Must Health Be Sacrificed For Beauty?

How far do we have to go to be deemed “beautiful” by society’s standards? Many end up losing their health as they put their bodies through extreme dieting and cosmetic surgery. It’s actually possible to cultivate beauty naturally and preserve our health in the process! This is the outlook of Lauren Berlingeri, the co-founder of HigherDOSE. Lauren is a former model who has first-hand experience trying to jump through the hoops of looking “perfect”.

In today’s candid conversation, Lauren shares how striving to achieve that standard wrecked her health, leaving her exhausted and with gut issues. She tells the story of how she ended up getting breast implants and why she later decided to have them removed. She goes over her new health regimen which includes sunlight, infrared sauna therapy, and more. She explains why she advocates for a more natural approach these days when it comes to beauty and cultivating well-being.

Visit Lauren’s website: higherdose.com

Become a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation.

Check out our sponsors: The New Biology Clinic and Optimal Carnivore

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Listen to the podcast here

Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Lauren Berlingeri.

Beauty Standards And Health

Trying to look good, be thin, and appear eternally young in an effort to conform to society’s norms can put unnecessary pressure on us and negatively impact our health. This is episode 483. Our guest is Lauren Berlingeri, co-founder of HigherDOSE. She’s a biohacker and mother of twins. Lauren is also a former model who tried so hard to fit the mold of modeling that she turned to breast implants. She tells us what they’re made of, what the consequences can be, and the symptoms of breast implant illness. She tells the story too of how she went on birth control pills to address cystic acne and hormone issues, but then she ended up with gut distress and other conditions.

Lauren understands that beauty is about more than how you look in a photograph. She discusses her health regimen, which includes sunlight, infrared sauna therapy, and more. She goes over her nutrition philosophy as that of a qualitarian. Finally, she also reviews simple, free ways to enhance beauty without sacrificing our health in the process.

Before we get into the conversation, I want to remind you that the Weston A. Price Foundation is a nonprofit, member-supported organization. We can only do education, research, and activism with your help, so become a member. Go to Weston A. Price and click on the Join Now button. Use the code POD10 to join for simply $30 for the year. You will get the quarterly journal and the ability to join us on private, members-only Zoom calls every other month. Thank you so much in advance for your support. You also help keep the show going. We are grateful.

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Visit Lauren’s website: HigherDOSE

Become a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation

Check out our sponsors: The New Biology Clinic and Optimal Carnivore

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Welcome to the show, Lauren.

Thank you for having me.

I want to hear from you a story of how beauty and society’s standards about it have played into your own health and wellness journey.

What a fully loaded question. I don’t know if you know, but I used to model for fifteen years. Beauty pressure and these beauty standards have always been imprinted in me at a very young age. I started modeling at sixteen. I started traveling the world. Back then, when I was modeling, it was really a hard time to be a model because that was the time when the Paris Hiltons and the Nicole Richies of the world were on the covers of magazines because they were anorexic, or Twiggy. The models were crazy skinny and no one was speaking out about it.

I went through every single crash diet back in the day. I mainly lived off of cigarettes, Diet Coke, coffee, and anything that didn’t have calories. That ultimately sped up my metabolism and took away my hunger. Probably ten years into my career, I crashed and burned, mainly because it was not sustainable. It’s fine when you’re sixteen years old. You can get away with it.

When I got into my late twenties, I had all these hormonal problems. I had cystic acne. I had gut issues. I was depressed and miserable. I had a hard time showing up to any of the modeling jobs because I felt like, “I don’t look like what I do in my photos,” which were clearly all photoshopped. I had this pressure and overwhelming feeling of not being enough and not being beautiful enough and being embarrassed about what I looked like versus what my photos portrayed.

That’s what the industry and society were putting on you, that beauty meant looking a certain way. Also, I have a friend who used to model who would say something like, “Beauty is pain.” She accepted that part and parcel of conforming to society’s desires meant that she was going to be in pain. Is that how you saw it too at the time, do you think?

Yeah, pretty much. The idea is that it was all about our measurements at the end of the day, which decided whether or not you were going to get a job, which is crazy. Looking back on it, if they looked at the skin, the energy, the aliveness in her eyes, and the things that I would consider to be important and contribute to whether or not someone’s beautiful or not, we would’ve all been a lot happier.

I don’t think we were set up with the right tools to model back in the day. I always say that if I knew what I know now, back then, I would’ve been an amazing model. I didn’t have the education. I didn’t have the tools. I didn’t know how to take care of myself. That’s when I started IIN and started learning about nutrition. I, first of all, realized I had a passion for nutrition and taking care of myself, but then I felt empowered on how to take care of myself. That’s where I went on my healing journey.

Fast forward, I have my own business all in the health and wellness space. We always call it beauty biohacking. We’re here to really educate and redefine what beauty means because we truly do believe beauty is from the inside out, and not in the cliche way. There’s so much more to being beautiful than what you look like in a photo. It’s all about vitality and being alive inside. That’s what HigherDOSE is here for. We solve that through products but mainly education. Education is our first product. It’s so important. I don’t think that education is out there for us, which is why I love talking on these shows and educating based on my personal experience.

There’s so much more to being beautiful than what you look like in a photo. It’s all about vitality and being alive inside.

Education is one of our main emphases as well. We are all about getting the word out about ancestral wisdom. I know there are young readers who are in that place where you were and who are trying to conform to someone else’s standards of beauty and sacrificing their health in the process.

I was there. I have been there. I went through everything from the age of sixteen when my hormones were crazy. I went on the birth control pill and ended up being on that for ten years. I didn’t know anything about my genetics back then. I found out later on that I don’t detox with estrogen, so when I went to get off the birth control pill, it was crazy what it did to my hormones.

I ended up being a lingerie model and a bathing suit model for a really long time. When I got off the birth control pill, I remember my boobs deflated to nothing. My estrogen tanked. I ended up getting breast implants, which is this spiral that ends up happening. We should educate young women early on that it is so important to understand what it is that you’re putting in, on, or around your body and educate yourself because if not, you’ll end up spiraling down this path that I did. I’m hoping to educate more women to do your research before you do anything that can mess with your health.

Wise Traditions | Lauren Berlingeri | Health — Health: Understanding what you put in, on, and around your body is crucial. Educate yourself, or risk spiraling down the wrong path.

Breast Implants

Talk to us about breast implants because we haven’t discussed that topic on this show before. What are they made of? How long do they last? What are some of the consequences of putting them in?

This is another thing that I don’t really think that doctors want you to know. It’s a business. They don’t educate you about what goes inside, all the chemicals, formaldehyde, and depending on if you have silicone or whatnot. People are always like, “I have saline. It’s okay,” but you don’t realize that the outer shell of the breast implant is always silicone.

Especially new breast implants, there are so many chemicals in there that make them non-liquid, so it’s like a jelly texture as well. Ultimately, it is a foreign object that goes in your body right above your heart and on top of your lungs. Your body knows it’s foreign so it does whatever it possibly can to get them out of your body. Our innate ability is to heal ourselves, so there’s this constant fight with breast implants.

I had chronic inflammation throughout my entire body and developed an excess layer of water because my body was so inflamed, trying to fight these breast implants and ultimately get rid of them. Also, from the many different chemicals that are in them, my liver was trying to process it. I had yellow eyes because I was trying to process the amount of chemicals that were in my body.

Plus, I did a lot of infrared saunas as well, heating them up. People are always like, “If I have breast implants and I go in an infrared sauna, it’s probably not good,” which is true. But it’s also the same if you’re out suntanning and you’re heating them up that way. You don’t want to heat up these different chemicals that go into your body. Your body is constantly in overdrive trying to get rid of them.

There’s this thing called breast implant illness. A lot of people say it’s hokey or whatnot. That’s because not everyone has these reactions to breast implants. Most people have something, and they don’t realize it because it comes in so many different forms, whether it’s through your skin, hair loss, anxiety, mood, inflammation, or whatever it is. Think about it as the opposite thing of nature and natural. You are putting something in there in your body that is full of chemicals, and your body does want to get it out. At some point or another, you might end up with some of these symptoms.

I’ve heard that a lot of women then, like you, end up having this explant surgery where they have them taken out. When did you put two and two together, like, “I’m having all these symptoms. Maybe it’s related to this,” or did you not put two and two together?

I did. It was once I became passionate about this health and wellness and biohacking space. I felt like a fraud. I was always very embarrassed about them. I didn’t want people to know that I had them. That’s the first sign that something’s not right. It was really once I got pregnant with my twins and I was breastfeeding them that I had this overwhelming sense of, “I need to get these out of my body.”

A lot of women wake up to what goes in and on their bodies when they start to get pregnant or think about pregnancy. It’s the way women are made. We’re more concerned about our children and our offspring sometimes than we are ourselves. That’s the first time that the light goes off in a lot of women’s heads, like, “What is in this? What are the ingredients? How is this going to affect my endocrine system? Will this affect my baby? Will it affect my pregnancy?” These are all healthy questions to ask. That was a pivotal moment for me.

What happened after you removed them? Did your body have relief? Tell us about it.

One, I had this fear of dying when I was in surgery, which is not the best feeling in the world. My twins were about a year and a half at that point, so there’s the trauma and stress of having surgery. Once I had them out, I remember taking a nap in the room. I had friends in the other room talking, so I was in between sleeping or not. I had this feeling that I had this yoga block between my back and that my heart was doing a heart opener. I remember thinking that I was in a heart-opener position during the nap. That was because I could sense this freeness from the energy that was flowing through my body. It was honestly like my heart was wide open.

On top of it, I’ve never been so much more in love with my body. I feel so much more comfortable. I was embarrassed about my implants. I used to pretend that they were real and mine. That’s not a good thing for my psychology. I’m a sporty girl at the end of the day. I use my body a lot. I felt much better about my body and have never felt more confident.

I’m so proud of you for making that decision because then, there would also maybe be a stigma attached to all of this. You’re telling the whole world.

This is my experience. This is what I went through. You might be different. You might have breast implants and never experienced these symptoms. I demand the truth. I wanted to know. That’s why my body communicates to me. I have a very strong relationship with my body. I wanted to know the truth and I really asked for that.

Beauty Vs. Health

I want to ask you. Are health and beauty mutually exclusive? It seems like a lot of interventions for beauty, even drastic ones where people inject Botox, fillers, and so forth, seem like they’re juxtaposed with good health.

I truly do believe that there are other things out there, and we are not so educated on them. First of all, one of my favorite ways to take care of my skin is through fasting and intermittent fasting, especially around my cycle. You’ll never see your skin so tight, so beautiful, and so clear if you have some form of fasting. That’s a free one.

I always like to highlight those free ones because a lot of these biohacking suggestions that I have for people are quite expensive like peptides, exosomes, stem cells, and all of the next-level, more science-backed ways of anti-aging. There are natural ways to release stem cells, which are through fasting and hormesis.

That being said, I do the best that I possibly can. I’m 95% really clean with all of my skincare, beauty, and products. There’s a certain amount of chemicals that you’re going to be exposed to regardless of how healthy you are in your air, your food, and your water. I really truly do believe in a focus on daily detoxification and whatever that might look like for you.

The infrared sauna is still one of my favorite ways to detox, but there are so many amazing ways to detox, whether that be rebounding, dry brushing, taking detox supplements, or binders. I really do have a strong practice around detox because I can’t control it. I don’t want to be so crazy about it because if I am, then you’ll go to a restaurant and you’re like, “You’re using seed oils,” and it will ruin your entire day. Maybe someone comes in and they’re wearing such a strong perfume that you spiral out. You can’t be like that. I’ve learned to let go of my perfection of being so clean.

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Coming up, Lauren talks about energy as a way to boost health and natural beauty.

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Go to the New Biology Clinic to learn more or reach out to their friendly care team via phone or email. Your journey to genuine healing begins here.

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Energy Healing

Since you’re the head of HigherDOSE, I want to ask you about the healing power of energy. I know HigherDOSE uses the PEMF systems and also the infrared light. Talk to us about the different forms in which energy comes to our bodies and how it can be healing.

First of all, we didn’t invent infrared PEMF or red light therapy. They’ve been around forever and are extremely studied and efficacious. The reason why we love these technologies mainly is because they replicate the healing power of nature. First and foremost, if you can get out in nature, be in natural sunlight, and ground to the earth, that is ultimately the best way to get high naturally.

I lived in New York for fifteen years. I’m a busy CEO and mother. I don’t always have time to do that morning walk, sunlight, and get dosed in nature, which is why our wellness technologies are really great for people who have a busy life or want to supplement whenever they don’t have time. Our wellness technologies, mainly our Infrared Sauna Blanket, are making the infrared sauna accessible. We used to have eleven infrared sauna spa locations in New York.

I don’t know if you have tried an infrared sauna before, but I’m sure you have, it’s pretty profound what you feel in one session. It detoxes seven times more than traditional sweating down to cortisol levels. It puts your body into a parasympathetic state. Your skin’s glowing and looks amazing. I was like, “How is everyone in New York not doing the infrared sauna?”

We really wanted to bring infrared to the masses, so we created the sauna blanket. That’s the way to make infrared saunas accessible. We created our Infrared PEMF Mat. PEMF replicates the earth’s core frequency, making it very grounding and healing. I’m always sitting on my HigherDOSE Infrared PEMF Mat whenever I’m doing podcasting, meetings, or whatnot. It helps me feel calm and relaxed. We wanted a product that gave you the benefits of infrared and PEMF but without the commitment of sweating. You can sit on it while you’re working. Your kids can hop on it. You can use it at any point of the day.

We launched into red light therapy as well, which mimics the healing power of the sun. The sun is at its most regenerative in the morning and the night when the sun’s about to go down. That’s when there’s the most infrared and red light therapy. That speaks to the body and feeds the mitochondria to produce ATP, which means every cell in your body is working better. It’s amazing for the skin, balancing mood, and hormones. These technologies are so good. Ultimately, what we’re doing is bringing the healing power of nature into your home.

Higher Dose Products

I love that. I have so many questions. First of all, are you all the ones who invented that mask that I see people wearing? Why is it a mask particular to the face? Why are you putting some of that energy into the face exactly?

The most known benefit of red light therapy is the skin benefits. Red light feeds the mitochondria to produce ATP, which means every cell in your body is working better. It’s really good at downing inflammation and ultimately feeding your skin so it’s juicy, dewy, and vibrant. I really want to educate on the benefits of infrared and red light, and both are in the Red Light Face Mask, beyond the skin benefits.

There are so many benefits of getting it in through the eye area, which is why our mask has eye holes. It is so that your eyes are picking up on the infrared and red light. It balances your circadian rhythm, boosts mood, balances hormones for women, and boosts hormones for men. It’s pretty profound. I truly believe that everyone should have access to red light therapy in their homes.

I also want to note that with all of our blue light exposure through our devices and our cell phones, red light is pretty much the opposite of blue light. The blue light is very stimulating. It’s aging you. If you do use a red light after you’ve had a busy and stressful workday, it helps your circadian balance out and tells your body to relax, calm down, and go to sleep. It’s amazing for your beauty sleep as well.

I have a friend who has a mask. She and her husband fight about it because he likes using it too. He is not trying to get so much the effects on his skin necessarily, but he wants these profound cellular regenerative effects that come as a result of that healing therapy. Another question I have for you is whether the PEMF technology replicates the resonance of the Earth’s natural magnetic frequencies. Is that right?

Correct. It also charges your cells and your body and downs inflammation. I don’t know if you ever go outside and walk barefoot in nature. That’s more grounding, but there is a pulsing that’s happening that the Earth is giving you. It’s similar to the feeling of stepping on our mat. There is no obvious pulsating. It’s a very subtle one, but it speaks to the body and our cells.

It tells our body, “It’s safe to relax. Go into a parasympathetic state,” and do its own healing. It’s primal. That’s why it’s great for the body. Any kind of new technology that comes out in the wellness space, I’m always like, “Tell me how it’s replicating what happens in nature. Explain that to me.” If they can do that, then I’m like, “That makes sense,” because that’s how our bodies are used to living and thriving.

Stress Management

That’s right. We are so harried, hassled, and hustling around. It’s a different time. Our stress levels are so high. Since you mentioned this, I have to ask. You were a model for years, but now, you’re a CEO, and you’ve got your two little ones. There’s so much going on. How do you lower your own stress level, maybe even apart from all these mats and infrared therapies?

Having a bunch of tools in my back pocket is the most ideal place to be. My favorite biohacks are the free ones, doing breathwork, meditation, movement, eating well, and all of these things. I always tell people, “If you’re looking for a magic blue pill, it’s not here. It’s a lifestyle.” Naturally, in all my decisions, I tend to make the best for what it is that my body needs.

I have a really great relationship with my body. Everyone is very bioindividual. Knowing what it is that I need and when and honoring that is important. I’m conscious of when I’m having a bad day or when I’m feeling stressed out. I’m fortunate enough to have the privilege of having my own business, so I can say, “I don’t think I’m going to do this today. I’m feeling off. I’m feeling like I need to relax and calm down.”

My kids go to school, which has been really great. They’re four. In the first two years of having my twins, it was the most challenging thing I’ve ever been through. I had to learn the hard way to put myself first. That’s a whole nother story for another day. I hit rock bottom again with my twins. I learned that you have to fill your cup up first before you give everything to your children, your business, your husband, or your family because you’ll have nothing left for yourself, and that’s not good.

It’s interesting. Many worries and things can weigh us down. In our ancestors’ time, they were worried about legitimate physical threats. We have legitimate threats, but they’re usually psychological, like, “That deadline is imposed on me,” or, “I have to get back to that person. “ I love that you have attuned yourself so well to your body that you know, “I’m going to step off this treadmill right now,” figuratively or literally, “and I’m going to do something that fills my cup again.” That is so critical. What a different place this is for you compared to where you were in those early modeling days when you were telling your body, “Be quiet. I’m going to tell you what to do,” and filling up your body with your cigarettes and Diet Coke.

That’s exactly it. I learned everything the hard way from when I was modeling, how to take care of myself, to overworking out. I used to have a show called Woman V. Workout where I did very physically demanding things from a 24-hour night with the Navy SEAL, NASCAR driving, motocross, and firefighter training. I burnt myself out like crazy. My adrenals were shot. I couldn’t sleep through the night.

I also learned you can overwork out too, and it took me a long time to figure that out. When you overwork out, you don’t achieve the goals that ultimately most women are trying to achieve. The twins, having kids, I thought, “Women have children all the time. How hard can it be? I did Navy SEAL training.” That wasn’t the case. I ended up having a grand mal seizure about a year before the date of my delivery. I had to do so much healing, which is PTSD, around my delivery and the fact that I couldn’t handle any sort of stress. I had crazy thoughts of things happening to my children all the time.

When you over-work out, you don’t achieve the goals that, ultimately, most women are trying to achieve.

When you have that relationship with yourself, you’re like, “I need to do something about it. I demand the truth, and then I’m going to do something about it.” That’s how I live my life. I’m not perfect by any means, but any time things get a little bit crazy or out of whack, I really do the work to figure out, “What is causing this? What do I need to learn? How do I need to grow?”

That ends up being something that I feel is my purpose here. I do feel like my story can help a lot of young women, women, and even men on the importance of living this lifestyle. It’s not because it’s cool or because you’re going to be skinny, but because you’re going to feel good. You’re going to feel alive. There’s nothing better than that and nothing more important.

Nutrition Philosophy

You are right. It is so priceless. There is a proverb that health is the first wealth. It is so valuable that no matter how much money you have in the bank or how much superficial beauty you might have, what really is going to let you live your life to your best potential is optimal health. You talked about eating. Tell me about your nourishment philosophy.

I studied at IIN, which we have in common. I truly discovered my passion is, first and foremost, nutrition. I remember listening to the modules and was obsessed with them. I would remember everything. Do you know how when you’re studying the wrong thing it could be challenging to learn? You’re like, “Why am I not learning?” You put so much pressure. I had the opposite with nutrition, which is where I learned where my true passion was.

Through the IIN course, I tried everything. I’m a human guinea pig with biohacking. I try everything. I did the same with my nutrition. The thing that really helped me out the most was learning that it’s not so much the philosophy and what you believe is the right way of eating. One, it is knowing and having that relationship with yourself to know what’s good for you.

I have the standard of I’m a qualitarian. For me, it’s all about the quality. You can’t put meat into one category and say it’s created equally. There is a cow that has been raised in a way that is not healthy. It hasn’t been properly slaughtered, not packaged properly, and then you deep fry it. There’s the worst way you could eat meat, and then there’s the highest quality.

You’re eating from a happy cow that is grass-fed, that’s getting sunlight, and that was slaughtered properly. You’re grilling it outside and have such a positive relationship with it. I truly do believe it’s about having a variety of different foods. I always try to tell people, “You have to look into what’s the best source and where it comes from. Try to have a mix of all of those different things and then see how your body reacts to it. That’s the best way to live.”

I love this term, qualitarian. I hope it takes off. We’ll credit you for it. It’s so good. You probably know because the Weston A. Price Foundation was a part of the IIN curriculum.

It was my favorite module. Milk is another example. I’m very much passionate about A2 milk and grass-fed whenever possible. I personally have a relationship with my farmers. I get raw whenever possible. I live out here in Austin, Texas. That’s probably one of the number one food groups that my family consumes the most. It’s so important to get the highest form of quality milk because there are so many essential minerals. Choline, I need that in my genetics. We’re not taught that.

That’s right. I don’t know if IIN still keeps the Weston A. Price Foundation in their curriculum, but when they did, one thing that might’ve informed your qualitarian stance is that Dr. Price’s most important finding was that of nutrient density. The Indigenous people groups he visited around the world had ten times more fat-soluble vitamins and four times water-soluble. Their quality was much greater than that of the people in the United States in his time. This was in the 1930s, so you can imagine how the quality of our food in general and in the US has gone down and how we need to seek out and know our farmers and look for the best sources we can possibly find within our budgets. We need to look for ways to maximize the quality over the quantity.

Agreed. I remember those photos where you would see the Indigenous kids that ate more Weston Price and the ones that didn’t. Their faces didn’t fully develop, their teeth were skewed, and whatnot. It’s not giving them that chance to thrive at a younger age. I’m very passionate about the way my kids eat and instilling in them, “What you’re eating is going to affect your body. The energy in is the energy out. See how your body feels and the way your brain feels.” I am teaching them to connect and have a relationship with their body at a young age.

You mentioned earlier bio-individuality. It’s important too because there are a lot of folks who will see an influencer and say, “I’m going to follow exactly what they recommend because it’s working for them.” What would you say to a person who is all about that?

That is not the way to look at it. I keep bringing it back to this idea of having a relationship with your body. Your body tells you everything, whether or not something’s good for you or not. I’m a big fan of applied kinesiology too. You can muscle test these things. Everyone’s biology is different. Your genes are different. Your ancestors are different. Where you live is different. Your goals are different. Everything is different. That’s the thing that makes this wellness industry, especially nutrition, so challenging.

Saying, “This way is the way for everyone,” as soon as someone says that in nutrition, I stop listening to them. I’m like, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” It’s really about figuring out what works for you, and there are lots of ways to do that. I use genes as my foundation. I use applied kinesiology to muscle test what foods are working for me. It’s important you find a good practitioner.

I have a strong relationship with my body. I’ve always done the elimination diet where if you think it’s something, eliminate it and then reintroduce it back in. That’s a sure way of your body telling you whether or not something works. There are multiple ways. It’s about learning what your bioindividual makeup is. The only thing you should be educating yourself on, first and foremost, is learning about yourself and then being able to curate the best way of living for you and the lifestyle that lights you up.

Dr. Price never used that term that I know of in his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, but he noticed that every group of isolated Indigenous people groups that he was with around the world had different customs. They had different foods that they were eating. They were all thriving, but it looked different. The commonalities or what they had in common in terms of nutrition are what make up the Wise Traditions dietary guidelines.

Biohacking Movement

Listen to that too. Their guidelines were not saying, “Everyone has to do every single thing,” but they are a way to get guided for your nutrition journey. It was like, “Maybe you need to include more ferments. Maybe you need to eat more nose-to-tail, including broth, and so forth.” We invite people to look these over and apply the ones that work for them. I want to ask you a couple of more questions before we wrap up. One is, what are we overlooking the most, do you think, in this ancestral health or biohacking health movement?

Light exposure. Light pollution versus light healing. Most people don’t know that infrared is also a form of light therapy, and so is red light therapy. The lack of natural sunlight that we’re getting, being inside behind our computers, the blue light, and not making it a priority, and then sunscreen on top of it, there needs to be more education around when to expose yourself to the sun. There needs to be more education on when to get that red light through the eyes, when to get that little bit of vitamin D each day, and to be careful about artificial lighting in your office and your home and light pollution.

I lived in New York for thirteen years. I remember I would go to a cottage or somewhere removed from all the lights and sleep so deeply. The importance of sleep is that’s when we heal and when we restore our glymphatic system, our brains. If there was one thing that people could be more aware of, it is when you are using your phone, having boundaries around your devices, trying to get as much natural sunlight as possible, and substituting with red light whenever you can. When you notice you have seasonal affective disorder or your mood’s a little bit down, try to go out and get some sun or red light therapy. It’s one of the best things for you.

Health Tip

I love it. I want to pose to you the question I love to pose at the end. You may have already answered this question through the course of this interview, but if the reader could do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do?

Try not to stress as much. That one’s a hard one. That needs its own category. Seek out more tools that reduce stress, like breathwork, meditation, mindfulness, and consciousness. There are books on this as well. It is being aware of what you’re stressing about, what you can control, and what you cannot. Life’s too short to stress about certain things that are not needed. Some of the happiest people are the ones that don’t stress.

Seek out ways to manage your stress levels. Maybe it’s not watching the news all the time. Track what triggers you and what makes you feel more calm and nurtured. Seek out more things that are restorative, calming, putting your body in a parasympathetic state or rest-and-digest, healing, sleeping, and all of that. When your cup is full, everything in your life is better.

Some of the happiest people are the ones who don’t stress, so seek out ways to manage your stress levels.

100%. Thank you for this lovely conversation. It’s been a pleasure.

It’s such a pleasure. Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation.

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Our guest was Lauren Berlingeri. You can visit her website, HigherDOSE, to learn more. I am the host and producer of this show for the Weston A. Price Foundation. You can find me at Holistic Hilda. Here is a review from Apple Podcasts. Kathylance had this to say, “Love your episodes. Thank you so much for the great information. I look forward to tuning in every week.” Kathy, thank you so much. It means a lot that you took the time to write us a review. You too can rate and review the show. The more reviews we have, the more attractive this show is to prospective audiences. Thank you so much for tuning in. Stay well and remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.

About Lauren Berlingeri

Lauren Berlingeri is dedicated to inspiring others through fitness and naturally-healthy lifestyle practices. After launching her career as an international model, Berlingeri went on to star in her own show, “Women vs. Workout”—grossing over 15 million views and receiving a Webby Award nomination for Best Host. This experience led to extreme sports hosting for brands such as UFC, EA Sports, and IMG. Having cemented her name within the fitness industry, Berlingeri decided to expand her expertise, earning a holistic nutritionist and health coach certification at The Institute of Integrative Nutrition. Her venture into the health and wellness startup spectrum began in 2014 as one of the first creative minds at Aloha.com—doing product development, leading the brand ambas- sador program, and brand partnerships.

Lauren discovered the power of Infrared technology — specifically Infrared saunas — and saw an opportunity to bring the biohacking tool to the masses. Since co-founding HigherDOSE with Katie Kaps, the wellness brand has experienced meteoric success, boiling down to a true revolutionization of the spa business. Creating all the initial branding themselves and even acting as models in their first campaigns, the brand exploded, leading the way to at-home sauna systems that thrived during the pandemic.

As a female biohacker and mother of twins, Lauren brings a fresh perspective to a space that has been dominated by male voices from its inception, making it HigherDOSE’s core mission to educate women about their bio-individuality and give them the tools they need to reach their own best selves, with content designed to educate people on how to take control of their own wellness regimens.