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Our air is contaminated. We’re so disconnected from the earth. We often get more artificial light than natural light in our daily routines. And this situation is threatening our health. What can we do to turn things around? Thaddeus Owen, of the Primalhacker brand and the Corporate Escape Artist podcast, has some brilliant ideas for how to go about it.
He has concrete ideas for upregulating our detoxification pathways, for example, to manage our polluted air. He offers suggestions for finding pristine sources of pure water for our bodies and for recharging ourselves as our ancestors did, with sunshine and earthing, among other ideas. Based on the five elements from traditional Chinese medicine, Thaddeus walks us through how to ground ourselves in more than one sense of the word.
Visit Thaddeus’ websites: primalhacker.com and howtoescapecorporate.com
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Episode Transcript
Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Thaddeus Owen.
Water, wood, fire, earth, and metal, these are the five elements in traditional Chinese medicine. Could including one of these elements or related health practices be the missing piece of the puzzle for your health? This is episode 470 and our guest is Thaddeus Owen. Thaddeus has a Masterβs Degree in Holistic Nutrition. He once worked in the pharmaceutical industry and is now the Cofounder of Primal Hacker and the co-host of the Corporate Escape Artist with his wife, Heidi.
Thaddeus discusses how approaching our health through the paradigm of the elements can help ground our lives and undergird our health. He talks about whatβs going wrong in our environment and what we can do to reverse the damage. For example, he points out that we are breathing in more particulates, heavy metals, and toxins in our air than ever before. He offers solutions for how to upgrade our detoxification pathways to combat these issues.
He covers how to mimic ancestral lighting sources like firelight to counteract the limited blue light spectrum for most of the lighting in our homes and offices. He goes over the toxins in our tap water which are not filtered out and offers best practices for water consumption like drinking spring water and structured water.
He explains why modern shoes are limiting our connection with the earth and how a little bit of time barefoot on the soil outside can be transformative. Before we get into the conversation, I want to remind you to follow this show on the platform of your choice. This way, you wonβt miss a thing, or better yet, download the Wise Traditions app to your phone. Itβs available on iOS and Android phones. This is Hilda Labrada Gore.
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Welcome to the show, Thaddeus.
Thank you so much, Hilda. It is great to be here again.
Itβs been a minute, but here you are back again. I feel like you are one of the people that I most admire, who incorporates ancestral wisdom into every aspect of your being and that leads to optimal health. Letβs talk about a friend of yours who was struggling with weight loss before we get going here.
Ancestral Wisdom For Optimal Health
I love telling this story because ancestral concepts and ancestral practices can be so powerful. In our modern world, many people want a silver bullet or this new technology thatβs going to solve all of their problems. I always tell people that if this supplement, not that supplements are bad. Some supplements are absolutely needed but thereβs no silver bullet supplement or technology.
If there was, you would stop buying the next, latest, and newest thing because the one thing would work and everyone would use it. I love going back to, what are we trying to mimic with these supplements and ancestral practices and all the latest technology? Weβre trying to mimic nature. Our biology is tuned into the natural world. Often, the natural ways of being and upgrading our health can be free.
When people hear free, they donβt always value it. I had a friend and he had some weight to lose. He wanted to lose about 40 pounds. He had all the latest biohacking technologies. Tens of thousands of dollars of technology in his home and garage. He was using it all and he came to a retreat. A retreat that you were at.
During the retreat, we would go outside at sunrise every single day. We would see the sunrise. We would expose our eyes without sunglasses, contacts, and glasses to the sun. Not that weβre staring directly at the sun, but weβre getting the sunlight in our eye by being outdoors. He continued that practice after he got home. He lived in California. He always wore sunglasses because his eyes were sensitive to the light but he got out every single day at dawn for months.
He wrote me this long email months later. He said, βThaddeus, I never believed you but I got out every day at sunrise. I lost 40 pounds and I am no longer sensitive to sunlight. I donβt have to wear sunglasses anymore when Iβm outside and I lost all this weight.β He has blue eyes and people with blue eyes are often sensitive. The only thing he changed was not his diet and supplements. It was getting outside at dawn.
Did he lost 40 pounds?
This was incredible. Iβve always known how powerful this is for me, but I donβt have any weight to lose. It just makes me feel amazing. I keep my health at an optimal level from doing this, but he literally lost 40 pounds from getting outside at dawn.
If you were to analyze that scientifically, what was the trigger for that weight loss?
Hereβs the thing, when we get outside at dawn, instead of seeing a screen first. I know you like to say sunrise before the screen because I love them. Iβm going to steal that but sunrise before you look at your devices and getting blue light in your eyes is allowing your hormones to flow naturally. When we see certain types of light, our hormones are stopped, your testosterone, estrogen, and building your thyroid hormone. Your melatonin that you build up for release at night. Those things are set by sunlight.
Looking at sunrise before you look at your devices and get blue light in your eyes allows your hormones to flow naturally.
Sunlight programs provide free information to our body to become hormones later in the day. We eat protein. The protein is broken down to amino acids. Those amino acids become thyroid hormone, serotonin, and melatonin. Theyβre programmed to become those hormones at the right time of day by sunlight. If youβre seeing a screen instead of sunlight, your hormones are being programmed by the wrong light.
Youβre essentially feeding incorrect information to the body so that the hormones are produced in the wrong amount at the wrong time. When you start to get your hormones right in your body, as we all know, everyone says, βMy hormones are all messed up, or Iβm gaining weight because I have a thyroid problem.β Your thyroid and your weight are set by melatonin release at night. That all begins at sunrise if youβre seeing the sun.
Our ancestors didnβt have devices, electricity, and things messing with the messages that their brain was getting about what time of day it was.
Every single time you see a bright light that has a blue wavelength of light. It could be super technical but at the end of the day, we have a receptor in our eye to read blue light. Every time you look at a device, your brain says, βItβs noon,β over and over. Itβs basically like if you are an astronaut on the space shuttle and youβre seeing the sunrise six times in a day. That messes up your circadian rhythm and your biology.
We know from studies from NASA that these astronauts have all these metabolical problems because their circadian rhythm is messed up. Youβre doing the same thing when you look at a screen all day long and after sunset, turn on the screen immediately. Your brain says, βItβs sunrise or itβs noon.β That completely creates chaos in the body.
Sun And Light
How can we mimic ancestral health ways when they would have a fire at night, for example? Theyβre not getting that blue light.
If we look at all the different lighting sources at night, you basically want to look at what the sources are doing to my melatonin because your melatonin, believe it or not, sleep and melatonin go hand in hand. Melatonin is responsible for appetite, sexual reproduction, and what youβre hungry for. Literally what youβre hungry for the next day and whether you gain weight as fat or muscle is set by the melatonin you release at night. Thatβs destroyed by normal everyday lighting and devices.
Firelight has been shown not to reduce melatonin production at night, so thatβs awesome. Most of us are not going to go back and be an ancestral cave person using fire at night. I honestly know some people that do. They use only candlelight at night. I am not joking and they feel amazing. How do we mimic that? How do we mimic the ancestral pathways at night? What is your fire or lighting strategy for night?
For me, the cheapest and easiest way to address firelight at night is to buy an inexpensive pair of blue light blocking glasses. If youβve been reading this show for a long time, Iβm sure you hear this over and over is to block the blue frequency of light at night and continue to tell your body after sunset that it is dark, release melatonin and heal me during the night. Blue light blocking glasses solve that without making any other change.
I donβt understand why people donβt take that very seriously who have heard it before. Maybe theyβre not in enough pain like your friend who was having all the weight issues and the other issues.
When you have a medical condition or youβre in pain, you will try anything. Most people wonβt do those practices until theyβre in pain. I always say, βWhy would you wait until you have a dis-ease in the body? Why would you wait until thereβs something wrong with you to then try to fix it? Thatβs the hardest time to fix something.
The easiest time to fix it is preventing it from ever happening before it ever happens. We know thousands of people, and I put this probably in a blog post, too. I got a lot of flack for it because Iβm calling people out. There are thousands of people that we personally know that have all the information about how important wearing blue light blocking glasses after sunset is and how important it is to your health.
I would say 90% or more of the people we know that know this donβt wear the glasses at night, even though they have the glasses and they know the information. They donβt wear them. Iβll tell you, I did this when I first learned about blue light blocking glasses. I wore them for two weeks to see if it made a difference and it made a massive difference for me in terms of my sleep. Whatβs happening with the blue light at night, it increases your cortisol, which makes you stressed, leads to anxiety, and insomnia. How many people do we know are stressed at night and have insomnia?
Healthy Water
This is one thing I like about you. When I first met you, you suggested I do two weeks of morning sun. If youβre reading, I suggest you try this out for two weeks and see what difference it makes for you. Iβve also found that I used to say, βItβs no big deal. I always sleep well.β Now when I wear the glasses, I can tell the difference when I donβt. I want to talk to you about water. Weβre in Florida on a retreat and I noticed youβre not drinking the tap water. Talk to us about how we can have the healthiest water in our bodies. We all know that we want good clean water, but why?
The majority of our body weight is made up of water. What weβre learning is itβs not just any water. Itβs structured water that we need in our body. Our body can make structured water but we need to put pure water into our bodies. You fill a gasoline tank of your car with diesel fuel and itβs going to completely destroy the engine and never work again. I have a friend who did this and it doesnβt work out well.
If youβre putting junk into your body and I consider tap water, unfortunately, junk. Most of our tap water is considered βclean or safe.β Itβs chlorinated so thereβs no viruses if we believe in such things or bacteria in it. I look at the bacteria part. The chlorine kills the bacteria. It makes our water safe and we are the only people in the world that put drugs into our water.
Humans, men and women, for some reason, decided that we donβt want to force feed everybody drugs. It should be, βYou go to your doctor,β and you consent to being drugged or taking a pharmaceutical. In the water supply, we add fluoride, which is a thyroid drug. Weβre adding a fluoride to the water, which is used in the pharmaceutical industry and itβs the only thing weβve all agreed to put in our bodies as a drug substance because of what weβre told it does to protect our teeth.
Is it true that water processing plants or purification centers canβt get rid of the residue that might come into the plant from someone elseβs pharmaceuticals? What I mean is my neighbor is taking drugs, and someone else is on birth control pills. The water goes into the waste center. They try to process it, purify it and put it back in the tap water, but they canβt get rid of these nanoparticles of pharmaceutical drugs. Is that right?
I worked in the pharmaceutical industry for many years and I will tell you, pharmacokinetics is how pharmaceutical drugs break down in our bodies. If you or anyone you know takes a pharmaceutical medication, which even some of us who donβt like the pharmaceutical industry will take once in a while if we have to. When we put those in our body, not 100% of the drug goes into your blood and is used.
Typically, only 50% of the active ingredient is used by the body and the rest is eliminated through the urine. That means weβre eliminating these into the wastewater. The wastewater has a sludge process where it takes out the solids of the wastewater and dumps the rest of the water full of everybodyβs non-digested and non-metabolized pharmaceuticals into the surface water, the Mississippi River and the St. Croix River. Wherever the plants dump their wastewater thatβs βclean.β Itβs cleaned of solids and bacteria. It is not cleaned of pharmaceutical or agricultural compounds.
Those will end up in somebody elseβs drinking water and the facilities making the clean drinking water. They filter it through a carbon filter, essentially, sometimes. Not always. They add chlorine, fluoride, and they settle out the solids but they do not remove the pharmaceuticals and the agricultural chemicals. Nor do they remove nitrates which are natural ingredients in the soil and present in the water. When chlorine and nitrates mix, you form chloramine and chlorine nitrate compounds that are carcinogenic. That are the byproduct of two things, adding chlorine and the natural nitrates in the water. Those are also in the drinking water and not filtered out.
There are so many ways I could go with this. Iβm thinking if people know about this, the pharmaceutical companies or the waste treatment plants know about this, why arenβt they doing more about it?
The other compound thatβs in there now that everyoneβs here about are the βforever chemicals.β
PFAS.
Those are perfluoroalkyl substances. Iβm very well studied in this at my current full-time job where I keep PFAS substances out of our own products. Iβm also familiar with this because I live about three miles from 3M. 3M had been dumping PFAS chemicals into the groundwater for decades. The city that I used to live in has PFAS contamination in the water to the point where they had to shut off our city water because back in 2011, there were no limits on PFAS in water.
You could drink as many of them as you could imagine and it was legal. Only in 2020 did the EPA set limits on the amount of PFAS in water. Many municipalities had to shut down their drinking water and filter those chemicals out. Imagine for decades, everyone was drinking these chemicals they now say are toxic. What do we put in the water thatβs toxic that wonβt be found out until ten years from now?
Everyone has to filter their tap water if theyβre drinking tap water because you donβt want to be fluoridating yourself. If you need fluoride for your teeth, thereβs a better way to get it. Even dentists agree that drinking fluoride does not help the teeth. If you apply it topically, thereβs some debate if thatβs helpful but nobody seems to debate drinking is a bad idea.
Drinking fluoride does not help the teeth.
Itβs a neurotoxin.
I was part of the debates in Colorado in Fort Collins. When I lived there back in the early 2000s, they were debating whether or not they should remove fluoride from the tap water. We brought in the most expert dentists and medical doctors from around the world. Not one expert dentist that said we should keep fluoride in the water. Not one of them disagreed that you shouldnβt drink it. They all said, βDonβt drink fluoride. Itβs not going to be helpful, but we still think you should keep it in the water.β It makes no sense.
I know your solutions focus, Thaddeus. Tell us what some options are for those who want to drink water but not the tap water.
Thereβs many strategies like well water. It is typically great and has been tested because there could be agricultural chemicals or somebody buried a drum of PFAS in there in your backyard decades ago. If you have a well, then most of the time that well water can be sent through a carbon filter and itβs extremely safe and beneficial to drink.
Spring water would be another. You can go onto a website called FindASpring.com. If you can find a spring near you that produces water directly from the earth, thatβs free and you can fill up a number of containers of that natural living. We call it living water because itβs moving. Finally, if youβre on city water like I am, you need to filter your water. I highly recommend everybody filter the chlorine and the fluoride out of their water. If you can find a system, I can tell you what some of those systems are. Not by name but the process that does it. It will filter the pharmaceuticals and the agricultural chemicals.
All those will be filtered out if itβs filtering out the chlorine and fluoride. My personal water strategy is to make living water like the ancient peoples like our ancestors would have had. What I first have to do is strip out all the modernness of my water then make it alive again. I strip out using reverse osmosis, the chlorine and the fluoride, then I distill the water. I make it not still. Dis is not instill, so I make it living. I distill it so you could use reverse osmosis and distillation. Both of those remove fluoride and chlorine. I structure my water through rocks and crystals so that I make it even more alive when it goes into my glass.
I see because the natural waters and streams that our ancestors drank from were living water. It was getting structured by the sun and it was moving over rocks. It had this structure to it that was easier to absorb by their cells.
The moving water is more vital. They call water under the earth that we tap for city water often like sleeping water. The water is captured by these rocks and some of itβs been sitting there. In St. Paul, they have a real deep well of spring water that anybody can access for a dollar a gallon. You go and fill your bottle up. Itβs been untouched, they say, for like over 11,000 years. Itβs been sitting under the earth still.
It means itβs not aged and itβs young water. Some people are claiming that when a spring bubbles to the surface, that is now water ready for consumption. Itβs living water, moving, bubbling, or in a stream. That stream is structuring the water. Itβs making it more alive and itβs now called ready to drink water. Thatβs the living waters that we want to put into our bodies because we are alive. We want to put living waters into our body to put life into us. We donβt want to take water into our body that we need to use our life energy to structure. We want to put water in our body that gives us life back.
We want to put living waters into our bodies to put life into us.
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Air: Detoxifying Pathways
Letβs talk also about the air. I know that unfortunately it is contaminated as well. What do you know about that?
Most people are aware that we live in this toxic soup, unfortunately, of air, water, and earth. In our air, weβve got airplanes flying over and some people see things that come out of the airplanes and have names for them. They think some things are floating down to earth from those things that come out of the backs of airplanes. Whatever that is, we know that thereβs airplanes flying all over burning jet fuel.
That jet fuel has exhaust and that exhaust filters down to the earth through the air. We also know that we have energy generation centers and factories and that weβre putting this particulate matter. We have forest fires now all over Canada and the United States. We call it fire season now. Those particulates filter to all the places of the United States.
Weβre breathing in more particulates, more heavy metals, and more toxins in our air than ever before. As we breathe that in, it goes to our lungs. What do we know about our lungs? We take in oxygen and the oxygen goes directly from the lung into the blood. When we breathe these particulates into our lungs, they have direct access to our bloodstream. Thatβs not necessarily something that we can change. We canβt change the air that we breathe. I donβt want to breathe like canned gas that I have to pay for, that someoneβs going to air and sell it back to me.
I can see that coming down the pike, though.
Youβre going to be like, βHow can we sell air?β In the pharmaceutical industry, the big joke was, βThe more water we sell, the more money we make.β I used to work making childrenβs products. Think the generic equivalence to big brands like cough and cold syrup or nighttime liquids. I donβt want to say the trade names but you would give a child a liquid cough suppressant or a liquid thing to sleep at night that has like sudafed and acetaminophen.
Those are liquids and theyβre like 99% water. Thereβs like the teeniest amount of drug ingredients in there to do its job, but the bulk of the bottle youβre buying is pure water. We always say like, βHow can we sell more water in the pharmaceutical industry because itβs so much profit?β The same with air. Is somebody going to start selling air? This is clean air. Breathe this all the time.
While we canβt change the air we breathe, what we can do is we can upregulate our detoxification pathways. I look around and say like, βWhat are the most significant ways to detoxify particulates and heavy metals from my body?β Things like sweating. If youβre doing exercise every day and working up a sweat. Sweating is the number one way to detoxify things like phthalates from your body.
We can’t change the air we breathe. What we can do is upregulate our detoxification pathways.
Phthalates are the things that make plastics soft. When plastic is soft and flexible, they add phthalates, get in our body and are potentially toxic. The only way to get rid of them from our body is to sweat. If weβre exercising, weβre sweating. If weβre using the sauna, weβre sweating. What are all the ways that you can use as a detoxification strategy that works well for you to detoxify and keep those pathways open and upregulated so that when you do take in toxins like weβre all going to do. Your body is expert at getting rid of them.
Sleep is a detoxification method also, isnβt it, on some level?
Sleep is very detoxifying as long as youβre getting enough of it and if you go to bed at the right time. We know that deep sleep only occurs between the hours of 9:00 PM and 11:00 PM in the winter and 10:00 PM and midnight in the summer. That is the peak time of deep sleep and it’s when we detoxify. If youβre going to bed super late because youβre a night owl all the time. You might be missing out on the deep sleep portion of sleep, where you get the rejuvenation and the detox.
Somebody mentioned to us during an episode that the brain shrinks at night during deep sleep up to 40%. Thatβs huge and when it shrinks, itβs to allow detoxification liquid, the glymphatic system, to flood the brain with melatonin to detoxify the brain cell, which we know when the brain starts getting toxic. It can lead to things like Alzheimerβs and dementia. People are claiming that by getting our deep sleep, by using the glymphatic system, we detoxify the brain at night.
Food is also a detoxifying mechanism, no?
Lots of foods can be very detoxifying. Foods can either help you eliminate through what we call the back passage. They can eliminate things through the colon and the intestines. Food can bind heavy metals that are produced or shed by the body through the digestive system. Foods can open up other detoxification pathways and people then will take the food. Our ancestors would have not taken supplements. They would have eaten whole foods.
Now, if you want to detoxify, you might use something like a certain type of B vitamin that helps your body detoxify. You might want to use magnesium that helps you detoxify. Thereβs all these detoxification supplements. Again, theyβre supplements. They are adding to your normal routine to help your body do certain things such as detoxification. All those supplements are in the food in the first place if youβre getting whole foods that are nutrient dense.
Liver is rich in B vitamins. I know oysters have tons of magnesium.
Also zinc.
The highest level of zinc you could find in any other food. I love that you mentioned that because weβre big on obviously food and nutrient dense food. When it comes to nature, by the way, these nutrients are in the right proportions to each other so theyβre going to be more effective in the body.
I studied Weston A. Price when I was doing my masterβs thesis on holistic nutrition. What I found is not only are these ingredients or supplements or nutrients packed in the right ratios. They are bound to organic amino acids. Theyβre easier to absorb in the body. Often, when we buy a supplement, the supplement is an inorganic form of mineral or vitamin. An inorganic form of mineral is not easily absorbed and in some cases, not absorbed at all by the body. In food, the plants and the animals put the nutrient in the form thatβs absorbable when we consume that plant or that animal product. We benefit of the absorbable form of those nutrients.
Grounded On Earth
I want to pivot now to another element, which is the earth. Talk to us about how connecting with the earth can improve our health.
This is something that most of us have forgotten. In 1950, we moved away from grounded shoes. The earth is grounding. It has electrons in it that have negative charge and when we stand on a barefoot, we get the benefit of absorbing electrons for free. Most of us wear rubber sole shoes and we live in these little boxes we call houses that are insulated from the earth. Theyβre not grounded. We ride around in a car thatβs not grounded. Rarely do many modern people set foot or barefoot on the earth to take advantage of that.
Before the 1950s, shoes didnβt have rubber soles?
Correct. Before the 1950s, shoes had leather soles which were grounded.
I wonder why that switched. It seems cheaper to have rubber than leather, probably for starters.
Thatβs why rubber can last longer. We used to have these people called cobblers that would fix your shoes.
Iβve heard of that. Not that I saw them with my own eyes.
I have and they donβt exist much anymore because we have these rubber soled shoes and if they do wear out, we buy a new cheap pair of shoes. If youβre buying brand shoes, they might not be so cheap. Shoes used to be expensive and they had leather soles and we were connected to the earth. When weβre connected to the earth, we can dump inflammation. Positive charge that builds up in the body is called inflammation and inflammation leads to dis-ease.
Weβre running around all day insulating, absorbing microwave radiation from the cell phones, Bluetooth, WiFi, power lines, and electric currents running through our homes and weβre picking up inflammation. We never get rid of the inflammation and so we have health problems later, potentially. What you can do is stand barefoot on the ground and you release the positive charge from your body, which is getting rid of inflammation. You absorb electrons which are healing. Why? Itβs because when your cells have more energy, they can detoxify and heal.
Energy does not come from fat, protein, and carbs. It comes from electrons. We break down food in the form of fat and protein to electrons to run through the mitochondria. Itβs called the electron transport chain. If you stand barefoot on the earth and get free electrons. Those free electrons can give you energy with no food and you get more energy to detoxify and relieve stress.
We touched on this topic with Dr. Gerald Pollack years ago in an episode I think I called Negative Charge Creates Positive Energy. Meaning that the Earthβs negative charge helps us offload the positive charge that we have and it gives us more energy. I think most adults now would say they probably canβt remember the last time they were barefoot.
Most adults, because I have kids, even tell you, βWhy are you letting those kids go out in the yard barefoot? Get shoes on them.β Itβs like, where did this programming, because to me, this is a program weβre running. Weβre running some programs. I encourage you to ask yourself, if thatβs something that you think, βI need to wear shoes, thereβs poisons on the ground, or Iβm going to get a bee sting.β Where did that programming come from? Where did you learn that?
I spent some time in Amish communities and Up until 1950, the Amish community that Iβve spent time in Mondovi, Wisconsin. They donβt get a pair of shoes until theyβre fourteen. They were helping build a new roof on a neighborβs house and the kids had no shoes on the roof. Iβm like, βWhy arenβt they not wearing shoes? They donβt get shoes until theyβre fifteen.
Most of us before 1950 were barefoot and even in the 1970s and 1980s when we grew up. I was barefoot all the time outdoors. Somehow, weβre now running these programs, βGot to wear shoes. Get shoes on those kids. Make sure they have shoes on their feet.β I donβt know where that came from but it is bizarre to me that we wouldnβt take our shoes off. Think about the last time you wore like Hilda said, when were you last barefoot outside on the earth?
They even sell little tennis shoes for babies that canβt walk yet. Maybe thatβs part of the thing like consuming these things and getting it into our mind. Even the kidβs mind, βI got to have shoes on.β
Donβt get me started on most shoes. Even menβs shoes are high heeled shoes. They elevate your heel above your toe. If your heel is elevated above your toe, pick your foot up and point your toes down. Youβre shortening your heel cords on your Achilles tendon area. It shortens that forever. We atrophy those heel cords and the muscles in your feet. Itβs like putting your foot in a cast. Also, look at even menβs athletic shoes or a menβs pair of dress shoes. Not to mention womenβs high heel shoes. It narrows your feet by your toes.
It crunches them together. People have things like, βI have these bunions.β Itβs because your feet are unnaturally crunched together. Part of your bone is trying to stick out where your toe should have been and then people get those cut off. They cut off the bunions. If you wore shoes or no shoes. Letβs say you wore no shoes or you wore something called barefoot shoes that allow your foot to expand to its natural length. You wouldnβt probably get those bunions because itβs the natural place your big toe should be.
Going back to having our feet on the ground, how long do you think is good? As adults, we have our jobs, weβre running around and doing things. Weβre probably going to be wearing shoes most of the time. How much time should we spend doing this as we start to cultivate this habit?
Even as little as 3 to 5 minutes barefoot outside. For me, when Iβm doing my morning sun practice, getting outside at sunrise, I will be barefoot. Now, I canβt do that in the winter because I live in Wisconsin and itβs very cold. Although, this time itβs bizarre, itβs 50 degrees. Normally, itβs 30 below at this time of year. When itβs 30 below Iβm not barefoot outside.
You can buy these like static heel straps. They basically are worn in the microelectronics industry to keep microelectronics engineers grounded when they touch microchips in the fabrication plant. If they pick up static charge or positive charge or inflammation in their body and touch a microchip. Itβll fry the chip. They have to be grounded while they work. You can pick up these inexpensive static heel straps. Put them on your boots or your shoes outdoors and winter and be grounded. If you can be grounded longer, like up to a half hour. Thatβs ideal. The minimum time 3 to 5 minutes has a massive benefit.
Metal: Refinement In Thinking
One of the elements in oriental medicine is metal. I want to start to wrap up with this. Metal can represent refinement. Talk to us about how we refine our thinking to know how to make the best choices with all of the options before us to improve our health.
In Chinese traditional medicine, they have the five elements. One of the last elements is the metal element, which I like to think of as spirit. This metal element is about we do earth, air, wind, and fire. We take all these pieces and we optimize them for your best health and your best life ever. Once you figure out that youβve optimized a lot of your life and youβre working on the right things. The very last thing most people end with, which probably should be number one that they start with, is their spirit.
We start to refine who we are, how we move through the world, and how we go about living our lives. Once you know, like, βI donβt want to drink tap water. It has all these crazy things.β What we donβt want to do is get stressed, worried, and freaked out about it. The metal element teaches us refinement in our thinking. We recognize what is true then we come up with a strategy. Now we have a water strategy. We have a food strategy.
I donβt go and eat seed oils at the restaurants. I eat whole living nutrient dense foods so I know when I look at a menu, thereβs only certain foods Iβm going to eat because Iβve refined my food strategy. I know whatβs best for me and Iβm going to live my best life ever. I know when I travel, I will buy some spring water or I will bring a filter with me so I donβt drink tap water. I have a water strategy. Itβs refined and I never have to worry about it again because what most of us do is forget the refinement part. Weβre not connecting into some spirit or source or energy thatβs greater than us.
We start to get worried and scared all the time without knowing that we can refine what we do. There is a reason weβre doing everything that weβre doing so that we can walk more gracefully through life with less fear. Itβs okay to know whatβs going on, but we have to stay out of the fear and out of being high in cortisol all the time.
I have friends in this health space who are so beyond fear that theyβve gone back to eating things with red dye number 40 and seed oils. Almost with impunity because theyβre like, βWe donβt care. Weβre not afraid.β Is there something to that as well?
I would say, yes. To me, I see it at various levels. You first go to the level of learning whatβs out there. You next go to the level of refining your strategies of avoiding the negative and rebuilding your health. First, everyone needs to rebuild their body. Our cells turn over from every second to every seven years. The quickest time they turn over is every second, and the longest time your bones turn over is seven years. We create a new body every seven years.
Let me just say, thatβs why I tell people Iβm seven years old. Iβm like, βThatβs the most I can be is seven.β
You could also say that youβre a billion years old because how old are the atoms? Whatever the age of the earth is. I donβt believe anything people tell me, but if your atoms never age, then why are you aging? My cells are ageless because theyβre made up of atoms at their base level and atoms donβt get old.
I like it.
Iβm ageless or Iβm seven years old. When youβve created a new body, detoxed, and gotten rid of all the junk that was programmed into you from before. At least in my opinion, Iβve created a new avatar for myself years ago. This new avatar has none of the seed oils. None of the junk in it. Next level is we refine our connection with spirit and our inner monologues, what we tell ourselves.
Once youβve reached that level, then can you program your own mind to take in any as nutrition? We hear of breatharians. They can use sunlight and air and water to survive. Could you survive off seed oils and be optimally healthy because you can alchemically transmute the seed oil to something beneficial for your body? Yes, and I also think you have to reach the level of no fear and believe it and have created and what I like to say a new avatar within seven years. Can you go there to eat anything you want and be optimally healthy? I do think itβs possible. I wouldnβt say Iβm there yet, but I would say that itβs possible.
Itβs almost like Wim Hofing it. Wim Hof is known as the iceman. A man who is able to literally keep his body temperature stable, if not increase it in the face of ice surrounding him for hours. The scientists have tested this. Heβs won some Guinness Book of World Records and awards of recognition because of his ability to do that. I do think itβs possible as well. I love the idea also of living without fear because if weβre living in fear, then is that living?
If youβre living in fear, youβre more susceptible to somebody telling you what to do. Without discernment, you go and do it without thinking about it because weβre in the lizard part of the brain. I donβt like to call the lizard part, but itβs the old part of the brain that just reacts. When youβre in the constant reaction phase because youβre scared. You will do things that are not in your best interest and you wonβt have discernment.
What we have to do is come out of fear. We can be much more discerning in how we approach the world and ideas. We start to know intuitively what is good for us and what is harmful to us. Coming out of fear is one of the top things that you can do for yourself. A lot of us learn all this stuff thatβs going on. Thereβs PFAS, phthalates, and heavy metals. Itβs raining down from the sky and itβs doom and gloom. Itβs okay to be scared when all thatβs happening, but recognize that thereβs not necessarily anything youβre going to be able to do about it.
Come out of fear and know that, βI acknowledge this is happening.β There are strategies. There are ways to overcome this. There are so many of us that know how to overcome what is going on. You can learn from all these great minds that have already done the work and are thriving now and not be in fear. Know that the solutions are out there.
Sunlight At Dawn
Now Iβd like to pose to you the question I always pose at the end of the show. If the reader could only do one thing, that is one thing to improve their health. What would you recommend that they do?
I wish they could do three things. If itβs only one thing, Iβm going to say that the number one thing you could do is get sunlight at dawn. I almost wanted to say blue blockers at night, but sunlight at dawn because whether youβre in the corporate office, driving in your car at dawn or youβre at home. Even if you canβt set foot outside, most people, especially in your car, roll your window down and get that natural sunlight. Honestly, that dawn light is magical. The more we study the effect of sunlight and sunrise on human biology, the more magical it gets every single year. I do think that there is magic at sunrise and everyone should be out seeing the sun.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thanks Hilda, this was so much fun.
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Our guest was Thaddeus Owen. Visit his website PrimalHacker.com to learn more. I am Hilda Labrada Gore, the host and producer of this show for the Weston A. Price Foundation. For the transcript for this episode, visit our website WestonAPrice.org, and click on the show page. Now for a Letter to the Editor from our Winter 2023 journal.
Crystal from Pensacola, Florida had this to say, βChanged my life. The Weston A. Price Foundation has changed my life and the lives of my family members. When I was 21 years old and a married mom of two small children, I got sick. I got really sick. I was also depressed and had lost the joy of living. To say my future seemed hopeless and bleak is an understatement. I went to traditional doctors and received no help. One doctor took a look into my ears and told me that it appeared that I was having an allergic reaction and to take some Benadryl to see whether I felt any better.
On a whim, I decided to try a weird βwitch doctorβ to see whether I could get any guidance. I walked into her office and was immediately surprised at her warmth and joy. She informed me that my body was in a whirlwind. The first thing I could do was get rid of inflammatory foods such as gluten, and eat steaks and eggs fried in butter instead while we waited on the results of my blood lab work. I was aghast. Steak and eggs fried in butter, give up healthy and improperly prepared grains?
She also gave me the Nourishing Traditions cookbook to take home and study. This was the beginning of a total transformation in my mind, body, and spirit. I am forever grateful and happy to say that myself and my family are enjoying the fullness of life. The many resources that the Weston A. Price Foundation provides are invaluable and life-changing. Thank you so much.β
Crystal, this is an encouraging letter. If you also have a testimonial that you want to share, please write to us. Write to us at Info@westonaprice.org and put Letter to the Editor and the subject line. We will consider your letter for inclusion in an upcoming journal. Thank you so much for reading. Stay well and remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.
About Thaddeus Owen
Thaddeus began his journey outdoors, camping and fishing as a boy in the Adirondacks and Central NY forests. After a decade spent developing pharmaceutical products, he just couldnβt face another day adding toxic ingredients into childrenβs medicine. He shifted gears and engineered a successful transition into a new job keeping toxic chemicals out of products we all use every day. From there, he was also able to find a way to incorporate more movement, nature and sunshine into his work environment.
He spends his free time experimenting on himself in hopes of helping others on their journey. He studies Nature, Sunshine, health optimization and EMF and educates others on how to become optimally healthy using light and avoiding EMF. He gave a TEDx talk on the power of using special glasses to block blue light and how it impacts our health. He is also the co-founder of Primalhacker and HowToEscapeCorporate.com
Thaddeus holds a personal training certification, nutrition certification, Masterβs degree in Holistic Nutrition and BS in Chemical Engineering. He teaches others how to optimize health through the online platform Primalhacker and records stories of escape and evasion on the Corporate Escape Artists Podcast with his wife Heidi. He lives in Wisconsin with his children and business partner and wife, Heidi, where they spend significant time outdoors.
Important Links
- Thaddeus Owen
- Primal Hacker
- Corporate Escape Artist
- Weston A. Price Foundation
- Nourishing Traditions
- Weston A Price Email
- How to Escape Corporate
- Wise Tradition Podcast App
- One Earth Health
- Holistic Hilda
Your guest fails to recognize that people were glasses to see. So we should double up with blue blockers over our prescriptions
Not helpful unless you donβt need glasses. Found advise bias
I can get blue-block in my prescription glasses from my optometrist
Thank you for all the wonderful words of wisdom!
Thank you for the advice, canβt wait to share with my wife and friends. So many simple suggestions with such great benefits.