 Oh, hi, and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's program, Don't Just Age, Engage. I'm your host, Larry Grimm, and it's my privilege to welcome today one of our new local folks who is going to share with us a response to the question I have. Now, most of Think Tech Hawaii looks at issues. We have issues around all kinds of community matters, and we explore those and unpack a lot of the issues and the answers to some of the dilemmas, political and economic that we have. But this program, Don't Just Age, Engage has to do with the emotional dynamics of aging. And my question this morning is, and I hope you'll send in your questions that are right here, but my question this afternoon is, is it really worth the time and the energy and the resources to think about and to work for healing for aging old people? I know it's behind a lot of questions people have about the distribution of resources. And to look at that with today, we've invited Kristen Davis. She'll share a lot more than just that with us to come online and to join us as my interviewee. Kristen, welcome. Hello, thank you so much for having me, Larry. I'm honored to be here. Well, you're welcome. And I'm such a treat, really a treat. Kristen's a registered nurse. She's a public health nurse. She's a certified clinical nutritionist. She started a program called Remedy Recipe, which she'll tell us about. And she is just very active in caring about and working for the healing of human beings. Was, is that fair to say Kristen about you? Yes, definitely. And thank you for the great introduction. Tell us more. All right, well, I want to go back to your question about is it, you know, is there really a point to healing or taking care of your health as an older person? And absolutely, of course it is. Who doesn't want to be thriving and living their best life until their very last days? And for some people, the end of their life, I think can even be the most enjoyable because you now have so much wisdom and so much knowledge. And a lot of people are no longer bogged down with like, you know, parenting and jobs and who doesn't want to enjoy their adulthood and their retirements? Like the very, like as vibrant as you can. Absolutely, Kristen. I appreciate that perspective. And I say in our human human, there are four dimensions to every human experience. Those are internal spiritual dimension. There's an external physical dimension for each individual. There's an internal corporate dimension for families and cultures and societies. And there's an external dimension for families, cultures and societies, rules and regulations, things that we provide, things that we get together. We usually spend a lot of time down here in the resource and piece and that's where we'll be with you today, which I think is great so people know what's available. But paying attention to that whole dynamic of inner, external, inner community and external community really gives a wonderful experience in aging in particular and other times of life as well. So tell us about the first thing I want to know about I think is remedy recipe. Let's flash that card, will you Eric? All right, so I have been studying holistic health and nutrition since, oh my gosh, for 20 years now. I am 42 years old and I started getting excited about holistic health and healing when I was 22. And long story short, I met a nutritionist, she called herself, but she really did so much more and she sort of changed my life through changing my diet. I thought that I was super healthy and fit and that I felt good and oh my goodness, I didn't know what that was until she really got me healthy and I felt so good and I'm like, I want everyone to have access to this. Like, everyone should be able to feel this good. And so that's what got me interested in it and studying. And I took several courses in holistic health and different kinds of like Chinese medicine, herbal modalities, different nutritional paths. And at the end of it, I thought, I know a lot, but I don't know enough. Like if someone came to me with a more critical disease or on blood pressure medication or something, and I just felt like, well, I'm not equipped to help that person because I don't know all about that. And so that's actually why I became a nurse. I never really, I never wanted to be a nurse. I did it as like a stepping stone for my business because I could recognize that there is so much value in Western medicine, but there's also so much value in traditional medicine and holistic healing. And for me, the important work that I do is bring those two things together. Because in Western medicine, I will say we are amazing at sewing people up at emergency care, at snake bites, at antibiotics when they're necessary. But when it comes to chronic conditions, this is a big statement, but I'm gonna say it, we fail. We fail hard. And especially when you look at mental health and the fact that there's so many mental illnesses that have just been on the rise for the past 10 or so years. And other chronic conditions as well, autoimmune conditions, we're good at treating symptoms, but we're not always good at looking at the root cause. And so that's where I believe the holistic path comes in. And it's really about bringing those things together. That's excellent. Let me ask this, Kristen, is it fair for me to say that Western medicine is emergency oriented, crisis oriented and not so much sustainability oriented? I mean, yes, I think so. Not to say that there aren't amazing doctors and nurses and practitioners out there because there are. And there's a lot more doctors now that are embracing functional medicine and integrative modalities. And so my intention is not in any way to like poo poo or put down allopathic medicine, but I'm just saying that both are super important and being able to bring those two things together to heal all components of a person and to live a vibrant life is really important. And you can't just take a pill through your symptom because then your body's gonna yell at you somewhere else. You'd be like, hey, you're not addressing the root cause. Yeah. And it's my understanding that Congress really threw its weight behind allopathic medicine early in the 20th century. And as a result, we have big pharma that has had the support of the political system all through the last century and into this one. So I really am appreciative. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this integrative approach. Bringing the best of both worlds, so to speak, and integrating them. Now it seems to me that you have begun this integration in your own life. Would that be true? Definitely, yes. And I have fallen off the path and I've paid for it. Oh. So tell us a little bit about that. Oh, well, without going into too much story, there was a point in my life where I had really dedicated so much time and energy to this. And I just thought, it's not working out. And there were some other just like things that happened in life that were not ideal for me. And I sort of turned my back on all of this. And it was really like I was denying my own soul and my passion and what I love. And I still ate well. And I still took my vitamins and things like that. But I really just stopped being on my soul's path as far as what I was creating and working with people. And I got really sick for a few years. And I hesitated in going back to all of the holistic ways. And I went to head MRIs. I went to Western doctors, GI doctors, like all the specialists. And I was kind of at my wit's end and about to just like give up. And I was like, I guess this is what the rest of my life looks like. I think I'm just, you know, I just have to deal with the fact that I'm not well. And it was right in the midst of that, I don't know if you want to call it giving up or acceptance, but it wasn't a positive acceptance that I was introduced to a healer who is actually a chiropractor by trade. And he also does a lot of nutritional work and a lot of the things that I've trained in and that my old nutritionist did. And after one session with him in two weeks, I was like 50% better from something I had been struggling with for years. And it was them that I was like, what am I doing? Why am I like denying everything that I know to be true about healing? And as soon as I turned back on the path, it was like vibrance and health came back. So when you went off this path and in a holistic approach now, what was the dimension, what was the, how much of a factor was your internal sort of belief system or your internal feelings about who you were at that point in your life? Were you sort of giving up your sense of wellbeing and value? Absolutely. Yeah, that was totally, it's an interesting point that you bring up because I do believe that more often than not, there are emotional components behind physical disease. And this is a great example of that. Cause it wasn't just being off the path of like, well eating or doing the proper exercises or whatever. It was mindset and it was emotional. Let's talk, I wanna talk then a little bit about your clients, the people that you are best suited, you feel best suited to help in your remedy recipe work. Are you hoping somebody comes to you with some sort of diagnosis already in place? Some sort of critical care concern? I like to say it's not my job to accept your diagnosis. It's my job to help you get well. Okay. So whether they have a diagnosis or not, I'll always tell somebody if I feel like what they're struggling with is over my head or if it's not in my area of expertise, I will read for them out to someone else that I think could better help them. But as long as I feel like I could help them, it doesn't matter if they have a diagnosis or not. I work with people that are wanting to overcome or improve anything from like a chronic condition to just an annoying ailment that they've been struggling with. We're just wanting to improve energy or sleep, weight loss, blood pressure, a lot of the things have I worked with, several autoimmune conditions, diabetes, has a really amazing success with people with anxiety and depression. So I love watching people get better and watching their lives transform. Yeah. Would you buy any chance, have a story about somebody that you helped that you maybe that had to do in part with, well, maybe with diabetes or neuropathy. I'm thinking about issues that aging people as we enter into adulthood are common, can be common, especially on our island here. Diabetes is so high. Is there, do you have a story about helping someone and how that worked out? I don't have a specific diabetes story, but I mean, I do believe that type two diabetes is most in most cases reversible. Type one is a different thing, but it really can be controlled and shifted with diet. The body is always trying to heal, it's always trying to be in balance and it's doing the detective work of finding out, what is that offensive factor that keeps getting in there, that's keeping it from healing? And it's not necessarily the person's fault. We are fed so much information on diet and what's healthy, and that's why people come to me to kind of help sort it all out because you can get lost in the sea of like, fad diets and natural packaged products. I'm like, nothing in a package is natural. But anyway, sorry, I'm not answering your question. Do you find a lot of people come to you feeling guilty about what they suppose, it's my fault, I know, and... I do, actually, especially not so much the younger people I work with, but the older people I've had questions like, well, do you think I'm kind of trying to find an appropriate word, but have I gone over the deep end because I did drugs in the past or I used to be an alcoholic or I used to be a smoker and the answer is no. No, the body is always trying to heal and let me help you get it in as much vibrance and balance that we possibly can. Talk some more about that, about the... I think of it as homeostasis, is that the correct word? The body always wants to move towards healing and homeostasis of a well-balanced... Talk some more about that. Can I trust that in my elder years as well? Yes, absolutely. It doesn't change for a child or an older person. An older person with many comorbidities may have more challenges to work through, depending on just your state of health at your age, but it can always be improved. We can always get to a place of feeling better and there's so many components of that. Had a story and I just lost it, I apologize. Oh, I know what I was going to say. I really believe that the body can heal itself with just about anything if you give it what it needs or you find the thing that you need to take away and that might be environmental, it might be something you're eating, it might be a thought that you're having. And that's where I come in as doing the detective work of looking at all the different pieces of your life objectively and even for me, I can't do this work on myself. I have to go to someone else. It's like looking in a mirror that's too close to your face, you can't see your own reflection. Yeah, right, yeah, yeah. So if I were a client, I might come to you and say, Kristen, I just don't feel well. I just don't feel as up to par what's going on. And we start with that kind of general problem, presentation. So what it would look like if we were working together, I always do a free consultation with people to make sure we're aligned to work together. And then from there, assuming that we both choose one another as partners on this journey, then I spend a lot of time on the back end doing a really in-depth history, similar to like what a doctor would do, but more. So I do tell people to set aside like a few hours, but we talk and it's fun and it's enjoyable. I usually will give them some pointers right off the get-go. And then oftentimes I'll look at their labs as well, and I do a functional lab assessment, which is very, very different from what Western medicine does with labs. I'm trained to look at it a different way to look more for the root cause versus treating the symptom. And so I'll use those things together. And I have like a survey, I have the person do, and then basically I help them come up with a plan. And I also spend a lot of time listening to what their diet's like and what their life is like, because anyone can say like, stop drinking alcohol, stop having sugar, exercise every day. And if you're not a person who does those things, that's not realistic. So I am all about making like easy little suggestions that end up having a profound effect in your life. But we work together over the period of a few months. We're always checking in to see how are you feeling? Are you having side effects? How is this remedy that I recommended going? Sometimes someone will be like, oh, I tried that dish you recommended and it was gross. And I'm like, oh, we'll try this instead. But I'm all about people enjoying their life, healing and being healthy should not, in my opinion, it should not be this horrible thing. It's not like a diet where you're just like, oh, I'm starving or I'm miserable or I'm sore. I want you to feel good through the process of through. Yeah, and as a fellow coach, life coach, as I am with you, I liked what you said in the blurb you sent me, which was you want to follow the goals and the dream of your client. Do you want that? You work with what they bring, what they want to have happen in their lives and don't impose something on them like, although your philosophy is very strong, pro-health and pro-well-being. You are a well-being coach, right? But absolutely, that's true. It's not what I want for them, it's what they want and how can I help them get to your goals and helping people set realistic goals off? Terrific, that's terrific. That is great. So another example, have you got any other, would you share another example about, well, just about a person because you work with people online primarily? I do. I think I just, in my mind, I go through HIPAA and I'm like, what can I share? But certainly, I can share stories. Just a generalization of a process online engagement. See, this is important to me now, there's my word. Don't just age, engage. And I like what you do because you're bringing people out of that sense of being a victim of health problems and into engagement into something new and life-giving. That's part of it, is the empowerment to know that you can be in control of your own health and feeling better if you're just little things. Let's see, I had someone who was really struggling with high cholesterol and was really not wanting, they came to me because they were not wanting to get on fat and drugs because of the side effects, but they were scared to death and felt like they were a ticking time bomb and that they were gonna have some cardiovascular event at any moment. And it was actually a lot of digging around and grueling out certain things, but we ended up discovering a genetic component. I do do some genetic SNP testing sometimes. And we found that she had a genetic component which I realized when I was hearing her talk about her family history and just some other things that had happened. And the treatment was actually very easy. It was just finding what it was because she had this really healthy diet. And so the question was like, why is your cholesterol so high? Like what is going on here? And so once we got to the root of the genetic component, the treatment was something totally natural that you could get like the health food store. And in less than 30 days, we got their cholesterol down like 80 points. And she was struggling this for years. So that was amazing. And then she started losing weight and it was just like all wonderful events moving forward after that. Another one I can think of was a gentleman who came to me wanting to get off his blood pressure medication. And we were able to do, we weaned it down slowly. I worked with his doctor too, to make sure the doctor was on board and he weaned down the medication as we got his blood pressure naturally down. So that's one, I've helped a lot of women with chronic fatigue and hormone imbalance, which any women listening to this, you know how huge that is and what a big difference that makes in your life and how you feel on a day to day basis. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's a great story and a great success too. What is it about the aging body? I'm gonna go into my niche now. What is it about the aging body post-65 into the 70s that makes it so difficult to affect health and well-being? Principally, let's say, losing weight, maintaining muscle mass. It seems to get harder. I'm speaking from personal experience here. For both men and women, there's often a hormonal component to that and stress definitely comes into play because of the role that court is all plays with keeping weight, especially on the abdomen area. For women, the balance between estrogen and progesterone and there's really not a one-size-fits-all answer because every person is different and for a woman, I would be asking questions like, well, were you on birth control and for how long and if you've gone through menopause at what age did that happen and what was that like for you and there's so many different components of it to get to the thing that's causing you to have the hard time with the weight gain and sometimes it's just a lack of exercise or maybe the person had an injury and so it's hard for them to get back into their regular exercise routine so we have to find an alternative route that they can enjoy and get sunshine and feel good and still be moving their body. Are you a proponent of a vegan diet? I'm not, actually. I don't think that it's bad though. I definitely know a lot of vegans that are super, super healthy but I do think a little bit of meat is good in the diet. However, if you are vegan, I'll still work with you. You can still be like super, super healthy and I do know a lot of healthy vegans. I was living in Denver and I had a vegan restaurant just down the block from me and I had breakfast, lunch and dinner there. Oh my gosh, the food was delicious. I was stunned at how really incredible the flavors were. They were very vibrant flavors. So I'm all in favor of the full range of food sources that we have. Oh, absolutely. And the more organic vegetables and fruits you can get in your body, the better. That's always gonna be better. I do think a little meat, especially for certain people, behooves them in Chinese medicine. They actually use meat medicinally but not the way that we eat it in the West. We will often have like a plate that's like half meat and like a little tiny thing of vegetables. So I'm more of a proponent of a plate of vegetables and a little tiny thing of meat. You're kind of reversing the proportions there, huh? Yes. Oh, that's great. That's great. Well, how would I contact you? How would I follow through if I get in touch with you to explore your services with you? So you can email me. My email is on my card that you showed earlier. It's Kristen, K-R-I-S-T-I-M, at Remedyrecipe.net. Oh, I'm just so into going to the card. It's actually .net, not .com. I still apologize. Gotta redo your card. I know. I think I just must have sent you an old one. But it's Kristen at Remedyrecipe.net. So you can ask me that, thank you. And my phone number is also on there so you can call or text me. I'll say it. It's 831-818-3460. And I'll always get back to you within 24 hours unless it's the weekend or I'm out of time. So, and this is anywhere in the world. This is a global reach, right? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I can only see so many people, I guess. And like I said, it's important to make sure we're aligned to work together that our philosophies of healing are similar. And I always want it to be a win-win. If the person's not getting results, then I don't feel good about the work I'm doing. So I need to know that we're on the same page working as a team. I think I'd be a little remiss if I didn't ask you a final question, Kristen, about what do you think is the most important thing to do towards health right now with regard to COVID-19? I thought you were gonna say for the aging population. I mean, with COVID, I think the most important thing is wash your hands all the time. Wash your hands, wash them well, and really take care of your immune system. If you're a smoker, you gotta quit that. Try to have less sugar. We know it's bad for the immune system. I mean, sometimes we get so technical. Like I've been to all of these seminars and classes and things and I can't tell you how often at the end, I just sit back and go, unbelievable, it's just always this, at the end, it's always the same simple things. Like sunshine, rest, be happy, be mindful, eat high quality food, have vitamin D, and I will say I think that organic food, especially right now is super important, not just because of the lack of pesticides, but because of the nutrient denseness of the food is like tenfold or more than commercial food. So when you can, if you can eat organic, you're gonna be nourishing your body and feeding your immune system much better. Right. Well, thank you so much, Kristen. And right now you've answered the question, is it worthwhile to be an aging person and move towards health and wholeness? Yes, if you get in touch with Kristen, you can have an easy way to do it and a joyful way to do it. Obviously an experience for wonderful support. Also, I do my own coaching for life support for aging people. I, you join my global community for your extraordinary elderhood. And that's at personalcoachingforlifeandfaith.com. You'll find all the information there and contact information for me. I wish you well, I wish you well, your well-being. I'm here every two weeks. So two weeks from today will be returning with another fascinating look at the insides and the outsides of aging. Have an extraordinary life and extraordinary elderhood, my friends. Thank you for joining me, Loha. Thank you.