So please share your story with our listeners, because it's incredible, and I really think many of them are gonna be able to relate.

Yeah.

Wow, what a great intro, and, and I really thank you so much, Karen.

I really appreciate that.

Um, yeah.

No, that's a lot to take in.

Thank you.

... where are these coming from?

On the note of actuarial exam support, did you ever feel obligated to forego your planned study time because you thought it would look bad to be putting your exams ahead of your job?

I think this is a huge struggle that new hires face going from...

Trying to balance the studying and learning a new job and a new role at the same time where you want to succeed and you want to look good to your employer, but also you want to pass your exams.

It's a really difficult balance to achieve.

And I personally know that I have felt this struggle a lot.

And I really try to stick to my planned study hours, but it can be super difficult when you have really pressing deadlines.

But I feel like the company that you work for at least should want to see you pass and want to see you succeed.

yeah On that note, what are some of the other pros and cons of working remotely versus hybrid versus in-office situation that you guys see?

[clears throat]

Um, yeah.

It is just absolutely beautiful.

I love it.

I...

Years ago, I came to him.

I said, "We should make a planner." Uh, it's really hard to find a good, well-designed planner, and especially one with a larger family.

What are some adjustments that you've made from last year to this year, and maybe a little bit of a, an explanation why.

When we're talking about plant-based and humic and fulvic, how does that get into the cell to be able to offer people better absorption and get to work in the areas that they're deficient?

The way I like to describe it is if you, let's just think about a magnesium molecule.

And the magnesium molecule came because you took some magnesium and you ended up with a whole bunch of magnesium in your gut.

And mostly your body went, oh my gosh, there's way too much magnesium, a concentration of magnesium in it.

It worked, it grabbed water, and it tried to eliminate most of it.

But one of those magnesium molecules got all the way broken down into its ionic chemical component size, and it hit up against a receptor site in your gut, and it absorbed into your bloodstream.

And now that magnesium molecule is floating around in your bloodstream, and it hit up against a cell wall, one of your cells, and your cell went, oh, that's magnesium, and it let that one magnesium molecule into your cell.

What does that do within our system over time? And how are we going to get rid of that? I mean, is there any promise for humic and fulvic to be able to come to the rescue working as that bouncer slash scavenger to go in there and try to clean things up?

[laughs]

So, um, when I...

But about for- mid-40s, uh, started perimenopause, and I'm telling you, it became really hard.

So I had flatlined adrenals for over a year.

I had really bad inflammation in my gut that caused bloating and, and elimination issues, even after being gluten-free for seven or so years.

I had a bad inflammation in my mouth with terrible periodontal disease, gum loss, uh, I mean bone loss in my teeth.

I had really bad inflammation in my sinuses that, from the mold exposure, and I could never get, um, any momentum in healing that, so I got sinus infections at the drop of a hat.

But before we get there, let's first just unpack a 101 for listeners on the body's mineral demands and, and what minerals in general do for the human body, and maybe some of the most common mineral deficiencies.

at caroline again always fun to have you on the show i appreciate your explanation on the difference between absorption and assimilation and even the points on bioavailability but i wanted to get back down to just a little bit more like if we have somebody listening on the show today they're not really well versed in health maybe they're finding their way back to a healthier person what's the most important point to understand about mineral absorption

I think the most important point is that minerals that you buy and take in pill and powder form even salts but they they really will hold those separate but the ones that you've you know you go to the health food store and you've got all the pill bottles lined up on the mineral aisle and there's zinc and there's chromium and there's selenium and there's magnesium and there's potato i mean there's there's like 18 or 20 of them okay and they're most of them made from rocks bones and shells Now, when you're eating and you get a rock or bone or a shell, what do you do? You spit it out because you know that your digestive system doesn't digest that well.

So when you put these powders and it looks like it's small and it's gonna get broken down really easily and absorbed into your bloodstream, but actually it's not.

About 90% of it is going to go straight through you and out the other end and not absorbed okay so now i want you to think about the inside of your gut okay the inside of your gut is a lot like a forest it's it's a diverse community of plant life and microbiota, all sorts of different organisms.

And they all work together in this incredibly beautiful way when it's a healthy environment and it keeps the lining of your gut really healthy as well.

So what happens is things get broken down in your gut.

And there's a molecule, let's say a molecule of magnesium, and it's floating around in there and it hits up against the lining of your gut.

So

What was happening?

Yeah.

You know, what was happening for me is I had had a whole bunch of different chronic issues, um, including inflammation in my gut.

So I'd been gluten-free for seven years or so but could never get over the bloating and the elimination issues.

I had a lot of inflammation in my mouth with bone loss in my teeth, uh, bad periodontal disease.

Been to multiple dentists trying to heal that problem.

I had, uh, had a mold exposure event, so I was dealing with continual sinus infections that came back every six to eight weeks.

But like what is actually happening when we're mineral deficient?

So what were some other ones, if you feel comfortable, um, to share about your other intuitive experiences and, and visions and psychic phenomena?

Well, one of the things that's actually been very challenging for me throughout my life is I'm extremely empathic.

And so, and as a young person, I would get really confused because what I am emp- empathetically experiencing coming from a person and what they're saying or presenting on their face might be completely different.

And as a young person, I would literally-- I, I literally thought I was going crazy because what I was getting was so much...

A- and I didn't know which I was supposed to respond to.

So that was really challenging.

I mean, for probably, I would say, 30 years of my life [laughs] I literal- I thought I was, something was wrong with me 'cause I didn't really know at that...

Real quick, do you think that that's because it existed, and we just weren't aware and paying attention? Or do you think that these issues started to compound and become created because of the, the toxic world that we live in? Or what's your, what is your perspective from that, having, you know, lived it and then-- 'cause I, I hadn't heard as much about mold up until recently.

So what's the sort of, what more is there to it? What do we have to do?

yeah well there's just not very much information about minerals out there and the only information that we get is maybe people taking a multivitamin and mineral you know supplement a pill or maybe as you know their their special their practitioner might say oh you need to be taking magnesium or if they're a woman with bone issues they say take calcium or Maybe your mother tells you to take zinc because it raises your immunity or different people will tell you, your trainer will say, oh, you need to take some electrolytes.

So the challenge is that all of these ways of using minerals are truly a misunderstanding.

So the shift, like the paradigm shift.

And it's literally just because nobody's talked about it.

Years ago, nobody had ever talked about the gut microbiome.

We just thought that's the place where a food gets broken down and then it ends up going out the other end.

i can see it

Six to one, which is-

Exactly.

So there's a huge issue with mineral depletion b- from nutrient density in foods.

But one of the other things is that I say we're all... a lot of us are walking around in bodies that we don't really understand how they're powered, and that's what I work a lot at, is bringing this information to people.

You know, like, you'd never buy a car if you didn't know how to fill up the gas tank.

Or at least check the oil.

You know, maybe you're not gonna change the oil, but you'd know somebody would say you need to check this oil once in a while, or you need to check the radiator or whatever.

What are some of those minerals?

Mm

... is, is often, um, uh, mineral depletion.

Then things like, uh, chronic inflammation, so let's say you just have, you could have chronic inflammation in your joints, in your muscles, in your connective tissues, in your, um, you know, all, all sorts of different places in your body.

So the question is, how is it that mineral deficiency could be affecting so many things? And that's what, when it gets really interesting.

So why is it? When you think about your body, and your entire body is made of cells, and every single cell is powered by mitochondria inside the cells, and those mitochondria are fueled by two things, minerals and amino acids.

Your body makes amino acids, not all, but many, and it requires all the minerals to come from the outside.

So when it doesn't have all the minerals it needs because you're drinking filtered water and your foods don't have the nutrients they ha- need, they used to have, um, and you have glyphosate in your system that's chelating minerals, and you're creating imbalance with using concentrated minerals so your body's trying to get rid of excess, what, what happens is your body does, is unable to generate enough energy.

Oh, fascinating.