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The Homeschool How To
I don't claim to know anything about homeschooling, so I set out on a journey to ask the people who do! Join me as I chat with homeschoolers to discuss; "why are people homeschooling," "what are all the ways people are using to homeschool today," and ultimately, "should I homeschool my kids?"
The Homeschool How To
#145: Functional Medicine Doesn’t Have to Be Confusing—Here’s What It Really Means | Dr. Dusty Hess
Is your child struggling with ADHD, allergies, or chronic illness? Wondering why childhood health is declining despite modern medicine?
In this episode, functional medicine doctor Dr. Dusty Hess explains the root causes behind rising rates of ADHD, autism, and infertility—and shares practical solutions every family can implement today.
What You'll Learn: ✅ Functional medicine vs. conventional healthcare (firefighters vs. builders) ✅ How plastics, seed oils, and processed foods disrupt hormones ✅ The truth about vaccines and personalized health approaches ✅ Why inflammation is both friend and foe ✅ The shocking infertility crisis: sperm counts down 50% in 50 years ✅ Autophagy and intermittent fasting made simple ✅ Practical swaps for your kitchen, home, and daily routine ✅ Why homeschool families are uniquely positioned for better health
About Dr. Dusty Hess: Dr. Dusty is a functional medicine doctor, founder of Upstream Health, and creator of Upstream Magazine—a monthly publication helping Christian families get healthy from the inside out.
Resources: Explore everything Upstream Health has to offer at www.upstreamhealth.com
Our free ADHD webinar shares guidance, tools, and encouragement from our care team to support you or someone you love navigating ADHD. https://upstreamhealth.com/webinar-landing/
Upstream Health link-tree: https://upstreamhealth.com/link-tree/
Perfect for: Homeschool parents, Christian families, moms seeking natural health solutions, anyone dealing with chronic childhood illness, ADHD, autism, or fertility challenges.
📘 The Homeschool How To Complete Starter Guide
Thinking about homeschooling but don’t know where to start? Cheryl created this comprehensive guide, compiling insights from interviews with over 120 homeschooling families across the country. From navigating state laws to balancing work and home life — this eBook covers it all. Stop feeling overwhelmed and start feeling confident on your homeschooling journey.
🚨 Let’s Talk, Emergencies!
The most important lessons we can teach our kids aren’t just reading, writing, and math — they’re how to keep themselves and others safe. Let’s Talk, Emergencies! helps children learn essential safety skills in a fun, approachable way — from dialing 911 on a locked phone to staying safe online, around water, and in case of fire. Give your kids the knowledge and confidence to handle real-world situations.
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Welcome. And with us today, I have Dr. Dusty Hess. Doctor, thank you so much for being here. This is going to be so fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me, Cheryl. So excited to be here too.
Speaker:So I want to just talk a little bit about what you've done. You are a functional medicine doctor. You have published the Upstream magazine. You're creator of the Upstream Plus membership and founder of upstreamhealth.com. So this is going to be so fun because I don't often get to talk to the experts on health.
Speaker 3:Yes. Well, so excited to be here. You know, I'm I love talking about health. So I'm a little chatty Kathy when it comes to this stuff.
Speaker:Well, that's great. And you know, for me, I come from the background of both parents worked. So it was like rush home from school. You know, my mother would pick up takeout somewhere. And we thought, because it was from the Italian restaurant, that it was somehow better than just getting like McDonald's every night. Yeah. Um, and even McDonald's is different in 2025 than it was in 1990 when I was growing up. Um and we just thought that was normal. I remember thinking, oh, soda's not bad for me because there's no fat in it, and totally falling in line with that food pyramid that just said like carbs good and protein was the very smallest amount. Like it's so backwards. Everything I had been doing was wrong. And I never understood, like, oh, why am I like the fat girl on the cheerliving squad? And then when I got into the homeschooling space, I was met with people that were super conscientious about what they ate. And I still make fun because I'm like just such the outsider, but I'm learning from them, which is so cool. Um, they probably look at me like like I'm an alien talking to them because I'm like, what do you mean, sourdough starter? And what's the stuff the that they put that little ball of mucus that it looks like that where they make like their little mother? Yes, and they're making kombucha and all of this fermented stuff. But I've been learning the last couple years, and it's been so exciting. So, can I ask you first, how did you even get into this line of work?
Speaker 3:Man, I thought you were gonna ask me the name of my SCOBY, and I wasn't gonna tell you on the air. No, I'm just kidding. No, actually, our SCOBY has passed away. We we're actually we're we're gonna be splitting up a new SCOBY coming here soon for our kombucha. But yeah, how did I come into this work? Well, when I was younger, I was diagnosed with ADHD. Uh, I grew up in a family of holistic doctors from my my great-grandfather all the way down. And so through the process, you know, as you were talking about, even McDonald's 50 years ago or whatever, it was totally different than it is now. But if we unpack that transgenerationally, we see our health care changing from, you know, a hundred years ago until now. And we see a dramatic shift in so many different areas from even 50 years until now. And so, you know, I'll I'll tell you a little story about how I got into just becoming a doctor and then how I became a functional medicine doctor. But my great-grandfather was an osteopath. Uh, we no longer really have osteopaths in the United States. I worked as a physician over in uh Europe for a bit. They still have osteopaths over there currently, but now we have what's called a DO. And how a DO came to be back in the day, basically the AMA at a certain point in time when osteopaths still existed in the United States, osteopaths, um, the AMA came to them and said, Hey, would you like to become a doctor? Basically, here's a slip. You sign this and you become a doctor. And then you literally come into the AMA because they were short on doctors and we're trying to find uh a suitable alternative. Um, because you have a lot of different varying degrees of healthcare professions back then, Cheryl. You know how you had osteopaths, you had chiropractors, you had naturopaths and homeopaths, and then you had doctors of medicine, you know, when we started to make more synthetics instead of herbalists and all these other tinctures and stuff, when you started to make more in the lab with technology, then you got the birth of the doctor of medicine. And so, and that's not that's not putting down any professions, it's just kind of seeing the landscape. And so my great grandfather said no. He was a handful of like maybe 25 people and in California that said, No, I'm not gonna turn in my license, I'm actually gonna stay an osteopath and I want to focus on getting the body healthy from the inside out. And so that kind of perpetuated down my family line to a lot of different people trying to get the body healthy from the inside out. And uh, when the craze of ADHD came along um in the late 80s, early 90s, and when they started changing a lot of things and the DSM and other things that uh allowed for uh pharmaceuticals to kind of come onto the scene, I was diagnosed with ADHD and the way that the world kind of treated me opened my eyes as I grew up. I looked back at my childhood, I looked back at my lineage, and I said, is this how, is this how we're getting healthy from the inside out? Like, how did how what's wrong with my brain or what's wrong with me? And I started to unpack that. I started to do more research. I started to to dive in. And I think that is exactly what I love about homeschool in this parallel is that we're free thinkers, that we don't just go with the status quo. If we want to learn something, we adapt, if we we figure that out. When I was in the health, when I was in the educational system, the same frustration. I was put into a box and I had to kind of act a certain way. And I was very, you know, hyper and let's go and let's deliver and and I was very visual. And I didn't have any of those cues within school. And so through that process, really made me dive more into the functional medicine scape after I got my doctorate. And that's where I really wanted to learn why we are having ADHD? Why are we dealing with autism? Why are we dealing with so many different dysfunctions where we're really not aligned with God's original design? And it's put us in a position of seeing brokenness instead of wholeness.
Speaker:Yeah, and you mentioned the late 80s, early 90s, and that's when the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act came out, which took away the liability from the vaccine manufacturers. Meaning it, you know, which really just sums up you can't sue Pfizer if their injection into your baby kills them or gives them some sort of injury. They call it injury. I know that that word never made sense to me because they always think of like, oh, I skinned my knee, you know, but a dysfunction or something, um, which really impacted the the schedule that we pediatricians run by because it went from just a couple vaccines that children were getting to now 78 are on the schedule from the time they're born to 18. Do you think that has any impact on the ADHD, the autism, and all that? I know that's a huge debate.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah. No, I would say, you know, when I speak across the nation, that's probably the first question I get asked at the end of my talk. Any talk.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker 3:There's so many people that are that are really up in arms with vaccines. And I would say, you know, if you were a manager of a grocery store and somebody walked into your store with, you know, a mask on, with uh, you know, uh maybe a shotgun and some some and started demanding cash from the register, you know, you would see them as a threat. And that that's just automatically, they didn't even have to say anything. Then we walk in and you just see and then you react to that. And so that's exactly what a vaccine is. When the vaccine comes into the body, it acts as a threat. It's coming into your grocery store and your body is responding to it. Now there's different forms of threats and different levels of threats, and whether it's a vaccine or whether it's anything else that comes in as a what we would call a hormetic stress, which means the body is under threat or it's under stress or it's under pressure, or it has like almost like a little bit of a negative connotation, but then results in a positive outcome through the stress of the body responding to it, right? That it becomes stronger because of it. But in any situation, when we see a personalized approach, we can get upstream from that. And this is the biggest issue is like the what's not in the conversation is seeing the person. You can't put out a blanket statement and say, you know, all vaccines are good and all, you know, you have to be able to see the individual. What is their lineage? Where do they come from? What are any predispositions? Are they inflamed? Do they have neurological inflammation? Did they have good gut health? Do they have good absorption? How are their nutrient? Are they nutrient deplete? Are they nutrient sufficient? You have to look at what you're dealing with, especially as a child in this young state, because a lot of things cross the placenta. A lot of things are setting these babies off not to a good start. And this is why we have to be intentional, as intentional with our health as we are with our education, as we are with our families, as we are with our faith. And as a man of faith, when I look at the body, I see something beautiful and powerful and something that can self-regulate homeostatically and allostatically. And so when I look at vaccines and it comes into the body and it comes into your grocery store as a threat, the body's going to react to that. And if it's not healthy, it's not transgenerationally healthy, the percentage and chance of energy of injury, of inflammation, of damage, of reaction is a lot higher these days than it was just a couple generations ago.
Speaker:Yeah. And I always kind of had the realization that not everybody can even have a strawberry on this planet, right? Some people are going to have an allergic reaction to a strawberry, and that might close their throat. It might give them a rash, they might die. So just like you were saying, you have to look as a person. People might be fine with a vaccine, right? And then there might be some people where because of other things going on, it has an effect. And that that rings true to what you were just saying. So a lot of people seem to not be trusting in the healthcare system today. I know I went from someone that completely did everything on the schedule with my son. He's now seven. With my daughter, I did everything totally different. But I I know a lot of people like me, kind of after 2020, waking up to, oh, wait a minute. Well, what are the ingredients? I mean, I know friends now that have never even taken ibuprofen in their lives. And I'm like, what? Yeah. You wouldn't even you have a headache and you find a tincture that you put together. This is crazy to me. But more and more people are realizing, oh, you don't have to just pop a pill and let it go away. Um, and then when you start to follow the money, you're like, oh, maybe there is a different way, and maybe people are just benefiting off of my illness and my sickness rather than wanting to get me health healthy. So I have two questions. But the first one, yeah, why do you think people are not trusting the system anymore? Is it 2020? Did that really was that the wake up call?
Speaker 3:2020 was a great example of what happens when people started to become free thinkers instead of being told what to do. It gave opportunity for people to pull away the blinders and to be able to see, see communication at the forefront. Yeah. You know, when when we're dealing with more and more education on the side of getting people healthy from the inside out versus dealing with the symptoms of acute care from the outside in, so many people are trying to leverage a system to get them healthy that's not designed to get them healthy. You know, when we're when we're looking at the stats these days, Cheryl, it's absolutely dismal. It's absolutely dismal. Three out of four adults are on at least one prescription drug. 80% of people over 60 are on at least one, uh have at least one chronic disease. Despite more technology than ever before, we become the most medicated and infertile generation, which I'd like to touch on later on.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:On this side of history. So you you see, you know, you talk about like kids not having ibuprofen for the first time, but you think about 150 years and before that, by thousands of years, there was no ibuprofen. And so when the way that the body is beautifully designed and beautifully crafted by our creator is incredibly intelligent. It knows how to adapt, it knows how to respond. And I think that the more we learn, the more we realize we know nothing. And on top of that, the more we learn, the more we realize we have to be able to respect the creation and the creator and support, not control. If we want health. Look, if if you're in, and this is where there's a parallel here, because I'm sure we're gonna get into a topic where we have to understand a little philosophy. What do we want? The future of healthcare is not scientifically driven when we're talking about health. We're talking about health. If you want to become healthy from the inside out, the future is not scientifically driven, it's culturally driven. What are people's values? What are people's values? And and that might be what they put in their mouth around their bodies, that might be family, it might be faith, it might be health, it might not be health. You might they might want to eat whatever they want to eat and and do whatever they want to do and put things on their skin and just so that they feel like they have more energy. They might value finances more than they value relationships. You know, it it comes down to what you're going to prioritize, which then ultimately determines what you'll say yes and no to. And I think that that's why so many people are really frustrated with the healthcare system is they're looking at the healthcare system to provide something that really honestly, it's not designed to provide. I would say, I would say the healthcare system in and of itself is probably you could parallel it with, I would say, a firefighter, right? Like if you had a house that was on fire and the firefighters came out and they started to put out that fire of your house, you're really not going to leverage them in a sense to really protect your house. It's when your house gets on fire, the firefighters are there, but you're not gonna rely on the firefighters to really make sure that the house doesn't catch fire.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker 3:But we're calling firefighters to protect our house. And that's the problem, is they're not trained to protect our house. They're trained to put out the fires.
Speaker:So true. So my second question there was what is functional medicine? Because from a layman like me, I would say maybe somebody that doesn't deal with medicine, more holistic, you know, but I couldn't actually pinpoint it. Can you lay it out for us? Because that's what you do. You are a functional medicine doctor, correct?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Absolutely. This is, I'd say this is probably the most important topic that people need to be talking about these days. Because if you think about it, it's like the difference between a functional medicine doctor and a doctor of medicine or like an acute style doctor. Now, there are doctors of medicine that are colleagues of mine, because you, you know, you you get your doctorate, and then from there, when you become a doctor, then you go back to school to become a functional medicine doctor. And so there's different philosophies that will come into that because it depends on what school you went through and what philosophy you were taught to then end up on the other side. And so the distinction here is just as important as the distinction between like the educational school system that we have, the conventional school system, and homeschooling, right? So the intention is either going to be in the hospital in and of itself, you're gonna be focused more on acute care. It's gonna be for focused more on symptoms or reactive care, right? Conventional medicine is more, let's say, crisis driven. It's like an ER model. It saves lives, but it really doesn't create health, right? It's the firefighter. And then you look at functional medicine and it looks upstream. It's it looks at for the root causes before the symptoms appear. It's not reacting to the symptoms, right? So both have value. It's not, it's not saying that firefighters are bad, right? It's just about knowing when to use which tool. It's like I don't want to put a whole mess of water on a house that's not on fire, right, Cheryl?
Speaker:Very true. Yes, and this stuff rings so true. And and it can be overwhelming, and we'll get into that, what the first steps would be. But I'm just thinking for like me becoming friends with the homeschool communities that I have become friends with in the last five years. I remember saying to one one day, I said, Well, what would you do if you got cancer? What would be your protocol? And she said, Yeah, well, why would I get cancer? And I go, What do you mean? How am I living my life that's gonna get give me cancer? Of course, nobody can say definitively that I've never been exposed to anything because we've got things falling out of our sky that we're breathing in.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker:But that was her, and I it was the first time I stopped and said, Wait, are there things I can do in my life to prevent this? So now the other side of my family that is very traditional thinks I'm just the craziest person ever. Because I'm like, put that margarine down, just eat butter. Why are you drinking milk, pasteurized milk? Go get raw milk and so I'm like the crazy one to them. So can you talk a little bit about why in school they never do they talk to you in medical school about talking to your patients to prevent cancer-causing activities or ways of living?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So, so yeah, this is a great question. Because in this, in this kind of scenario, when my great grandfather, I was the osteopath, when he didn't turn in his license to become a medical doctor or a DO as you see them today, which you can't really tell the difference when you go into the hospital, they control the curriculum, right? And so the AMA controls the curriculum and figure out what that looks like on the other side. And and, you know, let's give them the, let's, let's give everyone the benefit of the doubt here. Because I don't necessarily think that painting a bad picture of people is really going to get us ahead in the world. Um, I, you know, I think that everybody definitely wants to help people. People, I want to give people the benefit of the doubt. And just as much as any side will turn to the other side and and demonize them. But let's just remember firefighters are great people, right? Policemen, great people. Now, are there bad apples out there? Yes. Are there bad doctors out there? Yes. Are there bad firefighters out there? Yes. The ones that don't want to run into the fiery, you know, house to save the child. Uh, you know, yes, those exist. But ultimately, we have to look at the curriculum like you're talking about. What are they trained to do? They're trained to put out fires. And so when we're looking at curriculum for from a medical doctor, my great-grandfather's an osteopath coming down the line, trying to figure out what I wanted to do in healthcare. I didn't want to put out fires. I wanted to make sure that your studs were made of the greatest wood this side of eternity. I wanted to make sure that your in that your insulation of your home wasn't going to give you cancer. I was, I want to make sure that your flooring wasn't filled with chemicals that's going to cause endocrine disruption, right? So when I'm the builder, the doc the this type of doctor is the builder and make sure that your home is safe and it's protective. And that comes from the training of where they got their doctorate and what that was about, whether they're a firefighter or whether they're a protector, like a cop, or whatever they are, is going to determine what the how they can better best serve you, how they can serve your body. So do they know nutrition really well? Do they know emotional health? Do they know multiple different organ systems and how they all communicate together? Do they know more prevention or are they reactive? Is their philosophy more so, you know, I focus on when this happens and then I'm trying to figure out why is that happening, and then trying to put together something to stop that symptom. You know? So it's all about the curriculum, it's all about the education, it's all about the philosophy that then churns out somebody that's either going to serve what you want in life, or they're going to serve something that you might not necessarily want now, but you need later, i.e., the more ER-style philosophy.
Speaker:So when you talk about things like fibers in our carpet or, you know, insulation, all of that does seem overwhelming. And that's going above and beyond just what are you eating on your daily basis?
Speaker 3:100%.
Speaker:You have scented candles, stuff that maybe I could swap out my sheets for linens that, you know, are organic linens, and so I'm not breathing in plastic all night. But things like the carpets, and it is all so overwhelming. So, how do you help the common folk like myself or my five-year-ago? Because I'm still on that path. I mean, I'm yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, we are, we all are right. Yeah. I feel for you, Cheryl. I mean, the that's the thing is is we didn't we did this to ourselves. We live in a Genesis 3 fallen world. We are so disconnected from God's original design for our environment. Our genes and biology are like throwing up their hands, like, I have no idea what to do. You know, I always say that the devil doesn't create anything new. He can't create anything new, he just changes things by one degree. And so when we look at all different aspects, and I think that this is of his design, is that we feel overwhelmed because every category has been tainted. And this is really important because so many people get so sensitive with these healthcare topics. Like, you're gonna talk about what I can eat and what I can't, and become so legalistic and blah. This is about stewardship. This is about awareness. This is no different when we're talking about all these things that you're talking about. There's no difference between our spiritual disciplines and our family disciplines as there are with our health disciplines these days. Because what you're talking about with all these additives and all these different things, what we've done to our environment, our behavior and our lifestyles, what we've done to our textiles and our products, what we've done to our food, what we've done to our agriculture, what we've done to our air, our water, our walls and our house, everything. There's been enough time and enough technology and enough additives and enough shortcuts that everything has been tampered with. But that's not, it doesn't need to be overwhelming in a sense that we feel like, oh, whatever, let's be apathetic and throw up our hands and do nothing. Just focus on one thing at a time. If you can get the big idea, how about the big idea first? Is that our bodies were masterfully designed and they're incredibly intelligent. And we have to be as intentional with it as our education for our families, as anything else, like I talked about previously. If you get that, then what you can do is you can put up your antenna and realize you have skin in the game. And if you can get that philosophy, then what you can start to see is just one thing at a time. You start to see, you know, is there truth in this or there's not? Is this part of God's design or not? You know, should should these steers be eating this type of food or should they be eating what they're designed to eat? You know, that's easy, right? And then you unpack like, should I be, you know, plastics are are these kind of things that exist in nature or they don't exist in nature? And and, you know, if they come into our skin and understanding the skin is the largest organ of the body and absorbs things and it brings it into circulation, and and some things don't get broken down. And so then the body will react to that. So no unnatural products have more of a threat than natural products. When we look at fats, like you were talking about, it's a perfect example. And I think that this is a great segue for people to start to feel powerful.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I want people to feel like, man, like there is hope in the world because I have skin in the game to be able to make a choice that's going to have a result, and my choices matter. And so as we start to press in and make little changes by like having ghee or grass-fed butter instead of margarine, like you were talking about, these are higher in omega 3s and omega 6s. And so they're they're lower inflammatory, they're natural in nature, they're not synthetically made. This is this is made in God's natural environment. And what's made in God's natural environment is a fat, not a synthetic fat, a fat. I don't even like to call them healthy fats or bad fats because bad fats don't exist in nature. Like you have healthy fats. And so when the body processes it in the environment that it that it was designed for, it will process it. So that I would say have a healthy mindset about it first. So it doesn't become this victim mindset and you throw up your hands and you feel like you can't do anything. And then I want you to take that philosophy and I want you to start being more aware of one thing at a time. Hey, maybe I'm not going to have this plastic cup because it can those plastic can cut, those plastics can come into my body. They can start disrupting my endocrine system and my hormones, and they can start doing things that isn't really aligning with my values of what I'd like to serve my house with. Um, and when I say house, it's not only my body house, but also the house for my kids and my family. And so you see that with your sheets and and other things, yes, but just focus on one thing at a time, and then you'll start to see with that awareness that you'll start chipping away things and and then give the body the credit that's due because it has an amazing detoxification system, has an amazing digestive system, has amazing adaptability to be able to adapt to things. But when every area of life is in disarray and nobody has intentionality with it and they're not being responsible with it, don't expect better results.
Speaker:And that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so that led me to two other questions. So you've talked a couple of times about the endocrine system and endocrine disruption and also inflammation. So, you know, people understand my child has ADHD, my child has autism, my child has cancer, I have cancer. But I don't think people, I myself do not grasp what endocrine disruption or what inflammation can actually do. I think, you know, the common folk like myself would say, oh, inflammation, maybe my pants fit a little too tight today because I'm I have a little inflammation. But that's not exactly it. I have a feeling there's a little bit more to it. Can you talk about what those two are and what the long-term effects of them actually do to ourselves, our body?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. This is a great question, Cheryl. And I think that the the devil's in the details here because inflammation in and of itself is not a bad thing. So many people they like turn to inflammation and they call it a bad thing. Um, inflammation is a natural process within the body that the body is reacting to something to be able to disregard, the package up, to be able to move on. It has damaged tissue, it has damage, and it's a natural process. And so we need to be able to support good, healthy inflammation, similar to like a good healthy stress response. I think a lot of people have heard of the stress response. Now, imagine this is very similar if a gazelle goes down to the watering hole, right, in the savannas and a lion comes out and the gazelle just runs because it doesn't want to get eat by the lion. That is the sympathetic response, the fight and flight. And then the lion gets tired, the gazelle wins, gazelle just walks back down to the watering hole to starts drinking the water again because it's back in that parasympathetic rest and digest state. That's exactly what we want from our inflammation response. It's like inflammation there, take care of the problem, inflammation gone, right? But we don't want to stop that natural process. And that's what you get with the, you know, the NSAIDs and the anti-inflammatories of the world is like you've demonized all inflammation. And if you have pain, well, you got to figure out why the pain is there and what's going on, especially if it's chronic. And this is the difference between the firefighter and let's say the cop or whatever the metaphor might end up on the other end, is that we're trying to support what needs to be supported and help the body adapt through the challenges. And if we can minimize the challenges and we can help with the support, we can see we realign the system back to proper functioning. And so this is where chronic inflammation is at the root of a myriad of different issues. And when we have chronic inflammation, we can have, you know, endocrine disruption, for example. We can have a myriad of different breakdowns of processes of how the body can be able to function, how the body can be able to process or distribute funds to the rest of the body. There's a currency in the body, there's a transport in the body, there's there's a there's a cleanup process. And when we have chronic inflammation, we have an environment that's basically like your house is in a desert, it's incredibly dry, it's very hot, and there's like match sticks all over the floor around the house. That's like what chronic inflammation looks like. It's just one little snap away from the house catching fire. And that's the that's the problem where people are at with that.
Speaker:So would that maybe be like a chronic back pain or maybe a cancer, or maybe it is some form of AD?
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah. No, the great, great follow-up. So let me distinguish here because it's this is uh this is there's like a back pain, for example. You can you can be dealing with a low back injury or maybe a musculoskeletal injury, that can create inflammation. Sometimes that can hang around a little bit more locally, but I'm I'm talking more about global systemic inflammation. And this is where when we don't honor our bodies and we're not aware of the intentionality of different irritants and different things that are coming in systemically, that can be from what we're eating or our gut's ability to be able to be robust and strong. And if that, if different organ systems are weak and they break down, uh, this is the perfect example of global inflammation and the the issues with it. There are multiple different organ systems in the body that have barriers that protect our body from the environment and what's inside us. So, like our skin, for example, the largest organ in the body, like I said earlier, it's it's a barrier, right? But it also absorbs things. It uh it brings things in and it protects. But you think about our lungs. Our lungs also have a barrier and it will absorb things in our mouth and uh the buccal microbiome microbiome and all the different bacteria and organisms that live in our mouth, but under our tongue, it absorbs and it will take in nutrients. And some of the best way to take in actually uh a lot of different nutrients is sublingual when we're when we're taking in liposomal. And so you think about the gut and the way that all the microbes within our gut, and then the barrier that's within the gut, when that breaks down, when our lung barrier breaks down, we get things like irritations and asthma and immune reactions to things. And same thing in the gut, we'll get immune reactions to things, and and you'll have more global systemic inflammation throughout the whole blob body, and that will affect the way that organ systems function. That will also create oxidation within different aspects of cellular, uh um uh cellular function and distribution. And so you see, you see things like uh you talked about butter and you talked about margarine, talked about omega-3s and omega-6s, cardiovascular disease, for example, would be a perfect inflammation of. Of global inflammation and what it would play a role within, let's say, our lifestyle. If we're eating a very high omega-6 rich and um diet that's has very high PFAs and it has a lot of, let's say, fake fats in our diet, with the seed oils and a lot of these kind of things that are coming up that are very pro-inflammatory because the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio is off. Now, this pro-inflammatory environment around a plaque that's built up that, or around, let's say, LDL cholesterol that is that that due to higher high blood pressure has caused striations within our arteries and and now these smaller particles have lodged in there. And then the environment of inflammation around that particle causes it to then become plaque. It causes it to oxidize. And it's the environment of inflammation around things that ultimately becomes the danger. Interesting.
Speaker:Super interesting. Yeah, and even I I think about the years I spent drinking alcohol and just recently learning that, you know, the alcohol is one thing, but your body produces, I believe it's pronounced acetaldehyde, acetaldehyde. And that's even more harmful to your body. And it kind of sounds like the similar thing that you're talking about, probably causing inflammation too. But so your body's not only dealing with the alcohol, the poison from that itself, but then the poison from the acetaldehyde. And I was like, gee, they never taught us this in school. Funny. And then that got me kind of looking into what can I do? And I stumbled upon intermittent fasting and what autophagy does. And I another thing they did not teach us in school. Could you talk anything about that? Whether it's good or bad. I don't, I don't care. Whatever your thoughts are.
Speaker 3:On autophagy, I mean, yeah, it's a natural process within the body that the body then targets cells that aren't up to snuff, right? So if you don't have cells that are super strong and robust, when the body's put under pressure where it doesn't have a lot of fuel or anything else and it has to, then it's kind of like in this starvation mode where it's it's basically leaning out. If you were in a boat, right, and you you had like a little bit of a leak, right? And you had a whole mess of different packages or things in the boat, you're gonna figure out, and you maybe you had some friends in the boat too. You you're probably gonna figure out, okay, what am I going to throw overboard so that this boat doesn't go down, so that we all don't go down. So you're gonna, you're gonna find things in your boat that aren't of your value of priority. You're not gonna throw your best friend out right away, right? Let's hope not. Or your kids, right? Let's even put like family into the equation. You're gonna throw out the, you know, all the little items and all the little weight that's just not up to snuff. That's what autophagy is, is your body's natural way, in a sense of emergency, that it's going to start breaking down cells that aren't up to snuff and getting rid of them. It's gonna clear out, it's gonna clean out. And with that, it's um, it's renewing itself. And the problem that we're having these days is we live in a culture of abundance. And when we live in a culture of abundance, our bodies never have time to clean out. We need enough struggle to be able to establish a clean boat.
Speaker:Wow. So for people that don't know what it is or how to put your body through autophagy, can you just explain that a little bit?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's so many different ways that you can um help support autophagy in the body. Um, number one, don't eat all the time. You know, you you have to give room for the body to be able to utilize enough and not necessarily have enough to be able to then kind of shut down and then start breaking down cells. You can also you exercise. Like you have to be able to put yourself under resistance and bring yourself to a point where your body is going to need to break down and need energy and need things to be able to rebuild. The best way to really stimulate autophagy is you can intermittent fast, yes, but we intermittent fast when we sleep, right? If you get eight hours of sleep, you're basically intermittent fasting because you're not eating for eight hours. That's why we call it the breakfast is break fast. You're breaking your fast. That's what breakfast is. And so, yeah, so when we have that, when we have that idea and understanding of what that is, then when we get great sleep, we're actually putting our bodies into a position where we can have autophagy. That's a natural design that God's built in. The reason why we're not getting autophagy in that time is because we're not moving, we're not exercising throughout the day. And and that's something that we've created a world for us, ourselves, that is so comforting that it doesn't really allow for us to do the things that we were designed to do. We were designed to lift things and move things and and and walk and move. The way that our muscles and circulatory system and our lymphatic system is designed is we need movement to move it. If we sit, it becomes stagnant. The same thing for autophagy. If you if you are moving throughout the day and you're creating resistance training and you're doing different things, within six to eight hours, your body will enter into autophagy naturally.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Now, if you don't move throughout the day, right, and let's say you're still you have to intermittent fast longer to actually get autophagy to happen. So the fastest way to autophagy is you want to be able to make sure that you're not eating all the time, right? Imagine back in the day we didn't always have grocery stores right down the street that you can eat whatever we want or drive through or whatever. Um, and and so you don't eat all the time and you create windows of fasting, but then you also exercise and you break down muscle tissue, you break down tissue to rebuild tissue. And through that process, you'll have breakdown of cells and then rebuilding of better cells.
Speaker:And I love that because I think that does give that hope too. Like there are super easy ways. Well, I can't say super easy because it's hard when you want that morning coffee and you're like, I have to drink it black, but that's okay because I'm gonna feel great later.
Speaker 3:Oh, well, I mean, you know, I I have my morning coffee. I I love coffee. I think you know, this is actually the number one um antioxidant drink uh drink in the United States. Uh, it's also incredibly fiber rich. So when we're talking about short chain fatty acids for the body to be able to utilize, coffee is great. What I do is I add either heavy cream to my coffee, or I'll add some grass-fed butter, or I'll add some MCT oil, or I'll add some just natural fats, God-given fats, to my coffee. And that will help slow down the absorption of caffeine into my system and give me all the other benefits as well. And so that's just something that um yeah.
Speaker:Perfect. But if you're intermittent fasting and you want to drink coffee in that fasting window, black is probably how it should be, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, yeah, that's that's the thing, is is I think that this is a philosophy where people will usually get into like I I love hope. I love giving people hope. And in in functional medicine or in myriads of different areas, this is where the breakdown happens. People feel overwhelmed, people feel like they don't know what to do, they feel like everything's out of alignment. Now they've got to get these water filters, now they've got to get these air filters, now they've got to change their sheets, now they've got to change their food, now they, you know, how am I gonna afford all of this? Is like we live in a Genesis 3 fallen world. Our environment is so disconnected from our genes and biology the way that God's designed it. And we have to just at least have awareness. Start with one thing at a time. There is hope, right? So, in, but if we look at autophagy from the same perspective of like, hey, I want to control this because this is good, or hey, here's this colostrum. I I think this is really good for my this is gonna heal me. If we take the philosophy of pill for an ill, but just put it herb for an ill or supplement for an ill, there's no difference. So we have to create the right philosophy of supporting the body from the inside out to be able to get it healthy from the inside out. That robustness is built through our belief subset. It's it's it's what we say yes and no to. It's the culture, it's the it's the I value this based off of my beliefs. And since this falls on my values, then I'm gonna prioritize these things. And and when we prioritize, you know, as Christian families, we prioritize faith, family, and health, right? With maybe a sub-little category of finances, but how we honor those finances is totally different than other cultures honor those finances. So if we take our top three of faith, family, and health, how are we gonna honor that? And so that's really where we come back to the philosophy of looking at anything. And if we can look at it from that powerful perspective, we can take back control of what's already ours. It's not, hey, I want, I see that autophagy is good. What do I do to create autophagy? It's like, no, let's just come back into alignment of just getting good sleep, like prioritizing bedtime, prioritizing a wake up time and keeping it. You know, get moving more throughout the day because our bodies were designed to do that. If you the more you understand, the more you get educated on understanding God's original design and just work back towards that. Don't focus on trying to fix all the things that are misaligned. Come back to the way that God's designed our environment, our genes, our biology, and how we can best come into prioritizing faith, family, and health, and everything else will follow.
Speaker:Well, and that's true. I think that's it. Sounds like, gee, that's I need a checklist, right? We're kind of like a nation of give me the checklist, the steps I have to follow.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker:So that I can do it. But yes, if you just kind of have faith that it will all fall into alignment with, you know, you do start seeing the okay, do I need the ice cream before bed? Is this what they did a hundred years ago? Maybe if they made it from, you know, their their cow that was outside and you know, their homegrown sugar. But yeah, it's and we we watch Little House on the prairie a lot. So I have to like relate that back to my son. Like, well, do you think they were doing this in Little House?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker:No, they didn't go trick-or-treating and asking strangers for you know, candy and chemicals. Well, maybe we could do something different then for this little festivity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's so many parallels to that. We were just reading those books. My my daughter was reading those books, and we watched a couple of those movies not too long ago, just a few months ago. So I can totally relate to that. I yeah, I think that there's with going back a hundred years, and there's so many people that are looking at, well, how do we just go back to the way that we were before? And I think that we can also revel in the modern technology that we have now, but still also honor God's original design. And we can do that simultaneously, but we have to say yes and no to things. We have to be able to separate ourselves from what the world is offering and the way that God's designed it. Every aspect of manipulation is at play here. When somebody is selling you something, they're playing, they have scientists and psychologists and people working on trying to, the more we understand about the human psyche, the more we understand about the human, the more we can be able to tailor things to sell you things. So we have to be absolutely diligent with our health and our emotional health or physical health, our spiritual health, as we are just like education. This goes back to, you know, I really want my kids to grow up as free thinkers. It's really hard to do that. Like you're talking about the checklist. It's really hard to step out into the world as free thinkers when we are trained to be checklist checkers.
Speaker:Very true.
Speaker 3:And so we, as homeschool parents, we step into the world saying, no, we're gonna create free thinkers. That's gonna challenge the status quo, that's gonna create an environment and customize personalized education to them so that they can rise to the occasion to tackle whatever comes their way. And they're gonna love learning while they do it. And those are going to be the individuals in the future that will change the world. And we look at the same kind of self-discipline with that and open-mindedness that we have to have with our health is we need to create youngsters that see what the world has to offer and say, no, thank you, no, thank you, no, thank you. This is designed for me. This is not designed for me. And that's not legalism, that's stewardship. And so we have to be able to separate out the legalism from the stewardship if we want a healthier next generation. I think this is a topic that we're coming into, Cheryl, that I'm super passionate about coming up is infertility. And I don't know if you know too much of the stats on infertility.
Speaker:No, but why don't you tell us about that and then we'll just kind of tie into how homeschooling is it's really hard to do all of this in the public school system because of the food there, the sitting in the chair. So yeah, that's how so talk to us about that because there I know I'm 41 and I have a lot of friends that have had so many issues with fertility, or even keep you know, getting pregnant, but miscarrying.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. And you're spot on, you know, and we especially with education, you know, we kind of create our own fires when we don't even realize it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, and and that intentionality is so important. Um, and we've also been trained to really believe that like just a little bit of this is okay, a little bit of that is okay. And and, you know, we just kind of tweaked it around to really make it just what we want instead of what we need. And some of the best things in life come through sacrifices. And we look back and we, you know, look back on the history of our lives, and the vast majority of people would say some of the most challenging times of their life were the most growing, the most developing. But never do we ever want to step into those challenging times. Never, you know, we're like, oh wow, I really want to be challenged today. I really want to struggle today. Healthcare and education, faith and family, those are all struggles. All the disciplines, the financial disciplines, like they're struggles because we see that the world has a lot to offer and we have to say no to things. And so when we are looking at infertility, there is no difference or anything. And this is why I want to try to keep it super simple. Anything that comes against God's alignment with God's design, physiology, biology, your environment, behaviors, and lifestyles, there's going to be dissonance. There's going to be a fractionation. And when as we take that, each generation down will be affected by our choices, by our actions.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And this is where it, I want to start at this and preface this in a way that it doesn't sound like, oh, wow, this is really morbid. Or like, wow, like I'm like this really doesn't, this is really uncomfortable because I play a role in my great grandchildren's future. You know, there's a lot of responsibility in this, and and that's actually biblical when we're thinking about multi-generational and transgenerational health and transgenerational futures. You know, there are a myriad of different stats out there that can make this sound very dismal. You look at the past 50 years, and sperm counts have gone down one to two percent every year. So now sperm count is down 50% today than it was 50 years ago. 50. 50 years. That's a generation. Right.
Speaker:So what's one generation? What's the next 50 years? Where will it be? Zero?
Speaker 3:Potentially. I don't think so because there more and more people like me are whistleblowing and coming out and and jumping ship and changing careers. And you know, you know, it's kind of like uh procrastination. You know, you get to a point and all of a sudden there's this explosion of like, I'm gonna get it done, right? But the get it done is it might be a point where there's so much transgenerational destruction that it's going to take a lot to come back. And this is why I think healthy, whole Christian families will change the world, Cheryl, because if we can hold true to a culture that establishes the yeses and the no's and the honoring of God's temple and what we surround ourselves by and how we educate ourselves and how we choose to be able to place things as far as priority and value in our lives and for our families, these subgroups will say no to things before others say no to things. And we will say no to things that are very comfortable. And other people will say, oh no, that's not that bad, or that's not that bad, or that's not that bad. But we will say no to them. And that will determine what our not only our next generation, but the following generation will experience. And as there's more disarray, more disarray in other cultures, you'll see other cultures that are the cream of the crop, right? That are the the salt of the earth, right? These kind of phrases. Um, you know, if you think about all the stats on um infertility are just through the roof, but I don't want to focus on the dismal. I just want to really focus on understanding that the awareness and the philosophy and the culture is really going to determine what the next generation is going to look like and understanding how it affects one another and what roles they play.
Speaker:Yeah, and it's funny as you're talking, I'm thinking of even the shows that have been popular over the last decade or two. And they I'm thinking of like a handmaid's tale off the top of my head, where the premise was that none of the women could get pregnant. So they actually like enslaved these other women to, you know, sleep with the the husbands in this sort of like weird fashion with the wife right there, because the the wives to these wealthy families cannot get pregnant. They never tell you why they can't. Like, and I'm like, was it a vaccine? I'm like, they don't they don't tell you, and I but they're putting it in your mind that this is gonna be something in the future. Women just won't be able to get pregnant. And you know, things like you know, friends or sex in the city, where they just glorify that single lifestyle and who needs to be married and who needs to have kids, they just tie you down. And that just goes hand in hand with the entire like what they're feeding us through, you know, food and what what we're breathing in through our, you know, our clothes and uh the air, and then they're putting it in our minds too. And it it does it's like wow, they're getting it every angle. I and it really does. That was a big reason to step into the world of homeschooling too, because it was like this is almost impossible to combat in the school system when your kid is in there and every other kid, you know, maybe in third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, has a phone, and maybe you don't want your kid to have a phone and they're all watching this movie and you know, eating this type of food. You can send your kid with all the organic food you want, but most schools have free breakfast and lunch. So your kid can throw out the organic, expensive food and go eat the pizza and whatever else they're giving them, high fructose corn syrup. So it is, yeah. How do you how do you look at that? I know you have three little ones. Are you planning on homeschooling? And is that part of the oh absolutely.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. No, I mean, uh, I speak at homeschooling conventions across the nation. I, you know, like I said, you're intentional with the things that you value. And if you're intentional, if you value education, if you value bringing up the next generation to be free thinkers and to personalize their education, I believe the same kind of thing with healthcare is you want to personalize it, you want to be intentional, you value it. You best take, um you best invest as much of your time and energy into the things that you value. And for for our family, and I'm not gonna speak uh uh, you know, anybody else's family, but our family, we value faith, family, and health. And so of those things, we put those paramount. And so you know, I want to get back to what you're talking about with um with just, I want to unpack to help people understand what's behind the curtain. I think a lot of people don't understand all the different doctors, what their backgrounds are, who to trust, who to be able to go to for help or to listen to. And when it when it comes to functional medicine or when it comes to doctors that are trying to get you healthy from the inside out, when it comes to doctors that are trying to help support you, make good habits or or create an environment around your family that's going to nurture you, it has to align with your values. It's culturally driven. And it's kind of like you go to a wealth management, right? And I we we put finances below faith, family, and health, but they're still a priority. And so when we look at, when we look at wealth management, how they're going to tell you to invest your money or take care of your money is going to be based off of certain values. So you look at that wealth management company and say, do they align with my values? There's no difference within healthcare in this type of healthcare, right? Not acute care, not the firefighters. No, like, look, if I've got a brain tumor, right, and I'm reacting to that, I want, I want a specialist that is focused on exactly that. I don't want somebody that is that knows about like all whole mess of different organ systems and how they all communicate together. I want the brain surgeon that is going to help scrape that out of my brain. But when it comes to getting the body healthy from the inside out, you have to be able to see all the threats in the world. You have to be able to see what is how we're so our genes and biology are so disconnected from God's design. So I want to unpack this a little bit for you, Cheryl, because we have the endocrine system, right? Like as I talked about before. When we start messing with things like uh plastics or like uh endocrine disrupting chemicals, we call them EDCs. We look at uh BPA or phthalates, pesticides, all of these can interfere with. Let me let me choose a topic so that we can bring it back. Well, you're talking about infertility. So BPA, phthalates, uh, pesticides, all of these things can interfere with testosterone, estrogen, and other hormones that ultimately can disrupt fertility and fetal development, right? So that's where these kind of fake manufactured things that come in and controlling our environment, whether it be pesticides or whatever, they can come in, they can start messing with our hormones. And that can, you can imagine that that would cause issues in getting pregnant. We look at nutrient depletion, right? Now, nutrients are so vital in making sure that we can build things in the body and repair things. Uh, look at our modern diets and our soil that we have that that's depleted of magnesium and zinc these days. Our topsoil is so horrible because we monocrop and the way that we've controlled the environment for the overall gain of production, we've destroyed God's original design. And we're not herding cattle on it, and we're not doing things that are restorative and regenerative. We're just stealing from it. And so our modern diets are calorie-rich, but nutrient poor. And the deficiencies in these areas of zinc, selenium, vitamin D, um, and omega-3s, they really build sperm. They build eggs. So, as far as like sperm quality and egg health and hormone balance, like these nutrients are vital. We talked about uh chronic inflammation, right? Chronic inflammation. We look at processed foods, we look at seed oils, we look at sugar, environmental toxins. All of these things drive systemic inflammation. And systemic inflammation hanging around, like we talked about earlier, damages reproductive tissues, reduces fertility potential, it creates an environment like around your house of match sticks and everything, just ready to catch on fire. And then you look at the energy currency of the body, you look at mitochondria, right? And so I know I'm talking about and listening all these things off, and it might sound like overwhelming, but I want parents, I want people and listeners, I want you to understand something. This is the definition of beautifully crafted body made by our designer. And it's detailed and it is incredibly intelligent. So, what I'm going through right now is just defining that. But when we tamper with our environment and our families and our food and our and our air and our water, it affects all of these systems. So, why I'm bringing all these things up is because we're so disconnected that it's caused a lot of dysfunction. And now we have to go in and see all the damage that we've done and what's happening. It's not that I'm I'm talking about things that, oh wow, look at we got to fix this, we got to fix this, we got to fix this, we got to fix this, and overwhelming people. When we start realigning back to God's original design, these things go away. Like when you start just be intentional about what you're cooking with or like how you prepare your food or what you're putting in your body or what you're putting on your body and around your body, that intentionality goes a long way. If you were just intentional with some change or a dollar bill, or just putting five dollars, you know, like the typical, hey, if you put five dollars away for, you know, a day and you did that for 30 days and you put that in compounding interest and you put that in the bank and you would you realize how much you would have when you were 40 years old. You know, like that, it's the same kind of thing. If you're just intentional a little bit about this, you'll notice that your entire life will change within six months. Within six months, it's not that difficult. So mitochondrial depletion, I just want to, there's probably like uh, let's see, gut brain, axis, epigenetics. That's a that's a a big one that people talk about, or chronic stress. You know, the body has a currency. Talk about finances. That's mitochondria. So mitochondria produces the energy that the body can be able to run on. But the problem is that when we have overexposure to to blue light or lack of sleep or sedentary behavior and movement, and we're not exercising, our energy is poor. We can't produce reproductive cells. We're not thinking about like preparing a baby when we can't even produce enough energy to stay alive. So it's a protective mechanism. And then the gut, brain, and hormone access, we have so many different organisms that communicate together. So if your gut from all this crummy food that we're eating, and the gut is a perfect example of what the external environment is within us. So if we don't take care of that, then we have this dysregulation and we become weak and our immune system drops. And then we can start to break down that barrier, like I was talking about earlier, and then we get inflammation. And we also have what's called lipopolysaccharides that that start to create a lot of reaction. And that could actually break down the barrier of our brain and cause neurological inflammation because there's a connection between the gut and the brain, because the gut is a reflection of our external environment. The brain wants to know what's going on outside, and so the brain uses the eyes to be able to get information, but it also uses the gut to see the micro microbes and every all the bacteria and other things that are in our environment as hey, is there a threat going on? What's going on? It's incredibly intelligent. Well, when that starts to break down, we start to see estrogen dominance, we start to see infertility, we start to see autoimmune conditions, things like that. And all of this environment around it, like chronic dis chronic stress and emotional health. And when we have our kids looking at health, it's not just about what's on their plate and how they're moving. Their emotional health plays a huge role in their physiology. How they think and how they react to things will change their physiology. So we have to prioritize that just as much. And that all comes around to creating kind of like inflammation. It all bathes our genes. And when all of that environment bathes our genes, our genes will either express themselves in a healthy way or an unhealthy way. Our genes aren't just set in stone. Our genes are expressed, turned on, or turned off in an epigenetic fashion, right? We're talking about the epigenome. And this is where kind of where future quote unquote medicine or healthcare is going in trying to manipulate the body from the outside in is trying to control our peptides, trying to control our epigenome. The more they know, the more they learn, the more they're trying to control. The epigenome is not set in stone. So if we work on all these things that I'm talking about here and have a little bit of awareness over the course of six months, your genes will start to express themselves better. Some people might have more pre predispositions to things, but they will be expressed better when you create a better environment around them. And that's the culture is going to drive that, not the products. Oh, that makes so much sense.
Speaker:Dr. Dusty has, is there anything else you wanted to say before we close up? Because um, you know, I feel like this has been such a wealth of knowledge, and people really want to make these changes. And you've talked a lot about not overwhelming yourself, but it's almost like this is like a seed to plan. And once you kind of open up that arena, you know, when you hear more things, it's like, oh, I made the connection there and I made the connection there. And like you said, it cannot be done overnight. So I guess is if there was anything else that you wanted to just make sure the listeners were taking away from this, and then we're gonna get into two where people can find you because and I will put all of that, the links in the show's description. Um, because you have some great resources that people don't have to memorize this episode. They can, they can just check out what you're working on and and sort of you know, allow that to change their lives slowly in a great way.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I was first off, thank you so much for having me, Cheryl. Um, I just love great conversations um that you know people can learn from. And you've created just such a great platform to be able to have great, honest, transparent conversations. And so I'm just honored to be on, honored to be a part of the conversation. Um, love your podcast. Uh, and I love the fact that what you're doing is bringing more awareness towards education and taking back control over how we can be able to personalize something that we value. And, you know, you didn't you didn't choose homeschooling because it was easy. You chose it because your family was called to something better. You know, and that's a that health is the same way. When you realign with God's design, you reclaim your story, and that's the culture shift we need.
Speaker:Absolutely. Absolutely. So, where can people find you? And I will put the links in the show's description.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you could find us at um upstreamhealth.com, upstreamhealth.com. That right there is our website that houses our uh publication for our magazine, Upstream Magazine. Also has our upstream plus membership. And what we really focus on is helping Christian families getting healthy from the inside out. We we help them understand their environment, but also in a very positive light that's uplifting, that help them not feel like victims, but feeling like, hey, we can take this one step at a time to be able to really educate our next generation on food, on movement, on swapping out things that are not good for the body, not of God's design, how we can be able to see what the world has to offer versus what God's designed our bodies to be able to grow up with. And these these topics are all in our magazine. And we try to break it up in a way that even homeschool families absolutely love our magazine because we have devotions in there. We've got a family spotlight. We've got a functional medicine cabinet to kind of like clear out the the Tylenol and the ibuprofen that you that you have, you know, and then you can you can swap it out for something better. We have a functional swap, we have a meal plan in there every month, we have an exercise routine in there every month, and we have uh an avoid chronic disease section where I go through uh, you know, the topic of the day and really unpack it from a worldview that really gives the power back to individuals to feel like they can navigate their own health. And when it comes to chronic disease, you're in the driver's seat. When it comes to acute care, you want the specialist, right? So you need to really open yourself up to educating yourself a little bit more about how disconnected we are from our environment. And our magazine is exactly that educational material to help Christian families get upstream.
Speaker:Oh, fantastic. I can't wait to get it and use it as part of our homeschooling because we have to teach our kids this stuff. This is the most important stuff to teach them. It is way more important than Pythagorean's theorem. I'm sorry, I never needed that one day in my life. But you know what I did need to know? What plastics do to my body.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker:Amen.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker:So wonderful. Dr. Dusty, thank you for being here today. Check out the link in the show's description so you can be part of this journey right along with me.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, Cheryl.