Well, hello, ladies and gents Roberts.
Thanks ketose, a.com today. I've got special guest Alison,
Gannett on the line, and I learned a ton with this
conversation. She was diagnosed with a
malignant brain tumor. Back in 2013 was given like, six
point, eight months, to live something crazy, like that.
Totally turned her health around.
Change your nutrition, change, your lifestyle removed, a whole
bunch of the stress, the insulin, the toxins in her life,
and just healed herself, basically, so this podcast dies
very deep into To what she's learned in that process.
What she's learned in working with hundreds.
If not, thousands of clients over the years and what some of
the common pitfalls that she's seen in them.
What she's learned in that process.
I thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed the conversation.
Allison is a gift from on so many different levels because
she brings a very, very interesting perspective to
table, when it comes to nutrition.
There's a lot that has to be taken into consideration from
someone that is diagnosed brain with brain cancer.
Some of that's an athlete versus someone that is just living
their everyday day-to-day life, to be able to kind of put all
those pieces together and figure out what the common patterns
are. What some of the common
denominators are is incredibly insightful.
So I have no doubt that you will take something from this
conversation so that for their do sit back, relax and enjoy the
podcast with Alison Gannett. And we are live.
Allison. How are you?
I am great. I am so honored to be here.
I'm excited to have you here. You've got an interesting story.
I kind of bruise a little bit on your website and it seemed like
in 2013 was it you were diagnosed with malignant brain
cancer and giving them always, it's always weird when they give
you like a time. Length to live the gave you like
six months and that was the Catalyst for you.
Totally turning your life around and switching your diet
nutrition up, correct? Yeah, I mean I was a world
champion. Extreme skier, competitive
mountain biker, organic farmer. I thought I was really healthy.
And so when I was given that diagnosis of like, six point
eight months, to live and 2013. I was really shocked and you
might have gone through this same thing where you thought you
were healthy and then you discovered, you know, lower
carb, higher fat eating and then all of a sudden everything just
changed like Really cancer was a blessing and a curse.
Because I don't think I would be here today, if it weren't for
what I've discovered. I've learned a lot along the
way. Were you getting like a lot of
symptoms of cancer to Dent? Did that diagnosis totally take
you by surprise, you know, I was having some issues with depth
depth perception in skiing, and I also was having some memory
issues. I remember I had a motivational
talk for Microsoft. And Las Vegas.
And I literally forgot to get on the plane.
Like, I couldn't believe it, like they called me and they
were like, where are you? And this was my biggest speaking
engagement that I've ever had and I literally forgot.
So, at that point. Did you like just go to the
doctor not having a clue what was up and just as, you know, at
that point, I was just kind of like, oh, I'm getting older.
You know, I made a lot of excuses and there was about two
months after that incident. Dent with Microsoft, I was
cooking bacon because we raise pigs.
I was cooking bacon and the bacon grease caught on fire and
the Flames were licking up to the ceiling.
And my husband walked in the door and was like, what are you
doing? And I was like, oh, it's so
beautiful and at that point, he was like, okay Houston.
We have a problem. We're going to the, ER, so it
took us a while to get there. So, when you were seeing the
flames, you were like the Flames of Like the, the yeah, I
literally was just like thought it was.
You know, pretty, I, you know, there was a lot of altered
perception going on at the time, but looking back on it now, I
can see how weird it was, but at the time when I was inhabited
that body and that mind, it seemed perfectly normal.
It's hard to describe. So, when you are having like an
instance, like that, it didn't feel like it was any like that
you didn't like a multiple personality.
So to speak. It was all just kind of flowing
as one. There was no differentiating
between when things were When things are not right, I think
what happened is, you know, if I'll even just, if anybody's
watching the video looking at the video right now, looking at
the size of the brain tumor, I think what happened is when the
tumor crossed from the right hemisphere of the brain to the
left hemisphere, you can see how large it was in that picture.
I think that my personality was altered my balance.
Lance was offered altered. Like my memory was altered.
I was getting headaches but you do crazy things to justify those
things, even though I was so close to death.
When when they did that Scan. They said Allison if you had
waited just a little bit longer that tumor would have been so
big that it would have pressed on the blood flow, going into
your brain and you probably just would have dropped it and
they're telling you all this when you're at the hospital
getting this. Scan and yeah, I don't remember
a saying I've been told this is what happened?
Because I actually don't remember.
I was there talking and the doctors thought like I was
behaving completely normally, but I was not what kind of plan
of action did they suggest? I mean, I'm assuming, you know,
surgery getting it removed or what would that what was that
looking like? Yeah, they, you know immediately
scheduled surgery to save my life.
I don't even remember signing the Paperwork.
I remember my family trying to shop around for a really good
brain surgeon. Then I remember being rushed to
another hospital to get the brain surgery.
And then I remember waking up, is what I mostly remember,
because when they had taken the tumor out, they got most of it
out. My personality came back to
normal. It was Freaky.
Hmm. I can't even comprehend, what
that must be like, I mean, you you going through normal life,
you're doing everything quote-unquote, by the books.
Like you're supposed to. You get this news that you get
terminal brain cancer, given six months to live and then your
rush to the hospital, going through all this.
I mean, that doesn't give you any time to, you know, get any
of your Affairs in order. I mean, it's just totally
blindsided you. Well, I was really lucky because
the surgery was so invasive and so life-threatening.
And the Her was so big that they actually said okay, you've got
to go home and recover from the surgery and we're not going to
start chemo and radiation for six more months and that blessed
amount of time that six months that I was recovering from the
surgery, gave me time to look into Alternatives because they
basically didn't tell me that there was no cure for my cancer.
Even if I did surgery chemo and radiation that my life
expectancy. Could see was still, you know,
not very long. And I wanted to live a long
happy life and die of old age. So, I just started doing
research and research and luckily.
It was kind of a twist of fate that I discovered.
Dr. Nation Winters and she has a book, you know, that's come out
since it's called the metabolic approach to cancer.
But what I basically really resonated with her message was
why did you get cancer? What are the root causes that?
Cause Your body to grow a tumor that big and it made sense.
Like you can look into treatments, you know, treatments
are very very helpful, both conventional and alternative.
But also if you don't look at the why, why you got cancer in
the first place? No amount of treatments going to
work. If you don't, you know, change
your habits in knowing what, you know, now when you're kind of
like going back in time, do you have any ideas to what could
have been some of the contributing factors that led to
the tumor? I meant well and that's why I
started my coaching business because the kind of the recipe
for cancer is very, very similar to the recipe for ill health,
whether it be heart disease, diabetes, Parkinson's, you know,
excetera, Etc. We're basically I call its it,
which is stress for si4 insulin and T4 toxins.
Now, I could go into a very, very long list on Top of that,
but though, that is the basic three that I try to look at for
all my clients and what I work on for myself every given day.
Well, I definitely want to kind of pull the curtain back.
A little bit on those three pillars.
So I'm assuming, you know, just sitting and just lack of total
physical activity, but you were, I mean, kind of just assuming,
you know, you grew up on a farm, you have pigs.
I'm assuming, you were pretty physical active, pretty
Physically, Active before all of this, right?
You were, you were Mountain skiing.
Yes, and, you know, it's interesting because when you
look at stressors on the body, they can be mental emotional,
but they can also be physical. And in my case, too, much
exercise was actually causing inflammation on the body.
Now, a lot of my clients. We see the opposite.
We see either too little or too much exercise.
So Naysha doctor. Nisha always says exercise,
like, you were Laura, Ingalls, Laura Ingalls Wilder on Little
House on the Prairie, so, The farm life is great.
But the competition the way I was pushing my body day after
day, hour after hour, you know, I always thought like a little
exercise was good. So why not, you know, run for an
hour or three hours or six hours.
I always thought more was better and I really looking back on it.
I was really running from some emotional mental, emotional
issues from my childhood and I was kind of overcompensating by
being this world champion skier. So I had to find like more of a
middle ground. Do you think the like
psychological stressors of Life can have a similar impact as
well? Like the lobster shipping
business life and just simply you know, the career paths that
a lot of us choose that are incredibly high stress
environments. I feel like for me personally, I
think I've probably legitimately cut 10 years off my life just by
the stress that I've endured. Yeah.
I mean, like I said stress can be mental emotional or physical
and a lot of Times it's quite easy to remove things like
toxins or adopt, ketogenic diet, but dealing with the stress of
our jobs or our family life or covid.
Or, you know, there's so much stress in this world that our
body is kind of running from the tiger 24/7, and it really wasn't
designed to do that. Yeah, totally, totally agree.
I feel like, you know, having having something that removes
you from, just the hustle and bustle like For me.
We live on land as well and just having some tranquility and that
is probably the single most therapeutic thing.
I could ever imagine having and doing and just making a part of
my daily routine is having just some land to get my hands dirty
and not. Yeah, he just absorbed and the
news and media and social media and just constantly being
inundated with all that negativity.
Yeah, and what's interesting is I like it really took me seeing
the stress manifested in my labs for a really good example.
Is my cortisol, which is a stress hormone that you know,
about my cortisol was very, very high in the morning and it was
five years into my diagnosis and I actually had a new tumor
growing and I had been doing everything with eliminating
toxins. I had changed my entire.
Diet. I was really, really strict
about what I ate, but I hadn't addressed the elephant in the
living room. And that was my high cortisol.
And what happens is it basically, if you have a thought
and it's a negative thought, or a stressful thought or you're
worried about your business or you're worried about an upcoming
meeting, your cortisol will Spike and when your cortisol
spikes, that's a stress hormone, but it will also increase your
blood sugar. So a A lot of my clients and
myself included, think. Oh, you can just go on a
low-carb, high-fat diet or a ketogenic diet, and your blood
sugar will stay nice and low, but literally my thoughts were
causing my blood sugar to go up. And when your blood sugar goes
up, you can potentially fedak answering process.
So I really had to learn the hard way by having a recurrence.
I having a new brain tumor grow and then it was like kind of a
slap in the face, Allison. You've got to start doing
something more serious, like daily meditation and finding a
coach, and it's really changed my life in the first four weeks.
I then, retested my cortisol after adopting meditation, and
my cortisol went from 22 all the way down to 15.
So, that was just changing, you know, meditation, once a day, it
was, it blew my mind. Do you get to you like a
cortisone, blood panel, pretty regularly, kind of, as a way to
just Safeguard in Sure, that's in a healthy range.
I test 70 to 80 blood markers every single month and I have
for almost nine years. Wow.
That's pretty cool. I'm very what Naysha says is
test, don't guess. Yeah, and so I don't want to I
want to see something brewing in my labs always looking for
myself. And for my clients is Labs plus
your DNA, plus your health history, and you combine all
those together. And it It's like putting the
pieces of the puzzle together. It's like being a detective for
your own body and its really turned into my passion.
Is that instead of living in fear?
And I remember you saying I'm in one of your podcast you were
talking about faith, not fear part.
Of the reason. I feel that I have faith not
fear is that I'm looking at these Labs.
I'm looking at real numbers to see how optimally healthy I am.
And I'm looking. NG at places that I can improve
places that I've already improved.
And I'm always tweaking and adjusting my meditation, my
exercise, my food, my sleep, you know, my filtered water like
there's always an opportunity there and I think it's so
empowering to because, I mean, you don't have to go through the
traditional doctor's office. Go sit in the lobby for three
hours. Have them pull a bunch of labs.
I mean you can bypass all Of that via all the methods we have
available. Now, whether it be ordering the
Lambs online, getting something shipped to your door going
through, you know, as a specialty practice like what you
are offering here like that, just empowers that the
individual and I feel like so many people rely so heavily on
their doctors to Conventional Health Care System, but at the
end of day like no one's going to care as much about your
health as you and you have to take those matters in their own
hands and understand what those labs and numbers mean so you can
adjust your life accordingly. You nailed it on the head, you
know, you really what a lot of people don't realize when they
get their labs done. Say, you have a yearly physical
and you do like some Wellness labs when it says, in range or
out of range or high or low. That is a statistical average
for the state or the country you were in so that does not mean
you're optimally healthy. So what I am always teaching,
people is, you know, here's what in range for.
Let's just say cortisol and Is all could be like, 6 to 25 in a
normal lab, but what, dr. Nisha wants is your cortisol
from 15 to 17. And if your cortisol isn't from
15 to 17, then we know that the hormones aren't quite balanced
and we have to look at stress and we have to look at sleep and
we have to look at hormone disruption like chemicals
Plastics, Mercury, etc. Etc.
And it's a process of elimination.
And it's very overwhelming at first, but to me, it's a lot
better than living in fear to just feel like hope and feel
very proactive about my life. Yeah, 100% agree in.
And like, you were saying with regard to those averages.
I mean, those averages are based off of an unhealthy demographic
to begin with. I would argue that most of the,
the average people you see, walking around your neighborhood
are probably not optimal versions of human beings.
Yes, so we probably shouldn't strive for Sitting smack-dab in
the middle of that range. Anyways, exactly exactly.
We want to be a lot better than average.
If we want to live a long happy life and die of old age.
Totally. So stress is the I what is the i
in the acronym? Insulin insulin?
So, you know, that's your, you know, your story here with the
whole keto Savage is, you know, getting people to understand
like changing their diet. And, you know, I really thought
I was healthy. I grew and raised.
All my own Foods including grains, but I didn't realize
that, you know, cancer cancer, actually loves fructose.
And I, we have a huge Orchard. So we were raising a lot of
fruit. I was canning our own fruit,
preserving it, making eating it every day.
I didn't realize that a Snickers bar and a peach in the eyes of a
cancer cell the cancer cell is going to love both.
And it actually might love the Pete even more because it Loves
fructose so much. So I had to really change.
As, you know, getting rid of fruit and my diet lowering my
carbs, increasing my vegetables. I try to have at least nine cups
of vegetables a day. And, you know, we raise cattle
and we raise pigs and we raise chickens.
So I have grass-fed grass-finished, non-toxic really
healthy animals that I eat as well.
So I'm very fortunate. But, you know, you can do This
in an apartment in New York City or you can do it on a farm in
Colorado or on your farm. Right?
Anybody can do this. There's a lot of things I want
to dive into here. So with regard to insulin and
just lowering that Baseline level, obviously a ketogenic
diet low in carbohydrates and sugars is going to help that
there's been a lot of talk recently about, you know, the
carbohydrate insulin model of obesity versus the energy,
balance of obesity, calories, and calories that have you kind
of stay on top of all that. Discussion lately.
Oh, yes. I mean, I think it's fabulous
because actually I was a very like kind of overweight, you're
working math key because a kid and so I use exercise to control
my weight. But you know the guilt trip your
put on as an overweight person. Like if you only just ate less,
if you had more self-control like that's all bullshit really,
you know, weight loss is a hormonal imbalance.
That is made worse. S as we eat more carbs.
And so as I eliminated the carbs, my Hunger craving went
away, like my weight completely normalized, I'm not too skinny.
I'm not too fat balancing, the hormones and realizing that it's
not about calories that really. If we can fix the hormone
imbalance, then the hunger goes away and you feel really
satiated and happy, you know, if I didn't have cancer and someone
said, hey, you could eat anything you want.
I wouldn't eat exactly what I'm eating today.
Because I love this way of eating.
It's changed my life. My body feels better.
I feel healthier now at 56 than I did when I was 20, so I just
wish I'd found it sooner. Yeah.
It's interesting because I mean there's so much debate as to
what the actual mechanism is behind weight, gain and obesity
in. Perhaps the carbohydrate.
Insulin model of obesity is a little flawed and perhaps the
calories in calories out equation is right on the money.
Will just say that that is the case for instance, but But I see
so many people that remove the carbohydrates removed, all the
processed sugars and their hormones improve their satiety
signals and prove. They find it more sustainable
and their weight and composition and overall health markers
improve. So even if the mechanistic
property of the carbohydrates, the model of obesity is flawed,
if people are getting the end result, I mean, that that's the
main thing. Yeah, you know, I just didn't
believe it in the beginning. It didn't make sense to me
because I had always been told in And college and university,
you know, that, you know, go ahead and have salad and missed
your salad with olive oil. And now all the sudden I was
being told like, no, you know, you want to put a half a cup of,
really good, olive oil on your salad instead, and I couldn't
wrap my head around that, until I started seeing my labs come
back, and this was in 2013. And every time, every month, my
labs came back. Every time I added more fat and
more. Tables and moderated my protein.
My labs just got better and better and better.
And now I've gotten the chance to see that for thousands of my
clients and you know, seeing is believing seeing the results on
paper. Seeing the insulin go down
seeing the glucose down, go down.
Hemoglobin A1c. Go down, uric acid, go down.
I mean, there's so many markers of sugar that we don't take into
account. And as we see all those sugar
marker, Go down. And then we see as you add
quality, grass-fed grass-finished or wild-caught
proteins and you add more vegetables, that everybody's
Health improves at the same time and including mine.
So, you know, it seeing and feeling is believing it.
Really as you probably know, yourself that you tell people
like. Hey, when you start eating this
way, you're actually going to stop being ravenously hungry,
you know, No One Believes that. That until they actually feel
it. Well, what's interesting is
like, I mean, I'm not diagnosed with cancer.
I don't have any of those issues knocking at my door, but I've
eaten this way for the past seven years because I feel
better. I perform better and it is very
sustainable for me. And I see all these people, they
they knock for whatever reasons, a lot of people knocking the
ketogenic diet right now and some things that are going on
within the keto space. Like it.
They frustrate me that there's been this devaluation and just
Formation of Quito because of all the you know, the marketing
that's out there and you know, the false hopes, there's that
with anything that that is popular and is hyped around.
But I see so many people speaking negatively towards
keto, unless the individual has, you know, brain cancer or
something like that, you know, diabetes, Alzheimer's dementia,
but it's like, if somebody has that and then they're able to
mitigate that significantly by adopting a ketogenic diet.
It stands to reason in my mind. It just makes common sense that
if you Don't have that but you adopt a ketogenic diet and
lifestyle. You're probably hedging your
bets to prevent yourself from getting it later.
I think that's definitely true. And I think I'll just add a few
things to that. One of the things I try to not
call it Chi do because to me, Quito on the Internet is like
cream cheese and sausage. There's no vegetables.
There's, there's no you know, like when you made your bricks,
for example, you really thoughtfully, sourced your
ingredients and I'm the same way.
It's all about the quality of the Foods that we're eating.
And then the second part of that is there's no one-size-fits-all.
I'm looking at thousands of people's blood work, and every
single person has different DNA and different laps.
So every single person is going to be on a slightly different
diet. Now they all all Americans.
I think we can safely, say or most Americans are eating over
300 grams of carbohydrates. If not over 600 grams of
carbohydrates, so, I can agree that everybody needs to come
down on carbohydrates, but how much protein that person needs?
How many veggies what type of veggies?
What types of fats? Can they do chocolate?
Can they do caffeine? You know, what's so cool is we
can look at DNA now and then we can look at the labs and say,
okay. This is the right diet for that
person and to me that makes so much more sense.
And I think it resonates with a lot of people instead of saying
hey, you should do this diet. It's going to make you feel
better. Yeah, I agree.
I do. Like, you know, I can I
differentiate Quito from a lot of the other buzzword diets.
Like the South Beach Diet or Atkins diet, because those are
kind of just clicky diets, but like the ketogenic diet is more.
So a metabolic State than it is so much a branded dietary name,
but I agree with you, for sure. When it comes to, you know,
ketogenic diets. Like I like to just think of it
as simply a single ingredient wholesome, food, higher fat,
optimal protein, low. Low carbohydrate intake diet and
when you paint it in such a broad with such a broad brush
like that. I mean, I feel like most people
like you were saying, would probably benefit from, you know,
operating somewhere within that window.
Yeah, exactly. And of course, you know, over
the last nine years. I've done all my family and
friends. I've looked at their labs and
their DNA and everybody's slightly different, you know,
for example, my husband has genetic hemochromatosis, if
anybody Don't know what that is. It's basically an over
accumulation of iron and ferritin in the body.
So he would do better eating less red meat, if not know, read
me. Now.
I have low ferritin and I do not have genetic hemochromatosis, so
I can actually eat more red meat.
For example, same, we can look at coffee and I think that's why
the studies one study will say coffee is good for you.
And then the next study will say, no coffee's bad for you.
Well, the thing is is Buddy has different genes that metabolize
caffeine and catecholamines differently.
So caffeine, for example, with my husband is great for his
genetics, and it's terrible for my genetics, and you can just
keep going down the list for dairy for chocolate, for being a
vegetarian for being a carnivore.
You can look at the DNA. It's really fascinating.
Yeah, DNA. I've had a few different genetic
tests done and Bad Doctor Anthony J.
Analyze my genetics and it's super interesting because it
doesn't necessarily mean that this is or is not, you know,
what is going to happen. It just kind of gives you a
blueprint for your genetic code and you can kind of turn on or
off these genetic Snips based off of your environmental
factors. I eat your diet and lifestyle
and it's cool when you have that at your fingertips because it
again puts puts you in the driver's seat.
You said it perfectly. It's a blueprint, you know, DNA
is a loaded gun. But your diet and your
lifestyle, pull the trigger, so a good example for this who
people maybe don't understand epigenetics.
Is that, for example, I have what we call the Alzheimer's
Gene, apoe4? And a lot of people think.
Oh, I don't want to know if I have that Gene, you know, I just
would rather put my head in the sand and not find out.
Well, what's cool about finding out that I have this Gene and
that most of my family have the Jeep.
This Is this Gene doesn't process carbohydrates like
normal people. We also do not process saturated
fats, very well. So I had to switch to
Mediterranean style ketogenic diet, where I'm having more
olive oil. Avocado oil, macadamia nut oil.
As you know, I can't basically have coconut oil.
It doesn't metabolize well with my genetics, so if you change
the way you eat to match the DNA.
That you have in my case. This would be less or no grains.
No grains are or legumes. And then also avoiding saturated
fats for my genetics. Then I actually could live
longer with this. Apoe4 Alzheimer's Gene if I eat
properly, so it's good to know. Not bad to know if I hadn't
gotten cancer. I never would have found out
that I had this Jean and I Or would it change my way of
eating? And Alzheimer's is just rampant
in my family. And I don't know if this has
happened to you, but I feel that any memory fog that I ever had
has completely disappeared with the low-carb, high-fat way of
eating. Yeah, I agree for sure this
brings up an interesting point and that is with regard to, you
know, protein for instance. There's probably going to be
some genetic, you know, like you said, your husband doesn't do as
well with red meat as you do. Do when it comes to protein
proteins in the, in the spotlight right now within the,
the keto low carb circles and it's kind of been given this
Halo as of late. And I feel like when you look at
the general population, the general population probably does
under consume protein, they would benefit from bumping that
up quite a bit. But in the keto space, there's
been this massive push for just a ton of protein at the expense
of enough. Dietary fat here, lately least
that's what it seems to be. You know.
Yeah, I agree with you, Andy. This is very detrimental for
people with cancer or people who are trying to prevent cancer
because too much protein as you know, converts with
gluconeogenesis into sugar. So for a cancer person or a
person trying to prevent cancer or has cancer.
We really want to limit the protein based on what we see in
that person's Labs. So, dr.
Naysha says the um arranged for protein in American units is
seven point zero two seven point three.
So we're going to adjust the protein Target based on what we
see in the labs. Instead of just picking a number
out of outer space. What is its importance?
Hero? 27.3.
What's the market there? I think it's mg. /.
Oh, I can't remember off the top of my head.
I can look it up real quick. Yeah, most people when they
talk. Protein that's it's usually in
relation to grams per pound Lee. Yes.
So that is usually point eight grams per kilogram of lean body
mass to 1.5 grams per kilogram of lean body mass.
So that is how much protein you're actually consuming.
But until you look at your labs and see what your protein marker
is in your Lab tests, you're not actually going to know if you
should keep your protein. Exactly.
Where it is, or if you should raise your protein or you should
lower your protein again, you know, doctor, niches, favorites,
comment test. Don't guess is really what it's
all about. Yeah, I agree.
I mean, I'm all for increasing protein as high as you possibly
can without any adverse effects. I feel like that should be a
reasonable goal. Like the more, the more calories
you can consume from a fuel standpoint as long as you've got
the Right competition in your body's tolerating it.
Well tends to bode well for my metabolic standpoint from a
hormonal standpoint, depending on the goals, obviously, but
this push to consume protein at all costs and not give any
thought to there. Being a point of diminishing
returns is a little misguided in my opinion because if you're
especially trying to optimize from a ketogenic standpoint,
like if your 115 pounds and you're eating 300 grams of
protein and 50 grams of fat, you're not really going to
optimize from academic standpoint.
Yeah, and I, Use chronometer.com to help people set up their
macros. And you know, 115-pound woman is
going to be eating something like 43 grams of protein.
If you know, she is in an active leak answering process.
Now, of course, we're not going to just set that without looking
at her labs and also looking at her DNA because there's so many
different factors and we shouldn't just go out there and
say, you know, the carnivore diets.
Ask the vegetarian diets, the best.
You know, no Dairy is the best really have to look at every
single person's DNA and then you have to look at the expression
of their DNA in their Labs. So for example, with my husband,
if he has genetic hemochromatosis, the hfe gene,
then we're going to look at his ferritin in his labs and to see
if it's in that optimal range of like 35 to 45.
Well, no, when his Labs came back His was 222.
So it was way too high. So we knew we had to cut back
red meat for him quite dramatically, and he also had to
go give blood to reduce that iron in his labs and your limbs.
And your dietary requirements can be much different than other
people that are not trying to keep, you know, cancer.
So growth at Bay. So, like, just just speaking for
you. Personally, here.
What were your Macros looking like on average?
When you're trying to keep that that tumor in remission.
Well, it really depends. I change it actually every
month. Like a lot of people think that
you just set your Macros and they stay the same, but every
single month, my labs would come back and I would look at my
ferritin. I would look at my protein.
I would look at my insulin. I mean, I'm looking at 70
different markers and then I'm adjusting my chronometer
accordingly. So, in the beginning, I would
say that my protein was very low, so I was probably eating 90
In terms of protein, 20 grams of total carbs.
And then at that point, I was trying to lose weight.
And so I was only having maybe 150 grams of fat, then
eventually. I lost too much weight.
So then I had to bump up my fat to 300 grams.
And then I had my protein went up, so I had to then lower my
protein Target, and so, every single month.
It's like a yo-yo. And now, my protein, nine years
later is pretty, pretty, similar everyday.
I think I'm at about 75 milligrams of protein, or 75
grams of protein. Sorry, and it's interesting now
that I have been burning fat for so long.
I can have 200 to 300 grams of fat.
Day and not gain a drop of weight.
So I don't have my calculator. What does that mean?
The calorie breakdown? Oh, I'm probably eating, I'm
five foot three. I'm probably eating 3,000
calories a day and just you know it again, it's not it's about
the insulin balance, you know, when you're burning ketones your
mitochondria repairs and you know, you are actually your your
Earning more units of energy, when you're burning ketones.
Then when you're burning sugar because you know, at a cellular
level, there's more ATP required to burn a ketone, then there is
to burn glucose. I just let go here and yeah,
females that are eating that many calories and just thriving
because the, The Narrative to just chronically restrict.
I'm so sick of that narrative, been fighting tooth and nail to
kind of reverse the the words on that.
But so many People women especially, but everybody, I
mean they're like, you know, sub 1,000 calories and it's just
doing, you know, wreck and total havoc on their hormonal
metabolic health and they're doing it for far too long.
I mean, you should never get that low in the first place and
there's just when I was eating, yeah, I was starving myself at
1000 or 1500 calories when I was overweight and I kept gaining
weight because, you know, the majority of my calories.
He's came from carbs. And so it's so freeing to, you
know, wake up and not be constrained by that fear of fat,
making us fat. And it's very unfortunate that
fat and fat have the same name because, you know, people
associate them as one causing the other.
Yeah. Well, with you eating 300 grams
of fat a day. I'm curious.
What is it typical day of food look like?
Feel like when we, Eat throughout the day.
What does that normally consist of?
Well, I generally fast, you know, most of the day 16 to 18
hours of fasting and that's water only fasting.
If I if I can pull it off or herbal tea, then I you generally
do lunch and dinner and so I'll have coffee.
I have this like special recipe. I've I've kind of created a
whole cookbook. That's kind of anti-cancer keto
recipes. Appease which are more specific
about mate avoiding carcinogens avoiding toxins, and they're
much higher fat than most recipes that you would find on
the internet. So I have my coffee with my
coffee creamer that I make, then I'll have maybe a big frittata
with eggs and probably nine cups of vegetables mixed in there and
some kind of protein mixed in there and cooked in, you know,
bacon grease and some other kind of fat.
Um, and then I love to have like my brownies or my chocolate or
my homemade ice cream as a snack.
And then I kind of go right into dinner.
So my eating window is usually somewhere between 12 and 5.
P.m. Is when I get all my calories in
there, and I don't restrict myself.
I eat if I'm hungry, and I don't eat if I'm not hungry.
That's kind of the beauty of it is, you know, you're not hungry.
And then for dinner, Dinner, I'll have usually like a salad
with some kind of homemade olive oils salad dressing or soup with
is some kind of fat in it tons and tons of vegetables, some
kind of protein that's also cooked in a different type of
fat and usually another vegetable that's cooked in
another type of bat. So I'm always trying to have
each component of my meal, be like surrounded by some
different type of fat that is For my DNA with regard to the
vegetable consumption. I'm sure didn't like this, like
all things is going to be dependent upon the individual,
their genetic disposition, etc. Etc.
But you seem to eat quite a bit more vegetables.
In a lot of people in the keto certainly more so than the
carnivore space and there's kind of like two trains of thought.
You get some people that say vegetables are totally
unnecessary, just eat carnivore. Some people are like you got to
get your attend 11 cups of vegetables and then they, I
personally don't eat it. A ton of vegetables.
I don't avoid it by any means. I mean sometimes like last
night. I had a bunch of broccoli, but
when it comes to vegetables for just like a general rule of
thumb classic 80/20 analysis, for instance.
What benefits do you find in incorporating more vegetation?
I'm well, vegetables in general and most of the vegetables.
I eat our leafy, which, you know, I grow either.
So, I have a big bag in my fridge that is like, kind of
stir, fry vegetables. And then I have a big bag.
That's leafy. That is salad.
And then, of course, I have more dense, vegetables, like
broccoli, things like that. Those are more like condiments
because they're higher in carbs, but I still try to get, you
know, at least nine different. Except vegetables in my diet
every day. The reason being is that
vegetables are antioxidants. And so if you look at oxidative
stress in people's lab so you can see it in a lot of different
areas. You can see it in particularly
Red Cell distribution, width homocysteine.
I'm trying to think of other areas, but basically our bodies
as we age, they are Rusty. Ting or oxidative.
And so anti-aging is we're trying to antioxidant eight our
body. So for us to be healthier, we
want to remove that rust or we want to kind of counterbalance
that rest. So, for example, I'm going to
have a grass-fed grass-finished, steak that is actually oxidative
stress to the body. So if I combine that steak with
an herb, puree that goes on top of that.
Make and then a salad and then a vegetable with that.
So then I'm getting three different types of vegetables
with my steak three different types of fat.
Then, I'm going to see a difference in my laps because my
oxidative stress numbers will go down and cancer.
Also, all kinds of diseases along with aging loved oxidative
stress. So again, you know, we could
play around and look at your labs and see if you have
evidence of oxidative stress. And then see if What you're
eating is working for you or if there could be some tweaks to
make it more optimal. Yeah, I'm curious for sure, with
with your protocol. Mm.
Like, when somebody sends it to work with you and you you do
these, these genetic tests, these lab work panels.
Like what does that typically look like if you were to
describe like if I was to go online and sign up to work with
you, what was that? Typical process look like, well,
we're adding some new processes is coming up in February, but
basically I'll have like kind of a one and done.
Halting where I look at your health intake which is a 20-page
intake form. Sorry, but it's very detailed,
we go all the way back to like, you know, what happened, when
your mom was pregnant with you and all the way to current
times. So looking at a health intake
form then looking at this extensive list of lab work and
the DNA so you can sign up for like a one and done or you can
sign up for like a three to four-month program where we
monitor the whole time. Don't you guys, you know, is
this is this interesting? I may have to pull the trigger
on this because I'm curious myself because I I do quite a
bit of routine lab work, but I'm I need to do this click on a
more extensive list style protocol from a nutritional
standpoint because I mean, I feel great I function great but
I always like to just you know, whatever Edge I can get to be
even better. So this would be this would be
good. Yeah.
Well we should just do it for fun because what I basically
I've created a whole A spreadsheet that shows like what
in ranges and then what dr. Nash's Optimal Health is and
then I explain what each lab means.
So if you're not in range for a certain thing, you can be like,
oh, this means XY. Z-- P.
DQ like, a lot of doctors will never know that.
If you have low potassium, low potassium, often needs that
you're not eating enough vegetables.
So there's a lot of like little secret tricks to reading your
blood work and that's why I just love my job is every day.
I get to be a detective not only for myself, but for other people
and it's really satisfying and fun.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's nothing more fulfilling than using your skill set to
improve the life and livelihood of others for sure.
I want to touch on the other pillar of that.
Acronym, we touched on the stress, the insulin.
Now, we got to talk about toxins.
Correct? Yes toxins, you know, it's the
elephant in the living room, this day and age.
So yeah, let's pull the curtain back on that.
What are some like when I had Anthony J on the podcast and we
were talking about like his book extra generation and kind of all
the different toxins that are in your you know, body soaps and
toothpaste and all this stuff that I didn't even know about
until started diving deeper and then we pretty much totally
clean that our entire house and get everything much cleaner, but
when it comes, To toxins like that.
Like what are you seeing to be? Just common household items.
Just common things that people don't really recognize but could
potentially be having a pretty adverse effect on them.
Well, the number one thing I do for all my clients is take their
zip code and put it into ewg front / tap water, and it's
basically a drinking water report.
So you can put in, you can pick up your specific where you're
drinking water comes from and it will show you how many
carcinogens. In your drinking water that is
just mind-blowing. What is the website again?
We do this live. Right?
It's ewg. Dot org.
Slash. I Think It's tap water.
Yep, and then you just go ahead and put your ZIP code in there
and it'll tell you how many carcinogens are in your water.
Let's see here. I'm trying to find my little
town. Okay, here we go.
Yeah, then you gotta pick your exact water treatment plant and
all that stuff. Containment is detected tin
exceed its guidelines 21 total, many of them say cancer.
Where do you see that in? If you scroll down, it will have
a list of all the toxins and then it'll say like reproductive
harm or cancer or something like that.
There's a pretty exhaustive. It is not against you get all
kinds of big words here. Bromo declined chloromethane.
Yeah, and then right next to that it'll say like cancer or
its affect cancer. Yeah, not bad, but it's the fact
cancer. Because yeah, so this is the
number one. I mean, I have a list I go
through people's water. There are their food, their
cleaning products, their body products their home furnishings
there. Carpeting, I check the radon
test for there. Our area, I check their dental
work. I checked for mold Lyme disease,
different bacterial infections, different viral infections,
different parasites, leaky gut reflux sibo, constipation on.
And on like, you know, no stone unturned.
You just got to look for everything and you don't want to
miss a thing that could be contributing to your ill health.
Because it's, it's really even though, you know, I Spy.
Lies in oncology. I don't want anybody coming to
me. I want I want people to prevent
coming ever have to come to me. Hmm.
And unfortunately, we are surrounded by so many toxins,
which is I think one of the biggest reasons that we're
seeing, you know, such a rise in cancer is that it's
overwhelming. Our body's ability to detox
these things. They're just coming in faster
than we can deal with them. And a lot of them have to do.
Deal with mimicking estrogen and cancer, just loves estrogen.
So we really don't want to have a hormone imbalance and so much
of these. I mean, so many of these things
are present in everyday life. And if you try to avoid all of
them, 100% you live in a bubble and you don't to do that, but
you can't do it. You can't, you can't do it.
But so many of these things are easy swamps.
Like like if you look at what you've learned like just people
in general from nutrition. I mean, you swamp out, you know,
Ships report current that's a better swamp special.
Yeah, exactly. You could do something similar
with all these toxins like the toothpaste.
The body wants to shampoo the water, we filter all over water
through a key. So hopefully I'm not getting all
those cancer-causing water agents.
Yeah, you want to make sure when you have the perky you have
you're going to want the white filters on the top.
And then the, I'm sorry the black filters on the top and the
white filters on the bottom. Yeah.
I probably should change those filters more than I do.
But but yeah, well, yes, especially if you're ewd report
says you have Ten known carcinogens you are.
Yeah, and you know, we should look at those a little more
closely. If any of if any of your water
is radioactive, you don't want to be showering in that kind of
water. Yeah and like like Crystal,
she's pregnant now, so we've been diving even deeper into the
rabbit hole of like all the things that could affect affect
that from like an epigenetic standpoint.
Exactly. And it's just like the deeper
you go. It's truly mind-boggling.
When all is in your environmental, you know, setting
and You can and can't control and so much of it.
You can control, but again, most people don't ever don't ever
even scratch the surface and dive deep enough to kind of get
an understanding of this. Yeah.
I mean, it is overwhelming but you just have to do one baby
step at a time. And for people that are starting
with toxins. What I said, the water is the
number one thing you want to start with.
And then the second thing you want to look at is the toxins in
your food because basically, we are what we eat and Food isn't
like medicine food is medicine. So we really have to choose what
we're eating correctly and make sure that its chemical free.
If we want it to have the positive effects on our body and
increase, longevity and water. I mean, 70% of your water are
your body is made up of water like 80% of your brains Mass.
I mean, if I wanted like only thinking that all these
statistics and you look at the compounding effect of every
single meal, you consume every single day of your life for the
rest of your Life like like water consumption and food
consumption and activity and just day-to-day stress.
Like those are all things that you can directly impact.
And the compounding effect of that, over the course of your
life, can truly make a break, you know, the end result.
Yeah, it really is incredible and it and to watch your Labs
like in my case watching my labs just get better and better and
better. I mean, I never would have
believed that I could eat two or three cups of fat and not gain
any weight and literally have all my heart disease markers,
look better, every single day. I would have told you, you were
crazy and 2013 the more, you know, the more.
Yeah. Mourinho and there's a little
bit here and And talk about your little farm and Homestead
because that's something that I'm super passionate about
totally, you know, counter to nutrition, cancer development
and brain health, but just kind of pull the curtain back there.
You said, you have you raise your own cattle.
You've got chickens. What else you got?
You got you got pigs? Yeah.
We got all our animals and we've got a huge Garden several.
I don't know. We rotate it around but and we
grow and raise all our own food. We try to be Sustainable, my
former job was climate change scientists.
So I kind of I kind of got into farming, not because of my
health. But more I was thinking that,
you know, I wanted to be more of a prepper in case like, you
know, something should happen and it certainly be has been
magical during covid that we have never increase, you know,
never had any shortages here on the farm and we have snow on the
ground right now, and I have a big hoop house where I have all
my greens growing. So You know, I have this
constant supply of food. We are kind of at a battle, you
know, because it's so much work to raise your own food, but it
really is rewarding coming from a background in climate change.
Is there like, like I'm sure there's things that frustrates
you about the, just the narrative out there around the
topic of climate change, has there ever like a moment or
something you want to say when you just grab the mic and tell
the world, what your thoughts are on it.
Well, I think the biggest thing that irks me is well, I was a
vegetarian actually. This is part of the reason I got
sick was I was a vegetarian. I really was a car batarian
because I really didn't eat vegetables.
I you know, I ate a lot of carbs for 17 years and I thought I was
doing it for the environment. I thought I was doing it for my
health and then all of a sudden I have six point eight months to
live. So I knew that I had to change
everything. Thing.
And so one of those things was eating grass-fed grass-finished
meats that we were raising ourselves.
And I hear so much backlash about oh cows produce methane.
Well, cows that are raised like our cows.
They're in a Big Field, they poop.
And the poop goes into the ground, and it is absorbed by
the plants, and they actually absorb carbon dioxide when those
plants grow. So that the cow, Emits methane
but the pant plants then absorb more methane than came out of
the cow now. So many people say, oh, save the
climate, don't eat meat. Well, the meat that they're
talking about is meat, that is conventionally raised that it.
These are cows that never see anything, then concrete, and
conveyor belts. And their feces are very toxic
to the environment because they are not absorbed by Plants the
whole system. The whole ecosystem is broken
down. So a lot of these drives for
like meatless Mondays and things like that, just don't make sense
from a climate perspective. And then these whole like
chemically produced fake Meats really gets me because most of
them are seed oils, GMO soybeans and other toxic chemicals to
make like this fake meat that supposed to be like, Fear for
you, all I can say is for myself.
When I was a vegetarian. I was very unhealthy and my
labs. And then, when I was a
carnivore, I was also very unhealthy because of my DNA.
So I had to find like, what was right for me.
What was the right amount of protein to eat?
What was the right amount of fat?
And what was the right amount of carbs to, you know, make me tick
and you're going to be different.
Your wife's going to be different.
Your kids going to be different. We're All different.
I think we had it figured out and, like, the 1600s and 1700s
when we're all, you know, subsistence farming, and
Agriculture, and grown all own stuff and raising her own, you
know, livestock. And then bartering with people
having relationships, talking to individuals, face-to-face,
shaking hands, and, and actually doing things the right way.
As opposed to this weird maniacal system.
That's been built around now, but I feel like the closer we
can get towards that. You know more primitive aspect
when that's simply growing your own vegetables or you know,
going to the local butcher to get your account and from from
them the closer we get then I think is a good thing.
I think you're so spot-on and that's you know exactly where I
live now is if there's anything I don't grow a raise, I trade
for it with my local community and friends and so, you know,
it's almost like a cashless food economy.
Just because We all help each other out and you build
relationships and, you know, so much of Technology's wonderful
but it's also been the demise of like these human connections
that we really lost. Yeah.
It's interesting because I mean
since we moved to our new location, we've really been
trying to plug into the community and I don't know,
like, there's just so much more to be said when you're when
you're meeting people face-to-face and offering value
to them in a way that is not through.
The interwebs or 5G or something like that, like you just simply
bonding as humans have bonded for the past, you know, two
million years and I feel like that's that's that's what we
need to go back to. Yeah, I remember on your New
Year's Manifesto. I think you said something about
like kindness and you know, that is just something I've been
working on in meditation like whether I'm talking on the phone
to someone, or I'm at the post office or the bank like exuding
that like loving kindness from the depth of my heart, and it
just makes an incredible difference to both my life in
their life. And we need more of that in the
world. Yeah, you can't fake that.
Like, it's like, no putting yourself out there.
You don't wear a mask and you just being honest and genuine
like people pick up on that because it's so, it's so rare
these days. Like, people can't help but
notice it and there's just a deeper level of appreciation
bond that comes from that. So that's, that's, I mean
podcasting obviously is remote. We're doing this remotely via
Zoom, but I mean, you're bringing your story to the
table. I'm learning from you and I feel
like, you know, it all stems down to her.
Nation ships and I think the more we get back to that and
just simply learning and building and growing together.
I mean sounds little Wu but it's yeah, but it's real.
It's two totally and I remember I can't remember the first time
I saw you speak. It was maybe in 2018.
Where you at Key dokkan. Yeah.
Yeah, he took on that was. Yeah, I think that's the first
time I saw you speak and I was really impressed with what you
had to say and I've sent your information to tons of friends
of mine. Because, you know, you're
breaking the myth, that, you know, of what you have to eat to
be a successful athlete and, you know, I've seen the same results
in my own body and but you've taken it to a whole nother level
and I think it's just great that you're getting your message out
there. Thank you.
Yeah, I appreciate that. I think, you know, we're both
passionate about the lifestyle that we're living in.
I mean, if it can benefit anybody, If This falls on
anybody's ears and improve, Their life.
Then then our job is done. So exactly.
Where do people go to find out more about you follow along and
just dive deeper into your world.
It's pretty easy. It's my name is my website
Alison Gannett.com. So that's a l is 0 n g is in
George a n n as in Nancy ET t as in Tom.com.
Awesome. I will be sure to link it to
that as well and do whatever I can to spread the word if
there's anything that I could. Ever do for you, Allison.
Definitely. Don't hesitate to reach out and
let me know. Well, same goes for you.
And when is your baby coming May?
So we're due in May, so it's like 15 weeks away today.
Actually is 25 weeks in just kind of crazy.
Like, it's surreal to me, but it's incredible.
Congratulations. Thank you.
We're definitely excited about.
It's going to be the next Uncharted Territory for me, but
I'm excited about excellent. Well, so keep doing You doing
keep spreading the word, keep fighting the good fight, and I
will talk to you soon. I will talk to you soon.
Bye. Have a lovely day by everyone.