It can be very frustrating to have low energy — especially, when you think back on all the things you used to be able to do before the fatigue set in. Perhaps you wonder sometimes whether you’ll ever have enough energy to do those things again. In this podcast, I am talking with Heather and Damian Dubé. Heather is an Energy Medicine & Energy Psychology Practitioner and Damian is an Functional Nutrition & Functional Medicine Practitioner.
Heather will share her story about how she learned that she had Chronic Fatigue and Hashimoto’s, and how this led her and Damian on a path to help people get her life and health back. You’ll also hear about their “E3” approach to optimizing hormonal and metabolic health.
In this podcast, you’ll learn
- The simple lifestyle changes that can help you get your energy back
- Why Hashimoto’s is often misdiagnosed
- What Damian and Heather say health looks like
- How high levels of toxins affect health and energy levels (and how to get rid of toxins)
- The factors you should consider when you are going to do a detox
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How Low Energy Affects Your Life And How To Change Your Lifestyle For Optimal Health And Energy – Transcript
Ari Whitten: Hey everyone. Welcome back. This is Ari Whitten and this is the Energy Blueprint podcast. And today I have with me the founders, creators of E3 Energy Evolved, Heather Dube, hopefully I pronounced that right, and Damian Dube. So thank you guys so much for joining me.
Damian Dube: Thanks Ari, thanks for having us.
Heather Dube: Awesome. Thanks for having us.
Ari Whitten: I would love to get started by just having you guys talk a bit about your stories and…I guess your individual stories, your combined story and the story of E3 Energy Evolved.
Heather Dube: Yeah.
Damian Dube: You said you had a hard stop at what time?
Ari Whitten: At 4:30.
Heather Dube: Yeah. Well it’s kind of one story really, right. Like you, we had a long passion and background in commitment to fitness. That’s how we met in our early-mid 20s. I don’t know if you know John Barardi, but he’s also like a really close…They were training partners in college and he was at our weddings. We’ve just had a long history with fitness and a love affair with…You know, fitness and exercise physiology is a form of expression and experiencing the human body, if you will. And so when we got married, which is an amazing time, but also a very stressful time sometimes. It’s a huge adjustment in your life. We were going through just becoming new homeowners and we had a series of events that kind of happened at the time. It was our early 30s and just some different stressful events came up.
His dad, unfortunately, had a stage IV cancer diagnosis and we just bought a home. I was going through corporate buyout in my intense marketing job, and so you just add to the list. We went through an IRS audit and it was kind of just like boom-boom-boom-boom, and all of the sudden I didn’t really feel great anymore.
My commitment to fitness, which was something I never struggled with the motivation for, really backed off which was strange to me. It didn’t make sense. I was trying to drive from the mind because the body couldn’t do it anymore. It had no gas left in the engine. I went to a number of doctors, probably much…This story probably rings true for a lot of what you’ve been through. I went to a lot of doctors. We lived in northern California at the time. In our former or my before Hashi’s life in worked in nutrition marketing for an agency there, so we were in Sacramento and, you know, just the doctors didn’t have any answers. It was kind of like, “Well, you just have allergies.” They read the thyroid labs wrong. The same thing that most people experience, really.
That went over two years and fortunately what was going on internally worsened during that time and it really was when we turned the corner and started to get more aware of energy, like yourself, and natural health, but really that this was a higher level conversation of energy and the human body, that everything started to click and make sense and shift for us. What was kind of shocking was when we started to really get into natural medicine and a means to work on my healing because I really had full blown Hashimoto’s disease and chronic fatigue syndrome.
Also systemic Candida and like a whole host of other things by that time because it was so advanced. It’s just that there was a lot in the natural medicine world that was still kind of missing some best practices that we knew from the fitness world in nutrition and these things on how we could speed up and optimize change and transformation and resting metabolism of the human body, but also healing. And so that was really our big moments.
Ari Whitten: And you guys…You know, I neglected to mention in the intro where you guys have a strong background both in fitness and personal training and multiple-
Heather Dube: Correct.
Ari Whitten: Personal training certifications.
Heather Dube: Yeah.
Ari Whitten: Corrective exercise specialist. I see that on there. Exercise physiology expertise and bodybuilding-
Heather Dube: So that’s Damian’s background, and I’ll let him share that. My undergrad is in psychology and I have some post-grad work in positive psychology. Everything going from the neck up is always what’s fascinated me, but that was something I used as an athlete, right. We use that when we’re doing athletics and did some competitive athletics in terms of natural bodybuilding up to the national level and MPC, and Damian has as well, way back in the ’90s, but I’ll let him share that. I’ve taken up all of his airspace.
Damian Dube: I’m used to it.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. I saw that. There was a little hesitation and sigh and he’s like, “Well, just another day in the life.”
Heather Dube: Well, you’re married, right. I mean…
Ari Whitten: I get it. I get it. I had the same spot.
Damian Dube: It’s the way it is, right. We come to live with it. I apologize. I keep looking down. We have two Jack Russells. One of them is a puppy-
Heather Dube: There just-
Damian Dube: And she keeps trying to
Heather Dube: They decided to play.
Damian Dube: Engage the other one, so.
Ari Whitten: I know the feeling. I have my dog right next to me over here and she’s a whiny little creature as well.
Damian Dube: We’re not being…appear rude, but yeah. Similar to you, have an undergrad in exercise science, exercise physiology, the competitive bodybuilding in my early-mid-20s, you know, back in the mid-’90s. I’m dating myself a little bit.
Ari Whitten: Mm-hmm.
Damian Dube: Left that industry just because I saw where it was going with the substance abuse, you know?
Ari Whitten: I know a lot of people who went down that path. I was into bodybuilding myself. I always tempted in my younger years. Oh, there were several times where I came very close to doing some of the stuff. Researched it very heavily, was very close, looked at places to buy it, and my older brother talked me out of it, fortunately, but I know the temptation, and I’ve also seen a lot of close friends who started to get into it and then once you start it’s so hard to get out because you get addicted to it
It’s kind of a bizarre scene in a way in what it’s become, because it was originally started, you know, the guys were kind of doing these feats of strength and kind of displaying how healthy they were and that was like the origins of it. Like build some muscle, show off your strength, and be healthy.
Heather Dube: Yeah.
Ari Whitten: Be a picture of vitality and strength, and then it’s kind of morphed into this very weird subculture of people really abusing their bodies and doing all kinds of things that are really not good for health at all.
Heather Dube: Yeah, I know-
Ari Whitten: And then like posing on stage and saying, “look how strong I am,” but they’re actually not at all the picture of health.
Damian Dube: Yeah.
Heather Dube: And that was like ’95 too. I mean you were [crosstalk 00:08:43]-
Damian Dube: ’95-’96.
Heather Dube: With John Barardi and I think it was more like…I don’t know. I don’t want to say he was expected to do it, but it was kind of like…I think it’s changed a lot, you know? I mean, back in my early 20s, shoot, I was always natural but I was taking ephedrine-like…like it thought it was like, “Oh this stuff’s good.”
Damian Dube: You know, right.
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: “This is healthy for me. I’ll just take it before my workouts.”
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: So I think it’s changed a lot, really. It’s just, to your point too, it’s shifted so, so much. When I was first passionate about fitness, I was like 17, because I actually have a rare neurological condition which is what first got me interested in fitness, solely because at that time in college I had always played sports, I had skied. I’m an [inaudible 00:09:30], so I like the adrenaline junky sports. And then when I went to college I lost that influence and I was like, “What am I going to do,” and I just found myself in a gym and I just knew that when I weight trained and I listened to music, that my neurological symptoms got better, so I didn’t need to know why, I just kept doing it.
Ari Whitten: Mm-hmm.
Heather Dube: And then that lead an interest in nutrition and…It just kind of rolled forward as you’re finding ways to live in a healthy manner with your body. But definitely it’s…you know, we’re 44 and 45 now and it’s definitely just seen it change so much, the industry.
Heather Dube: When I was young like that idolized people like Monica Brant. I don’t know if you know who that is.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, I remember her.
Heather Dube: Yeah, that’s when figure to me was so different in, a woman’s bodybuilding figure was so different than what it is now.
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: And when I competed…When we met, it was just important to me to do it to complete a goal. Do you know what I mean?
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: It was like the end of that phase of my learning. I wanted to take a complete level, just the way I’m passionate about learning. And then when the learning is done, I move on to something else. So I competed naturally and I intentionally went back to compete after healing my Hashimoto’s and chronic fatigue because I wanted to take what we did to heal me, in terms of functional nutrition, and apply that as an athlete to see what the difference would be, as my own experiment, right, as our experiment together. And it was fascinating because I was on stage at 6% body fat up against women from other countries and the U.S. that are using and I’m there natural, and literally I had a period.
Ari Whitten: Wow.
Heather Dube: I just hated-
Damian Dube: And while she was competing, she was in menses.
Heather Dube: I had complete control of my mood.
Ari Whitten: Wow.
Heather Dube: When I walked off state there was zero metabolic backlash, and literally they told me I was too lean, I was too conditioned. [crosstalk 00:11:31] natural.
Damian Dube: Yeah. If you have too many home runs, you shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame, right?
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: It was more the point. I think to go through an experience where…And you know someone who’s been through chronic fatigue.
Ari Whitten: Mm-hmm.
Heather Dube: It’s incredibly spirit stealing. It’s incredibly life stealing.
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: There was a place to me at the bottom of that, two years into that, where literally I actually, and this is not me, began to question is this was all there was.
Ari Whitten: Mm-hmm.
Heather Dube: And for me to get to that place mentally with who I am and my passion for psychology and everything, it’s a big deal. And when I knew, I was like…There was just some line in me, and I don’t know if you had a similar experience, where I was like…I just was like…It was like this Phoenix Rising moment of, “I’m not going out like this.” This is not me. It was like an out of body experience. You know when you’re an athlete and you have a commitment to fitness and you can’t even do that let alone contribute to your household, contribute to your marriage, do your taxes. You’re laid up on the couch and you can’t go get groceries because your legs feel like dead weights. It’s just a very hard place to be.
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: Emotionally, mentally, spiritually, not just physically. So coming out of that, it was just…I was just maybe pissed off is the wrong phrase, but I was very angry for a long time, at the doctors that made errors and missed this, because we sacrificed a lot. We lost the phase of our life to have children and become parents.
Ari Whitten: Hmm.
Heather Dube: There’s a bigger conversation going on that people aren’t even tapping into because, if you don’t have enough energy function, you sure can’t as a woman have enough energy to produce another human life.
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: There’s only so many years you get to do that when you get married at 32. You know? And so I did really have a lot of just anger at how could this be missed. Because really all those missed diagnoses and mistreatment is actually what made me advance so dangerously ill, and it really could have been avoided. But instead we channeled that. You know what I mean? I channeled that and just was like, just like coming out like a bat out of hell, and I wanted to go back to compete to show that not only could we heal this naturally, when you, you, you and you said no it’s not possible, but we can become our best from the inside out. You know, healed but also in optimal condition externally, and that was just natural and a point I wanted to make. It didn’t take Synthroid. It didn’t take all these other things. It really took optimizing function and energy in the body to do it, and that can be done naturally.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. And so was it the health problems for you, Heather, that prompted you to move in the direction of kind of shifting out of the body composition focus more towards to energy and…?
Heather Dube: Yeah. And I think in a sense that, by the time I got sick we were blessed that…I mean you know too, there’s a lot of people in that industry still doing it wrong.
Ari Whitten: Yes.
Heather Dube: We were blessed to…Damian is very into it and always been naturally gifted with nutrients. We have influences like a coach like John Barardi who, if you could land a coach in the industry and get a chance to mentor with, he’s one of the best. So we were still doing sports nutrition in a way that was not…we weren’t piling down pizzas on the weekend for [inaudible 00:15:04]. It just was never the way we were.
Ari Whitten: Right.
Heather Dube: We had our own garden. We weren’t living that way, but it was very much the shift of, “Wow, it’s not just about this.” Like this thing that we had always thought, like this whole other underworld going on in the body. The lymphatic system, the digestive system, like all these things that I had to really more aware of. How do I optimize those things so that my resting metabolism ultimately is functioning more properly for me. And was fascinating to us is like, and I’m sure you know too, is like, “Well, wow.” All of sudden, if you do this from the inside out, if you do this in a way where you really get on the team with your body the way it wants to operate, the way that it knows to operate-
Damian Dube: It’s easy.
Heather Dube: It became easy.
Damian Dube: Yeah.
Heather Dube: We don’t have to force it as much. And so then we can…It’s not two hours killing yourself in the gym six days a week. It’s not that or what you thought it was for all these decades, right. It’s actually easier, and there’s nothing with that if you still want that, but it’s not necessary to get the body to respond and do what you want to do, if you’re healed internally first. And so that’s what we became really passionate about at that point, is that really we have to put healing first.
Damian Dube: Yeah.
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: And then metabolism just comes along for the ride, really. Because then you’re optimizing the resting metabolism the other 23 hours a day, not just the one that you’re in the gym.
Ari Whitten: Right.
Damian Dube: Yeah.
Ari Whitten: And Damian, what was it for you that kind of transitioned you more towards general health?
Damian Dube: I’ve always been through high school, through college, always been into working out and not doing a lot of the other things that everybody else was doing at the time. I started into the bodybuilding, took a path for a short period of time, then realized it wasn’t the right path, got back on track. And really, it’s just been common sense, really, and just understanding what the body is capable of if given the proper tools.
Damian Dube: When Heather got sick, that shifted us to a completely different level-
Heather Dube: Different level, yeah.
Damian Dube: Where you gotta cut out all the artificial sweeteners and things like that, right, which we would pound because it’s in every protein powder,-
Ari Whitten: Right.
Damian Dube: Every workout drink and every beverage out there. Yeah, I think that Heather getting…going through what she went through definitely kind of shifted. And then as she was shifting I was making those shifts as well, nutritionally. And my athlete’s foot went away, my lactose intolerance went away.
Heather Dube: Yeah.
Damian Dube: You know, all these different things that you don’t even expect. Everybody just assumes they’re kind of normal.
Heather Dube: Right.
Damian Dube: It just went away. And on top of that, staying in condition is actually easier, so in my 40s I’m in better condition than I was in my early to mid-30s.
Heather Dube: Yeah, you guys are really [inaudible 00:18:18]. I mean he looks like he could walk on stage [inaudible 00:18:22].
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: But we don’t do it for that reason, you know what I mean? We’re doing it because we’re honoring the body, we’re honoring our health.
Ari Whitten: Right. Yeah, I know I saw…I don’t know, Heather, were you at MindShare? Yeah, you both were-
Heather Dube: Yeah.
Damian Dube: Correct.
Ari Whitten: A few years ago and I remember seeing you. You’re both definitely in great shape, so you walk the walk which I appreciate.
Heather Dube: We appreciate that.
Damian Dube: And likewise, we appreciate that you do as well. It kind of drives us a little batty when people are not.
Heather Dube: [crosstalk 00:18:48]
Ari Whitten: Yes. I totally agree. It’s bizarre to have a conversation with someone about health and they’re clearly just not healthy.
Heather Dube: Yes.
Damian Dube: Right.
Heather Dube: Yeah.
Ari Whitten: So tell me about the system that you guys have developed? E3 Energy Evolved. Kind of paint a picture for me of, and for my audience more importantly than me, of what the paradigm of health is. What does it look like? What do you guys see as the biggest roadblocks for people to be healthy, or triggers of disease?
Heather Dube: Well, there’s a lot. But yeah, I know. I think…Well, there’s definitely this ah-ha moment for me, when I was coming out of the sickness and finally turned the corner where I could feel in my body that I was on the upward trajectory of, okay, energy is more than just my nutrition or my fitness. It’s if I’m really going to truly have a healing experience, I’ve gotta consider that, one, this is a bio-individual organism. It is constantly responding to its environment all the time. How it responds, it responds through how I perceive the stress response, right? So measure of stress could be different perception for me as it is for him as it is for you, and just that there’s our energy in, our energy, and our energy environment. And there was just this ah-ha moment and that was really the birth of E3 Energy Evolved.
Heather Dube: It’s like we’re having a conversation about three levels of energy and if we have an awareness about those levels of energy and what’s entailed in each of those levels of energy, and then how to always just be mindful of them and manage them proactively, that we can not only heal our disease but we can disease proof our lives. And that was such a huge pivotal shift for us in the way that we approach our bodies. I’m also blessed with a husband that we have very similar values and we were a team through that, and I think that’s a whole other conversation for another time. But essentially, that was the birth of our system. It was kind of like, okay we’re really talking about energy and kind of helping people to understand that your energy in, your energy out and your energy environment is really what’s important and then obviously there are certain things underneath those.
Heather Dube: So your energy in obviously is your nutrition. We put it in a specific order because we think like athletes. Athletes, whey you’re preparing for competition, you’re going to work as much of the mental and physical and spiritual body as possibly holistically to get the best outcome, so we look at it the same way when we look at healing. And why we do that in terms of the strategy is certain things and energy actually get you more outcome. Like the way we look at it philosophically is, if you’re not going to prioritize your nutrition, well let’s not really dive into essential oils. You know what I mean? Or let’s not really dive into what you’re worried about in your environment as much, because that’s really rounding out the last 10 to 20%, so we really look at it as 70% of the equation when your body is in some form of chaos or it’s departed from homeostasis and you’re dealing with a fatigue issue, a thyroid issues or autoimmune, it doesn’t really matter. You’re going to need to revamp that by recreating the human body through that energy in of what you put into the system to get [crosstalk 00:22:17].
Ari Whitten: Let’s dig more into that, the three levels of energy, the three E’s. Let’s start with energy in. What does that entail? Give me…kind of list out some of this energy in factors.
Heather Dube: Sure. Energy in is, first of all, obviously-
Damian Dube: It’s what you’re eating, right. Yeah.
Heather Dube: Nutrition. Then it’s also your nutraceuticals, so obviously we work in clinical grade nutraceuticals. That became a big shift for us at that point in our lives, in just terms of potency and efficacy. What you’re allowing into your mind is not often thought of, but is huge towards our stress. Also, the way that your mindset is. How do you perceive stress? There are those individual aspects of psychology that matter too. We can’t discount everything from…Hi Uma. Uma wants to say hi. Sorry. We can’t discount everything from the neck up. You know what I mean? Even though we’re talking about correcting the neck down, I like to say too if you’re not going to deal with what’s going on from the neck up that created what’s going on from the neck down, then you’re not going to totally fix what’s going on from the neck down. Then other things, you know, spirituality, like what you’re giving to your system to have what we call extreme peace or extreme rest. Those are important things.
Damian Dube: Sleep.
Heather Dube: Sleep. Hydration.
Ari Whitten: Is sleep putting the energy in category?
Heather Dube: Yeah.
Damian Dube: Yeah, because that helps to kind of replenish that, right.
Heather Dube: Replenish.
Damian Dube: Replenish that bank account that you’ll be drawing on.
Heather Dube: Whatever’s gonna, yeah, build up a bank account. When you get into energy out, we look at that as about 20% of the equation and that’s things like your exercise physiology, which is a form of stress on the human body as we all know. There are times when that stress, the benefits of that stress…I’m sorry, the risks of that stress outweigh the benefits, depending on where you are on the spectrum of fatigue. At least that’s our philosophy and position.
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: And knowing how to adjust the approach to your exercise is truly important if your goal is to, in our experience, to course correct a fatigue condition, you have to consider that in the equation.
Ari Whitten: Definitely.
Heather Dube: You will absolutely get there faster should you do that. It’s really amazing. One of the things we love, and I don’t know if you’ve experienced this too or similar to your clients, is when you just get somebody…We don’t actually work specifically with athletes, but every once in a while we’ll get someone who’s like a competitive crossfitter or something like that. Actually I work with everyday people. But you get someone like that whose so conditioned to think they have to be just like crushing themselves to get the outcome. And you put them on what we call extreme rest and like literally their pounds start flying off and they’re like, “what?” Because their body’s getting what they need to be nourished and it’s getting to focus all that metabolic energy towards the healing process.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. That was actually a big realization for me many years ago when I was chronically over-training.
Heather Dube: Yeah.
Damian Dube: Mm-hmm.
Ari Whitten: I’m sure you guys probably went through phases like that, but there were several years where I was just chronically over-training two times a day in the gym, two hour sessions, seven days a week, and it was a huge realization for me that I could actually get better results and feel a lot more energetic outside of the gym by taking a couple rest days here and there, and maybe having some days where you only work out once.
Heather Dube: Yeah.
Ari Whitten: And at that time, as-
Damian Dube: Even take a week off.
Ari Whitten: Weird as this might sound to some people, this was like a huge shift for me.
Heather Dube: Not to take a sidebar on that, but we used to, although we don’t right now because we haven’t had as much time, we used to write for a publication called On Fitness. I don’t if you’re familiar with them, but they’re really great in the industry in terms of they bring in functional nutritionists and high-level competitive athletes, chiropractic doctors, all from a natural perspective, but…Who was that one bodybuilder that you used to really love that has been around forever?
Damian Dube: Oh, Frank Zane.
Heather Dube: Frank Zane also wrote for them as well.
Ari Whitten: Mm-hmm.
Heather Dube: And he wrote a fantastic article about how your training should shift over your lifespan that actually as we age, if you’ve been training consistently, you don’t need to be training…like basically how we change metabolically, you can train less with less volume and less frequency and still be getting…You should be, actually, he was recommending that. I just thought it was a really fascinating article.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. And certainly been my experience. My older brother is a chiropractor and was a personal training when he was young as well, and into bodybuilding, and definitely that’s been his experience as well.
Heather Dube: Yeah. Then, on the energy out, obviously stress, stress management. But not to kind of…It’s kind of became a mainstream term and we’re talking about-
Damian Dube: Deeper levels.
Heather Dube: Deeper level of stress really. It’s not just like, “Oh yeah, I can do a little meditation.” We need to understand energy in the body and how things, like our mind and…can truly affect the stress response or trigger that in the body, and reframing how our role as an advocate for the body, if you will. For me, I had huge shifts at that time. It’s hard because sometimes people will email us and just kind of say, “What was the one thing that you took” or this or that, “What’s was the one supplement?” It wasn’t that simple. It was a broader thing where I had to really also look at how did I look at things in my life as an advocate for my body. I never really saw myself as that before, even as an athlete. Like I had a deep mind-body connection being an athlete, but I never acknowledged a mind, body and spirit and that they’re always together and that ultimately I’m the advocate for my body, so I’m the protector of that. I have to care for it, I have to nourish it. When I have needs, I have to speak them out my mouth to get them met in my relationship. All these things.
Heather Dube: I shifted a lot in who I was and how I would show up, and I’m a very intense, driven…I think we all are, like just when you have that in your background, I can be a really intense driven, competitive. That’s just part of my upbringing and how I was raised. We’re both [inaudible 00:28:34], if you know the different energy constitutions. It’s just that type of personality. And I really had to look at, here’s this persona that brought a lot of success into my life in different ways, in my career, in athletics but it wasn’t bringing success in my health, right. And so I had to say, how can I reframe this and come back at that and how can I find more balance in when it’s appropriate to show up that way, and when I have to ease back on the brakes. Do you know what I mean?
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: So that there’s more balance in that constitution energetically, in who I am and how I show up, as a protection for my body. And even sometimes that’s as simple as like, okay, if things don’t go the way you wanted that day or if you’re a little bit addicted to being a perfectionist, well really having a better perspective in life, unless the roof is falling or if your dying, it really doesn’t matter. And really going through a near-death experience like that, it completely changes you.
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: It completely forever changes your perspective in that sense, in what really matters in life. I think those all those things in that area of energy out.
Ari Whitten: What else falls into energy out? Are there anything else, any other triggers of illness that are worth mentioning here?
Heather Dube: [crosstalk 00:29:52] have any health issues. So when we’re talking about bio-individualization, you do have to consider if you have other health issues, like so for me I’ve always had a neurological condition that onset at 17. It’s very rare. I corrected it a lot over my life. I live with very minimal symptoms and I’ve lived drug-free. That was important to me. I never wanted to take the medications that the doctors offered. That was my first introduction to that world and I just never aligned with the medical system. Just the thought process never even worked for me. So I think it’s just considering, like if you have other stressors on the body, like imbalances, those things do need to be considered, whether that’s a specific system, does it affect a specific system, that kind of thing. If you’re on medications that you can’t take for a certain condition, whatever. Stress to the liver, like there are just those little things, when you’re thinking about individualization, other ways that the body may be taxed, energetically. [crosstalk 00:30:51]
Ari Whitten: Damian, were you about to jump in?
Heather Dube: What’s that?
Ari Whitten: Damian, were you about to jump in? You look like you were getting ready to say something.
Damian Dube: I think detoxification as well.
Heather Dube: Detoxification.
Damian Dube: So removing the toxins, eliminating, methylating properly, so and so forth.
Ari Whitten: Okay. Let’s dig into that a bit more. Can you talk about your strategies for how you…I mean, first of all, I guess diagnostics on that side of things. How you go about identifying when a person is toxic and what they’re toxic in and then talk about detoxification strategies.
Damian Dube: I don’t think it’s that if a person is toxic. I think it’s the degree of toxicity that they have. What we have to realize is in the last 150 years, with what we’ve done to our world, our food, our thoughts, all that stuff creates toxicity in our bodies and we all have a threshold. I kind of equate it to a glass. Some people have an eight-ounce glass, some people have a 16 ounce, some people have a full gallon glass. And as your adding more toxins to that glass, at some point you’re going to hit that threshold where it starts to spill over and that’s when, really, kind of when that disease state starts, for the most part.
As far as figuring out what people are toxic or how they’re toxic, I like to look at organic acids and things like that to kind of see some spillover there. Sometimes genetics comes into play. If somebody has got different MTHFR SNPs or [inaudible 00:32:29] SNPs and things like that, it definitely plays a part. A lot of it is just intuition. You’re looking at the diagnostics and sometimes they don’t make 100% on paper when you’re looking at just strict science, so you have to kind of just use your inner doc, your inner gut feeling and say, hey, maybe we gotta look at this and this might be the thing that we need to do. Does that kind of ans…address?
Ari Whitten: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. As far as actual detoxification strategies, do you guys have, and obviously this differs by person, but do you have some kind of go-to methods or protocols that you use? And obviously you don’t have to give away all your trade secrets. But do you have some specific strategies that you use?
Damian Dube: Yeah. I think a lot of times we put people on a gentle detoxification program at the onset just to kind of help clear them a little bit, open up the door for good things to happen. In my experience, you gotta kind of get the gallbladder and the liver kind of communicating together, because they’re going to help each other in that process. So I start out by trying to get them on the same page. From there it really depends on the individual, right, because there could be so many different nutrients involved in detoxification and you could be fine with all except for one, and if you’re deficient in glycine, you’re going to have some problems detoxifying chemicals. Like perfume gives you a headache when you’re exposed to it. Well, there’s a very good chance that you might be a little glycine deficient. Things like that.
And again, looking at the SNPs, what we find in a lot of people that come to us is that they’re very, very sensitive, so they’re either over-methylating or under-methylating and some of them can’t even deal with a B vitamin because it just pushes them so far over the edge. So you really have to be careful and very gentle with the whole process. So when we’re talking about individualization, it really is truly an individual thing, and it’s not only releasing those toxins from the tissue and everything like that, but also removing them from the body. If you’re not removing them and you’re releasing them, it’s just going to create more havoc. Sometimes it becomes more dangerous than the toxin sitting dormant in your tissue in the first place. That’s why this 10-day detox, 21-day detox, do my detox program, they’re pretty harmful to a lot of people.
Ari Whitten: Hmm.
Damian Dube: And it kind of drives us a little insane watching these people push that kind of marketing towards a clientele that they don’t even know about them.
Heather Dube: We’re big believers in bio-individualization, in the sense that the…We love the fastest path. I think that comes from our background in athletics, too. If there is a fast path to get there, take the fastest path. That’s the way we look at it. It’s efficiency. And energy efficiency is one of our core values, and so yeah. I mean I think what we do when someone comes in is there are basic things that obviously are the generalized things that people do to eliminate to get out of their way. But ultimately when we lab tests them, we can identify what is the specific nutrition path and nutraceutical path that they have to take and, to Damian’s point, it looks different for everybody.
Ari Whitten: Mm-hmm.
Heather Dube: So he may have someone on a detoxification thing while we’re waiting for their labs to come back in, but once their labs are in our goal is always to design the program for them that’s ultimately just completely designed for their individual body and what their imbalances are that need to be corrected.
Ari Whitten: Gotcha.
Damian Dube: Yeah.
Heather Dube: But in terms of your questions, like on detoxification, from a nutrition perspective, we definitely say the big guns that you gotta get out of the way, like dairy, sugar, artificial sweeteners, anything that’s ultimately going to limit the systems from operating properly.
Damian Dube: I mean go outside and pick your weeds rather than spray them, you know?
Heather Dube: Yeah. And then taking it outside of there, there are the other things that you can do for your body to help it. Things like just making sure like, lemon in your water, doing body brushing, things that you can do for regular care to get the skin to turn over quicker, stuff like that, that also all help. Obviously, we’re not doctors.
We can’t advise in the area of medication legally, although I’d love to say somebody unless this is absolutely necessary, get off your birth control pill, you know. There’s all of that as well. But we can’t make those calls legally for our clients. We can educate them so they’re fully aware of all of the consequences, risks and benefits, but they ultimately have to make those decisions. Our goal is to form a detoxification perspective is to help aid the liver to work as well as it can to do its job as best as it can and get the things out of its way that is going to limit it from doing that.
Ari Whitten: Mm-hmm. And obviously eliminating, kind of cleaning up your environment, picking your weeds-
Heather Dube: Correct. Yeah, that’s the [crosstalk 00:38:10].
Ari Whitten: The spraying, cleaning up personal care products, off-gassing of furniture in your home. You know, all that kind of stuff. Filtering your water and so on. As far as getting toxins, do you guys prefer a gentler approach to kind of stimulating the liver pathway as opposed to more aggressive chelation to get heavy metals out and that sort of thing?
Damian Dube: Again, I think that’s really dependent on the individual that’s sitting in front of you. I think as far as heavy metal chelation goes, the typical people that are coming to us are pretty sick. They’re really not feeling well and to start them off with chelating some of those metals, that’s going to make them feel complete…We’re going to try not to swear here, right. It’s going to make them feel really, really bad. And then they’ll probably not continue. So I do kind of believe in more of a gentle approach in that sense for the most part, because you don’t want to just release these things all at once. You want to do it slowly, because if you’re releasing them but you’re not removing them, like I said before, bad things are going to happen. So let’s do it gently, let’s do it slowly, make sure the pathways are all working properly. You might feel a little crummy as you’re going through the process, but if you feel like complete crap, well then that’s a little bit too much.
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: Sorry. I knew it was going to come out once.
Ari Whitten: Now, you guys are also big into identifying food intolerances. Is that right? I read some stuff on your site about that. Do you find that to be a big factor that hinders people’s health and do you have specific ways, like preferred ways of identifying and correcting those food intolerances?
Damian Dube: Yeah. We run labs. We’re not looking necessarily at IgG or anything like that. We’re looking at the inflammatory response after a food’s been introduced, so it’s a little bit different than a lot of the food sensitivity-
Heather Dube: Like a food allergy.
Damian Dube: Or food intolerance tests that people are getting done.
Ari Whitten: Which lab is that? Which one are you referring to? It’s not IgE, it’s-
Damian Dube: No. It’s not looking at any of the immunoglobulins. It’s looking at the median of release response.
Ari Whitten: Okay. Is it measuring cytokines or like IL6 or something like that?
Damian Dube: It’s been a while since I actually looked at what it’s actually measuring. I don’t remember to be honest with you.
Damian Dube: I’ve seen talk about it as being just like the rest. You can’t argue results.
Ari Whitten: Hmm.
Damian Dube: Right. So if somebody’s arguing that it’s not really that advocated and they’re not really getting results anyway, but we’re arguing that it is pretty complete and we’re getting tremendous results, well then there’s your proof.
Ari Whitten: Mm-hmm.
Damian Dube: Is it the only thing? No, but you know what, when somebody removes some of those foods and they lose 5 or 10 pounds right off the bat, well there’s a lot of inflammation that’s going down already and their headaches are going away and their digestion is getting better before doing anything else, that’s enough proof for me.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I’m curious do you guys find any particular patterns that emerge, like any specific foods that tend to be common or is it really, like you get very different results with each individual?
Damian Dube: No. Really what I find a lot is it’s the foods that you really gravitate towards are the foods that are the biggest offenders. Somebody’s eating a ton of avocados and a ton of turkey and eggs, you’ll probably see avocados, turkey and eggs on there. It’s obviously the foods you’re craving the most because your body’s just kind of going through that withdrawal type phase, so to speak, where it’s saying I want this.
Heather Dube: But there are still others that you would never know.
Damian Dube: And then there are some things we never even-
Heather Dube: Never know. Like we just ran mine recently, just because I always want to do a pulse and take a little break, because we all have a lot of stress with the work that we all do, right. So now it’s just kind of the way that we live. So I do a check in every once in a while and the labs on myself and there were definitely some on there that I had a lot and then there were others that I feel like I never have, and I’m just like, why is that on there?
Damian Dube: Yeah. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason, but I will say that 100% of the time, when I’m sitting with our client going over their results, and they’re like, “Ah, that sucks. I love that,” or “I eat that. It’s a staple in my diet.” Well, I’m sorry. We gotta remove it temporarily.
Heather Dube: And it’s really weird, some of the weirdest…I remember one client, one of the weirdest ones we had, like she was…It also goes through the foods that you want to lean towards that are permissible and it was just like steak and there was a choice of dairy on it, but we wouldn’t go to dairy anyway.
Damian Dube: But I think part of the problem is that we’re talking about removing food, so if you have a bunch of sensitivities, it’s an indication that you’ve got some over-permeability of the GI tract, right. So, yeah, we need to remove those offensive foods temporarily, potentially longterm, but at the very minimum temporarily. If we’re not focusing on restoring that integrity of the GI tract, then it doesn’t matter.
Ari Whitten: Mm-hmm.
Damian Dube: So you have to do everything together and, if you’re trying to restore the integrity of the GI tract but you’re not removing offensive foods, well that’s not going to work either.
Ari Whitten: Mm-hmm. On that note, I’m trying to decide now whether I want to go more into restoring the integrity of the gut or the other option would be to cover the last E of the system, the energy environment, which maybe we’ve touched on a little bit but-
Heather Dube: We kind of have. I mean really, like we talked about that’s more just…And I could do that in like two seconds. So that’s more just understanding your environment. For me, when I was sick, I lived in Sacramento. Biggest farming area of the entire nation, so I had to consider that the level of toxicity that my body was exposed to was much higher than if I had lived somewhere else where there was no farming, so it’s like having a broader awareness of what is this bio-organism exposed to in your lifestyle, in the way that you live, and then you have to offset that in order to get balance effectively in whatever you do from your programming perspective, from your…you know, for detoxification purposes, that kind of thing.
Heather Dube: We try to…People can get a little…I feel like, honestly, I was sick a decade ago and there are still some things that we’re changing over. Like we’re still looking at now buying an organic mattress, so you can’t take it all on at once or it could be overwhelming. And I think people can make the mistake of thinking, “I need to do all this stuff.” It’s really a gradual process that you ease into, and that last part is really 10% of the equation for us, so it should be a process working gradually.
Damian Dube: The simple things like removing a cell phone from your bedroom when you’re sleeping. [crosstalk 00:46:17]
Heather Dube: So endocrine disruptors, stuff like that and things that effect detoxification and endocrine disruption in your environment. One other core piece that we didn’t really touch on, on your energy…Well in that area actually, is beauty products. I mean I could go on for days about. I was shocked, just shocked at what I was slathering all over my thyroid, like chlorine and stuff on my face and it’s just like…It’s just shocking when you start looking at it. People are much more aware of it now I think.
Ari Whitten: Definitely in health-conscious that it’s true people are becoming aware that there’s stuff, hormone disruptors, heavy metals, all kinds of stuff, but there is a shocking level of ignorance in the general public about the fact that there’s lead in most common lipsticks and like perfumes and colognes disrupt hormones. I mean-
Damian Dube: And mercury [crosstalk 00:47:12].
Ari Whitten: These people are absolutely clueless.
Heather Dube: And what’s amazing is that the body talks to you so much louder when you start taking that off and away and allowing your body to be freed up and creating the space in your body, and not being just pummeled with all this stuff.
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: And when you come in contact with it, the level of sensitivity goes up exponentially as I’m sure you can-
Ari Whitten: Yeah, I know. I mean we all talk about it, right, everybody who’s like health geek like us, you walk by somebody who’s slathered in perfume or cologne or whatever their shampoos are, and you can just smell the toxicity and you’re like, “How is somebody wearing that stuff all the time?”
Damian Dube: Or you go to Macy’s and you get-
Heather Dube: I can’t.
Damian Dube: Assaulted by that person spraying.
Heather Dube: I can’t. I won’t even walk into a place like that anymore. But yeah, just those things, that awareness of, and even like the EPA is a great resource for that, just to have the one site that measures properties in makeup and stuff like that.
Damian Dube: You even have to be careful with some of those “natural products” too. I mean look at a lot of the natural makeups that are mineral based, right. Well, lead is a mineral, mercury is technically a mineral. It comes from the earth. Yeah, there’s lead and mercury in a lot of them too, you know, among other things. Cognium and so on and so forth.
Heather Dube: And I’ll be honest, like this is the only time I wear makeup. That was a conscious choice for me. When I was sick I had to actually remove. I was so advanced that it was like everything was game on. Everything had to be out of the way, and so I didn’t wear makeup for a while and I got really used to it and it’s kind of like, why do we need this, like I don’t know what the conscious need is for that anyway. Honestly, if you’re getting out there and you’re getting the natural sun and the vitamin E that you really need to be healthy, your skin gets so much healthier when you do these things, you don’t really need to cover it up anyways.
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: And I’m actually more comfortable not wearing makeup than I am now today.
Ari Whitten: Me too. So I can swing like five more minutes, maybe. But I’m wondering if we can wrap up with maybe your top two, top three, like strategies for health or tips for people looking to improve their health.
Heather Dube: Are we talking to somebody who is just getting started or they’re like already in the process?
Ari Whitten: Let’s say somebody who’s already in the process.
Heather Dube: They’re already in the conversation, obvious awareness if they’re in your world, so okay. I know you’re going to say sleep, aren’t you?
Damian Dube: Well, yeah. I mean sleep is always my top one. Right. Make sure you-
Ari Whitten: Way to ruin the surprise, Heather.
Damian Dube: You know-
Heather Dube: Regulation, the hours, more specifically.
Damian Dube: Yeah, the hours of sleep you get before 10 p.m. is much more, or between 10 and midnight, are much more effective than the hours after midnight, right. So if you’re going to bed at midnight, you’re losing a lot of that restored sleep, so eight hours of sleep between midnight and 8 a.m. is not nearly the same as 8 hours sleep between 9:30 and 4:30, or whatever it is, 5:30. So getting to bed at a reasonable hour consistently, and even on the weekends. Make sure you’re getting to bed by 10 o’clock is a must.
Heather Dube: I would say…sorry, go ahead.
Damian Dube: No ma’am.
Heather Dube: I would say and this may be…I don’t know if this is basic in this crowd, but the consistency. So when we’re talking about energy, you can have the same amount of nutrients in the day in one sitting and take all those and have it at the same time, but spread them out consistently and you’re going to have a completely different experience of your body. So consistency, like just that consistency of energetic input of your meals, that’s huge, and always having balance. So protein, carbohydrates and fats at every meal is technically a complete meal and the way that we really optimally consume nutrients, right. I think people under-value those things a lot. And hydration. There was a shift in me when I went from, I hydrate because I want to be lean because I was all in that world of sports nutrition and being-
Ari Whitten: Drink three gallons a day.
Heather Dube: Now, when I shifted to hydration from a perspective of healing, I need to hydrate to heal, I just think hydration is truly undervalued. People don’t understand how important water is in the human body, not only clean water like you mentioned, filtered water, but helping your pH by having lemon in it is amazing. But even thinking about it as a process of flushing your body, that was like a mental shift that I had that really helped me drink as much as I needed to when I was sick and was like, okay, my goal with healing was, this is just…You don’t wait until you’re thirsty, you are literally flushing the body all the time, and that’s the way, when I made that shift mentally, it really helped me never forget to grab the water.
Heather Dube: And I know you see athletes do tricks. They put their time on their bottle and there are lots of great ways to do that to remind yourself to drink water, but when I switched from I’m doing this because I need to drink it in order to get lean but to I literally need to flush the body because I’m eating it to detoxify, that was like a shift for me where I was just like, okay, always on the water.
Damian Dube: I got two more really quick ones for you.
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Damian Dube: Digestive enzymes. People are not digesting appropriately. Whether it’s because they’ve got heavy metals in their body which lead to impede that digestion or they’re just not producing the enzymes appropriately. If you’re not digesting, you’re not assimilating, you’re not absorbing and all the nutrients are necessary for everything. Detoxification, for neurotransmitter production and so on and so forth. My opinion, most important thing is taking some digestive enzymes with your meals.
The other thing too is from a mindset perspective, speaking your truth. Asking for what you want, not hiding behind everything. I think the one of the biggest problems in our society is that people are hiding behind their computer, hiding behind Facebook. They can’t be true anymore and I think that’s creating a lot of internal turmoil as well. Asking for what you want. If you’re in a career that doesn’t suit you, change careers. If you’re complaining about your job or your boss, well do something about it. Either have a conversation or change it. Only you can do that. And if you don’t, then there’s nobody else to blame but yourself.
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Heather Dube: He’s just going to offload that.
Damian Dube: But it’s true.
Ari Whitten: He’s speaking his truth right now.
Damian Dube: As harsh as that may sound, and everybody has got a different path, you know?
Ari Whitten: Yeah. Yeah, beautiful.
Damian Dube: It may be more realistic for some than others, but the reality is that it is realistic for…more realistic than you think.
Ari Whitten: Mm-hmm.
Damian Dube: And we find this a lot with clients that come to us. A month into their program, they’re changing their careers. Whether it’s their decision or their boss’ decision. Either way, it was energy that was moving out, bad energy that was moving out.
Ari Whitten: Mm-hmm.
Heather Dube: One of the things that were-
Damian Dube: Releasing.
Heather Dube: Really…Like now, the thing that fascinates me a decade later is energy medicine and that’s an area that I’ve been studying for like the last year and a half, and it’s really cool to look back and see that things that I was doing intuitively when I was sick, now I understand from an energy perspective that they were aiding my body to heal faster, because I chose to stay in an energy vibration of faith and gratitude and love, regardless of what the universe threw at us, job losses, losing our house, going through medical bankruptcy, it was like, okay come on, bring it on universe. You got another one? Come on. But we always stayed committed to my healing and we never allowed us to get into that…I used to come at it more from a perspective of mindset because my background’s in psychology and that’s the way I see it, but I’m starting to move into it from a space of the neck down, of like an energy vibration in the body and how that either aids to our healing or inhibits our healing.
So I think what’s fascinating, because we’re starting to see that conversation start to really speed up, and so when we work Damian really digs on the science and we always deal with the measurable, and that’s important to us, like you too. And we’re always shooting to get measurable outcomes for our clients. That’s important to us. But we also deal with the immeasurable in the sense that like, okay who is this person and how do they show up in their thinking and in their energy constitution and ayurvedically and in terms of energy medicine, and all that matters because we could give someone all the tools, right, nutritionally. Like we could do all these things for healing and you can only get someone so far if they’re going to stay in a really low energy vibration, right.
If they’re going to insist on being ungrateful, frustrated, like all that. What Damian is sharing too, is there’s the vibrations of guilt and shame, and I’m sure you see this too. This is very common in women that are going through…Just for some reason they’re not speaking, and I was doing this. I did the same thing in the beginning. I wasn’t telling him I was sick. I didn’t even know I was sick. I didn’t even know what it was because it was so elusive, you know. But as I became more aware that I was sick, I was kind of trying to just muscle through it on my own or not really telling anyone this was really going on for me, and this is a real problem with women. We see this time and again where they’re not speaking up, they’re not telling their spouse what they need, they’re not saying, “Hey, hun, something’s wrong with me and I don’t know what it is, but maybe I need your help or support here.”
You don’t have to take that on alone and, actually, when you’re doing that and you’re staying in guilt and shame for what you’re going through, you’re actually inhibiting, kind of closing the door that you want to open towards healing, and so that feels like a good last thing for me.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, yeah. Beautiful place to finish. So, if someone wants to work with you guys, where should they reach out to or get in contact with you or find out more about how to work with you and what’s involved?
Heather Dube: Yeah. They could go to our website, E3energyevolved.com, and then if they do forward slash gift…Sorry, forward slash guide it will take them to our free guide that kind of takes you through the E3 Energy Evolved system and it has some of his recipes that he really is amazing with and helped me a lot when I was working on my healing too, in terms of his gift with cooking, because it’s not me.
Ari Whitten: Okay. And real quick for listeners, what would you say your ideal client is? What does that look like? Where do you guys feel you’re at your best and the type of person that you work best with.
Heather Dube: We were just having this conversation. It’s absolutely…It’s doesn’t matter what your experience in nutrition is. It absolutely doesn’t matter. But usually the person that comes to us, they have a passion for movement in some form. It doesn’t have to be any specific kind of movement and it definitely not just weight. It’s like maybe they like to hike or exercise or whatever.
Damian Dube: Or yoga, whatever.
Heather Dube: Or yoga. It doesn’t really matter. Maybe they like to just get on a dirt bike and that fired them up as a woman and they fly around on their dirt bike on the weekends.
Damian Dube: Or jumping out of planes.
Heather Dube: Out of place in that fatigue state, where it’s become a form of a purgatory in the sense that they can no longer experience their body in the way that they want to physically. They can’t do those things anymore without backlash and they don’t know how to get back there and get out of this grip of that fatigue, and so how do they get their body replenished so that they can have that full experience of life and joy and of their body again, do the things that really light them up without basically having that kind of backlash. And at the same time, I would say the second thing is it’s also important to them to get off medication.
Ari Whitten: Mm-hmm.
Heather Dube: The type of person that comes to us is what we call a truth seeker. They’ve kind of exhausted the mainstream methods. They’ve excelled into maybe functional medicine or working with chiropractic doctors, but they haven’t gone into or taken their nutrition to a bio-individualized level yet. They’re kind of still doing more generalized nutrition, so they believe that there is a way to heal and they believe that the truth of the human body is that it doesn’t include medicine, in most cases.
Ari Whitten: Beautiful. Well thank you guys so much. It’s been a pleasure doing this interview with you. I wish we had more time to discuss. I’m sure we could talk for several more hours. But, once again, it’s E3energyevolved.com. Right?
Heather Dube: Yeah.
Damian Dube: Past tense with a D at the end.
Heather Dube: Yep.
Ari Whitten: Okay. Evolved.
Damian Dube: Yeah.
Ari Whitten: Okay. Wonderful, guys. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and it was an absolute pleasure.
Damian Dube: Thanks Ari.
Heather Dube: You too, Ari.
Damian Dube: We appreciate it.
Ari Whitten: All right. Take care.
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