[00:00:01] Luke: What's up with Flint, Michigan? What was it like to grow up there? Why are you not more like Michael Moore?

[00:00:07] Matthew: More like who?

[00:00:08] Luke: Michael Moore.

[00:00:09] Matthew: Michael Moore. He's a bit much. I've actually been down to see him at a little protest he was doing downtown one time. He's a bit much. Never dove into him a lot, but--

[00:00:21] Luke: Back in the day, he seemed like one of the good guys. And then he seemed to have been bought out or switched teams or something.

[00:00:29] Matthew: Yeah. I'm not sure what happened there. It does seem like there was a significant switch.

[00:00:33] Luke: He's the only thing I know about Flint, Michigan. That's why I brought him up.

[00:00:36] Matthew: That and the water, right?

[00:00:38] Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:00:40] Matthew: Yeah. Growing up there is pretty wild. I always tell people I'm not really a health expert. I'm a kid from the hood, and that was just very savage and just did what Flint people do and got thrown into the ringer probably about six or so years ago with just crazy chronic health issues that were just every symptom imaginable and got tossed around through different doctors and have been on a 24/7 mission to get my health back, but childhood was pretty wild.

[00:01:17] I had parallel traumas, I would say, occurring at the same time on the emotional and the physical front. So my mom actually caught my dad smoking crack in the basement when I was pretty young. Thankfully, she kicked him out, but obviously, no father. My older brother, his father was not around.

[00:01:39] And then my mom also took care of my two older cousins as well. So single mom, four kids, obviously she would bartend and serve and work odd jobs to keep food on the table, keep the lights on. So there wasn't a lot of family dinners or emotions. And my mom was a little traumatized by my grandfather as well. He was a bit abusive and aggressive. Maybe that correlated to her choice in men, I would imagine.

[00:02:07] But yeah, so there wasn't a lot of "I love you" and emotion going on. So I did build up a defense system from an emotional front that way. The abandonment issues started early. So I had a lot of emotional stuff going on that translated into my relationships with women and just people around me, but also I had a lot of immunological issues occurring at the same time.

[00:02:30] So I think maybe the trauma caused some of those or maybe I was just born toxic. My mom does have some mercury fillings, smoke cigarettes, real typical thing. And so I had a lot of ear infections. I've actually had both of my eardrums reconstructed. Literally, they cut behind your ear and take tissue from somewhere and reconstruct your entire, blown out eardrum. I had pneumonia when I was little, a hernia.

[00:02:58] I would get all these different fungal infections as well, and I would be on antibiotics all the time for my ear infections, ear drops, oral antibiotics. So we all know what that does to gut dysbiosis and all of that. And it just went on for a while. And then I just quit seeing doctors because my ear problems went away. But then I lived a life of drugs and alcohol and abused those quite a bit for a good decade, I would say.

[00:03:34] And then once I moved away and got sober, I realized actually how bad my health problems were. And then from there, I started going into the functional route, and we can go wherever you want with that, whether it'd be drugs or the Flint water crisis I lived through or all of the functional stuff that I tried.

[00:03:52] Luke: Well, we have a lot of parallels in our upbringing, it sounds like. And I guess that's why we ended up meeting one another. It's like you always sense you relate to someone and then as you learn more about them, you go, "Oh, I see why." Yeah. There's a lot of different directions we could go here.

[00:04:14] I definitely want to talk about hair testing and mineral balancing and heavy metals, like area of expertise as a practitioner that you've gone into. I think that's going to be really valuable to people because I think it's a way to circumvent it. Yeah, actually let's go here.

[00:04:38] So you have these two main models of healthcare. You have the allopathic, treat the symptom, try to get the symptom to go away with drugs or surgery, and oftentimes the drugs you're taking for the symptoms have side effects that create other symptoms. And if you're just living the standard American lifestyle, by the time you're 60, you're probably going to be on a number of different pharmaceutical drugs with a number of different illnesses associated with them.

[00:05:07] And then in the past few years, we've seen the popularity of naturopaths and integrative medicine, functional medicine, etc., which has been really helpful to me by and large in comparison to the Western allopathic system. However, there are instances in which that model mirrors the allopathic in that you're finding you have symptoms and maybe rather than taking drugs, you're taking $1,000 in supplements a month and doing testing and then supplements and testing and supplements.

[00:05:40] And I and many other people have seen improvement because you are at least aware that there's underlying causes and you might be taking supplements or adopting different practices, saunas, whatever, integrative therapies that are ultimately going after the root cause, but still you're chasing symptoms in some cases.

[00:06:05] So that's the two buckets. And then the way I see what you're doing and many other people that are practitioners like you with mineral balancing is a really different approach that I've tried to explain to people and I can't really articulate it. So maybe let's jump in there and then we'll meander into some other interesting stuff. I know we have a lot in common with former addiction issues and psychedelics and all of this, but maybe give us your perspective on those three broad models.

[00:06:39] Matthew: Yeah. Obviously. You heard my traditional Western medicine story. Felt like I got chewed up and spit out by them with antibiotics and all of that. So I gave up on them. And then in functional practices, as I started listening to more podcasts like this one or Ben Greenfield and stuff like that, I'm like, "Okay, this seems like a better route."

[00:07:01] And then I got chewed up and spit out from that model a little bit as well as you're speaking to very expensive testing. I did a 20,000-dollar Lyme disease treatment with Dr. Minkoff. Could have been beneficial. My wife noticed a change from that, but as the person who still felt really bad, I felt, not to say ripped off.

[00:07:24] I'm sure he helps a lot of people. He's very smart. You're doing ozones and whole cats and peptides and 40 different supplements. It's a lot. Lots of IVs. I even seen other doctors for genetics before that, multiple different blood works, and none of it really moved the needle until I found mineral balancing.

[00:07:45] And I think it's probably good to decipher between mineral balancing. That term is starting to get thrown out a little bit more, but it's different than just some of the normal practitioners who use HTMA on the side, or maybe that's their main thing, but they don't supplement it in the way that we do when you follow strictly Dr. Paul Eck and Dr. Wilson's work, because some people are doing HTMA in the fashion of what we would call replacement theory.

[00:08:17] So calcium's high. Stay away from calcium. Copper's low, you have low copper. But that's not really taken into consideration a lot of different factors that we look at on a hair test. So when we're doing mineral balancing, we're understanding that minerals work within a system. And a lot of people like to pull up the mineral chart. It's a cool thing. I send it in my emails. It's cool to look at. But that's just showing like one lens, I would say. You'll see the zinc to copper or iodine to selenium to show the antagonisms there.

[00:08:57] But I guess it'd be cool to break down how mineral balancing is a little bit different when you're looking at the whole system in comparison to replacement theory. So this was confusing for you on your test. Yeah, very typical test similar to yours would be high calcium, high magnesium, low sodium, low potassium.

[00:09:18] So we wouldn't look at that as not having a need for calcium. We would look at that as a bio unavailable calcium, calcification in the soft tissues where it shouldn't be, but also a need for replacement in a bioavailable form so that it actually can be utilized by the body and start to turn on these enzyme binding sites. And so we would actually give you a calcium and magnesium supplement, even though the hair test is reading high calcium and magnesium. So that's the first confusing part, and this seems very counterintuitive.

[00:09:57] Luke: Totally. Because I'm aware of calcification and things like that, I have always avoided calcium supplements like the plague.

[00:10:06] Matthew: Yeah.

[00:10:07] Luke: And then I got your Valence Cal-Mag Fusion. You're like, "Oh, we need to get you on calcium. Your calcium's high." I'm like, "Wait, what?" So it's very counterintuitive. But as you've explained it to me and as you're going to continue to explain it here, it begins to make sense once you get into the weeds of it, which unfortunately is required, but that's why we're here. So carry on.

[00:10:34] Matthew: Yeah. Another quick point on that. So when looking at that calcium and magnesium, you also have to take into consideration sodium and potassium because sodium and potassium in the right ideal ranges and the right ratio to one another will actually keep calcium and magnesium in an ionic solution to be utilized by the body.

[00:10:59] So to an average person who may just take a very cheap calcium supplement without taking into consideration the rest of the mineral chart, you may actually be adding to that calcification. So there's validity in that, but you got to make sure that calcium and magnesium are in the right ratio to one another in the supplement.

[00:11:20] Then you also have to look at sodium and potassium, and then it goes a step further. Sodium on a hair test is not actually a reflection of electrolytes like Re-Lyte powder or element. Sodium intake is not what we're looking at. It's actually a measurement of aldosterone, which is a corticosteroid hormone that's secreted by the adrenal glands.

[00:11:43] So we're looking at sodium as your adrenal output. How is it doing? Is it overactive? Is it underactive and needs some nutrients? And then potassium is not necessarily a need for potassium supplements. It's actually giving us a cortisol reading. And then we look at that relationship between calcium and potassium to get a thyroid reading because potassium is actually needed to synthesize thyroid hormone to the cell.

[00:12:13] And then calcium deals a lot with cell permeability. It's like, how well is it getting in? So then it even goes another step further where we actually use zinc to lower sodium and raise potassium. And then on the flip side if you had a low sodium to potassium ratio, we would use a zinc copper manganese complex to raise sodium and lower potassium. Because those copper and manganese are sodium synergists, they're going to boost that ratio.

[00:12:42] So we're not using electrolyte powders to balance the electrolytes. I'm not against them. If you're doing a lot of saunas, if you're eating a little bit lower carbohydrate, I generally recommend something like Re-Lyte or Quinton. I'm not against them. They're just not what's moving the markers on the hair test.

[00:13:00] And so you start to see the second and third order effects that happen when you start to take minerals. And then this becomes an issue with some of the functional medicine space because someone may just read papers about zinc, immune function, wound healing hair growth, fertility, and say zinc is good. And they may actually feel pretty good on zinc for a while because they may have had a high sodium to potassium ratio.

[00:13:34] But what happens when you continuously take that zinc for six months, a year, two years? Over a period of time, you're going to begin to lower your sodium to potassium ratio, and these are your electrolytes. They determine the electrical potential of your cell. That's what's happening here. So if you keep lowering your sodium to potassium ratio with that zinc supplement, you are going to start to have decreased awareness, liver issues, kidney issues, poor, basically, detoxification issues.

[00:14:10] And you're actually not going to link the zinc supplement to that fatigue or those issues that are arising from that low sodium to potassium ratio because you actually felt good on it in the beginning, because you needed it in the beginning. Same thing with copper. So if you have a low sodium to potassium ratio and you begin to take copper at some astronomical doses-- sometimes I was even on the 30, 100 milligram camp for a while, the Jason Hommel stuff. Thought his book was cool, which was just playing around with it.

[00:14:42] At least he had zinc in his program as well. So you were doing some balancing act there. But you may take copper and feel pretty good on it, and that's probably because you're either in fast oxidation, which is a metabolic type that we look at on the chart as well. We give them more copper. But also, if you have a low sodium to potassium ratio, you'll feel good on that copper. But at some point, it may begin to raise sodium too high and lower potassium, and then you would need to flip back to that zinc.

[00:15:11] So the retesting and the retracing part of it not only gets into a lot of emotional stuff we can get into, but just on the physical biochemical level, we have to start realizing that minerals specifically, and also different vitamins do have side effects, basically. It's not just like a free for all because they're natural.

[00:15:35] Luke: Good point. That brings me to this fantasy that I have, which doesn't work and I'll explain why, is-- this goes into the quantum health space, Jack Kruse and so many people that have followed his work, and I've benefited immensely from Jack's work. He's controversial because his delivery and attitude are pretty confronting to say the least.

[00:16:02] I told him once-- I said, "Dude, you're the Trump of Health." I really believe his heart is coming from the right place. And he's pissed at the medical system and he's pissed at people that just grift supplements and whatever his complaints are.

[00:16:18] But when I found his work, I was like, oh, this makes sense. We're just so divorced from nature, and specifically the light in nature, and magnetism and quality water and grounding and so many of the things that he talks about that we just need to get back in sync with our circadian biology, watch the sunrise, watch the sunset, get out and naked sunbathe, take your ice baths, eat a bunch of oysters.

[00:16:46] He doesn't say this, but I would add in Quinton, a natural balanced mineral supplement of sorts, BEAM minerals, fulvic and humic acid, Shilajit. It seems like you should just be able to do all of that and be super healthy and not need to go to allopathic functional medicine or someone like you for mineral balancing.

[00:17:11] In theory, that should work, but I tried it and still had problems. And I think why, and maybe you can answer your why, to me, you're talking about the past few generations in one's lineage of people that since the advent of electricity and indoor lighting, there was a huge downgrade there.

[00:17:41] And then as we went into mass agriculture, not so great. Probably diminishing the quality of foods into the industrial agriculture. It gets really bad. Then we add pesticides in the '40s. And so a couple of generations back even, maybe that would have worked great, but now we're so toxic.

[00:18:01] Our parents were toxic. Even for me, my grandparents were probably even, by the time they had my parents, having effects of industrial pollution and things like this. And now we're completely living indoors. There's freaking Wi-Fi everywhere. The assault on our biology is not only worse than it's ever been right now, but it's a couple of generations old.

[00:18:25] So we're not really starting at a baseline where we can just do the quantum thing and be okay, because there's many people in that space, Jack included, is like, supplements are toxic. You don't need them. Just get in nature. It's like, well, maybe a couple of hundred years ago that would've worked.

[00:18:47] They used to have these solariums where they would treat sick people just by putting them out in the sun. Hospitals had sun deck. So there's definitely something to that. But as I said, I've tried it. And so do you think that all of this nuanced stuff that you're explaining is necessary because we're just too far gone and we actually just need to get this granular and how we're working with these minerals and stuff? Like we can't just take Shilajit and Quinton and call it a day and have our minerals just figure themselves out.

[00:19:19] Matthew: Absolutely not. And we're in a perfect storm of heavy metal toxicity and mineral imbalances and deficiencies. And I guess we could start by why are we even bringing up minerals and heavy metals in the same discussion. Some people may, but I think some people have heard lead will substitute for calcium.

[00:19:42] But it's actually not that simple. There's a lot of substitutions happening at a lot of different places within the system. Basically, when you have mineral deficiencies or imbalances, the heavy metals actually gain access through different cellular compartments, and they take place of that mineral enzyme binding site that are the same like molecular weight on the periodic table. It's called ionic mimicry.

[00:20:12] And that's how heavy metals gain access to the cells. So with mineral balancing, we're actually replacing those minerals in the right way. You got to be very specific with it, as I already explained, and that will push the heavy metal out from that enzyme binding site, because if you have lead, say, for calcium, that enzyme binding site is probably functioning 10, 15% in comparison that if I had the mineral that it pleases, you would actually be functioning at 100%.

[00:20:43] What I believe Dr. Paul Eck figured out was how to strategically turn back on these mineral dependent enzyme binding sites, slowly, little by little, and reactivating them, getting the heavy metals out of the way, which I think are systemic toxicants, and then really going about really balancing, getting that homeostasis.

[00:21:04] I guess for one, there is an increased need due to the stressors that you talked about and the heavy metals themselves that cause us to need extra nutrition. So not only in the face of a few mineral deficiencies will you build up heavy metals. One ion of mercury can actually deplete 1,000 ions of zinc.

[00:21:28] And then almost every other heavy metal in the system also depletes zinc. So not only are they battling for absorption, it starts to increase our need. So it started as mineral deficiencies, poor farming, the food system just being jacked. Then you start to build it up a little bit and we're putting mercury fillings in mouths, and there was lead and gasoline, and now there's toxic manganese and gasoline, air pollution, tap water.

[00:21:55] So it's coming in rapidly as well. So there's an increased amount in the environment at the same exact time that we're destroying the food system that would actually protect us from absorbing those heavy metals. And then once the body has the heavy metal, it causes so much stress on the system and depletes more nutrients.

[00:22:18] So you start to see how modern life makes us have this increased need for nutrition, basically. And it's wild, but that's why I like mineral balancing, because it's what biohacking is talking about. It is a blending of ancient wisdom and modern technology. We're using the desiccated organs. We're using the ox bile, the pancreatic enzymes.

[00:22:46] And on the flip side, we're also using synthetic bees, synthetic vitamins, mineral chelates that are made in a lab to try to balance out the biochemistry and bring us back into homeostasis so that we can continue to do the things that we're doing right here.

[00:23:02] I'm not going to quit having clients or quit doing podcasts, or I'm never going to not be exposed to some level of toxicity. Obviously, there's Starlink across the entire globe at this point. So I don't think you're going to get away from the stressors, but we can biohack the system with the HTMA test, bring you back into homeostatic balance, and then you'll actually have a little bit more of a defense system against all of the daily stressors.

[00:23:33] Luke: Yeah, that perfect storm of introducing heavy metals into the food supply, the air, the water, etc., at the same time taking out the minerals, that is the definition of a perfect storm, especially when you consider minerals are metals, ultimately, and metals are minerals. They're synonymous. It's just some of them serve you and some of them don't.

[00:24:01] So talk about what we've done. I think I've done three hair tests with you. We got the results of the first two. We haven't got the results of this third one that was a couple of weeks ago, which I've done in the past, but it's been more under the model that you described earlier.

[00:24:18] It's just one of the many tests we'll do to identify heavy metal toxicity, mineral deficiencies. And then we just go, "Oh, you're low in magnesium. You need to take more magnesium, that old-school approach. Talk about how the hair test actually work. For people that have never done one, describe how you're cutting it off and mailing it in.

[00:24:41] What did they do with it? What does the test actually tell you? How do you address the test once you get the results in contrast to someone that might just be using it as just a side bit of data rather than the central focus of your treatment plan?

[00:24:59] Matthew: Yeah, so HTMA at its essence is a cellular biopsy test, in my opinion, that gives us a three-month average or trend of what's going on in the system. And that piece of information right there is critical because when you're doing a blood test, it's more of a snapshot in time, and there's a lot of different things that can affect that blood test-- the meal last night, if you had a couple drinks, or poor night's sleep. There's a lot of factors. And plus the body's always trying to find balance in the blood because that's your life source there.

[00:25:32] So you'll almost never see calcium issues in the blood because it'll just pull it from your bones. But that's not good to continuously keep leeching from your bones and your teeth over time, depleting your structure just because it's there. And so the HTMA is giving us a three-month trend on what's happening in the system.

[00:25:54] And from there, we can start to see different oxidation rates. We look at the thyroid and the adrenal marker for an oxidation rate, which is basically a metabolic pattern. So we give them different diets and different nutrients depending on the oxidation rate. Slow oxidizers can tend to have more fatigue, depression, be reliant on nicotine and caffeine or drugs, depending if it gets bad enough.

[00:26:24] And so we give them some more of the B vitamins that helps speed up the oxidation rate while giving them other nutrients and minerals as well. But we're trying to speed up that oxidation rate because the more energy we can give them, then the more their body will go, okay, now I feel comfortable eliminating this aluminum.

[00:26:41] Now, a fast oxidizer on the other hand tends to be a little bit more energetic. He has more energy. He gets things done, she. I don't want to be sexist here. But that person will get more done, so we'll use different sets of nutrients and minerals to slow them down.

[00:26:59] So we're trying to always bring you back to the middle because you can be in mild, slow and mild fast as well, which is where you want to be and to be able to float between those two, because extreme fast may look like they're very productive, but it's not really a flow state. It comes with a lot of anxiousness and irritability and you're bouncing around from one thing to the next.

[00:27:19] So we'll actually put them on a little bit of a lower carbohydrate diet because a high fat diet will actually help slow them down. And now slow oxidizers do a little bit better with carbohydrates as long as they're not having a severe blood sugar issue. So you have to monitor that situation as well.

[00:27:36] So there's two camps here, like Ray Peat and the carnivore people who are both clashing when in reality, there's a potential that a lot of the Ray Peat people are in slow oxidation and a lot of the carnivore people are in fast oxidation and then they're yelling at each other. When in reality, like they're both just in different oxidation states, so they are actually feeling better on whichever diet that they're choosing.

[00:28:01] So I think that's funny that I opened my eyes because I had tried carnivore and keto and vegan and Ray Peat. I'd done it all. And then I got into the work of the oxidation rates and I was like, "Well, this makes sense." There's a group of people who do feel better low-carb and then there's a group of people who actually do feel better on carbohydrates, and we should probably quit arguing about it.

[00:28:24] So that's funny. So there's a lot of different markers that we look at. And then I think poor eliminators is probably another one. I don't know if replacement theory people look at poor eliminators like we do. They might. So basically when you see a bunch of heavy metals that are really low on a hair test, that doesn't mean that you don't have those heavy metals.

[00:28:48] That means that your body is holding on to those heavy metals because I know every single person has some level of heavy metal toxicity. You're not safe from it. You're either subclinical or you're severe and you're paying me for my time because you feel really crappy. That's generally who I get.

[00:29:05] They've tried a bunch of other things, bunch of other protocols, and they come to me, but I have yet to find somebody-- I've asked all of my mentors if they've ever seen anybody who's been doing a 10, 12, 20 years. They're like, every single person eliminates lots of heavy metals. And so the hair test, we call that a poor eliminator.

[00:29:27] So you're basically holding onto that. And that can even reflect on iron because iron can be toxic. You can be holding onto that. You can be holding onto manganese. You can be holding onto copper. So that low copper level doesn't necessarily reflect the fact that you should just start taking copper.

[00:29:43] That's not how we're dosing copper. We're using the oxidation rate, the sodium potassium ratio, because you might just be holding on to that copper. And another interesting point with hair testing when you're doing mineral balancing is a lot of practitioners, I see their eyes roll when I'm explaining this because I have some functional doctors that even come to me where there is an ability for a copper toxicity or it can be manganese or iron where there is a toxicity and a deficiency coexisting at the same exact time simultaneously.

[00:30:23] So minerals can exist in different oxidation rates or different valence states and build up in the tissues where they're basically not being utilized, but then you also may have a need to balance out the system for a bioavailable form to be coming in through supplementation to help balance out that biochemistry.

[00:30:44] So it's confusing where you're like, I thought you said I had underlying copper toxicity, but now I have copper on my program. So it's hard to explain that to certain people as well. And so it gets a bit confusing. It took me a while to wrap my head around it and just very surface level. I thought I knew a lot about minerals and supplementation, and I was mind blown when I started the program.

[00:31:08] Luke: Who are the OGs you mentioned, a guy named Paul Eck? Who are the masters in this realm of mineral balancing?

[00:31:17] Matthew: Yeah. So Dr. Paul Eck was the founder of Analytical Research Labs. He also tweaked all of the supplements from Endo-met that we used to use before Valence came out. And one thing I really, really like about Dr. Paul Eck that a lot of people don't give enough credit to is he was actually practicing from the '70s to the '90s.

[00:31:42] And I think that that population of people were a lot healthier than we are. So his ideal levels to me are a much better gauge than any kind of new technology that's coming out and saying, "Hey, we took years to make these reference ranges." And I'm like, "Who?" Because in the '70s, if you just even look at photos, I would rather go back to that time period and say, this was optimal for Dr. Paul Eck, for his athletes, for anyone who felt good.

[00:32:15] In the '70s, this were-- not even ranges because Dr. Paul Eck doesn't like reference ranges either. He has ideal levels. If you notice on the chart I send you, there's just a line for ideal level. There's not these reference ranges. So small deviations from those ideal levels and from where the ratio he likes to be can actually tell us a lot.

[00:32:41] To the average eye, it just looks like, oh, I'm right there. I'm not too bad. But to the trained eye and looking at Dr. Paul Eck's work and then Dr. Wilson who took over after him and still practices today, we actually start to see the subtle imbalances because sometimes a hair test looks pretty-- yours actually looked pretty good, but there's always subtle imbalances that we can work on and then you'll begin to release some stuff and then you'll start to do some retracing.

[00:33:08] And that's another important part. Retesting and retracing, it's not about just, this low potassium, let's raise that potassium. You actually rewind back through all of the mineral patterns that led you to the burnt-out state that you came to me in. And this actually goes to you have to be an advanced practitioner to understand the retracing of it, because sometimes the patterns look worse.

[00:33:37] But the person had probably been in that pattern before you came into the pattern that you're seeing them for. And what actually happens a lot of times when you take them back through those mineral patterns, a lot of stored trauma can come up because you're back in the state you were in potentially when that trauma occurred.

[00:33:58] So I have a lot of people from the psychedelic community, a lot of people who do emotional work and somatic work who actually call my program psychedelic or emotional release and they can't actually believe that I'm bringing back up a lot of emotional issues that they thought that they had released with mushrooms and ayahuasca and all of these other plant medicines.

[00:34:24] Because at the cellular level, you still have the toxin there. And a lot of the heavy metals can affect the neurochemistry, so I have a theory about this. So a lot of the heavy metals can affect the neurochemistry and the nervous system, so there's a potential that even though you may have thought you worked through a traumatic experience, that the neurochemistry still held onto it a little bit due to the heavy metal that's there in that cellular compartment.

[00:34:50] And then when you begin to release that, then it may come up. I've had crazy dreams and thoughts about my girlfriend from high school. It's quite bizarre what can happen. And it generally comes later because they'll get the physical symptoms in the beginning, and those feel crappy.

[00:35:07] You're like, "Cool, but I'll deal with a sinus infection or a little fatigue and I'll just do a coffee enema and I'll be all right." But then when you start to bring up people's traumas in a day-to-day setting, which is very different than going into a psychedelic ceremony and knowing that you're going to try to deal with some shit, right?

[00:35:27] You're actually preparing yourself for it. But with mineral balancing, it's just a Tuesday morning. And you happen to take your supplements and now you're thinking about some crazy stuff that you did in your past where you treated someone poorly or how you didn't handle this relationship that well or father issues, whatever that looks like for you. That's actually daunting because you're not expecting it and it can come from left field.

[00:35:52] Luke: That's interesting. Yeah, I think we're starting to learn there's so much correlation between our emotional bodies and physical bodies. I've known people that have not been able to overcome chronic physical illnesses, and they've been primarily people that have been unable or unwilling to address their trauma.

[00:36:16] And they're just not wired for it, not interested, and just keep chasing physical symptoms. And I've suspected in some of those cases, man, I'm just like, ah, you got to get in, you got to get in. Do the core wound stuff, man, because it's going to show up. But that's interesting to think about how that happens on a biochemical level in terms of neurotransmission.

[00:36:37] It's like you're setting a blueprint for that chemical imbalance, for lack of a better term, that affects your levels of anxiety, depression, etc., that happened then and your body chemically still remembers that. It's not just like the somatic where it lives in your tissues and things like that. It's such a microscopic level of memory. It's really interesting. What are some of the other symptoms of mineral deficiencies?

[00:37:08] Matthew: It really just depends on which deficiency you have, which generally people have quite a few all occurring at the same time. But say calcium for instance. When calcium is really low, we actually call that an aggressiveness pattern. So we look at that as like, you're probably going to be a little bit more aggressive.

[00:37:32] And this is back to, I want to shed a little bit of light on calcium while we're here, calcium is so much more important than just this bone and structure. It's actually the most abundant mineral in the entire system. And so on the paper, you see the calcification. It's linked to almost every disease you could possibly think of when it's in the soft tissues and not being utilized properly.

[00:37:58] But calcium regulates multiple different enzymes within the mitochondria that create ATP, one that even links to complex five in the electron transport chain. So very effective for mitochondrial function. It's also really, really good at regulating the nervous system, back to this aggressive piece.

[00:38:18] It's a very calming mineral. It deals with different neurochemistry. There's enzyme called synaptogen, which deals with different neurotransmitter releasing. There's also another calcium enzyme binding site called calcineurin, which is for learning and memory and recall. And then also calcium is really needed for gut function.

[00:38:40] So it actually balances the acid alkaline base in the stomach, which I think is important. Some people argue alkalinity. Some people argue carnivore acidity. I think it's supposed to be in balance, and calcium is that buffer and it is that balancing mineral. It's also needed in the gut to close the tight junctions.

[00:39:01] So when a heavy metal actually displaces calcium within the gut, you're going to get leaky gut. And so you want calcium, also other minerals like zinc and other stuff that we're recommending, but calcium is very important for your tight junctions. So I just like to shed light on how important calcium is.

[00:39:22] And there's way more. You could go into heart muscle contractions. There's a lot that goes on with calcium because it's your most abundant mineral. It just needs to be utilized properly, and it needs to be in balance. And I think almost everybody's calcium deficient. Now over to zinc, zinc is a little bit tricky because I don't think there's actually a test that shows how deficient in zinc you are. Not the illegal scan, not a blood test, not a hair test.

[00:39:50] But if it is really low on a hair test, we will call that emotional instability. Some people will say zinc in and of itself is a neurotransmitter. Back to these minerals being very effective at neurotransmitter release, brain function. Zinc is also really needed for DNA and RNA synthase, for your immune system, for fertility, for gut function.

[00:40:17] Almost all of your digestive enzymes need zinc to be created. Zinc is really good for insulin signaling. It's just crazy how much you're missing when you're deficient in something, copper. You've probably already had Morley Robbins on here. The copper deficiency symptoms are severe as well from the energy standpoint and all of the parasitic and fungal infections and stuff that can occur when you're not having that copper utilized properly.

[00:40:45] The list is almost never ending. Magnesium is another one everyone knows about-- energy, all the enzymes that it functions in. And then you have multiple of them occurring at the same time, and then the imbalance between them as well. And you start to have that perfect storm I talked about.

[00:41:04] Luke: Are minerals at the foundation of health? Do you think that hormones and other things that we're paying a lot of attention to are downstream from minerals? Is that why you focused at this? Is this the fountainhead of the rest of our physical health? That's the sense I get the more I talk to people over the years that specialize in minerals like Morley and you and others.

[00:41:32] I'm led toward this trail of crumbs that's like minerals are at the top of the pyramid. And so many of the things that we're chasing around, trying to fix are a result of these mineral imbalances or deficiencies. Is that why you've gravitated toward this as your expertise?

[00:41:53] Matthew: Yeah. Back to Morley, I have a love-hate relationship with Morley, even though I've never met him personally. He seems like a great guy. But he opened my eyes to how important magnesium and copper really were. I listened to all of his podcasts. I listened to his audio book two or three times.

[00:42:10] I almost took his training. I was so bought in. But then I did his program and it didn't cure me or help me like I thought it would. And then I jumped over to that high copper protocol that's Jason Hommel's and actually found some benefit there because he does have zinc and some other things that Morley's not utilizing.

[00:42:28] But what it did was opened my mind to if copper is so important in so many systems and so is magnesium, what about all these other minerals? Why is there a hierarchy of minerals when they're probably all important? And that's when I shifted and found this mineral balancing crowd and then really got deep into it because the body, in my opinion, is running off of enzymes.

[00:42:56] And the mineral dependent enzymes are very critical for detoxification, for neurochemistry, for immunity, and a lot of your antioxidant systems revolve around them as well. And so you need to be focusing on those because those enzymes run your hormones. So when they are downregulated by having the heavy metal in there, you're going to have a lower hormone function.

[00:43:21] I'm not totally against hormones at all. TRT saved my life basically when I was chronically ill. It was the thing that probably saved my marriage potentially because I was so run down with symptoms that I just didn't even want to have sex. I tell like bad. It was like your body gets to such a bad state that it doesn't even prioritize that because it doesn't want to procreate.

[00:43:47] It's barely existing. So hormones saved my marriage. It brought me back up. It didn't fix everything, but it did give me a little energy. I was more sexually active. I'm like, "Okay, something's occurring here." But I get people that come to me who are on 10 hormones and they still have every symptom imaginable. So it's like clearly you're just trying to throw another functional medicine avenue at an underlying problem, which is basically toxicity.

[00:44:21] Luke: What about people that get into a lot of detoxing metals? If you do a hair test or a challenge urine test or blood test, you're showing high lead, aluminum, mercury, and so on, there's a pretty prevalent belief that we just need to go through these chelation protocols or do zeolite or saunas.

[00:44:46] There's a million different ways to get the metals out. Does that work well in conjunction with the balancing, or is the mineral balancing doing its job just by a different mechanism, as you said, of just replacing or adding in the mineral that is antagonistic to that metal versus just focusing on trying to get the metal out?

[00:45:11] Matthew: Yeah, so people lump all binders and chelators and everything into one category when I do think they're a little separate. I think some are safer than others. With chelation, a lot of them are putting in that chelating agent, whether it's EDTA or whatever else they want to use and just that kind of rips everything out.

[00:45:35] And you're also ripping the metal itself out of that enzyme binding site with the mineral to replace it. The thing is the body's actually holding onto that heavy metal because you need enzymes to live. The enzyme's just not functioning like it should, but it's actually serving a purpose.

[00:45:54] That's why your body held on to it. It didn't just hold on to it because it wanted to. It needed something in that enzyme binding site. So to just strip that out and think that you're just going to put back in mineral drops is an elementary approach, in my opinion. Now, on the flip side, the old school Dr. Paul Ecks and Dr. Wilsons and a lot of people from his camp really, really poo poo on all binders. And I'm not in that crowd.

[00:46:24] I actually think that you there's not that many good binders on the market, in my opinion. I really like ZeoCharge, which will probably be out before the show comes out. So people will already be aware of that. Jeff's really great. Jeff opened my eyes on how his binder works differently.

[00:46:40] And we have some of the same ideologies, basically. It's like he doesn't think that the zeolite, at least when you're using ZeoCharge is actually pulling the metal out. He actually thinks that it reduces the toxic load enough that the body feels comfortable releasing.

[00:46:58] Now, I don't think that's going to fix a calcium deficiency or a zinc deficiency, so I like to mix the two. But I do feel like it takes the edge off the program because you are moving around a lot and I would rather have a binder in the system that's going to grab that up because that heavy metal is still holding the charge and they're just so toxic to the body that you start to get a lot of symptoms, whether it's headaches or sinus infections or kidney pain and liver pain, and you really want a binder on top.

[00:47:29] And we are also giving other things that support bioflow, TmG, kidney support. So we're supporting as much as we can because the goal is to get everything out through the feces and through the urine. The hair is just a glimpse of what's moving around. But if all the metals came out through your hair, that'd be very close to your brain. You probably wouldn't feel that well.

[00:47:52] So I actually just use that as a gauge of what's going on. And it's validating to the client to see the elimination if they've been feeling crappy, but I try to tell them, with the binder, you might see less heavy metals on the chart, but as long as the mineral patterns are still moving in the direction that I like them, then we're all good.

[00:48:12] So I'm a different person because I think with the binder, people are more likely to stay on the program. And I actually took that ZeoCharge binder for about a year and a half before I recommended it. So I really think I did my due diligence with paying attention. I was doing a hair test every month.

[00:48:30] I was doing an illegal scan every month, and I really paid attention to see if it was causing a lot of mineral imbalances or what was really happening with it. So I didn't just jump on board. I really, really took that for a product for a long time before I recommended it. And so now there's a few practitioners recommending that.

[00:48:49] Some of the mineral balancing people like PectaSol as well, or PectoClear, they're by Eugenics. I haven't used those, but there's some really high-level practitioners that I like who have been getting good results with that. And so I'm in the middle. I'm like, some of my clients don't take a binder at all and they just power through with the animals and the sauna. And that's how people have been doing mineral balancing for decades. I find it to be a little bit easier to take the edge off with the ZeoCharge.

[00:49:17] Luke: Yeah, I have too, because as we've talked about, and we can share a bit more about this too, just the counterintuitive nature of your hair test looking worse each time you do it. But I think I found Jeff and maybe you through Matt Blackburn. I love his podcast, Mitolife Radio.

[00:49:37] I think I've listened to every episode. There's very few podcasts I listen to every episode, and I think that's been one of them. No, I don't think I've missed one. A couple, maybe halfway through I'm like, "I'm not interested in this topic." But I've at least started all of them. But yeah, I got into zeolite 20 years ago, long, long time ago, and then heard negative things about it, having aluminum.

[00:50:02] And I got sketched out and stopped taking it. So when I discovered Jeff's work, I was like, "Wow, this dude is--" And we'll put this in the show notes, by the way, because that will have come out by the time yours-- and our show notes today, by the way, are lukestorey.com/coffman, C-O-F-F-M-A-N.  lukestorey.com/coffman.

[00:50:21] So we'll put the zeolite episode in there, but what I found interesting about his take is that he seemed to really dial in the sourcing so that it's super clean. He dialed in the size, like how they're actually grinding it down. So you don't have the sensation like you're drinking a glass of sand like some of the old school zeolites.

[00:50:44] And he does all the testing, so you know it's clean and all that. But I think it's really interesting, as you said, his idea that you're mopping up just endotoxins and just random stuff that's in the bowel and then your body's going, "Oh, cool. Now we have room to start dumping this stuff." And so when I got on your program, definitely on days when I would do all three doses of your, what's it called, Valence?

[00:51:13] Matthew: Valence. 

[00:51:13] Luke: Valence. Your Valence supplements. I was like, oh shit, I'm feeling brain fog and this and that. And then last time we spoke, you're like, "Ah, throw in another dose of the ZeoCharge 30 minutes after you do the supplements.

[00:51:27] And I was like, "Oh, that was the missing link." It's very noticeable if I'm getting some of that detox reaction, Herx reaction kind of thing going on. So I'm a huge fan of the zeolite. And I've gone through two sets of his-- I'm almost through the second set of his mega pack, whatever it is. It's like 10 and you're taking 30 grams a night.

[00:51:49] I think that program is you take a little bit less as you go. But I'm still on the 30 grams. I seem to do it every night. I'm just like, "Man, this is getting expensive. I'm going through a lot of the zeolite, but I feel good." I notice on the nights when I take a big dose of that, right before I go to bed, I wake up feeling much more clear.

[00:52:12] For me, the symptoms are always brain related. It's just like I'll drop words and just be spaced out. And I noticed there's a lot less of that, even if I'm pretty aggressive with your program, if I'm chasing it with that zeolite, I do a lot better. So I think as far as in my experience of binders, that would be the least aggressive and the most biocompatible.

[00:52:37] And as you said, it's not stripping you of your other minerals as far as he claims. And that seems to be my experience too, versus doing IV chelation or EDTA, some of these more hardcore ones, or even activated charcoal and things like that, that are going to suck out any supplements you just took or minerals along with it.

[00:52:57] So it seems the zeolite has a really interesting natural intelligence to it, where it's leaving alone anything that you want in your body and only attaching to those, what is it, the positively charged molecules or whatever? I forget how he described it.

[00:53:13] Matthew: Yeah, just the negative charge.

[00:53:14] Luke: The negative charge. Yeah. So if you ate some bread with glyphosate in it, it's going to attach to that, but it's not going to take your zinc out, kind of thing. Whereas if you just took your mineral supplements and ate a bunch of glyphosate, took a bunch of charcoal, it's going to suck everything out. So I think that's interesting. It seems to be selective in the way that it binds to things.

[00:53:37] Matthew: Yeah. I've just found it to be the most effective even for mold and other toxicities outside of the complete just heavy metal crowd. Although I think you always have some level of heavy metal going on. Some people are in an active mold exposure or just left the mold exposure who come to me.

[00:53:58] And that's another thing too with mineral balancing, is we actually focus on the heavy metals, but the enzymes are actually upregulating all of your endogenous detox pathways and enzyme systems. So I actually think if you were to be performing some OATs test or urine toxicity test, you would see more plastics, more molds, maybe more chemicals coming out through the urine than we actually can read on the hair test because the hair test is actually, I didn't get to this part earlier, but they're burning the hair in the lab, and all of those metals, whether they be minerals or metals have a specific light frequency to them.

[00:54:38] So that's how we're measuring those. Mold and plastics and stuff are not going to have that same-- they're not going to get picked up by the technology. So you would have to do something like a urine test. But sometimes you can even give people urine strips, and if they're having a detox reaction, they'll actually see heavy metals coming out through the urine.

[00:54:57] So you can do a heavy metal urine test that way, but you would need a functional practitioner to see. But I think we're getting actually to the root of everything by just turning back on those enzymes like glutathione S-transferase. When you hear those ase names, those are mineral dependent enzymes.

[00:55:16] And that's what we're trying to do here by turning those enzyme binding sites back on. We're upregulating those endogenous detox systems so that they're just working more efficiently. You have the ability to detox. You just don't have the right inputs because we've just been bombarded.

[00:55:34] We've basically been poisoned. If you look at RFK and Food Babe, everyone doing the chemicals in the food, it's a lot. You look at the American product and the European product, and even though I don't really promote giving your kids cereal or whatever, you can see the clear difference in the junk food.

[00:55:53] We've been systemically poisoned. And then you have the geoengineering on top, which I know we talked about. I think every single test that I see has a very elevated aluminum. And I think that that has a lot to do with it. We probably already had a lot of aluminum before that started just from aluminum cans. We always used to cook in aluminum foil, all the normal things.

[00:56:16] But I think that that aluminum exposure from the nanoparticles in geoengineering, where basically nobody's safe because they just fly over every state in the country, and then you breathe in the nanoparticles, I think that's taken us from already-- we're already at our limit. We were already pretty toxic, and it just shoved a lot of people overboard.

[00:56:37] And aluminum is definitely correlated with tons of different neurological dysfunctions. I'm sure you already have people talk about it. With Alzheimer's and any of these later stage neurocognitive deficiencies that you see in older populations, you'll start to see those in younger populations when they have some of these toxicities.

[00:56:59] I felt like that myself. My short term memory was gone. I didn't have balance. I feel like my brain and my hand wasn't working together. I would break stuff like in the kitchen. Cook, and I broke the Vitamix three times. I just dropped it. It was crazy, man.

[00:57:16] Luke: That's expensive.

[00:57:17] Matthew: Yeah, so that was crazy. It was just the blender part, so it was a little bit cheaper to replace that.

[00:57:23] Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:57:23] Matthew: But yeah, so I was like, this is probably what you start to be like in those later years having some of those issues. And actually aluminum itself can bind with fluoride and actually create an even more toxic element and then it actually opens up the blood-brain barrier. And so now you have leaky brain because minerals actually regulate the blood brain barrier.

[00:57:49] And so when you start to have the heavy metals, aluminum and fluoride, even things like that, you'll start to have leaky brain, and so then now other toxins that would have normally been closed off because that blood-brain barrier is trying to really regulate everything can now gain entrance because of that leaky brain. And then we're just walking around drinking fluoride out of water and breathing in nanoparticles of aluminum.

[00:58:13] Luke: It almost seems like someone did it on purpose.

[00:58:16] Matthew: Very nefarious intent with a lot of it. A lot of it, I think, is just greed. Things like NPK fertilizers can contain a lot of cadmium. I don't even know if they really know. Maybe they do. They're just trying to extract the fertilizer to make money but don't filter out the cadmium that comes along with the mining process. And then now cadmium is in the food system. So I don't know if they actually know that what they're doing sometimes, but when you start to look at the fluoridated water and the food ingredients and chemtrails, it seems like very nefarious intent.

[00:58:54] Luke: It's not very often, but every once in a while I'll stop in a standard grocery store for I want to pick up some flowers or something. We have one here called Randalls. I think it's a unique to Texas. We have these HEB's here. There's new chains. Being from California, we had Safeway and Ralph's.

[00:59:17] Anyway, every once in a while I'll go into one of these grocery stores and I walk in and I'm just reminded, to your point, that literally everything is poison. I just walk in and I'm like, "Wait, people still eat this shit?" This is crazy. You walk down every aisle and it's just like poison, poison, poison, poison, poison.

[00:59:38] And then maybe, thankfully now, a few of them have a little organic section and they have some entry-level healthier options, gluten-free stuff, made out of cardboard and so on. But yeah, it's just astonishing to me that there's still such a lack of awareness at this point that we are literally just eating poison in our food and drinking poison in our water.

[01:00:06] And then people are going, "Oh, gee. I'm only 35, 40 and I'm already getting these diseases. What the hell's going on?" It's like, dude, if you put poison consistently in your body from the time you're born, you're not going to have a healthy and vital life. And even if you stop doing it, to my point early in the conversation, there's a lot of damage to undo, even if you clean up your act, which has been the case for me, sharing a past and addiction and just living off garbage and all kinds of toxins that I knowingly and willingly put into my body.

[01:00:44] Matthew: Same here.

[01:00:45] Luke: And I got sober and was just like, "Oh yeah, cool. I'm going to do yoga and just eat organic and become a vegetarian and I'll be healthy." And it's like, oh yeah, no, there's a lot of work to do. And even after all of that work, still symptoms and some underlying issues that persisted. So really, man, I just feel for people that don't have the awareness of the fact that almost everything out there in the world, unless you look really hard and just shop exclusively at a farmer's market is meant to kill you.

[01:01:15] That's leaving aside the EMF and blue light and all these other things, which I think are equally, if not more harmful in some ways. But yeah, it's really an uphill battle because of just greed. As you've said, people, they don't care. It's the bottom line, man. You have a multinational corporation that makes food products, not food-- food products.

[01:01:38] They're shareholders, there's profitability, and they're going to cut whatever corners they have to, regardless of how they're harming people. Thankfully, we have regenerative agriculture coming on the scene and we do at least have a whole foods in most major cities. I wouldn't say a lot of that food in there is whole.

[01:01:58] It's a lot of, I call it canola foods, lot of seed oils in whole foods and so on, but hey, it's an improvement. It's a step up, even if it's greenwashed, fake organic shit and "pasture-raised" this or that, it's a step up where we have some options that are at least somewhat affordable.

[01:02:19] Maybe not as affordable as McDonald's, but if you budget your life, you can eat somewhat healthfully if you try. So anyway, that's my soapbox on that. Let's go back into the testing because I'm still just wanting to learn myself, and I think for people that work with someone like you, there's real learning curve to get over the counterintuitive nature of your test results.

[01:02:48] Specifically, we did my first test and, oh, the aluminum's off the charts. I'm like, "Well, okay. I breathe air, so there you go." And I'm thinking, okay, we're going to get on the program. I started taking your supplements and doing the balancing thing. And then we do the second test and the aluminum is higher.

[01:03:07] And I'm coming from the old school, like, okay, aluminum is high. We need to detox aluminum. You saw my test. You're like, "Oh, this is awesome, man." Your test is looking great. I'm like, "Do you need glasses?" I'm like, "The shit that we don't want is higher." So talk to me about the excretion approach and that it's a good sign that now your body is opening up those detox pathways and what we're seeing is the end result of something that will ultimately be positive even though in the interim, it looks bad.

[01:03:38] Matthew: Yeah. So test with the heavy metals is definitely measuring excretion. So back to that poor eliminator term I used earlier, if you have all of your heavy metals really low, you're probably my sickest client, period. That means your body cannot eliminate anything. You're holding onto all of them probably.

[01:03:56] And so since we know everyone has heavy metals, a lot of people, once you get into this mineral balancing work, you're like, "Oh, everybody has heavy metals, at least to some degree." So when I start to see them rise on a hair test, I'm like, "Yeah, we're pushing those metals out." We want those to be higher.

[01:04:11] Now, we don't want them to stay elevated for a lifetime. Then they'll fluctuate too. Because like I said earlier, we're just giving the body the nutrients once. And then it decides what's that hierarchy of needs. What can I eliminate this test? What do I feel comfortable eliminating?

[01:04:29] So sometimes that's aluminum. Sometimes that's mercury. Sometimes it's a lot. Your test had everything coming out, which could actually just be a testament of a lot of the work that you've done and devices you have. And I have noticed people who have done a lot of the emotional work, I think their body feels a little bit safer, like you know how to deal with the symptoms that are going to arise, and then obviously you have a lot of technology and stuff that'll help with just cellular energy and stuff as well. So you had a lot come out fast.

[01:05:00] A more sicker client will take maybe a hair test or two to ramp up and build some energy because they're in such a depleted state. And so you do want to see that excretion. And kids can excrete this stuff very fast, back to what we were saying with everyone being poisoned. I see moms and kids in the exact same patterns, and we actually see kids in patterns that only burnt-out CEOs would have been in like the '90s. That's how crazy it is.

[01:05:28] So we're starting to see the effects of how being poisoned for so many decades finally is starting to catch up with us. And that's why the rates of autism are very high. Kids all have ADD or ADHD. And there's some people that say, "Oh, they just shouldn't be sitting in a school system," which I do agree with. I think, young, you have a lot of energy.

[01:05:52] But there was a long period of time where kids could do both. They could play at recess and sit in school and have attention. And we're starting to lose that to a degree where it's like you have to start to question what's going on here. It's not just that the kid wants to be a kid because there was a long period where we had school and kids sat down in class, paid attention, didn't have ADD and ADHD.

[01:06:17] Technology is another big issue with that because kids are just always watching screens. If you ever go to a restaurant or something, all you see is kids watching screens. But we are definitely being poisoned. And so we'll see kids have those levels rise really fast because they have a lot less congestion in the bile and the liver and the kidneys.

[01:06:36] And they'll release copper a lot faster as well, manganese. And so you actually want to see the body eliminating those. And almost everybody has copper toxicity, by the way. So when I see someone release copper, I'm very happy for them. A lot of people have manganese. Manganese is interesting. We could probably get into that because that was a little bit of your issue there.

[01:06:59] So you had a lot of manganese arise on your first test. And I told you, due to your symptoms, I don't know if you want to go into what your symptoms were, but we'll leave that. Basically, I told you, you would probably have a lot of aluminum and manganese coming out on your test.

[01:07:12] And I thought it might take a few tests to come out, but it literally instantly was like, yep, there it is. And so manganese is a very beneficial mineral. It's needed for one of the most important antioxidants in the mitochondria as well, manganese superoxide dismutase. It's also needed in bone formation.

[01:07:32] It's actually needed for gluconeogenesis. So you actually might have a little bit of a harder time doing a lower carb diet if you're manganese deficient. It's also needed to metabolize different carbohydrates, amino acids, cholesterol, things like that. So it's very important, but it actually does build up in the system.

[01:07:50] And so the manganese is coming from air pollution. So you lived in LA for a while. I told you, you probably got poisoned out there because we used to use lead and gasoline, but now we use manganese. It's also comes a lot from tap water. Anyone, at least my age, used to drink out of the hose. We had no awareness around water and--

[01:08:11] Luke: School water fountain.

[01:08:12] Matthew: Yeah. I would drink gallons of that stuff because I played sports all the time. It was crazy how much tap water I drank. But also there are issues, back to the pesticide issue we touched on, where glyphosate itself will actually deactivate a liver enzyme called CYP. It will actually impair the liver's ability to excrete manganese and then it will build up in the brainstem and the vagus nerve and basically the unbioavailable causing issues with the vagus nerve system and also the brain.

[01:08:49] And what's interesting with the correlation with that is we started to use these pesticides around the mid to late '90s very heavily. And then if you look at the rates of Lyme disease, they started to double around 2004, 2008, and I actually think the doubling is undercounted. I think not enough people were really aware of Lyme disease back then to where there was probably a lot more cases that went undiagnosed as well. So they could have maybe tripled. Who knows?

[01:09:22] And Lyme disease, Borrelia itself, aside from the fact that it's potentially a bioweapon, if you've ever read Kris Newby's book, leave that aside, there's other doctors that have been on my show that is said Borrelia burgdorferi has been around for thousands of years. So the actual Borrelia has been around. It's potentially been manipulated, but we'll leave that aside. Borrelia burgdorferi in studies thrives in a manganese-rich environment.

[01:09:49] So it will actually use drop off iron and then hide behind manganese to evade the immune system from different protocols. So I think if you're actually doing a Lyme disease protocol with no understanding or awareness around manganese toxicity, then I think you're actually doing yourself a disservice.

[01:10:11] And I actually think that there's a glyphosate connection with the Lyme and then the manganese buildup. So the impairment, the buildup in the brain and the vagus nerve, and then how Borrelia actually uses manganese to evade the system. And I think you have to get that manganese out of the system in order to really, really deeply recover from Lyme.

[01:10:30] And that's the difference because there are a lot of different people who "put" Lyme into remission. But I think a lot of them are living very suboptimal. I think they're just good enough to get by. They're not crushing weights. They float in and out of there, like, oh, my Lyme came back.

[01:10:52] You hear a lot of that, like the reactivation of my symptoms. So it's like you didn't really get rid of the Lyme. You just put it at bay until another stressor, whether that be emotional or toxicity or food related comes back into play and then now you collapse or you get exposed to mold, which can reactivate Lyme quite a bit.

[01:11:13] So the manganese is the missing piece there. Now, manganese is also showed in studies to cause tinnitus. Now, a manganese deficiency and a manganese toxicity have both been shown to cause ringing in the ears and tinnitus. And so you have to get this manganese out of the brain because it causes a lot of anger and different issues with mood.

[01:11:37] If it gets bad enough, you can even be schizophrenic and bipolar, especially if there's a copper and a manganese toxicity, which is very common. And so that's another one of those excretion patterns that I like to see. Because I want to get rid of that excess manganese in that toxic form.

[01:11:56] And then back to the mineral balancing, you may actually be on manganese, even though you have manganese toxicity. So it gets confusing, and these minerals exist in different states and they're not always utilized by the body. And sometimes you do need that beneficial mineral coming in to balance out the system and then just let the system do its thing. It'll excrete the manganese when it wants to.

[01:12:17] But that's also a good sign. You want to get rid of that excess. Sometimes it's calcium. Sometimes it's the heavy metals. Sometimes it's nickel. But those excretions are what we're looking for.

[01:12:29] Luke: Is there ever a point when someone really commits to the mineral balancing long-term and also works to minimize exposure that the hair test looks beautiful and clean and perfectly balanced and low in heavy metals?

[01:12:44] Matthew: Yeah, they'll start to be a lot lower for the more experienced practitioners, and then they'll see just random dumps here and there. It is interesting that a lot of long-term practitioners who were using Dr. Paul Eck's original formulas, the Endo-met stuff, have really started to detox a lot more on our Valence supplements, even though they've been detoxing for 10, 12 years, which shows that the mineral chelates that we're using and the forms of vitamins that we're using are definitely penetrating the cell deeper.

[01:13:19] And now they're starting to have some detox reactions when they really haven't had very many of them. In the past four or five years, they made few slight ones. So what happened there is Dr. Paul Eck passed away in the '90s, and his family's awesome or whoever's running the lab. They're really great. They're the nicest people, but there's a lot of new science around better forms of mineral chelates.

[01:13:43] I'm sure you've had the BiOptimizers guys on here who talk about all the different seven forms of magnesium and how they work differently in the body. I think that holds true for almost every mineral possible. You can use different calcium chelates to target different parts of the body, different zinc chelates to target different parts of the body.

[01:14:01] And so we looked at those supplements and we're like, "We think we can recreate this program by respecting Dr. Paul Eck's ratios between the minerals," which that's the reason those cheap supplements really work, Endo-met. They work because Dr. Paul Eck, really, I don't even know how he got to some of the ratios that he got to. They're different from like everything. I don't know if he had some otherworldly intelligence he was tapping into, but some of it still remains like a mystery.

[01:14:32] And it does go back to soil science. He read a lot of soil science, like Dr. William Albrecht's work. He has a bunch of books on soil science and how plants use minerals, but then he really correlated it to this hair tissue mineral analysis test. And it really just works. Even the Endo-met will get you a lot further than you would get on most of my functional protocols I had tried before that.

[01:14:54] I still detox a lot, even on Endo-met, but we have noticed that some people don't really come out of their calcium shell or some people still have a lot of heavy metals to release. And then they switched over to Valence and they started to get more of that increase in the excretion and in those levels.

[01:15:13] So I think that Dr. Paul Eck himself would have probably done what we're doing already at Valence, had he still been around. He was a ravid researcher. And so there was just better forms of vitamins and minerals, and that's where we took place with Valence and was like, well, let's see if we can make these better.

[01:15:31] And it started with just like a B6 thing. Some people had reached out to the lab saying, like, B6, if the liver can't convert it, the paradoxine can actually cause symptoms of toxicity. It can build up. You hear a lot of people talk about B6 toxicity. Dave Asprey, whoever, will make a lot of posts about it.

[01:15:50] We're like, can you switch this to P5P? And I think they're just scared to change stuff because it was Dr. Paul Eck's thing and they're just running it smoothly. But they started around like, let's switch out the main supplements that people are on to P5P. And then we switched a few of the mineral chelates and all of a sudden everything got better. People felt better. They were detoxing more. The sodium potassium ratio was flipping more.

[01:16:16] And so like, well, why don't we just make all of these supplements as clean as possible? We do still use a few Endo-met supplements because it's expensive and we haven't put all of them out yet, but we have a few more in the pipeline. Those are working. And I really truly believe we're in the middle of creating one of the most powerful detox programs on the planet.

[01:16:35] Luke: Epic. That's great because that's what I wanted to ask you next because I had the Endo-met when we first started working together and then you're like, "Hey, I'm watching my own shit." And then you sent me a big box of them. Some of them are sitting here. You give me the sheet and I go, "Okay, I take two of these, three of these per day when I just follow that," but I didn't really get into, just in the interest of time on our calls or we've gone over my tests and stuff like what-- you have this on here, the BileFlow, Slow Ox, the Cal-Mag Fusion.

[01:17:09] Break down for me how these work, part one. Part two is, it seems like your supplement company is more tailored for people that are, and correct me if I'm wrong, doing this type of protocol specifically versus someone that's just like, "Yeah, I heard zinc's good for you, so I'll just order a bunch of his zinc and start taking it."

[01:17:31] It seems like this is more of a strategic targeted approach. Is that correct? Two-part question, I guess. Tell me what these do. And then is it appropriate for anyone just to randomly start playing around with it, or are they going to get better results if they're specifically working with a practitioner like you or someone that has this specialty?

[01:17:51] Matthew: So after being in this work, you guys can probably clearly understand that I'm going to say you should probably do a test. That being said, plenty of people just take zinc. So if you just like a zinc supplement, our Zinc Matrix Pro has seven different forms, taking some of that ideology from BiOptimizers, like, oh, we can use different forms to target the brain or the gut.-

[01:18:14] Zinc carnosine is better for the gut. I think zinc orotate is going to penetrate the brain a little bit better, but then also using different forms. But that being said, some people just take calcium and magnesium supplements. They're on Amazon. If you want to take them, you can. I prefer to have a test so I can know the dosing and then retesting and seeing what's going on there.

[01:18:36] So it's a little bit more tailored, but some people do just take it. You can do either. I would prefer you had a test, even if it's not with me, just with a practitioner that recommends Valence, whoever you resonate with. But yeah, what we did with is-- Cal-Mag Fusion is probably my favorite supplement that we've created.

[01:18:55] It's definitely the most powerful when it comes to detoxification. We blended the work of Dr. Hans Nieper and Dr. Paul Eck. So we kept Dr. Paul Eck's ratios, but used a lot of Dr. Hans Nieper's mineral chelates. If you never heard of him, I think the only other person who ever mentions Dr. Hans Nieper is Dr. Group.

[01:19:19] He's the only person I know using the calcium orotate, but he's definitely got it in different doses. Doesn't have K2 in there. Doesn't have boron in there. Some of the other things that we like that Dr. Paul Eck uses. But he's using it in a different way. People are just taking his. Ours is more tailored for mineral balancing.

[01:19:37] But Dr. Hans Nieper actually started to notice that a lot of his patients weren't absorbing the normal mineral chelates that were on the market. The sicker they got. Some people reacted really well. The more sicker patients didn't seem to be getting the same results as his other clients, which starts to make sense.

[01:19:59] The more toxic you are, probably the more you don't absorb everything. Gut function's probably impaired. So he set out to create these different mineral chelates, and he was actually a prolific cancer researcher. That's why you've never heard of him, probably, because they don't like for you to hear about him.

[01:20:16] But he's got a really good book you guys can look up. I think it's called The Genius Mind or The Genius Man. It's been a while since I read it. But Dr. Hans Nieper, he was touted in New York. He started to really gain some traction with sicker clients. And so what happens with minerals is they repel like magnets.

[01:20:36] And so he realized by using something like orotic acid, he could actually get that mineral to penetrate the mitochondria through basically simple diffusion where they weren't no longer repelling. He'll use the charge of the mineral chelate to penetrate into the mitochondria and then now it can be utilized by those enzyme sites that I was talking about earlier.

[01:20:57] And so we were like, "Well, that sounds cool." Then also, the aspartates are really good at getting into the extracellular matrix. So there's really targeted approaches with the different mineral chelates that you can do. And we put out that Cal-Mag Fusion and it was just a night and day difference.

[01:21:14] I was using Dr. Group's a little bit for a while because I did like the orotates. But once we put out Cal-Mag Fusion, because the ratio is actually 1.6:1 with Dr. Paul Eck, and then the Dr. Group's is 2:1, but the orotates are so powerful. They did still work. But long-term I would like for it to be more Dr. Paul Eck's ratio. So that's why we made that.

[01:21:36] And the aluminum eliminations, the manganese and copper eliminations that we've seen since we've switched from the old school stuff that we were using to this has been a night and day difference. We also have Na/K UP, which is a zinc copper manganese complex.

[01:21:52] I know a lot of people just take zinc and copper because copper is the new wave of things. And people think that it should always just be a zinc copper balance. Totally fine. I'm sure some people probably buy our Na/K UP that don't do a hair test, but we like to use that to raise that sodium potassium ratio.

[01:22:10] SlowOx is our multivitamin, multimineral. Really cool. We put a few mitochondrial boosters in there, so I'm not opposed to some of these new mitochondrial supplements. I just think the minerals are more effective, but we have added some of them throughout our supplement line to really use some of the new science with some of the old-school ratios as long as we don't feel like they're impacting the mineral balancing we're trying to do.

[01:22:39] Because you can skew ratios even from vitamins sometimes. Like you said, I did the MitoLife podcast, so I got quite a few clients from there, and vitamin E and vitamin C can actually raise your sodium level. So I've seen quite a few of them with higher sodium.

[01:22:54] And so you have to pay attention to these nutrients, in my opinion, and really get them dialed in. And that's the beauty of Dr. Paul Eck. But yeah, the SlowOx is our multivitamin, multimineral with PQQ and acetylcarnitine and some things we threw in in the mix because slow oxidizers do have a little bit lower energy.

[01:23:13] So we're like, "If we can improve a little bit of mitochondrial function without skewing the ratios, that would be a cool addition." We also have a TMG product that's almost out. There was a little delay. I don't know if it was from the hurricane or what. It's in Georgia. So there was a little hiccup with putting that out.

[01:23:29] It's called Cell Restore. So that's going to replace TMG, and that's got some phosphoacetylcholine in there, some NAC, and so some other things that are really going to help with detoxification in my opinion. What else? Lithos is cool. This is a supplement that we felt like the science was pretty good.

[01:23:50] If you look at populations who drank low levels of lithium water or vanadium water, they really had improved health outcomes, better mood. But also with lithium, back again, lithium can go through this transmutation process and turn into sodium and potassium. So without testing and taking high doses of lithium, you don't really know what you're doing to those electrolyte patterns.

[01:24:16] So that can be iffy when you're starting to get into 5 and 10 and 20 milligrams of lithium. You might get that mood boost from it, but then long-term, what's going to happen to those electrolyte patterns? So we stuck to a really low dose, similar to what you may find in drinking water.

[01:24:33] There's also chromium in Lithos. Chromium is overlooked too. Very chronic chromium deficiency. I think we've farmed it right out of the soil. Every single pattern is very low, and chromium is actually really needed. We give it to diabetics for blood sugar control, and we also use chromium to basically turn carbohydrates into energy, the metabolism of carbohydrates. But it also even helps to break down proteins and fats.

[01:25:03] And so chromium is very important, and we find that a lot of people do better a little bit of a lower dose chromium on top of what's already in the SlowOx or even if you're in fast oxidation. So we added that in there as well.

[01:25:18] Luke: What about the Bile-Flow?

[01:25:21] Matthew: Yeah, Bile-Flow. So this was another Endo-met hiccup, not bashing them. Like I said, I really love them over there. They just haven't really innovated at all. What we used to give clients was just a pancreatic enzyme and ox bile supplement that I felt wasn't really pushing Bile-Flow as well as it should be.

[01:25:44] And then once you start adding in these Valence supplements that are moving around more metals than the old products, if you're not keeping that Bile-Flow going, you're going to really get backed up. Yeah, you can do the enemas, but not everyone has time for enemas every single day. So we were like, "We need a more potent bile-flowing agent on top of the ox bile and the pancreatic enzymes, which are really critical as well." Those do help.

[01:26:10] So we added in artichoke hearts, TUDCA. We kept the TUDCA dose very low. I think we're going to bump that up in the next formulation. So we're also very tweaking things. We actually just got in our third version of Cal-Mag Fusion, and we've only been in business for a year. So we're getting feedback, tweaking things. So that's the other difference with transferring everything over to just bioactive forms of everything.

[01:26:40] You don't just go from 10 milligrams of paradoxine to 10 milligrams of P5P. There's a clearly going to be a difference on the absorption there. So we lowered it in the beginning in the products, but then we even had to lower the P5P again. So we're even on our third version of NA/K UP.

[01:26:58] So you start to realize this is why no one's done this, because it's too much of a headache. So we've taken on the challenge of trying to find the right doses of what the bioavailable forms would match up to Dr. Paul Eck's forms and making sure people are detoxing too fast. But you can really lower the dose and you can tailor it.

[01:27:20] And that's another reason why I actually like that people are on so many supplements. People are like, "Man, this is a commitment." But that gives me the ability to tweak things. If you just have everything boiled into one tub of powder, how do you know what's actually reacting?

[01:27:42] Sometimes I can just pull out kelp in the beginning because iodine is very, very heavy and very detoxifying. I can just pull the kelp for three to six months then add it back in, and they'll stay on the program. But had it all just been in one mixture or one capsule, you wouldn't be able to tweak the way you need to.

[01:28:04] Sometimes I can just lower Cal-Mag Fusion a little bit or take off one of the zincs or one of the Na/K UPs and really play with it to see what you're reacting to because literally everybody's so different. Some people just power through it and they're good and some people who come to me who are like, "Yeah, I think I'm pretty healthy," they get smoked worse than the person that to me with 100 symptoms.

[01:28:28] Luke: It's been interesting for me for sure. I've wanted to quit at times because I'm just like, God, I think I felt pretty good before. But that's one thing I really love about testing, and I think there are limitations to urine tests and blood tests and things, as you said, because it's a snapshot.

[01:28:48] I think the hair test to me is really intriguing because you're seeing longer term trends and you're going off excretion that's really traceable. But I'm just driven by the data. I want to see that shit improve. And that's what keeps me committed. Part of it, of course, is I want to feel really good.

[01:29:08] I have things I want to do in the world, and I want to be as optimized as possible. But I personally, am willing to go through some rough days here and there to get not only to where I'm feeling really good on a consistent basis, but I want to see the test looking really good.

[01:29:24] And I think, again, it has been counterintuitive working with you. I'm like, "You say that's good, but it looks bad to me." I want to see everything going lower and you're like, "No, higher is good." So there's definitely a learning curve there, but I think it is really smart the way you're parsing out instead of just having one mega, mega vitamin or mega mineral supplement with ratios that are correct, but the ability to add and subtract and really fine tune.

[01:29:53] If you're working with a practitioner that knows how to read those tests and can make solid recommendations, I think it's a much more effective and just targeted approach than just throwing something at the wall and hoping it sticks. One question about the-- going back to iodine, there are many people, Dr. Group being one of them with Global Healing, he makes great products. I take a bunch of them. He was one of our biggest, most popular episodes.

[01:30:22] Matthew: He is great.

[01:30:23] Luke: Yeah, it's interesting too. I can never tell. Sometimes I'll be really into a conversation or a huge fan of someone and their downloads, it's how we judge this stuff or interactions on social media, the reaction to the micro content we post about each episode.

[01:30:39] I'll be super stoked and it's just average. And then he comes over. He was awesome. I loved him. He didn't blow my mind more than the guy of the week before. They're both awesome, and people freaking love that episode. It's a huge hit.

[01:30:57] They're just obsessed with this guy. But he loves just supplementing iodine. And you being a mineral guy recommended to me at least to just take kelp. And I'm thinking one little kelp, is that really going to move the needle on the iodine? You're like, "Just trust me. Don't worry about it. You don't need to take iodine. Just take the kelp."

[01:31:16] So what's the deal with iodine supplementation? You have the old-school Lugol's nascent iodine liquids I used to take where people would say, you rub it on your wrist and if it disappears too quick, you're deficient. And if it's still there, you have enough, this kind of thing.

[01:31:33] I don't know if that was true, but iodine seems important and is an antagonist to the chlorine we're drinking in our water and bathing in and things like that. So do you ever recommend an iodine supplement, or do you really just like to go with it in its natural holistic form of kelp?

[01:31:56] Matthew: Yeah. We usually do kelp. Iodine's tricky because it's more of an alter trace mineral. Trace elements labs will measure iodine and some more of these substances and minerals in your hair. That's why some people like them. But I don't think that we're getting the true reading. So kelp actually has a good decent amount of iodine in it.

[01:32:17] And then it has some other multi minerals in there as well and some other properties to it because it's all natural. And so we're always doing iodine, but you'll just notice that it's a little bit lower because I found that even people who have done these really high doses of iodine, I was one of them on the-- high copper protocol is also a very high iodine protocol for a lot of people.

[01:32:39] And I would take that Lugol's in very high doses. And then once I started doing HTMA, I could barely tolerate just kelp in small doses. So there must be something going on where you're shifting a lot of mineral patterns, or maybe it's because you're already moving so many other toxins out of the way that adding in a lot of iodine on top of it is wreaking a little bit of havoc.

[01:33:02] It's too much. So I find that I have to start people lower with iodine. But we do tend to build up over time. It does start to get around almost four milligrams or so. It can get even higher around five. Slow oxidizers tend to tolerate kelp a little bit better. Sometimes in the beginning, it's still too much.

[01:33:23] But over time, slow oxidizers can generally do a little bit, maybe five milligrams. That's not really high compared to the Dr. Brown's and the iodine people, but middle of the road, not RDA by any means, but not super high at the round of four or five milligrams. But then fast oxidizers do have a little bit more trouble with that iodine, so I got to pay attention to them because their metabolism is just working different. They're burning through things differently.

[01:33:53] Dr. Paul Eck actually didn't give anybody kelp in fast oxidation, but he was also living in a different time. As you said, we have more of the bromides and the chlorines and the fluoride. So we have found that we do have to increase that iodine via kelp over time, but sometimes in the beginning, I keep it a little low for people because I'm already moving around so much.

[01:34:16] We'll get to the point where you're on like two, two, two, and that would be like 3. 6 milligrams, or you could even go three, three, three, if you felt better, but I'm not trying to rock the boat too much. You're already feeling what you're feeling, so I don't need to add in another layer of iodine detox on top of what I'm already moving.

[01:34:33] But yeah, I did eventually got up to that two, two, two, and I take that pretty regularly, which is like 3.6 milligrams. And that's middle of the road, I would say. And I have noticed my fluoride has lowered dramatically on the Oligoscan. How accurate that is, I'm not 100% sure.

[01:34:50] I like to use the Oligoscan, and I only use it on a few people because it's an in-person thing and I don't have a clinic. I'm all virtual. But yeah, I like to do it on myself because I see some different markers on there. For instance, I've removed a lot of cadmium. On the Oligoscan, it's moved around a lot. I was in the red, but it's never once budged in my hair.

[01:35:11] So for me, that means it's probably coming out through urine, through feces, binding it up with ZeoCharge, whatever it may be. And so I do like those testing, but yeah, my fluoride has went down and my iodine has gotten better just from kelp. And I do think that megadosing will begin to cause one of these imbalances like I talked about over time because it's not natural. So yeah, we have an increased need for iodine due to the halogens and all of the chemicals that we're exposed to, but it's like slow and steady wins the race in my opinion.

[01:35:44] Luke: Got it. Okay. And how do you think mineral balancing and metal toxicity impacts addiction?

[01:35:53] Matthew: Yeah. That's interesting because when I was addicted, I was wild. I've never really gotten fully into it. I was living in Flint, Michigan. I always say there's like addiction and then there's like addiction in Flint, Michigan. You can really get into sketchy waters in Flint, Michigan.

[01:36:11] And then I was actually deejaying at the strip club, legitimately. I was growing cannabis, but I was selling every other drug possible doing handfuls of Vicodins and Adderalls at the same time. I was buried into pharmaceuticals, smoking weed all day because I was growing it and drinking at the strip club because it was very acceptable.

[01:36:32] And in case you guys didn't know, there's a lot of drug activity that goes on in strip clubs via selling, consuming. It was my little hub, and I could get away with a lot as far as being a dealer in there. But also, it was acceptable to just be on Vicodin at 2:00 PM and drinking whiskey.

[01:36:50] It was just like I was in my element, but I was also adapting to a very low frequency environment. Now, when I came out of addiction and moved to Florida to Tampa, where I live now, I had started doing the psychedelics a little bit, micro dosing, started getting into the macro dosings, reading, listening to Tim Ferriss's podcast and getting into all of that type of work, which was very, very beneficial.

[01:37:18] I'd say I became a different person after I started to macro dose mushrooms. And so I used to think all of my issues were stemming specifically from this abandonment from childhood, my mom not saying I love you. All of these different avenues, I was re-going through a lot of these situations in my psychedelic ceremonies.

[01:37:43] As I get deeper into the toxicity, I start to realize that there is a really big potential that the opiates, the Adderall were actually helping me upregulate some of these neurotransmitters and making me feel a bit better due to the toxicity that I already have. Mercury specifically actually can bind to your NMDA receptors and actually inhibit the uptake from glutamine to GABA.

[01:38:15] So if you think about what we're chasing when we start to drink a lot of alcohol is GABA. And so people have these mercury fillings. They eat a lot of tuna, like I did growing up, canned tuna for days. I was in the gym just eating tuna because it was cheap. I had a bunch of mercury. It was very, very obvious, and I had seven or eight mercury fillings extracted improperly as well, which I actually think is worse than just keeping them in, getting them drilled out.

[01:38:41] I'm sure you've had dentists on here. When you get them drilled out, you just breathe it all in. It was crazy. I was just at a regular dentist in Flint and they were like, we don't use these anymore. And I was like, "Cool." I don't want metal in my mouth. I'd rather have the white fillings. I'd look a lot better.

[01:38:55] I'm in high school trying to pick up chicks or whatever. And so I was like, "Cool." Later did I know like how bad that probably took a turn for my health. But when you start to look at how the neurochemistry gets affected by these minerals and these heavy metals, leaky blood-brain barrier and start to really realize how much they affect neurochemistry, it's like, are we sometimes on a different concoction of whether it be Adderall or cannabis or alcohol to substitute because we don't feel normal in the moment?

[01:39:31] And so I think it's both. I was clearly reliving out what my father was doing. A lot of that just generational trauma from just growing up in Flint. It was also very acceptable to be on drugs and drinking in Flint. That's what everybody's doing. In case you didn't know, it's the most violent city not because people are sober, because people have no money and they're getting really, really jacked up on multiple different drugs and dealing drugs.

[01:39:58] It's just very normalized there. But yeah, I think it was a mixture of, first, I thought it was all emotional and then I started to detox and feel really bad and started to realize like, "Oh, maybe I was actually soul searching to balance out what was actually going on." Maybe that's why I wanted so much cannabis or so much alcohol or whatever I was taking at the time.

[01:40:20] And I went through cycles of going off and on all kinds of different drugs. And so I think there's a clear link to obviously, I probably didn't have good neurotransmitter function from all of the antibiotics. You think about how much I was on antibiotics, three or four times a year for my entire childhood.

[01:40:39] So I probably was making none of the neurotransmitters. My gut was probably tanked, so that gut-brain connection, then I have all these heavy metals on top. And so I'm an extreme case, and I also was an extreme case far as chronic illness. But what about at a subclinical or a normalized level where someone just has some heavy metal toxicity but isn't really needing to go spend $20,000 somewhere? Is he still reaching for cannabis or a few drinks every night and is wondering why he can't break that cycle, doesn't feel normal if he doesn't have those couple of drinks or that Adderall or whatever it may be?

[01:41:22] The problem is those things are going to back up. Alcohol specifically is going to just shut down your liver and then your liver is already bombarded, so you're going to build up more toxins from alcohol. And I've actually gotten to the point where I can drink a few drinks, which I think is actually a beautiful place to be.

[01:41:39] I actually think it's better than complete sobriety. Personally, I think it's like you've slayed that dragon. So you actually feel more in control than if you are just 100% sober. I actually made a post about 100% sobriety being an addiction and how if you tell yourself that you can never touch another substance, it actually signals to the subconscious that you're not in control. And so that will begin to bleed out into other areas of your life. The actual goal is to slay the dragon, to become back in control.

[01:42:17] And maybe you're not ready for that yet. Maybe you're in your early stages, but I did tons of psychedelics and I would meditate for an hour and I would do yoga six days a week. I did a lot to get to that place where I felt comfortable with myself having two old-fashions or a couple of glasses of wine at dinner or maybe three, four, or five drinks at a concert. I can really do that and then not drink again for four months. I've really gotten to this place, and to me that's beautiful because alcohol is a social stimulant. You feel better. Being able to microdose psychedelics, those really helped.

[01:42:52] But yeah, I think that you do want to get to a place where you trust yourself again, whatever substance you choose. And I know you do the psychedelics, which helps a lot for sure. But yeah, the toxicity, in my opinion, also the detoxification, I think helped getting those metals out of the way and the parasites that come with it, the different chronic infections, the Epstein bars. You get all of those out of the way through detoxification.

[01:43:22] And then you don't actually feel like you need to have 20 drinks and get plowed. You already start to feel better in your body, so two drinks is like cool. And so you can get to a place through detoxification, I think, as well, where you begin to trust yourself more because you feel good on a day to day basis.

[01:43:41] When you're in a chronically low level, low energetic state, Dr. Paul Eck actually talked about how people in burnout utilize alcohol. Because they really don't have much energy. So now they have to go out and be social. They would just be a little socially withdrawn, so they use the alcohol to give them something, or it could be something even more dramatic than alcohol, cocaine, Adderall, whatever you might use.

[01:44:08] But then obviously there's a back-end consequence for all of that, whether it's depleting minerals, backing up your detox system. So it's not something I'm recommending you just start drinking wine every night or getting hammered, but I can have a few drinks at dinner nowadays and control that. And I think a lot of it is due to probably psychedelics and probably all the detox that I've done.

[01:44:31] Luke: That's very interesting. I have met a couple people like you that had problems with drugs and alcohol where they would have at some point classified themselves as an alcoholic or an addict. And through various stages of healing, as you've described, have been able to reintroduce some of those things into their lives in a way that isn't problematic and use them as tools.

[01:45:01] You go to a concert; you want to have three beers, it's fun, man. You know what I mean? I get it. And in me, I have noticed that I've been able to, because I've done a lot of similar healing work, I can use Kratom, for example, which hits your opiate receptors just like heroin, of which I was a really bad addict.

[01:45:26] And so when I first heard about Kratom, I was like, "Oh, hell no, I can't do that. I don't want to risk relapsing." And then I learned a little bit more, got some, tried a tiny, tiny little bit. Felt fine. And to this day, it's been 10 years or something, maybe. I could take it or leave it.

[01:45:45] These feel-free drinks came out with kava and kratom, and I'd drink a half of one of those and be like, "Oh, that's a little too much." And then put it away and not think about it ever again. And then I've seen people get addicted to those freaking drinks and literally have to go to a rehab because they're drinking nine of them a day and can't stop and their whole life falls apart.

[01:46:06] So I've had an interesting relationship with different substances that I never would have even touched at all in the first 20 years of just hardcore abstinent sobriety. And it's been interesting to see that I don't abuse those things. But when it comes to alcohol specifically for me, if I were to try it and it went like it used to go, I'm toast. I'm done.

[01:46:39] So it's like one of those things I'll never know because it's not worth the risk because, I was just writing about this in my book, from the very first time I ever tasted alcohol, I think I was about nine or so, the first time I got drunk, first time I drank, I got wasted, alcohol poisoning, crashed the bike, just completely annihilated.

[01:47:01] And I never ever once drank any amount of alcohol without getting completely shit faced. Once it touches my lips, I cannot stop until I'm on the floor. And it was always like that every single time. And years of like, God, tonight I'm just going to have three beers, take it easy. Very certain that that was going to be the case. Have one beer, boom, it's over. I'm off to the races.

[01:47:26] So that was my past experience, but also, my minerals were imbalanced, and I was toxic and I had all this emotional baggage that I never dealt with, etc., etc., childhood issues on and on and on. I will never know probably what my reaction would be this day.

[01:47:41] And if there's a half a percent chance that it would be like it used to where I can't stop and it spins out of control and starts escalating into all these other really even worse drugs and things like that. So I'm going to stick with the abstinence personally because the consequences are so grave if my experiment doesn't go well.

[01:48:03] And there's also a piece there that's like, I know that God is what got me sober. And I don't know that there's two of those offers on the table. You know what I'm saying? Because I played with it with nicotine. I smoked cigarettes for a long time. I prayed to God. I really want to stop cigarettes, stop cigarettes.

[01:48:24] And it did. It was just lifted one day, poof. Never craved it. Wasn't irritable. It was easy. I just threw my cigarettes away and was done for a few years. And then I smoked a Cuban cigar one time, boom, instantly addicted. Now I'm on the pouches. It's like nicotine. I go, "Man, if alcohol is still like it used to be, it'll be like nicotine still is for me now." It's like I'm either on it full time, 24/7, or it's complete abstinence. So just my perspective.

[01:48:54] Matthew: Yeah, I did the same thing. Even when I was still partying, I used to chew Grizzly Wintergreen. So all the drugs I was doing and I was doing Grizzly Wintergreen, one day I just threw it away. I'm not touching this anyway. Even though I was still partying and doing other stuff, I'm like, "I'm just going to quit. This shit's nasty."

[01:49:10] I'm spitting in plastic cups at the restaurant. It was just too much. And now these pouches are a lot cleaner and a little bit more socially acceptable. But yeah, I gave it up for a while. Then I got back into Ben Greenfield and Aubrey Marcus started talking about the benefits of nicotine and I felt good.

[01:49:28] I think they help when you still have some heavy metals as well. I found that I can push through a little bit of work with nicotine when I'm detoxing. So maybe one day I'll get to a place where-- I'm still eliminating metals, by the way. I'm right here in the fire with everyone else. I actually, a few months ago, had one of the worst months that I've had the whole program, which was wild.

[01:49:50] I think it was a copper elimination. I seen some mercury on the test, but all the symptoms pointed to copper. Maybe I excreted it through the bile or something. It didn't show up on the hair test, but it was gnarly. And nicotine helps a little bit. And also, I give myself a little bit of grace.

[01:50:04] I'm only here once. I'm not going to be super uptight about myself about having a little bit of coffee in the morning and having nicotine to go through my work day when I used to take handfuls of pharmaceuticals all day. I'm just like, "I'm cool with it, dude." I don't spiral. Nicotine doesn't cause me to lose relationships or be up for three days in a row, all of the things that all the other drugs would lead to, so I'm super cool with that. I'm okay with it.

[01:50:34] Luke: Same pass I've given myself because I've struggled with it because of what you described earlier, like, I don't want any molecule that's external to my biology to control my behavior and for me to feel like I need something to feel okay, because I lived like that for so long. And that's the part that has always bothered me about nicotine, that I can't master it.

[01:50:58] Why can't I just do it on Saturdays? I don't know. Maybe I can and I just haven't arrived there yet. But yeah, I've had to just reconcile that and go, "Hey, man. It could be a lot worse." There's things that I did in the past that, as you said, just completely devastated my life and hurt other people that I cared about and almost killed me and ended me up in jail and all kinds of crazy shit.

[01:51:22] So if this is my worst advice, I'm still way ahead of game. But yeah, then there's that side of me that's just like, yeah, but you still need something. Maybe I'm just neurotic and fuck, man. I'm just one of those people that has a few little crutches here and there. And as long as they're not harming my life, I'll just surrender to that and enjoy it until I don't enjoy it. And then maybe I'll be motivated to stop it.

[01:51:46] Matthew: Yeah. People ask me about nicotine on the program. And I tell them, well, it depends on how you view yourself and your nicotine, whether you want to call it addiction or your consumption. How do you speak to yourself by using nicotine all day? Is it bad?

[01:52:09] Is it neurotic? Do you talk down? Do you feel less about yourself? Because then that's probably a problem because your thought process means a lot, even in healing. A lot of people get attached to diagnoses quite a bit and it puts them in a box. And that's why I like mineral balancing because I'm not even worried really that much about your diagnosis.

[01:52:29] I'm like, "Here is what your body's lacking and what it needs." And then we'll balance you out and then we'll let it take care of whatever diagnoses you have later. And I'm not here to say that mineral balancing is a cure all, but what I like about it is that we're just trying to bring you into homeostasis and then let the body do its thing.

[01:52:47] And same thing with people's addictions to caffeine and nicotine. I would say if you feel good about yourself, if you don't think it's a big deal, yeah, I need caffeine every morning. I'll go out of my way to get it. I'm going to chew nicotine most of the day. Some days less, some days more. When I'm recording, definitely more.

[01:53:09] If I'm on with a lot of clients, I'll chew more, but I don't really feel bad about myself for it, so I'm okay with it. So your thought process and the way you talk to yourself matters a lot with whatever kind of--

[01:53:22] Luke: Thank you, coach.

[01:53:22] Matthew: Substance you're-- yeah. Your  crutch--

[01:53:25] Luke: I needed to hear that.

[01:53:26] Matthew: Yeah, your crutch is worse for you if you speak poorly to yourself about it, because obviously your belief system can affect biology as well. So if you just say, this is something that I do and I'm okay with it and I still love myself, then I think it's actually probably less powerful and has less of a negative consequence than what you may believe.

[01:53:50] Luke: I agree. So you and I both share the experience of really benefiting from the intentional use of plant medicine, psychedelics, etc., at different intervals. I think right now I'm at a place where there's no plans on the horizon. I don't really feel called at this particular place, but I have done a lot of heavy lifting over the past few years and just had incredible, measurable life changes in the way that I feel in my relationships and the external expression of my life and what I do and how I do it.

[01:54:24] It's benefited me tremendously. Obviously, they have their downsides and I've talked a lot about that on the podcast. I'm not going to give my speech on how to do it right or not. And if it's for everyone or not, there's plenty of episodes I've done in the past where I described that.

[01:54:42] But let's just say someone does feel called or is in an intentional and safe practice with these different substances. It seems to me the physical burden of those experiences is pretty heavy. And I've heard people talk about that if you go drink ayahuasca or do a heroic dose of mushrooms, that it can deplete your minerals and things like that.

[01:55:06] And I have noticed for sure that there's a period of physical recovery and rejuvenation that is necessary after a deep experience like that. You're just smoked. Part of it is because they're happening at night and you're staying up all night and then your circadian rhythm is thrown off. But what do you think the relationship is between psychedelics and minerals, heavy metals, etc.? Have you looked into that at all?

[01:55:31] Matthew: Yeah, a little bit. I actually have had a couple of shows where I talked a little bit about it. I think there's potential where someone's actually in a very burnt-out pattern, maybe even a calcium shell. So when you have extremely high calcium, I would say that you're more socially withdrawn. You're numb to your emotions because that calcium being in the soft tissues is a hardening mineral.

[01:55:56] You ever look at a picture of calcium? It's like it's using concrete. It's very hard. So it does the same thing within the nervous system, and you can be very withdrawn, especially within your emotional relationships. And so if you're going into a psychedelic experience where it shatters that and you start to feel something, you're like, "Wow, that really did something."

[01:56:20] But then you go home and you're still in the calcium shell. Or maybe worse, you might have depleted more magnesium or more vitamins. Who knows? Then you're going to run back to the psychedelic ceremony because after that honeymoon period wears off, you're still in the calcium shell and all you remember is how good you felt, how loving you felt, how much you cried, whatever it was.

[01:56:44] So now you're going to go soul searching back to a nonstop ayahuasca retreat every two months, sometimes even more for some of these people. So I think if you don't really balance out the biochemistry, you can really get caught in a loop with those things. Obviously, microdosing is a lot different.

[01:57:02] I think you can pretty safely take that once or twice a week or whenever you feel like. I'm a huge fan of LSD micro doses. I think that they banished my alcoholism almost instantly. I started it right after I came off the alcohol and it was almost nothing. That's probably why I can even have a couple of drinks nowadays and not worry about it, is the LSD microdoses. They're left out of the conversation, but they were part of the original AA.

[01:57:28] Luke: Yeah, I've talked about that.

[01:57:30] Matthew: Highly effective. I was like night and day. I started taking the LSD microdoses and I was like, "I don't even care if I drink." Now, do that a couple of times a week, but the bigger doses are going to have more effect probably on your mineral system because it's a more stressed-out state.

[01:57:45] And so I've actually had this guy, Dr. Jason Gandzjuk, on my show. He gives me very Paul Chek vibes, very, very cool guy. His Instagram's cool. He's been a little less active on there recently, but he told me, I didn't actually get the data from him, he started to do hair testing before and after psychedelic ceremonies because he's a psychedelic practitioner himself, but also an HTMA guy.

[01:58:10] I think he had went through more of these programs, a very smart guy. And he said, "You'll see the mineral pattern shift in a negative way." And so it would make sense that the body's going through an experience like that, it definitely can be life changing, but also there's no way that it has no effect on some of the nutrients in your system for sure.

[01:58:32] And so you would definitely want to be testing, and I think that the more toxicity you have in your system, what that does, in my opinion, is those are low frequency minerals, metals. They're very toxic. They're not needed in the body and they keep a low frequency compared to your minerals. And so I wonder sometimes with that low frequency going on and then introducing a substance, do you have potentially a more scary or negative outcome?

[01:59:05] Because actually, I don't talk about this that much, but this is a show where it would resonate maybe, I've actually felt multiple different times in my program that I released a demon that was in my field, and it was the wildest experience. And I was a little bit comfortable with it because I had done psychedelics, thank God. If had I never done psychedelics and just came from the drug addiction Flint world, I would probably have freaked out. But I was a little bit more comfortable with that experience.

[01:59:37] And there's been other people who have had similar experiences. So there's a potential that entities or interdimensional beings, whatever it may be that sometimes people interact with on psychedelics, actually some of those darker forces could potentially cling on to you just because you are a little toxic and you have a little bit more lower of a vibe and it's affecting your aura overall.

[02:00:03] Luke: Interesting, interesting.

[02:00:06] Matthew: That's just a theory, but--

[02:00:08] Luke: I like that theory. I'm going to have to contemplate that one. Yeah. Everything essentially is frequency. And so if your biological frequency and the frequency of your auric field is being impacted through metal toxicity, etc., it would make sense. You're going to be at a different wavelength that might make you more susceptible to energies like that. Have you ever tested anyone before and after Kambo and maybe explain to people that don't know what Kambo is, if you have any experience with that?

[02:00:44] Matthew: No, I haven't done the minerals with Kambo. I'm not sure if they would impact them as much. Even though it's intense, it is a shorter session. It's only 20 minutes, so it feels a lot, but you go through it really quickly. It's, in my opinion, a lot of just bioactive peptides.

[02:01:03] So yeah, I guess if you're eliminating parasites, if you're getting rid of Candida, if you're getting rid of yeast and mold that quickly, there's definitely got to be some shift that's occurring because a lot of the metals are involved there. I think Todd Shipman's even said he's tested some of the purge and there's been heavy metals in there.

[02:01:23] I don't think they're going deep where the minerals are going, but yeah, there's probably some surface level stuff in the gut that's actually impacting you. So if you move out a lot of stuff all at once, I would definitely think that there's a potential for that, but I haven't really been into as much Kambo.

[02:01:42] I just do some micro doses here and there, which actually is pretty effective for lowering inflammation and sleep quality and overall mood. Kambo micro dose is actually really effective for that and will last for a week or two sometimes. It's wild. Those peptides are very effective. But most people are doing like a larger dose to purge, right?

[02:02:03] Luke: Right.

[02:02:04] Matthew: So I don't know how it would exactly affect it.

[02:02:06] Luke: So you've done Kambo with the burning of the skin, but just a smaller dose is what you'd call a micro dose?

[02:02:11] Matthew: Yeah, so you're just one point. So there's no purging. Every once in a while, you might feel like you have to use the bathroom, but for the most part, you don't have to fast. You don't have to drink the water. You don't have to do any of the thing. You just make a point, put a dot on, sit with it.

[02:02:27] And then I usually get it wet and flip it after 10 minutes. So you get a little bit more of the peptides. And so really it's just a peptide therapy at that point because there's dozens of bioactive peptides in the Kambo secretion that you're still going to absorb, but you're not taking enough to do the full experience.

[02:02:44] Luke: Got it. Yeah. And for those listening, we're talking about the Kambo frog of South America that excretes a venom through its skin. And the indigenous people there figured out that you could irritate, tie up the frog, hog-tie the frog, rub it with a stick, get it to excrete this stuff, dry it out, burn a hole in your skin with a stick, rub it in there.

[02:03:05] And then magical things happen. It's just one of those beautiful indigenous medicine and wisdom pieces. I did that a long, long time ago prior to working with any psychedelics intentionally. And it was recommended that you would do three days in a row with the Kambo and went out to some hippies house in Topanga and sat with some homies.

[02:03:28] I'm pretty tough. I can handle some discomfort. And I did the one and I was trying to be macho and I didn't purge. I just sat there and breathed and it just felt really bad and then purged out the reverse end afterward quite violently.

[02:03:45] And they're like, so we'll see you tomorrow at 10:00 AM. And I was like, "I'm good." Never went back. That's one of those, I was like, "Yeah, once was enough." But I still wonder sometimes. Maybe there's some value there that I didn't tap into because I was so new to that modality.

[02:04:04] And I know so many people like Todd Shipman, you mentioned, and many practitioners here in Austin and elsewhere really swear by it and have derived so much benefit from it. But it's a rough one, I think. For me, it was maybe more rough because there isn't a psychoactive element to it.

[02:04:22] You're just forced to be in fears present with the discomfort versus you might work with ayahuasca and be nauseous and purging, but you're also just completely in multidimensional worlds that at least allows you to not pay as much attention to the fact that you're actually physically ill.

[02:04:44] Matthew: Yeah. The psychedelics are a little bit easier because you get the waves. You might go dark for a bit, but then you go into bliss and you might go back to dark. So at least you get some breaks. But I tell people over exaggerated a little bit because it is only 20 minutes, sometimes 15. Sometimes you purge and you're done in 15.

[02:05:03] The whole ceremony can take an hour and a half to two hours because we'll do Sananda and happe and make it very ceremonial. So it feels safe and set intention and prayer. So there's the sage. There's a lot that goes into actual ceremony, but the actual medicine is on only for 15, 20 minutes.

[02:05:21] And you do, man. People will have some wild experiences with it. I got into it from Todd Shipman because I was following him on Instagram. I didn't even know him personally. I'd never really talked to him, but he was posting all of these Instagram posts back in the day where it was like for autoimmune, for Lyme, for mold, all these things that I had.

[02:05:42] So I was actually using it on top of the stuff that these functional practitioners were giving me for Lyme because it was supposed to be pretty good at killing off Lyme. I didn't actually finally get rid of most of that until I did the mineral balancing, but it helped a lot because Kambo, even in the short term, is highly effective at banishing pain because it works with your opioid receptors.

[02:06:08] And I would have such severe back pain. I would toss and turn all night sleeping, joint pain from a lot of the toxicity, and then a lot of neurological stuff. And at least for a short period of time of a few weeks I would feel a lot of relief from that.

[02:06:26] So although it didn't get to the core of my issues because I was such a chronic case, it does help a lot of people who aren't as chronically ill as I was seem to have better thyroid function, lose weight easier. It's really good for addiction. Sometimes people will be like, man, I did that Kambo ceremony with you and I just quit smoking weed. Or I gave up nicotine.

[02:06:49] So if there's something to the peptides that are pretty effective and maybe it's the ceremonial part of it too, blending that in, but yeah, there's a lot of cool science around it. I think there might be some issues with sustainability long-term. Obviously, as it gains popularity, you need to keep a touch on that. I don't do it as much anymore because I'm so dedicated to the supplement company and the mineral balancing stuff that I think is effective, but yeah.

[02:07:14] Luke: Well, that's inspiring. It makes me a little more open-minded to perhaps revisit the Kambo, little frog friend, again someday because I have heard so many miraculous stories myself of people having just totally unexpected healing experiences of all kinds. It might only be 15 or 20 minutes, but it's a rough period of time. I want to let people know, if they want to check out Valence-- am I pronouncing it right?

[02:07:46] Matthew: Yeah.

[02:07:46] Luke: Valence? Is that like covalent bond, that kind of valence?

[02:07:50] Matthew: Similar. But yeah, basically minerals can exist in different oxidation states or different valence states. So it's linked in with the mineral balancing stuff.

[02:07:59] Luke: Okay, perfect. So people can go to lukestorey.com/valence, and the code LUKE will get you 5% off. But for people that want to work with you, can anyone just roll to your website and book time with you and start working with you, or what's your bandwidth there? I'm sure people listening are going to be like, "Oh, this sounds cool. I want to try that."

[02:08:19] Matthew: Yeah. By the way, I think we might adjust your discount code just because this is a bigger show. And so we'll put that in the show notes for sure. I think we might give them a little bit more of a discount, like a one-time code on that. And so we'll work with that, but we'll coordinate on that.

[02:08:35] But yeah, Integrative Thoughts is my podcast. Got tons of mineral balancing stuff over there, along with psychedelics and shows with my wife, just a little bit of a mixed bag, but a lot of mineral balancing shows. If you want to keep diving deeper with other guests that I've had, a lot of my mentors who've been doing this a long time have been on there.

[02:08:54] www.integrativethoughts.com is where you can book an HTMA and look at my services there. It's all virtual. I have clients in different countries. I can send over a PDF file, so you can just print it off, but you do still have to send it to the US. So it takes a little bit longer with people in Europe or different countries, but we can make it happen as long as the supplements can be shipped there.

[02:09:21] So it's a little bit tricky. It's not everywhere, but a lot of places, the supplements can get shipped there and we can work with clients overseas. And on Instagram, I'm just @integrativematt. I do a lot of shit posting in my stories about all kinds of random stuff, but then I make regular posts that are clips of my podcast and about HTMA and stuff like that.

[02:09:42] Luke: Cool. Who have been three teachers or teachings that have influenced your life that you want to share with us?

[02:09:49] Matthew: I would say the most dramatic effect out of everything, which is probably I'm sure a lot of people, was podcast and Ben Greenfield specifically. Once I got introduced to his show, I listened to it all day. And that actually did help me believe that I could heal. And then his guests would have podcasts.

[02:10:16] Then I got introduced to yours. Yours and Rich Roll's helped me a lot when I was also coming off of addiction because I was vegan at the time, so I really liked Rich Roll. And I was doing the vegan thing and he would also talk about addiction. So I was like, "This is cool." And then I think I heard you on Ben Greenfield or something. And then you were talking about addiction as well. So those really helped me and give me hope, just podcasts in general, I'd say.

[02:10:41] The next is probably what we touched on here, but people can dive into it if they want. Two books if you're really, really trying to get into mineral balancing. One is Dr. Paul Eck's Energy book. I send this to all of my clients in my opening email when they purchase, because it's an interview style, digestible, shorter book. Most people can read a few pages a day and start to understand how minerals affect the energy system.

[02:11:13] Now when you want to go deeper into it, Dr. Wilson has a textbook about mineral nutritional balancing, which is-- you're probably going to be more of a practitioner, but if you're just a person who really likes to understand minerals and all the concepts that I talked about today, you would read Dr. Wilson's textbook.

[02:11:32] And then the third one, I would probably just say myself, my intuition. I think the older I get, the more I realize that you have this God-given intuition right inside of yourself and too many people are on Instagram or on these podcasts waiting for someone else to tell them something, to be that person, when in reality, you're just not in tune with yourself enough to sift through the information, see what works for you, and combine all of these different levels of information that we're exposed to to formulate your own opinion.

[02:12:10] And I think that keeps me a little bit more authentic as well, but really, I've just noticed scratch all of the deeper layers to it. Every time, whether I was on drugs, making a drug deal, or later in my life in a normal situation, every time I had a gut instinct about something, it was almost always right.

[02:12:32] Like, this is going to be a sketchy drug deal and then I get ripped off or something. Or like, I shouldn't loan this person money, a family member or whoever, and then I get ripped off. But I did it anyways. And so most people don't learn from that and I'm like, "you really do, no matter how toxic you are or how glowing you are and healthy you are, you do have an innate intelligence that guides you through." You just have to tap into it, and prayer has been a big part of that as well.

[02:13:04] Luke: Beautiful, man. Thanks for joining me today.

[02:13:06] Matthew: Thank you so much, man. It's my pleasure.

[02:13:09] Luke: Cool.

[02:13:10] Matthew: All right, man. Hope that was good.

[02:13:13] Luke: Perfect.