The Melanie Avalon Podcast Episode #10 - Dr. Stephen Cabral
Dr. Stephen Cabral is a Board Certified Naturopathic Doctor and founder of the Cabral Wellness Institute and StephenCabral.com. At 17 years old, Stephen Cabral was diagnosed with a life-altering illness and given no hope for recovery. Everyday, he suffered endlessly for many years. It was only after Stephen traveled all over the world and discovered how to combine ancient Ayurvedic healing practices with state-of-the-art Naturopathic & Functional Medicine did he understand how to fully rebalance the body and re-energize it with life.
Today in Dr. Cabral’s online and Boston practice, where he and his team have completed over 250,000 client appointments, he uses Functional Medicine lab testing and Personalized Wellness Plans to help people rebalance their mind and body to recover from auto-immune, thyroid, fatigue, hormone, weight gain, digestive, childhood, mood, skin, and dozens of other hard to treat health conditions.
His mission is to help people understand that there is always a reason why you have not achieved your ideal wellness or weight loss goals and that you can and will get well again!
LEARN MORE AT:
StephenCabral.com/podcasts
EquilibriumNutrition.com
IntegrativeHealthPractitioner.org
Instagram.com/StephenCabral
Facebook.com/DrStephenCabral
SHOWNOTES
2:15 - LISTEN ON HIMALAYA!: Download the free Himalaya App (www.himalaya.fm) to FINALLY keep all your podcasts in one place, follow your favorites, make playlists, leave comments, and more! Follow The Melanie Avalon Podcast in Himalaya For Early Access 24 Hours In Advance! You Can Also Join Melanie's Exclusive Community For Exclusive Monthly Content, Episode Discussion, And Guest Requests! Use The Code MELANIE To Get Your First Month Free!
2:50 - Paleo OMAD Biohackers: Intermittent Fasting + Real Foods + Life: Join Melanie's Facebook Group To Discuss And Learn About All Things Biohacking! All Conversations Welcome!
3:20 - JOOVV: Red Light And NIR therapy for Fat Burning, Muscle Recovery, Mood, Sleep, And More! Use The Link Joovv.com/melanieavalon With The Code MelanieAvalon For A Free Gift From Joovv, And Also Forward Your Proof Of Purchase To Contact@MelanieAvalon.com, To Receive A Signed Copy Of What When Wine: Lose Weight and Feel Great with Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, and Wine!
The Melanie Avalon Podcast Episode #8 - Red Light Therapy
4:45 - FOOD SENSE GUIDE: Get Melanie's App To Tackle Your Food Sensitivities! Food SenseIncludes A Searchable Catalogue of 300+ Foods, Revealing Their amine, histamine, glutamate, oxalate, salicylate, sulfite, and thiol Status. Food Sense Also Includes Compound Overviews, reactions To Look For, lists of foods high and low in them, the ability to create your own personal lists, And More!
6:10 - Dr. Cabral's Personal Health Journey
9:00 - What Is The Rain Barrel Effect?
11:20 - The Role Of Genetics
12:45 - The Factors And Stages Of The Rain Barrel Effect : The Invisibility High -> Less Energy -> Crash
17:00 - Managing Mindset And Fear
20:25 - How Does Detox Work In The Liver?
23:00 - Weight Gain From Toxic Fat Cells
24:50 - The Ayurvedic Approach To Detox: Pancha Karma (Massage, The Lymphatic System, Sauna, Enema, etc.)
30:45 - Dr. Cabral's 1 Hour Detox System
Confidence Fitness Platform Fitness Machine: Vibration machines are fantastic for passive exercise, lymph stimulation, and detox! Your lymph system - in charge of filtering toxins in your body - only works by physcial movement (it has no "punp" like the heart.) Physical exercise is great for lymph, as is a vibration machine. Vibration machines also upregaulte exercise potential, and can help burn fat/build muscle by just standing on them. Say what??
ION BALANCE Ionic Detox Foot: Ionic foot baths are great for supporting detox. While only an estimated 20% of the "stuff" that shows up in the water may be actual toxins from your body, the ionic process works to upregualte your detox system, so you naturally excrete toxins over the next 24 hours via the liver and kidneys. I swear these things work! When I do it, the water turns dark black (a sign of heavy metals), yet when my sister does it - not a black speck insight! (But other things show up). draw toxins out of your body by ionizing your system. It seriously makes me feel amazing!
You can use the ionic detox system with this Ivation Foot Spa Massager for a comforting, warming, massaging, DETOXING foot bath!
AquaBliss High Output 12-Stage Shower Filter: This shower filter is amazing! It uses sediment filters, redox media, calcium sulfite, activated carbon and ceramic balls deliver to remove toxins like chlorine from water, balance PH levels, and even add minerals! I saw a major difference in skin sensitivity when I started using it, and I will never go back! It's easy to install, and the replacement filters are also very affordable and easy to change.
Engdenton Faucet Stainless-Steel Water Filter: This filter uses advanced activated carbon fiber filtration technology to inhibit bacterial growth and reduce toxins. While I don't recommend drinking tap water - even filtered - this filter is nevertheless great for minimizing toxic exposure on your hands, dishes, etc.! It's easy to install, lets you easily switch between filtered and non filtered, and has great pressure!
32:20 - BUTCHER BOX: Grass-Fed Beef, Organic Chicken, Heritage Pork, And More, All Raised Sustainably The Way Nature Intended! Buthcer Box Provides Access To Nutrient Rich, Affordable Meat And Seafood Shipped Straight To Your Door! Go To Butcherbox.com/Melanieavalon And Use The Code Melanieavalon For $20 Off Your Order, And 2 lbs of Wild Salmon and four 6oz Top sirloin steaks in your first box!!
34:15 - BEAUTY COUNTER: Non-Toxic Beauty Products Tested For Heavy Metals, Which Support Skin Health And Look Amazing! Go To Beautycounter.com/MelanieAvalon! To Receive A Free Beauty Counter Gift From Melanie, Exclusive Offers And Discounts, And More On The Science Of Skincare, Get On Melanie's Private Beauty Counter Email List At MelanieAvalon.com/BeautyCounter!
35:10 - Coffee Enemas For Liver Support
38:15 - Colonics: Cleansing Vs. Detox
41:00 - What Dietary Protocol Is Best For Detoxing?
43:15 - Food Sensitivities
44:20 - Elimination Diets
48:40 - The DESTRESS Protocol
50: 20 - The Role Of Emotions And The Mind
53:55 - Procrastinating To Make Changes: Just Starting And Learning From Failures
57:10 - The Role Of Limiting Beliefs
1:01:25 - The Role Of Mantras
1:02:30- Can Anyone Heal?
1:07:00 - Equilibriumnutrition.com
TRANSCRIPT
Melanie Avalon:
We have a very special guest that has an amazing book that honestly, I can't even describe how passionate and wonderful this book was. So, we have Dr. Stephen Cabral on the podcast, and listeners might be familiar with him because he's a pretty big name in the health and wellness sphere. He's a board-certified naturopathic doctor. He's also the founder of the Cabral Wellness Institute and he's also at stephencabral.com.
Melanie Avalon:
And your book that I just absolutely had so much in it that I identified with, it is called The Rain Barrel Effect, How A 6,000-year-old Answer Holds the Secret to Finally Getting Well, Losing Weight, and Feeling Alive Again. It's amazing. So, first of all, thank you so much for being here.
Stephen Cabral:
Thank you for having me on the show. I appreciate it. It's a great podcast, so I'm happy to be here.
Melanie Avalon:
Thank you. So, I guess, to start things off, would you like to tell listeners a little bit about your story? Because I feel like many people in the health and wellness sphere, they come to their health and wellness world out of their own struggle and their own journey. So, would you like to tell listeners a little bit about your own background and what led you to where you are today?
Stephen Cabral:
Absolutely. And I think that it is true that most people that ultimately get into the health and wellness realm even, whether it be a personal trainer or nutritionist, acupuncturist, a lot of people go through their own health struggle and that's how they find out about this field in the first place.
Stephen Cabral:
So, when I went through my health struggle about 20 years ago or so now, it lasted unfortunately for about 10 years. So, I was sick from about 17 years old to about 27 years old. And it was a real process of self-discovery. I got extremely sick and the best doctors in the world right here in Boston, Massachusetts couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I had swollen glands and my immune system was shutting down, my blood sugar was dysregulated.
Stephen Cabral:
I was later diagnosed after they brought me from specialist to specialist with rheumatoid arthritis, which is an autoimmune disease that attacks your joints. I had type 2 diabetes. I had Addison's disease, which is the inability to produce cortisol beginning of sarcoidosis. I mean, literally, it was just one on top of the other, POTS, fibromyalgia, that a lot of people might be more familiar with, and there was simply no answers except that they would give me medication being the specialist and doctors and hope to be able to manage the symptoms of the disease. When they got worse, they would up the medication.
Stephen Cabral:
And something just didn't sit right with me even 20 years ago that that could not be the answer, that this could not be my life because I had read what happens to people with Addison's disease. They don't live a very long life. So, when I read that, being the stubborn kid that I was, I said, "All right, I'm going to try to figure this out."
Stephen Cabral:
And so, I got into nutrition, the one thing I knew what I could do is like what food could I put my body. And then, I got into supplements, and then I got exposed to acupuncture, and I got exposed to different naturopathic doctors. And when that happened and they brought out functional medicine lab testing, I knew I was in the right place because we're no longer talking about symptoms. We were talking about the underlying root causes of why I got sick in the first place and how I ended up here. Once I found that, I knew that this would be my life's calling and that I would teach this to others.
Melanie Avalon:
Yeah. So, I mean, I really identify with that as well because my own passion for health and wellness also came out of my own struggles and, I mean, it just happens naturally, I feel, because you want to find answers so bad, especially when you feel really trapped in your body in a way and you know there's a way out if you could just find it. But the pills, the doctors, they just, so rarely, they don't really provide the solutions.
Melanie Avalon:
So, in your book, The Rain Barrel Effect, what I loved about it is you talk about this concept of all of these stressors building up like water being added to a rain barrel and then that final drop of water just causes it to tip over and things just overflowed. And I think a lot of people really identify with that, holding it together, feeling like things are okay, and then just crashing and burning, and just feeling so hopeless with all of that.
Melanie Avalon:
And then, also, we can talk about this as well. You combine it with Ayurvedic practices and coming from that detox perspective as well. So, would you like to talk a little bit about that concept of The Rain Barrel Effect? What are those toxins, those stressors, those things that are filling up our proverbial rain barrel and causing these health issues?
Stephen Cabral:
For sure. And this is something that is a little bit more unique for each individual, but the rain barrel analogy applies to everyone. So, when I got sick at 17 years old, I didn't know it. I just thought I woke up one day and I had caught something, or I'd got a cold, or whatever it was, and then it wouldn't go away and it stuck with me for years. But the problem was it had been building over time.
Stephen Cabral:
As a child, I had ear, nose, and throat issues. So, I was constantly... I got my adenoids taken out, I got tubes in my ears, I got my tonsils taken out. I was on antibiotics at least three, four times a year just because our local pediatrician prescribed amoxicillin or some pharmaceutical based on whatever was going on, even if it wasn't needed. And that slowly began to break down my gut microbiome and it caused me a, we call, leaky gut or increased intestinal permeability.
Stephen Cabral:
So, every time I ate, there would be proteins or they'd be bacteria or increased Candida overgrowth growing. And then, also, moving through my gut wall, it would turn on my immune system, so my immune system was chronically elevated. I started to get allergies. I had low level asthma.
Stephen Cabral:
And then, when I was 14 years old, I went to the dermatologist for some minor acne like a lot of guys do, who have bad diets, and girls as well. And they put me on it and it worked, so it got rid of the acne. The problem was, the repercussion was I stayed in that for three years, from 14 years old to 17 years old.
Stephen Cabral:
Now, I'm wiping out all the good bacteria in my body. Yes, I'm wiping out the bad bacteria as well, and it just shut down my immune system. So, when I finally crashed due to also stress, I talked about in the book that there's genetics. So yes, I was genetically predisposed to type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, maybe Addison's, etc., a couple of things, but that's what was in my genetics. But genetics does not necessarily matter until we're put in the environment, and then there's that trigger.
Stephen Cabral:
And, for me, the trigger was, well, I'm a perfectionist. I'm trying to do well on my SATs, I'm the oldest in my family, I'm going to be leaving for college next year, leaving all my friends. So, it was stress on top of all the gut issues, on top of working a job and go to school at the same time, playing sports, and eventually that rain barrel got filled up, body couldn't take it anymore. It overflowed. And the symptoms are what we call disease, but that's not what got me there. It's just what ended up now being what I'm labeled as someone with Addison's or rheumatoid arthritis, etc.
Melanie Avalon:
I identify with that so well because for me, I mean, like you, I was always perfectionist and overachiever and all of these things, and I felt like I was really thriving for a while. And then, I think a lot of factors... I mean, we like to look back and point at one thing and try to find the one cause for why we all of a sudden feel unwell, but I think it's more what you were saying. It can be like a lot of things going together.
Melanie Avalon:
So, I mean, for me, I was living in apartment with mold. I got really severe mercury toxicity, few other things, and I definitely experienced the rain barrel tipping over effect that you spoke about. So, can we talk a little bit about those different toxic exposures that people might be exposed to as well as the stressors and how those build up? I know you talked about heavy metals, and then the gut microbiome and stress. Would you like to go on a little bit of detail?
Stephen Cabral:
Absolutely. So, what we see, for sure, with most people, there is some level of stress. And like you were talking about before, oftentimes, people don't know that the crash is coming because when you're in the alarm stage of stress... there's three main stages and seven sub-stages when you look at all of it together.
Stephen Cabral:
But there's the alarm stage where you feel like you don't even need to sleep, that you have energy all the time, and you're running off anxious energy, but you don't really know it at the time, you don't need to eat, you don't need to sleep, and you can do a million different things. People experience it with birth of a child, starting a new business, going to grad school or college, whatever it might be, and you think you're invincible.
Stephen Cabral:
And then, all of a sudden, you move into the second stage, the resistance stage, where you have a little bit more difficulty to unwind at nights, you can't sleep as well. And you wake up, you start to wake up a little bit more groggy, where before, you didn't get a lot of sleep but yet still plenty of energy. And now, your digestive system is a little weaker because the energy shift in the body isn't happening so that there isn't that parasympathetic rest and digest, so it gets weaker. You start to get a little bit more bloating. It can start to lead to some SIBO or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, and then eventually you crash. And that's the exhaustion stage.
Stephen Cabral:
So, we go through this. Not everyone goes through all the different cycles in their life, but when you are in that state, that high stress state, your body can't do everything. So, what happens is it starts to shift a lot of its energy more towards that stress-based state, getting ready to run away, to fight, whatever it might be. Well, when that happens, we sacrifice a good deployed sleep, we sacrifice the body's ability to boost the metabolism to properly break down all of our foods. So, that's a huge one we see because we see so many gut-based issues.
Stephen Cabral:
And then, if you compound that with taking antibiotics or eating a lot of processed sugars, you could potentially build up some type of Candida-based overgrowth. And we see that, again, all the time in the practice as well as small intestinal-based bacterial overgrowth. So, that's part of what we do at ourselves through emotions, through stress, how we look at life.
Stephen Cabral:
And then there are things such as mold, and mold is more and more common. They say about 52% of all homes have some level of mold in them, whether it's the basements, the air conditioning docks, behind the walls that they don't know it's from a leak. And then, that mold toxicity could, again, it can manifest itself in so many different ways. That's why these things are hard to pin down without specific lab testing or even knowing what to look for, because it could be headaches to one person, a skin rash in another, joint pain in another. And that's, again, where genetics come from. Genetics matter, but not until you put yourself in the environment for it to be triggered. But the root cause can always be the same.
Stephen Cabral:
So, heavy metals are another one. Dental amalgams. So, the mercury amalgams, we call them silver amalgams, but they're not really silver per se. They're made of mercury, nickel, aluminum, other heavy metals in the body that they're so toxic, when you do have them taken out of your mouth, they have to be put in this hazmat box that's taken away in a very specific toxic-based method where masks are worn, it's tightly sealed, and that you want to make sure that stays away from your body. We know that. So, that's a big one.
Stephen Cabral:
And the ones that people don't know about are the simple everyday things like their tap water containing aluminum, containing potentially mercury, shower filters, breathing in chlorine-based vapors, using aluminum foil, using antiperspirants. So, these are things that were just never talked about in general in the media. So much so that right now, the average woman, when she walks out of her house has already been exposed to, the morning, 126 different chemicals, different toxins.
Stephen Cabral:
So, this is a big thing that we need to, I believe, pay more attention to since we're at 77,000 man-made chemicals and climbing, half of which we know lead to cancer. So, we need to really pay attention to this.
Melanie Avalon:
On the flip side, so, I became aware of these toxic elements that I was being exposed to and I started doing all the things, doing all the research, which is a good thing. But then, I do wonder if I almost went too extreme and a fear mindset surrounding everything.
Melanie Avalon:
But I mean, everything you talked about in your book, I started doing like the water filters, I got the massage, the detox, the red light. I changed all my makeup. I got an EMF curtain to block up my bed at night. I moved apartments. I did a lot of things, but still, even with all of that, which is all helpful and I'd love to go into more detail about all of that, I still wonder how much mindset is in perspective because I think my first response was to enter the state of fear in a way, because I knew something was wrong. I knew that these structures are built up and it can be scary to find your way out of it.
Melanie Avalon:
So, what do you think is the best approach when somebody finds themselves in this state where their rain barrel has overflowed? They need to detox. What is the best route to follow?
Stephen Cabral:
I do agree with you that it can be scary and that's why one of the things that I try to always talk about and write about is that this is happening no matter what. We can't get overwhelmed by it. All we can do is the best that we can do. And what I've also found is that I've gotten better progressively, I believe, with each year. So, I've done a lot and I'm now able to take on more.
Stephen Cabral:
So, that's what I want people to do is, what are the biggest exposures for you? If you're someone that wears a lot of different skincare-based products, that's a really important one because anything that touches your body is one that we should look at right away. And the same would be food. So, your skin is basically a dermis base layer that can absorb anything you put onto it and it goes right into the bloodstream, so that's important. And then, any food we put in our mouth. So, let's start there and then after that, let's look at the other things, okay?
Stephen Cabral:
Can we do a shower filter? Every six months, you change the filter, that's it. So, twice a year. That's all you have to do to worry about it. So, I'm all about low maintenance as well and really just doing what you can do and move through it in that way. I mean, so much so do I believe in mindset and health and wellness that in my DESTRESS Protocol, two parts of that are all based on the mind, out of eight. That's a large percentage is what we need to do for a mindset.
Stephen Cabral:
Because I've worked with so many people now and I can tell you that everyone gets well that sticks with it, doesn't get overwhelmed and believes that they can. I mean, it's such a big part to it. So, without a doubt, make sure you're in the right mindset. If you're not, do just what you can and continue to work on your vision for yourself and your life and that you can get well.
Melanie Avalon:
That was one of the things I loved about your book. I mean, it almost brought me to tears. It has both the detox protocol, so the actual step to take, for example, you mentioned like shower filters and things like that. Side note, I just moved, and I didn't have my shower filter for a few days and I just re-installed it. It actually makes a really big difference, I'm just saying, in my skin. So, that's a really good little low maintenance tip or trick for listeners.
Melanie Avalon:
But yeah, that's what I loved about your book is you have this protocol you can follow. I love what you said about getting better each and every day. That's such a motivating mindset to have that once you are aware of what you can do, each day you can get better and better. And then, the mindset stuff that you end with was just absolutely amazing.
Melanie Avalon:
Before we get into the mindset, because I would like to get into that, I'd like to get into a little bit more of that specifics about the detox and everything. So, one thing I'm really, really fascinated and you touched on this briefly was how the liver actually works with detox, the difference between Stage 1 and Stage 2, and how we can support both of those stages. Would you like to talk a little bit about how detox actually works in the body on a biological level?
Stephen Cabral:
Absolutely. So, the liver is this big dark red organ located on the right side of your rib cage and it's hardly ever talked about or it's talked about with maybe like cirrhosis of the liver or hepatitis C, something like that, but we never really hear about it, maybe fatty liver here and there. But it is the organ that controls the cleanliness of your blood. And if that is not doing its job to its greatest ability, you slowly begin to break down over time. Meaning, that you start to retain too much estrogen, you start to retain too much water, and we can go into how that works as well with the liver.
Stephen Cabral:
But your liver's job is to filter all of the blood in your body every six minutes. And it does that whether you're awake, whether you're sleeping, and it's like a car filter, I would say. As you're going down the highway at 60 miles an hour, the air is moving through the car filter and as you breathe in, you're hopefully breathing clean air. As long as that car filter has been changed.
Stephen Cabral:
Well, the problem is that our liver was never meant to be exposed to all of the man-made chemicals, and these chemicals are fairly new. The majority just started after 1950. Before that, before the real industrialization, there wasn't this level of plastics that it creates environmental-based estrogens in the body, and PCBs, and all sorts of other things that may be exposed to, even things like bug spray. We're not even told how toxic that is. All the different chemicals that we're putting on our skin for sunscreen. And again, there are natural alternatives to all these, but a lot of people were in sunscreen to try to prevent skin cancer and they're putting cancer-causing chemicals on their body, which it's not my opinion, this is all proven-based research.
Stephen Cabral:
So, what I try to tell people is there's nothing more important than supporting your liver for daily detoxification. And, again, I've never seen anything work better just for an average person who's looking to say, "How can I get healthier in both mind and body than doing a quarterly detox?" Every 12 weeks, it's an Ayurvedic-based principle. We're going to set our body up to remove a lot of what we accumulate to begin to empty our rain barrel.
Stephen Cabral:
And you asked about the phase one and phase two. Well, the liver works in two ways. It breaks down a lot of these toxins. Now, the toxins, unfortunately, when your liver can't keep up, because your liver is always doing its job, but when it gets overloaded, it pushes a lot of these heavy metals, estrogens, etc. into the fat cells or adipose tissue. Those fat cells actually swell then with water with all of these toxins. So, I believe that a lot of people are just holding onto a lot of toxic water weights.
Stephen Cabral:
So, yes, they might think it's body fat because it is the body fat. That tissue is actually swelling. But we see people lose a lot of that toxic water weight, not good hydration in a matter of one, two, or three weeks, and they feel completely different. Now, how do you do this? Will you support your body? That's what we talked about is that your body knows how to heal itself. We're not doing anything special. What we're doing is giving your body more of what it needs to fight back against all of these man-made chemicals.
Stephen Cabral:
And so, Phase 1 would really be taking these fat-soluble toxins using a lot of vitamins that we already know, vitamin E, vitamin C, we're using selenium, we're using zinc for some great minerals, we're using glutathione, and we're transforming that very harmful fat-soluble toxins that could go to the brain, that could go to the joints, the fat cells, and we're removing it from the body by changing over to what's called a water-soluble toxin.
Stephen Cabral:
And that water-soluble toxin, we break that down with, and again, you don't need to know how this works, taurine and sulforaphane and glutathione and this L-cystine, and we do that by simply taking in things such as broccoli, which contains sulforaphane. And again, we have a whole protocol on how to do this, but that allows your body then to get rid of the toxins through perspiration, urination, or a bowel movement on a daily basis. So, it's a great way to speed it up every 12 weeks, but we need to be doing this on a daily basis as well.
Melanie Avalon:
Yeah. And so, you mentioned it briefly, just now, the Ayurvedic aspect that you brought into it. Would you like to talk a little bit about that? Because you talked about how you came upon this quote, the secret, which was panchakarma, an ancient Ayurvedic practice and how that really focused on healing the body in a holistic manner with a focus on detoxification. So, would you like to talk a little bit about how that comes into play and how that translates into your modern manifestation and interpretation of it today?
Stephen Cabral:
Yes. And so, my internships were done overseas. I wanted to really explore the best forms of medicine all over the world. My original thought process was that I'm going to practice whatever is the best, whatever really works for people, whether it be Traditional Chinese medicine, whether it be homeopathy, whether it be Ayurvedic medicine. To me, it didn't matter. I just wanted to help people the best of my ability. And I was also on a mission myself to say what really is working the best.
Stephen Cabral:
And what I found was this, is that there's no one best form of medicine out there. There really isn't. It's knowing what form of medicine or what type of protocols to use with what person and at what time, because people are coming in at different times in their life and they need different things.
Stephen Cabral:
But here's what the underlying secret was amongst all of the ones that worked, and that worked over and over and over. It was some form of detoxification. And simply put, it means this, is that we live in a world right now... If you're listening to this podcast, you most likely have access to all the food that you want, all the alcohol, all the skincare products, all the whatever it is on a daily basis. You can just walk outside of your house or most likely drive somewhere and get anything that you need. So, we've never lived in a time where we've had access to everything and non-stop.
Stephen Cabral:
And so, what we need to do is actually take a step back, whether it be in our mind, a retreat, a sabbatical, I call it, or our diet or what we are doing in order to remove. It's not about addition anymore. A lot of it is about a subtraction. So, I always tell people that, "You will get well. You need to find out two things. One, what are you deficient at? Is it B vitamins? Is it vitamin C? Is it certain amino acids? It could be a number of things, but you can figure that out. So, what are you deficient at? Replace that. Help your body out. And then, also, what do you have too much of?" And we call those toxins. It could be estrogen dominance. We see that all the time in women. It could be too much cortisol, or it could be the mold, heavy metals, etc.
Stephen Cabral:
So, what Ayurveda does better than anyone else out there is they do something called panchakarma. And what I did was I said, "Okay, panchakarma is amazing, but it's not practiced really fully in the United States for multiple reasons why and it's just not something that is what we would call modern." It's not up to our time, although I think it's absolutely amazing and it still should be done. So, there are ways that you can do your own panchakarma with giving yourself the proper detox space nutrients. And I'm happy to talk about those if you want or I don't know how deep you want to get on this.
Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I think if we could provide listeners with a general overview and then, we'll just reference them honestly to your book because it has all the information in there, but just so they get a gauge of what that would look like on a practical day-to-day basis.
Stephen Cabral:
Absolutely. So, when I was over in India and I was in Sri Lanka and I was working in the clinics there under the doctors and we were working with everyone that would come in and some of them were just locals, so I was in some very poor communities. That was absolutely amazing getting to work there. And then, I was also at some higher-end clinics where people would travel from all over the world, especially Europe, to go to those. And what we did there was authentic panchakarma as well. And so, what you're doing is you're mobilizing toxins. That's the big thing.
Stephen Cabral:
So, to mobilize toxins, you're typically doing some type of natural-based accumulation. You're using herbs such as parsley and cilantro and cracked-cell chlorella, etc. and you're doing a very light diet, so as not to tox the liver.
Stephen Cabral:
And then you're moving these tox, so what you would do is you would do some type of lymphatic-based massage. In Ayurveda, they call it abhyanga. So, before we rediscovered Manual Lymph Drainage, Dr. Vodder, and others, they've already been doing it for 6,000 years. It's just no one knew, and it's called abhyanga. And what you're doing is you're moving towards the heart and we do it with dry brushing now as well. So, I'll talk about that in a moment.
Stephen Cabral:
After you do the massage, you can do a self-massage or in India, you're getting a two person massage to really just calm the central nervous system, calm the peripheral nervous system, and move the lymphatic, it takes all of the toxins from your digestive system and it cleans all of the cells and blood as well. So essentially, toxins are pushed out of the cell, things are moved through the digestive track, and the lymphatic system is four times the amount of blood that you have in your body.
Stephen Cabral:
Now, the problem is it can get backed up. It can get backed up from lack of movement, backed up from too much fats in the diet, it can get backed up from all sorts of congestion in the body, too much work. So, what the massage did is it manually move that lymphatic system. And then, after that, you would get into a sauna or steam and you would just sweat out a lot of these toxins. And at the same time, you'd either do an enema, they call it a Basti, or you'd have two or three bowel movements per day to keep trying to get these toxins out of your body as fast as possible. So, that was a big part of it.
Stephen Cabral:
Other parts of panchakarma that they don't do in the United States is actual controlled vomiting. And I know that sounds maybe kind of barbaric, but what you're doing is for a lot of people with a lot of mucus space production, they're bringing all that mucus to the stomach and then vomiting it all up. Again, we don't do that here in the United States.
Stephen Cabral:
So, what I did was how can we create a simpler system that people could do maybe just once a week or even once a month, and it's in one hour that I put it together and it's essentially a self-massage with sesame oil or you could use a dry brush. Okay, so that's a big part of it right there. It's doing an infrared sauna or some type of saunas just to sweat. That's a great way to do it. And then, it's doing a coffee enema. And it's an easy way within one hour to be able to do your little panchakarma right at home and remove a lot of these toxins as well.
Melanie Avalon:
So many things here. Okay, I love this so much. Because when I was reading your protocol, I was like, "Oh, this is kind of similar to something I've been implementing," because before I moved, I had more of a routine going on almost every other night was I would go to the gym, so get the lymph system flowing, and then they had an infrared sauna, so I would go in the infrared sauna. Then, I would come home. I have vibration machine, so I would sit on my vibration machine. Do you think that those work well for lymph stimulation?
Stephen Cabral:
Absolutely. You can lie right in your back and put your calves right on the vibrate plate and just... Yeah, absolutely.
Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I love my machine. It's amazing. So, I would sit on that. I have an ionic foot bath and then I have my red light therapy devices at home. So, all the things, not your specific protocol, but I was like, "Yes, I totally see where this is coming from," and it really works. I can tell just when I do these types of detox type practices. That's what I love too. You make it so easy for readers to follow. It's not going to take a lot of your time. You're going to feel amazing. An excuse to give yourself a massage or get a massage. I mean, it can't really go wrong.
Stephen Cabral:
No, in the coffee enema part, for people that have never heard of that before, because at first, I was taken aback, I said, "Why would I ever give myself an enema with coffee? This makes no sense." But, again, I'm someone that wants to know the science behind it. And what it actually does is it takes the speed and flow of processing the blood through the liver in about half the time. So, it speeds it up to about three minutes and it helps produce more what we call glutathione S-transferase. So, it actually helps with the detox space process.
Stephen Cabral:
And then, it dilates the bile ducts in the liver. So, after anywhere from 12 to 15 minutes of holding the coffee enema, you then dump all of the toxins from the liver, not every toxin you have, but a lot of those toxins, right to the colon. And then, obviously, right into the toilet. So, by sweating out in the sauna and then doing the coffee enema, and people feel amazing doing this, you're really releasing a lot of these toxins.
Stephen Cabral:
It's not something that you want to become really addicted to. I don't recommend daily coffee enemas or anything like that. Now, if you're working with a health practitioner for a specific reason because you're trying to really detox, I mean, your body may be high levels of mercury, maybe you're going through some type of cancer-support type therapy like a Gerson therapy, that's fine, but you'll work on your doctor. What I worry about is that then your bowel's get too used to using the enema to have a bowel movement, so that's why I'm saying once a week is enough for most people. And then, once your well, once a month or every couple of months that then you can do this practice as well.
Melanie Avalon:
So glad you brought that up again. Listeners would be surprised, I actually have never tried a coffee enema which is probably very shocking to listeners because I'm sort of known for trying all these crazy things, not that they're crazy, but all of these biohacking health things. With the coffee enema, if somebody is very caffeine sensitive, is that a problem at all? Will they maybe have insomnia or anything like that from it? Can you use decaf coffee or is the caffeine important part of the process?
Stephen Cabral:
Yeah, it's a great question. I definitely recommend doing them before 12:00, before noon, during the day because it could be a little bit simulating. Actually, anything that you put in for an enema, gets absorbed really well because we're talking about single cell of intestinal wall and it can be absorbed in the body as well.
Stephen Cabral:
So, what I recommend for everyone is when you make a coffee enema, typically it's 3 tablespoons per 1,000 milliliter or 1 liter of water, and you use distilled water typically, or if you have a Berkey filter or some type of filter, then that's fine too. You just want to make sure you're not putting aluminum or toxins into your body. So, what I recommend is you can just start with one tablespoon if you're sensitive to caffeine.
Stephen Cabral:
Now, most people won't feel a difference except a clearing of brain fog, really alert, but they're not going to feel the jitteriness from caffeine. But again, it's just like taking nutritional supplements. If someone recommends three for the day, you can start with one, see how you feel. So, that's what I recommend, you do one tablespoon. It should be caffeinated coffee because that helps with the dilation of the liver bile ducts.
Melanie Avalon:
And then, I'd also like to ask, because you mentioned not doing the coffee enemas all the time because of becoming reliant on them in a way. How do you feel about colonics for clearing out your system as well?
Stephen Cabral:
I'm glad that you brought that up. Maybe there's so many things to actually talk about, but it's kind of like a detox and a cleanse. They're two totally separate things. So, a detox is cleaning your blood. That's what it's meant to do. Technically, it's a functional medicine, liver detox is what it's called. But if we ever talked about it in that way, pretty much no one would do it because it sounds too technical and too hard to do, but it's not. So, that's what it's doing. And coffee enemas cleaning your blood per se, where a colonic is cleaning your colon and a cleanse, like an intestinal cleanse, is cleaning your colon. Both are fine to do but different purposes.
Stephen Cabral:
I also interned at a great functional medicine practice in Europe and I mean, they had done 20,000 plus colonics. That's what they're known for.
Stephen Cabral:
The problem I have with colonics is this, I like a series of about three to five and then after that, I don't recommend them on an ongoing basis unless you need them. And I know this is going to offend some people, but the reason is let that bacteria repopulate how it's supposed to after you've removed what shouldn't be there. And then, another big thing that most people don't know about a colonics is not just about the removal of what's in there, it's about toning, re-toning the colon because the colon is about five to six feet and it can get twisted and it can get prolapsed. So, colonics over time can actually help with the re-toning of that. So, three to six in a series, one or two a week for maybe three weeks, and then after that, I'm not an advocate of redoing them all the time.
Melanie Avalon:
Okay. I'm really glad to hear you clarify that because I personally struggle with IBS, so I found colonics very helpful at times for keeping things moving. But I was always wondering what is the right amount to do? What's the best method to go about doing it? Do you need to repopulate? So, I really liked what you said. So, it sounds like get things moving, get that detox of the colon, and then let your gut repopulate and do its thing on its own ideally.
Melanie Avalon:
And I'm also glad you clarified because, about the coffee enemas, I think that is a common misconception. People think that they are used to detox the colon when really, it's what you were speaking about. It's about detoxing the liver and the toxins, not so much your bowels per se.
Melanie Avalon:
So, something else that you mentioned, and I think this is also really reassuring in a way, you were saying how there's not one answer for everybody. There's not one diet. Basically, once we've identified that we're in this toxic state and we need to deal with it, there are different dice that can work for different people, but there's some common trends within that. I found that so reassuring when I read your chapter on the diet aspect and you were like, "Really, there's not one right diet and these all have things in common."
Melanie Avalon:
So, what are those things in common and what type of dietary protocol do you prescribe? And also, you can go into detail about your actual official DESTRESS Protocol, which I think listeners will find so helpful.
Stephen Cabral:
Absolutely. And so, one thing that we look at is that it's never one thing and that's what I was looking for when I was younger. First, I waited two years for a diagnosis. So, I was waiting to be diagnosed with some disease so finally, I could have an answer. And then, I was eventually diagnosed with three all at once. I was diagnosed with Addison's, type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and then later with POT syndrome and a few other things.
Stephen Cabral:
But what I realized was all that meant is that I was going to be medicated. There was no answer. And that left me very frustrated because when I asked, "Well, what do we do about this? How do we get rid of it?" and they said, "Well, we don't get rid of it. What we do is we make sure that it doesn't progress." And that didn't make any sense to me because if at one point in my life I didn't have this, I should be able to go back there. And that just wasn't jiving with the thought process and it still doesn't. It's not medical doctor's fault, that's not taught in graduate school or you when you go for your doctorate degree, but it is becoming now more prevalent looking for the underlying root causes.
Stephen Cabral:
So, we were just talking about IBS. So about, I would say, 60% of our practice is digestive issues, and then a lot of it's female hormones and other things as well. But let's just talk about IBS and digestive issues. There's always an underlying cause. So, it can be stress-based and that's basically locking down the peristaltic movement of the gut and it's allowing food to ferment there longer, slower digestive time, poor HCL production, which means there's going to be less bile production. It could be Candida overgrowth, it could be small intestine bacterial overgrowth, which is very common because that ileocecal valve stays open and the colon actually backfills up in the small intestine that should never happen. So, you give yourself bacterial overgrowth and then there's parasites and there's H. pylori.
Stephen Cabral:
And so, those are the four big one we're looking at, and we're looking at stress. And when we look at those and we can... Again, these labs can be done right at home. You can find your answer and then you go about, "Okay, well what do we do? Do we also run a food sensitivity test, because there's a lot of people out there eating eggs right now?" Well, eggs are the number three IgG food sensitivity on a test. So, let's say that you ate eggs and you say, "Yeah, but I eat eggs and I don't get bloated. I don't get gas for them, I don't get hives, I don't get headache," and I say, "I agree. That's called an IgE sensitivity, but an IgG sensitivity is inflammation a day or up to 72 hours later after eating the food." And that's really hard to figure out.
Stephen Cabral:
Let's just say we're recording this on a Wednesday. I'd have to ask you, "Do you remember what you ate on Sunday? Because what you ate on Sunday, any one of those ingredients could be causing you joint pain or IBS or other symptoms today." So again, there's always an underlying root cause. You can figure it out and then we fine-tune the diet.
Stephen Cabral:
We give people a nutrition plan that will not feed Candida, that won't feed bacterial overgrowth, and we'd begin then to remove the Candida through a Candida bacterial overgrowth protocol. But it doesn't stop there. Then, as their gut improves, they can start to add foods back in. So, we talk about elimination-based diets.
Stephen Cabral:
Well, there's a lot of different elimination diets. If you have rheumatoid arthritis or you have kidney stones, you have joint pain, you might decide to remove grains. You might decide to remove because they're high in lectins. You might decide to remove oxalates. But just because one person has an issue with lectins, doesn't mean everyone does. I know a lot of people that can eat grains, no problem. Should they not eat grains? Well, not for that person, but this person that gets joint pain. If they eat grains for two days in a row or nightshades potatoes, then they shouldn't eat those.
Stephen Cabral:
So, what I like to talk about is not making any one particular food the enemy, but just finding out and fine-tuning what works for you. And again, in 2019, we know how to do that. And so, I just really like to customize things for people and it seems to make obviously a world of difference.
Melanie Avalon:
Yes, exactly. That's always been my motto, "Finding what works for you." I mean, it drives me crazy. I mean, I'm really grateful for all the information that we get from various books that promote various dietary approaches that are a little bit extremist, saying that all of the health issues are related to this one thing, be it fats, be it carbs, be it lectins, whatever it is. On the one hand, I find reading all that very beneficial because I can learn a lot about those compounds and how those might be interacting. But in the end, we're all so unique and I don't really think it's one thing for every single person. If that was the case, I feel like we might have found it by now, maybe.
Stephen Cabral:
That's right. It makes for a good marketing of a book, but it's never the thing.
Melanie Avalon:
And I'm glad you talked about elimination diet as well because I think people often think that that's so restrictive or that's unhealthy, but it's not a permanent lifestyle thing. I think, and what I'm hearing from you, is that it's just a way to maybe clear out the system and then actually pinpoint what might be causing problems. So, a temporary step in the right direction rather than a lifelong diet per se.
Stephen Cabral:
That's right. And so, I always tell people, "Let's do this once and then we never have to do it again." So, let's do it right the first time. Let's stay focused. You tell me, if you're not ready right now, it's not a problem because it's not my job to push you when you are not ready. But when you're ready, let's do it once, figure it out, we won't have to do it again. And a big part of that is elimination diet.
Stephen Cabral:
And the reason is that when we put people on elimination diet, it simplifies their eating, which is really nice as well. So, food doesn't become their entire life anymore. It's just like you eat breakfast, you eat lunch, you eat dinner. You might decide to do a late breakfast, but you're doing essentially three meals a day for most people, and they're eating certain foods and it's not a million different ingredients at one meal.
Stephen Cabral:
And then, afterwards, they say, "Well, what are your favorite foods? What are the ones that you love?" And they realize that it's maybe a little like two or three foods that they really want to add back in even though, of course, there's much more variables and they can add in other things. And then, you figure out, once and for all, what's working for you. But again, it's not just about the dietary elimination.
Stephen Cabral:
If someone, for example, has IBS, a Candida diet by itself is not going to work. You have to do things to eliminate the Candida. If not, when you go back to eating the foods, which you eventually will, it's just going to repopulate the same way. If you had an overgrowth by 80%, 20% good, 80% bad, flipped on its head, well, again, when you start eating foods again, carbohydrates, prebiotic fibers, it's going to regrow the Candida as well. So, that's not the answer in the long run. You might feel temporarily good and I get it, I understand that, but use diet along with the protocols to help guess the root cause.
Melanie Avalon:
Yeah. So, definitely a holistic picture is really, really important. I know with me and Candida, I was seeing a functional practitioner and she's like, "I think you have Candida." And so, she gave me some prescription anti-fungals and then gave me this really strict Candida diet. And honestly, things got way worse, I think, because I just went into like fearful attack mode and it wasn't a holistic perspective in creating like an overall nourishing environment that supports healthy levels of everything. So, it's definitely really complicated. And I think that a holistic perspective and looking at the whole picture is definitely key.
Melanie Avalon:
So, speaking of mindset and everything like that, that's a large part of the later part of your book that I really love. So, you talked about, for example, the nine toxic emotions. Would you like to talk a little bit about that?
Stephen Cabral:
Happy to talk about that. So, in the DESTRESS Protocol, just... And again, I let people know all the time, whether it's my podcast, book, whatever it is, we try to get all this information out to people for free, and you do that obviously in your podcast as well. And the goal is to pass this information along to people so they can learn, they can see the healing effects in their own life, and then share it with others because there's nowhere else that this is being taught. I mean, it's not taught in schools, it's not taught to our children, it's not out there. It's certainly not can be shown in the media.
Stephen Cabral:
So, my DESTRESS Protocol, it's exactly what I do in my practice. I don't kind of like it, but it's exactly what we do. So, it's diet, it's exercise, it's stress reduction, it's toxin removal. It's working on the parasympathetic nervous system that we call rest. It's emotional balance, it's supplement protocols, and it's success mindset. So, people always say, "Well, It's this and that." Not for me, but just in functional medicine and naturopathic medicine in general.
Stephen Cabral:
But the problem is supplements give your body the push that you need to get it back into equilibrium or balance, and then you begin to wean off as you fix your gut, or you call them the central nervous system, whatever it is, then you can start to take over with whole healthy food. But you need to give your body a big push back when your digestive system is so weak.
Stephen Cabral:
I used to make the mistake many, many years ago just saying like, "Oh, well, we could do this through fruit alone." The problem is when you have hardly any stomach acid and you're not breaking down food properly, there's no motility in the gut, you have Candida overgrowth, you have SIBO, you have H. pylori. You're eating the best foods in the world, but you can't break them down. They're making you bloated. So, it's a little bit of a challenge. So, that's why it's only one of eight parts, but sometimes they do play a role.
Stephen Cabral:
In terms of emotions and mindset, we'll talk about those nine emotions right now. I don't think that there's anything more powerful. I tell people all the time, "There's no way I can give you a diet plan, exercise, or supplements that's more powerful than your own mind. There isn't. And so, I can give you a lot to push back, keep you balanced, but my goal is for you to be balanced in all areas of your life and not have to be on specific protocols for your entire life."
Stephen Cabral:
Even though they're natural, we don't necessarily want that, right? We want to get people on a 12 to 16-week protocol, begin to wean them off, and they'd go about enjoying and loving life again, right? That's what it's all about. So, there's these nine toxic emotions. I'll let you know what they are and if it interests you, obviously, you can read more about them. It's bitterness, resentment, discomfort, anger, disappointment, guilt, shame, anxiety, and sadness. And the nice thing is that I've found within each one of those, there's an underlying message that your mind and body are trying to teach you.
Stephen Cabral:
So, for example, if you are disappointed about something, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It means that you're holding it with you, which is bad, because that's literally wearing you down and breaking you down every single day. But disappointment shows you what you care about. You care about whether it be your parents' view of you or disappointment about your career and what you thought that you may be able to do or want to be able to do or give back, so that's the good part. You can start to focus on that and you can begin to get rid of the negative parts. And that obviously comes with mind and body-based work.
Stephen Cabral:
I found that if, for example, again, if the gut's a mess, we have something called the gut-brain axis and they send signals back and forth to each other all day long. And this is actually, again, scientifically proven through the vagal nerve. And so, when we look at this, we say, "Well, if your stomach's a mess and that's causing anxiety, you don't feel well, it's only going to make the mind feel worse." And if the mind's not feeling well, it's sending signals back to the gut. You're going to feel tense or you're going to feel queasy, whatever it might be.
Stephen Cabral:
So, for me, it's helping people address all aspects of their life and that's what a true, I believe, holistic-based program is. And that's why I get worried a little bit about what functional medicine is becoming because functional medicine should not be giving someone niacin at high doses for depression. Just because you're using a vitamin doesn't make it natural. Instead of pharmaceutical, you're giving them a high dose of niacin. That's not looking at the whole person.
Stephen Cabral:
So, what I try to do in my practice is look at the whole person, then as an individual, not a disease, not a number, and help them from that underlying root cause.
Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I love that so much. I loved that section on the different toxic emotions. And like you said, you brought in having these negative emotions, but why they're also serving us in a way because it's like almost everything, the mental chatter in our head, these negative feelings, they all have a purpose. They're all serving in a way to further, in theory, our health and wellness. They're there to protect us. In a way, they're just misplaced. And so, if we can actually reframe and bring in a sense of gratitude and love and deal with these emotions in a different way, I think it can make such a world of difference.
Melanie Avalon:
You should see my copy of your book. It's all highlighted. I mean, I loved it. And then, I was writing down, "Listeners, you have to get this book," because you just say so many things that just really put things in perspective very succinctly but are so motivating at the same time.
Melanie Avalon:
You talked about how often we procrastinate in making changes in our health plan because we think that we need more data, so we need to research and we need to make sure that we're going to do it right. And you said, "No, you don't need to wait until you have all of the information, all the data. You could just jump in and you can go one step at a time, and every day can get better and better. You can start at any moment and you don't have to be perfect." I think that's something I've struggled with, sounds like you struggle with, the problem with perfectionism.
Melanie Avalon:
So, I think just having this open perspective that this is a journey and every day can get better and better is just so reassuring and so helpful. So, I really thank you for that.
Stephen Cabral:
No, it's my pleasure. And that's where the success mindset comes in at the end is that you just have to get started. You really do. And you'll never have all the answers because you don't even know the right questions to ask yet. So, anything you've done in your life, you started to do it, and then you realized through trial and error, some people call it failure but I just call them mini failures if you want, until you eventually win. I mean, I tried to get well for many, many years and I went to practitioner to practitioner and I learned a lot along the way, and I read thousands of books and I just kept accumulating. And then, at some points, it all clicks. It becomes very easy. But you start to just ask yourself more questions.
Stephen Cabral:
So, what I like to also tell people is, "There's no way it's going to take anyone that long to get well, not in today's day and age." That's not going to happen. Most people, again, 12 to 16 weeks, they should get well. But think about any goal that you have is that whatever you achieve... So, for example, in your career, someone's career, you're going through just a first iteration if it's new. I mean, there's going to be a second iteration, a third iteration, a fourth iteration is because as you learn more, you grow, you experience new things. You decide whether you want this or don't want it, you fine-tune it, you tweak it to make it exactly how you want it one day.
Stephen Cabral:
So now, that's how I look at life is that no matter what I start, no matter what I want to do, I just begin, because beginning starts to boost that self-image because you already know you're going to have a bunch of failures along the way. And again, they're not even failures. They're just many challenges. They're testing you to see are you going to stick with it or are you not? And if you already know ahead of time that the likelihood that you're going to get it exactly right the very first time is almost nil, then good, then you get started. And every time you hit an obstacle, you say, "Okay, this is my first obstacle. What does it teach me? What else do I need to learn in order to take it to that second stage?"
Stephen Cabral:
That's why I love the whole mindset behind martial arts. I've done that my whole life. You started a white belt, it's clean, it's a blank slate, and you end up as a black belt, which is basically really dirty. You've been in the mud the whole time. You've been trying to figure things out along the way.
Stephen Cabral:
And so, for anybody who's thinking about accomplishing anything, just begin. That's it. I mean, yes, read a book, do an online program, hire a coach, go see a doctor, run that home lab test, whatever it might be. I mean, at least have a plan, but just begin it. Move forward and learn along the way. And that is how you'll be very, very successful in life.
Melanie Avalon:
That is so reassuring. And actually, I had one of the biggest epiphanies ever in recent history that I can remember when reading your book and it was when you discussed limiting beliefs. You were talking about how we often have these different beliefs that limit us, so we might think, "I'll never achieve this career goal, or I'll never be healthy. I'll never do this. I'm too this. I'm..." So, it's these thoughts, and you were talking about how we need to look at those and realize, "Are those true? Where are those coming from?"
Melanie Avalon:
And the epiphany I had was because for a limiting belief, I'll never achieve my career goals, for example. I've never struggled with that. I've always felt very motivated podcasting, acting, writing. I've never doubted it, so I've just accepted it. And so, any setback or failure, I didn't even see as a setback or failure, I was just like, "Well, keep on keeping on. This is just part of the journey."
Melanie Avalon:
But then, with the help-limiting belief, I'll never be healthy. Same thing. It's not a guaranteed outcome. My career is not a guaranteed outcome, my health's not a guaranteed outcome yet with the health aspect, I don't have that assurance. I'm like, "No, maybe I won't ever get healthy." And then, whenever I have a setback, I'm like, "Oh, I see. This is an example of me not getting healthy or failing or not making progress," and it was such an epiphany because I was like, "Those are two things. Neither of them is certain, I don't know the outcome." In theory, either one... And this "failure" or step is just that. It's just a learning step. Yet I see one as possible and one is not possible. So sorry that was a little bit of a tangent, but it was just such a big epiphany.
Melanie Avalon:
So, I really encourage listeners to look at, in Dr. Cabral's book, these limiting beliefs and saying, "Are these true? How are these affecting my life and how can we reframe and move forward?" And like you said, there is no failure. It's just another step in the right direction. You pick yourself back up. It's like making your way towards that black belt. So, I love that. I called my sister actually after it and I was like, "I had such an epiphany." Thank you.
Stephen Cabral:
That's great to hear. The thing is that these are just subconscious beliefs and conditioning locked inside of us from some previous event or multiple events compounded, and that is now your belief. But that's ingrained deep inside of you, and you can work backwards to figure out why that is. Or a lot of times, I just find it more beneficial to rewrite those programs, because just like you said, you don't have a worry in being successful in your career, but you have it in health.
Stephen Cabral:
So, I always talk about this on my Mindset and Motivation Monday shows. I talk about there's five different areas. There's your health, there's your body, there's your career, there's your relationships, and there's your spirituality, and almost no one is perfect in all five unless they've already done the work and they've realized that life is a journey. And when you achieve one goal, no matter what it is, guess what? You're going to just set another goal.
Stephen Cabral:
So, you might as well enjoy that journey, literally, because when you achieve the goal, it's never usually as special as it feels. We love the hunt for it. So, if you can take that with you in any year of your life and just work on mastery rather than perfection, then you know that you have the rest of your life to do this.
Stephen Cabral:
So, a lot of times, what I say is that look at your life right now. If you're wondering what your limiting beliefs are, well they're manifested right in front of you. They really are, because your life as it is right now, it's currently constituted, is the sum of all of your thoughts and beliefs which have led to your actions, which is your life right now.
Stephen Cabral:
And again, to a lot of people, that might sound maybe too much and they're like, "Well, I didn't choose this life," and whatever it might be, and some parts you may be chosen, some parts you didn't. But as an adult, we now get to make those decisions and we can look at our life. Sometimes, we can't just make a decision that day until it change directions totally, but we can start to walk in a different direction. So, that's what I tell people.
Stephen Cabral:
Look at what is your real life that you just said yourself, "In terms of my health, I might never get better." And that right there is that limiting belief, right? And so, you can say, "Well, why wouldn't I?" And so, I then take another part of my life. So, for you, I would say take your how well you've done in your career and all that and just say, "Well, if I've done it there, why wouldn't I be able to do it in my health as well?" or, "If someone else in the world has overcome the same health challenges that I have, why wouldn't I be able to?" And then, you use that mantra every day and every way in getting better and better.
Stephen Cabral:
So, it doesn't mean you need to get better tomorrow. It just means that every day and every way, you're getting better and better. And so, I just love to teach that part of it almost more than anything.
Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I love that. I started repeating that mantra to myself constantly, and the mantras really help. Repeating that, that "Every day and every way, I'm getting better and better," or whatever resonates with a person, just I think repeating that in your head is so, so beneficial because it can, even if you still have this other fears and doubts, it can replace it and crowd out. We know the brain, we know there's neuroplasticity, and we can change our thoughts and change our mindsets and change our patterns. So, I loved that.
Melanie Avalon:
And then, you were saying how, "If other people have overcome it, then I can too," which is also really amazing. And then, you also throw an amazing little fact, like you said, at the end of 12 months, for example, we've regenerated around 97% of our body. I mean, that's just a shocking concept. So, there really is no reason that we can't get better in everything in our career, our health, everything. So, I will ask a few final questions. Do you think truly anyone can heal?
Stephen Cabral:
And the answer to that is an emphatic yes. And some are going to be more difficult than others, meaning that a terminal-based cancer is obviously probably one of the hardest. That's going to be one of the most challenging. But again, even those people can absolutely heal. And the reason I say that is that we've seen many, many cases of that healing too in both the mind and the body.
Stephen Cabral:
But if we're talking about your everyday things that people are dealing with, right now, close to almost 50% of people with some type of autoimmune or inflammatory-based condition, more than two thirds of adults being on some type of pharmaceutical, so if you're talking about high cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, autoimmune-based issues, low thyroid, gut, digestive issues, brain fog, all of those things, those are not difficult to heal. They really are not. We have to get it out of our mindset that these are things that we need to live with for the rest of our life. We need to figure out what we're deficient in, what we're toxic in, remove the toxicities, replace the deficiencies, stick with the protocol, learn along the way.
Stephen Cabral:
When we're giving that protocol for you, it wasn't a teaching protocol. That was the problem. If they gave you a protocol and this is why it's happening, this is what you need to do, this is what you're doing along the way, you would take ownership of that, it would be yours, and then you would get to carry that with you for the rest of your life.
Stephen Cabral:
And that's also why I'm not a huge advocate of pharmaceuticals is because you're not learning anything from that. You're wanting to take a pill and mask your symptoms. I want to help people understand the why. So, here's why, here's the big thing, so you don't even need me anymore. And in 10 years from now, if this would ever happen again, because you kind of slid, you fell off the wagon, whatever it might be, you already have the protocol that you know works for you because we shift back in the same exact ways. And so yes, I believe anyone can nail that. That was a long answer to a short question as well.
Melanie Avalon:
No, I love it. I love it so much. So, for listeners, I cannot recommend enough that you get this book, The Rain Barrel Effect. It has all of this and more. You will walk away so motivated, but not motivated, just in like an airy type sense. It's very practical, applicable, and like you said, it's a teaching. So, you're learning this new mindset and paradigm and steps to practically follow so that you can implement it and make it long-term for life. So, I cannot thank you enough for your work.
Melanie Avalon:
I do have one question that I like to ask all of my guests. Final question. And it's just because, like I said, I've been realizing how important mindset is and everything. So, what is something that you're grateful for?
Stephen Cabral:
Grateful for my two young girls, four and six years old, and they give me a lot of perspective. So, like you, I used the word gratitude all the time, but my other word besides gratitude is perspective.
Stephen Cabral:
So, I didn't understand perspective until I had my two daughters, and now I do. Meaning like at the end of a hard day, at the end of what's going on, I go home to them, they don't really care what happened during my day. They're there, they're yelling at me, they're jumping on my leg, they're holding onto me. And so, that gives me a lot of perspective that there is more, because I'm someone that gets wrapped up in my work and I mean I read hundreds of labs a week, and I love it. I mean, this is who I am. And I don't think that if I maybe had my wife, my two girls, I'd have as much balance. And so, I'm extremely grateful for them.
Melanie Avalon:
I love it. Well, thank you so much for being here, Dr. Cabral. I'm so grateful for you, for your work, for this interview today, and everything that you're doing. So, I cannot recommend that listeners check out your work enough. How can listeners follow your work? They can get your book. What websites or social media would you like to direct them to?
Stephen Cabral:
Sure. So just to learn more, I always like to start with the education piece. There's The Rain Barrel Effect, which is the book, and 100% of all profits go to charity. I don't want to sell the information that I put in the book. I wanted to be able to give it to people but, of course, there has to be a price for it so I can put it on Amazon, all those things. So, that's something that they can start there.
Stephen Cabral:
And then, also, the podcast is called The Cabral Concept. It's on iTunes and all the typical players. And then, my website is stephencabral.com, just my name. Social media, Stephen Cabral on Instagram, which is pretty much where I am.
Stephen Cabral:
And then, if anyone's ever interested in doing the detox, learning more about it or doing at-home lab tests to find out what their underlying root causes are, you can simply go to equilibriumnutrition.com and that's where our online virtual practice there.
Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. So, for listeners, I will also put links to all of this in the show notes. So those will be at melanieavalon.com/rain barrel. So, if you go there, I will put links to all of this and definitely cannot encourage listeners enough to check that out. So, thank you so much. This has been absolutely wonderful, and I look forward to devouring more of your content, your podcasts, everything that you're doing. I just thank you so much for everything that you're doing.
Stephen Cabral:
I appreciate you. Thank you for all that you do as well and thank you for having me on.
Melanie Avalon:
All right. Well, I'll talk to you in the future.
Stephen Cabral:
Take care.
Melanie Avalon:
Bye.
