107: Kick Your Health Issues in the Nuts – with T.C. Hale

By losing his voice, T.C. found his “voice”.

T.C.(Tony) Hale was a standup comic living in Los Angles in 2004 when he suddenly lost his voice. At first, he wasn’t worried, as his voice had gone raspy many times…however, this time his voice never did return. Tony went to 23 doctors, and none could provide any solutions to enable Tony to talk again. That is when he snapped. Tony “went psycho,” spending every spare minute researching his condition – for eight years.

In this episode, Tony shares his journey – from a desperate comic who couldn’t speak to finding a new voice – becoming an expert in natural health and nutrition. During his quest to solve his health crisis, Tony discovered that he could also help his friends get to the root causes of their health issues by looking at each person’s unique bio-individuality.

Tony also writes books like Kick Your Fat in the Nuts and teaches health professionals workshops in more than 40 countries. He is on the Coalition For Health Education executive board, a nonprofit association that helps professionals and their clients learn about health through nutrition. Tony is also wrapping up production on a documentary called Why Am I So Fat?

In this podcast, we cover: 

• One of the first things Tony learned in his research that freaked him out
• How his health obsession gradually morphed into a business 
• What bio-individuality means and why Tony considers it a crucial approach to health
• Simple tests you can do at home to get a picture of what’s going on with your health
• The impact digestion has on your overall health and well being
• When clients have unreasonable expectations, how does Tony handle those situations?
• Tony’s work helping health educators more effectively teach their clients

What does Tony know about digestive health? 

When you ask Tony about digestion, you may want to sit down because he can talk a long time about this topic and how it plays a role in so many health areas. 

Many people deal with digestive problems these days, and, unfortunately, many resign themselves to living with their symptoms for the rest of their lives. “That’s just the way it is. My mom was constipated, so I’m constipated. Those are the cards dealt me, so that’s how it goes.” Most of the time, their doctor agrees because of the training they received. They come to believe this as well. 

Tony tells Wade that “we’re supposed to poop like champions!” Yet, people think being bloated is natural. Meanwhile, acid reflux is a multi-billion dollar industry. 

The problem is how people stop at their symptoms. Those symptoms are trying to tell you what’s going wrong. If you can fix the root cause, your health will improve in significant ways! 

Our modern industrialized food choices play a big role in today’s digestive disorder epidemic. According to Tony, “There’s been studies that show the cardboard box provides more nutrition than what was in the cardboard box.” Our farming and food production is now “despicable.” Because the food we’re eating does not contain the nutrients it did 6,000 years ago; people are starving despite having plenty of “food” available. On top of that, many people have messed up digestive systems that are not extracting nutrients from foods—combine these two issues, and you get an undernourished population. People are starving for nutrients at a cellular level, which leads to many other symptoms (low energy, brain fog, etc.) 

Tony is committed to teaching people how to turn these things around.

What are the two primary wrecking balls that demolish people’s digestion?

Through his research and years of working with clients, Tony has determined two of the most common issues that tear down people’s digestion:

• The first one involves a lack of stomach acid. There is a misconception that acid reflux is always caused by too much stomach acid. Tony says not enough stomach acid is behind people’s acid reflux around 80% of the time. The typical American diet lacks the nutrients needed to produce stomach acid, like hydrochloric acid (HCL)
• The second digestion “wrecking ball” involves the gall bladder, which generally does its job after our food passes through the stomach’s acid bath. When the food enters the duodenum, the gall bladder squirts bile onto the food. The bile is made in the liver, and the gall bladder delivers this alkaline substance onto the acid-covered food. When the bile hits the acid, there is a “sizzle” that should help digest your food. What happens to some folks is the bile becomes too thick and sticky to flow correctly. When the bile backs up, it can concentrate into gall stones–which are painful. And in the process, food is not getting digested properly, toxin build-up, the person loses nutrients—you get the picture. 

Tony has a ton of knowledge on the many subtopics surrounding digestion. You don’t want to miss what else he shares with Wade on not only digestion but a whole lot more!

You will enjoy this episode, as former standup comic T.C. Hale brings humor and fun to the serious topic of health and wellness. You will quickly notice his in-depth knowledge and talent for breaking the science down into easy-to-understand bites. Time to kick your health issues in the nuts with Tony!  

Episode Resources:
Main website: https://kickitinthenuts.com 
T.C. Hale Amazon Author Page 
T.C. Hale on Twitter
Kick It In the Nuts Facebook Page

Read The Episode Transcript:

Wade Lightheart:Good morning. Good afternoon. And good evening. It's Wade T Lightheart from BiOptimizers with another edition of the Awesome Health Podcast. And today we have a very unusual guest, a man who lost his voice for eight years and found a way to come back. But not only that today's guest, Mr. Tony Hale is a natural health and nutrition author who teaches people how to look at their unique bio-individuality to get to the root cause of a health issue. He wrote a book called kick your fat in the nuts. I love that and teaches workshops to health professionals in more than 40 countries and get this. He had a career in stand up comedy, and then on Valentine's day, 2004, Tony lost his voice and it never came back. After 23 doctors couldn't figure out the problem. Tony decided it was time to dig for his own answers. Love that attitude, eight years later, Tony figured out how to solve this himself. So he's on the executive board of the coalition for health education, a nonprofit association that helps professionals and their clients learn about health through nutrition. You can also find Tony producing documentaries, like why am I so fat? It's a great question. A film that teaches the truth about weight loss while showcasing Tony's client, Gabe Evans who lost 200 pounds in nine and a half months by treating Tony's word as gospel. So Tony, Hey, welcome to be honest, no podcast.

 T.C.Hale: Yes, Wade, what an intro, man. I can't wait to hear what I have to say. This is, this must be, this is going to be awesome. I, it seems

 Wade Lightheart: Well, first off you have something to say. I've never heard of anybody. That's lost their voice for eight years and is now on my podcast. So let's go back to that right off the bat, because, you know, oftentimes I think a lot of people re regulate like the biggest challenges in life end up becoming your biggest assets, but how the heck did that happen?

 T.C.Hale: You know, it, it, it, it took me a long kind of figured out. It turns out my shoes were on too tight. So, you know, who would have thought I was going to be, can you imagine how upset I'd be? If that was really what the situation was, but I was actually, I was in a, your neck of the woods. I was in LA and I was working as a comic. And I was even doing some personal training. Cause I, I was a touring comic in Florida and touring the whole country. And, and so all comics moved to LA. So I went out there and they were like, yeah, comics don't get paid here. Everybody just works for free, cause want to be seen. So they get a show. So we don't pay anybody here. And I was like, Oh, what I planned on eating while I was out here.

 T.C.Hale: I don't, what am I supposed to do now? So I had done some training before, so I just started doing some personal training to make money while I was in town. So I didn't have to be on the road all the time. So I was living in LA and went out to see a, the Dan band down at Hollywood and Highland with my girlfriend at the time and just lost my voice. And I had lost my voice before. No big deal. It comes back in a few days and it just, didn't just never came back. I just kept shutting up like the whole time. Wow. Doctor, after doctor medication, after medication, each one making my health a little bit worse, making me feel a little worse. I was losing all of my muscle. I starting to look like a pow and I was just like, you know what? You guys can off, but I'm going to just figure this out myself. And that's just kind of how I went about it. And so I just became a psycho, you know, cause I was, I was a comic that couldn't talk, which means that you're a mime. Yeah. Yeah.

 Wade Lightheart: I don't know anybody that wants to be a mine. Yeah. That's a tough gig. I was, I was hanging out with inadvertently with Joey Diaz and a couple of friends. I'm not friends with Joey Diaz, but he was in the room and had an opportunity to hang out with them. For those, I don't know, he's one of the Joe Rogan thinks that he's the funniest guy. He knows. And he comes on that show. He's hilarious. And he's just like, he is on the show in person. And he was telling me the LA comedy circuit. He's like, you go down to the comedy club on Tuesday nights, it's murderers role. Like he's just talking about the legends that are just at a comic store here. So I can appreciate the difficulty. I mean, if I had to go on a comedy stage like that, I'd probably tense up and lose my voice permanently.

 Wade Lightheart: So you won't see me there, but you, you talk about going psycho and which not as that's not going crazy or anything, but I think what it means is, you know, just, you know, you, you, there's a point, I think in everybody's health journey, particularly if you're overcoming a challenge that your situation where you've, you've done this circuit sort of speak, write it down, all the doctors and they've given you all the percentage changes and then the experimental techniques, and then they sit you down and it's like, well, you know, it's just looks like you're gonna, you're going to have to make some adaptations to your life. Cause there's, there's nothing that we could do. And I always encourage people is listen, just because somebody doesn't know what to do. And just because they have 50 million accreditations and they're accomplished and very good at the field doesn't mean that there isn't a solution. And that's the point where you say, you know what, I'm going to accept this and live under what these people have said, or you're going to find another way. So did you have that moment? Did you have that moment where you just kind of snapped and said, I'm done with these guys? Or what is he really wasn't? Yeah.

 T.C.Hale: And, and what I did is I just started perusing information, like just under reading, what I could and the piece of information that I found that really freaked me out was that I found I, I gained the understanding that all of the organizations that create all of the information that all of our doctors are studying from all of the medical school curriculum is created by these organizations that are funded by or founded by pharmaceutical company. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, by the way. So the people that profit the most from me being sick are the people that are teaching the doctors how to make me well. Yeah, you can, you can sign me up.

 Wade Lightheart: Most industries that's called a conflict of interest. Most

 T.C.Hale: Kind of the thing that I was like, Oh, okay, this is up to me. I got to figure this out. So I, when I say I went psycho, like I went psycho, like I was not awake if I wasn't reading or listening to some audio book or traveling somewhere in the country to go to some nutrition workshop or seminars, something like, I just became a little nuts and that's not the way you want to do it. But it was, I felt like it was my only option because I couldn't talk. I didn't like going out with friends. It was not enjoyable to me because I was funny. I wanted to be funny. I couldn't say anything. It was just more frustrating than anything. So I just became, Oh, I'll just be the psycho guy and just research nonstop. And that'll be my thing. That'd be my cool guy thing, a nut job.

 T.C.Hale: And but I, I started looking for answers and what I found was that I kept finding solutions to my friend's problems. Oh, that's why, that's why Jim sits on the toilet 12 times a day. I'll well, you know, we'll check on this and I'll, we'll look at some things, but his physiology and then he'll test it out. And then it worked and he was like, Holy mackerel. So my friends started telling their friends, Hey, you should ask Tony if he could help you with this. Right. And it wasn't until this guy emailed me. And he's like, and I had helped his friend fixes insomnia. And he's like, I'll pay you $500. If you help me fix my insomnia. And I was like 500. I was like, Oh, this is a business. That's, that's what this is. I didn't realize that's what this is. And, and I, it took me a second and I was like, you know, that's why would somebody offer to pay that?

 T.C.Hale: But, you know, it took me eight years. I would have gladly paid someone $10,000 to help me get my voice back early. And that would have saved me $90,000 and years of suffering. So that's when I started helping people and I started, I just had some weird connections from the gym. And I ended up starting to work with all these celebrities before I even had my voice back. And they would come over to my apartment. My office was, and I had these laminated index cards where I'd hold up questions for them and they just answer it like, this is what I do. And I'm just asking them questions about their health and their life and their symptoms and all this stuff. And then I would just help them through email. And I was just fixing stuff as I was still trying to figure out my own thing. So it was, it was a little weird. Wow.

 Wade Lightheart: And you know, I have a friend that runs a restaurant in Los Angeles and he started out in orange County and chef Edo and he's the silent chef. He doesn't speak. And so you learn to communicate with gestures and things like that. I think he took a vow of silence 15 years ago. He's a great chef, but like the challenges of communicating without a voice is really significant. And the fact that you're, you're, you're getting these celebrity type people you're doing like Sesame street flashcards. Like this is pretty wild already.

 T.C.Hale: Yeah. Really only in LA. And I also, I was still working in the gym training clients and didn't say a word and they were sending referrals to me. I'm like, I understand I can't talk. Right. And I'm like, I'd like, I would, I would explain to people, you know, I think they just come because they know they're not going to get yelled at. It's like the trainer who doesn't yell at ya.

 Wade Lightheart: Right. Do you have an aversion to being yelled at? There you go. Okay. So what was the, what was the TSN turning point as they say up? Cause I'm from Canada originally. So we're up there. We don't have ESPN. We have TSN. So what was the turning point that, that you were able to get your voice back?

 T.C.Hale: Well, I found out that I had this a thing called hereditary hemochromatosis, which is like an iron overload situation when your body absorbs way more iron than you need. And it it's, it gets so high that it, you know, all that metal creates inflammation. And so I had a lot of over inflammation issues. I had a hiatal hernia that was creating some reflux issues. So that's what doctors were telling me is that I had some reflux. And so I jumped on there, Hey, let's turn off digestion altogether bandwagon. And I got on the PPIs and that's shut it, shut off my digestion, but it didn't help at all. I found out later why that was and other aspects of digestion and all that kind of stuff. And that's why I was so excited to hang out with you. Cause it just seems like neither one of us have any ability whatsoever to shut up about digestion for more than five minutes at a time.

 Wade Lightheart: I'm with you on that. So what was the thing that kind of finished the, that got that got you over the top?

 T.C.Hale: Well, I ended up having to do a lot of phlebotomy therapy where I would just bleed out as much as I possibly was allowed to at a time. And that was the way

 Wade Lightheart: Really old school. Right. You know, bleed it out. Right. Yeah.

 T.C.Hale: I saw which doctor is basically what I saw now and that's just the best way to get the iron out. And once I got down to a level that it wasn't so, and I wasn't such as bucket of inflammation, then I could start, I started working on the reflux stuff and then I fixed the reflux naturally by adding more acid, not taking acid away. Yup. Got that valve to trigger to close. I learned how to fix my hiatal hernia on my own. And just, there was a little bit at a time. I was like, cause basically for years I might be able to get eight words out in a day that was like my max and I had to like, you know, budgeting than my words. And I'd say something like, man, you blew one, maybe use one of my words, come on. Right.

 Wade Lightheart: It just gradually

 T.C.Hale: Started getting better and better. And until all of a sudden I was like, Hey, wait a minute. I just, I talked all day. Whoa. That was pretty cool.

 Wade Lightheart: Wow. Amazing journey. You know, Hippocrates once said that the best physicians are not those who have been blessed with robust health, but those who have been challenged oftentimes repeatedly and, and develop the empathy and the drive to solve health problems and become good at becoming what I call a health sleuth, like figuring out all of different potentials and permutations between individuality and temperament and dietary practices. And we're, I know that you're one of those people that talk specifically about bio-individuality and determining programs or, you know, I hate to say the word treatments or whatever pathways to health that are varied. Can you talk a little bit about that in your journey as an health advocate in regards to that?

 T.C.Hale: Yeah. And it really was because as far as laryngitis type issues, all of those issues, I was, I was going to speech therapists that were a, a thousand dollars a session in LA. And I just thought that was the answer. And so what I found is that we need to figure out how to stop looking at the symptom that the person is dealing with and start looking at the person, because just about any issue that you look at it can have four or five or even 10 different underlying causes. So each person dealing with the same symptom could have a wildly different underlying cause of that symptom. So,

 Wade Lightheart: Well, this is a great point. This is like, I just want to highlight that for a second for our listeners, because we're living in this like one factor mentality. Like I want the one thing that's going to fix this, or the one strategy that's going to make me rich and famous and wealthy and healthy and, you know you know, like all these kinds of like, we we've got this kind of low resolution kind of mentality, but the push button psychology and, and you touch on something that's really, really important is that any given circumstance, particularly health is a combination of a variety of factors, not one single point.

 T.C.Hale: Right? Right. And, and for most significant issues, we find that, you know, there's not always just one underlying cause people are looking for, you know, people are building for a long time. I've just been looking for a pill. But even those who understand that, Oh, the pill is just covering up the symptom. There really is something causing this. Even those are still looking for this cause. And a lot of times it's not this cause a lot of times like let's just take obesity for example. And, and there's a lot of causes for someone to gain a large amount of weight like that. There's not just one, but let's take a really common one. And let's just say that it's, it's high insulin. That's triggering the body to store more fat and that's happening because someone's just cramming in carbs in their body all day.

 T.C.Hale: Yeah. It's easy to do, but you could look at that person and you can say, okay, the cause of his obesity is high insulin, but is it because in a lot of cases, the person has such high insulin because they have found that if they don't eat those carbs they're maniac or they're miserable, or they can't function as a human being because they, their digestion doesn't have the capacity to break down a steak or even any type of protein whatsoever. They may not be processing fats correctly at all. So if they hear, Oh, I should eat real food. I shouldn't be eating all this junk. So I'm going to do that. And so they go and they get a chicken breast and they get some broccoli and it sits in their stomach for about six hours. And it's like a rock and they have no energy because their body can't pull fuel out of that food.

 T.C.Hale: It doesn't have the ability to break it down, but to put a Pop-Tart in there, a Pop-Tart is practically broken down. But as before it comes out of the package, so they can break that down and turn into a fuel and they can function as a human being for at least a little while. So they're, they're hearing all the right information, but when they try to do it, they fail because their body's not set up to do it. So my biggest thing is that there's just, there is no diet that's right. For every person, because we're all processing things differently.

 Wade Lightheart: You know, my co-founder and I talk about this loss, he's a ketogenic guy and I'm a plant base guy. I always say, he's a carnivore and I'm a carb of war. Yeah. You guys are good match. Yeah. And people go, well, how is it possible that you guys run the same company? And we are, I always say dietary agnostic, like choose the diet that works for you at this season. And with your goals in mind, at this point in life, but retain, retain enough flexibility that you can make the adjustments as you move forward without getting yourself caught in, you know, the diet Wars as I like to illustrate them. I'm, you know, like you'll walk into the health show and it's like, are you keto? Or are you paleo? And my favorite was when I was in the raw food movement, I did Ralph food for exclusively, for two years. They used to come in and they go, what percentage of raw as if, you know, like, we don't want to share a bad state and we don't, we don't like your kind of 85% around here. You know, it's like,

 Speaker 4: Are you kidding me? Like, you're just like, like, is your identity so wrapped up, whether you're having potatoes or pork chops, you've got to like, you know, Hey, it's not safe to talk to someone that eats another type of food. That's a, that that's pretty,

 Wade Lightheart: Pretty good advice from you and talking about the multitude of things. So before you go on

 T.C.Hale: And did you guys work is because you're both still doing the same goal and you're helping a starving society. You're helping people that are so starved at the cellular level that it's begun to create what we call disease and malfunction and symptoms and issues and mental. And I want to lie on my bed in the fetal position and cry at the episode of Brady bunch and all those problems that people deal with. So many of them just come from starving at the cellular level. And so it doesn't matter if somebody is just gonna eat a cow or they're just going to mow the lawn and put that in the blender and drink it. If you can help somebody actually get some nutrients into their body and give the body what it needs, then all of a sudden, a lot of things can improve.

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah. The starving and polluting cycle. I call it.

 T.C.Hale: Yeah. That's a good name. As a matter of fact, next time I say that I'm going to give you credit, but like after two or three more times, I'll just use it as mine.

 Wade Lightheart: It is three times and then you own it. Right. Right. And then it's like, I heard it somewhere. My research has turned up and God blessed. All the people that I have adapted their philosophy is, and I'm a big advocate of recalling and sharing that information when I can remember it. But sometimes it gets so old. You start to forget where you learn stuff. So everything is well, there's nothing new under the sun is there, it's just discovering.

 T.C.Hale: Yeah. It's just rediscovery. And I knew that I needed to teach other people this, it was a day that someone asked me something and then I just spewed off all this information for about 10 minutes. And I was like, where did, where did that come from? I don't even, I don't even know how I knew that. I didn't even know that I knew that it's so true.

 Wade Lightheart: That's the beauty of when you kind of get an integrated level of a variety of knowledges, these things just kind of come out all on their own. It's quite miraculous to watch. So talk about I want to talk a little bit about your book, kick fat in the nuts, make you fat and kick your fat in the nuts. That is the best book title I think I've ever heard. That's great. Tell me, how did you come, go? How did you come to that title? And what's the,

 T.C.Hale: Well, the first that wasn't even the first book I wrote, that was just the series that I wanted to write. I wanted to help people kick different things and just heal them naturally. And what happened is I, there was this girl that had menstrual cramps to the point where she could not work. She couldn't get out of bed. She couldn't turn the light on without it creating some horrible migraine, it would break her for a week and a half to two weeks, every single month. So she came by and I helped her fix it within a month. And all of a sudden 30 girls show up with their menstrual cramps. Like, Hey, I hear you're the guy that helps the menstrual cramps. So my first book was actually kicked menstrual cramps in the nuts. And I, I was a guy and it was like, well, I, I never get menstrual cramps.

 T.C.Hale: So I must know what I'm talking about and here's how you do it. So then that's when I did the weight loss book next. But basically what we do is this is we help people understand that this whole, you know, low fat, low carb, high fat vegetarian, vegan, all these things you, it's so easy to see your friend do great on one and think, Oh, that's what I should do. And Oh, I did it. And I'm 20 pounds heavier now. So common, so common. And so what we try to do is we try to break that mentality of that. It's about calories in calories out because that formula works great. If everybody was a Petri dish in a laboratory. And those foods that had those calorie contents were the same in each person. But you know, when one person eats a steak with this amount of calories, if he can't break that steak down and access any of those nutrients in there, then there's the calories don't really count for fuel or what the body can use instead that steak rots and for merits and creates toxins and all these gasses and, and the body has to try to figure out how to get rid of it.

 T.C.Hale: It becomes a burden instead of becoming fuel. And so we teach people how to look at their physiology and we're just having them run simple self tests that they can do at home. Just to get a picture of what's going on. You know, none of this stuff is diagnostic, but if you can get an idea of do I process carbs better than fats, or do I process fats better? Can, can I even digest chicken at all? Can I, can I take protein and turn it into amino acids, which is what my body needs, because your body can't do anything with a peanut butter sandwich. It's got to, it's got to turn that into vitamins and minerals and amino acids. And co-factors that wouldn't even know what these things it's got to break it down. And then it can use that stuff. If, if the peanut butter sandwich isn't getting broken down and I'm not telling people to eat a peanut butter sandwich, that's just a fun analogy to say, but if a body, if, if a peanut butter sandwich can't break down and it gets into the system, then your body's like, well, what is that?

 T.C.Hale: That's, I don't even know what that is. Let's sound the alarms and that's going to be our enemy, and we're going to, we're going to attack that. So it's gotta, you gotta be able to break it down and then you have to be able to process those types of foods. If a person has insulin resistance and they can't even process carbohydrates correctly, then do they really need to be eating all these carbohydrates tonight? It's just becoming a burden. So we really got to look at the person. And then when we look at the person, then we can figure out the diet that will work best for them now. And we can also help them correct imbalances that may be restricting their ability to process certain types of foods or correct malfunctions in guide gestion hello that will allow them to then consume and, and succeed on a wider variety of,

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah, that's one of the things that we've learned over the years is oftentimes the early part of the journey. When, you know, people, you generally show up when they've already compromised and are there you know, not in the condition they want or there's a health challenge. And then oftentimes they start out on a relatively restrictive program to get them going. And then as their health and their digestion, and these things start to improve. All of a sudden they're able to open up the range. And I always say that great health is not achieved through continuous restriction. There may be a period of that, but when you activate your robust levels of health, that all of a sudden your range of choices happen, and the consequences of those choices, choices are reduced because your capabilities of handling the stress of digestion, the stress of life increases not decreases. And I've mastered restriction. You're looking at a guy that was a bodybuilding champion, which is right now, eight, five things for 11 straight months, at one point in time, you know, just insane levels of, of, of restriction, which had consequences later on, which led me to digestion. So wha what's your opinion on, you know, people's digestive situation and how that impacts their, their ability to process diets, their health, their overall wellbeing, which what's been your observations. Yeah,

 T.C.Hale: You might, you might be, sorry, you asked that question. You could probably go do some laundry and come back and I'll still be blabbing about it. But the big thing is, is that, is this, this, we have to understand that people are dealing with these digestive symptoms and the symptoms are so common that people just feel like, Oh, that's just the way it is. You know, my mom was constipated, so I'm constipated. And that's just, those are the cards that I was dealt and that's just how it goes. And they go to the doctor and then they're like, Hey I pooped in August and, and that's been it. And the doctor's like, well, you know, some people just poop less and that's just how it goes. This was, this blows me away. And I'm like, that's what your doctor's telling you. Cause that's

 Speaker 5: All, he's, that's the last time he took a crap,

 T.C.Hale: Right? Yeah. And that's all, and that's all that he, you know, understands and such. And I'm like, why don't you tell your doctor, Hey, some people just have a rectal dysfunction and that's just how it goes and see how he feels about that. But, you know, the, the reality is that we're supposed to poop. We're supposed to poop like champions and people are like, well, everybody's bloated. You know, everybody has acid reflux, acid reflux is a billion multi-billion dollar industry and it's going on. So when people have those issues, they just think that that's, that's how it is. But the reality is that those symptoms are trying to tell you what's going wrong. And when you can fix them, a whole lot of stuff can, can change in a big way. So there's a lot of aspects of digestion. There's a lot of things that go on and like, you could probably list 40 of them on your own.

 T.C.Hale: But the main things that we like people to look at first and foremost, and, and we do make sure that everybody understands about enzymes and the fact that you know, the, our food is not what it was. We don't have food anymore. We there's been studies that have shown that the, the cardboard box gave a person more nutrition than what was in the cardboard box. And like literally showed that they did better with the box. So the farming is despicable. We've broken a lot of things. So we had this two-sided issue going on where the food that we're eating does not contain the nutrients that it did 6,800 years ago. It's just not there. So we're getting less nutrients there. But then we had this other side that a lot of people don't really know about. And it's the fact that if you don't have digestion working in a way that you can release the nutrients in that food, then you're not breaking down very much of that food.

 T.C.Hale: So you have a food with no nutrients in it. And then you have a person who can't really pull very many of the nutrients that are in there out of it. Anyways, they're getting nothing. They're getting ripped off. And the body's like, well, that's fine. I have backup things that I can do. I'm going to, I'm going to fit. I'm going to work this out. You're not gonna die on Thursday. Like you really should. According to the amount of nutrients that are coming in, you should be dead Thursday, but I'm going to take care of you. Cause I have backup plans and I can pull nutrients. Now I'll just pull them out of your organs. I'll break this Oregon tissue down and I'll turn that into the nutrients that I need. I'm going to take this muscle tissue, this connective tissue. You're not going to die Thursday. If I use this, I'm going to break this stuff down because the body's going to get what it needs. But the problem is that these backup plans, they create symptoms and things that we call disease and issues that we deal with and in malfunctions and, and, and that, that can be a really big deal. So should we hear about the decides of digestion? Sure.

 Wade Lightheart: I want to extrapolate one thing off that for a second. Cause it's kind of streaming in and I like to go there. And do you feel as a personal observation and being in this industry that a lot of the physiological and I would say psychological frailty of the population at large today is a direct correlation to extreme nutrient deficiency passed on generationally possibly as well.

 T.C.Hale: Well, you asked me if, if I feel that way and like you wait is his Wade's fancy and he's like legit. But when your background is a stand-up comic, you don't have any credentials. You can say whatever you want. So I'm telling you that I don't feel like nutrient deficiency creates a lot of these emotional issues. I know that it does. I watch it happen. I've had clients in front of my face who were diagnosed with schizophrenia and I've watched them become schizophrenia in front of me. And it's unbelievable. And then you change some things to allow their brain, to get the fuel that it needs to function. It's a different human being. They even like there, they look different. Like they're, they just look different and it's, it's unbelievable. But one of the biggest things is that, you know, the minerals are lacking in the food and then we can't break the food down.

 T.C.Hale: And the problem is that it's minerals in the system that allow the signals to travel through, like from your body, to your brain and from your brain back to your body. Like if you, you put, you throw a toaster in a bathtub and it's going to shock you. You're not, you're going to be like, that was a horrible bath because you're going to get shocked because that current travels through all the minerals that are in that water. Yes. If you put it in distilled water where there's nothing in there, then it doesn't travel. I don't want you to try it.

 Wade Lightheart: It's at home, by the way, don't believe warning. Do not try this at home. Forget the toaster example, just eat the pop tart

 T.C.Hale: Better off. So these minerals are needed and when they're not there, the signals fall off and then we feel depressed. We've we're anxious because the body can't function like it wants to. And we experienced the body's anxiety in our own. So that there's other causes of anxiety. I, I don't want you to think that's the only one. But we teach people when you look at things like just that blood pressure and that's something that everybody understands is a real thing. And we look their blood pressure. And everybody knows that when blood pressure is high, that that's a bad thing that you're, you're going to have a blowout. You're going to get flat tires and you know, you're gonna, you're gonna have a heart attack or stroke. It's going to be a blowout. But when they go to the doctor and their blood pressure is 98, over 70, the doctor's like, Hey, great job.

 T.C.Hale: You're not going to have a up that's you're doing a great job and keep up the great work. And they're like, yeah, but I, I don't ever want to get off the couch. Not ever. And they don't understand that. Yes, they're not going to have a blowout, but is it any fun running around on flat tires all day? And our blood pressure can just give us a lot more information then do I need to be given a blood pressure, lowering drug for the rest of my life. There's a lot more information in that number than just that

 Wade Lightheart: Whole science in India of these guys that read your pulse and can tell your whole health by your pulse.

 T.C.Hale: Right. I can tell you a lot of other things that you might not even know by your pulse. Like sometimes I could, we have to get into some weeds,

 Wade Lightheart: Hey man, let's go there because I think this is a really interesting thing. People just say, Hey, I put the cuff on I'm one 20 over 70 or whatever, and that side, and they don't think anything about it.

 T.C.Hale: Okay. So first, but we got a good judge yesterday because we're going to get away from it, then we're going to call it. Right.

 Wade Lightheart: Right. So we were jumping all around saying, thank you, cookies down point. I'm having so much fun. Right, right.

 T.C.Hale: Okay. So first of all, we eat food and Ms. Things that happen in our mouth with enzymes and all this kind of stuff, but I'm just going to talk about the two main things of digestion that most often malfunction and go wrong and wreck a person. So we're supposed to eat this food. And when we do, we make hydrochloric acid in our stomach, the body does that and says, Hey, I'm going to start breaking this down. Especially protein. It really needs that HCL that we call it that's stomach acid. And then once that food is properly acidified, it leaves the stomach and goes into the duodenum, which is like the first 10 inches of the small intestine there. And in that point, the gallbladder squeezes, what we call bile down onto that acid product that leaves the stomach. And this bile is like a soapy alkaline substance it's made in the liver.

 T.C.Hale: And then the liver puts it down in his stores, in the gallbladder and concentrates it there until it's ready to be squeezed down on this acid product that leaves the stomach. So what this does is it's an alkaline product meeting an asset product, and it creates like this explosion. It's like a sizzle. It's what breaks the food apart so that we can pull all the nutrients out. It's like that the science fair project that you didn't eighth grade, where you had the baking soda and the vinegar and it all in, Oh, look at how cool it is it fizzles up and give him a name. He's brilliant. That's kind of, what's going on. There's this sizzle going on with these opposite pH substances together. And that's what allows us to break apart our food. And that's great. And then as it moves through the intestinal track at an appropriate pace, then the, the, the intestines, can we absorb all those nutrients as it's moving through everything, we get to use those nutrients.

 T.C.Hale: It's awesome. It's amazing. So what happens is a lot of people aren't making enough stomach acid for a lot of different reasons. You don't have to take a PPI drug to turn off your stomach acid, the stomach acid, to make it, the body needs nutrients to make this and these chloride to make hydrochloric acid. We gotta have zinc. We've gotta have all this other stuff to make that hydrochloric acid. So if you don't have enough minerals in your system to make that, then you can't break down your food to pull more minerals out and you get stuck in this cycle for decades and you get kind of broken. So the other side of that is the bile flow for a lot of reasons that bile can become too thick and sticky to flow correctly. And it gets kind of held up in the gallbladder and remember the gallbladder's there to concentrate it.

 T.C.Hale: So it just keeps concentrating it. And if it doesn't flow out of there, it concentrates it into stones. Have you ever heard of anybody that had gallstones before? So when this is happening, the bile is not moving, which means it doesn't come down and meet the acid product, leaving the stomach. So this is a problem for a lot of reasons. That means that you don't get that sizzle. You can't really break apart the food, but now you also have this acid product going through your intestinal track. Well, guess what? That acid was made to break down protein, guess what your intestinal track is made out of its proteins. So a person starts breaking down their intestinal track, and the body's like, well, we can't have this, get this out of here. And it brings all the water and, and you come your diarrhea you're lifted off the toilet, like a rocket because it comes out so fast. And so we get these chronic diarrhea issues because the bile is not there to neutralize the acids and make it up a substance that can move through it and appropriate pace. So if a person either is not making enough hydrochloric acid or the bile is not flowing correctly, they have a hard time really getting all the nutrients out of this food. They're eating that doesn't have a lot of nutrients in the first place

 Wade Lightheart: Beautifully said beautifully said. So, so we, we kind of, we've got digestion kind of worked out on that side of things. And let's, let's, let's talk about, we kind of were diving into deficiencies and psychological frailty going back to orthomolecular psychiatry, which was developed by Dr. Linus Pauling, Dr. Abraham Hoffer and Dr. David Hawkins back in the seventies, they started treating people with schizophrenia, with super physiological of nutrients. And the whole industry was up in arms and they were attacked viciously, oftentimes because of the interest of pharmaceuticals, which are used wide and wide variants. And Dr. Hawkins a in a, in a lecture, I attended one time talked about how oftentimes he would use medication to stabilize the person and then start doing nutrients in combination with the counseling to, to reverse the most severe cases and had an extraordinary success rate that orthomolecular nutrition then started to branch into other areas, which is now considered alternative medicine, as opposed to conventional medicine, which conventional medicine, which sounds like something that's been around for a long time. Really hasn't been around a long time. And the other forms of medic medicine, I would say, or healing methodologies or health optimization technologies have been around oftentimes for thousands of years or centuries even. And what's your, what's your whole take on that whole?

 T.C.Hale: I just came up with a definition of alternative medicine and it's happening right here on the awesome health podcast. I'm I I'm premiering this right here with you. Here's the definition of alternative health. You can't legally patent a natural substance, so you can't patent the solution and make billions from it that's alternative health. Yes. So that's the problem because we have this machine that's been in motion for a really, really long time. And the machine can't function without that new products that are gonna make billions, there's all these things that are expensive and they're all in place. And if we stopped that and we fixed people with elephant and Eileen, or, you know what I mean, amino acids or some kind of, you know, vitamin C I've had clients that canceled, canceled open-heart surgery because of the score Vic acid form of vitamin C.

 T.C.Hale: That's a different story, but you know what I'm saying? You can't patent that and make billions. So if you, if you try to use natural solutions, you break the machine and a lot of people's livelihoods and they can't be their families anymore. And so it's never going to be broken it's here. It's not going anywhere. And then there's also people who, wow, no, that, that sounds like that's going to take some work. I don't want to do that. If I can take a pill, I might do it. But otherwise I'm just going to deal with this symptom or whatever the problem is. So there's people who, who are going to benefit from that structure. So it's here. It's not going anywhere.

 Wade Lightheart: This is another thing that I find interesting is this, and you kind of touched on it a little bit in this, this whole I don't want to think about it. I don't want to worry about it. I just want to delay it, whatever. I just want to take a pill and forget about it. Like, how has that impacted? I would say clients psychology or their willingness to do what's necessary in order to reverse oftentimes decades of dysfunctional behavior, whether that was unintended or just simply out of negligence. How do you, how do you deal that? Like, is, is that a challenge when your clients come to you and you're like, Hey, you need to do this, this, this, this, and this. We're going to start to hear like, what's that process for you? And how do you overcome that?

 T.C.Hale: Well, the biggest thing is that a lot of times a person has to get what we call beat up a little bit, because they have a mentality that they'll come to a natural practitioner and they'll use a natural supplement. And I'm like, look, I took this supplement like three hours ago. And every symptom that I've had for the last 30 years has not vanished yet. So you, I think you might be a quack and yeah, because pharmaceutical medications are incredibly powerful and they work to get rid of a symptom. They don't work to correct the underlying cause. And you know, I've even heard you say that that's, you know, they tell us that they

 Wade Lightheart: Straight out of the straight out of the new England journal of medicine says we are not in the curing business. We treat the symptoms of disease. And this is one of the reasons why all of us cannot say that we can cure or diagnose or anything else, you know, anything that is influenced. So we've been under kind of like quote unquote compelled speech from federal regulation agencies in the health industry, virtually my whole career. And it's an extreme disservice to the world and we're attacked mercilessly. And, and some of it is warranted. Albeit I don't think you should be running around and saying, Hey, I've got the, you know, the miracle herb that just, you know, you know, fixes stupidity or something, but God, boy, we need bad

 T.C.Hale: Chuckle out of that right now. Yeah.

 Wade Lightheart: But, but the reality is, is, is I also feel that that we've kind of swung so far that people are even skeptical, that they can reverse debilitating conditions with, with the guidance of a, of a good health practitioner and, and some, and some solid practices in their life with some nutrient load.

 T.C.Hale: Right. And, and one thing that's really big with what you're saying is that this could eventually change. If more people started looking at the person instead of the symptom, because a lot of these people that are skeptical have tried things and they say, and they saw these testimonials that, Oh, it worked. They saw even from their friends that, Oh, it worked, but when they tried it, it didn't work because it wasn't addressing the underlying cause of that symptom for them. So then they become more and more skeptical. But the problem is that a drug can really turn some things around in three or four hours. It can make a symptom go away when take a PPI that turns off stomach acid. You're not, you're still getting reflux, but there's no acid there. So you don't feel it. And the problem that you had with it was that you didn't like the way that fell.

 T.C.Hale: It hurt. That was very painful. You wanted that to stop. And when you took this drug, it did right away. So when people go to a natural world, they think that that's supposed to happen in the same four hour period. And it just doesn't, but here's where it gets better. It gets better when someone has been beat up, like I was for a long time through a lot of doctors and, and it got worse and worse and worse, and everything made me worse. Nothing made me better. When they get beat up like that, then there are a lot more likely to listen. And it's a shame that a lot of people will have to suffer for a long time before they're ready to listen, but that's just how it is. And if you're a practitioner, you don't, you can't kill yourself trying to get everybody to listen.

 T.C.Hale: It's, it's gotta be their time. You know, they, they, for a lot of issues, the person really needs to be a participant in correcting that. And if someone's, you know, kicking and screaming the whole way in, they're not gonna do it. And even if they did the right things, their mental place could be creating other problems. That's just not going to allow it to do it. So sometimes you got to allow people to find their own time when they're ready. But what I've also found is when you can explain what's actually going on and when what's going on, makes sense then, Oh, well that maybe I will try that. Maybe that does make sense. Maybe we need to talk about that a little bit with the with the pulse thing.

 Wade Lightheart: Beautiful. you have you're, you're an executive on the board, the coalition for health education. And I can, it's obvious that your advocacy for health advocacy education is, is, is both personal and professional nature. Can you, can you talk about what the goals and, and, and mandate of, of that you have your work in that area is for, and why that's so important in today's world?

 T.C.Hale: Well, that organization is a private organization. And so what we do is we just help them create systems that make it easier for them to educate their clients. We create systems that make it easier for them to monitor the physiology of their clients. Cause we teach the client how to run these tests at home, which is really great because when there's something going wrong physiologically, and a person wants to see a symptom improve, they'll be given steps to take and they'll take those steps and maybe the symptoms haven't improved yet. But when you can see that the physiology is moving in the right direction, then they're like, Oh, what's up things happen. I'm, I'm going to put more effort into this. I'm going to do this longer. Since I haven't had the symptom stop, I probably would have quit. But since I can see that I have the ability to change the way that my body is functioning and the way that I'm seeing my physiology represented in these tasks, then I'll do some more work. So we help practitioners teach their clients how to do that. And we set up systems that help them monitor the changes cause they can just put their test results in these little graphs and just kind of watch what happens.

 Wade Lightheart: So beautiful. What are you what are you most passionate about where what's, what's, where's your career taking you right now and, and what's going on in Tony's world at this moment?

 T.C.Hale: Well, I've always been a big in weight loss just because that hits me personally, my mom died of obesity and I was I studied nutrition for a long time. At that point. I really thought I knew what I was talking about, but I was, I knew the mainstream information in that that information was not good. So I, I can see the same suffering that my mom had and a lot of people that come to me that are dealing with obesity and I've been able to help some people really have a new life that, and be, and be an unrecognizable person with the way that they lose that weight. And so that's really rewarding. But now I, I've been seeing a lot of of the mental and emotional issues and helping people improve those circumstances can be just as good because a lot of times they're dealing with this inside and they don't, they don't always get to show. It's not like being obese where everybody knows you're obese and they're understanding about it. If you're horribly depressed or you're bipolar, or you have this terrorizing anxiety crippling your life. A lot of times everybody doesn't know that and you're kind of going it alone. And when you can help somebody understand why that anxiety exists or why that depression is there sometimes in sometimes it's not what ha you know, if you can help somebody understand what's going on and then the steps that can really turn it around. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable.

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah, Matt and I both we, we cut our teeth and the personal training and nutritional counseling industry for a long, long, long time ago. And by optimizers became an extension of that mission because we, we both got addicted to helping people feel better in recapture and then, you know, optimize their health and hit new levels. And we've been on that journey. It's, it's super addictive and super fun when you can reach out and connect with other people and help them move on your way. Can you share with people where you can be reached and how they can find out more about what you're doing, or maybe contract you for your services or any of that sort of stuff. Can you share that with our listeners? Yeah.

 T.C.Hale: If you, if you want to read my book, kick your fat in the nuts for free, it will kind of walk you through how to do all those self tests. And people improve a lot of issues with that book beyond weight loss, just because it teaches you how to look at your physiology and, and your listeners could get it [email protected] slash book. And they'll just get you the whole book and you can download however you want to have. You want to read it, but that's my main site is kick it naturally.com. And I have a podcast under the same name. Pretty soon I'm going to have this brilliant guest. He's like a genius Wade, something or other. So you'll have to check that out when he's on the show. But that's probably the best place where people can find me.

 Wade Lightheart: Well, there you have it folks Mr. Tony Hale the man that figured out how to kick your fat in the nuts and has produced an extraordinary documentary called why am I so fat? So if you're struggling with that, or you're looking to take your health and understand individuality of your health, he's your man. Thank you for joining us today. It's really been great having you on board and

 T.C.Hale: Wait, I appreciate you having me here. It was really a lot of fun and I want to make sure you know, that the movie's not out yet. People were going to be digging for that for hours and not find it, but so just stay tuned on that one.

 Wade Lightheart: Okay. So make sure you go to his website, follow up for updates, get the links and all that sort of stuff. That way, when it comes out, you'll be one of the first to hear it. I know it's going to be a great one and I want to thank you for joining us today and for all our listeners out there in BiOptimizers world. It's another great episode. We'll see you on the next one, take care and make sure that you nutrify your life because your life is worth it. Thanks so much for joining us. See ya.