Wildland Firefighting and the Importance of Nutrition, Stress Management, and Overall Health, Fitness, & Wellness:

Scott Mulvaney and Jesse Thomas discuss their backgrounds in wildland firefighting and their transition to health coaching. Jesse emphasizes the importance of sustainable wellness, linking nutrition to environmental impact. They highlight the challenges of maintaining health in high-stress environments like firefighting, advocating for nutrient-dense food and avoiding toxins like glyphosate. Jesse shares her experiences with physical fitness and nutrition, stressing the need for long-term lifestyle changes over short-term diets. They also touch on the broader impact of environmental toxins on human health and the importance of local, sustainable practices in agriculture and wellness. Scott Mulvaney and Speaker 1 discuss their shared passion for health and fitness, emphasizing the importance of nutrition over exercise. They criticize the use of creatine and whey protein, citing their dubious benefits and high costs. Scott shares his experience with the carnivore diet, highlighting the balance between methionine and glycine. They also discuss the mental health challenges faced by firefighters, including addiction and suicide, and the importance of diet and lifestyle interventions. Scott's charity, Field Foundations, provides high-quality boots to firefighters, having donated 11 pairs so far. They both stress the need for personal accountability and sustainable wellness practices. Scott Mulvaney and his guest co-host discussed the importance of personal responsibility in health and wellness. Scott shared a story about a fellow athlete who faced significant challenges but never gave up. The guest emphasized the significance of aligning with one's heart and passions, and the responsibility to oneself and future generations. They highlighted the role of foundational health and wellness in achieving personal and societal goals. Scott concluded by thanking the guest for his contributions to the wellness community and encouraging listeners to prioritize their health and legacy.

Quote: “We are the agents for change in our internal ecosystems and the ecosystems in the world around us. We aren’t separate. It’s time to stack the deck in favor of both.”

Your Co-Host Today:

Jessie Thomas, owner of Sustainable Wellness, a health consulting business dedicated to helping people achieve better foundational health through nutrition and lifestyle. After 15 years as a wildland firefighter in region 1 and 4, I pivoted and went back to my roots in nutrition to start a health coaching business.

Outside of fire, I have a background in ultra running, nordic and alpine skiing. I am now raising kids with my smokejumper husband, Jake Besmer. Presently, I work with clients 1 on 1 and with groups of people interested in learning more about how nutrition and lifestyle can improve health outcomes and make their experiences as productive as possible.

Today’s Top 3 Takeaways:

The connection between Nutrition and Environmental impact.
Challenges in the Health and Wellness Industry
Environmental Toxins, for example, the negative impacts of glyphosate.

Today’s Guest Co-Host Links:

https://www.sustainablewellness.net
Instagram: @sustainablewellness

Watch us on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/psCgwJdNxzc

Timestamped Show Notes:

17:40 – So your eyes picked up on that, you had the senses that picked out that. I think that's the thing, is when people are buying crapola from Costco, and they don't really actually know what low quality food is. When you don't have the experience of knowing what real nutrient dense food looks and it feels like your senses are completely turned off.

22:25 – That is an important point when you're in Fire and you've got those store stops that may be in a Walmart, or they may be in some rural Montana, Idaho, Nevada, California, environment where you're subjected to whatever is available. Eggs are always going to be more nutrient dense than Hot Pockets. Eggs are a Superfood.

25:25 – The government just ensures basic food safety. Those are huge food sourcing contracts that go to the lowest bidder, and they can get around all kinds of logical things about bringing in actual good food by quoting food safety laws. So they're like, oh, we've got to make it shelf stable, otherwise people are going to die of food poisoning. What are those chances?

49:44 – Ben Lynch is the doctor, he's the one that wrote the book Dirty Genes, where I learned about that genetic marker regarding patients with gray hair.

50:35 – I didn't know anything when I started, and then I started to feel like, oh, you know, things could be better. Just before I did fire, I worked for a woman who was a physician. She quit her medical practice to open up a business. She opened up a restaurant that was all about using nutrition to support people with chronic health conditions. Impacting areas like Cancer, it was so amazing. So this is like in the late 90s, when the Institute for Functional Medicine was just starting. So we were really lucky, because we got to work there, and we got to have people come in and talk to us about inflammation, which at the time was as evolved as a conversation could possibly be, and now it's evolving.

01:10:15 – It's a lot of people in fire, I think, you and I have a very dopamine dominant brain type. So they love that high energy input, those kind of big exposures, those big experiences, to keep them up, up, up. Then, once it's over, those inputs are gone and they're left to their own devices. So what do you do in that situation? Will you drink because you're still trying to get so much? I think you know, when you understand certain mechanisms about mental health and how to support it using just diet and lifestyle interventions that are really specific to somebody in that lifestyle, then you really have a different outcome and a different experience. I put on a webinar this last I guess it would be spring, where I was talking about the foundations of mental health, using nutritional considerations for firefighters. It was great. It was well attended.

01:22:10 – Final Words

Our Final Words of the Show:

So emotional regulation, the children just lacked so many things that will just contribute to their ability to function in society. You can see that on them still, like they're going through grades, and they're just like, kids that are just groups of kids that are just fucked up, or total fucking assholes, and it's just like, we did this. We did this. People just went along with it and they were like, it's for public health. So I started arguing with the school board and medical providers in the community, because I'm like, you guys got to show me some information. I mean, doing a simple study on do masks work or not? That's not hard, because there were schools everywhere else that were not wearing masks, and did they have worse outbreaks?

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Wildland Fire & Sustainable Wellness with Jessie Thomas