← The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 658: Helping Others Find Their Second Chance | Dr. Sina McCullough, Beyond Labels
00:55:23
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- [00:02]
Commercial Narrator
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Jenny Ayrton
Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast.
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Podcast Host
My name is Jenny Ayrton, the founder.
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Jenny Ayrton
Of 1000 Hours Outside, and I have had the gift of getting connected with Dr. Cena McCullough. She runs a podcast with my favorite farmer, Joel Salatin. It's called the Beyond Labels Podcast. And they wrote a book together called Beyond Labels. A Doctor and a Farmer Conquer food confusion One bite at a time. She has a YouTube channel that is brand new, the Dr. Cena McCauley YouTube channel, where you can learn about health made simple. Dr. Cena, thank you for being here.
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Dr. Cena McCullough
Oh, thank you so much for having me. I wish we lived closer. I think we'd be BFFs, like. Yes, yes.
- [01:00]
Jenny Ayrton
Okay. You have got a tremendous story, and I learned about it in this book, book Beyond Labels, which is a fantastic book. It is a book that's written in conversational format, and I loved it. It was like a page turner for me. And I learned about your background, so you come together with Joel. He's a farmer, you know, and he jokes around about how people expect him to be in overalls all the time and, like, he'll wear a suit. And I'm like, why? What are you doing? You know? And so it's just such a great pairing to have this sort of farmer knowledge out in the field connecting with you as a doctor. But you have this interesting story where you get this PhD in nutrition at the same time you're having struggles with your health. So it's kind of ironic. You talked about. It was really a lot of things starting in your 30s, rheumatoid arthritis, and you had MRSA and sinus infections and chronic fatigue and hair loss and miscarriages and a tumor in the white of your eye and food sensitivities and kidney stones.
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Dr. Cena McCullough
Yeah, that's a lot.
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Jenny Ayrton
And you were able to turn your health around. So give us, you know, your story. Here is a tremendous story of hope that there are answers, even if, I mean, in those kind of situations, you think there probably aren't any answers for me. You say you're just lying on the floor in pain most of the time.
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Dr. Cena McCullough
Yes, it was truly the rock bottom portion of my entire life. But now that it's behind me. It is absolutely one of the biggest blessings that God has ever given to me. At the time though, it was very isolating. It was very lonely. This was well over a decade ago. Now there's a lot of people sharing a similar story as mine, so you can look online and find their success stories and model after them and feel like you're connected, like it's not just you. Back then we didn't have all these people that were speaking openly about these issues. So what I relied on in large part was the western medical system. I was in that system for over 20 years and it was very devastating and depressing and it was not filled with hope at all for me. I sought help from medical Doctors for over 20 years. And I mean actively seeking help. I saw so many specialists over that 20 years, had so many tests done, I lost count. I had numerous blood tests, urine tests, fecal tests, breath tests. I had three colonoscopies, two sigmoidoscopies. I even had exploratory surgery at one point because nobody could figure out what was happening, you know, and, and my symptoms started, it's something that seemed pretty benign. It was just gastrointestinal issues. And they labeled me with irritable bowel syndrome, ibs, which is just a catch all group saying they don't know what the root cause is. And it progressively got worse and worse. And like you said, it developed into all sorts of symptoms like nausea, brain fog. I had chronic sinus infection. So like every six weeks I was getting another sinus infection. Their solution was just another antibiotic. And then eventually they wanted me on steroids, you know, the kidney stones, the tumor. The worst was the miscarriages and just numerous food sensitivities. At the rock bottom, my list of foods I could eat was a half a sheet of paper, right? So I became sensitive to so many things, chemical sensitivities, EMF sensitivities. And this whole time, mind you, I'm seeking help from the system and my husband and I were acting as co detectives together we were scouring the scientific literature, we were trying to figure out, figure this out. Because as western medicine wasn't having any answers, we realized it was going to be up to us if I had any chance of healing. And then finally what happened is the last specialist that I saw told me that the symptoms actually had to be in my head because all of the tests they were running were negative, right? Or I was maybe borderline for something. And I didn't know about functional testing at the time. I was relying on the Western test. So I did not know how archaic many of those tests are. So I got sicker and sicker over time, as I said, more and more food sensitivities. And this was also during a time when I was making everything from scratch. Like, we didn't eat out at all.
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Jenny Ayrton
Wow.
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Dr. Cena McCullough
Everything was from scratch. Everything was organic or grown from one of my friends, you know, like grown from a local farmer. And I still just kept going downhill. My tipping point was when everybody in my family got sick with the flu and they got over it pretty quickly. And I ended up in the emergency room. And after that, I spiraled downhill. That's where I literally reached the point where I could not wrap my hand around a cup. Like, it was so painful to do that. It hurt every time I breathed. When I inhaled, it felt like my ribs were going to break. When I chewed food, it felt like my teeth were going to fall out. And at this point, I experienced muscle wasting like a cancer patient can experience. So, Jenny, I was eating almost constantly. I would put salt, like real salt on avocado and scoop it out and eat it straight just to get fat, to try to keep, you know, weight on. But I would lose, like, I was one month, I lost 15 pounds. It was uncontrollable weight loss just because I was experiencing muscle wasting. That was at the point where I got really, really scared. And we knew that if we couldn't turn this around, I basically wasn't going to live to see my kids grow up. Well, even though it was, like over a decade ago, it's still. Still when. When I talk about it, it just. It's raw. It brings it back. You know, it was a very scary point to think that this medical establishment that I was raised to believe in, that you had a problem, you can go there, and they would solve it for you to realize that that's not actually what it's designed to do. You know, it's. It is designed for emergency care, acute care, and the Western system is fantastic with acute care, you know, you get shot. I mean, you know, I'm not going to be looking up in my herb book and her. That's right. I'm going to go to the er.
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Jenny Ayrton
I'm not calling my midwife.
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Dr. Cena McCullough
That's right. So they're fantastic at things like that, but they're not designed to help us with these chronic conditions. And I found that out the hard way. So at that point, when I was experiencing the muscle wasting, that was the first time when I thought, oh, my goodness, like, this is it. Like, if we can't stop this, there's nothing we can do. And my husband realized the same thing. And at that point, I just surrendered to God and I asked him. I remember laying in bed just crying because I couldn't get out of the bed. I couldn't. My. My body was so weak that day, I couldn't move the sheet off my body to get out of the bed. And so I just laid there and just cried. And I just said to him, please, if you can just give me a second chance at life so that my kids don't grow up without a mother, I will spend the rest of my life helping others find their second chance. And it was right after that, Ginny, when he showed me a different path. Within three days of trying this new path, I was off the floor. Within three months, I was outside doing yard work again. Within one year, I had no markers of disease in my body. I've now been fully healed, not in remission, fully healed for over a decade. I have more energy than I had in my 20s. I mean, Ginny, at the age of 45, I gave birth to a healthy nine pound baby girl at home, right? And she's the healthiest of all three of my kids, right? So we're. I was like, I joke around with Joel because our podcast and books, Beyond Labels, and I tell him we're just breaking label boundaries, their limitations everywhere here. You know, I mean, Jenny, I even healed from paralysis in my left leg the doctor said would never heal. You know, that was a consequence of a chiropractor rupturing a disc in my spine, and it left my left leg paralyzed. But this new healing path that God showed me healed the paralysis. I mean, I can hike with you for like an hour, an hour and a half, and you would never know that I had paralysis. I mean, it's. It's incredible what the body can actually do if we just learn how to kind of communicate with it and get out of its way and let it do its thing.
- [09:55]
Jenny Ayrton
What a story. What a story, Dr. Stina. And you, you talk about this in the book. You say, today I'm disease free and have no pain. And healing was rapid. And you were at a spot where you were hurting so badly that your son, who was six years old at the time, had to bring the cup and hold it to your mouth just so that you could drink. And you, like you said, off the floor in three days, pain free in three months. Within a year, new markers of disease. Now, you said you are already Cooking your meals. So what were some of the other changes? I mean, I think a lot of people would look at that as being a first change. And you talked about earlier how like before we started recording, about how one of your things is to be able to take complex topics to into bite sized pieces. And so this book, Beyond Labels has got all of these bite sized pieces in here. You know, you're going to read your conversations, but then I'm trying to remember what they're called. They're called, oh, practical bites. You know, all the way throughout the book. They're, they're sprinkled in there. So there's these practical bites that are things that you could do like stock up on sale items and step outside the grocery store box or all the way through, bring your own solutions, like what if you're going to a party? Eat real salt. So all of these sort of bite sized things that are in this Beyond Labels book. If it wasn't the food, what was it?
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Dr. Cena McCullough
So the food definitely contributed to the condition. Okay, right. And so, so when you said you.
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Jenny Ayrton
Were cooking your own food, is this after or before?
- [11:23]
Dr. Cena McCullough
So during the journey I was cooking all my own food. So probably this, the second decade into this, you know, I was seeking help from the western Doctors for over 20 years.
- [11:34]
Jenny Ayrton
Yeah.
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Dr. Cena McCullough
And probably by the second decade I had changed over to organic and I was cooking everything from scratch and I learned things along the way. So one thing that really helped me, Jenny, was I was able to use my background to try to piece together the puzzle of how to actually reverse any chronic or autoimmune condition because no one was talking about it at the time. And the doctors, the medical doctors I saw had absolutely no idea how to do that because they didn't even think it was possible. Now I believed from the get go that all of this was reversible because I believe that God makes us to thrive. You know, he doesn't make us, he doesn't design us to be sick. He designs us to live this joyful, you know, life that's filled with the fruits of the spirits. And so I thought there has to be a way. And so I kept looking for answers. And what I stumbled upon was there are free online health summits and there's still those summits today. You can sign up for all kinds of different subjects in the health space. The oral microbiome to thyroid issues, to diabetes, to cancer. And they have these full summits with some of them are seven days long, some are three days long, and there's an, there's entire lineup of different expert speakers every day that you can learn from. So there's so much information available now, was not available back then, but, you know, to the extent that it is now. But whatever summits there were online, that's literally what I did when I was to the point where I couldn't get off the floor. And, and when, as you said, my son had to bring water over to me with a straw so I could drink from it, I was literally laying on the floor all day with the laptop there in front of me, wired, of course, no WI fi. And I would listen to these summits, you know, sometimes 40, 60 hours a week, trying to find the answer because I didn't want to die. And so I was sitting there educating myself beyond the Ph.D. because I, I realized quickly that even though I had a PhD in nutrition from a top university, so I'm supposed to be an expert in food, but part of the problem was food was killing me. So what was it that I wasn't taught? Even though I'm supposed to be one of these experts. Right. So that is what really saved my life, is piecing that together. And God was showing me which speakers to listen to. He was guiding me toward them. And then I connected with some of them and I learned about things like functional testing. I learned things like. So, for example, I didn't know that all grains contain gluten, so I went gluten free. But because that was one of the things we found in the literature that a lot of my symptoms seem to match up with somebody who is sensitive to glutens. So I went gluten free. And I thought that that meant all the glutens were removed from my diet, but it wasn't. I relied on the FDA's label, the certified gluten free label. But now we know that that label is actually outdated. It came from World War II. So now we know all grains contain a type of gluten. They don't all contain alpha gliadin, which is the one in wheat, but they do contain a type of gluten. So I was consuming gluten in unknowingly, and so I was still making myself sick. And what. The only reason why I figured that out is because God led me to one of the speakers that was on that summit. And the whole talk was about how the FDA label is actually outdated and it's making so many of us sick. So, wow, that was one of my big pieces. So, as you can see, this was a long process of trying to go through and piece these things all together. You know, I learned that there's about 40% of us have gluten sensitivity. Many times it's undiagnosed because a lot of times the doctors will do an antibody test and they're only usually testing antibodies to alpha gliadin or maybe a handful of them. But we know that there's at least 1,000 different gluten proteins, so we're missing them. We don't have the test that at least the western medicine doctor doesn't to be able to identify it. I tested negative in the western doctor's office. I tested negative for celiacs, I tested negative for non celiac gluten sensitivity. But when I did the gold standard test that I learned later on a genetic test that's just a cheek swab, I tested positive. I had three alleles for it. So part of it is I just didn't know. I didn't have all these pieces of what's really in the food. And I didn't know about how outdated the tests are. But today, Jenny, we know that there's over 300 different medical conditions that are associated with gluten alone. 300 conditions. And this is stuff from like, ranging from fatigue to joint pain to psoriasis, even seasonal allergies, anemia, thyroid disease, alopecia, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, they're all related to gluten. And we can get into like, I know people love their bread and you know, they love like the, the fresh mill, you know, and like, if you just mill it fresh, it's going to make all the difference. And if you want, we can go down that rabbit hole. And also, with what impact do I.
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Jenny Ayrton
Want to actually have?
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Dr. Cena McCullough
What was that?
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Jenny Ayrton
Do I want to go down that rabbit hole?
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Dr. Cena McCullough
I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe not. That could be a whole podcast in.
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Jenny Ayrton
And of itself, if you want. Now I'm like, I don't know if I want to. But what's so interesting is you said there's 300 conditions that are affected by gluten. But the key here is that the gluten free label, which is gf and you see it on all sorts of packaging, is not necessarily accurate for all.
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Dr. Cena McCullough
That's right. Because a lot of times when companies are creating gluten free, quote unquote alternatives, so they're removing the wheat, for example, or the, you know, wheat, barley, oats and rye are usually what we think of when we ask what are the gluten free foods? And that's because that's what The FDA labels them as and oats are usually labeled as possibly containing gluten because of cross contamination. Okay, so those are usually the four that people are looking out for when.
- [18:14]
Podcast Host
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- [20:55]
Dr. Cena McCullough
When, when companies make these gluten free foods, they usually use rice and corn. And both rice and corn. Corn are grains and they contain a form of gluten in them. So, so the label, I know, it's crazy. It's crazy and, and it's really like now, now that I'm past it, I can share the story with like barely any emotion connected to it. At the time when I found out, I was livid. I mean, I was so, yeah, angry. I was furious. I'm like. Because I almost died. And part of the reason is because of the labels that are on these foods. Hence partnering with Joel to do the book Beyond Labels and the Fall and subsequently the podcast, because there's so much information out there that's wrong. So rice and corn both have different types of gluten. In corn, the gluten is called zyn, and in rice it's orzanin. But millet has, has a type of gluten, gluten, sorghum, teff, I mean, you name it. But the point is, the foods that are labeled as gluten free usually have rice or corn. By the way, I also had arsenic poisoning and it's one reason why I couldn't recover. And we think that the arsenic poisoning came from the rice that was in all these quote unquote, gluten free foods, right? Because I was eating a lot of those until toward the end. So like I was saying, you know, the last few years when we were, when I was just getting sicker and sicker, I removed all of these processed foods. Like all of these foods that were labeled as these gluten free foods, I took them all out, you know, but my body was not able to properly detoxify itself. So when I was. So the body is made so wonderfully and so resiliently by God. And what, what happens is when you have a elevated level of inflammation that is chronic, it can slow down your detoxification pathways. And this is what happened to me. So I became less efficient at detoxing from things. So when I was consuming all these rice based products and they had arsenic in them, arsenic is water soluble. So in theory it should be one of the easier toxins, potential toxins for my body to eliminate. Right? But it wasn't. I could not get rid of it. And so because my detox pathways were downregulated, so my body was sequestering it away from my vital organs in an effort to protect me, but it was still harming me. So we ended up having to do like a natural chelation to start to pull the arsenic from my body. I was also deficient in 15 micronutrients. And this is also another interesting story that can also help people to not take on any shame in their own healing journey. Because not only do I have a PhD in nutrition, but I used to formulate supplements. So I know the best of the best supplements to buy. And Ginny, I was consuming a high quality multivitamin mineral supplement almost every day, yet I was deficient in 15 nutrients. I was so deficient in two B vitamins that I was borderline for beriberi and pellagra. And both of those micronutrient deficiencies can lead to death. They both were largely eradicated in the US by the mid-1900s. But we are seeing a resurgence of these different types of micronutrient deficiencies, in part because the food is now lacking nutrients, but also because our gastrointestinal tracts are becoming so inflamed and dysbiotic that we're having, we're seeing, we're having a hard time digesting and absorbing the food. So we used to say, you are what you eat, and now we're saying, you are what you absorb because we're having such a hard time digesting properly and absorbing. So I ended up deficient in those nutrients even though I was taking that multivitamin mineral like consistently. So that was another piece of it was I had foods that were offending my body, my body thought they were toxic. And that's largely because I had dysbiosis in my gastrointestinal tract, which means I needed to rebalance my microbiome. And I was micronutrient deficient because of that. And I had arsenic poisoning because my detox pathways were, you know, were downregulated. This is very common today, that a lot of people are in the same boat as me. And so when we look at dis ease and how to actually reverse it, we look at the individual now, like the, The N of 1 experiments that you are the best experiment. You can't group yourself into like dietary guidelines, for example, which we also talk about in the book, which, which are junk but you know, they're trying to change it. But that is part of the reason why we got sick. You know, what do the dietary guidelines recommend? You have the whole pyramid of grains and you've got seed oils and they took out the healthy animal fats, you know, and, and they took out the, the animal meats. Right. They're trying to really limit those and they're trying to get more plant based proteins in. So this goes into a whole nother category of there's things like oxalates in plants that can make some of us sick. Like, I learned one of the reasons why we believe I had a predisposition to kidney stones, which my mother did as well, and she actually had kidney disease and ended up having a transplant. But one of the reasons is because I was sensitive to oxalates. So you see, there's all these things and I was never taught that in school. I was never taught about oxalates.
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Jenny Ayrton
I don't, honestly, I don't even know what that is.
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Dr. Cena McCullough
Yeah, so the simplest way to describe it is there's, there's compounds in a lot of plants, a lot of superfoods that we think of like spinach or kale that have a compound naturally occurring in them that are called oxalates. And some people just happen to be more sensitive to them. And we actually some. And we don't exactly know why, but there is some thought in the literature and Dr. Sabine Hazan was interviewed by me and she's one of, I don't know if you've had her on your program, but she's a leading expert in the microbiome, like an internationally recognized expert. She's fantastic. And she agrees with my, my theory that one of the main reasons some people are more sensitive to oxalate than, than others is because we lack the microbes in the gastrointestinal tract to properly break down the oxalates. And then when oxalates come out and through, like if your body's filtering them and they get dumped back into the GI tract, the Microbes need to work on them to digest them. If they can't, they get absorbed back into the body. So this fits in with the whole concept of microbiome imbalance in the GI tract, you know, a dysbiosis. And some studies, Jenny, are showing that for sure, Western cultures like ours have lack of microbial diversity and quantity. And some of them are actually suggesting that we may have lost already about 3, 30 to 35% of the diversity of microbes in our gastrointestinal tract. And this is compared to, you know, tribes, like, even tribes that exist today, Right? So where these can be tied to every single condition, they can be tied to gluten sensitivity. In fact, like, I don't think that these sensitivities are something you cannot heal from. Okay. I, I think everything is reversible. So you don't have to be grain free your entire life. You know, like, I, for example, showed up as sensitive to chicken, of all things. So one of the, one of the foods that we think of as healthy in this culture, but on my functional test, my white blood cells showed to be highly reactive. The highest level of reactivity you could get, Jenny, was the chicken and bay leaf. I mean, who would have thought we're reacting to things like spices. There's kids now who we know react to things like pepper, right? And, and so, and this comes from having this dysbiosis in the gastrointestinal tract, which can lead to leaky gut, for example. So these food particles leak into the system where they shouldn't be in these large sizes. The body thinks of it as a foreign invader, and it mounts an inflammatory immune response. And over time, what happens is the, the body does it enough, you can have a situation called molecular mimicry. And that's because sometimes some of the proteins that are in the foods look structurally similar to certain structures in your body, like ligaments, for example, or tendons and things in the joint. And if your body sees those components in the joint as molecularly similar to these foodstuffs, it can mount, you know, an immune response toward your joint, and you can develop arthritis. Okay, if, if it does this in the pancreas and it looks molecularly similar to the pancreas, you can develop diabetes. Same thing, you know, with the brain with Alzheimer's. So this is just one mechanism that we've learned about. But it goes to show that on any of these things are reversible. Because, for example, I can eat chicken now, I can eat bay leaf, no problem whatsoever, because I fully healed. If you have not fully healed, you're not going to be able to reintroduce these things back into your diet because you're still having an imbalance in the body. But once you heal, I'm like, I'm. I know I sound like a broken record, but God really did design our body to be so resilient and to thrive. And so if you just give it the tools it needs to heal, you can go back to eating things that you want to eat and do and having the lifestyle that you had before, you know, like running around with your kids, for example, or having babies at the age of 45 that are totally healthy.
- [31:07]
Jenny Ayrton
Yes, the book is really a fascinating one because I told Joel this.
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Podcast Host
We were able to talk about it.
- [31:12]
Jenny Ayrton
A bit ago, but you did a masterful job of getting the reader to. To the end point that you wanted, which is, wait, I want to live where I'm not dependent on these labels at all. So it in. It, like, really, like, by the time you get to the end, you're like, oh, I see what they were doing here. You know, because you learn. Okay, first of all, the labels are not misleading. They're limited. They're inaccurate. You know, it's. It's not going to tell you if it was sprayed with glyphosate. It's not going to tell you if there were bio. What biosolids dumped on it. It's going to say, generally recognized as safe. What does that even mean?
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Podcast Host
So there.
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Jenny Ayrton
There's just so many limits there. And it's in. Your story is a really intriguing one because a lot of people would say, okay, you're having these health problems. Just cook your own food. Yeah, just buy organic. And you're like, but actually, that wasn't enough. And in some ways, that feels really overwhelming, I think, to your average listener, to your average person. That would feel overwhelming to me. And yet you were able to turn things around rather quickly. It's really about trying to step away from a life that is dependent on labels and uses labels at all. And you're going to find a lot of your answers there. So the book, like I said, is absolutely fascinating. I learned a tremendous amount, but it also changed my view of the world and on what's possible.
- [32:32]
Dr. Cena McCullough
Oh, wow.
- [32:33]
Jenny Ayrton
It's really, really a remarkable. Like, you. You end it and you're like, I don't want to be limited.
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Dr. Cena McCullough
Yeah.
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Jenny Ayrton
You know, I'm constantly going to these labels and I'm looking at how many calories. And you're like, well, the calories can be off by 20%.
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Dr. Cena McCullough
Yeah.
- [32:46]
Jenny Ayrton
That's huge. You're going to have a hamburger. Is it 600 calories or is it 720 calories? I mean, like, that's a really big deal. So if you're first, you're kind of like, oh, these are, these are kind of like a farce. And then beyond that, they, I don't want to have to, to be dependent on them. So let's talk about a couple of them. Let's, let's talk about the glyphosate that's not on the label. So if we have to live beyond labels, we do, because we're not going to know about things like glyphosate. So you say you avoid it at all costs.
- [33:21]
Dr. Cena McCullough
I do avoid glyphosate at all costs. So, you know, glyphosate is, and Joel and I have done several podcasts on this, but glyphosate is actually a patented antibiotic. So in talking about having dysbiosis of the microbiome and that leading to connecting with every single chronic and autoimmune condition you can think of, including mental health issues, it is a no brainer to me that we should be trying to avoid glyphosate at all costs. Okay, so what that means is that each time you're consuming foods that have glyphosate on them, it's like you're consuming an antibiotic or residues of an antibiotic, which I think we can all agree at this point, even in mainstream science, they're saying that that's not a good idea. That, you know, now we have superbugs, for example, that have, that have been formed because of all the antibiotics that we were taking and all of antibiotics that are fed to livestock, like most of them are actually fed to the livestock. So it's another reason to actually buy food from a farmer that you can trust. So when, when you're looking for food, let's say in a grocery store, because most people do go to the grocery store still. So I do like to address that. I mean, I buy things in the grocery store, not my meat, but I buy other things that I can't get from my local farmers in the grocery store. So organic actually means, like if you're looking for organic, that's a great step over conventional. Okay. I do not want to discourage people from taking that step because it will decrease your toxic burden. But at the same time, be aware that organic is not the savior. Okay. The actual definition of organic describes organic as plants can be grown without the use of, quote, most conventional pesticides and synthetic substances, synthetic fertilizer, sewage sludge, genetically modified organisms, or ionizing radiation. The plant, the animals, they're not given growth hormone or most antibiotics, or fed GMOs, pesticides or synthetic chemicals. So you can see just from the definition alone, it is not something that we would consider 100% organic in our minds. Right. The definition is different than what you think of when you're paying the extra money for the organic. Again though, from the definition you can tell it is better than conventional. So for example, in conventional produce, they can actually be grown in what we call sewage sludge or these biosolids. And if you look at the government's website, they actually themselves test what is in the sewage sludge or these biosolids. And there's a list on there of like numerous toxins that are in there. I mean, you know, we're talking about heavy metals, we're talking about prescription drugs. I mean, it's right there on the government's own website. So you have, that, you have synthetics that are in, in the fertilizer, which I'm, I'm sure Joel probably talked about that. And they can be. Conventional foods can be radiated. So in this world we're now learning, but like 5G and non native electromagnetic.
- [36:42]
Jenny Ayrton
Fields, what does that even mean, radiated? And why would a food need to be radiated?
- [36:47]
Dr. Cena McCullough
So this is actually. And anyone can go onto the USDA and FDA's website to look at this for themselves. I strongly encourage people all the time. Don't just trust me. Right? Don't trust what I'm saying. That's why the book is highly referenced, so you can look at the original source yourself. So everything I'm saying, go to the source and check it for yourself. Okay. But even the FDA and the USDA talk about how they allow radiation of food. So the reason is because they don't want quote, unquote pathogens on the food. So there's all kinds of, there's a whole list on there of all these foods that could be radiated, including meats and eggs and, and different types of produce and spices. Oh yeah, it's a big thing. So it's all in the name of trying to make it sanitary for us.
- [37:40]
Jenny Ayrton
So what is it, what is that process that makes me think about, it.
- [37:44]
Podcast Host
Makes me think about cancer.
- [37:45]
Jenny Ayrton
My only, I guess, connection to the word radiation is cancer. Like people use it for cancer treatment. So what actually is happening to the food?
- [37:55]
Dr. Cena McCullough
So there, there. And I'm bringing it up so I can show you the actual website. So they're irradiated. So they can actually, here's what they say. They can actually expose the food to controlled amounts of radiant energy like gamma rays, electron beams or X rays to kill bacteria, parasites, insects and mold.
- [38:20]
Jenny Ayrton
But that's not on the label.
- [38:22]
Dr. Cena McCullough
Yeah, so here's the thing. If it's, if it's the final product, if the final product was irradiated, it has to be on the label. But they could irradiate 95% of those ingredients but not do the final product. And you will never know. Okay. So that could happen to conventional products. There's like, there's a spice brand that I use, for example. And the one, one of the main reasons why I use it is because they do not irradiate the spices. It's one of their claims to fame. They also don't have fillers. So when you are somebody who is sensitive to glutens, for example, you'll learn things like some spices have rice as a filler, rice flour, like a rice powder as a filler to, to stretch it. Yeah, I know, it's crazy, right? So that's what I'm saying. There's all these things that you have to actually look out for. So, so that's what organic actually means. But what happened is. So with the organic label, one of the reasons why I still look for it is because your original question was glyphosate. Glyphosate is so damaging to us. Not only is it an patented antibiotic, it's a metal chelator. So it can chelate or grab onto metals from the soil, for example, and it could do a couple things. It can pull it away from the plant. So now the plant is not consumed, doesn't have the certain metals it needs for like, like you need certain amount of metals in the body, certain elements to function properly and a plant needs them to. And so it can actually grab onto them and decrease that plant's own immune system, the effectiveness of its immune system. And what that means is that now you are consuming a nutrient deficient or possibly a sick plant and then, or you or an animal eats it and then you eat the animal and you're still getting downstream consequence of that. So when you consume glyphosate from those plants, you're not only having that consequence or from the animal, but if, if it gets into your body, it, like I said, it's water soluble, so it can travel through your blood and it can grab onto things like metals and bring it across the blood. Brain barrier into your brain. And clearly you do not want metal, heavy metals in the brain. This is one of the things that science has shown is highly correlated with Alzheimer's, you know, Parkinson's, adhd, autism, you name it. And what. It's kind of a double whammy, Ginny, because not only can the glyphosate cause leaky gut, it can cause leaky brain. Where it opens, it's like opening the tight junctions in the gut. It does something similar in that blood brain barrier, it can do other things. It's been linked with reproductive issues, liver damage, impaired digestion, you know, immune issues, numerous different types of diseases, including cancer. So, so that's one reason why I try to avoid glyphosate. And by the way, the label, the organic label prohibits glyphosate. Right. You're not supposed to use glyphosate if you're doing the organic label. But here's the thing. The testing is really missing from these labels. They are largely paperwork. So only about 5% of the farms are actually tested. 5% of all the different farms. The end, the certifying agent is the one that determines if they're going to test or not. So it's really up to them. And a lot of times, you know, I talked with the organic standard board and they gave me a direct quote that the vast majority of the time these certifying agents rely on that rule of thumb that it's, you know, if it's been like X amount of years, I think it's three years that now it's okay to, to label that land as organic, that they don't actually go and they, and test it. So we're trusting a paper trail. Right. So that's why in the book I talk about pairing it. You look for a duo.
- [42:43]
Jenny Ayrton
Yeah.
- [42:43]
Dr. Cena McCullough
So you look for, for example, the USDA organic label plus the glyphosate residue free label, which comes from the Detox project. And that's a third party independent certifier. And they do test the food products. They test individual ingredients and the final product. So you would actually know if what you're eating contains glyphosate on it. The same thing like I've. So you look for the duo and then you look for the trio. So you're, what you're doing is you're pairing. I know. I'm like, see, this is how complicated it is in the grocery store.
- [43:16]
Jenny Ayrton
Which is why, which is why at the end of the book you're like, I don't even want to deal with any of this at all. And so it would be better to just know my farmer.
- [43:24]
Dr. Cena McCullough
Exactly. It is much better. You have your eyes on the ground and, you know, know your actual farmer.
- [43:30]
Jenny Ayrton
Right. Like. Like Joel said his. His eggs just say eggs.
- [43:35]
Dr. Cena McCullough
That's right.
- [43:36]
Jenny Ayrton
There's no labels at all because there's so many hoops that you have to jump through. Like, it's like they just. And they got pulled from Whole Foods because the packaging, you know, wasn't, I don't know, like, interesting enough or whatever. But he's like, you can't put anything else on, or you got to go all through all this paperwork, and it's super expensive. And so your. Your whole point is illustrating, okay, I've got to look for. I've got to look for organic. I've got. I didn't even know there was a label that said glyphosate residue free. And then the third one is.
- [44:04]
Dr. Cena McCullough
The third one is the non GMO project. This one has that pretty. It's the butterfly logo. You look for the butterfly, which is cool. My kids, you know, from a young age, they would run up and down the grocery store aisle and they would say, look, it has a butterfly. We can eat it. You know, so, like, get your. Make it fun. Get your kids involved, because, you know, like you said, it could be very overwhelming and very daunting. You know, the. The things that we. That Joel and I have outlined in this book are a lot of the things that God showed me when I was so sick. Like, these are the pieces of this puzzle where he showed me. Like, yeah, you know, let's humble yourself. You may have gotten this PhD in. In nutrition. You may be this quote, unquote expert on paper, but look at what's really going on here. And so it was one step at a time, and it was. It was really difficult for me to digest all this information because I truly believed in the system. Like, I believed that the government was looking out for us. You know, Like, I would. I would think, okay, well, these companies, I'm not sure that I really trust them because I know that they're just trying to make a profit, right? So why wouldn't they save money by cutting corners? But I truly believe that the government was there on our side, protecting and promoting our health, which is. Which is what their tagline is. So it's like, why wouldn't I believe that? But. But it's. It's not. It's not the case. Sadly, it's not the case. And so that's what Joel and I have tried to do is walk you through one small, practical bite at a time so that you don't get overwhelmed, you know, like I was, and that you feel encouraged. Like, we really don't want to shame anybody. We accept everybody for where you are. We love and accept you for where you are right now in this moment. And if you want to stay where you are right now, that's good too. Like, that is totally your choice. But if you want to move to the next small step, that's what the book is for, is to help you move one small step at a time in a loving, compassionate way. Jenny, there's so many people in our space that I think try to demonize and shame people into doing it or blame them. Like, why are you still buying food off Amazon? And I'm like, okay, look, I can't do everything. I've got to pick and choose because the overwhelm itself is disease forming.
- [46:21]
Jenny Ayrton
Yeah, you do talk about that. You talk about stress. So, yeah, it all goes together. But I think you're empowered. It's an enjoyable read because you're shocked. There's a lot of shocking things and you learn a lot. So you're like kind of it's a page turner. And it really does move you through this. Okay, this label is misleading. Okay, this label is missing pieces of information. Okay, I shouldn't be dependent on this at all. Can I start to make choices to live Beyond Labels? It's such a fantastic title. And, and really, like you said, can I live beyond the label of geriatric pregnancy? Can I live beyond the label of, you know, homeschool mother or what? Whatever the label is, yes. There's just so many labels in our society, and so it just takes you through to a different spot in life. It's very eye opening. I really enjoyed reading it. And people can listen to more on your podcast. The Beyond Labels Are Podcast. Before we wrap up, I just wanted to ask this, especially since we got a lot of families that are trying to get outside and you talked about microbial diversity. You say the air is full of stuff. So you definitely, in this book, Beyond Labels encourage families to get outside. You say, go out in nature, Breathe it in. You're breathing in this microbial diversity. Can you talk about the health benefits or some of them about getting outdoors?
- [47:36]
Dr. Cena McCullough
Oh, yes. I love this. Getting outdoors is one of the pillars of our homeschool life. It is something that we absolutely make sure we do every day our homeschool group meets out in nature. We Meet at least twice a week, sometimes three times a week. And it's always out in nature. We brave the weather, you know, because, Jenny, I don't know if you've had somebody talk about this already on your podcast, but getting out in the cold, you know, we're too comfortable. One of the things is, as modern humans, we are too comfortable in our houses with the heaters on, you know, during the winter, air conditioning on during the summer. And really what we're learning is there's a lot of people that are becoming deficient in vitamin D. And it's. It's not just because they're not just getting outside, but which they're not. You know, you need to get outside and expose your sun. But part of it is also because they're not getting out when it's cold. What we're learning is that when you're in the cold and you're experiencing the cold, it actually helps your body make vitamin D. It. Yes. Fascinating, right? And it actually helps to boost mitochondrial efficiency. So we talk about all these mitochondria. Heard this? Yes. Yeah, I know it's right. That's what I'm saying. Like, the body is designed so brilliantly, and whenever I am thinking of, like, I'm pondering if, you know, a new health finding is accurate or not, I always go back to the way that God designed us. Like, in the beginning, what did we look like in the beginning? What was our life like? What was tribal life like back then? And you can find all the answers in there. Like, the Bible has so many answers of, you know, how to actually heal ourselves. It's incredible. But, yeah, that's one of the things you talk about. All these different diseases, they associated them with mitochondrial dysfunction. There's practically no disease you can look at that doesn't have some kind of mitochondrial inefficiency or dysfunction. Well, that can be boosted by the cold. So it's. It's fascinating. One of the. In terms of benefits of being outside, you know, when I gave birth to my. My daughter, my Last child at 45, I hung out with Dr. Zach Bush. I don't know if you're familiar with him. And another fantastic expert, you know, who used to actually work with, with. With cancer and trying to figure out solutions for it until he realized one day that, like, radiation, the cancer is not a radiation deficiency. Right. You know? Right. It's not a chemo deficiency. So we're missing something here. So when I had my baby, that third baby, he said to me, the number one thing you can do to ensure long term health of your baby is go outside and sit next to a waterfall for at least two hours a day, every day. Yes. Huh. So not just being outside, but the water. Water. You know, if you talk about like structure water and whatnot and water from a waterfall, we, we have learned is probably more highly structured. You know, you're obviously wanting to go to a place that's not contaminated, you know, like where they're d from a chicken factory upstream. But it's so filled with structured water from the way that it's moved and which is healing in and of itself. And it aerosolizes. It aerosolizes that structured water and it aerosolizes microbes that are on it that again, if there's no pollutants over there, are healthier. So literally, I would go sit by a waterfall with her. And also it. The sound of it, the rhythmic sound of that nature helps regulate the nervous system. And I know we didn't probably have time to go into it, but this is one of the key factors of trying to reverse any kind of chronic or autoimmune dis ease is that the vast majority of us have dysregulated nervous systems. And a lot of times it starts in the womb. And so if we can get the babies around sounds, particularly nature sounds that have this rhythm, this natural, rhythmic, you know, frequency to them. Yeah, it can help in tune their nervous system to that natural rhythm that God gave us. So it can actually help start healing the baby case. There was, for example, stress on the mom when the baby was in utero. If her. If her nervous system is dysregulated chronically, the baby's nervous system is probably dysregulated. So you can start working on that from, like, even in utero. But if the baby's already born, you can start working on that by just going around, you know, sitting next to waterfalls. I mean, isn't it. It's beautiful, these things. That's what I'm talking about. This is health made simple. These are simple solutions that can have a profound impact.
- [52:26]
Jenny Ayrton
That's the right. That's right. That's right. And that's what the YouTube channel is about. It's brand new. If you're listening in, I'll make sure I'll put the link in the show notes. Health made simple. Dr. Cena, I've learned so much. I loved that you called Joel the hot dog. Your kids did. They called him the hot dog guy. What you two have built together is remarkable. You have an event called Two Days of Truth that happens in June of 2026. If people actually want to go to.
- [52:50]
Podcast Host
Poly Face, the two of you will.
- [52:52]
Jenny Ayrton
Be there running that event. And you have a book that is being re released, updated and expanded called Hands Off My Food in February. So I'm so excited. Hopefully you'll be back to talk with us about that. We always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood?
- [53:07]
Podcast Host
That was outside.
- [53:09]
Dr. Cena McCullough
Oh, boy. Oh, okay, I got one. So my parents, you know, we were raised poor like a lot of people, and so my parents would take us camping, tent camping. And those were like our vacations. And it was, it was kind of a funny memory because my parents were sleeping in the tent, napping during the day, and my sister and I decided to go explore. So we were traveling around, going up this mountain and we stumbled upon snow and we got lost. And so we started, we. We looked down to see where is the campground. And we were just going to try to beeline it as, you know, to get there as fast as we possibly could because we're thinking we're going to be in trouble because how long have we been gone? And you know, and our parents didn't even know we left. So we're climbing this mountain like hands and feet climbing this mountain of snow. And if we let go, we would have dropped off a cliff, actually. So we're climbing the mountain of snow at the end. We got over the mountain and then we see how far the campground is away. We're really scared that we're going to get in trouble. And so we start jumping over bushes to try to get to the campground. And finally we get there, we're totally cold. We feel like we have frostbite on our fingers. We have scratches all over our place, bodies from these bushes. And you know what? Parents didn't even know we were. But you.
- [54:30]
Jenny Ayrton
What an adventure.
- [54:33]
Dr. Cena McCullough
Such a fun adventure. And it taught us resiliency, determination. Right. Dedication. We depended on each other. We encouraged each other through it. We did not have helicopter parents.
- [54:45]
Jenny Ayrton
You're right.
- [54:45]
Dr. Cena McCullough
Right.
- [54:46]
Jenny Ayrton
Wow.
- [54:46]
Dr. Cena McCullough
What a day. Let us go and explore.
- [54:48]
Jenny Ayrton
And what an experience to have with your sister. I'm glad you made it out. It sounds. It sounds a little treacherous.
- [54:54]
Dr. Cena McCullough
Look, to tell the story.
- [54:56]
Jenny Ayrton
What an experience. Well, Dr. Cena, I so appreciate your time and for what you put out into the world. This book was phenomenal. Like I said, a total page turner and really got the message through to me of like, okay, you know, at first you're like, oh, I just wish we had better labels. And then you're like, I don't even want to pay attention to those at all. I want to meet my farmer. I want to know what I'm growing. And I want to grow my own things so that I can have more control of my own life. So I really appreciate, appreciate your time. Thank you for being here.
- [55:24]
Dr. Cena McCullough
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
- [55:28]
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