Let's Talk Naturopathy with Joyce Gerber - Health in the Real World with Chris Janke

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Health in the Real World. I'm joined today by Joyce Gerber. Very excited to meet with Joyce today. Joyce is a health and nutritional consultant, coach, clinician, practitioner, educator, and speaker.

[00:00:14] And she uses functional medicine and naturopathy in her practice. She's certified in nutrition, colon hydrotherapy, iridology, herbology, shiatsu, reflexology, and my favorite NLP neurolinguistic programming and is licensed in massage therapy. Joyce, thank you so much for joining me today. Appreciate you coming out.

[00:00:38] You're very welcome. Happy to be here, Chris.

[00:00:39] Absolutely. Well, we spoke a little bit before the interview about some ways that you got into this work originally, but why don't you just get us started? Quick introduction and then how you got involved in doing what you're doing now.

[00:00:55] Well, the introduction to how this happened is very funny. At the age of 20, that was my declaration of independence from my parents and I moved from New York to Miami Beach. And back then, my method of transportation was sticking out my thumb and hitchhiking.

[00:01:15] So one day I'm hitchhiking and somebody named Johnny picked me up. And I wish I knew his last name. I would love to thank him. He brought me to my first natural food store and restaurant. He was passionate about health, you know, just like, you know, in the car.

[00:01:31] I mean, he'd just be, you know, talking about fasting and juices and raw foods and cleansing. And I took to the food like a duck to water. I loved it. And I read my books, everything I could get my hands on I read.

[00:01:48] And it was such a revelation to me to be reading about the connection between health and nutrition and reading about all these people who saved their lives or the practitioners who help people save their lives by changing what they were eating and detoxification.

[00:02:05] So that's how I got into this. Wow. Yeah, that's fascinating. It's you know, all the buzzwords that we see. They've kind of resurged recently, you know, a lot of people getting into fasting, which is funny that it really is not new people have known this for thousands of years.

[00:02:20] Real quick question. Have you heard of he was an older author? I think he's passed a while ago. Norman Walker. Sure. Yeah, I think he lived to the age of 100. I have a couple of his books. I think he had something about his life.

[00:02:35] Juices. Something about raw food. Yeah, yes, I have this salad book and I have I think there was another one about juice. And he was very famous in those circles. Yeah, you know, I think he died when he was 116. Wow. Yeah, his books are amazing.

[00:02:51] And I read them probably I was probably about 20 years old when I read them originally. I got so into raw foods and and just incredible resources. And yeah, this stuff has been around. It's tried and true, you know, detoxing cleansing, you know, hydrating.

[00:03:09] So what what was it specifically? We'll go a little more laser focused. So what why are you specifically working with those those modalities that I mentioned? So we talked nutrition, detoxification, gut health and and red light therapy. I don't know if I said that but that is in your bio and I saw it on your website. It's fascinating stuff.

[00:03:29] Well, it's interesting. So you know, it was back in that health food restaurant at store slash restaurant, where I was introduced to healthy eating. And and I and so I was understanding the connection between nutritional the teachers I wound up studying with people like

[00:03:52] and wake more who's like the grandmother of living. Yeah, Dr. Bernard Jensen, who was given up to die of his severe lung condition when he was 18. He discovered nutrition and colon cleansing. Colon is another word for large intestine. Sometimes they use the word bowel. You know, when you focus on getting the poisons out of the body, and you focus on addressing nutritional deficiencies and eliminating them, the body gets well we have a blueprint for perfect health.

[00:04:20] In us. And when all of the things that interrupt good health are removed to the toxins, and all of the deficiencies are addressed. We reclaim our health. Then to so my first license was massage therapy because it made sense to me that getting a hands on license that would allow me to legally touch people and work with them made sense.

[00:04:48] I always knew that I was not going to go with the traditional medical model with nursing school or medical school. I was not interested in learning how to do surgery or how to use pharmaceutical drugs because I knew that all they did was take the symptoms away.

[00:05:04] They didn't address the cause of what was wrong.

[00:05:07] Then, and that was back in 1982 I got my massage license.

[00:05:12] In 1984, I had already started to do as a patient something called colon hydrotherapy. It's also known as colonics and that's taking water and gently introducing it through the anal canal.

[00:05:26] Gently introducing purified water so that it runs through the colon which is the large intestine which is our sewage system.

[00:05:34] And the whole idea was if we loosen and dissolve old waste from that orifice, as well as changing the nutrition from this orifice. You know, we address both getting poisons out and putting nutrition in.

[00:05:47] And that's what I did for decades. When the lockdown happened in March of 2020 and all of the offices were closed down, people like me who were doing colon therapy, who are working closely with people in a room with hands on work, we basically couldn't go to the office.

[00:06:08] We'd have to put on almost like a hazmat suit. So as that was being phased out at least temporarily, I had a chiropractor friend who was getting more and more enthralled with red light therapy.

[00:06:22] And red light therapy, at least what I work with, the person is in what looks like a tanning bed. And all these lights come on, it's somewhere between a 12 to a 15 minute session.

[00:06:36] And red light frequencies and infrared light frequencies infuse into the cells of the person for that amount of time. And the reason they're so powerful, the near infrared frequencies, they're like the most healthy light of the sun.

[00:06:57] And they stimulate what's called the mitochondria, which are the energy factories in our cells. And they stimulate the cells so the cells can totally restore, come back to optimal health.

[00:07:11] And so we're seeing the most unbelievable results with people who've been suffering from all kinds of ailments. And we cannot ever with food or red light or colon therapy, ever claim healing.

[00:07:25] What we can say is when we remove what the body can't use, what's toxic for the body. And when we put what the body needs in, whether it's the right nutrition or the right light frequencies, the body comes back to balance, comes back to homeostasis.

[00:07:42] So as colon therapy was being phased out of my professional life, red light therapy came in and because of how profound it is, it has stayed. So these are modalities I work with.

[00:07:55] So since COVID is over, is the colonic, is that therapy back in? Are you back in the colonic work as well?

[00:08:03] I'm not personally not. I mean, I think the world of it, I think it's an incredible modality. It's just that red light therapy came in with such a strong force.

[00:08:15] And, you know, there are colon hydrotherapists out there doing it and bless them that they're doing this work. But I guess my focus just kind of switched over organically.

[00:08:25] I'm so busy with that, as well as continuing to work with, you know, basically my work's all about giving people alternatives to drugs and surgery.

[00:08:36] And also making health simple, fun and delicious. You know, I really, I don't want to just tell somebody stop eating this, this, this and this because people feel deprived. They feel overwhelmed.

[00:08:49] Food really can taste delicious and we're social beings and it's totally fine to enjoy your life and enjoy your eating.

[00:08:57] But I like to help people create daily healthy lifestyles, but I certainly want to let people know who are looking at a diagnosis, who have all these doctors saying get on this medication.

[00:09:08] You have to get this organ removed to let people know, no, that is not how it has to be. Our body has a brilliant capacity to regenerate and come back to good health.

[00:09:20] I've had several people I've worked with who were looking at the possibility of surgery that wound up not needing it. So I'm passionate about this.

[00:09:30] Yeah, it's so powerful. You know, as you were talking, this is sort of along the lines of what I do as well.

[00:09:35] What I focus on specifically is people who have a lot of back pain and gosh, if I could count the number of times I have had a doctor in my life tell me I needed surgery and I, fortunately, just because I was 20 years old, something just didn't seem right about that.

[00:09:52] I don't think I need a surgery. I'm only 20 and that sort of forced me to find the modalities that I work with now.

[00:10:01] So I think I think it's great that you're doing that with the red light. I would done that too. I can attest to that. It's amazing.

[00:10:08] And that's great. That's fantastic. I haven't done the colonic, but I know three people who have done it.

[00:10:15] I even went to one of her appointments and waited out in the lobby and she came out. She's like, wow, that was different, but I feel great. So pretty, pretty powerful stuff.

[00:10:26] Now you have a program, Extreme Health in 90 days. Now, what does this include all the elements or certain elements? How does that work?

[00:10:36] Yes, because I realize this is about creating a healthy lifestyle. It's not just getting on and off a diet, on and off a program.

[00:10:45] People do that all the time. But if you're really looking to just have good health and healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle, just be an ongoing part of your life.

[00:10:55] I kind of feel like the difference between me and what a lot of other people do is it's really about helping you implement.

[00:11:03] I don't want to just give you information. I want to help you implement it, internalize it, have it become a part of you.

[00:11:11] So if I find that the first 30 days of a program when I work with somebody, I'm focusing on the beginning is usually a stronger detoxification.

[00:11:22] That's almost like the foundation of the building. You have to get the poisons out of the body so that if we're bombarding the body with therapeutic amounts of nutrition, the cells can really receive it.

[00:11:34] They're not blocked with all kinds of gunk that gets in the way of absorption. We're focusing on regenerating the gastrointestinal tract.

[00:11:45] There's a poison that's almost in all our food today. It's sprayed on all of the bushes and grass called glyphosate.

[00:11:53] It's the main ingredient in a product called Roundup, which used to be sold as a benign weed killer. Nothing benign about it. It's terrible.

[00:12:03] And so what it does, how it harms human beings is when it gets into our gastrointestinal tract, we have finger-like projections in the small intestine, which is 30 feet all curled up.

[00:12:15] I'll give a quick anatomy lesson. You chew, you swallow, goes down the esophagus, then goes to the stomach, which is in the upper left quadrant of the body.

[00:12:26] Then you've got 30 feet of small intestine with all these villi. Then it opens up to five and a half feet of large intestine.

[00:12:34] So the small intestine with all these villi is responsible for most of the absorption of nutrients.

[00:12:41] So the glyphosate destroys the villi. The glyphosate makes little holes in the lining of the membrane of the intestine.

[00:12:51] So you've got all these little holes that partially an undigested food leaks through.

[00:12:57] So the immune system recognizes them as foreign invaders and goes into an allergic response.

[00:13:05] So we've got this condition on the rise over the decades called leaky gut syndrome.

[00:13:11] So I work nutritionally with a person where there are substances that will remove the glyphosate.

[00:13:18] They will regenerate the villi. They will regenerate those holes in the lining of the intestine.

[00:13:24] Glyphosate also, because it's blocking absorption, minerals that normally get into the gut are deficient.

[00:13:32] So in my nutritional program, we give the person plenty of quality minerals to replenish that with a person's body.

[00:13:42] So the first 30 days of the extreme health and 90 days, I'm focusing a lot on rebuilding, regenerating, repopulating, getting therapeutic amounts of nutrition in.

[00:13:56] And one of the things I do during that time is I take people on a guided tour through the health food store, whether it's virtual or in person.

[00:14:05] I started that. I moved to California in 1993.

[00:14:10] So around 1987, when I lived in Greenwich Village where I had my office and saw people,

[00:14:18] I would jump up and go to a cabinet or go to a refrigerator and pull out foods and show them what's healthy.

[00:14:24] And one day I thought, why don't I just meet this person in the natural food store a few blocks from here?

[00:14:30] So that's what I started to do.

[00:14:32] And it's become such a fun, empowering information session for people like a hands on show and tell.

[00:14:40] You know, if people love bacon and eggs, you know, I can show them an alternative to the bacon that's full of nitrates and nitrates, nitrites.

[00:14:50] There's something called bacon bacon from Tempe, which is a fermented organic tofu.

[00:14:56] And I really love giving people alternatives that are healthier to what they're eating now.

[00:15:01] So they're not feeling deprived. They're looking at this as a fun new world.

[00:15:06] Joyce, have you ever have you ever filmed that that grocery store trip?

[00:15:11] OK, not yet. I'm guessing that's on the list, right?

[00:15:14] If you say, yeah, like what I really need help with, because I want to do a lot of online courses.

[00:15:21] I have all the content I need help with implementing it.

[00:15:24] I need help with the technical part. I would absolutely love to do that.

[00:15:28] So if you want to help me or you have any ideas, you know, I think I can definitely help out.

[00:15:34] You know, I I started my business in 2006.

[00:15:38] It was a brick and mortar.

[00:15:40] But as soon as YouTube came out, it came out, I think that same year, as soon as YouTube came out, I was thinking that's what I actually want to do.

[00:15:47] I want to teach people this online.

[00:15:49] I saw the writing on the wall, but it wasn't until covid when people actually in large numbers started to lock more toward those those online programs.

[00:15:58] Right.

[00:16:00] So in that way, it's been kind of a blessing in this post covid world where so much, you know,

[00:16:07] so many people are online and learning and it's great.

[00:16:11] You can even go. I love what you said about you want to be an implementer.

[00:16:15] You want to help people implement these strategies, which is great because all the information is out there.

[00:16:21] If somebody knows how to research and they're patient and they take their time and they can learn it.

[00:16:27] But to have somebody like you who can hold your hand, step one, step two, step three.

[00:16:34] I have a question about this now.

[00:16:37] Let's let's just say we're talking to somebody who has no experience in colon detoxification and cleansing and things like that.

[00:16:46] So to clarify, somebody who is, let's say, trying to be healthy

[00:16:52] and they're reading, let's say the recommended daily allowance on the side of the box or maybe they're researching broccoli and how much, you know, how many vitamins it has, et cetera.

[00:17:05] If somebody has an impacted colon, it's plugged up.

[00:17:08] They have absorption issues. Does that change the recommended allowance?

[00:17:14] Does that change how our body utilizes it?

[00:17:16] Or how would you discuss that with somebody who's just trying to add more instead of first trying to cleanse it away?

[00:17:24] So the first thing I'd say is, I think what's even more important and some of my great teachers shared this as well.

[00:17:32] People just go right to the nutritional profile.

[00:17:36] You know, how many fats and how much protein and how much carbs?

[00:17:40] I think what's even more important than that is the ingredient list because it's not like a protein is a protein is a protein or a carb is a carb is a carb.

[00:17:49] And I think that's a real misnomer in our culture.

[00:17:52] So the ingredient list is what's most important.

[00:17:56] I encourage people as much as possible to go organic rather than not, because when it's not organic, it's so deficient in nutrients.

[00:18:05] You know, our soils right now, you know, there's a there was some research done where I think a bowl of spinach today, you know, might have like something like 30 percent of what it used to have, you know, a few decades ago.

[00:18:18] So I think the organic is really important.

[00:18:21] The fact that you don't want things sprayed with chemicals is really important.

[00:18:26] And I know in our medical culture, there is so much focus on diagnostics.

[00:18:32] And we have a culture where everybody's plugged in.

[00:18:35] They get their, you know, notices or their emails or their texts a few times a year.

[00:18:39] It's time for your mammogram.

[00:18:41] It's time for your colonoscopy.

[00:18:43] It's time for this test or that test.

[00:18:45] And it leads us down a wrong path.

[00:18:49] Everybody is so tuned into, oh, my gosh, I have to make sure this germ or virus or pathogen or cancer cell people feel like it just jumps into their bodies and they're just like these happily-bred animals.

[00:19:02] Right.

[00:19:03] The truth is we're like farmers and our blood is like the soil and any pathogen, any virus, germ, bacteria, cancer cell, those are incubated.

[00:19:17] They will only take root and flourish in our bodies, in our blood, in ourselves if we have the conditions right and friendly for that.

[00:19:27] So like, for example, a cancer cell cannot survive in a highly oxygenated environment.

[00:19:33] So I've experienced where people who have been given a cancer diagnosis, the blood needs to be somewhere between 7.35 and 7.45 alkymin.

[00:19:46] What that means is I remember from high school chemistry, Mrs.

[00:19:50] Fisher had a whiteboard in front of the room and she talked about something called pH balance.

[00:19:57] And she talked about every substance on Earth is made of some kind of element and all elements have after those what's well, especially after metabolism, after eating turns into an acid or an alkaline, which is also known as a base chemistry.

[00:20:16] So a healthy bloodstream is somewhere between 7.35 and 7.45 alkylin.

[00:20:22] The only foods that create an alkaline chemistry are fresh squeezed juices, fruits, vegetables, they're fresh squeezed juices, sprouts, the grains, quinoa, millet and amaranth, the nut, almond, seaweed,

[00:20:39] the raw sauerkraut, unpasteurized miso and pretty much everything else is acidic.

[00:20:47] So when you have a diagnosis or you have a condition which we know comes from an acid chemistry, which creates more inflammation,

[00:20:58] the toxins breed in an acid environment without even knowing if you have a disease, but you have symptoms without even being given a diagnosis or a name.

[00:21:08] When you move to an alkaline chemistry diet and you bombard your body with enzymes, enzymes are in living foods, enzymes are destroyed through heater cooking.

[00:21:19] So when you're eating a diet that's mostly alive, mostly alkaline, full of minerals, full of oxygen, the plant's blood is chlorophyll.

[00:21:29] So when we're having a lot of green foods, we find often that the symptoms of disease go away without having ever been diagnosed.

[00:21:38] You know what I mean? So Western medicine compartmentalizes our body.

[00:21:44] You know, we've got our shoulder expertise and our people who are just gut or people just brain.

[00:21:51] And in my world, we're looking at two things. Are you toxic? Are you deficient?

[00:21:57] And when we address those things, we get the toxins out. We remove deficiencies that were totally nourished.

[00:22:04] We take that in through food and through light, you know, use things like colon therapy to get the waste out.

[00:22:13] You know, and the fit like you and I both fit, you know, since you have worked with physical therapy, is it, Chris? Is that kind of your expertise?

[00:22:22] I'm technically I'm a personal trainer, but I incorporate balanced fitness so that people who have had, you know, historically back pain can get out of that back pain by strengthening their core, rebalancing their hips, their spine, their shoulders, et cetera.

[00:22:38] Yeah, no, because all of that is magical. I mean, before I ever worked with nutrition, my first license was in massage therapy.

[00:22:46] Right. I had a friend who had been shot in the hand a few months before I met him.

[00:22:51] He his hand was curled up like a claw. The doctor said he had nerve damage. He'd never used the hand again.

[00:22:58] I was in the middle of massage school. I had a table upstairs in my studio. So his name was Eric.

[00:23:04] I said, Eric, get on my massage table. I just had a very strong feeling.

[00:23:09] He got on the table. I worked on his hand and arm for about a half hour.

[00:23:14] He felt all kinds of tingling after being completely numb. Within two weeks, he was holding a glass.

[00:23:21] Within a few months, he became assistant head chef at a very famous restaurant in New York called Sardis.

[00:23:28] And to this day, he still does chefing work. So even without the nutrition, Chris, I mean, I acknowledge that.

[00:23:35] I think the way I was introduced to health with massage and what you've been doing with the body,

[00:23:40] you know, magical things can happen just with natural interventions, interventions that have nothing to do with surgery,

[00:23:48] that have nothing to do with drugs, that are not about compartmentalizing the body,

[00:23:52] that are about looking at the human being as a whole. You know, I think that's where the magic is.

[00:23:58] And that's where the power is. Yeah, I think so.

[00:24:01] I think so. I think that's a great segue. Your tagline, own your health.

[00:24:06] Why is that your tagline? How did you choose that?

[00:24:08] Because I feel like so much of what I'm sharing is not known to the general public.

[00:24:17] And the more I can and people like you and I can get out there and make this information known

[00:24:25] and show people how to implement it, we give them tools so they can become their own doctors.

[00:24:31] I'm not just looking for people to come to me and, you know, walk through.

[00:24:35] And most of my work these days isn't really in an office.

[00:24:39] I meet people in the offices where there's the red light bed.

[00:24:43] But mostly I'm working virtually with nutrition, getting people on detox programs.

[00:24:49] If I were doing colon hydrotherapy, yes, that's certainly a hands-on healing art.

[00:24:55] But I want people to have the information how to care for their bodies.

[00:25:01] And that makes you your own doctor.

[00:25:04] And people like Chris and I are here if you need support,

[00:25:08] if you need some more information perhaps than you have now.

[00:25:12] And I just really want you to own your health.

[00:25:15] Yeah, I love that. Personal accountability, responsibility, and really educating.

[00:25:22] I think if each person educated themselves on the basics,

[00:25:26] and then you're not going to be an expert in everything, but we have other people to go to.

[00:25:31] And I think it's a great way to come together as a community and achieve that health,

[00:25:37] again, doing as much as we can without surgeries and interventions.

[00:25:41] I do personally think Western medicine is amazing at keeping people from dying and any kind of surgery.

[00:25:49] In fact, I have a friend who is a medical doctor.

[00:25:52] I asked him, I said, well, what should I go to the hospital for?

[00:25:56] He said, well, whatever you have, if it's not going to kill you, stay away from the hospital.

[00:26:02] But if your life is in danger, the hospital is the best place to be.

[00:26:06] So I think you and I are definitely in agreement on that.

[00:26:10] Let's start to wind it down a little bit, Joyce.

[00:26:13] I want to know though, what do you want your legacy to be?

[00:26:17] I want to know, what do you want your career to look like?

[00:26:20] OK, I just want to say before I answer that, I feel like if there is an accident or there is an injury,

[00:26:29] or there is something, let's say structural, where no matter what you're doing,

[00:26:35] if a structural injury is not going to respond to detoxification and nutrition,

[00:26:42] there are moments where Western medicine is incredible.

[00:26:47] Everything I'm saying I've been talking about is more for when there's something organically wrong,

[00:26:53] when we start to develop conditions that are acute and then become chronic,

[00:26:59] that affect our organs, that are the names of diseases.

[00:27:04] Those are the kind of things where I'm saying things like what we're talking about work.

[00:27:10] So I guess I'd want my legacy to be basically the perpetuation of own your health.

[00:27:19] Learn how your body works, learn what you need.

[00:27:23] We're living in a culture where we're constantly swimming upstream, the message everywhere.

[00:27:28] We're bombarded on TV with commercials or in publications or social media.

[00:27:33] It's like take this drug, keep getting these tests because you're going to decline as you get older.

[00:27:41] And if that's the leading thing, you're always thinking in terms of like warding off disease

[00:27:49] by fighting with a pathogen or making sure you catch something early enough

[00:27:54] so you can get on the medication or the drug.

[00:27:57] So I want my legacy to be, hey people, let me show you how your body works.

[00:28:03] Let me teach you what you need to get healthy, to stay healthy and to reverse disease.

[00:28:09] And if, Chris, you can help me perfect the technical world so when I am not in my body anymore,

[00:28:15] if I have publications, if I have online courses that people can go to and learn from,

[00:28:22] that will be a wonderful legacy for me.

[00:28:24] That sounds like a fantastic legacy.

[00:28:27] So Joyce, give us your website and then I know you have, actually you have a couple websites

[00:28:34] and I know you have a presentation, you have your program, your 90-day program.

[00:28:39] Give us all that information so people can contact you.

[00:28:42] Sure. Well pretty much everything is described on my website which is healthisaninsidejob.com.

[00:28:52] Healthisaninsidejob.com.

[00:28:56] You're welcome to call me, 310-980-7665.

[00:29:02] You can text as well and I'm happy to talk to you.

[00:29:06] On my website, on the home page, when you scroll down to the bottom,

[00:29:10] there is an opt in if you type in your name and your email and phone number if you want to.

[00:29:15] That's another way to send me a message and I will respond to that.

[00:29:19] Nice. 310 Area Code, you're in LA. I went to school in LA.

[00:29:23] Yes.

[00:29:24] I went to Loyola Murray Mount.

[00:29:26] Yes, actually I live near there. I'm in Playa Vista.

[00:29:30] Oh beautiful area right by the water. Love it.

[00:29:33] Yeah.

[00:29:34] Awesome. Well it's been my pleasure, Joyce, to speak with you today.

[00:29:39] Everybody, Joyce Gerber, check out her website.

[00:29:42] And Joyce, really appreciate you joining us today on Health in the Real World.

[00:29:47] I'm really happy to have been here with you, Chris. Thank you very much.