Sakara Life with Whitney Tingle
Today I'm speaking with Whitney Tingle, the founder of Sakara Life, on the Longevity Optimization Podcast. In this engaging conversation, we explore the realms of wellness, nutrition, and the journey of creating Sakara, a healthy meal delivery service. Whitney shares her personal health struggles and emphasizes the importance of gut health, discussing how nutrition profoundly impacts overall well-being. Our dialogue delves into the science behind food, the significance of hydration, and the challenges of sourcing quality ingredients, all while reflecting on the unique health landscape of New York City.
Whitney Tingle is a passionate advocate for holistic health and nutrition, dedicated to transforming the way people approach their diets. Throughout our discussion, we focus on various aspects of health and wellness, including dietary choices, diabetes management, and the importance of personalized medicine. We examine the impact of specific foods on health, particularly in relation to diabetes, and explore the significance of understanding individual health histories. The conversation highlights the role of gut health in overall wellness, the necessity of assessing toxic burdens, and the power of nutrition as a form of medicine. Finally, Whitney shares insights into daily wellness routines and practices that contribute to a healthier lifestyle, offering practical advice for listeners looking to enhance their well-being.
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Timestamps
00:00 Introduction to Wellness and Nutrition Conversations
03:04 The Birth of Saqqara: A Journey into Healthy Meal Delivery
05:59 Personal Health Struggles and the Gut-Skin Connection
08:45 Exploring Nutrition: The Science Behind Food and Health
11:45 The Importance of Gut Health in Skin Issues
14:54 The Role of Inflammation in Aging and Health
17:53 The Evolution of Health Understanding and Practices
20:56 Hydration and Nutrition: The Foundation of Health
24:10 Diversity in Diet: The Key to Optimal Nutrition
27:01 Sourcing Ingredients: The Challenges of Healthy Meal Prep
29:54 The New York Experience: Health and Convenience in Urban Living
37:48 Navigating Dietary Choices and Health Impacts
41:04 Understanding Diabetes Management and Dietary Approaches
44:38 The Importance of Personalized Medicine
46:50 Exploring Gut Health and Testing
52:03 Assessing Total Toxic Burden
56:10 The Role of Nutrition in Wellness
01:01:10 Daily Wellness Routines and Practices
Transcript
[00:00:00.240] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Whitney, it is such a pleasure to have you here with me today.
[00:00:02.910] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Thanks, Kayla. Excited to be here.
[00:00:05.040] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Same. Today we're going to do a slightly different version of a podcast. You and I are new friends and I just want to have, you know, conversation. I mean, I always do have conversations.
[00:00:18.060] - WHITNEY TINGLE
But I know whenever we're talking, I'm like, oh, we should be recording this.
[00:00:21.540] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I know, exactly. So it'll be fun. You guys can get to know Whitney as I further get to know Whitney. And I think we're going to ask some questions back and forth. So I'm so excited about this. It's all things longevity, wellness, nutrition. We have so many similar, you know, interests.
[00:00:40.900] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah. Excited.
[00:00:42.290] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
So for anyone that is listening, I actually just had a Sakara bowl, which is your company, and I think you were one of the first ones really, to do this, like, really organic, you know, high end meal delivery service.
[00:00:57.700] - WHITNEY TINGLE
You started it in 2011. We did our first deliveries in 2011. And in that time, people thought we were crazy.
[00:01:06.150] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Really?
[00:01:06.670] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah. They thought we were crazy. They're like, you're gonna send healthy food through the mail, like salads through the mail. He does that. And at this point, there wasn't even Uber Eats didn't exist. There was no Postmates. And so, you know, the only food that was being delivered was pizza and Chinese food. And they're like, who's going to want healthy food through BE to be delivered? They want pizza and Chinese food delivered. And we're like, no, we are going to change things. We're going to help people be healthier by making it more convenient.
[00:01:38.570] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Such a great. I haven't even. I never really thought about, like, the history of delivery. Right. But it really. Yeah. Pizza, obviously the first. Right. And then me or Chinese.
[00:01:48.940] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And that was really it. I mean, Blue apron started in 2012 and they had raised so much money that that really helped us, actually, because they helped get people used to getting food through the mail. Before that they. Nobody got food through the mail.
[00:02:05.760] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[00:02:06.200] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And so they kind of helped people get used to that and used to the concept of it. And then that helped us the. Then be like, okay, well, Blue Apron is just giving you ingredients and it's not that healthy. We make our meals ready to eat and are the highest level quality nutrition.
[00:02:25.010] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I love that. And tell us a little bit about your backstory, like what brought you. And you. You have a partner in the business, Danielle, also a woman, which I love. What. How did this. How was this birthed?
[00:02:38.130] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah. And so we grew up together in Sedona. Have you been to Sedona before?
[00:02:42.920] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I haven't, but you told me great things.
[00:02:45.210] - WHITNEY TINGLE
So you have to go. You and your husband have to go.
[00:02:47.850] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Okay.
[00:02:48.290] - WHITNEY TINGLE
It's amazing, you know, lots of hiking and just great nature. But really it's a place where people have come for years from all around the world as a place of healing. There's healing of all different modalities. You know, kind of like how in LA when you go to a restaurant and your waiter is also an actor or writing a screenplay, like everybody's in the industry here in Sedona, everybody is in the industry of healing. So your waiter is also a yoga teacher or a psychic or a Reiki healer. So my dad was an architect and a developer, but then every Tuesday night he would go and practice with a Reiki master. And so just, you know, raised with this kind of interesting upbringing of understanding that there are different modalities to healing and food being one of those modalities. But fast forward. Danielle was living in New York. She was studying to become a doctor. So studying pre med, interning at St. Luke's Hospital up in Harlem. I moved out to New York to work on Wall Street. I thought I wanted to be like Susie Orman, a financial advisor, a woman in charge of her finances.
[00:04:12.730] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And I got there and it was just a crazy lifestyle. Like 80 hour work weeks, eating whatever was convenient in the office. They're giving you food to help keep you kind of motivated and keep you there. And you know, I was young and broke, so I was eating whatever they were feeding me. And then it was part of my job to go out after work and go to the bar with them and be drinking and entertaining clients. And so, you know, I just, I put on a fast £15 and the cystic acne that I had had since like puberty really was at an all time worst. Just like big red, painful cysts all over my face. I still have acne scars from it. But I, you know, I thought, okay, I'm in New York City, somebody here is going to have the solution. Somebody is going to fix me, right? And I went one by one to see doctor after doctor and each one of them wanted to write me another prescription for antibiotics, which I did. So many antibiotics in my life, it's now become part of my mission to help people to understand the risks and consequences that come along with antibiotics.
[00:05:41.850] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Because I think they feel pretty innocuous. Just like, oh, yeah, just pop some antibiotics and you'll be fine. But they have long term side effects which we can get into later. But. So I was on antibiotics. I was on Accutane, which is another serious drug. It's made to shrink your oil glands from the inside. But you need your oil glands. Right.
[00:06:11.670] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I mean, I believe everything that we have was for a purpose, you know.
[00:06:16.130] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And it's what keeps your skin moisturized and youthful as you age, that oil, like, keeping that water barrier on your skin. But needless to say, like, those things didn't work for me. I still had the acne. It was a chronic infection that continued to come back. And I saw all these doctors, and none of them were asking me, like, what are you eating?
[00:06:41.570] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[00:06:42.230] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Are you going to the bathroom every day?
[00:06:44.980] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I know.
[00:06:45.700] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Which I wasn't. And, you know, I think, like, talking about poop should become normalized, especially with your doctor.
[00:06:55.380] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Right. It's super normalized to me. So. But I might be, like, over here.
[00:06:58.880] - WHITNEY TINGLE
In my own world, but, you know, like, I like to look at my poop to see what does it look like, because it can give you so much information.
[00:07:11.340] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Totally you. Yeah. If anyone's not familiar with the Bristol stool chart, just take a little gander at that. And not all poops are normal.
[00:07:20.080] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yes. And how often are you pooping? And so all these doctors, they weren't looking at that, and they just wanted to give me another prescription for antibiotics, another prescription for Accutane. I did lights, lasers, creams, topicals, everything. None of it worked. Because it wasn't an acute problem that a doctor could fix. It was a chronic problem, and it stemmed from my gut health. And so I realized, you know, this is what I like to say. I didn't have a gut problem, or I didn't have a skin problem. I had a gut problem. And so, like, that was my driver, really, of wanting to fix that. That led me to starting Sakara. I decided to. You know, I had kind of this inner voice telling me, this isn't actually the problem on your face. It is a symptom of a bigger problem going on inside. And so I went back to my roots, my Sedona roots. And, you know, Danielle was going on her own journey. She'd been a yo yo dieter. She was working in the hospital, seeing patients with lifestyle diseases, yet nobody addressing lifestyle, so she shifted her path to study nutrition. And.
[00:08:41.000] - WHITNEY TINGLE
But really, we came together to figure it out for ourselves, like, what should we eat for optimal health? And that once we get down to that, of, like, what should we be eating? Not the list of what shouldn't we be eating? That Danielle had been focused on Inner diets. But what do we need to put in our bodies to let our bodies function at their optimal health? And let's eat that. And so we studied a lot of different modalities. You know, Ayurveda and even Taoism has their own food philosophy. I think it used to be a part of religion really too, these food philosophies teaching us how to eat. And then paired that with modern cutting edge science that was coming out around the gut. Microbiome and epigenetics and nutrigenomics and how what you eat turns on and off certain genes in your body and put it together to create recipes. We started to eat them and it completely changed our bodies and our lives so much that, you know, people were starting to ask us, can you just make me some of that? And that's how we started. And one person told their friends, and their friends told their friends and it just spread through word of mouth.
[00:09:58.230] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Because when you're changing somebody's body in their life, they want to talk about it.
[00:10:04.200] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, I like, you know, I'm so sorry you even had to deal with all that. But it kind, it clearly came to like an end result that was really beneficial. Right? Yeah.
[00:10:16.830] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I think a lot of people, their mess becomes their mission.
[00:10:19.810] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Totally, absolutely. I mean that's this, it's, that's the same reason why I got interested in all of this stuff. You know, I started, I grew up on a very differently, you know, grew up on a standard American diet. I was on food stamps, you know, for large portions of my life. If anyone remembers a free lunch card, that was a very familiar thing to me. And I don't talk about this that much, but there's a perception online because of what I have now that somehow that was given to me and that that couldn't be further from the truth. You know, I, I've actually. I gave up so much of my life to do nothing but work. I started my first company when I was 17. I had no clue what I was doing. I was just saying yes to everything and figuring it out on the fly. But what I always knew and what really like spark spurred this initially was that in order to change my entire life because I knew I didn't want a life of the, like, the life I grew up in, I was going to have to upgrade my brain and my body because I knew that I had limiting beliefs.
[00:11:24.670] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
So when I think about the brain as like software and hardware, right. I had to upgrade the software because I, I had limiting beliefs. I You know, wasn't ever told in my life like you, I would have never been told that I could have the life that I have now. Right. I mean, I think some of best aspirations were so much lower than what I already have achieved. And so I knew I was going to have to upgrade my brain and I was going to have to upgrade my body because I had to have relentless energy. Like, I was so relentless in the hours I was willing to commit. I had to have the focus and the drive and the stamina to be able to keep up with that. And that's really, you know, that in, in combination with starting to study nutrition in college, I was just like, that was the light bulb. It was like, okay, this is how I do it. This is how I get the life that I always wanted by focusing on, on health. I always say health is the foundation of greatness.
[00:12:16.700] - WHITNEY TINGLE
It is.
[00:12:17.700] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
If there's anything you want to do in life, it is fueled by that health. Right. And to go back to your point about the skin, I get so many questions all the time. What is the skin product? You know, or I have acne. What is the product? And it's so frustrating because I have a post actually like primed to go this week. It's similar to one I did a few years ago. But skin issues are a sign that if something is off internally. Yeah, it's not a cream deficiency. Yeah, there's no cream. I mean, I'm not saying creams can't make some sort of impact, but it's not going to heal the root cause.
[00:12:52.710] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Exactly.
[00:12:53.340] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Every single time someone asks me, what should they do? Do you want to buy, you know, $600 in creams or do you want to spend $600 on a gut test? And when you resolve the gut issues, it's a super high likelihood that you're going to see those skin issues resolved.
[00:13:09.610] - WHITNEY TINGLE
It's your immune system. If you're having a chronic infection in your body, which acne is a chronic infection just coming out on your skin, then that means that you need to be working on your immune system. It's an imbalance of the bacteria in your body. It is a dysbiosis. And the best way to fix a dysbiosis is, is not by taking heavy duty antibiotics, which wipe out the good bacteria with the bad, but by boosting your good bacteria so that they can do the fight for you and fight that bad bacteria.
[00:13:45.290] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Absolutely, Absolutely, I agree.
[00:13:47.460] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And you know, like, it's funny because I have a lot of people that ask me about skin and what they should be doing. And I had somebody write on my Instagram be like, why are you giving skin advice? You're not a dermatologist? Like, nope. And a lot of dermatologists will not give the same advice that I'm giving. The number one, you know, solution that is still provided when somebody has acne is antibiotics. And if that doesn't work, Accutane still to this day. And they're not talking about those long term potential side effects that come along with it. And I just see that there's a different and a better way. And whether it's acne or rosacea or eczema or psoriasis, whatever it is, you need to start with the inside or even wrinkles. And aging of the skin starts with what you're eating and what you're putting into your body every day.
[00:14:54.490] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, I mean, we have a massive control and impact. Influence, I guess is the right word over all of those factors. And yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the Internet should just realize that, you know, you're allowed to share your story and what you did. Like it's your own Instagram page. And yeah, I mean, honestly, a lot of the literature, they say it takes roughly 20 years to prove something out in the literature for that to go to bedside. That's an incredibly long time. I'm not interested in waiting 20 years.
[00:15:30.120] - WHITNEY TINGLE
No, people don't even want to wait one month, one month or six months. They want things instantly. So let alone 20 years.
[00:15:38.000] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Totally. And that's why, you know, that's why I started a clinic and, you know, co started a clinic. That's why I am doing all these N of 1 experiments, because I'm figuring out, out finding the right people to bring into the fold to help me figure it out. But then I can, you know, just share my story. And hopefully that resonates with women because we are so incredibly underserved. I mean, it really just came full circle for me. How much? So I, you know, I know a lot of the numbers, but when I, when we were, we were both speakers at Edemonia. Yeah. So I was interviewing Dr. Jennifer Garrison and you know, female health, like ovarian aging specifically is like her entire, her entire lab right now, or a large portion of it.
[00:16:20.050] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I didn't get to hear that talk. Oh, so sad. I'll have to, I think they're doing a replay, so I'm going to have to watch it.
[00:16:26.080] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Oh, nice. And I did a podcast with her. Okay. But it was just amazing to me that so many of the questions that I asked, we don't have the data yet. Like we're doing the ground level work right now. Like why do the ovaries age 2.5 times faster than the rest of the body? We do not know.
[00:16:48.250] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah, we can make assumptions.
[00:16:49.890] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[00:16:50.520] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Like my assumption is that our bodies are divine, are designed to reproduce and then get rid of us, unfortunately. And so it's kind of this work that were into around how can we extend our health span. Right. And kind of biohack our natural biology in order to live longer and live healthier as we live longer.
[00:17:22.600] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Absolutely. Yeah. My eye. Well one, what's your hypothesis? My hypothesis is potentially related to inflammation. So we know throughout the menstrual cycle, cycle that we experience, you know, every month that there's a large increase at times of inflammation. We also know that inflammation, you know, expedites aging. That's from like a biological standpoint. From a more, you know, I, I don't know the word for it, but from a, a larger, I guess evolutionary standpoint would be potentially that we were meant to procreate at X time. I was having a conversation, I had a walk actually yesterday morning with an amazing PhD that's also studying something similar. And she also studied evolutionary biology. So the idea could be, you know, we were meant to procreate throughout this time period and then meant to, you know, be grandmothers and you know, etc. Makes sense, right? Yeah. But when you think about it from a male perspective, doesn't. The shoe doesn't also seem to fit that foot. So I don't know. I, I really feel like we need to know though, the exact reason why, you know.
[00:18:40.190] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah, why would help a lot.
[00:18:41.980] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah. And, but it seems so basic. Like for me, if it feels so basic that we should already know this information and also even the stuff with the skin. Right. Like, yeah. I mean, we know that the literature says the microbiome impacts the skin. We know this. Why is that not yet over to the clinics and the offices and the hospitals and the.
[00:19:02.220] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Well, we know that the gut microbiome greatly affects our mental health, our serotonin production, I mean, the balance of our brain chemicals. Yet why is food and nutrition still so greatly kind of like, I mean, it's very much ostracized, pushed to the side when it comes to psychiatry. Like psychiatrists, the majority of them, if, if they want to suggest some supplements or even nutritional labs, they can be, you know, called a quack or a fake or selling snake oil by their peers.
[00:19:38.770] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[00:19:39.260] - WHITNEY TINGLE
There's something still in that culture too. So I think it just takes time and these conversations, and there are certain people that are breaking out and branching out that we'll start to make the shift. But it's still. We're still in a little bubble.
[00:19:56.390] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I know, I know I did all of Dr. Daniel Amen's coursework. This was years ago, but when I was on this journey, like, how can I upgrade my brain? I found him and, you know, he really revolutionized psychiatry by actually looking at the brain. I mean, typically you're taking a standardized set of questions and like, leaving with a, you know, prescription most, most of the time when it comes to any mental, you know, disorder or variants. And he started looking at the brain with SPECT imaging and has made substantial strides in, in a variety of different mental health conditions and, you know, in general brain trauma. So I have a hard shell hyperbaric oxygen chamber upstairs in my bedroom, and I first found out about that from him. So there's so many influences and so much of it makes me so sad because we've just gotten away from the things that make us healthy. And I feel like the, the basic but very proven things are being overlooked because they're too simple.
[00:20:55.920] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I totally agree. And they're, they're just not sexy. And they take time and they take. It becomes. It has to be your everyday lifestyle. So, you know, circadian rhythm, going to bed at the right time, getting up at a good hour to get sunlight in your eyes, um, eating healthy foods. Like people want to know which foods they should eliminate and which specific food to eat to get X, Y, Z. But really it starts with just having that healthy foundation of what are you putting into your body. Are you getting enough plant fibers? Are you getting enough diversity of ingredients to build a diversity in your gut microbiome? Are you getting enough protein, enough hydration? Like, people aren't talking about hydration from food, but you need to be getting hydration from food. Eating foods that live and die in your refrigerator, not ones that can just sit on a shelf for two or five years.
[00:21:57.790] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I mean, that's really problematic. I know.
[00:22:01.330] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah.
[00:22:01.910] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
So crazy. Actually, one of the best water sources, obviously not for your primary water source necessarily, but one of the best water sources, if I'm remembering this correctly, is plants. Because the, the process that they, that they undergo to actually create the water inside of them. It's, it's very close to easy water or exclusion zone water, which is best absorbed by ourselves.
[00:22:25.120] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah, it's in this web, this structure of fiber and nutrients, antioxidants, and as it's going through your digestive system, because it's in this web, it's held in your system for a longer amount of time. So water can just kind of flush through you. It's great for flushing toxins. It's important to drink water. But really, I mean, I would say 80% of your hydration should come from your food. And eating those water rich foods that contain over 90% water in them, which most fruits and vegetables do, and so it can be released later down in your digestive system because your digestive system actually takes a lot of water to function. And if you're eating packaged crackers, even if they're gluten free, healthy, whatever crackers or cereals, even if they're grain free, whatever, they're like all of these take, or popcorn things take hydration and water to digest and they don't have water in them. So where are they going to get that water from? They're getting it from your body. Right. So it's coming from your skin or your organs. And really you want to be adding hydration into your body, keeping your cells plumped up, keeping your organs, you know, nice and hydrated because that really impacts our energy levels.
[00:23:59.320] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Not just like your skin plumpness, which it does too, but definitely energy levels. If you're dehydrated, you're going to feel sluggish.
[00:24:10.530] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Absolutely. So I've obviously been having your meals.
[00:24:15.240] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah.
[00:24:15.830] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Tons of variety diversity in them. How do you guys aim for like a specific diversity count in each meal or throughout the week? Is there a number, like how many different types?
[00:24:27.040] - WHITNEY TINGLE
On average you're getting about 70 different plant species in a day and close to 200 in a week. And you know, on average, the average American is getting, I think it's like 12 to 15 species of plants in their diet each week. 12 to 15. And most of them are domesticated, highly domesticated, you know, mono crop kind of fruits and vegetables. But so we really aim to boost that diversity in your diet because different foods contain different nutrient profiles. Right. So you're getting different vitamins and minerals, different antioxidants. So every plate looks like a rainbow. And the different colors contain different polyphenols and antioxidants that are helping to neutralize free radicals in your body, help to slow that DNA damage. So really great for longevity. But then also they contain different types of fibers. So I think a lot of people think fiber is just one thing. Like I went into Erewhon last night and I checked out, you know, our Sakara products. In there. And we have our fiber super powder and it's on a shelf with other fiber supplements. And they're all single source fibers, mostly psyllium husk. And I think that's what people think of when they think of fiber.
[00:26:05.060] - WHITNEY TINGLE
They're like, oh, psyllium husk.
[00:26:07.630] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[00:26:08.100] - WHITNEY TINGLE
But really there's so many different types of fibers and they do different things. They feed different bacteria in your gut, which then create postbiotics that are important and do different things for our bodies.
[00:26:23.400] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah. I mean, I love that. And it's also, it's, you know, I am a big cook in terms of. Not because I actually am like ultra passionate about cooking, but because I know that I can choose the quality of my food. I also, personally, for me, I love the act of, like making, you know, home cooked meals for my husband. I just feel like it's one of the most loving things I can do.
[00:26:45.260] - WHITNEY TINGLE
What an act of love.
[00:26:46.410] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I know. And also, you know, then I can manage our nutrition. I know exactly what we're eating and how often, et cetera. But you know, when I, when I eat things like sakara, I feel I'm so spoiled because I'm like, oh, man, this like, saves a lot of time.
[00:27:00.640] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah. And then you can use your brain power for something else when. When you don't want to cook.
[00:27:06.860] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I agree. And plus, it's fun because my husband and I, like, sometimes we will incorporate the meal into something we're already cooking. Yeah. And then we'll just split. So it's like instead of having to do all this prep work. I mean, salads take so long to make.
[00:27:19.990] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Truly, you know, their produce lives and dies in the fridge. So first you have to have fresh produce that hasn't gone bad, hasn't wrinkled, shriveled up in the fridge. And then you have to wash it clean, you know, cut it, prep it, and then add a sauce to it or do something it's not. I think it's a lot easier to just pull some salmon out of the freezer and heat that up just with a little bit of olive oil and salt and lemon. You know, three ingredients versus an entire vegetable dish like sakara, type of salad that contains, you know, 25 different ingredients in it.
[00:28:00.380] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
No. How do you. This is a really silly question. How do you dry the leaves? It just a salad spinner?
[00:28:09.210] - WHITNEY TINGLE
No, I mean, we have kind of. It's. It looks like a washing machine.
[00:28:16.520] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Okay, well.
[00:28:17.360] - WHITNEY TINGLE
But yeah, so it's like a gigantic center.
[00:28:19.460] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Oh, you do it? Yeah.
[00:28:20.590] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Cause I get sakara. It's like a big, A big one.
[00:28:23.720] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:24.870] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I go through a lot of leafy greens.
[00:28:26.510] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, I bet.
[00:28:27.620] - WHITNEY TINGLE
But yeah, I mean a salad spinner, wash them and then put them in a salad spinner. Or if I'm lazy and I don't want to get that out, I'll just use a paper towel.
[00:28:39.030] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Okay. That's what I've been doing.
[00:28:40.520] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah, it's not as good, it's not as tasty that way. But if you're. And then I think if you're getting the pre washed. One of my sister's friends is a microbiologist and she was doing testing on these packaged, you know, pre washed salad mixes. And I remember years ago she was like, you don't want to know the microbes on there. Like you have to still wash it. Absolutely. Wash those greens. And so I was washing them and now she's learned so much about important microbes are for us and how they can actually support the diversity. And so now she's like, don't wash them. It's actually beneficial for you.
[00:29:28.490] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Oh good. I love that. Well, my problem was I spent like three weeks because I did not have a lot of time to dedicate to just finding a salad spinner. Right? Yeah. So I spent like three weeks on and off. You know what I'm talking about? It's like, okay, I'm going to try to find this. So I was trying to find one so hard that didn't have plastic and yeah, it took forever. I finally have one. But of course the wait time was. Well, I don't have actually physically. Okay, it's being delivered. The wait time was super long because I'm not sure why, but I'm so excited to finally get a salad spinner. It's going to be the first salad spinner I've actually owned in my life because I used to just buy, you know, more. So the pre washed ones. Yeah. But I'm doing this, you know, just like trying to do farmers markets when I can and stuff so I can get like freshly, you know, picked stuff. Yeah. So how do you.
[00:30:15.220] - WHITNEY TINGLE
But that takes a lot of work to clean all the dirt off. So my mom, when kids grew up and moved out of the house, we used to have a big swimming pool in the backyard and a lot of like grass lawn. And she filled the swimming pool up with dirt and turned it into a garden. She planted fruit trees in the lawn.
[00:30:36.330] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yes.
[00:30:37.060] - WHITNEY TINGLE
So basically just turned her yard into an organic farm.
[00:30:42.220] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I love that.
[00:30:43.370] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And so when my husband and I were living back home during COVID We were harvesting things out of the garden, and, oh, man, it takes so much work to get all of the dirt and the bugs. You have to check every leaf of lettuce. And then that year, we had a bunch of snails.
[00:31:05.040] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Oh, I've seen this an issue before.
[00:31:07.660] - WHITNEY TINGLE
They will just leave a skeleton of a leaf on the plant. They will eat everything. And this year, the issue was raccoons.
[00:31:17.620] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Oh, my God.
[00:31:18.290] - WHITNEY TINGLE
The raccoons will come in. And they were eating all of her persimmons.
[00:31:23.240] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
And this happened to me. Yeah, I was devastated. See, right down. Right over there, we had all these trees. And my husband and I are very different. He's super patient. I'm not really. And so I saw all these peaches on the tree, and there's 40 of them. And I'm like, oh, yes, I want to eat these so bad. And he's like, no, no, let's be patient, and we'll wait. And sorry for telling the story, Warren, because I know you feel bad. So he wanted us to be patient and wait a month. So they were, like, fully ripe, even though we could have eaten them. One morning, we wake up, a raccoon family ate every single one. Gone. Remnants gone. We couldn't even identify what happened to them until, like, later I finally found tiny remnants.
[00:32:06.740] - WHITNEY TINGLE
But, yeah, I mean, they have tiny little thumbs, and so they can do a lot of damage in your garden. So this year, yeah, they went after her persimmons, but then they also started going after her pomegranates, which in years past, they didn't touch the pomegranates, but this year, they're able to open up the shell and eat all of the little, you know, seeds. All those. I forget what they're called, you know, little gems out of the pomegranate and just leave part of a shell attached to the bush.
[00:32:42.590] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
So sad. It's devastating to see this. It is.
[00:32:45.810] - WHITNEY TINGLE
You put so much time and work into nurturing these plants and helping them grow and watering them. And then I don't know if anybody has tips on how to manage raccoons. Like, reach out.
[00:32:59.910] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I'll take them as well.
[00:33:01.190] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah. And she puts out traps and will get a raccoon here and there in her trap and then has to relocate it somewhere away. But they just keep coming back. So I need some tips.
[00:33:16.140] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Same, same. How do you. How do you guys source so much volume and.
[00:33:22.860] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah, I mean, it takes a lot of work. We have experts on the team who have been in sourcing for a long time. Like, when we first started, it was me and Danielle going out and meeting farmers because, I mean, this was, you know, over a decade ago. Farmers were not answering emails.
[00:33:41.190] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, they're both. Still not.
[00:33:43.390] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Probably still not. They were, like, out on the farm, you know, doing the work. They're not going to, like, answer the phone or answer an email. So we literally had to, like, drive upstate. You know, we started in New York, drive upstate and walk out onto the farm and just be like, hey, guys. They're, like, looking at us like, who are you? And talk to them and tell them about what we were doing and convince them to sell to us. Because they have, you know, kind of vendors and then over time, have just built relationships with these farmers where now, you know, they'll ask us, okay, you know, is there anything that you want specific, like, specifically grown for next season or. And also they'll ask us, what are your projections? How much do you think you're going to need? And so this also helps reduce waste, food waste, because we can give them pretty good projections. You know, we've been in business a long time now and can give them projections so that they don't overgrow their. Their crops, but, you know, grow just the amount needed kind of thing.
[00:34:53.700] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I love that.
[00:34:54.770] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah.
[00:34:55.890] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
How was starting. How was starting in New York like New York City? I mean, I lived in New York for a while. I've never really thought of it as the healthiest place.
[00:35:07.280] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I think that's why it worked. Why? Because there were no healthy options back then in New York.
[00:35:15.600] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
They're still limited.
[00:35:16.530] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I feel, like, still super limited, for sure. I mean, there's a few more here and there popping up, but it was really, really hard to get healthy food in New York. And like you're saying, still hard, but I think New York is such a special, magical place. Like, there's nowhere else on the planet that is like that for business.
[00:35:40.570] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[00:35:41.490] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And it's just a catalyst of a city where you're meeting people and, like, the. The density of people who are influential and just can help you, like, move business quickly is so high. And you're living your life out in the world in New York. You're not in your home, and then you take your car from here to there. Your apartment is literally like. It's your bed and your closet. You know, you're not hanging out at home. So your living room is all the amazing, like, lounges in New York. Your kitchen is all the amazing restaurants in New York. You're walking from here to there. So you're running into people, you're meeting people all the time. And it just really helps to accelerate business. So I think that. That really we were kind of in the right place at the right time to help make this grow and grow quickly. Even though it's been over 10 years, you know, it was still pretty fast paced in its growth.
[00:36:51.630] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I love that. I mean, also, I think New York is a place that people appreciate convenience a lot. And it's not that there's a lack of desire of wanting to be healthy necessarily.
[00:37:01.840] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah, people are smart and educated.
[00:37:04.110] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Totally. It's just, I think more so I felt the culture was just not. I mean, obviously it's like just different from LA now.
[00:37:11.590] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah. I think breakfast is one of the most difficult meals in New York City that you go around. And a typical New Yorker's breakfast is a cup of coffee.
[00:37:22.870] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[00:37:23.370] - WHITNEY TINGLE
You know, maybe a cup of coffee and a muffin. A cup of coffee and a croissant, a bagel, two eggs and cheese on a roll, you know, but not healthy options. And then I think a lot of New Yorkers, especially young, you know, moved there in my early 20s, like that late night pizza, like getting a slice is part of the New York culture.
[00:37:48.760] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I know, I never did that.
[00:37:50.340] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Or the bagels, I mean, that is just a gut bomb.
[00:37:56.540] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I know, I know. I'm glad I was actually eating sakara back in New York. I had a roommate, she would order it and that's amazing. I didn't do the pizza thing. I'm proud of myself. But I agree, it's very. I was the only one not eating the pizza.
[00:38:10.350] - WHITNEY TINGLE
That was something that I had to eventually give pizza, like the big X, where I don't have a lot of things that I won't eat, actually, where I feel like if you are what you do the majority of the time, so most of the time you're flooding your body with great healthy foods to build up your immune system. You can handle. When you go out and eat something that's not that great for you and your body will bounce back. But for me, pizza just really kind of did me in. Like, I would notice it on my skin the next day. And now having a son with type 1 diabetes, I can see it what happens in his blood sugar when you eat a pizza. There's something that they call in the diabetes world the pizza phenomenon. And it's because it's high, high starch, like high sugar in the crust, high carb and high fat. And that combination raises your blood sugar and then the fat keeps it up there for an extended amount of time. Making you more insulin resistant.
[00:39:17.650] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[00:39:18.310] - WHITNEY TINGLE
So the first time that we were in New York with my son, he had some pizza, you know, wanted the New York pizza, and his blood sugar was high for like eight hours. We could not get it to come down. And so, you know, we were still early in that journey of understanding.
[00:39:37.280] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Mm.
[00:39:38.520] - WHITNEY TINGLE
What foods affected him and to what degree and how to deal with those types of situations. Now we. We can, you know, manage it much better. But it was just eye opening to me to see what pizza does. And it's anything that's like a pizza kind of does this. That combination of the high starchy carb and the high fat together.
[00:40:05.030] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[00:41:04.090] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
When those carbs are then going to break down into sugars, obviously, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:41:09.460] - WHITNEY TINGLE
That raises your glucose and then the fat keeps it up.
[00:41:12.730] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[00:41:13.510] - WHITNEY TINGLE
So I don't know if, you know, the mastering diabetes guys, Robbie and Cyrus, they're interesting and they take a different approach to blood sugar and diabetes than what's common out there. They focus on a plant based, low fat, ultra low fat diet that's high carb. So they're eating bowls of mangoes and bananas and all these different fruits that typically somebody with diabetes will stay away from. And they can eat that and totally manage their blood sugar easily and keep their A1C down. Because what they've seen is that it's actually the fat that creates insulin resistance and a higher glucose number overall.
[00:42:09.640] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Healthy fats, too. Like avocado or no.
[00:42:12.500] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah, yeah. So they'll. They'll do some avocado and some nuts and seeds in there. Here and there. But overall, they try and keep it fairly low. And so I've even played with that with my own body, wearing a continuous glucose monitor. And it is really interesting to see that drop in your average glucose number when you do take down that fat level. You know, a lot of people go keto, which is the higher fat, and like no carbs. But this is the other direction where, you know, they had tried that too. But they get better results and better health outcomes. Better over time by doing it the way that they do it.
[00:43:00.880] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
They're eating pasta on this diet.
[00:43:03.140] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I don't think so. I think it's mostly a whole food based diet based carbs.
[00:43:07.260] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Okay. That makes a lot more sense. Okay.
[00:43:09.300] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah. Like, they're really focused on healthy foods.
[00:43:14.370] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah. Okay.
[00:43:15.110] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Um, but I mean, they just, you know, have kind of like seen magic happen with reversal of type 2 diabetes and keeping type 1 under great management.
[00:43:29.340] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
That's Great. Yeah. I mean, there's so many different schools of thought, you know. Yeah. Super interesting.
[00:43:37.900] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And I think this idea of what you're talking about with an n of 1, like studies with an n of 1, is really important because I think we've got it in our head in society somewhere that we need to do a double blind clinical trial with 10,000 people or whatever it is to show that this is the outcome and this works. But, but we are all individuals and our history, our health history, our exposures history, our family history and their exposures history are all different and individual. And so something that might, you know, cause something, a chronic condition or trigger something in you could be totally different than if I do the same thing.
[00:44:27.600] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
100%. Yeah.
[00:44:29.000] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And so I think looking in the future, we'll get closer to a more personalized, individualized medicine that looks at all of these, the health history and exposures, and takes that into account when looking at a health plan for a patient. I joined the board of this organization called Documenting Hope, which you had reviewed back. Yeah, I haven't listened to that episode yet.
[00:45:01.120] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Is it out yet?
[00:45:02.120] - WHITNEY TINGLE
It's not out yet, actually.
[00:45:03.480] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I'm, I'm grateful, but I have a pretty massive backlog right now of podcasts. I'm thinking about going to two a week because I'm doing so many of them.
[00:45:11.970] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Great.
[00:45:12.640] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
So that's amazing.
[00:45:14.010] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah, but they do studies, you know, they'll look at an n of 1 and look at a child individually at their exposures, their total load. So all of the different toxins that they have in their body and start to unwind it all. And they've had amazing results with helping kids with chronic, you know, lifelong conditions and being able to reverse those.
[00:45:44.990] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, it's, it's so powerful. That's, you know, really the root is. I told you. I just interviewed Dr. You know, Jeffrey Bland before this one, and he pioneered functional medicine. And it's root cause medicine. That's also what we offer, you know, in, in my clinic. And the outcomes are just so powerful. I mean, yeah, there'll be people that have seen 10, 15, 20 doctors. They don't have a solution, they don't know what is even going on and they have no idea how to start improving that or reversing that condition. Right. And then once you start looking on, you start peeling back some of these layers and it's not always easy. Right. It can be a long process, it can be expensive. I hope that's going to change in the future, but that's why I Do so many of these labs. I mean, I'm doing, I'm looking at.
[00:46:34.990] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I want to know about what labs you're doing. You were talking earlier about looking at your toxin exposure, your toxic load.
[00:46:44.240] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[00:46:44.850] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And how it's changed. So, yeah, like what do you get done? How do you even look at that?
[00:46:50.080] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah. So on a quarterly basis I do quite a few things. I am looking at my GI effects. So, you know, gut testing, I firmly believe, you know, the gut is just the foundation of health and it's amazing to watch it change too. So I had a breast explant earlier this year. I did a GI effect prior to the breast explant. I knew I was gonna have to be on antibiotics. I was having a surger. Obviously I avoid antibiotics at all costs unless it's absolutely necessary. Then we're blessed to have them because they're life saving. So knew I was going to do that. I went from having probably one of the best gut tests. I even asked Dr. Bland, I'm like, have you ever seen GI effects with all zeros so at the top, I'm not sure if you've ever seen this lab, but it'll give you a score for a variety of different areas of your gut from dysbiosis to metabolic imbalance, inflammation, parasites, viruses, et cetera. So I had all zeros and 12 on dysbiosis. And we know that we have, you know, trillions of gut bacteria, so it's pretty much impossible to get a zero for the dysbiosis.
[00:47:56.510] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
There's always going to be some level. So do a gut test. But I did a gut test post explant. Those antibiotics, even though I stayed on a really high powered antibiotic while doing the antibiotics, still just wiped it out. So I'm in the process of rebuilding it now. Gut test massive. You want to look for things like, you know, a parasite can completely derail you a lot of autoimmune conditions. They're finding, you know, a variety of different bacterias that can be related to them, like H. Pylori. And you want to, of course, step one is eradicate any of those pathogens or bacteria. About three years ago, you know, because I've been doing these types of labs live has been open for four years for a long time and it's becoming so much more popular now. But I've been doing them for a long time. So about three years ago I got, I got a parasite, picked it up from. It could be anything, travel, it could be a piece of unwashed food. You know, who knows? I named it Lawrence. I had to get rid of Lawrence and his whole family, unfortunately, like super fast.
[00:48:58.130] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, I just took. We have like, you know, you have like the slow going, you know, approach, but I just took what we call in my clinic the big gun. I just took a prescription and just knocked Lawrence out completely. But that, that Lawrence was causing all this inflammation in my GI tract. There's something. There's a marker called calprotectin that is measurement of inflammation. So if I had not been testing and I hadn't caught Lawrence, then that could have led to ibs, Crohn's. Crohn's. It's. These conditions develop over the course of sometimes a decade, sometimes shorter. So gut test is a huge one, total test.
[00:49:31.280] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And with. With the antibiotics, you know, a recent study came out just last month. It hasn't even been peer reviewed yet because it's so new. But looking at what happens to your gut over the course of time, one year, four years, eight years, and showing that with certain antibiotics, a powerful one, like a clindamycin, which is commonly prescribed, can wipe out. It was wiping out, on average, 52 species of bacteria in your gut and takes over a year to replenish. And with some of these microbes never coming back. And so I'm reading an interesting book right now. It's called Missing Microbes by Martin J. Blaser, that's looking at the connection between these missing microbes and conditions. Like you're talking about autoimmune, asthma, allergies, and seeing if there's a connection between those.
[00:50:37.150] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
There definitely is. There's another gut test that I've done, and it's called the Gut Zoomer by Vibrant America. And I prefer now the GI Effects just for anyone that is interested. But it would actually break down the species in the microbes and then it would actually have a correlation of what those have been scientifically backed to potentially be, you know, causative or correlative with different conditions, from a wide range of things from Parkinson's to, you know, even obesity, for sure, obesity. So getting your gut in check, so, so important. And we've already, we've already talked a lot about that, but that's like something. Because if you improve the gut when the gut. Because when those good micro microbes are wiped out, it allows for the overgrowth of the bad microbiomes. You're always going to have some bag and then you have some benign, right? You have good, bad, benign. There's always going to be all of them. But it's all about the, you know, the, the level of dysbiosis that you have it. You don't want the bad ones overgrowing. But it's amazing because the second that those bad ones start to overgrow, you can see it in your hormones, you can see it in so many other facets of your health, your brain health, your brain fog, your cognition, all these things.
[00:51:45.110] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
So gut testing is a big one. Things. Something that I think is so underused right now, and I know that there's a cost to it, is a total toxic burden. I have been feeling like I've been.
[00:51:57.590] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Over this one I haven't done yet.
[00:51:59.060] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, I feel like I've been over this corner of, like the Instagrams over here talking about total toxic burdens for like six years since I started posting. And it's a test that combines heavy metals, molds and mycotoxins, environmental toxins, and it's incredible. So it's going to look at all of these different facets. Right. We know heavy metals have a direct link with a lot of neurological conditions. Molds and mycotoxins. Can we see people bedridden? And I'm not saying that that's always going to happen. Of course not. Other people, some people are more genetically susceptible to not be able to detox that mold. Or if you're compromised in general, your.
[00:52:37.730] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Gut health isn't optimized.
[00:52:39.690] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Exactly. But in the right person, or the prolonged exposure or if you have, you know, an unhealthy home, let's say, like, aren't built the way they used to be, they're not breathing. So these molds, which then produce these mycotoxins, can be really dangerous if you're not able to detox them or if you're living in, you know, a moldy environment. So it's going to look at all of those levels. And it's interesting because since I've been in, and I haven't even talked about this yet, but since I've been in California, when I was in Ohio, I had zero. So when they rank it, when you get a total toxic burden test, it'll rank it. You have a high section, which is obviously the most problematic, and then a medium and then a low. Almost everyone that comes in thinks that they're going to have, like, no toxins in the high range. Right. They, they're living a healthy life already every single time. Just about they're not correct. It's on average, you know, 20 plus toxins in the high range. So my last Test again was one of the best. But keep in mind everyone like, you know, we'll walk through my house before you leave.
[00:53:39.090] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
But like the intention to detail like our couch is like a low toxin couch. You know, there's the, this carpet. You know, I had to go and find an organic carpet because there's so many things make an impact. I do, you know, mold testing twice a year in my home just to see what's going on, see if there's something it's not always visible. So I'm doing so much. So I went from having zero toxins in the high range and only like two. One of them being glyphosate, which is a whole other story because I haven't eaten, eaten a piece of inorganic food in about living in Ohio.
[00:54:09.170] - WHITNEY TINGLE
There's a lot of crops there that are sprayed with glyphosate. So it could be in the air.
[00:54:13.450] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
It's in the air, it's in the water. I firmly believe in all of the shower water that glyphosate is in there. Because no one, I've never a test without glyphosate in high levels. Which is very concerning because we know it's a known carcinogen. Yeah. I mean, in every single room I have, I mean, I have six Jaspers in this house. That's enough Jaspers, you know, air filtration to cover like three of these homes. So I'm doing all the things, but it's showing me like where the real issues are. Because if I have these things and you know, it's, it's really.
[00:54:44.550] - WHITNEY TINGLE
You're doing this level of work.
[00:54:46.410] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I mean, imagine what other people, organic clothes and never using plastic. I like, I'm the most annoying person at the airport like on the face of the planet. Like, I'm trying to like, you know, give them a little tip under the table. Because at the airport they're like, no, we can't put it in a different cup.
[00:55:00.630] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah.
[00:55:00.940] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
But I bring, you know, a glass bottle or cup and eventually, if you ask them enough times, please don't tell the airport that I told you this. But eventually I've gotten the coffee and you know, in the mug that I bring. But it's everything. It's the tap water. We're looking at, you know, environmental toxins, things like bpa. I can immediately tell if someone's looking, drinking out of plastic water bottles. It's so obvious.
[00:55:21.930] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah.
[00:55:22.320] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Because the BPA is just through the roof. Pfas. I'm looking at all of these levels and such a Tiny percentage of the world is doing that. Yeah. And if you don't want to get the test, the test is expensive. It's about a 700 test because it's combining, you know, three different tests into one.
[00:55:38.840] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And it's a blood test. Oh, it's just urine.
[00:55:42.550] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Urine. So you do want to do. I always recommend, if you're not going to provoke with something like dsma, which your provider would need to prescribe for you, do a real good sauna session the day before. And there's some things you want to avoid, too, like seafood that potentially has, you know, high levels of heavy metals. You know, sometimes things high in different contaminants you want to avoid for a few days. But it's. It's so incredibly important because I. Since we've been living in our new house, I haven't yet gotten a whole home water filtration system. I was seeing if we could work it out with, for the first little bit at least, to see if we could just do really high quality of like, a massive water filter for the shower. And then, of course, all reverse osmosis. But I just got my recent labs back and I can look at levels of toxins and then I can look at, you know, the water supply here in LA at the. On the ewg, and they directly correlate.
[00:56:39.700] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Oh, wow.
[00:56:40.210] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
And I have the shower water filter. And I'm never like, you couldn't. I've said this before on a little viral video, but, like, you couldn't pay me to drink tap water. You know what I mean? Like this, of course, I'm not doing that. Use, you know, spring water. And so it's just. It's so pervasive. Yeah. They look at parabens.
[00:56:55.470] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I also wonder if the air outside affects us because I was seeing just, you know, I don't know if your audience is okay talking about this or not, but just a lot of chemtrails in the air in the past couple days.
[00:57:12.280] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[00:57:12.960] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And, like, that has to come down. You know, I'm not really a conspiracy theorist to think that those are there for whatever reason, but I just see that they're up there and that those particles fall down for us. And so, you know, maybe living in a different part of the country, maybe there are more airplanes flying overhead or something like that, too. That could be affecting.
[00:57:41.900] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Totally. I mean, I think the overall sentiment is that indoor air quality is actually worse right now than outdoor by far. So that's why when people ask, I'm like, you have to get, you know, an aqua True reverse osmosis water filters, a couple hundred dollars. You have to get one of those for all of your, you know, cooking, drinking, etc. You have to remineralize it because Ro pulls out the minerals. But also, the second thing is just an air filter. Um, so super important. But even, you know, I kind of. My husband started, so I do all my. These labs, and we'll go back to the rest of them. But, yeah, I do them to my husband, too.
[00:58:16.440] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Okay.
[00:58:16.950] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
At the same time. And I saw, you know, all of a sudden he has these, like, increasing. And when I say our levels are high, they're actually so low in comparison to, like, an average test. Right. But I see these parabens, like, sneaking up, and I'm like, I know. I've never given you anything that has a paraben in it from. You know, these are beauty products, right? Lotions, things like that. And so I showed him and I said, what do we think this is from? And, you know, he told me he's been using this lotion at the gym.
[00:58:47.180] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Oh, yeah.
[00:58:47.720] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I'm like, okay, it's the lotion at the gym. And it's. It's a good brand. I'm not even gonna name what brand it is, but it's a brand that you. That most people would be like, oh, this is a pretty good one. It's not a good one. And I see that directly in the lab. So. But that information is so powerful, even if you do that once a year. Right.
[00:59:04.300] - WHITNEY TINGLE
It's hard to make a change unless you see something like that.
[00:59:07.530] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
So many things you wouldn't even ever know. Right? Like these little contaminants that are in the water. The contaminants that, you know, maybe, you know, you and I have been doing. I've been doing a lot of travel lately for all these speaking engagements, which I love. But that means I'm out of my environment that I've, like, perfected internally. And so you just get exposed to things. You can live next to a manufacturing plant that you have no clue that they're using high levels of toxic materials, and they're just. You're breathing them in. Our lungs have very little defense against.
[00:59:38.420] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I live in Miami beach, and there's a gigantic golf course on Miami Beach. I don't live right next to it. But, you know, we have to get you this test. It's still in the air. Yeah, I want to do this test.
[00:59:50.020] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah. And it's great, because even it also, if you think about it this way, you know, not Everything's going to be the same. But if you can, only because I'd like to be mindful that not everybody can do this. Let's say if you did this test once a year and you were the only one to do it in your family, then that could be somewhat of a proxy though for your environment. Right. So. So maybe you don't have to do it for every single member, but you have at least a decent idea.
[01:00:13.380] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And it's likely covered by fsa.
[01:00:15.410] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah. As well.
[01:00:16.310] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Those FSA dollars.
[01:00:17.600] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
A lot of like True Med, my friend Callie's company, a lot of times that can be covered by that. So that's a really good point. Yeah. Total toxic burn, though. Super important. I would recommend doing at least once a year specifically too. If you move, you know, you might want to do it again because there's just different. Like there's more molds here. I mean, you say we're like living in this like jungle environment, which is beautiful, but, you know, it also produces some mold. So therefore that just means I'd make a little bit of a different choice with, you know, what, you know, areas I keep open more, what, where I spend more time. So just really important, but total talk. Super. And game changer. The other thing that I love that's pretty unique and this is outside of all my normal blood work. Right. I do like about 150 different blood labs. Just a super advanced cardiac panel, like looking at the size and the shape and, you know, tmao. All these things that regular doctors are not looking at.
[01:01:09.820] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah, tmao. Great.
[01:01:11.650] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah. So and plant based diet's great for tma.
[01:01:14.070] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah, it helps to clean out. If you're going to be eating a lot of animal protein, which will produce TMAO in the gut, then, you know, there's studies that have shown that eating plants, eating enough plants, especially leafy greens, will help to kind of work that out and decrease the TMAO almost completely.
[01:01:33.850] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, yeah. So tmao, for anyone listening, it's. It's more of an advanced, like cardiac marker that is fairly new.
[01:01:40.480] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I think it's linked to inflammation.
[01:01:42.260] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Inflammation. Yeah. And so we. That's part of our like advanced cardiac panel. But the other test that I do that I think is interesting is it's called a Nutri Eval by Genova. And so that is a blood and urine sample and that is actually looking at the nutrient status in your body. So. Oh, great. I try to do that, you know, and then I make amendments to my diet. Like for example, last time I Did it. So I'm doing these once a quarter. Last time I did it, I realized I was a little low on vitamin C. Right. I mean I take a lot of supplements, but I do try to do a food first approach. And then so I'm like, okay, you know, I need to be eating more oranges. For me, I'll do. And this is not the way you need to do it, but I'll go get a vitamin C IV to get my levels back up when I see something like that. And then I will also at the same time incorporate more into food. But you know, again, there are so many things that can go wrong when you're running.
[01:02:36.790] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Prolonged nutrient deficiencies. Yeah. Now if you're eating something like Sakara or you're taking the time to do these massively diverse salads along with high quality protein, you know, there's probably a pretty low chance that. But if you're doing any extreme diets like really understanding what nutrients. Another thing is it's not just what you're eating, it's what you're absorbing and what you're assimilating. So.
[01:03:00.190] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Right. So important.
[01:03:01.260] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Again, going back to that gut test, like the gut. So those are some of the things.
[01:03:04.890] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I'm looking at your hydrochloric acid levels.
[01:03:07.450] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[01:03:07.930] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Because can you break down the food that you're eating? And looking at your digestive enzymes, can you break it down? Can you assimilate those nutrients? I think there's such a focus on protein right now, but a lot of people, especially women, as we age, our hydrochloric acid declines and it becomes more difficult to break down those animal proteins that are filled with saturated fats. Fat is the most difficult to break down, followed by protein, followed by carbs. So I think also getting a diversity within your proteins is going to be really great so that you can kind of hedge and see what your body can digest.
[01:03:48.670] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, no, I agree with that. And also high stress can lead to reduced stomach acid.
[01:03:55.430] - WHITNEY TINGLE
So sometimes H. Pylori total is linked with low stomach acid as well.
[01:04:00.850] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[01:04:01.540] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And that's connected with stress also. And then stress can also, when you're stressed, your body needs more nutrients like it'll absorb, take away from your nutrient stores. And so if you're stressed and you're busy like most people are, then you need to make sure that you're getting enough nutrition to replenish those nutrient stores in your body.
[01:04:24.770] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, absolutely. When I eat, you know, I still love like a great grass fed, grass finished wagyu steak. But I'll do enzymes with it at the same time.
[01:04:34.910] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah.
[01:04:35.370] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Because I just am gonna hedge, you know, on the side of precaution.
[01:04:39.660] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah.
[01:04:40.190] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
And I find that, you know, that is, is beneficial.
[01:04:43.550] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah. If I'm eating something like that, I'll do the same thing.
[01:04:46.670] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[01:04:47.080] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Like a lot of people think that because Sakara is a plant based company that, that we're all vegans, but actually 95% of my clients are not vegan. They're omnivores. I'm not a vegan. I've been a vegan, you know, and I'll go back into eating primarily plants here and there throughout my life. But, you know, I focus on getting enough plants and that diversity into my diet and then I eat other things along with it as well.
[01:05:19.060] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[01:05:19.780] - WHITNEY TINGLE
So just, we help people get more plants into their body, into their diets. And also we've seen just tremendous results over the years when people have come on and they've followed it specifically. And I think being fully plant based can be a great therapeutic tool in your toolkit where maybe it's not something that you're on for all of your life, but if you're working on something specific, it can be really helpful. You know, we've seen people get off of medications for Hashimoto's, for lupus, for other things that maybe I'm not going to mention on a podcast, but big diseases, big conditions and they've seen just incredible life changing benefits by doing this program. And it's because we're not focused on what we're eliminating. Right. We're trying to really boost your nutrition, boost your gut health, flood your body with those antioxidants that just helps your body's natural processes to do what they need to do.
[01:06:31.590] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah. I mean, without a doubt. I mean, food is medicine.
[01:06:34.500] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah.
[01:06:35.070] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
And we are definitely not getting enough plants, definitely not getting enough whole foods. And everything they are doing is organic, which I love. So, I mean, yeah, it's. And then, and I love, like today I had the Mama Earth bowl, which is incredibly tasty. And then I just added some sardines onto it.
[01:06:55.400] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Amazing.
[01:06:55.880] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I mean, it was perfect. And it took, I mean, like no time. I was in between podcasts. It was really great. And you know, some people are doing a lot of these like food replacement powders nowadays.
[01:07:07.350] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Oh, yeah.
[01:07:07.910] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
And I'm just, I'm not in, I'm not in that game. I'm.
[01:07:10.940] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I mean. And again, it's so detached from the earth then. So it doesn't have any hydration in it, right? No, Water and no, maybe like a small amount of life energy. But I think life energy, again, is not something that people are talking about when it comes to food and is a piece of nutrition. Right. Like, how long has it been since it was connected to the plant and the Earth? And I think, you know, Mark Hyman, he always says food is information, and he talks about it kind of as maybe it's chemical and biological compounds going in, telling which genes to turn on and off. This, you know, talking about nutrigenomics. But I think it goes even beyond that, that it's interacting with different microbes and fungi and all of these things out in nature that are constantly gaining information from the environment. So you're getting that information from Mother Nature coming into your body, which then can inform your body how to. How to function or how to respond in that environment, too.
[01:08:28.390] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think there's. There's so much power with that connection to the earth through what we're eating. And I don't think people know this that. That much, but the longer. Yeah. That it's disconnected from its source or its roots, it's actually losing nutritional value. How do you guys manage that at Sakara?
[01:08:50.660] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I mean, it's about going straight to the source, you know, getting as close to the farm as possible. So that, you know, we have a farmer that we work with, and I brought him onto our podcast, and he said, yeah, you know, we'll, like, cut your greens in the morning, and then it's at your kitchen at noon, and then you're making it into a meal and shipping it out to people overnight. And it's that fast. From being grown in the ground to being on your plate.
[01:09:20.620] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
So important.
[01:09:22.310] - WHITNEY TINGLE
You know, if you're going to the grocery store, it's often it can be shipped even from foreign countries, stored in refrigerators in the back of the grocery store, you know, for days or weeks, then on the shelf for days or weeks, and then in your refrigerator for days or weeks before you eat it. And it's like you said, losing nutrition during that time.
[01:09:45.840] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah. So important.
[01:09:49.600] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah. Getting that life energy, because at the end of the day, like, you are what you eat, and you get that energy from the food. Like, these plants are doing photosynthesis. They're collecting energy from the sun, then that we get to eat and feel that energy kind of from the sun as the direct source, but through the plant.
[01:10:11.970] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, I love that. What does, like, a day of wellness look like for you, Wennie?
[01:10:22.090] - WHITNEY TINGLE
That's a good question. Like an Ideal day of wellness or just average day? An average day. An average day I think would start with snuggles with my son, my little one. Definitely some hydration. I feel so good when I'm just drinking water first thing in the morning. Like, good, high quality water. Getting in a nutritious smoothie with lots of different superfoods and different seeds in it. Flaxseeds, hemp seeds, chia seeds, wild blueberries, high quality spirulina, things like that. Definitely getting sunshine exercise. I love Pilates, so I like classical Pilates. And again, it's something that's expensive to work with a private instructor, but. But you know, it doesn't take that many sessions to really make a difference in your body. And we've been talking a lot about posture today. And Pilates will just completely change your posture and your alignment and help work on the specific muscles in your body that you need to work on to create better alignment. And, you know, it's functional. It. It's functional movement then that you can use out in the world when I'm picking up my kid or working at my desk. So I love Pilates. Yeah. And eating really great food from the earth.
[01:12:11.370] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Eating my sakara meals, just. I feel so much more nourished and like I'm flooding my body with all those nutrients and knowing I'm doing something really good for myself.
[01:12:22.350] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Well, I love that. And yeah, I mean, similar. I have a bunch more stuff, but you can watch my YouTube video if anyone wants to see what I do in a day.
[01:12:31.470] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I know if I could, like, do I. I would love to have a hyperbaric oxygen chamber in my house. Move to la.
[01:12:38.960] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
You can use mine.
[01:12:39.910] - WHITNEY TINGLE
I know I keep, like, trying to convince my husband, but it's like the cost of a luxury vehicle.
[01:12:46.450] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I know.
[01:12:47.120] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And so, like, maybe one day, because I don't. I don't have a car, so that. So I'm like, I know if I were gonna buy a car, I would spend this amount, so why not just spend it on something that I would really enjoy and use and it's good for my health.
[01:13:01.650] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I agree. I agree. I'll opt you for you.
[01:13:04.260] - WHITNEY TINGLE
This is like girl math, right?
[01:13:05.670] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I know. Yeah.
[01:13:06.480] - WHITNEY TINGLE
If I don't have a car, it's almost free.
[01:13:08.880] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, exactly.
[01:13:11.580] - WHITNEY TINGLE
And then I love red light infrared and red light infrared sauna. I'm. I go back and forth on. I feel really good when I do it, but I find that I'm just sensitive so it can dehydrate me if I'm not careful.
[01:13:28.960] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
I Have to work on in extra hydration for sure. And electrolytes and minerals. So.
[01:13:35.270] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah, I feel like I just. Yeah. That my body is a bit sensitive to changes like that and.
[01:13:43.190] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah.
[01:13:44.630] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Like, I've had times where I've gone hardcore in the sauna and then I've ended up with a UTI after from just being so dehydrated.
[01:13:53.830] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, you do. I think it's like sauna is something too. I think it, like, does actually require a little bit of a, like, lead up if you just go from none or.
[01:14:03.080] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah.
[01:14:03.610] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Little to a ton to work up with it. Right. Yeah, it's something like. It's really like consistent sleep, you know, it's like a consistent consistency.
[01:14:10.900] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah. But I did it while I was out here because I'm staying at a friend's house and they have one out on their porch. As many people in LA do.
[01:14:18.520] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah. As I do.
[01:14:19.800] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah. And I felt amazing after. Just like the endorphins and like, so good. And I feel like I skid in my skin too.
[01:14:30.430] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Oh, yeah, it's great for skin. We just. You know, I recently became involved in this heavenly heat. It's on a company and we just rolled out. I'll show you. It's upstairs. Really, really cool. It combines actual red light with an infrared sauna with a grounding port. So you can be so efficient. Right. That's like taking three different therapies, combining them into one. And for me, just, I love to do things faster if possible. But yeah, I love, and I love the benefits. I mean, the benefits of the sun alone. You know, we've really demonized sun, I guess, in like the long health world. And yes, you can do too much. Yes, you have to protect yourself. Yes, you can wear mineral sunscreen. But we also, we're actually like plants in that way. Like, yes, taking a vitamin D supplement is not the same. You don't get all the same benefits. I'm not saying don't do it. If your vitamin D is low, please take a vitamin D supplement. But you get such a cascade of additional health benefits by actually the process of taking sun and turning it into vitamin D. Yeah.
[01:15:33.280] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Some people will be like, oh, if you're eating plants, where do you get your vitamin D from? Like the sun. You're eating leafy greens filled with vitamin K. You go out in the sun, you're gonna get your vitamin D. Totally.
[01:15:47.190] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, I agree. Well, this has been so much fun.
[01:15:49.530] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah. So fun. And I can't wait to go check out all of your. Your toys and gadgets, things that you have upstairs.
[01:15:55.960] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
We'll feel a little tour, but this was such a fun. This was such a fun chat.
[01:15:59.670] - WHITNEY TINGLE
Yeah.