321-SYNCPodcast_AdrianaShuman

Jenny Swisher: [00:00:00] Welcome friends to this [00:01:00] episode of the Sync Your Life podcast. Today I have a new friend with me, Adriana Schumann. She’s a certified nutritionist and functional medicine, health and wellness strategist with a degree in pharmacy. She’s also an author and an entrepreneur. We were just chatting beforehand about all the things we have in common and, and really wanting to serve people, women and particular just understand their bodies and become more hormone literate, body literate.

So they can really advocate for themselves and step into, um, deeper and deeper levels of wellness, right? Like it really is about helping you find your maximum energy. And regardless of what society and diet culture says we should look like or feel like it’s really about how we’re showing up in the world, right?

How are we showing up for the relationships, um, in our lives? And are we really living with that maximum energy? So we’re gonna dive deeper today into just different things as it pertains to our mitochondrial health, how we can really live well. Um, but Adriana, welcome to the show. I would love for you to just share with my audience who you are and what you do.

Adriana Shuman: Thank you so much, Jenny. I really enjoyed our conversation before you hit record. [00:02:00] Um, well, I, uh, came from a very brutal upbringing, violent home back in, uh, what used to be Czechoslovakia when I was born, and it became Slovakia, uh, later when I was 14 years old. And, um, having a lot of stress unpredictability and on top of that food that was also.

Very, uh, toxic, even though it was very delicious and homemade. Um, but a lot of fried foods, a lot of sugar, uh, mold in our apartment. Growing up, unfiltered water, there was just so much toxicity. In my body and my environment that it was manifesting with, uh, low energy, constant digestive issues. I was on antibiotics I think since infancy, and it was just handed out to me like candy a couple times a year.

It was destroying my gut and just destroying my body and we didn’t know anything back then. Right. So, [00:03:00] um. It was pretty bad, and I was also watching my close family members. Every single one of my cl uh, close family members have died from cancer and just watching them. Painfully slowly die. Um, just started to really open something up inside of me and question what is actually going on.

And then later on going into the university, studying pharmacy and learning about the body more and the medicine, and also natural medicine because in Slovakia, our faculty, we actually had our own garden where we studied plants and. That really opened up a new world for me and a bigger connection to nature, which I already really loved, uh, nature.

And I was, I was brought up by my dad who loved, uh, sustainability and nature and he was really involved in, uh, in sustainable living. [00:04:00] So, um, kind of all of this just put this little light inside of me where I. I knew that I did not want to live my life the way I was living for 26 years of my life. And watching people in my family, and also my friends suffering and accepting is that this is normal.

This is just how we live, and there’s nothing you can do and not even questioning in it. So I was literally pulled out of my country, um, just by my. But the universe, my soul, call it whatever you want. I just knew I had to leave or I would just die inside. So I left everything behind, no English, no money. I came to the US and I just knew that I had to heal.

I did not have another, another option, but to heal myself. And not having really a plan. And it was very brutal still. It wasn’t very, um, it wasn’t a nice path for me, but I [00:05:00] knew that I had to stay on it. I just felt inside of me that this is my way to, uh, heal and, um, get on the path of then later on helping other people do the same.

So, um, yeah, that led me to, uh, having the opportunity to. I live here, have a few businesses, and since 2008, that was my very first sustainable business. And I started to teach people, especially pregnant women, actually, on all organic sustainable products for their babies. And that kind of led me to another business.

And then I got into a functional medicine, um, coaching in 2021. Where, uh, I just decided like this is what I’m gonna, uh, give all my energy to. And since then I have de developed my, um, methodology. It’s called Live Well Methodology, and my book is based on that as well, where I teach [00:06:00] people like what you so is understanding your body and environment is key to living a vibrant health.

Without understanding your body and environment, you’re just gonna be bouncing off from one idea to another and just constantly guessing and restricting yourself. And it’s just not gonna lead to sustained real long-lasting hell just patching up holes. So that is really the core principle of, of what I do now and this is how I got here.

Jenny Swisher: Yeah. Yeah. So good. I was just telling you before we hit record that. I’ve learned so much about myself at the age of 41 that I wish I had known so much sooner when it came to my genetics and my predispositions and goodness. I feel like so much of people in general, just the, the struggle could be shortened by taking a look at those things.

So yeah, I’m excited to talk a lot more specifically about environment. Um, that’s something that my, my listeners are now, um, coming used to, listening to from me. So, um, I recently partnered with a company that’s very. We wanna inform and [00:07:00] educate people about endocrine disruption and the, the role of our environment and.

Helping lessen that toxic load because it does play such a huge role in how we feel. I know your pillars are environment, which I wanna dive deeper into. Food, sleep, and movement, which are almost identical to mine. Um, I have the mm-hmm. The fundamentals of hormone balance. Right. We incorporate trauma into that and some other things.

Yep. But. These really are the foundational pieces that most people are overlooking, like they’re looking. I always like to say for me personally, with my migraine journey, I was looking for my Dr. House. I was looking for the person who was gonna, you know, find the ultimate reason why everything was, um.

Causing pain for me. And at the end of the day, like I was the person that needed to figure that out. And also it was really, I always say, is it really that simple? It really was as simple as, what am I overlooking? Like, am I really getting enough sleep? Am I eating, you know, the foods that God made as I like to say, am I, am I really focusing on these foundational elements that are helping me live?

Well. Before we get into environment though, I wanna ask you this. You have a [00:08:00] degree in pharmacy and you’re working in holistic wellness. Tell me about that transition. Is that something that you like? Do you feel like stepping into this was just like, you could no longer see, you know, like what you’re seeing in pharmaceutical land or what, what made you wanna make that transition yourself?

Adriana Shuman: I know and I tried to go back and actually think about it when people ask me this question, but it was very simple. And simple doesn’t mean easy. I wanna point that out really clearly. Simple is not easy, but it was simple in the sense where, uh, during my school when I was. Standing behind the counter at the pharmacy counter, and I was seeing all these people coming in and struggling with their health, and all I was doing is giving them medication, giving them these tools to just patch up their symptoms.

For just right now, for today, I just, there was something inside of me like, this is not okay. I’m not serving anybody. Like this is not how it works. So that’s what and ha having the. Kind of the [00:09:00] foundation of appreciation of nature and from my dad, and also learning that in school and just, again, it was just this inner voice.

It was just my inner truth. That’s what I can call it. We all have our own purpose, and if you connect your body and we really tune into ourselves, you will know what actually your purpose is instead of, you know, uh. What unfortunately a lot of people are doing is just we get so busy and it’s, it’s so noisy everywhere that you can’t even figure out what the heck you’re feeling inside.

So. Just being really in tune with your body. I just knew this was not the path and I was then actually considering like, okay, I’m not gonna be working behind the counter. That doesn’t work. Maybe I need to be, um, doing something else in the pharmacy. Like I was trying to find different options, but it was constantly like all these thinking was pulling me like, no, you need to leave.

You need to leave. Like that’s where your path is. And I had no idea what’s gonna happen. Even when I came to [00:10:00] United States and I started to learn English, ’cause I didn’t speak English, uh, really much, when I came here, I actually contacted somebody, uh, who would help me to get, um, a degree in pharmacy here in the us.

And as I was going through the books and. And also, you know, realizing I’m 27 now and learning English to the point where I actually can take these courses. And I was like, no, this, it just, it just felt like this heavy, no. So I’m like, okay, what do I know how to do? So I actually started to make tinctures.

I’m like. Let’s take herbs, let’s make tinctures, let’s start doing education about this kind of stuff, and how to actually heal and talk about, you know, fitness, talk about sleep, talk about all these things that I do not work on. Just a very simple, without any science. You know, background, just, just logical things that our bodies need that I know from physiology, just from school.

And it just slowly developed [00:11:00] into what I’m doing right now. And you know, so it wasn’t like an overnight thing, it was just really paying attention to whatever I was doing. Is it a yes or is it this heavy? No, in my body. And, you know, it took years and, you know, Jen, it takes years. It’s, it doesn’t happen like yay overnight for anybody.

Like, that’s what we really want, but it doesn’t work that way, so. Right. It was just a very organic way to get here.

Jenny Swisher: Yeah. Well, I love that. I love, I mean, I love that you have that intuition, right. Of like, I’m gonna trust the way I feel and, and make my decisions accordingly. Yeah. Um, yeah, so I wanna, I wanna dive deeper, like I said, into this topic of environment.

Um. I always, I find myself saying this often because I come from a fitness background, so a lot of people will, you know, I either already know them or they knew me in my, my, my fitness days, so to speak. Right. Or they’re also into exercise and, and that’s how they find me is through psycho thinking and that kind of information.

And a lot of times, you know, women, I like to say this, [00:12:00] we can’t cycles sink our way to hormone balance, right? So they come to me and they’re like, oh, I wanna do cycle syncing. I wanna kinda level up my, my fitness game, right? And. It’s like a sore disappointment when they come to the realization that fitness is really just the icing on the cake, right?

If you’re living in an environment, for example, that is. I mean, we could be talking about actual, like things like mold, toxins, or we could also be talking about just mm-hmm. Environments, right? Um, yep. Relationship stress, et cetera. Like your environment plays such a critical role and you can’t, you can be doing all those other things.

You can be exercising. I. Focusing on the right type of training, eating, pull, you know, whole Foods, organic foods, you could be doing all those things right? But if your environment is not right, right. It’s gonna just pull you away. It’s literally like you’re working against everything else. And so I would love to kind of dive deeper into this, um, you know, what role does the environment play?

We’ll start there. Mm-hmm. And then, and then we’ll go deeper into like, you know, how can we go about. Reducing, um, exposure to different things.

Adriana Shuman: Yeah. So what you [00:13:00] just said, what I tell people, we need to turn the faucet off. So you need to turn the toxins actually coming in. You need to clean the house. You can’t just open the windows and turn, you know, essential oils on and the garbage continues to stay in.

Like, it doesn’t work that way. You need to take the stuff out. So I tell people very simple analogy. If you have a seed of an oak tree and you wanna grow this beautiful strong oak tree, it needs healthy soil. Water and sunlight and what I call the soil is our environment, and it’s the inner environment and outer environment.

And the inner environment is all the past trauma, the chronic stress every day. If you get up in the morning and you just hate going to work, you have absolutely nothing to look forward to. Your relationships are not supportive and loving. If you have, uh. Uh, dissociation from your, from your traumas before, or it can even be a car accident that happened that you actually just kind of like brushed off and, and never, um, never [00:14:00] really healed from that either.

Like it can be any kind of trauma, right? And. That creates environment, a soil that’s toxic. Stress is as toxic as mold. And I’m talking about chronic stress, not, you know, like, uh, little acute stress from, I don’t know, your husband pissing you off or your whatever, somebody screaming at you on the street, right?

I’m talking about this ongoing stress. I have to heal. I had to heal from so much trauma and I’m still healing. It’s a. Continuous healing journey for the rest of my life. It doesn’t stop, but we have to decide to actually get on the journey and take tiny little steps at the time, and you will be feeling, it’s not like, oh, I’m gonna feel better one day.

You’re gonna start feeling better every single day, and it’s just gonna be getting better and better and better. So that’s the inner environment. And the outer environment that I call, it’s everything that’s in your, uh, physical environment, like growing up with mold, like [00:15:00] for myself or drinking water that is not filtered.

And so many times people tell me, oh, I have filtration at home. Like, okay, well let’s talk about the filtration system that you have. And unless it’s a reverse osmosis filter for your water, I have found that people are still drinking fluoride or. All kinds of other, you know, toxins that, um, the, their filtration system doesn’t filter out.

Now we have, you know, the conversations about plastics, which, which are obesogens. What does that mean? It means that disrupts your hormone. It literally blocks the receptors on your cells, or it mimics. Hormones instead of letting your hormones actually do the work on, uh, inside the cells. So it has direct effect on your mitochondria, on your microbiome.

And we can talk about all kinds of different specific, um, toxins in our environment. But the point is that I tell people is start from foundation of understanding your mitochondria and your [00:16:00] microbiome and what they actually need. If the mitochondria. Is getting the food is like a generator for your house.

The generator needs fuel and if the fuel is dirty, the generator cannot create power for you to turn the lights on in your house, make dinner, and do whatever you want, right? It’s the same thing in mitochondria. Mitochondria needs certain fuel, certain food, which is oxygen, carbohydrates, um, proteins and fat in order to make energy for you.

To for, for you to even listen to us talking right now, but at what rate are you able to listen to us? 30%. A hundred percent. Right. So if you’re giving dirty fuel to the mitochondria, which is, you know, the toxins coming in constantly from plastics, from fluoride in your toothpaste, from mold and whatever that is, the mitochondria is compromised.

You’re giving the mitochondrial dirty fuel, so you’re never gonna be able to function at the rate that you want. So you’re gonna have migraines, you’re gonna have digestive issues, you’re gonna have joint pain, whatever that is. [00:17:00] These are just. The message is the buyer is giving you like, Hey, whatever you’re doing is not serving you.

Like, stop, turn the faucet off. It doesn’t, I don’t like to focus on symptoms because they’re all directly, uh, uh, you know, directly pointing to the mitochondrial dysfunction. We’re not giving the mitochondria what it needs. And then the mitochondria is directly connected to microbiome even though they have, uh, different.

Uh, functions in a body. They work together in a sense of creating microbiome creates molecules that the mitochondria needs to, to create energy. The microbiome detoxifies, like for example, estrogen for women, right? Estrogen is not bad. What happens for people, a lot of people are scared of estrogen, is if your microbiome doesn’t have the specific.

Uh, bacteria that actually is able to remove the already used estrogen out of your body, then it becomes cancerous and toxic. So, and now we [00:18:00] know that the microbiome is directly speaking to, to the brain. So again, if you have migraines, if you have headaches, if you have brain fork, whatever, stop looking at the head, look at the microbiome.

What kind of bacteria do you have in there? And, uh, what kind of, you know, biochemical processes are actually not being able to. You know, uh, do so then your brain cannot function the way it’s supposed to. So it’s just the connection of mitochondria microbiome to the toxicity and thinking about as, as the soil, uh, and we need as clean soil as possible for us to, to live well,

Jenny Swisher: yeah.

Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting ’cause I was literally just having a conversation this morning with my husband, my oldest daughter, my 8-year-old, um, she actually just had a strep throat and an ear infection and so she was put on an antibiotic and, um. Every time, like literally every time she’s on an antibiotic, you know, somewhere around day seven or so, we get behavioral issues.

We [00:19:00] get, um, struggle sleeping. All of a sudden she’s out of her bedroom at night. Right. And it’s funny, it took us until she was probably six years old to kind of put the pieces together. And every time she’s been on an antibiotic, we have this happen and we finally started to piece it together that oh my goodness, like.

Right. So we can do all the things. We can have the pharmacy remove the red dye, so there’s no, you know, artificial dye. Yeah. But end of the day, it’s the antibiotic itself that’s disrupting her microbiome and leading that, those issues. So sometimes it’s like, you can see that, you can, like, that’s a, a, you know, sort of like a.

A correlation that’s very strong, right? Mm-hmm. We’ve seen that happen multiple times, but then there’s other times where a lot of people don’t realize, you know, I’ve been doing a lot of research recently on just perimenopause, like women over 40 and why, why all of a sudden are we starting to deal with gut microbiome imbalances over the age of 40?

And that obviously is a growing area of research. Um, I’m starting to hear more and more about the microbiome. Mm-hmm. For people who aren’t just people who write about the gut microbiome. Yeah. But you know, I think it’s, it’s fascinating and I think that when we can understand even on the most basic [00:20:00] level that this is where our energy comes from, right?

Mm-hmm. Like energy is coming from our mitochondrial health, then we can start to understand, I say when women know the why, we can apply, right? So we understand like, okay, well what can I do then? Like, what is within my control? You might not be able to control when you step outside of your house. The air that you’re breathing.

Right? But when you’re in your house, like, can we filter the air? Can we filter the water? You mentioned reverse osmosis. I talk about that here on the show. We also talk about adding the minerals back into your water if you do the reverse osmosis. There’s so many different steps to all of these things, right?

So let’s kind of just share as a sort of tangible, a tangible tip. Um, how do you advise your clients like to go through removing toxins within their home or within the environment that they’re living in? Right. So we’ve mentioned maybe air and water purification, but. What, what other steps do you, um, you know, suggest.

Adriana Shuman: Yeah, and I know it can be very overwhelming because there are so many toxins in our environment, but the first thing is to identify. So identify the environment that you’re living in. For that you need to have a little bit of understanding of what [00:21:00] can be toxic or not. And then, you know, that can be helpful to have a little guide, obviously.

But, um, it depends. On, uh, what your environment is when, where you know, where you would start. But I have kind of like the first six where I started with all the people, and number one is sugar and alcohol. And I put them all in the same because I’m finding more and more that people are really, really struggling with sugar addictions.

And, um, having constant sugar, um, in your bloodstream going up and down, that’s causing inflammation in the whole system of the body. And again, if we’re talking about migraines, ’cause I know that was your experience, there was actually a study I was hearing in Germany where they got people, uh, completely on ketogenic diet just for a very short time and off the sugar.

And they started to feel so much better, and then they gave them a cookie and they had migraines the whole night. And this is not just migraines. We have to understand [00:22:00] that. Uh, you know, I know we’re talking about sugar, but just understanding why, like you said, like asking the questions, why, what is happening inside of my body when I do X, Y, Z or when this is getting into my body.

Like, it’s okay to have a sugar once in a while, but, uh, understanding like if you do this every single day, it is acting as a toxin and. If you are doing this thinking that it’s healthy. Like so many of my clients, they think like having a toast with a banana or oatmeal with mango or any of these kind of things because they’re whole real foods.

Perhaps they’re still full of. Uh, glucose and fructose, which are simple sugars and fructose is even worse because it goes straight to your liver. It doesn’t even actually act as glucose and pancreas doesn’t have to, you know, release insulin for most of it. And, and I, you know, I’m, I don’t wanna [00:23:00] go. I. Deep down into this, this hole of, uh, uh, biochemistry.

It’s still sugar. Yeah. Yeah. It, it’s still is sugar, but um, so we have to just understand that sugar act like it’s basically a toxin, right? Right. Period. So that’s the first thing to remove. And there are things you can do to remove it, eating a lot more protein and plants, plant foods that have lots of fiber.

Um, and the other one is when it comes to food, is ultra processed foods, um, that I talk to people about. And again, because there is not enough nutrients in the process, ultra processed foods that the mitochondria can use to make energy and ultra processed foods are in. Restaurants, they’re in grocery store.

If you’re buying sushi, that’s pre-made at Whole Foods, it’s ultra processed foods. Look at the ingredient label. People need to, um. Learn what actually ultra processed foods mean, because that’s where a lot of [00:24:00] confusion also lies. Where I hear people, well, I just eat in restaurants. No, it’s still ultra processed food.

What kind of oils are they, oils are they using? Right? How are they processing their, are, are they eating fried foods? Um, is does it have any other additives? Soy and, and you know, all kinds of other stuff. So, um, that’s number two. And then number three is the malt mycotoxins. There are a lot of people that are unaware of having, uh, mycotoxin, um, toxicity, which is directly connected to many cancers, especially aflatoxin in.

Peanuts. Uh, and I know, um, yeah. In American culture, peanuts are big. So when I tell somebody to stop eating peanut, they’re like, what?

Jenny Swisher: Yeah. When I tell people that peanut butter is the, the most moldy food, they’re like, really? Like, yes.

Adriana Shuman: Yeah. Actually, what? There’s so many other knots. Yeah. We don’t,

Jenny Swisher: oh, my girls have never had peanut butter.

My oldest has a, you know, her biological. Um, siblings and mother were allergic to peanuts, [00:25:00] so we haven’t even tried it with her. And it’s funny because when people ask me like, are, are you ever gonna try it? I’m like, there’s really no need to eat peanuts. Like, why? Why? Like, I don’t really think there. I will say that I do love me some peanut butter, so on occasion I will eat some, I’m not gonna rule it out completely right?

Like IP but um. But at the same time, like it’s really not an eat, guess what? Almond butter. There’s other ones that are not quite as, yeah, hazelnut. I mean, I’m European,

Adriana Shuman: so I’m biased for

Jenny Swisher: hazelnut butter, right?

Adriana Shuman: Sure. But it is so freaking good. And you can put cocoa powder in it. That’s unsweetened, that has polyphenols and so many amazing benefits and mm, so much better.

And guess so try that. That’s my tip.

Jenny Swisher: Yeah. And guess what, like 95% of. Peanut almond, cashew, hazelnut butters that are sold in grocery stores have other things in them. Yes. So you gotta make sure if you’re looking at your ingredients, friends that you’re looking at, like if you are gonna buy peanut butter, look for organic peanuts, sea salt, nothing else added.

Right? Like you don’t need anything else. Um, but

Adriana Shuman: yeah, go ahead. Yeah. And always in a glass bottle. I wanna add that too, but that’s exactly like when [00:26:00] you start going into like all the details, it’s exactly what you said. Make sure it’s always organic and sustainable. It’s in the glass, so now you’re not getting toxicity from the plastics.

Right. But really, like, if I can give you any tip, if you’re really in love with peanut butter, just try hazelnut butter. Add cocoa powder in it and you can add a little bit of honey and Oh my gosh, delicious. Yeah. So

Jenny Swisher: yeah, I recently have you heard of Baruch Nuts? Baruch Nuts?

Adriana Shuman: Yes, I have. Yeah, I have not actually, no, I think I have tried them in Hawaii.

I.

Jenny Swisher: There’s ACA butter that I really, it’s like a peanut butter with bru nuts, and it’s, it’s really good. It’s really good.

Adriana Shuman: Mm. I haven’t

Jenny Swisher: tried it. It’s so good. So, yeah, I mean, I love these tips. I mean, I think, so this is interesting. I had, um, a couple years ago when the migraines started creeping back for me, I had my C four A marker tested for mold, and it was, I.

Too high. It was too high. But then we did testing in our home and nothing came back. We actually had just built our home in the, in the previous couple [00:27:00] years, we really didn’t have anything crazy come back. Mm-hmm. So I do know that however, that I was raised, we in a home with mold, like in my childhood. So even if you’re thinking right now, like, oh, mold isn’t a factor for me.

Like I live in a brand new house, or I, you know, whatever, I recently moved or whatever, you could have, you could still have this be an issue for you, especially if you grew up in, in an environment with mold. So. A hundred

Adriana Shuman: percent. I brought my mold to, uh, from my childhood. Yeah. I was not exposed to mold here at all.

And it’s in my late thirties where I figured out it, I have mold inside my body and where is it coming from? From my childhood. It doesn’t go away. We have to remove it. Um, detoxified from our body. It doesn’t just Right. Get out on its own. So

Jenny Swisher: it’s on, yeah. So I love this. I mean, I, I know I’ve done podcast episodes on, um, you know, eliminating endocrine disruptors in your home.

For me, I like to teach people that, you know, you gotta start small. It’s not like you’re gonna have an overnight change. Right. Um, we started with, like I said, [00:28:00] an air filtration system a couple years ago. We, we’ve had reverse osmosis since we built the house. We have to add the electrolytes and things back in.

Um, we also. Do, like for me personally, I started with household care. Like what are the things underneath the ca i, I, I used to come home, we’ve had somebody clean our house for the last couple years, and I would come home on cleaning day and I, I would get like a headache or I would get no. Mm-hmm. My house smelled like chemicals.

Right. And so one day I literally was just like, for me personally, I’m very black or white, so it wasn’t a gradual process. I was just like, this whole bucket of stuff is gonna go, like, I’m not. Transitioning. Like I just, I can’t smell this anymore. Right? So we started with that and then from there, I’m not really a big, I wasn’t ever really a big skincare person.

I didn’t have like a five step skincare routine or anything like that, but I was starting to pay special attention to like the things that were touching my body. Um, I used bioidentical hormone creams for my migraines and just for HRT. And I was noticing like if I’m using this tiny little dot of testosterone cream or progesterone [00:29:00] cream.

It’s affecting my migraines, it’s affecting my energy, it’s affecting my sleep. What is the lotion doing that I’m putting the, you know, I’m putting lotion on my body when I get outta the shower or, or the body wash in the shower, or the deodorants under my armpit. Like all those things that you’re kind of putting on your body.

We know that the average woman is applying 168 chemicals to her body per day. The average man is applying over 80, and the average teenage girl they’re saying is now applying over 200, and I believe it. I have an 8-year-old and a 4-year-old, and they’re already saying things like skincare, which is crazy to me.

Yeah,

Adriana Shuman: and makeup. Yeah.

Jenny Swisher: I just think like there are things that are within your control, right? Like right now in central Indiana, there are pollens in the environment, there are plastics in the air. I’m not gonna walk outta my hou house in a hazmat suit, right? Like, that’s not gonna happen. But when I’m in my home, like what are the things that I can control and remove and reduce?

How can I reduce my exposure? Because that’s where most of my time is spent. Right. So, um, any other tips from you on reducing exposure?

Adriana Shuman: No, and it’s true because when you’re in your home, you have a hundred percent, um, [00:30:00] uh, control. You are in charge of what you’re taking into the home. And, and thinking about all the things that you’re saying is number one thing is what people don’t think about.

Take your shoes off before you enter your home because all the pollution, all the toxins, everything that you’re walking on outside of your home, you’re bringing it into your house. And so many people are sitting on a couch and, um. And walking on their carpets and their babies are crawling on the all, all over the ground and getting these things in their bodies.

So all the garbage from streets. So take your shoes off. That’s the first thing that people get into a habit and then fragrances. Yeah, that’s one of the six ones on the first six that I have on my list. And it’s everywhere. It’s in your cleaning product. Candles. Candles are a big thing. Replace candles with, uh, essential diffuser.

Very simple. And, um, what else? The water quality we talked about. Yeah. Having an air filter. And another thing is, uh, incredible, uh, bringing plants and, um, into your [00:31:00] home. Lots of green. Easy to care for plants that will oxygenate your air and clean your, there’s so many plants, they actually clean your air.

Um. And just knowing for plastics, I’m trying to think like what people are asking me most about is, yeah, using, there’s glass containers, beeswax wrappers for, you know, sandwiches or just covering balls. Uh, beeswax is absolutely incredible. I use it. Constantly. And, uh, silicone as well is amazing. I just would not heat silicone ’cause there are chemicals in it that are not, um, not great for us, but just using it for, um, just storing food in a fridge or just on the go is, is a great option.

The great thing about these things is they last and they don’t leach anything into our food glass ceramics. Um, and yeah, just, just do one thing at a time because yeah, we can talk about all of these things, but it’s like, whoa. Okay. So just start with what, and. Honestly, like when we’re talking about [00:32:00] like the skincare, I would probably start with fragrances.

Jenny Swisher: Yeah,

Adriana Shuman: that’s huge. Getting into the lungs and, and, and also because there is no, there is no, uh, uh, protective barrier when it gets into your nose, you’re breathing. It goes straight into your brain. Yeah, right. It doesn’t have to go through, through the protective barrier, so. Um, and they can be in, um, the dry sheet, you know, those things.

I don’t use it anymore. I use the wool balls. Yeah. Yeah. Uh oh. Yeah. Like fragrances can hide in so many different things. Mm-hmm. That you really have to read ingredients. And as long as it says fragrance or perfume, uh, just. Put it down, like it should have a label, either like zero perfume, zero fragrances, or it should list specifically if it has essentials or, or kind of, um, you know, smells it has in there.

Um, and just being really, really aware of it. And there’s [00:33:00] so many offices now too that have labels. Like you can’t wear any perfume when you’re walking into this office. And people are starting to get really smart about that.

Jenny Swisher: Yeah. Well, it’s, it’s funny, we, we just came back from a trip and we were, um, we were in a store, we went to a shopping mall.

My cousin was on this trip and her two girls, so she has like a seven and 8-year-old. My eight and 4-year-old were walking through this store and all of a sudden I feel a mist of like water. And I thought it was my 4-year-old. I mean, she’s. You know, she was, had her water bottle with her. I thought maybe she had like sprayed it somehow, or it was on me and I, it took me like a hot second to figure out what was going on.

I just felt this water in my face and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And then, then I smelled it and I was, my gosh. And so my, my cousin’s daughter was spraying perfume and she was spraying it. She was seven years old. She was spraying it all over her neck and I was standing right there and I got bathed in this fragrance.

And it’s been years since I have. I don’t do fragrances. I didn’t do them before. ’cause I’m such a migraine. Migraines trigger me [00:34:00] easily. Um, so I, I was just like, I mean, the rest of the day I literally felt like I was gonna get sick. I changed my clothes, I took a shower. I was like, oh. And like, all I could think about was like, when you, you know, I know too much.

I’m like, I know too much about the toxicity of that perfume and what I just inhaled. Um, but it’s true. I mean, I have shared studies here on the podcast about how we’re seeing puberty happen earlier in young girls, and a lot of the research studies that are being done in that space are pointing specifically to fragrances.

Yeah. So if you are the mother of teenage daughters or boys that really like Axe Body Spray, right? That’s been happening too. I, you know, limit the fragrances or just get them out of there,

Adriana Shuman: get rid of them. I would say just completely zero. Yeah. Because, um, obviously it’s not like that one exposure for you.

It can trigger migraine because you’re predisposed to that. Right. Um, but for me, like, um, if I walk into Sephora, which I don’t, but like, if I walk into Sephora, it’s not gonna affect me that much. But if I was doing this every single day, right? Yeah. Then I’m gonna be sick. But I have, [00:35:00] uh, I mean they have these rolling, you know, roller things that with essentials that you can just roll it on and it smells beautiful.

Yeah. Yeah, it’s amazing.

Jenny Swisher: Yeah. I interviewed the founder of Campo Beauty here on the podcast, and I’ll make sure I link it up in the show notes for you guys. These rollers are my favorite, and actually my daughters have really been loving them too. They’re like these blends of essential oils, and they really smell almost just like smells so good.

So good. I’m not even somebody who, like I said, I’ve been very sensitive to fragrances from the beginning, so, um, people always ask me, so I’ll make sure that I link that up in the show notes. But, um, this is, this is great stuff and I, you know, we’ve talked a lot about sort of this, you talked about inner trauma, outer trauma, internal stress.

I’d love to talk touch on that because, because a lot of my women are sort of in that over 35 category where. Perimenopause is upon us and now progesterone’s declining and maybe our sleep is affected and we’re starting to feel more anxious. And it does, I think, and I can speak to my own, um, experience, like, you know, relationships might even get a little bit harder, [00:36:00] right?

Like when you’re not feeling your best, when you’re not sleeping, or you’re dealing with, with, um, brain fog or anxiety. Mm-hmm. Like you have less patience for your children or you know, you’re all of a sudden you’re frustrated with your husband’s chewing, right. Or, or whatever it is. And so, um. I wanna talk about that too.

Like there are these things that you can do in your actual environment. Like we’ve talked about eliminating exposure to different endocrine disruptors, but there’s also this internal element of stress that we carry, I think, especially as women who wear all the hats and do all the things. Right. Um, that I’d love to touch on.

So how do you work with clients in the realm of internal stress? Like what suggestions do you have there?

Adriana Shuman: Yeah, the very first practice that we started doing is I what I call sit and release and asking the question, what do I need? ’cause exactly how you said, like, we get, we’re doing everything. We’re doing family, we’re doing business, we’re doing household, we’re doing friends, we’re doing all of that stuff.

And now I hit perimenopause. I was 42 when I got into perimenopause and everything started to shift. I started to [00:37:00] get bloated. My energy was different and, and just like everything started to shift and I had to learn about all these new. Symptoms and start understanding them and learn about hormones and, and what I can do to actually support my body to start feeling better every day.

Right? So what did I have to do? I had to start tuning into my body a little bit more. And this practice that I have, it’s a morning practice. It had to become. A ritual that is non-negotiable. That is not something I think about. I don’t decide whether I do it or not do it. I don’t decide whether I put clothes on in the morning or I don’t, or I don’t decide if I brush my teeth or not.

This is something that you just do. It needs to become your practice, and it can be literally five minutes a day. Sit and release. Find a quiet space in your home. Make sure it’s every, uh, every day. It’s a same spot, so your body already knows, Hey, this is what we’re doing. When you show up at this [00:38:00] place, start breath deeply into your belly.

Oxygen is extremely important for detoxification. If for your mitochondria, create energy, we forget that. Oxygen actually plays a really important role. And if we’re shallow breathers or breathers in the, you know, upper chest, we’re not actually oxygenating our body. So just even putting your hands around your waist and your kidneys and just feeling the, the, the air coming through and into your belly, expanding the belly and the kidneys and the side of the body area.

It’s gonna be really helpful and just sitting there with your eyes closed breath, and ask yourself just one simple question. What do I need? What do I need? And just keep repeating that question until something comes to you. Having a pad next to yourself with, uh, paper, no phone pad and paper. And start writing down whatever comes through you.

And it can be some childhood memories, it can be something that you’re [00:39:00] processing right now. Um. You might be crying at sometimes. Sometimes it’s can be like nothing comes up, whatever. You just spend the time with yourself to really tune into your body a little bit more and think about more about your own needs because as you said, as we go through me perimenopause and all of these symptoms we are having that we’re not understanding right now.

We just need to spend a little bit more time with ourselves to. Not resist and push away all these symptoms, but accept them as this is part of nature. This is what is happening right now. And you don’t have to suffer. If you’re starting to feel, you know, these new feelings in your body. Your body and you.

Your body will tell you what it needs. Whether it needs a little bit more rest, maybe you need to spend more time outside. Maybe you need to eat more vegetables. Maybe you need hormone therapy. I don’t know what it is. It’s different for everybody else, but. Sit and [00:40:00] release, and the release part is whatever comes through you not holding it into our body, in our bodies, because we know whatever emotions we carry inside our body that are not being processed and released, they’re going to manifest physically.

Right? And it can be from cancer, cardiovascular disease, headaches, autoimmune diseases. It can be anything. And just thinking about how or. All of these, um, pushed down emotions manifesting in my body. All right, so. Release is really letting go of whatever comes up after you, after you process it through your body.

So student release, very simple practice every single day, though this is not something you do once a week, you do it every single day,

Jenny Swisher: right? If you want something to stick, you gotta do it every day. This is good. I mean, we’ve, we’ve touched on so many things, but I love that the central theme here is really about releasing, um.

You know, releasing the toxins, whether it’s toxins or external [00:41:00] toxins, because like we said, like, I mean, you, your, you know, your pillars are almost the same as mine, right? We talked food, sleep, movement, those things all matter, right? Mm-hmm. All your food matters, like making sure you’re getting a lot of whole food ingredients like, but to me those are things that are more figureoutable or more easily figureoutable than.

This idea of toxins, right? Like what, what are my, how are, how are my thoughts potentially toxic to me? And how are the things that I’m living in potentially toxic to me? Because again, you can’t exercise your way to hormone health or optimal energy if you’re living in an, in a stressful environment. So this has been so, so good.

I mean, I have so many more questions for you. We might have to have you back to do a part two ’cause I wanted to touch more on like sleep and um mm-hmm. Idea of transformation. You know, like how do we walk people through. This is a big, for a lot of people, this is a big transition, right? Like this is a big deal.

I mean, I think about. When people ask me like how I got to where I am, I’m like, it’s been years. Like I started my journey 15 years ago or more. [00:42:00] I was, I always like to say I was like the hamburger helper girl, right? Like, I was shopping the aisles of, of the supermarket. Like I was not shopping the perimeter of the supermarket.

I was not exercising every day. Certainly didn’t prioritize my sleep. I was also in my twenties. Um, but you know, these types of things were not even on my radar, right? And so I’m sure that to some people hearing me talk about. A Burke water filter and adding minerals back into your reverse osmosis might sound like really, really weird, right?

And really far off the spectrum, but it has been a 15 plus year journey. Of just taking the next step, right? Like for a lot of people, the first step is exercise, right? And I’m not here to say that that’s wrong. It’s great. You do. You need movement, right? Mm-hmm. But like, again, your environment matters so much.

So if you’re listening to this and you’re at all feeling like, oh my gosh, this is so overwhelming, or whatever, like, please don’t be overwhelmed, but just know that really there is kind of an order to this. Um, and I want you to move, I do want you to get out and walk every day. I do want you to do strength training.

I do want you to eat healthy. I, all these things do matter. [00:43:00] But if, if, if you’re feeling like, how do I, how do I start? Like, where do I begin? Take a look around you. I. What are the things that you can control in your environment? How can you do this sort of sit and release every single day to really get control of your thoughts and what thoughts are serving you?

What thoughts are not serving you? Because your mindset, as you go through this transformation, as you do start to embrace food, sleep, exercise. As you do start to do that, everything comes back to the way you’re thinking, right? And, and what’s around you. So this has been so great. I would love for you to kind of point people to where they can find you, um, your book, like tell us all the things.

Adriana Shuman: Thank you, Jenny. Yeah, it’s been, it’s been really fun. I’m happy to be back and sleep is one of my favorite things to talk about because that is something that is, um, and I already said that these things are non-negotiable for me too, but sleep is really like the one that I will protect no matter what. I even.

Tell my friends and people if they want to go out to dinner, I go out to lunch because that’s how important my sleep is and I don’t eat, [00:44:00] um, you know, close to bed and all this stuff. We can talk about it next time, but uh, you can find [email protected]. Again, it’s your wellness dash made simple.com because I like to make wellness very simple.

And, uh, my new book Live, well, you can find it on my website as well. It’s coming up mid-May. If people pre-order right now, you get, uh, lots of free bonuses, free goodies, um, to get you started. And I have a private Facebook page as well where people can get, um, uh, answers to their specific questions. And yeah, it’s.

That’s, and I’m also on Instagram, but it’s not my favorite thing, but I, and I have to be there, so I’m there. But, uh, direct messaging,

Jenny Swisher: I always say Instagram is where my posts go to die. Instagram, but we all have one. So. Yeah. Okay. Well we’ll link all that up for everyone in the show notes. As usual, you guys, you can swipe up to get access to Adriana and her amazing book.

Um, but thank you so much for being here. I do wanna have you back, we can [00:45:00] dive deeper into sleep and just continue this conversation ’cause there’s so much more here. So friends, thank you so much for tuning in today’s episode. We will talk soon. Thanks Adriana.