Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode, and I'm so thrilled to announce I introduce our next guest. She is the original green smoothie girl. She's the founder of Green Smoothie Girl Dotcom. She's also the author of 15 health and wellness books, including the USA Today Best Vibe and our all time best seller, The Green Smoothies Diet. She has been featured in so many different online summits, keynote speakers and different health and personal growth events. So please help me welcome Robin Openshaw Chantel.
Nice to meet you all. Thanks for having me.
So I know that your son's health journey has had a major impact on you. Can you tell the listeners about how those journeys and how they led you to create Green Smoothie Girl?
Yeah, my son, when he was first born, he was healthy. And then when he was about seven months old and I had spent six years in infertility treatments and had several miscarriages. And he was a he was the first artificial insemination is when he was conceived. And I had I lost his twin. He was a twin. So it was quite a journey to even get him here. And when I was seven months old, I weaned him onto a formula, and that's when his health just really tanked. And he was in and out of hospitals and emergency rooms and he was on lots of antibiotics and bronchodilators every four hours with the strep a gas mask kind of thing to his face. And when he was prescribed his fifth course of liquid steroids. And here I was running into the emergency room in the middle of the night. Sometimes he was hospitalized. He was only 15 months old when he was prescribed his fifth course of liquid steroids. He had already been diagnosed failure to thrive because he had fallen below the fifth percentile for weight. Keep in mind, I'm five eight.
His dad, six four run to the family. Six four offensive linemen like this kid was born nine pounds. Twenty three inches. And here he is a year later, failure to thrive. And I was I was given the fifth course of liquid steroids. And the doctor said, by the way, this is guaranteed to stunt his growth. And that was the day that the realization hit me, what we're doing isn't working and just putting myself in the hands of the doctors and giving him all these drugs, this is not going to lead to a good outcome. And that's the day that I started to take responsibility for his health and for mine. I was overweight, bordering on obese, and I changed our diet. To make a very long story short, I change our diet and I changed it radically. I had watched my grandmother beat stage four metastatic melanoma cancer some 15 years before that. I'd seen her say no to chemo and radiation. Instead, she did this crazy juicing plant base, no sugar, no animal products for two years. And she was supposed to die in a year. And instead she lived in the 20 years she was actually there when all four of my babies were born. And so I had seen how powerful nutrition was. And so I went back to that and I was like, well, what if nutrition is part of the problem here? I didn't know that the food that I was feeding my baby, we're what we're at the root of his problems because I was just feeding him what everybody else did.
You know, what the cows milk, ice cream, otter pops, sugar, cinnamon raisin bread was a staple at the time that I had this awareness. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I got to change everything here. Chicken Nugget. These are the kinds of things I was feeding my son, the same things everybody else was. And I radically change our diet and never had him. Not only do I never have him on steroids and never did give him that fifth course of liquid steroids, never again on steroids, never again on antibiotics.
And I went on to have three more children and they're all adults. Now, that boy grew up to be a MVP of a state championship winning baseball team. He was headed the state for RBIs. He was six foot three, his senior year of high school. He pitched a shutout in the state playoffs and was named Most Valuable Player. He wasn't he wasn't headed there when he was 15 months old and diagnosed failure to thrive. It was getting him off of dairy and sugar and processed meat. And we went to a Whole Foods diet to see if it could do for him what it had done for my grandmother. And it gave him his destiny. Destiny. Back then, I had three more children. And with them I didn't make those same mistakes. I never fed them garbage, food, and they're all adults now and getting to live out their destiny. So it made me a believer in doing things a little different than other mothers were doing, feeding other kids garbage foods. And I, I a lot of challenges along the way. Dealing with that, I had a lot of challenges with people who thought I was crazy and why aren't you going with the flow and why don't you let your kids eat the garbage that the teacher feeds them? And, you know, I had to take a stand many times along the way because I was feeding my child, my children later differently than everybody else. And I and I was not opting into all the medical treatments either. In many cases, I was studying what I could do, this natural that doesn't harm the immune system. I became very, very educated on the subject. And that's how Greensmith got started, because I put that website up 13 years ago when my family went on the ABC Disney show Wife Swap.
And you do. You went, Oh yes. Oh my gosh, I didn't watch that episode.
Yeah, good luck. Good luck. I generally don't help people find it because but I mean, it airs on the Lifetime channel to this day. I mean, it was 13 years ago, but I mean, ABC Disney really wanted to they really want to string you up for something. Right. And so the things they honed in on, I knew they were going to hone in on the green smoothies. But if you do go find it, you know, a lot of stuff is posed like, you know, they want to be behind my son practicing the piano with my hands on my hips. So that is not actually something I would do. Like they went and found things in my closet that they thought were like super conservative and like the overachiever mom type outfits. And they made me wear this pair dockers over and over again. I'm like, I don't even know where you got that in my closet. Like, I don't wear Dockers. Right. And so they would tell me to get out of the jeans and put the Dockers on. They would it was it was very, very manipulated. The thing I didn't see coming. So the green smoothies, I was not surprised that the fact that I said my kids a pint of green smoothies every day and what I put it in, I totally expected that would be in the show. The thing I didn't expect is that they made out that I am so obsessed with efficiency that I force all my children to celebrate their birthdays on the same day, which not only isn't true. But they didn't mention that all four of my kids are born within two weeks of each other, and so when the family came from out of town and traveled four hours to be there, yeah, we had the family party, but I never had a combined friend party. And I did all the things that all the other moms did that. So I don't recommend anybody go on wife swap. I hear it's still going on. I didn't know it, but yeah, that's the back story there that is hysterical.
Well, if you had to give listeners your top three wellness tips, what would they be and why?
Oh, gosh. Well, the biggest thing I'm obsessed with right now is modified fasting. And I've been doing it putting into play. I've been you know, I just wrote this little book here about how to get the health benefits of fasting without going hungry.
And I know that fasting is your jam. And what I'm discovering is that there's this volume of research coming out, especially out of us. See the Longevity Institute at USC by Dr. Valter Longo and his colleagues showing that you can actually eat a certain amount and achieve all the benefits of fasting. You have to do it in a prescribed way to eat within a certain window. You're familiar with this and I'm sure your audience is familiar with intermittent fasting. This is kind of like the next step after intermittent fasting, but not as hardcore as water fasting, which I've also done I've done for long waterfalls in the last four years. I was before I discovered intermittent fasting so fast regularly. It's your best cancer prevention. It's your best way to keep your cholesterol and your blood pressure low. It's the best way to keep yourself out of mood disorders like anxiety and depression. Secondly, don't eat processed meat, dairy and sugar. You get rid of three things, get rid of those. And I'm assuming with that that you're not drinking a lot and you're not drinking soda and some of those really bad things. But those are the three things that I feel like most Americans are eating and just getting rid of those early on. I don't even know how to cook Whole Foods, but eating mostly Whole Foods, plant based diet and getting rid of sugar berry and processed meat will be huge for your health. And then thirdly, drink a quart of green smoothie every day. Life changing.
Awesome. So in my newest edition of my book, Waste Away, I talk about how people don't have to deprive themselves when it comes to food, but everyone needs to decide for themselves what are their red light, yellow light and green light foods.
And so red light and things like if I eat this, I feel horrible, like there's no way I want to eat. And then yellow light is things that you don't eat very often, but you don't feel great when you eat that. So what would be your personal red light? Yellow light.
Yeah, for me, I like that. I like that metaphor of the red, yellow and green green light. I, I eat probably more greens than anybody you know, and it's because I got my health back doing that, eating lots of greens. I mean our cousins, the primates who we share more than ninety eight percent of our DNA with the Greens all day long and they eat a wide variety of them. So because I drink at least a quart of green smoothie a day, I would say greens are my are my biggest green light and all, all vegetables, lots and lots of vegetables and greens and nuts and seeds and legumes and whole grains. Those are things for I don't count it, I don't weigh it. I don't worry about the calories of it. I would love to tell you that I don't ever drink wine and I don't ever eat sugar. I'm actually on January 1st taking a sugar beet and I've done it before for a whole year, but for a whole year, a couple of friends and my boyfriend and I are going completely off of sugar and flour and I'm excited about it because then it makes it a game of size it and I'm accountable to someone else. And so it kind of just takes away the debate that goes on in your head, you know, when you're like, am I going to eat this like. You know, like today, my boyfriend has these KARMELITA bars in our house and I'm like, oh, they're so good, am I going to have one after lunch, you know, like when we don't have it in our house and when we have to pay each other ten thousand dollars, if we screw up on the bed, then we don't do it. So that's yellow, like alcohol, sugar. It's not good for me. And there are things I absolutely will not eat. The red ones. The red light ones. I don't drink soda. Don't eat hydrogenated fats. I don't eat processed meat like it's pretty rare that I even eat meat at all. I'm like ninety five percent plant based for the last twenty five years and that really got my health back, my sons and my health back. That's why I shifted my whole family to and I raised my children on probably for them 90 percent plant based because I actually said I would make homemade like Kiffer from goat raw milk and I really felt that that was a really good part of their diet, especially when they're little, they're babies and they need to be gaining weight. So for them is more like 90 percent plant based. For me, I've been ninety five percent plus plant based for years. So for me, processed meat.
It's just a no, I'm talking about like baloney and salami and sausage and bacon, that kind of thing, just hot dogs, cancer sticks, right. Hydrogenated fat and. Pork, no pork of any kind. Those are the red light ones for me.
So let me ask you, I just watched this movie Game Changers on Netflix. Have you seen that?
I haven't. But everybody keeps saying to me, I intend to. My daughter, who is twenty four, graduated college a year ago. She she just came in my office a few days ago, just like mom. Have you seen game changers as she was talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger in it?
And I said, that's funny because my daughter has been vegetarians, that she's 11, so she's been vegetarian for 13 years. She has not eaten animal flesh in 13 years. And I'm trying to talk her into going vegan because I tell her I would rather have you eat clean animal flesh for your health. She's kind of a ecological animal rights sort of vegetarian. And I've told her I would rather have you eat animals less than eat dairy products, that she still does eat a little bit of. So I'm talking about milk and cheese and cream and stuff like that. So I have not seen it. And I'd love to hear what you have to say about and she was talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger. And I said, you know what? I read a quote of Arnold Schwarzenegger's from years ago, and his friend was Bill Purlie, who was a vegetarian.
Mr. Universe, as I said, I remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger said Bill Purlie didn't convince me to be a vegetarian, but Bill Purlie convinced me that a vegetarian can become Mr. Universe. So right now, he's gone way more plant based and he's done a great service to the the whole ecosystem. Because when someone like Schwarzenegger speaks up and says a big and massive and bodybuilder as I am, I'm eating mostly plants, it does a lot more for us than me pointing out, hey, everyone, the primates, they don't lack for muscle mass at all. They eat is plants. It really helps us tell the story. So I'm excited to see it. What do you think of it?
Yeah, I thought it was great. I, I personally think that, you know, 70 to 80 percent of your diet should come from plants. And I think just a huge like that's where you should get your you should have, you know, a 70 to 80 percent plant based diet. I do think that my one concern is that V12 is you cannot get them from plants, so you have to take a supplement.
And I believe that anything that you have to take a supplement like you should be able to live without having to be on a supplement. But I think that if you need, you know, like I'm really big on listening to your body.
And so, like, I eat tons of plants. If my body says, hey, you are craving, like, meat or craving or craving that, I do think you should listen to your body. And then a lot of that means that there's a nutrient that you need that you're getting as long as you're filling the rest of your body with, you know, plant based things that I that's how I personally like to live. And I feel that you shouldn't. That's the big pieces. Where do you get your V12 from if you aren't having any any kind of dairy or meat or stuff like that?
Where do I get my 12? I don't eat meat and I haven't been V12 deficient in twenty five years and a lot of people who do eat meat are V12 deficient. So that's definitely kind of a thing that's out there that you can't get be 12 if you don't eat meat. It's not actually entirely true. And a lot of meat eaters get it from a lot of meat eaters are also V12 deficient, which I think is more about gut disease than anything. But V12 is in the soil. And so if you eat organic produce and you just don't wash it very well. I've grown my own vegetables and some fruits and a lot of greens for many years. I don't now since my kids are grown, I don't have the big garden I used to. But I would assume that because I don't worry about scrubbing my organic vegetables off that the big 12 that's in the soil, which is the same place that the cow gets it to pass it along to a human, I would assume that that's why I'm not V12 deficient. And of course, people who eat plants, there's actually an argument for people who eat only plant may be deficient in a in a few things. There's definitely people who make that argument. But I haven't seen any, like, longitudinal research about it. I mean, two thirds of the planet eats is vegetarian or vegan. Two thirds of the people live on the planet right now, a vegetarian. It's not because they read a diet book or because they, like, took up a cause and, like, beat people up about it and go on Facebook. And, you know, that old joke about how can you tell someone's a vegetarian? Don't worry, they'll tell you so. But I don't talk about that like on Green Smoothie Girl. I don't talk about being vegetarian or vegan because I feel like it's polarizing. And so it's not really a thing for me to try to tell other people where to be. They do want to point out that all of the blue zones, all of the five areas of the world that have been very heavily studied because they have 30 times more centenarians and North America does it all. There's there's one blue zone in North America and it's the Mediterranean Seventh Day Adventists in Loma Linda, California. So there's one North American population that actually lives to be over one hundred at a multiplier rate of those of us eating the standard American diet. And all five of the blue zones eat 90 to 100 percent plant based. So I'm not arguing for any specific percentage of my body used to crave it, I'm not sure if it's a nutrient we're craving, if we crave meat or if it's like what we came from. You know, I think it's sort of easy for me to be plantlife because when my grandmother. When my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, my my grandparents owned a produce company, so produce was free for them and my mother grew up in that environment and so my mother never made meat for us. Then I got married and then I was eating meat and lots of processed food from the influence of the family I married into. And then I had this baby. And then we both had all these health problems and I was overweight, but I grew up like my whole family. There's not a single overweight person in the family and everybody ate plant based. My mom just we might have had an animal product once a week on Sunday dinner, but it was never like. It was never like. A steak or like a slab of animal flesh, like there might have been a little bit of animal protein, something that we ate on Sunday night. That's it. That's it. And it's not we weren't dogmatic about it or anything like that. It's just what my mom knew how to make because they're always using everything up in the in the warehouses that we owned. We owned the Romney produce company in the southern states. And so anyways, it's just interesting things to think about. I mean, the average the standard American diet is 70 to 80 percent or is 20 to 30 percent animal products. But I think that lots of people can be healthy eating more animal products in the blue zones do possibly and eating more animal products than I do possibly. That's entirely possible if we keep it to Whole Foods. Right. I think once we start mixing in the processed food, the sugar and flour, which I actually rarely eat, processed for sugar and flour, I don't like how I feel. So like how I feel. Don't like how I look.
So awesome. Well, now the question I ask all my guests take me through a normal day in the life of Robin, like, what did you eat yesterday? When did you eat it? Did you work out all of that?
Yeah. So I'm a competitive tennis player, so I play tennis at the photo level. And almost every morning I play tennis, I get up in the morning and I get on my exercise bike and I do about forty five minutes to an hour of cardio. Very first thing. It's literally the first thing I do after I get up and drink a pint of water. Yes, you got to hydrate when you wake up. So I'll do my workout and I'll go play tennis, which really for me is more fun than exercise. And then for breakfast, my partner usually makes us a pink smoothie and it's a very sort of famous Greensmith recipe.
You think that green smoothie would be our most famous recipe, but this pink smoothie is it's so delicious and what it is. And here's I'll tell you exactly what it's for one serving, which is like a quart. OK, this is mineral water right here. But this is a court. It's a big jar. Right. And it makes about a full court. It's about four hundred and 450 calories. It's got beets and carrots in it. So every day I have beets and carrots and it's delicious. So it's a cup and a half of coconut water and I ferment it. By the way, you can put water four grains in it if that's to advance for you or too weird for you, don't worry about it. But I ferment my coconut water a cup and a half of that.
Then I put a chunk of a raw beet and then talk to people real quick about what do you do to ferment it. So, yeah, you have a cup and a half of it. What do you do to get that fermenting process?
Yeah, so you just get like Waterkeeper grains and you put them in there and I have a vented lid on top. So I was in my kitchen. I could show you the vented lid allows you to drain it off into the blender so every day drain off into the blender.
And then I put another cup and a half of I feel that it's the smaller jar, not this court. Javitz a pint jar that's half the size. Then I put more in for tomorrow in the water, tea for greens. And the reason I do that is it's great for good health because those waterkeeper greens are living organisms are colonies of living organisms and they they populate your gut with good bacteria. And most people don't realize that if they've ever taken an antibiotic, they wiped out all the good bacteria. That's most of your immune system. So people are suffering if they're getting sick over and over again. This is a good little tip. Make my pink smoothie and have your have your coconut liquid coconut water. It's how they sell it at Costco or whatever. Ferment it, ferment it with water key for grains and you could get water key for grains on Amazon or whatever, and you can just keep reusing them. You know, they're not something you add to your blender. You just keep those waterkeeper grains and they culture or ferment your coconut water. So forget about all that. If that's like too much cup and a half of coconut water, a chunk of a beat, OK, cut the skin off the skin. Makes it taste a little bit earthy, but these are so good for purifying your blood. Actually pigment your skin a lot like I'm super, super fair. And it really helps me because I'm always out in the sun playing sports. So I'm going to be a full carrott like a big old carrot. Just cut it into pieces or a new blender. A handful of cashews, OK? Not roasted salted cashews, just the ROLLAN. And for dates, if you get whole dates, take the pits out. All right. So you've got a cup and a half of coconut liquid, a chunk of a beat, a big old carrot, a handful of cashews and four days blend it all up till it's smooth in your Weida mix or your Blendtec or your neutral, neutral bullet, whatever you've got. And then add 12 large strawberries or about 10 ounces of frozen strawberries, or you could do some strawberries and blueberries. So those frozen strawberries in there blend it till it's smooth and boom. You've got this amount, a nice breakfast of I call it the hot pink breakfast smoothie. So that's breakfast for lunch today. I'm going to have cut up. I have these spears' of an English cucumber. I'm gonna eat my favorite organic hummus. And I have a big sort of green smoothie that John made. It doesn't have any fruit in it. A super hard core. We've been making jokes lately about how hardcore we can take our green smoothie. And then I don't even know what I'm going to have for dinner yet, but a lot of times I'll have another green smoothie and maybe some, like lentils over rice and quinoa kind of thing.
Awesome, I love it, and so for you, how often do you do a longer, fast, like if you're going to do a longer fast, how often do you do that?
I don't do long. Fast now that I've not only studied modified fasting and integrated it into my lifestyle, but I've also developed the flash fast.
Since I've done that. I actually canceled my annual water fast that I'm going to go to TrueNorth in Santa Rosa this time and do a week long, fast. But you know what? When I do a water only fast, I'm really not productive. I can't work. So I have to take a week of vacation.
That's exactly what I want to do with my vacation time. So. I canceled it and I've done nine flashbacks in the last three months, I've been doing a flashback three times a month and it is in our kit, it comes this this little book, How to get the Health Benefits of fasting without going hungry comes in at your first time. But it's and it's really inexpensive and it's organic and it's five mini meals that gets you through the day. Our our first hundred one hundred fosters their average, highest hunger level. According to their own self rating was three point four on a scale of one to ten. They told us the hunger they got was three point four, which is pretty cool because for three days they're getting into that state of autophagy. That's state of autophagy, where your body is breaking down broken parts and such a great disease, preventative. It's so great for keeping your belly flop.
Awesome. We'll talk a little bit more about the modified fast, I know that we'll have a link that they can buy this modified fast and actually have some of it right here. But walk us through. So like they have the you have like the flex seats, you have the protein meal, you have the bar walk, you walk someone through a day in the life of what they would do when they get the kid.
Yeah. So your kid I don't know if you have the whole box, but the box has dividers and you've got your first day, your second day and your third day. And each day you have five mini meals and four of them are Shaikh's. We're working on some soups. I have some soups that are going to go in the kit really soon. But right now it's for shakes in one bar in a day.
In the shakes are a superfood blend where that is higher in protein. So what we want is we want really good fiber and a little bit more protein than the average vegan diet would get. So you're getting higher protein and you're getting those good fats that that really help with satiety. So if you keep your five minute meals within a window of, say, nine to six. OK, about about 10 hours or less. And you space them out, there's no reason why you should get really hungry.
But, you know, I get up and I'll make the first two shakes and I'll put it in a big blender bottle and I'll throw greens in because you can add as many greens as you want to your shakes. You can add to the five minute meals.
You can also add up to two servings of non starchy vegetables. So at the beginning of my three days, I'll steam a whole head of. Of cauliflower and a whole bunch of asparagus, and the only reason I seem cauliflower and asparagus is that I like those vegetables, you know, so you could you could do whatever vegetables you like, not potatoes or sweet potatoes.
Those are higher in calories. And the clinical research about getting the health benefits of modified passing, I'm talking everything from heart disease, cancer to autoimmune disease to correcting hormone imbalances, to targeting belly fat, all of those autophagy and keep ketosis benefits. You've got to keep under eight hundred calories. Or in or calories are fewer. And so that's what everything in your kit is at six hundred fifty calories. So if you add two vegetables or one fruit, if I add a fruit, I'll take an entire banana. And when I make my shaikh's, which all you have to do is add water really. But you can add greens if you want to add some of the sprouted flax. So you have a packet of sprouted blocks for each day.
You could add some to your shapes and it's going to really help keep your essential fatty acids optimum levels and it's really going to help with satiety as well and helping you absorb nutrition. Those good, essential fatty acids help you absorb minerals really well from your food. So, one, I just use the bar kind of in the middle of my day and it's kind of my treat because it's really delicious. It's one of your five many meals and there's a little one page insert in your.
In your kit.
And.
But.
I guess in a competitive tennis match in the middle of the the hot Utah summer, believe it or not, it was a I guess you can't see the snow outside the window, but two months ago, it was a hot Utah desert summer and I have played a competitive match on day two and day three of the flash fest. And the reason that's exciting is that when I do a water fast, I'm out. All I really do is lie around and watch Netflix for the most part, because I just get a brain fog and I can't go out and go for even a two mile walk after the first or second day. And so it's really exciting to me that we can get the health benefits of fasting without the sort of misery that goes along with getting that hungry.
That's awesome. I also love tennis. I am a competitive tennis player. I some days I'm at three point five, some days I'm a four hour. You never know what day I'm going to be, what level. But I just recently broke my foot, I don't know, at six weeks right now. And I stepped on a tennis ball when I, it was, I was winning a tournament, I was in a tennis tournament. I was winning. And somebody put a tennis ball from the other court. I didn't see it. And I was hitting a ball and I stepped on it and I actually broke my foot.
So it looks like every tennis players nightmare, that's we're always clearing balls. I'm so sorry. That happened to be horrible.
Well, let's jump right into the listener questions. This first one is from Tara in Boulder. She says, Hey there, love the podcast. I have a six year old and four year old sons who are very super picky eaters. They especially hate eating vegetables and refuse to give them any tips on how I can sneak them into their meals without them knowing. Tara in Boulder.
Yeah, first of all, kids avoid vegetables when they they've been raised with sugar. And then I bring that up is that sugar is more addictive than crack cocaine, multiple animal studies that have proven that. And so, you know, while your kids are little, since I've raised four kids to adulthood, that one of the best tips I could give a young parent is don't have sugar in your house, like starve your kids sugar addiction because vegetables don't taste good when you're addicted to sugar. There's there's all kinds of brain chemicals that happen and they make vegetables just loathsome to us. Now, that said, that's one part of it is we got to not have the sugar in the house. And when we have processed foods in the house, some children, in fact, most of them just still just categorically avoid vegetables. And they don't they don't have that future thinking ability. They don't have a developed frontal lobe like you do where it's like, OK, if I don't eat vegetables, I am becoming nutrient deficient. I am more vulnerable to all these disease states and all these problems. They're just like, what? Tastes good, give me what I want. Right. So it's our job as parents to do that. So there's that factor. I want to just bring that up. But the other thing is blend it, OK? You can also blend it in a soup. So get those blended greens or vegetables. I mean, I put all kinds of vegetables.
I put like ginger root and turmeric root that you can get in most produce sections of a really good grocery store. I blend those into the blender, so if they like a fruit smoothie, just start slowly increasing the amount of kale and spinach you can. Like I said, you can blend an entire carrot into your your breakfast smoothie. So now to Tara in Boulder. Make that pink smoothie and you'll be amazed because they'll think it's delicious. It is amazing that hot pink breakfast smoothie.
I don't know if you have shown notes or whatever your e-mails put that pink smoothie in the schnitz.
Yeah, awesome. So but, you know, and if you kind of get a list going of those kinds of things, like if if your kids love the hot pink breakfast smoothie, guess what? They're getting beets and carrots in their day and keep a list of those recipes and kind of make them your go to the name of something goofy. Right. Like a green smoothie, if they're willing to eat, agrees to be put, put a mixed berries, organic mixed berries in it, and it'll make it purple or brown instead of seeing the green of the spinach and kale. And don't make it in front of them. Right. Don't make it in front of them. They don't have to know what's in it and call it Shrek two or Super Power Blaster or Juice or whatever you think that your kids will respond to.
Awesome, Shannon in Dover. My eight year old has asthma and terrible allergies. It's so bad that we can't go over to a lot of friends houses because they have pets. Is there anything natural we can try to do to help with the allergies and asthma? We don't want to do allergy shots. Shannon in Dover.
Yeah, that's actually I don't know if I mentioned I told you about my son's serious health problems.
It was allergies and asthma and, you know, until I changed our diet. I didn't dare put him in daycare, I didn't dare take him to church and let him be in the nursery, I mean, we were like recluses. He was like an inch away from being bubble boy because I was terrified that he would get a virus because I would put him into such a horrible asthma tailspin. And so I really relate to what you're saying, Shannon. That was exactly the situation that I was in. And after I got my son completely off of dairy, the dairy got to go. Like right now, dairy has got to go dairy and sugar. You may see such a massive difference that may completely change your life just from getting rid of dairy and sugar. Now, what else are you going to put in the diet? What was super useful to me is start the green smoothie habit. I didn't think he would drink. Agrees with me. I was your typical standard American diet mom. You know, like I said, feeding my kid chicken nuggets and cinnamon raisin bread and butter pops. Like that's the kind of stuff I was feeding him. Just pure crap. You know, here his organs and his bones are developing. I didn't know better. I was just doing all the other moms were doing. And I didn't know that feeding him dairy products, sugar to the dairy products is the very worst was causing inflammation in this little body, including in his respiratory system where he is getting inflamed tissues and it's mucus forming. So the body starts to produce mucus because we're not meant to we can't really digest that large fat molecule. So the body produces mucus and then it fills up the small airways of the lungs, those bronchioles which are spasming from the inflammation and are filled with fluids or mucus.
And when you get rid of the dairy products and I don't mean decrease them, I mean eliminate dairy products. And you don't need dairy products, which so many other things you can use. Now there's almond milk to put in the granola or whatever. So if you have to take it, you may want to take it further than that, I got rid of all of it. I got rid of the process, sugar, the process, flour, the dairy. And it was a massive overnight shift. And, yes, he wasn't allergic to dairy. We're all sensitive. We're all reactive to dairy.
We aren't meant to have pasteurized, homogenized cows, milk full of steroids and antibiotics and hormones. But that's what this was in the dairy products and blood and pus. Not to be gross, but it's a terrible thing. So and, you know, back then I loved it. You know, cheese was a staple. Milk was a staple of gallons of cow milk. And I said my baby went all the way up until he was 15 months old. And that day that the the pediatrician handed me a fifth course of liquid steroids and I was like, these drugs are worse than the disease. You know, I feed him. I would put the bronchodilators in his body and he wouldn't eat. That's how he got to be a failure to thrive. Is the drugs killed his appetite? You just lay there trying to breathe and they breathe like 80 times a minute. And here he was, nine months old, a year old was terrible. So I have told so many young mothers to do this and have them see miraculous results. And you may think, well, yeah, but it's pets. Oh, my son was highly reactive to pets. And, you know, to be fair, he's twenty six now. He still is allergic to cats. So I'm not saying that the allergies will disappear. However, when the immune system is strengthened and you start putting foods in his body that create this mucus forming situation where his immune system is maxed all the time, he may have a much healthier response to things he's allergic to, but the body's not supposed to be allergic to all these different things. It's it's a. It's a. Autoimmune problem, it's a it's a misfire of the immune system.
All right, Brittny in Bethesda, what is your opinion of the flu shot? I usually get one every single year, but I know a lot of people who refuse to because they swear the flu shot makes them sick to get the flu. Should I get one or is there some other natural way I can get to protect against flu? Brittany in Bethesda.
Well, big question. So the best thing to do is, is listen to my podcast. In the last few weeks, I've published interviews with Bobby Kennedy. So Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. Yes. Those Kennedys who is an activist and he speaks all over the country and he's phenomenally articulate. He's an attorney and he is suing Merck right now for the the problems with vaccines there. They are not safety tested, especially aren't tested in conjunction with others. I mean, sometimes babies now are being injected with three and six vaccines at once. So go go listen to what they have to say. My show is called VIB. On iTunes and everywhere else, but listen to the episode that I just released last week. So what are we talking October twenty nineteen right now? In October 2013, I did an interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that is fantastic about vaccines. And a couple of weeks before that, I aired an interview I did with Mitty's Dr. Stephanie Cintas and also asked her questions about vaccine efficacy. Both of them talked about what total frauds the Gardasil vaccine is and the flu vaccine. And there's a lot I could say, but I want to touch on what else can I do? I want to make sure that I address that for a quick minute. But and I asked Stephanie sent us that question, by the way. So it's a really great interview that because that's a tough question to answer in a two minute answer here. But I got the flu vaccine when I was forced to in graduate school. I accepted my second year practicum working with children on the state hospital and psychiatric hospital. And I found out I had to get a flu shot right before. And I already knew that I didn't want a flu shot. I knew that it was not highly efficacious. I knew that was full of heavy metals and toxins. I had my concerns about it, but I didn't have time to line up another internship and I wanted to do that internship. So I got the flu shot. And after that I was sick 10 times. I was sick all winter. I was sick over and over and over again. And if you listen to those interviews with Dr. Stenseth and Bob and Bobby Kennedy, you'll hear the why of why does the flu vaccine with all heavy metals and adjuvants and toxins and dead flu bacteria, which is just a guess the CDC guesses every winter what which of the many, many, many flu strains to even put in the vaccine for next year? They're guessing it's an educated guess, but sometimes they're 20 percent right. Sometimes they're 50 percent right. Sometimes they're zero percent right. So we just got that toxic shot that our immune system reacts to. And we didn't even get any protection at all. So to me, the flu vaccine is is just an absolute no for me and my family.
But I want to say that I got I actually got the flu not only to get sick 10 times that whole winter, which is highly like all I get, I get a cold every other year, the whole rest of my life.
But that winter, I was sick. And they talk about why about what that does to your immune system. And I actually that winter got the flu, the flu, got diagnosed with it, tested for it and everything. It's the first and only time in my life I've had the actual influenza virus that most people don't realize. It's not like you're getting a shot of the flu and there's only one flu and that's the flu they're going to be protected from. There are many, many, many influenza strains. So really quickly to say, is there anything else? Listen, if you get your children off of dairy products and sugar and processed flour and processed meat, if you feed them a Whole Foods diet, their immune system just gets stronger and stronger. And they're not reacting with mucus forming, inflammation causing foods. So that's the very short answer to that. But that's kind of everything I teach at Green Smoothie Girl is how to, you know, not be you don't have to be so scared of flu viruses and other viruses, viral and bacterial infections.
Also, if you just ask Green Smoothie Girl, I have a list of the six supplements that I have on hand and that each one of my children who live away from home because there's four of them that they have on hand and you have these six on hand. And if someone gets sick, get them on it. At the very first symptom is when we end up on antibiotics. None of my children on antibiotics. In twenty five years since I discovered these things that we're talking about right now, you know, my my son was on antibiotics a lot that first year of his life. Then I discovered how to how to improve his immune system and clear it of all the garbage and mucus. And that acidic condition makes you very vulnerable to viral and bacterial infections. And then I have these supplements on it and they work. And I'm talking about like a little silver and a really good vitamin C. Most vitamin C is garbage. Ascorbic acid is made from hydrochloric acid and and corn sirup don't buy that by a good vitamin C and several other supplements. And they work. They work. If you get your child on them or you get on them at the first symptoms, if you don't use your natural supplements, which really do starve out the infection, they do very well. And I like I said, my kids, none of us have been on antibiotics in the last twenty five years since I learned these things. So Ascott Green Smoothie girl, this little girl dot com asked my staff for it or ask on Facebook about the green smoothie girl on Facebook. And my staff will give you this little list, this little wallet card of here's the the six supplements I think are most efficacious against bulls, bacterial infections, which, guess what, antibiotics don't even work against viruses and viruses.
Awesome. Well, if you go to Chantel Ray way Dotcom's eglash fast, then you can also get this amazing kit and you can do your modified fast. Thank you so much for being on the show. Tell listeners where they can go to follow you and your work.
Yeah, thank you. Chantel on Green Smoothie Girl on Facebook. And you can check out what we've got going on that green smoothie girl Dotcom. The site started as I was a young mom when I started the site thirteen years ago. I was a single mom of an eight, 11, 13 and 15 year old. And now life circumstances have changed. But there is a lot of amazing content on there. I've written millions of words on the exact kinds of topics that you guys have been asking here. So sounds like your audience is. Got quite a few moms in it, but but I appreciate you asking and I think on Instagram we're at Green Smoothie Girl or something like the Greensville. I think it's a great smoothie girl. We're we're on all the platforms.
And if you have a question that you want answered, go to questions at Chantel Ray Dotcom. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.