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Transcript for Look as Young as You Feel

Dr. Cates: Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates, 2020 is a new year, a new decade, and great opportunities to get your health back on track and that’s so much of what I’m doing with The Spa Dr. Podcast right now to help you get back on track with your health and set your goals for 2020 for the new year, the new decade. And who better to talk about fitness than Kathy Smith, she is a New York Times Best Selling Author and has been called a fitness Titan. For good reason of course, with her iconic library of exercise workouts, she has inspired millions of women to move their bodies. Kathy has stood at the forefront of fitness and wellness industries for more than 30 years with her highly acclaimed podcast, The Art of Living and an all in one workout app. Kathy remains at the cutting edge of a business that she helped pioneer. She’s created a collection of top selling books, videos, lifestyle products and fitness equipment, and a spot in the video hall of fame with the mission of inspiring the best of all people.

Dr. Cates: Kathy’s ageless program is an ongoing series devoted to inspiring her audience to live life to its fullest with her motivational message, strong women stay young. Kathy is a mother of two daughters and currently lives in Park City, Utah where I live and she can be found hiking or skiing on the mountains with me or without me some times, So love having Kathy Smith back on the podcast. On today’s podcast we talk about how to set achievable wellness goals for 2020 and Kathy shares facial exercises, cause you have muscles in your face too, tips for dropping that excess belly fat and the best times for workouts including how to fit them in with ease. And she gives specific tips on how to do these exercises. Plus as she shares, try and trusted exercise tips and a new trend that’s getting people big results while lifting less weight. So you’ll have to watch the podcast to find out what that is. All of this is to help you look and feel your best in 2020 so please enjoy this interview.

New Speaker: Kathy it’s so great to have you back on The Spa Dr. Podcast.

Kathy Smith: It’s so funny seeing you here, I feel like I should be on the mountain skiing with you.

Dr. Cates: Yeah we’re both in Park City, we should be doing this together in person.

Dr. Cates: All right, so I know we’ve gotten through the holidays, through the beginning of the year of 2020 and new year’s resolutions are kind of, you know, a thing that people don’t usually stick to, but certainly having goals for 2020 and helping you look and feel your best are a big part of, I know what you’re great at. So that’s why I’m going to have you back on the podcast.

Kathy Smith: You know, the funny thing is I’ve been doing this for so long and you’re right, it’s, we’re shifting out of this idea of new year’s resolutions because it used to be that there was this big time January, January, you would start maybe bikini season, you would start, but now the whole flow of people are into more fitness throughout the year. But actually they jump in and then they fall off and then they maybe are doing the same thing and they get into plateaus or ruts. And so my thing is at the beginning of the year, and it’s worked, it works for me through the years. It works for people that, you know, that I’m coaching that I talked to in and that’s the idea. How do you reframe goals and how do you set yourself up for success every single day?

Kathy Smith: So if you have a big goal, like I want to lose 10 pounds, I want to lose 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds. That right in the beginning of the year can just, I mean, even hearing that can make your, you know, your whole being drop. It’s sort of like, oh, I gotta go into deprivation. I gotta go into things like you know, I have to workout harder and longer and deprive myself of the things I want. So my thing is, how do you shift, how do you reframe what you’re trying to achieve? And so if your idea is that you want to lose weight and you start with like a weekly goal or even a monthly goal, I’m going to eat more vegetables this month I’m going to really focus on eating literally, you know, seven to nine vegetables every single day and I’m want to go to the grocery store.

Kathy Smith: The first thing I’m going to fill up in my cart is I’m going to fill up with groceries and then I’m going to, I mean with with vegetables and then I’m going to start filling in the other things. That might be something that turns you on or it could be something like, you know what, I’m going to just do, 10 minutes of working out before I jump in the shower. So this is the big one that I really try to help people with. I like the before shower, get it done, get it, you know, one and done type of thing. Get it over with. And even though 10 minutes doesn’t sound like a lot, people are not understanding that exercise is much more than just a calorie burn. It, you know, it, it improves circulation as you know, for skin.

Kathy Smith: It improves you know, how you handle blood, your sugars throughout the day. And so it’s really great to get that 10 to 15 minutes because studies are even showing that that simple little thing of moving your body for 10 to 15 minutes can help minimize your chances of having metabolic syndrome or diabetes and just processing sugars. And so it’s the little bit that really can go a long way. And when you start to have that feel good feeling early in the morning, you’re more likely than to you know, to do something later on or just stay on track. So it’s really the little things. I’m really big on your morning routine. You know, everybody has heard this, but I love the saying win the morning, win the day and that whole idea is what are your three to five rituals or you know, patterns that you do every single morning that gets you on track.

Kathy Smith: So mine is I get up and I either make, you know, either it’s either a ginger shot or I love, I have a matcha oat milk with turmeric and cinnamon that I put in my NutriBullet. And that’s kind of the first thing I put on my classical music. I do a little bit of a meditation and I write a couple of things in my gratitude journal. Now all of that can take me like 10 minutes, but it really sets the tone for the day. And so I encourage people, you know, whatever your pattern is, make yourself feel yummy and just loved and cared for. Cause that’s part of this whole thing that field you’re in the field I’m in, it’s not about feeling minimizing or, you know yourself or feeling bad about yourself, it’s about self-empowerment.

Kathy Smith: Just what are you going to do to make yourself feel good today? And I think that’s the thing when you build on that, and I’ll just finish off by saying one thing. Even though I said win the morning win the day, you win the morning, most people don’t get you win the morning by starting the night before. So what happens the night before sets you up your next day up. So think about that and think about, you know, when is your last meal? And for me, I mean I’m always trying to cause I like to snack or whatever, but when I pulled back to like stop my last meals over at 7:00 or 7:30 and then I’m not, you know, I shut down the kitchen at that point. But then eventually if I want to be in bed by like 10 o’clock you start the process of when are you going to start turning off all these gadgets that we have.

Kathy Smith: When are you going to start to, what is your ritual at night? Is it, you know, is it the hot bath? Is it with your creams and everything? Do you have a little ritual that, you know, sometimes putting the creams on and doing 10 minutes of yoga before you go to bed, but whatever it is, setting yourself up for that good night’s sleep, which sets you up for the morning before. And even though we’re not talking about the exercise part of it, everything that I just suggested, if you start doing those things, you’re more likely to do the other things we’re going to talk about, because you’re in a good space.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. Those are, those are fantastic. And they’re so true. I mean, you get a good night’s sleep, you get a good start to the day. And I know I’ve been at conferences with you and everybody’s going to get their coffee and you’re running to go do your workout.

Kathy Smith: That is, I am a creature of habit, and you know what part of it is, I know how good it makes me feel. It gets back to I know how, and because we always think body, when we think about working out or most of us do. But honestly, I mean, you know, my story, we talked about it last time I was on the show. But, you know, this idea of if you’re suffering from anxiety or depression or any kind of issues that we all have, I mean, when you say if you’re suffering, everybody’s got issues in their life and it can be stress related type of things, just, it could be work, relationships, whatever, kids, you know, aging parents, whatever it is. But the thing that is, that puts me in that centered place where I can handle it all and I can handle everything coming at me is getting that 10 minutes.

Kathy Smith: I mean, it can just be 10 minutes. I mean, if it’s 30 minutes, great. If it’s an hour, that’s fun if I’m up on the mountain, but it doesn’t have to be a lot. But just moving your body, and I don’t know if we talked about this last time, but I’m really into this concept of nutritious movement and it’s, it’s really gaining more and more popularity. And the idea is, you can get the workout in the morning, but then if you’re sitting all day long, then it almost negates that workout. And it’s really fascinating that our bodies are not meant to be sitting like we are for hours and hours and hours and hours at a time. So literally I have people when I give my talks I say, you know, once every hour if you’re at a computer, stand up, you know, and just because they’re seeing that just changing the level in your body, your bodies are thinking, I’m not asleep. Cause when it’s, when we sit here for a while, your body actually is going well and you know, we’re not doing much. I can really slow down. So just standing up then once every two hours doing something that is a little bit more vigorous and I was just doing a, I just did a conference with Zach Bush who, you know, is the great gut doctor and he has a big thing where he’s got a four minute routine and I have these myself. But it’s funny seeing Zach who’s a triple board MD, whatever. And he’s, you know, he’s got his, you know, his flapping wings that you do and then in here and then you do and it’s very fast and you do your, you know, your squats and then, and he’s got the whole room doing it and then there’s four moves, you repeat it four times. And that’s your four minutes.

Kathy Smith: Now I have, and anybody’s interested, I know you’ll give it to them at the end, but on my website I have all kinds of these like little four minute things that you can do just twice a day. That really, um, not only pick up metabolism, but it’s also how you’re processing, you know, what’s happening on the cellular level. So my big thing is, you know, just don’t become a, we are not even couch potato cause that sounds like you’re watching TV, but it’s, it’s more of the computer potatoe, or whatever where we’re just sitting so much throughout the day.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Okay. So I know we’ve talked about, you and I have talked about facial exercises. So let’s talk about that first and then we’ll talk about the rest of the body. But you know, a lot of people that watch the listen to The Spa Dr. because of skin. So let’s talk about, we’re talking about, toning and keeping a youthful look and appearance on it. So what do you, what are your feelings about facial exercises?

Kathy Smith: Well, you know, when I first got, I always thought they were a little gimmicky, but when you, and I think it depends what you’re think they’re going to help you achieve. I have been, gotten more into it through the years and it’s just, it’s makes such sense because our bodies are muscle and you know, one of the, in one of my books, Feed Muscle, Shrink Fat, I talk about, you know, muscle is youth. As we age, we lose muscle. And as we lose muscle, we think about in our bodies what happens, you know, you’re, you know, bicep gets a little flabby, your tricep, you know, you start to lose that tone. And I see it with women with their core and their abdominals. And as they lose that tone they start to slouch more and they get poochier. You know, better than anybody that your face is made up of all these muscles.

Kathy Smith: I mean, it’s amazing if you take off the skin and you take off the fat, right? And you know, you have this whole network of muscles there and just like anything else, those muscles, as they start to atrophy and get a little smaller and get a little limper and looser, you know things start to sag a little bit. So in the videos and you know, we can give them to whoever wants them I’ve, made videos about this. And there’s one for the eyes. There’s one for the neck, there’s one for the cheek bones. But this is the one that I do. Oh my God, everything’s going wrong here. I didn’t turn off my phone. Sorry. Okay. Everything’s off now. Sorry about that.

Kathy Smith: So if you think about your fingers are your dumbbells. So these do your dumbbells. And so even like doing little things where you’re putting your dumbbells on your cheeks. Now with all of this, you always start with clean hands, clean face. You’re not putting a lot of pressure. This is not something you’re like digging into, but you’re just thinking about, you know, okay these are your dumbbells here and now and you’d do like 10 repetitions. I actually liked this one cause I, and then you know your fingers back here. And again, I’m going through, I, I love the eyelid ones cause this one really wakes me up in the morning. Again, think about these being your dumbbells and think about it. I’ll do it on one eye and it’s just like you do it, very light touch so you’re not stretching the skin or anything, but you dropped out like, lift your finger up, lift finger up.

Kathy Smith: And I just noticed that, you know, it’s just, it was waking up the muscles and it’s not anything that’s going to be super dramatic. But I’ve seen it work. I mean I’ve seen the subtle little changes and I really, I’ll notice two sides of my face cause all our faces are different on both sides. And this sides tends to, especially when I’m tired and everything tends to start to droop a little a drip, I don’t know if droops the right word, but starts to, it doesn’t have the, the plumpness in the of this side. And through these little things I can increase circulation. I increased and I kinda just wake up that muscle group. So there’s one and there’s one for the lips that you know you’re doing for the lips. So anyway, I went to cause one, I, this is something I don’t, I’m way off topic now, but I went into a girlfriend with a girlfriend for a, she was going to a plastic surgeon and I went with her and he was talking to her about some things, but he, you know, he was saying that for women, your age shows because the distance between your nose to here starts to lengthen as you get older.

Kathy Smith: And part of it is once again, because of the muscles dropping and the lips thinning and stuff. So there’s just one of these things that, you know, that just, it’s like how to keep those muscles, you know, alive. But in addition to that total body exercise, I mean, especially with the neck reason here, I mean one thing is, you know, when you’re doing biceps, you’re doing all this stuff for skiing and you’re using your neck muscles. Once again, this keeps this, this lengthier and this distance and a little bit of the of the you know, just the tone in that area in, you know, in the back all the way around. So it is total exercise. But I’m really, I actually, have gotten into these facial exercises and I shot some videos so that if anybody’s interested they can have them for free.

Dr. Cates: That would be fantastic.

Kathy Smith: You know, they are a kick. You will get a kick. I want you to try them cause you’ll get a kick out of it. And again, the thing with facial exercises, I think I like them. I think that a lot of times when they came out before they’re promising the world, you know?

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Well, so here’s my question, is Botox basically freezes the muscles. So my concern is what is this doing to people’s muscles over time if you’re paralyzing them. You know what I mean?

Kathy Smith: It’s so true. That’s what, yeah, that’s what they’re finding, especially when the women that were doing excessive amounts in this area here. I think between the forehead is you know, I haven’t heard as much about that because, you know, just because it’s the contraction this way.

Kathy Smith: But through the years, I, you know, have used Botox between here at times, not much, but I find with all my athletics and everything, I actually I did it when I was a little younger and everything, but if you, if you can train yourself not to scrunch that down every time you’re going to other ski slope and whatever, that can help. I mean, and so there’s almost a training that happens. But anyway, you can also train. I used to be on a television show called Alive and Well, and there was another person and it was a daily TV shows on USA Network. And I would notice that some of the women would come in and they would, they would put tape across here and stuff. There’s kind of a training thing to, not always for your brow, but the ones where you see that there’s an issue if you, you know, do too much around the eyes.

Kathy Smith: Do you want to get rid of crow’s feet? And you do all of that. Then eventually those, you’re right, these muscles start to atrophy and they, and you can start to see women that have had a little too much of a done through the years and decades, I should say. And all of a sudden this stuff is starting to really lean out and also drop.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. It particularly concerned me with the, you know, the women that are like in their twenties and early thirties that are starting it to prevent wrinkles. That’s, I’m not sure if it’s actually going to do what what they’re saying, but, okay, so let’s move on to the rest of the body. So there are certainly things that we want to do, especially as we age. And I know that we usually, we oftentimes we stick with one thing, right, where like we’ll get into over and over again. And I know, I know your thoughts about this, but I want you to share them with everybody.

Kathy Smith: Well, you know, I think I was, lucky and I was talking to a friend the other day. I said, you know, we were really lucky cause when we came up through the fitness movement, there weren’t the specialists there are now, I mean, you would go to a strength class and aerobics class, a yoga class, a pilates class. I mean you would do a little, you would do different things. And now I noticed that you’re absolutely right. Somebody is just into bar method or they’re just into pilates and they can be the best classes and great classes. But I will tell you that if there’s anything I can suggest even if you’re in your 20s and 30s or you know, that age group, the more that you can cross train with different disciplines, the more you’re going to and the easier time you’re going to have maintaining your weight, having the body type that you want, preventing injury, which is you know, what I noticed is that there’s a lot of overused injuries even with yoga, something that seems like, Oh, how can you get hurt in yoga? In yoga, there’s so many injuries and that’s because you know, you’re constantly going through upward dog head back, you know, eventually it’s like the anterior deltoid, the back of the neck, your erector muscles and your, so you’re working one part of the body but you’re not really working the bys and the lats and some of the other parts quite the same way.

Kathy Smith: You’re working the quads a lot, but you’re not working the hamstrings a lot. So the way that you keep that balance is through cross training. And I would just recommend whatever your love is. I mean stick with your love. If it’s spinning, that’s great. If it’s, you know, I mean, we’re fortunate up here in ski country and in Park City that we’re naturally going to go to different sports because we have to, when you can’t bike in the summer, it’s hard, I mean in the winter, it’s hard to run. In the winter its hard to hike and so you’re going to go into more of these cross country downhill, you know, snowshoeing type things. But what not only are you training your body in different modalities, you’re also giving your body a rest. And I think one of the reasons why at my age, and I see other people that, at my age why everything’s still put together.

Kathy Smith: There’s no, I have no issues. And knock on wood, I mean, no shoulder, no hips, no knees. But because of that, because of this idea that your body needs to recover, we always think about the workout being the important part. The important part is what happens after the workout and what you feed it, what you feed your body, how you treat your body so that it can repair itself so that it can get stronger and you can be a better athlete. I know you know this Trevor, but for the audience, I have a daughter who is an Olympic athlete and this is one and she went to Rio. She’s an 800 meter track athlete, she might be in Tokyo this year. So I’m very excited about that. But she’ll definitely be at the national championships in June. And one of the things we talk about all the time and the biggest thing and should, there’s 10 Olympians on her team, but how do you recover?

Kathy Smith: How do you make sure your feet, your legs, your body, your adrenals, your thyroid, I mean, everything that is tied in to staying healthy, recovers. And that part of that is through good nutrition right after you workout. But this idea that they always, they always cross train. I mean, even the runners they’re not doing the same workout. Come at the end of their season, they’re required, and I’m saying required to take a month off if take a month off and do nothing you’re not allowed to workout for and maybe it’s like three weeks. But that whole idea is like why? Because every single tendon and ligament and everything in your body gets to recover. And so that, I think I went down to another one path there. The other reason for cross training is because, we have different muscle fibers.

Kathy Smith: You know, you have slow, fast twitch, slow twitch and you know, super fast twitch. But part of the idea is that in some these, you know, and yoga and Pilates and these great disciplines, I love them, but you’re really not working your heart. You’re not really working your propulsion. You’re not really working explosive movements many times. And what happens though as you age, those are the first things that people start to notice. I mean, when people, when they really see the aging process, like, Oh, I can’t walk as fast. I can’t run as fast. I can’t do these things. So it’s the heart. And by the way, there’s a window I was just, you know, there’s a study out and I love the study, in the time to develop this heart arobic capacity is you’re in your thirties and your forties and in your 50s because you can maintain it and you can, and honestly, there are 70 year olds who started when they were in their forties and fifties that can be maintain your aerobic capacity.

Kathy Smith: And you don’t have to lose a whole lot. But here’s the caveat there. If you don’t start, there’s a point where you can’t catch up. And so sort of like if you don’t, if you wait til mid sixties and things to start with those, some of this aerobic stuff, but then you’re going to lose a lot of that aerobic capacity and people don’t realize it. And again, you’re still, and I know a lot of the audience is young and young being, you know, 40 ish, but thirties and forties, but I have friends that have turned late forties, and all of a sudden they’ll call me and they’ll say, Oh my God, I can’t believe it happened. What you said was going to happen, which like all of a sudden their strength isn’t there. They’re going to pick up a suitcase, they’re going to move something and they just realize, or they go, they’re going out to play, you know, a sport that they used to play so easily and they’re winded.

Kathy Smith: So it does happen to all of us. And the trick is you don’t have to do a lot. You just have to be consistent. And I do mention this over and over again, consistency is the key. And that’s why, to your point, I travel a lot, so I can’t say we have a good friend. We won’t mention his name, but I’m having dinner with them tomorrow night. But the point that what I was thinking about is that whenever he always goes, Oh, I don’t work out when I’m on the road, but he’s on the road like, you know, 200 days a year and he works out. So I just make sure that that’s an easy excuse for all of us. Like we’re on vacation. We’re on the road, we can’t. And I just realized that it’s so easy to, you know, stay moving wherever you are.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. So there are some other things that, you know, I think, you know, certainly with cross training it’s that, and it also helps with flexibility and being able to rebound and age gracefully and being able to prevent injury certainly slips and falls and all of that as we get older or more prone to that. Right? Yeah. And so some of the other things that people are concerned about, one thing that happens as we get older, is a lot of people complain about belly fat, I didn’t have this when I was younger. Why am I getting this belly fat? How do I get rid of it? So what are your tips on that?

Kathy Smith: Well, again, I don’t want to be redundant because we talked about this on the other show, but I do think it’s important because everybody, it’s the number one question I get and that is belly fat. So again, we talked about it before as a reminder, you have muscle groups and your core, and think about your core is not only the front but the back. And you have your rectus abdominis, which goes from your rib cage to your pelvis. And those are your crunching muscles and that’s your six pack muscle.

Kathy Smith: And you have your twisting and those are your external and internal obliques. And those are for all your bicycles. And that kind of creates the, the waistline here. And then you have what we call the transverse abdominis. And those go across your belly. And those are the ones that as we’re sitting here, we can be working. And I’m big on telling people this because this is the one that really helps your posture and in helping your posture will help that perception of belly fat. So the difference between me being up here in, you know, the camera, whatever I’m doing right now and not using my transfers and being down here means what’s crunching to get me down here is my midsection is now compressing pooching a bit and at the same time putting all this pressure on the internal organs.

Kathy Smith: So in the way that you think about the transverse abdominis, is you think about, again, putting on your tightest pair of pants and, and you have to like suck it in. And so that’s important. But I want to get into, we didn’t talk about this in the last show. I want to get into another aspect of that, which is the pelvic floor. But before I do think about putting tightest pair of pants and that keeps you upright. Not with your shoulders, shoulders still relax but that transverse is engaged and then the final topping on the cake or whatever is the pelvic floor. So, in my family, because of Kate, my Olympian, we talk a lot about the pelvic floor. Cause believe it or not, as an athlete, your pelvic floor is extremely important for performance and for your core.

Kathy Smith: And it’s not something we talk about, but think about your pelvic floor as being that sling at the bottom of your body. So if you think about, you know, from your pubic bone up until your, well what does that bone, you know, by your anus there that you’re going to, you’re going to that, you have that sling there and that sling, especially as we, after we have children, you know, it gets a little slingier. And what happens is that that area down there is an area that if you start to learn how to turn that on, you start to turn on the internal muscles of your core. And the way that we do that, there’s like kegels, but there’s, you know, a lot of people do kegels not quite the right way. The way that we’re teaching now is align your back and to go into a neutral position so you don’t have anything, working against that hammock we’re talking about.

Kathy Smith: And then you think about taking a marble and you think about inserting in your vagina and you start taking that marble and you start thinking about working that marble up and up and up. And that contraction that would happen of like taking it, you might even think about it like an elevator and you’re putting it in on the basement and you’re going to take it up to the first floor, the second floor, the third, and hold it at the top. At the top you’re going to flutter a little bit as like flutter, flutter, flutter, flutter, like quick, quick, quick, quick tense and release, tense and release. And then you relax it down. So things like that are things that you can do throughout the day. So what’s fun about something like that, including the transverse abdominals, you’re sitting in the car, you can, you give yourself a laugh by being in line at, you know, whole foods and you know, be doing your flutter kicks inside your body.

Kathy Smith: And those little things though, they’re also just for me, they’re sort of Pavlovian, they’re sort of a thing that just tells me engage, you know, pull up, engage throughout the day. Cause we all do, we do. If you’re not, training that area, you go into the slouch mode. And when I show people on stage what it looks like, it’s pretty dramatic and you can, okay. So I kind of went too long with that. Let me get off into next. We went through the muscles on top of the muscle fat, which is your subcutaneous fat marbled through the muscle in the organs is your visceral fat, which is a little more dangerous. Both respond the best to something called HIIT training, high intensity interval training. And HIIT training is where there’s variations on this, but I would just recommend, you pick something on your block there, you know, mark off a certain area and for 60 seconds, you know, I pick up the speed so that depending on if you’re a walker, you pick up fast walking. If you’re jogger you pick it up to a fast jog or a sprint and then you recover for 30 seconds and then you repeat that pattern and you just do you do, you know, you build up, eventually you do six to eight of those and it’s a 10 to 15 minute little workout, but it’s literally pushing yourself and what people, I think we’ve, a lot of people get in their comfort zone. They liked their comfort zone, they like their dogs. Now that’s great. Walking dog is great. Being on the treadmill, talking to your friend, going for what all of that is like, do not avoid that. That’s all social and wonderful.

Kathy Smith: But this idea of pushing yourself, you will notice, if you want to make the biggest difference in, in your body and in your wellbeing and in your mental wellbeing, just add some HIIT training and that’s where you really tackle this belly fat.

Dr. Cates: Right, Absolutely. I know that you’re doing, there’s some kind of newer stuff too. There’s the blood flow restriction program too, that you’ve been looking into. So what do you, how do you feel about that?

Kathy Smith: Yeah, no, it’s the most exciting thing. And I, you know, I want to say that it will be, it’s the talk, it’s the buzz going around now with kind of the early adapters. Lots of companies are jumping on. Lots of people are wanting to know about it. So let me explain what it is. It’s called blood flow restriction training.

Kathy Smith: The acronym is B F R and it comes out of Japan called Kaatsu training in Japan. Bodybuilders have been using it here in the United States forever, but not necessarily in a safe way. But basically you get, it’s a band that you like a cuff, a blood pressure cuff in a sense that you put at the top of your limbs, your arms and your legs right by your groin there and there’s a little pump and you pump it up. And that pump then creates, puts a little air into the chamber and to the chambers, I should say. And then what happens is that arterial blood flow. So again, little anatomy here, you have arteries going into your limbs and they’re going away from your heart, and then your veins are coming back out of your limbs. So it does a restrict arterial blood flow, but it restricts venous blood flow. Now the key here is it restricts, it doesn’t occlude, so it doesn’t cut it off or anything. It just makes it a little harder. And the way we call this your muscle pump. And so what happens is you do your bicep curl, you’re helping that blood flow get back to, you know, your heart and the circulation and everything. And here’s the key. It tricks your body into thinking you’re working out harder than you are. So you can lift lighter weights, less damage to the joints, less recovery time, and it starts to incorporate more muscle fibers faster. And then the biggest thing, which I’ve noticed, which I’m just like dying about, there’s a systemic response in your body and the systemic response is this cascade of hormones that’s released. And so you’re going to love this, Trevor, even for you know, like for, and I’ll, I’ll get together and workout with you with this, but human growth hormone HGH, which, you know, everybody is a bit of a fountain of youth.

Kathy Smith: But you know, how do you get it naturally and naturally you get HGH is released when you do really high intensity, working out. Well, most people don’t work out to that level or whatever. So this takes you to the place where your body is tricked into thinking it’s working out at that level, releasing this cascade of hormones, which just just helps vitality, brain function. I’m just feeling, you know, you’ll see, you know, so I’m super excited about it. It is one of those things that there’s a learning curve and I’m involved now in helping to simplify the program that I’m working with, which is called Be strong. So Be Strong is, you know, the safest one of these on the market. And as you’re looking around, you start to look around, please, definitely check out, Be Strong and go to my website.

Kathy Smith: And I have actually a podcast with the inventor of Be Strong. But cause there’s ways it is now gaining a lot of popularity. Couple of companies are now, few companies are now popping up on the scene and you’re gonna see more and more of this. But, it’s, you know, to do it the safe way. It’s unbelievable. And just like everything else, even with skin care, you know, there’s safe ways to do things and then you know, you can get into something and if you’re not going to the right people or whatever you can actually damage the skin. So kind of that same approach, just do to do your homework and fortunately I’ve spent the last year and a half doing mine, so it’s pretty exciting though. I’m really excited about it. And thank you for asking.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, that’s really great. And I know, I know some of our friends have been doing this and I haven’t actually tried it yet. I know I’ve seen it. I’ve heard about it, but I’m excited to get together with you and try it out. And yeah, like you said, you know, anything, it just, you have to be careful and pay attention to your body and be smart. Right. Of course if you have health issues, you know, you know wanna make sure you’re addressing those and not jumping into something that could be dangerous. Right? Exactly. Okay, so Kathy, I know that you have this free, you have a free fit over 40 program that you’re promoting right now. So I mean this, I love this idea because we all need ideas for exercises. We just talked about the fact like don’t do, don’t just keep doing the same thing. Mix it up a little bit. So I love that you have this program and it’s, what is it, 14 days? Is that what it is?

Kathy Smith: Yeah. So it’s free and I love that you’re bringing up and exactly ties into what we’re talking about. It’s you get a new workout every day, that will be delivered either, there’s a couple of ways we deliver it, but however you want, we can do it in an email or there you can download them. But basically the idea is mixing it up. You might have a, a core pilates day and might have a, you know, HIIT training day, a yoga day and every single day you get a workout and it’s pretty quick. They’re 10 minute workouts, 15 minute workouts and 20 minute workouts. And I think once in there, there’s an hour long a walk option that we give you and with HIIT training. So the idea that you have this, it’s 14 days, there’s a group that I’ve created that we can support your efforts. I can answer any of your questions. So, yeah, if you’re looking for that, it’s just, Oh I thought I was going to remember this, but I don’t kind of remember it.

Dr. Cates: It’s katysmith.com/fitover40

Kathy Smith: You got it.

Dr. Cates: And we’ll also have the link up below your interview on the site. So yeah, we’ll have that link up so that you guys can go check it out. And I mean, I definitely, I’m going to get it. I’m going to do it. I need some ideas to mix it up. So yeah, thank you for doing that and tell everybody, any other way that people can connect with you or you know, you’re on social media, your website, all of that.

Kathy Smith: Yeah. Website is just kathysmith.com of Kathy with a K and everything is there and I, you know, give lots of information, lots of videos, lots of free giveaways. Instagram is KathySmithFitness, Kathy with a K again, but all that stuff, I think the easiest way, you know, my, on my podcast also is, The Art of Living Kathy Smith. But if you put in K A T H Y Smith and get to my website, everything we’re talking about will be on that homepage so I can direct you any questions that they have, they can come through me. They can, you know, send them to you and you can forward them. So I’m, I’m really eager to answer questions.

Kathy Smith: And I also so want to say before we, hang up or I leave you, I have to tell you your book really was helpful. And you know, I got back. I did this big adventure this summer, the Camino Santiago, which I walked across Spain and t’s a 500 mile walk. It’s 20 miles a day. It took me 30 days. It was life changing. Oh well, you know, wouldn’t have traded it for the world, although I will say one of the things when you’re walking across Spain and you’re, you know, you’re carrying your stuff, you’re carrying your backpack. You have your two pairs of pants, your two tops, one, you know, your sunblock or whatever. By the way, my daughter was helping pack, she goes, you either get to take a lip gloss or an eye pencil. You only get one piece of makeup, one, skin care product. But anyway, got back the point that I’m trying to get to I got back and I’ve never had that.

Kathy Smith: My skin was a wreck for, I mean, and I think it was because I’m not even sure, I mean exactly why, but I was two months in Europe with different things. And I really, it was the first time in my entire life I had to go back to basics of just how do you clean up your act. And I think part of it was probably the sugar because when you’re walking that much and you’re in Spain and every morning there’s a croissant and there jams and there’s homemade this and there’s that and that, and you’re expending a lot of calories and you’re, you don’t really have, you know, a big food supply around. So you kind of eat what’s there, which was fine. And again, no regrets with all of it. But I did get the, I did eventually get the sugar Jones.

Kathy Smith: I mean, I was so like, I was half a chocolate bar a day. It’s not, it’s not the one little dark piece that we talk about, you know, dark chocolate. It was like, and I think it was, I don’t know if just calories, but I got back and it, you know, getting back to the basics of cleaning out and just cleaning out, you know, what goes in your body and what goes on your body and your skin and it world of difference. So completely turned, so it, you know, I’m living proof, you know, once again and kind of like with exercise. I mean, you go through these stages in life and you think you’ve got it all put together and you, you know, I haven’t had, I hadn’t had that issue in, I dunno how many years, but it was one of those things where nothing was, nothing was working on my skin and I, you know, I pulled out your book, started thumbing through, started doing things and I’m good now. So thank you.

Dr. Cates: There you go. It actually works stated by, Kathy Smith. All right, well Kathy, thank you and thanks again for coming on today. It’s always so fun to interview you and learn from you. You’re just, you’ve been doing this, you know, you’re a fitness Titan, you’ve been doing this a long time and you’re just, you’re my go to for, fitness and any questions related to that. So thank you for, for covering like a recap on some things and, and teaching us some new things and I’ll have to have you back on some time and we’ll have to.

Kathy Smith: Okay, I’m up for it. It’s always great. See you soon.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Kathy Smith, I certainly did. And to learn more about her and get the links that she talked about in the interview, you can go to thespadr.com, go to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information and links there. And while you’re there, I invited join The Spa Dr. community so you don’t miss any upcoming shows and we always love to hear your reviews. So hop over to iTunes. That’s the best place to leave a review. So we’ll get to see those reviews and we sometimes share those on The Spa Dr. Podcast, always love to see those. And if you haven’t already taken the skin quiz, you can go to theskinquiz.com find out what messages your skin is trying to tell you about your health and what you could do about it. Just go to theskinquiz.com find out if you’re an Amber, Olivia, Sage, Emmett or Heath skin type. It’s a skin quiz I put together to help people get real solutions to their skin and overall health. And you could join us on social media,The Spa Dr. is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest. You can join the conversation there and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.

Transcript for Cleansing Tips

Dr. Cates: Hi there. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. On today’s episode of The Spa Dr. Podcast, we’re continuing the conversation about detoxification and cleansing because this is a great time of year to do this. Getting a good start to 2020 in January and you’ve heard my experience or perspective. So this time I have a guest on who has traveled the world visiting different clinics, specializing in detoxification. Plus she’s researched herself aspects of effective cleansing techniques. My guest is Green Smoothie Girl, Robyn Openshaw, who is back on as a guest. She is author of 16 books including bestsellers, The Green Smoothies Diet, 12 Steps To Whole Foods and Vibe: Unlock The Energetic Frequencies of Limitless Health, Love and Success. She’s a former psychotherapist, university professor and lectured in over 450 cities in the six years after launching her popular site, greensmoothiegirl.com in 2007. She’s a single mom to four kids and she lives here in Park City where I live too.

Dr. Cates: She skis, she plays tennis competitively. I get to see her locally as well. But in today’s podcast, Robyn shares what she’s found are the key aspects of detoxification programs as well as what is helpful for ongoing support that you can provide for your body. And at the end of the interview, I’m going to tell you how you may be able to get a free copy, a free signed copy of her book. So please enjoy this interview and be sure to listen to the end.

New Speaker: Robyn, it’s so great to have you back on The Spa Dr. Podcast. Welcome.

Robyn Openshaw: Oh, I’ve missed you, Trevor. I haven’t seen you in weeks, it’s good to be back on your show too.

Dr. Cates: I know. I know. We’re here in Park City together, but not really together. Yeah. So you have so much experience with detoxification has been one of them, your big passions. You’ve got a few passions. One of your big passions is finding the true really effective ways for detoxification and cleansing and so a podcast I just did, I talked about some of my things that I love about, you know, what’s really important, what I’ve found to be really important for cleansing and detoxification. And I know you’ve done a lot, you’ve traveled all around the world looking for stuff. So I want to have you on to talk about it.

Robyn Openshaw: Yeah, I would love to. You know, I was sick when I was young. I was really sick in my late twenties and early thirties and it was a terrible time to be sick cause I had little kids. You know I had three little kids and I hardly got out of bed. I would take two or three hour naps in the middle of the day, put the kids in front of the TV, because I was nonfunctional and I had started reading and started studying and hearing all these stories of what people did to get the garbage out. And I became very curious about it. And it started a 20 year research project and I’ve tried a lot of things and over the many, many years of studying what works in human detoxification, in the process of studying that and experimenting, I got, well, I got, well, I lost 70 pounds and, I got my joy of life back so I could be a good mom again. And so it’s been completely life changing.

Robyn Openshaw: Later on, long after I got well, you know, I had been a lifelong athlete and you know, I’d been, you know, slim my whole life. Then I started eating a standard American diet, mostly because the family that I married into and they just want to eat garbage, no different than most Americans, right? But I started eating lots of processed food, lots of meat, and mostly just to like please them and to fit in. And years after I got well after all that and got my oldest child, well, who was in and out of hospitals and just dying. I did a professional exploration of human detoxification that included flying all over the world to 20 different clinics on four continents. So that’s what you were alluding to about being all over the world.

Robyn Openshaw: And one thing I found, I was studying what people do to treat cancer, nontoxicly and in these clinics all over the world, I learned that they weren’t just treating cancer, that with some of the exact same method, they were successfully treating neurodegenerative disease like Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s and ALS and Dementia and Alzheimer’s. And I was seeing all these miracles take place all over the world. And one of two things that all of these clinics had in common is that they, well the first thing is they would figure out why you got sick in the first place. What was your toxic exposure like? Toxicity always was part of the investigation of how to get people well. These 20 clinics that specialize in holistic, comprehensive root cause, functional medicine, biological medicine these all being similar words, you know, ways to address disease. They figured out what went wrong. How did your immune system go down and disease got the upper hand. The other thing is, which is very, very related, is that they found many ways to detoxify the human organism all the way from energetic detoxification too eating an organic plant based diet for a period of time to get a lot of garbage of the organs of elimination. And this was ubiquitous.

Robyn Openshaw: Every single one of these physicians, many of them are medical doctors. They weren’t just the people who went to school because they already had a leaning towards holism or functional medicine. Many, many, many of these doctors worldwide were medical doctors who went to medical school and got trained in drugs and surgery and then later, so I don’t want to do this anymore, I want to help people get well. All of them focused on detoxification. All of them had come to the conclusion that until we detoxify the human being, we cannot help them get well.

Dr. Cates: Right. And a lot of that starts with diet and what you’re eating. And just like with your own health struggles and eating the standard American diet and being so sick and your family being sick and you finding green smoothies and, and a healthier way of eating, that is a huge part of it. Right? And on a lot of these places that you went to that that’s where they start. And so that’s the foundation and then you know, we can add things onto it, right?

Robyn Openshaw: Yeah, absolutely. And so you can’t ignore the diet piece. And just because I discovered something that I know you wanted me to talk about today, which is the fact that every single one of these 20 clinics, they all had invested in different technologies, different diagnostics, different treatment modalities. There were some things they had a lot of them had in common. But the one that every single one of them had invested in it was infrared saunas. So much so that I really dug into it and started learning a lot about it and, and ended up, you know, buying one for my own home, which is a lot less expensive than I thought it was going to be. You know, I mean, you can’t put a cryo chamber your house, most people can’t.

Robyn Openshaw: You’re not necessarily going to invest in full body hyperthermia in your house, but an infrared sauna was so incredibly powerful and there’s so much evidence for it that it becomes just a no brainer, that if you’ve got a few feet somewhere, you can stick in a storage room or you know, the fitness room or I know people who’ve put it in their master bedroom cause it was that important to them. It’s a great way to detoxify over time. It is the most powerful way that we have to detoxify. And we can talk about that. But I do want to say that we are fooling ourselves if we think that we can get an infrared sauna and that’s gonna fix everything from eating a seven day a week standard American diet. We have, we absolutely have to we have to address the diet piece. You can’t be eating processed food. I mean, maybe on a rare occasion, but it can’t be a staple. It can’t be something we’re bringing home from the grocery store.

Robyn Openshaw: And genetically modified foods or over eating animal products, mostly cause most people are eating over eating animal products and if they are eating animal products there, you know, getting a lot more chemicals exposure, the tissues of animal products. Oh, and especially dairy products, have concentrated levels of glyphosate, you know, the pesticides and herbicides. So the vast majority of us need to eat more plants. I’m not here to say eat a vegan diet or whatever. I’m saying most of us are eating too much animal product and far too little organic plant based foods. So just a little page for, we do have to address the diet. There’s no escaping that.

Dr. Cates: Yeah.

Robyn Openshaw: But infrared saunas, are one of the things that I found or just like the easiest, most pleasant, most enjoyable parts of detoxifying on a regular basis.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. So, yeah, when it comes to animal products, if people actually think about, you know, they know that are the way our bodies detoxify and where a lot of times people hear about the fat is where a lot of our toxins are stored and it gets stored up in our tissues. And that women who are breastfeeding, need to be careful about what they’re exposed to, because it will come through in the milk, in the breast milk. If you think about animals, it’s the same like whatever they’re exposed to, their pesticides in the grass that they’re eating and whatever that they’re eating in their environment, the water that they’re drinking. Same thing like if it’s going to store up in their bodies and then we eat, eat that or you know, and if you think about lack lactation and you know, milk where it comes from cows, milk, or any kind of dairy products, it is a modified is coming from a modified sweat gland. Mammary glands are modified sweat glands. And one of the ways we get toxins out of our body is to sweat. I mean, who wants to really, I mean, if you think about that, I can get a lot of people off dairy just by talking about that process, you’re basically drinking modified sweat.

Robyn Openshaw: Oh, I could tell you even grosser stuff than that about dairy products that will help people get off dairy products. But then like John would say, don’t yuck my yum. You know, people don’t want to hear it, but there’s, there’s worse things than that about dairy products. You know I have a daughter who has been vegetarian since she was 11 she’s 24 now, so she hasn’t eaten animal flesh in 13 years. And I’m always telling her I would way rather have you eat animal flesh than those dairy products.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, yeah. And of course if we can find clean sources of animal protein. I’m, you know, you and I are not necessarily saying everyone needs to eat a vegan diet. But I do think that when you’re talking about detoxification, people need to at least reduce and sometime maybe even go vegetarian for a period of time. It’s not such a bad idea too because you learn how to eat more plants. We all need to eat more vegetables it’s so true. And a lot of these clinics that you have been to visit, I imagine that a lot of them are plant based foods that they’re providing. And then also in addition to foods, what people are eating when it comes to detoxification. You’ve got to also reduce further exposure to toxins. I mean, cause people will continue not just in the food but also in, you know, your air, your water, your, your skin care products, all of that you’ve had to reduce the toxic exposure that you’re getting. So I imagine a lot of these clinics you went to, it’s so nice to go there cause it’s probably like this clean bubble and you’re not getting those additional exposures. Right?

Robyn Openshaw: Well, and there’s no temptations cause there’s, you know, there’s not something down the road or you’re just eating what they, what they serve you there. So yeah, I’ve been taking people as you know, to Switzerland to a clinic. My favorite of the 20 clinics there, to do a Liberty talks every year for eight years now it’d be my 11 trip in June. And regardless of whether you think you should be vegan or not, a good detox protocol is not going to have you eating foods that cause a heavy acid load. And so you don’t have to eat vegan year-round, but if you really want to take the burden off your liver, kidneys, GI tract, and just increase throughput, you’re going to eat entirely plant based for that week or two weeks or whatever it is. So yeah, they all do either, they don’t, these places where people get well from cancer or whatever. And the ones that I don’t suggest people go to after my research in 20 clinics, there are places that just feed you whatever you want to eat because they want you to have a good experience there and just literally don’t address the diet. Like they don’t have the facilities for it or they don’t, those physicians don’t have the education in nutrition to know what’s an appropriate diet to help people get well.

Robyn Openshaw: But if they address the diet, it’s pretty much entirely plant-based except for like the super underweight people. People who are like stage four cancer patients in ataxia . So when the body is metabolizing muscle, then they’ll build, they’ll increase protein and they’ll be like, there’s really no way to get enough protein. But anyways, I digress. A plant based diet is a very, very good detoxification diet because it makes metabolism very simple when you don’t have to break down flesh.

Dr. Cates: So yeah, I encourage people, it just reduced her toxin exposure and your food and your water, your air personal care products and then you can, you can improve detoxification pathways by certain techniques like saunas. I think it’s really interesting when you’re saying with all these different clinics that you went to, that was the one kind of modality treatment tool that they had all in common. So obviously there’s something to this sauna thing, but this is a really important part of detoxification, right?

Robyn Openshaw: It’s so easy to detoxify when you get rivers of sweat going several times a week. And so, yeah, every single one of these clinics put people every single day in an infrared sauna. And there were several brands out there and I was pretty frustrated with them because most of them don’t even get to a therapeutic heat. Okay. If your sauna maxes out at 140 degrees or even 150 degrees, that’s a hot enough. If you take a look at, and I have spent many, many, many hours looking at all the published research on the health benefit of saunas the last few decades, as more and more research is coming out, you take a look at all those, the vast majority of the studies were done at high temperatures, like over 160 degrees, which is higher temperature then most of these saunas being sold in America actually get to. And I’m not saying that if you get a sauna, you should instantly get in there at 170 degrees, but I want to see a sauna, if I’m going to put it in my house, it’s going to take up space and I’m going spend a few thousand dollars on it, I want it to get to a temperature that I know that the research, the published research shows is going to be useful for my health because there’s the sweating. Do not let anybody tell you it’s just the infrared waves that are doing the work and that you don’t need to sweat. They’re just telling you that because their sauna doesn’t get hot enough. The primary mechanism by which an infrared sauna is good for you and is detoxifying is when it produces massive sweat.

Robyn Openshaw: And Trevor, I know you came to my yoga studio that I go to a couple times a week at least once. I remember you coming and us doing hot yoga, but if you’re next to me in yoga you will notice something very weird, which is that I don’t sweat like I don’t even use the yoga towel because most people use it cause otherwise there’s like a puddle around them. I’ll get to the end and I literally won’t have dripped one single drop of sweat everyone else does. But from my observation it’s about one in five like that. Usually women, I’ve never seen a guy who doesn’t sweat profusely, but you know, I don’t want it taking up space in my house and I don’t want to spend money on it if I’m not going to sweat. And I had, because I would start talking about saunas years ago and my followers started buying saunas from that company.

Robyn Openshaw: And I had another company say, hey come, they flew me all the way across the country and I was in their sauna twice I did two sessions in their saunas and afterwards they were like, how did you enjoy your sauna session? And I was like, well your sauna is very beautiful, gorgeous sauna. I enjoyed my experience in it very much, but I didn’t sweat at all, not one drop of sweat. And it was like the temperature was maxed out and they were like, oh well it doesn’t matter. It’s just, you know, the infrared waves, they penetrate deeply. They stimulate, you know, organs subcutaneously. Well thing is I’ve already done, I’ve done my research and this is not true.

Robyn Openshaw: Okay. Anything that infrared waves are doing beyond creating a more comfortable environment for you to sweat than the hot rocks or whatever the steam sauna where you just want to run out in five minutes cause you feel like you’re going to scald your, your lungs. Listen, the main thing is the sweating is the pool of sweat. Because here’s the thing. When people have sent their sweat into a lab, okay, and then yes, there have been people who do that. They find 10 to 20 times more heavy metals, glyphosate, pesticides, BPA, plastics, all kinds of garbage. You know, the stuff that we’re all being exposed to, I don’t care how clean you eat. I don’t care if you moved up to 8,000 feet like I did to get away from the dirty air here in Utah, you’re still being exposed to it. I don’t care if you don’t drink out of plastic water bottles, all those things are good. I do care. You should do all those things, but we all just have exposure, we all of exposure. We all travel. We don’t live in a bubble. And even if we did that bubble would probably be made out of plastic, so we got to sweat those exposures out, and the proof is in the pudding. You send that, that sweat into a lab and you find out that you are eliminating, by a multiplier effect, those chemical toxins that do damage to organ function, to systems function that are proven to cause cancer, autoimmune disease, shows up in your skin, right? Your skin being your, as The Spa Dr. tells us, our magic mirror and just holds us back from where we’re trying to go with our health and our energy. Okay, I’m just the older, taller version of Trevor, right? Like Trevor in her forties there’s me and my fifties we’re, we’re just, we need all the tools we can get that do only do good and do no harm. And I just absolutely love my infrared sauna especially since I live in this very cold place, get in there almost every night in the winter.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And we, we are expecting to live longer now than we used to. And we also are exposed to more toxins now than we have ever been. And our air, water, food, personal care products in our homes, all of that. And so I, you know, I just, I think whatever we can do to first reduce our total exposure and then second keep the detoxification pathways going. So liver, kidneys, lymphatic system, sweating through the skin. I mean that is, those are all really important because that’s how these toxins get out rather than just staying stored in the body. Now some are a little bit harder just to sweat out, but there’s a lot that your body can process, and remove, especially it’s the stuff that we’re exposed to on a regular basis. A lot of these endocrine disrupting chemicals there and plastics and pesticides and so much of what we’re exposed to on a day to day basis that one of the ways we get it out is through sweating. And if we don’t sweat it just kind of starts to accumulate in the body and the liver can take a lot of it out. You can, you know, eliminate a lot through the digestive system, but use all of it. We need all of it, right? We need to take all of these pathways of elimination and detoxification and amp them up.

Robyn Openshaw: Yeah, it’s a multifaceted approach. Just like I said, hey, just because you have an infrared sauna in your house doesn’t give you license to eat all processed food. All processed and animal products are still enough to, you know, we have to, we have to come at it from different angles. But I think I love about having my own sauna is, I mean a lot of people will drive across town and pay $30 for you know, 30 minutes in the sauna. The problem with that is then you’ve got to drive home with your wet hair and so what ends up happening is you don’t go.

Dr. Cates: Right.

Robyn Openshaw: And so the best ways to detoxify are the easiest ways. We are every single one of us pretty spoiled. We don’t want to do things that are hard. And so I love that I just go downstairs and I pressed the button and then an hour later I go down and I get in my sauna at 160 degrees and there is a puddle of sweat, which I cannot get at hot yoga. Like I said, like I look at everybody else and I’m like, what is wrong with me? Everybody else’s in a puddle. You know, it also it creates a lot of heat shock proteins in the body, which might be more linked, to anti aging in the literature than anything else. And we get some heat shock proteins going from fasting, which is much more one of my other research interests these days. But getting in a sauna and increasing your core body temperature it creates an artificial fever, which gets your white blood cells moving around like little Pac-Man. If you look at your white blood cells under high powered microscope, they move glacially like a glacier. And then if you get in the sauna and then you take a drop of your blood and look under a high powered microscope, which I have done in Switzerland, they turn into little Pac-Man and they’re just running around gobbling up aberrant cells there. They’re cleaning up waste products.

Robyn Openshaw: That’s one of many different mechanisms that are enhanced by, that are leveraged by the process of getting in the sauna and raising your core body temperature to like 101 degrees. And that’s what’s amazing is you can get yourself a little bit of a fever, not where you feel sick after you feel great after, but you can raise your core body temperature where you mobilize all these processes of the immune system in 25 minutes a few times a week or up to once a day.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. You know, I, by the way, I have a sauna I have an infrared sauna in my home too. Well actually mine, I keep mine in the back of my house. All the houses here have jacuzzis like that’s just Park City.

Robyn Openshaw: Like, if you live in Arizona, you have to have a pool or else you won’t be able to sell your house. We all have to have a hot tub or else we won’t be able to sell our house.

Dr. Cates: Right. But I get in the, I like to get in the sauna more than I like to get in the hot tub because I mean, I like, you know, sitting in that water. I mean, I’d rather take an epsom salt bath and actually get in the jacuzzi. It’s there, but I don’t really use it cause I love the sauna. It actually makes me, you know, it’s like the detoxification aspect of it. Plus, I love the way my skin feels after sweating like that. And, you know, I’m big on skin. Right. So would you, what are some of the benefits that you’ve found when it comes to skin?

Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. When I get out, my skin is just like pink and, it just looks so healthy. And because I sweat out so much through the pores there’s just, you know, I don’t feel like I have to do all the, you know, as much like exfoliating and worrying about my skin because I’m opening up the pores and toxins are flooding out through. And I know that you already teach this Trevor, but you know the body’s largest organ of elimination. You know, we have a huge amount of skin and it’s every single inch of it that is eliminating when we sweat. And so sweating is super powerful. It’s kind of boring. You talk about like, Oh, I need to break a sweat every day. Well, I could go for a 10 mile run, but guess what, I’ve, that’s when plenty of 10k’s where I don’t sweat at all. So it’s great for the skin to dilate those pores and flush out. It’s also super great for the cardiovascular system and not everybody is getting out there and getting their three mile jog in six days a week. You’ve been skiing for three days straight. You’re a very, very active person. I play tennis competitively, but I have noticed that the vast majority of people a have a reason why they’re not working out. And another really nice thing about owning your own sauna is that there are multiple studies that show that 25 minutes in your sauna at 160 degrees, is the equivalent of a three mile jog in terms of raising your heart rate, and caloric burn. So you can burn according to the most prestigious medical journal, Journal of American Medical Association, you can burn up to 600 calories in 25 30 minutes in your sauna. So it’s a great passive cardiovascular workout.

Robyn Openshaw: Okay. When I get in, I have very low resting heart rate 50 generally it’s about 50 and 25 minutes later in my sauna it’s 90. I would have to go for a fairly significant jog to get my heart rate up to 90. And you do that just sitting there enjoying a great sweat and you know, you can get in there with one of your children or spouse. And if I’m in there by myself, I put a podcast on and I lie down and just put my legs up. Mine is smaller, mine’s a two man and I put my legs up on the side so I’m L shaped and I just sweat it out and it’s perfect. Perfect before bed, nice cardiovascular benefits. My skin looks awesome when I get out and I go to bed and I just go right to sleep if I get a nice sauna session in beforehand.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, no it definitely helps a goo nights sleep for sure. But you know, I know one of the things that you and I both love is dry skin brushing. We like to recommend that to other people for as part of like a detoxification routine and like on a regular basis, not just for a program. So when it comes to the sauna, do you recommend people do it like after the sauna, before the sauna, and maybe we should even explain what dry skin brushing is because some people might not know what that is.

Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. So I actually have my dry skin brush right inside in the little rack inside my, the door of my sauna. And you gotta do it before. Don’t do it after, because after you’re going to be soaking wet and it’s a dry skin brush. And the reason to do it when your skin is dry is that you’re stimulating lymphatic flow. People think that they’re getting rid of dead skin cells and that is one of the mechanisms. But the other is stimulating that lymphatic flow. So if you’re cardiovascular system is bringing in the groceries, your lymphatic system is taking out the trash, we’re just optimizing that, we’re just stimulating it and increasing it. It’s super important for me because I, you know, we all have a weakness when our immune system goes down, it goes through, we end up, for some people that weakness is their respiratory system and they always get a bronchial thing or they have gut issues and they get stomach aches and have a hard time with digestion. My weakness is my lymphatic system.

Robyn Openshaw: And ever since I figured out dry skin brushing and sauna, so I’ll get in my sauna and I just start dry brushing, light, feathery touches following the pathways of the lymphatic system. Okay, you kinda can’t mess it up. Right. Your lymphatic system is practically everywhere. I haven’t gotten sick the whole time I was growing up. I would get strep and I would know I was getting sick because all of a sudden my lymph nodes here are really hard and some people listening to this will know what I’m talking about cause maybe that’s their body’s natural weak spot as well. And I’m really glad that I turned that around. I used to get so sick several times a year and I haven’t been sick and 20 years.

Dr. Cates: Yeah.

Robyn Openshaw: Since I figured this out.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. It’s such a great tool. And I mean I often has recommend people do it before they get in the shower, but doing it before a sauna sounds like I need to start doing that. I haven’t been doing that like so I’m excited to try that. But basically for people who aren’t familiar with it you can buy dry skin brushes on Amazon, health food stores and they usually they have a long handle so that you can get to different places and they, you know, there are lots of different brands out there, but basically you want to brush towards your heart so that you’re helping circulation and you don’t need to do it hard. It’s just light, little brush strokes. Don’t do your face, I don’t recommend people do their face. It’s too rough for the face. But yeah, the rest of the body is, it’s fantastic and I’m excited to try it before my sauna. Yeah, and so Robyn, I know people are gonna want to know more about, cause we’ve got, there’s more stuff to talk about with saunas. You’ve got a whole webinar. So we’re going to do this webinar together. I’m so excited about this. If people can learn more, cause you’ve done so much research, I can’t believe how much research you’ve done on saunas. You spent a lot of time on that.

Robyn Openshaw: Yeah, because you know I was suggesting that people go get an infrared sauna. But then I started looking at all the options out there and there were some good options that the company I liked is right here on the edge of bankruptcy. And so it was falling apart and their engineer and their manufacturer came to me and said let’s make a better sauna for a better price. So I’ve now made my own sauna and the independent website, Infrared Sauna Foundation, and you can go check us out for yourself. They rate saunas and I’ve never even talked to them. I don’t even know the guy who runs this. He was a guy who had cancer. He bought a sauna and it started on fire. And the more he studied about saunas, the more upset he was about the corruption in this industry. Well, he rates our sauna the highest of all the saunas out there and he does a multifactorial evaluation of all these saunas, and what I’m really proud of is that with the original manufacturer of infrared saunas and a 14 year sauna engineer has a master’s degree from Cal Poly and I have made an amazing sauna and we’re making it available to The Spa Dr. followers for 25% off and free shipping.

Robyn Openshaw: If you’re hearing this at the end of January, go to thespadr. that’s dr. thespadr.com/sauna to sign up for our webinar that we’re doing here at the end of January, 2020. Now if you’re hearing this and that time has passed, just check the show notes down below, and we’ll see what we can do for you. But we have sort of taken the sauna world by storm because all of a sudden we have a sauna that gets to therapeutic heat for a better price than anybody’s ever offered before. And it’s cedar wood, it won’t mold. You don’t want to put a sauna in your house that’s high EMF giving off energetic pollution. So you’re re-toxing while you’re detoxing and your sauna, you don’t want to have wood that harbors, bacteria and mold.

Robyn Openshaw: And first and foremost, you want it to get really hot and really quickly. Don’t believe anybody who tells you that 150 degrees is high enough for a sauan that you’re going spend good money on. So we’re going to teach you all the health benefits of infrared sauna because like Trevor said, I’ve dug very deeply into the published literature on what an infrared sauna can do for your health. And so we’ll cover all that. We’ll be nice and brief and entertaining. But you can jump in on the free webinar at thespadr.com/sauna. Is that right Trevor?

Dr. Cates: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Well so we’ll have that. We’ll have that up. And, yeah, I’m so excited to share all the information cause I know we can’t share it all today because you’ve got all this whole presentation that you put together for us so I really appreciate it. All right, so, Robyn, thanks so much for coming back on the podcast today and talking about detoxification with me and, and all that you do to help people. I mean you’re, you do what you like, learn for yourself, learn with your own family and you’re doing such a great job of getting this information out to other people and so I so appreciate everything that you do. Thank you.

Robyn Openshaw: It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me back Trevor.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Robyn Openshaw to learn more about her, you can go to thespadr.com, go to the podcast page with her interview. You can also go straight to thespadr.com/sauna to catch the webinar. Now, if you’re listening past February 1st, you may have missed that, but you could still go to the page and hopefully we can have a replay up or you’ll be able to still be able to get, get a chance to catch that. Also, as I mentioned in the beginning, I have a free signed copy of Robyn’s book and she’s generously given to us for a lucky winner. So if you can answer this question after listening to the podcast, you should have the answer to this. What is the one thing that Robyn suggested adding to a to improve lymphatic circulation? What is the one thing that she talked about the technique. We both talked about it that helps improve lymphatic circulation. So if you email that to [email protected] and you’re the first person to answer this, then you can get a free signed copy of Robyn Openshaw’s book. So that was all about today’s podcast. And I also invite you to join us on social media, we’re on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, join the conversation and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.

Here’s the link to join us for the sauna webinar: thespadr.com/sauna