Beautifully Broken 200: What I Learned in 200 Episodes

WELCOME TO EPISODE 200

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Freddie Kimmel (00:01.246)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the beautifully broken podcast. If you're watching this on YouTube, you're asking yourself, where's the cast? It is just I, because this is episode 200. Can you believe it? Can you believe we've done 200 episodes together? I wanted to do a solo episode. And as you know, I normally do 20 episodes. I'll reboot and do a new season. So season seven, we're like.

or like 29 episodes in, because I was so close to 200. I said, you know what, I gotta keep going. And I wanted to do, I had so many ideas for this episode. I was like, let me go back and just pull my favorite moments from the last five years. And I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do that podcast. And at the same time...

I always say that the value of this show is the incredible learning and the osmosis that I receive from the guests and the thought leaders and the changing world of health. My views on health have changed in many ways. In some ways, they have stayed the same. So I want to share that on this episode with you, just you and me. Drop on in. Get a little heart to heart time.

My heart is very tender. I've been doing a lot of I've had a lot of change in my life. I've been doing a lot of deep therapy with EMDR and with a wonderful therapist in Buffalo who is just Incredible and then all the other things right, you know add that with elite nutrition and Just a sleep hygiene protocol that you would die for

Like now my bedroom has got these block out shades from you block out. And I've got a cool mattress. And I've got the harmonizer, which is a PMF device that sits on my chest. And I'll do a little meditation beforehand. And it's just, it's added so much value to my life. Sometimes I wake up and I was like, all I want is for everybody else on the planet to feel this full of life. I know in my heart of hearts, there would be less war.

Freddie Kimmel (02:15.978)
I say that about a few things in my life lately, but man, it is up regulating the quality of the human experience and combining that with a amplified presence. The present of the present moment and just being here and being now, which what a gift. I mean, somebody sat down with me on a meeting today. We were talking about, we were talking about different experiences.

We are talking about, hold on, you know what I want to do? I want to put this on, do not disturb, because if someone were to give me a phone call right now, I would be so frustrated to break up this flow. So we were talking about different experiences and he was saying, you know, he's got to work with all these leaders across the globe and game changers, people who they're nine figures, you know. I was like, that's so incredible, the impact you can make. And I appreciate that.

And I have such a unique experience that you can't buy. Um, there was a long time I just wanted to live. You know, I wanted to live. I wanted to make it. I wanted to not have metastatic cancer. I wanted to not be under the crippling vice of, of brain fog and fatigue. That Lyme disease can often gift someone. That's all I wanted. And now to be so functional and not only to be functional.

but now to be in a role where I get to assist others who have fallen along the way. I don't like the word to influence. I don't know what it is about. I don't like the word influence. I'm not an influencer, but that's actually all in my list of things I've gained. So let me just say this. I, that gift.

right? That I have that like cancer and Lyme and chronic illness and all these surgeries that I talk about on all the podcasts. And if this is your first podcast, you're like, who is this guy? What is he talking about? So you can go back to some of the earlier episodes and see, um, uh, my life as a cancer survivor, all the things, but I'm, I'm very, uh, the cup, the cup is overflowing. That's all, that's the only way I can say it. And so I made this list of things that have

Freddie Kimmel (04:33.29)
have really rolled into my DNA, rolled into my being from doing the podcast, which is the gift that keeps on giving. So I'm going to go through these in no particular order. And there'll be more and there'll be more. There's so many times that I was like, wow, that is a new belief system that's developed as a result of working with bioregulatory medicine or sitting in with two to three episodes with Dr. Dix and Tom in which I understand my body's way of inter relating with the outside world impacts.

what I choose to do for health. That is forever changed. And this is season seven, right? It's forever changed. So there's a lot, there's a lot. It probably needs to be a book. And every time I say a book or writing a book, which I've written for years, it's like a pile of writings. I'm like, I don't know what to do with that thing. It feels very intimidating, but I should put everything together. So I just should all over myself.

Let's go forward with this list. So if I'm going in no particular order, what did I write here? Oh God. Number one is I'm, I'm so aware that the human brain operates for the most part on unconscious programming. And so what is a program? It's this, it's this almost like this reflexive response to, it could be, um, if something feels.

expensive or if something feels out of alignment, you have a yes or a no in your body. So you automatically have a deep knowing. You're like, no, that's not for me. Yes, that's for me. But the programs aren't always ours. They can be moms, they can be dads, they can be programs about feeling safe in a relationship. They can be programs about physical intimacy. They can be programs about your belief system on what your self-worth comes from. Do I need to achieve, you know?

is an achiever, I'm a chronic achiever, that drives me to do things above and beyond the norm. A lot of times on the other side of that, I feel love. Look what I've achieved. I feel love. So we could say, we could argue that program is one that may serve me in some aspects of my life. And also I find from my experience that as a program that can burn you out.

Freddie Kimmel (06:54.418)
It's like, how hard can you make the hamster run in a wheel? So I'm so aware of that in my life. And what my note was is that programs are fierce and they are competitive.

Freddie Kimmel (07:10.546)
I found great value in unpacking this. Um, and I will do this for the rest of my life. What programs serve me and what ones I may want to tweak to find better value from my life and it's going to be personal. There's no list of programs I can give everybody, but the way the brain works, a lot of these run on the subconscious and they are driving you down the maze of life and in, and here's, here's the great one.

The only thing we can do, we continually have to take time. We have to step off the ride. We have to pause and we have to breathe. I remember always being like, do I need, what is meditation? Doesn't feel good. I don't like it. I don't like sitting still. Well, I'll tell you what. The value is for me stepping off the ride. When I pause, when I breathe, there's a different level of awareness of my programming.

And that is the place that I have found I can create change in my own life. So I still don't like meditating, but I like stepping off the ride and I like the power of pause and I like intentional napping and I like slowing down. Um, it saved my life. So that's number one. The, the, the next one I have on my list, let me just see. It's on a big whiteboard. I wish you could see it. Um, let's see. Oh, this is so big.

This is so big. And this really comes from bioregulatory medicine. I got to give a shout out to Christine Dionisi and Dr. Dix and Tom understanding. And I knew this. It sounds so it's I, they, they did not invent this, but we have these self-correcting systems within the body. We have these auto regulatory processes that exist in the body. I'll give you one that's been big over the last year and that's the Lumbatic system. And from my.

last year doing a deep dive from someone who had 80, you know, surgical staples left in their peritoneum cavity. That's my chest, um, where lymph nodes used to be. I had nine big tumors removed. This system, lymph, it's cleaning up the garbage in the body. It's also managing inflammatory mediators. It's managing.

Freddie Kimmel (09:29.378)
the fluid balance that is inside the cell and outside of the cell. So we have this fancy metric called the intracellular, extracellular fluid ratio, right? That should be two to one. So we should have more water in the cell versus the extracellular matrix. That often ratio is way off and we're holding lots of extra fluid. We are not clearing the inflammatory mediators. We're not moving. Of course, I just, oh, it tried to happen. Did you hear that?

tried to send in a phone call. It doesn't do a good job at managing that balance. And with that, we have an immune system that doesn't go anywhere and everywhere. We can think about in our lymph nodes, right? I said it's a garbage cleanup system. Well, in those lymph nodes is also born our NK killer cells that are going to fight cancer, our B cells, our T cells, our dendritic cells, and they need to flow throughout the body. And the system doesn't have a pump to drive it.

It moves and flows and there is this, oh, it's a dance inside the body. And how does that happen? Walking, deep diaphragmatic breathing and time and parasympathetic. So we can think about the system that is helping with all immune function, all cellular garbage and your average practitioner. You know, I had this story in my head. I saw so many doctors that couldn't help me. The average doctor gets about 30 minutes on the lymphatic system.

You know, it wasn't in 2012 that medicine discovered, I give a big old air quotes, discovered that the brain had a glymphatic system which helped drain cellular waste from the human computer operating system. It's wild to think about. And I give that example to say, that is something every human being should understand if you wanna better understand your operating manual. Why do I function well? Or why do I have these

deficiencies. Well, we have these self-autoregulating systems. One is lymphatics and it's just a great reminder, right? The body doesn't make mistakes. These things happen. These things, I'm going to do things, air quotes, cancer, Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, autoimmunity, MS, they happen as a result of multiple systems falling offline in the body and the body can no longer autoregulate.

Freddie Kimmel (11:57.534)
I had never looked at disease like that. When I was 23, I looked at diseases. I can't believe this is happening to me. Why? You know, or when I was 18, you know, I do a couple episodes about hair loss. Why has the great creator turned his back on me? And why is my hair dropping out at 18? Why has the universe turned their shoulder on me and...

allowed all this cancer to develop in my belly. Why am I waking up one morning with rheumatoid arthritis? Why is this happening to me? Now, if we start to flip the script, if we start to, again, back to number one, change the program, right? It's a different story and it's a different way to work with the information, which for me, being so curious and having the blessing of being on the other side of all those maladies.

I can now understand why all the lifestyle things that I've committed to have changed the way I feel pain, bowel function, energy, joy. And I'm so very grateful. So I'm again, that's a great opportunity for you to understand what are the auto-regulating systems of the body, one being lymph. That's my little tip. Oh, goodness. I've said, you know, I think I said this podcast like one or five. I said the next 20 years.

of medicine is going to be more about what we remove from the body than what we put in. This sort of just links to what I just said. I said this idea of the two-thirds of the body, the fluid being in the cell, one-third being out of the cell, think about that fluid ratio when that's off. Can nutrients easily flow into the cell? No. If it's off in a different direction, can toxicity flow out of the cell? No.

We have this process of letting go, which is based on this intracellular, extracellular fluid ratio. Fascinating. I know I'm fascinated, but we can think about, you know, I think it was, um, school of applied functional medicine. Oh my goodness. This is terrible. I can't remember a guest name, but Tracy who runs that program talked about her husband having early Parkinsonian type symptoms, right? And.

Freddie Kimmel (14:16.242)
everything was alleviated by a detoxification protocol around mercury and heavy metals. And how many times have we heard that story again and again? Dr. Chris Shade, Tony Robbins, you don't have to look far to see that this is what people are experiencing. There is a burden imposed from the environment as a result of the modern lifestyle we all agree to silently or make a verbal agreement to. That is a burden.

And so what do we do to remove things from the body other than self metals, toxicants, glyphosate, you know, it's, we're not going to go into all the problems with the world, but it's a great time to remember and embrace the fact that we have to compliment drainage within the body. Drainage doesn't necessarily mean detox. When we talk about drainage, we talk about the ability of the cell is a collective, right? Freddy's body to allow things to leave.

So the process of allowing and you know, in that there's conversations from, um, oh goodness, anything from cell core looking at humic and fulvics to binders and toxicants from Dr. Neil Nathan, this commonality of chronic illness being Lyme disease or molds, or, um, even, even Parkinson's like symptoms, having a benefit from taking a binder.

like an activated charcoal or a humic and fulvic acid to form a covalent bond with an environmental toxicant that helps remove it out of the body. You know, removing something other than self. So again, that's been confirmed over 200 episodes. I hear it again and again and again. Dr. Stephen Cabral echoed this, even offering environmental toxicant tests where we can see, we can pee and we can send in the pee and we can see that the toxicants from the local playground.

the exact chemicals that make up those rubber mats are in your child's urine. Yes, and they make it very challenging for the brain to think as a brain should, among other cellular functions and organ functions. I could go on, but I'll get off that soapbox. I wanna get through this list because I don't wanna make this too long. Although I did five years of podcasts. I'm not trying to sum it up. I think I'll do this once in a while because listen, I find incredible value to...

Freddie Kimmel (16:35.89)
establishing what are these universal truths that can be valuable to many people across a broad spectrum. So another one on my list is here. Let me read this. I got this one today and I'm reminded of it. So as many people in the audience know, I work as a consultant for different wellness technology companies, be it PEMF devices and lymphatic drainage and red lights and vibroacoustic, you name it. Really, I'm a fan of all of it.

You know, it all has validity and we're watching it come to the forefront. We're watching it be embraced by medicine because they're throwing their hands up. They're throwing their hands up. And I don't mean they as an other, I mean, that operating system is asking for help. And I hear the call, so I don't want to, it's not, I'm not calling it out as other. I want to remove judgment if that sounded judgy. And I want to go back to this statement that I heard today.

something can't be expensive and hold incredible value. And that hit me right in the heart. Because that's my belief. That's so true to me. If you tell me something's expensive, then you don't understand the value where the value doesn't pertain to you. But if it holds incredible value, if something holds incredible value, for me when I hear that I'm like, it's priceless. How am I putting a number on that? You tell me,

You are going to change my, the hours I spend a day managing my inflammatory response to the outside world, be it a mold, be it an environmental toxicant. There's no amount of money. I would come up with the money. I would work for the rest of my life for the money. If you told me you could save me time and suffering because you had shown me there was enough value there. And I hear that all the time in the health space, you know, it's too expensive. And I agree with you.

over prescription of over assignment of prescription drugs equally parallels the burden of over supplementation. Most people have no idea what the supplements they're taking or doing. And most of the people they look at the end of the monthly bill and they're like, Oh my God, I'm spending $800, $1,000, $2,000 for these treatments and these supplements that have a net neutral effect.

Freddie Kimmel (19:02.146)
They don't do anything. Again, it's a lack of understanding. It's, I think it's a lack of individual or precision medicine under which they are prescribed, prescribed being a loose word, again, very loosely. I think it's really, my theory has always been empower a person to better understand what their body needs through diagnostic testing, through more information, and they can be the person deciding as like,

Does this feel like a right fit? Do I feel better on it? Is there value there for me? Because it's so multifactorial. I never want you to listen to this podcast and be influenced by me to be like, well, Freddie likes it, I should do it. I have no idea if it's good for you. All I can tell you is I believe in the science. I believe in the person who put the science together and created a product. I might have a personal experience where I've found value.

Other than that, you've got to decide if it's a right fit for you. I think all of these conversations, what I really want you to feel, I really want you to feel from my heart is that it is a jumping off point for you to explore and see what else you could be doing. A lot of it is based on you will find an amplified effect when you have your sleep hygiene, when you have your daily movement, when you learn how to breathe.

When you learn how to remove judgment and just focus on what, what do you have control over? You have control over your response. My response is my responsibility. Kathy Weelahan, Laura Young, thank you for that. That is something that has made its way into my DNA. My response is my responsibility. You know, that's all, that's all. So yeah, something can't be expensive and have incredible value. Think about that.

before we go into the number one, the program that it's expensive, because that could be your parents' mindset around money, and I find that is very, very frequent. It's my least favorite conversation to have, especially when someone's running a medical practice and they tell me something's expensive. I was like, well then, then we need to have a conversation about what you would be doing with the technology or your thing, who is facilitating it, what is the per cost session, and what does that ROI look like,

Freddie Kimmel (21:27.186)
your business model and the value delivered to the patient. And that's the only conversation to have. And then you can go shop around between all the different car dealerships and find what you wanna find. But that's the only conversation to have. Can you see I'm passionate about this stuff? I hope you guys listen to this podcast. I feel really good about it. Here's, I'm gonna do three more. Stay out of story, stick to the facts. Do I need to break that one down? Stay out of story.

There's so many times when people will jump into a story or a narrative and I'm listening and I will pause and I said, do you actually know that? Have you been there? Have you had that experience? Have you tried it? And they're like, no, but I've heard. And I was like, wow, I wanna pause here. I don't wanna spend out any more energy. And I would rather just like, let's talk about the last South Park or family guy or let's talk about the football game.

I don't want to go into story with you on this because we're just telling each other what we think things could be. We're filling in all the blanks and my energy is so precious and I love you, but I want to stick to the facts. Then of course, this plays into how we talked about, right? How do we talk about hard things? A couple social media posts have talked about going into an election.

Right? How many times do you go into a conversation in which there's just no ability to stick to facts? It's all story. Now, let me just say this. It's a hard time to know what the facts are. Really and truly. What a challenging age in which there's just so much spin. If you've ever remembered that movie, Wag the Dog, it's, it's fascinating. Just the spin on politics, but, um, stay out of the story, stick to the facts. You could hold your practitioner.

We can hold this accountable in a consult. We can hold this accountable in a romantic partner or a business relationship. Let's stick to the facts. You'll be so much happier. And I've really tried to pull that in. I try to add that in silently to the interviews that I do. Another one on here. Oh, find value in the in-between moments. So...

Freddie Kimmel (23:45.438)
I have this experience lately where I've noticed myself in a gentle state of agitation, where there's two times where one, I'll be getting off a plane and I've traveled all week. I've served like a thousand people at a show, like I'm wrapping people in Flo Presso, and or maybe I'm up there and I'm speaking and I'm prepping for a new presentation and I'm so tired. And I get off the plane and I get my bag and it's not until I'm at Austin airport and I get out of the elevator.

and I can feel the distance between the elevator and my car. And I think, Oh my God, I'm so tired. I've got so long to go. I got to go to the, to the garage through another garage to the walkway. I got to get my keys out. I got to lift these heavy bags. And it feels like, it feels like I'm going through the last couple of miles of Death Valley. And

The other one is when I'm checking out at a grocery store, when I got all my shopping done and I'm right up to my bags, everything's in the bag and the last couple buttons are like, how many bags do you buy? Do you want us to charge you that for on your card? Do you want to run up for education? And I'm like banging on the screen. I'm like, no, no. Like let me out of here. But I give you these examples and I want to ask you, do you have moments that you are, they're like,

painful points of frustration in which I am realizing I'm wishing away time. It's like, I want to be onto the next time. How can I reframe this painful moment to bring myself back into the presence? And I do, I'll do the walk from the elevator to the car. I'll just flip that one. I'm not going to take too much time on these. I'll do that one. And I would frame this in the way that if I were out of my 12 day stay,

in intensive care and I remember this very well and I hadn't left the hospital. I hadn't seen fresh air, hadn't eaten a normal meal and hadn't walked outside. I remember that walk to the car. Weeping. I never thought I would leave. And I remember the beauty of how the air fell on my face and the sunshine and it was cold. It was spring in Rochester, New York.

Freddie Kimmel (26:09.078)
I'm driving down Mount Hope and all the little simple things I was just ready to pop. And it's the little in-between moments that we can just do a little frame, reframe in our brain. And I'll lie, the only reason I say to do this is to don't wish your wife away. Don't wish your wife away. Don't wish your life away. You are wishing away the preparatory phase before you go up Mount Everest.

You're wishing away the 1,000 days that might lead up to your wedding. There's so many opportunities to suck the nectar of life. So again, when I said at the top, I was like, what do I take away from all this podcasting? What do I really take away? We got to slow down. We got to be still. We don't have to, but I'm finding more value in my life and more joy when I slow down. And there is a program.

to go back to number one that is so strong on my brain that there's more, that somehow tomorrow holds more, more podcasts, downloads, more opportunities, more money, more influence, more relationship, more friendships. It's never really been true. And I've been here 46 years.

It's never been, I've never seen it to be true. Some of my most profound moments of joy in this life have been the simple ones, but it's paired with a deep awareness and presence of like, you know, oh, just sitting down in a couch in Redding, Connecticut, and there's a roaring fire, and there's people around, and maybe we're just, we're having a piece of homemade pumpkin pie.

and there's a beautiful golden retriever on the floor. And the wood, the fire's cracking and it's so beautiful.

Freddie Kimmel (28:09.474)
There's not, I'm not going to have a better moment than that. But the brain would tell you there is the brain would tell you there more. Yep. I had a moment this winter when my whole family, all my nieces and nephews had grown up enough where we could go skiing and, and they were, they were, they're just old enough to the not, they're just not that annoying anymore. Everybody can keep up and we can all ski together. We can go up and down the lift and my dad's there and my sister and my brother and their kids, and I'm just so proud of them. And it's just like.

Man, my heart feels so full. And these privileges are not lost on me. It's so good. The last thing I wanna go in, and this last one, it was just kind of like, this has come up a lot on the podcast, this idea of the dose becomes the poison. We can look at these.

rare medicines in which it's this small, small hormetic dose. Here's a great example of the small hormetic dose of just enough exercise to just build muscle where we see chronic exercise really does lead to all, all early onset decline of everything, you know, deterioration of joints and muscles. It's like we only have so many miles on the car.

And then we can now we can replace shoulders and knees and joints and hips. But we only have so many miles on the, the elasticity of the circulatory system in the heart.

Freddie Kimmel (29:48.346)
It's incredible. It really is. So I'm not saying to live a life so careful I am saying be careful of the program that you let Overtake your brain and start running the show and saying I need to go to the gym every single day all day That's one example. Another example of the dose becomes a poison is something like if I ate a bunch of mistletoe It would kill me. However, if I have a very small injection

Powerful adjunct to support the body's immune system in its fight against cancer

Freddie Kimmel (30:26.006)
You know, if I have a fever, let's think about a fever. You know, this is the other one. We have this reflexive response to suppress a fever every time we're sick. You know, one of my guests, Dr. Piper Dobner, said if there's one drug I could remove from the marketplace, it'd be a fever suppressant, betylenol. That fever is recalibrating the program within the immune system. We have this TH2, TH1.

branches of the immune system that work just like a teeter-totter, but we get this heavy immune system memory and we never get a new challenger in, a new microbe, right? It becomes, we get this heavy-handed response. So then what happens? Now this team, I'm not a doctor. I want you to go to the Google button if you doubt this fact. Look at the percentage of the population dealing with an autoimmune condition from 1910 to 2024.

These are not my numbers. This is not my story. This is the experience of the country we live in. So it is good, right? The dose becomes the poison. Fevers are good. Small hormetic stressors, right? There's a big trend. Everybody's jumping in ice, right? I've never said, I put an ice barrel. I put my original ice barrel that I had built a cold water immersion system in my backyard three years ago.

And there was nobody, there was nobody was doing this. You know, I bought a chiller. I went to Home Depot 20 times. I hired a local guy to help me do it. And now there's, you know, you can buy, you can buy 300 different systems on the internet, ready for you at your door, ready to rock. Um, but I just put it on, on Craigslist and it was like, I had 25 asks that day. You know, everybody's like, I'm tired of my, my bathtub is doing it for me. I say all this to say.

being an extreme cold, you know, I got to go to the Sherpa level two training in Wisconsin this winter with the great Kristen Weitzel of Sherpa Breath and Cold. And it was like negative nine, the water was 32. I was like, am I really doing this? We're cutting holes and you know, a foot and a half of ice. And I felt absolutely incredible. I felt incredible.

Freddie Kimmel (32:46.566)
And you know, the science is there to support this, but I really will go. It's not that we all need to be an ice. It's that we become hyper comfortable in our controlled 72 degree boxes in our comfortable little living rooms. And that needs to change. And when we change that, what happens? We get better distribution of brown fat and muscle tissue and immune response and all the things. So again, this isn't, this isn't me spouting like, um,

my opinion, this is what the evidentiary proof points to, that we have this lesson coming through of the dose becomes a poison. So that's really it. I love you guys. I really do. I wanna look up one thing. I wanna look up, if anybody's here.

Freddie Kimmel (33:37.834)
If anybody knows Ren, do you guys know Ren? I want you to listen to him. Man, he's a great artist on YouTube, spent a majority of his life with chronic illness, with Lyme, brain fog, encephalitis, you know, all the things. It is profound music. I've been so inspired listening to him. It's kind of rap, hip hop meets Eminem. At other times, it's like the Rolling Stones. He's got a great voice.

There is a poem and I've read it in another podcast. Hi, Ren. I'm gonna say poem at the end. Yep, yep, yep. Here's the lyrics, full lyrics. I'm going down here. So I've read this on another podcast. And this is so good. So I'm just gonna read this and then we'll dip out. We'll dip out. When I was 17 years old, I shouted into an empty room, into a blank canvas.

that I would defeat the forces of evil. And for the next 10 years of my life, I suffered the consequences, auto-immunity, illness, and psychosis. As I got older, I realized there were no real winners, and there were no real losers in psychological warfare. But there were victims, and there were students. It wasn't David versus Goliath. It was a pendulum, eternally swaying from the dark to the light. And the more intense

that the light shone, the darker the shadow had cast. It was never really a battle for me to win. It was an eternal dance. And like a dance, the more rigid I became, the harder it got. The more I cursed my clumsy footsteps and the more I struggled. So I got older and I learned to relax and I learned to soften and the dance got easier.

It is this eternal dance that separates human beings from angels, from demons, from gods. And I must not forget, we must not forget

Freddie Kimmel (35:46.626)
that we are all human beings. Beautifully Broken Podcast, episode 200. I love you so much. Big love, bye.