How Changing Your Environment Can Improve Your Health with ZuZu Armes

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:00:03 Hi and welcome to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Jessica Drummond, and I am so thrilled to have you here. As we dive into today’s episode, as always innovating and integrating in the world of women’s health. And just as a reminder, the content in this podcast episode is no substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from your medical or licensed health care team. While myself and many of my guests are licensed healthcare professionals, we are not your licensed healthcare professionals, so you want to get advice on your unique circumstances. Diagnostic recommendations treatment recommendations from your home medical team. Enjoy the episode. Let’s innovate and integrate together. Oh.

Speaker 2 00:01:02 Hi. Welcome back to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. You are going to love my guest this week. She is somewhat unconventional and I really love that about her because I think sometimes in integrative health we get very dialed into the research, which I think is extremely important. We get very dialed into what is evidence based, what is standards of care, you know, what can we study? What are the best diagnostics for certain things? What are the best medications? What are the best supplements? What are the best nutritional protocols? What are the best strength training protocols for whatever your client is dealing with? But as we go deep there and specific and we’re really looking at everything from the the quality of the research to the quality of the supplement to the sourcing and quality and dosing of the medication or even the lifestyle protocol, String Training Protocol, sleep quality protocol.

Speaker 2 00:02:08 What we sometimes miss is a deeper connection to a mindset shift of recovery of nervous system, regulation, of stepping outside your environment and connecting with nature. Literally, quite literally. Like feet in the dirt. Hands in the dirt. Gardening plants, flowers, circadian rhythms, seasonal rhythms, and the rhythm of connection with people who are just positive and fun. And that’s a piece of health. The the place, the connectedness, the shift from an environment and from, like, kind of just bad habits we sometimes get into because they’re easier. Right? And they were literally designed to entrap us. Things like, you know, the algorithm on your phone or work demands, or just feeling like you need to buy new things to achieve X, y, z, or you have to have a perfect house or whatever it is, you know. And so our guest today, Zuzu Arms, is just a beautiful, embodied example of what it means to live from a place of energy and connectedness. And I have had a really traumatic and difficult journey with, having a really severe Covid infection, having had long Covid for six years.

Speaker 2 00:03:46 So I am really aware of the benefits of of N95 masking, of being really mindful Of, you know, exposures to everything from viruses to environmental toxins, which are everywhere. And so what I think, though many of us lost, even if it’s strongly evidence based. Well, many of us lost is this connectedness, because the reality is it’s not as safe as it was six years ago to be in just a room with other people. It’s simply not. But one of the places that we can get that back and to make it safer by literally building our own resilience. And I don’t just to be very, very clear, there is no evidence right now that that there’s a way to be healthy enough, even with the perfect gut microbiome, even with the peak level of fitness and athleticism to avoid being injured by a post viral illness or post infectious illness, whether that’s Covid. Epstein. Barr. Lyme. So I don’t want to discount those. I think it’s a reality that we’re living in. It’s also a reality that we’re living in, that our environment is strongly polluted with microplastics.

Speaker 2 00:05:11 That environmental regulation, at least in the United States, has been absolutely decimated within the last year. And so our water is less clean, our air is less clean, our power is more expensive due to data centers and AI. So these systemic factors can’t be ignored. And yet I think part of how we both unwind or integrate, I think integrate is a better term. The trauma and the danger and the risk of the last six years and the ongoing world of this danger is to be literally in nature with people who are healthy, getting healthier and positive. And look, if you were alive, you were healthy and getting healthier, right? Sick and healthy is not a binary. It’s a continuum. So if you are alive, you are healthy and getting as healthy as you want. You’re on that path. Okay. And one of the things that I love about our guest today is she has a really interesting story. She’s a mom of 11. She opened a natural health store, like, more than 30 years ago in a small town in Wisconsin.

Speaker 2 00:06:28 I think I confused that with Minnesota during the episode. Excuse me for that, for those of you who live up there, and she has learned many, many of the modalities of healing at a very, you know, skilled level. But what we really ended up talking about, which is, I think, something you can implement right now, today in your life, in your practice with the next person. You see, if you’re listening to this over your lunch break or on your walk, your next client yourself is how a slight shift in your environment can absolutely change your health and your clients health. I’ll see you on the other side of our conversation for what to do this week to implement this stuff. You’re going to love this.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:07:17 I am here with Zuzu arms, and we.

Speaker 2 00:07:21 Are.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:07:21 Going to talk all about having.

Speaker 2 00:07:24 A women’s health and health in general focused farm retreat center. And we’ve talked a lot about at the Integrative Women’s Health Institute, the rise of AI, the rise of digital women’s health, the rise of telehealth, the scaling of women’s health.

Speaker 2 00:07:41 And while all of these things have their place, I think there’s an equally expanding moment in time right now where women’s health and community and wellness needs to be brought physically back into community, into nature. And as a Taurus girl myself who loves to get dirty and gardening and being outside and hiking and all that. I’m really excited to hear how Zuzu and her team have expanded a physical wellness center in this environment, so welcome, Zuzu.

Zuzu Armes 00:08:18 Thank you and thanks for all you do. This is great. So happy to be here.

Speaker 2 00:08:21 Thank you. All right. So first of all, give us a little background. What’s your story? What brought you to this place of such a growing and expanding health and wellness center that’s literally on a farm?

Zuzu Armes 00:08:34 It’s been fun. It has been amazing. I got into natural health because I had epilepsy growing up, and I was on free medications, and I didn’t want to have that in my system while I was pregnant. So I researched back then without World Wide Web, I know all the younger people can’t even imagine, but that’s how we were so.

Zuzu Armes 00:08:50 And you know, and I was able to reverse my epilepsy and Titrate off all the medication, and I haven’t had a seizure in over 35 years. And so that got me going. And then I had my first green drink when I was at college, and I ended up having the baby, having a baby after I got married. We had babies and and we just jumped into homeopathy and herbs and that’s where the world went. I started teaching classes and then I was in the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin, and everyone would come for classes and they’re like, where do you get all this stuff? And I’m like, I’ll open a store like healthcare. So I opened up a store and then it just then everybody came to me with their health questions, especially with seizures and epilepsy. I’ve been able to help pretty much 100% of the people over the last 30 years with that, because it’s a Gaba deficiency. But probably I’m fine talking to the choir right now, but it was really neat because then we I just became a practitioner, a holistic.

Zuzu Armes 00:09:37 I took a bunch of schooling and became a practitioner and then wrote my own course because it was a wonderful course. But there was. So it was like brought you in up here. And I’m like, wait a minute, people don’t even know what gallbladder to do. Let’s go. So I just wrote a bunch of coursework and started a school and then went all online. And so we had cafes and stores. And it’s been great. It’s been a lot of fun. But the entire time I was like, I’m going to open the retreat center one day where people can just come for 30 days or four months and just get rid of disease and just be. And anyhow, so in 22, I found myself a single mom. But all the kids, we had ten children and then adopted one. And one of my friends, actually one of my students, left me her daughter when she passed away, which is a beautiful story out. And so I was without kids in the house anymore. And so I bought an RV, traveled the entire country in 2022, looking forward to open up this retreat center.

Zuzu Armes 00:10:31 And God brought me right here to Hawkinsville, Georgia. So here I am. So we’ve got 67 to 69 acres. Depends on which survey you actually want to look at. But and so we started a regenerative farm and organic permaculture. And the farm is on hold right now because we did put all of our energy into the wellness center because that was very urgent. I wanted that open so people could come. So the farm is still here. We do a lot and we put in a huge labyrinth because I’m such a labyrinth lover. Like every woman in the world needs to go walk a labyrinth. If you ever are like, I’m just out of sorts. Just go to the labyrinth. It’s there. Just amazing. So I put in a huge labyrinth here on the property and then the wellness center. That’s what we do. So that was full circle. Having grown up on medications, getting off of that, I reversed my scoliosis a few years ago. I taught a lot of people how to get rid of scoliosis and then arthritis, or on the scoliosis that was gone in a few months.

Zuzu Armes 00:11:20 Well, about eight months. So it’s just been neat because when people understand how the body works, it takes the fear out of any kind of disease, even though diagnostics are amazing. But then we can learn how to improve ourselves, and it takes a little bit of time, but it’s worth it. So that’s what we’re doing.

Speaker 2 00:11:38 That’s lovely. So let’s say someone is really struggling with a number of health issues, and so many of our students and our clients and their clients are women in midlife who have the stack of not just perimenopause, but they may have also have a history of autoimmune disease, endometriosis, migraines, chronic fatigue, chronic pain issues, depression, anxiety. So if we think about someone who’s just struggling with any number of health issues, and there may be certain ones that you’re really focused on, what would it look like to come to your wellness center? What is that experience?

Zuzu Armes 00:12:20 Oh, that’s a neat question. it depends on if they want to come and stay or if they’re coming just from appointments.

Zuzu Armes 00:12:26 So we do appointments and scans and consultations, but I on zoom and in person. But when they come like we just finished a an eight day or ten day retreat and we do eight day and ten day retreats and they come and we do. So if they come for a bigger retreat where we start and we’re going to do the seven point diagnostic, we do the ultrasound of all the major organs. We do all your blood work and your urine analysis, and we do live blood cell analysis. That’s important. A lot of people have come and they’re struggling for 20 years with something, and they don’t know what it is until boom, it’s under a microscope and we’re like, hey, you have 11 bacteria. That’s why you feel great on an antibiotic. And then it comes right back again. So that’s a different treatment. So I think sometimes when you look at the blood and we don’t die, I shouldn’t have said diagnostics because we don’t diagnose anybody. We just inform them of what entertainment might look like.

Zuzu Armes 00:13:13 So we’re very careful not to diagnose. But but we do help people understand what’s going on in their bodies. And so we then make a plan after we do all the imaging and everything that thermal imaging, etc., and then we just work with them. And the biggest thing is diet like it is you are your you are what you consume and what is absorbed in the body. And so chronic fatigue and Ms. and all that. And that’s all stuff that we’ve helped. I guess you probably couldn’t name anything you haven’t worked with over the last 35 years. And I think that so much of it is caused by the same, by the same nail in the coffin kind of thing. And so when we start nourishing our body appropriately, you wouldn’t believe how much goes away. And that’s my favorite part, is the food. I’m a big foodie, right? I have recipe books. We had cafes and when. That’s my favorite part, is when someone comes for those 8 or 10 days and they’re eating so many more fruits and vegetables, unless they have Sibo or chemo.

Zuzu Armes 00:14:04 But when they’re eating things for their body that are nourishing them, oh my gosh, their energy is incredible. People sleep better. Their bowel movements are turning beautiful. And that’s the fun part because people are always telling us, like everybody reports every day, like what’s going on and how they’re feeling. And we only take 8 to 10 people at a time. So right now we do 1 to 2 retreats a month. We would love it. And my goal is to be open just 24 over seven. People can just show up, stay and get the help that they need. So that’s what we’re growing. So we’re open right now. We’ve been doing this since June. I’ve been doing retreats for decades. But these clinical retreats, this is what we’ve done since June, and it’s just been me. And it’s been neat. So that’s what it looks like, is they spend the day with us. They’re in the hyperbaric chamber, they sauna, they do red light therapy. They do. We have 3 or 4 different PMF units and we do a lot of traditional Chinese medicine.

Zuzu Armes 00:14:52 Moxibustion is amazing for anybody. So moxibustion. We do acupuncture, needless acupuncture with the dolphins. And then we work with, you know, some supplementation. We usually do a liver cleanse while they’re here. I’m pretty adamant about liver and gallbladder cleanses if they have a gallbladder because tremendous things happen just doing those throughout the year. So that’s what it looks like.

Speaker 2 00:15:12 Yeah. So do you have the medical team on your staff as well? Oh that’s great. And so someone would come there and immerse one of the things that we teach a lot here at the Integrative Women’s Health Institute is how much of, you know, you’re saying a lot of these dysfunctions, a lot of the diagnoses, but really just systems and balances are actually grounded in some kind of stressor. Now, increasingly that’s work stress. That’s environmental stress. A lot fewer and fewer people have access to clean air, clean water, healthy food. But I think that the other thing is just particularly for women in midlife, which is our the core of our population, or women who are somewhat younger when their childbearing years.

Speaker 2 00:16:01 The biggest issue is actually just stress. Stress like emotional stress, caregiving, work stress, financial stress. So what do you see as the opportunity when people actually just come and take a real break? Sometimes for our clients, we’ve actually recommended, like one of the core things you need to do is just absolute rest for two weeks, 30 days, 60 days. And I would imagine that doing that by stepping away. And we’ve interviewed another group who has done some really interesting studies on doing this for like treatment resistant depression, this idea that you have enough breathing room to focus on your own rest and support. What do people say about that experience?

Zuzu Armes 00:16:54 That is a beautiful question. We even have people come and they turn off their phone for the week. Like literally men and women. I had one. It was a big social media influencer. Hundreds of thousands of followers started off for a week. He was like, I just want to be and I’m so glad you brought that up because frequency is everything.

Zuzu Armes 00:17:10 So we work with the adrenals all the time. We do a lot of adrenal tea. We do. Everyone who’s comes is on adrenal tea. They do golden milk every day. We do a detox tea. We do parasite cleanses. We really try to remove the toxins because parasites cause a huge amount of stress on the body. And parasites are very aggressive. Parasites are always wanting to eat. And so they take your nutrients which are there to balance you. There’s a lot of issues with parasites, so we do really gentle parasite detoxes, but what they love is just that piece away, like just taking care of themselves. And I have a saying in my on a big one on my wall here and it says the only person standing in the way is you. And I keep it up for me, because the only person standing in the way of me getting good night’s sleep, or me feeling better, or me taking care of my adrenals or me is me. And I think sometimes we have to accept that responsibility, that no one’s going to come and save us.

Zuzu Armes 00:18:02 We actually have to step up and go, I’m putting the walls up, I’m turning my phone off. I’m going to go to Lilly Field, whatever it might be. Most people keep your phones on, by the way, but like when they do remove themselves out of the stretch, it’s cell context. So like my entire book, right? This is the fourth edition, but the entire book is written on how cells function. Because if you change the environment of the cell, this is the entire thing is on how cells function. Because if you change the environment of the cell, you change the outcome of the body. And most if someone has a thyroid issue T tyrosine for four molecules iodine, there’s not enough most hypothyroid issues on some hypo and hyper R because there’s not four molecules of iodine. But if you start taking nascent iodine or eating Nazi iodine rich foods. Now there’s iodine. Iodine in the environment, and now the body can make T4 on its own. So when we change the environment of the cell, we change our health 100% of the time.

Zuzu Armes 00:18:58 When you change environment, you change your body, right? You change the outcome of that gland or that organ that you can now make a neurotransmitter or a home. And if the parts are there with our bodies, it’s the same thing. When we change our environment, we start to feel things different. People will be like, wow, I never knew I had an ache right here. I’m like, okay, let’s check out the kidney. Or wow, like they’ll find different things because they’re out of their environment so they can feel more and they’re a little bit more aware. I think that’s my favorite part, is the awareness that we might be missing if we wake up and do the exact same thing every single day. We have a routine. We become so dialed in, and that is our environment that if we start making some changes to the environment. Then we see things differently. Including we see ourselves differently and we might see other differently. So you nailed it on the head when you were like.

Zuzu Armes 00:19:50 When we remove ourselves from a place or we go into some peaceful thoughts or thinking, even meditation, deep breathing that will all bring that to you no matter where you are, even if you’re in your office. But when we’re deep breathing, we’re meditating. We’re removing our mind away from our lists. Right? Isn’t that a saying? Detach from the list.

Speaker 2 00:20:10 Detach from the phone to detach from the notes app. Detach from Instagram. Yeah. Got it.

Zuzu Armes 00:20:16 And or like I do, I exercise in the morning. And then we saw in it every morning, my husband and I. And when I’m on my jiggle machine, I do a couple different rounds. And one of them is when I checked your social media, that limits me to 20 minutes. I’m okay. Done. Like sometimes putting a timestamp on that can really help, and some days you’ll want to spend more time because there’s crazy stuff going on. You want to just figure out there so you’re aware. But I think a lot of us as women, we are so empathetic.

Zuzu Armes 00:20:42 We love human beings, we love each other, and we miss that when we’re behind our screen. And when you come together, there’s just something really magical. We have. My favorite retreat all year is the first weekend in May. It’s our students that come from all over the world and other people come to, but they come and it’s we’re together. And entanglement is very real. For those of you who might not know what entanglement is, but you’re entangled with people when you’re sharing electrons and you’re entangled with your plants, you’re entangled with anything alive. And so when we’re together and we become entangled, we can strengthen one another. At our retreats, we normally do some really neat strengthening activities, but I think that’s an IT part is just if we get out of our office and we get out of our home and we’re on the earth and we’re touching the earth, or we’re swimming, or we’re touching a plant and gardening, like you were mentioning earlier, we are entangled with those because we’re sharing electrons with the Earth and with the plants, but then with the people around us.

Zuzu Armes 00:21:33 And I think that is the most powerful medicine is entanglement on the other side, you’re also entangled with the negative people in your life. So the people we hang out with are affecting us. And if you’re in a negative environment, at home, at work, at school, anywhere, at the gym, like those are electrons that actually are hurting our cellular environment. Period. Electrons are up to 100 times quicker response at the cell receptor site than a molecule. So when we have negative emotions towards us, we can feel them. And just like when we have a negative emotion or in someone else, they can feel bad. And so trying to clean up the electrical environment, what you can do, I should grant it to your listeners. I have a how to raise the frequency of everyone around you without them knowing. It’s a super fun audio file. I can share that with you guys. I’ll give you a free code for that. But it’s really true because you can even buy pineapples and put them in your kitchen, and all of a sudden you’re going to be happier and you don’t even have to eat the pineapple, I don’t care, we’ll get the $4 pineapple.

Zuzu Armes 00:22:33 Get three of them, because people don’t realize that a rose has the highest angstrom of anything on earth is a road, and we can test the human body that is sick. In a hospital, you go to someone in the hospital, you test the angstroms, which is just a unit of measurement with a voltmeter. And and they are vibrating at X, Y or Z. Right. 5960, 500, whatever it might be. You put roses in their room, just put the roses in their room and leave. You come back and they will have raised their frequency. Those roses will literally, because they’re entangled with the human being next to them. And I doubt anybody knew this when they started delivering roses to people at hospitals. But it changes their electrical environment and you actually do get better faster. You feel better. There’s peace. There’s this there’s a balance to those positive ions which are very destructive in our bodies. We need some or we wouldn’t function. But most people have way too much positive ionic activity and not enough negative ions.

Zuzu Armes 00:23:30 And it’s just cool. So that was a very long answer, wasn’t it? But that was where I come from. So when we’re around people, we have to look at who they are, how they make us feel, how are we making them feel? And just find your find your groupie people, your happy people. And you can really do that much better in person.

Speaker 2 00:23:47 Yeah, yeah. I think what comes to mind when you say all that around energy and connectedness with others and stepping away from the environments that are draining to you. I spent five weeks in France last summer and did nothing but eat croissants, drink wine, eat sugar like things I never do and haven’t for 25 years gluten as much as I wanted, whatever. And I just ate whatever I wanted. And I hung out with my family and a few friends that we have over there. But mostly just like walking in the town, we went to some swimming holes and but I felt the healthiest I’ve felt in years and years because I worked probably 80% less.

Speaker 2 00:24:36 I was outside almost all the time, even though it was quite hot. Part of it, just because the environment was such that people walk to the farmer’s market, there was like, basically you get your food at a farmer’s market. That’s how it is almost every day. And so you’re walking there. It was a small it was a medium sized town. So there’s a lot of walking. And I think when someone chooses to step out of their life into a different environment, and we’ve actually done this multiple times in our whole environment where we literally moved. And you’ve done the same thing coming from, I think you said Minnesota all the way down to Georgia and all of every time it’s been really valuable for different reasons. So changing your environment. So let’s say someone has this opportunity where they can leave for 8 to 10 days, maybe they could stay even a little longer. I think everyone in our community could use that like 100% of them. But then and here’s where it gets tricky. How do you transition back and maintain as much of that for me.

Speaker 2 00:25:43 It’s often been reassessing what I’m actually doing when I go back, so that I get really clear and let go of things and bring new things in. But is there some way that you teach that?

Zuzu Armes 00:25:56 Yes. And Doctor Jessica, that’s a perfect question. Then it is it’s like when you’re fasting. So if we want to heal, get rid of pancreatic cancer. Obviously the number one thing for that is a fast and a long 130 days. Right. You’re not you’re just doing longer fast. And when you are done with your fast, even if it’s a three day or a seven day fast. But when we’re done fasting, when we’ve changed that environment in our body, we need to introduce things differently. We can’t just go eat a steak, right? Because then you’re gonna have a major problem and we won’t get into that. And so we do it slowly. And I think when people leave here, that’s what they do. They go home. They do spend hours here, especially at the end of the retreat making their own food.

Zuzu Armes 00:26:33 We teach them how to make their almond butter, how to make almond milk. How to make all your milks. How to make anything. Sauces, golden milk, anything they want to make. We taste them so that when they go home they also have some hands on skills. But the biggest thing that we find is that they don’t want to go back to how they were. We even had we had 22 Russians here one time. That was hysterical, by the way. I don’t know how what they were saying any of the time, but it was so much fun. Oh, thank goodness I had interpreters everywhere, but but we had two of them were teenagers and they came with their mom and at the end and they were here. But that was a ten day retreat, and they were the first ones to speak up. At the end, when we talk about what were our biggest takeaways, how are we gonna do when we go home? And they’re like, we will never eat the way we ate again.

Zuzu Armes 00:27:13 We will never. We feel so good. They were like, I will never do this. And so at least the mindset was changed. I know that one of them has definitely kept up with everything, but I think the mind is what’s so powerful because it. Remember, the only thing standing in your way is you of anything. So if you want to continue to feel that energy, you’re going to need to make a few more changes. And my favorite saying ever, especially for moms, because I was a mom and our kids were great. We had the kids grew up emptying trucks and stocking a grocery store and working in the cafe since they were little. I probably broke every child labor law, but I’m over it. So are they. They love me. We had so much fun. But the cool thing was, if it’s not in the house, you don’t eat it. So this whole, oh, my kids will never eat that, or my kids will never eat this. And I’m like, don’t bring it home.

Zuzu Armes 00:27:56 And then they can go buy it themselves and eat in the car somewhere and feel guilty. But I’m like, but I wasn’t crazy. Like, we had potato chip Wednesdays and but they were organic potato chips in coconut oil. They were phenomenal. We had Chocolate Fridays, right? But I made a lot of the chocolate and it’s pretty easy to make chocolate. But now there’s so many good organic chocolates out there. So find those yummy or those treats and make a time for those things. But if there’s not no home, you’re not going to eat it. If you have a trail mix fresh trail mix in your car, along with whatever, some fruit roll ups or whatever you’ve made, right? If it’s in the car, then you won’t go through the drive through. So preparation is a key. So if you make a couple drinks and you bring them with you, then you won’t stop and buy something from Starbucks, right? You don’t really don’t do that. So like I think preparation is the biggest thing.

Zuzu Armes 00:28:43 So when people leave. They’ve been pretty. We prepared them as best we can, especially the ones who really want to learn. We spend more time with that, but then they don’t want to go back to how they were. And I’m a big one for feng shui. Like I love one, right? So I’m like, when you change the environment of your home or your room like you change the bagua, boom. Like your life can change. And so creation can be happening in your own bedroom, in your own bathroom, just moving things from one drawer to the next, going to the closet so it’s not stuffed with stuff because then you’re stuck with stuff. It’s like, just check out your environment and just do a little bit. Just change things up a little bit. Paint the wall, move this, move that. I hope that answer the question, but that’s what we help our people understand is slow, right. So after that fast it’s fruits, it’s juices, it’s water, it’s salt water.

Zuzu Armes 00:29:28 Right. And it’s more minerals and then a salad. And then we get into some of the millet and quinoa and buckwheat. Those are seeds, right? Then we can get into a light grain and then we can see build. But that’s what we can do. And even today, you can start a fast of your own fasting from stress. When you feel it come up, grab those ears, do some regular therapy, do whatever you need to do. By the way, this works wonderful and just start changing that environment. That’s what I would. That would be my $0.02 work.

Speaker 2 00:29:56 So essentially when they’re coming to your retreat center, they’ve changed their environment. They’ve made a conscious decision to decrease or put the phone down, or come with some friends or come by themselves and just have that rest, recovery, nourishment. Essentially, they’re receiving nourishment, which I think because obviously everybody can have there’s more and more access to red light saunas and all these kinds of things that. But the fact that you chose to go somewhere for a reasonably extended period of time to receive that support.

Speaker 2 00:30:34 Long enough for your body to have an exhale. A little sense of safety. And then it’s a matter of consciously deciding when you go back to your environment, how are you going to shift that? What is it that you’re going to make sure you rearrange the furniture in your room, or you’re going to clean your closet, or you’re going to get rid of maybe just some bad habits around food, snacking, processed foods, things like that. Maybe a lot more. Boundary. I love this idea of 20 minutes a day of digital input. You’re still you’ve got what’s going on. You’ve done any work related social media that you have to do. But really 20 minutes for almost everyone is enough. And yet I think on average people are on their phones about four hours a day, so that it’s just a shift.

Zuzu Armes 00:31:26 Think of all the good food you can make in four hours. Yes, some things you could do in your kitchen, all the fermentation and all the vegetables and all.

Speaker 2 00:31:32 You could plant roses in your yard.

Zuzu Armes 00:31:35 Oh, you’re so sweet. After Jessica. You should just come with a bunch of your followers. Just come for a weekend. And some people come for five days. But we find it needs to be at least five days. Otherwise, if it’s three days, that’s nice. That’s like a long weekend. And you’re right back at work. You hit it spot on the head when you put you first, which I know is so outside of the mother and the the woman in us and the wife in us. But when we put ourselves first, we put the oxygen on. How much better can the world be around you?

Speaker 2 00:32:05 Yeah, yeah. And I think there’s just something to be said for clearing the decks. Like you said, a fasting from stress, which I feel like is much more nourishing even than this idea of fasting. Because for women, which I’m. I agree with many of the health benefits of fasting, temporary fasting, long or fast and whatever. But I think for a lot of women, when we think about fasting related to food, it’s so interesting when you talk about entanglement.

Speaker 2 00:32:33 It’s so intertwined with diet, culture and thinness. Whereas we when we’re thinking about letting go of stress and receiving nourishment, receiving healthy food, receiving vegetables, receiving sleep, receiving sauna, receiving, just walking around someone’s 69 acres. It’s a very different mindset that once you’ve practiced it for five, eight, ten, 40, 100 days, I think we have to keep going back to it and practicing it. But what I love about your physical location, when I would encourage so many of our students to think about, is the benefit of that shift in the physical location to how you align your environment? Really? Any other kind of interesting tidbits you’ve learned in this experience? Yeah, I’m sure you’ve got some good stories.

Zuzu Armes 00:33:31 I think good stories. One that came to my mind when you were talking about changing environment I had. This is, my gosh, probably 20 years ago, I had this woman come to my office in Wisconsin. So we had an office and clinic in Wisconsin. Then when we had another one out west in Utah area, and this woman came into my office and she had she had just lost her job and her husband wanted to leave her, and she had like several or several organs removed.

Zuzu Armes 00:33:57 And because she was always in pain, she had the pain. The pain just put in. So she had her metal box and wiring through her body. And she was just a wreck, right? She was completely a wreck. And she said, okay, so what can you do for me? And I’m like, and she had these medications. I’m like, I was like, oh my gosh, her appendix is gone or gone. Butter’s gone. Half her pancreas is now gone. And this is one breast. I was just on and on. I was like, dear Lord, what do I do? And I had this was after I had written all the literature for my students, and I teach 120 modalities of natural healing. And so I really as she was talking, I went into this space of flipping open that book in my mind. What do I need to do here? And it was clear as day that we needed to change her environment above everything else. We needed to change her environment.

Zuzu Armes 00:34:41 So she finished explaining her whole life story to me and everything going on in her body. And I said, actually, Debbie, and I’m going to change her name. But I said, I’m not going to actually send you home any supplement? Nothing. Here’s a couple of your medications you could do your thing with. But this is something where I think what we need to do first is change environment. And I explained to her how cells function and how a cell can never be in rest and digest at the same time. It’s in fight or flight. It can’t. It can only be in one position, on or off, right? So sympathetic or parasitic. And I explain this to I said, so what I like you to do is to go home and move your silverware into a different drawer. I want you to paint the entry room. When you first walk in, I want you to paint your fam the family room. One of the walls this teal color. Pick out a color for I said I want you to rearrange your bedroom.

Zuzu Armes 00:35:29 Close your bathroom door at night. Use this red carpet over here like I just. I went through the whole house in my mind with her, I said. And when you take your dogs for a walk, I don’t want you to go to the front door anymore. Why don’t you go out? The back door was like the back door. Because your myelin sheath is already laid pretty permanently everywhere in your life. And it sucks. Like we have got to change the entire environment, right? And I said, I don’t want you to park where you park your car anymore. I want you to find a new parking spot on the other side of the driveway. Like everything. I was like, we are changing your entire environment, living in the same house. And so she went home. I think I gave her B vitamins for sure, because B vitamins make you happy, but I didn’t. I was like, I’m going to do more later. I ran her tests and blah blah, but I’m like, let’s just do what we can right now, and I want you to eat sprouts every day.

Zuzu Armes 00:36:14 That’s the highest frequency food, right? So she goes home and she starts making all these changes, and she comes back and she’s like, oh my gosh, I have more energy. My husband’s happier now. Like on and on. Right? It ended up being she went under a protocol. Did amazing. She became one of our therapeutic nutritional counselors. She got off of all but one medication, had the paintbox removed, all the wiring like she was just a whole new human being because she changed the environment of her home first. And I think nature and nurture are very important. We can remove someone out of an environment, but they have to remove that from themselves. But when they change their environment, they change that inside themselves. So I wanted to share that. I felt impressed to share that when we were talking about the environment so much, because I saw that word. And my favorite thing though to talk about is electricity, because that’s who we are. Everything in the world is atomic.

Zuzu Armes 00:37:05 Every single thing that you look, feel, touch, breathe, whatever, everything’s atomic because everything’s made of atoms. And I have a big periodic table of elements in my office, because when there’s one proton, then there’s normally one electron orbiting that electron creates electricity. And so that proton attracts an electron if there’s two. hydrogen helium, lithium beryllium. Right. We have magnesium, phosphorus, all of those born, all of them vibrate differently where magnesium vibrates at the frequency to relax all of our muscles, where calcium vibrates and constricts our muscles, where selenium vibrates and relaxes and cleans our skin. So annoying. So everything vibrates at a different specific frequency when. So when I talk about fruits and vegetables, it is very passionate because we actually have gotten so far removed from the garden and from the farm, which in many people’s opinion, the earth was a garden. There was vegetables and fruits everywhere. There had to be before there were any animals here or humans like there needed to be vegetation, because vegetation is how all of your macro and trace minerals are delivered into the body.

Zuzu Armes 00:38:15 All of your fats come from vegetation. All of your amino acids which build proteins, come from vegetation. You can eat the animal that ate the plant, or the animal that ate the animal that ate the plant. That’s there. That’s the far distance. Don’t care. But we need to get plants into our body because that’s where minerals and vitamins are. The minerals. The vitamins are cofactors for minerals. Obviously you can’t iron, won’t absorb without vitamin C and etc., etc.. And so when we start eating vegetables and fruits, nuts and seeds sprouting everything, all of a sudden we are going to be firing differently, electrically different than you were. And it’s and that’s something you can measure. Everything’s measurable. The world is very mathematic. And so when we can raise the vibrational frequency of ourselves by the people around us, what we have around is our environment, the food that we’re eating, the water we drink right now, tap water when we can cleanse our inner vessel. Raise the frequency of ourselves.

Zuzu Armes 00:39:15 Choose a little better who we might want to hang out with at this time in our life. I think we’re going to be, I do. I say it all the time. We find a different Life. We start living a higher vibrational life, not a better than someone else, but you start existing in things differently that you may not have. When we were bombarded with lower frequency thoughts and lower frequencies foods and I actually I made a whole chart of those frequencies and I put it together in 2014, because every food vibrates at a specific frequency, and every emotion vibrates at a specific frequency. And if you change the food that you eat, you actually change the vibrational frequency of your emotions. Right in the back of my put, I put tear out pages in the back of the book so they could put them on their fridge. But anyhow, so it’s just neat. So that’s the number one thing. If I can leave anybody with is eat more fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, because that is going to literally change the cell context of our body and help us to become healthier, happier and more electric.

Zuzu Armes 00:40:19 And that’s just exciting.

Speaker 2 00:40:23 If your energy is an example, which I think it is of the way you live. It’s really inspiring. And I think what’s so valuable about what you just shared is so many women in our practitioners in our community have a deep toolbox, right? We teach everything from red light therapy, from nutrition therapy, from mindfulness, from nervous system regulation, hyperbaric oxygen supplements, all these things. And and many of them have even additional things physical therapy, medications, acupuncture, occupational therapy, nursing. When we meet someone who’s really been struggling, I think that root cause of nervous system regulation, what you said, like you’re either in parasympathetic or you’re in sympathetic and you’re either stuck in how you’ve always done things, these sort of patterns that are aligned, what you really were describing is essentially the opportunity of neuroplasticity. So when, if our students are stuck there like someone sitting in front of them and they have a vast toolbox and they’re like, where do I begin? I really love that example because sometimes it’s just about empowering that client that they have so much power within themselves to heal by just re wiring.

Speaker 2 00:41:42 And it’s hard. I remind them, like you’ve practiced, this is a super high way of going out the front door and checking your phone. The minute you wake up and being angry at your partner the first thing in the morning. That’s a super highway. So when you go out the back door and you don’t touch your phone for 24 hours and you paint a wall. One of our recent graduates, Caroline Dixon, was posting how she just designed painted a whole wall in her office, and that really changed everything about what she was offering. And that’s a version of neuroplasticity. And it’s hard to build those new channels around the superhighways. It’s new, creating new habits. But I think it’s exactly just like we were talking about before. Once you have the immersion in that new environment, you begin to see the downward effects. You have enough more energy to make a green juice in the morning. You have enough more energy to cook dinner rather than going through a drive through or ordering takeout. And so your energy is really inspiring.

Speaker 2 00:42:47 What you’ve built is really inspiring. And I think just your approach of starting with giving people that depth of empowerment and that the tools are really valuable, but they’re not really the secret sauce. Right? Yes, is so inspiring for me and I’m sure our entire community. So where can people find you and learn more about your work? And like I said, absolutely everyone listening to this podcast needs to spend 8 to 10 days somewhere this year.

Zuzu Armes 00:43:20 And spend it with us.

Speaker 2 00:43:21 Resting and rewiring. So if you want to go there. It sounds like a good option. So where can they find you?

Zuzu Armes 00:43:30 You sure you should just. I love your school already. Because if they’re all like you and they’re aware of these things, that’s wonderful. So all of you should come. But. But yes, come for a retreat. And you can also just come and stay. Like you can rent the boathouse and stay for a month. Like you can just come and get away. But we’re in Hawkinsville, Georgia.

Zuzu Armes 00:43:45 If you go because we have so many things happening. I created a website called Zuzu unleashed.com, and that will take you anywhere you want to go. So Zuzu Unleashed is where you can go and click to find the retreats and Lily fields and free courses and whatnot. Lou. Zuzu unleashed because Lily Field Center is in middle Georgia. We’re two hours south of Atlanta, so most people fly into Atlanta and then they come on down and we have some of our programs for eight days is only $2,400, and some of them are $8,700, depending on IVs you’re using and whatnot. We’ve kept it very affordable. We’ve had several people come who have been to Switzerland and other countries, and they’re like, I had so much more fun here. I saved so much money because I was learning, because we only take these smaller groups at a time so they can learn in the kitchen. And by the way, we do neuro linguistic reprogramming with everybody who comes. We have the the creator of the fly program for your life, Lamont Wilcox, phenomenal instructor, one of my favorite I’ve ever heard an instructor on an MLP.

Zuzu Armes 00:44:46 And so he is here with all of our retreats as well. So the diversity of the people that you get to work with, and we just love on you. Like we just love. We just everybody loves. We just have a lot of patience and a lot of love for the people that come and a desire because as an instructor, right, I can work one on one with people. That’s nice. If you’re here bucks an hour, but that, who cares? I would rather be doing this and reaching out. And when you get people who are so excited now about green drinks, are so excited about Golden milk, are so excited to learn how to make almond look. It’s so simple, right? Just need almond butter and water. But anyhow. And we can teach you and make all of it. But then they go and share it. Now we see the world shifting, because if we keep everything to ourselves, that’s nice. You’re going to feel better or your kids will feel better.

Zuzu Armes 00:45:28 But when you’re out there sharing because you feel so good and now you’re living it, you’re not just talking it. You’re walking that walk. When you walk the walk that you’ve been talking for 30 years. Now people are just attracted that. And they want they need you. And it’s going to elevate your practice. And it’ll elevate the clients that already work with you because they’re going to want you to transform. And I know when and when we change inwardly, people feel that outwardly. So come into Lily fields, please come and join us anytime. Or just go find a place near you and get away. Like you can do your own juicing for seven days. You can find other restaurants or HelloFresh or something and just order things and then change your environment in your home for 5 or 7 days. Like you can do something at home. Also, go do tai chi in the morning and or go out here, go on a cruise that’s different to, you know, the food, but what are we to do? You can’t come here.

Zuzu Armes 00:46:21 You can create your own retreat wherever you are.

Speaker 2 00:46:24 Yeah. That’s so very true. Thank you so much, Susie. It was such a pleasure having you here. Thank you everyone. We’ll see you next week. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Zuzu arms. I really do think her energy is contagious and what they have built down there in in South Georgia. Middle Georgia is really beautiful. And I think the message I want you to take from this today, right back into your own life and your practice with your next client, is what environmental shifts can trigger that literal cellular shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic activation? Is it something she can do in her home? Is it some way she could change her morning routine? Is it creating a retreat or going on a retreat sometime in the next six months, or three months or a year. Is it taking a week? Fully disconnected off work? Like, what does that look like for you and your client? What’s the next one thing they can do to kick off that parasympathetic activation, which is the root root cause nervous system regulation of all healing is shifting into more nervous system regulation.

Speaker 2 00:47:45 That is the state in which the body heals no matter what other tools we use to support it medications, surgeries, supplements, nutrition, sleep therapy tools, biohacking tools, manual therapy, like you name it, it all works better in a in a state of regulated parasympathetic activated nervous system and cells. And that happens. That is something that your client has the ability to do right now, but probably needs to practice or relearn. And that’s where things like literally touching grass. As Gen Z says, being in nature. And that’s what I love about this opportunity to join Zuzu at her retreat center. Do that, or think about how you can do that in your own community, with your own community. I’ll see you next week.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:48:44 Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. Please share this episode with a colleague and if you loved it, hit that subscribe or follow button on your favorite podcast streaming service so that we can do even more to make this podcast better for you and your clients.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:49:08 Let’s innovate and integrate in the world of women’s health.