Ep 42: The Truth About CBD Oil and Anxiety

Suzy Hardy, a certified stress management and anxiety coach, shares her journey and expertise in natural approaches to good health. She discusses the negative effects of excess stress and anxiety on mental and physical well-being. 

Suzy emphasizes the importance of a mind-body-spirit approach to managing stress and anxiety, including the use of CBD oil. She also highlights the need for individuals to take control of their own health and explore different tools and techniques to find what works best for them. Suzy offers her Serenity School program as a resource for those seeking to manage their stress and anxiety.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
08:27 The Benefits of CBD Oil
28:04 Exploring Tools and Techniques
39:10 Serenity School: A Program for Managing Stress and Anxiety

Suzy's website:  https://www.suzyhardy.com/

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Transcript

Stress and anxiety are part of life. But excess stress and anxiety over a period of time have been proven to have negative effects on mental and physical well -being. Welcome to Adventures in Good Health, the place where we discuss natural approaches to good health. I'm your host, David Maloof. Our expert guest today is Suzy Hardy. Suzy,

is a certified stress management and anxiety coach and a wealth of knowledge and wisdom. Let's jump right in. Hello, Suzy, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, David, pleasure to be here. Okay, so real quick question. All right.

A stress management and anxiety coach. I would love to know what that is. And how did you get here? Yes. I will tell, I'm going to happily tell you. Perfect. They say you should teach what you know. And I have always been a seeker of natural health and wellbeing. Always, always. Since I was a kid. That's how I was raised. My mom taught me about supplements and herbs and natural healing.

from, and she learned that from her mother. You know, my parents, both my parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe. They always thought that nutrition was very important and that the doctors didn't know everything. I came to find that to be true at a very early age when I started having panic attacks in the third grade. And that was happened for a couple of reasons. I was a highly sensitive kid, but I was undergoing some stressful situations. I was transferring schools. My father had come to me and said, I'm divorcing your mother.

or sorry, your mother wants to divorce me. And I don't remember that conversation, but there was too much going on. All of a sudden, we went out to dinner as a family. He told me this and we went out to dinner and I'm sitting there at this table watching my parents be miserable. And my body just went into panic attack, and I was at, what are you in third grade, seven or eight? And from eight years old. Yeah. And so from there on out, I have dealt with.

stress, anxiety, general anxiety, depression, burnout, all of the things that our nervous system goes through as we go through life. I studied psychology in college. I was a massage therapist and an energy healer while I was pursuing another passion line as an actress, professional actress. And I've just always been obsessed with like, how can I help myself? How can I help my body feel it's best, look it's best, act it's best?

live my best life. So for me, I had a very early education into nervous system dysregulation, which is the fancy word for all of the things I just described, you know, anxiety, depression, dysregulation. Yeah. All right. So that in general, and I love that term. I really do because I had a lot of shame my whole life around all of my nervous system issues.

all of my reactions. I thought they were bad. I thought they were wrong. I would freak out in social situations. I, you know, there's, and I know I'm not alone. My head would be constantly spinning over analyzing. And I knew that, you know, and then that, that would be juxtaposed with periods of peace and calm and joy, which I wanted to feel more often. And so, um, at this stage of my life, I realized I have a hemp CBD company, which helps keep us healthy naturally.

But at this stage in my life, I was experiencing a lot of anxiety again. And I thought there's, there's other things that I can be doing, not just taking supplements, herbs, which are wonderful. Um, not just meditating, which is, you know, what I teach, but there's other things. It's a mind, it's a mind, body, spirit approach, in my opinion, that's going to help people regulate, regulate their nervous system. And now a quick word from our sponsor.

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you will receive 10 % off your entire order. For more information, click the links below and now back to the show. I got a quick question. Going back to being an actress, are you talking theater? Or television, film? Yeah, so I started in theater. Okay. And I'm just getting anxious just thinking about it. So, was it?

So was that an outlet for you? Yeah, it was. I mean, it was a combination too. So the anxiousness that you're feeling, like every actor hates auditioning. It's horrible. It's horrible until you land the job. And you can learn to...

not be so nervous about it. You get better, you practice, you rehearse, you take classes, you get your confidence. But it's almost like I was putting myself through torture, considering I already had this nervous system that was highly sensitive. But I also loved it. So I was a shy kid. But there was a school play in fourth grade, it was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Okay. And I...

I auditioned for it; it sounded like fun. I was already a dancer, I always loved to perform, so I was already a dancer. And I was a shy kid, but when I got a script and I got someone else, I could be someone else, I came out of my shell and I loved it, I was hooked. And then so I got the part, I played Violet Beauregard, the one that turns into the blueberry. Oh, the one who turns into the blueberry, okay. Yeah, and I was hooked. And I pursued that from getting out of college. I mean, I did theater throughout high school.

and I got a minor in college, and I just loved it. So, but again, it was like this self -imposed torture of like, I love it, but the actual act of pursuing it professionally was really challenging and a lot to deal with mentally and a lot of stress and a lot of nervousness and a lot of anxiety and all the things. I've known people who were in acting.

and to some degree this even applies to certain cosplayers, is that getting to step into somebody else's shoes, it's a type of outlet. And I'm not sure I would even call it a therapy, but it was, they got a joy from it. And for a period of time, after they got the job, it sounds like, it was kind of therapeutic in a way. For me also.

Sorry, go ahead. No, I was just like, but did you get any permanent type relief? Permanent type of relief? Yeah, from acting. I would say that you know how an art, like say a painter uses a palette of paints or a sculptor might use different mediums, clay and metal. And for me as an artist, I could tap into my emotions. So that was my palette.

and living out different experiences through a different character.

enabled me to actually therapeutically move through some stuff, to process things and to just have a lot of fun. Because sometimes it was just fun and silly. Like I did improv. That's not serious. It's just fun and silly. Okay, perfect. All right. Didn't mean to derail you. I was just curious. No, not at all. I love talking about all of it. Okay, so you mentioned that you

You have a business that's CBD related. Yes. Okay. So I'm just going to let you continue on, on your journey. So I was pursuing acting. I was, I was doing voiceover through my mid to late thirties. I, my side, and I was always an entrepreneur at heart. So I had a side business as a massage therapist and energy healer. I was professionally had my own clientele and

Then I got married and my husband also had come to, we met in Hollywood and he was also there to produce and write films and produce films. And it wasn't happening the way we wanted to. And the Green Rush was happening in California. We were in Los Angeles and he said, hey, how about we get into this space? And I said, absolutely not. Don't know what is the Green Rush? Okay. So the marijuana rush, the, it was, you know, the. Okay.

Marijuana has been cannabis has been medically legal in California for over 20 years, but, um, about seven or eight years ago, it was becoming more mainstream and going to be recreational and available in shops as it is now where just anyone over 21 can purchase it. And, um, so we got into that and then long story short, we decided to go into strictly into hemp CBD, which is federally legal marijuana as of yet is not.

Difference being, if I had cannabis plant here and cannabis plant here, A and B, and A had high THC, which is the tetrahydrocannabinol, which makes you high, that's considered marijuana. At plant B has low THC and high CBD cannabidiol, which is not psychoactive, does not make you high. They look the same, they smell the same. The only way you could tell the difference is,

their chemical, uh, their cannabinoids, they produce the chemical composition. So it's a very interesting industry, but again, I was always interested in natural healing and CBD helps with homeostasis. We make the, we make cannabinoids in our body, so you can never overdose on them. That includes THC. That's why it's, it's very natural. The worst that happens is you might feel stomach upset or you take you really sleepy, but if you overdose or if you take too much, you.

There's no toxic side effects. You can't die. CBD helps with sleep, appetite, mood, inflammation, pain response, and immune system. So if you have any issues in those six sectors, which encompasses a lot, it's going to help your body balance out. Depending upon what you're dealing with, either want to rub it on or eat it or inhale it. There's different ways of utilizing it. It's a wonderful thing. It helps pets too, helps pets the same. It can help with arthritis. It can help with.

pain, it can help with anxiety, it helps with a lot of things. It's a wonderful plant and I've been doing that with my husband for six years and my company is called CBD Fountain and we have organic vegan products. Yes, CBD fountain .com. Well, okay, so I got a bunch of questions. Shoot. So if I understand what you're saying, so.

The hemp, like marijuana is different from the CBD because the marijuana has more of the chemicals that can make you high. Whereas if I'm using incorrect terminology, go ahead and just stop me. But what you're saying is that the CBD oil is made from a similar plant, but it has very low chemicals that can make you high. I would say it like this. Picture a petunia plant.

Okay. And one is purple and one is pink. The same. They're just a little bit different in terms of they're the same plant and the, the difference. It's not like one is, you know, the species and this is this species. They're not, they're the same plant. Someone in Europe a while ago decided if it's under 0 .3 % THC, then it's hemp and anything above that. And the whole world followed suit. They're like, okay, that sounds like a, it's just arbitrary. Okay. They, they set a standard.

Yeah. And everybody followed it and because it's very, yes. So it's just marijuana has high THC, low CBD, hemp, which is federally legal has high CBD, low THC. And then there's also over a hundred other minor cannabinoids that we're just beginning to scratch the surface of that help with other things. For example, CBN helps with sleep. CBC, I believe helps with.

inhibiting cancer cells. So there's a lot, but there's a lot of research to be done. If, uh, so, so taking CBD, that's not going to make someone high then. So they're taking this for a medicinal purpose, but it's not to get high. Right. It's not, it can make you, it can make you buzzy. If you take a lot, it can make you sleepy. If you take a lot more than your body needs. And that's the hard, if you eat, if you eat too much, if you rub it on, it's not going to.

It's not going to do that when it gets, when you eat it, it goes through your stomach, liver, central, uh, central nervous system. And it affects all of the, the way it's absorbed is through the nerve cells in our bodies. So if you ever see a CBD product that say, I saw CBD mascara. And I thought, why, what is the point of that? That doesn't touch any of your nerve cells. This is a hoax. Okay. So I did a little bit of research on this. Um, it's.

David Maloof (14:12.845)

If one of the issues that some people have, even with like medical marijuana, where it could very well be legal in a lot of places in the US. However, if they work at their place of work, if there's drug testing, they can still get in trouble. And potentially lose their job. I know there's some cases, you know, working their way through the courts, you know. Is CBD oil something that could show up on a, say a workplace blood test?

Drug test? Okay, so there's not the CBD oil. So basically there's three types of CBD oil. And my husband and I actually not only make products in the past, we have grown our own hemp and extracted it, which is a lot of work. Now we just make products, but there's three types. So picture like a vodka distillation. When you first extract the oil, it's dark and sticky.

And it's got all of the other cannabinoids, including some of the naturally occurring less than 0 .3 % THC. If you use a product, if you are a nurse or a pilot or someone who gets drug tested and you use a product that has CBD, we call it crude oil that has naturally occurring THC. Yes, it is possible that would come up on a drug test, even though you're not getting high. It's, it's similar to say, um, someone who gets tested for heroin and they eat too many poppy seeds. I know you have to eat like.

A lot of pounds of poppy seeds, but it is theoretically true. Um, then there is what's called a distillate and then there's what's called an isolate, a CBD isolate, which is pure CBD. All of the other stuff is removed. In my opinion, you would be okay with using the CBD isolate, but to be honest, um, you know, it's, it is a risk. And if you really like your job, I would just stay away from it because unfortunately, even though it's federally legal, even though it's wonderful stuff, even though you're not getting high, you don't want to throw your career away.

So we offer different products with all three, we utilize all three for different products, but it's, you know, you have to use your best judgment. So you have to also be really aware of what the company is using, what kind of tea, sorry, CBD oil they are using.

So is there a like a industry standard, quality control standard in the CBD industry or does it run the spectrum? From your observation? It runs the spectrum and it's really, it's by state by state. Yeah, and it's state by state. Even though it's federally legal states, in the marijuana and the hemp space, the states are really like.

wrestling with, well, this is what we want for our people. You know, and it's, to me, it's silly because especially with, with, with hemp, um, there's actually, I have to point this out, David, there's a, a patent from the U S government on CBD from the nineties. I think it's 93 or 95. You can look it up. I have it on our website. Um, the department of health and human services patented CBD for its neuro neuro generative.

neuroprotective and high antioxidant qualities. It did that so no one else could do it. But when my father's a patent attorney, so when you patent something, it means it's gone through the, through our system. There's enough scientific evidence to prove what you're saying. So the U S government has said this stuff is great. It regenerates nerves. It protects our nerves. They even mentioned things. Um, it's beneficial for ischemic events, meaning stroke, uh, Parkinson's it's in the patent.

High antioxidant, antioxidants are one of the ways in which our bodies repair itself. We make them and we also eat them from berries and other things. It's in the patent, but there's still this kind of wrestling with like, well, what's, you know, what are we going to do with it? How are we going to regulate? It's, it's crazy. So it's a very beneficial substance. I feel like I straight off the subject. What was your original question? Sorry. I'm passionate about this stuff. We were just, you know, we were just talking about some of the things that people need to know.

Yeah, there's a lot. I've been even in Georgia; I'll go to certain touristy locations and you'll see CBD sold here and things like that. Oh, regulating. That's what you asked me. So is it like an industry standard in terms of quality control or does it run the range? No, it runs the range right now. I would not buy it in a gas station.

Okay. I would not buy it off Amazon. There's a lot of you're not all actually allowed to sell CBD on Amazon. I can't sell my products on Amazon, but there are companies that get around it and they say like 30 ,000 milligrams of CBD, which is a lot. And that's not true. Um, so you have to do your due diligence. You you're welcome to always email us info at CBD fountain .com. I answer all of the questions personally. I guide people. I I'm honest with them. You know, I created all of my products actually to help.

myself, my friends, my family, and my pets. My first product was my body lotion because I have back pain from being a cheerleader as a teenager. And it works. It helps me. So, and then I created my tincture for my own anxiety, and it does work, does calm me down. But you'd have to ask a lot of questions. You certainly do. You see it out there. One of the things that, you know, doing a little research is in the United States,

from what I read, at least 10 million people are on prescription medicine just for anxiety. That seems low to me. I think it would be higher, but yeah. Well, and it seemed a little low to me and that was like, that was just a sliver because there were wide range of prescription medications to address other, other issues that people are experiencing. And that number was from 2020, I think.

And they had said it was a 10 % increase over 2019, obviously, because of COVID and things like that. Is CBD something that is potentially could assist in anxiety, or is it more physical, the physical areas that it, that it helps? 1000 % helps with anxiety. So we go back to homeostasis. Homeostasis is how our body keeps it self -balanced. And it has those six realms. Sleep, appetite, mood.

mood includes anxiety, pain response, inflammation, and immune system. So, um, yeah, there's actually a great nonprofit website called project CBD .org and it has a lot of science and it doesn't sell anything. Um, you can, you can look up a lot of information there. You know, it's all coal. It's all in one spot. No, but actually it really does help with anxiety. It it's, it's through the, what we call the endo cannabinoid system and don't meaning inside us.

Uh, CBD is a phyto cannabinoid meaning from plant, but we produce our own anyway. So when you eat it, say for anxiety, I have it, I have a great tincture. Um, it takes a little while. It has to go to the dissect and digest the system. It gets to the stomach, then to the liver, and then it's in the bloodstream and it goes all over. And it fits like a lock and key into the membranes of nerve cells, which is where the endocannabinoid system resides. So when you take CBD, it fits into those nerve cells. It triggers it. It goes, ah, we recognize this.

We're going to chill out. If you have pain, it's like, we're going to lower the pain. We're going to lower the pain response. If you have inflammation, it helps reduce it. So it works wonderfully for all those things. It's kind of, kind of adaptive in terms of like, we make it anyway. And when you take it for a specific thing, whether if you say you take a, an edible for either pain or inflammation or anxiety, it utilizes it for what you need, which is remarkable. And I don't exactly know how that happens, but that's the magic of our bodies.

So yes, 1 ,000 % helps with anxiety for us and for animals.

with no side effects. So as part of your coaching, I tend to think in terms of a toolbox and we open up our toolbox and we've got different tools that we can use. I should say, what other tools do you pull from when someone needs your help? Yeah, so CVD is absolutely one of the tools if someone is open to taking it. Some people are,

Absolutely not. That's okay. It's their body. But that's exactly how I look at it. I approach it from a mind, body, spirit approach. When we take just a pharmaceutical, and I have, I've taken Xanax for anxiety and I loved it. Very effective. And guess what? It's super toxic and super addictive and you can't take it forever. It's meant to be used for 30 days. And I know people on Xanax for decades. And especially now with what they happen with the opioid crisis, doctors don't even prescribe it anymore.

And they really don't have a better backup. So I actually was cut off, even though I wasn't, I had my Xanax and I would have the lowest dose and I would break a pill in half and I would use it sort of break glass in case of emergency only in like, if I was having a panic attack, if my body was taking over and I think I had one bottle, one bottle of 30 per year. And my doctor said, I'm not going to give this to you anymore. I said, um, I don't really use it that often, but I'd like to know that I have it. And she's like, no,

with the, it's too addictive. I'm like, then why did you prescribe it to begin with? And they don't have anything else. So I had to go and seek out my own tools. And, um, like I said, mind, body, spirit approach. So when you're having all of this stress and anxiety, your body is, is reacting to your environment as if it's going to die. And then that's how we evolved. We evolved that's, and it, and it does save us, right? You know, I've been in circumstances where I was under threat and my body.

took over and got me to safety. However, if you're having this every day because of traffic or your mother -in -law or bills or the world at large or COVID and et cetera, et cetera, social media, I could go on and on. You're raising your baseline of stress. And we wanna bring, we wanna be able to be, you know, this goes into polyvagal theory, which I'm really excited about, but we wanna be able to, it's not that we always wanna be calm and,

That's not the point. We're humans. But when we go into a stressful state, we want to be able to come back down and have our baseline in a calm place so that we can be healthy because stress and anxiety really do affect our bodies. If you ask doctors, they always say for degenerative disease, the number one cause is for stress. And there's many reasons for why that is. But the toolbox that I use is basically

First and foremost is to list out all of the things that are stressing you out. You cannot fix anything if you don't bring light to it. That's number one. Number two is I always say, you know, look at your diet and your supplements. If you don't have enough magnesium or B vitamins in your diet, your body, your nervous system is not going to function optimally. It's going to be struggling. It's like if you are trying to run a car without enough oil.

So that's another thing that I coach people on. So magnesium and B vitamins. So what are some of the foods? I'm sure there's supplements, but are there certain foods that are just very good sources of those vitamins? There are, there's, you know, so many of them incorporate a little bit here, a little bit there. That's why I do tell people to go to supplementation because that way you know you're getting it. Many of the foods nowadays are depleted from the nutrition that we need.

So, yeah, I've, I get that's a whole other topic about how nutritious foods were in the 1950s. They were very seasonal. It took longer to grow, but it gave the plant more time to absorb the nutrients from the soil. And now we've got plants coming in, vegetables coming in 365 days a year. They're rushed through and they're under ripe. They're growing process. So they look wonderful.

tender and juicy and everything, they didn't have time to absorb the normal nutrients. And the soil is depleted too. So if you're growing something and you don't do - The whole other topic. Whole other topic. Whole other topic, but it sounds like you're saying people need to look at their nutrition. Absolutely. Is a major part of your toolbox, okay? Yeah, because there's not one thing, and that's where I differ what I think from my own personal experience.

Yeah, Xanax was great and it was toxic and they took it away. Okay. So now what? Well, there's not one thing that's going to fix you because there's not one thing that caused this. The nervous system and how we respond to our environment is very beautiful and very complicated. So there's not just one thing like a pill that's going to fix it. If you are really serious about feeling better, basically about taking back control of your body and your life, because.

When you're really, really stressed, you're going to snap at your husband or your wife or your partner. You might be frustrated with the dog. You might be irritable with your kids. You're not going to perform as well as work and you're going to feel like crap. You're going to sleep badly. It goes on and on and on. It affects everything. So if you can, if you're honest with yourself, if you are experiencing high stress, chronic stress and anxiety, gosh, it affects your life in so many ways. And it's just, it's many little steps.

that I guide people through a course that I call Serenity School. And it's learning all of these tools so that you can take your power back. So first thing is list your anxiety and your stress triggers. Next is what are you eating? What are you supplementing? Are you drinking too much coffee? Are you drinking too much alcohol? All of these things contribute. The next is how much are you moving versus how much are you being still? Are you exercising at all? Are you doing too much?

stimulating exercise. If you're only doing cardio and you're never doing something that calms the nervous system down, like yoga, like walking, like, um, Tai Chi, there's different, there's different times for different types of exercise. And if you're, if your nervous system is dysregulated and you're only doing what we in America like to do is just go harder, bigger, faster P90X and cardio and all of that. It's, it's, it could stress you out even more.

So sometimes you have to do less. Yeah, I've had some people say, I've had some people say, you know, exercise, it just worked that stress out. And I can say from my personal experience, I haven't personally found exercise to be something that works the stress out. Maybe I was going too fast or too hard, but it sounds like it's more complicated than that, isn't it? Based on what you're saying. Very much so. In fact, I had burnout last spring.

Um, and I realized, I thought, Oh gosh, you know, I need to slow my body down. I need to do, I was doing, you know, power yoga and cardio and weights. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I need to slow it down. You know, there's, you don't, there's one thing, there's exercise to look your best. There's one thing and then this exercise just to feel good and be healthy. That's a whole other. And sometimes that incorporate that sometimes that means being gentle with yourself. Sometimes that means slowing down.

So it's, and it's very individual. And then you, and you mentioned, you mentioned yoga, Tai Chi. I mean, there's a lot of different disciplines. And so it sounds like a person needs to find the right one or the right combination. Okay. A sense of play. We are so, when we are stressed out,

We don't, we don't give time to play, to actually enjoy our lives, to do something, we do something just for fun. You know, just for, just for the strict enjoyment of it. And that's why I love going to Europe and I love Europeans. They do, they master this so much more than we do. They just enjoy themselves. Um, we're always about starting a side hustles, doing a podcast, do it, writing a book, you know, leaving your mark. Like we're just go, go, go, go, go. When was the last time.

David, when was the last time you did something just for play?

I'm actually pretty good at that. My wife and I, we love to travel. Now this is a topic that could make some people stress out. The idea of going on an airplane and doing international travel and dealing with customs and all that. For us, it's almost relaxing. It's just the adventure. So for us it works. Travel, it's relaxing, it's fun, it's a new adventure.

Other people, totally different story. So what you're saying is people need to find what they enjoy doing just for the purpose of play. And I'll swing back to my, when you asked me about acting, if you're stuck, if you're not sure, it's whatever you enjoy in the present moment. So I also love travel. I just went to Mexico. My husband and I went to Thailand. Like we just love it.

And I, and I thought about it. What is it about it? Cause yes, you're right. It's travel to stress other people out. For me, it's when I'm in a new place, I am super present because I don't know where I'm going. I'm eating new foods. I don't understand the language and I'm in the moment. I'm present. That is the whole purpose of my program of serenity school is to be able to be present because if you're anxious, you're fearing the future, you're thinking too far ahead. And if you're depressed, you're looking, you're regretting the past, the point of power and the, and the.

point of pleasure and joy and happiness in our lives is in the present moment. But if we're fearing the future and regretting the past, so what, you know, you're never going to be present. And if you're miserable in the present, if you're in a house, you don't like, if you're in a marriage, you don't like, if you're in a job, you don't like, you're also going to deny it. You're also going to not want to be in the present. So the point of play, find something that you enjoy in the present moment. It could be coloring, it could be drawn, it could be singing, it could be acting for me. I loved acting because I was, when I was on stage,

I was present. So I really like the direction that you're going with this. You know, the, it's interesting what you had mentioned about doctors encouraging people to get off certain medication. To me, that's a huge red flag. So if the doctors are saying, yeah, you need to get off that. I can say from personal experience,

It was a totally different prescription that I was on. I had a brand new doctor and I just met with her for the first time and she goes, why are you taking this? And I said, well, I'm, you know, blah, blah, blah. And she's like, oh, we gotta get you off that. I was like, well, okay, it's supposed to be good. And I honestly had never read the instructions, that detail. And it said to be used no more than two weeks. And I had been using it for longer than that. I was like, oh my gosh.

But it took this particular doctor just said, no, you need to get off that. So that was a red flag. And so now you're explaining, you know, some similar situations with doctors saying, yeah, this, you call it an opioid, opioid, I'm having trouble pronouncing it, but some of these drugs that people take for their anxiety, obviously the medical industry sees some major problems with that.

Yeah. Well, so first let me preface it with this. I don't blame them. That's how they were trained. Doctor, Western medicine doctors were trained to either prescribe a pill or surgically remove. If you're looking at physical therapy, yes, they have physical therapy, but they don't look at mind body connection. They're starting to, which is what includes stress and anxiety. They're starting. They're starting. They don't look at how the body heals itself and how they do. So when you break a bone, unless it's a

multiple breaks and really bad. They usually like set it and let your body heal and your body heals it. Um, but for the most part, they, they don't do that. They want to take a statistical population of their, this is how they were trained in med school had that has X diagnosis. And if you have X diagnosis, well, this is the medically, this is what's been proven to work. We're either going to cut, we're going to give you a pill and that's it and send you out the door. Well, the problem that I have with that is big pharma.

is horrible. We saw this with Purdue. We saw this with the opioid crisis. They're just out for money. They make a lot of it. They don't want to kill us. They just want us all be sick. So we're all on their medications. They have beautiful commercials that I used to audition for. And trust me, I had problems with this. They pay a lot for when you're an actor in a pharmaceutical, you make a lot of money. Beautiful people running through meadows and fields and playing tennis and that's not.

how the, if you read the side effects, the potential side effects, or even hear them now in commercials where they read them off, you've heard those commercials are possible. Side effects may include death, suicidal ideation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, I don't blame them. It's how they were trained. And yes, sometimes they do get you to a point. Medications will get to the point of feeling better or being better with whatever you're feeling. I truly believe.

Our mind has a lot to do with what happens into our body. Um, the genetic verse, the nature versus nurture debate, which is when I was in college was, Oh, it's, it's very much nature. It's very much in your genes. If you have the gene for XYZ, you're probably going to get, if your mom had a, you're probably going to get it. That's your potential. That's not your destiny. And I have seen it in myself. I've been told, well, you know, with the back pain that I had from a teenager, which was, it was.

bad. I went from being an athlete to not being able to get up out of a chair by myself. I literally, I had to, I was in so much pain. I went to the doctor. He gave me Advil. I went to a chiropractor. It cracked my, it was a muscle and soft tissue injury, but I was in agony. And this is what led me to be a massage therapist. I was in agony. I finally, six months later, I had sciatica. I was in bed all the time. I finally went to an acupuncturist, which this was in the late nineties. It was very not.

super well known. So she had a massage therapist, those two modalities together healed me in a month where the doctor couldn't help me. And it was, I just needed a massage. I needed someone who knew what they were doing and they needed to acupuncture, which I, which innervated the nerves and let my body reset back to normal. I just had a muscle spasm, but no one could help me and I had to help myself. And so that was the pinnacle point of for me. It was like, Oh yeah, my mom's right. They don't know everything. Um, so there,

This is how they're trained and it's an industry. It's a very profitable industry. And for me, my family, the, anyone I'm friends with who you will tell you, I, anytime they're dealing with the health thing, I'm like, Oh, let's look it up. Let's see what we can do. Because I like to take control of my own health for anxiety. Um, is annex as a benzodiazepine as a, is Valium, um, at a van, they're all very effective and they're not meant to be used more than.

a few weeks to a month. And so then what? Then what? And then they love to diagnosis, well, you have an anxiety disorder. When your nervous system and your body is just telling you something is wrong. Something is wrong. I am overloaded. I am overwhelmed. I was going to say, if someone wants to take charge of their anxiety, what is the best way that they can reach you?

if they have questions or if they need help. They can find me on my website, suzyhardy .com. They can sign up for my newsletter immediately. You're going to get a video tutorial of my number one tool that I teach people. It is super easy, super fast and very effective for calming the body down. So we do in my program, we do a lot of somatic release and balancing techniques to give you power over your own body because...

before if it was, if you were on medications before, if it was a pill, now you're going to learn different tools and techniques that when you are freaking out, where there'd be a little bit of worry, a full blown panic attack, that you can just relax your system down so that you can think more clearly so that you can have control over your body. And you can email me as well and find me on my website.

Well, and anyone who is interested. So Susie, we're going to have your contact information in the program notes on YouTube or on the podcast service that you are using. Um, but I do appreciate the messaging that you have, especially, you know, to try to get people off some of these prescription medications, or if they're literally just being taken off, just ripping that away. Um,

That's also concerning, but it's good to know that to use the term we've been using, there is a toolbox out there that has other options. It sounds like it's a matter of finding the right tool or combination of tools. And you've made it your role to help people with that. Yeah, because I don't want people to suffer. I've suffered for a long time, but I also believe that there is benefit.

to me having gone through that because now I have power and control over my own dysregulated, sometimes dysregulated nervous system. And I don't freak out. I understand that this is my body. This is the way we evolved to survive. And now we just live in a different environment where there's just many more micro stressors that it's constantly perceiving. Your body is, your body wants to keep you alive. Your body wants to keep you alive at all costs. And it's constantly looking for threats. And so if you don't get a chance to rest, reset, play, calm your system down,

You're not going to live a very happy and healthy life. So I don't want people to suffer like I did. And that's why I share what I've learned with the world. Well, Susie, thank you very much for sharing with, with our audience here. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

All right, well, lots of very interesting information. Thank you very much for watching the show. Thank you for liking. Thank you for commenting. If you have any feedback, please let us know. And oh, and don't forget to press the subscribe button. Ooh.

Press subscribe and the notification and that will notify you when we upload new episodes and it also helps the show. All right. Well, that does it for this week. I am David Maloof, exploring natural approaches to good health. That does it for this episode of Adventures in Good Health. We would like to hear from you regarding this podcast and any suggestions you have for future podcasts.

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