Transcript #644 How Toxic Relationships Affect Your HTMA, Minerals, and Detox With Susan Cachay

Get the Detox Like a Pro checklist when you join my newsletter!

How Toxic Relationships Affect Your HTMA, Minerals, and Detox

with Susan Cachay

GET THE PDF COPY HERE

Dr. Wendy Myers

Hello, I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. Welcome to the Myers Detox Podcast. On this show, we talk about everything related to heavy metal and chemical toxicity, the health issues caused by toxins, and more advanced topics than you’ll hear on other shows. I love talking about emotional trauma, biohacking, and bioenergetics, and how you can dramatically improve your health with unconventional methods.

Today on the show, we have Susan Cachay. I’ve had her on the show like once or twice before, and we’re going to talk about the impact of unhealthy relationships on your Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis and minerals. So this is a really fascinating conversation. We’re going to be talking all about how, if you’re in a stressful or abusive relationship, what that looks like on a hair metal analysis, and how the body tries to protect itself with calcium.

You could have super crazy high calcium and calcifications in your tissues because of stressors in your life. We’ll talk about what you can do about that. We talk about all of the ways that stress affects our adrenal glands, and then how that affects our ability to detox heavy metals and chemicals, why you need to take minerals as a way to push out and displace heavy metals, and why, if you’re mineral-deficient, you’re going to absorb more heavy metals than you normally would. We’ll talk about why people who are very, very ill that we see when I look at someone’s analysis, that’s very, very ill, they always have really low minerals, and why minerals are the foundation of your health, and why you want to balance them with a hair metal analysis as a roadmap to do that successfully. So lots of great info on the show tonight.

Our guest is Susan Cachay, the founder of the HTMA Success Practitioner Training program. She’s a certified nutritionist with a Bachelor’s degree in education and a Master’s in Psychological Counseling. She’s one of the most trusted and experienced voices in hair tissue mineral analysis, HTMA, and mineral nutritional balancing. With over 25 years in practice, 15-plus years mentoring wellness professionals, and a personal health journey that fuels her passion, Susan brings science, the lived experience, and the heart to help clients reclaim their health and to guide practitioners in creating meaningful, sustainable careers.

You can learn more about Susan’s work at htmasuccess.com. Susan, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Susan Cachay

Thank you, Wendy, for having me. It’s always nice to see you.

Dr. Wendy Myers

We’re going to be talking about the biochemical impact that our emotions can have on HTMA. So I thought about our hair tissue mineral analysis and the biochemical impact of unhealthy relationships, and how that shows on the hair test. Can you talk a little about that?

Susan Cachay

I want to preface this by saying there are other reasons why these patterns can show up on an HTMA. And just because I don’t want people to go, oh my goodness, I’m showing this indicator. I thought my relationship was great, and I guess it’s not. So these are not necessarily specific to being in a stressful, unhealthy relationship, but there are ones that typically will show up, and we’ll talk about this a little bit later, I think, as well.

But there are also patterns where even if our life has changed and we are now in a place where we do feel safe, we’re in a respectful relationship, that if we’ve gone through periods of time when we’re in a relationship, that is not that way, those stress patterns can actually develop, and our bodies can hold on to them for different reasons. But I think that HTMA is really underutilized in terms of looking at emotional patterns. I really look at HTMA as kind of like a survival map. So the HTMA maze not only shows nutrient patterns and perhaps what we’re deficient in, but also ways to support the body on a physical level. But it also really tells a very vivid emotional story of how a person’s body has adapted to stress.

So it’s not just about what nutrients they’re missing. The calcium show is the first one that comes to mind. And if you’re not familiar with HTMA, calcium is the first macro mineral on the top, and the nutrient minerals section that can actually rise for a couple of different reasons. One can be a physical reason that there aren’t enough nutrients to keep the calcium in solution in the body, but on an emotional level, a calcium shell or even higher calcium can build up as a way of the body protecting itself. The body is pretty smart. So when we’re going through trauma, calcium can be actually elevated on purpose because it kind of numbs us. 

It doesn’t mean it takes away all our emotions, or we don’t feel anything, but it kind of numbs us a little bit and allows us to better function in a situation that is very stressful. I had a client who had her mom die at a very young age, and it was very tragic. She had had a calcium shell since that time until she started the program. So our bodies can hang on to that sympathetic dominance, which is another pattern that we see in clients who are in very stressful relationship type patterns, where the sympathetic dominance and the main indicator is the low potassium.

That is, as we all know, fight or flight, right? The body is in fight or flight. The body is not feeling safe enough. And the reason why I thought this topic was so important to have a discussion about it is that a lot of us practitioners talk about how detox is so important, how heavy metals cause so many issues, and that is all true. But when you’re in a place where you don’t feel safe, and you’re maybe walking on eggshells, and you’re in this strong, strong, sympathetic dominance pattern, the body is not relaxed enough to actually release those metals. So sometimes, as a practitioner, we’ll be working with our clients, and we’ll be thinking, wow, they’re doing this detox, and we’re not really seeing the needle move very much in terms of metals releasing. 

Well, it’s not the toxic metals that are just sitting idly in our tissues that are causing the most issues. They’re the ones that are placed in the body that have been used as a substitute for the preferred minerals. Therefore, when under threat, the body does not release those very readily. So the official pattern, and to me, that we would be talking about is like a poor and very poor eliminator pattern where the metals are very low, which isn’t a good thing because we know everybody is exposed to a certain amount of metals, but it’s that they’re sequestered in the tissues, and when a person is in that sympathetic dominance and doesn’t feel that that safety or calmness, the body is much more reluctant to release them. 

So what we know is that our emotions really will affect our capacity to detoxify, no matter what we’re doing. So that’s a really important one, because that affects people’s overall health. And there are some studies that link being in unhealthy, more toxic relationships to things such as smoking and drinking alcohol. In terms of the effects at a physical level, it’s substantial. James Sexton, who’s a New York lawyer, I can’t remember his book, but he talks a lot about statistics and relationships. I think it’s a little bit exaggerated. But he says 57% of marriages end in divorce. And if you look at relationships overall, his quote is about 75% of relationships.

People really struggle. So it’s an area I think that needs more attention with regard to the effect on our health. As a result of sympathetic dominance, a person also ends up with copper dysregulation because the adrenal and glandular function starts to be compromised. The oxidation rate starts to slow as the person’s body really tries to conserve energy. The body is kind of sheltering. If it can’t get out of the situation, it will kind of shelter in place and down, regulate down, regulate the oxidation rate. There are a lot of different things that happen in that particular situation. What an amazing tool we have. And it’s not that expensive a tool to actually look at that map and go, ” How is this person adapting to stress?

Ads 08:53

This show is brought to you by Bon Charge, and I wanna take a minute to tell you about one of their amazing products that I’m absolutely in love with. There’s something I’ve been doing for about 10 minutes a day, and it’s wearing a face mask, but it’s not just any face mask. It’s this Bon Charge red light face mask, and it’s essential to my nightly skincare routine now. Believe me, red light therapy really works. It’s well established in the research to improve the appearance of your skin. How it does that is it penetrates deep into the skin to boost collagen production. It reduces the size of your pores, reduces inflammation, and eases the signs of aging. 

Bon Charge’s red light face mask makes it so easy to take care of your skin. It’s like a mini spa session every night that I’m doing. It can be used easily at home. There’s no cord, so you can wear it while you’re doing other tasks. Plus, the mask is totally painless and it doesn’t heat up. Unlike some other beauty, anti-aging treatments, Bon Charge’s red light face mask has been a game changer. It’s part of my everyday skincare routine now, and I’m seeing such great results already from using this mask. My skin is more clear, it seems more plump, fresh, juicy, and my redness and dark blemishes are fading. 

There’s a very special offer for all of my listeners right now. My listeners get 15% off when you order from boncharge.com and use my promo code, Wendy at checkout. This discount applies sitewide, and you’ll also get free shipping and a 12-month warranty. Go now to get this exclusive offer. That’s boncharge.com and with promo code, Wendy, you get. 15% off. This is one of my secrets to super healthy young-looking skin. I’m trying to reverse the clock. I’m trying to do everything I can to anti-age and this is one of the secrets in my toolkit.

Dr. Wendy Myers

It’s interesting, though, because when you’re in a stressful relationship, your body is under stress. Detox can take a backseat. And that’s where we see a hormonal analysis, like you said, that eliminates our pattern where people don’t have that many metals coming out. Many people, including doctors, might take your demand to your doctor. But laypeople as well, look at it go, oh, I don’t really have any metals. Great, I got a free pass on mm HTMA, but that’s definitely not the case when you start taking minerals, and you start detoxing, doing sauna and other things, you start seeing metals coming out on future tests.

Susan Cachay

And all of those are causing interference. So I know it is a really big misconception that, wow, I want my metals to be as low as possible on this test. And that’s not what we’re looking for, right? Even if you’re as careful as you can, you put everything into place to prevent as much exposure, we’re all exposed to a certain amount. Just because we’re on the Earth and so on. On HTMA, when a person has healthy detoxification, and their oxidation rate is more balanced, we want to see that there’s an average amount that the person is releasing. Actually, the people who are the most ill are the ones who have the lowest level of metals at their initial time because they’re all being sequestered in the tissues, causing interference in the body running correctly.

Dr. Wendy Myers

I definitely had a calcium channel when I first started doing HTMA. I wasn’t in the best relationship at that time. And it was surprising when I started taking tons of calcium. So calcium channels are super high on HTMA. I started taking tons and tons of calcium, and that’s what ironically brought it down. So a lot of the things you do with mineral balancing are very, very counterintuitive. But I was really surprised that I had this calcium shell when I first started doing HTMA.

Susan Cachay

I know it really is amazing. It is the body’s protection. You’re hitting on a good point. It’s not about replacement therapy. The high calcium shell is actually an indication that there’s a shortage of bioavailable calcium at the cellular level. Therefore, a person can actually have symptoms of an excess of bile-unavailable calcium. Sure, but also a shortage of bioavailable calcium. So, giving that bioavailable calcium encourages the body to start to release some of the unavailable form. So it’s so fascinating.

Dr. Wendy Myers

What is the purpose served by the high calcium? I know that calcium can kind of deaden nerve impulses. So it can reduce pain, and can numb you a little bit. And those are going to be really, really helpful when you’re in a bad relationship like that. Can you talk about any other mechanisms with high calcium?

Susan Cachay

Well, that’s the emotional level, right? It’s a response to trauma and the way the body adjusts itself to deal with the trauma. So in your particular situation, where there was that unhealthy relationship, and while you did that, there was that shell that is likely directly related to the relationship that you were in, and your body’s just trying to help you cope with that a little bit better, even though I’m sure it was still very stressful. On a physical level, if a person has low adrenal function, the indicators that we use there are sodium and potassium. Then the body really doesn’t have the resources to keep that calcium in solution and usable. And that’s another reason why some people will start to try to give sodium and potassium in terms of nutrients.

That actually does not raise the sodium and potassium on a hair test. It’s a really big misconception where people will wait a minute, and again, it’s all about the interpretation. So that’s a glandular function. And the way that we would address that more effectively is we need to support the adrenal and the thyroid gland. When we talk a lot about the adrenals being the main drivers of energy, yes, for sure. But the thyroid is too. Some people can’t separate just the adrenals and other people talk about, oh, it’s just the thyroid, and it’s really not the body that works, it’s the whole system. When the glandular system has gotten exhausted, burned out, or worn down, that’s when calcium and magnesium are not able to be kept in solution as much in the body. That’s another reason why it becomes dysregulated.

Ads 17:08

Now a word for one of our sponsors. So I’m a huge, huge fan of Tru Energy Skincare. This is a bioenergetic skincare line that I’ve been using for almost two years now, and it’s what I use exclusively. It’s so good. They have a new product out called the Bio Adaptive Hydration Oil. This is really, really key for protecting your skin from dry winter weather because when you have cold weather plus wind, plus indoor heating that’s gonna equal dry, irritated skin. So hydration is really, really key to protect your skin barrier and, you know, preserve your skin.

Why does this matter? It’s because dehydrated skin can look dull, tight,more fine lines and wrinkles. Supporting your skin during winter helps it stay resilient and healthy. Like I mentioned, I love Tru Energy Skincare and they have this bio-adaptive formulation designed to boost hydration and nourish the skin. It’s a bioactive nourishing skin oil, and so it’s infused with frequencies. There are dozens and dozens of frequencies imprinted on their energy-optimized blue bead that’s in all of their products. It’s actually imprinted not with hundreds, with thousands of frequencies to support cellular repair, improve collagen production, and increase regeneration of your skin.

This is what I’m using at 53 to get the best skin that I can possibly get. This is one of my secret weapons that I personally use. This bio-adaptive hydration oil uses nutrient-rich skin-supportive and clean ingredients as well. All you do is add one to two drops to your face cream or Tru Energy products like their serums or their lotion, and it just increases that hydration. I also use it ’cause I do face yoga every night. I use hydration oil. I put it all over my skin and I’ll do a massage and I’ll do guha and other things. It’s part of my nightly routine. So there are a lot of different uses for it, including increasing the hydration and the effectiveness of the products you already have. Try it for yourself. Go to trytruenergy.com/wendy5  

Dr. Wendy Myers

Who doesn’t have poor adrenal function today? Thanks for being with us because our adrenal glands, which sit on top of our kidneys, make our stress hormones, our cortisol, adrenaline, and things like that. In today’s society, with everyone having emotional trauma for the most part, and all the Wi-Fi, poor nutrition and all these different factors working on us, poor light, junk light, and poor sleep, many people are just unaware of how stressed that they are and how stressed their adrenals are and how that affects their minerals and thus their ability to detox.

Susan Cachay

I know it’s really just overwhelming when you look at it that way, and there are ways that we can help ourselves. There are two main things that have happened in, I don’t know, the last few decades. One is more of all of that that you mentioned, more toxic metals. Look at our oceans and just pollution, EMFs, and everything that we have, the busyness, rate increase, sickness and other issues. But at the same time, it’s very unfortunate that our food supply is much lower in nutrients. It’s not just that we have this influx, but we’re still being supported in a really positive way by our food. It’s the food. So everything on the earth, and that means all animals, all plants, humans, we’re all in the same position where there’s this shift where we have more metals, plants, our food has more metals now and less nutrients.

I think it’s causing a lot of the chronic illnesses that we’re seeing. Because again, of course, you talk about this a lot on your podcast. Heavy metals are interfering. That’s why people talk about detoxing them so much. They interfere with our functioning, and they take the place, as I mentioned earlier, of those preferred minerals. Sometimes I use the example of if you’re driving your car in the desert and your fan belt breaks and you’re like, there’s nowhere around, there’s no service station, but you’ve got a belt on your jeans. You put that on where the fan belt should be, and your car starts. You’re like, great, okay, my car’s running, but it’s not running 100% right.

So, many of us, and we all are to a certain extent, but some people, more than others, are running around with toxic metals instead of the preferred minerals where they should be in the thyroid, adrenal, liver, right everywhere, brain, everywhere they’re supposed to be. We’ve got toxic metals now that really can’t be totally detected. There’s no test that can test your total load of toxic metals, but they cause interference and it’s like that fan belt. 

The way mineral balancing works is like taking your car to the repair shop, and you get that new part, and all of a sudden, you’re like, ” Oh, my car is driving so much better. But it happens slowly over time because there are metals stored everywhere in our bodies. So I feel like those two things, and I’m really excited about the initiative of working on the soil, getting more nutrients in our soil, because in the soil that’s been so depleted. Most people just call it dirt. Now, when you have the lower levels of minerals, just like in our bodies, the toxic metals are crowding out that space. I read some stats, and I can’t remember exactly the time frame, like 15 years ago, as early as 15 years ago, but that you could eat an apple from an organic orchard.

One apple that is today you’d need to eat six of those to have the same level of nutrients as that 15 years ago, and people are eating less. That’s the other thing, fewer nutrients. People are also eating less food in general. Our metabolisms are adapting, and they’re slowing. The metabolic rate and our body temperatures are dropping. It’s not a good scenario.

Dr. Wendy Myers

And there’s no financial incentive to mineralize the soil. So you’ve got to do it yourself. You’ve got to mineralize your body. It’s the number one thing you need to do. It’s the most foundational thing that you need to do, but not only that, but also balance the minerals as well. And to me, it’s a great tool to be able to do that with a roadmap that gives you an outline of the supplements you need to be taking and how much exactly.

Susan Cachay

Some people will say, well, how long do I need to do this? And it’s like, well, if our food supply is so depleted, you need some type of supplementation.  I’m the first person to say I wish we didn’t have to supplement, but some type of supplementation is probably necessary unless this greater kind of situation changes. Things are not the same as they used to be, and I’ve seen results. You probably have to send for people who don’t supplement at all, and how depleted they are, and how we can see that their body has been using more of those toxic metals instead of the preferred minerals, and they don’t feel well. It doesn’t work the same in our systems.

Dr. Wendy Myers

The people with the lowest level of minerals and their age to me, are the sickest people. They just don’t have the nutrients they need to power all the enzymatic processes and the protein building. And that makes stomach acid, and all the millions of things that these minerals do. So that it’s got to be the focus for your health. I take minerals all day long. I’m taking minerals, and it’s really the fountain of youth as well. I think people just get very sidetracked with taking antioxidants and things that are marketed to them. And very rarely do you see minerals marketed to people on Instagram or whatever. It’s not.

That’s why I do this podcast. I try to tell people these are the basics. This is the foundation of your health. There’s nothing more powerful you can do for your health than to feed your body tons and tons of minerals in the right ratios.

Susan Cachay

I always talk about it too when we’re talking about antioxidants and anti-aging approaches. Well, if you look at that fan belt example with a car, that car is not going to do well with that jeans belt, if it keeps running on that. And what’s going to happen is it’s going to affect the other parts of the car. In terms of aging, we’re all going to age no matter what we do. But if you need the more toxic metals you have stored in your body systems, in your body, generally, that age is a person faster because it’s interfering with the proper normal function of our bodies. Right? So I think a mineral balancing two is the best natural anti-aging program as well.

 

Ads 26:22

Are you taking collagen supplements? Well, check this out. Our friends at Organifi have sourced the best collagen on the planet, and you can get it with 20% off savings today, too. So, what is collagen? It’s the most abundant protein in our body. It’s everywhere. It’s in your muscles, joints, hair, skin, fingernails, everywhere. It’s one of the fundamental building blocks of life. Your body uses collagen constantly to keep itself refreshed and repaired. But as you get older, especially as women who are going into menopause, you can lose 30% of your collagen within the first five years of menopause, and that starts in perimenopause as well. Your body just stops making as much of it, and you start losing it, especially as your estrogen levels come down. That’s why consuming collagen is such a great idea every single day. It gives your body a fresh supply to keep working at its best. 

It’s not only good for your hair, skin, and nails, but it helps to support your gut and metabolic health, immune system, cardiovascular strength, and all of your muscles and moving parts too. Collagen is nothing new. It’s one of the oldest supplements out there. Collagen supplements have been around for quite a while now. But what makes Organifi so special is it’s all about the quality.The non-organic collagen scare 16 me. They’re really problematic because they can be full of glyphosate, pesticides and other chemicals that you do not wanna be taking on a daily basis. Not all collagens are the same. It can come from many different sources and the source can drastically impact its potency and effectiveness as well. 

Some manufacturers just go with the cheapest stuff that they can find and then add fillers and artificial flavors and they still charge you a lot of money for that. Organifi always goes the extra mile to ensure their quality is the best. They blend five collagen types from four different sources, and they taste and test until it’s perfect. And then they go even further to test for things like glyphosate residue and other sneaky toxins that can get into the mix. After passing through all of these goalposts, it finally gets the Organifi seal of approval so you can rest assured it’s the highest quality and non-toxic. I love that this company is a company that I can trust that their products will be safe and effective exactly as they say they will be.

In the supplement world these days, that kind of honesty and transparency is getting harder to come by. So, if you’ve never tried collagen, now is a great time to start. And if you’re already taking it, now is a great time to switch to a better brand. Upgrade what you’re doing right now so you and your entire body is gonna love Organifi Collagen. It is something that I take on a daily basis. It’s been a part of my supplement routine for the past five years, since I went into menopause, and so I can’t recommend it highly enough. Now let’s talk about saving you some cash as well. Here’s what you do. Go to organifi.com/myersdetox and put in coupon code Myers detox to get 20% off. You’ll save an extra 20% off by putting in my special coupon code Myers detox. So, like I said, collagen’s one of those things that I take every single day. It’s one of the most important parts of my anti-aging protocol, the things I’m doing to fight off the clock. So for me, taking clean collagen is really important. It’s hard to find, so I highly, highly recommend Organifi collagen.

Dr. Wendy Myers

Let’s talk about some of the other minerals. We talked about calcium. What about magnesium, sodium, and potassium, as far as stress resilience, emotional resilience, and stress tolerance?

Susan Cachay

Well, minerals really run the electrical system in the body. So, doctor EC used to say, minerals affect our emotions. Our emotions affect our minerals, and absolutely that’s true. The body works as a whole system. So we talked about how calcium and magnesium work well together. They are both calming minerals in the body. They affect our emotional regulation. So it’s not unusual for people to have low levels of those minerals. We’re talking about what this looks like in terms of relational stress. If a person has low levels of calcium and magnesium, they tend not to be as emotionally regulated because there’s no buffer. Those are our main calming minerals.

They are so important for so many enzyme reactions in the body. In the last, I don’t know, couple of decades, there’s been this swing to focus on magnesium and not as much calcium. And I think that’s a big mistake. The two work together, and I think that people were taking calcium carbonate and a lot of calcium without being balanced with the other nutrients. And of course, that caused problems for some people. So then there was kind of this swing, magnesium was the miracle mineral and let’s all do this topical magnesium, Epsom salt baths and everything. Magnesium is super important. It does help with relaxation and calming. Even in terms of lead and our bones, magnesium plays a really important role, but not in isolation.

We really need calcium for so many functions, keeping our gut junctions tight. When people talk about leaky gut, well, sometimes it’s that there’s not enough bioavailable calcium in the diet, and the magnesium is relaxing and more of a vasodilator. Well, you need to have the support from the calcium first structure as well. It’s super important in our emotions as well. It’s just really hard to regulate our emotions when those are low or deficient. Sodium and potassium really are indicators of how well we respond to stress. And yes, there’s more and more stress now. They’re related to glandular function, adrenal gland function. So when those are low, I think I’ve mentioned this earlier, giving those nutrients really does very little to raise that. 

We really need glandular support. So sometimes a particular glandular in particular nutrients helps support that, depending on what else is showing up on an eczema. And that is slower to repair because if a person has been out in burnout for 15 years, it’s not going to take 2 or 3 months to get back up to where they need to be. One of the things that I would caution people about is the difference between healing the glandular system and really supporting the production and regulation of sodium and potassium in the body, and taking adaptogens. Adaptogens are substances that kind of promise up a little bit. They keep us going during stressful times, but they’re not really actually healing the glandular system.

That’s why in mineral balancing, we usually don’t include them or a lot of them; it’s because we really want to get to the place where the body is healing, getting rid of the toxic metals, and we’re actually regenerating those glands in the body. So sodium and potassium are very important in the adrenal stress response. And again, the main indicators that we look at, phosphorus is super important too.

It reflects our energy capacity in the body. So that’s really the main indicator. I also look at digestion. Is a person producing enough HCl? Are they getting enough protein in their diet, and are they able to assimilate it?  We can take protein in, but if our digestion is weak and we need some support there, that’s also going to affect our body’s building and repair of its tissues.

Dr. Wendy Myers

The teammates that I’ve done with, with clients that the sodium potassium is very slow to improve. It’s painfully so because people are so stressed out and it’s very hard for someone to turn that ship around and get out of burnout. You have been so scared by their doctors from taking sodium, like the dreaded salt. And it’s the biggest scam in medicine. It is the biggest scam. You are being gaslit, lied to, but you know, albeit maybe a well-meaning person who has also been lied to and is just kind of parroting that back.

But yeah, you don’t want to be consuming table salt, but sea salt and taking minerals is a completely different thing than table salt, which is 80% sodium chloride. We don’t want that. We want minerals and in balance, how they exist in nature, in seawater. That’s sea salt. So those can go a long way towards nourishing your adrenals and nourishing you back to health, nurturing you back to health.

Susan Cachay

Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Wendy Myers

Well, let’s talk a little bit about how people can stay stuck in burnout, but they can also stay stuck in this stress response on HTMA, even after they maybe intellectually recognize that their relationship isn’t unhealthy or after they leave it. It can still take some time to resolve.

Susan Cachay

And it does often. The body is smart in that it does not want to go back into that particular situation. So it gets into this holding pattern. I see a lot of clients where, unless they’ve done some specific work around safety, and what’s happening with them, what actually is allowing their nervous system to relax and feel safe, they end up in this adaptation kind of pattern, this holding pattern, until they’re able to kind of let go of that. Minerals do play a very big role in that. I’ve seen a lot of people who have gone to different therapists for talk therapy, and it’s been helpful to a certain extent, but they still are holding that stress in their body. So this may have been talked about on one of your shows before, but Gabor Mate is a wonderful researcher in this area.

He has a book called When the Body Says No. It’s all about when we’re suppressing our emotions, especially anger, and how that manifests in cancer in different conditions that have started, you know, ten years prior. When somebody has a diagnosis of something like osteoporosis or cancer, whatever it may be, oftentimes that has started 10 to 15 years before the actual diagnosis.

Our bodies get into these patterns that can be more difficult to shift again, just like the calcium shell. So, as you were saying, you had been in an unhealthy relationship. You did an HTMA, you had this calcium shell. Your body was trying to protect you. Now, had you not done mineral balancing and addressed that, you may actually still have that calcium shell today because the body kind of gets into this pattern. John Gottman is another psychologist who talks a lot about how it’s not just our emotions that are affected in these types of relationships. It’s really our biology that gets affected and our emotions. Our biology reflects our emotional health a lot of the time.

One of the really lovely things about mineral balancing is when a person is no longer in that situation, but they are still carrying some of those stress patterns. Having those minerals come in at a physical level, having the body do more detox, more relaxation, meditation, the different aspects of the program really make such a big difference in shifting that pattern. Now, that doesn’t mean that if a person is in a situation where they can’t leave, I’m not suggesting everybody just like, okay, I’m out of here, right? People have children, and sometimes there are financial concerns and religious aspects. There are so many reasons why a person may not just be able to say, I’m going to get up and leave this.

Again, as a disclaimer, I’d like to say first and foremost, it’s trying to heal and repair your relationship with your partner, right? Relationships take effort. I think sometimes people think that everything is just supposed to be really rosy without effort. They really do take effort. So, of course, that is always the first recommendation. However, if that’s not possible, it’s almost a similar situation to living in mold, for example. When you’re in a mold, a situation, a home that has a mold issue, and you’re being affected and you’re being exposed to this toxin, well, you can’t mineral balance your way out of that toxic environment. You can’t do mineral balancing and go, well, it’s okay now for me to stay here in this toxic environment. It’s better for a person to be on the program for sure, because it’s supporting them right where they’re at.

But there’s still going to be that constant toxic stress that’s affecting them on a daily basis. So just like we say with mold, look, you’ve got to really look at that and remediate, or you’ve got to find a different situation because every day that you stay there, it’s affecting you physically, emotionally. It’s the same with unhealthy relationships. If you’re in that position, mineral balancing can help. But what’s so fascinating to me, over the number of years that I’ve been doing this work, I’ve actually worked with a number of couples. Now, the majority of my clients are women who have been in unhealthy relationships, and they’ve known that. And of course, as a practitioner, it’s not my place to push or to say, hey, you know, we just talk about the stress patterns.

I allow them to tell me where they think they may be originating from because they know their own bodies best. But I cannot tell you how many times I have seen this happen where there has been the calcium shell, lower adrenal function, and not detoxing. Well, and it’s not that they’re not making progress on the program in their situation. But it’s kind of a small shift. And you can see that the body is still in this holding pattern. When the person has made the decision to leave that situation and leave that relationship, oh my gosh, I just had one client a couple of weeks ago, and everything is coming out like she’s just unbelievable. It’s unbelievable how much after these, I think it’s been three years that she’s been on the program, and now, leaving that situation, her body is just relaxed.

It’s just it’s all coming out right. Everything that she was hanging on to. And another interesting thing about toxic metals in that capacity. We talk about this on the program too, that toxic metals serve a purpose in kind of toughening us up. We talk about putting on this suit of armor. And so when we go through stress, even somebody who’s detoxing really well, and then they have a stressful period, sometimes we see the metals drop, and it actually is called an armoring up pattern like, no, I need this. It’s like putting on my suit of armor. It’s kind of making me tougher and protecting me. And so for healing, wow, it’s just so powerful to see that when the nervous system starts to relax and that safety is there, that people really start to shift and heal and change their patterns.

They’re finally able to let go of them. So it’s quite phenomenal. I just don’t think it’s necessarily talked about enough. So I’m really happy that we’re having this discussion today.

Ads 42:37

And now a word from one of our sponsors. Like many of you guys, I’m trying to eat super, super healthy, and that’s why I love really good quality olive oil. And by good I mean fresh. Olive oil packs some of the most flavorful and healthiest nutrients like antioxidants when it’s fresh from the farm. That’s the problem with store-bought olive oil. They’re not fresh. They can sit on the shelves for months, growing stale and losing that antioxidant punch. That’s why I get my olive oils directly from small award-winning farms, thanks to a fellow named TJ Robinson, who’s also known as the olive oil hunter.

So when I tasted TJ’s farm fresh olive oil, I fell in love with the vibrant grassy flavors. They’re incredible on salad, veggies, pasta, meat, fish, you name it. I use it on everything. Everything I cook, I’m using this olive oil. As an introduction to his fresh-pressed olive oil club, TJ is willing to send you a $39 full-size bottle of olive oil for only $. It’s one of the world’s finest artisanal olive oils. It’s fresh from the new harvest, and it’s just $1 to help ’em cover the shipping. There’s no commitment to buy anything now, or ever. Get your free $39 bottle for just $1 shipping and taste the difference that freshness makes. Just go to getfreshwendy.com to take advantage of this offer and get a full-sized $39 bottle for just $1.

Dr. Wendy Myers

I was surprised too that my calcium shell came down and disappeared, and disintegrated right after I left my relationship also. But I also love how your body releases fat as well. Your body will hold on to fat, which is like an energetic barrier to a spouse. That’s maybe giving it a lot of negative energy, or emotional or verbal abuse, or what have you. You can really put on a suit of armor as well, with your weight as well.

Susan Cachay

That’s a great point. And the end part of that is oftentimes the oxidation rate will slow. At that rate, the body starts to slow down, almost like hibernating. I would liken it to hibernating when we’re stressed and we’re trying to shelter in some way or get some shelter for ourselves. We downregulate everything, and not only detoxification, but our oxidation rate metabolism starts to kind of slow.

Dr. Wendy Myers

When you have poor adrenal function, your oxidation rate slows as well. That it’s essentially your metabolism, and your thyroid is low functioning. You can see that in me as well. So it’s really interesting how all these things tie in and show on a hair mineral analysis. You can get a lot of information from a hair metal analysis from someone who’s properly trained on how to read it. A lot of people don’t know how to read it or they don’t know anything about it. They don’t realize there’s a lot of science behind it, and it’s used in a lot of different sciences and in a lot of different disciplines as well, not just for health.

Is there anything else you want to come out of this conversation about emotional relationships and stress, resilience, or anything related to hormonal analysis?

Susan Cachay

I just wanted to reiterate that a lot of practitioners, just like you were saying, often misinterpret mineral patterns on a tumor as being isolated nutritional issues, rather than looking at adaptations to lived experiences. That is so important when doing this work, and it’s really showing how the nervous system is organized and what the metabolism is doing in response to perceived safety or threat. The flip side is also true when you’re in a really loving, respectful relationship that actually calms your nervous system and can actually facilitate and increase healing and metal dumping. We’ve talked about some of the negatives, but when I see families that are just really cohesive and respectful energetically, they help each other, and everybody shifts just even faster.

It’s really miraculous. It’s really something to see. But chronic relationship stress definitely turns on that survival system and we can get stuck there. So if you’re an HTMA practitioner and you’d like to learn more about that, I run a program called HTMA Success for Practitioner Training. You can reach out to me. My website is htmasuccess.com. I also work with clients in my own practice. I think this shift of being able to read actually what is showing on an individual to me at a little bit of a deeper level is just so important and so helpful for people’s healing.  Oftentimes, it gets them over that hump. They’re like, I don’t know why this isn’t working for me. And often that is the missing piece.

Dr. Wendy Myers

I love hormonal analysis. I’ve been doing it personally for 15 years, and I’ve done it with thousands of clients.  I just think it’s such an amazing tool. The more I learned about it over the years, the more I realized what a great screening tool it is and what a great tool it is to help people with this very basic foundational thing in health, which is our minerals. You can shift so much in your physical and mental health and improve your health so much just by balancing your minerals and facilitating detoxification because a lot of people are not able to detox if they don’t have the proper levels of minerals and the balance of minerals as well.

The body is just not going to let metals release when it’s using them because it doesn’t have minerals. It needs to do those jobs. One of the main aspects of detoxification is simply taking minerals. You can’t just go in and rip the metals out, taking key layers or taking substances that pull the metals out now, or doing an infrared sauna just on its own, which is great, but you’re just not going to get the same results. The deep detoxification that you can get, the deep bone detoxification, and the storage in the organs and in the brain, you’re not going to go deep unless you are replenishing your minerals. And so that’s why using an HTMA as a guide is so important.

Ads 49:20

 

For anyone listening who really wants to detox their body, go to heavymetalsquiz.com. I created a quiz for you. It only takes a couple of seconds and it’s based on some lifestyle questions. You can get your toxicity score and get a free video series that answers all of your frequently asked questions about how to detox your body. Check it out at heavymetalsquiz.com 

Susan Cachay

You’ve said it well, Wendy

Dr. Wendy Myers

Yes, I wanted to close with that. I wanted to close with that. Susan again, thanks so much for coming on the Myers Detox Podcast. I love having practitioners like yourself come on and just talk about the importance of mineral analysis, one of my first loves. So check out her website if you want to become a practitioner, or if you want to learn more about minerals at htmasuccess.com. You can also work with Susan as well if you want to detox. 

Thanks for tuning in. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers, and I love bringing these health experts around the world to give you those missing pieces of the puzzle that you’re looking for in your health, that you may not be getting at your conventional doctor. That’s why I do this show. I really want to shine a light on the missing info you’re not getting from your conventional medical doctor. I really want you to find the underlying root causes of your health issues by looking at detoxification, emotional trauma, and using bioenergetics, nutrition, and these things that are just largely not talked about in the conventional sphere. So thanks for tuning in and I’ll see you guys next week.

Disclaimer

The Myers Detox Podcast is created and hosted by Wendy Myers. This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast, including Wendy Myers and the producers, disclaims responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. The opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.

Keep in Touch

Let me give you the latest, most inspiring health tools available.