Latest / Your Thoughts Your Reality / Empowering Veteran Renewal: Stephan Beardwood's Journey Through Adversity, Music, and Community Healing

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Empowering Veteran Renewal: Stephan Beardwood's Journey Through Adversity, Music, and Community Healing · Your Thoughts Your Reality

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to your Thoughts, your Reality with Michael Cole, the podcast that shines a compassionate light on the journey of veterans battling through life's challenges.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Michael is a dual elite certified neuro encoding specialist in coaching and keynote training presentations dedicated to guiding military veterans as they navigate the intricate pathways of post-deployment life.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Join him as we delve into the profound realm of neuroencoding science, empowering these brave individuals to conquer universal battles procrastination, self-doubt, fear and more.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Together, let's uncover the strength within you to re-engage with families and society, forging a new path forward.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Hello, hello, hello everybody.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: So today I have a special guest, super excited.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: We have Stephan Beardwood 17 years of military experience, including seven as an airborne commando and medic.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: He's a co-founder we're going to talk about this Super excited and chair of Veterans House Alliance international, an organization dedicated to helping veterans and supporting them.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Uh, stephen is also Stefan, sorry, it is also a talent.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: I'm going to I I I'm going to have that every once in a while.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Um, stefan is a talented musician, as you can see all the cool stuff back there.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: We've been talking for about 15 minutes now just about music and stuff, using his art to connect and inspire others.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: His mission is to accomplish what others fail to achieve, which I love.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: That man Offering innovative insights into veterans' well-being, and we're going to dive into his upcoming book, instinctive Measures, and the documentary about TURN.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: So super excited to have you on.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: We'll stop talking about playing banjo and mandolin and stuff and we'll get into it.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: Talk about that all day.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: This just won't get to the other stuff, that's all Right.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: So any veteran musicians stay on, everybody else Just go off.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: That's playing, that's playing.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: So why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself?
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: What's there to tell really?
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm just someone who decided I wanted to do something.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: I was going to accomplish it.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: I kind of noticed things when I was younger.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: I joined the military when I was 17, out of high school, initially just as a reservist, but I noticed almost right away I was really good at it.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: I started getting top candidates on all the courses you know.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: And then I did this exercise up in Petawawa.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: It was a joint exercise with the regular force and I got tasked with airborne at that time along with a number of the people that I was serving with, and of course we all came back going oh, got to go airborne, got to go airborne, right, no one actioned it.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: No one right.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: It's like, why aren't they actioning it?
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: It's like I'm going to die if I stay here Bye, going to fulfill the dream.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I guess I'm a dreamer and I just I take action, I commit actions.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: I'm not.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: I'm not a fan of awareness programs because all they do is show that oh look, everyone's now aware that there's a problem.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: No one has a plan to solve it, you know.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that stuff and because you know I, and it's something that I coach and train on all the time and use it myself.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I don't coach theory.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: You can have all the knowledge in the world, but what good does it do unless you take that first step which leads to the next one and creating that roadmap?
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: And that's something that we learned through the military Hesitation kills.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: You have to make a decision.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be the right decision, but it has to be a decision.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: Your next decision, if you made a wrong one, will probably correct your power, of course, very fast and hopefully you won't pay too dear a price for the wrong decision.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: But that's the reason we train is so that you can make those wrong decisions in training and then do the exercise again and have success Absolutely, go ahead.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: No.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: Then do the exercise again and have success Absolutely and go ahead.
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: No.
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: I'm just saying it's the same principles in dealing with health and recovery.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, and I you know, a two degree turn.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: 2% turn um literally changes that trajectory of your entire life, whether you're in the military and you're you know, like you were talking about or transitioning out, or it's been out for 20 years, whatever the case may be, when you make that decision and take that action, 2% takes you to a whole different place in a week, a month, a year, 10 years, that you can make those dreams come true, which I think is super important.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a hundred percent.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, awesome, awesome.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: No-transcript.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: There's some Facebook groups Get involved in our community and be part of it, so I just wanted to mention that really quick.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: So, stephan, you ready to get going?
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: I'm ready to get going.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: So about the banjo?
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: I'm just joking.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: What's your wife?
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: So can you share some of your experiences as an airborne commando and a medic that shaped your understanding and challenges veterans face during the transition to civilian life and after.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, being in the Canadian military makes you an expert on adversity.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: Ok, if you're not paying attention to what's going on in Canada right now, you need to go online and look it up.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: There is no equipment, there is no money.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: It is a complete agenda.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: It's all about the individual.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: It's nothing more about teamwork or fighting as a team to go into battle.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: It's gone.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: So the military I knew no longer exists.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: But the military I knew, and even the one that does exist now, are still experts in teaching you all about adversity, because that's what you're going to face when you join it, especially in Canada.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: And then when you deploy, we deploy without sufficient equipment.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: So, for example, when I deployed in 92 uh into somalia, um, we had brand new vehicles but we had no replacement parts.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: So when we hit the landmines we had to keep parts from those vehicles to use for the next one.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: You know we couldn't commit to aid to the locals because we had enough medical stuff supply for 72 hours and that's all we had for the first month or more, and we would not get our resupply for over a month because we couldn't get it in Right.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: So if we committed that aid and we got hit, we couldn't, you know we couldn't support ourselves, right, yeah, right.
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: So all of these things you know you.
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: You start learning how to do things on the fly, how to overcome adversity.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: Right, because you always have to.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: You still have a job to do and you have.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: You have to come up with a solution.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: Absolutely when, when you release and you're no longer functioning as a human being, like I was and I mean I was completely non-functioning.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: I was locked away in a psych ward for over six months.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: Um, I was poisoned with a neurotoxicant which is mefloquine.
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: Um, that is a anti-malarial drug, and of course we knew nothing about it at the time.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: So they decided I had post-traumatic stress disorder and that my hallucinations and everything was all from.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: You know, from what I saw, right, but what I saw was nothing compared to what I experienced when I worked ambulance or you know anything else.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: You know, like, in training, there's nothing to watch around.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: Bounce three inches from my face, we're doing a life assault, that's what got paid for.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: So if I watched around bounce three inches from my carrier, that's not going to give me post-medic stress disorder.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: So these are the kind of things.
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: So the biggest struggle once again was this adversity that the military placed upon us by not telling us about the drug, by misdiagnosing us, uh.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: And then they gave me a drug.
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: Um, it was anti-depressant, ssri, and it stated clearly in it do not use with mapliquin or 0.9 based drugs.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: Right and uh, you know, a couple weeks later I was uh, without a relationship, all my kids were gone and I was locked up for six months.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Got it, you got it.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: So the adversity that you, you know let's call it a skill that you, you know have now because of a lot of that and of course, I'm sure you've enhanced your skills and you know being on the right track and so on, so how has that affected?
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, you do a lot for military veterans and thank you so much.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: How is that adversity kind of affected?
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: Or in a good way, obviously, since you've been on the right track and the things that you're doing now, what does that really taught you?
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's just conditioned, or are there more skill sets that you've added to that, I guess, as time went on?
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so one of the first things I had to accept and it took 20 years.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: Had someone been there, I probably could have learned a lot faster.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, with a lot faster, yeah, yeah.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: With a lot less loss, yeah, and I think we can all say that, right, yeah, we can all go back.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: I was literally talking to somebody yesterday if we can just take a second, sure, we literally were talking about yesterday and I say this, and we hear this constantly man, if I would have known that 20 years ago, where would I be now?
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: But here's the thing is, where we are now is where we're supposed to be.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: That's right, because if something changed and we had, you know, back to the future, michael J Fox, and you know we went back in time and did all that stuff, how would life be different, potentially for the people that we're helping?
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: Well, we spoke briefly about what's going on right in my life just before we got on, so I'm going to bring that up in just a second because I think it answers what you just spoke on.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: Before I speak on that, the first thing I had to learn was that my personality who I was had been amputated Right, and no amount of drug was ever going to provide a new personality, right true yeah, right, yeah, I had to rebuild that from scratch, and so one of the analogies I use is how do you, how long does it take to grow a brain right?
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: the answer is usually about nine months before it can sustain itself.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: Right, and even then it requires a lot of assistance from an external source for a number of years, right.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: And then when we get a little bit bigger, we start being able to wear pants.
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: Then we try to put them on, and I have a great memory of a picture of my brother Kirk.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: I love telling the story because it's an embarrassment to him Underwear on one leg and his shorts on the other, and he's quite proud of himself because he accomplished it.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: He successfully got his leg into his underwear and his pants right, and within a few days to a week he managed to do both correctly.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: But even then, you know, mom still had to tell him you know, you're not wearing that one today, but change your underwear, man, holy jeez, kurt.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: You know like these are the things that we.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: We need someone doing this for us, right?
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: We should never enter into recovery, uh, or trauma or healing alone.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: First right set.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: So the first thing we have to have is is the knowledge that we've we're amputated right.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: It may be physical, especially if it's a mental health, but the skill you had before you no longer have it doesn't mean you can't rebuild it.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: It may not be the same, it could be better.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: Most of my skills are much better today than what I had before.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: Had I not gone through that, I would not be in the situation where I am today, where I am getting help for my wife.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: She's in hospital right now, diagnosed with stage four cancer.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: Her liver is about four times the normal size and within 24 hours I have more assistance coming at me than most people will ever have in a lifetime.
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: It's amazing, and that's because I had connected to a network.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, change the subject.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: Take your time, stefan, seriously take your time.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: So you know, when you told me this, this, I literally got chills, and I'm not talking about just on one arm, I mean like my whole body, you know it's.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: It's amazing when you're out there doing good um, you know with with veterans house alliance international and the things you're doing and the connections, the network that you, you've created and I was having this aha moment the other day, just like, just like you, right, it's wow, you know we're out was having this aha moment the other day, just like you, right, it's wow.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: You know we're out here helping people and doing the right thing and being there for other people, and it's amazing the blessings that come to us even in the worst times.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: If you really truly are in need of help or want help, then start helping others, because that's how you get help.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Amen, amen, yeah.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: So thank you for being vulnerable always, man, and having this conversation, because it's not an easy one, and I appreciate you doing it Well, that was the second lesson I learned If you want to recover, you have to be in a position of vulnerability because you have to accept help.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: You cannot do it alone, right?
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you can understand the concept that a person who's had a leg amputated right is given a pair of crutches, a tourniquet and a painkiller by a doctor and told to go run a marathon Right, and most people would go, you know.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: Or the baby is crying, right, uncontrollable right.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: Most people would pick it up, comfort it, feed it, change its diaper, you know, nurture it.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: Um, the other solution, of course, is you could always put a band-aid on the baby's mouth and you won't have to listen to it cry anymore either.
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: Right, and that's essentially what we're doing, right.
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: So when we make ourselves vulnerable and ask for help through networking, people who have got the experience, who have gone through the failures, can speed up our learning curve, who have gone through the failures can speed up our learning curve, right.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: So yesterday I was having a conversation with the oncologist and I have zero faith and zero trust in the medical system up here in Canada.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: I've been damaged by it far too many times and they're just a group of narcissists, so you can imagine, I was biting my tongue a lot having this conversation, but I did ask a couple key things, and one of the things I asked the doctor was I said what's your position on cannabis?
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: And she said I'm in full support of it.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: If you want to do that, I will back back you 100, and I was not quite ready for that.
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: And so then we did talk about it a little bit and what we did is, uh, you know, I said you know, like I, I don't want you to not know what we're doing and I don't want to not know what you're doing.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: So I put down everything that we're going to give and all I did, you know, went off the documentaries there that Kim Sultary had done on cannabis, and so, and actually Kim, who's doing the production about TURN, he's said he's one of the people sending me a package and helping me to connect with who I need to be connected to and helping me to connect with who I need to be connected to.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: So yeah, and so I know that she's going to get the right types of cannabis and that kind of stuff, and you know.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: So I was talking to the doctor and it was a very brief conversation I'm going to get right down exactly what I'm giving her, when she's getting it, how she's getting it right, and then your staff can report that she received it.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: And I already know that they are not going to do any treatment because their first word where she is terminal.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: So if my wife is alive to be on your podcast in a few weeks time and in feeling much better, or even if a couple of months time, it will be because of that network, not because of the oncologist.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: Well, I will give the oncologist credit for backing us.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, and that's great that the communication is open.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's super important.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: You know, regardless of you know past and or future if you will, but if that communication is open and I think this goes with anything in life is that communication is open, it's always going to be better period.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it was the third thing I learned as well.
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: Like I said, everything connects right.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: It does.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: It's amazing.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: You have to have an open conversation.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: If you don't talk openly, then you're screwed.
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: So, even though I will never, ever go go to another therapy again ever in my life, you know, I mean like no way, that's, that's my position, like I, I'm just I'm digging into that trench, by the way, all right, um, yet um two years ago I had I tried psilocybin through one of my wellness camps and within about a half hour to an hour, I was feeling something.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: I thought, oh my God, this is normal, I'm feeling normal.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: I remember this feeling.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: It's been 30 years.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: How is it normal, right?
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: So this is the you know.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, and I then had to come home and then I had to figure out what my dose is going to be.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: So I had to run an experiment on my own at home, and I didn't want to do that without supports in place because of the high likelihood that I could have a very serious hallucination.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: Of course, yeah and especially yeah.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to go into that, but I think it's super important.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: I'd love to talk to you more.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: You know off off camera about some of this stuff.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah absolutely.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: There's some amazing, amazing, amazing research results and things that are coming out.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: You know about these things, so fantastic.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: Well, I have no doubt psilocybin will be licensed for use in Canada within two to four years probably.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: They just opened a clinic, a research clinic, next door to us in Kingston, so that's how fast it's moving.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: The only problem I see is, if they don't roll it out properly, there's not going to be any quality control, and that's what they did with marijuana up here too.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: So now, if you want quality controlled marijuana, you have to go through a medical dispensary, because that's the only place you're going to get quality, unless you make it your own, your own right right yeah, and I think it's super important um with with all of it to uh have that so um fantastic but what?
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: What I was getting at?
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: We got a little bit off topic, but it's still related.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Okay, it's an organic conversation, like I said.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's still about psilocybin, right, yeah, so I had to run this experiment.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: I've already been in a position where I took the wrong strain of cannabis and I was out of my mind for six hours in the middle of the night.
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: And strain of cannabis and I was out of my mind for six hours in the middle of the night, uh, and you know, and my wife couldn't do anything and she was like just beside herself and I have no memory of it, you know.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: So I don't need that kind of repeat.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: So I went to a therapist.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: Uh, you know, um, and the only difference was I was the person in control in the office.
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: So when I sat down in the chair and the therapist asked me what I wanted to accomplish, I looked at her, or what I hope to accomplish through this.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: I said absolutely nothing.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: I said I'm here for you, I'm here because I need you as a security backup in case I screw up.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: And she kind of like what are you doing?
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: I'm going to start dosing mushrooms.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: What are you doing?
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: I'm going to start dosing mushrooms to see if it will help me help improve my ability to concentrate and, you know, sleep and all this other good stuff.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: And so over the next several weeks her and I talked on a weekly basis and she learned a lot about cannabis and and mushrooms and she her practice is now going in a whole new direction.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and she's, I know.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: I know that, um, she I'll never use her name, but I know she's trying mushrooms herself, so that she knows what it's like.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: You know, uh, and you know, it's just like you have to go very slow and you have to be deliberate on what you do and you have to have security in place, and so you have to have a team, but you have to pick your team extremely smartly.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: You know, like that oncologist with my wife, I would pick her because she's smart enough to listen and to look at something more than just what's licensed, and to look at something more than just what's licensed.
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, whereas, you know, my family doctor didn't even do a proper exam on my wife's abdomen a week ago, which is why she ended up having to go in in an emergency.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: So my family doctor I don't have.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: You know, it's like I only go in there to tell him what I want and then I leave.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: You have to have the people around you.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: That again, that communication and that trust, has to be there.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: I've struggled in the United States with some of that too.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to get into all of it right now, but I do have some good I that I believe in and stuff around you know I was able to find a nephrologist.
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: Um, because I have atypical type 2 diabetes.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: My insulin levels are normal, so my sugar should be normal too, but it's not.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: It's always high, and it's always high at one time of year only interesting right, I didn't realize that was an issue.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: No, it didn't even get the doctors.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: Oh, they're treating me like a type 2 diabetic.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: I was on insulin.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: I almost died on insulin.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: That's when I figured out the diet change.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: That was number four, by the way.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: It was change your diet, and that was you know.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: Number four, by the way, was change your diet, because I don't know how anyone can expect to heal from anything if they are still poisoning themselves with food starch and sugar, absolutely.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about this because I know this is something really important to you.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: So, as far as diet and nutrition to improve mental and physical health for veterans and so on, what are some tips and thoughts there?
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: We've got about five minutes left and I do want to talk about Veterans House Alliance more as well.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really simple Stop eating crap.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: If it's processed, if someone else has put it together, don't eat it.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: If it's got starch and sugar in it, don't eat it.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: Quinoa has got tons of starch in it.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: It's a green.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: Don't eat grains Right.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: Don't eat potatoes.
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: Don't eat sweet potatoes.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: Don't eat bananas.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: Don't eat fruit Right.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: If you want some fruit, have a small piece of fruit, right, but don't eat fruit.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: Like.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: I see these people doing the smoothies all the time.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: It's like crazy.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: Right, eat fruit.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: I see these people doing the smoothies all the time.
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: It's like crazy.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: So what is the issue with fruit?
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: So?
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: the issue with fruit is that fruit contains sugar.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: All sugar has to be converted and stored as fat before it can be burned.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: Got it?
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: And all starch is equal and converts to sugar and then into fat.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: So for every tablespoon of starch, you're getting a tablespoon of sugar, right?
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: So the big key is, you know, eliminate those things.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: And now you've stopped putting poison into your body, right?
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: So if a glass is in the sink, the water is dripping.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: Eventually it's going to overflow.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: Turn the tap off it'll dry up and be empty, right, and it will never fill again.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: Turn the tap off it'll dry up and be empty, right, and it will never fill again.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: And with weight loss.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Of course, when you don't have the sugars, your body starts to use.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: Let's stress, your body starts processing things, right.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and then you know the plant-based approach to healing.
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: You do not need to be stoned and high and smoking 24 and seven.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: You know you need THC, but you can take that at night when you go to bed.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: You'll get tired and you go to sleep right.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: That's your indication that it's time to go to sleep.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: Right, when you get tired after taking your THC.
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: But you can take a CBD with small trace amounts of THC during the day and not be high, right, and it'll reduce that inflammation and it helps the body heal the systems that actually heal the body.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: Right, because the reason we get sick is because we damaged the system that heals us, and that's what we have to repair it first, and it can only be repaired with food yeah, and you know I I'm a big believer in most diseases um can be prevented and or eliminated with proper nutrition.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: That's right get rid of those sugars, the inflammation, all that stuff starts going away you know, my wife had been taking cbd for the past year but she stopped Got it.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: Got it Right Because she'd been having problems, right.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: But when she stopped, that's when things escalated.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: If we'd known then we would have increased what she was getting.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: I didn't realize there was a correlation between those Interesting I always, and it's my ignorance to it to be honest.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: I always associated the use of cannabis and so forth, for especially people with chemo and to help with appetite and those kinds of things.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: Cannabis can cure up to 80% of cancers.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Interesting when we're off screen or, you know, when you have a chance.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: Send me some info on that.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: I'd like to I'll send you Kim's documentaries Um, like they're.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: They're just amazing.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: They really are.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, um, jack's garage is one of them.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: Um, these are guys who just you know they, you know risk jail, um, uh, to get healthy right, because you know they risk jail to get healthy right, because the system wanted to punish them for not participating in the for-profit system model you know from.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure this is an exact amount, but I think the actual success on chemo is only roughly 33% from a lot of cancers you know.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: so, yeah, thanks for sharing, thanks for sharing this, and you know everybody here do your own research, you know.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: Look, that's why you know I always want to learn more and I think you know, in five years, 10 years from now, all this research that's just starting to come out or just being done, it's going to, it's really going to be a different game out there Now that everyone's not watching TV anymore and they're watching podcasts instead.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: The information is going to explode.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: I think we're about to have an information explosion I'm right there with you.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: Let's do it.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: So, um, we only got a couple minutes left.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: I'll talk about um internet veterans house alliance international.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: What are you guys doing?
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: What do you guys do?
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: so what we do is we partner with for-profit corporations to fund not-for-profit programs for veterans.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: So a couple of the partnerships as an example, veterans for Healing is a medical grow-up for cannabis.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: It sells through Aqualetus, but it also pays for a doctor's offices in Sydney, nova Scotia, where veterans can go and have absolutely anything that they need assessed and help with, including getting pensions and prescriptions and whatever housing even you know what I mean or that kind of stuff.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: They also through that.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: We run wellness camps.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: That's where I was supposed to be heading on Thursday.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: Obviously, I can't go to this year's wellness camp, but I will be there in spirit.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: The good news is the wellness camp is coming to me.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: And then we also partnered with the Disability Channel another fine example.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: There we are retraining veterans into media.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: We are training a crew right now.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: They will be going out to the Invictus Games next year and covering the Invictus Games as veterans and we're also working on.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: Well, we have a couple of different programs that we'll be doing through the Disability Channel, which is to start reaching more veterans and non-veterans and start getting changes in dietary beliefs and in health beliefs, that kind of stuff right.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: So we're doing shows based on that stuff, and so there's one which is just veteran and then there's two more which include veterans.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: Awesome, absolutely fantastic.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you for what you're doing out there.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: I truly, truly mean that it's important to just get all that information out.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: And you know, and again you know, we're not a medical podcast.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: We're not.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: You know, these are all just people talking and going through things, so do your research.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: This is your body doing itself.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Amen, so really quick.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: How do people reach you?
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: Info at veteranshouseca or our website, wwwveteranshouseca.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: There is a Veterans House Canada.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: That is not us.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: We are Veterans House Alliance International.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: We don't have our new website coming up and actually it's a small funny story we granted the name Veterans House Candidates to the other organization.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, love it, love it and I love my wife just popped up.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: Do your own research, figure out what's right for you, but keep an open mind.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: Amen, because that's the important part.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, thank you, my beautiful wife.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: I almost said thank you beautiful, but I didn't.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: You know you're a good looking guy, stephan, but I didn't want any miscommunication there.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: I still couldn't.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: It was me, amen man.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: So if we can really quick, three tips to get veterans and their families further faster.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: Don't ever disconnect when you leave the military.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: Stay connected, yeah.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: If you have disconnected, reconnect immediately.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah right, and have the difficult, uncomfortable conversations.
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: If you are having a conversation and you're in full agreement, like we are, um, you're not being productive.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: You need to have someone who's in disagreements so you can understand why.
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: So I had an air force guy.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: He was left and they come and I was this right and him and I would have coffee every morning and the wives would say, oh, you're fighting again.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: It's like no, we're just happy we're.
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: We actually enjoy each other's company, we're having conversations and we learned more.
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: Enjoy each other's company.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: We're having conversations and we learn more from each other.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: That's how you learn.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: You don't learn from things being perfect and success unless you analyze the success.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: You learn from your failures.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: You learn from some of that conflict.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: If you're in the right mindset to do that, if you're willing to, you have to be willing to, absolutely man.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: Someone's wife told me that just you have to be willing to.
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: Absolutely man.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: Someone's wife told me that just a little while ago.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Fantastic man, thank you for being on the show.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Of course, time is the most precious resource we have as human beings.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Thank you for spending this time.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: I know you've got a lot going on in your life and I'm honored, honestly, that you spent the time.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Man, I truly, truly am, so thank you.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: My pleasure, thank you.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: All right, guys, and on that note, we are out of here.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Bye, everybody.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on another insightful journey of your thoughts your reality podcast with your host, michael Cole.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: We hope the conversation sparked some thoughts that resonate with you.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: To dive deeper into empowering your thoughts and enhancing your reality, visit empowerperformancestrategiescom.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Remember your thoughts shape your reality, so make them count.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Until next time, stay inspired and keep creating the reality you desire.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Catch you on the next episode.