Welcome to the Own Your Health podcast.
I'm Cyndi Lynne, and I can't wait to
help you step into your health power.
I want to share today,
I get asked very, very frequently one common question,
and that is, what do you think about....
And then fill in the blank.
And I get asked, what do you think about
randomly from family members and from clients and just
from all kinds of people I work with.
And they ask about everything.
What do you think about supplements?
What do you think vitamin D?
What do you think about this ozempic stuff?
What do you think about Crossfit?
What do you think about acupressure or chiropractic?
Or what do you think about statins?
And my answer is always the same.
And that is, it depends.
I'm sure this is really frustrating for folks because
they, I know that they look at me and
they think, okay, you coach people on their health,
you help people manage
through really complex diagnoses.
Why can't you just answer a simple question
like, what do you think about these things?
But I discourage my clients from asking that.
And the ones who I've been working with
for a while, I'll even call them out
and say, what was that question again?
Because you don't really want to ask even any
expert on what do you think about. Including me!
So why would anyone work with me if I won't
answer that question about what do I think about?
Well, it's because one of the foundations of
owning your health is asking better questions.
And I would much rather have my clients
have my friends, have family members ask, how
do you think about this new thing?
How do you analyze, how do you work
through these things when something new comes out?
Because that's a much more empowering situation.
You know, you don't want to be in
a position where you have to just take
what anybody, including me, says at face value.
I want the people I work with,
I want all of you to ask better questions
so that you're empowered to get the information, so
that then you can think about it.
And so you learn how to pick things apart, how to
read a study, how to really kind of analyze anything.
So if you ask, what do you think?
You get an opinion, and that's kind of the end of it.
Although with some people, you get a
whole lot more than just an opinion.
But ask, how do you think about this?
And this stems also from many folks who, and I
take it as an absolute compliment, say to me, oh,
my gosh, I wish I had all your experience.
I wish I knew all the stuff you know, about supplements or
I wish I knew all of the stuff that you know about...
And I say I wish I knew all this stuff about that.
And guess what?
Nobody does.
The experts, the people who are truly good teachers, are
the ones who learn how and know how to look
at things, know how to think about things.
And that's true of anyone from
a master gardener to a surgeon.
I mean, just absolutely anyone.
So in upcoming episodes, I've decided to kind of tackle
some the top what do you think about questions and
answer them in how do you best think about.
And so just if you're confused still about the differentiation,
let me give you a little bit of an example.
So when somebody says what do you think about supplements,
and first of all, that's an extremely broad
question because there's really good supplements, there's really
bad supplements quality wise, there's very good supplements
for specific individuals with specific problems, and other
supplements would be very bad for them.
There are supplements, you know, and very often it depends
what your goals are and what your sense of risk
is and what your risk benefit analysis is.
So, for example, vitamin D is a real common one.
What do you think about vitamin D?
Well, I can tell you pretty much most of us
who live up in North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin kind of
band, are probably going to be low on vitamin D.
Now vitamin D is quick.
It's easy to check.
Physicians often don't do it.
And my personal opinion is they don't bother to do
it because they don't understand the true value of it.
And they don't have a prescription they can
write for it, and they're not even really
sure how to tell you to correct it.
Because the way we get vitamin D naturally is time in
the sun. And we've been taught to be so afraid
of the sun that that has really increased the problem
of very low levels of vitamin D.
And we saw that, we saw the
devastating effects of low vitamin D levels
all through the recent health pandemic.
So when somebody asks, what about that?
You know, do you think about vitamin D supplements?
Well, if you fall into a certain category or if you
have low vitamin D, and by the way, say it's a
cheap and easy test, I can put a link in the
show notes where you can go online, order a kit, put
blood droplets on an envelope and send it back and find
out what your vitamin D level is.
Now, when I think about these things, when I think
about supplementing anything, and this is, we're talking about vitamin
D now, I also say to myself, okay, what other
things are involved in the body using vitamin D.
And it's also important to supplement the
cofactors like vitamin K2 and magnesium.
And at that point, a lot of folks get a
little bit overwhelmed or a lot overwhelmed, and then they
just want an answer, how much should I take?
What do I have to take with it?
And that's where, for my clients, I push back
a little bit and say, I'll help you through
this, but we're going to think through this together.
So you know how to look at this the next
time, or how you need to make adjustments based on
future test results so that it's not another dependency.
Like so many people are dependent upon their doctor to
draw their blood and tell them what it says and
then tell them why they don't feel well, even if
everything says it's normal, and then tell them what to
do about it and then write a prescription.
We want to get out of that loop
if we want to own our health.
So you can test your vitamin D,
you can, you can play the odds.
And if you live in these northern states and northern
climates, if you don't get out in the sun, if
you're absolutely covered up all the time, if you're always
indoors, vitamin D is actually very safe.
There's very little risk for the potential benefit.
There's very little financial risk because
vitamin D, K2, magnesium, are
all relatively inexpensive to take.
And so we look at risk benefit, we look at,
what else goes into supplementing something like vitamin D?
And we look at what our goals are, and we apply
the same process to anything that we want to take on.
So when somebody asks about acupuncture, all right, I'm
not an expert in acupuncture, but how I would
think about it if that was something I was
seeking, would be, okay, what have I done?
What do I expect this to do for me?
What do I know about it?
And then I would use all of the skills that
I've used in the past to select a good practitioner.
You know, I'd meet with somebody, I'd talk
with them, I'd understand their philosophy of care.
I'd understand what they believe that
acupuncture can and cannot do.
And then I make my assessment, and I
may try multiple sessions and then reevaluate, and
I may look at what is benefit.
I get what is the potential cost, financially
or time wise, or other health risks.
And so we could go through these for every single item
on what I listed and give you this one off information.
But I think it would be more helpful to do just
the ten minute blurb on some of the most popular questions
that I get asking what do you think about...
And instead saying, okay, how can you think about this
if this is something that you are considering and that
way you'll be empowered to go out, get the information
you need to make the decision that's right for you,
that's right for your body, for your time, for where
you are in health journey, for your financial situation,
because face it, that's, that is a consideration.
You know, there's the, you know, so many of the so
called experts have all of these recommendations that would simply be
cost prohibitive for most of us to do everything all the
time and to own all of the equipment and own and
to purchase and to be and to go and to sign
up for and you know, there isn't enough hours in the
day to do all of the things.
So you need to develop the tools to help
you decide what's the best use of all of
your resources, especially your time and your health.
So going forward, that's what I'm going to do.
Now, if this is a question that you've asked of your
experts or if this is a question, you know, if this
type of what do you think about question is something that
you talk about with you and your friends, go ahead and
share this podcast and have them subscribe and they'll get the
how do you think abouts for probably my top ten questions,
I haven't even, I haven't sorted through all of them yet,
so I don't know exactly how many they're going to be,
but this will be a little mini series.
So again, subscribe so you don't miss them upcoming.
And if you like it, please rate it.
It's very helpful in me reaching others
with this, with this important material.
So until next week, check out the show notes.
Go ahead and grab a vitamin D test.
If that's something that's interesting to you,
if that's something that's been one of
your one, what do you think about?
Go ahead, grab a test.
It's quick, it's easy, and it's
empowering because it gives you information.
So until next week, until our next, ask me how,
take care of yourself and go out and own it.
