Improving Performance through Wellness with Bruce Scheer and Gloria Treister

Bruce Scheer: Welcome to the ValuePros Show where value pros get value ready. Hi. My name is Bruce Scheer, and I'm the host of the ValuePros Show. In this episode, we're talking with Gloria Treister, a board certified holistic health practitioner, award winning entrepreneur, and author of wellness 101, simple steps to good health. Gloria is a nationally recognized corporate wellness expert, a celebrated speaker, and a passionate advocate for empowering individuals to achieve optimal health. Now today, we'll explore how wellness isn't just a lifestyle choice, it's a performance strategy. And she shares actionable insights on improving energy, mental clarity, and overall health to fuel personal and professional success. Stay tuned as she helps us uncover practical science backed ways to be cool to our future selves, her phrase. Well, hey. Welcome, Gloria. I am so excited to have you on the ValuePro Show and for this topic. And just wanted to mention to everybody listening and watching, Gloria and I met as part of a cross book promotion on Amazon. And, man, I was really grateful because of that promotion, Gloria. I I my book, Inspire Your Buyers Go TO Market With A Story That Sizzles, reached the top 10 yet again for the 3rd time for 2024 in the sales and selling management category. So I was delighted, and my wife thought I was pretty cool too. But, in anyways, the other thing is I got to meet really cool authors like Gloria. And, Gloria, I'm just so grateful you could come into the the show and help people thinking about, wellness. So just a little bit of context. Gloria wrote this book, wellness 101, and I I I definitely bought the book, and wellness is something I've been focused on in my early age here. And, I just really wanted to, double down on this, especially for 2025. And then I I opened it up and and woah and behold, it's one of the most beautiful books I've ever seen. You know, rarely do you get a book that's 4 color printed and and just just lights up a page. But you can see here, there's text, there's visuals, there's quotes, there's caricatures, you know, just a bunch going on, which makes this book incredibly visually stimulating. And I I just encourage everybody to look for wellness 101. Grab a copy because you're not gonna read it in one setting. It's for me, it's gonna be one of my best friends in in 2025. There's just a lot going on in the book, and and Gloria didn't, didn't, shortchange any of us and and the time and energy and research that she put into this book. So, final word, Gloria, before we get in on, on our topic is, I saw something on LinkedIn that somebody posted, self, health, and wealth. And I just thought it it's so perfect for us and this show. And I want this to be a holiday gift for everybody. And then, also, course, it'll be sitting out there on YouTube and in Apple Podcast and all the other podcast players for some time to come, but, yeah, for us all to return to and get focused. But the the whole goal is, you know, focus on yourself, your health, and and that's gonna lead to performance and wealth as we as we move forward. So, Gloria, you're gonna be talking to us today about improving performance through wellness. What would you like to say just to kick us off before we get into some of your powerful quotes?

Gloria Treister: Well, I just love what you picked up on LinkedIn, Bruce, and thank you for having me, and hi, everybody. Yeah. It's you know, the self part is great. I mean, if you think about it lately when I've been teaching my wellness 101 class, I'll say to the group, okay. Show of hands. How many of you have a spare body at home that you're gonna move into when you trash this one. And nobody can raise their hands. Right? Because none of us has one. This is it. This is what you get. And so that self part is great because you really need to love yourself enough to take care of yourself and what you've been given. And from there, I encourage people to sit down and say for the health part, why do I wanna be healthy? What's your why? It's kind of relates back to the Simon Sinek thing, getting to why with your business. You've gotta know why am I in business. Right? And you've gotta relate back to it when you have to make business decisions. Well, for me, the same is true with your health. Why do you wanna be healthy? So I spoke at the, Employers Health Care and Benefits Congress, and on each seat, I put a circle cut out of some tag board colored tag board in a Sharpie. And I said to everybody in the audience, after I'm done speaking during the break, I want you to stop by my booth, which was a big black Velcro wall, and I Velcro on these. And I said, write down your why and put them on my wall, and let's see what people say. It was the most interesting experiment. It was great. One guy came over, and there were four names on his circle. I said, what does that represent? He said, those are my 4 children. Someone else wrote, because it's easier to stay well than to get well from illness. I thought that's brilliant. Somebody else wrote, duh. You know? Right? What's your why? You wanna be well. And someone else wrote to get into my skinny jeans. So the point I'm trying to make here is it doesn't matter what your why is. It's your why, but find your why. And when you're making a decision during the day and someone told me maybe you can vet this out for me, Bruce, that we make, like, 35,000 decisions a day. It was some crazy number like that. And upwards of 75 to 80% of those decisions impact your health. It's a big deal. So when you're making those decisions, think, okay. I wanna be well because I wanna dance at my granddaughter's wedding, so I'm gonna pass on that dessert today, or I'm not gonna have another alcoholic beverage, or whatever it is that you're deciding at that moment, or I'm gonna find 10 minutes to throw in some squats today. So you can make those decisions, and then the wealth part is easy. If you don't have good energy, if your brain's not working well, if your body's not functioning, you are not going to achieve your monetary goals either. You need all 3.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah. No. Really, really well stated. So excited about this. My personal why and and why I love that word self health and wealth, because I do wanna focus on myself, self self fully, I'd say, versus selfishly. I wanna be more full. And I'm I'm, playing off of a guy named Marshall Rosen Rosenberg with that quote, but I do wanna be more self full. And, you know, just prioritize and, you know, treat myself well. And but I just know that it's gonna impact so much and so many others when I'm well. I'll be able to focus way more on others and making sure everybody's getting having a better life, work life, professional life, personal life, what have you. And that's that's what I'm trying to do in my world, but I need great health, to to drive all that. So and I know the listening audience and viewing audience, you know, we we all want better health for for, of course, for better wealth and and and impacting all those that who we love and care about, including ourselves. So, we're what we're gonna be doing, Gloria, we're we're going through a lot of Gloria's very pithy quotes that are fantastic. So if you're watching this on YouTube, of course, you can see the quotes. If you're listening, we'll mention them to you. But I hope you enjoy this because, you know, any topic we could go on for an hour on any one thing. And, the book does a good job of, doing a double click on on a lot a lot of the detail that everybody should be aware of as part of this life journey of education and how to have better wellness. But we'll do some flyover, and, hopefully, everybody will just get into the mindset of wanting better, wellness, better health for themselves. Then, also, stay tuned. Towards the end of this episode, we are going to, based on glorious generosity, have a free offering, a giveaway for everybody to kinda especially as we start to roll into the new year, everybody can get on the the right train, the wellness train, and and do right by this. That's awesome. That's great. Yeah. So, Gloria, let's add take it away on some of these quotes. Why don't you go ahead and or I'll read it, and then you talk about it. Alright. Sounds like a straight from the book. Our bodies operate as systems. Each part can never be well unless the whole is well. What did you mean by this?

Gloria Treister: Yeah. It's an interesting concept. And, basically, what I meant by that is when you are in a conventional allopathic medical environment, which is what we're in now, unless you're seeing a functional medicine doctor or some kind of holistic doctor, you're in allopathic, which means that they treat with drugs or surgery. People don't know that. A lot of people will call our current medical system traditional. That's not traditional medicine. Traditional medicine is what Native Americans used or the Indian Native Americans used or the Indians, Ayurveda, or traditional Chinese medicine. That's different. What we're doing today is called conventional allopathic medicine. So what happens? You go to a doctor, and let's say you have a problem with your heart. They're going to send you to a cardiologist, or you have a problem with your gut. They're gonna send you to someone who specializes in gut problems. Here's the problem with that. Once you get into the specialties, you're no longer a system. You're a gut. You're a heart. You're a brain. You're a bone. Whatever that specialty is, and they're not relating it to the rest of the whole person. That's what holistic medicine or holistic approach means. And, really, we don't wanna go down that route unless we have to. Thank god that they're there if you really, really need it. But for the most part, we have to understand that all things work together. We are a system, and so we wanna keep that in mind and make sure that we're honoring that. We all have unique biochemistry, and those also have to be tended to. Everybody's an individual. This one size fits all medicine, it doesn't really work. I mean, look at the numbers. We're not killing it here in the United States the way we're delivering health care. And so what I'm here to do today is to give you enough information that it really makes you dig in a little deeper and say, you know what? I wanna be in charge of my health. I don't want my doctor to be in charge. And and later as we go through, I'll share a personal story that happened to me that really drives that point home.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah. No. Really, well well stated. And on the topic of doctors, you know, we, go ahead and describe just what doctor means just so everybody has that definition.

Gloria Treister: Yeah. When I was writing the the book, Bruce, it came to my attention that the word doctor actually came from the Latin word docere, which means to teach. When's the last time your doctor sat down and taught you anything? They don't have time. It's not that they're bad people. They're good people. They go in for the right reasons. Our health care system makes it so that they don't have time to sit there and teach you what you need to know. Not to mention the fact, also not knocking doctors, but, they don't get taught the things that you really need to know to live a healthy lifestyle. They don't get taught about food. They get taught about medications. And to that end, I would bet that most of them don't really get too familiar with what those medications actually can do to you. And we can talk about that a little more as we go forward, but it means to teach. That's what I love to do, and that's why I wrote the book. I think that, as great as the Internet is and as great as it is that you can look up anything you want on Google, the problem is there's information overload now. And there's so much competing information that you get confused. And a lot of people will research something, and it'll say, do this. Wait a minute. No. Don't do that. Do this. And by the time you're done, you're just like, I give up. I I I don't get it. I'm just gonna do what I've been doing for better or for worse. And, really, it's great when you can have one simple resource, and that was my motivation for writing this book. It's called the the subtitle is simple steps to good health. Well, this is not that difficult. It really isn't. Don't make it harder than it needs to be.

Bruce Scheer: No. I love it. And, gosh, I I read something such a long time ago, but at the end of the day, you need to be your own doctor. You know, it's your body. You gotta own it. Each body is unique, so you need to study it and look at the cause and effect and, you know, really try to come to terms with that, you know, and and even effectively teach yourself. So that that really resonates so well with me, especially also this quote that you had. Every choice you make every single day is either leading you in a direction of wellness or or illness. Make good choices. And, you know, I mean, kids are taught that in sports and school and, you know, and and as adults, we oh god. We need to hold on to this. What would you say to this quote?

Gloria Treister: Yeah. I think that making good choices, of course, is a good idea. And you you need to base it on good hard evidence. I, I'd like to explain what a good approach would be to making those choices if you are struggling with a medical problem. Instead of just going to the doctor and having them say, you know, here, Bruce, you can't sleep. Oh, that's too bad. Here's your sleeping pill. If it doesn't work, come back in a month, and we'll try another one. That's like a rinse and repeat kind of approach. If you go to someone who really is gonna dig in for you, a functional wellness doctor, a functional medicine doctor, they're gonna say, Bruce, you can't sleep. That's interesting. Let's dig into that. Have you always had this problem? How long has it been going on? Are you having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep? What are you doing before you go to bed? Are you bringing your computer into bed with you? Are you watching TV? Are you eating right before you go to bed? There's a million questions that they can ask you so that you can really pinpoint what's the root cause of you not being able to sleep rather than throwing a pill on it and saying, okay. Here's this pill. Let's squash that symptom. Not being able to sleep is a symptom, right, of something. We don't know what. But if you get to the root cause, you can find that out. Maybe that doctor will say, you know what? I think we need to test your cortisol, which is your stress hormone. Maybe you're one of those people that wakes up like a truck ran over to you in the morning because you have no cortisol. You're supposed to start with a high level. And during the course of the day, that's supposed to wane and go down. So at night, you have very low cortisol. You go to sleep. Some of us wake up with none. We need that coffee immediately. And then as the day goes through, stress creates more car cortisol, more cortisol. By the time you're ready to go to bed, you're tired, but you're wired, and you can't do it. So these are the things that I want people to be aware of. Learn to ask why. Why do I have this problem?

Bruce Scheer: Yeah.

Gloria Treister: Where did it come from? Can we at least look for it? And in today's health care, there's so much available in the way of lab testing. The whole science of lab testing has taken us to a point where you can really pinpoint things and get to the root cause, and then you have a better strategy. I mean, if you had a problem shipping in your shipping department, you'd wanna find out what's the root cause of that problem. The same applies to your health. Why can't I sleep, or why do I have gut issues after I eat, or why do I get headaches? All of those things have a root cause, and all you need to do is find out, get a direction. How do I figure this out? And stop and think about it.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah. I love it. But, yeah, back to that main main theme, you gotta be your own doctor and diagnose, you know, may and make sure you diagnose, make sure your doctor diagnoses, and don't just grab that pill and hopefully whack that mole and move on. And there's some really good reasons for that. Another quote that you had that I just absolutely loved. Could you mention this for us and just explain it?

Gloria Treister: Yeah. Sure. Your genetics load the proverbial gun, but your lifestyle is what pulls the trigger. Now why do I say that? There's a whole new field in health care called epigenetics, epi meaning above. We're all genetically programmed. Right? We all have genes. And maybe in your family, there's a lot of people who have diabetes. Let's take that as an example. But epigenetics would tell us that 80% of your genetic makeup is modifiable through lifestyle. So, thinking about whether or not that gene turns on, it's like a light switch. Is it gonna turn on for you? It might be in you. It does not knee mean that it's going to, quote, express itself. That's what they call it in functional medicine. So what you do on a daily basis, actually, 80% of that is modifiable through what you eat, how you sleep, how much exercise you get, how you manage stress, how much toxicity is in you and in your environment, which we wanna touch on in a little bit. But you actually have more control than you might think. And, also, 80% of all chronic disease on the planet is preventable. So we need to really grab on to that and say, you know what? Is what I'm struggling with preventable? Do I really need to be on that medication for my blood pressure, or is there something I can do? What can I do to control my cholesterol? How can I keep from having GERD? You know? There's so many health conditions that fall into that chronic disease state. And with 80% of 80% of them being preventable, come on. Wouldn't you wanna be part of that? I I do. I fight that all the time.

Bruce Scheer: Absolutely. Gosh. You you make me think about a story. One of my best friends during the pandemic, he went into u UMass, cancer ward, And he was literally neighbors with a guy named Clayton Christensen in the business world, a really famous professor, and wrote a a fabulous book called The Innovator's Dilemma. But when he was in there, you know, the highest tier of safety for their cancer ward, and, the doctor just kinda confessed with him. And my buddy's name was Nick. He subsequently has passed away, but, the doctors were telling him, Nick, there's not really anything we can do. All we're trying to do is help you get your body into a position where it can heal itself. You know? And, you know, which we are we can. We can make the right choices back to what you were saying to to get on on the right footing and and to heal heal ourselves and especially what you're saying to prevent sliding down at into that hole in the first place. So I I love this point.

Gloria Treister: Thank you. You know what? Let me share a personal story, and I'm I'm pretty private when it comes to my health at at times, but this story is really compelling, and I think it will drive home this point. Last year in April and then no. In August, I went to see my primary care doctor, and I had just had a bone density scan. And it looked like I was headed towards osteoporosis. And she said to me, oh, you know, you're losing bone density. Next year, when you come in for your physical, we'll put you on a medication to help you with your bones. And I said to her, why would I wanna wait a year? If I'm losing bone density, why aren't we addressing it right now? She said, oh, don't worry about it. It's not that bad. You can wait a year. I left there, and I was thinking, no. I'm a little too type a for that. Please don't tell me that. And so I went to my functional medicine doctor. I have 2 doctors. I went to my functional medicine doctor, and I said, Nancy, I'm losing bone density. I'm really concerned. You know? I wanna keep my bone health. Then she said, well, let's figure out why that's happening. Because I said, look. I I do weight bearing exercise. I eat a healthy diet. I take calcium supplements. Like, what's going on here? She ran some tests that a conventional medical doctor would not run, and that's a distinction also I need to share with your audience. They're not gonna run every test, so you need to learn a little bit. And I have a whole section in my book breaking down what tests are out there, what they prove, and what you need to know about them. Humana tests for parathyroid hormone. Alright. I have to confess. I've been in health care over 40 years. I didn't know we had a parathyroid. I'd heard of a thyroid, but, apparently, we have 4 parathyroid glands. And what they do is they manage how your body handles calcium. Never knew that. Guess what? I had a bad parathyroid gland. And what happens is when you have one that's not acting properly, it thinks you don't have enough calcium, so it starts pulling it out of your bones and putting it in your bloodstream. Okay? If it's in your bloodstream, your arteries can calcify. Calcium calcify, builds up in your arteries. What could have happened to me, number 1, if my conventional doctor put me on more calcium, my parathyroid, which was not functioning, would have thrown it into my arteries, and I could have had a heart attack or a stroke, which was preventable. Plus, we weren't getting to the root cause of the problem. When I went back to see her and she told me that my parathyroid was off the chart, she pushed every paper away from her Desiline forward and said to me, you need to take care of this right now. So So for the first time in my life, I had a medical condition. I had to have surgery. They removed one gland. My parathyroid went back to normal. My blood calcium levels went back to normal. And then I went on a supplement called AlgaeCal, which is amazing, and something called strontium. You learned about that when you learned your periodic chart in high school. Right? It's it's Okay. An element, and it helps repair your bones. 2 weeks ago, I got another bone density scan. I no longer have osteopenia, which is the step right before osteoporosis. My doctor said to me, you've gotta be so proud. I'm not just proud. I'm grateful because I didn't accept we'll wait a year and then put you on a medication. And I just want to encourage your listeners that your gut will tell you if something sounds right or not. It it's that that way in everything. Right? You can perceive it in your gut. I knew something was wrong. I didn't know what, and my conventional doctor didn't know to test that. What can I say? I had to take it into my own hands, and I really want to encourage people that if something doesn't sound right to you, push back. Ask questions. Don't be afraid. If they blow you off, they're not the right doctor for you. And, do a little research. Find out what you can do. But that could happen do you know how many people probably that happens to, and they just go, well, she said that, so I guess I'll just wait a year.

Bruce Scheer: Oh, gosh. Yeah. No. No. I I love, what what a lovely summary of these points. You gotta be your own doctor. You gotta own own your own body. Your body's a system. You gotta figure things out. It's not easy. And doctors do play a role, and and we respect that, but also you gotta own it and and and get to it and and measure and figure things out. Wonderful points that you're making there. If, Gloria, if we could, let's turn the corner a little bit and just hit some practicals, you know, on food. So you had this quote in your book. Food can either be your best medicine or slowest form of poison. Why would anyone eat poison?

Gloria Treister: I love it. Unfortunately, in our current food systems, it's, you know, industrial agriculture. So here's what happens. A bunch of things happen. 1, the fields in which our foods are being grown are being over planted. So to get the right amount of minerals and, nutrients into our core plants, the soil needs to rest. We're not doing that. That's one problem. Another problem is we're we're spraying food. We're genetically modifying foods. If you're if our listeners today are familiar with GMOs, genetically modified organisms, what that means is they've actually taken a plant, messed with its DNA so that it can withstand being sprayed with pesticides and, with, herbicides, so weed killers, pesticides like Roundup. Well, what that means is when you're eating a genetically modified food, you're eating poison. You're eating anything ending in -cide means to kill. Homicide, pesticide. It means you're killing something. Right? Do you really wanna kill yourself? And, you know, people will argue, well, okay. Organic foods are too expensive. I'm gonna say that today, Costco, Trader Joe's, there's plenty of good organic food out there at a reasonable cost. However, if you still think it's too expensive, my advice is eat less and eat better. We eat too much in this country. And, you know, I think we've been spoiled. You go to TGI Fridays, and you get this ginormous plate of food. It's more than anyone should eat. So when you get that much food, maybe before you even start, tell the server, would you take half of this and put it in a to go box and just eat half? But I think, when it comes to foods, you wanna eat good, wholesome, whole foods. And some people say, oh, healthy foods don't taste good. Yes. They do. You just need to learn how to work with them. Cook them, eat them raw, whatever it is, but learn to train your taste buds. Sugar is poison. That's what makes a lot of things taste good. If I could give people one one takeaway, learn about sugar. Learn what else it's called. When you learn how to read a label, you know, there's ways that these manufacturers hide sugar by calling it 3 or 4 different things in the list of foods on your box of food. And by the way, if it's in a box, it's probably not that healthy either. So we wanna keep your food simple, just organic foods that don't have labels. If you're wondering if a plant that you're gonna buy, like an avocado or apple, whatever, is organic, it will start with the number 9 on those little PLU labels and have 5 digits. If it's got 4 digits, it is not organic. Treat Treat yourself to organic food. That's another way you can be good to yourself, and that's a great way to do it. Yeah.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah. No. Perfectly stated. And and, gosh, you even have a whole I think I even a chapter on sugar, so you really double down. The book has all all the depth, everybody. Just so make sure to get the book to to dig in where we're truly just doing a flyover. Gloria, next, let's talk just a little bit about exercise, if you could. This quote, you you know, that I've, again, pulled from the book. If you could put exercise into a pill, it would be one of the best drugs ever invented. Tell us what that means.

Gloria Treister: Well, I think that people want everything to be easy or they think it's too hard. Let's go to both sides of that equation. I don't have an hour every day to work out. I get that. It's hard to find the time to work out. So let's figure out how you can do that. So you can do what I call exercise snacks. So when you have 5 minutes while your coffee's brewing in the morning, have an exercise snack. Do 20 squats, and then do 20 push ups against the wall. You can get that done in just a few minutes. If somebody calls you and you have a phone meeting and you're able, instead of sitting down and getting dead butt syndrome, which I think they just wrote about in the New York Times or something, get up and walk while you're talking. You know? Figure out ways that you can work exercise into your day and know, trust me, that they all add up. If you did, like, 10, 5 minute things during the day, that adds up. There's your hour. There's 50 minutes of working out. It's not as hard as you think. If you can devote 50 minutes to an hour, you don't have to go to a gym. To me, I don't go to a gym because I don't wanna deal with getting there, being social, working out, being social, getting dressed, and going home takes too long. I'm not that kind of person. YouTube has a 1,000,000 free exercise people. Get on there. Find something you love. Last year, I discovered a young man from Mason, Ohio who has a little nutrition store, and he does twice a week cardio drumming classes. It's a blast. We love it, and I do it with my husband at home. Takes 50 minutes. We do it probably 5 times a week. He does it with weights. You gotta get your strength training in there. Remember that, folks. But

Bruce Scheer: Mhmm.

Gloria Treister: You know, it boils down to this. If you're not gonna do that for yourself, you're gonna pay later. It's buy now or pay later. And if you don't have time to do it now, you're gonna have to have time later on for rehab. You're gonna wind up in a nursing home, and you're not gonna like what happened to you. I think the best thing ever would be just make up your mind that you're gonna do your setups or whatever it is you're gonna do when your coffee's brewing, if you're a coffee drinker. Mhmm. After lunch, you'll take 10 minutes to do something else, and just keep going with it. Go with it. It's good for you. And once you get in the habit, you're gonna miss it when you don't do it. You're gonna feel it. And even sitting at your desk, if anyone's watching, if you're if you're listening, sorry you can't see it, but you can do stretches just while you're sitting there. You can raise your shoulders to your ears and let them down if you're feeling stressed. You can do head rolls. You can do all kinds of things. I have pages of little line drawings of them in the book. Or if it's a money thing, go get yourself a $5 piece of TheraBand exercise tubing. You can tie it to a door handle, and you can get a lot of resistance training out of that. There's lots of ways to do it. Just figure out what you will do. I always tell people the best exercise for you is the one you will do.

Bruce Scheer: Oh, yeah. No. That's great advice. And, yeah, since I heard you talk about exercise snacks, I I I do that now, by design. I've got a I I was lucky. I bought a early Peloton when it was still a Kickstarter, believe it or not, before they had their huge run. That thing still works. And and so I I go jump on that, especially in the afternoon. I might you know, between that, you know, oh, I think Daniel Pink, you know, talk calls it the trough where, I think it's from 2 to you and I talked about it actually from 2 to 4 where your your, you know, your circadian rhythm just might take a little bit of a deep. It's post lunch, you're a little tired, etcetera. Instead of taking a nap or whatever, sometimes, especially if I happen to be home working, I'll jump on that bike and kinda get after it for 10, 15 minutes, and it just resets everything. And my mood included where I'm kind of excited again, get back in there and go for it. So, thanks for that tip because my my norm was to go to the, you know, the the food closet and get something that's processed, and and that that that's not doing anybody any favors. That's for sure. Well, what know,

Gloria Treister: just to say one last thing on the exercise thing. You know, we can talk I could talk for hours about neurotransmitters. That's a whole different thing. But, you know, when you hear runners say they got that runner's high, that runner's high is that exercise creates dopamine. That's your feel good neurotransmitter. You wanna feel better? Go do 5 minutes of exercise. That's better than taking a pill, eating a snack, drinking coffee. It's gonna get you going. So trust me. Try it.

Bruce Scheer: Awesome. Awesome. Well, let's, kinda end some of these practicals on, mental health, just, what do you have? We talked in the beginning about the body being a this holistic system, but how does that relate to mental health, and what would you offer us there?

Gloria Treister: Yeah. I mean, we're in a mental health crisis right now across the globe. There's more depression, a lot is that the gut is your 2nd brain. Everything that's manufactured, all your brain chemicals are made in your gut. Whatever you put in your gut, you put garbage in there, you're gonna get garbage out of your head. And so I'll give you an example. We just had Thanksgiving not too long ago, and everybody knows that after you eat your turkey dinner, what happens, Bruce?

Bruce Scheer: We go to sleep and and feel bad.

Gloria Treister: We wanna go take a nap. Right? And everybody kind of knows, I think, oh, that's because there's tryptophan in Turkey. People have heard that term. I don't know why, but that's when I do my lectures, everybody knows what tryptophan is.

Bruce Scheer: Oh, yeah. Mhmm.

Gloria Treister: Tryptophan is the precursor in your body to serotonin. Serotonin is also a feel good relaxation calming neurotransmitter. We have excitatory neurotransmitters, and we have calming. You wanna balance. But when you're whatever you're eating, whatever you put in your gut makes your brain chemistry, and so we wanna make sure that we're not putting garbage in our gut. And a lot of the, processed foods, the trans fats, the sugars, the, fillers, you know, all the garbage stuff creates bad chemistry for your brain. We don't want that. We wanna be happy, well adjusted, energetic people. And so by taking good care of your gut, that helps your brain a lot too. And, you know, also all the things that we all know about, you know, getting the exercise, getting good a good night's sleep. That's good for mental health. And lately, the also the big thing in it it's at the bottom of my quote is that, you know, good mental health suggests we're in a state of well-being. Right? Each one of us can realize our own potential. We're also able to cope with normal stressors of life, and we can work productively, but we also wanna make a contribution to the community. And community has emerged lately as a big deal in terms of mental health, having community. If you're isolated, you're working at home, go find yourself a community. They discovered if your people are familiar with the blue zones, and these are peep places on the earth where people live healthy to over a100. One of the things that they found that was common across all of the blue zones is that people lived in a community. They had a community. I think it was in Japan, which, Okinawa is one of the blue zones. They discovered that when people are young, they're assigned a group of people that they go through life with, and that's their support system. And I thought that was such a beautiful thing. So if you're not feeling well and you've kind of isolated yourself or you're busy, busy, busy, always working, working, working, and you haven't taken the time for friends or family or a community, just keep in mind that that's good for your health too. It's not just about food and exercise and medications or toxic chemicals in the environment. It's also about your relationships, and we wanna make sure that you have good ones and that you're connected to people. That will also help with your good mental health as well.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah. And you can weave the community even you cite in your book, but, you know, with your exercise and tennis and, over meals, you know, you know, so you can weave it into your rhythm, that sense of community. I'm even a member of 2 different communities, one of which I, was a precursor to meeting you, NSA, National Speakers Association. But, you know, just find your tribe and and and work your social, and then even your local community. Like, you talked about going to a Christmas party tonight. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, hey. I know we need to, kinda move towards your giveaway, but any other point you would make before we, move into that topic?

Gloria Treister: There's a couple things. One that I really wanna talk about a little bit is I wanna encourage people to become what I call label sleuths. I want you to start reading labels, not just in your food, but I think a lot of the mental health issues. I don't think I know. A lot of the toxic chemicals in our foods, in our daily products that we're using, lotions, potions, shampoo, toothpaste, you would be amazed at how much crap they're loading into those products. Some of them are chefs shelf stabilizers so that they can stay fresh on a shelf for years. Those things are toxic to your body, and your body has a system to get rid of toxins. We have liver. We have kidneys. They process things. But what we're asking them to do in 2024 coming on 2025 is more than our bodies were ever meant to handle. And so we can do one of 2 things or both. We can eliminate them from our world. Just tonight, if you're listening to this, go home, go get your toothpaste, and read the ingredients, and then compare it to a list of toxic chemicals or your shampoo or your soap. They are all toxic. Your laundry soap, what you're putting, you know, your clothes into. You would be amazed at the assaults against us. I just wrote you know, Bruce, I write a weekly article, and I would love to encourage people listening to subscribe. I it's on LinkedIn as well. You can look me up on LinkedIn and subscribe. But a couple weeks ago, I because of Halloween and I don't know when you're listening to this. It could be April. But because of Halloween, I wrote an article about food dyes. Think about Skittles and what kids are eating. Those are not natural colors, people. Those are toxic dyes. And in Europe, most of them are banned. The United States is very, very lax when it comes to banning toxic chemicals. So here's another time where you need to be kind to yourself and go learn about that because they are if you're getting headaches and you don't know why, might be toxic chemicals. If your gut can't handle what you're putting in it, maybe you're eating something that's toxic. I just want you to kind of think of that cause and effect. So the environment we live in is very toxic. Even in your house, paint, carpet, all of those things are toxic. And one simple thing you can do, and I have 2 pages of this in the book. And by the way, the book is written in 1 and 2, maybe 3 page articles. So, just to segue away from that for one second, I I kinda laugh about this, and my husband hates it when I say this, but I think my book's a great bathroom book. You can read 2 pages while you're in the bathroom and come out of there smarter. So, I have 2 pages in there about how how house plants detoxify your air. You don't have money for an air purifier? Go get yourself some good plants, like mothers and mother-in-law tongue. You know, those straight up things that they they clean your air. Plants are great. You've gotta learn how to live in, combination with nature and nurture and just kinda take care of that environment. So that's one thing. Thing. Just look for the chemicals. Learn what they are. If you can't pronounce it and it's on a food label, don't eat it. Don't eat it. It's not good for you. The other thing I wanna say is if you're getting lab testing done, a lot of times you'll go to see your testing done, a lot of times, you'll go to see your doctor, and they'll have a sheet of paper in front of them with a bunch of numbers. This has been my experience. I don't know if it's been everybody else's. They kinda look down, look at the numbers. Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. You're fine. They never explain it to you. Find out what those numbers mean. And if you're being tested for certain things, find out what the normative data is that they're using. Because for me, when I get my hormones tested, I don't want to be normal for a 70 plus year old person, which I am. I wanna be normal for a 35 year old person because that's how I wanna feel. Don't tell me it's okay that I feel old. I don't want that for myself, and I don't want it for our listeners. I want you to feel great at any age, and you can. You absolutely can. And just kind of get enough guts up to say, well, what does that result mean? Or at least take your results and go online and find out what the functional medicine norms are because they're gonna be closer to where you wanna be than the conventional medicine norms, especially when it comes to your hormones. Women men, when you hit 40, things kinda get a little different, don't they? You can't lose weight like you used to. You don't have the energy. You're not thinking as clearly as you used to. Learn to get your hormones tested in the right ones and figure out what you need to do. I personally have compounded for me, bioidentical hormones, and it has made all the difference in the world. So you can do that. It's out there for you. Just go look for it. And I'm happy to help. I'm always around to help people. I love that. One last point I wanna make is that, if you are taking medications, I want to encourage you to find out, and that's also in the book. I have charts of it, what nutrients those medications either block or keep you from, keeping them in your body. They help you they they help eliminate them more quickly or they block the absorption of. So I'll give you an example, a quick one. Statin drugs block the absorption of coenzyme q 10. You probably heard about CoQ 10. There's advertisements for it all the time. CoQ 10 makes something called ATP. I'm not trying to get all technical on you, but you need every time you fire your muscles, if I flex my bicep, I'm using ATP to do that. Your body needs it. But if you're taking a statin drug and it depletes it, your muscles can't function, and so not the way that they're supposed to. So a lot of people who are taking a statin will get winded walking up a flight of steps, and they don't know why. It's because you need to replete, meaning put back in some coq10. I think doctors who are prescribing a statin drug should also say and you might also wanna take a 100 to 2 100 milligrams of coQ10 a day. What's so hard about that? But they don't do it. And my article this Sunday, I am highlighting 5 conditions that have drugs that deplete nutrients and what you need to do to replete those same nutrients. It's not that hard. This is not rocket science. It's out there for people, and that is another way where we can make you the CEO of your own health and well-being.

Bruce Scheer: Love it. Love it. Well, let's can they get to the your articles and newsletter off to your website or where they'll go for this? Or okay.

Gloria Treister: Yes. They can go to wellnessevolution.com as opposed to revolution. Some people stick that r in there. We're having a wellness revolution, but my company is wellness evolution. Evolution. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have a 30 day health recharge that I put together for people so that if you're interested, you don't know where to get started, you're like, you know, I really do wanna start taking better care of myself. What should I do? You will get 30 days of daily emails, each one very brief. I'm not gonna waste your time. It will have one tip for the day. So for instance, it might say, today, we're gonna hydrate. Drink more water. Here's why you need to drink more water. Here's how much water to drink. Do that all day to day. The next day, you'll get a different tip. At the end of each week, you'll get a prompt that'll say, what did you do this week that you like that you'll keep doing for the rest of your life? Let's get you started with some simple, simple steps. Wellness is easy. It really is. Don't make it harder than it needs to be. The book makes it simple. I've written it with lots of white space and pretty pictures. Bruce, I think you alluded to my little empowerment man carry character. He's he's a little book flexing his muscle. He gives you tips. You could just read a tip and learn something. I just want you to be well. I want people to have a good life. And in order to do that, you need good health, good energy, and you'll look better. You'll attract better energy in other people when you have good energy and you're a healthy person.

Bruce Scheer: Fantastic. Well, I've got 3 bathrooms, and I only have one of your books. So I'm gonna or order a couple, additional copies. So for so all the guests that come to my home, I I can love on them and make sure they're doing this. And, thanks so much for just talking about how we can improve. You know, I I started thinking about improving performance through wellness, but just, thanks for helping us extend our our wonderful lives, Gloria. I re really appreciate your work. It's awesome.

Gloria Treister: You're welcome, and I wanna leave people with my motto, which is be cool to your future self. What you're doing today is gonna impact your future. People who have a heart attack at 50, that didn't just happen. That started when they were 30. It's the same for you. You might feel good today. Keep it going. Take good care of yourself. Be cool to

Bruce Scheer: your future. Cool to your future self. Awesome. Actually, I do have a microphone. That's a mic drop moment right there.

Gloria Treister: Excellent. Right.

Bruce Scheer: Thank you so much, Gloria.

Gloria Treister: Thank you so much, Bruce. It's been such a pleasure, and I just love getting to know you. You're a very dynamic person, and I just can feel your energy right through the screen.

Bruce Scheer: Awesome. Awesome. Thanks everyone for tuning into this. Wow. What an inspiring conversation with Gloria Treister. We covered so much ground from the importance of understanding your why for staying healthy to practical tips on nutrition, exercise, and even mental health. What resonated most with me was Gloria's insight that your genetics load the gun, but your lifestyle pulls the trigger. It's a powerful reminder that we have the agency to take control of our well-being every single day. So if you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to the ValuePros Show. And if you're feeling kind, leave a review so others can find and enjoy it too. See you next time, and until then treat yourself well, literally.