Rob Carney: Eileen, welcome to the show, my friend. It’s great to have you here. And I'm excited to dive into some really fun topics today.
Eileen Durfee: Well, thanks for having me.
Rob Carney: Yeah. And as we just described, you know, I don't get the opportunity to talk to a nuclear engineer, too often. So, I want to just kind of start there just to pique my own interest, because obviously, you've worked as a nuclear power plant engineer, as we were discussing in the introduction here, but I kind of want to hear a little bit about that experience, because I think that's something that for a lot of people is a big mystery. I think people kind of hear about nuclear and I think there's a lot of misconceptions about it. I feel like people don't really know what actually goes on there. So, I'd love to kind of know, you know, what was your experience working in a nuclear power plant? And can that be done sustainably? So, I feel like we often hear the bad sides of nuclear without always talking about the good sides.
Eileen Durfee: Well, I'm from Kennewick Washington. And for a lot of people who don't know, this is where, you know, within 20 miles, they built the bomb. And unfortunately, when they did that, they just left a mess. This is the most contaminated place in the western hemisphere of the world. And of course, the race is to contain the nuclear waste, you know, in originally, single shell tanks, now double shell tanks are leaking. And they're trying to glassify the waste. They've got multiple pumps along the river, over 100 gallons a minute each pumping up groundwater and purifying it before it hits the Columbia River. This is a drastic health problem here.
So, I grew up here. And of course, they had not only all the abandoned plants from making the bomb and all the plutonium and things like that, but they had the Hanford reservation where the WPPSS, they call it where, you know, they mothballed all those nuclear power plants. And so, I, after working for Rockwell Hanford out there, I started job shopping, where we were working at plants that were under construction. Okay, so there was a lot of design and inspection and things like that. And my specialty was quality assurance engineering. And I worked in Florida, California, Kansas, Texas, Illinois. And I worked at broad range of disciplines from everything from pipe supports to hangers to instrumentation, you know to all this, this equipment. And one of the things people don't realize is these nuclear power plants are so overbuilt for like earthquakes and all these scenarios.
So, when you put a location, and you know, there's tolerances, and then everything runs into each other. And so then, you have to have design work changes and everything like that. I mean, when I worked in California, at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, it was just like, if you rejected something as an inspector, your car would be blown up, or, I mean, it was like the craft ran wild. It was a time where, you know, if you were a woman, and you worked in the field, you know, talk about harassment. It was horrible, you know, and you had to be 10 times as good as any man at all, you know, to do anything. And the last nuclear job that I worked at was at Comanche Peak, where, you know, I did statistical analysis and, you know, inspections weren't done like they were supposed to.
So, they would take populations of like every anchor bolt installed, you know, every piece installed, and if any item failed within that population, then they'd have to do a total rework and, and things like that. And, you know, you know, I just really poured in to the paperwork and things like that. And, you know, I found that you know, when you calibrate something, you're supposed to use for the depth with an ultrasonic device, you know, if you're gonna measure something that's supposed to be two inches long, and you got to calibrate it to two-inch block. Every single ultrasonic test ever performed at this nuclear power plant had not been calibrated, right. So, it's like here I write this up and they, but they were like, that plant was great at wanting to do everything right, fix everything. And the best nuclear power plant that I ever worked at was in Kansas, New Strawn, Wolf Creek. They actually now are setting records for maintenance and all kinds of things. There really needs to be a change in the construction, you know, where you have small teams that go out and solve some of the problems because these contractors, they were making cos plus tan.
So, I mean, some, some of these were so crooked, like at the - in Washington state, they would like tear out - the night shift would tear out what the day crew put in. And it was just like, cost overruns, cost overruns. But as far as nuclear power plants, there's no standardized design. There's boiling water reactors, there’s SNUPPS, closed loop reactors. And you know, obviously, the older boiling water reactors have more potential, you know, for problems. There's just a lot of design things, you know, that we learned from Fukushima, with the spent rods, you know, and different stuff like that. Obviously, there has got to be, you know, some improvement. And now, there's designs of really small compact, nuclear power plant stations that maybe only supply power for a whole city that are really, you know, a leapfrog in evolution for safety.
You know, but people don't realize that every single nuclear power plant inside the containment dome, there's a pressure relief valve that’s meant to release radiation. And, you know, there's just a lot of things in here in these designs that I mean, if we got rid of every nuclear power plant, you know, let me, let me tell you. Wind and solar just aren't gonna give us what we need.
Rob Carney: Right.
Eileen Durfee: You know, and, and now a lot of places, you know, Germany's almost closed down every nuclear power plant, but what are they doing now? They're firing up coal fired plants to feed the electric vehicles. So, I mean, there has to, there has to be a balance here. And I think the pendulum swung way too far because, yeah, Fukushima, you know, those issues need to be addressed at any, you know, nuclear power plant along, you know, dangerous waters and things like that. And they need to be doing something different with the spent fuel rods than what they are. But all in all, it is pretty darn safe as far as emissions, as far as you know, the safety shutdowns and, and the valves and the redundancy of systems is unbelievable. I mean, that's why they're so expensive to build. So, I would, I would be a proponent in favor of doing the smaller sealed units, that the safety, I mean, they've been doing it in other countries now for quite a while, that that would really be helpful, but I don't think it's helpful when you consider where you have to bury the windmill blades and –
Rob Carney: Right.
Eileen Durfee: You know, all the different costs and the subsidies that went into it, and they're just not generating the megawatts, you know, of power that we need. You know, I think individual homeowner should be getting into, you know, solar panels and different things. But then we have waste disposal on the solar panel problems, you know.
Rob Carney: Right.
Eileen Durfee: It’s just really hard to have the perfect solution. I mean, I really like the fourth phase of water. And I'd like to see some research gone into that, because Dr. Gerald Pollack found out that you can take water and put a negative and positive electrode in there and shine 3000 nanometers of light on there, and it'll generate more power than it took to shine the 3000 nanometers of light on the water, and to store energy in water. I think that there's going to be some inventions that come out that are going to really take us out of this quandary that we're in right now.
Rob Carney: For sure. And you know, I think that like you mentioned with the solar, it's a great step in the right direction. But for me, anytime we're dependent on one thing, I'm always a little skeptical because what if that one thing now doesn't work or if some bad players get control over that one electrical grid unit that we're creating. Then what happens? Then, what happens if we monopolize entire electrical circuits and now it costs you know 1000 bucks to just heat your home or, you know, use your electricity every month.
So, I think that anytime we get into one size fits all, it becomes a very slippery slope. And so, you know, I think that there's, obviously we hear the horror stories of nuclear. But you know, the more I learned about it, I think there's also a lot of, a lot of potential in there. And I think since these Fukushima’s and these other, you know, nuclear waste projects we've had, essentially is, we've made a lot of improvement. And so now it's a matter of, can we use this new technology to find a balance that we're not so dependent on one side and not utilizing the other. And so, you know, obviously, for you saying that you are proponent of smaller scale, nuclear or smaller operations of nuclear. But you've had some side effects of working at a nuclear power plant. I'm curious as to how those two pieces interact? Is it just the fact that the one you were on wasn't sustainable, and I'm also curious, were other people working in the same plant getting sick as well?
Eileen Durfee: Well, you know, when you're an inspector, and you're in the field, or if you're an engineer, and you're checking on stuff, you're around welding fumes, you're around chemicals. And back then, we don't have the standards now that we do, where people are wearing hoods, and having fresh air pumped in. This is back when, who cares almost? You know, let's get the job done. And so, there's a lot less occupational exposure than when I was out there. You know, so a lot of the construction type exposure has been eliminated. You know, I mean, in Washington State, I mean, when my mom was here, they were releasing radioactivity in the air, just straight in the air. And it's like, here, we have more thyroid disease than anywhere in the world, you know. And also, underactive thyroid, you know, because it's like, then, you know, your parents, you know.
So, then you're born with, you know, weaker thyroid and all of that. And so, it's, it’s occupational exposure. Nowadays, you know, there's a lot more regulations, you know, protecting that. But back then, you know, I mean, it's like, I grew up with my dad at a motorcycle shop. And that's when we had leaded gasoline. And I remember all the exhaust fumes in the repair shop, I used to think it smelt good, you know. And I mean, just think of all the lead, you know. I mean, it's like, we've come a long way.
Rob Carney: For sure.
Eileen Durfee: But as far as nuclear, you know, there's just a lot of different chemicals that they use in piping systems that are pumped to do this to neutralize that, you know, and everything like that. And so when you're out there in construction, and doing inspections, when there wasn't like odor control, when there wasn't, you know, that kind of thing in place. You know, you're gonna have the exposure just during construction of building it, not of it operating.
Rob Carney: Gotcha.
Eileen Durfee: You know, so as far as the operating portion, you know, there's a lot of things that have to be maintained and changed, and there's risk for that, you know but there's protective equipment now. So, I mean, I still wouldn't, I didn't want to be an inspector in a hot nuclear powerplant and wear my dosimeter and go in and get my dose of radiation, you know. So, I mainly worked, you know, other than the, the mess out there that was created with the bomb. You know, I work with the effluent control group. So, our job was actually identifying all the toxic waste that was created. I mean, literally, there were train tunnels where we had records unclassified, of course, that you know, they were just storing uranium and cardboard boxes. I mean, so now they build robots to go in you know, and you know, do different things. But yeah, today it is a whole different ballgame than our history.
Rob Carney: Cool. Well, you're talking about you know, toxic chemicals bringing these things in. I know a topic that you're very interested in and I'm very interested in is that of oxygen and air quality in general. So, let's just kind of have you dive into you know, your, how you keep your house and wherever you go, how you keep that high quality air going? How you build a holistic home, and just the, the little oxygen miracle, I think is what you called it?
Eileen Durfee: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, our single most impactful exposure to anything, is what we breathe, because we do that more than anything. We do that more than we drink. You know, more than we're touching things. You know, we have all these pathways to get good things into our body like oxygen and negative ions versus toxins. I mean, its common knowledge, EPA says that indoor air is three to five times more toxic than outdoor air. And part of the problem with our conditioned living spaces that we have, our heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, they have duct work, you know, they have an intake. They suck the air, they circulate air through the house, which, you know, the EPA says that if you can increase air circulation, you can decrease respiratory distress from the contaminants, you know, within the home. But part of that recirculation strips the air of negative ions, and people don't realize that our body has this threshold of a minimum amount of negative ions that it needs to function, just like we have a minimum amount that we need of oxygen. We have a minimum amount we need of water for our bodies to function.
Rob Carney: Eileen, real quick. Can you just tell people what the negative ions are and how those work for anybody who's not familiar?
Eileen Durfee: Sure, well, in nature, there's always positive and negative. And so, there's invisible particles, you know, that you see in the air, and there's negative ones, and they attract the harmful positive ions. And its nature's way of cleaning up outdoors and weather effects that you're going to have more negative ions. You know, after a rainstorm, you know, that fresh smell also has, you know, oxygen in it, and things like that. And it's just nature's cleanser. But, you know, like our computer screen, its emitting poisonous positive ions. You know, and if we don't have a certain amount of negative ions per cubic centimeter, that's the size of a sugar cube, that we’re inhaling, our body is going to be fatigued, we could have headaches. You know, so somebody who's like indoors, you know, especially with COVID now, more people have been indoors. And then you know, the formaldehydes and the benzenes and ammonias and all the stuff emitting off of our furniture, our draperies, our carpets and all that kind of stuff.
Then, you know, you can have all kinds of symptoms and not even realize that. You can go on the Health and Human Services website and look up all these health conditions that are associated with contaminated air. I mean, I just read a study from cities where people were inhaling more contaminants in their air just because of the smog and you know, traveling in and out of their city. They found out that city dwellers have more of the bad kind of fat, you know, than someone who's not breathing that. So, the air can be affecting your body composition, your overall health, you know, a lot of things. And so early on, because I used to be allergic to everything. And, I mean, if somebody had cologne on or some smell of a soap, or anything like that.
I mean, my lungs would begin to close up, I had to have an EpiPen. I was allergic to every food. I had to like eat a food and wait 72 hours before I could eat it again, because I would just become allergic to everything I ate, you know, until I found out about leaky gut and what was really going on there to be able to heal myself of the allergies. But I learned you know, before you could go to the grocery store and buy either, I don't know, seventh generation or granny's old soap or you know, all of these nontoxic brands now that you could go and buy. I mean, I had to come up with my own you know, making different things and using you know. So, clean up what you're emitting in your home environment first place, you know, with your cleaning chemicals, your body care products.
It's typical for a woman between all the stuff that they put on their skin and in their hair, to be exposed to over 500 chemicals and when you put it on your skin, you know so, so clean up the stuff that's emitting the odors in your own home and then go to hard surface if you can, and not everybody can afford you know, tile or you know, wood flooring with nontoxic stains and you know, like Rubio oil that doesn't emit, you know, vocs. Nowadays, you can buy VOC paint, but there's also a special shampoo you can get with a sealer and a lock, that literally if you have brand new carpet, that you know is giving you a headache because of all the chemicals, you can seal all that and in a two-day process, the outgassing is completely taken care of.
You know, there's no air purifier known to man that could keep up with the outgassing of new carpet in the home. And I mean, not everybody can afford wool carpet because you can buy wool carpet that doesn't have you know, emitting of that. And then, you know, circulation does help. So, you know, go over to your thermostat, and cause your circulating fan instead of to come on and off when you’re either cooling or heating. Have a go continuous and people are going, oh my gosh, the power. You know, it draws very little voltage and you'll have voltage spikes in usage and electrical power when the fan turns on and off more than just consistently. Your fan will actually last longer, because it's not hammering the windings. And that will really improve along with how many people regularly change their furnace filter.
I mean, come on, guys. You know, changing that. You know, now we've got reminders on our smartphones, we've got habit reminders, man. Set a reminder and change your, your furnace filter. And you would be shocked at how much better you know, that makes your indoor air environment. However, you know, I got tired of all these air purifiers that are noisy, that have to have expensive filters. So, I came up with, and you know, we're sedentary. We're indoors, we have the lower negative ions, we have the lower oxygen levels.
So, I wanted to, you know, come up with something different than everyone else. Because you can always, there's so many different air purifiers that you can get. And some of them are good and helpful and great. But I came up with something new using plasma. Now, everybody's familiar maybe with a negative ion generator, you know, but plasma takes it to a next level. It's like the LAX airport uses giant plasma air purifiers to get rid of the toxic jet fumes. Because if you've gone through their concourses lately, you'll notice that the airport sure smells a lot better. And so, plasma is something really important. And so, I actually was having a lucid dream when I was on an airplane and saw this little tiny mini device. And I saw other people coughing and hacking and getting sick. And then I was breathing safe.
So, I described what it looked like to my engineer. And we came up with this little device that emits 19,100,000 negative ions and 4,550,000 positive. That's what makes it plasma when it has both negative and positive. So, it's like this ionic cloud that's constantly having these reactions. It's like priming the pump. So, it's cleaning the air of all kinds of volatile organic compounds and dust particles that are so small that will make it through a HEPA filter and leaving over a bunch of negative ions. And this little device is capable of running off of a battery pack that you charge your tablet or your phone with. So, you can go mobile with this. And that's part of the reason why what I told the engineer is that that it had to run off of one of those. And so, this actually off of a 20,000-milliamp hour battery bank will run 72 hours continuously.
I actually put one of these in my hyperbaric oxygen chamber. So - and you know, so I'm getting negative ions because hyperbaric strips air of negative ions. And then I had this family that were asthmatics, and they just said, Eileen, I just sniff above that device and I don't have to use my inhaler. And so, I was like, I sent it off for lab testing you know to put it on the floor and measure up to my nose when I'm in the sauna. How many negative ions am I really, with what's leftover am I inhaling, which it turns out to be 56,000 negative ions per cubic cm. It takes 30,000 or 20,000 per cubic cm in a sauna to cause your sweat volume to double according to European studies. So, there's huge benefits to using this in a sauna besides the fact I started thinking about the toxic, humidified sauna sweat I was rebreathing.
So, this, you know, cleans all that up. But I sent it back to the lab because I'm like trying to figure out why is this working for people with sleep apnea or asthma to where they're instantly able to breathe. And turns out that not only is it ionized, clean air, it's increasing background oxygen levels, 70% to 118%. So, all this yoga, breath work, get more oxygen, man, you know, your hack is, keep one of these close by, but I have them, you know, all over the house. And as far as pathogens goes in the air, it's pretty good. I mean, but it's only like 48%. I mean, a lot of the air purifiers you get, the reason why they're better at cleaning pathogens out of the air is because of the filtration media that they go through. I mean, that has no filter, you just take a brush and you clean it. So, one of my son's college roommates always had these Glade Air Wicks plugged in when I'd go visit. And I would just be choking, knowing that the chemicals in there listed on the Health and Human Services website is carcinogenic.
Rob Carney: Yeah.
Eileen Durfee: And here, it's just like everywhere, oh my gosh.
Rob Carney: Yeah.
Eileen Durfee: So, I used to have this LED light that cleaned the air. You could hold a cigarette up to it, and the smoke would just disappear. So, I said, I don't want an LED light. Even it had a healthy CRI rating. But people are so scared of LED lights, that they don't look that you can have a healthy CRI rating, that's not going to damage your eyes. But anyway, so I abandoned that and went to the ionic refresher and just put the technology in here without a light. And you can hold a cigarette up to this and the smoke will just disappear. But this little gizmo when I tested it, because of these metallic impregnated fibers in this tip, kill 89% of pathogens in the air. And I mean, the only maintenance is, you know, wipe it off about once a month. That's it, and it's silent. So, what I used for my home is, I basically bought a 12-pack of these home and plugged them in everywhere around the house. And then I have Breathe Safe’s pretty much everywhere and then I have my furnace fan on continuous and I changed my filter like once a month.
So, that's, you know, besides using nontoxic cleaners and laundry, laundry soap. Putting that up against your skin, you know, you use dryer ball. Will dryer balls in the dryer, so you're not using the dryer sheets to put all that to absorb in your skin. You know, we have a lot to think about besides just what we breathe, but you know what's on our skin and how we can you know, improve our health.
Rob Carney: 100%. Yeah. And that’s something that I often talk about with water filtration is our showers is so much. So many times, we're doing all these great things. We’re intaking great water, but then we go into the shower and we're absorbing fluoride, chlorine, all these different chemicals. So, you know a lot of people say you know, it's, it's a lot and it is a lot. It is a lot of little things but I tell people you know start with one step at a time. You know, for me, it's like alright, instead of wearing synthetic clothing that has all these chemicals you know, try to get your under shirts with organic cotton or you know make one shift at a time and make it sustainable. So, you can try to upheave everything.
One, it's stressful, two, it costs a lot of money and then you may just say, this is too much and then you quit. So how can you start these little incremental things? And I think a big thing like you said is, especially for women using a lot of different perfumes and you know, hair. I don't even know all the stuff. Hair stuff and you know all these different chemicals that are going on their bodies and it's right there like you said. And then especially, you know, you're breathing that stuff in. It's on you all day. It's absorbing into your skin, absorbing into your hair, absorbing into your nails. So, how can we make these little tiny shifts and that's what it is, is a bunch of tiny shifts and I think that it can be easy to be overwhelmed. I think we do everything all at once.
Eileen Durfee: Right.
Rob Carney: So, I like the fact that you said like hey, let’s start by getting down some fragrances. If you got something plugged in the wall that’s shooting out fragrances, let's cut that out real quick. Pull that out and just throw them in the trash. You know, deodorant is another big one that I think is very overlooked is, you know, using a nontoxic deodorant. You know, aluminum is common in these, in these fragrances and what do we got going on there?
Eileen Durfee: We have a whole skincare line, of course.
Rob Carney: We do? Cool.
Eileen Durfee: Five-star reviews. Every single one of them. We started out with deodorant. Because no matter what natural deodorant my daughter and I used, you still smell. I mean, who's got one that works, right?
Rob Carney: It took, I'll tell you. I finally - it took me years because those are same. I was trying brand after brand. And I finally just recently got one. So, I'm gonna have to check out the ones that you have too.
Eileen Durfee: Yeah, we have the – and ours are ancestral products, because we render kidney fat. You know, a cow, I mean, grass fed, we can't get enough organic, but we use like other organic ingredients. But you know, a cow could have 300 pounds of fat, only maybe 15 to 20 pounds on top of the kidneys in that fascia sac. You know, because you've, you know, seen a lot of tele products online, maybe bottom and you smell like you just cooked a hamburger. I mean, how can you like, wear that around, right? And so, we came up with this process of rendering that takes like about a week. And then out of the amount of fat that we buy, only we end up with 25%.
So, it's a very expensive, long-drawn-out process and it's hard, you know, to source. We're in with some farms, a group, group of farms, you know, in the Pacific Northwest that are just grazing. They're not giving them any hormones or shots or anything like that. And so, we render our tallow but we have to deodorants, Lemon Lime, and Fresh. And, I mean, there hasn't been - there's only in, the last five years only been one person that it didn't work for, but they can - could not have any, any at all baking soda. There's a very minute amount in here. Everyone else’s said, well, I can't have baking soda on my skin. I’ve tried it and haven't had a problem. I've only had one that couldn't.
Other than that, like five-star reviews. Then I, you know, because I'm going to be 60 years old. Look at my videos from 5, 10 years ago and look at me now. I mean, it's because of all the prototyping and developing this natural skincare. We've got toners with Dead Sea minerals and all kinds of stuff. You know, because I got tired. I was buying from Macy's, the, the Origins brand, you know, where you get a little tiny thing like this for like $60 you know, and stuff like that. So, I developed a, a facial toner that works better. Body toners and then we have lotions. We've got sunscreen, we've got cellulite injection, we've got balms. But you look at, I even have a review from a person who's a vegan who tried absolutely everything under the sun and had such a horrific skin condition that she was desperate. So, she tried one of the products and it fixed her.
So, you know, yes, they're, they're not, they’re not vegan. You know, I had one person ask me, Well, did the cow have to die? Yes, unfortunately. You know, it was slaughtered and we used the kidney fat but there's a lot of you know, oil soluble vitamins and everything like that. If you ever just accidentally get some butter on your skin, you notice how it just kind of absorbs in there. This just goes into the deeper layers and rejuvenates and we put some pretty darn expensive ingredients in these. But yeah, that, that reduced all kinds of stuff. So, I would just encourage people and they smell nice. We don't like overpower the formulas with essential oils. The essential oils that we choose are for healing and rejuvenating purposes. And a lot of the aroma comes from the organic oils that we put in there but you'll find that you smell this stuff and your just - body just craves it because it's got natural healing properties.
So, we're developing several other products like I actually use an anti-cellulite cream on a Q-Tip and I put it around my eyes if there's any puffiness and it kind of shrinks it back. So, we're working on a, a cream, you know, an anti-aging cream for the eyes and using some peptides because I'm doing a lot of research on peptides. They’re just wonderful things that help the body rejuvenate with that. And then we're going to come out with an acne cream. We do have a lot of ingredients in the healing lotion that work for acne, rosacea, psoriasis, you know, a whole bunch of things like that. And they're all low PUFA, polyunsaturated fatty acids. We now know that a lot of our problems are these seed oils.
Rob Carney: Yes.
Eileen Durfee: So, we, you know, they say that if you're a 10 PUFA or less, you know, that's okay. So, I mean, I think our highest one is like six, you know. So, we have considered that in almost all the ingredients, organic, and they actually work. So, like I said, the five-star reviews tell the story.
Rob Carney: Yeah, you mentioned the seed oils there. And that's a big, big gripe of mine that I'm always talking about people. I put out a couple of posts recently about that in you know like five alternatives to cope. Canola oil was a popular one. And then also too, there is some studies I was seeing that basically, we’re saying that people that consume the standard American diet, and a lot of that being tracked towards seed oil consumption have a much higher risk of skin cancer, sunburns, all these other type of negative side effects from the sun. And here we are blaming the sun. But when people stop consuming these seed oils, the sun is giving life to every single thing on this planet. And so, it's always fascinating to me to see these types of studies that, you know, I've found for me, as somebody, you know, pretty light skinned, dude, most of my life, I get pretty burned. And as my nutrition has improved, I don't really get burned that often.
And I think part of that is also you know, I'm more mindful of not just laying out in the sun for four hours straight and not taking any sort of break. But between hydrating better, between higher quality nutrition, sometimes I'll use a little bit of coconut oil. And it's, I haven't really had any issues with burning, but I think it's a very interesting, very interesting topic to dive into those seed oils. And you also mentioned the, you know, both the vegan pushback that I think that there's, you know, obviously, there’s big movement right now. And my background is in sustainable food and farming from my undergrad. And there was this really big misconception that animals, especially cows are the worst thing to ever walk this planet –
Eileen Durfee: Oh my God!
Rob Carney: … when in fact, it’s just about the complete opposite, that they're really sequestering carbon in soil. And if we can utilize -
Eileen Durfee: So, you saw the TED talk on that? That is phenomenal, where they killed all the elephants, and then they bring in cattle. And they, it just completely redid the land because it's sequestering carbon.
Rob Carney: You know, it's amazing. And I think that it's this, you know, I don't want to get conspiratorial, but I think there's a lot of plant-based companies out there that are pushing some science that is definitely in their favor, as opposed to saying, hey, maybe the cow is used in a sustainable manner. You know, we're looking at the studies from like feedlots. And obviously –
Eileen Durfee: Right. Right.
Rob Carney: If you’re using data from an unsustainable model. Yeah, you're gonna show a result to show –
Eileen Durfee: Right.
Rob Carney: Yeah, but if you use a sustainable farm, that's a whole different story. And so, what I also like about what you're saying about using this, this kidney fat is that, most people when they're consuming animal products are just using the major muscle areas. They're not going into these little areas. And that's for me, I'm a big fan of organ meats. I think you know –
Eileen Durfee: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Rob Carney: Liver is one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet.
Eileen Durfee: Yes.
Rob Carney: And so, for me, it's like alright. So yeah, maybe having an animal, just using the major parts isn't the most sustainable, but if we use all the different pieces of the animal, that's what has been done ancestrally for, since the dawn of time.
Eileen Durfee: Nose to tail.
Rob Carney: Nose to tail. Exactly. And I watched this hunting show, it's called MeatEater. It's actually a really good show on, on Netflix and this guy, he goes out and hunts and like he's, you know, talking about how you can eat like the fat behind the eyeballs, and like all these like little random things that you never really think of as an average person, but there's so many incredible benefits when we do use that nose to tail model.
Eileen Durfee: Right. Well, another comment I think that's tied to skin cancer is the use of sunglasses.
Rob Carney: Yes. I go off on this one.
Eileen Durfee: Because of blocking the hormone. And you know, with being light skinned, you know, if you get out when the Kelvin’s in the sunlight are low in the morning, you can like develop what you call a skin callus towards not burning as much. But if you do have to be out in the sun, we have a completely nontoxic skincare. I mean, sunscreen, a little dabble, do you? Oh my gosh, and there’s an SPF 35. So, you know, we've tried to come up with healthy alternatives, you know for that.
Rob Carney: I love it. Yeah, you know, the sun, the sunglasses is the big one, too. I stopped wearing sunglasses probably four or five years ago. So, I remember seeing a post on Instagram, one of my mentors is talking about, stop using sunglasses. It's, you know, terrible for your eyes, your circadian rhythm, your skin –
Eileen Durfee: Oh, yeah.
Rob Carney: All these different things and -
Eileen Durfee: All your hormones.
Rob Carney: Yeah.
Eileen Durfee: I mean, we just have the 21st century disease. We're indoors, we’re not getting the sun, we're not getting the grounding. We're not breathing what we should. We're putting all this stuff on our bodies. I mean, you know, it's just amazing how much someone could feel better just by getting out, watching the sunrise, barefoot.
Rob Carney: Yeah.
Eileen Durfee: In the morning for a month.
Rob Carney: Yeah.
Eileen Durfee: Their sleep will improve like so much. It's amazing.
Rob Carney: I'll tell you. I mean, it's funny when I'm working with clients, you know, doing one on one coaching. And so, my first suggestion is, all right, when you wake up, go for a little barefoot walk to your backyard, you know, sit in the sun for five minutes. And it's like little things as that. When they come to me as a health coach, they're not expecting. They're expecting nutrition and you know, exercise.
Eileen Durfee: No. How much money do I have to buy this?
Rob Carney: Right. Yeah.
Eileen Durfee: There’s, there’s like so much you can do for free.
Rob Carney: Right. And that's what - you know, that's what I think is, I always recommend let's, there's so many great gadgets out there. You know, I'm a big fan of using supplements in a proper way. I'm a big fan of using things like air filters, and all these things we've talked about. But what if you just started by going outside, breathing fresh air, getting in the sun, going for a walk? Free things. And then the other things are the icing on the cake. But if you're not keeping your basics down pat, you can buy the fanciest gadgets in the world. And yeah, you may see some results, but you're not going to be optimized. You got to balance the gadgets with the basics. And I think that's a big thing –
Eileen Durfee: Right.
Rob Carney: … that I'm a big proponent of in this you know, biohacking has become such a, you know, I don't even know how big of an industry it's going to become in 10 years, probably billion, many billion-dollar industry. But those are all great, but let’s balance it out with returning to our roots, you know. What were our ancestors doing? And obviously, now we've learned more than them. You know, they were, their life expectancy is like 40 years old. And we're a little bit beyond that. So, it's finding what worked and also finding what's working with our technology and find that middle ground where we can now blend the two together. And I think that's what I find so fascinating about you know, the things that you've shared with your technology, your products, you know, a lot of things that I'm often talking about.
It's, it’s a blend of the two. It's not all, I think that it tends to be, we love to be one side or the other in our society nowadays. It's like you're either this side or that side. So, like, what about something in the middle. So, I think there's a little bit of good on both sides.
Eileen Durfee: I'm, one of the things, I'm a gadget woman, you know, and so I buy and try so many things. And, you know, if it's not easy to use, where does all that stuff go? In your garage –
Rob Carney: Right.
Eileen Durfee: … or the next yard sale and you don't even use it. So, one of the things of my company that I've tried to do is to design products that are easy to use to put in your lifestyle that give kind of like an immediate payback, meaning the person feels better. I mean, they're encouraged to do more. I mean, I always say that if you know somebody asked me, I'm only going to do one thing for my health. What do I do? I'd say, do a daily coffee enema. And then I give them my reasons why. And you know, of course I am a proponent of doing near infrared saunas and drinking ozonated water you know, obviously going outside, doing the, the free things. But you know, doing stuff that helps me and one of my passions.
I've got 10 patents and five of them relates to your structure. You know, your posture. It's huge. People don't realize how much energy their body consumes just holding yourself up right in gravity. And every time somebody has a tight muscle, it's just it's horrible that you see people reaching for you know, anti inflammatories, you know, muscle relaxers, or even you know, I think it's better using the CBD and the THC for the pain. But I want to get at the root and bottom line. Our spine is a mechanical device, kind of like a crankshaft in the motor. If you have a bent crankshaft, man, that motor is gonna seize up, things are gonna wear. You know, and all these tight muscles and everything like that is an emergency protective mechanism so your body doesn't drift further.
And, you know, a lot of people don't know this. I mean, I was born and the doctor grabbed me and twisted me, yanking me out with forceps. And of course, my parents didn't know to take me to a chiropractor then and, and my body was twisted, and I'd to wear special shoes. And every time I walked, my right knee jammed into my left knee. I mean, I just, I just physically wasn't very good at, you know, running, jumping, anything like that. And then I grew nine inches in three months, if you can just imagine the horrific pain. And then I got ran over by a car in the parking lot. I mean, every single breath was like a dagger to my heart. And then I became acquainted with the chiropractor, who thought that we needed to have an ideal shape in gravity.
So, his training, his treatment, everything was to give you back the shape that you either didn't acquire, or you lost. And he ended up working with the New England Patriots and the US Olympic team. And he had a whole team of people and developed equipment, and then he passed away. And so, I've improved his equipment. And you know, there's basically four simple things people can do to get that shape of the spine, you know, which you can't change the muscle attachment points on bone. So, these tight muscles and the ligaments and the damage to your fascia and all of that. We're not exercising, inducing curvature, and improving the multifidus and interspinales, you know. So, we have these vertebrae, that if we have the right shape, the shear forces of gravity will lock our bone on bone to back those facet bones. That you're not going to have a dislocation. And so, there's a whole new product line. So far, we've got 34 products, and there's more. There's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 more products. So, we're gonna have a whole spinal fitness line to address these issues. And we're working with basically professional athletes who are seeing tremendous results that they don't get anywhere else. So, it's going to help increase athletic ability, minimize injuries and speed recovery.
Rob Carney: Well, you know, like you're saying is that, you know, the force of gravity is holding life together. But also, if you got a forward head posture, even just by a couple inches, that's a lot of pressure on the back of your neck and even me sitting at a computer, that slight hunch, even after, like, now I'm more aware of it. So, after like 30 minutes, it's like, oh, man, like, I can't imagine doing that before. And then, you know, I tell people like, Hey, if you, if you work a desk job, which a lot of people do, hey, I'm not going to tell you what to do with your life. But if that's the career you've chosen, get up and move your body at least every hour. You know, I’d say preferably a little bit more, but if you can get up at least once an hour and just to walk to the bathroom and back, reset your spine, like stand up straight.
I like to lay on the floor like a hard surface, lay down flat. You know just do a little stretching, like get the body back into alignment because when we're out of alignment with our bone structure, our muscular structure, everything else is going to suffer. Our breath is going to be stifled. We're going to be breathing more shallowly, probably into the chest activating the sympathetic nervous system, stimulating inflammation. You know, the list goes on and on. And so, then it comes down to, again returning to our roots. How can we just get back to our basic healthy posture. And I think that that for a lot of people is moving more, doing more things like walking, doing more things like stretching, and actually being mindful of their, of their little postures. And if you're having your hand up here, when you're typing with your mouse, bring the mouse down lower and like we're seeing with the, the household things early.
It's a lot of little things. If you're, if you're looking down at a computer, raise it up a little bit, have it a little bit high, little things and that can make the world of a difference. And then I know, I want to kind of dive into your, your tools you got going on because I'm a big fan of foam rollers. I'm a big fan of, you know, massage guns and like you’re saying, all these little gadgets, the lacrosse balls, golf balls that we can just use to kind of reset that musculature. But we like to just kind of close up here with all the tools you have for spinal support. And where people can learn more about all this stuff.
Eileen Durfee: Yeah, well, we have the neck shaper. There's a neck flexion exercise that you can do. And because of all of our electronic devices, I want to just start with the neck, because a lot of pain going through your arms, and even your low back curve are affected by your neck. And a lot of people do stretching because of tight muscles. But unless you have force on top of your body, that's called anterior force. With posterior support, like a train has a train track, okay? So, if you want your bones to be in a certain way, you have your posterior support guiding. You know, a lot of these foam rollers out there, they crunch the spinous and the transverse process. It doesn't stretch the joint. A lot of times, it's painful.
I mean, heck, there's that chirp roll, people are falling off of that thing and injuring themselves. And you know, foam rollers are great for releasing fascia and, you know, tight muscles, but what about inducing the curvature? That type of behavior does not induce curvature. So, with the neck shaper, you're able to put that force, the anterior force, and with the rolls, the posterior support with the groove, because it lets the spinous float. And then the edges of your vertebrae are called transverse process. And so, you'll literally be adjusting your back while you're using, you know, this equipment and then it’s stretching the joint. I mean, you have hundreds of joints in your spine. And, like you said, the muscles are suffering, the range of motion and all these things, but what people don't realize is that, through your brain, and your spinal cord through every joint where the nerves go out to supply, you know, impulses, to the organs.
So, when you have these pinched organs, you're going to have less organ function. And so, when you use the rolls, then you're able to stretch that. It releases nerve impulses. But one of the things we teach is to do the back twist, you know, to sit up straight and lead and rotate because your, your discs are like a sponge. What we want to do with this rotation is, we want to change the state to a jelly. Then, you use these different rolls. You know, we have five different diameters, three different densities of each. So, it depends on how flat your back is, or how injured you are, or how athletic you are. We have a sizing kit so you can determine the right size. Then you put one in your low back and one behind your neck and you lay down on the ground, like you talked about laying down flat.
What this does then, you lay there for 20 minutes. And so now gravity, all those tight muscles relax. Literally, your – here, your bone’s moving, and then your discs turn back to the sponge state and you can roll off, get up. And it's like encouraged. You're just fighting [0:53:58 audio gap] to use that curvature. It begins to train you. And because of the five different diameters and three different densities, and some of the other exercises that we teach, which are all in PDF free guides that they can go like spinalfitness.com, it forwards it to the website, and you can get all that for free. And utilize that to reduce pain. I mean, there was one kid who had a trampoline accident and he had been through physical therapy and he was having seizures. And I had these prototype Ugly Duckling you know, cushions.
I mean, they were like really bad. These are, these are the finished nice product. And you know, I taught them how to do the back test and lay down. And a month later, his dad came back and said, he's never had a seizure since and that kid carries those rolls with him everywhere and uses them faithfully every day. And I mean, it’s just amazing. And right now, we have the power cushion, the molds being cut right now with the integrated neck shaper. That's what the New England Patriots have their players, you know, on. And that's how they can do the pelvic tilt and a real sit-up where you're arching over so that you're strengthening the multifidus and the inner spinalis muscles and are inducing the curvature because you know, football players that have that big low back, they're the ones that are the best. They can run faster, jump higher, hit stronger. And so, you know, we've got these proven exercises and the equipment to be able to give you the curvature. And that's, you're looking at every Olympic athlete.
You just see they have that big low back curve, and they have that curve, and they just have this natural stance. It's a reminder, to stand up straight isn't going to give you the opposing force to induce curvature. So, that's why we need the exercises. There's a pelvic tilt, a setup and the neck flexion. And then there's a twist to lay over the cushions. You can drink ozonated water to get the miracle of more oxygen in your body. There's just, you know, just everything and we're constantly coming up with things to maximize your energy and your health.
Rob Carney: Eileen, this has been a lot of fun. I definitely had some good questions answered. And I learned a lot of good things. I'm excited for people to be tuned into this and follow along with all the cool stuff you're doing. So, I appreciate you being here today.
Eileen Durfee: Well, thank you for having me.
Rob Carney: Absolutely. And everybody listening. Have an amazing day. And we'll see you soon.