Podcast appearances and mentions of erin well

The following is a conversation with Erin Kenney, the CEO of Nutrition Rewired. Erin is a registered dietitian with a Master's in nutritional science. She's done an amazing job in building a business that helps people take control of their lives through modulating their diet, improving their gut health and ultimately looking after the gut microbiome. Today's conversation was far-reaching. We talked about fibre, We talked about gums, we talked about artificial sweeteners, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and supplements. This was pretty much an A to Z of what to do to look after your gut health, what works and what doesn't.  I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of the listeners and supporters of the podcast for everything you've done to help us build the name, and the brand, and to get the message out there around microbiome being critically important and gut health being important for wider body health. Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:19 How Erin became interested in gut health 00:04:32 Biggest impacts on Erin's health 00:06:09 Stress and gut health 00:09:22 Does caffeine give us energy? 00:14:46 Bone broth instead of coffee 00:16:06 Coffee and our liver 00:16:48 Taking control of gut health 00:18:42 The role of a good breakfast 00:21:55 Lean muscle mass and women 00:23:07 Importance of protein 00:26:32 Role of supplements 00:29:35 Creating an optimal regime 00:32:33 Ketogenic diets 00:38:34 SIBO 00:46:24 Microbiome testing 00:49:00 Vitamin D 00:51:51 Green powder supplements 00:55:19 Heavy metals 01:01:38 Artificial sweeteners 01:05:58 Gum instead of gluten 01:10:18 Palm oil 01:12:20 Nutrition Rewired   Full Transcript: [00:00:00] JAMES: The following is a conversation with Erin Kenny, the CEO of Nutrition Rewired. Erin is a registered dietitian with a master's in nutritional science. She's done an amazing job in building a business up that helps people take control of their lives through modulating their diet, improving their gut health and ultimately looking after the gut microbiome. [00:00:24] JAMES: Today's conversation was far reaching. We talked about fiber, We talked about gums, we talked about artificial sweeteners, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, supplements. This was pretty much a A to Z of what to do to look after your gut health, what works and what doesn't. I really appreciated how simply Erin put lots of complicated topics for the listener. [00:00:49] JAMES: She podcast so that might explain why she was such a good guest. This is an amazing episode for anyone who's wanting to enter into this field, but we also digged into some [00:01:00] technical aspects, and I learned a lot over the course of the conversation. This is Inside Matters. My name is Dr. James McIlroy. I hope you enjoy it. [00:01:16] JAMES: So how did you get interested then in gut health? [00:01:19] ERIN: It was a very selfish Journey for me, I, from a very young age, struggled with digestive issues. They had to take me off of being breastfed when I was a baby and got on to formula fed. And, you know, I was struggling with a ton of digestive issues. And basically they just slapped me with a diagnosis of lactose intolerance. [00:01:42] ERIN: And basically what most of my childhood, struggling with horrible pain, horrible bowel movement. I will honestly say that a majority of my childhood was spent in the bathroom because Of how bad things were with my gut and [00:02:00] I really didn't have much help, you know, it was kind of just, you know, let's watch out for dairy and let's watch out for, you know, triggers and things like that, but it was kind of just, you know, take elodium and, and hope for the best. [00:02:13] ERIN: So, fast forward, you know, as I started to get older, I was a full time athlete, I was, you know, in high school, and really wanted to start taking care of myself. I struggled with mental health issues, I lost my father to his battle with mental health struggles, and it started to connect with me that on the days when my stomach was at its worst, my mental health was also at its worst. [00:02:42] ERIN: And so I was starting to make these connections and, you know, learn and, Spent a lot of time on Google, which, you know, we all know is not a reputable source of information. But nonetheless, I was, I was interested in, in seeking alternative ways to help [00:03:00] support my body. And when I went to college, I didn't really know what I wanted to major in. [00:03:05] ERIN: And I thought, you know, nutrition sounds like something that I could use some support with, considering everything that I'm going through and. You know, the things that I've read online and from there on out, it was just about healing myself. I learned, you know, after being on a decade of medications from birth control to fix the hormone imbalance, from PPI's to address the chronic acid reflux, you know, it was just being thrown medication after medication because doctors were just treating symptoms. [00:03:40] ERIN: So I, I've dedicated all my time to researching about, you know, the gut microbiome and nutrition. And then I was in school for nutrition. And I started following people in the field who were talking about these things, talking about the gut microbiome, talking about how nutrition impacts mental health. I [00:04:00] just lit up, you know, it was, it was like, for the first time in my life, someone was speaking to me and, you know, I felt validated too, for so many years, it's like, oh, it's just all in your head, you just gotta, you know, stop eating dairy, and I have now, Basically built a business on helping individuals get to the root cause of their digestive issues and imbalances because of everything that I went through. [00:04:25] ERIN: So I'm incredibly passionate about what I do and I'm just really excited to chat with you today. [00:04:32] JAMES: So what were some of the key things then as you went along your own journey that made the biggest impact to your own health? [00:04:39] ERIN: I will highlight a very important one that I think a lot of people don't consider and that's stress. [00:04:45] ERIN: It's Uh, you know, there was a lot of stress in my life and I was kind of putting that on the back burner as something that, yeah, you know, I'm stressed, I'm, you know, working out intensely and doing all this stuff, but that [00:05:00] can't, you know, that's not going to make a huge difference. So I really had to prioritize stress as one of them. [00:05:06] ERIN: Diet, as we all know, you know, is incredibly important. My diet was Not supportive of what I needed for my body. I played around with a plant based diet, and I have no shame for anybody who is, who loves their plant based diet, but for me it was not the right fit. I needed a plant forward diet, but I also needed protein. [00:05:30] ERIN: I needed to really hone in on, like, focusing on diversity of what I was eating. I was eating a lot of the same things over and over again. I think a lot of us can get into a rut pretty easily with that. And then I learned, you know, how much diversity our gut needs in terms of the microbiome. So stress, diet was huge. [00:05:50] ERIN: And then I had to address imbalances. I had small intestinal bacterial overgrowth because I was On proton pump inhibitors long term, I had yeast [00:06:00] overgrowth. Uh, so a lot of these things I learned from stool testing and I was able to Going [00:06:09] JAMES: back to the stress then. So how do people identify if their stress levels are too high? [00:06:15] JAMES: And you mentioned exercise, maybe exercise is a double edged sword. If you do too much, it might be actually a big stress on your body. So what are your tools and tips then for stress management? I guess a little bit is good for you, right? But too much is detrimental. [00:06:31] ERIN: Sure. Yeah, we call that eustress, right? [00:06:33] ERIN: It's that, that, that period where you're kind of in that Goldilocks sweet spot where stress is, is beneficial. It helps us grow. It's good for inflammation. But in terms of my own journey, I, I would love to say that I had this like, you know, lovely revelation of your stress and you need to pull back. It was. [00:06:53] ERIN: One of those moments, I say this to clients all the time, it's if you listen to your body when it whispers, you don't have to hear [00:07:00] it when it screams. And I was at the screaming point where I was running seven to ten miles a day and You know, I got to a point where I couldn't barely even walk because I was just like so obsessed with how exercise made me feel, how good it was for my mental health. [00:07:16] ERIN: So I was basically forced in to loving yoga. It wasn't love at first. It was a, it was, it was not love at first. It was a rocky relationship to begin with, but I thought this is the only thing I can do. Yoga is the only thing that I physically can do that's going to support my mental health and I just fell in love with it. [00:07:37] ERIN: And to this day has always been an incredible stress management technique for me because not only do I get to move my body, but I'm doing it in a way that's not inflammatory. I'm doing it in a way where I'm, I'm like feeling everything of what's going on in my muscles and how tight I am and breath, right? [00:07:57] ERIN: I'm breathing. So a lot of times [00:08:00] people will say, I'm just not good at meditation. And I'll say, well, have you tried yoga? Have you tried walking or yoga? Like those are also forms of meditation because you have to focus on your breath. If you're in a down dog position and you're sweating and you're tired, the only way you're going to get through that pose is that you're going to breathe. [00:08:20] ERIN: So meditation has been, meditation and yoga have been incredible assets to my healing journey, but also just the way that I Manage my stress now and also just the awareness of what is my threshold for stress and what are some of the signs that come up for me when I know I've hit my breaking point and become more irritable towards the people that I love. [00:08:45] ERIN: My sleep starts to suffer. My digestion starts to go off a little bit. So these are kind of my. Red flags of, Hey, Aaron, let's check in with yourself. You might be doing a little too much. So are those [00:08:59] JAMES: [00:09:00] the sort of whispers then before the screams, the irritability, the sleep? Yeah. [00:09:05] ERIN: And for females to even males, people think, yeah, changes in hormones, like you'd notice changes in your menstrual cycle or your libido, like those types of things can, can also take a hit when you're dealing with chronic stress. [00:09:22] JAMES: Cause I guess a lot of people think, Oh, well. You know, I'm a little bit tired today. I'll just drink more coffee or I'm a little bit sore today. I'm just gonna train more But what you're saying is maybe you need to just slow down to perform [00:09:34] ERIN: better. Exactly. And I also love to talk to clients about how caffeine actually works. [00:09:41] ERIN: Caffeine doesn't give us energy. It actually blocks these adenosine receptors in our brain. And these adenosine receptors are like those little whispers of us hearing the signal that we're tired. And once that caffeine wears off, those [00:10:00] adenosine receptors don't go away. They're still there to then tell our brain, hey, we're really tired. [00:10:07] ERIN: So I always Tell people that, that you're not giving yourself more energy by loading up on caffeine, you're decreasing your perception of how tired you are, which is allowing you to push through something, whether it's a workout or a long, you know, night at work. And over time, especially your body is going to shut down. [00:10:33] JAMES: As an avid coffee drinker, I'm sort of running through my head, am I drinking? I'm not listening to the whispers, but have you got recommendations then for your clients around coffee and caffeine, like some rules or suggestions in terms of when to drink, how much to drink? Cause that could be really interesting for the listeners on Inside Matters. [00:10:52] ERIN: My number one tip is that, and I say this to clients, you have to eat a full breakfast before you have your [00:11:00] cup of coffee. And when we do this experiment, sometimes my clients will say, after I had, [00:11:10] ERIN: they'll say, I didn't, I didn't even want my cup of coffee after I had my breakfast. And it's because we're not using artificial fuel, right? We're eating. Some nice eggs with, you know, some sweet potatoes and avocado and, you know, we're energized and now we don't have this craving for a stimulant. And I'm not shaming caffeine completely, especially coffee. [00:11:36] ERIN: There's numerous health benefits in addition to the microbiome, but it's, it's evaluating that relationship with it. And so. So I always say, no coffee until you've had a, a, a full breakfast. Coffee does not count as breakfast. I tell them no caffeine after noon. Uh, the researcher, Michael, is it, oh, Matthew Walker. [00:11:58] ERIN: He talks about [00:12:00] metabolism of caffeine and, you know, the half life and how long that caffeine can stay in your system. And You could be laying in bed at night if you had your cup of coffee at 3 p. m., and you're still metabolizing it in the middle of the night, impacting your quality of sleep, and then the cycle just starts again, right? [00:12:18] ERIN: You wake up, you're exhausted, you're groggy, and that's because That's You know, that the later in the day that can impact your sleep. [00:12:27] JAMES: So someone maybe like me who wakes up in the morning and finds a way over to the coffee. I know myself. It just, it's like part of the routine and I kind of love it to be honest, but so someone's addicted to that morning routine and they come to you and they become a client. [00:12:45] JAMES: How do you get them to break that cycle and get into the routine of. I don't know, maybe cold shower and then they come in, they've had their breakfast, then they have their coffee. Is it a slow process or do you just say, right, that's it, cold turkey. [00:12:58] ERIN: I'm never, [00:13:00] I'm never militant with my clients ever because I'm also human and the I also understand that, you know, when we make changes, that they don't need to happen overnight and it certainly doesn't usually feel good to our nervous system or mental health wise when someone says, just cut it out. [00:13:17] ERIN: And now, don't get me wrong, I've got clients that are all or nothing and they just, when I tell them generally what I've just told you, they'll say, forget it, I'm cutting it out. I want to do this, I want to do it perfectly, that's type of person. Right. So when we, when we start, you know, I, I get to know what their relationship is like. [00:13:36] ERIN: I had a client one time and she had this, you know, whole setup in her house. The whole side of the wall was dedicated to coffee. So for the client like that, we're going to say, okay, you know, let's. Maybe switch to a decaf or switch to, you know, less of a serving and put more, you know, almond milk in it to just cut down on the, on the portion. [00:13:56] ERIN: And then we, we work our way towards, uh, maybe after [00:14:00] breakfast, but there's lots of alternative things that you can do to still have that routine. So I'll, I'll just give my example. I drink a bone broth, hot chocolate in the morning and that bone broth, hot chocolate. It doesn't, you know, contain loads of caffeine. [00:14:16] ERIN: It's still got the gut health benefits. It's still bitter because of the cacao. And so I drink that it's got 20 grams of protein and it's warm and it's, it still gives me that so people can find, you know, there's all these like, you know, medicinal mushroom type of blends and things like that. So if you can find something that you like. [00:14:36] ERIN: That isn't that, you know, bursts of caffeine and acidity to your stomach on an empty stomach, then that might help the transition be a little bit easier. Thank [00:14:46] JAMES: you so much for that example. Mark, who's one of the hosts here at the podcast studio has bone broth and cayenne pepper. Okay. There you go. In the morning. [00:14:56] JAMES: Yep. And bizarrely, I was speaking to him on Tuesday because we're [00:15:00] planning for the week and we're talking about you. Um, and I said, cause he was drinking in the same type of Yeti coffee mug as me. And I was like, Oh, nice mug. Like you're one of the good guys. Um, is that a coffee? He explained that no, it was just his bone broth and it's part of his routine to get, you know, great nutrition and in the morning and it's still warm. [00:15:18] JAMES: And as you say, it sort of feels like a coffee, but it's not really a coffee. So. Um, I'm going to go for it. I'm going to start my day with some bone broth. [00:15:27] ERIN: I expect a report back. I'd love to hear from you. [00:15:31] JAMES: I'll give you a report. I can't promise to stop the coffee. That's not the goal. I might go from two shots to one shot. [00:15:39] JAMES: I think two shots to one shot. That's success. You know, you mentioned the health benefits of coffee. It's really interesting. I've had several people come on. So one of them was Professor Debbie Shawcross, who's like a leading authority on, on liver health, basically saying drink more coffee because for some reason it's protective [00:16:00] against, um, cirrhosis and, uh, non alcoholic fatty changes. [00:16:05] JAMES: So there's, there's something in there, isn't there? [00:16:06] ERIN: This, I think there's so many, there's so many asks. Aspects of it. I think, you know, you and I are big into gut health, right? So we're probably gonna always look at it from a gut health lens. And, you know, my scientific brain goes to, well, you know, coffee helps people have a bowel movement, right? [00:16:22] ERIN: It stimulates the liver and digestion. And if we're having regular bowel movements and, and stimulating that process, that's great for the liver, right? We don't want, that's good. You know, sluggish digestion. So just one of the many, I mean, there's, there's antioxidants in there, there's. The polyphenols that feed beneficial bacteria and you know, the liver and the gut are most certainly connected. [00:16:48] JAMES: So could you maybe walk the listeners through some of the other things you try and help your clients with? So you mentioned stress, diet, maybe we can unpack diet a little bit more because that must be huge. We hear. In terms [00:17:00] of. You know, taking control of your health and your microbiome and your gut. [00:17:04] ERIN: Sure. Yeah. As a dietician, you know, people expect that we just focus on food and we, we often do. There's not usually one client that comes in that there's not something diet related that we're talking about and everyone's starting at different ends of the spectrum, right? Some people have no knowledge that. [00:17:23] ERIN: You know, they're not even getting nearly enough protein. They're not eating any vegetables, you know, that, that kind of standard American diet where a lot of processed foods, you know, a lot of refined grains that aren't providing any fiber or nutrition. So there's so many different ends of the spectrum of things that we work on. [00:17:41] ERIN: And then you have, you know, clients who have overgrowth or SIBO, like SIBO, for example, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, and they're eating super clean. You know, air quote clean, where they're not touching your processed food. They're loading up on fiber because they've been told, [00:18:00] fiber, fiber, fiber, if you want better gut health, eat more fiber. [00:18:04] ERIN: And that's making them feel worse. So there's that end of the spectrum where we have to. obviously address the underlying root cause, but we need to simplify their diet, make it easy for them to break things down a little bit, give their gut some rest. And then there's the other spectrum where, you know, I have a woman come to me and she's eating one egg for breakfast. [00:18:25] ERIN: And I'm saying, where's your protein? She said, well, I haven't had an egg for breakfast. I said, well, one egg is six grams of protein. We need 25 or 30 grams of protein to start our day. Right? So there's, there's all these missing links. [00:18:42] JAMES: We've talked about breakfast quite a lot then because as you know, within the sort of wellness health sphere, there's this debate around intermittent fasting and it sounds like you're very much in favor of, you should have a really great nutritious breakfast with macronutrients to set you up [00:19:00] for the day. [00:19:01] JAMES: Is that the case? So you're big, big on breakfast for you and your clients. [00:19:06] ERIN: So for me, yes, I, I've always tried to adopt that my philosophy on my own nutrition and what I think makes me feel best is not going to determine what I think is best for a client. And I think that's really important. I think a lot of, you know, health professionals, it's, you know, they find something that works for them or works for some of their clients and then everyone should do it. [00:19:28] ERIN: Now. Do I often, would I recommend intermittent fasting to people? No, it wouldn't be my first recommendation for the majority of people that I work with. I have worked with clients and most of those clients end up being males who do really well with intermittent fasting. Maybe it's males or oftentimes it's women who are post menopause and they have specific goals, maybe related to body composition and hormone balance. [00:19:55] ERIN: And they found that these practices of intermittent fasting in whatever [00:20:00] fashion make them feel really good. A lot of these are CEOs of companies that like, they love the focus aspect of it during the day. And, you know, so I'm just going to come in and I'm going to work with them and say, Well, if this works for you and you're not, Uh, binge eating at night and feeling like you're deprived during the day and you're getting good nutrition and you're fast, you're feeding window, then I'll work with you. [00:20:23] ERIN: We'll work with where you're at. But the majority of my clients, you know, especially those that are female and they're still cycling, this can really disrupt their hormones. It can disrupt their ability to work out during the day. And so we have to really personalize that if it's going to be part of the protocol and, and the research that I've seen, my biggest concern is the body composition. [00:20:46] ERIN: I've seen the loss of muscle mass be a potential and I think that's a huge issue for a lot of people, right? We all need nice lean muscle mass and if fasting, you know, if we continue to see research that [00:21:00] fasting negatively impacts our lean muscle tissue, I don't love [00:21:04] JAMES: that. Yeah. I mean, intuitively it makes sense, right? [00:21:08] JAMES: You stop consuming calories, you've got no protein intake, therefore there's no amino acids moving around. So it kind of makes sense that your body is going to look for energy. Yeah. And I guess muscle is, is, is a target is probably less desirable than, than fat and certainly your glycogen stores kind of make sense that it forms part of that source of energy that we need. [00:21:32] JAMES: Our bodies are incredible. I'm just on the muscle mass thing. Oh yeah, absolutely. And on the muscle mass thing then, you know, I guess maybe some women listeners might think. It doesn't really apply to me. You know, that's for men that lift and train and work out, but that's not the case, is it? It's, it's just as important, maybe even more important. [00:21:54] JAMES: I, [00:21:55] ERIN: I'm a, I'm not a buff woman. Okay. I, I [00:22:00] get, you know, up to 130 grams of protein per day. And I'm not, you know, what, what people, a lot of women would think I would turn into by eating as much protein as I do. But I will tell you. Some things about me is that I'm very strong, very strong in the gym. I have a good lean body mass My hormones are balanced. [00:22:20] ERIN: I don't have cravings for sugar throughout the day. Those are the things that protein does for us. And so I think we need to understand that from a, you know, biochemical aspect, protein is essential. It is protective. It increases our metabolism. It's the only macronutrient that has a higher thermic effect of food like that. [00:22:41] ERIN: That's incredible. So we, you know, just old school recommendations that always seem to sneak their way into further generation. [00:22:50] JAMES: So, um, how does someone know, I mean, if they're not got the benefit of working with an expert dietitian like you, how do they know if they're on the right track for protein? And in [00:23:00] addition to like the actual macronutrient gram per day recommendations, how important is the source of protein for people? [00:23:07] ERIN: Hmm, that's a great question. So we have two different types of protein. We have a complete protein, which is basically a protein that combines all of the essential amino acids, which amino acids are the little building blocks of what protein is. And essential, meaning our body needs them to survive and to produce the daily functions and live optimally. [00:23:30] ERIN: So that's, that's an essential amino acid. That's a, that's a complete protein. Those Food sources are things like meat, fish, eggs. These are animal proteins. And then you have the incomplete side where we have incomplete, and these are going to be plant based foods. There are a few plant based foods that are complete proteins, but the majority, things like beans and lentils, these are not complete proteins. [00:23:55] ERIN: So they're just missing a few of those amino acids that we need for [00:24:00] essential daily living. Now, this doesn't mean that non complete proteins are not beneficial, but the requirement of how much you would need per day slightly goes up because the digestibility, how able we are to digest these proteins, is not as efficient, you know, if you were to eat eggs or a piece of fish, for example. [00:24:24] ERIN: So my approach is try to get some really good quality complete proteins in your diet and also get some incomplete protein sources in your diet, like lentils and beans and nuts and seeds, if that's something that works with, you know, your individualized physiology. But this idea that everything has to be a complete protein, I think is also, you know, too far left because, you know, bone broth isn't a complete protein, but it's still an excellent source of protein. [00:24:53] ERIN: And I'm still going to have, you know, salmon for dinner, and I'm going to hit my Total, you know, amino acid needs for [00:25:00] the day, if you will, [00:25:01] JAMES: and the total amino acid needs for the day. How does one calculate what they may or may not need? [00:25:07] ERIN: That's a great question. So the amino acids themselves, you could use something like I think chronometer might do this on a very, you know, specific level. [00:25:17] ERIN: I don't know if it goes that into detail, but we look at the total grams of protein as a dietitian, you know, so we're looking for Usually around 1.2, up to two kilograms, sorry, grams per kilogram per day of protein for each person. So the minimum, like the USDA requirements for protein, we're talking 0.8 grams per kilogram per day for a person. [00:25:43] ERIN: Uh, however you need to convert that, but it's what 0. 8 is not a recommendation I use for any of my clients. We're always going above that, especially when my clients are more active or they're looking to optimize their body composition. We're looking closer to like, uh, up to one [00:26:00] to two grams per kilogram. [00:26:03] ERIN: So that's your, that's your goal is to really figure out like what is that number for you based on your body weight and then how can you spread that throughout the day. You know, you don't have to completely spread it evenly, but I usually just tell people to make it easier. Get 25 to 30 grams at each meal and then adjust, you know, add to that to meet your needs and then add snacks where appropriate. [00:26:27] ERIN: But that's a good baseline if they're kind of starting from ground zero. [00:26:32] JAMES: That's an amazing summary of protein. Thank you so much. How do supplements fit into that? And I'm asking you in the context of this minimally processed versus like ultra processed food debate we have all the time. So some people say, Oh yeah, whey protein supplement contains the essential amino acids. [00:26:50] JAMES: Go for it. But other people say, Whoa, it's so processed you shouldn't have it. So what are your thoughts then, um, on supplements and How do [00:27:00] they fit in? [00:27:01] ERIN: I think supplements can be great. I think they have a time and a place and you know, a lot of the time is convenience is, is a big reason, you know, for somebody that has a protein goal of 180 grams per day. [00:27:15] ERIN: You know, meeting that might be really challenging if they're not throwing in some whey protein into a smoothie or a shake. Whey protein is excellent. Yes, it's processed, but so is your oatmeal and your brown rice and your ground meat. Like everything is processed. And if you choose grass fed, you know, protein powder, a whey protein powder with minimal ingredients that maybe just has whey, maybe some, you know, sweetener and something to Add some salt or whatnot. [00:27:43] ERIN: But if you have like a three ingredient protein powder, it's high quality grass fed, and you add that to your smoothie, you're doing wonderful things for your body. So I think it, it really comes into when you see these, you know, those, you know, body building companies always start these protein [00:28:00] powders and it's , you know, strawberry cheesecake or cookie dough. [00:28:03] ERIN: Yeah. And. I used to eat these. I'm not, I'm not saying I've never tried them. They do taste good. They do. They taste just like they say they do, or at least when you're, you know, eating healthy, they do. And, you know, that's when we get into the long list of ingredients. We see, you know, binders and gums and artificial sweeteners. [00:28:24] ERIN: And we see, you know, things that can really not make us feel good, especially from a gut health perspective. So a good quality You know, one that's been maybe tested for heavy metals, things like lead that can be common in plant based protein powders, arsenic. If we get a good quality protein powder, minimal ingredients, uh, high quality testing, ask for the certificate of analysis from the company. [00:28:51] ERIN: Then, you know, you're, you're, you're gonna help yourself out if you're struggling to get your protein intake. Thank you for [00:28:57] JAMES: that. I've, I've got so many things written down to ask, you know, I'm [00:29:00] actually not even sure where to start. Fibers, gum, sweeteners, heavy, heavy metals, other macronutrients. Before I jump into sort of more supplements and sweeteners and the heavy metals, I'd kind of like to. [00:29:16] JAMES: Round off the diet piece with you more generally. So maybe talk a little bit about fiber, um, fruit and veg, talk about carbs and fats. Yes. You know, when you're working with all your clients and for yourself as well, how do you build like an optimal diet? Big question. [00:29:35] ERIN: Yes. No, it's, it's a great one. How do you create like an optimal regime? [00:29:38] ERIN: Absolutely. So we start with again, base, like we kind of find this base for people to start. And that's where the three meals per day comes in. You know, if someone's not used to eating breakfast, we're going to try to get them to start eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner, or we can call it meal one, meal two, meal three, whatever your schedule is like. [00:29:56] ERIN: And at that meal, we're aiming to get again, that 25 to 30 grams of [00:30:00] protein. We want to hit. half a plate of vegetables that are colorful, usually like darker leafy greens tend to be an area that a lot of people struggle. So we try to look for those dark pigments. And then the other portion of that, usually I say like a fist of carbohydrates minimum at your meal. [00:30:18] ERIN: And we try to choose carbohydrates every meal and we try to choose carbohydrates that are more complex. So things like. higher fiber carbs. So if you're looking at a label, you're going to see fiber there. But if you're just in the produce section and you're looking at carbohydrate sources, potatoes have fiber, both sweet and white potatoes. [00:30:37] ERIN: Uh, things like quinoa, plantains, bananas. These are all sources of carbohydrates that are very nutrient dense. If a client's more active, those carbohydrates Intakes might go up. We might be consuming more carbohydrates per day. Um, and then fat is, is incorporated into those meals. We, we try to focus on healthy fats, particularly omega [00:31:00] 3 fats. [00:31:00] ERIN: So things like wild caught salmon, we're looking at things like mackerel, sardines, herring. These are omega 3 rich fats that we have to get two to three servings per week. So we've got three meals per day, protein, vegetable, carbohydrate, healthy fats included. And then, then we kind of go from there. We say, okay, are you working out? [00:31:22] ERIN: Okay, well, we need a pre workout, post workout routine. And how can we adjust there? Um, you know, you're training for a marathon. Okay, your carbohydrate needs go up significantly. We're going to have to adjust that. But once we have that base, you know, and, and You don't have to focus so much on the grams of fiber, although we are aiming for about 25 to 35 grams per day, if you're choosing complex carbs, if you're choosing half your plate of vegetables, then you're likely going to hit your fiber needs for the most part. [00:31:53] JAMES: It's going to happen, right? It's going to happen just by default, you know, because it's quite difficult to [00:32:00] find the fiber on the foods and to figure out. [00:32:04] ERIN: Yeah. And if you're focusing on it, we're [00:32:08] JAMES: sorry, there's a bit of a, a bit of a, a like you. Please continue, please. [00:32:13] ERIN: No, no. I was just going to say, so if you're focusing on getting the majority of your foods from less processed foods, then you're again, likely to hit those fiber goals because you're going to be choosing those types of fruits and vegetables and things like that that just naturally come with, you know, the, the benefit of the fiber. [00:32:33] JAMES: Absolutely. I'm going to just push you a little bit, um, on. Ketogenic diets and people even go more extreme and they have these um, carnivore diets. They're great. And you've been quite clear in your recommendation around you should have some carbohydrate with each meal. So, could we just unpack that a little bit and what some of the, you know, why is that part of your recommendation versus, you know, just eat meat and [00:33:00] veg, for example? [00:33:01] ERIN: Mm hmm. So, the, the main focus there is blood sugar balance and this is something that people think this is a discussion just reserved for people who have, say, diabetes. You know, oh, well, you know, they gotta watch their blood sugar and, you know, gotta make sure they don't eat too many carbohydrates. But the reality is, is we all should care about blood sugar. [00:33:22] ERIN: Blood sugar impacts our cardiovascular system. It impacts our mental health, it impacts our hormones, it impacts our muscle growth and maintenance. So having stable blood sugar throughout the day is absolutely key to optimal performance, energy, all those things that we're talking about. And so being able to get a steady adequate amount consistent throughout the day is going to allow that blood sugar to just kind of have this nice little up and down throughout the day. [00:33:52] ERIN: And we're going to stay within this nice range that the body likes to stay in for optimal health. When you go get your blood work done and you get your [00:34:00] hemoglobin A1C tested, that's your report card of how well you've been managing That blood sugar over the past three months, how well you've been staying within that range. [00:34:10] ERIN: And when you don't eat carbs for breakfast, and you don't eat carbs for lunch, and then you have a carb dinner, you're more likely to see a larger spike in those blood glucose levels. Again, this isn't the case for everybody. If somebody has been on a low carb diet, and they've maintained that, and their blood sugar is great, and they're feeling awesome, I'm so happy for them, and I would support them in that way. [00:34:34] ERIN: But for the majority of us, We have these habits where our carbs are not distributed properly. We're not eating the right amount. We're either eating too much in one sitting, not enough at one sitting, and we're wondering why we're craving sugar all the time, and why we're tired all the time. And if we just got high quality carbohydrates at every meal in adequate amounts, not overdoing it, not underdoing it, [00:35:00] we might find a really healthy balance. [00:35:02] ERIN: And not to mention, the trouble with those low carb diets is the number one symptom is constipation. Because These carbohydrates feed our beneficial bacteria. I probably see 10 to 15 stool tests per week, and any time I see someone come in with a carnivore, keto, low carb diet, they have very low beneficial bacteria. [00:35:30] ERIN: And it is pretty much causation, right? We can pretty much assume that the correlation there is because they're not So, my theory, you know, the, the keto diet, it's originally designed for, for medical purposes, and it's incredible for, you know, patients who are diagnosed with a, a type of epilepsy, and it has, been proven to And, uh, yeah, I mean, I don't [00:36:00] think that the majority of the United States needs to be on a carnivore or ketogenic diet, especially long term. [00:36:08] ERIN: We don't really know the long term effects of eating, you know, a ketogenic carnivore diet. it's, You know, I suspect that a lot of people that have found that they feel so good on those diets could be because they have an underlying gut imbalance, and now they're not feeding it with any fiber, any carbs, and that's kind of maintained their symptoms, so they feel really good. [00:36:36] ERIN: And that's, that's just a theory, it's just my thought, you know, that a lot of people find those diets because they're looking for relief and to feel good, and Ultimately, we all want to feel good, right? But if we're not addressing a root cause, then that, that's a, that's a problem, especially if it, it forces you to be on that restrictive of the diet. [00:36:57] ERIN: I [00:36:57] JAMES: mean, the way I like to describe the carnivore diets [00:37:00] to some people is you're essentially starving your microbiome. Yeah. It's not getting anything that it needs, really. I mean, there's, there's some microbes that can metabolize amino acids, um, and, and maybe some more complex chains and proteins, but it's, as you mentioned, it's really the fibers. [00:37:23] JAMES: It's the complex carbohydrates that they really, truly need. [00:37:27] ERIN: Yeah, there's, there's a few specific bacteria that the few specific bacteria, the Fecalobacterium Presnitzii. Uh, the aphromancia, these are two keystone, I'm sure you're familiar with them, they're two keystone bacteria in our gut. And one of the things that they thrive on is polyphenol rich foods. [00:37:47] ERIN: Polyphenol rich foods are going to be things like our berries, our, you know, pomegranates and grapes and those, those dark pigmented. fruits and, uh, leafy green vegetables, which wouldn't essentially be [00:38:00] allowed on some of those diets. And those are keys on species for protecting our gut lining for protecting us against things like inflammatory bowel disease. [00:38:10] ERIN: So I just, I don't know how you could convince me that a diet void of all these amazing foods and mentally for myself, I could never, you know, that's just. No, it's not for me. [00:38:26] JAMES: I've got a note to ask you about your diet and your routine in this totality, but just like to explore this, this fiber concept a little bit more. [00:38:34] JAMES: So one of the things that you said at the start, which I think was absolutely fascinating and you just touched on that again with people getting relief. I think maybe you're talking about the SIBO and how things are just going a bit crazy and counterintuitively, whilst perhaps in someone who doesn't have SIBO and who's functioning correctly otherwise, fibre is brilliant. [00:38:57] JAMES: For them, who've got too many bugs in the [00:39:00] upper GI tract, maybe fibre's not so good. So maybe you can walk the listener through that and Also, how you help these people get them to a state where maybe they can tolerate [00:39:08] ERIN: fiber again. Yes. And, and this would go for, you know, certain condition as patients who have inflammatory bowel diseases. [00:39:16] ERIN: Well, you know, if they're dealing with a lot of chronic inflammation, again, fiber is hard to break down. And that's part of what makes it good for healthy individuals, is that it's hard to break down. We don't digest a good majority of it, therefore it feeds our beneficial bacteria. But for those who are struggling, those who really find that, you know, they start to eat. [00:39:37] ERIN: a salad and it completely destroys them or, you know, the thought of any sort of vegetable on their plate is a nightmare. Then we're basically going to go forward and do some sort of testing. So the gold standard for the the SIBO is going to be a breath test. We're going to be testing for three types of gases, methane, hydrogen, and hydrogen sulfide. [00:39:58] ERIN: And then we're [00:40:00] also probably going to do a GI map to look at overgrowths in the colon, the lower part of the digestive tract as well. And If that person has a lot of overgrowth, then typically the course of action is going to be some sort of antimicrobial. And that could be either you could go to your conventional medicine doctor and you could choose to go that route, or you could choose to take the more natural route and use things like berberine, allicin, grapefruit seed extract, neem. [00:40:32] ERIN: These are all natural antimicrobials that have been shown to be very effective at, killing off harmful bacteria, both in the small intestine and the large intestine. And it's not just as simple as killing them off, right? We want to figure out what else is going on. You know, are they super stressed all the time? [00:40:50] ERIN: Do they have low stomach acid? Are they on a proton pump inhibitor, which is again, further reducing their stomach acid. We also want to look at the whole picture so [00:41:00] that this doesn't happen again. Cause the number one thing with SIBO is that people have reoccurrence because they just go in. They say, let's kill this off, but they don't address the fact that they have motility issues, thyroid issues, you know, stress that is just like, unbearable, and then they wonder why it comes back. [00:41:21] ERIN: So that's the, that's the big thing with addressing the gut is that we don't, we don't hone in on one specific thing. It's not as simple as like, oh, vitamin D is low, we, we increase it or. You know, it's, it's okay. So how did we get here? This is your gut is like a forest, right? You go into a forest and you just pull one thing out. [00:41:39] ERIN: You still have the whole forest there. [00:41:42] JAMES: So how do you then in your practice help your patients with SIBO? Do you recommend the berberine, the grapefruit extract, that kind of thing? And have you had good success with people? [00:41:52] ERIN: Yes. Yes. So I, those are the herbs that I like to use. Those are a few of the evidence based herbs that have been very [00:42:00] effective with my patients. [00:42:01] ERIN: And I've seen a lot of my clients get better with just a few rounds of these. Some, they do one round and we've addressed everything else and they're totally better. Some of my clients have had to go through two or three rounds of it to really fully get rid of it. But we'll retest it. We'll continually see those levels go down and down and down. [00:42:21] ERIN: And it's just, it's amazing to, to see people feel better. You start to see. Their iron labs start to go up because they start absorbing their nutrients, their vitamin D levels start to go up, you know, it's, it's a fascinating, you know, uh, progression of how people can be impacted by, by SIBO and for so long, you know, the, the, the statistics show that about 70 people who are, who are diagnosed with IBS actually have SIBO and they'll go their whole lives not knowing that because they're just going to say, well, I've got IBS. [00:42:56] ERIN: It's gotta, you know, be careful, follow a little FODMAP diet, and they don't ever [00:43:00] think to look further. And most doctors, some of them don't even, you know, we were talking about belief systems. Some of them don't believe that SIBO is a thing when it's clinically documented. So [00:43:12] JAMES: still to this day, to this day, for sure, it's still not widely accepted amongst the medical community. [00:43:20] JAMES: And some of the things you're talking about in terms of. Using these, you know, natural means rather than the classical antimicrobials. Also, we're just not there yet, I don't think. What's your [00:43:32] ERIN: experience? Yeah. And there's a lot of great doctors out there, especially gastroenterologists. And uh, I can't give you a long list of them, of great doctors that I know, but I can give you, um, you know, some experiences from clients who their doctors are, are really open to, they have a good understanding. [00:43:52] ERIN: You know, they, they see this in their practice every day. Uh, a lot of the doctors that say they don't believe in it, you know, they're, they're a [00:44:00] little outdated, right? They haven't been keeping up on the research. They have not been seeing patients and, and truly hearing them for what their symptoms are. [00:44:08] ERIN: And I think that, that there actually is, uh, a large amount of. Uh, physicians out there who are, are truly taking it seriously and treating and they're very, you know, there's a lot of doctors who are very quick to treat for, for SIGO with antibiotics and they do recognize how important it is. But, you know, it's just unfortunate that there are some out there that are leaving patients, you know, feeling very defeated. [00:44:35] JAMES: And with regards to the herbs that you recommend, is there like, this is the entrepreneur in me now, just my mind's going, is there like, you know, one supplement that has all the key elements in terms of all the herbs that have been beneficial or do you ask your patients while just. Maybe try a bit of the, the grape for effect, maybe try a bit of the berberine and see what happens. [00:44:56] ERIN: Yes, that's a great question. There, there are [00:45:00] formulations of herbs out there that are designed or supplements out there that are designed specifically for SIBO. So they'll usually have a combination of. You know, some of those more broad spectrum antimicrobials, I typically use them in a more isolated fashion because I love using tinctures. [00:45:18] ERIN: I like to try to reduce the amount of pills that a client will take. So oftentimes, you know, it will be like. Three times a day, you're doing your drops of oregano, your drops of neem, and then we'll do a berberine in a pill form. And, you know, we do that for a course of four to six weeks, and then we reassess symptoms. [00:45:35] ERIN: But there are, there are formulations out there. There's ones that are even more broad spectrum that, you know, are gonna have additional things like wormwood in them, and Uh, you know, things that can address yeast and candida, you know, knowing that those things can sometimes coexist, but the benefit of my practice is that I'm able to test with coins and I'm able to see, like, okay, how can we really hone in on this and instead of doing [00:46:00] this broad, you know, formulation, we do something much more specific to what you need. [00:46:05] JAMES: Yeah, my brain was just ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And also, I was wondering That's just how it works in my brain. The, the tests that you do, I'm also fascinated. So I'm, I'm very familiar with the hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen methane, because Um, and terabiotics is actually going to be doing a clinical trial, uh, in the IBS area. [00:46:24] JAMES: So I've been reading all about IBSC IBSD, post infectious SIBO and so on. Um, but I wondered because what you're talking about, it's fascinating, it's, it's a combination of the breath test. It's a combination of the stool test. So do you have providers that you go to and that you trust to give you the right kind of data, or do patients come to you having done a microbiome test? [00:46:46] JAMES: Like at home. Mm hmm. [00:46:48] ERIN: Yes. So the majority of, of what I will have clients do with their providers is have their standard colonoscopy, endoscopy, get their blood work done. If they [00:47:00] can get, you know, the things that I like to see, like the ferritin, iron, B12, vitamin D. Uh, so I'll usually have them do that just because it's covered by insurance, right? [00:47:09] ERIN: We try to save clients as much money as possible knowing that these types of cases can be, you know, more intensive and, and costly. And so the stuff that we will do together, luckily as a dietician, we have, uh, different resources where I have an ordering physician on my team who can order the labs for me. [00:47:30] ERIN: And I've been trained to evaluate and interpret these labs over the past 10 years. And so I get these results, we sit down, we go over them together, and you know, we either work with their physician or just on our own, depending on how willing their, their other providers are. We try to work as a team to help this client get better in whatever way that looks like for them. [00:47:54] JAMES: Got it. Thank you. I just wondered if there was like a. Best in class microbiome testing service [00:48:00] that you just thought was unbelievably good. That gave you so many insights. Yeah, [00:48:04] ERIN: I, yes, much more simple. I will answer that more simply here. So the, I love the GI map. I've been using the GI map by diagnostic solutions for several years. [00:48:16] ERIN: I also love, uh, Jenova. That's another really great one. Um, sometimes that might be a better fit for a client based on kind of their symptomatology. But those are really the two main ones. And then, you know, the breath test, I use the TrioSmart because they do all three of the, the, the breath gases versus, you know, if you go get it done in your conventional doctor, they're likely just going to test for the hydrogen and the methane and they might miss the hydrogen sulfide. [00:48:46] ERIN: No affiliations with the brands. Thank you. [00:48:51] JAMES: Thank you for that. Um, you got quite excited when you talked about vitamin D, iron, and ferritin. Can you just like maybe unpack that a little bit? Why is that so important? [00:49:00] [00:49:00] ERIN: These are basic, you know, labs that should be run for all of us. And I laugh about it because it's so frustrating how it's like pulling teeth with providers that you want to know what your vitamin D levels are. [00:49:14] ERIN: Especially when we're in New England over here. So we're not getting UVB rays from the sun to produce vitamin D on our skin for a very large portion of the year. And also just scientifically knowing that 90 percent of Americans are deficient in vitamin D. Vitamin D impacts our hormones, our mental health, our risk for inflammatory bowel disease, everything. [00:49:35] ERIN: It quite literally impacts everything. Uh, so vitamin D, I always have clients advocate for that. And if it's not done over here in the U. S. as a standard blood panel. Iron is another one. Iron typically is tested, but ferritin, the storage form of iron, is not always tested. And this can tell us a lot about inflammation in the body. [00:49:56] ERIN: This can tell us a lot about our body's ability to absorb [00:50:00] iron. So that one is another one. Especially, I work with a lot of athletes, especially endurance athletes, and they tend to be very low in ferritin. And so, you know, if a provider saw, oh, in 2017, your iron looked good, they're not going to test it again. [00:50:15] ERIN: And, you know, hello, it's 2024. Things can change pretty quickly. So, I like ferritin. I also like B12. Both B12, ferritin, vitamin D can tell us that there maybe is malabsorption going on related to SIBO. So, these are things that are common deficiencies that I see in my practice. You know, we should just be knowing regularly what our values are. [00:50:39] JAMES: Got it. Are there any other blood tests that you recommend for the sort of general person? Um, and I'm assuming you recommend vitamin D supplementation. [00:50:49] ERIN: Yep. If you are deficient in vitamin D to a point where, you know, you're getting into the twenties and lower. You're not going to be able to eat food and get your values back [00:51:00] up. [00:51:00] ERIN: You're going to need to supplement unless you're living in a place where it's very sunny And it's very clear that you've been hibernating and lathering the sunscreen and then you can change that habit But the majority of people in order to get their vitamin D levels back up will need to supplement So that's really important for people to know and you always want to take vitamin D 3 plus K 2 K 2 It prevents us from absorbing too much calcium into our, um, the vascular system, which can increase your risk for cardiovascular disease. [00:51:32] ERIN: So vitamin D3 plus K2, always have that combination together and just make sure that you're advocating for it. If you have a deficiency in vitamin D, you're going to need to supplement. There's very few food sources of vitamin D. And those really aren't likely to move the needle if you have a deficiency. [00:51:51] JAMES: And on the subject of supplements, do you recommend anything else? Like, for example, a greens powder, which are all the rage at the moment. [00:51:59] ERIN: Yeah, [00:52:00] I, I don't recommend those supplements. You know, there, there's, um. There's some out there, you know, there's ones that I've taken that I feel really good on, you know, the, the athletic greens was a big, it, it blew up and I, you know, they sent me a sample and I thought, oh, you know, this is like another greens powder and I'll be honest, I felt really good. [00:52:20] ERIN: You know, I'm not going to lie to people. I felt really good when I took it. And that could be due to the fact that it's basically like a multivitamin. And it's got adaptogens like ashwagandha, which I love ashwagandha. And, you know, it was great. I was taking it for a little while. And then, you know, consumer labs came out. [00:52:38] ERIN: They, they independently tested all of these greens powders. And they found higher levels of lead in a lot of them, which something that just naturally occurs in the soil. You know, plants are growing, they absorb these heavy metals from the soil. And lead is not good for us. As someone might imagine, that getting lead in, in [00:53:00] higher doses regularly, ideally we want no lead. [00:53:03] ERIN: But we're always going to be exposed to some level of heavy metals. But when you take something and you concentrate it down, that means you're going to get a larger dose in a small serving. And so, you know, certain brands that I mentioned, like You know were above the limit that I would consider safe to consume on a regular basis for optimal health And so I wow, you know stopped using that and I you know, I I really caution My clients to be using these powders You know, even if they are passing heavy metal testing, you know, they're, they're not a replacement for food. [00:53:36] ERIN: You know, if someone's really struggling, they might offer some assistance. There are certain fruit and vegetable capsules out there that have passed heavy metal testing, you know, don't have any fillers in them. Um, the brand like Juice Plus, for example, over here in the U S you know, they, they seem to kind of pass with flying colors. [00:53:55] ERIN: So I would say. You know, I think of someone like my grandmother who, you know, [00:54:00] she maybe eats, like, two meals a day, if even that, and she doesn't touch fruits or vegetables. She might be a good candidate for someone to take these fruit and veggie capsules, just to get something in her body, but For the majority of us, you know, we don't need 17 different, you know, powders and vitamins in one sitting. [00:54:20] ERIN: First of all, it's really tough for our body to absorb that all in one. So you've got that aspect of it, where are you really getting all the nutrients out of it? Number two is the heavy metals. And number three is there's typically lots of additives to them, artificial sweeteners and flavors and, and things like that. [00:54:37] ERIN: So I, I don't, you know, I don't recommend them, but I'm sure there are times and places for, for those and in people's lives, but the majority of us should be just focusing on high quality foods from our diet. Aaron, this [00:54:50] JAMES: has been such a, an educational journey for me, uh, in addition to the listener, cause I also. [00:54:55] JAMES: take AG1 once or twice a day and have done for quite a long time. [00:55:00] Also a powder called Vibey Greens. And I had no idea about the heavy metal piece. Just no idea. And to be honest with you, I actually don't know that much about heavy metals and how they can impact on health. So could we talk about that for a little bit? [00:55:19] JAMES: Like How do we know if we're have, you know, if we've got too many heavy metals, what's the health and impacts of heavy metals? And then if there's too many and it's having an health impact, what do we do? [00:55:35] ERIN: So heavy metals. Each different type of heavy metal, from lead to arsenic to cadmium, those are two very those are three very common heavy metals that we typically see in supplements, powders, even chocolate. [00:55:49] ERIN: We see high levels of lead, unfortunately. Big chocolate fan over here, so, trust me, I'm not Nooooo! You're like, you're taking away my coffee and now my [00:56:00] chocolate. No, but what's going [00:56:01] JAMES: on here? But again, my AG1 and coffee, now my [00:56:04] ERIN: chocolate. So again, like I will use AG1 if I know I'm going out and I'm going to have a really long run. [00:56:10] ERIN: You know that that's that's the kind of thing I'm trying to really educate clients on is like I'm not taking it every day But I'm not never using it because I like the way it makes me feel I'm also consuming chocolate regularly But I'm choosing brands that are at least not the highest in lead and I'm moderating my intake But I probably eat chocolate at least three to four times a week. [00:56:31] ERIN: Like I'm not gonna lie. It's just You know, you can't avoid all of these things, but you know, there are some that are avoidable that are just, you know, we're getting too much and that could be impacting certain people. So you know, heavy metals can impact all of our organs. A lot of them can accumulate in our body and it's really hard to get rid of. [00:56:49] ERIN: Some are actually impossible to get rid of. So the kidneys can be affected. The gut can be affected. The liver, right? We can have this buildup of these heavy metals. And then on top of [00:57:00] that, if you have an unhealthy gut, then you're more likely to have these accumulate because if you have that intestinal permeability where things can move from your gut into your blood because you have leaky gut, you're in a, you're in a worse shape to be consuming these heavy metal, you know, containing products. [00:57:17] ERIN: But generally speaking, they have, they have widespread impact on our health from our brain health to our, our organ function. And over time, this can be very serious for people and it's, it's hard to say, you know, okay, look for these symptoms, it's, it's, you know, the, the, this happens slowly. So this could be you show up with dementia or Alzheimer's when you're, you know, 50 years old and you don't realize how much of something you've been consuming. [00:57:43] ERIN: But there's testing that you can do. There's hair mineral analysis testing that can look at heavy metals, which can be really helpful. Um, you know, mercury is another one that will accumulate in the body. And even just reducing your high mercury fish can really help your body, um, [00:58:00] work more efficiently. [00:58:01] ERIN: And then, you know, you can kind of go back to working in moderation versus. Eating high mercury tuna for lunch every day, for example, so this is a very big stressor for me is like we need to think about moderation. We don't need to fear monger people into being afraid of consuming chocolate or, you know, things like that. [00:58:18] ERIN: It's education, making better choices. And then if you are someone who has really poor detox, methylation issues, like MTHFR mutation, poor gut health. We might need some extra support with heavy metals, so we might use certain, like, green algaes to help just pull heavy metals out of your system. Um, we might use things like NACL cysteine, which, you know, helps upregulate glutathione levels in the body. [00:58:43] ERIN: You know, these are things that, essentially what we're doing is we're working on chelating, um, things like charcoal and, and algae, green algae vegetables. And then we're working to support the liver and, and, and all those other Um, up regulation processes that naturally happen in the body and then we [00:59:00] support the gut and we support sweating and we make sure our bowels are moving and, you know, we make sure nutrient deficiencies are addressed and that helps us just ensure that we're, you know, well oiled machines that can handle, you know, the daily toxins that we're always going to get no matter what, right? [00:59:16] ERIN: We're always going to get these things, but how can we educate ourselves, make better choices and reduce our total heavy metal load? [00:59:27] JAMES: What are some of the signs and symptoms that someone might have if they're sort of high and heavy [00:59:31] ERIN: metals? So kidney, you know, kidney issues can be a big one. Um, having, you know, kidney. [00:59:37] ERIN: So if you're doing blood testing or things like that, if you're, you know, consuming a lot of brown rice, very high in arsenic, um, that's something that over time, especially with smaller kids, you know, they're even more sensitive to these levels of arsenic, for example. Um, but, but kidney issues, liver issues, brain, um, if you're noticing, like I said, you know, early signs of Alzheimer's, dementia, [01:00:00] Parkinson's disease, uh, there's even, this is not my expertise, but, um, you know, a lot of dieticians who focus on the autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, um, a lot of discussion around how they have a harder time with detoxification and, and Some heavy metal accumulation. [01:00:17] ERIN: And so, you know, refer to them for more information on that. But I've learned from other dieticians about how that can be, um, you know, a way that these types of things can show up, um, gut issues, you know, you know, heavy metals can really disrupt the gut, the gut microbiome. So. Again, there's not really like obvious symptoms for a lot of people that you would say, Oh, that's, that's gotta be heavy models. [01:00:40] ERIN: Sometimes it's, you know, your body just kind of slowly not functioning optimally and not realizing that your total toxic burden is just too high. [01:00:50] JAMES: Gosh, it just made me wonder, I mean, imagine how many people with autoimmune disease, for example, may actually just be too high in, in these heavy metals. [01:01:00] It's again, I think it's one of these things where the traditional classical medical community probably aren't that interested. [01:01:08] ERIN: Yeah, unfortunately not. And you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a very broken system overall. And, you know, I wish I had, I wish I had the solution. I wish that I could say that I could see things getting better in the future. But I think when you involve finances, when you put money into the, the picture, you know, it, the, yeah. [01:01:30] ERIN: The priority of healthcare, uh, preventative care really just. Yeah, [01:01:38] JAMES: I'm with you. So I'm going to bring us back now to some of the things I've wanted to discuss with you. Um, artificial sweeteners is top of the list. So as a dietitian and expert in gut health, what are your thoughts and recommendations relating to artificial sweeteners? [01:01:55] JAMES: Because I think this is one of the ones that comes up the most when you speak to people. Yeah. You [01:02:00] know? [01:02:00] ERIN: So what are your thoughts? Yeah. So I've, you know, I'

Hey and welcome to the Can I Have Another Snack? Podcast. This week I'm talking to specialist diabetes dietitian Erin Phillips about all things insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Erin shares some background on what happens in the body that leads to type 2 diabetes, why ‘prediabetes' is a dubious diagnosis and the things the keto-bros often leave out this conversation. We talk about why sugar and higher weight aren't the cause of type 2 diabetes, and how there is so much more we can do to care for diabetes outside of cutting carbs and losing weight, especially if you have a background of an ED or disordered eating. Lots of you have requested more content around this topic - let me know what questions you still have after listening to this episode!Find out more about Erin's work here.Follow her on Instagram here.Follow Laura on Instagram here.Subscribe to Laura's newsletter here.Enrol in the Raising Embodied Eaters course here.Here's the transcript in full:INTROErin: I think sometimes a diagnosis of prediabetes or type 2 diabetes can be a traumatic event, especially when it's not in the presence of someone caring and that you trust. Or especially if you have a family history of diabetes where you've seen…maybe some scary things. Which I will – now that I said that – I will add that it's, that's not a definite outcome either, those scary things, yeah.But it can be, that can be really stressful, and that's the opposite of what is helpful for blood sugars.Laura: Hey and welcome to the Can I Have Another Snack? podcast where we talk about appetite, bodies and identity, especially through the lens of parenting. I'm Laura Thomas, I'm an anti-diet registered nutritionist and I also write the Can I Have Another Snack? newsletter.Today's guest is registered dietitian Erin Phillips. Erin's work is grounded in health at every size and fat positive nutrition. She has an advanced certification as a diabetes specialist and has spent most of her career working with people living with all types of diabetes. She has a private practice that focuses primarily on the intersection of diabetes and eating disorders. She works with people living with diabetes through individual counselling, as well as providing consultation to clinicians looking to be more grounded and confident in supporting their clients and patients with co-occurring diagnoses of diabetes and eating disorders. So I've had a lot of feedback from newsletter readers and people who listen to the podcast saying that you'd like more information about weight-inclusive approaches to so-called prediabetes – which we'll get into in a minute – insulin resistance and elevated glucose levels as well as type 2 diabetes. Most of the advice out there centers on carbs. So I was excited to talk to Erin about why these approaches are not only unhelpful for a lot of folks, but how they can be harmful. And why you don't need to get sucked into diet culture to care for yourself. In this episode, we discuss why type 2 diabetes isn't caused by too much sugar or having a bigger body, why pre-diabetes is a fake diagnosis, and why you don't need to cut out carbs to manage your blood sugar. I'm so excited for you to hear this episode. But before we get to Erin, I want to remind you that the Can I Have Another Snack? universe is entirely listener and reader supported. If you get something out of the work that we do here, please help support us by becoming a paid subscriber. It's £5 a month or £50 for the year. And as well as getting you loads of cool perks, you help guarantee the sustainability of this newsletter, have a say in the work that we do here and help ensure I can keep delivering deeply researched pieces that provide a diet culture-free take on hot nutrition topics like ultra processed foods, the Zoe app, and the deep dive on folic acid and folate that I just did recently.All of those you can read at laurathomas.substack.com if you haven't already. And if you're not totally sold yet then maybe this lovely review that I got recently will help convince you. So one reader wrote: “I feel so lucky that I found your work around the same time I started feeding my kid real food. It saved me so much angst and has allowed me to relax and really enjoy seeing him explore eating. Your essays on sugar especially was a game changer. I'm sure it won't always be plain sailing, but I feel so much more prepared to ride the waves of his changing appetite. and tastes as he grows, accepting them as a feature and not a bug.So hopefully he can have a much more relaxed relationship to food than I had for a long time. And I pay my £5 a month because I so value the work you put into your writing and think it's worth paying for. There's a lot of free advice out there, but I never know what I can trust. This is such a safe haven.”So yeah, it's £5 a month or £50 for the year. You can sign up at laurathomas.substack.com or check out the show notes for this episode. And if you can't stretch to a paid subscription right now, you can email hello@laurathomasphd.co.uk for a comp subscription. No questions asked. You don't need to justify yourself. Just put ‘Snacks' in the subject line. This is actually going to be our last podcast of the year. I'll be back in your ears in January with brand new guests. Paid subscribers will continue to hear from me in your inboxes and in the group chat, where I'm going to be holding space for all the venting and screaming at diet culture shit that gets dredged up over the holidays and into January. If you'd like to join us, you can sign up at LauraThomas.substack.com. Otherwise I'll speak to you in January. Okay, team. Over to Erin. MAIN EPISODE:Alright, Erin. Can you please start by telling us a bit more about you and the work that you do?Erin: Yeah. I am a registered dietitian. Well, in the United States, based in, um, the Seattle, Washington…I was gonna say, the ‘state of Washington'! And I'm also a certified diabetes care and education specialist. It used to be a certified diabetes educator and they wanted to add more letters. So I'm in private practice and I focus on working with people with diabetes and eating disorders at the same time, or people who had a history of an eating disorder and then were recently diagnosed with diabetes but don't want like It wouldn't be helpful or safe for them to go to just any diabetes educator.So those are the folks that I work with.Laura: Okay, so you're kind of working at that intersection between eating disorder care and diabetes care. And I think, like, what's important to highlight, which people might not be...aware of or familiar with is the idea that people who have type 2 diabetes, I would say in particular, but all forms of diabetes are at a heightened risk of disordered eating and eating disorders. And does that relationship…? No, it doesn't go the other way, does it?Erin: I think it does.Laura: You think it does?Erin: I think it does. There isn't a lot of research on it, but clinically, I absolutely see that.Laura: Okay. That's interesting. Erin: And eating disorders and gestational diabetes. I was talking with a colleague about this, that we see people with a history of, of an eating disorder, it feels like are at much higher risk of gestational diabetes.But the research…I don't, I haven't looked into the research on that, but we definitely see it clinically.Laura: Yeah, that's an interesting observation that you've noticed. So, you use this term diabetes educator. We don't have that here so it might be helpful to just kind of explain a little bit about what that is and then maybe we can unpack what exactly we're talking about here when we talk about diabetes and sort of associated terms.Erin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks for clarifying that. I love talking to people in other countries to learn about like, what do things look like there? So, a diabetes educator, I know they have them in the States and in Canada, maybe Australia, but basically what it is, is...Laura: Just to clarify, like, okay, in case my, like...dietetics colleagues are all like yelling at me right now. We do have dieticians that specialise in diabetes, but it's like the diabetes educator title is kind of a, like a bolt on right to your, your like baseline nutrition training. Is that right?Erin: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So here to become a. a certified diabetes care and education specialist – that's such a mouthful! You, yeah, you need, I think it's 2000 hours of working with people with diabetes after you've become, become a dietitian or you can be a social worker, you can be a pharmacist, you can be a nurse. There's lots of nurses that are diabetes educators. So you get those practice hours, you get continuing, I don't know how many hours of continuing education a lot. And then you take an exam, right? Then it's like, well, at least here, like the dietitian renewal where every five years you renew by getting enough continuing education credits.Laura: Okay, so it's safe to say you know a lot of stuff about diabetes.Erin: Yes, I think so, yeah.Laura: It's kind of your thing. So, I really wanted to talk to you specifically about type 2 diabetes today because, 1) there seems to be a lot of confusion about it. 2) It kind of gets bundled up with a lot of anti-fat bias and carb-phobia and diet culture. And then 3), it's something that listeners of the podcast and readers of the newsletter have requested that we talk about. Would you mind starting by just telling us what exactly type 2 diabetes is, and how it relates to concepts like prediabetes and insulin resistance? So that's a big question. Where feels like the best place to start?Erin: I think actually starting with insulin resistance, because I think of that as kind of an umbrella and then prediabetes and type 2 diabetes fall underneath that umbrella. Yeah. So, insulin resistance is a term that means…so all humans have glucose floating around in their blood at all times. That is the main source of fuel. It's so funny to look at you while I'm talking about this because I'm like, you know this! But anyway, all humans have glucose floating around in the blood. It's our main source of fuel for the body. And then for glucose to get into our cells, we need insulin. And I always use the analogy of: insulin is the key that unlocks the cell to let the glucose in. And so insulin resistance is where that key gets a little, like, sticky or…kind of like the key to my car right now that I have to wriggle it the just the right way. So it can take a little bit longer for the glucose to get into the cell. It still happens but it just takes a little bit longer.So that is insulin resistance and that is one of the key features of both ‘prediabetes' and type 2 diabetes. Often, when I say ‘prediabetes', I do bunny ears or air quotes because it's a misunderstood term and we can totally get into that later. But so type 2 diabetes is where a body has either lived with insulin resistance long enough or something else has happened that has made, in addition to insulin resistance, glucose levels get high enough in the blood to meet this diagnostic criteria.And we've actually…this is something I love sharing with people because often type 2 diabetes is just like, all we focus on is insulin resistance, but there's actually at least 10 other changes in the body that lead to elevated glucose levels that are going on in addition to insulin resistance.Laura: Okay, before we go on, I want to actually reverse and back up a little bit here, because…so you talked about how we have glucose in our bloodstreams that needs to get into our cells all the time.That's like everybody, always – even if you're like a keto bro. What I just wanted to make really clear for anyone who's totally new to these conversations is that glucose…it gets into our bloodstream from the food that we eat and it's a sugar, right? So I think those are two important points to clarify, that we consume food, it gets broken down and digested and absorbed across the gut lumen. And that's what raises our blood glucose levels. And then insulin is the hormone that's secreted by the pancreas that unlocks the door to the cell, to let glucose move into the cell, so we have energy, so we can do things, so we can go about our business as being humans. Sometimes what can happen is that the door gets a little rusty, or the key gets a little rusty, and it's harder for that insulin to get into the cell. Is that like a fair summary of... Wow. What's going on? Erin: That was beautiful. I was nodding furiously.Laura: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like I know something about this! Right. So then can you tell us a little, like – I think you alluded to this – but maybe speak to it a little more to how the kind of the cells get rusty and how it's harder to shift insulin into the cells.Can you talk to us about what happens next? Maybe some of the symptoms people might experience and then what's going on physiologically as well.Erin: Yeah. So when a body is experiencing those like rusty cell doors, there's a lot of different hormones that are actually involved in not only glucose regulation or blood sugar regulation, but just metabolism.So glucose regulation is just one part of metabolism. And when I say metabolism, I mean using energy from food and turning that energy into energy for the body and then using energy to the body.Laura: Yeah, thank you for clarifying that because this is something I come up against a lot where like metabolism is used as this kind of catch-all phrase to mean how quickly your body burns energy or it's like this really diet culture-y kind of thing.But when you and I are talking about it... I think we're talking about all the biochemical processes that are going on inside your body, all these cascades of reactions and like how a nutrient that we ingest in food or in a supplement winds its way into our body and becomes part of these chemical reactions that are going on, like, deep inside our tissues.Erin: Yep. Yeah, that good old Krebs cycle. So when the cell door gets rusty, that's a big kind of flag for the body, I guess you could say, for the metabolic process. So, I think you mentioned the pancreas already. So the pancreas is the organ in the body that produces the hormone insulin, along with other hormones. When the pancreas notices the cell doors getting rusty, the pancreas will say, Oh, that's cool. I got this. And we'll start producing more and more insulin because the signal that the pancreas is getting is from the cells. The cells are saying, we're not getting the glucose that we're wanting, that we need, that we need to survive or not getting it as quickly or as much. And so then the pancreas starts producing more and more insulin.Laura: So it's trying to, it's getting the message that there's not enough insulin to, to get the glucose from the bloodstream into the cell so it starts to produce more. And can you maybe speak to the impact that this can have on the pancreas? Is it helpful to explain that a little bit?Erin: Yeah, yeah, I think so, because I think that's also something that people don't think about or aren't explained. Yeah. So the beta cells are the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, and as they produce more and more insulin, they start to, after... I should say after decades of producing more and more insulin, those beta cells start to kind of poop out.Laura: Yeah, they get exhausted.Erin: Yeah. That's a better word.Laura: Crap out, poop out, exhaustion. Yeah, like ultimately they're working really hard for a really long time and that takes a toll, I think is what we're saying.Erin: Yeah, they start to go on strike, like they're doing the work of more…Laura: Like the teachers and the nurses and the doctors and the train drivers and yeah, we're having a lot of strikes here at the moment.So yeah, it's almost as though governments are failing globally, right? Almost.Erin: Yeah, you have to laugh because otherwise you cry! So the pancreas starts to get exhausted, in the research that's called beta cell exhaustion or beta cell failure. So the pancreas isn't able to produce quite as much insulin anymore.And after decades and decades and decades, the pancreas will not be able to produce enough insulin to meet the needs of the body. And that's when I say, store bought insulin works really well for that.Laura: Store bought! I love it. I love it because to me that just feels like a much kinder non-judgmental framing of what I think is…often a condition that is attached with a lot of shame and judgment. Like, yeah, there's, there's a real narrative that if you get to the point where you need the store bought insulin, that that's a failure.And there's a lot of research and a lot of conversations at the moment about this idea around ‘remission' and, you know, ‘reversing diabetes' and, and all of those kinds of things, which we're going to speak to a little bit in a minute, but I think that just adds so much to the shame of needing the store bought insulin. So yeah, that just feels like a really kind kind of framing around that. So let's see, we've talked a little bit about the mechanisms whereby we find it harder to get glucose into the cells over a long, long, long period of time that can kind of exhaust the pancreas, which means that we might need to get that store bought insulin. But there's kind of a wide spectrum between, like, the cells starting to get rusty and getting to the point where you might need insulin...endogenous? Exogenous! Exogenous insulin.Erin: That's why I say store bought!Laura: Store bought, yes. And I think that's where maybe this idea of like prediabetes comes in. And we've, you've talked about how that's maybe not the most helpful label.I suppose what I'm trying to say is that there's a period where somebody might have some insulin resistance, might have elevated blood glucose levels. But it's not considered high enough for a type 2 diabetes diagnosis. So could you explain what's going on there and why that's a contested term?Erin: Yeah, yeah. So if we think about a timeline of a body experiencing insulin resistance, the first thing that will happen is the insulin resistance And then the next thing that will happen…I shouldn't say will, that's the biggest thing that I don't like about the term pr diabetes is this, that it, it makes us think that it will happen.So what could happen, a body experiences insulin resistance. What could happen is that their glucose levels start to increase to a level where they meet the prediabetes diagnostic criteria. And then, the assumption with the term prediabetes is that that means eventually, unless you do something, like in big, bold, scary letters, that eventually, your body will meet the diagnostic criteria for type 2 diabetes.But what research shows is that that's not, that's not the case. I'm maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.Laura: No, I know. That's absolutely…I think it's a really important point. And so I have, and Erin, you can tell me if this isn't quite right, but my understanding is that progression from prediabetes to type 2 diabetes is less than 2% per year or less than 10% in 5 years.And I also have another statistic that 59% of people with prediabetes return to normal blood glucose values between 1 and 11 years with no treatment at all. Does that corroborate with your understanding? .Erin: Yeah, yeah, I recently was looking into this research and that sounds like exactly what I found. And it really depends on where you look and what study you look at and what population they were looking at. But the, the biggest takeaway for me was that it's not…Laura: It's not a done deal.Erin: Yeah, someone's body can just be in that prediabetes range forever or um, either forever or they can go back to below the prediabetes range that it…by focusing on the blood glucose values, we're looking at a symptom and we're not really looking at what's going on underneath.And so it's, I find that less, less helpful for that reason.Laura: Yeah, absolutely. So I think what we're saying is that prediabetes is somewhat of a dubious diagnosis, and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this too, but my sense is that like, giving that label can create a lot of shame and create stigma.It freaks people out, is my... experience of working with clients who their doctors have flagged that they have elevated blood sugar levels, let's say, and then….we know that stress and anxiety is not great for blood sugar management, so like, I mean, yeah, do you have anything to add to that? Like, what are your thoughts on that?Erin: That's exactly what I see in my practice and what I saw when I worked in a GP's office as well, that people are freaked out by either, either one of those labels and…yeah, stress and worry and anxiety and trauma. I think sometimes a diagnosis of prediabetes or type 2 diabetes can be a traumatic event, especially when it's not in the presence of someone caring and that you trust, or especially if you have a family history of diabetes where you've seen maybe some scary things, which I will – now that I said that – I will add that it's, that's not a, what's the word? That's not like a definite outcome either of those scary things. But it can be, yeah, it can be really stressful and that's the opposite of what is helpful for blood sugars.Laura: Yeah. Tell us a little about what the difference between a ‘prediabetes' diagnosis is versus a type 2 diabetes diagnosis? Is it just a difference of the level of sugar in the blood?Is it, is there a factor of time or like, is time factored into that? Like how long it's elevated for? Can you maybe speak to how, you know, you go from ‘prediabetes' as it were to type 2 diabetes?Erin: Yeah, that's a really good question. The way that I think about it is just in the diagnostic criteria, which is for a type 2 diabetes diagnosis, your blood sugar needs to get so high in the States, we usually diagnose it based on an A1c.So an A1c is usually what we use in the States to diagnose both prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. And here a type 2 diabetes is diagnosed at 6.5 and prediabetes is diagnosed at 5.7 up to 6.4. So ours is actually lower than yours in the UK and lower than Canada and lower than the rest of the world, basically.Laura: I feel like that's probably a really important and intentional thing, and we could probably go off on some conspiracy theories there. Erin: I have many. Yeah. Laura: Yeah, maybe it would be helpful to just briefly explain what HbA1c is, or A1c, and how it's measured and, like, what, what it's measuring. Erin: Yeah. A1c, I call it A1c, but you guys call it HbA1c. Should I say HbA1c?Laura: No, it's, it's fine. And I don't, I don't know why I call it that because I did my dietetics training in the US but I, I dunno, who knows, who knows?Erin: I've noticed everybody calls it something a little bit different.Laura: So, because I guess the HB refers to it being the hemoglobin is the hemoglobin one. But it's the same thing. A1c is easier, so let's just go with that. Erin: Okay, okay, cool. So A1c is a measurement of average glucose levels over the past two to three months. And the reason that it's average and two to three months is that as hemoglobin, so hemoglobin A1c is the full name of the lab value.As hemoglobin is part of our red blood cells, so in our veins and arteries, our red blood cells are floating around and glucose is also floating around. And so as glucose is bumping up against those red blood cells, it leaves a little bit of stickiness of glucose on the red blood cells. And then red blood cells live for 60 to 90 days, so that's 2 to 3 months.So then when they draw blood to check an A1C, they measure what percentage of the red blood cells are…kind of have this glucose levels on them or glucose on them. And then they can give us that A1C measurement in percentage form. So like 5.7 means... That according to the United States, we're classifying that as prediabetes and then 6.5 is type 2 diabetes. And the reason that we diagnose type 2 diabetes or all diabetes at a 6.5 is that long, long, long term research…or we followed, not we, I'm not part of it, the fancy researchers have followed thousands of people for decades and found that if blood sugar stays kind of in that 6.5 to 6.9 range, risk of those scary things like blindness or kidney disease or circulation problems is very, very, very, very, very, very low, basically the same as people without diabetes. So that's why we diagnose it at that, what I think of as like a pretty conservative level, because we want to keep people from experiencing those scary things.Laura: Absolutely. HbA1c is a sort of medium-ish term measurement of your average blood glucose levels, whereas if we were to just do a blood test randomly at any point in the day, there are like a bajillion different factors that could influence, you know, whether it's a high reading or a low reading, like how recently you ate, it can, you know, it can vary according to a whole bunch of different things.So a better way of measuring blood glucose is to look at that value over a slightly longer period of time and get that average, even though there are still some issues with looking at that number, but it's, it's a better number than, than just doing a random blood glucose test. So we've talked a little bit about insulin resistances, what prediabetes is and what type 2 diabetes is. There is this really pervasive myth that type 2 diabetes is caused by eating too much sugar. What do we know about that? Is that true?Erin: Absolutely not. Absolutely not.Laura: That was such a leading question, right?Erin: Is that true? Tell us! The way I think of that is that it's a real, just a misunderstanding of, of the complicated nature of type 2 diabetes – and when I say complicated, I mean, like referring back to those 11 different changes in the body that I mentioned earlier.Laura: Oh, so tell us about that because you, we said we were going to come back to this. What are the different changes?Erin: I can't even remember them all off the top of my head, but some of them are…the insulin resistance is one, the kidneys are responsible for filtering out our glucose when there's too much. And in type 2 diabetes, the kidneys start holding on to more glucose than we would want them to.Another is a decreased level of incretin hormones. So, GLP 1 is an incretin hormone. GIP is another incretin hormone, and those hormones are responsible for helping regulate glucose levels. And, and many people with type 2 diabetes and someone with prediabetes, they have a decreased level of those hormones.Laura: Okay, so I guess what, what you're saying here is that we often just focus on the changes to the pancreas and insulin, which is what I was asking you about before, but actually there are systemic changes that are going on throughout the whole body, right? Is that what we're saying? Erin: Yeah. Laura: Okay.Erin: Yeah. And those are absolutely not caused by eating, quote, too much sugar or eating sugar.Laura: Right, right, right, but because what we're dealing with is elevated blood glucose levels, the sort of obvious, or what people think of is the obvious pathway, as well…it's too much sugar in the diet, therefore your blood sugar level is too high. But what I'm hearing you say is it's just not as straightforward as that.Erin: Absolutely, yeah.Laura: Okay. Anything else that you wanted to add about, like, that particular myth, or?Erin: I wish I had more, like, definitive, like, it, that is not true because X, Y, Z, but you can't disprove a myth with research, you know what I mean?Laura: Yeah, yeah.Erin: Like, if somebody was like, yeah, unicorns exist, I'd be like, I don't know how to prove that to you. Because I can't show you, like, there is not a unicorn here.Laura: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I hear you. But I guess, like, what I would want people to take away from this and understand is that, like, you didn't cause your type 2 diabetes, like, you're not to blame. And, you know, similarly to how there are all different changes in the body that take place when somebody has type 2 diabetes, there are all sorts of factors that contribute to and help explain why somebody might develop type 2 diabetes. And they are everything from, you know, stress and sleep and things that, you know, often get called like lifestyle variables, even though that in and of itself is problematic, all the way through to experiencing racism, homophobia, transphobia, anti fat bias, you know, all of these like discrimination and prejudiceracism, homophobia, transphobia, anti fat bias, you know, all of these like discrimination and prejudice. Those things are also going to play a part in our blood glucose regulation, but we don't think of that. We don't think about the social determinants of health. We just think about like, well, you ate too many carbs. Therefore you need to cut out carbs. And this is the advice that people are given, we hear this idea that like carbohydrates cause, in inverted commas, type 2 diabetes, but we've…we also hear that it's caused by being a higher body weight.So, I'd love to hear you unpack that a little bit and, and kind of…yeah, is it a similar thing to what I just said about carbohydrates or is there anything else that you would add to that?Erin: So the thing that I go back to a lot with that, I guess, argument is that there's a really big difference between a correlation and a causation.So the example that I give with that is that as soon as ice cream sales go up, there's also an increase in shark attacks. Like, those things are correlated, but we can't say, we can't draw from that that correlation.Laura: Yeah, that ice cream causes shark attacks.Erin: Shark attacks, yeah. Right. And with that one, there's a really obvious, you know, third factor, which is weather, that contributes to both of those things going up, and it's not quite so clear with weight and, and type 2 diabetes.But there's one theory, which is that weight gain can be a symptom of type 2 diabetes. Another problem with that argument is that it really ignores just the natural body diversity that exists and occurs in the world. There are plenty, plenty of people in higher weight bodies who don't have diabetes and If it were true that higher weight causes type 2 diabetes, then all people in larger bodies would, would have type 2 diabetes, and that is...absolutely not true at all and the research shows thatLaura: And I guess the inverse is also true, right, that people who have a lower body weight, a lower BMI also get type 2 diabetes. And so it's, it's again, not looking at the, the correlation and drawing kind of the cause and effect conclusion, but also thinking about, okay, what other factors are going on that we're not seeing?And I think, to my mind, at least, it goes back to some of the things that I talked about before, some of the things that are, well, a lot of things that are outside of our control, like again, how we are treated in society, and how that, you know, that has been shown to like..even things like the Whitehall studies.Are you familiar with the Whitehall studies? Erin: No.Laura: So the Whitehall studies are kind of what I think Michael Marmot's work on the social determinants of health are based on, whereby they studied like civil servants who worked in Whitehall, which is like part of the government in the UK. And basically they stratified, I think it was mostly on men. Whitehall 1 was mostly done on men, because, of course, we need to know more about men, but this was, this was, these studies were done, done a while back and they have since added women. But effectively they stratified people by like their pay grade essentially, and they found that people who were in a lower pay grade, you know, they all worked in the same place. There was a lot of factors that were very similar about these men. But one of the key aspects was how much like autonomy they had in their job and what their income was. And they found that the people who hadl ess autonomy, so they were like a lower pay grade, basically, even though they had sort of overall similar working conditions, that the people in the lower pay grades had, I think, higher risk of cardiovascular disease compared to upper management and that kind of thing.And so it's a similar sort of effect here. And we also see it with like racism and anti-fat bias that there are all these structural things that contribute to our health in really, really complex ways. So I feel like that is a big part of what happens with type 2 diabetes that again, like kind of just seems to get overlooked by the keto bros.Hopefully some of that rambling made sense, but I'd like to maybe now think about...For anyone who has received this prediabetes diagnosis or a type 2 diabetes diagnosis, like, one of the first line pieces of advice that a GP or even a dietitian might give is around weight loss and around limiting carbohydrates in the diet.Where to start, really, Erin? Like, in terms of both of those. But basically, I would be interested to hear from you. Is that where you would start with someone? Or like, even putting it another way, are those helpful places to start? I mean, again, a leading question.Erin: The short answer is no, I do not find that to be a helpful place to start.You know, I'm really looking at this from the perspective of the population that I work with, who are people who have, who have restricted their eating many, many, many times throughout their life, or engaged in intentional weight loss many, many, many times in their life.Laura: Sorry, I just wanted to clarify as well for anyone who's like newer to the podcast that you say intentional weight loss and when you say that someone who has restricted their food for whatever, like, who has restricted their food, that doesn't necessarily mean someone who has an eating disorder, right? Like, like, what I'm trying to get at that people might not immediately realise is that that applies to people who have been chronic dieters, like people who have been dieting their whole life, right? That also kind of falls under that umbrella, right?Erin: Yeah, absolutely. And most people fall under that umbrella versus the, like, the full eating disorder umbrella. So yeah, it really applies to…most people who have been socialised as female, I would be so bold as to say that most, most people who have been socialised as female and many others have, have restricted their eating or dieted or gone on a lifestyle change, many, many times.And. So, because…I'm trying to think of how to say this without getting too into the weeds of, of, um, like clinical weeds…but because the body is hardwired against famine, what will happen if someone tries this again or says like, okay, I've been told to lose weight and restrict carbs or eat less carbs because I've had this diagnosis of prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, what will happen is things will look, quote, better for a little while. And so that's why, that's why the research shows like, oh, yeah, that's the thing that we need to do is because for 12 to 24 months, things are gonna get better. And when I say better, I mean, glucose levels will go lower.Laura: I was just gonna say because research in this area is generally done over like a fairly short term period where maybe If you're really, like, persistent, you can diet for that length of time, but yeah, so that's kind of, I guess what I'm trying to say is that over that shorter time frame, people, especially if they're given lots of support, like in a research study setting, might be able to continue with a restrictive diet for a bit longer, right? But then what happens?Erin: Yeah, but then the body…since the body's hardwired against famine, the body will start to engage in all of these compensatory mechanisms. Yeah. Basically like that, that carb restriction or yeah, any kind of caloric restriction, but especially carb restriction will kind of start the spring loading effect for the body to protect against that famine at all costs, which means that glucose levels will go up higher than they were before, and weight does the same thing, insulin level, same thing. So If we follow people longer than that 12 to 24 months, what we see is that these metabolic health markers are worse than they were at the beginning.Laura: Interesting. Yeah. So, I guess what, what you're saying is... And I see this in practice as well, is that people, yeah, in the shorter term, they might be able to restrict their eating, they may even lose a little bit of weight, or maybe even a lot of weight in some instances, and then in the short term, those biomarkers might seem as though they're improving.But then, because the body is, as you said, hardwired to, yeah, to protect itself, to move, like, protect itself against starvation, and the body can't really tell the difference between, you know, famine. And self imposed or medically imposed dieting and restriction, it eventually fights back against that in the form of like, it dials up cravings for these foods.It might also…like your metabolism, like all of that, those metabolic functions that we talked about right at the beginning, they start to slow down, which means that you start to maintain your weight or, or even put weight on. And what I see – and I'm, I'm curious if you see this as well – is that that degree of restriction that is often asked of people in these very low carb diets that sometimes get prescribed, certainly here in the UK on the NHS or that a lot that are sort of endorsed by a lot of diabetes organizations even, they cause people to fall into a binge restrict cycle. So rather than having kind of a more…moderate's not the right word, but like having a healthier relationship with food where you maybe are eating more regularly, but maybe in a way that feels more attuned to your body and also caring for yourself in all of these other ways that are really important. I don't want to just put that emphasis on food, but we're talking about food here. That what you end up happening is people restrict, restrict, restrict, but then they can't maintain that restriction forever. And so they end up in a blowout, right? Like where they're eating past the point of comfortable fullness, which can send their blood glucose levels sky fucking high, and I don't mean that in like a shaming way. I'm not blaming any individual person who has been caught in this cycle because it's not your fault. But just to illustrate like how kind of messed up that advice is that it can send people sort of, yeah, into this, this downward spiral of binge restrict, binge restrict.And I think what's kind of important to note here is that you could have someone who has what looks like on paper, perfect A1C, right? But they are binging and restricting, binging and restricting, and that the average blood glucose level over time looks like…you know, on paper, it looks great. But if you were to actually look at what was happening to that person and their relationship with food and how they were feeling, you might see a different picture.Erin: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, that's a really good point. A really good point. And to add on to what you were saying about it not being someone's fault, that binge restrict cycle is, is a very predictable result of the exact recommendations that people are being given. People are being given these recommendations to restrict calories, restrict carbs, and that is…the most predictable outcome of that is weight gain, higher glucose, and that binge restrict cycle when we look at the long, in the long term.Laura: Yeah, and I think that there's, there's something kind of psychological that goes on here as well when we ask people to really focus on the minutiae of detail around carbohydrates, around what they're eating, that that in and of itself, like that mental restriction can create, like, what I call the fuck it effect, like, or, yeah, just even the threat of restriction and deprivation can kind of trip a switch for people who have had an experience or had a history of disordered eating or chronic dieting or, you know, even, even people who have just tried to maintain a quote, a healthy lifestyle or wellness lifestyle and it really lead to problems for them.So, Erin, for anyone who's listening to this, who is like, well, my doctor has told me to lose weight. My doctor has told me that I need to cut out carbs or my diabetes nurse or my dietitian. But you're telling me, and actually my lived experience is that that's not a great option for me. Where can people start? Like, or more specifically, like, where do you start with people who come to you with this exact?Erin: The first place I start is by repeating over and over that you did not cause your diabetes. This is absolutely not your fault. You did all the things right, quote, right. Like there's nothing that you could have done differently to make this different, to make this not happen. Because like you were saying, Laura, that's most of the, the biggest factors here are stress, trauma, marginalisation. Those, those are the biggest factors and you don't, those are things are completely out of – and genetics! I didn't, we haven't even mentioned…Laura: Yeah, there's the genetic thing too.Erin: So, I think that's really hard for people to believe because it's the opposite of what they've been told for so long. There's so much of like, if you don't blah blah blah, you're gonna get diabetes. And so I repeat that over and over, that you did not cause your diabetes, it's not your fault. And then the next thing that we talk about is actually eating enough. So making sure that you're nourishing your body enough. Mm hmm. There's a lot of, like, biochemical metabolic processes that we can talk about about the why behind that. But I think we've, we've talked a lot about that today so we can take our words for it. That eating enough is just really, really important.Laura: Yeah, I think there's something there about sort of, you know, if it's available to you, like doing some work maybe around figuring out what your hunger and fullness cues look like, feel like. Because, again, just purely anecdotally, I've noticed that people who are, you know, not so attuned to those signals might, you know, put off, not eat enough throughout the day, so that then it does leave them feeling a bit more vulnerable to bingeing or, you know, like eating in a way that that feels like out of control or chaotic.Not that eating has to be this like super controlled thing, but also just recognising how unsettling and disturbing it can feel, if it feels like you have no say in what's going on as well. So yeah, I love that that's kind of like your, your starting point is like, hold up, are you actually eating enough?Erin: Mm hmm. And I say this in, you know, in this blanket way, talking to you today, because way more often than not, I see that people are not eating enough. And people are shocked at like, wait, I eat that much?Laura: Yeah. And, and I just want to, like, underscore that point. Especially for my clients who are fat or in bigger bodies, plus size, whatever language you feel comfortable using there. When I've said to clients in bigger bodies before, like, I don't think you're eating enough. There is just like a…I don't know, like, just this complete disbelief because it's so counter to what they've always been told, which is like you're eating too much. So, yeah, I just wanted to like flag that as well that like this is not just a thin people thing. That's for everyone.Erin: Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for highlighting that.Laura: Are there any other like, kind of like, I suppose what I'm thinking of is like low hanging fruit, like things that are like, maybe not easy for people, but like, that might feel more accessible. That's maybe the right word.Erin: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think it, you know, really, really depends on the person and their, their experiences with food and movement and the medical system and their body, but some other things that may or may not be low hanging fruit are finding a doctor or a, or a medical team that you really vibe with, or at least that you hate less, we can say, like that feels less terrible. Because one of the biggest, most helpful things you can do with any type of diabetes is monitoring. And when I say monitoring, that can be anything from, well, mostly that's just like checking in with your medical team like quarterly or a few times a year, depending on what's going on for you. And if, if you absolutely dread it, that's not going to happen, right? Like you're not going to be able to be monitored.So finding somewhere that is less terrible, or maybe even someone you vibe with is really important.Laura: Yeah. That's really good advice. And I'm just…I'm thinking about the pathways that we have here in the UK and as far as I know, and it will probably depend slightly on different NHS trusts, but as far as I know you get an annual diabetes review for type 2 diabetes and I'm just thinking like about that in relation to the point that you're making which is that, yeah, having that check in that support just…you know not necessarily like a full review but like just to, yeah, see how things are going and, and see like what you might need, like that might not be available to everyone, certainly in this country. And I'm sure it depends on things like insurance and stuff in other countries, but I guess what I'm learning is just how fucking atrocious a lot of medical…or like not atrocious, that's not what I mean. But like, how under-resourced a lot of medical systems are in terms of like giving people the things that would be most useful, which is again why we're like, here's a diet sheet off you go, and that's not helpful.Erin: Yeah. No. Yeah. Not helpful at all. Gosh, that's, that's so maddening. t's really easy for us here in the U. S. to be like, uh, everywhere else has it better with healthcare, but it's really grounding to hear that not everybody's figured it out.Laura: It's like, what, 13 years of a Tory government? So. It's not surprising that our healthcare system has been absolutely obliterated.And again, it will depend on the area that you're in as to how good that care is. And that's not a reflection on any, like, individual practitioner within that system. Like, we all know how hard they are working and how kind of up against it they are. But what I'm hearing you say, really, Erin, is that, like, the going in hard with, like, weight loss and restricting carbohydrates, that is probably counterproductive to the overall aim of, like, caring for yourself, and that there are some other things that we can, like, think about and incorporate that might…Okay, they're maybe not such a like, go hard or go home approach, but that maybe they're more sustainable. Maybe they're like, kinder and gentler. And I think that reminds me of something that I will say to people if they come to me and they're like, you know, my doctor has flagged this, I'm feeling really stressed is…this is not an emergency. Right, like this is your arm is not hanging off or whatever it is. We can take a beat. And if there's other stuff that you just need to like, get a handle on, like life stuff or whatever it is, like, maybe this isn't your top top priority right now. Like, what are some like, small things that we can do to help you feel like you're caring for yourself or are being cared for that don't sort of, are maybe not going like full throttle, like, you know, what the common narrative is that we should be like cutting out carbs and losing all of this weight. But what are maybe some like softer things that we can start with? Yeah. Oh, well, Erin, thank you so much. This has been really helpful. And I know that you have a ton of resources on your website, on your Instagram that people can dig into. And I'll link to all of that in, in the show notes. I also want to mention that a while back at LCIE, we produced a guide, a weight inclusive guide to insulin resistance, and it has some more information about things like medication, supplementation, and again, some of those like lower hanging fruit things that might be helpful if this is something you're navigating and it has, you know, information about what we talked about today, Erin, the lock and key thing and like the how ‘prediabetes' is a dubious diagnosis. So I'll also link to that for anyone who's interested in the show notes. Okay, Erin, before I let you go, At the end of every episode, my guest and I share what they've been snacking on. So it can be anything, you know, a show, a podcast, a literal snack, whatever it is. I'd love to hear what recommendation you have for the listeners.Erin: Can I share a couple? Laura: Of course! Yeah. Erin: Okay, cool. Well, I'm literally snacking on all things peanut butter, which I don't know if you guys like peanut butter, but I. Just had some peanut butter pretzels again recently and I was like, gosh… Laura: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, are they the Trader Joe's ones? Erin: Yes. Laura: Okay. So last Christmas, my brother sent me like a huge ass box of stuff 'cause he lives in Oklahoma. From Trader Joe's. And it had those peanut butter pretzels in them and I hadn't had them before. And we don't have good snacks here. I'm just gonna say like the snack game in the States is just like…it's so much better than it is here, but I know those pretzels and they're so good. They're so good, yeah.We're gonna do a, like a snack box exchange again this year. So I sent him like, he loves chocolate, so I sent him like a ton of like Dairy Milk and like chocolates from... the UK and he sends me stuff from the US. So like, that's, that's fun. But I'm going to add them to the list because they are so good.Erin: They are so good. And you can, if you're in the States, you can also get them at Costco. Very similar ones.Laura: Okay.Erin: In bulk. Yeah. Big ol thing. So that's what I'm snacking on. My other thing is the podcast Normal Gossip.Laura: Oh yeah! I have heard a couple of episodes of that. And like, for anyone who hasn't heard it, can you explain the premise?Erin: Yeah, they get a story sent in from someone, like a true story, and then they share the story, like they're gossiping with a guest on, and they'll pause a lot in the story where they're like, okay, so this is what's going on, what would you do next? And so there's a little bit of like, choose your own adventure that I think is really fun.And then it's just so silly, but it's really nice to like, have some silliness.Laura: Oh, 100%. In the mess of everything. Do you have, like, a favourite episode that you would... Is there like a standout?Erin: Well, I just listened to one that was a live episode that I think it was like the plant story or something like that.And it was fun because they had a guest where they would ask them what they'd do. And then they'd have people raise their hands if they like absolutely disagreed in the audience. And then. So you just got a lot…there was even more choose your own adventure.Laura: There's like, yeah, more back and forth. Okay. Yeah. Like the plant story. I'm going to get you to send me the link and I will include it in the show notes because yeah, I am deep down a research rabbit hole at the moment looking at folic acid and folate and I'm like digesting all this biochemistry and I find that that happens a lot that I listen to a lot of like podcasts that are related to my work in some way and I forget the podcast can be fun.Erin: Uh huh!Laura: Yeah, I need to get back into that. All right, real quick, mine. So this is just like a fun, festive thing that I came across the other day, which I was looking for some new shoes and I came across gold sparkly converse high tops. Erin: Oh my God. Laura: And they are so cool. So I bought a pair. I don't know if I'm going to…they haven't arrived yet. I'm gonna try them on, but I feel like gold is a neutral, right? Like, it will go with everything.Erin: Oh, that's true. When I first heard you said neutral, I was like, are they? Is gold neutral? But it does go with anything.Laura: Yeah, so I'm gonna try them on, see what they're like, but I will, I will include a link in the show notes because, yeah, from the picture, I haven't seen them in real life yet, but from the picture, they don't look like they're too over the top and I feel like…if you know if like depending on what you're wearing like you probably get away with them at the playground, right?Erin: Totally. Totally. Laura: This is what I'm telling myself anyway. I kind of text them to all of my friends. I was like, what do you think of this? And there was like a lukewarm reception, but I think, I think I need new friends is really…with better taste is what, is kind of where I've come down on it! Maybe I'll put them on my Instagram stories and see what people think. Erin: There you go. Laura: All right, Erin. This was…uh, I was gonna say this was really fun, that little bit at the end was really fun. Like, all the bullshit around weight loss and low carb diets, not so fun, but I'm glad that we got to unpack, unpack that a little bit.For anyone who wants to dig into your work and your resources a little bit more, where can they find you and more about your work?Erin: My website is a good place. I have some free resources there and I try to update my blog with some kind of my push, my pushing back beliefs on kind of diabetes diet culture. And that is ErinPhillips.com. No, erinphillipsnutrition.com. Laura: Should we fact check your website?! Erin: I tried to buy erinphillips.com, but it wasn't available. So, erinphillipsnutrition.com. And then my Instagram, I think it's @ErinPhillipsNutrition.Laura: Okay, well we…just make sure you click on the link in the show notes because Erin's not a reliable resource on her own social media! So we'll make sure people get there in the end.All right, thank you so much, I really appreciate it Erin. Erin: Yeah, thank you, Laura. Thanks so much for having me.OUTRO:Laura: Thanks so much for listening to the Can I Have Another Snack? podcast. You can support the show by subscribing in your podcast player and leaving a rating and review. And if you want to support the show further and get full access to the Can I Have Another Snack? universe, you can become a paid subscriber.It's just £5 a month or £50 for the year. As well as getting tons of cool perks you help make this work sustainable and we couldn't do it without the support of paying subscribers. Head to laurathomas.substack.com to learn more and sign up today.  Can I Have Another Snack? is hosted by me, Laura Thomas. Our sound engineer is Lucy Dearlove. Fiona Bray formats and schedules all of our posts and makes sure that they're out on time every week. Our funky artwork is by Caitlin Preyser, and the music is by Jason Barkhouse. Thanks so much for listening. ICYMI this week: Gift Concierge + Mini Gift Guide* Fundamentals: Helping Kids build a Good Relationship with Sugar* Here's Why You Might Want to Pass On Getting Your Kid Weighed in School* The One-upMUMship of Kid Food Instagram This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit laurathomas.substack.com/subscribe

Lori: Erin what is something you just learned?Erin: Well, I'm in the process of learning is that has there Yeah, I in the process of learning. So, um, we all remember the left brain, right brain, you know, the left brain is the logical part of you and the right brain is the more poetic part. That's been dispelled a bit. This is not exactly correct. However, there are parts of the brain that do master some of these things that seem sort of beyond consciousness, you know, what your personality for example, you know, we've heard the examples of someone who will get have brain damage, and then their personality will train change dramatically. There are also many instances of where you know, a leisure or a lesion, excuse my leisure, a lesion, or some sort of injury will really impact language on one side of the brain or on the other. And I think those have led us to believe that like, oh, yeah, they're, they're super different. And the whole goal is to like, kind of get them to work together and it'll be supercharged. And I'm, I'm, I'm learning that that's a misunderstanding, but still wanting to explore. It's called lateralization. Erin: What is the competitive landscape once AI tools have been introduced?Lori: I mean, yeah, that's a very valid argument. And a lot of what I'm seeing in the marketing space, that as a marketer, if you are not leaning into AI, you're going to, you're going to fizzle out fairly quickly. I mean, it's changing the landscape. It's not replacing jobs, it's creating new jobs. And you have to learn how to use the tools to create efficiencies, so that, you know, we can produce more and I could go on this tangent for a very long time. But I would recommend, and I think there's an opportunity to look at, I have two points to share, look at AI outside of just the production line, and how it can be incorporated into other aspects of not just manufacturing, but any business. I think there are a lot of opportunities for creating efficiencies. But one area that I do believe can be extremely beneficial and it aligns with some of the case studies in the article here is, you know, the one thing that any business owner or business leader wants to do is make intelligent business decisions. And what AI is doing is helping to move that process along a lot faster. Because it's gathering the data which is what everyone needs in order to be confident in the decision that they're making. And the data is telling a story. And, you know, historically, we would just as humans spend a lot of time analyzing and digging through that, where AI is. It's doing that for us. And so it's allowing us to move faster and have more confidence in that intelligent business decision-making process.And so much more… Connect with the broads!Connect with Erin on LinkedIn and visit http://www.earthlinginteractive.com for web-based solutions to your complex business problems!Connect with Lori on LinkedIn and visit www.keystoneclick.com for your strategic digital marketing needs! Connect with Kris on LinkedIn and visit www.genalpha.com for OEM and aftermarket digital solutions!

On today's episode of Engineering Influence, we welcome back Erin McLaughlin to provide a overview of her latest Private Industry Brief, which is available on www.acec.org.Transcript:Host: Welcome to another edition of engineering influence, a podcast by the American Council of Engineering Companies. And once again, we are very pleased to welcome Erin McLaughlin, our own Erin McLaughlin, who handles all of our private market research and produces the Private Industry Brief, which is a very popular document available online at www.acec.org that covers the gamut of private market activity. And it's a regular document that looks at different sectors of the economy and in this issue available now online, we're looking at the Q3 - quarter three - 2019 review and Erin has pointed out a couple of highlights from the report and welcome back. And what are those highlights?Erin: Thank you. Well even though in Q2 and earlier this year, lots of folks were talking about when a recession would hit. Overall, we've seen that a recession does not seem to be immediately coming and we continue to have the longest economic expansion on record. So as of November, that was 125 months. We still have the record low unemployment rate, which averaged 3.6% in Q3. This obviously for our member firms has resulted in finding talent being a significant challenge and any fears of sort of the global economic market, which is slower than the U.S. Market influencing us has sort of been mitigated by the Fed Reserve, which has lowered interest rates three times in 2019 and all within the last four months.Host: Yeah. And talking to some people, they understand that Europe's kind of bottomed out with their kind of economic decline and it seems like they're in the process of stabilizing so that that's had an impact as well. But the labor crunch as always, I mean it's great to have close to full employment but doesn't really make it easy to get talent and it's a very competitive market.Speaker 3: It is. But on the upside we're continuing to see member firm revenues grow. So the U.S. Census Bureau actually tracks A/E firm revenues and puts out a quarterly report. They released their first estimate for Q3 on November 19th and it showed at $91.73 billion in firm revenues for the third quarter. So that's the last two quarters. It's gone up a little bit after sort of declining in the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019. So sort of similar to the construction spending the ups and the downs are very minute. So I would say it's pretty flat, flat but strong. So, and then sort of some of the other A/E macro industry indicators have also been pretty flat. So the ABC backlog indicator is still, when you average it out, hovering about 8.8 months of construction backlog and sort of the new housing units starting and some of the other economic indicators remain solid.Host: So one of the things that we talked about before going on was kind of the I guess the dismal science of economics, the upside risk. Now everything's going bad, but this one great thing is happening. So what's the upside risk for our industry?Erin: The upside risk? So we belong to the national association for business economics and they do a great, they do great surveys of sort of macro economic forecasters that cover all different industries folks that work for trade associations, wall street, federal reserve banks, et cetera, and sort of the A/E/C industry. So they are not specific, they're not specifically looking at that design or the construction market. However, in their most recent survey when these macro economic economic forecasters were asked, what is the greatest upside risk to the economy, infrastructure spending came in third and that came in after strong wage growth and reduced a trade protectionism. So the fact that, you know, as our economy sort of flattens out and may or may not decline in the next, you know, 12 to 24 months, the fact that there could be greater infrastructure spending on the horizon, you know, might help it for our industry, any sort of slow down.Erin: And I think just my insight is that might be especially true given how low interest rates are. So within the economist community, there's a conversation about how, you know, during a recession or to mitigate a recession, you would lower interest rates, but they're so low already. There's only so much you can do within that policy toolbox. So sort of counter to lowering interest rates is stimulus. So we're hoping here at ACC to keep, you know, working in, hammering that issue for our people that are in the advocacy groups so that when we're presented the opportunity, we can help policymakers understand that in that tool box, it's not just lowering interest rates, but also spending on infrastructure. SoHost: Yeah, it's the best time to start investing in infrastructure. Federal, of course, this is, you know, FAST Act, you know, we've got to look at moving on that and the Congress and then the States are doing their own thing with investing and that's good. But national leadership is something that we are continuing to advocate strongly for. So the point is well taken. You can't lower interest rates that much further and it's the prime time to start building things.Erin:  Exactly. One of the, one of the sectors that I was most surprised at is both when you look back at 12 months from Q3 of this year through Q3 of 2019, and what money is being spent on what construction sectors, the two leading sectors are water supply, which is more than 20....has grown more than 20% and sewage and waste disposal, which is an 18% growth. So those are the top two. And what the, you know, for most of our member firms, water supply and sewage and waste disposal are the water wastewater folks. You know, the people that serve that market. And I think that really that spending is going to continue. We've seen in certain parts of the country and Michigan and New Jersey and elsewhere that the decline of the water systems has given policymakers and those that fund those kinds of projects real, a real sense of urgency that I think we're now starting to see the result of.Host: Yeah, they have that incentive now with Camden and Flint, they're really take a close look at the last time that they really made improvements to the road infrastructure and, and and that's good - it's a societal good because it means that they're paying attention to it, which reflects that growth in that market. So let's kind of round out this brief update with the index of consumer sentiment. Where does that stand?Erin: Well, and then that is not an index that I usually highlight. But it is one of the driving the driving growth of our continued economy is that people are still spending money and feeling good about spending money as consumers. That is certainly driving the Amazon spending the last mile, the intermodal and logistics, that sort of freight transportation related market that a lot of our members play in. But it's, even though the index of consumer sentiment is really strong University of Michigan is the one I highlighted in the brief as a 2018. It was up at 98.4. This is after a low in 2008, 11 years ago of 63.7. So it's very, very strong. But that strength has not translated into sort of the real estate market being larger when it comes to the retail square square footage. So it's just a fun fact that even though a consumer sentiment in spending is strong in the retail market, on the private side spaces are still shrinking and becoming other things, which is really interesting.Host: Yeah. People were buying more things, but they're buying it online. So yeah, you don't need as much retail square footage, brick and mortar construction as you used to. So that's a really interesting point. So what's next for the brief? What do we have coming up next issue?Erin: The next issue is the intermodal and logistics issue, which we'll talk about sort of freight, transportation and land use and ports and congestion, and all of that good stuff and the sort of market for our member firms in that. And then our next quarterly report will be a Q4 review for 2019 and an outlook for 2020. And so that will be out in sort of mid winter and we can reflect back on 2019 but also look ahead to 2020Host:  2020 and the the new year and all that it will bring. Erin, thank you again for coming back on the show again. The the private market briefs are a great source of information, very, very easy to read and digest to pick apart. A lot of graphics, a lot of visuals. If you're an executive who just wants a quick snapshot of the economy or a business sector and you don't feel like going through a lot of reports, this is a great resource for you. Again, just go on to acec.org and you'll find them both this edition and past additions and you can just sign up to subscribe so you don't have to do anything. They'll just get delivered right to you. So thank you again for coming back on and we'll see you next time.Erin:  Thank you. 

Erin: Today I’m talking about water quality in hydronic systems with Bob “Hot Rod” Rohr of Caleffi Hydronic Solutions. Thanks for joining us, Hot Rod. Hot Rod: Yeah, thanks. Erin: Hot Rod, you seem to have a burr under your saddle in regards to hydronic water quality, let's talk about that. Hot Rod: Yeah, I’ve been on this mission for probably, oh I’d say the last four or five years. Working with Caleffi we have a lot of interest in water quality. It’s the one part of our business that affects really everybody, whether you’re a manufacturer, an installer, the owner of the building, the homeowner, the troubleshooter that works on the system. It just seems to be something that we haven’t paid enough attention to and it’s a simple thing to deal with, so that’s kinda been my mission. And what’s unique in my business is that I get to see a lot of different people in the industry. I go to the wholesalers. I go to the contractors. I go to the engineers. I go to the reps and stuff. So I see all avenues of the business and I see water quality being a big issue. So that’s my mission these days: to learn and to share. Erin: Well, thank you. And I appreciate you sharing with us. A couple of episodes ago, I spoke with Ray Wohlfarth who works on commercial systems and he had mentioned that poor water quality was one of the issues that can kill a boiler. I’m happy that we can talk about this now and learn a bit more about how we can prevent something like that. Hot Rod: I’m certainly not an expert, but I’ve learned a lot specific to our industry and I’d be glad to share that with whoever is listening today. And yeah, you say boilers, but it could be a steam boiler, it could be a hot water boiler, a solar thermal system, a geothermal system. It’s not just hydronics boilers and water. It could be glycol mixed and methanol mixed too. Erin: That’s so true. Now I, like most homeowners, may assume the water coming from my faucet, provided by my city, is just fine for hydronics, am I hallucinating? Hot Rod: Well you might be. I guess we’ve all been to a point in our lives where there’s a little hallucination. Basically what the public water departments want to do is make sure that the water is safe to drink, to consume, to cook with, and stuff like that. They are not really concerned or thinking about boiler water quality as far as the different disinfectants they might be adding in there and the different chemicals they put in there at different times of the year. In the springtime you may have turbidity in there. And turbidity is the optical clarity of water. If you fill a glass with water and it’s a little cloudy and a little brown in color, that’s probably not bad for you. It’s probably just some silica and sand from the runoff in spring. But people don’t want that in their bathtub or their sink or anything, so the city will put different chemicals in there to try and deal with that. And those chemicals might react with some of the things that you’re putting in your boiler, so don’t assume that the city is sending you water that is ideal for your boiler. They’re not checking for hardness specifically or the TDS (the total dissolved solids). They just want to make sure that the bacteria or anything that could make you sick or has a taste to it is out of the water. So there’s a couple of things you want to check to make sure you still have quality water for your hydronic systems. Erin: So given that, what knowledge do I need to get a thumbs up or down for the water I intend to use? Hot Rod: Well, great question. And, interestingly enough, it’s not hard to get a handle on water quality. There are a couple of things you want to check for and it doesn’t take expensive equipment to do it. You want to check for the hardness of the water. That will tell you the scaling minerals that are in the water. You can buy a little test kit online for about $35. It’s a little dropper test. You just count the drops and it will tell you how many grains of hardness in your water. Now the other thing that you want to be checking for is the TDS. That stands for Total Dissolved Solids. And that goes a little bit further than a hardness test kit because a hardness test kit is testing for the scaling minerals - the calcium, the magnesium, anything that will turn to scale in your system. The TDS takes it a little bit further than that. It checks for both the positive and the negative ions - the cations and adions. So it gives you a better picture of what’s going on there. It’s a fairly simple meter in the way it works. It’s almost like an O meter, for those that are listening that work with electricity and understand what an O meter does (it measures resistance). Well, you stick this meter in the water and it too is measuring the resistance of the water. So the more stuff, scale and minerals, that are in your water, it will change the reading on the meter and tell you what’s in there. The other third one that I have in my kit is a PH meter. Some people buy strips, but I like the meter. I like to see a number instead of just trying to match up a color. So those are really the three instruments that I would suggest people own and learn how to use and see how it affects what you’re putting in your systems. Erin: Those are great tips. Now if my water is below the standards that the manufacturers list in the installation manual, now what? What do I do? Hot Rod: Yeah, so that’s the good news that the industry is stepping up. And, by industry, I’m talking about the manufacturers of boilers and pumps and stuff like that. They’re starting to put water quality standards in their installation manuals. It seems like years ago there used to be a sentence in there, you know, “Maintain good water quality,” or something fairly vague. But now they’re starting to put some numbers in there. Say the hardness needs to be below, oh let’s say 7 grains of hardness. And they’ll have the TDS number in there. They might have a chloride number in there. They’ll have some PH numbers. They’re giving us a lot more information than they did in years past, so basically you’ll test your water and look at what they recommend. And here’s what will happen. If you put water in there that doesn’t meet the spec or if it’s way out of the spec of the required suggestion, then you don’t have a warranty on that piece of equipment. So if a boiler fails within two years of the date you put it in...maybe you go back there and it’s got a pinhole in it or something like that and it’s percolating and making noise through it. You or the manufacturer determine that it’s full of scale. You’ve got a lot of minerals in there that are just coating up the heat exchanger. And there’s your problem. So that’s not going to be a warranty issue. That probably didn’t leave the factory like that and it’s really not something that they want to give you a new boiler for because you didn’t deal with or treat the water. So we can take most things out of the water. We can take the water down to almost 99% pure H2O. And there are a couple of different ways that we can do that. We can reverse osmosis. And that’s basically squeezing the water through a semi-permeable membrane. You’ve probably seen those under some people’s kitchen sinks. They take taste and different things out of the water. So that’s probably one of the most common ones. Erin: Are there any other ways to “fix” the water? Hot Rod: Yeah. We can reverse osmosis it. We can de-ionize and de-mineralize the water. And that’s just as the name implies. We’re taking all of the minerals out of the water. And what’s different about that than a reverse osmosis is that it’s a resin bed that the water flows through, so it’s a little more portable. You can take it with you to job sites. And actually, Caleffi offers one of those that you just hook up your city water, or well water, whatever you have on the jobsite to. And it runs through this device that kinda looks like a little droid, like an R2D2, and the water goes in the bottom. And by the time it comes out the top it goes through that resin bed and it pulls all of the minerals (all of the positive and negative ions) out and you end up with pretty much H2O, pure water. And that’s what you want to put in there. Now that being said, that water could be aggressive. It’ll probably have a PH down in maybe the low 6s/high 5s so you might want to put a conditioner or an additive in with that to bump your PH up. And there are certainly plenty of those out there. So yeah, we can fix it, we can treat it. We can do that on the jobsite. We can haul water to the jobsite with us if we don’t have water on the jobsite that we can deal with. You can buy water from some of the wholesalers and take it with you. Erin: That’s great. Now suppose I embrace other hydronic fluids, like glycol or methanol for example. Hot Rod: Yeah, people do. And that’s a good point. If you’re going to mix glycol on a jobsite. Say you’re going to buy straight glycol or a strong mix of glycol and you want to thin it down or dilute it a little on the jobsite, you really should be using pure water to do that. You want to use de-ionized water because what will happen is, if you use water that has a lot of scaling minerals in it and the PH is out of whack, you’re pretty much ruining that glycol that you’re blending by using bad water with it. When you buy pre-blended glycol from the manufacturer, they blend it with the ionized water to ensure they’re not ruining some of the inhibitors. Some of the chemicals that they put in there to protect your system will get abused or broken down by using bad water to mix it with. And some of the geo guys I know who are still using different alcohols like methanol or ethanol - that too should be blended with good water. So, yeah, whatever you put in there, you need to start out with good quality water. Erin: Now I suppose there are pros out there that can lead me down the righteous path? Hot Rod: Yeah, certainly. There are experts out there. There are people who have degrees in water quality and water treatment. And I’ve worked with a couple of them. Luckily I have one in Springfield, Missouri near where I live. It’s Rhomar Chemical and they’ll do analysis for you. I mean, there are certain things that you can check right on the jobsite with just those three meters that I described. You might want to send it in for a more thorough analysis. And the reason why I’d want to do that would be if I’m working on a job and there’s some liability involved, like maybe a big expensive steam system in maybe a hospital building or something like that where you absolutely can’t have issues with that failing or prematurely going bad. So I might send a sample off to Rhomar. Fernox is another brand that’s out there that will do water samples. And they’ll send back a list of things that are in your water. They’ll break down dozens of different components in the water and then they’ll tell you what needs to be adjusted in the water. So at some point you might want to call in the pros if you’re having a problem and are going over and over with a system that you can’t get a hand on. There are certainly people out there that specialize in this type of analysis and treatment. Erin: Well, that’s fantastic information. Thank you so much, Hot Rod, for joining us on the podcast. Hot Rod: Yeah, this was fun. And hopefully everybody gets a little something out of it. And I’d be glad to help anybody if they want to contact me at Caleffi. I can certainly share what I know and help a brother or a sister out. Erin: And that’s it for today’s episode of the Heating Help podcast. To learn more about water quality in hydronic systems, download issue 18 of Caleffi’s technical journal idronics at www.caleffi.com. Like many people in the Heating Help community, I’m a huge fan of this resource. Each issue of idronics covers a different industry-related topic with easy-to-understand explanations and diagrams. And, if you’d like to meet Hot Rod and other industry experts, join us on August 24 at Wetstock in New York City. This event brings together some of the sharpest people in the hydronic heating community for an afternoon of roundtable discussions, sharing, and all-around fun. The only way you won’t get something out of Wetstock is if you stay home. Learn more at www.heatinghelp.com/wetstock. We hope to see you there!

Episode Transcript Erin: Today I’m talking with Ray Wohlfarth, commercial-heating expert and industry author. Ray’s Lessons Learned book series offers a common-sense approach to everything from servicing and installing commercial boilers to brewing with steam. You can find them in our store at HeatingHelp.com. And you can learn more about Ray’s seminars at boilerlessons.com. Thanks for joining us on the podcast today, Ray. Ray: Hi Erin. I’m so excited. This is great. Erin: We’re thrilled to have you. I’d love to hear more about how you got your start in the heating industry. Ray: Well, I was planning on going to school to be a lawyer in high school. And right after high school, my dad was in a really bad auto wreck and could not work any more. So I had to go to work to earn money. My relative was in a trade union (the steamfitters) and said that this is a great opportunity because people are always going to need heat. So I said ok. I got involved and I loved it. I just love technical things. So I got to learn all about systems and specialized in the boiler end of it. Erin: That’s great. Do you have any advice for new technicians who are just starting out? Ray: What I would suggest is to learn how systems operate. Anybody can look at components, but there’s no better feeling than to go onto a job when there’s been three or four people there and you understand systems and are able to get the heat or air conditioning going. And it’s rare to find someone in the industry that really does know how the entire system works. Erin: That’s an excellent point. And speaking of lessons, I’ve heard you say that when you’re replacing a commercial boiler, you should always assume that the existing boiler is installed incorrectly. Can you explain what you mean by that? Ray: Well, I got kind of burned on a couple of different jobs. What I found out is that there’s an unwritten rule in our industry that if you replace the boiler, you own the entire system. So what I’ve found is that we were replacing some boilers and the rest of the system was not working at all. Well, after we replaced the boiler, we were getting all of these calls about things that had nothing to do with my boilers, but the people didn’t know who to call. And it was that whole adage that you hear: “The thing worked fine before you put that new boiler of yours in there!” So what I understood is that most of the systems, not through fault of the installers, but maybe through maintenance over the years when people have changed things around and then they don’t work the way they were supposed to work or the way they were designed. I’ve gotten burned so many times that I am really hesitant when I go onto a boiler replacement project now. Erin: That makes sense. Do you have any other tips for commercial-boiler replacement jobs? Ray: What I like to do is talk to the building owner. A lot of times we get a call and we’re dealing with a mechanical engineer, but I also like to talk with the person who is maintaining the boiler, whether it’s a custodian or a maintenance person. I like to ask them a lot of questions and again, where I assume there are issues with the boiler, I’ll ask them what areas are the most problematic for them. And, sure enough, they’re going to say, “Oh, we can never get heat in this office” or “This office is always roasting hot and we have to keep the windows open.” So if you’re talking with those people that deal with this on a regular basis, they’re going to kind of give you some heads up and places to look where you can find the problems and hopefully resolve them with your new boiler system. Erin: Now in your book, Brewing with Steam, you mention that a commercial steam boiler is designed to last 20-30 years, but you’ve seen boilers destroyed in less than a year, which is astonishing. What can kill a boiler like that? Ray: Well, if it’s a steam boiler, most of it is water treatment. The first thing, the water is really not as good as it used to be. On that particular job I was talking about in my book, the boiler was there just over one heating season and the tubes started to leak. The Director of Maintenance was a very good friend of mine and he was put into a bind because the President of the University and the CFO were upset because they just bought this boiler and it was leaking already. They blamed him and they blamed me. We got one of the boiler tubes replaced and we sent it out to be evaluated. We found out it was chlorine that had done it. And do you remember a couple of years ago in West Virginia when they had that chemical spill into their domestic water and everybody was sick? There were counties that had to be evacuated because of this chemical that got in there. And what they did was add large doses of chlorine into the water to kill whatever was leftover and the residue. And this chlorine just killed this boiler. I paid out of my own pocket to have this test done. It vindicated us and the owner, but what we see is that steam boilers are just not being maintained and there are water-treatment issues. Another time an installer friend of mine called me for help. There was a boiler that they had put in just a year ago and within a year the low-water cutoff had filled with mud and the boiler dry fired. And they destroyed a boiler within a year because they didn’t do maintenance. So between the maintenance and the water treatment, I think that’s what really puts the dagger into the life of a steam boiler. Erin: Those are really good points, Ray. Never a dull moment in this industry, right? Ray: Haha! No, I love it. Erin: One of the many reasons why I love reading your monthly newsletter is because you share some great on-the-job stories, like you just did right now. And to our listeners, if you’re interested in receiving Ray’s newsletter, you can sign up at boilerlessons.com. One of the stories you told last month, Ray, was about the haunted thermostat. I loved it. Can you share that one with our listeners? Ray: Sure. We put steam boilers into an old, old school that became a rehabilitation hospital. And, right after the boilers were in there, I got a call from the customer saying the boilers were going off at night, around 11 o’clock every night and then at 6 o’clock in the morning they were coming back on. And we went crazy. We went through that whole building trying to figure out what it was. We thought, well perhaps they were on a light with an outdoor timer. And the maintenance person, every time we’d come he’d say, “Oh, this place is haunted. This place is haunted!” And when we couldn’t figure out what was going on, he’d say, “Oh it’s that ghost again.” And we’d say, “There’s no such thing as a ghost.” And he’d say, “Oh yes, Ray. There’s a ghost.” So I put a data logger on there that monitors temperatures every 15 minutes. And, sure enough, after a week at 11 o’clock the temperatures would just start to come down and at 6 o’clock it would come up. And we thought, “What the heck is going on?” Well, it was a locking thermostat cover, so we changed it to a new one and the problems went away. As it turned out, one of the people in the hospital for rehab was a heating and air-conditioning technician and he had a key for the thermostat. And he liked to sleep with the temperature cool at night so he’d turned it down to 60 degrees at night and, before anybody woke up, he’d turn it back up to 72. And we could not figure it out until we changed that locking box cover. Erin: Now when you changed the cover, did he say, “Oh, that was me. Can I have a new key?” Ray: Well, on his way out the door. He confessed and said, “That was me that was turning it down the whole time. When I’m in rehab I can’t sleep when it’s warm.” So I laugh a lot about it now, but it caused me a lot of headaches and gray hairs back then. Erin: So he could sleep, but you couldn’t! Ray: Right. Exactly. Erin: Ray, you wrote a book called Lessons Learned: Selling HVAC Service. In it, you say “Don’t spill your candy in the lobby.” What does that mean? Ray: Well, when I first got into the trade, I was a steamfitter and I worked for a control company and then I was involved in a really bad auto accident on the way home from work and I couldn’t do the work any more. So a friend of mine who was a contractor hired me on as a salesperson. Well, one of the jobs I went to, I was talking with the building owner and I said to him, “I think I can solve your problem.” And he said, “Well how exactly would you do that?” And I told him and he said, “Would you mind showing me a little bit of a drawing so I can show it to my boss? And we’ll get your company to do the work.” So I thought, great, I’m able to solve his problem. And I went back to the office and told my boss, “Well, we’re going to get this job. I know it.” About three days later, I get a request for bid to do exactly what I had put on this drawing that I’d made for this guy. He cropped my name off the paper and made it like it was his own. And we bid on the job and we did not get it. Then the person had the nerve to call me and say, “That didn’t work. You need to come back here and figure out what’s going on.” And, needless to say, I was furious. I went back and told my boss and he handed me a cup of coffee and he said, “Well, you spilled your coffee in the lobby.” And I said, “What the heck does that mean?” And he said, “That means that you gave away all of your tricks before you got paid for them. What you have to do is assure the people you can fix it, but don’t tell them how you’re going to do it until they agree to your terms.” So that was a lesson learned and I got burned a little bit, but it never happened to me again. Erin: So no more spilling candy? Ray: No. Erin: Well that’s excellent advice. Thanks for chatting with me today, Ray. We really appreciate it. Ray: I enjoyed it and I love what you’re doing with the website. Erin: Thank you. And if our listeners are interested in reading Ray Wohlfarth’s books, you can find them in our store at HeatingHelp.com. Ray also teaches seminars and you can find more information about them at boilerlessons.com. Thanks for listening! Stay tuned for our next episode about putting an end to water hammer once and for all.

Braze's Director of Data Jesse Tao and Tech Alliances Manager at Looker Erin Franz graciously break down BI tools and the value of data for the rest of us civilians. They walk through the marketization of data and the power of Looker blocks.        TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:17] PJ: Hi there. This is PJ Bruno. Welcome back to Braze For Impact, your weekly tech industry discussed digest. And I'm thrilled today to have two very good friends of mine, Jesse Tao, our director of data, the man about data. What's the title Jesse? It's just data person?   [0:00:33] Jesse: Well my Slack title is just data stuff.   [0:00:35] PJ: Right. So we have Jesse Tao, data stuff-   [0:00:38] Jesse: Official title is, Head of Data Strategy.   [0:00:41] PJ: Head of Data Stuff, Jesse Tao, and also our very good friend joining us from Looker, that's Erin Franz. Hi Erin.   [0:00:48] Erin: Hi.   [0:00:49] PJ: Good to have you here.   [0:00:50] Erin: Yeah, glad to be here.   [0:00:51] PJ: How's the day been so far? You guys have been doing workshops right?   [0:00:54] Erin: Yeah. Flew in last night. Just starting the day early, east coast time. Feeling great.   [0:00:58] PJ: Awesome. Not too jet lagged yet? You're feeling good?   [0:01:01] Erin: So far.   [0:01:02] PJ: Hitting our stride. That's what I like to hear. So we're here today to talk about data, about insights. I'm sure as you two know, over the past 30 years there's been monumental strides in what that means to companies, and the value that it can add. So let's start really, really general, where we are today. Erin, can you speak to some patterns that we've since in data, since the beginning of it? I guess from relational, to non relational databases, to the kind of stuff that you work with right now?   [0:01:34] Erin: Yeah. I mean, I can speak to ... Since I've joined Looker about four years ago, sort of how the landscape's changed and how we've seen sort of the product evolve with the technologies that have become available. So I think when Looker was founded six years ago or so, Redshift was just emerging as this modern analytical data warehouse. And those technologies didn't really exist before. And what this enabled, was the ability to actually expose large volumes of data across an organization in a way that multiple people could be accessing at the same time, and really using it to make data-driven decisions. Luckily, Looker took a bet on SQL being kind of this language of querying that would scale with all these different technologies that have come out. And luckily, that's been the case. With Redshift, we've also seen other databases like Snowflake and Google has BigQuery, that have really enabled organizations to become data-driven and self-serving when it comes to making decisions based on data.   [0:02:37] PJ: And making it more accessible to people like me, like pedestrians, plebs, who just don't really understand kind of the technical side of data. It's like-   [0:02:47] Erin: Exactly.   [0:02:48] PJ: Democratizes it a bit.   [0:02:49] Erin: Right. Making it accessible in a way that it's not just accessible to technical folks, to data analysts, to people who understand SQL and know how to code, to people who just want to click and drop and create reports and explore data on their own, products like Looker make that possible.   [0:03:06] PJ: And Jesse you work with Looker pretty regularly at this point?   [0:03:10] Jesse: Yes, almost every day.   [0:03:11] PJ: Almost every day. And I mean we wouldn't call you a pedestrian, you're pretty deep in data, you understand it well enough.   [0:03:16] Jesse: Yes I do.   [0:03:17] PJ: Why don't you talk to us a little bit about the marketization of data. This is something that's-   [0:03:22] Jesse: Yeah, you know, I think today we collect a lot of data. And in my opinion, data has more or less become a commodity now, rather than the hot topic. And what the hot topic of today is, it's insights. Because you're thinking about it, we're collecting a lot of data. We have data coming in from IOT and all these other sources, and most of the data that's collected, isn't being used. So, how useful is something that's sitting in the data of our house, kind of just collecting dust? So, very low value there. The value is from the insights, from actually analyzing the data, getting the data and figuring out what you want to do with it, to drive business decisions. And this is kind of where Braze comes in, and Looker comes in. We're providing the data and also providing the framework and the tools for people who are not using data, to get insights out of it and actually use that data. So I think in terms of the marketing pressure in the industry, we're moving ... We're going to still collect a lot of data, but more of the focus is going to be on how do we actually use that data faster and more efficiently?   [0:04:21] PJ: Right. Because if you're not using that data and you're not taking action on it, you're going to be left in the dust, more or less, right? Is that the ...   [0:04:27] Jesse: Yes. To put it in Marie Kondo terms, data just sitting there, brings us no joy.   [0:04:33] PJ: And you're all about sparking joy.   [0:04:36] Jesse: Sure.   [0:04:38] PJ: All right then. Okay, well what sorts of data, insights are available to day that wasn't available in the past? Obviously this is kind of a big sweeping generalization, but what can we speak to currently?   [0:04:49] Erin: I think some common themes that we've seen emerging are, people are collecting data from tools that they are using in their business, whether that's a Salesforce as a CRM's index as a support system and centralizing all that data in one place. So you're not just accessing one data set, not just your transactional data set, but also the data sets that define your whole business and your whole customer journey. So you're actually able to create kind of that 360 view of the customer that we're all sort of striving for, from as many sources as possible. And that's become possible because of these data warehousing technologies that are now available.   [0:05:27] PJ: It's all about that 360 degree view these days, isn't it?   [0:05:30] Jesse: Absolutely.   [0:05:33] PJ: Because I'm still kind of just getting my feet wet with my understanding of the eco system of products right? You have your attribution, you have your CDPs, Braze is in there somewhere-   [0:05:44] Jesse: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-   [0:05:46] PJ: Engagement. So Looker is the analysis, it's less the visualization and more the business intelligence right? Because I feel like on our call, we talked a little bit, it's not just graphs right?   [0:05:57] Erin: Right. Part of it is graphs for sure-   [0:06:00] PJ: Right.   [0:06:00] Erin: You need to be able to visualize your data, but much more than that, of course we always say the starting point for Looker is a dashboard, or a visualization. You can really drill into that visualization, see the components that have built that. If you're technical, you can even see the SQL that is being written to the database to supply that result set. And then you can modify that report, you can drill down into the granular level data that's supplying the data for that visualization. So let's say you're looking at event count by day on your application, you can see what those events are just by clicking into one of those data points.   [0:06:36] PJ: Gotcha. And that data, that belongs to the company effectively, or that belongs to the user?   [0:06:45] Jesse: I have a point of view on that. And before I share my thoughts, I'll preface it by saying I'm not a lawyer, so do not use this as legal advice.   [0:06:53] PJ: Okay, thanks for that.   [0:06:55] Jesse: I think the data ultimately belongs to the end user, but the company is basically the custodian of that data. Because without the end user, there is no data but without the company, there's not way of collecting or storing that data. So, the company is more or less using, collecting that data on behalf of the user. They're creating some sort of value from it, either from messaging or personalization or just understanding the user a little bit better. Some way of using that data to create insights into the level of value to that user. But ultimately, it is that user's data and the user should own that data. I think that's the point of view that many countries and regulatory bodies are holding as well. If you look at GDPR as well as the upcoming California privacy laws, the focus is really on the end user and their ability to control the data that they collect, the accuracy of it and the right to be forgotten. So, I think there is a common theme where the view point is the end user owns the data whereas, the companies are the ones who are using it to provide value both to the user and to the marketplace.   [0:08:03] PJ: That makes sense. And the California protection, that's going to happen at the end of this year right?   [0:08:11] Jesse: I don't know the exact timeline. We'll have to refer to our legal team about that.   [0:08:14] PJ: Okay. Well we can patch that up later if we need to. So Erin, let's dig more into Looker a little bit. What's the real differentiator for you guys? What do you guys kind of hold up as a torch? This is kind of who we are and what makes us stand out-   [0:08:29] Erin: Yeah.   [0:08:30] PJ: Amongst the other tools.   [0:08:31] Erin: I think luckily, the core Looker product has been fundamentally the same since its inception. With the core differentiators being that it's entirely in database. So as we talked about, the ability to access all of the data, down to the granular ... Most granular level that you're collecting it and exposed that across your organization. And the way that we're able to do that while still providing standards governance, so users are not creating their own one-off definitions of revenue, something that's incredibly important to reporting, is through our modeling layer, which is called LookML. So that's where you define all the business logic that your end data consumers will be using, whether by just exposing them to pre-built dashboards, visualizations or having them build their own content. And the way this works, while still leveraging the database, is it's really just an abstraction of SQL, or the language that you're using to create those database investments. And then finally, it's a web-based modern application. So that makes it really easy to share, collaborate and extend into plenty of other users. We have a fully baked API where you can serve data from Looker elsewhere to bring it into the tools where you need it.   [0:09:46] PJ: So LookML, you said it's your own language-   [0:09:50] Erin: Yup.   [0:09:50] PJ: It's built on another language-   [0:09:53] Erin: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-   [0:09:54] PJ: And so if you know LookML, it actually is useful outside of Looker as well.   [0:09:59] Erin: It's proprietary to the product, but it's very ... What you're doing is modeling the components of SQL, which is a core skillset of any data analyst. It really just makes it easier because instead of writing one-off queries, you're writing the components of those queries so they can be reused, by not only the data analyst, but also by all the data consumers.   [0:10:21] PJ: Gotcha. Cool. Well let's talk Looker Blocks. This is what I really want to get into because I first heard about it at LTR 2018, because we announced our first Looker Block right?   [0:10:34] Jesse: Two Looker Blocks actually.   [0:10:35] PJ: Thank you Jesse. Fact checking on the go. Do you want to talk about that? That was kind of a big release right?   [0:10:43] Jesse: Yeah, it was a pretty big release because it was still pretty early on in our relationship with Looker but we saw the immediate value pretty early on, so we decided to move quickly in that direction. And I'll let Erin talk a little bit about what our Looker Blocks, but the two Looker Blocks that we released back in November, are based around our currents data export and it focuses on market engagement and user behavior. So marketing engagement on the Braze data side will be things like email sends, push opens and at message clicks, stuff like that. And user behavior includes things like session starts and app purchases, so the behaviors of the users. We take all of that information together to create really useful insights around how campaigns are performing, user retention, if campaigns are improving your driving purchases, things like that.   [0:11:32] PJ: Gotcha. And Looker Blocks for those of us who don't actually know the definition-   [0:11:39] Erin: Yeah.   [0:11:39] PJ: Are basically ...   [0:11:40] Erin: They're basically templates for LookML. So LookML is a text-base modeling language. So we can model expected data sources upfront. So, data sources that are going to have a common schema, so common tables, columns, fields, within that. We've created a bunch of these for sources that are commonly used across our customers like Salesforce, Zendesk, as I mentioned before, Google AdWords, Facebook ads. The sources we're seeing most often, and then also the sources that we want to model proactively with our partners like Braze.   [0:12:12] PJ: Cool. And so these two Looker Blocks, these are the first of many.   [0:12:16] Jesse: Yes.   [0:12:18] PJ: Cool. I mean, do you know what's on deck? Do we know what's coming up or do we want to save that for our next episode?   [0:12:24] Jesse: We can save that for the next episode, but I actually want to talk a little bit about why we decided to make these Looker Blocks. And I think it's because we saw in it, the common vision with our product, which is data agility, or what we call, data agility. And that means basically speed to insight for us. As I mentioned before, the value of data is not in the data itself, it's what you can do with it, and how you can actually gets insights out of it. And with Looker Blocks, it acts as a template where we are predefining all the data fields and relationships, and providing those fundamental building blocks for us and out customers to build on top of. So, what would historically take a data engineer or a BI developer weeks, days, potentially even months to model, we do all of that leg work for our customers so they can just drag and drop in those Looker Blocks and be ready to find insights within minutes or hours.   [0:13:20] PJ: So that's huge. That's going to save time.   [0:13:22] Jesse: Absolutely.   [0:13:24] PJ: It's exciting. All right, let's move on down to data tech changing roles. How is data tech ... How is it changing the way people are doing their jobs and what will the change for real expectations be in the future?   [0:13:39] Jesse: Sure. Now, I think that people are becoming a lot more data-driven, and thinking about how to both collect and use data in their every day lives. Well not just their every day lives, but every day professional lives. They're using data to not just justify their decisions, but also to understand what the implications are in areas that they may not have seen before. And I think that's going to be a point of differentiation for customers, for our companies, because if you can actually use the data in a very insightful way, you can understand more about your users, your competitors, the marketplace and be able to confidently act in a way that will set you apart. And I think in terms of the data collection, the aspect of privacy is going to be more and more important as well. As I mentioned before, there's GDPR, there's the California privacy laws. I think people are just going to be ... Sorry. I think people are going to have to be more careful about what they collect because in the past, you could collect everything. And now with the privacy breeches you've been seeing at big tech companies, big banks, people have to be careful about both what they're collecting and how they're using it.   [0:14:49] PJ: What's the most insightful way you've collected data to make a decision about your life? Putting you on the spot Jesse. I'll start.   [0:14:58] Jesse: Okay.   [0:15:00] PJ: Mine will have to be using Rotten Tomatoes to decide to not watch movies. That's probably it. That's probably saved me several hours of viewing time.   [0:15:11] Jesse: Okay. So I actually have a script that I write, that scrapes lottery websites for the winning numbers, as well as the pay out. And I modeled out something where something like Powerball or Mega Millions, the optimal time to buy is a jackpot of around 3.25 to 3.5 million because at that time, there are not so many buyers where you have to split the pot. So you basically maximize your payout that way. So, we have office lotto pools here and I don't really partake in them up until a certain point where I think there's a higher payout.   [0:15:49] PJ: I'm going to keep that in mind Jesse. That's a good one. That was a really good one.   [0:15:52] Erin: Yeah, saving time, stress. I'm more on the Rotten Tomatoes path.   [0:15:59] PJ: Yeah?   [0:15:59] Erin: Yeah.   [0:16:00] PJ: Do your homework, do your reviews, leverage the data available.   [0:16:03] Erin: I guess restaurants also.   [0:16:05] PJ: Yup. Yeah.   [0:16:07] Erin: Avid Yelp user.   [0:16:08] PJ: I'm a latecomer-   [0:16:09] Erin: Not a reviewer but-   [0:16:10] PJ: Not a reviewer, right. I'm a voyeur. I hide in the comments and I watch.   [0:16:13] Erin: Yes.   [0:16:14] PJ: I'm a-   [0:16:14] Jesse: Lurker.   [0:16:15] PJ: What's that?   [0:16:16] Jesse: A lurker.   [0:16:16] PJ: I'm a lurker. I'm a lurker, that's right.   [0:16:18] Erin: Yeah, I rely on those people who are letting people know their opinions.   [0:16:22] PJ: And I'm a latecomer to Reddit actually. I kind of just joined the bandwagon because I needed information on a certain thing. I was like, wow, this isn't just funny comments, there's a lot of really useful information here. Who knew? Anyways, so what were some trends, some hot ideas in the last few years that really didn't deliver on its promise? What are some current trends or hot ideas you think do have promise in the future? Erin, you want to weigh in?   [0:16:48] Erin: Well, getting back to technology here, I think that as companies starting becoming more digital, and they were collecting so much more data and they wanted a place to put it, a data lake, and I think you know, I don't know how long ago it was, but Hadoop technology has emerged as kind of this place where you could be putting all your log data, all of your transactional data, all of this data. And it was easy to collect potentially, but not easy to actually self serve. So you were collecting all this data, but you didn't know ... There was no way to expose it to the organization. So I think that these analytical data warehouses have really filled that void and actually made that possible. And we've only seen that within the past five years or so.   [0:17:33] PJ: Can you tell me the different between a data warehouse and a data lake? Because I've heard data lake around this office over the past eight or nine months, and is there a big different that I'm missing?   [0:17:45] Erin: I can give the high level and then I think Jesse might want to comment on the more details. But you can think of a data lake as more like a file system. So you're putting all these files of data in this place for storage, but that doesn't make it necessarily accessible to the people who need it.   [0:18:02] PJ: But the warehouse, you can actually do more with it?   [0:18:05] Erin: Right. In a more performant way.   [0:18:07] Jesse: Yeah, I mean the way I would kind of think about it is a little bit more literally if you will. A data warehouse you can image as potentially a physical warehouse that you can just put anything in there. In this case, it's going to be data. And a data lake, you can think of as a warehouse that has a giant pool in it. All that data is kind of just swimming around in a, I wouldn't call it a liquid form, but there's ... It's potentially unstructured, it's very fluid, it's just there.   [0:18:31] PJ: Makes sense.   [0:18:32] Jesse: And then people can go into that data lake with buckets or whatever tool to extract the data that they need.   [0:18:40] PJ: That's a good metaphor. And so data lakes versus data ponds, is there ...   [0:18:45] Jesse: There have been some ... I've heard the term data ponds before-   [0:18:48] PJ: Really? Okay. I thought I was just messing with you, but I guess I wasn't-   [0:18:53] Jesse: No I've heard it before. I don't think we're currently using that though.   [0:18:56] PJ: All right, Jesse, hot shot, will data proficiency be a core skill for talent in the future? What do you think?   [0:19:05] Jesse: Yeah, I think absolutely. I think here at Braze, and just at other companies, just reading the news, you hear more and more about how companies try to be data-driven. If you just look at our job descriptions, by the way we're hiring, and job descriptions of other companies you see, the requirement of understanding the different data warehouses, technologies, how to use data. A move from Excel to more complicated analytics technologies like Looker for example, becoming more and more popular. So it's absolutely going to be more important in the future. And you know I think for data analysts, that's ... Their role has kind of changed over the recent years and will continue to change as well. I think for the data analysts that I see, it's moving more and more towards a full staff knowledge. So before, you would see people focusing on one element of the data pipeline, whereas analysts today tend to have more visibility over how to bring data in, how to clean it, how to do the app analysis and the visualization, everything. And I think there's going to be more focus on the domain knowledge as well because data and insights out of context, is not going to be terribly useful to the organization. So we need to know how to appropriately analyze and interpret enough information in a way that the business or the end users can actually use. Also, I think in terms of the marketplace, you're just going to see more and more technologies. Some better, some worse than others, within the visualization space. Looker is pretty new, they're a ... I would call them a challenger, again something encompassing the place and they're doing very well. But going further upstream, you're seeing a lot of new database, data warehouse technologies, a lot of new ETL technologies. So I think the data analysts of today and tomorrow, are just going to be more familiar with these technologies and how to use these technologies. And then flipping a little bit to the non technical people, so the end consumers of the data. I think you're going to see changes there as well, especially as data becomes more democratized, and easier to use and consume. We're definitely seeing a trend towards self service. So, drag and drop analysis of data rather than actually going into the data warehouse to write the code and analyze it. We're seeing more sophisticated alerting, so we know when data isn't looking the way we think it should be looking. And that's just going to allow people to move a lot more quickly and more confidently as they try out experiments, they do AB tests and iterate quickly.   [0:21:37] PJ: Brave new world.   [0:21:38] Jesse: Yes.   [0:21:40] PJ: Erin, you want to weigh in? What does the future hold for Looker? You don't need to show your full hand. I know you guys have stuff. But anything you want to leave us with?   [0:21:49] Erin: Yeah, I think beyond sort of self service, the core BI use case, Looker's really trying to position itself as a data platform. So, not just for internal analytics and reporting, but also serving data elsewhere to other applications, to deliver data where it needs to go, like the action hub integration that we built with Braze. So, basically connecting the dots when it comes to doing analysis and taking action on it. So, building your list of users you want to target a campaign to and not just having to export that and then upload it into a tool, but creating that link directly to that product you're using.   [0:22:32] PJ: Awesome. Cool. A lot stuff to look forward to then.   [0:22:35] Jesse: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-   [0:22:35] PJ: Thank you guys so much for being here with me, and thank you guys for joining us. This has been Jesse Tao, Erin Franz and PJ Bruno. Happy visualizing. [0:22:45]

  FUll Transcript Below Show Summary: Serina Gilbert is always coming across great stories and this one from Erin and Bob at White Cane Coffee is as good as it gets. Taking a Bad Day and transferring that into the launching of a new company, Erin and Bob, a daughter and son team, tell us why they wanted to start White Cane Coffee and how they want to impact others with the opportunity through the affiliate program coming soon. You can check out the line of White Cane Coffee on the web at www.WhiteCaneCoffee.comand find the coffee that best suits you.  Here is an overview of White Cane Coffee taken from the web: Hi, I’m Erin from White Cane Coffee. I, with the help of my parents, started this company to provide great coffee to our customers and provide self sustaining jobs for people with disabilities. We have a variety of coffee roasts for your enjoyment. Colombian Supremo is sweet, smooth and bold. We also have a Colombian Supremo Decaf which gives you all the same great flavor without all the caffeine. But, if you want that caffeine boost, try our High Octane. Our Donut Shop blend gives you that fruity, clean taste you expect to find in your neighborhood pastry shop. If you like a bold, earthy cup of joe, try our Dark Roast, it is roasted from 100% Indonesian Sumatra beans. French Roast gives you that rich, robust flavor you may crave. Or if you prefer a Breakfast Blend, ours will give you that tangy, fruity flavor you will love. All of our beans are organic and micro-roasted, using hot air to give you the very best quality and flavor. There is nothing worse than waking up in the morning and discovering you are out of coffee. (I shudder at the mere thought of it). So, that is why we offer a subscription service so you can receive your favorite White Cane Coffee right on your door step every month. If you make your subscription for a full year, we will cover your shipping. You will also notice that, other than our sample box, (which I highly recommend so you find the right blend for you), our coffee arrives in 1 pound and 2 pound packages. You will actually get what you expect you are paying for. Now a bit about White Cane Coffee, and why we standout. The reason I wanted to start White Cane Coffee is because, number one, “Who doesn’t love coffee.”. But most importantly, my brothers and I are all on the Autism Spectrum and I am also blind. We have found that finding jobs extremely difficult. In our experience, employers didn’t want to provide full time or a living wages to handicapped individuals. Or because of bullying on the job site staying at some jobs unbearable. So, at 22, I started to ask, “When you have the right people around you, the question stops being, What can I do? but What’s stopping me”. So here we are. Our goal is to provide a welcoming environment to all people and provide jobs to the handicapped community at a living wage. Most of all, we want to provide you with a Great cup of coffee! Check out this episode of Job Insights and send us your feedback and topic suggestions by email. Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network. Contact: Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Full Transcript   Jeff Thompson: I saw one on there that was called the high octane.   Bob: Yeah, that one's double the caffeine, double have fun.   Serena Gilbert: Do not ship that one to Jeff.   Jeff Thompson: Job Insights, a podcast to help you carve out your career pathway and enhance the opportunities for gainful employment.   Serena Gilbert: I saw a post from White Cane Coffee, and I was intrigued because the name, I think it's like a super awesome name for a company.   Jeff Thompson: Learn about resources for training, education and employment opportunities.   Erin: I swear, the excitement for me is just constant, because again, I'm just branching out on new things, I'm meeting with people in the community, I'm on podcast now. There's always new things that we're doing, so one part of it may not be as flashy or exciting as it was, but there's a new part that's brand sparkling new and just like, yeah.   Jeff Thompson: You will hear from people seeking careers, employment from professionals in the educational field, teachers, and innovators in this ever changing world of technology.   Speaker 5:          That's an easy one to remember, because everyone knows the white game, everyone loves coffee and.com there you go.   Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter @BlindAbilities and download our free Blind Abilities App from the APP store, that's two words, blind abilities. Now please welcome Serena Gilbert and Jeff Thompson with Job Insights.   Erin: If they do find work, it's for absolutely a pittance amount of money, so we're just like, let's employ them and pay them fairly.   Jeff Thompson: Welcome to the Job Insights. I'm Jeff Thompson and with me is Serena Gilbert. How are you doing Serena?   Serena Gilbert: I am doing absolutely fantastic, Jeff, how are you?   Jeff Thompson: I'm doing good. You came across a great company on Facebook and invited them on. Tell us a little bit about it.   Serena Gilbert: I was scrolling through Facebook like I do for, I don't even know how many hours a day at this point, and I saw a post from White Cane Coffee and I was intrigued because, well of course, first the name, I think it's like a super awesome name for a company, and secondly, what their mission was and how they started a company to be able to have nice jobs for individuals with disabilities to be able to be a little bit more self-sustaining. I really, really liked that idea.   Jeff Thompson: Entrepreneurship right there. I like it.   Serena Gilbert: Of course.   Jeff Thompson: Well we got them here in the studio. Let's welcome. Erin and Bob from White Cane Coffee. How are you guys doing?   Erin: We're doing well.   Bob: Doing wonderful, glad to be here.   Jeff Thompson: Well, thank you for taking the time, coming on to Job Insights. It's exciting, it's exciting. I read Erin's article on Facebook and yeah, I really liked it. Bang, here we are. Let's start it out by what got you started with White Cane Coffee?   Erin: Well, honestly it started with me having a bad day, and so just it's hard when you're disabled and trying to find a job and just, it's frustrating. When I'm frustrated like that, me and my dad will play games, like we'll create [inaudible] or in this case we were just like, if you had x amount of money, what would you do to grow it? And so one day we started with a coffee company and then we just kept talking about this coffee company just like, well, what would you do with this, or what would you do with that? It's just like, well, why not hire people with disabilities for one thing, and just it kept growing until eventually were just like, Oh, we're actually doing this, aren't we?   Bob: Yeah. That was about six months ago, and so then it was just doing research, figuring out exactly what it was going to take to create this coffee company. And so that meant we needed an accountant, we needed an attorney, we needed to figure out how we were going to get our coffee roasted, packaging, getting the shipping, getting the website up. It became a creature unto itself, but the best part was we had fun doing it and right now, I mean, the response we're getting, even from our local community, they love our coffee. We did a couple of hundred sample bags or whatever, and we just gave them out to everyone, and everyone said, "Oh isn't that [inaudible]."   Bob: And then they called back and said, "You know, that was really good coffee. I need more."   Bob: Now every time we turn around, somebody's calling us up saying, "We need more." That's our whole thing is getting the word out, letting people know we have great coffee.   Serena Gilbert: That's fantastic, Bob, and I know you have kind of a unique business model. Do you want to share with us some of the services that customers can receive from your coffee business?   Bob: The key is, they can go online at whitecanecoffee.com, and one of the first things that shows up, the first item there is a sample box because people always say, what is your best coffee? Well, they're all great, so it all depends on the customer. We suggest to them, order up the sample box, try them all, find the one that fits your likes, then order whether it's subscription or it's a [inaudible], whatever the case may be, but we want them to find the one they like the best. That's really our model, that in a nutshell is our coffee is roasted fresh for them. Most coffees that you get, say at a grocery store and some of the big names that I'm not going to mention but we all know who they are, those sit in a warehouse for up to a year before they even get to the store. We like our coffee what, how old Erin?   Erin: About a week fresh, so from the time we package that to the point where it gets to your door, it's only about a week old, so you know you're going to get the freshest cup of coffee that you are able to have.   Jeff Thompson: I couldn't help it but I saw one on there that was called high octane.   Bob: Yeah, that one's double the caffeine, double the fun.   Serena Gilbert: Do not ship that one too Jeff, Oh my goodness.   Bob: Don't ship that one. That one is actually very popular, especially the people work like third shifts or you know-   Erin: The mid night hour [inaudible].   Bob: They're the ones who order it and they go, the flavor's great [inaudible] and we're awake. And I said, well that's pretty much what it does.   Erin: [inaudible] through testing.   Bob: Yeah, that one was hard.   Jeff Thompson: You mentioned earlier you had a tough three weeks of testing coffee and that must've been fun, because none of these go out without you guys knowing what exactly you're selling.   Erin: Exactly.   Bob: Exactly, that's I mean each time ... We roaster whatever, we sample it. It doesn't just like oh it's good enough. The good enough is never good enough. The product has to be right every time it goes out, because that's our reputation that's on the line here. We're not some huge mega corporation where you get a bad pot of coffee and lose a customer they go, eh. With us, that doesn't work that way. Every customer needs to be happy.   Jeff Thompson: And they can find this at whitecanecoffee.com.   Bob: Correct.   Erin: Yup.   Jeff Thompson: That's an easy one to remember, because knows the White Cane, everyone loves coffee and .com, there you go.   Bob: That was even our reasoning of naming the company and with our logo, with the young girl, with the white cane, we want people to know exactly who we are, when they see our logo, they know.   Erin: It was [inaudible] a blind disabled person or blind disabled people, people and just disabled people, and people, people.   Jeff Thompson: People, people. I like it.   Bob: But that was it. We want people to know exactly who we are and what we're about, the transparency, I guess is the new buzzword that everybody uses, but that is important. They need to know who we are. When they go on our Facebook page or whatever, and even once the about page is done finally on the website, there's a picture of Erin right there. She is the face of our company, this is her baby. There's no big corporate board room back here where everybody's hanging out.   Jeff Thompson: Yeah.   Erin: Home grown.   Jeff Thompson: It's amazing the way you can start by just having a bad day, right Erin?   Erin: I know.   Bob: Isn't that how all the great companies have started though, is somebody sitting around saying there's a problem and then eventually somebody says, Hey, I think we can fix it.   Jeff Thompson: Solution based, there you go.   Serena Gilbert: Well, I understand that you guys employ a few individuals that also have disabilities. Is that correct?   Erin: Yes.   Bob: Yes.   Serena Gilbert: Tell us a little bit about what made you design your business in that way?   Erin: Well, if I was having trouble finding a job for my disability, and there is a huge population in our town of disabled people on who just cannot find work, or if they do find work, it's for absolutely a pittance amount of money, so we're just like, let's employ them and pay them fairly.   Jeff Thompson: I like that.   Bob: We're all about living wage. People sit in and say, well, like I said, you know, if you have a sheltered workshop, there's no bottom to how much they can pay their employees. Like ours, we have one here nearby and they pay about a dollar, dollar 10 an hour is what they pay their employees. You can't live on that. And second of all, with social security at 750 a month, I think it is, you can't live on that. I mean, you can't pay rent, you can't pay utilities, you can't do anything. They're all into survival mode. Well, there's more to life than just survival mode. We want people to have a decent wage, so at the end of the week they can pay all their bills and you know what, there's still some money left-over to do what they want to do and have some fun.   Jeff Thompson: And buy some coffee.   Bob: Buy more.   Jeff Thompson: There you go.   Serena Gilbert: Very smart business model there.   Bob: That's what it really was all about. Not only have we found work for Erin and her brothers now, but we're finding work for people who are just like her because that's what you're supposed to do.   Jeff Thompson: Erin, on your picture on Facebook, you do have a cane here wearing sunglasses, so you are blind?   Erin: Correct. I only have 5% of my vision left.   Jeff Thompson: When did that start?   Erin: I started to lose my vision when I was about 15.   Jeff Thompson: Did it affect you in how you did your education at school?   Erin: Yes actually. I had to, with assistance, essence basically people reading me the questions on the test. I graduated high school at 15.   Serena Gilbert: Look at that, wow. That's not an easy accomplishment. That's awesome, Erin.   Erin: Thank you.   Serena Gilbert: Yeah, I could not imagine.   Jeff Thompson: That's awesome for anybody.   Serena Gilbert: Yeah, it's a big deal.   Jeff Thompson: Wow.   Bob: Well, Erin was in the gifted program when she was in school, and so it wasn't much of a challenge for the school just to allow her basically to test out. It was interesting and it's like, okay, here's all the subjects you can pass everything, you can graduate and she did.   Erin: Through the first try and they're just like, yeah, okay, that's fair.   Bob: She had her diploma and we moved on.   Jeff Thompson: There you go. You might want to give that college thing a try, that might be a piece of cake too.   Bob: Someday.   Jeff Thompson: There you go.   Bob: But right now, like I said, we're challenged in what we're doing and I think right now as this company is growing here, this is going to keep her busy for many, many years to come.   Jeff Thompson: That's great.   Erin: We're hoping the best for this.   Jeff Thompson: It's nice to have a challenge, and to challenge yourself and that's what we all kind of look for, is to accept the challenges and it keeps you waking up in the morning with a good cup of coffee, that helps too, right Serena?   Serena Gilbert: Of course. Now if you guys start shipping out hot chocolate I'm in, because I'm not much of a coffee drinker because it makes me completely stay up for days. But some hot chocolate, I'll be totally about it.   Erin: [inaudible] considered it yet, but maybe in the distant future, we're thinking maybe hot chocolate or teas or something like that, but for right now we're strictly coffee.   Jeff Thompson: Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't know she wasn't a coffee drinker. I would've got someone else to come on the podcast, sorry Bob.   Serena Gilbert: Oh Jeff.   Bob: On of the other things we are trying to do here is, hopefully within the next week is we are setting up affiliate programs so that other people who are blind and disabled all across the country can also be a part of this company, because we would love to see White Cane Coffee basically in every town, business, home across this nation. I want people, no matter where they go, they're going to see White Cane Coffee on Facebook, on Instagram, Twitter. That's the name of this game here. We have a great product, and we want to be able to share that with everyone in the United States, and we also want people to be able to earn a living as affiliates across the country, because let's face it, people like Erin and you guys or whatever all over, and so that the name of the game is let's create as many jobs as we can.   Bob: People who will be able to sign up as affiliates on the website and what will happen is, they'll be given basically their own code that'll go on the end of whitecanecoffee.com, it'll be like, let's say in Jeff's case it might be whitecanecoffee.com/Jeff. Now Jeff's going to sit there and say, hey, all my friends, guess what? White Cane Coffee, great stuff, give it a shot. Here's their email address, and it'll be that one there. Any sales that those make, Jeff would then get a commission on. Does that make sense?   Serena Gilbert: Yeah. I think that's awesome that you're building that, because a lot of the big company, like obviously Amazon, they have an affiliate program, target all kinds of places. I think it's great that you're seizing that opportunity to allow some of our audience to be able to have some fairly passive income coming in with being able to share their affiliate links and things like that. That's very unique to small businesses and I like that.   Bob: Yeah, because we all have our own networks. I have my friends who are on Facebook and on Twitter and everything like that. You have your friends and acquaintances and business contacts on yours and Jeff does. We all have these little things, that's why they call it the web. The more that web over it goes on each other, then guess what? That's when the company grows.   Erin: This way, we're not just helping our towns own disabled group, we're helping other towns and the State disabled groups.   Jeff Thompson: Oh, that's great. I like that idea. It gives me something, you know, I never wanted to do an Avon, Mary Kay or stuff like that, Tupperware. Now I can do White Cane Coffee.   Serena Gilbert: But just this morning, Jeff, you were giving me some makeup tips, so I don't know.   Bob: That's one of the things that people always, you know, because we've talked to a few people on the go, well, what's it going to cost us? It doesn't cost you anything. I mean that's the whole key. We'd like you to try our coffee, but if you don't drink coffee or whatever, that doesn't stop you from-   Erin: Getting the word out there.   Bob: And being involved.   Jeff Thompson: Awesome. I like it.   Serena Gilbert: I for one, when you guys get that up and running, please send us a link or message in that group chat that we have going, because I will definitely spread the word for you guys. I think that's awesome what you're doing.   Bob: Absolutely. We'll make sure you guys get the invite to it and that, and that's the goal, we want as many people as we can. If 10,000 people sign up as affiliates, fantastic. Because that's 10,000 people who are going to try to do something and that's what we want to see.   Jeff Thompson: I like it. Let's check it out, whitecanecofee.com, you go there, it says buy coffee. I clicked on buy coffee and I had eight choices. The first one was the package box and for $20, no tax, no shipping, it's delivered to your door. You can sample all the flavors, and the flavors come in, Colombian Supremo, Colombian Supremo Decaf, Breakfast Blend, Dark Roast, Doughnut Shop, French Roast, and my future favorite, High Octane. You have a choice of 16 ounces or 32 ounces. 16 ounces is going to run you $14.99, and 32 ounces is discounted a little bit at $27.99 and you can opt for a one month, three month, six month up to a 12 month subscription. That means it will be delivered to your door once a month and you don't have to lift a finger.   Jeff Thompson: An incentive to do the 12 months subscription is there's no shipping costs, thus allowing you to save $7 and 50 cents every month just by subscribing to a 12 month. That's quite a savings. At $14.99 I think it's very affordable. When you click on one of these flavors such as the High Octane, it'll take you to the page and they'll do a write up on what that flavor is all about, probably high octane I imagine, or the French Roast, or the Breakfast Blend. They'll all have a description there. Check out the about page, because that talk about Erin and her story and what the company's all about and it'll have some of this information then it just relayed to you. With that in mind, let's get back to the show.   Jeff Thompson: Erin, I want to go back to something, do you use an iPhone?   Erin: I use an iPad, it seems to work best for me.   Jeff Thompson: Oh, that's good. With voiceover.   Erin: Oh my gosh, yes.   Jeff Thompson: There you go.   Erin: So much voiceover.   Jeff Thompson: Yeah, we're all about tech and we love our voiceover stuff with the iPhones. Not knocking any of the android stuff, it's coming along.   Erin: Yeah, but Apple just seems to have, it has everything that you need for that.   Jeff Thompson: Yep, they're doing good, and so are you guys whitecanecoffee.com, everyone go check it out, go sign up, get the sample pack, you can figure it out which one you like best and then place your orders. It comes once a month, right to your doorstep, and if you order annually, they knock off the price of shipping so you can save a little money there. Erin, Bob, I want to thank you for taking the time to coming onto Job Insights and sharing with us your, well Erin's bad day innovation, her entrepreneurship and starting this company. Serena, do you have anything else you want to ask?   Serena Gilbert: Just do us a favor and tell our audience where they can find you on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.   Erin: You can find us at White Cane Coffee on Facebook. You can find this on White Cane Coffee on Tumbler, weirdly enough.   Bob: We're setting up our Twitter and Instagram pages because Instagram and Facebook kind of work hand in hand together now, so when you advertise on one, you advertise on both. It's always funny, we always say, we need to get some of the big influencers on Instagram or something of that nature, one of the Kardashians. [inaudible] say, hey White Cane Coffee, and things would go insane at that point, but no, the goal is we're getting the word out and we're really happy that you guys contacted us and wanted to hear what we're doing.   Serena Gilbert: We absolutely love sharing what individuals in our community are doing, especially when it comes to employment and being able to live a little bit more independently, so we were happy to have you on.   Erin: We were absolutely ecstatic to be on.   Serena Gilbert: Do you guys have any questions or any additional information that you'd like to share?   Bob: We look forward to seeing your podcast, because you're on YouTube, is that correct?   Jeff Thompson: We're on YouTube, we're on Apple, you can download the Blind Abilities App right to your iPad and iPhone, any device like that. Pod Catchers just search for Blind Abilities, that's two words, Blind Abilities.   Serena Gilbert: He's so trained over there. Oh my goodness.   Bob: Sounds great, we look forward to that. Keep in touch with us, we like talking to people who are in the community, kind of how we find out what's going on. We hope that these conversations will go on for long time in the future.   Serena Gilbert: Of course.   Bob: It's funny, since we went on Facebook and started doing this, you guys just kind of caught our attention. It's like okay let's do this and-   Erin: Nothing ventured, nothing gained.   Bob: Absolutely.   Serena Gilbert: Next step is shark tank, right?   Bob: Oh God no. No, never Shark Tank. Venture capitalists are about making money, we're about making a difference and so that would probably never happen.   Jeff Thompson: I like that line. Put it on my tee shirt, or my coffee cup. There you go.   Serena Gilbert: I will definitely be checking out your guys' website because I do have coffee drinkers in my family, so I might even show it to my husband, because we have a Keurig, but we have the little thing where you can put the coffee beans or in it and trick it.   Jeff Thompson: Well, Serena, if you check out the website, they do have a coffee that has low caffeine.   Serena Gilbert: Even for you, that would be too much caffeine.   Bob: I'll tell you, if your husband likes that robust flavor, get the Colombian. If you like a coffee that's real smooth, you don't need milk or anything, look at the Dark Roast, it is so smooth. There's no bitterness to it.   Serena Gilbert: Oh Wow.   Jeff Thompson: Well I think I'm going to try the sample because I've always liked looking for that coffee that it tastes good and it does everything that you want it to do in the flavor without having to add the cream or this or the other thing. I just want that perfect blend.   Erin: Yeah. We hope you like it.   Bob: Yeah, get online after you're done with us, just go right to White Cane Coffee, you order tonight, they'll be out in the mail in the morning.   Serena Gilbert: Oh Wow. That's fast.   Jeff Thompson: There we go. The UPS or FedEx, one of those businesses know where you live, right?   Bob: Absolutely. They're here up quite a bit, picking up boxes.   Jeff Thompson: That's cool.   Bob: They're happy, it keeps them working I guess.   Serena Gilbert: Exactly.   Erin: [inaudible] when we first started, they were so confused.   Bob: They really were, but now they're just kind of used to it, they bring the truck up and get the boxes.   Jeff Thompson: Is the excitement gone? I mean, usually if the UPS truck pulls up in front of my place, I'm like, oh.   Serena Gilbert: What did I order?   Jeff Thompson: Yeah, I'm like rubbing my hands together.   Erin: I swear, the excitement for me is just constant because again, I'm branching out on new things, I'm meeting with people in the community, I'm on podcast now. There's always new things that we're doing in the company to sort of get the word out, so yeah, it's just like, okay, so one part of it may not be as flashy or exciting as it was, but there's a new part that's brand sparkling new and just like yeah.   Bob: Like in November, the Pennsylvania National Federation for the Blind has their convention in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Well now they're talking about having Erin come and speak at the convention.   Jeff Thompson: Oh, that's great.   Serena Gilbert: That's huge. That's awesome.   Bob: I wish she can make a difference. We really are looking forward to this, it's amazing. Everyone in this country drinks coffee, 90% of the people truly do have coffee first thing in the morning, that's what starts their day.   Jeff Thompson: Take notes Serena.   Erin: It's something that's so ingrained into our society, that coffee [inaudible] to help people with disabilities was just a no brainer. How many times have you heard in cartoons like, don't talk to me before I've had my coffee. I mean, when I was a little kid, on Christmas, we weren't allowed to open our presents until mum and dad had their coffee. I learned how to make coffee at age eight.   Bob: No coffee, no presents.   Erin: Just like brothers have already sorted out the gifts, specialized mugs in each hand they come downstairs, here you go, let's open presents.   Jeff Thompson: There you go, and now you can do it with White Cane Coffee.   Serena Gilbert: Exactly.   Bob: Exactly. It's fun for everyone. I like seeing Erin excited. I like seeing her brother's excited. I like seeing the other workers excited because when they come to work, they're excited to be useful and to have a purpose. You know, that when they're here that they're welcome here, and we adapt to their needs instead of like a lot of jobs you have to adapt to the company. We kind of do it the other way around, we adapt to each person individually. What are their needs, what's going to make their experience here working better for them because we found if they're happy, they're much more productive, and so it's a win-win on both sides   Erin: This may sound odd, but with some people's disabilities they have such strengths and others are like one of our workers, even though they are very autistic, they are also very hyper focused and are perfectionists, so we know every label is going to be on perfectly just like, alright, you do you man.   Jeff Thompson: There you go. I like that where you're creating opportunities and not limiting them but enhancing their opportunities by embracing their set of skills that they have.   Bob: Oh exactly.   Erin: Exactly, and once you have the right people around you, it really is, you can do almost anything with it.   Jeff Thompson: I like what you're doing Erin.   Bob: We don't sit around and say, oh, what can I do? It's more of what's stopping us from moving on, changing things and making things better for everyone involved, and coffee is that venue that is allowing us to do that.   Jeff Thompson: Oh, I tip my cup to you guys.   Serena Gilbert: We really appreciate your time.   Bob: Absolutely.   Jeff Thompson: Thanks Bob. Thanks Erin.   Bob: You all have a good evening.   Erin: It was great talking to you guys.   Jeff Thompson: All right.     [Music]  [Transition noise]  -When we share -What we see -Through each other's eyes...   [Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]   ...We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.   Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with the blindness perspective: Check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com On Twitter @BlindAbilities Download our app from the App store:  'Blind Abilities'; that's two words. Or send us an e-mail at: info@blindabilities.com Thanks for listening.  

Jeff & Will talk about their upcoming trip to the 2019 LA Times Festival of Books. They also discuss two series they’ve been watching: Comedy Central’s The Other Two and Freeform’s Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists. Books reviewed this week include Kim Fielding’s The Spy’s Love Song, Ari McKay’s Take Two and Erin McLellan’s Clean Break. Jeff interviews Erin McLellan about Clean Break, the second book in her Farm College series, and about why it’s important for her to tell stories based in her home state of Oklahoma. They also talk about her Love Life series, what got her started writing, her author influences and the TV she likes to binge watch. Complete shownotes for episode 182 are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. -------- Here’s the text of Jeff’s book reviews: The Spy’s Love Song by Kim FieldingRock star and secret agent on a mission to a foreign country to topple a dictator all wrapped up in a Dreamspun Desires package. That combination pushed all of my romantic suspense buttons and I had no choice but to pick up this book. And I loved it every bit as much as I thought I would. I was in tropey goodness heaven with the rock star thing, a bodyguard vibe plus lovers on the run and some occasional forced proximity. Jaxon Powers is a jaded rock star who’s at the end of a long tour. After waking up in a hotel room barely remembering what happened the night before, he might also be ready for a change in lifestyle. He gets a lot more than he bargained for when his manager brings him to a meeting with the State Department. It seems the dictator that runs the small country of Vasnytsia is a fan and wants Jaxon to perform a private concert as well as a large outdoor one for a worker’s festival. The U.S. wants Jaxon to do this because it’s a chance to improve US relations with the Russia-supported dictator. The only person going with Jaxon on the trip is secret agent Reid Stanfill. Besides keeping Jaxon safe, Reid’s got an agenda that has global ramifications. I fell in love with this book right from the beginning. Kim plays with expectations from the beginning. While Jaxon appears to be the spoiled rock star we quickly find that’s not what he wants to be. He’s a small town boy, doing what he loves to do but he wants more substance to the way he’s living. The trip to Vasnytsia does exactly that as his world view gets a complete makeover. Not only does Jaxon end up traveling without the entourage he’s used to, as Reid’s mission goes sideways the two end up on the run. Reid’s mission is to try to destabilize the country and force elections and that makes him an enemy of the state. Despite his fear, Jaxon won’t leave Reid to fend for himself. Jaxon knows his celebrity can protect both of them and he sticks by Reid even as Reid tries to force the star to safety. Through all of the crazy events that could result in either of them dying, Jaxon and Reid manage to start a romance. Reid tries to keep it from beginning since they’re in a country where homosexuality is illegal but they give in to their passions. That’s just the beginning as they share stories about their pasts, which only endears them more to each other. The mix between the romance and suspense is perfect, giving our guys time to fall in love even while things around them go crazy. I liked that Kim avoided the usual Dreamspun scenario of having alternating points of view. Everything in the story is Jaxon, which works perfectly so we don’t know Reid’s mission or anything else too early. It makes for a very snappy read going on the roller coaster that Jaxon experiences. Kim brings Vasnytsia to life through its people. It starts with the guides taking Jaxon around the country, giving him peek behind the propaganda. As he meets fans who must covertly speak to him as it wouldn’t be proper for anyone to talk with the American he begins to understand why Reid’s mission is so important. Ultimately it’s these people who shelter Reid and Jaxon and help complete his mission–with a particularly awesome assist from Jaxon. Drew Bacca does a great job on the audiobook, including having to sing a couple of Jaxon’s songs. This is the first book in the “Stars From Peril” series that Kim has in the Dreamspun line. The second book, Redesigning Landry Bishop, comes out in May and I’m already looking forward to it.  -------- Clean Break by Erin McLellanI almost didn’t pick this book up because I couldn’t imagine reading a book that included the characters taking care of Madagascar hissing cockroaches. I’m not a fan of bugs and the trigger warning page discusses more about the bugs than anything else. However, I’m glad I listened to the re-assurances I wouldn’t be creeped out because this is a terrific book–and the bugs really are a non-thing. This book, the second in Erin’s “Farm College” series, throws together Connor Blume and Travis Bedford–two guys who very much don’t like each other in the aftermath of an awkward, failed hookup. As their final college term begins, Connor and Travis are taking Entomology 101 and because the professor likes students to sit alphabetically, they’re next to each other and end up becoming class partners. Their dislike for each other radiates from them during that first class. Connor’s OCD and anxiety flare up just being near the guy, who he’s still wildly attracted to and wants to have a real discussion with. Travis has the attraction too but carries the anger from their previous hookup. It only gets worse as they get the assignment that they’ll be caring for Madagascar hissing cockroaches for the semester or that they’ll have to answer discussion questions together. It doesn’t take long for the sparks of dislike to turn into sparks of desire and they end up spending time after class in a storage closet making out. Neither of them is particularly happy that they’re giving in to their desires, which makes the scenes cuter and hotter. Travis wants the fussy farmer and Connor very much wants the stand-offish English major. Even as their make out sessions start to cool their hatred, they realize they’re constrained by time. At graduation, Connor is set to take over management of his parent’s farm, even though he doesn’t necessarily want that. Meanwhile, Travis can’t wait to get out of the small town for his legal aid internship and then on to law school. The guys have their futures mapped out and there’s no space for the other. That doesn’t stop them from getting emotionally entangled. Erin does a terrific job of bringing these two together. As they move their hookups to the bedroom, Travis discovers he likes Connor’s controlling side and gives himself over to it. Connor though never takes advantage, making sure that he’s always got Travis’s consent and that Travis enjoys himself. That continues as Travis reveals he’d like to be spanked. Both guys discover this is exactly what they need. Beyond the sex though, their efforts to not get too attached aren’t helped by their post-sex talks. Travis usually wants Connor to tell him a story and it’s here that he opens up bit by bit about his anxiety, his OCD and his pre-determined future. There’s so much going on for him, as a reader I wanted to wrap him in a hug and do whatever I could to ease the load he carried. Travis talks a lot too and over time we learn what makes him so driven–it turns out he lost one of his dreams due to an accident and he doesn’t want to let anything or anyone cost him this one. Just a she was great at bringing them together, Erin tears the guys apart just as expertly. It’s a tough go as Connor and Travis force themselves apart as graduation nears. Erin does a number on the characters as they emotionally hurt themselves and each other as they keep to their plans. Both guys want to talk to the other so badly and yet they’ve promised not too. For Connor, this is particularly bad for his OCD. Of course, this is a romance, so all must end happy. Thankfully how Erin gets the guys back together his as satisfying as everything she did earlier in the book. There is a way for them to be together–it just takes time for them to get there. -------- Interview Transcript - Erin McLellan Jeff: Welcome, Erin, to the podcast. Erin: Hi. Thanks for having me. Jeff: Very excited to have you here. You’re a new-to-me author and I just finished reading “Clean Break,” which I have to tell you, I adored so much. I’m reviewing it right before we get into the interview segment I’ll have reviewed it to kinda tell everybody about it. Erin: Yay, thank you. Jeff: It is the second book in your “Farm College” Series. So before we dive into “Clean Break,” tell us more about what the “Farm College” Series is about. Erin: Okay. So it’s just two books so far like you said and they are set in a fictional college in Western Oklahoma. And I would say kind of the overarching themes are… Since they’re college stories, they’re new adult that’s kind of coming of age and self-discovery, finding your authentic self, finding a home is kind of a big one. I think that’s kind of important at that age. You’ve moved out of your parent’s house or wherever you grew up for a lot of people and kinda figuring out what is home, what is family, that kind of thing. So those types of themes are kind of follow both books. They’re both kind of angsty to be honest though “Controlled Burn,” more so than “Clean Break” actually. Jeff: Oh, my goodness. Erin: So be prepared. But, yeah, and I think in terms of… The setting is really important to me at least as the author and those books is important to me. I’m from Oklahoma. I live in Alaska now, but I’m from Oklahoma. And it’s important to me to write stories that are set in Oklahoma that have, you know, LGBTQIA+ characters in Oklahoma. And I know as somebody that reads a lot of romance, I don’t see that very often. I don’t see romance set there or it might be… I have seen it where it’s, you know, characters that are like, escaping Oklahoma which certainly is the case for a lot of people, but it’s also the case that people live and love, and make their lives there. And I kinda wanna show that. Jeff: Does a farm college like this exist in Oklahoma? Is it based on a real place? Erin: No. Kind of I guess. A lot of the kind of small details mirror Oklahoma State which was my alma mater for undergrad, but Oklahoma State is so much bigger than the college that I created. So Farm College is kind of a smaller college in Western Oklahoma that I’ve created, but in terms of being, you know, having a strong agriculture program, but also kind of having this liberal arts situation that’s going on and a pretty vibrant LGBTQIA community, I’ve kind of made most of that up. So… Jeff: And I agree that we don’t see, I mean, besides books set in Oklahoma, really the more rural settings kinda, it’s always escaping from those places. And I like that you kind of built a place as if this is what you’d like to see even if it doesn’t quite exist there now. Erin: Right. And I think it’s kind of funny when I started writing “Controlled Burn.” It was pre-2016, right? And I kind of had this, you know, I kind of had this idea that it’s getting better, right? It’s looking up for lots of communities and I’m not sure if that’s necessarily the case anymore. I hope it will be and I hope it is eventually. But, you know, there’s good and bad, I think, about places like Oklahoma and Kansas, and Texas. And, you know, Oklahoma is really special to me. It’s really important to me. Kansas is the same, but there’s also problems and, you know, I wanna kinda write those stories. And I also, thinking about Oklahoma or Texas probably more so, a lot of the romances that I’ve read that are set there are like, ranch, you know, the cowboys, the farmers which there is kind of a farmer in “Clean Break.” But there’s a lot of people that live in Oklahoma and in Texas, in Kansas that aren’t cowboys. So I wanted to tell that story too. Jeff: Right. And you really hinted that a little bit with some of the dialogue between Travis and Connor in “Clean Break” too as they kind of talk about the difference between cowboy and more the farmer type that Connor and his family are. Erin: Right. Jeff: And so, as we kinda move this direction, tell us what “Clean break” is about and kind of who Travis and Connor are. Erin: Right. So “Clean Break” is about Travis and Connor. Travis is…he’s the best friend in “Controlled Burn.” So if you read “Controlled Burn,” you see quite a bit of him. He’s an English major. He’s from Houston, Texas, very ambitious. He’s got these kind of life plans and nothing’s gonna slow him down, right? He wants to go to law school. He’s got an internship after for the summer. He’s planning to move to Saint Louis eventually to work at this legal aid charity. He has this very, you know, set goals and he’s also kind of a unique, quirky, funny character to me. And then you have Connor who comes in and I don’t know if I would say at the beginning of the book, it’s more like pre-book before the book happens, they have a little bit of a failed hookup in a lot of ways. Some misunderstandings and so, they don’t like each other very much. And then in the first chapter, they get paired together as class partners in a class. And Connor is a farm boy. He’s kind of a townie, right? He’s from Elkville which is the city that’s it’s set in. He’s expected to take over the family farm and so, he’s got this, you know, he kind of his future plans are set, right? He doesn’t have a say over them and he’s… I have a big soft spot in my heart for him. He’s got anxiety, he has OCD. I really wanted to kind of write against the archetype of the like, lackadaisical cowboy or even like, the kind of the hard cowboy or, you know, that kind of archetype that I had in my head. I wanted to write a sensitive farm boy who’s in therapy and, you know, it doesn’t really match some of the people or the characters that I have seen written that way. And kind of the main issue between them, first is that they don’t like each other, but they’re attracted to each other, right? But the kind of the main two things that I wanted to do with the book is I wanted to write a complex authentic characters that are really well-rounded and hopefully, I accomplish that. And then the other thing that I really wanted to do was kind of write to people that are heading towards their future which is graduation and then, you know, the future beyond. And then their futures don’t mesh. There’s not really a way to come together at the end of graduation. They’re moving in different directions and I think that’s a really universal thing for people in college that are dating and dating seriously… do you compromise your future for somebody else? Do you change it? How do you make it work? So those are kind of the two things that I really wanted to hit on and of course, there’s, you know, there’s some kink that happens in the book and kind of self-discovery with that especially on Connors’ part. So there’s a lot going on, but those two things. The characterization and the conflict there with their futures not meshing are the two things I really wanted to hit. Jeff: And I think you did them both, I mean, really well. This book has so much going on in it and yet it never…the story also never gets way down either with the weight of everything that’s kind of moving around here. Erin: Thank you. Jeff: And really, you started them off as enemies who sort of move to friends to sort of get to lovers. Erin: Right. Jeff: Just that progression was so fun to watch unfold as they both pick at each other and then also help each other grow at the same time. It’s like, they lift each other up and kinda tear each other down at the same time. Erin: Right. And I hope that that is realistic. I think people… Because in a lot of ways they are kind of mean to each other at certain points and people can be mean to each other in real life. Especially, they’re not very old, you know, they’re 21, 22. So they kinda make stupid mistakes sometimes and say things that can be hurtful and then have to figure out how to make it better. Jeff: And I think with Connor too, you talked about writing against the archetypes and just having kinda the anxiety plus the OCD. And being, you know, a young gay man in that setting really just sets up so much for him in that situation. Erin: Right. Yeah. He has a lot going on. He’s bi actually and… Jeff: Right. I’m sorry. You’re right. Yes. Erin: And so, kind of a lot. I mean, it’s just a lot and I think it’s a lot for him to kind of deal with all at the same time. Jeff: What was your research on the mental health side of it to kind of figure out what traits to weave into his personality? Erin: So I did a lot of research and I had some readers too that read it for me. One of the main things that I really looked at was kind of the myths especially with OCD, kind of the myths surrounding OCD. I think a lot of people think it’s just, you know, a cleanliness thing or even an organizational thing where they, you know, people with OCD have an impulse to organize or clean. And that’s not really how it presents for a lot of people. A lot people have intrusive thoughts which he has or, you know, they have checking where he checks the expiration dates on food and he can’t kind of stop doing that even though he knows he shouldn’t be doing it, and it’s not healthy for him to do. And so, I did a lot of research about the myths and the different ways that it presents for people and kind of the hardships that it causes them. And I also really wanted to make sure that I kind of made it clear. It’s something that he’ll always deal with, right? It’s not going away and so, it’s really… I did a lot of research on how to manage it, how, you know, how to kind of continue life dealing with a mental health problem like that. Jeff: Yeah. I just… So often I wanted to just give him a hug when he was starting to lapse into it. It’s like, “Oh, I’m so sorry this is happening.” What you did through the black moments and I don’t wanna give spoilers for folks who, you know, need to read the book. But what you did to the black moments for both Connor and Travis as they dealt with their emotions and for Connor how those emotions kinda manifest themselves in his OCD was really just, I really liked seeing two young adults kinda come to grapple with all of that. Erin: Yeah. And I think it’s pretty normal when you’re more stressed, right? Or when there’s more and more stress for, you know, the OCD to kind of build on itself. The same with anxiety like, whenever I am really stressed about my anxiety, it’s gonna be worse about small things, you know, you can kind of blow them out of proportion. I know I do that and so, I was kind of trying to show that how it’s like as things got more stressful for him with graduation moving and with kind of this relationship with Travis, that’s not going away he wants it to go. It does kind of snowball for him and it kinda snowballs for Travis too just in different ways because he doesn’t, you know, he doesn’t have anxiety or OCD of course, but, you know, he struggles just kind of the same way. Jeff: Yeah. When you were talking about with this books about you left out one of its major points. Erin: The bugs? Jeff: That is the inclusion of the the hissing cockroaches. Where did that idea even come from? Erin: So I knew I wanted to put them in a class together and I wanted them to be class partners. But Travis is an English major and Connor is agriculture sciences, agribusiness major. And so, I knew it had to be like a gen ed class for at least one of them. And so, I really started thinking about the gen ed class that I had taken as an English major whenever I was an undergrad trying to figure out what class would make sense. And then I realized that I actually had taken an ag class that was Entomology 101. And I loved it, I, you know, I held like, tarantulas and I held millipedes. And I could see myself being that like, weird bug girl a little bit. I just loved it. And so, that’s kinda how I decided to put them in an entomology class. And it’s funny because, I mean, I do think that college is one of those times to take the weird class and do the weird thing. And so, I think it kind of made sense there and I also felt like, I gave a degree of what kind of humor and lightness I thought it would to the story. But I realize now that a lot of readers maybe don’t like bugs. So it’s something that’s like a little distracting to some people. When I had took the entomology class, we had an assignment where we had that exact assignment with the Madagascar hissing cockroaches where we had to take them home and observe them. And so, you know, for an entire semester, I had a Madagascar hissing cockroach in my dorm room with me. I never took it out of its box. I like, you know, I fed it, like, carrots through the little hole that it couldn’t get out and so, that would be fun to put that in the story. And I can tell you for the readers, the cockroaches do not escape ever. They never… There’s no, like, unexpected cockroach scenes. I promise. Jeff: Yeah. And I can vouch for that. There are no unexpected scenes and in fact, I had to check… I had to ask about that before I took the book to read and I’m like, “Bugs, I don’t know about that.” Erin: I know. I have put it in the trigger warnings for the book and on my website, it really does lay out kinda scene by scene where they’re at and kind of the degree that they’re on the page. And they’re not on the page that much. Jeff: No, they’re not and I never got squirmy reading it either because I really don’t like bugs. But I was totally fine with how this turned out. So… Erin: Yeah. I know. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me that it would gross people out. At that point it was too late when it, like, finally hit me. I was like, “Well, I can’t do anything about it.” But I kind of thought that they were funny. Jeff: Well, I think it really fits with the whole ag culture of the college that of course, they’re gonna end up with bugs or whatever and have to learn about them. So it all meshed in together and like you said, there’s no point where they’re escaping or, you know, being gross. They’re just kind of there. Erin: Right. And students… Jeff: I like to, you know, those classes sometimes you take in high school where you’re having to take care of the doll for a week or whatever. And in this case you’re hanging out with a cockroach. So… Erin: Right. It’s kinda like a little pet for them for this semester. Jeff: So is there more plan for the Farm College Series? Erin: I have not kind of set plans. I do want to write a story for Alex. He’s in both books. He’s not in “Controlled Burn” for very much though his part is kind of important in “Controlled Burn.” He’s a friend of Connor’s really in “Clean Break” and I do wanna give him a story and I will. I’ll probably start writing that soon. Kind of be on that. I don’t know how much more I’ll write in the Farm College Series though I do wanna do a spin off that’s kind of several years in the future. So they’re not really in college anymore and I want to do an F/F romance for Desie and Lena. So I would start there for them. Jeff: Yay. Yeah. I would totally read that book because one of the things you did in “Clean Break” and I’m sure you established it back in “Controlled Burn” too, was just the tight community of friends that Travis and Connor both have, and even, like, the strong family presence of Connor’s family and how they support him. So it would be great to see more of all of that. Erin: Yeah. So… Yeah. And I definitely… I think I did a little bit more successfully in “Clean Break” for sure where they have very supportive families and they do have kind of a big wide friend group. And so, yeah, I’m glad that you like that, but I do want to do the F/F romance for Lena and Desie kind of. But Lena is quite young in this book. She’s 20 and so, I wanna give her a little bit of time to grow up, I guess. Jeff: Yeah. That’s cool. Now, you’ve got another series out there called “Love Life.” And tell us a little bit about what goes on in that series? Erin: Sure. So that’s also, they’re both male/male romances. Set in Oklahoma, Eastern Oklahoma for the first book, “Life on Pause.” They’re kind of small town romances there. The first one is about a guy that works at a homestead kind of prairie museum. They’re kind of common in Oklahoma where the people that work there have to dress in like, historical costumes of the time. So he works at that type of museum and then he is paired with a high school choir teacher. And it’s kind of them trying to fall in love and figure out how their relationship will work. It’s definitely kind of lighter in tone than the farm college series, but it’s still a little angsty. The second book in the series, “Life of Bliss,” is more novella link that’s a little short and it’s very tropey. It’s kind of two people that don’t like each other very much, but are fooling around kind of behind their friends’ backs. They agree to be fake boyfriends for a family wedding in Arkansas and Arkansas kind of, well, it has this… Historically in the area, it was the only state that didn’t have a waiting period for marriage licenses. Now, most of the states don’t, but back in the day, you know, they made you like, test for syphilis and all kind of stuffs. But extended the marriage license period. So Arkansas is kind of the place where people go for their shotgun weddings historically. So this is going back quite away, but in this book they go to a wedding in Arkansas, they get drunk at the wedding and basically, end up getting married themselves. It’s set in Eureka Springs, Arkansas for the wedding part and I don’t know if anybody would be familiar with that. But you can get married practically anywhere in Eureka Springs. It’s kind of an economy there. So it’s quite easy to get married and that’s what happens. So it’s kind of fake dating to accidental marriage. Jeff: Fake dating to accidental marriage. I like… Those are favorite tropes right there. Erin: Yeah. It’s a fun one, I think. Jeff: So what is your writing origin story? You’ve got these four books out. How did all this start? Erin: Well, I was a creative writing English major in undergrad, but then I ended up going to grad school for library and information studies. And I was a public librarian. And I had… I kind of had a lot of big changes in my life. I just graduated grad school. I just got married, I just moved away from home like, all of these big changes. I had a full time job for the first time and I had… I was living in Houston, Texas and I had this horrible commute. It was like, an hour and a half each way and… Jeff: Yeah. that’s pretty horrible. Erin: I think most people that have been in Houston know what I’m talking about. And I had all this time to kind of think and I basically on my commute started plotting a book. And some of it came from, I missed kind of the creative outlet writing research papers and stuff like that from school. And so, yeah, that’s kind of how I started writing as I plotted this book on my commute and then finally, I decided that I was gonna sit down and write it. And that book was “Controlled Burn.” Jeff: That’s an awesome story. Erin: Thank you. Jeff: What led you into putting this creativity towards M/M romance amongst all of the genres that were possible? Erin: Yeah. Some of it I think is that I was reading a lot of it at that time, I kind of got into M/M romance I guess if we’re going further back by reading Suzanne Brockmann, right? So she has the “Troubleshooters” series and that has Jules Cassidy who’s the gay FBI agent, right? He’s got that kind of the secondary romance through several books and then the primary thorugh a novella. And then whenever I was in grad school, I kind of didn’t have time to read for pleasure very much. So I wasn’t reading very much and then I took a class about reader’s advisory that we had to read like, the books from the best books of the year for “Publishers Weekly” and “Kirkus,” and stuff. And I just kind of… I can’t remember what year it was, but I grabbed kind of a random book off the romance list and it ended up being “Brothers of the Wild North Sea” by Harper Fox and I didn’t really realize that it was a male/male romance. So I just kinda grabbed it and started reading, and then it became quite clear, you know, very early on what it was. And it’s a beautiful book. Harper Fox is, you know, is a beautiful writer. Everything that she writes is really awesome and so, I kind of gobbled up everything that she had written and then it kind of hit me at that time. There has to be other writers that are doing this and, you know, they weren’t the books that were in the libraries. They weren’t in my libraries. So I kind of started searching them out and, you know, read a lot of K.A. Mitchell and Z.A. Maxfield, and some of those authors at that time that were the most prolific. And I was just very excited because I felt like there are all these authors that I had never heard of that I didn’t know about and they were all really, really good. And they were writing, you know, stories that kind of the themes were very important to me. And so, then when I write finally, eventually, decided to sit down and write a book. I think probably the main thing for me is that I wanted to write characters who are LGBTQIA in Oklahoma and it just happened to be that the first book that kind of came to mind, and that I plotted fully was an M/M romance in “Controlled Burn.” So that’s definitely how I got started. Jeff: That’s very cool and some great authors there to get you introduced to the genre as well. Who do you count as your author influences? Erin: Well, definitely, you know, my gateways were Suzanne Brockmann into romance in general and then Harper Fox. Kind of on a wider scale, I really like Alisha Rai. She kind of, she writes the heroines that are the type of parents that I just love. They are raunchy and rowdy, and wonderful. I would say also Annabeth Albert in terms of contemporary romance. Alexis Hall, I think kind of teaches or his books are like a master class on first person point of view if you look at “For Real” or “Glitterland.” And so, I really, really like his books too. Jeff: Now, your bio mentions that you like binge worthy TV shows. So of course, we have to know what are you binging these days or have binged recently that you would recommend? Erin: So my husband and I have been rewatching “Game of Thrones” of course, because the last season was about to come out. So when you binge that show, you just kind of realize how many awful things happened back to back to back because the first time we watched it, we didn’t binge it. We are watching it week to week, but when you’re binge watching that it’s like, “Oh, my God. That’s so awful, these things that keep happening.” Other than that, I really like… I like true crime, but I’m not watching any kind of true crime right now. And I like comedies. So I’ve watched “Schitt’s Creek” recently which I love, “The Good Place,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “One Day at a Time,” all these sitcoms that I think are really good, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” because I love musicals is really good. And then I also watch a lot of like, reality TV. So I like, like, “Tiny House Hunters,” and “Instant Hotel,” and “Project Runway,” shows kind of like that. Jeff: Very cool. Yeah. Some good stuff on there. Erin: You can tell me I watch a lot of TV. Jeff: “The Good Place” is a particular favorite. Erin: Yeah. It’s so smart. It’s so different than like, yeah, it’s very, very unique. So this is a great list for everybody who’s looking for something to binge the spring right here. So what’s coming up next for you in your release plans? Jeff: So I don’t have anything kind of set in stone. I’m not very good at planning. [I”m working on one about] tornado chasers or storm chasers. That’s a male/male romance that I have on submission right now to a publisher that I’m hoping will pick it up. If they don’t, then, you know, it’ll keep going out and hopefully somebody else will want it. I’m currently writing a book about a rec league softball team and I want this to be really, really tropey and kind of fun and light. The first one is using kind of the one bed trope. So I hope that that would be a lot of fun. I’ll write Alex’s story pretty soon and then I have a book that I wrote. But I’m hoping to put out at Christmas, it’s called “Stocking Stuffers.” And it’s a M/F romance with a bi heroine who sell sex toys. You know, like the Tupperware parties, but it’s like the, you know, the sex toy Tupperware parties kind of. And so, she works for a company kinda is the marketing person for a company like that and she’s hosting one of those parties, get snowed in, you know, with a big red bag of toys basically. Jeff: Yeah. That’s like an interesting forced proximity story. Erin: yeah. So it was a lot of fun to write. Jeff: And I’m very interested in the storm chasers one too because I’m kind of a weather geek at heart. So you kind of got me on that one. Erin: It was a lot of fun to write. Growing up in Oklahoma, you know, tornadoes are such a kind of a constant really. I mean, my parents have lost a house in tornado. I know lots of people that have lost houses in tornado. It’s so common. It’s just kind of a part of your life especially if you’re from Central Oklahoma like me and so, it’s… Yeah. It was a really fun one to write because you are just kind of entrenched in bad weather in Oklahoma in the spring all the time. So… Jeff: Very cool. And how can readers keep up with you online to keep track of all these projects? Erin: So I have a Facebook group called Erin McLellan’s Meet Cute. That’s a good one if you kind of… I do giveaways and book recs, and stuff. On Twitter my handle is @emclellanwrites and I’m on Twitter pretty often. On Instagram it’s @erinmclellanwrites and on Instagram, I would say it’s about 70% Alaska stuff like, every moves that I’ve ever seen and then 30% books. Unless there’s a book released and then it flips. But it’s a lot of Alaska if you follow me on Instagram. And then my newsletter which you can get too on my website or through any of the social media too. You would be able to kind of find the link to my newsletter and that’s probably the best way if you just want like, to know about new releases or sales, or things like that without having to kind of trudge through Twitter. Jeff: Well, fantastic. Well, I thank you so much for coming to talk to us about “Clean Break” and wish you all the success on that one and the upcoming releases as well. Erin: Thank you so much. It was so fun.

Bill Weir, travel correspondent and host of CNN Wonder List has his dream job. He gets to jet all over the world to capture images and weave stories together from what he finds. It’s all perfect, except for one thing--Bill is monolingual. “I wish I could travel back in time and punch my teenage self in the face for not paying attention. I was one of those horrible language students who didn't figure I would ever need it.” He seems an odd choice to address thousands of language teachers at their annual convention. But Bill is full of praise for the teachers helping today’s American teens gain their multilingual chops, including one special teacher Bill met in the green room before she went on stage--Ying Jin. She had just won National Language Teacher of the Year--the first Chinese teacher to do so. In this episode, we’ll take you behind the scenes with Bill and Ying to hear what they hope for America. This episode was written by Steve Leveen, our producer Fernando Hernández (who also does our cool sound design and mixing) and our Francofile French Teacher and associate producer, Beckie Rankin. Check out the rest of our cast at America the Bilingual dot com, including our brand and editorial director Mim Harrison, editorial consultant Maja Thomas, design director, Carlos Plaza and finally last and least, our bark-lingual mascot, Chet. Special thanks to Marty Abbott, Michelle van Gelder and Erin Well cher of the Lead with Languages campaign, as well as all the teachers and administrators who came by to be interviewed; we’ll hear their voices in future episodes. Music in this episode with a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license by (in orden of appearance): Hank - Dark Country http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Hank/AckrillVenning_91/Dark_Country Kevin Macleod - Quasi motion http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kevin_MacLeod/Global_Sampler/Quasi_Motion Jason Shaw - Travel light http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/TRAVEL_LIGHT______________________1-53 Jason Shaw - Wheels http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/WHEELS_________________3-30 Mystery Mammal - Foreign Produce http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Mystery_Mammal/Latent/Foreign_Produce_1368