JAYSON and MIRA CALTON
Month 11, Week 3
Mira: CN, FAAIM, DCCN, CMS, CPFC, BCIH
Jayson: PhD, FAAIM, DCCN, CMS, CISSN, BCIH, ROHP
CaltonNurition.com
The Overwhelming Health Benefits of a Micronutrient Sufficient Lifestyle
[These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The information on this audiocast is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.]
[Theme song playing]
Robyn: Hello everyone. Welcome to month 11 of the Self-Care Revolution. We’re exploring the theme of Power of Gratitude. My name is Robyn Benson. I’m a doctor of Oriental Medicine for 21 years, the founder of Santa Fe Soul Health and Healing Center and I’m here with…
Keith: Kevin Snow. I’m an Intuitive Counselor here at Santa Fe Soul. It’s a beautiful day in Santa Fe today.
Robyn: We’re still pretty ecstatic from our last conversation with Sean.
Keith: Absolutely.
Robyn: Wow!
Keith: We’re rolling right into this one.
Robyn: I mean we’ve got some hot seats today, two amazing people. Today, we’re joined by Jayson and Mira Calton. Welcome.
Mira: Hello. Thanks for having us.
Jayson: Hi guys.
Robyn: It’s so great to have you here and for all of you we have so many new people joining the Self-Care Revolution just this week. Just to let you know, this is the first year, but it’s a 12-month series where we’re exploring various topics. We stated out with Thought & Food as Medicine.
Keith: Absolutely. Heart & Breath Matters.
Robyn: Heart and Breath Matters. We brought in Stig Severinsen all the way from Denmark to share his amazing story, his Guinness World Record of being under water and how important it is to breathe properly.
Keith: Yes.
Robyn: You know what? We brought in a really important month, too. Month three was all about Releasing and Transmuting Trauma because when it comes to self-care in terms of how we age, in terms of why some people get cancer, why certain people get diseases and others don’t, a lot of it has to do with how we process our trauma. So that was a really potent month.
I want all of you to know that you can get this whole year-long program. We’re talking over 110 experts in the wellness and fitness industry, including our self-care coaches at Santa Fe Soul Health and Healing Center. We’ve done 11 live streams so far. You have the opportunity for an incredible investment to get that at any given time, so we want you to know that that’s available to you.
Keith: We’ve had it available to us, just like having this amazing interview that we’re about to start now. I mean we know how valuable it so, hopefully, that’s transferring to you, our listeners. Partaking in this year-long program at your own pace is such a valuable thing and, really, as we’re in the Month of Gratitude, I’m just expressing my gratitude for all these amazing speakers that have said yes to us.
Robyn: Right. For everybody listening, this is really a big mission, vision, a challenge to help the world see that so many of the diseases out there can be prevented, they can be reversed and that we’re here to live a fun, fulfilled, engaged life. Also, when you think about what your most important values are, that Sean illuminated so well, we have a lot to live for.
Keith: Absolutely.
Robyn: And to know that a lot of this degradation we see of our body, mind and spirit doesn’t have to happen.
Keith: Right.
Robyn: And with us today, Jayson and Mira who are going to be our next speakers. Again, thank you so much for being here live with us, literally, from New York City where they’re taking a break from their many multimedia appearances to be live with each and every one of you. So, again, thank you. Here you are.
Mira: Well, we just want to show a little gratitude to you for having us and allowing us to share our message with all the people who are your fans and followers and all the people listening right now. We’re really, really thankful for that.
Robyn: Yeah! The Caltons are among the world’s leading experts on the topics of weight management, lifestyle medicine and micronutrient deficiency. Their high success rate working with adults and children to achieve sustainable weight loss and reverse health-disease conditions has made their consultancy highly sought after by celebrities, athletes and top corporate executives around the world. It is their belief that becoming micronutrient sufficient is the first step towards preventing and reversing many of today’s most prevalent health conditions and diseases.
That is the very short of the long amazing bios of these two amazing people, so I thought I would just start by asking the question. Actually, let’s start with you Jayson. How did you get into this field of nutrition and health and how did you meet your lovely wife?
Jayson: Well, I’ve been infatuated with nutrition since I was a child. I created my first diet when I was seven years old. My parents got me a book. I think it was for Christmas or Easter or whatever it was, I came out and there was this book sitting there called Bitter Fat. The concept of the book really kind of boiled down to one sentence – Eat less and exercise more. That’s what the book said. I wasn’t a heavy child in any way, shape or form, but I had an uncle who was into bodybuilding and he looked completely different than anybody else.
I was infatuated with manipulating the human body through food and through exercise and so I decided to do my own diet. I said if less calories and more exercise means weight loss let me try it. I remember I went into the kitchen and I had my mother help me. I got some sugar-free Jell-O and I made batches and batches of the stuff and then I said that’s all I’m going to eat. If fewer calories is the answer then no calories is the way to go. I learned a very important lesson with that diet that lasted about a day and a half. I learned that calories equal energy and from there on I’ve just been experimenting one day after the next after the next.
When I met Mira I had been practicing nutrition for about 12 years in my own private practice. I had been involved in what I always called the macronutrient wars. I had been doing what a lot of nutritionists do. When people come to your office and they want to lose weight, they want to sleep better or they want to get rid of their high cholesterol, blood pressure, whatever it may be, you talk to them about diet and that diet always surrounds those macronutrients, the carbs, the fats and the proteins. How much should I eat? How much shouldn’t I eat? What’s good for me? What’s bad for me?
Mira came in and when I met her she was about 31 and she had advanced osteoporosis. Advanced osteoporosis to the point where she was breakable and this is very unusual for a woman at that age. She didn’t need me to talk to her about if she should be eating carbs or fats or proteins. What she needed was help in understanding how to get her body to absorb those vital micronutrients that we’re going to be talking about today.
So I want, first of all, everybody to know that a micronutrient is the other side of food. It’s the non-caloric stuff in food that makes it good for you. It’s the vitamins, the minerals, essential fatty acids, amino acids, these types of things. For her, we needed her body to absorb that calcium and that magnesium, the boron and the vitamin K, so that’s where our research kind of went away from diet, in general, and really laser-focused onto the micronutrients. That’s how I first met Mira. She was actually a client of mine.
Robyn: Wow. Mira, can we hear a little bit more about your background? We know how you met your husband.
Mira: Yeah. I was not interested in health. Obviously, I had advanced osteoporosis. I was not interested in health. I was not interested in nutrition. I was interested in fashion and fun and I thought that New York City and lifestyle was all that mattered. When I got sick I learned very, very quickly that the only thing that matters is your health. Very, very quickly everything else turns bad the minute you’re not healthy and you can no longer have a job, you can no longer live where you want to live, you cannot take care of yourself.
One day with Jayson we started working on this and it actually came to something I was really passionate about because we were able to reverse my osteoporosis in only two years. So when we went in and my DXA scan came back completely fine, I didn’t have osteoporosis, I didn’t have osteopenia, that set in motion me going back to school to become a nutritionist so that we could write books, so we could travel around the world and try to figure out if what we had learned about the power of the micronutrient, the power of each individual and essential vitamin and mineral, could benefit people around the world and to what extent it was going to help them. Could it help them to reverse their health problems and conditions, as well? What we found out is that it is intrinsically linked to most every lifestyle and health condition that is plaguing Americans and people around the world today.
What we like to say is that micronutrient deficiency is the most widespread and dangerous health condition of the 21st century. The fact is that 99%, or nearly every single person listening right now, it is likely that they have a micronutrient deficiency and they’re not aware of it. The longer it lasts and the deeper it gets the more at risk they are for a health condition.
Robyn: And you’re saying that it’s affecting 99% of the planet. That is massive. That’s just about every one of us.
Jayson: Yes, it is.
Mira: It’s not like our government is not doing these statistics. I mean this is where we’re getting the numbers. We didn’t make it up. We didn’t test everyone. We actually found out that nine out of 10 Americans are deficient in potassium, eight out of 10 are deficient in vitamin E, seven out of 10 in calcium and 50% of Americans are deficient in their A and the C of their magnesium. In the U.K., they’ve actually come out and said that every single person in the U.K. is likely deficient.
Robyn: Wow. Fortunately, we had some time with you before we went live. You said that you’re going to be speaking tonight about this micronutrient deficiency in terms of genetically-modified foods. Are you there with Jeffrey Smith by any chance?
Jayson: No, we’re not here tonight with Jeffrey Smith, Jeffrey Smith, of course, being one of the world-renowned experts on GMOs. We’re going to be on in this new film talking about GMOs, but the way we look at it our vision is very much similar to Jeffrey’s. Jeffrey is a good friend of ours.
We’re talking a lot about how the micronutrients are depleted from glyphosate, which is the herbicide Roundup, and just how prevalent GMOs are in the grocery store. Of course, we wrote Rich Food, Poor Food, really the only grocery store guide that showed people how to stay away from GMOs and their derivates in the aisles of the grocery store. So that’s what we’re going to be talking about tonight. The movie will be coming out and that one is called ‘Bought’.
Mira: Because the government has bought our time.
Robyn: Okay, great.
Keith: Excellent. What caught my attention is this idea of naked calories. We’re wondering if you could share a little bit about what you mean by naked calories. What are some of the foods? I mean we think of things like white breads, cake and that sort of thing, but I think you’re extending it much further out to things that are empty of these micronutrients.
Jayson: You’re exactly right, Kevin. People kind of know the word empty calories and empty calories are really kind of thought of as junk foods. We think of them as cookies, candies, cakes, pies and, yes, those are empty calories and they’re empty because they don’t have any micronutrients. But when we coined the term ‘naked calories’, it went beyond the empty calories. We’re not talking about just the processed junk foods, we’re talking about even foods that we may have considered healthy right up until the last few years. We’re talking about things like fruits, vegetables and lean proteins.
It’s really any food that has had its vitamins, minerals or essential fats somehow stripped from it and this can happen in a multitude of different ways. It can start in the soil. So our soil can be depleted and then when we grow food in depleted soil, of course, we get foods that are filled with naked calories. It can be food that’s been shipped across borders, state lines and even from continent to continent. Now we have a global food distribution system where the longer that food is in transit and the more it’s exposed to light, heat and air it is losing those vital micronutrients. We could be talking about food that’s been chopped, diced, sliced, micro waved or cooked.
Again, we lose those micronutrients when it’s exposed to that heat. It could be food that you brought home from the restaurant last night and left in your refrigerator a day or two and then reheated again. That can be a way that micronutrients can be stripped. The really sad thing is everything we do to food strips micronutrients and creates naked calories, but it never reduces the calories in the foods. Food has two components, calories and then those micronutrients. The calories are always intact, but almost everything we do to it strips those micronutrients in some way.
Robyn: And the natural enzymes, right?
Mira: Absolutely. That’s all to do with the preparation.
Jayson: Sure. Heat definitely destroys the enzymes and that’s why raw food is so, so good for you.
Keith: You were sharing some examples, you mentioned fruit and vegetables. Maybe just elaborate a little bit on that. Some of the things when we’re shopping on the perimeter of the grocery store still may be stripped of these micronutrients.
Mira: Absolutely. We love Sean Preston who was on today with you guys and he always says just real food. We take it one step further because we have to say an apple is real. An apple is a real food. Our thing is just each rich food. We like to say that even if it’s real, unfortunately, in today’s modern society there have been so many things that strip it of its micronutrients that you really have to go one step further and make sure it’s rich.
You want it to have high micronutrient value, so you better look for something that’s been grown locally and picked fresh. You want to make sure that it’s organic because there are 42 pesticides on the average apple and some of those are glyphosate, and basically what that’s going to do is strip you of your magnesium, your calcium, lots of the different minerals.
It used to be they’d say an apple a day keeps the doctor way and that was a great thing for our grandparents’ age because it was probably true. An apple had a lot of micronutrients, it wasn’t coated with pesticides and it was a healthy food. But today, due to the poor soil and due to the bad farming and all that, it doesn’t have nearly the amount of micronutrients one would expect to have in an apple. It has 96% less iron and nearly 50% less calcium.
So you’re eating these foods that you think are natural good foods, but you’re just not getting the nutrition from them or the high micronutrient value that you should. The same is true of your proteins. You have to watch how you’re purchasing and make sure that the animals have been brought up on what their correct feed should be and in the correct environment that they should be living.
Keith: Wow. There’s a connection here, obviously. You were talking about osteoporosis and how you reversed that with changing the diet and supplementing, I believe that you were talking about. What are some of the other conditions and what are those conditions connected to as far as things that we can notice in ourselves?
Jayson: Every single vitamin and mineral, so you’ve got vitamin A and all the B vitamins, vitamin C and D and E, we all know these. Sometimes we’ve taken them for granted and many of us don’t really think much about why they are called essential micronutrients. The reason why, of course, is because they are essential to our health. Meaning, if they are deficient there is only one thing that can happen and there is only one thing that will happen. A deficiency in these essential micronutrients will make it so that our bodies cannot perform at its optimal level. It can’t even perform at its minimum level and if those deficiencies become too deep then this will start up these health conditions and over time they can convert to what we call diseases in today’s world.