Episode 75 - Fascia, Hormones & the Quantum Body with Dr. Catherine Clinton

🐚Topics covered

• Dr. Catherine's autoimmune health crisis leading to discovering quantum biology
• Quantum biology defined: light, water, sound & energy fields in living systems
• The body as an antenna receiving light, sound & electromagnetic information
• Morning light's role in cortisol rhythm & sex hormone conversion
• Evening light exposure & melatonin's connection to fertility signaling
• Bioelectric capacity: how cells hold charge & its connection to inflammation
• Fascia explained: collagen-based communication network throughout the body
• Differences between male & female fascia & estrogen receptor responsiveness
• Fascia's role in luteal phase stiffness & menstrual cycle symptoms
• Structured versus bulk water & true cellular hydration
• Electrolytes, minerals & bio-individual approaches to hydration
• Heart-centered morning practice as foundation for hormonal coherence

About Dr. Catherine Clinton

Dr. Catherine Clinton, ND, is a licensed naturopathic physician, author, and the Founder and Chair of the Quantum Biology Health Institute. With more than 18 years of clinical and educational experience, she helps wellness seekers and healthcare practitioners understand health through a systems-based, quantum biology lens. While in naturopathic medical school, her diagnosis of two autoimmune conditions and Lyme disease reshaped her understanding of healing and led her beyond conventional models. Dr. Clinton has published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, teaches internationally, and maintains a small clinical practice in Eugene, Oregon. Her work is dedicated to expanding how we understand health by honoring the body’s intelligence and its relationship with light, water, and environment

Where to find Dr. Catherine Clinton

Instagram: @dr.catherineclinton

Facebook: @dr.catherineclintonnd

YouTube: @drcatherineclinton

Website: www.drcatherineclinton.com

About the Host

I’m Iris Josephina, a functional hormone specialist, orthomolecular hormone coach, circadian biology practitioner, and entrepreneur. Through Cycle Seeds and The Inner Rhythms Podcast, I support people in reconnecting with their cyclical nature, deepening body literacy, and reclaiming hormonal harmony from a place of sovereignty and embodied knowledge. Most people know me from Instagram, where I share stories, tools, and inspiration on cyclical living, menstrual cycles, fertility, hormones, and more. 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Iris Josephina: I have been wanting to sit down with Dr. Catherine for a long time, and I'm very excited that she agreed to join me for a conversation on the podcast. And Dr. Catherine Clinton, she is a naturopathic physician, an author, and the founder and chair of the Quantum Biology Health Institute. And with more than 18 years of clinical and educational experience, she helps wellness seekers and healthcare practitioners understand health through a more systems-based quantum biology lens. While in naturopathic medical school, her diagnosis of two autoimmune conditions and Lyme disease really reshaped her understanding of healing and led her beyond conventional models. Dr. Clinton is published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. She teaches internationally. I'm actually going to meet her in September. I'm really excited. And she maintains a small clinical practice in Eugene, Oregon. And her work is really dedicated to expanding how we understand health by honoring the body's intelligence and its relationship specifically with light, water, and its environment.

[00:00:56] Iris Josephina: And for this episode, we went pretty deep. We went into her own autoimmune health crisis, which led her to discover quantum biology. We talk about what quantum biology actually is, how we perceive the body from a quantum biology lens. We talk about light. We talk about lack of light exposure. And from there, we move into the bioelectric capacity of the body, which I find extremely fascinating, and also fascia, and how fascia for men and women is different. And yeah, this conversation just expanded my own understanding of quantum biology and made me even more passionate about it than I already am. I hope you will enjoy it. Let us know what you think, and enjoy listening.

[00:02:01] Iris Josephina: You are listening to the podcast of Iris Josephina. If you are passionate about exploring the menstrual cycle, cyclical living, body wisdom, personal growth, spirituality, and running a business in alignment with your natural cycles, you're in the right place. I'm Iris. I'm an entrepreneur, functional hormone specialist, trainer and coach, and I am on a mission to share insights, fun facts, and inspiration I discover along the way as I run my business and walk my own path on earth. Here you'll hear my personal stories, guest interviews, and vulnerable shares from clients and students. Most people know me from Instagram where you can find me under @cycleseeds, or they have been a coaching client or student in one of my courses. I'm so grateful you're here. Let's dive into today's episode.

[00:02:57] Iris Josephina: Welcome, Dr. Catherine. I'm so excited to have you here and to have this very necessary conversation.

[00:03:05] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Well, I'm so excited to be here and talk with you today.

[00:03:09] Iris Josephina: So your field of passion and expertise is quantum biology, but you're also a naturopathic doctor, and I'm very curious about your story. How did you first learn about quantum biology, and how did you get so passionate about it?

[00:03:28] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Yes, because they don't often collide, right? Quantum biology is sort of its own sect, but I got really sick in naturopathic school. So I was in my second year of schooling, and it was long clinic hours, long hours in class, and my nervous system just couldn't weather all the stress, and I was diagnosed with a couple of autoimmune diseases and Lyme disease. And in naturopathic school, we're taught all the allopathic or mainstream medical things that an MD would learn, but on top of that, we're taught herbs, botanicals, nutrition, homeopathy, physical modalities. And all of that chemical, mechanical approach to health was wonderful, but it wasn't enough to get me back to the state of health, and that's where I found quantum biology. This was over 20 years ago, working on 25 years ago almost, and the mitochondria were really new and exciting and starting to show up prominently in the research, so I was looking at them. The physician that I was doing clinical rotations under was urging me to look at psychoneuroimmunology, and that's just a big word for how our thoughts and emotions impact our health. And at the same time, I stumbled across research from UC Berkeley, from Graham Fleming and Greg Engel about quantum effects in photosynthetic bacteria, and research from Martin Piccard and the mitochondria, and it all just kind of coalesced to this aha moment that the body was more than chemical and mechanical. It was energetic as well in a very real sense, and it's been so exciting to see the research emerge and continue to emerge in this field.

[00:05:42] Iris Josephina: Wow. I'm so sorry you got sick, though. It's always so confusing, especially with what I would call more modern lifestyle illness. There's not like a one-way street to, "Oh, this is causing it, and this is what we need to do to support us." And I think this is why it's so cool what you're doing, because I feel that when we combine different modalities, we are much more equipped to holistically meet all of these newer things that happen in our bodies. So yeah, really cool.

[00:06:19] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Yeah, absolutely. That's a beautiful way to put it, because I think that we've been approaching health through that chemical, mechanical model, right? A chemical imbalance, so we have a pharmaceutical or a botanical or a supplement. Mechanical, we do surgery, which is wonderful. That's great, but our patient sets, the patients that I've been seeing, are getting more and more complex, and I think that's because our landscape has really become more and more complex. Really, we're inundated with all of these things that we can't see in our environment, and it just makes sense to work with all the tools that we have in the toolkit. And quantum biology definitely offers a nice section of modalities that are a lot of times often free, which is wonderful.

[00:07:15] Iris Josephina: Yeah. I agree. I'm in hormone health and learned from the orthomolecular and functional medicine branch, so it's a bit similar. Like, when I first heard about quantum biology, it's like, oh my God, it's the missing link in the things that I've been doing. So for the people who are listening and who are not really sure what quantum biology is, could you give us a little introduction into what it is? What are the key principles?

[00:07:43] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Absolutely. Well, really, it's looking at quantum effects in living systems. And what that means for human health is we're looking at how light, water in the body, how sound, how fields of energy, whether that be electromagnetic fields, scalar fields, our biofield, our thoughts and emotions, how those impact things in the body like our mitochondria, those little organelles in our cells that create cellular energy, so important for our health, or our fascia, our cell membranes, our DNA, our nervous system. All of these things create an interconnected web that aren't just chemical and mechanical. There's this step before chemistry, the body before chemistry, and that's where quantum biology comes in. It's these waves of energy and information, whether we're talking about light or sound or electromagnetic fields, and how they produce measurable biological action in the body, and understanding that and utilizing that for better health and longevity.

[00:08:59] Iris Josephina: I love that you said that it comes before the biochemical part, that it's the first thing that we should be looking at. Because for many people it's most often the last thing that they find, and then that starts to move the needle. But I love that you say it's actually the foundation, what we should be looking at, before we look at the biochemical components.

[00:09:23] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Absolutely. Yeah. And oftentimes those biochemical approaches are so much more effective if that quantum biological foundation is set. And it just makes sense. I've had a lot of patients where we get that set, and something that they have been doing for years just clicked and started working. Like, they thought it would work for all those years, but it wasn't quite doing what it was supposed to because they didn't have that foundation.

[00:09:54] Iris Josephina: Mm-hmm. Beautiful. And how would you say that quantum biology can help restore human health? How does that work? You named a couple of the principles. Let's say light or water and hydration. What does that practically look like for people?

[00:10:17] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Yeah, absolutely. I think that looking at the body as an antenna, it's really receiving all this information. So the light in our environment, whether we are aligning with the rising and setting of the sun, has an enormous impact on our health, our state of inflammation, our balance in our hormones, our metabolic state. All of those things are triggered and really informed by the light in our environment, and when that light is at least some percentage natural light, then our body works much more efficiently. There's much more balance in the body. And so it can look like regulating our light environment, being conscious of our sound environment and how sound can impact our health, being conscious of electromagnetic fields, whether that's from manmade, non-natural electromagnetic fields, or the electromagnetic field that is created and emanated from the heart or that surrounds the Earth when we come in contact with the Earth in earthing or grounding practices. I mean, there are so many ways to approach this. But it really comes back to this understanding that it does exist and that it does have real impact on our health.

[00:11:48] Iris Josephina: Yeah. I love that there is all the science out there right now because some of the things that you're saying may sound a bit woo-woo to some people. Like, what do you mean just looking at the sun? Or what do you mean just standing on the earth? But I love that there is so much more research coming out that actually proves shifts in even blood. Like when you're grounding on the earth, the way that your blood looks under the microscope can literally shift and change. So I feel that this field and the authority that it's currently getting in our field of work can really shift how we approach everything that is currently happening to human bodies. And with that, as you know, I mainly work with women and fertility. Could you share a bit more about how you look at how quantum biology principles could support people who have certain hormone problems or fertility problems or issues with their menstrual cycle?

[00:12:58] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Absolutely. I think that, just going back to what we were talking about with the light environment, I think a lot of people don't realize how important it is to align with that circadian rhythm of the sun. So for example, when somebody goes outside and they get that morning light upon waking, so many of us in our modern lives have an alarm clock on our phone, we turn it off, we start scrolling. That first light comes from an artificial source that is rich in blue light that tells our body that it's noon, that we are late, we need to catch up, we need to be doing everything that we would be doing at solar noon. Whereas, if we go outside within half an hour or an hour of waking, then the light in our environment is cuing so many different hormonal conversions in the body, and that looks like the sex hormones, estrogen and progesterone, testosterone. Those are actually stimulated by that early morning light and the change in light. So every minute that passes that we're outside, that spectrum of light is constantly changing. And I think it was 2017 that three researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work on chronobiology, or how light impacts life. And they found that it has tremendous impact, that we have all these circadian genes, and almost every cell in the body has a circadian clock or gene. And when that light, that natural morning light, comes in through the eye, if we're able to see the sunrise, that predominantly red and infrared spectrum is very soothing for our nervous system, and that slow rise in cortisol is really beneficial when you're looking at hormonal secretion and patterns and fertility. That really common practice of looking at the phone does just the opposite. It spikes our cortisol right up because the body says, "Oh, wow, it's noon. You're late. We have to get the cortisol up as fast as we can." Whereas seeing that morning light tells your nervous system, "Okay, we can gently ramp up that cortisol, and we can start secreting, telling the adrenal glands to secrete pregnenolone and have that converted into the sex hormones." And that conversion of estrogen and progesterone and testosterone is really important for hormonal balance and fertility. Getting natural light throughout the day can maintain that circadian signal, and then lowering the lights at night is going to be really important as well, because it's not just the morning light that is signaling all that information and hormonal balance in the body. There is signaling that happens in darkness as well. So as the sun sets, if we move to lighting that's more rich in orange and red tones, that's lower in light, so not a bright overhead light. We're moving the light down on our horizon. I have a salt lamp right behind me that I turn on. I have them all over my house, in the living room, in the bathrooms, in bedrooms, so that we get a low, gentle orange light, and that signals to the body that the sun is setting or has set. It doesn't block the release of melatonin from the pineal gland, and that's really important for our hormones. Because if we can secrete melatonin, if we can get to bed in between that 10:00 PM to 2:00 AM time window, that's when insulin and leptin start docking in the hypothalamus. And when that happens, it tells the body, "Is this person rich in energy reserves so that they can get pregnant? Do we have enough energy to support a pregnancy?" And so even that morning light window and the importance that it holds in our hormone balance and fertility, the nighttime window is just as important. If that insulin and that leptin aren't docking, if that melatonin is blocked by those blue lights that are so common if we're scrolling on our screens or watching TV or have those bright overhead lights, it blocks melatonin, and it can block leptin and insulin in the brain. And when those don't dock, when those don't communicate with the brain and let the brain know, "Oh, yeah, okay, we have enough energy, we can support a pregnancy for sure," the body errs on the side of safety. Like, I didn't get the message, so I'm going to assume that we don't have the energy, because I want to keep the system going. And so something as simple as getting morning light, getting light throughout the day, lowering the lights, we can wear blue light blocking glasses, we can switch our lighting from those LED lights, we can use apps on our phones and our computers so that the light is blocking that blue light that says "don't secrete melatonin" and turns it into that red light that allows for that melatonin to be released and those things to communicate with the brain.

[00:19:13] Iris Josephina: Mm-hmm. It's funny that you showed the Himalayan salt lamp. I have literal red light in my house. And people who have never seen that I do that, they come into my house and they're like, "Your house looks like a brothel." And now I use it in my classes, like, make your house look like a brothel at night. Red light is the best.

[00:19:38] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Yeah. It's so good. I mean, before recording, we were talking about a trip coming up, and I travel with little clip-on no blue light orange and red lights. Because there's nothing I can do. I mean, I have tried putting stuff over the lights, trying to make it not that aggressive blue LED light, and you really can't change that. It is what it is. So we just don't use those lights, and instead we use those little clip-on readers. And everyone has them. My kids have them, my husband has them. They're autonomous in their light, so they can light whatever they want to use. But it's so important.

[00:20:26] Iris Josephina: Yeah, it's really crazy to me that we just don't think about it. If you're not growing up with this mindset about how important it is to dim your lights at night, you just don't know. And then maybe you have all these sleeping problems, and something as easy as not using your overhead lights can maybe fix your problem.

[00:20:50] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that usually when I see patients, they walk away with sort of these quantum biology or circadian prescriptions, and they're like, "Okay." But once they feel the difference, once you have somebody who hasn't been sleeping for years able to sleep through the night, they're on board. These things are small but have enormous impact.

[00:21:18] Iris Josephina: Yeah. And I feel that that is what makes people move, what makes them do things. Because if you give people an enormous stack of supplements, they're going to be really overwhelmed. And I just give them like small steps, and they're like, "Really? Like sunrise?" I'm like, "Yes, go watch the sunrise."

[00:21:38] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Yeah. And that's the world I was coming from. Naturopathic physicians are like, "Okay, here's your bag of supplements." And so to discover that there was this expanded understanding of the body and our biology, and how brilliant the body is, and it's really enmeshed in this universal flow of energy, and modern life has taken us out of that context. And the more we can return to that, the healthier we will be. It's just a beautiful sense of belonging that a lot of those patients leave with this list, and they're like, "Oh, okay." But really it's an invitation to return to these relationships that we've walked away from, the rising and setting of the sun, the waters, the ground beneath our feet. All of those things are so, so powerful when it comes to our health.

[00:22:40] Iris Josephina: Yeah. It really is. I've noticed it. I see it in my students and my clients as well, and I really believe that, I'm even daring to say, this could be like the healing toolkit for a lot of stuff that is hurting people in our modern society.

[00:22:58] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Yeah. I think that there's a way to look at the body where pain, inflammation, symptoms, pathology, and disease states really come back to this loss in bioelectric capacity in the body, right? Our cells run on a negative electrical charge, and when we lose that charge, symptoms start to ensue, inflammation and hormonal imbalance, all of those things. And taking steps to maintain that electrical charge or to boost it and to replenish it are such a powerful way to approach health.

[00:23:43] Iris Josephina: Mm-hmm. So there is also another part that you talk about on your Instagram and also within your book, and that is fascia, and I am so fascinated by fascia. So I wanted to ask you, could you give us a brief intro on what is fascia, why is it important? And then go into the difference between male and female fascia, because I'm fascinated by how that apparently can be so different.

[00:24:13] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Yes, absolutely. Well, I love fascia too, and I think that fascia is really having a moment. And there are so many different takes on fascia, and for me, fascia is this bridge of communication in the body. Fascia is this body-wide web or fabric of connective tissue, and the connective tissue is made up mostly of collagen. And if you think about this fascial web, it's like a fabric pulled across our bones, like our bones are a loom and this fascia is a fabric, and it connects to every single structure in the body, connects inside the cells as well. So it's really creating this interconnected communication network, and it's mostly made up of collagen. Collagen is semiconductive, so it can hold an electrical charge and it can transmit it. It's also piezoelectric, so it can, when compressed or when exposed to pressure waves, create an electrical current. So we have this web of connective tissue in our body that can hold and transmit an electrical charge and generate one, and it's coming from our superficial layers all the way down into our internal organs and our bones, and it transmits energy, yes, but also information. It's an intermediary with our nervous system. It's communicating pressure, mechanics. It's communicating tension. It is lined with this hyaluronic acid and water gel that really helps the fascia not only move, right? A lot of people used to think that fascia was just a sort of packaging material of the body, and we now know that it's a network. And then the next thing that happened was people thought, "Okay, fascia is really intertwined with the muscles," which it is, yes, but it's more than that. It communicates with our immune system. It communicates with our nervous system. It communicates with our hormones. Our fascia has hormonal receptors within it. And to your question of the difference between male and female fascia, the difference is quite dramatic.

[00:26:55] Dr. Catherine Clinton: The estrogen receptors in female fascia are responsive to estrogen, and the estrogen tells the fascia to be more elastic, to create more elastic, springy fascia. And when we see women transition into perimenopause and menopause and the decrease in estrogen, we see this bidirectional sort of conversation that the fascia has with the hormones. Not only is it listening to the hormones and responding to the level of hormones, so if the hormones are decreasing, it can make the fascia stiffer, it can lead to things like aches and pains and stiffness, but also the health of the fascia, if the fascia is healthy, it can respond to the hormones more efficiently. So if you have declining hormones and unhealthy fascia, it's going to have a bigger impact on your overall health than if you have the natural decline in estrogen that we all go through and the healthy fascia that can listen and respond and be resilient. And when we're looking at male fascia, we see that the natural lesser amount of estrogen and estrogen receptors makes the fascia more rigid, more rope-like. And so there's a real difference between female and male fascia, where female fascia is looser, it's more stretchy and bouncy and springy and elastic, and male fascia is more rigid. It's more structured. It's more sturdy as well. And so there are real differences when it comes to the genders, the fascia, and how the fascia is responding to hormones.

[00:29:01] Iris Josephina: Mm-hmm. Can I ask you something about this? And maybe you don't have the answer here, but as you were talking, I was wondering where in gestation do we start creating fascia in our bodies in utero? It just dropped in when you were talking. Maybe you don't have the answer, but I wanted to ask you anyway.

[00:29:25] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Yeah. It's formed out of the mesoderm in an embryo. So it's connected. Our fascia comes out of that same cell line as our muscles, and our bones, and our tendons. It's this web. And when we look at all of them, we see that they all have this piezoelectric capacity to generate charge. And fascia really seems to be this bridge that is this front line communicator or interconnected bridge between those structures, the muscles, the bones, the tendons, and our nervous system, our immune system, our hormonal system, our metabolic system. So it's really this brilliant structure that allows for so much information and interconnection in the body.

[00:30:29] Iris Josephina: Mm-hmm. And could it also be the reason that women in their luteal phase, so after estrogen has peaked and we come into this luteal phase, sometimes we hold more bulk water in that phase, and we may feel more stiff? Like, I definitely feel it even when I stretch in my luteal phase when progesterone is more dominant and my estrogen in ratio to progesterone is a lot lower. Can we look at it in that way when it comes to fascia?

[00:31:05] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Yeah, absolutely. Those day-to-day changes in our hormones absolutely impact our fascia, and it's going to go the other way too, right? The health of our fascia is telling us the capacity for it to respond to those hormonal signals as well. So it's really a two-way street.

[00:31:31] Iris Josephina: Yeah. Is there something that you would like to add in terms of the menstrual cycle and the whole of quantum biology? Like, what should we pay attention to, or are there any things that you've learned from quantum biology that people with a menstrual cycle definitely should know, apart from having to attune to your light environment?

[00:32:00] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Yeah, definitely. That's a big one. I think tending to the fascia is also really important. Because when we're talking about the uterus and the ovaries, we're talking about a system that's covered in fascia, that's held in the fascial web of the pelvic floor. And so the health is going to be intertwined with how healthy the fascia is there. And so what does that mean? How do we tend to our fascia? Well, there's a light component that we talked about. Hydration is really important. And a lot of people think that hydration is how much water you're drinking. But really, it's what the water is doing once you drink it that can signal whether your body is hydrated or not. Water in the body takes on many forms. You mentioned bulk water, what we would think of in a glass of water, H2O. When water comes in against a surface like fascia, it takes on a different organization, takes on a different structure. And that water is so important for the ability for fascia to glide, to move. That's going to impact our menstrual cycle and symptoms that we have premenstrually, all kinds of PMS symptoms and pain during menstruation. So thinking about a quantum biology approach to the menstrual cycle, we're thinking about light, we're thinking about true hydration, and that means drinking something that is mineralized. We can also think about something that is energized. There are two different forms of water. Just like if we were looking at the periodic table, and we were looking at all the elements, hydrogen and oxygen and carbon and nitrogen, they exist in a ground state where they're resting, and they also exist in an excited state. And we can say the same thing about water. We can add energy to water, and the research is coming out more and more each year, and it's so fascinating. And we definitely need more funding and more research in this area. But what we see from research in Petri dishes, what we see in agriculture, in livestock, and in human studies, is that that excited, energized water has benefits for that living system. It seems to act almost like an antioxidant, and perhaps working on mitochondrial energy. And so drinking something that is mineralized, so just like grade school osmosis, right? The water follows the minerals. It doesn't have to be a lot. Just a little bit can help that water be absorbed and stay absorbed and get into that extracellular matrix and inside the cell. And that energy that we put into the water by putting it in sunlight, by putting plant material in it, whether that's tea leaves or slices of cucumber or a slice of lemon, that can make an energized component to the water. Stirring the water with a spoon. There are companies out there that create special wands that you can stir the water with to impart energy into the water. So the kind of water we're drinking is going to impact hydration. And then once the water is in us, what do we do? Well, it kind of looks like putting energy into that glass of water. If we go outside, if we move, if we are exposing ourselves to infrared energy, then we can add more of that organized liquid crystal water in the body, and that's going to have so many downstream effects. So when we're thinking about the menstrual cycle, thinking about light, thinking about hydration, thinking about mitochondrial health as well. If our mitochondria are working efficiently and creating energy in that cell, then we're going to have more resilience and balance in our hormones and in the day-to-day monthly cycle of our menstrual cycle, including PMS, including the actual days of menstruation that can potentially hold symptoms for some people.

[00:37:03] Iris Josephina: Mm-hmm. I love that you mentioned that drinking water is not the only thing that we should be doing, and you combined it with exposing ourselves to light or moving our body so we are helping our body. And what I can hear people think right now, and I want to ask you, oh, but what about electrolytes? Because some people know about the movement of water. Some people know about putting salt. Some people know about electrolytes, and then if people are in quantum biology, they'll know about molecular hydrogen. So for me, those are all parts of my life, and I'll put them in different moments for different purposes. For example, I'll take more electrolytes after a very heavy workout and I'll walk while I'm drinking it. So I'm curious about your view about that because I'm sure that people may be wondering about that.

[00:38:04] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Sure. That's a great question because it's something that we are seeing a lot on the internet and social media, people using electrolytes. And here's the bottom line. I think that having some kind of mineral content in the water is going to help with your state of hydration. Now, a lot of those electrolyte packets can be overkill for some people. So it's not really a one-size-fits-all. The one size that fits all is that some mineral content is going to be important, but that can be very little. I worked with a company to make a hydration formulation, and it really is sea salt, or seawater minerals, which are really low when you look at some of the electrolyte packets out there. And so companies like Quinton or Baja Gold making these seawater mineral hydration companions for your drinking, you add them to the water. Really, what we're talking about is just enough to skew the osmolarity and to have that flow into the body. Electrolytes can be great. For me personally, I use something like a seawater mineral in my drinking water. Now, I live in the Pacific Northwest. It is wet here. It is wonderfully hydrating, but I often visit the Southwest in the desert. That's when I reach for my electrolytes, because I'm losing so much in the sweat that I'm sweating. And so it's really individual how much minerals, how much electrolytes, but electrolytes are really the conductor. We talked about the bioelectric capacity of the body to hold electricity and to maintain that electrical charge, and electrolytes are really important in that equation. So I would say some, yes, absolutely is needed. How much? That's a whole other question, because some of those electrolyte packets are just packed with electrolytes, and I've seen that cause issues with people with their thyroids. So it just depends on the individual. But overall, some mineral component and electrolyte component to the water is going to help with hydration, and electrolytes just overall hold that capacity to transfer charge in the body. So they're going to be an important thing to look at.

[00:40:56] Iris Josephina: Yeah. Thank you for adding that, because I think some people are so confused by all of the output on social media, like, "Buy this electrolyte, buy that electrolyte." For me personally, I keep it simple. I use desert salt and sea salt. And I have the Quinton ampules, both of them, the hypertonic and isotonic. And then the electrolytes for after very intense workouts when I really feel like, oh my God, where is my water?

[00:41:26] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Yeah. Yes, absolutely. That's super smart, and that's how I do it here as well. I might do it differently if I was living year-round in Arizona in the desert, where it's always a loss of electrolytes in my system. But yeah.

[00:41:46] Iris Josephina: Yeah. That's what I do as well. So I think what is important for people to know is that it's very bio-individual and geographically determined, like how much and when you need. So yeah, thank you. Is there anything else that you would like to add that we didn't talk about, or just a snippet of wisdom that you want to give people before we close?

[00:42:12] Dr. Catherine Clinton: I think that when we're looking at the body from this expanded perspective, we can sometimes get siloed into different areas. Like light or water or whatever it is, but I think that we often forget how brilliant the body is and how our thoughts and emotions are really the conductor of coherence. So sometimes people ask me, "What's your one thing, your non-negotiable? Is it light? Is it this? Is it that?" And really for me, what it is, is leading from a heart-centered place. Before I even get out of bed, before I open my eyes, I start with a heart-centered practice where I'm focusing my intention on my heart, I'm breathing into that area, and I'm just very quickly having a gratitude practice, and this takes just a couple of minutes, right? I'm not in Zen meditation for hours. I'm a business owner, and I am an educator and a physician and a mother who home schools her two kids, so I'm busy, and Zen meditation hasn't yet made it into my daily schedule. But I can have a couple of minutes where I get centered, I am grounded, I am grateful, and that shift in what's happening internally just because I spend a couple of minutes there before I get out of bed is so powerful. So I think just reminding people of the power that they hold, it's not only the relationship we have with these things in our environment, but also our own internal voice holds such power for our health and our healing and our hormones.

[00:44:10] Iris Josephina: Thank you for adding that. I feel that that is something that is very often forgotten, so thank you for adding that as a little snippet of wisdom and a reminder for all of us.

[00:44:23] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Thank you for letting me.

[00:44:25] Iris Josephina: And I'm really happy that we got to have this conversation, and I'm even more excited that I'm actually going to meet you in September in the Netherlands.

[00:44:35] Dr. Catherine Clinton: I am so excited as well.

[00:44:37] Iris Josephina: Where can people find you if they're looking for you and want to learn more about you?

[00:44:43] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Yes. I didn't get creative with my name. I am just Dr. Catherine Clinton. That's my website, drcatherineclinton.com. That's where you can find me on social media, on YouTube, and this is what I share about. This is what I love. I really think that this is the trajectory that medicine needs to go towards, and it really brings the power back into the individual's own hands. So I'm passionate about it.

[00:45:17] Iris Josephina: Thank you so much. I'll make sure to paste everything in the show notes so people can easily find you. And thank you so much for taking the time to come on and talk about everything that you're passionate about.

[00:45:30] Dr. Catherine Clinton: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me today.

[00:45:34] Iris Josephina: Okay, this wraps up today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. Want to know more about me? The best way to reach me is via @cycleseeds on Instagram, and if you heard something today and you think, oh my God, wow, I learned something new, feel free to share the podcast on your social media and tag me or leave a review or rating. In this way, you help me reach more people like you. Thank you so much.