You were nominated for the Innovative Teaching Showcase by a former student. Why do you think your students enjoy and value your class so much? I know that when I enroll in a class and I see what it is I think I'm going to learn, and when it's actually what I wanted to learn and above and beyond that, then I feel very appreciative of the facilitation that was done to implement that process. So it's because I'm getting what I need, so that's why I think that they enjoy the class. She gave us the flexibility to kind of apply our own content in some of the assignments and also with the mini lesson. So that was again very helpful to me because I could feel comfortable enough in my own content and then try to apply it to this online class. My beginning feelings were pretty fearful of the whole thing and I don't see how I could make this work because I didn't have a real strong technology background. But I can kind of see past that now and I really have much more to explore there. So that was really exciting to start to see that and feel more comfortable. June has customized the assignments by making them learner centered. Everyone has the opportunity to prepare a presentation, to design their own class. They take their projects and they run them. So by putting it in the hands of the student, the student can make it her own and then individualize it the way she needs to. And also June isn't rigid, so rigid that she sacrifices learning. She's able to maintain a balance of creating guidelines for projects but letting students push them in the ways that they need to to make them meaningful. Professor Don was able to help me focus on what it is that I want to do. Originally I knew that I would be creating a design document in her course and I didn't really know exactly what, I didn't know if the guy knew at all what I was going to do. However, because she gave us this opportunity of all this active learning, I was like, I got it! I'm going to create a course so I have a passion for learning styles and accommodating learning styles. I'm really into a very comprehensive learning style model that I'm doing a lot of research on. And I just have a passion for online, not just online learning. I love online learning. I'm kind of addicted to it. I'm just like click, click, click, click. I just love to be there. Speaking for myself, I value the class because I see that what I learned in Professor Don's class today, I can translate directly into the classes that I'll be teaching tomorrow.


Good morning, so I'm going to be talking back up. My name is Matthew Garris. I work at Google on various things related to Loan Security and Today I'm going to be talking about some of the ways we're looking at making use of EVM, IMA and Loan Security modules to sort of tie these into a cohesive policy that satisfies our use cases I'm going to be talking to some extent about things that Mimi already brought up But providing a bit more context about why we're interested in working on them and what we're hoping to gain as a result of this functionality So some context here we employ quite a lot of developers and Those developers Largely end up at some point in their day-to-day work using Linux systems and we would like those Linux systems to have reasonably strong security guarantees But unfortunately somewhat inherent in the role of being a developer is the bit where you Build some software and then try to run it and If your security model is based around only allowing explicitly trusted binderees to execute then that's going to make it more difficult for developers to do their job So there's two ways of thinking about this the first would be okay We could block stuff for everyone who's not a developer and then allow developers to Run anything they want that's not ideal because developers Are not actually it turns out particularly better than the average user in terms of not downloading Random files from the internet and clicking on them Developers are not themselves inherently more trustworthy just because they know how to write codes In fact many of our security problems are it turns out down to developers writing code So another way of thinking about it is that we could be more secure if we did stop the developers doing any development But that's not really within the range of solutions. I'm allowed to advocate for But even if you do restrict things to signed Bineries you're still left with the problem of well, you can't sign data files and enforce signatures there If people are Using a computer you're generating files. You're going to need to be able to open those files at some point so You need to allow for unsigned files that are not executable, but then when it comes to interpreted languages How do you handle this is a Script a Python script is fundamentally just a data file that you feed to the Python executable And then it executes it and we can't remove Python because a lot of infrastructure is based around Python and even if we could You're still left with shell scripts and removing the shell is Really not an option. So we've got this whole set of interpreted languages that will happily either read data files or in many cases even take code from Standard IO or even worse take code as an argument to them and we can't deal with that with Signs binaries. So we need another approach look at security modules help us a lot here is the reason that we are concerned about the sanctity of code in terms of it not being modifiable it being something that we can say is reasonably trustworthy is Because we don't we trust that code not to do malicious things If instead we're able to say, okay Nothing can do malicious things regardless of whether it wants to or not then the situation is much easier we don't need to get into the same situation of having to Ensure that only trusted code runs if even untrusted code can't do any damage So we can use learn security modules like Se loan X app armor smack tomorrow the entire sets of families to restrict what applications can do and We can split this into two sorts of broad categories. We can say, okay trusted applications should be able to do basically anything because we assume that some things There are some things that some applications need to do but which we don't want our true codes to be able to do For instance, if we have credentials on a system that's provide access to other systems We only want trusted codes to be able to access those credentials But we still want untrusted code to be run the ball on the system So we could write an app on policy that has or an excellence policy or whatever that has some mechanism to differentiate between Applications that are considered trustworthy and applications that are not considered trustworthy and Then based on those two policies Trustworthy applications get access to credentials Untrusted applications do not get access to credentials How do we tell the difference between a trustworthy application and an untrusted application? small tangent here IMA integrity measurement architecture as Mimi mentioned is a mechanism that was initially something that Generated measurements of files Largely executables, but you can configure it so that measures all files that are accessed by different processes IMA appraisal was a later addition to the IMA feature set which allows validation of that measurement against a Stored hash and either a stored hash or a stored digital signature If you have an IMA policy that says that IMA should Appraise a file or executable under a specific set of circumstances the kernel will then perform a Measurement of the file compare that to the hash or to the digital signature and then block access if that Measurements does not correspond to the stores copy So this is the mechanism by which we could sign Executables which as I said we can't do in all cases. We cannot say appraise all Executables and then only allow Executables to run if they have a valid signature because we do need to allow the untrusted binaries to run as well And those will not have a signature The one problem around IMA in this respect well, so another slight tangent IMA Only protects the contents of a file if I modify the file contents then the IMA measurements will change the signature will no longer validate and IMA will either warn or block access to that file as a result But the file contents are not the only security relevant part of a file the other aspects include things like the file permissions if an executable is Set you it it may behave differently to if it's not and if I add the set you ID bit to an executable That's going to change my assumptions about that executables security But IMA is still going to be fine with this because the measurement of the file contents itself have not changed Similarly the security.se Linux extended attribute will determine what context an executable will run in or will determine which Processes are able to access that file and if I modify that Then again the context under which that The security Context of that process will now be different security context in that file will now be different and again IMA will not care so EVM protects the file metadata EVM adds an additional attribute which then Contains a signature over either a signature or an HMAC over the metadata And then you can configure The kernel so that as well as validating the IMA signature or hash it will also verify that the EVM Attribute corresponds to the other security relevant Metadata of the file that's way if the metadata is tampered with EVM will fail to validate if the file contents are tampered with IMA will fail to validate EVM was not this time 18 months ago EVM was not quite usable for what we wanted to do EVM signatures included as Mimi mentioned the file I node which is a reasonable thing to do for certain use cases but unfortunately You can't know ahead of time outside very constrained circumstances Which I know a file is going to end up on if you're distributing a package that hasn't yet been installed so That meant we could ship Precomputed IMA signatures alongside a file, but we could not ship precomputed EVM Signatures which meant we couldn't automatically handle the cases where We want to protect the metadata so We've now added Support for a portable IMA signature. Sorry a portable EVM signature one which only Includes a subset of the information that the full EVM signatures was include but which is Something that can be calculated using only the information, you know ahead of time rather than information You only get at the point where the package is installed The other change we made in terms of the EVM signatures themselves is adding support for signatures that were more than a signed copy of the Shah one digest of the file and the reasoning there is that Shah one is absolutely fine as The basis for an HMAC There's no reason at this point to think that the use of Shah one there is weak on the other hand We are now at the point where attacks on Shah one in the more general case are becoming more of a concern and the potential ability for someone to come up with a pre-computed attack where they're able to Modify a file and still have the same Shah one Probably still not at the point where it's realistic But it's probably also the case that if you're beginning to deploy this stuff You want something that's a little more future-proof, so we reworked the EVM hashing Code a little to add support for using additional hashes rather than just Shah one So the next step was how do we tie these two things together? How do we say? Okay? Signed files we can take the files that we believe are trustworthy and we can sign those But how do we then say? These files should be allowed to run with elevated privileges and other files should not And the work we've done here is associated with our armor because that's what we're using for enforcement You can come up with similar approaches for well SELinux is more straightforward because you already have an extended attribute. That's the basis for policy attachment for Ap armor previously policy attachments was based on the path of a file and the problem with that is if you say okay My trusted files all get installed into, you know, slash user slash bin slash user slash S bin We can write an app on policy that says stuff there is trustworthy If I then copy a file Into there, it'll be considered trustworthy Which is Kind of not what we were aiming for So the way we're doing this is to add supports to app armor to allow Profile attachments to also be based on the presence or contents of extended attributes and this means that we can write an app armor policy That says if this file has the security dot EVM extended attribute This profile should attach and then that profile is considered a better match than one that is equivalent But doesn't have the extended attribute mentioned So we do that and then Trusted files have the security dot EVM attribute they run in the trustworthy Ap armor profile everything that doesn't have that attribute runs in the untrusted state the IMA policy is then configured to only Appraise files that are running in the trusted profile rather than the untrusted one So if you build something that is You build something locally it does not have a signature Therefore it runs in the untrusted profile therefore IMA ignores it as far as appraisal is concerned You install something from a package we've built that in our build system We've determined that this is a trustworthy executable. It has the security dot EVM extended attribute It is then run in the trusted profile by app armor And I may then performs an appraisal. So if you take a file That has the security dot EVM extended attributes and you modify it then the IMA appraisal will fail and execution will be blocked except This didn't quite work Ap armor. Sorry. IMA has various points where you can Trigger and appraisal or a measurement and BPRM check was the one that corresponded to executing a file The problem here was that the appraisal and measurement were taking place Early in execution at the point where the files initially read off disk and That happens before the new credentials are committed which meant that The LSM context was still that of the parent process. It was not the Context that the process would actually end up executing as So we added a new additional cred check function to IMA to say Okay, perform the appraisal after the credentials have been committed. So this allows you to say I want everything This is running in this context Sorry, I want everything that is run by a process in this context to be appraised That's what BPRM checks does. I want everything that will be running in this context to be appraised is what credits check does So it's a non obvious difference, but it's actually meaningful Yeah, the kernel code for all of this stuff is kind of terrifying. I wish I didn't know about this now the things we do So this is what an IMA policy in this case looks like it's very straightforward. We say a praise at the point of the credentials being committed Anything that is running in the trusted underscore exec app armor profile Anything that's not running in that profile does not get appraised. So this way Anything that is running in the trusted profile has a signature the signature will be validated Attempting to run in the trusted profile without having a valid signature will result in execution being blocked by IMA if you remove the signature then The file will be run in the untrusted context and will therefore not be able to touch various bits of sensitive material Interpreted languages are still a tricky problem here because Python as shit comes from for instance comes from our Repository of trusted Files we don't we haven't gone through there and then special case the build system So this interpreted languages sorry language interpreters get the signatures left off So the approach we're taking at the moment is to make use of the security dot app armor extented attributes and right now our build system just inserts the part the full path of the Execs pull in the package into the security dots app armor extented attributes the security dot app armor extented attributes is now Part of the EVM signature. So modifying that will fail and then We write additional app armor policy for Language interpreters that lists that attaches to the contents of the security dot app armor extented attributes so we can say if This executable is user bin python 2.7 run it in the untrusted tier and If you rename the file It will still bind because the we're binding to the x-assard not to the actual path name The security dot app armor x-assard will still contain the same value if you modify that The signature will no longer validate and execution will be blocked So that way we can force all the language interpreters down to the untrusted tier without having to special case stuff in the build system Magically Scripts still work Because the policy Transition is determined When a process is initially executed and stuff that has a shebang line is very very very magic indeed The policy you run as is whatever policy is associated with the script not the scripts interpreter I'm not certain that this behavior is meaningfully documented as guaranteed So I Have not spent enough time reading this code to be absolutely certain that I can depend on this behavior But right now this is the behavior and it's fine. So and if anybody changes it now, they'll be breaking user space so What could go wrong we can make this even more complicated So as Mimi mentions there's now support for at runtime writing into a Attributes in Sysfs, sorry in security FS to say I would like additional extended attributes to be protected by the EVM signatures So upfront you pre-compute the signature including this extended attributes signature validation will then fail until you tell the kernel by the way include this additional extended attributes in the digest Which means we can add metadata For instance packages that go into our build system come from various different sources we can add Additional metadata that indicates which which input path those Bineries came from we could even add support for which user triggered this build and That means that we can come up with even find a green security policy This is okay. This is signed because it came through our build system But the upload path for this is not as trustworthy as the upload path for something else Therefore, even though it has a valid signature. It should be run in the untrusted context And that way we can do stuff that is so for stuff That's an experimental build we could potentially put stuff somewhere in the middle It's we trust this more than we trust something was built locally because we have a full audit trail of the source code that was built but This is built from experimental code. We don't want to say it's as trustworthy as Something that Wasn't experimental We build quite large binaries in some cases some of the binaries that we deal with are on the order of 500 megabytes Go is an amazing language But more realistically debug symbols add a lot to this And debug symbols are still part of what's being measured here. This is Reasonably expensive as a one-off cost but if it's on a local file system, then IMA will trust that the file has not been manipulated in the meantime and Will not rehashes until The file system informs us that it's been changed by bumping the iversion field in the file metadata fuse We can't rely on the fuse file systems to do that and therefore on every Open the file is rehashed And if you're pulling that 500 megabytes over the network in the background, that's really expensive One thing here is that even if fuse is Reperforming the measurement on every open of a file If the fuse file system is malicious, it's still possible to circumvent this measurement The fuse file system can return one Set of results the first time you read it while you're doing the hashing and can then return something different for all future reads and there's no guarantee that the Copy that was read up front is the copy that will always be run because the kernel may end up pushing Shunks of that code out of RAM and then pulling them off the file system again later and if the file system gives a different result the second time then a sufficiently carefully malicious file system could give you something that match the signature, but which then ended up triggering unmeasured code Militia's code as a later point. So we're already placing some trust in the fuse file system in an Universe where you are trusting that I'ma will get valid measurements You probably don't want to be placing too much faith in untrusted fuse file systems You probably want to be ensuring that the file systems you're running are trusted If the file system you're using is trusted can we make use of that trust to improve performance one way we could do that is to say well We wrote all the data to the file system at some point the file system got all that data The file system could generate the hash at that point and we could then retrieve the hash at a later point And you can come up with situations where this isn't just necessarily about fuse You can come up with situations where you have some other mechanism on a local file system for ensuring that a hash is protected and then What we did here was and this is very much not upstream yet Add an additional VFS hook that file systems can optionally provides this allows you to ask the file system to give you the hash of a file and Then we've plumbed that through fuse. So then a fuse file system can Optionally implement this the room there is that you don't want this to be achievable for file systems. You don't trust so in this case What we're looking at doing is adding support in So far we've only been looking at app armor app armor allows you to restrict Processes abilities to mount stuff based on the file system type So you can say only certain types of process come out fuse file systems fuse file systems actually add a sub file system type a file system subtype and We would like to extend stuff so that we can say okay only stuff with fuse Sorry things with fuse dot magic file system can only be mounted by trusted processes and Then Extend IMA so that we can say appraise stuff Sorry, allow stuff that is being executed off something that is fuse dot magic file system to make use of this shortcut Rather than hashing the file ourselves on every access If we trust the file system, we trust the file system to return consistent results If we trust the file system to return consistent results, we should probably be able to trust the file system to also Return the correct hash rather than start lying to us in this specific case as me mentioned, there's still some difficulty in distributing signatures in Debian packages I've been working with the d package upstream to add support for Debian would like to have a generalized way to distribute and store file metadata within packages So not just about the signatures, but then having a centralized store of all the file metadata and then be able to Compare that against the file system. This was also give a better way of distributing File capabilities, which Debian packages otherwise right now require you to set up in the package post inst Which means that in order to be able to calculate the EVM signature in advance You need to parse the post inst to figure out which file system capabilities are going to be added to a file Which is Really not ideal So working with deep package upstream to add that we now have an Implementation, but it turns out there's some awkward corner cases that we're still working through that are going to slow this down a bit more So still some work to do there so the summary of this We're able to tie the app armor context that a process will run in to the Content or a presence of an extended attribute. We can then protect that extended attributes with EVM We can protect the file contents with IMA We can trigger appraisal based on it only running on in the privileged context and then Untrusted code will still run but will run in an untrusted context Which is not appraised but which does not have access to the same set of sensitive material and that's it So I think if we've got any questions couple of minutes Could you tell us something more about the overhead of all that? Okay, what is the overheads for this and the answer is actually minimal. We're already using IMA measurement So the expensive part of this is reading the file and generating the hash We're already doing that adding a signature validations that is very cheap in comparison So for our specific use case overhead is tiny questions So you're using Trusted and untrusted as far as your subject attributes Any thought to use in a hierarchy of Trust or what or any other kind of finer granularity than yes and no So there are certainly arguments for introducing additional tiers having a entire spectrum of What we consider in terms of a file But one aspect of this design is also to keep things as easy to understand as possible as maintainable as Maintainable as possible. We didn't want to create a security model which requires many years of experience to understand because that just results in people making If people misunderstand stuff and are trying to fix bugs then it's not always the case that whoever initially implemented This is still going to be around. You don't want to require like the whole don't if Code is if the code you're writing is at the point where you just understand what you're writing it's going to be basically impossible for anybody else to debug that and We wanted to keep things as a fairly simple straightforward level So that it was as debuggable as possible and as maintainable as possible If we end up needing additional complexity, then we'll look at adding more stuff. But right now this is where we are No questions. Is there some online resources to try and reproduce and test your approach other online tools No So part of this is that The build system we have is tied to our internal infrastructure So the code from there is not particularly usable in a general sense the code that I'm using to generate signatures is Available on github and It's actually being maintained by someone outside the company So I can't run the URL off-hands, but if you drop me an email I can send you a link to that That the code for generating the IMA signatures only requires a small extension to be able to generate EVM signatures as well Outside that all the functionality I'm talking about is in the upstream kernel Although right now the use land app armor tooling doesn't yet have support for adding the Policy attachment stuff we've got these sort of hard-coded thing right now for handling that and working on adding support for that question from there What would stop some Removing EVM nothing so if malicious code is running as roots It could remove the security dot EVM extended attributes at which point if you attempted to run that it would run in the untrusted context So that's fine. You've successfully said okay. I'm going to downgrade this File and then tamper with it so that it now runs malicious code But it now runs in the untrusted tier and as a result it should not be able to do damage or obtain sensitive material It's basically equivalent to I Built a malicious file myself or I downloaded a malicious file myself from somewhere else and then ran it on questions So you use the extended attribute to attach the Armor policy instead of the path using the path So is there an additional privilege that is required to add the security of the armor extended attribute as opposed to moving a file into us usr bin so security technically yes in that You need to be roots to modify the security Extended attributes and you don't necessarily need to be roots might move stuff into user respon but it's not You can add these security dots at Palmer extended attributes If you do that it will then run in the trusted tier, but it will then also trigger appraisal So if you added that attribute or if you modified that attribute if the file previously has an EVM signature It will no longer validate and Therefore execution will be blocked that way No questions. If not, let's thank the speaker. Thank you


The study conducted by researchers in the Pacific Northwest regions of the US and Canada revealed that the extreme heatwave experienced in late June 2021 was made much more likely due to human-caused climate change. The researchers used multiple methods including observations, modeling, and statistical analysis to estimate the probability of such an event occurring without human-caused climate change. They concluded that the event would be extremely rare if not for human-caused climate change and that the event would be even more intense if global temperatures continue to rise. This article was authored by S. Y. Philip, S. F. Q., G. J. Van Oldenborg, and others.


Sleep is essential to our life. Perhaps it's almost important as breathing and eating. Despite the intensive study, the mechanism of sleeping is still not very clear. About 20% of adults may have chronic insomnia that feel difficulty falling asleep and maintain sleep. The insomnia can substantially influence the quality of life, may cause fatigue, low efficiency, and may even cause depression and anxiety. There are several approaches that can treatment for sleep disorders. For example, a gold-sleep habit, some psychology therapy. But these measures may not sometimes not be so effective. Most often, we have to take a drug. The problem with drug is that it can not only affect sleep, but also can affect many brain function, because it can affect most of the neurons throughout the brain. So the question is, can we find an approach that can specifically manipulate the sleep without affecting other brain functions? So the sleep actually may have two major facets. One is the survival sleep. The other is the process of our body seem to slow down. So we have a good rest and refreshing. The other factor is REM sleep. And during sleep, the brain seems not rested with activity just like a wake. And also we can with rapid eye movement. So our sleep will always start with a slow sleep, then fall by REM, and then back to slow sleep again. So this cycle can repeat several times. Traditionally, scientists actually found that the brain has many other systems that can maintain our brain in a wake state. But we don't know whether our brain has a specific brain circuit that can actively control sleep. So that's the question that we want to address. Recently, scientists have developed approaches that can specifically activate the neuron network so that we can specifically control animal behavior. This is by we call the optogenetics that we can express the gene in the specific circuit so that we can control the specific behaviors. In these measures, we found that when we not stimulate the garbage neuron in our LTD, or tiny brain area in the brain, we found that it can induce freezing behavior. It's kind of in that figure. It's just like the master sees a cat response. It cannot move. Then we designed another experiment that we expose TMT that are components of the cat balls that the master is very afraid of. So we can induce freezing response. But if we see the same LTD for another population neuron, the mass are no more afraid of TMT. They can move around just to see. But when we stop the simulation, the mice are freezing again. So use this method, we use proud of the sleeping mechanism just to see here. We found that if the mice in the saliva sleep when you stimulate the acetylcholine neuron, you can awake the animal. But we can never induce the REM sleep. People believe that this is related to REM sleep. But we can never induce REM sleep if the animal is awake. So the key question is, we need to find a method to induce the saliva sleep. In this study, we showed that we found that if we are not stimulate the garbage neuron in a tiny area, in a brain stem, we can immediately induce the saliva sleep. The opportunity is an invasive method. So it's not applicable to human. So scientists are developing the new method that may be non-invasive. For example, this shows that you can use the focus ultrasound that can open brain blood barrier that can permit the familiar drug to the specific site. In this way, they can control the drug delivery to the specific brain region so that they can specifically control animal behavior, maybe in the human. Thank you very much.


Hey, we are live Dr. Shackleton. It is always a joy to talk to another friend, and we've both been in Boulder for a long time. I think you've been here longer than I have, but welcome to our live show, and I'm so glad to talk to you today about environmental toxicity. Before we start, just a few housekeeping for everybody listening, and then I wanna introduce Dr. Shackleton. Basics are, you can find me on my website, JillCarnahan.com, tons of free resources there. Dr. JillHealth.com is the retail store, and if you need any information or questions, those are always available. We also have a brand new YouTube channel. If you just search my name under YouTube, you'll see all of these videos and more, lots of fun stuff with friends, and lots and lots of great topics, it's all free, so go there and just subscribe if you like. But today I have an awesome friend, and just someone I respect so much, because we just have such parallel practices in Boulder, Colorado, and a lot of the types of people that we see, and we both have a few stories around some of this environmental toxicity that we'll share today. This will be recorded, so if you miss the first part or wanna share it later, you can, it'll be on the Facebook page as well. So Dr. Shackleton, I wanna introduce you first.  She's a member of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, with a focus on chronic disease, conditions associated with environmental toxic exposure, and chronic hidden infections, such as Lyme, mixed bacterial infections, and immune dysfunction. She has a blog in which she writes about her passion for the environment and its impact on human health. Where can they find that? What's your website, Dr. Shackleton? MaryShackleton.com is where my blog is, and then they can also find me at HolisticCare.com. Awesome, very good. And we'll mention that again at the end, and we'll talk about what she's been up to and what's upcoming in her life. Well, here it is. She's just completed writing a book on the impact of environmental toxins on neurodegenerative disorders in the unborn fetus. I am really excited to get to that topic because a lot of people don't really think they just, oh, I'm pregnant, this is great, but think about that pre-care. So we will dive into that as well. I love to start though with kind of story, and I'd love to hear a little bit about your background and how you get interested in medicine and your path to this career. Well, that's a good question. It was circuitous for sure. I started kind of dabbling in medicine, didn't feel like it was the right course for me, ended up getting a master's in public health. That never felt like the right fit for me at the time either I was working in the wrong public health department, I'm not sure, but then literally when the lightning bolt strikes and you go, that's it. I saw a poster on a phone poll really, and it was advertising Southwest College of naturopathic medicine, doctorate degree, four years, and I never knew you could get a degree in naturopathic medicine. And so for me, it was a slam dunk. I had all my pre-rex done, I couldn't wait to be done, and it really started for me the love of my life which is practicing naturopathic medicine, and it really has been, it was made for me. So I love going to work every day. I'm always much more energized when I get home from having seen patients, and I love the complexity of what's happening, and that's part of what inspired this book, was realizing that there's so much happening in the environment, and it's impacting women's health pretty significantly. So it's like, what can I do about this? And this book was born from that kind of question. Wow, I love that.  No, I moved here in 99. So I've had my practice here for about 22 years, and it's wonderful working here with people that are extremely knowledgeable about their health and interested and motivated, and then there's a lot of people here that are not well. So it does, it's a great place to work and live. I couldn't agree more. Gosh, it's so exciting to be here among, again, most of our patients I always joke because in Illinois, to have people on three, two liters of Diet Coke per day and McDonald's and I rarely see people that aren't already doing 80% of what they need with healthy diet and lifestyle. So that makes it easy because the foundation, there's definitely tweaks, right? Cause some people need a little help with, they still diet's kind of a core of what we do. But a lot of times at least they have the basic like healthy lifestyle there. And I have to beat the internet to a lot of that. You know, there was a time that the internet wasn't as accessible. And I was really teaching a lot of basic foundational stuff. Now people have, they know so much before they sit down. I used to have a talk, a live talk radio show and the questions that would come, this was 99, 2000. And those questions were really from educated healthcare consumers. And I loved it, but even more so now people can access anything online. Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? Any given analogy they come. So right now, first of all, let's go through what's happened recently a little bit. How has that affected your practice, your patients that are coming in? You're probably doing more virtual than before. Tell me just a little bit about how the shift in your practices happened through this pandemic. Right, so touch and go in the beginning, we have a lot of cancer patients that are some that are getting their chemo through our office and really immunocompromised. So we decided to stay open only for those folks and really not let anybody else in the clinic. So those were big decisions in late March, early April. And then everything went online, all patient appointments. And I realized, wow, we really can do a lot online. But you have IVs, so tell us more about, so you offer what different types of IVs are you offering? We have, goodness, Myers cocktails, amino acids, alphalopoic acid, IV curcumin, phosphatidylcholine, glutathione, ozone, and we also have a laser. So we have a lot of different things. I might be leaving a few things out, but we do a lot, we can address most things with that complement of IVs. So we stayed open for really only a handful of cancer patients, not even the folks that wanted to do immune support, we just said no because we couldn't control everyone's exposure. So now we are still pretty much online, seeing some patients, but really have to keep the clinic to less than 10 people. And we have one IV per room, where we used to have three in a room. So we're spreading it out and getting people in as we can. Good. Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing how with the IVs, because you got to have them in person, right? We did this thing, well, we both mostly went virtual and just didn't do a lot of IVs. We didn't have people that had critical needs. So we were able, and we have a much smaller IV population than you do. So, and we did all Zoom for a while and then got back alive and it was really no big deal. Now, same thing, there's a limited amount that come in the office. One thing I wanted to talk to you about for sure was, gosh, the impact we've talked about the virus and the impact of that on human health and everything, but what people are not talking about. And I think is maybe a bigger issue is number one, social isolation and that effect on the immune system and health. And then mental health of our kids and our young adults. I mean, even our adults, what are the effects? Are you seeing people with more issues with mental health or more issues with anxiety? Yes, I'm actually kind of surprised because I started to really get curious with patients to just ask every single person, how are you doing and how has this impacted your life? And I was shocked to understand the depth of anxiety that people are experiencing. And I think part of it is the isolation. I think I didn't even realize the full impact of social isolation on my own self. And I imagine that everybody's experiencing their own thing. So I think that people are actually really terrified of getting this virus. And there are so many different sides of this entire experience that it's very complex. And so, they might have had chronic asthma as a kid and been fine for 20 years, but this is a real trigger for them. So they're triggered around their health and they're isolating. I have a patient that's living in the mountains by himself because he's so afraid of contact with other people. And then to answer your question about how it's affecting our immune system, our immune systems learn by contact with viruses and bacteria. And so, you can take a certain amount of supplements, but that doesn't create antibodies to infection and that's what we need. And so kids are good at that. They're getting exposed all the time and their immune systems can be fairly robust. And yet adults, our immune systems are not getting exposed or seeing any infection. So we're not giving it the chance to learn how to respond. So, and yet it's very complicated. We do need to stay home for a little bit longer and we do need to wear masks and we do need to wash our hands. And the whole concept of hand sanitizer, I've written so many blogs about, don't use hand sanitizer because we want these microbes. Now, the tricklesan, which is actually related to reduced fertility, I just keep seeing these hands on it, gallon size hand sanitizers. And it's like, we just are all on a point of surrender for now. We have to surrender. You bring that up, because I can't even say it. Tricklesan? Yeah, say that again. So over here. Tricklesan. Thank you. Tricklesan. So this is toxic. Tell us a little bit more about that toxicity. So they found that this was responsible for infertility in a lot of women. And tricklesan is an endocrine disrupting hormone that's found in most major brands of hand sanitizer. So, endocrine disruptors are things that get into our bodies. They look like hormones. They confuse hormone messaging. And the daily use of a hand sanitizer is just gonna contribute to this complex, hormonal, confused messaging. So, but I keep telling patients, you know what, we're gonna just follow the rules for now. We're gonna wear our masks and use our hand sanitizer. We're gonna wash our hands and just do it. It's not forever. So that's kind of the pep talk I've given patients, is just do what you need to do to protect yourself mentally and emotionally from this. And be as careful as you can. I love that balance. So because that's where I'm at, I'm not saying that any of the regulations are wrong or bad or any of that is we need to do what we need to do. I'm washing my office down between patients.  But the truth is I know that our microbiome live in habits, our space and our body and our skin and our mouth and so there's all of these places. And I just wonder, I saw a commercial day of the day for United and Chlorox. And they were so proud of this collaboration between United and Chlorox. And they showed these people, and they were fuming the pillings and they were just pouring the Chlorox. And I thought, oh, for our chemically sensitive patients, this is going to be an area to start to travel with the chemicals right in the planes. And again, they're doing, they're trying to do the right thing. But for example, you have a two-year-old in the garden grabbing a dirty carrot and eating that. That's how their immune system is trained as to what's dangerous and what's good. Like our contact with dirt as children is actually training for our immune systems. And then as we get to be adults, the contact with germs on a constant basis is how our immune system detects good versus evil, right? Well, I agree with you. I'm like, how in the world in a year or two or more, maybe a decade, probably a lot less than that, we're going to see the manifestations of this trial of sterilization of our environment, which is really, really quite unhealthy for us. It is. I think it's also an opportunity to really talk about, you know, there's a lot being taken away from us right now, but I think there's also a huge opportunity to have a conversation about what is in our control. And what's in our control is what we put in our mouth, how we choose to eat. And, you know, there's no substitute for a good diet. You cannot take supplements and have like superimpose that on an unhealthy diet. So I think, you know, as we all have read that the comorbidity, the patients with comorbidities are the ones that are highest risk from dying from COVID. And so this is an opportunity to get, you know, to rein in our health, to lower our inflammation with good diet, to exercise, to reduce our weight, to reduce our hypertension. This is the best time that we're ever going to have and the best reason that we have to ever do, to enact some personal changes in our own behaviors because it's protective. Yeah, I love that because a lot of times they talk about, you know, the germ theory was years ago and it's still real, there's germs and they call this but the new theory is terrain because if we have a healthy terrain that we live in and inhabit and we choose to do things like clean air, clean water, clean food, weight loss or appropriate, you know, food intake and all those kinds of things that we can do we really do have more control than we think. And it's fine line between fear and between taking control of what we can control. One thing you mentioned that I think is important too is like you said that the mental health of isolation we're seeing, at least for me, I'm seeing younger kids and stuff and the whole school debate. I won't get into how I feel about that. I have a lot of compassion for those of you who are parents and dealing with decisions and all of that. And you mentioned you're gonna take your kids on the road a little bit more. Yeah, I mean the last 10 weeks of school were a disaster in my house watching, you know, my son is 17 and he had one screen with his video game and one screen with his teacher. Unbelievable.  I was busy trying to keep my own business afloat. My husband was doing the same thing. So I just knew when I knew the schools were not gonna start in person learning because just watching the numbers rise. And so we really kind of have planned to do some online classroom time in the outdoors. And again, I feel like the outdoors are very healing for us and great for our immune system. So if you can walk outside barefoot, you can actually absorb the vibration of the earth and that's the counterbalance to EMFs and being on a computer. So I'm going to really hope that we can find some good adventures where we can also do several hours of classroom time. I'm gonna try to figure out how I'm gonna work it for my schedule, but I'll figure it out. But that's kind of our strategy. And while not everyone can do that, I know, but I really wanna say to parents, I've had this conversation over and over with my best friend who's a social worker in high school that every parent is struggling. If you feel like you are failing at X, Y, or Z right now, just know every single mother and father are feeling the exact same way. This is so unprecedented and nobody really knows what to do. And I just really believe that everybody's doing the best they can. And that's kind of been the refrain in my mind when something feels frustrating or I don't understand it or I can't tolerate it. It's like everybody really is just trying to do the best they can. And some people need to give themselves a lot of permission to not be perfect right now and just to get the other side. I love that. I think that's something just to pause on, like we are, we're doing the best we can and whether you're anxious or sad or overwhelmed or depressed or there is this, we really need for compassion instead of judgment and instead of all the stuff that's happening on the other end, I think that's so important. And even for people just to create a space where they can be where they're at. And it's funny because there's a lot of, I've talked about this before, but the things that raise cortisol are novelty, unpredictability, threat to ego and sense of control. And we're kind of engaging all four of those right now, right? So it's definitely stressful on all of us. I think just the unpredictability and the unknown, right? Yeah, humans don't do well with uncertainty. I'm certainly one of those people. Right, me too, I like to play them. Well, let's talk about, so you wrote last year and hopefully that'll be published very soon. But I know how this goes with COVID and my own book and writing, things are a little up in the air with the publishers. Tell us about your upcoming book and a little bit more because I wanna dive into that topic. I think people will find it really interesting. Okay, so I wrote a book on environmental toxicity and how to prevent having a baby on the autism spectrum. And the genesis of the book really came from seeing woman after woman plop down in my chair in my exam room and say, I wanna have a baby next month and I wanna do a detox this month. Wow. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. So the thinking is that, if we think of like having a baby as a marathon, the first 18 to 20 miles really should be planning for conception. So detoxing, looking at your personal environment, what can you do to clean out what we've stored and then not put any more in? And that's a process and it takes some time. So if you get this, I also think of the detox machine like a wheel, if you get it spinning and then get pregnant, that baby will be exposed to everything you've now unrooted or pulled out of hiding. And so the goal really is to have a good year, 12 months to detox before you get pregnant. It will increase your chances of having a healthy baby. It will increase your fertility, increase the chances of the baby's brain being neurologically intact. So it's a concept that I really want women in their early fertile years to grasp because their fertility is affected greatly by what's happening in the environment. And what's happening in the environment is happening so rapidly that it's impacting our genes, it's impacting the way we are actually having babies. I think there was something like 20,000 babies born to IVF in 1998 and in 2012 went to 60,000. So that's not gonna change. And part of that is the environment, of course not all of it, but part of that is due to environmental changes.  And there's no doubt that I had in utero exposure to toxic endocrine disruptors on the farm. So atrazine and organo-operates, right? I mean, classic. And if I looked, I remember, this was like 10 years after my diagnosis when I was in remission, but I remember looking up atrazine, really understanding it and then realizing it's banned in Europe, but in Illinois and in United States it's still being used and being like, oh my goodness, how in the world is this chemical which we know is so toxic still being used? And then I'm like, well, let's see where the concentration of use is. And I looked up map of the United States and atrazine use. And I literally fell off my chair, Mary, because right in the hottest red spot of the use was where I grew up. Like a little bubble of red that was solid, as solid can be. Just got the chills. Yeah, right in the central Illinois farmland. And I was like, oh my gosh, there's no doubt in weed a well with well water. So there's probably, there's so many things I could talk about, but talk about in utero. So I have no doubt. My mother had migraines, chronic fatigue, Hashimoto's therbiditis. And I remember being really depleted five children and I was a second. So yeah, there's, I mean, there's so many things now. And I also, one little thing that I also didn't put together a lot recently was I had precocious puberty at five, which means breast bud development went away. Pediatrician was like, no big deal. Duh, that's when the breast tissue had this estrogenic effect. And I think it was probably starting in utero. So you had my mom know, she didn't know any better and she was doing the best she could. And now my family is one of the first families in Illinois that is organic soy and corn and all non-GMO. So I'm excited that my experience is actually transmitted, you know, to the farming community and changes there. But does it make sense as you're talking about Texas D and my own breast cancer in what you're talking about? Oh yes. And atrazine in particular is interesting because they've studied frogs with exposure to atrazine and they exhibit both male and female reproductive characteristics. So males can actually have ovaries. Males can have babies. So it's confusing the entire hormone messaging system. And so how can we really even expect to have a baby on the first attempt or a healthy baby if we don't really try to reduce our exposures somehow? Yeah, so important. And again, my mom was doing the best she could. Yeah. Nowadays she's done detox. She knows all about that. But I think if we could have caught a young mother like that and had her go through a year of detox like you're recommending, it might have made the difference in a cancer of a 25-year-old woman, which doesn't seem possible but totally related in my mind. Oh, mine too, for sure. And the other thing that you mentioned, which is interesting is that multiple children in one family, that last baby, unless the mother is very intentional about putting nutrients back in, that last baby gets the least amount of nutrients. So in terms of essential fatty acids and minerals and all these things that are really important for neural development. So that's another thing about preconception planning is this your first baby or your fourth if it's your fourth, you really need to, these nutrients that we take orally are really critical. Was, is there any recommendations if a patient, if a woman is planning kind of her family about timing between pregnancies or tips on that? Well, I don't know about that. I think it's more, I mean, certainly a year to get your body to recover. And in that year, definitely stay on your prenatal, vitamin D, probiotic, fish oil because those are all really important nutrients to feed your cells, get your cell membranes back to being really resilient. Those are the big ones. And then dietarily, absolutely dark green leafy vegetables, eggs if you can tolerate them, grass-fed protein, animal meat if you can tolerate them like that. So those, those nutrients are really, really important to, to replenish. I mean, it's not just like you have your baby, but that takes a lot out of a woman. It takes a lot. And then you nurse, I mean, that's a 600 to 800 calories a day that you're expending to keep another human alive. So you really have to be intentional and get some support around that. Yeah, gosh, I love that. And what, so say someone does come to you and say, I wanna get pregnant in a couple of years. What should I do now? What would you do? What can I work up or testing or what would you do for that woman? That's great. I would do genetic testing for sure. I would look at their MTHFR status because if that were a problem that we'd know we have to kind of back up and do maybe even a little bit extra detox for this person that shuts down phase two detoxification in the liver. I would do a nutrient panel for sure, just to see where is it looking? And then I would kind of do a clinical intake with them and figure out what their risk of exposure is. Did they grow up on the farm? Did their grandmother grow up on the farm? We do know about transgenerational toxic exposure.  So doing an entire family history is often really illuminating to see where are your potential risks and what can we do now? Heavy metals, stool testing, depending on how they're doing, because the microbiome really is critical and that we share, women share that with their babies as they come through the vaginal birth canal. So knowing if your microbiome, and I don't know about you, but we probably rarely see anybody with an intact microbiome these days, but it's a good teaching tool for people to see, this is why diversity in your diet is so important. This is why avoiding all of the things that deplete the microbiome are really important. So that's kind of, and certainly blood work. And I love the gut that you talked about because it really is inoculation of the baby through the vaginal birth canal and C-section babies. A lot of midwives and holistic practitioners are actually inoculating with vaginal fluids in the babies that are newborn because it's such a key to get that ingestion of the microflora. Yes, I really encourage people. I mean, if they have, the goal is to have a baby, right? So whether you can have a vaginal or not, okay, you have to surrender at some point, but if you don't to really advocate for yourself to do a vaginal swab for the baby's mouth, because that's really, really important for life. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's incredible if you think about how we're designed.  It really is, it's crazy fascinating. And the studies that I've done, looked at on C-section babies, they may never completely, now first of all, granted there's emergencies and we wanna have a healthy baby. So I had no problem with C-sections, but if it's scheduled around the OB's golf schedule, maybe that's not a good idea. Because what we see is we see these C-section babies have a different flora from birth and it may never completely regain to that of a vaginally born infant. So there's much more like skin flora like staff and strep and those in the baby's gut versus our typical bifidobacter and lactobacillus. Yeah, I usually see like a lack of lactobacillus with a C-section baby for life. Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? So I always ask, I'm sure you do too when you patients, I think they could be eight or 18 or 80 and I'm like, so how were you born? Was it vaginal or C-section?  Because those are important even if they're in their 70s or 80s. Yeah, I know, it's fascinating. Yeah, so you would do the testing and then you would probably get them on some nutrition if they wanna do detox and they're not trying, would you tell them to potentially wait to actively try to get pregnant while they do the detox? Tell us more about that. Yes, I would, I would. So first I wanna always make sure that there are five pathways of elimination are open. Are they sweating when they exercise or if they sit in the sauna? How long does it take them to sweat? If it takes more than 20, 25 minutes, then they say, okay, then your sweating mechanism is weak. How are your bowel movements? One a day is a minimum, ideally three per day. It's a major way of getting toxins out of the body. How's the liver looking at certain genes potentially that govern phase one, phase two detoxification? Kidney, are you thirsty? Do you have a lot of urination? And lymphatic. So if they don't exercise, then we know that that's a hindrance to moving toxins out of the body as well. So always make sure those five pathways are discussed and addressed. And then what was your question? Sorry. So that's perfect. That was kind of it is like, how would you start with someone who was in, say you were gonna take them through detox, you obviously check those pathways and say, let's not plan on trying getting pregnant for the next six to 12 months. You said ideally 12 months, right? Ideally, yes, if they have the time, which is why I really wanna get this book in the hands of young women so they can plan, because they're already planning, they're planning around their fertility by using birth control. And so they can plan to wean off of that and detox and give themselves enough time. Cause there is a, these women are educated, they've gone to school, they've created a career, they wanna have a baby when they wanna have a baby. And I'm always saying, I wanted you to have a baby when you have a baby, but not if it's not safe for you.  Yes, is there anything in particular you've seen? I mean, I've seen different things and I'd love to, but I wanna hear you for autism is on the rise massively. And there's definitely, I loved in your bio because you said something I've always thought, toxic load infectious burden is at the core of what we do, right? Yes. We talk about autism. It's that those systems that are like the weak links of one in a thousand kiddos that have poor detox and you load them with toxic load and you see this weakness and it can manifest as this communicative disorder with autism. But tell me more about what kinds of things do you see that contribute to that diagnosis? Definitely the mother's history. And so I think the MTHF bar gene is really key. It is really key for phase two detox. It's one of the four steps. And if that is, if that's working at 70% or even 30% with a double snip, then that is a huge risk for autism. So we wanna address that and give a lot of folate and B12 for neural development. And autism is modifiable.  So yeah, definitely look at all those factors that are involved in autism. So the other thing that's really related to autism is exposure to glyphosate. And so Stephanie Seneff has done a lot of work on this topic and she works at MIT in the AI department and I just love her. I'm so grateful for her work because she has documented what we all see in our clinics that we don't have the time to document ourselves. And her documentation really is solid around exposure, the use of glyphosate and the rate of autism, it's parallel. And glyphosate is very toxic and it's spread over the entire globe at this point. So we have to be very active in avoiding that. And that's part of the educational process. And that doesn't happen overnight either, which is why we ideally would like several months to get that out of our houses, out of our bodies. And glyphosate goes away pretty rapidly actually when you avoid it, it can be gone, not detectable within a week. Yeah, gosh, I love that and the encouragement because there's some things like MTBEs, which are like, you know, some of these things are fairly quick to get rid of if you just don't get exposed, right? Like at the core, decreased exposure is one of the principles versus we often, if you're listening, you might think, oh my gosh, what's my toxic load? What do I have to do? It's super complex. Yes, but just clean air, clean water, clean food can be huge. Little interesting story about glyphosate too, because I remember after my mold exposure, I was like, oh, I gotta test my glyphosate and see what's up. I had been eating organic for probably a decade, like almost 100%. And I thought, oh, I'll be super clean and great. And I remember, you might have heard me tell this, I was three times the level of a study with farmers on application day, meaning they had just applied it. So I was like, what in the world? Like it was really high. And this was before we had standardized access. It was a lab that was just doing research. So they compared the levels of the people who put in their urine samples to different studies. And so I was like on the dots on the graph, I was three times higher than any of the study levels. Wow. Yeah. So, and of course I got that out of my body, but I really think I have two dogs. I'm in a condo where I don't control the lawn care and they scream. Oh yeah. And the dogs sleep with me. And the spray, we found out organic wines in California have traces of glyphosate. So it's not safe to just have organic. So I think the dogs were part of it. So taking your shoes off when you enter the house. Right. The dogs are clean and not walking on glyphosate grass. But it's amazing, right? Because I would have thought that I would have been the role model of someone who had low glyphosate. And here I was, not at all. And probably my detox pathways were not great either. But was that from what they were spraying where you were living? Not from your diet? I don't think, I mean, it's hard. I really don't know. I don't think I had much dietary exposure because I was really careful about organic. The dogs were my first thought. Could it have been past exposure? Because I grew up on a farm where glyphosate was everywhere when I grew up. Now, like I said, they're GMO-free. So they don't spray glyphosate at all. But at the time, I don't know. Do you know how long it lasts in your system? I think it's out pretty quickly. So that must have been an ongoing exposure, maybe from the grass and the dogs. Like you said, I think that's all. Maybe I happened to test right after they sprayed. But it might have been just timing thing. Because ever since then I've been like zero undetected. So it's been good. Oh, that's good. Yeah, so that is, I mean, what I really want to impart to people is as heavy as this information is. Trust me, I was a little depressed writing this book. It's kind of heavy. It's kind of overwhelming. But the truth is, there is a lot in our control like this. And this goes away quickly. Heavy metals take a long time to come out. Mold is a little in between, depending on how healthy you are and what your genetic landscape looks like. But some of this stuff really can shift quickly. And I walk through personal care products and what we can do about that. And really, it does take time to go through a home and identify the things that are putting you at risk. And there's now, compared to 20 years ago, there are so many amazing products available, astounded. So there's almost no excuse. And these are not expensive anymore. They used to be really out of reach financially for a lot of people. And now, we also know that vinegar and water are really great tea-cleaning supplies. So I try to give people really manageable suggestions and things that will work for every person. I love that. I can't wait for this book, because it's going to be such a big deal for patients, for my patients, too. So I'm excited. And right now, there's no for sure the timelines a little bit. No. I know how this goes. I know. I wish I could say, maybe I come back when it's ready. I don't know. I wish I could say it was ready. But the other reason I wrote this book was that I've been seeing, I'm sure you have too, so many people in their 40s and 50s with cognitive decline and they're otherwise healthy. And that, to me, is if I had one tattoo, it would be why. Why does this 40-year-old have cognitive decline? That doesn't make any sense. And I really backed it up to, well, they probably came in with a lot of this. And so if we want to change the generation coming behind us, we want them to come in healthier. And so it's an educational process. And we'll get there. And I'm sure you talk about the cord blood studies that showed the babies being born into the world. Is it greater than 200 chemicals able to be detected in their cord blood? And I think 180 of those were neurologically toxic. Oh, my goodness. So I mean, and we don't know how they act together. So maybe you studied that. And so we used to think of this placenta as this magic gate. And the placenta is just as porous as the brain barrier. So we have to assume that anything that we are exposed to or have stored will be shared with the fetus at some point. And so that's a big motivator for a lot of people to think, OK, I can't just get away with this because it's going to get to the baby where they say, you know, this drug is a classy drug and it's pregnancy-safe, but it still gets to the baby. Right. Exactly. So you have to really be thinking about that. In our last few minutes, I'd love to just briefly talk about mold, because you and I both have stories. I won't go into mine, but I had in my office totally had to leave and start over and get something similar. Tell us just a little bit about your story. It's very similar, very similar. I was in an office in Boulder that I was in for six years. And every day that I don't work every day. And so it wasn't like I could track it. And I thought, oh, I just have low blood sugar, but I would have these visual changes. And at the end of the day, I couldn't read my own writing. It was so impaired. And I would often drive home feeling like I had been drinking and then couldn't sleep and anxiety, depression, insomnia, which none of that is normal for me. And so this was 2017. And we did an air sport trap test in the office because all of our patients that are mycotoxic kept coming in saying, why am I dizzy in here? I have had a headache for three days since being in your office. We're like, that doesn't make any sense. This is clean. The air sport trap test was negative. And then we did a dust sample and it was off the charts. So then we had it cleaned. And I couldn't go back in after it was clean because I would get dizzy every time I went back in. And I'm pretty healthy. Previously this, I have been very strong and resilient and healthy. And like I have exercised, you know, I've been a runner for 30 years and came in fourth in the Boulder Boulder years ago. Like, you know, I've been pretty strong, but I went down hard.  And I said, oh my God, that's funny. I have that gene. I blasted off. And then I was like, oh my gosh. Now I see, you know, in my MTHFR, I have one SNP.  And then, you know, I do believe there's a gift in every single illness.  Would you ever chosen that? No, but it has, you know, really honed my skills at working with mycotoxic patients and detox in general. And so, you know, I got through it. I still have a little bit of residual. I've just been lazy. I need to clean up. For the most part, it took six months to find a spot in Boulder that didn't have mold in it because we had a flood here and there's, you know, so many- Lots of properties. Yes. Yeah, I know. And so, yeah, we have a clean office which, you know, I'm super happy about and- I love it. I have to come see your new space. Yeah, yeah. To do it. Well, yeah, very similar story that everybody's heard of my own as well. And what I think that was interesting is I've had a lot of colleagues who, they're mostly colleagues, a few friends, a few patients that have had infertility or miscarriages and we later found out they had massive mold exposure. So, as we're talking about fertility and that, this could be an issue too if you're having infertility issues or if you've had multiple miscarriages. Mycotoxins are teratogenic so they can cause birth defects. And they look, it's funny because a lot of the studies because they affect grain production and then like livestock really. Right. A lot of the studies around mycotoxins and mold are done in cattle and in pigs but it's super clear that it has a fertility effect and it has an effect to the fetus. So, this is a really big deal too and this is one that you may or may not know. So, one thing I've seen with COVID is as people are at home more when their home is toxic, all of a sudden I've seen people are like, oh, I'm getting so sick, right? No, I'm so worried about this. Yeah. Have you seen people who are noticing because they're always in their home and their home is moldy? Yes, yes, yes, yes. And early on in the pandemic I thought, oh no, all these people are gonna be stuck at home. Yes. And this was, you know, still winter so the windows were closed and I was really worried about that. And did you have people who got work? I mean, I saw tons, maybe 10% or so of people that really got sick but it was kind of interesting because like, well, what changed in March? Oh, and so they would kind of, the buy-in for them was easier because like, oh yeah, I've been home a lot. Yeah, I've been, I've been the worst. So, they kind of put it together because part of the issue with mold is for the patient to actually believe there's a real issue, right? Oh, for sure. For sure. And, you know, I think you've probably seen the same number of people with mycotoxicity and cancer diagnoses. Yes. And when they're really trying, when they try to unpack like, why did I get this? Why, why, why? And it's like, well, let's look, let's just do a little dust sample of your house. I mean, we not need to look too far. Right. So yeah, it's, you know, mold is insidious and quiet and it touches every area of our lives, quite honestly, I think it does. Ashley, I know, don't you, I remember at the very beginning, I'm like, well, not everything's mold but then as I would dig, I kept finding these cases that were presenting with autoimmunity or neurodegenerative, like we said, Alzheimer's or dementia or they were massive chronic fatigue or migraine headaches and kept finding like, gosh, is everything mold? And it's not, but there's an awful lot of it that goes in that dust, right? Gemma, I'm actually kind of glad when I see somebody with MS and like, oh, you might not have MS, you're presenting like that, but it might just be really treatable mold, which I don't, I don't mean to take it lightly because it's very destructive to your house or your office or whatever, but at least it's treatable. At least it's not something that's happening to you that nobody has an explanation for. So I love, at least it's a layer. It's absolutely a layer, if not the top cause. That's kind of how I get it. I totally agree. And then fertility, say you have a woman, young woman comes up, hey, Dr. Shuckleton, I wanna get pregnant, I've heard you're great at this, I wanna know what you want me to do. And then as you talk to her, maybe just do some testing and you find out she has mold in her home, how would you, would you treat that pretty similar as far as detox for a year? What would you do with that patient for a pregnancy? I would say we wanna retest and get a negative mycotoxin test before you conceive. Yeah, so take all the steps that we do to clean the house, remediate in every way possible, and then treat for six to 12 months, depending on the burden and see how she's doing. But I think it's, as we both know, you can clean it up, you just gotta know how. Yes, absolutely. So that's one of those things that as a blessing in disguise, like, oh, this is what it is. It's super treatable. It's just gonna be a pain for about a year. It is a pain in the butt, but it's very painful. Yeah. Like you said, it's a huge blessing because all my knowledge comes from, I mean, not all, there's a study afterwards, but as far as my interest, I was joke because I was like, I'm not gonna treat Lyme or mold. Well, guess what? We kinda have to treat both and that might be the majority of my practice because there's so many people who aren't doing those two things, probably similar for you, right? I remember reading the word stackabotris. So my master's in public health, we look at, I took a toxicology class, but they really were talking about environmental disasters like the Minamata Bay, mercury contamination, and then subsequent mercury poisoning of the people in Japan. So we looked at that kind of stuff, but never this like in low grade environmental exposures, chronic exposures. So, wait, where was I going with that? Sorry, the brain. Oh, no, yeah, with exposures and toxicity and I think I'm not gonna remember what happened. Friday, we were talking about women getting pregnant and chronic low-lying exposures. Oh, you were talking about your public health and just how it's so insidious and you were seeing, oh, stackabotris is the word. Oh, thank you, thank you. So I remember reading that word thinking, oh, I don't ever want that and boom, got it. Where's the other one in here? That was one in my office too. Yeah, I was like, ooh, I don't think I'm ever, am I just associated with East Coast? You know, that's a big myth is that you can't have mold in Colorado because it's so dry here. Well, it's an epidemic here.  Yeah, I always say I never chose to treat mold that chose me. I was like, I gotta do this thing. This is so fun, I love it. Tell us a little bit about what we talked about where they can find you, but go ahead and repeat those websites for everybody. So the clinic website is Holistica, care, H-O-L-I-S-T-I-C-A-C-A-R-E dot com. And then my blog is on maryshackleton.com. Awesome, I'll be sure and share those links. Any last words of wisdom?  The kids are starting to go back to school, some of them. What's the, any bit of advice you'd like to leave us all with? I think right now, and this is just my personal feeling because I love summer and spring so much, but to be outside as much as possible right now. I mean, we do have a pretty big forest fire here right now, so the air quality is not great. So if you have asthma, don't listen to me. But, you know, to be outside as much as possible right now because it helps recalibrate everything about us and to counteract the wireless exposure that we're having. And that's kind of, you know, the things that, do the things that you can do and then be really gentle on the stuff that you don't feel good about right now and just be kind in your mind. Those are my kind of words. Oh, I love it. You're kind in your mind. Yes, I love it. Thank you, Dr. Shackleton. It has been a treat to talk to you today. Thank you, so fun to see you. And we are literally just a few miles apart but we never see each other, so hopefully that'll change. Sounds good. Thank you for having me. You're welcome.


Welcome everyone to the Learning Loop podcast, your best source for educational insights and trends. I'm Chris, your host. Today's special guest is Natalie. Natalie is a lead curriculum developer here at CESA. Natalie's a former teacher who focuses on building the best lessons in curriculum for classrooms. Today in our episode, Natalie will share her's plans for National Education Week and how CESA is really coming to meet you teachers where you are. Natalie, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Chris. I'm thrilled to be here. We're so excited. I want to start with a basic question. We'll just lay our foundation here. How do featured collections like this one that we're releasing for National Education Week, how did these start in CESA with the curriculum team? How do we get started on some of those things? That is a great question. So our featured collection changes monthly and it has three collections of free content for educators. So no matter what your user status is, our featured content is free for the month. The first collection is always our special days. So this is created to highlight culture, heritage, holidays, nationally recognized special days. I don't know if you've ever Google searched. There are a lot. Some of these include like Donut Day, who knew. Kindness Day, which we definitely capitalize on a lot here at CESA and then even more fun like Pet Day. Our second collection is created with content to support educators in implementing popular national initiatives in education. So thinking about back to school. That's a national time where there's certain protocols, procedures, getting students acclimated to your routines, community building, and then also digital citizenship is another common national initiative or read across America. And then our third collection is our spotlight. And this showcases lessons that have already been developed that exist in our library that support learning goals during specific times in the school year. So National Education Month, bringing it back around, falls into that second collection. National Education Month is our national initiative focus for November. Awesome. So amazing. And all of these are available for free for any teacher to go in and grab and use. So what a tremendous gift that is being provided. I love it. How do you find the balance in CESA's curriculum between like instructional best practices, but also then the ease of use for teachers and students? Like we wanna make sure that everything's accessible, but we also wanna deliver the best. Like how do we balance that? And how do you guys balance that on the CESA curriculum team? Absolutely. And I think most educators probably can relate to that even in their own lesson planning. In the mold of, okay, I gotta teach objectives. I know best practices, but I also need to make this lesson fit in a certain duration. And I also need to make certain components so that my students are engaged and they have time to work on their own with a partner. And so that's kind of the approach that we've taken with our model or our mold in the actual lessons themselves. To support these best practices in ease of use, our lessons follow a predictable flow. So each lesson begins with an intro. You can think of this as you're modeling your direct instruction. And this intro gives context for teachers. So if I'm an educator who maybe has not had a ton of time to look at a lesson ahead of time, but I found this lesson in CESA and I'm like, you know what, let's roll with it. That intro is gonna at least give the teacher context to, okay, what are the objectives? What are the goals for my students? What maybe background knowledge do I need to quickly check up on or do my students maybe need? And then it also introduces students to the key vocabulary as well as the concepts. Next, all of our lessons move into a practice section. And this is your guided instruction. So students are facilitated through a hands-on exploration of the content. And then after they've gotten to practice, explore, get familiar with the content, we have a connect piece where students take their learning or their initial understandings and work with a peer or a family member. So they get to extend upon learning as they discuss and create. And then lastly, all of our lessons end with a show what you know. So this section allows for students to explain and check their own understanding of those initial concepts taught in the lesson. The section can also be used by teachers as a formative assessment so that they can check their learning outcomes and plan for future instruction. Perfect. Yeah, that's so amazing. And it's such a holistic view of what lessons really are and how they really provide the best for our classrooms. Quick question for you, an additional one here. When you think of that show what you know, how much are you guys emphasizing weaving in the new formative assessment tool into that? Is that gonna be in every show what you know or is that something that's kind of based on the lesson as you move forward? That is a great question. I don't want to commit and say that a formative assessment will be in every single show what you know. But we are working diligently to incorporate a formative assessment in all of our lessons. So a lot of times it does elude itself really well to that show what you know. And it's been interesting as a team we are really trying to showcase formative assessment and we're finding that a lot of times that is where we end up pocketing it in the show what you know. But there are some instances where we can utilize the formative assessment in the practice because the formative assessment does give us an option to basically turn off feedback. So we can have feedback turned on. So students could be completing what we're calling a formative assessment within the practice. And they're actually seeing what they're getting right or where they might have gaps in their learning. And that would still be considered part of the practice piece. And then if we wanted to turn off that reveal for students that's where we really use that formative assessment in the show what you know. So students are not seeing their answers and getting that immediate feedback it's going directly to teachers. Awesome, awesome. Just bringing the best tools in the best way in the best place for those lessons in there too to make sure that the educational lesson and the pathway that students are taking is also being best for them. I think that's an awesome mindset that you guys have and a great way to design these lessons also and include those tools in the best possible way. So that's super awesome to hear. Absolutely, thank you. We want your support, so that's good. Glad you agreed. For sure. What inspired you and or your team to make a collection around National Education Week? Yeah, absolutely. So I knew there was National Education Week. I'll be honest. I did not know until recently it's broader than that. The month of November is actually National Education Month. So that caught my attention in that I was like, ooh, wait, this initiative is not just a week. This is like the full month. So it probed me to kind of do a little research. And my understanding, and I preface that with my understandings, I don't want to like quote exactly what National Education Month is, but my understanding of the month is that it is a time to celebrate our public education, which most people know, but it's also a time actually to bring awareness to opportunities for improvement and highlight how education has evolved over time. And it should be evolving over time to meet the needs of our students. So as soon as I was kind of doing this research and learning a little bit more about the month itself and what it represents, I just thought, oh my gosh, she saw as a company, we do both of these things really well. So we support and we celebrate that learning loop made up of teachers, students and families, which we know should be a constant in education. That's something that is foundational. That's something that should stay. It might grow and expand to improve. But we also continue to involve and enhance the learning experience for students, specifically when we think about all of the tools and the usage within the learning platform and also the curriculum and the lessons that we have. So that kind of, yeah, just made me think, oh my gosh, she saw as just the great example of an innovative solution to demonstrate student-centered learning, what it looks and feels like, and our content really is exemplary of fun, engaging and interactive, but it also makes students accountable for their learning and gives them a safe place to take risks, explore and share their thinking, which I think is true of modern education from when you think of how education used to be when I was in school and then when I think of my parents and even my grandparents. So I just think Seesaw is a resource for students and teachers and families to continue influencing the learning over time. And I think we're gonna continue to meet those needs hopefully as we take feedback from multiple different parties and turn it into actionable items. Yes, yes, and providing also a gift during this time. It's just like a thank you teachers for doing what you do in classrooms and in families and everybody who's part of learning. This is our way of showing appreciation too, I think, as part of that week or month, excuse me, not week. Well, it is a week, that's what's so funny. So it's a month, but as far as when you think of like, oh, teacher appreciation, yeah, I don't know. I guess we need to change that. It really is a month. Teachers should be getting placed for the whole month, not just the week. They should, they should. They should just get appreciation all the time. That's what we're here to do. Absolutely, yes, put it in the right order. When you're thinking and when you design this collection, thinking about either the content that's in it or even just the pieces of content, even the nitty gritty little parts of it, what is your favorite part of this new featured collection for this week? Oh, that is such a good question. I would say my favorite part is that the collection showcases a variety of lessons that support character ed and core subjects. And it also shows how the lessons regardless of subject can be equally objective focused and fun. And I think as a former educator that's something that can often be something you struggle with in, I've got these objectives that I need to teach, but I also want my learning to be fun and I want it to be something that the students enjoy and they take away remembering the experience of the learning, not just the content. And so I think that this collection does a really good job with a really good job at showing how again, regardless of the content, you can have a lesson that meets those objectives focused without giving up the fun, but actually flipping it and enhancing the fun as you're doing the teaching of the concepts that you have to teach. Love that. It comes back to that earlier question about the balance of what students and teachers really want is that fun and that excitement, but we also need to make sure we're delivering on the standards and the content that we have to do. And so I love that you're using that balance there and really focusing on it being as even as possible where you're still doing a whole bunch of fun stuff and you're delivering it in a fun way so that students remember it, but you're also ensuring that you're delivering on those standards and that academics that needs to be had too, so I love that. What makes this collection special for educators during National Education Week? I know you hinted on a few things, but is there anything else that just makes this collection really special for this week? So I think the collection's really special because the lessons were specifically chosen. I mean, all of our lessons are fun, right? I'm not biased, but I would hope that when you think of Education Week, in my mind, this should be a week that is remembers, allows educators to remember the impact that they're having, but also that the relationships they're building with students and the atmosphere that they're creating within their classroom. And I think that all of the lessons within this collection really do support learning that's fun for all, including the teacher, because let's be honest, that the teacher should be enjoying what they're doing and there's a lot of aspects in education that don't necessarily allow us to do that as teachers, but your time with your students 100% should be a time that you are enjoying and you're finding to be impactful. So I think they'll see that the lessons, well, they're all ready to go lessons, so they decrease prep time. And they provide individualized learning for their students too. So if teachers decide to utilize these lessons this week, hopefully they will be having fun, but they'll also be given their students the opportunity to explore, collaborate, play, explain, and share, and just really delve into the multifacets that learning can be. Absolutely, and I'm sure that teachers who pick up on all these things, they're gonna enjoy it, they're gonna have so much fun and they're gonna also learn some things as they come out of using these lessons as well. So after all these conversations around this collection, what's in the collection, what does it do? How does it help classrooms? How can a teacher who listens to all this, how can they actually take advantage of this and use these lessons and find these lessons so that they can put them into practice in their classroom? So yes, we want these lessons to be used, right? So first, teachers can take full advantage of the resource by saving the lessons. As you and I discussed at the very beginning, one amazing gift of the featured collection is that the content is free for the month. After that month, some of these lessons may not be accessible depending on the type of user that you are, so I would save all of them, even if you don't know if you wanna use them this year, but start filling that bucket of content which you can do every single month with our featured content. And then I would say secondly, teachers should choose and implement a lesson in each content area at some point, not necessarily maybe all in this month if that's a heavy lift, but thinking about, ooh, I wanna try to implement a CSaw lesson in a different content area at least throughout my school year, especially if you're a newer user so that you can see different ways instruction can be supported in CSaw. I think that's also a key takeaway for educators is, we wanna inspire, they inspire us, but we also wanna repay that and inspire them. So one of the wonderful things about CSaw is they can create their own lessons. And so the featured content does give examples of different ways that our platform can be used to deliver instruction. And I think that it also allows teachers if they choose different content areas, they can see what types of lessons they're having the biggest impact on learning in their own classroom and the engagement with their students. Awesome, super, super practical next steps and tips for any teacher too, if you're really just, if you're new to CSaw or even a veteran to CSaw, this really will help you to figure out what works in your classroom and what works for your students and what works for you as a teacher too. So I love these really practical next steps that you provided and just helps them to just be very clear on how do they start to move forward and take advantage of all of these lessons as they move into this coming week. Well, we're at time Natalie, I just wanna say thank you so much for taking time here to be with us. Thank you for sharing your expertise around how lessons are designed, how you put together collections and really how we are continuing to deliver excellent lessons and curriculum to educators all around the world. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you, Chris.


The present study found that food waste in school lunch programs in Thailand is prevalent, especially among kindergartners. The study estimated that each child generates approximately 71 grams of plate waste per day, which represents a significant loss of calories and money. The findings suggest that there is room for improvement in the design of school lunch programs in order to reduce food waste and ensure children receive adequate nutrition. This article was authored by Jareneth Petchu, Narasara Kichutima, and Natapol Tansafum.


Free reasons why the narcissist is ignoring you, when they refuse to take notice of you, when they fail to consider you, when they disregard you intentionally, when they make you feel like you don't exist, they will avoid replying to your texts or answering your phone calls. If they see you in person, they will avoid eye contact. They will act as though they don't see you, and there are reasons why they are doing this. They are doing it deliberately, and it is in response to something. They are narrow-minded people, who focus on insignificant things, things that you may not even be aware of. They have an undue concern for trivial matters, which often results in spiteful behaviour. They can become very mean and generous and grudging. So here are three reasons why the narcissist is ignoring you. One, punishment. When the narcissist ignores you, it's often a punishment. They are punishing you for something you did or didn't do, but as I said, it may be something that you're not even aware of. The narcissist will punish you for being more attractive or more successful than they are. It's usually because they're envious of something, even if it's just your positive attitude, and they want to take it away from you, so that they can feel better about themselves. When the narcissist ignores you, they're also trying to project their emotions onto you. The narcissist ignores people as the result of a narcissistic injury, where they feel worthless and insignificant. So following this injury, they will then try to make you feel the same way. However you feel around a narcissist is likely to be how they want you to feel, and it's also likely to be a reflection of how they feel. It's very difficult to hold your own separate thoughts and feelings when you are around someone who is as dominant and controlling as a narcissist. Two, testing. When the narcissist ignores you, it may be a test. They want to see how you're going to react to it. They want to see what you're going to do. They're hoping that you will just cave in and do what they want. To get their attention, to win them over, they're manipulating your emotions. They want to see what you're willing to do to get them back. They want to see how much it affects you, because to them it defines their worth. It tells them how special and important they are, free. They want something. Whenever a narcissist says or does something, it's usually because they want something from you. When they ignore you, it's no different. They want something. They want to get your attention. They want you to chase them.  Your reaction makes them feel special and important. It makes them feel like they're wanted by someone, as though they have a useful purpose.  Don't waste your time trying to get them back. You shouldn't have to beg for someone's attention. Their behaviour should reveal their true character to you. They are not to be trusted. Narcissists are very insecure people. They feel weak and powerless, especially when they are around you. Because they feel inferior to you. So naturally they will want to see what they can get away with. They will try to cross your boundaries. They will try to make you feel small. They will try to make you hand your power over to them, so that they can have power over you.  But do not give them the reaction they're looking for. Do not validate their illusion. The reaction fuels them. It gives them narcissistic supply. Instead of giving your power away to the narcissist, empower yourself by realising that you don't need them. They need you. And that is why they're ignoring you. Because they're trying to extract something from you. Thank you for watching. I hope this video resonated with you. Please like, comment, share and subscribe. If you would like to donate, my PayPal link is in the video description. Coaching Inquiries. You can email me at coaching.narc-survivor.co.uk. Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon.