435 – Brenda Watson Discusses HOPE for Digestive Problems

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HOPE stands for High Fiber, Omega-3 Oils, Probiotics and Enzymes

These four nutrients are essential for good health!

In this interview Brenda Watson discusses her personal history with digestive problems. Like many of us her journey began with her desire to get better. Brenda is considered one of the foremost experts on digestive health. Her personal journey has resulted in thousands of consumers discovering the foundations of digestive health.

Brenda has created a program called HOPE. This simple acronym has profound implications for health. especially digestive health.

• H is for High Fiber – 35 grams per day.
• O is for Omega-3 Oils – 2000 mg. + per day.
• P is for Probiotics – 60 billion bacteria from 60 strains.
• E is for Enzymes – with every meal.

Brenda has written some of the best books on digestive health and the role of fiber, omega-3, probiotics and enzymes. Check out Gut Solutions and The Road to Perfect Health, and others. I highly recommend them.

TRANSCRIPT

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

probiotic strains, health food store, digestive health, Brenda Watson, antibiotics, Vital Planet, gut health, HOPE, High fiber, Omega-3, Probiotics, Enzymes

SPEAKERS

Brenda Watson, Steve Lankford

Introduction  00:09

Hello and welcome to Health Quest dedicated to nutrition and your good health support for Health Quest has been provided by some of America’s best nutritional companies and now Health Quest with your host, Steve Lankford.

Steve Lankford  00:30

Hello, and welcome back to Health Quest podcast. Thanks for joining me. I’m your host, Steve Lankford. I’m glad you’re here. This is going to be a good interview for me. I’m going to be interviewing one of the pioneers in the natural products industry. Miss Brenda Watson, you may have heard of Brenda, if you haven’t, you haven’t been paying attention. Because she has been a prolific supporter of the natural products industry. She’s been an innovator. She has such a profound history. I’ve known Brenda for a long time.

And when I say she’s a pioneer, I don’t say that lightly. There are some people in this industry who have made a profound difference. And Brenda Watson is one of those people. I have been in this industry 50 years now. And it was way back in 1972. I went into a health food store, because I was going to Mexico. And I asked them, what can I take with me to Mexico to avoid the digestive challenges that people had. And what they sold me back in 1972 was a probiotic, and a digestive product called betaine hydrochloride. So those people were on board 50 years ago. That’s how profound our intro our industry has been in focusing on what are these important aspects of health. Now, interestingly enough, that first probiotic that I purchased was 100,000, acidophilus bacteria. And the betaine. hydrochloride, of course, is a wonderful digestive aid.

I learned about those things early on, but most people had no clue for the decades that followed. When I had my health food store. People didn’t know about digestive health, they didn’t know about the things that Brenda was going to reveal to us in a very profound way. And so I’m really pleased to be able to pick up this conversation, because our last interview had to be at least 10 years ago, and things have changed a lot in the industry. Since then, Brenda, in her time, I’m going to credit her with launching this awareness of digestive health as a category. This was a passion and a mission. And it was very well accomplished.

And she carries it on today, looking at the latest science and the products that aid digestive health. So when I tell you, she’s a pioneer, you can believe it because she has profoundly affected millions of people. She’s produced some of the best products in the industry. And her books are legendary. She has produced some of the best books on digestive health, and you should get yourself one of her books, you will never regret it. So it’s in that capacity. I am pleased to introduce to you once again, Brenda Watson, Brenda, welcome back to Health Quest podcast.

Brenda Watson  03:39

Thank you, Steve. I’m happy to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m always excited to be disseminating information,

Steve Lankford  03:47

You are one of the more excited people I know because it’s your passion. This is not something that you just do as a job. You wouldn’t have to do this as a job. You do it. I know your passion and your desire to lead people to better health. And you’ve created not only products that do that, but you’ve created sort of a system we’ve talked about in the past, and we’re going to talk about it today. It’s called HOPE, we will reveal what that stands for. We’ll get into that in the conversation. But before we do that, could you tell our listeners just a little bit about your history? How is it that you became interested in natural health and what began your journey?

Brenda Watson  04:31

I absolutely never thought that I would wake up one day and go, Oh, I’m going to get into gut health or I’m going to get into digestive health. It did not happen that way. It happened like it happens. Steve with a lot of the I guess you could say leaders or people in our industry. I got in this natural health because I was sick and you’re talking Have you been in it? 50 years, I’m getting into the 30 year range. And of course, when I started, I had started having poor health at two, two years old, two years old. And the reason and I was born in the early 50s. So that really was the antibiotic revolution, because you’ve got ear infections, throat infections, and you know, that big deal back then was okay, antibiotics, antibiotics, and my mom and dad didn’t do it, because they thought it would ever harm me on a long term basis. But that’s just what they did. So I got a lot of antibiotics.

And I will tell you see, by the time I was in the first grade, I was being hospitalized for migraine headaches, I was being hospitalized for digestive issues that they couldn’t figure out what it was. And going into your more middle school arena. I had chronic fatigue syndrome, I can remember being out of school for a month, just being sick. So I had all these health issues. But no one knew back in, let’s say, the early 60s going into the early 60s, no one knew that your gut was associated with anything. So anyway, I went along with my life through my 20s. Still, at that point in time, then going on into hormonal problems, all kinds of other issues. And like you were just said, I probably around the age of maybe getting from my mid 20s into my late 20s.

I walked into a health food store one day, and I went, I am so sick and tired of being sick and tired. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Traditional medicine has left me in a state of just take more antibiotics or take more steroids or take more of this. And the other thing that happened to me, which is really hard when you’re young girl is losing my hair and my hair falling out in patches. So anyway, I walked into a health food store and back then there was no digestive care category. I mean, they had Sonne’s Seven Clay, they had some psyllium husk, that kind of stuff. I didn’t even know that I had a gut problem. So why would they even look at that.

But I was back in the day stay with the early guys like Dr. Bernard Jensen. And I mean the real early teachers, so went in there and said, just give me some books and let me read and so I started reading and I started doing like juice cleansing juicing, which was that was the big thing back then I started juice cleansing and over a period of about a year I started getting better, not realizing that I was constipated. That was what was causing a lot of all these health problems that you didn’t associate really with a gut. When I had skin issues, hair falling out and all of these chronic fatigue syndrome. I didn’t know that. So I started juicing, I started changing my diet. I started going into healthy store and questioning and going What can I do so over a period of time I got better and better hard that was to having total elimination regularly.

So that was like getting into down moving into the middle 80s into the late 80s. And there was some doctors moving into natural when I say that I mean, medical doctors were moving into integrative medicine. We called it back then holistic medicine. We called it different names. And so when that happened, I went in and I said, Oh, okay, so they started helping me in the area. I’m in Florida. I’m from North Carolina, you can tell by the accent, but I was in Florida. So I’ve just kept soaking up information and changing things.

And in a period of about a year I started getting better. And then I went wow, if I can get better. How can I change other people’s health? How can I take what’s happened with me and help others so I went back to school. And back then in that late 80s I started studying nutrition here in Florida. And I got into a couple of apprenticeship programs. I started working with the medical doctors that were transitioning into Holistic Health. I learned how to read blood work because I worked in clinics where they taught me that so that’s how it happened. But the point of it is, once I got better over a period of time, and over a period of time, I knew in my heart and soul, I wanted to help other people. I knew it.

And so I went back to school started studying nutrition and cleansing. Now, believe it or not, in the state of Florida, we were already down here very legal to do colonics and clay wraps and steam baths and all that stuff to detoxify. And so I went into an apprenticeship program with a woman, believe it or not, who had been doing this since the 70s. So she was really like an old timer, if you want to say it. So I worked in her clinic as an apprentice for a few years. So as I’m doing this, I was also going in and getting my degree in herbalism, as an herbalist see back then we would have like a one herb product, we didn’t have combination herbs, you would have like a one herb product. And that was it. You know what I mean? And there were no fibers, but psyllium fibers.

So as I went to work in this clinic, and I began to study under this woman, I began to see Whoa, these women who are on psyllium fibers have terrible gas and bloating. So I began to look at other ways of getting fiber into the diet like flax. Right, so I was the very first person to come out with a flax fiber. And so that’s kind of how it happened. And you know what,  I guess God just puts it in front of us, when my first clients came back to me and said, I feel better. That was like the hook. I’m like, oh, my gosh, I have helped someone have a better life. And that’s what I did. So I worked in a very busy place.

And so I stayed in there for two or three years, I became certified to teach anatomy physiology in the state of Florida, for nurses and all that with gut health. And I decided, after a period of four or five years working in a clinic, I was going to go and have my own clinics. So in the early 90s, I, over a period of a couple of years, I put together five natural health clinics. And in those five natural health clinics, we did acupuncture, colonics massage, we did, like I said, the play wraps the head out of the steam cabinet that she would say that an old film, and you would steam and we detoxify them that way. And so I can tell you going to school is important stage,

I’m not degrading that, working in the trenches as what I call it in a clinic. There’s nothing like it, because you are there with that patient or with that client getting well. And so I went through that. And I ended up in the early 90s training therapists for the state of Florida and opening five natural health clinics. And then my whole world I’ve been to me because I also at that time, I’ve had become a Master Herbalist.

So then because we didn’t have combination herbs, let’s say a combination herbs for liver health or combination herbs for colon health. So we didn’t have that. So I started to formulate those. And then because I had this wonderful platform there, I could take a formula and use it in five clinics, and see the benefit that our clients got from it. And that’s how I began to develop formulas that eventually ended up in the health food stores. Because I had this wonderful ability. And I don’t want to say practice it, but just see if I could formulate something that someone got better from

Steve Lankford  14:10

What a wonderful story and what a wonderful legacy, and certainly a common story. Many people get into this industry because of their own health challenges or a family member or somehow they seek out something better than the typical medical model. And I don’t disparage modern medicine. I think it has its limitations. And I think doctors have their focus. And their focus really isn’t on creating more health as much as it is managing disease and health problems. And so a lot of people get stuck because, well Drugs aren’t nutrition and nutrients are not drugs. They’re different ways of approaching somebody’s physical challenges.

And so I’ve always told people, whether you’re healthy or you’re not healthy, whether you’re under a doctor’s care or not, under doctor’s care, everybody still needs to be well nourished. So that’s a common experience that so many of us have had. And it can’t hardly get more profound than that when you turn around your own health, and then you start to do something like I did in a health food store for decades, every time you help somebody, and they come back and tell you what a difference it made, it not only reaffirms your own knowledge and what you’re doing, but nothing feels better than knowing that you have helped somebody understand and move towards better health. And so you have a long history of doing this, I appreciate hearing your story, because it really sets the stage for what you have done since then.

And so now you’re part of a company called Vital Planet, your second company, certainly a profound movement forward. So this idea of digestive health, when you started, there was no connection about digestive health and your brain, digestive health and your heart, digestive health and your mood. Those things weren’t known or appreciated. And still, they’re not known to this day as well as they should be. So I know you have a strong educational platform as well. And we’re going to get into that in a little bit. But what I’d like to hear next is a little bit about Vital Planet, this has been your passion. Now, I’m not sure how many six years maybe you can tell us. So what are the foundations of Vital Planet? What did you learn in all of these years leading up to Vital Planet, that you saw a need to bring forth this company with your new vision, tell us about that.

Brenda Watson  16:58

I started and I had five natural health clinics, but you’re not like raking in the money. You know what I mean? I’m still doing things. I’m trying to formulate products, I don’t have much money at all. And once I think with my first herbal cleansing kits that I came out with, one of the things that was extremely important. And my husband kept saying, why don’t you put that in a health food store? And I went, No, I don’t want to do that. Because I can’t, I don’t want to go in and speak in front of a bunch of people. I’m not a speaker, and I don’t want to get up in front of people and talk about constipation. That is gross.

But guess what happened? The Universe moved me in to that position to where I did that. And you see the thing that happened is and so because I started Renew Life out of the trunk of my car with $0. I do believe that when one door closes, another door opens. And so what happened is, I had ran into a guy who had a beautiful facility in Oregon, and he came to me one day, and he said to me, Well, I would like to help you put your products in a bottle. And I’m like, I don’t have any money. Like I can’t run like 1000s of bottles of product. I mean, I’ve got five clinics, I could probably do 500 bottles that would be yet right. So anyway, that happened. That was another godsend. That was another God moment, if you want to call it so I started the formulas from there.

And then of course, Renew life just took off. But what happens deep is like is very, very, I don’t want to say it’s tragic. But it is tragic. In many ways. You know what I mean? We go through our ups and downs and ups and downs, and I had been my founded Renew Life, we must have had for 200 products, depending on IVs. And all the things that were open back then.

But what happened to me is, I guess, sort of a double whammy, and I lost my son, and in a very tragic way. And so Renew Life at that point in time. I never thought I’d work again. But I thought I’m done. I can’t do this. And so Renew Life was sold.

Well, again, my husband and my son in law started a company with pet products, right? Because I can do pet products and we started pet products and all of that. And I still see was like going no, my husband would say Come on. Let’s start for it because I already had the formulations for Vital Flora right, the 60 billion, 60 strain already knew I was going to do that in 2015. But after all the transition I went through, I just thought now I’ll let somebody else do that.

And then you go through and think and I don’t want to veer off upon this, but I do want to say in our world Steve, we don’t talk about grief, very much grief. And so I had no idea what grief was. And so anyway, I went through a couple of years. And then finally, my husband came home one day he goes, you need to go back to work. And I went, Okay, so then that’s when I came with Vital Planet and went into the human segment, and started doing the 60 billion, 60 strains, which is quite unique.

So I came out with a new probiotic, not a me-too probiotic, but a new probiotic, with new scientific features that science, the science has been moving with the microbiome project since 2004. It was moving, moving, moving, moving, moving, and I was keeping up with it, no matter if I was at home in grief or not, it was my interest. So I was reading, reading, reading. And so I came back into Vital Planet, and I went, I’m going to do it my way, I’m going to come out with Vital Flora, just, for example, a 60 billion potency probiotic was 60 strains. And I thought, wow, I can do this again, I can get out there, I can get this message out, I can help people. And that’s how and now what happened is I’ve got my family, I got my son in law, and my daughter and my husband and my brother in law, and my sister who’s been on customer service for 20 years, we all came back together once I got, of course, into the human arena.

And now we are just rockin’ and rollin’ again, and bringing the new science of probiotics as well. We’re doing new things. We’re cleansing and fibers and things like that. However, the new probiotic positioning that we’re taking with the strain diversity, because what happened is with National Institutes of Health, they were giving money to all the microbiologist and all these universities across the country. Well, I’m following these guys. Some are studying it with weight loss, some are studying it with the gut brain connection, some were studying it with all sorts of different aspects of what probiotics do for the health of the human body. And so I said, this is where the future is, because what they were finding these scientists, is they were finding that we’re losing strains. Now, think about this, you know, the word lactobacillus acidophilus.

Plus, you all know bifido bacteria. Bifido is the main friendly bacteria in the colon. lactobacillus acidophilus is the main friendly bacteria in the small intestine. So what we’re finding in in you know this, because you came from that far back, we called everything acidophilus, everything. So then when the microbiologist came out and went, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we’ve got like, hundreds of lactobacillus acidophilus strains. And we got 1000s of Bifido bacterium strains. And guess what, they don’t all do the same thing. So some of these strains make vitamins B and k, for example, some of them help you with immunity, some of them help you with the gut brain connection and making serotonin and things like that. So now we’re starting to gain knowledge.

But where we are gaining knowledge, Steve is in strains. No one knew that we weren’t even labeling the products properly. And I didn’t either, because we didn’t know. So what happened is I started saying, Oh, my goodness. So Stanford, University, University of Alberta, went across the world, and then went, where are there people who have the strain, diversity, still, and they went to Africa, and they went to Mexico, and they went to South America. And they found these hunter gatherer tribes of people who had 1000s of strains and who had no colon cancer, who had no hemorrhoids, who had no IBS, who had none of these problems, because they had strain diversity. Well, in the West over here, where we are the processed foods, the antibiotics that Cesarean births all the things that were going on over here, we were losing the strain Steve and they weren’t coming back.

And that’s why Stanford went out and started looking at all these tribes. There’s really five tribes across the world and went, whoa, these people don’t have any problems. Why are we losing strains? Well, we know antibiotics and sugar and we know all those things if you’re in a health food environment. You know all that. So what happened is, we started to see that we could recover the strains. Okay, you probably had people on here that do seed banks, we’ve lost seeds from raising our crops and our foods. So we have seen banks, meaning we store these seeds of our crops in a bank. Because if we don’t, we’re going to lose them. Same things happening with strains of bacteria. So if we’ve got 1000s of strains of bacteria in our gut, where are they going, we don’t have them all anymore.

So then that’s when Stanford went out and all these other universities and studied the hunter gatherers and the ones that still did have the strain diversity, that’s when we begin to learn that strains are what create the health.

For example, if you’ve got lack of lactobacillus acidophilus, there’s hundreds of strains under that, lactobacillus acidophilus, we never knew that. Okay. And each of these strains has a different purpose, a different health purpose, Steve. So some, like I said, would create vitamins b and k, some would make the gut brain connection, some would keep the pathogens, food poisoning, whatever COVID, even from getting inside of our gut and getting into our bloodstream and creating disease, that was the beginning of it.

We know now, which I wrote the Skinny Gut Diet back in 2015, we knew that bacteria had the ability to determine whether a person was fat, or whether they were skinny, they did it with mice in the beginning. So that’s what started happening. And now we know the plethora of information on strain diversity. So that’s why you see us at Vital Planet, coming out with a formula that not only has the potency, because I had the very first potency of 50 billion back and 04 or 05, that’s potency. But then we began to see a, there’s more to it than that. There’s diversity. So we’ve got potency and diversity. And that’s what we have created at Vital Planet, we’ve now combined the two, the diversity and the potency.

And here’s a way to look and see, if you looked at your gut, or anyone’s gut, you have approximately three and a half pounds in your gut, bacteria. Not all of its good. Some of its neutral, some of its good, some of its negative. Okay, so you got three and a half pounds of that three and a half pounds of bacteria. We’re hoping that 80% of it is good is the probiotics. If we don’t have along with that, Steve, this diversity of the strains, then that’s why we’re ending up now with more and more auto immune more and more of people with all sorts of illnesses that we’re seeing today that we’re going, Where’s that coming from? It’s coming from, we don’t have strain diversity, they’re gone?

Steve Lankford  28:17

Well, it’s one of the things that you have been noted for, from the very beginning is not just assuming that we know everything. But as we learn more, we create products that reflect this new knowledge. And now you’re creating a line of products based on what we’ve learned in, say, the last 10 years brought together from what you’ve learned before. It’s a very profound movement, that you’re heading up right there in your own company.

And it’s setting a stage you’re not a me too type of person, you get out there and do this wonderful research, create these wonderful assets for people not only the products, but the knowledge and the books, and your presentations on TV, we’ll touch upon that as well, because you’ve been a pioneer in reaching out beyond the health food store, which is historically where people have gone like yourself, you go in and you ask questions, you’re reaching out to a platform that reaches a lot of educated people who have an interest and I want to cover that in just a bit.

Before we get to that though, I’d like to turn our attention to your program called HOPE. We discussed this before, and I was talking to my wife yesterday. And I said this acronym of HOPE, Brenda Watson has summed up in these four letters, the most profound foundations of digestive health and further total health in those four words, and I always thought it was so succinct, and yet so profound, as many things are So could you explain HOPE to us? What does that program consist of?

Brenda Watson  30:06

Okay. It’s kind of a funny story. You know how things are. So I’m writing a book called Gut Solutions. You remember that? So I’m sitting there with Dr. Leonard Smith. Dr. Smith was my mentor, and also a GI surgeon. And unfortunately, he passed last year, but we’re writing a book in my house, right? We’ve got Gut Solutions. It takes every digestive condition, right? And gives you what is it? Who gets it? What are the signs and symptoms? What is traditional medicine do for it? What could you do for it naturally?

So I’m sitting there, and Dr. Smith is a character. And we were actually on this, Barrett’s esophagus is what we were talking about. So he’s on the phone with some professor at a university right now. I’m like, Dr. Smith, I got to get these programs down at the end of this book. I mean, we’re getting like on a deadline. So anyway, I’m writing up the protocols, like the natural protocols. And so as he’s talking to some professor, I finally he hangs up.

And I said, You know what, Dr. Smith? Which very interesting is, we’ve got all these conditions, whether it starts with Barrett’s goes into constipation, diarrhea, IBD, IBS, there were 27 of them. And I said, but do you remember these that as I go through, and I give, what to do for them diet wise, supplement wise, do you know what every single condition goes back to fiber? Omega-3 oils, probiotics and enzymes. Now, remember, this is 2002. Okay, so we’re way still way back there. And I’m like, wow, I wish we could come up with an acronym for that.

And we’re laughing about it. And he goes, we could call it FOPE fiber omega-3, it was, I said to him we can’t do that, what we did is we went back and I said, Let’s do high fiber. Okay, High fiber, Omega-3 oils, Probiotics and Enzymes. Because every single condition that we were looking at the results are the answers not we might add a few other things, but the diet and everything see that went with it. Then what we did is I went wow, this is amazing.

So then we came up with the HOPE acronym. And then that’s when we had that Gut Solutions. But then I go to PBS, this is in 2004. And I said, Well, I said I go to because I want to do a show. Well, literally Steve, they laughed me out of the room. I went to them. And I said, I think you have an audience, especially baby boomers, like me, I said, who have a lot of GI problems. And I said, we have this formula called HOPE. And this got solutions book. And I really think that this would be an amazing show. And they were what? And I’m like, No, it’s called Hope, high fiber Omega three oils. And I went through the whole thing with them.

And they said, well, couple of things. We don’t want you to say the word gut on TV. And I went, why can you imagine with what’s on TV today? And I can’t say gut, right. So what happens is we’ve got that.

And then what happens is, and they sit and the other thing is we just don’t have women that are that successful. Do you know what that did? To me? This set me on fire? Right? I went? Are you kidding me? You’re telling me that because I’m a woman that I can’t get across a message on digestive health, then we can’t have a successful show. Well, I went back a second time. Of course, I didn’t give up and went back the second time. And on the second go round. They said you might have something here.

And so we came up with the show in 2004. or 05 called the HOPE formula, the most successful show on health that PBS has ever had. So I’ve gone through all this time, I did five more shows I did Detox Strategy, Fiber 35 Diet, all of these other shows Skinny Gut Diet.

And so when I came back into it under Vital Planet, I had this producer from PBS call me and she said I’ve been talking to PBS corporate now hear what I’m saying? When I did the shows before we paid for them to produce them. They were extremely expensive. And of course, when I started Vital Planet and I didn’t have that kind of money to go out and spend a couple $100,000 on the show. So my producer came back I said no, no, no, no, they’re going to back for it, I’m like, that’s amazing.

So what we have is we have is called Gut Check, it actually starts running, you’ll have to go to your local pbs.org in your area. And it starts running, I believe, between Sunday (March 2023) of this coming week and Wednesday. And it’s called Gut Check the HOPE Formula. And so I went back updated, everything brought all the new science back to the forefront. And that’s what we’re coming out with on PBS starting some stations surveys starting Sunday, and some are starting on Wednesday

Steve Lankford  35:41

they should go and look for this. And if I’m not mistaken, and correct me where I’m, this will play at different times in March of 23, which is when we’re recording this, and subsequently throughout the year, is that correct?

Brenda Watson  35:55

Yes, what they do is they run them quarterly, March, June, August, September in some areas, and then again, in November, and December, so every quarter, you’re going to have it running. And so the biggest pledge drive, though, is March. So we’re starting, the new one will come out. I mean, I just got a call yesterday, and they said, Some stations are going to start running at Sunday, which is really still February, but that March 1 is Wednesday. And so we’re going to start running it then. And I want people if you go to pbs.org, or go on my vital planet.com, what you’ll see is you can go on in every area is different, like you’re in Wisconsin, right? Yes, yeah. So you got a station there. So they would go to your PBS station and look up Gut Check the Brenda Watson’s Gut Check, and then they can tell the times that it’s running in your area?

Steve Lankford  36:53

Well, I hope that they do, because I’m a big fan, Brenda Watson of the work that you’ve done, and the importance of the work that you’ve done, because what we have learned, and through much of your effort is that you we’re not going to be really fully healthy, if we don’t have our digestive system working properly. And so many people have these challenges. So many of them are taking drugs to manage their symptoms. But if they’re not rebuilding their gut health, through these very important, high fiber, Omega three, probiotics and enzymes, it’s such a succinct and yet important combination that you’ve created there. So I urge them to do that, I also want to suggest they can certainly avail themselves of your books, if somebody has challenges, they should have one of these books in their home. And they will never regret it. And they will never lose value from looking at the content that you’ve created. Because not only did you cover it in such a consumer friendly, and well-articulated manner, so I’m a big fan of those resources that you’ve created as well.

Brenda Watson  38:10

And I just want to say, so many people are confused a, because they’re on Instagram, they’re on Facebook, and everything’s now the gut and all these people, there’s those four things HOPE that we talked about, if you can get those four things going on in your gut, you will get better. And that’s what I’m going to go on. That’s what the whole shows about. Like, you can start way up here and way down there. But there’s four things you don’t have to eat, because so many people are confused. A, they think, Oh, I’m going to take this, and I’ll take this, and I’m going to take this, no, start with four things

Steve Lankford  38:50

And get good quality. There’s so much spurious product, bad information on the internet, with all the good products and the good information. So people have to make these distinctions in the marketplace. It’s one of the reasons I do Health Quest podcasts. Because you’re right, I realize how confused people are by all of this information. So you have to find out who can you trust, who really does a good job, who knows what they’re doing, who appreciates the science in the formulas that they create.

There are so many companies that have bought products and profits, but they have never embraced the philosophy that actually brings good products to the marketplace. And you have certainly done that in an exceptional way. There’s so much we didn’t cover I want to just tell people, they can go to your site, vital planet.com they can review your products, your information, access your books, so you’ve got information there. They’ve got this PBS special coming up soon that they should avail themselves of as well. But in the last few minutes we have Brenda, I want to give our guests always the last word. Is there anything we didn’t cover today that you would like to make sure that our listeners hear?

Brenda Watson  40:11

I think the whole purpose of us, you may all of us teachers out there, whether you have a podcast, whether you’re a practitioner of health, I have lived through being the underdog, kind of with gut health, they people think I’m stupid and crazy and all that. But here’s the thing, I’m serious I bought, I was like, look at,

Steve Lankford  40:32

Well, yes, food faddist, food quacks, health food nuts. We’ve all been labeled that way over the years, now we’re victims of our own success, we’ve created a positive message that has now become commoditized and diluted in a big way. So we need to understand who are the real champions in this industry,

Brenda Watson  40:52

The thing of it is, is you have to focus in on the gut first, no matter if you’ve got eczema or skin issues, or you’ve got any of these other things going on, you’ve got just focus on this first. And really, if you listen to the show, if you listen, if you get the books, you can go back and focus on the gut with four things, and you can get better I did. I have 1000s, and millions of people that have followed my work over the years. And these four things with a good diet, I’m always going to say with a good diet can get better from all of this, they really care. So don’t dismiss going out. And I’m not saying don’t take a multivitamin. I’m not saying don’t take this or that or the other. But if nothing else, get in this HOPE formula. And also start reading and educating yourself because you’re not going to get any better if you don’t. And I’ve got tons of books and my sister who’s been on that customer service line 20 years. Do you know what we’ve heard in 20? years? A lot.

Steve Lankford  42:01

 A lot? I’m sure, yes, because people are desperate. Yeah, for sure, Brenda, you’ve been such a champion over all of these years. And it is your passion and your succinct direct focus on that mission. And the results that you brought about that are so profound, I don’t think we would be here understanding probiotics as well, if you weren’t part of that revolution, because you brought your message to 1000s of health food stores who have reached 1000s of customers, and your PBS specials your books.

It is an amazing legacy that is as profoundly impactful today, as it was when you first came out with it even more so because we still suffer these challenges to our health as a nation. And so I want to thank you so much for what you’ve done. It’s been a profound benefit to my family. We’ve used products that you’ve created many times over the years to our personal benefit. I’ve recommended you to so many people because I know that you reach them in a way that is profound and effective.

So thank you for your work. Thank you for taking the time to visit with me today. I always enjoy seeing you at the trade shows and I look forward to our next time to visit. Thank you so much until our next opportunity to speak, take care and I wish you the best. Bye bye.

Steve Lankford  43:39

if you would like additional information, please visit HealthQuestPodcast.com. We’ve provided additional details and links on the podcast page. Remember, this is your process of discovery. Continue to search continue to learn. The more you know the better choices you can make better choices lead to better outcomes. If you like HealthQuestPodcast.com, please recommend us to your friends and social networks. We sincerely appreciate every like, every star and every review. Together we can lead others to better health one listener at a time. Thank you for joining me today. I’m glad you were here. Make it a good day and join me for another interesting Health Quest Podcast.

Brenda Watson  44:30

Thank you Bye bye.

Close  44:30

Thank you for joining us today on Health Quest you want to improve your health, Health Quest can help. For more information and interviews that help you visit HealthQuestPodcast.com

Tagged as: antibiotics, Brenda Watson, digestive health, enzymes, gut health, High fiber, HOPE, omega-3, probiotic strains, probiotics, Vital Planet