How Fermentation Can Heal Your Gut | Lauren Mones

Darin: You are listening to the Darin Olien Show. I’m Darin. I spent the last 20 years devoted to improving health, protecting the environment, and finding ways to live a more sustainable life. In this podcast, I have honest conversations with people that inspire me. I hope that through their knowledge and unique perspectives they’ll inspire you too. We talk about all kinds of topics, from amping up your diets to improving your well-being to the mind-blowing stories behind the human experience and the people that are striving to save us and our incredible planet. We even investigate some of life’s fatal conveniences, those things that we are told might be good for us but totally aren’t. So here’s to making better choices in the small tweaks in your life that amount to big changes for you and the people around you and the planet. Let’s do this. This is my show, the Darin Olien Show.

Darin: Hey, everybody, welcome to the show. This is Darin Olien. This is The Darin Olien Show. Happy that you’re here. Stoked for you to continue to learn and apply and to be a greater version of yourself. It’s all we can ask for every day, learn about ourselves, learn about the world, and then apply it and become a better person. My next guest, Lauren Mones, is the founder and CEO of Fermenting Fairy, I love that. Fermentingfairy.com, just straight up it’s about fermentation. She had her own story of healing herself, and healing doesn’t have to be hard or it doesn’t have to take a long time. And she went back through thousands of years of fermentation understanding. You’ve always heard of good bacteria, bad bacteria, eat your fermented kombuchas, all of these things. Fermentation is basically a type of predigestion that naturally occurs with the bacteria in the natural world with our food. They used to use it dating back 6 and maybe even 10,000 years in ancient China. Then it was a way that we realize that it’s an incredible way to preserve food, but then as we became more aware of it that predigestion and the bacteria was actually quite beneficial. And the lactobacillus or Bifidus strains was really the first things that we started to understand that it was able to break down sugars and starches in the food and become these different types of bacteria and starting to divide. They started taking the place of the “bad bacteria” or putrification or putrified bacteria. So all these good bacteria started to move into the areas and push out the bad bacteria and therefore created a harmony that not only from a digestion perspective but immune-boosting and all of these things. So we get into all of that and Lauren is such a treat. I met her originally in Malibu. She had a little booth next to me on the beach. We’re sharing our products. I was representing Barukas, and I got to know her, and it was incredible to see what she was doing and building the business. I certainly love and support good people passionately living out what it is that they want to bring in the world. Fermentation and this type of eating is so essential, and she has built a business around that. If you want, she has been kind to give 15% off of all the products, so go to fermentingfairy.com and the promo code is DARIN, all caps, D-A-R-I-N. Thank you, Laren, for giving all of you listeners 15% off of all of the fermented amazing products that you have, kefirs, etc. So, hook in and hold on and enjoy this incredible touching conversation with Lauren Mones.

Darin: Lauren, it’s such a pleasure to see you here.

Lauren: Thank you. Thank you for having me, Darin.

Darin: Of course, and I couldn’t help but to see this amazing quote that you have upfront and center on your website, and I want to read it so everyone can hear it. “The path to optimal health is the warrior’s way. It takes radical trust in the body’s innate healing intelligence to defy our fear-driven health care system. Allow this path to build you up with courage, not break you down with fear. Practice the art of patience, slow down enough to listen, and endlessly cultivate deep trust. Join me this warrior’s way to optimal health. We can do this together.” Come on. There’s so much truth and power, intention, allowance, acceptance in what you’re saying that flies in the face of everything that does not work in the normal systems that we call healthcare. So I know this is a massive Pandora’s box, but I needed to say that quote, and I needed to tell the audience where you’re coming from and where I’m coming from as a relates to health. I want to clap for you. I want to celebrate for you. It’s my long second intro. I am grateful to have you here. I’m grateful for the warriors path that you’re taking, the dow, the trust of nature that you’ve built and rebuilt your health on, and I want everyone to hear that story. Also the pillars to which every entrepreneurial person on the planet should build upon that that is a very, very important aspect of building upon the trust of nature, which is another way of saying that is sustainability, that is regenerative, and that is in alignment with that, which is nature itself. So, thank you for being here.

Lauren: I have nothing to say after that. We could just end right here. Wow, my heart just exploded. You and I are so aligned like this. And your words are so beautiful, and they land deep in my heart. Thank you for that incredible intro.

Darin: Yeah, it’s a beautiful thing. I really want people to sit with that, and we’re going to unpack that just a little bit about what the difference is because everyone can relate to the body not functioning well, being in out of sync. If we try to escape that which we are or try to find that which we already are, it creates problems. 

Lauren: We don’t have to search for it anymore or you just come back home. That’s what it is. Just stand in who you are because you are already that. And that spark of nature that we hold so dearly, like going to the ocean gives us so much nourishment and fuel and going to the forest. There’s this separation of we’re human, and we’re not part of that absolute stunning glory that we see and love and Mother Earth. And yet, we’re not a part of that. There’s that whole cultural programming, societal programming. If we return back home to that deep layer like bone, like knowing in your bones, that we are a part of that, that is all divine. Nature is all divine spark, divine life, then there’s no question. There’s no separation. There’s no fear anymore.

Darin: And at the same time, there are steps to take that get us back to that because we’re all in some way in some form or fashion, we’ve deprogrammed ourselves or bought into the idea that we’re not something and we’re something else like I’m just Darrin, this is who I am, which is a radically small definition of the body, the being, the cells, the galactic connection that I am that is so infinite, you can’t even literally describe it. So let’s go back to your origin story of your Crohn’s, this happened to you but happened for you and let’s unpack. I want to hear how you got to where you’re at.

Lauren: How I was a product of Western medicine, right, because we all are and that’s exactly where we’re at right now, especially with this whole COVID thing. This is it, we have to dismantle all of that. Our entire lives were just like one big way to keep us small and silent. And just for us to believe that we’re sick human beings, our bodies are sick, and they can’t heal without medication and drugs. So I was a product of that. And thank the Lord that I got myself out of it and fairly quickly because I wouldn’t be where I am today. So yeah, my story started in my mid-30s, about seven years ago, when I was told I had a lifelong incurable disease that’s called Crohn’s. And at that time, about a year before the diagnosis, I was actually living my best life, I was thriving. I was considered by my friends uber healthy because I was racing long-distance triathlons. A typical day for me, I was waking up at four in the morning, I would ride 40 miles on my bike, come home, work a full-time job, and then run 10 miles or swim in the ocean or something. I loved to do that. So people thought I was nuts. They thought I was crazy. I was uber healthy. I thought I was thriving. And yet, I started to show signs of poor gut health. But if I’m really honest with myself, I look back in retrospect, and I see that my entire life, I’m 44 years old right now, my entire life, I’ve been sick. And it started from birth really. All of our stories actually start at birth. My birth story set me up for a pretty sick adulthood. I was a C-section baby. So the first microbes that my infant body was introduced to were from my mom’s skin. So skin microbes and gut microbes are very, very different. So for a baby to be introduced to that right away as the first microbes is not the best scenario. I was also formula-fed. And back then formulas were not fortified with bacteria, specifically Bifido infantis, which is what’s in breast milk. So this was my entrance into the world.

Darin: So if everyone doesn’t fully grok that, the travel down the birth canal is that first inoculation from the mother’s vaginal canal to the baby that’s basically starting up and seeding and breeding the essence and the foundation of the immune system. And so you didn’t have that?

Lauren: I didn’t have that. And the vaginal bacteria and microbes are very similar to the gut microbes. So when a baby travels down the vaginal canal, it’s bathed in these wonderful microbes that set the microbiome and the immune system up for diversity and for strength, and for adaptability. I didn’t have that. And that’s not to say that my baby born cesarean can’t have a lifelong of health. That’s not what I’m saying. But for me, the story starts there. I was a colicky baby. I was very fussy, I was very picky with what I was eating. I had UTIs every three months as a little girl. And I was put on antibiotics every three months. But it was good because I loved my antibiotics. It was the pink, I don’t know if you remember this, but the pink bubblegum amoxicillin that– Thank you to Big Pharma and food scientists. They make a taste like a wonderful bubblegum so that kids love it. So this is what we’re working with as children.

Darin: Right. So the antibiotics, the layman’s definition is against life. So it’s going in and clear-cutting what your microbiome is trying to build up. Think of it like a forest, when you leave it alone, it becomes a great forest. And every time it tries to grow, you’re basically annihilating it with this blanket antibiotics that’s killing everything. And then you have to seed yourself again and again and again. Now listen, there are places obviously and spaces for antibiotics. And there’s also, and I’m sure you can unpack this, there are procedures how you could take antibiotics, and also then have a rebuilding “package” to build yourself up again. But that being said, so now you’re in this cycle where now you’re just antibiotics–

Lauren: Right, just antibiotics and of course, back then we didn’t really have the awareness of gut health and the microbiome. This is all new within the last three years maybe, I mean, not even.

Lauren: So I enter my 20s and I am terribly depressed. I get on antidepressants for years. Finally, I get off of them. And antidepressants we have to also acknowledge are like antibiotics. They are interrupting the gut-brain connection. And they’ve also been shown to kill the healthy bacteria in the gut. And that is such a strong connection. No one ever told me that you’re depressed because your gut is a mess.

Darin: You’re gut’s a mess, 80% to 90% of the serotonin that’s supplying. It’s almost like this rain forest, which would provide you life and support and everything else, you just clear-cut it. So how is it supposed to provide any of these other beneficial enzymes, bacteria, serotonin, you name it, and it can’t. So of course, there’s a chain of events that happen. And back to our healthcare system, it just throws a pill at this event that is from this foundational disturbance.

Lauren: Yep, you got it exactly. I look back and I’m like, ah, that is that. I connect the dots. So I get into my 30s, I’m thriving, I feel good. And then around my mid-30s, again, I start to have poor gut health. And when I say poor, I started to get really sick. I was going to the bathroom, diarrhea 20 times a day at least. I was a prisoner of my home because as soon as I left my house, if I had to go to the bathroom, it’s called rapid transit. There was no like, I have to go to the bathroom, let me find a bathroom. It’s like, I have to go to the bathroom I already went. So it was a lot of accidents in my mid-30s. And here I am planning a wedding. I was engaged to a man that I thought I loved and planning a wedding and I’m having messes all over me all the time. I was so malnourished. I was skin and bones. My heart would beat out of my chest just walking. Because I wasn’t absorbing any nutrients, I didn’t have the bacteria in my body to break down the food I was eating. I would eat it, it would go right through me. So I was very sick. I finally agreed to a colonoscopy because I couldn’t handle this anymore. And I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. And I was told at the time of diagnosis, as I’m coming out of the phase of a procedure, I was told that you have an incurable disease, lifelong. You’ll be on medication for the rest of your life. Just go home, take the medication, eat whatever you want, food has nothing to do with the activity of the disease. But it’s okay because people with Crohn’s can live an average life. You’ll be in and out of hospitals, but for the most part, you’ll live an average life. Darin, literally those words, I’m not making those up.

Darin: You know I don’t put a lot of thought into my skincare routine, I just don’t like spending the time. But now, I turn 50, I’m thinking about it a little more. I’ve been using Caldera Lab’s The Good serum on my skin at night. So I was stoked when they introduced a new product line that compliments The Good, The Clean Slate. This stuff is amazing. This stuff is pH balanced for the skin as a cleanser using biome friendly, probiotics, and mineral-rich ocean silk extracts to naturally cleanse the skin. Come on, that’s just the way it’s got to be. Then I follow through with the base layer in nourishing day moisturizer design to protect your skin from environmental stress like pollutions and even blue light radiation. It uses plant stem cells, I dug into this a little bit, it’s incredible science, to deliver intensive hydration without that greasiness. It feels like I have nothing on my face, but I can feel the nourishing benefit. So that’s my morning routine. And then at night, I wash with the cleanser again and follow up with The Good serum. It’s easy, it’s quick. I wake up with awesome skin every day. Super easy. Fantastic. So all you have to do is head over to calderalab.com/darin, that’s C-A-L-D-E-R-A-L-A-B dot com forward slash D-A-R-I-N. Or use the discount code DARIN in all caps and then you get 20% off. So cool. So give these guys a try. I promise you your skin will thank you.

Darin: I think we all can go back to the story of this doctor in this position saying these things. It’s so irresponsible to say those kinds of things and impress upon people this limited, horrible outcome. Again, the divorcing of nature at its freaking core. Food has nothing to do with it? What planet are you on? Go back to the other planet because that’s not how this works.

Lauren: But you know it it’s a blessing that he said that, and those were his exact words. It was a blessing that he said it because that was the one thing that he said that made me go, “What?” And then I went home because that was the thing that stood out to me. I went home, took the medication, I wasn’t getting better, but I knew that food had something to do with how I felt. So I went to Barnes and Noble when there was an actual Barnes and Nobles in Santa Monica. I found this book, 600-page book called The Paleo Diet for Autoimmune Diseases, something like that. And reading it and reading it reading.

Lauren: I’m researching what is Crohn’s. I don’t even know what this thing is, and reading. And in a little paragraph, she says, fermented foods could be good for autoimmune diseases. I was like, oh, that’s interesting. I don’t even know what fermented foods are,except for the sauerkraut that I got on like a dirty water hot dog in New York City, which was dead, devoid of anything alive and nutrients. But that sent up like an opening for me to research gut health and what was actually going on in my gut. Why did I have Crohn’s? And so I dove deep into that research. What I found was that the doctor told me I have an autoimmune disease and that my body’s attacking itself. So again, like here we are fear-based words, my body doesn’t attack itself. No, my body is all about goodness, and kindness and love. I’m made from love.

Darin: And its nature, why would nature all of a sudden decide, like, let’s destroy ourselves? If that was the premise, we would see two flowers of the same plant start destroying itself. That doesn’t happen.

Lauren: It doesn’t happen. So in my research, I said, okay, the one word that keeps coming up in my research is inflammation. Crohn’s is inflammatory bowel disease, inflammation of the gut, inflammation, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, okay, so I have inflammation. I broke my elbow once, that was inflammation. I have a headache, that’s inflammation. I have a bruise, that’s inflammation. I just have inflammation of the gut, maybe it’s not that big of a deal after all. And it just dawned on me, I’m suppressing my immune system by taking these immune suppressors that they give you for Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis, and other autoimmune diseases, all of them have immune suppressors as the drugs. You’re suppressing the very thing that you need. It makes no sense. And no doctor has ever questioned that.

Darin: On the one hand, it’s like the Twilight Zone. Just to unpack that logically, what do you mean all of a sudden, I have to do the opposite? Like I have to take drugs to dampen my immune system, that makes no sense whatsoever. And again, it’s this idea that the premise of the body is you’re broken. You’ve got two choices, buy into it, give all your power to the person that doesn’t know you, not in your body, doesn’t know your body and is blowing off, might as well be eating Twinkies for the rest of their lives because they’re not acknowledging anything that goes in your mouth. Or you do what Lauren’s doing, and I’ve done it several times, like really, you’re gonna tell me that? The little spark in me goes, oh, really. And now you’re gonna get a fight, and that fight is not the other person. And that’s where we actually get it right. The fight is letting go of that construct and you take that power back from the people that you just realize you gave it to and said, wait a minute, I need to be the advocate for my own sovereignty of health, period. I wanted to just say it because that’s what I heard you do, you’re like, okay, but you went into it and started learning. And then at one of its cores, inflammation.

Lauren: Yeah. And also to your point, I want to say to your listeners too, I am no one special. I don’t have a degree in medicine. I didn’t have a background in health, not that much. I knew about nutrition a little bit. So I’m not someone special with a whole background of knowledge about the body. I just knew something good enough that I know food has something to do with it. So that sent a flag. So we all have that capacity. We all have that bullshit radar. We all have it but it’s so suppressed because we’ve been told to suppress it by the education system, the school system. They’re teaching us things that just aren’t true. You’re told as a young kid to sit down, shut up, stay still. And that’s not what kids should be doing. And so the health care system, the food system is all meant to block us into this box so that we don’t know any better. We believe them. It’s just like you said, we give our power away to people who don’t care about us.

Darin: My favorite word this year is sovereignty without a doubt.

Lauren: Me too.

Darin: Its water, its food, its healthcare, its shelter, its freedoms, it’s all of that stuff. So, learn, grow, expand, understand. So back to that because there’s a lot of people in some form more than ever, as you know, that has an inflammatory condition in their digestive system, from their mouth to their anus, something’s going on because of all of this undesirable food, exposures to toxins, stressors, you name it. So once you discovered this inflammation, now the drumroll, now, what did you do then?

Lauren: I said, well, this can’t be so bad. Maybe there’s an opportunity to not have an incurable disease. And so I started questioning all the beliefs that were fed to me. I didn’t consent to that, just like you were saying, how does someone just lay that on an innocent person?

Lauren: So I started questioning those beliefs. And the big aha moment for me was I went to the health food store and I bought a jar of sauerkraut. I opened it up and I took a forkful, I put it in my mouth, I was very hesitant. I didn’t like the smell, put it in my mouth, started chewing it. And I’m like, whoa, and I get almost like a Kundalini awakening. I just felt this surge of energy in my body. I swallowed, and my whole body came to life. Just one bite I was like, what was that? And I took another bite, it didn’t happen again but I was like, what just happened. But it excited me to the point where every day after that for about the next two or three days, I would integrate sauerkraut into my diet. All of a sudden, my stool started forming. I was having thicker stool. It wasn’t like water like it used to be, it was thicker. And then after about a week, I was having normal, more or less stools. I was not going 20 times a day. I was able to leave my house. I was still on medication at that point, but it just changed my life completely. And then I started really researching what this was. What is going on with sauerkraut fermented foods? And that’s when I knew that the medication was not my path. That’s what I knew. I threw it out cold turkey. I didn’t even titrate off. I just was like that’s it. And also Darin, this is a fun part of my story is that my dad is a GI doc and a very traditional one. I mean, he’s been doing this for 75 years. So his daughter gets diagnosed with Crohn’s, and it’s like a big deal to him. And his daughter throws out medication and says, you know what, I’m not doing this like this anymore. Yeah, we had little uncomfortable moments there. 

Darin: That is like a divine comedy right there.

Lauren: Can it be set up any better? So I threw out the meds, and I dove deep into fermented foods. I started making them at home, I read books, I watched YouTube. And the process of fermentation, not only was it healing my physical body, but spiritually it was changing the entire way that I saw the world. I was still very sick, I don’t want to make it seem like I just got better like that. I was still very sick. But on those days where I felt like I might even die, I remember that there’s a whole world of beings, microorganisms, that’s working for me and they’re all over and they’re inside of me. And so I’m really sick right now that this reality is not all that there is. And so I really took solace in having there be other realities, other possibilities, and knowing that there are other beings that are working on my behalf, and it just changed everything spiritually. I thought I was taught to kill these things for all of my life, antibacterial, soap, Lysol, and everything, wash your hands all the time, put food in the refrigerator right away, microbes are bad, they’re going to kill you. And here I am, they’re saving my life. It just changed my whole world, doing the actual fermentation. And I started to get better and better and better and that’s when after about a year of making ferments at home, eating them and having them primarily like the staple of my diet, I started to get a lot better. But within that time again, going back, there were days where I did want to go run and get medication again. I wanted to go back to the hospital. I thought I might die alone because at that point I had broken up with my fiance, I had hard days, and that’s when I went back to trusting my body. I just knew, without a doubt, even though I could have gone into the fear mode, I could have went into the rabbit hole of just like, I need something outside of me, but I chose not to and I just chose to trust and trust and trust and trust. And I always got better. Just like you said, you always got better, and that’s what the body does, that’s what nature does. We always come back to homeostasis. If you allow it, you get out of its way, it’s going to heal.

Darin: Many of you who follow me know I’ve spent most of my life searching for the healthiest foods on the planet. If you look hard enough, there are a few unknown extraordinary foods around the world that people still don’t know about. And a few years ago, I came across my favorite superfood discovery of all time, Barukas nuts. When I first tasted them, my eyes lit up. The taste alone just absolutely blew me away. But after sending them to the lab, which I do, and getting all the tests, I realized they’re the health theists nuts on the planet. No other nut even compares. They have an unusually high amount of fiber and they’re off the charts in super high antioxidants and have few calories than any other nut. It’s jam-packed with micronutrients. But they’re not just good for you, they’re really good for the planet. Most other nuts require millions of gallons of irrigated water, but Baruka trees require no artificial irrigation. Barukas are truly good for you, good for the planet, and good for the world community. It’s a win all the way around. I really think you’ll love them, so I’m giving all of my listeners 15% off by going to barukas.com/darin. That’s B-A-R-U-K-A-S dot com backslash Darin, D-A-R-I-N. I know you will enjoy.

Darin: You’re describing something that we all have faced at one point to varying degrees, and that is I’m uncomfortable in my body, something’s going on, I want to get out of this discomfort. That is a natural thing. And we have created a world of way too many conveniences that we avoid pain at all costs. But I just want to say this one thing and that you are probably given this opportunity in a million moments as you’re restoring your health and that is, am I going to trust right now or am I going to be in fear? Guess what happens when we’re in fear? Suppression, literally of our physical body of chemistry and biology and the immune system, sympathetic responses, dampening of nature, divorcing nature in that moment, not trusting. And so this is a very important point. You always have to ask yourself, your body, what do you need, what do you need, what do you need, what do you need? People around you may be freaking out, going, don’t die or whatever it is, but it is those moments that you’re listening. Listen, you could say like, okay, body, you need that medication now, okay, that’s fine. Or body, I need to rest and trust. So I just want to make that distinction because being in fear, rather than a choice of empowerment, whatever that choice is to you is radically different than letting yourself succumb to the fear. And now I’m making choices out of that place and that creates further and deeper away from that which is ultimately the thing that is all of life. So you’re now into the world of microbes, 10 times more microbes in our system, our symbiosis, you’re obviously healing and feeling better, and playing and playing and playing with the microbial world. Talk to me about that.

Lauren: Yes. So I started feeling better. The products that I have on the market right now, I was actually making back then to heal my body. So it’s the same products, I haven’t changed anything. And I was giving them to friends who I know had also some serious gut issues, and they were just getting better too.

Lauren: So I had no intention of starting a company because I was an occupational therapist, I had a job, I was fine with that. I wasn’t exactly happy, but I was fine. But I was really it’s my Dharma. It was pushing me, the divine is just pushing me, this is your path, this is your path. So I started at the farmers market, the Brentwood Farmers Market. I had people coming back for more and “we just came to the farmers market just for your products.” And before I knew it, I had a tried and true product that was healing people. I never ever imagined this. It touches my heart even now I hear the stories. So I feel very, very blessed and I’m thriving. The thing is Darin, fermentation did a lot for my body. There’s no doubt, and it’s my health insurance. I take it every day. But it really was, and this is what I like to tell people, it’s the dismantling of everything I’ve ever been told that really made me heal. It’s to recognize and see myself as not sick anymore. And I don’t have a sick body. I never did. I just had a temporary imbalance, and that’s all. Dismantling of everything that I’ve ever known. Getting rid of it, getting rid of all those layers, taking them off, and then rebuilding myself as me, as Lauren, as a higher being, not somebody who is small and somewhat insignificant. That was a huge part of my healing. Again, taking back my power, stepping into agency, stepping into self-efficacy, sovereignty.

Darin: Yeah, and that’s such a key to real healing because it really sounds like it was mental, it was emotional, it was spiritual, and of course, it was physical. And then the foundation, I mean, it’s such a beautiful thing because the foundation of your company is built upon the wellness that you received. And then you’re able to gift it forward and make it convenient. I mean, that’s the thing, you make it convenient for people to get because not all people– fermentation can be tricky. You got to get that stuff right, even I don’t want to do it. And I love to nerd out about this stuff. But for me, I’m like, you know what, I love finding good products. Let me just support them with my money, and let them do their thing. And it’s weird because when we met, we met in that that Malibu market and I was standing there with barukas, and you were just next to me. And I remember taking your products and I was like, wow, these are incredible. So it’s solidified in time that whole kind of situation. But also, I mean, Fermenting Fairy is like the best name ever. So how do you not feel nurtured and taken care of by that?

Lauren: Also, I want to tell your listeners too because I was following you for a while, like years before, you and I actually met at that party or biohacking place, and whatever you call that, but you and I met in person. I remember saying to you, Darin, I want to get my story out to people because I really feel like it can help people, and I tried to get on all these podcasts, and I don’t have thousands or millions of followers, so nobody wants me on their podcast. So how do I do this? And you said to me, well, I don’t have a podcast yet, but I’m gonna have one soon, and I’ll have you on as my guest. And I was like, oh, that’s so amazing. You came out with a podcast, a couple of months later, sent you a DM saying, hey, can I be a guest? And you’re like, yep, right away. And I just want to say like, thank you because just your kindness, it just shows in that step of you kept your word. You’re a man of your word, and I appreciate that. And I know your listeners also know that about you, but I just think it’s a great story, and it just highlights how amazing you are.

Darin: Well, thank you. And I try to strive every day and learn from the things that I mess up on as we all do being human and it’s seductive too to be like, I can hear it in my own things like get this person because it’s better for your podcast. It’s like all this crazy shit when in fact it’s not about all that. When things happen naturally, fine. But it’s like this kind of story, your particular story is something that’s meaningful to me and something I care about, of course. And then meeting you, vibing with you that day, it was like this is what it’s all about. It’s about people connecting, telling the truth, sharing the truth, sharing what works, and then people are affected by that. And so nothing gives me greater pleasure than to have this time with you and to get to know you and hear that story. And the fact that you make convenient products for people to be able to consume. If you eat an apple once, that doesn’t mean you get all the benefits of eating an apple every day. That’s why they call it an apple a day keeps the doctor away. All of these things are things that we can do. And I love the fact that this isn’t a supplement for you. This is a food. This is microbes. This is a living organism that are so much a part of or used to be a part of our culture, and have been part of cultures throughout millennia. Every major culture of our time has always had fermenting foods. And I just want to say, there’ll be these moments where I will eat sauerkraut or fermented and I literally, when I even smell it, my body just goes holy shit, I need this right now.

Lauren: Yeah, oh, yeah, it’s a craving.

Darin: It’s a very powerful. And I think when you’ve cultivated addictions out of your life with the poor quality foods that feed bad microbes, so there is this moment, a transition from those poor-quality foods to reseed yourself full of these microbes. Once you kind of do that, the cravings go away. And the other cravings that are the cravings of life are more profound. And I think that’s what I am connecting to when I eat fermented foods. It’s this life-affirming power that when you start really taking care of, you really do believe that food has something to do with your bloody health, then that’s the celebration. You get to celebrate whole healthy foods, and reap the benefits thereafter.

Lauren: Yeah, and when you start to rebalance your gut, I always tell people because they’re like, I’m so sensitive now. Energetically, they become sensitive. Like I can sense what other people are feeling or what they’re thinking or I could just sense the energy in the room when you start to get the toxins and the crap out of your body, not just with food but with everything, even emotional thoughts. You start to get that out, you just become this light, this antenna that picks up on everything and you become this sensitive light being. And a lot of this is the healthy bacteria that are communicating with every cell in your body and also everything outside of your body. So you become tuned in, really, really tuned in.

Darin: That’s it because this world is so focused out here getting this, doing that, out here, out here, out here stimulus. And once you start to go inside and nurture from inside both mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, but also physically see the very organisms that are in absolute necessity and relationship to you for your health, it can’t help but to touch on and nourish every aspect, that is you and that is of nature. So we go full circle to back to the sovereignty and the bowing our heads, and so I align myself with those things, those principles, those ways of being. And I think that’s part of what you’re saying and the terms of you start learning who you are, what you are and what you require, but it’s so easy to blow that off. It’s so easy to blow off those deep signals and that’s what I really love to build upon with people. And like you said, once you start feeling and tasting and experiencing health–

Lauren: And goodness, nourishment.

Darin: Yeah, you start to get more and more discerning on those kind of principles because it adds upon this power.

Lauren: Actually, I love that because I think craving the sun today, like I can’t get enough. I wonder if the solar eclipse is today, the new moon. But it’s important to also note that probiotic supplements will not do this for you. So we’re not talking about probiotics supplements.

Lauren: I think that’s really important to decipher because a lot of people will be like okay though, I could just pop a pill. But I want to tell people that probiotic supplements is just another branch of Big Pharma. That’s gonna be a hard pill to swallow but it is. What we’re talking about, you and I, Darin are wild fermented foods, not even all fermented foods. We’re talking about wild fermented foods. Literally, the fruit or the vegetable grown from an organic regenerative soil that has all the healthy microbes and then the vegetable being fermented has all that in its cell walls and it’s on its skin. We take that, we create an evironment to allow those microbes to flourish so that what you’re getting in your body when you’re eating my ferments is you’re getting the microbes from nature. I call my stuff nature in a bottle because it is. There is nothing preventing or interrupting that process.

Darin: Wow. I’m so glad you brought that up. It is such a distinction between people going, yeah, I’m kidding, my probiotic’s here. Yes, this is their functional qualities to some of that stuff, some of it is research without a doubt, but this is a whole nother level and you’re just creating the environment for that which you got from nature to continue to develop based in foundational principles, foundational microbes, whole foods, sleep, water, air, good relationships, all of that stuff. And this, I don’t know what else is more fundamental than our microbes. Thank you for bringing that very, very important distinction up. And I love the fact that that’s how you do it. Now, I’m gonna order a ton of your products today. Thank you, Lauren, this has been such a pleasure. I really appreciate your time and your journey, and your trust of nature and to be able to then expand that for other people to benefit from. It’s the best.

Lauren: Darin, this has been a very powerful conversation, and I can’t thank you enough for giving me a voice on your platform. It means the world to me, and I can just get teary thinking about it, but it’s what’s needed right now, this coming together. And I hope your listeners feel like they’re in the room with us because this is for the world, we’re changing the world, and it’s time. We need it.

Darin: Hundred percent. So hey, support small businesses, support businesses doing the work like this amazing human. I get nothing from it other than to support someone doing something great in the world and I’m honored and grateful.

Lauren: Thank you so much.

Darin: Thank you, Lauren.

Darin: What a fantastic episode. So tell me, what is one thing you got out of today’s conversation? If this episode struck a chord with you and you want to dive a little deeper into my other conversations with incredible guests, you can head over to my website, darinolien.com for more episodes and in-depth articles. Keep diving my friends. Keep diving.