How To Heal Your Body Organically - Dr Jolie Mestre

This is the beyond the story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. Dr. Jay's in the building. What's happening. Welcome to the show.

Sebastian Rusk

Good morning. How are you?

Jolie Mestre

Oh, I'm doing fantastic. So great to have you here. I know that we were chatting before the interview here. We met at our networking group that we meet at once a week. You came and visited one week, and I've been following you ever since. 15 years ago, if I said I was following you, that would be wildly awkward, but these days it's become the norm. Um, and, uh, I love your content. I love what, um, what you're doing and what you're doing to help people. Um, but you made a post a couple of weeks back and it really piqued my interest. Cause it showed a little bit of your backstory and your journey that brought you to today with what you're doing with your business and how you in fact help people. And I was like, wait a second, I need to get this girl on the podcast. Cause I want to know more about this story. So, Thanks again for taking some time out here and just to add some context for our listeners here, let's back up a little bit to the beginning of the story and you decide where the beginning of that story is that really brought you to present day with where you're at right now with your business and helping people really become the healthiest and best version of themselves.

Sebastian Rusk

Well, thank you. Thank you for all the kind words and the backstory. Wow. Well, I don't know where to begin, but I was just a traditional pharmacist. Like, you know, you go to CVS or Walgreens and you see the person in the white coat handing out the pills. That was me. Um, I worked at hospitals, legal drug dealer. Yeah, but I was a legal drug dealer. Um, and, I don't even know really how I got into pharmacy. People always ask, like, why did you become a pharmacist? And I always was drawn to helping people. I studied psychology. I have a degree in psychology as well. And I was always really interested in, like, the chemistry and how drugs work and how they work on the brain. So I was just always, you know, drawn to that that field. But never it never really set well with me how Every time I would see a patient at the pharmacy, they were picking up like a whole cartload of meds, but yet they were still sick. They were, I saw shopping carts full of very inflammatory foods. And I just felt like there was just something not right about the whole scenario. You know, every pill that they were taking, it seemed to be accompanied with another pill that was just covering up the side effects of one pill. So it just it just felt counterintuitive and it just felt, you know, not not right. but I kind of just, you know, was unfulfilled in my job, you know, it was the only way I knew how to make money. So I just, you know, kept at it. And it wasn't until I actually got sick myself in 2020 that I really started being like, no, this, this is wrong. All of this stuff that I was taught is just not, Not for me. It's not my trajectory of what I'm supposed to do in this world. And also for my own health. It's not for me. So I was diagnosed with something called Cushing's disease, which is actually pretty rare. I mean, I should have realized back then, you know, that this didn't sound right, but I was experiencing really high levels of cortisol and they couldn't figure out what was wrong. And, you know, nowadays, if you hear about cortisol, you know, like I feel like holistic and alternative medicine is more trending and people are becoming more aware. But back then, I was told by my endocrinologist that it was due to a what she called a functioning tumor, which was a tumor that they said was like basically microscopic, like smaller than the size of a pencil tip. And it was causing my body to to pump out these extra hormones and it was causing like a cascade effect. And they told me that the only option for me to get better was to have a surgery to remove this like microscopic tumor. And I remember at the time thinking like, wow, what? Like I have a tumor. I have a brain tumor. Like that's what's causing all of these issues. And they're like, yeah, you just got to do the surgery. And it has a 98% cure rate. And we have an availability open next week if you want to come in. And at the time, I was just so terrified and scared, you know, hearing the word brain tumor. I was just like, oh my gosh. And I remember the doctor calling me while I was at work. I was at the pharmacy and I just started crying. And she's like, what's wrong with you? Why are you crying? I'm like, you just told me I have a brain tumor. She's like, oh, but it's fine. It's just like a simple surgery. It's a simple resolution. And I was like, but is there any other thing that I could do for this, like diet, lifestyle, like something? And she's like, nope, there's absolutely nothing that can be done except for having this surgery. and you know, there's availability next week, let's do it. And I was like, okay, you know, these are the top endocrinologists in Miami. And then it was the top neurosurgeon, one of the top neurosurgeons in the country. So I kind of just was trusting these people blindly, did no research, didn't have time to process it. I was just, I said yes, because I thought that was the option and the best solution for me. So I scheduled the surgery. Had the surgery. I was a week at UMH in the neuro ICU, had to take off six weeks from work. And then after the surgery, they were like, well, you know, your cortisol levels are not really trending as we thought. And, you know, maybe the surgery was unsuccessful. We have to wait and see. And I was like, what? After I just spent all of this, I mean, forget the money. after I spent all this money, time off of work, all the pain that I went through for them to tell me like, oh, it might not have been successful. And so months later, my endocrinologist told me that she believes the surgery was not done properly. And that's why my cortisol levels were not trending down as anticipated. And I was just so confused and frustrated and that I was just like, you know what? Forget these people. I started doing a bunch of research. I started studying everything nutrition, Ayurvedic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, supplements, lifestyle modifications. I became just like engulfed in this. I studied this every day, whether it was podcasts, books, I was doing online certifications for Ayurveda. And I just did it to heal myself. I had no plan to make a business out of this. And I started sharing on social media things, tips to help people out. Like here, here's some healthy tips. Food is medicine, healthy supplements, ways to lower stress naturally. And people started reaching out to me and said, Hey, you know, I would pay you. to tell me what to eat. And I'm like, sure, like, I could do that in my sleep. Like, I love this. I'm like a nutrition, like, I can blindly tell you exactly what to eat. And I was like, you want to pay me for that? Like, I was never an entrepreneur, so it was actually kind of a big test in my, you know, what I was worth. Like, myself, where people are like, oh, how much do you charge for your services? And I'm like, I've always worked corporate. I don't know. Let's... I don't know where to start, but that's how my business started, kind of organically. People liked my services. They had good results and weight loss, improved sleep and improved anxiety, improved lab markers. So they started recommending me to their friends. Then my little business bloomed from there. And now I see clients all over the world. And I I focus more now on hormone health and gut health. And I get people on protocols and just get them feeling their self again. And someone that I wish I had back then when I didn't know any better and just you know, was doing what I thought was best at the time was, you know, Western medicine, traditional medicine, get a surgery, take a pharmaceutical drug. And so many of my clients, especially females, It's the same vicious cycle. They just get put on antibiotics and birth control to regulate their, you know, their acne, their gut health, their hormonal imbalances, and it's just completely wrecking havoc on their bodies. So my goal is to help people live better, healthier, happier lives without using pharmaceuticals and hopefully without having to get surgery, so.

Yeah, I mean, we live in this world where here, you know, here, take this pill. call me in the morning, let me know how it goes. And it's just masking the underlying issue. Our bodies are designed to heal themselves. And modern medicine, it doesn't really allow that to play out the way that it should. So when you started to go do all this work, you were able to heal yourself post-surgery and everything as far as everything else you were experiencing. And when they said it was done wrong or incorrectly or.

Yeah. I mean, it's everything holistic, you know, in this world, everyone wants like to Amazon prime their health, like, Oh, let's just take a pill. We want to lose weight. Let's inject those Zempik or let's get on a crash diet. But that's doesn't, that's doesn't help anything for longevity. That's just like a quick fix. That's like you said, a bandaid solution. So it did take some time, you know, it wasn't quick, but. Once I started eating right, I started lowering my stress levels. It was like a whole mind, body, soul transformation. And it took time, but yes, like now I have more energy than I ever had before. My hormones are more in balance than they ever have been. I'm happier. I'm healthier. I'm, you know, there's, it's like night and day compared to what I was going through in 2021. So.

I mean, you did the work though. That that's the most important part. You were willing to go, I'm going to figure this out and I'm going to do the work that's required on me to get wherever it is that I need to go and get near where I need to be. Little did you know, people were noticing that noticing the transformation and noticing the difference and noticing how you show up. And we're like, wait a second. And I think that's a natural progression of human behavior where we see somebody else. Let's just call it winning in life. Because if you are healthy, you are winning. When they see that, people wanna be around people who are winning, people who are making good, healthy, strong decisions, people who are improving their lives and going from where they were to where they currently are in a completely different space and realm. So I absolutely love that. So you mentioned something about Ayurveda. I had a girl on the show years ago who I met, because she was a sideline reporter for the Dodgers with Fox Sports, oddly enough. And I had just followed her online and that was it. And when she stopped being a sports reporter, she got into holistic health because she had actually been able to heal herself through means of Ayurveda. And I had not dug deep into that outside of our conversation. This was probably 10 years ago, but that's something that she actually discovered and found and allowed her to heal herself because she went years and years and years and doctors since this and that, and they could not figure out what's air quotes wrong with her. And once she was able to really go in and figure out a more holistic approach to it, she was able to solve that problem. And she went on to do great things as well and to help people do exactly what she was able to do. But let's talk a little bit about what, you know, what that looks like on here. Let's, let's, let's help everybody understand what, Ayurveda is sounds like a, like a nineties rock band, but, um, I know it's extremely effective. I've heard it several, several times before. I just haven't spent a lot of time to really unpack it.

Yeah. And when I say that I heal myself, it wasn't alone. Like I had help. And one of the, one of the ways I had help was through Ayurveda actually traveled to Southeast Asia in 2022. And I met with holistic doctors there. And that's where I actually was introduced to Ayurveda. So Ayurveda means the Ayurveda is the science of life or the knowledge of life. So actually, like how yoga has become mainstream in the US, I predict that in a couple of years, Ayurveda will be mainstream because that's the original medicine. Like 5000 years ago, that's the medicine that was practiced in India. So it's like, you know, when you hear things like Ayurveda and Panchakarma in the U.S., people are like, what the hell are you talking about? But I've marked my words in a few years, it's going to be like synonymous, just like yoga. Yeah, it's Ayurveda. So because it holds so much wisdom and truth. So Ayurveda, like the name suggests the science of life. It's like kind of like a mind, body, soul. Like they see it's like the original holistic medicine. Like they see the patient as a whole. And when you go to an Ayurvedic doctor, you don't go to like a gastroenterologist, a dermatologist, a gynecologist, like you just see one doctor and they will prescribe yoga to you. They will prescribe meditation to you. They will prescribe herbs and they will find out the imbalances and they help bring your body back to equilibrium. It's all about like toxin removal and it's all about balancing the mind, body and spirit. so that you are a balanced person and any of these toxicities in your body or any of these imbalances will actually get a root cause. they'll actually find the root cause and actually help you heal at a root cause level. Instead of just like putting a Band-Aid solution, like, oh, take this pill or get this surgery. Like they'll actually find long lasting results because they actually find the root cause, not just treating with a Band-Aid solution. So Ayurveda is amazing. I'm actually traveling to Southeast Asia next month to dive deeper into Ayurveda. So interesting that you brought that up. I actually just booked my flight last night.

Love that excited to hear about how that goes as well. I mean, it's, I think most people are terrified because we live in this where, you know, everyone's on autopilot, you know, we're just autopilot slash survival mode, which is just a crazy place to live. So, um, and, and to be able to, I was introduced to the work, I call it the work in general, which is just going in and being able to literally. unfuck yourself, which most people are not willing to go and do. And I was introduced to it blindsided. I had no idea what I was getting into, but he. here we are and years later was introduced to effigy breathwork and effigy breathwork really helped me really go in. For those of you wondering what effigy breathwork is, it's pretty much a 45 minute yoga class where you hyperventilate with a, with a, with a blindfold on and some crazy music playing and you just figure it out and you actually end up in some, in some form of a psychedelic trip because of your, uh, of your breath. But I've been able to see a significant difference in my life in several Because of that, I think the main thing that shows up when we decide that we want to heal ourselves is our level of awareness and self-awareness. Because self-awareness and our level of awareness, there's, first of all, there's a gigantic deficit in the world for self-awareness. Just look around. But when we start to be aware, then we're, because I remember, I never forget asking my breath work coach, So I feel like I've lost a couple pounds since I've done like we did a ceremony and we did, you know, I've been going to breath work and she said, well, when we're more aware, we're more aware of the things that we're putting in our mouth and the things that we're consuming on a daily basis. So yeah, it could relate to losing a couple extra pounds or whatever, you know, whatever it may be, but you know, I'm, I'm eternally grateful for, um, for, for the opportunity to step into a different version of myself and heal. Um, and it's become really my, my core message of helping people, I do it through podcasting. I help people step into a completely different version of themselves, whether it's getting over fear of whatever it may be or repeating patterns or wherever it might be. But, you know, when it comes to, I think they all really work together. It's this, you know, this, when, when awareness shows up, we start to get really curious. And when we get really curious and we take action on that curiosity and our awareness, things start to really, really shift drastically. Has that been your experience as well?

Oh yeah, definitely. And I love that you bring up breathwork because the breath is so powerful. Like it is so healing. The first time I ever did breathwork was actually in Bali and I was like, what is this? had physical and like you said, it was kind of like a psychedelic experience. And I had all these emotions come up and I had like physical symptom, you know, I had like the tetany and I was like, it really piqued my interest. I'm like, wow, because I'm a scientist, like I have a scientist mind. So I was like, I didn't know like, I like you can get all these crazy effects just from breathing. So that really got me into, you know, looking into that more when I came back to the US, I started doing it on a regular basis and that has profound effects for your mind and body, you know, and it's, it's an amazing thing to get into the practice of practicing some sort of breath work every morning that will change your life.

Yeah. I mean, I never thought in a million years I would be able to meditate and I can, I'm not as frequent and disciplined with it as I can be, but in the event you were like, it's time to meditate. I'm like, Let's roll never in a million years. I would want to do it. I would want to wiggle and giggle. That's what I would want to do when it's time. But my as my breath work practitioner would always say stop avoiding laughter is a form of avoiding. Wiggling is a form of avoiding stay in there. Like what does she always tell me? Stay in it. Stay in it.

Let's do the work. I wish I would have gotten into meditation years ago. That probably would have changed the whole trajectory of my life. So last year I started meditating actually for the first time and I do transcendental meditation. So I really recommend that.

Yeah, that's real intense.

Well, it's actually great because for people who feel like they can't meditate, it kind of offers you like a structured program.

Isn't it like three hours long though?

No, it's 20 minutes. Technically, you're supposed to do 20 minutes twice a day, 20 minutes upon waking and 20 minutes in the afternoon. So it's life changing. I highly recommend it to anyone. They have transcendental meditation facilitators, I believe in every city. There's a few here in South Florida. But it's a it's an amazing practice. And it's amazing to for people who really feel like they can't meditate and don't know how to get started. I highly recommend it.

I'll never forget, I just told a story a couple of weeks ago. My friend Monica first introduced me to the world of meditating because I had shared that like, I just want to wiggle and giggle. And she's like, why don't you meet me at the beach next Tuesday at 7 a.m. And I was like, cool, I'm a morning person. I can dig a sunrise. She's like, yeah, beach is a good place for us to start. And we get out there and we're sitting and we're chatting and this out there. She's like, okay, cool. Let's do some work. And we start to meditate. And again, here we are wiggling and giggling again. And finally, she looked at me and she said, Sebastian, I need three minutes out of you.

Okay.

And I'm like, all right, cool. Let's go more, more wiggling, more giggling. And she said, um, all right, listen, man, we're not leaving until you give me three uninterrupted minutes of meditating. And I'm like, I am so grateful for that morning because still, and it was never became, it never gets easier. We just get better at the practice on what we're being able to go do. But if I, light some sage, some Palo Santo, turn on my TV that has like a blue light behind it. Throw on the meditation mix from Spotify. Like if you're listening to this right now, this is literally how easy it is. Like you light a candle, like whatever you gotta do to like set a vibe in your own space. I do it in my, my, my living room, pull out a yoga mat, pull up Spotify, type in, uh, uh, uh, meditation music. There's a playlist out there. You'll be, you'll be wildly surprised. Music is a huge, huge component. to creating an experience and being able to go, what we refer to as going in, uh, which is going into ourselves out of our mind and into our body, uh, through this experience, I can literally go do that and drop in and I'm good for a minimum of at least 15 or 20 minutes, which is a modern day miracle. I'm like, what I couldn't do three minutes before. And I get up and it is always an emotional experience. I always do the Wim Hof. Um, I'm not, I haven't done a bunch of his stuff, but you do the whole, um, I think it's like 30 breaths in and out. And then the last breath you exhale and you hold it. And if you hold it, then it's almost starts to feel like the beginning process of breath work. Sometimes I'll do a little mini breath work session as well, where you just start to feel the tingling in your hands, et cetera. But it really starts to unlock you internally as well. Cause I find myself in a deep emotional state. I'm a, I'm a crier anyway, so I got no problem. Anyway, get it out. Y'all get it out. But,

I love it.

Yeah, spit it out. Spit it out. You know what? I went through a course in 2016 and we beat on pillows as part of one of the exercises. And I'll never forget the instructor going, get this shit out because it will fucking kill you. Literally. And I never forgot that. And now I've continued to do the work all these years later. The meditation, it really is where I find myself, I'm fired up, I'm wound tight, I'm on a good one for the day. I wanna just freaking punch people in the throat. Being able to go, it's time to get on the mat. It's time to get on the mat. And we literally set ourselves free by being able to sit and invest a few minutes into just ourselves on our system. It's incredible. I mean, again, back to your original point, we have everything that we need in order to heal ourselves.

And I love that you brought up that you like to cry because, first of all, I love when men admit that because in the society, men are like macho men. And I was like macho for years. I did not cry for years. I really feel like I got myself sick because I was, I would suppress all of my emotions. Like, I don't know if you've read the book, The Body Keeps the Score.

No, but I have it in my queue. It's funny you say that.

So it is so real when you hold on to all of these emotions and you bury them. I was like, had the mentality like, oh, suck it up, you know, just, you know, push, push it away. You know, don't deal head on with emotions. If you just. push down the emotions and you don't let it come out to the surface, it'll literally manifest in your body as disease. So it is so important to process these emotions, to recognize them when they come up and do whatever it is you need to do. Maybe that's therapy, maybe that's breath work, maybe that's yoga, whatever it is, but you need to process those emotions. Anything that you just push down will just manifest as a disease eventually in your body.

I just told a friend that yesterday, what we avoid chases us. What we resist persists. That's it. Right. Absolutely. Um, what we resist persist is a little more of a common term that some people have heard. But when you tell someone what we avoid chases us, like nobody wants something chasing them at all. And it really does help wake people up, you know, to, you know, to, to, to that reality on, on where it's all at. But, you know, I think the work as a general premise of just the work of healing, healing ourselves, healing our mind, our body. I think it, you know, once we are, once we've been introduced to the opportunity of healing ourselves and we are to start to put that into practice, it is, it is, it now becomes our responsibility to share it with the world. And it's not by calling our friends and our family and going, Hey, you need to start doing this. It's by leading by example. and showing up and going, you know, there's something different about you. I don't know what it is, but she's got this glow to her and there's just something different. And I want to know more about it. And when we do that, it invites people into an opportunity to be able to get in there. And and I've been able to have that have never in a million years that I think because I own a podcast agency and I'm a speaker and a comedian, I'm going to take the the hard work that I've done on me to heal myself emotionally and thank God, not physically, just emotionally today. back to what we're doing with the podcast. I was like, I had a client call me a couple of years ago and say, Sebastian, I want you to know that what you do has very little to do with podcasting and everything to do with life. And I was like, really? She called me from a personal development event at a seminar she was at on a Saturday night at six o'clock bawling her eyes out. And I'm like, oh my God, are you okay? And she's like, I'm great. But remember you, you asked me last on last week's call about She was supposed to be in an event in Dallas that I was gonna be on. She's like, I don't know if we're gonna be able to make it because my nanny can't come with us. And I was like, your nanny? So the nanny just stays home. And she's like, we can't do that. I'm like, so who's this nanny? She's like, well, it's my husband's personal assistant. And I said, so wait a second. So personal assistant and nanny that you trust with your children already, but only if they travel with you. How much longer are you gonna continue to live in that story? And is it serving you? And it really stuck with her. And I didn't think that it was. I just was, first of all, I was like, was kind of taken back by it. But she ends up at this event and she calls me crying her eyes out six o'clock on a Saturday night. I'm like, Oh my God, are you okay? I'm like, we're gonna get the podcast launched. Don't worry. She's like, no, listen, hear me out. Like it just clicked. My mom died. My grandmother stepped in and took over. And then after my grandmother died, I carried the guilt that my grandmother somehow put her life on hold to come in and step in and take care of me. And I go, yeah, none of that's true. Huh? She goes, no, not at all. I go, so if grandma's looking down at you right now, what would she want you to do right now? She wants you to do exactly what you're doing right now, which is just work through the bullshit story that we all create in our minds. That's not even true. So when that happened and arrived there, I know I kind of got off on a tangent here with this, but when we do the work and we heal ourselves and we start to put it in play in our life, just like you, I mean, you're a living example of this as well, too. Like you're like, what? I thought I was a pharmacist when the world now I'm a holistic health coach who's healed myself and helps other people just make good decisions, step into that version. So it's just wild that it's a true testament to this life experience of being a link in the chain.

Really, it's a wild ride, but sometimes you just have to listen to your intuition and just follow the breadcrumbs and your life can take some unexpected turns and in amazing ways that you would never expect it.

I love that. I love that. My sister reminded me of a quote from Wynonna Judd that she said, that gut feeling is God's whisper. And, uh, I always think about that like that. No, I just had a nudge. I'm like, I bet, I bet you did. Our intuition really leads us. We have all the answers we need. We literally have an internal compass that tells us exactly where to go, whether we listen to it or not is entirely up to us. Well, Jolie, I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I knew that I would. It's been so exciting to learn more about your journey. I look forward to continuing to to keep updated with where you're at, with what you're doing with your business and how you're helping people. Any final thoughts for our listeners based on our conversation today or what you got going on?

I would love to be able to help people. I would love to be the person to help others, the person I needed back in 2020, 2021, back when I was so lost, so confused, had no idea how to heal myself. Like, I would love to be able to guide people. And that's what I've made a living doing now, guiding people to just their best lives, you know, feeling completely holistically healed and not having to depend on pharmaceuticals and jump on some fad diet or start injecting Ozempic to lose weight. Like I really want to educate people just to like for longevity and optimal health. Um, so that's just, that's been my mission. So if anybody wants to learn more, they can visit my website. Uh, I have a website, Dr. Jolie Mestre.com, or they can follow me on Instagram by the same name, Dr. Jolie Mestre. And I actually just started a YouTube channel. So Dr. Jolie on, on YouTube.

We'll be sure to include both of those links in the show notes. That's the description of this podcast episode, in case you're wondering what in the world a show note is. So make it easy for you. Just grab your phone or wherever you're listening to this right now, and just click on the link that's within the description on here. And you can, well, just like that connect with Jolie. Thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Keep doing what you're doing. It clearly matters. And I'm inspired by our conversation.

Thank you so much. I love talking to you. Thank you. Have a great day.

Thanks so much. Until next time, friends. Take care. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. We sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.