How to Reverse Cardiovascular Aging Naturally | Dr. Melanie Icard, Ep. 207

Jennifer Norman:
What if the biggest threat to your heart isn't cholesterol or genetics, but the stress, unresolved trauma, and the silent weight of living a life in overdrive? Today's conversation may just change the way you think about heart health forever. Here's what most people don't realize. You can actually reverse aspects of cardiovascular and metabolic aging through the powerful root level shifts that we're going to talk about today. My guest today is Dr. Melanie Icard, known to many as Dr. Mel. A naturopathic doctor and the creator of the Biohacked Heart Blueprint, a revolutionary holistic system designed to reverse cardiovascular risk at its root.

Jennifer Norman:
With her years of clinical experience, Dr. Mel integrates science, spirituality, and nervous system healing to address what conventional medicine often overlooks. Her work isn't just about adding years to your life. It's about bringing life back into your years. So in this episode, we're going to explore the real root causes of cardiovascular disease, why your nervous system might be the missing link, and how you can begin to feel younger, stronger, and more fully alive. Starting today. If you've ever felt like your body is trying to tell you something, then this conversation might just be be what your heart desires.

Jennifer Norman:
Welcome to the stage, Dr. Mel. I'm so grateful you're here.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Thanks for having me.

Jennifer Norman:
I think what you're going to share today is going to be surprising to a lot of people because we've been taught that heart disease is mostly about our diet. Cholesterol, maybe genetics. But from your work, that's, like, only part of the story. So what are the true root causes of cardiovascular disease that most people are missing?

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Yeah, I think there's always stress. It's always stress. And I think when we think about genetics and, like, maybe there are genetic things that can cause cardiovascular disease, but it's much more nurture over nature. Right. So we have a lot of control. So I find, like, maybe families eat the same kinds of food or we deal with stress in similar ways, which maybe aren't as healthy for us. And that's where we get the this runs in the family thing. And the cool thing is that we can kind of take control of that and not only improve our health, but, like, pivot and change the health legacy for the rest of your family moving forward, too.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
So, yeah, so the huge one is stress. It's always at the beginning of everything. And that's easier said than done. Right. Like, hey, why don't you be less stressed? Yeah, it was that easy. Right? So.

Jennifer Norman:
Right.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
We always need to work on these things. And we can't ignore relaxation. I find that almost everyone I talk to, when I ask them what are they doing to relax, I get a lot of blank stares. You know, they haven't really thought about relaxing. So even planting that seed. Seed. Oh, maybe I should be doing something to relax.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Inviting that into our life. But the biggest thing that probably got its stage stolen by cholesterol is really glucose and insulin. Glucose and insulin are, I would say, are more related to cardiovascular damage, metabolic damage, than cholesterol. And so from my point of view, cholesterol's been a bit of a distraction, right? And now I'm pretty sure your audience knows that all medications have side effects. It's not just a neutral trade off. Right. And so with the cholesterol, people are learning that all of our hormones are kind of built on a backbone of cholesterol. So maybe squishing down that cholesterol number isn't in our best interest.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
When our brain loves cholesterol and we make vitamin D out of cholesterol, and what we're finding when we step back is actually the. The people that have lower cholesterols are having more deaths overall from all causes and more deaths by cancer. So if you want to nerd out, which I don't. I don't think it's for the sightings, but, like, cholesterol is a stress repair molecule, right? And our liver, which is our organ, is making most of it up 80% is what they say. And so why is our liver making this cholesterol? And. And why does my body feel like it needs a stress repair molecule? Would be a better question than, like, hey, let's squish down this cholesterol. And thinking that perhaps big pharma knows more about how much cholesterol you need than your own liver.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow, you've just said a few things that I think are gonna rock everybody's boat. Because I mean, I've definitely been into the nerding out aspects of health and longevity and wellness. It's always seems like there's a finding in terms of what we've known about. All of a sudden it's reversed.

Jennifer Norman:
It's like, okay, cholesterol is the villain. Let's do everything that we can to lower our cholesterol. No, wait a minute. Cholesterol is not the villain. Everybody's like, well, maybe it's like the good and the bad cholesterol. So get rid of the bad cholesterol.

Jennifer Norman:
It's like, no, wait a minute. We actually have to make sure that we're not reducing everything because it throws other systems out of whack. And that does become the issue, is that we forget about the system of the body as a whole when we are just, like, trying to focus on getting one thing down.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
It's just way too myopic, way too narrow. So let's talk about this in a bit for a second. Now that we are. Some people's eyes are wide open and they're like, okay, wait a minute. Okay. Cholesterol isn't the enemy. I just have to really think more holistically about things. What does the glucose, as you were saying, have to do with it and the insulin and all of that stuff in terms of heart health?

Dr. Melanie Icard:
It's really, It's. Well, I mean, glycation, you'll hear that term thrown around and that you don't want glycation in your blood vessels, right. Which is basically. That sounds like glucose, right? So that's just kind of like I, I just. People think about. It's like the sugars, like getting coated in your arteries and making them stiff and inflamed, Right. But whatever, wherever glucose goes, insulin's gonna follow, right? And insulin.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And we don't hate any of these hormones because without them we're dead. Right. Everything is orchestra that's running all the time. But when we get high in insulin, which. Which we often do, it's going to do fluid retention, right. So we're swollen. That could raise our blood pressure, that could damage our arteries. Right.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
It's going to do fat storage, which we all hate. Right. If you've got a belly and you can't figure out you're doing the gym, you're doing all these things. I would check a fasting insulin, and the insulin actually goes to the liver and says, hey, let's make some cholesterol. That's actually the pathway. Right? And the cool thing is insulin and glucose, we can get a lot of control over that, right? We have a lot of control over that with lifestyle. We don't need any. We don't even need meds.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Like, in my experience, people very easily reverse their pre diabetes, bump that diabetes down to pre diabetes, and. And you can unwind this. And it just takes a few things. So, like with the cholesterol thing, like, a lot of things, we just got wrong for a long time. I don't know how old you are. I'm going to be 44 this year. And when I grew up, were terrified of fat. We were terrified.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
I was afraid to eat butter most of my life.

Jennifer Norman:
Margarine, sure.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
I was like, why don't we have I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. I'm like, what's going on here? And we were terrified of fat. But now we're finding out. And I, I didn't find out till I went to naturopathic medical school that we need fat to feel full. And when we went fat fear of fat, fat free. Everybody got fat and got diabetic, you know, so we got that wrong. So sometimes we get things wrong.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
So the fat fear was one of them. And I think everyone's going to find out. The cholesterol fear is another one that we just kind of got wrong. And it just. These things take decades, as you can see, with like the fat fear thing to, to unwind. And I still have conversations with patients about this every day because they're afraid of fat and they're afraid of salt. So I even have a doctor that went to my program and he had a heart attack, did the conventional method, cardiac rehab, like the whole thing. He was, in the nicest way possible, a hot mess.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
When he called me, he had uncontrollable blood pressure. We found out he was pre diabetic when he came to work with me, he was having palpitations, anxiety. He would literally pass out sometimes. And he followed the conventional advice, which was like to do a low fat, high carb diet. And he's such, he's like such a good, like a good boy. He's following directions. He's doing what he's told. And I said, well, how.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
What happened when you did that in cardiac rehab? Said, well, my blood pressure got worse and my blood sugar got worse, right? And then. And he was kind of a metabolic and cardiovascular mess when he started. I almost thought, oh, geez, should we, you know, should we even work with this guy? But he was so willing to do the work right, because he is like, like ideal coachable client. And I was shocked that he. And he showed up to every client. He didn't miss a call, he didn't miss anything. Like he was serious. And I was shocked that in three weeks of this simple just.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
He hadn't even started that much therapies. His blood pressure had stabilized and his cardiologist had weaned him off of one of his meds.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And this is like, simple things that everyone can do, like, we all have to detox, we all have to disinflame like them we're eating too often is another thing, Right. Like we all grew up with the three meals a day plus snacks. I mean, probably. Right? And what I found and what we're all finding out now is that that is also a setup for insulin resistance. So old advice was like, if someone tended to get low blood sugar, was like, just feed them, just feed them, just feed them. But that sets them up for insulin resistance and later diabetes.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Because when the food pyramid, which they just changed, I was kind of shocked about that too. I was like, oh, but it was grains. It was all grains at the bottom, right? So if we're eating grains six times a day, our glucose and insulin is going up.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And then it's going to go down. Because it's kind of like a pendulum. It's like what goes up must go down. And even if you're not even insulin resistant or pre diabetic, what a blessing. But those peaks and dips, that's going to damage your arteries. So even if. So even thin fit people, everybody, we all need to get a window in on what's going on with my glucose and insulin because we literally don't know until we look. We're just driving blind and we think, oh, this is fine.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Or this is fine. And guaranteed 100 time percent of the time. People get surprised when they start monitoring their continuous glucose monitoring because there's things that they thought were good for them that are not agreeing with their system metabolically at all.

Jennifer Norman:
It's so true.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And that's how we get those behavior changes. Cause if you see it, then you get it, right? If you see it, then you. Then in real time, then you get it and you make the behavior changes.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow, audience, we've thrown a lot of things at you right now and so just kind of breaking it down. Of course, Dr. Mel started with stress and a lot of you are probably like, good luck. Everything is hopeless then because I can't let go of the stress. I'm just stressed all the time. What, Dr. Mel, do you recommend for people who just feel that they can't get rid of stress or they just live stressful lives then? And if they feel that they're doomed because they just can't get rid of the stress?

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Well, I totally get that. I totally get that. What we have everybody do is positive psychology homework. So it's really simple. So every morning you think of three things that you're grateful for. If you live with other people, you can do that together. I recommend you switch it up it can't always be your dog, your house and your spouse because that kind of, that's not working the gratitude muscle that well.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Right.

Jennifer Norman:
And try to think of different things each time.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Yeah. Be creative. And there's different things every day. And then at the end of the day you can think of three things that went well. Because even on the worst day you made it home, maybe you got to eat. Then as you get better, you can take things that could have been perceived as negative and turn them around. Right. Like oh, we went out to eat and the waitress was of kind cranky, but we turned her around by being sweet to her.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And that went well. And just these things, these little things help wash our brain to be more positive and have gratitude. And it sounds super nerdy, but we, it works. And we literally heal better and exist better in these states.

Jennifer Norman:
It's true. Optimism is a tremendous placebo. It's like mind over matter. Things that you can do at just like those little things that you catch yourself. If it's the, like the subtle negative talk or the self deprecation, like just noticing and becoming aware of those things can go such a long way because a lot of times if we don't keep up with that, then it's overwhelming. We feel this anxiousness. We feel like everything is bad. But really if we stop and pause and we take a look at the blue sky, we take a look at a flower, we see just like the nature, which is like the best healer that there is.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Absolutely.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. If we notice those sorts of things, like we can lift ourselves out of a lot of the tumultuousness that goes on in our minds, which are full, and then turn it into mindfulness.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Getting outside in nature is key. If you live by a forest or a beach, if you can walk barefoot at least once a week, and even if you live in a city, go to the park, notice the ducks, things like that is really healing.

Jennifer Norman:
True.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And one of the things too is like when, when you do a detox and you disinflame your whole system. This is kind of like a hard reset too, mentally and emotionally. You haven't done it. I encourage you to do a detox. And you'll see that because a big part of anxiety and depression is the inflammation. And that is, that's that small part where we see that sometimes the SSRIs are working is because they're all a little anti inflammatory. But a detox or certain anti inflammatory herbs and things like that and just that can reset the system.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
So if you ever feel like you're really stuck in a funk? Even if you're able to fast, just if you're metabolically stable enough to do like a three day water fast, this is the best mental, emotional and physiological reset that I mean it just, I've seen it totally changed people in three days. For the better.

Jennifer Norman:
Minding the environment, as you said, getting out in nature, thinking about just like getting those peaceful moments into your day. A lot of those things are small but can help to just habit stack in the right direction, I think because a lot of times when people are stressed, then they'll reach for the bag of cookies or they'll do the flopping on the couch. I don't feel like working out or even going out for a walk. And so the habits that we start to produce are those that are more escapism in the negative way or in the not healthy way. They might be a panacea for the moment, but... And not to say that we can't have those either, but it's just like minding how often, I suppose because sometimes we need to Netflix and chill. But yeah, just minding what the day is actually looking like and maybe even starting a journal and seeing what your days as they stack up are actually doing because you might actually surprise yourself.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Yeah. And just making, having the discipline to maybe commit to one or two of these things if it's new for 30 days until it becomes just a habit, it right. Just kind of pushing through until it becomes a habit. I always try to overshoot. Like I like movement is great. Right. Being stress when that and a lot of people go to the gym or they surf or whatever they do. But I always say, oh, I like to, I'm going to go every day.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
But then life happens. So then if, when I make it four days a week, I feel happy. I always overshoot with like what I want to do because if I, if I just shot for four, I'd probably go twice a week and then be disappointed.

Jennifer Norman:
Now you've also mentioned and I think this is going to be a bit relieving for a lot of people because if they've said, oh, my father died of a heart attack or my grandfather died of a heart attack and my uncle's got heart disease and they all, they feel that it is genetic. They feel like it's running... And so that's also its own sense of stress is that, oh my gosh, I have to be careful. I have to go on a statin or something. And instantly they're kind of on that medical wheel. And so there are alternatives or potentially alternatives.

Jennifer Norman:
And by the way, I do want to say that this podcast is not about medical advice. We don't treat or diagnose or cure any diseases or whatnot. My usual medical disclaimer.

Jennifer Norman:
But it's thinking about some of those more holistic aspects of the things that you can do, which are what Dr. Mel said at the beginning, which was more nurture, which is essentially what you're doing with your lifestyle versus nature, which is your genetics. So, yeah, let's talk about some other holistic aspects of helping to really think about heart health and that emotional. Emotional state and that neurological state, those things that happen within our nervous system and how we might be able to recognize those triggers and what we might be able to do about it.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Yeah, I mean, a real simple thing is, if people aren't, they might want to lean into adding some magnesium into their routine because we're all kind of deficient in magnesium and that kind of just that.

Jennifer Norman:
Actually. Is there a kind of magnesium that you recommend?

Dr. Melanie Icard:
I do have one, and I have a favorite one that I've probably used for like 12 or 13 years. So I like a magnesium glycinate primarily. And that's very relaxing. Right? So it's going to relax you. It's going to relax tight muscles, it's going to relax vessels, people that tend to have high blood pressure. And it's nice before bed because then we sleep better, too.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
We're all deficient in it. It's a Cofactor in all these reactions in our body. And I like one by Biotics called MG Zyme. And so that's what I usually put my clients on because each little capsule is only 100 milligrams. So it's. So it's easy to increase your dose or find the perfect dose for you.

Jennifer Norman:
How would one know where to start as far as, like a dosage?

Dr. Melanie Icard:
I usually have everyone start at 300 milligrams. That's a good, like, basic dose. And then let's say, like, if you kind of get a tight neck or like tight shoulder, so then you take it and you go, okay, like, yeah, but I still feel pretty tight. Then I would try four, which would be 400. And basically you can increase the magnesium, this type of magnesium, until you get loose stool. Right. Because when the body says, okay, I'm saturated, then it's going to have loose stool. So then you go, oh, well, five gave me loose stool. Maybe I'm a four girl.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And you can kind of find, like they call it titrate to bowel tolerance. The magnesium and 300 is good for almost everybody. But honestly, I've had people that have needed 1200, you know, so it just depends on how, like, tight everything is in your baseline.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, I don't think that people really think about trauma as being related to cardiovascular disease, but it is all about that inflammation that we were just describing and all of the effects, that cascade that happens in the body that causes all of that. And that chronic aspect of reliving trauma and not having, Resolving, having resolved trauma can essentially impact a lot of parts of our system, not just the heart. But can you talk a little bit further about that, with respect?

Dr. Melanie Icard:
So I talk to people every day that either they're scared because of a family history or something has come up, or maybe they've even had a major event. And I would say eight times out of 10, it's always at this climactic point of, like, just things kept stacking, and that's when it's like. It's just the stress level kept stacking, and that's when. And that's when the major event typically happens. And it's a lot of men. It's not that women don't get these cardiovascular things, but it's a lot of men. And I would say there's kind of personality type, because it's not just your cartoon hothead, angry cardiac personality. You know, have the high blood pressure that is a type, but there's another type, and I call it the stoic.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
So they're this person where they're the caretaker, they're the center of the wheel, and there's all these spokes that come to them, and they handle it like a pro. And they're not angry. They're not yelling at people. But is stress and mental gymnastics happening? It sure is. And then that seems to kind of stack up in the arteries, too. And especially with guys. But we all do it, though, too.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Maybe you're not even reliving the trauma, but you're just kind of stacking it over on the side and it's still there. And that's where these patterns of living, where we just are on the go all the time.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Where I've noticed this pattern where we've just had our foot on the gas for decades to the point where we don't know how to take it off. Like, we don't even need to have it on the gas anymore. Even people who are retired, but it's like they still don't know how to slow down. And it was. I think the first time I heard it was about 10 years ago. But let me know if you've heard this. It was like the busyness. Being busy is a trauma response.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Like. And I was like, wow, You think I'm busy? I'm being productive. But when I heard that and I stepped back because it's like, it was described to me like. Because it's almost like we all have our inner child.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And maybe this inner child, but I've got to please people to be loved and taken care of. Or if. If I keep moving, then they can't catch me, you know, or whatever it is that there's all these different, like, uncreated conscious trauma patterns that keep us, like, moving all the time. And perhaps when we were little, it helped us survive our environment or whatever it is, but then it gets to a point where we don't know how to turn it off. And it's causing this inflammation and this metabolic chaos and damaging our blood vessels.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And what I've found is that it's. It's almost. I call it like an overachiever chronic stress metabolic syndrome. Because these people look pretty good. They're trying. It's not like they're hitting the drive through every day like they're trying to eat whole foods. They're even maybe muscular and everything. But then when I pull the labs, like, it's like, the labs don't lie. And you can see like, oh, wow, here's another person that's been on for decades, and now the body's sending us a bill.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
So we have to pay it and so we can. There's two ways. You can wait till that bill gets really big, and then, you know, then there's those major events that none of us want to have, or we're worried about having the major event which is going to raise your blood pressure and your blood sugar. Just thinking, you know, just thinking about it and being worried about it. Or the simple thing is to just decide to level up your standard of living and just get them out. Right. Like, what are the things that I can control? Well, we can try to relax. We can do the nature and the gratitude and little things like that and exercise.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And then. And then the physiological stuff is detox. I really find that intermittent fasting is Kind of a non negotiable these days. And Sarcadian living, like going with the sun. So when the sun sets, we really don't want to be working or working out or, or eating food because naturally that's when our hormones want to go with the sun. Like, if you've ever gone camping. I hate camping. I'm such a princess.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
But I've gone in a tent, you know, and when the sun goes down, you're like ripping it up.

Jennifer Norman:
You've camped in a tent?

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And then it's bedtime. Right. Cause it's dark, what are you going to do? And so when the sun comes up, you're like, yeah. Yay. And you. And I think that's how we naturally lived forever before we had all of these lights and all this electricity. And so we've just kind of gone against our nature with all the. Do you really think our ancestors were out eating three meals a day plus snacks while they were hunting and gathering? I don't.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
It just doesn't really make sense. Right.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. They didn't whip out that bar (snack).

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Yeah. And then later with modern living, we have to work on the gut. The gut gets inflamed, especially here in the U.S. I mean, I keep hearing about all how many chemicals they allow into the food supply compared to other countries. That's another discussion. But that's disappointing and we can't ignore that. So we've got to detox more often and we've got to heal the gut. I have all my clients do a gut healing kit once a year because our guts are inflamed.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Right. And so they get leaky and so things leak out of the gut and that. Can you believe it? Inflammation from your gut can actually cause high blood pressure and damage to your blood vessels because it causes systemic inflammation. It's not just like the, like the gut brain connection. There's a gut heart connection too. So these are things with modern living that we just have to do. Like when I first started this, I would just do a lot of education and really try to get people to do a detox. It was like a hard sell.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And they would do it like once a year. But I feel like now in 2026, I, I like all my clients to do a detox quarterly because I find we can do a lot of damage in three months if we're not on it. So just so we have like these little checks and balances. Because if you waited a year, man, a whole lot could happen.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
In a year.

Jennifer Norman:
Can you step us through what a detox looks like, just very like basic, and then also what your gut kit looks like as well. Like, can you describe these things?

Dr. Melanie Icard:
As I've gotten older in, in my career, I tend to lean more herbs. I tend to lean more herbs in lifestyle and I just find that it's, it's more natural and it's very efficient. Right. So with my clients, I always have them start with this herbal detox and it's got moringa in it and green tea, senna and cat's claw, which is an amazing anti inflammatory herb. Right. And the great thing is this is a great place to start because the people feel better right away. They have more energy, their inflammation goes down, their blood pressure improves, their bowel movements are better. But we're not talking about anything chaotic.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
It's just like, oh, that was a good bowel movement. So they're getting these wins right away and it's healthy. And then I give them a list of things I want them to take out of their diet for two weeks.

Jennifer Norman:
So the herbs is an addition to what you're doing and then afterwards you're removing. It's essentially just like an elimination diet.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
If I just hit them with the list, I'm going to get a lot of resistance, right?

Jennifer Norman:
Of course.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
So we start them with the herbal detox. So they feel the wins, right? And so they're like, hey, I'm feeling, hey, I'm grooving. Right. So then I show them the list while they're getting into it because there's always going to be one to five things that they're going to be sad about or want to kind of complain about taking out of their diet.

Jennifer Norman:
Coffee would be mine.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
So it's like, it's. Coffee is a big one. Some people it's alcohol, we take out the wheat, we take out the dairy. Some of the random ones, it's like, like pork, peanuts, obviously sugar. And so, so I just tell them, hey, look at the list. Have your come to Jesus with it, put the date on the calendar. So then you, okay, on this date that's when I'm going to take these things out for two weeks. And that gives you a deeper layer.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
So first you get the herbs and you're feeling good and then you get that deeper layer of detox. And when you take these things out, that's when you might have the pain, right? Because you're taking these out so you might have like kind of heavy headache, like you're walking through the mud for the second and third day of the nutritional detox. And if you push through that, then you feel like a million bucks. And almost always the people don't rush at the end of the two weeks to bring the things they thought they were gonna miss back in. Yeah. It's crazy.

Jennifer Norman:
They find that they could actually live without it.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
And they probably like the way that they feel so much or even the way that they look so much. Who knows? I mean, there's lots of benefits from cleaning up your diet.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Right. It's just like a mental attachment. Right. Like, do that.

Jennifer Norman:
It's our pacifier. Yeah.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
More than anything, we gotta wean ourselves off of those sorts of things. So cool. Okay, so that is your detox. Is that the same as your gut kit, or is that different from it?

Dr. Melanie Icard:
No, and so. And so. And then some people are a little bit heavier. Right. So if someone comes on board with me and they want to lose more than 25 pounds, I'll say, okay, we're going to do. Do two months of this herbal detox. Right.

Jennifer Norman:
Fair. Okay.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And then if not, if it's just for disinflaming, we do one month, and then we bring in another herbal kit, and it has like, oil of oregano and berberine, and it's another three herb kit. But this is to go in and get. Because we just have bacteria overgrowth and Candida overgrowth in our guts. Right. And so. And it's crazy because I had. I worked with a woman, and she literally had such a bad immune situation going on that she had candida in her throat, in her mouth, and couldn't get rid of it. And just doing the gut kit, got rid of it.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Oh. And usually I'm doing it for the systemic benefits, but we get crazy benefits like this. Like a lot of fellas or young ladies have that acid reflux, and they just make, okay, this is part of my life. You know, maybe they're pounding Tums every day for decades and have been to multiple doctors and just. Just going through the gut kit. It's gone. It's gone. Yeah.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
So it's really important. Some people, you know, if you're more of a gut person, like, maybe you've had more issues in that area, then it's going to be a more slow roll. Right. Like if to take the herbs three times a day, you might just start out with once because you feel things moving. Right. So then you just kind of. It's really important with all of this kind of work to just be very mindful and present with your body. Right.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Just because the baseline is to take the herbal detox three times a day. Well, you have to pay attention to how you feel. Right. And if you are detoxing, you gotta drink more water. We gotta flush that stuff out. Right. And so that's why we always have a community and health coaches for everybody. Because everybody's body is a little bit. There's like the basic way that it goes and then, and then you have to kind of dial it in for other people. But that's the basic for everyone.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And everyone of my clients, they usually listen. I like them to eat two meals a day. I just, I think two meals a day is plenty and just be done by the time the sun goes down down. And just that alone is going to massively decrease insulin resistance. If you need to lose weight, your waistline is gonna shrink. I think somebody told me the other day that they just got on the daylight fasting being done by the time the sun went down.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And just with that and not changing anything, they lost 15 pounds.

Jennifer Norman:
Isn't that amazing?

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Anything? So just like these little simple things and then we are absolutely insane about learning what's going on with your glucose and balancing it it. Right. And I actually had stressed myself into being pre diabetic. So that's why I'm such a nut about this. Because here I am, the naturopathic doctor. I'm going to the meditation class, I'm going to the gym, I'm even doing the ice baths. I'm like raising my autistic son by myself, running a business and had that history. I was that low blood sugar kid.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And they're like feed her, feed her, feed her, you know. And with all of this responsibility and even with the holistic lifestyle, I found myself pre diabetic. And of course that was unacceptable. You know, I was like, this is, we are reversing this like immediately. So I had to do a deep dive on the how do we do that? And a big part of it is stress because stress hormone raise can raise your glucose. So before you're even stressed and you're eating the cupcakes and drinking the wine because you're stressed and making, you're making bad decisions. Your, your body is pumping out more glucose because of the stress hormone. So that I think that's a big issue nowadays.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And that's why I see so many well meaning professionals that are already insulin resistant. And even a lot of them, they find out they're pre diabetic when they start working with me, you know, like they didn't even know, you know, that they were pre diabetic. But it's because even before we put food in our mouth and none of us are perfect and we all have blind spots, but even before that we already are probably having a higher glucose and insulin just from like the mental gymnastics, you know, of every, of everyday living. So I also had to, had to think like, okay, I obviously have a lot of responsibility and like, I'm not looking to be diabetic, you know, and so I had to make some changes in my life, right. Like I had a medium sized practice and I decided that I didn't want to do that anymore. I, it was one of those moments where I was just kind of following this wave, right. So I decided that I needed to be at the beach. I was like, I need to be at the beach, you know, and I don't need to work full time and I don't need to be here full time.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And I didn't really have a plan, but I knew that I couldn't do that anymore and for some reason I needed to be at the beach. And we had, we had already had this biohacked heart blueprint protocol and helped many people, you know, with different levels of cardiac stuff with that. And it just kind of wanted to come forth and give birth to it itself. Right. And, and so now I, we work hybrid, right. So now we work with people all over the country and we do, we work as a community. We have, you know, group calls, we have group meditation calls for that nervous system reset stuff, you know, and, and, and then we have people come and there's a, there's an IV portion of it. But I'm, but I'm able to work without having such a big team and having to be on seven days a week full on.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And that's something that I just had to have faith that I, my old way of living just wasn't compatible with actually being healthy for me, you know?

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And I just, I just.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, no, I mean, I didn't mean to cut you off, but I just wanted to say I celebrate you so, so much because I know that that is a very hard decision for a lot of people. And I think that part of it is, you know, the fear of loss of income. And so that leads to its own stresses. But there's also another fear which is, is more ego based. It's more about, well, you know, what does success look like? And people have kind of like an old model of success in their brains and they can't get off that hamster wheel. But when you are faced with either a trauma or a crisis or something in your health, that it makes you reconsider a lot of your life choices. And I, too, went through that same thing in a very different way. But you really do start to recalibrate.

Jennifer Norman:
What does a life well lived really look like to do? I want to be grinding, you know, the midnight oil every single night? No, I frankly don't. I really want to be able to go outside and breathe and, you know, hear the birds sing. And just to have peace. And so that is what I consider success now is I just have these ways that I can design every day with built in time for me, time for family, and do the things that I find so joyful, such as this, this podcast and talking to amazing people like you. It just, to me, that is really like a rewarding life. Not, you know, like, you know, chasing something that I feel is just going to lead me to feeling hollow and empty.

Jennifer Norman:
Because that too, like, those feelings of hollowness and empty, I mean, it's physiological, it's psychological. A lot of it, like, it all comes back into the body, into the soul, into the mind. Like, it's all interconnected. And so I love that your focus is on the heart because to me, that it' just. It's a beautiful metaphor for following your heart and for listening to your heart and for caring for and nurturing your heart as healthy human beings in so many different, different ways. And I know that you had mentioned very quickly there, the Biohacked Heart Blueprint. And so I just wanted you to be able to talk about that just a little bit further so that it's a bit more clarified for the audience about what that is and what you offer.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Yeah, so it's a holistic protocol because I'm a naturopath, so know, it's very rare that I'll do prescriptions. Right. And it was, it was, it was born for a client of mine that lucky for us, when they told him that he needed to put stents in his heart, he has a strong personality. And he said, I don't think so. Give me two months. And then he came to see me and, and, and he said. And he was a really naughty patient. You know, he would come once a year and he never wanted to listen to anything I said.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And he said, I know I'm going to lift in the sun because I don't want to do this. What do you got for me, Mel? And I said, okay. And it just kind of came in and it was all these different therapies that we had been doing. I had already just gone through the whole pre diabetes thing with myself, so that was like, fresh in my mind's eye too. And we did calcium balancing therapy, which is a big part. You know, calcium gets deposited in the wrong parts of the body. We did the blood sugar balancing, the detoxing, and these IV therapies, which was Ozone, my absolute favorite, IV time, and Plaquex, which is kind of like it sounds, right? Like, take. Take the plaque out.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And he was serious. He showed up, he did his coaching, he did his detox, he did all of his therapies. And I was really surprised that in two months he was excused from needing the stent surgery. You know, I was like, oh, wow, cool. You know, and so, and, and so obviously he was happy. That's. That's what he wanted. And then we had found that these results are repeatable, right? So other people that had plaque that were.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Were really healthy and already doing the intermittent fasting and all the, all the good things and didn't know what the heck with this plaque have been able to get rid of their plaque, you know, or people that had already had a heart attack. And then the heart gets weaker, but also they put you on all these meds that also kind of slow everything down too, right? And then just get all this energy and strength back, and their heart, you know, more than doubles in strength. And all of this is in two months time, right? And this is without meds. This is simple and repeatable. And these are regular people, you know, I mean, yeah, the one guy was intermittent fasting, but he was coachable, right? Because he was. He also came in and at that time was carnivore, but he wasn't really having his bowel movements, so he was open to changing his diet, you know, and kind of meeting me in the middle and stuff like that, you know.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
But what we found was that. And I thought, wow, this could really redefine how we age. Because I'm looking at my grandparents and these cute people have just this grocery list of stuff wrong with them. Every time I call them, I feel like I gotta get out a notebook and find out what happened. They got the, the bucket of pills and all these doctors, and I said, no, no, no, like, we gotta change this. And I'm very attached to my dad. My mother died when I was 11, so I'm like, super, super.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
That's kind of how I got into this, right. And yeah, I'm super attached to my dad and I said I, you know, I just want my dad to live well and live healthy forever, you know. So obviously I have him work the program and everything like that. And he was another one, a lot of mental gymnastics. We found out he was pre diabetic. He didn't even know it. But he is also like a student. You know, he's so serious about his health that he got it turned around in four weeks and it was crazy.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
I just did his labs and he, he not only has like a good hemoglobin A1C has like an ideal one. Right. So I'm so proud of him.

Jennifer Norman:
Well done dad. That's amazing. So it sounds like this protocol, it was something that you pretty much invented from. Yeah. Based upon just things that you've discovered, had worked and maybe had researched and then also have just essentially put together to determine. Wow, this has been so helpful for my patients and my clients and. And it's something that other people can also learn more about as well, right?

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And we can just redefine retirement. You know, it can be, it can be different for our parents and for us, you know, I love that.

Jennifer Norman:
So where can people find out more about the Biohacked Heart and about your work?

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Yeah, well on our website there is a free Masterclass. It's only 20 minutes so if you want to kind of understand the process and other ways wins that people have, that's on there. And it's Dr. Melanie Icard (i-c-a-r-d) dot com, drmelanieicard.com, and we always do a live webinar once or twice a month so you can sign up for that there and show up. And we do education. So for those of you that are the holistic health nerds, you know we go through different like pathways and trying things out and answering questions and things like that. And I am on most social medias @DrMelHolistic, so you can find me there.

Dr. Melanie Icard:
And we do have a Sedona Biohacked Heart Retreat because some people are time poor. So now we have a four day immersion so that we get. It's kind of like a boot camp when we get you going on all this stuff and a lot of people tell me, well I don't know what to eat. Well, I'm going to feed you, I'm going to show you exactly what to eat, you know, and it's going to be delicious and organic and blood sugar friendly at the retreat and then we have the nurse and the ultrasound people there. So everyone at the retreat will get two sets of these IVs, and the protocol is always expanding. So we just decided in the last week that we're going to add some mitochondrial support in the program. So I said, let's bring it into the Sedona retreat so everyone can have that there. Just because it just, you know, as I evolve, you know, the program evolves, and it just keeps getting better and better.

Jennifer Norman:
Amazing. Well, that sounds so interesting. And I do hope that our listeners do follow up and learn a little bit more about this, how they can also biohack their hearts as well. I love that there is an alternative to being on the prescription hamster wheel, because I think that a lot of people are tired of, you know, and they have seen their parents with the bucket of pills, and I don't think any of us wants to be on that many prescriptions at that time of our lives. And we would much rather just be like, you know, our food is our medicine, all of these interesting ways that we can have nature work for us, and also just live our best lives and enjoy life every moment of every day. I think that that is super special. Thank you so much for all of that.

Jennifer Norman:
Okay, so, Dr. Mel, this is the time when I ask my guests three common questions. They are the questions that I find bind us together and connect us us. It's our beauty, our humanity, and the truths that we live by. So my first question to you is, what makes you beautiful?

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Oh, that's a fun one. What makes me beautiful? Well, I think that I'm a really loving person. I love connecting with people and just. And that's beautiful. Just feeling that connection and being seen and heard and feeling safe. I love that.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, that's a wonderful answer. And I would agree. You seem like such a loving person and very, very caring, and very giving. I truly, truly admire that. My second question is, what does it mean to be human?

Dr. Melanie Icard:
Oh, well, I guess to be human is to be imperfect and to be constantly learning and evolving. But the thing that keeps coming up for me over the last couple weeks is that like. Like a tree. Like a tree, they get a ring every year until they die. So I think we're the same. Like, we're supposed to keep growing and learning and evolving constantly until we die.

Jennifer Norman:
That's a great answer, too. And then my final question is, what is one truth that you live by?

Dr. Melanie Icard:
What is one truth that I live by? I think just showing up, Just showing up every day and being yourself, just being truly yourself. Being okay with being yourself.

Jennifer Norman:
Excellent. That's authenticity. Nothing more powerful than authenticity as your truth. Well, Dr. Mel, thank you so much for your wisdom and your work and your heart with us today. I think that this conversation has been a really powerful reminder that healing isn't all about just fixing what's broken. It is about reconnecting and nurturing what is already within us. To everybody who's listening, if this episode spoke to you, do share it with someone that you love.

Jennifer Norman:
Because taking care of your heart might just be the most human thing that you can do. Until next time, stay curious, stay kind, stay courageous. I'm Jennifer Norman and this is the Human Beauty Movement Podcast. I'll see you in the next episode.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to the Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movement is a community based platform that you cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at the humanbeautymovement.com. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human.