There are ups and downs in the healing journey. So, when I was really sick and started my healing journey and began to get well, I had no idea that there were going to be highs that were so high, and lows that were so low. With some of the cleansing that I’ve done, I’ve had intense detox symptoms. I just got back from Costa Rica where I did a 23-day water fast, and I felt incredible, but around day 10, I didn’t feel too good. The ups and downs are truly there.
We had the pleasure of interviewing Lindsey Duncan. Master Formulator, Herbalist, Doctor of Naturopathy, and certified Nutritionist, Lindsey Duncan, CEO of All-In Nutritionals, is regarded as one of the world’s top formulators and has won multiple national and international awards for his formulations. With nearly 4 decades in the nutrition, natural health, and supplementation fields, Lindsey has accumulated well over 30,000 hours of time guiding, encouraging, and education people on detoxification, nutrition, supplementation and other natural healthcare techniques.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
Yes, absolutely. My story, like many people in the natural wellness industry, starts as a sick child. For the first eighteen years of my life, I was extremely sick, and I went from doctor to doctor, and medication to medication. There were no answers and my problems just got worse. So finally, out of frustration, I turned to natural medicine when I was about nineteen or twenty years old. That’s when the floodgates opened. Everything changed when I started cleansing, fasting, using herbs, and eating properly, I can’t even begin to tell you the change that took place in my body. I was well in a year and after that, there was no turning back. I never looked back.
I’ve been in one industry my entire professional career and that is the natural healthcare and wellness industry. I later became a registered, certified nutritionist, and an ND which is a Doctor of Naturopathy. In addition, I became certified in at least a half a dozen natural healthcare modalities from Doctor Bernard Jensen and Bernard Jensen International; Dr. Jensen is one of the founders of our entire industry. He’s truly one of the godfathers, if you will, of the natural products industry. He wrote 50 or more books that have been translated into almost every language on the planet. He is an expert in cleansing and purification, natural products, herbs, and formulating. I had the privilege of studying with Dr. Jensen for seven and a half years at his sanitarium and ranch in Escondido, CA, when I was living in Los Angeles.
I started to practice nutrition in my own clinic where I accumulated over 30,000 clinical hours helping people who were at the end of their rope, and who had tried everything they could to get well. I was able to help them with herbs, natural products, diet, fasting, cleansing, and natural, non-evasive techniques. So, accumulating these 30,000 clinical hours and working with Dr. Jensen are two of my big highlights, even more than my degrees. Additional highlights of my career were when I became an expert and regular, repeat guest on the Doctor Oz Show. Quite often I was also on The View as a nutrition expert and I’ve also been on all the major news channels; CNN, NBC, ABC, E Entertainment, CBS, and BBC Worldwide. Basically, I have been on every major news station in North America, so I have had quite an extensive career in natural healing and natural wellness.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
Yes, it will sound a little harsh, but it has a wonderful ending. One of the more interesting stories of my career was when I was practicing nutrition in Santa Monica, CA. I had a clinic on Seventh Street, and it was called Lindsay Duncan’s Home Nutrition Clinic. I had a team of nutritionists that I had hired and a full staff. I had great results with my clients, and so we had an extensive waiting list. At one time, I had a two year wait for new clients to see me.
One day a lady came in who had waited about four or five months to see me. She came in and told me that I had had very good results with her family members. She said she was going to do every single thing that I told her to do except one. And I said OK, tell me what that is. She said she was going to do everything, except quit smoking. She said she really enjoyed smoking and it was the one bad habit that she had. She said she’d do all the supplements, the diet, and the fasting, but she didn’t want to quit smoking because she simply enjoyed it.
I told her that was fine, and that I was still going to do my job; I’d tell her whether she needed to quit smoking or not and then we’d go from there.
She looked at me with a confused look and asked me what would determine if I told her to quit smoking or not. I explained a practice I used at the time called iridology; one of the main things I could see from this was tissue integrity. I could tell whether a person had strong genetics or weak genetics. I could also tell whether the tissues in their body were like a burlap sack, meaning weak, or were like nylon; tightly woven and strong. I explained that I would examine her eyes and look, especially at the 3:00 and 9:00 areas of the irises, and that would tell me whether her lung structure was weak or strong.
An hour and a half later, after testing her body chemistry, PH and examining her eyes, I asked her how many cigarettes she smoked a day. She told me that she smoked about a pack and a half. I told her my recommendation was that she double her cigarette intake.
She was stunned and looked at me and was like, what?
Again, I told her my recommendation is that she double her cigarette intake.
She said, “You’re a nutritionist. Why are you telling me to double my cigarette intake?”
I asked her how old she was, and she told me that she was 45. This is when I explained my logic. I told her that she had genetically weak lungs and asked if both her parents smoked; she told me they did, which meant she had inherited weak lungs. I told her I could see this by the fibers in her tissues. I explained that if she had genetically weak lungs, it clearly meant she was going to get a disease.
I explained that the lungs are either genetically strong or genetically weak, and that’s how a 92-year-old can smoke for 50 years and never get cancer, yet someone else who smoked for five years, gets it.
I said if you’re going to get it, which you are because of your inherent weakness, and you’re forty-five now, I’d rather you get it when you’re 50 or 51, rather than when you are 60 or 61. I told her I was trying to speed up the inevitable so she could fight and win. I told her all I cared about was that she got the chance to fight and win. She was going to fight better at 51 or 52 than at 62 or 63. She just looked at me like she just couldn’t even comprehend what I was saying. She never touched a cigarette again.
Long story short, she never smoked again from that day, and even today, still does not smoke. So again, I know it sounds harsh, but I was only being honest. I was pretty aggressive and strong when I was initially practicing in my clinic as a nutritionist, but I knew what was going to happen in her body and I was able to convince her that she had the type of body that couldn’t smoke long-term. It ended up saving her life.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about a mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Yes, a mistake I made when I was first starting and when I was first starting in my clinic, is when I was developing these really great formulas. I’ve been developing natural formulas for 35 to 36 years and this was back in the 80s. I had developed an eye formula, and it was a topical eye formula that you applied to your eyes, and it had incredible ingredients.
It had three ingredients. Linseed oil, organic apple cider vinegar, which clears the calcification and buildup in the eyes and lastly, eyebright which is probably the single most beneficial herb on the plant for the eyes.
Eyebright can be drunk as a tea, and you can also apply it topically to the eyes. I mixed up all three ingredients and I knew it was going to be really good, so I put it in my eyes. Well, the linseed oil is so thick that I couldn’t see for about 5 hours. My eyes had a really thick haze in them because of the oil. I felt great after it wore off, but I knew that it wasn’t going to be marketable. So, I spent a lot of time on that and it’s something that I just never brought to market.
Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
I focus on big issues. I don’t focus on symptoms. I know that the headache is not the problem. There’s something that’s underlying. I know that acne is not the problem. There’s something that’s underlying that toxic blood, causing that skin issue. I know that acid indigestion is not the problem. I understand that acid indigestion is not a deficiency of Tums. A headache is not a deficiency of Tylenol. And, depression is not a deficiency of Prozac. There is an underlying cause. I focus on the big issues. And so, to me, that’s big work that has really big results, and that’s why we’re so busy.
So, if you look at three things that we’re doing right now, one is we’ve developed a really healthy alkaline coffee. Now this is a big deal because so many millions of people drink coffee. But the coffee that they’re drinking has mold in it, and it’s been processed with harsh chemicals. I mean, really mass processed and produced. It’s also very acidic, too high in caffeine, and is an irritant to the nervous system, the stomach, and the digestive system. It’s an irritant to the whole body. We’ve come out with an alkaline coffee that’s 7.1, 7.2 on the pH scale, is certified mold free, and has mushrooms added to it for energy and endurance. It has figs and magnesium added to it, which is calming. This could possibly change the entire coffee industry. It’s an alkaline coffee that doesn’t burn out your chest, your stomach, or your nervous system. That’s a big deal.
Another example would be the showerhead that we’re coming out with. Now, we’re nutritionists, why would we be coming out with a showerhead? We develop high-end proprietary nutritional supplements. Why would we come out with a showerhead? Well, the human body is 80% water. That means that water is 80% important to you, to me, and to our bodies. Most people don’t realize that when we take that hot shower, we absorb between six to eight glasses of water. So, we have to ask ourselves, are we absorbing chlorinated water, water with fluoride, water with chemicals, water with herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, larvicides, or chemical runoff from train derailments and explosions? You know what most people don’t realize when they’re taking that nice hot shower? All the steam that’s coming from the water, if it has chlorine, fluoride, or chemicals in it, guess where that steam is going? It’s going in our nostrils; it’s going in our lungs. People don’t realize this. They just don’t realize how important the water is that we drink and that we bathe in. We’re a nutrition company. If we can’t address the water that people are bathing in, then we’re missing something big.
Another powerful example is, I believe that everybody in the industrialized world needs to cleanse their digestive system, their stomach, their small intestines, and their large intestines. I believe that every single person has buildup in there. We came out with a product called Triple Cleanse. Now, this is going to the core. Triple Cleanse has three products, Part One is Total Body Cleanse. It focuses on the seven channels of elimination. Part Two is the Total Eliminator. It makes sure that we’re eliminating well and getting the bad stuff out of our body. And Part Three, is called Total Fiber. It kind of acts as a big broom. It goes through that 30-feet from the start of the digestive tract to the end of the digestive tract and moves everything out. Fiber is critical. That’s a big deal. If I could get everybody to cleanse their body, I believe that would change the health of our nation overnight.
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing?
Yes, I easily have fifty, but I will give you my top five.
1 . Number one would be to fall in love with autophagy. Autophagy comes from a Greek word; “auto” meaning self, and “phagy” meaning eat. This is brilliant.
Yoshinori Ohsumi, a famous researcher from Japan and cell biologist won the Nobel Prize in 2016 for discovering this. Autophagy is basically the body turning on itself after not eating for a certain number of hours. With no food, the body begins to eat rogue cells, toxic cells, and all the junk that the body has accumulated.
Essentially, this process begins in the liver and the body begins to eat away all the glucose that the liver is storing. Once all the glucose has been eaten, it then goes to the fat stored in the liver and eats away all the fat.
When this is done, the body has nothing to eat, so it goes on to all the toxic cells. These are the cells that are running rogue in our body, that can become disease or cancerous. It starts to eat those, and this is incredible. The body converts this into fuel and energy.
So, we are taking something horrible in the body, whether it’s sugar, fat or bad cells, and the body is brilliantly turning it into energy. If people could just understand this, it would be huge. Dinner to dinner fasting usually kicks in around 18 hours, but it really gets strong around 24 to 30 hours. You’re in autophagy when you get that feeling in your stomach like, “Oh, I feel like I’m hungry. I feel like I’m eating myself in the gut.” When this happens, you’re in autophagy. The body’s eating itself. This is a very good thing. People automatically think it’s a bad thing if they feel too hungry because of low blood sugar. On the contrary, it’s a very good thing. Unless, of course, you’re diabetic.
2 . Number two would be to truly understand hydration. We are water beings. If you think about it, the human body is roughly 80% water. Our planet is 80% water, and our body is 80% water. Therefore, our diet should consist of 80% high water content foods.
People don’t understand that when they eat a food that has low water content like bread or cheese, they are dehydrating their body.
Do you know how much water is in a high carbohydrate food like bread or a bagel? Or a chunk of cheese? Both have about 30% hydration, so, 30% water. Comparatively, do you know how much water is in watermelon or cabbage? There is 92% hydration in watermelon, and 92% hydration in cabbage.
Other examples of high-water content foods are the following: 92% hydration in asparagus, 92% hydration in spinach, 92% hydration in mushrooms, and 92% hydration in strawberries. The difference in hydration between eating watermelon or strawberries and eating a bagel or cheese is over 50%.
Your body basically says, “I’m 50% dehydrated. I need that water from somewhere,” so it goes and looks for it. When we become dehydrated, our intestines, skin, and hair dry out. Everything begins to dry out, and the body says I’m going to get my water from somewhere, and it has nowhere to go. This is a really big deal.
3 . Number three is I would try to get people to understand a pill is not a pill, meaning not all pills are created equally. The western mentality equates pills to medicine. When some people take good supplements, they think it’s medicine and it’s not. Again, they equate it to medication, when in reality, it’s food. Fresh garlic that has been pressed into a pill is not medication. It’s simply fresh garlic in pill form. We must learn to understand that when we take supplements, we’re not taking the typical pill or medicine. We’re taking food and we’re enhancing our diet. We’re increasing our nutrient uptake so we can be healthy. It’s a state of mind and much of the Western mentality thinks all pills are alike.
4 . Number four would be to understand the power of our symptoms. People automatically think that symptoms are bad. People think that they are a problem and they’re not. On the contrary, the symptom is the messenger. The symptom is our best friend.
When I get a headache, I know my liver is toxic. This tells me I need to fast, cleanse, and flush my system. If I get a pimple, I know my blood is dirty. It’s from something that I ate, and I need to flush my bloodstream.
The best analogy I can give is the car analogy. It’s like you’re driving through the desert and your engine light comes on to let you know that something is seriously wrong. It’s bothering you as you’re driving through the desert because it’s flashing and its red. So, you take a hammer, and you bash out the light, so you don’t see it anymore. You ignore it.
What’s going to happen when invariably, the engine blows up? We think because we knocked the light out, we’ve taken care of the problem, but the engine blows up and we have an even more serious problem.
Everybody’s engines are blowing up and we know that from the increasing cancer rates. People want to take something for their headache, but they don’t want to find out what’s causing it. They want to take something for their cramps, but they don’t want to find out what’s causing it. They want to take something to suppress their bloat or their irritation in the bowels, but not look at the health of their gut microbiome. We must think deeper. Our symptom is our best friend. It tells us it’s time to do inner work, to learn what’s going on, and to fix the problem before the problem becomes serious.
5 . Number five is the importance of water in our shower and the importance of what we bathe in. I would love to get people to understand that there’s three types of water. First, there is toxic water that has all the harmful things from the environment such as chlorine and fluoride in it. Second, there’s dead water, which is reverse osmosis. It’s been stripped and it has no life in it whatsoever. Finally, there is powerful, clean, pure mineralized water. Mineralized water brings health into our cells and tissues and the hundreds of trillions of cells that make up our body. We need clean, pure mineralized water whether we are drinking it or bathing in it. This is a key to wellness.
These would be my top five lifestyle tweaks.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
If I could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most people, it would include a few things.
First, I would have “Fasting Fridays.” This would be where people fasted for one to two days and went into autophagy, which is what I was talking about earlier. So essentially, they would be in that every week. The second thing I would do is teach people one of the greatest exercises they can learn, which is to push away from the dinner table before they’re full. This is a great exercise and it’s simple. In the West, we’ve learned to gorge ourselves and overeat. We eat until we’re ready to sleep. The push-away exercise is the complete opposite of this.
The third thing I would teach them is what we would call “Microbiome Mondays.” This is so critical. It’s one of the most important things that we can ever address in the human body; to obtain a solid, healthy, diverse microbiome. On Monday’s everyone would only eat things like non-dairy kefir, yogurt, sauerkraut and kombucha. All these incredibly beneficial fermented foods feed a diverse and healthy gut microbiome.
Do you know, out of the 14 cancers that are on the rise in epidemic proportions, that eight of them are directly connected to the digestive system? Researchers are now saying the gut microbiome and the digestive system have a direct correlation to these increases in cancer. We’ve stripped and beaten up our gut microbiome; we have ravaged it. When people start to rebuild their gut microbiome with true strategy, not just taking probiotics, the health of that person, their family and this nation will change quickly and dramatically.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
1. Diet really is a four-letter word, and not in a good way. When I was practicing nutrition in Santa Monica, CA, every single time somebody went on a diet, they would go off of a diet. There shouldn’t be a start and a stop. It’s all about the lifestyle choice. You must make the choice, “I want to be healthy,” not, “I want to go on a diet.”
2. Not all supplements are created equal. Some supplements have so much garbage in them, like dicalcium phosphate and croscarmellose sodium. They even use ‘beetle juice’ for food glaze. I mean the stuff that they put in some of these supplements, like the fake sugars and the fake sweeteners, you think you’re buying a supplement that’s healthy, but there’s nothing healthy about it.
3. There are ups and downs in the healing journey. So, when I was really sick and started my healing journey and began to get well, I had no idea that there were going to be highs that were so high, and lows that were so low. With some of the cleansing that I’ve done, I’ve had intense detox symptoms. I just got back from Costa Rica where I did a 23-day water fast, and I felt incredible, but around day 10, I didn’t feel too good. The ups and downs are truly there.
4. There isn’t a high availability of health foods. So, you’re trying to eat healthy, you’re doing the cleansing and the fasting, you’re taking all the great supplements, but you’re driving down the road in another city, and all you have is fast food restaurants, and you’re just saying, “Where can I go to get a healthy meal? Where can I go to get a healthy juice? Where can I go to get something that’s good and that’s healthy?” Sometimes it’s really difficult, especially when you’re in a hurry.
5. ‘Natural’ and ‘healthy’ do not always mean natural and healthy. I’m not going to call any of these health food stores out, but I’ll tell you, some stores will put something on the shelf that says ‘natural’ but it’s not natural. It says ‘healthy’ but it’s not healthy. You get these ‘healthy’ sweets, they’re not healthy, or these ‘healthy’ cookies, and these ‘healthy’ and ‘natural’ bars, and all these foods that are ‘natural’ and ‘healthy.’ Guess what? They’re not necessarily natural and healthy. Nothing can take the place of true, natural, healthy, live, organic, and real food.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health, and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
The one that’s dearest to me would be mental health. My wife and I went through a horrible, violent trauma a few years back and we, unfortunately, got to learn the power of the mind and how it can tear you up pretty badly. We had to go through the fire, but I’ve watched my wife blossom.
She’s become a life coach, and now she’s devoted her whole life to helping people heal mentally as a life coach. She teaches neuroplasticity; she teaches people how to rewire their brain. She teaches them how to change their thoughts and how to own their day and break patterns that they never thought they could break before, whether it’s smoking, alcohol, or fast food. She helps people get up early and exercise, and she is unbelievably successful.
We’ve also incorporated mental health into the course that we teach, and I’ve incorporated it into my life. I’ve incorporated it into everything. I don’t think that we understand how strong the mind really is and how it can work for you in a really positive way. But you can also flip that coin over, and it’ll work for you in a really damaging and destructive way. We have to understand how to use the mind, and not let it rip us to shreds.
What is the best way for our readers to further follow your work online?
To follow me and my work, the best place to go is our website, allinnutritonals.com. You can also hit us up on all our social media accounts, Facebook, Instagram, and our TikTok account which has gotten really popular. We’ve got millions of views on there and it’s still fairly new. But our website is basically the best place.
Unfortunately, my personal Facebook account has been maxed out for about 10 years now. I don’t know why they only allow you to have 5000 friends, but I’ve had 5000 friends for a decade, and I probably have triple that in my friend requests. So, sometimes people get mad. Like, “Why didn’t you accept my friend request?” Well, I can’t. I have to go in and delete somebody to accept one person. So, it’s kind of frustrating. I do have a fan page on Facebook, however. It’s a Lindsey Duncan fan page with an old picture, but I’d say All-In is the best way to follow me.
Thank you for these fantastic insights! We wish you continued success and good health.
A bout the Interviewer: Wanda Malhotra is a wellness entrepreneur, lifestyle journalist, and the CEO of Crunchy Mama Box, a mission-driven platform promoting conscious living. CMB empowers individuals with educational resources and vetted products to help them make informed choices. Passionate about social causes like environmental preservation and animal welfare, Wanda writes about clean beauty, wellness, nutrition, social impact and sustainability, simplifying wellness with curated resources. Join Wanda and the Crunchy Mama Box community in embracing a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle at CrunchyMamaBox.com.
