Laura Laire [00:00:00] Welcome to the Married 2 Marketing podcast, where our lifelong love affair with marketing is second only to our commitment to each other.
Todd Laire [00:00:06] I'm Todd Laire, CEO and co-founder of LAIRE Digital.
Laura Laire [00:00:10] And I'm Laura Laire, VP of Creative Strategy, co-founder of LAIRE Digital and Todd's Better half.
Todd Laire [00:00:15] Together, we found success in business and in life by combining our talents, entrepreneurial spirit and creativity.
Laura Laire [00:00:21] Whether you're a marketing newbie or a seasoned pro, Married to Marketing is a podcast that'll have you flexing your creative muscles, pushing boundaries and thinking outside the box.
Todd Laire [00:00:30] Our mission to equip you with knowledge, tools and strategies that will skyrocket your brand success. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Married to Marketing Podcast. I'm your host Todd Laire along with my co-host.
Laura Laire [00:00:48] Laura Laire
Todd Laire [00:00:50] And today we're going to talk about performance, but starting with a personal story and really covering a topic that is near and dear to us and something that we have worked with together and worked through as a family. But I thought it'd be fitting for Laura to introduce the topic.
Laura Laire [00:01:10] Well, Todd and I had been talking about human performance and kind of going through a series, you know, a few episodes about, you know, our business and how we have decided to be better performers. And a lot of this is leading up from a cancer diagnosis. Dun, dun, dun. And this has been going on for two and a half years. June 12th of 2021, to be exact. But let me preempt that story with leading up to that story. We lived in a house that had black mold, unbeknownst to us, for several years, probably four or five years. We did get that cleaned out. We had it remediated, hazmat suits. Guys came in, completely sealed off the entire house. But I was pretty sick as in sick all the time. And for being a very healthy, organic girl, farmers market, you know, making everything from scratch. I absolutely adore cooking. Being a creative, food is art for me, but always been very healthy. We've always taken supplements, we've always exercised. But the mold really did a number on my immune system, and several of my doctors definitely believe that that suppression, environmental suppression for so many years was pretty detrimental to my health, hormonal imbalance and all kinds of other issues. I'll be 49 in a couple of weeks. So age wise, there was some of those things that were starting to show up, and I had had a couple thermography scans when I was really sick trying to see what was going on. And you could actually see the the area of the breast that was lit up. And my doctors just didn't look at it because you actually could see that there was breast cancer developing. The gal who took the thermography scan did put me on iodine. I don't know if she felt comfortable or absolutely doesn't want to diagnose. And thermography is not used to diagnose breast cancer. But you can definitely see when there's a inflammatory response going on or there's heat in an area where there shouldn't be. So I had that done in 2016 and 2017 and you could see a pattern. It was actually getting brighter and hotter in 2017. I skipped a year. In 2018 and 2019, my doctor encouraged me to get a mammogram just to switch it up. But the mammogram was actually negative in 2019. When you have very dense breast tissue, it's not actually going to show anything. So mammograms don't actually work for everybody. I'm not saying that you should not get a mammogram. You should do whatever you feel comfortable and whatever your doctor feels comfortable with. My doctor suggested that I alternate and get a mammogram. So it was negative in 2019. So I didn't know that anything was actually going on. And in 2020, we all know what happened. I mean, it was a really serious amount of stress. In 2020, we shut down our office. Our employees did not want to come back to the office due to, you know, what was going on with COVID. So we eventually closed it and at that point decided to move to a new state. If we were not going to go in office, we were going to be remote, full time, then you know, why not? So we moved to South Carolina and went fully remote, which had a lot of challenges moving to a new state, new school for the kids. Everybody's wearing mask. It was pretty stressful for my kids. You know, it's really difficult to meet people in a new school when you're wearing a mask. And so a lot of that was troublesome. But right in 2020, in the springtime, I felt a lump in my breast. I actually felt it myself. Now, again, I had a negative mammogram in 2019, but you could see it in 2016 and 2017. So it takes a long time for things like this to develop. We're talking 15, 20 years for most people. It's been a problem for a lot longer. Then when you actually can see it, it's a pretty big problem when it's presented in the form of a mass or a tumor. And there was activity in the breast and in the lymph nodes which made it stage three. And I will never forget that day. This is four weeks after my father had passed away. My mom had already passed away a couple of years before, so I had lost both parents lives in a house with mold, had a large amount of stress in my life. And sometimes we've got to remember it doesn't matter what you eat. If the conversation in your head and your stress level is not manageable, your body is going to produce way too much insulin. There's just a lot of problems that happen. And I won't get into the technical side of that. But a lot of problems that happen in the body when there is a large amount of stress going on. So the surgeon called me. I got a biopsy that day on June or June 11th and June 12th. She called me that day, and I remember Todd's footsteps coming up the stairs from the the garage so slow. He walked so slow. And I could almost hear the exasperation in the slow, deep breath. And meanwhile, I am in complete and total shock that me, like I have cancer. And neither one of my parents died from cancer. This is not something that I've ever imagined thought about. I was not fearful of. I've always been healthy. I've always had this mantra of being in the best shape of my life by the time I'm 50. Health is very important to me. So it was puzzling. It was scary. And I didn't know what to do. And at that point that day, I started researching and I can definitely tell you a little bit more about what happened in the days that transpired from there.
Todd Laire [00:07:01] Yeah, I think it just was all a blur to us and trying not to panic or worry until we had more information, I think was the biggest one. But I also felt like a sense of urgency or we felt a sense of urgency to take action and to act, and that, you know, time was working against us. And, you know, looking back, you know, we time wasn't working against us. It was actually on our side and still is. But I just remember just feeling so much helplessness that, you know, and power powerlessness as well. Like we both just didn't know. And I'll never forget, you weren't even sure what to eat, you know, until we had more information on what you could eat and you were sitting there eating, I think, like stir fried vegetables or whatever, or like, no, no salt or anything on it just because we just didn't know at all. And I remember, you know, how worried but also kind of miserable you looked and had that look on your face. And, you know, looking back, that was the beginning of a really long journey that we're still on today. I guess one question that I wanted to ask you, Laura, looking back now, what you know, you just got this diagnosis and you're panicked and you can you can hit the panic button, this magic button and the panic button allows you to speak to yourself now. What would you say to yourself, you know, knowing that you just got this diagnosis, you know, 5 minutes ago and you're just and you can't tell yourself the future, right? But you can you can certainly tell yourself some advice that, you know, you listen to. What would you say to yourself?
Laura Laire [00:08:49] To listen to yourself, actually, to breathe, to take a deep breath. And I do remember taking a few deep breaths, but there was also a lot of intermittent fast heartbeats. And to speak to what you were talking about, that was probably the most stressful time of my life. I've never had panic attacks. I wouldn't consider myself to be a hyper stressed person, but I remember I mean, my dad had just died. We were we're dealing with closing his estate because my mom had already passed away. So I had my my siblings. We were trying to figure out all of that. And there was a lot of stress there. But, you know, when you get a diagnosis like this, all you can think is, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I don't want to die. And if I could go back, I would tell myself, you're not going to die. Cancer is not something outside of you that is here to destroy you. It's not something that's outside of your control, per se, even though a lot of a lot of people would say that. And let me just say this I'm not here to treat or diagnose or give you any medical advice. This is just my story. This is just the path that we decided to take as a family. And I would tell myself to really quiet your mind. Don't listen to what everybody else has to say or take it with a grain of salt. And I did collect a lot of information. I read. I think I remember telling Todd, I am not going to cook dinner for a while. Like I need to figure out what this is, what is happening and what I'm going to do. And that's my suggestion to everybody, is to breathe and to educate yourself. Nobody lives in your body but you there. There is no one else that has a better answer for you then you. You are being led by your intuition, if you can hear it. And I still to this day, ask my intuition. I quiet my mind, I take a few deep breaths and center myself, ground myself and ask what my body needs today, and ask if this supplement is something that is good for me or if I need to take this every day. A muscle test like tuning in to what you need, you will be guided whether you believe in a higher power that's guiding you, or angels or elders or guides or God or whatever you believe, you are always being guided. Right. And I believe when you're tapped into that intuition by meditating, quieting down, praying and asking for guidance, I believe that I started to get guidance very, very quickly. This was probably the most brutal period. As you know, right after my father had passed away, he was supposed to come to my house six weeks after he died. And I asked my brother and sister, my other brother, my answer to please keep that, you know, to please come in and visit us in our new home. My dad never got to see our new home. And when they came, I remember multiple times, like I remember looking at my sister or looking at my brother, and I would just break down like, just, you know, we're going to go to the beach and we're trying to have a good time. And I would just lose it like one time I'm standing in the kitchen and my sister's like, Have you eaten? And I'm like, No. Like, I don't know what to eat. Am I supposed to be vegan? Am I supposed to? I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And to be honest, I had no appetite because I was so fearful and so stressed and I was leading with fear. And that's the thing that I would I would tell myself is there is no need to be fear. Your body created this. Your body can heal it. Your body did this for a reason, whether it was due to unhappiness and stress and the fact that your body you know, I think sometimes when when we are so stressed out and so unhappy and environmentally taxed that our bodies like, okay, well, we're done. And it kind of it can it's like a implode button. I think sometimes that cancer is like, all right, well, let's go. And when you when you get a cancer diagnosis, it's a wake up call. It's your body's last request. Hey, you know, smack, smack, pay attention. We need to we need to change. Whether it's needing to change our diet or needing to to change the way we think or needing to change our environment, which we definitely did. We made a lot of changes during that time, but I'm not going to say that it was easy because it was not. It was it was it was pretty rough. We had started really a cancer diet four weeks prior to the diagnosis. Todd and I, after being in 2020, after our gym was closed for nine months and we couldn't go to the gym and we were trying to figure out how to get exercise, how to workout, and we were in a little tiny neighborhood that was really like a little circle. And we walked the circle and circle and circle and we were both like, Oh my gosh, like, I cannot walk in this circle anymore. So we really wanted to move someplace where we had freedom of movement and could ride bikes and could walk and be outdoors. That was one of the reasons why we moved where we moved. Did not know that this is where, you know, I was going to be healing. But during that time I had picked up running. So I was running, I was exercising, I was lifting weights. And at that four week period, we started a, a diet where we did no sugar, we started intermittent fasting. We had one cheat meal a week, but it was very low carbohydrate, higher protein. And this is actually was really good for me for getting off of sugar and not putting agave or honey or whatever in my tea or, you know, sugar in towards coffee or drinking Starbucks with chocolate in it, chocolate syrup in it, you know, those kind of things that we kind of get accustomed to or not really thinking about. And getting off of sugar was one of the most important things we did. So during that four week period, I lost £13 and that's an excellent way to jump start healing the body. Wouldn't you agree Todd?
Todd Laire [00:14:59] Mhm I would, yeah. Yeah. And, and it just I think that kind of lowered the boom a little bit for us to be able to adapt a little easier because we just already had that mindset going into it that we wanted to be healthier and this is a great way to do it. And then, you know, kind of the immediate resonance with what you were tasked with, a lot of that aligned already. So I think that I'm grateful that we you know, we're already moving in that direction. I want to take a step back and talk a little bit more about the diagnosis and the recommendation and then your decision. So you. You were diagnosed in late May of 2021 and immediately met with a surgeon, a breast surgeon, a specialized surgeon, a highly recommended one, and their recommendation was surgery. Remove both breasts, put you on hormone blockers. You'd start menopause early, immediately. They recommended chemo and radiation. And just really the full gamut of that, that traditional treatment towards, you know, towards treating cancer. But you decided to go in a different direction. Wanted to know what you were feeling, what you were thinking. And then ultimately, like from a high level, you could get into it if you want, or you can just address it and then we can segway into it. But what path you ultimately did decide to go down?
Laura Laire [00:16:29] Well, when I got that diagnosis and she wrote everything down for me on a piece of paper. Chemo, radiation, mastectomy, hormone blocking drugs, taking lymph nodes like that, the whole gamut. And I just remember feeling like a deer in headlights, like, well, what happens if I don't do this? Because it didn't resonate with me. It wasn't like, all right, let's schedule surgery. Okay, Let's do this. It was like bells, like fire alarms going off in my head. Run, run, run! No, no, no, no, no, no. I think, you know, and I remember her even asking me at one point, are you listening to me? And and I probably was just like, I'm not doing this. Like, I just felt with every fiber of my being that this is not the path that I am taking and I need to figure out what I'm going to do. And that is some advice, you know, that anybody can take is to really be your own advocate. Like, is there an alternative path? What happens when somebody goes this path? What is their survival rate? Is this the only path that I can take? Can you get some information and read and learn? What are the other options out there? I knew there were other options, but I did need to investigate and figure those out. But she did tell me that if I did not do chemo, surgery, radiation and hormone blocking drugs, a mastectomy, all of that, that I had 0% chance of survival. So that was pretty scary to go home with and to walk away from it. I know most people are not going to walk away from that. They're going to do because fear really is an instigator to do what they're telling you to do. And I got home and I started researching. I talked to friends. I just started asking around and making requests known, you know, Do you know anything about this? Do you know anybody who does this? Do you know anybody who's beat this? I just started talking to a lot of people researching and I found quite a few doctors, a lot of places that you could go. And I ended up settling on going to hope for cancer in Mexico for three weeks. My kids were heading off to camp in the mountains for three weeks. So I decided, you know, right away, let me just go while they're gone so that they're not having to deal with what I'm dealing with. I really tried to shield as much as possible, even though I did have a few breakdowns. And recently I've had a breakdown with my daughter. We both cried like, you know, it just because you get bad news doesn't mean that you're not healing. And that's something that I've learned that, you know, scans can't always tell when things are good or when they're bad. It really can't distinguish the difference between healing and growing. You know, it can really look the same on a on a PET scan. So how do you know and how do you feel about it? Well, like I said, when I got the diagnosis and I was getting ready to go to Hope for cancer, I was really the diagnosis put me in bad shape. The fear really took a toll on my body. I started having panic attacks where I would just be standing there and all of a sudden my entire body would get tingling. My heart would start racing and I'm like, What is happening to me? And it was it was fear. It was fear. It wasn't cancer. It was fear. And where did the fear come from? From outside myself. It was from other people telling me, You have no chance. You're going to die. This is this is the way that it is. And there's no other way. But you know, what I found out there actually is I read a book called Radical Remission. I read a book called Hope for Cancer. I read another book. It was like seven steps. I can't remember exactly what the name of it is by Dr. Veronique Disu. The Breast Cancer Conquerer also wrote a book. I just started reading and reading and reading. I started studying Doctor Joe Dispenza, breaking the habit of being yourself and started looking at, you know, how am I? How am I talking to myself? How am I dealing with stress? Like what is happening? And I started getting ready to go to hope for cancer. I'm still getting the exercise. I was still sugar free. I, you know, stayed with intermittent fasting, all of which are really good for detoxifying the body. So I think I was doing a lot of detoxification during that first 30 days. And that's the one thing that I learned at home for cancer is I also did genetic testing myself on my own through nutrition genome and learned that I don't detoxify well, which is another challenge when you need to to heal the body. I always had gastrointestinal problems my entire life. I wasn't breastfed and there was a lot of challenges as an infant, you know, on a formula, a soy milk type formula that really nothing ever worked. I always had stomach challenges, you know, all the way up until last year, I actually always had gastrointestinal challenges. So if you start looking and thinking about all of these different things that are happening, the large amount of stress, environmental toxicity, I don't detoxify. And I learned that I actually have to force my body to sweat not only through exercise, but through sauna, infrared sauna or a hypothermia, which I use at home is like laying in a little pizza oven and gets your body at a really high temperature so that I'm forcing my body to sweat. When Todd and I work out, he is dripping in sweat and we can be doing the same workout I'm doing, you know, a lot of times just as heavy of weights or a little, you know, under what he's doing. I might do 15lbs. He's doing 25. So I'm still not sweating in the way that that somebody else would. So supporting my body with detoxification a lot of this I learned at home for cancer and came home with for Todd to participate too so you know I'm like look if I need to detoxify so to you so let's get in the hypothermia. So we started doing these things together at hope for cancer. We did coffee enemas every day, coffee enemas, and that was that was exciting. So I have some some fun stories to share about learning how to do a coffee enema without instructions. And we started doing coffee enemas at home, both of us, for detoxification, learning about juicing like green juicing. I read a book called Curing Cancer with Carrots and realized that, you know, 5lbs of carrots a day will start to shrink tumors. And for, you know, I don't think it's been a year, maybe six months or so. I've been drinking 5lbs of carrot juice every single day to heal my body. And so a lot of these processes, a lot of these treatments, infrared light therapy, LED, light therapy, vitamin C, IVs, elixir, which is mistletoe therapy that you can inject into the body, methylene blue, like I could go on and on and on about all of these natural things that will heal the body. But for me it was learning what my body needed. Why? Why did I get cancer in the first place? Why does anybody get cancer in the first place? There's usually some malfunction somewhere. Either they're not detoxifying, they don't absorb the nutrition, which is the other issue for me is I'm not even if I'm taking nutrition or I'm eating the right food, my body's not assimilating it. It's not turning beta carotene into vitamin A that I need. It's and looking at those genetic issues, we created a diet for me based on my body. And Todd's been through all of these different changes. I'm, you know, like, should I be vegan? Will come to find out it wasn't working really well for me. When I arrived at Hope for Cancer, I was actually insulin resistant, which I'd never been in my life. But during that time I was I was trying to be vegan and running for five miles and I was not getting the adequate amount of protein. I actually wasn't eating enough in general. Not to say that vegan doesn't work for a lot of people. It absolutely can work for a lot of people. I just really struggled with being vegan, and when I arrived at Hope for Cancer, they decided to put me on a ketogenic diet again. Was really tough for me and come to find out when we did the gene testing. I do not metabolize fat that well, so having a very high fat diet was tough on my body really increased the cholesterol. I did lose a lot of weight. I got really skinny on a ketogenic diet, but it was so emotionally stressful for me and realizing that my body didn't metabolize fat like that and that that was one of the challenges. My nutritionist changed my diet to be more balanced. Whole foods, plant based with some protein, minimal eggs, minimal fish, like just eating really clean and more like a paleo diet, lower carbohydrate, but healthy whole foods. And it really is the way that I've always eaten for the most part. But I'll tell you what. There's a lot less eating out. And to this day, I have completely remained sugar free. And that's been fun, right? Yeah. Every time we go to a restaurant, you know, it's. Does that have sugar in it? Can I get this dressing or can I do that? Or, you know, just going out to eat and being sugar free and having the willpower. You know, when there's birthday cakes and other things that are around to really change my lifestyle and to realize, I mean, there's sugar in everything there is. We went to one restaurant for Mother's Day one time, and every single thing that was on their fixed menu had sugar in it, including the chicken. Like the chicken was marinated with sugar. It was like everything. The collard greens had sugar. And I'm sitting there like, Wow, what am I going to eat? Everything actually had sugar in it. So it's been a lot of lifestyle changes for both of us. Are you wasting ad spend? Are your leads straight up website not converting? Listen, you're busy and we know it. 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Todd Laire [00:26:57] Yeah, that's great. And I think, too, looking back at those early days, we both were of the mindset of like, when is this going to be over? You know, when is this? When is this going to be finished? When is the end date going to be? And I'll never forget I had some skin cancer on my nose that I had removed. And and scuse me, the nurse told me. She said, Well, now that we know your body, your skin, you know, ultimately your body can create cancer. You're going to have to always be aware of this for the rest of your life. You know, like wearing sunscreen, protect your nose, stay out of the sun, you know, for long, prolonged periods of time. And although she was telling me that and I've had bouts before, you know, I'm like, yeah, no kidding. All I could think about is was you, right? Like, you know. And I think this is what most most all people that have a cancer diagnosis or are faced with is this idea that, well, if I just go in and do these things, then it'll be gone and I won't have to deal with it anymore. And it'll be behind me, you know, kind of like bad debt. You pay it off and you don't have that issue again. And and something that you said to that you learned was that cancer is not a death diagnosis. You know, it's not a death sentence. Cancer is not a death sentence, which it's not. But but I added on to that. And although we know cancer is not a death sentence, it is a life sentence. You know, it's a life sentence for all of us. You know, every person on this earth that we need to be conscious of our health. We need to do things that are good for us and stay or limit or eliminate things that are bad for us so that we have the best outcome. And so I wanted you to talk a little bit more about that, that, you know, no matter what, even if you get the, you know, no evidence of disease, you're always talking about, you know, need. And, you know, even if you get that, I don't see you changing your lifestyle in any way because we certainly don't want it to come back. But it's also changed you as as a person. You're better off in a lot of ways. You know, this is kind of the worst and to a degree, the best thing that's ever happened to you or happened to us wanted you to share your thoughts on just the journey ahead, if you don't mind.
Laura Laire [00:29:26] Well, we are all always getting cancer and it's our immune system that is getting rid of it and we are all going to die like that is this is the one guarantee that we have is we're all going to die. Whether or not we die young, you know, truly has a lot to do with, I would say, luck, but also how you treat your body and how you take care of it. Even though I believe that cancer doesn't have to be, you know, a diagnosis of death, It can be you know, there's a lot of studies. I read a book called Mind over Medicine, and there's a lot of studies that show that cancer can be turned off and on by belief alone, by fear alone. So there's a lot to be said about how you feel and how that truly affects your body. And I would say that's the one thing that I'm most aware of, that I've become the observer of my thoughts. You know, I'm not just the one hearing it, but I'm the one who's watching me hear it. Like I'm aware of how I'm talking to myself and I'm aware of what I put in my mouth as far as food. I'm aware of the people that I spend my time with. I'm just very conscious of what's happening inside my body, what's happening to my body, what I put in my body, not to a degree where, you know, I also believe that there has to not be so many restrictions to where if it causes a lot of stress, it's not good for you anyway. You know, if you have a good diet 80% of the time, then you're winning like you're winning over everybody else. But if it's causing a lot of stress, then it's not good for you anyway. And during this time, you know, as time is going by, I went to hope for cancer. I went to a follow up ketogenic works where a lot of people didn't necessarily wasn't a good thing for me. It was more stressful than helpful for me during that time. Like I said, vegan works for a lot of people. I was extremely active and it was also very stressful and tough for me. I really loved to eat the way Dr. Mark Hyman, you know, a little bit of meat, not too much like Dr. Mark Hyman or Michael Pollan, You know, eat food, not too much, but like food, like real.
Todd Laire [00:31:40] Mostly plants.
Laura Laire [00:31:40] Yeah, mostly plants. But it's but it's food. So, you know, I don't I don't get my food out of a window if I can help it. I try to make food as much as I can at home or eat at a farm to table restaurant and being really aware of where it's coming from. But it's just one part. Food is one part. I mean, there's a lot of people I know that heal with food. I know people who have healed with meditation. And EE system, which is an energy enhancement system, is scalar energy that heals the body. There are people that if feel just with cancer, just with carrot juice, 5lbs a day, you know, over a 6 to 9 month period, there are people that have healed themselves with so many different things. And any one of these things, people that I know that is healed from mistletoe there are so many ways. But the one thing I think all of those people have in common is the mentality that they were going to heal no matter what. You know, that is the number one ingredient, I believe, for success is actually believing that you will. And one of the questions I get asked quite frequently is how did you say no to to the doctors? Because let me tell you, I still you know, I still have this diagnosis. I'm still treating my body, even though over time, you know, it's been kind of a rollercoaster. We've gotten good results and okay, well, not so good. You know, for most people who get chemotherapy, it tends to come back 3 to 5 years later. This is not something that I did because I already knew that. I knew that chemotherapy does not kill cancer stem cells. And that's the stem cells are why it travels or moves to to other parts of the body. And that's what we want to address, is the terrain, you know, the soil. Like what? What what allowed cancer to grow in the first place? How do I fix my immune system or wake it up? Is it my microbiome and my digestive system? Like, what do I need to do in order to be able to heal my body not only from cancer but from anything? So as I'm coming back from Hope for cancer, we needed to find a doctor at home and I found an naturopathic oncologist that I started seeing, and he recommended Cryoablation just based on the the time frame. You know, it was, I don't know, probably nine months into the process. I'd been to hope for cancer a couple of times, was not getting results as fast as I would have liked and things kept growing. It was a little bit stressful. It was not spreading, however, so it was still just in the breast and the lymph nodes. And he said, You know, I think you're a really good candidate for Cryoablation, which is something that is not talked about very much. Not written about very much, but it's much less invasive than surgery. And it's where you actually going in and freezing. It's a in and out same day years, no hospital stay. And you actually don't have to go to a hospital. You can go to a medical center. So he recommended a interventional radiologist who did this procedure. So I ended up traveling to get this procedure done. And I actually had an embolization prior to that to shrink the tumor. And they used immunotherapy to help to shrink the tumor. So the immunotherapy was injected and I had the embolization to try to shrink so that I could then go get Cryoablation four weeks later, which I did. They also gave me immunotherapy at that appointment as well. I believe it was maybe six months later when we were getting tests and scans, we realized that it wasn't completely frozen, that there was still active cancer. So I ended up going again to get Cryoablation and had it frozen again. And it was probably not even 30 days after that. And I had gotten immunotherapy. Again, this was a third time getting immunotherapy, which is a medication that's it's like blocking some of the the signaling pathways to help my body get rid of the cancer cells. And during this time, I started having really serious digestive problems. And it probably went on for, I don't know, six or seven months. And we realized that I had colitis and it was due to the medication that I was given several times in the treatments that I was given. So, you know, I'm looking at everything. My bloodwork is amazing. I feel amazing, everything's great. But my microbiome was destroyed with this medication. Now this is not going to happen to everybody is just what happened to me. But the good thing about that is once we realized what it was, had a colonoscopy, realized it was colitis, you know, I'm talking with Todd. I'm like, like what now brown cow? Like, I mean, my doctors were like this, we can't even think about cancer right now. We have to heal colitis because until you heal your gut, well, your body where your immune system lies in your gut, will your body actually heal itself? And so I read a book again, I'm educating myself constantly how I read Healthy Gut Healthy You and I absolutely. I was just, ah, no, Todd's probably like every day I'm like, listen to what I just learned. Listen to this. This is amazing. I'm going to heal myself. And I did within I think it was about five weeks maybe that I completely healed the colitis. I did that with a low-fodmap diet, and that was pretty much torture. That was really rough on everybody. Eating no garlic, no onion. You know, I still made things for the family. It's really hard for me to cook for the family and myself. Something completely, totally different. So Low-fodmap started aloes started colostrum like all the things that could heal the digestive tract. I also started on probiotics, three of them twice per day. Anyway, there's more details in that, which I'm probably going to write about in a book someday. But it was, it was amazing. Within five weeks, you know, from living in the bathroom to being super sick to it five weeks like it was completely gone. And we went to we went to visit his mom. And that was when when it happened, it just slowly over maybe a two week period. I was like, I think it's gone. I think it's gone. I think it's gone. And we went and saw the Grand Canyon that week. It was an amazing trip and it was completely gone.
Todd Laire [00:38:03] Still processing it. Which, again, you know what you set your mind to. And I think the amount of research and things that you tried and really diagnosing the symptoms and then finding something that you could fit into your daily routine that ultimately paid off is hugely rewarding for you. And and a sign that if that can be done, other things can be done too.
Laura Laire [00:38:28] During this time of having colitis, the cancer just got worse. You know there was new things popping up, satellite tumors, more lymph nodes. You know, the frozen tumor still had activity. And everybody knew that this is because my immune system is not working. I had a autoimmune disorder in my GI tract. And where did that come from? The only thing that we could think that it came from was from the medication. And the reason being, well, first of all, my doctor said that he thought it came from that, but also because I heard it on TV, I heard the actual medication, there was a commercial for it and it said may cause colitis. I was like, Oh my gosh. Like, come on, you know? So there, you know, not without side effects, but I was open to integrative care, holistic care, you know, but, but integrating if there was a medication that would help me along with natural things, then I'm going to do both of them. And I actually did. During this time, I got on low dose naltrexone. My naturopath gave it to me for helping to heal the gut as well as it's also good for cancer. And I started drinking the 5lbs of carrots per day. I had read that book. It was and I wrote down on my calendar, started drinking carrots because I wanted to see I'd read that book curing Cancer with carrots and felt like this was a really good thing for me. So I started that at that time and I knew as I continued to get subpar results, you know, I'm getting an ultrasound every 90 days. I get an MRI and a PET scan at least once per year, but the results still were not where we wanted them to be. But I just I just knew I knew that I was healing. I knew because I had just healed my gut. I had just healed colitis. I knew my immune system was working. There's no way that I'm going to be able to heal this so rapidly and my body not be able to heal cancer at the same time. The one thing that was constant over these past two and a half years is change. And I would constantly ask myself and ask my body as I'm researching and as I'm learning. And then I would go to my doctors and say, hey, you know, we read about in this book called Out Live by Dr. Peter. It's Peter Attia. I read it, my husband read it, my mother in law read it. And we discovered in there rapamycin and I believe it also talked about metformin in there, but in learning about rapamycin and metformin, those two and Lotos Naltrexone are all used for anti-aging medicine. So little by little, as I'm discovering treatments, as I'm discovering integrative therapies, natural therapies, I started getting methylene blue IVs when I could, started taking drops by mouth, and I started adding things that I found myself. I would I would email my doctors or talk to my doctors. I really feel like this is good for me. What do you think? And then they would end up agreeing and I would remove as I added and remove and add. So I was constantly changing and letting intuition guide me. And also asking the question is, is this what I need right now? And the last ultrasound that I received as I'm moving along and I'm talking to my doctors and the last ultrasound I got, everything was completely stable. Now, mind you, most everything has been frozen. They don't truly know what's been frozen and what hasn't. So we're monitoring right now. There's no need for me to run and go get a mastectomy when most everything is frozen and our bodies can heal. I know that, I've seen it a million times. I've heard a million testimonials of people for radical remission, for spontaneous remission. It happens all the time. And I asked the surgeon when I went and saw a surgeon, just because my doctor said just, you know, check all the boxes, talk to all the doctors. And she said, you know, we don't want to leave anything in there. So I'm going to recommend a full mastectomy, like removing everything or remove all your lymph nodes. Like, you know, and as I'm sitting there in so much fear and anxiety thinking, this is not what I want to do, this is not what feels right for me. And I'm like, what? You know, there's there's very minimal left. There was a little bit of SUV in the PET scan, which a little bit of activity here. The ultrasound was completely stable, nothing new. Nothing had grown. The large tumor that was frozen had actually shrank, you know, and usually scar tissue doesn't shrink. So bloodwork looked amazing. Most importantly, I feel great. I'm happy. I'm not stressed. I'm nutritionally sound. I'm very active. I picked up tennis. I started playing tennis. I workout. I do yoga almost every day. I meditate. I'm in such an amazing place. I'm not losing weight, you know, I'm just as healthy as I can be. And so when you get those results, the only change was the PET scan showed a little more activity than a year ago after the the cryoablation. And so the surgeon and everybody's freaking out. You know, there's still activity. But is that activity actually what it looks like to heal? And I asked the surgeon this question because I listened to the doctor who created ValAsta. It's astaxanthin. It's a very, very powerful astaxanthin that's been patented to treat disease which I take which I'm a big fan of and I'm not paid to talk about any of the stuff. By the way. This is just some of the things that that I use and I'm very interested in. And again, always editing, always changing, always researching and learning and asking my body what it needs today. And I listen to this doctor who said, you know, how do you know if it's an inflammatory response, if your body is healing, if all the T cells and the natural killer cells are in this area working and breaking down and healing the body, it's going to show activity. You know, Does a PET scan show the difference between healing and disease process growing and are you losing weight or are you gaining weight? Is your energy going up or is your energy going down? You have to look holistically at the entire person, not just at a scan. Scans can be wrong, and scans don't differentiate between the healing process. And when I asked the surgeon this question, I said, What about spontaneous remission? What about healing? You know, based on everything else, not just the PET scan, but based on the ultrasound, the blood work me as a person and how I feel and mental and physical and spiritual and all of these things. And she said to me, she said, I just don't see people who are healing. I see people who are going the conventional path, the traditional route for chemo, surgery and radiation, which, by the way, there's nothing wrong with it. That's the path you chose then. Great. You know, you got to do what is best for you. It just was not the right path for me at that time. And I'm not opposed to anything. I really want to listen to my own intuition and what my body is asking for. And she said, I just don't see people who are healing. They don't know what it looks like to heal, because when people are healing, they're not seeing surgeons. So I think it's important when you're listening to people that you get the information and that you do talk to people who have healed their body because it's absolutely, completely and totally possible. And I think cancer can be a gift. I mean, it really can be a gift not only for yourself to heal and to be in the best shape of your life, but it can be a gift that really transposes to everyone around you. You know, like my kids, my husband. Like the lifestyle that we've chosen and what we've learned about fasting and sugar and exercise and meditation and the cleaning up the body environmentally and physically cleaning up our house and, you know, making sure we don't, you know, we even turn our Wi-Fi off at night so that we're not sleeping and getting EMFs in our body. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that we've learned that's crossed over to everybody. So, you know, you have to wonder, is cancer a death sentence or is it really giving you a better life? And it really can. I think it's based on the path that you choose, how you decide to heal. And and truly, if you want to heal, not everybody is ready to heal and wants to go through this process. It takes a lot of courage and to stand up for yourself and to advocate for yourself and to be on the cutting edge of science. And it and it definitely takes a great partner who believes and is on board with what you decide that, you know, when when you're breaking down and crying and upset and trying to figure out what to do that is behind you and is like, look, we'll do whatever you decide to do, That's what we'll do. I'm behind you 100%. And that definitely was Todd throughout this entire process that we're really still in.
Todd Laire [00:47:16] Yeah, it's a life sentence, but I think it's also a renewed lease on life sentence as well. I know you get the question a lot and it's really hard to make recommendations because everybody's different, even people, you know, same age, same, you know, same everything, same diagnosis. It's still different. Right. But I guess, you know, kind of going back a little bit, you know, what would you say to someone who is newly diagnosed? What are some, you know, one, two, three, four things that you'd recommend that they look into check out? One thing that comes to mind that just, I think, applies to everyone, regardless, a cancer diagnosis or not, is understanding that, for lack of a better word, the business behind cancer. But then also the hope that can come with a diagnosis and a path to beat it. And what was transformational for us was watching the movie Movie Cancer Can Be Killed. It's everywhere. It's in, you know, Apple movies. You find it on YouTube, you can find it everywhere. It's widely available. Cancer Can Be Killed. I'd recommend anybody watch that. But what are a couple of things were that you'd recommend two, three or four things that come to mind. You know, that anybody at any stage of life, any diagnosis should start, you know, starting to read research, check out?
Laura Laire [00:48:46] Well, Heal is another great documentary. We watched so much stuff that the Truth About Cancer is another one that we just started to educate ourselves, but to find advocates, you know, to surround yourself with people who agree with the path that you've chosen, It's really tough when you're surrounded by people who have nothing but fear, fear, fear, fear. And I really had to stop seeing specific doctors who were leading with fear. I had to stop hanging out with people who were extremely fearful. I had to educate some friends because the one thing that I did not need was to be fearful again. Mind over Medicine is a transformative book. So is Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza and really learning how much power your mind has. I mean, your mind is the best pharmacy there is. And when you feel joy and you feel happy and exhilaration, your body creates those chemicals in your body. If you feel fear and stress and anxiety, your body creates those chemicals. So for me, it was learning how to be in homeostasis, learning how to not be in an environment where I feel like I need to yell at my kids and learning to take a break and go breathe for 5 minutes to close my eyes, center myself, and to calm my nervous system, to not be in stressful environments. And if you're in a stressful relationship, something needs to change there. If you're in a stressful job, something needs to change there. I mean, cancer is is multifactorial. It's not just stress. It's not just mental. It's not just environmental. It's not just food. You know, you need to think of cancer as holistically healing. And that means that we're going to look at every aspect of it. I'm going to look at my genetics to see how my body works, what I need, what diet works best for my body to heal and to fill in the blanks. So looking at it spiritually, you know, is there some kind of spiritual connection, you know, with a higher power with yourself where you're spending time? I think self-love is probably one of the most important ingredients there is in order to heal. And that's something that took me a little while to actually look at cancer and and to look at those cells because, you know, I'm not fighting cancer because my body made it. It's like loving myself into healing, loving the cancer cells, into healing and watching, you know, making sure I'm not watching stressful things on TV or reading stressful books and horror movies and things like that. So there's the spiritual aspect of and I truly believe in energy healing and sound healing. I've even, you know, found myself singing to myself because sound is so healing to the cells. And so I'm very big into the energy side of things, spirituality, making sure that that you're hitting all those high points environmentally. What's in your house, the chemicals, the air you breathe, the water you drink, cleaning everything out, and then looking at nutritionally, where are the the fill in the blanks? Like where are you meeting nutritional support? I'm definitely a big fan of juicing, especially organic carrots. 5lbs a day is excellent. I know Chris Wark also recommends 5lbs of carrots a day, but reading that book, curing cancer with carrots was a a big motivator. Um, so there is the environment, there's spiritual, there's physical, there's mental. Like how are you talking to yourself every day? Are you saying, I don't want to die? I don't want to die. I don't want to die? Or are you saying now's the time to truly live? I'm going to beat this? Like having a positive mental attitude is the first ingredient of your success when it comes to healing. You have to believe that you will. You have to know that you will, no matter how long it takes. And it can be a slow process or it can be a fast process. But in the interim, surrounding yourself with people who also believe in that ability of your body to heal itself, I mean, it's pretty miraculous when you get cut, like I stab myself the other day with a knife as I'm cutting. And it's just miraculous to watch how our bodies really want to heal. And they will, if given the right environment. So these are the things that you want to look at. And there's really like, you know, if you if you read the book Hope for Cancer there, it's really you're looking at all of these things food, environment, spiritual, emotional, physical. Are you moving your body? You know, you have to move your mass every day, like 30 minutes a day. Walking is probably the best exercise there is. I'm tired and I try to ground by getting our feet on the ground. Hand on a tree where you're absorbing electrons from the earth lowers inflammation. There's just a lot of different things that we can do to get back to the way our bodies actually naturally heal with whole foods, with the Earth and finding people who are on board with that. And that was something I think it takes a little bit of time to find interventional doctors or a naturopathic oncologist. But most of them I see all of mine virtually. I still see hope for cancer virtually, and I'm still in this process and and it's okay. Like I can live with this. You know, I will get another scan in, you know, I don't know, 90 days to six months. But for now, all of my doctors are like, you know, we're heading in the right direction. Everything looks good. There's just a little bit left in. Is that little bit, is it actually healing? Because it's definitely not growing. So we're going to say that it's healing and we will definitely keep you updated on the progress as we go along. But we wanted to start off a human performance series with really what started our journey a couple of years ago. I mean, we've always been into to human performance, but really when it came down to it, you know, we got hard core when it came to how much sugar we consume, you know what you know, whether we consume caffeine, what type, you know, sleep, exercise, goals and visualization and positive mental attitude and all of these different things that affect your business, affect your job. It affects our business, it affects our team. And we've really wanted to create a culture of well-being. And it starts with us. And we definitely got a jumpstart that actually is more than two and a half years ago now. But we're doing great and we're really excited about the future and we're really excited to share the good news as it continues to come along.
Todd Laire [00:55:17] Awesome. I think this was great and long overdue and probably maybe the first of many. We could definitely do a series on different modalities and treatments. Your schedule, your routine, which kind of resembles like a celebrity or or an athlete's performance routine because it's a lot but also the discipline that you have to stick with it and see it through has been nothing short of amazing.
Laura Laire [00:55:45] So there's a lot of overtime nights and weekends on treating this human right here. But we're I'm here for it.
Todd Laire [00:55:56] Awesome. Another one in the books. Thanks for sharing.
Laura Laire [00:55:59] We'll see you next time on our new human performance series that'll be coming up. That's right. Thanks for listening.
Todd Laire [00:56:04] Don't miss it.
Laura Laire [00:56:05] Bye. That's a wrap on this week's episode of the Married 2 Marketing podcast. I'm your host, Laura, along with my husband and partner Todd. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review our podcast. Your feedback fuels our passion and keeps the marketing fire burning bright.
Todd Laire [00:56:21] And if you're hungry for more marketing magic, be sure to visit our website. Married2Marketing.com, where we've got a treasure trove of additional resources, episode transcripts, and mind blowing bonus content.
Laura Laire [00:56:33] We'll be back next week with another engaging episode. Until then, be creative, get strategic and never go to bed angry.
