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Every sports-loving guy who gets injured would look at a chiropractor as the last resort. Dr. Ben Benulis was guilty of this when he finally consulted a young chiropractor that told him it wasn’t his injured knee that was the issue but his quad. When the doctors confirmed this, Ben went to his first session and felt 70% better. However, another health issue came up, and this time it related to his digestive system. He found out that he developed food allergies at 26 years old. This realization led him on a medical journey to create the Digestive Rescue Blueprint which educates people about changing their diet and lifestyle to eventually allow them to be able to eat some foods they have been allergic to.
On the podcast, we have Dr. Ben Benulis. Dr. Ben had some major health issues seven or eight years ago that would change the course of his life and put him on the path of becoming a doctor of chiropractic and helping others heal. He has an amazing life story. I’m excited to have him on the podcast. Please welcome, Dr. Ben Benulis.
Listen To The Episode Here
The Digestive Rescue Blueprint: Change Your Diet And Lifestyle with Dr. Ben Benulis
On the podcast we have Dr. Benjamin Benulis. He has a new eBook out called The Digestive Rescue Blueprint. Dr. Ben, how are you?
I’m doing well. I was stoked to get an invite to be on your podcast.
Dr. Ben, where are you from originally?
I’m from Boston, Massachusetts originally.
Did you spend the majority of your early life there? When I first met you, we were out in California?
Yeah. I grew up there, went to high school and everything. As soon as I could get out, I left to go to school.
What made you want to go to chiropractic school?
That was a long journey. It wasn’t my original career. I originally was a mechanical engineer. I was working in the microchip industry doing my thing.
You’re originally fascinated with engineering and everything. How did you end up there?
I was good at math and science. It’s actually funny, I originally was going to do biomedical stuff and my first semester of undergrad it was biomedical engineering.
You went to school in Boston?
No, I went to school in Philadelphia. I was doing that and this was probably ancient history for you, but this was ‘99, 2000-ish.It was when they started allowing pharmaceutical drugs to be advertised on TV. It was the most bizarre thing when you would see that. It’s everywhere on TV. Every TV ad is Viagra, Cialis and anti-depressants. When that first came out, it was bizarre because it would be like, “Feel better. If you have these problems, talk to your doctor,” then they would go through this list of side effects.
Did they have to list the side effects back then? That was a wall that came later, right?
No. They wouldn’t allow them originally because they had so many side effects. You’d see the first third of this commercial would be positive, then they’d be firing off this list of side effects and dangers. You’re like, “What the fuck is this shit?”When that happened and that came out, I was like, “What am I getting into?”It was like boner pills. It resonated with something bad and made me seriously reconsider what I was doing. I got in this to help people. This was the pinnacle of biomedical innovation, Viagra, which is something that can cause heart attack. I bailed on that. That was freshman year. I was pretty good at math and science, so I ended up in mechanical engineering. It was all right. I was good at it so I put my desire to help people aside. I ended up getting a job in Austin working at a tech company called Advanced Micro Devices. They make computer chips. I did that for a number of years.
How did you like that?
Initially, it was cool. I’m like, “I’m being paid the big bucks to do this and I’m smart.” Eventually it became stupid. There were all this office politics. The company was all about making money. It wasn’t about serving any greater good. We’re always screwing people over and screwing customers over to make an extra buck.
What was the turning point for you there? A lot of people have jobs they don’t enjoy but they stick with it. Was there a moment for you where you’re like, “I cannot do this anymore?”
Yeah. That definitely happened and it took a while. First, I got hurt.
How did you get hurt?
A hacky sack injury.
Please talk about this because you have a gift for hacky sacking. I found out about that one day when you were messing around outside class one day.
I got into it in my twenties. I found this guy in my town who was super good. I practiced with him and we trained seriously for the sport.
You’re unreal at it. It’s impressive to watch.
When you dedicate a good chunk of time to something, you can get pretty damn good. We started having tournaments in Texas. We travel. We went to world championships in Florida one year, and I came in 25th in the world. I messed up my knee super bad. I got to the point where I couldn’t play anymore. I couldn’t run. I had trouble walking upstairs. It was bad. I was 27 years old. I go to this MD who sends me to an ortho who looks at it. They X-rayed it and they’re like, “We definitely have to do surgery.” I’m like, “What’s wrong?” He’s like, “We’re going to go in there and we’re going to find out.” I’m like, “No, you’re not going to cut my knee. I’m too young for that.” I did nothing about it for awhile. One day at work, they’re like, “These rehab doctors are coming in. If you have a sports injury, they’ll look at it for free.” I was like, “Good, because I’ve been doing nothing about this.”
The Digestive Rescue Blueprint: When you dedicate a good chunk of time to something, you can get pretty damn good.
Are these orthopedic doctors or were they chiropractors?
I didn’t know that they were chiropractors but they were there. They sit there like sports injury specialists. The term chiropractic has such bad negative brand equity that when you say that, people runaway. This dude comes in and he looked at my knee and he’s fresh out of chiropractic school, 25 years old, younger than me, super baby faced, and he acts like he knows everything. I’m like, “Who the hell is this guy?”It was free, I had nothing to lose. My only other option was surgery, so let’s do the shot. He examines my knee and my leg and he’s like, “I see what’s going on here. It’s not your knee, it’s your quad.” I’m thinking, “Smart guy. It’s my quad? It’s my knee that hurts.” I went to the ortho. They said that they’re going to do surgery on my knee.” I showed him the mechanism of injury and he’s like, “I see what’s going on here. You have a bunch of scar tissue built up in your quad.”He basically did this soft tissue ART-type stuff on it.
Like active release?
Yeah. I had never been to a chiropractor before. I didn’t even know that he was a chiropractor at the time. The first session, there was so much scar tissue built up. It was gnarly, but I was 70% better the next day. He gave me some rehab exercises. He’s like, “Come back, see me in my office in a week.” I come back and he’s like, “How’s it going with the exercises?” I’m like, “I’ve been doing them every day, sometimes twice a day.” He looks at me, “You actually did the exercises that I gave you? No one does that.” Within three sessions, my knee was 100% like nothing ever happened. I stayed in touch with this guy because it inspired me to get more into fitness and stuff like that. I started running half marathons and stuff. I would check in with him whenever I would hurt something, I would go back and see him. He was a soft tissue specialist-type guy. That was my introduction to chiropractic. I was like, “The results speak for themselves.” This dude that I thought was some young punk was actually skilled at getting me better. That planted the seed. The other thing that happened was I got super sick a little while later after that. Basically over the course of the year, the condition came on insidiously, and by the end of 2010 I was a mess. I had super bad chronic fatigue and super bad muscle pain where my muscles would be sore even if I wasn’t working out. I would wake up with unexplainable muscle soreness and bad digestive issues. Every meal I ate, I would feel like a bomb went off and I would have to lie down for an hour and clutch my sides.
You must have been freaking out?
It happened slowly to where I realized what was going on until I got to the point where I was sleeping all weekend. It started interfering with my life enough that I was like, “If I don’t figure out what the hell is going on, I’m beyond disability.” I was sucking down two to three Monsters a day to maintain.
To keep your energy up?
Yeah. It was bad.
Are you still working with the microchips?
Yeah. My boss was like, “What’s going on? You’re not performing at the level you used to be. Is there something going on?”I’m like, “I’m fatigued. I’m tired. I don’t feel well.”Finally as most guys do, you don’t want to go to the doctor, but I finally do. That ends up being this rat hole.
Where did you go first?
To my primary care, then they refer you to a rheumatologist and a gastroenterologist. They do all these tests on you. They’re like, “We don’t know what’s going on. Take anti-acid. Take Pepto-Bismol.”
Did they try to push you on any medications as well?
Yeah, like PPI and stuff like that, like an acid-type medication prescription-strength. I was not getting any better. It was honestly feeling worse. Someone was like, “Maybe you have food allergies. Maybe you should get tested for that. That’s why your digestion is so bad.” I’m like, “Ridiculous, food allergies? There’s no way I have freaking food allergies.”
How’s your overall diet at this point?
I’m on a steady diet of pizza, burritos, Chinese food, what everybody eats. If it’s not affecting me, why would it be affecting anybody else? Obviously it can’t be what I’m eating because everybody’s eating the same thing as me. I’m thin, I’m lean, I look fine, and I’m not fat. I must be eating healthy. I reluctantly go in and get a food allergy test. As it comes back, I’m allergic to everything in the freaking planet. The doctor was like, “You’re allergic to soy, gluten, wheat, dairy, Brewer’s yeast and nutritional yeast.” He rattles off this list of things. I tell the guy, “What are you going to give me? I’ve got these food allergies. What are you going to give me?”Of course, that’s the level of consciousness I’m on at. There must be some medication that solves this problem. He was like, “No, there’s nothing we can give you. You have to cut these foods out of your diet.” I’m like, “What am I going to eat? Gluten-free air sandwiches?” I’m going to the grocery store trying to buy the Amy’s gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free macaroni and cheese that tastes like cardboard and it’s$4.50.I was spending way too much money on food that tastes like crap, but I’m not feeling any better. I’m like, “What am I going to do?” I’m in the weeds. I don’t have anybody and no one understands. I’m slogging this out trying to stay healthy enough to be able to still work and pay my bills and everything.
I have this mentality. I’m super lazy. I don’t want to cook healthy food. I learned how to do all that. I’m a 28-year-old dude. I microwave a lot of stuff. I’m like, “I could fit this lazy man mentality. I’m just going to make smoothies.” Microwave food, you throw it in there, you push a button, you wait and it’s done. Smoothies, you throw the stuff in there, you push a button, you wait a little bit. It’s the same thing. I’m starting to make these smoothies. I’m starting to feel a little better, but I’m throwing whatever I got in the fridge in there. Then I got this idea of, “I’m going to actually look up recipes to make ones that actually tastes good.” I go on YouTube and I find this dude who just completely changes my life.
What’s his name?
His name is Dan McDonald. His YouTube channel is called the LifeRegenerator. He’s this long-haired, hippie, ex-stoner dude who at the time was living in the woods in Washington State in an RV. He would make these smoothies in front of his RV and he would talk about the health benefits of fruits and vegetables and raw food diet and all that stuff. I was laughing at the beginning, “This guy is totally nuts. This is great entertainment.” You could tell he was a total ex-burnout. He would talk about how he settles drug addiction problems and changing his diet was his savior for that. I’m starting to follow the recipes and do what he’s doing. I buy a juicer. I buy a better blender. I’m doing everything he’s saying. All the stuff he starts talking about nutrition and spirituality starts to click. I’m like, “Maybe this guy is onto something.” Fruits and vegetables become what my body can not only tolerate but thrive on. The joint pain goes away, the muscle pain goes away. The digestion gets way better. The fatigue totally lifts.
The Digestive Rescue Blueprint: Fruits and vegetables become what my body can not only tolerate but thrive on.
What are you doing at this point? Eating while you’re still doing the smoothies? Are you starting to cook now? You’re following his recipes that he’s giving?
Yeah. I’m doing a lot of green juices, a lot of smoothies, and a lot of salads. I’m still eating whatever less and less so because it affects me more and more. I eat a pizza and be like, “I feel the contrast there.”Eventually after awhile, I adopted a 100% plant-based diet, like vegan and mostly raw.
What do you mean by raw?
Raw as in uncooked. I’m eating pretty much fruits and leafy green vegetables. At one point I decided, “I’m going to test run this.” I do 30 days 100% raw. I feel incredible. I’m like, “I’ve got to do that again.” I do 60 days 100% raw, and the craziest stuff starts happening in my life. This was right around the time I turned 30. It shifted my consciousness. It lifted the fog of everything that was going on. I knew I was not happy in this job and I got clarity. One day I was walking my dogs and I just got hit by this bolt that was like, “You need to leave this job and you need to go become a chiropractor.” I was like, “What? That’s ridiculous. I can’t do that.”
That’s funny because chiropractic was a little bit part of it because it got your knee better. I’m curious why chiropractic? Pretty much you just changed your diet. There are of different avenues you could have went there. What do you think made you gravitate towards chiropractic there?
I had the experience with my knee. A lot of the guys who were promoting raw food diets and stuff like that were actually chiropractors; guys who are promoting fasting. A lot of these guys were super old school. These books have been written in the ‘40s and ‘50s. I realized the philosophy was very similar; remove the obstruction and let the body heal. The adjustment doesn’t heal you just as much as the mango doesn’t heal you. It just removes the interference, the body’s innate ability to heal itself. The philosophy lined up.
Are you getting any chiropractic adjustments at this point, or you got your knee better and you just started eating well? Are you getting adjusted at all at this point?
Yeah. I have a guy who’s doing diversified on me and I was going few times a month just for maintenance, and not from a philosophical standpoint. More of like I was working out, I was running, and I was playing foot bag again. I just wanted to maintain my body.
You have that a-ha moment, that epiphany. Where did that take you?
I was 30 years old and I was thinking, “I’m way too old to go back to school.” It sounds funny now but at the time I was like, “I had this career, I own a house, I got dogs. There’s no school here in Austin, I would have to move somewhere.” I called up Dr. Nick Askey. He was the original guy who worked on my knee. I emailed him, “I’m thinking about going back to chiropractic school. Can we talk?” He writes to me back within 30 minutes. He’s like, “Here’s my cell phone number, call me anytime.” I called him within an hour after that. We talked for two hours. He’s like, “You would be awesome. You definitely can do it.” He answered all my questions and addressed all my objections. I remember, that was June 11th, 2012.I will not forget that freaking day. You and I didn’t start school until a year after that. I had to bang out some pre-reqs, sell my house, and get prepared to get the heck out of there. I had a goal and I had a vision for what I wanted to do. However long I had to wait, it was fine. I was set after that point. I was on the path.
The Digestive Rescue Blueprint: I had a goal and I had a vision for what I wanted to do. However long I had to wait, it was fine.
Good for you for making that transition because I’ve spoken to a couple of people that are in the same boat right now, and they are hesitant to do it because of what you just said. They have a house, they’re married, and they have kids. They don’t think they could do the transition, when in reality, we’ve got a couple of people that were in their 40s, even 50s in our class that did it. It was the best decision they ever made. I don’t think it’s ever too late to do something like that.
It was definitely not an easy decision for me. I’m so glad I did it. In retrospect, it wasn’t that bad, but at the time when you had tunnel vision, it can seem daunting. I’m 36 years old now. Six years would have gone by anyway and I would’ve been freaking miserable doing the same thing. I’m happy to be here doing this now. If anybody out there is thinking about that thing and worry that they’re too old or too this or too there. You’re wearing your too-too, give me a call. I’ll be happy to chat with anybody about that.
What made you pick the school we went to, Southern California University of Health Science?
You want to go somewhere and have a decent quality of life. I could have gone to Palmer and snowy Iowa, and I would’ve been miserable. I wanted someplace where I could eat the way I wanted to eat and live the way I wanted to live. In LA, it’s like the bomb.
It’s a good spot to do what you said exactly. Just like how you want to live.
Luckily, they also were super easy on the pre-reqs. In Georgia, it was wanting me to do a year and a half more of undergrad, taking English classes and stuff. I’m like, “You’ve got to be kidding me. No way.”It happened that LACC was also chill about it. They’re like, “Take this class and you’re good.”
They even offer that accelerated program that you can take with them to get in faster, I believe.
They know what they’re doing when it comes to recruiting, let’s say that. They want to make it easy for you. When it’s down to these other schools, I don’t know if they want to make it difficult. I don’t know.
Did you know about chiropractic philosophy before you went there? Because I had no idea.
I knew a little bit about it.
I was like, “I’m going to Southern California University of Health Sciences.”People were like, “They don’t teach philosophy there.”I was like, “I don’t even know what you’re saying. I don’t even know what that means. I don’t care.”Then you get there and you figure it out. Either way, I had a great experience there. I think it’s a great school. I learned a lot. As long as you go to school, get done what needs to get done. You can shadow any doctor you want on your own time and learn everything you want to learn.
If you’re young and impressionable and you know nothing else, you think you have this view of what chiropractic is. You think it’s treating CrossFit injuries and that’s about it.
You’re at school now and you’re feeling pretty good at this point?
Yeah, I’m feeling a hell lot better than I was. In my own mind, I’m feeling freaking great. School was definitely an adjustment, pardon the pun. Ten years out of school and I go back.
It’s a full-time job when you first get into it. It hits your hard of the book work.
Even when I was doing engineering that was nineteen, twenty hours a week of credits. Chiropractic school is like 30, 33. This just hammers you. I’m cruising along and doing my thing. It was New Year’s Eve 2014, 2015, I come home New Year’s Eve night, and one of my dogs dies. That sucked, that hit me hard. School’s going to start again in a week. You’ve got to put your game face on.
Was this after first term?
This was after fourth term, between fourth and fifth. Being New Year, I started this new workout program. Things are going well for a while and then I start getting this bad shoulder pain. It’s both shoulders. I’m telling people about it. They examine and I’m going to the student clinic and they can’t figure out what’s going on. They’re doing these orthopedic tests on me, shooting a laser at it to ease in, all the modalities.
Everything non-chiropractic?
Yeah. I’m getting adjusted. It was like the last priority. They’re doing e-stim and all this soft tissue stuff. It’s getting 5% better and it’s hurting just as bad the next day. About this time, we take that crazy class.
I forgot what they call it but once a week, they were bringing a new person to teach a new chiropractic technique to the entire class.
I almost see this as entertainment value. I’m laughing at it every week. Some of the stuff is just so out there. Some of the people that they bring in are really out there. The most out there, the NSA guys come in, and they’re like working and shows the guy doing the freaking worm on the table. I’m like, “Oh, my God.”
That went wild. To give everybody a visual what was going on. It’s very white. They almost don’t even look like they don’t even touch you. This guy literally started doing the worm and it looked like it was involuntary on the chiropractic table. Everyone’s like, “What the hell is this guy doing? This cannot be real.”
I’m ready to walk out the door at this point. I’m like, “I’ve seen enough. I can get away with one unexcused absence in this class. I’m just going to leave.” I almost leave and I stick around. Then afterwards we go into that other room where they let the docs work on the students. I’m like, “No way is anybody doing this on me.”I get to talking with one of the docs and we just chatted about philosophy and stuff like that. I was like, “This dude seems like he might be pretty on to something. I’m going to get his card and maybe check him out over break.” I go and I check out his office. It’s weird because it’s like his office was a walking distance from where my now ex-girlfriend was living in West Hollywood. You go into his office and you’re seeing all Hollywood-type clientele. There are pro skateboarders. There are super hot models. Paparazzi who have back pain from sitting in their car twelve hours a day trying to chase down celebrities. Then he’s doing NSA on them and they’re flopping all over the table. I just felt like I went to Bizarro Land.
What does NSA stand for again?
It stands for Network Spinal Analysis. In the past year, they’ve decided to call it Network Spinal. I don’t know why. At the end of the day he’s like, “I can work on you now.” I was like, “I don’t think I’m up for that.”He’s like, “Come on, you drove all the way out to West Hollywood from your area,” which is like an hour and a half drive sometimes depending on traffic. He’s like, “You come out all this way to see all this stuff. Even if you don’t believe in it, at least you do it. Then you know for sure this is bullshit and you can go home and be fine with it.” I’m like, “Fine,” and I get on the table. He starts working on me. It’s these little light touches mostly on the back of the neck and the sacrum. I just started moving.
You actually were doing the worm? They call it the wave or something?
Yeah, they call it the wave. I’m feeling like there’s this tension and I’ve got to get it out of me. That’s the feeling. All of a sudden, I start having these flashes in front of my eyes. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure when they’re traveling through time and all the stuff that’s pushing by. I have all these memories of my dog dying whooshing by. I started crying on the table but I’m still moving with the rhythm, yelling and screaming. It was absolute chaos. At the end he’s like, “Tell me about what happened.” I was like, “I have these memories of my dog dying that came back.”We had a long chat about that. He’s super supportive. He became a good mentor after that and I ended up interning with him and learning a ton from him. The next day I go to work out and the shoulder pain was like it never happened at all. That got me thinking, “Maybe this whole grief experience, all this stuff I had repressed, turned into this shoulder pain.”Being like a pretty much left brain engineer dude, that got me thinking, “Maybe there are all this stuff going on that I don’t know about.”What ended up happening was getting under Network care and doing a lot of the breathing exercises that they recommend. That was what got my digestion to 100%.
The Digestive Rescue Blueprint: Maybe this whole grief experience, all this stuff I had repressed, turned into this shoulder pain.
Everybody that thinks this might be bullshit, I know Tony Robbins credits this technique with saving his wife’s life. I had it done on me. Tony from our class did it on me. I passed out for three hours afterwards. Something just released. It was the deepest nap I’ve ever taken. I woke up I didn’t even know where I was. It’s pretty amazing. They barely touch it. It’s pretty cool.
It’s pretty clear from the story that at the beginning, I was the most opposed to it you could possibly be. I did not want it to work. I was like, “Crap, now I’ve got to do this.” Tony Robbins gets it done. He’s a big proponent of it. I don’t know what else to say about it. It’s pretty wild.
It’s almost like you can’t even explain it until it’s done on you. You get that first treatment and shoulder pain’s gone and everything. It’s about term five right now?
Yeah. I signed on to observe with him next term and the craziest stuff happens in that office. There are these Hollywood big shots. Not that I saw anybody whose name you would know, but it’s just totally different than the LACC clinic where it’s all Medicare patients. I did that.
Are you doing Network right now?
I’m not licensed in Arizona yet. It should happen in a few weeks, but that’s my plan.
Were you doing it in California?
Yeah.
Have you seen a lot of amazing things while you’re treating people out there?
Yeah, I’ve seen some pretty wild stuff. A lot more things shift in people’s lives when they unwind some of this tension that’s holding them back. People leave jobs or leave relationships or start an exercise program or they shift in their view of themselves and what they want for themselves. That’s one thing I’ve definitely noticed.
Ben, you have a pretty big social media following with the plant-based diet and digestive issues and everything. Are you also coaching them on how they can change their lifestyle? You have an eBook out right now. What’s the eBook about?
The Digestive Rescue Blueprint
Mainly when I’m working with clients in my office, I try talking about that and most people don’t hear it right. That’s why I have all the online channels to talk about that because it helps people out. The eBook is called The Digestive Rescue Blueprint. If I was to go back in time to 2010 and be like, “Here’s a five-page or eight-page, pretty short synopsis of what you need to do to get well,” I can go Back to the Future and hand that to myself. That’s what it would be.
What’s it consists of?
It has some diet tips. It talks about some lifestyle tips. One of the big things is we’re chiropractors. We look at the nervous system. I found that for digestive issues, the nervous system is huge. When you’re in sympathetic fight or flight mode, your body shuts off digestion. It’s like, “I’ve got to run away. I am about to be run over in traffic or run over by a saber tooth tiger or whatever.” Digestion is not mission critical. It takes up a lot of energy where they’re shutting that off and we’re running away or fighting or whatever. Being in the 21st century, it can activate people’s fight or flights all the time.
It doesn’t even have to be that extreme. If you’re stressed out at your job 24/7, it doesn’t have to be a life or death situation. You’re constantly releasing cortisol and it’s causing inflammation. The digestive system is 80%, 90% of our immune system, with all the micro-bacteria in there. It’s fight or flight, but it doesn’t have to be a drastic life or death situation. Most people are going through it daily.
Yeah. It’s essentially getting micro-dose all the time. It’s not even that they’re consciously aware of it.
What’s in the eBook that can help out with that, just a switch to the parasympathetic rest and digest model?
Getting enough rest is huge. Go to bed early and go to bed on time. Meditation is huge. Breath work, which is similar to meditation, is huge at activating that parasympathetic system, getting the digestion back online. Getting innervation to it is huge.
Are you familiar with Wim Hof?
Yeah.
I’ve done a couple of his breathing exercises and I love it. The breath is very powerful. If we can switch modes like that.
If you think about it, when you’re in that fight or flight mode especially if you’re panicked, you start to take shallow breaths and your heart beats faster. It’s one of these things where if you can slow down the breath and take deep, slow breaths, it tells the body, “I’m not in that fight or flight mode, I’m actually in this relaxed state.” I don’t want to say you trick your body into that state, but you ease yourself into that state. Wim Hof’s stuff is great. I have a different method that I do. I know a lot of people who do Wim Hof and get great results with it, so it’s very good, too.
Would you be willing to break down a little bit what that breathing technique is?
There’s one exercise in the book. I actually just recorded a podcast with someone else that we showed a few of the exercises. There was a book you can get by Donny Epstein, the creator of NSA. He wrote a couple of books. One is called The 12 Stages of Healing. It’s essentially twelve breath work exercises. You can grab it used on Amazon for $6 or $7. It’s an accessible book. Then he wrote one called the Somato Respiratory Integration Workbook. That’s a good one, too.
There are millions of people struggling with IBS, chronic fatigue, and just a lot of gastrointestinal issues. What would your advice be for them and how can they get started on the right foot?
It’s in the Blueprint obviously. Eating fruit is one of the best foods you can eat to heal your digestion. It’s super easy to digest. It’s got lots of fiber which feeds the good bacteria that promote gut health. It’s got a full nutritional package of everything you need, eating simple meals of just fruit. I was always the guy that liked half a watermelon. It’s like a giant smoothie or whatever that was super clutch.
What’s your thought process on everything? A lot of people are saying sugar is the worst thing for you. Is it more than just the processed sugar? There’s a lot of sugar in fruits, but it’s natural sugar that our body can probably process a lot better than the processed sugar in all of our grocery store aisles. Is that what the thing is?
Yeah. People think of sugar and they think of doughnuts is going to be the same thing as bananas. A refined sugar is you take some plant like corn, you strip out all the fiber, all the vitamins, all the fat, all the protein, all the minerals and the antioxidants, and then you’re left with corn syrup. This is liquid sugar with no vitamins. You’re eating high quantities of that so there’s all this nutrition you’re not getting. That’s where the problem comes from when you process it into something unnatural. If you look at humans, we’re essentially related to chimpanzees, bonobos, apes, that thing. They eat a diet of primarily fruit and leafy green vegetables. We’ve noticed that we have similar teeth structure, similar bowel structure.
Fruit looks very pretty naturally. People post pictures of fruit on Pinterest and it looks cool with all these different colors. It’s very appealing in its natural state. You don’t need to cook it. You don’t need to season it. You can eat it plain and it tastes great. It’s something that we evolved with. It’s naturally part of our diet. We thought, “There’s sugar in it. We like the sugar. Let’s process it into some way we can get even more of that sugar.”Nature never intended us to do all these bizarre things to make extra sugar. It sends that signal to your brain, “I want something sweet.”You go and eat the Snickers bar and the brain is like, “I’ve got the sugar but I didn’t get the vitamins and the phyto nutrients and everything else I needed. I’m going to send the sugar signal again. Go get the sugar.”Your body doesn’t realize your brain is trying to tell you to eat fruit, but you’re going and eating all this other stuff that’s out there and never getting the nutrition you want, so you never get full. It’s definitely a big difference. If the sugar in fruit made you fat, I wouldn’t fit on the screen. I’d be like 600 pounds.
What’s your take on food allergies?
A lot of it has to do with intestinal permeability AKA leaky gut. I can’t say for certain but I’m pretty sure that’s caused by a lot of these GMO foods, the Bt toxin in corn, and the glyphosate in wheat and soy and stuff like that. They’re endocrine disruptors but they’re also pouring holes into your small intestine. Essentially, you have this one layer mucous membrane thick that once that gets ruptured, then all this crap can start going through. That’s where the food allergies develop because all of a sudden you’re getting exposed to stuff that’s in the food that normally your body wouldn’t absorb. All of a sudden it’s getting absorbed because you have essentially holes in your small intestine. People are showing up with allergies on tons of things because they have a leaky gut. All the bad stuff from all these things that normally glides on through is getting absorbed and they’re having reactions to it. I’ve noticed for all three years of school that we’re there, I ate 100%raw, 100% fruits and vegetables. I did not veer from the plan because I knew that if I did, it would be trouble for me. In recent times, I’ve lightened up. I’m eating some things like rice and occasionally I have wheat or soy very rarely. I’ve noticed that it does not affect me the way that it used to. To some degree, I haven’t gotten another food allergy test. Being able to heal your gut and repair that innerlining, you are going to notice that you aren’t as sensitive to things that you used to be.
The Digestive Rescue Blueprint: Food allergies develop because all of a sudden you’re getting exposed to stuff that’s in the food that normally your body wouldn’t absorb.
Maybe if people buckled down, change their diet, obviously it doesn’t have to be extreme of what you were talking about. They can slowly start down the road, reintroducing things, see how they do, and then maybe they’ll eventually be able to eat some things again that they were “allergic” to in the beginning?
Yeah. If you think about it, not that you want to eat necessarily bad food, but you don’t want to be completely handcuffed, too, and never be able to eat certain things, especially in social situations. These food allergies didn’t come to me until I was 26, 27 years old. It’s bizarre. I was never allergic to wheat before, how come I’m allergic now? A lot of people hear about this and they’re like, “That whole gluten thing must be horse shit because ten years ago, twenty years ago, no one was complaining about it.”What’s the one thing in the food supply that’s changed? We’ve got all these GMO crops that have Bt toxin and glyphosate in them and that’s like the smoking gun essentially.
Where can people find you on social media? Do you have a YouTube channel, Instagram, all that stuff?
Yeah. It’s @DrBenjaminBenulis on Facebook and YouTube. My Instagram handle is @WholeFuture. You can also look up Dr. Benjamin Benulis, that should show up. I posted on those three channels pretty regularly.
You’re soon to be licensed in Arizona. Where can people go to see you for some chiropractic adjustment?
I’m still working the details of that out.
Ben, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge on that. It’s always great talking to you.
Thank you for having me on, Kevin.
Is there anything else you want to touch on?
You can grab The Digestive Rescue Blueprint. You can sign up for my email list. I’ve got a lot of great info on there. It’s essentially eight years of knowledge that boiled down to a few pages to share with people who are suffering from that. I’m happy to get that out there to the people who need it.
I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks for coming on.
Thank you.
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