Eva Hooft: Heavy Metals, Hidden Trauma & True Healing

Stuart Cooke (00:01.099)
Hey guys, this is Stu from the Health Sessions and I am delighted to welcome Eva Hooft to the podcast. Eva, how are you?

Eva (00:08.482)
Hi, I'm good. It's so nice to be here.

Stuart Cooke (00:11.101)
No, I appreciate your time. But first up, before we jump into the conversation, I would love it if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself, please.

Eva (00:21.614)
Yeah, absolutely. So I'll give the Cliff note version. Otherwise we'd be here for a couple hours. Um, but yeah, so my story kind of started when I was very young. I grew up in Holland. So then the North of Holland, small town and was born really kind of into, into the whole like world of dis-ease pretty quickly. Like I was born, had like a ton of health issues, like full blown eczema, always had allergies, things like that. Um, at a very young age.

Stuart Cooke (00:26.18)
Ha

Eva (00:48.994)
Thankfully, my parents took me to a lot of alternative doctors. So I was seeing people that did biofeedback and homeopathics, which was a really beautiful way of coming into this world versus the medical system that are just some faults with sometimes. yeah, so that was a beautiful start to come into this world. But I did really realize and reflect on how there was always just something that was going on. So if it wasn't.

Stuart Cooke (00:59.595)
Yeah.

Eva (01:13.858)
you know, my skin or allergies. Eventually I also developed like depression, anxiety, like all the way to like clinically diagnosed depression. I had to go in for like actual light therapy that would help me get over my depression. I was, you know, in therapy, all sorts of things, nothing really worked. And obviously I just figured like, this is a mental health thing, has nothing to do with my physical body. And at the same time,

I was dealing with lots of physical issues as well. So I was having all sorts of food allergies and tolerances, would get crazy reactions to specific types of foods, and again, would just treat or try to treat things holistically and hope that they would get away. And then when I was about 15, I went into the modeling industry. So this is kind of when things really changed for me.

and right about that time, I also got diagnosed with chronic CMV. So I was bedridden for about two years. and literally just had to miss about two years of school and couldn't do anything then, but just rest and lay in my bed. after which I recovered and then got diagnosed with, mono. So it was kind of like one after the other, just, was always something wrong. every time I went to the doctor, there was something new and,

Stuart Cooke (02:26.241)
You

Eva (02:34.252)
Yeah, it wasn't really a great start into modeling. So I put that onto Paws. And then eventually once I was 18 and I left school, I was able to start modeling. And at this time, like I was having tons of digestive issues and still like lots of fatigue and brain fog and depression. But at least I was, you know, leaving my hometown where we have all those like traumas and memories associated. So it did help a little bit. And I started feeling a bit better. And yeah, from there onwards, you know, as a model, I was just put on to

all these different diets and ways to lose weight. And now you have to lose two inches in a few weeks because then there's a fashion show. And so it just did so much to my mental health where I developed like a severe eating disorder. I was tracking every single one of my calories. I was weighing my almond milk. Like it was like just out of this world. Like looking back now, I'm like, this is actually ridiculous thinking that I can just make some sort of calculating machine of myself.

Stuart Cooke (03:05.174)
Hmm.

Stuart Cooke (03:08.545)
So,

Stuart Cooke (03:20.479)
Ha ha ha.

Eva (03:31.17)
But at the time, like that was my way of really feeling a control over my health and over how I looked. And from there, because I was constantly juggling different diets and trying different things, I developed very severe SIBO. So I basically hit this point where I always was feeling like I was pregnant. I was having stomach pains 24 seven. I had to lay down after almost every single meal and

as I'm sure you can imagine, you when you're modeling on set and people are like, well, can you suck in your stomach, but you were having insane cramps. It's like just a world that doesn't really work well together. Um, so yeah, I mean, obviously now I know like the reasons why all of that happened. Um, but really the truth is that I was just born into a family and into a body full of heavy metals. Um, like my mom,

Stuart Cooke (04:02.815)
Yeah.

Eva (04:19.936)
and dad both had amalgam fillings. They were exposed to a lot of lead, aluminum, and therefore, you know, in utero, I got passed down so many of these metals and that really messed up my, obviously like brain chemistry is huge. So things like depression, anxiety, but also liver congestion, hormonal issues, digestive issues, and really the way I also kind of look at and bring in.

more of like the consciousness of metals is actually understanding also that when we are toxic like that, we are just going to crave more toxic substances and do things that are not good for us. And so, you know, I was smoking weed and smoking cigarettes and using drugs. And so all those things just kind of kept making my body worse and worse and the toxic burden higher and higher until I hit this point where I was like, I just need to figure this out. And that's really where my journey started of, kind of going into

Stuart Cooke (05:08.074)
Yeah.

Eva (05:12.664)
the holistic space after being filled by, the like, try this diet and do this. So.

Stuart Cooke (05:15.32)
Ha

Stuart Cooke (05:18.571)
That is a wild ride. my word. Like game over. You've had everything. So the turning point then. what was it that just you'd had enough? What was it that led you to think, right, I've got to try something else. And where did you go? Because obviously you've mentioned so many things there that have so many different paths and directions that you could explore. Whether it be heavy metal toxicity, you've got SIBO.

Eva (05:21.829)
yeah.

Eva (05:36.696)
Hmm.

Stuart Cooke (05:46.261)
gut permeability, trauma, all of that. But mean, throwing modeling on top of that, is probably, it has to be ridiculously unhealthy for the brain, let alone the body. Where would you start? I wouldn't even have a clue which direction to take.

Eva (05:52.721)
yeah.

Eva (06:03.37)
Yeah. So I mean, at the time, know, like, first of all, people weren't even really talking about heavy metal toxicity back then. They weren't even talking about things like liver congestion. And, and like, all I knew was that I had gut issues. So I started very, very basic. I ended up finding like Anthony Williams, medical mediums work and went kind of into like, you know, maybe I should just do a lot of like cleanses like that, or, you know, doing a lot of fasts and, working with every single.

Stuart Cooke (06:09.697)
Hmm.

Stuart Cooke (06:21.963)
Hmm.

Eva (06:31.33)
You know, gut healing supplement on the planet, like doing all the SIBO protocols, like maybe it's just kill it all and then try all these things. I, I feel like, because all the things that I tried would work for a little bit and then just fail me. just kept pushing me further and further into like having to do my own research because I quickly began to understand that most practitioners that said they had a clue about what was going on actually didn't. it wasn't until probably four years ago now that I ended up finding.

Stuart Cooke (06:35.207)
Yeah. Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (06:54.518)
Yeah.

Eva (07:01.154)
Just another thing, and at this point I will say, like had done so much that I was feeling quite good in the sense that I was managing my symptoms. So I knew exactly what my triggers were. I knew exactly like when I would get, you know, a lot more constipation and bloating, when there would be a lot more stress so I could understand my body, but I didn't understand how to actually work with it. So I had done a bunch of cleanses at this point. I will say that there was one cleanse that I did like on

you know, pure fate. I met this guy who was this alchemist who lived in Taos, New Mexico, and he was working with all these ancient formulas from like back in ancient Egypt and like that doing a gut cleanse with that formula, which I'll talk about is actually something I now use with all of my clients. That to me was something that like really turned like made a huge 180 for me because I was having such severe food intolerances and responses that

If there was even a sprinkle of garlic and onion in like a hummus or in something that I would eat, I would literally be out for like 24 hours. And after this cleanse, which was just a five day, mucosal plaque, a gut cleanse, you're eating pretty normal, free of lectins. You're kind of flushing also not fully the liver, but you're kind of working with like loosening up congestion. within five days,

I went from not being able to eat anything else than like rice and chicken if I wanted to feel okay, to being able to eat broccoli, garlic, Brussels sprouts, cheese. Like my whole mind was so blown. So I had done like a couple of those over the years and that really made a big enough change for me to be like, okay, you know, we're at a place where things feel manageable, but every time like symptoms kept kind of creeping back in. And so...

Stuart Cooke (08:28.864)
Wow.

Eva (08:46.06)
This is where I found like the more advanced versions, if you will, of like mucus plaque cleansing, and then also liver flushing. And when I really dove deep into liver congestion and all the signs and symptoms that it comes from, from liver congestion, that's really when I saw the biggest change. So after a couple months, like really diving into, you know, focusing on bioflow and breaking up congestion and doing liver and gallbladder flushes, that's really when I saw all the inflammation leave in my body. had so much energy and I.

didn't have any digestive issues. But then with that, there was the caveat that I overdid it. So I always have to experience like the two sides of everything, right? Usually people just experience the benefits and then they start to be like, okay, now I'm gonna do this with everyone. I always have to become the one that things they know it all. And then I end up experiencing the other side of the spectrum. So I ended up cleansing myself all the way into the urgent care. So unfortunately,

Unfortunately, I realized, okay, you know, there's, there's too much of everything and really having to learn the hard way that like when we're working with things like metals and parasites and these, these things like the body is, you know, it's already extremely fragile. The nervous system and the adrenals are already fried from those things being in the system. And now we're forcing the body to release something that it might actually not be ready for. So, I have sins like.

Stuart Cooke (09:49.013)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (10:06.753)
Hmm.

Eva (10:08.878)
completely changed my philosophy and now work with essentially getting the body to a place of safety, which obviously is something we have to do from a nervous system perspective, but also, you know, an emotional, trauma based perspective and a physical perspective. And I think a lot of people forget the physical piece where, yeah, you know, we can make the body feel safe with breath work and with, you know, meditation. But if the body on like a mineral level and on an elemental level feels completely depleted from all the

you know, the toxicity and things like that. Now we're going to try to pull out these elements that are actually in a way, keeping the system together. That's already really fragile. So, yeah, that's kind of been those two points were like the main turning points in my journey where I was like, okay, detoxification is everything. And then, actually safety is everything, which is kind of where I'm lending now.

Stuart Cooke (10:57.845)
Ha ha ha.

Boy, boy. It's really hard to know where to start as well because detoxification, as you mentioned, it's not easy. And I had a period where I had some heavy metal testing done with, it was a hair analysis. And it showed that I had a ton of heavy metals in there. And I think perhaps probably from childhood through the water system in the UK, like uranium of all things was in there as well.

And so I bought an infrared sauna and thought, right, I've heard all the good things about infrared sauna. I'm just going to sweat this stuff out. And I sat in there for six months, literally every single night for 30 minutes and just sweat, sweat, sweat, sweat, sweat. And I cleared a lot of metals. But then I also had a few other issues that started to appear because like you said, you know, a little bit of something might be great. A lot of something might be not great. It might start to trigger other things as well.

When you have all of these symptoms, and I know that, at least for our audience, food sensitivities and allergies are really, really one of the big things, and which speaks to gut, which could also speak to psychological and, you know, we can think ourselves into different states. How do you, do you test or are there any benchmark tests that you might, I mean, you mentioned SIBO, there's a SIBO test, heavy metal, like gut permeability, like all of this stuff.

Eva (12:13.486)
Totally.

Stuart Cooke (12:26.013)
Is there any, like, where do you start in terms of assessing the battlefield in wanting to know where to then address?

Eva (12:34.99)
Great question. So I think a lot of tests in my experience, in my opinion, like I went down that route of like, okay, you know, we're going to just base all the tests off the protocols. However, it's typically the people that find me that have done that. And that actually didn't work because a lot of things, like a lot of the tests that we do, they're not necessarily like very accurate in the sense that they might tell us something about what's going on, but they actually can't tell us like the depth of what's going on because by the time, right, that something is off in the blood.

Stuart Cooke (12:43.935)
Yeah.

Eva (13:04.002)
there's a lot of deeper imbalances that have already taken place because the body will do everything to try to keep the blood levels in check, right? Like that's the thing that like needs to function best. And so the way I kind of like to look at it is that in today's day and age, everyone's toxic. Like whether you're living in an area where, as you mentioned, right, we're exposed to what's in the water system, what's in the air, they're, you know, spraying things in the air. It's in our foods, it's in our, you know, makeup or self-care products.

Stuart Cooke (13:10.485)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (13:13.921)
Mm.

Eva (13:32.424)
And obviously like what we have passed down in, in utero, like the four generations before us. So heavy metals are always a thing. I've never not seen people eliminate heavy metals when they actually are on the right protocol. It's the same thing with mucoid plaque, with liver congestion and things like that. So how I assess when someone comes to me is more of a symptom assessment in terms of, right? Like how well.

Stuart Cooke (13:36.523)
Yeah.

Eva (13:57.006)
do you digest your food? Like what are, what are some of the symptoms you're experiencing that will help me determine what's going on? And I also really like to check in, like what are someone's psycho emotional, like mental experiences? Because those, mean, those give me a better indicator of what can be going on than any sort of lab work can do, because I've seen it so many times where people come to me and they're saying,

Stuart Cooke (14:09.857)
Hmm.

Eva (14:23.172)
my lab work is great. And actually I did a GI map and I don't have SIBO. And actually things look like, maybe like there's a little gut permeability, but nothing crazy. Right. And it's often those people that actually end up having this like crazy journey of like releasing massive amounts of congestion and parasites. And obviously also like the, the emotional trauma and the nervous system regulation being like a key role here as well. So I like to say that

Stuart Cooke (14:31.551)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (14:41.259)
Mm.

Eva (14:50.434)
quite often when the tests are really bad, we're already looking at like the fourth stage of the development of that very specific disease in the body. so quite often, everyone needs gut support. Everyone needs some sort of liver support. And everyone these days has some sort of liver congestion, whether we are experiencing a lot of symptoms or we're just experiencing things like...

Fatigue here and there, maybe the inability to digest fats as well as we'd like, or just like some symptoms like bloating and constipation or indigestion to some extent. Like these are all signs of, you know, low stomach acid, of poor bowel flow. And so when we just address all the foundations and then we give the body the minerals and the nutrients that it needs, it will just start to work on everything that's underlying. you know, for someone that might say, okay, well, I'm physically feeling pretty good.

what would happen if we actually then support the body even more, right? This is typically when like the really deep traumas will come up, when the really deep emotional processes will come up because the body now has the energy to actually work with what was stored in the nervous system for so many years that it actually couldn't get to because there was not enough energy to deal with it. So it's been really fascinating to see what we can do when we actually don't just look at and...

hold onto the data or the diagnoses or whatever the thing is that we typically like to really focus on. It's like, what if we actually just make your body feel safe and supported on like the physical, the mental, the emotional and the energetic level and then see what happens. And it's quite often like a miraculous process to witness.

Stuart Cooke (16:17.665)
Hmm.

Stuart Cooke (16:33.321)
What connected you then to explore the emotional side of things? Because obviously you can physically see bloating, you can see problematic skin, you can feel issues where food are concerned, but who knows what's going on in the brain because it is just such a complex beast.

Eva (16:41.496)
Hmm.

Eva (16:57.388)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, in my own journey, you my experience was I had no emotions, like up to the gosh, when was this like probably like six or seven years ago, I was like, I don't get affected by anything. I haven't cried in six years, like thinking that that was a good thing, you know. And I remember my ex partner at the time, he introduced me to some sort of like seminar, some transformational weekend. And by the end of it, I was like,

Stuart Cooke (17:06.049)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (17:12.895)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eva (17:24.642)
my gosh, I have not felt these things in like 10 years. And that's really when I started to see like the level of protection and the level of programming that I was living in. And, you know, as human beings, we like the only thing that's keeping us, us captive is the mind. And so when we start to understand, right, the, the programming that we're living in and that we're through, including the way that we perceive our symptoms or, you know, I'll have clients that say, well,

Stuart Cooke (17:43.105)
Hmm.

Eva (17:53.164)
I can't eat this because I have this thing and in order for me to heal, have to have all these steps or all these things checked. And so we're now living in these conditions and until these conditions are met, then we can have the experience that we're wanting. So it is always the case that there is some sort of deeper emotional route to whatever our experiences that we came here to experience. And so the way that I can kind of,

The way that I like to kind of make that correlation is that I like to say that every experience we have has some sort of deeper emotional magnetizing power that will basically create this experience in your life. So we all kind of know like the classic example of someone who feels a fear of abandonment that keeps repeating the same relationship pattern, right? It's like, well, how come she always attracts the man who then starts to abandon her?

Stuart Cooke (18:40.843)
Hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Eva (18:48.022)
It's the same thing with our physical body and our physical symptoms. So if we are meant to feel, let's say frustration, right? If we have a deep sense of unprocessed anger and frustration because we never learned how to deal with this anger, or maybe this is even anger that's been passed down again for four generations that was never felt, right? Now what happens is that we are going to create experiences. We're magnetizing experiences to us that will help us feel

and process this anger. So what could that look like on a symptomology level? Maybe we have acne, right? Acne is extremely linked to heat in the body, to the liver. So maybe there's all this repressed anger and specifically relationally, because the skin is how we have contact with other people. And maybe there's also something attached around like a fear of being seen. So when there's this insane amount of pressure and frustration with our own symptoms that it's

never going away. Why does everyone else have healthy skin and I don't, right? The experience is there just so that we can feel and sit with that feeling. And so when we actually learn to understand like the language that the body speaks through emotions, we tend to be able to actually remove the deeper reason why we have that experience in the first place. And I've seen like people's just healing journey and how quickly things can leave when we're actually getting to that super quickly. And

That's like the first thing that I like to show my clients. had this client who had like full body eczema had tried everything. You know, she had done all the protocols, had worked with all the things and all the practitioners. And we were just working on very simple things, very much like mental, emotional. Also anger came up. Anger was a really, really big thing. And the frustration and the resistance towards feeling anger. And once we removed that within three days, 80 % of her eczema had cleared. Now, again, this is when I told her.

don't attach to this because you're going to have deeper layers of frustration that will come up. So it's going to be this journey of like, anytime we want to attach to something and say, I got to figure it out, right? That's typically when it gets taken away from us. So yeah, that was kind of my own journey with like the emotional pieces is that I needed to learn for myself that if I just focused on my physical body, that it wouldn't, it wouldn't get to like the deepest part that actually wanted to be felt. And in my case, right.

Stuart Cooke (20:55.361)
Mmm.

Eva (21:11.522)
coming from being bullied as a child, feeling like I didn't fit in, and then going into the complete opposite, the modeling industry, where now you have all this fame and this attention. The real deep root of my gut issues was shame and self-hatred and feeling like I wasn't good enough. And so until I processed all of that, I kept having my symptoms come back. And so it's been this really beautiful journey of understanding the psycho.

somatic emotional landscape that we have as human beings.

Stuart Cooke (21:43.849)
Yeah, boy, that's amazing. It must be hard, I think, then to dig deep with your clients and try and uncover all of these little closed chests stored away in their mind at some stage. mean, how long does that process take and where would you start given the fact that it's such a closed box?

Eva (22:05.494)
Yeah. So, you know, I do have the blessing of actually most of my clients that I tend to work with, they're at the level where they've done it all and they're just so ready to dive in and they're like, okay, like I'm willing to do whatever it takes. Right. So it takes time, but I also teach my clients how to do this themselves. So like the biggest asset is just learning that language of, when I feel the symptom pop up, I will learn how to dive into the somatic space and have a conversation with

you know, the younger parts of myself with a subconscious mind. And even when it comes to like more deeper energetic layers to things and how to actually work with them. So the idea is that this is going to be a lifelong process that doesn't mean that we have to have symptoms for the rest of our life. So it's about getting to a level of connection and awareness with our bodies where, you know, if we look at like a realistic timeline of someone that has experienced, you know, like

decades of chronic symptoms. Like we're definitely looking at like a one to two year cycle of actually, you know, working with that, but that doesn't mean that they need to be under guidance for those two years. That just means that, Hey, you need to learn the language and have the tools that when you have bloating, when you have constipation come up, when you're going on vacation, you know exactly what your body needs in order to kind of move through that with ease. and I do think that that's kind of where the gap in the market is currently, because everyone's like,

Stuart Cooke (23:06.113)
Hmm.

Stuart Cooke (23:12.309)
Yeah.

Eva (23:30.958)
No, just keep working with me and just stay on this protocol forever. And if not, then you just renew and or another protocol. it's great. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, sometimes, you know, even to like the detriment of myself, I try to really like stay away from that. So how can I give people as much as possible in a short period of time? And sometimes that just doesn't always work where it's like, okay, you know, we do need to at least have six months together or longer because these these things are.

Stuart Cooke (23:34.217)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's a good business model.

Stuart Cooke (23:55.51)
Yeah.

Eva (24:00.705)
is very deep.

Stuart Cooke (24:02.036)
Wow. to give our listeners then a perspective of what they might encounter if connecting with you. So if we've tried everything, like can't fix all of the issues that were going on, perhaps we've got lethargy, brain fog, problematic skin, allergic to all the different types of foods out there and...

have tried everything, been vegan all the way through to carnivore and all of the crazy stuff in between. Where would we start with you? What would you typically do perhaps within the first month or so of working with me?

Eva (24:41.952)
Yeah, so I take people through pretty in-depth assessments first. So like really understanding, right? First of all, what have you done? What worked for you? What didn't? Because that's a great indicator to understand like, okay, when you just made this switch, you actually felt better. So we get a lot of understanding of like how you have responded to things in the past. And then typically I will start everyone with the foundation. So that's gut support and liver support. So making sure that...

Stuart Cooke (24:56.479)
Yeah.

Eva (25:07.982)
you know, your, again, we're working on the integrity of your gut lining. We're working on soothing the gut. We're working on detoxing the gut. So we're going to introduce binders. Um, because, know, nine out of 10 times, if we do have, you know, some sort of like bacterial overgrowth or imbalance, or we have candida or parasites or molds, like just to take the pressure off of the nervous system by starting to bind some of the endotoxins that these things produce, the system actually can calm down quite a bit. So we want it.

always focus on safety first. So binders support nervous system support. So I'll usually introduce some sort of like nervous system support in the terms of like herbal tinctures and breath work and things that just kind of feel, make the body feel more safe. And then when the body is stabilized and you're having great digestion, you know, and you're, having good consistent bowel movements, then we'll move to deliver. this is

Stuart Cooke (25:39.798)
Yeah.

Eva (26:01.25)
typically how we work our way up the funnel because right, if we're just starting to dump all these toxins from the brain or from the cells and you have a clock that funnel, like it just keeps recirculating. This is where we see like, you know, panic attacks, anxiety, rashes, skin eruptions, like all the things that typically come with a detox that we're told are normal detox symptoms. so yeah, of course you can't always fully eliminate those entirely, but we do like to really stay in that safe realm where your body.

Stuart Cooke (26:08.043)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (26:21.078)
Yeah.

Eva (26:29.88)
Feel supported rather than overwhelmed. yeah, gut liver. And then we typically go into the deeper systems, introducing mineral support. So starting to balance the minerals, heavy metal tests, like HTML tests is also something that I'm starting to bring in more and more, into the practice as well. So really learning, right. Okay.

Where are your mineral ratios at right now? What can we support to bring that back in balance so that the body then has more energy to actually do the deeper cellular eliminations, which typically we don't want to do after we have done some sort of preparation work, which is typically like the gut, the liver, and then seeing what else we can address there.

Stuart Cooke (27:11.073)
Brilliant. And any quick wins in terms of low-hanging fruit, perhaps from food or supplements? Because there are a vast array of supplements out there that supposedly help you detox, supposedly help for gut permeability, minerals, all that kind of stuff, varying spectrum of rubbish to great. Where do you sit in terms of maybe the stuff that you keep in your cupboard that you always know is going to add value?

Eva (27:33.635)
Hehehe.

Eva (27:41.742)
Great question. I think for a lot of people, not for me personally, but for a lot of people, right. stomach acid, low stomach acid, especially from nervous system, dysregulation is a really big one. So also everyone's talking these days about, know, if you eat sushi, you get parasites, blah, blah, which is a whole conversation on its own. just make sure that you eat mercury free fish and you can actually eat them raw. however, you know, when you do want to enjoy your sushi or you're abroad and you want kind of like a first line of defense,

Stuart Cooke (27:51.729)
Mm. Okay.

Stuart Cooke (27:59.873)
Yeah.

Eva (28:11.826)
HCL with pepsin, just to bring that stomach acid down is a great first line of defense. There's tons of resources online on how to work with it. It's kind of like finding the right dose for your body. So that's one first line of defense, always great to have in your cupboard. Binders are another great thing to have any time that you feel, you know, brain fog, fatigue, or you know that you're moving through something like, you know, metal toxicity molds.

Stuart Cooke (28:23.553)
Hmm.

Eva (28:38.51)
Or you're just on vacation and you want to make sure that you don't get food poisoning, right? Um, like I really like enteros gel. is a silica based binder. Super easy. You can buy it on Amazon for like 15 bucks. That's like the easiest, most tolerated binder that you can take. Um, obviously activated charcoal can sometimes be helpful. I only use it with food poisoning because it does also bind to other met, uh, minerals and, things that we do need. So I don't typically work with it too much, but it's a good staple.

Stuart Cooke (28:41.505)
Yeah.

Eva (29:07.4)
I love modified Citruspectin from Pectisol. it is a binder that's very underrated because it also works. It can cross the blood brain barrier. So it also works for mitochondria support. So this is extremely well researched in the cancer community. It's extremely well researched for mole toxicity and binding to mycotoxins. so I like to take at least one to two scoops of that on an empty stomach. the one caveat with that is that if you have someone who's very sensitive,

they might not tolerate it. So I do typically recommend taking that one. You know, if you're a very sensitive individual taking it under practitioner guidance. but yeah, those are kind of like classic binders and then, high dose zeolites as well. really liked the company's zeo charge. So those, those are kind of like my foundation for binders. So even if I don't do anything right with a client or they're not ready for something yet is to just offset some of the things that are circulating in their body or that are coming in from food.

Stuart Cooke (29:41.269)
Hmm.

Stuart Cooke (30:01.697)
Mm.

Eva (30:05.41)
And then digestive support, bitters are always incredible. So liver bitters, I specifically love the one from Quicksilver. They have two different kinds. those are extremely powerful also. So you want to start slow, but yeah, anything that gets bile flowing. So liver bitters, lemon water, if you don't have histamine issues, you know, Shilajit is another great source of minerals as well. So those are kind of the things that I like to do to help my bile move.

Stuart Cooke (30:29.547)
Mm.

Eva (30:34.176)
And then, you can also drink green tea with Jasmine is a very untapped bio flow source as well. So some people that kind of sip on green tea throughout the day might notice an extra bowel movement in the afternoon that they usually wouldn't have. So yeah, anything that we can do to kind of keep that first, you know, the first funnel flowing, which is the colon, tends to help very, very well. And then also just our vegetable intake, it's going to sound really, really cliche. but.

In an ideal world, we do have two cups of ideally pressure cooked or steamed and then sauteed vegetables. It sounds like a lot per meal, but I can guarantee you like your microbiome might freak out for a week or two and you're going to feel really bloated, which is a good sign. That means that it's adapting, right? but it typically also helps bind because the fiber in there does also pull things from, you know, that are coming in like harmful substances. So fiber.

Stuart Cooke (31:17.846)
Mm.

Eva (31:30.668)
bioflow and those things are extremely helpful to just start.

Stuart Cooke (31:33.761)
And in terms of the veg, where would you typically go to in veg? Because people often maybe eat 10 things, 10 food groups. Well, my veg, I only ever eat broccoli, cauliflower, and maybe sprouts. And they're all cruciferous. And obviously, there's a whole range of other things out there. What do you look for as perhaps the most useful when veg are concerned?

Eva (31:55.48)
Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I will say this is really hard because so many people these days have some sort of SIBO. So they're going to do a lot. They're going to need to do a lot more prep work in order to get to the place where they can eat all the vegetables that I'm going to name. So if you're under this category and you're listening and you're like, my gosh, like, you know, if I would eat what I do right now, like when I was in the midst of my things, like I would be on the floor for three days, you know, so just.

Stuart Cooke (32:09.066)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (32:19.06)
Right. Yeah.

Eva (32:20.182)
Again, like test the waters, have a little bit of it and then see if you tolerate it or not. But for me, like, alliums are incredible. So right now I'll try to have like all sorts of different kinds of onions. so they contain a very specific prebiotic fiber, which is extremely helpful for the gut as well. So I'll do, you know, a spring onion, yellow, red onion, all of those. I really love zucchini. doesn't add incredible nutritional value, but it's still a vegetable.

and then I do similar like cruciferous vegetables as well. So all of those are amazing. And then I really, really like to do the more like starchy veg for kind of like my starches. So think, you know, beets and carrots, like all of those kinds of potatoes are also incredible. again, this is, I find it really difficult to give nutrition advice because for so many people, right, if you're dealing with like Candida and molds, you're going to not want to eat.

Stuart Cooke (33:14.731)
Yeah.

Eva (33:18.018)
the beads because they're high in oxalate. there's, there's some caveats. And I think it's just about after like at the end of the day, it's what do you currently feel good with and trust that that also will change because our bodies are like, they are always changing. think it's like the microbiome can change within like a week or something. It's crazy or two weeks. So even if we're like, well, those are trigger foods. And I feel horrible when I eat this, like we should never attach that to our identity because then again, we were trapped, right? We're like, we are our.

Stuart Cooke (33:36.641)
Hmm.

Eva (33:47.98)
diagnosis and I can't eat these or I'm sensitive to these things, which is why I never do food sensitivity tests because they're absolutely yes. Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (33:53.343)
Yeah, it's so hard. Yeah, no, I hear you. I've done a few of those. On the flip side then, are there any particular foods that you deem as more than likely to be problematic? again, you know, probably a lot of the process crap out there, but I know that people are attached to, oftentimes I think people are attached to...

the food so much emotionally that that's often times the biggest trigger and the one thing that they don't want to remove.

Eva (34:22.904)
Yeah, you nailed it. Like that was even my journey, know, even this past year when, like a year ago, I started my mineral balancing journey, which is, it's obviously something that I'm now bringing into the practice and it's been so transformative, but I had to give up my sweet breakfast and I had been a sweet breakfast person for years, even though I knew that my body didn't like it. And yeah, you know, I was eating enough like fiber and fat and protein with it, but still I knew that actually my body wanted like,

Stuart Cooke (34:43.467)
Yeah.

Eva (34:51.128)
you eggs and protein and like veggies. And I was like, no, not this breakfast. So yeah, whoever's listening, just know that like we're all human. We have our days, we have our little emotional treats and we should. But yeah, so problematic foods, foods that I now have everyone cut out. Number one's chocolate. Sorry to say it. Like even your

Stuart Cooke (34:52.629)
Yeah. Yep.

Eva (35:13.462)
ceremonial cacao is like very, very problematic. It's so full of lead and cadmium. And if there's anything that I could change in my past, it would be to listen to when I found out that it was full of lead and cadmium and just, you know, me being like, you know, I'm, I'm healthy anyway. Like, you know, you can't do everything right. Or I'm already detoxing. And now to feel what it feels like to go through a lead elimination. I'm like, okay, I wish I, I wish that I listened to myself. So

Stuart Cooke (35:14.943)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (35:40.47)
Yeah.

Eva (35:41.294)
you know, thankfully these days there's so many resources like an apps that will really show you like health products and the metal contents in there or other additives or microplastics. but in general, I have yet to find any cacao that's entirely free of heavy metals. It is just a natural prop part of the soil that these plants tend to grow in. So,

Stuart Cooke (36:01.643)
Mm.

Eva (36:03.808)
Even the most healthy brands, the ones that we all love, they tend to be even higher in metals because they're higher in cacao than some of the processed brands. Then rice is another very problematic food, both brown and white, typically also tend to be grown in areas where the arsenic is very high in soil. And I've heard something really interesting that I think

Stuart Cooke (36:21.729)
Hmm.

Eva (36:25.186)
You know, we don't really take into consideration, but nature is extremely smart, right? It all, it's all imbalanced. there are specific crops that are specifically utilized in nature to actually help decrease the amount of metals in the soil. And those plants tend to be the ones that retain a lot more metals. so from what I've heard, that tends to be right. Like the rice, the, Kikow plants and things like that. And then you also, of course have.

Green tea, matcha, those tend to be full of metals as well as any sort of like herbs. So I try to avoid any herbs from China whatsoever, even if they're in tinctures. And when you're working with supplements and tinctures to just always make sure they have their certificates, right. It's like triple tested for heavy metals because these days everything is very contaminated. So yeah, those are the things I, tend to cut out.

Stuart Cooke (36:56.086)
Hmm.

Stuart Cooke (37:13.043)
Yeah, it's tricky. You've a lot of people weeping right now about the chocolate. Thinking about popular wellness trends, again, there are so many different avenues that we could take. mean, the green smoothie springs to mind, which can be good in some instances, depending on what you blend, but also can be very problematic on the other side of the coin.

Eva (37:18.284)
I know. I know. That was the hardest one for me to give up too.

Eva (37:34.168)
Mm.

Stuart Cooke (37:42.535)
Any or currently any wellness trends that you see that your clients are participating in that you think are going to be detrimental to the work that you want to do with them?

Eva (37:57.326)
So many, like that's, think that's the whole thing. It's like, you know, the whole health and wellness industry is trending right now. So they're going to just think, the more things I do, the better it is. And the more biohacking and Asana and a cold blunge and this and that. And like, we have to understand that the body, right. Sees all these things as stress, even though they are nervous system regulating tools, they are external stressors to some capacity sometimes. Like for one person,

Stuart Cooke (37:59.457)
Hmm.

Stuart Cooke (38:06.677)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (38:15.873)
Mm.

Eva (38:23.982)
PEMF may be extremely helpful in regulating and for the other, might be a perceived stressor. So I think it's really understanding where your body is at. I've gone through waves, I've gone through waves where, you know, sauna, bath was extremely helpful for me or what I perceived was helpful. And the reason I ended up in urgent care was because I had a near death experience from an ice bath. So would not recommend, especially.

Stuart Cooke (38:28.565)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (38:42.945)
Ha

Eva (38:46.028)
especially as women, but also men that have mineral imbalances like metal toxicity. Again, this taxes the adrenal so much that unless you know like, I've gone through significant metal eliminations, I've done a lot of work, like I feel very strong, my minerals are balanced. Then I'm like, great, these things are gonna be great for performance boosting. And if you haven't done that and you do have some sort of symptoms or...

whatever it is, even if it's as simple as brain fog or concentration or whatever the thing is, I would just recommend against anything that's going to add stress to the adrenals. other wellness trends that I think will be problematic in the future. And people might really hate me for this is, things like certain peptides and other injections and things that are just very, very new that everyone just jumps on. I have personally experienced very adverse reactions to them. I've had a lot of clients where

Stuart Cooke (39:20.843)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (39:34.721)
Hmm.

Eva (39:40.206)
They've experienced extreme adverse reactions to them, stem cells similarly, just because it really will bring up, right? Like these things are so intense on the system in a great way, right? It can really target inflammation or other things. And again, I don't have enough knowledge to speak to all of them, but some of them will also trigger deeper imbalances that are in the system. So if your body cannot handle the amount of, right, like toxins or things that are being

Stuart Cooke (39:50.302)
Yeah.

Eva (40:07.04)
stirred up by taking some of these substances, it can do a lot of damage. Another wellness trend that I think is going to really, really like run its course is like all the, you know, like the intense breath work, emotional release, Kundalini activation, like group sessions. I cannot tell you how many times I've had clients come to me with like those sessions induced psychosis where they actually like are driven into this place where like, like

mentally they just cannot comprehend the amount of trauma that's coming up and then they are re-traumatized and brought into extremely fragile states. yeah, like I have my own opinions about that kind of work and about a lot of just like lack of integrity in the space with practitioners that think, I can just go through one training and now I can play with people's energy and manipulate them and have insane reactions. like, yeah.

Stuart Cooke (40:57.769)
Yeah, it's...

It's frightening. mean, I think oftentimes we've kind of commercialized some of these sacred practices, even like ayahuasca for one. Like we'll take it out of the jungles from the shaman and we'll put it into the shopping center and jump into ayahuasca for 25 bucks and you come out gibbering mess. Who knows where it's gonna go.

Eva (41:06.995)
yeah. my gosh. Yeah.

Eva (41:18.872)
That was my experience too. I got so dramatized. I'm like, am I a shaman from Wisconsin? Like, wait, what's going on? Yeah. Like, yeah. That's, yeah.

Stuart Cooke (41:25.441)
Gary. Yeah, it's frightening. It is frightening. I always look to my grandparents because they lived into their 90s and they didn't exercise in terms of running or gym or any of that kind of stuff. They just moved. They had eight simple foods. They weren't overstimulated by all the tech that we've got.

Eva (41:37.006)
Mm.

Stuart Cooke (41:48.031)
their food was naturally organic because that was just how it was in the day. And now we're dropping like flies and we need every form of therapy, beginning from our teenage years just to get through. And they went through World War and the Great Depression, et cetera. So they saw their fair share of stress, but yeah, it is kind of crazy. So I'm keen to ask,

how your definition then of health and beauty has evolved now because obviously from an early age thrown into the modeling and it's all about the look and

know, vanity metrics and people go to the gym, like, it's just, I just want to look good irrespective of what I have to do to get there. But now obviously you've got this toolkit, which you know can transform your body and bring us into true long lasting health. So how, how has that definition shifted for you in terms of your, your journey?

Eva (42:31.662)
Mm-hmm.

Eva (42:49.71)
Oh gosh, mean, just a complete 180. Like for me, think it's, I always really deeply check in with my body as to like, like, does my body want to work out right now? Does it want to do these things? Does it even want to like, even the protocols that I'm doing now or the protocols I'm approaching with my clients, right? Like I think what makes my work so different is that I don't give people a protocol and take this every day and figure it out. It becomes this really deep connection to their body of like,

Stuart Cooke (42:52.469)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (43:17.441)
Yeah.

Eva (43:18.018)
Does my body actually want the supplement right now? Or do I feel a sense of like resistance here? Because we have to learn to listen to the natural flow of energy that we go through. And especially as women where we have our cycles and we have different needs every single phase of our, of our cycle. So my definition has changed so much to where I just deeply trust my body. And I deeply trust that like, there's going to be times where I need to have, you know,

Stuart Cooke (43:22.367)
Hmm.

Eva (43:44.724)
more weight on me because again, when we actually look at safety, right, the body stores toxins and fat. So if you are very lean and also for people that go through rapid weight loss programs, that can be extremely detrimental to the system because now you're freeing up all these fat soluble toxins that were in the fat tissue. And sometimes the body will want to retain more water or more fat to protect itself, not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally, right? It's this protection layer from

Stuart Cooke (44:02.719)
right.

Stuart Cooke (44:12.127)
Hmm.

Eva (44:12.706)
from the outer world, sometimes for vulnerability or from intimacy. And so I just really deeply trust my body's processes. And that means that, you know, there's these waves, especially as right now I'm mineral balancing and my body is going through deeper metal eliminations that there might be two or three months where I barely work out. And kind of what you were saying, like I just move. Maybe it's intuitive movement, maybe it's yoga, maybe it's just going for a walk and trusting as well that.

Stuart Cooke (44:34.528)
Yeah.

Eva (44:40.236)
When I'm on the other side of this, that my body will actually have the capability of building muscle from a place where it's actually healthy, right? It's like actually in the process that it wants to build muscle, not because I'm forcing it to do so while my adrenals and nervous system are like, my gosh, like, here we go again. We're at the gym again. so yeah, it's that, it's that. And yeah. And I think I'll add one more thing to that. Cause I think.

Stuart Cooke (44:56.863)
Yeah, doesn't stop. That's excellent.

Eva (45:04.59)
The other thing that's really, really important is just nourishment in general, because I think as a society, we have forgotten what true nourishment looks and feels like when it comes to feeling nourishment of potentially the love that we didn't get from our parents or from a loved one. And how can we learn to really give ourselves and our bodies the sense of nourishment that it actually needs, whether that's in the form of food or self-love or just, again, like...

allowing your body to rest, taking a day off of work, like all of these things that we have completely lost touch with.

Stuart Cooke (45:38.965)
Yeah, it's a busy life, busy times as well. Attack from all angles. So we are, so we're coming up on time, but I wanted just to ask one last question from you and that talks to your non-negotiable. So perhaps the things that you do on automatic pilot every day that just make you feel great, that you always default to, to allow you just to crush that day.

Eva (46:04.046)
Great question. From morning on, would say non-negotiable is meditation, even though sometimes I fall off with that. But right now I have like a very, yeah, I'll do like a sadhana, so a morning practice that includes breath, meditation and mantra, which really kind of sets the tone for the day for me, depending on, you know, how I wake up. And also like, no matter how I feel, I'll always go through it and feel better.

Stuart Cooke (46:29.184)
Yeah.

Eva (46:33.17)
that's a non-negotiable. Another one is just eating whatever my body needs in that day. So usually also always starts the same lemon water, legit bitters. I I'm currently on some supplements that help kind of regulate my cycle even more. and then just having a quiet morning. the first two hours of my day, I don't do meetings. I'm just with myself, with my body. and then a matcha I'm absolutely addicted to matcha is the one thing that I can't let go of.

Stuart Cooke (47:00.331)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Eva (47:03.16)
But yeah, I did finally find some that's heavy metal free. Yeah, exactly. And then I think somatic work is my non-negotiable. Every single day there will be a moment where I tune in with my body, whether that's laying on my biomat on the floor and actually tuning into tension in my body and seeing what's come up during the day and how I can move with it and work with it. Or just like.

Stuart Cooke (47:05.266)
some good got some of the good stuff.

Eva (47:27.756)
Yeah, like allowing my body to speak in terms of actual somatic movements, so intuitive movement or dance or just shaking it out. So that's like a non-negotiable for me. Cause if I don't like, I work so much these days that like, if I don't take those breaks for my nervous system to entirely like come back to a sense of like, you know, regulation and, and, and balance, will, yeah, get tension headaches or feel like brain fog or feel tired. And so to just let those moments of rest come in is like a non-negotiable as well.

Stuart Cooke (47:52.342)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (47:58.911)
Well, you certainly covered a lot of ground, that's for sure. And I know that there'll be a whole heap of people that want to find out more about you and your work and dial into everything that we've spoken today. where can we send them?

Eva (48:12.406)
Yeah. So, I share a lot on my Instagram. So that's just my first dot last name. Eva dot hooft. and my website has all the information as well. So kind of what I mentioned earlier on that I currently do with my clients, I have this mucoid plaque cleanse that I essentially did what, which really changed the game for me a couple of years ago, that over the last two years, including somatic practices and

meditations and nervous system balancing work. have worked into a 10 day program. So that's typically kind of like a start point for everyone that's hesitant about the work. Just like, I don't know what she is and what she does. And I don't know if I want to work with her yet. Like that's a, that's a great place to start. It's only $97. so that's, if you just go to my website, www.evahooft.com, you'll see 10 day reset. That's a great place to start. and then my main program is the realignment program, which is a three month group container that I take everyone through.

Stuart Cooke (48:50.247)
Yeah.

Eva (49:08.654)
Um, with basically everything that we just covered, right? Nervous system, um, colon liver, like somatic work. You'll learn actually how to work with these deeper emotions and do like work with energy work, like basically everything that I've packed into a 12 week program. And then I also do one-on-one coaching, um, for a couple of people at a time, um, when I have space, but yeah, that's obviously my, my preference. love my one-on-one clients. Um, so all of that's to find on my website as well.

Stuart Cooke (49:36.585)
Awesome, fantastic. look, we will put everything that you've spoken about today in the show notes, including all of your links, and send as many people as we can, because we've covered a lot of ground. yeah, I'm personally fascinated to find out a lot more about this as well, because it comes from a place of...

Eva (49:44.814)
Thank

Stuart Cooke (49:51.987)
intense curiosity I think and you seem to have completely cracked the code on all of that because you are absolutely glowing as well, full of you watching this on video. But Eva, thank you so much for your time, much appreciated and hopefully we'll connect at some stage in the future.

Eva (50:10.03)
Thank you so much.