Summary:

Dr. Shivani Gupta, founder of Fusionary Formulas, discussed the benefits of turmeric and curcumin in a conversation with Megan Lyons. Gupta explained that she grew up in a family that used traditional Indian remedies, which led her to study Ayurveda and eventually focus on turmeric for its numerous health benefits. She emphasized the importance of gut health and reducing inflammation for overall wellness. Gupta also discussed her company’s products, TurmerGold and Inflammation Relief, which contain potent doses of curcumin, the most effective compound in turmeric for reducing inflammation. She advised people to cycle on and off supplements for optimal health and to consult with their doctors before starting any new regimen.

Full Episode:

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Transcription:

Megan Lyons:

Thank you so much, Dr. Shivani Gupta for coming on Wellness Your Way. I am very excited to have you here.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Awesome. Thank you for having me.

Megan Lyons:

Of course. Well, I’ve read your bio to our audience. It’s extremely impressive and I’m thrilled for all of the wisdom you’re going to share today. But why don’t you just start by telling us in your words how you wound up here.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

For sure. So I grew up a Texas girl in Houston, Texas to an immigrant family, and I grew up living in two worlds. So I grew up being a Texas girl, going to school, American schooling, everything. But my parents would take us to India every year to go see my grandparents and my cousins. And so I always remember in my upbringing like, gosh, these are two different worlds. And in India, we live one way. If I have a stomach ache, my grandma pulls out herbs and spices, and if I have any issues, there’s like an herb or a spice or a tea that will fix that. And when I’m home here in Texas, it’s totally different. It’s like whatever’s at the time was our drugstore. Now it’s called CVS. And so eventually growing up I was just kind of a sickly kid, and anytime we traveled I would get so sick car, sick air, sick sea, sick.

You couldn’t take me anywhere. And finally, by the time I hit high school, I was getting these chronic colds again, felt like I had no immune system compared to everyone else, and took a really large amount of antibiotics every month. The pediatrician was just like, here’s augmented and here’s antibiotics. Just keep taking it. You’ll get better. By the time I hit college, I realized, you know what? I have no immune system. Everyone else can party and have dinner and have fun, and I’m stuck. I’m stuck being sick. And I remember in India one day, I said to the doctor, I said, there has to be a different way than you blowing up my gut with an antibiotic. You have not even talked to me about a probiotic. And I looked at my parents and I said, outside these doors is the land of yoga and Ayurveda, maybe we need to go explore some other system to heal me because the current one’s not working. And that’s what set me off on my big journey to studying and loving Ayurveda to the point that I teach it now.

Megan Lyons:

Wow, that is incredible. So many people have turned their own pain into good. And I am grateful that you did that, although I’m sorry you had to go through all of those experiences. Sounds tough.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Yeah, it was tough, but you know what, now I guard my immune system with my life and I win at it all the time. I don’t catch anything, knock on wood. And so I’m very grateful. Amazing. It paved the way for a much easier life now.

Megan Lyons:

Yes. That is incredible. Well, we’ll be talking all about immune systems and all kinds of stuff related to your background, but I have to say you’re the first person I’ve ever talked to with a Ph.D. in turmeric that is so specific and so incredible. It makes me happy. How did you get specifically so interested in turmeric?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Well, I studied Ayurveda. I went to India. I studied it under the great gurus. I kept exploring how do I pull the nuggets out of this wisdom? It’s a pretty involved lifestyle and commitment, and the detoxes are huge. I remember going to India and doing the detoxes thinking, gosh, if we all just detox for three weeks every year we would have an entirely different planet in terms of our health pathologies and diseases. And so eventually I thought, I need to study this in a structure so that when I go out to write books and teach about this, people will listen. But I did my master’s in I rdic sciences first and in the IRV the course, it was just so much knowledge and herbology really caught my interest because we have such a affinity for and usage of herbs and spices in a way that here in the west we have no idea.

In the west, we’re like, I’ve got my oregano, I’ve got my rosemary, I use some sage maybe if I want to be fancy with my Italian versus in India it’s unending the level of spices we play with, but they have potent medical benefits, potent superfood level things that they do to the body. And so when I was sitting in herbology class, I’m hearing cilantro does this and cumin does that, and Feneg GRI does this and mustard seed does that. And then they talked about turmeric, the spice, and I thought, gosh, we all use turmeric. What is the big deal? But when they spoke about the benefits, I was like, whoa, it’s anti-inflammatory antioxidant. It’s antiviral. That one really caught my attention, antibacterial, antifungal, and I thought, wow, this was the key to the kingdom. If I had had this as a kid, maybe I wouldn’t have been dying on every vacation and I wouldn’t have been the weak one who couldn’t really go to a party or a trip without being scared that I just crashed the next day.

And I also felt like I come from a family of diabetics. And so growing up going to India every year, I’d watch people really suffer with the advanced stages of diabetes and pass away from it, from stroke, heart attack, amputation, all those things. So I just sat there and thought this spice could be that one thing that if I study it and I understand it, maybe we can convince all of Western medicine to use this as a tool. And so that’s why I chose it as my PhD topic. My advisor was like, you need to pick something. And I underestimated how hard it would be to study that much science, but it made me a true evangelist of the power of turmeric.

Megan Lyons:

Wow, that is incredible. And I think the audience has heard me talk about turmeric so many times, and every single time I’m just saying it’s anti-inflammatory at the root of all of our chronic diseases, all of this kind of stuff. And so they’ve heard my take on it, which is not the PhD in turmeric take on it. I’d love for you to really break it down for the audience to hear it in a new way. What is inflammation and why does this even happen in the first place?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Sure. So inflammation is like this forest fire. Oftentimes we have acute inflammation, the body handles it fine, usually our inflammation is handled properly and it’s a good thing. But the problem is most of us have a system that’s got toxins, toxic burdens. Our immune system is not as strong. Our lymphatic system’s congested. The body is not at a plus level. And so thus, once this inflammation is happening in the body, it oftentimes becomes chronic low-grade persistent inflammation, which I consider a forest fire. And most people say, well, I’m not inflamed because they’re not feeling a very active symptom of inflammation. I’m in my early forties. I would not say that I’m inflamed, but when I think about it, the stackup of symptoms that I do complain about and all my friends complain about are what we call inflammaging. So that is, oh, you know what?

I wake up and I’m just still tired. Oh, when I wake up, I’m more creaky. My feet hurt or my this hurts. Oh, I’ve got headaches every day, but I don’t know why I have all this belly fat and I’ve done everything, but I can’t get rid of it. There’s certain things that when they start adding up, you look at that and say, guys, I always say we’re not aging. This is inflammaging. And if we actually ate an anti-inflammatory diet and address inflammation, these would not be complaints. So don’t blame aging for what is actually inflammation in the body. And so when it comes to turmeric, turmeric is not just a very powerful natural anti-inflammatory that can address chronic joint pain and major inflammation issues. It can also do so much more. It’s antioxidant. And the science shows that it’s not just going to reduce oxidation, it’ll stop the forces that are creating the oxidation in the first place.

So it really goes to that root cause. Oxidation is what’s aging us. It’s what makes us the scarecrow from Wizard of Oz or the Tin Man, sorry. It makes us all stiff in the joints and having all those things over time that we complain about. So the antioxidant benefit I find wonderful, so we can stay youthful and vibrant and focused and energized for longer as we age, then it is such an immune modulator. So the antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal aspects are very powerful supports, especially in this modern day world where we are traveling, where we’re working, where we’re constantly touching things and exposed. I think we saw in the last few years, we all are susceptible to things. So if we can show up in the world every day with our defense system activated with something on board that’s protecting us at all times, to me that’s a very powerful tool because I need that defense system in place.

I can’t assume that in any given day my lymphatic system’s clear that I’ve eaten perfectly and done all the good things. I wish I was that way, but I do my best. And so I take this as my insurance policy, and then now I’m doing a lot more presentations on curcumin at medical conferences. So I’m speaking more into the pre-surgical and the post-surgical applications of using curcumin across all the surgeon and medical subspecialties. I’m speaking into curcumin for longevity. I think there’s a lot of science that’s going to come out in the next few years because it’s exponentially growing the amount of published science on curcumin, but it’s also a powerful tool for longevity. There’s an indication that it extends telomeres. So to me, it’s truly a wonder herb, like a top, top wonder herb that’s beautiful and supportive to nearly all of us that we can use as a strategic tool. And when people talk about superfoods, I’m like, have you thought about super spices? Because we take superfoods for the antioxidant benefit. So I stopped taking the 50 superfoods out there and I just take my turmeric and I’m like, great. I have done the work to be anti-inflammatory.

Megan Lyons:

Amazing. You covered so much great information there. I wrote down several things I want to dive into, but the first question that I have for you is inflammation is actually a good thing. To some extent, our body is doing that for a reason. So how do we now weigh the fact that we all need this anti-inflammatory agent with the fact that inflammation is a quote, good or helpful process in our body?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Great question. So our body is built to defend ourselves and our body is built for survival. It’s why we have the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system at any given moment. If there’s a threat, our body knows how to send resources where they need to go so we can run, so we can hide, so we can actually send all the blood flow to the things needed to save our life. So I have full faith that the body is capable of always creating a great inflammatory response to any threat because it’s built for that. Our skin is a defense system. We have so many defense systems. The problem is our poor body in modern day times is under assault 24 7. So between the food quality, the water quality, the air quality, the EMF pollution, the toxins, the body’s literally confused at all times about what is good and what is bad.

And so if our body’s going to be creating inflammation and response 24 7, then that’s where the inflammatory response is not good. So when you take a plant like a turmeric or any of the Ayurvedic herbs, they’re so intelligent with the body, their plants from earth, we are from earth. And so they go in there and the body knows adaptogenic wise and with our own inner thermostat how to use what it is we’re taking. So I have found over the years, when you have knee pain, if you take turmeric, it’ll help get that knee pain down. But then people will say, my gingivitis went away. So once you address the big inflammation issues, it’ll go after the small inflammation issues. And there’s so many inflammatory issues people are suffering with every itis in the body’s inflammation. We know that the chronic diseases that are the biggest killers and epidemics in the world are inflammation based. So I’m a big believer in let’s address the systemic inflammation. We know that we’re all suffering from and trust that the body’s fully capable of generating the inflammation response it has to generate when it’s actually needed.

Megan Lyons:

Really great. I like that. Giving us a little more context to it. So is your understanding that you as how you referred to yourself as a sickly child, your body was just trying to kind of play whack-a-mole with all of the different things that it needed to have an inflammatory response to, and so it couldn’t prioritize those viruses or sicknesses that you were getting? Is that how you understand it?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

That’s one way I understand it. And then the other piece is really that in the west and most of the world now, we don’t really revere gut health as all health. And so 80% of the immune system, 70 to 80% is residing in the gut. And we have zero awareness of our gut health. So we’re eating whatever we want. We treat it like a trash compactor. We assume it can assimilate, absorb, and deal with everything. And so Ayurveda as a system of science always said that that gut health is the center of all things. All health starts in the gut. So gut health is paramount. We have tools, we have rituals, we have spices, we have a diet, we have everything to build amazing gut health. So when I studied Ayurveda, I was like, whoa, this is a gut healing protocol of all gut healing protocols.

And once I healed my gut, which also involved reducing some inflammation, reducing that situation, that’s irritating the system, then I won at having this great immune system. And gut health is kind of a long lifelong journey. It’s not a one-time fix all. It’s easy to take antibiotics anytime we want all year to just get rid of the problem we have. But how often do we lovingly rebuild the gut? Anytime we have a huge stressful moment in life, I’m so aware that if I have surgery, if there’s something that’s horribly stressful that happens, I’m going to owe my gut a gut healing protocol to get back to normal levels and then I can proceed. And if I don’t pause and honor that, then the punishments that come are ones that I unendingly signed up for.

Megan Lyons:

Yes. So important to hear. So in addition to turmeric, which I’m assuming is part of your gut healing protocol, what other kinds of gut supportive things would you do to help repair that gut?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

So in I’ve though we teach about something called kitty. Have you heard of Kitty?

Megan Lyons:

Yes. I’ve never tried it though. I have to call myself out.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Okay. Kitty is like this porridge you could call it that we make from India. Culturally, it’s part of certain areas of India anyways, but it’s basically rice and lentils and it’s considered a complete food. If someone’s having an issue, I’ll say, look, just do your kitty for three days and do hin kani, which is a beautiful Ayurvedic tea and remedy that we use. It’s a spice called hing. You put a pinch of it and a pinch of gala, nama, which is our purple spice, purple salt into a cup of water, bring it to a boil, cool it to tea temperature and drink it. And I’ve had so many people who have such painful GI upset issues. I would say most of us have bloating and indigestion sometimes, or we eat in a restaurant and it doesn’t suit us, and we just want a quick fix to cool that down or soothe that down.

So I use this tea for that all the time. I used it almost every day when I was pregnant for my indigestion, bloating and issues from eating bigger meals that didn’t fit with the baby. And even now when my kids aren’t well or if we don’t feel good, we take it. But my father-in-Law who lived with me, he and I, he’d say, Shivani, my stomach’s wrong. I don’t know something’s wrong. I’m like, dad, don’t worry. Let’s do a gut healing protocol for one day. It’s so easy. And we would just have the hink up on ET two or three times a day and we would make a lovely homemade, very simple and not with all the vegetables and fancy stuff, and the gut would just get that day to heal and have the right spices in there and get soothed and get settled.

And by the next day you’re fine. And if you need to do it for three days. But I like finding quick fixes that with love can create the profound change we want while sympathetically giving the body what it needs because the body always wants to be in a heeled state. The problem is that we get in the way. And so that’s where I find the Ayurvedic tool so powerful is if you want to heal the gut, let the gut do its job and put all the good things in there. And then what’s cool is in modern science, we know so much about the gut microbiome. So we know that we have, we’re mostly gut bacteria, we’re not as much human as we think. So if we can honor that and use prebiotics and probiotics that are very high quality and potent, we can constantly work to inoculate our gut eating those prebiotic foods IRV that teaches us to eat for nutrient variety, nutrient density, eat seasonally, pay attention to circadian your circadian clock and eating with what nature cycles are and all of those things work together to give you that beautiful gut health.

Megan Lyons:

That’s incredible. So at a very basic level, the protocol is designed to reduce some of those tough to digest things that harm our gut health, that make our gut have to work in overtime and cause this inflammation. And then also providing with those spices, those probiotics, those prebiotics, those foundational things to help it repair itself. So I’d love to just touch on that first part. What are some of these things in your mind that are creating adverse gut health, maybe some common foods that many of us are eating or other lifestyle practices that we’re doing that are harming our gut health and creating inflammation?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Sure. I mean, we have a lot of things we do that cause inflammation in the system. I would start with stress. I think modern day times have our mind inundated 24 7. And so that stress of social media always something to do and feeling like everything is on fire at all times has us in our sympathetic nervous system. And that’s a problem. We cannot be on defense 24 7 and not expect a punishment on gut punishment on our whole system causing inflammation, causing problems. So number one is stress reduction, which is so much easier said than done. I’m one of those people who loves to work and loves to create cool things and wants to raise amazing kids. And so I kind of drive myself nuts and have to really sit with myself and say, Hey, you are teaching Ayurveda and you’re teaching the world how to be healthy.

Don’t sacrifice your health on this journey. And so I have built in self-care practices from Aveda self-care rituals, anchoring in self-care and diet in a way that my body is at least 70% protected and supported at all times and that it’s my job to do some stress management investment in sleep and all of that for the other 30%. Number two, I would say sleep, because sleep is when we clear inflammation. And so a lot of people meet me and say, I sleep fine. And I’m like, fine is a very big term that means nothing to me. Why don’t you measure your sleep and why don’t you do some sleep optimization? And then let’s talk about what fine sleep is. I want sleep. That’s extraordinary. I want to wake up so rested that it’s almost like that vacation sleep when you wake up and you’re like, that is incredible.

I am so lucky. I feel like we should all have that thought every single day and we can build for that kind of sleep. And that is when you know invested in the sleep to clear inflammation and caveat to that, Ayurveda teaches about circadian medicine and circadian health, and so we teach that you must sleep 10 to two on the clock, 10:00 PM to 2:00 AM. Most people don’t want to hear that from me at all because they want to sleep when they want to sleep. But to optimize inflammation clearing from the body and lymphatic clearing of the body, you would sleep about 10 to two. So that’s just something to keep in mind. It’s like a specific tip I like to give. And then the third way, there’s many ways, but the third biggest way I would say is anti-inflammatory diet. We in the west and now across the world, because we’ve exported our diet and fast food, we all think that food is just something you consume but to fuel you and keep you going.

Or some of us love food and love and are addicted to it. So food is a sensitive topic, but in general, science is showing we must reduce the inflammatory foods we eat and some of us are more inflamed by certain foods than others. So either doing a food intolerance test or doing an elimination diet will clearly show you the foods you’re not meant to eat. The top five inflammatory foods that I teach are gluten, dairy, sugar, alcohol, and red meat. Not to say we all have to give up that people have to give up their red meat, but some do because it’s hard to digest dairy for a lot of people. Alcohol we know is poisonous to us and bad for us, and we’re not supposed to consume any of it. So that’s just reducing. I tell people, just reduce. I’m not here to take away the whole world from you, but if you can go from a hundred percent consumption to 80, 80 to 50, and if you can do an elimination diet once, I do this a lot with women, I do full detoxes with them for three weeks.

If you give up gluten, a lot of times you will learn that gluten was that one problem that was causing all of your problems. When I gave up gluten, my gut health completely changed, brain fog gone, all these problems that I thought, wow, this must be what post kids is like. They have evaporated over gluten. And then I’m careful with dairy as well, but I have my wine. I have a lot of other things that I enjoy, enjoy, and so I really encourage people to look at what’s inflammatory to you, reduce it, reduce stress the best you can. In Ayurveda, we have yoga and meditation as our sister sciences, and then that sleep piece is really big too.

Megan Lyons:

Oh, I love it. I have a very similar list that I generally give, which is gluten, dairy, added sugar, alcohol, and I trade red meat for ultra-processed foods. Although I agree with you, if a person does not have digestive capacity to break down red meat, that can be very harmful. And I would say for sure the average American is consuming too much red meat, even if we can digest it. So I think that maybe we could make a list of six. We could throw ultra-processed food in there too and still keep the red meat on the list as long as someone can digest it. But that makes a lot of sense. And I also share your experience. I gave up gluten about 10 years ago now, and it was just an experiment, but honestly, I feel so good without it. I don’t know why I would go back. I just really don’t miss it very much. That’s different for some people. I think many of us can include some of these things, like you said, alcohol and moderation, even though we know it’s not great for us, we have a little wiggle room as long as we’re taking care of our body. Is that your opinion as well?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Absolutely. And with gluten, I can’t play. There’s no playing with gluten anymore. Anytime I have it, I’m like, wow, I’m going to bed now. You can feel the symptoms so acutely and honestly, there’s so much out there now. Granted, you have to read the labels. I am shocked sometimes at the labels. I’m like, how much xantham gum and tapioca starch and chemicals do you people want to put in my body? This is ridiculous. Some of you should try to make without it, but I have a gluten-free toast I love, I have a gluten-free pizza. I love if I really want a treat, it’s the Costco gluten-free pizza. It’s amazing. I have almond flour tortillas, trader Joe’s Sprouts. All these stores have so many gluten-free options. So if you crave a tortilla and you crave a toast and you need a few of those things around your food, go for it.

They’re there. But I find so many people have autoimmune conditions, thyroid conditions, subclinical thyroid conditions, and if we just let go of the gluten, our whole experience of life would change. And how cool is that? Because I now function just today, I was like, I feel like I have the energy pace of a Ferrari. Oh, I love it this morning. And I was like, you’ve built that over time and then you work to maintain it. And so that is just such an opportunity for us. Then you can build whatever you want in life, have the energy for whatever matters to you, and have that extra capacity to do more like impact on a greater scale.

Megan Lyons:

Yes. Oh, so excellent. I just want to touch on two other quick things and then get back into turmeric, which is our main topic. But I wrote myself a note when you were talking about sleeping 10 to two. First of all, I love that I go to bed at nine, so it’s great from my perspective, but I just want to be very clear to the audience. I strongly believe Shivani is not saying sleep only 10 to two, it’s just that you need to be asleep during 10 to two for maximum benefit. Is that true?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Correct. We all have different amounts of sleep. We need, I believe the majority of us need seven to eight hours. There’s a lot of sleep experts publishing a lot of books that say some people need six, some people need nine. But on average people need seven to eight hours, and you can figure that out for yourself. I do need eight hours of sleep personally, it’s just that the 10 to two block is the most important for the inflammation clearing. So yes,

Megan Lyons:

Love it. Thank you for that. And then one other thing you mentioned which will bring us back to turmeric is you mentioned curcumin in there and I think the very close listeners to previous Wellness Your Way podcast, we’ll know the relationship between turmeric and curcumin, but I’d love to hear your perspective on this as well as when we’re looking at a product, how do we understand, okay, it has this many curcuminoids, this potency. Just give us all of that.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

For sure. So when I was finishing up my PhD, I started looking around at the market because anyone who came to me with a pain, I would say, oh, you catch colds off and take turmeric. You have joint pain. Take turmeric. And so I started looking around at which one would I recommend, because there’s so many on the market at the big box retailers or the health food stores, it’s hard to know. The problem with the turmeric market is it’s almost impossible to read the labels when the label says curcuma longa, that’s the plant name, that’s the rhizome that’s buying regular turmeric, the spice and sprinkling it on your food, which most people do. And what most people don’t realize is out of the entire turmeric plant, only 3% of it is the curcuminoids, which have been most studied for all the scientific benefit that we’re talking about when it comes to turmeric.

And out of those three curcuminoids, the one curcumin is the most effective at reducing inflammation. And so when we look at the market, the market’s like, here’s a thousand milligrams of regular turmeric, that’s not going to do the needle when it comes to significantly reducing inflammation in the body and giving the support that we’re talking about, then people say, okay, well here’s all three curcuminoids. Just take all three. But what if you isolated the one and gave it at a full dose? What could that do in the body? And so that’s what I sought out to do about eight years ago, and I created a formula and it was really just a theory. I was like, can I get all of Western medicine and orthopedics to give us less pain meds that have side effects? That was just a theory because myself, I can’t tolerate NSAIDs well, I can’t tolerate those things a lot when I have an plantar fasciitis or any kind of pain in my body.

And so I created the formulation and it completely worked to the point that it shocked me, shocked the doctors. They were like, what we don’t normally see plant medicine have that type of impact. And so I just encourage everyone, because there’s other great turmerics out there, I’m sure there’s great ones. Look at that label closely and make sure you’re taking one that’s really got the potency you want and drives the effect that you want in the body. Because a lot of people ask me, can’t I just take regular turmeric? We should not take so many supplements. We should take the regular plant or everything in whole natural form. I completely agree with you. I should eat an apple and not drink apple juice. Those choices are certainly clear. But if I had the flu coming on or I wanted to do something that was really significant for my immune system, I wouldn’t just eat an orange. I would reach for the potent things I really need in the form, I need them. So that’s where I want to share, take your turmeric, but take a really good one that’s going to drive the result that you want. And then it can be that replacement to those things that have side effects.

Megan Lyons:

Absolutely. When people say to me, oh, I eat curry once a month, is that enough turmeric? I’m like, well, maybe it would be if you lived in a place where you never had toxic food, you never had stress, you didn’t have EMFs, nothing ever came your way virally or anything like that. Maybe, maybe, but probably not still. And definitely most of us do not live in that world. So we really do need the big guns. And I thank you for putting that into a supplement. I’ve mentioned it in the intro, but we haven’t even mentioned in the bulk of the interview your company. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about the specific brand and blend of turmeric that you’ve made?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Sure. I would love to. So ary formulas was my creation eight years ago. And really that goal was can Western medicine just use us as an adjunct tool? Can I hand a new tool because they are those healers, those people who are there as the frontline defense that we all go to when it comes to our health, when it comes to when we have a problem. And I really revere Western medicine. They really do save us in so many ways. I help with so many acute issues, but for me, I needed that long-term solution. I needed a solution that could build that immune system. So infusion area, I built a formula called Termer Gold. It’s a powerful daily preventive. I built one called Inflammation Relief. It’s for when you know you’re inflamed. Most of us know when we’re inflamed, and a lot of people take inflammation relief and term of gold together as their pain solution bundle if they have chronic joint pain or chronic health issues or autoimmune type issues.

And so that’s the whole company. And we do after the in turmeric formulas, I made sleep formulas. I realized, if you don’t sleep, you’re going to stay infl. And I wanted them to win at the whole circle of the clock of how your inflammation is getting supported and solved. And then I have fun after that. I made a menopause tea. I’ve made a metabolism tea. I like to play with the herbs and spices from Ayurveda and see, can I make a tea as potent as a supplement? Where do people need help and how can I pull the tools of Ayurveda out to help them?

Megan Lyons:

Amazing. I’m so excited to dive more into these products. Let’s start with the first two, the gold and the, was it inflammation support or inflammation? What was the word after that? Relief. Relief. Okay. Gold and inflammation relief. Can you talk to me about the differences a little bit more? You said if you know you’re inflamed, you would go inflammation relief. If you’re just kind of on a preventative basis, you would go with gold. But now that you’ve explained to us the curcuminoids and all of this kind of stuff, what’s the differences in the formulations between those?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Sure. So I made turmeric gold with 500 milligrams of that pure curcumin extract, and I added black pepper to it and 50 milligrams of turmeric powder because I wanted the synergistic effect of whole plant with extract. I wanted the non curcuminoid benefit. There’s still non curcuminoid benefit in turmeric that’s to be honored. So I’d still encourage to use turmeric in their diet. And then the black pepper is what increases the absorption by 2000%. So you can take a lipid-based curcumin or a black pepper one. Everyone says that theirs is better, but I have never seen an apples to apple study proving whether a lipid-based or a black pepper based formula is better. So turmeric gold, I consider that defense system. I take it every day as my defense, and if I have people around me like my little ones who are catching a cold, I’ll just take more and I consider that my support.

Now, inflammation relief, I put 400 milligrams of the curcumin extract the same ingredient, but then I put all the herbs from Ayurveda that work synergistically to reduce inflammation because Ayurveda is an ancient wise science. They don’t just pull one extract and say, let me hit you with the hammer and get the job done. Instead. It’s much more sympathetic to a plant medicine solution. And so that one has guruci, amla, dried ginger, the turmeric and the black pepper, and it works synergistically to help reduce inflammation in the system overall. And so when I made inflammation relief, I made it. I knew it would be tremendous, but I didn’t think that western medicine would adopt it or use it. I was worried that they were all weird Ayurvedic herbs. No one would touch it. But now there’s so much more awareness. People are hearing about bas amla and those benefits, and all my doctors astounded me.

They’re like, listen, you have the science, we’re fine with it. And so they’re all using the combo of the two because if a patient has a lot of pain, they need more support. So instead of telling you to take double the turmeric gold or double the inflammation relief, they combine the two themselves, which I never thought of. I didn’t make it for that, and it works beautifully. So it’s interesting. I have some people who love inflammation relief more, it supports them better. And then I have a whole contingency who love it the way I do it, which is turmeric gold. And then I made sleep solutions like a sleep tea and a sleep formula, because again, if we don’t sleep well, we’re not going to clear that inflammation.

Megan Lyons:

That is incredible. So I think that super potent anti-inflammatory impact of the inflammation relief. And you’re talking about how some western medicine doctors have adopted it lead me back into what you said earlier about surgery. Now, a couple years ago I developed this app called Mend Better with some partners at Johns Hopkins and things like that. It was about nutrition for surgery, and of course we recommended turmeric, but we had to be very careful because we know that many doctors say no supplements at all two weeks before and two weeks after, and we’d never want to recommend against anything that your surgeon is saying. Of course, I’m not a surgeon, so don’t listen to me on this, but I can show you some of the research on how this is very beneficial for wound healing. So I would always encourage them to have a conversation with your doctor. Hey, here’s some of the research on this. Is this okay? And oftentimes then they would say yes. Is that kind of how you’ve had to approach this? Yes. We know it’s not a standard practice, but if you really look into it, we think you’ll believe in it.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Yes. Two things happened. First of all, I’ve had the company for eight years, and so it was really hard for the first five because I felt like I was convincing a bunch of people who really didn’t want to be convinced on this new topic. And I really was like, I will change orthopedics and didn’t realize I picked kind of the hardest door to call on with this topic, and they’re dealing with very serious pain and issues, so I can understand the reticence and hesitation there. Then in the last few years, I did two things. First of all, the pandemic changed things. People realized they have to take sovereignty and ownership of their health in a new way. Second of all, I think doctors really changed their mindset where they said, you know what? We have a lot of tools, but maybe we should be open to more toolkits.

And that really opened the door for me. And then thirdly, people knew that there are these solutions, they want to play with them more, but they do want their doctors’ approval. And so when I sit down with doctors, I say, look, turmeric is a vasodilator. It is an anticoagulant. It will thin the blood. You do have to be very careful around surgery. So because I work with a hundred, 150 doctors, they give me the data all the time. They’re like, wow, Shivani, I’m so impressed it did this. Yes, I have my patients come off one week before. Yes, I put them back on five to seven days after depending on the type of patient. And that really comes down to the doctor and their comfort level. Yes, and I actually just did a talk on wound healing with curcumin, and I had to do so much pulling of the science again, which I hadn’t done in a while.

And there’s exponentially more science being published on turmeric. So there’s so much there around if we know we’re going to get an elective surgery, I look at that as, can you prepare for a marathon? Can you show up with the healthiest tissue and the healthiest body, reduce that inflammation, have a great immune system ready to support you. And so I’ve had a few surgeries for different things, fibroids and different things I couldn’t win at naturally. And I guide people on that because I think we can show up so healthy and strong and then get a 10 x better outcome from surgery than just walking in as is and hoping for the best.

Megan Lyons:

Incredible. I love that. I have so many more questions for you, but I’m only going to ask one, and then I’m going to ask you for anything else you want to share about your company, your product, any of that. My question is a little bit selfish, but I know many of the audience members are with me. I’ve been taking turmeric for a while and I am going to go on record right now. I am completely convinced I’m going to be switching over to your product, and this is not going to come out for a couple months. So I will even update the audience on how it’s going because I’m very excited to have it from the best source possible. But should I be worried? Am I possibly dampening my immune response too much by having this anti-inflammatory effect going all the time? Is there something I need to be doing to cycle on and off, or do you think in today’s day and age I’m good, I should keep on going?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

It’s such a great question. The honest answer is we should cycle off and on with everything we do everything. We know that the body is seasonal. We know that the body calibrates constantly. There would be no reason to take one source of anything 24/7 year round. And I’m a big believer in cycling, so I cycle with my probiotics. I cycle with my D. I don’t cycle with my turmeric. I don’t believe anyone else has like mine. I’ll either take it or I won’t take it. But it’s one of those things where I think we have to look at our health as a quarterly, annually, and decade version of what are we doing for ourselves. So now as I approach my forties and I can see everyone’s in perimenopause and struggling, I’m like, oh, we need to calibrate some things. Maybe I need more supplements on board now.

Then I see women in their fifties, menopause is really kicking everyone’s butt. And I’m like, okay, so each decade, let’s look at what we’re doing and change things up a little. Let’s not assume that just because I’m taking a D, it’s a good one. And for me, I’m always calling on functional medicine. Functional medicine loves my product, so does chiropractic medicine, naturopathic medicine. Those guys have a very good feel for the companies and what works and what doesn’t. Doctors level supplement companies like mine are very focused on can we drive the result because otherwise that practitioner is not going to use us. And so on any given season, I am playing with my supplements and trying to figure out what is best for me. And then we can also do quarterly blood work or half biannual or annual blood work and see are we winning?

Because if I’m going to go and my D is still low and my inflammation is still high and all those things, obviously the supplements I’m using are not doing the job. So although as a supplement company, it would make sense to say, yes, take me 24 7, 365 days. That is not the best way forward. The best way forward is take a week off every quarter, take a two weeks off, three weeks off every year, play with it. And a lot of people who take other people’s turmeric will call me and say, you know what? I came off the other one and I took yours, and now I can feel the profound difference, and now I can’t leave you. So that’s always fun to hear is like if you’re taking one, that’s great. Take a week off, see how you feel because you flying without the supplement on board, and then try a new one and see all of a sudden, do you feel a huge shift or not? Because not all of us will feel every supplement equally.

Megan Lyons:

Absolutely. Love that. Thank you for the honest answer. I said that would be the last question, but maybe this is a super quick one. When you say measured in your lab work, are you measuring H-S-C-R-P or is there a favorite indicator for inflammation that you like?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

I think CRP is the best way. I think that’s one that measures well, for me personally, I go to functional medicine and so we get 10 pages of blood work on me looking at that full picture of like, where’s every micronutrient? My omega threes are always deficient. I’m vegetarian. So it’s important to look at where all are we focusing? Because I might always reduce inflammation, but if I’m not taking omega threes, am I still balanced. So I think it’s looking at that number that really helps. Cholesterol. Great. I love it. Turmeric helps with cholesterol, turmeric helps with blood pressure. It’s amazing how many ways turmeric can bring those numbers down in our blood work and show us that it’s working.

Megan Lyons:

Incredible. I like looking at the whole picture as well. So like I said, I could talk to you for hours, but I’d love to give you the opportunity to say anything else about the topic that we haven’t covered yet. And for sure, one more time, tell them about your company Fusion formulas, how to get the product and even a discount code that we have to offer, and anything else you want to share.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Sure. My last message would just be, we have such a powerful opportunity to create the health that we want, that level of vibrancy, that level of joy. We can have it every single day as we age. And I think it’s a very modern construct that as we age, we’re going to get older and tired and less functional. I completely disregard that mind construct. I think I can feel, I know I can feel younger, more beautiful, happier, more energetic, and more capable and functional as I age. And so that’s just my invitation to everyone is look at all the tools in your toolkit, see if you need to go find more of them. Learn how to inflame yourself so your body can stay so vibrant and healthy and aligned. And then that’s how we can all have that vibrant health that we crave every single day.

Megan Lyons:

Amazing. What a powerful message. Thank you for that. And where can people find fusion formulas? And they can use the discount code, the lions share, T-H-E-L-Y-O-N-S-S-H-A-R-E. Where can they take advantage of that?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Perfect. My website is fusion formulas.com, F-U-S-I-O-N-A-R-Y. That’s the website for the supplements. My website is shivani gupta.com, S-H-I-V-A-N-I Gupta. So you can find lots of tools there, like a seven day inflammation challenge and things. I have a Facebook group called The Inflammation Solutions, so I love teaching live in there every week. And I have a podcast called the Ary Health Podcast.

Megan Lyons:

Amazing. We will link to all of those incredible resources in the show notes for sure. So please check out the various websites, join that Facebook group, and definitely check out the turmeric product and maybe some of the teas and sleep formulas as well. Dr. Gupta, it has been so fantastic to get to speak with you today. Thank you again for sharing your wisdom. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

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