Jan. 21, 2025

Episode 303 – Unstoppable Holistic Brain Health Practitioner with Tina Huang

Episode 303 – Unstoppable Holistic Brain Health Practitioner with Tina Huang

If you want to hear the story of a truly unstoppable person then listen to this episode and our guest, Tina Huang. To begin, Tina grew up with a hidden disability which still does not really have a name. Tina will tell us how she battled through school up through under graduate and graduate studies knowing she was different, but not getting any real support to find out why she had so many difficulties with the learning process. Even so, not only did Tina have challenges, but she found on her own ways to get by and even excel.   In addition to her learning disability she lately has also had to battle what she calls “being environmentally sensitive”. She has had to face mold in three different homes which caused her to face serious illness. As she will tell us, however, she has come out the other side and is again open for business helping others who face similar difficulties as she has faced.   Tina has not only learned pre-covid how to be a good healer, but due to all the challenges she has faced she has found improved healing methods that have helped her. She is using her newly learned skills to do even more to help her clients. Tina clearly is committed to living and being unstoppable. She has lots to offer as you will see.       About the Guest:   For the 1st half of my life, I struggled with learning disabilities, severe stomach pains, depression, anxiety, and horrific self-loathing.  My father was always angry, and we were constantly walking on eggshells around him. I never could please him.  We lived in Hong Kong for 4 years where my parents put me in a Chinese speaking school, and I hated it.  I never was able to learn the language well enough to make friends.      Life was better after returning to the US, but in high school I was starting to notice that I had to work a lot harder than my peers.  In college I got my degree in computer science and then became a software engineer, but I had no love for computers.   Meanwhile my ailments and concerns were either dismissed by doctors, or inadequately addressed, or I was told I had to just accept my limitations.  This was fueling my depression and despair, so I decided for my own mental health, that I had to refuse to accept their limitations.   I decided that if they didn’t have answers, I had to find them.  It was my only hope!  I applied to get my Ph.D. in neuroscience and went to the University of Rochester.   But in graduate school, we had lectures that would last for 4 hours and I couldn't keep up.   There weren't any textbooks, and I kept missing key points.  I constantly had to ask a classmate to help me fill in the gaps.   I was having frequent panic attacks about whether I'd be able to stay in grad school.  My peers seemed to be able to have relatively balanced lives, but I constantly had to turn down social activities to study.  Several professors suggested that I consider doing something else, but they argued that if I couldn't handle the classes, the research was going to be infinitely harder.  I disagreed.  I'd always been good at projects.  It was the memorization that I struggled with.  I was finally diagnosed with a learning disability in my last academic class in grad school.   My senior lab advisor dropped my funding when I told him I had been diagnosed with a learning disability. 

My only chance of staying in grad school was to write my own NIH grant.  I did.  The head of the Neurobiology & Anatomy program offered to read my grant the night before it was due.   He told me it was the best NRSA grant he'd ever read, and that he had no suggestions for improvement!   It got funded on my first submission!  This was a first in all 3 neuroscience programs in my grad school (University of Rochester)!   In my 5th year in grad school, I realized I wasn't great in the lab, and didn't love doing research on animals, so I took off for a badly needed vacation for a month in India.  My travel partner mentioned wanting to get his Masters of Public Health, and I couldn't wait to learn more about it.  When I got back, I discovered the field of epidemiology and realized that this was a MUCH better fit for me.  So after getting my Ph.D. I went to Johns Hopkins for a postdoctoral fellowship in psychiatric epidemiology.  I did a postdoc in nutritional epidemiology at Tufts University,  some research with Transparent Corporation, and then ended up in a couple of postdocs that went south for various reasons, and I had to leave the field.  I was devastated.  I knew that if I had the support I needed, I would have been able to make a much bigger difference in Alzheimer's research, but apparently that wasn't my destiny.   Out of my despair, I sought ways to heal from my trauma.  I had already seen a psychiatrist at the best medical school, and counselors for decades, but I still hated almost everything about me.  Things had to change!  So I kept searching for anything that would help.   And that is when I discovered energy medicine.  I noticed that I was for the first time getting relief from my trauma for the first time in my life!  When I felt like my research career had ended, I started my business as a holistic brain health practitioner when I realized that I could help clients address their root causes quickly and efficiently with my intuitive skills.    Because I didn’t have any business skills or support, it took a long time for me to have a full practice, but in 2021 I had a full practice with a waiting list.   Then in early 2022 disaster struck.  I had to evacuate from 3 homes over 5 months due to mold and toxins.   The first 2 killed my beloved soulmate kitty.    Then I bought a condo and had to evacuate 2 weeks later due to toxic mold and parasites.  The toxic mold came from the attic and chimney, and the stress of having to compel the HOA to remediate, while I was having relentlessly terrifying symptoms and unable to live at home was too much. I was out of money and had to live with strangers while I was extremely sick and immunocompromised in the middle of COVID.   I also got extremely environmentally sensitive and couldn’t interact with paper, my clothes, bags, my computer or phone safely for about a year.   While I was an excellent healer before this trauma, I’ve been forced to relentlessly search for better and better ways to heal safely.   Luckily, it’s been paying off, and I'm no longer environmentally sensitive and finally able to work again.  I need to rebuild my business as quickly as possible to pay off my debts so I don’t lose my home.   I’m on a mission to help others with similar issues, so less people will have to endure the hell that I’ve been through.  But I'm unstoppable.   Ways to connect with Tina:   https://tryholisticbrainhealth.com/ https://www.facebook.com/tryHolisticBrainHealth/ https://www.facebook.com/tina.huang.353 https://www.linkedin.com/in/tinalhuangphd/ www.youtube.com/@TinaHuangPhD     About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Greetings once again, everyone. I am your host, Mike Hingson, and you are listening to unstoppable mindset today, we get to do one of those things that I always love, and that is, we get a guest who I met at a recent podapalooza event. And if you don't know what podaPalooza is? Because you haven't kept up with this here. PodaPalooza is an event that happens four times a year, and it is an event for people who are doing podcasts, who want to interview people, people who want to become podcasters, and are wanting to learn how and it's also for people who want to be interviewed by podcasters. I think that covers everything. So it really is all things podcasting. And we had one earlier in June. And out of that, I happened to meet this very interesting lady, Tina Huang, who said that she wanted to come on unstoppable mindset. And I thought that would be a good thing. So here we are, Tina, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really   Tina Huang ** 02:24 glad you're here. Thank you for having me, Michael and   Michael Hingson ** 02:28 I didn't tell her that we would be nice, but we will.   Tina Huang ** 02:34 I'm always nice.   Michael Hingson ** 02:35 Well, there you go. See that's what works. As I did tell Tina, I think I told you, if I didn't, then I'll tell you now that there's one hard and fast rule on this podcast, and that is, everyone has to have fun. So there sounds great. So that works.   Tina Huang ** 02:51 I'm always up for fun. There you   Michael Hingson ** 02:53 are. It's always a good idea to have fun. Well, let's start maybe by kind of learning a little about the earlier Tina, growing up and all that. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that, and then we can, and I know from reading your bio, we can then go into all sorts of things from there.   Tina Huang ** 03:09 Yeah, well, thank you for asking. Michael. I actually had a pretty difficult childhood growing up. It's not a fun topic, but I'll kind of go into some some brief aspects about it. So I was born in the United States, but I moved to Hong Kong when we were when I was about six, seven years old, after first grade, and my parents put me in a Chinese speaking school, and I didn't speak Chinese at that time, and they my dad was like, you know, you got to learn Chinese by immersion. And I have to say that I really, really, really struggled. It was so hard for me. We had to memorize our Chinese lessons, and it would be only a paragraph, but the way I would memorize would be that, I mean, it was just I realized that just the standard, like repeating sentences over and over again wasn't working for me. So I finally went down to the method of memorizing one character and then adding another character and memorizing two characters and then memorizing three characters. I mean, it was so slow and so methodical. And at first grade, I was like, up till like, after midnight, studying for these stupid exams, these Chinese lesson exams. And my sister, my younger sister, was not having these kinds of problems at all, and so nobody picked up on something, that something was wrong, but that was kind of a beginning indicator that was something, that something wasn't going well for me. I hated Hong Kong, to be honest. It was just such a struggle. And I really miss speaking English, you know, I didn't. It was very hard to make friends when I was struggling so much with the language, and I get caught, get get, got put in different classrooms every year, because the way, my parents decided that to to keep us in school, they had a class that would go from morning to afternoon to morning to afternoon, but they want to keep me in the mornings. And so I had different, different classmates every. A year. So it was a real struggle. And I was very happy to get back to the United States, where I was like, oh my goodness, we're speaking English again. And and suddenly I went from being and I, and before I had left for Hong Kong, I was actually, like, grades ahead of everybody else. I was like, in third they, you know, even though I was in first grade, I kept getting put in, like, with the third graders. So this, you know, going from being the super smart kid to the super dumb kid was a real challenge. So when I came back to the United States again, I was a smart kid, but things my school schools got a lot harder as I got into high school, but especially undergraduate and then graduate school, where I was just really struggling in in classes in terms of absorbing information. And   Michael Hingson ** 05:47 what year was this roughly   Tina Huang ** 05:49 that I went to Hong Kong?   Michael Hingson ** 05:51 No say, when you went to undergrad, when you started college. I started   Tina Huang ** 05:55 college in 1986 Okay,   Michael Hingson ** 05:58 okay. The reason I asked is that we've learned so much about learning disabilities and so on since that time, yes, so it's not too surprising. But anyway, go ahead, yeah, and   Tina Huang ** 06:10 back in those days, for listeners who are younger, we knew hardly anything about learning disabilities, and we might have known about dyslexia when I was young. I don't know, we might have known about add but, you know, it was not something that was discussed. It was very rarely known about, right? So, yeah, and in fact, I went to graduate school in neuroscience, you know, I'm gonna skip move forward to that. And even in my neuroscience programs, we were not talking about learning disabilities back then, I was kind of appalled. I was like, we're not talking about learning disabilities and so, and that will apparently, was in the developmental biology section, but it wasn't in, or it wasn't actually in developmental biology. It was more like developmental psychology, yeah, where it was discussed, but it wasn't, it had not been brought into the neuroscience arena at all.   Tina Huang ** 07:02 Well, when   Michael Hingson ** 07:03 or let me rephrase it differently, what did you finally discover was your actual learning disability? Was it dyslexia? Or what was it? No, it wouldn't be dyslexia, because that wouldn't answer the issues of learning from an auditory standpoint, Chinese, although that's a language with a lot of nuances anyway,   Tina Huang ** 07:24 yeah, that well, so the the learning disability that doesn't actually have a name, it was just called an accumulative learning disability. You know, some people have auditory deficits. Some people have visual deficits. I had everything deficit in terms of, well, everything they tested deficit. And I should say that I didn't actually get diagnosed with learning disability until my last year of classes in graduate school, and it was because of the times, really, because there was just so little known about it. But I had extensive testing with a clinical psychologist, and what they discovered was that that I was exceptionally brilliant in some ways and exceptionally handicapped in others. And what I was struggling with, and what I still struggle with, it's just accumulation of information, a lot of information. And in graduate school in neuroscience, we actually had classes that lasted for four hours. And imagine four hours of intense, yes, not conducive to learning at all.   Michael Hingson ** 08:23 Disability notwithstanding, oh,   Tina Huang ** 08:25 my goodness, yeah. And, and, you know, it's a little frustrating to me. You know, in a neuroscience program that they'd actually allow that, like, how do they not understand that, that a four hour lecture is not a good idea for anybody. But you know, of course, especially with people learning disabilities. But you know, they weren't here there to accommodate people learning disabilities, even though two of us had one, one of my friends, we only we. You know, graduate school programs aren't necessarily large. Mine was only seven. No right between seven and 13 people in each class, depending on the the the class. And so I think in our program officially, there were nine or 11 or something like that, because it varied a bit depending on the year. But one, one of the women had dyslexia, and then there was me, and I really the it's a cumulative learning disability. So basically it means that, you know, if there's a lot of if there's too much information being presented at once, I'm not going to be able to retain it all. And it really shows up a lot in languages. Like, because there's just languages are almost they come out from nowhere. I have a really hard time remembering names unless they're common. Like, I don't have a problem with Michael, but if you give me a Chinese name that I've never maybe a language like Arabic or something like that, that I don't know Well, I mean, that's going to be or I don't know at all, that could be a real challenge unless I've heard that name before, or if it's simple to pronounce. But the more complex a name is, and the more foreign it is, the harder it is for me to remember, right? So it's, it's an. It's a learning disability that sort of requires that really baseline learning and and you know, that idea that, like people, can just jump into a foreign country and absorb that is exactly what I can't do, right? There's no immersion aspect of of what I do just FYI, I'm not making these funny. All these strange symbols are coming up on zoom that I'm not making. So I'm going to see if I can stop that. But I'm not making those purposely.   Michael Hingson ** 10:31 That's okay. And I'm not hearing and I'm not hearing them, so it's okay, okay. But the it's, it's interesting. So you went through most of of school, not really understanding why you were and you obviously observed that you were different, but you had no real understanding of why you were different or how you were different other than you just couldn't get material absorbed the same way most people did   Tina Huang ** 11:00 Right, right. And yet it was very confusing, because I was often told, Oh, you're really smart. You're so smart, you know. And I know that, like in some ways I am, you know. And actually, right now, they're only talking about it, but there's this term called twice exceptional. And twice exceptional is when you are exceptionally brilliant and yet exceptionally handicapped at the same time, and that's, you know, when you and somebody asked me really recently, you know, so isn't everybody neurodivergent, right? Doesn't everybody have these differences in their learning? And my answer to them was, yes, we all have different brains, and some of us are stronger in some ways and weaker and other ways. But when you have a disability that's so severe that you cannot have a normal life, you can't you can't have any balance in your life, or you need accommodations, and you can't function. You can't survive with the way society is expecting you to survive based on your disabilities. That's when you have a quote, unquote disability, is when societies, the society is not geared to help you thrive.   Michael Hingson ** 12:07 Course, the the issue with disabilities in general, and it's something that we talk about from time to time, on unstoppable mindset, when the opportunity arises, I submit that everyone on the planet has a disability, and the problem for most people is they're light dependent. Why is that a disability? Just watch the power suddenly go out where you are, especially at night, but even during the day, I've seen that happen during the day, power goes out, lights go out suddenly. Everybody's scrambling to try to find a smartphone or a flashlight to be able to see, because they're not used to functioning without light, and the reality is that their disability of light dependence is covered up because we have focused so heavily on making light on demand available. But it doesn't change the fact that the disability is still there, it's just covered up a lot, right?   Tina Huang ** 13:04 But you don't need it to survive either, unless, unless we have a power outage, right? So you, you know, you are much more prepared if we all have a power outage than most of us. But, yeah, situation often, then, then you would be in better shape. But if we don't have power outages, if we live in a country where that's not a common problem, then you know, other people are an advantage because they can see, right?   Michael Hingson ** 13:33 Oh, no, I understand that, but. But the point is, though, that if you want to level the playing field, the reality is, everyone has a disability of some sort. It's just that for most people, the disability is really covered up because we have light on demand. We don't have light on demand necessarily in Uganda and other places like that, where there isn't power or a lot of power. I actually talked with someone yesterday who's going to come on unstoppable mindset, and they offer to children solar powered lamps so that they can study because they don't have power to be able to have lights to study at night, but if they have solar powered lamps that charge up during the day, then in fact, they can continue to study at night, unless They take a different tact and learn braille or something like that, but sighted people aren't going to do that, and that's okay, but the bottom line is, it still proves that everyone has some sort of disability. What we don't tend to do nearly as much as we ought to is recognize that while everyone has different gifts. We shouldn't knock somebody just because their gifts are different than our gifts, right?   Tina Huang ** 14:47 And actually, I want to expand on that quite a bit, because there is, if we think about this a little bit more broadly. Well, first of all, there's, I don't know if you're familiar with Oliver Sacks, books he wrote. A Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. He's a famous neurologist, and he talks about people who are differentially abled. He himself, I think, would be considered twice exceptional. He is the kind of person that he has a facial AG, nausea, where he cannot recognize people when he sees them. And in fact, it's so bad. It is so bad that if he looks in the mirror, he doesn't even recognize himself. And that's just insane. That's that is extreme. So he, he is also absolutely a brilliant writer and a brilliant neurologist, and he writes a lot about people who are differentially abled. So he has, you know, he's written about amazing stories of like, for example, there's a drummer with Tourette's syndrome, and as soon as he takes his medication, so he's a absolutely brilliant drummer. And as soon as he takes his medication, he loses that, that profound ability to drum in the way that he normally does. It's just, it's fascinating about what you know, how things can be influenced by our disabilities or the drugs that we take and so forth. There are other stories like, I don't remember whether it was Oliver Sacks or somebody else who wrote about a man who could smell as well as a dog, right? And imagine having the sensory receptors of of pets, right? And if we think about disabilities, it's like, well, you know, if you compare, if we compare ourselves to our dogs and their olfactory senses, well, we, you know, in some ways, we could say we all have disabilities, right? Because there are dogs that can sniff out COVID Or, you know, help us figure out where mold is and so forth. And you know, most humans, the vast majority of humans, aren't built for that. You know, we have there are animals across the animal kingdom that can see a lot of things that we can't see or detect energies that we can't see. And so when we think about this, I mean, and within the human spectrum, there are people that are very right brained and have intuitive abilities that most of us don't have, right so you know that, and so we are all differentially abled. That is true, and sometimes our handicaps actually lead to our brilliances. There's a fascinating story, I think it was on a hidden brain where somebody had a head injury, and after the head injury, they developed these amazing, incredible musical skills that were just beyond imagination. You know, like, suddenly, this person, without training, became a professional musician. It's like, so the brain is absolutely fascinating, and it's one reason why I'm a neuroscienter. I have training in neuroscience is because these differential abilities that people have are mind blowing and mind you know, and it's just fascinating to realize that we are we're all limited in our ability to perceive truth. We are all limited. And I think if we recognize that and know that, like it's dependent on our experiences and our own sensory systems, which are they're limited because we're human and we're not necessarily, we don't have all the sensory system systems that exist. It's just good to know. It's very humbling, and it's also helps us realize that there's all this new stuff to learn in these perspectives, to to learn from.   Tina Huang ** 18:24 And   Michael Hingson ** 18:26 I have always been a proponent of the concept that in reality, we should always be learning. And if we ever decide we know all we need to know and stop learning, that's such a horrible thing to do, because there's always new stuff to learn, always, always, which is what makes life so fun. I was at the University of California at Irvine a week ago tomorrow, actually, so last Thursday, and so I was down there because I was inducted actually into phi beta, kappa as an alumni member, which is kind of cool, because I wasn't able to to join when I was in in college, because they were just forming the chapter when I was leaving. But I was visiting one of my thank you. I was visiting with one of my old physics professors, actually a couple of them. And I brought up, you know, we were talking about how, how physics has learned so much, but there's still so much to learn. And I said, Well, someday we'll finally figure out the unified field theory that combines everything. And one of the professors said something that's very interesting, and I think is very true. He said it may not even be unified field theory. It may go off in completely different directions, which is new from the way it used to be. But the fact is, we're learning so much that we are. We're learning and discovering that things we thought aren't necessarily the way they are, and we have to continue to grow. And I think it's so much fun to see that sort of thing happening. Yeah,   Tina Huang ** 19:57 and I have to say, I mean, that's part of being an unstoppable. Having an unstoppable mindset, right? One thing that I talk about as a holistic brain health practitioner is that, you know, the reason why I'm a Holistic brain health practitioner, I should say, is because of my differential brain, my brain that doesn't, doesn't, isn't very, very conducive to an environment like medical school. So I basically did the PhD route and did postdoctoral training in epidemiology in order to to develop my expertise in root causes, which is what I'm an expert in. But as I talk to clients or the public in general, a lot of people struggle with symptoms that they don't understand or characteristics they don't understand. And Western medicine, you know, as brilliant as it is, and I'm not going to, you know, I'm not bad talking western medicine, but I think in the United States, we put a little bit too much faith in western medicine, and believe that it should be able to address everything. And right now it doesn't, and it may not ever get that way, until they start to open their mind up to look at what other cultures are doing. Chinese medicine, for example, has so much brilliance. Energy. Medicine has so much brilliance. The Amazon has so much brilliance. And if we stick to the idea that we need to think about it only in terms of the way that Western medicine is able to do it, and they are thinking about it in from a, you know, if you look at physics, they're looking at it from a It's not quantum mechanics, it's the other kind of mechanics. What is it? Classical Mechanics, right? It's a classical way of looking at things, but quantum mechanics is really like, that's where the magic happens, right? And if they're not incorporating that way of thinking, then they're going to think that everybody who's doing using methods, using quantum mechanics is crazy. But physics can prove that quantum that particles can be in two places at once. So in physics, can prove all these things that sound absolutely crazy, but work in energy medicine, and so the idea that like that, you know, I think I want to see, like Western medicine, just the whole field, be a little bit more humble in some ways. You know, when you go to a doctor, if somebody shows up with symptoms that that they don't understand, instead of calling them crazy, I want them to say, Oh, that's interesting. Let me, let me learn more about what's going on for you and see if I can figure out what those causes are or what to do about it. Yeah, you know,   Michael Hingson ** 22:38 yeah. So it's so true, I mean, there's more to life than drugs, and yeah, and Western medicine focuses so much just on the drug part of it, and there's been so much evidence that any number of people, and we've had a number of people on unstoppable mindset, who had medical Problems that Western medicine didn't solve but reg a and energy medicines and Eastern medicines and other kinds of forms of medicine, if you will, helped, and they were able to get beyond what was deal, what they were, what they were feeling and what was hurting them, and they became better for it.   Tina Huang ** 23:19 Yeah, exactly. And I think that the you know, it's not that you shouldn't look at Western medicine, it's that everything needs to be considered. And I think the more you merge it, and the more you consider the varieties of practices that involve, are involved, or that are possible, the better outcomes you can't get. Same time, it is very overwhelming. There's a lot of possibilities, of places you can go. So it's a matter of knowing, you know where the brilliance is, and and so forth. So that is a challenging and that's my life mission. Is figuring out, you know, what are those methods that are really effective and and helping people heal?   Michael Hingson ** 23:56 One of the things when we started dealing with China back in the Nixon administration and beyond, acupuncture started being talked about. But even today, Western medicine doesn't embrace it fully and make it a traditional part of what it does, even though clearly it helps any number of people.   Tina Huang ** 24:19 Yeah. And the thing about acupuncture is that, you know, they they used to say, and they're not saying it anymore, but they used to say, Oh, it's a placebo effect. And I would look at it and look at them like, this whole placebo argument is really kind of ridiculous when it comes to acupuncture, because it looks like torture. So it's like, Why would anything look like torture have a placebo effect? You know? Yeah, make any sense to me? Yeah. So, you know, I think, I think at least nowadays, Western medicine is a little bit more cautious about saying anything bad about acupuncture. And, in fact, more are willing to say, hey, you know, it's worth trying. It's worth trying. Exactly, good, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 24:55 Well, so for you, so you went through most of college. Knowledge and everything with a learning disability. What really finally caused you to I don't want, well, maybe the terminology isn't correct to say, feel comfortable with it, but what was it that finally got you to realize that you had a learning disability or were different, and you had to really do things in a different way, and how did that then start to affect what you did?   Tina Huang ** 25:26 Yeah, I am, I actually was asked several times in graduate school, like professors took me aside. So I should say, in graduate school, I was having regular panic attacks. I was I had no life. I was studying like crazy. I remember, like sometimes feeling so much panic. I would just get on my bike and just bike as fast as I can, you know, just trying to get that panic out of me. I was pulled aside several times by professors who said to me, you know, I you, you know, you really seem to be struggling way too much. And you know, the classwork is the easy part. If you can't do the class work. How are you ever going to be able to, you know, do the research? And I would, I would look at them and say, look, the classwork is going to be the hardest part for me. This is definitely going to be the hardest part for me. But once I get to the projects, once I get to the research, I'm good with projects. I think I should be okay. And they would look at me like I had two heads, and then let me know. And finally, my my advisor, My Media Advisor, in the lab I was working with, said, you know, Tina, you asked too many questions. And I was like, well, so does this other person like? Why? How? Why is asking questions a bad idea? And he said, Well, yours are different. And so I knew that he really cared about me, and he wanted me to thrive. And so the way he phrased it made me start to think, Okay, I need to go see get a clinical, you know, clinical evaluation. Now, again, back then, this was not something like we only knew about, I think dyslexia, and add at a time, weren't names for other learning disabilities and and so, and very few people even like, he didn't suggest I go see one like. He didn't even really know much about that concept. He just said, something is different about you. And so I did some research and looked and found out that there was a Learning Disability Center. And so I went to them, talked to them, and I had looked into the, I think, briefly before, but nothing. The disabilities that were described weren't exactly what I had. So, you know, it was, I didn't know if they could help me, but they sent me off to clinical psychologist who gave me this evaluation I was talking about, that that, you know, actually found that I was like he was actually the clinical psychologist I saw was in his 70s, and he had been working in the field for, I don't know, 50 years or something like that, but some insanely long period of time. And he said, you know, your ability to accumulate information is like less than the 20th percentile. We're talking about general population. We're not talking about in comparison to graduate school peers. And then when it but when it comes to, like, this one math test, which is just sort of arithmetic, he's like you, not only did you score a perfect score, but you did it faster than anybody else I've seen in the history of my entire career. And also I knew that, like, you know, we took these graduate school record examinations. And we had a verbal section, we had a math section, we had a logic section, and I know that, like in the logic section, I actually scored in the 98th percentile for people who are taking this examination. In the math I was like, in the upper nine, like, not upper 90s, but I think like 90 or 92nd or something like that percentile and the verbal, I studied the verbal like crazy, and I was, like, in less the 40th percentile. But I studied, I could never get that up high, you know, at all. So that's, you know, again, another example of extreme. So anyways, differences in my my abilities. So in that last class in graduate school I did, I was able to ask for more time on my tests, but my senior advisor also told me that I had to tell I'm sorry. My junior advisor also told me I had to tell my senior advisor that I had a disability, and I really dreaded that, but he had, he was holding the key to my funding. I was on his grant, and so I told him, and he dropped me. He dropped my funding.   29:21 And did he say why? He   Tina Huang ** 29:25 did not say why. Because, if he had said why, it would have been illegal. But, you know, he basically said he didn't think I could do the job right. Do, do the research. Luckily, my junior advisor believed in me, and my junior advisor was starting to get really worried about my senior advisor and not say he did not say that explicitly, but I could see in his actions there, the senior advisor was really well known, but there were some things about him that were of grave concern that were really getting revealed, partly from interactions with me. And so he dropped. To me, but Carrie o Banyan, who is my, was my advisor at the time, said, You know, you're, he didn't have the money at that time, and he's like, the only option we have is if you we write a grant, you know, and I had to write that. That was, that was an NIH grant called NRSA. And I wrote that grant, and with his support. And I remember the night before submission, the head of the neurobiology, anatomy Department said, Hey, Tina, would you like me to read your grant and give you just any last minute advice? And I was like, Sure. And so he calls me up the night before it's due. And he's like, okay, Tina, I want you to write. Sit down, grab a piece of paper and a pen, and I want you to write this down. And he's like, are you ready, you know, are you prepared for this? And I'm like, Yeah, give it to me, you know. And he goes, I want you to write I did an excellent job on my NRSA. And I was like, oh, okay, well, thank you. Do you have anything else? And he's like, No, I'm like, what? He goes, this is the best NRSA I've ever read.   Tina Huang ** 31:05 I was like, oh, okay, thank you. He goes,   Michael Hingson ** 31:08 What does NRSA stand for? And   Tina Huang ** 31:10 NRSA is, oh, it's just, I can't remember. It's important,   Michael Hingson ** 31:15 no, just curious. Anyway, go   Tina Huang ** 31:17 ahead, yeah, but it is the it was at least that time. It was the premier NIH grant that you could get as a graduate student. It was the most prestigious and best NRSA ever read, yeah, yeah. And so it was the best NRSA you'd ever read. And he said, yeah, just submit it as is. It's as good as it gets. You don't need any improvement. And then so I submitted it, and I got funded on the first submission. And again, that was the first. That's very unusual too. Yeah, it was extremely unusual. It was the first in all three neuroscience departments at University of Rochester.   Tina Huang ** 31:54 So I'm   Tina Huang ** 31:56 the comeback kid. I mean, I got, you know, I love that. You know, here I am. People have asked me to leave graduate school three times, and I show them that I can do research, right, you know, and that I'm an excellent grant writer, which is exactly the biggest reason, the biggest fear, and what I had been told is that it's so hard to get grants, and here I am. I just nailed it on my first try.   Michael Hingson ** 32:25 What did your senior academic advisor say about that? Oh,   Tina Huang ** 32:29 he didn't. He was out of the picture. We just didn't. We stopped talking to him honestly. Okay,   Michael Hingson ** 32:32 okay,   Tina Huang ** 32:34 yeah. Better that way, yeah. I mean,   Tina Huang ** 32:41 I am sure he heard about it, and I'm sure he was stumped. I know, I know that a lot of my professors that had asked me to leave were very confused by that, but I hope, I hope that seeing that enabled them to see that we need to start talking about learning distriments, differences in disabilities, and I, and I have seen that shift like I know that. I know that neuro learning disabilities, actually, what's really interesting is that I'm as I get these graduate school alumni magazines there are, there are actually conferences now in learning disabilities at University of Rochester, in the neuroscience you know that are heavily that neuro or the neuroscience department, is heavily involved. And I would like to think that what they saw with me helped them start to think about the importance of thinking about differential learning abilities.   Tina Huang ** 33:36 And probably that is true.   Tina Huang ** 33:41 I would, yeah, I just thought of that, but I think, I think that that probably got some heads turning.   Michael Hingson ** 33:46 So you got your PhD, and then what did you do?   Tina Huang ** 33:52 Well, I realized actually that I was not in love with lab work. I really am interested in mechanism of action, but I did not like the idea of working with animals in the way that we did in the labs, and I didn't like chemicals. And so I went on a trip to India during grad school years to kind of get away and and reframe and just think of it. And I was traveling with a friend who told me he wanted to get his master's in public health. And back then, I didn't know what that was, but I suddenly my ears perked up because that sounded really intriguing to me. And then I got back and and I was in the in a graduate student council, and somebody passed around the the pamphlet for public health, and I looked at it. And I saw this, this little description of a course in epidemiology, and I was like, Wow, this sounds really interesting. And it was about getting at root causes. And so I started digging into looking more the web was just a pretty new thing back then. And so I was like, searching, you know, the web, and trying to figure out. Um, more about this epidemiology, because it sound fascinating. And then I heard the John Snow story, which is about understanding like this. John Snow epidemiologist was what they call a shoestring epidemiologist, where there was a water pump that was the source of cholera, and how he found that made that discovery of how cholera started. And I was just like, This is what I want to do. I want to get at root causes. And so I actually decided, you know, I was advised to finish my PhD. I was in my fifth year at that time. I come pretty far at that point. So I was advised to just finish off my research and then apply for postdocs in epidemiology. So I actually applied. I, for some reason, I went to Johns Hopkins. I applied to Johns Hopkins, and I got accepted there as a postdoc. And so I did my postdoc at psychiatric in psychiatric Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins, and I loved it, because they actually and they let me take all the classes. I audited them, because otherwise I'd have to pay for them. I didn't have the money, so I audited classes in epidemiology and and bio stats and all the other things that I needed to   Tina Huang ** 36:16 to work in that field.   Michael Hingson ** 36:19 So you learned what you needed to, and that's kind of where you started focusing.   Tina Huang ** 36:24 Yeah, yeah. So I wrote, I wrote some the work that I'm most proud of was in that field. I did some pretty made some pretty cool discoveries for in the field of Alzheimer's disease, discovered that early life actually impacts your risk of dementia. And I looked at a measure, an anthropometric measure, called knee knee height. So the height of our knees is actually indicative of our first two years of life. And specifically we were thinking it was nutrition, but now I think it might be more than nutrition. I think nutrition is a very important part of it, but I think also our adverse childhood experiences are contribute, contribute as well, but also our microbiome. So I was the first, not the first, paper to show that knee height was an indicator, indicative of or in knee height, or that those first two years of life was important and relevant for a risk, our future risk of dementia. I was the first person to show that in or first paper to show that in a western population.   Michael Hingson ** 37:43 So how did you discover that? Or what exactly did you discover that makes somebody who's less likely to get dementia, as opposed to somebody who's more likely?   Tina Huang ** 37:58 Yeah, so what I discovered is that people with shorter knee heights have a higher risk of dementia. Got it and the knee height is indicative. It's a reflection of what happened in the first two years of our life. Okay,   Tina Huang ** 38:14 yeah, so   Michael Hingson ** 38:15 partly nutrition, but partly other other things that come along that affect it,   Tina Huang ** 38:23 right? And I And, and that's, you know, I didn't prove that in the paper. That's just knowledge that I've accumulated from watching the research. But we now know the importance of the microbiome, for example, that was not, we were not touching on that subject at all back then, right? And now there's a lot of research on adverse childhood experiences. You know how our early life experience, you know whether we got enough emotional support, whether we have a parent that's in jail or violent, all of that impacts our stress and our you know, for if we're undergoing if we are in the midst of extreme stress or neglect or anything like that, not getting the new the love and support we need that can impact our ability to impacts our microbiome and our ability to absorb nutrients, digest and absorb nutrients, and To get interest that brain health connection that's vital to success and thriving.   Michael Hingson ** 39:24 I know that when, and I've told the story before here, but when I was born, and it was discovered about four months after I was born, that I was blind, I was born two months premature and put in an incubator and given too much oxygen, and that causes the retina not to develop properly, but the doctors told my parents to go off and send me to a home because a blind child could never grow up to be anything good in society. Essentially, couldn't be a contributor, would bring down the family and so on. And my parents said, Absolutely not. He can grow up to learn to do what. Whatever he wants. And that's why opportunity, which is, which is the point.   Tina Huang ** 40:06 And I think you're unstoppable, you know, because you had that parental, you know, those parental cheerleaders that you so badly needed, and that's just, that's amazing, well, and the power that's, I mean, that that alone, really speaks to the about the power of parents and what they can do for their kids. I see great example of that.   Michael Hingson ** 40:27 I've seen so many kids who are blind or were blind, who grew up and who weren't overly self confident, who didn't do as well as they could have, but it was because they were sheltered. Their parents didn't feel that they could do as much, and the result was they didn't do as much, yeah, and they didn't really learn to do the things that they could do, and they weren't challenged to be able to do the things that they ought to be able to do, like other people, and it's so unfortunate, but I've seen some, some children who grew up who were very good, very competent, very competent, but so many, oh, they're blind, they can't do anything, and that was how they were braced. And that's always a challenge, of course, and a problem,   Tina Huang ** 41:17 yeah. And I agree, and the same thing with me. I mean, as a person with learning disabilities, I was often dismissed. I mean, I had, I worked in, you know, I was at Johns Hopkins for my first postdoc, but I had some other postdocs that I'm not going to name, where I was neglected pretty severely, and it's because they did not recognize my genius, or maybe they did and didn't want to to foster that because of my other challenges and didn't, didn't believe that I was worth their time. You know, it's, it's very frustrating to to be brilliant and to know that you can contribute in huge ways, but that you're not given that chance to do so. You know, because of people's perceptions, they're inaccurate perceptions about what you're able or, you know, capable of. It   Michael Hingson ** 42:06 gets back to prejudice. It gets back so much to societal prejudice. Yeah,   Tina Huang ** 42:10 and it's, it's, it may not be intentional, and I don't think it's intentional prejudice, but it is stereotypes. And it's, we have these stereotypes. You know, our brains are constructed in a way that we have to categorize people quickly and efficiently. And I have to say that I am grateful because our society is changing. I mean, I am seeing that there is more and more awareness about learning disabilities and neuro divergence and celebrating that. Sure so that is that's wonderful. I I actually have been watching a bit of America got America's Got Talent. And what's great, what I really appreciate about that program is they're starting to accept more and more people of more and more different flavors. I mean, at times, there were we didn't, you know, we shunned people who are who are trans or, you know, have different sexual preferences, or gay or whatever. And, and we're becoming more and more open to those people as well, you know. And maybe not everybody is, but African Americans were, you know, we had an African American president. We're seeing we, we got to see an example of of African Americans and what they can do, you know, and Trevor Noah's brilliance. And, you know, there's just so many, you know, I think it was Amanda Gorman who was the amazing poet, yes. And so, it's, it's, it's wonderful that stereotypes are being broken and, and it's about time, you know, I think it is, it's huge change in just the last few years, and with that, and I'm so grateful to finally see that happen, because I've gone through so much of life where that hasn't happened, but I don't, I wish they'd talk more about, you know, other disabilities as well, but, but it changes are happening. So you're you're a part of that. So thank you.   Michael Hingson ** 44:03 The reality is that, in general, when we talk about diversity, we never talk about disabilities. It's not part of the conversation, and it should be, especially when the CDC says that up to 25% of all people in this country have some sort of a well, I'll call it traditional disability, as opposed to the other 75% who have light dependence, and it's still a disability, but 25% have a disability, and it's something that we don't talk about. There's a lot of fear involved in that, that, Oh, I could become like them. I don't want that. They're they're not as good as I am, they're less than I am, you know, and you talked about LGBTQ and so on. And I find it so interesting, how many people say in the Bible, it says that that's not a good thing, and you're you're going against the Bible if you're LGBTQ. But you know, Jesus also was the person who said, Judge not, lest you be judged and let. It, he or she, if you will, who is without sin cast the first stone. You know, the reality is that it's not my place to judge anyone, no matter who or what, even politicians, although they deserve it. But you know, we don't we. We don't judge people, because that's not our job. That's between them and God and it Well,   Tina Huang ** 45:24 here's the thing is that is that, why would God make us so different and allow that to happen like we're choice, all part of, I mean, this universe produced us, you know, and, and sometimes, you know, if we have brains that don't feel like, you know, if I, if I were, you know, and I'm not this kind of person. But I was also very interested. I actually wrote a paper on the biological basis of homosexuality in graduate school because I thought it was absolutely fascinating of understanding, you know, why? Why do we have brains? Why? Why do we sometimes have brains that don't resonate with how, how we show up externally? You know, like, how come a female can feel like they, they, they should be a male, and a male can feel like, how they should, you know, they should be a female. And it's, it's absolutely fascinating. It's, it's, I'm, I'm very curious about it, but I don't see the defect. It's just a difference, and it's absolutely fascinating, but it's a part of who we are, and it's a part of spectrum of society and and, you know, just because people are different doesn't make them less than it just makes them different, you know, interesting. And even   Michael Hingson ** 46:39 if it were true, even if it were true, which I don't think that it is, but even if it were true that, say being homosexual is is a horrible thing, it's still if, for especially religious people, if you think that goes against what God wants, that's still not your choice To make. Yeah, I agree, and people need to get over it. The reality is, it, is it? Mary, very well, may be choice. I don't know that. It's always choice. You're right. Brains are different, but it's still between the individual involved in God, and people need to leave that stuff alone and allow people to grow as they can, and it's okay to be different, but we, we don't generally tend to accept that collectively in our society, it's not okay to be different. You're supposed to really be like me, or you're less than me, right? And   Tina Huang ** 47:39 I have to say, in terms of a choice, it's not like, Oh, I'm going to choose this flavor of ice cream. It's more like, you know, I mean, people who are trans are choosing, they're choosing who they really believe that they are. And it's a correct fundamental, like, it's, so it's, it's, it's, it's much more. It may be a choice, but it's kind of a choice to just reveal that their truth, that's the real issue. They think, who they feel, their reality of who they are. So it's it. It's kind of like asking them if to, if they're asked to deny that they're asking to deny who they feel they are. And that's, that's a that's a huge thing to ask of people. Huge thing that's not okay to ask people, you know, and I think that's, that's a huge has been a huge struggle of mine, you know, like, I actually grew up in an environment where very Christian, and I have to say that I'm I rebelled a lot because I kept getting told that I had to believe this and I had to believe that. And it wasn't, it wasn't jiving with me, you know, like the idea that God loves you, wasn't jiving with me because I had so much horrible experiences as a child, you know, I did not feel loved by God, and so I did not resonate with that, right? Um, well, that's not something I'm resonating with right now. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, yeah, I've had a lot of challenges in my   Michael Hingson ** 49:08 life. I, I am one of these people who do believe that God loves everyone, but that is, again, an issue between you and God, and so if you decide that that that's okay, that's okay. If it's if you decide it's not okay, God's not going to smite you down for it. God isn't going to execute you. Everyone. That's the beautiful part about the universe. Everyone has free will,   Tina Huang ** 49:40 right, right. I do think it has a lot to do with our experiences, though. So well   Michael Hingson ** 49:45 it does it, it does. And you know, something may come along to make you feel differently in the future, but that's it doesn't matter. That's still really the choice that you get to make as you are going through life and experiencing the adventure. Life, and life is an adventure by any standard, right, right? And it far be. It from me to tell you that you have to say that God loves you,   Tina Huang ** 50:10 right? I appreciate that. Now,   Michael Hingson ** 50:13 my dog, on the other hand, would sit in your lap if he could, but that's another story. He's, he's, he's a   Tina Huang ** 50:21 I trust, I trust animals love me. I can have faith in that at least, at least the healthy ones. Well, yeah, but I am a, I'm a bit of an A kitty magnet, although I love them a lot too. So   Michael Hingson ** 50:34 Well, we have a cat, or I have a cat, and she's probably waiting for this to end, so that I will go pet her while she eats. She loves to get petted while she eats, and she gets very irritated if she doesn't get attention when she wants it. Yeah, that's okay. That's part of love. How did you grow to be a holistic brain practitioner?   Tina Huang ** 51:03 I so I think, you know, I've told you my backstory, learning disabilities and not doing traditional things. I I had severe depression, anxiety, stomach problems, and, of course, these learning disabilities that we've been talking about throughout my early life and kept going to doctors and getting dismissed by doctors. Or, yeah, getting getting dismissed. Or, you know, told I need to go see a psychologist or whatever, and and not really getting to the root of the problems. And I was fascinated by neuroscience, so, you know, I went, you know, did the neuroscience epidemiology route. I told you about that, but I had some bad postdocs, and these postdocs were career ruining for me. I discovered some fraud, and that ended up hurting me more than the person that committed the fraud, which was very upsetting, and I lost my job because I discovered their fraud. And so I had to find new methods to heal. And I had, when I discovered that there were ways that I could, through energy, medicine, intuitively detect root causes directly in people, I decided that that I really need to learn more about this. And when I discovered that the methods worked, I was like, Okay, I need to develop a career in this. You know, it's it was so much more efficient than doing the research. And I also was struggling. I know that, you know, I really was coming down to the or understanding the limitations of research, and some of the big limitations of research, especially when you're looking at data large scale data sets, is that you need to account for all the variables that are involved. And my research was an Alzheimer's disease. And if you look at all the different things are involved that cause Alzheimer's disease, you cannot fit it into a specific equation. You can only fit like, three or four, maybe five variables into a specific into an equation depending on the on your population size, and so it's not going to be able to count for all the very the individual differences. And there was just no way to do that in in epidemiology. And so there's real, I mean, that's just that points to a huge, huge limitation of research is that is really good for people who are the norm. But the problem is, is so many of us are not the norm. So many women. I mean, there's, there's not a lot of research in women, for example. So so much of the research is better for men, you know. And and if you have unusual symptoms, research is not going to cover you at this point, right? So, and I was, I was always in that category of having symptoms that doctors didn't understand. And so I was like, I've got to figure out root causes much more directly. And so when I figured out I could do that, I started to work on develop my own business, and that's how I became a holistic brain health practitioner. I absolutely   Michael Hingson ** 54:06 love it. You made comments about the concept of first impressions. Tell me about that.   Tina Huang ** 54:14 Yeah, I I don't like I think it's really important dangerous. It could be very dangerous to allow your first impressions to navigate your understanding or shape, not, not it will shape, it will always shape your understanding of a person. But if you let it be the sole contributor to your impressions of a person, it can be very dangerous, so let me just elaborate that on a bit. There are people who are very charming and likable when you first meet them, and oftentimes leaders. Lot of leaders are very likable and very charming and can be very popular and well loved.   Tina Huang ** 54:57 But I.   Tina Huang ** 55:01 They can also be very toxic to people who are close to them. And I'm specifically talking about people who are in the sociopathic, the sociopathic personality type, and narcissists are a great example of that. They can be very, very charming, and we can hold on, especially if we are an empath, and are the kind of person that wants to take care of others, we can hold on to those beliefs about this person, that they are wonderful, and that everybody loves them, and so forth, you know. Why? Why are they so? Why does everybody love them so much, you know? And then, and then this person, if you get to it into a relationship with them, if you get too close to them, they can end up being very toxic to especially empaths or people who are vulnerable. I'm not saying that everybody who is charming and likable is this way. I'm just saying that if you are, if you happen to encounter a narcissist, that that's what can happen these personality types, they can go from being just absolutely amazing and wonderful in certain stages and absolutely terrifyingly horrifically dangerous for you on the other side. And so making these assumptions is can be very dangerous, but it's also dangerous for the individuals who have disabilities that are hidden. So it is dangerous for people like me who have a hidden disability. People are not necessarily going to see that I have a disability. It is dangerous for people like me because, for example, I developed a severe environmental sensitivity due to Toxic Mold and doctors could never see even first depression can be like going to a doctor's office and they don't see anything wrong and they can't run anything in tests, so they've decided that you're fine. And so for me, I got, didn't get the diagnosis I needed, and I didn't get the support I need. So I'm actually in deep debt because of I wasn't able to work for two years because nobody was able to give me a diagnosis, and I couldn't get on disability. And so that's another example of first impressions that are dangerous. And they may not be dangerous for the person, if it's the doctor giving it to the patient, but it's very dangerous for those of us who struggle with toxic mold issues. Because I am not alone. There are tons of us who struggle with symptoms that nobody understands and are not getting disabilities or disability help because doctors refuse to understand or to look at the impacts of mold on our systems. Mo, you know, there's three types of mold. There is pathogenic mold, sorry, there's allogenic molds, pathogenic mold and toxigenic mold. And most doctors, if you ask them if they know about those three types, or if they know about different types of mold, they will not know. They only know about allergenic and that's a huge problem, because pathogenic mold, for one, can make you sick for months and make it impossible for you to work for months. Toxigenic mold can completely destroy your immune system and your detoxification systems and make you completely immunocompromised. And it can do it for your entire life, yeah. And it can make you that, that in parasites can make you extremely immunocompromised, and they don't know about that. You know, it's   Michael Hingson ** 58:22 scary that not enough is being done to address the issue. It's like anything else. It takes some incredible, rude awakening somewhere before anyone starts to really focus on some of these issues.   Tina Huang ** 58:36 Yeah, it's, it's a big reason why I was absolutely determined to get well is because I knew that I was going to have to get on stages and start to speak about this. I'm I'm not just trying to champion my own, my own experience, but my experience struggling with these toxic mold issues was absolutely horrific. It was hellish, beyond imagination, and there's not social support to help people like us, and it's just, it's horrific, and it needs to, it needs that needs to change.   Michael Hingson ** 59:08 So what is it you're doing today? What kind of work or what do you do?   Tina Huang ** 59:13 Well, as a holistic brain health practitioner, I help clients sensitive souls who are struggling with symptoms that doctors can't understand, and I help them thrive, regardless of relationships, surroundings or symptoms by root causes. And yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 59:32 do you do that remotely? Do you do it in person? Or what do you do? I do   Tina Huang ** 59:35 it remotely right now. I used to do it partly in person before COVID, and then COVID When COVID happened, I'm able to do everything I do remotely, so I just stuck with it, and then I got sick. So yeah, so I'm actually just rebuilding my business right now.   Michael Hingson ** 59:56 Yeah, I've had to do that because of COVID as well, and it's a process.   Tina Huang ** 59:59 Yes, yeah. Well, because for me, it wasn't COVID, it was, I was actually doing fine, but it was because of the toxic mold problem so   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:07 well, for me, just COVID caused so many changes. It just took away. Fortunately, I've not gotten COVID. I don't want to get COVID, and I have no problem wearing masks and doing other things to make sure that I don't get COVID or keep that that probability as low as possible. And I know too many people who've gotten COVID a number of times, yeah, and don't want to do that,   Tina Huang ** 1:00:31 yeah, well, that's awesome. You must have a great immune system then,   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:34 well, I also make sure I take all the vaccines. And I don't have a problem with that either. Yeah,   Tina Huang ** 1:00:40 yeah, doing what you can do to protect yourself is really important, very important, very, very important part of   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:46 that. Well, this has been a lot of fun, and it didn't take us a lot of effort to go through an hour, did it?   Tina Huang ** 1:00:53 Are we there yet? Oh, we are. Look at that, huh. Time flies surprise, yeah. But   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:59 I do want to thank you. But how can people get in touch with you? If they'd like to to talk with you further, learn what you do and maybe use your your skills and so on to help them?   Tina Huang ** 1:01:09 Yeah, my my website is try holistic brain health.com so it's T, R, Y, holistic brain health.com and so you can go check out. I have a very extensive website. You can check out more about what I do, what I help people with. I've got tons of testimonials there. I'm a speaker as well, so people are interested in hearing more, can check out my speakers page. And for those who are struggling with brain health challenges, I offer a holistic brain health assessment, and you can check that out on my how to work with me page,   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:45 okay, have you written any books? I   Tina Huang ** 1:01:47 have not written any books at this point. I Yeah. I started to and got waylaid by a few things, but yeah, my my recent health, my two year health stint, really got in the way of of a lot right now, he sent me back quite a bit. So well,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:05 if you get one written at some point, let us know. We'd love to put it up on the page where we talk about the podcast when it comes out. But this has been fun, and I really enjoy you being here and getting the the chance to talk with us and and was great to meet you at patapalooza.   Tina Huang ** 1:02:24 Thank you, Michael, it's been an absolute delight. Thank you for having me.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:29 Well, I want to thank you all for listening. We really appreciate it. We'd love it if you would give us a five star rating wherever you're listening to this podcast. Five Star Ratings are always greatly appreciated. We love your feedback and your comments. If you'd like to reach out to me, you're welcome to do so. You can email me at Michael h i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S i, b, e.com, or you can go to our podcast page, www, dot Michael hingson, M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, S o, n.com/podcast, where you can find all of our podcast episodes, but you'll find them where, wherever you're listening to us today. And again, we really appreciate you giving us a a good rating. We we value that we love to hear your thoughts. If you have any ideas of people who ought to be on the podcast and Tina, for you as well. Please don't ever hesitate to refer people to us who ought to come on and we'll we'll get them on. It's so much fun to do. But again, lastly, Tina, I want to thank you for being here and spending an hour with   Tina Huang ** 1:03:34 us. Thank you so much, Michael.   **Michael Hingson ** 1:03:42 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.