Dr Andrew Greenland: 0:03

So welcome to Voices in Health and Wellness. This is the show where we sit down with the leaders, the clinicians and changemakers who are reimagining how health is delivered, experienced and sustained. I'm your host, dr Andrew Greenland, and today we're diving into the connection between chronic stress, nervous system health and the way modern wellness is being reshaped, not just in the clinic but in the digital space. Joining me is Dr Ashley Kumar, a holistic physical therapist based in St Louis, missouri, and the co-creator of your Thrive Code, an online course designed to help burned out women reclaim their vitality. Ashley's work blends clinical expertise with functional medicine, breathwork, mindset coaching and biohacking tools, all in service of helping women move from exhaustion to empowerment. So, ashley, thank you very much for agreeing to appear on the show this afternoon and a very warm welcome to you.

Ashley Kumar: 0:49

Yes, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 0:51

So maybe we could start with your journey. You're a physical, holistic physical therapist, but you've built a digital course and education platform. What led you from your clinic work into this kind of burnout recovery education?

Ashley Kumar: 1:06

your clinic work into this kind of burnout recovery education? Yes. So we me and my partner saw so many women, ourselves included, hitting a wall of burnout. They were overwhelmed by stress, hormone shifts, deep exhaustion, and I felt like they weren't really finding their answers through traditional healthcare. So, personally, I experienced adrenal fatigue after having Irish twins which is two kids in two years and running my own physical therapy business inside of a holistic wellness center, and I reached a breaking point. Dr Greenland and I couldn't even get out of bed anymore.

Ashley Kumar: 1:33

This was about three and a half four years ago, and I knew something had to change. Through me applying some of these tools that I had learned from the wellness world around me, slowly but surely I started to literally come back to life. I felt more alive again, and then I realized I wasn't alone. So many of my patients were also struggling with those same chronic stress symptoms, and I think a lot of us are right in today's world. So then that's how that course was. Birthed was together me as the physical therapist? I partnered with a functional medicine doctor. She specializes in female health. She has quite a bit of clinical experience 30 plus years and we knew that there had to be a better way, right? So our goal was to give every woman the tools that they need to feel alive and balanced and in control again. So that's whenever we created this course your Thrive Code.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 2:22

So the vision for this Thrive Code, what would you say is the big picture, the big vision.

Ashley Kumar: 2:26

Yeah. So the vision is really to take a, I say, a woman that is not living in survival mode currently, but she's kind of coming out of it. We're trying to help her, to guide her to come out of it. So that say, you've got a woman, sally, who has three kids she's working full time and those kids, whenever those children are young, you're pretty much, I would say a lot of women are stuck in that survival mode because they're raising their children, they're trying to keep their kids alive and they kind of forget about themselves. So we're trying to help that mom who has children two and a half and older their youngest is two and a half and older. They're kind of coming out of survival mode. They're kind of waking up again, starting to sleep again, to break those habits of survival mode and getting them to transition into perimenopause with greater ease. So that's, I would say, is really the mission for those specific women, because I think that if you get stuck in survival mode for several years, it becomes you right. So we're trying to break that cycle and having them get back into who they were, maybe prior to children or prior to chronic stress. So we divided that course for them so that they can really get to those goals.

Ashley Kumar: 3:37

Because you know, as holistic, functional practitioner, that it's more than just a pill, right, it's more than a pill. So we went in and we really went through the Bain Digestible Pillars, which were seven pillars how stress affects a woman, how stress affects our bodies, chronic stress specifically, mindset, nutrition, rest and repair, movement and breath, work, hormones and biohacking tools as needed, so that it could be sold as more of a complete transformation for the woman, or you can just purchase an individual module if you just wanted to learn about hormones. So then that really helped us to create more reoccurring revenue model and made it accessible for people at multiple different price points and different audiences. So that's really how we created the course. But no one's going to sit behind a computer and just take a course, right? So we really wanted to support these women. So we meet with them two times a week as group participants with that full structure, so that we can really give these women the guided support that I feel like they need, you know.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 4:42

So how does this fit in with your clinical practice? Do people do both? Do people come and see you? Still, how do you do these two different worlds? Well, they're probably part of the same world, I guess, but yeah, they're really a part of the same.

Ashley Kumar: 4:54

I would say that in my clinical practice I cover a lot of these things. In our therapy sessions I really focus on postpartum women as well as people with chronic stress. So it just really depends. I kind of dynamically find out what their needs are. In clinic I'm teaching them breath work, bagel toning, even breath work for core stability.

Ashley Kumar: 5:14

If you just had a baby, your pelvic floor is usually pretty weak, your core is pretty stretched out. So we'll go in and we'll do a lot of nervous system regulation work and then, if they do need extra guidance, the holistic wellness center that I work at they also have we have four functional medicine doctors, so I will refer them to a functional medicine doctor to get that. But for those that can't afford, I'm working at a membership based facility for those that can't afford. You know, functional medicine can be quite expensive, right, at least here in St Louis. It is cash. That's why we really wanted to create this course too is for it to be more affordable. So more for my social media following and ones that you know new moms that are working or a single mom that can't afford spending $4,000 a year on functional medicine doctor, then we're giving them the tools to be able to learn how to fix that, those issues that they might be having on their own, just through taking ownership and learning it.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 6:07

Brilliant. So we're seeing a big rise in interest around nervous system regulation, especially breath work, and I know you mentioned this is one of your favorite things to teach. Why do you think breath is such a powerful tool in health transformation?

Ashley Kumar: 6:19

Yeah, I mean, breath work is really the way in to your parasympathetic nervous system and guess what? It's always with you. It's sitting right there in you all the time, right, your diaphragm, your vagus nerve. So I believe that breathwork is the easiest way, instead of buying tools and gadgets, to improve your calm. Yes, I think sleep is also very important, but breath work really is teaching someone how to use that, I think, is extremely powerful and empowering for a patient, because a lot of us, I think, are learning about breath work through reading it or hearing it, but I don't think people are actually properly doing it.

Ashley Kumar: 6:59

If I asked you to breathe right now and you have really bad posture and you've been bent over a desk the whole entire day, your diaphragm is being sat on Are you really using your diaphragm to breathe? Diaphragm is going to stimulate that vagus nerve and the vagus nerve is, to me, the most powerful nerve of the human body because it's going to help you shift into a calm, relaxed state, reducing your heart rate, reducing your blood pressure, helping you to shift out of that state of fight or flight. So you know, using the diaphragm is extremely important and I think that it's not just breathing and sniffing your breath in and paradoxically breathing, but teaching people how to optimally use their diaphragm so they can get to that state of wow. I really feel a shift, I really feel a change. So that's really, I think, the biggest importance of how breath work can be super impactful for someone that's working full time, living in a state of stress, you know.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 7:52

Thank you, which is probably most of us. Can you perhaps share one or two quick tips that listeners could apply straight away without wishing to diminish your work? But is there anything that is like a quick takeaway that people could perhaps do your work, but is there anything that is like a quick takeaway that people could?

Ashley Kumar: 8:05

perhaps do. Yeah, definitely so. A simple and powerful breathing technique that I love to use and let's do this together, okay, and for the listeners that are listening. So inhale for four seconds, hold for four seconds and then have your exhale. Try to be longer than your inhale, if you can two times as long. So exhale for eight seconds, and you can either with a physiological sigh like so or a humming, so there's your sigh and your hum is more close your mouth and hear the reverberation. So like H-U-M-M-M-M-M-M, to really elongate that exhale. And why do that? Because that reverberates and vibrates the vagus nerve that stems out of your brainstem, down your neck and into all the way down into your intestines. And doing that all through your nose and the key here is nasal breathing. So we're not just going to get air in through smelling our breath in, but we're really going to open the back of your throat.

Ashley Kumar: 9:16

It's called the Ujjayi breath in yoga. It's actually a cervical diaphragm that speaks directly to your respiratory diaphragm, and then that's going to create better communication. So first of all, let's talk on the nose. I want you to try to sniff your breath in first and you hear your nose hairs and you feel your chest rise. Instead of getting stuck in your upper pathway, your upper nasal pathway, I want you to open the back of your throat and make it more sound like a Darth Vader noise, but it's called the Ujjayi breath Keeping the chest quiet, taking all the energy down into the diaphragm and feeling the ribs expand from the front, the side and the back a 360-degree rib cage expansion. Okay, so that's how you're going to get that diaphragm to work. If you feel it in your neck, you're not using your primary respiratory muscle, you're using your secondary respiratory muscles. So now let's go through this powerful technique Inhale four, hold four, exhale for eight.

Ashley Kumar: 10:14

On your exhale, don't be shy, hum or sigh, all by inhaling through the back of the throat. So ready, we're going to inhale in for four, three, two, one. Hold three, two, one, exhale seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. I'm going to do it with you this time and not count. So inhale, hold, exhale, exhale. Getting all that stagnation, that stagnant CO2, carbon dioxide out of you and that hum or sigh. Sometimes people aren't going to hum, right, because they're embarrassed. Other people around them Just sigh.

Ashley Kumar: 11:15

But having that breath, do you already feel a little bit calmer? It's slowing down your body really right, because we want to give our body feedback to say you're safe, you don't have to be in fight or flight, you don't have to be running from the lion. Even though you're emailing someone, right, you're not really running, so your muscles aren't working, even though you're stuck in that state of stress, which we could go down a whole glucose pathway, insulin resistance pathway, with chronic stress, but I won't. Today you should feel five breaths three times a day morning, lunch and evening time before bed. That's starting to get you into breath awareness.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 11:51

So yeah, really really helpful, and that's something people can take away right now. What does the course look like in its structure in terms of somebody?

Ashley Kumar: 12:05

who's interested in doing this? What's it going to?

Dr Andrew Greenland: 12:07

look like you know day-to-day for somebody the cost? Explain what you mean. No, no, the course, your online course, your platform. Give us a sort of sense of what it involves for people that might be, you know, deciding to take it up. Thank you. If anybody was going to enroll on the platform, what would the course look like? How is it structured? What would it kind of involve day-to-day for people that are using?

Ashley Kumar: 12:37

yeah, so it's a seven week course, but what we like to do is really kind of give you 14 weeks to get through that all, and so it's just a rolling. If you enter the course, every single seven weeks we will go through each topic, so those seven digestible pillars that we talked about, and we will go through and you will be taking some of that content, and then we'll meet together and if you have any questions, one of those meetings for an hour will be questions that you might have. So bring your questions and let's talk about the pillar that we're going through. Say we're going through hormones and so any questions about hormones. And then that same week we'll also cover a topic on the hormones for an hour. So two times a week we're meeting one hour each and then we are all going through those pillars together. So in a flow of, say that you entered the course and we are on mindset instead of the first one, so you'll kind of enter in there and then we're all kind of going through that course together.

Ashley Kumar: 13:36

So you never feel alone. People are not going to take a course and not have support. That's what I've learned. So patients want support, right. So that's kind of how the program goes and how you will gain support through that. And then future for us is we would love to hire on some health coaches that are into holistic wellness as well as nutritionist, because I find that you know, working in a holistic wellness center, people need accountability. They need accountability. So going in and then also having 30-minute hormone consults as well through the functional medicine doctor. She's already doing that right now, but for someone who needs more specific care, they will go in and kind of giving them more one-on-one care as needed.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 14:21

Got it. So you're working with women navigating chronic stress, perimenopause and exhaustion, as some of the examples you gave. Are you seeing their needs change or even diverging from the traditional care model? I'm just trying to get some sense of whether you think the system is catching up or how far behind we really are in helping these women.

Ashley Kumar: 14:38

Right. So I mean, I would say that a lot of women let's just speak on hormones, for example they'll go to their OBGYN, who delivers babies more than probably you know works with hormones. So they'll say you know, I have gut issues, bloated, I'm not sleeping at night, I'm losing my hair, I just feel like something is off, knowing honestly that, whatever the route may be, usually the route is the cortisol is high or they have no cortisol left their insulin, they're starting to become insulin resistant, so their glucose is spiking, so they're becoming into more of a metabolic dysfunction. And so those doctors, the Western care docs, I would say, and I've had my own experience it took me five doctors before this the doctor that I work with actually was the one that opened my eyes to knowing, wow, there's a bigger route to this through holistic health, through getting good sleep, guiding these women into helping them to eat well and know what to eat and when to eat right, and then also managing their stress and going in and looking at that deeper route, instead of just saying, oh yeah, you need an antidepressant or a pill, right, Instead of really finding the route and starting with having these people go through those main lifestyle wellness pillars, with sleep, getting more sleep, with managing their stress better.

Ashley Kumar: 15:54

Suddenly their hormones might just balance back out. They might not even need hormone replacement therapy. However, they might need some hormone replacement therapy during that transition. You know, I'd say that, finding someone that's more, that's first of all specialized in hormones, that understands them to a deeper level than maybe just your primary care doctor, and not just putting you on birth control but finding out, you know, is it your progesterone's low, which I wouldn't mind talking about that too? Cortisol steel Do you know about cortisol steel?

Dr Andrew Greenland: 16:23

We do. We talk about it all the time. It's interesting how many people haven't heard of it, and it's because the cortisol thing and stress is just something which is talked about very nebulously in conventional medical circles. But when you sit down with that diagram and show them, it really makes sense to people.

Ashley Kumar: 16:37

Yes, yes, so I had, like I said, I went to five doctors and I started off with my OBGYN. He was a male and he put me on testosterone because I asked him for it, because my friends were taking it. And you know, he was like I don't know what you need really, and just kind of trying to get me out of the office, Right, he didn't know what to do with me. And so after the fifth doctor, that's whenever I found my partner, actually Dr Bashima Williams she's absolutely amazing and she goes oh, you have cortisol steel. And I said, oh, really, what's that? So I'm just going to explain that real quick for the listener. Cortisol steel is do you know about the hormone hierarchy? Dr Greenland.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 17:14

Yeah, I used to actually put the diagram in front of people to explain it, because it I think Shane visually makes more sense to explain that cascade.

Ashley Kumar: 17:21

It was like crystal clear your body is more important. What is the most important thing is your body is the three hormones oxytocin, love, which is huge, for, you know, children that are went through trauma it's like, okay, well, a lot of things might be out of whack as they become adults, right? So your body's most important things are love, oxytocin, insulin, glucose to make energy and cortisol stay alive, right. And then next up is your thyroid. That's lesser importance, and sex hormones is very last importance.

Ashley Kumar: 17:51

So whenever your body's under chronic stress, it's prioritizing to make cortisol the main stress hormone to keep you alive right. But in doing so, it diverts resources away from other hormones, like progesterone, which is a calming hormone and it's essential for things like sleep, mood and your menstrual cycle. So, in short, your body's choosing to survive, overthrive, right, and that's our mission is to reclaim these women back to energy, resilience and hormone balance, and not against it. So my body was pulling progesterone to make cortisol. So I was feeling anxious for no good reason and having, you know, wavy moods, I would just call it. And the fact was the days 14 through 26, 28, I didn't have progesterone, so that's why I felt so awful. So I started just a microdose of progesterone, and now I don't have to take it anymore because I've got my lifestyle in order amazing.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 18:44

That's something really practical, it's working and it takes you off a medication that you don't necessarily need to be on, which is what you're trying to do in this world.

Ashley Kumar: 18:50

They all have side effects.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 18:52

Maybe you can talk a little bit about the business side. What's working well for you in terms of getting traction and building awareness for your Thrive Code?

Ashley Kumar: 18:59

So I would say that it's all an ebb and flow and a learning process because as practitioners we don't really know how to run a business. We didn't go to business school right. So I actually have kind of gone to business school. I've hired it's important as a practitioner to know your lane and so I tried to do it all at first, which is very overwhelming. So we've hired on a marketing company which helps us with all the marketing, which is all the busy work right that I don't have time for. I'm also still seeing patients and then we've pretty much hired as I guess you'd call her business coach, and so she's helping us to learn and understand what we need to do for the business so that we can incorporate those with our marketing company.

Ashley Kumar: 19:40

But I will say you know you have to have money to invest if you want to grow any business right. So in the beginning it's always a learning curve and there are challenges. But just to know that you've got to delegate some work because if not you are going to burn out and you're not going to your mission, your passion of what you're trying to impact is. I think you'll lose that over time if you don't know you know the areas that you're not good at and to lean into those and give those away to others to have them help you out. But really understanding the business side of things first, because if you hire a marketing company and you don't know what to tell them to do, you are going to waste a lot of money, and we did waste a lot of money in the beginning. So I think that would be my advice for anyone who is trying to do something outside of just clinical practice and treating patients is really understanding business before you start. What do you think about that?

Dr Andrew Greenland: 20:39

Totally, and you're absolutely right. We get no training in this. I mean, I work in the health services my medical training set me up for, but there's clearly no business involved in that. I've had to learn it all myself to do what I do. I've been trained as a clinician and as a doctor and as a functional medicine person, but not in terms of how to run a business and how to market and how to do accounts. So it's been a steep learning curve and you're right. I think having coaches and trusted mentors on your side to shortcut the process or at least save a lot of time, energy and money and getting you to where you need to be in the shortest possible time is really worth it.

Ashley Kumar: 21:11

Yeah, definitely, you know, and just starting off with a person who says that they want to shift their practice to inside a brick and mortar, or even if they want to open a brick and mortar, you know they have to get clear on their why. Who are you truly trying to help? You know, I think a niche is important and then also to build systems that align with those energy and values that you're trying to output, and not doing it alone, you know, so that you can be sustainable and have a goal. And how are you going to get there, instead of have a goal and have no plan or guidance on how to get to that goal, because you're going to get really, really tired and burnt out.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 21:49

Absolutely. And on the other side, what have been some of the frustrations or the challenges or the things which are slowing you down that perhaps you hadn't anticipated when you started this out?

Ashley Kumar: 21:58

I'd say that translating years of hands-on clinical experience into an online platform was the learning curve, you know.

Ashley Kumar: 22:06

So we had to figure out how to take that deep topics that we have been talking about and turn them into something super clear and engaging and actionable for multiple women. You know, it's not just like you're seeing this one patient in front of you that has their issues. We're trying to niche in and find out how to speak very clearly and making it very actionable for multiple women that are having this issue. So we leaned into what we do best, which is educating with our heart and our empathy, and we brought the support that they needed, especially on the tech and marketing side. So I think that the challenges that we faced were the business. We're really good at what we do. Obviously, we've been doing it. I've been doing it for more than a decade and my partner's been doing it more than 30 years. So it was really the tech side and the nuance of AI and bringing on business professionals that could help us knowing how to market it. Our first biggest struggle was we were like we're just going to create a course and sell it, and I actually have a breathing course that I created about three years ago and, like I said, if you just create an online course and you expect to sell it, nobody's going to buy it because or if they buy it, they're not going to complete it. So you're really still not making an impact, you know.

Ashley Kumar: 23:21

But the biggest part that we had to figure out was we needed a way to give these people support too, and bringing them in, for the marketing aspect is you're not just going to create. We were doing Instagram videos over Instagram videos and is all logical thinking using conscious you know your conscious and your subconscious for marketing. So we were doing a lot of just education and it wasn't a way to sell. So learning how to have the person that's watching your videos if you're creating a marketing ad understanding that it's more about connecting with them, either using your story to connect with their story and saying, hey, I need that, knowing what their pain point is, instead of just creating a bunch of videos.

Ashley Kumar: 24:07

That gives education. It's how to really make sure that your time is valuable, right, as a practitioner, especially if you're still treating patients, you don't have a lot of time. So dialing in to how to make sure that we are bringing people into this course, that not only our niche, but also how to bring them in, because a lot of people don't even understand you know, with a video on just education what exactly our course is and does. So I say that that was probably our biggest hurdle is how to bring a person into knowing what our course is and making it grow right, and then also just the tech and the business side. That's been our biggest obstacles, because we're not good at it. We had to learn, just like we had to learn how to be good. Functional medicine practitioners and physical therapists.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 24:59

You talked a lot about balance in what you do in your program, but how do you balance being a clinician running a digital product with all the teaching, the marketing, the tech? I know you've obviously got some help and you've brought some people in, but how do you achieve balance?

Ashley Kumar: 25:08

Yeah, so I have devices that I use. One of them has been the Oura Ring and the other one is my Whoop Watch and these guys right here keep me accountable. They let me know whenever my HRV is taken and my heart rate's getting too high and I'm into too much stress. I also use a cold plunge, so my whole house is turned into a biohacking facility actually. So I wake up first thing out of bed. It's a non-negotiable. I have EWOT, which is exercise with oxygen therapy, which is exercise with oxygen therapy the two biggest things that have dramatically changed my life regarding stress management, and that is obviously the breathing. But the biohacking tools would be the EWOT and the cold plunge.

Ashley Kumar: 25:43

Now, granted, did you know that for cold plunges, that women do not need to be cold plunging lower than 50 degrees Fahrenheit? Men can handle quite a bit more stress than women can. So a lot of people are like, oh well, I would not cold plunge because I'm already under stress. If you're in a complete adrenal fatigue and you have no cortisol left, probably don't want to be cold plunging at that time. But as you start to come out of it, using that cold plunge has helped me with stress resilience. It's helped me with mindset clarity, happy neurotransmitters, all that good stuff.

Ashley Kumar: 26:14

But I'll wake up out of bed, dr Greenland, and I'll throw on my swimsuit and I'll run upstairs in my physical therapy biohacking room I'll jump on the EWT for 10 minutes, do a little bit of reformer Pilates. If it's cold out I'll sauna, but it's hot as Hades in St Louis right now, so I don't choose to sauna because I'm already sauna-ning whenever I walk outside. And then I also have a red light and a pimp mat. So I get my pimp mat in during what I'm driving and then, if I want a red light, maybe I'll do that at nighttime before bed.

Ashley Kumar: 26:42

But really my main stickers are wake up, ewt for 10 minutes, pilates, reformer, cold plunge, get out in the sun ground, do some stretching. And it really just makes me. I mean those habits, those habit stacks. I can't tell you how much it's changed my life. And then my sleep is non-negotiable. I'm going to go to bed way earlier than I ever used to, but that's how it took me down the rabbit hole of adrenal fatigue. I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't taking care of myself. So I've changed the way that I see life and I move through life.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 27:15

You know, that's how I keep up so you're a product of the fundamentals of what you. I am yeah, absolutely so. In terms of what kind of metrics or signals are you tracking for success in what you do, in terms of either the clinic or the platform? Is it around engagement, outcomes, enrollments, or there are other things or other nuances that you're looking for to see. You see, how is this thing working and playing out?

Ashley Kumar: 27:38

I just think that these tracking devices that we are having is just the best way to take ownership and understand what's going on in your body so you know if someone is really struggling with weight gain or they're having, you know, mood shifts. I would say that you know that. Recommending, if they can afford it, some sort of tracking device the Oura Ring or the Whoop Watch If they're active, the Whoop Watch. If they're not so active, the Oura Ring, because sleep is just super important. It tells a lot about what you did during your daytime. So a tracking device first of all, and then going through those metrics with those clients, we actually, on our course, explain how to read your Our-ring.

Ashley Kumar: 28:14

How many people have an O-ring and don't know how to read it? I'd say probably more than 50%. Right, it's just it's a trending thing. You know, kind of like the cold punch is a trending thing too. But using those tracking devices HRV on the tracking device is huge for stress resilience, heart rate variability If you have a low heart rate variability, it usually correlates with stress and chronic stress and you're not able to kind of catch your body up at nighttime.

Ashley Kumar: 28:39

Heart rate is another one that I like to look at. Low resting heart rate's, wonderful Body temp. Also, menstrual cycle is another ability way to track if someone is doing well. And then if someone's really struggling, like I said, with weight loss or even hormonal shifts, I like to try to have them use a 14-day glucose monitor, a CGM, continuous glucose monitor. Yeah, they might not have type 2 diabetes, they might not be diabetic, but you can get glucose monitors without having a doctor's order. Ageless RX will give you one. Lingo is another company. It's only $49 for a 14-day trial, knowing what food is doing to your body in real time. So I think that these metrics is how we measure, you know, and then the patient starts to feel like they can take ownership and they're empowered because they start to really see things in real time. They're like, wow, that oatmeal actually spiked my glucose so much. Now the thing with the glucose, though. Has he ever worn a CGM before?

Dr Andrew Greenland: 29:37

Yeah, I mean, I've used them myself. I'm a guinea pig for everything that I do.

Ashley Kumar: 29:40

I mean, oh yes, I'm a science experiment is what I tell my patients. But that's how you learn right. But with that CGM, you know, what's interesting about the CGM is that if I spiked on my glucose, I really didn't feel different. Did you feel different?

Dr Andrew Greenland: 29:54

Not while I was doing it, I just found the data very interesting.

Ashley Kumar: 29:58

Right the data. And then what are you using with that data Is then next up. You know that you're not going to have oatmeal for breakfast if it's spiking you so much, if you know insulin is an issue, if your A1C is an issue, so instead it's. I know that eggs and sourdough, bread and avocado don't spike me. I know that cottage cheese, raspberries and blueberries don't spike me, so it's just having that quick little 14 day trial and testing it.

Ashley Kumar: 30:23

And then the other piece is like the supplements, like berberine and what's the other one? Is it ALA? That helps? Yeah, and also, you know, taking a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar before you eat, 10 minutes before you eat, all of those things, checking them in real time and knowing, wow, that really does work in my body, then I think that you know those are important things to track and check. But I would just say that the biggest is you really have no idea. You hear it, I've heard it on you, it on education, podcasts and everything about food and telling you how to do things and how to eat and how to sleep and how to exercise. But I don't think it really clicked until I saw it in real time on my own body, and then I was just set back in awe. I was like, wow, this stuff really is true. So I actually then took ownership and understood my body better and then I really started to do the things that I needed to do to feel better.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 31:19

Amazing. So, zooming out, what does success look like over the next six to 12 months? Are you focused on growth, more engagement, enrollments on the platform, refining the curriculum of the platform, maybe partnering with other practitioners? What are you kind of looking to do over the next year or so?

Ashley Kumar: 31:39

Yeah. So I think it's just it's all about our client, it's all about our participants. That's the reason that we're doing this is God spoke to me about two years ago and he said Ashley, you're seeing patients one-on-one. I need you to impact more people with your story. So what we really plan to do is to create deeper support for our participants. So, like I said, by hiring on health coaches, nutritionists, doing hormone consults for those that need more one-on-one support, and then we're also exploring corporate wellness partnerships and we'll continue our in-person community events that we do quite a bit. We're actually doing a big one tomorrow with goals to possibly start up some retreats so that we can really meet with these people and help them out and get them going in a more one-on-one setting.

Ashley Kumar: 32:17

So we want this to become a movement, not just a course, so women everywhere have access to real healing tools. So we would just love, if you're interested in this or you just want to learn a little bit more about it, go to yourthrivecodecom and then also for all of your listeners, dr Greenland, we'd love to offer a discount to the course if they are interested, by using the code THRIVE T-H-R-I-V-E and to save a little bit on the course and then I give away free information all the time on my Instagram and that's Healing with AK. And also I'm on Facebook, ashley Kumar, so you know you can follow me in that journey. But those are really our goals for leveling up into this course. Getting more participants is always a goal, but just to really impact women and help them out so they don't have to go through what I went through, because I think there's a better way.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 33:08

Finally, if you could remove one big bottleneck with a magic wand, something that would really accelerate your mission, what would that be? Big bottleneck?

Ashley Kumar: 33:16

with a magic wand, something that would really accelerate your mission. What would that be? Accelerate the mission regarding helping women.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 33:20

Something which is a bottleneck or a frustration that's kind of getting in the way of your mission what would that be and what would you want to solve?

Ashley Kumar: 33:30

I would say, regarding you know, just an online course for practitioners is just all the busy work you know and just making sure that you are finding your people. It's hard to find your people. We've hired and fired probably about five marketing companies and people at this point, so you're going to have to go through some people before you find someone that really wants to help you out, and you got to pay them well and you know. So you've got to figure out a way to. If you don't have the financial means, then you've got to find out a way, whether that's seeing patients one on one and using that that finance to you know, grow into your, your new, our new venture right Online course, or. But having a financial means to to find those people is also important.

Ashley Kumar: 34:11

But I would say, though, that it's just finding the right people to help you out, making sure that, before you hire on marketing companies and people to help you, you know what you need from them. So you have to take ownership and you have to understand how to run a business. So that would be my thing. That I would say is, the bottleneck is making sure that you're not sitting there every day just doing busy work and finding the right people to help you to grow.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 34:38

And, on that note, I'd like to thank you so much for your time this afternoon. Really appreciate it Hearing about your mission, what you're doing on the platform, the people that you're serving and lots of useful tips and information, which I'm very grateful for. So thank you very much, Ashley, for your time.

Ashley Kumar: 34:52

Thanks so much for having me.