From Burnout to Farm Life: A Radical Health Transformation

Discover how a life-threatening diagnosis can become the catalyst for radical change, forcing you to reassess priorities and take immediate action to reclaim your health and future.
Understand how chronic stress, poor lifestyle habits, and emotional overload silently drive inflammation, weight gain, and disease—and why removing the root stressor can be life-saving.
Learn how consistent lifestyle changes—diet, detoxification, mindset, and environment—can dramatically reverse health decline and create a completely new way of living.

About the Expert

John Nieters, LAc, DAOM, CFMP

Dr John Nieters

Dr John Nieters has been teaching and practicing the combination of Functional Medicine paired with Traditional Chinese Medicine for several decades. He has been practicing Tai Qi, Qi Gong and meditation for 50 years.

He has hosted over 500 call-in talk radio shows on "The Balancing Point." He currently lives in Alameda, CA with his wife, Jenny and son, Johnny. His wife, Jenny, is the acupuncturist for the 49ers football and St Mary's Rugby team.

He has authored the book "The Sweet Spot," on how to read your blood work and plans to have two additional books published this year.

Dr John's patients, staff and listeners call me the "Story-teller".

One of the things about eggs for the listeners, there’s a scale called the amino acid utilization scale. And so they take different foods and they see how much of it will actually go to make protein.

Like a steak, for example, less than 30% of that meat will, actually, go make muscle mass. It’ll break down in a variety of ways and you’ll get lots of things out of, but eventually a lot of sugar out, of even.

And so the amino acid utilization scale is seeing how much of that product will actually go to make muscle. The highest level is mothers’ milk, human mothers milk at almost 50%. But the second highest are eggs, good quality eggs with an amino-acid utilization that’s more than twice eating a steak.

So good eggs. Boy, that is right at the heart of everything. Hi, and welcome to The Balancing Point. I’m Dr. John Needers. And I’m here to make traditional Chinese medicine, functional medicine and integrative health simple, practical and fun.

So you can restore balance, boost vitality and enjoy a healthier life every single day. Hi, y’all. Thanks for joining us again here in another episode of The Balancing Point.

And today I’m really, really delighted to have a kind of a special guest, actually, not kind, he is a Special Guest, and it’s someone I’ve known for quite a while.

As some of you know, my real goal at this point in my life and this part of my career is to help people make life-changing decisions. I’m working on my book, Never Ever Ever Give Up and doing talks about that subject, about how to be told you’re basically that you are dying and then come up with a way to turn it around.

And so many people don’t, they either don’ t take the steps or they just don t believe it can happen. is Carl Okulov and Carl is one of those people that really, really turned it around.

Now Carl, 62 year old California native, grew up in the South Bay area. And when he was young, about 21, he went into a career that took him to eventually becoming a chief operating engineer.

For those of you that don’t know, those are the the brightest in a particular way of anybody I know. My dad was a chief engineer, my son-in-law is a Chief Engineer, and these are people that can make or do anything.

I go to the dump with my dad back in the days when you could wander around and take as much stuff out as you took in, right? And invariably, he would find stuff.

And I remember one day he found a couple little tanks and motors. I made two air compressors and then next time we went out, he figured a way to make a drill to take up to his property and drill for water.

And that’s what he does. That’s where Carl’s at. He’s one of those incredibly innovative people. But what I want him to do here today is talk about his journey from getting a very, very bad news from his medical doctor and what did about it.

So Carl, welcome. Hi, thank you. Good to have you on. Tell us about that trip to the doctor, the one that kind of turned things around for you? Oh, well, that was a day that it was particularly stressful.

I was on my way into work, sitting at the intersection at The Corner, across from the corporate facility that I wasn’t in charge of at that time. So they moved me out of the engineering thing and made me the manager of a whole place.

And I still had to do the Engineering job and I had do my boss’s job. So I had a meeting coming up with a particularly troubling employee and it was stressing me out.

So, I started having what I thought were a heart attack in the left-hand turn lane, going into work. I got on my phone and dialed the security guards.

They knew they had defibrillators, so I was going to have them run over the intersection and defibulate me if I were having a hear attack. But it calmed down, it turned out it was just a severe palpitation that was extended length of time.

It just kept on going. And finally it stopped. Go in, call my doctor. She just come and see me right away. she’s okay. You’re out of here. I’m going to send you right down the street to the cardiologist, go see him right.

So he brought me in. Questioned me about my job, check my pulse, this and that. Had a really high heart rate. He took some blood and. I sat there for a little while.

He came back, you know, we did a typical doctor meeting and when he came. And he says, Carl, You need to unplug immediately. So what’s going on? He says you’re about to have a massive heart attack and it’s not a survivable one.

It’s what they call a widow maker. You’re going to die. Okay. so my first reaction, sorry, all I can think of was my I hate your old song. Sorry, not having to tag.

I ask my patients in one way or another after I’ve taken their information is, what is your why? What’s your reason for wanting to live? what do you need to be here for?

And I find that that why, in this case, your eight-year-old son is what causes people to change direction and make changes in their lives. Otherwise there’s a tendency to just kind of keep cruising along.

But when you get that information from your doctor and you immediately, the face of your son pops into your head. Like, I want to be here for him. Correct.

Yeah. And then it was my son and my wife, but the first person I thought of was, my, what’s my sun going to do without a dad? And I just couldn’t phantom that.

So I drove home in tears, see my life, ask her, What are we going do? She says, you’re going quit. We’ll be fine. So the doctor gave me some time off of work said, hang up, turn off your phone.

Don’t talk to anybody at work. Just write your boss or call them, tell them you’re not coming in and you going to take the rest of the week off. My suggestion to you is to unplug and find something else to do because you’re going to die.

And, you know, the building engineering job is pretty stressful. You’re in charge of data centers. There’s no downtime allowed. Your on call 24 seven.

I was on a call, 24, seven since I. 20 years old. and I think I, was 50, 54, 55 at the time when I got that news. We’re at about there. 55, somewhere thereabouts.

So I said, what are we going to do? All my contacts are here, all my information, everything I know is here. It’s what I do. And so I thought about it for a minute.

No, by the way, it was easy for my wife to say, quit, we’ll be fine. She’s from Thailand. So they live a very simple life. So it was a little bit, I don’t know how to explain it, but it wasn’t easy for her to say, just quit.

We’re going to be fine no matter what. And so I did the following week I drafted a resigning, a letter to resign and I resigned. I came into work, collected my things and walked out the door.

Went home, sat around for a couple of weeks, went to another doctor and then found out I had another thing along with the heart problem, the CLL, chronic lymphatic leukemia.

So that kind of sent me in an emotional spiral. And I said, I have to do something about this. One of the things that came to mind is I knew I needed to come see you and I did.

I came and saw you before I, before, I moved, and, um, you saw my C-reactive protein was through the roof and a variety of things. You gave me some stuff, but then about 30 days, a month or so I come back and I saw your, my, C reactive protein within tolerable limits from the, uh, TCM herbs, supplements you had prescribed to me.

I changed my diet. And I hadn’t decided to move away yet. It was about a year it took me to decide to actually just leave the Bay Area. And then. You had told me about, you know, my liver was inflamed because I had been drinking a lot from the stress at work.

I gained a lotta weight. It was about 230 pounds. And I couldn’t tie my shoe. Couldn’t bend over, couldn’ breathe, everything was so tight inside my body, so full of fat, I could’nt bend or tie up my shoes.

Had asked my wife to tie me shoe, had to put my sho up on a stool or something just so I can tie it. Then I was winded tying my show. So, um, you suggested that it would be good for me to try the liver cleanse and the gallbladder thing that I did with you and Catherine.

So I get it was a 10 day cleanse. And I have to say that. I don’t remember it. My wife remembers it and she won’t allow me do anything. She says I was.

But I, what I the biggest takeaway from it wasn’t that bad. The first two days was kind of weird at night is the weird sensation in my body and my blood.

It’s just an odd sensation. But after that, it kind was a downhill role with the program and it changed my desire for sugar. I didn’t, I couldn’t drink juices any longer.

Stopped drinking alcohol and that went on for about a year until I tried a beer again. Boy, that was good. And. But I had, I went over the 11 month period of time, dropped 55 pounds and the jumpstart for me was the liver cleanse because it changed my desire for sweets, for heavy carbs, For alcohol.

I just didn’t have a desire. For it any longer. And. I could just tell when I put something in my mouth, my body would reject things, especially things that had sugar in them.

And I just couldn’t do it and basically saved my life. by making that change. And then I decided to come up to the Bayer, but I’ll stop here and see if you have any other thing to…

No, that’s just an amazing story. What’s really wonderful about it is I’ve heard similar stories by a few people. I mean, not with the cardiologist, But in terms of doing liver gallbladder cleanse.

My first cleanse, I was young and crazy, so I just did a water fast for a week, right? When I came home, so it was the first day I was, I, was miserable.

The second day, miserable because I wasn’t eating anything. Third day. I thought, you know, got the flu. Fourth day? I started feeling really good. It was like, wow, don’t remember ever feeling this good six days.

Like I’m sitting at the right hand of God. And the seventh day well, maybe I am God, but I mean, it’s amazing. From the mountains played the best softball game I ever played in my life and I hadn’t eaten in a week.

I had planted a bunch of vegetables in my yard and for some reason I planted beets because I did not like beats. The only beests I’d ever eaten were my mom’s that she got from a can.

Well, I came home. And I went out in my garden and I pulled up a beet and started eating it and almost couldn’t eat it because it was so sweet. Oh yeah.

But I did. I ate it. It was just amazing. And i’ve got this red juice from the beet running down my face and my neighbor comes over and goes, what the heck are you doing?

So, but yeah, you lose your sweet tooth. You lose all of those cravings. So it’s amazing, so by the way, I just planted a bed of beets in our market. All right.

Didn’t tell us what happened about your decisions about heading north. I hung around for a while and I’m going to sidetrack for just a second. You know the saying, cleanliness is close to godliness.

Have you heard that before? My mom used to say that all the time. What I found, I just thought it was just the mom saying about cleaning your sock drawer and making sure your clothing was folded and all that stuff, put away right.

No, I found out differently. So my, my epiphany was this colonialist was close to godliness is when about eight, nine months into my weight loss program and just my clean eating.

And I started doing a little more meditating, started to doing binaural beats for, and started Neurosynchronization, you know, with the headphones and this kind of thing.

I do these meditations and I started getting into a really blissful state. And, and it came to me, it’s like, this is what it means, cleanliness, the clothes of godliness.

Cause I start becoming what I would call more aware, more, I don’t know the right term for it is omniscient. That’s kind big, but I just became aware of things that.

I never was before and they were all very simple and this whole thing about being well was also simple. It was all a matter of how your mind works and how you think about yourself and, and.

And making a choice to make a change and just making that decision. And once you do, it’s downhill from there and you don’t realize how simple being well actually is.

It’s a matter of changing your mind. And matter of fact, never minding a lot of the noise. That was my motto, just nevermind. So back to answer your question, where I got to leaving.

I decide, okay, my wife and I was well again. I was doing, I took on a little with my contractors, so I just took out a handyman business, helping people fixing around their house and this kind of thing.

And to get a lot of extra money, keep me busy. My wife wanted me out of the house. So kept me outta the House. I went on for about a year and I decided that maybe I should go back to work.

Let me go check it out. So I filled out an application for a big, you know, a, big one of the high tech companies, the big ones in the South Bay. And I went into, they had three positions, all of which I were qualified for the senior, that the facilities manager, The data center manager and the chief engineer job.

I was qualified For all three, but they wanted me to choose which one I wanted. So, I picked the easiest one. It was the data Center manager. I didn’t have a lot of employees.

That’s what took me out was having to fire people. And I went in for the interview and the fellow came in. I could, as far as meeting Homer Simpson in real life, he had donut glaze on his face.

He had a beer belly, you know, huge. And I just, you know, I kind of went through that myself and, and I saw it and it’s like, the first thing I says, do you realize that this job has a lot of stress?

I said, i do. And i could see that. So anyhow, I did the interview, it went fine. And I walked out of there. I said, i’m not answering their calls. iIm not ever going back.

Im done. I went home, I had a 55 gallon drum that I was going to turn into a smoker for barbecuing. All of my certificates, all of, my manuals and all the things I learned, All the techie stuff I’ve learned over the years for the buildings.

I started a fire in the drum and I start throwing it all and then I burned it. All I just burned. It, I didn’t care. And I was done over it and that was my ritual letting, knowing I, was making a change.

So I. Just got rid of the past of work and walked away and, um, told my wife, we’re going to sell the house. We’re gonna leave. In the same time it was COVID.

And we were being, I guess I’m going to call it threatened. with, you know, I can’t really talk too much about it, but we were being told that we had to do this and had do that.

And we just didn’t buy it. So, and the kids were out of school and that the kid was going to go back to school. The parents had had something that I didn’ want to because I had the blood issue, the CLL.

I don’t want risk interfering with that, so I just wasn’t interested. We decided, let’s just get out here. Tell them about for selling a house. Okay. Fine.

Call the realtor. He was there the next day. My wife says, what are you doing? It’s too soon. I just, we just I have to, I need time. So anyway, um, so I made my, made up my mind we’re leaving.

We’re out of here. we were going to leave as soon as possible. so we did, We put the house up for sale. fixed it up. made a bunch of money on the House as I do when I fix houses up, but, and then, Sold it.

And rather than waiting to, for escrow and finding a place and waiting for our place to sell and this and that, I bought a motor home and big enough to fit my wife, my son, and my daughter and I, without us getting, you know, in each other’s hair.

So we parked at a campground for nine months, looking for a property. Finally, we found a ranch. It was an old horse ranch, used to be a horse farm. We bought that and turned it into a market farm and a chicken farm, And we have cows now have three cows out there and two little pigs and 108 chickens.

108. And I also have a tractor. That was one of the first things I bought. I had to get a try and need it because we got to keep the weeds down. We’ve got six acres here.

It’s not that big. Oh, we have an arena, horse arena in front that we allow the local kids. They just sign a release of liability and the kids come ride their horses.

We live in a horse community. It’s kind of like what I call the lost goddess of reading if there is such a thing. But the people out here are ranchy type people.

Tigs, they got goats, I got sheep, horses, cows. that kind of thing, chickens, pig, you know, that’s a lot of livestock around. So, and this farm was suited for livestock.

We basically did that. And we also do the market farm, putting up the farm stand this year. My wife’s got a green thumb being from Thailand, a farmer from Taiwan.

So that’s helpful. But I’m her labor. I do the irrigation, the digging, and the building. Tell me the name of your company. Well, we’ve got Sunshine Farms.

It’s not listed. I use a free website to market our farm. Okay. Its called localhens.com and we’re on there. You can search for any farm, any local small farm operation, whether it’s livestock or food.

In your area, you go on localhens.com and you can find local eggs, this kind of things, or meat, vegetables, that kind stuff. And there’s not a lot of listings on there, but I put it on and I’ve had some activity there.

But I just wanted somewhere where I can direct people to for the farming stuff, we also do farmers market under our, our business name called freeze dried specialty.

I started a freeze-dried operation in the next County over. where we freeze dry tropical fruit and foods, grilled fish sandwiches, tomato soup. Well, Carl, you make that sound really like a, of course, we just freeze-dry all this stuff.

There had to be a lot of work that went into that and a a of training. I mean, your used to baking things and you build things. That’s what you do. You learn new stuff, but to get into this freeze drying business, that’s a big deal.

Well, you know. Being a building guy, working with security in these big corporate buildings, part of our job was to keep people safe and be prepared.

I was a Boy Scout, you know, be prepare, the motto, Be prepared for the worst, but expect the best. So I’ve always been kind of prepared, I always have water, extra food, Extra fuel, ways to bar, fuel for barbecuing and propane, all this kind stuff.

You could cook if power goes out, You have stuff for lights and this kinda thing. So I had a beef jerky company back in the 90s where there was dehydration.

And so I did that. So when I was selling the house, I decided, what are we going to do when we get up there? to earning, to bring money in. I said, well, I know what I’ll do.

All do freeze dried foods because the way things are going with COVID and the world was coming to an end, which it still seems like it might be, but who knows?

We’ll see. Hopefully not. And so I, bought some freeze dryers and had them shipped up to a storage place and we’re moving to, and they sat there for about a year, got my proper, And got the electrician to come put the proper power in and got those set up.

Gotcha. And we started freeze drying food. So I probably got about 600 batches of freeze dried food under my belt and several thousand pounds of food, been freeze-dried and not everything’s a success.

There’s some trial and error. It’s so big. That’s the big experiment. New things are experiment, we’ve got some new experiments going on right now. Latest of which is an organic fresh raspberry, guitar chocolate, white chocolate.

I remember the day that you came down and brought a big box of your products. And I was pretty blown away. I mean, you had the. the soups, you had all kinds of vegetables and a lot, I mean, and herbs, things I would never buy, but now I’ve got them on my cupboard and they’re so handy.

Right. And so all of this stuff, it was just delicious. Absolutely delicious everything that I opened of yours has been absolutely phenomenal. So you’ve, uh, not delicious, let me know and I’ll fix that.

Okay. Gotcha. So the thing I’m most excited about now that you’re up to are your eggs. I had been ordering my eggs from a company back east, phenomenally expensive, but they were low polyunsaturated fats.

And the nutritional profile was so far ahead of even the best eggs that I could get here at a local supermarket. You brought me some of your egg, Man, they are amazing, just amazing.

So I know you’re trying to get to the point where you can sell those, but as soon as you do and ship them, soon, as, you let me know, because I’ve got a lot of patients that will love your eggs.

I mean, tell us about, I, mean tell, us, about the vitamins and nutrients in eggs, especially in your. Well, in eggs in general, but that’s the, when you say my eggs, the difference is that we allow our chickens to, to forage in the grass.

And we find there’s a big difference in these eggs between summer and, and when things are dry and then when are green and damp and wet. the chickens can actually scratch into the dirt and get the bugs and the worms and all that kind of stuff.

And they can eat the fresh grass and this kind stuff, so it’s giving them a lot of the meat, more aminos. It’s, it does something to the proteins. I forgot what the protein, I’ve got some notes here, but there’s the, proteins in their eggs, depending on the quality of their diet, changes the density of, the white, egg whites, and also some of things in the egg yolk.

But in general, I had to make a list because there’s so much stuff in an egg. You got all the B vitamins, B1, B2, b3, b5, d6, d9, and b12. A, E, D, K2. The yolks are truck full of choline, which is a neurotransmitter helper.

And then the minerals, I have a listed minerals here somewhere, but there are a bunch of minerals. There’s omega threes. Oh, the big one that I like is that the lutein and zeaxanthin, I don’t know how to say that.

Yeah. So for the, for it’s good. Eggs are good for everything. I mean, muscle growth. It’s like a giant multivitamin. And yeah, but when you, when do you get that level of luten and ziaxanthen and choline, those are so powerful for eyes and for brain.

The perfect brain food. One of the things about eggs. For the listeners, there’s a scale called the amino acid utilization scale. And so they take different foods and they see how much of it will actually go to make protein.

Like a steak, for example, less than 30% of that meat will go actually to go make muscle mass. It’ll break down in a variety of ways and you’ll get lots of things out of it, but eventually a lot of sugar out it even.

And so the amino acid utilization scale is seeing how much of that product will actually go to make muscle. The highest level is mother’s milk, human mother milk at almost 50%. But the second highest are eggs, good quality eggs with an amino-acid utilization that’s more than twice eating a steak.

Good eggs, boy. That’s right at the heart of everything. Thank you for joining me on The Balancing Point. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review.

Feeling out of balance? Most approaches just manage symptoms. Here, we get to the root. So real healing. real clarity and balance can begin. Visit AlamedaAcupuncture.com to learn more, explore our supplements, or book a call.

We’d love to hear from you.

Alameda Acupuncture

Ancient medicine for our modern world

From Burnout to Farm Life: A Radical Health Transformation

About the Expert

Recent Posts

Interested in knowing if we are the right fit for you and your condition?

Alameda Acupuncture

Ancient medicine for our modern world

From Burnout to Farm Life: A Radical Health Transformation

About the Expert

Recent Posts

Tags

Interested in knowing if we are the right fit for you and your condition?