The Crackin' Backs Podcast

Financial Freedom and Holistic Health: Strategies for Thriving After Trauma- Sandi Krakowski

Dr. Terry Weyman and Dr. Spencer Baron

Imagine facing insurmountable trauma, the kind that leaves scars on both body and soul, and yet emerging stronger, healthier, and more successful than ever. That’s the incredible journey of Sandi Krakowski—an entrepreneur, author, and advocate for health and healing—who joins us on the Crackin’ Backs Podcast to share her powerful story.

Sandi’s life is a testament to resilience. She has endured unimaginable pain, including surviving multiple personal tragedies that could have left her broken. Instead, she turned her pain into purpose. Today, Sandi is a Forbes-recognized social media influencer and a thriving business mogul who inspires millions. If you’ve ever felt like you couldn’t escape your struggles or find the answers to reclaim your life, this episode is for you.

What You’ll Learn:

  • Mental Health and Social Media: Sandi opens up about the toll of constant online engagement and shares strategies for protecting your mental health in our digitally obsessed world.
  • Physical Health and Longevity: From menopause to gut health, Sandi provides actionable advice on how to use tools like peptides, bioidentical hormones, and personalized wellness trends to reclaim your vitality.
  • Breaking Free from the Past: Learn how to release the weight of your past, tap into your potential, and trust yourself again—whether it’s your health, finances, or personal growth.
  • Longevity and Aging: Sandi reveals holistic methods to extend not just your lifespan but your quality of life, using cutting-edge wellness techniques.
  • Empowerment Through Self-Trust: You don’t need a degree or a privileged background to achieve success. Sandi shares how to develop self-trust and turn your challenges into stepping stones for greatness.


Key Questions We Explored:

  1. In our digitally connected world, what practices do you recommend for maintaining mental health while managing the pressures of social media?
  2. With increasing attention on women’s health issues like menopause, how can employers and society better support women during these transitions?
  3. As wellness trends evolve, how can individuals identify and integrate meaningful approaches like gut health and personalized nutrition into their lives?
  4. How can women—and anyone—proactively incorporate mental wellness practices into their routines to prevent future health challenges?
  5. With growing interest in longevity, what holistic approaches do you suggest for enhancing lifespan and quality of life?


Why You Should Listen:

This is more than a podcast episode—it’s a lifeline for anyone who feels trapped in their circumstances, whether by trauma, poor health, or financial struggles. Sandi's relatable journey, coupled with her expertise in health, marketing, and entrepreneurship, makes this episode a transformative experience. You'll walk away inspired, equipped with actionable advice, and ready to reclaim control of your life.

Learn More About Sandi Krakowski:

We are two sports chiropractors, seeking knowledge from some of the best resources in the world of health. From our perspective, health is more than just “Crackin Backs” but a deep dive into physical, mental, and nutritional well-being philosophies.

Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the most incredible gems you can use to maintain a higher level of health. Crackin Backs Podcast

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Sandy, welcome to the cracking backs podcast, where we empower you to reclaim your health and your life. Today, we're honored to have Sandy krikowski with us. Sandy is a dynamic entrepreneur who built a $20 million empire from the ground up, and while navigating the challenges of motherhood and some personal adversity, she's here to share her transformative journey and insights on overcoming trauma.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

All right. Well, Sandy Krakowski, it's a pleasure to actually have you on the show. It's I follow you for a while, and I just love your energy. And so I'm excited to blow this. I already know from our priest talk that this is going to be a high energy show that's going to be filled with a lot of knowledge, a lot of laughs, and just just a side note, we are recording it. I am in Southern California, and so a lot of crap is happening right now all around us. The Firestorm that's national news is going on right around us. And by the time the show comes off, we're gonna have a different looking Southern California says, because we're right in the middle of what's going on right now. And so I think by time this show comes off, hopefully we have some information for people that to try and rebuild their financial, their physical, their nutritional lives, where they can have some information that would be very valuable. So welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being on.

Sandi Krakowski:

Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. It's my honor.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Well, you know, from a woman who's rebuilt herself, who's done everything I want to actually start off with, especially with the ruin that we've got going on in my back door. People are gonna be financially ruined. They're losing their businesses, they've lost their homes. There is no insurance to cover it. So people are gonna be they're gonna look to FEMA. They're gonna look to their insurance. There's not gonna be anything there. So let's talk about responsibility. And a lot of people sexist, they turn to the men, and, you know, to help. And there's a lot of women out there, they're gonna have to get back on their feet. So I would rather, let's talk about the women. And you've made a career of helping women build their financial independence. So can you just share a little bit about where all this started from, and let's get a little background on who you are and and all

Sandi Krakowski:

that. Respectfully, Terry, I'm gonna correct you. Okay, perfect. In the 18 companies that I've built, they have never been devoted to only women. We have a client base currently of 2.7 million people, and 42% of those are men. And so I am a woman who believes that men do usually stand up first. They are wired with provider and protector. And when a woman takes that away from him, you're actually doing him a disservice. Now women also need to be able to think quick on their feet. The Bible does not teach in Proverbs 31 that the woman is a weak imbecile. She doesn't know what to do, she doesn't know how to balance her own checkbook, and she doesn't know what to do in dire straits, no way this woman's selling real estate. She's having babies. She's growing a garden. Her husband does not speak ill of her because of her ability and competency. And you know, having been someone who was given a year to live more than once, who's made nine figures in business, in my history of business, who's lost millions, I can say that there's one thing that not a fire, not an illness, not a tornado, and not even a devastating two year long, multi million dollar divorce can take away from you, and that is your own brain and your own spirit. And that is the one thing that AI can't replicate, and that is the one thing that I believe that when you're in business, that is your greatest strength, sure you can out market and out serve your competitor, but depending on how good you are without uncertainty, and how you handle things, whether or not you have resiliency or you flake, whenever there's a problem that doesn't go your way, that is going to determine your capacity to get back up. I've always liked to say that the champion is not the one who always wins, but the champions, one falls on their ass and knows how to get back up and does it. So these are going to be very devastating situations. I don't have any capacity to even comprehend what it would be like. Certainly the area where it's happening, you will have people who have far more resources, far more back power, maybe more wealth, to be able to restore and redo things, multiple streams of income, et cetera. But at the end of the day, humanity is humanity, and I wouldn't. Wish this on anyone, and I think just like what happened in North Carolina, this is an opportunity for the American people to support and encourage and serve each other, because my freedom came from the discipline of not depending on the federal government for what I needed in my crisis, but to have a support system around me and to know how to get those resources when I needed them, without waiting for someone to bring them to me. Now, do I believe that the people in California deserve everything the government can offer you? Better believe it far more than Ukraine, but I will tell you that that may not happen in the time frame that you need it, and that's when we all pull together. I don't care what you make, I don't care what your gender. I don't care you know, what your skin color. This is when we need each other. And so that's what I've learned through difficult things. Sandy,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

you made a really good point that about, you know, the winners and the losers and who you want to identify with as in a leadership capacity. It was fascinating to experience that, where I was graced by the opportunity to be with a World Series winning baseball team, the Florida Marlins, back when I started and got caught up in all this energy of winning. And you know, you think everybody's a leader, and then, you know, I had the unfortunate experience of being working for the Miami Dolphins when they went one win 15 losses. And what we saw were the people you thought were leaders crumbling, yeah. And the ones that were the rock stars were the guys who started every dream at 100% Yeah, and didn't get phased. They had short memories, and that's it. I really think that what you said just a moment ago is even more important than you alluded to is look to a losing team to see who the leadership where the leadership is, and then model that so. And with that, my question for you is the anxiety that is expressed in people that are experiencing a lot of pressure. What do you suggest and what do you do for yourself? Because anxiety is always around. It's how you perceive it. So give us some of your thoughts about how to alleviate those concerns and build well.

Sandi Krakowski:

As someone who experienced horrific trauma as a child, I dealt with anxiety the majority of my life, until I did a lot of EMDR and parts work in the last five years, and so I battled chronic PTSD most of my life. Went on to build eight companies. Because, of course, entrepreneurship is where those of us who've been traumatized and don't want to sleep go and make millions of dollars, but the anxiety of uncertainty, I think needs to come to grips with the awareness that very few things in life are certain. And so I often find that when there is distress about uncertainty or things that we can't control, I think our expectation is what creates the anxiety, because when we realize we really don't have control over very many things, but we do have control on how we perceive and what we're going to do next. And you know something I have in my gym, and I've never met him, but man, it would be an honor to you know Jocko says discipline is freedom. I have a big eight foot sign in my home gym that says discipline is freedom, and people kind of equate discipline like people like Goggins. You know what I mean? I can't remember his first name. Like that would be David Goggins would be your definition of discipline. No. David Goggins would be your definition of insane discipline. That's Navy SEAL discipline. I'm talking the discipline that the average person must have to get your ass out of bed in the morning when you don't feel like it, to get into the gym, even when you're not motivated, to examine your finances, even though it's devastating and you've made a ton of mistakes. And you know, when they gave me a year to live for the first time, I felt completely helpless because I had tried everything that I thought could be done. I had tried every pharmaceutical, natural, allopathic, you know, homeopathic, herbalist, whatever approach was. But it wasn't until someone came into my life and gave me information that I did not I did not know. And now, all of a sudden, the whole perspective changed, all the anxiety about all of this and all of this that I. Had done and what else can I do dissipated in all that I could do, because I simply lack the knowledge of what was still available. In the midst of my anxiety, I faced the same kind of thing in the middle of a devastating divorce. It took two years to go through that grueling divorce because I had built so many companies, and he thought I had offshore accounts and blah, blah, blah, all this kind of stuff, and yet, at the end, I knew that I was blameless, not sinless, but I knew that my finances were in order, that I had not lied about anything, that if I was going to have to pay a settlement, I would pay that settlement. But the anxiety started to come. Did I hire the right people? Are the right people working with me? Am I going to be heard? Am I going to be protected? And I learned through that mind, you, I was given a year to live in the middle of my divorce. My greatest strength comes from my relationship with Jesus Christ. I have a very intimate walk with God, and I do not have a relationship with religion, that's a very big difference, and my understanding that he would be with me, but I have the responsibility to seek him out, that he would walk with me and help me, but I have the responsibility to walk out what he's sharing with me helped me to fire the wrong people, hire The right people, speak when I was terrified to open my voice like here I was in a courtroom, running multi million dollar companies, but terrified to speak to a judge. Why would I be terrified to speak to a judge? Because I'd never stood in front of one before. I mean, in my brain, the only judges I knew were coming through my television. You know, you don't usually go in front of a judge when you've done everything good like but you know, I also learned that the judge that got assigned on our case had a high level of integrity, and he had the ability to read somebody. And I will say that that was a small price to pay for the freedom that I received, because marrying the wrong person could kill you, and it almost did. And yet, the anxiety of going through it every day, you know, people would be like, don't stress out. And it's like, you don't stress out. I wasn't working out at that time. I was on 140 milligrams of Oxycontin, 90 milligrams of prednisone a day, on Remicade infusions every four weeks, trying to save my life. 75% of my digestive tract was hemorrhaging, and I'm going through a divorce. You talk about anxiety, and yet I look back and I think to myself, How the heck did I do that? I do know that I dissociated, probably through a lot of it, which made it worse, and I didn't address a lot of the things that I thought were super important, but I would later learn of warrant so dissociation was the negative. I later would learn as I integrated a lot of my trauma, and I don't battle PTSD anymore, I went through five years of extensive therapy and EMDR and multiple different things to reintegrate that part of my brain that had caused so much distress and so much distortion. But I also learned that during that situation, because I was so sick, I only started working five hours a week because there was I didn't have any left. I didn't have any bandwidth left. I had a great team, but I had no bandwidth left, and I realized how very little was critically important during that critically important time in my life.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

You know, a lot of people ask, what keeps us going during these long recording sessions? And the truth, it's all about the coffee. Stark rose, to be exact. Seriously, this stuff is the perfect fuel to get us through every episode. And it's bold, it's smooth, and it's exactly what we need, whether we're cracking jokes or diving deep with a guest, Stark roast keeps me sharp, keeps me focused. It's the fuel behind every great conversation that we have here, whether it's early in the morning or late at night, Stark roast is there to keep us energized and ready to roll. So if you're a coffee lover like us, or just need that little extra boost to get you through the day, we highly recommend Stark roast. It's the good stuff. Thanks for dark roast, for sponsoring this episode, and click on the link below in the description to buy some of your own. It's the real deal. Now let's get back into it, Sandy, let me ask you two questions for the listening audience. You had mentioned EMDR twice, and I would like you to elaborate. On that? Yeah, what that is, because a lot of people don't know. In fact, I just recently, in the last couple years, found out what EMDR is. And also, I would love to know what you were actually sick with

Sandi Krakowski:

Crohn's disease and rheumatoid arthritis and thrombocytopenia and multiple different autoimmune conditions that are no longer seen in my blood.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Okay, we want, and I want to know how yesterday

Sandi Krakowski:

in the gym, I left it three times my body weight went from a walker to this. So EMDR, is eye movement, desensitization, reprocessing. Have you ever seen anybody who's in a traumatic event, say, a car accident, and they're sitting by the side of the road and they're going like they just keep looking back and forth and back and forth. It's an interesting method that the brain uses to try to grasp reality. Now it is the grace of God that we don't have the capacity to process everything instantaneously, or we would die. We would literally die as a human race if we had to deal with traumatic events immediately, and so the brain compartmentalizes parts of these memories. My first one that happened when I was a very little girl, my mother was a psychopathic pedophile and stole my childhood from me. Yeah, and again, I would later experience a gang rape in my when I was 18. And the reason that I can speak about it so calmly now is because eye movement reprocessing, EMDR, desensitization, reprocessing, you work with a therapist who helps you to be able to process to completion, the memory. The problem happens where I had multiple traumatic events, and there were parts of my brain that had fractured. I had. It is the it is a miracle I did not have multiple personality disorder. It is a miracle, because what happened to me would typically, that would what would happen. But when the brain fractures, it stays in a hyper vigilant loop. This is why vets, they come back from war, and as soon as anything in their senses, their body, even when they're asleep, thinks something's happening similar, the brain starts processing again like it's already like it is happening, their physiology immediately goes into a state like it is happening. And you can't talk them out of it, because it is happening in the unconscious mind. 90% of what we process all day is in the unconscious mind. And so I had multiple parts of my brain that were constantly in hyper vigilance, which totally fed into the meta inflammation that was killing me, because hyper vigilance will give you inflammation like cardiac arrest, it will definitely raise my C reactive proteins were so off the chart. Every time I went into the doctor or hospital for Crohn's disease, they thought I was having a heart attack. And when you do the eye movement, a psychotherapist helps you to process a memory. So let's say Spencer we're going to process one part of the gang rape I experienced that I can't remember. And that is not what EMDR is for, because the brain has a selective capacity to block out until you are ready. It is an incredibly self. It is so remarkable what the brain will do. But let's say there's one part that every time I think of it, I start shaking or like I just, I can't talk about it. It gets too much, and I start, you know, I want to change the subject, and I go into hysterical laughter, and I want to think about something else. That is what a therapist will help you to do. That all of those are dissociative methods, by the way, that's the unconscious mind saying, Stay away from there. So what a therapist helps you do is process that memory while your eyes are watching a light go back and forth over the course of like, a minute. It's not for long you're not going to get stuck, because the only place that trauma is is in memory. I can tell you about it, but you can't live it, because it's in the past. But in the unconscious mind, it was still very present. There were part of my brain that was still four, that was still eight, that was still processing certain emotions like I was 14, because that's when the trauma happened, and when you process it with the eye movement and a licensed therapist who can help you to know when what to process, when to stop, when to take a breather, when to ground yourself and help yourself realize you're not in the memory. Memory, the brain does a remarkable thing. So the eye movement desensitizes. I could go through a memory and not have a physiological response. Then, are you ready for this? It's mind boggling. The brain begins to integrate not only that memory, but the residue of that memory and many other areas of your life, and as that integration happens, I mean, it's a grueling work doing this and facing memories that we have spent the majority of our life not wanting to talk about, not wanting to remember, not wanting to act like it ever happened, not wanting anybody to bring up, and now you're asking me to face it. And yet when you face it in that desensitized way, oftentimes you find a part of yourself that is so remarkably powerful to have lived through that memory that is so remarkably wise. I was a little girl who could talk predators out of their demise to keep myself alive. I was a little girl that could talk a group of men in a gang rape out of killing me. I didn't remember that until I started to do a lot of EMDR, and then when the reprocessing happens, gosh, your brain starts to act like you took a limitless pill, because now you have access to your brain and the rest of you is not exhausted all the time, my inflammatory markers would start to go down. I would start to sense a trigger happening, but I would have tools to know how to reassure myself that this is not that and I know how to handle this. And my doctor was Dr Michaela Sarno, who is in Costa Mesa, and such a brilliant woman because, you know, being in charge of a multi million dollar corporation and millions of people online confidentiality was of the utmost importance. My story was mine to tell, and no one else's. And I needed that, and I needed somebody who didn't have such a big ego that they wanted to be responsible for healing me so they could tell Sandy's story and use her as a little you know, pin up on their board of success stories. That is so appalling when people do that, the very fact that she was able to win trust with me, which took a while, took about six months, so she could win the trust with constantly working through and talking and opening up and allowing me to ask anything, this is not a therapy. You walk in on a Saturday and walk out that night and you're fine, because it takes an enormous amount of trust for the unconscious mind to drop its guard and for you to able to reassure your mind that I'm not going to let you get in that situation again. It often feel felt like, at certain point, like I was re parenting a younger part of myself, and then integration happens when you realize and all those parts are me. They're not separate personalities. They're just memories that fractured off into a, if you would, a hidden box, and didn't want to talk about it, but my brain was trying to process it all day long, trying to protect me and keep me safe. And so it was life changing. Like people said to me, your eye color changed, Sandy, you talk differently. My children were like, I mean, you've always been our hero, but you have a level of calm now, with your intensity that is unbelievable. Like they were, they were accustomed to the badass mommy, but the the calmness that came from really realizing who God made me to be and who I was, and how remarkable it was that I had survived that. Let's

Dr. Spencer Baron:

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Sandi Krakowski:

It was an interesting process, even owning that, if you will. So I had been a multi millionaire for more than 12 years before I ever told anybody I was a millionaire. I when I made my first million, I was in a very religious church, and I was terrified to tell anybody it was a millionaire, because every Sunday from the pulpit, there were messages about how God doesn't like money and money is evil. And you know, here I was just on my computer, homeschooling my children, minding my business, and it was like I just made $50,000 and I barely have a high school education, and then I made 100,000 and then I made 300,000 and then, um, I made a million. I remember when I told my ex husband I made my first million, he asked me if it was legal, because that's the typical response from someone who barely makes it through high school and is with someone who has multiple degrees, and you go and make a million dollars by the middle of your second year in business, and you've never been in business before.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

What were those what were those characteristics, or those attributes that you already possessed that allowed you to get to that point, because some of our listeners are super intrigued and want to know, well,

Sandi Krakowski:

I was the little girl who came home from school and read the World Book, encyclopedia. No kidding, I was a little girl who came home from school and was reading, you know, the world books and and studying everything I could, and I pretty much created a world of knowledge and wisdom outside of the circumstance I was living in, and little did I know that God was wiring all that together for my future. The very capacity that I had for watching my predators and knowing exactly where they were, what they were doing and how to get myself safe, caused my brain to identify trends and patterns at a level that was like, Whoa. Did somebody teach you to do that? I remember when a multi billionaire copywriter said to me, you have a skill that you can't teach. That was one of them. I had the ability. I remember when I first created my first website, which looks atrocious when you look on archive.org, do and I would study websites, and I would study the patterns that were between multiple different industries and multiple different headlines. There must be something similar here. Okay, they're all doing this, and I just spent hours and hours I was not sleeping at the time, studying, watching, watching people speak, turning off the voice, and watching their what they were doing with their body language. And when I started my first kitchenware store, my motto was, if it's not in my kitchen, it's not in my store, because that was the integrity I operated in. I was going to sell you something that I thought was crap. To this day, I won't if I can't get behind it, why would I sell it to you? There's so many ways to make money. Why would I be a fraud like that? And I would later discover that my ability to do trends and patterns would pay me an enormous amount of money in marketing, and I had an innate ability to write copy, which is the words that sell as a direct response marketing copywriter that would cause people to take the direct response that I wanted, whether it was through a radio infomercial, through a Facebook ad, back then, it was overture, Before Google even. I mean, I remember the day Google opened and I started my account. I still have that account, by the way, whenever I haven't used Google ads in a bit, but the last time I did, I remember one of the tech support said to me, you haven't you have a remnant account. And I was like, I have a what? And they're like, you were around when Google first opened their advertising. I don't even know if that is the case anymore, since there's alphabet, but I studied ads. Ads ran almost like the stock market back then, because, like, you would say, I'm going to pay 10 cents a click, and there would be like, 10 other companies that were paying 10 cents a click, and then you'd say, I want to pay. 17 cents a click, and then somebody else paid 32 cents a click. I literally sat in front of my computer all the time, managing budgets, watching what worked, what didn't work. I don't know why I wasn't afraid of loss. Maybe because what did I have to lose? I mean, I was I just really had no idea that I was going to make a million dollars. I hadn't made a vision board. I didn't ask God to make me a millionaire. None of that stuff. I just wanted to give it my best and make enough money to get my own kitchenware for free. My motive and by the second year, we made a million. By the third year, I had made over 4 million, and went on and built multiple other companies after that, I think my ability to get back up quickly, my resiliency, is what kept me going. Since the day that I made my first million, my companies have I've never made, personally, less than a million a year, and I went from working 100 and something hours a week down to now I work about five or 10 hours. I'm also building another company, and so I'm starting to spend a lot of time researching and stuff for that company. I currently still have a company that runs but I pretty much retired five years ago, and I have an exceptional team that allows me to work five hours a week, and they do the rest. But, yeah, I think stick to itiveness, being okay with uncertainty and insatiable hunger to learn and grow and try to find a solution rather than a problem. If

Dr. Spencer Baron:

you were to talk to someone that, a woman, preferably, in this arena, to start out. And how would you, what would you tell her to start out with? And you know, mentally, what would they, should they be thinking or doing? Well,

Sandi Krakowski:

from 2008 to 2020 we had a Business Academy. And in that business academy is over 2200 hours of me teaching, and we put 1.8 million people through that Business Academy. So what I told people was, initially, when they're like, I want to make money. How do I make money quickly? How do I how do I get out of debt quickly? And I'm like, no, no, your focus is all wrong. Lean into the marketplace and listen to what they're what they're saying. Is there something you can do that would solve that problem? Can you out service and out market somebody? Do you see a problem that you believe you are capable of fixing? Do you see something that the marketplace is demanding already and you can fill that need. That is what a good business is built around. A good business is not usually something you pull out of thin air and try to figure out if it works. That's where the Elon Musk and the Jeff Bezos, they do that kind of stuff. US average gals like myself, we find something that's exceptional, but then we find out where it's broken. That's exactly what I'm doing right now with my telehealth company that will open this spring. I am finding all the structural breaks, the psychological breaks, the INTEGRIS. Integrity is the what is that word? The integral breaks. There's no integrity in the medical system. There just isn't I believe that telehealth and AI is going to give a cease and desist to all these doctors who don't deserve to practice, because no longer are they going to be tolerated. And I'm not out there trying to convince people that they should use telehealth for bio identical hormones for women, testosterone replacement for men and injectable peptides for both, because that needs already there. Plus eight years ago, how did I heal my body and I'm no longer given a year to live. It was bioidentical hormones and peptide therapy. And so what I do have in my favor this time, that I didn't with other companies when I was first starting, is I have a client base of over 2 million people that are over the age of 40. So because of that, it will be very easy to grow. But when you don't have a client base, you only have one choice. You have to market period. You're not waiting for an opportunity. You're not waiting for someone to give you a big break. I've never had one. You're not like people say all the time, well, I never got an opportunity. You're lucky. I'm like, no, no, no, opportunity is equal. Outcome is not you're talking to a girl barely made it through high school, was given a year to live, was gang raped when she was 18, a pedophile stole her childhood and I married a narcissist, of course, because that's all that I knew. Tell me what opportunity that was. That was an opportunity to become a heroin addict, kill myself or end up in jail, statistically. But I decided to go counter culture to what I may have been statistically looked at like I would become and to become who God May. Me to be and this one thing I discovered when I came to know Jesus at 12 is he gave me enormous courage to do things I don't know how to do, and to try to figure them out.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Sandy, knowing that you're not a physician or anything, but you speak very highly about health and wellness for the menopausal or post menopausal woman that may be in the workplace or in a relationship. Could you lend some advice that you've experienced that worked best for you,

Sandi Krakowski:

sure, and the reason why we're going to serve men and women is because it would be tragic to help a woman get on bioidentical hormones, get her sex drive back, get her into the gym feeling great about herself and her poor husband's over there, going, what just happened to my woman? I would like both of them to be teenagers again, in their 50s. So what happened to me because of that trauma? I was predisposed first of all, when a woman is sexually violated, she is already predisposed to go into menopause early when she has an abortion and multiple miscarriages, the gang rape, that was another thing I had to heal from, was an abortion, not only that I almost died from, but that I wanted to die because I had done that and walking through that shame and all of that. So here I was statistically wired to go through menopause early, and after my last baby and four miscarriages, they almost lost me, and I had a hysterectomy at 31 years old, no one ever put me on hormones. Now, when a woman loses her estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, you will age quickly. Your inflammation will go off the charts. Now you have a risk of colon cancer. Your heart is advancing quickly into deterioration. You are not only losing one to 2% of your bone loss every year. You're lucky if you didn't lose 15 to 20% of it. When I met a doctor at 53 years old, my bone density looked like I was 70. My lab said my estrogen level was five. A healthy post menopausal woman and bioidentical hormones, it would be between 80 and 100 that's when you feel like you can think again and you can sleep again, and you're not bitching at everybody and everything else. Then what happened was she introduced me to injectable peptides back when peptides weren't even sexy. Everybody thinks peptides means GOP ones. No, there's hundreds of peptides, and the anti inflammatory peptides and the bioidentical hormones and the will to live, I created my own protocol, weaned off of all the opiates without any side effects, weaned off of all the prednisone, walked back into the gym after 30 years. Went from competing and bodybuilding in my 20s to not being in the gym for 30 years. Walk back into the gym with a serious case of Sarco obesity, which means I was 185 pounds, and my muscle and bone were less than the fat and started from ground zero. And so for me, I do a lot of extensive research on these to be able to speak appropriately. I also have great relationships with multiple doctors. I've also taken many certification classes. I will obviously not be consulting anybody. I will be the CEO and the owner and the founder. I will have the best medical directors that the United States has to offer, the best nurse practitioners and physicians assistants. But the sad thing that happened was women were taken off all their hormones by a bogus press release that happened in the night in 2002 by the World Health Initiative, and that was later retracted, but women didn't get that message. Now the average doctor, including an OBGYN, has less than an hour or two of training on menopause. Once you lose your eggs, you have no use to the OBGYN world. You don't make them much money. Now you're of use to the cardiologist, now you're of use to the gastroenterologist, now you're of use to the bone people, but because you don't have any eggs, you're not going to make us any more money and OB, GYN, they have very little knowledge on hormones. And I began to educate myself to try to figure out, why do I feel so much better? Why did my skin change? Why am I back in the gym? How did all this happen? And began to talk about it, and found women were just as frustrated as I was, and men, because the levels of testosterone have been lowered, so that you see, 94% of Americans right now in 2025 have metabolic dysfunction. Metabolic dysfunction will kill you. It is the primary. Behind Alzheimer's, dementia, heart disease, colon cancer, breast cancer, metabolic dysfunction is what causes hormone positive cancers, not hormones. It's because you have such severe metabolic dysfunction that you cannot process these hormones properly. And so, you know, I just started talking to people about it. I got severe metabolic dysfunction after eight years of being on Remicade, and two years ago, I had to wean myself off a Remicade and heal metabolic dysfunction. Thank God for peptides. I was able to rebuild my mitochondria, and here I am.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

That's great. I mean, we've interviewed guests that specialize, I mean, Terry, what was the name of the gynecologist out

Unknown:

in Oh, Dr, C, yeah.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Dr, Sarai. Knew she believed the same way you do. And then a recent article, gosh, Sandy, you brought up a really important point. A recent article came out, and I think Wall Street Journal that talked about how the old days, well, which weren't that old, when you get a hysterectomy, they would take everything out, and women wouldn't ask, and those ovaries like you should like you.

Sandi Krakowski:

I still had my ovaries, but they wanted to put me on Premarin. I am not a horse. Okay? I don't want horse estrogen. I want bio identical hormones that are bio available if any woman is reading this book or a man who hopes to understand his wife, I'm listening to this better. Estrogen matters is ground zero to understand how anti inflammatory estrogen is, how protective it is, why it's important to have your levels regularly checked. Why do I have a part time job of eating 135 grams of protein a day? That's what it feels like a part time job, because if I want to keep my bones and my muscle, they need protein. Why do I lift weights? Well, first of all, it keeps me off the streets and out of prison, but that's a joke, kind of I love lifting weights, but I lift weights because there is no other exercise that increases your bone density, resistance strength training is the only thing that increases your bone density. Why am I obsessed about my sleep? Because my deep sleep is what makes my body repair. Prior to doing EMDR, I could not get a half hour of REM to save my life. I now get between two and three hours of REM. Last week, I had one night that I did four hours of REM, and I was like, looking at my ring, and I was like, jeez, that brain was busy. That's when you process all those memories as your REM and your deep sleep is when your body is able to repair and it produces all those lovely hormones that make you feel amazing, and you don't behave like a post menopausal woman that needs to get off of Facebook and take some estrogen, or a post menopausal man, respectfully, who needs to get off of other sites and go find his goals again and get a tee shot or maybe some oral testosterone or Whatever, and feel like himself again, because men are not made to live without a drive to do something and build solutions and protect and provide, and women were not made to sit around in front of the current soap opera called Facebook and read it all day, right? So, so

Dr. Spencer Baron:

what? What actually is your daily nutritional approach? Like what you said, you mentioned, how much protein, but can you give like a typical day? So some of our listeners might be sure. Well,

Sandi Krakowski:

first of all, I buy as little as I can from the store. I have a half a cow that's grass fed, finished in my freezer. For just me, I literally ate a quarter of a cow last year. And I weigh 128 and then I buy local. You know, in Texas, it's amazing. I can buy my fit, my turkey and my chicken from local farmers. I have wild Alaska that sends me all my best the best fish. I grow all my own, organic veggies and berries and herbs. So in my backyard, I've got all my veggies and berries and herbs growing whatever I might not be growing that I want. I get from a farmer's market. I If I eat bread or whatever, it's usually the stuff that I make or it's high protein bread. I do not count carbs. I'm not macro obsessed anymore. I live that life for way too long. But I'm hyper focused on protein, protein and a gallon of water a day. I. Protein and making sure I got my amino acids, my element electrolytes, making sure I'm getting good sleep, keeping morons close, far away, everything that you know you to keep yourself strong and resilient. And my current cardiovascular age on my test is 48 and my metabolic age is 45 and I'll be 61 in two months.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Bravo. You mentioned about peptides because we had somebody on our podcast that was an expert in peptides. What do you mind sharing? What your favorite peptides are sure.

Sandi Krakowski:

I've been taking CJC, 1295, and IPA morelin, TB, 500 BPC, 157, Mott, Sc, periodically for the mitochondria and a very small microdose. I was taking microdoses of HGH for about four or five years, and I don't use a GLP one for weight loss, but I highly recommend it for people with metabolic dysfunction. But retro true tide, I actually just recently, in the last two weeks, started micro dosing it for inflammation and replaced the HGH trying out retro Truett, which is a new GLP one that also has anabolic type effects, meaning that it's going to spare your muscle. Personally, I don't think people have excessive muscle loss if you're if you're eating right, if you're taking a GLP one, and your appetite has been cut so bad that you can't eat, you need to lower your dose, not complain that you can't eat. You know what I mean? If you eat like crap, you're gonna feel like crap. So I had a torn meniscus. For example, tore 75% of my meniscus in one of my knees. The surgeon said, There's nothing you can do. You're gonna have to get surgery. I said, thank you very much. I'll see you in 90 days. If that's the case, I started taking TB, 500 extra doses of HGH, I usually use testosterone cream, which is common for menopausal woman post menopause, but I used injectable testosterone for two months, because that helps you grow tissue. And the MRI showed that I grew new cartilage just calling green s and so I love glutathione, which is not necessarily a peptide. I love NAD. And whenever something's off, you know, I know some great people who helped me to find out what might work. And I don't tolerate feeling off for very long.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Have you ever done a GI mapping? You talked about micro, alluded to microbiome and like a stool sample?

Sandi Krakowski:

Yes, yeah. Prior to going on Remicade, they were almost they were going to give me a, what is it called? It is a stool transfusion, where, basically it's one of those things. There's various hospitals that do that, where they take, I actually had a donor. It was one of my friend's sons who had never been vaccinated, and he had never been sick. He was 15, and they were going to take fecal transplant and take that and then they clean it all out and put all the microbiome in your gut. But I went on Remicade, that's what stopped all the bleeding, and then eventually I had to get off Remicade, because Remicade is a very strong drug, and that's what really facilitated getting into metabolic dysfunction. And so I mean, my weight all my adult life is between 125 and 135 and I was 180 pounds while on Remicade, wow, and 185 pounds when I was on prednisone and opiates. So, yeah, it goes to show you. I mean, inflammation is the killer, and so many women are so afraid of estrogen yet, they're drinking alcohol, they're not sleeping, they're stressed out to the max, they're not exercising, they're not eating right, and they're terrified of estrogen. That metabolic function is far more dangerous. Yeah,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

are the gynecologist that was on our podcast, shared a really interesting point of view you might want to look at. I mean, the research that was done that determined that estrogen would cause cancer was done with a not a biologically No,

Sandi Krakowski:

no, it's not a bioidentical hormone. They also didn't publish that it was actually progestins that were off the chart, and the progestins are far more cancer inducing than estrogen ever will be. But if you have metabolic dysfunction, and then you have estrogen dominance, and then you take progestins, which is so wild to me, because so many women buy them at health food stores, they're not regulated, they're not tested. They haven't had the proteins taken out of the story of the yam for the estrogen. I mean, shoot, there's essential oil companies selling progesterone, like it's, you know, like it's vitamin C, and yet, the progestins are the one that can be very problematic to you if you have metabolic dysfunction, and so, but it made a sensational headline that terrified millions of women and they stopped taking estrogen. Well, you know, a terrified woman is very easy to control, and she's very easy to talk into taking statins. She's very easy to talk into following a low fat diet that that will later lead her to heart disease. She's very easy to talk into anything because she's terrified. And so I'm on a mission to help women advocate for themselves and to ask the right questions, and to stop asking like acting. I have women all the time and say, Well, I don't know what doctor to trust. And I said, well, first of all, why are you looking for a doctor to trust. The first person you have to trust is yourself. That's where you have to do the research. You have to know what you're asking for. You have to let them know when you feel off. They're not got. You have to let them know when the hormones are making you break out, or you're all of a sudden, you're waking up, or you're getting a headache. And then when you find and you start interviewing doctors, that's what you're doing. You're interviewing to see if they deserve to work with you and advocate with you for your best outcome, then you'll know how to fire them. Why? Because you trust yourself. That's how you attract doctors that you trust, because you trust yourself first, rather than, I mean, a lot of times when women, you know, biologically, we look for someone to rescue us, and yet, people, I can get better help from people. You know, part of my healing was learning how to ask for help. You know, the power of feminine essence is being willing to receive and be able to ask for help. And yet, I needed to know who to ask for help from. I needed to know who to ignore and when to ask more questions, and then when to fire their ass because they're not working for me.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Hey, Sandy, you brought up a lot, and you're good at clearing the mud as far as, like I say, because there's so much chaos out there, and there's so much a mess, and people are confused and all that. I want to go back to bioidentical hormones. A lot of people don't understand that, and they hear and you know, from this thing and this thing, you've lived it, you own it, and now you're going to create a company. Can you just clear some mud about what bioidentical hormones are, a patch, an injection, anything like that for the person,

Sandi Krakowski:

absolutely. So the hormones that many of the women were taking for many, many years were synthetic hormones, and they were originated from horse sources and multiple other different things. They put me on Premarin when I had a hysterectomy and I got over 20 lesions, 20 cysts in my breast within a couple weeks. So of course, he said, You can't take HRT. You're not a candidate for HRT. Well, that's synthetic hormones. Synthetic hormones look at your biochemistry, and without a filter, it's like they look at your biochemistry. Go, what the fuck you're like? You're not a horse. What am I supposed to do now? Bio identical hormones are made for a woman. In estrogen and progesterone are made from soy and yam. However, they do not have the allergens in them anymore. What you find on your health food store? First of all, there's no such thing as a non bio ident, a non genetically modified soy in America, I don't care if you got it in your health food store, and I don't care if the labor label said organic. You have genetically modified soy and yam, and you have a protein that a lot of people can't handle. That soy protein where with bioidentical hormones, they take the soy and the yam and they process it. They remove the proteins. It is turned into, yes, a synthetic substance, but it is bioidentical to a woman's estrogen and progesterone. Therefore the bioavailability is more readily usable now, it can come in a gel, it can come in a compounded cream, it can come in a patch, it can come in a tablet, and it can come in an injection. You have to be careful with the tablets and injections, because they're going to process through the liver, and men have been blessed to have a new medication now for testosterone called kaisatrex, which processes through the lymphatic system, which is fantastic for men, because oral testosterone goes right through that liver again. And I'm hoping that the same kind of biochemistry will bring an oral estrogen to women as well. That processes through the lymphatic system. The goal is to keep consistent doses, and the more like so, for example, I was on a certain dose of gel from the time I was 53 till I was 60 a couple months ago, and then all of a sudden I started getting a little off, like my memory was off again. I'm starting getting warm in the middle of the night having some hot flashes, and like, what, what is going on? And so we switched me to a patch, because by the time you're taking a couple pumps of a cream, you're already reached the lid of how much you're probably going to absorb. I got put on a patch. Symptoms dissipated in two days. Wow. And now that's not going to happen for a woman coming in cold, but my body already knew what to do with bioidentical hormones. It already knew it was already giving symptoms that it's dropping, and so it could adapt quickly. For the average woman, it can take 30 to 60 days. A lot of women feel relief. I mean, for me, I felt like my brain woke up. I remember calling my doctor going, I have a sex drive again. She goes, and I mean, I literally felt like I was 40 again, and felt fantastic. The joint pain started going down. I had a desire to start walking before I could hardly walk around my block without pain. And, you know, I had calmness. And then testosterone cream, that's bioidentical as well. Obviously a woman will take about 110 of what a man does. It just depends on where your levels are. Some women feel good at 80. Some women feel good at 120 I tend to feel good at about 100 120 when they put me on testosterone injections, it went higher than that. Let me just say I have enormous respect for men. I felt like I was a teenage boy. That's all I'm gonna say. I was just like, why is my brain thinking about sex? 24 hours? I was like, Okay, how much longer do I have to take this? I'm getting off the dating apps, and I'm not talking to anybody, but some women, they need two, 300 until they feel better. What a lot of women don't realize is, you know how we juggle career in kids and cooking and laundry and all that? That's because when you're younger, your testosterone is three times higher than your estrogen and but testosterone doesn't go like this. For a woman, it starts to go like this. That's why many women understand they're in perimenopause, when all of a sudden, everything bugs them, and I can't sleep. And why am I doing everything? The estrogen, as soon as the eggs, you know that, it starts to decline more aggressively, but it's amazing what it does to protect your brain. For me, it was a part of putting my autoimmune conditions in remission, and it was a part of really giving me my life back, and giving me the capacity to push forward and find how to heal from these diseases, because when you feel like crap, you only have so much capacity. I mean, as soon as you you hit a wall, you're just like, well, forget it. You know where, when you feel stronger and you are more resilient and your hormones are balanced, you're like, Okay, that's a wall. We're going that way. No, we're not giving up. We're going that way. Hormones are amazing. Question,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

since you're a you're a fixer, and you've always studied everything for the woman who has never done it in their 50s and 60s, who's cold is going, Oh, my joints hurt. Oh, this says, and what would be a cookbook or a define someone to know what was the right doses for them, what would be a cookbook that people listening to the show can can start to get a recipe?

Sandi Krakowski:

Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. Read this book. Okay? I also have a mentorship where I help women know what questions to ask their doctor, how to understand their symptoms, how to understand that if you have multiple diseases, like I did, you need a hormone specialist. Okay? You also need to understand why your OB, GYN may say you're normal. You need to understand why many of them haven't had the education. You need to understand that you don't ask your neurologist about your hormones. Sister, you don't ask your gastroenterologist, okay, you had colon cancer, but we're not asking our gastroenterologist about our hormones. We're asking a hormone specialist who works with oncologists, and what happens is, for the majority of the time, telehealth is a beautiful. Place for this, because most women will put off their health ahead of every other member of the family. As soon as they have to work overtime, they cancel the appointment as soon as there's too much traffic. Mind you, their hormones are already down, so they have the capacity to push through like I was, like, forget it for just forget it. Just forget it. And constantly rescheduling the appointment. Usually, if you're in your 50s, they're going to put you on hormones by your symptoms, and then they're going to take your labs. They're not necessarily going to take your labs and then take your hormones. The reason being is you're already giving the symptoms. It's already common. Some women go completely into perimenopause in their 30s and have not been educated that that can happen, and then you get your labs done about every three months, so you don't need to fear, oh my God, what's going to happen if everything gets out of whack, and nobody knows, and I wake up one day and have cancer, that's not going to happen. If you take care of yourself. You get your labs regularly, you eat the clean diet, you move your body, you have a relationship with your practitioner to tell them how you feel. And then you really have to give it patience, and you have to believe that this kind of stuff can help. How do you help that buy in, like I said, by reading books, by listening to people like Dr Mary Claire, who's really talked a lot about menopause and following some menopause specialists on Instagram who talk about, what do you really have to watch for? You know, I think culturally, it's been offensive. It's become offensive to say to a woman these 40 pounds you're carrying around your waist, this high blood pressure, these high LDLs and HDLs are dangerous. That's going to get you breast cancer faster than estrogen. It's women don't want to hear that they already hate themselves and they're mad that they're out of shape and feel like crap. But that's a conversation that has to be had, because the estrogen is not the one to be scary of the alcohol and the metabolic dysfunction is the one to be scared of. And then to do that, to not just have a need to talk about your symptoms, to not just constantly keep processing what all your symptoms are. I've worked with women like that. They just want to continue the dialog. They're like, Well, my doctor told me I shouldn't take them. And I'm like, do you feel like crap? Yeah. Did they say you have an existing condition that prevents you from taking them? No. Then fire them and find another doctor advocate for yourself. Did you have a doctor who says with the bracket Gene You shouldn't be taking them? Yeah? Well, then find somebody who understands what the brachogene is and that actually you can take transdermal estrogen. Find someone who understands that specialty. When my digestive tract was hemorrhaging, okay, I wasn't consulting with an osteopathic doctor for my digestive tract. When my rheumatoid arthritis was off the wall, I was not calling, you know, somebody who specializes in infectious diseases. I was with a rheumatologist. And so hormones are the connectors to all other organs functioning properly. And it's just a it's so funny how a small dose, a small level off, can make your everything feel off. And when it gets balanced, you really do not know how off you felt until you're balanced. That was my experience. Like, holy cow, I had no idea I was so sick because we pushed through women. We're survivors. Like, you know, we don't want, you know, we got to take care of the baby and, oh my god, now I gotta make dinner, and nobody did the laundry, and my boss has a project, and we put ourselves last, and yet, in order to do what we have to do, we have to realize it's not selfish to put yourself first. The greatest thing you can tell show your family is that you love yourself and you love yourself enough to take care of yourself, because if you don't take care of yourself now, you are going to be a very costly, difficult burden later in life. The greatest gift you can give your family is take care of yourself.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Love that Sandy, I think we kind of think, I mean, I'm absolutely certain what you had said is so remarkably important, is take care of yourself first. And a lot of women do believe that now, because it's been said so many times, yeah, you know the most important thing is, who do you trust and who can you go to, but people like yourself, who've been through this, who've been, you know, our podcast highlights some brilliant people that share, you know, the avenue to take that's that completely bucks the system of what every. What he's, you know, what the masses are doing, and, you know, falling victim to so thank you. We appreciate that. And I have a funny feeling our next little segment right now that we're going into to end our show is the rapid fire questions. I have five questions. No,

Sandi Krakowski:

I love it. That's my favorite thing is not knowing anything somebody's going to ask me and answering it. I do that with my stocks group, and it's like, on Fridays, it's Ask Me Anything Friday. Monday through Friday, I'm teaching them private equity and money and stocks and investment. And on Friday it's like, pick my brain. I have no idea what you're going to ask. Oh,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

perfect. I have a good feeling that you're going to be very quick on your feet. I couldn't wait for this segment because I go she's gonna rock this thing. All right, sand, you got five questions, starting with number one, are you ready for this? Ready for my

Unknown:

next five questions?

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Go number one, are there any food trends that you can't stand carnivore? All right, how come? Because

Sandi Krakowski:

it masks the symptoms. People say no. Carnivore healed my Crohn's really they need three donuts with me. No, I can't do that. I'll feel sick. I won't be able to go to the bathroom. My inflammatory markers are going. I go then, honey, the carnivore abated your symptoms. It didn't heal anything

Dr. Spencer Baron:

nice, nice. Question number two, what is one piece of device that you've gotten that continues to guide you to this day? Do

Sandi Krakowski:

not take advice from people who do not have the kind of life that you want? Oh, I love that.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Quite question number three, if you, if you were a Formula One race car, what team name would you be called?

Sandi Krakowski:

Mighty might, so my grand kids call me mighty might, yeah. Mimi, you a mighty might. Oh, I love it. That's great mighty might or unicorn Speedway

Dr. Spencer Baron:

question number four, what is your favorite? Get down and Boogie music,

Sandi Krakowski:

country, really? Yeah. Give me some more Whelan or Cody Johnson. Heck, yeah. Nice, yeah. Give me some jelly roll. Give me all that I'm digging post Malone's country era. Yes, there you go, George. There we go. I grew up in R and B capital, in Detroit, but as soon as I came to Texas, man, I sold my Mercedes sports car got me 2500 and all the ultimate in turn on country.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Love it. I went to chiropractic college in Houston, and I hated country in the first year. Before the end of that first year, I had my radio station tuned in and everything.

Sandi Krakowski:

I got my big truck, got my guns and got my country. There you go.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Love it. Question number five, final question, Sandy, what would you love to be remembered for

Sandi Krakowski:

helping people break out of their amnesia and remembering who they are? I literally want that is my life goal is to help people remember who they are. I

Dr. Spencer Baron:

see that, Cindy, it's been a wonderful over an hour, but it's been a wonderful truly. I love your energy, your enthusiasm for life. I think you're going to really not I think you're going to really help a lot of people. Good

Sandi Krakowski:

for you. Thank you. I hope so. I want to make a difference. I want to give people hope and help people realize that old age is not a disease.

Unknown:

I love that. Thanks.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Thank you. Thank you, Sandy, everything you said was just fantastic. Thank you.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Thank you for listening to today's episode of The cracking backs podcast, we hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you follow us on Instagram at cracking backs podcast, catch new episodes every Monday. See you next time you.