My Favorite Fixer Upper
For the past 5 months I’ve been living in a real life episode of Fixer Upper as we’ve been remodeling our home. As seen on TV, we’ve had our fair share of ups and downs, unexpected costs and great opportunities to make our home beautiful.
This remodel has given me the chance to create my dream home. And I have been particularly excited to also create a cleaner, more environmentally safe and health supporting household.
During the demo phase, my mind and body were put at ease when no additional water damage or mold were found, and knowing the majority of the materials (wood flooring, carpet, paint etc.) in our home which had been exposed to toxic mold were being replaced.
I have absolutely fallen in love with every decor detail from the paint colors, glass tiled fireplace and waterfall backsplash and our huge pocket sliding door to give our home an indoor/outdoor living space.
But…
My favorite remodel upgrade is my new whole house water filtration system!
I can now drink water safely from any faucet in my home, and shower without worrying about toxins disrupting my hormone balance.
Water is the most essential element for our survival. On average 60% of the body is made of water. We drink water, cook with water and bath with water. Water is vital in every aspect of our life.
Yet water is the number one place where harmful toxins are lurking.
We have been told our tap water is safe, but what does safe really mean? As we’ve seen with the Flint, Michigan water crisis tap water isn’t always as safe or clean as we would like to think.
The general rule of thumb for health is to drink at least 8 glasses of water per day, or half of your body weight in ounces. If you’re abiding by those rules, or aiming to, and drinking tap or bottled water you could actually be causing your body more harm than good.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) recently did a study and compiled a tap water database using 28 million water records collected from 50,000 water utility companies that serve all 50 states in the U.S. and this is what they found:
- 40,000 or 81% of water systems had contaminants linked to cancer
- 250 million or 77% of water sources contained hexavalent chromium (the “Erin Brockovich” chemical)
- 7 million contained nitrate, a fertilizer
- 19,000 contained lead levels harmful for children
- A total of 250 chemicals overall (and counting) were identified
- 160 contaminants that the Federal Government has yet to set limits on
These statistics are staggering and down right scary. And those Brita Filters you have don’t even begin to put a dent in filtering out these types of chemicals.
Drinking or cooking with toxic water isn’t your only concern either.
We tend to overlook the health concerns associated with bathing in contaminated water. You also absorb toxins through your skin. Plus if you’re like me and love a hot shower, all of those toxins become airborne in the steam and you run the risk of inhaling them.
Cleaning up my water sources is one of the ways I started to restore balance to my hormones, reverse hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s.
In this week’s video and blog I dive into more detail about what’s lurking in your water that’s harmful to your health and how you can protect yourself.
The majority of the toxins lurking in your water can be classified into 3 different health harming categories:
- Obesogens – these toxins turns cells meant to be other tissue such as bone into fat cells
- Endocrine Disruptors – these toxins disrupt estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid and all of the other hormones and gland parts of the endocrine system
- Xenoestrogens – these toxins mimic estrogen in the body, raising estrogen levels or overloading the estrogen pathways
For anyone who is struggling with weight loss or weight gain, and having hormonal issues, the toxins in your water could be a huge piece to your healing puzzle. And for those who aren’t currently struggle with these health issues, that doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. These toxins could be contributing to health issues you’ll be faced with down the road.
The 3 most toxic chemicals when it comes to thyroid health, for example, are found in our water sources:
- Chlorine
- Bromine
- Fluoride
These 3 little chemicals are known as endocrine disruptors and they can wreak a lot of havoc, particularly on your thyroid function. These toxins can bind to thyroid hormone making it inactive or block the receptor sites used to receive thyroid hormone so it can’t be put it to use for vital functions in the body.
If your thyroid becomes sluggish, it starts a chain reaction taking down your other hormones.
Your thyroid plays a huge role keeping your weight balanced, regulating body temperature, energy, mood and keeping your other hormones in check too.
When I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, a thyroid autoimmune disorder, I was regularly showering in chlorine contaminated water and I wasn’t very diligent about always cooking with or drinking filtered water. This wasn’t the cause of my thyroid condition, but it certainly was a contributing factor keeping me from having good thyroid health.
Chlorine, fluoride and bromine were originally introduced as a way to kill bacteria and improve dental health, but as new research emerges we are now beginning to understand their negative impact on our bodies.
As I mentioned earlier, simply buying a drinking water filter just isn’t enough. Most of the popular water filter brands don’t even begin to scrape the surface when it comes to filtering out all the toxins in our water.
Buying bottled water doesn’t really do the trick either. Bottled water has its own risk of toxins such as BPA plastic, the number one xenoestrogen toxin out in the market place.
And if you’re showing in water laden with toxic chemicals, it can have just as much of a negative impact. In fact, the most common way these endocrine disrupting chemicals get into our body is in the shower. We inhale them from the steam and they go straight into our bloodstream.
Aside from these toxins turning your hormonal balance upside down, they also greatly burden the liver. The liver is responsible for eliminating all toxins that we consume, absorb through our skin or inhale. The liver also plays a part in keeping our hormones in balance and supporting weight maintenance; it helps to convert thyroid hormone, regulates insulin and blood sugar levels, and filters out excess estrogen.
I get it though, it’s impossible to control your water sources all of the time. I love to travel and I certainly have less control over water when I’m on the road.
However, by controlling your water sources at home you can create a cleaner, safer and more health supporting environment for yourself and your family. And there are even ways to have more control when you’re on the road.
Aquasana is one of my favorite safe water supporting companies. They have many wonderful water filtration options, are very knowledgeable about water filter needs based on where you live and have great customer service in my experience.
Here’s how you can take back control of your health by implementing some safe water sources:
- Get a water bottle with a filter that you can take with you everywhere
- Upgrade your home with a whole house water filtration system
- At a minimum install a shower filter and get a good quality countertop or kitchen sink filter
- If bottled water is the option, opt for brands that come in glass bottles such as Pellegrino or Perrier and BPA free plastic such as Fiji
To check the specific toxic element details about your local water check out the EWG’s Water Database.
And if you’re interested in doing your own home water test check out microtraceminerals.com
Cleaning up your water may seem like a small drop in the bucket in relation to your overall health BUT small shifts can result in large changes. We tend to think we have to be exposed to large amounts of chemicals for them to be dangerous and that just isn’t the case.
As Chris Kresser pointed out during his toxins presentation at Paleo F(x) this past Spring, even the smallest amounts of toxins (1 teaspoon in comparison to an olympic swimming pool) have the same negative impact on our health as large amounts do.
Do your body favor, and drink or use water safely.
If you want to uncover more hidden health stressors that are negatively impacting your body like toxic water and figure out the missing pieces to your health story, then schedule a complimentary Ideal Health & Weight Discovery Session with me here.
10 lbs Lighter – 1 Year Later
I thought this day would never come. I finally lost the 10 pounds I have been working towards over the past year.
For most of my adult life I hovered somewhere between 133-137 pounds. In my twenties I once dwindled down to 126 lbs for a fitness show, a number I had always dreamed of, but it’s not where I felt or looked my best.
I had come to accept my body as it was – 135 lbs was my sweet spot.
But I haven’t seen the number 135 in almost 2 years at this point. Slowly over time the pounds started to pack on…
At first I didn’t notice it at all. I crept up to 137 but brushed it off – I thought I just had eaten too many carbs or didn’t exercise enough that week. Then next thing I knew I was on the scale and it read 142!
I thought the batteries in the scale must have been dying, or it needed to be re-calibrated. After all I wasn’t one to watch the scale, my body always stayed in that same range of 133-137.
Yet my weight continued to climb. And the strangest part was that all my clothes still fit the same. I told myself that as long as my clothes still fit there was nothing to worry about. This was just a part of getting older, more curvy and “filling out” in my thirties.
I was shocked when the scale read 150 and then 152 lbs.
WTF!?
I was doing everything right…
I was eating a mostly gluten, dairy, sugar and soy free diet
I had cut back on my weekend alcohol intake
I was in bed early almost every night of the week
I lifted weights 3-4 times a week and ran 3-4 times a week
I did yoga on a weekly basis
I was even meditating once or twice a day at this point
I left my stressful corporate job and didn’t commute to work anymore
I was consciously swapping out toxic products in my home
I was stumped about what was happening with my body. Maybe I was just destined to be this way. After all most of the women in my family were heavy set, so genetics must be at play.
As the weight slowly climbed, I started to beat myself up about it more and more. I felt disgusted when I looked in the mirror. My once trim and toned physique was now fluffy and soft. I didn’t want to wear fitted clothing and I just didn’t feel comfortable in anything.
I pushed myself to work out harder. I found the biggest hill by my house and did rounds of sprints up it once a week. I lifted heavier weights and ran longer distances. Even though I felt tired in the morning or achy, I forced myself to work through it.
Aside from the weight, other things started to change too. I developed acne out of the blue, started having irregular periods and breast tenderness, was moody and felt like a foreigner in my own body.
I searched and researched, and finally figured out I was estrogen dominant.
I went to various doctors and health practitioners but no one could figure out what was wrong with me. I even had one doctor (mind you a “women’s specialist” in one of the most pristine hospital organizations here in San Diego) tell me that I likely just put on 10 pounds of muscle.
She obviously has little concept about the female body because it’s challenging enough for a bodybuilder type to put on 10 lbs. and I certainly wasn’t training to that caliber, nor did I look like it.
I stumbled upon the answer on my own. I ran my own tests, the same ones I use on my clients, to investigate the root cause or contributing factors to this unusual weight gain. It turned out I was estrogen dominant and I also had a combination of parasites, bacteria and yeast in my gut (which had previously been completely clean!).
I was so pleased to finally have an answer! I had faith the weight would come off now. I thought if I did all the right things to restore balance to my body I would be back feeling like myself again in a matter of weeks!
I never would have anticipated that it would take a whole year to lose ten pounds, but like I always say…
You have to get healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to get healthy.
In this week’s video and blog I share more about why it took me so long to finally shed 10 pounds and what I’ve learned along the way.
The Estrogen Dominance was a sign of something else – toxic mold and Hashimoto’s.
Apart from the toxic mold needing to go, I knew I couldn’t keep living the same way I was living while expecting different results from my body. I had to create space for my body to heal.
The toxic mold had created a very stressful burden on my body, toyed with my hormones and negatively impacted my immune system. But I also had to take responsibility for how I had added fuel to the fire; by forcing and pushing my body to work harder, not being as compliant as I could be with eating foods that were best for me and beating myself up mentally all the time – all of which just add more stress!
Sure you can force and push for results, but it doesn’t really work that way. And when you do force or push, you have to consider what you are doing to your body along the way that will impact your health moving forward.
Your body can only heal in a relaxed state.
I had to honestly address the ways in which I had been treating my body and make some significant changes to allow for more relaxation and healing to happen…
I drastically cut back on my exercise intensity and engaged in more restorative movement
I committed to cutting out all foods 100% that were fueling the inflammation fire
I worked on forgiving myself and creating more positive conversation in my head
I made more room for down time and was more mindful about getting good sleep
Most importantly I stopped forcing the results to come.
I dropped a few pounds at first, but hit a plateau for a long period of time. Even though the weight was taking its sweet time to come off, all along the way my body showed me other ways it was healing. I went back to being acne and anxiety free, having perfectly timed menstrual cycles without PMS, had more mental clarity and I was able to handle stress without shedding tears or losing my sh*t.
I even went into remission with my Hashimoto’s after 6 short months of taking medication and changing my lifestyle to reverse the condition. I thought surely the weight would fall off then, but it didn’t.
I kept my faith that the weight loss would come when my body was ready.
Over the summer my hormones started to fully return to back to balance. My estrogen went back down to normal, my testosterone went back up to normal, cortisol was stable and my inflammatory markers for mold illness finally dropped.
On November 30th, it will be the 1-year anniversary of the toxic mold being removed from my home, and a little over a year from learning about my Hashimoto’s.
Since late September I have been steadily losing weight, finally, and lost a total of 10 lbs. at this point.
This experience has brought me a lot of perspective about the body and how important creating space to heal is. It has also really driven home my motto about having to get healthy in order to lose weight, and not losing weight to get healthy.
Here are some other major things I’ve learned along the way…
- Thyroid function can be reduced by as much as 30% when caloric deficits are too high over the course of just a few days
- Women’s hormones are ultra sensitive to food deprivation and toxins
- Toxins have a much bigger impact on our health that we can even begin to imagine and they are very silent disruptors
- The conversation I have with my body on a daily basis is more empowering than any compliment I’ll ever receive
- To be a better listener for what my body needs and what it’s trying to tell me
- I don’t have to be tough all the time and “push through it.” It’s ok to take a day, or even multiple days at a time off to heal
Most importantly, this experience has shown me that our body truly does have all of the answers. When we give it the right food, rest, exercise, reduce stress, support it with the proper supplements and space when needed, the body knows how to return back to balance.
I’m in the business of empowering the whole body naturally.
I share this milestone in my own health journey not to boast about the weight that I have lost but to shed some light on similar frustrations you might have and on how the body really works.
If you’ve been feeling stuck or frustrated in your health or body in some way and can’t seem to find the missing pieces, then let me help you! I’ve been in your shoes, and trust me there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Schedule a complimentary Ideal Health & Weight Discovery Session here to investigate what’s going on in your health and how you can take back control.
Eating Healthy In Asia (and around the world!)
This week’s blog is being brought to you by a special request from one of my Instagram followers – she posted a very good question in response to my pictures and recent blog post about my trip to Thailand (catch that blog here), and this is what she asked…
“Please tell us how you managed the food topic in Asia, you know gluten, dairy, soy, etc. Also what do you take to support the Adrenals during trips?” XOXO”
I absolutely love this question because it’s about real life applications for healthy living while living life to the fullest!
If you’ve been following me at all on Facebook, Instagram or my blogs, you know I LOVE to travel. But feeling at home in my body while doing it is also very important to me.
To me, there is no point in traveling if you don’t have the health to fully enjoy it.
My health is what supports my passion for traveling. If I’m going to invest money and time to get somewhere, you bet I’m going to make the most of every minute and seek out every cool adventure to take part in.
I can’t say I’ve been in perfect health for every trip I’ve ever taken. I wish I could, but life just isn’t perfect that way. When I’ve traveled with a lower quality of health, the feelings of fatigue, cloudy thinking or uncomfortableness in my own skin definitely limited the activities I participated in, my ability to be present and my overall enjoyment of the trip.
I don’t regret those trips or those moments. In fact, those moments have served as great motivating factors to keep working on my health when I wanted to give up, and as friendly reminders about why it is important for me to maintain the health that I have. They put things into perspective for me.
However, my favorite trips and places that I’ve traveled to certainly correlate directly with how well I was feeling at the time. When I feel at home in my body, have an abundance of energy and don’t feel anxious or overwhelmed I am much more spontaneous, adventurous, curious and present to the place I am visiting.
Eating right for my body has played a MAJOR role in helping me get back to the healthy place I am in today and amplified my travel experiences. Over the past year I went on a strict AIP diet for 4-6 months to reverse my Hashimoto’s and heal from a toxic mold exposure. Now I still avoid gluten as much as possible and I limit my intake of grains, dairy, sugar, soy, alcohol and a few other things that don’t agree with me.
Food is not what makes the experience. I am.
Sure, food adds to any travel experience (and I am definitely a huge foodie too), but food does not make the experience. I do. With all that I have dealt with in my health, and the various dietary changes I have had to make to support it and get back to feeling like me again, I have learned to not allow food to dictate the experience I am having.
If I choose so, I am able to enjoy any city around the world or simply sit amongst friends and still have an awesome time without partaking in foods or drinks that aren’t in alignment with what my body needs from me.
Eating in Asia or around the world for your dietary needs boils down to mindset.
Say what?!
I’m sure that sounds like an over-simplification. Once you get down to the nitty gritty of why you might indulge in foods that hinder your health instead of supporting it, it really all boils down to mindset.
Sometimes we forget that we always have a choice in any situation. We may not be able to choose what food is in front of us or what will be served at a social gathering, but we can choose how we decide to deal with it, how we perceive the situation and what we make it mean about us.
In this week’s video and blog I share my best mindset practices and food friendly tools that help me eat healthy with enjoyment while traveling the world.
I am not saying that I never eat a food that isn’t right for my body, because I have and sometimes I still do. On the rare occasion when I do eat something that maybe I shouldn’t, I make sure it’s a conscious choice and I know how to support my body after.
For example, during the first 24 hours or so of my trip to Thailand I openly ate some of the local foods and consciously chose to ignore the list of ingredients or to ask too many questions about them because I wanted to just embrace it all. I even knowingly ate a local cuisine with some gluten and my body let me know.
I listened, evaluated the value of the food in comparison to how I was feeling (bloated, upset stomach like, foggy, tired) and decided for the rest of the trip, it wasn’t worth it. I wanted to feel my best and to make the most out of my trip, so I was back on my A-game making sure my food choices were right for me.
My traveling partners on the other hand kept eating what I wouldn’t eat but not once did I feel left out or sorry for myself. I felt quite the opposite – confident, energetic, proud, satisfied and joyful about my food choices because my body was feeling great!
Why do we use food to fit in?
This is a really great question to ask ourselves when challenged to make a choice between eating right for yourself or eating what everyone else is eating. The reality is, our friends, family and co-workers won’t disown us if we don’t eat what they eat.
What comes up when you think about this question?…
I don’t want to make a scene
I don’t want to be “that” person who asks for gluten free etc.
I’ll feel guilty or disrespectful if I don’t eat what is provided
Everyone else is eating it, so why can’t I
In my own personal experience and in working with clients, I find that these responses tend to come from a place of lack – meaning there is some other void you’re feeling in your life that wants to be filled.
When we tap into our well of fullness and satisfaction, that is all we need.
When we fill ourselves up with goodness, the desire to eat foods that aren’t right for us slowly starts to diminish and can almost disappear completely. This goodness can come in the form of eating foods that actually do make you feel good, meditating to build up positive energy or even in simple acts of taking time for yourself daily, all of which lead to feeling more satisfied in your life and less searching for satisfaction in food (mindset!).
Easier said than done, right?
So let me give you some practical tips for how you can start making the shift, and my best practices for eating healthfully in Asia or anywhere around the world…
Find Me Gluten Free App
This handy little tool has helped me find yummy places to eat in some of even the most remote of places. Although it didn’t list a lot for Thailand, I was surprised to see how gluten free friendly Hong Kong was! This app gives me options so that I can guarantee at least 1 or 2 meals of my day will be guaranteed gluten free without having to ask too many questions. It takes some of the guesswork out of it.
Balancing Back at Home
Because I love to travel so much and let loose a little bit when I do, so I make sure to create as much balance for my body when I am at home. I abide by my dietary needs 100% when I’m home. If I have an upcoming trip, I load up on sleep, hydrate a ton and reduce or avoid alcohol altogether (knowing I’ll get less satisfying sleep while away, flying dehydrates me and I’ll probably want a few cocktails on vacay). By creating balance and consistency at home with my health, my less than perfect habits while I’m away won’t have as much as an effect on me.
Voice My Needs
I am confident I can find something to eat on practically any menu and this is the same confidence I aim to teach my clients. Modifications might be in order, but who cares? Being “that” person who asks for gluten free doesn’t bother me (anymore) because feeling good in my own skin is much more valuable than the short-lived embarrassment by asking a bunch of gluten or dairy free questions. The more you voice your needs, the stronger your voice will grow. Every time I voiced my food needs to my family, friends or the server, my voice grew stronger, and I was greatly rewarded by my body feeling good after eating every single time.
Choosing Consciously (without guilt!)
As I mentioned before, sometimes I knowingly eat something I probably shouldn’t (like the dish with gluten in Thailand). But before diving in, I check in with myself, take a gauge on how I’m feeling in that moment and if the food I’m about to eat is worth the price I might pay. If I’m already feeling a little fatigued or exhausted from travel, I’m less likely to add insult to injury by eating something inflammatory, but if I’m feeling in tip top shape I just might give it a taste. Most importantly, whatever I decide I don’t beat myself up about it. That negative mindset just adds to sickness in the body and if I’m going to eat it, I’m going to enjoy every bite and savor every flavor.
Fill Yourself Up First
I always make sure I’m coming from a place of abundance now instead of lack. When we feel lack, it’s easy to see food as a way to fill the void, even if it’s not really what we are lacking in. When I’m home or traveling I always engage in activities early in the day that fill up my cup of joy and carry me through the day. I typically start my day off with a meditation and getting outside or doing some exercise. This makes me feel purposeful and full, so when I sit down to eat I’m not searching for something on a menu to give my day purpose.
Aside from these best practices, and to answer my Instagram follower’s question more directly, through my travels and by trial-and-error I have learned what things have gluten, dairy or other inflammatory ingredients in them, and I figure this out primarily by voicing my needs. This time around in Thailand, I figured out that oyster sauce also has wheat in it and is used in a LOT of Thai dishes, so I learned to ask for dishes without it.
I’ve also come to know that wheat products in Europe don’t really bother me because the breads and pastas are ground properly or fermented the old fashioned way to break down the gluten, unlike here in the United States.
Understanding what works for my body, constantly checking in about what is creating stress on my body (such as food, lack of sleep, work, toxins, etc.) and working to alleviate or balance that stress is how I support my adrenals, thyroid, gut and overall health while I’m in flight or at home.
Just like traveling, life and health is a journey. Once you get to one destination you’ll likely want to go to the next. So I just continue traveling, tuning into my body and making adjustments as needed 🙂
Fight Cold and Flu Season Naturally
Fall is officially here, meaning cold and flu season is swinging into full force, and seasonal allergies are reaching their peak for some people.
How do I know this? Well there are some obvious signs such as the leaves changing colors and falling from the trees, or the Halloween decorations that are painting every house and storefront these days. And for anyone who still watches regular cable TV, commercials promoting flu shots, cold medicines and allergy relief are being broadcasted more frequently.
Years ago, I suffered from seasonal allergies and the occasional nasty sinus cold. I would load up on symptom relievers, such as DayQuil, NyQuil, throat lozenges, Mucinex, and Tylenol or Advil for my painful ear aches.
Now I take nothing.
No, really. I no longer have to take any over the counter symptom relievers because I don’t suffer from seasonal allergies anymore, and I haven’t had a cold or the flu in so long that I can’t even remember the last time I did (keep reading and I’ll tell you why).
I’m not superhuman or anything. I still occasionally feel the shift of the seasons in my body – my energy is lower some days, I get a slight runny nose or tickle in my throat when Spring or Fall bring about new allergens in the air, and I even feel the onset of what might be a cold from time to time.
BUT my symptoms are tolerable and I can stop them naturally.
When we take over-the-counter (OTC’s) medications we have a false sense of healing our body in some way, but what we’re really doing is just masking the symptoms until our body is able to make a slow and full recovery. This is why over the years allergies, colds and flus become more intense, frequent, and longer in duration.
When we mask symptoms with OTC’s we’re ignoring our body’s call for help.
As annoying as a runny nose or postnasal drip can be, it’s your body’s way of saying, “Hey, something is really stressing me out right now or I’m under attack. I’m trying my best to fight it off, but I could really use your support and help.”
We’ve been taught to “push through it” when we get sick or feel under the weather. We use OTC’s to numb the pain so we can still go to work and take care of all our responsibilities, except for ourself. But what is the price we pay in the long run for continually taking this action?
Nobody ever reads the warnings or the side effects list on an OTC medication. I mean, they’re over the counter so they must be safe, right?
Wrong.
OTC’s come with a laundry list of negative side effects that can occur acutely or chronically over time. Here are just a few OTC’s side effects highlights that we commonly overlook …
- Acetaminophen (aka Tylenol) – liver damage
- Ibuprofen (aka Advil or Motrin) – peptic ulcers and kidney damage
- Decongestants – high blood pressure or blood pressure spikes
- Antihistamines – damage to heart muscle and the central nervous system
Large or small, long or short, any usage of OTC’s impacts the body’s ability to function normally and disrupts its homeostasis (balance). They do not boost our immunity, they block it.
OTC’s also are one of the number one contributors to leaky gut (aka intestinal permeability or dysbiosis), and guess what happens when you have a leaky gut?
A leaky gut increases your risk for allergies, colds and flus.
The gut is where 80% of your immune system lives, so if it’s dysfunctional guess what else is going to be dysfunctional? Your immune system, and your ability to fight off allergies, colds or the flu.
When the intestinal lining is compromised you’ve lost your first line of defense internally. Foreign invaders such as allergens, bacteria and viruses are able cross the gut barrier and get directly into the bloodstream.
In this week’s video and blog I talk more about boosting your immune system by using natural remedies for allergies, colds and the flu to keep your gut and health intact.
One of the first health improvements my clients usually notice very quickly in our work together is that they don’t get sick anymore, or when a cold starts to come about it doesn’t fully develop and they make a very quick recovery from it.
It’s not magic, it’s just allowing the immune system to do its job.
The very first thing I focus on with ALL of my clients is digestive support and repair for 3 very important reasons:
- To boost the immune system, which lives in the digestive tract
- To increase nutrient availability for the body
- To reduce inflammation and stress on the body
Healing your gut is the key to sustainable health success, but healing the gut is a process which requires consistency. It can take months or even years to fully recovery in some cases.
In order to heal the gut you have to consistently:
- Avoid inflammatory and toxic foods such as gluten, dairy, sugar, soy and alcohol
- Get rid of gut bugs such as parasites, bacteria and yeast (candida)
- Add in foods and supplements to help repair the integrity of the gut, such as digestive enzymes, fish oils, L-glutamine, probiotics, collagen peptides, bone broth and fermented foods
Healing my gut is what has made my seasonal allergies virtually non-existent and given me the superhuman powers to fight of a cold or the flu before it even really gets started.
However, my immune system obviously wasn’t always able to do this. I suffered for years before I started to take action on healing my gut, and when I did the results weren’t immediate. It took time. In the in-between time of healing I still had to find ways to lessen the pain and suffering without using OTC’s that would just set me back gut health-wise.
I began to slowly transition away from gut damaging OTC’s and introduced more natural therapies to boost my immune system and my body’s own defense system.
Some of my favorite natural remedies for allergies, colds and the flu include:
- Taking a supplement with quercetin and/or nettles leaf for allergies – this is something I do automatically when the seasons change to boost immunity
- Combo of peppermint essential oil (diffused or topically) and arnica (ingested or topically) for tension headaches, migraines or aches/pains
- Vitamin C, D and Zinc to fight off viruses and the flu – taken preventatively or acutely
- Oil of oregano and/or garlic as a supplement for anti-microbial properties to kill off bacteria and prevent colds or sinus infections
- Ginger or peppermint tea and bone broth for upset stomachs
For even more ideas on natural remedies to relieve your symptoms and support your immune system in defending you naturally check out these other resources:
- Wellness Mama’s Natural Remedies for Illness – she even makes her own cough syrup
- Chris Kresser’s How To Prevent Colds & Flus Naturally OR The Truth About The Flu Shot & What To Do Instead – how to prevent and treat colds or the flu naturally
- Dr. Mercola’s Flu Attack! How A Virus Invades Your Body – how the flu happens and how to avoid it
We forget that OTC’s haven’t always been around yet our ancestors found natural ways to ease pain, suffering and symptoms. Natural remedies are still relevant and still work in our modern day world. We just have to seek them out.
Aside from using natural remedies and healing your gut, there are a few other really important things when it comes to having the strength and stamina to fight allergies, colds and the flu naturally – making sure to eat nutrient dense foods, getting good quality sleep, exercising, drinking plenty of water and taking time to de-stress on a daily basis through meditation or some other type of modality.
Bottom line is, you don’t have to suffer or mask your symptoms with superficial remedies. You can become your own health boss and thrive in this world any season of the year!
P.S. If you want to heal your gut and avoid allergies, colds and the flu all-together, then let’s chat! Schedule a complimentary Ideal Health & Weight Discovery Session here.
My Healthiest Trip Yet!
I just spent the last two weeks touring Thailand and Hong Kong, and I feel healthier than I have in years! I don’t say that because I took a well-deserved vacation from work and the stress of life, but because I noticed a significant improvement in my health compared to past trips.
This time last year I spent 3 weeks traveling all over Europe. I went to Croatia, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands. While I certainly enjoyed all of the beautiful sites and cities I explored, there was a nagging sense of fatigue, bloating, brain fog and weight gain running the in background.
I did my best to make the most of my Europe trip but honestly I was exhausted most of the time. My face felt puffy every morning, my clothes fit a little too tight and the second I sat down on a train, plane or in a car I was dozing off to sleep.
Most would chalk up these feelings to being jet lagged, and a part of me wanted to also, but I knew this tired, swollen and less than excited version of me wasn’t the real me.
At the time, I didn’t know that what I was feeling was all a part of my soon to be diagnosed Hashimoto’s and mold illness. About a week after my return from Europe, I received my diagnosis and just a few weeks later, a test revealed toxic mold in my home.
I spent the better part of 2-3 years leading up to those two moments of revelation feeling as if I was trying to dig myself out of some poor-health-hole I wasn’t really sure how I had landed in. All I wanted was to feel like my best self again. The same fit and energetic version of me from 2013 when I felt at the peak of optimal health.
Looking back, I can now see exactly what led to my demise over time…
- Working a stressful job for a struggling start up company as the VP of Strategic Wellness Planning
- Adding extra work hours on the side as a personal trainer to start my business
- Mysterious mold in my house that I had no idea about
- Eating “healthy” but not consciously and not always right for my body
- Not making time for myself, then binging on self-care in short spurts
- Searching for purpose in social scenes and having one too many drinks
- Running long distances after late nights and hitting the weights way too hard at the gym
Mind you, a lot of these actions held true for me most of my life. For a long time my body was able to adapt and recover, but at some point it reached its threshold and couldn’t handle it anymore .
Adaptation, or lack thereof, is tricky to explain to clients. They want to know “but why was I able to eat this or do that my whole life and all of a sudden now it’s a problem?”
The truth is, it’s always been a problem.
Your body is amazing at adapting to its situation. It’s always looking for the most efficient way to accomplish a task whether it’s something that you consciously embark on, such as hitting baseball, or some physiological function running in the background.
However, there’s one flaw – you only have so much vital reserve to run on before your body starts to break down.
Each of us has a different threshold for our vital reserve (aka our ability to adapt and how much stress our body can handle) based on our genetics and where our weak links are placed. Think of the old theory or saying, “survival of the fittest,” it points out what we know evolutionarily – the strongest survive and the weakest don’t.
But in these modern times we’re able to bypass the typical evolutionary process. We can outsmart disease with what we know about the body. We can easily identify what’s contributing to disease and take action to reduce it, enhance our vital reserve and improve our chances for survival.
This is exactly what I started doing even more intensely a year ago to achieve the way I feel today.
The accumulation of stress on my body intensified when I started working from home full time in a toxic mold-infested place. My body’s vital reserve and ability to adapt to the stress of my lifestyle and environment drastically decreased, I hit my threshold and as a result an autoimmune process flourished.
In this week’s video and blog I share with you what I’ve done to enhance my vital reserve, to reverse the autoimmune process, to feel the healthiest I’ve been in years and how you can too!
Now my energy surprises me. At the end of the day, I’m astonished at how much I have accomplished and how much energy I still have left. Sometimes I underestimate my energy availability as if I have PTSD from being so fatigued before.
This recent trip to Thailand really brought to light how much healthier I am!
I had zero jet lag even after only sleeping for 4 hours during a 30+ hour travel day
I felt at home in my body, slim and trim the whole time!
I could have a cocktail without it kicking my ass the next day or destroying my sleep
I woke up feeling rested every single morning with the sunrise
I was able to think clearly, stay focused and maintain a joyful mood
I didn’t need (or even want) a nap after long days of hiking, snorkeling, walking or sightseeing
I am so grateful for the way I feel in my body today, and it makes every ounce of effort I have put into healing myself this past year more than worth it.
When I received my Hashimoto’s diagnosis and found the toxic mold in my home last fall, I made a promise to myself to not let these situations get the better of me. I hunkered down, got to business taking even better care of myself to coach up my body’s vital reserve and started the slow road to a full recovery.
What I did was actually really simple. I didn’t take any magic pills, try any elaborate or expensive therapies and I didn’t rely on prescription medications to mask my symptoms.
I simply focused on the general principles of health and creating consistency with them.
As a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, focusing on the general principles of health is the backbone to the training I have received and the work that I do.
The general principles of health have worked for thousands of years and have proven to outperform specific treatments for disease. They are simple yet impactful. Before we had modern medicine all we had were the general principles of health; eat healthy, sleep, move our body, de-stress at the end of the each day, and the use of herbs or vitamins to support bodily functions.
The body wants to be in balance, it doesn’t want to be out of balance. And given the right resources the body is able to build up its vital reserve and it will always return to its preferred state of balance.
The body thrives on consistency.
Just think, the more consistently you do something, the better you become at it. This holds true in anything we do in life, such as riding a bike, hitting a baseball, our job, being a parent, cooking, etc. Practice makes perfect.
Consistency paves the way for our body to adapt, to become more efficient. If we are consistently immersed in activities that don’t support our health, our body will adapt, utilize its resources until there are no more and eventually give way to sickness. Or if we are consistently engaged in activities that support our health, our bodies will adapt, become even more efficient, use fewer resources and promote greater health.
And if we are consistently somewhere in between, bouncing back and forth creating a roller coaster of highs and lows, then our bodies will struggle to adapt, drain its resources in doing so, and eventually reach its threshold. You can think of this similarly to the wear and tear on your car; driving in the city with the constant stop and go produces more wear and tear on your car versus just hopping on the freeway and driving at one speed for a period of time without stopping. Most modern cars even kick into a “fuel efficient” state when you drive at a constant speed for a period of time.
Consistency has carried me back to a place of feeling like myself.
In order to restore my vital reserve and return my body to balance, I focused on creating consistency this past year.
I more consistently…
- Went to bed within a few hours after sunset 6 nights a week
- Made self care part of my daily routine instead of binging on the weekends or once a month
- Created and engaged in a meditation practice promoting positive thoughts and healing
- Set healthy boundaries around work and anything else that drained my energy
- Ate 100% grain, dairy, sugar, soy and alcohol free for 3+ months and still do 90% of the time
- Worked on being present and making empowered choices with me in mind
- Took my supplements religiously to nourish and heal my body
- Tested, and tested again to monitor my progress and make adjustments to my healing plan when needed
All of my efforts have paid off in order to feel as healthy and more like myself on this trip than I have in a long time.
By all means, I haven’t been perfect in my commitment to restore balance to my body and create consistency. I have stared temptation in the face, had lengthy conversations in my head about giving in and giving up, and at times have felt very alone on this journey and in some of the choices I’ve had to make for me.
Each time I felt challenged on my journey I reconnected with what really matters – my health and feeling like myself again, and it always helped me get back to creating consistency for my body to thrive on.
If you feel stuck when it comes to your health or struggle with getting back to feeling like yourself, consider how consistent or not you have been…
Do you find yourself doing healthy things all week and binging on the weekends in unhealthy activities? Are you super healthy at home but let loose too much when you travel for work or pleasure? Or maybe you run a tight and healthy ship for extended periods of time, end up feeling deprived and then throw in the towel to fill the void?
Healthy is a way of being not of doing.
You can do all the healthy things in the world, but if you don’t embrace it as a lifestyle and create consistency you’ll constantly be swimming upstream. And when you do embrace it as a lifestyle, it will significantly get easier. You’ll find yourself riding with the current and the wind in your sails.
P.S. If you’re ready to break the roller coaster ride cycle and create consistency to promote your health, then let’s chat! Schedule a complimentary Ideal Health & Weight Discovery Session here.
Demystifying Natural Health & Wellness!
We all know that knowledge is power in SO many different ways and aspects in our life. The key to becoming your own health boss and empowering yourself is gaining as much knowledge as possible and using it to figure out what works for you and what is right for your body.
I don’t claim to know all of the answers, but I am committed to learning and searching for them, which has made all the difference in how I have been able to restore my health and help others do the same.
One thing I do know for certain is that natural health and wellness approaches almost always outperform specific treatments. I am an example of this, my clients are an example of this and a very special person I had the pleasure of meeting recently is a BIG example of this.
Jennifer Hudgens and I met a few months back at a local and very casual networking meeting. We instantly connected over all things health and wellness related – her love for essential oils and my passion for functional health practices.
As we got to talking, Jennifer proceeded to tell me her health story. She had suffered with a terrible back injury and was given little to no hope for a full recovery.
Her doctors prescribed various medications to manage the pain, all of which barely put a dent in her suffering and left her feeling unlike herself.
She was fortunate enough to connect with someone about essential oils, and with nothing to lose she decided to give them a shot. She committed to using various oils every day and to her surprise, she experienced more relief than any pain medication had ever given her.o much, in fact, that she quit the meds altogether!
When I first met Jennifer, I would have never thought she ever experienced such pain, discomfort or such a serious injury before. She is very much alive and thriving!
She, too, has seen the power of natural health and wellness, and like me has become very passionate about it and wants to help others become empowered with it.o she created the Demystifying Health & Wellness Interview Series.
I was honored to be asked to be one of 21 amazing women interviewed for their expertise in natural health and wellness for her series. I am so excited to be a part of this series to spread the wealth of knowledge, and I am even more excited to share it with you.
Not only was I interviewed, but 20 other women in natural health and wellness were also! The women range from massage therapists, to naturopaths, physician assistants, yoga instructors, skin care experts, pilates instructors, and even physical therapist. Each of them sharing their knowledge and wisdom for your benefit.
The best part is access to the interviews is completely FREE!!!
Just take a look at the line up of women and topics that are being covered in the interview series….
- Nanci Tunley: Healing to speak your truth and live your purpose
- Jenn Malecha: Autoimmune disease and how to take back control of your health
- Molly Hamill: Finding your self-worth
- Dr. Arezou Ghane: Mindfulness and changing our inner conversation
- Emily Trott: Perseverance
- Lauren Mahlburg: Nutrition and the great outdoors
- Alisha Frank: Energy work and so much more
- Stephanie Lane: Meditation and morning routine
- Anna Ulmer: Coming alive through empowerment and mindfulness
- Elizabeth Ensor: Healing your body naturally
- Tina Ardolino: Yoga, Pre-natal, Post-natal – Follow your dharma
- Stephanie Zito: Be aware of what’s in your skin care
- Jessica M Fray: Menstruation and women’s health
- Sarah Connor: Grounding energy work
- Lee-Anne McCall: Homeopathy
- Teresa Rodden: Women and Sobriety, It doesn’t have to be a dirty word!
- Emma Fashion: Dressing for Self-Worth and Confidence
- Jessisa DeLuise: Eat Your Way to Wellness
- Corry Lang: Emotional Health Coaching
- Lauren Maniscalco: Core strength and why it’s important
- Katie D’Amato: Grounded to heal, empowered to move
The interview series will begin on Monday, October 2nd. Those who register for it will receive a new email with a link to the interview of the day every Monday through Friday through the end of October.
One of the best ways we can learn to solve our own health issues is to learn from other people’s experiences. As I learned in one of my transformational coaching training programs, “your problem is someone else’s solution.”
I encourage you to check out the interview series to learn from people’s stories like Jennifer’s and mine, and see what kinds of natural health and wellness tips, tricks and inspiration you can pick up to help you along your health journey.
Register for and get access to the Demystifying Health & Wellness Interview Series here!
Activate and Upgrade Your Healing Process!
We don’t give ourselves enough credit in general, especially when it comes to being able to heal ourselves. We are often our worst critic and place the power of healing in the hands of others who have no idea what it’s like to be inside our body, our mind and they certainly haven’t lived our life.
What we also don’t realize is, any kind of sickness or illness is a lifestyle disease.
No matter what the ailment is, it can almost always be related to lifestyle choice(s) you’ve made.
Staying up late and not getting enough rest
Overworking or not making time for yourself
Eating foods that don’t support your health
Exercising when you’re already exhausted
How you handle stressful or traumatic situations
Not being mindful or present and getting into dangerous situations
Every choice you make in your life can either support or suppress your health. Sure you are dealt a deck of genes, but you have the power to turn genes related to your health off or on based upon the lifestyle choices you make – this is the beauty of epigenetics!
You truly have more power to heal yourself than you could ever imagine!
More than any doctor, in fact. If you use the power of epigenetics in your favor, you could essentially prevent or reverse any disease, even cancer as Dr. Nasha Winters ND points out in her book The Metabolic Approach To Cancer.
To help you take back your power when it comes to your health, and to prevent or reverse disease, Molly Hamill and I just did a kick ass webinar on Tuesday night all about how to activate and upgrade your autoimmune healing process. And this wasn’t just for people currently and knowingly suffering with an autoimmune condition, it was for everyone because..
Antibodies for autoimmune disease can be seen up to 10 years before a clinical diagnosis is given – you can reverse it before you get there.
The feedback we received on it was so incredible so I wanted to make sure you got a chance to check out the recording if you missed it.
For this week’s video and blog I’m sharing with you the Activate & Upgrade Your Autoimmune Healing webinar replay.
In this webinar replay Molly and I cover…
- Contributing Factors:
- How did you wind up here? What triggers autoimmune and chronic health conditions?
- The Science Side:
- What’s happening inside your body? How can you investigate and measure it
- The Behavior Side:
- How are your thoughts, feelings, emotions or lifestyle habits helping or hindering your health?
- Activate & Upgrade:
- What action can you take to activate and upgrade your autoimmune healing or to prevent health issues?
You will walk away with…
- Our best practices which we use on ourselves and with our clients to identify stress on the body, how to take responsibility for it, and take action to promote healing.
- A better understanding of how your thoughts, emotions, choices or lifestyle habits either help or hinder your health
- Tools to coach up function in the body by rebuilding your relationship with it and changing your mindset
- Knowledge about all the different angles of healing (science-based and spiritually) that you need to activate and/or upgrade your healing process or to prevent disease
Check out the replay and become empowered today – Get the replay here!
There is no cheap or easy way…
I just spent the last 3 days at the Ancestral Health Symposium in Seattle, Washington with some of the brightest minds and biggest pioneers in the functional medicine and health world. The lecture rooms were filled with naturopaths, functional medicine doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists, psychologist, personal trainers and tons of other functional health practitioners, like myself.
The presentations and discussion groups focused on everything from trends in different diets, research studies comparing which diets work best for which individuals, how exercise and gut function play a major role in our health, to the microscopic level of mitochondrial function inside the cells.
The key takeaway from every lecture was…
There is no cheap or easy way to heal the body, it requires a multi-level approach.
The body is an extremely complex system and what we know now about it is just scraping the surface. There are new advancements in health and understanding happening every day.
And unfortunately most people dealing with chronic health conditions, or not, are getting lost in the system and not getting access to the right information in order prevent or reverse disease.
As this study pointed out, “It is frequently stated that it takes an average of 17 years for research evidence to reach clinical practice.”
That means on average, it takes 17 years for new research and advancements about health and medicine to actually reach your doctor and be put into practice. By the time it hits their desk, it’s already outdated.
This study and the recent symposium I just attended proves there is more relevant and accurate information out there in regards to what you could be doing for your health. Your doctor just doesn’t know about it, and the healthcare system policies haven’t caught up to it, so you’ll likely have to go out of network and out of pocket to find the latest and greatest advancements to improve your health.
You need to become your own health boss, assume responsibility and take back control of your health.
I know this first hand. The conventional medical system has failed me in many ways over the years…
It prescribed me birth control at a young age to mask a painful and irregular period.
It told me to eat a standard American diet, which inflamed my body.
It overlooked health risk factors and markers, which led to skin cancer.
Routine lab tests painted me as the picture of health, but my body was an internal mess.
Various doctors dismissed my estrogen dominance and told me to “wait it out” while suffering.
No one checked me for Hashimoto’s, I had to discover it myself.
And forget about the mold toxicity, because in conventional medicine, it doesn’t even exist.
I refused to live a life full of pain, fatigue, mood swings, weight gain and suffering. I wasn’t going to let a broken and outdated system get the best of me when we live in a world where information is available immediately on our phones and at our fingertips.
I became a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner because I knew there was more to be known out about our health. Educating myself has helped me to overcome and heal every single health issue I have been faced with, and now I help my clients do the same.
To be completely transparent, the road to health recovery certainly isn’t cheap or easy.
Since receiving my Hashimoto’s diagnosis and discovering toxic mold in my home less than a year ago, I have done numerous tests, taken handfuls of supplements daily, spent hundreds of dollars on high quality food, spent countless hours meditating and working to create a healthier mindset that would support my healing.
In less than a year, look at how many tests it has taken to reach remission with my Hashimoto’s and get my health back on track:
- Three GI Map stool sample test
- Three DUTCH Cortisol/Hormone tests
- Four home mold tests
- Six metabolic mold tests
- Six thyroid tests
- One organic acids and toxins test
Not everyone needs to run this many tests, but some do. At least half of these tests were NOT covered by insurance. I really had to wrap my mind around spending money on myself because my health needed to be a priority. After all, I wasn’t going to settle for anything less than I deserved when it came to my health, wellness or life.
Less than a year later, I am back to feeling like myself. My thyroid and hormone levels are balanced and stable, and my inflammatory mold markers are dropping.
In fact, I just hired a personal trainer for myself for the first time in four years to kick up my workout intensity because I finally have my youthful energy back and my body has healed. Every penny and minute I have spent on this health journey has been more than worth it.
In this week’s video I share more about my health journey, how I invested in myself and what has helped me return to optimal health.
At the Ancestral Health Symposium I attended, Dr. Ruscio gave a great presentation about gut function. His presentation highlighted studies about the benefits of various diets such as Paleo, low FODMAPS and keto for improving gut function. All of these diets have been proven to work on various individuals showing that there is no such thing as one-solution-fits-all.
Dr. Ruscio, among many of the other presenters, also emphasized that just diet, exercise, medications or supplements alone won’t restore balance to the body. You have to incorporate a variety of healing modalities that collectively will help to restore and heal the body.
Over the past year, and even for even longer, I have implemented many changes/tools to help my body heal and to support my health such as:
- Modifying my diet over and over again to meet my body’s needs
- Making sure I was in bed by 10pm at least 5 times a week
- Reducing my exercise when my body was stressed or fatigued
- Taking numerous supplements for different periods of time
- Scheduling monthly massages and regular chiropractic visits
- Ridding my home of toxic products and mold
- Learning to do Mayan abdominal massage on myself
- Using an infrared sauna for at least 20 minutes 2-3 times week
- Liver flushing and colon hydrotherapy
- Kundalini, yoga, meditation, journaling and tapping
- Lab testing, making adjustments and retesting to track my progress
- Learning to speak up for myself and communicate my needs
- Mindset work to increase my feeling of self worth (this was a big one!)
Not one of these things alone could have solved my health problems completely, but the combination of them created a powerful healing force.
Investigating where I was lacking, what needed to be healed and what worked for me is how I reached remission so quickly.
At the Ancestral Health Symposium it was very apparent that the future of healthcare is personalized care, there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all. The medical system has been trying to put us all in a box based on similarities in symptoms and it hasn’t been working.
Personalized medicine requires us to assume responsibility for our health, to get in tune with our bodies and to be a collaborator in our healthcare – to become your own health boss. As Dr. Mark Hyman (MD, director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine and chairman of the Institute for Functional Medicine) says, “Health doesn’t happen in the doctor’s office. Health happens where we live, in our kitchens where we cook, and where we eat.”
So in light of this, to help you become your own health boss, Molly Hamill and I are hosting a free webinar – Activate & Upgrade Your Autoimmune Healing on Sept. 19th at 5:30pm PT/ 8:30pm ET
Regardless of whether you have an autoimmune issue or not, this webinar can help you to up-level your health. Molly Hamill and I will be sharing our best practices that we use on ourselves and with our clients to activate and upgrade the healing process in the body. To prevent and/or reverse disease.
In this webinar we will be:
- Sharing our best practices that we use on ourselves and with our clients to heal the body, how to take responsibility for it, and take action to promote health.
- Teaching you how your thoughts, emotions, choices or lifestyle either help or hinder your health
- Showing you how to coach up function in the body by rebuilding your relationship with it and changing your mindset
- Covering all of the different angles of healing (science-based and spiritually) that you need to activate and/or upgrade your healing process
And don’t worry, if you can’t make it live we’ll be sending out a recording to everyone who registers!
Register here for our free webinar – Activate & Upgrade Your Autoimmune Healing on Sept. 19th at 5:30pm PT/ 8:30pm ET
And be one step closer to becoming your own health boss!
My One Big Message
You hear me cover a lot of different types of topics in my weekly emails and blog – everything from the latest science about hormone testing and diet, to sleep, exercise, meditation and spirituality.
It may not always seem as if these topics have anything in common, but they do. They are all addressing different types of stress that we encounter throughout our day and how to combat it.
Stress isn’t just the mental or emotional stress that we initially think of in relation to work, relationships or traumatic events. Stress is much more than that.
Stress is anything that places a burden on the body.
Whether it’s inflammatory foods such as gluten, not getting adequate rest or sleep, under exercising or over exercising when your body is already fatigued, toxins in your environment, or physical ailments from misalignments in bones and muscles – it all equates to stress on the body.
When I went through my Functional Diagnostic Nutrition training program we were taught to identify H.I.D.D.E.N. stressors, or malfunctions in the…
- Hormone
- Immune
- Digestion
- Detoxification
- Energy Production
- Nervous System
Looking at these different systems of the body and recognizing malfunction helps me to also identify healing opportunities.
But in order to help someone heal and restore health to these systems of the body, I have to know what is causing the malfunction in the first place – stress.
To alleviate stress, I guide my clients in “coaching down contributors to stress, and coaching up function of the body” as my mentor Reed Davis says.
In all of the blogging and work that I do, my one big message for you is…
“I want you to be able to recognize the burden of stress on your body at any point in time and to know what to do about it in order to achieve your ideal health.”
Having a better understanding of what is contributing to a stress burden on your body leading to dysfunction, and taking action to minimize the stress is the secret to optimal health that we are all looking for.
In this week’s video I talk more about the different types of stressors, how to coach down the contributors and coach up function.
Our bodies are a miracle in and of themselves if you think about all that they do for us on a daily basis with little to no effort on our part: pumping blood and oxygen, breaking down and rebuilding cells, breathing, and giving us the ability to be mobile.
What we don’t realize is that those daily functions require a lot of work and energy from our body already, so we tend to pile on additionals tasks, toxins and responsibilities that force our body to work harder.
Our body will essentially do anything we ask it to, but that doesn’t mean we should.
It’s rare that your body will tell you no. It will climb to the peak of mountain tops, work through the night to meet a deadline for us and eat almost anything we feed it. But that doesn’t mean we should ask it do those things, especially if it’s already burdened with H.I.D.D.E.N. stressors that we can’t see or aren’t aware of.
Know that stress can be…
- The inflammatory or pesticide laden foods in our diet
- Eating foods that are not in alignment with our nutritional needs
- Staying up late at night consistently or not getting enough sleep
- Exercising at a high intensity or for long durations when the body is tired
- Perceived mental or emotional stress from work, relationships and traumatic events
- Lack of nutrients in the body for functions to actually take place
- Toxins in our environment which burden the liver, alter cells and disrupt hormones
- And there are many more
For the longest time exercise was actually one of my biggest stressors. As a naturally active individual with a personal training background, exercising was not only a passion but something I was intrinsically driven to do. I was constantly pushing my body to do more, get stronger or go longer.
A huge turning point leading to my remission with Hashimoto’s (an autoimmune thyroid disorder) was turning down the volume on my workout routine a lot, to relieve an unnecessary stress I was placing on my body so it could heal. As soon as I cut back on lifting weights and running, and focused more on walking and yoga, my body started to heal more rapidly.
I look back now and I can see many points in my life when I pushed way too hard when it came to exercise. I vividly remember running my first marathon and at mile 22 my body simply refused to keep running, but I kept pushing- an obvious moment in time when the burden of stress on my body was high and likely contributed to dysfunction that I probably never fully recovered from. Now I know better and I would never put my body in that position again.
If I go to bed late, get a crappy night of sleep, cheat on my diet, am traveling or doing anything else that might create extra stress on my body, I’m very mindful about striking a balance by doing things such as skipping my usual workout for something that is more restorative, going to bed early the next day and taking a full weekend to eat healthy and rest.
Using functional lab testing, I’m able to help clients see where dysfunction exists in the hormone, immune, digestive, detoxification, energy production and nervous system BUT the bigger question is what do you do about it.
The secret to restoring balance and health is working towards eliminating the things that are causing stress on the body and giving it the support it needs to function at a higher level.
Just fixing your diet won’t do it. It’s one aspect of healing but not the catch-all solution most hope it would be.
Coaching up function in the body and achieving optimal health requires a multifaceted approach, one that involves:
- Diet
- Rest
- Exercise
- Stress Reduction (of all kinds)
- And Supplementation to support and restore bodily functions while you eliminate the stressors
I have found in my many years of doing this work that the mindset and spirituality components are just as critical as any of the physiological and science aspects. One will only be able reach a limited level of optimal health without incorporating both and addressing all the burdens of potential stress.
Rebuilding the relationship with your body, taking responsibility and treating it with respect will help you forge forward in optimizing your health. If you don’t change your mindset and the relationship with your body, you’ll continue to beat it down and run into a wall with your health.
So I’ll leave you with this… think about how much stress is on your body at this moment in time as you are reading this blog…
Are there toxins in your environment that you can’t see, hear or feel?
Did you get a crappy night’s sleep?
What was the last thing you ate and was it nutritious or not?
Did your force yourself to work out today or push too hard?
Are you stressed at work or in your relationships?
What else might be contributing to a burden of stress in your life?
Remember to weigh your stress burden regularly and then you can quickly take action to reduce it before it reduces your health.
P.S. If you want to learn more about identifying the burden of stress on your body, how to take control and reduce it, then check out my upcoming webinar Activate & Upgrade Your Autoimmune Healing on Sept. 19th at 5:30pm PT/ 8:30pm ET
Regardless of whether you have an autoimmune issue or not, this webinar can help you to up-level your health. Molly Hamill and I will be sharing our best practices that we use on ourselves and with our clients to identify stress on the body, how to take responsibility for it, and take action to promote healing.
Why Meditation Matters
I never thought rock climbing would feel anything like meditation, but after my first rock climbing experience last week I can tell you that oddly enough they are very similar.
As my aunt-in-law pointed out during our family vacation rock climbing adventure together, rock climbing requires a heightened state of mindfulness. In that moment, as your body is hanging on the side of a cliff, you certainly aren’t thinking about emails that need to be sent, work that needs to be done or the long laundry list of other to-do items you might have.
While rock climbing I was in the moment, fully in my body and nothing else mattered.
That is exactly what meditation feels like. It’s a place of serenity when there is chaos swirling around you, an escape for rest and relaxation, and an avenue for healing to happen.
In our fast paced, modern world we have lost our sense of mindfulness. We mindlessly eat and react to situations rather than being present and proactive. We act quickly without thinking it through and later regret our decisions. We worry ourselves sick over the simplest circumstances, letting it distract us from creating what we really want to happen.
When we are mindful and present, it’s as if the world is moving in slow motion around us. We are able to observe, make choices that are in alignment with our health and come from a place of empowerment.
This is why meditation matters for your health.
As my dear friend and colleague Molly Hamill often quotes from Yogi Bhajan, “meditation clears the garbage from our subconscious. It’s like taking the trash out of our minds each day.”
Our mind needs a daily mental detox just as much as our body needs to physically detox every day. The study of epigenetics proves this to be true – our mindset can literally alter our gene expression.
As one study pointed out, mindfulness interventions such as meditation have the power to influence our genes and reduce inflammation in the body, making meditation a valuable tool for treating chronic inflammatory conditions such as autoimmune disorders, cancer, adrenal dysfunction, leaky gut, high cholesterol and so many others.
This graphic from Positive Health Wellness helps to paint the bigger picture of how meditation impacts the body on a scientific level as well. Meditation helps to lower cortisol levels (our stress hormone), increases our sense of calmness, and decreases feeling of anxiety, fear and depression.
In this week’s video and blog, I dive into more detail about how meditation positively influences gene expression, reduces inflammation and supports health improvement.
We can only heal in a relaxed state.
This is the critical foundation that meditation provides us – a relaxed place that allows the body to actually heal.
Meditation permits the body to slip into what is called a parasympathetic state, also known as the rest and digest mode. This is the complete opposite of being in a sympathetic state, also known as the fight or flight mode.
Most of the time we are in fight or flight, our stress response is heightened by the abundance of daily demands placed on us in our jobs and in our lives. This state keeps us alert, ready for action and survival.
This brilliant mechanism for alertness, action and survival takes a toll on the body when engaged for prolonged periods of time. When the body is in flight or flight, it directs blood flow outward, shuts off any unnecessary functions (such as healing) and conserves all of its energy to address whatever the threat, aka stress, is.
As I pointed out in a recent blog, our fight or flight function served a valuable purpose back in the day when our ancient ancestors were being chased by predators, such as lions. So while we don’t confront lions in our day, on a physiological level our bodies react to stress such as traffic, crappy co-workers or relationship challenges as if a lion was chasing us.
This constant state of stress chaos triggers inflammation which has the power to alter cells and create disease and dysfunction – and this is exactly what the study of epigenetics has shown us.
When we slow down and adopt the deep rhythmic breathing patterns usually associated with relaxation techniques like meditation, we are able to flip the switch. The body recognizes the changes in breathing and thought patterns, turns off the fight or flight response and turns on the parasympathetic mode.
Let the healing happen!
In a parasympathetic state, the body is relaxed and able to heal. All of its resources are directed inward to restore and rebalance. It is able to combat inflammation, repair damaged cells, to prevent or reverse disease and dysfunction- again, this is what the study of epigenetics has proven.
Meditation is one of the quickest, most effective and accessible ways to get yourself into a parasympathetic state. It doesn’t require any money or resources, and you can do it anywhere.
Meditation can take on many forms. It can mean sitting in silence, taking a leisurely walk, saying positive affirmations, doing deep breathing, chanting or it can even be rock climbing in some cases (as I experienced). The ultimate goal is to simply disconnect from the stress of your day-to-day life, to let any pent up energy flow through you and to free your mind from the vicious cycle of negative thoughts that we tend to get trapped in.
Having a daily meditation practice has helped me create the space for my body to heal from Hashimoto’s, mold toxicity, leaky gut, estrogen dominance and the flood of emotions related to the passing of my mother.
Some of my favorite meditation resources include:
- Molly’s fear releasing (for autoimmune), gut healing, sleep and thyroid guided meditations
- Insight Timer app with thousands of theme and different duration of meditations to choose from
- Deepak Chopra’s 21-Day Meditation Challenges
- Binaural Beats – the use of sound frequencies to induce the same mental state as meditation
Give your body the gift of meditation, and let the healing happen!
