Radical Health Rebel
Welcome to the Radical Health Rebel Podcast, where Leigh, a renowned Functional Medicine Practitioner, CHEK Practitioner, CHEK Faculty Instructor, Active Release Techniques® Therapist, Emotion Code Practitioner, author, and podcast host, takes you on a journey to achieve optimal health, wellness, and happiness. With his extensive training and years of clinical experience, Leigh provides a truly holistic approach to health that has proven effective even when other methods have failed.
Join us every week for insightful discussions and expert interviews focusing on chronic pain, gut health, and skin health. Leigh's diverse background and passion for holistic healing brings you valuable knowledge and practical tips from leading experts in the field. Whether you're struggling with persistent health issues or simply looking to enhance your well-being, the Radical Health Rebel Podcast is your go-to resource for achieving a vibrant and healthy life. Tune in and start your journey to radical health today!
Radical Health Rebel
143 - Why Gut Healing Isn’t A One-Size-Fits-All: How to Find the Missing Piece in Your Health Journey with Courtney Cowie
Welcome back to the Radical Health Rebel Podcast! In today’s episode, we’re diving deep into gut health with Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner Courtney Cowie.
We often hear about gut healing protocols, restrictive diets, and supplement regimens, but what if the reason you’re still struggling is that gut healing isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach? In this conversation, Courtney shares her own gut health journey, the gaps in the conventional medical approach, and how to truly get to the root cause of gut issues instead of just managing symptoms.
If you’ve ever felt frustrated with mainstream gut health solutions that don’t seem to work for you, this episode is packed with valuable insights to help you find the missing piece in your health journey.
We discused:
0:00
Gut Health Mystery With Courtney Cowie
20:02
Challenges in Gut Health Diagnosis
28:51
Personal Responsibility in Health Choices
35:38
Navigating the Conventional Health System
44:04
Transforming Lives Through Gut Health
51:24
Root Cause Testing in Functional Nutrition
58:14
Foundational Health Approach and Environmental Impact
1:08:38
Balancing Variety and Gut Health
1:11:57
Balancing Gut Health and Lifestyle Choices
1:15:14
Personal Core Values in Diet
1:19:21
Deeper Root Issues in Gut Health
1:34:55
Exploring Emotional Trauma in Healing
You can find Courtney @:
https://www.courtneycowie.com/free-e-guide
https://www.facebook.com/courtneycowientp/
https://www.instagram.com/courtneycowientp/
https://www.tiktok.com/@courtneycowientp?lang=en
Don't forget to leave a Rating for the podcast!
You can find Leigh @:
Leigh's website - https://www.bodychek.co.uk/
Leigh's books - https://www.bodychek.co.uk/books/
StickAbility - https://stickabilitycourse.com/
Eliminate Adult Acne Programme - https://eliminateadultacne.com/
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YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@radicalhealthrebelpodcast
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I was originally diagnosed with IBSD and then when I went back years later when things really flared up again, I was basically dismissed by the original GI doc who did the full workup right and she was just like it's IBS. That's all this is. And she got very frustrated because I tried all the meds. Nothing was working. She didn't know what to tell me to do, diet wise, other than see a nutritionist, which of course you know where was I going to go in my community at the time. But then a few more years went by and I finally was just like something's really not right, I want to get this looked at again. And they did a colonoscopy and they're like, oh, you now have microscopic colitis.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Radical Health Rebel podcast. I'm your host, lee Brandom. This work started for me several decades ago when I started to see the impact I could make on people, helping them to identify the root cause of their health problems that no doctor could figure out, including serious back, knee, shoulder and neck injuries, acne and eczema issues, severe gut health problems, even helping couples get pregnant after several IVF treatments had failed, and it really moves me to be able to help people in this way, and that is why I do what I do and why we have this show. Welcome back to the Radical Health Rebel podcast.
Speaker 2:In today's episode, we're diving into gut health with functional diagnostic nutritional practitioner, courtney Cowie. We often hear about gut healing protocols, restrictive diets and supplement regimes, but what if the reasons you're still struggling is that gut healing isn't a one-size-fits-all approach? In this conversation, courtney shares her own gut health journey the gaps in the conventional medical approach and how to truly get to the root cause of gut issues instead of just managing symptoms. If you've ever felt frustrated with mainstream gut health solutions that doesn't seem to work for you, this episode is packed with valuable insights to help you find the missing piece in your health journey, so let's get into it. Courtney Cowie, welcome to the Radical Health Rebel podcast that's coming on the show.
Speaker 1:Hey, I'm so glad to be here. I'm really excited.
Speaker 2:It's good to have you here, courtney, and to kick things off, could you share a little bit about your own background, including your journey with gut health, and can you walk us through some of the pivotal moments that shaped your path towards becoming a functional nutrition practitioner?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. My story with gut health actually goes all the way back to childhood. I was a kid that would come home from school at least a couple times a week. I had terrible stomach pain. I'd end up laying down on the couch putting a pillow under my stomach. I'd have to lay there for like 20, 30 minutes and then that pain would go away and then I'd get up and kind of be okay.
Speaker 1:And I think back at that time in my life, like this was kind of normalized for me, like I had three brothers and none of them had those types of symptoms, my parents didn't really think anything was amiss. But I do remember like here and there, like we would go on family vacations, usually once or twice a year, and you know being being like out in California, you know visiting family in San Francisco, and we'd be out and about and I would get these terrible stomach aches and it was annoying to my parents. Like my mom would be like well, this isn't the time to be having a stomach ache, like we can't do anything about this now. So it kind of was treated as like almost a little bit of like this is annoying, this is a disruption. I think my parents always assumed it would go away because it did. But you know it wasn't really thought of as being abnormal by any stretch, and you know my family kind of way of looking at health is like you'd only go to the doctor if there's something really seriously wrong. So otherwise I was a pretty healthy kid and so as I got older the stomach aches continued to happen I'd say all the way through my teenage years into my 20s and as I approached kind of college years especially, I'd always been a really active kid.
Speaker 1:I grew up doing swim team. I played soccer most of the way through high school and then when I got to college I ended up transitioning into lightweight rowing because that was a walk-on sport where I went to school. And then when I got to college I ended up transitioning into lightweight rowing because that was a walk-on sport where I went to school. I knew I wasn't going to make the swim team at the school I went to. It's really large. I was at UW Madison and so I thought, well, this is good, I will try this sport. And it was a very intense program. I mean it was big 10 collegiate rowing, very competitive. I trained hard.
Speaker 1:There was this culture of kind of under eating because it was a lightweight rowing program, so all of the women on the team had to make a weight of 130 pounds or less and of course they varied in you know body composition and height and stuff, and so there was a lot of just disordered eating going on. And I think that psychology kind of was shared amongst the team to a certain extent. And I remember kind of getting into this phase of you know intense exercise training alongside my teammates and also doing a little bit of the under eating you know controlling food portions thing that they were doing, although to be honest with you, I was a smaller frame woman, I probably could have been a coxswain, I didn't need to do that, but it put a huge stress load on my body and I think that then carried into an interest in triathlons. I did a little bit of like long distance running, marathoning all the way through to my mid to late twenties and all of that, I think, really shut down my body's ability to like generate energy. Well, certainly was like harmful on the digestive system and just furthered the whole GI stuff I'd had from childhood and so, as this was all going on, I was starting to develop bouts of loose stool that were happening like intermittently. And so in the very beginning I remember experimenting with my diet and I should mention the other thing that I had chosen to do as a teenager which was not the smartest move, looking back was I went vegetarian for about a decade in high school, and then I'll kind of tell the story of how I got out of that. Like what can I do to manage this like loose stool thing that's happening kind of intermittently? I remember trying like a raw foods diet at one point and it was awful. I mean, I would get out of bed in the morning and instantly run to the toilet a couple times and I was like, okay, this is scary, I'm not going to do that anymore, let's not do that. Like I clearly need to eat more cooked food. So I was doing a lot of just kind of self-experimentation. I'd have periods where things were okay and then it would kind of like regress and I couldn't really figure out what was really causing it.
Speaker 1:And then during those like years when I was in undergraduate and graduate school, I had an interest in Japan. I had studied abroad for one year as an undergraduate and loved it, and so I ended up going back several more times and so when I was over there my last year as a graduate student, I was working a job it was almost like a third shift, part-time job trying to really refine my Japanese language skills. I was really interested in kind of just getting right in there with, you know, regular Japanese people working alongside. So I was working this job. It was a fun job in a little restaurant in downtown Tokyo, but the shift was like 10pm to like 3am, which was not the type of hours I would keep right like ever in my life. So after several weeks of that I was noticing I was having trouble, kind of like getting up in the morning, getting my head on straight.
Speaker 1:And then one day I woke up and I thought I kind of had my bearings and I actually ended up passing out for the first time in my life and of course, mind you, I was still a vegetarian all the things still running and still training really hard, not necessarily to be on a tee, but just on my own to maintain like an exercise routine. And so what ended up happening was I had a good Japanese friend. She referred me to go see a Chinese herbalist actually that she worked with and she's like you need to see this lady, she's going to help you. I went in, I sat down. I was pretty blown away by the question she was asking me. They seemed very different than what a doctor would. I had never had that experience outside of a traditional medical setting. She wanted to look at my tongue. She wanted to feel my pulses. She even pressed into the front of my leg against my shin bone. I see some swelling. This is telling me this.
Speaker 1:She basically said here's the deal I'm going to give you some herbal formulas, but I want you to start eating meat again. It has to be in your diet. You don't have to eat great amounts of it, but just start small. And if you just get it in two, three times a week. And I was like I'll do whatever you say, because I was desperate, I was not feeling well, and so I ended up going home with those formulas, adding hot water, drinking these herbal medicines and, honest to God, I started to see some positive change. And that just blew me away, because I had never experienced that type of thing outside of just taking drugs to try to treat symptoms, and so I was really hooked. And then, of course, I started eating the meat again too, and so, interestingly, it was that Chinese medicine encounter and experience that got me really interested in natural, holistic approaches to healing and so that actually led me into becoming a Chinese medicine based body worker. This was a few years later. That was kind of my first entryway into holistic health and trying to help others with their health, and then that again kind of graduated into more of an interest in nutrition and functional health approaches, mostly because my GI stuff actually came back.
Speaker 1:After I got back from Japan I went through kind of some real major stressors. It was like a divorce. I had my first child, I was a newly single mom, I was building my bodywork practice, lots of background stressors going on which again I think played a major role, and the same gut issues came back, but they came back with a vengeance. I believe I was like in my early thirties at this point just woke up one day. It felt like running to the bathroom all the time, and this went on day after day and I in the beginning I told myself this is just temporary, it was probably something bad. I ate, it'll get better, because it usually does. Well, it didn't.
Speaker 1:So that's what started me down the path, and I did, in the very beginning, go to like a local nutrition facility brick and mortar to get help. All they did for me was the LCAT food sensitivity test. I know that's probably one that you've heard of and are familiar with, and, of course, a ton of foods came back right and I thought that would be the ticket. It's like, just follow the green zone foods, just eat those and avoid the yellow and reds, and everything will get better. Well, to my surprise and to their surprise didn't. And so that was interesting because, you know, I remember going in probably a good three, four months and I think there became this point of frustration where, you know, they probably didn't know what to do because their whole methodology was based on just the LCAT as their primary tool. And I'm like, look, I'm doing everything you're telling me to do. I'm literally eating all these foods. Things aren't getting better.
Speaker 1:And so that that kind of led to the next practitioner, the next practitioner, and I felt like every practitioner I saw who was functionally trained gave me a piece, but nobody was really getting the whole picture right. And so that really inspired me to be like, okay, this is crazy, I'm going to have to figure this out. I'm intelligent enough to figure this out. I'm going to just go get this education and I've got this book of body work clients that may also benefit from this. So if I invest and make this choice, this could actually be another facet to my career path that would be really fulfilling. So that took me into exploring and then eventually enrolling in the Nutrition Therapy Association program to become a certified nutrition therapy practitioner.
Speaker 1:So for the first probably four to five years of my nutrition career I worked. Clients would come in and I could put a nutrient or a supplement on their tongue and then check the, basically the tenderness of different reflex points on the body that you know innervate the nerves, kind of innervate the taste buds, and you can give information about, you know, what might be going on at a deeper level. And it did work well for a while. And then my case was a complex. I still was kind of I got to a place of stability based on diet change after that and was doing good, but then things kind of would get bad again and you know I was just like something's missing. I don't have all the pieces to this puzzle and I continued to go down the educational rabbit hole.
Speaker 1:I did, you know, continuing add on SIBO, you know, got into that and I think it was the actual the SIBO pro course I did with Alison Seebecker where she suggested that I start to look into maybe mold toxicity and Lyme disease it's like some deeper layers to the puzzle. And then, sure enough, went down that rabbit hole and they were there right, like that was part of my process the whole time and of course nobody had caught it. It was missed right and honestly, that was what led me to functional diagnostic nutrition, because I knew that it would complement what I did really well with my training with the NTA and it would give me the foundational training I would need to understand how to run functional testing and then become a really great launchpad to get into more and more testing and education understanding from there. And so that was essentially how I got into my path to become kind of a holistic functional health practitioner.
Speaker 2:In a nutshell, yeah, it's a great little story. You know we were talking. We were talking a little bit off air before we started recording and you know I was saying that. You know, obviously I were talking. We were talking a little bit off air before we started recording and you know I was saying that. You know, obviously I went through the functional diagnostic nutrition training as well. When did you, when did you kind of graduate from FDN?
Speaker 1:Gosh, I have to think back on that. I think it was around 2020. I think it was like right around the COVID era, and that was another piece too. I realized, as things were transitioning to more and more telework or telehealth, that my nutrition practice was going to become more important because, again, I had been leaning mostly on just my body work practice, which was great. But I had the thought, okay, if people are too afraid to come get work in person from me, how am I going to make a living right, like, if this happens again? Um, and I'm also getting older, I can't take the numbers of people every week that I used to be able to in the beginning.
Speaker 1:So, and honestly, I love the work of working with people from more of that complex angle of let me help you put the missing pieces of the puzzle together. Let me help coach you to get the right elements in place for you to see holistic health change. Just that whole, you know, thinking capacity that's needed as a nutritionist. That really I really love that. You know it's just such a different thing compared to body work. So that was where I really was, you know, getting very much invested in. Okay, I need to kind of change my nutrition practice model and doing this FDN program. I can see how this would give me additional skills to make my offering more robust and then eventually evolve it to become more of a telehealth type of practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting. I went through a similar situation really in 2020. I was working predominantly from a facility in central Londonon and I would probably say, you know, 80 of my income was from that facility. I was already. I was already doing most of my kind of nutrition and lifestyle, functional medicine type work online. Um, yeah, but as soon as we went into lockdown and I thought, well, if governments can keep doing this which obviously they, they did. But during the first lockdown I kept thinking, well, if governments are going to continue doing this, it's a little bit risky relying on a bricks and mortar business, right? So I kind of made that decision pretty early on that I was going to do a lot more work online.
Speaker 2:I still do exercise work and body work, but, yeah, the predomin uh time I spend with clients is is online now, you know, whereas it was probably 20 before, now it's probably 80, 90 now. For sure. In one way, it's a good thing, because you know you can help a wider audience. You know, yes, yeah, and you know, if you go back 20 years, you know you can help a wider audience. You know, yes, yeah, and you know, if you go back 20 years, you know someone would probably have to fly to see me, right? Yeah, I mean, people still do. But you know, for nutrition and lifestyle you don't really need to do that now because obviously we've got Zoom and other technologies where we just don't need to do that.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, and I actually think there's advantages to doing it online, like just being able to, you know, share your screen and put the tests up right, like I find that so much easier than having someone who's sitting across from me and having to, like, turn my computer screen so they can see it. Or, you know, if a client wants me to record the session where I'm explaining their test results, like absolutely happy to do that, right, and then they can go back and review that information. It's a living resource for them and it gets ahead of any potential questions like, well, what was that thing you were saying? It's great to be able to do that with technology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it is good. I think most people find, let's say, they go to a medical doctor or they go to someone like us, they have the session and they go home and they think, oh, what, what was that? What did that? What did they say? Yeah, what, what did that mean? And how many of those and you know. So, yeah, that that is quite an important part and for you, the practitioner, if they've got that there as the resource, it's also probably going to save you time, because they're not emailing you to say, oh, you know that thing, what was that that you said? So, yeah, I think that's a good move.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, and I think sometimes perspective clients don't realize that. I think most of us. I think you would do this too, lee, but I take very detailed notes for them. I've got pre-built templates I'll work off and just edit to make it appropriate to what we talked about or the testing we ran together. And man, they love that. You know, when I go back and interview clients like what were some of the best value things you got from our work together, like what were the highest value nuggets you got out of it. Like, time and time again people are like your notes, your notes, and just having that document, I could go back to that resource, like if you just don't get that in the conventional system, you don't get that, and even therapy right, like it's great, so yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I I'm definitely one for taking notes. Um, to be honest, I'd be lost without them, right? You know if you're seeing, you know if you've got 20 clients on your books and you're seeing them every week. How are you going to remember everything if you haven't written it down?
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Exactly yes. So, moving on, so many of your clients like you this is what you've said to me before they've faced frustrating or vague diagnosis like IBSD, which is irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea and microscopic colitis why do you think that traditional medicine often falls short for people with chronic digestive issues? Amanda spent 19 years battling severe IBS, diarrhea and abdominal pain. Her life was ruled by public toilets and she avoided holidays for fear of flare-ups. Doctors offered no solutions, just endless Imodium. After working together, amanda discovered the root causes of her symptoms and in just three months she was IBS free. She even booked her first holiday with her husband a dream come true. If you're struggling like Amanda, visit wwwbodycheckcouk to schedule your consultation. Let's find the root cause and get your life back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great question. So I actually have done a bit of a like episode on this whole topic of you know, whether we're talking IBS or forms of inflammatory bowel disease. You know, are we really talking about two different things here, or is it kind of just gut dysfunction on a spectrum of severity and inflammation, right, and so I personally feel like it's kind of one in the same and we're just kind of seeing it across the spectrum. And I guess that's a part of my story too that I maybe didn't mention, lee, is that in the very beginning, when I did go through the traditional system to try to get help with my own gut issues, I was originally diagnosed with IBSD. And then, when I went back years later, when things really flared up again, I was basically dismissed by the original GI doc who did the full workup, right, and she was just like it's IBS, that's all this is, and she got very frustrated because I tried all the meds, nothing was working. She didn't know what to tell me to do, diet wise, other than see a nutritionist, which of course you know where was I going to go in my community at the time. So, but then, you know, a few more years went by and I finally was just like something's really not right, I want to get this looked at again. And they did a colonoscopy and they're like, oh, you now have microscopic colitis. And I'm like, well then it seems to me IBS can actually develop into a form of IBD in some people. So really we're talking about a disease progression spectrum.
Speaker 1:But to answer the question you're asking, I think the problem with conventional offerings for things like IBS especially is that there isn't any observable obvious damage or like criteria threshold that a doctor can be like, okay, this exact thing is wrong. The symptoms are there. But when they're doing their, you know their full workup, as they call it, and there's a number of tests they can do to really check this and check that and roll this and that out or in, right. But normally most people are going to get an upper endoscopy, lower colonoscopy. There's other nebarium swallow things they can do as well. But if all that checks out and then you're just kind of left with well, we didn't find anything wrong.
Speaker 1:Basically, your options are to take a drug. Often a GI doc will just suggest something like fiber or probiotic. I've certainly had that suggested in my case a number of times too. But again, depending on what's really going on beneath the surface, some of those things can actually make the symptoms worse if there's no testing to really look deeper and see like, okay, what is going on with the beneficial bacteria in the gut? What can we see in terms of like levels of populations or counts, or you know, I guess nowadays a lot of GI docs have now moved into the area of recognizing small intestinal bacteria overgrowth, or SIBO, as a big contributing factor to IBS and a lot of them are willing to run lactulose breath tests, for example. And you know, if they find something there, great, we can give rifaximin, which is the number one prescription to treat that right. Or sometimes they'll just give it kind of like proactively.
Speaker 1:I found too, if you go in and you're like I've got diarrhea, well, you probably have SIBO, we'll just write you a script for rifaximin. Well, about diarrhea, well, you probably have SIBO. We'll just write you a script for rifaximin. Well, rifaximin may or may not work. You know there's a number of clients I've worked with who have had that diagnosis coming to me. They might have even run the lactose breath test. We're seeing high levels of, say, hydrogen gases and they're having diarrhea and they've done rifaximin and you know it can sometimes not work.
Speaker 1:You know people can be resistant to treatment that way. So then what would you do if you were stuck in that camp and all you had at your disposal was a prescription medication, right? So there's that problem of, like, what do you do when all of the conventional testing comes back normal? You're offered some kind of entry-level basic tools like probiotics, fiber and a prescription med. None of those are working well, or maybe they've worked a little bit, and now the symptoms are coming back and the doctor really doesn't have much else to offer. Like, you really are stuck, right.
Speaker 1:And then in the case of IBD, you know, often again it's the same types of things or you're adding in immunosuppressive drugs, and then that comes with the side effects of okay, now we're modulating the immune system. This is probably going to increase your risk of more serious things, because we don't have the immune system functioning the way it should. And the way we're going to address this problem, with the damage going on you know, whether it's the colon or the small intestine or wherever in the GI system is we're just going to block it. We're going to block it so that tissue damage doesn't continue, but there's always a trade-off. So I think where that leads a person is deep down if they they really feel like this isn't really getting to the root, and I understand this is kind of blocking things and maybe helping me a little bit, but I'm not okay with that.
Speaker 1:That was the thinking process I arrived at in my case, right, and I feel like a lot of clients who reach out to me they're along those same lines.
Speaker 1:They're like I don't want to have to take a med, I don't want to have to just band-aid this and I'm not even sure if the band-aid is going to work for me. Right, they're almost like not even willing to go that route until they try something holistic and natural first. And so that's where I feel like we can use our tools of more specialized testing that looks at different data points than a doctor's test would. It's going to give us data that you know, especially as functional diagnostic nutrition practitioners. We can correlate that back to the whole picture and the symptoms you know see this case. That makes sense. And then work with, in my opinion, safer, gentler interventions that are more herbally based or supplementally based, that are going to be like these carpet bombs coming in like antibiotics and, you know, disrupting everything in the gut, but can still, over time, help to support the body to get back to a good balance. So yeah, I think I answered that question, hopefully.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the first thing you know talking about IBS. To me, IBS is a diagnosis used when the person doesn't know what's going on.
Speaker 1:That's very true.
Speaker 2:Yes, right, it's because it's it's not really telling you anything. Yeah, right, right, you might have certain symptoms and they're just putting a label on the symptoms but they're not really, you know, uncovering what the cause of that issue is.
Speaker 2:Yes of that issue is, yes, a friend of mine. He said that ibs is uh, should should be termed intestinal bullshit. I like that, um, yeah, so a guy called dave hompes. He wrote actually a really great book on on hpl or I, but it but it's, it's a it's quite an accurate term really, because it's not really telling you anything like you know, just like a balanced diet, it's just a nonsensical term, doesn't mean anything right, and what I find here in the uk and I don't know how different it is in the us, but the amount of times I've had someone come to see me and you know you look at their history, you look at their symptoms and you say, like I think it'd be a really good idea if we run a stool test and they'll say, oh no, no, I did that with my gp and it come back absolutely fine.
Speaker 2:And you think, and sometimes there have been, there have been situations where, um, I'm talking to a client, I've got their history and they're going through their symptoms and I'm thinking, okay, you've got five symptoms of a parasite infection. Yeah, you know. Blotchy skin, itchy anus, weight loss, night sweats. You know they got, they got that. You know the full, the full monty, yeah, and a couple of times I've said to them look, you may well have had a test done by your GP. I'll tell you what do do the test that I'm suggesting. If it comes back negative, I'll give you the money back, right? Yeah, every time I did that it came back and they had a whole load of stuff going on that came out Right. And I must admit I don't I don't always do that because it's a bit of a risky thing to do, um, but um, you know, for me it's just really frustrating that people don't get that kind of service that we do when they go the medical route.
Speaker 2:And for some people, you know, certainly in the uk, it might be their only option because obviously the medical services are taxpayer funded, right? Oh, okay, so so people think, well, medicine's free, right? Well, have a look at your tax bill, yeah, if you think, if you think it's right, nothing's free, right, exactly so. So people go and get their you know doctor to check it out. And then you know, four or five years down the line, all of a sudden they're on 12 medications rather than one, right, because one medication is called another problem which oh yeah, we've got a drug for that, and then that causes another side effect.
Speaker 2:Oh, you've got a drug for that as well. Now that causes another side effect. Oh yeah, we've got a drug for that as well. Now all these are interacting Exactly Right, and you're on this pharmaceutical merry-go-round. That's very difficult to get off once you're on it. So you know, I've certainly found, by doing more specific testing, which I think is kind of what you were alluding to yeah, has really helped me kind of pin the tail on the donkey, so to speak yes so you know, you know what you're dealing with.
Speaker 2:You know we have a saying of the czech institute without assessing, you're guessing, right. So when, when you were talking, you know, people go in, they're diagnosed with ibs, which again tells us that doesn't really tell us anything, and they're just given fiber and probiotics and and pharmaceuticals. Well, that is guessing, it is gasping. Yeah, right, you know. And someone once said if every, if the only tool you've got is a hammer, everything will look like a nail, right. So if the only thing you've got is a prescription pad, the only thing you're going to do is prescribe pharmaceuticals. Yeah, right. So, yeah, I think it's really great that you know. People like us, we've got many tools in our toolbox.
Speaker 2:And another thing, just to add to that and I think you know, I think it was hippocrates said that you shouldn't treat the disease the person has. You should treat the person that has the disease right. Yeah, which, again, is what we're doing. Where we're, we're helping the person. We're not treating the disease right. And and I'm sure, I'm sure you know, when you're working with your clients, they're getting much better results than they were when they were, you know, working with a medical doctor oh for sure, lee.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean I, I have found the same thing as you where I've had clients come to me this is a very frequent conversation where they're like I've already had a stool test on or specific to age pylori because you kind of mentioned that in passing, like that's a classic example. I've been tested for H pylori and then I'll run one of the functional stool tests I do and it's shown up, and sometimes in high amounts, and I'm like this isn't a coincidence If you're also telling me you have acid reflux, if you're also telling me you have acid reflux, herping fullness in the stomach, these clues actually correlate and so, yeah, it's just the whole, I think, misconception that the tests that doctors run are set up to get the type of data that's going to actually get them well. And I think I mean this is a big rabbit hole. We could go down no-transcript. They see a doctor and get a procedure done and I would argue exorbitant of what we would charge when you actually do a cost by cost comparison and that system.
Speaker 1:At the same time they're charging you a lot but the goal is not to get you well, the goal is to keep you, like you said, on that merry-go-round of pharmaceuticals and continuous doctor's, because that's how insurance companies make money, at least here in the US. Right, they don't make money if people actually get well. And so it becomes this conundrum where, if people can actually logically get that, it's going to be costly to be on that merry-go-round and delude yourself that that's actually a cheaper way to solve your health issue than it actually is to just kind of, in a sense, buck it up and pay out of pocket to hire someone who can really help you solve this, because once you get to that place of resolution now it's not a problem and from there you're not going to invest the kinds of resources to solve the problem anymore.
Speaker 2:Right, like that's the way I try to explain it to people yeah, I mean that's that's looking at it from a purely financial perspective and that's important. Yeah, that's absolutely important yeah but I think even more important is to look at it from a quality of life aspect yeah, right, yes because that, you know, as I was alluding to, you know, all pharmaceuticals have negative side effects, right?
Speaker 2:They are toxic, right? Yeah, that's just the fact. And again, if I talk about the UK situation, again, because people don't feel like they're paying, but they are right, well, as long as they're paying tax and national insurance, that they're paying for it. But because their perception is it's free to come to someone like us, they see that as expensive yeah right.
Speaker 2:But when you look at it another way, if it means you know you can play with your kids, if it means you can play with your kids or you don't feel like going to sleep at 2 pm every afternoon, or you haven't got the energy to do things that are fun in life, or you're depressed because your gut microbiome is all over the place, or whatever it might be. I think it's important to understand that if you could have more of a helicopter view yes, it's going to cost you more money possibly, and it might seem like it's a lot of money but is quality of life not worth it?
Speaker 2:I've seen people in my own personal life spiral downwards in terms of quality of life once they get on that pharmaceutical merry-go-round, you know, and, and I guess the point is, it doesn't have to be that way, but, but what it does require is personal responsibility and again, we were talking about that a little bit before we started recording. It is very easy to sit back and say, well, I'll just take a tablet, right, rather than okay, I'm going to go to bed a bit earlier and yeah, I'm going to eat better food and I'm going to do exercise every day and might go, you know, go and have a sauna once or twice a week. Or, you know, do a cold plunge every morning or a cold shower or whatever it might be those things. They're outside of the comfort zone for a lot of people, right, whereas I can just pop a few pills and everything's going to be sorted. Well, I I know from the last 30 years of my, my life and my career, popping the pills hardly ever works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, the only way, the only way people can get healthy is through their, their choices and their behaviors and their beliefs. Beliefs are quite important as well when it comes to your health. So your beliefs, your choices, your behaviors. Not a pill, not a scalpel, not an injection they don't get you healthy. I think, maybe since 2021, people are starting to realize injections don't necessarily get you healthy. And you know, I think maybe since 2021, people starting to realize injections don't necessarily get you healthy. But that's a whole. That's a whole nother episode.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, no for sure. But you you hit on such a great point, lee, like it really is about valuing your quality of life, whether that's time lost because you're not functional, because you're feeling so unwell, opportunities missed to be with your friends and family, hobbies and activities you can't participate in. The average person doesn't really sit down and put a literal cost to that and I think that's a really great, just kind of exercise to do if you're in a position where you're on the fence about where do I go now I'm not getting the answers I want from my doctor. I'm struggling with my health, but I don't know if I want to invest in solving this problem on my own right. Like you have to really give a value to all those other things as well yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 2:Just a few weeks ago actually um, I won't say exactly who it was, but a family member of mine had, let's just say, a bad health incident and it was gut-related, and they were rushed to hospital and when we first got there, I finally got seen by a consultant and, you know, took the history and they said well, sounds like you've got diverticulitis. Okay, okay, fair enough. You know it's not very nice, but okay. But she said look, want to do a CT scan? And then, you know, we'll take it further. So many hours later did the CT scan and eventually the diagnosis was colitis. Right Now, we didn't have the diagnosis earlier on.
Speaker 2:And it's like 2 o'clock in the morning and this person's saying to me I'm really hungry. I'm really hungry and I'm thinking well, if you eat something, it's probably going to irritate the gut again and you're probably going to have to rush to the toilet again, right, and? And this person said what do you think? Because I said probably not a good idea, but apparently the doctor's going to come and see you soon. Let's ask the doctor, right? Yeah, so in the meantime someone come around from the hospital and said, oh, would you like something to eat? And, uh, this person decided a cheese sandwich, so with low fat spread, not butter, anyway. So they put the sandwich to the side and said I won't eat it, wait till the doctor comes around and we can ask the doctor. Now I'm thinking eating that wouldn't be a good idea, right? So we asked the doctor. Doctor says oh yeah, it should be fine. Should be fine. No, no problem.
Speaker 2:So the doctor goes away and they said to me what do you think? I said well, I don't think it'd be a good idea. But if you want to try a little bit, if you're that hungry, try a little bit and see how you feel. So so they had half the sandwich. 20 minutes later they said I feel fine, so I'll have the other, the other half. I said okay, so they have the other half. And 10 minutes later they they said I feel fine, so I'll have the other half. I said okay, so they have the other half. And 10 minutes later they rush it into the toilet. And I wanted to say I told you so but I didn't. And it just sums up that I'm sure if you'd have been in the same situation if someone had said to you at that point it was potentially diverticulitis. Right, yeah, if someone had said to you you know, at that point, it was potentially diverticulitis, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:If someone said to you you know, should I be eating anything now? I'm sure you probably would have had the same view as me. Right? Probably not a good idea, because you're probably just going to irritate the gut, especially especially if it's dairy. White bread, yeah, and. And low fat spread, right, exactly, seed oils, um, so yeah, it was just.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just so frustrated by that, but oh yeah well, and it just goes to show too like this is a pretty typical approach. I found this in the conventional system, you know. I mean I remember when I was going through man, I probably saw a handful of GI doctors, because you kind of get to a point with one and sometimes I would actually get I don't want to say combative but antagonistic, because they get frustrated right when they're not able to help you. And I mean I understand that as a practitioner now myself, it's a, it's a an understandable reaction because at heart of it, like, of course we're in this work because we want to see people get results, but there's obviously limitations to what doctors can do when they're trained very differently than you know, say, functional practices are trained, and so the truth is they're not going to be able to help everybody. They're probably not going to be able to help a lot of people with the way the system is set up, and so I would then, you know, move to the next person, because it was, you know, ultimately it would end in kind of like a not so helpful, negative experience.
Speaker 1:And I remember I got to this one GI doc. This was after my microscopic colitis diagnosis, later after the IBSD one, you know, prior to that, and we're talking about the options, and she's like, yeah, you know, the drugs shown to work for this is budesonide. And the way we do this is we start you at a high dose and it's kind of like you're going to take it for the next 12 weeks and we slowly, like, decrease the dose. And you know, back then I was at least with it enough to be like, well, yeah, but it's a steroid, so how is you know I can see how it's going to suppress the immune system and that might suppress the symptoms, but how is your weaning off Is? Is this going to help the body? Like, if the attack is still happening, what are the symptoms come back? You know, I think I even asked her that question, but she's just like, didn't have a great answer. But she's like, yeah, as far as your diet goes, I think you should just eat whatever the heck you want, just take the drug and eat whatever the heck you want.
Speaker 1:And I was like my jaw dropped. I was like, are we on the same planet right now, you know? But I wasn't gonna, you know, argue with her because I knew that was not going to be productive. But I was like I got a bit left, but I was like, oh God, like if this is the typical experience people are having. They're either super frustrated or really confused as to what they can do to help themselves, because none of this feels empowering, like none of this feels like anything at all that you're eating or doing with your life is connected to the symptoms, which is just crazy to me, right, because we know there's absolutely a connection with the food we eat. We know, and there's absolutely connection with how much sleep we get, how much, like you know, rest, rest and play we have in our lives and good social connection. All those things matter when it comes to chronic illness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. It just reminded me, actually, of someone I worked with quite a few years ago now and she had IBSD, right, but the most severe I've ever come across. So she had to live within walking distance of where she worked and she had to take a route that wasn't direct because she had to take a route where there were public toilets along the way.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 2:So she had almost constant diarrhea, right? I think she was 33 when she came to see me, if I remember right, and I think she'd had it since she was 18. So she's never been on holiday, she never went on honeymoon when she got married, right. So her quality of life was was awful. And when she went to the doctor, the only thing they offered was imodium. So so she'd go to the doctor and the doctor would say, right, okay, what you need to do is take imodium. So she'd take imodium, and then it would help for a little bit, and then it would just come back. So she'd go back to the doctor and they say, say well, now take two Imodium. And then the same thing happened. They went back and they said, okay, now take three.
Speaker 2:Now, when she came to see me, I think she was on 11 Imodium a day. Oh my gosh, wow, now I've taken Imodium once in my life, right, yeah. And the only reason I took it was I was on a course and I'd spent a lot of money and I must have had food poisoning or something on that day, and I remember thinking I do not want to be sat in my hotel whilst the course is going on. So obviously I paid for the hotel, I paid for the course. I need to do something. So I took this Imodium. I didn't have another bowel movement for two weeks. So this lady comes to me, she's taking 11 Imodium a day. She's got no quality of life, and she says you can help me. And I said, yeah, yeah, I think I probably can. So I mean, it was so simple. We start, we start getting her food right. Yeah, we find out what food she's sensitive to. We eliminate those foods. I ran a stool test and within about I can't remember exactly within a few weeks she was completely fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. And so she'd had maybe 15 years of extremely low quality of life and within weeks, her life was completely transformed Right. Her life was completely transformed right and, what was quite interesting, after several months of kind of feeling, okay, she, you know, she had a normal life. Her and her husband decided to fly to new york to have a honeymoon oh, that's hilarious, that's awesome though so.
Speaker 2:So she's in new york and she's very careful because gluten was her main trigger. Yeah, surprise, surprise, yeah, right. And she was in this hotel and I was having a meal and she ordered some fries, right, and it all came back. That's surprising, right, right, and it all came back. That's surprising, right, right. And I can't remember if she emailed me or called me or something from New York and told me and I said, what were they cooked in? And she's like oil. I was like, right, okay, well, that in itself could potentially cause inflammation, right, and I said what else were they cooking in the oil? Did you check, like, were they cooking other gluten containing foods in the oil? And she's like I didn't think about that. So she went and asked them and they said, yeah, they were cooking all sorts in there, yeah, yeah. So I said, well, you've been glutened, right, yeah, and so that was an important lesson for her.
Speaker 2:But rather than you know, that went on for 15 years. Within a day or two, she was fine again and now she's got a normal life, and it was as simple as get the diet right, reduce or eliminate the foods that you're sensitive to. And I can't remember exactly what we did. We did some stuff to to help with the gut microbiome. It was really simple and she'd lived all these years a terrible I don't want to say a terrible life, but a very inconvenient life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, where she, you know she couldn't just go off and do social things, as I said, she couldn't go on holiday. Um, I think she was probably very lucky the company she worked for were very kind of you know, they really helped her and you know other companies would have probably fired her, you know, because of what she couldn't do. Um, so it's very frustrating, isn't it? When you? When you see someone going down that medical route and they're not getting the answers and you know their, their standard of living is really poor and it could be someone that's got tons of money but they've still got a poor quality of life when actually, if you do the right assessment and you find out what's causing it and you eliminate the cause, it can turn around very, very quickly yeah, oh, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:I had a client not quite as desperate as yours but similar last last fall I worked with who, um, was willing to actually trial eliminating a number of foods, but wheat is always usually the place I I recommend clients start, and she was. She was really game for it and she kind of found through self-experimentation because she had some kids that were busy and they were doing a lot of just running around with those activities and so she had moments where she wasn't perfect, but I think she had done enough gluten avoidance that when she would get gluten she's like, oh my gosh, it's the wheat, it is the wheat, it has been the wheat all along. And I was like, yay, now we've got some definitive data Right. And so she self-reinforced just how important that was then as a probable lifelong you know just dietary habits she was going to have to maintain just to keep her gut working really well.
Speaker 1:And I was so pleased that that was kind of the main trigger for her as well, because you know, depending on who we might be working with, sometimes the gut can get to such a state that it can be other foods as well and that can be like a whole nother process. But yeah, I mean, it's amazing how sometimes it is just that simple, like you start in a very logical foundational place and especially if the client's like more than willing to try, you know, taking one of the worst food triggers out, and then they see improvement pretty quickly. It's like they're sold Like you know you don't. It's like your eyes are open and you're never going to go back to the way it was Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely so, to the way it was right. Yeah, yeah, absolutely so. So we've been talking quite a bit about root causes. Now you've got a program called tame your gut. Yes, can you perhaps talk a little bit more about root cause testing, kind of what it is and how it helps clients identify the real source of their symptoms?
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Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. The approach I take with the root cause testing in my program is pretty individualized in that, you know, especially being a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner, we have a lot of different potential root cause tests we could choose from that give us different data points that we can help rule in or rule out possibilities that we can see that link with symptoms and clients. And so the way I kind of assess my clients in the beginning is you know some of it is is just subjective assessment like okay, how, how are you rating these symptoms? I use a tool called the nutrition assessment questionnaire which actually goes back to my nutrition therapy days and then also asks a lot of questions about just their, their home. You know, what do they know about the age of their home? You know stress points or stress levels, their relationships, just a lot of kind of like whole person centric data to form a really good impression as to what I think might be some possible root cause things driving the whole symptom picture. And I will say, because I have served mostly people with gut issues, whether that's IBS or something more serious like on the IBD spectrum, we're always going to do a really good stool test, right and, of course, different than what the doctor would run, as we were talking earlier. So that's kind of like non-negotiable, always one of the tests I run on all of my gut clients. Now, beyond that, it can kind of vary depending on the other components of what's going on with them. So in certain cases I might want to actually look at different hormone balances that might be related to having, you know, stress levels that are not in balance. Right, I'm going to use very simple terms here so it's hopefully pretty understandable. But you know we can actually look at stress hormone profiles through certain testing. We can look at sex hormone profiles. That can give us a lot of information about the health of the nervous system and, you know, also a little bit of insight into, maybe, what may be going on with the immune system, because we know if the immune system's out of whack we're often going to see stress hormones out of whack as well and sex hormones out of whack.
Speaker 1:I will sometimes look at thyroid as well, because that can actually secondarily either get impacted by longstanding gut issues, especially if there's absorption issues or problems with, say like liver function. The liver is where you know, thyroid hormone needs to convert into its active form. And so if thyroid gets out of whack either, typically what we see is, you know, thyroid function kind of going down we call that hypothyroid, right or function low thyroid function. That can impact, you know, not only just how well can that person make digestive fluids like stomach acid and enzymes, but also the motility through the gut, which of course, could be directly correlated with different gut symptoms, whether that's diarrhea, constipation, right. So that's a big piece of it in certain cases.
Speaker 1:Other testing I will sometimes do will look at energy production in the cells or even metabolic function toxicities, right. That is I'm finding just more and more a background piece to a lot of clients, especially the clients that may have worked with another functionality trained practitioner before, who's done some foundational work, or they've been working really hard on their diet and I'm looking at what they're eating and I'm like you know you're not in too bad a place. We can make some adjustments and improve this more. But you know I'm getting the sense that there could actually be a toxic load that could be driving some of what's going on with the gut. So there's special testing that you know I can do to kind of confirm like are we seeing signs of, you know high toxin metabolites coming out. You know, usually it's like urine testing we're going to use to check that. So I would say, like, in general, those are kind of the suites of tests that I'm looking at for the gut health camp, but always, always, we're going to be looking at the gut itself through a stool test just to get a sense of how is digestion working. Are we seeing any issues where you know this person may or may not be breaking down their food well and that could be a contributing factor? Are we seeing problems with, you know, balance of the bacteria good or bad in the gut that we might need to address? Are we seeing other bad gut bugs that shouldn't be there that are showing up? Are we seeing, you know, any signs of immune dysregulation which we can get from stool testing? Are we seeing signs of oh, I forgot to mention weed exposure?
Speaker 1:I don't always do a lot of food sensitivity testing in my practice simply because I really got good at helping clients from you know a diet nutrient density improvement as well as just elimination diet use standpoint. As a nutrition therapy practitioner, like having that strong background in just teaching clients like how to eat in a way that incorporates whole foods and then you know, taking the biggest food triggers out that tend to aggravate the gut A lot of times. I have a lot of good success with that. But in certain cases, if I'm working with clients that need to see that black and white evidence like they just need to know meat is a problem for them we could run a special test. The one I like to run is called the wheatat Zoomer, which looks at sensitivity at a very specific kind of level. That can give us very specific feedback and I've also found it helpful in cases where we might just want to check to make sure that they're accurately and successfully avoiding wheat. Like they think they're doing it. They think they've been doing it for a long time, but I might suspect, based on what they're describing about the dietary habits of the other members in their household.
Speaker 1:Or this is a person who goes out to eat frequently, kind of like you mentioned your client you worked with who got gluten when she went on her honeymoon, right.
Speaker 1:Like that can happen very frequently, if not every time a person goes out to eat and if someone's been going out to eat a lot and then they say but I eat gluten free or wheat free at home, I still have a very healthy suspicion they're getting gluten frequently, whether they know it or not, and so we can run that type of test to kind of confirm that and then use the results to really say, hey, we might really have to shore this up or take extra precautions.
Speaker 1:If you're going to go out to eat, you might have to make some more specific choices around where you go, or there's some specific things we can do to offset the micro dosing of gluten you're getting. You know if you are eating from a shared kitchen with other gluten foods that are getting prepared on site at that restaurant. So I would say in a nutshell, those are the tests that I tend to work with, and then I kind of cater it to each client's specific picture and how they're presenting, so that we can hopefully get data that will help us really understand the deeper triggers and problems going on, without running the whole kitchen sink of testing on them at the same time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, it comes back to if you're not assessing're guessing, right, exactly, I mean, there's certainly. You can certainly, in most people, achieve massive improvements just by working on what we call the six foundations. So, positive thinking, correct breathing, hydration, nutrition, movement, sleep yeah, right, sleep, slash circadian rhythm. But then in some people they need more than that, right, and and I would say most, most people that come to me I always start with the foundations. I don't go beyond the foundations until they've got them nailed and then, once they've got all those in place, then we could start to look at other things, right, yeah, because in some instances those foundations are enough, and you know I I don't ever want a client to invest in a test that they don't need, right? I always try and keep testing to a minimum, supplementation to a minimum. At the end of the day, once someone gets healthy, they don't really need that stuff. But for some people, when they're first starting out, then we often do need to know a little bit more.
Speaker 2:As you know, we're taught to be health detectives, right? Yes, you know. As, as you know, we're taught to be health detectives, right? Yes, you know. And when I'm working with someone, quite often I explain to them you know, you need to look at me like a detective, right and? And you and your life is the is the crime scene, and I just need to gather as much evidence as possible so I can find out who the culprit is, or the culprits, and then we can decide what to do with them, which again is very different from the medical model, right? Oh, there's the crime scene, we're just going to put a bomb in it. That's going to solve the problem, right?
Speaker 1:No, I mean I'm totally with you, lee, like we think alike in that and I think because I was originally trained as a nutrition therapy practitioner it was the foundations mostly I mean very diet-heavy program. I mean it was rooted in ancestral diets and we looked at the work of Weston A Price who was this holistic dentist that went around the world and looked at different populations with different native diets but found unequivocally it didn't matter so much that they ate all the same things but if they stuck with their native whole foods diet they had impeccable dental health and whole body health, right Like it. So you know it definitely has this bio-individuality component to it. But you know just that foundational piece alone for sure I was seeing great results with that with people. And you know it's interesting because sometimes I get clients that are big, just suckle supplement like addicts. You know they go to the supplement store that's in the middle of town and you know every month it's like what can I try now to try this and try that?
Speaker 1:I've had clients come in with like did you not bags of like 25 things and they want to pull these bottles out in the consult we're doing and have me look at the stuff and I'm just like you know this is less important to me because at the end of the day, the goal is not to be on 25 things, like we're going to use things if we need to use things to correct what we find on testing, but ultimately like we're not going to out supplement a bad diet, like we have to look at your diet before we do anything.
Speaker 1:And I think it kind of gets back to just like, culturally and again because of the way that the medical system is, people are just looking for this quick fix. It's like, well, this is better than a drug, so I'll just try this right. It's this kind of like knee jerk thing. I think that seems very tempting because, of course, if it was a quick silver bullet fix, who wouldn't want that Right? But that just isn't. That isn't the case and I think it's these foundations, honestly, where people need the most help and support and coaching right To get those working well for them and supportive their health. But they often underestimate how important those things are. You know, as part of coming to us, they don't necessarily recognize how important these things are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think, not just how important those things are, but how effective they are as well. Getting to bed earlier Well, surely that's too simple, right? But you know again, you know this but the time you go to bed and the time you wake up has a massive effect on your hormonal system. It does Right, but we should wake up close to the time when the sun comes up and we should really be going to sleep close to when the sun goes down.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:But there's a lot of people that are almost, almost the entire other way around yeah right and that and that has a massive effect, not just your hormonal system, but your nervous system as well for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just getting that morning sunlight and you know, and that's why we're seeing like I think, an explosion and like red light therapy and some of these adjunct things, you know, these tools to ground, I mean and I'm not saying those are bad, they can be great as an adjunct but this is available to us naturally right. Like we're adapted to be outside more, we're adapted to get that morning sunlight in our eyes, and again at dusk, when the sun's coming down, we're adapted to walk barefoot on the ground, you know, at least when it's not winter time, like it is here for me and Yuli. But, yeah, you know, I mean, it's just we've gotten away from having that lifestyle that our ancestors did years ago, where they were more connected to the outdoor environment and to nature, because so many of our jobs also necessitate that we're indoors.
Speaker 1:We're seated under artificial lighting, right, and in Wi-Fi, you know, and in wi-fi you know crazy environments that you know. People don't necessarily take that into account or believe that's a thing, but it's definitely not the way life was years ago and you have to really question like is this really helpful for the human body to get bombarded by all of this different? You know, frequency and radiation from all these electronic gadgets that are constantly running in our homes and workplaces, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, I mean, we are electromagnetic beings. And why? Why would a unnatural or what was now kind of being called non-native electromagnetic field not adversely affect our bodies when we are electromagnetic? And you know what? Again, what I've observed over the last almost three decades is the further someone moves away from their natural environment, the more sick they get. Yeah, right, you know. It's interesting again, if you look at the work of western a price, when he found native tribes that were living in their natural way, there was practically zero disease. Yeah, right, there was no, no depression of no heart disease, there was no cancer, there was no diabetes, there was no dementia. They were, they were robust, they were strong, they were happy. Yeah, definitely didn't need a dentist, definitely didn't need a mortgage, right, yeah, and you can look at it in the other way that you know, the further away you work, you move away from that environment, the more sick you tend to be, right yeah, yeah so I definitely noticed when I lived in tokyo.
Speaker 1:That was probably the biggest major city I've ever lived in it something psychologically just wasn't the same as it is when I'm back home in my native state of Wisconsin. There's a lot, I mean there's obviously. I live in a city here too, but you can easily get to nature, you can easily get to open spaces, right, and Tokyo was like one big concrete jungle. I mean you would have to get on a train and ride it for 45 minutes to an hour to get out of that and you got used to it the longer you were there. But I, thinking back, it was like, yeah, there were just days I felt downright depressed and sad and didn't know what was wrong and you really have to wonder like is it this environment I'm constantly in every day, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, again, just to kind of emphasize the point, there's someone on instagram and for the how can I best describe her? She's like a body positivity person for acne, right? So she says you know, you're still beautiful if you've got acne, there's nothing wrong with acne, it's perfectly normal, etc. Etc. Right, yeah, that's fine, that's her view. But if acne is perfectly normal, why do people living in their natural environment not have acne?
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Right, if you go and find a hunter-gatherer tribe now, there are a few still out there you will not find any of them, and I'm talking about the teenagers as well. You won't find any of them with acne, right, and it's because they're living in alignment with their natural environment. And you can talk about any animal, right? Right? What happens to killer whales when they go out of their captivity? Right? Yeah, their fin flips over, doesn't it? That's just one sign that we can see that they're not healthy. Anyway, let's crack on. So you know, many people might believe that. You know, resolving chronic digestive issues requires extreme, restrictive diets. That's going to have to, you know, have to do for the rest of their life. What myths about gut healing do you? Wish you could dispel? Attention, all radical health rebels, are you ready to uncover the truth? The authorities don't want you to know.
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Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think, just to speak to that extreme diet piece, you know, again, there's such a spectrum of thinking around this and again there's a lot of people that have made huge names for themselves doing specific types of extreme diets right, and I mean, all the way I was trained I would argue that we need as many foods in our diet as the body can healthfully tolerate, right, whole foods especially. So you know, again, kind of the simple template that I think makes sense in every situation is if you're eating a real, recognizable food, generally speaking that's good, generally speaking that's good. Now the reality is, with the gut health camp, there definitely are people I found just in my experience and then my own personal experience living at that and saying that they're going to be able to get to a place of being able to eat anything and everything for the rest of their lives. If we quote, unquote, heal their gut is probably not realistic. So I guess the real kind of strategy there is to get basically get to a place where their diet can be as expansive as possible and they find joy in food and they have as much variety as possible but we're still able to maintain relatively normal, healthy gut function and bowel movements right. And so the strategy I always take with the majority of clients in the beginning is that, hey, you're coming to me because you're struggling, and the majority of them, honestly, are on a standard American diet, just a standard mostly processed foods diet. And most of them do recognize deep down that their diet is playing a role and they understand they're going to have to make some changes. And so that process kind of looks like okay, let's sit down and take a look at what you're actually eating. I'm going to start to lay out some possible changes and suggestions and let's see what you're open to doing first, and then we start to kind of walk down that path and so I kind of let them also take the lead in terms of like.
Speaker 1:Like the client I was mentioning, I worked with last fall, who was discovering that wheat was her big trigger, you know, she was able to feel like her digestive system was normalizing nicely and she was feeling better, energy wise, brain function, wise, the whole nine with getting weed out. And then also, what she didn't report but I could tell by looking at her food journal was her food quality had also improved, like she wasn't eating as many processed, nutrient-poor foods. She was actually incorporating some of the better nutrient-dense options that I had kind of, you know, introduced her to or given her some ideas for, hey, for healthy snacks, like here's some great things that my kids really like, we like in our household, like you know, if this looks interesting to you, give it a go, you know. And so she had actually made a lot of just like nutrition quality swaps along with getting weed out, and that landed her nicely in a spot where I could tell she was very happy with, you know, being able to maintain that and she didn't feel ultra restricted. And we talked about, you know, if you take vacations, if you travel, from a weed avoidance standpoint, we're going to have to talk about some supports that you can use and it might take a little, you know, researching where you want to eat in advance and making some choices in advance as to where you're going to have your meals out so that we can minimize those exposures. She was totally okay with that.
Speaker 1:So you know, on the other end, some people find that they end up having to remove more foods than wheat and it really kind of becomes this individual thing where, you know, with every client I work with, we try to find the sweet spot of you know where we can get them diet wise to a place where their gut is functioning well but they also don't feel unusually psychologically stressed or, you know, I would even say psychological stress at all. Like you know, they might find that at home they're maintaining a certain way of eating that keeps their gut functioning well and then when they go out with friends and family whenever that is once a week, a couple of times a month that they're able to incorporate foods they wouldn't normally eat, they may or may not have a little bit of a setback, but that's okay. That's kind of that sweet spot for them to kind of have the lifestyle and social connections they want and still feel like they've maintained their health gains. So I guess, to kind of answer that question, lee, I would say I don't think that being in a super restricted diet without doing deeper testing on the gut to get to the root of like, are we seeing parasites, are we seeing bacterial imbalance, are we seeing digestive dysfunction right, like those things, in my opinion should also be part of that deeper process of discovery to really figure out okay, can we correct some of these things so that you're not stuck on this really limited diet in order to maintain good gut function, because I find if it's that restrictive, that can make it very, very hard for that person long-term to go out and have more of a normal life where they're able to go out to eat with friends and family or travel and then find places that they can eat reasonably. That I suppose if it was a carnivore diet you could just get a steak, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:It can get very tricky, I think, in the long haul. And then my other concern with something that's that extreme too is are we setting the body up for nutrient deficiencies and macronutrient deficiencies that could cause secondary issues like not having enough carbohydrates, which is often the one that can happen with the gut health camp, because these are folks that often are having more sensitivities to carbohydrate types of foods. They'll go in the direction of reducing, reducing, eliminating, eliminating. Then we get to a place where there's not much of those types of foods in the diet. Severely restricting carbohydrates can be a big problem too for the long haul health-wise.
Speaker 1:So that's where I think, using like a good stool test in combination with maybe some other testing if it seems really complex, to get the deeper answers as to like what are these other stressors that are leading to these food sensitivities in the first place? That makes sense, like the truth of it is some people are just never going to tolerate wheat or dairy. You know they have genetic snips we call them like polymorphisms that make them more likely, in the presence of wheat, to mount an immune response. And so that is just what it is. And if you know, we figure this out either experientially or they've done some genetic testing and they discover this. Then we have to make that decision about.
Speaker 1:Is this a food we take out lifelong for the greater good of your health and for you being able to maintain higher function? Right, and most people, I find, are willing to do that if they're really health forward people, right. But we've got this other camp where some people get into kind of the DIY. Let me figure this out Now. I'm doing carnivore for a year and I feel great. But are you going to feel great five years down the road if you're still doing that diet? So that's kind of the common ends of the camp that I see with the whole restrictive diet piece of it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah I mean I kind of look at it from a practitioner point of view is that the more unwell someone is, the more out of balance they are. Initially they might need to be a little bit more I don't like to use the word, but I can't think of a better one right now restrictive.
Speaker 1:Yes, I agree with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah you know, if someone's coming to me and their condition is not as bad, then they can maybe be a little bit more. Let's call it flexible, right, yeah, but beyond that, what? What I do and this is something that we're probably going to talk about on your podcast next week, yeah is it's setting core values. Right, and you can set core values around a number of different subjects, but one of them that's really important, I believe, is around your diet. So so for me, my core values around diet is that I only ever buy organic food. I don't, I don't ever buy anything that's not organic, unless it's wild fish. I would never buy organic fish because it's farmed. It's not a good idea. I always drink two, three liters of really good quality water every day. I eat right from a metabolic type, but occasionally I might go out and have an Indian meal or a Thai meal or something along those lines, where I'm not sticking to it a hundred percent, and if the next day I've got some kind of symptomology because of what I've eaten, I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, that's, that's within my core values. Now, if I was eating out every week, that would become a problem for my health. I wouldn't be able. That wouldn't do me any good, right.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't eat out very often, but I think everyone needs to get clear on what their own core values is. And what I say to my clients is there's no such thing as failure, only feedback, right? So you know, someone might say to me oh, I went out the other day and I had cake and I had this and I had that. And I look at their diet sheets and, yeah, the next morning, you know, they were constipated or they had diarrhea, or their skin broke out, or they couldn't sleep that night, or they had no energy the next day. And they're like oh, I'm really sorry, I'm really sorry and I'm like look, don't apologize, it's got nothing to do with me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what you've got is some feedback from the foods that you ate. Now, when we get feedback, that's great because it's an opportunity to learn and grow. So then the next question would be okay. So when you're in that social situation next time, what do you want to do? Do you want to do the same thing again and get the same response? And if you do, I'll support that or can you? Or would you want to do something else? And if you wanted to do something else, how? How would you do that because you know in social situations are there are lots of social pressure, right?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Now I don't do social pressure right. No one can socially pressurize me into doing anything, right. But I know not everyone's like that. Some people don't like feeling the left out or the odd one out or whatever. Wow. But then that now becomes a completely different subject. It's like okay, so why? Why are you so concerned about what someone else thinks of you? Because that's got nothing to do with you exactly. That's just their, their view, right? So that's another whole can of worms which I didn't want to, don't really want to go down now, because maybe we'll talk about that on your podcast. Yeah, absolutely. Um, something we've mentioned is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, because maybe we'll talk about that on your podcast. Yeah, absolutely, something we've mentioned is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Can you explain why addressing SIBO alone isn't always enough and what deeper root issues might be driving chronic gut symptoms below the surface?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So SIBO is a great, I feel like trending area in gut health and I feel like, as of the last decade, I mean I still get a lot of people asking me questions about it and I mean it definitely is a real thing and I think I mentioned earlier that upwards of 70% to 80% of all IBS has an underlying small intestinal bacterial overgrowth component to it. Now, things I can kind of share with you from my training under Alison Seebecker and her SIBO, pro course you know, things I didn't realize before I took that course is upwards of I think 75% of all autoimmune disease, believe it or not, also has SIBO underlying it. And even things like rheumatoid arthritis, where there may or may not be gut, overt gut symptoms present, still can have SIBO as a component, kind of driving some of that inflammatory dysfunction from the gut of it right. And I've seen client testing where, even from other practitioners, where they've come to work with me and they brought these tests over and they're like, oh, my practitioner had me do a lactose breath test and they've got you know the client I'm thinking of had RA and you know of course it was positive. She's like I'm just so stumped, I have no gut symptoms and I'm like, yeah, that's the interesting thing about that condition. It doesn't necessarily produce overt gut symptoms in everyone. But I think just that statistic where we're seeing enough correlation also in the autoimmune camp does kind of beg the question of is this by itself a standalone disorder that's just kind of, I guess, developing out of nowhere in the gut? Or is it developing secondary to other dysfunctions that are setting the stage for something like SIBO and so sort of?
Speaker 1:What I have just found to be true and working within the gut population is when I look at either a stool test and actually I don't do a lot of lactulose breath testing either, because I find that there's enough correlation with bacterial imbalances and stool testing that if I'm seeing signs on the stool test that make me suspicious SIBO could be part of it, it's not as relevant that we need to go down that rabbit hole or check that type of information. I have enough from the stool test that I'm pretty confident, if we run a protocol to help bring things into balance, that either the potential SIBO that might be there will also, you know, self-correct or it won't. And I guess what I find is when I'm looking at just signs of bacterial overgrowth in the gut folks. Almost always there's going to be at the same time signs of upper GI weakness. So things like low stomach acid, low enzyme output or bile quality issues are not enough bile getting produced and so all of those things, as you know right, can set the stage for just poor digestion, larger particles of food making it through the intestines, which will start to become easy substrate then for bacteria to either migrate up Usually that's where they're coming from is the colon, migrating up into the small intestine, feeding off of that food and then kind of having a party and creating inflammation and the gut people. It's going to show up usually as bloating or constipation or diarrhea or sometimes even abdominal pain too. And so correcting that upper digestive issue, that digestive weakness or dysfunction that's happening always, should be a piece of trying to actually work on bringing that SIBO issue back into balance for the for the long haul right.
Speaker 1:And the other interesting thing about it and this was again kind of a factoid I learned in the SIBO pro course is that like two-thirds of all SIBO is chronic and recurring as well, and so you have to ask yourself okay, if it's coming back, assuming you could effectively self-treat using an herbal protocol or you go see a GI doc and they give you something like rifaximin and it clears it. Like what are the circumstances or factors lending to it coming back again? Right, and it would make sense that if digestion is weak, that stage that setting up the environment for that bacteria to overgrow and populate, right, it's just going to get reset again if we're not correcting the digestive dysfunction. So that's a big piece of it. And then there's also this notion that you know again, I think this kind of ties into just overall the gut as an environment and how conducive it is to good balance and, you know, having an immune system that's responsive when it needs to be responsive, but not overly responsive, right. Like not an overvigilant immune system, which we can often see in autoimmune conditions. Just any gut environment that's prone to the growth of more inflammatory strains of bacteria, I find also tends to favor things like SIBO, right. So this is kind of more of that.
Speaker 1:Like I was almost going to touch on this earlier because you had said something that made me think of this, that pathogen versus terrain type of health theory, right, Like you can either look at, do we go after all these suspicious pathogens and these bad guys we find on testing and just like, pound the heck out of them and get them out of there and then this person will get better. Or do we focus on the host themselves, including, like, what is that person as a whole person doing to facilitate the gut as a whole to function well? And that gets back to some of the foundations again as well, like are they sleeping enough? Are they overly stressed? Are they getting good social connections? Is their quality of thought healthy? They're not beating themselves up internally all the time? Those types of things that are a little bit harder to measure.
Speaker 1:But I do believe that in cases where we see a lot of SIBO show up, there's more of just that terrain problem that's very conducive to allowing it to kind of like, continue to take a stronghold, and it's almost like I don't know.
Speaker 1:I think of it as kind of like a bit of a like parasitic type of thing where, even though we're talking about bacteria, I mean it's overgrowth of an organism that's stealing nutrients from the body and essentially going to leach energy, and that's kind of what a parasite does too.
Speaker 1:And so I find it fascinating just to think about, like you know, contextually, like are we seeing maybe correlation with the person as a whole and some of the circumstances of their lifestyle that might allow for that type of infection, if you will, to take a strong hold and drain them right. And so I know this is a little bit more in that mind-body connection space I'm sort of coming from, but I think to really get at a problem like SIBO and fully bring it back into balance, it's a lot more than just taking an herbal protocol or pharmaceutical protocol to clear it and that it's just, you know, goes away for good, like I rarely see that. So I think if it's there automatically, the question should be like what are the deeper things that are allowing this to continue to kind of reoccur in the body, even if we're able to effectively eradicate it?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's interesting. I I did some study with Alison Seabrook quite a long time ago, yeah, and more recently I did some training with Jason Horlick, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so he's. I've done two episodes with Jason actually, and the first one we did was on SIBO nice and at the moment it's the third most downloaded episode that I've done, I bet, and I found the training that I did with Jason really helped me help clients with SIBO. But it's going back to the terrain versus germ theory aspect. That's something that's I've really looked into more in the last four years four, five, yeah, five years now since I read Tom Cowan's book Contagion Theory yeah, um, and then having read, uh, the final pandemic by sam and mark bailey, and then I've read can you catch a cold by daniel roy class, and even, um, the book dissolving illusions. And again, I've had roman, uh, bistrianic, on the podcast.
Speaker 2:It actually doesn't come out until next month but, um, it's really interesting looking at that work and then comparing it to, I guess, what's the current thinking amongst functional medicine, and I'm starting to think it might be slightly different from what we're seeing. Yeah, in terms of, because I still think in functional medicine there's still a little bit of room for germ theory, and I'm starting to question whether there is room for germ theory, yeah, at all, you know, because I think a lot of and I've thought this for a long time and I think a lot of people still do, is that there's a gray area between terrain and germ theory, that you know if you're healthy then you won't get an infectious disease. But actually when you look at the science, there's no science that actually backs up the evidence of any infectious disease. So fascinating, which is quite interesting. So I need to dig further into this.
Speaker 1:But I've got some kind of thoughts into my head as to what might be right, but I definitely definitely need to do some more digging yeah, it's very nuanced and I feel like the way we're trained as FDNPs is to is to find the hidden stressors in the gut and I do think there is a part of that. Like I would never discount that. It's definitely a part of my process. But I kind of like you Leigh, like I haven't dug that deep into the literature as you have, but I've listened to enough of it, especially during the COVID era that I've really, and also I would also say too from some of the Chinese medicine training I've done, because I didn't mention this but I did go through some Chinese herbal training about eight years ago and it was fascinating, just to just to learn how that medicine works.
Speaker 1:I decided not to really get super smart on that and incorporate that into the work I do, but it taught me a lot and it taught me different ways of looking at health in the body and I would say there's a lot of just correlation with kind of how Chinese medicine really views. I would say that system really does favor more so the terrain theory and it's all about getting you know. Basically they talk about chi or kind of this life force, energy, that kind of circulates in the system, getting that individual to as robust a state as possible in the attempt of, kind of like, having the body itself deal with these problems that are presenting Right. And so um, I I start to, I'm starting to question you know how much we need to be pounding pathogens, or let's just say, like it can be hard with a lot of, I think functional approaches can look like conventional approaches, just revamped as supplements instead of drugs, if you know what I mean, right.
Speaker 1:Like it's very hyper-focused on going after all the quote-unquote problems in the body, but almost to the exclusion of everything else, which I would say is really missing the mark, right? Because then we're discounting everything else that makes the body able to function well, and a lot of that is this foundational stuff like sleep, diet, relationships, mindset. You know all the things you were just mentioning, so, yeah, yeah, again, I did.
Speaker 2:Actually, I haven't interviewed dr mark bailey and I've interviewed daniel royitas and we have discussed these topics. Yeah, um, and if anyone wants to listen to those episodes, that's um. You need to be a subscriber to the podcast to listen to those, or if you want to watch the first half, you can watch it on my rumble channel. It's just radical health rebel. But what's quite interesting is that you know that that group of doctors and scientists, you know what they're. What they're starting to question is you know, if you've got a parasite, you've got a fungal infection. Well, they wouldn't even call it infection.
Speaker 2:If you've got a parasite, fungus, a so-called pathogenic bacteria, are they not there for a particular reason? Are they there to actually help you, right? So, for instance, you know fungus and parasites. They can actually protect you from heavy metals that are in the system. Yes, so if you then kill them, then you're actually going to release those heavy metals back into your system, right? Yeah, so their kind of view is there's no such thing as infection, there's no such thing as pathogens in terms of microbes, and, and there is no evidence that viruses exist either, which is another, another rabbit hole to go down, if anyone wants to go down. But again, I've done, I've done two episodes on that and it's a really, really interesting subject, but, um, the science just isn't there. That they, they exist, which I know for a lot of people is a, is a bit of a what we would call a melon twister exactly yeah, so got one more question for you, okay.
Speaker 2:So in your own healing journey you know you've discovered how emotional and energetic factors contribute to physical health. How do you integrate that understanding into your work with clients?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's great. We're kind of touching on this, I think, a little bit with the whole terrain. You know, germship theory thing and you know, and I think this would also kind of tread into the area of, okay, what do we do? Say like this will come up in my world sometimes in testing with clients, when we've done all of the things right, all of the things that should work theoretically right and they've run a protocol, should have theoretically helped support the gut to come into better balance and say we run a stool testing, we're still seeing a lot of the same issues.
Speaker 1:Now sometimes it could be something deeper, like toxicities or metals or what have you, and some of those organisms are buffering that 100%.
Speaker 1:But what I've found and I've actually found this to be true in my own personal gut health journey is that all energy and I guess we can say it this way like all energy in the body, eventually, when it's concentrated in a certain way, will manifest physically right. And so I know this is kind of like a woo-woo area to sort of talk about. But if you look at just how you know, there's definitely been research done on even different cancer, like people who have gotten cancer repeatedly and just off the top of my head, I can't think of the different researchers that I've come across and read about in the past, but they've shown that, you know, these certain energetic imprints will continue to show up and that in cases where these folks with cancer were successfully treated and the cancer was in remission, if the energetic blueprint of the body doesn't change, almost always the cancer would manifest again right, and so I find that really fascinating, and even, as I've actually had.
Speaker 2:I've actually had someone on my podcast talking about that oh well, there you go, perfect yeah yeah, quite early. I think it's episode five, I think very early on. So the guy called Pauline Dirtz. That's kind of what he does. He works on um the emotional trauma cause of of cancer.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, I've done a couple of episodes with him actually, so yeah, that's definitely a thing. So yeah, sorry, carry on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no, no, absolutely. Well, I'm glad that you've got that on. That would be a great episode for listeners to go listen to, because I found that so fascinating when I came across that. And then I was just going to mention that, even as of like the last year, I was introduced via another practitioner to like German New Medicine. I don't know if that's something you're familiar with as well, lee.
Speaker 2:Have you had yeah, well, interestingly, paul Linders talks about it a lot. Oh, really, oh, same person, funny. Well, the reason, the reason he talks about it is because and again don't want to go too far into this he's been accused of kind of kind of doing it but not doing German new medicine, and so he's kind of rebutted that and said no, you're mistaken If you think that's what I do. What I do is different. So anyway, yeah, sorry, carry on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I don't remember the doctor, but it was a German doctor who had done different studies, let's put that, but like lots of studies on again, I think it was cancer population of many, many patients and was able to correlate the different types of cancer and the different organs of the body that were affected with different regions of the brain and then kind of map out how, from like a almost an evolutionary perspective, like a survival perspective, that there there was a stressor or a trauma that there could always, that whole manifestation of the physical disease could be traced back to, based on the, the brain's interpretation. And so, like the example I remember that, um, I listened to when I was first kind of coming across. This was like, say, it was like a husband and wife and the husband got into a fatal car accident and this is a trauma now for her. Her brain could interpret that event in multiple different ways. And if it was interpreted as like, first and foremost, like a loss of security, one region of the brain would get, you know, triggered, and then that could manifest, you know, because of the meaning associated with that, to potentially this type of physical, like disease development. If it was more so like a an emotional trauma, right, because they were really close, that would have a different meaning, right. And so there were all these different ways that these different events or traumas that you know we've been through, and the crazy part of this is is it can go back generationally too, right? So this kind of gets into this whole intergenerational theory of disease or trauma, where you know, events that even our great grandparents and beyond have gone through can get encoded in DNA and then transferred down through the generations. Dna and then transfer down through the generations and that potential can live within us as individuals and, under the right circumstances, can get activated and that can be a piece.
Speaker 1:I found this is just sort of what I've deduced through my own personal experience with my own illness and just working with lots of people who have not been easily responsive to a lot of the foundational stuff is I almost always come to the conclusion there's a deeper energetic, emotional or trauma piece, whether it's their you know lifetime they're aware of it or not or it's something that's been encoded in them, that's been activated, that wasn't resolved in the past, that needs to be worked on and resolved and actualized for their body to physically kind of get to a place where they're able to heal fully Right, and I don't myself personally have like a wonderful tool for that. But this is where, again, having the eye for it and then being able to offer up resources for people to look into, if you know they feel that intuitively that might be a piece of it and you know we have that conversation but I do feel, just on a very basic level, being able to use somatic tools to try to calm the nervous system, you know, know how to be conscious of when you're getting into a stress, stress state, is super, super helpful as part of the process of helping the body heal. And so the system that I'm training and use is heart math and again, it's it's not a very difficult thing to learn. It's that's kind of why I like it. It's a tool in the toolbox, like some clients really love it when I teach them.
Speaker 1:Is it going to resolve intergenerational trauma? Probably not, but it will definitely start to develop more body awareness, consciousness and if clients are willing to actually engage and use the tool, they can effectively bring down the stress response pretty quickly doing it. So I feel everybody should have some tool of that type in their toolbox if they're on, you know a path to healing a chronic illness, because I just find time and time again there's almost always some sort of nervous system dysregulation, stress, trauma, you know that type of thing going on in the background and then with that energetic or emotional imbalance as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I completely agree. And again, we were talking before we started recording and I was saying to you, I do the emotion code. And then I actually had dr bradley nelson on the show as well to talk about the emotion code, yeah, which is pretty cool. So when I went through my training I think it's just over two years ago I finished my training on the emotion code and, um, I was thinking how, how am I going to incorporate that into my current like packages or programs that I offer clients, yeah, and so, oh, thinking I don't really want to put my prices up, how am I going to incorporate it? So I, I just offer that as part of the package.
Speaker 2:I didn't put my rates up at all, even though for some people I might be spending twice as much time with them. So I found it a really good add. Add-on to you know my services that I already do. Some people, you know, just come and do the emotion code on its own. That's fine and they just pay per session. Um, but having incorporated it into my other work, you know nutrition and lifestyle coaching and functional medicine and exercise and hands-on therapy yeah, it works really nicely, I would say I love that, yeah, and I'm very curious about that.
Speaker 1:I've come across it, but I'm not super familiar with it.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I've heard really good things, though, for sure, and it does work on generational trauma as well oh, does it awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so well worth that, that investment in that training for you?
Speaker 2:yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, I I thought it was really good, yeah, and there's other levels. It's the body code and you've got the um. I think it's belief code as well. I haven't done those yet, but okay, did you do the basic yeah, yeah, I've just done the emotion code. Yeah, sweet. Yeah, I will do the others at some point.
Speaker 1:But yeah only 24 hours in a day oh, I know too much going on.
Speaker 2:Right, got a lot going on yeah, and talking about lots going on. What's what's next for you?
Speaker 1:oh yeah, well, I'm kind of just doing my thing.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I mean, I still have my bodywork practice, but I also see nutrition clients, functional health clients and so continuing to still, just, you know, grow that and serve more people.
Speaker 1:And so I would like to my my hope would be, at some point down the road, to get into more like, maybe, group work, and then what would be awesome about that is it would actually do like focus on less of the testing ironically right, even though we're trained to run testing like that, and I do like doing that. But I think sometimes having a small group container can actually be beneficial for people who are on a similar health path, who do need more of that social support as well as the coaching, and then also want to learn from what other people are challenged with or going through, and so that's kind of like the next thing that I want to try to bring into fruition. But, like you, leah, I need time to kind of devote towards developing that resource. So that's down the road. But yeah, for right now I'm kind of just continuing to do a lot of one-on-one work and I love that and I'll never stop doing that, but you can only serve so many people that way too, in a given day or week right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. Where can people find you online?
Speaker 1:So best way is my website, which is my first and last name, courtneycowiecom. If you go there you'll see. Actually at the top I have a free e-guide. So if you're struggling with anything in the IBSD or IBD realm, it's kind of designed for that chronic diarrhea predominant symptoms. So there's a lot of great, just simple starting point tips in there that a lot of people have found to be really helpful. So that's kind of a nice resource I have out there for folks.
Speaker 2:Awesome, great stuff. Courtney, thank you so much for your time. I've really enjoyed talking to you today and thanks for sharing your knowledge and wisdom with the Radical Health Rebel audience. It's been really great.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on today. It was a pleasure.
Speaker 2:So that's all from Courtney and me for this week, but don't forget to join me same time, same place next week on the Radical Health Rebel podcast. Thanks for tuning in, remember to give the show a rating and a review, and I'll see you next time.
