00:00:00:00 - 00:00:09:09

Unknown

I've seen it time and time again of women who are on oral contraceptives and we'll see cortisol chronically elevated in their test.

00:00:09:09 - 00:00:23:04

Unknown

And then we'll also see, I mean, their whole hormone cascade is suppressed and then fpg also incredibly high, and then they're binding up all their testosterone. So, I mean, they look like a menopausal woman with high levels of cortisol now.

00:00:23:04 - 00:00:42:00

Unknown

But even coming back to the gut microbiome, you know, it leads to dysbiosis, it depletes the body of key micronutrients, impacts your preference for partner, as you said, like cortisol levels, your stress response is impacted, Inflammation levels go up. It's like we could go on and on and on. This is not talked about, though.

00:00:42:01 - 00:01:04:04

Unknown

When women get on birth control, you know, and women, like most of us, were put on birth control at the age of 14, because you're told that it's going to fix our period. And actually having a period, it's gross, it's bad. Who wants to have that? Like, that's even like how society really views it and has conditioned us to even believe, which I believe the menstrual cycle really at the core, it's a superpower.

00:01:04:05 - 00:01:24:22

Unknown

And we could go into to like a whole conspiracy on this still. But it's like women are incredibly powerful and women who are ovulating and they're really in their highest feminine energy. That's incredibly powerful. So of course, society would want to suppress that and take that away out of a sense of control. But we're just not told about all of these things.

00:01:24:22 - 00:01:52:19

Unknown

What is happening everyone. Welcome back to your favorite podcast, the "Grow or Die" podcast. I'm your host Justin Mihaly and I am thrilled to have you back on another journey with us. Before the show begins, if you please could hit the subscribe button. Share this with your friends if you love the show and check out the sponsors in the show notes, it would help this show grow tremendously.

00:01:52:21 - 00:02:00:11

Unknown

Get ready. There is a mindblowing episode coming. I'll see you inside.

00:02:00:11 - 00:02:22:23

Unknown

Rachel Scheer, welcome to the "Grow or Die" podcast. I appreciate you taking some time out today. I heard that you have a very adventurous view from your recording studio right now. my gosh, Yes. I have a whole view of construction going on right into basically my backyard right now. RJC, rather, looking out. You know, I can't complain. I can't complain.

00:02:22:23 - 00:02:53:12

Unknown

You don't need a beach. Just a little bit more construction. I was just at the beach, though. I was just in Hawaii and I got to spend two weeks at the beach and doing all of that. And actually, in the area I live in, in Dallas, it's actually a lot of nature to do. So my whole backyard, surrounded by trees and it's like a bird sanctuary, but also with the addition of a construction right now for a small edition for a short period, everyone season here is are here the I guess she is safe.

00:02:53:13 - 00:03:19:23

Unknown

Those are not gunshots we promise. Just sort of do not live in that kind of a neighborhood. Yeah. We're always grateful to my parents, then. Yeah. Okay. I want people to hear and I want to hear a spark news version of you were you went through some very interesting and intense gut health issues that sparked you on this journey of helping others like you are now.

00:03:20:04 - 00:03:48:08

Unknown

And doctors wanted to remove your entire large intestine. Chat with us about this. Yeah, my entire large intestine, because of severe gastrointestinal issues and my colon was not disease. I did not have ulcerative colitis. I didn't have Crohn's disease, but I had a very severe case of IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, which I consider to be a trash can diagnosis because it's really not a diagnosis at all.

00:03:48:08 - 00:04:08:22

Unknown

It's an accumulation of symptoms and a lot of my health issues actually started as I started to get more into physical fitness. I did not on the earliest side of it, but really I stepped into competing in bodybuilding and I competed back to back for three years. And on the outside looking in, I was the epitome of health.

00:04:08:22 - 00:04:28:05

Unknown

I was shredded. I was maintaining about 10% body fat. I was doing all of these different fitness modeling gigs. I was the cover of Men's Health bodybuilding dot com, and I just remember this one day it was after I had won first place at a competition. I went to bed that night and there was just something super off, like with my gut.

00:04:28:10 - 00:04:52:12

Unknown

And it's funny because I have like an actual moment where just things shift and changed for me over time, but I didn't know that this was actually going to be the beginning of me going down an entire journey of really struggling with my health and not just that issues, but struggling with severe anxiety, depression, struggling with, you know, looking like I'm six months bloated at the end of every single day.

00:04:52:14 - 00:05:16:22

Unknown

And I did what most people would do. You go to the doctor, you're like, okay, I feel like there's something off and everything came back is normal. Besides the fact that I did have hypothyroidism, which makes sense because I was at 10% body fat and the thyroid begins to slow down. So I was put on thyroid medication, I was put on just synthetic the T4 type of medication.

00:05:16:22 - 00:05:37:03

Unknown

And then, you know, as I continued on this journey, I was passed around from doctor to doctor. You know, you go to the under an allergist for hormones and for thyroid, and then you go to the gastroenterologist and they do the colonoscopies, endoscopy, CT, MRI, all of that's normal. So what do you get? You're prescribed more medications. I was put on prescription laxatives.

00:05:37:03 - 00:05:58:10

Unknown

Eventually I was put on an antidepressant. And it got to the point where I was on five plus medications to just manage these symptoms and, you know, just and I'm the kind of person coming from the competitor world, you know, and I'm sure you can relate to this, but I, I take action and things in life. So for me, I'm like, I'm going to get to the root of all of this.

00:05:58:10 - 00:06:21:08

Unknown

But I was just being passed around from all these physicians. I even went to the Mayo Clinic because I was that determined to fix all of my health, but still really nothing. And after spending thousands of dollars, that was when I was then shortly after sent to a rectal surgeon, because actually the motility of my gut had completely come to a halt.

00:06:21:10 - 00:06:45:15

Unknown

You know, it's not sexy to say, but I actually couldn't use the restroom at all anymore without doing it. And I'm on I'm on prescription laxatives and and all these medications. And that was where this colorectal surgeon was like, you know, you probably have had this for a lot of your life. It's called a sluggish colon. And we can fix the issue by actually removing your large intestine.

00:06:45:15 - 00:07:07:14

Unknown

And that'll fix a lot of the motility issues because, I mean, you can imagine like not being able to actually use the restroom that's incredibly toxic to the body and actually can lead to I mean, eventually death, you know, in a lot of ways. So I always tell this story and people kind of like you kind of shake their head and they're like, that's insane.

00:07:07:14 - 00:07:32:22

Unknown

You know, that someone would suggest the removal of, you know, your large intestine. But actually, at that point in my life, it was like, okay, great, let's do this. I was like, awesome, A solution to all of my health issues. Let's schedule the surgery, Let's cut it out. And actually remember, at the time my last relationship, I was in my my ex was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down a little bit.

00:07:32:22 - 00:07:58:12

Unknown

Like, maybe we pause. But I was that low and I was that desperate. You know, I'd gotten to the point where literally food scared me because of how it would make me feel. I would lay in bed every single day. I was just in survival mode, you know? Good luck for me. Having any fulfilling relationships work, just any amount of life just felt so taken away from me.

00:07:58:12 - 00:08:22:05

Unknown

And my whole life had revolved around fitness and nutrition. I was actually a gymnast. I was a dancer growing up. I went to Baylor for nutrition and dietetics because I wanted to study nutrition. I went to clinical round, I went the competitor out, and I'm like, Why are all these health issues happening to me? But I was like, okay, I'm going to give it one more shot.

00:08:22:07 - 00:08:47:12

Unknown

And I left the doctor's office and then that just catapulted me into literally becoming obsessed with getting to the root cause of all of my health issues. I would spend hours and hours up every single night learning all about gut health and the microbiome and how the bacteria in our gut, you know, control everything. And they're not just dormant and how it can play a role in your thyroid health and your mental health and your hormones and definitely the motility.

00:08:47:18 - 00:09:11:13

Unknown

And that led me down the route of functional medicine, which was a root cause approach. I started working with different functional practitioners. I was able to determine actually that a lot of my core issues were stemming from dysbiosis, so an imbalance in my microbiome did a lot of different healing protocols also, which we could go down a whole rabbit hole on.

00:09:11:13 - 00:09:42:02

Unknown

This led to me having to really do a lot of the inner work because even in the work that I do now in my own practice, it's it's not just the root causes. What's off with your gut or your thyroid, although that is more of a root cause. It's what led to these problems in the first place. And I had to take a radical look at my life and the relationship that I had with myself and even where so much of my sense of worth was really stemming from all of these things outside of me, my physical body.

00:09:42:04 - 00:10:04:18

Unknown

You know, we may look at competitors as healthy, but I think probably you and I both know that it's usually quite the opposite. But I'm so grateful for this journey because through functional medicine and through just being an advocate for my own healing and health, leaning into doing a lot of the inner work, I was able to completely heal my body.

00:10:04:18 - 00:10:32:03

Unknown

I was able to get off all the medication. I was able to avoid having my entire large intestine removed, and it was then where I was like, This is what I want to do. And led me to starting a career in functional medicine, leaving the 9 to 5, working in clinical and really going all in and really just desiring to give other people the approach that I wish that I had that was so much more than just 15 minutes with a doctor's office and prescribing medication.

00:10:32:05 - 00:11:01:22

Unknown

But even more than just like nutrition coaching, you know, my whole philosophy revolves around really those holistic approach, which not only encompasses functional medicine, testing and root cause analysis, but it's also so much deeper than that. It's it's the emotional side, it's the relationship with self, and that's where healing can really begin to occur. So I'll leave it there and maybe the weirdest compliment you've ever been given.

00:11:01:22 - 00:11:24:16

Unknown

I'm grateful that you had all of those issues because without them you to impacting so many people the way that you are. So we had laxatives, we had SSRI, so we had we had the entire trickle down. We had the kitchen sink and curl thyroid medications, thyroid medication. Yeah, yeah. That's what they love. Do it. You know, I don't fault doctors simply for it.

00:11:24:16 - 00:11:44:20

Unknown

There's a quota. You have to see a certain amount of people every single day. If they're on a conveyor belt, they're coming in, they're going down. I'm not sure how much their life is really set up to actually continue learning to actually problem solve. So I don't fault them. It's more so the health care as a whole, which is really archaic.

00:11:44:20 - 00:12:09:01

Unknown

And it's sad to see that like at the basis of this all, you were the epitome of health here on magazine covers. You're doing competitions, you're doing the whole thing. You don't need all those things. Like clearly your body is resilient, clearly it's adaptable. Clearly it can be healed. We just need to give the body the things that it that it needs.

00:12:09:01 - 00:12:36:22

Unknown

And my philosophy is not dissimilar from yours. It's kind of interesting because, you know, in the bodybuilding space as well, but kind of bridging that functional maybe a little bit of biohacking in with the archaic bodybuilding principles. And it's incredible when you just simply heal someone's gut, which it takes them to be open to, it takes them to have the mental and emotional resolve and environment to be able to actually heal.

00:12:37:00 - 00:12:58:10

Unknown

It's incredible how much further training goes in cardio, goes in an actual micro-insurance diagnose or even goes for my clients go like, Wow, you're getting so much more out of so much less because your body can actually use these things. So you're given all these medications, but you had so much back up is so much dysbiosis. Like was your body even using them?

00:12:58:10 - 00:13:20:15

Unknown

Was your body even able or was your stomach was your liver? Were these things able to actually be used in your body for any sort of effect? Is kind of where my mind always goes. So I want to ask you, you left the Mayo Clinic near like I mean, the amount of how did you start your process of truly learning?

00:13:23:03 - 00:13:47:19

Unknown

Learning about functional and learning about go, It literally was to me, just like at first Googling and just trying to learn about gut health because food for me was now a problem. Everything that I ate bothered me. I was sensitive to literally everything. And so going out to eat restaurants, all of those things, it was not even really a part of my life anymore.

00:13:47:21 - 00:14:18:03

Unknown

So for me, it started on how can I heal my gut through nutrition? And I ended up actually dwindling my diet down to, I mean, literally probably nothing, not a whole lot of anything at that time. But it led me down the path of researching more about in gut healing dietary protocols. Right? So I learned more about which foods are more fermentable to gut bacteria, and especially as I dug into functional medicine and I did get some functional medicine testing, which they don't look.

00:14:18:03 - 00:14:34:12

Unknown

And the same type of tests in Western medicine, functional will do things like look at, look at the microbiome, look at the bacteria. Is there dysbiosis? Are you low in digestive enzymes? Is there a leaky gut? Are there pathogens? Are there parasites? None of these things were looked at for me, you know, and we'll look at how that's connected.

00:14:34:12 - 00:15:01:11

Unknown

We'll look at is there any kind of bacteria overgrowth. So I did some of these microbiome tests after kind of going down my own route of research and learning about the gut microbiome and nutrition. And that was where I was like, wow, I have a ton of dysbiosis. This imbalance of bacteria that's in my gut, which led me down the route of treating how do you treat a lot of this bacteria overgrowth?

00:15:01:13 - 00:15:21:10

Unknown

So we have to remove a lot of the food sources. So gut healing is very different from gut health actually. And most of what we see online is really gut health, right? So eat a lot of fiber, prebiotics probiotics, kimchi, sauerkraut, all of these things are great for gut health. If I would have eaten those things, it would have made me ten times worse.

00:15:21:11 - 00:15:48:19

Unknown

Because when somebody has dysbiosis in their gut or any kind of bacteria overgrowth, these foods are actually feeding a lot of the bad bacteria that are already overgrown in their gut. And these bacteria actually ferment on all of the foods that we're eating, producing a large amount of gas, releasing a good amount of toxins. Let's say the person also has intestinal permeability, which tends to go hand-in-hand with dysbiosis.

00:15:48:19 - 00:16:07:04

Unknown

S and leaky gut can occur because somebody has a poor diet. They have a lot of chronic stress. For me, it was a lot of the stress component and I've said this before on some other shows that I've been on, but you know, we often don't think about the fact that the gut lining, it's only one cell layer thick.

00:16:07:04 - 00:16:32:19

Unknown

So when you're competing and you're doing bodybuilding, right, we're we're trying to avoid the breakdown of muscle tissue as much as possible. So we do a high protein diet. Right. And we're trying to minimize cortisol, which when you're in a metabolically stressed state, everything begins to slow down. Cortisol does elevate and the gut takes a massive hit in the process so that cortisol begins to actually break down the gut lining.

00:16:32:19 - 00:16:58:04

Unknown

And not to mention when we're in a chronically stressed state, the gut completely shuts down, stops producing digestive enzymes, motility comes to a halt because that's what happens in a stress response. We're not thinking about digestion, rest, recover. So you can kind of see what happens, then happens as an adaptation to a lot of this stress. And this is ultimately really what happened to me.

00:16:58:04 - 00:17:28:16

Unknown

And it led to leaky gut, which can lead to a lot of food sensitivities to develop because we start to get bacteria, foods and toxins leaking into the bloodstream, triggering a large immune and inflammatory response. So this is where people like they start to notice foods that maybe they've been eating for a long time. All of a sudden they become hypersensitive to and actually, if left untreated, this can even lead to more of an autoimmune condition for people.

00:17:28:18 - 00:17:52:04

Unknown

So this is where for me, I had to start to work on not only just eradicating some of the bacteria overgrowth had to remove a lot of the foods that were feeding the bacteria. So in my practice, all the different types of diets of people who are bacteria overgrowth, low fodmap diet, I'm not sure if you've heard of that one before, but one or two times.

00:17:52:06 - 00:18:19:16

Unknown

And then, yeah, basically just pulling out prebiotic fibers, sort of how I view it. Yeah, you either stop feeding the overgrowth and something an important note I want to make before I lose it is, I mean, 90% of people are going to have biofilms also. And so, you know, one of my first moves is going to be pulling out things that feed the biofilms like zinc and magnesium and iron.

00:18:19:18 - 00:18:43:23

Unknown

Say you're putting these in your body and it's like, like this is good for me. This is awesome for me. Like if they're just feeding biofilms and this biofilms get stronger and stronger and can attack your immune system in your gut even harder than they're not really helping. And some people need a bit of a biofilm disrupter to EDC for antimicrobials.

00:18:43:23 - 00:19:02:19

Unknown

Like, I mean, I love Berberine Sail on Cinnamon definitely uses often, like even in people who they don't have a lot of manifestation of gut health issues occurring like in prep athletes or in founders that I work with anyone who's really high stress. I'll bring in this actually, let me run it by you. I told you I might.

00:19:02:19 - 00:19:34:16

Unknown

I'll run some things by you and see if you love it or hate it. AUBREY In a comprehensive gut, health protocol that we start our days with, with organic beef bone broth size, that's going to be for the college and gelatin for the stomach mucosa and the lining glutamine. Of course, if I don't suspect someone has any sort of actual issue going on, we use zinc artisan, we use lemon juice, apple cider vinegar I think is one of the best things you can probably put in your body.

00:19:34:18 - 00:20:00:08

Unknown

These click acids are very similar to the hydrochloric acid in your stomach, so it's going to help you break down food breakdown minerals that you might be lacking. Kimchi, I would say love kimchi. If someone has overgrowth. Obviously we don't want to put more fermentation or fermented things into their gut, as you already alluded to. Let's see what else they were in there.

00:20:00:13 - 00:20:23:22

Unknown

And then the berberine antimicrobials, the sale on cinnamon. Yeah, all that on an empty stomach. And the feedback has been fantastic. Magnesium side trades in times of high stress. Make sure that we're relaxed, that our bowels are relaxed to be able to pass. So what do you think about that? You do the citrate in the morning. Yeah. Or in the evening.

00:20:23:22 - 00:20:40:03

Unknown

It depends is sometimes in the morning you might have like sprint to the bathroom real fast during the day and it's like a little bit. Yeah. If they're having the run is will switch it to the nighttime before bed. Yeah. If you're doing a small amount in the morning it's usually not so good. yeah. That's, that's fine.

00:20:40:05 - 00:21:02:21

Unknown

Yeah. 300 foot for most people. I like the protocol. Yeah. You're doing a lot of things to support the gut lining with the collagen, and you're adding in some glutamine, you're supporting a stomach acid with apple cider vinegar. So you're helping a lot with absorption there. And then you said kimchi. So some fermented foods in there. aloe vera juice throughout the aloe vera juices.

00:21:02:23 - 00:21:28:03

Unknown

Also great for supporting the gut lining. Also another probiotic. So I'm I'm a fan. I think it's great. I have a there's another comment you made so my girlfriend I would chatted about her briefly is thought there might be some relation for the show. When we started dating she had IBS had passed since and she's a nurse. I know our nurse.

00:21:28:05 - 00:21:57:16

Unknown

She's like around health care all the time. And it's it's been fun to watch her mind open up to. there is. Wow. A lot of things I've been told are not accurate. She doesn't have IBS anymore. It's completely gone. My theory IBS is it starts as just a very simple like yellow belly he got. Your stomach's a little permeable, so these going into your bloodstream, that shouldn't be going into your bloodstream.

00:21:57:18 - 00:22:20:00

Unknown

It's an easy fix, but then it gets worse and worse and worse because you're eating gluten or dairy or high stress or like, especially in an O.R. situation like this, a very high stress environment. You're in a hospital all day. There's no sunlight that happens from 632 to 30. While she's there, You know, circadian is going to be thrown off.

00:22:20:02 - 00:22:41:09

Unknown

And we're we're not able to heal. The gut's never able to heal because we don't know anything is going on in. This keeps persisting happening. So if we just like all we did was we removed gluten and dairy, we throw her on to cells in that sac and foods, a micronutrient rich diet that supports the gut lining. She was on hormonal birth control, too.

00:22:41:11 - 00:23:04:20

Unknown

And you know that that can actually disrupt the microbiome a bit, too. Yeah. Yeah. And we're going to dive in in it increases cortisol, which is super interesting. We could even yesterday I did a lab review with a client and this was true to me and I've seen it time and time again of women who are on oral contraceptives and we'll see cortisol chronically elevated in their test.

00:23:04:20 - 00:23:30:17

Unknown

And then we'll also see, I mean, their whole hormone cascade is suppressed and then fpg also incredibly high, and then they're binding up all their testosterone. So, I mean, they look like a menopausal woman with high levels of cortisol now. So that was actually part of my healing, too, is I had to get off of birth control. That's probably a great first step for any woman who's experiencing negative health effects to go on.

00:23:30:17 - 00:23:53:04

Unknown

I want to I want to read this to I put this in my broadcast, you know, a while back. This this is mind blowing. Like when I read decide to sit with it for a minute. Women who are on hormonal birth control don't experience the same AC response. That is our Adreno quarter code. Tropic hormone your pituitary gland releases plays a huge role in how your body responds to stress.

00:23:53:06 - 00:24:25:02

Unknown

So the release of HGH triggers your adrenal glands to produce cortisol. The stress hormone. This research measured the levels of stress hormone active in females blood, 15 minutes of social activity after 50 minutes after social activity, they took a blood sample. Women who are not on birth control pills had a far greater reduction in active levels, whereas hormonal women who are on birth control pills didn't experience any reductions.

00:24:25:02 - 00:24:51:17

Unknown

So we talked so much about and I talked so much about your environment, your social group leading to you, feeling like you like you fit in somewhere. You're not lonely, that that takes away things like anxiety and depression, all that stuff. Birth control pills are known for being able to affect the EPA access. There's a lot of hypotheses that tried to explain lower, lower cortisol levels in women who use birth control pills.

00:24:51:17 - 00:25:13:05

Unknown

But in the actual research that we have, it's really suggesting that that stress response just continues to go up, up, up. And then you're part of a community or part of a sports team. You're part of a great group of friends and it doesn't change. I mean, progesterone is gone, all of pregnant one's gone. Both those just get throttled when you're on hormonal birth control.

00:25:13:07 - 00:25:32:23

Unknown

And so you can go having amazing doctor didn't tell you about birth control when you got. Yeah. You have some good posts about that. It just blows my mind, Rachel, that you can go have an amazing day with friends. But if you're on hormonal birth control is not going to reduce your stress at all. Whereas the women who are not on hormonal birth control are going to actually have a stress reduction from that.

00:25:32:23 - 00:26:03:18

Unknown

What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I believe it. I haven't seen that study. Yeah, but I've seen a lot of the different studies about birth control. My favorite one and I remember when I read it, I was like, Holy shit, was the studies about how birth control changes a woman's preference for their male partner. And they did some different studies and they for these women, they showed photos of men, some with more masculine facial features and some with more feminine facial features.

00:26:03:23 - 00:26:33:16

Unknown

And the women who are taking oral contraceptive actually preferred the men with more feminine facial features versus the women who were not on birth control. I remember being like, Holy shit, because it's really funny because I came off of I actually broke up with my ex about a couple of months after I came off of birth control. The feminine looking face, not thinking that that was exactly what happened.

00:26:33:18 - 00:27:01:13

Unknown

I asked you if there was anything off limits to talk about now. That's what it was. Pretty much. It was pretty. If my girlfriend calls me pretty, I have problems. I know. I hope he probably never watches the podcast, but I got to call him that. He's pretty. Yeah, you know, there are some guys that are like more pretty, and then there's guys that are more rugged and masculine.

00:27:01:13 - 00:27:32:01

Unknown

Yeah. Like, yeah, I try to favor more. That is all your. Yeah. Like you're, you're definitely more like the lumberjack. Rugged, bearded. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so funny. I think you're blushing. I think you read about podcast, you know. Do you typically blush on podcast? I have, I have few times. But that, that study, I mean when I read that, I was like, that's insane.

00:27:32:01 - 00:27:53:14

Unknown

And I think women are just not educated. But even coming back to the gut microbiome, you know, it leads to dysbiosis, it depletes the body of key micronutrients, impacts your preference for partner, as you said, like cortisol levels, your stress response is impacted, Inflammation levels go up. It's like we could go on and on and on. This is not talked about, though.

00:27:53:15 - 00:28:15:18

Unknown

When women get on birth control, you know, and women, like most of us, were put on birth control at the age of 14, because you're told that it's going to fix our period. And actually having a period, it's gross, it's bad. Who wants to have that? Like, that's even like how society really views it and has conditioned us to even believe, which I believe the menstrual cycle really at the core, it's a superpower.

00:28:15:19 - 00:28:36:12

Unknown

And we could go into to like a whole conspiracy on this still. But it's like women are incredibly powerful and women who are ovulating and they're really in their highest feminine energy. That's incredibly powerful. So of course, society would want to suppress that and take that away out of a sense of control. But we're just not told about all of these things.

00:28:36:12 - 00:28:58:02

Unknown

We're told only about the benefits. No period, no cramping, fix all of your acne. And then now all of these women are now dealing with PCOS, hormonal issues and fertility later on in life as they're trying to get off of it. I mean, almost I would say every female that I've worked with coming off hormonal birth control is an estrogen dominant state.

00:28:58:02 - 00:29:27:11

Unknown

And there's just nothing there's nothing positive about that whatsoever. I mean, when you're an average and dominant state to so our liver is responsible for detoxifying the body of excess estrogen. And when it's not able to do that, which I should ask is a dominant state or a state of gut, this virus is to the liver. So back to our opponents rule that actually gets recycled back into our body as a more toxic version of estrogen.

00:29:27:14 - 00:29:53:08

Unknown

Estrogen. And that's where we get these awful, nasty things are happening. And that's just happening. Eyelashes It's to be honest, it's sad to think about. I mean, progesterone just drops so substantially, which is why someone's an estrogen dominant state. I mean, if progesterone is high enough, you're not going to be estrogen dominant. And it's not just helping with preventing pregnancy, too, by not ovulating.

00:29:53:08 - 00:30:16:10

Unknown

It's actually literally killing your entire libido and sex drive to go along with it. That's increasing fpg binding up all testosterone. So it's like, yeah, these are the things that we're not told. So you're off of it. You don't just come off of it and you're like, all right, everything's back to normal now. A lot of women actually get severe cases of post birth control syndrome.

00:30:16:10 - 00:30:37:12

Unknown

A lot of women actually end up with cases of polycystic ovarian syndrome as a byproduct of being on it and fertility issues. I came off of it and it was months until that I actually got my cycle back. I had to even supplement with a little bit of bioidentical progesterone to just get my body back into the cycling nature of plus doing all of these other things.

00:30:37:12 - 00:31:06:17

Unknown

I had to heal my gut. I had to address my stress response. I had to replenish micronutrients. And, you know, coming off of it, a lot of women actually get an exacerbation in a lot of their symptoms, too, that they had even before. So, like I had acne. What teenager doesn't get acne right when you go on it, But it's like all of a sudden now I'm at the time when I came off of it, 26 years old and I'm back to having teenage cystic acne all over again because actually it leads to a surge.

00:31:06:17 - 00:31:27:02

Unknown

And now a lot of the androgens that have been suppressed for so long and also to genetically, I'm somebody who converts most of my testosterone into DHT. And so, like for me, it led to a lot of the acne issues and I had to now work on getting all of that fixed, which is a process to do all of these things.

00:31:27:02 - 00:31:49:17

Unknown

And I want to ask you, if you were to go back to 26 year old Rachel with the knowledge you have now, the experience you have now, how would you come off of hormonal birth control? Take us through the process of like what would you start doing leading up to pulling it? Then after you put it, what would you do?

00:31:49:19 - 00:32:13:20

Unknown

I would heal the gut as much as I could. Right? Because birth control does lead to bacteria and balances in the gut. But I would really work on healing. My gut now is already doing that a fair amount at that point in time. Testing can be good. I love Dutch testing. We use it a lot in my practice because it looks at how you're metabolizing your estrogen and progesterone and your androgens.

00:32:13:21 - 00:32:35:07

Unknown

And even though they're suppressed when you're on birth control, for me, being able to find out that I and what they call a five alpha person, so I convert genetically most of my androgens through this five alpha pathway into dihydroxide testosterone for me, I'm going to be the type of person as I'm coming off of it, I'm probably going to get a lot of the acne kind of side effects.

00:32:35:07 - 00:32:54:01

Unknown

I'm also the person where you give me any amount of testosterone, like a physician one time was like your testosterone is low, which again wasn't looking at the root cause approach because he said this to me when I was competing also on birth control. And he's like, your testosterone is really low, but you on on testosterone, same thing happened.

00:32:54:01 - 00:33:17:11

Unknown

And I just ended up looking like a teenager going through puberty again. And I was like, fat not being any of that. So I think knowing a bit of your body, getting some testing done, I definitely would have done that work. On healing the gut, working on replenishing micronutrients, supporting adrenals as much as possible. A lot of women actually need a bit of some metabolic repair.

00:33:17:13 - 00:33:41:18

Unknown

So looking at if there is a degree of insulin resistance already going on, if someone's a metabolically unhealthy place, they're also probably going to be the person who really ends up with a lot of that estrogen dominance because insulin levels drive estrogen production quite a bit. So it can really create a greater gap between progesterone and estrogen levels.

00:33:41:18 - 00:34:02:16

Unknown

And not to mention insulin also is a root cause for a lot of cases with PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome. I didn't have that issue, but that's what I would at least want to look at with anybody coming off a birth control, are you metabolically healthy? You know, are you depleted in key micronutrients? Can we support that? What's going on with your gut health?

00:34:02:16 - 00:34:31:10

Unknown

Let's support the adrenals. Let's look at how your body genetically also metabolizes some of these hormones, because there also can be genetic predisposition with even estrogen, too. And even with, like I mentioned, androgen. So all of those things can help somebody as they're getting off of it. We can't say there's not going to be any sort of side effects getting off of it, but you can at least help get the body more into a state of healing as the body comes off.

00:34:31:12 - 00:34:52:23

Unknown

I love that. I think you bring up some really important points there. Insulin is an often very overlooked biomarker in terms of predisposition to PCOS. When you come off acne, when you come off. I mean, if someone any time you have a high insulin load, you're going to have more severe sebum produced, It's going to increase your acne.

00:34:52:23 - 00:35:22:01

Unknown

And I mean, yeah, I've seen that can really destroy someone's confidence. I mean, I can imagine I remember being 14 with acne all over my face. Of course I did Accutane at the time. My kids would never take Accutane. Yeah. Now, looking back, I would been like parents. Why did you let me take that? But my gosh, I'm sitting there with my parents and like, I'm mentally unwell, like, while I'm sitting with one of my parents and they had just gone through a divorce.

00:35:22:01 - 00:35:37:16

Unknown

I have this horrendous acne. And then doctors like now, you know, one thing we need to look out for is like a lot of our patients or a lot of patients who use Accutane will get a little bit of mental side effects and some want to kill them, so people want to go, well, Rachel, what the hell happened to me?

00:35:37:16 - 00:35:57:04

Unknown

I'm three months in. I'm like, Wow, I really want to kill myself right now. Like, what in the world? And but you're I mean, you hardly have liberty of your own free thoughts and a free will at 13, 14 years old like it doesn't quite exist. So you don't really realize you don't have this critical thinking ability. You just think that can pull yourself out of it and like, look, examine.

00:35:57:04 - 00:36:16:06

Unknown

You're just. You're in it. Yeah. My kids will never touch Accutane. I yeah, I since I've become much more educated on skin health, acne, things like that over the last six, seven months, I've. I feel bad for my former self. I wish I could give that guy a hug. 14 year old Justin. He needs a hug. Same of mine.

00:36:16:10 - 00:36:36:00

Unknown

Mean, I feel the exact same way, but it's. I mean, it is that empowers you to be able to help other people better than how you were helped her. Well, I'm going to pitch another idea to you. And again, if you hate it, I hope you'll let me know whenever someone comes to us to come off hormonal birth.

00:36:36:02 - 00:37:00:08

Unknown

We like former runway, so we're not going to pull it right away. There's a lot of things that need to happen before we actually pull that out. But the runway really consists of number like a micronutrient rich diet. We need to have some sort of okay body composition here. Like if we're if we're way too over fat and we start having sex hormones reboot, bounce back, we're going to be converting a lot of that to estrogen.

00:37:00:08 - 00:37:24:01

Unknown

You're already going to be an oxygen dominant state. Very, very, very, very, very, very likely. So probably have inflammation and maybe even some insulin resistance, too. Yeah, a lot of pain to move. So over again, they methylated B, vitamins, vitamin E, vitamin A, selenium, magnesium, zinc. All of these are obviously depleted when you're on hormonal birth control, ivory and lithium.

00:37:24:01 - 00:37:49:16

Unknown

It's just like a little bit extra like 50 milligrams of lithium a day to help with the B12 transportation and dim to help the liver detoxify. Typically It depends how long someone's been on, but I'm typically going to be like I treat it like a normal PD run. So I'm bringing in milk thistle. Typically, I'll bring in Todd Card, typically with people to help support that liver.

00:37:49:18 - 00:38:12:03

Unknown

We're going to bring in my gut health protocol that I ran by you earlier. So like, there's a lot of supplements that come in in this time with a high micronutrient diet because your body's been depleted of so many things for so long. But I love diving into progesterone with vitamin EAMCET oil like I love just dive in and at it.

00:38:12:05 - 00:38:29:16

Unknown

You don't really need to see lab work when someone's been on birth control for 12 years, you kind of know exactly what it looks like. It all looks similar. So I bring that it like will pull the birth control. So we have about a two or three week runway of this protocol. Well, no progesterone yet will pull the birth control.

00:38:29:18 - 00:38:56:06

Unknown

I'll give it four or five six days. Allow your body to work through. Then we'll bring that progesterone in. There's a progesterone bioidentical identical. Yes. Drops sublingual mark. Like what I ended up doing. What's the amount? Cindy Microdosing. Yeah, that's how much I ended up doing was 50 when I came off myeloma. Okay, I titrate the dose, so I do it at night.

00:38:56:10 - 00:39:16:17

Unknown

Obviously there's going to be a GABA release occurs and then we have the methylated B vitamins. So glutamate is going to be quite high in your brain. We are in a hyper stressed state which hormonal birth control drives you. The B6 will help convert that glutamate into GABA. So like we should see a pretty quick turnaround in sleep quality and mental well-being.

00:39:16:19 - 00:39:40:15

Unknown

I think a hard part is people breaking away from the identity of being on hormonal birth control, like leaving the identity in the past and like how I feel in the past and all those things. So the mood turnaround isn't really something I look for right away. Usually that's like around a three or four week mark, but what are you seeing around the three month mark is what we see when women actually start to notice symptoms come back.

00:39:40:20 - 00:40:04:04

Unknown

I remember that was like when I came off of it, it was like month, one month. I was like, I'm fine coming off. This was easy. Not a big Daniels like month three boom. And in typically when we do any sort of damage testing with any of our clients, they have to be off of oral contraceptives for about three months in order to get an accurate reading because it takes time for the hormones to come back.

00:40:04:04 - 00:40:38:03

Unknown

You know, some women will get a menstrual cycle right away. And some people it's light. Some people will have very women who will have very heavy people cycles. And then you never know these things. Women I have no actual comment to make. Now. Yeah. Gosh, I don't know. Who knows these days? Seriously. Okay, now I lost my train of thought where I was digesting three months of oral birth control.

00:40:38:03 - 00:40:57:13

Unknown

Yeah. heavy periods. Yeah. They need to be three months off of it before they start to really see. So, I mean, I like your protocol. You're supporting a lot. Are you doing it all at once with somebody? The vitamins all at once. The gut health starts first. Gut health starts clearing up. And to be honest to God, it's pretty simple.

00:40:57:13 - 00:41:15:18

Unknown

It's like Mercy's people have never pooped every day. Okay, now you're pooping every day and your stomach feels flat and empty during the day. Cool. This is a really good sign. It's never been like that. Now we're going to bring in the actual runway to replete the vitamins, minerals that your body has been deficient in so long. So gut health.

00:41:15:20 - 00:41:40:11

Unknown

And similar to what you're saying with the dime and then runway ups and then about two, three weeks on the runway, subsets of vitamin B, vitamin E, a sling, all those things replacing those. And then we pull the birth control and then four or five or six days clearance and then progesterone and then progesterone. Yeah. I mean, I like the the protocol.

00:41:40:11 - 00:42:16:02

Unknown

I think it's great that you're also supporting methylation to you could add in some tri methyl glycine but if you already doing some like the apple cider vinegar, I'm not familiar with methyl glycine, but teenage seal does help it can help somebody from cause it must. You're doing some testing on methylation right some people who don't have methylation issues or you overly support methylation they can get hyper methylation to try methyl glycine actually helps kind of balance it out l-theanine can actually help to from somebody going into that hypermethylation state.

00:42:16:02 - 00:42:40:06

Unknown

So like we'll do testing to kind of identify that, but I like to usually pair those together, try methyl glycine a little bit of l-theanine to counterbalance if you're doing more of like a higher dose of like five empty of five empty h f to support the methylation. But the methylation is important because I mean, everything you're doing, you're supporting estrogen metabolism, phase one, you're supporting liberty detoxification.

00:42:40:07 - 00:43:09:12

Unknown

You could do independent, a little bit of sulforaphane in there if you wanted. If you knew that person was very estrogen dominant. And then I'm not familiar with Sulforaphane either. Sulforaphane Yeah, yeah. So for fans, great for phase two estrogen detoxification. So Denmark really well for supporting phase one, pushing more of this, we call the two o age pathway, which is more of the protective pathway with estrogen.

00:43:09:17 - 00:43:38:00

Unknown

So it's great. You have to be careful with them. For women who like for me coming off a birth control, I was actually low estrogen like I did not have any of that. But it makes sense because I was so lean composition wise versus probably most of the women who, like you said, have a little bit of weight they need to get under control first, which I love that getting composition under control, making sure inflammation is reduced through a diet by literally just getting them to lose weight.

00:43:38:04 - 00:43:58:04

Unknown

That's going to also get that under control and then supporting estrogen metabolism, supporting detoxification. So you're supporting the removal of estrogen. You're adding in a little bit of progesterone micronutrients, support. So you're I mean, all of it sounds great. Good. I was a little nervous. I mean, that one by I'm sweating a little bit. I'm like, I feel great about it.

00:43:58:04 - 00:44:21:06

Unknown

We've had amazing results on it. But would you would you put beating in place of the apple cider vinegar and the gut health protocol? Then when pulling somebody off of birth control to support the methylation? Yeah. I mean between HCR is going to literally be stomach acid. Yeah. So it's going to work a bit more effectively. Could still do a little bit of some apple cider vinegar.

00:44:21:06 - 00:44:40:17

Unknown

I like apple cider vinegar. Yeah. You know, I think it's one of like the miracle. It's like a miracle health pillar. Yeah. There's so many freaking benefits of it. Not all, but yeah, you'll see a lot of good research on methyl glycine and support for like mood and mental health. And part of that is just because of methylation support.

00:44:40:17 - 00:45:10:06

Unknown

I love that. Fantastic. And I also appreciate you teaching me some things here. Regulating the nervous system in a fast paced, highly stimulating world. You post a ton about just sort of finding your peace, emotional well-being, mental well-being. You're a very calming person to chat with as well. Yeah. How do we find that? I, I struggle with it, asking for a friend myself.

00:45:10:08 - 00:45:31:20

Unknown

What are some things you do and not just like the normal. Like I talk about journaling, I talk about breathwork. I feel my absolute best, Rachel When I'm grounding, when I have my, when I'm just touching the earth, that's when I truly feel my best. When you're actually working, when we're getting in after it during our day to day highly stimulating world.

00:45:31:22 - 00:45:59:17

Unknown

How do you stay aware of your anxiety if you're calm of your centering? Yeah, and I only talk about it so much because, I mean, part of my healing was realizing how much I was operating in a hyper vigilant nervous system. I was constantly upregulated and, you know, my body naturally can go into more of like a hyper aroused, excited state.

00:45:59:17 - 00:46:30:04

Unknown

So I can very easily kind of go over part of that, too. As I have methylation issues, I have a teed fact actually interesting on genetics that coffee tea impacts methylation so similar to like a fire, but coffee also is going to interfere with how you metabolize dopamine. So actually a lot of people who have a t defect, they tend to be the hyper achievers, perfectionist, very high strung, super interesting.

00:46:30:06 - 00:46:50:17

Unknown

When you get into some of the research there. It's actually it for me supporting methylation actually did help bring that down a little bit. But also I, I run at a fast pace and that's sort of how I've been wired my entire life. You know, you could trace a lot of it back to my upbringing and, you know, view of self that was created.

00:46:50:17 - 00:47:12:10

Unknown

So for me, it's it's been a constant need to have to like come home and self-soothe my nervous system to bring myself back down. And that played such a huge role in my healing because you may have seen and some my content I talk about, it's not just doing the gut protocols or the healing, but the gut can't heal unless we heal the nervous system.

00:47:12:12 - 00:47:33:18

Unknown

Because as I alluded to earlier, when the body is constantly upregulated, we're in that sympathetic state. The gut is shut down. And that's how most people are operating. And they're doing all of these different things to try to heal their gut or heal their hormones. But their body is constantly in this hyper stressed state and we need to be able to calm the body.

00:47:33:18 - 00:48:06:18

Unknown

Now, that doesn't mean we can't go in it. I mean, health, in my opinion, is the ability to choose does the ability to choose what state you are in. And it's being able to go purposely into the sympathetic, which is very action oriented, is I get shit done but also be able to then come out of it. And for a lot of people who have nervous system imbalances, which could be a byproduct of trauma, can be things that are often internal in their body dysbiosis, hormone issues or circadian rhythm issues.

00:48:06:20 - 00:48:28:18

Unknown

It's harder for these people to come out of it and really have that ability to choose. That window has been narrowed quite a bit, and that's what I found for myself, is I would get upregulated and I would almost get stuck there and I wouldn't be able to come out of it. And anything that's chronic leads to disease overall and it leads to a lot of these health issues.

00:48:28:18 - 00:48:51:22

Unknown

So working on my nervous system, it's been huge part of my healing and now I incorporate it with a lot of my clients. I became certified to do somatic breathwork, so now I incorporate Breathwork actually into a lot of the coaching that I even do with my clients. And it's cool because it's not just helping regulate the nervous system through the breathwork.

00:48:51:22 - 00:49:13:04

Unknown

But I also find to a lot of people are able to come to their own conclusions on the root cause of their health issues, you know, and an example would be I just did a session with a a top entrepreneur. You know, he's running super fast all the time. He's got gut issues. So we're working on healing that.

00:49:13:06 - 00:49:33:23

Unknown

And I was like, Hey, let's do some somatic Breathwork I brought him through the entire 90 minute session and intense of what we do, but after we had such a beautiful conversation and when he just came out of it like this pure child, I don't know how to describe it. It just like he was in his essence and he was so light.

00:49:33:23 - 00:50:04:14

Unknown

And, you know, we talked about how he's been running for a long time. And it was this conversation about, well, what are you running towards? And it ended up coming back to you and I. I don't know what I'm wanting towards. I think it's what I've been I'm running away from him for my entire life. And just the power of that in itself is so healing to realize that because it's that that really creates all of our circumstances in our health.

00:50:04:14 - 00:50:37:12

Unknown

And that's where, you know, if we don't get to the root of these kind of things, we're only going to continue to recreate these circumstance answers over and over again, whether it's gut issues or any other type of health element that the whole person really must heal in order for us to restore balance and optimal health. But to answer your question, because I kind of went off tangent there, you know, for me, nervous system regulation outside, I have to be outside, I have to be out in nature.

00:50:37:14 - 00:51:01:19

Unknown

I have a slow morning routine because my innate instinct is I want to get up and go get shit done. I got to use an ice cream, I'm triggered right? Like, right when I would wake up and I mean, I run a pretty large business entrepreneur and I used to try to actually keep up with, you know, a lot of the guys.

00:51:01:19 - 00:51:28:01

Unknown

And I realize I can't operate at that same level, nor do I need to, nor do I want to. And even part of my power coming into is realizing I can do anything that I want, but I don't need to. I don't need to because I have nothing to prove. So giving myself the grace and the permission to actually slow down and finding more fulfillment in the things that I do, because I think that's a huge part.

00:51:28:01 - 00:51:48:09

Unknown

Sometimes it's not that we're burnt out on doing too much, but too little of the things that feed our soul and make us feel alive. So we've been, for me, nervous system regulation. It's play. I asked myself daily, How good can I let myself feel today? What would that look like? Yes, I'm working, I'm doing all these things.

00:51:48:09 - 00:52:05:13

Unknown

But how good can I let myself feel? Is it going to be going outside? I'm going for a walk. Is it going to be doing some grounding? Is it going to be laughing with a friend? Is it going to be journaling? Whatever it is that I can do? How can I find moments of pure presence and play throughout my day?

00:52:05:13 - 00:52:32:11

Unknown

Because that at the core is what is so healing because we are fully our most authentic self in that moment. In all of these other times when our nervous systems upregulated, we're actually not fully in our self, right? We're operating in our psyche, we're not in our body, we're separated, we're in the past, we're in the future. So it's about coming back to creating presence and that can be so many different things for people.

00:52:32:11 - 00:53:01:03

Unknown

They can be, you know, for some people painting if they whatever they love to do, that's their passion that they get so totally lost. And what is that for you? A lot of people, it's outside nature does that for us. Nature's healing, sunlight, dance. Any of these things can reregulate and restore healing to the nervous system. The goofier, the sillier, the more spontaneous, the more childlike we are.

00:53:01:04 - 00:53:42:12

Unknown

It seems like everyone just gets a little bit happier as they embrace. Life's better. It is. How do you identify if you're running towards something or running away from something towards something or a way, something That's a tough one to answer, I think because it comes back to the intention. And also, are we being driven by fear or are we being driven towards being called to a purpose in creating something I feel is driven?

00:53:42:14 - 00:54:01:12

Unknown

I think most people are fear driven. I think fear is a very huge motivating factor. It's often what gets most of us started and there's nothing wrong with that. It just can't be what keeps us going in the long term. Think about most people who get into maybe their health and fitness, right? They're unhappy. They don't like the way they look.

00:54:01:12 - 00:54:26:04

Unknown

They're looking in the mirror. They're like sick and tired of being here. It's a pain that drives us to get started, but we almost get so conditioned operating in this fear based states. And if we never actually heal the core roots of self, we still are going to continue to create similar things. That was where for me, you know, I had all my health issues and I ended up doing a lot of the inner work.

00:54:26:04 - 00:54:55:03

Unknown

But later I grow my entire business and, you know, I find similar would find similar things coming out and I would lead burnout and all of these other things and even my health beginning to become affected again. And I'm like, you know, this is the same thing, although it's a little bit different now. So until I really heal at the true root, I'm going to continue to create different but similar circumstance cases over and over again.

00:54:55:05 - 00:55:24:01

Unknown

The fears, the greatest motivator for us. See, it started, but I wonder at what point, whether it be entrepreneurship or maybe bodybuilding or whatever, this crazy life we're all living as a. At what point should that transition happen towards running towards something? Is fear based? People like myself? Not much any longer. I think I'm just on the other side of it, barely.

00:55:24:03 - 00:55:43:04

Unknown

So you start repeating patterns because you're living in this fear and these patterns just get so toxic and detrimental and they break relationships and they hold back the company growth or they rub people the wrong way, or it's not you being your authentic self because you're just in the state of fear of whatever it is you're running from.

00:55:43:06 - 00:56:10:01

Unknown

I wonder what state that's supposed to change. I mean, you and I both competed. You have some you want to add there before I well, I was going to say, I don't think it just is a point where it's supposed to change. Right. I think most people, until they realize that they're running into similar things over and over again, and usually their pain now is creating more pain, even though it has served them in some type of a way.

00:56:10:01 - 00:56:41:13

Unknown

Of course, like, why do we do anything? It's serving us in a purpose to create a certain outcome. But we also realize in the process we're also creating pain in other ways. And it's at that point, I think, where most people, they have one or two options. I mean, they continue down that path and they just keep repeating it over and over again, unaware or maybe some are aware, but they just don't really maybe they don't know how or they haven't felt called to really do a lot of the inner work.

00:56:41:13 - 00:57:05:14

Unknown

And I think it's at that point where someone just has to be have that radical honesty of like I need to and need to really do some more of this. In her work and get to the root of this and heal my relationship that I have a self which relationship with self is view of self. I'm viewing myself because how we view our self is how we are creating all of our circumstances in a relationship.

00:57:05:16 - 00:57:33:19

Unknown

So in every single moment I have a view of myself and that view of myself is creating a behavior what I'm doing. And that's, that's going to create all of everything that's happening. So I think healing at the core is coming back to what and where. Even so, the root cause, where some of those views of self really stemmed from and if we were to peel it back, most of us, it's younger, you know, we created a core belief.

00:57:33:20 - 00:57:59:12

Unknown

There's different traumas and things that we walk through. We've all walked through different things. You know, And I think too, it's in these moments through these traumas or even society as a young kid, we choose attachment over authenticity. We will choose fitting in, being loved. What do I need to do in order to fit in and be loved?

00:57:59:12 - 00:58:22:00

Unknown

And we will choose that over authenticity. So what do we do? We put on these masks. We say, I need to be this person. I need to achieve. I need to do all of these things in order to be loved. So we lose that connection with authentic self. So part of is really coming back to our most authentic self.

00:58:22:00 - 00:58:47:17

Unknown

And I don't know if we get to a point where we're like, I'm, I'm there. I think it's it's healing and I think any of us ever get to the point where we're healed. There's always different things. And also every time you up level in your life, you'll notice it's the same things that come up. An example I can give my best so used to be deathly afraid of public speaking like ten people in a gym.

00:58:47:19 - 00:59:07:04

Unknown

I scared me to death and then I got into and that's actually part of why I leaned in. Do so much of like speaking and doing all of those things. But I would be terrified, you know? And then I did a lot of the inner work and I healed what was coming up for me in those moments and then it no longer bothered me.

00:59:07:06 - 00:59:34:20

Unknown

But I bet you if I was invited to go speak to 5000 people, 10,000 people, probably that same thing that even though I healed it to a certain level, would come up again. And so every time you try to up level in your life, the same things come up. So that's where the healing journey, it's constant and it's always coming back to ourself.

00:59:34:22 - 00:59:59:21

Unknown

Do you have a process for the bad self dialog self these days that gets you on the right track about body image or I should be doing more. I'm not. That's like fully developed. Here's what everybody should do. I mean, it's in the process because I've done so many different things. It's hard to say like it was this one thing.

00:59:59:21 - 01:00:24:01

Unknown

It's been the accumulation of a lot of different things. But for me, introspection, journaling has helped exponentially. So being in touch with our feelings is important, but it's like you have a feeling you're upregulated. Can we create some awareness? I mean, a lot of people aren't even consciously aware that that's happening when they're in it. They're just they're in it.

01:00:24:01 - 01:00:45:22

Unknown

Like what you said when you're 14 years old and all these things weren't you didn't have the ability to dis attach and create separation from what was actually happening in your internal world with your thoughts and your feelings. So for me now, it's okay. There's a feeling there is that fear is an anxiety what is coming out because it's we're humans that's going to happen.

01:00:45:22 - 01:01:06:06

Unknown

We're going to get triggered. But I'm able to then go through a process, through journaling of, all right, what is the feeling? It's anxiety, it's fear. Maybe it's frustration, maybe it's anger. Okay, where do I feel this in my body. So I feel it in my throat. I feel it on my chest. I feel it in my stomach.

01:01:06:08 - 01:01:33:03

Unknown

Okay. This creates a little bit of separation from what the feeling is. What is the belief tied to the feeling. And that's even a powerful question in and of itself is what do I believe right now? Well, I believe that if I if I don't show up in a certain way in the speaking event, and if I mess up that people are going to laugh at me, what would that mean then?

01:01:33:05 - 01:01:51:16

Unknown

That would mean then I'm an imposter and I shouldn't be doing what I doing. Well, what would that mean then? Well, that would mean that I'm not good enough. What would that mean then? That would mean that I'm not loved. Yeah, and we can begin to peel it back a little by little. Okay. This is the belief there.

01:01:51:16 - 01:02:16:05

Unknown

This is the feeling. And then at that point in time, you know, I may even ask myself questions like, how old does this feel? This story for me, it's an eight year old little girl. I can trace it back to her. Okay. Eight year old Rachel, what does she need right now? And it's usually our little kids. The talk.

01:02:16:06 - 01:02:48:12

Unknown

It's I need to be held. I need to be told everything's going to be okay and to be told I got it. Can I give that to myself right now? Then I'm able to give that to myself in that moment, in this time, like I may cry, different things might come up, but it's such a powerful process to go through because in this entire process I am actually healing, I am actively healing, and I'm giving myself what I need in that moment.

01:02:48:14 - 01:03:17:16

Unknown

And I'm able to then usually shift out of it after I go through this and it's after this, I'm like, All right, now I can go change my states and I create a different awareness, but I bring more of my my parent. Some people call it the parent the highest self. There's different words for it. But I bring that version of me, which is more my authentic self back on the scene, back into control, verses little eight year old Rachel, who's trying to run the show, which I don't want.

01:03:17:18 - 01:03:37:06

Unknown

Little eight year old Rachel showing up to. My speaking engagements are, doing things like that. So yeah, this is like the process and then it's like, okay, what can I now do? Regulate my nervous system, get outside, go for a walk, get a nature, get a workout, physically change my state. But I think often even we learn all of these things to change our state.

01:03:37:06 - 01:03:57:07

Unknown

All right, I can go do all of these things, but we also need to be able to feel it. We need to lean into it. We have to be able to feel it all. And I think so much of us are also disconnected with our feelings because that's also what trauma does. It creates a disconnect from feeling. And when we're disconnected from feeling, we don't feel the pain, but we also don't feel all of the the good.

01:03:57:11 - 01:04:18:11

Unknown

We can't feel joy, we can't feel bliss. And we also losing touch with our intuition because our Soma, it's the feeler, but it's also our intuition. So over time, what do we do? We override our intuition. We follow more of the psyche, we follow more of our our thoughts and what we think, and we create a greater disconnect with self.

01:04:18:13 - 01:04:42:15

Unknown

And we actually create almost a betrayal with self over time, because there's things that maybe we even know intuitively, but we don't listen to it. So we have to be able to feel all of our feelings. So for some people, this mean mourning, sadness, whatever is there, we have to let it all out because that is part of the healing process.

01:04:42:15 - 01:05:04:13

Unknown

It's releasing it and breathwork actually can be a powerful way for people to really sit through some of these processes like I walk through can be a powerful way, but it opens ourself up to really being able to experience all of life because to feel means to be fully alive. And a lot of what I also love too, is how can I create an abundant and fulfilling life?

01:05:04:14 - 01:05:39:08

Unknown

Well, we can only do that by doing all of these things. If you aren't able to soak in sadness and grief and mourning and all of those things, then you're not going to be able to experience the joy in the happiness and the love. I feel that women are more open to this whole self healing, self-actualization manifestation, putting your thoughts on paper, your emotions and our feelings.

01:05:39:10 - 01:06:09:19

Unknown

Yeah, much more open to it than men. Although sure, because women are more feelings by nature. I believe men could benefit from this very greatly right now outside of our genetic hardwiring. Why do you think this is? How do we get more men to come around to being open to this? Yeah, I mean, men have been taught, like you said, most of their life, to not not feel right.

01:06:09:19 - 01:06:32:18

Unknown

It starts at a very early age and a little boy cries. And moms, I don't cry. Boys don't cry. So men are really taught to suppress that part of themselves. So I think it's beautiful. A guy who's like, really in touch with his emotions and heart. It's powerful, it's passionate, it's strength at the core. It's very different from being not controlled in your emotions.

01:06:32:18 - 01:06:58:01

Unknown

Like they're they're controlling you, you're reactive based off of it. But somebody who can actually express man who can express all of his emotions is incredibly powerful. So I think there there needs to be a bit of a reframe. And I think for a lot of men, they frame it as weak. They frame it as I'm losing control, which maybe there's been experiences in their life where they felt out of control.

01:06:58:01 - 01:07:12:20

Unknown

And we often do. We feel out of control. That's why we don't want to express emotions because they go, my gosh, if I feel this, I'm not going to be able to come out of it. I'm going to get stuck there. I think we've all had that feeling before. We know it's not true, but those fears are still there.

01:07:12:20 - 01:07:35:15

Unknown

If I go there, will I be able to come out? What are people going to think of me? And I think that's what's so powerful too. And like even the reclaiming of your power, being able to go and lean in to that unknown, which is often where we find our strength in event. I do see more men opening up to it idea and it's really cool to see.

01:07:35:17 - 01:08:00:13

Unknown

I agree with that New Age masculinity is I think being emotionally vulnerable and in touch is an easy thing to manipulate too though. So I would challenge to challenge men who listen to this show to you got to assess your intentions with everything. Like no one's going to be personally well-intended, like, not even Gandhi was perfectly well intended, right?

01:08:00:13 - 01:08:22:13

Unknown

So, like, there's always going to be personal biases and desires and, you know, whatever that plays. But I in my personal life, I have a lot of work to do. I've got a long ways to go. Like I'm very, very far from a finished product, but I've seen everything get so much more just beautiful and abundant and vibrant.

01:08:22:15 - 01:08:57:09

Unknown

When you start feeling and stop just running away from things. I feel like that's kind of when the manifestation of running towards something and the abundance kind of entered my life. I think we're going to go down this rabbit hole. It's a touchy feely, shy. We've started functional, very logical and tactile, and we wish we did know. But I think that's exactly where it's supposed to go.

01:08:57:09 - 01:09:46:06

Unknown

And I think these are the powerful conversations people really need to hear because, you know, we could talk all day long about healing the God, but these are this is like the work at the core of it that's really going to change people's lives. And I know you hear that with the functional stuff, and then you do this part like, woof, It would be fascinating to see the eradication of health issues, mental and physiological if you were if we were just able to get our clients to leave their relationship, get out of the environment, break away from the things that have so much negative, I guess, resolve inside of our physical bodies, it would be

01:09:46:06 - 01:10:07:00

Unknown

quite powerful to see what that can do. I mean, I like you. There's people you can help and you can have the perfect protocol for and you can do the thing. But if they're in a relationship that is just holding them back and not serving them, it is very draining from an emotional mental standpoint. They're not going to heal.

01:10:07:00 - 01:10:33:11

Unknown

They're going to come. They're going to continually relapse. So now this issue pop back up and like I'm doing everything right, man. If you're not in the right environment to actually support health, it's far beyond physical. It's far beyond building a body and think looking impressive when you take your shirt off. If you're not in a place to really support who and what it is want to be, then it's going to be quite impossible to get there.

01:10:33:13 - 01:11:03:14

Unknown

Mike Yeah, and for sure, and even in scenarios like that, because I can look back at a younger version of myself and my guardian, I'm in a relationship that I know is not like good for me, and it's leading to even poor health, you know, it even still comes though, back to the self. What is it about where I'm at, where I'm acknowledging that this is affecting my health, but I'm still staying in it, right?

01:11:03:15 - 01:11:28:02

Unknown

And it still comes back to that relationship with Saw the view of self. How am I viewing myself now that is keeping me sitting here in this environment? Everything always comes back to that. You know, the person who is struggling to make changes in their diet, right? It all comes back to some kind of belief view of self and whatever we believe to be true.

01:11:28:05 - 01:11:48:22

Unknown

It's not like the X factor. We will prove that to be true. It doesn't mean we want it to be true, but we will prove it to be true. Whatever we believe. If I believe that I am unworthy, if I believe that I will never lose weight, if I believe that I am, you know, I'm a fat slob, you know, I'm even though I don't want to.

01:11:48:22 - 01:12:14:22

Unknown

And I'm saying, yes, I want to lose this. But if I believe that and I don't heal that part, I will create the circumstances in order to prove that believe to be true subconsciously in everything. If I don't believe I'm truly worthy and I would stay in a relationship that I know maybe isn't what I deserve, because at the core, I don't believe that I'm worthy and I don't deserve better.

01:12:14:22 - 01:12:52:15

Unknown

If I if I believed that I deserved the world and this person was giving me this, there's no fucking way I would settle for that. Right. But if I believe that I'm worthy of that, I will settle for that. We will always settle for what we believe we are worthy of in anything. So that's where it's like everybody in school when you do some of this work, because you can literally walk and get to know people and people wear their beliefs literally on their sleeves and their behaviors and everything, that the way that they act, which is I say that not from a place of judgment to are out of place, out of a lot

01:12:52:15 - 01:13:17:01

Unknown

of empathy in curiosity because everybody's just showing up based off of their own level of healing that they've done. So when you know that and have done the work theirself, when you can see people who are, you know, people who are online, who are going to be the trolls and they're going to shoot the people, commenting on some of my posts who like write mean hateful things about how I look.

01:13:17:03 - 01:13:34:18

Unknown

Yeah, doesn't mean that it doesn't hit on my little girl. But I also can look at it from a point of I know these people are just showing up based off of their own level of healing. And anybody who I've ever seen has is in a place of so much love that they have for themselves. They're not going to show judgment.

01:13:34:18 - 01:14:03:13

Unknown

And that towards another person. So what somebody actually is doing outside of them, where I get to create the empathy is how they're actually showing that towards themselves internally. Yeah, you can expect somebody to outperform their current level of consciousness, and I think that's a very powerful realization to have and to accept when you're dealing with anyone who says negative things or when you're dealing in a social media space.

01:14:03:15 - 01:14:27:15

Unknown

She are absolutely fascinating getting to know you, fascinating getting to chat with you. What's coming next for you? I know you're here. You always got a lot going on. It's very impressive involved. But what's coming next? You this is my Eat, Pray, love here. I love it. I know that people are now like, all right, this girl, it's kind of functional, but hey, I'm glad we started their first.

01:14:27:15 - 01:15:01:19

Unknown

Yeah, same. Yeah. This is my year of travel and play, so I'm to Portugal here in six weeks. And, you know, I love it because I get to bring so much more of this creativity in the work that I am doing. But of that, I mean, a lot of different things. Masterminds, I actually coach other women in business and helping them step into their Mozart excel, bring that into their message and their brand as other functional practitioners or health practitioners for that matter.

01:15:01:20 - 01:15:38:08

Unknown

I have my practice. I always love that helping other people in their healing journey. And actually recently this year I launched my own functional nutrition certificate and to certify coaches in more of this functional process, it does not go into the deeper healing stuff, it's more on the functional side. But I think it's really powerful for for any nutrition coach to be able like the things you're doing right, you're able to help and serve people in such a greater capacity than just, here's some macros, I'll help you lose weight.

01:15:38:09 - 01:15:56:23

Unknown

And I think, you know, we're in a space where a health coaches are truly what can make the biggest shift in people's lives because they're coaches. I agree with Rachel. Pleasure getting to know you. I look forward to when we get to meet in person. I'm in Dallas a lot. It sounds like you're in Also sorts.

01:15:57:01 - 01:16:04:08

Unknown

We will definitely be linking up soon. Okay. Thanks so much for your time. We will. Thanks, Justin. All right Grow or Die fam, we'll see you next time. Peace.