From Symptom Obsession to Freedom in Your Body: A Manifest Your Health Case Study | Ep 404

Part of me was a little cocky. I'm not going to lie. I thought I was doing more than the average person. And I thought that with my background and through college sports that I felt like I knew what I needed to do to support my body. And then there was another part of me that felt really guilty of like everything that I was asking of my body day in and day out. So I fully had the mindset of like, how can I supplement my way to health without changing my life in any way? So I could continue to do everything that I'm doing to overwork, to over extend, to overachieve. Like, Doc, just tell me what I need to do or take so that I could keep like grinding away in my life. Welcome to the Functional Nutrition Podcast. Spell over the K because we do things a little differently around here. I'm your host, Erin Holt and I've got 15 years of clinical experience as a functional nutritionist and mindset coach creating a new model that I call intuitive functional medicine. Where we combine root cause medicine with the innate intelligence of your body. This is where science meets self trust. Your body already knows how to heal in this show is going to show you how. If you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health, be sure to follow and share with a friend because you never know whose life you might change. Okay, my friends. So I know that many of you have been patiently waiting for this announcement since I've basically been teasing it out for months. But I finally have a date for you. Manifest your health. The brand new membership is officially rolling out April 27th for those of you on our wait list. Manifest your health is a neuroscience-backed membership that blends systems biology with nervous system regulation, subconscious rewiring and emotional release. So you can reconnect with your body's natural ability to heal. My team has been working so hard to design and build out an app for you guys. You are absolutely going to love it. I'm so excited for you to have it in your literal hands like inside your phone. So in celebration of that, this whole month is going to be dedicated to the mind body connection. How our bodies are constantly communicating with us. We're going to talk about neuroscience. We're going to talk about using your mind to heal, leveraging the power of your brain to heal your body. Yes, that's real. It's really, really real. I'm going to show you how. And we're going to talk about the different readiness levels that are required for this to actually happen. So we've got lots of new stuff coming at you this month on the podcast. Today, we're kicking things off with an actual manifest your health client because I want you to hear what it's actually like to go through this process. Sometimes we can talk about this stuff and it might feel so far away from where you are right now. So I want to bring it. I want to ground this for you and really make you understand how possible this is for you. So today you're going to hear from Emily where she started with her health journey where she's at now and what specific things she did that really helped her bridge that gap. So be sure to head to the link in the show notes to get on the weightless. We're going to open things up with the discounted founders rate on April 27th. So you definitely want to get in early on this one and I'm just so excited to get started with you guys. Okay, Emily, I am so excited to chat with you. This is something a little bit different because you're going to share your experience. You're going to talk about what's been going on with you, what has happened over the past few years, your health challenges where you're at now and how manifest your health really helped and what you learned along the way. So my goal, my hope, my intention of this show is that people will hear you. They'll listen to your story and they'll see aspects of you in themselves. And what we are trying to do is story people into possibility. We want people to see what is available to them. We want to put healing potential on the table for more people, especially people who feel like it is not for them or healing or recovering from a chronic condition is not available to them. So let's start off by you just sharing where you're at now, where you started with your health journey and where you're at now, just kind of like the TLDR of it all and then we can get more into your backstory. Yeah, for sure. My health issues started in 2019. So solid six to seven years. I've been on this road. I didn't have a formal diagnosis for the majority of that time. And then was ultimately diagnosed with something called serves at the end of 2023 stands for chronic inflammatory response syndrome also notice mold illness and to put it as simply as possible. It's it's something that affects like every system of the body. It causes so many different symptoms. So it's really hard to diagnose. And if left unchecked can start to do damage to your brain in the form of atrophy or shrinkage, which can lead to all sorts of fun stuff later on like Alzheimer's dementia, so forth. So what I was experiencing was extreme fatigue, my hair was falling out, really bad acne, extreme digestive issues, bloating and then it started to play in the like realm of depression and anxiety. So really like cross the gamut of everything. And then so like that's where I was today. I can confidently say that my chronic health challenges of six to seven years no longer cross my mind. Full stop I no longer spend time thinking worrying stressing about my health, which is something that I used to spend 80 to 90% of my day thinking about or actively working on and I can definitely say that manifest your health helped me get there. And I'm not in remission from a lab's perspective yet, but from a lived experience symptom how I go about my daily life and personal freedom standpoint, I absolutely feel in remission and I kind of think the term life changing is used so often in our daily vocabulary that it starts to lose its weight, but no longer spending the majority or even actually any part of my day thinking about my health. Like that is life changing for me like period end of story all this is say I still work with my naturopathic doctor, but it's so different now I take my medication, I take my supplements and it's just something that I do it's something that operates in the background and I don't think twice about it. I'm not looking for new information or getting like spooked by like God knows who influencers online telling me everything that I'm doing is wrong, I'm not grasping on to these medications and supplements with desperation and panic like I need you to work I need you to fix me I'm not refreshing my email every five seconds to see if my latest lab results have come in. So like all these things I was doing years prior like no judgment if you're you're in that boat, I think the reason my chronic health challenges no longer cross my mind is because for the most part my symptoms have resolved. So yeah, it's like really easy to not think about your health when you're feeling really good again. It's kind of obvious and also really crazy for me to say that after all these years. That's kind of like where I am now and there's like so much more that I could speak on about the program. I didn't think I was going to like already start crying for minutes into this but I like just hearing you talk of where you were I just relate to it so much like you know for me it was like. Instagram wasn't as much like it wasn't what it is ten years ago but I was like in a lot of Facebook platforms are like autoimmune communities and stuff and I would just be like searching and searching and searching and searching and like. Always on the hunt for like what is wrong and how can I fix it what else could be wrong and how can I fix it and I just my heart like hurts. For those warmer versions of ourselves because it is such a hard way to live like yes feeling unwell sucks but the fear of things progressing and or is this going to be my forever that like really puts you into such a chronic fight or flight activation and in that panic and urgency sense one of the only things that can help to calm us down is more information sometimes. And so I just relate to that so much and I'm also somebody who is in remission but I have no proof from labs because I don't need proof from labs that to me is irrelevant not everybody can say that but I can confidently say that. I don't have symptoms I don't have any symptoms that I used to I feel so good so to me like the labs which I used to put as the primary thing like test the body test the body what's wrong find what's wrong so we can fix it. That has fallen by the wayside so it's like no longer holds such importance to me so I know people are going to be like okay cool that's a great before and after how did you do it how did you get there. And so I know that you're eager to talk about some of your experience with manifest your health as a program as a system as a method but can we actually hit the rewind button a little bit and tell us like your story your journey of actually getting that diagnosis what happened leading up to it. And maybe we start there yeah for sure and I mean it was six to seven years so there's definitely a lot there but to set the stage a little bit just like personality wise I grew up as a lifelong athlete like if you name a sport I probably played it I went to an Ivy League college was valedictorian of my high school and I share that not as a brag but more so because honestly I think it's a personality tree rather than like intelligence. And I know I was just a person that knew what I was capable of and I was really uncomfortable with allowing myself to do less than that full capability. So, just like type A, perfect. When to I believe like I said played D on the cross for all four years and honestly like everything was good at this point I think I'd like made it to my end goal So it was like the work was done and I was happy to pass the baton and kind of slip into this like student athlete stereotype instead instead of being like this Marty pants all the time I went into Investment banking straight out of college because that's just what Everyone was around me was doing and two years into that so the end of 2019 I really started to struggle with my health like that's where my official health story begins I again had the really bad digestive issues extreme bloating and I just started to collect these symptoms and at the time I felt like I was doing all the right things. I was cooking all my own food I grew up with that background my mom was like on the organic wave before organic was cool She was cooking all of our meals like we did not eat the standard American diet I was exercising. I again like doing all the things but like I started work at 6.45 a.m Worked until like 10 p.m. And then I was like going to the gym and Doing a really hard workout because that's all I knew at the time and then like going home and probably sleeping like four to five hours I had no autonomy at this point in my life and I was just burning the candle at both ends But again in my mind I was Doing all the right things that I had control over what I probably needed that time was like more sleep Maybe to outsource some other things like getting my groceries delivered But I had a lot of pride in being able to do it all myself And I think that's something I grew up with a little bit like my parents grew up fairly humbly Their mothers were in charge of making a single paycheck go a long way to care for six or seven people So like being thrifty and the energy of doing things ourselves was was something that I grew up in and then I sought out my first functional health practitioner functional medicine type provider I just grew up with that lens. I knew that It was never really in my mind to go the conventional route because I thought on paper and looking at me like you would see a healthy person You would see someone who is accomplishing a lot of things and that's what I assumed the Western medical system would see too And I wanted to go deeper. I wanted to address things before they could get worse and for anyone concerned I did go to my PCP and like cross the T's dot the eyes and and got the blood work done and he told me I was fine So yeah, like I went into this experience Part of me was a little cocky. I'm not gonna lie. I thought I was doing more than the average person and I thought that with my background and through college sports that I felt like I knew what I needed to do to support my body and then there was another part of me that felt really guilty of Like everything that I was asking of my body day in and day out So I really went into this mindset of like these tests are gonna show that I'm healthy But it's also gonna show me that there's like a few markers off and my practitioner's gonna give me some supplements some dietary changes I'll do those things and I'll be on my way So I fully had the mindset of like how can I supplement my way to health without changing my life in any way So I could continue to do everything that I'm doing to Overwork to over extend to over achieve like Doc just tell me what I need to do or take so that I could keep like grinding away in my life essentially So yeah, like came back leaky gut My immune pedal was shot my inflammation was really high my fasting glucose levels showed that I was borderline pre diabetic Which to me made no sense based on my diet. I didn't know at the time like the effect high stress has on regulating blood sugar, but this moment for me was like a holy shit. So Was put on elimination rotation diets things like that You know that like gluten-free dairy free diet a lot of that was really difficult for me like It's a big pustina girl growing up and I also felt like back then that there was This idea that if you were eating gluten or dairy free that you're on a diet or you were like trying to be skinny And that didn't feel good to me I liked to eat to be strong and to nourish my body It was also COVID had just hit the grocery stores or like having shortages and my Practitioners telling me like with the rotation piece if you have a carrot on day one You can't have carrots again until day five. Yo functional medicine prescription You got a lot. I just gonna interrupt you because I want to call to this is my obviously you know this But you know in case somebody is like new leaning on this podcast I do practice functional medicine. We do in our practice But we do it so differently because this rarely really helps people if it's this prescriptive if somebody's walking away being like This feels really hard really challenging really limited And I feel like I have a set of rules that is rarely the entry point in the doorway to true healing Like we might be able to like change some labs or to get the gut less leaky But that is not a sustainable approach And so if you are a practitioner that happens to be listening to the show I really want you to listen to Emily's story and like take Notes and take heart. This is not how we should be practicing root cause medicine This is template medicine This is if that then this and it doesn't work and we all have to Evolve beyond that approach. Okay, now continue. I'll get off my soapbox No, and I will definitely say finding a provider that you trust and like really agree with the game plan that they have Set forth and who's actually Working together with you makes like all the difference in the world and helps you not to like second-guess every single thing that you're doing for yourself I think that's honestly the hardest part The diet did help my digestive stuff but like everything else was still happening And I just felt like I was starting to plateau and get worse and when I say get worse like at this point Like 50% of my hair had fallen out my skin was getting worse. I was getting recurring BV And I was only ever able to register this years later when I was feeling better like how badly I was doing because sometimes when you felt shitty for so long You kind of forget what it's like to feel good So in retrospect this scariest part was that I developed such extreme brain fog to the point that I was partially numb to my experience Like each day was such a slog to get through and it felt like each day was like a rinse and repeat of the last day like Sisyphus style like pushing that boulder up the mountain I was so chronically fatigued and lethargic no matter how much I slept I started to develop really bad insomnia And I was like definitely depressed But again, I couldn't even register that I was in that place because of how brain fogged and fatigued I felt But I remember going to sleep at night and feeling so daunted by the fact that I had to like do this all again tomorrow So yeah, like cut ties with this practitioner went to a naturopathic doctor Wasn't really making progress again. I changed jobs and everyone thought that like As soon as I left investment banking like everything would go back to normal News flash it didn't but I was remote with this new job. So I ended up going to Austin in May 2022 I came across a post from the founder of higher dose who Said something about like being impacted by mold spores after her recent move from Miami to Austin And her skin kind of looked like mine. So I asked my naturopathic doctor if we could run that test And it came back testing really high for satra toxin G which comes from black mold and then also Think ochre toxin A which comes more from food sources So again kind of like ooh, I might be onto something here, but didn't feel like my provider was like a great fit. So like moved on again So I've long made fun of the gummies as supplements trend It's kind of like adults taking candy and calling it health Until I realized that it's the only way my husband will actually consistently take supplements every day He takes organifies creatine cherry choose and organifies chilegit gummies Which is super mineral rich with full of acids and humic acids But my personal favorite and I do take them every day is the happy drops They're yummy little lemon gummies that are made with ginger go to cola and passion flour All of which are shown to have positive effects on mood and emotional well-being Plus it has saffron which is shown to help your brain modulate its levels of serotonin I do notice a difference in my mood when I am taking these gummies every day Even if they do taste like candy So if you're excited to try happy drops or just sick of taking your supplements in pill form You want to get in on the gummy action head to organify.com forward slash funk That's or g-a-n-i-f-i.com forward slash funk and you can save 20% off your order with that code funk If you struggle with fatigue headaches muscle cramps you might not be getting enough sodium This might surprise you But if you eat a primarily Whole Foods diet it shouldn't According to the FDA 70% of sodium in the American diet comes from processed foods So if you reduce or eliminate processed foods from your diet strong recommend You may also be reducing essential sodium Yes, sodium is essential. It's not an optional mineral Since I eat a Whole Foods diet I heavily salt my foods with sea salt I also drink element a tasty and salty electrolyte mix daily Right now element is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any drink mix purchase That's eight single serving packets for free with any drink mix purchase It's a great way to try all the different flavors And you can get yours at drinkelement.com forward slash funk This deal is only available through this link So you have to go to drinklmnt.com forward slash funk element offers a no questions ask refunds so you can try it totally risk free Take us to when you actually got the Sir's Diagnosis? What was that experience like? I will say that like this summer before the Sir's Diagnosis. I was like in my bag. I like started working with Camille of Camille Marie Nutrition who just finished FNA with you. So shout out to Camille. And I got so much better. And that's when I started to get into meditation, breath work journaling. And it really started to click. Whereas when I tried these things before they just didn't. I reminded me of your story of how you attribute like removing gluten from your diet, lowering your inflammation and like helping you recover from your eating disorder. It was like I physically could not do those things and work on my mental emotional spiritual bodies like with the inflammation and what I was dealing with on the physical plane. I'm so glad that you're bringing this up Emily because this is something that really can go overlooked, especially when we start talking about mental healing, emotional healing, spiritual healing, energetic healing when we start to say, oh, like, hey, maybe my nervous system has something to do with this. And we start to go into the breath work and all of these tools which you know, I love and you love. But what is so important for people to understand is that the brain in the body have this incredible capacity to change, to rewire. And that is a super power that we have. But in order for the brain to be able to do that, it needs, it requires certain physiological inputs in order to do that. So like Emily just said, if there's inflammation in the brain, it's going to be really hard to rewire it. We cannot override the physical body. We can't just be like, oh, I'm not going to put the appropriate stuff in here. And I'm just going to jump to breath work. Usually the success rate of that is going to be pretty low. What I'm hearing in Emily's story and what I want you guys to really hear is that she did lay the physical foundations. So she's eating well. She's removing the trigger foods that could potentially be causing inflammation in her body. And then layered on top, she's adding in breath work. And that is why she wasn't able to see change before. And she started to see more benefit from these very same practices. Yeah, for sure. And there was like, as soon as I made the improvements on the physical side, then the mental emotional spiritual side could like take hold. And then when that happened, then my physical symptoms got better. So it was just this like amazing positive feedback loop of like one driving the other and like the up and right direction. Okay. So then to like fast forward, we kind of hit a plateau. But again, like 80% there. And Camille's like, I suspect you have serves. She doesn't specialize in it. So she told me like, there's someone else out there. So I went through that process was confirmed with that diagnosis. And like definitely experience that that rush of validation of like, I'm not crazy. Finally, after like four or five years, like I have a name to put to everything that I've been feeling. That was great. But then like, it doesn't matter. But switch providers again, when I started to learn about the diagnosis with my naturopathic doctor, she actually had us do a group program to learn what serves is and to learn about the foundations of health through the lens of mold illness. And I totally get why she did it, totally appreciate why she did those things because it's a lot. I'm a really cerebral person. I usually do well with information because it makes me feel like I have options. It makes me feel like I'm not a sitting duck. And like I could do something about my situation. But the more I was learning about this, it was just like not good, not a good time. I was not feeling like empowered that I was going to have a life that I wanted to live after this. And so at this time, I was really struggling with accepting my diagnosis because I was having a hard time accepting all of the things, the prognosis that comes along with it, like the hyper vigilance, the constant scanning of my environment, like not being able to travel, not being able to feel safe visiting even my friends and family, not being able to go to a grocery store. Like my life was starting to feel really small, like it was getting smaller. And again, this life sentence like feeling. But I felt like I wasn't allowed to separate the diagnosis from the prognosis. What they told me my life was going to look like. But that's when it was kind of like divine timing. Like the Manifesto Health podcast series came out. And I was able to like tap into something different. And Aaron, like you told your story about your scleroderma diagnosis and kind of how you're going through the same thing of like God it, I see the scans, like I see it in black and white. But what you're telling me about how I'm going to feel and how my life is going to end up, like that's not true for me. And as soon as I heard you say that, I was like, wait, I'm allowed to do that. Like raise my hand, sign me up. Like if she could do that, I could do that. And so that was like an absolute game changer for me because I was really beating myself up for like kind of trying to see another way out. So that's kind of when Manifesto Health came into play, I had moved back home. Again, we did see mold when we were fixing it up for me to return. So like knew that that was a thing. And like once it was taken care of, my doctor wasn't, it was a little nervous just like how my my environment was. But I mean, at least what I think like there's no place that's 100% free for mold. So you can drive yourself insane trying to like feel safe in an environment. So I was in a really interesting spot where I could experiment like let me see what happens if I don't change my living environment and just tap into the Manifesto Health podcast series instead. Like there's no lab that exists that says, hey, are my symptoms or the result of physical like things happening in my life or is it on the mental emotional spiritual plane? Like there's no way for us to really know. So usually the prescription is, hey, like do it all, you don't have to do it all at once. But eventually, but this was kind of a unique opportunity that I could play around with that of like going to put the physical stuff on pause, like in terms of changing my environment. And I'm going to tap into this and just see what happens. And just in the podcast series alone, I noticed a reduction in symptoms. At this time, my depression was like really bad, like lowest I've ever been in my entire life. And since I didn't have the brain fog of the years prior, I was like painfully aware of how well I wasn't doing. And I was super anxious. I mean, this was the time where I just felt like there was two camps emerging of like, hey, you have the functional medicine, people saying like through diet lifestyle changes supplements, you can achieve pure health. And then you had the like nervous system regulators of the world and the like trauma stored in the body and that just needs to release. And like to be clear, I believe in both, but it felt like no one was allowing for both to be true at the same time. You had to pick one or the other and like choose your fighter. And that was really difficult for me to hear, especially because I had suspected that there was something going on in the mental emotional spiritual side. And kind of all I'd been doing so far was the physical. And it just kind of felt like they were saying everything that I was doing was for nothing. And when you're already like super anxious about everything, like that's not the message you want to hear. Yeah, I think that is a big thing. When you know, when you and I chatted before this podcast, that was a big thing that really stood out to me about your story. One is that you are in this place of which I can so relate to. It's kind of like there's this beauty in this desperation because you're so open to possibility. I mean, you have to like be really primed like the pump needs to be primed for you to listen to some podcast into already received medicine. And by the way, I'm so grateful that that was your experience because really all I'm doing in those in that podcast series is teaching you about your mind. I'm introducing some concepts of manifestation. I'm introducing some concepts of neurobiology and how we kind of create our own reality and our own body of health. And so I love that you are so ready. It's kind of that like fuck it. I'll try anything moment. And that is like, you know, where the real magic happens. But also what you're saying right now is that you are feeling like things were being positioned where you had to choose one or the other like either I'm working on my physical health through functional medicine or I am working on the rest of it. And I laugh at, you know, how you call it, the nervous system regulator. But I want to speak into that right now because there's so much rhetoric about the nervous system right now. And sometimes I have to laugh because the nervous system is the most complex thing in our entire bodies. And our bodies are pretty complex. And so the way that people talk about it, like it's so basic and straightforward and simple. I'm like, you know, I don't think you quite understand the nervous system. Nervous system health is super, super important where I find that this has the potential to miss the mark. It is when we're looking at the nervous system in nervous system health as things you do. And what's interesting is when I pulled my audience on Instagram relatively recently and I asked what people wanted. They were like easy hacks for the nervous system. Hacks, that's their words, not mine. A list of things to do. Simple, fast, realistic tools, easy ways to incorporate nervous system work. And the funny thing about it is like that's actually not how nervous system healing happens or how it works. There are certainly practices that can help us source safety in our bodies or get ourselves into a parasympathetic state, box breathing, physiological, sigh, vagus nerve techniques, go on Instagram, you'll find them all. But if that's all you're doing, your healing is going to say kind of surface level because real nervous system regulation work is understanding why your brain, in your body, keep returning to a dysregulated state. And the nervous system is so intimately tied to the subconscious. Really, I can almost think about the nervous system as a physical manifestation of the subconscious. It's kind of like the break gas pedal that causes physical reactions, whether it's fight, flight, freeze, depending on the subconscious current programming. And so if we want real change to happen, we have to go a little bit deeper than, quote unquote, nervous system hacks or easy ways to, quote unquote, regulate my nervous system. We have to take it a little bit deeper. We have to look at subconscious beliefs, maybe inner child parts, unprocess experiences. Those are all things that can really keep the nervous system in dysregulation. And so I would love for you to talk about because manifest your health can feel a little bit intangible, maybe sometimes even esoteric for people that haven't been through it. So can you talk about some of the tools, the practices, the things that you actually did, or ideas or concepts that actually gelled for you and helped you, you're working on the physical body. How did you continue to work on the physical body while also bringing in some of these tools and practices? For sure. And I definitely didn't like stop treatment on the physical stuff while I was doing this, which like both can exist at the same time. But one of the biggest concepts for me, like, oof, like I get chills when I think about this one, was the concept of secondary gains. And I love the way you taught it on it. You gave us full permission to tune this out, put it on a shelf, reject the whole thing if we weren't ready to hear it. But again, me being five years into feeling horrible, I was desperate. And again, you're just like in this beautiful place of being so open to possibility and trying things and being open to seeing things differently. So the prompt here was, is there a part of you that wants to be sick? Is there a part of you that feels safer being sick? Like, yeah. That's a doozy. Yeah. Everyone's like, of course, I don't want to be sick. Like, how could you even say that? How dare you? No one wants this. F you. So for me to get past this defensive first layer, I reframed it as if this were true. If it were true, that part of me wants to be sick. What are some reasons why that might be? And I feel like phrasing it this way allowed me to put some distance between it and me and like play around with the prompt rather than like white knuckling and wanting to fight it. And I want to show what came up for me because when you told us how this showed up in your life, it really helped me to connect the dots on where it was playing out in mind. Those real world examples were super impactful for me. So to pay it forward, some of the things that came up for me first, my illness, my health challenges allowed me to change. You know, in college, I was definitely more of a partier. Like, no regrets, by the way, I had a great time. But after I graduated, that environment, alcohol just like wasn't as interesting to me as it once was. It just wasn't as fun. And my health decline allowed me to step away from that life. It allowed me to say like, oh, I'm not drinking because of my health when really the truth was I wasn't going out because I just wasn't that interested in it anymore. Like, not that I'm so aware by any means, but like, you get what I'm saying. It also allowed me to like try more woo-woo things that I was interested in, but again, could blame on my health. Another thing I wrote down is that, you know, it's really interesting that my illness took the form of mold illness specifically, which is environment driven. I'm someone that likes like a modern, clean, and I come from a family that's like, we make do with what we got. We have antiques. We have things passed down from family members. And like, again, we're like proud of that identity. And I feel like I internalized that as like, oh, I don't need the shiny environment, the living situation like other people value that, but like, I don't need that stuff. When a reality like that newer environment is the environment that makes me feel like the most comfortable, the most clear, the most creative. So my mold illness gave me to an excuse to say, let's say like, need that new build apartment. I could blame my illness for needing that because I'd be too embarrassed to say that like, I valued that type of space so much like when it was such a point of pride in my family. And while I'm sure there's truth to both of those things, the biggest one for me was realizing that my illness was protecting me from my biggest fear that I may never find my purpose or the thing I was put on this earth to do. I grew up with a good kind of conditioning that I could, it was told I could do anything or be anyone and succeed like, well done parents. Thank you. But with this messaging, I started to put a lot of pressure on my self. I felt and honestly still feel sometimes that I need to find this thing that I'm meant to do. And if I don't, I'll be wasting the gifts that I was fortunate enough to be given. And I'll be wasting the positive supportive family situation that I was lucky enough to be brought into. So being sick gave me an out from that fear. It allowed me to put the fear of never finding my purpose up on a shelf because I had more important things, my health to focus on. I couldn't think about my next steps because, you know, first I had to get better. And once I was aware of this, once I said that out loud, once I made the subconscious conscious and was willing to look at in the face, one the fear while still daunting and like, no part of me has figured out what I want to do with my life, it's just like not that scary anymore. It doesn't hold as much weight or power over me. And the anxiety that I had over my health was just like, poof, God, like it was so immediate. And it was like, oh, this is what I'm actually scared of. This is actually what needs my attention. And this doesn't mean that I'm saying my diagnosis or my symptoms and my health challenges are not real or all my head or that like anything I was doing to support my physical body was for nothing. And also, I do believe that my mind was a factor that was keeping me from healing all the way from achieving true health and freedom from thinking about my health all the time because it was trying to protect me and shield me from this bigger fear of never finding my purpose. Wow, that is so major. And I like what you said, like, with this work, we're never telling anybody their lived experience isn't real. We're not saying, oh, no, you don't actually have this diagnosis. That's not real. We're never doing that. We're not gaslighting people. We're not telling you that your lived experience isn't actually happening. We're just saying that there's other things that you might not be aware of that are influencing what your body is doing right now. And sometimes the body's only way of communicating with us is through illness or through injury or through symptoms. And so it's more often than not a protection mechanism. And I want to just talk about this concept of secondary gains. It can also be known as hidden benefits, kind of one and the same. The overall gist of what Emily's talking about this concept is that you're conscious desire. So the things that you know you want, you're aware of the fact that you want to like a clean house, a new clean house built. That would be a conscious desire. I'm aware that I want this. And that has to align with your subconscious beliefs and programs. If they're not congruent, it will be really challenging to call in to receive and to hold that desire. So Emily is saying, you know, I would love like a beautiful, clean, brand new, pristine apartment. But I have these subconscious identities. I've locked in this family identity of like, that's not who we are. We don't need to be frivolous like that. We can, we make do with what we've got. You know, we can repurpose and we can reuse your body's never going to outperform your own self image, your own self identity. Never, ever, ever it won't. It won't do it. And so that's a kind of a small silly example, but it's a way that it plays out in real life. So if your conscious desires or goals and your subconscious beliefs and programs are not congruent, we won't be able to call in and hold the things that we want. So we can be doing all the right things, but it might feel like there's a block there. So if you desire one thing consciously, but any part of you, unconsciously or subconsciously believes that that thing is not safe, or it will create a problem for you or create friction in your life, then your subconscious will pump the brakes. And the way that it does that is through the body more often than not. So the subconscious and the nervous system work together. Like I said earlier, and this is a real world example of that. So when the subconscious is slamming the brakes saying, alert, alert, alert, this isn't safe. This does not align with our current beliefs programs and identity. What can happen is it can feel like panic. It can feel like urgency. It can feel like freeze. It can feel like shutdown. Like I said, it can be injury or illness or symptoms. But again, it's really just a protection mechanism in your body. And we just have to get super clear of what's going on here. So Emily said earlier, I took the subconscious and I made it conscious because once we are aware of these things, then we have the opportunity to change. Then we have the opportunity to make new decisions or to think about things in new, in different ways. Just store yourselves into new possibility. And I'm wondering if this concept helped you to seek, because I know that you are talking about self trust. Like you have more trust in your body and more trust in yourself and is understanding that the body is kind of always working against us, even with these protection mechanisms. Is that helpful for you to step into more self trust? Yeah, for sure. And I think that the compassion piece also came into it. It was like, oh, I see what you're doing here, Brain. Like, thank you so much. I know you're working in my favor, like love you, but like we don't need to do that anymore. So yeah, like learning that in tandem with the compassion piece that was kind of unlocked also with manifest your health definitely helped me to just like have more trust in my body definitely. And you said speaking with the self compassion, because you commented on an Instagram post and something that really jumped out to me, you said it's an educational tool to open up a treasure trove of self compassion. But then when you and I were talking, you were like, it also unlocked compassion for everybody else. So I want you to say more on that, when we're doing self help work, when we're working on ourselves, sure, this is work that benefits us. But what I am seeing more and more and more is how this can actually benefit the collective, how this can influence our relationships with other people. I think the goal you were talking about a small life are, I don't think I'm not going to speak for everybody, but for myself, my goal was never for my life to get smaller and smaller and smaller and more boundaries. It was to live a bigger, bolder, more beautiful life. And when I do take the time to do this work and work on myself, I can show up bigger, bolder, and more places and spaces for other people. And I can tap into that kind of like compassion for the collective. So speak into that because I just thought everything you said here was so beautiful. Yeah. So like you said, unlocked a treasure trove of self compassion and all of that was just learning the brain science, like how does the human brain work? So like understanding that everyone is going through life and seeing life through these set of filters, most of which were learned and programmed in us at a really young age. And just like this understanding that we're all watching the same channel, but experiencing a completely different movie. I just find it so much more difficult to be critical of myself and of others knowing that we have these programs like sometimes working against us, sometimes working in our favor, or just like working differently than the next person, and that's maybe why we don't see eye to eye. So for someone who like has always wanted more from themselves their whole life, like this was so impactful for me to learn. And then like unlocking that for myself and then unlocking the abundance of compassion for my family, my friends, my loved ones, and then that extending beyond them to literally like every single human that I pass on the street, like it's nothing sort of magical like to live in that consciousness and to live from that space, it's crazy, and it's like wonderful. And it was really cool that normally like the information plus the integration, as you say, is what makes the change. And like this was one of those times where just the information alone like unlocked that for me. We've talked before about why one skin stands out as a skin care company. It's real science. The founding team are longevity researchers who asked the question, if many visible signs of aging like wrinkles, fine lines, and loss of elasticity are driven by so-called zombie cells, what if you could actually reduce those cells to slow the aging process down? That research led to OS1, one skin's proprietary peptide. It's the first ingredient proven to switch off damaged senescent cells in actually slow skin aging. The reason I started using one skin is because I really liked the story and the science behind the brand, but also because as a 41-year-old, I was looking for effective skin care that didn't bother my sensitive skin, so no fragrance, no other really intense ingredients. When I use one skin, I'm giving my skin a clear signal to repair damaged cells, support collagen, and strengthen my skin barrier. Born from over a decade of longevity research, one skin's OS1 peptide is proven to target the visible signs of aging, helping you unlock your healthiest skin now and as you age. For a limited time, try one skin with 15% off using CodeFunk at 1skin.co/func, that's 15% off, 1skin.co with CodeFUNK. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them, please support our show and tell them that we sent you. I'm going to throw a little bit of a curve ball at you. You mentioned the word spiritual, like quite a few times, and then I started saying it too. Let's just lean into that because one of the concepts of Manifestor Health is intuitive functional medicine. Just how I see health in the human body is that we have a self in its made up of multiple parts. We have the physical self, which is the body. We have the nervous system, which is kind of like our personal surveillance system. We have the mental health, which are our thoughts and beliefs. We've kind of been talking about this with the subconscious. We have the emotional self, which is our feelings. We have the energetic self, which are energy networks within the body, and then also our energy field that surrounds us, and all of this we talk about in Manifestor Health, but we also have the spiritual self. I used to teach the energy body and the spiritual body as one and the same. That's how it was taught to me, but I've really been thinking about it differently a lot lately. I want to say here, speak into the microphone for everybody to hear. I am not here to tell anybody what to believe. I'm not trying to be any type of spiritual guru or anything like that. I always kind of think is like anything that we talk about on like the spiritual plane. It's just like a little bit of a choose your own adventure. It's like kind of like sliding scale, like you get to control the drip, you get to do whatever you want. Some people are like, I don't want it at all. I'm like, cool. Totally fine. Like you can still get some great medicine out of this. I always think about like everything is an invitation, and then you just get the opportunity to RSVP. No, like no big deal. Take what you need. Leave the rest. But what I've been pretty fascinated with lately is more of the research, and especially the work of Dr. Lisa Miller, who really is showcasing that high spiritual brains are healthier. So we all have a natural capacity to perceive a greater reality and consciously connect to the life force that moves in through and around us. So you were kind of alluding to that when you were talking about kind of like plugging into like collective consciousness. And even if we don't identify as being religious or being spiritual, our brain, all of our brains have a natural inclination like toward spiritual awareness. And we engage in these capabilities, our brains become healthier. And so I just think that's really cool. Again, I'm not trying to force any belief systems on anybody, but I would be so curious to hear your thoughts just in regards to spirituality and how, you know, using the body almost as an entry point to access like a deeper understanding. I don't even know how I would define spirituality. I think it's kind of like a feeling of interconnectedness, a feeling of awe, like moments of synchronicity, feeling connected to something bigger than yourself. Like that's probably how I would define it. And I would love for you to speak into that if you so choose to. For sure. And like I grew up with a religion, but I see it completely separate from that and honestly end up finding myself more attracted to the word spiritual and what that means to me. And it's kind of like you said for me, it's just like connecting to something bigger than myself. Honestly, for no reason other than it feels better for me. I'm like, oh, there's something out there that's bigger and like maybe knows more than I do. So like I don't have to be doing it all myself. Like there's something that's looking out for me or has the answers when I don't. And so for me, like I interchangeably use like universe, like I know God is a touchy one, but like God, like higher power source, like it's all kind of the same to me. I'm just kind of like whatever that is, like that's kind of how I view spirituality. You could find in the woods, like doesn't need to be in a church. Like that's how I see I like to not really put guardrails around it for me. It's kind of this like moving, moving piece. Can you see? I'm like tearing up. I like, I'm not sad. It's just like, I'm like awestruck. I just, yes, exactly. And I'm like, it feels good. It feels good to even have this conversation with you. Like it feels good in my body. And I oftentimes I'm like, okay, so our bodies have these like subconscious programs. And it just, just means that we're not consciously aware of them, right? That are running the show, like how we breathe, how, you know, we create new cells. Like we're not like consciously directing any of that. And our bodies know how to heal. And if you don't believe that, like trust me on this one, you know, like our gut lining is regenerating every few days. Like it's all happening. And what's the consciousness that's directing? It's bigger than just us. Like there's something bigger. I kind of feel like when I can plug into that, whatever it is, it's almost like a feeling that's being created right now as we're having this conversation. When I can plug into that, that is when I align with my sense of purpose. And so I think that there's like a real, I think we're living in these bodies into kind of pull it back full circle. I don't think we should choose body over like energy body or body over mind. It's all connected. And I think our souls, like our bodies are a space for our souls. And we get to live our life. We get to eat a peach, you know, we get to like smell a flower. We get to engage our human senses. I don't think healing is to transcend the body and pretend that nothing is happening on the physical plane. It's all happening on the physical plane, right? And I think that when we can use the body as an entry point into like these like layers of ourselves and when we can really connect with something greater or a higher self or a soul or whatever word resonates with you, I think that that's when our sense of purpose can click in. Research does say that a higher purpose is linked with lower levels of anxiety and depression, better resiliency and coping, better health, better psychological wellbeing. So it's all connected all the time. And I just wanted to speak into that because I think it's such a fascinating thing that your illness really gave you in your diagnosis and the fear associated with it. Because it's not just the diagnosis that sends us on our path, right? Or sends us on this like big long journey. Oftentimes it's the fear that we associate with the diagnosis. That is kind of like leading you to your higher purpose, you know, I think that's what the secondary gain like helped you to see. So I think it's just it's all wild. Yeah, no, absolutely. And another podcast I was listening to introduced me to David Guillem who spreads the work of Kabbalah and the person he was talking to also struggled with their health and what he said was God or the light or like whatever word you choose, that was kind of a way to pivot you like to like force you in another direction. Like maybe you're going down one path and like it was like, nope, I need you here. And again, like that doesn't technically have to be true. But if it makes you feel better, like I'm like why not believe it? And so at the same time I was listening to manifest your health podcasts, I was like tuning into his like little masterclass because it just felt better. Like there was no rhyme or reason. But I was like, I'm plugging into things that feel better. Cause I want to drown out all the things that don't make me feel good. And sometimes we can just let our gauge be that simple. Does it feel good? Cool. Do more of that engage in more of that. Does it feel bad? Yeah, do less of that. I mean, it gets to be that simple. And that's why like, you know, I just feel as though so many of my paths have like revealed themselves to me because I just keep following what I'm called to do, what feels good, what excites me, what feels engaging and just like let the path kind of reveal itself before we close out. I just want to see if you have any final thoughts or there's any aspects of the program itself or your experience that I haven't covered that we haven't talked about here that you think people should really know and understand. We did touch on like how manifest your health helped me restore the trust I had in my body and like definitely gave me a more positive outlook on my health. And I just wanted to give like a concrete example of that as part of the surge diagnostic criteria, they look at your HLDR genes. Basically, some genes are increased your susceptibility to having this. And I've got those genes. I got the bad genes. And like learning about the genetics really rocked me. I think prior to that, because of my time in sports, because of the background and how I grew up, I had or I held the identity of like, I am someone who is healthy. I am someone who is strong. I am someone who can bounce back from anything when it comes to my body. Like I got injured in college and it was never a matter of like if I would heal. It was just when it was automatic. But the genetics piece really started to break down that identity and I am a healthy person transformed into I am someone who is compromised. I am someone who will have this forever. And so that life sentence again, it's just so hard to overcome, especially to your point of like, it kind of sometimes feels like we're not allowed to believe in the things that feel good. Like we have to believe in what the doctor or the authority says or like, what everyone is saying about this condition. And like, I'm not allowed to believe something differently. And I instead started to poke holes in the diagnosis because it just made me feel better like how many people in my family have these genes and are like just fine. Like how many people are like actively in this world have these genes and are living in probably moldy houses and are like completely fine. Like we don't know about them because like they don't have symptoms. So we're not testing them. And you showed in manifest your health like people who had slipped discs and weren't experiencing back pain. So just like this idea that there can be physical deformities and like you can still not experience pain. It's not the end all be all. And yeah, I just felt like once again, I couldn't fully let myself believe that until I like went through manifest your health and was like, oh, this is okay. I am allowed to do that. You know, we talk about diagnoses as medical hexing sometime like the no sebo effect. What people are told about their condition and their potential to heal can really dramatically influence that. And so sometimes we have to look at that and say, is that the path for me? Like Emily has said a couple of times, we can accept the diagnosis. We can say, okay, I see the labs. I totally see the data that supports that. But the rest of it, the story that is attached to this does not need to be my story. I have a manifestation teacher who says that everything that doesn't feel good is a lie. If the story doesn't feel good, you get to reject it. You have the power. You have the agency that is up to you and you can do that because that doesn't have to be my story. And then what we can start to do, which is what Emily did is start to look for evidence of the contrary because your subconscious mind does mean marching orders. It does need to see evidence that what you want in the story that you want to create actually exists out there. And so that's a really, really important thing. I know you said you have a closing statement that you want to make. Yes, it's quick. And Aaron didn't pay me to say this. But throughout the program, I kept thinking like this should be required reading for all humans. Like put manifest your health on the syllabus for things you must know as a human being, living and breathing in 2026, like not just those who have helped challenges because it works on so much more than health, like literally every aspect of your life. Like I'm still uncovering and challenging old beliefs. Like the compassion piece was huge. Like it's really hard to put into words all the ripple effects that this program has. Thank you so much for trying to do it for us because it is really, really hard to put into words what we're doing here. And I'm just so proud of you. And everything that you've done and what your body has been able to do. And I'm so grateful that you found the podcast doing God's work out there. I'm so grateful that you stumbled across the podcast and found the program. And I just really appreciate you coming on the show. I know it's not always easy to talk about your health journey and all of that, all the warts and bumps along the way. But I know that this story is going to help people. And it's going to, you're going to act as an expander for somebody. And I think that's just, you know, thank you for being part of the ripple effect. So we really appreciate you being here Emily. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Like you've been in my ears for so many years. So honestly, super crazy and surreal to be doing this with you now when you're face. Okay. Alright, bye everybody. We will check you next week. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Functional Nutrition Podcast. Please keep in mind this podcast is creative for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. 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