I recently spoke at a Natural Family Conference and walked away realizing how much we all tend to outsource our health to “experts.” Even myself, who has extensive training and clinical experience working with clients felt “less than” when sharing the stage with doctors, naturopaths and other healthcare professionals. This made me realize how often our worth and education level or status is tied into what we tend to believe is true when it comes to our own health journey.
Think for a moment- how often have you trusted an expert without critically thinking or questioning it yourself (hint: really consider the last 2-3 years of our lives and what the “experts” told us to believe…).
At the conference I spoke about how for years I trusted docs when they said my bloodwork was “normal” and was even told I “…didn’t have a thyroid issue, I had a body dysmorphia issue” (…coming from a doc that never even ran thyroid labs on me!!!). However, “THEY” are the experts and thus I didn’t need to question it and had to just accept that my health and how I felt was, I guess, “normal.”
It wasn’t until I found the functional space and compared my labs to what optimal ranges are that I saw the night and day difference. I FINALLY had answers as to why I felt so terrible despite the “normal” bloodwork my doc had run.
In the past, it was maybe just our doctors or other health practitioners that were giving us recommendations that we trusted, but in this world of social media we are now inundated daily with different things we could try to better our health.
This Doesn’t Just Mean Doctors
How many times have you believed what you read or saw on social media and fallen for a product/program because the person promoting it looked so confident and appeared to help their health? Insert me, raising my hand.
Here are just some of the trends I know are very common these days:
- Essential oils
- Liquid collagen products
- Weight loss products
- Detox/cleanse programs
- Anti-aging supplements
- Pro-metabolic diets
- Ancestral eating
- Lifestyle tools- saunas, red light therapy, prana mats, etc.
- Supplements…and more supplements
All of these things can be helpful tools, but may also end up being another item that sits and collects dust OR one that you never really know if it helped you at all.
One Person’s Potion is Another’s Poison
Here’s the issue- that great collagen supplement that the beauty on Instagram is promoting MAY help her skin and stretch marks…but so too could be because of the botox she gets (but swears she doesn’t!), the facials she does monthly, the foods she eats, the genes she was born with, the products she uses on her skin- the list goes on.
Just because ONE thing worked for someone doesn’t get to the root cause of your health struggles. I had to learn this the hard way of spending thousands (yes, thousands) on dozens of products that each went after their own claim without ever addressing ALL of the root issues in my body.
Below are just a few “hot topics” that I discuss with my clients that they are taking because they think it will support their health…only to realize after getting their labs back that it could be sabotaging their health:
- Blood Sugar Balance: some popular styles of eating (pro-metabolic specifically) encourage lots of carbohydrates, which for someone with high blood sugar or blood sugar dysregulation could be a terrible choice.
- Intermittent Fasting: Did you know that a majority of the studies done on fasting were done on males? Males who don’t have a monthly cycle, get pregnant, breastfeed, or go through menopause. Fasting in many women can actually be a lot more harmful than helpful and keep a body in fight or flight.
- Liver or Organ Complexes: animal organs are incredibly nutrient-dense, but for some with mineral imbalances, specifically with copper and iron, or with a congested liver this could make you more toxic than actually helpful
- Vitamin D: In acute cases of sickness, Vitamin D is very helpful to have on hand. However, many people have been told to take it daily and it can actually force calcium out of your bones and end up in soft tissues, manifesting in things like osteoporosis, kidney stones, calcium deposits, and joint pain
- Fish Oil: another thing many people are taking, but so many on the market aren’t made from the best fish OR are rancid through processing and aren’t the true “old school form” of cod liver oil that is actually beneficial
- Saunas or other Detox tools: I use these a lot with clients, but if drainage pathways aren’t open or someone isn’t ready from a mineral/adrenal/stress perspective to detox, asking the body to push harden when it is already feeling taxed is going to leave you even more depleted than better!
You Don’t Have One Root Cause
Despite what is marketed, getting to TRUE and lasting health usually takes more than one step or program:
- A heavy metal detox alone probably won’t fix you.
- Going keto, or ancestral or paleo or vegan may make you feel better for a bit, but likely won’t fix deep seeded infections, viruses, mold, bacterial imbalances or hormone imbalances.
- Doing 75 hard may make you lose some weight and put on some muscle, but it may leave your stress hormones more out of whack than when you first started.
- Introducing detox support like saunas, dry brushing, gua sha, coffee enemas may help rid your body of toxins, but if your drainage pathways aren’t open or you aren’t using them correctly, it may make you feel worse.
Approaching Health Step-By-Step vs. Segments
Another thing I see a lot are all of the siloed experts that zoom in on one cause and don’t think about the large, intertwined picture of your body + how it works. Now, I’m not saying that all experts are bad- I am VERY thankful my daughter has a pediatric cardiologist trained in heart surgery and health. I’m talking about conditions that have many interconnected root issues like thyroid, acne, cholesterol, infertility, and more.
Often the silos of these fields only address the “what” and don’t address the “why” and what you can change in your lifestyle to truly heal from the inside out. This looks like:
- Cream for your skin condition without addressing gut or liver
- Thyroid medication without addressing anything that impacts your thyroid
- Statin medication for cholesterol without addressing its connection to thyroid or liver health
- Jumping right to IVF without addressing infertility holistically first
Are you ready to heal everything non-specifically?
In my work with clients, we don’t just do a liver cleanse…or a paleo diet…or an exercise program. Each protocol is custom-designed to fit your life and your functional lab results and what issues need to be tackled first. It’s so much more than one system, one symptom or one product. It is true lifestyle change from the inside out and one that I wish to leave you as the TRUE “expert.”
If you’re ready to stop wasting your money on one-off items and are ready to look at everything comprehensively, book a free Discovery Call today and let’s get after it together.