Sense of Soul - Sick of Being Sick?

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

Are you sick of being sick? If you said yes, this episode is for you! Joining Sense of Soul today is Sabrina Dvorak, Nurse Practitioner, Health Coach and founder of Evolution Health Consulting, a holistic evidence-based approach to healthcare with functional medicine.  Sabrina had a dream to evolve healthcare from a "sick care" model to an individualized, patient-centered model. She believes its more than just treating the symptom. Investigating deeper, discovering the root of the problem, the underlying causes. Mande and Shanna relate, both having experienced the many diagnosis’s that lead to a bag full of prescriptions, years ago, part of their journey they both speak about often. Evolution Health Consulting, is done via telemedicine, many of it’s testing can be sent to your home.  Supported by a highly experienced team, you can be on your way to good health, with a deeper understanding of your the health of your mind, body and soul. Freedom and control over your treatment plans, that are customized and personalized for you! Check out below, Evolution Health Consulting! A Functional Medicine Company Health Coaching, Employee COVID-19 Testing, Immune System Testing. Schedule Your Free 15-Minute Consultation Now! www.evolutionhealthconsulting.com EHC Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe Click here Check out Sense of Soul website, online metaphysical store, workshops, blog, meditations and more... www.mysenseofsoul.com  

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart and soul. It's time to awaken. Today we have with us Sabrina Dvorak, founder of Evolution Health Consulting. As a nurse practitioner and health coach, she helps her patients come up with wellness plans that are specifically designed for you. And it is her passion to educate people on a holistic evidence-based approach to healthcare using functional medicine. She's local here in Colorado, and we are excited to have you with us, Sabrina. Thanks so much.

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's awesome to be with you guys. Yeah, I was very excited because we've had no one on like you at all. And you know, I was actually sitting in that the other day. I was thinking maybe I've been avoiding the nutritional and health piece because I know that it's going to trigger me into needing to really take a better look at my own health. It does that. Yeah. That's a good thing, right? If you help yourself, you help other people around you too. Yeah. So tell us how you started. So a long time

ago, my grandma actually gave us like vitamins and minerals and she lived in a very small, small town in Nebraska. And I'm saying like 30 people small. So she was kind of ahead of her time. She did massage, some acupressure. Both grandparents believed heavily in supporting your body with nutrients and minerals. That kind of stuck with me. And then my mom was involved in a malpractice suit that left her sick. She's still sick with chronic pain. Growing up, watching her go through different doctors and suffer made me want to go to nursing school, actually. So I became a nurse, worked in intensive care unit, really, really sick people.

And that's like the extreme end of where sick people end up, right? So people on ventilators, people needing multiple medications just to stay alive. So I kind of saw the worst of the worst and decided that I wanted to go into more of a preventative health role to keep people out of the ICU, I guess. So I went to nurse practitioner school, almost quit because I felt like I was just giving more drugs. People weren't getting any better. We had to see patients very quickly. And I just didn't feel like I was really giving anyone any benefit to

long lasting, healthy longevity. So I started taking classes actually for like Reiki and psychic development and really cool things like that, just to kind of get more into my own body and figure out like, what is health and what is it? What do you need to be healthy? And as luck would have it, I ended up with having thyroid problems of my own and went in to see the doctor and she gave me lipothyroxine or Synthroid, which is the common prescription you get when you first are diagnosed with hypothyroidism. And she's like, I'll see you back in six weeks. So in six weeks, I was like, okay, great. I'm going to lose weight. I'm going to have more energy. I'm my hair's going to keep coming through. Like, I'm going to feel amazing. And well, six weeks comes by, we do another blood

test. And she's like, you know what? You are absolutely perfectly normal now. And I was like, are you kidding me right now? Like I haven't lost any weight. I have no energy. I have all of the same symptoms, like nothing's changed, but she's like, well, your blood test is normal. And I'm like, so what do I do? And she said, well, there really isn't anything you can do. We can try to go up on the prescription medication, but you know, your blood levels are normal. So there's really no indication to do that. I was like, well, there's gotta be another way. This is absurd. Like I can't keep feeling like this. I am a mom. Like I have things to do. I have to work full time. So I went to see a functional medicine doctor and I took a friend along with me because I'm like, what is

this stuff? Who are these people? And I was very curious and skeptical. I went in, I started a program. I took some tests. I learned I had some gut infections that I didn't know about. I had high triglycerides. I was leaning towards type one diabetes. I had many symptoms that I just thought were part of me for the long time, like irritable bowel symptoms, constipation, diarrhea, acne, just thinking those were normal things that people go through, but learned that I had a really toxic environment inside of me. And within six months to a year, I completely reversed my hypothyroidism. I no longer require a prescription medication. You know, this is real healing. This is the direction I want to move to help other people

feel better inside of their bodies too. I love that. That's kind of what sent Shanna and I into our awakening as we were both given all these meds and one pill would lead to another, would lead to another. We finally just said no more. And we both were misdiagnosed with fibromyalgia. And I also took Synthroid for my hypothyroidism.

And then I healed it myself as well. Finding out that there are other options. We're just not aware of them. Right. Yeah. There's a lot of other options. And that's kind of why I wanted to talk about functional medicine is because a lot of people don't know that it exists or they don't really know what

it is. And it really is just looking at the root cause. Like, why do you have these symptoms instead of just treating the symptom with a pill that needs another pill that needs another pill? What we do is we just look at the root cause. So we're going to look at your gut. We're going to look at your hormones. We're going to make sure that you have the adequate nutrients and vitamins that you need to actually keep your body functioning in a functional state. So it digs a little deeper, but you know, really that's what medicine should be, right? Like we should look for why you got sick and then look at it holistically, not just about what's going on symptom wise, but what's going on in your life as well? Like what's triggering this?

Are you having a high level of stress? Is there foods? Is there extra toxins that you don't know about such as mold or Lyme that could be causing your symptoms? It's like, I think that these diagnosis are just being thrown out so very easily. And we're not looking at maybe it's something that could be treated within the body. What I've noticed a lot of is that mold, which is common indoors and outdoors, but now that we're stuck inside more often, um, mold is causing people to have a lot of anxiety and depression, and you might not see the mold in your house. It might be something that happened like from a water leak a few years ago, or maybe it was a window well leak that just kind of leaks every now and then you wipe the black

stuff off and it goes away. But what happens is the mold spores are still in your house and those accumulate in your system and can cause all sorts of havoc on your gut and your brain, which is how you get anxiety and depression or fatigue, insomnia, just simple things like that require just a little bit more investigation. And instead of putting them on a prescription that causes even more disruption and neurotransmitters, it's best just to kind of look to see what the actual underlying cause can be. Yeah. You know, whenever I was on your website, I loved how it said sick of being sick question mark. Are you frustrated with the five minute doctor visits? Are you tired of taking

a medication that needs another medication to counteract the side effects? And I thought, oh my God, that was so me. And yes, I was sick of being sick and I was sick of being sick. And I was sick of those five minute appointments because I did feel like I was like this cattle that was like pushed in there and pushed out because they were on like this timeframe. And they would always tell me what was wrong with me, but seem annoyed that I wanted to know why that was wrong with me. And it was a real wake up call for me when I saw all these women around 35 having thyroid problems I thought to myself wait what's going on it's one thing to tell me what's wrong with me but I want to know why it happened I want to know why my thyroid is overactive or underactive I want to

know why my teeth all of a sudden are getting brittle I want to know why and I felt like whenever I asked those why questions I was actually being like annoying to them. That's something we hear a lot. And actually, you know, that's something I've gone through as a patient myself. I had an experience with mold, which took me to the functional medicine route again. But first I was like, you know, I I'm going to go see the GI docs because I was having these severe GI symptoms. Then I also started having these brain symptoms where I couldn't recall names of objects. So I'd be staring at a vacuum and I was telling my kids, go get that. What the heck is the name?

Just that stupid thing. Like, Oh, why can't I say it? And they're like, it's a vacuum. And I was just like, what is happening to me right now? You know, and I would go to the, I went to the doctors. We did was just like, what is happening to me right now? You know? And I would go to the, I went to the doctors, we did all the tests, every single one of them and the upper GI, the lower GI, the lab values, the x-rays. And they're like, we really can't find anything that's going on. And I'm just like, well, I mean, obviously there's something wrong. They're like,

we'll just try this diet, you know? And I'm like, well, but it's not diet related. Like this just started kind of out of the blue, you know, and they were annoyed, right. They're annoyed at me because I kept asking these questions or like, I don't know, sometimes it just happens. And I'm like, this does not just happen. Like something caused this to happen and we need to figure out what it was. And sure enough, related to my genetics, it was actually mold and I couldn't get it out of my system without having a medication to actually help get rid of it. And then once I took that medication, guess what? 100% resolution of all my symptoms. And I can say what objects are now go get the vacuum. You know what I mean? Like I almost was like,

am I going to have dementia at 40? I can't have that. You know? So it's just really interesting how I've been placed in these situations where I've had these health issues and I've had to navigate through them. And when I've gone to conventional medicine, I have gotten nowhere. But when I've gone to functional medicine, I've completely reversed like all of my symptoms and issues. So it's really incredible. You know, let's talk about something that you brought up. You said your grandmother really valued and implemented vitamins into her life.

Supplements years ago, Shanna and I had severe fog brain. So we started diving into our vitamin deficiencies like vitamin D and my body would not absorb it after I was in ICU for my asthma attack. Shanna was lacking. Shanna wasn't yours. B you were very B deficient. Um, specifically B12, you know, my memory was messed up so that I'd never been checked for it. I was severe. Like I'm talking like way under like hundreds and maybe like a thousand under what the norm is. So she says, you have to take, you know, these drops of B12 every day. I had to start getting injections eventually. Right away, my memory just came back. It was

amazing. They don't test for that. Right. That's just one small piece. Our bodies don't produce B12. You have to get it from, you know, meats and proteins and which is crazy to me. Why do we need something that we can't even produce? Well, the thing is, is if your gut is healthy and functioning, right, you're going to absorb all those nutrients from the foods that you eat, but if it's not, then you end up being B12 deficient. So it's, it's probably still something that's going on in your gut that you eat, but if it's not, then you end up being B12 deficient. So it's, it's probably still something that's going on in your gut that you haven't addressed yet. That needs a little bit more in-depth testing. Well, and just to let the listeners know, if you don't have B12, we're talking damage to the brain, you need B12 in order for your brain to function, people who are in stages of like Alzheimer's are lacking

and can't absorb B12. Yeah. I mean, when it comes to brain health, it's a lot about your gut health. I mean, because there's a gut brain connection. So if you have what's called leaky gut or your, your guts allowing, you know, maybe you drink alcohol, maybe you are eating foods that your body doesn't like, but you don't necessarily know that maybe you get a little skin rash, maybe you have acne. There's little signs and symptoms that once you find these things, you look back and you're like, Oh my God, like that was from that. Like, I know that if I have a specific food, it's going to cause this reaction to me, but that's only because I've researched it and like took the time to look to see like

how my body reacts with different things. When we are in functional medicine, what we do is we look at all of that. So I'm not just going to look at the fact that you have B12 deficiency. I'm going to look at like why you have B12 deficiency. So we're going to look at your body reacts with everything, right? So it's not just a one thing. I'm not just going to be like, okay, well, you need B12. I'm just going to give you B12. Well, we have to look at everything else. We have to look at how you're detoxifying. You know, we have to look at what inflammation markers that you have going on, like inside your body. We need to look at your gut health. We need to look at your brain health, your stress too. Like right now, everyone's a little stressed out.

So it's causing our bodies to be in what's called fight or flight. So it's like, we're running from a tiger and we're always running from the tiger. And normally if there's a tiger bias, we want our body to do that, but there's no tigers. We're creating the tigers, you know, our stresses in our world and, um, in our environment right now, the things that we feel like we have to do are causing us to be in this fight or flight method, you know, symptomology. And so we have to find ways to calm ourselves because that will decrease our stress. When we do that, it helps our adrenal glands. It helps our gut and it helps our brain. So it's all connected. So that's, that's the reason like you really need a good functional

medicine practitioner to look at the whole picture, not just that one symptom of B12. Cause I guarantee you, if I gave you my health history form and you filled it out, there'd be a lot of things that you'd be like, Oh, I forgot. I have that. Oh, I forgot. I do this. Oh yes. That's, that's true. I forgot about this. And so we're looking at the whole picture, not just picking and choosing little parts because it all works together. Just like our mind, body, and soul works together, right? We can't have one piece without the other piece. So that's kind of how we look at it. You know, I can remember having a lot of these symptoms you're talking about right before I had my big asthma attack, you know, I can remember having a lot of these symptoms you're talking about right

before I had my big asthma attack, you know, the acne, the skin issues. A couple of things popped into my head. I wanted to talk about, first of all, as women, I feel like it's really, really hard sometimes to decipher, like, what is the symptom of, because you just had a baby. So your hormones might be jacked up or you're on your period and your periods are heavy. So that might be part of it or stress because you're a mom. So is that it? Or is it food? I mean, it's so, I feel like it's so confusing as women, because we go through all these

different stages. Then you're like, wait, is it menopause? So there's all these like different aspects that I feel like for women, it makes it even harder to like figure out like, is it hormones? Is it vitamins? Is it asthma? Is it foods? Like there's a lot, probably all of it. Yeah. You know, and that's the thing. It's probably a little bit of all of it, but once you can clear out like these underlying infections, you know, that you might not know that you have, then a lot of things end up reversing. So like, if you can picture a river, and then beavers, they got,

you know, they're active, and they made a dam. So a lot of the things down the river aren't flowing as good as they should. So maybe the trees not getting water anymore. And, and this little pasture is drying up that kind of thing. So those are kind of the symptoms downstream that you're having, like the acne, the gut pain, the, you know, not breathing well, but if we fix the dam and we get rid of the dam, then everything starts flowing again. So that's kind of what the root cause does. So if we fix the root cause of your symptoms, then everything else starts to kind of fall into place again and starts functioning at a higher level.

So that's why we go for that. It's is it's not just picking the symptoms and attacking those. There are things that we can give you to make you feel better in the meantime, but we're not going to stop there. We're going to make sure we want to reverse chronic disease. We don't want you to end up with cancer. We don't want you to, and, and, and, you know, I have so many people I know right now with cancer and, and two of them are terminal and they're young, they're fifties. And, and I wish I could say this is not happening so often, but it's happening more and more. And the problem is our environment is toxic. We have toxic things in our system for stressed out. We do too much. We're going to see conventional therapists. They're not giving

us the whole picture. They're not fixing what's really going on. And more and more people are going to be diagnosed with cancer younger and younger because they're not looking at the whole picture. We can completely and utterly totally reverse chronic disease using functional medicine, autoimmune conditions, brain conditions, anxiety, depression, we can help mitigate ADHD, autism that, you know, we can, we can make people better with functional medicine without using so many drugs. And it's just, it's incredible to me that I'm just glad I live in a time where this exists, you know? Well, you know what I am too, but I will tell you that a lot of people don't choose this route because unfortunately the stuff that is holistic and actually works is not covered by insurance. And I've learned that the hard way, you know, with hormone therapy, I mean, it's,

it costs $700 a month for my husband and I, and a lot of these holistic options are so expensive, including organic food, which I don't even trust anymore. How do we know we're actually getting good, solid organic food? We don't know if we actually really are. Where do we even get food that you can trust that, you know, hasn't had a bunch of pesticides on it and eating healthy is really expensive. So it's frustrating to me because in my mind, I'm like, I want to, I want to go see Sabrina because this is logical and it makes sense. And because I crave to know the root problem, but why is it that everything that's like

this is not covered by insurance and is out of pocket? Well, I mean, you can, you can look at this a couple of ways. So is there money? If I make you better in the pharmaceutical industry, our pharmaceutical industry loves prescriptions. You know, they keep changing their qualifications for different medications to, to put you on so they can put more people on them. So there's not a lot of money in prevention or health really. And we're a symptom driven society. So we want to, we have a symptom, we want it fixed and we want to take a pill to do it. It's hard to do the hard work,

but functional medicine is affordable when your health is your number one priority. I was on Medicaid with two children when I went and had my functional medicine assessment and started going through it because I knew I couldn't live like that anymore. And I didn't want to feel like that. And really, if you invest in yourself for one year, doing a functional medicine approach, like I have a membership program, it includes visits with me, a health coach and a clinical nutritionist. It's all included in the cost of the membership. If you invest in that for a year, we can take you from feeling the way you are to almost being a completely new person, reversing your chronic disease by the end of that. And then really,

maybe you just need some maintenance here and there, but it's not extravagant. Like it's something that I feel everyone can afford. It's just that your health has to be your priority. And there is a myth surrounding eating organic. I used to think that eating organic was a lot more expensive and there's some things that are more expensive, but I find that actually natural grocers is one of my favorite because it's so easy to go there because everything is organic. And so I don't have to go to like sprouts and be like, okay, well, should I get these raspberries or are they on the dirty list? Am I supposed to get the clean, the dirty? And then I'm looking on my phone and then I'm

annoyed. Cause I have 35 seconds to get shopping done. Cause I have a baby, you know, and I'm just like, I can't stand this. So I just go to natural grocers and I get the stuff that I need. It's organic and Costco has great organic beef and chicken and fish and tons of organic produce. And it's so much cheaper than going to like kink supers or Safeway or your regular grocery store. Costco is awesome for organic produce. And, you know, as a single mom been off and on Medicaid a few times, just with things that have happened in my life. And I still have always chosen to buy organic as, as much as possible. I mean, just do 80% of it. Like if you can make 80%, you're decreasing your toxic load by a lot. So don't be frustrated by the, by the fact that it is more expensive there. Definitely. I mean, if I wanted to buy some cashew queso cheese, just to eat with my, my chips, it's, I'm going to spend a little bit more money, right. But I, maybe I can't have dairy and that's just the treat I have, but you don't have to buy them all the time. And a lot of the supplements, you can use your HSA card or FSA card to, to decrease the cost. A lot of the labs we can do that insurance cover or just partial coverage or your HSA card works for that. So there's a lot of affordable options

to get through. But like I said, your health has to be your number one priority. And if it's not going to make, you're just not ever going to have enough money for it. Well, I love that you said that. Thank you for all of that information that was great because if I would have had preventative care in place then maybe I wouldn't have had a million dollar ICU bill right what's the cost of not doing it is sometimes exactly and you know I just paid four grand in the last two months for my asthma shots that I get weekly. So, I mean, yeah, it might seem expensive at the time, but in the wrong run, it's probably a lot cheaper. Oh my gosh. I mean, I spent some money and it took me a little bit of time to pay everything off, but you know, the coolest part, I think with the telemedicine is one, you don't have to go anywhere. So you

save on gas. You don't have to wait in line. You don't have to even get dressed if you don't want to, I mean, maybe top dressed or something like that, at least for me, because we do see each other on screen, please. You know, but, but to have a membership keeps you engaged and going. So when everything is included and maybe you pay monthly, or maybe you have the funds and you can pay annually, but after a year of investment and you feel so much better, you're going to look back and be like, that was the best money I've ever spent. Because you know, what happens is if you don't have your health, you can't spend money on anything else. Anyway, you can't go to work because you feel sick.

You can't do the things you want to do. You can't go travel because you don't feel well, or you can't walk because you have arthritis. Like there's so many things that your health impact. And once you feel good, you look at those things and you're like, oh my God, I'm so happy. I can do these things. Like I am so blessed that I don't have to do allergy shots all the time that I don't have to take these medications that I know my kids are protected and their health is going to be fine in case they are exposed to viruses. COVID is just one virus. These viruses are going to keep coming. It's not like there's never going to be another one. So

now's the best time to really like assess your health and where you're at with it to see like, what are the improvements I can make? What investment can I put in myself so that I can feel better so that everyone else around me can feel better too. I wanted to just say that the whole thing about the mold and maybe other things that we're not aware of that are in our environment, you know, and how we were talking about how they might affect us. I just thought about our children, what's going on there with the kids and also the foods. I mean, my son who's autistic only eats Taco Bell, tortitos, pizza, and frosted flakes. And, you know, I've sat with nutritionists before and, you know, I'm like, these people are like, okay,

so this is what you're going to be eating every day. And he's like, okay. And then he's like, he'd never eat any of that. And his is more of a texture thing. And also he's hypotonics. So he doesn't, he doesn't feel things. And I think it also affects his senses. Like he likes spicy things or like things that are, that are going to liven up his mouth. You won't eat anything bland. Well, I guess frosted flakes are bland though. I don't know. I, you know, that's just the thing with autism. Like you just never can figure it out. It's just such a, you know, it's a, it's a puzzle, which is why I think they have a puzzle piece, but it really concerns me with him. I mean, he's 17, six something and barely weighs probably a hundred pounds. Yeah. And it, you know, if I'm always worried,

if he got COVID like love this past week, when I was sick, he was drinking after me. Right. And so sugar, sugar causes yeast. Well, so basically yeast overgrowth causes what's called high oxalates and oxalates are actually pretty painful and oxalates can travel to different parts of your body, but a lot of them can be in the brain. They go to soft tissues. They can go, they can go everywhere. And oxalates are really high in people that have autism or people that have brain inflammation. We find those things on something called organic acid testing, which is a urine test. It's really simple to do. And when we turn it in and get it back,

then we can see what levels of oxalates he has in his system. And then we know how to treat him appropriately, which can help bring down some of his symptoms of his autism and can help really curb that brain inflammation that's going on. Cause essentially that's what autism is. It's just the brain inflammation. So I'm shaking my head because Sabrina, what, I mean, how do you get someone to eat something that just, I think he would eat it if he could, you know, like everybody else, you know, if you could. Well, when you're, when we, when you kill off the yeast or you get rid of the yeast, that's in his, in his gut and his system and his body, then his sugar cravings will go down because yeast eat sugar.

They crave sugar. So it makes you crave sugar. So he's just feeding his gut bacteria, essentially the bad gut bacteria. And once you change that, then, then you, you change his diet based on what he's able to do. Right. I'm, you don't just give someone a plan and then say, do it. And then knowing that they can't do it, it's a personalized plan for him and for you, because you're the one that has to help him to do it. So, so it's not something that we go, you know, well, this is what you do,

and this is how you do it. That's not how this works. You have to, you have to kill the underlying, um, the infections first, you know, and, and then different things change inside. If you can decrease the brain inflammation, it's going to feel a lot better. Cause if you can imagine like having a hurt ankle all the time, right? Your, your ankles always bruised and swollen and it hurts to walk on. And then we do some things that help decrease that. And you start feeling better. You start using it in a different way, right? So you're, you're starting to move more and do more. Well, imagine your brain has a bruise on it and that's kind of like autism, right? So your,

your brain's inflamed. It's kind of in a bruise state all the time. So you're not going to use it in certain ways. You kind of do what makes it feel best, you know, because that's how you've been coping. Yeah. It's, it's a huge approach. I worked with a pediatrician that specializes in autism in a holistic environment. And I learned a lot from her and how she treats kids that have autism. And to me, everyone can benefit from functional medicine just because if you've, if you've never done it, just clearing out those infections and your toxic burden. So if you can imagine like a bucket and everybody has a different size bucket and you pour in like heavy metals or mold or chemicals or infections or I love your visuals, by the way, they're great. Yeah. Poor dietary choices, you know, or you see,

you know, you see that guy that's smoking and drinking his whole life and lives to be 110. And you're like, yeah, how does this make sense? This other guy has cancer at age 40 and he's a marathon runner. So everybody has a different size bucket. So it doesn't his, the guy with that can smoke and drink his bucket may be endless. And the other guys, his bucket is really small. And so it, for him, it doesn't take so much to throw him over the edge where his body can't cope anymore. So basically what we're trying to do for each person is dump the bucket. We want to get as much stuff out of the bucket that we can to have the body function in like a clean slate. Like if you had a plant that was dying, you're not

going to, you know, just be like, okay, plant. Well, I hope you get better. You know, I see your leaves are, are, are doing bad. So I'm just going to squirt the end of the leaf with water. No, you're going to look at the soil. You're going to be like, Oh, I haven't fertilized it. Oh, it's, it has like a bunch of full of rocks. Like you can't even grow because it's full of rocks. It doesn't have dirt in it. So you want to change the environment that people are living in to help people thrive and function. Man, that's a, that was a powerful that was a powerful visual for me just now. It goes back to that whole root problem. And I love how you talk about the root,

because for me, I think of that root chakra, and that is where we have our stability. That's where we have the foundation. And that's where we always do meditations, where we attach that root to mother earth. And I love how you say that, because that's what we forget to do, is to look attach that root to mother earth. And I love how you say that because that's what we forget to do is to look at that root. So in my mind, I keep thinking about that. Can I ask you a question? You're testing that you do. So you do what's called lab based

assessments. I know for me personally, throughout my life, I've gone in like every six months and they prick my back with like 50 of the exact same things always. And then 25 on each arm and it takes four hours. And, you know, and I heard that your allergies can change like even sometimes weekly, monthly. They always have this baseline of tests, like the same exact ones. And then when they went outside of the box and did a few others, they found out I was allergic to pork because they had never tested me for pork. What does that look like for you when it comes to testing? When I find someone that's allergic to a lot of different things, I'm looking at your immune system for sure. So your immune system is overactive, right? It's attacking everything that's you're

coming into contact with. So something is driving your immune system to be overactive. So what is that? Why do you have that? What I'm going to look at is probably your gut again, because the gut has a huge, huge part in allergies. So you will look at the gut first, obviously look at, you know, like the stress hormones, look at your nutrients and vitamin levels and see what's going on. So there's a way to decrease your body overreacting. So we need to calm the nervous system down and we need to calm your immune system down. And a lot of the times what people would do is put you on something like a pill, like it's called a biologic to help decrease your immune system. And you might need that right now, you know, to decrease your immune system from

being so overreactive. Oh my God, I got to attack this. I got to attack that. I got to attack everything. Ah, like you're just always in attack mode. My friend who does facials, she said, I'm the very first person and I'm in the 1% that my immune system attacks Botox and won't even like accept it. Wrinkles for you. You're like, don't let me be that one. I don't want to be that person. Yeah. So you need to calm down your immune system from being overreactive, but we got to figure out why is that? Why is your immune system doing that? And so in my practice, we test, we don't guess. I'm not going to just say, oh, well, let's try this. Let's try this. Let's try that. Like that doesn't do you any good. And that's a lot of money spent for, for not really finding things out. So we want to pinpoint exactly what we're looking for. Sometimes

we look at the broader picture and then we can narrow it down as we go along and just be like, that's what caused it. And a lot of times we can find the root cause of that. Sometimes it can take more than a year, depending on, you know, your level of disease process, because really when you're sick, you're creating organ damage. So what we're trying to do is prevent or the organ damage. We don't want you to keep getting worse because then you start having to really need to have the medications, right? Because your body's just not going to function without them anymore. So the sooner we can get to you to reverse things, the better off you're going to be. So you don't have to be on that stuff for a while. Yeah. Do you guys look at parasites? For a long time, it was

trending this leaky gut, which I did a lot of research on, because I'm like, what are they talking about? You know, it was all over even my Facebook feed, leaky gut, leaky gut. I'm like, what is it? And also parasites and these people putting out like these weird recipes and things you can drink to actually have them like come out of your skin. It was actually, I know, but do you think a lot of us have parasites? Yeah. I think a lot of our food isn't clean and especially sushi. Sorry if I ruined your day, but you know, they have parasites on them. And if, if we don't have enough stomach acid to kill that that, and really having low stomach acid is more common than high stomach acid.

So reflux can be caused by low stomach acid as well. So if you don't have enough acid, your gut's not working right to kill those bacteria and pathogens, then you can have a parasite. You know, they're common. They're very hard to catch, to find in testing, but we do test for those, um, with the gut testing just to make sure just to check it out. Yeah. Um, you, you had an amazing list of some foods that help people support their immune system. Um, what are like garlic, citrus fruits? What are some other ones that you can throw out?

Oh my gosh. Um, there's so many foods that can support your immune system. Um, one of the things I do, especially in the winter is a bone broth. So you can buy like beef bone broth, um, like kettle and fire or bonafide beef broth. You can make your own too. That helps with your gut. Um, I like collagen protein powders are really good to help with gut and skin hair and nails, anything that's in season, your body knows like the environment knows this. These are the fruits you eat in season because these are the ones that help you during that season. Um, we've been eating a lot of pomegranates lately. Those things are amazing. Perstemians.

I don't know if you've ever tried one of those. We tried them at Costco has them. They're fabulous. They taste like fall. They're so good. And they're good for you. They have vitamins, nutrients, minerals that you need. So I tend to eat the things that are in season.

Obviously, if you eat more organic, you're going to help with your gut. Try to avoid leaky gut, that kind of thing. So can you just walk me through what it would look like if I called you up and said, let's do this, which I plan on. Like the entire process. Can we just like put it out there for our listeners so that they can get an idea of what it would look like? So it's super easy. So you can go on my Facebook page or Instagram page or the website, which is evolutionhealthconsulting.com. Um, on there, it says book a free 15 minute consultation. When you book that free 15 minute consultation, you'll get an email kind of describing our

practice a little bit more in detail. So I suggest you read that just so it kind of answers some questions that you might have. So we can really focus our time on that 15 minute call. And really that calls to see, you know, are you a good fit for functional medicine? Number one is healthier. Number one priority. If you're not a nine or 10 out of 10 saying, yes, it is, then you're probably not a good fit for our practice. We really want people that are motivated to make their health a priority. And then after that, we talk for 15 minutes. And if you're a candidate, then we set you up for what's called the orientation to the practice. During that time, you're going to the membership plan. That's right for you. You'll decide, you know, which payment you would like to make for the membership. And then we'll

tell you how the flow goes with me, the health coach and the clinical nutritionist who, by the way, have their masters in clinical nutritionists. And they're one of the smartest people I've ever met the team. So you have three people that work for you. So we spend hours and hours and hours of time on you. And the first appointment with me is around two hours. Actually, we do a whole timeline of your health history, starting from when your mom was pregnant with you all the way into your current situation. So there's a lot of time spent and invested in each

person that gets accepted to our practice. We don't take everybody. So we want to make sure we're the right fit for you. And you're the right fit for us. So we can get you the best clinical outcomes. I read something on your website and you said that a health coach bridges the gap between your doctor's recommendations and your everyday life. I wish that in our society, people would work more together because you could so benefit doctors and doctors could so benefit you. And, you know, I will say that I'm forever grateful to doctors and hospitals because they saved my life. And unfortunately, they just haven't been trained this way. So when you go to see a doctor and OBG and they see you, they're going to treat that symptom, give you the medication and send you on your way.

So I never want to talk bad about them. And I don't think that's what you're trying to say either. Absolutely not. No, I mean, we work with your doctors, you know, like a lot of the doctors are actually more open to this than you think. It's just, they don't have the time or the education to decipher the testing that we do. So I still want you to have a primary care doctor. I still want you to have your specialists, but what we're going to do is kind of look at the whole picture and we're going to get rid of some of the other stuff that they're not doing. And then eventually maybe you don't even need those doctors anymore. Maybe we can cut back on some of those doctors. You just go to see your primary care for, you know, your yearly exams that you need. But I mean, I talk to doctors all the time. We're constantly in contact with everyone. If you want me to talk to your

doc, I will, if they want to talk to me and have questions, you know, we work together. So this isn't a thing where they lose, I win, we, or I lose, they win. It's becoming a thing where they're becoming more interested in it. It's just that they don't get trained in nutrition in medical school. They don't have the ability to see you for hours and hours because that's not what their practice is set up to be like. And if they take insurance, they have to see you at those certain times. They have to recommend certain protocols or they don't get paid by your insurance company.

So that's why a lot of functional medicine providers don't take insurance because we wouldn't be able to do the testing we need to do to get the results that you need. So all of us work together and to help make you feel better. I'm so glad I brought that up because what you just said is powerful. And our listeners need to hear that. So you could have access to my medical records. I can have them released to you, or you can call my doctor's office. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Wow. There's a lot more nurses. There's a lot more doctors that I'm hearing about now that are offering holistic approaches. I've heard of doctors, you know, saying do meditation, right. You know, if more people start wanting this approach, then insurance will hopefully eventually cover it, but we don't want to wait for your health to decline to wait to see if insurance is going to cover it.

So, you know, just an investment of one year of your life to really focus on your health and reverse chronic conditions, or maybe not get the same ones that your grandma got or your aunt got or your sister got or your mom got, you know, like you have the authority to be an advocate for yourself and make that choice. And we just help guide you along the way to do it. You know, I was so excited last year, a friend of ours that works at children's hospital asked, um, Shanna and I, if we could come in and do Reiki on some of their employees as for health. And I was like, that is so awesome that hospitals are starting to implement Reiki. And there's actually a woman who I spoke to who comes in and helps people with trauma with

essential oils. And that's her only job is she goes into the hospital rooms and brings in these essential oils to help people deal with their trauma or their anxiety. So I think it was really headed. Isn't that awesome? We're headed into a great direction. Sometimes we forget that we can advocate for ourselves. We really, isn't that crazy? We just simply forget. We're like, well, they control it. The doctors control it. That's, you know, sometimes you just don't know there's another way until you see that there's another way. And you're like, well, I didn't know this exists. You know, like when you want to buy a red car and then all you see is red cars, you know? So it's, it's kind of the same with medicine. It's like, well, now that I know this, why would I go back

to this? Like, I definitely want to do this first, you know? So yeah, I think it's, it's an awesome direction that I think everything we're going to and we all work together and right. It's a change in times is now's the time to go for it yeah do you send people then um to a specific place to get the lab-based assessments or how does that work actually all the lab kits are sent directly to your house and you do them in the comfort of your own home and there's only one that i do sometimes, or if I request blood work, then I'll send you the requisition and you go to your local lab and you get your labs done and then they send them to me.

But for the most part, most of them are just shipped to your house and then you, you do them and you ship them back. It's pretty cool. I know a lot of women who are kind of cuckoo right now to serve out ready to go into menopause and they definitely should be listening. And if you are definitely get a hold of Sabrina. Yeah, absolutely. We can do all the testing at the comfort of your own home. You don't have to go anywhere. You ship it back. It's super easy. They tell you how to do the whole test. So when I send out the request,

you get it, you pay for it online, they ship it to you, they tell you how to do it, email it back, get these awesome results of these things that we can end up changing to make you feel better. So Serena, I really think that your program is wonderful. Awesome. Yeah, it works really well for a lot. I love your website. You have that amazing blog. I love like the recipes that you have on there.

You also had a section that I thought was super cool. It's just some easy tips for flushing out the extra toxins. And they're just like, duh, things basically an amazing thing. I'll just read them off. It says drinking half of your body weight in ounces. So it says, um, you have an example, 150 pounds. So drinking 75 ounces per day, eat lots of dark leafy green, which I hate green vegetables with a passion. I only like one of them zucchini. And if it's fried, of course, and it says, well, I like cauliflower. You have cauliflower on here.

Vegetables are hard for me. I grew up. So that's what the clinical nutritionist works with you. She works with your likes and dislikes and then they find out the program that's right for you. So that's why I have them focus on it more than me. I know how to do clinical nutrition, but they're experts at it. I'd rather be expert in lab analysis and figuring out your plan. And then the health coach keeps you on track. So they're like, what can we do for this week? How do we get you to relax? Like, how do we get you to come into yourself? How do we get you to follow through with your diet? Like what are your stressors? So the whole combo works really good. So you're not setting him up for failure and

telling him to eat, you know, five green beans. you're going to give him something. I'm not going to make you eat something that you think is awful. I mean, I think I have PTSD over peas. Okay. But, uh, number three was get moving. Of course, any kind of exercises and, you know, there's many different things and it specifically says this gets you sweating and stimulates your lymphatic system. So that way toxins to the liver. Yeah. And then it says supplements and antioxidants to help to support your liver and then, you know, different vitamins. And then I love this one, just taking an Epsom salt bath, which I tell everyone, my clients to do because really it pulls out all the toxins and Yeah. And you can find all of her amazing information, recipes, tips on her website. Chicken soup. So yeah. Yes. You want to hear my, how my brain goes y'all is

that the three words that stuck out baked sourdough bread. I could never do a gluten-free. So I could never, I love bread way too much. There's other options that you'd like. I'm sure of it. So there is, I do. I love gluten-free. It's all just, you have to put time and effort into it. Like, so my little one hates vegetables. I kind of thought of it as when she was a baby and I was weaning her off of a bottle, I had to, I have a picture. I tried a hundred different cups. I tried a hundred different ways and I finally found one, but it took a lot of time and effort to finally find something that works. So for her, for vegetables, the only way Sloan will eat vegetables is in those like yummy naked drinks, which is better than nothing. Right. Well, you start there and then

you keep improving, you know, like she does this thing. And then maybe the next time you shave some carrots into the spaghetti sauce and they can't see them, it just adds more bulk. And then they just got some vitamin a, so there's lots of different tricks. So that's why we use the health coaches and the clinical nutritionist to kind of work with you and your family life do you help the family like you're helping the mom so you know mom's cooking then everybody else is going to start yeah in certain ways that we kind of do that but we all we see families here at the practice so you know there's a discount you can make it a family affair if you like it it's definitely you know, and there's a discount, you can make it a family affair if you like. And it's definitely, you know, like I said, an investment in your health, you know, reverse these conditions. We've seen kids change and to become completely new kids, you know, and people become completely

new people. They get new jobs that they like, they feel so good about themselves doing things they never thought or they could ever do, you know? So it's very inspirational to be a functional medicine practitioner because you can actually see your patients get better. And it's just so rewarding that way. I love it. We've had a lot of people on our podcast that have turned pain into purpose, and everyone's story is unique. And I love that yours is unique, that you know, you had health issues. And now you've taken that and found your purpose. It's an awesome story. I know. Awesome. And now it's time for break that shit down. I think what 2020 is telling all of us right now is that there's no other time. The time is now we might not be guaranteed the future right now is the best time to make any

changes that you think that you've been wanting to do, any dreams that you have that you haven't realized. But most importantly, what it's showing us is that you really need to focus on your health. I mean, the patients that have the comorbidities like hypertension, obesity, diabetes, depression, anxiety, those people are the ones that are struggling with the COVID and the viruses and the viruses are going to keep coming. So instead of being scared and worried about your health, it's better to be confident about your health. And now's the time to make the investment to really feel confident about your health. I don't feel scared about COVID virus with my family. I know that we're all protected. I have our health on

track, you know, and I think right now it's just a really important time to put you as a number one priority. Don't forget to check out Sabrina's website, evolutionhealthconsulting.com. Thanks so much for being with us. Really appreciate it. Awesome. In person sometime, that would be great. We'll have coffee or something, or I don't know if you drink coffee. Coffee is- I do drink coffee. Okay. I have three children.

All right. Because I do too. Okay. I love coffee. Thank you. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe.

Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.