This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 148 / Reclaim OWNERSHIP Over Your Own Health with Andrea Nakayama

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

You know how I feel about one-size-fits-all solutions to anything, and the health and wellness industry is no exception. So when we cover topics like todays, I’m always careful to bring people on who will share what they’ve learned, what they know to be true, their expertise BUT ALSO say that YOU need to figure out what’s right, best, and true for you. Said another way, they offer solutions, just not the one-size fits all kind. With that in mind, let me introduce you to our guest. Andrea Nakayama is a Functional Medicine Nutritionist, educator, and Host of the 15-Minute Matrix Podcast, where she draws on systems biology, mental models, root cause methodology and the therapeutic partnership to offer long-awaited solutions for the rapidly growing chronic illness epidemic. Andrea is leading a revolution in which we reclaim OWNERSHIP over our own health. Here’s all I know for sure: your body is yours, you only get one, and you’re the only one who has to, who gets to, take care of it. There are many ways we can abandon ourselves, but hating our bodies so much that we don’t even listen to them anymore has got to be pretty high up on the list. Prioritizing our health and longevity is the most beautiful thing we can do. Connect with Andrea: Website: www.andreanakayama.com Instagram: @andreanakayama Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AndreaNakayama.page To join Nicole’s pod (to get all the inside scoops, free stuff, and the occasional rant), click here

Here is a little appetizer to get you ready for the main course. The more you're showing up with a, let's say a doctor, any healthcare practitioner, with information about yourself and what you know to be true, the more they're going to pay attention because you've brought your expertise to the room. I am Nicole Kalil, and if I'm being utterly transparent with you, I can't think of a relationship I've had that's been more confusing or more complicated than the one I have with my own body. I wish that weren't the case, but I know that's true for me and for so many of you too. Because the greatest trick that's been played on us as women, the biggest con of them all is the notion that our body's primary purpose is its ability to

be attractive to others. Let me say that a different way. Far too many of us have spent far too much energy on how our bodies look because we believe it's what matters most. Let's face it, we spend a disproportionate amount of time, money, energy, effort on our physical appearance, and we've been taught to prioritize looks over everything, including how our body feels and how healthy or not healthy it is. We sacrifice our mental, emotional, and physical health at the altar of attention, and it's got to stop. Seriously, if there's one thing I'm doing my very best to make sure that I don't pass down to JJ, it's this confused and complicated relationship I've had with my body for as long as I can remember. Since I believe we all learn best through experience and observation, I've been rebuilding my relationship with my own body for her sake and for my own. It hasn't been easy, but I keep telling myself that practice makes progress and reminding myself to give a little grace because I've had this unhealthy relationship for about 30-ish years. So expecting it to all change overnight

is a little unreasonable. As part of rebuilding a healthier relationship, I've noticed a few things. First, because I had stopped listening to my body while I was trying to make it look perfect so that I could finally be deemed worthy, I became completely disconnected from it. I'm having to relearn both how to listen to

and how to trust my own body. Think for a second how fucked up that is. I've lived in this body for 47 years and I have to relearn how to listen to and trust it again because as an example for me, I'd stopped knowing the difference between being hungry and being lonely. I thought constantly feeling tired, having brain fog, and getting sick were just additional ways that my body was failing me rather than ways my body was trying to communicate with me. And my second learning, which may not

actually be a learning but more of a pet peeve, is that it's way too hard to find information about your own health, to listen to your own body over the voices of everyone else telling you how you're supposed to take care of it. And it's way too easy to find contradictory information and Instagram experts who think they have your answer. Do you know how I feel about one-size-fits-all solutions to anything? And the health and wellness industry is no exception. So when we cover topics like today's, I'm always careful to bring on people who will share what they've learned, what they know to be true, their expertise, but also to say early and often that you need to figure out what's right, best, and true for you. Said another way, they offer solutions, just not one size fits all kind. So with that in mind, let me introduce you to our guest.

Andrea Nakayama is a functional medicine nutritionist, educator, and host of the 15-Minute Matrix podcast, where she draws on systems biology, mental models, root cause methodology, and the therapeutic partnership to offer long-awaited solutions for the rapidly growing chronic illness epidemic. After losing her young husband to a brain tumor in 2002, she discovered a passion for using food as personalized medicine and is now regularly consulted as the nutrition expert for the toughest clinical cases in the practices of many world-renowned doctors. Andrea is leading a revolution in which we reclaim ownership over our own health, which sounds like a much healthier way to live than what I was doing.

So Andrea, thank you so much for being here. And I want to start by focusing on what we can begin to do to listen to our bodies and to listen to what it's telling us, whether it be something small, like feeling tired or something big like disease or pain. How do we begin to relearn, relisten to our own bodies? Yeah, Nicole, that's such a good question. And I'm going to back us up as I like to do. But I first just want to say thank you for that powerful introduction. That's so true. And I am sure that many people resonate with that message and that experience. And it's part of what we have to come to terms with when we are sick or tired and it's not getting better. And my passion is really empowering people who are experiencing those places where the quick fix

no longer works, where the standard protocols that we tried maybe in our 20s or 30s that worked for a short time and we yo-yoed in some way. This isn't about dieting. This isn't about being perfect. This is about being you. And we have to rediscover, as you said, what that means. So I just want to start us out with talking about what functional medicine and functional nutrition really are so we can ground on that because these are terms that are now growing in popularity on social circles. And in my opinion, they're moving too far away from the original intentions of the methodologies, which were established in the 1990s. And so there's three primary tenants, and you're going to hear me talk in systems. You said I like systems approaches. I do mental models. There's a lot of

ways that we can start to think about things differently. So there's three primary tenants of a truly functional practice. One is a therapeutic partnership. Two is that we're looking for the root causes. And three is a systems-based approach. I want to break each of those down just really quickly because I know we have a lot to discuss, but that therapeutic partnership has many aspects to it and includes your partnership with yourself. And that's where we really have to tune in. We have to track. We have to get curious, not blame, not think we're broken, not think we're somebody who needs to be fixed, understand why we're doing what we're doing and think we're somebody who needs to be fixed, understand why

we're doing what we're doing and what we're looking to achieve. Of course, that also includes your therapeutic partnership with anybody who's helping you, but your therapeutic partnership with yourself is a key part of the healing journey. Those root causes, I think a lot of people are talking about root cause resolution, but I put an S in there because there is never any one reason. And I think when people are sick and not getting better, they're on this quest, which is a sympathetic dominant state where you're looking for something that is an answer that is going to fix everything and health and the body are more complicated,

beautifully complex than that. And the systems-based approach helps us to not only think in systems, but understand systems biology. And this means that your gut is connected to your brain. We all know that now that's pretty popular, right? That we, the gut is the second brain, right? But your hormones are connected to your gut, which are connected to your liver. Your inflammation is impacting your brain fog. When we understand that it's not just one thing, we take a broader approach instead of looking for the one size fits all, like you said, or the quick fix that we think, oh, I'm having problems with my cycle or I'm perimenopause or I'm experiencing brain fog or insomnia. What is the supplement? Who is the

practitioner? What is the protocol? That doesn't exist. When we actually nourish the terrain, the broader picture, the soil that those roots live in, we shift the expression of the branches, which are all our signs, symptoms, or diagnoses. Did that make sense as a model of thinking like broad versus targeted? Well, it made the most sense it's ever made when people say functional medicine. I thought I knew what it was or what it meant, but that breakdown was really helpful. And I want to circle back on a few of those. First, you said being curious versus blaming. I think that that is such an important distinction. And one of the things that always felt a little challenging for me in more of the nutrition space. I understand that food and supplements and what we put in our bodies really matters, but then there's this sort

of feeling that if it can all be cured or prevented or fixed by food, that if if and when something goes wrong, we must be doing something bad or wrong or whatever, as opposed to this shift to curiosity. What is this telling me? Curious your reaction to anything that I just said. Yeah, for sure. I think that that's a really important point. Yeah. So when I think that we are thinking of food as medicine, which is a complicated term, it implies that it can exist alone. And I like to say that what we do is the yes and. We need to self-advocate, but it's not our fault when something happens in our body or we need other support, whether that support is medical or by another practitioner, things are

going to happen. I lost my husband, as you said, to a brain tumor. I have autoimmunity. That wasn't his fault. It's not my fault. There are many factors that include our genes, our digestion, our inflammation. I call those the three roots. There are many factors that lead up to any expression of a sign, symptom, or diagnosis. And food alone isn't necessarily going to cure or fix it. It's going to support the environment in which that is expressing, as well as help us deal with any of the interventions we may or may not have to go through medically. So that for me is the role of nutrition. Nutrition is about growth, metabolism, and repair. I'm not here to put my hands on my hips and say, medicine's doing it all wrong,

and I've got the answer. Sometimes we need to hold hands. If someone needs surgery, I'm going to help them support their body to go through that surgery. If someone's having fertility issues or they have an autoimmune condition or they have cancer, those are real life events that are not our fault. Are we contributing to the terrain in which we can support our body? Absolutely. So it's about empowerment, but not about full responsibility and blame. We're born with certain things. Our environment is exposing us to certain things. Stress, hello. I mean, I, Nicole, talk about a non-negotiable trifecta, and that includes sleep, poop, and blood sugar balance. Those are the areas that we can focus on for ourselves

in really simplified ways that I can speak into, but that's where we support ourselves. It's not with eating the right diet. There is no right diet. Your dietary needs and nutrition needs are going to be different than mine. Are there some principles we can all adhere to that support us? Yes. Are we going to be perfect all the time? No. How do we find the flow of life without, without having all that blame and holding this responsibility that we're at fault for what happens? Okay, I'm gonna circle back to the three parts of functional medicine because a couple of my questions fall directly in those.

So with therapeutic partnership, I talk a lot about confidence. That's the thing that I care about. And I define confidence as firm and bold trust in self. But my working definition is when you know who you are, own who you're not and choose to embrace all of it. I want to talk about therapeutic partnerships and the owning who you're not piece, because for the vast majority of people listening, we are not doctors. We are not experts. We are maybe not nutritionists. We're not

sleep experts. We're not, there's so many things we're not in this space yet. Trusting ourselves is of utmost importance. How do we navigate through that and create these therapeutic partnerships that work for us. I love this question because you talked about all the things that we are not experts in. And I want to say what you are an expert in is you. In a therapeutic partnership, the only expert in you, in the room, is you. And I think the mistake that a lot of people are doing, especially because of all the noise in healthcare, is they're self-diagnosing, they're self-prescribing, and they're showing up in their therapeutic partnership or in a partnership, trying to be the expert from all they've learned,

but missing the expertise that they actually have. So the way you can be the expert in you is by getting curious. One of my favorite tools for getting curious is tracking. Now we can track what we eat and how we feel. I call it a food mood poop journal and mood is in quotation marks because it's not just your mental health, it's any sign or symptom you're experiencing, whether it's fatigue or leg twitches or a headache. When does that happen and how do you start to bring more information around that? Some people don't like to track their food. That's a personal decision. It's very triggering because of histories around tracking food.

So put the food aside for a minute and let's just track when in the day, when in your cycle, you have certain symptoms. Let's track your elimination. Then can you start to put pieces together that say, you know, when I eat oatmeal for breakfast versus when I eat an egg for breakfast, I have more energy, it's more sustainable, and I have a better poop that day. That's the reason we're tracking, that we're actually bringing our attention not to what to do to fix us, but to what's actually going on with us. I like to have people track their labs, even though they don't know what it means, put some darn numbers in a

spreadsheet, show up. The more you're showing up with a, let's say a doctor, any healthcare practitioner with information about yourself and what you know to be true, the more they're going to pay attention because you've brought your expertise to the room. And that's what I think we're missing in our self-care and how we can be the true partners. It's what we do every day, but it's also paying attention. Let me just give you another example. Another tool I love is a timeline. So in functional nutrition, we create a very extensive timeline for our clients. What I invite patients to do, us all to do, is create mini timelines. So let's say all of a sudden you are having gas and bloating. What I'm going to ask you to do is to remember when's the last time this was an issue for you?

When's the first time you remember it being an issue for you like this? If you can journal those occurrences, you actually show up and you're able to say to the doctor, not just I'm having gas and bloating, but I've been having gas and bloating since March. Here's what was going on around that time. This is what changed. I was trying to do X, Y, Z. And that actually gives your partner a lot more information that they wouldn't otherwise known and that you likely won't recall just in that appointment or visit. I could jump through and just hug you right now because nothing has ever made more sense than that, that I am an expert on only one thing and that my job is to come and deliver that expertise that only I can deliver

as opposed to, and if you want to Google some things or learn some things, great, but that doesn't eliminate the need to remain an expert on the thing that you can be an expert on. And I love that too, because you're right. Every time I show up to a doctor or a medical appointment, they'll ask me and it's like the symptom I had yesterday is forgotten, right? It's having that information to be able to share, I'm imagining makes your therapeutic partner's not never any one reason. I have an inclination that many of us may have a tendency to think about one root cause and ignore some of the others or focus in one area of our life and not in others. What might we want to pay attention to? What might be happening beneath the surface or beneath our awareness when you feel like you're doing thing, I'm putting in air quotes, doing things right, like getting the right things or whatever, and you still have symptoms or pain or weight gain or feeling tired. What else might we want to look at as far as root causes?

Yeah. So again, I'm going to bring us back to this analogy that I call three roots, many branches. So the exercise here is to invite ourselves to take a moment and say, what is any sign, symptom, or diagnosis that I'm struggling with right now? Anything, anyone that comes up. And then we step back and I want us to recognize that that's a branch. That is an expression of what's happening internally. It's not an expression of how you're eating. It's the expression of how, what is happening in your life externally is interacting with the internal terrain. And together, those things are manifesting in these branches. So the way I explain it to people is let's say you encounter this beautiful tree in this field and you're

walking towards this tree and you're just awestruck by it. And as you get closer, you realize that some of the leaves on the tree are turning, even though we're in the height of a green season, some of the branches don't look so healthy. And you have to think, what do I do about this? I want this tree to thrive. Should I get a ladder and pick off the dead leaves so I don't have to look at them? Should I get a ladder and a saw

and chop off those branches that are starting to turn? No, I have to think in a different way because those things will help the eye, but they're not going to help the tree. They're not going to help the ecosystem. So I want to go deeper and I want to get to the roots, but I also want to nourish the soil, which is a word you heard me use, or the terrain in which those roots exist. So I have a trifecta or a model, of Venn diagram that talks about the three roots. And the three roots are our genes, our digestion, and inflammation. Now, our genes are not set in stone in terms of how they express.

So each of those roots has its own circle of influence. That's the soil. And this is from Stephen Covey, you know, the habits of the most successful people. When we look at a circle of influence, we're not focused on the anxiety place of like, oh my God, my genes, this is what I'm born with. Epigenetics are the factors that influence our genes. And those are food, movement, environment, and mindset. Those are the factors. And those are vast. You're never going to hear me say food. Hey, Nicole, we should all be eating this diet with this many hours of fasting. It just doesn't work like that because we are human

and individual. And those therapeutic protocols that we see touted on social media are meant to be used therapeutically and people are not using them therapeutically. So they can do more harm than good. So with food, that's going to have its own circle of influence, but let's just move on to another factor, digestion. I will say to people, it's not about what you eat. It's about what your body can do with what you eat. So if you have issues that you're experiencing in your digestion, or if you have an autoimmune condition, we need to optimize the hole that receives our food to bring it to ourselves. And that's a primary focus.

But then we think about inflammation and the circle of influence I'm going to bring us to there is to clear, calm, enhance, and modulate. And for each of us, I said a lot of different things there, but I just want us to think about the calm factor, especially for this particular audience. I get it. I built a big business that I sold. I've been through all of the challenges of building a business through being a single parent who lost my partner. And it's a lot of stress.

And our bodies can't heal in what's called a sympathetic dominant, a fight or flight state. And so what we can do more than anything is recognize where we can come into more of the rest and the digest, where we can make time for that parasympathetic dominant state. Okay. There was so much good stuff in there. And I kind of want to wrap up the three things. So the systems part of it, but I think my question with systems might circle back to what you were talking about. You said it's all connected. And I think that is something we're all learning said it's all connected. And I think that is something we're all learning is it's all connected and nothing's happening in a silo. You mentioned

a few of these when you were talking about the roots and the terrain. How do we bring the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of all of this together and how do we begin to learn what might be i don't know the best place to start or the best i feel like we all sort of have a tendency to fall back on something like just take another supplement yeah you said that earlier in our conversation we're looking for one right thing that's going to fix it. How do we navigate through the complexity of all of that and knowing it's all connected, decide where to go and where to start. Yeah. So my mantra starts with everything is connected. And I say, everything is connected. We are all unique and all things matter. So I'm going to say start where it feels comfortable to start in a broader area. If you're

starting with a supplement, that's not a broad area, that's a targeted area. But if you want to start thinking about your sleep and relaxation, both broad and narrow. So broader in that it's providing your body with a cradle and narrow in that don't try to do all the things at once. People are often saying, I'm going to go on this dietary protocol and I'm going to take these supplements and I'm going to do this detox and I started the gym. And if that doesn't work and it doesn't work past like three days, if you even get started in three days, I want sustainable change that forms new habits. And the more we can say, you know what, I'm going to work on my sleep this month. I'm noticing that I stay up late

because I want that time to myself to be productive after the kids go to bed. And then I don't sleep as well. I'm going to recognize that sleep actually impacts my hormones. It impacts my inflammation. It impacts my microbiome. Even if I just heard that from Andrea, period, the end, I'm going to focus on my sleep and work on backing my sleep

up a half an hour to a total of an hour over time and see if I feel any different. I'm going to track does going to sleep earlier make a difference? I'm just throwing that out as one thing. But for me, it could be sleep. It could be some kind of movement. It could be I'm going to hydrate more. You pick your place and just stay in that one thing until it becomes second nature to you and track if you feel any differences over time.

I've worked with people where hydration can make a huge difference in their levels of fatigue. And there's a physiological mechanistic reason for that, that I can tell you, but that can make a difference. And we can come out of here going like, oh, I'm going to focus on hydrating and let me see if it makes a difference over a month. That's my goal. I want to talk about two things. You mentioned stress earlier and the environments that we're in and how that plays a part. I think when we have physical symptoms, we have a tendency to look to a physical solution. How much should we be considering the relationships that we're in, the work environments, the people, the cultures, the, you know, just the stress of life and how that's playing into our health. Is maybe that a broader category to start in?

Even if your lens is to typically go, I need to relax more or I need to eat better. Where does that fit in to stress and to our overall wellness? Yeah, it's so big. You're asking such great questions, Nicole. And I have what I call a functional nutrition matrix. So it helps us see the whole, and it resonates with the everything is connected. We are all unique. All things matter. In the all things matter categories, there's sleep and relaxation, exercise and movement, nutrition and hydration, stress and resilience, and relationships and networks.

Those are all the things that if you're working with me or someone I train or someone on my team, we're making sure we have a full understanding of where is that support internally because stress isn't just the bills, the relationship, the kids, the in-laws. Stress is also what's happening in our body or what's happening environmentally or our sociological pressures. So the social determinants of health, safety, all of those things impact our response rate and the load of stress that we are each holding. So I don't want people to be fearful of stress, like, oh, my stress is killing me. Stress is actually a good thing as long as we can recover. If you've ever seen something happen to

an animal, like a cat getting stuck in a tree, the next day it sleeps for 24 hours. We get stuck in our tree, our, you know, metaphorical trees, and then we keep going. We have to understand that the body needs to create some resilience to all of the stressors. So for me, stress is huge. And it relates to every single part of the quote unquote matrix, literal and the way we're thinking about things. So if we try to tackle stress head on, it can be a bit overwhelming because we don't know all the things that are causing us stress, which is why I like to go back to sleep, poop, and blood sugar balance as things we can focus on. And those are even big, but saying that those are ways we actually start to promote our

resilience and counter the stressors that we're exposed to. Okay. Andrea, I wish we had more time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If you're listening and you want to learn more about Andrea and her work, go to andreanakayama.com. We'll put that as well as Instagram and other things

in show notes. Andrea, thank you for your great work and for being one of those people who gives good information and expertise, but not from a one size fits all lens. Thank you, Nicole. I so appreciate your questions and being with you. My pleasure. Okay. Here's all I know for sure. Your body is yours. You only get one and you're the only one who has it and who gets to take care of it. If you only focus on its beauty, if you sacrifice everything for how it looks, you'll pay for that choice in so many ways, not the least of which will be your confidence and agency, not to mention chronic symptoms like pain or fatigue. There are many ways we can abandon ourselves, but hating our bodies so much that we don't even listen to them anymore has got to be

pretty high up on that list. Prioritizing our health and longevity is the most beautiful thing we can do. In fact, there's nothing sexier. And that's why it's most certainly woman's work.