What Functional Medicine Misses—and How Herbalism Fills the Gaps: A Candid Talk with Dr. Nikki DiNezza

Is functional medicine really the answer for gut health? Or are we just trading one pill-for-every-ill model for another—this time with supplements?

In this candid episode of The Herbalist’s Path, I’m joined by Dr. Nikki DiNezza—chiropractor, nutritionist, and self-proclaimed “gut microbiome queen.” Nikki shares her journey from chronic pain to gut healing, and how functional medicine helped... until it didn’t.

We explore what functional medicine often gets wrong, the dark side of supplement-heavy protocols, and why herbalism offers a more intuitive, affordable, root-cause approach.

We also laugh, talk poop (obviously), and nerd out on herbs, microbiomes, and tuning into your body’s wisdom. If you’re tired of cutting more foods or popping more pills, this one’s for you.

🎧 Tune in to learn about:

00:38 – Nikki’s chronic pain & journey to chiropractic school
06:04 – How gut healing—not adjustments—resolved her pain
08:35 – Discovering functional medicine
18:12 – Food fear & supplement overload
24:05 – Finding herbalism—and real healing
31:40 – Treating people, not diagnoses
36:00 – The turmeric tip that saved a patient $63
42:17 – Gut health: less fear, more nourishment
50:20 – Why most gut plans miss the mark

Ready to go deeper—without the overwhelm or $88 curcumin?
Find Dr. Nikki at fodmapfreedom.com/so

If you’ve been dabbling in herbal medicine and now your friends and coworkers come to you for their health woes…
It might be time to take the next step on the herbalist’s path and become the confident community herbalist they already see you as.💚

Feeling the call? Reach out and let’s chat to see if the Community Herbalist Certification Program is right for you!🌿

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to the Herbalist Path
• 4:37 Meet Dr. Nikki: The Gut Microbiome Queen
• 8:26 Connecting Back Pain to Gluten Sensitivity
• 13:34 From Functional Medicine to Herbalism
• 23:22 Why Turmeric Tincture Beats Expensive Supplements
• 33:40 Diet Diversity vs. Food Elimination
• 40:55 The Vagus Nerve's Role in Digestion
• 51:28 Pulling Toward Health vs. Pushing Away Disease
• 59:19 FODMAP Freedom Program and Success Stories
• 1:12:05 Closing Thoughts and Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:37

Welcome to the Herbalist Path, a podcast that's all about helping herbalism spread like wildflowers. I'm Mel, a clinical herbalist, environmental educator and a mama who's been walking this path for well over 20 years. I created this show to help you feel confident with herbal medicine. You're going to get a blend of how-to episodes, incredible guest experts sharing their wisdom and real talk about using herbs every day, all to help you care for your family naturally, take better care of our precious planet and maybe even become the trusted herbalist in your own community. You see, this work isn't just about the herbs. It's about healing ourselves, it's about caring for each other and it's about living in deeper connection with the earth. So, whether you're blending your first tea, making your first tincture or feeling called to be the go-to herbalist in your community, welcome, you belong here, you are right on time and you are on the Herbalist Path. Hello, hello and welcome.

Speaker 1: 2:53

Back to another episode on the Herbalist Path, and I am so excited for what's to come of today's talk. I don't know exactly what we're going to talk about, but I got a hunch. We're going to talk about the gut and digestive health and the importance of a healthy microbiome, because today's guest is a guest I've wanted on my show for a couple of years now, and it's Dr Nikki Dinesa, and she is the gut microbiome queen. She's super fun. If you're not already watching her on Instagram or on YouTube after the show, you're probably going to want to, and we've connected in the online space for quite a while and I love the way she shares information with people about the importance of checking in with what's going on in the gut, because it ultimately leads to the healing of all the other inflammatory diseases and conditions that the body has. So, nikki, dr Neza and the gut microbiome queen, I am so happy to have you here, welcome.

Speaker 2: 4:01

Happy to be here. I'm glad that we finally made this work. Me too, Two years in the making.

Speaker 1: 4:05

but we finally did it. I know, I know it's interesting how many other things can get in the way, or, you know, maybe it's not getting in the way, it's just part of the part of the path, part of the journey. Maybe it's not getting in a way, it's just part of the part of the path, part of the journey. Yeah, the human process, exactly, exactly. So right before we actually hit record on this show, you were chatting and you're like I don't know if I like call myself an herbalist yet, but like you're a doctor of chiropractic, you are a nutritional therapy practitioner and you use herbs.

Speaker 2: 4:37

So I think I do indeed use herbs.

Speaker 1: 4:41

I think you qualify if you want to have that.

Speaker 2: 4:44

So you know like I oscillate back and forth between calling myself an herb enthusiast versus an herbalist, and I feel like part of the hang up in my brain is that I feel like I will feel official once. I kind of like get some sort of official accolade under my belt. But it is silly, right, Because I use herbs and so many people have used herbs for 1000s upon 1000s of years and there was no official accolade or title or certification for many, many, many years. So it is it. It feels a little bit silly, but I think that's where my brain is at with it.

Speaker 1: 5:41

I think I hear you in like feeling that it's silly, and I think this is something that people come across all the time. I know it's a discussion I've had with many other herbalists out there that have gone through the ladder of like climbing up to that level, and also those that are the home herbalists that are using herbs to heal their family. Like that is also a level of herbalist Are you a clinical herbalist at that level?

Speaker 1: 6:09

Probably not so much Right. But yeah, I think there's a wide range of angles of officially becoming an herbalist. And when I hear that you're a doctor of chiropractic, right, and you specialize in the gut, microbiome and helping people heal things and deal with SIBO and leaky gut and all of those kinds of things, I can't help but be incredibly curious how a doctor of chiropractic got into the world of herbs and healing the gut.

Speaker 2: 6:45

Yeah, tangentially, you know, right next door to the spine, I suppose, but very different things that you would deal with. Okay, so can I launch into the story then Do it.

Speaker 1: 6:56

Are you volunteering for the story? Yeah, bring me stories, Okay so what?

Speaker 2: 7:02

and it's gonna start at the beginning. That's the only place story could start. Yeah, so I had chronic low back pain for five years in my late teens and early 20s. I think I was about 19 when it started and it persisted for five years. I was a rower at the time and I kind of convinced myself oh, rowing is one of those sports that's really hard on your back and I have a lot of teammates who have injured their back, so I just must be one of them, I must be one of the ones that the sport of rowing claimed. And now I have a bad back.

Speaker 2: 7:38

But I tried, you know, physical therapy. I stretched, I strengthened my bachelor's degrees in exercise science, like I used to be a personal trainer for crying out loud. So like I know how to strengthen my glutes and strengthen my core, do all of that jazz. And no amount of that ever helped. And finally, you know I'm like 22, or whatever it was. I was like, alright, I've had chronic back pain for four years. This is kind of enough. So I decided to go to chiropractic school to figure out my own back and sort of PT stuff with the manipulation. So I went to chiro school mostly to fix my own back, and in the first year or so I tried a bunch of different chiropractic techniques. I got acupuncture. I again tried yoga. Again nothing was budging. It was still this chronic right SI joint pain that persisted. I had the. I had them do an x ray at one point because I thought okay, wait. I had a really bad case of Lyme disease when I was 14. Is this like a Lyme arthritis kind of situation? Years down the road, nope, looked clean. However, I was and am a seminar addict. It's not the worst addiction you could have, but I I worked a part time job as a personal trainer and another one as a tutor purely so I could fund my seminar and conference habit and I was going to everything. Right, like in the beginning, I went to seminars about orthotics and nutrition and eventually functional medicine and that was the first thing that really called my name in school. Like, the rest of school was fine, but I was never super passionate about the adjustment side of chiropractic, ironically enough.

Speaker 2: 9:28

But sitting down and hearing Datis Karazian talk about the thyroid for two hours I went into it. I was like this is going to be boring AF. It's one little piddly gland right here, like how can he? For two hours? I went into it. I was like this is going to be boring AF. It's one little piddly gland right here Like how can he fill two hours of talking time with the thyroid? This is dumb, it's amazing.

Speaker 2: 9:45

And he told the story, which is typically his story of, like the person with Hashimoto's. They get told their hypothyroid, they're put on levothyroxine or synthroid. Their TSH is now normal but they still feel like dog shit and their doctors like don't know what to tell you. Your TSH is good, so you're good. Goodbye, see you later. Okay, yeah, your, your labs are fine. Therefore you're fine and I don't know what to do with you.

Speaker 2: 10:11

And as he's talking about this, in the seminar it sounded exactly like my mom and I had this holy shit moment of whoa. I think my mom has Hashimoto's and nobody ever told her. Her whole side is of the family is riddled with autoimmune disease. It just clicked and it made sense. So I went home and called my mom. I was like my, you're going gluten free and you know.

Speaker 2: 10:33

We went on this whole thing together and then, in the process of that, I started really diving deep into functional medicine and spending all my free time at those seminars and conferences and reading the books and all of that. And I started playing around with elimination diets and supplements and detoxes and all that, that kind of stuff. And I figured out oh, my body, super duper, doesn't like gluten or dairy. Oh, and, by the way, I have the celiac antibodies. So I joke that I'm probably a celiac. I had the blood antibodies. I just never proceeded with the endoscopy Because at that point I was like why bother? Now I have a different opinion but, but at the time I thought why bother? I'm not going to eat the stuff anyway whatever, I'm just going to go gluten free.

Speaker 2: 11:23

And it was going gluten free and healing my gut that actually got rid of the low back pain. And I didn't realize it for a while until I got glutenated for the first time about a month or two later. And then the back pain came roaring right back and it was like this old friend came to haunt me and I was like whoa, I didn't even realize you were God, but now you're whoa and, and so I think that was sort of the start of it. So started started kind of working on my gut health, went through a bit of an IBSD kind of journey myself really severe bloating, diarrhea, food intolerances, out the wazoo. I joke, I did AIP before it was cool.

Speaker 2: 12:04

I did AIP before it was AIP Right Because, like, I don't think it was coined yet at that point. But you know, anything even potentially remotely inflammatory was hacked out of my diet and you know, now cut cut to 2025. And my diet is nice and diverse and broad. I can eat everything except gluten. My gut is fine, like no bloating, no diarrhea, no problems with my tummy, and now I help other people kind of figure out their gut and heal too.

Speaker 1: 12:37

I love that story and the journey of it and how quickly you saw the return of the back pain when you got gluten. It is amazing and insane how directly correlated that is and you don't realize it until you do take the time to heal the gut and I think that's really incredibly powerful. It was wild.

Speaker 2: 13:02

Yeah, you know, nobody ever wants to get exposed to a food that they're sensitive to, and I'm I'm sure I was in a lot of misery that particular night, but I'm glad that that happened, because that was the wake up call for me of like, ooh yeah, light bulb, light bulb. This is the thing that got rid of very low back pain. And over the years I've observed the same thing, like if I accidentally get glutenated at a restaurant or eating something because I'm not super careful, the back pain will come back to this day and it's the damnedest thing.

Speaker 1: 13:32

Yeah, I think that's really important that you mentioned that. It really brings to the fact of how we really need to listen to our bodies and we tend to forget to do that in our society. And I was just breaking this down to my community herbalist students, as we're doing a little bit of gut healing protocol in there and I'm like it's not going to be the same for anybody in here and it's important for you to check in with your body, listen to your gut. You know now is the time to feel that intuition. You probably know already what foods you're sensitive to or intolerant to, but you've been eating them all your life, so you're like I'm fine, I've eaten gluten all my life, I'm good to go Right, yeah, so where you have the quintessential, like lactose intolerance is a great example of this People who fully know that they are lactose intolerant and they know what the consequences are, but they eat ice cream anyway.

Speaker 2: 14:27

Oh yeah, and look like my purpose is not to be here to judge like ice cream is delicious. I'm not going to judge that. But you know, sometimes there are situations like that where people kind of know, oh, my body super doesn't like gluten or corn or whatever it might be, but they kind of eat it anyway. And you know there's probably a whole battery of psychology we could get into of like why we do that to ourselves sometimes. But that's a topic for another day.

Speaker 1: 14:53

Including those little bad gut bugs that are like, hey, eat more of it, I need more of that sugar, I need more of that stuff. And triggering those psychological feelings of like, oh, I need that pint of ice cream right now.

Speaker 2: 15:07

I sort of wonder how much of that goes on, like that's an emerging area with microbiome research that I'm interested to watch is the idea that the critters in our gut can actually make us have cravings and manipulate that. And I know I have seen people who seem to have candida overgrowth or like a yeast overgrowth in their gut and they're craving sugar a lot and like an atypical amount of sugar cravings and then we get them on something for candida and then those sugar cravings get substantially better. Like I have seen that numerous times I'm not saying it's across the board. Sometimes you just crave sugar because you've been eating too much sugar and your brain has gotten used to that and your taste buds have kind of calibrated to that level of sweetness in your diet. But yeah, sometimes it might be the bugs, it's. It's interesting, spooky stuff.

Speaker 1: 15:52

Yeah, yeah, I mean that's definitely something I've observed. I've also observed like ditch the sugar all the way for three days and like that chemical reaction that's happening, that craving starts to go away. Have you seen that with the patients and you get to say patients, because you're a doctor, I don't get to say it.

Speaker 2: 16:13

Yeah, but we can call it whatever. Yeah, yeah, I've seen that. I think you know it's funny. My husband is actually gearing up to do a variation of keto right now and he's one of the most sugar addicted human beings I've ever met in my lifetime. I love him dearly but my God and you know it's it's interesting watching him do this. I never would have thought in a million gazillion years that he would give up sugar, but I'm super proud of him for doing this. But yeah, it's. It's fascinating how quickly your taste buds rewire and then you bite into an apple and you're like Whoa, this is really sweet, like you don't need the Smarties or the Sour Patch Kids or the whatever. Fruit is sweet.

Speaker 1: 16:54

With natural sugars that don't, you know, feel so horrible in the body all the time.

Speaker 2: 16:59

Well, and I will say too I want to stop. I don't want to come across as this like nutrition Nazi person in this episode. I'm not the person who's like. You have to adhere strictly to this diet forever and ever, and if you ever eat sugar, it's the devil and you're not going to be healthy. I just had ice cream two days ago and I am a chocoholic, but chocolate has magnesium and polyphenol, so it's a health food. Damn it.

Speaker 1: 17:24

I stand by that.

Speaker 2: 17:27

I eat dark chocolate pretty regularly. It's not like anti sugar, anti processed foods period. It's just is that stuff making up a majority or a minority of your diet and there seems to be sort of a magic number for ultra processed foods actually, which is basically like what we would call processed foods. If ultra processed foods make up 20% or more of your calories, then that's kind of the threshold where it seems to do a lot of damage to your health and it increases your risk for, you know, heart disease, cancer, inflammatory, chronic conditions. But you can eat ultra processed food in moderation and keep it, you know, 10% of your diet and it's. It's not at least for the data we have right now it's not going to negatively impact your lifespan or make you more prone to any particular disease. But again, like a lot of people don't consume whole foods 90% of the time and then the snickerdoodles or the Pop-Tarts 10% of the time. Usually those numbers are pretty flipped in our society.

Speaker 1: 18:31

Absolutely, and I love that you're like, hey, I'm not the food Nazi or the diet Nazi, and you really can't be, because we also know that so much of our emotions are stored in our gut and when we feel that that feeling of stress and anxiety over like guilt, guilt and shame of like oh my gosh, I'm eating this ice cream, I am so bad, I'm so off my diet, that directly contributes to your digestive system not being able to do its job right. So you know, if you're gonna eat the Ben and Jerry's, love it.

Speaker 2: 19:06

Yeah, yeah, just enjoy the damn thing, yeah. And I think also we should mention the vagus nerve in this part of the conversation. To your gut doesn't do much of anything all on its own. Your gut is obeying the gut brain axis, namely the vagus nerve, and it's that long vagus nerve that's telling your stomach to produce stomach acid. It's telling your gallbladder to release bile. It's telling your you know esophagus to contract. It's telling your colon to contract. It's running your motility in the small intestine and elsewhere, for that matter. So you know it's.

Speaker 2: 19:41

The vagus nerve is rest and digest and it's also really connected to feelings of safety and connection and love and, like oxytocin and just like all of the feel good, chemicals basically feed into these vagal pathways. And so if you are shaming yourself or berating yourself for eating that treat, you're not allowing yourself to get into rest and digest, You're shutting down your vagus nerve and then, guess what, You're not going to digest it very well and then you're going to get symptoms and then you're going to double down next time you eat that ice cream and you're going to be really shaming yourself because, oh, I knew I got bloated last time and I'm still eating it now. What a dummy I am, and it just it could snowball, but the vagus nerve is really a piece of that too.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Yeah, absolutely. It's such a great breakdown of that and I really appreciate it. And I also want to talk on another thing you were talking about there in how, when you first started getting into this, you had to eliminate the gluten and the dairy and all of the things that seem, but now you have this very diverse diet because you took the time to thoroughly heal the gut. So I'd love to just hear a little bit about like, hey, sure, you eliminate some things for a bit of time to figure out what's going on and to do the healing process, but then the sunshine comes out again.

Speaker 2: 21:09

Yeah well, and I'm going to throw my profession under the bus slightly with this and I'm going to state right out the gate that I think part of the problem that people kind of get into this with is that there is a lot of disordered eating and a lot of orthorexia in the field of functional medicine, naturopathic medicine, etc. Honest to God, when I go to conferences and stuff now and kind of knowing what I know and working the way I do, I think that the vast majority of those people have disordered eating themselves and orthorexia and like obsession with health, and it's really easy to imprint that on your patients and and try to make them see the world the same way that you see it. You know, like food bad, gluten, bad, glutamine, good, and so I think that's part of it is like a lot of functional providers haven't kind of dealt with their own shit, where they haven't acknowledged that their shit is shit. But yeah, you know, you also see a lot naturopaths in particular. I've seen a lot of people get food sensitivity tests and then those results are taken as gospel Like oh, these are the 30 foods that you not only can you not eat, which we do not know at that stage of the game, but B, you can never eat them again. This is your forever no list, and I'm so sick of seeing this.

Speaker 2: 22:32

Because then what happens? And actually, funny enough, my Instagram reel today is talking about this you narrow down your diet, you narrow the base of support for your microbiome. Essentially, your microbiome becomes less healthy and less diverse, and now you're not making as many of those good anti inflammatory, immune, educating chemicals with the microbiome. So you start to get a reduction in, like short chain fatty acid production, butyrate production, whatever. And now you're taking away signals from your immune system that would normally tell your immune system hey, tolerate this. It's cool you don't have to freak out at every food, you see, because we eat a lot of different foods. Look, we ate 30 different foods just this week alone. Remember them, remember to tolerate them. So as we constrict our diet, we constrict our microbiome, and then we are giving more inflammatory, less tolerogenic signals to the immune system.

Speaker 2: 23:34

And then what happens? So the person cuts out those 30 no, no foods and maybe they feel better for a while, maybe they don't, who knows. Then, maybe a few months or even a year later, they go back to the naturopath or maybe a different naturopath and they say, man, I really feel like crap, doc, maybe we need to do another food sensitivity test. Well, now there's 15 new foods on that test that they can apparently never, ever eat again. And then they lose more immune tolerance and eventually they lose tolerance to more of the foods that they're eating. And I've seen people go through this journey where they get numerous food sensitivity tests or numerous run throughs with an elimination diet and they keep finding trigger foods every step of the way and it's like, yeah, because your immune system is losing tolerance and what you're doing sorry, what you're doing is one of the chief cause of that loss of tolerance.

Speaker 2: 24:26

So it could be a tricky journey to get people back up to eating a normal diet when they've whittled their diet down to literally eight or 10 foods, or heaven forbid less than that. Their diet down to literally eight or 10 foods, or heaven forbid less than that. The carnivore diet is super popular right now and these people are just eating what? Steak, eggs and butter and maybe cheese. I don't even like four foods, none of which contain fiber or carbohydrate Anywhere. No, not a scrap of butyrate being produced, I'm sure. Yeah, so you know, taking somebody from that kind of diet and then helping them eat all of the high, high FODMAP foods behind me in particular. It can be pretty challenging, but that's sort of the the world that I've accidentally landed myself in. Good thing, I'm good at helping those people.

Speaker 1: 25:08

Yeah, you, you definitely are. And, as you were talking about the diversity and things, and I'm like looking at the background of your, your recording area and you've always got it in your Instagram reels and things and it's just beautiful and colorful and diverse and it's a rainbow and I think it very directly speaks to everything that we're talking about and that you're speaking about, and I love it. So, thank you, and I want to backtrack, or not even backtrack. I want to start nerding out on herbs a bit with you, and when I say backtrack, I want to hear a little bit again about your core story of getting into the world of herbal medicine and how you, and then we can, like start talking about how you incorporate herbs and what you do.

Speaker 2: 25:56

Ooh, another fun story. Okay, so, like I said, I got so. My kind of path was chiropractic initially, then I got into functional medicine and nutrition sort of at the same time, and then later I got into herbs properly. So what I mean by that is and I don't know how much experience you have with like the functional medicine space, just in general or seeing those people yourself but they use herbs, but in a very allopathic, dare I say, bastardized sense, I agree. So you know, I got into this world and I started using, you know, just berberine in a capsule and you never taste the bitterness. You don't even know what plant that berberine came from or proprietary formulas, and it was literally like some dude, you know, like to tease Krazian or whoever was on PubMed late one night, went on a bender, found every single herb and supplemented vitamin that could ever, ever stimulate serotonin production ever. And then they just crammed all of those things into one pill and they're like here this is your serotonin, serotonin active, right. And so that was the world of herbal medicine that I was most familiar with. So that was the world of herbal medicine that I was most familiar with, and you know it's like I loved functional medicine in the beginning. Again, it made my mom's story make sense. It helped me heal something that had plagued me for years. Like I'm grateful to the functional medicine world, but the longer I was in it the more disenchanted I became with it.

Speaker 2: 27:37

Because I started having this, this feeling of like they say that we treat the individual and we don't treat the disease. And that's kind of true Right. Like you could have 10 rheumatoid arthritis patients go into 10 different integrative functional practitioner offices and they will get 10 different treatments. But when you're talking about the world of functional diagnoses, then you start getting away from that. So you could have 10 different people diagnosed with leaky gut by that one practitioner and I guarantee you, I'll bet you five bucks on it. Now each individual practitioner has their go to leaky gut formula, their go to candida formula, their go to SIBO antimicrobial, their go to prokinetic, their go to adrenal formula. So it's like they they treat the person and they don't treat the disease. As long as you're talking about the conventional medicine allopathic diseases but when you get into the labels or the diagnoses of the functional space, everybody is treated the damn same and it drives me bonkers. And then I would see people in forums, like practitioners and doctors and shit in the forums, and they'll literally go in there every day, like all the time, and they'll go in there and be like what's your favorite SIBO protocol, what's your candida protocol, what's your fibro protocol, what's your the? What's your favorite supplement for leaky gut? And it's just a numbers game whatever one gets mentioned, the most wins, and now that's the one that they're going to order on full script for all of their patients from now until kingdom come.

Speaker 2: 29:19

So I had the whisperings of this and like the discomfort with functional medicine for some time and then I went to my first, my baby, my, my cherry popping of herbal medicine and I went to medicines from the earth and my daughter was really young, so my guess is that it was either 2016 or 2017. I went to medicines from the earth and that was just the biggest aha. Not only light bulbs, like the angels were singing and the clouds parted ways and they just illuminated Black Mountain, north Carolina. It was amazing and these people were so freaking smart and they were referencing research and articles and like wisdom that I couldn't even fathom, but they were also talking about oh hey, you have somebody who comes in with migraines. Well, there's a ton of different flavors of migraines and like presentations. Are they hot, are they cold, are they phlegmy, are they whatever? And here's where you would use the different herbs. I remember you know David Winston talking about all of the various flavors of depression, you know, and how you might use herbs differently. Like this group might respond really well to St John's wort and this group maybe would respond better to.

Speaker 2: 30:38

I don't know, I'm getting carried away, but my point is I found my tribe, finally, and I found the people who are actually treating people as individuals rather than treating the diagnoses and getting lost in the diagnoses. And so I was hooked from that point on and honestly, I feel like I've just flipped. I really don't go to functional medicine seminars at all anymore, maybe like one a year, just because I like the organization here in North Carolina. But I I spend my time and my education money buying herb books or going to conferences like medicines from the earth, or I've been to some of the American herbalist guild ones when they're close enough that I could kind of justify driving to it. Um, but yeah, I feel like I found my tribe, so that's yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:24

I love that story ever since, and clearly, clearly, my heart is like, yes, this is beautiful. And hearing that differentiation, especially coming from a more allopathic background into the functional medicine background, and seeing that incredible connection and and and hearing like I found my tribe at an herb conference. Same thing happened to me when I went to my first official herb conference and I remember like I had been dabbling in herbs and playing with things and it was all really cool. And I went to a Brighton Bush herbal conference out here in Oregon and it just went on a whim.

Speaker 1: 32:02

I didn't know anybody, I didn't know anything. I didn't even know that I could ever call myself an herbalist. I was just having fun with books and playing with herbs and things like that. And I went there. You were herb curious. I mean, I had been herb curious for quite some time now that I reflect back but I had officially just been like, okay, I'm going to this conference because it's right down the highway from me, and I just remember being there and like, wow, these are my people, these people are beautiful.

Speaker 1: 32:35

They are kind, they are caring, they love the earth, they love people and they get it. And so that was like my like. All right, that's where I'm going, that's what I'm doing. You know, obviously I think too sorry to interrupt, I'm going.

Speaker 2: 32:47

That's what I'm doing, you know. Obviously I think to wavered on the story. To interrupt, I was gonna say another plug for herbal medicine as it's practiced by herbalists, rather than the functional medicine space, is that I also, over the years, have gotten very frustrated with functional medicine and again it's like another layer of hypocrisy and, yeah, I still a part of my heart will always belong to functional medicine. I don't mean this episode to be like totally shitting on them, but you'll hear all sorts of natural practitioners, including functional medicine. People say that conventional medicine is broken and crooked and they are getting, you know, funded by the pharmaceutical industry, and pharmaceutical reps are going to go to your office and buy lunch for your staff just to get you to prescribe more Lipitor. And we're better than that, and I've got news for all of you that shit happens in functional medicine just as much. It might not be every day that you and your staff get a free lunch, but I have had lab testing companies and supplement companies offer to host events in my office or bring lunch or do a lunch and learn or schmooze with me or give me free product or give me a coupon code or give me a free test to do on myself that they then can help walk me through the interpretation of, and then, ooh, maybe then I will want to order that test on patients Like that.

Speaker 2: 34:11

Shit does happen in functional medicine and I think that's probably one of several reasons why a lot of those formulas are wicked expensive. You get, you know, you get like a 90 count bottle of serotonin active or whatever you know functional formula. You want to say that could be a good 50, 60, 70 bucks for one of those. Or, like tumor, heaven forbid. You want a curcumin supplement. My god, you have to take out a mortgage on your damn house to buy the fancy schmancy, isolated, bioavailable piperine, extracted, emulsified, whatever isolated curcumin that they're selling you now.

Speaker 2: 34:53

And I remember two things I feel like one of them was definitely David Winston. So I remember David Winston years ago at Medicines from the Earth and he was saying that it's it's ludicrous that we're spending so much money on these curcumin products when turmeric tincture works phenomenally well. And he mentioned a study it was in mice, I believe where they basically took out all of the curcuminoids, right, all of the good stuff, right. They took all of the good stuff out of the turmeric and they put that in. You know, I don't know if they fed it to the mice or they dumped it in their veins, I don't know what happened, but they gave that to the mice. And then the other group. They basically took all of the discarded junk that they did not think was medicinal right Everything but the curcuminoids and they gave that to the other group of mice and they were equally effective. Amazing, there's something else in turmeric other than curcumin.

Speaker 1: 35:51

Who knew, who would ever think that a whole plant has many different things dancing together to madness.

Speaker 2: 35:59

I tell you, but that it was just perfect. So I heard him say that and I had a patient at the time who was prior to even working with me. She was taking a curcumin supplement and it was helping with joint pain. Great, but it was like $88 a bottle for these again bio emulsified, mycelated whatever, whatever bio absorbable, special curcumin. So I remember I went back to my office I still remember her name. I called her up and I was like Bonnie, I have an idea. I just, and I told her what I just told you and I said I will give you a bottle of turmeric tincture If you will be my guinea pig and give me feedback.

Speaker 2: 36:37

I want you to stop the capsules that you're taking. Take this for a few weeks instead, in that you're going to report back. Are you cool with that? And she was like yeah, sure, it worked just fine and it was $25 instead of 88. Exactly, you know, and now you know I love nothing more than getting people to buy a big old bag of chamomile tea. You know bulk chamomile and that's gonna last them from now until doomsday. And maybe you don't need some fancy, schmancy, proprietary $60 a bottle blend. Maybe you just need one big hefty bag of tea. Yeah, Amen.

Speaker 1: 37:18

I mean I might have to blast this episode out to the masses on like 20x volume instead of just so yeah, absolutely genius. And the other piece like just back on the turmeric, like tinctures, rad, but like eat the damn food. Yeah, food is your medicine, and that might've been his point also.

Speaker 2: 37:41

I forget now yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:42

I'm pretty sure it was. Knowing anything I've ever learned with David Winston. I know he's very pro use your herbs as food and food as medicine. And you know, also with that turmeric like you've got to get your fats and if you bring in the black pepper you're going to increase the bioavailability and all of that Super cool stuff.

Speaker 2: 38:00

We don't need to be spending $88 a bottle and have and have our people on subscriptions through full script or whatever, where that's just an indefinite part of their regimen. Like I don't think that's the answer.

Speaker 1: 38:13

I mean, I'm definitely grateful for supplementation. There's definitely a time and a place. There are people that are like no, I can't get myself to take a tincture every day. I despise the flavor of turmeric in my food, and you know.

Speaker 2: 38:25

so on and so on, and so if you're traveling, or you might not want to bring a tincture a tincture in a glass bottle on an airplane. Maybe just bring the capsules for that trip exactly, or you know, oh gosh, brain fart.

Speaker 1: 38:38

It's gone away. Ah, I had a capsules, kirk, even tinctures, airplanes, I don't know right. Oh gosh, it's gone for the moment, but I'm sure it'll come, come back at some point. It was good, it'll come back.

Speaker 2: 38:52

Absolutely, but I guess my point was that that is a very common like day to day visit to visit occurrence. Within functional medicine is that there's a heavy reliance and a degree of comfort with really expensive proprietary formulas and it's like companies that you can only buy through your practitioner and you can't get them on Amazon and standard process.

Speaker 2: 39:16

Yeah, yeah, but they're yeah, that's another one for another day, but yeah, you know, it's just, it's it's weird and I so I had another story, briefly. So the first one was definitely David Winston. I remember that lecture like it was yesterday. But there was another one, and I think that this one was Walter Crinion.

Speaker 2: 39:37

He was a naturopath and he used to chum around at the you know, the herbal medicine conferences. He went to medicines from the earth several years in a row when I was going. He has since passed away, unfortunately, but he, he was a pretty smart guy and he was a big deal in the detox world especially. But I remember he was saying and again, I think he was from the West Coast somewhere, I think he might have lived in Arizona, and that he was out in North Carolina for this event and he was chuckling and he told us he said I love traveling for these work conferences. And he said chuckling. And he told us he said I love traveling for these work conferences.

Speaker 2: 40:10

And he said partially, because one of my favorite hobbies is that I go into whatever health food store they have in the town and I just stand there for hours seemingly, and I pick up the bottles on the shelf and I look at the formulas at the at the hippie dippy you know market, and he said I could always tell which companies have an herbalist on staff and which which ones just have like a dude, with PubMed just making a kitchen sink formula.

Speaker 2: 40:37

And again, datis Kharrazian was my gateway drug into functional medicine and I still think he's brilliant and fabulous. However, all of the formulas that Apex has, that's a really good example, you know. You look at like their flagship adrenal product, for example, they've got uppers, they've got downers, they've got hot, they've got cold, they've got all the things all just mishmashed into one because there's research proving that all of these things are good, so why the hell not just slap them all in a formula? And I just died laughing when he was talking about that hobby of his, and now I've kind of adopted it myself. It is a hoot.

Speaker 1: 41:12

Oh, I love that. Yeah, I definitely find myself reading labels, but I hadn't thought of it in that way. Instead, I'm like well, this is a great formula and this is like I refer to it as shotgun herbalism.

Speaker 2: 41:33

Like just throw all the things at it Because I read an article that said all these herbs are good for the digestive system. There they go. But I googled, I googled which herbs are good for SIBO, and then I just put them all into one and now I have no fucking clue what's working.

Speaker 1: 41:39

Yeah, for me. Yeah, because it is so individual. I love this. I could ramble on this for decades and in fact I do, and I want to ramble on it more with you. Hopefully I can get you into our community herbalist program to teach our students in there some of your perspectives on gut microbiome healing, and I know that you have something pretty amazing coming up and I want to hear a bit more about it. I want you to tell these people, cause I'm sure by now they're like oh my gosh, I want to do work with her and I want to heal my gut and feel great and yeah, so they could get more rambling stories. Who doesn't want rambling stories? I mean, they're listening to my show, nikki. So yeah, absolutely yeah. So tell us more about what you got going on.

Speaker 2: 42:32

Yes. First, though, may I confess something. So we know some of the same people, at least loosely like through the internet.

Speaker 1: 42:40

I'm pretty sure you've spoken with Thomas Easley or yeah, I did a big old tour of Mountain, uh, mountain reserves with him and Sean Donald, the owner of mountain rose, and Mason from herb rally, and yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:54

Yeah, but yeah, um, so we had, we had gotten to know each other through forums many years ago, but he's in my state. But then the thing that actually I wanted to bring up is that I feel like our brains probably would especially resonate with Jim McDonald. Oh yeah, oh my God, oh my God. He and I'm so excited he's going to medicines from the earth this year and I already messaged him was like I'm so excited to meet you.

Speaker 2: 43:16

But that the way that he teaches, with again kind of the rambly stories and the tangents and the rabbit trails and like visual props like I did his Ladera class and it's phenomenal chef's kiss, highly recommend but like all of the weird ass examples and props and stories and metaphors and analogies that that man uses, I'm just like I think I found my kindred spirit in you and like I'm happily married. It's nothing like that, but like my herb kindred spirit, but something about the way that man talks and teaches herbalism just really scratches something in me. So as we were joking about our long winded stories and tendencies, I just thought I would plug Jim McDonald as well.

Speaker 1: 43:58

I want to plug in there Also. He's one of my first teachers. He's been on the show also. I thought he had, yeah, a long time ago and I had the pleasure of getting to learn with him. When I was going through clinical studies. My the guy who ran that program brought awesome herbalists in for the month and so I had two different years where I got to have Jim teaching live and in the flesh and he is so much fun and since then I've turned a few of my students on to him as well, so I love that you bring him up. He loves to talk about pool noodles and all kinds of great things and he does a great job diving into like what about herbal energetics and how do we really work with herbs and a person and their symptoms uniquely, instead of that massive, super expensive $90 formula, right?

Speaker 2: 44:45

And I think I resonate with him too, because at the end of the day, he keeps it reasonably simple.

Speaker 1: 44:51

Yeah, right, like he takes complex, because herbalism is complex, very much so. But you can make it simple and he does a great job of that.

Speaker 2: 44:59

Yeah, well, and this will eventually segue into the point you were trying to make a moment ago. But I feel the same way about nutrition and just health in general. Mm, hmm, I think we could kind of blame the human ego or maybe the frontal lobe in general for some of this. But there's this, this underpinning in a lot of nutrition, especially in the functional space, where people want to identify the bad food or the bad constituent in the food, right. So like, oh, it's, the spinach is bad for you because of oxalates, or the wheat is bad for you because of the gluten or whatever. Or you know, the peaches are bad for you because of the FODMAPs or whatever it might be, and that can help for a period of time as a bandaid to help mitigate symptoms, especially if somebody is really really sick, right, like if they're really compromised and they can't function, they can't live their life, by all means you could use an elimination diet and help them kind of slowly reintroduce and bring in foods. But at the end of the day, we have so much good research to support the idea that Michael Pollan said years and years ago eat food not too much, mostly plants, right, eat food, not hyper processed food, not the pop tarts and the Oreos and the Twinkies and the whatever else. Those can be there in moderation, again, like maybe 10% of your total calories, but most of the time, eat food not too much, mostly plants. And I would throw in one additional layer, which is if you can diversify, then that's going to be good for you nutritionally right. Like there's a lot of vitamins and minerals that are necessary for human health. And if we can learn how to diversify our diet and eat some foods that contain iron, some foods that contain folate, some foods that contain fiber, some foods that contain protein, etc. Etc. Etc. You know, selenium, whatever it might be, there's a much higher likelihood that you will successfully meet your nutrient needs with your diet and you won't need supplementation or heaven forbid, you won't develop a disease from deficiency, and you know, it's just it's. It cracks me up sometimes because I feel like my job at the end of the day is helping people see the simplicity and helping people believe that it really can be that simple. Like, again, just eat food not too much, mostly plants.

Speaker 2: 47:24

And with healing, there's only so many things we really need to focus on with healing. Like everybody gets lost in the specific diagnoses. Oh, I have leaky gut, oh, I have candida, I have SIBO, I have this. And I think that healing those conditions is 95% of the same. And then there's that little 5% where it's like, okay, well, if you have leaky gut, maybe you take some glutamine, and if you, if you have candida, then yeah, maybe you take some caprylic acid and oh, if you have SIBO, maybe you take a prokinetic. You know, there's that little, that little wiggle room where we get really specific with the condition. But I would say 95% of what people need to do to heal almost any human ailment looks the same. But that is very unglamorous, I jokingly say it's unsexy. So our silly goose human brains tend to downplay the importance of those unsexy basics, and so, again, a big part of my job is just helping people understand the importance of those basic foundations and helping them implement them in their life.

Speaker 1: 48:25

Yeah, I love that so much because when we can simplify it, it makes it easier for them to say, oh, that's why I'm doing this. And now it's possible because I understand it. My brain's not spinning down the rabbit hole trying to do all the research, I get why I'm doing it, and now it becomes so much easier to actually implement and integrate that into my life.

Speaker 2: 48:53

So well and like one. One sort of metaphor that I've used is a lot of people, at least that I work with, are actively trying to push themselves away from a particular diagnosis. Oftentimes for me in my world it's usually SIBO, candida or kind of dysbiosis more broadly. But there's, there's something that they are struggling against and they are actively trying to push away. You know, they're doing the low FODMAP diet because they were told erroneously that it treats SIBO. They're doing the candida diet because they think that that's the answer for their candida, whatever it might be. They're pushing and their arm muscles are so tired because they've been pushing and bracing for years and years and years and they're struggling and they can't push away the disease.

Speaker 2: 49:40

And a lot of my work, I tell people, is if you can let go of that for like a split second, it's going to be terrifying AF Again. You've spent how many months or years of your life pushing against the scary thing? It's going to scare the willikers out of you. But if you could drop those arms and pivot for just a nanosecond, then you could start focusing on pulling yourself towards health. Love that. It's the same net result. You could push this direction or you could pull this direction. You're still ultimately trying to move the same direction, toward the same goal, but it's a much different energy pulling yourself towards health and seeking health, as opposed to oh God, I'm scared of SIBO. I need to push away from SIBO. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, the klebsiella is eating.

Speaker 1: 50:31

Different energy? Yeah, absolutely. And more of that vagus nerve love when you're pulling the goods to you instead of freaking out and push away.

Speaker 2: 50:36

So much better for the vagus nerve.

Speaker 1: 50:38

Yeah, oh, I love that.

Speaker 2: 50:39

Beautiful, and also there's a lot of the stuff over here within the diagnosis, the condition, the physiology, the pathophysiology, the whatever, the biochemistry. There's a lot of this shit that we don't know yet, and that's part of the problem is people will spend so much of their time doing a deep dive on PubMed or in Facebook groups and Reddit threads and they're trying to research every little intricacy of Klebsiella because it showed up positive on one stool test one time and they're convinced that that's what's wrong with them. Or they're trying to research the ever loving crap out of this particular flavor of yeast overgrowth that the GI map told them that they have, and there's a lot of that stuff that we just don't know. Yet Science isn't done. There are scientists doing science right now and they haven't published their studies yet. They might not even come out this year, and there's going to be more scientists next year doing different research, and the cycle is going to persist for our whole lives.

Speaker 2: 51:42

So it's also like you can never know enough to successfully shove yourself away from the disease, at least in my opinion. But we know an awful lot about and we have a lot of good large scale data to support what goes into making a human being healthy that we actually know quite a bit about. So again, if you could drop your arms and pivot for just a second and deal with the terror of that experience, you can pull yourself towards help with a great deal of success. And that's what I teach people all the time, and that's why I try to emphasize in my work.

Speaker 1: 52:18

I love that. That is so, so beautiful, so well said. Like that energy shift it's, you're almost guaranteed success. I'm not going to say it's always guaranteed right, but significantly more so. Your odds are what? 80 90% better when you're the good towards you instead of I mean that mode.

Speaker 2: 52:41

That's been my experience with it. Yes, and actually funny enough to segue way back again. You had asked about my program coming up in April. We're going to be opening again. I actually do have a 100% money back guarantee on that program, which I I've never heard of anybody else doing that in this space or even in the like functional medicine, naturopathic space. But it works so well and I'm I'm so my team and I are so good at identifying the people that we know we can help. Yeah, that I guarantee my work. Like sure, there's going to be some people. Maybe there's some extenuating circumstances that we don't gather from you when we first meet you and kind of assess like if we're a good fit. But if we approve you to join our program, I guarantee that I can help you. And if I don't, if your gut health is not radically transformed after working with me, I will just cut you a check or a Venmo or a PayPal and give you your money back.

Speaker 1: 53:39

So yeah, I love that. That's huge in this world, right? Because obviously you're not. I mean, you're teaching them and you're doing incredible work and you're showing them the way, but really it's them that has to do the work. But I love that you're kind of checking in with tricky right.

Speaker 2: 53:53

Just tricky, honestly, because there's always this wild card for me as a business owner like putting that hat on is that I was just telling my nutritionist, who works for me, not more than a week ago, that it's hard because there are people where I don't think that my program failed them. I don't think it's that my program didn't work, but they did not implement something or they did not. So, for example, we have somebody who she has not requested a refund I don't even know if she will, but she came in a vegetarian or vegan and there was a lot of discussion of like but your iron has been low for a long time and that's important for gut health. And what about B12 and zinc and these other nutrients that are much easier to get through? Animal protein and like would it? Would you be open minded to bringing in a little bit of animal protein? Or maybe like a heme based iron supplement at least, because we really need to get your iron up, and she kind of was like a little bit open minded, but then she'll just throw in there kind of at random. That, like forks over knives, was a huge eye opener for her. And we're like like I don't know if you're super getting the vibe here.

Speaker 2: 55:06

And then just recently on one of the calls she was kind of backsliding, it seemed, and basically expressing that she wants to go back to a plant based eating style.

Speaker 2: 55:15

And I'm like, ooh, that's gonna be hard Because I don't know if I could realistically guarantee results if somebody's not willing to implement some of the stuff that I say. But if she asked for a refund, I would still give her a refund because like there's, there's there's going to be some percentage of people that I can lead the horse to the water repeatedly and they're just not going to drink and I have to kind of eat that as a business owner. And that's part of what goes into making a guarantee like that. It just it is what it is. But for the people who are going to do the work, who are open minded, who are coachable and who can get the transformation of a lifetime, I want to have that, that safety net in place for them so that they could feel confident doing my program and they know that it's the right decision for them. So I love that. It's still worth it.

Speaker 1: 56:02

Yeah, absolutely so. Tell me more about your program FODMAP Freedom coming up. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 56:09

Well, I'll start by saying you don't have to be on a low FODMAP diet or even considering a low FODMAP diet to join. I just thought it was a cute name. I'm a sucker for alliteration. I thought that was fun when I named it. People working primarily in the IBS and SIBO world a lot of the people I work with do come on with a low FODMAP diet or some variation of a quote unquote SIBO diet. So it makes sense for my people. But I've had plenty of people who don't do that diet when they join and I, for the record, I'm not the person to recommend that diet typically, so you can breathe a sigh of relief typically, so you can breathe a sigh of relief. But yeah, it's, you know it's, it's, it's kind of intense, it's very educational.

Speaker 2: 56:52

I joke pretty frequently that we don't get a user's manual with the human body when we're born. And wouldn't it be nice if we had? And I lead you through the 12 week program, kind of. I feel like it's my duty to give you that user's manual and understand how the body works, what it needs to really thrive and be healthy and heal and and build new healthy tissues and a new healthy microbiome, and we support you along the way. So it's 12 weeks. So there's a like learning, you know, kind of component, with either video or audio lectures that you would listen to on your own time. So the style is called a flipped classroom. I don't know if you've heard that before, but you, you listen to the lecture content on your own time during the week and then once a week we get together for the live q&a is and will help you chew on it, metaphorically maybe, and literally to, and that help you kind of figure out how to apply it in your day to day life. And so we go through that and then the cycle repeats. We have another module that drops with more content. You watch that at your own pace and then at the end of the week we get together for the q&a. So I have a nutritionist who works for me and she does two Q&As herself and then I host two Q&As per week also. So we have four Q&As total each week and it's the cycle of like you learn something, then you chew on it together. You learn something, you chew on it together, and I've been told that I could probably get college credit for the course if I applied it that way for some sort of accreditation. So it is quite a lot of learning.

Speaker 2: 58:29

If you are not a dork and if you don't have a good sense of humor, it's probably not the right thing for you. I have I have, I think, like 300 gifs and memes embedded in FODMAP freedom at various places. I'm a sucker for a good gif, but yeah, and then you know, we take you through the steps of healing your gut and nutrition and how to, how to diversify your diet, how to make sure that you're getting all of the nutrients you need from your diet. We talk a lot about having a good relationship with your food and how to deal with food fear and how to reintroduce things successfully and like finding a pace that works for you with that.

Speaker 2: 59:04

I do use herbs and supplements and I recommend some throughout the program, but I try not to be too heavy on that out of respect for people's pocketbooks. But I actually one of the things I really like in again the IBS kind of SIBO space, with a lot of folks having pooping problems or bloating as a primary chief complaint. I love herbal prokinetics and I will preach them until the end of times, but basically it's a lot of bile moving herbs. If you just look at the formulas. But I actually package up little one week tester supply baggies of all of the herbal prokinetic formulas I've ever found and I back him up and slap a label on them and I mail them to every single student at the beginning of the program along with some like HCL and some other goodies. So part of the process too is that I kind of make people become citizen scientists and learn how to experiment on themselves and like figure things out in in a curious kind of scientific way. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:00:06

Yeah, I love that. I always say it's like playing detective. That's what I do as an herbalist, like I'm a detective and we've got to figure out and we're going to. We got to work together to figure out what the problem is and what's going to fix the problem.

Speaker 2: 1:00:18

And yeah, yeah, well, and you know this is sometimes hard to understand when you're in the throes of something that's really frightening or painful. But even a bad reaction is data, if you see it that way, absolutely so. If you eat something and you get diarrhea from it, like a lot of people, understandably would be very distraught and very freaked out by that and and that would you know, they would spiral kind of mentally and physically because of that. Or you could approach that with some curiosity and say what is it about the peach that set me off? And maybe you can learn a little bit more about, like, the types of prebiotic that are in the peach and like what might have happened there.

Speaker 2: 1:00:59

Or maybe it wasn't the peach at all, maybe it was something else that happened during your day, maybe you had a super stressful meeting with your boss right before lunch and then you ate that poor, innocent peach and then you wagged a finger at the peach and it wasn't the peach at all, it was the boss that gave you diarrhea. So, but again, like you can't figure it out if you don't even acknowledge the presence of these data points in your life. So I think, understanding that good reactions, bad reactions and a lack of seemingly lack of response to something. Those are all just data points, and if you can approach this journey with a more scientific viewpoint, I think that not only takes away a lot of the stress and the fight or flight from the situation, but also and it works better but yeah, it's, it's a more enjoyable experience.

Speaker 1: 1:01:45

Yeah, I love that. It's a great way to put it all together and how to. I always call them learning lessons. You know, if there's a bad reaction, great, what did we learn from that? You know, like cool. There's something to take away from that. So this sounds amazing. Can you just take a minute and tell me some of the results your people have had after going through FODMAP freedom with you?

Speaker 2: 1:02:14

Well, again, I tend to attract a very particular flavor of tummy problems. So the most common things that we'll see is that people are able to diversify their diets. So people who had been stuck on a low FODMAP diet or a low histamine diet or whatever, they've been able to reintroduce food successfully without a negative reaction or consequence. So that's a big one. Bloating is a very common chief complaint and we see a lot of people get tremendous benefit with bloating, pooping problems of all varieties, you know, whether it be constipation, diarrhea or mixed IBS presentation. We see a normalization in bowel movements quite often, and it's not uncommon for us to see improvement in other stuff too, like we've had people with histamine sort of symptoms that get better as a consequence of going through this process and healing their gut. We've seen people know who who used to have headaches and then the headaches seem to get better or whatever it might be.

Speaker 2: 1:03:15

I will say as a side note though, because I have to be, I guess, like mindful of my place in the world and my scope and my, my zone of genius my guarantee applies to tummy symptoms. So, unfortunately, if you come in with eczema or migraines and you're hoping to heal that by way of healing your gut. You're welcome to try. It's just I can't guarantee that that's going to be the case. So, but again, if you have pooping problems, bloating, indigestion, a billion gazillion food sensitivities that give you the runs, that's the kind of stuff I can guarantee my work on. But you know, I'm not. I'm not an expert in eczema, I'm not an expert in migraine. Like I have to be realistic with what I can guarantee my work on. But I fear that I tangented off a bit, though.

Speaker 1: 1:04:05

No, I love it. I think you really shared what an awesome program FODMAP freedom is and the importance of people knowing that it doesn't mean that you have to go on the FODMAP diet, right?

Speaker 2: 1:04:18

No, it's the opposite. Yeah, I get excited when people can eat gluten again, even though I can't personally like it's. I've come full circle in that regard. I no longer think that gluten is the evil bane of all of our existence, I think.

Speaker 1: 1:04:32

It's not, but you can't get taught that right in the beginning? Like gluten is the enemy for everybody.

Speaker 2: 1:04:38

Oh, it's the enemy for my body. Thanks, fasano, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:04:45

Anyways, I I will. I would love to hear how people can get access to you and how they can get access to FODMAP freedom, and of course, I'll be linking to all the things in the show notes, but I think this is going to be really helpful for so many people listening here.

Speaker 2: 1:05:03

Certainly so. I am mostly going to be found on YouTube, Instagram and my podcast. As far as like free content get to know me, learn from me kind of stuff goes on YouTube and Instagram. I go by the handle gut microbiome queen. If you just type that in, as is on YouTube, it'll pop right up. If you type in on Instagram, it's gutmicrobiomequeen, but I think if you search for it it'll pop up anyway. And then I have a podcast of my own and I'm super excited to have you on and we can talk about herbs for digestion. I think that's going to be really, really good.

Speaker 2: 1:05:43

So if you want to hear Mel on my podcast a little bit down the road, then I would encourage you to look up the IBS Freedom podcast. We're on audio based apps you know, Spotify, Apple, whatever and we also post those episodes on a separate YouTube channel. So, like I have my own channel and then the podcast has its own separate YouTube channel. So if you look up IBS Freedom podcast, you can find us there too has its own separate YouTube channel. So if you look up IBS Freedom Podcast, you can find us there too. My co host is a registered dietitian who also works in like the IBS, SIBO kind of world, so we'll a little different experience with the two of us.

Speaker 2: 1:06:18

And then for FODMAP Freedom, I link to it in all of my stuff. So if you find one of my YouTube videos or if you go to Instagram, it's right there. But probably the best link to find all of my stuff in one place is wwwfodmap. F O D M A P. Freedomcom slash social and that's the link that I effectively use like a link tree, even though it's not to like. I built it myself. It's not like yeah, but yeah, yeah, FODMAP freedomcom slash social and that actually has links to YouTube, podcast, Instagram, some little like freebie things that I've done over the years. There was a lecture I did at like a gluten free health fair that was recorded and put online and that it has the links for working with me, including FODMAP freedom. Awesome, I love it and we'll be opening up. I think it's April 28. So it's going to sneak up on me before I know. It will be opening the doors again and welcoming our next, our next group, the baby ducklings, as I call them. I love it.

Speaker 1: 1:07:23

They're my little babies. I love it. I love it. I love it Because you, you go into it with this new group with so much love and care and excitement to see what they, their breakthroughs, are.

Speaker 2: 1:07:34

Yeah, yeah, and you really never know what you're going to hear. We we had to give you one example, real quick Cause maybe this is what you were fishing for. Earlier we had one student with this group and she popped onto a q&a with my nutritionist not with me and she was like I usually don't get to attend the q&a, is that much. But I wanted to tell you guys she was dependent on daily enemas and high, high doses of oral magnesium, high, high doses of oral magnesium and, if I remember correctly, an herbal laxative. And she would take those things enema, high dose magnesium, herbal laxative every day for many, many years.

Speaker 2: 1:08:21

Sometimes she needed two enemas in one day because her constipation was so severe and I believe she had bloating and some other stuff going on too. I'm trying to recall off the top of my head. But she came to one of the Q&As and she said I've been really focusing on the stuff in the first three modules, like you told me to, and I haven't needed an enema. And at the time when she came on the Q&A to say this, it had been 13 days and she had not needed an enema and she was pooping like a champion and she was diversifying her diet and eating a lot of foods that she had not eaten in a long time, beautiful and she like, and you can't even comprehend the difference that it would make.

Speaker 2: 1:08:56

Like she was saying, even if she traveled she would have to bring all of her enema supplies with her when she traveled just bonkers stuff and here she is just pooping like a champion. Just amazing thing on the first few weeks worth of stuff that I taught her. So that was. That was probably the coolest one that I've heard this this time around. But we've had plenty of other people who like their bloating is gone and they're pooping better. But that was a pretty, pretty stark contrast to go from daily enemas and high dose magnesium to, hey, I poop like a normal person now.

Speaker 1: 1:09:30

Ah, that's so good. So good, so amazing. Okay, we're going to wrap it up. I am so excited to share this episode with everybody. I am so grateful that we got to finally hang out and chat and talk poop, like that's one of the glories of her job. We get to talk on the regular in all the different ways you could take that meaning. So, thank you, thank you so much for being here and, of course, everybody connect with the gut microbiome queen, because she has some amazing things to teach you and help you feel fabulous, so come hang out.

Speaker 1: 1:10:08

I try to make poop fun. Yeah, totally Vibrant, colorful, diverse.

Speaker 2: 1:10:14

I mean, hopefully it's just the one color, but not the poop, not the poop I'm talking about you are okay, yes, and colorful and there we go.

Speaker 1: 1:10:21

Content is all under the gut microbiome, but it's also diversified. And I look at your. I've always admired your, your background and the colors and anyways, yeah, go check her out.

Speaker 1: 1:10:34

You guys have a good one. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the Herbalist Path. If you're loving this journey and learning all about the various aspects of herbal medicine, be sure to follow and review the show. It helps more people find their own path with herbal medicine, and if you have a friend or know, a mama or another budding herbalist who could use this kind of support, please share this episode with them and that way we can keep making herbalism spread like wildflowers. And a gentle reminder nothing shared on this podcast is intended to diagnose, treat or cure any disease. All the information is for educational purposes only and yeah, we throw in some entertainment too. But what it is not is a substitute for personalized care from a qualified health practitioner. Always do your own research, listen to your body and, when needed, partner with a trusted professional who honors both your intuition and your health. Until next time, take care, stay curious and keep walking down the herbalist path.