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00:00.00
wildremedies
Welcome to the wild Remedies Podcast Erin Super excited to talk to you today. How are you good where where are you right now. Okay.

00:08.80
Erin
Um, I'm awesome. I'm so excited to be here. Um I'm in New Hampshire so I would it's like an hour and a half from boston to context to where I am and on the map.

00:18.11
wildremedies
Nice, wonderful and are you getting all of the wonderful spring Equinox vibes over there right now. Nice really.

00:27.26
Erin
Yeah, it's definite's like spring has sprung for sure. There's still a lot of snow on the ground but it's starting to melt so the sun is out and for that we are grateful. Yeah.

00:37.21
wildremedies
Yeah, yeah, totally here as well. I'm just so excited for. We just entered airy season and all of that fresh energy coming in and I'm just I'm so excited about it.

00:47.48
Erin
I my son sign is a pisces and like if you know me, you'd be super shocked like everyone kind of thinks I'm an aies because I'm like all fire all the time but I'm like right on the I'm right on the cusp. They're my birthdays St Patrick's day March Seventeenth I just had a birthday. Um, and thank you.

01:04.57
wildremedies
Ah, nice happy birthday.

01:07.80
Erin
Um, but I love I Love me some ay energy. Love it. So good unless you fight with an airries I think that's the only time that you're like oh maybe I don't love airy so much.

01:08.75
wildremedies
Yeah, yeah I think everybody does. It's just yeah, bring a new life to everybody right now.

01:21.95
wildremedies
Totally the low octos can be a little bit frightening for sure. Ah sweet. Well I'm super psyched to talk to you about functional nutrition today.

01:23.55
Erin
I.

01:33.66
wildremedies
This is kind of a new one for me. You know we've had nutritionists on the podcast before but I've never heard the term functional nutrition. Um, so first of all, why don't We just kind of dive into that like what functional nutrition is and how you came into this line of expertise.

01:49.83
Erin
Yeah, this is funny because typically when I'm on shows they're like functional nutrition shows. So I'm like oh this is great. We're starting starting with like a take it from the top starting with a fresh fresh crowd.

01:58.33
wildremedies
Yeah.

02:02.64
Erin
Um I think it probably does make sense to start a little bit with my backstory because that can that kind of explains what this approach is and how it's unique I went to school for dietetics originally because I was struggling with ah years long disordered eating from my teens into my early 20 s and so I decided to.

02:04.54
wildremedies
You know.

02:21.70
Erin
Go to school so I could fix myself essentially I was very much so living with this belief that my body is a problem to be solved. It is a problem that needs to be fixed like so many women carry around with that that belief I had bought into that and I was like if I can just go to school to learn about.

02:30.64
wildremedies
Is.

02:40.64
Erin
Nutrition to get myself skinnier then I won't have to do these disordered eating behaviors and there we go I'm keeled I'm cured. Um, so I was still very much. So at that point looking at food and nutrition through the lens of will it make me skinny.

02:58.40
wildremedies
Yes, you can.

02:59.95
Erin
Will this lead to thinness in leanness which is like the holy grail right? The ideal body. Um, and through learning about nutrition and the science and. Nutritional biochemistry and all of that it didn't really fix me. It didn't really make me any better. So after graduation I was still struggling and decided to turn to toward more of a alternative approach which involved me taking the focus off of food and putting the focus onto every other aspect and area of my life like. Relationships in career in enjoyment I found yoga I found meditation and I started building these practices into my life and I stopped hyper fixating on food and through that I was able to heal. Um and recover through very like nontraditional methods. Um, and that's how I started building my nutrition practice my focus at first was on emotional eating and I took a very non diet approach to food and that was like really great I was kind of living the dream I had this nutrition practice I was teaching yoga. I met my husband we got married I had a baby like life was good and then after I gave birth at this point. It's almost nine years ago I got extremely sick and I kept going to my doctors being like something's really wrong here.

04:23.14
wildremedies
Then.

04:25.50
Erin
And they're like Nah this is just kind of like normal all of your lab work is normal. This is normal for a new mom I think in our culture We're really okay with the ideas of mom being like completely wrung out used up. You know like yeah, you're exhausted. Yeah, that tracks if you're a mom so I was kind of just like tossed out of my doctor's office.

04:36.33
wildremedies
The.

04:44.54
Erin
Time and time again that went on for a year it kind of referred to it as the medical gaslighting of the american woman where it's like your lived experience isn't real. It's all happening in your head. You're kind of crazy here's some valium get to step in. That's all I've got for you. It's all she wrote and after about a year I was like I can't.

04:49.15
wildremedies
You need.

04:59.35
wildremedies
Literally.

05:04.18
Erin
Like this is insane and I had to advocate for myself and through that self-advocacy I I we got a lot of lab work done and I was I ended up being diagnosed with a very serious autoimmune illness so I wasn't crazy. It wasn't all in my head. It was actually happening now. The way that the conventional model looks at autoimmunity. It's kind of a big question Mark we don't have a whole lot of answers for yeah, like we don't know why it happens. And we don't really know what to do for you other than to put you on medication that can shut down your entire mutant system which isn't great. It's great if you need it. Not awesome if you don't it shouldn't be the first place that we start so that kind of prompted me to do my own research and my own continuing education and it was that.

05:44.77
wildremedies
E.

05:53.64
Erin
Way like that's how I found functional medicine and functional nutrition. Um, and what the premise of functional medicine is is essentially looking for the root cause conventional medicine is really good at saying you have this but it's not so great at asking. Asking the questions. But why and that's where a functional medicine comes into play. It's like hey the body doesn't break down for no reason it doesn't just happen overnight. It's not random so we want to uncover what happened you know what was the process that broke it down and then can we address it from the root. A great analogy for folks is if you step on a tack and you're walking around you're in bare feet you step on attackck ouch you know that's going to hurt. You know if you have a ta in your foot. It's going to hurt and there are certain things that you can do to alleviate that pain. You can take Advil.

06:39.95
wildremedies
If you.

06:48.20
Erin
You can maybe like rub some essential oils on it. You can put some numbing cream on it. There's a lot of things you can do to manage the symptom which is pain but the pain the problem is never just going to go away unless you remove the tack and so that's really what a functional root cause approach is is looking for the tack. To remove it.

07:10.74
wildremedies
Um I love that? Yeah and there's so much there that I really resonate with especially with your story in the beginning beginning about equating health and wellness with being skinny that was.

07:22.30
Erin
Ah, yeah.

07:24.73
wildremedies
Always a thing for me as well like my body shape isn't even naturally you know very thin but in my mind it was like okay if I'm going to be healthy if like that is just what I thought that that equated. Which created eating disorder for me as well and so I completely understand that it's interesting though. How you moved into nutrition. Um, so there was like this hyperfix fixation on the eating and stuff like how did you heal that relationship and then be able to come into a place of you know. Working in the nutrition field from like a healed healed place.

08:03.60
Erin
Well I I do feel that food can be medicine and food has the power to heal the reality of the situation is that everything in our body requires nutrients everything in our body and so we need to obtain those nutrients through food.

08:07.17
wildremedies
Yeah.

08:17.34
wildremedies
Yeah, yeah.

08:22.80
Erin
And so when for me in healing from my eating disorder. It wasn't about bypassing nutrition or bypassing food altogether it was just not allowing that to be the primary focus. It was recognizing that food is a really big piece but it's not the only piece. And so I had to address other aspects of my life and I had to understand that my relationship to food had very little to do with food and had everything to do with my relationship to myself. How I viewed myself in the world. Obviously this goes back. To like family of origin and how I grew up and you know like all sorts of things. Ah very complex very layered but but food was the only was only one of the pieces but I never lost sight of the fact that food can be nourishment and food can be healing.

09:06.30
wildremedies
A.

09:19.33
wildremedies
And hit.

09:21.37
Erin
And that's and I and I always had a deep reverence and respect for that and so that's kind of what brought me back full circle to be um, teaching educating about about food but I do really really want to emphasize underscore that food is 1 piece of somebody's overall health pie.

09:43.90
wildremedies
Yep, Absolutely yeah and I think a lot of folks now hyper fixate on the diet like the trends All of the things in order to feel in control about changing something that maybe they don't like about themselves on.

09:56.33
Erin
Um.

09:59.22
Erin
Like you.

10:00.70
wildremedies
And exterior level but really a lot of the healing and the change happens within and that can be really difficult to face for a lot of folks because it's work right? It's not a quick fix situation.

10:15.63
Erin
Um, um, well we were conditioned in primed to look for the quick fix and so I used to travel around and teach in-person lectures and one of the questions that I would always ask is about the quick fix like.

10:19.72
wildremedies
And.

10:28.10
Erin
Do you believe that the quick fix exists and everyone's like no we know consciously we know and we can sit here and tell you that we do not believe the quick fix exists and yet the vast majority of people are on the perpetuate. Perpetual Quest for the next quick Fix. So It's It's a huge disconnect between like consciously what we know to be true and then like the subconscious drivers of like but butt Butt Butt Butt What if it does exist and if it does exist I need to find it. We're really primed.

10:46.93
wildremedies
That is.

11:03.42
Erin
Um, to to kind of like be on the perpetual lookout for that. We're very excited at any opportunity to do that and so it's It's a little bit of an uphill battle that that people face unfortunately.

11:14.78
wildremedies
Yeah, absolutely and it's tough I mean even when you do find a practitioner that you're working with and that you really resonate with the healing modalities and it's still. It's still difficult like I know with the process that I'm currently going through right now. Um, going a homeopathic route and doing some really deep testing that might be a little bit different but it's resonating with me right now. But there's this whole you know process of shedding these layers. So my body's changing a lot in the sense that I've removed certain things in my life like. Hormonal medication things that that I was on for all kinds of chronic conditions. But my body's changing right? like gained a bunch of weight um and feeling not super well through this process because we're going really deep and focusing on like. Parasites and bacteria and all of the stuff that's been really deep in my body for a really long time and so it's this whole process of being able to trust that process and let go of a little bit of control and just let my body heal even though it can be really uncomfortable and it's not a quick. Fucking process like it's months that it's been already and I know it's going to be several months more and I think that's something that people just need to understand when you're going the natural healing route and you really actually want to get to the root and actually heal. It's not it's not overnight

12:44.93
Erin
No, and you really somebody should be prefit framing preframing that for you, you know like whoever you're working with should be willing to say like hey this is going to be a process and that is so so important so you don't feel.

12:45.28
wildremedies
It's not overnight.

12:50.31
wildremedies
Who Yeah, totally. Yeah.

13:03.23
Erin
Like you're failing right? like you want to make sure that you're putting yourself in a position to win and the biggest thing we can come back to is this idea that our body does know how to heal when it's given the correct inputs right? Food can be 1 of them. We have to figure out part of healing is figuring out where we might be interrupting that process and it is healing is absolutely unquestionably a ah process. So I appreciate you bringing that to the forefront.

13:32.24
wildremedies
Um, yeah, well let's talk about functional nutrition a little bit more like what makes it different than just regular nutrition practice.

13:40.78
Erin
So if we're looking at conventional nutrition. It's kind of a little bit more template driven of like this is the way to do it whereas functional nutrition takes more into account individuality and what's. Good for 1 person may not be appropriate for another person and even to take that a bit further. What's good for 1 person in 1 season of their life might not be appropriate for another season of their life to make things even more complex the type of practice that I do at this point is more functional medicine based.

14:06.93
wildremedies
Um, yeah.

14:17.56
Erin
So we are looking for those root causes if somebody comes and let's say they have harper you know, ongoing gi disfunction ah harburn or yeah let's use harburn as as and as an example so they're coming to me and I want to know why. I'm not saying oh how do we get rid of the heartburn. How do? what do I give this person to get rid of the heartburn I'm saying why is the heartburn happening in the first place is it lack of digestive capacity. Is it food hygiene the way that they're eating. the environment in which that they're eating they're eating super fast or they're drinking a ton of water with their meals. Is there something going on more from a bacterial standpoint something like an h pylori which is the bacteria that can live in the stomach. Sometimes it's great other times. Not so much. What is the actual. Ah. Cause or the root of this heartburn and how do we address the root rather than just try to mask the Symptom so a lot of the work that I do is looking at those roots and it can be what's happening at the level of the gut. The microbiome. The bacteria and the fungi and the viruses that live in your colon or your digestive tract that tube that runs from your mouth to your bum. There's a lot of things that happen there and that kind of needs to be addressed from top to tail. We could be looking at your liver capacity. So.

15:33.69
wildremedies
But.

15:42.41
Erin
How well is your liver functioning listen there's like this whole trend of being like you don't need to do a detox. You've got a liver you've got kidneys you're fine. It's like cool one ah hundred and fifty years ago that might have been great advice that might have been all you needed are those couple of organs. But now we really need to support. Capacity of these organs because we're inundated with environmental toxicants. That's just the the reality of our situation. So we're focusing on liver and hepatic bio transformation which is just like liver clearance of different types of toxicants. We might be looking from. Ah.

16:06.54
wildremedies
Me here.

16:21.75
Erin
Hormones We might be looking at Thyroid Physiology. There's a lot of different root factors that can come into play here. So it's really super duper duper individualized based on whoever I'm working with.

16:27.65
wildremedies
Thank you.

16:33.25
wildremedies
Yeah, that's awesome and you focus on lab testing for a lot of that stuff right? yeah.

16:39.22
Erin
We do? Yeah, we definitely run a labs-based practice by the time folks are getting to us there. They've been dealing with stuff for quite a few years they've been to a lot of other providers. So at that point we want to have the data to kind of.

16:48.72
wildremedies
Yes.

16:56.40
Erin
Showcase Exactly what's going on.

16:56.14
wildremedies
And through your work I have noticed that you mentioned that there's certain foundations that people should address before looking at Lab testing What are those things.

17:07.18
Erin
Yeah, absolutely like I think so functional lab testing is typically out of pocket right? So it can be quite expensive for folks, especially if you're used to operating within the insurance model. It's usually not in the insurance model and there is.

17:13.65
wildremedies
Yes.

17:26.36
Erin
Um, because functional. It's funny to say that you've never heard a functional nutrition nutrition before because like that's so my world right? because it's gaining in more and more and more popularity. There are different ways to practice in some functional nutritionists or functional medicine practitioners you work with.

17:33.17
wildremedies
Yes.

17:45.72
Erin
You'll walk in the door and have to throw down like 5 ive six seven $8000 before they'll even look at you because they're running all of these labs like tons of labs that is not how I practice. At all I want to meet with you first I want to have a conversation with you and I want to see what you're doing the foundations. Are you even doing those. We'll talk about that in a second and then I want to see what your symptoms are and then I want to see what your budget is and from that information through our dialogue through our conversation. That's when I'm deciding what data do we need to help us assess your root cause and so there are different ways to ah practice a functional approach just to keep that in mind I want to let everybody know that that it's not as simple as just finding a functional practitioner. Unfortunately, it's not that easy. Um, in regards to like some of the foundations like before I would even run expensive functional lab testing on somebody I want to make sure that they're eating primarily a whole foods diet that's going to look different for everybody but we're not eating a ton of. Processed foods. We're not eating a ton of sugar a lot of it. Pro-inflammatory foods. We want to just clean up the diet first that is super important. That's a huge foundation sleep is another biggie if you're not getting adequate sleep if you're not prioritizing sleep.

19:04.86
Erin
Sleep hygiene making sure that you're winding down appropriately at the end of the day that you're supporting circadian rhythm. You don't need a $400 hormone test. You know to to tell you what's wrong with your hormones if you're not doing the basics in the foundation. So food sleep.

19:17.93
wildremedies
E.

19:23.00
Erin
Getting outside every day um, getting exposed to sunlight getting exposed to nature whether that's a green space or a blue space just getting outside every single day. Our bodies are designed to be outside and so we're not giving our bodies the inputs that they need.

19:35.31
wildremedies
A.

19:40.93
Erin
Going to lead to imbalance and dysregulation moving your body every day but not in such a way that it's pushing your body past its physical capacity because to kind of pull it back to the weight loss discussion. So much of what we do is with the end goal of weight loss right? of leanness of. Thinness and so typically I have women that will come to me over the past twelve years who are undereating. They're not eating enough calories. They're maybe doing a little bit of intermittent fasting because they read somewhere or listen to some podcasts and that's the way to balance your hormones.

20:06.30
wildremedies
He.

20:15.11
Erin
And then they're doing high intensity interval training like six days a week so that's a recipe for disaster. So when I say move your body some is good more is not necessarily better. We want to be moving our bodies every day but not in a way that we're overshooting it because that has a lot of downstream negative. Health effects. Um, those were like some of the biggies blood sugar balance is a huge one because blood sugar balance imbalance I should say can impact your overall inflammation your energy your stress hormones your sex hormones your thyroid hormones blood sugar balances.

20:38.60
wildremedies
Here.

20:54.40
Erin
1 of the foundations. So just making sure we're not going huge long stretches without skipping meals making sure that we are eating within 30 to 60 minutes of waking up coffee doesn't count as a meal I don't care how much stuff you add to it come fight me like listen I've been doing this work for 12 years I've worked with. Thousands of women I've seen so many hormones hormone tests like I say this with conviction I come with receipts when I say this stuff um and then making sure we're eating balanced meals. So again, that balance is going to look very different from everybody but making sure we're prioritizing protein. We are not. Completely skipping out on carbs. But we're not overeating refined carbohydrates and then we're eating adequate fat just to kind of give it like you know like a real basic approach.

21:40.99
wildremedies
Yeah I love that honestly, the balanced approach to eating has been such a game changer for me I was definitely and 1 of those people who you know was doing the keto the fasting all of the training because it was like well. If I'm going to be healthy then obviously I need to do all of these things and I need to lose the weight and it was funny because recently I was just kind of like going through a bunch of old Instagram posts I was looking for a recipe or something and I had gone back to a time a couple of years ago where I had done this really intense cleanse quote unquote cleanse and. <unk>ve done some of these things these protocols in the past that are actually quite aggressive right? It's like really locales I was drinking attention the ton of g I was called a punch karac cleanse was this ayerrobaic thing but what I've learned is like my body does not react well to extremes at all and so that includes the fasting and all of the training and I look back and I see these posts that I've made where it's a photo of me and my body's a certain size and I'm like look how healthy I am I'm feeling so great and I've lost some weight and yay me. And when I think back to those times I'm like yeah cool. Okay so I remember my depression was so bad at that time that I couldn't get out of bed for fucking days I also remember that that cleanse that I did absolutely destroyed my gut to the point where I was having these crazy histamine reactions.

23:15.13
wildremedies
And all that energy that I was feeling was just straight up cortisol from all of the fasting which later down the line totally destroyed my nervous system. So Sometimes we think that we're doing all of these really amazing things and pushing pushing pushing pushing pushing and then. You just kind of come undone and that's where I am right now where pushed way way too hard in so many different levels of my life. Not only was it that but had a relationship crash. You know, building businesses all of these things and now I'm in this whole unlearning process of like Okay, how do we.? How do we do less of all that stuff you know focus on walks focus on eating carbs Again, you know I don't do gluten but I found this really amazing gluten-free sour dough that I have a little bit of bread every single day something that was absolutely terrified of before. But it actually really helps to ground me down and eat in in balance with other foods can actually really help my my blood sugar levels and so it's a lot of unlearning right? because there's just so much crazy information out there.

24:24.60
Erin
There's so much information out there and it's um we I work with a lot of women who are not misinformed. They don't It's not for lack of information right? They have an abundance of information at their fingertips and what they actually need is someone saying.

24:35.58
wildremedies
Yep, yes.

24:40.51
Erin
This is the information that applies to you to your unique physiology. All the rest you can forget about it's not that fasting is wrong or bad or not a therapeutic strategy it is. It's just saying who is it a therapeutic strategy for is it you if not then don't do it and let that be okay.

24:53.90
wildremedies
And if they.

25:00.22
Erin
For the most part for female physiology for a menstruating female. Our brains All of our hormones. Everyone wants to talk about hormones I'm like cool you have to talk about the brain because that's where all of hormone production begins and if your brain doesn't feel safe. It is not going to send the messages. Down to the rest of your glands and your organs to do the thing to produce the hormones right? It's going to shut it all down from the top and so we have to continuously make sure that we're sending safety signals to our brain if we want to have robust health so this looks like.

25:21.12
wildremedies
She mean.

25:37.67
wildremedies
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

25:38.41
Erin
Eating eating an appropriate. You know, fueling yourself. It looks like for a lot of people eating an appropriate amount of carbs. It looks like not skipping meals. It looks like not overtraining. It's assessing the stress that's in your life. It's assessing the boundaries that you're setting or not setting. Are you a priority in your own life almost nine years ago when I got the diagnosis or eight years ago when I got the diagnosis I was told this could kill you so that's a real wake up call and it's just so unfortunate. It sounds like you have like a you know, ah like a rock bottom. And you're like oh shit, it's all falling apart now I actually have to like do take care of myself right? and like I just it's so frustrating to me that as women we let it get to the point where like it feels like everything is coming. Undone.

26:23.89
wildremedies
He.

26:25.94
Erin
Before we say like oh shit I really have to like pull up for myself I have to make myself a priority I have to make my physical health a priority and prioritizing leanness prioritizing a 6 pack is not always the same thing as prioritizing health those. 2 goals don't have to be mutually exclusive but a lot of the times they actually are and that's just like the nature of the bees you know and we have to always think about if we're you know to use your Instagram post like. Who are you comparing yourself to who are you looking up to for guidance I've been in this world for a minute I've been in the wellness space for a while I've seen some shit I see what goes on behind closed doors I see what goes on. You know it's like the great and powerful oz. I get a peek behind the curtain and it is a shit show. We've had influencers come to us with like hundreds of thousands of followers in a 6 pack and they have not menstruated in two and a half years and cannot reproduce.

27:17.28
wildremedies
Even.

27:31.95
Erin
You never know when you're looking at pictures on the internet you have no idea what's going on behind the scenes and is that the ultimate goal for you I don't know that's something you're going to have to choose for yourself but oftentimes when we're just hyper fixated on our aesthetics. We have to sacrifice our actual health.

27:47.21
wildremedies
Gene.

27:51.89
Erin
To get that and for a while it's fine. You know and for a while your body can pull up for you and for a while your body is so resilient and it just keeps going. It has the comps compensatory mechanisms to just keep going and then there's like the proverbial straw that breaks the Camebell's back and that's when people come to me. That's when people work with us and they're like.

27:52.65
wildremedies
Pain.

28:08.10
wildremedies
Yep.

28:11.21
Erin
You know shit I messed up and we have to rebuild their health from the ground up.

28:11.82
wildremedies
Um, yeah, oh this is such an important conversation and it's a huge lesson for myself and I think all women. And something that I've been looking at a little bit more closely. The health practitioner that I'm currently working with. He's kind of gently guiding me. You know to be like hey Krista you need to stop focusing so much on the external but I come like my story is well I've only been valued by. Opposite sex for how I look right? That was the only thing that I've ever you know had value for in the past and I think a lot of women are conditioned that way too right? to look a certain way in order for the male gaze to appreciate them and. Think we do that to ourselves a lot of the time too like it's not necessarily all men wanting women to look a certain way. Yes, we've had some really fucked up paradigms in in the past but a lot of a lot of times too I think women find that. Men prefer them without the makeup or just with you know, being being real and raw and that's a whole unlearning process that we really really need to go through right? It's and it's it's tough. They can be really tough.

29:38.28
Erin
Well, it's it like ultimately what is lean like if so if your practitioner is saying to you. You got to take the focus off of the external I think we all have to understand like what is how does that make me feel right? So if somebody's like my goal is this and like cool. How will you know when you've actually reached that goal like.

29:51.20
wildremedies
Many.

29:57.56
Erin
What's your experience. What's your lived experience going to be like when you've reached that goal and that's where I want to take them. You know, like from the before state to the after state. What's the actual desired after say is it a size two genes or is it how you feel in those size 2 genes like let's talk about that. Let's unpack that.

30:02.60
wildremedies
Yeah.

30:10.40
wildremedies
Yeah, give me.

30:14.90
Erin
Right? Like that's super duper important to help somebody get the transformation that they're after and it's and so if if ultimately the value is like I see seen or I feel seen I feel respected that that male gaze is important to me or you know like that's the value that I provide is are there other ways to help us act. That that feeling that that creates for you in your body for me I'm like laughing because I remember in high school I wanted to cut my hair super short I Just go through phases where I hack it all off and it started in high school love short hair and I had a teacher who was like well just so you know like boys don't like short hair.

30:52.21
wildremedies
Oh wow.

30:52.76
Erin
And I was like hold my beer I went to the lot I got it hacked off and I still caught some D So don't you worry about me teacher come fine I'll be fine. Um, it was like I was like that so that was never my thing like oh I got to look good for the men I was like I want to be the best.

31:08.63
wildremedies
Ah, yeah.

31:12.38
Erin
My value is from being the best and so that translates through my physical body by being the skinniest you know so we have to really tap into what is it like what's our value system our inner value system and it it oftentimes originates like from child.

31:28.94
wildremedies
Yeah.

31:29.70
Erin
You know, ah family of origin or childhood or adolescence or something we hadn' an experience that experience informed our belief about ourselves in the world and so it's so so so so important when you're working with a practitioner like this is why I create so much space for dialogue because as the practitioner as the provider.

31:35.69
wildremedies
Listen.

31:47.73
Erin
I Want to get to know how you see the world I Want to know your construct of the world because how can I get you from here to there from where you are to where you want to be if I don't know that you know and that is just I think that's another real fundamental difference between the conventional Healthcare model.

31:57.63
wildremedies
Um, gpm.

32:04.88
Erin
And a functional approach like a functional root cause approach really should make space for that conversation I think listening is ah is a very lost art form when it comes to like health in medicine. Um, you know.

32:15.67
wildremedies
Yeah, oh absolutely yeah, generally it's you have 15 minutes to you know, tell me what's wrong I'm gonna give you a pill and then get out of my office. Yeah.

32:27.63
Erin
Yeah, it's like it's just enough at time to like not feel seen heard or validated.

32:32.87
wildremedies
Totally yeah and create a whole bunch of trauma around that as well. It's great. Yeah.

32:37.10
Erin
Or Reinforce Drama. You know if there's if you have any history of abandonment if you have any history of my voice is not doesn't matter my my story doesn't matter like that's just going to reinforce those. Pathways like lickety split and I always like try to preframe this conversation by saying I am not opposed to conventional medicine I'm so grateful for it. I'm so grateful that we have it if I break my arm I don't want to go to my acupunctures I Want to go to the Er You know I want that support when I need it. Um.

32:57.40
wildremedies
That is.

33:08.51
Erin
Unfortunately art The the system is a tragically broken system and it's very Ill equipped for folks who are struggling with long term chronic issues. It's kind of like healthy, healthy, healthy healthy disease.

33:21.63
wildremedies
You know.

33:22.13
Erin
And like that's not how it works like they're waiting for you to have labs that reflect a disease state before they take action on it in a lot of cases and so with a functional approach. We're trying to catch it like long before it gets to that point because there's so many different strategies and interventions that you can do. Before you get to a point of like oh shit things are really bad.

33:41.80
wildremedies
Yeah, yeah, thank goodness said this is becoming more of a common thing because we need we need the support So badly I was doing a little bit of research recently and it was like 25% of all North Americans don't even have access to a primary. Health Care Physician right now which in some senses. It's like okay maybe that's really a blessing in disguise because we aren't actually getting the support that we need ah for chronic illnesses and it was interesting I Really loved how I was listening to an interview by Gabo Mate and he was like. You know if I break a bone I Really really want to go and see a bone doctor you know for anything that's emergency based and that needs fixing right Now. So so grateful for those healers but when you're looking at something like depression or. Chronic illnesses that we know have so many layers now there's emotional causes. There's all of the you know, unworthiness all of these different things that can build up over Time. You're not going to want to see the bone doctor for that particular thing and I think this is an opportunity with. A lot of the health care crises that we're seeing right now is for people to see and try some of these other methods that that are out there that are actually really helping people.

35:05.26
Erin
Yeah, something a quote from Gubor mate that I've been used I've used for years and years because he's been sounding the alarm on this for a very very very long time is the more specialized medicine becomes because Medicine's very very very specialized right? The more.

35:22.60
wildremedies
Um.

35:23.60
Erin
Specialized Medicine becomes the more physicians see like individual body parts rather than being able to step back and see the human behind those body parts and really for Health care for whole health care for for becoming whole.

35:27.11
wildremedies
And.

35:41.49
Erin
We need to be able to understand all of the different aspects that make up a human the emotional I talk about the 4 bodies a lot. We have the physical body. It's really important. It is not the only body we have the physical body. We have the emotional body we have the mental body. We have the energetic body and.

35:54.63
wildremedies
Nate.

36:00.21
Erin
All of these things need to be addressed for true Health This is the future of Medicine. No I Just if anybody's listening in there have any intention of getting into wellness like this is where it's at this is what you have to have the knowledge in the skill set to help people with is to. Connect all of the 4 bodies together and make them understand how important each and every body is.

36:25.84
wildremedies
Yeah I Totally agree. Um I just took a couple of notes about some things that you said prior that I wanted to address you mentioned Pro-inflammatory foods and I wanted to get your perspective on that because there's a lot of information. Going around the internet right now there's always like a new right? It's like you know, a lot of things about seed oils and whatever and yes, those probably aren't that great. But I Just love to hear your perspective on like what are some Pro-inflammatory foods that we should actually be avoiding.

36:44.60
Erin
Sure is.

37:00.24
Erin
It's ah it's funny because I'm like oh we're so we're taught we're back to seed oils like we're talking about this again like six years ago this is like the money shot and it's like and now it's back yes, seed oils are inflammatory sorry sorry just

37:04.40
wildremedies
He hath an.

37:13.96
wildremedies
And they're like in literally everything like everything. Yeah.

37:18.11
Erin
Literally everything right? Ah and so because of part of the you know part of the reason processed foods are so Pro-inflammatory is because of the seed oils. It's also because of the refined carbohydrates because of the refined sugar.

37:35.30
wildremedies
Are.

37:37.29
Erin
Altogether I mean it just makes your body was not accustomed to consuming these foods so anything out of alignment with like what your body knows to be you know fuel. It's It's probably going to cause a ruckus if you're doing it more often than not. Once in a blue moon. Not a big deal. But if this is like part of your every single day Diet. It's going to be a problem you know and that really depends too on how many other Inflammatory inputs you have. It's very individualized. Some people can get away with a whole lot other people don't have as much wiggle room. So.

37:56.40
wildremedies
In here.

38:11.13
Erin
You know blood sugar regulation He or dysregulation is hugely inflammatory to the body that is hypo glycemia so episodes of low blood sugar and hyper glycemia episodes of high blood sugar because they're usually not. They don't exist in a vacuum. You're usually having swings between the 2 Wildly Inflammatory for the body. Um other Inflammatory things Stress. So If you you know have a lot of chronic unchecked mismanaged stress that really grinds down on a lot of the systems in the body. Um, wildly Inflammatory. So It kind of just depends on.

38:28.96
wildremedies
Yep, and then.

38:48.16
Erin
How much inflammation if you're underslept, if you if you're somebody who just sleeps like five or six hours a night wicked inflammatory so how much inflammation do you have in the body and then how much can you you know get away with through food and inflammatory seed oils. Do you know does that make sense. It's pretty contextual. Yeah.

38:54.83
wildremedies
Um e.

39:03.99
wildremedies
Um, yeah, totally yeah, absolutely what would your thoughts on dairy. Yeah.

39:11.58
Erin
Super duper individualized for some people. It's great and for others not so much I tend to ah recommend what I am recommending Dairy It's grass-fed whole. Ah you know, like full fat dairy not Skim Dairy Not you know.

39:20.73
wildremedies
You hear.

39:29.84
Erin
It's organic grass-fed full fat for the full benefits. You know for the full spectrum of nutrients fat soluble nutrients that come in with it.

39:31.37
wildremedies
And.

39:38.49
wildremedies
Yeah, yeah I I agree with that like I I love Dairy I consume really really high quality dairy but you know I have a lot of friends that are lactose intolerant. So obviously it's not great for them. But again.

39:51.56
Erin
Well so lactose that's like there's a little bit of a misunderstanding because lactose is a milk sugar and so some people can be sensitive to the sugars in milk like lactose and that usually doesn't cause an Immune dysregulation reaction. It's usually like oo my tummy I got bubble guts I'm going to like poop my pants.

39:56.72
wildremedies
Um, yeah, he.

40:08.48
wildremedies
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

40:11.12
Erin
You know I mean that's usually a pretty um, immediate and significant Gi reaction like you kind of know like ooh I shouldn't have eaten that whereas other people can be sensitive to the proteins within Dairy so Caseian or whey and that is a little bit of like a sneaky.

40:17.29
wildremedies
You need.

40:29.58
Erin
Situation because those reactions can take up to four days to present themselves and those reactions can be like anywhere from top to tail. It's not like oh I ate the cheese and I got the tummy. It's like I ate the cheese and then three days later my eczema flared up and it can be a little bit harder to make the association. So.

40:35.90
wildremedies
Um, a.

40:47.38
wildremedies
Yeah.

40:49.19
Erin
Um, in those scenarios I'm kind of a fan for either doing an elimination style diet to suss it out, especially if you have some type of chronic Inflammatory condition. Um or a certain type of food sensitivity testing to just make sure that you are not inadvertently exposing your immune system to something that.

40:54.90
wildremedies
Um, and then.

41:07.48
Erin
That is causing inflammation and an immune reaction.

41:08.66
wildremedies
Yeah, and that's essentially how how I figured out the the gluten intolerance or whatever it is that that I have was quite severe. It was actually causing my severe clinical depression that I had for many many years

41:14.23
Erin
In.

41:24.76
wildremedies
But it took so long to figure it out because it was the same thing where you eat something it wasn an immediate reaction. It would happen days later and that's where I'm kind of grateful for some of those crazy diets that it did in the past because it was during a keto period where you know I was still dealing with a lot of inflammation stuff because of the high cortisol and. Stressed and all of those things. But once I introduced the gluten back. It was like a very very noticeable difference where it was like holy shit. Okay, this is what is literally killing me right now. But yeah, it's really really hard to diagnose that stuff and what? what. What would you like the um, the allergy testing and and things like I remember in the past it felt like it wasn't very accurate like are those a lot better now in terms of accuracy. Yeah.

42:14.89
Erin
How much I do I did like a whole hour like this is one of those like questions. This is why my job can be hard because people are like just give me the skinning on boopaoopaoo I'm like how much time do you have because like our answer ah food sensitivity testing is never the first place that I start with anybody.

42:31.67
wildremedies
Okay.

42:34.71
Erin
They're not and there's multiple ways to test for food sensitivities. There's multiple technologies behind these labs. So it's I rarely if ever recommend somebody do like a male home you know and like an at home test kit because they're usually not. Super duper reliable and we always want to understand like what's going on behind the scenes. So if your let's say you do a ah sensitivity test and there's like 25 different foods that's usually more of an indication that you've got some immune dysregulation or some gi dysbiosis or dysfunction and that's the thing that needs to be addressed.

43:06.10
wildremedies
Um, yeah.

43:09.89
Erin
It's not pulling out all of the foods that you're supposedly sensitive to that can actually exacerbate the immune dysregulation. So it's a it's I'm not a huge fan if I'm going to use them I'm going to use them with like real precision for really specific situations. Um the one. I would say caveat to that is gluten like this is the only test that I will sell like anybody can buy it off of my website I don't we don't do lab testing on on our website at all. But because this one can be so profound for people like removing gluten. Um, getting that data can be really really really important and that's like the 1 exception to my rule for for food sensitivity testing. But for the most part they're kind of a waste of money. They're not giving you like full data. We still want to understand the whys behind it and it can.

43:52.40
wildremedies
Yeah.

44:05.34
Erin
Showcase a lot of foods that you might not actually have to remove for life and so people are kind of unnecessarily restricting their food after those tests that's tends to tends to be what I see.

44:15.50
wildremedies
And class that makes sense something I saw on your channel that I thought was really cool is the link between Perfectionism and hormone imbalance. Can we talk about that because I was Like. Mind Blown Oh My God Okay, this is definitely something I need to look into further.

44:36.96
Erin
Yeah, it's I like I'll joke that like I've never seen a perfectionist with perfect cortisol. Um, it's just doesn't happen and this I say this with love because I am definitely a recovering perfectionist. It. It's not recovered yet. But I'm working on it. Um, because when we have this like perpetual drive to just keep going into have everything be perfect and to be the best like I said that that's kind of Mychek I got if I'm going to do anything I got to be the best at it. That's really high standards right? and we can go into this.

44:58.21
wildremedies
To him.

45:06.50
wildremedies
He.

45:12.45
Erin
Overfunctioning and again not to harp on Childhood. But so many of these subconscious beliefs get baked in at a very young Age. So if there was any any um situation in your childhood where you got where you receive love and comfort in care or. Invalidation and belonging by performing and by being perfect and by doing the most then that's going to anchor that belief into you is like in order to receive love Comfort respect camaraderie you know, fitting In. Um I have to continue to operate at this like high functioning level ah or otherwise people might leave me you know and if I if I do the most if I make myself absolutely indispensable. They can't leave me. They gotta stick around and so we might not even be aware of this consciously aware of this. But.

45:54.66
wildremedies
Um.

46:08.77
Erin
These ideas these beliefs are kind of running the show and so we just keep like we keep doubling down on ourselves like I got to keep going harder and more and more and the body is a beautiful miraculous thing but it has limited capacity for what it can do and so if we're constantly. Pushing our body past its capacity eventually. It's going to wear down but this like kind of like keyed up this like hyper vigilance I gotta keep going. Gotta keep going. Gotta keep going that kind of keeps us in an active stress response and so over time we can see cortisol levels start to kind of Peter out and. Um, a lot of downstream side effects from there. So I think perfectionism goes hands in hand with chronic stress. We are the except the calls coming from inside the house like we're the ones stressing ourselves out.

46:57.70
wildremedies
Yeah, absolutely and honestly this is almost like a collective wound that so many of us in our society are dealing with right now and for anybody listening to this like I think this is an important lesson to learn.

47:03.44
Erin
Me.

47:16.99
wildremedies
Even in your twenty s right? because this is where it started for me. You know I had a lot of resilience in things in my body when when you're younger and so you push and push and push and I remember I moved overseas to work for a company that was very much in the. At that time it was when the startup culture and just grinding was the flavor of the month right? It was like that is success right? If you're not an a player like get the fuck out like you need to be grinding 24 7 or you're never going to make it here and you're going to lose your job and you have no value. And I totally adopted that mindset for several years and I worked you know from the moment that I woke up till like 1 in the morning I not only had a job but I had a startup and it's always been like that with me I always have like 2 or 3 endeavors going. At once have a lot more balance now because I just couldn't do that to myself anymore and you know I still see people in younger generations with this hustle mentality. And yeah, you can feel like you're on top of the world and like you got this shit and you can just push yourself and that's the way to do it and. And and and I think there was a big difference too with with men and women like men are built to have that drive a little bit more women. Not so much. Our hormone systems are a little bit more delicate and so you're really gonna feel that shit later in life and there's kind of like this competitive nature that we do have with the masculine. Um.

48:51.41
wildremedies
At times and I think this is just a really important lesson for people of all ages to understand that the shit will catch up with you eventually.

48:59.91
Erin
Yeah I will and you know when when that is for you is. There's no prediction I will say I will add or I don't think that women's hormones are more delicate but they are in fact, more cyclical.

49:04.95
wildremedies
No.

49:13.33
wildremedies
He.

49:15.41
Erin
Um, and that we don't really have like a deep reverence or a respect for that if like hustle culture is go go go go go go go push push push push push that really is more attuned to ah like male physiology which does run on a 24 hour cycle versus female physiology which runs on a twenty eight day cycle and kind of bakes in different phases in different rest periods into the cycle. We don't honor that we don't acknowledge that we plow through it because we view it as a weakness or as a fault or as a flaw.

49:42.47
wildremedies
Yeah.

49:49.70
Erin
And so we plow through it and that's when chit catches up to you is like when we're not honoring our own cycles.

49:54.16
wildremedies
Yeah, absolutely and so you do a lot of education around that as well.

49:59.70
Erin
Well, you can't talk about hormones without talking about cycles baby.

50:02.92
wildremedies
Yeah, 100% I want to dig into all of that. But we're like at the end of our time already. This has been such an amazing interview. Thank you so much I love how like yeah I can definitely tell that you've been in the industry for a really long time like you know your shit.

50:20.95
Erin
I Know my shit but and it's not like this is because I stay learning and I stay in the trenches I stay working with people and I listen to women's lived experience if you tell me something I believe you right? We don't We are not a culture who believes.

50:22.46
wildremedies
For sure and.

50:27.58
wildremedies
That.

50:33.68
wildremedies
In in.

50:37.81
Erin
Women and in fact I remember that this was on Instagram and some med student I was talking about my experience some med student who knows more than anything than a student of anything right? like well well expert a med student said I'm sorry that that happened to you but anecdotal evidence is not evidence and I said that's where we disagree.

50:56.43
wildremedies
Whoa.

50:57.49
Erin
That is where we fundamentally disagree because lived experience is absolutely evident. So I listen to people I listen to their experience and so that's why I can talk about all of this stuff because this is happening This is real. You know, um so experience is is key. Thank you so much for having me on the show and listening to me.

51:09.18
wildremedies
Um, yeah, it is no. It's fantastic. Ah, so folks that want to learn more or potentially work with you How how can they do those things.

51:16.11
Erin
Rant.

51:23.30
Erin
Um I always like to send people to the podcast first and foremost you can get a little tasty taste of like how I do work how I do operate the functional nutrition podcast I've been podcasting for five and a half years you've got like.

51:27.90
wildremedies
Um.

51:34.28
Erin
Three hundred or more hours of content to pick your way through you like end up with like a ph d in nutrition at the end of it. So I love to send send people there to to learn a thing or 2

51:39.30
wildremedies
Amazing! Awesome Well thank you again. I definitely got schooled on a few things and yeah for anybody who was inspired make sure you connect with Aaron and. We'll catch you all in the next episode.

51:57.28
Erin
Thank you.