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Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.
This podcast is brought to you by Ritual, and in particular, their women’s prenatal, which I wish I had found when I was pregnant, which I recommend all the time to my pregnant friends. Did you know that there are now updated recommendations for omega-3 DHA intake during pregnancy and that this is super critical because less than 5% of U.S. pregnant women consume the recommended amount. And there are a lot of data linking the proper amounts of this essential nutrient in pregnancy to really good outcomes for the baby, including brain health and so much more. And approximately 95% of Americans, including pregnant and lactating women, are not getting enough choline in their diet either. And Ritual sets out to solve this problem. Their prenatal is different from my perspective. It’s science backed formula, it’s third-party tested to be free of heavy metals, microbes, traceable ingredients, and it is meticulously researched to have the right levels of nutrients to specifically support a pregnant woman and her developing baby. They include, for instance, methylated folate and nature-identical choline to support the baby’s neural tube development, the right amount of omega-3 for brain and early vision development, and vitamin D support for fetal bone health.
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This podcast is brought to you by Jigsaw Health, who you might have heard me talk about before. But today I want to talk about their new collagen. And in my house, we go through a lot of collagen. I consume quite a bit for keeping my joints and tendons healthy as I get older and work out a whole lot. And also for the potential anti-aging benefits as I’m now aware of this as I get older. Theirs is really cool and unique because it uses three clinically tested bioactive collagen peptides that are clinically tested to promote the growth and healing of new cartilage. They’re clinically tested to support mobility in healthy individuals. They’re clinically tested to have a positive influence on cartilage tissue regeneration, bone density, and to stimulate healthy skin metabolism and promote firmer and smoother skin, which is one of the benefits I’m after. And they’re clinically tested to promote growth and health of fingernails, which I noticed very rapidly when I started increasing my collagen production. I love that theirs is unflavored and dissolves really easily. So it’s easy to put into almost any food or drink or even my morning coffee. And it has 17 grams of protein per serving. It’s of course grass fed, and it includes hyaluronic acid, which we’re seeing increasing studies talk about from an anti-aging perspective. I keep a canister of it in my kitchen and my kids will add to smoothies or to food. I add it to most drinks that I consume. And you can find out more or get your own by going to wellnessmama.com/go/jigsawcollagen.
Katie: Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and I’m so grateful to have gotten to have this conversation today. Long time coming with Dr. Jill Carnahan, whose work I have followed and known for many, many years and who I was so overjoyed to finally get to talk to. She is an expert in many, many things. And in this one, we go deep on the specific topics of chronic illness, autoimmunity, trauma, and how to heal, which she has incredible expertise on. She’s known as your functional medicine expert, and she has been featured in literally every media ever for her work. She is a global speaker and prolific writer and has years and years of content that she shares online. She’s also the founder and medical director of Flatiron Functional Medicine, which is a widely sought after practice with a broad range of clinical services. And she’s trusted by people I know personally, including people who are very skeptical about natural medicine or functional medicine. Her YouTube channel and podcast feature interviews with experts from around the world, and she’s also an executive producer, film writer, and has a new feature documentary about her journey overcoming illness called Doctor Patient that will be distributed this year. Her story is incredible. Her expertise is incredible. I cannot wait to share this with you. So let’s jump in with Dr. Jill Carnahan. Dr. Jill, welcome. Thanks so much for being here.
Dr. Jill: Thank you. I’m delighted to be here today.
Katie: Well, you, I of course have known about for a very long time, and you come so highly recommended. And I’m so glad that we finally get to have a conversation and get to share this with the listeners today. And your expertise is so wide ranging. I feel like I could do a whole day worth of episodes with you and still barely scratch the surface. But based on what I hear from listeners, what I’d really love to go deep on with you in our first episode together today is kind of that the equation of complex illness and especially trauma and how to heal. Because this has been part of my story that I have opened up about, but I can only share from personal experience. And I don’t have a magic formula that seems to work for everyone. And I know you’ve worked with so many people. So I know this is a huge topic, but as sort of a broad intro, can you walk us through how you came to understand the pieces of this equation and then we can go deep on some of the individual ones.
Dr. Jill: Sounds great. And I always love talking about this because as great as functional medicine is, a lot of times there’s these other pieces of our physiology and what we’re holding on to. And if we feel safe in our bodies, and if we don’t address all of those parts, I feel like the functional medicine plus of the next generation is trauma work and safety in the body and these things, and it all works together.
But before we do that, we could just frame it as, I always think of functional medicine as kind of toxic load plus infectious burden. And somewhere these two intersect and create a burden on the immune system, creating inflammation and dysfunction. And what’s interesting is someone the other day said, what’s the link between cancer and autoimmunity? And it’s very interesting because you might think, okay, well, is the immune system overactive or suppressed, well, you can have both at the same time. So often, a lot of our exponentially rising conditions like autoimmunity and cancer and neurodegenerative diseases and just things like fatigue and mitochondrial disorders at the root is all at some point, there’s always immune dysfunction.
So when we think about toxic load, that could be things like mold toxicity or heavy metals or all of the many hundreds of thousands of chemicals that are exposed to us in the environment, flame retardants, PCBs, parabens, phthalates, PFAs, the fluorinated compounds like Teflon and Gore-Tex, and I could go on and on. And I know you know with bath and body products, you guys have such a great line of things. And that’s partially because if we are not paying attention to the stuff we’re putting in our body, that’s contributing to that toxic load.
And what happens is our immune systems are made to detoxify. But at some point, it’s like the water level in a bucket, that water level starts to creep up and spill over the top. And when we reach the top and start to spill over into autoimmunity or dysfunction or mitochondrial disorders or neurodegenerative like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or any number of things I could name, it’s when that bucket is spilling over the top and we no longer have margin. And I love talking about this because when we talk about toxic load, and environmental toxicity, at least for me, it’s overwhelming and a little bit depressing. But when we think about it, we don’t have to lower that bucket so that there’s no water in the bucket because our bodies can handle some load. It’s we have to give back margin. And all of us currently are drowning in that bucket. So if we can think about ways that we can have clean air and clean water and clean food and some basic principles, clean body products, clean mind, all these things, then we can lower that load, give ourselves margin back. And then all of a sudden, our body does what it’s supposed to do. And we’ll reverse some of the immune inflammation.
On this side is infectious burden, and that’s a whole nother ballgame. But what we see is lots of underlying old infections like Epstein-Barr or cytomegaly virus or a tick infection like Lyme or Bartonella or Babesia. And these things in a healthy person with a healthy immune system, just like toxic load, should be able to be kept in check. But what happens is when those immune defenses are overloaded, then all of a sudden, old infections like Epstein-Barr, which was mono when you were 19 in high school and got fatigue and a sore throat, can pop back up in your 20s or 30s or 40s and start to cause Hashimoto’s thyroiditis or adrenal dysfunction or any number of other things. So when we think about it that way, the frame of toxic load, infectious burden, creating immune dysfunction, that really underlies probably 95% of all the functional kinds of disorders that we see.
Katie: That was such a great explanation. And I love the bucket analogy because that also really points to the fact that absolute perfection is not needed to get better. It’s just creating that margin. I love the way you explain that. And I would love to talk a little bit more about the infectious burden side, because I feel like this point is not talked about that much. It seems like it can be a big key for a lot of people. But how might someone even know if they might have like a latent virus that’s still in their body or an infectious burden?
Dr. Jill: Yeah, so people all know about shingles, right? And so often if we get stressed or after a surgery, or we’ve lost a loved one and our body’s under stress or not sleeping, someone will get shingles. And more and more since the pandemic, they’ve been even more common. Shingles is chickenpox from five years old or eight years old that just got reactivated. And when I say it that way, you understand how something back from decades ago when you were five years old, say you got chickenpox, lied dormant in your system until you were 50, 60, 70, 80, got under stress and shingles popped up. That’s the exact same virus of decades before.
So a lot of these infections stay in our immune system and they lie dormant. They don’t really bother us, but they never really go away. And the risk is, once again, it’s kind of, it’s almost like the bucket analogy in that when our immune systems, I always say it’s almost like a limbo bar. When that bar gets dropped too low, these old infections can pop up and wreak havoc. That can really cause a lot of symptoms. And many people are unaware. So chickenpox is just one. And that’s a real thing because people know about shingles and the rash. But many people don’t know about things like chronic Lyme, Borrelia, Bartonella, Babesia, Ehrlichia, and I could name a hundred of other ones, including viruses like Epstein-Barr, herpetic viruses that cause the cold sore, HSV-1 and 2, Coxsackie virus, cytomegaly virus. And these are all in herpetic family. And these kinds of things, I would say many, many, many people have gotten bit by a tick or had exposure to Lyme or those kinds of infections. But many, many people do not need treatment because that infection is being controlled by an immune system that’s doing what it’s supposed to do, saying, hey, calm down, don’t cause any problems.
So if I were to test 10,000 people on the street for Lyme disease, I might find like 30%, I’m just guessing, have Lyme and they’re fine. So there’s this huge prevalence of these infections that aren’t bothering everyone. But just like the toxic load, if we get stress, lack of sleep, overwhelm, overwork, all of these things that we’re all experiencing, family life imbalances or loved ones that are all of a sudden needing care, our parents need care, our children need more things. And all of these burdens on our stress system, that weakens our immune system. And then all of a sudden that immune system that was doing a really good job at keeping everything in balance is like, can’t do it anymore. And then old infections will pop up.
And I think not only are we seeing tick-borne illness is encroaching on society. So the prevalence of actually getting tick bites is increasing, but we’re also seeing that stress level increases so people who are walking around since 12, where they’ve got a tick bite and they’re now 45 years old, they’re fine until they get sick. They get a weak immune system. They’re not sleeping. And then all of a sudden they get joint pain and they get headaches and they get fatigue and they can’t figure out why.
So one of the things I and my other colleagues do as functional medicine doctors is we look at the infectious burden. And we say, what things are under the hood of the car that could be contributing. And these infections can also be triggers to autoimmune disease. And then what we say is, how is your immune system doing at the job of keeping them in check? Because most of these infections are very low virulence, meaning they don’t kill a person. And so they’re usually fine staying under the immune radar. But when we get in a weakened state or we get another infection or we’re sick or we’re not sleeping, then these old infections can do all kinds of nasty things such as cause chronic fatigue, pain, or even autoimmune disease.
Katie: And I’m so curious, it seems like it’s likely that all of us have something kind of under the hood, as you said. Is it possible to truly get rid of those? Or does that even matter if it’s more about keeping our immune system in a healthy state to where they’re not a problem?
Dr. Jill: Yeah, brilliant question because Lyme disease is a great example. It’s so scary. And people are like, oh my gosh, do I have Lyme disease? Well, like I said, I said 10,000 people on the street, we might find 30%. A lot of people have dormant Borrelia, which is Lyme disease, and they’re fine. And I say that, and I think it’s so critical because it’s not a death sentence. If we can get your immune system back on track, Dave Asprey and I were recently talking, and one of the things we agree on that’s not talked about a lot is 95% maybe of some of the Lyme infections in people who have symptoms, they got a toxic mold exposure or a massive life stressor that weakened the immune system, the Lyme popped up. It’s a very real issue. But so often when we treat that toxic load and that stress level and that lack of sleep and that hormone imbalance, then sometimes, not always, we don’t even need to treat these serious infections like Lyme.
Back to your question, are they there? Yes. These infections really do lie dormant in the system. So some people are like, well, can I ever get rid of it? Well, does it really matter if it never bothers you? And these things do lie there. And I think that most of the time it is impossible to completely eradicate them. Like Epstein-Barr is going to be there for life. A lot of these retroviruses are there for life. Lyme, for the most part, is there for life. But if you have a strong, robust immune system, this may or may not ever bother you or cause symptoms.
Katie: Okay, that makes sense. So that brings to the question of the idea of creating more margin. I’m sure that this is obviously very personalized and there’s a whole lot of nuance and testing that likely goes into a full answer to this question. But are there sort of any recurring themes or patterns or maybe like 80-20 ideas of things that are good starting points for creating more margin?
Dr. Jill: Again, a great question because this is where, like I said at the beginning, some of these things can be overwhelming and really depressing. You’re like, what do I do in this toxic world? One of the lectures I often do is called Resilience in a Toxic World. And what it is, is empowering your listeners or anyone that I talk to or even physicians because otherwise it is overwhelming. So the answer is yes. And I love to keep it simple. Something that number one, everyone can afford and not everyone needs a fancy physician. They pay money to see or whatever, but it’s simple and accessible. And so one of the things I said before and say frequently is clean air, clean water, clean food. We can start with just the inputs because half the battle is not, yes, if we’ve had a long history of chemical exposure or we’ve had toxic mold in a home, we do usually have to do a little bit more intensive detox protocol. But even before we do that, if we are choosing good inputs like clean air, clean water, clean food, and I’ll tell you briefly how we can do that, we’re decreasing that toxic load and we’re doing it in a way that, like I said, is accessible for everyone, no matter of what your financial resources are or where you live, and even if it’s small.
So clean air, 80% of the toxic load that we take in is from the air that we breathe. This even surprised me years ago when Walter Krenian was telling me the data on this, because so often we don’t see this, it’s invisible, we don’t know, but our alveoli are the little air-filled sacs in our lungs. And for example, if we’re in a home that has mold, these mycotoxins are smaller than viruses and we inhale them, they go into our lungs, and there is no filter there. They literally go right into the bloodstream and into our tissues. So we can within five to 10 seconds of inhaling air from exhaust, from a moldy building, from off-gassing, from flooring that might have formaldehyde, like new tile laminate flooring, all of these things can go through the alveoli and right into the bloodstream. So that air is actually a really big deal, and we don’t think about it. When we think about toxic load, we’re probably more thinking about other things, like maybe the food that we eat.
So the clean air is huge. So what do we do? The very basic is make sure your air filter at home, like your furnace filter, is the highest-grade filter that you can fit in there. Usually it’s a MERV rating, and anywhere from 12, 16 or up, and they do get thicker. So sometimes all you can do is an inch and you get the best thing you can do for an inch. Some of them now contain charcoal or other allergen filters. So I always buy the highest filter that I can for my furnace system, and then I put a note, either a recurring reminder every three months to change that. And the one thing you might get is slightly less efficient airflow, but you’re getting a much cleaner product.
Now, sadly in our environment nowadays, I think that it’s also crucial to have a standalone air filter, at least in your bedroom. And we just talked about this filtration system in our furnace. That’s HEPA. That’s particulate. What we want to do in the bedroom or in our home is have something that has the HEPA filtration, but also a VOC filter. VOC is volatile organic compounds, and those are those much smaller microns. So this is something that usually has a core of zeolite or carbon in the filter. And any of the good brands have HEPA plus carbon VOC filtration. And you want to run that, I run mine 24-7. I run it on low when I’m at home. And if I leave the house, I turn it on high. And just the air that you breathe at night matters. So having it, if you have one place that you can have it, it’d be in your bedroom. So HEPA filter with VOC. And I think standalone and IQ Air, Austin Air, Air Doctor, and 101 other ones are good. I’m a big fan of just a simple HEPA with VOC. That’s air quality.
And if you live by an airport or by a road, there’s all kinds of nanoparticulate. So you really want to be extra careful. And then make sure that you’re not buying materials like laminate flooring or cabinets. Those are huge sources of off-gassing. Flame retardants on new materials. So the stuff that you bring into your house, or if you’re remodeling your house, you can choose low or no VOC kinds of products. And it really does make a difference. Because new homes are one of the biggest sources of off-gassing. That’s air.
Water. Water we take for granted. And so many times we’re drinking out of plastic water bottles, which have BPA in them. So I’m a huge fan of a whole house filter if it’s possible. That’s typically a reverse osmosis system. Reverse osmosis by nature, though, depletes the minerals out of the water. And so you make a more acidic product. So while it’s a fantastic way to filter the water, you need to make sure that you’re adding back in minerals in some way or having a system that actually adds back the minerals. Minerals create a more alkaline product. Your body works better with drinking alkaline water. And if it’s not alkaline, your body has to pull minerals from things like bones and tissues, which is not good for your bone health, in order to neutralize and make that pH back to normal in your body.
So if you can, spring water, a natural mineral water from European tends to be a little cleaner is another good way to drink. So my preferred is like glass water bottles like Pellegrino between meals is ideal. And just making sure clean water source, it’s huge. I would say nowadays tap water cannot be trusted. So by general rule is don’t drink tap water. Even if you’re traveling, you can now buy those filtered water bottles where you take them with you when you go and you can just drink filtered water wherever you go.
And then clean food. I could spend an hour on this, but some of the basics are organic whenever possible, non-GMO whenever possible, local whenever possible, grow your own whenever possible, do the best you can. And in season is best because you’re going to get a lot more nutrients. If I had to choose a lot of times, I would choose local in season over organic if the farmers know what they’re doing, because those organic certified that come on trucks across the country are already depleted in nutrients. And a recent study on nitric oxide, which is absolutely essential to allow for blood flow to our periphery, our nitric oxide production decreases after the age of 40 by 50%. And this is women, libido, men, erectile function, if that doesn’t get your attention, but it’s also cardiovascular and lung health and it’s a blood flow. And the study showed that organic produce like bok choy and spinach and arugula, these high precursors of nitric oxide were actually lower in nitric oxide from organic sources than conventional. So it’s like, how do you win, right? So your best bet is a local farmer who maybe does things without chemicals, but isn’t certified organic. That’s using fertilizers that have nitrate rich fertilizer on the soils so that you get those nitrate rich things in your diet. And then really, really avoiding the super toxic things like artificial sweeteners and flavorings and additives. And like something like farm salmon is actually quite toxic, but wild is not. So choosing the good choices.
Katie: I like the tip about air filter during sleep. I’ve noticed a big difference from this and I love the white noise of it as well. But that’s something I’ve also encouraged people is if you can only make baby step changes, make ones that affect you while you’re sleeping because sleep quality, of course, is so important. But also if it’s something that doesn’t require effort once you set it up and you’re improving your sleep, I feel like that has kind of exponential benefits across the board.
And I feel like you just built such a solid foundation for the physical aspects of this. And I know you have so many resources online for people to go deeper on all of them. I’d love to now bring in the trauma piece a little bit because we’ve talked about the foundation and I know at least from my own experience that I had all those things super dialed in. I had worked with so many doctors. I had literal spreadsheets of all the things to make sure I did everything right. And I had this gigantic elephant in the room piece that I was ignoring relating to emotional and mental health and trauma. So I’m so curious your clinical experience with this and how you address that since it can be so different in everyone.
Dr. Jill: Yes. So I love talking about this and kind of like we started in the beginning, this is like the functional medicine plus because this is actually often where we get the most traction. So one of the things I see in clinic that is exponentially increasing, probably the number one complaint of new patients is mass cell activation syndrome. We did not even talk about this 20 years ago in medical school. There was only something called mastocytosis, which is a proliferative, almost like cancer-like disorder that’s quite rare. Well, nowadays, we are seeing over and over and over again, these mass cell activation syndromes.
Now, why does that relate to trauma? Mast cells are our primordial cells that are our immune system’s way of kind of testing the environment and saying, what’s out there? Is it safe? Is it not? And it’s a protective mechanism that our cells have to kind of shoot out histamine and prostaglandins and all these things can create, you know, say there’s a bacteria or virus or a chemical that can kind of ward off those invaders.
And the reason this is increasing is not only are we increasing our toxic load as we’ve already established, but trauma or unresolved feeling of unsafeness in your body is also a trigger of mast cell. And one of the things we all just got through several years ago was the pandemic when I think fear was at an all-time high. There was uncertainty. I always love to say Hans Selye is the researcher on cortisol and stress response. And he uses acronym that I love called NUTS. And these are the things that create more cortisol stress response in our body. So as I say them, these are going to sound familiar. Novelty is N, so something new that we’ve never been through before. Unpredictability is U. Once again, pandemic was very unpredictable. Threat to ego or threat to health, so something that we have fear for our own life or fear for our own ego as far as our safety. And then sense of control. And as you can imagine, those novelty, unpredictability, threat to ego, sense of control have been at an all-time high pre-pandemic, post-pandemic, and since that time. And I think that’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing this mast cell activation so high.
So back to your first question is how does this relate to somatics, experiencing somatic behavioral, our own trauma? I have found that the people who aren’t getting well, who are feeling stuck, usually the piece of the puzzle that I’m missing or that we have to go to is, are you feeling safe in your own body? And whether you could say, oh yeah, I’m fine, often at a subconscious level due to either familial patterns, maybe attachment with your parents that was either inconsistent or even neglectful. But I will say there’s many, many, many people who had really wonderful families and really great parents. I’m in that class. I had a phenomenal family. I grew up on a farm in central Illinois, but because I was a highly sensitive kiddo in a stoic German pull it by the bootstraps, don’t complain kind of family, I learned to be that and to not complain and to get over my sensitivity like that was weakness.
And in doing that, I was denying a part of myself that was actually really important. And in that denial, it was unsafe to really be me, which was the highly sensitive person that I was. And I had to relearn as an adult after 40 how to live in my highly sensitive body, how to use it as a gift and how to embrace that sweet little girl that was just trying to survive. And by doing that and almost reparenting her in a way that was more safety oriented. So for example, I say, oh, sweetheart, you’re doing a great job. Keep up the great work. Or let’s try that again. Like those are the kind of phrases that we would use with our nieces or nephews or our own children. Why don’t we do that with ourselves, right? Instead, we’re like, oh, come on. You’re such a. You’re such a. You know, you can’t do that. You can’t do things right. You don’t know what you’re doing. And you’re you’re a jerk or you are so stupid. And how in the world can we expect ourselves to heal if our inner dialogue is that kind of talk?
And most of us grew up in a culture where we’re very we learn to be kind to others and compassionate. But we’re never taught how to have that same love and compassion to ourselves. And again, I am not a somatic expert. I know just enough of my own work and I know how to refer people to these kinds of programs. But I do know this, these kinds of shifts on our immune system, and we’ve just established that immune system is the core of most of the stuff that we’re seeing, is profoundly healing because our immune system is set up to protect us from danger, from dangerous strangers and environmental threats. And if we are not feeling safe in our own human capsule, then at the core, we need to create a new safe paradigm. And all of this kinds of work really deals with it at this level.
Katie: Yeah, like I said, this was an absolutely pivotal piece for me and one that I was actually almost entirely unaware of until I got to the point of being able to address it. And I’ve had other guests, one who said kind of the first baby step of any healing is to see yourself well. And I feel like this trauma piece, this nervous system piece is often one that keeps us from being able to even make that initial step to see ourselves well. And I know I’ve shared my story on here before many times, but just when all the physical health things I was doing weren’t really working and then when I addressed that trauma piece, all of those things, it was like my physiology caught up with my emotional.
Dr. Jill: Everything clicks.
Katie: Yes, exactly. So I love that you unite the science and the clinical and the testing and the nuance with also helping people be aware of the trauma side, the emotional health side, the mental health side. And I also think there’s a really important component here of, in a sense, like our mindset around things does really impact how our body responds to them. And I’ve seen cases of people who ate on paper a perfect diet and lived very clean and avoided all the toxins. But we’re living in a state of fear of even the healthy foods they were eating. And I feel like in that state, your body can’t even get the most benefit from the inputs you’re putting in if you’re addressing everything from that state of fear. But that journey to let go of that and to resolve whatever the inner conflict is can be quite a long and very personal one for sure.
Dr. Jill: Yeah, it’s interesting because we often think like hatred is the opposite of love. It’s not. Fear is the opposite of love. And that’s why this like self-compassion, you could think of it as self-love. You cannot have fear and love at the same time. So if you’re ever struggling with fear, which we all do, right? Fear of getting ill, fear of losing a loved one, fear of whatever, X, Y, Z. If we switch that to love and compassion and we start by focusing on that love and compassion directed towards ourselves, that really is transformative in a way that’s hard to even describe.
The other thing that you mentioned I think is so powerful is identity and how we view ourselves. You kind of talked about this, you know, maybe someone who’s eating exactly right and doing everything right, but they might still identify with I’m sick or I have cancer. My story involves having breast cancer at 25, a very, very aggressive breast cancer in medical school and learning to overcome that and learning what I needed to heal. And if I look back, what’s very interesting is there’s times when I tell my story, I talk about what happened and it’s been almost 20 years. And I’m almost like, oh yeah, I had cancer. Like, of course I had cancer. Of course I remember that. But I remember very clearly, and I don’t think I even understood it then as I do now, I never identified as a cancer patient. In fact, I rarely call myself a cancer survivor. Once in a while I will, but there’s no identity to that.
And I remember understanding part of me getting through that was I wasn’t stuck there. I wasn’t, it wasn’t my identity. It was almost like, is this for real? You know, and it wasn’t in denial either. It’s a fine line. But when you identify with something and on that same, so you can either disidentify with an illness, because once we become the illness, I had a patient one time with like fibro on her license plate because she had fibromyalgia, right? And she did not get well because she really, really, really identified. I mean, you know, a vanity plate for fibro that kind of tells you how much that was her and no blame, no shame for that. But when we identify to that level, it’s going to be real hard to get well because it’s on your license plate, right, versus the other way.
And I learned, you know, after I got through mold-related illness, I was trying to recreate an identity. And I thought I’m going to start giving my subconscious a fodder for a new identity. And I started every morning of my walk saying every day in every way, I’m stronger and healthier, wealthier and more resilient, younger and more beautiful. I will overcome all obstacles. I will outlast all adversity. Things are turning in my favor. And then since then I’ve added on and I no longer do overwhelm and I’ll just add little bits and pieces to that. But what I do by doing that, our subconscious is just a machine. It’ll do anything that it believes and it’ll make it come to pass. So what I was doing is I was feeding a message to my subconscious day after day after day after day until it couldn’t help but become stronger and healthier, wealthier, younger, all the things that I wanted to embrace. And I feel like, you know, maybe seven years since I’ve started that, it’s true. It’s becoming true. And that is who I am. So you can actually choose that if you’re listening. You can make up your own little thing. I just wrote that out on a piece of paper and then started saying it every day.
Katie: I love that. And I think that’s more powerful than often we might expect it to be. I had a similar rewiring when I switched. I realized I was identifying with the illness, and I would say I have Hashimoto’s or I am sick. And when I started telling my subconscious, like I am healing and every day I feel more energetic and every day I feel more joyful and thriving, it started over time really actually to resonate. And I think it’s easy to underestimate because of its simplicity, steps like that. And also I felt just how profound they could be. Also, I hope it’s okay to talk about on the podcast, but I know that there’s also a documentary that I feel like can really help a lot of people. And I would love for you to explain it and also where people can access it.
Dr. Jill: Sure. Thank you for asking about that. Cause it’s been my life’s passion and work as far as we were in the midst of, I was just about getting ready to publish my book and it was midst of pandemic. And I literally had this thought one day, this is what had the power of meditation and prayer. And I sat there and I was like, wait a second, people are on screens now. Are they even reading books anymore? I was like, I need to, we had this message out and the core was just getting the message of hope and healing out there. And I thought, well, let’s do a documentary. Now I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but within a few weeks of talking to people, when you have an idea and a vision that’s supposed to happen and you put it out there with the energy and not really attachment to it, it’ll happen if it’s supposed to.
And that’s what happened for me is over the next several months, we got a full budget. We had an incredible crew and we started filming my story, but also the story of patients. So this documentary, it’s called Doctor Patient. You can stream it online anywhere you watch, you know, your iPad, your iPhone, your TV at doctorpatientmovie.com. And the core of this is the message of hope and healing and the message of whether you have Lyme disease or autoimmunity or breast cancer, as many of the patients in the movie have, or my own illness with mold-related illness, there is hope and there are answers. And we need to think about medicine in a different way. So I talk about a lot about the conventional system, which is great when you’re in trauma or heart attack, but then the limitations of that system, if you have chronic infection or autoimmunity or mold-related illness, and even how to navigate that system as a patient and get the best answers and the best kinds of persons to listen.
And then what’s interesting is where we just went with our conversation at the end, I go really deep because after my divorce at 40, I had to go really, really deep into identity and trauma and some of these other pieces of the puzzle. And I had to go deep and really love myself and relearn some of these things I’ve just shared with you. And I shared that level of healing, the self-compassion, because at the core, I think more profound than any supplement or diet or IV, or protocol is self-compassion. And that’s really the core of the movie.
Katie: I love that. And I will make sure there are links for that in the show notes, as well as to the many places people can find you online and keep learning from you. I have, like I said, known about you for a long time. I think you’re an absolutely incredible resource and I’m so grateful we got to record this podcast. Thank you so much for your time today.
Dr. Jill: You’re welcome.
Katie: And thank you for listening. And I hope you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.
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