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In this episode, I discuss:

Adrienne Nolan-Smith is a board certified patient advocate, speaker and the founder of WellBe, a media company and lifestyle brand focused on bridging the large gap between the healthcare system and the wellness movement to help people prevent and reverse chronic health issues naturally. She received her BA from Johns Hopkins University and her MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University. She lives with her husband in New York City.

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Episode Transcript:

Academic, really esteemed academic medical centers teaching in their medical schools less than 10 to 15 hours, I’ve heard depending on where, of nutrition over four years at medical school. So you’ve got doctors who don’t even understand the fundamental of health, which is every single food choice that you make in a day impacts your health either positively or negatively. There’s just no other way around it.

Welcome to the Healing Uncensored Podcast. My name is Sarah Small and I’m a health and mindset coach for women with autoimmune disease just like you. I absolutely love helping you tap into your self-healing power, uncover the energetic side of healing, and release limiting beliefs around your body and your life. Think of this podcast as everything you wouldn’t hear at your doctor’s office. It’s a place for empowered souls to move beyond food and heal themselves on a soul level. I hope you enjoy today’s episode. Now let’s begin.

Welcome to today’s episode. I have with me Adrienne Nolan-Smith. She is a board-certified patient advocate, speaker, and the founder of WellBe, which is a media company and lifestyle brand focused on bridging the large gap between the healthcare system and the wellness movement to help people prevent and reverse chronic health issues naturally. Adrienne and I will be talking about the broken healthcare system, what it means to be a patient advocate especially, some of you have never heard of that term before, why she is so passionate about health and wellness because of her own personal healing experience, and we’re also going to break down some of the wellness trends and fads that we’ve been hearing about lately. So I think you’re going to enjoy this. Let’s dive in.

Sarah: Welcome, Adrienne. So you are a patient advocate and have created this amazing community and brand, WellBe. What inspired you to become so passionate about health in the first place?

Adrienne:  Well, thank you so much for having me on your podcast, Sarah. I’m really happy to be here. And there are so many different things that contributed to my passion and interest in health and wellness, but there’s basically three that have really defined my story and my path. The first of which was getting diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease when I was 11 years old. So I say chronic Lyme because it’s basically, antibiotics don’t quite work to kill the entire Lyme bacteria after a certain amount of time of having that Lyme disease. So a lot of people that have Lyme have chronic Lyme, which means that they didn’t really catch it in time. And so, currently, there’s not a lot of good treatments for this. And once we tried the antibiotics and they didn’t work, basically, my mom was told by conventional healthcare doctors, ‘good luck,’ and sent her on a bit of a wild goose chase to try to get me and my younger brother, who was also diagnosed with Lyme at the same time, better. And that’s exactly what it felt like.

For two years we were on a wild goose chase of different integrative therapies and this was before Google. And she was an amazing researcher. And we did lots of things that I thought couldn’t have been weirder, but after about two years, I was testing inactive for my Lyme, and my symptoms, which were largely just really, really intense fatigue as well as short-term memory loss, were diminishing. So that was my first major ‘aha’ moment that conventional healthcare didn’t really always have all of the answers, even though they had the nice white coats and the Ivy league degrees on the wall and that these kind of integrative practitioners seem to look pretty weird, but in fact, were much more interested and willing to roll their sleeves up and do the hard work of trying whatever would work to get us better. And when you’re trying to heal an immune system that’s extremely compromised, you usually have to do a number of different things at once. And so, that was my introduction to integrative medicine. And now I think functional medicine is the modern version of it and natural therapies and all of that.

And fast forward to college. I went away to Johns Hopkins which is in Baltimore, Maryland and I started eating in the dining hall and just living a normal college kid life. I had good health from age 13, when I got better from my Lyme disease, to about 18, when I went to college. And it turns out that my immune system had been, I guess, sort of pretty compromised from the Lyme or maybe it was just such a large shock to my system, having eaten really cleanly at home because of my family learning so much about food as medicine during the Lyme process, that when I started to eat in the dining hall, two or three meals a day in a large Sodexo-style food hall or whatever it was, I lost my period. And it was about six months after I went to college that I lost it. And after about six months to a year of not having a period, which had been completely normal since age 12 when I first got it, I started to get pretty worried and I started to go to a lot of different doctors both through Johns Hopkins and then back in New York and fancy gynecologists and whatever. And basically, nobody could find anything wrong with me on any sort of normal blood test.

And so, they asked me a lot of questions about have you lost any weight? No. Have you done this? No. That? No. Are you stressed? Not particularly. And basically, I got no answers. They told me to go on the birth control pill. And having gotten pretty empowered from my Lyme experience and knowing a lot more about what it takes to heal the body, I knew that that was a temporary solution and also that there’s a lot of risks with synthetic hormones and I didn’t want to be putting that in my body. So I said, with all due respect, that’s a Band-Aid. I want to know what’s wrong with me and I want to heal it. And none of them really had anything to say so off I went. And luckily, after some time, my father found me a naturopath in New York to work with and she looked at my blood work so differently and I changed my diet drastically. I started doing Chinese herbs and supplements and acupuncture and all these different things. And she said, do this religiously for six months and it will come back. And I wasn’t even really doing the acupuncture that much, just the supplements and herbs and the diet change, and six months and a day later, it came back and it’s been normal ever since.

So that was a huge eye-opener for me, I guess my second strike, of seeing the conventional healthcare system not quite be able to solve nor were particularly interested in solving my chronic health issues and seeing that when you give your body the right tools and the right inputs and take out the wrong ones, which was part of the diet change, the body can heal itself and normalize out hormonal imbalances and different things that may have occurred. So that was my second biggest ‘aha’ moment. And then I’d say my third came shortly after. So I got my period back, I was so excited, and then I think about six months later or a year later my mom had a massive manic episode. And it was really pretty shocking because she was having crazy paranoia and delusions and thinking that God was talking to her and that we were trying to kill her and it was really pretty crazy. And so, we ended up having to chase her through the New York City subway system in the middle of the night, myself and my two brothers too because she thought we were going to harm her or something.

So we had to basically restrain her in Queens, she took us from Manhattan to Queens on the subway, and put her in the back of a cop car, and send her to some city mental healthcare facility. And it was my first introduction to the mental healthcare system in America and it is as bad as you expect it to be, as siloed and disorganized and frightening, and the opposite of a healing environment and expensive and jail-like as you can imagine. And it was really the start of a nightmarish couple of years. She was in and out of a variety of different mental health facilities. And eventually, she was so drugged up she was like a zombie because the antipsychotics and antidepressants they had her on, a lot of the side effects included drooling and shaking and not really being able to speak properly and not sleeping, and constipation. And so, then they’re giving her all these other drugs too to combat those side effects which all have their own set of side effects. So it was really not even close to a solution. Yes, it solved some of the mania, but it was just a different kind of torture for her, I think, because she felt so awful on those drugs and couldn’t really function. The quality of life was just as bad in a different way.

And so, eventually, she took her life a few days before Christmas, 2010, so a little over eight years ago. And it was right before I was actually applying to business school. And I didn’t exactly know why I wanted to go, I just knew that I wanted to do something that was actually going to improve the world. And it was probably naive thinking, but I felt that it was important to do meaningful work and I wanted to figure out what that was and I thought maybe business school was a good opportunity to do that. And I’d been working at IBM at the time and I didn’t feel like that was really my calling. So as I was applying, this all happened and I didn’t think I could finish any of the applications because I was pretty incapacitated. And basically, some friends of mine banded together and were really sweet about trying to help me get some drafts out. And they said, no, you have everything else all ready to go, just get at least two applications out the door, you can do it, whatever and you know, staying up all night and all of that. So I did. And I swore to myself at that time, if I got into business school, I would use it to change career paths and work on transforming the healthcare system for the rest of my life to one that was more root-cause-driven.

So I believe that the answer to all of our healthcare problems and with costs and runaway disease rates is all related to the fact that physicians don’t practice really root-cause medicine. It’s more of a symptom-management or disease-management system, a little bit of a “pill for an ill” mentality for everything, for most things. And certainly, for emergency care, where you get run over by a car or you get sick in a foreign country, you better believe that we all want the full power of the conventional healthcare system with their antibiotics and their lifesaving surgeries and things like that. But for chronic health issues, you really have to get to the root cause of understanding why it’s happening and then heal that in order for it to actually stay away and in order for it to not cause more harm over time by treating just the symptom. Because often, the things that treat symptoms also have their potential harms like overprescription of antibiotics or overusing steroids or drugs that really tax the liver and end up causing liver failure and things like that. So that’s what I’ve been working on since I went to Northwestern in Chicago for business school.

And the whole time I was there, I was trying to figure out exactly what form this should take and I ended up working in the healthcare system for three years with hospitals, after business school, on chronic disease management programs. And it was just so depressing, to be honest, but I also learned so much about what I thought was wrong and really seeing it upfront and up-close with the system. And finally, I felt that working on the inside of the healthcare system really wasn’t changing what I know needs to be changed about switching from this kind of disease-care system to really a holistic root-cause healthcare system. And so, I quit my job in March of 2017 and founded something called WellBe, which is what I am working on now. So one other thing, and I think you may ask me some questions about this because it’s something a lot of people don’t know about, but around the same time, I studied for and took my exam to become a board-certified patient advocate. So I can talk more about that later, but that’s my whole journey and sort of everything about why I’m doing what I’m doing now.

Sarah: Yes. Thank you so much for just sharing that and letting everyone get to know you better, but also seeing how the resilience to find the answers, especially when you were saying, Oh, birth control, this is a Band-Aid, right? And what you did was say, no. And I think that so many of us, at least in the beginning of our health journey, were afraid to say no and to stand up for ourselves, and not see the white coat as some sort of divine being. And like you said, there’s absolutely a time and a place for specialty emergency care and acute care. But what you’ve experienced and what I’ve also experienced is that oftentimes our conventional healthcare system does not treat the root cause of chronic illness. And that’s where I think so many of us just feel kind of bitch-slapped, like we’re in a freaking tunnel, like bump, bump, bump, bump, like what do we do, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor? You feel like you’ve been thrown around.

Adrienne: Yes.

Sarah: And I’ve talked about this to a lot of my clients and women in my community. They actually experienced some almost PTSD from that experience in itself of just feeling so whipped around and unheard and not understood. So I would love for you to tell us what it means to be a patient advocate and the importance of patient advocates, especially in the field of chronic illness and mental health, I’m really glad you brought up mental health today as well, and some of those harder to diagnose diseases like Lyme disease.

Adrienne: Yes. So to be a patient advocate means that I am technically licensed to navigate people and explain to them different treatment options based on symptoms or even something they’ve already been diagnosed with. So it’s really kind of sad that the healthcare system now requires this as an actual position within it because it really means that people are frustrated, people are lost, people aren’t being heard. The administrative component of getting things paid for and reimbursements and insurance and faxing and patient portals and things not getting from one person to the other, as far as coordination between providers, I think it’s just a disaster really. And it’s a disappointment because the technology is there, we just are choosing not to really utilize it to its full potential and also because we’ve created a system where it’s very specialized and people are just a cardiologist, or just a endocrinologist, or just a gynecologist.

But what we realize now, especially after the microbiome project and understanding how much hormonal health and mental health and digestive health have to do with gut health, is that you can’t really look at everything in a siloed way. If you want to understand how to treat a mental health condition or a cardiovascular heart condition or a hormonal condition or a women’s health fertility-type condition, you have to look at the entire body. And there are so many clues and connections, but everything is completely related. And so, even pain and mental health are so connected. So each of these organs are sending messages to each other all day long and to think that we can just hear about some symptoms in a silo that have to do with the brain and just throw a really powerful medication with tons of side effects at it without thinking about what people are eating and if they’re overdoing it on other over-the-counter drugs or antibiotics that has now destroyed their gut and it’s letting some violent parasite take control and even affect the brain that way, we don’t do any of that. And there’s so many ways to naturally get out in front of a lot of these conditions.

We interviewed an integrative psychiatrist who talked about “anxiety and depression are sleep disorders until proven otherwise to me.” So just even that component. I mean, how many psychiatrists really get in-depth information about sleep from somebody before they hand over some sort of a prescription? Hardly any. It’s sad to me, but I’m happy that my skills, everything that I learned within the healthcare system, can also be paired with my interest in making sure that people get to the root cause of health issues and heal them naturally, that this board-certified patient advocate role came about. So at the moment, I’m not working privately with coaching people through these issues, it’s more like navigating than coaching, but I will on occasion. And I’m just using it to inform my work with WellBe, which is a media and lifestyle brand that’s really helping to connect the dots between the healthcare system and the wellness movement through our events and content and e-learning resources and stuff like that.

Sarah: Yes, that’s awesome. Just for people who have never heard of patient advocates before, if someone’s like, Oh my God, that would be amazing to have somebody help me navigate this healing process and all the options that are available to me, how would they work with a patient advocate or where would they find one?

Adrienne: Well, they can always reach out to hello@getwellbe.com and I can try to navigate them from there or see if it makes sense to do something with me. But another resource is that now I think there’s an actual directory. The acronym is BCPA, so if you just google board-certified patient advocate or BCPA, there’s a governing board that oversaw the licensing exam, and that also has a listing, I believe, of everybody who’s passed the exam. So that’s one place to look. I’m pretty sure that everybody would be listed there, but I’m not a hundred percent positive. It’s pretty new still.

Sarah: Yes, you made a good point. It’s like, but we do need this, right? Because there are doctors who are just doing their gynecology or they’re a heart surgeon or whatever their specialty is and it’s almost like the lines aren’t being connected from place to place to be able to paint the whole picture and for people to understand, or even your different specialists to be able to communicate with each other to put everything into perspective for you so you can make the most informed and educated and empowered decision. So we talked about this healthcare system, and I know you’ve been in it, right? You’ve not only been a client and a patient within it, but you’ve also worked in it as a professional. So based on your experience, why do you think our healthcare system is so broken and how do we start to bridge the gap between healthcare and then all the wellness movements and naturopathic medicine and functional medicine that are taking flight these days?

Adrienne: Yes, that’s a great question. So I think the healthcare system is broken for a couple of different reasons. I actually just wrote an article for Dr. Axe on this last week. But one reason is I think, as I mentioned, if you’re not treating root causes and about 80% of our healthcare costs in America are related to chronic illness, then you’re just creating this monster of different treatments and tests and drugs being prescribed without an end in sight, really, right? Because if you don’t get to the root cause, then you’re not actually solving the problem. It’s something that that person is then going to have to deal with indefinitely, which is just astronomical as far as, you know, much more of an inconvenience I was about to say, but a real sore on their life as they try to constantly be dealing with these doctors and prescriptions and tests and all these other things throughout maybe decades while still having some of those symptoms or at least being on something quite powerful that then gives them symptoms in the form of side effects. So that’s, I would say, the first major issue with the healthcare system is that we’re not treating root causes and therefore creating a litany of these health problems that go on forever, right?

People have now high blood pressure for decades. Like 40 through 80 years old, they might be dealing with that and taking Lipitor or something like that indefinitely and thinking that that’s just fine, that they can continue eating whatever the heck they were eating and having high blood pressure but taking this medication, which has its set of side effects and long-term health consequences, forever. And so, versus, Oh my gosh, I have high blood pressure and actually working with somebody to figure out the root causes of that, change those lifestyle and diet behaviors as well as looking under the hood to see if there’s some sort of hormonal or gut imbalances that might be contributing to that, and then healing it. And so, maybe that takes a couple of years, maybe that takes two years, but then it’s over and this person isn’t just indefinitely paying into the system. They’re able to keep their savings, and their premiums aren’t going up, and they’re not just an indefinite patient. So I think that’s one of the issues.

The other issue is just the way that the healthcare education system has developed is that you’ve got really esteemed academic medical centers teaching in their medical schools less than 10 to 15 hours, I’ve heard depending on where, of nutrition over four years at medical school. So you’ve got doctors who don’t even understand the fundamental of health, which is every single food choice that you make in a day impacts your health either positively or negatively. There’s just no other way around it. And depending on what you read, people say it’s about 70% or 60 at the least, 60 or 70% of your health is determined by what you eat and then the other lifestyle components of exercise and whether or not you smoke and whether you do mindfulness activities and take natural therapies or whatever else is a component of that. And then maybe about 10% is this genetic predisposition component, right? So that’s huge and such an opportunity.

And if you’ve got the people who are supposed to be in charge of your care not really knowing that much about it, it’s not their fault if they’re not taught, then you’re just setting every single patient experience up for disaster because the single easiest component, which is starting with diet, doesn’t really get addressed, or isn’t even seen as that important. It’s sometimes even laughed at, Oh yeah, you can’t broccoli your way out of this or whatever, which is one of the detriments of the system we’ve got going on right now. So I think those two are two of the fundamental problems. And then the third problem that makes it so broken I think, is that it’s this insurance-first system. The entire system is set up around something called disease codes so you basically have to already have a disease or some symptom to get something paid for. So if you’re trying to be proactive in your health and you are trying to get acupuncture, or you’re trying to get let’s say, a medical massage that you don’t have to go get a surgery because you’ve been dealing with a back injury from a sports thing, if you’re trying to do that without a confirmed diagnosis that a doctor gives you, then you can’t get it paid for. And so, what it does is set you up for a system where you don’t do anything for your health until it’s already too late, until you’re already dealing with some kind of a condition.

So because insurance decides who you can see and whether or not you’ve got a disease code or not and therefore it’s not reimbursed, and with a very expensive healthcare system, for most people, if it’s not reimbursed, you’re probably not going to do it, right? So with that leading the charge as far as incentivizing people and providers and stuff like that, nobody has any incentive to really do anything until they’re already sick. And also, furthermore, there are very few natural therapies and functional integrative medicine doctors and practitioners that are covered by insurance so it just keeps out a lot of people that don’t really want to go outside of their insurance to get anything health-related paid for. So I think those are the three major issues. They’re all connected, but I think if we could work on the insurance component of this and the root cause medicine approach being taught in medical schools, those two things would… And getting a little bit out of the hyperfocus on having specialists. Obviously, some specialists are very needed. I don’t want somebody operating on my back that hasn’t operated on thousands of backs already, right? But when you’re talking about, again, chronic health issues, that’s where specialists are, I think, not as effective because it’s not taking all the different components into account. So if those two changes could be made, I think our healthcare system issues would reverse quite dramatically.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. So you were just starting to talk a little bit about how we bridge that gap. But for example, I actually, this morning, made an appointment. I just watched this documentary Root Cause on Netflix and was so inspired to go make an appointment with a holistic dentist so I called them this morning. And my health is very important to me and I’m very, very willing to invest in my health, but it’s going to be $640 for the first appointment. And so, how do we start to bridge that? I’m someone who I’m like, Okay, yes, I’m going to do this. It’s worth it. I see the value of investing in that. But in what other ways do we start to bridge that? Or how do we even, as patients or people who have a chronic illness, start to determine what wellness movements or big fads like celery juice and the medical medium are fads versus which ones are really worth investing in and spending our time and money on? Does that make sense?

Adrienne: Yes. So I feel like those are two different things. How are normal people supposed to pay for functional integrative medicine at these costs that you’re describing like $600? And then the second component is, what’s really worth spending your money on, what sort of faddy; faddy with a D not fatty with a T? But yes, two major issues and great questions. So I would say on the side of how can we expect all people to pay for this? Absolutely. I think most people do not understand that health is everything until you have an issue or lose it, and then you can’t… It’s like, well, there’s no other thing in life I should be doing but dealing with this because I can’t really function in my normal life without getting this fixed or under control. And so, it’s the foundation to then launch off and have a healthy career and have a happy relationship and have friends and be able to do the things that you want to do. And if you don’t have your health, all of those things sort of fall apart.

But it’s very hard for people to understand that until they’ve really been personally affected so I don’t expect that everybody would just take my word for it that it’s worth it to put the money in to get somebody who’s really knowledgeable about looking at you holistically to be the person that takes care of your health. Those two things I think should be a fundamental foundation for everybody but I completely understand that these costs are insane. And the issue is that it’s a simple, economic model, right? There’s a lot of demand for this kind of medicine now because so many people have chronic health issues and because there’s finally a different way of approaching them and people are having success with it. And then there’s just not enough of them because it’s not what conventional medical schools are spitting out. So people have to go and do additional fellowships and certifications and things to get these licenses. And of course, these osteopathic and naturopathic medical schools are smaller so you’re just not able to produce the numbers that the conventional healthcare system can produce as far as doctors. So there’s a huge discrepancy, right?

And when there’s a huge demand for chocolate and not much of it, the price goes up, so same thing, the price is really high at this point. But the two things that I think can work to bring them down is having a lot more demand, consumer demand, and sort of voicing to the conventional healthcare system and insurance companies that this is what you want will create a lot of movement within the system about more people getting these certifications or functional medicine and integrative therapies and clinical trials and stuff happening and being taught in conventional medical schools. So that’s, I think, one thing that hopefully will bring these costs down. Another is, if you’re having a serious health issue, do not be afraid to go to something like a sort of a GoFundMe, or I know of a different one that’s based out of Chicago, I can’t remember the name right now but it was a similar kind of crowdfunding for healthcare issues. And there are wonderful people out there who have absolutely no problem donating to something like somebody’s healthcare especially because that’s so clear-cut versus charity in general. You know you don’t know where that money goes exactly, right? So I think that’s something that it’s worth trying and worth doing. And I’ve seen people have success with that so I think those are two things to try.

And then, I think, as far as what is just fad, and you mentioned celery juice and the medical medium, which is the most insane fad, I’ve had so many people mention it to me, it’s really unreal. I mean he has quite a grip on all kinds of different people, it’s just wild to me. And then also what’s really rooted in science and worth doing. I have a friend who has horrible lifelong psoriasis/eczema, I’m not exactly sure, and has basically used more steroids than any human on earth should and her gut health is just a mess at this point. Every month that goes by, her skin is more reactive, more sensitive, everything sets her off. I mean, everything. And so, it’s compromising her in so many ways. It’s burning her, she can’t sleep. It’s obviously all over her when she’s at work, which is very awkward and sometimes she can’t even go to work. And she mentioned something about doing the celery juice, whatever, and I said to her, so that’s it? That’s all you’re going to change? You’re just going to start drinking some celery juice with everything that you’re going through? Don’t you want to have somebody who’s really knowledgeable, who can do all of the amazing different tests that functional medicine has to offer, look at your case and look at your gut and figure out exactly what is wrong and then help you to utilize exactly those therapies that might be most beneficial?

Say, if it’s a bad gut health situation, for example, it may not necessarily be celery juice for you. It might be bone broth and kimchi and a certain kind of probiotic and these sorts of other tools. Whereas if your problem is entirely liver-related, maybe celery juice is your issue, you know? So there’s a lot of different things that you could be doing, but I’m of the mindset that isn’t it better to get somebody to use everything that testing and science and their education have to offer to understand which things exactly are best to be doing for you? You know, similar to like choosing a supplement, right? There are thousands of brands and thousands of different supplements that can all do something for you. And I think there’s a tendency, once you are taking any supplement, to just keep throwing them on there because everyone’s like, Oh, you should take a blank, it really helps with this and that. And that sounds great but over time and just in general, taking dozens and dozens of different supplements a day will just burn you out of taking any, and then you can’t even stomach one more, which has happened to me.

And what I realized is it’s not just that everything is good for you. You have to know based on, again, testing and your micronutrient levels, what do you need to be taking? Because you’ve got, let’s say, low vitamin D and you’ve got a thyroid condition so you need to take vitamin C to support your adrenals, which are very connected to your thyroid. Whatever the mix of things might be, have it be really systematic, don’t just kind of throw things at the wall. And so, with regard to some of these fads, that’s my take on it. And my advice is that if you have a particular issue that you know about or can feel, that you are sure this fad or this natural treatment is perfect for you for that and it couldn’t be anything else and you’ve either talked to a professional about that, or you’ve done a lot of extensive research on your own, then fine, go for it, you know? I always feel like celery juice is never going to hurt you. If you believe that that’s going to help you and it does, that is awesome. What a cheap way to solve your issue.

But at the same time, just doing that and thinking that one fad that you read about on the internet is the answer to a serious chronic health issue or getting too carried away with something like people were doing with juice cleansing, where it can end up being somewhat harmful in a way to the body, or some sort of fast that’s really way too long, or whatever it might be and getting into the dangerous area, just make sure you know why you’re doing it. And do enough research to know that it’s not just one guy, medical medium, talking about it, but look at a couple of other sources. Make sure that you really understand the science behind celery juice and why you might be using it and which part of you and your health journey needs that at this time and then go for it. And I would say also when you’re doing something like that, pay close attention to if it’s working or not.

I know a lot of people who get in to start certain natural therapies or different fads and do them for years and if you ask them, Oh, okay, well, did it fix your whatever problem?… and they’re like, Oh, I don’t know…Well, you didn’t think to check-in and track that while you were starting this or not start four therapies at once, maybe do them a little bit separated to see if one is making a larger difference and then really commit to that one or, you know? All these things, it’s just kind of funny that some people just don’t think to measure it until they’ve already started it, and then it’s a useless exercise because they didn’t really understand if it worked or not. But yes, so does that answer that question?

Sarah: Absolutely, yes. I think that people reach for the fad. They’re well-intentioned and often desperate just to try to find something to help. But what I think we fail to realize sometimes out of oftentimes desperation is that we are all so individual and we’re all so unique. And even if, let’s just use celery juice as an example, 90% of the population thrives on celery juice, you could still be in that 10%. I had excess oxalates in my body, so celery juice, if I drank it every day, actually could harm me. So when you don’t know the environment of your body, I think that’s where it just becomes not always dangerous, but it just gets complicated. And so, I totally agree with you. Do it with intention, understand really, the whole framework of your body by getting a good picture of it before we dive into things, and don’t do it in this systematic way like you were mentioning. So that’s really helpful.

Adrienne: Yes, I remember somebody mentioning to me something about how I had to use a cast-iron pan. And I’m very concerned about Teflon and plastics and stuff like that with cooking ware and in general. So I was looking for a pan that was non-toxic and we got the iron one and then I just happened to have a blood test. I’m sorry, the cast-iron one and I happened to have a blood test from my naturopath that week and she was just talking about how she sees other members of my family and we all have this tendency to, it’s like a genetic predisposition to hemochromatosis, which I don’t have because I don’t have the genetic mutation, I just have the risk for it or whatever. And I happened to see it also on 23andMe several months later. But basically, it just means that your liver or your body has a harder time processing iron. And so, I have to just be a little bit careful with how much iron I take in at once.

And a lot of the cast-iron, people say it’s great because you actually get some iron in your food from the pan when you’re eating, and don’t you always want that? And it’s just like you said, I’m sure people who are saying use a cast-iron pan are well-intentioned, and in a way, of course, they’re right, over Teflon or one of these things with chemicals in it, but at the same time, it’s so individual, it’s so complex. Had I not known that I had trouble and went all-in on this cast-iron pan and was using it three times a day to cook my food, maybe that would have ended up causing me harm. So you really have to understand these intricacies and look up your genetic testing and get these other blood work components done and feel like you’re with someone who’s really willing to dig and who’s really knowledgeable and talks to you in-depth about all the different components. If you go to a doctor who says, we’ll call you if there’s anything weird about your blood work, get out immediately. That is a terrible doctor.

Sarah: So this is a lot, I think, for probably a lot of people to take in because they’re like, Oh crap, I’ve been drinking celery juice or I’ve been or whatever it is. Or they just are like, how do I navigate all of these different practitioners? Or maybe they feel discouraged because they realize too that the healthcare system is broken or have been a victim, to some extent, of that. So how can we inspire some hope into people as we finish up here and what action steps could anybody start taking today to start to work towards their wellness in a really beautiful, supportive, and holistic way?

Adrienne: Yes. So I think it’s actually a pretty encouraging time despite the healthcare system being broken because I think for the first time, there’s a real movement towards people taking back their power and understanding that you are your doctor, really. You’re the CEO, the boss, the executive director of your body and your health. No matter what anybody else says, you have to live in this vessel for maybe a hundred years and therefore, it’s really up to you about what you want to do with it. And it’s so encouraging and inspiring to see things like the Blue Zones and see that people are living without chronic illness today to well over a hundred, or just seeing a lot of the research that’s finally being done on non-pharmaceutical-type therapies and dietary changes and stuff like that, to see that when you actually live in a way that encourages health, you can avoid a lot of these common illnesses.

And I hate to say, avoid the healthcare system like you’re kind of living off the reservation, but in a way, that’s my goal. I hope to pretty much never be in a hospital ever again if I can help it. And also, I access only practitioners and doctors that I know are going to try their hardest not to really do any additional treatments with me, or prescribing things, or really work to just get my body to heal itself with any health issues and to really empower it in that way. So I think it’s a really awesome time that we finally have a lot of research and science coming together with this more natural and holistic approach to living and to health. And so, I think there are so many wonderful resources. Hopefully, WellBe could be one of them for you guys, but also, certainly Sarah’s podcast, and just in general, there’s so much content. And yes, some of us can be confusing and overwhelming and too much emphasis on celery juice and this and that, but we have pretty much everything we need to live chronic disease-free and to a hundred at our fingertips, it’s just a matter of having the right tools and knowing what you need to really do that. And so, it’s been laid out time and time again.

I think it’s hard to implement in the modern world because we have so much fast food and on the go, and nobody has time for cooking and this and that. But eating real organic foods, mostly plants, coupled with frequent movement and getting off devices and connecting with loved ones and having joy and laughter in your life and healing things that are chronic with as natural an approach as you can to really empower your own body, that is the foundation of what you need, really. And so, I think when you see it in a more simple way instead of a more “everything is going to kill you and it’s the healthcare system is broken,” then it’s really kind of empowering, it’s up to you. And I think that’s pretty awesome to know that I don’t have to necessarily, except for maybe some testing, rely on a lot of other people that I don’t even know to decide whether or not I’m going to be sick or not. It’s a lot of what I can do every single day to make sure that I heal chronic health issues and also prevent them from occurring in the future.

Sarah: Yes, I love that. You’re right. It’s all those little choices that we make every single day. So where can people learn more and start following WellBe as well as you?

Adrienne: Yes. Thank you, Sarah. You can find me at getwellbe.com. So WellBe is the name of my company; we have a weekly newsletter. We also have a podcast called The WellBe Podcast and obviously a website. And we’re quite active on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube so it’s @getwellbe at every one of those places; so our website and all of our different channels. And we have a website that, I’m sorry, we have an email address on our website that you can easily reach out to with any questions about anything that we’ve talked about or any piece of content that you see on the site or whatever else. So I’m, I think, pretty quick about responding to people so I’ll hopefully be able to chat with you there or on Instagram and I’d love to have you as part of our community. And hopefully, a lot of what I’m talking about and Sarah talks about are similarly valuable in your quest to heal these chronic health issues and treat them naturally when they arise.

Sarah: Great. Thank you so much for your time today and I so appreciate you being on.

Adrienne: Thank you, Sarah, for having me.

Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode of The Healing Uncensored Podcast. I love you guys so much. I got a message from a listener the other day that literally brought me to tears. I really just want to express all my gratitude to all of you for taking the time to listen. I know your days are jam-packed and you have so much on your plate and if this can just be that little spark of hope in your day, then that means the world to me. That’s the purpose of this podcast; to show up, to tell the uncommon stories, and to show alternative other ways to healing beyond food on a soul level. So again, thank you so much for your support today and every time you put in your earbuds or listen to the podcast in the shower, or the car, or while you’re making dinner, or wherever you’re tuning in. Again, I love you, I thank you, and it would mean so much to me if you would just take a minute to go rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already. Again, I really, truly appreciate it. Have a wonderful day. Thanks for tuning in and I’ll see you next time.

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