Today we’re talking about the gut and gut health. We have discussed the importance of the gut microbiome in previous podcasts but never in relation to perimenopause and menopause. And that’s because no one really knew that was a thing until very recently. But it makes sense though since our gut and the biodiversity of the microbiome affects every other aspect of our health why wouldn’t our hormone balance be involved in some way.

Ideally we would all get everything our body needs to function optimally from real, whole food. Theoretically if we did that then we wouldn’t need to count calories. Or even watch portion sizes because the body has built in on and off switches for our appetite and is brilliantly designed to find the perfect energy balance. Sadly I think we can all agree that the standard American diet is deficient on many levels.

Our modern life of convenient hyper palatable food consumption has disrupted that delicate balance and led to food addiction, gut dysfunction and metabolic disease. Today, the lack of nutrition awareness and just basic general activity in modern life and you see most people deficient in many micro nutrients, using food as therapy on some level and desperate for a quick fix to fill in the gaps. That’s where supplements come in.

Episode 38, and 39 of the work in our, a beautiful collaboration between myself and Kailyn Vu from Dear Lovely Universe. We decided to get a little creative and swap hosts for each of our podcasts. So today you're going to hear Kaelin, interviewing me about trauma release exercise and yoga, about the connection between the nervous system and our health, about how we can better nourish ourselves, body, mind and spirit. It's a great conversation.

The standard American diet has its foundation in sugar addiction. Sugar toxicity is the root cause of the epidemic of metabolic syndrome, prediabetes and non alcoholic fatty liver disease in this country. It’s time for an intervention.

The neurologist, you know, just kept coming into his room saying this can't be possible, that he is alive and that he's functioning and his ECGs are coming back normal. So, I consider myself the luckiest mom in the world. So I, I just feel like I need to use that experience to help other parents who are going through that whether you've just found a little bit of marijuana in your kids backpack or a bottle, an empty bottle of vodka in their room, too, you know I've got a kid on the streets, who's doing heroin.

What no one tells you is that unless you’re willing to uncover and shift the shadow patterns that created those habits in the first place it’s nearly impossible to keep those results long term. Our mental, emotional & physical patterns provide the infrastructure for our beliefs and drive our actions. 

Maybe one of the most powerful, deeply entrenched patterns we have are our shadow patterns around food. Changing an eating habit, or any habit permanently is nearly impossible without also addressing the underlying patterns that support it.