Charlotte Hill used functional nutritional therapy to treat Ankylosing Spondylitis, now she helps others manage autoimmune diseases in a natural and holistic way.
Charlotte is a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner who helps people get their body out of the way of them living their best life.
She works with nutrition and lifestyle changes to address the root cause of what is really happening in the body. Charlotte got into this work through her own suffering with Ankylosing Spondylitis, an autoimmune disease that affects the spine, that she has had for 15 years.
This has caused chronic pain, disrupted her dream of being a World Cup lacrosse player but discovering the power of food and uncovering what was really going in her own body turned her life around 7 years ago. She hasn’t looked back! Charlotte sees one on one clients in her clinic in Sydney, Australia and online, runs seminars and workshops for corporates and is an Associate Instructor at the Nutritional Therapy Association.
See all episode artwork, links and notes at:
https://blog.dirobi.com
This show is for informational purposes only.
None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Find episode links, notes and artwork at:
https://blog.dirobi.com
This show is for informational purposes only.
None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Charlotte Hill used functional nutritional therapy to treat Ankylosing Spondylitis, now she helps others manage autoimmune diseases in a natural and holistic way.
Charlotte is a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner who helps people get their body out of the way of them living their best life.
She works with nutrition and lifestyle changes to address the root cause of what is really happening in the body. Charlotte got into this work through her own suffering with Ankylosing Spondylitis, an autoimmune disease that affects the spine, that she has had for 15 years.
This has caused chronic pain, disrupted her dream of being a World Cup lacrosse player but discovering the power of food and uncovering what was really going in her own body turned her life around 7 years ago. She hasn’t looked back! Charlotte sees one on one clients in her clinic in Sydney, Australia and online, runs seminars and workshops for corporates and is an Associate Instructor at the Nutritional Therapy Association.
See all episode artwork, links and notes at:
https://blog.dirobi.com
This show is for informational purposes only.
None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Find episode links, notes and artwork at:
https://blog.dirobi.com
This show is for informational purposes only.
None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
[inaudible]
Speaker 2:welcome to the show. I got a freebie for you today. Before we jump into the episode, we've created a mini course called nutrition and fitness for busy professionals. Chances are that's you. And one of the challenges we all have in our health and fitness journey right now is life is super busy and complicated, and oftentimes we want to work out, we want to eat right, but it just takes time. It takes time to learn how to do that. It takes time to hit the gym, it takes time to do everything. And this mini course really will tackle three of the biggest areas that keep busy professionals from reaching their fitness goals. And it includes the three steps of fix, a broken diet, how to stay in shape when you're busy, including a really sweet minimalist workout. And finally, the all important power of sleep and important tips on how to get more sleep. We all know that that's kind of the, um, overlooked secret of health. A lot of people ignore to their peril. So go to[inaudible] dot com it's advertised right there on the homepage and get the mini course. I think you'll really like it. It won't take very long to read and yet it is packed with really great actionable information and now on with the show. Hello everybody. Welcome to the dire OB health show. Today I've got Charlotte Hill who is a functional nutritional therapy practitioner. She helps people get their body out of the way of them living their best life. She works with nutrition and lifestyle changes to address the root cause of what is really happening in their body. Charlotte got into this work through her own suffering with ankylosing spondylitis. If you know somebody who has that condition, you'll definitely want to share this episode with them. It's an autoimmune auto immune disease that affects a spine that she's had for 15 years, has caused a lot of chronic pain, disrupted her dream of being a world cup lacrosse player, but by discovering the power of food and uncovering what was really going in her own body. She turned her life around about seven years ago and hasn't looked back. Charlotte, thank you. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Speaker 3:My pleasure. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have, you seem like the kind of person who once you get into something, you really go into something because of you, you've done, you've got a clinic, uh, you run seminars and workshops. Uh, you sound like you are very busy doing what you're doing.
Speaker 3:Yes. I think, um, as you talked about, I've been on such a journey with my Ankolysing spondylitis. I'm just so passionate to share what I have learned with as many people as will listen to me because yes, you might have a health condition but also you may not have one yet and there is so much you can do now with your body, with the food that you eat to stop you maybe getting conditions that you may be predisposed to. So I just want to share the world, the word or how important it all is.
Speaker 2:So after you were diagnosed with this disease, and uh, actually I want to a question prior to this question. So first of all, let's start with your backstory. Tell us, you know, you, you sound like you're very active. You're an athlete. Tell us your story up to the point of realizing you had this condition.
Speaker 3:Yes. So when I was at school, you can probably tell from my accent, I'm from the UK and even though I now live in Australia, but at school I was obsessed with sport. So netball I loved, but lacrosse was my passion. And from the age of 16 years old, I was on the England international team and it was my life. I wanted to go to university that was really good at lacrosse and I could spend my whole time playing lacrosse there. At some point I wanted to go to America to go to one of your colleges and to play lacrosse in America as well. And I, I literally spent my life when I was at school running around a lacrosse pitch and working really hard and doing my exams. And that was my life. And, but unfortunately back then I did this in the kind of traditional way by drinking a lot of sugar, eating a lot of breads and all of these things that now in hindsight that go, Oh my goodness me, what was I doing to myself? Cause that would have really stressed my body out. But I had no idea until I left school. When I was 18 years old, I was happy as Larry pushing my body to its limits, playing really well, being really successful. And that was my life.
Speaker 2:Okay. So up to 18 everything's going well. When did you start to realize that something wasn't quite right?
Speaker 3:So what happened was I left school when I was 18 in the July and the took three months off. I just slowed down for three months and I went to my first England lacrosse training camp after I left school. So that was in September. And I had this really dull back pain in my back and I couldn't run the way I used to run and I played defense in lacrosse. So anyone that is an offender in any, any sport, you're know that you know that you're stopping your attacker doing what they want to do so you're not doing what you want to do. You're stopping someone else and do what they want to do. And suddenly my ability to run around and do what I want to follow. Someone else around that across pitch was just suddenly not possible and it really quickly developed into chronic back pain. And I had just started at Cambridge university that October and I went to university and I was sleeping on the floor. I couldn't roll over if I laid in bed because of the mattress was soft, even though it wasn't that soft, I couldn't turn off an alarm some days it resorted to, I couldn't even put on a pair of trousers, let alone one around that lacrosse pit. That was really the thing in life that I really, really, really loved. So over time I had to stop playing netball because I really wanted to focus on my lacrosse and I then just started taking as many pain killers as I could so I could still get on that across pitch.
Speaker 2:Wow. And this story right up till this point will resonate with a lot of Americans because we have a lot of boys in football, for example, who go through something very, very much like what you're describing. They start to get injured and the drugs come out and they start masking the underlying symptoms. And some of these guys grew up to be men who have chronic knee problems, chronic hip problems, back problems, neck problems and um, it's a little bit sad that grownup grownup adults who should know better will take these athletes who are struggling and have injuries and shoot them up with painkillers to keep them out on the field. And that's not quite your story. I understand that. But it is a common story, um, that we treat young athletes that way.
Speaker 3:Exactly. And what I have learnt later, like in that was before I was even diagnosed with what I had, but what I know now is that when you take things like ibuprofen, you're actually also, you're not only masking the pain bill also stopping the healing process in your body. So it's kind of a double negative. So I'm really, that's why I'm so passionate about what I do now and raising awareness about the story, which we haven't even covered in full yet because I want people to just start asking their body wise, my body playing up because the S it's telling you something for a reason and we should be grateful for our body telling us, even if it is through chronic pain.
Speaker 2:So from that point, when did you finally realize that there was a condition? I assume you at some point had to go to a doctor who finally figured out the problem.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I started seeing a physiotherapist and I was very lucky to see a very good physiotherapist and she picked her up on it relatively quickly that things weren't right. Um, so she sent me to see a rheumatologist and they then did a blood test for something called H L a B 27, which most people would ankylosing, but it's something that shows up in a white blood cell and it's a genetic marker. And most people with ankylosing spondylitis have this marker, even though not everyone with this marker has Ankolysing spondylitis. So what they did is they tested me for HLAB 27 I came back positive and they said, Oh, you've got ankylosing spondylitis. So my time to diagnosis from when I initially got the pain was only about 18 months, two years, which was really, really lucky because lots of people go a very, very, very long time, decades without being diagnosed. But still that was 2005 so when you get told you've got an autoimmune disease, you've got Ankolysing spondylitis, you don't really know really what to do apart from to follow the mainstream medical advice, which is to start taking drugs, which are not the antiinflammatories to manage your condition. And with that your in and out of the doctor's surgery because you're having blood tests all the time to have your liver function and full blood test done to make sure your body's not being adversely effected.
Speaker 2:And so did you, did you take the doctor's advice in the beginning and then start doing your own research and changing your nutritional habits? How did that unfold?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so what happens? So back in 2005 I started taking their advice and my rheumatologist said, you just need to take these drugs and improve your core stability and there's nothing else we can really do when you have children. It might go away, but we just got to manage it. Until then, so I started taking these drugs. They didn't really make very much difference. I was still trying to play England lacrosse. So I then started getting steroid injections in my sacred iliac joint, which is a joint that joins your spine to your pelvis. And I would also wear like this big secret iliac belt, went to play lacrosse in. I was still dose myself up to the nines with all of these drugs. People would always go to me, when are you going to be better, better and not injured? And I just didn't know the answer cause the injury I had, I couldn't really explain. So my life just went on and I just kept on eating. But I'd always eaten. So bucket loads of sports, drink and bread and all of those sorts of things. And I just live my life and the drugs didn't really do anything and I still, I could still have a steroid injection and a week later the effects of it had completely disappeared and affected other things in my body. Um, so I just went on this roller coaster of a journey. Some weeks I was good, some months I was good, other months I wasn't so good. I, over the next six years I did some crazy things. I gave up playing lacrosse because I got so frustrated because I couldn't, I wasn't a standard that I wanted to be or needed to be, to be an international lacrosse player. And the emotional toll it was taking on me was huge and I just had to give up my dream and just get on with my working life. Um, but I then did things like, I cycled the length of the UK, which is over a thousand miles. Everyone else's body was stiff for a week. My body broke for six months. So I still have these massive effects. I couldn't really, I can never really predict things and I still eat the same diet, which was I grew up eating relatively healthy diet. But then I had the pastries, I had the sugar, I had all I everything. And eventually a physio said to me, I'm six years later, I just don't know what to do with you anymore, Charlotte. This pain just keeps on moving round and I've just got no answers. So we're not 26 and that is told to you, it's really confronting because all you've done is to follow the best advice that you've been given. And the next drug choice for me was this anticancer drug called methotrexate, which I didn't want to take. And so what then happened was I was told to go see an osteopath. And so I went into the office or went back to see this osteopath. That afternoon was already in my gym kit to be examined and had my spine examined because why I haven't really explained as ankylosing spondylitis as an autoimmune disease and this particular autoimmune disease attacks your spine and the endpoint of this condition is your spine being completely fused. So it causes inflammation in your spine and basically what you're doing is trying to not let your spine be fused where the different individual vertebrae fused together. Because obviously you want to keep on having as much movement as you can. And what actually happened in this osteopath was you said to me, Charlotte, what does it mean for you to get better? And I still remember this moment really, really, really well now. And I just burst into tears and I realized how much this condition had really affected my whole life in so many ways. More than I'd realized. And it was quite confronting. He then said to me, what does it mean? What will you do to get better? And I said in a thing and he then proceeded to ask me about what I ate and I said, I eat anything. He goes, how do you feel when you eat food? And I said, fine, but anything particular, I disagree with you. I was like, nothing. How's your digestion fine. I had no idea. Then got pretty embarrassed when he asked me about, um, some parts that my digestion, because I never been asked before. And then he said to me, Charlotte, I think you're reacting to the foods that you're eating and I want you to take gluten out of your diet. And this was in 2012, so being gluten free, what gluten was, was not common, but like didn't, people didn't really know what it was. I guess I knew what celiac disease was, but that was the only time you'd know someone on the gluten free diet really. And then the other thing he told me to do was to start drinking chicken broth, which you couldn't buy it. Do you have to go and make it at home using a recipe for your granny or your mom? And um, basically I walked out of the appointment, my back wasn't looked at once and I was given these two food dietary pieces of advice.
Speaker 2:It's so fascinating to me as I listened to your story that six years into a diagnosis of a serious autoimmune disease, the first professional asked you about your diet. It's just shocking and disgusting and it's so wrong on so many levels.
Speaker 3:Oh, I completely agree. Because now what I tell everyone that I see is that if we look at, if we take off all of our clothes and we look at our body, every single thing that we see is the food that we eat. So why do we not think as food is really powerful?
Speaker 2:And yet we don't, and this is a topic I cover on this show quite a bit. We recently had an episode on integrative medicine and that was really inspiring. Uh, Dawn Phillips, uh, she's, she works in a doctor's office. He's a traditional doctor who has wised up and hired a nutritionist and has each client see a nutritionist. And I just think that's wonderful. And of course it's also unfortunately rare. It feels like we're going in the right direction. But the fact that people aren't asking these questions and, and aren't dealing with the source of the problem in this day and age is just still shocking and surprising to me every time I hear it.
Speaker 3:I know. And I tell you say so what happened then was when I get iced us went home and I rang up my mum and I said, how do I pick stock? And I started making my chicken stock and I started, I took gluten out and I, and literally inflammation that I never knew existed around my face on my belly. Like a physio had said to me, Charlotte, you'll never have a flat stomach. But all it was was this huge amount of inflammation that was just sitting there. And that happened within weeks. I couldn't explain it to anyone. Why w I would eat would affect my back and my back got a lot better obviously as well. But, and that was just for making simple dietary changes. We haven't even started doing some of the other hard work that I've had to do during my journey.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I want to linger here for a minute on broth because my sister Angela is a lover of all things with health, just like I am. Her and I are always talking about these things. She's been making bone broth and drinking it and feeding it to her family for years. And during that whole time, I just never got the gumption to get into it. It looked like a pain in the neck. It just didn't capture me. I F I felt healthy. I, I'm blessed that I don't have an autoimmune disease, uh, personally. And I'm able to, to, uh, from the diet I was eating, achieve my, my health goals. But finally I realized, you know, I outta up my up my game and, and so I started making bone broth. I now drink a cup of bone broth every morning and every night. And I do chicken broth. And I also do beef. And I do chicken because it has a, the collagen one, two, and three where beef doesn't have collagen two. And I do the beef because it's heavier on the amino acids and I think a little bit better, uh, as a protein source. And so I do, I do both. And, and now, and I do it in my instant pot, uh, which takes out one of the factors of it that made me not want to do it, which was that it's a pain in the neck. And so I'm just buying the bone so my local butcher throw them in the freezer. And I generally make one batch a week that lasts me all week and I really am loving it. And, uh, as I have visitors or people staying at our house, I'll offer to make them a cup. And typically they love it. It tastes like a warm soup, you know, when you put the right herbs in it, et cetera. So I'm now a believer, but I, I wasn't a believer for a long time. It, it took me a long time to, to, to become a convert, so to speak, and to find a way that worked for me. So I didn't feel like I was a slave in the kitchen. So I'm all in and I, I now and try to do two cups a day, one in the morning, one at night. Now why you talk to us, you, you started this habit well before I did. I imagine you're still in the habit. Talk to us about bone broth.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Bone broth is just, it's incredible. And if we think about it, societies or cultures and tribes had been happy if for generations. So it's a real traditional food that we just have forgotten about. And if we go, there's a famous dentist who went around the world to compare different tribes because he was a dentist and he realized he saw massive tooth decay, um, decline increase over the time he was a dentist. So he then went around the world to all of these different tribes around the world to see what was in their diet. And what he realized was there's lots of different diets around the world, but they have some very common things. And one of them was having nutrient dense and like amino acid rich mineral rich bone broth. And so it's something we've really been having for generations, but it's something that we forgot about until it became fashionable, how many years ago. But what it really does is, um, it really helps. It's very nourishing. So it's full of all the minerals, the collagen amino acids, as you talked about. But what it does is it actually helped heal our gut. So we have our digestive system and the first point where really food crosses into the body is in our small intestine. And at that point there was a single layer of cells and we should really fully break down our food. But we through chewing it through hydrochloric acid in the stomach and through other enzymes, and when it's at its smallest, most broken down part, the food should be absorbed through this single layer of cells in the small intestine. And it goes into the bloodstream. And because our body just wants to protect ourselves from the environment, because we don't want to have any danger going into our body, it puts approximately 80% of our immune system behind that single layer of cells to monitor anything that crosses over and is about to go into the bloodstream because we don't want things that shouldn't be going into our body, going into our body. But what actually happens in a lot of us as we don't digest our food properly, we eat food that's contaminated with pesticides or hormones and we have lots that, we have antibiotics, there's personal care products. And what actually happens is that single layer of cells is not tightly knit together anymore. And it becomes what we call leaky. So the cells pull away from each other. And so what actually happens is that it's kind of a freeway for anything to pass into your body and it stimulates that immune system because our immune system just wants to protect us. And in anyone with an ultra immune disease, they have been shown to have this dysregulated gut lining called leaky gut. And that's probably what stimulating the immune system, which stimulating a lot of the inflammation that's driving this immune system. So the first thing that we often will walk, we always to do with someone with an autoimmune disease or two on us, anyone with a chronic disease is making sure we're nurturing and healing that gut lining to bring those cells back together. And chicken broth is an amazing way to do that.
Speaker 2:Okay. And like my sister, uh, you focus on chicken broth, that's what you originally advised as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Chicken broth. I would, I have chicken broth. Like to most people, chicken Brock tastes better than beef broth. People will often like can sometimes initially runaway. I actually make chicken broth, beef broth, fish broth, I'll do anything.
Speaker 2:Okay. So it's, it's not that chicken is superior or anything. Um, well you heard what I said. I do know the difference. Uh, there are, there are small differences between the two. A lot of people love broth because of the collagen specifically for their hair and nails and, and skin and, and knowing that the type two, uh, type one, two and three collagen is in the chicken, I think is a big motivator for people. Could you talk to us about any, and I've heard that the fish broth is also has a different set of really unique and powerful, um, benefits, but I've never dabbled with a, a chicken broth. Do you want to just talk for a minute about the differences between the different types of Brothen? What, what people ought to know?
Speaker 3:Well, it's real as you sound like more of an expert than me about the different types of collagen in it. But what I would like to say is that I think it's really important to get, um, a good variety of foods in our diet because what happens if we eat the same food over and over again and we have slight gut dysfunction as we can come, become sensitive to foods that we eat all of the time. So therefore if you're having chicken broth every day or you're having brief broth every day and you're not mixing it up, you may, you have a high propensity to start reacting to it. And I think, I can't remember the exact stats, but the diversity of our food has shrunk beyond the leaf and we only actually have access to so many nutrients every day due to cause we're eat often the same thing over and over again. So I think from my point of view, you want to have as much like the chicken and the beef and the fish is going to have different minerals and it's going to have different amino acids in it. It's got different colleges in it. So make sure you mix. I would if you can mix it up as much as you can, um, to give your body some variety.
Speaker 2:Okay. Sounds good. Another thing I learned, again, I am kind of a rookie to this, a lot of this I just know because it's top of mind because I've just recently been learning all this stuff. So if I sound like an expert, I'm really a rookie. It's just that I've just finished doing a lot of, of reading about it. That's all. But, um, I did learn a little bit about the bones and that, for example, if you can do beef, the marrow bones aren't as good as joint bones for example. And the chicken, I know my sister is really a big fan of the chicken feet, which look absolutely disgusting, but apparently make phenomenal broth. Do you have any comments on the types of bones that you're getting and using?
Speaker 3:Yes. The person, what I do personally is, um, when I get a chicken, what I try and do is I'll buy a whole chicken often and I will poach the whole chicken. And liquid first. And I'll always, and I'll add carrots, onion, chimeric peppercorns, any other leftover veggies that I have from the week. Um, but I'll poach the chicken first. Cause what I'll then do is I'll take the chicken out. Once it's cooked, I'll take all of the meat off the bone and then I've got my chicken for my lunches, for my dinners for the week if I need that. Um, and then I put the bones back in again. And yes, absolutely. Chicken feet are amazing cause what they do is they act, they increase the, the gelatin content of the, um, of the broth, which is another part like, which is really, really healing as well. So I'll add the, at that stage I'll then add the chicken feet and I'll just add the chicken carcass back in with all the bones and I'll add a bit of Apple cider vinegar also to try and, um, to make sure you're pulling out as many nutrients out of the bones as you can. And because you are pulling out nutrients out of the, um, the bones of an animal, that's why you really want to buy the best quality, um, animals that you can. So ideally organic pasture raised if you can, um, because if they haven't been fed in optimal diet, that's what's going to be going into our body. So I think quality is really important. But, um, and that's why I like using the whole chicken because you get the meat and you also get the bones. And then with beef, like what I will tend to do is absolutely, I'll use the joint bones and then you get when you slow cook them or you do them in your, um, instant pot, you can then you also have those fatty bits which are around the bones as well, which actually really healing frog guts. So I often take them off and this sounds a bit disgusting and I often eat them as well. Um, because then you make the broth, which is nurturing, and then they have the bits of fat that's around those joints that will then become really smooth and soft when you've cooked it. And they're really good as well. And then the marrow Boone's I still buy, if I have them, I'll still put them in there, but they're not as good as the joints. And I'll often eat. I'll have, I'll eat the bone marrow out of them. And that's really nurturing property as well.
Speaker 2:Okay, excellent. Um, earlier Charlotte mentioned the dentists who travel on the world around the world. His name was Weston price is Charlotte. Are you an expert? Um, well not, I want to rephrase the question. Does your training include what Weston price foundation type of nutritional, um, protocol or is that just, uh, you just know his story?
Speaker 3:Yes. No, no, I do. So, um, the ice study through the nutritional therapy association and one of the pie, the pie, one of the pioneers that we very much believe in is Western a price. And we believe in, here's the kind of the philosophies that he found through when he traveled around the world. So I'm eating all the mates, um, having these nutrient dense, dense broths, having a variety of foods. Um, and also I just think the work that he did was amazing. Comparing the commercial, what happened was he, he looked at tribes and then he saw commercialized versions of the same tribe and he just saw the health decline over such a short period of time just through changing their diets, which I think is phenomenal. And there was that amazing book called um, nutritional and physical, general degeneration, which is just nutrition and physical degeneration, which just shows how important nutrition really is. And then the other person I also really liked to talk about is someone who Francis Pottenger who did an experiment with cats. And in what he was doing was he was doing an experiment with cats am adrenal glands and he got so many cats donated to his experiment to which he was doing this Sanitarium that he ran out of food for the cats to had to feed some cats, Sanitarium scraps. And then he had to feed the other cats wall but just scraps. And he realized that the cat ate the ball, but just scraps. We're a lot healthier than the cats eat the Sanitarium scraps. So he went on from there and he did an experiment using cats and raw milk versus pasteurized milk versus pasteurized sweeten milk. And even in that first generation of cats that had the different types of milk, there was a difference in their health depending on the types of milk that they had, whether they had warm milk milk that had been heated up or melted. It had been heated up and sweetened. But then what was even more interesting was when the cats, we produced the kittens of the warm milk cats were just as healthy as the cats that had the cat. The cat had the parents that had the warm milk, but then the pasteurized sweetened milk cats and the pasteurize milk cats, the kittens that were born and then eat the same diet as their parents were not as healthy as that parents, even though they ate the exact same thing. And so it was really the first experiment that shows what you eat affects your genetic expression. We all think we are our genes, but actually our genes have the ability to turn on and turn off and food has a big influence. Which was just so interesting. And over time when the cats reproduced the cats that had the pasteurize milk in the past, raised sweeten milk over time, nasty ability to reproduce after approximately four generations. But the good news and then other things happened that jaws became smaller, their teeth became more crowded, their faces became narrower there for change. That energy change that bones were a lot more brittle compared to the raw milk cats. That generation on generation just thrived there. The good news is is that once you brought the raw milk back in to the other cats, they started, their health started increasing. So I think, let me just bring it back to modern society. I think health is just going downhill. But when I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, not many people had one, but now certain people have one. But the food we eat is so powerful and we can each make a slightly better choice every single day. But the food that we're going to eat, and it's going to have a big impact, not only for us and the rest of our lives, but our children and our children's children.
Speaker 2:And our animals, you'll be happy to know that I give half a cup of beef broth and half a cup of chicken broth to my dog every day.
Speaker 3:Wow, that's amazing. And I, I completely agree. We've seen the animals online. I have any animals but I wouldn't at well at some point, but we see them having these horrible foods and they're the, this game is humans. I need good nutritious food.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's true. Um, yeah, I wish I could get my kids to eat the, I can get the dog to eat it. Uh, my kids are another story. They still think that the bone brought this just kind of grow. So I'm working on that.
Speaker 3:But what about making like vegetable mashes? So you can put it in like make a pumpkin match or sweet potato mash or cauliflower mash, um, and put it in that way. Or make us mash potato and put it in the, instead of Walter, you use broth.
Speaker 2:Now we do do that. My wife uses the broth, so I've canned a bunch of broth. So we have a bunch of canned broth that I didn't put much flavoring in at all just as a base and she is using that and soups and things like that. And then I always have a fresh broth, uh, in the, in the fridge, that's the one that I drink every morning and give to the dog. But we could do much more of that. So for example, when you say vegetable broth or vegetable mash, I actually don't even know what that means. Can you explain that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so what I do often is I will, especially in winter, which is perfect for anyone in America right now, is that I will go and get cauliflower and I will just for example, or broccoli, anything and I will cook it. I will basically boil it up in some chicken broth or beef broth, whatever I have. I'll then add a tablespoon of ghee or coconut oil or anything else and any other sun source of fat that probably Gill coconut oil. And then once it's tender and I'll add obviously salt and pepper and then once the cauliflower is cooked through, I'll then put it in a food processor or use a stick blender to basically make it into a mash, like a mashed potato, but instead of mashed potato it's mashed cauliflower or mashed sweet potato.
Speaker 2:Okay, I love that. Now your website is chill and nourish.com. Do you have recipes like that on your website?
Speaker 3:I think so and if not, I will make sure there is one on there this weekend. Um, yeah, I'm pretty sure there's a cauliflower mash on there at the moment and then you can do things like sweet potato with ginger and then you can make things like, I'm not sure if things like Shepherd's pie or cottage pie are big things in America, but with mince underneath and then you put the potato, the instead of honing potatoes, you just have cauliflower national top and it's a really simple way to get really nutrient dense food in you.
Speaker 2:I love that. I love that. My, my parents are English. I was born in England, but I was just a baby when they immigrated to Canada. And then I met my wife who's American and we moved to the United States, uh, in 1992, I think. But regardless, I have English ancestry, so I know what Shepherd's pie is and I love Shepherd's pie and, uh, but many of my listeners in the United States probably don't know what a Shepherd's pie is. Just explain that one more time.
Speaker 3:So Shepherd's pie is when you basically get, um, beef mince or whatever, like whatever mints you like really, and you, um, I'll often fry some onions and garlic and then I'll add the Minson in there. Then I'll add barrier's Herb's and spices and I'll add Canton. Like traditionally you add canned tomatoes and then you just simmer it on the stove until it's cooked. You would want to reduce the liquid quite a lot. And then I add different hubs and then I'll put it in a casserole dish or a baking dish. Um, and then, so you'll probably make it two thirds with the mints. And then on top of that you would add mash. Typically mashed potato and then um, but what I'm saying is I'll add, um, instead, mashed sweet potato or cauliflower mash and then you put the whole thing in the oven and heated up and then the top goes nice and crispy and then you take it out again and you serve it in portions on pates with salad or vegetables or whatever you like.
Speaker 2:And it is so delicious and you guys listening, if you've never tried it, you've got to follow the recipe that you're just told and give it a shot. It's a wonderful dish. And the way Charlotte just described it, it also meets the, the hand rules that I was talking about on our show of of getting a good, a good mix of protein, carbs and fats and vegetables. And the meal she just described does that perfectly. So Shepherd's pie.
Speaker 3:Yes. And you sound like you sing from my hymnbook as well. I've heard, I completely agree. You want to have a balanced diet and in that minutes you can add the chicken broth. You can add lots of vegetables as well, but a chopped up and it is just a perfect nutrient dense meal and a great winter warmer as well.
Speaker 2:Okay. Now how did you come up with the name chill and nourish?
Speaker 3:Um, I, so my name is Charlotte Hill, so if you take C and Hill it, it makes chill. Um, so that's the chill part, but really is, it's all about nourishing yourself, which I think obviously is really important through the journey that I've been on. But the longer I've gone on my journey, I also realize it's not just about what you eat, it's also about how you digest your food and how you live your life as well. And unless we sit down and we eat off food in a relaxed state, we're actually not going to digest off food. And so I went for a very long time and my health journey and I was eating all of the right foods, but I actually wasn't really digesting it properly and I was probably running around a bit too much and not concentrating. And there was other stuff going on as well. So as well as eating the right food, which is the nourish. I really want people to relax and to make sure they enjoy their foods and also do the things in their life that they love and really connect to that. And then the end is not an and per se. It's actually a positive sign. So first of all, at school max was one of my favorite subjects. So that's why one of the reasons, but also mindset I think is really important. And having a positive mindset just in life is really important. I had to change my look at my mindset quite a lot through going on my journey with ankylosing spondylitis. But man, I am so glad I have my condition for not only into making me be introduced to real foods, but also making me slow down, relax, and then look at the way I live my life, the little voice in my head that tells me I should do this. It shouldn't do that. It's just been the most amazing journey. So it's kind of a name that encompasses all parts of what I've been through really.
Speaker 2:Okay. So a few years down the road now you have educated yourself, you've changed your habits in all these ways you just described. How is life now dealing with, with this autoimmune condition that you have?
Speaker 3:Amazing. Um, so my life, like I'm still dealing with my autoimmune disease, like on a daily basis. I still don't take any drugs for it. I still do as much as I can. So what I'm doing really through the, through that haven't really talked about is I'm trying to reduce the inflammation before it even arises in my body rather than the conventional approach, which let's see inflammation arise and then tries to suppress it. Um, so I, I love, like, I'm very grateful my Ankolysing spondylitis. I have to very carefully listen to my body every single day to make sure I'm not overdoing it. I'm making sure I'm nurturing myself and I'm doing the right things to my body. Sometimes the things I do today are not the same things that I could do a year ago. So I think the lesson to tune into my body has been invaluable and I think it's just set me up for success, hopefully with my health for the rest of my life. But I also love being able to do the job that I'm doing. I love being able to pass on the message to other people and to give other people hope. And they didn't think that there was any hope because they couldn't get questions answered by that doctor, but actually, and they weren't really treating the root cause of a condition, they would just putting a plaster on it and pushing it down the road. So being able to have impactful conversations and make massive changes to my clients and live my life the way I live my life, doing what I want to do in Alaska specs. It's just amazing.
Speaker 2:Well that is excellent. And before I let you go, I want you to talk about some of your top recommendations to people. And let's start specifically with people who already have an autoimmune condition. What are some of the biggest things that you want? You know, you want your, your new clients to know,
Speaker 3:um, with all show mean disease. I think the first thing you need to look at is what are you eating? Are you eating a whole food, nutrient dense diet? And I imagine you probably talked about this lots in your podcast, but are you actually eating real food? So the foods that don't have the ingredient label on it. So the vegetables, the meats, the good quality fats and the protein because they're all going to nurture our body. We need to make sure that we are supporting our body with the nutrients that it needs and we're not putting extra pressure on our body through having the process foods that come out of a packet that are refined that are just going to make it worse. The second step I would do what is really, I would go and see someone to support you with looking at your digestive function and because they've, they've done experiments that show that everyone with an autoimmune disease has something called a leaky gut. So you really want to take steps to improving your digestion and there can be things that are lurking in your digestive system or it can not be functioning in a way that is optimal and I think getting someone to help you is really powerful, but if you don't want to do that just yet or any before you go and do that, you can just make sure you're sitting down and eating your meals in a relaxed state, you're really chewing your food because unless we do that, we're passing on food to the rest of our digestive system in a state that's not suitable. We can then have lots of foods like with the contained chicken broth or beef broth that also can really help heal our gut lining, which also really nourishing to the body and having things like Lebanon hot water in the morning I think is also a great way to help clear out our body. Help tends our body in that trip as well and so they're probably my top tips that were where I would start for anyone.
Speaker 2:I love that. And of course a tip you are not going to say, but I will say it, is that people ought to contact you. Uh, if, if someone listens to the show has an autoimmune disease, uh, I would highly recommend going over to chill and nourish.com. Is there any other ways you'd like people to reach out to you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so if you want to follow me on Instagram, my Instagram handles@chillandnourishandmyemailischarlotteactualandnourish.com and absolutely, please reach out there is, there's so much you can do, but then there's so much that um, I or anyone else as a practitioner can do to really help you to dig around to see what's really going on in your individual body that's really driving your condition. And it can be amazing how quickly you can turn around your health with some really simple changes.
Speaker 2:Okay. I have one more comment before I let you go. You said something a minute ago that I've never heard before and it's fascinating to me. You said that everyone with an autoimmune disease has a leaky gut. That's kind of an amazing statement I've never heard before.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So they, they ran an amazing experiment and it was really run by people that are very, have developed an the autoimmune paleo diet and everyone that they tested with an alter mean disease has a leaky gut. So, which is interesting because that will anyone, if you have a leaky gut, it means your immune system where we'll be more under stress and 80% of your immune system sits behind that gut lining and that, so therefore we really want to heal that gut, sort of improving what we eat through improving our digestion through making sure that we haven't got any, um, adverse gut, um, gut pathogens are happening. We really want to heal that, to stop that continual onslaught on our immune system that will be stressing out of our, our body and contributing to our Alterman disease.
Speaker 2:Fascinating. And for those of you interested in that, we actually had an episode episode one 15 with Michelle spring who talked about that, uh, exact paleo diet that Charlotte just mentioned. So you might want to check into that as well. So Charlotte, that is really fascinating. This whole interview has been really, really good. Is there anything else you want to share though before I let you go?
Speaker 3:Um, just one thing. I think that one thing we have forgotten today is listening to our own body. So if everyone could just start listening to the body, your body and the different signs and symptoms that it's giving you on a daily basis. Like are you getting a headache? Does your knee hurt? Does your hip hurt? Do you have energy levels in the afternoon? Do you not sleep well? Just start piecing those things together and stop putting a plaster on them and start working on the root cause of why those things are happening. Because they're all there to tell you a story. And it could be an early warning sign for something that's more serious. It's that going to crop up later down the road. So I think we all need to honor ourselves and listen to our body and what it's telling us.
Speaker 2:Well, that is excellent advice to end on. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Speaker 3:My pleasure.
Speaker 2:It has been terrific. And for those of you listening, this is Dave Sherwin wishing you health and success. Well, thanks again for listening. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. And just a reminder that that course, the mini course, health and fitness for busy professionals is available for free download at[inaudible] dot com so check that out. D I R O B[inaudible] dot com see you next time.