Ep. 51 - Transforming Pain Into Purpose and Power Through Holistic Health with Amanda Soukoulis

Struggling with stubborn health issues like unexplained fatigue, brain fog, or gut problems that doctors can’t solve? In this episode, we reveal how functional medicine and advanced self-tracking tools can help you uncover the real root causes of your symptoms and finally reclaim your energy, focus, and vitality. Amanda Soukoulis, a former private equity professional turned functional health practitioner, shares her inspiring story of hitting rock bottom in her mid-twenties—and how she transformed her pain into purpose.

Learn about Amanda’s groundbreaking U3 system (“Uncover, Uproot, Unleash”), which uses comprehensive lab testing and data-driven strategies to personalize healing and optimize wellness. Discover the underrated power of peptides, the connection between gut health and brain function, and why investing in your well-being pays lifelong dividends. Plus, Amanda offers actionable tips on harnessing wearables like Whoop, breaking free from overwhelm, and why you don’t have to heal alone.

Whether you’re a high-achiever burned out by stress, someone tired of being dismissed by the healthcare system, or simply seeking holistic ways to feel your absolute best—this episode will spark hope, provide real solutions, and help you step into your highest potential. Tune in now to learn how your health can become your greatest investment!

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• Turning health challenges into purpose
• Functional lab testing for root causes
• Personalized approaches to optimal wellness
• The power of peptide therapies
• Overcoming chronic illness with self-advocacy

view extended shownotes here

Subscribe to Sense of Peace (Kathy's Substack) today!

RECEIVE the attention you need to reconnect with your purpose. Click here to learn more about individual coaching with Kathy!

If this resonated, the most generous thing you can do is share it with one woman who needs to hear it. One share grows this community more than any algorithm.

Follow the show on your favorite platform, and come find me on Substack at senseofpeace.substack.com — that’s where the deeper conversation lives.

And if you’re ready to stop just listening and start doing this work — visit kathywashburn.net. I’d love to talk with you. 

Until next time — keep investing in yourself. It is always, always worth it.

#SpreadMadLove

Transcript

Ep. 51 - Transforming Pain Into Purpose and Power Through Holistic Health with Amanda Soukoulis

[00:00:00] Today's guest is Amanda Soukoulis, a young CPA turned functional medicine nutrition practitioner. Our discussion circles around bridging emotional healing and functional testing in order to help clients truly understand how the dis-ease. And their emotional body may be manifesting as physical symptoms and vice versa, often in ways that they've never connected before.

Amanda explains her holistic approach, which includes comprehensive testing to uncover root causes and targeted protocols to address imbalances. She emphasizes the importance of addressing the whole person body, mind, and emotions to achieve lasting transformation. It is my hope. By the end of this conversation, you will be encouraged to [00:01:00] prioritize your health.

May this podcast be a catalyst for you to become the better version of you just bursting to step forward. You are listening to the Investment of Self podcast where we uncover ways to reduce dis-ease and live authentically. Welcome. I am Kathy Washburn, your host. I'm a 20 year advanced stage cancer survivor who only recently realized the importance of investing in myself. I created this podcast to connect the work and research of knowledge experts directly to you.

The humans, their work can help.

Introduction and Warm Welcome

Kathy Washburn: Welcome, Amanda Soukoulis. It is so exciting to see your beautiful smile. How are you today? I. 

Amanda Soukoulis: I'm doing so well. How are you? Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited for our [00:02:00] conversation today. 

Kathy Washburn: Oh, as am I have to say I saw Amanda speak at a conference I was at recently, and first of all, her zest like just leaped off the stage, but her story was remarkable.

Her and I, she's much younger than I am, but we both came from the world of investments. She you were in private equity, is that correct? 

Amanda Soukoulis: Yes. 

Kathy Washburn: Yeah. I was in the less sexy municipal bond world. 

Amanda Soukoulis: Hey, there, there, those are a stable investment, so a lot of 

Kathy Washburn: them this is true, but I'm gonna start it off.

I'm gonna invite Amanda to introduce herself with one of my favorite narrative coaching questions. 

Amanda's Life-Changing Health Journey

Kathy Washburn: I want you to just give us a little summary and maybe just give us a high point in your life, a low point in your life, and a turning point in your life. 

Amanda Soukoulis: Yeah I think the low point and the turning point kind of are one and the same for me.

And [00:03:00] I will say that the lowest point that I can remember actually happened on Christmas day and I was back home where I grew up in California at my parents' house, and I woke up in my childhood bedroom. And which is still to this day, it's the most beautiful painting of like, this like grownup princess room is how I would put it.

Aw. So beautiful. And I woke up, walked into my bathroom, and I remember looking at myself in the mirror and I didn't recognize myself, and my whole body was covered in hives. I had chills, I had body aches. I had a fever. And I felt like a prisoner in my own body. And I had just gotten test results back between Thanksgiving and Christmas of what had been transpiring over the past six months.

And what we had uncovered was that my gut [00:04:00] had a bacterial pathogen in it that was wreaking havoc on my body. And so I remember waking up on Christmas day and I didn't even have the energy to. Move anywhere other than the couch or my bed. And it's so unlike me to say, Hey, I cannot make it family. I literally cannot make it.

My family thought I was being dramatic, and then they realized how serious it was of what I was walking through, and it breaks my heart because that would've been the last Christmas that I would've gotten to spend with my grandma. And so, but that's just where my body was at that point. And. You know, that's when I realized if you don't have your health, nothing else matters.

Really, truly. from there, instead of asking why me, I said it had to be me. And that's kind of the turning point that happened. I had been really dismissed by a lot of doctors They kind of were saying [00:05:00] in one sense or another, like, you're crazy. Like, it's all in your head, or I'm not worried about this.

And I said, okay, well, you're not worried about it, but I'm worried about it. So I knew that if I wanted there to be change, I would have to become the CEO of my health. So that was the turning point for me. And as you have already mentioned I did come from the world of private equity. I have my master's degree.

I studied finance and accounting, went and jumped into the corporate world, then went and worked in private equity, and I was on paper living the dream of what someone from my background would be doing. Yet I found myself consumed by brain fog with a gut that was descended. Feeling like a literal prisoner in my own body.

And it's especially frustrating because I had spent so many years as an athlete and as a coach, really fine tuning my body, taking care of myself in a way that I thought was a [00:06:00] standard of excellence. And so for my body to betray me like that, it was something that was like, oh, this is where your pain turns into purpose.

And then from there, your purpose into your power. And it's not my own power, but the power of the calling that was on my life. And so from there is where I launched my practice. 

Kathy Washburn: Wow. It's amazing. And I, can I ask how old you were when you found yourself? Christmas morning. That Christmas morning, 

Amanda Soukoulis: 26.

Kathy Washburn: 26. So I wasn't much older than you when I was experiencing something very similar of my body was definitely betraying me and the healthcare system acted like I was. Illusional and every time I went back they would just kind of roll their eyes and I, because my ex-husband's family were all doctors, I had like a plethora of doctors that I kept going to and.

They kept saying, you know, [00:07:00] you're healthy, you're fine. But I knew in my body I wasn't fine. And unlike you, I just avoided it until that fine found its way to cancer. And I really do believe that the misdiagnosis for so long was what led. To cancer, you know, these things that we ignore. And I also know you, like me, had a beautiful outside view of from the world, like from the outside in perfection.

Two kids, a dog, a picket fence, a great job in the investment world. And you, I love your Instagram by the way. It makes me smile. You're a dancer and you have an amazingly fitness aura about you. 

The Birth of the U3 System

Kathy Washburn: It's not just about like you wanna look good from the outside, it's really you're portraying this outside in kind of you like, and this leads us to what you have [00:08:00] come up with which I just think is so beautiful.

You call it the Youth three system. And I would love it if you could just tell us a little about what it is and. Even share with us a success story. It can be your own or one of your clients, but you, it's so brilliant. 

Amanda Soukoulis: well first of all, thank you. And you know, I think it's been such a journey to get to where I am.

And you mentioned about my Instagram and I remember just a few years back where. I didn't, I thought that being on camera, showing up on social media was something that was selfish. And so I had kind of told myself that narrative I. What I realized was I was behind hiding behind masks. So part of my healing journey, right?

My physical healing journey was also learning how to take off those masks show up as myself [00:09:00] authentically and vulnerably, and that's what's made the world of a difference. Thank you for sharing that means a lot to me because that's my goal with social media, is just to be able to connect with people, to show people there's a better way to live.

And that if you can optimize your health, you can literally go do what you were put on this planet to do, which for every one of us, that's gonna be something different. Yeah. But I love, love, love what I do because I help peak performers really. Walk through the U three system and what that stands for is uncover, uproot, unleash.

So step one, given my data background, right? I love numbers and what I tell people is I just took my love for numbers in financial statements and I just moved it into the human body. And I think that this is a little bit more impactful, to be honest with you. It's more fulfilling for me. [00:10:00] So step one is uncover.

I love to run functional lab tests. So we're gonna do comprehensive lab tests to really uncover what is the root cause of the cellular miscommunication that's going on inside of your body. Because oftentimes we have all of these symptoms, and the symptoms are actually a gift. They're a blessing. They are your body telling you, Hey, something is not right.

Like, think about if you're. Driving your car and something flashes on your dashboard, you ignore it for too long, you're gonna end up on the side of the road. 

Kathy Washburn: So 

Amanda Soukoulis: you wouldn't not take your car to a mechanic. And the same way, we shouldn't just keep ignoring and pushing down those symptoms. Those symptoms are gifts.

And so what I love about what I do is that I'm looking at the interconnectedness of the human body. So if someone comes to me and tells me that they have brain fog or they're dealing with some focus issues, [00:11:00] my thought is not let's fix the brain. My thought is how do we fix the gut? Because the gut and the brain have a very strong connection.

So step one, uncover, we're doing those functional lab tests that I could create. Entire picture of what's going on inside of your body. We're gonna run a gut zoomer, a hormone zoomer. We're gonna do blood work, we're gonna look at toxins, we're gonna look at your adrenals. And I also love to do genetics testing to really see, okay, 10% right comes from genetics.

Another 90% is environmental. But if we know what that 10% of genetics is, it can help us. Optimize and elevate that other 90% to the next level. 

Kathy Washburn: So 

Amanda Soukoulis: that's step one. Then step two, uproot. So once we actually figure out what's going on inside of the body, you leave that to me. 'cause sometimes these test results come back with like a hundred pages and so, and you know, I think this is so beautiful.

When I was four or five [00:12:00] years old, some of my core memories are actually sitting on the floor with my mom doing puzzles. We did puzzles every single day. I loved puzzles, and she would just sit there with me for hours doing puzzles. And so I think that was planting the seed for what I do now, because that's exactly what it is.

It's an entire puzzle that comes back, and I'm trying to figure out, okay, how do we bring your hormones into harmony while balancing your gut and bringing your adrenals down? So everything that we're doing. That's where we get to uproot. And so we're gonna uproot those chronic stressors, we're going to uproot those imbalances so that then we can step into what I call unleash, which I'm in the business of not just helping people heal, like my heart and my soul is with helping people optimize their health.

Because if you can optimize your health, you can optimize your life. And as I said, you can step into that purpose and that calling that you have. 

Kathy Washburn: Wow. [00:13:00] I love this idea of looking at these imbalances a as signs to help us. Shift and change, but be like a mad scientist, like this is a mystery and let me figure this puzzle out.

And I have this guide to help me look at this. It's really stunning to me how our modern healthcare system actually encourages us to disconnect to our body and hand the keys to the castle over to somebody in a white coat that knows better than we do about. The thing that we walk in all day, every day.

Amanda Soukoulis: Yeah. And you know, there's a need for the medical system. If I break my arm, like that's acute care. We're right away. But our country has been overridden, overburdened with. A chronic disease that probably started 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago. 

Kathy Washburn: And 

Amanda Soukoulis: so [00:14:00] we need to just go be on the surface level.

We actually have to go see what is happening. And you asked me to talk about one of my clients. 

Client Success Stories

Amanda Soukoulis: There's so many examples that I could use, but three come to mind and I'll make them brief. One, I had a client come to me that has had Hashimoto's, which is an autoimmune condition since she was 11 years old.

She says, no matter what I do, we cannot get my numbers down. And so I said, well, there's probably something I. Deeper rooted than just the Hashimoto's, the thyroid is signaling to something else in your body. And so sure enough, we ran those lab tests and we uncovered that she had a gut pathogen. Then she had a lot of mold in her body, and so the root cause of her thyroid problems is that we had to heal her gut and then get rid of the toxins, and we're actually still walking through her process right [00:15:00] now.

But she has seen tremendous results as far as weight coming off, which has been a big pain point. More importantly, we're getting rid of the gut bacteria. We're getting rid of those mycotoxins so that she doesn't have to keep going through this cycle. So that's one a second. A second one. I wish I could show you the before and after photo of it.

This client came to me found me actually on YouTube. So she was a complete stranger. She had gone to doctors for 10 plus years. She was in her early forties when she found me. And she had just chronic gut problems and it would look like she was. Literally seven months pregnant, it would just bloat seven months pregnant, and then a few days later it would look fine again.

And so we did all the comprehensive testing. I said, okay, this is our roadmap. This is what we're gonna do. Then we implemented, because I knew that she'd been struggling with [00:16:00] this for so long. We implemented what we call peptides, which peptides, they're naturally occurring in our body. They have absolutely transformed my health in my life.

And so I always, I'm a big believer, like I'm not gonna tell someone else to do something that I haven't already done. So I had used these peptides, I had seen the tremendous impacts that they've had on my health. So I said, Hey. We could go two different routes. We can go the antimicrobial supplement route for you to get rid of this bacteria, or we can go the peptide route.

So we want the peptide route for her as we were healing. And we did that alongside nutrition, alongside different lifestyle changes. And her gut literally went from here. So like it was so distended to. Wow. The before and after picture. It like looked like seven months pregnant to like a year postpartum when you are back in the best shape of your life.

And my favorite [00:17:00] piece was that she finally has the energy to go back and do hobbies that she hasn't done for years. And she actually, right when we started working together. Had just been laid off from her job and now she had the energy and courage to be able to launch her own business. And she, at the end of our time together, she told me, Amanda, I would not have had the courage to take on this client a year ago.

Wow. And because of the work that we've done, I've been able to step into that. And so that to me. That's what's the breakthrough? That's the transformation. Is it? It's, yes. It's the physical change, but it's also it. It's the newfound confidence, the newfound joy, people being able to get back to their relationships, back to their life.

Because when I was at my sickest, I. I started isolating myself because I didn't have the energy to even get up and like get on the trail and go for a walk with a friend. I was canceling on people left and right 'cause I didn't have that energy. Right. So I [00:18:00] know what it feels like and I know then what it feels like once you're on the other end of that healing to be able to step into that optimal living.

Kathy Washburn: That's stunning for. For those of listeners that don't know what peptides are, can you give us a little highlight? 

Understanding Peptides

Amanda Soukoulis: Yeah, so peptides, they are already naturally occurring in our body and they are just chains of amino acids, so proteins, right? They make up, they're made up of amino acids, soar peptides.

If it's over 50, it's a protein. If it's under. It's a peptide, and how I best explain them is that they are like re-signing messengers within our body. So they help restore function, they help accelerate recovery. They help just optimize and take it to the next, take your health to the next level. For me, there's like a bunch of different categories that they do, and they're very specific [00:19:00] messengers.

So if you want better sleep, like one that, the very first petta I was introduced to was called Epitol, and it was a 10 day reset for my pineal gland in the back of my brain. And what it does is it reset your circadian rhythm. My restorative sleep was at 48%. The average American is around 35 to 45%.

That's what stats show us. Mine was already on the higher end, which means I got pretty decent sleep. Three days into the reset, my restorative sleep shot up to 62%, and then months later. It is still on average, 60%. So I am getting sometimes on average, like five hours and 30 minutes of restorative sleep in a night.

And so WhatsApp allowed me to do, it's allowed me to. Recover quicker. It's allowed me to have more energy because I'm [00:20:00] getting deeper sleep. I'm able to recover. It's like helping my body be able to show up as effectively and efficiently. So that's just one example of peptides. There's peptides for longevity.

So if you're an endurance athlete, like specific ones for that. If you have a chronic injury, soft tissue repair. There's ones that I mentioned like for my one client for gut health. There's some for women that are simply just for like, beauty that help with skin and aesthetics. I mean, I guess it could be for men too, but it's more of a woman's thing, right?

Yeah. And the reason why I actually first started taking peptides. I got connected with Dr. Adam. I. In October of last year, and it was right after I found out that I had black mold. 

And he said, we need to, I was at a conference, he was speaking about stem cells and he said, we need to connect.

My wife actually has battled with molds. And so we hop on a [00:21:00] call and he says, okay, you're gonna start with Epitol and then you're gonna do this other peptide to get rid of the malt. I did a protocol for three months and then I retested at the end of it. All of the black mold gone just like that, and so, wow.

One, I knew that the purity of their products was high quality, and two, I knew that my body was primed to be able to respond well to the peptides because I had done all the healing work. Done all the work on my gut, done all the work on my nervous system, made sure I had all my basic foundations into play so that the peptides could actually do their job and help re-sign what, what had been misaligned within my body.

Kathy Washburn: Wow. Okay. That is stunning. I've been exposed to a lot of mold, so we're gonna have to talk offline later. Yes. Before we go, before we move on, I wanna hear the third story. 

Amanda Soukoulis: [00:22:00] Yes. The third story. So I know we are in a society where people struggle with a lot of anxiety and a lot of brain just imbalances.

And it almost comes to a place where. People have normalized it. 

Kathy Washburn: Yeah. 

Amanda Soukoulis: Like, oh, I've just lived with anxiety or lived with depression for my entire life. That is not normal. That is her body telling you that there is work that needs to be done from within. And I had a client come in and she said to me, I have really horrible allergies all the time.

My anxiety is through the roof. I said okay. So we did all her testing. I. Came back. There was one marker that was really high, and I'm like, okay, we need to test this as well. What we uncovered was that her body was having a histamine overload. What we had to do is we had to work her through a [00:23:00] histamine detox with a specific nutrition protocol and then add in some supplementation.

Transformational Health Journey

Amanda Soukoulis: And she went from having horrible allergies and anxiety almost every single day to none at all. And on top of that, she came in with chronic migraines 

Kathy Washburn: and it was like 

Amanda Soukoulis: five months later, and I was looking back when we first started. I was like, Hey, when was the last time you had a migraine? I don't know, Amanda, like four or five months ago.

And so from all of the mosaic that I had pieced together, I was able to put together this is what we needed to do, and it was simply just removing a few foods from her diet for a few months. To allow her body to detox the histamine. Her anxiety went away. Her migraines went away. She was able to show up better at work.

She was like, my mood is so much [00:24:00] better. And now she, she just got married, which is so exciting. And so it's like, it was just really cool because we had walked through all these things and she's like, it is it is been transformational. The fact I don't have to carry around my migraine medicine every day, let alone who knows what that migraine medicine is doing to the rest of her body.

Kathy Washburn: Wow. Those are three remarkable stories. 

Overcoming Overwhelm and Taking the First Step

Kathy Washburn: One of the things I'm taking away from that is this idea you mentioned briefly about a lot of these things are just cumulative. The result of a cumulative disconnection or misalignment or, and we often really do feel like. Oh, this is just my normal. We get so used to this that we don't even hear the signals anymore, and at the same time, there's so much overwhelm when we think about gosh, I really don't feel well, but where do I start?

I can go back to my primary [00:25:00] care, or I go and, you know, maybe I reach out to Amanda and see like, where can I start? But. There's a couple of things that I feel like there's hurdles. One, it's sometimes when people look forward, it's just like, wow, it's so overwhelming. I'm just gonna shut that down again and just keep moving as I'm moving.

And the other is this idea of. I gotta do this alone in the vortex of me. And sometimes people are Googling and thinking like, oh, I can do this. I can do this. Tell me there's one thing that I heard you say that has really stuck with me. I actually just quoted it in a blog post today that I did on Substack, where you said, look forward not far.

So let's start there. 

The Power of Focus and Delegation

Kathy Washburn: You have that just like how we deal with the overwhelm. Let's do that first. What does look forward? Not far mean. 

Amanda Soukoulis: To me, look forward. Not far [00:26:00] means have the vision, have the dreams. Know exactly where it is you want to be 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now and keep your eye on that vision, but take the next step in faith.

Focus on what is right in front of you. What is already in your hands? The grass is green where you water it. Right, and so knowing that, yes, of course there's gonna be analysis paralysis if we're trying to think about everything, but if we get really clear on who it is we want to be and what our core values are, that's something that drives me.

I know exactly what my core values are. Every single morning I read over myself. Who I am, who I want to be 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now, it doesn't change. And so it makes my guesses and my nose really easy. And so when I am looking forward and I'm saying, okay, what is my [00:27:00] day gonna look like today? Okay, well the, does this need to be, I use my like three A's, right?

Does this need to be automated? Does this need to be abolished or does it need to be a, to be a assigned to someone else, right. Delegated out. And so being able to do that. Allows me to focus on, okay, I'm gonna now double down on what makes me unique. For so long I tried to work on my weaknesses. I was told, work on your weaknesses, Amanda.

No. Double down on what makes you unique. Like, yes, it's good, but like. No that's what you delegate that out for. Because your time is precious. Your energy is precious. Why are you gonna spend time and energy on things that drain you of your energy? And so getting really clear, that's what I do.

I always get really clear on, okay, what are my intentions for this day, for this week, for this month? And then I just take one step forward 

Kathy Washburn: so that 

Amanda Soukoulis: another step forward. 

Kathy Washburn: Yeah, I look forward not [00:28:00] far. 

Investing in Your Health

Kathy Washburn: So the other element of this is like, oh, I can do this by myself. I can get myself health books. I can read about peptides and go start kicking 'em back.

And and I think you and I both work very similarly where we we're not cheap. It requires an investment but we're there by their, we're in it with them. So it's weekly. One-on-one calls. What, how do you, what do you see in the importance of that? Of this commitment? 

Amanda Soukoulis: Yeah, I think that's a great point.

Last year, my business coach was interviewing me on a podcast and she said, what is one thing that you would tell yourself when you were in the thick of your healing? And I said. Make the investment and do it from the beginning because I tried, well, really, my gut issues [00:29:00] started when I was 16 years old, so it had been years and years.

Of this disease, dis disease. Inside my body. But then it finally blew up and for so many years I had managed it and I had figured it out and I actually worked with like some wonderful functional people that had helped me get to where I was. But then when my health started to decline steadily, it was like six months of like radio silence from anyone that was in the healthcare space.

And I remember getting to a point it had to get. Like I would not have waited for it to get as bad as it did. 

Kathy Washburn: To 

Amanda Soukoulis: find the help. Because imagine how much quicker my healing could have potentially been. And you know, I find once I finally made the investment, it was such a great investment for me.

I mean, it's crazy 'cause I've invested now like pretty much $50,000. Health in like a year span. That was like the most amount that I had spent in a year. And that's 'cause for [00:30:00] me, if I don't have my health, nothing else matters. So I'm gonna double down on that. And then knowing that it's gonna pay dividends in the future.

And that's what I would say to people, yes, it's an investment, but if you don't have your health, you're not gonna be able, it puts your. It puts your dreams, your ambitions, on the back burner because you're just simply trying to just show up in your day to day. So imagine how much more money you can make, how much more time you could spend with the people that you love, how much more energy you can give.

You can't pour from an empty cup. So why would you let your health just keep being on the back burner? Why would you keep making excuses? There's really never gonna be the right time to invest in your health. 

Kathy Washburn: Yeah. 

Amanda Soukoulis: So. Eventually either you're gonna spend 2, 3, 4, 5 x. Like, it breaks my heart when there's people that come to me that are like, oh yeah, I have this much in medical debt because I didn't take care of my body [00:31:00] for the past 20 years.

I would, I love to help those people, but it took 20 years to get there. It's not gonna take two months to get back to where you want. 

Kathy Washburn: Yeah. 

Amanda Soukoulis: Yeah it's one of those things where you just decide, you make the decision. This is important to me. 'cause if I have my health, I can go do everything that I was put on this planet to do.

Kathy Washburn: That's so valid. And I, I. I hear that a lot from clients when they do feel the need and they reach out and they say, okay, I know I need help. And then we talk about the time commitment. We talk about the energy commitment, we talk about the financial commitment, and they're like, yeah I don't think I can do that right now.

And I often share with them, like, if you don't do it now, to help you be healthy, then you will do it later in helping you be unsick, you know, like you will, [00:32:00] you, this will accumulate into a, this dis disease will accumulate into disease. And at that point, like you said the costs are much higher and and.

I, I think it's hard for people to think about that future. Like, oh, it could get worse. I think our brains are like, stop us from thinking that can happen. But in this world today, there's so many different options. 

Using Technology for Health Awareness

Kathy Washburn: In fact, I love that your story, I read about your story and you said the first kind of thing that you noticed was you wear one of those.

What is it? Is that a whoop. Yeah, it's called a whoop. Yeah. Yeah. I bought my son's one of those, both of them for Christmas a few years ago. But that piece of technology around your wrist, you actually noticed that a sign that something was wrong. And I believe that, in this world of overwhelm with information, we can really use information to help [00:33:00] us and to help us be participants in our health versus being patient patients in our medical system.

So this does cost money. It does cost time and there are people like you in functional medicine that is often not covered by insurance 'cause. How could we possibly make the pharmaceutical companies more profitable if we cover functional medicine and rely on our own human body and our own choices to make the difference?

But tell me what how you share that with somebody that you're using. They can use this technology to really help them become experts on their own body. In fact, like let's just start with the whoop. 

Amanda Soukoulis: Yeah. Yeah. I love the whoop. I think that the first step towards change is awareness. 

And I have worn my whoop [00:34:00] since 2022. So it's been three years now, and what it does is it's a biometric tracking. Band on your wrist and it tracks your sleep, it tracks your recovery, it tracks your strain, which strain is just like your physical exertion in a day. It looks at your stress levels. And they actually just came out with a new upgraded version, which mine just, I just got notification right before this that mine came in the mail.

So I'm so excited. But they have a new updated version that is gonna actually tell you what your health. Age is so not your chronological age, but based on your habits every single day. Based on all of your metrics, what is your age and are you aging? At an accelerated rate, or are you slowing down your aging process with all of the good habits you have in place?

So what it does is every morning I wake up to my sleep score. That tells me how recovered [00:35:00] I am. So it's not technically a sleep score, it's a recovery score. I wake up to my recovery score every day and it tracks your heart rate variability is one piece that is telling you how balanced and ready your nervous system is to take on the day.

Everyone's numbers are gonna be different. The higher the better. So kind of going back to my story when. My, the very first sign that I knew that I was getting sick was at my HRV. It plummeted from a 90 down to a 60 overnight, and then it didn't go back up. And so that's when I went to the doctor and I said, Hey, this is what's happening.

And they completely just dismissed it probably because they had no education on HRV, so they just said, not like, let me look into it. It was like, oh, I'm not worried about that. I knew something was wrong 'cause my nervous system was off. That's what it does is that it clues you into what's going on in your body.

It's looking at your resting heart rate. It's really cool. It tracks your VO two max, [00:36:00] which is amazing 'cause that's like definitely an indicator for longevity and like your cardiovascular strength. It's gonna look at. For me it's been helpful because I would be one to overtrain and so my wrist will literally vibrate when I.

Have hit my threshold for the day for training. And so it says like, pretty much, okay Amanda, it's time to like fi, finish out your workout. It looks at sleep and that's where I've been able to track my restorative sleep. So I've been able to see the impact that Epia has had over the past eight months where my restorative sleep started at a 48%, right?

And now it's on average outta 60%, which is absolutely remarkable. And then every morning I wake up and I track my journal. So in my journal I'm tracking, okay, did I intermittent fast yesterday? Did I do asana? Did I do red light? Did I do a cold plunge? Did I eat too late? Like all of those little things, because really it's important to master the basics.

Kathy Washburn: [00:37:00] Until 

Amanda Soukoulis: you step onto the next level and mastering the basics to me is are you eating whole foods? Are you getting in enough water and electrolytes? Are you moving your body every day? Are you spending some time alone to recharge? Like all of those things, are you getting in quality relationships? How is your sleep?

All of those things. And so this whoop has helped me uncover what are the things that. Implement that, increase my HRV and what are the things that decrease my recovery score? And so looking at all of those things, then I'm able to say, oh, like for me, things that really decrease my recovery score. One is if I have gluten, it's like an automatic like.

For a lot of, I don't drink alcohol, but for people that drink alcohol, they often see like their recovery score, just like tanks, right? I mean, it's a poison, it's a toxin. So I'm not surprised by that. But on the flip side, like my recovery score is really high. If it [00:38:00] is. 79% sleep score or better.

So if I'm getting 79% of the sleep that I need in a night, my recovery is on average, I think it's like 11% higher. So it just goes to show how much my body needs sleep. 

Kathy Washburn: Wow. Yeah. So information is really powerful. Knowledge is power. Information is power, and it gives us choice. I love this idea. I am so grateful for your time.

I, I think that this is like one of these conversations that just spark so many possibilities for people. We will definitely have your contact information and your bio and everything in the show notes, but is there anything else that you wanna share? Before we go to our last question, anything that we missed or you wanna make sure like, wait, I gotta tell 'em this one thing.

Amanda Soukoulis: Something that I lead with and what my whole practice is grounded in is the saying, the [00:39:00] thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. But you were made to live life to the full and to live it abundantly. How I kind of dissect, steal, kill, and destroy is to rob you of your relationships, to take away your energy, to take you, pull you back from your purpose when your health is stripped from you.

so no one can pour from an empty cup. So make sure that if your health is not where you want it to be. Find the right person to partner with to find the answers so that you can optimize. I really believe in coaches because I have a coach for pretty much everything because I wanna time collapse and be able to get to where I am trying to go quicker.

And so that's what coaches do. They help you lose the confusion and they're just an expert in something that, that you might [00:40:00] be a beginner in. And so. They're able to help get you there a lot quicker than you might be able to with a little bit of a Google searches or chat GB Ts. So, that, that's what I would say because I know that everyone is put on this planet to do something remarkable.

There is a standard of excellence that we were born into this world, like with purpose, with a calling. And if you don't have your health, it's really hard to step into that. Your creativity goes away, your energy goes away, all those things. And so my heart is for people to be able to thrive, and the best way to do that is to optimize your health.

Final Thoughts and Reflections

Kathy Washburn: Thank you for your wisdom and really your generosity in the spirit. You are so aligned with what you're supposed to do in this world, and it is, it brings me so much peace knowing that humans are doing this at an earlier and earlier age. They're not waiting like I did till I was 50 to kind of.[00:41:00] 

Get that like woo, wake up call of things can be different. I'd like to close asking you a question. I ask all of my guests. If I were to crush you up and put your essence in pill form, what effect would you have on someone taking that pill?

Amanda Soukoulis: I think it's the sparkle effect. I think that something that. I really clinging to every day is to count it all joy. And I think I am able to do that because of the low lows that I have walked through. Most people probably you would look at me and you're like, oh, she's been through no trials or tribulations.

Oh, I've been through a lot of, I've been put through the fire a lot, but what that allows me to do. Is to then show up with more joy because I have an appreciation for those deep valleys. And so how I wanna be remembered is that I was a woman [00:42:00] of great joy and that I showed up with my sparkle.

Right? And that then allowed other people to give themselves permission to prosper as well. 

Kathy Washburn: If we could just. Encapsulate that and put it on shelves. It would be. It would be magical. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for sharing your sparkle with us today, Amanda. I am so grateful for your gift of time. Thank you.

I wish you well, my friend. 

Thank you so much for your gift of time and for tuning into the investment of self type C transformation podcast. Make sure to check out the show notes for this episode@kathywashburn.net slash podcast and give us a follow on Instagram at Kathy Washburn, D-O-T-N-E-T. If you liked this episode, make sure to follow investment of self type C transformation [00:43:00] and if you feel so moved.

I would love a review. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, I wish you well.