Your Body Has Been Whispering for Years - Here’s How to Listen With Dr. Amanda Adkins

Most chronic illnesses don’t appear overnight. In this episode, Dr. Amanda Adkins shares how simple daily habits, mindset shifts, and a holistic approach can lower your risk for diabetes, heart disease, and other preventable conditions.

If you’ve ever wondered why chronic conditions seem to “suddenly” appear in your 40s or 50s, today’s conversation will open your eyes. Dr. Amanda Adkins joins me to share her personal journey from obese teen to lifestyle medicine physician and why prevention starts long before symptoms show up.

We talk about the everyday habits driving the rise in diabetes and heart disease, what most people misunderstand about nutrition, and why mindset and spiritual health play a major role in healing and longevity. Dr. Adkins also breaks down three simple steps busy women can take this week to reduce inflammation, lower disease risk, and feel more in control of their health.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE:

• The hidden lifestyle patterns silently driving chronic disease
• Why “it just happened this decade” is a myth
• How spiritual and mindset alignment impact long-term wellness
• Three simple steps to start improving your health today

CONNECT WITH DR. AMANDA ADKINS

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Chapters

• 0:00 Rethinking Pills And Personalizing Care
• 3:39 The Show’s Mission And Host Introduction
• 4:52 Meet Dr. Amanda Atkins
• 6:28 From Teen Health Struggles To Prevention
• 8:34 Why Chronic Illness Is Rising
• 10:43 Foundations People Were Never Taught
• 13:02 What Holistic Health Really Means
• 15:03 Three Steps You Can Start This Week
• 17:10 Mindset, Identity, And Spiritual Motivation
• 19:04 Inside Dr. Amanda’s 12-Week Program
• 20:58 Where To Find Dr. Amanda
• 21:23 Host Wrap-Up And Resources

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 1:58

Medications certainly have their place. But what if there was a way to support your body naturally by working with your genetics?

SPEAKER_00: 2:06

We are a pill for an ill society. We take 18 pills per person per American per day. It was so hard to find the budget.

SPEAKER_02: 2:16

And for me to get well, it's a thousands of dollars. And I thought, but what do regular people do? This is not right. Despite my best efforts, I wasn't actually reversing disease and helping people to heal in the way that I thought I would.

SPEAKER_01: 2:28

We want to empower yourselves to take care of this root call. We don't just want to cover it up.

SPEAKER_02: 2:35

If you're ready to break free from outdated one-size-fits-all healthcare, you're in the right place. Welcome to Race This Group with Nature Genomics, brought to you by Interflow by Life Balance. You're the literature from We're All Unique right down to our DNA. So it's no wonder we respond differently to the same medications, food, and environment. How do you discover what your body needs? Which medications, foods, supplements, or exercises are right for you? How can you manage chronic conditions without highly wanting more prescriptions? That's what we're here to explore. I'm your host, Ashwick's More Lawful, Dr. Pharmacy, Metogenomics Specialist, and your partner in reimagining how we personalize care for better outcomes. Whether you're a patient or a practitioner, let's raise this script and bring healthcare to higher levels together. Because the future of health is personal. I think almost all of us have experienced that. I thought I was doing okay moment. And it can be scary, but the truth is most chronic conditions don't show up overnight. They build quietly, slowly, underneath the surface of our busy lives. And that's exactly what today's guest is here to help us understand. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Amanda Atkins, MD, a double board certified internal medicine and lifestyle medicine physician, health strategist, and owner of Atkins Enlightenment Lifestyle Medicine. She specializes in holistic health and lifestyle-driven prevention, helping people avoid chronic illnesses like diabetes and heart disease by taking a whole person approach to wellness. Her mission is simple: help people become healthier again. What I love about Dr. Amanda is how personal her approach is. She's lived through her own health challenges. She knows what it's like to feel overwhelmed and unsure where to start. And she has spent decades helping people build health from the inside out, not with extremes, but with simple, sustainable steps that actually fit into real life. Today she's sharing the lifestyle patterns that quietly shape your health, the role mindset and spirituality play in prevention, and the three things you can do this week to support your long-term wellness. Let's get into it. Dr. Amanda, welcome to Raise the Script of Neutrogenomics. I'm so glad you're here.

SPEAKER_01: 5:22

Thank you so much for having me. I'm going to look forward to talking to you today.

SPEAKER_02: 5:26

Likewise. Now, could you tell us a little bit more about you? I know your work centers around helping people avoid these chronic illnesses. Um, but what led you toward a preventative, holistic approach rather than a traditional treatment-based model?

SPEAKER_01: 5:42

Yes, so I always tell people this goes back decades. So let me let me do the short version of the decade story. So I can tell you that I want to become a physician since I was 12 years old. And I just thought that the human body worked miraculously. And I always have to give a shout out to my health sixth grade teacher, Dr. Ivy, who um at the time it was in the 80s. So he really made, you know, learning fun. We didn't have all these fancy things with technology back then. And he actually set on the ground the cardiovascular system and how the blood flowed through the body. And I just thought it was, you know, fascinating. No one in my family was in medicine or anything like that. And I was just like, from that point, I was like, oh, I want to become a doctor. I want to actually help people. Um, but the actual preventative part came later, later on after I myself found out I was an obese teenager at the age of 16. Um, actually at the age of 14, I weighed 199 pounds and I was like, there's no way I'm going to continue on this journey. I have to do something to help myself because in my family was heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure. I remember going to my grandmother's hospital when she was about to have open heart surgery. And I'm like, I don't want this. So the preventive part came from me actually working on myself, and then others um starting to ask me, well, what else can I do besides medication to actually help me with these illnesses and then also not to get these illnesses? So that's how I ended up actually in lifestyle medicine after doing internal medicine in residency and everything. So I tell people it's it's just been a lifelong journey of my own to actually prevent it for myself and then now prevent it for others.

SPEAKER_02: 7:29

You know, I love that because so many people don't realize how preventable these conditions can be. And, you know, based on your practice, Dr. Amanda, what do you feel are the biggest everyday lifestyle factors driving the rise of conditions like diabetes and heart disease today?

SPEAKER_01: 7:48

So, number one, I always tell people is nutrition, what we are putting in our mouth. And they people are like, well, you know, I ate this, I ate the same thing that my grandmother ate, and she didn't have this, and she lived to be like 90 years old. And I'm like, um, still sometimes the food is not the same. We get a lot more processed foods at this point in time. Um, the soil is different, and so we just have to take care of our bodies um a little bit better. And also, I point out that um back in the day we were moving more. Um, now we sit a lot. And so people are like, oh, okay, I guess you're right. Um, but number one is um I always have people focus on their nutrition first, what they're eating, how much they're eating, and um trying to get them to eat more fiber to definitely decrease the inflammation that's going on in their body. And um, I will say out 99% of the time, we could always find something that they can change in their eating style that will help them to prevent these illnesses for themselves.

SPEAKER_02: 8:47

Yeah, you know, and and um another thing too that I believe helps is understanding um why they develop these conditions. And as you pointed to you, the nutrition indeed is a big factor. And once they realize that uh what I am putting into my body, even what I'm exposing myself through, my environment, uh whether it's uh chemicals or stress and relationships or work and job, that all impacts uh those chronic conditions as well. So once they understand that why they can they can be empowered to take action.

SPEAKER_01: 9:24

Yes, that that is so true. So, like you said, there's other many factors um that go into it. And that's like the six pillars of lifestyle medicine. Um, but like nutrition is just my piece because I was like, that's what helped me the most. So I usually focus on that mostly. But you're right, there's the stress, the sleep, uh, social connections, all those things make a big difference for people's lives.

SPEAKER_02: 9:46

Yeah. Now, Dr. Amanda, you help people learn to be healthy, which is such a powerful phrase. What are some of the foundational skills or habits you find most people were never taught about their health?

SPEAKER_01: 10:01

So that one, that everything that they put in their body makes a difference. Like people are like, yeah, I know I'm supposed to eat vegetables, but I didn't know that if I don't, then it would make this big of an impact. So usually they're like, all of a sudden I have high blood pressure, all of a sudden I have diabetes. And I tell them, you know, that's not the case. Usually it's something that you've been doing over lifetime that is actually contributing to this inflammation that's going on in your body. And they're like, oh, I never even, you know, knew that I've been doing this to my body for years and it just didn't happen, you know, when I turned 40, because like it's always a new decade that someone said, well, it just happened in this decade of life. And I'm like, no, it's been happening for decades of your life. And when they look at it like that, they're usually more open to making changes and know that the changes won't be immediate because of this been built up over time. Because again, the body is miraculous. Um, it can stand a whole lot of punishment before it actually tells on you of what's going on. So um, when people actually learn that, they're like, okay, I can take this, I can start to make these changes in my life, and knowing that it's going to make a difference, um, sometimes for some people in the short term, but more likely in the longer term.

SPEAKER_02: 11:18

Yeah, we need to work with our body. You're right. The body is so strong and it puts up with a lot until by the time we start having those symptoms and feeling things, that's at the point where it's like, okay, we've I've had enough. You know, you've got to do something different. You got to lead me differently. And that um brings me to something I think your approach actually does so well. On you talk about holistic health as the key to preventing chronic disease. So I would love for you to define uh holistic health and why is it essential for preventing conditions like diabetes and heart disease.

SPEAKER_01: 11:55

So holistic health, I start with you know, the six pillars of lifestyle medicine. So we talk about plant, uh predominant nutrition, um, exercise, restorative sleep, um, stress reduction, um, social connection, and getting rid of toxic substances. Um, but the unique thing that I believe I bring to this is like when people are making their behavioral changes and bring in the spiritual aspect. Um, because I tell people, you know, we are, you know, soul, body, and spirit. And most of the time we're focusing mostly on the body and not necessarily the spirit and the soul part. And when we actually make a transition in our mind and thinking in that aspect, people are more likely to make the changes. So when we take care of this earthly suit and we call it the body, we're more able to do actually our spiritual work that we actually been set here to do. And that's why I call it like holistic health. Like sometimes people think of it just as the body, but I also bring in the spiritual and soul aspect of it.

SPEAKER_02: 12:55

I love that. I love that. Now, for uh someone who's listening, you know, they're I know on my um my listeners, they tend to be busy, busy women. Um, they're overwhelmed, uh, they're unsure where to start. What are three simple, sustainable steps they can take this week to lower their risk of chronic illness? What would you say?

SPEAKER_01: 13:14

So, number one, add in more vegetables to every single meal. Most of the time we are fiber, fiber, fiber deficient. And if you just add it in, don't have to worry about taking things away, but just add in some type of vegetable to every meal. Um, the next thing I would say is move your body every single day. So we want to be up and moving. And I always like snicker when I say that because most time we're sitting when I'm saying this to people and they're like, yes, you say move your body, but you want to be getting up like every hour. I like love my Apple Watch that like reminds me to get up. You've been sitting at the computer too long, get up and move around because we are actually um mammals, we're meant to move, we're supposed to be moving around. And then the last thing is to bring in that spiritual aspect to do something to actually reduce that everyday stress that we have because it's that chronic stress that is causing um a lot of the illnesses for us, also. So you want to do something like prayer, meditation, journaling, and you want to do that every single day. You don't want to wait till something um comes overwhelming. And it doesn't have to be anything um, you know, spectacular, you don't have to have this, you know, wonderful journal. You can take a scrap piece of paper, and actually, one of my meditation teachers taught me this um scrap people scrap piece of paper, write whatever going down right now, and then just ball it up and throw it away. Like I'm done with that thought. I'm done with it. And that's the easiest thing because otherwise, if you think you have to have this journal, you have to have this music, you have to have something going on. No, the scrap piece of paper that's crap, I'm talking too fast, I'm getting too excited. The scrap piece of paper that's just sitting there can do wonders for your overall well-being. And so don't overthink it. Write down what's going on and just go with it. So those three simple things you can do, and you can do them today.

SPEAKER_02: 15:02

I love that. I love that. The vegetables, the uh movements and the spiritual aspects, and that ties into the mindset. Um I believe it has a huge role in prevention. And in the my program, it's one of the it's the first thing that I discuss with them because we have these self-limited beliefs, we have they have so many things that they're bringing with them along their health journey. And I know you share a lot about being um intentional, intentional living and becoming your healthiest self. Uh, so I'm curious, uh, from your perspective, how much of preventing chronic illness is mindset and how can women shift into that healthier identity?

SPEAKER_01: 15:47

So it is the like you said, the first aspect that has to change because people know to eat vegetables, people know to exercise, but do they do it? And we always wonder like, why are you not doing what you know will help? And like you said, it's something that's holding them back. And when I actually figured out for myself, like this, I know what I'm doing now is going to cause harm. It's not gonna get me where I want, and I call it my own conviction. Once you understand the own your own conviction and what you're here to do, and that the path you're going down is not gonna lead you there, then that's where you can actually have that mindset shift. And so that's why I bring in the the spiritual aspect, um, especially with you know holy scriptures, when people actually pull those together and like realize what they're doing and actually um actually taking care of their own health is actually a form of worship. Um, if you are, you know, a Christian, like that's what I am for believers, and that's usually where I work with, um, that they look at it a lot different, like, okay, um, when I do certain things, this not is actually causing health, and it's not actually helping me to actually do a form of worship that I would agree with, you know. So if they if they look at it that way, then I see that most of my patients and clients actually start to make that shift and to also know to give themselves grace that it's not going to be um a total 180 um within the first day. But as you continue on like and just be more conscious of what you're doing and what you're thinking, um, then in the long run, it will be there.

SPEAKER_02: 17:25

Oh, yes, that's great, great advice. I love that. Now, um, Dr. Amanda, can you tell us about the holistic health programs that you offer? What does it look like to work with you? How do you support people in creating lasting change?

SPEAKER_01: 17:38

Yeah, so um I offer with my coaching program a 12-week program. And like I said, the first thing that we do is to focus on, you know, mindset, like you're saying you do, but we also focus on adding in those veggies. Um, so that's why I always tell people that's the first step to do. So when you actually look at your eating plan, and I always want people to see what they're currently doing and then see what they can add in, because the we none of us like taking away things. So, what can we add in to make you feel more whole? Um, and then um actually have people do a whole food plant-based kind of like cleanse is another step that we do. Um, because people sometimes are very hesitant to give up their animal products, I'll say. Um, they're like, I don't know if this will be a good thing or not. But they will actually see that they actually feel better, they rest better, they have better mental clarity when they actually take that and just eat their whole foods and just give that positive reinforcement for them to keep going. Um, and then as we get further along in the journey, um, say like month two, then that's when we look at other aspects of our health. So that's when the other six pillars are the other five pillars of lifestyle medicine come in to see really where they're struggling. Um, so like I have one lady that has like stress issues and then one like like sleep. And so then we really phone uh focus in on one of those other aspects of the uh pillars and then go from there.

SPEAKER_02: 19:08

Okay, wow. This is work that's so important and definitely needed. I know the listeners will want to stay connected uh with you. So where can they find you online and learn about your programs or follow your health tips?

SPEAKER_01: 19:23

Yes, so I point everyone to my website at www.dramandamd.com. Um, you can book appointments with me there. Um, you can also find my like YouTube channel and then any other social media from there.

SPEAKER_02: 19:37

Perfect. And I will make sure I have those in the show notes for everyone to easily assess, have access to you, Dr. Amanda. It's been a pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you so much uh for sharing your viewpoints and sharing your program with us.

SPEAKER_01: 19:52

Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed talking to you today.

SPEAKER_02: 19:55

I hope this conversation with Dr. Amanda Atkins encouraged you to slow down and really look at the pattern shaping your health, not from fear, but from awareness. Her reminder that chronic illness builds over years is something we all need to hear. And it's never too late to start making intentional choices that support your body. If today's episode resonated with you, I highly encourage you to stay connected with Dr. Amanda. You can learn more about her work, her programs, and her holistic approach to preventing chronic disease at dramandamd.com. She has such a powerful way of helping people shift from overwhelm to clarity. And of course, if you'd like to learn more about how your DNA, lifestyle, and environment work together to shape your health, you can visit me at thelifebalance.com. That's www.thebalance.com. That's where you'll find resources, programs, and conversations like this one to help you design wellness that fits your life, not the other way around. You'll also find your inner CEO Blueprint. It's a free guide that walks you through five DNA-based strategies to boost your energy, clarity, and confidence without extremes or burnout. And if you're a healthcare or wellness professional, pharmacist, nurse, practitioner, health coach, MD, you'll want to explore the DNA strategy starter kit at the same site. It's a practical roadmap for integrating nutrigenomics into your practice so you can help your patients and clients create precision wellness plans that truly last. Because health is not guesswork, it's design. Talk to you next Friday. Until then, always remember to raise the script on health because together we can bring healthcare to higher levels. Raise the script with Nutrigenomics is a production of Inher Glow by Life Balance.