The Root of Dysfunction + Resiliency with Nikki Burnett (part 1)

You know that persistent health issue you've been dealing with? The one where every doctor says something different, every treatment helps a little but never completely? Functional nutritionist and "health detective" Nikki Burnett reveals why that's happening and how to finally get to the bottom of it.

Nikki's own journey through a two-year unrelenting headache transformed her understanding of health and ultimately led her to become the advocate patients desperately need. "Everybody thinks 'yes, I can help you,' but it's never the right answer for me," she recalls of her frustrating search for answers. This experience mirrors what so many face when dealing with chronic conditions—the endless cycle of practitioners, treatments, and disappointments that drain both finances and hope.

The game-changing perspective Nikki offers is simple yet profound: your body isn't broken. Those symptoms aren't dysfunction—they're communication. "Our body's main job is to keep us alive," she explains. "If there's a symptom or pain, it's the body talking to us." This shift in thinking transforms how we approach healing, moving us from suppressing symptoms to genuinely listening to what our bodies need.

Throughout our conversation, Nikki unpacks why conventional diagnoses often fall short (IBS is just "a list of symptoms with an acronym"), how childhood experiences like antibiotic use can affect adult health, and why asking "why" repeatedly is your most powerful tool in health discovery. She details her comprehensive approach that examines everything from toxin exposure and mold issues to emotional trauma stored in the body.

For anyone struggling with chronic health issues or simply wanting to optimize their wellbeing, this episode offers both practical wisdom and renewed hope. You'll walk away understanding how to reclaim your power in your health journey and finally start addressing the root causes rather than just managing symptoms.

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:06

All of us reach a point in time where we are depleted and need to somehow find a way to reignite the fire within. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience, where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. Resilience where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. We'll discuss the art of reigniting our passion and strategies to stoke our enthusiasm. And now here are your hosts, natalie Davis and Pamela Cass.

Speaker 2 0:41

Welcome back to another episode of reignite resilience Resilience. I'm your co-host, natalie Davis, and so excited to be back with all of you, and joining me, of course, is your co-host, pam Kass. Hello Pam, how are you today?

Speaker 3 0:53

I am fabulous. We are finishing up Monday. I'm kind of laughing right now because it's probably 90 degrees today. It is hot, it is. My office upstairs tends to be a little hotter, so I've got a fan blowing on me. But I'm at the point in my life where I don't know if I'm having a hot flash or if I'm just hot.

Speaker 2 1:12

It's like what is happening? Isn't it the same? I don't know if it's the same. It's one and the same, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 1:19

It's just cruel and unusual punishment, and so I may or may not be having hot flashes. If I get really sparkly, it might be.

Speaker 2 1:29

I am right there and you're right. It is exactly 90 degrees right now. And I had a conversation with some clients and friends and we were standing outside and everyone's just chatting and I'm like, do we have to have this conversation outside? Can we go? Because I can just feel my body temperature rising and I just know it's a good three hours before I can regulate that again. And so here we are. This is, you know, I don't know what season. This is called Womanhood. We're just going to call it that Wisdom.

Speaker 4 1:57

It's wisdom, wisdom.

Speaker 3 1:58

It is wisdom.

Speaker 4 2:00

That's what I keep telling myself.

Speaker 3 2:05

We're that's what I keep telling myself exactly.

Speaker 2 2:06

We're so full of wisdom that it's just coming through heat it's exactly I was gonna say we could make a shirt of where there's wisdom, there's warmth yes, yes, yes oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 2:18

Well, pam, we have a guest with us joining today, and which is which is a little bit of a surprise. You know, we've had a few episodes where it's you and I this our travel episode just dropped and I don't know if we've had an episode with more laughter ever. But there you have it. It's travel season, but we have a guest joining us. Why don't you tell our listeners who's joining us?

Speaker 3 2:39

today absolutely super excited. So today we have a Nikki Burnett. She is a functional nutritionist and health detective on a mission to revolutionize health. Nikki is also the host of Taste Life Nutrition radio and podcast. Welcome, I am so excited for you to be here and to learn from you. So love to hear kind of your story and what brought you to where you are today and what you're doing. Just small question.

Speaker 4 3:32

Let's see where do we start. So I'll keep it as lean as possible and then you can just ask questions as you want to ask, if that's how we want to do this. But essentially I've always been a science nerd, but I only sort of made my way into nutrition kind of accidentally. So I'll say, you know, since the show is on resilience, it's so much fun, it's also hard, but it's so much fun when you have the opportunity to look backwards at why you are where you are today because of where you were before.

Speaker 4 3:58

And so I had my own journey, you know, sort of this pain journey, right, it was two years of this headache. It never went away. I didn't know if I was dying, I didn't know if I had a tumor, I didn't know what was going on, right, and it was. It impacts everything about you. And so my journey in my own health was, you know, being my own advocate, you know, and trying all of the modalities and spending all of the money and doing all of the things that so many people go through and my patients and clients today with they're going through and struggling with. It takes up everything that you're doing, it takes up every thought that you have it, takes up your bank account and you're still going. What is going on with me and why? And so from that point, you know, I sort of made my way through the medical care system, but then I also was working in the medical care system but then also working on my own health, figuring all of those pieces out and then also then figuring out I really enjoy and appreciate natural health and how can I be my best in natural health.

Speaker 4 5:06

So move through the journey of pharmaceuticals, both personally as well, as you know, in my work life, as well as the medical devices, but then finally found my place in nutrition. It's like this is where I need to be and this is why you know I'd gotten, you know, figured out my headache stuff. It was a bunch of, you know, my biomechanically kind of a mess, but biochemically I'm great. So, as you don't get a curve in my spine, so I think it just created this headache and so, as you're figuring out everything that helps you to optimize, I then wanted to help others do the same thing and, as I'm learning and working more with people who are struggling with chronic conditions and chronic diseases and all of these things, I want to be able to share what I know in my journey and because there's so much out there that can be so supportive and beneficial for all of us. So that was not very clean and clear, but that's what it was.

Speaker 3 6:07

Share with our listeners a little bit about what natural medicine is, for those that have never really heard that term or don't really understand what that is.

Understanding Natural Medicine Approach

Speaker 4 6:15

So, as a functional nutritionist, you can also. You know there's a there's this whole world of natural medicine, right, I don't practice medicine, but I practice nutrition. So you've got your holistic and your functional and your integrative and all of these things. Ideally, though, in the way that I'm trained, you want to understand the root cause of dysfunction. I'm going to say the word dysfunction. I'm going to also tell you that I don't like the word dysfunction.

Speaker 4 6:41

Dysfunction makes it easy for everybody to understand, right? If I have symptoms, it's a dysfunction. If I have a GI thing, it's a dysfunction. What I fully believe to be the case, though, is it's not a dysfunction. Our body's main goal, what it does for us it's so beautifully, beautifully created is that its main job is to keep us alive. So if there is something that's happening with us, if there's a symptom or a pain or whatever the case may be, a full-on disease right, there's some pretty scary ones out there it's the body talking to us. It's doing what it knows to help us say hey, I need your help now. I'm not sure you know, and we need to learn how to pay attention to that. So that's where I come in, whether it's with functional lab testing, looking at history, understanding stress and trauma and all of these things that can play a role into health and disease and dysfunction. Let's find what that might be and let's help to give the body what it needs to manage what it's trying to tell us.

Speaker 2 7:43

I think that's huge, absolutely. And, nikki, for your own personal journey. You said that you started down this path after suffering from headaches, migraine type symptoms. How long did that last? And kind of explain to us where you were? Because I feel, when you have any of these conditions that pop up, we go from a place of fear and then we're also trying to like navigate through the symptoms and discover solutions, for which is always the catch-22, right Like we want a solution, we need to find a cure, we want the reprieve, but we're also experiencing those same symptoms at the exact same time. So how long did you experience that and what was that journey like until you were able to find the solution for yourself that you're now able to help others with?

Speaker 4 9:22

Sure. So it was two years and so, interestingly, I had been dating my now husband for a year. I remember the night we were babysitting his cousins that we walked out and I said I have this headache and it was just this bizarre situation where you know, we, you know, often we'll have monthly headaches and things like that, but it was a very off time for me and it just didn't. It never went away. And so over that two year period was that time where you know, I went the conventional medical route. I went to, I got the pain relievers and the muscle relaxants and thankfully, you know a lot of times we're prescribed on like antidepressants and things like that. I feel very grateful that I never went down that road, especially with what we know now about some of these things.

Speaker 4 10:12

Then I went outside, I went to the dentist and I went and I had colonics and I did GI stuff and I did anti-candida stuff and I mean the whole thing. Right, you go and you do, and I saw the practitioners and this is what I got and this is what I hear a lot with my clients and patients now is everybody knows the answer, but it's never the right answer for me. Right, so everybody can help, like everybody thinks, yes, I can help you, yes, I can help you, and we are. I, me as the client or the patient. I'm sitting here going, I I don't know if I'm dying, I'm struggling, I don't know what to do. You know, I had went to the eye doctor and he said yeah, you know what, I had his receptionist. So he was saying I had my receptionist who had a headache, had a brain tumor, and she died.

Speaker 3 11:00

I was like why would you say that?

Speaker 4 11:09

Wow, it's an amazing place to be and there's lots of life lessons came out of that whole situation, and that one I'll never forget.

Speaker 2 11:21

People will say the darndest things, not realizing right, and I mean, let's just face it like it was a matter of time, had he not said it before. You go to the web and start searching and that's usually the end result. It is you are dying, right, like it's never a here's. Here's a natural way to heal it. It's, it's you're dying, yes, but to tell that to your patient?

Speaker 4 11:46

Yeah, it is. It's interesting, and I hear stories like this a lot, where there's a. I think oftentimes it's sad, but maybe a bit necessary, that there is this intentional disconnect between doctor and patient because there's so much emotion that could be wrapped up into what doctors do on a daily basis. I do think sometimes it can go too far, though, right, I mean, I work with patients and clients every day and I feel their emotions every day, partly because I felt it before. But I don't want to not have that, because the struggle is real, right, and so I think it's important to be to a degree in the same place and have that empathy and understanding. But some of us can take on too much of it too, so it's a hard balance to find.

Speaker 3 12:34

It is, and it's hard to find those doctors that are willing to take that extra step and ask some of those extra questions. I think of the doctor that I had for all three of my kids and then he retired, which I thought was really selfish. But he retired and he was one of those doctors that you would show up and you're like, hey, this is what's going on. And he goes, okay, hold on. And he would go get the big medical book and he would like flip through it and cause he didn't know all the answers and I just love that he, like, would spend the time to research and to figure out what was going on before. It was just like, well, let me just write you a prescription and you'll feel better.

Speaker 3 13:11

So yeah, you said being your own advocate and it's interesting. I was with a group this last week and that same thing came up. Somebody was dealing with some sort of health issue and they had they kept going back and they would go to different doctors and it took multiple doctors, multiple them doing their own research and demanding tests being done. I thought it was just interesting, the whole advocacy. So what would your thoughts be for people that are listening to this when you have something happening?

Finding Your Power in Health Challenges

Speaker 4 13:40

I think that, unfortunately, what, what a lot of people I see start to experience, is the loss of power. And you know, when you don't know and it's not not everybody's a doctor, right. Not everybody's a nutritionist, not everybody's a bookkeeper right, there's. You know, I don't feel very empowered when I'm doing my own books, and so when, when people are out of their comfort zone and struggling at the same time, and then going back to you know, it's the same thing over and, over and over again, let's try another drug, or let's try another practitioner or another doctor or another device, or whatever the case may be, the frustration, there's fear, there's frustration, there's a perceived loss of power, and I think that what I hope for is, as a patient and as those who are struggling, is we start to take that step back and say I do have the power, that step back and say I do have the power. I'm here to ask the questions and to do my best to understand and not leave everything in the hands of someone else, because this is my body. My body may be telling me things that I don't understand, but I need to learn how to listen to it and I want to know what it's telling me and to never be told that it's all in my head or that you're just sad, or that you're just upset, or whatever the case may be, because I hear this a lot. Also, there's this something, when we don't have a diagnosis or something that we don't understand, which, to me, a diagnosis is a list of symptoms, right. Then we just want to give it a name, right? So, like IBS. What is IBS? Well, it's bellyache, right, or it's heartburn, or it's a list of these GI symptoms, but we don't have, we don't really know what it is or why it's there. So we give it a, an acronym, right, and so, taking that control and saying, and sorry, the things keep coming to me, but it's always asking why, why?

Speaker 4 15:40

I had a of mine. She was another practitioner and she was like you know, it's like a little kid, a little five-year-old. It's why, why, why, why, why Never stop asking why, if you have IBS, why? Well, maybe you have infection? Why did you have trauma? Why did you, you know, and it's going deeper and deeper and deeper, as deep as you can possibly go, which is why, you know, we do the lab testing and we want to look at, you know, and I keep going back to the gut, because everybody understands the gut.

Speaker 4 16:05

But if we're struggling with symptoms, these tests can give us so much information. We don't always need them, but the more information we have, the more targeted we can be and the better off we are. And to me that's power. When I can see on a piece of paper what the body's trying to tell me and say here's your body, this is why you're struggling with these symptoms. There's that power that you're able to take that back and say okay, I think we might know what to do with this Right, or at least we can start down that road. I love that.

Speaker 2 16:39

Nikki, in your own personal journey. Is that what led you down the space of nutrition, because you mentioned, like, just integrating nutrition and being a nutritionist and what do we call it Like mainstream nutrition, traditional medical field, the traditional medical field that we see? Was it your own personal journey that started to lead you down this path, or was it a passion or interest that you had prior to the two year headache that you experienced?

Speaker 4 17:04

It's such a good question For one. You know, a lot of people ask me, you know, why are you doing what you're doing? And every time I'll say God, because that really is truly, fully the case. Because I didn't know where I was going, I didn't know the reason behind all of this stuff. I didn't go to school to be a nutritionist early on. So you know, I said, you know, I'm a science nerd, I'm an animal nerd, I love horses, I love dogs. I was going to go to vet school. I did not.

Speaker 4 17:30

But my master's degree is in animal science. I master's degrees in animal science and I'm like, what am I going to do with this? So, so that's you know. Again, you're kind of going through the process of what am I going to do, what do I want to do, what am I interested in? And you know, I jumped around a little bit but I did find, early on, after grad it was after grad school in college, and grad school it was, you know, pizza and nachos and beer and the whole thing it was. It was great.

Speaker 2 17:57

Yes, typical college experience? Yeah, exactly.

From Animal Science to Nutrition

Speaker 4 18:03

But then I just started. Believe it or not, there are two things that stick out to me. One is I was dating a guy at the time who took me into my first health food store. I was like, oh, this is cool. Time he took me into my first health food store, I was like, oh, this is cool, what is this? And he there were all these bulk herbs and I had this very overwhelmed feeling of or it was a feeling of overwhelm going how would you ever know what to do with all of this stuff? And then it was but how cool is that that you have all these bulk medicinal herbs for whatever? So it was that experience.

Speaker 4 18:34

And then another one where I started reading for whatever. So it was that experience. And then another one where I started reading, for whatever reason, about a particular amino acid. I don't know why. It's not like I was studying nutrition but started reading on it and then just started going down the path. So it was these two things fairly close together that I just started. I just couldn't get enough. And so it just down the road of learning on my own for a whole bunch of years until I decided to actually go to nutrition school.

Speaker 4 19:02

So that was the time where I you know, I, you know sold pharmaceuticals and sold surgical devices and was kind of making my way through the corporate American world and then moved up here to Denver and was laid off from this, you know, doing business development for this medical company. I was like you know, this is a great gig, you know. And I was laid off and I was super frustrated and I met up with a friend of mine and he's like I'm going to nutrition school and I went, what? Totally? The light bulb went off and I went I'm done with corporate America, anyway, I'm just kind of kicking my tail a little bit and this is where I need to be. And so that's what I did. I came home, said, honey, I'm going back to school.

Speaker 2 19:50

And it's not animal science this time. So it's okay. Yeah, right, right, I love that, but not animal science this time. So it's okay, right, I love that. And so listening to that calling, like and it sounds like it was always, it's always been a calling, even though it may not the puzzle pieces may not seem to create the picture for you Looking at where you are now, it's kind of led you to what you're doing and how you're helping people.

Speaker 4 20:15

Yeah, it's kind of led you to to, to what you're doing and and how you're helping people. Yeah, it's true, and I will throw in there that I do help people feed. I teach people how to feed their dogs raw food. Okay, I love that it's still still a little bit.

Speaker 3 20:28

So it's still, it's still combines it a little bit.

Speaker 2 20:31

Of course I love that. I love that. Well, tell us a little bit about the work that you do with your, with your patients, your clients that you work with now.

Working with Clients: Root Cause Solutions

Speaker 4 20:40

So I do say patients and clients If I'm working in my own practice, they're my clients. I can they can. I can say patients if I'm working with the clinicians who I collaborate with because I see I'm seeing their patients, for what I've been doing in my own practice over the last 10 plus years really is doing my best to do exactly what I said. So I want to listen to their history. You know I always send a really big intake. People are like that took me so long. I said have you ever done it before? No, okay, this is what we need, right. We need to have the history. I need to know if you are a vaginal birth or a C-section, right. I need to know if you were breastfed. I need to know if you had, you know, ear infections and antibiotics from the time you were two, right? So these are all really, really important things that people don't realize that their whatever is going on could likely be from the 10 or 20 or 40 rounds of antibiotics that a lot of kids get when they're when they're young, okay, and so knowing as much of that history as possible and then taking that and saying, okay, let's put your current lab work together, any lab work that I want to do because I tend to look. I want to look at toxins. I want to look at metals. I want to look at toxins. I want to look at metals. I want to look at toxins, metals, mycotoxins, mycotoxins, molds, everywhere. It's insane what we're seeing with the mycotoxins these days, but that, to me, is a root cause that can push infection, it can push dysbiosis, right. And then you have trauma. Now I don't deal with or work with trauma. I always want to make sure that there's somebody who's on board with that, but that the the mental, emotional stuff can, can really push the physical stuff. There's the book the Body Keeps the Score. You know, has there been, you know, financial struggles and relational struggles and spiritual struggles, right, all of these things are gonna can sit and live in the tissues. So that, essentially, is what I do. I work a lot with autoimmune conditions, GI dysfunction, right.

Speaker 4 22:49

And then you know people who want to optimize. There's some weight loss, things like that, but people will come to me for weight loss. I'll tell them I want to get you healthy. Your main goal may be weight. My main goal is for you to get healthy and the weight will come off right, though when I'm working with other practitioners then you know it kind of depends on what they want, right, so they may just send me their patients and I see their patients.

Speaker 4 23:13

Just, you know, for the lifestyle stuff, the guidance, you know, we may review some labs, help them understand the things where the, you know, the doctor has his place or her place. But there are things that they don't want to do and that's okay, cause that's the stuff that I like to do. I like to talk about the food and and you know, all of the things that play a role in making the body healthy or not. I am also working with a local doc helping him to build his wellness clinic here in town. So that has been a big, really cool undertaking. There's a, you know it's a starting from scratch kind of situation, but seeing his patients as well as building out his wellness center, has been really cool yeah.

Speaker 2 23:53

That's fun. Is that like a holistic wellness clinic?

Speaker 4 23:56

The clinic itself is an immunology clinic, it's conventional, but he has this really clear, pure understanding that so much of life is lifestyle and food and all the things that we're talking about, and so that's where we're trying to to just kind of bring it all together. So I didn't understand the complexity of disease until working with some of these patients. It can be a lot to unwind. You know and I talk about my story my story was hard. My story doesn't compare to what some of these people are struggling with and how we just have to just take it so slow and steady to unwind some of these things. It's, it's difficult people.

Episode Closing

Speaker 4 24:41

People are in a tough spot, man, and it's, you know, that's where you know, going back to just trying just listening. I think that that's the biggest thing over anything else is just listening to their story and what they're trying to say. I give 15 minute pre consults and they're 45 minutes or an hour, which is okay, right, I have had multiple say you're the only person who's listened to me, you know, and it's, that's not, that's not the problem with the doctor, it's the problem with our insurance system. Exactly, we don't have the time.

Speaker 1 25:13

Thank you for joining us today on the Reignite Resilience podcast. We hope you had some aha moments and learned a few new real life ideas. To fuel the flames of passion, please subscribe on your favorite streaming platform, like or download your favorite episodes and, of course, share with your friends and family. We look forward to seeing you again next time on Reignite Resilience.