Journey to Well
We are not created to do this healing journey or life alone. In fact, it was Bessle Van Der Kolk who expertly shared “healing happens in the presence of an empathic witness”. That is the heart of this podcast & my business : to witness. You can expect a plethora of conversations on nervous system regulation, breathwork, human design & astrology, cycle alignment, energy & spirituality work and so much more. We are all on a journey back home to ourselves, rediscovering our innate power within & I am thrilled to take this journey to well with you. be well xx
Journey to Well
Are You Feeding Your Body or Just Filling It? | Stefanie Adler
Have you ever wondered why your body seems to fight against your best intentions, especially when it comes to food cravings and health goals? The answer might be more fascinating than you think.
Functional health practitioner Stefanie Adler (5/2 Splenic Projector) takes us on an eye-opening journey through the misunderstood world of nutrition, challenging everything we've been taught about healthy eating. From her own transformation healing childhood IBS through diet changes when medications failed, to her current work helping women reclaim their hormone health and fertility, Stefanie offers a refreshing perspective grounded in both ancestral wisdom and modern functional medicine.
"Salt is like the kid on the playground who somehow got a bad reputation, but it's actually a really good kid," Stefanie explains, shattering the myth that all salt is harmful. This conversation delves into why high-quality, mineral-rich salt is essential for proper bodily function, while revealing how commercial table salts have been stripped of their beneficial properties.
Perhaps most surprising is the revelation about gut bacteria's profound influence on our behavior and cravings. "If you've ever wanted to quit sugar but felt it was absolutely impossible, it might not be about your willpower," Stefanie shares. "It's probably about the bacteria in your gut literally sending signals to your brain saying 'eat the sugar' until you cave." This gut-brain connection extends to mental health, with emerging research suggesting conditions from anxiety to schizophrenia may have roots in gut imbalances.
The discussion on fertility brings particular clarity to couples struggling to conceive, connecting modern environmental toxins and nutrient deficiencies to reproductive challenges. Rather than overwhelming listeners, Stefanie offers practical, manageable steps toward better health, emphasizing that even small changes can yield significant benefits.
Ready to transform your relationship with food and reclaim your body's innate wisdom? This episode will empower you to become "the sovereign of your body" and make informed choices that support true cellular health.
Connect with Stefanie on IG @ stefanieadlerwellness
Let's connect on social media! You can find me @ _journeytowell
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be well, my friend
xx Hannah
Good afternoon, good morning, good evening whenever you're listening to this, good afternoon for us. Welcome back to the podcast Journey to Well. I am joined with Stephanie Adler today. She's a functional health practitioner specializing in women's hormone health and women's fertility, so we're going to talk all about nutrition and health, which I don't even know if we talked about this, stephanie, but my mom has her undergraduate degree in nutrition, so growing up I knew so much about nutrition that I didn't realize not everyone knows like fat free and sugar free are not the ways to go, and like how to read a nutrition label and if it says no sugar, that doesn't mean there's actually not any sugar in it, and all of these things. So I'm super excited to chat with you. Stephanie is a 5'2 splenic projector. For those of us that are into human design. We'll chat a little bit about human design throughout the podcast and all of the good things, but first, thank you so much for coming on, thank you for taking the time and I would love to have you introduce yourself. Who is Stephanie Adler?
Speaker 2:Hi, hannah, thanks so much. I'm so excited to be here and, yeah, I also think it'll be really fun chatting nutrition from, like where your foundations are and the baselines, and and it's so neat because I've always said, you know, if I had a dollar for every time, someone was like I eat healthy. But right, I'd be like having this, this zoom call, from my yacht because, like, our versions of what we've been told is healthy are actually typically so far from what is actually most nourishing and biologically normal for us as women and as just humans on planet earth, and so I'm really excited to dispel some myths today and provide this community with some really awesome ways to deepen into their own nutrition from, like a true cellular level. So thanks for having me. Um, for those of you I haven't had the privilege of connecting with yet, my name is Stephanie Adler and, as Hannah mentioned, I'm a functional health practitioner and my journey actually started when I was a child.
Speaker 2:Um, I had a lot of gut issues and my parents didn't really know how to help me, and so they took me to the doctor and we did all of this testing and they kept saying we'll take this medication, it should help you feel better and it didn't, or it made me feel the symptoms were of.
Speaker 2:The medication were actually worse than my initial symptoms and after a couple of years of testing and things like you know invasive tests and also less invasive treatments they kind of left me with a diagnosis of you have IBS and you're going to have this for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2:And I was 12 and all I wanted to do was go to a bat mitzvah without having to call my mom from the bathroom being like come pick me up.
Speaker 2:I don't feel good. And so I decided at this very young age to experiment with what I was eating and change what I was eating and, despite my doctor saying it wouldn't help at all symptoms I've been having for 13 years, at this point almost um started to go away within three months and I became very, very aware at this young age that food can be medicine or food can be a catalyst for disease. And this really sparked my lifelong journey in uh into food and to nutrition and wellness and, over the years, as I progressed in my own learning and healing, really also the magic of the female body, like in its uh beauty of creation. And so, when I went to school for my second degree, my mom of course was like when I went to college. She was like you should be a nutritionist. And I was like shut up, mom, you know nothing about me. And of course she was right.
Speaker 1:Um they normally are. Yeah, you just have to come to it on your own.
Speaker 2:You know, and I'm going to remember one day, with my own kids, I'm going to be like uh, but yeah, so I. I came back to uh, to the world of holistic nutrition, and decided to specialize in everything from preconception all the way through, you know, like generational wellness for babies and first foods, and it's been such a fun journey, helping women become the sovereign of their bodies.
Speaker 1:We have so many similarities and I I think this is such an important conversation to have and education to have and learn about, because there's so much power that we give away. My first question what gave you that idea of? Maybe food can change this IBS diagnosis or could help me feel better if you weren't getting that from your doctor? You were getting the opposite.
Speaker 2:Totally so. My great aunt actually is like the catalyst for this. She is just like a socialite kind of you know and like knows everyone and knows everything, and this you have to remember this at this point was almost 20 years ago and she came to me and she said you know, I have a friend of a friend who went off of this thing called gluten and she feels a lot better. What if you tried it? And again, remember 20 years ago, like gluten was not the old thing that it currently is, there was this tiny section at Whole Foods with like three products that tasted like cardboard. You know, that were like the gluten free alternatives.
Speaker 2:But I was lucky in that I grew up in the restaurant industry. My dad owned a pizza restaurant, so it didn't help from like a how I felt, everyday perspective. But I had always been interested in kit in kitchens and around kitchens and interested in cooking and I spent a lot of time home from school with stomach aches and I would watch the food network. Um, and like really love to cook, and so it was. Even though like gluten-free wasn't really a thing I got, I was able to like really do it for myself, um, even at 13, like my mom didn't really get it, which has honestly been something that like we she and I have had to work through, like later in life, where I was like I was a kid, like I needed you to like own this instead of like, oops, I didn't realize that breading the chicken, you know before I cook it in this thing would hurt you, yeah yeah. So it was kind of like a game of telephone that got me here.
Speaker 1:Wow, and thank God for your great aunt, I mean. So it's so interesting to me because I recognize that a lot of my journey is different than others because I had such a I don't even know how to like I had a very supportive mom, my dad, like we had. There was like that like contrast between my mom and my dad. But, um, so interesting because I don't, I can't relate to like the people that are. I have a couple of friends that have a lot of health issues and their families just don't eat or support their way of eating, and and it's such an interesting like juxtaposition and tension there to me and it's so sad but anyway, but, but you learn right and you learn and you learn to advocate for yourself.
Speaker 1:So there's always that silver lining and everyone's journey is different. So let's let's dispel some myths and then I would love to get more into the like ancestral eating and supporting. You know that I do a lot of cycle work with my clients, so I would love to kind of touch on that as well. But let's start with some myths. Since we're talking about healthy eating and what is healthy eating, what are your top three to five myths that you get with when, when you start working with clients that you're like, actually, this is not what you might think it is.
Speaker 2:There's so many of them, um. So the first one is and I always describe it as like, so salt. People are really afraid of salt and so I always like compare it to like salt is the kid on the playground who like somehow got this bad reputation, but it's like really a good kid and like anytime he wants to go play with other kids, the moms are like, no, come over here. But like really salt is who we want to be, our friend, like we really he's like a really good kid, um, and so we need to be. Like almost every woman that I see, unless her, uh. So I run hair mineral analysis tests on people and it's my favorite test to get insight into like someone's nutritional status and the way their body is managing stress. It's like so amazing. And one of the minerals that we look at is sodium and almost every woman I look at, her sodium is depleted and when we don't have enough sodium, it man, it inhibits our digestion from doing what it's supposed to do. So a lot of times people think that their gut issues are like in the gut, but a lot of times it's that they don't have enough sodium, they're not eating enough salt. It can cause anxiety, depression, twitches. I mean like there's so many things that sodium is connected to in a positive way. What's the myth? Is that all salts are created equal. Right, not all salts are created equal.
Speaker 2:If you go to your pantry after listening to this podcast and you have Morton's table salt, or if you have just like a normal salt from Trader Joe's, toss it and go and buy a real salt, because what has happened to most of the produce salts in the grocery store is that all of the minerals have been taken out of them. They're sold to a supplement company so they can sell it to you in a multivitamin. They add iodine back in because they have to, and when they started interfering with salt a hundred, a hundred years ago, people got very sick and that's why they have to add iodine back to it, because it's such an essential nutrient for life. So typically, if you have, you know, the Morton's table salt, it'll say table salt with iodine added, um, and that salt also has chemical additives that they don't have to tell you about. That can really interfere with your body's ability to function, and so that salt actually is bad for you.
Speaker 2:But if you were having Celtic sea salt or any sort of salt that has a color and texture like your salt should have life in it, and if you were having life salt, it is so critical for life and you really want like one to two teaspoons a day. So most people are under salting because they're afraid of salt, um, and most people are also using the wrong salt, which, like then, I guess they have some reason to be afraid of it. But if we're using the right salt it is very much our friend and should be very present in our diets.
Speaker 1:Hmm, so Celtic sea salt, I use, uh, himalayan sea salt. Are these all created equal?
Speaker 2:Himalayan sea salt. Are these all created equal? Yes, and like I think it's good to vary them, just because, like, himalayan salt is going to have different composition than something that's coming from the sea, right, like one of them is more like present in rock formations and things like that. A long time ago it was in the sea, but it's good to mix it up, so like you could mix yours up with like a Baja gold sea salt, or even, like I mentioned, trader Joe's, but like Trader Joe's even has one that comes in like a little ceramic tin thing and that like when you touch it, it like actually has texture and it feels kind of wet, and so you know it's a really good sea salt. So you can get good sea salt anywhere.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I would just mix it up between the Himalayan and Redmond's real salt or a sea salt of some kind. Hmm, super interesting. What about like the white chunky salts that you would get like at a market basket if you're in the Northeast, like Hannaford Whole Foods? Maybe not Whole Foods just like the white chunky salt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, um, some some brands are better than others, Like the Malden sea salt brand is totally fine and those are like the flaky salt or the chunky salt. But I wouldn't just like go with like regular kosher salt and sometimes that is like what people think of as chunky.
Speaker 1:Very cool, thank you, okay. Myth number two.
Speaker 2:Number two myth. Number two is that fermented foods are optional. Fermented foods are optional. People, people forget You're not like ferments.
Speaker 1:No, I'm laughing because my mom always asks me are you eating your?
Speaker 2:fermented vegetables I'm like, I mean I do a couple of times a week. So we, like, are not separate from our environment and I think that people forget that our modern environment looks very different at an exponential rate than what it did even like a hundred years ago, and our bodies, like, can't evolve that quickly. And so if you think about the fact that, like, the refrigerator is about a hundred years old or less, you know like, really less, like from when it was mass, you know, and everyone to have one, but let's call it a hundred years and be generous. So, before refrigerators, if you lived in a part of the world, or really even just you know, let's talk about the United States and keep it local but really the world where you didn't have fresh vegetables and fruits all year, which is most parts of the world, right, then how did you have them? And not summer and spring?
Speaker 2:You preserved them, you fermented them and we as humans evolved over thousands of years, thousands and thousands and thousands of years with these fermented foods, because it was the way to make food safe, like, if you go back, you know, a couple of years, thousands and thousands and thousands of years with these fermented foods, because it was the way to make food safe, like, if you go back, you know, a couple hundred years, like people drink wine, not water because like it was safer. Right, you were drinking beer because like that was the fermentation process and it made it like not going to kill you if you had a sip of it, you know. And so we evolved over a long time and our gut has approximately three pounds.
Speaker 2:If you think about your soul cycle weight, you know, like, your gut has approximately three pounds of bacteria that we are supposed to live in harmony with, not like, use us as a host and control everything from our metabolism to our mental health, to our immunity, and if we're not properly feeding them, then it it misfires, and this is where we can.
Speaker 2:Um, take a lot of the chronic health conditions I mean everything from adhd to autoimmune illness can be a result of having an imbalance of these good and bad gut bacteria. And then you also bring in things like modern day antibiotics and pesticides that we put in our food, and it really actually increases our need for these ferments. But most people don't eat them, and if they do, they're eating like the fake version, like if you just buy normal pickles at the store, they're not actually like lacto, fermented and alive, right, um. So fermented foods are not optional. They are something that should be part of really every meal, um, and it's something that I think our culture really needs to come back to and to really embrace in order for us to have optimal wellness.
Speaker 1:Give me some examples of fermented foods.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, so there are lots of like. I think people think of sauerkraut, which like is absolutely one of them sauerkraut, kimchi, you know anything like that. But when you make them at home, the variety is literally endless. I mean you can ferment radishes, you can ferment strawberries and make strawberry kvass, which is like a drink that originated in. Kvass is like a lightly like carbonated fermented drink that originated in Russia that it's like so delicious and you can make it with beets, or you can make it with peaches, or you can make it with strawberries, like you can make yogurt, you can make kefir, you can make cultured butter. I mean, I love my son and I just sit and eat cultured butter by the spoon. So it's basically like taking sour making. You know, you just take cream and turn it into sour cream and then you turn that into butter.
Speaker 2:There are so many options when it comes to ferments.
Speaker 2:Making them at home is going to not only like expand your options, cause otherwise you go to the grocery store and there's like one option of kimchi and one option of kraut Right, maybe nowadays there's a few more, depending on where you shop.
Speaker 2:But uh, the fact of the matter is is that store-bought ferments are not actually going to have even a 10th probably of the benefit that making it at home will. Because if I were to take my kefir so I make kefir at home every day, which is like a yogurt drink kind of and if I were to take that and put it in the store and try and commercialize it, it would explode on the shelf because it's so alive and so they can't realistically travel with that and then keep it on the shelves and sell it, and so they have to make much more muted versions for commercial uses. So if you take ownership of it and do it at home, it's very easy, it's very fun. You're going to have so much more benefit. Um, and then even little things like yogurt at the store, for example, when they ferment yogurt at the store you know they may be fermented for four to six hours, whereas if you do it at home and you do it for 24 hours, it's like so much more diverse and rich and good for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh my gosh I assume you talk about all of this on your social media If we want to find some recipes cause now you're making me interested in these recipes- and the beautiful thing is it's so easy.
Speaker 2:Like people think it's so intimidating, but I promise you making kefir is literally as easy. All you need is to find a kefir grain. Like go on Facebook marketplace or Etsy or whatever you know, like somewhere local. If you can find someone, I give them away. On Facebook marketplace. People show up at my door once a week and I'm just like here, have one, because the thing is they keep growing. It's like a kombucha scoby, Like you have to give it away, or else you just throw it away or eat it, and so, like all you need is a kefir grain. They look like little rubbery pieces of cauliflower and then you just stick it in milk and leave it on your counter for 24 hours, Like I mean, of course I have a recipe written for people, but it's like so simple that people just think that these things, because they seem old fashioned or they seem time consuming, they get intimidated by them. But the reality is it's really easy.
Speaker 1:Love that. Thank you for that idea and thank you for the reminder that it gets to be easy, because I do think I had another person on my podcast and we talked about how it can be very overwhelming to shift our diets and to shift not in our diets necessarily, I mean yes, but also just our way of thinking about food and what we eat and what we're putting in our body. And when we hear like all of these things, it can be like, oh my gosh, I don't know what to do. But it doesn't have to be as complicated as we make it or as overwhelming, and it can be very simple, just starting with one thing and then seeing how that feels and then, another thing and see how that feels.
Speaker 2:So let's, do one more myth.
Speaker 2:Cool, and what I was actually about to say is it leads into that with, like you know, some of these things feel intimidating, but they're actually really easy swaps. So this one that I'm about to share is that animal fats. The myth is is that animal fats are bad for us. Yeah, there's so much of a misconception around the fact that animal fats, or saturated fats, cause high cholesterol and that, even if they do, that cholesterol is bad for you. Like I actually celebrate if my cholesterol has gone up. I don't actually really test it, but like I would celebrate it and I do with clients. Cholesterol is so important for the, and it actually studies show that women who have higher cholesterol at all ages end up having a longer lifespan. Like there's so much. I could go on with that and we won't because I could be here all day, but, um, I have a podcast episode on my own podcast If anyone's interested in learning more about cholesterol. But um, the point about the animal fats is that animal fats are incredibly nourishing and important for us, and they contain a lot of fat soluble nutrients that are almost impossible to get elsewhere in our diets, that are so critical for our function, and so I'll give you the example of vitamin A, vitamin A. People think of vitamin A incorrectly as like coming from butternut squash or like sweet potatoes. They're thinking about beta carotene. Now, in a perfect body and I truly mean this like in a perfect person who is over the age of 22, who has a perfectly functioning thyroid, who has adequate other minerals and nutrients and all of these things, their body might be able to turn some of that beta carotene into the usable form of retinol and vitamin A. Most people, if your thyroid is even tiny bit off, if you're a child or if you're a teenager, like you're not going to be able to convert that. If you're at all nutrient deficient, if you're really stressed out, your body doesn't have what it needs to make that conversion and vitamin A is so critical. I I went to a conference where this woman um last year, did this entire talk about um fertility and how, like the fertility crisis, it's because of vitamin A deficiency and I will tell you that I see this in my practice constantly that most women are vitamin a deficient and when they, if we catch it early enough, and they start introducing vitamin a back in significant levels, their fertility comes online and it's amazing to have babies.
Speaker 2:So these fats animal fats like lard, like butter, like tallow, like duck fat, like liver, which isn't really a fat but it's an animal product they contain these fat soluble nutrients that are not found elsewhere in our diets, and so it is such a myth that you can live without them, like truly. For optimal function in your body, we need these fat soluble nutrients, like vitamin A and vitamin K, and animal fats are the main way to get them, and so they're very, very nourishing, and people oftentimes are like okay, but like, what does that mean? Instead of cooking your roasted veggies in olive oil, cook them in lard, which has vitamin D in it, like real vitamin D instead of, and it also makes everything taste a little bit like bacon. It's delicious, um, you know? Like, cook your eggs in a lot of butter.
Speaker 2:If you're eating bread, put enough butter on it that you can see your teeth marks Like as you bite into it. Like don't, don't be afraid of these fats, and a lot of people think that they're going to also make them fat. Even if they're not worried about the cholesterol, right, they're like well, they're fattening, I'm going to make me fat. I assure you that, when done properly, these fats are actually going to make your metabolism thrive, and you will feel like it is easy to stay leaner, and so that's where I'll drop the mic with the myths, because it's really important.
Speaker 1:I love that. So, so butter. Can we talk about that real quick? Because it's yeah, Is it just let's go get like a stick of butter at the grocery store.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes and no. Like I mean, there are some butters that I feel fine with people eating at the grocery store. So, like you're looking for a grass fed, organic butter, there's, you know, like truly is one brand, even like the Kerrygold is okay, like you know, the grass fed butter. But if you can and you have access to sourcing butter from like real artisans, I mean you're going to see a big difference in the butter. Like you're in the Northeast and so you have some amazing options when it comes to butter.
Speaker 2:So like the Amish basically make the absolute best butter in the world and like that entire part of the country that has, you know, is within like several states of them, can very easily get it delivered. And like the butter will be this thick, yellow. And when we actually look at indigenous communities around the world, several of them waited to time pregnancies around when the cows went out to pasture, because that was when they had the most nutrient dense milk and therefore then butter, and then also when the babies were going to be born and have access to that and it's so important. So, yes, I mean, if you have access to like artisan butter, definitely go for it, but you can get some decent butter at the grocery store.
Speaker 1:Very interesting. I should Google how I can get some good butter delivered.
Speaker 2:Really quick. I make butter like with cream. I get locally but also there's like I'm a part of a food club that gets from the Amish, like they drive it out here to Colorado twice a month and like I order butter from the Amish and I can get it in Colorado and it's coming from Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1:So like, even if you're not right next to it and you just do a little bit of searching, you're going to be able to like, find find a way, mm-hmm, yeah, so here's a question that I feel has come across my path and not directly to me, so I've never answered this question myself. But when we talk in terms of like, let's eat how we did ancestrally and think about how, you know, in tribal times our ancestors ate, and you know the lack of refrigeration and all of that. I understand that very cognizantly, but was their health really that much better? Because now we're living longer, I believe. So why is it more important or beneficial to eat more ancestrally than to eat how we are today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a really great question. So when I say ancestrally, like, I also just like to really clarify, I'm actually not talking about paleolithic times, you know, like I'm not going back to like 10,000 years ago, you know where, like there are like a paleo movement, but also it cracks me up because I'm the paleo movement.
Speaker 2:They're like, look at these paleo brownies. I'm like, yeah, the paleolithic people were like totally eating those brownies. You know, when I say ancestral eating or traditional nutrition is another term I really like to use, I really want you to think about like 1850, like what were your ancestors, like what were your great, great great grandparents eating, right, and when we think about it, that from that perspective, it actually changes it a little bit. While we are technically living longer, it's mostly actually not because we're healthier. People are actually much sicker and have much more chronic illness now and are on. You know, the average elderly person is on like 12 medications to help them stay alive. Right, they're not actually well.
Speaker 2:When we look at Indigenous communities that are mostly extinct today, but even as of a hundred years, we were able to much more clearly compare and contrast. We actually saw that, you know, despite like the outliers of like injuries and infection that then led to a shorter lifespan overall, and we have to remember that that's influencing lifespan here as well. And similarly, to remember that that's influencing lifespan here as well, and similarly, like things that were taken into account with lifespan were, like you know, the maternal like, like infant death rate and things like that, which, like obviously modern medicine, in some ways has just like the invention of the NICU, like a baby can be born today at 20 weeks and potentially survive, where that wasn't the case before. So, all to say, like we just actually need to be able to think about the numbers a little bit more rationally and recognize that we actually are probably not living so much longer than our like a healthy person in the past was. And when we looked at indigenous communities, aside from things like injury which led to infection, there would be people living in those communities till very old age, you know, sometimes a hundred or more and who were in much better condition, right, because they didn't have access to these medications and things like that. So if they were living longer, it was purely because of life force, and it's super interesting.
Speaker 2:For anyone who's curious to learn more about this, I highly recommend looking into Weston A Price. He was a dentist at the turn of the century, from the 1800s to the 1900s, and he wanted to learn more about why in the West we like again did you have braces? I had braces, I did. Okay, we almost like don't know anyone who doesn't have braces. You know like you look at all these perfect smiles and it hides the fact that all of us, if we didn't have braces, would have had I'll speak for myself like a nightmare of a mouth you know yeah.
Speaker 2:And that actually is a newer thing. Like, again, you go back even 200 years ago. No one had braces and everyone had good teeth. So, like Weston, a Price was trying to figure out what was happening here. He was like, why are we suddenly having like all of these you know dental issues in the United States? And so he did this like huge tour looking at indigenous communities all over the world, like everywhere, from the Mayans to in Florida, like the native people, all the way to like Northern Europe and all of these, the Eskimos, et cetera.
Speaker 2:He looked at 12 different communities and what he found is that within one generation of introducing Western foods, they went from having perfect teeth and perfect face formation because of the teeth and the jaw and all these things, to, within one generation, complete disaster. And that health issues came along with it. Right, so, like, when we have not the proper formation which then allows for the space in the mouth for the teeth to grow in properly, we also end up with kids who have more ear infections and who have, you know, more sinus issues and everything down the line to like chronic illness. So, um, we actually are able to see like that, the myth we're just all walking around with like contacts and having had braces and all these things like thinking that we're just all walking around with like contacts and having had braces and all these things like thinking that we're like so much healthier than previous generations. But it's not true.
Speaker 1:Wow, I read, um, uh, james Nestor's book breath, breathe, breath, breath, Um, and he talked about how, like breathing improperly actually also changes the physical structure. And then, if you look through generations of now how we breathe and all of that is also connected to what we're eating as well and it changes the physical structure, and then that leads to more breathing problems and more health issues, which is just wild. There's so many things that we don't think about, like you know, that it's unrelated, which is which is my next question, because you did mention briefly that our gut health is connected to our mental health and physical health and emotional health. Can you dive into that a little bit?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, our gut is our second brain. So when I was a as I mentioned my story of being a kid with IBS the first medication that they gave me was actually a low dose of an antidepressant. And I remember this so clearly because I was so confused by, you know, when they were explaining it to us, which, like at the time, I actually have to look back and be like at least they explained it to us. You know, like most of the time that's like not the case. They're just like take this, but I remember them explaining that it was a low dose of an antidepressant because the cells of the brain and the gut are so similar that the idea is that we like calm down the cells in the gut by using this low dose of an antidepressant. And so I mean the way that I like to explain it to people is like when you get excited or anxious about something, if you're about to go on, you know and do public speaking where do you feel that it butterflies in your stomach or you feel like sick to your stomach. But that is the gut brain connection. It is so, so closely linked. Scientists are really only beginning to understand on, like the data level, the the extent to which this is. I mean, I remember doing a research project about this, probably at this point, like eight or nine years ago, and you know Harvard and MIT were looking into like that schizophrenia and bipolar disorder were diseases of the gut. So I mean we're really starting to scratch the surface.
Speaker 2:Hippocrates knew, when we go back thousands of years, he always said that all disease begins in the gut, and so when it comes to mental wellbeing, or the opposite thereof, right of mental illness, we have to think about it like any other place. If all disease begins in the gut, so too does our mental wellbeing. And the thing about these gut microbes is they're living, breathing things, they have their own agenda, and so if there's an imbalance of good to bad bacteria and the bad bacteria feed on certain things, they can truly control your behavior, they can control your cravings, they can, like absolutely control everything they want to, for the most part, to be able to ultimately, you know, achieve their goal, which is to continue to survive. So if anyone has ever like, wanted to quit sugar, you know, achieve their goal, which is to continue to survive. So if anyone has ever like, wanted to quit sugar, you know, or like to control their sugar, but they feel like it's absolutely impossible to do right.
Speaker 2:It might not be all about your willpower. It's probably about the bacteria in your gut who are literally sending signals to your brain saying eat the sugar, eat the sugar, eat the sugar, eat the sugar until you cave. Right, and of course, we have ways that we work around this. I mean, I help clients deal with this all the time and we can overcome that imbalance and rebalance the gut. But if you don't know that that's happening right and you just are like sitting here being like, oh, I have no willpower, you're going to be stuck in a pretty rough cycle. So we have to give more credit to the bacteria in our gut and I mean there's so many other elements of gut health too. There's like the idea of leaky gut, et cetera. But from the perspective of like our brains and how it's connected to that, um, it plays such a big role with the bacteria that's present or or not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, uh, one of the biggest pillars of my foundations, of my business, is let's rediscover the truths about ourselves so that we aren't in this judgment, shame, guilt cycle of I'm doing it wrong or something's wrong with me. So one of the things that you just said of I feel like it's my willpower I'm just not strong enough to cut out sugar or cut out alcohol or cut out junk food, and maybe it's not just a matter of your willpower, maybe there's something else coming into play. And in my personal life, when I have learned these pieces of my human design is what I'm going to say and of my cycle, when I've learned these pieces, it's made such a big difference. Like luteal phase, right, and that's right before your period, right before you get your period, and you just sometimes you kind of are a little bit more on edge, you're a little hungrier. We tend to need more nutrients in our luteal phase because our body's actually getting ready to shed and like, go through that death process, and so when I was fasting which I had a little journey with intermittent fasting don't know your thoughts on that, but when I was fasting and I would just be so hungry, I would feel like I would need so much more food and I'd be like why am I so hungry? I shouldn't be hungry. I just had breakfast, or you know, I just had a lot of like a good like protein dense breakfast and learning. I just had a lot of like a good like protein dense breakfast and learning. Oh, I'm in my luteal phase. My body actually needs more support. My body needs more nutrients and learning.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm going through this, you know, pulling out of sugar, and maybe it's not just my willpower. How else can I support myself? Knowledge truly is, and knowing what's going on with our body. I don't think there's anything more important than that in understanding how to best support ourselves and how to best hold ourselves through these transitions. Or I mean, even if it's not a transition right, even if it's not cutting out sugar or trying to get pregnant or, you know, whatever it is, maybe it's just supporting myself through the four phases of my cycle. So I assume that you deal a lot with this with all of your clients and and also fertility stuff. I mean, we could kind of get into that fertility conversation of what's going on with my body. Why can't I, why can't I conceive?
Speaker 2:It's a big question, Um, well, one I just want to say around the cycle piece, I mean, I think cycle informing is huge, Like I actually used to have a a course for coaches called cycle informed coaching, because I think, no matter what kind of coach you are like, to understand where people are at in their cycle totally changes the way that you're able to, like, help them help themselves. So I love that that's something that you focus on and I think it's such a biohack and such a game changer for women. Um, so I love, love, love, love, love that and there are totally, like, even just going back to the fermented foods, like fermented foods are important literally in every meal but, like also in our first half of our cycle, they can help manage estrogen a little bit better because of the way that, like, the gut bacteria play a role in estrogen metabolism in the gut and so, like, if you're having really bad periods or like period symptoms, like fermented food play a role in that. So, kind of bringing those two together it's really fun. Um, the fertility conversation is big. I mean I think there are so many factors, like, to some extent, I really think that vitamin a deficiency is like a huge contributor to the fact that so many women are struggling now, Um, so many couples are struggling. It also plays a role with men. You know, one in six couples are struggling to get pregnant today.
Speaker 2:And I think we need to be asking the bigger questions of not just like on an individual level, but like societally why, right and again thinking back to like your great grandparents, like everyone ate liver, because everyone ate organs, Like that was just part of life, Like you ate the nose to tail, like you'd nothing went to waste, and like that is not the case Now we live in a society of abundance for the most part, and you can choose to not eat organs if you don't want to, and most people don't have experience with them. And so it contributes to vitamin A deficiency, which can impact everything from PCOS to thyroid dysfunction to causing frequent miscarriages. I mean, the list goes on and on. I think there's also a big conversation that needs to be had around our environments in terms of toxicity and like the overuse of, you know, petrochemicals on our food, which is basically like if you were eating non-organic food, and unfortunately, even most organics and grocery stores are compromised now. It's like the equivalent of taking a low dose of antibiotics every day.
Speaker 2:Like you know, there's also like the in our tap. I mean the one thing also if anyone is listening to this and is trying to get pregnant and is still drinking tap water, it's basically infertility water. Like get off the tap water. You know, like we need to have a conversation about just the toxic soup that this like world is in and like how have you one? Protect yourself, but also, like support your body's detox processes, and this is something I think about a lot, like so many experts in the and I'm doing a little air quotes for people who are just listening like who you know talk about the fertility crisis are saying you know, well, a big part of it is that women are starting to have babies later and later.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's like play down that thought pattern for a little bit. Like, yeah, women are starting to have babies later and later, but what we know about women historically is that even if they started earlier, they had a lot more kids. So even if a woman was starting to have babies at 22, she was probably having her last baby at like 38 or 40. Right, so like starting at 35, shouldn't be that? Like that's not a hundred percent explaining what's going on here. And we also are seeing fertility issues in women who are younger and younger. It's not only women who are above 35. So it doesn't fully play out, but what I actually think is more likely happening when it does come to the advanced maternal age is that you have more exposures to these toxins. Like a 25 year old has 25 years in this toxic environment. If you're 35, you have literally, almost you know, 50% more time and 50% more toxic exposure.
Speaker 2:And so the preconception phase of like really planning and preparing for pregnancy for everyone now really should include detoxification, um, not only to help you get pregnant with more ease, but also what the body does.
Speaker 2:It's kind of a weird mechanism, um, but it uses pregnancy as an opportunity to detox, and this is also one of the reasons why, uh, the miscarriage rate, I think, is going up, and a woman a mentor of mine, has talked about this publicly quite a bit that she's seeing more and more women have like two or three miscarriages before they can carry a healthy baby to full term. And what's happening is the body like, sees this other organism and is like, ooh, an opportunity to clean house and we'll take toxins that it's been storing for years and put them onto the babies. And so when we see babies with more eczema and more allergies and more, you know, asthma, it can be because of their increased toxic burden. So not only for the health of you getting pregnant or for the support of you getting pregnant with more ease and having a healthy pregnancy, but also for the health of your baby, detoxing before getting pregnant can be a really, really supportive tool for your family's health in the future supportive tool for your family's health in the future.
Speaker 1:I had not heard that. That's so interesting. Thank you for sharing that. That's an interesting thing. So one of the things that I always think about and that I do hear often when we're talking about eating healthier, changing our lifestyle, changing our lifestyle just to be healthier, changing our lifestyle to get pregnant or anything.
Speaker 1:Really, whenever we talk about nutrition, it feels very overwhelming, like it feels like oh my God, I've been doing everything wrong for my entire life and I am just swimming. You know like I, I drink the tap water, I eat unorganic food, I, you know I'm buying the iodized salt and you know, like everything that she's saying I'm doing wrong. And it feels very overwhelming to the point where we just kind of go into that freeze response we, we cannot do anything. We get so overwhelmed that it's like I'm just I can't change anything because there's there's just too many things to change and it's too expensive or I don't have the time. I don't have the time to cook, I don't have the time to make my own kefir water, I don't know where to find the little kefir balls or the sourdough starter. What do we say to these people?
Speaker 2:One of my favorite proverbs is the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the second best time is right now. Right, like we can either sit and think about the what ifs and the this and I feel too overwhelmed or we can say that, hey, showing up messy is better than showing up, not showing up at all. Right, um, and look, I get it. Like. I think that unfortunately, this can feel overwhelming for a lot of people because we've verged so far from what is normal and what is like biologically healthy and normal from us, and it's the reclaiming it one step at a time. Right, like you don't need to turn around tomorrow and have every single thing in your life changed. But if there was one thing on this podcast, for example, that you're like oh, that's interesting, start with that one thing, right, go find some Amish butter, you know. Or like, go and send me a message and be like hey, stephanie, what water filter do you recommend? Right. And if it feels really expensive, like this is an interesting thing around the expense, you know, in the United States the average person spends I think it's actually maybe a little bit more with inflation now, but it used to be 10% of our budget on groceries and it's probably closer, I'd guess, to like 15% now with inflation. But you know what it is in France? Oh, tell me, 30 plus percent, wow. And that is like more the norm across the world, right? Wow, and that is like more the norm across the world, right? We as a culture have just decided to not prioritize healthy food and also the government has been subsidizing actually poisonous food, so we have this wrong idea of what is like normal, when the question we should be asking is not why are the $12 a dozen eggs so expensive, but why are the $4 a dozen eggs so cheap? Like that is the question we should be asking. And so I usually just really encourage people to like look at their life right and do like a little bit of an audit, like I personally would rather pay the farmer than the doctor, really, the health insurance company, right. And so you know, I, I did this, uh, I do hair, uh, mineral analysis with people, and there was this one woman that I did a test for and she we had a lot of things that like could have used a lot of support and I made some, you know, food recommendations and supplement recommendations and things like that. And she kind of freaked out and was like you know, everything is so expensive. You have to be so rich to be like healthy in today's day and age. And I, in a very loving way, responded back to her and I said you know the reason we're having this call. She had bought the test in July but we weren't having this call until September and it was because she needed to wait almost seven weeks to get her test done, because she gets, she had gotten highlights and a keratin treatment on her hair. And then she was.
Speaker 2:I had, you know, in the course of the call, had asked her like tell me what breakfast, lunch and dinner looks like. And you know she usually goes and grabs something fast, casual, and they order sushi a couple of nights a week. And I said to her you can go to the grocery store You're saying that groceries are so expensive. You can go to the grocery store and buy a pound of grass-fed ground beef and some in-season vegetables or, even better, find, you know, like a local farmer and get them from them. And, you know, support your local economy but also probably pay a little bit less if you do it in a CSI, whatever, and you can make an awesome dinner that's going to feed you and your family for two days for around 25 bucks Right. Or you can order four rolls of sushi right.
Speaker 2:Like it's, it's about priority, and we just unfortunately like have a skewed version of like what the priority is, and so I really encourage people to like do an audit on their life. I used to love having really fun nail art on my nails. I still would. I would love it. But you know what I realized? Between what I pay in childcare for when I'm going and getting them done and what I was paying for my nails every month, I was like you know what. That doesn't feel like a good use of my resources anymore. I'd rather put that money towards like nourishing my family in deeper ways, and that was a choice I made. Like that's not going to be the choice everyone makes, but like the invitation is to look at our lifestyles and see, like well, where are you choosing to prioritize?
Speaker 1:Thank you, I love that and I think that that's a really hard thing to take accountability for and really I always say we all have, we all have that thing right, like we all have that addiction and whether you know. Anyway, I have like some history with with addiction, not personally, but in relationships so we all have addictions. But what are we addicted to? Is it like overspending and shopping? Is it drinking? Is it? You know, amazon Is?
Speaker 2:it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, phone addiction, a fitness addiction, is it like going to the gym all the time? And and my mom's is definitely food and I mean that's like a good one, but she's always said that is, I would rather spend my money on something nourishing and something that's going to um, nourish and support my body. Then, you know, go out to dinner and have a $50 meal, uh, which is a priority, right? Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think I would like your mom, but also like, yeah, I mean, it's an interesting thing with time. You know to like when people are like oh, I'm struggling to find the time, like log onto your iPhone or whatever phone you have and I want you to tell me what your screen time is every day. Right, Like you're telling me you don't have time to cook dinner, but you have an hour and a half to scroll on Instagram.
Speaker 1:Right, okay, here's the thing, though I agree with you. Devil's advocate would be that is my decompression time, like cooking stresses me out and scrolling on my phone it helps me relax, so it feels like I'm going from work to then do more work, versus from work to relax.
Speaker 2:I hear that I would argue back that like if you were nourishing yourself on like a true cellular level, you'd be able to manage stress way better and it would feel like so much easier to not need to decompress like that you know what I mean. Like you've got just like your capacity for stress and like your nervous system expansion would be bigger, and also just like a reminder like it can be easy. Like I made dinner for tonight, literally last night, after my son went to bed, because I was like my husband's out of town and my auntie wasn't coming in this morning and I was like, oh, like I threw something in the slow cooker. It took me I'm not exaggerating six minutes. Pop an onion and chop a cabbage, throw it in the slow cooker with.
Speaker 2:I ended up using a beef tongue, cause I love weird cuts of meat like that, but you could use stew meat, you could do whatever you know. You could just roast in there a can of tomato paste, a couple of spices. The entire thing took me nine minutes, maybe it's it's sitting in the slow cooker. I didn't have to cook once a day, right? So you know, it can also be really easy and nourishing. So like when? Again. It's like if you can find 10 minutes in your day, you can find 10 minutes to like make a really nourishing meal. But but yes, I will totally accept your devil's advocate.
Speaker 1:I just like to challenge. Uh, no, it's. It comes down to prioritize, prioritize priorities and and how you want to prioritize your money, your finances, your, your food. I love what you said. If you're watching the video I gave you some snaps of, I would, you know, rather pay for the food than pay the doctor, and that's that's really what it comes down to.
Speaker 1:And I think, unfortunately, outwardly, you know, like I might very outwardly look very healthy right now. Outwardly you look very healthy. We can't really know until our body is screaming at us with this chronic disease or this pain, or you know this inflammation or you know some sort of diagnosis. It's really hard to know. So when we're younger I know that was my mindset and a lot of my peers' mindsets when you're younger, you're like I'm healthy. You know, you never think that anything's going to happen to you and nothing's going to go wrong. And then you start, not that either of us are old, but as you get older, you, I think we begin to see the ramifications of what we have lived the past, however many years and I mean you made a good point of that with older pregnancies and having that longer time of exposure.
Speaker 2:Totally and just like recovery from these big life events. You know, like being pregnant and birthing a baby and nourishing that baby from your body. Events, you know, like being pregnant and birthing a baby and nourishing that baby from your body, like an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of reaction, right In terms of like illness and so totally, but also like humans, are very, uh, immediate gratification driven. And yeah, I actually have a question for you, because when you said I'm like I can't, I can't hold it back anymore, um, um, I remember when we were connecting about this and then you mentioned my human design and the thing like I'm curious, like if there's anything about me and from what you've learned about just like my approach to health and wellness, that like is related to my human design. I I don't know a lot, admittingly, about human design. The only thing I really know is that I'm a projector and that projectors, like invitations, like those, are that's like my high level knowledge of human design, and so I know I'm, I have the expert here.
Speaker 1:Thanks for that little intro. You're inviting me and I'm not even a projector. I'm gonna pull up your chart because there is one thing that you said that I wanted to look at, but now, of course, my app is messing up. So you are a projector, which is really fun, actually, for me, because I feel like everyone in the past six months that I've had on my podcast has either run a generator or a manifesting generator. So I'm like, oh my gosh, I have a projector, my mom's a projector, my sister's a reflector, which we projectors and reflectors are very similar in their energy type, and actually you have the same two centers defined as my mom, which is kind of funny. So you have your spleen is defined. So we have do you know the chakra system A little bit? Yeah, okay, so like roughly, the human design centers mirror our chakra system. So we have seven chakras, nine human design centers, because two of them are split into two of the chakras are split into two centers. So your spleen and your throat are defined, which really just means when we have a defined center, it really just means that we have direct connection to this center and the energy and the characteristics of this center.
Speaker 1:So our throat is maybe what you would think is all about communication, and it doesn't mean that you're a good communicator or a bad communicator. It simply means that the way in which you communicate is pretty consistent. So one of the personal examples that I use is like if you go back, I started my YouTube channel probably like three or four years now, maybe four or five years ago Now if you go back and listen to the things that I said and even like the way that I was saying it not necessarily the information, because obviously I've learned a lot since you know 2019, but the way in which I say it and present it is pretty consistent. Like it's going to sound like oh yeah, no, that's Hannah, the way that she's saying this. So it's more consistency in the way and your voice and the way that you choose to share things versus maybe an undefined throat center. You might feel like this person communicates very differently, in different ways and over the years it kind of morphs and who they hang out with, kind of morphs.
Speaker 1:And then your defined spleen center is our center of instincts. It's our instinctual kind of like vibes. I always say if you're a splenic, your spleen is also your authority. So, being a splenic authority, picking up on vibes is like your superpower. So you might meet someone and be like you know you won't you. You meet that person and you're like, oh we, we just really like align, we just kind of like vibe, whatever, that's your authority.
Speaker 1:So being able to walk into a room, being able to walk into a situation and be like I just feel that this is right for me. I maybe can't explain it and I can't logically tell you why this is right or wrong. Trusting your instincts there you have that consistent access to trusting your instincts. Our spleen is also our center of wellness and well-being. So having a defined spleen center is I don't want to say this the wrong or like a weird way, but yeah, it's our center of wellness. So having that direct connection, even you know something that I'm kind of thinking right now is like just knowing, like, hey, I think eating, changing what I eat would help me, like having that defined center, having that kind of instinct right there. And that insight maybe is something that came up when you were younger. Um, I wanted to look at your environment because I was wondering if your environment was was kitchens, but no, so your environment is natural shores, which just is like being near, being near water, being near the ocean.
Speaker 2:That's so interesting because I feel like most at peace next to the ocean, always, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me too, which mine is light, but yeah, so, natural source, what else? Consecutive appetite we have a digestion. Ooh, this is what I want to tell you about. Okay, we're getting here. We have what's called a digestion type in human design and I really like to point out it's not just how we digest food, it's how we digest information and how we best and most easily and ease fully learn.
Speaker 1:So yours is a consecutive appetite, which I've actually had a few clients, which is fun. So one of the things it says is your digestive pattern is the same as our early ancestors, who ate very simply and naturally, so, eating more simple, your body can digest that the most easily. Also, like how you learn information. So if you can take in this information and it's presented in a very simple and easy way, that's how you're going to take in and learn the information most easily, versus like go to this module and go to this module and like watch this like hour long TED talk on this, whatever project, and, um, that might be a little bit overwhelming or you might kind of like feel your body like shutting down. Um, but a consecutive appetite also is like well, it depends on which way your arrow is, but yours would be facing to the left, I would have to double check, but, um, left, I would have to double check, but eating around the same time.
Speaker 1:So some people actually do better, kind of like I'm going to eat when I feel hungry or eat when I feel ready. And I also am the opposite Like you, like having a pretty scheduled like I'm going to wake up, I'm going to eat. I'm going to have lunch around noon. I'm going to have dinner. I eat very early, so I'm going to have dinner around noon. I'm going to have dinner. I eat very early, so I'm going to have dinner around like 5530. Having that scheduled time again, it's like your body has this ability to more easefully recognize okay, it's lunchtime. Let me like get all my juices flowing and let me work on digesting this food. Versus other people, they might eat like a big lunch and then just pick at dinner or eat a smaller breakfast one morning and eat it a little bit later, at like 9am versus 8am, so yeah, that's a lot of information about your human design.
Speaker 1:I was just kind of scrolling through as we were looking.
Speaker 2:I love that, no, and so much of it makes a ton of sense for me. Like a ton of sense for me which is so like reading, for example, is like my best way of absorbing information. Like like just reading a book. Like I don't need to like watch a video and I don't need like a worksheet, I don't need. I literally just need to read a book and like I got it. So yeah, super interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect example of like that simple. It doesn't have to be super layered and I don't need all of the bombardment of information, I just need the information. Let me read it on my own time. Um, let me slow down. Love that. So I have one final question. But before our final question, where can people connect with you? I know I've stalked your Instagram a little bit and you have so much great information, so where could people find you on Instagram and then otherwise?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so definitely come say hi on Instagram and for any other projectors out there. I invite you to just like, truly come say hi. I mean, I read all my own messages and everything on my favorite part about, you know, connecting with other communities. It's like, oh my God, we get to meet, just like amazing women in the world and like one of the awesome things about being a part of this modern environment. So let me know something that like interests you or triggered you on the podcast, whatever. Like just come say aspirin. What if you're, if your butter is okay? Um, but yeah, stephanie Adler wellness, as Stephanie is with an F, so S T E, f A N I E Adler A D L E R wellness. Uh, on Instagram and then my website, stephanieadlercom. You know you can learn more about mineral testing or anything else like that. Um, and then my podcast, wisdom of the womb podcast is a place to.
Speaker 2:I'm not super active on it right now, but um, it's a. There's plenty of old episodes in the archive that you can totally nerd out on all things gut health, hormone health, fertility, you name it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you send me that podcast that you reference, I'll link it down below too, and that way, um, they can have the link to the podcast, um, okay. So final question if you were standing on a stage and you had one message that you could share with the world, and you had one minute to share it, what would that message be?
Speaker 2:That you were the expert of your own body. I think so often. Now we outsource our expertise to authority and we have created a society that is, like so afraid of everything that we're almost willing to take responsibility for nothing. And when we turn that on its head and we no longer are afraid of our body or our illness or anything like that, because we, like truly understand how to nurse ourselves and take care of ourselves and like understand how to read our instincts and our body, then, like, and we take responsibility for it, then we're no longer afraid. Like it's this beautiful self-fulfilling cycle and so own it, like own that you get to be the expert of your body more than your doctor, more than someone like me, but if it helps, like invest in books and courses or coach or whatever to help you figure out what are the missing pieces there, because your only limitation in terms of you know how you show up in this world is, like your willingness to let your body be your friend in this process, as opposed to something that's holding you back.
Speaker 1:Thank you. That's really beautiful. I think it's really scary when our bodies like betray us right In quotes or when something goes wrong, and then we just get so afraid and there's a lot of mistrust. That happens whether we realize it or not. And remembering that you are the expert and your body knows how to heal itself, it's so wise and it might just need a little bit of support. But learning what's going on is is your power Totally. Yeah, love that. Thank you so much for coming on, Stephanie. This was such a fun conversation. Likewise, thanks for having me.