Amazing Sleep and Immunity | Alissa Salvitti | EP 03

In this episode, host Carol Beringer sits down with Dr. Alissa M. Salvitti, DC, a traditional naturopath and chiropractor from West Chester, Pennsylvania. With a multifaceted approach to wellness, Dr. Salvitti shares her expertise in nutrition, lymphatic therapy, and chiropractic care.

Join Carol and Alissa as they explore the importance of lymphatic drainage for detoxification and immune health. They discuss the life-changing benefits of the "floating hug" (affectionately called "the flug" by clients) compression therapy, and how it helps move from "fight or flight" to "rest and digest" - essential for healing and recovery. This conversation offers valuable insights into maintaining wellness as a lifestyle rather than waiting for health crises to occur.

Whether you're curious about natural approaches to wellness or seeking to develop greater resilience in your physical and mental health, this conversation provides practical wisdom for your wellness journey.

About Dr. Alissa M. Salvitti, DC: Dr. Salvitti is a traditional naturopath and chiropractor with a wellness practice in Westchester, Pennsylvania. She specializes in nutrition, lymphatic therapy, and chiropractic care, helping patients detoxify, improve posture, and enhance their overall wellness through a holistic approach.

Connect with Dr. Alissa M. Salvitti, DC:
Website: https://truebalancechiro.com/about-us

CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction to Amazing Movement Podcast
00:36 Meet Dr. Alissa M. Salvitti, DC
00:52 How Carol and Alissa Connected
01:37 Introduction to Lymphatic Drainage
02:10 Understanding Your Lymphatic System
02:49 The "Floating Hug" (FLUG) Compression Therapy
03:50 The Sleep-Lymphatic Connection
04:21 The Recovery Benefits of Lymphatic Therapy
04:33 Movement and Resilience
05:24 The Value of Preventative Care
05:51 Carol's Posture Correction Experience
06:39 Personal Definition of Wellness
08:03 The Importance of Health Priorities
08:46 Daily Check-in Practices for Wellness
10:20 Morning Gratitude Practices
12:22 Learning from Challenges
13:09 Expanding Time for Self-Care
15:25 Skills to Develop
17:31 Hair Analysis for Nutritional Assessment
18:28 Customized Supplement Recommendations
19:46 Understanding Heavy Metal Toxicity
21:15 Dinner with Someone Special

ABOUT CAROL BERINGER:
With 25+ years of experience, Carol combines expertise in brain-based functional movement, Pilates, and yoga to help clients achieve improved posture, pain relief, and lifelong wellness. Her mission is to help people live as well as they can for as long as they can, building a community of women embracing wellness and joy as a lifestyle.

CONNECT WITH CAROL:

Website: https://carolberinger.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pilatesandmore110/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CarolBeringerMethod
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-amazing-movement-podcast/id1801483560

Subscribe for weekly episodes to continue your journey toward wellness and resilience!
#FunctionalMovement #ChiropracticCare #LymphaticDrainage #WellnessLifestyle #NaturalHealth #AmazingMovement #Resilience

Transcript

00:00 - Carol Beringer (Host)
Welcome to my weekly podcast. I'm building a community of women embracing wellness and joy as a lifestyle. Join me as I explore diverse self-care practices and interview amazing women. My mission is to live as well as we can for as long as we can. Let's embark on this vibrant journey together. Today, my guest is, and we're both nervous because we don't do interviews, and so we're going to just have some fun and I'm going to let Alyssa introduce herself and tell you a little bit about her business, and then we'll carry on. 

00:36 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
My name's Dr Alyssa Salviti. I have a wellness practice in Westchester, Pennsylvania, and I'm a traditional naturopath and a chiropractor and we do nutrition, we do lymphatic therapy and chiropractic. 

00:52 - Carol Beringer (Host)
So the way we met in my Pilates studio, one of my clients was talking about this lymphatic drainage therapy that she was having in Westchester and how much she liked Dr Alyssa therapy that she was having in Westchester and how much she liked Dr Alyssa. And I'm always interested in finding ways for lymphatic drainage because it's super important and we'll probably get into that a little bit. And I went and I just fell in love with the whole practice and we had this camaraderie about wellness and I have had so many benefits both with the chiropractic, the lymphatic drainage which the client who sent me there has what does she name it? 

01:35 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
the um oh, the flag. 

01:37 - Carol Beringer (Host)
The flag because yes, a floating hug so it's a flag and so I probably do that about once a month, and so I'll let Alyssa get into that a little bit more. And so, yeah, do tell us about that, because one of the things I learned I listened to a podcast that Alyssa was on a couple of weeks ago with another health practitioner, and sleep was such an important part of lymphatic drainage that I didn't know. So you know, some of you may know what lymphatic drainage is. Many of you may not, so take it. 

02:10 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
Yeah. So I'll start with what your lymphatic system is, and it's a whole network of organs, glands and vessels that basically, when you come in contact with too many toxins throughout each day, then your lymphatic system gets bombarded by these toxins and it stays stagnant. So you always want your lymphatic system to be moving because it's basically you can kind of think of it as your like sewage system in your body. You need to clear out those toxins all the time and it also directly relates to your immune system. So that's where there's a lot of ways to clear your lymphatic system. 

02:49
What Carol's referring to that she did is a service that we have where basically you're laying down and there's a full body compression suit and it has infrared heat, so it's going deep into your tissue and then it like gently massages, because that's how you move your lymph is on the surface level of your skin, so it gently massages and increases circulation. It helps you detox by moving that fluid out of your body and basically it puts you into fight or it takes you out of fight or flight, which most people are in, and puts you into rest and digest, which is when we heal and we finally recover. So that's why it's called a. Our mutual client refers to it as a flug, a floating hug, because you pretty much lay there and it just puts you on another planet and you sleep and you wake up feeling refreshed and not only detox all those you know, excess toxins in your body, but you just feel like you get like a second wind. 

03:50 - Carol Beringer (Host)
Well, I know that in this other podcast that I listened to and I learned so much from about lymphatic drainage, that sleep is so important and many of us don't sleep well or we don't sleep enough, and that I know when I go in there I wake up and I don't even know where I am and they have to wake me up to get out of the compression suit and I do feel like I've had five hours of sleep and that's what you said, that it's an equivalent of having five hours of good, solid sleep. 

04:21 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
Yeah, it's like a 45-minute session. But, it's kind of like a cheat, like if you're not getting enough rest or you're not recovering, I always tell people just come in and do this, because you'll catch up quicker and heal yeah. 

04:33 - Carol Beringer (Host)
And also I love this, because amazing movement moving your body, moving your lymph, moving your brain forward, not being stuck, I mean, that's a goal that I think all of us have, and that's what resolving to be resilient is all about is that you can take whatever happens in your life and reconcile it or not even, but move forward from it. And so this resiliency goes on physically, mentally, emotionally, everythingy. 

05:04 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
Yeah, I actually. I think that's super important because you want to. The reason to do like health practices you know, each week or daily, is to improve your body's ability to respond to stress and become more resilient, because if you don't take care of yourself, how could you continue to keep going and keep doing the things you want to do? 

05:24 - Carol Beringer (Host)
Right, and the better we feel in our bodies, the better we do feel in our brains, and it's so. It's just hilarious, but the first time I went to see Alyssa for the chiropractic portion, she checked my posture. I'm a posture expert yeah, and she just reset one tiny thing, because I'm not looking at myself, I look at all my clients and it seriously was a game changer and you're already in good shape but right, that's why I was like oh, we're just gonna do a few things. 

05:51
You look good otherwise but it was such a tiny shift that I had a little bit more balance forward in my um foot then to my heel which I wouldn't have recognized, and I just did that little shift yeah, it makes a difference yeah, and I I just find it refreshing that I check myself now a little bit on that. 

06:14
So we're going to get into some deep questions. I have my little card game here, and so we're going to steer it this way and see where the conversations take us. So what's your personal definition of wellness and how has it evolved in your life journey? And just so we're going to mention this, that her life journey is going to change a lot because Alyssa is having her first child in a couple of months. 

06:39 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
So, yeah, yeah, that's going to be a big change, yes, but currently. So I would say my own definition of wellness obviously it changes over the years. You go through different things, you have to adapt and learn, but I would say staying consistent with your own health because it is important, like you don't want to wait until you're ill or you have a problem or a physical injury. You want to get started now and start doing Pilates or start doing nutritional balancing and getting adjusted. So I would say that's a good definition of wellness is like having a quality life instead of just trudging along and then waiting till something comes up and then taking care of it. 

07:22 - Carol Beringer (Host)
Yeah, it's never a good idea to start making decisions about your health in the middle of a crisis. 

07:27
So, you're in the crisis and then, even if you're getting sound advice, you're not processing it all. You can't possibly. You know you're in that fight or flight. You're not processing it all. You can't possibly. You know you're you're in that fight or flight. So, and the more that resilience that we develop by being in our bodies and in our minds and having, you know, a mind body connection and a neurophysical balance, that, yeah, I mean it's pretty exciting stuff because it gives you confidence where where you might not have had it before, so that once you get authentically intentional about your health because if you don't have your health, you really are in deep doo-doo. 

08:03
Yeah, I think it's the most important thing, right, Right yeah, and we know this, but we take it for granted often until there is a crisis. Or a crisis to someone we care for or care about. 

08:16 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
Right. 

08:17 - Carol Beringer (Host)
Yeah, yeah. So all right, and it will change, and it will change when you have your, your yeah we're talking about sleep best tip that I ever got when your baby's sleeping, you're sleeping, so yeah so if they fall asleep for a two-hour nap yeah, take advantage of it, for sure, yeah do you have a regular check-in to make resolutions to boost you and simultaneously let go of what's not boosting you? 

08:46 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
like a daily practice, like do you have a? 

08:48
check-in like morning and night yeah, because my typical pattern is I'll wake up and feel like I can do everything and feel amazing and this is just me personally, and I know by the end of the day I'm like don't even overthink anything. If you're not feeling good, it's, you're going to be fine in the morning, uh, so that's usually my check-in, like by the end of the day, I'll see how was I doing throughout the day. Did I overdo it? Uh, are there things I need to do to balance out? You know, maybe extra stressors I'm experiencing? But yeah, I would say like a daily practice, and we didn't talk or say anything about the mental side. 

09:23
But obviously you're, you know, knowledgeable about this as well. But if your brain isn't, you know, thinking properly and you're kind of in a rut where you're just thinking negatively all the time, then your health is going to follow that. So that's something I try to focus on every day is being consistent. You know, practicing gratitude. I'll pray a lot, especially if I'm going through something and I start to feel really overwhelmed, or if I'm having some health issue, like it's only temporary. What am I going to do that's positive to offset that and what am I grateful for? Because it immediately switches your perspective. So that's. I think that's super helpful. I actually try to teach that to a lot of my patients too, because people forget about that and they just think of their physical ailments, not that their. You know, their mind is important too. 

10:10 - Carol Beringer (Host)
So when you do things with intention, you get better at it, and you know that. Saying that, when I know better, I'll do better, so, then you know better because you learn better about yourself. 

10:20
Even so, I have a practice where I wake up in the morning and before my feet hit the floor, it's like, okay, I am so grateful that my feet can hit the floor and I'm going to, you know, have a beautiful day and I'm grateful for it and I'm going to be the best version of myself that I can be today and then that night I might check in and I might not have been the best version of myself, but I'll just check in and say oh, I could have done that better, or maybe I did everything as best I could. 

10:47 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
It's good to be mindful of that too. It's like how did I handle this? Moving forward, do I want to do something different? 

10:52 - Carol Beringer (Host)
Right, and when you do better, then you really get to appreciate yourself, which boosts your confidence, and if you're better, everybody around you is better. Yeah, those are fun, interesting but hard things to accomplish. 

11:12 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
But we can do hard things we know this. I think that's important too. Like you're instructed, obviously doing Pilates and instructing people and, you know, influencing them. So I think it's important that and I'm the same way, I'm like coaching people with their health you have to personally be like balanced in your own ways. Uh, because I don't know how you could help other people if you're you know, or if you're not practicing what you preach, even sometimes I'm not having my best day exactly, and I'll just say so my bit bit about functional movement, which Pilates is, yoga is. 

11:43 - Carol Beringer (Host)
There's Feldenkrais, alexander, there's a plethora of disciplines that you can seek for functional movement. Functional movement means how do you get through your day? You sit, you stand, you walk and you drive, and then if you do those things better, then your brain will be better, because you're moving through your day with, basically, confidence and or with enjoyment. So you know we do want to part of this. Resolving to be resilient is to live a lifestyle embracing wellness and joy, and so you know you can find the joy in realizing you didn't have the best day. 

12:22
So you know you put that on the plus side and just you know it's very helpful to. Just you know, do these check-ins and definitely not beat yourself up about them, because everything's a learning experience yeah, it's always going to be up and down. 

12:35 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
So right, I think, accepting that, but changing the way you handle things, yeah, and even clients, like if you would just say oh my gosh, I'm like falling over my words. 

12:42 - Carol Beringer (Host)
today I'm not having my best day, you know. If I say something from Mars, you know, please make me bring it back to English. Here's a good one, because you're going to need to use this a lot in the near future. We all always say we're too busy or something gets in the way, right, so if you could expand time, how? 

13:09 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
would you spend it and would you use additional? Hours in a day, or would you want to add another day into the week? I would definitely add another day into the week because, like I mentioned before, by the end, of the day. I'm just ready to go to bed anyway. So I think that would be a little more energizing and it would give you like then I could dedicate that day to, like you know, rest, self-care. That would be amazing and I guess you could do that now. 

13:30 - Carol Beringer (Host)
Technically, you just have to make the change right, exactly, we do have the power Right, and it's like dedicate. 

13:36 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
You know, friday afternoons and on, I'm not going to say yes to anything. I tell people to do that sometimes because you know it's always I'm so busy, I can't, I can't, and then you know sometimes you need to do that for yourself. You do. 

13:51 - Carol Beringer (Host)
And then the other thing is too, when, if we can expand time, if you're busy, then you do make time for the things that are important to you, and I think everyone that I've asked that question has said that too, that they want the day to do nothing. 

14:08
And I actually had a conversation with someone this morning. They said, well, you know your studio's been so busy, what would you do? Have you hit capacity? And I go, no, I go, it seems to just always work out Right. And I said, you know, that would be nice, a nice problem to have. And they said, well, you'd have to expand your hours, or you know, I'm not open on Sundays. And I said, well, we're Sunday by appointment. I have two teachers that will do, you know, sometimes or you know, not a whole day, but I said it just. 

14:38
I think it follows my example of wanting to have a healthy lifestyle is that we do need a day off. I mean a full day off. And I have clients that would say well, you know, if you did an early morning Sunday class, I would really like that. And I would ask them. I'd say well, what is it you do now on Sunday mornings? And they'd say well, my husband and I get to New York Times and we sit on the back porch and have a second cup of coffee. And I said, okay, do you want to give that up? 

15:04
And they thought about it and they go not really and I'm like right. I said most people would kill to have that you know relationship or that ritual or yeah. 

15:13 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
Yeah. 

15:14 - Carol Beringer (Host)
So it's like a what would you call it A guilty pleasure, but you can have a whole day of it. 

15:19 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
Most people are always rushing. That's a good way to get out of fight or flight for a day out of the week. 

15:25 - Carol Beringer (Host)
You could magically have a new skill. What would it be Like? Fly an airplane or learn a new language, like anything. 

15:34 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
What have you been coveting that you'd like to? New skill, I would say Parenting. I know, maybe I guess I could procrastinate a little bit, I guess if I could be more organized, starting my own business. And you understand this, you have to become type a. I was never type a, so I think that's a skill I'm working on and I've always wanted to be good at it because I could kind of jump around from thing to thing. And you know, I think it's important because, like getting back to being structured with just your life in general, it's helpful. 

16:10 - Carol Beringer (Host)
It's a lifelong challenge. Oh, I did want to talk to you a little bit about your nutrition side of your business and the naturopath piece, because for me and I plan to live to be 100, and I only have a couple decades left. But I'm going to approach it this way that even when I was younger I always knew I was going to live a long time and I've always had a healthy approach to life since I was a teenager, with movement and eating and you know, yeah, I've had my off years and been brutal on myself for it. But the thing is that when you're in it it's almost like too hard to see it and then, once you develop it, you keep developing those parts of you better and other pieces then fall into place. So, with the nutrition, so many other decades ago I had a hair analysis done. 

17:17 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
And I never heard about it again until I I remember you saying you did it before. 

17:21 - Carol Beringer (Host)
The client that named it, the Flug, also said oh, melissa, does this hair analysis? I said how did I not know that? So yeah, so tell us a little bit about that. 

17:31 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
Yeah, so I use that as a whole comprehensive wellness tool. 

17:35 - Carol Beringer (Host)
What's the process of it? 

17:37 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
So the hair analysis is you take a little sample of your hair and you get enough to send to a lab and then they measure the minerals that are in your body from that sample and it's different from blood work, because blood work is acute, meaning at the moment you get that blood taken. That's your levels With hair. It's analyzing the past three months of your diet, your lifestyle, everything and telling you what levels your minerals are at, which then tells you a lot of things about your digestion, about the function of your thyroid, your adrenals, about your immune system. It's really helpful because it tells you if you're successfully detoxing the toxins we were talking about. So I use that for everybody, initially because it's so comprehensive and I've found oh, oh, and it also checks for heavy metals, which is great. That's super important. 

18:28
But I found if you don't balance your minerals and take the proper supplement, you can't really make lasting changes that you want to with your health. So I think that's what I've noticed is a lot of people get the long-term results just by following you know, know, following the whole protocol. But it helps you figure out exactly what supplements to take. So you're not it's hard because there's so many supplements out there and everybody's like should I take this? I have a whole drawer full. What should I be taking? And this literally tells you like you're low in this. Take that so you figure out exactly what your body needs. 

19:01 - Carol Beringer (Host)
Right. So because if you read any kind of health article and they'll mention a supplement, it's like, oh, how did I make it to this day without that supplement? And way back in my life I did do some nutritional work and I would always say to people anything that you're taking supplement-wise, you know, bring it in a bag with you and I'd say, well, why are you taking that? Well, I've been taking it for 15 years. Well, maybe you did need it 15 years ago. That doesn't mean you need it today. 

19:26 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
Right, yeah, your body changes. 

19:27 - Carol Beringer (Host)
Right your body changes and you need to adapt with that. And if you are starting to live a healthier lifestyle, you probably need less. And it's really fascinating. But I have a question that I've never known how does one get at a toxic level with heavy metals? 

19:46 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
With heavy metals. Yeah Well, unfortunately everybody has heavy metals in their body. The reason most people don't know is because they get stored in your organs and your tissue. So you could. You know, most people have aluminum and mercury in their body, but what is different for each individual is how much, and are you properly detoxing it? 

20:09 - Carol Beringer (Host)
but does it get into us by food or water? 

20:11 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
or breathing the air, or all of those things all the above, definitely water. That's always like the first thing I explain, to make sure your water's, you know, properly filtered or you have some system set up so it's not just tap water air. You know there's a lot of aluminum in the air, uh, so so a lot of it's unavoidable. It's like you're coming in contact every day with these heavy metals. 

20:35
That's why it's so important to stay ahead of it and continue to like improve your body's ability to detox and the lymph um compression suit really does move that on that's why I have a lot of people do it, because it's it just gets right to it, um, to helping you detox instead of telling you to hydrate. And you know, maybe sleep is important, but this just kind of gets you further along faster, yeah, yeah so that then you have to do both, I know all right. 

21:06 - Carol Beringer (Host)
So last question is if you could have dinner with one person, dead or alive, who would that be? 

21:15 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
dead or alive? Yeah, um, wow, that's a really difficult question. Well, it's interesting, isn't it? I know I like that. I guess I would pick somebody who's passed away and it would probably be a family member, so I would say my grandmother, who I never met, my mom's mom. Another like not as exciting response. 

21:38 - Carol Beringer (Host)
No, it's perfect. 

21:40 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
I would want to meet her because so I'm Lebanese and my grandmother was Lebanese and that was the type of cooking they did, so like Mediterranean cuisine, and I want to meet her so she can teach me how to cook everything and we could have a meal together or something I think that would be cool, great, and that you'd never met her. Yes, yeah, I didn't. I think two of my brothers met her, the rest of us didn't, so she passed away. Yeah, before. 

22:06 - Carol Beringer (Host)
I was born Now. I think that's a wonderful answer, because most people would pick a celebrity. 

22:10 - Alyssa Salvitti (Guest)
I know I don't even care about celebrities enough to pick one. 

22:13 - Carol Beringer (Host)
Yeah, or you know some kind of mentor, or you know, I don't know, but that's a, so that'll give you all something to think about. So thank you for joining us and, um, we'll see you at the uh the next time you join us, and Alyssa's information will be available at the end of the podcast. So thanks for joining us.