Resolve IBS and IBD Naturally
This podcast is for you if you are struggling with symptoms of IBS and IBD and want to get to the root cause of your symptoms so you can take back your health through a holistic, whole-person approach.
Resolve IBS and IBD Naturally
Episode 60: The Missing Link in Healing: Preparing Your Body for Detox, with Heather Sunderland
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Heather Sunderland shares her remarkable healing journey from 28 years of chronic illness to vibrant health by addressing the root causes of mold toxicity and Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (SIRS). Her experience reveals crucial insights into healing complex chronic conditions that conventional medicine often misses.
• Difference between mold toxicity and SIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome)
• The importance of assessing your environment for water damage and mold exposure
• Why preparing the body before detoxification is critical for successful healing
• Three foundational steps: evaluating environment, regulating nervous system, opening detox pathways
• Signs your detoxification pathways aren't functioning optimally
• How nutrition and liquid diets can support gentle detoxification
• Simple environmental changes to reduce toxic burden in daily life
• Why most practitioners miss key components by focusing only on binding or killing
If you're struggling with chronic health issues that haven't responded to conventional treatments, email healthcoachingbyheather@gmail.com to request Heather's free training video on "Uncovering the Hidden Signs of Mold Toxicity and SIRS."
Link to sign up for webinar "Hidden Signs of Mold Toxicity & CIRS:"
https://navigatingmoldandcirs.com/on-demand-client-webinar-landing-page
Heather's website: https://healthcoachingbyheather.com/
Link to a free 30 minute Gut Check Call
Disclaimer: None of the content discussed is meant to be taken as medical advice. All information presented is for educational purposes only and listeners and viewers assume all responsibility around implementing any changes to their health and medical regimen.
Introduction to Holistic Health Approach
Speaker 1Welcome to Resolve IBS and IBD. Naturally, I'm Courtney Cowie, a nutrition therapy and functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner. If you are struggling with the symptoms of IBS or IBD and want to get to the root cause of your symptoms so you can take back your health through a whole person approach, this podcast is for you. Just a disclaimer that the information I'm presenting in this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice. You should always consult a qualified practitioner before making any changes to your health or medical regimen. That being said, let's get on with the show. Heather Sunderland, I'm excited to have this conversation with you today about your journey into helping others heal from mold, toxicity and other toxic exposures. Um, I was excited when you and I connected, cause we have some overlap in our health journeys and, um, maybe it would just be helpful to start with your own story and and kind of how you got into the holistic health space.
Speaker 2Or my story is a long one and I I've like learned how to like speak about it in three to five minutes. But basically I got sick. I'm 60. Now I got sick when I was 30. I was labeled with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome and as the years went on, you know, I had severe neuropathy, interstitial cystitis. I had trouble walking, trouble standing, even had a spinal cord stimulator implanted because I had the. Neuropathy was quite severe, to say the least, and I also had issues with ligament laxity, like they thought I had Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and did tons of prolotherapy and injections to try to strengthen the ligaments and we were missing the root cause. I had SIBO. The list goes on. There's like a list of probably 20 illnesses I had, but it was at the time when I was 52, I had I had a doctor say, hey, let's, let's do a Lyme test, and I lived in Pennsylvania really didn't think a lot about Lyme but had ticks on me a lot.
Speaker 2Um, as a kid and as an adult, tested for Lyme. Um, I was. I had had chronic Lyme disease and we treated Lyme. I improved, I started coming off. I was on 20 drugs for pain and all these things, all these labels, asthma and all these things, and started coming off the drugs. But I was still not well. I was better. I was off medications. I was still struggling to walk, to stand. I still had terrible neuropathy.
Speaker 2Moved to Arizona, entered health coaching school, had that terrible ligament laxity, was in a zero gravity chair. Going to health coaching school and it was during COVID my Lyme resurfaced and I didn't know Lyme could resurface after we had treated holistically. Didn't know Lyme could resurface after we had treated holistically. Um, and I also developed Graves disease, hyperthyroidism, which was not fun Um cause I didn't sleep for 72 hours at a time and I had active mono. All in the same month. It was like April.
Speaker 2Um, during that, like the, when COVID had started and I had to like stop health coaching. Um, and another health coach reached out to me and said I think you have mold toxicity or serves and I thought I live in the desert. Like, how can I have mold toxicity? I'm in a new house, but it triggered this thought in my head like oh my gosh, our water heater, our you know our water heater burst and our base finished basement. Um, when my son was my son was two and we had seven inches of water, eight inches of water in our carpeted furnished basement. Did we do anything special? Now we just went, backed it up and had a cleaning company come out and just like clean the carpets. I didn't know anything about mold, but I went and had blood work for SERS. I did a mycotoxin urine test, you know, I did all the things um BCS test and basically I had chronic inflammatory response syndrome, which a lot of people say is mold toxicity. They're different. I mean, most people with mold toxicity can have chronic inflammatory response syndrome, but people with SERS are sicker and they take longer to get well. Um so, but I'll just we can. But treatment is the same. You know, ideally what we're trying to do is the same.
Speaker 2Um so that started me in the rabbit hole of the mold and SIRS world and as I shared my story, I started attracting people with clients with mold and SERS. And so while I was healing. I was coaching people with mold toxicity and SERS and truly and Lyme and I cause a Lyme. Mold was getting missed and a lot of people who were treating and killing and killing but they were missing. They were in an environment that was toxic and it hindered their ability to get well and it was part of why I think my Lyme and the Graves came about was because I was toxic, not just for mold but from all the drugs I had been on right. All the toxicities were exposed to in our air, in our water, in our food pathogens, all of it and our food pathogens, all of it. And I went to a wonderful doctor out here she's still my doctor but their approach did not get me well and it very much just focused on binding mold mycotoxins and did not prepare my body for the process.
Discovering Hidden Mold Toxicity
Speaker 2So I sort of walked away and sort of found the approach, found other people who had Maldon CERS who were using the regenerative approach that I use with clients and there are a lot of good doctors out there and a lot of times they don't have the time even to do all the pieces that, like a health coach, may get into because they're a doctor and they're spending less time with you. So this doctor is still my doctor. She's still brilliant. I still use her when I need her, but I went off on my own and I don't have mold, I don't have Lyme, I don't have SIRS. I'm still peeling away some last layers because I was sick for 28 years and exposed to mold ever since I was three years old as a little girl and probably every home I had been in, but I have no idea the levels and I had digestive issues and SIBO and like the list is so long.
Speaker 2But I mean, everything has been reversed and you know what I do with clients is we create that internal environment that we take away the things that are interfering with healing, which can be like where you're living. It can be your drainage pathways, your liver, your lymph, your bowels, your kidneys that need support so that these toxins and pathogens and the die off can leave. But we create this environment that the body can start doing it on its own and once that happens, the ball just gets rolling on its own. And a lot of times when I see people and they're coming from other practitioners there's a lot of focus on killing or binding and they're coming from other practitioners. There's a lot of focus on killing or binding, but not on like how do we eat to detox? How do we eat to nourish the cell? There's no look at, like, the mitochondria. There's no look at the nervous system and addressing nervous system dysregulation mindset.
Speaker 2I mean just, there's so many aspects to healing and I really had to embrace all of them. I wish there was like one magic pill that we could take to get better. But that is not how it works. When we have complex chronic conditions we're like peeling the onion peeling away the onion and different layers show up at different times, and it's a process. Nobody likes the fact that it at different times. And it's a process. Nobody likes the fact that it's a process, but it's a process. But I want to give people hope. If I can get better, you know, and have been sick for 28 years, I had a walker, had, you know, a zero gravity chair, I had assistive devices to get around. Um couldn't even walk my front door to my bedroom in my new build in Arizona and now like, and I couldn't walk barefoot because we have tile, now I can walk barefoot, I can vacuum, I can mop, I mean I can hike. It's just sort of crazy. Five years ago I could barely stand.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, Wow. There's like so much you said there and in some ways your story reminds me a little bit of Dr Terry Walls. I don't know if you're familiar with how she healed herself from MS and you know, in a similar way, her big focus in the very beginning was nutrient dense diet, Right and like really looking at food as sort of like the nutrient foundation that's going to give the body what it needs resource-wise to help heal. So I agree wholeheartedly, Heather. I feel like my own experience with biotoxin illness, especially with like brick and mortar, functionally trained docs, if you will right. Often these practitioners have initially worked in the conventional medical system and then crossed over, and although that gives them some advantages and obviously they have the ability to prescribe, which can be helpful at times, One common theme I found too is like very few of them are deeply trained in therapeutic nutritional approaches, certainly not necessarily behavioral change coaching, like none of that stuff which, as you're kind of alluding to our core foundational pieces that should be considered in every chronic illness, right?
Speaker 2Yeah, oh, definitely. And I just had a client right before we got on. I mean, I've seen her struggling and my head is like major nervous system dysfunction and I'm like, oh, I'm pretty sure there's still exposure, you know, and they've remediated like three times and every time they keep finding more exposure. And today I think we pinpointed where the exposure might be coming from. But doctors don't have the time to delve in to that. Sometimes they're just responding to treating a symptom.
Speaker 2But this gal's symptoms are due to nervous system dysregulation and exposure. So it doesn't really matter what we give her. If we don't address the exposure and the nervous system dysregulation, it's gonna hinder the process of healing. And I think, once you and I we've gone through this process of healing, and even though it may look different, it helps us have eyes to understand and see in our clients what others might miss if they haven't been someone who has walked through mold, toxicity, biotoxic illness, sirs in a way that I think other people can't always see. And not that I wish it on anybody to go through it, I don't but there's a value to having somebody come alongside you who's been on the journey and who's come through the other side.
Speaker 1Oh for sure. Yeah, I would agree wholeheartedly and I definitely think that's a piece that often gets either misunderstood or missed is that you really have to take in consideration the constitution of the person in front of you. And, like you said, if they're really toxic, whether that's coming from environment, almost always there's a component of that right, or historical exposures, but it could also be conditioning and mindset and other things too. They have to have the energy reserves, the gas in the tank, so to speak, to handle offloading those toxins.
Speaker 1And even just yesterday I was having a conversation with a really undernourished client who was like desperate to just start getting some wins, and I had to really set expectations and say, look like I know you want to dive into detox and have me look at all these supplements you're taking, but we're not going to go there yet. Like, first of all, I rely on my testing to give me clues as to where we need to prioritize. But then, secondly, I'm like we need to nourish you and build you up a little bit before we start pushing major toxins or you're going to feel worse and sicker and you know that's the hardest part I think is just kind of even from the client interfacing end, right, heather, is trying to set those expectations, like you said, and that's where your story becomes so inspiring, because it's like look, this could be a process. I don't want it to take 20 years for you, but just let's be realistic here too, right?
Speaker 2Yeah, well, and hopefully a coach, someone with your background or my background. We can help them get to the root a lot quicker sometimes than the practitioners they're working with Not always, but a lot of times. I just see people where so many pieces are being missed and the nutrition pieces I could not tolerate. Nothing shifted until I started nourishing and my diet was down to 10 foods. But when I started doing liquid liquids because I could absorb better that, I started to be able to detox using liquids. I could detox with and symptoms started improving within three days of the approach I was using and I wasn't doing herbs and stuff to kill and I wasn't taking binders. I was using food to nourish and to bind and to alkalize. So just very different.
SIRS vs. Mold Toxicity Explained
Speaker 2Now, later on, my diet over time was able to shift and I was able to add in other tools and other supports.
Speaker 2But I was so toxic, you know, on 20 drugs for 20 years to just start giving me a binder to pull out toxins without opening my pathways, without addressing my nervous system, didn't, didn't work at all. Yeah, right for me, um, but now, yeah, I can, I can take binders and do all those things, but, um, everybody's so unique what they need and even what diet to eat to heal. You know, how I eat is not how all my clients eat. I teach them principles, um, and at different seasons of healing, my diet shifted and my body pretty much intuitively told me what I needed, based on what I was craving. I craved a lot of cabbage and broccoli the first year of healing and when I look back, I think, oh, my liver, my liver needed that support for detox and I would eat a head of cabbage like every other day. Um, I mean, I just look back and I just tell people if you're in tune with your body, lean into your cravings, of their healthy cravings, cause usually it's something your body needs. Um, absolutely.
Speaker 1Absolutely.
Speaker 1And even if it's like not so healthy cravings like chocolate could be one right. That could be magnesium deficiency potentially. So, yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. One thing I heard you mention that I think would be really helpful for you to touch on, heather, is the fact that you moved to Arizona and then someone planted in your head the idea that you might've been mold exposed, and so talk a little bit about how it could even be historical water damage, building exposure, not so much the current state of the environment you're in, because I know, when I'm trying to explain that concept to whether it's other practitioners or clients, that can be a tough one for people to wrap their heads around.
Speaker 2I think we all have to remember that we're exposed to things all the time that we can't see or feel right in our air, in our water, in our food, even walking down a grocery aisle or a laundry detergent aisle with all those chemicals, like my brain sort of goes not good, like I don't have symptoms, but my brain goes not good. So I mean, a lot of times we're in school buildings. We may have been a college dorm room, we may have gone to a friend's house that had water damage and there's no smell, there's no visible signs. Sometimes there is. Sometimes you see staining, staining on the walls, yeah. But all of that, especially if you've got poor genetics to be able to detox, that stuff stays and builds up in our body, can hide in our fat cells and over time, that toxic load in the body and not just mold. Part of what I do is make sure that we're looking at the whole load parasites, viruses, bacteria, heavy metals, like. Because if we just remove mycotoxins from somebody who has mold and SERS, they're usually not feeling great because we haven't brought down that whole entire toxic bucket and so we're getting exposed to those things all the time. Or we've had childhood viruses that are, you know, in our body. But if we're more toxic, we're more inflamed, we're more acidic, we can have more pain, more symptoms that eventually lead to illness and disease which may not even have a root, as like, specifically, mold toxicity. Mold will tip a lot of people's buckets, but there's not just mold and mycotoxins in people's bodies.
Speaker 2I live off a golf course. Never thought about it. I bought a house on the golf course. I love the view, you know, and I think, oh my gosh, I'm exposed to pesticides and chemicals. If I go out and walk on and I'm in the desert, in the low desert in Arizona, outside west of Phoenix and farm country, I go out and walk on the golf course Like I'm thinking, oh, pesticides, glyphosate, like chemicals, and like I don't have grass in my backyard and I have the golf course right there, but I don't take my shoes off anymore and just cause. Um, I don't you know, but I'm being exposed, right, whether I realize that or not, I'm being exposed and I can be proactive to do things to help my body, those pathways to be open and help my body.
Speaker 2Do, even though I've got some poor genetics, to be able to remove my body. Do, even though I've got some poor genetics to be able to remove the toxins that I'm exposed to on a daily basis. Where you don't have this, you know I went through this accumulation of toxins and then healing was quite uncomfortable because I was sick and had undiagnosed Lyme for 22 years. So you know, sick and had undiagnosed Lyme for 22 years. So you know it was not. It's been a very rewarding journey and I saw shifts, like right away. You know the whole process, but I had symptoms the entire process.
Speaker 2And that's not everybody's story. You know, if somebody is young and they're 20 or they're 30 or they're 40, it's not the same as somebody who's 60, you know who's had this bucket that's overflowing for a while. But so there's so many things we can do to decrease what's coming in and help open up the faucet so things can sort of drain out. Even if you've got poor genetics. It's really our lifestyle and the things we do that make a huge difference in how our body's working and functioning.
Speaker 2And once we, you know, do the things we need to do to clear those pathways, get bio flowing, you know, get rid of the stagnation in the liver, get the lymph moving, um, just kidneys flowing properly, um, the body can start to let go on its own. Sometimes we don't even have to. I use binders more to mop up. If somebody's detoxing on their own a lot, I'm not using a binder to usually pull out toxins from the tissue. I'm using the binder to mop up because I'm getting the body to do it on its own, to let go, and then the binders to grab stuff and get it out more quickly so people don't have the symptoms that they're having.
Speaker 1Yeah, so I do want to talk about that because I think that's going to be a very different take than potentially a lot of people listening who have explored healing with a functional doctor who maybe doesn't take this approach right. Heather, but before we go there, I know you've mentioned SIRS and mold toxicity are two very different things, so I think it would be very helpful for you to kind of talk about that. Maybe just talk about, like, what is SIRS, so people kind of understand that term.
The Regenerative Approach to Healing
Speaker 2Yeah, chronic it stands for chronic inflammatory response syndrome and it's called a biotoxin illness. So biotoxins are living organisms, so you can have a high load of mold as a living organism, pathogens like parasites, viruses and bacteria. Lime right is a bacteria. So SERS is very common in the Lyme population that they're undiagnosed with SERS and they're focused on killing Lyme but they're not looking at the whole picture. And once you have SIRS, basically the toxic load in the body has overflowed and you have systemic inflammation, a cytokine storm, and it affects people differently but it can impact every single system of the body. But some people might come in and like the cardiovascular system's really affected or somebody's got metabolic syndrome and type two diabetes and they can't lose weight. Where me, I had neuropathy and trouble walking and standing and I had digestive issues. So my whole family had SIRS. But we all really hit different systems of the body that were affected. And in traditional medicine and conventional medicine this is like they're not trained in mold toxicity or SERS, so it both get missed. Many people with mold toxicity not everybody has SERS, but the treatment is the same to me for both. But I've just noticed that when people just have mold toxicity and they haven't been exposed a long time and the people who haven't been exposed as long they respond quicker. But if you've got actual SIRS where you do blood work to verify chronic inflammatory response syndrome, it's a two to five year process to bring like all the numbers back into range and it depends on the person and what they're doing and how they're doing it. If they have repeat exposures to toxins, not just mold and mycotoxins, that's probably a very common one that we don't know we're exposed to. But I have a family member who has SIRS and wasn't due to mold. It was just that traditional conventional medicine put them on one drug after another drug after another drug, very high pathogen load in the body. I mean I've had people who were worked in a paint store and were painters, right, and they're inhaling all those paint fumes and positive they had serves with their symptoms. So it doesn't always come from Lyme and mold, but a lot of times if people have Lyme, chronic Lyme or mold toxicity and they're not improving, you might want to look at SERS because sometimes people are just way too focused on just Because sometimes people are just way too focused on just the mold and the mycotoxins and in Lyme they're way too focused on just the Lyme bacteria. You really got to look at the whole picture and nobody who's chronically ill has just one issue. It's usually we've got.
Speaker 2Everybody I work with I do muscle testing. Everybody I work with who's sick has elevated levels of heavy metals, parasites, of viruses, of bacteria, of mold, mycotoxins and toxins. And the breakdown may be different, but it's pretty rare that I see someone. I've had one person who had low levels of toxins and they were healthy. They were a practitioner I was connecting with and then they moved into a house and got really sick and called me and because I had muscle tested, we could muscle test where they were now and there was this jump from like two two out of 10 to like eight out of 10 with the whole family and I'm like I think we need, and they checked their house and there was water damage and that was why everything jumped.
Speaker 2When we have that toxic overload, there's more acidity. More pathogens survive in acidity, so things can reproduce and thrive, even if you're not aware you're in that environment. That's not ideal for your health. You're not, you're in that environment. That's not, you know, ideal for your health. So just, I mean the symptoms overlap with mold and SERS, and it's just SERS takes usually longer to get the nervous system, the immune system, everything back in line and regulated. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1It definitely makes sense and I think kind of at the core of it, there's got to be, on some level, detoxification inhibition, because it's also kind of this problem of all these exposures and then the inability to properly eliminate this stuff once you're getting exposed to it too right.
Speaker 2Yeah, and I think, like so many times, most practitioners I mean I don't want to name approaches because there's a lot of approaches and I've taught on some of the different approaches but most approaches go in and start binding if you've got mold and SERS right away. And most doctors I haven't met too many even in the Lyme world that I'm friendly with there's no preparation of the body, there's no making sure the nervous system is ready to do this. But if those pathways aren't flowing, you know, you start trying to pull toxins out. The toxins have to move through the lymphatic system and then they get thrown into the kidneys and to the bowels. And if people are having skin issues, it's usually a lot of times the pathways Um. And if people are having skin issues, it's usually a lot of times the pathways you know, or the liver Um. And it doesn't mean people aren't going to have symptoms in the process Um. But symptoms can be decreased if we've got the right support at the right dose Um. And the more you're letting go of pathogens and toxins, the more support you usually need. The more you're letting go of pathogens and toxins, the more support you usually need.
Speaker 2And I was the queen of needing really insane support, because I think of the length of time I was sick and all that was in my body. I needed really high dose support. And so I have people like they're deeply, deeply detoxing or dumping toxins and I'm like, yeah, one binder pill is not going to cut it. Sometimes people need to take 10, 20, 30.
Speaker 2It just depends what their body is doing, and I love I love the muscle testing for that. Just to assess do they need more binder? To mop up, do they need a higher dose of support? And honing in on what support does their body want versus you know well, yeah, I've heard milk thistle is good for the liver, but as is that what your body wants. My body loves a really high end liver support. That's a very expensive, but without it my liver would really be struggling with all that you know has been leaving my body. I need the right support at the right dose on board, and everybody does. It's just what that looks like, for each person is very unique and has to be customized by the person you know that you're working with.
Speaker 1I couldn't even go for a walk without planning my bathroom breaks. If you have IBSD or IBD and feel trapped by your gut, you're not alone. I used to plan my life around bathroom breaks until I found a three-step solution that finally worked To get my free guide IBSD and IBD Relief a three-step solution to end bowel urgency and loose stool click the link in the show notes below, below, yeah, yeah, I remember reading Dr Neil Nathan's book Toxic a few years ago when it first came out, and he was, I think, one of the first people I saw who was also a doctor, who talked about these really, really toxic people and even not being able to tolerate more than an eighth of a capsule of a binder right, which is really profound when you think about it. And so I think you're kind of hitting it, heather.
Speaker 1This is the unfortunate reality is, I think, a lot of people that are really, really ill. They're in this like sort of conundrum position where they need to get this stuff out, but the normal tools that a lot of practitioners would use to help do that actually could flare them or aggravate them more. Their system's just not ready for it. So that kind of segues into just you've been alluding to it, but like, without giving away all of your trade secrets, right, like what? What is like to you the best way foundationally to try to approach somebody with either SERS or multitoxicity or even just Lyme disease, just basically someone who's pretty toxic in general?
Three Key Steps Before Detoxification
Speaker 2I mean I would say number one is you've got to evaluate your environment that you're currently living in. Because if you're living in a home that has mold, mycotoxins, actinos, endotoxins, like anywhere, you can cut down on toxins in your home, which can be cleaning products and those things as well. But if you've got water damage and you don't know about it and the byproducts of water damage, that's where I see people like they're going from doctor to doctor to doctor and nine years later they're still just as sick with all their symptoms. So it's so critical to evaluate the environment and there's no perfect test to do that either. Right, there's no, you know, like the ERMI tests for mold spores. But I mean, I have people, they they remediate and they repeat with an ERMI, but there's mycotoxins that they're being impacted by. So there's no perfect test. When people aren't getting better, we usually dig deeper into ruling out the environment and checking their body with, maybe, blood work to make sure there's not signs of exposure through blood work. But that's number one is the environment. Number two, I would say is the nervous system.
Speaker 2Working on the nervous system, most people who are toxic, whether it's from mold or Lyme or other things, there is some level of nervous system dysregulation. These toxins inflame the brain, they impair the vagal nerve, they impair the limbic system. It can look different in different people. I've gotten pretty good at spotting it in my clients and there's just so many options. Right for nervous system work, and most people have to do some things at home. Right For nervous system work, and most people have to do some things at home. Right For nervous system work. It can be breath work, it could be um tapping, it could be somatic um exercises that people do at home, um, and some people have to do a lot more than that to get the nervous system to come back to a place that it feels safe. The nervous system is dysregulated. People's detox pathways aren't going to work as well Like bowels, you know, people can be more constipated. So it's, it's a piece.
Speaker 2I didn't realize I was doing nervous system work at the beginning of my journey and for me that was. It was the word of God and I was in biblical counseling when I was so, so sick. My Lyme was active, I had active Graves and active mono and I was just being diagnosed with SIRS. But I was every time and I had crazy symptoms at that season right. I was awake for 72 hours at a time. My heart rate was elevated. I'd wake up with a heart rate of 130 in bed, like I hadn't even started moving. So I've a lot for me. My nervous system I used God's word.
Speaker 2For some people that is not enough. You know. They have to do more modalities to help bring the nervous system back into balance. And if you're in exposure like the nervous system, the mycotoxins are going to inflame the brain and set off the nervous system and dysregulate it. So those are like the first two biggest. And then number three would be opening up those pathways right, and having somebody assess are you pooping daily?
Speaker 2Once things start leaving that lymph gets congested. I'm at the end of the journey where my body's just right, I'm not sick, all the labels are gone, but my body's cleaning out 60 years of right. It's been cleaning out 60 years of toxins and we're down at like year 59 or 60. But it's been crazy. I've never had so much leaving. If I do not, um, get a lymph massage every week, my legs are like lead. You know I have to do all these things. It's not just one thing. So everybody's very different what they need to make sure, in different seasons what they need is going to change um.
Speaker 2So addressing those pathways the lymph, lymph, the liver, the kidneys and the bowels as being like the major breath. Breath is huge to skin is huge, but usually the skin is a sign of the other pathways being backed up. Those are like the first big three things I do before I ever start to detox people anymore. I mean, I used to do it differently but I've learned. Give people some time to get their body ready. They're going to be a lot less symptomatic and they're not going to hate me. You know for what I'm doing.
Speaker 2People should not be going in and killing Bartonella and killing Lyme without preparing the body. And I see it all the time and I talk about it wherever I can all the time. And sadly, I mean these doctors are very expensive. Right To go to to heal, but sometimes you need somebody else to take on that part. And that's where I think, like you and I can be huge for the mindset. I want my people to have doctors. I can carry people through the whole healing process probably without a physician, and refer them to a physician when they need one.
Speaker 2Um, but it's good to have a team, oh, it's good to have a team and you need different people on the team at different seasons of the journey and different people are good at doing different things and coaches are really good at honing in on the mindset, on the nervous system, addressing the pathways, and somebody who's been through it is going to have all different perspective than a doctor who's just treating SERS, mold or Lyme and hasn't personally been through it, where we can understand oh, that's a symptom of detox, that's a symptom of that's definitely die off. You know you need a little bit more support of your pathways, you need a little bit more binder. But sometimes these symptoms on the healing journey are they're weird, they're just, they're scary, they're crazy, they're um, they're unnerving, they don't you know. I think when people understand what's going on with their body, it helps them to feel more comfortable, more safe with the process.
Speaker 1Um, yeah, yeah, so funny. I'm thinking of um years ago I took Alison Seebecker's like I think, her first SIBO pro course group, that of practitioners that went through and she had this video that I remember watching. I actually save it for my clients, heather, because it's like what you can expect on an elemental diet, which is a two to three week liquid diet which a lot of people are just not even going to attempt but I've done it myself personally three times over which kind of gets to your point of you have to walk in the shoes of what you're going to recommend to your clients. Right and just different colored poops.
Speaker 1How you know, all these random, weird things and all of the odd things you can, you would never even think of it. You just your. Your whole little spiel there makes me think about yep, yep and yep. There's so much weird stuff that can happen when somebody is healing. Like to have that reassurance of somebody who really gets it. It can be so huge for a client right, definitely.
Speaker 2And the other piece that I mean nourishing gets missed and how to eat to detox, right. So that's usually the next thing we start on. But I have to listen to people right If they've.
Speaker 2They're really sensitive to foods, right, we have to lean into what they can focus on. Um and uh. But I have found this approach of addressing the whole picture, of addressing parasites and bacteria and viruses as well. Um, people truly get well, not just oh, my toxic bucket went from here to here, like I have clients in their seventies. Their body's just unloading on its own gently and they're just getting better and better and better. But there are symptoms, right. The older we are, the longer you've been sick. It's a diff. It's a little bit more of a rollercoaster ride than if somebody's been sick for three months exposed to mold. It's a different organism when you've been in mold your whole life.
Speaker 1Absolutely, absolutely. So you kind of touched on this, but it might be helpful just to go through sort of some general symptoms that the detox pathways aren't open. Obviously you mentioned like pooping every day. What else, heather?
Speaker 2Yeah, so yeah, you have to be pooping at least once a day and if you're not, we need to work on your bowels and supporting your gut, supporting bowel movement, motility, definitely, if you're having skin issues rashes, breakouts I mean it can look different for different people. This was not an issue I had. I had little episodes here or there. My husband was someone. As he was healing head to toe rashes. He's just like a skin detox. When he was sick he had rashes and as he was healing, it didn't matter how well his pathways were supported, he still. He just would detox through the skin. But that's a sign.
Speaker 2You know that your other organs are often struggling because the skin's our largest organ. Um, if you're having heaviness in your limbs, um, that's a sign of the limbs congested. Like people say, oh, my legs are like cement, they're like lead. Um, that's a sign of the limbs congested. Sometimes pain I, at the end of this journey, I've had a lot of pain in my neck and if I get on the vibration plate, the pain goes away because my lymph is getting really congested up in this area. Even if I do self lymph practices, it's just not enough. So you can have more pain and brain fog. When your lymph is congested Liver, you can have like belching, nausea, vomiting.
Speaker 2I had a lot of liver and gallbladder issues because of all the stuff my body processed, so if I'm nauseous it's usually a sign for me that it's my gallbladder or liver. I have dark circles under my eyes because and I have makeup on but I could see them when I got on the camera I don't know how visible it is to all of you, but without makeup I have very dark circles under my eyes because my liver's processed so many drugs and so much garbage for so long that once the detox stops, my eyes look great. But when I'm detoxing a lot, all I have to do is look at my eyes or the eyes of my clients look great. But when I'm detoxing a lot, all I have to do is look at my eyes or the eyes of my clients and usually you know those dark circles are assigned.
Speaker 2The gallbladder or liver needs some support. But even just touching the liver if you touch under your right rib and you press and it's sore, it's tender your liver needs some love. If you're having pain in your kidneys, um, like people will have low back pain. You know that can be the kidneys. I have a lot of clients who have that. It's like all we do is some kidney herbs and they're usually great within an hour. But it's again, it's finding the right herbs for them.
Speaker 1Yeah, for sure, and that kind of reminds me like my original training as a nutrition therapy practitioner. I was trained in lingual neural testing which did actually kind of go under the rib cage and assess that soft tissue around the liver to get a sense of you know how sore is that? And just in body work terms, right, like being a body work therapist. Like sometimes people don't realize that the musculature and the soft tissue around the organs will actually tighten and feel more constrained and tender to protect that organ when it's inflamed too. So that's a really good thing that you're kind of pointing out, heather, because it might feel muscular but beneath that there could be some organ weakness or inflammation going on for sure.
Speaker 2That's a really. I've experienced a lot of that on the journey. Just my whole abdomen would get really tight, you know, and protective, when my liver and gallbladder and things were just really having to process a lot yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, so good. So yeah, I think that's. Those are some excellent things for people to think about, just in terms of, like, you know, if you're listening and you've had a real hellish struggle with your health and you've never really considered toxicity as a potential root driving cause, like some of these things, if they're hitting home, could be indicators that that that could be a piece right.
Signs Your Detox Pathways Need Support
Speaker 2Definitely. I think I mean 95% of all illnesses are environmental. So I would say about 50% of those are definitely mold or mycotoxin. Water damage related is what the research shows when I've talked on the topic. So that's a lot. You know our environment, our food, our air or water. So anywhere people are willing whether you're if you're not sick and you want to stay well that you're willing to make changes to decrease exposure of what's coming into your body.
Speaker 2Yeah it's a great idea to do that. You know, just start where you're ready to start.
Speaker 1Absolutely. Yeah, I've read the exact same statistic and even just to like put a little tip out there for folks listening like to start with clean drinking water. Right, like that simple step right, because how much water, or liquids just in general, are we consuming on a daily basis? And although it might seem like that's a little bit of a reach to get like a reverse osmosis system or something really high quality for your kitchen man, what an investment in your health. You know. Like right there you're getting so much out exposure wise, right.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, it's so funny because I have a reverse osmosis system and I always have. Yeah, well, it's so funny because I have a reverse osmosis system and I always have. But I've been on trainings where they talk about distilled water. And I'm in the middle of a course and I'm like, oh my gosh, reverse osmosis water still has, like has 50% less toxins, but distilled water you're taking all the toxins out and all the minerals out and then you can put minerals back in the water.
Speaker 2And I'm thinking about distilled water because I'm like my husband's a postman. He works in the desert, drinking two to three gallons of water in the heat outside during the day. And I'm like I looked at you know, the water for where we live. And I just thought, if I'm only taking out 50% and we've done all this work to clean up our body, I'm considering doing this, getting rid of our reverse osmosis and doing a distilled water machine. I'm like doing some research on it right now, doing a deeper dive, safe, with the reverse osmosis, but it doesn't take everything out. And I've been on several trainings where they've shown statistics and I'm like, oh, that's not best, that's good, right, it's better. Reverse osmosis is better, um, but I'm thinking the distilled water might be better because it removes all toxins.
Speaker 1Yeah, so so tell me about that Heather cause. I feel like the um distilled water had sort of a faddish heyday a few years ago, but maybe there's still a lot of like talk in the functional space about that. But, like, what is it about RO that isn't removing all the toxins?
Speaker 2based on what you've seen in these trainings, I've been on cell core trainings and different cell core practitioners who showed research from the EWG about the toxins and reverse osmosis versus tap water versus distilled, and the distilled didn't have any toxins and the reverse osmosis was about 50% less. So I mean that's still a huge improvement. I'm just realizing I did a lot of work to get to where I am that anything I can do because we drink a lot of water in the desert that I can do to decrease what I'm putting in, I mean I my house I don't have. I don't clean with chemicals, I don't I don't cook with chemicals, I don't use chemical laundry detergent. I think I've done all those other things and I think that's what it's like for our clients.
Speaker 2We, I think I've done all those other things and I think that's what it's like for our clients as we have more knowledge and we're ready to take a step. We take a step to reduce, to change out, like our skincare, our hair care. We got rid of Wi-Fi in our house. I was in health coaching school. It was a while ago, like maybe six, seven years ago, and it wasn't expensive to do. We just had an electrician sort of hardwire where we needed the drops to hook our computers into the internet and our TV, um, but I saw this huge shift in my sleep. I went from like and I was sick.
Practical Environmental Changes for Health
Speaker 2You know when we did this but I went from sleeping four hours a night to eight hours a night a few days after getting rid of wifi, and I used to turn off the wifi at night. So it shocked me, um, um, but that was just something we felt led to do. Right, and everybody's at a different phase. It can be a little overwhelming to look at all the things you can be doing. I tell people, start where you're ready, start where you're motivated to start, and just pick, you know one thing, to decrease that toxic load that's coming. I stopped dying my hair, um, soon after I'm. I didn't know I was sick and toxic. Now does everybody do that? No, right, some sometimes like, right, you just feel better about yourself, um, but I, I didn't know I was toxic. And now it's like, oh yeah, I don't think I can go back, you know, to dying knowing how toxic I was. But sometimes we make choices for some things that aren't perfect for sure, for sure, heather.
Speaker 1Yeah, I know I'm still young enough I can get away with the pure henna, so I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be utilizing that as long as I can, but, yeah, when I hit that point, I mean I'm not going back there either, because even the so-called organic better line dyes, they're still dyes, they still have chemicals in them. And that's so interesting just to hear about the hardwiring of the house, because that's something I've been wanting to do since we've built a house and we even went so far as to paint EMF base coat on our walls in the main rooms where we spend time. So there's some shielding, but unfortunately we're still in a wifi environment. Yes, we turn it off at night, but optimally I'd like to do what you've done, where we get the internet hardwired in.
Speaker 2So at the time I don't know what it would cost today. I think it cost us $200, and we had two offices, a bedroom and our television, so four rooms that we had.
Speaker 1That's awesome.
Speaker 2So the only thing my phone is on wifi. If I, you know, make a call or something, I can plug it into the internet. If I'm doing like you know, like interviewing people through the phone, not the computer, but that's the only thing that's not hardwired, that's awesome.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's gotta be a little faster, I would imagine too, cause you're not having to rely on the signaling.
Speaker 2I've never had an issue. Well, I take that back. We were teaching our course on mold that my colleague and I did on our first night. I don't know why Zoom kept crashing and I could not show up on the Zoom and it wasn't Wi-Fi, it was just technology with Zoom. So I showed up on my phone through to my girlfriend who was co-leading and I shared my parts and I couldn't see the slides. I couldn't see any of it, but we had prepared and it was a little crazy. So but that, but normally I have really good, I have no issues. It was just a zoom glitch with yeah, with wife internet at all. When you're hardwired it's definitely not an issue.
Speaker 1Yeah, oh, that's awesome. Yeah, that's just so good to hear your experience, cause, yeah, that's definitely on kind of my bucket list of things to do as like final steps to get our house to a good place.
Speaker 2And I think that's a good reminder for people watching. Like have your list of things that you would like to do to improve your health, but it doesn't. I had a list and this was and cross them off. As you have the finances, as you have the bandwidth, you know to go there. You know it doesn't. You don't have to do it all at once. I spent like eight or nine years like using cleaner products and educating myself. Um, I didn't do it in a day, it was it was years.
Speaker 1Such a great tip from a health coach. So, heather, where can people find you? Cause you've mentioned a lot of great resources and I'm sure people are going to be interested in just learning from you and connecting with you.
Speaker 2Yeah, healthcoachingbyheathercom is my website and healthcoachingbyheather at gmailcom if you want to reach me. And can I put a plug if anybody wants to watch a video training my colleague and I did on uncovering the hidden signs of mold toxicity and SIRS and we sort of educate about mold and mycotoxins and first steps, because our heart is I don't want people to miss the root cause and often water damage is an underlying root in these chronic health conditions. So we've taught this webinar to practitioners. We've given it to hundreds of clients. We just did it for the villages in Florida. Somebody found me for their health and wellness group and we got rave reviews on it. So I always have YouTube recordings that if people are interested, if they email me, I can send them that recording with the PDFs that go with it.
Speaker 1Well, awesome. This has been such a fun conversation. I feel like we could keep talking for another hour, because this is an area I love to talk about too, but in the interest of time and just having having other things we have on our schedules, like, I think you've given a wealth of information and this has definitely brought a different and very valued perspective on mold to the podcast, because I honestly haven't had this conversation with a practitioner about this particular approach to mold. I resonate with it. I support it 100%. I think this is a very solid way to approach any toxicity right. And then having your experience as someone who's gone through multiple toxicities right not just mold but lime and all of the things I think really is unique and you know, I have not have someone who's had all of those different toxic buckets full right on the podcast before, so I appreciate all of that, heather.
Speaker 2Thank you, courtney for having me. I really I love giving people hope that they can get better, courtney for having me. I really I love giving people hope that they can get better ultimately, that there's a root cause I'm sure we both like to do that that there's a root to your issues and people can get well. They just have to be willing and ready to do the work to get well.
Speaker 1Did you find this episode informative and helpful? I'd love to have you leave me a five-star rating. Do you have questions about holistic approaches to optimizing gut health that you'd like to ask? Please leave your question or comment below and I will be sure to address it personally or cover it in a future episode. Be sure to check the show notes for any resources mentioned in today's episode. See you next time.