Phoenix Helix: Maximizing Autoimmune Health Through The Paleo Diet And Lifestyle

If you ask people with autoimmune disease to name their biggest flare triggers, stress often tops the list. And if you ask people to name their top sources of stress, many are overwhelmed by the news. Today’s podcast is a life skill building episode – one that’s very important for emotional and physical health. How do we consume the news in a way that keeps us accurately informed without becoming overwhelmed? How do we discern fake news from real news? And how do we break through feelings of powerlessness to see where we can make a difference in the world? My guest is Sharon McMahon, an expert who shares non-partisan information about news and democracy. She’s a voice of reason in unreasonable times, and I’m grateful to have her on the podcast today.

When you see the power of food as medicine for yourself, it’s natural to want your children to benefit as well. It doesn't mean they need to eat just like you, but fostering a love of real food is an understandable goal. However, children often go through picky eating phases and have a deep love for packaged foods, fast food, and as many sweets as you’re willing to provide. One way to get kids interested in healthier eating is to welcome them into the kitchen, teach them how to cook, and allow them to select recipes to try. So, today we’re sharing tips for all ages: babies, toddlers, grade school, and teens. My guest is Ginny Mahar, a fellow parent and autoimmune warrior who is also a professional chef and cooking instructor.

When you have autoimmune disease, it's common to feel disconnected from your body and even betrayed by your body. Yet we live in our bodies, so this creates a complicated relationship with ourselves. Instead of self-love, we might end up feeling self-hate. How can we change that? How does self-love, or the lack of self-love, impact our wellbeing, both mentally and physically? My guest today is Dr. Shainna Ali, a mental health counselor, educator, and advocate. She is also the author of the Self-Love Workbook series. They are practical guides with concrete action steps. They go beyond a misty view of self-love and teach skills we can apply in our daily lives.

If you get referred to a rheumatologist and they suspect autoimmune disease, there's a list of tests they run as part of the diagnosis process. If you're diagnosed with autoimmune disease, there are specific tests that help monitor disease activity and also your response to treatments. What are these tests, and what does each one measure? How important are they in the diagnosis and monitoring process? These are the questions we'll be answering today. I believe in being an empowered patient, and part of that is clearly understanding the medical care we receive. My guest is Dr. Anna Lafian, an integrative rheumatologist who believes in a holistic approach to patient care.

When we think of skin, we usually think of the outside of the body, but our skin reflects what's happening inside our body as well. It's rare for problems to be isolated to the skin alone. Anyone with a skin-related autoimmune disease knows this. But it's also true for any skin problem, including acne, rashes, eczema, rosacea, and others. They're all signals from the skin that something is unbalanced within the body. We've talked about the importance of gut health many times on this podcast. It won't surprise you to know that it has a major impact on skin health as well. We're doing a deep dive into the gut-skin connection today. My guest is Dr. Shayna Peter, a holistic dermatologist who uses a root cause approach to heal skin from the inside out. She is a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine, specializing in dermatology and functional medicine.

This is one of the most popular podcast episodes - for good reason! While not everyone has a sweet tooth, a lot of us do, and it's often hard to break the sugar habit. Why is that so true? It turns out there are a lot of forces driving those cravings: emotional, psychological, and even biological. It's no wonder they're not easy to resist. In today's episode, we dive into the details. My guest is holistic psychologist Dr. Vickie Bhatia. We discuss everything from the gut microbiome and brain chemistry, to the emotions surrounding food, to the psychology of habit change. Most importantly, we share practical tips for making empowered food choices, and breaking the sugar craving cycle.

Today we have a very special episode. I’m celebrating the publication of my new book: Healing Mindset. It’s a guide to the mind-body connection for people with autoimmune disease. The mind-body connection isn’t just an idea. There’s an entire field of science called psychoneuroimmunology that studies this connection. How we feel in our body affects how we feel in our minds, and our thoughts and feelings impact our physical health. Today, we’ll be talking about specific mind-body techniques, science-based benefits, and how to harness this connection for autoimmune health. My partner for this episode is Donna Jackson Nakazawa. Many of you know her as one of my most popular podcast guests. She’s an award-winning science journalist, author of 7 books, a fellow autoimmune warrior, and an expert on the mind-body connection. Today, we’re trading places. She will be the host and I will be the guest!

Autoimmune disease brings a lot of changes to our lives, and as we all know, it doesn't just impact us alone. It also impacts those we love – friends, family, and children. Today, I've invited three parents with autoimmune disease onto the podcast to talk about their experiences. What has been the most challenging part? How have they adapted as parents? How do they talk to their children about their health? And how have their children grown in response? This is a deeply personal conversation, and I'm so grateful to the guests for sharing. I hope it resonates with every parent listening, and helps you know you're not alone.

This podcast is all about autoimmune empowerment! Making choices in our daily lives that minimize symptoms and maximize our joy in living. That said, it's not always easy. Sometimes the habits are hard to start and hard to keep. Other times, you're doing everything right but not seeing the results you hoped to achieve. So, today, we're doing a troubleshooting episode with an expert guest and one of my favorite people: Dr. Terry Wahls. She is a functional medicine physician, a clinical researcher, a professor of medicine, and a fellow autoimmune warrior. In this episode, she shares her best advice for thriving with autoimmune disease and troubleshooting the obstacles we encounter along the way. We talk about motivation, family dynamics, digestion, supplements, physical therapy, personalized diets, and more!

When we think of pollution, the first images that come to mind are things like smokestacks, oil spills, smog, and greenhouse gases. But you may not realize that your home can contain pollution as well – in your water supply, in the air you breathe, and in the products you purchase. More than 80,000 new chemicals have been released into the world since the industrial revolution 150 years ago, and most of them within the past 50 years. These chemicals have never been fully tested for their effects on our bodies or the environment. And a lot of them are inside our homes. On top of that, people with autoimmune disease are often more sensitive to chemicals, and toxins can be an autoimmune trigger. I don't say this to scare anyone. This podcast is about empowerment. So, today we're going to share tips for reducing the toxins in our homes. Every step we take is a positive one. My guest is Dr. Aly Cohen, an integrative rheumatologist and an expert on non-toxic living.

Two of the most common autoimmune diagnoses are Hashimoto's Disease and Graves' disease, and they both involve the thyroid. Conventional doctors often run a simple thyroid test as part of an annual physical. The problem is that it doesn't catch every thyroid problem. Functional medicine physicians run a complete thyroid panel, which gives a more expansive picture, but it's not always a clear picture. Today, we're going to go over what each test measures and how to interpret your results. My guest is Dr. Datis Kharrazian, an award-winning researcher, clinician, author, and educator. Many of you are familiar with his bestselling book, Why Do I Still Have Thyroid Symptoms When My Lab Tests Are Normal? He has a new online class called Hashimoto's: Solving the Puzzle.

Before autoimmune disease, did you have a yoga practice that you loved but can no longer do? Do you struggle to find a way to adapt your practice to your ever-changing autoimmune body? Do you miss yoga and want to make it part of your life again? Or maybe you have never practiced yoga, but would love to try and don't know where to begin. This podcast is for you! My guest is Jivana Heyman, founder and director of the Accessible Yoga Association and co-founder of the Accessible Yoga Training School. He has over 25 years of experience teaching yoga to people of diverse abilities. In this episode, we’re going to troubleshoot a wide variety of autoimmune symptoms and talk about how to develop a personalized yoga practice.

If you're new to the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol, a lot of your favorite foods are suddenly off the table and you may wonder what you can eat! In today's podcast, we share AIP food swaps for the foods you miss the most. We also share some powerful superfood combinations. My guest is Annie Rubin. She is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and an AIP Certified Coach. She's also a fellow autoimmune warrior living with rheumatoid arthritis herself.

If you’re a regular listener of my podcast, you know that I start every year with a Healing Stories episode. It features back-to-back interviews with autoimmune warriors just like you! I ask them to share their journey from rock bottom to reclaiming a vital life. In this episode, we talk about rheumatoid arthritis, alopecia, myasthenia gravis, and also autoimmunity in general. Everyone’s story is unique, but we also have so much in common. Whatever your diagnosis, I hope these stories resonate and inspire.

This is one of the most popular podcast episodes - for good reason! Autoimmune health depends on blood sugar balance. When our blood sugar gets too high, drops too low, or swings wildly between these extremes, it increases inflammation in our body. If this happens regularly, it leads to chronic inflammation. In today's episode, we'll be sharing diet, lifestyle, and functional medicine tips for achieving and maintaining blood sugar balance. My guest is Dr. Jeff Horacek, a functional medicine physician with over 20 years of experience. Blood sugar is one of his medical specialties.

In support of my own autoimmune health, I'm taking a sabbatical for the month of December and releasing two of my favorite episodes from the archives that you might have missed. Today's episode is one of the most popular of all time. If you think you can't meditate, this podcast is for you! Do you picture meditators sitting quietly with completely empty minds - something you could never do? Let me tell you a secret: those people don't exist. Even the Dalai Lama has thoughts while he meditates. The mind is designed to think just like the heart is designed to beat. Meditation isn't about stopping thoughts; it's learning how to notice and detach from them. There are also many different ways to meditate, including moving meditations, or cultivating mindful moments in everyday life. My guest is Jeff Warren, who is known as the “MacGyver of Meditation”. He excels at fixing people’s meditation problems. In this episode, we talk about common meditation obstacles for people with autoimmune disease, and how to overcome

When you first experience the connection between the food you eat and how you feel, that can be an empowering moment. But when certain foods cause you to flare, that can also inspire a fear of food. This is a natural reaction, but it also has consequences. The fear itself can cause autoimmune flares and also increase food sensitivity, creating a vicious cycle. Suddenly, all food feels dangerous, and we over-restrict our diets, which harms our health long-term. There is good news! We can overcome food fear, replacing it with a deep knowledge about our bodies and enjoy eating again. That's our goal with our conversation today. My guests are fellow autoimmune warriors, Nitika Chopra and Alison Marras. We've all experienced food fear and share tips for overcoming it.

Dr. Aly Cohen is an integrative rheumatologist who blends both conventional and holistic approaches in her medical practice. She's been a great resource for accurate coronavirus information since the pandemic began. I interviewed her in Episode 154 about COVID-19 infections among people with autoimmune disease and what factors increased vs. decreased our risk. I invited her back onto the podcast today to talk about vaccines. This is a topic many of you requested when the vaccines first became available in early 2021. At that time, there was no data on people with autoimmune disease because we weren't included in the initial research studies. Now, enough people have been vaccinated that the data is available, and we'll be sharing it with you today.

Human beings depend on each other. Sometimes we give help, and sometimes we receive it, but many of us are much more comfortable in the giving role. Autoimmune disease can turn the tables quickly. Suddenly, we’re in a position where we need help more often. If we were the caregivers before, how do we navigate this change in identity? How do we face the fears that may arise - of vulnerability, feeling weak, being seen as a burden, or people saying no? If you took pride in your independence, do you feel shame if you need help? There are gifts that come with learning to receive: a deeper intimacy in relationships, a greater sense of self-compassion, a more expansive sense of identity, and a stronger connection with humanity. But that doesn’t mean it’s an easy transformation. My guest is Kalene Khan, a licensed therapist who specializes in self-compassion. She helps people learn to be as kind to themselves as they are to others. She is our guide for this conversation today.

I have two friends who were diagnosed with autoimmune disease through a referral from their ophthalmologist. Their first symptoms appeared in their eyes. Across diagnoses, this is common. Eye pain, dryness, swelling, inflammation, vision loss, and double vision - almost every autoimmune diagnosis can include eye symptoms. This is why an ophthalmologist is an important person to have on our healthcare team. Today, we're lucky enough to have an integrative ophthalmologist on the podcast. Dr. Rani Banik is a board-certified neuro-ophthalmologist with over 20 years of medical experience as a clinician, educator, and researcher. She also has specialized training in functional medicine and treats her patients from a holistic perspective.