Returning to homeostasis as the body was intended to function requires intentional nourishment and optimal digestion, but in modern day America, if your wellness routine doesn’t also include purposeful detoxification, you will be spinning your wheels. It is believed that most people are dealing with a toxic burden at some level—it’s just a matter of how much that toxic burden is contributing to somebody’s current symptoms or disease state.

The Storied Wellness Approach says that wellness doesn’t have to be complicated—in fact, we spend a lot of time learning the importance of returning to simple roots. In this post, we’re breaking down the first of the three Storied Wellness pillars, and defining what it means to Nourish ourselves in six key areas.

If you’re new to the natural health world, it can be really confusing to figure out which type of care you should be looking for. Maybe you’ve decided not to go the traditional route, but what are the differences in how an allopathic doctor would treat your condition versus a functional practitioner? Where does foundational medicine fit in? These comparisons will really make you think.

Maybe you’ve been dealing with symptoms of an irritable bowel for years and you’re keenly aware that your digestion is connected to how healthy you feel. But what if you haven’t? Why should you care about your digestive health? What are some of the other signs and symptoms you should look out for? What did Hippocrates mean by, “all disease begins in the gut?”

Let’s explore the typical path that we often take when symptoms arise. We usually squelch the symptoms with over the counter drugs because we don’t like to be uncomfortable and we’re taught that symptoms are bad. Maybe you’ve exhausted all that the docs have to offer you. You may even have a whole pantry full of supplements and oils to deal with them from a more natural approach. But why isn’t this getting to the root cause?

Have you ever thought to yourself, why does everything have to be so complicated? Maybe the more things that you try, the more elusive your health goals really seem. Is it inflammation? Leaky gut? Autoimmune? Candida? Stress? Hormone imbalance? I teach three main principles to un-complicate wellness and provide you with the framework to address your real root causes without overwhelm.

Your hormones are chemical messengers that are all interconnected. Most diagnoses like "estrogen dominance" or "hypothyroidism" that you've been given are not root causes but byproducts of deeper dysfunction. It is never one gland that is imbalanced so we must consider the whole system together, especially what impacts the master signaling hormones upstream, if we want to restore balance.

One of the biggest differences of the Foundational approach is the emphasis on optimizing elimination. The essential and un-cute side of healing that we have to normalize is talking about your body’s drainage funnel. You have 3 main ways to eliminate toxic waste, and each of these things need to be working well before moving into any type of protocol, or you’ll simply end up recirculating toxins.

Have you considered that allergies are just a symptom of something going on deeper under the surface, and that once you learn to read your body’s clues and address those root causes, you can overcome them? While many alternative histamine-suppressing treatments such as DAO, nasal rinses, gut health protocols, and low-histamine diets may help, they all fall short of addressing your root causes and can only offer short term relief at best.

When you’ve been unwell for months, maybe years, it starts to wear on you. It begins to shape your perspective in ways that you might not even realize. You begin to identify yourself with your diagnosis or the symptoms that you are managing and its perceived limitations. Those limitations may be practical, or they could merely be ideas that we’ve been conditioned to believe about our capacity to heal.

I do not practice functional pill-for-every-ill-medicine. Meaning, I do no spot treat abnormal lab values with nutraceuticals. I think it’s only natural coming from an allopathic background to want to know what’s going on under the hood. Functional tests are great for that. What I didn’t anticipate in my own journey, and what much of the functional medicine community is still getting wrong, is that the root causes we dig up with functional testing aren’t the real root causes.

Have you been around the block a few times when it comes to your gut health? Maybe you roll your eyes as you scroll through Instagram as the one thousandth influencer tries to sell you on the next best supplement or foods to eliminate to “beat the bloat.” You’ve seen countless providers over the years trying to find relief. You’re frustrated because it seems no one understands what you’re going through. But you’ve never heard about terrain theory, or been taught that you cannot heal in a toxic environment… Until now.

After the anti-Candida diet, I dabbled with Autoimmune Paleo, clean keto, low-histamine, and pro-metabolic diets. They all seemed healthy and I always focused on nutrient density and quality no matter which framework I followed, but none of them were the magical solution that I was looking for. Functional testing is great for helping to identify many issues that are not found with conventional lab work, but going after things like Candida, mold, heavy metals, or Lyme as a first step is a horrible idea, and now I understand why.

Our bodies are designed to heal, but sometimes once we uncover what is truly keeping us sick, we experience new symptoms that can throw us off or discourage us from continuing on the current path. By understanding common hindrances to healing like poor drainage, toxins, parasites and pathogens, we have a better understanding of the big picture and a renewed zeal for maintaining a healthy terrain.

I recently shared in my masterclass, The Healing Shift, about my journey with chronic eczema on my hands. I thought that it was especially important to note that of all the symptoms that I’ve dealt with over the years, this was not one that I grew up with like the migraines, hormone imbalances, or gut issues. This particular problem did not show up until after I was diagnosed with a leaky gut and Candida and began cleaning up my diet and using targeted supplements to help with my gut and hormones. But why?

If we are going to embrace the Foundational Medicine model, understanding this concept of terrain is vitally important. I want to introduce you to a new term that helps this whole theory come to life: pleomorphism. Once this concept makes sense to you, you’ll never look at the human body the same way again.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. I’ve spent many years studying the complicated and nuanced science of nutrition and the body to be able to tell you, it actually can be pretty simple. Here at Storied Wellness Co. we believe your body was designed with the innate capacity to heal itself when we remove the things that keep us sick and give it more of the things it needs to function optimally.