WELLTHY Generation Podcast!

89. "I'm on Three Medications But No One's Talked to Me About Food" Why does it matter?

• Naihomy Jerez • Episode 89

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We explore the frustrating disconnect between conventional medical care and true healing, highlighting how doctors often lack training in nutrition and lifestyle medicine despite their crucial role in health.

• Medical professionals typically focus on treating symptoms rather than addressing root causes
• Women's health concerns are frequently dismissed or misunderstood in conventional medical settings
• Most doctors receive minimal education on nutrition and lifestyle interventions
• Personal story of reversing prediabetes through food and lifestyle changes without medication
• Client success stories including resolving IBS, PCOS, acne, autoimmune conditions and fertility issues
• Understanding your body's symptoms as communication rather than random occurrences
• The importance of cultural relevance when making dietary changes
• Working collaboratively with medical professionals while advocating for root-cause approaches
• How learning about food beyond calories and sodium creates sustainable health changes

If you want support with healing at the root level while maintaining joy in your food choices, book a free consultation call or send me a DM via Instagram so we can get the conversation started. See links below!

Thank you so much for listening!


Speaker 1:

Hello friends, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited to be here and I am really excited to have you here with me Now. Today we're going to cover a topic that a lot of my clients come to me with, and it's frustration after visiting the doctor. They go to the doctor, they're not feeling well, something's off with their body, and oftentimes they're met with. But your blood work looks good, or they're met with. If you take this medication, it'll help, you feel better. Or if you lost weight, xyz health condition or problem wouldn't be happening because you're just overweight. And it becomes very frustrating for them. And I've been in that kind of scenario too, where I'm just trying to heal at the root level but I'm met with just oh, this will take care of the problem and this will take care of the symptom, and sometimes it does help. But I am a firm believer that healing happens at a deeper level, right, and we're going to the doctor to try and understand what's happening and to try and get whatever's going on to totally go away, not just manage the symptoms. Right, and there's a few blind spots that happen when we are in these kinds of relationships with the doctor and this is not a doctor bashing episode ships with the doctor, and this is not a doctor bashing episode.

Speaker 1:

What happens most of the time is that they're not educated on this, and by this I mean food and lifestyle. This is not something necessarily. They're taught in medical school. They are taught how to determine what your symptoms are and then treat those symptoms so that you can start to feel better, and this is like at a totally high level. They're really not taught how your lifestyle and how you eat and your stress levels and the way you live your life impact your health. So here you are, you're on three or four medication and no one's talking to you about how food can impact you and how your lifestyle can impact you. And it was just recently on Instagram.

Speaker 1:

I heard a famous doctor say that we have a lifestyle issue in the United States, and it's true. There's lifestyle issue, there's accessibility issue, there's education issue. There's just so many things that is industry is creating. And this is even more magnified for women because women are not studied as frequently. We are seen as complicated creatures because we do have hormonal shifts happening every month with our menstrual cycle and perimenopause. So it's not until recently where there are female specific studies happening and education, and medical professionals are being educated on this. So what happens is that we often also get gaslit when we go to the doctor, and a lot of times they say that it's in her head or that it's not that serious, it can't be that painful, and there are a number of articles just going around on this where they're calling these things out in the medical field, especially when it comes to women. So, because our bodies are so different, because our hormones are more sensitive and it requires this symphony of a flow our hormones really get impacted by the way we live and by the food we're eating. So it turns into this managing the symptom rather than creating and nurturing our health.

Speaker 1:

And this is not bashing on medication either, like pharmaceutical medication over the counter. What have you? I do think that they're all important. There is a time and a place for everything, and we are very lucky to have this amount of medication accessible to us for when it is needed. However, what I do think happens is that, because there's really no guidance from the medical professionals as to how to help our symptoms go away or what can be helpful, then they're over-prescribed and they're used for very long periods of time, and then they build on each other and of course, they have side effects and things like that. So if we learned how to live a lifestyle like how to eat better, how to manage your stress better, how to sleep, so on and so forth maybe we would be able to come off of those medications with our doctor's approval, or we might not need them at all.

Speaker 1:

To begin with and I can share some examples with you so that you're understanding better where I'm coming from I'll start with myself. I was pre-diabetic very early on. I was 31 years old and my blood work. I found this out years later, after I created a login for Quest Lab and I saw my blood work results from years ago. And then I was like, oh my God, my blood work results from years ago. And then I was like, oh my God, I was pre-diabetic. The note that the nurse practitioner had written that went along with this blood work result was oh, you're doing fine, nothing to worry about. Eat more fruits and vegetables, exercise the typical response. And it just rolls off their tongue at this point, because every single doctor would tell you that and they don't know exactly what that means, how to do it and most likely they're not doing it themselves. So at that point, if I would have continued my lifestyle the same way that I had been now at 39 years old, I would have most likely right this is all speculation been diabetic or been way, way deeper into prediabetes. They probably would have prescribed to me some sort of medication like metformin to help me manage my blood sugar, and I would have just continued down this rabbit hole of inevitably getting diabetes.

Speaker 1:

However, what happened was because I had switched my lifestyle, my blood, my blood work, basically my eight of one C, completely reverted back to a quote, unquote normal range where I was no longer in that warning that warning, I guess, range of pre-diabetes. And that's the power of food and lifestyle, because just by changing a few things of the way I eat and trust me, if you know me or if you don't know me I have never given up my cultural foods or foods I love and enjoy, like bagels and mango and tostones and French fries and pizza and all these and ice cream, right, donuts things I do enjoy, but I did learn how to eat them in a different way. I did learn how to meet my body's needs in a different way. I did learn how to meet my body's needs in a different way. I did learn how to incorporate exercise in my life. So the lifestyle changes that I made helped me reverse my prediabetes, as I have supported a lot of my clients in doing so as well. And it comes down to the lifestyle. If I would have continued to eat and do whatever I was doing years ago, then I would have gotten into real big trouble. And looking back at my photos from college and my early 20s, I know exactly why I was pre-diabetic. Like I was downing those you know Dallas BBQ, henny Coladas and Pina Coladas with all the syrup and the margaritas, and I was just eating a crazy amount of I don't want to say carbs because I don't want to demonize them, but the way I was living my life was not conducive to supporting my body in not going into prediabetes and then diabetes All right. So these are conversations that are not happening in the doctor.

Speaker 1:

Another example is that I recently had a yeast infection after like 17 years and I went to the gynecologist just to make sure that everything was okay. She gave me, I used, monista and then she gave me a prescription. I forgot what the name of the prescription was called, but it's to kill yeast, basically. But what I know also to be true is that yeast feeds off of sugar, right. So she gave me the prescriptions and she was like take one and then, two days later, take the other one and goodbye, have a nice day. Oh, no, no, no.

Speaker 1:

Then she goes you know, eat fruits and vegetables, eat anti-inflammatory foods. You know, exercise vegetables, eat anti-inflammatory foods. You know, exercise. And I started laughing because this was my first time seeing this doctor and she doesn't know me or you know my lifestyle or anything like that. Nor did she ask. And then I was like I was cracking up because I said you know, I'm that person that sprinkles turmeric in my eggs every morning and I do eat fruits and vegetables, and very balanced, and I exercise regularly. And she stares at me and she goes oh, I want to be like you when I grow up. And I'm like what do you mean by that? And she goes I don't do any of those things. She's like it's too hard for me. I recommend it all the time to my patients, but I don't do that. Okay, so again, you can have all the information in the world, quote, unquote, but you don't necessarily know how to use it. It might be difficult, it might be out of the ordinary for you, and instead of having this conversation about around food and lifestyle and maybe saying, hey, naomi, don't eat sugar because that feeds the yeast so they can completely die off, uh, try having, you know, garlic and ginger, because those kinds of foods are anti-inflammatory, none of that happened. None of that happened because that's not their area of expertise.

Speaker 1:

So what did I do? Yes, I did take the medication because I needed something to support me ASAP. I really did need relief from my symptoms because it's extremely uncomfortable. And then, on top of that, I switched up my food, how I was eating, and I incorporated food that I know heals and helps heal and kill off bacteria, or yeast rather. And on top of that, I also manage my emotions because I also work with holistic healers and when I spoke to the both of them, they both recommended I work on my emotions and I didn't go deeper into the story. But it was yeast, or the rash I was having was tied to certain organs in my body and certain organs are tied to certain emotions in the body. That's really tied to traditional Chinese medicine. So, in essence, I did go to my healer to process emotions. I really tried to help myself become more regulated. In addition to the foods I was eating, to starve out this bacteria, the yeast.

Speaker 1:

I spoke to the doctor again and guess what happened? She was like oh, your blood work came back, fine, you don't have yeast anymore. Meanwhile I had this mean red fever, very, very itchy rash on my neck that was from this yeast that was coming back to my body. All right, so again, it's not like let's not go to doctors, it's how do we combine how doctors can help us understand where their blind spots are and we can fill in the blank where their blind spots are and we can fill in the blank, or we can help ourselves, on the other end, with the way that we're eating and our lifestyle.

Speaker 1:

And just to quickly run through a few of my clients and their stories, I had a client who had been on IBS medication for many, many years and she didn't have a clear understanding of IBS. She didn't know that she had celiacs. The doctors had recommended in the past to go gluten-free. However, they didn't explain why or gave her any culturally relevant solutions to help her go gluten-free, because that's not easy when you come from a culture where a lot of the foods that we're eating or your comfort foods have gluten. So that's also the difference between going to the doctor for like five minute visit and getting some notes on a paper of what to do and actually having somebody support you make these changes with cultural relevance and supporting you through that, where you get resources and you get different recipes or you get to process your emotions around it. You get to understand how you feel. That's the type of stuff that you do with me, versus just going to the doctor and you're just getting this printout.

Speaker 1:

So, needless to say that after a few months of working together, she was able to get off her medication with her doctor's permission. This is always with your doctor's approval and permission. I want to make that extremely clear. I'm not like hey, friend, you can get off your meds now. That is 100% unethical. Most of the time I am asking you to go to the doctor and to ask them questions and permission for things, right. So yeah, I just wanted to make that super clear. She was able to safely get off her meds and really manage not feeling sick to her stomach, literally by changing the way she ate and understanding food and how it affected her.

Speaker 1:

I had another client who had PCOS and she was on medications as well to make sure that she was getting basically a forced period, just to make sure that she was cleaning out her uterus and all of that every month. And eventually, as we worked with food and lifestyle and we adjusted how she was eating, she understood how to pair her meals and all that. Eventually she got her period back naturally again, having conversations with her doctor, her period back naturally again, having conversations with her doctor, and she was able to get off of this medication because all of a sudden she was not missing periods anymore, they were coming naturally. And surprise, surprise, she also ended up getting pregnant and having a beautiful baby a few months later. Because food and lifestyle work. Okay, food and lifestyle works.

Speaker 1:

I've had other clients who have really bad acne. They're going to the dermatologist. The dermatologist offers them steroid creams and what's it called Antibiotics and all these other things to try and support them, and we never have a conversation around what their food is like. Okay, these things just it's just not their place of focus, it's not something that they're even comfortable talking about, unless your doctor intentionally got another degree in nutrition, which one of my doctors does have, and some of them do have because they do understand how important it is. So they do feel more comfortable in addressing certain symptoms and situations with food and lifestyle, which, again, it's part of the formula. Sometimes it's not just the only solution. We do need support from medication every once in a while.

Speaker 1:

So this particular client she was going to the dermatologist and she was just so tired because she had really really bad periods and she had really really bad acne to the point where she couldn't show up to work. She was exhausted, she was embarrassed to show herself and I have like two clients kind of along these lines and she came to me and she's like, well, I just don't know what to do. And we started again working with how she was eating when she was eating, what kinds of food she was having and, guess what? Her acne started to improve, her acne started to go away. She then started working with a esthetician to help clear out the scarring, to help clear out the bacteria that was already at the surface level of her face and she stopped getting painful cystic acne because she implemented the food and lifestyle changes that would support her and she did not have to continue going back for steroid treatments and antibiotics.

Speaker 1:

All of that start to affect other areas of your body, like your gut health and your gut bacteria and your liver and all these other things and all these other things. So what if we can really support the body in feeling optimally with the food that you're eating and how you're treating it? And I'll give you one last example, because I can just go on and on about these kinds of things, because food really does make such a big impact. It can help you with autoimmune conditions. I had a client who was suffering from Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Her numbers pretty much reversed, it went into remission. She again going to the doctor, doctor was testing her Going to the doctor, doctor was testing her endocrinologist and throughout our work together she was able to reverse her Hashimoto's so much that it wasn't even being like highlighted in her blood work All right. So it's just so beautiful to see.

Speaker 1:

And the last one I'm going to share was one of my clients really wanted to have a baby. She was already having conversations with her doctor about fertility treatments. She decided to work with me as a last straw, as like vamos a ver lo que pasa. Work with me as a last straw, as like vamos a ver lo que pasa. Just, we'll see. And within the first three months of us working together, she got pregnant. Okay, we worked so much with food and her lifestyle. She had a demanding career. She's also an entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur at that.

Speaker 1:

So I'm going on and on with examples because I hope that you're able to feel seen and not think that you need to be tied to your, to your medications, and every single time you go, there's a new one, there's a new one forever, like, maybe, maybe, right, we don't know, but maybe not. And that maybe not, I hope, gives you hope that you are able to make changes that feel good, that are simple, that you can keep up with and that supports your health. Okay, I want you to know that most of the time the symptoms that you're experiencing is your body asking you for something. Is your body communicating with you? It doesn't hate you, it doesn't want to ruin your life. It's just literally screaming for help. That is all that is happening. It is really screaming for help and we're not taught to listen in that way, right, and we do what we think we're supposed to be doing, which, yes, we go to the doctor and we try and figure it out, but they don't offer us the solution that inherently we actually are looking for.

Speaker 1:

However, when we work together right, when you start to understand that lifestyle is a factor, that the food you're eating is a factor, that maybe you don't know how to read your body symptoms and you feel like you're at a total loss because you've been doctor hopping for years now and you still feel like crap and you don't have the answers that you need, that's, getting the information and getting support in adjusting your lifestyle can actually help you heal. The founder of the nutrition school I went to has a famous quote that says given half a chance, your body will heal. Half a chance, your body will heal on its own. So oftentimes it's not the medication healing you, it's your body healing you, it's just given the opportunity to do so. So starting to understand your symptoms, starting to address them, to listen to them, to start to nurture your body with food that will actually give it the tools to help you heal, so that these things hopefully don't come back Again.

Speaker 1:

Speculation we're human, things happen, we also need to keep that in mind Can be mind blowing and life changing. It really gets to me when I see young people, older people with a gallon size Ziploc bags of medications upon medications, upon medications. What if we can cut that in half? What if we don't need to get there in the first place, because we honor our bodies so well while also experiencing joy? Cultural relevance is something that's super important, right, you don't need to give up the stuff that you love most of the time, right, unless you really need to go gluten-free or dairy-free or something like that. But how still can you find joy? How can you find alternatives for the foods that you love? When you really understand how food impacts your specific conditions? You can work with your body's healing capacity instead of just masking those symptoms, and then you can reduce the need for medication over time. Right, this is a medical team or a wellness team where you are at the helm of it and then you have support systems around you, but really throwing up your hands and thinking that you cannot do anything or that you must rely on these specific medications forever.

Speaker 1:

I want to give you hope that that's probably not the case and you can really support yourself with food and with your lifestyle. Understanding how it works is exactly where I can support you in one-on-one coaching. That's exactly what I teach my clients we start to understand food past the calories. I know there's always talk about calories, but we start to understand food past calories, past sodium. I think that those are the two things that people always focus on, forever and always.

Speaker 1:

But understanding food at a deeper level, always. But understanding food at a deeper level, what it's providing you, what kind of healing can it have for you? Where does it work? Where does it support you Can really have the changes that you really want to see, the healing at the root level. Okay, so we start to understand food and that gives you more freedom, because we don't like, I don't work with a meal plan. You cannot take a meal plan with you everywhere you go on vacation, to your family barbecue, on to Christmas, to your family gatherings, like no. But we can learn how to make the best decision possible if you have the knowledge to do so, with whatever resources that you have.

Speaker 1:

So that is the difference when you are actually learning and learning learning about food and learning how to implement this into your life in a way that feels good. You understand the process of what it looks like to become that person who understand foods deeply and who makes choices to keep yourself feeling good in your body. There's obviously with any journey. There is a range of emotions that we go by. There is unsolicited advice that people like to give without asking right. There's so many things that happen along the way.

Speaker 1:

So, understanding the cultural nuances, understanding the types of food that are around at our family gatherings, understanding how busy life can get being a mom, having a corporate job, being an entrepreneur those are all things that need to get be taken into consideration and address when you are actually making a lifestyle shift and becoming that girl, that woman that you really want to be, where you're in more in control of your wellness than you think and you get to heal at a root level instead of consistently, every single day trying to handle a new symptom or a new ache or a new pain that you don't know where it's coming from. So if you want support with this, I am happy to be that coach for you that understands you at a deeper level and that puts and helps you compile all this information together. That is, supporting you when you go to the doctor with what questions to ask, what kind of things to request, and really get you on the path to heal and then bringing this back to your doctor and being like, hey, do I still need to be on this medication or not? What are your thoughts? What do you think of where my health is now? So I want to invite you to book a free consultation, call or send me a DM via Instagram so that we can get the conversation started.

Speaker 1:

All right, I want you to really hold on to that little bit of hope and be like okay, if I just start implementing learning how to implement what I know about food, what I like to eat and a few other lifestyle shifts, maybe I can get out of the situation that I am in, and I can promise you you most likely can. So let's have a conversation about it so that you can share your challenges, you can share your goals, you can share what you've done before, the conversations that you've had, and then we can piece that all together so that you can actually start to heal at the root level, right, and know that you can actually reduce the medications that you're using over time. Maybe not get there in the first place, but we need to start implementing how, or addressing how, you eat and your lifestyle. All right, I'll see y'all next week. Bye.