[00:00:00] Welcome back to the personal, the personalized, the future of personalized medicine summit, and I have Kira Witham here with us and Kira is a traditional naturopath and functional medicine trained nutritionist. She combines the principles of holistic nutrition, naturopathic and functional medicine to help bring people, bring their bodies back into balance.

[00:00:34] Kira is a firm believer in the mind-body connection and believes that the body is capable of healing from anything when we can simply remove the obstacles in its way and optimize what it needs. She's going to talk about healing chronic digestive symptoms through a mind body approach. Kira, welcome to the summit.

[00:00:54] Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah. So tell me about, we were talking a little bit before we started, you're a military kid, my mom was too. So she. She went from Texas to Georgia to Alaska in high school, all in high school. Met my dad up there, but tell us a little bit about your journey.

[00:01:11] How did you land in this world of? A functional medicine naturopathic medicine and nutrition. Yeah. My story is probably not unique to many. It's because of my own journey. So I had chronic digestive issues growing up well into my twenties did, every allopathic test out there, barium drinks, scopes, all the things.

[00:01:35] And was told, it's IBS, I don't know what to tell you, try cutting out, X, Y, Z, and we'll give you birth control for your hormones because, that's a separate issue, but we know now it's connected. Yeah. And at some point in my 20s, I started to really hit my breaking point. No one could give me any answers.

[00:01:55] I was missing out on events, I was in a lot of pain. And I was a middle school English teacher. And I said, I, what if there's something to and I know it sounds funny, but no one ever taught me about, they don't teach you about food in school, like grad school or anything. And so I said, I'm going to go get a nutrition degree for myself and see if I can figure this out.

[00:02:20] And that just sparked the journey because as soon as I started realizing food was medicine, oh my gosh, like these symptoms are starting to disappear. From there my son was born and my husband was a couple months later diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis. And I know, and it was not a great prognosis.

[00:02:43] No, it was not good at all. He was told he'd be on steroids. For reference, this, but liver enzymes for anyone else watching should be maybe in the teens, twenties. His were in the 2000s at that point, it was severe. I didn't know anything about functional medicine, no clue. I just, I was trained in nutrition at that point.

[00:03:02] I just finished my degree and I said, okay, we can do some stuff with food. But. I feel like the body doesn't just fail on its own like this Great yesterday and today you're telling me that this is happening let me guess you went to medical school No I found him a functional medicine doctor didn't even know what functional medicine was but i'm like somebody has to have some answers And that really fueled me into functional medicine, naturopathic medicine, and here we are.

[00:03:32] Wow. And what was that? Was that about an 8 or 10 year journey? It was, yeah. Yeah, that's probably about right. Yeah, because you're a naturopathic doctor now, right? A traditional one, yeah. Okay, great. No, that's cool. Yeah, I, you know what, my story is very similar. I had acid reflux for 25 years and I went and got scoped and I did all of the traditional allopathic tests.

[00:03:57] Everybody said, just take the purple pill. Not knowing it was destroying my gut biome, gut health, weakening my bones and everything else. And I hit a breaking point too. I was a corporate banker, got out of that and built a company from one store to almost 50 with a great team, not all me.

[00:04:17] But the last three years I was in there, I was in terrible pain, constipation, IBS. Throwing up all night long, once a month, it seemed like it was a repeating cycle and I just I got to do something different. So I sold

[00:04:37] one. He helped me understand I had a genetic path that there were certain types of foods. I don't break down very well. And we removed those. We cleaned up my, how I eat. And within four or five months, I was off. Medicine for reflux and I haven't, I had to use Tums the first six months and I haven't had to use Tums in six years.

[00:04:59] And and it's amazing how you can re engineer, and he used that phrase with me, food is medicine, and there's other things, and food also is poison. So you have to learn the difference. The reason I brought that up was, is that I want to reinforce, if you're listening to this, what Kira is talking about is an empowered way of doing medicine.

[00:05:18] And we're not saying your primary isn't good for what, you still should have a primary. Traditional medicine is good for when you're sick, you need to do that. But if you're experiencing these problems that are not diagnosable right now, the system won't be able to treat you, so you got to find somebody like what Kira does.

[00:05:36] So let's talk about, you've got three big points that you want to talk about this mind body approach. Do you want to I'll read the first one. It says how stress and emotions directly impact gut function and contribute to chronic digestive issues. Unpack that for us, Kira. We're primarily speaking here to high performers, and we know that somewhere around 40 percent of those with IBS, we're just talking IBS, have high stress jobs, and then we know that chronic stress increases the risk of gut issues, so bloating, the acid reflux you mentioned, SIBO, gut motility, all these different things, and so many people are living in a chronic stressed out state.

[00:06:18] Not just our high achievers, but everybody, we live in a society where it's go do this, do that. Taking rest is, lazy. And we're not really looking at how that's impacting our overall health, but especially the microbiome. We just think that they're two completely separate things and they're not everything in the body is connected, but especially when we're looking at.

[00:06:40] Chronic stress or I mentioned emotions in there. We have poor boundaries We're living a life full of anger or of grief that we've not gotten over traumatic experiences that we've continued to just suppress That's going to impact our gut So one of the things you probably do is address those right up front, right?

[00:07:00] Because that's a precursor to gut health repair It is. We can't. I tell my clients you can't heal if you're in a chronic fight or flight state. I don't care how many amazing protocols We throw at it and you've got the best labs, but if you're living in that fight or flight state or even a freeze state, we're just not gonna have that healing opportunity.

[00:07:21] The body can't do it. So yeah. One of my best said, you cannot heal a stressed out and sleep deprived body. Oh, that's so funny. Isn't that good? I know. I wrote it down. So how do you, so what are the things that you do? By the way, cura with them. Am I saying that properly? With them. Okay, Whittam? Whittam, yeah.

[00:07:43] Okay, all right, no problem. I just had a friend with the same last name that had a TH yeah. What are your protocols? What do you do to help somebody with this first issue? What does that look like? It's woven in throughout our time together. We ease into it of just understanding. It's funny, in one of my assessments, I'm asking them, do you have stress in your life?

[00:08:05] Is it managed? And probably not shocking to you, but it was to me the first many times of how many people would say no. And then I'd go, okay this is interesting. They say they don't have stress or that it's well managed. And I've come to the point where if they put that, I'm like, I don't buy it. I think it's because they're habituated to being in that state.

[00:08:27] They don't even know they're in it. Yeah, and I can relate to that. That's what's funny about it is I recognize it because that was me. I was living in that, I gotta keep moving, like we don't sit down. It's just for, lazy people. And so we start out with just, what are the stressors in your life?

[00:08:44] What's the state of your body? How often do you actually sit and listen? Are you always tense? Is your breathing shallow? Are you breathing into your diaphragm? Do you take time for yourself or do you view rest as lazy? Is it hard for you to just sit still and be with your thoughts, or do you have 5, 000 things running through your mind?

[00:09:04] So awareness, I would say is our starting point of just creating that. And then from there, it's what's doable for the person. Because me just saying, I need you to meditate for 45 minutes every single day, not going to go over well. No, it's not. Yeah. That's my single weakest area still for me is I, even after seven, eight years on this journey, meditation is the hardest one for me to do.

[00:09:28] Type a don't like timeouts. I do breathing ton of breathing. That one's tough. Yeah, so I get it. Yeah Sometimes it's finding what's right for the person some people are never gonna get to the point of enjoying meditation I like guided meditation, but if you tell me to sit there and just do my own thing without thoughts going through It's not gonna happen.

[00:09:49] So Breathing like you said I like one of the biggest things I have my clients do is Breath check ins, meaning throughout the day, pause, check in with your breathing, we're not judging it, and then I need you to optimize it. 5 to 6 seconds in through your nose, into your diaphragm, blowing it up like a balloon, and then exhaling out 7 to 8 seconds.

[00:10:11] Do that a few times. What's that elongated exhale do? We're putting the body, to say it simply, in the rest and digest state. Yeah, so we want that slightly longer exhale than inhale. And that's going to calm the body. And I say, can we just do that? And then three of those nice deep breaths go about your day.

[00:10:30] Maybe your alarm goes off. Maybe you see a post it note in your office. Something reminds you, oh, I'm going to check in with my breathing again. And I'm going to do it. That teeny tiny thing is doable for any person without saying, I don't have 20 minutes to go do this for myself or to take a walk, just simple things.

[00:10:49] And if they do it daily, within a couple weeks, they'll really notice they have better emotional control. They might be falling asleep easier. They don't feel this. Something sitting on your chest all the time. Yeah. Yeah. And the triggers, the Getting angry at the drivers or so and so said this they start to just chill a little bit Yeah.

[00:11:10] Yeah. Oh, that's cool So when you so you get working on that and it might be multiple Pathways too. So it's like it's awareness around what's driving the stress getting them to do some breath work Maybe introduce some baby steps to meditation and then you move into mindful eating and the energetic emotional state while eating and how that affects, their gut their digestion, their absorption.

[00:11:36] That is, that's unique on all of the people I've talked to. I want to hear more about what does mindful eating look like? Teach me, 'cause I'm about to eat soon as this is done and I wanna do it better. Yeah. When we look at the average person, let's say we're sitting in a restaurant or even at home watching our family, most people are inhaling meals.

[00:11:56] We're eating in the car, we're running to meetings, we've got phone calls. We're just busy. But if we think about it, it's called meal time. It's not called scroll your phone, check your emails, do this, and throw some bites in your mouth. I like to use the analogy of a zebra out in the field running from a lion.

[00:12:14] It doesn't stop to graze. Okay, we're going to go back to the whole fight or flight thing. It's running for its life. That's just bio, the biological component of it. And when it's safe, it'll stop to eat. That's also when those digestive secretions come out to play. Our body doesn't know if we're running to a meeting, if that's the lion or not.

[00:12:36] We're still in fight or flight. It's viewed exactly the same. And so when we're eating in this rushed state where we're not paying any attention to what we're doing, those digestive secretions aren't coming out. So now we're not pumping out pancreatic enzymes. Now we're impairing stomach acid, leading to things like acid reflux.

[00:12:53] And then we wonder why am I bloating? Why am I dealing with, slow gut motility? Why are all these things happening to me? But we're just not paying attention to how we're eating our food So it's literally slowing down and going i'm going to treasure this moment I'm going to be i'm going to maybe I do three deep breaths before I eat to get into that state Are you telling me that it actually will improve the absorption of nutrients as well?

[00:13:18] Yeah, because you're optimizing those digestive secretions and you're prepping the body. And it's funny that you say three breaths because that's actually what I tell my clients is before you eat a meal, I just want you to get in that rest and digest state. Take those three deep breaths and eat your meal, but eat it with gratitude.

[00:13:35] Don't eat it. And I say this for people that maybe are struggling with health issues and start to develop that fear of food of Oh my gosh, I hope I don't have symptoms after I eat this. I hope I don't feel terrible I hope I don't get a headache. I don't you know, all those thoughts that can go through someone's head we want to get in a positive state Where we're going to receive the food receive the nutrients and it's going to be digested and assimilated.

[00:13:58] Right that's a great point that if that's something people should take away from this episode or this Video is that idea of get yourself in that calm state to eat It's a very simple thing you can remember to do. Very simple. Yeah, that's excellent. That's gold, but it's difficult I laugh because I tell people it's free and it's one of the most powerful pieces of advice you can get But if you can be present at mealtime use your five senses Respect feeling satisfied versus i'm eating till i'm stuffed like it's thanksgiving You're optimizing your gut in a very simple natural way Yeah and just even maybe a little gratitude practice, whether it's prayer or it's just you and your spouse or your family going, what does everybody grow?

[00:14:44] That's one thing you're grateful for today. Yeah. Starts putting in that state. Wow, that's really good. Let's talk about come. So the third point I want to get into is combining functional medicine principles with mind body practices. Such as hypnosis, journaling, EFT tapping, I want to know what that is, movement to create this really good long term gut health improvement.

[00:15:10] So yeah, unpack, that's going to be fun, unpack that for us. This is, it's a loaded one because there's so much that goes into this, but I'm going to, I'm going to call some things out in the, in the field of I feel like a lot of people in the gut space are heavily focused on, let's run a stool test.

[00:15:26] Let me give you a protocol. And then, three months down the line, we'll tweak that protocol and we'll see how you're doing. Maybe we'll put you on a elimination diet and that's it. And that's fine. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. That's part of what I do as well. But it goes back to we can't heal in this fight or flight state.

[00:15:44] We also can't heal if we're not getting natural sunlight. We can't heal if we're not taking time for ourselves. We can't heal if we have poor boundaries. And so it's all connected in looking at what was the driving factor behind this. It wasn't due to a lack of a protocol that you developed these gut issues or chronic migraine.

[00:16:03] There's something deeper and a lot of times people stop it. Okay. Yeah, so I'm on this gut healing protocol We're killing off this candida, and I've got SIBO. Okay, but what started that? And that's really important distinction because you what you're saying is it's all of life is connected not just the physiological laboratory data Because, one thing I was talking about with somebody else here, when you really start to embrace autonomic nervous system balance, which is what you're talking about, pulling out of the fight or flight, getting into the rest and digest.

[00:16:37] It'll give you space to start seeing your life more holistically, and you may need to make a change. You might be in a toxic environment that until you get out of it, you will never get better. What you'll do is you'll get them stable, or they may need to make a change in how they run their company to a different kind of model that gives them their life back.

[00:16:57] Because a lot of entrepreneurs build a house they hate later. I've done it myself and so I really appreciate what you're saying is you're helping them like journaling, unpacking emotions, dealing with them what you're saying is you're going to help them see all of it so that they can actually, in addition to a medical root cause, there's also a psychological and an emotional and a life, how you're living your life root cause.

[00:17:21] There really is. Yeah. Yeah. And it's looking at every aspect. Okay let's start with how you wake up in the morning. What's the first thing you do? Oh, you scroll your cell phone and you go to your emails. What kind of emotional state does that put you into at 545 in the morning? Facebook toilet time.

[00:17:36] That's so stupid. Yeah. But it's so common and I'm guilty of it. I'll check my emails or, my portal. Oh, I've got client messages coming in. That's not the way to start the day. Then we're getting the blue stimulating light. We're already ramping up our nervous system. Looking at things like that.

[00:17:53] Can we tweak your morning routine? That's really good. Yeah. Most burnout is not from too much effort. It's from toxicity and your emotions and your environment. Yeah. And we could look at environment in so many different ways. I talk a lot about circadian rhythm and natural light. We again, look at our day and we've got bright lights everywhere.

[00:18:13] Fluorescent lights. If we're in an office, we're on computer screens all day. We're checking our cell phones. We're not getting the natural light and we've got research on how that impacts the microbiome and how that impacts our health overall So there's so many avenues like you said journaling or tapping which not a tapping expert but I share it with clients and I have some that absolutely love tapping because it Calms them down.

[00:18:39] Yeah, do you do a 30 second primer on that? So it's just emotional freedom technique. I'm not trained in this by any means But I've brought in some experts and i've learned about it over the years. It's actually one. It's funny. It doesn't fully resonate with me Like meditation doesn't resonate with others, but I have some clients that say if I can tap when I get stressed out or anxious or I get digestive issues, it calms them down.

[00:19:05] And so there, it's just on, I don't even think it's acupuncture points. I think it's acupressure points, but there's certain points in the body where they'll have you do this. A lot of times you're doing it with different affirmations. Yeah. There's so many. Yes. So many different techniques. In movement, I normally do my workout in the morning, but today I did it before our time together here today.

[00:19:32] I did 50 minutes of elliptical. Talk about movement and how that contributes to improve gut health. It's, I'm going to go twofold on this. We need movement in general, because again, everything in the body is connected. If we're not getting any movement in. Now what are we doing to blood sugar?

[00:19:50] How is blood sugar rippling into the gut microbiome? And that can also be something that's very calming and it's, moving stuff around. So movement in general is something that we need to be getting in every single day. I tell my clients, I don't care what that looks like for you. Park farther away at the grocery store instead of driving around for 20 minutes looking for the closest spot or take the stairs instead of the elevator yeah, but when I say it's twofold.

[00:20:17] I also see those high achievers Going and overdoing it. I'm gonna go to CrossFit because it's quick I'm gonna go to Orange Theory because I can knock out this killer workout, but then Continues to decline because they're pushing too hard When their body is not ready, right? Yeah. Yeah. But it's also, there's a great book called spark.

[00:20:39] It's about 15 years ago. The guy wrote it about movement and how it catalyzes brain derived neurotrophic factor in your brain. It releases these growth factors in your heart, other ones in your pancreas. So movement just does wonders for people. And one of the things we tell people with our clients at Tiger Medical is just if all you can do is walk briskly for 20 minutes, there's a 45 year retrospective study by Harvard with medical people that shows that if you do that six days a week, you get the same benefits of running, which is what people equate with real work, but there's a, there's the emotional detox that goes along with a body movement piece there.

[00:21:23] That then connects right to the gut because as you start to disconnect from the stress your gut Yeah, and we're a society that does not move enough again We sit and we work and then i'm too tired. I can't go to the gym don't go to the gym. But like you said go for a brisk walk then something i'm trying to do every hour I got this from an insurance guy in canada We're talking about partnering with them and he gets his clients to get up once an hour and do 10 squats and 10 push ups If you do that once an hour, you're always moving.

[00:21:55] And anybody can do 10 pushups and 10 squats. Maybe you can only do two right now, but you can work up to 10. Yeah. And I'm still not doing it every hour, but I'm getting there. I'm doing like 80, 90 a day and I added sit-ups 'cause I'm Type A, so of course I gotta do that. I heard, and this is not my term, it's not coined by me, but exercise snacks.

[00:22:17] And that's what it is. I tell my clients, instead of taking those snacks to go eat, take an exercise snack, do some squats, do some lunges, take a lap around the office, but take those little breaks. That's great. So for you, how many kids, you have kids, right? I just have one. You have one. And, but knowing what, cause my daughter has really learned a lot from being around our company and she worked with our doctor for a while.

[00:22:44] And so her son is two and he has gotten the cleanest diet I've ever seen in a two year old. And I'm appalled at the programs, what they advertise on children's programs for food. They should be put in jail for what they're trying to get kids to eat. And he's super healthy. He doesn't have any issues.

[00:23:03] Have you seen your son or your daughter thrive because of the nutrition that you're giving them? My son. Yeah, a hundred percent. And I had just finished my nutrition degree when he was born. So thankfully I knew a lot. Yeah, he's rarely ever sick when he is sick. It's the kid gets over something in 12 hours.

[00:23:23] It seems like it's laughable. I'm like hot and then meanwhile I'm struggling for a week with it

[00:23:31] Yeah, because it optimizes your immune function because 70-80 percent of your immune function is in your gut. So if your gut is not healthy, you're not going to be healthy yourself. So what, how do people get a hold of you, Kira? What's a good, easy way for them that's memorable that they can, and do you have, is there anything you want to promote online?

[00:23:48] You'd be, feel free to do that. I am active on social media, Instagram, Kira, what I'm dot M N D. You can find me on Facebook. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm not super active. My website is a nourished life nutrition. com. It's pretty easy to say that again, a nourished life nutrition. com. Okay. Got it. Yeah.

[00:24:08] Our team will capture that in the notes and all of that. And it's Kira K I R a With them. W H I T H a M. Hence the with them for me. Kira, is there one thing you want to leave the audience with? Like one thing that, that you could get them spurred to think differently. Yeah, just know that you have immense power in your own health.

[00:24:33] I think it's so easy for us to give it away and say, okay, I don't know. I've been dealing with this forever. The doctors can't figure out what's wrong or they're not helping. They're just throwing more medicine at me. Keep digging, keep advocating for yourself, look elsewhere, think outside the box, do the things that we're talking about.

[00:24:51] Huh. Okay. Kira mentioned circadian rhythm. Let me go into what that looks like. How would I optimize my circadian rhythm? Or yeah, I do check my phone and I get very angry in the morning. How can I work through that? Let me think about how my diet might be impacting me. So just take a look at what's going on in your life and just start making little changes.

[00:25:13] And I'm going to take away the gratitude before we eat and three breaths. Thank you for that. Kira, thanks for being on the summit with us. Absolutely. Thanks for having me.