Welcome to Living on Doctor, sponsored by Pure Essentials. I am Rachel Ash, your hosts. We are here on w R seven ten am every Sunday from five to five thirty pm. For more information, I'm Pure Essentials. You can go on their website www dot pure hyphen Essentials dot com. That's p U r E hyphen e ss e ntils dot com, or on Facebook or Instagram at shop Pure Essentials. I'm your host, Rachel Lash, wellness consultant and healthy living expert. I'm joined by my co host, Melissa chris
Bell, who was trained as a natural path and nutrition specialist. She has a whole host of other wellness certifications to include uricular acupuncture for detoxification and relaxation,
yoga and natural healing. Melissa spent the better part of the last thirteen years teaching doctors all around the world how to look at both traditional lab testing with a functional medicine lens, use specialty lab testing like nutritional genetic tests, food sensitivity tests, and micronutrient tests, along with professional grade nutraceutical supplements such
as Pure Essentials to create their own signature programs. A self proclaimed wellness warrior advocate, Melissa is Atomission to teach you how to reclaim your health and live your best life. Undoctored. Today's show, we're going to be talking about functional wellness and functional nutrition. Functional nutrition is a holistic approach that focuses on identifying the causes of health issues rather than treating the symptoms with the medication.
By investigating and identifying the root cause, people can make meaningful diet, lifestyle, and nutrition choices. Melissa, you are involved in all of this. What are some ways people can investigate and identify their root causes? Yow, You're right, Rachel. This is my world, this is my passion when
it comes to investigating and identifying your own root cause. While this sounds very basic, I believe the very first thing to do is start charting what you eat, chart what you drink, chart your exercise, your relaxation time, the causes of stress and sleep. When you can look at patterns and you can look at changes in the pattern, then you're able to help yourself identify
where the changes need to happen for the better. So if you're tracking all this data, and I know it is such a great way to do it, do people still need the lab testing and everything that goes along with it, or how do you negotiate what somebody needs? Why? Guess, just test? You know, the body doesn't lie, The numbers don't lie, your blood doesn't lie. As a matter of fact, the body is probably
giving warning signs that most people are ignoring, or people right off. I heard clients say, oh, I'm just getting old, I'm just tired. Unfortunately, with some practitioners, even warning signs with them are missed, so you can't substitute for testing. And with that, you know, we're talking about diseases and onsets of autoimmune issues. You know, some people say it happens over time. Some people say it's a sudden occurrence. I know,
through functional medicine and nutrition and that whole functional wellness world. A lot of times we look at cumulative toxic load or through that lens. But what is your thought on that an autoimmune condition is not going to just pop up overnight. Now, someone might have a sign or a symptom that pops up overnight. But if you're looking at autoimmune disease autoimmune conditions, those are chronic symptoms.
They happen over and over and over again. They might come and go for people, but there is some sort of experience of a symptom that's happening for quite some time, and like we were just talking about, someone might think, oh, I'm just getting old. Oh it's just a sign of age or something like that, and so they kind of write it off for that moment, and then something else might pop up and they write it off as something else. If you take a look, there's a pattern somewhere.
There's always a pattern. And research this isn't even my opinion now. Research shows that signs of autoimmunity can show up on tests, simple tests, months even before someone has full blown symptoms and receives a diagnosis or a label from their medical professional. And I think there are a lot of issues that are autoimmune issues that people don't realize are autoimmune issues that they're treated in other ways. People are given medications. There's a whole bunch of ways that people handle
it, not understanding that's really occurring as an autoimmune issue. So let's talk specifics. How many autoimmune conditions are there and what are some things that are autoimmune issues that people might not realize are. They're about eighty ish different autoimmune conditions or autoimmune diseases. So there can be quite a few differences, as you may have guessed, because there are different conditions. There's good news and
there's bad news here. So early signs are pretty similar. That's the good news. The bad news is they can also be a little bit vague. They can be kind of non specific in the early stages, so they can be kind of tricky to point out. The one common denominator, though, is inflammation the skin. The skin is the best place to note the first sign of inflammation, so someone could look out for recurring rashes, redness, itchiness, blotchiness, maybe tender or even a painful area. Even acne can
be a sign that something isn't right on the inside. In school, I learned that the skin is an outward reflection of an inward condition, So when you have something happening on the outside, you probably have something happening on the inside as well. And I know the skin is the largest organ and you can absorb more by putting something on your skin than you can by eating it,
so it's a big gateway for your body. Yeah, conditions like lupus are directly linked to changes in the texture and the color of the skin, so it's good for people to be mindful of any kind of swollen or maybe scaly areas. And a good rule of thumb is if you notice changes that don't have an explanation or don't have a reason. You know, if you bump into the counter in the kitchen and you have a bruise on your hip,
you know cause and effect, you know what happened. But if something pops up on your in and there's no explanation for it, that's something that really should be looked at. You know, it suggests that something's up there. It's a message from the body. And that's the way that these practitioners practice looking holistically evaluating cumulative toxic load. How does the body detox, how
does the body repair, how does the body rebuild itself? And putting somebody in that optimal state and reducing that toxic burden, a lot of times you can alleviate relief or even potentially reverse symptoms. I know you had a client. I'd love for you to share that story of a client who was a pretty severe case. Yeah, so little Rider was eight years old. His mom had heard it was one of those friend of a friend through the grapevine
things that seems to be how the clients find me. There were two moms in the natural food store talking. One was talking about food and chemical sensitivity testing done on their daughter and this was what was noted and what was found and all of those things. So anyway, Rider's mom locates me through a chiropractor friend of mine, and they asked me to come in and help from a nutrition perspective. And at the time, Rider was probably eighty five percent
covered in agzema. Writer had quit te ball because he didn't want to wear short sleeve shirts. He didn't want people to see the scars, just these call marks down his arm from the itching. It was constant for him. Sweating outside was burning. This kid was in eighty degree weather. He's wearing a hoodie, sweatshirt and jeans because he doesn't want anyone to see his skin. Yet he's making himself sweat and it's making it more painful for him.
We did food and chemical sensitivity testing, we did food tracking, we did we did all the things. We sat down with the results and the mom and dad, and we had some emotional components there too. Something that this probably frequently overlooked the stress. Writer's parents went through a divorce and Writer was very stressed about that Writer's mom not to but all their business out there, but this was part of the story that was stressful for him, and that
stress was the source of his gut issues. So we went through detoxification, we went through repairing, we went through were building, and this took us as solid eighteen months. This was not overnight, you know. It's not just like, oh, well, we figured it out, here's a pill. This is the end of it. It takes the body time. You
know. We've been doing the show for a couple of weeks now, and we were talking about the nervous system and the different parts of the nervous system and calming the nervous system so that the body can absorb those nutrients and can go through the whole healing process. Fast forward. It's been a few years since then, probably eight years now, writers probably getting close to graduating from high school. And his mom used to check in with me every so often.
I haven't heard from her in a year or two now, but all as well, and the whole family. That was the cool thing about that was the whole family learned, and the whole family made adjustments to their stress levels, their activity levels, their sleep their rest. So that was probably the coolest part was that the whole family benefited from that one when we had the center in this That's what I love coming in and seeing those aha moments,
those life changing moments. Doctor I should put people on alkaline forming diets with pure essentials, Vitamin C, the pure essentials, coerced in and just some really basic things to help reduce that inflammations, speed up repairing and detoxification and rebuilding and a lot of times some really simple changes and identifying those root causes can have drastic changes. And that was so much fun to witness and just really special. The hot topic right now is brain fog, inflammation product
issues. Brain fog comes with that. Can you talk about how brain fog comes into play here? Yeah, So, in addition to skin issues, brain fog is another early sign of an autoimmium condition. Feeling exhausted after a full night's sleep. That absolutely should not be ignored. That's not how the body works, that's not the cycle. So fatigue and brain fog are some early signs. Fatigue can be a cause or can be the physical consequence.
It can be you know the result of an anemia or chronic inflammation. It can also be a sign of a nutrient deficiency, so the chronic deficiency can result in inflammation. So you know, if we're all connecting the dots here, everything is connected. One thing has a consequence somewhere else, So if everything's connected, we can also say if somebody's experiencing weight gain or weight loss, that can be an early indicator too. Yeah, most definitely, most
definitely. While a lot of autoimmune issues are associated with or linked to weight loss, there are some that are associated with weight and gain. If your diet hasn't changed, your exercise, or your activity level hasn't changed, and you're experiencing weight changes that are not attributed to an age related metabolism situation, you might want to look deeper at that. Hypothyroidism is linked to slower metabolism, which can mean a rapid weight gain even if your diet in your activity
has stayed the same. Hypothyroidism is an autoimmune condition, so you know, it's a signaling issue. The liberties to signal the pancreas, the pancreas signals up, so there's always a system involved in the body, and we have to look at is the message getting from point A to point b. These symptoms are all messages, So even though there's a whole host of potential symptoms, it's all coming down to the same route with whatever that inflammation is.
And to that point, aches and pains could be included. Aches and pains are definitely included. Probably not surprising, but yes, muscle or joint pain can be an indicator of something going on in your immune system. So your muscles and joints should not just randomly hurt. You don't just wake up one day and go, oh, this hurts without there being some sort of reason.
You know, if you're in the CrossFit box, or you're training for an event, or you just simply overdid it out there doing the yardwork. Yeah, okay, waking up the next day and feeling like, oh this doesn't feel so hot, that makes sense. But if none of that happened, then just oh this hurts shouldn't happen either. And I know that's how Drash got into this whole field of functional integrat of medicine. He was on twenty milligrams of prednizone a day for two and a half years because he was
suffering from an inflammatory type of arthritis. Was on steroids, saw all these doctors, there was nothing they could do to get him better. And he turns out he turned to this type of evaluation to functional medicine and the root cause of his issue was organic carrots. And who know that also speaks to we're all individual biochemistries. So when we see our functional medicine, doctors will
get these special evaluations that we can see what our specific biochemistry is. But through changing diet, through supplementing properly here where you recommend pure essentials because of its high quality and that it gets the results, and not all supplements are created equal. But he was able to reverse his chronic illness just through evaluating through this lens also ibs, which he wrote a book on the same type of thing, a general term for I don't know what's going on in my
gi track. I love that you brought that up because so many functional medicine practitioners, whether medical doctor, naturopath, nutritionist, dietitian, chiropractors, I've met them all. Everyone has some story, They have some situation, whether it was themselves or a family member, and that's how they got into this line of work, and that's how they decided that this was the way to
practice. I have to say that any discomfort in the digestive track should be explored, absolutely should be explored, especially if there are other symptoms present too. So if you're having something along the lines of constipation and you have skin issues, and we'll get into it a little bit later about genetics. When everything starts lining up, don't ignore it. Don't ignore it. We need to take a look at it. But you know, too many times symptoms
wax and wane. They show up for a little while, you do something, it might feel a little bit better, and then they get written off and they get pinned on stress, or they get penned on poor eating or on you know, I was just traveling and I wasn't eating as well as I should, or I wasn't sleeping as well as I could. I would really recommend that if you have these things lining up, take a look at take them seriously. I'm your host, Rachel Lash, joined by my co
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diagnosed. You're a preventity disease Living Undoctorate sponsored by Pure Essentials. I'm your host Rachel Lash joined by my co host Melissa Chris Bealve was trained as a natural path and nutrition specialist, talking about functional wellness and functional nutrition, Melissa, what kinds of tests does Pure Essentials have to unravel some of these mysteries before they get the best as someone, I would say, first and foremost
do to the nutritional genetics test. Pure Essentials design this nutritional genetics test that looks at forty different genes to help someone understand what their specific full potential is. So someone can see if they have the potential to be vitamin deficient. They can look and see if they have the potential to be gluten sensitive or to have an unfavorable fat metabolism gene. Didn't anyone know you have a gene for that, you know, to have a pesticide sensitivity or to have a
histamine intolerance. All of these things, they're the programming of your body, and they will show up and they will tell your body how to do something specifically, so it could be and take a look and see what your body's potential is. So it's really good to have as a tool in your toolbox
and a guide to help you understand yourself better. And those are available on our website here hyphen Esentials dot com a's www dot pure hyphen E S S E N TI ALS, dot com, or you can call the office Monday through Friday nine two five at two and two seven five eight three two zero zero. That's two on two seven eight thirty two hundred. Actually, it's
interesting. So you talked about sensitivities, and you mentioned pesticides. If someone has a pesticide sensitivity, and I sort of think most people you know would have some type of sensitivity, whether it's manifesting you know, noticeably or not. What does that look like? You know everyone? You're right, everyone does have some level of difficulty processing environmental toxins. We weren't designed to do
that. We were designed, however, to detoxify. So we have the specific organs, we have the specific processes that take what we need and leave the rest. When we're overburdened, particularly children and older adults who are the most susceptible. When we're overburdened, our body just can't clear those toxins properly. So there are a variety of genetic variations that make those folks more prone to experiencing a neurological or a metabolic dysfunction as a result of not being able
to let those toxins go. So we have specific ways that toxins leave our body. The genes that are assessed in this report have been linked to poor detoxification of several chemicals, but specifically pesticides and food dies. So if we've got a little one, a little buddy who has this gene is unable to process the toxins from those food dyes, and those food dyes are in their multi vitamin, what are we doing. We might be causing a problem,
and that's something that we need to look at. Yeah, and what are some specific symptoms associated with poor detoxification with these genes. Yeah, I'm going to sell one of those commercials again. But migrains, anxiety, low T, low testosterone, guys, PCOS, infertility, It affects a lot of very important areas ADHD, fatigue, asthma, autism, brain fog, fatty, liver, spider veins. These are all specific signs that are associated with
poor detoxication of pesticides and food dice. And in terms of the pure essentials, I know there's so much on the line that's designed for a detox repair and rebuild. What would be your recommendation? I always recommend pure essentials. See Bufford Quercetin So see Bufford has antioxidant properties, It has clearing abilities. I like to refer to it as nature's vacuum cleaner, and it just goes around and it sucks all the issue from the tissues. Quercetin is a natural
anti inflammatory. It can be used in place of end sets. If you'd like to stop taking ibprofen and other pain relievers, you can use Pure essentials Quercetin. Pure Essentials Ultra Antioxidant is a really great one, as is the NAC the nctal system by Pure Essentials, milk thistle and glutathione are considered the gold standard supplements for someone that's having issues with detoxification. Pure Essentials and Ultra Anioxidant has milkwhistle in it. It also has vitamin D, vitamin E,
and coqu ten which are superpowerhouse anioxidants. And NAC is a precursor to glutothione. So instead of taking straight glutothione, which you can do, we prefer to support the body and help it do what it was designed to do naturally, and those two products will help deliver with its own natural gluteothione production. And when we talk about the genetic tests, so we're talking about different sensitivities.
When we have this tests, I know, I'll just point out one thing that Pure Essentials does not save or sell your information, and I know that's something that a lot of other tests do. This is something you can do at home. And again, your information's not sold or saved. It's yours and belongs to you. And if you want to share with anyone, you're welcome to. But if a gene shows up in this report, does it mean that you have whatever is associated with it? Talk about how somebody
can take this test and use it to their advantage. So let's start there. How can someone take the test? So you go to pure dash essentials dot com, you order the test, that test comes to you in the mail. The first thing you're willing to do is register your viole number. This is how your results get linked to you. Because Pure Essentials doesn't save your information, doesn't save your results, you have to do some of these things on your own. We want to make sure at Pure Essential that there
is complete transparency. There's no buying and selling of information. So you're going to have to register your vial, that number is assigned to you and your results. You're going to use the cheek. Pop, rub it up and down on your cheek like you're kind of like what you do when you're brushing your teeth, so you can get the cells. You're going to stick it into the vial, break the other end off, lid on it, stick it in the little zippy bed, put it back in the box, tape
it up, and then send it off with the prepaid label. You're going to receive your results in three to five weeks, and that's when the magic starts. That's when you start planning everything. All of the information that is in your report is for you to make the best choices for you. What works in your house, what works in your family. Just because you may have a gene or a variation that says your gluten sensitive, it doesn't necessarily
mean that you're a Celiac. Very specifically, if you show up having the HLA, d Q eight or two point five, which are specific Celiac genes, it doesn't mean that you have Celiac disease. It's information for you to make choice. Do you want to keep eating bread? Do you want to keep eating pasta? Do you want to keep eating gluten containing foods and take the risk. Probably not so this is an opportunity for someone to change the way that they put food on the table. The NYO nine B, that's
a gene associated with autoimmunity, just a general autoimmunity. Variants in this gene are directly linked to a higher risk of an autoimmune diagnosis, especially crones and rheumatoid arthritis. But in those that consume gluten, so chances are your results are going to show that a gluten free diet is recommended. In addition, those who are a wild type, which means that there's no variant, they're more likely to have something like heartburn, silent reflux, gird symptoms when they
consume gluten. I was, for the very very longest time I was not a everybody needs to be gluten free. But the more I learn about our genetics and what shows up even if you're not a celiac, even if you don't have signs and symptoms that can be completely tied back to gluten right there on the spot and that are very very obvious. There are things that are kind of lurking in the woodshed that can be not so lovely for us. It can be a pesticide issue, it can be a processing issue additives and
such. You know, here in America they do what's called desiccating the field, which is spraying the field that you know, where the grains are growing, to force maturation so that they can wipe those fields faster and get more volume from them. The problem is that when they do that, they're spreading everything, and it's the pesticide that you can't wash it off. So this is all just information to help people make the best choices possible for their lives.
Yeah. I don't know who was said at first, my mom or Oprah. But when we know better, we do better. And how many people look at illnesses that a family member has gone through, You know, they have the thought if I had only known, or if I knew this, then I would have done that. If I had known sooner, I would have made this change. That's how I came to this field too, And I'll share that story on a different time. But a family member who
had toxicity exposure that changed my world. It changed my life. So when you know better, you do better. You know, we're talking about onsets of autoimmune issues. Some people say it happens over time. Some people say it's a sudden occurrence. I know through functional medicine and nutrition and that whole functional wellness world. A lot of times we look at cumulative toxic load or through that lens. But what is your thought on that an autoimmune condition is
not going to just pop up overnight. Now, someone might have a sign or a symptom that pops up overnight, But if you're looking at autoimmune disease autoimmune conditions, those are chronic symptoms. They happen over and over and over again. They might come and go for people, but there is some sort of experience of a symptom that's happening for quite some time. Someone might think,
Oh, I'm just getting old. Oh it's just a sign of age or something like that, and so they kind of write it off for that moment, and then something else might pop up and they write it off as something else. If you take a look, there's a pattern somewhere. There's always a pattern. And research shows that signs of autoimmunity can show up on simple tests months even years before someone has full blown symptoms and receives a diagnosis
or a label from their medical professional. And I think there are a lot of issues that are autoimmune issues that people don't realize are autoimmune issues that they're treated in other ways. People are given medications. There's a whole bunch of ways that people handle it, not understanding that's really occurring as an autoimmune issue. There can be quite a few differences, as you may have guests, because there are different conditions. There's good news and there's bad news here.
So early signs are pretty similar. That's the good news. The bad news is they can also be a little bit vague. They can be kind of non specific in the early stages, so they can be kind of tricky to point out. The one common denominator, though, is inflammation the skin. The skin is the best place to note the first sign of inflammation. When you have something happening on the outside, you probably have something happening on the inside as well. And a good rule of thumb is if you notice changes
that don't have an explanation or don't have a reason. You know, if you bump into the counter in the kitchen and you have a bruise on your hip, you know cause and effect, you know what happened. But if something pops up on your skin and there's no explanation for it, that's something that really should be looked at. You know, it suggests that something's up there, and it's good to have the resources to not have to reinvent the
wheel. The information's out there, you have to go to trusted sources and learn what works. So for more information on Pure Essentials, Melissa's book about the nutritional genetics test. Do your own homework so you can live your life undoctored. For more information on Pure Essentials, you can go on their website www dot pure hyphen Essentials dot com. That's p U r E hyphen E s S E n t I a ls dot com. Or you can call the office Monday through Friday, nine am to five pm at two one two
seven five eight thirty two hundred. That's two one two seven five eight three two zero zero. We have people there to help you out. That website is chock full of information to help get you the specified supplements that are best for you at the highest quality available. Thank you all for listening, and we will see you next Sunday at five pm here on WR