myBurbank Talks
myBurbank Talks
Women of Burbank: Alina Nazari, Gut Nutritionist
Meet Alina Nazari, a Function FDN-P gut nutritionist through her company Go Happy Belly. MyBurbank reporter sits down with Alina to talk about all things gut including microbiomes, immune systems, fasting, acidity, and more. Alina struggled with health problems for years, and while every test came back normal, she turned to nutrition and studying the gut for answers. Understanding the gut changed her life and now through coaching she is helping to change others. Alina also shares what it’s like being a mom while building her business, and her experience competing on a entrepreneur reality show earlier this year.
Learn more about Go Happy Belly here: https://gohappybelly.com/
From deep in the Burbank Media District. It's time for another edition of my Burbank Talks presented by the staff of my Burbank. Now let's see what's on today's agenda as we join our program.
Speaker 2:Hi, my Burbank reporter, ashley Erickson, here and I'm back on another episode of Women of Burbank, and today my guest is Alina Nazari Zari. She's a Burbank mom, resident and functional FDNP, gut nutritionist at her company, go Happy Belly, who transformed her life through food and is now helping others do the same thing. Welcome, alina, thank you for coming. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm so excited to talk about this. I think that gut health is super important. I feel like so many of us struggle and it's not something that we really ever talk about. I know it's something that I've struggled with since 10th grade, um, and it's this is a newer chapter to you as well like being in this path, so I'm really excited to kind of delve into it. But, um, tell me about your life before nutrition and why you kind of went down this path.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I've I've always had gut issues, like many of us have, and my lab, my labs, would always come back normal. My test would always come back normal. I would have colonoscopies done, I had endoscopies done and just things that I didn't feel were right and everything would come back normal. And I had things, issues that you would consider benign, like constipation, eczema, seasonal allergies, things that you wouldn't attribute maybe to gut health, especially not as a teenager, and they're often overlooked, and we get this general diagnosis that a lot of people get like, oh, you just have IBS, which is irritable bowel syndrome. That's what I've been diagnosed with.
Speaker 2:What does that mean? Why are my bowels irritable, but no one tells you? They just give you medicine to mask the symptoms and you move on with your life Exactly.
Speaker 1:But no one addresses. Why has this happened? Why is there inflammation in the gut lining? Why do you have these issues? I suffered with so many of these things growing up and I always just thought that they were normal, especially because my test would always come back normal and it wasn't significant enough for me to really pay attention much to it. Significant enough for me to really pay attention much to it. I just kind of thought I have seasonal allergies or I just have constipation, or I have eczema, or I have these sensitivities irritability.
Speaker 2:It was coming out in your skin as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had really bad eczema all through high school and college. Yeah, and really it wasn't until I had my first son, because when you have your first child, you really take a deep dive into your own health and want to make sure that you're living as long as you can for your child and setting a good example. And setting a good example, yeah, and you know, I lost my mom very young, when she was 46 years old and I was 10 years old, and it was always a fear of mine because she died of stomach cancer and I always thought why did this happen to her so young? And the the answers were always kind of the same things that we hear, like cancer is genetic. Um, you know, things are genetic that's kind of out of our control, and that didn't sit right with me. How can things just be out of our control? Yet we didn't have these things 50 years ago, 100 years ago. What has changed and what can we do about it to take better charge of our health? And so really, after having my first son, I really decided to make more sense of what was going on in my gut health.
Speaker 1:But it wasn't until I had my second son where he kind of he was. It was a blessing in disguise, but he really destroyed my gut. I felt like I couldn't eat anything. I was nauseous all the time I was nursing him and so many things that I would eat he would react to. And I think that he was my blessing in. He was telling me hey, these things have always been going on in your gut. I'm just making the issues bigger because I want you to pay attention to them. I want to magnify these for you so that you can understand that there's something going on. And so at the time of course I was frustrated, but looking back, it is such a blessing that I had those symptoms with him and they were a little bit more severe and I just started doing a deep dive into the gut what goes on in health? And it was very frustrating because I went to more gastroenterologists and the tests would come back normal.
Speaker 2:What were they testing for? What kind of things would come back normal?
Speaker 1:They would try to see if there are any ulcers, if there's any polyps in your colon, if there's anything that they might see that they might be going on.
Speaker 2:But those are still like secondary things too, right? Something has to cause the ulcers or the polyps, right? So they're not really even looking for the root cause, right?
Speaker 1:And no one will really address your diet. No one will tell you hey, ashley, you have gut issues, how are you sleeping at night? Because poor sleep is going to attribute to poor gut health. No one has probably ever told you that Just these things that we have access to, just natural things like getting better sleep, going outside more, we're not really told and we're given something like a medicine to just cover up those symptoms. And so from there I went down the rabbit hole of just health and what was going on, and I kept a food journal and tried to figure out what foods I would react to and what would make me feel OK. And there were, when my gut was at its weakest, there were maybe five to 10 foods that I could eat that I would not react to.
Speaker 2:I mean I was pretty miserable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember going to one Thanksgiving dinner at my sister in law's house and I just ate the shrimp off the shrimp cocktail on the table. I couldn't eat turkey. I couldn't eat meat. Meat is really hard to digest, oh interesting. Yeah, if you have a lot of gut dysbiosis you cannot handle a lot of meat. Especially slow digesting foods. I couldn't have any legumes. She made a beautiful edamame salad. I couldn't have that. No beans, no sauces, no fructans. I couldn't have anything high in FODMAP. So no onions, no garlic, no carrots.
Speaker 2:Which isn't everything. Everything I mean seasoned with that.
Speaker 1:There was very few foods that I could have. Yeah, and raw shrimp I did okay with. So I was having the raw shrimp off the shrimp cocktail and you know, I was just miserable and I knew that I had to figure out what was going on with me and I said I bet there are so many people like me who are not getting those answers and just feel frustrated and they just feel fatigued or bloated or have constipation, constipation and have all these issues every day and they're seeking answers. And so that really made me realize this is what I meant to do, this is how I'm supposed to help people.
Speaker 2:What were you doing before this? Because you were, you're like a major entrepreneur. I feel like you had a sandal business. You are a realtor, so you were working during all of this as you were researching. What were you doing at that time?
Speaker 1:So I full on became a gut nutritionist about four years ago, full time. Before that, yeah, I was doing real estate. I had a flip-flop company and before that I was doing corporate events. But corporate events I gave up as soon as my first son was born because I didn't want to fly around and do corporate events.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So then you went down this rabbit hole, you researched and you decided like now I'm helping myself, I want to help other people. Did you start in the home, like, did you change everyone's diet in the house? Or how did that work diet? In the house, or how did that work? It's not that easy to change your family's diet.
Speaker 1:No, I'm still working on changing their diet, but I, with the kids, we talk all the time about how certain foods have certain nutrients and vitamins, how they heal us. I allow them to. We cook together all the time. I think that's a big part of my kids eating healthier, also because they're so proud of the meal that they helped prepare. Of course, my kitchen is a lot messier, it takes a lot longer, the recipe sometimes doesn't come out how it's supposed to, but they are learning so much when they're involved in the process, and so that's a big part of it also is just talking about what vitamins are in these foods, what nutrients are there and what do these other processed ingredients do to us, and so I talk to them about that all the time.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, they're still kids. If you offered my kids Doritos, they would gladly take it, so they have to be kids too. Yeah, and I think people have to understand that too. There is no extreme. You can't be extreme on either side, and I don't like to be. I allow my kids to be kids. They'll have the snack bags after baseball games, you know. I'll let them enjoy things at birthday parties.
Speaker 2:Well, their guts are still healthy. Well, their guts are still healthy.
Speaker 1:But they'll notice certain things too, which is I love you know. They'll say you know, you were right, I ate these foods and it didn't feel good after and I'm like uh-huh, uh-huh, you know, and so just little things like that. But again, I try to not put that pressure on them and be this extreme mom who's just controlling everything that they're eating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and I feel like gut health is so different with every person, right, like what's gonna affect you is gonna be different for me, and so, like, how do you balance that, like in a house of like this person can eat this and this person can't have this, and is it a lot of just like making everyone individual meals? Or you make, I make one thing and that's it. I make one thing and that's it.
Speaker 1:I don't do individual meals. I will make a big batch of protein because I know I'll have more of it and I'll usually have it with a salad or avocado or something like that on the side. And the kids I'll make a starch or something for them to have with the protein and some vegetables and kind of. That's it. I don't really make separate meals and I'm pretty strict as far as dinner goes. My kids will tell you if it's something that's new they have to try it and if they absolutely hate it.
Speaker 1:That's fine, I'll make them something else, but there's no, that looks weird. This is green that has weird stuff on it. It smells weird. We're not having it. I'm like I'm not doing that. Yeah, this is what we're having. Yeah, so there for sure there's a battle. I mean, there's six and ten.
Speaker 2:So I mean there's a battle with cooking food, no matter what it is, with kids. They don't want to eat anything. So I that. So you know gut health is so important and I feel like it's, it's tied to like everything in your body. Tell me about, like, what the gut is connected to, because I know, for me, anxiety and stress immediately sets my stomach off. Yeah, just like my brain sends a signal and it's like nope, you're going to have a bad day.
Speaker 1:You know, what's interesting is I never knew that seasonal allergies are tied to your gut health. So when we have allergies, it's a sign of a weakened immune system. It's a sign of a weakened gut. Yeah, and I just thought seasonal allergies are just normal, you know? Yeah, it's March, the allergies kick in and that's what it is. I haven't had seasonal allergies in years and years since, since fixing my gut, and I never really attributed this. Actually was my husband's friend who asked me. I said yeah, I used to have really bad allergies and he said how did you get rid of them? And I said I don't know. Actually they just went away one day and I just had them for years and it wasn't until he asked me that question that it clicked. And then I started looking into it and I said, oh my God, it's tied to your immune system. It's a sign of a weakened immune system. You're not supposed to respond that way to the season changing.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, I do have friends that will eat dairy and then they get like a stuffy nose, which? Is so weird to me, yeah, how it will work like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we're not supposed to respond that way to foods that we're supposed to eat, and so these are all signs of a distressed gut, a distressed immune system.
Speaker 1:So once you start learning about that, it's just fascinating how the things that our body has been telling us we don't even know. Our body speaks to us all the time but we're not listening, we're not listening, we don't listen until our body's yelling at us and saying, hey, I don't like those foods. But if your body's saying, hey, I kind of get a headache when you eat those foods, you're like I know my body doesn't react that well to it, but I'm still going to have that chocolate or that cake, you know, because it's not that bad, until your body's like I said, cut it out, we're not having that anymore. And you're like I can't have gluten anymore, you know. Or I can't have dairy or whatever it is. We push it to that point and we all, we all do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, speaking of gluten, you know my brother has celiac disease and I was tested too, because I've had IBS and I always have stomach problems, and you know I was negative. So I just continued eating, and just recently, my husband went on this like low carb diet and I was like, well, I'm just going to try it, because you know he's making low carb things. We're kind of cutting stuff out, and I'm on two weeks and I mean stomach issues gone, wow, like I was like this has been my problem the whole time was breads and sugars. Um, I have to give a shout out to donut. Today, though, I went to go film a video and donuts are like my favorite food, um, and he sent me home with a box. So I will break my no, no carb today when I come home from this and eat a donut. So thank you, calvin, for the donuts.
Speaker 2:Anyways, yeah, so it's interesting because I never. I just eat bread with every meal. You know I have an English muffin, a bagel, and so I just thought, you know, maybe it was the coffee, if it was this, and so, eliminating that, it was like I feel lighter, I feel less bloated, I just I mean, I couldn't believe it and I don't know what it is, if it's a single thing, because I'm cutting out all carbs, so I'd have to now slowly add things in. Right, that's what you did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the thing with gluten. A lot of people ask this well, how come we could eat it for years and years and now, all of a sudden, we have this sensitivity or this allergy. Or I've even heard heard people say, oh, it's just a LA thing, everyone there has a gluten allergy, you know. And and kind of making fun of that, and I have a gluten allergy, you know. So I'm I'm always a little sensitive to that. I'm like, no, it's not an LA thing, um, but I do, I do.
Speaker 1:I will say I do miss donuts, for sure, and breakfast burritos, which, oh, yeah, for sure, um, which I haven't had in years. But our soils are now depleted of these nutrients and bacteria and vitamins that we used to have in the soils, and so your body is not reacting to this frankenfood that we're eating. It's this dead food that we're eating and your body doesn't know what to do with it. So that's why you'll hear a lot of people say I made sourdough at home and I was fine with it. Or we have a local sourdough shop that open and I don't know if you've seen their advertisement, but they say it's gluten friendly, because a lot of people who have gluten sensitivities do well with their food, because it's an actual sourdough bread. It's not this dead food you're buying in the market. If you've ever noticed, on the back of almost every bread it says enriched wheat flour.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 1:I thought it was a good thing. I was like cool, it's enriched with nutrients. That's exactly what I thought and I said by thinking I was doing something. Great, it's not. What that means is that they've stripped it of every single vitamin that there is, of every naturally occurring vitamin and mineral in that bread, and they've enriched it with synthetic form and then they're selling it to you as enriched wheat flour. It's crazy, and so that's why we're reacting so much to it is because everything is synthetic around us, and you know you're.
Speaker 1:I always like to say our health is kind of like a leaky bucket. You know, if there's maybe a small leak in it, maybe not that big of a deal, if you have so many different holes in the bucket, it cannot contain anymore. That's what's happening with our environmental toxins, with our soils being depleted, these artificial dyes that are in our foods, and so there's so many holes in our bucket that our body cannot handle that. So someone might eat a tomato and say, oh, it's high FODMAP. I'm not able to eat tomatoes anymore. I can't eat watermelon anymore, or onions and garlic because they're high FODMAP. I'm not able to eat tomatoes anymore. I can't eat watermelon anymore, or onions and garlic because they're high FODMAP. It's not because it's high FODMAP, it's because there's so many holes in the bucket that we just cannot handle even the smallest. A response to something to everyday food.
Speaker 2:So how do you repair that? Like, how did you repair your gut? I mean, you said you eliminated almost everything. Yeah, I did, and now you're able to bring stuff back in, but I'm sure there's other things in food that you have to do, right Well?
Speaker 1:really keeping a food journal, I would say, was a big step for me, because I was trying to do all of the diets that I was finding online or that people that I follow were doing, and so I was doing. I even did raw food diet, which I was miserable, but I thought, if this is my life and this is what makes me feel good, I guess this is it.
Speaker 2:I'm just like, just fruits and vegetables, like anything grown.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I was eating raw zucchini and raw romaine lettuce and by itself, yeah. But I thought, if this is what's good, because I was so miserable and just in so much stomach pain all the time, yeah, I thought, well, if this is it, then I guess I'm a raw vegan. You know, that's just my life. But it wasn't because I was still having those stomach pains. And so I tried to do carnivore, which is just me. I tried to do keto. I went on a 33 day juice fast, just juice, 33 days, nothing, nothing. It didn't heal me, it didn't make me feel good. I didn't even lose weight. I was like this is not you know. It didn't do anything for me because that's not how the body works. And that's another reason why different diets work for different people is because everyone is very bio individual. The bacteria strains that you have in your gut microbiome are not the same that I have. It's not the same that your kids have or your husband has, or anyone, and so that's why carnivore might work really well for someone. We hear it all the time, we see it on social media. Carnivore is definitely trending. People love carnivore. It reversed all of these things. Other people say I don't get it.
Speaker 1:I didn't feel well on carnivore. I was one of those people. I did carnivore and I felt terrible. I had fatigue, I had stomach pain. It didn't feel good. I felt like it was just sitting in my gut. I didn't know that if you have gut dysbiosis, you have meat takes a lot of stomach acid to digest. If you have low stomach acid, you're not gonna be able to digest meat and you're eating nothing but meat so you're having no fiber to even help you. When you have a low stomach acid, you're not going to do well on carnivore. I didn't know this. I was just trying to do the different diets and I just felt like.
Speaker 2:I don't understand. Nobody tells you that when you're on these diets, no yeah, when am I supposed to?
Speaker 1:eat. This isn't working, that's not working, and so so, little by little, just by my own testing, I was able to figure out that, oh, when your gut is not strong enough, it doesn't really matter what diet you're doing You're not going to feel well on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially, and you'll even hear people say I eat a salad and I feel bloated, and if you've heard people say that I don't do well with raw greens, again, it comes back to if your gut's not strong enough, it doesn't matter if you're doing raw greens, if you're doing meat, if you're what it is you're doing, you just don't have the proper acid, like hydrochloric acid, to break down those foods.
Speaker 2:So that's really where it comes down to. I never even heard of that before. Like the stomach acid, I know like bacteria you have to have probiotics a lot of stuff, but not about the acid, and probiotics a lot of stuff but not about the acid. And so this is what you do in your company Go Happy Belly, right. And so you take your clients and you kind of just figure out what they need. Tell me how that program works.
Speaker 1:So they get an at-home test when they work with me one-on-one. It's called a GI map stool test and that allows me to see what kind of bacterial imbalance they have going on. So it lets me see if they have a lot of opportunistic bacteria like negative bacteria, what the ratio is of good bacteria in their gut, if they have different strains of things that might be opportunistic. Also, it also lets there are other tests that I recommend, also depending on what the person has. So we might do a stress and hormone panel which allows me to see their estrogen levels, their testosterone levels, what are their progesterone levels, and that's a lab like the blood draw. It's a saliva test.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, Cool. Yeah, you do stool saliva and you do blood draw too.
Speaker 1:So this is all you do at home Really. Yeah, wow, so they're all at-home tests. You send it to the lab, and the lab lets me know what your results are and I go over them with you. Wow, and I say, hey, ashley, this is what your results showed and we'll go over on a Zoom call and I'll share my screen and show you your labs. You'll also have your will go over what it shows and a lot of times it's validating for people because they'll say I knew something was going on.
Speaker 2:I knew that's why I was feeling that and I'll say, yeah, this is exactly what's going on. These tests aren't normally done at like a GI or things like that.
Speaker 1:If you request them and your insurance covers it, yeah, they can be done, ok. But we all know insurance likes to deny, deny, deny, deny until something is, until your body is yelling at you so loud with the symptom that your, your gi, says okay, we'll order that for you. So these are out of pocket tests and that's that's really I I would say a barrier that I wish it wasn't. But they are out of pocket and there's nothing I can do to control that. But if your primary will order those tests, absolutely you can get all of them done and they'll go over that.
Speaker 2:You don't even know what to ask for. That's the problem. Yeah, right, like you know exactly what to ask for the whole nine yards, right?
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah. Another certification that I got is called an OAT certification. It's an organic acids test, so I'm able to see the acidity in your gut. You come to me and you tell me I always have reflux. I have acidic issues, a gnawing pain, a burning pain.
Speaker 2:That's what I have.
Speaker 1:All of these things. So we would do an organic acids test and then I'm able to go over those results with you and see that Again you can ask for these, but I bet you've never even heard of these tests.
Speaker 2:No, because I went to and they had me in this weird test where I was like in this machine and I had to like drink this awful like chalk thick stuff and they were taking pictures of it going down and then like to see if it come back up and there's like an hour test and then they had to like lay me upside down and see like it came up and all these tests and they're like oh, you don't have any acid reflux. I'm like I'm throwing up. Yeah, I mean I mean like gnawing. I can taste it's bitter in my mouth. I can smell the bitterness. I mean it was. I was so miserable and I couldn't get any validation for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah and that's exactly why I realized that this was my calling and this is what I needed to do, because I I, after years of frustration I said said there must be thousands, millions of people out there who are going through the same thing and their tests are coming back normal, just like yours were, just like mine were, you know, and we don't know what's going on. We're not sure. Maybe take some you know, I don't know antacid.
Speaker 2:Maybe throw me on Prilosec and set me on my way. Yeah, awful.
Speaker 1:And good luck with the side effects. Come back in two years when those side effects kick in. We'll put you on something else, exactly yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's always just like a patch, a patch, a patch on everything. So you get the client, they do the testing and then what's the next step in their program?
Speaker 1:So we go over what the protocol for them will be, when be. When they go through the program they also take a gut type quiz. There's different types of gut that someone might have. I think most people don't know that also. They all think that it's just one gut type. You throw some probiotics at it and you're healed. We don't talk about how there's different types of gut. They're all interconnected.
Speaker 1:They all, I would say, have similar symptoms, but there are some that are more pronounced than others. So if someone has a candida gut, that means they have a lot of fungus in the body. We usually see tonal fungus, we see white on the tongue, we might see red under the armpits. So they might have a candida gut type, meaning they'll probably have other things going on too. They might have food sensitivities, but the candida is what's most pronounced in the gut.
Speaker 1:Um, someone might have a stressed gut. Um, maybe they have thyroid dysfunction. Usually we see that because the thyroid controls a lot of our stress and our hormones, and so if someone has a stressed gut, they usually have some thyroid dysfunction also. Yeah, um, which thyroid is another test that you can get a general thyroid test done, but they won't do a full thyroid panel, unless you specifically request it. Okay, and that's what I had done and it came back normal. But in the beginning my primary, whom I love, didn't want to do the thyroid panel. She said there isn't really a need. You're really young, you know, I don't really see anything going on. I said I'm demanding the full thyroid panel. What do I have insurance for?
Speaker 2:If we're not even doing these tests. I don't get it, you know totally.
Speaker 1:So we got that done, and so you really have to push for a lot of these tests.
Speaker 2:But so in the program.
Speaker 1:They'll take a gut type quiz and it'll it'll tell them the gut type that it thinks they have and then from there there's different protocols and things they can follow and recommendations. So they can do the program on their own or they can book with me one on one and that's where they get the at home tests that that go over.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. So how many people do you think you've been helping over these last few years? I don't know.
Speaker 1:You know, I don't know. I wish I could help everyone for free and I talk about this with business and business coaching all the time, because they'll say Alina, you need to charge more for this. And I'm like, well, you know, I don't want to just help people who are able to pay me that dollar amount, I want to help everyone. Yeah, but they'll. They'll tell me but you're helping people just by posting videos, which that's a job in and of itself, right?
Speaker 2:Per 100%. That was what I was going to bring up next. Is you're so good on social media? I don't think so, but thank you, no, you do and you're always posting video reels and giving away tips and things like that, which I want to talk about, because you have some really great, informative videos. Thank, you.
Speaker 1:But see, even the things that we just covered in the past half hour, I probably don't have any reels or posts on them because you just forget and you don't. You don't post as often because I think you just maybe overthink things or you just forget to post, or you don't realize what people know and don't know, like exactly.
Speaker 2:You become so immune to what you're doing that you're like forget, oh, they don't know that term or what a leaky gut is. Yeah, like leaky gut, can I? I've heard this term before. Yeah, can you tell me what that is?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is literally holes in your gut lining.
Speaker 2:That's a real thing. That's not an analogy.
Speaker 1:No, no, and this was a term that I heard for a long time also, and I kept saying, ok, leaky gut, leaky gut, what is that? Yeah, just like we know that your gut health is tied to your brain health or your immune system, but we don't really know how. We don't really know what that means. What does that mean? You know so, um, and that's another thing why I over complicate my reels also because I don't want to go too detailed, and I think do people even really know that, uh, that detailed but leaky gut is literally something that your gut, um has you've ingested or consumed that it didn't like and it creates a little wound in the gut lining. Okay, if you continue consuming that, it's going to create a hole in the gut lining, so those holes will get bigger over time.
Speaker 1:We don't want this to happen because when this happens, then things that are not supposed to go into your bloodstream go into your bloodstream, like food particles, toxins, things you're. Then things that are not supposed to go into your bloodstream go into your bloodstream, like food particles, toxins, things you're consuming, things that your body should be able to detox and get rid of. So even, not even just food, but even things that you're you're ingesting that you're not supposed to. Your liver does a great job of detoxifying and getting rid of that. Yeah, if you have a lot of leaky gut, those holes are really big. It's going to go into your bloodstream and it's going to cause all sorts of dysbiosis. Yeah, when you have food particles that go into your bloodstream, your blood does not recognize that piece of onion or garlic. It thinks it's a foreign invader, so it attacks, it creates antibodies for this foreign invader. What is this piece of onion garlic? Whatever it is, it creates antibodies and thus food sensitivities are born. So now you have antibodies to onions, garlic, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:So now it's like a foreign thing. Every time you eat it, your body's like. I'm not supposed to have this Exactly.
Speaker 1:Now your body. The soldiers are prepared, they know that food and anytime you ingest it it's like I know this food. Attack, attack, attack. Oh my gosh, Can you fix that? You can fix it, but you have to remember that it took you years to get here. It took you years to heal it. Years to heal, yeah.
Speaker 2:So would you say, like the first step would be to eliminate one thing at a time, eliminate all things, and then slowly add things, like for somebody who wants to just kind of figure out what they're sensitive to, what would be the first step?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say that the first step is really a food journal. You have to write down every single thing you're eating, from the sauces to the coffee coffee creamer. I recently gave up coffee. It's about a week I've given up coffee. I really needed to because I also test myself and so I was seeing my hormones were just dysregulated. Just a lot of stress, and coffee raises cortisol in the body. I know we think that it calms us down and it makes us feel like we're functional, but it doesn't. It's caffeine and so it raises cortisol in the body. When you already have elevated levels of cortisol, it's not suggested to take to drink coffee, caffeinated beverages. It's just going to increase cortisol when cortisol is too high. I know we veered off your question a little bit, no.
Speaker 2:I was actually going to ask you because on TikTok, every day it tells me I have high cortisol. It's like if you have this, you have high cortisol. I was like that's me. I don't even know what cortisol is. I haven't been tested for it, but it's linked to the stomach.
Speaker 1:So cortisol is your fight or flight response. Cortisol also produces adrenaline and so a lot of times especially moms, especially entrepreneurs we're just running on adrenaline all day long and we get numb to it. We think that this is how you're supposed to function. That's not how you're supposed to function. Your body is in this parasympathetic state. It is in this fight or flight response all the time. It's on high alert because it thinks it's in danger mode. It goes back to how we are, um, how we are in tune with with just the world and being hunter-gatherers. But your body thinks that it needs to be on alert all the time. It thinks that there's danger around us. That's how we respond to our day. We wake up, we got to go, we got to get that. Get the kids ready we're on high alert. Get their lunches in, get them out the door, get them to school, and then we have work to do. We have emails, we have podcasts, we have all these things. Going errands to run and then pick up the kids, and all of that goes.
Speaker 1:Think of how disconnected we are from nature. When was the last time you just sat outside in nature for 10 minutes? Just sat there, not on your phone, not drinking coffee, just sitting there in nature. This is not something we do often, but this is something that we need to do because we're a part of nature. We forget that, and so we wake up.
Speaker 1:We look at our phone that's blue light. That's disrupting your hormones, because your body wakes up, sees the sunlight and says oh, it's sunlight, I need to start winding down in about 10 hours and producing melatonin to go to sleep. We wake up and look at our phone. Your body does not signal the same light. It signals the synthetic light, and so your body doesn't produce the hormones how it's supposed to. But what it does produce because it needs to is cortisol, and so usually your other hormones will be really low. Another thing that happens when cortisol is really high is that cortisol is very demanding, and so when your body's trying to produce estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, cortisol is robbing all of it, because it needs it to fuel as adrenaline, and so you're having mood imbalances, hot flashes, you don't feel well, you're not sleeping well at night.
Speaker 2:So you probably think you're going through perimenopause when you're really just having cortisol issues, weight gain, all of these things, and you might be going through perimenopause when you're really just having cortisol issues, weight gain, all of these things and you might be going through perimenopause.
Speaker 1:But they're also synced to one another because those hormones also change as we age when we're going through perimenopause, but cortisol will rob those hormones and convert them into cortisol because it needs it. You're telling your body I need cortisol all day long yeah. Because we got to go. We have a meeting at two o'clock Then we got to pick up the kids. Then they have baseball. They have to make something for dinner.
Speaker 2:Oh, I forgot laundry Then my husband's coming home.
Speaker 1:Oh, I forgot to feed the dog. You're telling your body I need to be on adrenaline all day long, and so your body is not producing the hormones as it needs to in order to properly have that circadian rhythm, which is probably another term that you're hearing a lot on social media. Your circadian rhythm is just like your biological clock. Yeah, it's how your body functions. Is it 9 am? Is it 7 am? Is it sunrise?
Speaker 2:OK, we need to produce these hormones especially when you're sitting all day in an office or something and you are not outside seeing what time of day it is. I'm sure that really throws it off. It does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does, and so a lot of times I mean almost always I'll recommend people just go sit outside. I do this for myself. It was something that I would do when I would, that I would remember to do, but now I make it a point to, every single day, go sit outside, even for five minutes, 10 minutes, and just connect with nature, just not be on my phone, but just be connected to the earth and just breathe and just center myself. We always love to say I don't have time.
Speaker 1:I don't have time, we have plenty of time, we just don't prioritize it 100% yeah, we have five minutes that instead of scrolling on TikTok, social media, instagram, we can just go sit outside? Yeah, but we don't. We prioritize other things, yeah.
Speaker 2:And speaking of outside, I feel like all your videos are always of you outside on a walk or something, so you're outside a lot. But I want to talk about a couple of those videos. One of them you published was the top five supplements for boosting your immune system. Can you remember what those five are off the top of your head? Or at least three of them.
Speaker 1:Well, things that I always keep on hand, in rotation, I would say, for my top five supplements. I don't know the exact ones from my reel, but it's always going to be D3 and K2. D3 we get from sunlight, but not enough because, as we just talked about, we're definitely not outside getting exposed to those rays as often as we should be. Um, there are free apps that you can get that will actually tell you when is the best time for you to go outside to get that best absorption.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:There's an app called D-Minder. It's a free app and you put it in. It knows your location and tells you hey, go outside. This is the best time for you to be absorbing those, those rays. Yeah, um, but d3 really pairs well with k2. When we take a k2 supplement, it allows your body to absorb that. That uh, d3 okay and so is k. Potassium k is yeah, k is the um, the uh, vitamin found in dark leafy greens. Okay, yeah, and D3 is the most bioavailable form of D.
Speaker 2:There's other D vitamins. Yeah, I take that with magnesium, exactly. Tiktok told me to take it together. Tiktok is correct. Okay, great, yes, one point TikTok yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, with magnesium. What's another one that I recommended on my reel? I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:Okay, what about elderberry? I take elderberry gummies every day. I don't know if they work, but TikTok told me to take it. Yeah, so I take those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love elderberry. Every winter I'll make an elderberry syrup to keep at home for the kids and I'll put fresh ginger in it. I put clove in it, manuka honey, cinnamon all of these things that are anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and we always keep that on hand yeah, ginger, I feel like it's a big thing too, like ginger turmeric.
Speaker 2:Um, when I make my tea when I get sick, that's always put ginger, turmeric, black pepper, because apparently turmeric can't be absorbed unless you have black pepper.
Speaker 1:There's so many rules, I know and that's another thing I try not to do is not to overwhelm people. Yeah, I'll have friends send me a reel of someone they saw and they'll say I thought I was doing the right things. But this person says don't drink that milk, only drink a two milk, you know? And? Or oatmeal in the morning spikes your glucose. Should I not be eating that anymore? Or this person said, yeah, protein. And I'm like listen, that's again. It all bio-individual. It's what works for that person doesn't mean that it works for you.
Speaker 1:100. If someone has a dairy sensitivity because I know now there's a lot of people just harping on these um milk alternatives don't drink oat milk, don't drink almond milk. This is uh, increases estrogen. The flax milk increases estrogen. Don't drink I don't know Whatever it is all of these milks. But if someone cannot tolerate dairy, they need to drink those milks. Right, and so it's just about finding one that doesn't have the inflammatory gums, like the guar gum and carrageenan, and those filler ingredients or the seed oils. It doesn't have canola oil in it, but if it's just a clean product, you're fine to use it. Rather, you have to feel good right, you feel good, exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and so what works for you is not going to work for the other person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's interesting. What's your like? Go to breakfast.
Speaker 1:This morning actually, I had hard boiled eggs and oatmeal. I've been trying to get better with having breakfast as well. Another thing we tend to do is under eat, especially as women. We fast way too long. I love fasting, but people don't understand that fasting is always intentional. It is not I'm starving my body to lose weight, it is I'm intentionally fasting to heal. There's a difference, and so there are times when I'll do an extended, even water fast or a bone broth fast, which I love, which is just bone broth and sea salt. Water fast is just going to be just water and sea salt or unflavored electrolytes. You can have black coffee or black tea also, but those are healing tools. They're not something that you do all the time. You're not starving yourself, you're not punishing yourself. I have clients who will eat something they're not supposed to and then they'll do a 24 hour water fast as punishment, and I'm like that's we're not punishing our body.
Speaker 1:Also, you're never going to heal a body you hate. So if you look in the mirror and you hate your body, you hate the way you look. You're like, oh my body, this my body, hate your body. You hate the way you look. You're like, oh, my body, this my body. That your body listens to you all the time, it talks to you all the time, and so it's absorbing those things. Your subconscious is absorbing those things.
Speaker 1:You're not going to heal a body you hate. You have to love your body. You have to love yourself. You have to be grateful, practice gratitude. We talk about all these things. People think that it's kind of silly sometimes to practice gratitude or even just to sit outside with their feet in the dirt, but studies have shown the positive effects on it has on decreasing depression, decreasing anxiety, lowering inflammation and so all of these tools that we have. We have to understand that it's not the quick fix of what can you prescribe me. It's literally go outside, tell your body you love your body, be grateful for five things in your life, it seems so simple, so simple, and yet we are not doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think we like to complicate our lives.
Speaker 2:I think so. I think we're just. We want the easy fix and even though the fix is simple, it's not what we want to hear. Yeah, and we don't want to put the work in for things. I think you know.
Speaker 1:I think that's a part of it. Also, it's so much easier to just take a pill.
Speaker 2:Yes, and be better immediately, in that moment.
Speaker 1:Right For me to say go outside for five minutes every day and stick your feet in the dirt.
Speaker 2:And maybe in a few months you'll finally get.
Speaker 1:But no one wants to wait that long.
Speaker 2:Right and and then the response is I don't have time, I don't know, I don't have time, I don't have time, I don't have five minutes, you always have time for things you really want to do, yeah, so you've just got to make it something you want to do, and if you, think about it, you'll always find time for things that you really want to do 100%. Yeah, yeah, and you talked about fasting and I know intermittent fasting became like a really big fad for a while. Is that something that you recommend at?
Speaker 1:Again, I do, but not every day. So we don't like to have the same fasting schedule every day. We don't like to have the same eating schedule every day. Just like, think about, think of when you go to the gym. You don't do the same workout every time you go to the gym. Your body adapts and gets stronger when you add in variation. It is the same thing for fasting. It's the same thing for your eating schedule. So when you're always doing maybe low-cal or low-fat or you know watching what you're eating, and then you have this date night and maybe you splurge, maybe you wake up the next morning and you don't feel that great Sure, but long-term it's actually going to make your body stronger. It makes your immune system stronger. We cannot just forever cut out these foods, forever stay on track. So you're saying it's okay to have cheat meals. I'm saying it's actually beneficial to have cheat meals.
Speaker 2:You hear that, calvin, I'm eating the donut when I get home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's also mentally beneficial for you to just not be focused on that and just be there and enjoying a donut with your kids and enjoying a date night with your husband and not be worrying about oh, I'm gonna make, I'm gonna feel terrible tomorrow. Yeah, is this okay for my gut?
Speaker 2:it's gonna weigh you down, it's going to it is emotionally it is because you're, you're seeing something you love, yeah, and you're like goodbye and it just it's gone, and then it becomes sad and you're watching everyone else enjoy life without it. Yeah, I think something here and there is just fine, yeah, I agree, I think mental health is also just as important as your gut health.
Speaker 1:It really is, and a lot of people don't know that when we are in a state of chronic stress every day, you're just carrying this stress every day it's going to result in gut dysbiosis, yeah, and so anytime that I so, first people book a discovery call with me and I kind of get to know them a little bit.
Speaker 1:Almost always when they tell me their symptoms, I know they're in a stress environment. They have textbook symptoms going on, or digestion, they have feelings of just acidity, they have heartburn, they have this gnawing feeling, this pain, and I always tell them I bet you're in a stressful environment. I just had a client, recently actually, and she said, yeah, I'm a CFO, how did you know? I said because that's exactly what happens when we are in this state of chronic stress it actually lowers stomach acid. Guess who loves, thrives in that environment the bad bacteria. That is their ideal environment. So when stomach acid is low they're able to come out and thrive, kind of like out of the sewer they'll come out right, Little rats come out of the sewer, yeah but if there's too much stomach acid, like too much water in the sewer, the rats don't survive, they kill off.
Speaker 1:So the same thing happens in the gut.
Speaker 2:And is it true that bad gut bacteria craves sugar, so when you have like sweet tooth, it's your. Your stomach is actually making you eat that, exactly.
Speaker 1:It's crazy, exactly. And when you go into a healthier diet you'll notice those sugar cravings the strongest, because that bad bacteria is dying off and they're like feed me feed me, yeah, and you cannot give in. You have to stay strong and allow those to just die off. Fasting is a really great way to kill off that bad bacteria, and so that's that's why I'm saying you know, I love fasting, but it has to be intentional. It's not where you're punishing yourself. It's not where you're starving your body or under eating.
Speaker 2:So do you have a place locally or anywhere nearby where you like to shop off of your ingredients or your supplements?
Speaker 1:No, I really go to Sprouts and Whole Foods, I would say the most. Yeah, they have different vitamins, which is interesting.
Speaker 2:Oh, at the different stores.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Certain things I'll find at Sprouts I don't find at Whole Foods, and vice versa. You just kind of have to shop around.
Speaker 2:You just have to shop around, exactly yeah, yeah, um. So I'm going to talk a little bit, because you, you this. You've always been an entrepreneur, you've always been self-sufficient and you were recently on a reality competition show for entrepreneurs called the blocks blocks. Yeah, and you flew somewhere, yeah. So tell me, where were were you? How long were you gone? What is the show I flew to?
Speaker 1:Tulsa, oklahoma, for a week. It was the longest I've been away from my husband and kids. That's a long time. It was really hard. And it's one thing to go somewhere where you know people. It's another thing to get thrown into Tulsa, oklahoma by yourself. By yourself, not knowing anyone, and you're there to compete. You're there to talk about high stress, and high stress present every single day, and so you get broken up into pods and the creator and host of the show is Wes Borgman from the reality show. Oh, my gosh, I don't watch his shows. Is it Road Rules, that old show? Yeah, you know, he has orange hair. He's like a goatee. Oh, I have no idea. He's on a new show now, on e, called the villains. Oh, okay, I'll show you his picture. You'll know exactly what I'm talking about. But I think he was on road rules and and um and real world oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:I haven't heard those terms in so long, I know.
Speaker 1:So he's the creator of the show. Ok, and the competition one that happened after that. I forgot what it was called.
Speaker 2:Oh, I remember, yeah, yeah so he's the creator of the show.
Speaker 1:And so you go there and he gives you about an hour or two hour presentation on something relating to business. It's a PowerPoint presentation. You don't know what the theme is going to be yet, and then, as he breaks you off into pods, he gives you the question that he wants you to present on. And so you go and you have 15 minutes to come up with your presentation and you have two judges that are sitting there in your pod and you get up within 15 minutes of strategizing and coming up with your presentation and you present to the judges and in front of your pod, and then the judges choose one winner from the pod. So there's, I think, nine different pods. Ok, so there's one winner from each pod each night.
Speaker 2:Oh, and then they move on to the next round.
Speaker 1:Those winners go up on the main stage and present in front of everyone, which is about 150 people, every night. So every night, if you get chosen from your pod, you'll go up on stage every night and present. And so the next day you go again. Wes gives this two hour presentation and he says your question is you know, tell me how in your company you would build out SOPs, which are standard operating procedures, and playbooks, and how that would help you scale, Go and so you have to come up with a presentation on how you would come up with these playbooks and SOPs and how it would help you scale, and present to the judges and in front of your pod, and then they rate you and then at the end they say OK, so the winner from this pod is this person you know. And then you go up on stage and now present to the 150 people everyone in the audience.
Speaker 2:And in the end there's a that's like very stressful Talk about, like public speaking I know, but now you're like judging for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's crazy you know, my goal has always been to be a public speaker. I want to be more on stage and be more known as a public speaker, and so, yes, I was hesitant and scared to apply for this show, but I thought you know what you got to just sometimes throw yourself into the deep ocean and figure out how to swim. And that's exactly what I did. Did you learn a lot from that experience? I learned so much. It was an incredible experience. But let me tell you something about fear.
Speaker 1:I almost didn't get on my plane. Yeah, my husband and kids dropped me off at LAX and kissed me goodbye and I had so much anxiety and I thought what am I thinking? Are you crazy? You're going to go to Tulsa and present and compete with entrepreneurs. I mean, some of these people had million dollar annual revenue, two million dollar annual revenue. I'm like what am I thinking? I'm not. How can I compete with these people? There's no competition. And I was just.
Speaker 1:I started overthinking. My anxiety started getting to me. I didn't get on my flight and I called my husband and I said I didn't get on the flight and he said you better get on another flight. No, and I said I can't. I think I just want to come home. I think I'm just going to consider it a loss. I'm fine with it. I'm just going to go back in my safe corner, you know.
Speaker 1:And he said I know you and I know you're going to regret this. And I said I think I'm okay, I think I'm just going to be fine with you and the kids. You know, just buy me a nice latte and call me pretty and we'll be okay. You know, I just think you need to baby me a little bit. And he said no, get on another flight. And so I said fine, I tried booking another flight and you know, lax has different terminals, which are all around LA. You have to take a shuttle to the other terminal. I got to the other terminal, they said this flight's already been sold out. I booked another airline. I got to that terminal, they said we had one seat left, but it actually filled up right before you got here, and so now the next flights were all filling up.
Speaker 1:And I thought oh, my God, now I want to go.
Speaker 2:And I don't even know if I'm going to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so there was one flight left. It was. It had a layover in Denver, which was having a hailstorm, and then from Denver going to Tulsa, and I thought, oh my God, alina, you could have been on this non bumpy ride in the smooth weather.
Speaker 2:You made your problem. You made your problem this is all you.
Speaker 1:There was no reason for this obstacle. And so now I'm like maybe I shouldn't go. You know, all these flights have been booked. And so I prayed. I went to a corner of the airport and I prayed and I said, god, I'm freaking out. I don't know if I'm supposed to go and be away from my family and kids for a week. You know, maybe this will affect them in a way that I don't understand. Maybe that's why I'm not supposed to go. I don't know. And I said if I'm meant to go on this flight, just give me a really clear sign that I'm meant to go, and if I'm not, I'll go home. I'm OK. And I turned around and on the standby list for boarding was my name.
Speaker 1:No, it's got chills and I said I think that was a clear sign that I was meant to go on this trip. So I got on the plane and it was a never questioned it again. And I think that you know not to really go into religion, but I think that a lot of times we have that guidance and we overlook it. You know, just like we were talking about connecting with nature and just connecting with a higher power, and we have that guidance. We're seeking all these other things. You know, what does this app tell me? What does my horoscope tell me? What is this? And we just need to really connect with our higher power and nature and just maybe look, realign ourselves and listen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, listening is the hardest part. Yeah, that's such a cool story. At least you have like a story you know versus. I just got on the plane and I went. Now you have something you know perseverance that you get to share with your family and your friends. Yeah, that's really cool. And you can't tell us, I can't tell you what the show is no. Do you know when it airs or how we can watch?
Speaker 1:it. I think they just aired season 14. So I was on season 17. So, yeah, we still have about four more seasons to go.
Speaker 2:That's really cool. Are they airing it all at one time?
Speaker 1:Yes, oh my gosh, no no, I think they release it once a week.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, yeah, oh okay yeah. That's really cool. And how can we watch the other seasons so?
Speaker 1:two of the seasons um, I won't know about my season, but two of the seasons. They'd get picked up on Amazon, but the other ones are on their Facebook, which is free to watch, and then, I think, on their app, also their website, also the Blocks.
Speaker 2:The Blocks. That's what it's called B-L-O-X.
Speaker 1:Okay, when it's there, I'll tell you guys Okay, that is so exciting, I know.
Speaker 2:I can't wait to see it. Are you nervous to watch yourself, kind of because?
Speaker 1:you just, I think, put on a different version of yourself when you're in competition mode also, you're ruthless, yeah. So I think at one point they said how do you feel being here? And I said this is a competition I'm not here for go happy belly. This is no happy belly, I'm here to win.
Speaker 2:And you know me, that's so not like me at all, but I think there's this competitor that comes over you, and so, yes, I'm definitely cringing already at all of my little things that I've said. Well, you're so brave, I'm really proud of you for doing that. And then, lastly, I just want to hear what your goals are for this year for Go Happy Belly for you, for any other things you have, like, what's your future looking like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd love to build out a team where it's not just me having these one-on-one calls with people. I have a team who's also able to overlook the labs and kind of have these consultations with clients, and the more that I'm able to build out a team, the more that we can help people. And gut health, you know, is now trending and we're hearing more about gut health, but not to the extent that I would like people to understand what's going on in their gut. And, you know, something important that I forgot to mention is that it wasn't until I did my own GI map stool test that I saw that I had an overgrowth of opportunistic bacteria and that made a lot of sense to me, but I hadn't seen those things prior to that. So this is the same GI map stool test that I have my clients do and it allows me to see what is going on, what is the dysbiosis kind of, what is the bacterial balance imbalance going on, and so it's the same tests and things that I did to heal myself, and my goal is really to reach as many people as I can and to help as many people as I can know what's going on in their body before it leads to an unfortunate diagnosis or something else.
Speaker 1:That's going on because we hear that all the time everything looks good. Everything looks good. Oh, you got diagnosed with this. I'm sure there were a lot of steps that we missed prior to that. You know why did we miss so many steps prior to that? That's really where I come in, and I want to. I want you to know what's going on with your gut. How can I address this? How can I heal myself before it leads into something else?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, thank you. I think this is such an incredible topic. It's definitely eye-opener for me and, especially, I'm actually glad I went through these two weeks of cutting things out, because it really showed me what can change in just a few weeks from food I mean within the day, really because what you can eat can trigger almost immediately in your stomach. So I hope that a lot of people will hear this and reach out to you for a consultation. We'll put your website in our bio and, yeah, thank you for being here, alina. Thank you so much. This was so fun. It was fun, and we'll see you guys on the next podcast episode.