A Holistic Approach to Healing and Long-lasting Relief

It is quite common for us now to have clients in our fold that come not just for an acute need, but to join into a program of ongoing relationship with us because they want to heal their imbalances on a deeper level and experience a relief of their acute need in a real and lasting way.  

Often times, it can be a challenge for them to understand the science behind how our generalized program can address the acute need. 

Truly our program of strategies has truly been curated from years of trying various modalities, simplifying them to the options that work and are necessary to regulate and restore the functionality of the body, as well as promote a sense of overall wellbeing.

I think we’ve been conditioned to believe that when there are symptoms or injury to the body that it’s permanent and only a chemical can “make it go away”. 

What does it truly take to help a person recover from symptoms, besides just using the best ingredients?

Once the needed ingredients are identified, we need to support the healthy functioning, the innate actions that the body KNOWS to do, by providing an environment in which health is a natural outcome.

This means learning skills and strategies to do all the things so cells can function healthfully and NOT create dysfunction, intolerances, and inflammation. 

A lot of this is a retraining of lifestyle and choices, along with a retraining of the protective instincts the nervous and immune systems have adopted due to toxic insults from the outside and from the stressful inside. 

One of our most profound tenets behind our work at ANMC is that the body cannot heal if it does not feel safe. 

A common response to a lack of safety is the activation of the dominant sympathetic system, which teaches us to be on alert at all times.

This nervous system then sends signals and releases stress chemicals to the cells, activating their protective mechanisms in preparation for an imminent attack.

Tell me, if you sense an attack coming, will you be thinking about the meal you are going to eat next? 

Of course not, you won’t think about digestion, you’ll be thinking about survival. 

If this is the body’s greatest need, will the glands be providing necessary chemicals, enzymes, and hormones to digest food properly?  Again, of course not. 

They will be providing chemicals and messages for survival. 

At any time, a body can receive an insult from long-term stress, trauma, viruses, or toxins, which can subsequently alter the messages sent to the cells.

In response, the cells may don 'armor' as a defense mechanism to protect themselves.

Unfortunately, this can even defend against the GOOD things including food and nutrients. 

For these reasons and many more, allergies, intolerances, and sensitivities become a natural outcome.

Gluten and dairy sensitivity, due to their large-sized proteins, repeated intake, and the manufacturing alterations made to them, have become common problems.

But we don’t stop there with an understanding of the physical response.  

Our sense of safety, or the perception of being in a safe environment, can potentially have an impact on individuals with gluten intolerance or sensitivity, which is why it makes up a large foundation of our long term programs. 

The psychological and emotional state of an individual can influence their overall well-being, including their gastrointestinal health.

Stress, anxiety, and other emotional factors can affect digestion and exacerbate symptoms for people with gluten intolerance.

When individuals feel unsafe or stressed, their bodies may produce more stress hormones, such as cortisol, which can impact digestion and increase sensitivity to certain foods, including gluten.

In this post, we’re going to provide more detail into our program method to explain how it all fits together and how physical symptoms are “worked on” by NOT working on them alone, but the root of why they came.  Read on…

Our Retrain the Allergy Brain program encompasses curated strategies to help counteract the factors behind why a person developed gluten sensitivity or intolerance.  

Here’s how and why the program is put together as it is.

The signify phase:  The Comprehensive Consultation

The program is mapped out over 3 trimesters. 

The first 6 weeks put our focus on the body’s physical needs. 

The immediate needs are signified in Stage 1, an individual’s comprehensive appointment. 

We not only assess cellular functions, labs, nutrition, and biochemistry, but we also consider the client's symptoms and life experiences to identify all the factors that may contribute to their current presentation

Based on this information and the client's capabilities, we develop a strategic plan that incorporates supplements, nutrition, diet changes, movement, and lifestyle adaptations.

The client then proceeds to coaching education sessions until meeting with the practitioner 6 weeks later for another assessment and re-evaluation.

In the past, clients would see me as a practitioner and then not again for 4-6 weeks.

Now, we are able to establish an ongoing relationship where they receive support to follow their protocol specific to them and work with like-minded individuals that are intent on their positive progress, and to help them learn skills for the longer outcome.

The Program Circuit

In our program, we operate on a circuit. We follow a general mapping and a set of curated strategies that encompass all the components of the program.

These strategies are utilized because they have been discovered to be effective and serve as a foundation for normal body functioning.

The coaching is designed to deliver education on these tools and help clients successfully integrate them into their lives.

Additionally, this provides clients with a support system, an accountability mechanism, and the opportunity to ask questions and receive support for their individual protocol.

The therapies serve a particular purpose during each trimester, and the Fitbay movements help to connect the brain with the body and manifest new healthy cells in physical form. 

The First Trimester:  The A Sessions

During the first trimester, what we call the A sessions, the focus is on physical, immediate needs. 

These sessions encompass our understanding of the body's functional requirements at a cellular level.

The cells do two functions that we focus on in these beginning sessions. These two functions are nutrients in waste out.

The supplements the client receives help them to ensure bioavailability, digestion, and metabolism.

Moreover, dietary changes may facilitate the removal of any barriers that impede the entry of nutrients into cells and their availability to the necessary tissues.

The coaching sessions are responsible for teaching tools that clients can utilize throughout their lives, even beyond their time in the program. Therefore, the tools in the A sessions are designed to support the cells in these two functions.

First, we teach a particular functional method of dieting that makes it simple and easy to understand balance in what we eat. Next, the therapies at this part of the program are intended to assist the bodies reduction of inflammation.

This approach capitalizes on the new information the body receives from the diet and supplements.

With less inflammation, the cells become more responsive, capable of absorbing nutrients, and reducing inflammation that may be causing nerve signaling messages.

Finally, we utilize simple exercises in our Fitbay to promote neuromuscular connection. 

We want the brain and nerves to communicate effectively with the body. This helps the parts of the brain that control motor functions and the messaging system that facilitates communication between the brain and the gut through the nerves to communicate efficiently rather than from a place of inflammation.

We also walk through a planning tool in order to “provide the architect with the blueprints for where we want to go”.

This goes beyond goal setting, and instead, allows us to begin the idea of a possibility mindset, to create an empowered action plan so our cells know what we want them to do. 

After addressing nutrient intake, the next aspect of cellular function we focus on is “waste out”. We educate about enzymes, their dietary sources, and the body's production of specific catalytic enzymes.

Again, the coaching strategy here is to teach usable tools.

The tool of enzymes puts the person in power of selecting foods from the food function chart called eliminators, the best source for enzymatic action foods.

What you select as foods is part of your toolbox. It is essential to know what those helpful tools are.

It's not just about eating food; it's about selecting foods that will support your body's function.

At this point in the first trimester, we focus on obtaining nutrients and eliminating waste. The practitioner has planned and provided education on supplements for remedial work or balancing, and now it is in the individual's hands to understand their role in providing the body with necessary fuel.

Now that we've dealt with the cells’ needs for nutrients in and waste out, we move on to where they receive their messages.

Cells are spoken to by the nervous system. The nervous system dictates what proteins are needed and how the cells should respond. The brain has been receiving messages from the gut, the senses and the microbiome and the brain responds by sending needs back down to the body's parts through the form of chemical messengers.

This is why it is essential for a person to understand a somatic response.

It is essential for a person to understand what their emotions are and how these emotions are contributing to a physical response.

There's a part in the brain called the basal ganglia. This portion of the brain in particular helps the body to express emotion in a physical form. Emotions will be expressed in a physical form because it's our cue to address that there is a disturbance.

The greater the emotion, generally the greater the physical symptom.

So during our first trimester, we next talk about how you utilize the tool of emotions. 

We discuss about how HRV is a useful assessment of which part of the nervous system is activated and how to train a better use of the body’s innate nervous systems. We talk about meditation because it’s an easy tool anyone can have in their toolbox.

Clients learn that meditation is a way to help shift into a more beneficial parasympathetic state, allowing the nervous system to align with our intentions and release its defenses, which means the cells will learn from this state of “safety”. 

If the nervous system is acting from a less hypervigilant state, the cells can respond from functional action rather than a defense response. 

Why does this matter for a client’s physical symptoms? 

Because cells function as they were intended to, nutrients can enter, and waste can be eliminated. When this occurs, cells thrive, replicate with health, which represents the cell's third and final function.

This transition smoothly leads us to the supportive environmental therapies we employ to train HRV, downregulate the hypervigilance response of the nervous system through recorded meditations and parasympathetic training, and enhance stem cell production through PEMF, far-infrared spectrum, and chromatherapy.

Now that we have addressed immediate physical needs, supported the cells in their function, and initiated work to align the nervous system, we proceed with the A sessions to assist the client in creating an environment that supports the beneficial information we have provided. We discuss environmental toxins and provide tools for clients to make changes in potential toxin exposure within their living spaces.

At this point, it’s time for a reassessment.  New cellular assessments and nutrition analysis are conducted and adaptations are made as needed. 

The B Sessions

One of the things that I have learned over all the years of perfecting this method is that, after the physical needs are addressed in the A sessions, the physical body performs a natural uptick in detoxification and elimination.

Usually at this point, we see cellular inflammation markers over detox and elimination systems.

This prompted me to understand this was a natural part of the cycle when good ingredients were being put in and so I added this in as part of the program. At the mid program assessment before we transition into the B sessions, we automatically look to see how the eliminative organs are functioning. 

We want to make sure the liver, the kidney, the lymph, the lungs, and the skin have what is needed and that they are supported in order to be able to do this important work of helping the body to move out old garbage.

This is essential in a healing journey or in a rebalancing protocol.

The toxic waste and the degraded proteins need to now move out of the body. That seems like a no brainer but we have to understand at a deeper level that this is highly supportive of the nervous and immune systems.

Without these wastes the immune system has less to fight thus produce less defense responses, less inflammatory compounds, and less burden on the adrenal glands, thyroid, and whole endocrine system. 

The messages that the nervous system receives from the body to the brain are less defensive and more proactive for health. This allows the parasympathetic nervous system to be the dominant, and the “emergency response system” parts of the nervous system to activate only when needed, and de-activate when they’re not. 

This develops a greater resilience. 

People may feel this as the ability to handle stressors better, a more balanced cortisol and hormone systems, greater ability to fend off illness, a reduction of symptoms including pain, inflammation, sleep, digestion, and allergies/intolerances. 

As the body is physically detoxing, it is natural for it to detox wastes and chemicals that are created from stress.

Stress chemicals are a real thing. Emotions produce multiple stress chemicals. This is why we then begin working more on learning from emotions, handling emotions and a process we call neural cognizance training so that we can utilize our experiences as a way to serve us rather than to constantly trigger stress, emotions, and physical illness.

The B session coaching and education then all surrounds tools that allow us to work deeper into the mind, mental and emotional factors. The education received during these sessions is designed to provide tools to support what we learned in A sessions:  the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems and how it affects one physically. 

The B session tools provide strategies for what to do and how to plan for addressing stressors that arise, but also how to “pull the thread” and learn from past experiences and how they may have had an effect on the physical outcome the body is expressing.

In this way, we can allow healing from the stories, on a physical, emotional, and even spiritual level. 

The therapy options switch to an intention of supporting detox processes as well as downregulating stress and promoting relaxation. 

They don’t just provide a chance to relax, they provide a chance for the nervous system to initiate a natural high and low pattern. 

Therapies like sound therapy and solfeggio frequency therapy allow a greater resiliency of the nervous system, to know when to relax and when to take action. 

Many of our people are in a constant cycle of stress and mental rumination with negative/limiting automatic thoughts forcing the idea to take action, take action. Mechanically gifting the nervous system time where frequencies are operating on the brain’s “downshift” mechanisms reminds the innate system that there is a time for a action and there is a time for recovery. When a person is experiencing stressors then, it is easier to activate from this state of being rather than mental rumination and a physical adrenal stress response. 

Detox therapies help to support a natural, safe, and gentle removal of physical toxins.

The C Sessions

Now that we’ve dealt with the physical space, learned from the mental and emotional, the C sessions are more from a place of possibility:  how can we take what we’ve learned and really allow it to manifest in our bodies, our lives, and the world around us? 

How can we be the best people we can be so that we can be a better servant out in the world? 

In these sessions, it’s about helping a client to create a new chapter in their life as we support them like “training wheels” when they wobble. 

We provide support strategies that they can continue to use out in their regular world, and take a greater time together working on any lingering symptoms as well as help them to see what they can do for the world from a greater place of well-being and wholeness.