+ Food as Medicine: Podcasts Archives

Episode 230: Healing Stories 11

If you’re a regular listener of my podcast, you know that I start every year with a Healing Stories episode. It features back-to-back interviews with autoimmune warriors just like you! I ask them to share their journey from rock bottom to reclaiming a vital life. In this episode, we talk about Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, Crohn’s disease, narcolepsy, rheumatoid arthritis, sarcoidosis, and also autoimmunity in general. Everyone’s story is unique, but we also have so much in common. Whatever your diagnosis, I hope these stories resonate and inspire.

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Episode 223: Epinutrients with Dr. Kara Fitzgerald

We are more than our genes! Epigenetics is a field of science that studies what influences our genetic expression. These are the things that turn our genes on and off. Our body is dynamic and it’s changing all the time in response to our environment and daily choices. Epinutrients are the nutritional compounds that alter genetic expression in a positive direction. My guest, Dr. Kara Fitzgerald, is a naturopathic doctor and clinical researcher, whose research focuses on the epigenetics of diet and lifestyle. Her book, Younger You, is a deep dive into the science of Epinutrients.

Episode 218: Anti-Inflammatory Foods with VJ Hamilton

When it comes to autoimmune disease, inflammation plays a big role. The higher our inflammation, the higher our symptoms and disease activity. Doctors know this, which is why bloodwork for autoimmune patients usually includes inflammation markers. When it comes to self-care and living well with autoimmune disease, learning how to reduce our inflammation naturally can be very helpful, and our food choices are a big part of that. Which foods have the greatest anti-inflammatory properties? That’s the focus of our discussion today. My guest is VJ Hamilton. She’s a nutritionist who has also studied immunology, and she has autoimmune disease herself. Her specialty is helping people with autoimmune disease thrive.

Episode 217: Healing Stories 10

If you’re a regular listener of my podcast, you know that I start every year with a Healing Stories episode. It features back-to-back interviews with autoimmune warriors just like you! I ask them to share their journey from rock bottom to reclaiming a vital life. In this episode, we talk about Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, Hidradenitis Suppurativa, Ankylosing Spondylitis, Susac Syndrome. and also autoimmunity in general. Everyone’s story is unique, but we also have so much in common. Whatever your diagnosis, I hope these stories resonate and inspire.

Episode 214: Emotional Eating & Autoimmune Disease with Tomesha Campbell

Life with chronic illness can inspire strong emotions that trigger emotional eating. If the foods chosen are inflammatory, autoimmune flares may follow, turning short-term comfort into longer-lasting pain. This often leads to feelings of shame, guilt, and self-judgment, which can drive more emotional eating, creating a vicious cycle. If you find yourself caught in this pattern, you aren’t alone. Today’s podcast is designed to help. My guest is Tomesha Campbell. She is a fellow autoimmune warrior, as well as an AIP certified coach who specializes in Intuitive Eating. She’ll be sharing her personal experience and professional advice.

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Episode 209: Preventing Autoimmune Flares

With autoimmune disease, flares are part of the experience, and we cannot prevent every single one. However, that doesn’t mean we’re powerless. Discovering our own flare triggers is a powerful piece of self-knowledge. It can help minimize how often we flare and how severe those flares are. That’s the focus of our discussion today. I’ve invited two other autoimmune warriors to join me. We’ll be sharing our personal flare triggers and how we manage them to live our healthiest lives.

Episode 208: Nutrient Deficiencies & Healing Diets with Dr. Sarah Ballantyne

When we develop autoimmune disease, our body becomes more sensitive and that often includes food sensitivity. Many of us turn to healing diets in an effort to eliminate inflammatory foods and embrace the foods that support healing instead. One risk, however, is paying too much attention to the foods we remove and not enough to the foods we add. Another risk is sticking to a dietary template without personalizing it for our body’s unique needs. There are lots of healing diets out there. We often talk about the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol and Wahls Protocol on this podcast. But other diets you may be familiar with include the Specific Carbohydrate Diet or GAPS Diet, the Low-FODMAP diet, a vegetarian or vegan diet, a ketogenic diet, or a carnivore diet. Today, we discuss which nutrient deficiencies are most common on which healing diets, and how we can make sure we’re getting the nutrition we need. My guest is Dr. Sarah Ballantyne. She’s a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and former research scientist, fascinated with the healing power of food.

Episode 206: Listener Q&A

I listen to a lot of podcasts myself and some of my favorite episodes are Listener Q&A’s. It allows a lot of topics to be covered in a short period of time, and everyone learns something new. I asked you to send in your questions, and you delivered! Here are some we’ll be answering in today’s episode: How do you react to people who don’t believe your autoimmune disease is real? What is a good way to explain why I cannot have “cheat” days to someone who tries to pressure me into eating things I shouldn’t? What foods have you successfully reintroduced? Have you ever befriended a listener and ended up enjoying a long-term friendship? Why can some people seem to put their autoimmune disease into remission, and others who have diet and lifestyle “dialed in” still need immunotherapy? What has been the most powerful growth and learning for you through doing this podcast? With my friend Joanna’s help, I answer these questions and more in today’s podcast!

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Episode 203: Kids in the Kitchen with Ginny Mahar

When you see the power of food as medicine for yourself, it’s natural to want your children to benefit as well. It doesn’t mean they need to eat just like you, but fostering a love of real food is an understandable goal. However, children often go through picky eating phases and have a deep love for packaged foods, fast food, and as many sweets as you’re willing to provide. One way to get kids interested in healthier eating is to welcome them into the kitchen, teach them how to cook, and allow them to select recipes to try. So, today we’re sharing tips for all ages: babies, toddlers, grade school, and teens. My guest is Ginny Mahar, a fellow parent and autoimmune warrior who is also a professional chef and cooking instructor.

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Episode 199: Best of – Overcoming Sugar Cravings with Dr. Vickie Bhatia

This is one of the most popular podcast episodes – for good reason! While not everyone has a sweet tooth, a lot of us do, and it’s often hard to break the sugar habit. Why is that so true? It turns out there are a lot of forces driving those cravings: emotional, psychological, and even biological. It’s no wonder they’re not easy to resist. In today’s episode, we dive into the details. My guest is holistic psychologist Dr. Vickie Bhatia. We discuss everything from the gut microbiome and brain chemistry, to the emotions surrounding food, to the psychology of habit change. Most importantly, we share practical tips for making empowered food choices, and breaking the sugar craving cycle.

Episode 196: Troubleshooting with Dr. Terry Wahls

This podcast is all about autoimmune empowerment! Making choices in our daily lives that minimize symptoms and maximize our joy in living. That said, it’s not always easy. Sometimes the habits are hard to start and hard to keep. Other times, you’re doing everything right but not seeing the results you hoped to achieve. So, today, we’re doing a troubleshooting episode with an expert guest and one of my favorite people: Dr. Terry Wahls. She is a functional medicine physician, a clinical researcher, a professor of medicine, and a fellow autoimmune warrior. In this episode, she shares her best advice for thriving with autoimmune disease and troubleshooting the obstacles we encounter along the way. We talk about motivation, family dynamics, digestion, supplements, physical therapy, personalized diets, and more!

Episode 192: Healthy Food Swaps & Nutritious Combos with Annie Rubin, RDN

If you’re new to the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol, a lot of your favorite foods are suddenly off the table and you may wonder what you can eat! In today’s podcast, we share AIP food swaps for the foods you miss the most. We also share some powerful superfood combinations. My guest is Annie Rubin. She is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and an AIP Certified Coach. She’s also a fellow autoimmune warrior living with rheumatoid arthritis herself.

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Episode 191: Healing Stories 9

If you’re a regular listener of my podcast, you know that I start every year with a Healing Stories episode. It features back-to-back interviews with autoimmune warriors just like you! I ask them to share their journey from rock bottom to reclaiming a vital life. In this episode, we talk about rheumatoid arthritis, alopecia, myasthenia gravis, and also autoimmunity in general. Everyone’s story is unique, but we also have so much in common. Whatever your diagnosis, I hope these stories resonate and inspire.

Episode 190: Best Of – Blood Sugar & Autoimmunity with Dr. Jeff Horacek

This is one of the most popular podcast episodes – for good reason! Autoimmune health depends on blood sugar balance. When our blood sugar gets too high, drops too low, or swings wildly between these extremes, it increases inflammation in our body. If this happens regularly, it leads to chronic inflammation. In today’s episode, we’ll be sharing diet, lifestyle, and functional medicine tips for achieving and maintaining blood sugar balance. My guest is Dr. Jeff Horacek, a functional medicine physician with over 20 years of experience. Blood sugar is one of his medical specialties.

Episode 188: Overcoming Food Fear

When you first experience the connection between the food you eat and how you feel, that can be an empowering moment. But when certain foods cause you to flare, that can also inspire a fear of food. This is a natural reaction, but it also has consequences. The fear itself can cause autoimmune flares and also increase food sensitivity, creating a vicious cycle. Suddenly, all food feels dangerous, and we over-restrict our diets, which harms our health long-term. There is good news! We can overcome food fear, replacing it with a deep knowledge about our bodies and enjoy eating again. That’s our goal with our conversation today. My guests are fellow autoimmune warriors, Nitika Chopra and Alison Marras. We share our own experiences with food fear and tips for overcoming it.

Episode 183: Detoxifying Foods with Andrea Nakayama

Our bodies naturally have the ability to detoxify and do it every single day. However, problems can develop, and that’s not uncommon with autoimmune disease. The answer isn’t an aggressive “cleanse” where we try to force our bodies to do a year’s worth of detox in 30 days. Instead, we need to support our bodies year-round. There are foods that support our detox pathways, and foods that can interfere with them. That’s what today’s podcast is all about. My guest is Andrea Nakayama, a world-renowned functional nutritionist and educator, whose mission is to change the way we do healthcare by empowering patients to reclaim ownership over their own health.

Episode 177: GMOs with McKay Jenkins

The first genetically modified food hit the market in 1994. Now, nearly all the food included in a Standard American Diet contains GMO ingredients. The good news is that if you avoid processed foods and shop the perimeter of the store, you cut your GMO consumption dramatically. However, we can’t escape it altogether. The increased herbicide use becomes part of the environment in which we live. There’s cross-contamination of crops, so even farms that strive to be GMO-free often find GMO plants in their fields. And 95% of animal feed is GMO. What are the health risks associated with genetically modified foods? Is it the genetic engineering that’s the problem, or the chemicals that are sprayed on them? How can we make the healthiest choices when it comes to the food we eat? My guest is McKay Jenkins, a professor and journalist who has been writing and teaching about the environment for 30 years. He’s the author of the book, Food Fight: GMOs and the Future of the American Diet.

Episode 170: Gut Health Superfoods with Dr. Sarah Ballantyne

Gut health and autoimmune health are intimately connected. So, focusing on foods that promote gut health makes sense. What qualifies as a gut health superfood? How can we incorporate more of these foods into our diet? Can a healthy food for one person be unhealthy for someone else? How do we determine the best “superfoods” for us? My guest is Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, bestselling author and leader in the paleo autoimmune community. She’s spent the last six years deeply researching gut health and shares her findings with us today.

Episode 165: Healing Stories 8

If you’re a regular listener of my podcast, you know that I often start my shows with personal stories, where my guests share their health journeys from rock bottom to reclaiming a vital life. But at a least once a year, I dedicate an episode to back-to-back healing stories, and I make an effort to speak to people with different autoimmune diagnoses each time. In this episode, we talk about Ulcerative Colitis, Multiple Sclerosis, CRMO, Graves’ Disease, and also Autoimmunity in general. And if you want to hear the prior Healing Stories podcasts, check out episodes 1, 14, 30, 43, 61, 87, 113, and 139. Let’s inspire each other!

Episode 164: Best Of – AIP FAQ

This is one of the most popular podcast episodes – for good reason! One of my goals is to make the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol as simple to follow as possible. In this episode, I dedicate an entire podcast to the most frequently asked questions I’ve received: Will the AIP work for my diagnosis? Is it helpful if you don’t have autoimmune disease? Does it replace medication? How does it differ from the Wahls Protocol? Why can’t I just do an allergy test? Can you do the AIP as a vegetarian? Why isn’t coffee allowed? Can you have sugar on the AIP? I’m constantly hungry – what do I do? Tune in to get answers to these questions, and many more.

Episode 162: AIP Celebrations

One of the joys of living is celebrating special occasions with those we love, and food often ends up being a central part of that celebration. What happens when your diet has changed and you’re no longer eating traditional celebration foods? The answer isn’t to give up on celebrations. Life is meant to be enjoyed! It just takes a little creativity to adapt the food piece in a way that’s delicious, special, and supports your healing at the same time. In this episode, two AIP experts share their favorite ways to do that. We’ll be talking about year-round holidays, birthdays, and parties in general. Whether it’s an anniversary, a graduation, or a retirement celebration, you can serve AIP food so delicious everyone will enjoy it!

Episode 161: Perfectionism with Dr. Judy Tsafrir

Often, perfectionism is seen as a positive trait. What’s wrong with striving for excellence? Nothing, but there’s a difference between healthy striving and perfectionism. Healthy striving is a self-compassionate mindset that allows for mistakes, learns from them, sets challenging but achievable goals, and adapts as needed. Perfectionism fears failure, despises mistakes, sets unattainable goals, and feels shame and self-judgement when those impossible goals aren’t met. When you apply perfectionism to autoimmune disease, your diagnosis may feel like your fault, and every flare may feel like a failure. You may believe that if you just lived your life perfectly, you could cure yourself. I am a recovering perfectionist, so I have felt all of these things. Don’t judge yourself if you have felt this way, too. In this podcast, we explore the connection between autoimmune disease and perfectionism. My guest is Dr. Judy Tsafrir, a holistic psychiatrist who approaches mental health from a functional medicine perspective. She strives to treat root causes in her practice, rather than just symptoms.

Episode 156: Cultural Foods and the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol

We all come from cultural backgrounds where food is part of our family heritage. Did you grieve lost food traditions when you went paleo or AIP? Did you find AIP versions that came close? Or did you find new ways to celebrate those traditions? These are the questions I’m asking my guests today.

Episode 151: Intuitive Eating and the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol with Steph Gaudreau

Many people think of the AIP as simply a list of foods you can and can’t eat, so how can intuition play a role? And if your intuition tells you to eat junk food, that derails health goals rather than supports them, right? So, how can these things possibly go together? In this podcast episode, we bust some myths about both of these dietary philosophies and see how they might be blended for autoimmune health.

Episode 149: Best Of – Sticking To It – Staying ON the Paleo AIP Wagon

This is one of the most popular podcast episodes – for good reason! Let’s be honest. The paleo autoimmune protocol is hard to do, and some people have a harder time than others. In this podcast, I invited 3 health & nutrition coaches onto the show, to share techniques that help their clients maintain a healthy lifestyle against all temptations and obstacles. All three of these ladies have personal experience following the autoimmune protocol for their own health as well. Let’s help each other succeed!

Wahls Protocol Research Update | Phoenix Helix Podcast

Episode 145: Wahls Protocol Research Update

Most of you are familiar with Dr. Terry Wahls. She’s a physician with multiple sclerosis who reversed her symptoms dramatically, going from a wheelchair to a bicycle after implementing diet and lifestyle changes. That program is now called The Wahls Protocol and has been the subject of multiple medical studies, proving its effectiveness for others as well. In this episode, we summarize all the research, from the very first study to the current clinical trial comparing the Wahls & Swank diets for patients with MS. We also talk about a future clinical trial which will compare the Wahls Protocol to medication.

How to Survive an Autoimmune Flare | Phoenix Helix Podcast

Episode 143: How to Survive an Autoimmune Flare

Flares are one of the scariest parts of autoimmune disease. They’re unpredictable, often very painful, sometimes disabling, and always disruptive to our plans. In this episode, three autoimmune warriors share their best tips for making it through autoimmune flares with strength and self-compassion. We talk about favorite foods, lifestyle hacks, mindset techniques, and more.