Episode 31
Table of Contents:
In this episode:
Dr. Doni Wilson joins us for today’s episode.
Dr. Doni is a naturopathic doctor, certified professional midwife, and certified nutrition specialist who has developed her Stress Recovery Protocol through the process of solving her 25-year struggle with migraines. Using her protocol, she helps her patients reverse challenging health conditions, including autoimmunity.
Her newest book, Master Your Stress, Reset Your Health, is available for pre-order and releases on May 3, 2022.
Today we talk about how important it is to know your stress type in order to dial in your stress recovery; why it is important to measure your cortisol and adrenaline levels; and how to begin to heal your adrenal distress.
Listen in to learn how to increase your resilience…you are worth it!
Dr. Doni is a naturopathic doctor, certified professional midwife, and certified nutrition specialist who has developed her Stress Recovery Protocol through the process of solving her 25-year struggle with migraines. Using her protocol, she helps her patients reverse challenging health conditions, including autoimmunity.
Her newest book, Master Your Stress, Reset Your Health, is available for pre-order and releases on May 3, 2022.
Today we talk about how important it is to know your stress type in order to dial in your stress recovery; why it is important to measure your cortisol and adrenaline levels; and how to begin to heal your adrenal distress.
Listen in to learn how to increase your resilience…you are worth it!
Other Resources:
Connect with Dr. Doni Wilson
Dr. Doni Wilson has a gift for you!
7 Day Stress Reset Program
Free 7-Day Stress Reset Program
Episode Transcript
[Page//00:00:00] Julie Michelson: Welcome back to the inspired living with auto-immunity podcast. I'm your host, Julie Michaelson. And today I'm joined by Dr. Doni Wilson, and I'm so excited to share our conversation. Dr. Doni is a naturopathic doctor who through the process of solving her own 25 years of migraines developed her stress recovery protocol that she uses with her patients to help them reverse all sorts of challenging health [Page//00:01:00] conditions, including autoimmunity.
[Page//00:01:03] Today, we talk about how important it is to know your stress type in order to dial in your stress recovery. Why it's important to measure your cortisol and adrenaline levels and how to begin to heal your adrenal district. Dr. Doni shares with us and valuable nuggets from her upcoming book, master your stress, reset your health, which is just about to become available.
[Page//00:01:29] This is a must listen to episode, you are worth it.
[Page//00:01:33] Dr. Dani, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here.
[Page//00:01:37] Dr. Doni Wilson: I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.
[Page//00:01:39] Julie Michelson: I love to get started with your journey. How did you get to be this amazing naturopath helping people heal from all kinds of chronic challenges and issues? I always say I was guessing when you were a little girl, this wasn't what you thought you would be doing.
[Page//00:01:58] Dr. Doni Wilson: Well, and I, I joke [Page//00:02:00] that I, I grew up in a pharmacy. My father is a pharmacist, and so I really grew up all around the pharmacy and pharmaceuticals. It's I think even my parents were surprised when I then was studying to get a pre-med degree in science. Then I decided to add a degree in nutrition and I started to have the spot.
[Page//00:02:24] Is there a kind of medicine? Integrates nutrition into care and healthcare. And that's when I found out about nature of having medicine and immediately I was like, that's exactly it, it was like, it felt like a dream come true, you know, because that's what made sense to me at that time. And so instead of going to pharmacy school, I went to nature public medical school.
[Page//00:02:45] So it was, I was pretty early on in my, in my life. Then I ended up figuring this out and I realized that actually. As a pharmacist, my father, and through, throughout, throughout my childhood would always speak about how do [Page//00:03:00] we prevent the need for medications whenever possible.
[Page//00:03:03] Julie Michelson: Wow.
[Page//00:03:04] Dr. Doni Wilson: Right. And so then I'm like, oh, no wonder I was having those thoughts even from a young age and when, and then went on to your best year university in Seattle Washington to, to do my nature pathic degree.
[Page//00:03:18] And I also became very interested in women's health in particular. Also trained as a midwife at the same time. And it just felt like this was just meant to be. And then I ended up when I graduated, I moved to the east coast. I ended up moving to Manhattan in 2001, right after nine 11. And the thing is, is that when I was researching women's health during my training, I was researching fear of labor and how stress affects women.
[Page//00:03:49] And later. And then I went and moved to Manhattan right after nine 11 and realized maybe I can apply some of what I learned about women in labor to [Page//00:04:00] all humans at any point in time when you're exposed to stress. And so I continue to. To implement and learn through the years of practice, um, how to help people recover from stress.
[Page//00:04:11] At the same time, I was also having migraines. I had migraines for 25 years and I didn't talk about it though. I felt like as a practitioner, I'm not supposed to have symptoms. I'm, I'm supposed to be able to solve this. I was helping other people with their migraines and yet I couldn't solve my own migraines and tell just a few years ago.
[Page//00:04:33] It kind of pushed me to keep researching, keep learning, keep applying. As I'm grateful now, to look back how much I learned by solving my migraines and eventually getting them to go away. And in the process of that, developing my protocol for, for stress recovery, that helps with many different health issues, including auto-immunity,
[Page//00:04:55] Julie Michelson: Wow. I love that. I love how you were so ahead of the [Page//00:05:00] curve. Um, so many people come on the show shifted, you know, because of their own health struggles and you just kind of lived with yours on the side while you were on this path to begin with, which is amazing. I want to circle back and repeat 25 years of migraines.
[Page//00:05:17] Dr. Doni Wilson: Yeah.
[Page//00:05:18] Julie Michelson: That's, that's amazing. And I love, um, You know what you're doing works with so many things. It's not migraine specific it, and yes, I know you have helped so many people with autoimmunity as well. And even I've seen you help people get rid of HPV and all kinds of issues, all those things that we're sometimes unfortunately told or often told, you know, oh, nothing you can do, but you know, surgical or medical or.
[Page//00:05:52] Um, so I'm excited to take it into the stress connection, obviously doing what I do. [Page//00:06:00] You can't heal out of immunity if you're not addressing stress. And I say all the time, you know, well, if you're on this plane, You're experiencing chronic stress of some sort. And especially if you have a chronic illness or a chronic struggle.
[Page//00:06:16] Um, but, but let's get into, how do we know if that's a driver? How do we know? You know, if, if stress is a big player, um, because although I tend to say everybody experiences chronic stress, not everybody. Has a long-term chronic illness because of it. So, so how do we know? What are you, where do we see?
[Page//00:06:43] Dr. Doni Wilson: I love that question. And because a lot of times when you see, when we look at underlying causes, right, from a nature pathic perspective and from, from what you would do as well, it's, we'll look at, we'll say, well, we want to address things from an underlying cause. Same thing with auto-immunity to reverse it.
[Page//00:06:59] We [Page//00:07:00] need to look at what caused it in the first place. And you might see a list of things, right? You might go, oh, well they're worse. Maybe there was a viral infection. Maybe there was a Medicaid. What was your antibiotics? For example, maybe there was, you know, like there's a list of potential underlying causes and on that list will be stress.
[Page//00:07:20] Well, from my perspective, all of those things are stresses because when it comes down to it, ultimately. I think of it as this concept of nature versus nurture, right? We always are. There's this age old dilemma is what, what causes our health issues? Is it all genetics or is it all our in our environment and from what I see and what I read in the research.
[Page//00:07:47] Um, actually genetics, even though we can have a genetic predisposition to auto-immunity, um, I definitely have the genetic predisposition to auto-immunity myself.
[Page//00:07:57] Julie Michelson: I don't.
[Page//00:07:58] Dr. Doni Wilson: what else? So it's not a [Page//00:08:00] hundred percent, right? It's not always the case. Um, but what the studies show is that actually the genetics play less than 20% of the world.
[Page//00:08:09] And the environment is more of the determinant of what happens with our house. So what is environment? Well, environment. The various different stresses we're exposed to whether it's psycho-emotional stress, whether it's toxins as a stress, whether it's an infection or an injury, that's a stress on the physical body.
[Page//00:08:30] Uh, you know, these are the stresses we're exposed to that. Then make us susceptible to the development of whatever health issue, including auto-immunity. And so to me, stress is absolutely. The thing that needs to be looked at with auto-immunity in particular, because if we're not looking at a stress, then we're not truly looking in identifying and addressing the underlying costs.
[Page//00:08:57] Julie Michelson: I love that. That's amazing. And I [Page//00:09:00] always say when it comes to stress, well, all of them overlap and you just so beautifully and eloquently, you know, Iowa often when I talk about toxic.
[Page//00:09:10] Dr. Doni Wilson: Mm.
[Page//00:09:11] Julie Michelson: I talk about chronic stress as a toxin and then flip it, right. You just gave us the other side of that. Also toxin exposure, that's not cleared is now a stressor.
[Page//00:09:22] And so the, you know, there's never one thing.
[Page//00:09:25] Dr. Doni Wilson: And I, the way my mind works, I, you know, maybe this is all of my sort of math and science background is I'm, I'm thinking of it as an equation to solve, you know? And so if I go, okay, W, if we're going to solve this equation for your health and end up helping you improve your health, then we need to look at what are the factors that are contributing and even, you know, say a diet that's not healthy for you, or is inflammatory is a stress on your system.
[Page//00:09:52] Our bodies are, we have a built in stress response system and. It's not something we can stop having. [Page//00:10:00] That's just part of being human. We're going to be our brain and our body is going to be looking for anything. That's going to be a potential stress trigger, and it's going to respond. So whether that's a food or a toxin, or maybe it's a lack of food, sometimes it's that we're, we're fasting too long or we're not sleeping enough or we're eating too much sugar.
[Page//00:10:17] Julie Michelson: too hard. All of it. Yeah.
[Page//00:10:20] Dr. Doni Wilson: Like I joke that there's such a thing as too much of a good thing, you know, it sounds like it's a good thing, but. It could be too much of a good thing to end up caused, triggering a stress response. And once that stress response goes, now we have cortisol our main stress hormone, trying to respond and protect us.
[Page//00:10:39] We have adrenaline trying to respond and protect us, and that's a good thing. We want them to be responding. We want them to exist. So it's not like we're, it's not black and white. It's not like we're going to say, well, you want zero cortisol or zero adrenaline? No. Well, you want, as you want an optimal amount of cortisol adrenaline at the right time of day at the [Page//00:11:00] right, you know, right.
[Page//00:11:01] Amount of stress exposure. And it's the thing is, is when we're bombarded with all these various stresses that gets thrown in. It just, the cortisol gets out of balance. The adrenaline gets out of the balance. Our stress response gets out of balance. And once that system's out of balance, then it's going to send the wrong signals.
[Page//00:11:20] It's going to send a stress signal to the digestion, to the immune system, to the nervous system, to all the other hormones in the body. So it's like this ripple effect, right? So it's like the stress hits. And if it was just a single stress and we respond and recover, that's a good thing. But if it's like bombarding now, At scrambling the signals throughout your whole body over and over all the time and tell them you can't even, you don't even know anything different.
[Page//00:11:46] So normal to be constantly in a stress response. And. Then what I find, and this is what I research is how each of us has a unique pattern. Like we would assume we're all gonna have the same, [Page//00:12:00] right? Like so many people assume, oh, we're all going to have a high core resolve. And we're all going to have a high adrenaline.
[Page//00:12:05] But actually in the research, I do it doesn't show that we are not all the same. We're very unique in the way our bodies respond to stress. So some of us, when we have a stress response might ended up with high cortisol, some with low cortisol, depending on time of day, some have high adrenaline, some have low adrenaline.
[Page//00:12:24] So we're not, we're not even, we can't even assume what our stress response is gonna be.
[Page//00:12:31] Julie Michelson: So informative because you hear people say, And we can get into, I might throw you under the bus with this sometimes to me, sometimes it's semantics. People get really, you know, oh, you know, you used to hear adrenal fatigue and now they don't like to call it adrenal fatigue or adrenal burnout. Cause it's not really burnt out.
[Page//00:12:52] I say taxed or stressed because that's what we can see. Right. High cortisol or cortisol in the toilet. [Page//00:13:00] Like it can be either or.
[Page//00:13:02] Dr. Doni Wilson: no, I, I say in, in my new book, I talk about that. I, I don't like to use the term fatigue during no fatigue or exhaustion because it's not the case for everyone. So I, I use the term adrenal distress, which to me means. The adrenals are in a distressed state. Now we have to figure out what that looks like for you.
[Page//00:13:23] And, and to me then the best way to do that is to measure the levels because we can actually met, we don't have to guess we can actually measure the cortisol, measure the adrenaline and find out what adrenal stress distress looks like for you. And the important part of this is the treatment is different.
[Page//00:13:40] So it wouldn't really matter if the treatment was the same for everything. We'd be like, well, does everybody do the same treatment, but no, it's not. If the cortisol is too high, it's a different treatment than if the cortisol is too low. And if it's a different treatment, if the adrenaline's too high or too low, and not only that, but it requires a [Page//00:14:00] sequential treatment protocol.
[Page//00:14:01] You can't address it all at once. So as much as we, you know, we would kind of. I think sometimes we'd like to just make things simple. Right. We'd be like, okay, let's make it all adrenal fatigue. And let's give everybody the same treatment, but it doesn't work. How many people are doing adrenal treatment and they're just not feeling better.
[Page//00:14:20] Julie Michelson: Well, and we're unique individuals, as you just said all the way around anyway, that the, how many people, I'm sure they do it to you. Oh, just tell me what you eat. I'll eat what you eat and I'll know. Cause you're not mean it's not going to work for you. Same thing, you know, it's, it's the. The the, sometimes the diagnosis is, well, not sometimes it's never the answer.
[Page//00:14:45] It, it could be a direction that is not the answer.
[Page//00:14:48] Dr. Doni Wilson: it's usually just the label.
[Page//00:14:50] Julie Michelson: But we're trained that way from the Western medical system, right. Diagnosis equals pill, which we use to consider, you know, prescription [Page//00:15:00] was cure. And now we, we all know that's not the case, but it's hard to shed that mentality of like, okay, just what's the fix that one.
[Page//00:15:10] Dr. Doni Wilson: I'm so glad you're mentioning this. Yeah. I mean, again, I grew up in the pharmacy, so I, I saw it over and over. Yeah. It's like you get, and sometimes we, we want that, right. We want the name for it and we want the pill to solve it. But when you start to realize that sometimes the pill doesn't actually solve it, it's just maybe just suppressing symptoms or, and it might end up causing more side effects.
[Page//00:15:34] Once we start to realize, wait a minute. I mean, yeah. Sometimes it helps to have, okay, I have this diagnosis, I'm gonna take this pill to solve it. But if it becomes something chronic, like auto immunity now it's
[Page//00:15:47] Julie Michelson: Do not solving anything other than putting a bandaid on a symptom. Yeah, it's so true. And, and I always, here's my qualifier. I say it all the time. You just said it, but I'm going to [Page//00:16:00] reiterate clearly there's a time and a place. Thank goodness. We have pharmaceuticals and medication and emergency medicine.
[Page//00:16:06] And I always say Western medicine is acute care. You need acute care. That's where, that's where I'm going. For sure.
[Page//00:16:16] Dr. Doni Wilson: so it's not to criticize it or it's not to say you don't need it. We do. Um, but especially when it comes to something more chronic and that you're like, Hey, do I really want to live however many more decades of my life? With this, these symptoms and being reliant on such and such medication. And then you start to think maybe there's another way.
[Page//00:16:38] I mean, this was the case for me with the migraines. I was like, Hey, is there a way to solve this versus just figuring, oh, I'm going to be reliant on such and such medication. Um, I just, wasn't willing to accept that. No, there's gotta be a way that I can solve this and it ended up, and I think this is true for auto-immunity as well, but [Page//00:17:00] migraines is a good example.
[Page//00:17:01] There's multiple things to address. It's not usually just one thing. You know, I needed to address my diet and figure out how to heal leaky gut and you know, not just eliminated foods, but heal my leaky gut so that I could shift the pattern we needed to look in microbiome and go, okay, is there an issue?
[Page//00:17:21] Is it out of balance? How do we solve that? Not just some quick fix, it needs to actually be rebalanced. Is there a hormone imbalances? Is there neurotransmitter imbalances? Is there a toxin exposure? I figured out I was sleeping on a. Uh, memory foam mattress filled with formaldehyde and I'm like, what am I doing to myself? Sleeping in this toxins all this time. And, and, um, flame retardants in the mattresses. I'm like, okay, no more of that mattress. So, but it wasn't just one thing that solved the migraines. I had to go on every level. And I think that sometimes, um, People start to feel frustrated with themselves. [Page//00:18:00] Like, oh my gosh, how am I going to have to, what do I have to work on next?
[Page//00:18:03] But I, I, if I can give any insight into that and it's just keep staying after, because you're worth it, you're worth solving it. You're worth figuring it out. And it may take layers and, and working through multiple factors to get to the point where you can turn off the auto-immunity. Um, now both my parents had.
[Page//00:18:26] How do I meet it in? I've been able to help them both two, let alone all of my patients that I help with. Auto-immunity and, and it's, it's so amazing, right? To be able to see that this is possible to actually turn off the auto-immune process in the immune system. It doesn't have to be stuck that way.
[Page//00:18:45] Julie Michelson: It does not have to be stuck that way. And I would have you say that a thousand times, because that that's exactly why I have the podcast, because I was one of those people, unfortunately, who, when I was [Page//00:19:00] diagnosed and they said, oh, we're so sorry. You know, dot dot, dot, you know, your future is declined.
[Page//00:19:07] Basically. I believed them. I had no idea that that wasn't true and I believe them for, for 11 years before. I, it was that same thing. I was like, wait a minute. You know, I was 10 prescriptions and I was on 10 prescriptions at once. You know, you know how that goes. I was taking prescriptions for my prescription for the side effects of the other prescriptions, um, and declining as expected because of course that was my mindset as well.
[Page//00:19:39] Um, and, and that was it. It was like, what can I try? Yeah, what else? This is clearly not the answer. What else can I try? Um, and I, and I will say, I was thinking, I love that you said, you know, stick with it. You're worth it. Um, which I find I'm sure you do too. Is a process [Page//00:20:00] for, for so many to learn, um, that they are worth it.
[Page//00:20:04] Uh, and, and to really reinforce and kind of strengthen that muscle as they go as well. But you really, I mean, 25 years of searching for an answer and not giving up is beyond amazing and look at the gift as, because as you're fixing yourself, you were serving more and more people. It's, it's fantastic.
[Page//00:20:27] Dr. Doni Wilson: Yeah, and I love it. It's so rewarding. I mean, I, I, sometimes I joke I have now all this information and experience in my brain and I want to be able to share it with people who are looking for that. Who've been searching for answers and, and, and running into dead ends. And that's exactly why I wrote this book.
[Page//00:20:45] The master, your stress reset your house book, because I just feel like I want to put the information out there. I feel so grateful for. For, you know, being able to solve this for myself, that I want others to be able to have the information they need to [Page//00:21:00] solve it for themselves too. And so I'm sad. So it's so rewarding to be able to help you.
[Page//00:21:05] Julie Michelson: And I can't wait until the book is out. The book should be launching. Right. I'm guessing right after this airs right around. And we're going to have a link in the show notes for you guys to pre-order. Um, I am super excited. Let's, let's talk about it a little bit because you've touched on so many things.
[Page//00:21:24] Like I could, I could go down all the trails and we could be here for three hours, but I know we both have other stuff on our schedule. Um, let's talk about the book in, you know, there are so many books on stress, so share with listeners. Um, cause I already know, but why is this different? What's different about this book?
[Page//00:21:46] Dr. Doni Wilson: Well, the one difference is it's written from a naturepath and doctor's perspective. And from, from my experience to helping people recover from stress, I've been in practice now for 22 years and, uh,
[Page//00:21:59] Julie Michelson: you look [Page//00:22:00] 22, so that you're doing something right. You guys get the book.
[Page//00:22:06] Dr. Doni Wilson: Thank you. Yes, I've been, I mean, I've needed to implement everything along the way because of the migraines. Again, it kind of really pushed me to implement myself and I think actually that's how I've prevented. Auto-immunity because I have. Genetic predisposition to auto-immunity, but I ha I don't test positive for autoimmunity and it's, um, I think because of these tools that I've been implementing along the way, and one other difference about this book is it's really helping you to understand how stress affects you individually.
[Page//00:22:38] So it's not just talking about stress as something general, and it's not just talking about the things you might already guess, right? When you think of a book about stress, some people think, oh, it's probably going to tell them. To take deep breaths and medicine. And I see you can almost feel like, you know, what the book's going to say, but this, I do mention taking deep breaths and meditation in the book.
[Page//00:22:59] What I [Page//00:23:00] first do is help you to understand how, what is stress doing on, uh, you know, throughout our bodies? What kind of disruption can it cause what are examples of stress, which we talked touched on here. And then we look at, I guide you through a quiz to identify. When I call your stress type it's it's how your body, the pattern your body goes into when you're in what I call stress mode.
[Page//00:23:26] Is your cortisol higher? Low? Is your adrenaline higher? Low? Because again, then I, in the, in the second half of the book, I can guide you through. How to implement recovery from stress based on your stress type, because it's different for each, you know, if you're even, um, I use that acronym care, which, um, is like with self care.
[Page//00:23:48] So the C is for clean eating a is for adequate sleep. R is for recovery activities and E is for exercise. And the thing is, is that. Care is going to [Page//00:24:00] be unique to each person based on their stress type and w there, where they are in their stress recovery. And I've found that this was of all the, because people come to me, I work with patients one-on-one by phone and in person and by zoom.
[Page//00:24:16] And when they come to me, they've usually been. Dealing with a health issue for a long time and worked with many different practitioners. And so though, I also had to figure out what was missing in all the other approaches that they tried already. And this is what I found was missing. It wasn't individualized based on their stress type and it wasn't matching up with where they are in their stress recovery process.
[Page//00:24:40] And when we can implement those two variables, now we can actually be successful. You think it's using diet, it's using nutrients, it's using herbs, it's using natural approaches to help your body heal and recover. And I, the ultimate goal in the book is to become resilient, to stress. So that, [Page//00:25:00] because it's not like we can avoid stress, right?
[Page//00:25:01] Like some people think, well, you know, am I supposed to just have zero stress and that's impossible. So then maybe they want to give up.
[Page//00:25:10] Julie Michelson: my mother. Yeah.
[Page//00:25:12] Dr. Doni Wilson: So I want to say it's not about having zero stress. It's not about giving up on your stress. It's about. Harnessing it about being present with it, embracing your body and how it responds to stress and figuring out how do you create and use your self-care based on your stress type to ultimately become resilient to the stress you're exposed to.
[Page//00:25:36] Julie Michelson: I love that that's such a powerful tool. I'm thinking what keeps coming up for me and I'm sure you see this too. I have people show up and they, they w you mentioned it before their there's stress, the incredible stress level is their norm, and they just don't feel it. They're not even aware. So can you.
[Page//00:25:58] In our last few [Page//00:26:00] minutes, can we walk through just briefly touch on some of perhaps the traits of the stress types or what they are so that people can realize like, oh wait, maybe, maybe she is talking to me.
[Page//00:26:14] Dr. Doni Wilson: Yes, absolutely. Well, for example, there's a stress magnet, which is a lot of us assume that we're this stress type where there's high cortisol and high adrenaline. And I have to say, Julie, I've seen more. Stress magnets in the past two years with this, with the pandemic, it's really raising, you know, the, the level of stress for people.
[Page//00:26:36] And I'm seeing stress, magnet pattern more often, not high cortisol, hydro Mullen. That person might be, they actually might be very productive because they have that cortisol, no adrenaline. So they tend to be people who. Have a lot of expectation and responsibility. They may work long hours. They are pushing, they're willing to push themselves, but at a certain point they start developing health issues.
[Page//00:26:57] And sometimes it is [Page//00:27:00] auto-immunity because the system can only be pushed so hard before some things starts to. Uh, appear in terms of symptoms. Um, another is a night owl and the night owl is similar to the stress magnet, except that they have high cortisol and adrenaline more in the evening or overnight.
[Page//00:27:16] And so now they often are either working late and so they ended up not getting enough sleep because they're working late. Um, or they're waking up there. They can't get to sleep or they're waking up early. So it's this, it starts to shift their sleep patterns. And so these again, it's, it's understanding.
[Page//00:27:34] Those two different patterns require slightly different treatment and timing of their treatment during the day to really get them most recovery.
[Page//00:27:43] Julie Michelson: I'm like classifying. My clients says, as you go through, I'm like, Ooh, he fits in that basket. She fits in that basket.
[Page//00:27:51] Dr. Doni Wilson: And then there's the block and blue, which I, a lot of times find myself in the blonde and blue when I test my cortisol and adrenaline levels and I, which [Page//00:28:00] is the low cortisol and low adrenaline, um, where, you know, where the adrenal glands just can't keep up anymore and the levels drop. And you just feel like, why am I tired all the time?
[Page//00:28:10] And my mood is down and how am I going to keep up? And I also see this. With moms, you know, it's very, I think, um, the stress of being a parent, especially moms, there's a lot on our show shoulders. My daughter's 19 now, so I'm
[Page//00:28:27] Julie Michelson: Congratulations. My baby's 22.
[Page//00:28:32] Dr. Doni Wilson: okay. Yeah, there you go.
[Page//00:28:34] Julie Michelson: it's a, it's an accomplishment.
[Page//00:28:36] Dr. Doni Wilson: It is, but it's a lot when you have children it's it's and it can be very draining.
[Page//00:28:42] Julie Michelson: Well, and that was one of the reasons, and I know we're, we're not done with them yet, but, um, the blind blue makes me think of that mom with auto-immunity. Right. And you may not be thinking adrenals or [Page//00:29:00] cortisol or stress. Because you've been told that fatigue goes with your diagnosis and you've been told, well, you're a mom, of course you're tired and you're blue because you have chronic illness.
[Page//00:29:10] And so we kind of outsource, you know, oh, go, this fits that category. I'm not going to look further down. Um, and so I see that one, a lot in my moms as well. because you know, and again, they're not thinking. You know, they've been told that's typical for their diagnosis and nobody has looked underneath
[Page//00:29:34] Dr. Doni Wilson: And most practitioners are not going to address this situation. They don't test a cortisol or adrenaline and they don't, they don't, they're not trained in how to use nutrients or herbs or how to help them during a land's recover. So it's not just know that it's not something that usual rheumatologists chronologist is even going to mention to you.
[Page//00:29:52] Julie Michelson: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So more about the other [Page//00:30:00] than the blonde blue, there's
[Page//00:30:02] Dr. Doni Wilson: Oh, yes. There's also the, there's the tired and wired and the sluggish and stressed. And, um, and the thing here is where you ha you know, they have either high cortisol, low adrenaline, or low cortisol, high adrenaline. And so these can have slightly different patterns where maybe the person. Tired because their cortisol is low, but they feel kind of like heart racy and their mind's racing and they feel anxious because the adrenaline's high, for example.
[Page//00:30:31] So we need to rebalance those. And, and here again is the key that, you know, sometimes it's tempting when we see a low cortisol to start to support the cortisol right away. But I've learned from patients that that's not a good idea, especially if you have high adrenaline, because most times, if. Support the cortisol.
[Page//00:30:50] We support adrenaline too at the same time. And now the person feels worse. So if you've tried supporting your adrenals and you felt worse, it's probably because you didn't, you weren't [Page//00:31:00] addressing the adrenaline first and, and, or the neuro-transmitters, it also can I find is really
[Page//00:31:05] Julie Michelson: hormones or?
[Page//00:31:07] Dr. Doni Wilson: Any of the other things, that's why it has to be.
[Page//00:31:10] I talk about in the book, my stress recovery protocol, which is three phases. And if we just jump in to phase two before addressing phase one and phase one is really about what I call getting out of stress mode. So ultimately the stress. It's what happens when you're in stress mode, your body's like trying to adapt and help you, but it ends up in this out of balanced place.
[Page//00:31:35] And so we need to help the body get out of stress mode first. If the cortisol is too high, we need to get it down. If the adrenaline is too high, we need to get it down. If we, as, as you're saying, if there's things that are depleted, even nutrients that are depleted, we need to correct that because otherwise, if we just try to make too quick of changes, as tempting as it is the person that might actually feel the worst, because their body's not ready for that, they have to get out of stress mode and [Page//00:32:00] then we can help the rest of the recovery process to happen.
[Page//00:32:04] I hope that helps, but yeah, it's like, it's it you've been struggling, you know, it's it, it may just help you figure out what was missing.
[Page//00:32:13] Julie Michelson: And this is exactly why, what you shouldn't do is listen to this podcast and say, oh, I'm stressed. I'm going to go run out and order and adrenal support or run to the health food store and grab an adrenal support because we, you need to know exactly where you are, what that balance is. And again, it's the same as that.
[Page//00:32:38] Give me a pill mentality. No, we need to fix, what's driving that to begin with in order to get the best results. Um, so I, I, again, I'm so excited for your book to come out. I think I'm going to just gift one to every one of my one-on-one clients, because, um, it is. I joke. [Page//00:33:00] I have said I have been referred.
[Page//00:33:02] You've probably seen this too. I I've. Because as you said that the, the clients I work with one-on-one for the most part, unless they're referred by their functional medicine doc quickly, um, they've been looking for years, right? They've tried this, they've tried that. And I have had people show up on my doorstep.
[Page//00:33:22] With their correct diet dialed in, that's taken them years and doctors and tests and experimenting to figure out nobody has shown up with their stress management routine titled where that's no longer a driver of inflammation. I mean, to me, it is it's the biggest driver, because again, like you said, all of those other things.
[Page//00:33:47] Our stressors. Um, and so you mentioned a word I want to, I want to highlight you use the word resilience and that's health. Like [Page//00:34:00] that's wellness. That's what it's all about. We are always going to be bombarded. There's always going to be an opportunity and we want to have our body be able to bounce back and manage.
[Page//00:34:13] Dr. Doni Wilson: Absolutely. I love that bounce back. Yes. That's exactly what we want because it's not going to go away. You know, we're going to have, say. You know, something come up with our children, our parents, our loved ones. There's some, you know, some things can, things are going to happen. We can't avoid all stress, but what we can do is be prepared and knowing what we knowing your, what your pattern is, what happens to your cortisol and adrenaline, when you're under stress now, you know exactly what to go to, to quickly recover instead of having it.
[Page//00:34:47] I ended up causing a health issue, right? Like how do we address it in the moment? So you can bounce back and, and become resilient to the stresses that come along. And that's, you know, that's what I teach you. But having the care in [Page//00:35:00] place, having your self-care routine in place is essential. So that means.
[Page//00:35:06] You know, like you were mentioning diet, you know, fine tuning, what are the dietary changes that are going to help keep your blood sugar balanced and keep your inflammation down? And, you know, then you, you got that, you know what to do. The funny thing is when we're most under stress, we tend to forget about
[Page//00:35:21] Julie Michelson: Oh, yes, totally.
[Page//00:35:24] Dr. Doni Wilson: right?
[Page//00:35:24] It goes out the window.
[Page//00:35:26] Julie Michelson: Yeah, I did a podcast interview with somebody else who's in this field a couple of weeks ago, and he was super stressed and not doing any of his care and aware, you know, this is what I do for a living. It is the human tendency tendency to do that. It just is. So we have to have them in place as routine, or, but I've had clients say that all the time, like with breathing, you know, oh no, I'm not doing it.
[Page//00:35:52] You know, every night or every day I'm doing it when I need it. And I'm like, no, you're not because you don't have it in your pocket when you need it, [Page//00:36:00] unless you're doing it as routine. And that's what you're talking about is really supporting yourself that way.
[Page//00:36:06] Dr. Doni Wilson: Exactly. Exactly. It's like, because otherwise it feels like one more thing on the to-do list and our to-do list is already too long and we're already stressed about it. So we need to have it set so that it's not a, it's not another to do. Integrated into your day. It becomes your norm of, Hey, and, and I think back to this, you're worth it like to realize I, I have to take care of myself in order to be able to show up for others in order to be able to go from my passion and my goal.
[Page//00:36:37] I have to be taking care of myself and my. Or else, nothing else is really ultimately going to get there because at some point your health has been Italian. Your body's in is how you, it needs attention. I say sometimes it's like, you know, someone was running a marathon. We expect that they're going to need to stop to get some water and stop to take one of those little fuel shots or, you know, like they, you expect that [Page//00:37:00] with someone who's running a marathon.
[Page//00:37:02] But we, sometimes we, we don't expect that we need that. We think, oh, I'm supposed to be able to get through the day without food or water or going to the bathroom, or, you know, we were, we live in human bodies and we can't go to the body store and get another one. This is the human body than I live in. So I need to, and we don't come with an instruction manual either.
[Page//00:37:24] So it's not like, you know, it doesn't say, oh, here's what to do to take care of this body. We have to figure it out along the way. How do I feed this body? How, how often does it need to be fed? How often does it need to sleep? You know what I mean? Like let's figure out what your body needs so that you can go be running your marathon of life and, and keeping up with it versus crashing at some point along the way.
[Page//00:37:51] Julie Michelson: I love that run your marathon of life. So I know how I would answer this for you, but I'm [Page//00:38:00] not going to, I'm going to behave myself. What is one step that listeners can take today to improve their health?
[Page//00:38:10] Dr. Doni Wilson: Well, you can definitely order the book.
[Page//00:38:12] Julie Michelson: That was what I was going to say. Order the book is beautiful.
[Page//00:38:18] Dr. Doni Wilson: an early coffee that I got the master reset, your house book, which is available everywhere that, that you might want to order books from. And then definitely come and tell me on my book pre-order page that you ordered it because I have thank you gifts for you and support so that you can really start already implementing, learning about.
[Page//00:38:40] The self care from the perspective of addressing your stress type, like, cause that's the thing, it's one thing to know how to do self care in general, but it's another thing to know, how do I do it based on what my body needs based on my stress type. And so I'm going to be, you know, giving you extra support to do that along with the book.
[Page//00:38:59] [Page//00:39:00] And I just I'm so looking forward to having you all join me in this. And so you can tell me, you know, your experiences and how it's going with.
[Page//00:39:08] Julie Michelson: Amazing. Oh my gosh guys, get it. Get the book and take advantage. You know, Dr. Donnie works one-on-one and those of us that do that, we can only support so many people at a time. So an opportunity for any kind of extra support with the book is, is a huge gift. It's a tremendous gift. So I I'm so excited for that.
[Page//00:39:32] So before we wrap up, links will be in the show notes, but where's the, the number one best place for listeners to find you
[Page//00:39:39] Dr. Doni Wilson: Well, my website is drdoni.com, which is you can either just do D R D O N i.com. Or you can spell it out. D O C T O R D O N i.com. And I'm on social media as @drdoniwilson. Um, so you can find me there as well.
[Page//00:39:56] I'd love to connect with each of you and, and really give you [Page//00:40:00] hope on this path of healing auto-immunity. I'm so glad Julie, that you're there helping them because it's, it's definitely possible. I see. Every day with my patients, those auto antibodies can turn off your body can heal. And, and so I know that it's possible for you to, and we're here for you to do that, help you do that.
[Page//00:40:22] Julie Michelson: Dr. Dani. Thank you so much. You have shared some amazing gold with listeners today, so happy to have had you here.
[Page//00:40:31] Dr. Doni Wilson: Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure and I look forward to staying in touch.
[Page//00:40:36] Julie Michelson: Absolutely. And for everyone listening, remember, you can get the show notes and transcripts by visiting inspiredliving.show. I hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I'll see you next week.
[Page//00:01:03] Today, we talk about how important it is to know your stress type in order to dial in your stress recovery. Why it's important to measure your cortisol and adrenaline levels and how to begin to heal your adrenal district. Dr. Doni shares with us and valuable nuggets from her upcoming book, master your stress, reset your health, which is just about to become available.
[Page//00:01:29] This is a must listen to episode, you are worth it.
[Page//00:01:33] Dr. Dani, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here.
[Page//00:01:37] Dr. Doni Wilson: I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.
[Page//00:01:39] Julie Michelson: I love to get started with your journey. How did you get to be this amazing naturopath helping people heal from all kinds of chronic challenges and issues? I always say I was guessing when you were a little girl, this wasn't what you thought you would be doing.
[Page//00:01:58] Dr. Doni Wilson: Well, and I, I joke [Page//00:02:00] that I, I grew up in a pharmacy. My father is a pharmacist, and so I really grew up all around the pharmacy and pharmaceuticals. It's I think even my parents were surprised when I then was studying to get a pre-med degree in science. Then I decided to add a degree in nutrition and I started to have the spot.
[Page//00:02:24] Is there a kind of medicine? Integrates nutrition into care and healthcare. And that's when I found out about nature of having medicine and immediately I was like, that's exactly it, it was like, it felt like a dream come true, you know, because that's what made sense to me at that time. And so instead of going to pharmacy school, I went to nature public medical school.
[Page//00:02:45] So it was, I was pretty early on in my, in my life. Then I ended up figuring this out and I realized that actually. As a pharmacist, my father, and through, throughout, throughout my childhood would always speak about how do [Page//00:03:00] we prevent the need for medications whenever possible.
[Page//00:03:03] Julie Michelson: Wow.
[Page//00:03:04] Dr. Doni Wilson: Right. And so then I'm like, oh, no wonder I was having those thoughts even from a young age and when, and then went on to your best year university in Seattle Washington to, to do my nature pathic degree.
[Page//00:03:18] And I also became very interested in women's health in particular. Also trained as a midwife at the same time. And it just felt like this was just meant to be. And then I ended up when I graduated, I moved to the east coast. I ended up moving to Manhattan in 2001, right after nine 11. And the thing is, is that when I was researching women's health during my training, I was researching fear of labor and how stress affects women.
[Page//00:03:49] And later. And then I went and moved to Manhattan right after nine 11 and realized maybe I can apply some of what I learned about women in labor to [Page//00:04:00] all humans at any point in time when you're exposed to stress. And so I continue to. To implement and learn through the years of practice, um, how to help people recover from stress.
[Page//00:04:11] At the same time, I was also having migraines. I had migraines for 25 years and I didn't talk about it though. I felt like as a practitioner, I'm not supposed to have symptoms. I'm, I'm supposed to be able to solve this. I was helping other people with their migraines and yet I couldn't solve my own migraines and tell just a few years ago.
[Page//00:04:33] It kind of pushed me to keep researching, keep learning, keep applying. As I'm grateful now, to look back how much I learned by solving my migraines and eventually getting them to go away. And in the process of that, developing my protocol for, for stress recovery, that helps with many different health issues, including auto-immunity,
[Page//00:04:55] Julie Michelson: Wow. I love that. I love how you were so ahead of the [Page//00:05:00] curve. Um, so many people come on the show shifted, you know, because of their own health struggles and you just kind of lived with yours on the side while you were on this path to begin with, which is amazing. I want to circle back and repeat 25 years of migraines.
[Page//00:05:17] Dr. Doni Wilson: Yeah.
[Page//00:05:18] Julie Michelson: That's, that's amazing. And I love, um, You know what you're doing works with so many things. It's not migraine specific it, and yes, I know you have helped so many people with autoimmunity as well. And even I've seen you help people get rid of HPV and all kinds of issues, all those things that we're sometimes unfortunately told or often told, you know, oh, nothing you can do, but you know, surgical or medical or.
[Page//00:05:52] Um, so I'm excited to take it into the stress connection, obviously doing what I do. [Page//00:06:00] You can't heal out of immunity if you're not addressing stress. And I say all the time, you know, well, if you're on this plane, You're experiencing chronic stress of some sort. And especially if you have a chronic illness or a chronic struggle.
[Page//00:06:16] Um, but, but let's get into, how do we know if that's a driver? How do we know? You know, if, if stress is a big player, um, because although I tend to say everybody experiences chronic stress, not everybody. Has a long-term chronic illness because of it. So, so how do we know? What are you, where do we see?
[Page//00:06:43] Dr. Doni Wilson: I love that question. And because a lot of times when you see, when we look at underlying causes, right, from a nature pathic perspective and from, from what you would do as well, it's, we'll look at, we'll say, well, we want to address things from an underlying cause. Same thing with auto-immunity to reverse it.
[Page//00:06:59] We [Page//00:07:00] need to look at what caused it in the first place. And you might see a list of things, right? You might go, oh, well they're worse. Maybe there was a viral infection. Maybe there was a Medicaid. What was your antibiotics? For example, maybe there was, you know, like there's a list of potential underlying causes and on that list will be stress.
[Page//00:07:20] Well, from my perspective, all of those things are stresses because when it comes down to it, ultimately. I think of it as this concept of nature versus nurture, right? We always are. There's this age old dilemma is what, what causes our health issues? Is it all genetics or is it all our in our environment and from what I see and what I read in the research.
[Page//00:07:47] Um, actually genetics, even though we can have a genetic predisposition to auto-immunity, um, I definitely have the genetic predisposition to auto-immunity myself.
[Page//00:07:57] Julie Michelson: I don't.
[Page//00:07:58] Dr. Doni Wilson: what else? So it's not a [Page//00:08:00] hundred percent, right? It's not always the case. Um, but what the studies show is that actually the genetics play less than 20% of the world.
[Page//00:08:09] And the environment is more of the determinant of what happens with our house. So what is environment? Well, environment. The various different stresses we're exposed to whether it's psycho-emotional stress, whether it's toxins as a stress, whether it's an infection or an injury, that's a stress on the physical body.
[Page//00:08:30] Uh, you know, these are the stresses we're exposed to that. Then make us susceptible to the development of whatever health issue, including auto-immunity. And so to me, stress is absolutely. The thing that needs to be looked at with auto-immunity in particular, because if we're not looking at a stress, then we're not truly looking in identifying and addressing the underlying costs.
[Page//00:08:57] Julie Michelson: I love that. That's amazing. And I [Page//00:09:00] always say when it comes to stress, well, all of them overlap and you just so beautifully and eloquently, you know, Iowa often when I talk about toxic.
[Page//00:09:10] Dr. Doni Wilson: Mm.
[Page//00:09:11] Julie Michelson: I talk about chronic stress as a toxin and then flip it, right. You just gave us the other side of that. Also toxin exposure, that's not cleared is now a stressor.
[Page//00:09:22] And so the, you know, there's never one thing.
[Page//00:09:25] Dr. Doni Wilson: And I, the way my mind works, I, you know, maybe this is all of my sort of math and science background is I'm, I'm thinking of it as an equation to solve, you know? And so if I go, okay, W, if we're going to solve this equation for your health and end up helping you improve your health, then we need to look at what are the factors that are contributing and even, you know, say a diet that's not healthy for you, or is inflammatory is a stress on your system.
[Page//00:09:52] Our bodies are, we have a built in stress response system and. It's not something we can stop having. [Page//00:10:00] That's just part of being human. We're going to be our brain and our body is going to be looking for anything. That's going to be a potential stress trigger, and it's going to respond. So whether that's a food or a toxin, or maybe it's a lack of food, sometimes it's that we're, we're fasting too long or we're not sleeping enough or we're eating too much sugar.
[Page//00:10:17] Julie Michelson: too hard. All of it. Yeah.
[Page//00:10:20] Dr. Doni Wilson: Like I joke that there's such a thing as too much of a good thing, you know, it sounds like it's a good thing, but. It could be too much of a good thing to end up caused, triggering a stress response. And once that stress response goes, now we have cortisol our main stress hormone, trying to respond and protect us.
[Page//00:10:39] We have adrenaline trying to respond and protect us, and that's a good thing. We want them to be responding. We want them to exist. So it's not like we're, it's not black and white. It's not like we're going to say, well, you want zero cortisol or zero adrenaline? No. Well, you want, as you want an optimal amount of cortisol adrenaline at the right time of day at the [Page//00:11:00] right, you know, right.
[Page//00:11:01] Amount of stress exposure. And it's the thing is, is when we're bombarded with all these various stresses that gets thrown in. It just, the cortisol gets out of balance. The adrenaline gets out of the balance. Our stress response gets out of balance. And once that system's out of balance, then it's going to send the wrong signals.
[Page//00:11:20] It's going to send a stress signal to the digestion, to the immune system, to the nervous system, to all the other hormones in the body. So it's like this ripple effect, right? So it's like the stress hits. And if it was just a single stress and we respond and recover, that's a good thing. But if it's like bombarding now, At scrambling the signals throughout your whole body over and over all the time and tell them you can't even, you don't even know anything different.
[Page//00:11:46] So normal to be constantly in a stress response. And. Then what I find, and this is what I research is how each of us has a unique pattern. Like we would assume we're all gonna have the same, [Page//00:12:00] right? Like so many people assume, oh, we're all going to have a high core resolve. And we're all going to have a high adrenaline.
[Page//00:12:05] But actually in the research, I do it doesn't show that we are not all the same. We're very unique in the way our bodies respond to stress. So some of us, when we have a stress response might ended up with high cortisol, some with low cortisol, depending on time of day, some have high adrenaline, some have low adrenaline.
[Page//00:12:24] So we're not, we're not even, we can't even assume what our stress response is gonna be.
[Page//00:12:31] Julie Michelson: So informative because you hear people say, And we can get into, I might throw you under the bus with this sometimes to me, sometimes it's semantics. People get really, you know, oh, you know, you used to hear adrenal fatigue and now they don't like to call it adrenal fatigue or adrenal burnout. Cause it's not really burnt out.
[Page//00:12:52] I say taxed or stressed because that's what we can see. Right. High cortisol or cortisol in the toilet. [Page//00:13:00] Like it can be either or.
[Page//00:13:02] Dr. Doni Wilson: no, I, I say in, in my new book, I talk about that. I, I don't like to use the term fatigue during no fatigue or exhaustion because it's not the case for everyone. So I, I use the term adrenal distress, which to me means. The adrenals are in a distressed state. Now we have to figure out what that looks like for you.
[Page//00:13:23] And, and to me then the best way to do that is to measure the levels because we can actually met, we don't have to guess we can actually measure the cortisol, measure the adrenaline and find out what adrenal stress distress looks like for you. And the important part of this is the treatment is different.
[Page//00:13:40] So it wouldn't really matter if the treatment was the same for everything. We'd be like, well, does everybody do the same treatment, but no, it's not. If the cortisol is too high, it's a different treatment than if the cortisol is too low. And if it's a different treatment, if the adrenaline's too high or too low, and not only that, but it requires a [Page//00:14:00] sequential treatment protocol.
[Page//00:14:01] You can't address it all at once. So as much as we, you know, we would kind of. I think sometimes we'd like to just make things simple. Right. We'd be like, okay, let's make it all adrenal fatigue. And let's give everybody the same treatment, but it doesn't work. How many people are doing adrenal treatment and they're just not feeling better.
[Page//00:14:20] Julie Michelson: Well, and we're unique individuals, as you just said all the way around anyway, that the, how many people, I'm sure they do it to you. Oh, just tell me what you eat. I'll eat what you eat and I'll know. Cause you're not mean it's not going to work for you. Same thing, you know, it's, it's the. The the, sometimes the diagnosis is, well, not sometimes it's never the answer.
[Page//00:14:45] It, it could be a direction that is not the answer.
[Page//00:14:48] Dr. Doni Wilson: it's usually just the label.
[Page//00:14:50] Julie Michelson: But we're trained that way from the Western medical system, right. Diagnosis equals pill, which we use to consider, you know, prescription [Page//00:15:00] was cure. And now we, we all know that's not the case, but it's hard to shed that mentality of like, okay, just what's the fix that one.
[Page//00:15:10] Dr. Doni Wilson: I'm so glad you're mentioning this. Yeah. I mean, again, I grew up in the pharmacy, so I, I saw it over and over. Yeah. It's like you get, and sometimes we, we want that, right. We want the name for it and we want the pill to solve it. But when you start to realize that sometimes the pill doesn't actually solve it, it's just maybe just suppressing symptoms or, and it might end up causing more side effects.
[Page//00:15:34] Once we start to realize, wait a minute. I mean, yeah. Sometimes it helps to have, okay, I have this diagnosis, I'm gonna take this pill to solve it. But if it becomes something chronic, like auto immunity now it's
[Page//00:15:47] Julie Michelson: Do not solving anything other than putting a bandaid on a symptom. Yeah, it's so true. And, and I always, here's my qualifier. I say it all the time. You just said it, but I'm going to [Page//00:16:00] reiterate clearly there's a time and a place. Thank goodness. We have pharmaceuticals and medication and emergency medicine.
[Page//00:16:06] And I always say Western medicine is acute care. You need acute care. That's where, that's where I'm going. For sure.
[Page//00:16:16] Dr. Doni Wilson: so it's not to criticize it or it's not to say you don't need it. We do. Um, but especially when it comes to something more chronic and that you're like, Hey, do I really want to live however many more decades of my life? With this, these symptoms and being reliant on such and such medication. And then you start to think maybe there's another way.
[Page//00:16:38] I mean, this was the case for me with the migraines. I was like, Hey, is there a way to solve this versus just figuring, oh, I'm going to be reliant on such and such medication. Um, I just, wasn't willing to accept that. No, there's gotta be a way that I can solve this and it ended up, and I think this is true for auto-immunity as well, but [Page//00:17:00] migraines is a good example.
[Page//00:17:01] There's multiple things to address. It's not usually just one thing. You know, I needed to address my diet and figure out how to heal leaky gut and you know, not just eliminated foods, but heal my leaky gut so that I could shift the pattern we needed to look in microbiome and go, okay, is there an issue?
[Page//00:17:21] Is it out of balance? How do we solve that? Not just some quick fix, it needs to actually be rebalanced. Is there a hormone imbalances? Is there neurotransmitter imbalances? Is there a toxin exposure? I figured out I was sleeping on a. Uh, memory foam mattress filled with formaldehyde and I'm like, what am I doing to myself? Sleeping in this toxins all this time. And, and, um, flame retardants in the mattresses. I'm like, okay, no more of that mattress. So, but it wasn't just one thing that solved the migraines. I had to go on every level. And I think that sometimes, um, People start to feel frustrated with themselves. [Page//00:18:00] Like, oh my gosh, how am I going to have to, what do I have to work on next?
[Page//00:18:03] But I, I, if I can give any insight into that and it's just keep staying after, because you're worth it, you're worth solving it. You're worth figuring it out. And it may take layers and, and working through multiple factors to get to the point where you can turn off the auto-immunity. Um, now both my parents had.
[Page//00:18:26] How do I meet it in? I've been able to help them both two, let alone all of my patients that I help with. Auto-immunity and, and it's, it's so amazing, right? To be able to see that this is possible to actually turn off the auto-immune process in the immune system. It doesn't have to be stuck that way.
[Page//00:18:45] Julie Michelson: It does not have to be stuck that way. And I would have you say that a thousand times, because that that's exactly why I have the podcast, because I was one of those people, unfortunately, who, when I was [Page//00:19:00] diagnosed and they said, oh, we're so sorry. You know, dot dot, dot, you know, your future is declined.
[Page//00:19:07] Basically. I believed them. I had no idea that that wasn't true and I believe them for, for 11 years before. I, it was that same thing. I was like, wait a minute. You know, I was 10 prescriptions and I was on 10 prescriptions at once. You know, you know how that goes. I was taking prescriptions for my prescription for the side effects of the other prescriptions, um, and declining as expected because of course that was my mindset as well.
[Page//00:19:39] Um, and, and that was it. It was like, what can I try? Yeah, what else? This is clearly not the answer. What else can I try? Um, and I, and I will say, I was thinking, I love that you said, you know, stick with it. You're worth it. Um, which I find I'm sure you do too. Is a process [Page//00:20:00] for, for so many to learn, um, that they are worth it.
[Page//00:20:04] Uh, and, and to really reinforce and kind of strengthen that muscle as they go as well. But you really, I mean, 25 years of searching for an answer and not giving up is beyond amazing and look at the gift as, because as you're fixing yourself, you were serving more and more people. It's, it's fantastic.
[Page//00:20:27] Dr. Doni Wilson: Yeah, and I love it. It's so rewarding. I mean, I, I, sometimes I joke I have now all this information and experience in my brain and I want to be able to share it with people who are looking for that. Who've been searching for answers and, and, and running into dead ends. And that's exactly why I wrote this book.
[Page//00:20:45] The master, your stress reset your house book, because I just feel like I want to put the information out there. I feel so grateful for. For, you know, being able to solve this for myself, that I want others to be able to have the information they need to [Page//00:21:00] solve it for themselves too. And so I'm sad. So it's so rewarding to be able to help you.
[Page//00:21:05] Julie Michelson: And I can't wait until the book is out. The book should be launching. Right. I'm guessing right after this airs right around. And we're going to have a link in the show notes for you guys to pre-order. Um, I am super excited. Let's, let's talk about it a little bit because you've touched on so many things.
[Page//00:21:24] Like I could, I could go down all the trails and we could be here for three hours, but I know we both have other stuff on our schedule. Um, let's talk about the book in, you know, there are so many books on stress, so share with listeners. Um, cause I already know, but why is this different? What's different about this book?
[Page//00:21:46] Dr. Doni Wilson: Well, the one difference is it's written from a naturepath and doctor's perspective. And from, from my experience to helping people recover from stress, I've been in practice now for 22 years and, uh,
[Page//00:21:59] Julie Michelson: you look [Page//00:22:00] 22, so that you're doing something right. You guys get the book.
[Page//00:22:06] Dr. Doni Wilson: Thank you. Yes, I've been, I mean, I've needed to implement everything along the way because of the migraines. Again, it kind of really pushed me to implement myself and I think actually that's how I've prevented. Auto-immunity because I have. Genetic predisposition to auto-immunity, but I ha I don't test positive for autoimmunity and it's, um, I think because of these tools that I've been implementing along the way, and one other difference about this book is it's really helping you to understand how stress affects you individually.
[Page//00:22:38] So it's not just talking about stress as something general, and it's not just talking about the things you might already guess, right? When you think of a book about stress, some people think, oh, it's probably going to tell them. To take deep breaths and medicine. And I see you can almost feel like, you know, what the book's going to say, but this, I do mention taking deep breaths and meditation in the book.
[Page//00:22:59] What I [Page//00:23:00] first do is help you to understand how, what is stress doing on, uh, you know, throughout our bodies? What kind of disruption can it cause what are examples of stress, which we talked touched on here. And then we look at, I guide you through a quiz to identify. When I call your stress type it's it's how your body, the pattern your body goes into when you're in what I call stress mode.
[Page//00:23:26] Is your cortisol higher? Low? Is your adrenaline higher? Low? Because again, then I, in the, in the second half of the book, I can guide you through. How to implement recovery from stress based on your stress type, because it's different for each, you know, if you're even, um, I use that acronym care, which, um, is like with self care.
[Page//00:23:48] So the C is for clean eating a is for adequate sleep. R is for recovery activities and E is for exercise. And the thing is, is that. Care is going to [Page//00:24:00] be unique to each person based on their stress type and w there, where they are in their stress recovery. And I've found that this was of all the, because people come to me, I work with patients one-on-one by phone and in person and by zoom.
[Page//00:24:16] And when they come to me, they've usually been. Dealing with a health issue for a long time and worked with many different practitioners. And so though, I also had to figure out what was missing in all the other approaches that they tried already. And this is what I found was missing. It wasn't individualized based on their stress type and it wasn't matching up with where they are in their stress recovery process.
[Page//00:24:40] And when we can implement those two variables, now we can actually be successful. You think it's using diet, it's using nutrients, it's using herbs, it's using natural approaches to help your body heal and recover. And I, the ultimate goal in the book is to become resilient, to stress. So that, [Page//00:25:00] because it's not like we can avoid stress, right?
[Page//00:25:01] Like some people think, well, you know, am I supposed to just have zero stress and that's impossible. So then maybe they want to give up.
[Page//00:25:10] Julie Michelson: my mother. Yeah.
[Page//00:25:12] Dr. Doni Wilson: So I want to say it's not about having zero stress. It's not about giving up on your stress. It's about. Harnessing it about being present with it, embracing your body and how it responds to stress and figuring out how do you create and use your self-care based on your stress type to ultimately become resilient to the stress you're exposed to.
[Page//00:25:36] Julie Michelson: I love that that's such a powerful tool. I'm thinking what keeps coming up for me and I'm sure you see this too. I have people show up and they, they w you mentioned it before their there's stress, the incredible stress level is their norm, and they just don't feel it. They're not even aware. So can you.
[Page//00:25:58] In our last few [Page//00:26:00] minutes, can we walk through just briefly touch on some of perhaps the traits of the stress types or what they are so that people can realize like, oh wait, maybe, maybe she is talking to me.
[Page//00:26:14] Dr. Doni Wilson: Yes, absolutely. Well, for example, there's a stress magnet, which is a lot of us assume that we're this stress type where there's high cortisol and high adrenaline. And I have to say, Julie, I've seen more. Stress magnets in the past two years with this, with the pandemic, it's really raising, you know, the, the level of stress for people.
[Page//00:26:36] And I'm seeing stress, magnet pattern more often, not high cortisol, hydro Mullen. That person might be, they actually might be very productive because they have that cortisol, no adrenaline. So they tend to be people who. Have a lot of expectation and responsibility. They may work long hours. They are pushing, they're willing to push themselves, but at a certain point they start developing health issues.
[Page//00:26:57] And sometimes it is [Page//00:27:00] auto-immunity because the system can only be pushed so hard before some things starts to. Uh, appear in terms of symptoms. Um, another is a night owl and the night owl is similar to the stress magnet, except that they have high cortisol and adrenaline more in the evening or overnight.
[Page//00:27:16] And so now they often are either working late and so they ended up not getting enough sleep because they're working late. Um, or they're waking up there. They can't get to sleep or they're waking up early. So it's this, it starts to shift their sleep patterns. And so these again, it's, it's understanding.
[Page//00:27:34] Those two different patterns require slightly different treatment and timing of their treatment during the day to really get them most recovery.
[Page//00:27:43] Julie Michelson: I'm like classifying. My clients says, as you go through, I'm like, Ooh, he fits in that basket. She fits in that basket.
[Page//00:27:51] Dr. Doni Wilson: And then there's the block and blue, which I, a lot of times find myself in the blonde and blue when I test my cortisol and adrenaline levels and I, which [Page//00:28:00] is the low cortisol and low adrenaline, um, where, you know, where the adrenal glands just can't keep up anymore and the levels drop. And you just feel like, why am I tired all the time?
[Page//00:28:10] And my mood is down and how am I going to keep up? And I also see this. With moms, you know, it's very, I think, um, the stress of being a parent, especially moms, there's a lot on our show shoulders. My daughter's 19 now, so I'm
[Page//00:28:27] Julie Michelson: Congratulations. My baby's 22.
[Page//00:28:32] Dr. Doni Wilson: okay. Yeah, there you go.
[Page//00:28:34] Julie Michelson: it's a, it's an accomplishment.
[Page//00:28:36] Dr. Doni Wilson: It is, but it's a lot when you have children it's it's and it can be very draining.
[Page//00:28:42] Julie Michelson: Well, and that was one of the reasons, and I know we're, we're not done with them yet, but, um, the blind blue makes me think of that mom with auto-immunity. Right. And you may not be thinking adrenals or [Page//00:29:00] cortisol or stress. Because you've been told that fatigue goes with your diagnosis and you've been told, well, you're a mom, of course you're tired and you're blue because you have chronic illness.
[Page//00:29:10] And so we kind of outsource, you know, oh, go, this fits that category. I'm not going to look further down. Um, and so I see that one, a lot in my moms as well. because you know, and again, they're not thinking. You know, they've been told that's typical for their diagnosis and nobody has looked underneath
[Page//00:29:34] Dr. Doni Wilson: And most practitioners are not going to address this situation. They don't test a cortisol or adrenaline and they don't, they don't, they're not trained in how to use nutrients or herbs or how to help them during a land's recover. So it's not just know that it's not something that usual rheumatologists chronologist is even going to mention to you.
[Page//00:29:52] Julie Michelson: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So more about the other [Page//00:30:00] than the blonde blue, there's
[Page//00:30:02] Dr. Doni Wilson: Oh, yes. There's also the, there's the tired and wired and the sluggish and stressed. And, um, and the thing here is where you ha you know, they have either high cortisol, low adrenaline, or low cortisol, high adrenaline. And so these can have slightly different patterns where maybe the person. Tired because their cortisol is low, but they feel kind of like heart racy and their mind's racing and they feel anxious because the adrenaline's high, for example.
[Page//00:30:31] So we need to rebalance those. And, and here again is the key that, you know, sometimes it's tempting when we see a low cortisol to start to support the cortisol right away. But I've learned from patients that that's not a good idea, especially if you have high adrenaline, because most times, if. Support the cortisol.
[Page//00:30:50] We support adrenaline too at the same time. And now the person feels worse. So if you've tried supporting your adrenals and you felt worse, it's probably because you didn't, you weren't [Page//00:31:00] addressing the adrenaline first and, and, or the neuro-transmitters, it also can I find is really
[Page//00:31:05] Julie Michelson: hormones or?
[Page//00:31:07] Dr. Doni Wilson: Any of the other things, that's why it has to be.
[Page//00:31:10] I talk about in the book, my stress recovery protocol, which is three phases. And if we just jump in to phase two before addressing phase one and phase one is really about what I call getting out of stress mode. So ultimately the stress. It's what happens when you're in stress mode, your body's like trying to adapt and help you, but it ends up in this out of balanced place.
[Page//00:31:35] And so we need to help the body get out of stress mode first. If the cortisol is too high, we need to get it down. If the adrenaline is too high, we need to get it down. If we, as, as you're saying, if there's things that are depleted, even nutrients that are depleted, we need to correct that because otherwise, if we just try to make too quick of changes, as tempting as it is the person that might actually feel the worst, because their body's not ready for that, they have to get out of stress mode and [Page//00:32:00] then we can help the rest of the recovery process to happen.
[Page//00:32:04] I hope that helps, but yeah, it's like, it's it you've been struggling, you know, it's it, it may just help you figure out what was missing.
[Page//00:32:13] Julie Michelson: And this is exactly why, what you shouldn't do is listen to this podcast and say, oh, I'm stressed. I'm going to go run out and order and adrenal support or run to the health food store and grab an adrenal support because we, you need to know exactly where you are, what that balance is. And again, it's the same as that.
[Page//00:32:38] Give me a pill mentality. No, we need to fix, what's driving that to begin with in order to get the best results. Um, so I, I, again, I'm so excited for your book to come out. I think I'm going to just gift one to every one of my one-on-one clients, because, um, it is. I joke. [Page//00:33:00] I have said I have been referred.
[Page//00:33:02] You've probably seen this too. I I've. Because as you said that the, the clients I work with one-on-one for the most part, unless they're referred by their functional medicine doc quickly, um, they've been looking for years, right? They've tried this, they've tried that. And I have had people show up on my doorstep.
[Page//00:33:22] With their correct diet dialed in, that's taken them years and doctors and tests and experimenting to figure out nobody has shown up with their stress management routine titled where that's no longer a driver of inflammation. I mean, to me, it is it's the biggest driver, because again, like you said, all of those other things.
[Page//00:33:47] Our stressors. Um, and so you mentioned a word I want to, I want to highlight you use the word resilience and that's health. Like [Page//00:34:00] that's wellness. That's what it's all about. We are always going to be bombarded. There's always going to be an opportunity and we want to have our body be able to bounce back and manage.
[Page//00:34:13] Dr. Doni Wilson: Absolutely. I love that bounce back. Yes. That's exactly what we want because it's not going to go away. You know, we're going to have, say. You know, something come up with our children, our parents, our loved ones. There's some, you know, some things can, things are going to happen. We can't avoid all stress, but what we can do is be prepared and knowing what we knowing your, what your pattern is, what happens to your cortisol and adrenaline, when you're under stress now, you know exactly what to go to, to quickly recover instead of having it.
[Page//00:34:47] I ended up causing a health issue, right? Like how do we address it in the moment? So you can bounce back and, and become resilient to the stresses that come along. And that's, you know, that's what I teach you. But having the care in [Page//00:35:00] place, having your self-care routine in place is essential. So that means.
[Page//00:35:06] You know, like you were mentioning diet, you know, fine tuning, what are the dietary changes that are going to help keep your blood sugar balanced and keep your inflammation down? And, you know, then you, you got that, you know what to do. The funny thing is when we're most under stress, we tend to forget about
[Page//00:35:21] Julie Michelson: Oh, yes, totally.
[Page//00:35:24] Dr. Doni Wilson: right?
[Page//00:35:24] It goes out the window.
[Page//00:35:26] Julie Michelson: Yeah, I did a podcast interview with somebody else who's in this field a couple of weeks ago, and he was super stressed and not doing any of his care and aware, you know, this is what I do for a living. It is the human tendency tendency to do that. It just is. So we have to have them in place as routine, or, but I've had clients say that all the time, like with breathing, you know, oh no, I'm not doing it.
[Page//00:35:52] You know, every night or every day I'm doing it when I need it. And I'm like, no, you're not because you don't have it in your pocket when you need it, [Page//00:36:00] unless you're doing it as routine. And that's what you're talking about is really supporting yourself that way.
[Page//00:36:06] Dr. Doni Wilson: Exactly. Exactly. It's like, because otherwise it feels like one more thing on the to-do list and our to-do list is already too long and we're already stressed about it. So we need to have it set so that it's not a, it's not another to do. Integrated into your day. It becomes your norm of, Hey, and, and I think back to this, you're worth it like to realize I, I have to take care of myself in order to be able to show up for others in order to be able to go from my passion and my goal.
[Page//00:36:37] I have to be taking care of myself and my. Or else, nothing else is really ultimately going to get there because at some point your health has been Italian. Your body's in is how you, it needs attention. I say sometimes it's like, you know, someone was running a marathon. We expect that they're going to need to stop to get some water and stop to take one of those little fuel shots or, you know, like they, you expect that [Page//00:37:00] with someone who's running a marathon.
[Page//00:37:02] But we, sometimes we, we don't expect that we need that. We think, oh, I'm supposed to be able to get through the day without food or water or going to the bathroom, or, you know, we were, we live in human bodies and we can't go to the body store and get another one. This is the human body than I live in. So I need to, and we don't come with an instruction manual either.
[Page//00:37:24] So it's not like, you know, it doesn't say, oh, here's what to do to take care of this body. We have to figure it out along the way. How do I feed this body? How, how often does it need to be fed? How often does it need to sleep? You know what I mean? Like let's figure out what your body needs so that you can go be running your marathon of life and, and keeping up with it versus crashing at some point along the way.
[Page//00:37:51] Julie Michelson: I love that run your marathon of life. So I know how I would answer this for you, but I'm [Page//00:38:00] not going to, I'm going to behave myself. What is one step that listeners can take today to improve their health?
[Page//00:38:10] Dr. Doni Wilson: Well, you can definitely order the book.
[Page//00:38:12] Julie Michelson: That was what I was going to say. Order the book is beautiful.
[Page//00:38:18] Dr. Doni Wilson: an early coffee that I got the master reset, your house book, which is available everywhere that, that you might want to order books from. And then definitely come and tell me on my book pre-order page that you ordered it because I have thank you gifts for you and support so that you can really start already implementing, learning about.
[Page//00:38:40] The self care from the perspective of addressing your stress type, like, cause that's the thing, it's one thing to know how to do self care in general, but it's another thing to know, how do I do it based on what my body needs based on my stress type. And so I'm going to be, you know, giving you extra support to do that along with the book.
[Page//00:38:59] [Page//00:39:00] And I just I'm so looking forward to having you all join me in this. And so you can tell me, you know, your experiences and how it's going with.
[Page//00:39:08] Julie Michelson: Amazing. Oh my gosh guys, get it. Get the book and take advantage. You know, Dr. Donnie works one-on-one and those of us that do that, we can only support so many people at a time. So an opportunity for any kind of extra support with the book is, is a huge gift. It's a tremendous gift. So I I'm so excited for that.
[Page//00:39:32] So before we wrap up, links will be in the show notes, but where's the, the number one best place for listeners to find you
[Page//00:39:39] Dr. Doni Wilson: Well, my website is drdoni.com, which is you can either just do D R D O N i.com. Or you can spell it out. D O C T O R D O N i.com. And I'm on social media as @drdoniwilson. Um, so you can find me there as well.
[Page//00:39:56] I'd love to connect with each of you and, and really give you [Page//00:40:00] hope on this path of healing auto-immunity. I'm so glad Julie, that you're there helping them because it's, it's definitely possible. I see. Every day with my patients, those auto antibodies can turn off your body can heal. And, and so I know that it's possible for you to, and we're here for you to do that, help you do that.
[Page//00:40:22] Julie Michelson: Dr. Dani. Thank you so much. You have shared some amazing gold with listeners today, so happy to have had you here.
[Page//00:40:31] Dr. Doni Wilson: Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure and I look forward to staying in touch.
[Page//00:40:36] Julie Michelson: Absolutely. And for everyone listening, remember, you can get the show notes and transcripts by visiting inspiredliving.show. I hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I'll see you next week.
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My Guest For This Episode
Connect with Dr. Doni Wilson
Dr. Doni Wilson
Naturopathic Doctor
Dr. Doni Wilson is a naturopathic doctor, certified professional midwife, and certified nutrition specialist.
Dr. Doni experienced severe migraines for 25 years and in the process of solving her migraines, she developed her Stress Recovery Protocol. She focuses on identifying how stress affects each of us uniquely and then applies epigenetics to reoptimize health.
Using her protocol, Dr. Doni helps patients reverse challenging health conditions including fatigue, anxiety, autoimmunity, fertility issues and recurrent miscarriages, as well as HPV and abnormal pap smears.Dr. Doni is frequently called upon to discuss her approach on hundreds of podcasts, radio shows, and TV. She is an international speaker and best selling author. Her newest book - Master Your Stress, Reset Your Health - is available for pre-order and releases May 3, 2022.
Dr. Doni experienced severe migraines for 25 years and in the process of solving her migraines, she developed her Stress Recovery Protocol. She focuses on identifying how stress affects each of us uniquely and then applies epigenetics to reoptimize health.
Using her protocol, Dr. Doni helps patients reverse challenging health conditions including fatigue, anxiety, autoimmunity, fertility issues and recurrent miscarriages, as well as HPV and abnormal pap smears.Dr. Doni is frequently called upon to discuss her approach on hundreds of podcasts, radio shows, and TV. She is an international speaker and best selling author. Her newest book - Master Your Stress, Reset Your Health - is available for pre-order and releases May 3, 2022.
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