Kyria Marie - Naturally Healing Your Body | Trauma and Mental Health Podcast

Michael: Hey! What's up, Unbroken Nation. Hope that you're doing well wherever you are in the world today. Very excited to be back with you with another episode with my guest, Kyria Marie, who is a holistic nutritional consultant and health coach. Kyria, my friend, how are you? What is happening in your world today?

Kyria: Hello, Michael I'm doing well, we are out here in Hawaii. So, if we hear some birds, that's what's going on in the background, but I'm so honored to be on your show. Thank you for having me.

Michael: I'm very excited to have you honors all mine and a big part of that is because when you and I had spoken a couple of months ago, when we're having a little bit of a back and forth, you know, there were so many correlations and experiences that I've had in my own personal journey around nutritional and health, through a holistic expertise, that I've felt this will be a really powerful conversation because as you get into understanding a lot of the ways that the body manipulates itself for survival, understanding food and intake and nutrition is incredibly important. So, this will be a really powerful episode, I think. Before we get into it and dive deep, tell us a little bit about your backstory, what got you interested in this and how you got to where you are today?

Kyria: Yes, absolutely. I've always had a passion in health. I mean, ever since I was a little girl on the playground in elementary school and, you know, a friend would run and scrape their knee, I would run to the nearest, like just patch them up with like what paper towels. So, I've always been interested in helping people to heal naturally and it was one of my first thoughts to go into like med school and become a doctor and go that route. But then my passion for natural healing grew more and more. So, I had a number of different health challenges as a teenager and in college, but it wasn't really, until I started public school teaching that my health just crashed and burned. So, immediately after university, I joined a program where we work in really low-income high needs school districts so I was placed in super rural North Carolina and I grew up in California. I grew up on Catalina Island, which is a little island off the coast of Los Angeles so super small town, and then went all the way to the other side of the country and I had such incredible students and I loved my work as a teacher, but I just really sacrificed myself. So, I was like, oftentimes the first teacher there and the last one to leave, cuz I was so committed and as any first-year teacher would tell you that there's so much to learn and oftentimes feeling not really knowing how to do anything. So, I just struggled, I started to have super adrenal burnout which essentially just being like really stressed and really low energy, super poor sleep, a lot of weight gain, a lot of anxiety, depression it was a hot mess, things were not looking very good, my hormonal cycles I'll out of balance. So, I neglected it again and again, and just kept kind of going back to work and diving into what I thought was the most important, so I just, I kind of ignored all those health symptoms. They started out small, right? Like just a little bit of fatigue or just a little bit of low energy or dry itchy skin, just certain things like that, that I kept doing Advil or those sort of kind of band aid approaches. And then at some point, it just crashed and burned. So that summer I decided that I really needed to do something different, but if I kept going the way that I was going, I didn't think that I would make it that much longer and I definitely wouldn't be a good teacher or even be able to be present for my students.

So, I started doing a lot of research and going down that rabbit hole, and I know you've been down there before Michael and a lot of people have where which is like, how do I fix myself? Like, I don't just wanna take medications or aspirin forever. Like what is actually wrong? I think that's when things started to change for me, when I started asking the question, like why? Like I actually wanted to know why this was happening, not just to, you know, erase the symptoms to really heal and to more than that, just thrive and have true optimum health.

So, I did a couple things, you know, like try to eat more vegetables and try to work out more. And that did help, I went back, you know, talked to school again and again, my students were amazing, but my health was still struggling with my second year of teaching. But I started doing a little bit more work life balance, and everybody's already heard about self-care, you know, but I started teaching like, a yoga club for our students and softball coaching, and just things like that, that's all good and fine, right? Everybody just to like eat healthier and exercise and have more work life balance and self-care, but definitely doesn't solve everything. Um, and doesn't really help to fix it for the long term, unless we get to the root of what's going on. So, after that year, I started working with a holistic nutritionist and just kind of through word-of-mouth friend to friend was so grateful that I got to connect with her in functional blood chemistry analysis, we call it FBCA for short, literally saved my life. Like it showed me exactly what was going on and exactly what was out of balance. And I always considered myself a healthy person, but I had never even heard of that before. Right. Like maybe getting some labs done with the doctor just like routinely and trusting that they, you know, were looking at for my highest good, but really this functional blood chemistry analysis showed me in such detailed levels, like on the cellular level of my body like, what was unhealthy, what was like really seriously a problem, but almost more importantly, just all the micro imbalances, right? Because those added up to be serious health issues for me. So, I became obsessed, I was like, this is the coolest thing in the world, this feels like a magic trick I just learned exactly what's going on and I wanna help others cuz you know, I've always been interested in health, but FBCA was like the missing link for me. So, then I went back to graduate school and I became a holistic nutritionist and, you know, focused on this functional blood chemistry analysis and health coaching and have been doing it ever since. And it does kind of feel like, you know, a magic trick because people have been trying for so long to fix certain things and once, we get to learn what's wrong it's so much easier to fix it. Right. So, low and behold, I'm feeling a lot better now, way better now, you know, over a decade later than I was in my early twenties or late teens, which is just so strange, but also makes so much sense when we know how to honor our body.

Michael: Yeah. I mean, you're spot on when you start compounding stress, process food, life, everything that comes along with this journey, you paying attention to your body, I think is incredibly important. And, you know, even for myself looking at my own journey and the journey that I know so many people go through where constantly, it feels like struggling or swimming upstream, just trying to figure out where to begin. And I would argue that, you know, probably the internet, isn't the best thing for figuring out how to take care of your health because there's a rabbit hole and next thing you know, you're taking 37 vitamins, you have no idea what they do, you're ordering stuff from the black web, like it's chaos, right? I've been down that hole, I tried whatever it took to get healthy. You know, I think one of the things we often don't address, especially when it comes to our physical health is, and I'm talking about physical the root cause and failing to realize how important that is. So, for folks who are listening or even, you know, looking back in your own journey, how important is the root cause in figuring out a - what's going on and then b - how to treat it?

Kyria: Oh, it's everything. I'm glad that you brought that up because it's all about the root cause, right? Like we can keep, you know, have a huge garden here on this land and you can keep kind of like trimming the weeds. Right. But until you really pull out the root, it's gonna keep coming back. Right. So of course, you wanna actually get to the root cause of it that way you can actually save money, save time, save energy, save a lot of tears and heartache and actually learn what's going on. Right. So,you know your community and everybody who's listening to this, like really cares about the why it's like the red pill, right? Like being brave enough to know like what is going on. Like, I actually wanna know the truth of my own body. So, when we get to the root cause it's just really empowering and we focus on it from you know, like an educational, empowering perspective where it's not like these are all the things that are wrong, but this is exactly the fastest, easiest, most effective way to help fix it. Right. So, I like that you brought up Google because you know, it is an okay place to start and a lot of us do start there with just like, this is what I feel what does it mean, oftentimes it just ends up telling us. You know, nothing or something very, very scary and tragic that probably isn't true either. And that can be equally debilitating when we're really focusing on our health. I mean, I remember when I was teaching, like there was one point where I was just like in my classroom, I was so overwhelmed, so fried, couldn't sleep, so stressed, so depressed, so anxious. I was eating like this huge bag of leftover Cheetos from one of our class parties. I'm like in the classroom all by myself, the door was locked, I turned off the lights, I was like, nobody can come in. I'm just eating this bag of Cheetos. I don't eat Cheetos anymore and I don't hide like that anymore, but it just broke like rock bottom. And so, you know, turned to other things to kind of numb myself and some of us do that with Netflix or with food or gambling or sex or rock and roll or whatever it might be and it's a coping mechanism. And I'm sure we'll talk about that more today too, but it's so natural for our body to try and just get what it needs. But once we know the root cause we always say that the answer is within you, right? Like it's literally in your blood, it's right there. If you wanna, you know, take a little bit of courage and look at it, you can find out everything and also all the great things, which is really nice to see, right? Like to learn everything that's super healthy and really an alignment in your body. So, it's all about the root cause. Yeah. Highly recommend.

Michael: I love that. Use the word courage in this because I think especially, and I'll speak from my perspective, growing up in a traumatic household, trying to not only necessarily just figure out how to be healthy in my adulthood, but like reconciling the fact that since no one took care of me as a kid, I did not have the tools instilled in myself to take care of myself. And there was a really a like garnering of courage that I had to have to be able to go to the doctor, to get blood work, to do the test, do the examinations, to fucking go to the dentist at points of my life. Right? And to have the willingness to step into that took courage. Why is that important? Like, why is that a word that you've used multiple times?

Kyria: Because most people don't do it and most of us don't even know how to do it. Right. Like you mentioned, not necessarily even learning that growing up and most of us don't like going the extra mile. Right. And the thing is, insurance doesn't wanna pay for it because it's more of a proactive, preventative approach whereas our current medical model is pretty reactive. It's amazing. Right? Like if somebody gets into a car accident, they don't need courage to be taken to the ER, like they're just gonna go there it naturally happens. But for somebody to take an extra step and to travel the road, that others don't necessarily, then it's important. I think having a little bit of belief that it can happen. Right. So, we like to say like portal of possibility like if we know, oh, Michael's done this and it worked for him, like I'm gonna try it too, or I'm gonna believe like, I can be unbroken. He is and other people are right? So, somebody's like, oh, if you wanna heal naturally, you can do it, I did it like, here's something to try. But when we try, there's always the chance that it might not work. Right. And I think that's so hard, especially when it comes to our health, because what I've found in my practice with clients is that there's almost some shame around it. Right. It's like, I should just feel good. I should be able to know how to fix this, it's my body, or it's my mind, or it's my gut or my hormones, like it should just be working. Right. And it's my fault that it's not necessarily, like we just need to learn, you know, maybe it's super toxic water that is in your county that you have to bathe in every day. Right. Maybe. You know, this environmental pollution that could just be other things that are totally outside of our realm of control or trauma, right? That has happened to us or our parents or our grandparents and in our generational trauma so that's when we get into epigenetics or genetics. But it takes a lot of courage because I've never done FBCA that's a hundred percent perfectly in the green, even my own. And I've been doing it for years and years, but it's not about that because we are human so there's always going to be a little bit of room for growth. But I've also never done an FBCA where it's a hundred percent in the red and everything's wrong. So, we just use our strengths and we leverage those to help the areas that are a little bit out of balance and yeah, we just have to have a little bit of courage when we come to the point of no return, right? Like when I was with the Cheetos in the dark classroom, locking myself in, I was like anything, please help me. So, once we get to that point, then I like to say that it's easier to rise to the top after bouncing off rock bottom.

Michael: Yeah, it's very true. And in that I think the aspect of courage that's so beneficial is that it will reinforce this thing called self-care, it'll reinforce self-love, it'll reinforce all the things that you need to give yourself, cuz like it fucking sucks going and getting a needle in your mouth to have a tooth fixed, but like it's so much about self-care, right? One of the things that you mentioned earlier that I want to rewind to briefly, because I think it's important, you talked about being fatigued, you talking about being tired, you talk about adrenal fatigue. And I think we live in this society that is so much about power through it go a hundred miles an hour, you know, don't quit and I'm a proponent of massive action and everyone who listens to this show knows that, but I'm also going to the movies at Tuesday at 12 o'clock in the afternoon, if I want to, you know what I mean? And so, talk to me about what your thoughts on just the way that people are not, I don't wanna say not cause I do think you are noticing it, but how do we pay better attention to the warning signs that our body's actually giving us that maybe something's imbalanced?

Kyria: Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the easiest things is like our hormones, right? So, cortisol and melatonin should essentially be operating at like an inverse. So, if we imagine a U shape on a graph then ideally, when we wake up in the morning, our cortisol is kind of like at its highest point, right? So, then it goes down throughout the day and then we can fall asleep at night. And then in theory, melatonin should be at its lowest point in the morning and then be increasing throughout the day and then we can go to sleep at night. But for so many of us, especially like what you are saying when we just feel like we're going, going, going, and it's such a part of our culture today, right? It's not of as like irresponsible or lazy to go to the movies on a Tuesday afternoon. Like, why don't you do something right? But it's actually really, really healthy and balanced to be able to listen to your body and know what to do. Now a little caveat there so many of us weren't trained on how to listen to our body, right? Like people keep saying, listen to your body, it's like, what do I do? So, I'm glad that you brought up this question, but as far as listening, we can also look at our body.

So, if we see that we're really tired in the morning, and then we're really alert and awake at night, which is a lot of the people that first come to me and start working with us that they just have an inverse in those hormones. Right. So, for them, their melatonin is really high in the morning, they finally, after tossing and turning all night long, finally their melatonin has increased. So, they wake up and then they're all sleepy and groggy, but then their cortisol at night is super high. Right. So let me know if that is kind of making sense of that picture there, but they just have it swapped so we essentially have to bring it back into balance so that we need cortisol. Cortisol kind of gets a bad rap, but we would not survive without cortisol. However, most of us have an excess and abundance of it, which then becomes toxic and you know, this systemic issue in our body. So, we have to have cortisol, but just in balance and then we also need to have melatonin, which is why it's a really popular supplement for people to sleep at. But if we only keep taking melatonin at night and then we never balance out our hormones, cause all of our hormones are in like an orchestra together. If we don't actually take the step to balance out cortisol also, then this is gonna be like the, you know, the rat on the hamster on a hamster wheel rat on a rat wheel, the rat and the rat brace. So, and then it will never actually work and it'll actually just make other problems and its quake. So, that's one of the things that I would say is like checking in with just how you feel in the morning and how you feel at night.

Michael: Yeah. How do you get to balance in that? Because I think that, you know, looking at and understanding how cortisol can be present and I agree it does get a bad rep because people don't fully understand it. So, I think two things would be beneficial here. One, if you can kind of define cortisol what it is, what it does, it's function in the body. And then secondarily, if you can go into talking about creating balance between just hormones in general, not necessarily only just cortisol.

Kyria: Ooh, how much time do we have, hormones are massive. I mean, it really is like an orchestra and that's the best metaphor that I can use. So, we'll definitely dive into cortisol, cuz it is a popular one. It's a sexy hormone so we should all learn more about cortisol cuz it's very important. But as far as all the hormones, you know, it is like an orchestra. So, if we are gonna adjust cortisol, we do a lot and everything else, but essentially cortisol is one of our hormones and it's known as like a stress hormone. Right. It's also considered like a steroid. So, we do need cortisol. If you put your hands on your hips, you know, and you kind of feel like above your hip bones on either side of your spine in the back. So, on your back area, either side of your spine, above your hip bone, and you kinda like make a little fit right in that area is your kidney. And the next to your kidneys are your adrenal glands, right? So, your adrenal glands, if you want, you can give yourself a little massage while you're there, but your adrenal glams are named after adrenaline, right which is another really famous stress hormone. So, as far as cortisol goes, you know, there's different levels for everybody I was just doing an FBCA this morning and we tested her serum levels of cortisol. So, her cortisol in the blood, and it actually looked normal and fine. But we don't stop there, we also tested for many other inflammation markers, including like homocysteine or CRP and those were super high, which again is why it's helpful to dive in and get a whole picture of what's going on in your body ‘cuz if we would've just tested cortisol, no problem. She is fine. But we look at everything cuz of that orchestra that we talked about earlier and she was saying that she feels fatigued, that she feels low energy, you know, like slow metabolism, things like that. So, we're able to kind of paint the picture and put it together as far as what to do to lower cortisol and to bring it back into balance, some people actually need to increase their cortisol, that's like few and far between. But to lower it, it depends and that is not an answer that people like to hear, but it just depends on like, why is it high? Right. Are these people like struggling with past or current trauma? Are these people having the standard American diet are the rest of their hormones out of balance? Are they recovering from a serious infection or are they just in a car accident? So, that's why, you know, the FBCA process is a little bit like a work of art because we have to see what's going on. I mean, the most basic answer would be reduce your stress which, you know, everybody's already focusing on doing that and it's good to reduce your stress. But many people who come to us have already, you know, meditated, they've done yoga, they're drinking green juice, they're trying all these things, but they don't know that they actually have like a gallbladder deficiency or they actually have a low-grade chronic infection that's been with them for years. So, sometimes we don't know what's stressing us, but for everybody listening, if you do know that something is stressing you, of course, then helping to heal or eliminate or forgive or work through whatever that stress is. But if you don't know, if you've already tried everything, then I would ask your body, I would ask your blood to see what is a stressor.

Michael: Yeah, and it's super important. And I do quarterly blood work because of all of the health issues I've had from SIBO to C.diff to surgeries, to you name it. And so, the deeper that I've gotten into, not only just doing the work and having someone teach me and explain it, but like the follows through, you know, you look at these studies and they say people are more likely to go and pick up the prescription and give it to their animal than they are to themselves. And I think so much of this journey, especially around our physical health is you have to have the willingness to like actually execute the game plan because if you sit here and you're like, oh great, I went and I got all these tests, all these results have all this information, you don't do anything with it, it's fruitless and nothing's going to change unless, well, you change it. What are some of the most important baseline indicators that you're looking for as you're going through these tests with people. And when they're speaking with their doctors or their counselors, what are the questions they should be asking?

Kyria: Oh, really good. On our website, we have like a free PDF download that kind of goes into all of the markers that we test and like some of the key things, which is way more than we could talk about, our answer right now. But one of the main ones is the CRP that we talked about before that reactive protein marker that is like so helpful for testing inflammation in the body. Right. So, with the functional blood chemistry analysis, it uses more narrow lab ranges, the way that it's currently set up in our medical model is that when somebody goes to their lab and most of us at this point in time have had some slab test at some point, and most of us have gotten it and it comes back saying it's all normal, or maybe one thing is a little out of balance, but the way that they're getting those averages for the lab tests are based on the net average of people who are going into that lab. And as you mentioned earlier, most people who are going into the lab are going in more like, as a reactive approach, right? Not necessarily at this point in time where most people thinking very proactively with their health and also insurance isn't really covering the proactive part. So, the standard ranges that people are seeing on their lab tests, unless, you know, they're working, how you and I are with doing more of a functional approach is based on the average American, but the average American, unfortunately, isn't very healthy, right?

So, six out of 10 Americans have one chronic disease. Four out of 10 Americans have two or more chronic diseases. This is according to the CDC, so why would I ever wanna be compared to the average American. Like, I don't want to, I wanna be compared to just what is healthy, like tell me what the healthy ranges are. So, when people are getting standard lab tests on, it's comparing them to essentially that average and of course, if you are higher or lower, then the average that is a serious problem. Definitely. Right. But if you really want to focus on these things, like how you mentioned earlier, cortisol or fatigue or energy, and you haven't been able to figure it out, it's helpful to go to the functional ranges, cuz those ranges are comparing you to not the average people, but just what is healthy, right? Like what's the healthy range. So, that is one thing to keep in mind when talking with doctors or doing, you know, traditional labs and that's like the download that we have, it shows you our ranges, like the functional ranges. So, even if some people already have blood tests that they've done before at home, they can plug in their numbers and they can see, is it like super serious high or low, or maybe it's functionally high or functionally low, which isn't diagnostic of a disease or a serious condition, but it is a sign of an imbalance. And when you have enough of those imbalances that add up, it answers the question of why don't I feel good. Right. And for a lot of us just knowing the answer of like, Oh, it's not all in my head. I'm not crazy. You know, I went to my doctor, they gave me an antidepressant, but something's actually wrong. I feel like something is wrong. It's really, really empowering to see that on paper.

Michael: Yeah. It truly is. And per the averages, I mean, I'm six foot four, 220 pounds,my averages are gonna be very different than someone who's five foot to 98 pounds. You know, and I think we all get categorized into this place where it's like, oh, you must fit in this box, but I don't necessarily believe that's true. One of the things that I think that'd be really beneficial as we head into where I hope this conversation's gonna go here is if you can really just define what Holistic Nutritional counseling is? Because I want people to understand the differentiation between that and kind of what standard westernized medicine looks like.

Kyria: Yes. So, standard westernized medicine and then more of like the functional holistic approach, but the functional holistic approach is really looking at health. So, like health and wellness is the focus, the goal is to be as healthy as possible and to have the best wellness as possible to be thriving. Right? Like my level of thriving may look different in how I get there than yours. Right. Versus like the Western current model, which is changing and it's starting to shift so that's good to see that, you know, I have a lot of hope for the future, but is really reactionary. Right. It's really focused on disease. There's a number of studies that have come out that say that like currently medical doctors get about two hours of nutrition in their whole, like six years of practice. So, but nutrition isn't really that helpful necessarily if you're just looking for like disease and pharmaceuticals. Right. But if you're focusing on Optimum health or prevention being the best cure or healing, naturally, if there already is a diagnosis or a disease in place, then of course you wanna look at natural approaches like nutrition or lifestyle or mindfulness, for some people's spirituality is in there too nature. Right. Those other things, and sometimes pharmaceuticals are needed. But I would say just boiling it down would be like reaction versus being proactive. Right. And God forbid, you know, if there's a car crash, like please take me to like the nearest ER and like Western medical doctor ‘cause so amazing, like so many incredible healing techniques that they can do nowadays that wasn't necessarily a thing in the past. But if I just want to go in and check in with someone and see, how am I doing, or how am I feeling? Or there's this mysterious thing that's going on in my body? And none of the conventional doctors have found it like I need somebody to dig deep, then that would be more like the holistic functional approach. So, as a basis, being reactive versus being proactive and then I guess like in the treatment or in the approach would be maybe just more like pharmaceutical oriented or just more of a pill, maybe a pill that they give their animal. Like you said earlier, just, you know, a pill or actually needing to have that courage that we talked about and making a change. Right. Maybe there are some supplements or some herbs, but it might also mean having some self-care time or turning off the lights an hour earlier, if we're talking about increasing melatonin at night versus just taking a sleep aid. So, there might be a little bit more action but we always do our best to make that part as sustainable as possible.

Michael: So, yeah, and I think it's really important to note like me too. I'm like, if I'm a car accident, do not take me to a Reiki practitioner, you know what I mean? It's like because I want to be treated and I think that being proactive is so important. You hear all the time, food is medicine, you hear this all the time, you hear that the body can heal itself. You hear all the time that we're meant to thrive and survive and not to be sick and ament all the time. What was your journey? Cuz you mentioned you were sick and the Cheetos experience and all of these things, but what was your path to healing, in terms of like, what were the indicators, what were you looking for? What were the actions you were taking? What were some of the practical things that you were adopting into your life to go from where you were to, where you are now mentioning again, this healthier than you were in your teens and twenties?

Kyria: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, really knowing myself and I had already, you know, listen to my body and tried the exercise and the eating healthier, I tried the vegan thing, I tried the paleo thing. I tried the vegetarian; I tried all the different things. And then just knowing, right, like really looking at my own labs, my own blood work, working with an expert for a while. You know, then I became the expert in just doing it myself now. And seeing, like, what does my body need? Like maybe, you know, research has this or this podcast has that, but like what do I need since I'm a unique individual that just is kind of like the recipe for success, because it's so different even all of my clients, they all have different recommendations or different protocols that they're doing based on their own body and their own results and their own goals and their history, which is another difference I would say between like conventional medicine and working with like a holistic nutritionist is actually working with somebody who cares about the past trauma or who looks at the family history or who looks at where you wanna go in your future. Right. So, really having that customized approach can be super helpful and just a lot easier because then you get better results faster. So, as far as my own journey, yes, the Cheetos in the dark classroom was a low point and then after that I just had my own plan. I was working with a professional who said, these are the best foods for you. These are the food allergies. These are the herbs and supplements and vitamins right now. You know, this is what we need to do for rest or for stress management. And it was really that simple and then, like you said, you go quarterly checking in, right? So, it's not like a one and done sort of thing. It is more like the dentist where you check in, because that changed for me. Right. Maybe I needed more iron at some point, or my hormones were perfectly imbalance, so I didn't need to take certain herbs or supplements anymore. But checking in really is just kind of the key because it just simplifies the process as far as updating it and it made it so much easier. I mean, I used to try all these really hard, complex, like meal plans and crazy recipes and just different things ‘cause I was trying, you know, I was doing the best that I could, of the knowledge that I had at that point so that's fine. But when we know better, we do better and it just made it a lot easier, it's like, this is curious plan like this is what's for my body right now, not Michael's plan or my friend's plan, this is what is good for me and it's gonna be different than other people. So, yeah, it was kind of as easy as plug and play once I knew what to do.

Michael: Yeah, that was the same for me too. I mean, of course there's still moments where like, I'm gonna eat a pizza, like, cuz that's the human experience. Right. But in general, it's like if you can make and adapt these lifestyle shifts, I think that's ultimately what it is. And I think the lifestyle that we lead and living in a very unhealthy country, unfortunately, and as someone who used to be 350 pounds, I can attest to understanding how that happens. But I think that there's a huge conversation to be had about the willingness that one must have to be the advocate for their own health. What do you think are some of the most important things that people can do just at the beginning to start this process? Maybe they have gut health issues. Maybe they have migraines all the time. Maybe it's because it is inflammation. It is stress. It is homocysteine levels are out of control, right? Whatever that may be like, what are the jump off points for people?

Kyria: I would say the first is knowing and truly believing that you are worth healing. So, knowing and truly believing that you are worth healing is like, I mean, it still gives me goosebumps because that's the first step and really the hardest one. So, way more important like calories or macros or whatever you're eating or whatever exercise or no exercise you're doing is just our mindset. Right? So, our belief. So, if we grew up in a household that didn't teach us that we were worth anything, let alone healing, let alone healing through an alternative approach nothing that we do is kind of work and that's just like the way of it. But once we choose ourselves and we're like, nope, I am taking full ownership of my life, you know, I'm going to be thriving, successful, healthy, happy unbroken, and I'm going to heal then it's like unstoppable. Right? And then it really is going to happen, whether it's through, you know, whatever approach, it doesn't matter. You know, if somebody wants to do FBCA or if they wanna do something else that they wanna do Reiki, like you mentioned, it's all fine but it all starts with that belief that like, I am worth healing. And then no matter how many times, you know, a doctor, a person says, Nope, can't be done. It's just a mystery or, oh, actually you're totally fine, just, you know, you need an antidepressant or something. And all of these are things that we've been told repeatedly in our practice that people have been told in the past, you know, once we know and we make the decision that I am not giving up and I am going to figure this out, I'm going to heal, then it really is unstoppable. So, I would say, yeah, mindset is just number one.

Michael: Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. And I went through a phase at one point over 40 doctors. Right. Trying to figure out, I mean, unbelievable amount of time, unbelievable amount of money invested to finally get to the one. And I was just like, whatever it takes. Right. And that that's what I'm willing to do. So, I think, you know, sleep, journaling, meditation those things are always kind of like the most standard practical baseline lifestyle adaptations and shifts that you can make in this process. Are there areas that you think people are just not talking about that you think are also beneficial in terms of lifestyle changes?

Kyria: Yeah, of course. One of the most important and they're gonna sound more surface level because they are right, because they work for everyone if somebody really wants to know like, oh my gosh, almonds are the worst thing for me to eat. Then, you know, we would have to dive into their blood work and their history. But another big one is like water filtration and that's a pretty easy one to do, but especially, you know, for a lot of our clients who are I'm really honestly, everywhere nowadays, the waters just contaminated. Right? So, one of our clients, we couldn't figure out what was going on and we were like diving into all these different things and he was always, you know, the first one to wake up in his household and the first one to like, get things ready and the first one to go out the door and go to work and the rest of his family was fine, they weren't having the same, like skin outbreaks that he was the same fatigue, kind of like, low libido, low testosterone, all his hair was falling out all these different things. And we did his blood tests, we did all these things and we balanced some things out, optimized his nutrition, and then we realized that he was always the first one to get up and shower first before anybody. And they lived in a lower income neighborhood and guess what? We did a little water test, super toxic water, like really old pipes, super old house, and he was bathing in like all these heavy metals every morning, nice warm water, pours were opening up and all that water is going straight into his bloodstream. So, a shower filter, and then he started feeling a lot better, but we would've never known that. Right. So just as like a little prevention, people can get shower filters for 30 bucks or $3,000, right? There's a whole spectrum, but at least just getting something is really helpful ‘cuz there is an argument to be made that like our shower filter for water is more important than our drinking water, do both. I would say just, you know, filter it all. But because our drinking water, it goes through our GI system, right? So, we actually do digest and filter what we put into our mouth, but not what we put straight into our bloodstream. So, when we're showering, especially if we're doing warm showers that water's just straight in. So that's something that people don't usually thinking about is just filtering the water.

Michael: Yeah, that's a phenomenal point. You know, when I remember when I lived in Indonesia, I was getting sick constantly and someone had mentioned to me like, dude, the water here's not that clean, you might want to go buy a filter. And I put it on the room and my bungalow and sure enough things got different. And I love that you said that, cuz nobody talks about that, that's such a phenomenal point. And I think people also forget like the skin is literally the largest organ that you have.   And so, you know, taking care of that and thinking about it, are there any other things, like in terms of household things that people should be looking at, things that they're using in day-to-day basis? Like, oh, what I literally wanna do is just kind of give people baseline to think about what they're putting on and into their body?

Kyria: Yes. On into their body. So, the water is essential, right? Water is life. There's really two things that we need to survive as humans. I mean, I would say there's a lot. We need like love and friendship and fun and all of that too, but really two things. So, we need fuel and we need oxygen as these human animals that we are so for most of us, fuel is glucose. There's some people who are doing the ketogenic diet. And even fewer people who are doing it well and who are actually burning ketones as fuel, but for most of us who are burning glucose. So, stabilizing the blood sugar is one of the most critical things to achieving peak performance and Optum health. And that means for a lot of us having a good, healthy protein and fat every two to three hours. Some people are a good candidate for intermittent fasting, but again, it just depends on the individual. So having stable blood sugar throughout the day, if we start to get hangry that like hungry, angry sensation, then we know that our blood sugar has tank for people who are focusing on like biohacking a really peak performance, then getting something like a continuous glucose monitor can be really helpful. So, that way we can self-monitor and see when is this happening? Like when is my blood sugar dipping? When is it peaking? What foods are better to help stabilize it? But that's one of the easiest things to do is just having consistent stable blood sugar. And then the other thing is oxygen, right? So, just like deep breathing can be so helpful and some of us like to do breathe work, some of us like to, you know, meditate, things like that, but we don't have to do that, just taking a couple deep breaths every now and then to revitalize ourselves and to bring oxygen and is so important. And a lot of people miss the breathing wall sleeping. So, sleep apnea is actually pretty common and there's like 25% of people who have sleep apnea are not overweight, it's usually looked at as like, oh, just if people are like obese, they should be concerned about sleep apnea. But sleep apnea is essentially when we stop breathing at night and that's so critical cuz we don't even notice that. Right. And like our partners or if there's other people sleeping in the bed or room with us, they probably wouldn't even notice that, main way to test that is to get a sleep test, but you wanna make sure that you're getting enough fuel. So again, for most of us it's glucose, that doesn't mean like having, you know, candy bars, but just eating good quality protein and fat throughout the day, and then also breathing. So, breathing mindfully throughout the day but especially at night, those would be another two things in addition to the water.

Michael: I love that. Yeah. I installed, I like to say a CGM in myself and it was shocking to me those sweet potatoes skyrocketed me. Right. And so, if you really wanna be able to monitor your glucose, I highly recommend talk to your doctor. I am not one. That said this conversation's been absolutely incredible, before I ask you my last question, can you tell everyone where they can learn more about what you do?

Kyria: Yes, absolutely. So, our website will be the main place it's www.kyriahealth.com and that's where people can get like that PDF about the functional blood chemistry if they wanna kind of plug and play with their own numbers, or we've got lots of goodies on there. And then we're also @kyriahealth on Instagram or Facebook. You all are more than welcome to email us info@kyriahealth.com everybody my team, and I we've all overcome a lot of health challenges. So, we deeply are passionate about this and just wanna help people to heal naturally.

Michael: Yeah, I love it. And the reason I had you on the show, I think it's really important is because through a natural path, I was able to create a massive, massive change in my life. And it really just did start with looking at the blood markers and going deeper than any other doctor was willing to go and so, I'm a vast amount of appreciation for you and what you do. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Kyria: What does it mean to me to be unbroken? I've thought a lot about this ‘cause I knew we were gonna ask it and there's really two answers. So, one is just never giving up. Right? I mean, they say there's no such thing as failure, as long as we never give up. And I feel like that is so resonant with being unbroken, kinda like what we were going back before is like, what's the first step to healing and it's having that mindset and that belief that I am worthy of healing. Right. So just knowing and never, ever giving up and always failing forward. The other thing is to get up and get out and I'm just so deeply grateful for my mom who went through so much trauma in her life and she overcame it, she's unbroken and she helped to teach so much, and I just stand on her shoulders and I just feel like being able to get up and get out, like how you just shared, where you learned about your health and then you got out, right? Like now you're helping to heal the world you're helping to make the world unbroken. So, when we first start with ourselves and we never give up, and then we get up, we do what we have to do to overcome it and then we get out, like we help to share our gifts or our passion, or at least our story with the world so that way positive ripple effects.

Michael: Beautifully said my friend. Thank you so much for being here. Unbroken Nation. Thank you for listening.

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