Best of: Feel Dismissed by Doctors? – The Truth About Root-Cause Healing & Empowerment with Dr. Jill Carnahan

Over the next 6 weeks, we're bringing back our most popular podcasts over the last 2 years. These are the ones we got the most input from, people thought were the best, the greatest, and from some of the top experts in the country. This first one is actually Dr. Jill Carnahan. First met her years before the pandemic in Switzerland, my wife and I. She's a great, great person, great individual, and her story is insane. She got diagnosed with breast cancer when she was in medical school. got inflammatory bowel disease from the chemotherapy and literally figured out how to heal herself. Her story's amazing. And so I think it, for all y'all looking out for answers to questions that no one's giving the answers for, this is a great episode for y'all. Hope you enjoy.

If we're traditionally in the insurance system, we're constantly, and you know this as well, fighting with the company to say, my patient needs this. And the business person on the other end will say, well, they don't really need that. And who are they to make a medical decision? But all day long, Maybe 50% of our time is spent fighting with the bureaucracy of what's covered and what's not covered, and I wanted nothing to do with that.

Welcome back, everybody. I'm super excited to be with my friend and colleague here, Jill Carnahan. She's an awesome functional medicine practitioner, a leader in the thought space, and she has an amazing, compelling story. So after we go through the introduction so y'all can get to know her a little bit, we'll just kind of dive right into it. Dr. Jill completed her residency at the University of Illinois in family medicine at Methodist Medical Center and received her medical degree from Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, Chicago. She received her bachelor's degree in science and bioengineering at the University of Illinois. Dr. Jill is dually board-certified in family medicine and integrative holistic medicine, and she founded the Methodist Center for Integrative Medicine in Peoria, Illinois in 2009. Dr. Jill is a survivor of both breast cancer and Crohn's disease. And she is super passionate about teaching patients how to live well and thrive in the midst of complex chronic illness. She has an amazing story, which we're actually going to dive into today. She's also a widely sought-after inspirational speaker, travels around the world, travels all over the place lecturing physicians like myself. She's a prolific writer and she's been all over the place. She's been on Shape Magazine, Parade, Forbes, MindBodyGreen, Townsend Newsletter, a whole host of things. She's recently co-authored the Personalized and Precision Integrative Cardiovascular Medicine textbook. And, her prescriptive memoir actually came out in 2021. So, Dr. Jill, super excited to have you here today and just talk with you and share your story.

Thank you, Dr. Hartman. It is absolute pleasure to be here. Yeah.

I want to start, you know, first met you actually, it was in Switzerland actually, a couple, several years ago with my wife and just kind of being with you for a week, hearing your story, your passion, also getting to know you personally. I was really struck by, you know, you're not, you're someone who hasn't just, it's not just smart and, you know, learn the stuff, but you have a story. You've got Heart Behind the Mind. Could you just walk us through briefly medical school, just kind of walk through some of your health issues and kind of how you were confronted early on in your training with a need to find a different path to help yourself get better?

Yeah. So, I grew up on a farm in central Illinois. I was one of 5 children, wonderful idyllic Norman Rockwellist kind of place. And, unbeknownst to me, some of the chemicals and things that I was exposed to maybe even in utero, maybe even back that Were slowly killing me. I had no idea. I lived a wonderful life as a child. I did have allergies and asthma and some pretty significant, in hindsight, probably mast cell issues. But other than that, overall healthy. And I did also didn't know I was a healer, but I knew I wanted to help people. And I thought, well, why not go into medicine? And for me, it was a big, big deal because there was no one in my family. It was farmers and my mom was a nurse, but there was no doctors whatsoever in any history of my ancestors. So I was the very first one to even consider. When I first, because I was so naturally minded, we We grew up with like organic things from the garden. And my mom as a nurse would, you know, try maybe honey and ginger before she would do an antibiotic. So it was very much, not that we would not do regular medicine, but we would always try to find more gentle approaches first. And we knew that food was medicine. So I grew up with that foundation and I had my, most of the times I visited a chiropractor instead of a primary doc for the basic like check-in or nutrition or whatever. So I had a very holistic mindset. And I started by looking at, you know, chiropractic school and acupuncture school and some of the other modalities. And then literally in the midst of that, I thought, Why not medicine? Even if I don't agree with everything out there, what if I could actually take all the good and then add to it and have a bigger toolbox? And so that was my journey. And as I started getting accepted to allopathic medical school, I chose Loyola. So in Loyola is where my journey really began as a healer, because as a third-year medical student, I'd just gone through my surgical rotation. And of course, we're taught to do breast exams because that's part of the surgery. I found a lump in my left breast, and once again, I was 25. I did not think anything of it. I wasn't concerned. I would've probably ignored it because the grueling schedule of medical school, you know how that goes. But I went ahead and had an ultrasound and a mammogram, and I'll never forget Aaron sitting next to the radiologist because as a student, there's always the learning opportunities. And I look over at him and he is telling me the findings. We're looking at my mammogram and ultrasound on the board. And he said, Jill, if you were 55, this is highly suspicious for ductal carcinoma, which is breast cancer, the most common form of breast cancer diagnosed. But you're not, so go ahead and get a biopsy. It's probably okay. But I knew immediately from tone of voice, the look in his eyes, this is serious. And that moment really changed my life forever because shortly after I had a biopsy and was told that I had a very aggressive form of breast cancer and I was only 25.

So that, that's crazy to think about 25. 'Cause when I remember, I did see a case of breast cancer, young lady, when I was in medical school, she was 28. And I was told this was like a 1 in 20,000 or 1 in 30,000 event. If I remember correctly from one of your Lectures somewhere. I think atrazine, was that the pesticide, which is still, I mean, it's still used, isn't it?

So of course, part of my brain is so curious and part of my thing post-breast cancer was, well, what happened? Why did I get this? Could I have prevented it? What did— so I was just wanting to discover, and I dove into many things like clean hair and makeup products, bath and body products, cleaning products, like all the things that we use in our bodies, especially as women that are parabens and phthalates and chemicals. And then growing up on the farm, organophosphates and glyphosate. But the big one is I started to read Tyrone Hayes's work about Atrazine as a massive endocrine disruptor, I started searching. I'll never forget that day. I like Googled atrazine use in the U.S. and the map came up and all of a sudden, right smack dab in the middle of Illinois where I grew up was the largest distribution of use in corn and soybeans. I literally called up my dad and I said, Dad, I'm looking at this map and atrazine's like smack dab so highly used in central Illinois. Do you still use that on your crops? And he kind of sighed and because he start— I mean, with my cancer and stuff, he was starting to take stock of what they were doing on the farms and what was traditional, what else they could do. And he he sighed and said, "Yeah, Jill, we do. We use it very heavily on corn." And I just thought, "What in the world?" The same year I was diagnosed in 2001 in the European Union. So this is over 20 years ago now. It was banned. So it's been banned for over 20 years in Europe, and it's still today being used. And it's a known known toxic endocrine disruptor, which means it has a hormone-like effect on the body for men and women, and causes disruption. Some of which is prostate and breast cancers.

Yeah.

And I think what's interesting about that is, I mean, I hear the story, I'm like, oh, Atrazine. Well, that's just Illinois. That's just Dr. Carnehan. That's not anywhere else in the country. But here in Richmond, we had an issue with arsenic in the groundwater from my local coal burning plant. Annapolis, Maryland, which is not too far from me, they have a lot of issues with runoff from chemical, from companies around there. And they have a higher incidence of cancers and Annapolis, and all of a sudden you start looking and every place has these centers. You know, my family went on a little trip to learn Spanish in Costa Rica before the pandemic to this place, Tuviste Torrealba, which is beautiful in the middle of nowhere, the gastric cancer capital of the world. And so I thought it was in the middle of nowhere and I actually found out, you know, lo and behold, they have chemicals everywhere for food. They send around, actually around the world, actually. So Even though your story sounds a little, it's unique, it's actually common if you start looking, this idea of environmental toxins causing massive health issues. So once you got the diagnosis of breast cancer, what were the next steps? Because there's a whole process of you going and getting treated and how it, one thing led to another with your health.

Yeah. So of course the diagnosis was a shock and that was the big turning point of doctor to patient. And I always say now those really difficult things, and if you're out there listening, I feel like so many people are in crisis, whether it's a relationship breakup or a financial crisis or a job loss, or, and I could name 101 other things. When crisis happens, the biggest thing that we can learn is to embrace the uncertainty it brings and also the lessons that it brings, because often we look back and we say, oh, that was actually really, really good. And I look back now at my cancer and I would not be the same person, the same doctor, the same human being without that profoundly changing experience that literally created, I mean, really it created the biggest part of my healing and also the biggest part of my ability to heal others because I experienced something that no medical textbook could teach me. First thing, first lesson was all of a sudden I'm faced with all these decisions. First of all, young woman, it's not the standard of care. What do we do with her? Very aggressive. And so I was faced with, do we do super aggressive chemotherapy? Do I skip all the conventional and do alternative or what? What do I do? I ended up doing all the recommended conventional, very, very aggressive radiation, 3-drug chemotherapy. One of the drugs was calculated to the maximum rate before my heart would stop beating. So it's literally like it was toxic. It was super toxic. I could never ever get, again, get even a small amount of that drug again in my life. I've had the lifetime maximum dosage. Wow. But that's how it was. And then I had multiple surgeries to get clear margins and the radiation that followed. But what I, what struck me, the lesson that I took away was here I am in medical training almost, you know, 3 quarters of the way through. And I went to, this was back in the days before you can get all this stuff on Google. I was literally at the medical libraries getting journals and reading these journals. And I was so overwhelmed with how complex there was not a black and white solution. And I realized for that moment. So often we go into medicine thinking there, here's the answer for this XYZ, and it's so gray. And you and I know this, but it really struck me as how in the world am I with medical training having this massively complex decision? How does the average patient deal with the complexity and the gray? And we trust, like as a patient, when you trust the doctor to give you the right answer. But when I, for example, radiation after lumpectomy, black and white, right? It's not. When I looked at mortality, there was zero increase in mortality. It was like a 3 more months of life average. And then that was in a 1%. I don't know what the statistics were, but now, but it was so small that I was like, wait, we're basing this decision on that amount of data. And that was the same for many things. So I really thought when I get to be a doctor, I want to help navigate this with so much compassion as a patient faces a decision. And the biggest thing I offer often is like, number one, there's no pressure because so often they like get cancer and like, we need to decide next week what to do. And maybe that's true in a very small percentage of aggressive cases, but most of the time they have a few weeks or at least a few days and that pressure they feel, often they make a poor decision because they're feeling so much pressure. So one of the things I love to tell people is take your time, get a peace in your heart, pray about it, because that is where you're going to find the peace. And when I made that decision, I knew there was never, even though I've had immune deficiency and many other side effects since all of the treatment that might've been related to my treatment, there's not one moment that I have said, what if I hadn't done that? Because I made a decision in real time, I'm going to do this. And I'm never ever going to look back no matter what happens, whether I live or whether I die or whether I have side effects. I'm going to make the best decision today and I will never ever ever live in regret. And I teach that to patients too because it serves us so well to move forward with the best peace of mind that we can do and then never ever have that rumination going behind us.

Every fall the schedule tightens and most of our attention goes to getting the kids ready. Almost none of it goes to the person holding the whole thing together. So I put together these 3 things just for that. A daily multivitamin in the active forms your body can actually use, quercetin and nettles to support your immune and respiratory health without the drowsiness, and NAC, N-acetylcysteine, to help your body rebuild its own antioxidant reserve. This is what I take every fall. That's aaronhartmanmd.com/backtoschool. It's really interesting you saying that because there's so much angst in the healthcare system. Like, the most feared thing for a female is the diagnosis of breast cancer. And then, you get the diagnosis, it's, oh my gosh, I have to have this out last week. And it's, well, you don't. You actually have months to figure things out, like you said. And so, but we're so trained that once you get the diagnosis, it has to be cured last week that people don't have time to sit and ruminate and think and process and talk to their family and actually Come to a decision where they are like, I'm doing the right thing. So it's really, I think that's a really key thing with whatever your diagnosis is, unless it's like acute appendicitis or something like that.

Right. There's rare exceptions, even maybe acute pancreatic cancer that's so aggressive that it dies in a day or something. There are exceptions. But, and the bigger thing to that is like that really, and I think all of us now, the slowing down and being present and really tapping into our bodies innately have wisdom. And so often we relegate the knowledge to someone else, like someone else tell me what to do. Whereas if we, Not that we can't gather information from professionals. I think that's very appropriate. But then ultimately we have to make a decision. And so many patients relegate that because they're like, oh, I don't know what to do. But if they go deep down, if they pray, they meditate, whatever practice they have, they often will know. And their body is very, very wise. And I love encouraging people to tap into that innate wisdom that we all have.

And that requires having some space and having some time and having some quiet to sit and actually Listen, which is very atypical for our current culture. So you got surgery, you got chemo and radiation. How do you do with those therapies? Like what were some of the things that they did with your body? If I remember correctly, at some point in time you actually ended up getting inflammatory bowel disease. I'm not sure if that was this part or a little—

Yes, exactly. So it was brutal. It was so brutal. And I literally, in my mind, I'm like this tough farm girl. I'm like, oh, no one will even know I have cancer. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna keep doing my rotations and that. And at the first chemo hit, I was curled up in a ball. I started losing my hair right away and I was like, Oh, there's no way I can even get out of bed, let alone do a rotation. So very quickly, I knew I had to take a leave of absence. I took nine months off to do all the therapy, came back, and once again, I was still in that. This is also part of my healing: is I was in this tough farm girl mentality. Don't ask for help. Don't complain. And you know how residency was? It's same same era. Unless you're dead or running like 103 temperature, you report to work. You do not call in sick. There's no such thing almost. There's no compassion to like. And you think about the training. I mean, we're trained to hold our bladder, just not eat, to not sleep, to like deny. All of our own physical needs so that we can show up, but we're actually not doing ourselves any service because how in the world can we show up as a compassionate, fully human physician when we're totally in denial and basically dissociated from our own needs? And I was no different. And so I came back in like literally, you know, a week after I got my last radiation treatment. I'm back on the floor doing ER, and I was running fevers. I was so sick. I was so malnourished. I had no business looking back. I was like I would have said, sweetheart, take some time off. Like, take care of yourself. But I had no concept around growing up in the farm family, brothers on either side of me. It was all around, you know, show up, don't complain, work hard, all those things. So I did it. Looking back though, again, it was not good for me. And I started running fevers. And within 6 months, I ended up passing out in my ER rotation, ended up in the ER with an abscess that was drained. And then woke up to the surgeon saying, Jill, this is classical Crohn's disease. You have Crohn's disease.

So that's kind of crazy from cancer to Crohn's. And I think just that's really super interesting because there in my medical school class, there was a young lady who actually got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis after her first year in medical school. I mean, to your point, I actually remember going to having influenza and doing rounds with 102 fever yesterday.

Yeah, right?

It's a different world. And so like stress-induced, it wasn't just illness, stress Making this other inflammatory autoimmune thing kind of pop up. So what was next? I mean, you know, many people would have dropped out of school. Many people dropped out of school after the first incident, right? The second one. So what do you do next? Like, what's your next step?

Yeah, and then again, it's hard to even describe. Like, I was probably really dissociated, and I was very like I had a strong will. I was so sick. I was so sick and so malnourished, and it makes perfect sense because some of the chemo drugs actually induce more permeability. I had a genetic predisposition towards having an abnormally aggressive response to a normal. Microbiome, which was part of the leaky gut creating dumpage of bacterial contents into my blood. And then that created the storm of developed into Crohn's disease. So it kind of makes sense that it was a perfect storm. First visit was to the gastroenterologist. He said, Jill, you're going to need steroids. Here's an immune modulating option for drugs. You're probably going to need surgery during your life. And he gave me this whole spiel and this is incurable and you're likely going to have part of your colon removed over your life. I mean, it was dismal. And the last question, I was so sincere in this. I was like, you know what? I want to do whatever I can.

What diet should I be on?

Does diet have any to do with it. He did not even pause and he's like, Jill, diet has nothing to do with this, and kind of shamed me for asking the question. But I had this little enough stubbornness in me and enough intuition to be like, that can't be right. Like, how can diet not have anything to do with Crohn's? And I didn't know any better, but I went out to find answers and I came across some data on specific carbohydrate diet and a few other things, and I had nothing to lose, right? I was already on medications for the inflammation and I was very, very sick. Yeah. I changed my diet, and at that moment I was gluten-free and more specific carbohydrate than anything, which is still what I like to start my Crohn's and colitis patients on, although there's many variations. And within 2 weeks, my fevers went away, my diarrhea started fading, and I wasn't cured. It took a lot of years to really heal the microbiome in the gut, but there was such a dramatic difference on 2 weeks on a new diet that I thought, oh my goodness, there is something going on here.

So the diet that doesn't work, that's not supposed to work, actually worked.

Yes.

Did you ever go back to the GI doctor and like do a follow-up or didn't say, hey, I did this, do you think it's helping? Was there any kind of follow-up with that or just kind of not mention it at all?

You know what, I, I, it's so funny because I'm trying to remember because I did have that gastroenterologist, I, and he was fulfilling a prescription, but I think once the prescription ran out and it was like asacolamine, I think one of those, you know, early kind of drugs that aren't super powerful, and then I think I stopped the drug and never went back.

So, wow, wow. So, so, and one of the things you said, it took years to heal. I think that's an important thing for people to hear because a lot of times people will go You know, GI effects or you know a GI 360 or whatever test they do, and they're like, "I changed my diet," and why am I not better in three months? So why am I not 100% better? Healing is a journey; it's a process. And for your gut, it's I tell people it's a lifelong. I mean, you're gonna have to always be pushing against that microbiome forever. So you're finishing your third year of medical school. You got this double diagnosis. What was your next like event?

Yeah, and just a comment on the diet. I think that's so critical because I have chosen something lifelong like my diet. I'm basically paleo grain free, completely gluten. Gluten-free, sugar-free, all processed food-free. Now the good news is, as I get healthier and healthier and healthier, if I want to have a little splurge—I don't ever splurge on gluten and dairy, don't drink alcohol—but certain things may be a little bit more processed once in a great while. I can do that now. So it's also not as restrictive as it used to be. But this has been a lifelong choice. And then to your point, I really had to deep dive into the dis—I had significant dysbiosis. I had silent celiac, which I didn't know. So there was a lot of healing that had to take place over many years that to really get me to the place where I say I am. completely cured of Crohn's, but it wasn't overnight. And what I love about diet is you can often see a transition rip very quickly, but it takes time. It takes so much time to get to where I've gotten. So got outta medical school and again, I started, you know, turning the corner and gaining weight and doing well. And then I went to Peoria, Illinois to do my residency and came out of there and asked the hospital to help me build an integrated medical center. So then I was kind of on my way to really doing what I wanted to do, but I was still stuck in a system at that time. It was a hospital-based system and it was all about productivity.

Yeah.

So I'll never remember, I'll never forget sitting in a board meeting and I was the integrative medical director of that part of the hospital. And there was a gastroenterology director in all the different departments. And the CEO was talking about each department and the number of beds filled, which meant how many, how much business are we sending to the hospital? Which was hysterical cuz I'm like, wait a second, I'm trying to keep people out of the hospital. Like, this is not gonna go well for me if I, so I kind of saw the writing on the the wall as far as they wanted the status of having an integrative center and they were the only hospital in central Illinois that did, but they didn't understand what that really meant in terms of how do we treat the patients, how do we heal the patients. And even for me, I was still in a productivity model. So I was required to see a lot more patients than is legitimately appropriate for functional medicine. And I was burning myself out and I didn't know it, but that's kind of the story there. And somehow I think God aligned it so that I could get to Colorado and I ended up leaving that job and starting over in Colorado. And, that was really the beginning in Colorado, 2010, to my functional medicine career.

I think that's a really interesting thing you said there because when I started my practice, one of the things I learned early on was the average family practitioner created about $1 point— and this is 2007— created about $1.4 million in revenue for the local hospital. I mean, they know the numbers down to the decimal and most of it's hospital admissions and radiology. And so, they're looking at you. And when they buy practices, they're not buying the primary care practice; they're buying the referral center. And so people don't realize that affects so much of what's approved by insurance, how physicians—not that we're bad people—but just it's the game. And you almost have to jump out of the system and figure out a different reimbursement system where you're directly responsible to your patients, not third-party people. I think could you talk to that a little bit? Because I think that's something people don't understand. Like why is there? Why don't more people do integrative medicine? Why don't the people I hear this all the time? Like it's just there's a lack of understanding of how the system actually works. That the reimbursement schemes, and ultimately you have to follow the money. Every fall, the schedule tightens and most of our attention goes to getting the kids ready. Almost none of it goes to the person holding the whole thing together. So I put together these 3 things just for that: a daily multivitamin in the active forms your body can actually use, quercetin and nettles to support your immune and respiratory health without the drowsiness, and NAC, N-acetylcysteine, to help your body rebuild its own Antioxidant Reserve. This is what I take every fall. That's Aaron Hartman MD dot com slash back to school.

I love this because it's so important and for patients to know. First thing was when I first got out of residency and went and I started in a family practice, but I had one day a week that was cash integrative. So I kind of saw both in the beginning. I did traditional family practice, but just started to do a little bit of cash on the side where I would spend more time with patients. I'll never forget in that part of the practice. Often the question would be, because this was like very commercially based, I'd say, okay, well, let's start with vitamin D or some real basic thing. And they'd be like, does insurance cover that? And it was flabbergasting. I'm like, well, no, but it's like $10 a bottle. And why wouldn't you do something for— so this idea that you have to invest in your own health and that insurance is going to save me is so— well, it's a myth because insurance is there for a— it's if you are falling through the cracks or you have a life-threatening illness, it will probably help you pay your bills. And even then it's questionable, but it is not to keep you healthy. It It is not intended to keep you healthy, and the decisions made by your insurance will not keep you healthy. So that was the first aha. Second aha was I'm doing this cash practice, right? What happened was the patients from my family practice compared to the cash practice were so different, and here's why. When someone invests something of themselves and they pay something to a doctor out of their own hard-earned cash, they're invested. And at first I was like, oh, I hate the cash system. I don't want to. I want to do this for free. I want to you know serve people. But what I realized is by them investing in my visit. And the cost associated with that, all of a sudden they had a whole different attitude about what they needed to do because they're investing. So they're willing to change their diet. They're willing to do things. And I've never gone back from cash since that time because number one, I no longer work for the insurance company. I am sitting with that patient. I'm making—I am completely tuned into them and what is best for them. If they need an MRI, I'll get it and I'll get it approved if possible. Or if they need this, whatever they need, it's all about them. If we're traditionally in the insurance system, we're constantly, and you know this as well, fighting with the company to say, my patient needs this. And the business person on the other end will say, well, they don't really need that. And who are they to make a medical decision? But all day long, maybe 50% of our time is spent fighting with the bureaucracy of what's covered and what's not covered. And I wanted nothing to do with that.

Yeah. I think one of the things people don't realize, because we used to see a lot of our own patients in the hospital, we were the hospitals for our patients for about 15 years. And we were graded on how many days a patient was in the hospital and how many complexities Codes we'd give them. So someone came in with a UTI; they had to get upcoded to urosepsis because that gave them three days in the hospital versus UTI gave you a 23-hour admit. And so there's always pressures, and so you're put you're pushed to find more sicker diagnoses, but never ask why do why is this your third UTI in two months? Why do you keep on getting like urosepsis for a 55-year-old female? Like what's going on here? That was never the question. It was like maximizing the value for those admission things. And so that's something I think that just perverse and simple. of in our system that unfortunately many times makes patients become proceduralized, which is unfortunately kind of what, how it is. And so I love that you say that you patients that are engaged, that are there to get better and there to learn, but also do what you tell them, what you recommend to do, not in an authoritative way, but they want to heal.

Well, and what you're describing is so the paternalistic model is old school and I think it's going away. I don't think it's going to survive very much longer. And that's the authority of the doctor who knows what to do, right? The old, some of those Patrick Quinn, MD, and some of those, you know, medicine woman and the, but the truth is like now, like I feel like number one, I'm a partner and I'm like really engaging in where do you want to go? Where do you, let me be your guide. Give me your map of where you want to go and I'll help you get there. I'll give you like a detailed map and then you get to take the journey, but I'm your guide. I'm your tour guide. I'm the one who encourages you, supports you, asks the questions so that we can figure out together what the best way to get there is. And that excites me because I Ultimately, I'm very hands-off. I'm like, you can do this or not do this. You can get these supplements or not get these supplements, but I will help you with everything in me. But ultimately, you have to take the first step. And that's going to not only create a much better outcome, but a much better trust-filled partnership, which is core.

Yeah. And on a side note, I want to back up one thing you mentioned about the food. I remember, I think which conference I was at where you were talking at, and you at that point in time, I don't know if you still do this or not, you actually had shipped ahead your food for the weekend. That you're going to be somewhere. And I think that weekend your food didn't come. So you literally were fasting for 24 hours waiting for your stuff to come. And actually, I think Dr. Wahls does, Terry Wahls does something very similar. Like, when you're using your food like a drug medicinally to heal and you have a significant health issue, I mean, you were taking it very, very seriously. I think you mentioned if you got an infraction, you felt it for days. And so I think your body's a teller, but that's the case. With anything, food, your body takes what you eat and it turns it into who you are. And so I think like realizing that if you really wanna take your health seriously, you really have to take food seriously, like a drug. Not, not everybody has to take it to that extreme, but we have to take it seriously.

Yeah, no, I actually love that cuz people don't, finally after 20+ years out of cancer and Crohn's and I can be more, a little bit more flexible, but I'm still, you might call it rigid, but I don't call it that way. It actually gives me more freedom because every time we make a decision in the day, we lose our willpower. It just goes down like this. It's Evidence-based, right? So by the end of the day, that's when most people snack on unhealthy things because they've lost the willpower and like, oh, chocolate sounds good, or potato chips or whatever. But the truth is, that's because you have all these decisions. If you eliminate those things from your pantry, or you don't ever— you have a— like for me, I just have rules. I don't eat gluten. I don't drink alcohol. I never have to. If someone offers me a drink or someone offers me a piece of bread, there's no decision willpower because I just— that's not who I am. It's identity. And we create identities around our health and healing and what we want to be. It's so easy because this is who I am, not what I do. And when that's part of our identity, it makes the decision-making process so easy. And for me, Gretchen Rubin talks about abstainers and moderators. Abstainers are the ones that are just all or nothing like me, and it works much better. There's another type called a moderator, and they might need like a 90/10 rule. So you might resonate with that more than you resonate with what I'm saying. But the truth is, someone like me, those rules actually create such a beautiful guardrail that makes your life so easy.

So you, you worked through breast cancer and then the toxicity from chemo. You worked through inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's disease, and occult celiac you mentioned. What was your next health struggle?

Yeah. And so, that was my 20s. That was a rough time. Children of my own because all through my fertility years, I was dealing with very, very severe chronic illness. So, I was doing well, moved to Colorado, started a new practice. I was running again, hiking, doing life, and we had a massive flood in Boulder, 2013. It flooded my office and cause water damage, unbeknownst to me. But about 6 months later, I started having symptoms of mold toxicity, which I— we weren't taught in medical school, and I wouldn't have even known what it was. Brain fog, skin issues, mast cell activation, just so many different things. Fatigue for sure. And lo and behold, there was Stachybotrys in the basement of my office. And I started by testing my urine, doing the blood workup for immune system, and then testing the bulk sample, and everything matched. And Very soon after that, it was the end of 2014. I was like, "Oh, mold is an issue," and then I did a deep dive because I wanted to get well. All of my education in the gut and some of this with mold has been: I need to fix myself first, and this was no different. I feel like God's given me these like things that have been okay. Let's see how you handle this. So mold was the next thing, and it took many, many, many months to detox and really understand that. But that was my doorway into mold toxicity and becoming a mold expert and environmental toxicity. And I overcame that eventually too after several years.

So you've overcome some— 1 in 2 Americans will get cancer and the mold is just crazy. Like 22, 23% of the population has the gene for it and half the buildings in the country have water damage. You've worked through some things that sound unique, but actually they're way more common than people would give credence to. How have these made you good at what you do? How these helped hone your skills, your art as a clinician? Because there's the cognitive aspect, you memorize the stuff and you become good. There's the heart aspect of being a compassionate person, but also that personal experience of working through this or a loved one, how has it affected how you clinical insight, but also how you care for people?

Yeah. So there is, I mean, almost anyone who sits in front of me, whether they're suffering from something similar for me or something totally different, I know what it's like to face illness, to face it alone, to be in pain, to not know what the next day might bring. And so I have definitely a deep, deep, deep empathy with my patients because of that. I sit across from them and I never ever feel like I am any better or any different. I'm just human, just like them. So So it really brought a level of humanity and compassion because were it for the grace of God, I would be in the same place. I could be dead. So I know the gift that I've been given. And if I can extend that to hope and healing to others. One of the things before we went on that you mentioned that I want to make sure we talk about is so often people look at me and again, right now I'm out in the world and teaching and doing all kinds of fun things. And they're like, well, that's Dr. Jill, but I could never do that. But I feel so, so humbled because I think any one of us has the opportunity. And where does that come from?

Yeah.

So I think we all— I love the work of Viktor Frankl. Frankl and just the ability of our mind to overcome. And one of the things that kept me going through each of these things was believing that there was an answer. Like I never, ever, ever had a doubt that I could get through cancer. It was hard and it was scary and it was painful and same with Crohn's, but somewhere deep, deep inside of me, and I'm not different from anybody else, we all have this deep innate sense of ability to overcome and we have to tap into that. And so if you're out there suffering or struggling with something and you feel like you've lost hope. I just encourage you to tap into that deepest place of knowing that there is answers and believing that. There's a chapter in my book, I call it Believe, Act, Wait, and it's really the formula for my life. I didn't realize it till I wrote it, but the believe part is knowing and believing that something else is possible, that you can heal from this, that you can find answers. And you kind of have to let go of your timeline because that's what we get attached to is the control. And well, I want it in 6 months, or I want it in 2 years. But if you let go of the timeline and you don't ask the questions about, well, when you're just focused on the, I believe that something can happen and you really trust that process, that's when miracles start to happen. So the believe is the first part. The act is do what's in your power. Go study nutrition, find a good functional doctor, change your diet, go actually whatever things are in your capacity at that moment to do, you do, you go get a new training degree or you go whatever it We always have some part that we can do. So we have to believe, believe something else is possible, act, do what we can. And then the wait part is trusting a higher power, whatever that looks like for you, to do the things that you can't. And when you do that, when you walk through life with great expectation, I cannot tell you the number of times you could call them miracles where the resource, the person, the solution, the thing came to me and it was in the wait period. And it's the hardest period because we have to trust. Yeah. Trust that the answers, the divine solutions, the people, the places, the things, the drugs, the supplements are coming and will be revealed. But when we trust, it opens up the universe to help us in that journey, and people over and over will experience healing. It's hard, but it's also simple.

I have experienced that on the opposite end as practitioner because my part of my story is my daughter, her health issues. But there's routinely times where I'll learn something new, and four weeks later. There's a new patient comes in that I would have had no idea what to do with you 5 weeks ago, but now I know. And, it's just like I have this little mantra that I pray when I go to work. I pray to see what can't be seen, hear what can't be heard, and diagnose what can't be diagnosed. And actually, strangely enough, that happens routinely, not just a one-off but on a routine basis. And so, I think people just overlook the power of the spiritual aspect we are. We have a spiritual aspect to us, whatever your belief system is with that. That's huge. And if you ignore that, it's going to impede your healing process, which I think is a great way to segment into. It's a thing that's been on my radar in the last year or 2, but I've come to realize it's a big issue. And some people call it different things like trauma, big T trauma, little t trauma, medical trauma, or whatever. I found that's one of people's places in their healing process where they get stuck. And the trauma could be something that happened to them when they're 6, or it could be their health issue. They've been chronically ill themselves for years.

Yeah.

Could you talk a little bit about that? Not maybe not yourself, but other patients, like how this aspect of trauma, and some people call it limbic kindling or vagal nerve dysfunction or whatever you want to call it, but this idea that your brain gets stuck and we have to get our brain to do what it was made to do, which is help us self-heal and self-repair.

Yeah. Oh, I love this because I've been doing functional medicine a long time and I love the supplements, diet, nutrition, lifestyle. All those things are important. But by far the biggest transformations I've seen is when we go to this level of the limbic looping or the trauma or whatever it is, and we all have it. Some people do have some really significant big T traumas, horrific things they've been through, but most of us have a combination, or sometimes we just have the little t's where our, you know, mother might've favored our sister one time and it felt, you know, shameful or whatever it is. And they can seem small, but if we don't address them and start to find healing within ourselves, that we carry those patterns and those patterns will develop into illness. For example, breast cancer. There's actually been studies and research, and Gabor Maté talks about this. his latest book with women who are over-nurturing, meaning they put everybody's needs ahead of themselves and they don't really take care of themselves. That was definitely me. And it's a beautiful thing. I grew up in this idea that, you know, you serve others and love others and take care of others first, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if it's at the expense of yourself or you have self-hatred or you disown parts of yourselves, your body will develop symptoms. And for me, that's what it was. I wasn't taking care of myself. And what I learned is I grew up in a culture that was very conservative, kind of fundamental Christian, and it was taught Self-love is like selfish or maybe not godly or whatever. And so because of that, I thought, oh my goodness, I can't love myself. But my healing actually happened when I started to really love my body, love myself, accept myself in a healthy way. And only then could I trust. We talked about a patient making a decision and trusting their intuition or peace that they might find in a decision. Well, if you don't really love yourself and believe that you are worthy of love as a human being, not for what you're doing or achieving, but just for being born. You're worthy of love. And if you start to embrace that, well, then you can actually start to trust the thoughts that come, the ideas that come, the direction that comes through prayer, through meditation, through talking with friends and colleagues and resources. And so those things are so crucial because that creates a foundation of safety, which is where trauma is sabotaging. If you don't feel safe in your body, like you can trust this thing that we're inside, that our soul lives If we can't trust that to give us information, then there's no safety. And when there's no safety in your body, you cannot heal. Like, it is an absolute— I can tell you 100% of the time, if someone truly does not feel safe in their body, they will have illness. So this level, I feel like, is so powerful. I'm not the expert. I send people to somatic therapists and Primal Trust and all kinds of programs, Gupta, DNRS. There's a bunch of them out there. Or even just the work, neurolinguistic programming or tapping, but any sort of thing that works for you, I think is really, really powerful in the healing. And if you're not doing some of that, you're probably not going to get 100% to where you want to go.

Yeah. And I've found that to be 100% the case. People, they get like 60% better or 70%, whatever that sticking point is, that is it. Did I miss mold? Did I miss Lyme? You know, running the NutriVal, what have I missed? And I usually do that a couple of times and then eventually, okay.

Wait.

Maybe we need to— and I had one patient actually, she was in her 70s and she had a bad relationship with her mother and her mother passed away and she just was stuck in her healing process. And I pulled a Dr. Phil on her and I was like, you need to go down to your mother's grave in Florida. You need to curse her out and then you need to forgive her. And just the idea, like, I have to forgive this person who caused me pain and suffering for— and, but when she did that, she came back to me like 4 months later and she's like, oh my God, Like a weight came off my back. My pain is almost all the way gone. And we had done all kinds of stuff and fancy tests and mold and Lyme and binders and who knows what. And, but her sticking point was her brain was, you know, this is where some of cell danger response comes into play where her brain was making her mitochondria get stuck. And something as simple as forgiveness for her was the next step in healing journey. So I really love, love that. And I've discovered the exact same thing in my practice as well. So, I want to respect your time. We're getting close to our hard stop right here. I love your story. I love all you do. If people want to learn more about what you're doing, could you just share with us briefly? We'll put this in the show notes as well, like where people can learn more about you, on what you're doing, on what you're doing next.

Yeah. So, everything, the hub is my website, which is my name, just Jill Carnahan, jillcarnahan.com. We just put the book out last year and it's been really well received. And probably more than anything because I really, really pour out my heart and my story in a very, very personal way. And I just wanted to share because I think, like you said in the beginning, I am not unique. I am no different than you. My story is no different from you. And my prayer in the book was that you would see yourself in some part of the story and maybe somehow have hope that you too can have resilience and overcome because I am no different than you. And that's the book. It's called Unexpected: Finding Resilience Through Functional Medicine, Science, and Faith. And then as part of that, we did a Documentary into 2022, and that's also available for streaming. It's just Doctor Patient Movie, Doctor Patient Movie dot com. It will soon be on iTunes and Amazon. For the moment, it's at the website, and you can stream it or watch it or share it or whatever. And that's also just a deep look into what does it look like in the functional medicine practice to see patients? What does my own healing look like? And again, both of those were for me. It was a real challenge to go super deep and to share very, very personal because I realized it's that that's our connective tissue is our human story and our humanity. And I want to come across as I'm just another woman trying to navigate this life. And if I can be an encouragement to you, then that would— that's all I need.

Thank you so much for your story. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate you sparing some time to talk with us today. And I'm sure we'll see later. We'll put all this information in the show notes. So thank you so much for your time and sharing with us today.

You're welcome. All right. Take care. Take care.

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