Balance Hormones by Listening to Your Body – with Shannon Miller

Hi, and welcome. I'm Dr. Donni Wilson, and today I'm looking forward to introducing you to Shannon Miller. She is a holistic hormone practitioner. She has a master's in health and nutrition, and she has her fdn, which is a functional diagnostic nutrition training. She loves to help especially women with hormones and fertility and autoimmunity. As you know from me, these are also topics I love to help people with. So I'm really looking forward to getting to talk with Shannon about just how we help women and what that looks like and to give you all some hope if you've been struggling with any of these health issues. So thank you so much for joining me, Shannon.

Thank you, Dr. Donny. Happy to be here.

So tell us a little more just to introduce yourself and what got you to be offering these services and being so passionate about helping women. Tell us more about your story.

Yeah, so my story is an interesting one. I come from a very conventional Western medicine family. My dad is a surgeon. My mom worked in public health. She still actually works in Public Health 40 years later. I was very much brought up in a conventional household, but my life took a very unconventional turn at a pretty young age, and I'm always very open about this. Part of what got me to where I'm at is around the age of 12, I actually was struggling, started to struggle with an eating disorder. And that ultimately led to a lot of my issues down the road. But I started this, like, very unhealthy relationship with myself and with my body. I was very much aesthetically driven. I had a lot of limiting beliefs, thinking my worth was tied up in how I looked.

And so, you know, I continued with an eating disorder for over a decade. And when I was around 21, 22, I started to deal with a lot of physical issues. I started to wake up having a lot of pain. I always say, like, it felt like I was having to walk on shards of glass first thing in the morning. You know, as soon as I opened my eyes, I was like, oh, God, here we are again. I have to get out of bed. And that was just the most painful thought to me. And what ultimately ended up transpiring over the next three years. It took me three years to figure out what was going on. I had an autoimmune disease. It's ultimately what came about. After seeing multiple specialists, after having a lot of different blood tests done, I even did some spinal taps, MRIs. Like, I went through the gamut trying to figure this out.

Yeah. And it's like this endless. You know. Oh, now let's check this. Now let's do this imaging. Now let's do this blood work.

Yes.

One thing after the next.

Yeah. And it's like, well, here's a referral to this doctor. And then they don't know. So here's a referral to this doctor. They thought I was pain seeking. They actually thought I was, like, a pain seeker. I have alcoholism in my story as well, but I was never a pain pill person, but they thought I was pain seeking. And so I kind of had. What I've heard so many times, and I'm sure you have, too, is like, I was starting to think maybe I was crazy. Maybe it was in my head. Maybe these things weren't really happening.

You start to question yourself because everyone else doesn't believe your story. So you start to question yourself, too. Oh, my gosh. And then it's even more painful. It's emotionally painful.

And I was on Facebook one day, and I saw this ad come up for, like, how to reduce pain and inflammation in your body. And I was like, oh, that's me. So I went to this seminar, and it ended up being a functional medicine doctor. I had never even heard about functional medicine, holistic medicine, alternative healthcare. I mean, my mom did, like, acupuncture a couple times, so I guess that's.

Alternative.

World to you.

A whole new world. And I went to this seminar, and I was like, oh, my gosh. She's speaking to me. She's speaking about me. And so I ended up booking a consultation and sitting down with this doctor for 90 minutes. And she was like, shannon, you have an autoimmune disease. And I was like, how do you know that? And she's like, looking at your history, looking at everything that's been going on, everything that you told me you have an autoimmune disease. And we ran, like, two tests to confirm it. You know, after three years of this whole, like, I wish I had known.

I would have just come right here.

Yeah. I was like, oh, I have it. Like, right, I have a diagnosis. I know what it is. And she's like, yeah, now we know what it is. But the real magic is in how we heal you. And this started a completely 180 of my life, because, like I said, I had an eating disorder in my history. I had alcoholism in my history and sexual abuse in my history, too. Which all, as we know, mind, body, is so connected. It all really adds together in the end. And so by.

I don't want to say, like, having to have a Different relationship with food. I got to renegotiate the relationship I had with food and that I had with my body and see food as something that could heal me, as something that was truly my medicine. And where I got to, by just really transforming my relationship with food and starting to speak to myself differently, I really started to heal. And that ultimately led me to go back to school to get my master's in holistic health and nutrition. And it was there that I wasn't engaged at the time, but I actually got engaged while I was in that master's program. So I started to think about kids. I always wanted to be a mom. I had many therapists actually tell me that I probably would never be able to conceive because of the damage I did to my body. I had an amazing professor who I'm still in contact with this day, and she said, shannon, if you want to prepare yourself to have a baby, you need to start taking action now. And I was like, But, Dr. Clark, I'm, like, two years away from really, like, wanting to conceive. And she's like, yeah, you should start on it now. And I was like, oh, okay. So, yeah, I started to dive into all of this, you know, information about hormones. I had been on birth control since the age of 13. Nobody ever told me, like, you're not. You're supposed to have a period every month. Like, I went years sometimes without having a period. You know, I did every single different birth control that was out there. I had no idea what it was doing to my body. And so I got to spend these two years, like, just preparing my body, going in deeper into mindset, work, fitness, food. And I think maybe two months into trying to conceive, we conceived our first child. Now we're going for baby number two. But I just fell in love with this whole idea, the whole concept of, you know, the mind and the body being connected and then just really spending time. Like, you know, I work with women that are going through ivf, that are going through different routes of fertility, right? And it's like, no matter what route you ultimately need to take, like, preparing your body is still going to matter so much. So that really is kind of my crazy, you know, story of how I got to fall in love with holistic health and especially, you know, autoimmunity, but also female hormones. And I'm so grateful for the struggles, right, because it made me learn so much about myself, and it helps me understand other people on an even deeper level as well.

Well, I think that's what I hear.

Really unique about your story is that you were. There's something about you that you were willing to look at the struggles as an opportunity for learning. And I know that so many people feel stuck in the struggles, you know, and I've been there too. I can totally understand because I've had a lot of pain in my life, too, and pain in the body and as well as emotional pain that you also shared with us, it can cause us to become locked in our own bodies and very separate from ourselves. Right. It's like we kind of imprison ourselves. And it can feel like you're very lost, you know, Very lost. Like you lose track of who you are, like you were saying, because the medical system can feel like it's dismissing what your symptoms are. You start to question yourself. So you lose track of yourself and you lose track of the fact that, you know, we're humans living in a human body. This is our body, this is what we're doing. And it's. It can be, you know, because of the pain we want to get out of our bodies, want to try to get away from the pain, but.

That'S not going to happen. We're in a human body, so we need to, like, actually go into it and work through it and find our way through it. And so you're really. I think that your story is an inspiration to people that that's possible. You know, that you can learn from the pain and that you can find other solutions. And especially say with fertility, where I think so many women are told. I mean, I know, I hear from women too, all the time when I'm helping them with fertility, that they're told all the time, oh, you won't be able to have a baby or you likely are going to have a problem. And it's right away, I see that it's putting this negative intention into the space.

And it's like, you know, hey, maybe that's true, but maybe it's not true. How about instead we say, hey, we understand. You can accept your body and say, hey, my body's been through a lot, but I'm going to also hold the space for something different possible. If I shift my diet and my environment and my self talk and right then it can shift. The body can shift and the ovaries can ovulate and pregnancy can happen.

Mindset is, it's powerful. You can do all, you can eat all the right things. You can, you know, have the perfect workout routine. But if you're speaking negatively to yourself, and I did this for years, I spoke negatively to myself. And I love the phrase, like, you can't heal a body that you hate, right? You can't heal a body that you're at war with. And something that I'll have some clients do. And they. They look at me when I first tell them this. They're like, you're crazy. You want me to say that? And I'm like, yes. And I'll have them say things like, I'm having a regular period. I'm ovulating every single month. I am carrying a healthy baby. And, like, just making those truly powerful statements. And a lot of times it's women that haven't ovulated or haven't had a period in months, if not years, that are struggling with pcos, Polycystic ovary syndrome, you know, where their periods are really off and they start to see those things, and it shifts something in the body. You're really nurturing your body to do what you're asking of it, of what intention you're putting behind it. And it's pretty powerful to see how things can shift and change just by shifting the mindset.

Well, we know. We know that if we put an.

Intention out there, first of all, our reticular activating system in our brain starts to seek that. We're basically saying to our brain, let's. I find this.

Let's experience this.

And I really think that the. The body listens to what we're saying to it, you know, so if we're like, I love this, what you're saying. Like, I'm ovulating. I'm having a regular menstrual cycle. I'm even. I'm pregnant. Even if you're not yet, you know, but you're. You're saying. And that's why at first it feels.

Weird because you're like, how come I'm.

Saying something that if I look right now, it's not showing up in our 3D reality, but. But you just practice saying it anyway, and then your body will follow those thoughts.

And then you can't help. But I mean, it does take that kind of trust to just kind of fall forward into that. But it is when you've been through so much pain and you're ready to give up at a certain point, you're like, okay, I gave up already. Let me just try this. Sometimes it's when you surrender like that, right? You're just like, let it all go and just surrender and be like, okay, I'm just gonna say it anyway and see what happens.

I Call it the gift of desperation. Like, it's kind of the gift of exhausting all the other routes of trying, you know, the conventional route or so many of us, right? Like, we see this person doing one thing, so we try and do that, and we try. We go through all the different things, and it's just like, oh, my gosh, I'm tired. Like, somebody just hand me something that's going to work. And it's truly that gift of desperation. And I love what you said, like, the gift of surrendering, you know, surrendering. People think it's a weakness, right? They think it's giving up, but it's not. It's really letting go and stepping into your power, not away from it, but it's just kind of releasing the fact of, like, okay, I can't do this on my own. I can't do this by myself. Like, I need help. I need guidance. And we were not made to live in isolation. If 2020 taught us anything, right, it's. We need people. And there is strength in community. There's strength in finding other people that have similar struggles and banding together and having people to listen to you, people that you can, you know, open your heart to people that are just going to say, hey, I've been there, too, and there's a way through this. I think there's such power in that.

It's a good point, because I think a lot of women feel ashamed, you know, feel ashamed of either not feeling well. Like, sometimes people feel ashamed to even say, hey, I can't. I don't feel good today. Or I have a headache, or I have. I have menstrual pain, or I have been trying to get pregnant and I haven't been able to, or I had a miscarriage, or, you know, these are conversations that a lot of times we're not. There may not be normal conversations or may feel like this is. You feel uncomfortable saying it to someone. And yet being able to communicate about that really is healing part of the process, too. And I love, like, you. You really give. I hear you saying how you give your patients this opportunity to put words to their experience. And I find that too, you know, that when we can, you know, if. If. You know, that's one of the amazing things about being a practitioner is getting to really be present with people in their pain and with their stories, even the things that they haven't felt comfortable sharing, sometimes even with their closest family members, right? It's like we start to make. We kind of make ourselves alone in it because we're so afraid of how the other person's going to respond. And so sometimes it can help to have a practitioner you can share it with first until you can kind of get the words and get the feeling of it. And then you sometimes find, okay, now I feel more comfortable sharing about this with other people, too. Yeah.

And I think, too, it's oftentimes there is so much shame around, you know, like, I don't know why it's taboo to talk about periods or ovulation or vaginal discharge, but it's like, you know, as women, at least we all have it, we all experience it. And, you know, like, again, I'm a very open book. I had a miscarriage a couple months ago, and I shared it because that's the only way I know how to process things now is I have to share it. I have. Like, that's part of my processing. It's part of how I, you know, grieve things and work through things. And it opened the door to other women to share their own experience as well. And I think it's just sometimes we don't know how many people have gone through the same thing because we're all so afraid to share it. But there's so many people that are going through the same thing. And I think it does take a little bit of time to be able to find the words. Right. Like, there's a lot to the throat chakra and actually finding the voice and putting into words how we're feeling. I think sometimes we, you know, at least for me, like, I was so used to just burying things and shoving things down that putting words was really hard for a long time. But again, it just those struggles. And I think why I embrace my struggles so much is that it allows me to get closer to other people. It allowed me to get closer to myself, and it allowed me to actually have honest relationships for the first time in my life, because my wall was down, my shields were down for the first time, and I was able to let other people in. And so I think healing is not a isolated journey. Healing happens with other people. Even if people aren't going through the exact same process or are on their own health journey, it's still like, we heal in community with other people.

Yeah. Thank you. And thank you so much for sharing about your miscarriage experience, because I think you're modeling how to talk about it and how to feel about it and how to, you know, how to connect with other people. And it's. Other cultures do do that more than our culture. And I think it, it's definitely going to be healing and helpful because otherwise then it. It gets stuck in our system as a trauma or stress. And that just adds to the pile of other stresses. And yeah, I totally agree. I found that for myself too, that the more I share, you know, I had a history of migraines for over 20 years, and I used to not say anything about it because I felt like, well, I'm supposed to be there for my patients and I can't be saying to them that I'm having a migraine. And when I finally did start talking about it and sharing and saying, hey, I get these migraines is when the migraines stopped happening. So it's amazing to me, like, of all the things I was doing as a naturopathic doctor for over 20 years, it was talking about it, that I made a big difference. And it. I think that your point is, is, you know, the way I hear it is like, hey, we're. We're all human and humans, human bodies do some stuff that we sort of think of as gross or, you know, or we're not supposed to talk about it.

But the reality is we all have.

Human bodies and all women's human bodies bleed and have discharge and sometimes have a miscarriage or get pregnant or don't get pregnant or, you know, like, or in pain or. This is what our human body, our bodies do those things that we vomit, we poop, we sleep, we, you know, that's just part of being in a human body. And when we talk about a baby, we're like, oh, yeah, baby, of course they're gonna do those things. But somehow we think that as adults, we're not supposed to do some of those things, but it's not true. It's. Yeah, it's just part of our human nervous system and our bodies. And to be more accepting of ourselves, then we can be more able to share with others and be accepting of them. And it's, it's such a, I think, a missing part of the healing process because we're. A lot of times in medicine, we're in a separate room and a separate. Everything is of course confidential. Right. But that creates the separateness. And so just re looking at that and encouraging those who are listening to just look inside and say, hey, is there some part of my story that I, that I've felt hesitant or ashamed or, you know, some reason not felt comfortable sharing? And how does start shifting that? It doesn't have to mean that you're gonna, you know, make a big announcement you know, but you can start shifting that direction gently and gradually, right?

Yeah. And I think sometimes it's like the missing pieces in what we're not saying. Right. It's, it's oftentimes not in what somebody is saying that we need to listen to. It's everything that somebody's not saying because that's really where a lot of the healing opportunities or the missing pieces are lying. And it's interesting that you just said the separateness because again, my dad's a surgeon. I'm so glad we have western medicine.

Right.

So grateful for it.

Yeah.

The one thing that happens though is that everything is very dissected. Right. You have a specialist for this, a specialist for that. I mean, that's why it took me so long to get a diagnosis, is that they were just looking at one function or one.

Organ in my body. And it's like the body is connected, the mind is connected to the body. You actually can't separate them and hope to figure out what's going on. And that's why I'm so grateful for functionality medicine because it takes the whole person into account. And I think if any of those doctors had been like, hey, how were you born? How were you brought into this world? I was a C section baby from the get go. My immune system took a huge hit because I didn't go through the vaginal canal with my mom. That's a huge piece of the puzzle. But nobody asked me that until I went and met with this other doctor. Nobody cared about that. And I'm like, from birth. Right. We have these different pieces of our story and that's why our whole story has to be taken into account. Not just what's been going on the last six months, but what has been going on for your whole lifetime. Because there's little pieces of the puzzle that are going to create the full picture all along the way.

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Yeah, and sometimes it, like in nature Pathway medical school, we use this technique, but anyone could, could do it anytime is just write down, write down your story, you know, from your, from your birth or even when your mom was pregnant and just write it down. What is the story of your life? Because for a lot of people, maybe they've never really told it that way or expressed it. Even if you start by expressing it to yourself through writing, you know, and then, yeah, maybe, you know, working with someone who then you, you can talk about those, you know, those experiences and sometimes just getting to express it and love yourself through. Because usually in our childhood, a lot of times we didn't have a loving presence. And that's when the, sometimes these memories kind of get, you know, kind of get also stuck as a trauma is if we didn't have a loving presence there to guide us. And so we can do that now. We can go back and go, okay, where were the moments in my life when I could have used some loving support? And then give it to yourself even at this moment in time. And that can have a big shift too. You've seen that too.

Yeah, I love like the, you know, kind of model of like speaking to your inner child or speaking to that younger self because it's so many of our belief systems, right. Are in place at a very, very young age. And what I have found through my own story and through a lot of the women that I work with is that we have these messages, we have these beliefs that were in place from a very young age. Sometimes it's not because somebody actually directly said it to us. Right. But sometimes it's just what we interpret and we start to believe it with every single fiber of our being.

Beyond.

I'm not enough. I'm not smart enough, I'm not pretty enough. I spoke with a woman a couple weeks ago. She was like, I was always told, you're so pretty, but you'd be prettier if you lost weight. So for her, she's like, she's, that's what she's always chasing. She's like, I'm not pretty until I lose weight.

Right.

Or you know, the, I'm not lovable because, you know, a parent figure left or something like that. And there's so much that we need to heal of that younger child, you know, and so, yeah, you know, I love writing down your story and starting to really look at that. Not with any judgment, but just kind of with curiosity, like, okay, you know, what incidents or what experiences have really shaped how I think how I act as an adult or as an older self. So I love that idea for sure.

Yeah.

It's so valuable. And I really seen how it can. It can shift something at a deep level where all of a sudden you just, your perspective shifts. Because if you are looking at these limiting beliefs and we all of a sudden shift that limiting belief to a statement that's loving and unconditionally supportive, that can really shift the way you look at yourself and your life and the decisions you make. And it's like all of a sudden it's this tiny little tweak, and yet it has this ripple effect that's as a. And it can help with, as we've been talking about from the beginning, you know, that can help even with things like menstrual cycle and fertility and autoimmunity and any kinds of hormone imbalances or other symptoms in the body like migraines and anxiety and depression. And I help a lot of women with HPV or abnormal pap smears. I see the same pattern, that this makes a difference there too, where you start to really know yourself better.

You know, just being able to help yourself through and be able to shift these different health issues just by shifting some of the belief systems that are, you know, in your internal conversation with yourself and you're in your environment, in your. In your life.

So it's, it is, it's so amazing.

And, and as much as we're talking about this is kind of mindset and psycho emotional work, there's also such power in nutrition. And I know that's another area that.

We both focus on is, you know.

And I think it's important to point out because sometimes for us it becomes so obvious. Of course what we eat is going.

To influence our health.

But again, sometimes it's not as obvious.

Like, oh, my gosh, is what I.

Eat going to affect autoimmunity? Is it going to affect fertility? Is it going to help with an abnormal Pap smear? And yes, it definitely does. What you eat makes a difference too.

You know, so it's what you're feeding.

Yourself in terms of your mindset and your thoughts, but it's also what you're feeding yourself in terms of your food.

Yeah, it's, you know, I always like the word like nurture and nourishing, those really resonate with me of just nurturing your mind and nourishing your body. Body.

And you're right, nutrition becomes second nature when it becomes your life. But when I first started, I had no idea of what inflammatory food was. I had no idea of how gluten reacts in the body, and I had no idea, like, what dairy does or alcohol. Especially for women struggling with hormones, alcohol is a big one. That can really make a big difference in those struggles, too. And I just had no idea that alcohol had such an impact on estrogen until I started to learn more and more about it. But I think whenever I start working with somebody on nutrition because it can become overwhelming. It can become kind of information overload. And I think, honestly, a lot of people are feeling that because there are so many more people talking about nutrition and food is medicine or food is fuel and all of those things that it can become like, are carbs good? Are carbs bad? Is dairy the devil? Should I eat dairy? What's going to happen if I eat gluten? Oh, my God, sugar. People are overwhelmed sometimes when they come to me and I'm like, okay, let's just really simplify it. Did your ancestors eat this 100 years ago? Was it around 100 years ago? Yes.

No.

If the answer is yes, probably okay to eat. If the answer is no, maybe steer clear, you know, and kind of really just taking it baseline at first before getting into the nitty gritty. Because a lot of times for people to pick up an apple over an energy drink, like, that's a huge shift. And it's like, okay, cool, let's start there. I'm a big fan of, like, start meet people where they're at, right? Because trying to take somebody from, let's say, you know, more processed food, kind of fast food to like a paleo diet, that is very overwhelming. So I oftentimes like to be like, okay, let's just focus on, like, a couple things. And I'm a big fan of adding before taking things away, right? So I'm always like, can we add another serving of vegetables somewhere in your day? Can we add one more glass of water? Can we add one more hour of sleep? That's another big thing I focus on is sleep, too. I'm like, where can we really, like, add things to your life? And, you know, oftentimes adding helpful behaviors, adding, you know, nutrient dense food, it kind of helps to just automatically crowd out some of the less favorable things. I don't like saying Good food, bad food. I just say things that help our health, things that take away from our health, or things that maybe don't provide us the outcome that we want. But I don't think there's any good or bad food. I think food just has a different effect. And we can really pick food to have a certain effect on our body. It's just kind of choosing which one we want.

Well, and it's. And I like, you know, what you're doing is you're helping people to navigate the. Sometimes how the negative messages pop back in, you know, because our, you know, our. We can have these perfectionist tendencies, you know, and even. Even almost a drive to stress ourselves out more.

And so if we get, you know.

Information overload or we're like, okay, I'm supposed to do this, this, this, this, avoid this, you know, eat more of that. You know, it gets to be like, the perfectionist messages start to overwhelm us again. And with your history of an eating disorder, I think that's become really clear to you, like, hey, we want to steer clear of those messages that end up in that stressed almost toward the eating disorder kind of a place we want to be in this acceptance of ourselves, acceptance of our foods, and just navigating in that place of acceptance of, hey, what really does my body need and what can I choose that I'm going to enjoy? So it becomes eating in a way that is both. You get to enjoy the food and it's good for your body.

Yes, 100%. I'm a big proponent of balance. And again, because if I become too rigid in what I'm eating, it leads me down a dangerous pathway. And I've seen a lot of people in this industry kind of almost become very indoctrinated by certain ways of eating or like, oh, my God, you can never have that. And I'm just. It doesn't sit well with me and my approach, basically. And, you know, my son's birthday was last month. My birthday was last month. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to have a piece of cake, but I'm going to make sure it is really, really good. And I enjoy every single bite of it. I don't have cake every day, but when I'm having some of those foods that are, you know, I call it. Sometimes I choose foods that are going to nourish my body, and sometimes I choose foods that are going to nourish my soul. Right. You know, sometimes they're different. And my husband always jokes because I'll say Sometimes the healthiest choice you can make is to have the cookie. Sometimes that is the healthy choice in that moment, depending on what's going on. Sometimes it's going to be a green smoothie or a kale salad, but sometimes it's a cookie. And really, I think the big takeaway that I've had and that I like to steal into people is be in tune and be in touch with your body. Don't be so disconnected. Don't rely on. On a food tracking app to tell you if you're hitting your calories or not. Don't rely on a fitness tracker to tell you if you've taken enough steps. Those are tools. They have their place. I think the biggest tool we have, the biggest resource that any of us have in how we're doing is our own body. And we know our body better than anybody else, better than any doctor. So I always tell people, don't let a doctor tell you that you're not feeling the way that you're feeling because you spend every day in your body. You've spent every year of your life in your body. Don't let anybody tell you that you're not feeling that. Or, oh, no, that can't be happening. You know, your body. Listen to it. Because we talked about pain in the beginning, right? Pain is a great motivator, but pain is a. It's a signal from your body being like, hey, something's wrong, you know, and is taking Advil the right thing to just diminish the pain? Or is it taking that moment and being like, what's off? What is my body asking for? Because that's what pain is. It's a signal. It's a communication from your body. So the more aware, the more in tune we are with the body. We can become actually quicker at giving our body what it needs to feel its best. But we become so disconnected from it. We rely on so many things outside of ourselves instead of just being in our bodies again.

No, it's so true. You know, it's the other day guiding people to, you know, even, like, turn out the lights and just close your eyes and go inward and see. Because otherwise we're so distracted, right? We're so distracted with all the different things going on and comparing ourselves to someone else. And we lose track of ourselves and we lose track of what our body's trying to tell us. And when we can go inward. And we. We tend to feel like, you know, kind of spending time with ourselves is like. It gets categorized as something like either that we're doing nothing or we should be doing something else. So I really like to encourage people to just be like, no, it's. You need that time to just connect in with yourself and listen to the messages your body's giving you. And not that you're gonna necessarily, like you said, go respond right away to everything your body's telling you, more like you want to listen. And then consciously and intentionally decide, hey, what. What am I going to choose differently to. To shift this pattern based on what my body's telling me? And, and so it becomes more of a. Of a gentle and gradual shift versus a quick fix. These things we're talking about. I mean, it's, it's. It's not a quick fix to get the ovaries working again after being on a birth control pill, for example, or after being under a lot of stress, like an eating disorder. The ovaries under that kind of stress, they're told to turn off. So it's going to take some time for the ovaries to get the signal back again. Oh, okay. It needs to feel safe inside your body. It needs to feel not stressed. It needs to feel like you're getting fed regularly and sleep regularly and light and dark exposure on a consistent basis in order for the ovaries to feel like they can make hormones and ovulate and hold a pregnancy. You know, so it's. That takes time. It's not going to happen overnight. Right. It's the consistency of taking good care of yourself and connecting with others that allows the ovaries to get those signals. And same with the immune system and autoimmunity. Right. It's. It's the same idea. We need to shift the internal stress in our bodies in order to shift the immune system away from autoimmunity. Because autoimmunity is really our immune system trying to protect us from ourselves. When we think about it, it's like.

Why is the immune system trying to.

Protect me from myself?

Well, because it's so overwhelmed with all the stress that it gets confused and turns inward. And we need to. We can shift that. Once we become aware of it, we can shift that pattern.

I mean, our body, like the mechanisms that are innately woven into us is incredible. But our body is always 100% of the time trying to keep us alive, you know? And I know for me, I felt at war with my body. I felt like my body was, like, out to destroy me, and I had to have that little flip of like, no, my body is trying to protect me. What do I need to what is it trying to protect me from and how do I resolve that issue? So, and you said one of my favorite words, especially when we're talking about reproduction, safe. Our body needs to feel safe, right? It doesn't want to feel like it's chasing the bear or running from the bear. Because especially when we're talking about fertility, the body goes, hey, not safe. Not time to bring a child into the world. And even if you're not trying to conceive, ladies, your cycle, especially ovulation, is critical to your health. Not just making a baby, but to your health. So that ovulation, it's not your period, that's the main event. It is ovulation that is the main event. And so many women are ovulating because of that stress response. And so it's really like, okay, how do we let the body know it is safe? And it comes down to that. Consistency, consistent food, consistent nutrients, consistent sleep, consistent rest. There is no quick fix. I always say if you can, at least with weight loss, if you can lose it fast, you can gain it faster.

Healing takes time. And that's one thing I know. We are a go, go, go society. We want it now.

Everything Amazon, two days, it's there. You can get groceries by this afternoon. The world's a little too fast almost. Our body takes a little bit more time. Things don't happen overnight. And that is a big shift for people. And it's hard because there's so many things out there that are like, lose 20 pounds in 20 days or, you know, fix everything in two months. And it's just not the reality of how our bodies were really created and how they've evolved. And so giving yourself time and letting it be a journey, right? Letting it truly be a healing journey or self exploration or whatever you want to call it, but it does take time. And I know that's so hard. It was hard for me to like, listen to when I was starting my own journey. I hated that my teacher was like, you need two years, Shannon. Because she knew my history. She knew like there was a lot off, there was a lot that needed help. Okay, not saying it's going to take two years for everybody, but.

There was a lot of damage I did. I needed that time. And it helped me be patient. It helped me have grace with myself, knowing that it didn't need to happen overnight. And then I didn't have to change everything overnight either, you know, because change is hard. Our bodies, if we try to change too quickly, that actually stresses our body, right? Our body goes into that, whoa, this is dangerous. This is a little too much. We're going to go, we're going to revert back. And so I think that's the other thing. When people try to change things too quickly, we fall into the trap of we can do it for a little bit, but we can't sustain it. So it's the small steps and then building upon that and having the consistency that's the secret. You know, it's not a magic pill, it's not a magic plan. It's taking those small steps and then layering in the next thing and doing that for a longer period of time.

That's really true in some ways. When we kind of allow ourselves the time, then it also lets go of expectation and let go of that stress and pressure. And sometimes at first it feels weird because we're so used to feeling stressed and pressured. We know that it's like, oh, wait a minute, oh, I can actually take a breath. Oh, I can, I can, you know, I can have time to listen and respond. And it's then you start to feel that becomes, to feel more normal, you know, more familiar. And that, that, that same feeling that you experience, you know, when things are just more gentle and more relaxed, that's the same experience your body wants and needs in order to function. And it's, it's such a, it's such a good point about how it's amazing that, you know how the body starts working when it gets to experience that day in, day out. I mean, that's the thing. Our bodies are just constantly responding every day and picking up on all of our stimulation. And if we shift that stimulation consistently, the messages inside of us shift too. And it's. I see the same thing when I work with patients with fertility, but also with HPV and abnormals past years, because it's amazing, the more we help recover from the stress is how I think about it, shift out of stress mode and back into balance on all these different levels.

When we start to shift from digestion to hormones to immune system to nervous system, we start to shift out of stress mode into more of a balanced functioning. Then our immune system can fend off viruses like HPV or EBV or lyme or whatever chronic infection might be happening. It also then allows for the ovaries start working the hormone, the thyroid starts working, the cortisol comes back into balance. And so it becomes this orchestra of health. And that's when I say to women even who are not planning to get pregnant, I say, you're going to become.

More likely to get pregnant.

Because sometimes it surprises women, like they're like, oh my gosh, I got pregnant. And they weren't planning on it, but it's because they were successfully shifting out of stress mode and into this healthier, balanced place. And of course, then the ovaries are going to ovulate and pregnancy is more likely. And so that's what better way to find yourself improving fertility than in just by being healthier.

Well, and I think that's the amazing thing about functional and holistic health. Right. Is that it's not working on one system. Right. Obviously, it's much easier for people to understand, hey, I help women balance their hormones and I help with fertility. But that's not all we're doing. Just like you said, you can't work on fertility without working on the immune system, without working on blood sugar regulation, without talking about detoxification and toxicity toxins, without addressing thyroid.

Good lord.

Talk about a critical part of your fertility journey is your thyroid. You can't isolate it. And I think that's the beauty of it too, is that we don't have to know the intricates of every single disease and every single function and system. It's like we just support the entire body. And if you support the entire body, everything gets better. Who doesn't want that? Which I just think is a really beautiful piece of holistic health, is that it really is taking everything into account and helping improve maybe things you didn't even think you needed to improve upon.

Yes. Sometimes it is a pleasant surprise. Like all of a sudden you're like, wait a minute, I used to have this issue and it disappeared. Where did it go?

It can be a pleasant surprise. And I want to make sure everyone knows how to find you so they can connect more with what you know, just these messages that you're sharing and.

The opportunities to learn more from you. I know your businesses or your practice is called Three Leaf Health, right? Yes.

Three Leaf Health and Wellness. And the three is very symbolic. One is the trinity, which I grew up with. I am the youngest of three. And then obviously mind, body and soul. But when we talk about fertility, it is preconception, conception, postpartum, and then the three trimesters. So three is a very sacred number to me. And I'm Irish, so Three Leaf Clover. So, yeah. So my website is threeleaf health.com and then Three Leaf Health and Wellness on Facebook and at Three Leaf on Instagram as well.

Wonderful. So, oh my gosh, thank you so much. And I encourage everyone to, to go find you and connect with you, especially if the. This conversation has resonated with you. And, and, you know, I'm so glad you are here to listen. And thank you so much, Shannon, for joining me for this really important conversation. I think that we covered such important pieces of the healing process as you described. You know, just know that there can be a healing journey, and if you and I can be little lights on the path of your healing journey, then that's what we're here for.

We're guides, you know, but we don't do the healing for anybody. Right? People are like, oh, my God, thank you so much for everything you did. And I was like, I didn't do it. You did. I was here. I walked right alongside you. But you did the work. I didn't choose your food for you. I didn't put you to bed like you did that. And I think that's the biggest thing is that, you know, to whoever's listening, like, it's your healing journey. It is, it's. It is your work that you have to go through, but it's. You earn it, you. You get to explore it and. And get to the other side, but it is you doing it. Don't ever let anybody, you know, take credit for the work that you're doing.

We're.

We're guides and we're here and, you know, wealth of information, right? But ultimately, you guys do the work.

No, that's so true. And it's. In that way, then it becomes very empowering. You start to get that confidence in yourself and empowered about your health and your life and what else you can create. So we want that for you. I completely agree.

I always say it's a bad business model, but I don't want people to need me years down the road. I want you to gain the insight and gain that intuition and awareness of your body that you know what it needs. You don't need me. I love the people that I work with, but I don't want them to, who need to work with me for, honestly, longer than a year, because I want them to know how to continue the journey on their own, you know, so that's maybe a bad business model, but that's how I like to work.

Well, you know, the way I look.

At it is then it just keeps offering more space for more people. That's the thing is I just, you know, the more it makes when you start to see what's possible, you know, the patients come back with the pregnancy and with autoimmunity going to negative and write all these positive spaces. And I just feel so grateful to be an honor to be with them on that path. But also then they say to me, please reach out to help even more women. And so it gives us that opportunity to write, just to connect and help so many more people by being successful. So that's, you know, that's the thing. Yeah, it's like, it's, that's the way.

That I work in my practice, too. It's, you know, and I agree, it's, it's important because. Yeah, it's not about just, okay, let me, let me, you know, let's continue this forever. No, I don't want you to be reliant on me. I want you to learn yourself and your body signals and you. The tools that work for you so you can, you can keep going and then reach out if you get stuck. You know, we're here if you get stuck along the way. But you know, you're going to learn and you're going to be able to solve it yourself.

Wonderful.

Well, thanks again, Shannon, and I look forward to staying in touch.

Thank you. Me too.

Thanks for listening to how humans heal.

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