Holistic Wellness for Women: Embracing a Multifaceted Approach to Health

Hi, and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donni Wilson, and today I get to introduce you to Katie Wells, who is known as the Wellness Mama. She runs and hosts the Wellness Mama podcast, has written books, and created her own product line, and everything to do with helping everyone with their health and wellness, especially moms and families. So thank you so much for being here today, Katie.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for our conversation, and you've.

Just generously also hosted me on your podcast, and I'm so appreciative of that. To be part of what you do, and anyone who isn't aware, I encourage you to definitely go check out Candy's podcast, Wellness Mama. I don't know, I'm curious, like, when you first started out, because you have, I think, over 700 episodes of your podcast out now. When you first started, which would have been years ago. I mean, did you have any. Any idea that this could be such a resource of information for people and how much people would just be drawn to what you're offering?

Oh, thank you for saying that. I started it in 2014, and at the time, and to some degree still, I feel like podcasting has been a lot more male voices, and it didn't feel like there were a lot of voices speaking specifically to moms. And so, despite a lot of advice from the business circles of, like, you know, expand your audience, talk to everyone. For me, the Miss has always been women and moms especially. And so from the very beginning, I wanted to focus on the moms. And it's been such a truly great honor and privilege to get to talk to so many incredible people through that podcast and to get to share it with the community of moms that's at Wellness Mama that every day, I'm just grateful that I get to be part of that.

It's so cool that it. Right when it becomes something that really also relates to you, because, I mean, this is the thing, you're called a wellness Mama because you're sharing actually the life that you live. Like, you walk the talk, you do the things. I'm curious, like, what does that now mean? Because I think wellness Mama is you've created a new term. Like, if someone's asking themselves, hey, am I a Wellness Mama? Like, what do you. What does that mean to be a Wellness Mama?

I love that question. I don't think I've gotten a specific one before. And it's kind of, I think, sort of grown with my own journey, but also taken on a life of its own through that amazing community. Because I for a long time believed that women, and moms especially, are such a force of nature, because not only superficially in that we make all the purchasing decisions, but more importantly, we're hands on with the next generation. We're helping them form their foundational habits that will stay with them for their whole life. And so wellness, wellness kind of grown with me, but more importantly with all of those women as we've all been on this journey. And I think my recent part of that journey, I got into health and wellness from journalism, actually, because I was having health problems. And that's, I think, a very common story for those of us in health and wellness that we go into it seeking answers for ourselves. But I realized so many other women were in similar positions. And reading that our kids even are facing higher rates of all these chronic health conditions, I realized moms would be the change makers. If there was one, it would be the moms. And so wanting to support moms while I also went on that journey for myself. And I think for a lot of years, I would say in hindsight, I was maybe overemphasizing only the physical side. And I do, of course, think that side's very important and what we put in and on our bodies and how we move and if we get light, those are so important. But the recent part of the journey, for me, I feel like, become more multifaceted and realizing wellness is a holistic, whole person term. And that has to include our mental wellness, our spiritual, our emotions, all of those aspects working together. So that's been the last, I would say five or so years for me, is trying to integrate those parts and then at this point realizing even beyond that women are so multifaceted. And so for many of us, that includes things like talking about business or at least finances and our financial wellness and talking about, you know, areas I haven't covered before. So it's been a really fun and beautiful journey. And I'm honored that largely it's been led by the audience to some degree, because I get such amazing questions from these women who are doing incredible research on their own, who are serving as their own primary healthcare providers and kind of operating from that belief that we are each our own primary healthcare provider at the end of the day, and we are each our own healer and we can have partners in that process, but at the end of the day, the responsibility stays within us. And so to see so many women really stepping into their power there and making those choices for themselves and their families has been Such an incredible honor and joy to watch.

Oh, it's beautiful. And the way that you really hold that space for women to choose that, you know, because I think a lot of times in our cultures, in our society, there isn't the space for that. And women feel very alone. So it's amazing to be able to have digital platforms like podcasts and blogs and books that women actually feel that. I feel that when I interact with you, feel that just space that you hold to say, hey, it's okay. We're not alone, and we can do this and figure this out together. And I wanted to point out that I think what I observe you also doing, Katie, is you're redefining parenting because you also go into really saying, you know, yes, as a wellness mama, you are a mama of six children. And so you're in it with your kids and figuring the parenting out, which, of course, a lot of parenting is figuring it out as we go. But you share about that, and you really share tips about how can we become more conscious about our parenting and how could we maybe do it differently than maybe in the. Well, from. Based on information we're learning, why repeat the same patterns? Tell us more about what. I don't know if you've thought about it that way, but how are you. How do you perceive that you're. You're defining parenting?

Oh, thank you for this question, too. I think this is, of course, such an important aspect of motherhood, but I would also say this is an important aspect of wellness because we know that our relationships are actually a tremendous key to even the physical health, to longevity, and that having solid, close relationships in proximity in our lives is more important than quitting smoking. It's more important than exercise or diet. It's actually more important than those things combined. And so, sort of, to some degree, we are the product of our relationships, and we are only as healthy as our relationships with people around us. And I would say for moms, of course, our kids are paramount in that hierarchy of relationships partners as well, of course. But our kids are the ones that really depend on us for a lot of that early emotional growth and nervous system regulation and how they learn to exist in relationships. And so I hope that this has become part of the conversation as well, and that terms like conscious parenting are floating around and that so many women especially, and men, too, seem to be really waking up to being just a little bit more aware of our intention and our words and how we put that into our interactions with our children. And so for me, this starts from the first principle that each of our children is their own infinite autonomous human. And so with my kids, I don't, I don't think of them as mine, they don't belong to me, I don't direct them. I feel like my role here is to help them discover who they are and how they're going to help the world. And so I feel like that sort of governs all the choices I make within parenting. And by no means do I do it perfectly every day, but I think coming from that perspective allows you to, in that in relationship with kids as well, hopefully hold space for their emotions, which are valid, hold space for their purpose and their desires in their lives, which are valid. And to help sort of hold their hand on that journey, but not lead them on that journey, to let them have their own journey of it. And within that there are of course things that fall into the tactical realm. Like I have a rule with myself that I won't do anything for my kids that they're capable of doing on their own. Not because I don't love them and want to help them, but because since they are their own infinite autonomous humans, that would be an insult to their agency and to their ability and to their capability and to the respect that I have for them. And so that doesn't mean I'm not going to work with them to learn those skills or make sure they feel confident in their ability to do them, but it means I'm not going to take emotional responsibility from them because that would actually be a disservice to them in the long term. And it means in interactions with them, I'm responsible for my own emotional regulation. That's not my kids fault. They can't make me mad. No one can make us mad without us being complicit in that. And so if there are moments in parenting that arise where I feel angry or I feel stressed or I feel triggered, it's taking a breath, taking ownership for that, still holding space for their emotions which are equally valid and using that as a point of connection and conversation to hopefully build a stronger foundation versus letting that escalate into something that could be stressful for both of us. Because I think they pay attention to what we say, but they pay so much more attention to what we do. And so to the degree that I can imperfectly and certainly not well, some days, but model that, it gives them the capacity and the permission to hopefully do that as well. And of course that extends to the things we hope for them in health and wellness as well, in modeling Those good habits and them seeing me put time and energy toward working out or to movement every day or toward choosing healthy food or getting sunlight. I think our, our example goes a lot farther than our words. And of course they need both. And of course they're so capable of understanding when we help them understand why those things are important. But I think to the degree possible, based on their ages, those things can become their choice. It's so much more powerful and has such a greater likelihood of sticking for them when they get to initiate the choice.

It's beautiful. I completely agree with you and I think it's so amazing because this, this leading by example and allow because sometimes we like, you know, and I think you may hear this from other people, other your of your listeners where, you know, they maybe feel like they're starting on maybe a health or wellness journey themselves, making diet changes or making changes in their products, in their home, let's say. And then maybe they feel like the rest of their family is separate and they're not, they're not connected in that journey. And what you're describing is from the foundation saying, hey, let's come together as a family and say, hey, we're here to support, to be there for each other, support each other with wellness as our value and our priority. And how do we then each navigate our own paths but support each other along the way?

Exactly. Like how can we go on the journey together? Not how can you go on my journey? And even, I mean any mom would know if phrase this way, like we can't actually force our kids to eat what we want them to eat, short of truly abusing them and forcing food down their throat, we can't do that. It does rely on their autonomy and their choice. And so to the degree that we can help them nurture that and nurture confidence in their decision making and let them have guardrails to fail sometimes and within safe bounds within our homes and feel the consequences of the failure of their actions in a natural way. It helps them to shape those things so that in adult life they have the foundation to make good choices. And like all of us, they might still make ones we wouldn't have chosen for them sometimes. And that's okay too because humans are resilient and adaptable and that there's great lessons in those as well.

You can always learn from whatever we go through.

Exactly.

And it's. Yeah, that's the thing is I think sometimes people might think, oh well, if you're a wellness related person or you're listening to all this information, you never make mistakes or you never experience stress, but I'm sure you do have your own challenges that you work through and how beautiful that you're doing that in this, in the work that you do.

I think there's power in vulnerability when it's true vulnerability. And I think with parenting, there's a little bit of nuance there in that are here to be sort of the emotional support for our children. But that is, that's part of that relationship. That's not two way. Like I would say, it's not their job to be my emotional support. And so I try to make, I have like a really solid framework of people in my life that I can go to for support and therapists and people to lean on so that I can be that emotional support for my kids without having them having to take on adult emotions at a young age. But I think also like, like you said, it's that connection and letting them have a safe place to navigate it.

Love it. I love it. And in terms of the work you do with the wellness mama, again, you, you're interviewing so many different experts on so many different topics. The amazing thing to me is like that you, you are able to cover so much everything from diet and stress and sleep and, and toxins and finances and business. And it's because it all comes back to relating to being a human and how do we. These are all real things that humans deal with. I mean, tell us more like about your favorite conversations that you have in your work. And I'm assuming you probably learn with every conversation you have with an expert too.

Absolutely. I don't take for granted at all that my literal job is to get to talk to incredible people and to learn from them. And I also think one of my core beliefs is that there's something to learn from every single person we encounter. And there's sort of a duality to this. So I try to approach every conversation with just childlike curiosity because there is so much wisdom in each person we encounter. And if I've learned one lesson in the last 15 years of doing this, it's that we also are all each so individual and that there's much personalization and at the end of the day, we're each figuring out what works best for us. So any expert, me included, of course, we may have found out hopefully the parts that work for us and that can serve as a really great jumping in point and framework for research for someone else. But I shy away from giving my own examples of like, I take these Exact things every day. I eat only these things every day because that won't translate directly to someone else. And so I think the beauty of something like the podcast and getting to talk to so many incredible voices is each of us getting exposure to them and getting to sort of like intuitively evaluate which pieces might be best for us and experiment. At the end of the day, our bodies are our best resource and our own answers are not Googleable. And so I think it's just an incredible privilege to get to talk to so many incredible people and to gain wisdom from them and then to be able to take that and translate it through the lens of personal experience. And hopefully people listening can benefit from that in the same way. And I know that with your podcast as well, it's the same thing. We get to, to share the voices of these incredible people with each of our listeners and then they get to hopefully benefit from that in the way that serves them best.

I've done a lot of detoxes over the years and many of them made me feel a lot worse. Not only that, but I've had a lot of patients come in and tell me how after doing a detox, they have a stomachache and headache and they can't sleep and they're feeling anxious and I'm like, I can't just recommend that my patient do a program that's going to make them feel worse. So I finally decided to design my own detox program. It's a 14 day detox program that's not like other detox programs out there in several ways. One is that I'm focused on helping you to get the toxins out in a safe and effective way, using nutrients, antioxidants, and supporting our natural detoxification pathways in the body. Also, I'm helping you to decrease your exposure to toxins by learning the ways that you've been exposed to toxins and how to change your day to day lifestyle to decrease your toxins over time. And I'm helping you to look not just at chemistry, typical environmental toxins, but also emotional and energetic toxicity. And yes, it's possible to accomplish all of this in 14 days. I have so many patients who have done the 14 day detox and report back to me how much better they feel. And I think it's also because I help you to know what to eat, you are getting adequate food, then tastes good, plus protein shakes that I developed that are good for your body, that your body knows how to use these nutrients and take them in and use them to help you safely Detoxify without feeling worse. Also I help you to balance your blood sugar levels, get better sleep and introduce things like meditation, biofeedback and other types of stress recovery recovery into your day to day routine. So I just am so excited about it. I want to make sure you know about this 14 day detox. I'm going to put the link, you can find it at drdani.com forward/detox-program but I'll also put the link below so you can find the 14 day detox program@drdani.com I look forward to guiding you through this detox so that you can actually feel better on your way to better health. It's such an important point that it's like it's not that we need a cookie cutter answer for everybody. It can't be, oh, this diet worked for this person, so it's supposed to work for me too. It's how do we take in the information and then listen to ourselves and choose based on that. I love that, Katie, that you really are coming from that perspective. And the other thing I notice about you, if you don't mind me noticing pointing it out, is that you're, you're always willing to try something new. Like you're you. I think your personality maybe is you. Just each day you go, okay, let's try this, let's try this. Do you find that about yourself?

Yeah. I think there's so much to be gained from just trying things and especially trying them without expectation. I think that sets us free from a desired outcome. It actually lets us more objectively evaluate how something is working or not working. And I know you've been in the health and wellness world for a while too. It's like we try all these things. Some work phenomenally, some don't work at all. And I think it's having the clarity to choose the things that seem to make an impact and integrate those as habits and to let go of the things that might not work for us even if they did work phenomenally for someone else. Because at the end of the day is that n of one experimentation that makes the difference for us personally. And I say so often, like no doctor, no practitioner, no expert could ever know your body as well as you can know your body. And that doesn't mean we all do. I certainly didn't for a lot of years. In fact, I had to sort of learn that through the mental and emotional journey of healing for myself. And I sometimes say the quote that I found during that process that was so profound for Me, it was that I said to my body, I want to be your friend. And it took a deep breath and said, I've been waiting our whole life for this. And I feel like that is that the journey we all get to go on is making peace and making friends with ourselves and then learning to listen to our bodies with the input of people who have done incredible research and with all of the amazing resources available through technology. But it still goes back to the lens of our own experience.

Oh, that gives me goosebumps to hear that, you know. Yeah. Just coming back to like, how can I be my own friend and support and caring for myself in that way that really can't come from someone else. It needs to come from within. So that's a beautiful lesson. And I want to transition into your wellness brand and products because I'm. I'm guessing that that you saw that there wasn't, there was a need that it's hard to find these products in. And so you're like, okay, I'm going to create what it is that I'm looking for. But tell me more, how did that come to be?

Very much so, because when I started on this path of healing, I. A lot of the things available now were not available even to the degree of. In the rural area where I lived at the time, you couldn't buy grass fed meat in a grocery store, you couldn't buy coconut oil in a grocery store. So I was having to like meet up with Amish farmers in parking lots and buy all these things sort of, I guess on the black market at that point. And it just wasn't as available. Same thing with natural personal care products. They didn't exist in the stores and even certainly not as wide scale as they do on the Internet. So I started making, making most of those at home myself just to have clean options. And I shared those recipes and they're all still there. But I also realized moms are some of the busiest people on the planet. And most moms don't have the time to make laundry detergent and lotion and shampoo and toothpaste and all the things from scratch. And I realized even in my own life, people I'm very close to, they were eating organic, they were using natural products a lot of the time, but there were still certain products that they were using that were more conventional and that would have stuff you would want to avoid in it. And it was because they worked and they were available. And so I realized in order for people to make sustainable shifts, these things had to work as well as the conventional alternatives. And they had to be easily available and not exorbitantly expensive in order for them to work. And so I built from the homemade recipes I've been using for years and made sure they were shelf stable and worked with formulators to get them into a packaged product that we could all just buy and implement. And I started with the 8020 principle, which I use across a lot of aspects of my life. But the idea that in most cases you can find this pattern over and over and over, that 80% of results come from 20% of inputs. And so in this case, 80% of exposure to harmful ingredients and personal care products came from 20% of inputs, which were hair care and oral care, because those both are absorbed so easily into the body. And so I wanted to start with those, realizing that if families only switched those, they would be making a sustainable and noticeable shift in their toxic burden by eliminating the products that would have toxic things in them. And especially when it comes to oral care. This has been a pet research project for me for a decade. Because there are medications that we put under our tongue because they get into our system so quickly. And so what we put in our mouth enters our body very rapidly and can profoundly impact the body. We know this from medication, yet many of us were putting different oral care products in our mouth that not only are destroying our oral microbiome, but that are being rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream. And there's been all this talk of things like, you know, actual toxins like fluoride even carries a poison control warning, and it's in most toothpaste, but even microplastics found in toothpaste and all kinds of unsavory ingredients. And so I got to deep dive into the the world of the science of the oral microbiome and how, for instance, you can see problems like cavities or gingivitis, you don't often see them together because they're each caused by an opportunistic bacteria that is sort of competitive. So you might see one or the other go out of balance in the mouth. And the answer, just like in the gut, is not to destroy the microbiome entirely and kill all the bacteria. It's actually to promote a healthy microbiome in the mouth that can handle and keep those opportunistic bacteria in check. And so I got to delve into the world of how do we create microbiome friendly, non toxic products that we can safely put on our skin and our hair and our mouth and on our kids. And know that we can feel good about those choices and that we're not going to have to call the poison control center if they happen to ingest it for some reason.

Wow. It's. It really is. When you start to look at it, you go, what the heck are we, like you said, putting in our mouths or putting on our skin or even putting on our hair that's getting into our bodies and affecting our health. And I love how you're. You're using this 8020. Like, how. Because sometimes it's overwhelming for people to think start to sort of get the toxins out of their home environment. It's like, oh, my gosh, where do I begin? But you're like, hey, let's pay attention to the major sources first and work our way through this way.

Yeah. Because perfection, at least for me, is not possible. And I don't even believe that's the most desirable goal because it's not only unattainable, but the stress that we create in trying to strive for perfection in that realm can actually be more harmful than the things we're encountering. But. And creating the stress about. And so I think it is about finding that balance, but within doing that, making the choices that are not going to be overwhelming or difficult, but that can lead to a noticeable difference, and that can reduce that load. As we go on the journey of trying to get a little bit better each day without the stress of trying to be perfect.

That's. That's like the key, isn't it? Right? Like, how do we. How do we be human and. And live our lives without stressing ourselves more, but making choices to really ultimately prevent illness and extend our healthy lifetime? What would you say is, like, if you could. As we're wrapping up here, what would you say if there's anything you would want listeners to know? And also I'm going to make sure they have the link to the Wellness Mama and Wellness products. But what would you want them to know if they want to learn more about, you know, your world and, and what they can learn from you?

Well, for me, everything online lives@wellnesswoman.com including the podcast and links to the products. But I would say what's even more important than that? Because there's hopefully a lot of tactical things that can help people on the website. But I would say what is more important, and a very slow lesson for me is it's not just the what of what happens, it's the story that we tell ourselves about what happens to us and that perhaps even in the Physical realm. The most profound thing we can do for our health is to audit and be aware of and start changing the stories we tell ourselves and the language we tell ourselves. And an example from this, in my own life, in recovering from Hashimoto's, for instance, because I was diagnosed. And of course, when you get an autoimmune disease, they tell you it's lifelong and that you can never be cured. And I am now not on medication, and my labs are completely normal. They would still say I'm in remission, and I say I no longer have it. But when I. When I was in that phase, I had internal stories about that. I had internal stories about my body attacking itself, my body attacking my thyroid. And I had questions for myself, like, why is this so hard? Why can't I lose weight? Why can't I heal? And when we give our subconscious those questions, it answers them. So the answers I got back were like, oh, well, it's because you have thyroid disease. Oh, it's because you have six kids. Oh, it's because this. And when I slowly started to change the way I talk to myself and make friends with my body, it started to be my partner and getting better and started to answer better questions, like, how can I make healing so fun? How can I do this with grace, ease, and joy? How can I get a little bit better every single day? And it started responding to those. And I think even that language of how I used to say my body was attacking itself, I realized the body is always on our side. It's never out to get us. If our body wanted to, it could kill us in under a second. It is always moving toward healing. And even symptoms are messengers and gifts because that's our body directly speaking to us about what it needs. And when we reframe it like that and learn to listen from a place of curiosity and humility, we sometimes get much better answers. And so I actually now often say this as the starting point, like, certainly do the other things, too. Get the morning sunlight, get quality sleep, hydrate, eat nourishing food. Those are so important. And pay attention more so to the language that you're using with yourself about that. And use it as a way to partner with your body, to make friends with your body, and to create habits that you do because of you. You, because you love yourself and because you want to nourish your body. Not because you're fighting a disease or you're fighting yourself or you're trying to punish yourself into looking or feeling a certain way. And I think those Internal shifts make the external shifts so much easier.

Well, and I think a lot of times we don't realize that those internal shifts can make a difference on an autoimmune condition or even on, you know, other physical aspects of our health. We're like, think it's. It's unrelated because we've never been taught that it's connected. So I'm. I thank you for bringing that up and really sharing your. Your internal experience with that of like, hey, that really made a difference to. To shift that conversation. And it's. Sometimes it's not an easy shift to make. It's not, you know, sometimes it sounds like, oh, this is just a flip the switch of this conversation. And it does take deep, you know, reflection, self reflection to sometimes create those changes in our inner internal conversations. But I love your story of how powerful that can be because I see that in my patients, too, every day. It's amazing.

You're right. It's a. It's not an overnight process. It's a journey, and it's probably a lifelong one. But even if we can just become a little more aware or catch ourselves in those moments of, you know, saying negative things to ourselves and reframe them with something a little bit more positive or maybe put up things that remind us of the positive and make those little shifts over time, I feel like another amazing universal principle is that of compounding. And we know this in the financial world. Like, if you invest and it's in a compounding framework, it will grow over time and you will get bigger and bigger results from the same initial investment. Same thing with our health, if we can. Or with our inner talk, if we can make little changes, these compound over time and lead up to truly profound changes.

Yeah, I was just talking with a patient about that, and I was. He's like, I'm waiting for the big aha moment. And I'm like, well, maybe it's actually in the small incremental steps where you can look back a year later or five years later and be like, wow, I just climbed an emotional mountain and I did it. I just did it in little steps over time.

Yeah, I think we all want the lightning bolt or the silver bullet, but we maybe missed the million tiny glimmers in looking for the lightning bolt.

Yeah, amazing. And I noticed that you're also a doula. I'm. I started off as a doula as well, and I really. I for myself, feel that in, like, in a very powerful way, in all the work I do. I'm curious if you do too, because to me, a doula is really, for anyone listening, a doula is a. Is a labor support person. So we support women emotionally during labor and delivery of a baby. And yet to me, being a doula can extend to all aspects of health. And so I really see now. Oh, my gosh, Katie, you're like a doula for all aspects of health for women, not just during labor and delivery.

Oh, thank you for saying that. Yeah, I very much enjoy being a doula. And of course, time wise, that can be tough when you have your own kids. But I still do it occasionally and do it for friends. I have one baby expected in May. And I think you're right because doula really means with women. And we're there for the mom. The midwife or the doctor is there to make sure the baby and the mom are safe from a physical perspective, but the doula is there to sort of be that the other woman, the voice for that mom of encouragement and support and just holding space, which is where this conversation started and how much goes back to that. And so I really appreciate you saying that. That's a tremendous compliment. And yeah, thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you so much for joining me here today. Katie and everyone listening, thank you so much for being here and for your time and attention. I hope this has been helpful for you and inspiring. I know how inspiring Katie is for me as well. And so I encourage you to go spend more time with her and to also make sure you watch the next episode of How Humans Heal. I look forward to seeing you then.

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