How to Beat Autoimmune Disease with Palmer Kippola
15 Dec 2025 · 42 min
Palmer Kippola, a functional medicine health coach, shares her experience reversing multiple sclerosis through diet and stress management. She outlines a framework for tackling autoimmune disease by addressing root causes rather than just symptoms.
Chapters
Hey JJ Here. Every year around this time, I get the urge to make my home feel a little extra special. A space that feels just like the holidays. And Wayfair is my go to for that. Think cozy textures, twinkly decor, warm lighting, and all those little touches that make you want to curl up with a good book and a blanket. You'll usually find my books stacked on a great little end table I got from Wayfair, proof that function and style can coexist. Now, whether you're adding last minute hosting essentials, picking out gifts for loved ones, or refreshing your decor for the season, Wayfair makes it easy with beautiful finds, great prices and fast delivery. And when the holidays wind down, Wayfair has everything you need to tuck it all neatly away. Smart storage solutions for every room from the kitchen to the closet. Plus, with free shipping for any order over $35, that's fast delivery and a total peace of mind. It's the perfect mix of joy and order, bringing the holiday spirit in, then storing it all with ease. If you're ready to make your home feel as good as it looks, get organized, refreshed and ready for the holidays. For way less head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. Wayfair Every style, every home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com hey, it's JJ here. You know, I've been talking about environmental toxins forever, and laundry detergent is a sneaky one. A lot of them contain harsh chemicals like dyes, preservatives, and even UV brighteners. Those brighteners don't actually clean anything. They just coat fabric so your eyes think things look whiter or brighter. That's more chemicals I don't want on my family's sheets or skin. And if you've got sensitive skin or allergies around the house, this can be a big problem. That's what got my attention about Earth Breeze. It looks like a dryer sheet, but it's actually laundry detergent. You toss one in the washer and that's it. No pouring, no mess, and no heavy plastic jug. Their packaging is lightweight cardboard, which helps reduce plastic waste. And if you choose the fragrance free option, it's gentle, hypoallergenic, non irritating and non sensitizing. I really like how simple it is and how fresh and clean everything comes out without those unnecessary chemicals. Right now you can try Earth Breeze for up to 40% off with free gifts@earthbreeze.com virgin that's earthbreeze.com virgin for up to 40% off plus free gifts on your first order.
This episode is brought to you by.
McAfee swimsuit passport phone with VPN activated VPN cell phone service is going to be spotty on vacation, so be using public Wi fi.
Sounds sketchy.
Exactly. The networks can leave your personal info like credit card numbers exposed to hackers.
McAfee's secure VPN lets you browse and bank safely from wherever, whenever. Learn more@mcafee.com online protection what if we have the possibility of seeing the gift in whatever tragedy there is so that we can bypass or shortcut all of that grief and suffering to get to the other side faster?
Here's jj, Virgin Triple Board certified nutrition and fitness expert and four time New York Times best selling author. It's time to reignite wellness.
Hey it's JJ and I've got a super inspiring interview today. I am really, really excited to be talking to Palmer Coppola. She's a Functional Medicine certified health coach and she helps people reverse autoimmune conditions and she does it through her framework called the Fights Method which she's going to walk us through today. And she has a crazy, incredible story and she has literally reversed her Ms. She has a book called Beat Autoimmune. Dr. Mark Hyman, our buddy and multiple guests here on the show, wrote the forward and she is going to share some insights I've never actually heard anyone talk about yet in terms of things that can help with autoimmune. So I'm super excited to share that with you. Before I do that, I want to share this with you. Jackie from Northville wrote a five star review on Apple iTunes. She says thank you JJ. Thank you for providing a podcast that is informational, fun and starts my morning off in a positive way. I listen to you in the morning while I'm getting for work or on my drive in fun, easy tips. Plus I've also added some podcasts to my library based on your fantastic guests. And I also lost £15 following your protocol. Thank you. I'm 53 and I feel great. And again, that is shout out to Jackie from Royal Oak, Michigan. I super appreciate that. I would love to shout you out too. So if you haven't done it yet, you can do this by the way for every show. Hint hint hint. It rate and review and put your name in there so I can shout you out. I would love to do that. And before we dive into this amazing interview, I want to share one other super cool thing with you. So stay with me.
Hey, jj, Virgin here. Okay, real talk. So often the holidays sneak up on me. Travel, gifts, hosting, you know, all the things. And suddenly it's like, wait, who spent what and where? And I know I'm not the only one who's looked at a bill in January and thought, wow, that escalated quickly. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface. On your laptop or on your phone. Monarch lets you link everything and gives you real time visibility so you're not shocked later. Right now, I've been checking the holiday spending category so I don't accidentally start the new year with that dreaded debt hangover. And honestly, just seeing everything laid out is already helping me stay more aware. This season, Monarch does the heavy lifting. It links your accounts in minutes, gives you smart categorization and super clear visuals. Yes, that end of year reset could be a real goal this time. Don't let financial opportunities slip through the cracks. Use the code virgin@monimal.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with the code Virgin. Toyotathon is on. So stop by your local Toyota dealer and test drive a stylish new Camry or sleek and capable Corolla with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit buyatoyota.com for more toy yoga. Let's go places.
Alrighty. Palmer Coppola. Now, did I say it right? I said kipola. Kipola. I got kipola. Then I went. Then I went and did the cupola, which is Finnish, which we were talking offline because I just went to Iceland and now I'm kind of fascinated with all of these cold, wet, dark countries and why they're so happy. Anyway, I digress. I am super excited to be digging in with you today about autoimmunity, your story, and then how you now are helping so many people beat autoimmune disease. So let's dig in. First of all, welcome, Palmer. So glad to have you here.
Thank you, jj. It's such a pleasure to be with you. Thanks for inviting me.
Oh, yes. Now, let's dig in first because you have a crazy story with how you got into the autoimmune field. So let's start there.
It's a good place to Start, but we have to go back a few years because I was diagnosed when I was 19.
I know I can't even imagine that at 19 years old. And it wasn't with, like, with. This sounds really extreme, so.
Well, sadly, it's not. In fact, people are getting diagnosed younger and younger because the number of. Of toxicants in our environment is increasing. So at my age when this happened, it was fairly unusual. We had never even heard of this thing. So here's the quick story. I was home after my freshman year of college, a happy, healthy, well adjusted young woman, and working a summer job as a hostess in Southern California. And one morning I woke up to go to my job and the soles of my feet were all tingly. That feeling you get when you slept on a limb and the blood flows back. It's all tingly. Only this morning I shook my feet and the blood wasn't going back there. So I went off to work thinking, this will just go away. Over the course of the morning, the tingling crept up my leg, and by the time it reached my knees, I knew something was really wrong. So I called my parents who called the family doctor who said, get her to UCLA this afternoon. So that's what we did. We sat in that neurologist's office that afternoon and she did a real cursory exam. She had me walk across her floor, heel, toe, touch my fingers to my nose with my eyes closed, few reflexes, that kind of thing. And pronounced. I am 99% certain that you have multiple sclerosis, Ms. And if I'm right, there's nothing you can do except take medication.
Now, the first thing that just drives me insane is that. And I love. I was looking in one of our mindshare threads and I loved what Dr. Scott Antone said. He goes, nothing and always should never be used in medicine. And, you know, there's nothing like, there's nothing you can do. Just like, sets off every single, like, warrior mom, like, radar, blah, you know? Anyway, okay, so then what happened?
Well, I'm with you on the warrior.
And how did this just happen? Like, it's just amazing to me too, because I've had, you know, a lot of clients with Ms. Over the years, but I never heard it just come on that, like, just boof. Like that.
Yeah, well, it's been something that I've reflected on for years, as you can imagine. And most people and my clients and the research shows that it's usually, you know, the straw that breaks the camel's back that you've been Feeling these symptoms for a while and then suddenly there's a big flare. In my case, I didn't have any of the lead up. I just had the ta da.
Wow.
So it was an absolute shocker. And we left that office with very little information, very little hope. This is the mid-80s. There is no intern, no Dr. Terry Walls. I am on my own. And the doctor had taken my parents aside and said, you better get ready for her life in a wheelchair, because that's where she's headed. So this was just devastating to us. And that night, as we crawled in bed, my mom crawled in bed with me and held me. And she's crying. I'm crying harder because by this time, jj, the tingling had crept all the way up to under my chin. But then all the areas of my body that had been tingling went completely numb. And I stayed completely numb, chin to toes for six weeks. This was an absolutely terrifying time. And I have never had such a bad exacerbation or experience. But for those six weeks, I was relegated to the couch. And there were a few important things that happened during that summer. Number one is my dad inspired my can do attitude right away. He would say, honey, you can beat this thing, you know, and that is why I get the title of the book there. And a bunch of friends came by to bring gifts, like the usual things that your 19 year old friends bring you cookies and books and things like that. But this one family friend into things metaphysical came by with a question. She said, palmer, why do you think you got the ms? And I just went into full on defense mode.
I was just gonna say, yeah, how do you respond to that?
Are you accusing me of bringing this myself? Is. Wait a minute, did I do this? So I'm lying there on the couch, nowhere to go except watching the Summer Olympics on tv. And it came.
Which is sort of the antithesis of where you are mentally.
Like, totally, totally. I'm in complete other gymnastics.
The other side. Yeah, it's like to think about, you know, I was just kind of irritated yesterday with social media and phones and everything. But the other side of that is, oh my gosh. Yeah, you couldn't watch Terry Wahls TED Talk, which we'll definitely link to in the show notes@jjbirgin.com. palmer, you couldn't like, you couldn't Google anything. And there really wasn't much going on. Dr. Mark Hyman wasn't out like slaying it for functional medicine. I don't think Jeff Bland was just getting it rolling, you know, like.
This Is before the MRI was called an mri, it used to be called a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Image nmr, which is a super scary image.
Scary nuclear warfarer. Yes.
Okay, so this is what's going on. So I'm lying there on the couch at age 19, and it comes to me as a flash of insight, and I need to go back a little bit farther in time. We've talked about this, too, both of us being adopted, that my parents who adopted me were very, very loving. But my dad had been a fighter pilot whose way was invariably the right way. And he used to yell a lot, and he was verbally abusive, and he actually would call my mom names, and I wasn't going to have any of that. So that flash of insight that came to me came as an image of me, age 3 or 4. My dad's yelling at my mom, who's locked herself in her bedroom. She's crying. I'm standing up in the hallway to my dad. You call my mom names and I'll sock your lights out. So I had become this little child.
Warrior child.
Warrior child. Right.
Amazing.
Has been trying to unwind from that, which we'll see is super important. But I viewed, and I don't know how this came to me, but it was a flash of intuition that my immune system had become this proxy for that hyper vigilance that if it didn't have a real battle to wage, like viruses, infections, bacteria, then it was going to create its own battle, even if it meant friendly fire. So that still kind of rings true for me today. But that hypothesis that chronic stress was at the root of this Ms. Still rings true for me today, jj, Even though I know there's more to the story that still.
I just have to ask you, were you, when you were at Mindshare this year, did you have a chance to hear Mary Morrissey tell her story?
I only caught the tail end because I had to leave.
We'll share you offline because she tells a very similar story about how she healed her kidney and this whole exact same thing you're talking about.
Yeah. All right.
It's amazing. I just want, you know, just. Just to kind of throw out this possibility that thoughts are things and they can create. So.
And they do.
And they do. It's honestly, it's why I was so careful when my son was in the coma. I managed anything being said around him. I told him the entire time through, he's going to be 110% that this was going to be the best thing that happened to him. I said it over and over, and I. And anything that came into my head that was like, you know, anything that made me think otherwise, I was like, no, no, no. You know, it was like, cancel, cancel. I'm just staying completely focused on how to get to 110%, because it is so key, critical. Okay, so there you are. Let's. There we go.
And this is. This is the message. I mean, if I think overall, what I want to convey is that it's really helpful to reframe these things that happen to us as, what if this is happening for us? What if we have the possibility of seeing the gift in whatever tragedy there is so that we can bypass or shortcut all of that grief and suffering to get to the other side faster? That is really my biggest message in this. But I was really grateful that I came up with chronic stress as the leading hypothesis, because what did I do anything that I could to try to dampen down that stress? I mean, I knew I was always on. And we don't need to do anything to train ourselves to get into the stress reaction.
Right?
This happens naturally. I mean, I could catch knives out of the air. But what I couldn't do is bring myself into this parasympathetic relax and digest and digest and tend and befriend nervous system. That is where healing happens. So I spent the next three decades really working on how can I bring myself down? Because if I want to heal, that's where I need to be. So that was my first experiment after I finally got off that couch.
So you had the flash of. Of inspiration about that, or intuition. But did you immediately, like, start to go, oh, this is what I need to do? Because that's a pretty advanced thought process for someone who's 19, you know?
Oh, no, no, no, no. That came later. With hindsight, my friend.
Okay. I was, like, going, wow, I'm impressed. 19. I wasn't there.
No, I wasn't there either. So what happened is I ultimately was able to get off that couch in the nick of time to get back to my sophomore. The numbness just retreated. That's what happens with relapsing. Remitting Ms. Symptoms come and they go. They ebb and they flow, and I found that they flowed more with stress, and they ebbed more with relaxation. And I started to notice that over time. But when I got back to school, the first thing I did was go into complete denial. And I have to tell you that my dad, the fighter pilot, encouraged me to not tell anybody about this, because people would perceive me as being weak if they knew that I had this thing called Ms. So I did the dance of denial for years, But I think by the late 80s, I had intuited that I needed to relax, I really needed. And that was just intuition that told me this. I started doing yoga, then I started meditating in the early 90s. And because I noticed that when I was stressed, like, if I had exams at school, if I was overwhelmed at work, or had conflict in relationships, I would have a flare up. But conversely, when I relaxed, I was chilled and had fewer Ms. Symptoms. So the cause and effect thing, it was really clear to me that stress was bad and relaxing was good as long as I did them.
So we don't hope for Ms. On anybody. But, boy, wouldn't it be great if we had a better. A better thing, a better indicator for people? Because I feel like just having this conversation on a podcast with someone yesterday that, like, it's a badge of honor to be stressed out and to overwork and to overdo. And I'm like, this is not a badge of honor. It's like a badge of stupidity. You know, it's like taking down your body. So there's a gift there in that your body was going, okay, nope, relax, rest, restore. It's. I wish we. I wish we had some kind of barometer, you know, that we could all see that would go, okay, time to just chill for a little bit. All right, so you learned how to do that. What else did you do to help you get to this point where you've, you know, you're in now, complete remission.
Complete remission. In fact, I don't really like that word because it seems to me like it's just lurking and ready to.
I know we're not. We're never supposed to say the other one. You know, I'm so trained to say, never say cure. Never say.
Well, you know what the word cure means foundationally? The Latin meaning of the word cure is to bring back to balance, to restore balance. So I don't want that word hijacked by any industries. I think I'll take that.
Sounds awesome.
That sounds awesome.
Okay, so you're back in balance.
Back in balance? Yes, back in balance. Have not had a single symptom since October of 2010. So I'll tell you briefly. I tried a few other things. I tried the low fat vegetarian thing for a while and that didn't work. It caused more tummy trouble after eating. So I tried that for a while and stopped. I then tried medication for a period of time. And the reason I want to bring this up is that I really want people to do their own research when it comes to meds, because there are 98 medications that we know of that induce lupus. In fact, they call it drug induced lupus. Not kidding, not kidding.
So we know 98 drugs induced lupus.
Right. But there's a name for.
Reminds me of, you know, like the psych meds. Having a son with whatever. It's really neural inflammation, but. And then a traumatic brain injury. Like so many of the medications they use for any of these psychiatric issues create other problems that were as bad at the initial thing was, you know.
Absolutely, absolutely. And we know from Dr. Jill Carnahan, who went through breast cancer and did the standard of care chemo in her 20s, developed an autoimmune condition. She developed Crohn's as a result of those medications. She's really clear about that. And I talk about her in my book. So, yes, I tried the drugs. I'm just saying this because I want people to do their own research and really understand how this is working, why it's important that they go on them, et cetera. My holy grail experiment was actually I call gut healing. In 2010, I finally was listening to signals from my body and got an appointment with a functional medicine nutritionist. This is somebody that, as you know, digs into the root causes of why you're having issues. And she did a bunch of testing, and we found out that I am sensitive to gluten. Highly sensitive to gluten.
Not remotely surprised. Yeah, of course you are.
Gluten cereal with every breakfast.
Oh, my gosh.
Jelly sandwiches on whole wheat bread for every lunch and beer. We do this. So a steady stream of gluten. There's now research that shows from 2015 that shows that people who eat gluten, anyone who eats gluten gets some form of leaky gut. That doesn't mean that everybody's going to get an autoimmune condition, but if you have the proclivity, it might be a problem.
I just, I can't see for anyone, you know, and of course, now, like, come on. I wrote. I wrote a book about this one. So it's like, I know I'm might be considered over the top, but I'm going to make the bold statement. I just don't think gluten is good for anyone in the. Now I'm talking in the United States. If we're going to go to Europe and some of these different countries that have different types of wheat. They're back, still using Einkorn or whatever. Totally different situation, but that's not the situation here. So I just, I have yet to find the person that I can absolutely 100% pull off of gluten for a month and then go back and have a him try it. Who feels better with it than without it. I've never seen it. Right.
Well, I am really clear that my story may not look like other people's stories. Like, I'm not saying that anyone with Ms. Removes the gluten and you have this Eureka experiment like I had, because I don't know, jj, had I not been doing all the stress reduction things and the forgiveness and the gratitude and the meditation and yoga, if I would have had the same response as I did when I removed the gluten and did the gut healing. And one month later, I stopped having any tummy trouble after eating. Just completely stopped. And within one month, I stopped having any and all Ms. Symptoms ever again. Full stop. And I have since had the Cyrex array. I think it's 7x that shows if you have any elevated antibodies to your own neurological tissue, they're all in the normal range. I've had a couple follow up MRIs years later that show no new lesions and a disappearance and fading of.
Crazy.
It's crazy. But it's not. I mean, it isn't. It isn't in the sense that it can be this easy and it can be this simple because it's really all about reducing that toxin bucket that we are unfortunately just loading up with more and more things. And my toxin bucket might not be filled with your elements, but we have a good sense of what those big baddies are. And that's probably the biggest one when it comes to autoimmune issues.
So, yeah, yep, I've seen some pretty crazy things. So when I wrote the Virgin Diet, it was really after working with doctors in their offices for years and seeing people come in complaining about, you know, joint pain and bloating and skin problems, blah, blah, blah. And what I found was when we figured out their food intolerances and pulled them off, all of they started to lose weight. So I wrote the Virgin Diet really with as a new way to look at using elimination diet for weight loss. What I didn't expect that happened was all these people started to see their autoimmune issues just go away. And I'm like, what? You know, like a gal with psoriatic arthritis who, you know, in three weeks could throw all our medications away. I was like, oh my gosh. Like, oh, okay, I didn't realize. Right.
Didn't know.
We didn't know. It wasn't what I'd written it for. And I'm like, wow, okay, what a.
Happy accident that was.
Yes, that was. You know, that's the difference between drugs and supplements and diet and drugs is that with drugs there's usually not, you know, there's very, very few things. Like the Latisse situation where you use it for glaucoma and find out you have nice eyelashes. Usually it's more you use it, you know, you use it to stabilize your mood and find out it's going to make you hypoglycemic. You know, it's usually something else that's going on that's problematic. And so I love that about like when you start to work with diet and supplements and lifestyle changes is you get all these side benefits.
Side benefits. Benefits, Exactly. And as Dr. Hyman talks about when we start, I forget his exact quote, but health happens as a side effect of all of these healthy habits. Right?
Yep. I always feel like if you live like a healthy, lean, fit person, guess what you'll become. It's just, it comes over time. I feel like we focus on the wrong goal. Like, I want to lose 10 pounds. I'm like, you know, if you just start with, okay, first thing I'm going to do is just add more vegetables into my diet. Second thing is drink more water. Third thing is, you know, maybe start a yoga class. Just start putting one in, making it a habit, add the next one. All of a sudden you'll turn around and go, wow, you know, you just start living like a healthy person. But you got to do it one by one. You're not going to start today. And I'm sure if you'd been sitting on that couch at 19 thought, okay, now I'm going to get the gluten out of my diet, I'm going to start meditating, I'll start yoga. You, your, your 19 year old self would have been like, there's no, I'm not, I'm not doing that like at all. You know. But now you look back and go, wow, it's like you, because you just added one to the next, to the next, to the next. And you're doing this with, with a lot more people now. I'm glad you wrote the book. We always need these, you know, the books and the resources out there, especially since when you were first diagnosed there was nothing. So thankfully, you're helping change that. Let's talk about some of the things that you bring up in the book, like what are some key takeaways that we should know?
Yeah. Well, first and foremost, there is science behind all of this, and it's super exciting and empowering. We have epigenetics, which I'm sure you've talked about, which helps people be empowered. It's an empowering biology that shows that our lifestyle and environmental factors matter way more than our genesis. In fact, I'll always have the genes for the ms, but through my lifestyle and these positive, healthy habits that you're talking about that we just build over time, I can switch off that Ms. Epigenetically. So it's super important thing to know that you can epigenetically switch things off. Every fork full of food, every thought you think, every hour of sleep you get or don't get, the exercise you do or don't do, all of it is highly concentrated. So I just want to give a shout out to epigenetics for being responsible for this. And then I quickly want to add that. Did you know we have an autoimmune equation? So in the early 2000s, Dr. Alessio Fasano and his team, who are now at Harvard Medical School, I think maybe Mass General, discovered the third element necessary for autoimmune autoimmune conditions to occur. We've always known that gene play some role and environmental factors play another, but nobody knew how they come together to explode into autoimmunity. And then enter Alessio Fasano and his team that found that it's intestinal hyperpermeability.
Oh, my goodness.
That's the missing link. That's leaky.
And now we're gonna find with leaky brain that the issues there, like, it's. That's. Wow, I did not know that that is.
This is the equation. And what's so exciting about it, as he writes in the abstract of this study, that if you flip the equation, you detect and remove your triggers, and you heal and seal the lining of your gut, you can potentially reverse these conditions. So that goes back to why I don't say remission. Yeah, I say reverse. Because this.
This guy clearly, I mean, look what you did, and look what Terry Walls has done. And so clearly that is absolutely the case. And you know the cool thing, like, the more we start to really study genes and we're still so at the forefront, and you start to look at what can flip those switches, it's like they're all the things that we've known forever. Right. Eat more vegetables, have great relationships, manage stress, move more, drink. They're like, these are the things everyone talks about. Biohacking. I'm like the best biohack. Hug someone you care about, believe in something big or have a purpose in your life. Get some sunshine, pet your dog.
We can go now, jj.
Yeah. I'm like, we can go spend all this money and get all this other stuff. And yes, those things are great, but, you know, I wouldn't focus on the red lights and the stem cells and the saunas and all. And I love my sunlight and sauna, don't get me wrong. But I wouldn't focus on any of that. If you're eating a bunch of garbage and you're mad at your mom.
You.
Know, when you're overworking, like, fix the foundation first. Don't, like, sit there and worry about what color you're painting the walls if your foundation's got cracks and mold.
So beautifully said.
There you go. That's my rant. All right.
That is the summary of the whole thing. I get sometimes angry with these anti aging docs and even functional docs who throw those things. The red light, hyperbaric oxygen and a.
Little growth hormone, blah, blah, blah, nad.
Let's inject some of that. And $50,000 later.
They never asked what they were eating.
I was like, well, they didn't. Not only did they not ask what they're eating, but nobody's inquired about stress in your life. And now we've got these studies about these adverse childhood experiences. The trauma in childhood doesn't stay in childhood. It follows us into a history book.
Unless we fix it. Yep. Huh. I know, we're. There's a lot of. That's a whole nother call, a podcast. I'm gonna have to do about some of the different things that you can do to get through a lot of that, so. Because we all have it. I mean, come on. You know, and I did it to my kids, too. I was like going, gosh, like, how did that happen? You know, I mean, having a son who's in a coma and the other son seeing him on a stretcher, you know, it's like, these things leave. Leave scars, and then you can turn them into a thing that can make you an amazing human and totally resilient and incredibly positive. But you have to do the work to get to that.
You have to go through it. You can't go around it.
Nope, nope. Putting it. I had this running joke where I said, you know, I have a closet where I didn't want to be a little grudge holder. So I decided to put everything that got me upset into my closet. Right. So I had this client said, oh, I have a closet, you know, and that does not work, by the way. That's. I think that's probably why we get autoimmune and cancer and everything else, because we keep the closet full of crap, all the anger hidden away, and better to get it out just like a toxin. I think these are probably some of the most troubling toxins we have. Now you have a framework, which I always love when we have great acronyms. So your acronym, it's bites. What is that?
So I wanted to come up with a word that would represent all of those environmental factors we can control on top of our genes. Right. And I'm a word person. So I wrote things down and looked at all the categories and a word emerged and it was fights. And I really regret that it didn't spell peace. But I think it was more aligned with that little child warrior that I became.
Right.
So fight stands for food, infections, gut health, hormone balance, toxins and stress. And what's exciting about having a framework like this is if you each side, if you flip it, you can heal it. So there's two sides of food, right? There's the inflammatory food, the anti inflammatory food, right? There's stress, there's relaxation. So we look at both sides of each, and in the book, I don't go through them in order that it's spelled because it makes more sense to start with food and then heal your gut and then deal with your infections and toxins and so forth. And hormones is last because it is naturally downstream from everything else. As we work these lifestyle factors, our hormones may naturally come back into balance. That is what fights is very good.
And on the other side is peace.
And other.
Oh, yes, that's a sequel. And then you are the way of the peaceful warrior, like Dan Millman.
There you go. Absolutely. It is an ongoing journey, jj, isn't it?
Daily peeling an onion. Like, you know, that's why I think we have to re. We have to change the whole conversation of how we look at health. Because I feel like people go, okay, I'm go do this thing. They'll be done. I'm like, no, it's just crazy. All right, let's share with everybody. And again, I'm going to put all the notes, things we've been talking about. I'll put them@jjvirgin.com Palmer let's share the cool guide that you're giving everybody. Tell us what that is.
So the biggest question I get is what should I eat? If I have an autoimmune, the biggest.
Question everyone gets is what should I eat? I was talking to Mark Hyman about that. It's like he goes, I'm writing the book. It's like we laugh. Like the number one question I get is what should I eat? What do you eat? And then do you ever cheat? And I'm like, when you really understand food, that's not a thing anymore. Connect the dots and you realize what cheating does and cheating isn't a thing, you know, and that those cheat days make me insane.
Right, right, right. So, so very true. And I am in your camp saying that there is no one right diet for everyone. In fact, I like the term food plan because that's what it is, diet. The first three letters is die. And who wants that? So I've created this ebook called you'd Optimal Food Guide. And I take people through this process of how to figure out the foods that are best for you. In my research I have found that a paleo template diet, which means that foundation of taking the grains out and the inflammatory foods. And for folks with autoimmune conditions, you may react to nightshade vegetables, those tomatoes and peppers and so forth, especially if you have pain and arthritis. The best thing that you can do for yourself and the most empowering experiment I ever did is what I call a 30 day 5 food vacation. So I've kind of rebranded the elimination diet in the book. But this food guide really walks people through what they can do for themselves. And you know, I have that@palmer kipala.com.
I'll put it into the. I will put it into the jjvirgin.com palmer There you go. That makes it easy. Put everything in one place. Then people don't have to drive and write down stuff that would be bad. That would be bad. We want to keep everybody alive. And yes, we will put like we've talked about so many things in here. I'm going to link to Emily Fletcher's meditation and my buddy Nick Ortner's tapping and we'll link to your food guide and we'll link to Cyrix testing and we'll link to Terry Wall's TEDx talk. I mean there's a lot of stuff.
So, so many resources.
Yeah, I like to make it so it's very simple for everyone to get what they need in one place. And we'll also link to your book and I'm so glad you did that. And thank you so much for bringing, bringing it all over here today. I could talk to you all day and I have a feeling we're going to be hanging out some because we have so much in common. Love it. Yes.
Yes, indeed. Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure.
Thank you. Now, after the break, I'm going to give you some takeaways. So stay with me.
Ray Ban Meta glasses come with open ear audio so you can listen to your favorite music without blocking out the world around you.
Hey, Meta, play Gorgeous.
Here's Gorgeous by Doja Cat.
You can also ask Meta AI questions.
Hey, Meta, when's Doja Cat's next concert?
Doja Cat is playing at the Los Angeles theater next Tuesday.
Sweet.
Ray Ban Meta Glasses available at Ray Ban stores and other authorized retailers.
Alrighty. Welcome back. This is the time when I give you some top takeaways so that you can put them into media action, which of course is super key and critical because no point in learning cool stuff and then doing nothing with it. Not on my watch anyway. And, you know, we, we talked about a couple things and you're going to hear me talk a lot more about these this year. And one of them is just adding things one by one and shifting those habits that if you live like a healthy, lean person over time, you will become one. And this isn't something that happens overnight. You know, even though this was a very strange situation where Palmer literally like got these symptoms overnight, in most cases with anything going on with us, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, dementia, these things didn't happen. You didn't wake up one day and there you are. These are long, slow, progressive things. So, you know, or even some of the things like low energy, weight gain, skin problems. So I want you to think about if it didn't happen overnight, probably not going to be fixed overnight either. But when you put the right things in place, it can be fixed fairly quickly. But what I really would like to do is focus on tackling one thing at a time. Just like Gary Keller talks about in the One Thing, kind of obsessed with him. I know I mention his name all the time, but I think what he talks about is so key and critical. Get one thing, get it done, get it habitual, add the next. And then I want to also shout out, point out two more things. Number one, she was talking about epigenetics. And that is really the impact of different diet and lifestyle and things on our genes, whether they flip them on flip them off. And you know, the more we're learning about genes, the more we're learning that all of these basic things, getting some sunshine, hugging a friend, laughing, having a purpose, believing in something bigger than yourself, contribution, charity, gratitude, appreciation, eating your vegetables, taking your supplements, drinking your water, eating anti inflammatory foods, pulling out things like gluten, all of these actually have those impacts on the genes and that's why they're, they're doing amazing things. I've never heard someone say, oh yeah, you know what, you know, doing that, you know, doing that yoga class or getting a good night's sleep. Yeah, that had a negative impact. Like says no one ever, right? Other thing here that I want to stress is a really critical part of her healing had nothing to do with the food or the gut healing or the supplements. Right? A big part of her healing had to do. In fact, the biggest part, and it's how I start every single one of my programs is through mindset. And if you feel like you're struggling at all with mindset, I'll put into the show notes@jjvirgin.com Palmer a link to my Gratitude, Appreciation, Little Miracles Challenge, and also a link to Warrior mom, which was formally titled Miracle Mindset because it's all about the mindset, how you can develop a mindset, a growth mindset to help you in challenging times. Because I know we're going to face them and how to stay positive. So that will all be again@jjvirgin.com Palmer of course, big ask at the end here if you have not rated and reviewed yet. I'd love you to rate and review the show. Make sure you throw your name on in there so that I can give you a shout out. I'd love to do that. And again, while you're there, subscribe and share. Share with some pals because we are out to help a billion people become the CEO of their own health and be able to help others as well. So it starts with us. All right, see ya.
Foreign.
Hello listeners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And, of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader, and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.
More from JJ


Healthy Revisit: Heavily Meditated - Transforming Your Emotional Landscape with Dave Asprey






