Uncovering the Root Causes of Autoimmune Disease with Risa Groux

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00:47What is going on, everybody? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show. And on today's episode, we are super thrilled to have Risa here. She is a functional nutritionist and a certified autoimmune coach. This is the first time that we are bringing the autoimmune discussion to the podcast, which I'm really excited to dive into. She's got a passion for health, and she helps clients tackle a range of health challenges from autoimmune diseases to hormonal imbalances using the power of whole foods and functional nutrition, which I'm excited to dive into because you all know that is what we love to chat about on this podcast. So welcome, Risa, to this journey. I'm excited to understand your insights, your knowledge, and you just pour into our community here. Welcome to the podcast.

01:40Thank you so much, Nikki. It's great to be here. Awesome. So, Risa, I mean, selfishly, I'm meeting you for the first time. I want to know a little bit about you, what drew you into the field of functional nutrition and autoimmune coaching, and then you can share a little bit about your journey. Yeah. So I was always interested in health from a really young age. I had this really bad relationship with food growing up in my house. Everybody was always on a diet, trying to lose 5 or 10 pounds. And so then I adopted that, and I went from starvation and deprivation to, you know, pigging out as a teenager, and I was always trying to lose that 3 pounds as well. But it was crazy. It was crazy making. And finally, I realized this is not a way to live. This is a bad relationship with food. I'm not going to do it.

02:20So I did a lot of research, and I realized how to eat better for myself. And then I got married, and I had conceived our first child immediately. No problems, no issues right off the bat. Great pregnancy, great delivery. And then I went to go. We tried for our second one a couple years later, and I just couldn't get pregnant. I just couldn't. I tried. I did everything I could. And I had a couple of miscarriages, and I didn't realize what was going on.

02:51So I went to this fertility specialist, and he did blood work, and he sat at the table, and he handed over a script. And I said, what's this for? And he said, well, you have an underachieving thyroid, so you're going to need to take this synthetic thyroid medication. I said, for how long? And he said, well, every day. And I said, well, like, for how long? And he's like, oh, the rest of your life. And I went, what? I walked out of that appointment, and I thought, why is my body not doing something that it's born to do? Right? It's not making enough thyroid hormone. And why is this doctor not even asking why I'm not making it? Like, this was, like, so illogical to me. And that started me on my journey, and I started to really do a bit of a deep dive. I ended up realizing that I had a gene mutation called MTHFR, and I took B vitamins, and MTHFR can cause infertility miscarriages. Go figure. I found out about it myself. I tested myself, started taking B vitamins, and lo and behold, I got pregnant naturally and had a great pregnancy.

03:50Oh, wow. Great mound list. And I went down every single rabbit hole you can imagine. And, you know, I had high levels of mercury. I mean, like, really, really high levels of mercury. So I spent about a year chelating. I did everything. I had an active form of Epstein-Barr virus. I had low vitamin D. I mean, it went on and on and on. And it wasn't really, you know, I wasn't able to really move the needle that much.

04:46I did labs about three months later after I was, like, changed my diet. I fully took gluten out, dairy out, sugar out, everything like that. And I was vegan at the time because I was afraid to eat any fish. And I did my labs about three months later when I was like 99% compliant. And it moved just a little bit. So I said, something's up. I had done a Boston Heart Lab at the same time. And my risk for having cardiovascular events were extremely high.

05:16So I'm like, what is the deal? So I ordered myself a stool test. And that's when I found it. I had all this bacteria. And I knew that heart and teeth are connected. Our dental health is very connected to our heart health. So I found an amazing biological periodontist in LA. And I went to her and I brought my stool test and she said, oh, that's a salivary bacteria. And in two seconds, I was in taking a CAT scan. And sure enough, they found it. There was a root in my jaw that had been left there 23 years prior when I had my wisdom teeth removed that had grown an abscess around it. I felt nothing. You couldn't see it. You couldn't feel it. There was absolutely no symptoms at all.

06:04So after I had the surgery, and then, of course, they found a piece of metal that they had left in there all these years. But after I had that surgery, my numbers started to normalize. Everything started to come down. So in the meantime, I was still going. I was going to school for nutrition and reading every book I could possibly do in all these years leading up to all this. So when I finally started my practice, I knew I was testing everybody for a stool test and a comprehensive blood test. Wow. What a story. What a way to advocate for yourself and figure it out on your own, which is so I feel like it's such an important aspect when it comes to, you know, you kind of touched on it at the beginning, the medical doctors, they want to say this is the way this is the surface level to fix a cause.

06:53However, you got to the root of this situation for yourself by having to, you know, advocate and figure it out. So that's very inspiring. Thank you. Yeah. Well, I help others because it's it's it's sometimes it's just more complicated than you anticipate. And conventional medicine does not dig deep. Unfortunately, they are everything's really predicated from insurance companies. So it's we're not really able to find the root causes. And oftentimes if you're diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, they give you a little squirt gun to help put out the fire. But I'm going to get the fire hose out there. Right.

07:28Because we've got to put out the fire. That's a great analogy. I love that. So within your practice, what are some of the most common misconceptions about autoimmune autoimmune diseases that you encounter? Well, I think most people walk into my office thinking that they can just manage this. Right. They can just you're just going to have this one autoimmune disease and you can manage it with pills. So that's a big misconception. We've been able to reverse Hashimoto's like I have for myself. And we've been able to reverse those things. I'm working with somebody right now in her 30s, three children, very busy life, major, major pain with fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis.

08:06And we've been working together maybe 10 weeks or so, something like that. And she has many days where she has absolutely no pain at all. And we're only doing it through food and supplements, which is basically food as well. So we are getting to the root causes. And another misconception I would say about autoimmune is once you have one, you're likely to get more. So doctors will say, well, they're not related. You know, they're different.

08:36But it's the same thing because you're creating antibodies. You're creating you're in the cytokine storm. Your TH17 is activated and you're finding a place to park them. So if you don't decrease your antibody production, your defense mechanism in your in your system, it's going to find another gland tissue or an organ in which to park itself. And you're going to start collecting autoimmune diseases. Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with body changes you're experiencing during menopause?

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09:39Take charge of your health and join our community of strong, empowered women. Visit WarriorBabe.com forward slash apply today to start your transformation. That's WarriorBabe.com forward slash apply. All right, let's get back to the show. So for the audience that's listening, can you explain like the definition of an autoimmune disease? Sure. So autoimmune disease is when you're creating antibodies and these antibodies are erroneously thinking that a gland, a tissue or an organ is the enemy.

10:16So it starts to attack it. You're in a self attack mode with these antibodies. So as I said, it could be fibromyalgia is your muscles, rheumatoid arthritis, your joints, Hashimoto's your thyroid. So it depends on which one you have. But there are reasons, root causes to autoimmunity. And unfortunately, we're seeing an increase of autoimmunity in our country because of the amount of chemicals. We have a copious amount of chemicals.

10:47The FDA has approved at this point 86,000 chemicals for us to use. 86,000, way more than any other country on the planet. So we are inundated with, you know, it's the shampoos in your shower. It's the nail polish, the makeup, the candles, all those air fresheners that you see everywhere and every Uber and everywhere you see them. Those are all toxins that we're breathing, things that we're putting on our skin and definitely what we're eating. You know, the preservative and additive business in our country, this is an older stat, but a few years ago, it was said that $4.1 billion in additives and preservatives in our country.

11:32So we shouldn't be eating additives and preservatives, right? We should be eating real food. So this is a big part of it. And leaky gut is a huge root cause. A third of it is genetics. Leaky gut is a huge chunk after that. And leaky gut is very common. As I said, toxins, stress, bread, sugar, dairy, and alcohol, bad diet, too much sugar, processed foods, not enough sleep, toxins. These are all things that can start opening up those tight junctions in the gut.

12:05And then we are creating antibodies. So we want to close those tight junctions so we don't create those antibodies. And as I said, there's other things that it could be. So you got to go down the list and find it. Yeah. Thank you. You said they're whole foods. I just wanted you to do like a mic drop there, wanting people to eat more whole foods rather than the grabbing of the preservatives or the grabbing of like, you know, I say women need to eat a lot more protein in their diet. And usually they'll grab protein bars, which are just not they're artificially made.

12:40And they contain all the things, too, that you're talking about. So whole foods. What's your definition of whole foods? Things that crawl on the ground and sprout from the earth. Beautiful. Simple enough. What? Thank you. I said beautiful. Simple enough. Yeah, exactly. Those are whole foods. Things that are made from a farm and not from a factory. Things that don't have a nutritional panel. So how do you feel about the like meat? Like, how do you because like that means like, you know, I'm thinking more vegan, vegetarian things.

13:10Like, how do you feel about if somebody is a you know, I love chicken. I love beef, ground beef. What if people want to consume that? What should they look for? So you want to have the cleanest possible. And fortunately, the way we manufacture our animal protein in these times is horrific. So most of our cows are being fed antibiotics and growth hormones with corn. And they want to make them fatter because then it's more money for them. And they're eating corn that is GMO.

13:40So it has glyphosate in it, which is weed killer. And glyphosate is now we find it in the rain, unfortunately. And it's a major endocrine disruptor. It's going to be, I think, the number one cause of infertility moving forward. Um, so you want to get grass fed. And now they found a loophole that if you feed them corn the last 30 days, you can still call them grass fed. So now we have to do grass fed and grass finished. That's the label we're looking for, which is crazy, right?

14:12So we're getting a little bit more. Since being a kid, so much has changed with like the labels, what we need to look for. And like you're saying, it's just kind of, you know, this is, it's getting worse. And this is, thank you for saying and being an advocate, like being a voice of what we need to look out for. For sure. For sure. I try to get my megaphone out every day because we don't realize I'm getting more and more kids in my office that are having stomach issues. I had one yesterday and we talked about what she's eating and it's all processed food.

14:47All of it. So there's no, you know, where's our fiber? Where's our water? We can't just drink water anymore. We have to drink a soda or a flavored something. It's just, let's just get back to basics. I mean, I rarely go down the cookie aisle in any market, but I was, had to go get something. And I was like, look at the register and I had to run down this aisle. And I noticed down the cookie aisle, there are so many Oreos. I mean, we have double stuffed and we have single and then we have mini and then we have dipped and then we have red and green and blue.

15:21And I mean, it is unfathomable. We have Oreo ice cream and, or, I mean, it's everyone like doing the Oreos. You're on this Oreo thing, this Oreo cake, right? Have you been to Costco? Do you have a Costco around you at all? I don't really go to Costco much anymore. Okay. So we were just in Costco too. And I'm the same thing. Like we're running around and they have Oreos that now have, uh, they're called space Oreos or something like that. They are made up of pop rocks. My goodness. I mean, we are science experiments.

15:52That's what we are. How does our government even let that be? Pop rocks. You know, I feel like that is like a whole nother topic for a whole nother conversation, but I couldn't agree more. So let's keep going down this. Uh, what if like, what, what do we need to know about this? Like, I know you're talking about like the labels and grass fed, grass finished, like what else were and not preservatives. Like how else if a woman was going through a grocery store right now, what were some of the, what are some of the key takeaways that you would want them to, or what are some of the key foods that you want them to look for to incorporate in their diet?

16:27So I, my principle that has worked for all the decades that I've been doing my practice is protein, fat, and fiber. I believe everybody needs to eat a little differently according to their current health status. But at the end of the day, everybody needs protein, fat, and fiber. So it doesn't matter who you are, what, what health status you have. We just need protein, fat, and fiber. So good protein. We were talking about the beef and then, and again, beef is okay. If it's, uh, you know, I'd have to look at labs because I look at iron.

16:58And if you have a lot of iron storage, your ferritin is very high. I'd probably say not so much. Some people use iron, um, uh, iron cast iron pans. So they're having a lot of iron. So those people, I would say, take out the cast iron pan. And, and, but I'd have to look at numbers. I do everything individually and custom for each person because we're all different. Um, and so your fish, a fish has now been the latest problem the last few years. It's GMO and it is, um, formed and it is unconscionable. If you've ever seen any movies that, what are they doing to these fish?

17:30It is just horrible. And they die so many of the salmon that we get. So it's very hard. Even at the market, I have a hard time finding wild. So even if you go to the nicest restaurant, I always ask, is it farmed or is it wild? And it's almost all the time, uh, farmed. Occasionally you'll get a farm, a wild, but it's crazy. So, and then fowl, your, your, um, your chicken or your turkey should be, uh, pastured. So they should be on the land eating what they're supposed to be eating, not in cages, eating,

18:04um, you know, feed again, corn and things like that. So, um, if you can buy local, buy with your farmer, um, go to farmer's markets. If you go to a market and just look for organic as much as possible, not everything needs to be organic, but pretty much all your greens, all your, if you're eating it on that skin, then it should be organic. Things like avocado, you don't necessarily need to do organic because it has a thick skin. Um, bananas too, even though I buy those organic because I just, the soil is better.

18:38And, um, just a stat for you. Uh, the soil has been depleted 50% since the 1940s, 50%. So we shouldn't have to take supplements. We should be getting all of these minerals and vitamins from our soil, but we don't, unfortunately. We don't. Interesting. So as you said earlier, you do a lot of your, uh, protocols with obviously nutrition, uh, nutrition can help with a lot of deficiencies, um, but then supplements, which is basically what you're saying, which is like, it's also food.

19:10Right. You mentioned that really quick. And I have a question. Um, the actually two questions. One, you said farm salmon and wild. I know wild is what we want to look for, right? Well, that's smoked. Is smoked the same as farm? No. So smoked is how they cook it. Um, smoked is what's in a smoker. And so there's some thoughts that that is, um, creating carcinogens. So every now and then, if you have some smoked beef or turkey or fish, okay. But you just probably don't want to have that every day.

19:42Got it. So second question is you mentioned protein, fat, and fiber. We're missing a macronutrient there. What are your thoughts on carbohydrates? So we get carbs from fiber, right? So if we stick to protein, fat, and fiber, and we talked about the protein, right? There's those animal proteins. There's also, um, plant-based proteins. So that's beans, nuts, seeds. Um, and, uh, you know, again, I'm very, uh, customized to the person. So if they've got SIBO, let's say they have chronic bloating, it's not something I

20:13would recommend eating all those beans because it's a lot of lectins. It's going to be very difficult for them to digest it. Um, and then there's the, um, fat. So these are good fats. These are the good oils. So the avocado oil, coconut oil, and, um, olive oil. Olives are great. Coconut is great. Avocado is great. Eggs are great. So those are really good fats. And then your vegetables, your fiber is all vegetables. Those are your plants. And all those plants have carbohydrates.

20:43All of them do. Every food has a carbohydrate with the exception of animal protein and liquid fat. So like, uh, oils, they don't have any carbs. So you're getting enough carbs there. Now, if you need more carbs, let's say you're a premier athlete or you're running 10 miles three times a day or three times a week, I would say throw in some sweet potato yams for sure. If you don't want to lose weight, then absolutely you need some carbohydrates if you're burning them. If you're building muscle, we need to have some carbohydrates. If you don't have, um, if you want to lose weight, then we've got storage, right?

21:18So we, if we have carbs in storage, then you're just going to pull from the storage unit. You don't need to eat carbs, right? Um, I worked with a professional athlete who ran 100 mile races. That is a person who needed more carbs. You know, she would run a marathon a couple of times a week just for training. So she needed more carbs and protein because she didn't have any storage to, to take from. So everybody is different. Um, and, but there's good carbs, there's complex carbs and they're simple carbs.

21:52Simple carbs are the ones that turn into sugar right away. So Doritos and, and pasta and cookies and things like that. And complex carbs, which are your fibers for your fibers, vegetables. Those are all complex carbs and sweet potato and yams are too. Great. Thank you for that clarification. Um, I have a question. When, when you digest the fiber though, right? You're saying they're carbs, uh, the way it gets digested though, is it different? I'm sorry. Is it when you digest like fiber, like the fiber, like the carbs that come from fiber,

22:26uh, doesn't it get, does it get utilized differently in the body? So yeah, it depends on what kind of fiber you're having. So there's water soluble and, um, non-soluble fiber. So it depends what five, what fiber you're having. And again, I'm basing it on your health status. So if you've got SIBO, I'd be very careful with a lot of very fibrous foods. That's going to blow you. It's going to retain water. It's going to retain some gases. It's going to be very uncomfortable for you. So everybody is different. You know how we process a, uh, a muffin, let's say that's a carbohydrate.

23:01It's easily turns into a sugar. It's going to spike your blood sugar levels. And so, um, it's, it's, it's a very different system, but a real fiber is slower and it slows down a sugar spike. And we need fiber because that fiber is what is the trash truck that goes through the station and it picks up all the trash in the intestines and then takes it out. Right. Most people don't get enough fiber. Awesome. So now I, now I'm curious, I want to circle back up to the autoimmune disease, um, topic

23:34that we were talking about with how you, you know, you figured out the root cause of what you were dealing with personally, and then you went to address it and now you're doing it with your clients. So how does the role of our nutrition on a day to day manage and potentially reverse? I'm sure that's what you focused on and what you focus on with your clients. How does it, how does it do that? Like, how does it reverse autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto's, uh, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia.

24:06Thank you. You need to find the root cause. So I worked with somebody who had rheumatoid arthritis a long time ago. She was a kindergarten teacher and she young and she was like maybe early forties and she couldn't sit crisscross applesauce. She was a kindergarten teacher and she just couldn't. She said, it was so much pain. I couldn't unwind it. She couldn't go up and down her stairs more than once a day. So she was in a lot of pain. She was eating very little fiber, but we did a stool test and we found out that she had a

24:38very elevated level of a pathogen that causes, uh, rheumatoid arthritis. We killed that pathogen and she's totally fine. Now that's a pretty easy one, right? And I've worked with, I mean, I have so many stories, but I worked with somebody with colitis, same thing. She couldn't leave her house before 11 o'clock because she was just on the toilet the whole morning. And she came to see me. She had been to all the doctors, nobody helped. They gave her medication, nothing was happening. And again, I found a, um, citrobacter fundi, which is a pathogen that was at super high levels

25:12that was causing her, uh, colitis. I see her from time to time. She always comes into my office and she's fluttering around the world. And like, she's a totally different person. Totally. So it's, um, I mean, I could just go on and on. I worked with somebody who had Tourette's really bad. And, uh, we, we dampened her autoimmunity and the Tourette's symptoms disappeared. So it's, it's finding what the root is. It's not accepting that you have this autoimmune disease because you have these antibodies that

25:44are high. And so how do we, you know, are you okay with high antibodies? I'm not. So I'm going to find out why are you creating so many antibodies, right? Is it a, a virus that's gone active? Is it a pathogen overload, right? Is it a high levels of mercury eating tuna and aji and swordfish? Is it lack of vitamin D, which I see in my office pretty much every day. Is it MTHFR, that B vitamin, that methylation process, or is it leaky gut? You know, leaky gut is a huge one.

26:16And all the reasons for leaky gut and almost everybody has leaky gut. I mean, it's very, very common. We only have one layer of epithelial cells on the intestinal lining, just one layer. We have seven on the outside skin. So it's very fragile. And once you poke holes, you're leaky and leaky gut, leaky brain. What's the definition of leaky gut? It's called intestinal permeability. And it's basically when you have holes, they're called tight junctions in the intestinal lining. And so food particles, toxins, undigested proteins go in through the, into the system.

26:51And it goes into the bloodstream, into the back door and the body. We have our defense mechanism. The body says, who are you? You're the enemy. You're coming in through the back door and we create antibodies. That's our defense mechanism. And these antibodies are going to shoot at the enemy every time it comes in through the back door. So if you're eating all day long and it's coming in through the back door, your body is busy, right? You are making lots of antibodies and eventually, and then we're going to have some food sensitivities, of course, and eventually an inflammation. And eventually it'll find a place to park it.

27:23So it'll find a gland, a tissue or an organ. And then we have autoimmune. I have worked with several people who have had four autoimmune diseases. And that's usually the threshold I see that they cannot be functional at that point. At one time they had four. Wow. I get a lot of two, but I've had a few at four. And those people are really, they have to quit their job. They have to just really isolate and take care of themselves because they're really in bad shape.

27:54So stop it before it gets that bad. If you get diagnosed with one, follow it. Find the root cause and try and reverse those antibodies. Yeah. So you keep saying root cause there. How do you approach identifying the root cause of an autoimmune disease in your clients? So depending on what it is, I do thorough testing no matter what. So I do a comprehensive bioscreen, which is pretty big. I'm looking at all four markers of the blood sugar, all nine markers of the thyroid. I'm looking at iron. I'm looking at inflammation.

28:25I'm looking at white blood cell breakdown, all that stuff. And that helps me give me some clues. Do we have inflammation? What's the inflammation for? All that stuff. And then white blood cells, I'm looking for a bacterial pattern or viral pattern. And then I order a stool test. Every single person who I work with gets a stool test. And I'm looking for 84 pathogens. So I'm looking for the good guys, the bad guys. Do we have too much of one, not enough of the other? I'm looking for worms, bugs, parasites, candida, fungus, H. pylori, which is a really big one.

28:58And that is pretty serious. And that can lead to gastric cancers and peptic ulcers. And then I'm looking at how many pancreatic enzymes you're producing. Are you having a hard time processing your fat? Are you inflamed? Do you have any kind of occult blood, microscopic blood? I worked with somebody years ago who is a 36-year-old guy, super healthy. So we thought. And his wife was, I think they just had their second baby.

29:30And he came to see me. He wanted to eat a little bit better. And he wanted to lose a few pounds. So he came to see me. I ordered the stool test because that's what I do for everybody. We saw a tremendous amount of occult blood in his stool. So I referred him to the gastroenterologist. I said, you've got to get a colonoscopy. Most of the time when I see that, it's hemorrhoids of some sort, fissures. But in his case, it was first stage colon cancer. And he had a history of colon cancer. His dad had had it. And we caught it. We caught it immediately.

30:01So it was, and he had no symptoms, zero. So if we didn't do that test because he just wanted to lose like eight pounds, we would have found it. He would have waited all those years till he was symptomatic. And it was stage four. And he was going to have the fight of his life. But we didn't have to do that. So that was great. Crazy, right? 36 years old. That's wild. What an incredible story, though. You guys caught it so early on. He was able to do the right procedure to fix it.

30:31Is he clear now? Or is he still? Yeah, he's totally good. He eats really well. You know, he eats his fiber. And he gets checked. So it's good. You always have to look. That's awesome. So in your experience with working with your clients, nutrition is, as we're talking about, a very big thing. What do you feel like is the biggest challenge that your patients face when they're trying to adjust? Eating, you know, the middle of the grocery store, essentially, in order to fix these health conditions that they may have.

31:02Hey, hey, just want to drop a huge appreciation to you guys listening to the show. It means a lot. I hope you guys are enjoying it. And there's so much more to come with it. If you are enjoying it, hit the subscribe button. I'd appreciate that tons. And also, it would help this podcast reach others who need to hear these messages, too. Thanks so much, guys. Let's get back to the show. So I think, in my experience, the people have some challenges. There's two, basically. One is wine. People love their wine.

31:32They are very attached to their wine. I hit so hard with the audience. It's a social thing. It's an unwind thing. It's wine is, you know, they'll come in and say, please don't take my wine from me. And, you know, that's a big challenge. And we can come back to wine and we find wines that are a little bit better, not as high in sugar, doesn't have sulfites and sulfates. So it's a little better for you. But wine is a tough one.

32:03That's a big challenge. And the second one I would say is people are so used to grabbing and go and heating up and not cooking. And it's crazy to me how many people don't cook. Like my kids, when they left my house, there was just no way. Oh, are you one of them? I hate cooking. And the audience knows it because I talk about it all the time. I hate it. Oh, wow. I got to get over to your house and show you how easy it is. I need a chef. I used to.

32:35Don't get me wrong. I used to meal prep through and through and through. But in the recent years, I just I haven't attributed as much to it. I just normally do egg whites and yogurt and granola. And I mean, I do so I do veggies here and there. They're not my best friend, but I've gotten better. Why no yolks? What's that? Why no yolks? Oh, I do yolks. I do one egg yolk. I just try and load my fats. I do like roughly 60, 70 grams of fats a day.

33:09But I usually get it from I get from the yolks. I get it from granola. Well, the granola is mainly carbs. What else do I get it from? Avocado. Avocado. Peanut butter. I'm going down my list right now. Chicken has it in a little bit. Ground beef has it in, depending on the percentage. Right. I love olives. Great. Awesome. So good. Anyway, didn't mean to deter away from the question.

33:41Yeah. So that's the challenge is that people are so used to grabbing and not cooking. And, you know, it's an investment. That time is an investment in your health. I would rather much rather prep my meals than sit in a doctor's office waiting, waiting at the pharmacy, waiting at the doctor's office, dealing with all that. It's so painful for me. I would much rather whip up my dressings. I make a big salad on Sundays or Mondays. I always have homemade dressings in my fridge.

34:13And I make simple, easy. The other night, I just put chicken in a pan. I had some pesto that I had made. I had asparagus I chopped up. I had mushrooms, onions, cauliflower rice, threw it in, put the pesto in, done. 10 minutes, one pan, done. And I, of course, had it with a salad. I always have a salad. So easy. Making vegetable soups are easy. Put some chicken in it. It's just easy, right? And make big batches so you don't have to make every meal and every day.

34:44Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Well, how do you feel about olive oil? You know Brian Johnson? You follow Brian Johnson at all? He's like big. Yeah. What if he's big on olive oil? Yeah, olive oil is awesome. Yeah. It's awesome. Cool. You mentioned a little bit of your success stories. I would love to hear some more because I know that there's a ton of listeners that have Hashimoto's, have thyroid problems, that have rheumatoid arthritis. And we want, you know, we shed gently with those.

35:16We love women for strength training, for building more muscle, for longevity, especially the years post-menopause, for bone density and reducing osteoporosis. But yeah, let's hear some more success stories you can share about your patients, not your reverse or autoimmune diseases. Well, here's one, but it's not autoimmune, but I think it's really amazing. It's an amazing story. But one day, several years ago, I get a phone call from a professional golfer, a PGA, probably one of the greatest golfers of our time, Freddie Couples.

35:48And he calls me and he says, you know, I was referred to you and I want to lose 20 pounds before the Masters. I'm like, no problem. Come on in. 20 pounds, no big deal. So he comes in and I said, Freddie, you know, you're like known for back pain. Like you've been carted off courses. You are in, you know, they talk about it all the time. And so tell me about the back. So he's like, oh, I have this doctor in Germany and this doctor in Mexico. And I travel with my physical therapist and I'm in pain all the time. I said, on a scale from one to 10, how much pain are you in?

36:18He said, definitely a seven, anywhere from a seven, eight or nine, depending on how much golf I play every day. He said, forget it. I've done everything. There's no way I can get out of this back pain. And I said, well, tell me about the surgeries. And he said, I haven't had any. I said, you haven't had any surgeries. He said, no. And I said, has anybody ever tested you for inflammation? He said, no, I don't think so. So I said, well, I'm going to order some tests. He goes, order whatever you need to order. I put him on my detox. He came into my office a week later.

36:49He had lost some weight. But I said, Freddie, what's your number? He said, four. He came in the week after that. I said, what's your number? He was a zero or a one, depending on how much golf he played that week. He never was higher than a one at any time that I was working with him. And we got back his inflammation numbers, and they were through the roof. So he lives, his two homes, and both of them are on golf courses. And he works on golf courses. So he is breathing in these toxic chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, all day and all night.

37:25He would get headaches. He had smell sensitivity. He would get an Uber, and he would have to cover his mouth because any kind of smell, as I was talking about the air fresheners, would give him a headache. And he was on a plane every week. So he was always eating out. So we'd have bad oils and inflammatory oils, and he wasn't eating all that great. He wasn't horrible, but he's on the road. So he's grabbing a sandwich and this. So we cleaned him up. We decreased all his inflammation, and his back pain was gone.

37:58His headaches were gone. Smell sensitivity were gone. He was just overloaded with toxins. So I love that story. You did a testimony on my website, so that's why I could share it. But it's really an amazing story because that is just fundamentally what inflammation does. And autoimmune is inflammation. So when you have inflammation, as I said, it's just going to attack a different part of your body. Just get that. What kills me is people come into my office, and they say, oh, I was just diagnosed with,

38:30let's say, Hashimoto's. And I said, well, what did the doctor say? And they said, well, here's this pill. And I said, well, did they tell you it's autoimmune? Well, some of them do, and some of them don't. But I said, did they talk to you about your diet? No, they don't mention anything about my diet. So gluten and Hashimoto's don't get along, right? Gluten is really effective at poking holes in that intestinal lining. You should absolutely 100%, 1,000% be gluten-free if you have autoimmune. And dairy as well. I would put that in the same area, special convention dairy, until we get you in a better

39:05place. Then we can bring back a little bit of sheep or goat's milk. And then soy. Soy and thyroid do not get along. And almost all processed foods have soybean oil or soy lecithin or just soy everywhere. So it is imperative to clean up the diet when we have this inflammation. It's just imperative. So that's what I do with people. And I've reversed Hashimoto's and all kinds of stuff. So it's awesome to watch.

39:36There's nothing better than watching people heal, in my opinion. It's just the coolest job in the world. It's very cool. I love that. I can hear and feel your passion as you share these stories and just throughout this whole episode today. It is incredible how to watch somebody fix the way they're eating. And these, because that's what we feel. We watched inside of Warrior Babe. Our women come in with similar situations. And we guide them through the protocols of eating better. And they are soon able to come off of medications.

40:07They're soon feeling so much better. It's just an incredible transformation to be able to see. And I came from the medical field. I spent nine years in the medical field. And I'm so happy I got out. But one of the reasons that, you know, it just tread lightly. But I Googled how much of nutritional guidance doctors get. And it blew my mind of time spent in residency. And then I also, when I was on the floor and I worked in the ER, I got questions.

40:37I got all of the time when I was on my start of my fitness journey. All the time questions around nutrition. And then it just, I needed to get out of there when I saw that there was just a better way in healing people outside of just handing them medications to treat a, just to treat a, there was no root cause to anything. So thank you for what you're doing. It's that pill for an ill paradigm. And that's why I'm so grateful that there are some MDs who are really sick and tired of that paradigm.

41:08And I'm very grateful that I have those tools to read labs. And to know what, you know, how to, how to, how to gauge it and, and, and get a blueprint. So I can help people, including myself. But, and, and food is a huge part of it. And it is, nutrition is an elective in medical school. And even the nutrition that they teach is just the, the, the government. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just, it's sad. And we have a lot of room for growth. So on that note, I want to ask you, what do you feel like is future developments that you foresee in the field of functional nutrition?

41:43And, and auto autoimmune disease treatment? I am seeing it's just kicked off in the last few months, but we are seeing tremendous growth in probiotics with certain strains designed specifically for different issues. And I am loving this. So. Sorry, keep going. Yeah. So like right now, I just got one in my office this week for glucose control, right? So it helps. It has all the bacteria, the good probiotics that are going to help your, your blood sugar, right?

42:15And then we have acromantia minisophilia, which is a strain. That's a good guy. That is really important for, for disease. And I test everybody for it. And so many people don't even have any, like it's none, zero. So now we have an acromantia minisophilia that I can give to somebody so that they can start building that. And I don't want to get too technical, but the mucosal lining will help to recolonize it so that you can make it. It's amazing. We have this ecosystem that was created to absolutely thrive and survive.

42:46It's just all these chemicals and all these processed foods and all this stress and everything has just destroyed it. And the medication is not a bandaid. It just worsens it most of the time. So we're really seeing tremendous movement in the probiotic field, which I am super excited about because I don't think people know, right? We, oh, this is good. And these are good strains, but now we know what, what, what's, what do you need? What specific to you do you need?

43:16Incredible. You said that was just so well put. What are some supplements that people should be having? I mean, I know everyone's very individual, depends on numbers, depends on what's needed, but maybe like a foundational protocol of what people should be having. So everyone I work with, I get, I test them for vitamin D. It's actually a hormone. It's not a vitamin, but vitamin D is imperative. I have a billion supplements on my wall. And if somebody said you can only take one for the rest of your life, it would be D. It is, you will not make bone without it.

43:47I don't care how much calcium you take or you eat. You, it is anti-aging, anti-cancer. It is huge for immunity. It is imperative for gut health, heart health, brain health, thyroid health. We have a D receptor site on every cell in the body. We need vitamin D and you want a good one. I get a lot of them from a store that we've mentioned here that has soybean oil in it and canola oil without a vitamin K, which you need for absorption. So I'm very picky about my supplements. That's why I made my own line because I want good stuff.

44:17If I'm going to spend money on it and take it, I want the good stuff. So vitamin D is absolutely, pretty much everybody has that. How many times should we have of that a day? Well, you need your numbers to be between 80 and 100. Labs will usually go 30 to 80, which is really a joke. And if you are autoimmune, you could go all the way to 120. It's hard to get overdosed on vitamin D, but you can. I've been doing this so long. I've never had anybody overdosed. You know, it have side effects from toxic effects from too much vitamin D, but they'll get up there and then we stop.

44:51And we're just always monitoring that because it's a really big thing. Really, really big, important marker. And then vitamin B. You want to methylize vitamin B. My B-Ultra is in methylcobalamine form and it's incredibly important for RNA, DNA. Also stress. If you're high stress, we eat our B vitamins. If you're vegetarian or vegan, you're not getting many B12. So it's really imperative that B vitamins are in my maintenance program. And then if you're autoimmune, I have my Fab 5.

45:22So I have Omega, my Omega Max, vitamin D. Resveratrol, which is an anti-inflammatory. And turmeric, my turmeric max, which is anti-inflammatory. And glutathione. Glutathione is our master antioxidant. So it's imperative that we have that. We lose it when it leaves the building, kind of like female eggs. Once it's gone, it's gone. And it helps us protect us against any oxidative stress. So that's anything that wants to come into the body and create disease. So glutathione is really, really, really important.

45:54And those are the Fab 5. I also have an AI balance, which is an autoimmune. And it has all the minerals and the vitamins to help with thyroid conversion and just dampening more inflammation. Thank you. Very insightful there. Mentioning of the vitamin B, I also, too, have the MTHR. FR. FR. G mutation. It's broken. It's broken. So I take the MTHR, right? Five a day.

46:25Okay. Yeah. You just want to make sure you're in methylated form. There's two alleles. Your B-cub and or your B9, your folate. So depending on what allele you have. But I just do a complex B vitamin because there's so many benefits to it. So that's what I do. Ranting my B-ultra. Very nice. Amazing. Well, Risa, thank you so much for being here today. Where can listeners learn more about you? My website is RisaGruNutrition, R-I-S-A. Gru is G-R-O-U-X, nutrition.

46:56You can find my book food frame there. And I highlight six different major diet types that is best suited most of the time. I use those, one of those six for people. I talk about my detox there. And then I have a course on achieving optimal thyroid health on my website as well. And all my product line is there and tons of information and articles. All my social media is RisaGruNutrition. And yeah, I work with people all over the country. So I'm happy to work with anybody via Zoom. And we can get the test done and the stool test and the blood test.

47:30Incredible. Awesome, Risa. Well, thank you so much for being here and spending your time and sharing much, very, very insightful information and all your knowledge with us. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Hey, guys, real quick. If you're interested in taking your body to the next level, lose body fat, build more muscle, feel more confident. Do it alongside one of our 30 plus professional coaches. Work one-on-one with her to eliminate all of the guesswork that you may have. And all you need to do is just do the work that she tells you to do to get to those goals of yours.

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