What Causes Autoimmune Disease and Can Diet Help?

Nikkiey: Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals and feel insanely confident. And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask you to do is leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else.

Risa: It's amazing. We have this ecosystem that was created to absolutely thrive and survive. It's just all these chemicals and all these processed foods and all this stress that have destroyed it. And the medication is not a band-aid. 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.

Nikkiey: What is going on, everybody? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show. 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 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. I'm excited to hear your insights and your knowledge, and to have you pour into our community here. Welcome to the podcast.

Risa: Thank you so much, Nikkiey. It's great to be here.

Nikkiey: Awesome. So, Risa, 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.

Risa: Yeah. I was always interested in health from a really young age. I had a really bad relationship with food growing up. In my house, everybody was always on a diet, trying to lose 5 or 10 pounds. So I adopted that, and I went from starvation and deprivation to pigging out as a teenager, and I was always trying to lose those 3 pounds as well. 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.

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

So I went to a fertility specialist, and he did blood work, and he sat at the table and handed over a script. I said, what's this for? And he said, well, you have an underactive 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, for how long? And he said, 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 it was born to do? It's not making enough thyroid hormone. And why is this doctor not even asking why I'm not making it? That was so illogical to me.

That started me on my journey, and I really did a deep dive. I ended up realizing that I had a gene mutation called MTHFR, and MTHFR can cause infertility and 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.

Nikkiey: Oh, wow.

Risa: And meanwhile, I went down every single rabbit hole you can imagine. I had high levels of mercury, 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. It went on and on and on. And I wasn't able to really move the needle that much.

I did labs about three months after I 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. I did my labs about three months later, when I was 99% compliant, and they 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 cardiovascular events was extremely high.

So I'm like, what is the deal? 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. I went to her and brought my stool test, and she said, oh, that's a salivary bacteria. In two seconds I was 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 were absolutely no symptoms at all.

Then, of course, they found a piece of metal they had left in there all those years. But after I had that surgery, my numbers started to normalize. Everything started to come down. In the meantime, I was going to school for nutrition and reading every book I possibly could all those years leading up to this. So when I finally started my practice, I knew I was testing everybody with a stool test and a comprehensive blood test.

Nikkiey: Wow. What a story. What a way to advocate for yourself and figure it out on your own. I feel like that's such an important aspect. You touched on it at the beginning: the medical doctors want to say this is the way, this is the surface-level fix. However, you got to the root of the situation for yourself by having to advocate and figure it out. So that's very inspiring.

Risa: Thank you. Well, I help others because sometimes it's just more complicated than you anticipate. And conventional medicine does not dig deep. Unfortunately, everything's really predicated on insurance companies, so we're not really able to find the root causes. 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, because we've got to put out the fire.

Nikkiey: That's a great analogy. I love that. So within your practice, what are some of the most common misconceptions about autoimmune diseases that you encounter?

Risa: I think most people walk into my office thinking that they can just manage this. That you're just going to have this one autoimmune disease and you can manage it with pills. 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, with major, major pain from fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis. We've been working together maybe 10 weeks or so, 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.

Another misconception about autoimmune is around the fact that once you have one, you're likely to get more. Doctors will say, well, they're not related, they're different. But it's the same thing, because you're creating antibodies. 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 system, it's going to find another gland, tissue or organ in which to park itself, and you're going to start collecting autoimmune diseases.

Nikkiey: Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with the body changes you're experiencing during menopause? It's time to take control. If you're between 45 and 65 years old and tired of struggling with body fat and muscle loss, WarriorBabe is here for you. At WarriorBabe, we've helped over 18,000 women just like you lose body fat, build toned muscle and understand their bodies better with personalized plans based on hormone and thyroid testing and more. Imagine knowing exactly what your body needs to see real results, and results that last. Don't wait anymore. Take charge of your health and join our community of strong, empowered women. Visit WarriorBabe.com/apply today to start your transformation. That's WarriorBabe.com/apply. All right, let's get back to the show.

So for the audience that's listening, can you explain the definition of an autoimmune disease?

Risa: Sure. 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. So they start to attack it. You're in a self-attack mode with these antibodies. As I said, it could be fibromyalgia, which is your muscles; rheumatoid arthritis, your joints; Hashimoto's, your thyroid. It depends on which one you have. But there are reasons, root causes, to autoimmunity.

Unfortunately, we're seeing an increase of autoimmunity in our country because of the amount of chemicals. We have a copious amount of chemicals. The 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. It's the shampoos in your shower. It's the nail polish, the makeup, the candles, all those air fresheners you see in every Uber and everywhere. Those are all toxins that we're breathing, things we're putting on our skin, and definitely what we're eating. The preservative and additive business in our country, and this is an older stat, a few years ago was said to be $4.1 billion.

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. Toxins, stress, bread, sugar, dairy and alcohol, a bad diet, too much sugar, processed foods, not enough sleep: these are all things that can start opening up those tight junctions in the gut, and 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 are other things it could be, so you've got to go down the list and find it.

Nikkiey: Yeah. Thank you. You said whole foods. I just wanted you to do a mic drop there, wanting people to eat more whole foods rather than grabbing the preservatives. I say women need to eat a lot more protein in their diet, and usually they'll grab protein bars, which are artificially made and contain all the things you're talking about. So, whole foods. What's your definition of whole foods?

Risa: Things that crawl on the ground and sprout from the earth.

Nikkiey: Beautiful. Simple enough.

Risa: What?

Nikkiey: Thank you. I said beautiful. Simple enough.

Risa: Yeah, exactly. Those are whole foods. Things that are made on a farm and not in a factory. Things that don't have a nutritional panel.

Nikkiey: So how do you feel about meat? Because that makes me think more of vegan and vegetarian things. I love chicken. I love beef, ground beef. What if people want to consume that? What should they look for?

Risa: You want to have the cleanest possible. Unfortunately, the way we manufacture our animal protein these days is horrific. Most of our cows are being fed antibiotics and growth hormones with corn. They want to make them fatter because then it's more money for them. And they're eating corn that is GMO, so it has glyphosate in it, which is weed killer. We now find glyphosate in the rain, unfortunately, and it's a major endocrine disruptor. I think it's going to be the number one cause of infertility moving forward.

So you want to get grass fed. And now they've found a loophole: if you feed them corn the last 30 days, you can still call them grass fed. So now we have to look for grass fed and grass finished. That's the label we're looking for, which is crazy, right?

Nikkiey: Since I was a kid, so much has changed with the labels and what we need to look for. And like you're saying, it's getting worse. So thank you for being an advocate, for being a voice for what we need to look out for.

Risa: For sure. I try to get my megaphone out every day, because I'm getting more and more kids in my office who are having stomach issues. I had one yesterday, and we talked about what she's eating, and it's all processed food. All of it. So 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. Let's just get back to basics.

I rarely go down the cookie aisle in any market, but I had to go get something, and I had to run down this aisle. And I noticed there are so many Oreos. We have Double Stuf and we have single and then we have mini and then we have dipped and then we have red and green and blue. It is unfathomable. We have Oreo ice cream. Everyone's doing the Oreos. There's this Oreo cake, right?

Nikkiey: Have you been to Costco? Do you have a Costco around you at all?

Risa: I don't really go to Costco much anymore.

Nikkiey: Okay. So we were just in Costco too, and it's the same thing. We're running around, and they have Oreos now called Space Oreos or something like that. They are made with Pop Rocks.

Risa: My goodness. We are science experiments. That's what we are. How does our government even let that be? Pop Rocks.

Nikkiey: I feel like that's a whole other topic for a whole other conversation, but I couldn't agree more. So let's keep going down this. You're talking about the labels, grass fed, grass finished, and no preservatives. If a woman was going through a grocery store right now, what are some of the key takeaways, or some of the key foods, you'd want her to look for and incorporate into her diet?

Risa: My principle that has worked for all the decades 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. It doesn't matter who you are or what health status you have. We just need protein, fat and fiber.

So, good protein. We were talking about beef, and again, beef is okay. I'd have to look at labs, because I look at iron. If you have a lot of iron storage, if your ferritin is very high, I'd probably say not so much. Some people use cast iron pans, so they're getting a lot of iron. For those people I would say take out the cast iron pan. But I'd have to look at the numbers. I do everything individually and custom for each person, because we're all different.

And fish has been the latest problem the last few years. It's GMO and it's farmed, and it is unconscionable. If you've ever seen any of the movies, what they are doing to these fish is just horrible. They dye so much of the salmon we get. So it's very hard. Even at the market I have a hard time finding wild. Even if you go to the nicest restaurant, I always ask, is it farmed or is it wild? And almost all the time it's farmed. Occasionally you'll get wild, but it's crazy.

And then fowl, your chicken or your turkey, should be pastured. They should be on the land eating what they're supposed to be eating, not in cages eating feed, again corn and things like that. If you can buy local, buy from your farmer. Go to farmers markets. If you go to a market, look for organic as much as possible. Not everything needs to be organic, but pretty much all your greens, and if you're eating it with the skin, it should be organic. Things like avocado you don't necessarily need to buy organic because it has a thick skin. Bananas too, even though I buy those organic because the soil is better.

And just a stat for you: the soil has been depleted 50% since the 1940s. 50%. We shouldn't have to take supplements. We should be getting all of these minerals and vitamins from our soil, but unfortunately we don't.

Nikkiey: Interesting. So as you said earlier, you do a lot of your protocols with nutrition. Nutrition can help with a lot of deficiencies. And then supplements, which you mentioned really quick, are basically food too. I actually have two questions. One, you said farmed salmon and wild. I know wild is what we want to look for. What about smoked? Is smoked the same as farmed?

Risa: No. Smoked is how they cook it. It's cooked in a smoker. And there are some thoughts that it creates carcinogens. So every now and then, if you have some smoked beef or turkey or fish, okay. But you probably don't want to have that every day.

Nikkiey: Got it. The second question: you mentioned protein, fat and fiber. We're missing a macronutrient there. What are your thoughts on carbohydrates?

Risa: We get carbs from fiber, right? If we stick to protein, fat and fiber, we talked about the protein. There are the animal proteins, and there are also plant-based proteins: beans, nuts, seeds. And again, I'm very customized to the person. If they've got SIBO, let's say chronic bloating, I wouldn't recommend eating all those beans, because they have a lot of lectins and it's going to be very difficult for them to digest.

Then there's the fat. These are good fats, the good oils: avocado oil, coconut oil and olive oil. Olives are great. Coconut is great. Avocado is great. Eggs are great. Those are really good fats. And then your vegetables. Your fiber is all vegetables. Those are your plants, and all those plants have carbohydrates. All of them do. Every food has a carbohydrate with the exception of animal protein and liquid fat. Oils 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 week, I would say throw in some sweet potatoes and 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 some carbohydrates. If you want to lose weight, then we've got storage, right? If we have carbs in storage, you're just going to pull from the storage unit. You don't need to eat carbs.

I worked with a professional athlete who ran 100-mile races. That is a person who needed more carbs. 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 take from. Everybody is different. But there are good carbs. There are complex carbs and there are simple carbs. Simple carbs are the ones that turn into sugar right away: Doritos and pasta and cookies and things like that. Complex carbs are your fibers, your vegetables. Those are all complex carbs, and sweet potatoes and yams are too.

Nikkiey: Great. Thank you for that clarification. I have a question. When you digest the fiber, the carbs that come from fiber, doesn't it get utilized differently in the body?

Risa: Yeah, it depends on what kind of fiber you're having. There's water-soluble and insoluble fiber. And again, I'm basing it on your health status. If you've got SIBO, I'd be very careful with a lot of very fibrous foods. That's going to bloat you. It's going to retain water and some gases, and it's going to be very uncomfortable for you. So everybody is different.

You know how we process a muffin, let's say. That's a carbohydrate. It easily turns into sugar. It's going to spike your blood sugar levels. So it's a very different system. Real fiber is slower, and it slows down a sugar spike. And we need fiber because fiber is the trash truck that goes through the station, picks up all the trash in the intestines and takes it out. Most people don't get enough fiber.

Nikkiey: Awesome. Now I'm curious. I want to circle back to the autoimmune disease topic. You figured out the root cause of what you were dealing with personally, you addressed it, and now you're doing it with your clients. So what is the role of our day-to-day nutrition in managing and potentially reversing it? How does it reverse autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto's, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia?

Risa: Thank you. You need to find the root cause. I worked with somebody who had rheumatoid arthritis a long time ago. She was a kindergarten teacher, young, 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 she 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. We did a stool test and found that she had a very elevated level of a pathogen that causes rheumatoid arthritis. We killed that pathogen, and she's totally fine. Now, that's a pretty easy one, right?

I have so many stories. I worked with somebody with colitis, same thing. She couldn't leave her house before 11 o'clock because she was on the toilet the whole morning. She had been to all the doctors, and nobody helped. They gave her medication, and nothing was happening. Again, I found Citrobacter freundii, which is a pathogen, at super high levels, and it was causing her colitis. I see her from time to time. She comes into my office, and she's fluttering around the world. She's a totally different person. Totally.

I could go on and on. I worked with somebody who had really bad Tourette's, and we dampened her autoimmunity and the Tourette's symptoms disappeared. So it's finding what the root is. It's not accepting that you have this autoimmune disease because you have these antibodies that are high. Are you okay with high antibodies? I'm not. So I'm going to find out why you're creating so many antibodies. Is it a virus that's gone active? Is it a pathogen overload? Is it high levels of mercury from eating tuna and ahi and swordfish? Is it lack of vitamin D, which I see in my office pretty much every day? Is it MTHFR, that B vitamin methylation process? Or is it leaky gut?

Leaky gut is a huge one, with all the reasons for leaky gut, and almost everybody has leaky gut. 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. Leaky gut, leaky brain.

Nikkiey: What's the definition of leaky gut?

Risa: It's called intestinal permeability. It's basically when you have holes in what are called tight junctions in the intestinal lining. So food particles, toxins and undigested proteins go into the system, into the bloodstream, through the back door of 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. 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. You're making lots of antibodies, and then we're going to have some food sensitivities, of course, and eventually inflammation. And eventually it'll find a place to park, 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 where they cannot be functional at that point.

Nikkiey: At one time they had four? Wow.

Risa: I get a lot of two, but I've had a few at four. And those people have to quit their jobs. They have to really isolate and take care of themselves because they're in bad shape. So stop it before it gets that bad. If you get diagnosed with one, follow it. Find the root cause and try to reverse those antibodies.

Nikkiey: Yeah. You keep saying root cause. How do you approach identifying the root cause of an autoimmune disease in your clients?

Risa: Depending on what it is, I do thorough testing no matter what. I do a comprehensive bioscreen, which is pretty big. I'm looking at all four markers of blood sugar, all nine markers of the thyroid. I'm looking at iron. I'm looking at inflammation. I'm looking at the white blood cell breakdown, all that stuff. That gives me some clues. Do we have inflammation? What's the inflammation from? With the white blood cells, I'm looking for a bacterial pattern or a viral pattern.

Then I order a stool test. Every single person I work with gets a stool test, and I'm looking for 84 pathogens. I'm looking at the good guys and the bad guys. Do we have too much of one, not enough of the other? I'm looking for worms, bugs, parasites, candida, fungus, and H. pylori, which is a really big one. That is pretty serious, and it can lead to gastric cancers and peptic ulcers. 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 occult blood, microscopic blood?

I worked with somebody years ago, a 36-year-old guy, super healthy, so we thought. I think he and his wife had just had their second baby. He came to see me because he wanted to eat a little better and lose a few pounds. I ordered the stool test, because that's what I do for everybody, and we saw a tremendous amount of occult blood in his stool. So I referred him to a gastroenterologist. I said, you've got to get a colonoscopy. Most of the time when I see that, it's hemorrhoids of some sort, or fissures. But in his case, it was first-stage colon cancer. He had a history of colon cancer. His dad had had it. And we caught it immediately.

And he had no symptoms. Zero. If we hadn't done that test, because he just wanted to lose eight pounds, we wouldn't have found it. He would have waited all those years until he was symptomatic, and it would have been stage four, and he would have had the fight of his life. But we didn't have to do that. So that was great. Crazy, right? 36 years old.

Nikkiey: That's wild. What an incredible story, though. You caught it so early on, and he was able to do the right procedure to fix it. Is he clear now?

Risa: Yeah, he's totally good. He eats really well. He eats his fiber, and he gets checked. So it's good. You always have to look.

Nikkiey: That's awesome. So in your experience working with your clients, nutrition, as we're talking about, is a very big thing. What do you feel is the biggest challenge your patients face when they're trying to adjust their eating, away from the middle of the grocery store essentially, in order to fix these health conditions they may have?

Hey, just want to drop a huge appreciation to you guys listening to the show. It means a lot. I hope you're enjoying it, and there's so much more to come. If you are enjoying it, hit the subscribe button. I'd appreciate that tons, and 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.

Risa: In my experience, there are two challenges, basically. One is wine. People love their wine. They are very attached to their wine.

Nikkiey: That hits so hard with the audience.

Risa: It's a social thing. It's an unwind thing. They'll come in and say, please don't take my wine from me. That's a big challenge. We can come back to wine, and we find wines that are a little better, not as high in sugar, without sulfites and sulfates, so it's a little better for you. But wine is a tough one.

The second one, I would say, is that people are so used to grabbing and going and heating up and not cooking. It's crazy to me how many people don't cook. My kids, when they left my house, there was just no way. Oh, are you one of them?

Nikkiey: I hate cooking. And the audience knows it because I talk about it all the time. I hate it.

Risa: Oh, wow. I've got to get over to your house and show you how easy it is.

Nikkiey: I need a chef. I used to, don't get me wrong. I used to meal prep through and through. But in recent years I just haven't put as much into it. I normally do egg whites and yogurt and granola. And I do veggies here and there. They're not my best friend, but I've gotten better.

Risa: Why no yolks?

Nikkiey: What's that?

Risa: Why no yolks?

Nikkiey: Oh, I do yolks. I do one egg yolk. I just try to load my fats. I do roughly 60 to 70 grams of fat a day. I get it from the yolks. I get it from granola. Well, the granola is mainly carbs. What else do I get it from? Avocado.

Risa: Avocado.

Nikkiey: Peanut butter. I'm going down my list right now. Chicken has a little bit. Ground beef has it, depending on the percentage. I love olives.

Risa: Great.

Nikkiey: Awesome. So good. Anyway, didn't mean to steer away from the question.

Risa: Yeah. So that's the challenge: people are so used to grabbing and not cooking. And it's an investment. That time is an investment in your health. I would much rather prep my meals than sit 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.

And I make it simple and easy. The other night, I just put chicken in a pan. I had some pesto I had made. I had asparagus I chopped up, mushrooms, onions, cauliflower rice. Threw it in, put the pesto in, done. 10 minutes, one pan, done. And of course I had it with a salad. I always have a salad. So easy. 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 every day.

Nikkiey: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. How do you feel about olive oil? Do you know Bryan Johnson? Do you follow Bryan Johnson at all? He's big on olive oil.

Risa: Yeah, olive oil is awesome.

Nikkiey: Cool. You mentioned a little bit of your success stories. I would love to hear some more, because I know there are a ton of listeners who have Hashimoto's, thyroid problems, rheumatoid arthritis. And we work gently with those. We love women strength training, building more muscle, for longevity, especially in the years post-menopause, for bone density and reducing osteoporosis. But let's hear some more success stories you can share about your patients reversing their autoimmune diseases.

Risa: Well, here's one. It's not autoimmune, but I think it's an amazing story. Several years ago, I got a phone call from a professional golfer, PGA, probably one of the greatest golfers of our time, Freddie Couples. He calls me and says, 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're known for back pain. You've been carted off courses. They talk about it all the time. So tell me about the back. 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? He 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.

I said, well, tell me about the surgeries. 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 said, order whatever you need to order. I put him on my detox. He came into my office a week later. He had lost some weight. I said, Freddie, what's your number? He said, four. He came in the week after that, and I said, what's your number? He was a zero or a one, depending on how much golf he played that week. He was never higher than a one at any time I was working with him.

We got back his inflammation numbers, and they were through the roof. His two homes are both on golf courses, and he works on golf courses. So he's breathing in these toxic chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, all day and all night. He would get headaches. He had smell sensitivity. He would get in an Uber and have to cover his mouth, because any kind of smell, like the air fresheners I was talking about, would give him a headache. And he was on a plane every week, so he was always eating out, with bad oils and inflammatory oils. He wasn't horrible, but he's on the road, so he's grabbing a sandwich and this and that.

So we cleaned him up. We decreased all his inflammation, and his back pain was gone. His headaches were gone. His smell sensitivity was gone. He was just overloaded with toxins. I love that story. He did a testimonial on my website, so that's why I can share it. But it's really an amazing story, because that is fundamentally what inflammation does. And autoimmune is inflammation. When you have inflammation, as I said, it's just going to attack a different part of your body.

What kills me is people come into my office and say, oh, I was just diagnosed with, let's say, Hashimoto's. I say, well, what did the doctor say? And they say, well, here's this pill. And I say, did they tell you it's autoimmune? Some of them do and some of them don't. And I say, did they talk to you about your diet? No, they don't mention anything about my diet.

Gluten and Hashimoto's don't get along. 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 category, especially conventional dairy, until we get you to a better place. 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. That's what I do with people, and I've reversed Hashimoto's and all kinds of stuff. It's awesome to watch. There's nothing better than watching people heal, in my opinion. It's just the coolest job in the world.

Nikkiey: It's very cool. I love that. I can hear and feel your passion as you share these stories and throughout this whole episode. It is incredible to watch somebody fix the way they're eating, because that's what we see inside of WarriorBabe. Our women come in with similar situations, and we guide them through the protocols of eating better, and soon they're able to come off of medications. They're soon feeling so much better. It's just an incredible transformation to be able to see.

I came from the medical field. I spent nine years in the medical field, and I'm so happy I got out. I'll tread lightly, but I Googled how much nutritional guidance doctors get, and the time spent on it in residency blew my mind. And when I was on the floor, working in the ER, at the start of my fitness journey, I got questions around nutrition all the time. I needed to get out of there when I saw that there was a better way of healing people outside of just handing them medications to treat symptoms. There was no root cause to anything. So thank you for what you're doing.

Risa: 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. And I'm very grateful that I have the tools to read labs and know how to gauge them and get a blueprint, so I can help people, including myself. Food is a huge part of it. Nutrition is an elective in medical school. And even the nutrition they teach is just the government's.

Nikkiey: Yeah. Yeah.

Risa: So it's sad. And we have a lot of room for growth.

Nikkiey: On that note, what future developments do you foresee in the field of functional nutrition and autoimmune disease treatment?

Risa: 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.

Nikkiey: Sorry, keep going.

Risa: Right now, I just got one in my office this week for glucose control. It has all the good probiotic bacteria that are going to help your blood sugar. And then we have Akkermansia muciniphila, which is a strain. That's a good guy, and it's really important for disease. I test everybody for it, and so many people don't have any. None, zero. So now we have an Akkermansia muciniphila that I can give somebody so they can start building it. I don't want to get too technical, but it helps recolonize the mucosal lining so that you can make it.

It's amazing. We have this ecosystem that was created to absolutely thrive and survive. It's just all these chemicals and all these processed foods and all this stress that have destroyed it. And the medication is not a band-aid. 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. We used to say, oh, this is good, and these are good strains. But now we know what you specifically need.

Nikkiey: Incredible. That was just so well put. What are some supplements people should be having? I know everyone's very individual, and it depends on numbers and what's needed, but maybe a foundational protocol of what people should be having.

Risa: Everyone I work with, I test for vitamin D. It's actually a hormone, 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. You will not make bone without it. I don't care how much calcium you take or eat. 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 see a lot of them from a store we've mentioned here that have soybean oil and canola oil in them, without 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. If I'm going to spend money on it and take it, I want the good stuff. So vitamin D, pretty much everybody has that.

Nikkiey: How much of that should we have a day?

Risa: 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 overdose on vitamin D, but you can. I've been doing this so long, and I've never had anybody have toxic effects from too much vitamin D. They'll get up there, and then we stop. We're always monitoring it, because it's a really big, important marker.

Then vitamin B. You want methylated vitamin B. My B-Ultra is in methylcobalamin form, and it's incredibly important for RNA and DNA. Also stress. If you're high stress, we eat up our B vitamins. If you're vegetarian or vegan, you're not getting much B12. So it's really imperative that B vitamins are in my maintenance program.

And if you're autoimmune, I have my Fab 5. I have my Omega Max, vitamin D, resveratrol, which is an anti-inflammatory, my Turmeric Max, which is anti-inflammatory, and glutathione. Glutathione is our master antioxidant, so it's imperative that we have it. We lose it when it leaves the building, kind of like female eggs. Once it's gone, it's gone. It helps protect us against oxidative stress, which is anything that wants to come into the body and create disease. So glutathione is really, really important. Those are the Fab 5. I also have AI Balance, which is for autoimmune. It has all the minerals and vitamins to help with thyroid conversion and dampening more inflammation.

Nikkiey: Thank you. Very insightful. Mentioning vitamin B, I also have the MTH...

Risa: FR.

Nikkiey: FR. The gene mutation. It's broken. So I take the MTHFR one, right? Five a day.

Risa: Okay. Yeah. You just want to make sure it's in methylated form. There are two alleles, your B12 and your B9, your folate, so it depends on which allele you have. But I just do a complex B vitamin because there are so many benefits to it. So that's what I do. That's my B-Ultra.

Nikkiey: Very nice. Amazing. Well, Risa, thank you so much for being here today. Where can listeners learn more about you?

Risa: My website is Risa Groux Nutrition. Risa is R-I-S-A, Groux is G-R-O-U-X, Nutrition. You can find my book, FOODFRAME, there. In it I highlight six major diet types, and most of the time I use one of those six for people. I talk about my detox there. I also have a course on achieving optimal thyroid health on my website. My whole product line is there, and tons of information and articles. All my social media is Risa Groux Nutrition. And I work with people all over the country, so I'm happy to work with anybody via Zoom, and we can get the stool test and the blood test done.

Nikkiey: Incredible. Awesome, Risa. Thank you so much for being here, spending your time and sharing so much very insightful information and all your knowledge with us.

Risa: Thank you for having me.

Nikkiey: Hey guys, real quick. If you're interested in taking your body to the next level, losing body fat, building more muscle and feeling more confident, do it alongside one of our 30-plus professional coaches. Work one-on-one with her to eliminate all of the guesswork you may have, and all you need to do is the work she tells you to do to get to those goals of yours. To learn more, click the link below this podcast and apply to our VIP program right now.