July 10, 2024 • 27 mins
Experience a new era of health transformation with our special guest, a leading expert in mind-body functional transformative medicine. Lera Mikhailova is the founder & CEO of Whole Womanhood, a holistic practice integrating functional medicine + nervous system repair + feminine alchemy. Her goal is for women to dive into root cause revival & feminine energy together to feel truly aligned, alive, & resilient. She is a board certified OB/GYN Nurse Practitioner with a background in Neuroscience, Physiology, & Behavior. Her expertise includes hormones & fertility, cyclical living, gut health, drainage & detox, & nervous system dysregulation.
Our guest highlights the shortcomings of conventional medicine, particularly in personalized follow-up care, and the importance of unique lab tests and lifestyle evaluations. As we address the toxic wellness culture and its adverse effects on women's health, we emphasize the significance of both physical and emotional nourishment. Learn how empowering women to listen to their bodies and regulate their nervous systems can lead to a sustainable and joyful life, ultimately allowing them to pursue their true passions and potential.
Guest: Lera Mikhailova
Hormone starter kit link: www.wholewomanhood.com/starterkit (What it's called: 10 Essential (& often missed) Foundations for Hormone & Gut Bliss)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, thank you for being here and coming on as a
podcast guest on my podcast andjust sharing your expertise.
I'm really excited.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Can you introduce yourself and just a little bit
about yourself, your background,just, or what you do, just
whatever you want to share aboutyourself?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
no-transcript into now, kind of mind-body
functional transformativemedicine, and then I fuse it
with nervous system repair andembodiment work.
So it's all the things I thinkhave been missing for us as
women for a long time.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Nice, I love that.
What kind of made you want totransition from what you were
doing before to what you'redoing now.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
It's sort of a weird question.
It's usually that you wind upseeing that you are using
band-aids, that you really,really want to help women and
that number one you wind upbeing just as sick as the rest
of them.
We're all hormonally imbalanced.
We're trying to look for rootcauses.
We can't seem to find them.
We're doing everything that wecan.
(01:36):
We wind up really burned out,and so one of the reasons that I
left is that I just got toosick.
I was really really unwell and Iwas taking care of women who
were really really unwell and Iwas working alongside women who
were really really unwell, and Irealized that, as much as a lot
of us have our hearts really inthe right place, we're trying
to diagnose women instead ofreally listen to them and get to
the root cause of our issues Ofreally going down deeper and
(02:00):
deeper into this rabbit hole ofokay, but why are you struggling
?
Where is it coming from?
How do we actually make thatchange for you, that changes
everything, so that your bodyreally feels like home and you
really understand what's goingon?
I realized that even after Ipassed my boards, even after I
was in practice, we were neverreally taught about our bodies,
(02:23):
and so I think I left to reallyjust dive deeper into this
foundational understanding ofwhat is it?
What's our biology and what'sbeyond our biochemistry, what's
beyond?
But what do we actually deservein the world of pleasure, in
the world of rest, in the worldof root cause cancers?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I love that because I'm a social worker, I worked in
mental health, I work in ahelping profession and I work
for an agency, and so sometimesI could see how hard it could be
.
There's just so many rules oryou have to do things this way
and you want to give so muchmore, and sometimes it could
feel like your hands are tiedright, like you could feel like
(03:05):
your hands are tied right, likeyou could feel very limited.
So do you feel like you weren'table to help in the way that
you wanted to right and what youwere doing before?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
precisely that.
There's rules, there'sregulations that oftentimes
leave you asking, like such, butwhy, questions?
Um, the the red tape isactually preventing us from
saying I don't necessarily thinkthat that medication is going
to solve it.
Right, the medication is aband-aid.
What is it band-aiding?
(03:35):
And so you wind up in this, youwind up in a numbers game,
which I'm sure you know right.
You wind up in this constantsituation of, like, did I see 15
patients?
Did I see 20?
Why did I spend extra time withpatients?
I might spend extra time withthem because they're crying, and
that's what you do with people.
Because they're hurting, andthat's what you do with people,
(03:57):
particularly in the world ofobstetrics, where you're dealing
with infertility andmiscarriages and you're dealing
with, like, surprises of allkinds where gynecology, where is
it a pap smear?
Or is it also women who finallyfeel safe enough to share that
she'd been sexually assaulted?
Right, you're not just gonnasay like, thank you so much,
thank you, um.
Our job is to really move withthese women, um, and so I really
(04:21):
wanted to create my own rules,so I did take a while and it
nice.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So how has that been for you, that transition um to
making your own rules and doingwhat you're doing now?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
um, it's terrifying.
At first you want to shit yourpants.
The short answer um, I thoughtI committed career suicide and
in the beginning I just wasn'tsure of what would happen.
I realized that once,especially as women, because we
have so many hormonalfluctuations and we have so many
(04:57):
expectations of ourselves, whenyou start feeling that initial
kind of seed of alignment, um,it changes everything.
And I think that as women,we've been conditioned to feel
so unaligned.
Right, I have to go to my joband I get the Sunday scaries and
my boss doesn't understand me,and I go to brunch so that I can
drink alcohol, so I can forgetabout it, and I'm on my phone
(05:18):
and everything's not aligned.
And as you start making theseminor changes and really getting
to this level of, oh, I thinkthis is actually my vision, I
think this is what I'm alignedwith and it starts working in
your favor.
So I thought my practice wouldbe a hobby, so to speak, made
out of necessity.
And my practice, within thefirst couple of months, hit a
(05:43):
seven month wait list.
Couple of months, it hit aseven-month wait list, and so it
just kept growing and growing.
It's been exclusively word ofmouth for years, so it's just
like people are their own bestcalling card.
So what got into the company isthat someone would run into
someone else and be like why doyou look so good?
Why are you so calm?
Why does life seem to betreating you well?
(06:04):
Like, why are you so calm?
Why is life seem to be treatingyou well?
And so that's kind of how itstarted.
And then I started to grow it.
I started to see a lot oftarget clients and really dive
into this idea.
If someone's trying to treatjust your body, you're shit out
of luck.
Right, like what do you feelsafe?
Does your nervous system feelsafe?
Are you in the rightenvironment?
Right, you can only takeyourself as far as your
(06:26):
environment deems it safe,because your nervous system
deems it safe.
And so, um, the experience hasbeen incredible.
Just because I didn't expect itto skyrocket the way that it did
, I chose to have no disabilitypresence because I just wanted
to focus on trying to figure outhow so many women found me, um
(06:47):
and all through word of mouth,and you just kind of go down
this rabbit hole, um, and nowit's grown.
Now I'm seeing the samepatterns missed over and over
again in women.
We were never taught sex edproperly, we were never taught
about our hormones properly, andso I really started seeing
these patterns constantly, ofall of these missed foundations.
(07:07):
So I got to the point where nowI'm building out a course
that's really an immersiveexperience for women that's
supported right.
We're all isolated, we'redisconnected from our bodies,
we're disconnected from ourcommunities, and so the goal is
to really come at it from acompletely different way at this
point.
How do we connect with eachother?
(07:29):
How do we connect them to senseof self, and how do we do it in
a body that they understand?
Um, and so it's been wonderful,um, it's been absolutely
wonderful to build this out,because the challenges are hard,
but when you're in alignmentright, it's the right kind of
hard great.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
so can you go a little bit into, like, um, what
your types of services wouldlook like versus, like you know,
the traditional approach, rightof going to see your doctor at
a doctor's office?
Can you talk a little bit aboutthe differences with the two?
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, I think a shorter conversation would be to
talk about the similarities.
So, yes, so, when someone comesin with me, first and foremost
I need them to make sure thatwe're actually in good match.
I think it really matters thatsomeone just has an absolute
hell.
Yes, this is my energy.
This feels really good.
I think a lot of what healthpractices work is accountability
(08:26):
, which is generally what'smissing in most of medicine.
A lot of us who are in medicineactually speak out against that
.
Right, you want to see peoplemore often, you want to have
follow-up, but again, these areimpacted.
They're low staff, there's alot of other variables, and so
generally what happens is thatwomen come in with me and our
(08:47):
first visit is about two hourslong.
So right away it's very, verydifferent.
We are going into the nooks andcrannies.
My job is not just to listen toit, it's to really hear you.
What happened?
How can you follow these thingsback?
How can you actually look atthings and kind of pinpoint
uh-huh, that's where somethingseems like it changed versus
like.
(09:07):
I've had women who come to me orhave myself in medicine, but
people are like what's the thingthat brings you here?
And women are like oh, it'slike these couple of things I
don't like, well, which one dowe focus on?
But, yes, and my gut hurts andI have a lot of cramps and I
have headaches and I'm like,well, which one bothers you the
(09:29):
most?
And so it's reallyunderstanding how all of these
things are connected.
It's this idea of systemsbiology.
You don't have organs that arejust doing all their own thing.
They're all speaking, and soit's to really get that story
and then, initially, right away,it's to dive into what
foundations can we do on a humanlevel, right?
(09:50):
What labs can we run?
The labs that I run are verydifferent than what I used to
run.
We're going into figuring outdo you have actual gut stuff
going on?
We can see?
In there, we can see thingslike do you have an overgrowth?
Are you digesting your food?
Are you coping out hormones asyou should be, which most women
don't realize you should bedoing?
(10:11):
Are you coping out hormones asyou should be, which most women
don't realize you should bedoing, right?
So there's this idea ofactually having a snapshot into
things.
Do you have toxicity?
Are your hormones doing thething that they should be?
These are tests that I nevereven knew how to run in
conventional medicine.
At the same time, we're lookinginto your diet.
We're looking into actually,like, how do you eat?
(10:32):
And what I find is huge red flagacross the board now is, in the
world of conventional medicine,we were never trained.
A lot of people left it andthen spiraled into wellness and
now we have this toxic wellnessculture where everyone's like
this is my four-hour morningroutine and this is what I eat
in a day, right On TikTok or onInstagram and I'm like first off
(10:56):
, stop it, because half of thosepeople are my clients and
they're influencing people.
Literally.
They're influencers influencingpeople wrong, and it's
oftentimes now leading to womenbeing completely obsessed and
restricted and fixated andthinking that they have to do
things a certain way and they'veeliminated everything.
And we've created so much fearand so much stress that a lot of
(11:18):
what we're doing is essentiallysitting with a woman first
going into hey, this is whatyour body's literally trying to
tell you.
This is what it looks like tobe fed abundance.
This is what it looks like torelearn how to eat right.
I was never taught how to eat.
I think I first didn't know atall, so I ate Cocoa Puffs
literally for a period of yearsfor dinner.
(11:38):
Then we get healthy because alot of us get really sick or
desperate.
That creates fixations, thatit's more disordered eating
patterns.
Oftentimes that inadvertentlyleads to big, big issues with
malnutrition or under eating,even if it's inadvertent, and so
it's really systematic to saywhat's your body trying to tell
(12:00):
us?
How do we teach you how todeeply nourish yourself, not how
to eat right, but how tonourish yourself?
What does that look like on apersonalized level?
How can it bring joy Right?
A lot of my practice.
There's a lot of laughter Likethere's a lot of us coming in
being like this doesn't have tosuck, we're regulating your
nervous system, right.
(12:21):
That ability to actually rest,women, we don't.
Not only do we not know how torest anymore, we've been
conditioned to think that theopposite is what makes us worthy
.
You're productive.
It is what makes us worthy.
You're productive, it's whatmakes you worthy, right.
So that's kind of what we're infor.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah, yeah, a lot of the times, because it's easy to
get stuck on something like yousaid, like a diet or like you
know what does that even mean?
But a lot of the times it's nota sustainable plan, like we
think for a month or two monthsand then it's like okay, I don't
want to do this anymore,exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
And the whole point is the thing that I think is
missed across the board.
Is this idea of sensuality andembodiment right, it's the okay.
Now you're eating moreabundantly, now you understand
your body, so what the hell isit that you want?
from this beautiful life, right.
Like, what is it that you crave?
What is your vision?
What if you're meant to doamazing things?
What if it can actually bereally really good?
(13:20):
What if you don't have to worka nine to five?
What if you have some likebeautiful secret thing you're
meant to bring to the world?
You can't do that if you'reburnt out, if you're tired, if
you're malnourished, if you'rehurting.
That if you're burnt out, ifyou're tired, if you're
malnourished, if you're hurting,right.
And so it kind of goes throughthis idea of what are your labs?
(13:40):
At the same time, your labs aresmall but beautiful.
Part of this, what's thenourishment that actually
sustains you long-term?
How do you actually repair yournervous systems that your body
feels safe again long-term?
How do you actually reconnectwith pleasure again long-term?
We're not just women where,once you like, figure it out and
teach us how to eat, we alljust shut up and do what we're
supposed to do, right, it'squite the opposite.
(14:01):
Like what do you crave?
So now I have women where wedon't right, our teen pregnancy
rate has gone down, which atfirst we were like woo, and then
we're like, oh, my God, it'sbecause people literally aren't
having sex anymore.
It's that people are sodisconnected that it's all
phones, it's all social mediathat people are literally afraid
to interact.
So there's this initial like oh, this is great and also wait,
(14:24):
is it actually happening for theright reasons?
And so it's really gettingwomen back in touch with their
feminine, that deep, deepfeminine energy, that beautiful
slowness we're supposed to.
We deserve the whole beautifulthing, right, I say that over
and over again, but I mean itthat pleasure is also our
birthright and I think gettingwomen from this point A to point
(14:48):
, like exclamation mark, waythrough the alphabet, into this
whole other world, creates thisdeep resiliency and this deep
vitality that's really, reallyhard to mess with.
So it breeds confidence and itbreeds, like this actual ability
to live a turned on life and Ithink it's neatly what we
deserve.
So it's very, very differentthan the original model.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Right, yeah, and I love that because it's, I mean,
everyone's different, right,everyone's bodies are different,
like everyone's a differentthing, so it's not like there's
no one size fits all, which itcould sometimes feel like, you
know, when you do go to like atraditional doctor, but I'm all
I mean, I understand too, likewe've been talking about, like
there's certain limitations,right, when you go see there's a
(15:30):
pine in a place.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Precisely that's what I try to make very clear to
people is I am one of them andthey are also great, right, so
you can be in both worlds, andyou're supposed to be in both.
You're supposed to be in allthe worlds that you choose,
right, that can benefit you in away that really creates the
sense of wholeness, right, andso there's a time and a place
(15:54):
you can go to conventionalmedicine.
There's really really powerful,um situations where that's
needed acute care.
You are bleeding, you arehurting, you have, like, sudden
infections, you have crazythings that need to be removed.
Please go there, um.
And it's really about bridgingscience with magic, right,
really bridging science withmagic, right.
Really bridging that beautifulpart of ourselves that's
completely untapped.
As women, we're literallytaught to be like men, right To
(16:19):
be on a man's cycle, and we'renot.
We're physiologicallycompletely different, and so
once you tap into it, yourealize it really is something
you can harness versus somethingthat you have to constantly
fight against.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And let me tell you why I was interested in this
topic.
So I started we hear it likehealth journey, right, going on
this health journey.
So I started doing that becauseI'm like, okay, like I want to
exercise, you know, whatever,like all that stuff that we do
or we want to do getting likewhat I thought was stomach pain,
(17:00):
like at the start of the year.
I'm like, okay, I'm gettingthis really bad stomach pain.
I went to the doctor likeseveral times and the doctor was
like, oh well, maybe it'ssomething you ate that's making
your stomach.
I'm like, oh, okay, that makessense.
But then it just never like gotbetter.
And I went back to the doctoragain and then they were like,
well, maybe it was like astomach flu.
And so I was like never gettingan answer.
(17:22):
And I actually posted like aTikTok video on my TikTok and it
went viral because apparently alot of people have the same
experience, you know, with theirdoctors and it literally like
it's still getting shared up tothis day, like that video.
So I was just sitting like atthe doctor's office, like you
know, trying to get answers forthis pain, and like all that
(17:45):
they would suggest is like OK,maybe it's something you ate.
You need to go on a diet likethat's going to solve right.
And I was like that's so sadthat so many people could relate
and like there has to be like abetter way.
And so, yeah, right, there isnow.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
So I think what's you know as I speak and as I can
dive into this deeper, peopleare like you know you need to
demand answers and I'm like, butthey don't have answers, right?
A lot of those people are alsomy clients.
So I work deeply in the worldof fertility and deeply in the
world of hormones as well, andI've reminded people that, like,
(18:25):
the person who's doing your IVFis actually my client, the
person who you see as aclinician is my client, right?
So there's this idea ofeveryone wanting answers.
If someone has stomach pain,for example, like you, the
easiest thing to do is literallylook into physically what might
(18:45):
be going on.
So initially, yeah, maybe it'simaging, maybe that's exactly
that beautiful bridge of worlds.
Someone should physically takea look.
Before that, someone shouldalso believe you, right?
That's the first thing.
Is that half the time, womenfeel like it takes us how many
years to get actually diagnosedwith our autoimmune conditions?
(19:08):
How many women where I justasked them how are you?
And they burst into tearsbecause they're saying that
you're one of the first peoplethat's actually made eye contact
with me when they asked me that, and it seems like you're
actually curious, and I am damncurious, because you're not
supposed to be suffering, right.
We're not supposed to besuffering.
We are so damn beautiful, right, and everything we've gotten
(19:32):
shit on over and over again.
And so, first, it's believe you.
Second of all, it's actuallythat's usually when conventional
medicine shines.
It's like rule out what's goingto kill you.
That's what I was literallytaught Rule out the things that
might kill them.
That would be nice, right.
Make sure that you don't havesome sort of crazy infection.
There's just been a crazy thinggoing on, and then you actually
(19:55):
have to use critical thinking.
So, right away, it's not aboutgoing on a diet.
What in the world does thateven mean?
Should you go vegan?
Should you go carnivore?
Should you be plant-based?
Is that the same thing asvegetarian?
All we've done is confuse thecrap out of people, right, and
so it really comes down to thefact that there's these
foundations that are constantlymissed in our quote-unquote diet
(20:19):
.
It's not about our diet, it'sabout nourishment.
Women all fundamentally needsimilar foundations, and then,
as you know your body, you getto personalize what you need on
top of that, right.
It's why some women needgluten-free.
Other women need to eliminatecertain foods for a certain
period of time, right.
(20:40):
But initially, what never cameacross for you is no one looked
at you and was like let's get tothe root of this, right?
Like what's the root of theroot of the root?
Okay.
Do you have parasites andinfections at the same time that
you have food sensitivities,that you also have toxins?
You're supposed to poop outtoxins.
(21:00):
You're supposed to poop outhormones, right?
So one of the easiest things todo is just take a look in and
once all the crazy things thatare going to kill you are ruled
out, you go into actual holistictesting.
It's just very complicated.
You take a cup and you poopinto it.
That's it, right.
And then you poop into it.
That's it.
And then you set it off.
That's it.
(21:21):
Someone else does the work foryou, and someone who should be
highly trained and qualifiedreads it like a story, and if
you're with a good clinician ora good coach, then what a lot of
us are is really goodstorytellers.
We finally tell the story ofyou back to you in a way where
the chapters make sense, notlike quick, you should eat more
(21:42):
broccoli or you need to suddenlyremove this.
I'm Eastern European.
We're gals, we love to live.
Generally, some people are like, okay, then just, but why, why,
what are we trying toaccomplish?
And so that's easily what wouldhave been done for you is like
let's actually listen to you,let's do something like a puke
(22:02):
that rules it out, and thenlet's take that deep dive.
I have never seen one singlestool test come back normal In
conventional medicine.
When I did that version ofstool testing, almost all of
them come back normal.
It's a completely differenttest.
And so people are like, yeah,yeah, yeah, they checked my gut,
it was normal.
And I'm like I don't think so.
(22:22):
Did they actually do the DNAstool analysis?
And they're like I don't knownumber one, or definitely they
did not, knowing which resourcesyou have available, because the
paradigm is shifting right now.
We've all been so disappointedin medicine, including those of
us who are in medicine.
A lot of us are just trying tolook for more answers, and I
(22:47):
think that's what I'm trying toraise awareness of is that there
is this beautiful new paradigmstarting, where we're actually
teaching women not only how tocrave more, but to be more and
ask for more and be worthy ofmore right, and it starts on
this biological level.
Why in the hell did yourstomach pains.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
I'm so desperate so just you know, in case anyone
was wondering like it actuallyended up being like gallstones,
so that was my pain.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
So I just wanted to go ahead and comment on that.
Before you get gallstones,there's so many other signs and
that's why so many women gettheir gallbladder removed now.
And that's why I ask women allthe time please know the status
of your liver, of yourgallbladder.
Why?
(23:36):
Because your gallbladder andyour liver work together to
produce a magical little juicecalled bile.
That's actually what breaksdown fats, but fats are the
building blocks of your hormones.
So that's why so many womenwith gallstone to gallbladder or
liver or whatever issue.
That's where so many hormoneissues come from.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
So that's how connected all of this is yeah,
so that's what I'm finding outnow, like just I mean, I mean,
at least it's nice to just knowwhat it was now, rather than you
know, I just didn't know for awhile, but yeah, um, okay, so
where could people find likemore information, like if they
(24:17):
were interested in learning moreabout you know, your services,
or just in general, like moreinformation about this?
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, so they can find me at wholewomanhoodcom.
So I'm the founder, I have awonderful team and it is growing
, and so my practice right nowis it is waitlisted.
It's a long waitlist and that'swhy I'm releasing a program
called Hormone Alchemy andthat's what I was talking about.
(24:45):
It's these foundations thatevery woman deserves to know.
So we go through everything,starting with your cycle.
What you were never taught howto actually revive your nervous
system, how to go through whatare the basics of your hormones,
what are the basics of your gut.
I still have yet to meet asingle woman who actually works
(25:06):
with the foundations, and thewomen that I work with are
amazing and they're smart.
They're just doing other things, and if you're really good at
what you're doing, you shouldprobably be really good at who
you're being.
This entire body shouldprobably be taken care of.
So that's launching.
People can find me on Instagramat whole womanhood, and I would
(25:26):
love, love, love if anyone who'slistening downloads my hormone
and gut revival starter kit.
It's where I go through thesebasics.
It's kind of the quick anddirty, quick start guide, for
what do you actually do rightaway that prevents gallstones?
I'm happy that you got thediagnosis.
Those are also painful, right.
(25:47):
It would have been real nice toavoid them to begin with, and
there's a lot of things that wecan do to make that happen.
And so it really is aboutcreating these foundations in a
body that you love andunderstand, and that's where it
starts.
So I would love to be aresource for women.
I send out a newsletter thatpeople literally just respond to
in person all the time.
(26:09):
That's meant to be these littlequick and juicy pearls.
This is what your recoveringgynecologist wishes.
You knew about your body, so Iwould love to stay connected
with women like that.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Sounds great.
I'm going to go sign up myselfafter recording this series.
It's really good stuff and I'mgoing to include that link for
anyone interested in thedescription for the episode.
So make sure to check it out.
And yeah, just once again,thank you for being on and
talking about this absolutely I.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
I think that we we just deserve it right.
We deserve it so much that,like, if we had answers and I
say that all the time what wouldyou do with your life if you
felt so damn good you couldn'thelp yourself, right?
What would we actually do?
And it's really beautiful tosee what women come up with.
The whole process is definitelyit's a transformation.
(27:06):
So thank you for having me here.
I can't wait to talk with youfurther.
Thank you.
Hi, thank you for being here and coming on as a
podcast guest on my podcast andjust sharing your expertise.
I'm really excited.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Can you introduce yourself and just a little bit
about yourself, your background,just, or what you do, just
whatever you want to share aboutyourself?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
no-transcript into now, kind of mind-body
functional transformativemedicine, and then I fuse it
with nervous system repair andembodiment work.
So it's all the things I thinkhave been missing for us as
women for a long time.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Nice, I love that.
What kind of made you want totransition from what you were
doing before to what you'redoing now.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
It's sort of a weird question.
It's usually that you wind upseeing that you are using
band-aids, that you really,really want to help women and
that number one you wind upbeing just as sick as the rest
of them.
We're all hormonally imbalanced.
We're trying to look for rootcauses.
We can't seem to find them.
We're doing everything that wecan.
(01:36):
We wind up really burned out,and so one of the reasons that I
left is that I just got toosick.
I was really really unwell and Iwas taking care of women who
were really really unwell and Iwas working alongside women who
were really really unwell, and Irealized that, as much as a lot
of us have our hearts really inthe right place, we're trying
to diagnose women instead ofreally listen to them and get to
the root cause of our issues Ofreally going down deeper and
(02:00):
deeper into this rabbit hole ofokay, but why are you struggling
?
Where is it coming from?
How do we actually make thatchange for you, that changes
everything, so that your bodyreally feels like home and you
really understand what's goingon?
I realized that even after Ipassed my boards, even after I
was in practice, we were neverreally taught about our bodies,
(02:23):
and so I think I left to reallyjust dive deeper into this
foundational understanding ofwhat is it?
What's our biology and what'sbeyond our biochemistry, what's
beyond?
But what do we actually deservein the world of pleasure, in
the world of rest, in the worldof root cause cancers?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I love that because I'm a social worker, I worked in
mental health, I work in ahelping profession and I work
for an agency, and so sometimesI could see how hard it could be
.
There's just so many rules oryou have to do things this way
and you want to give so muchmore, and sometimes it could
feel like your hands are tiedright, like you could feel like
(03:05):
your hands are tied right, likeyou could feel very limited.
So do you feel like you weren'table to help in the way that
you wanted to right and what youwere doing before?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
precisely that.
There's rules, there'sregulations that oftentimes
leave you asking, like such, butwhy, questions?
Um, the the red tape isactually preventing us from
saying I don't necessarily thinkthat that medication is going
to solve it.
Right, the medication is aband-aid.
What is it band-aiding?
(03:35):
And so you wind up in this, youwind up in a numbers game,
which I'm sure you know right.
You wind up in this constantsituation of, like, did I see 15
patients?
Did I see 20?
Why did I spend extra time withpatients?
I might spend extra time withthem because they're crying, and
that's what you do with people.
Because they're hurting, andthat's what you do with people,
(03:57):
particularly in the world ofobstetrics, where you're dealing
with infertility andmiscarriages and you're dealing
with, like, surprises of allkinds where gynecology, where is
it a pap smear?
Or is it also women who finallyfeel safe enough to share that
she'd been sexually assaulted?
Right, you're not just gonnasay like, thank you so much,
thank you, um.
Our job is to really move withthese women, um, and so I really
(04:21):
wanted to create my own rules,so I did take a while and it
nice.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So how has that been for you, that transition um to
making your own rules and doingwhat you're doing now?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
um, it's terrifying.
At first you want to shit yourpants.
The short answer um, I thoughtI committed career suicide and
in the beginning I just wasn'tsure of what would happen.
I realized that once,especially as women, because we
have so many hormonalfluctuations and we have so many
(04:57):
expectations of ourselves, whenyou start feeling that initial
kind of seed of alignment, um,it changes everything.
And I think that as women,we've been conditioned to feel
so unaligned.
Right, I have to go to my joband I get the Sunday scaries and
my boss doesn't understand me,and I go to brunch so that I can
drink alcohol, so I can forgetabout it, and I'm on my phone
(05:18):
and everything's not aligned.
And as you start making theseminor changes and really getting
to this level of, oh, I thinkthis is actually my vision, I
think this is what I'm alignedwith and it starts working in
your favor.
So I thought my practice wouldbe a hobby, so to speak, made
out of necessity.
And my practice, within thefirst couple of months, hit a
(05:43):
seven month wait list.
Couple of months, it hit aseven-month wait list, and so it
just kept growing and growing.
It's been exclusively word ofmouth for years, so it's just
like people are their own bestcalling card.
So what got into the company isthat someone would run into
someone else and be like why doyou look so good?
Why are you so calm?
Why does life seem to betreating you well?
(06:04):
Like, why are you so calm?
Why is life seem to be treatingyou well?
And so that's kind of how itstarted.
And then I started to grow it.
I started to see a lot oftarget clients and really dive
into this idea.
If someone's trying to treatjust your body, you're shit out
of luck.
Right, like what do you feelsafe?
Does your nervous system feelsafe?
Are you in the rightenvironment?
Right, you can only takeyourself as far as your
(06:26):
environment deems it safe,because your nervous system
deems it safe.
And so, um, the experience hasbeen incredible.
Just because I didn't expect itto skyrocket the way that it did
, I chose to have no disabilitypresence because I just wanted
to focus on trying to figure outhow so many women found me, um
(06:47):
and all through word of mouth,and you just kind of go down
this rabbit hole, um, and nowit's grown.
Now I'm seeing the samepatterns missed over and over
again in women.
We were never taught sex edproperly, we were never taught
about our hormones properly, andso I really started seeing
these patterns constantly, ofall of these missed foundations.
(07:07):
So I got to the point where nowI'm building out a course
that's really an immersiveexperience for women that's
supported right.
We're all isolated, we'redisconnected from our bodies,
we're disconnected from ourcommunities, and so the goal is
to really come at it from acompletely different way at this
point.
How do we connect with eachother?
(07:29):
How do we connect them to senseof self, and how do we do it in
a body that they understand?
Um, and so it's been wonderful,um, it's been absolutely
wonderful to build this out,because the challenges are hard,
but when you're in alignmentright, it's the right kind of
hard great.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
so can you go a little bit into, like, um, what
your types of services wouldlook like versus, like you know,
the traditional approach, rightof going to see your doctor at
a doctor's office?
Can you talk a little bit aboutthe differences with the two?
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, I think a shorter conversation would be to
talk about the similarities.
So, yes, so, when someone comesin with me, first and foremost
I need them to make sure thatwe're actually in good match.
I think it really matters thatsomeone just has an absolute
hell.
Yes, this is my energy.
This feels really good.
I think a lot of what healthpractices work is accountability
(08:26):
, which is generally what'smissing in most of medicine.
A lot of us who are in medicineactually speak out against that
.
Right, you want to see peoplemore often, you want to have
follow-up, but again, these areimpacted.
They're low staff, there's alot of other variables, and so
generally what happens is thatwomen come in with me and our
(08:47):
first visit is about two hourslong.
So right away it's very, verydifferent.
We are going into the nooks andcrannies.
My job is not just to listen toit, it's to really hear you.
What happened?
How can you follow these thingsback?
How can you actually look atthings and kind of pinpoint
uh-huh, that's where somethingseems like it changed versus
like.
(09:07):
I've had women who come to me orhave myself in medicine, but
people are like what's the thingthat brings you here?
And women are like oh, it'slike these couple of things I
don't like, well, which one dowe focus on?
But, yes, and my gut hurts andI have a lot of cramps and I
have headaches and I'm like,well, which one bothers you the
(09:29):
most?
And so it's reallyunderstanding how all of these
things are connected.
It's this idea of systemsbiology.
You don't have organs that arejust doing all their own thing.
They're all speaking, and soit's to really get that story
and then, initially, right away,it's to dive into what
foundations can we do on a humanlevel, right?
(09:50):
What labs can we run?
The labs that I run are verydifferent than what I used to
run.
We're going into figuring outdo you have actual gut stuff
going on?
We can see?
In there, we can see thingslike do you have an overgrowth?
Are you digesting your food?
Are you coping out hormones asyou should be, which most women
don't realize you should bedoing?
(10:11):
Are you coping out hormones asyou should be, which most women
don't realize you should bedoing, right?
So there's this idea ofactually having a snapshot into
things.
Do you have toxicity?
Are your hormones doing thething that they should be?
These are tests that I nevereven knew how to run in
conventional medicine.
At the same time, we're lookinginto your diet.
We're looking into actually,like, how do you eat?
(10:32):
And what I find is huge red flagacross the board now is, in the
world of conventional medicine,we were never trained.
A lot of people left it andthen spiraled into wellness and
now we have this toxic wellnessculture where everyone's like
this is my four-hour morningroutine and this is what I eat
in a day, right On TikTok or onInstagram and I'm like first off
(10:56):
, stop it, because half of thosepeople are my clients and
they're influencing people.
Literally.
They're influencers influencingpeople wrong, and it's
oftentimes now leading to womenbeing completely obsessed and
restricted and fixated andthinking that they have to do
things a certain way and they'veeliminated everything.
And we've created so much fearand so much stress that a lot of
(11:18):
what we're doing is essentiallysitting with a woman first
going into hey, this is whatyour body's literally trying to
tell you.
This is what it looks like tobe fed abundance.
This is what it looks like torelearn how to eat right.
I was never taught how to eat.
I think I first didn't know atall, so I ate Cocoa Puffs
literally for a period of yearsfor dinner.
(11:38):
Then we get healthy because alot of us get really sick or
desperate.
That creates fixations, thatit's more disordered eating
patterns.
Oftentimes that inadvertentlyleads to big, big issues with
malnutrition or under eating,even if it's inadvertent, and so
it's really systematic to saywhat's your body trying to tell
(12:00):
us?
How do we teach you how todeeply nourish yourself, not how
to eat right, but how tonourish yourself?
What does that look like on apersonalized level?
How can it bring joy Right?
A lot of my practice.
There's a lot of laughter Likethere's a lot of us coming in
being like this doesn't have tosuck, we're regulating your
nervous system, right.
(12:21):
That ability to actually rest,women, we don't.
Not only do we not know how torest anymore, we've been
conditioned to think that theopposite is what makes us worthy
.
You're productive.
It is what makes us worthy.
You're productive, it's whatmakes you worthy, right.
So that's kind of what we're infor.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah, yeah, a lot of the times, because it's easy to
get stuck on something like yousaid, like a diet or like you
know what does that even mean?
But a lot of the times it's nota sustainable plan, like we
think for a month or two monthsand then it's like okay, I don't
want to do this anymore,exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
And the whole point is the thing that I think is
missed across the board.
Is this idea of sensuality andembodiment right, it's the okay.
Now you're eating moreabundantly, now you understand
your body, so what the hell isit that you want?
from this beautiful life, right.
Like, what is it that you crave?
What is your vision?
What if you're meant to doamazing things?
What if it can actually bereally really good?
(13:20):
What if you don't have to worka nine to five?
What if you have some likebeautiful secret thing you're
meant to bring to the world?
You can't do that if you'reburnt out, if you're tired, if
you're malnourished, if you'rehurting.
That if you're burnt out, ifyou're tired, if you're
malnourished, if you're hurting,right.
And so it kind of goes throughthis idea of what are your labs?
(13:40):
At the same time, your labs aresmall but beautiful.
Part of this, what's thenourishment that actually
sustains you long-term?
How do you actually repair yournervous systems that your body
feels safe again long-term?
How do you actually reconnectwith pleasure again long-term?
We're not just women where,once you like, figure it out and
teach us how to eat, we alljust shut up and do what we're
supposed to do, right, it'squite the opposite.
(14:01):
Like what do you crave?
So now I have women where wedon't right, our teen pregnancy
rate has gone down, which atfirst we were like woo, and then
we're like, oh, my God, it'sbecause people literally aren't
having sex anymore.
It's that people are sodisconnected that it's all
phones, it's all social mediathat people are literally afraid
to interact.
So there's this initial like oh, this is great and also wait,
(14:24):
is it actually happening for theright reasons?
And so it's really gettingwomen back in touch with their
feminine, that deep, deepfeminine energy, that beautiful
slowness we're supposed to.
We deserve the whole beautifulthing, right, I say that over
and over again, but I mean itthat pleasure is also our
birthright and I think gettingwomen from this point A to point
(14:48):
, like exclamation mark, waythrough the alphabet, into this
whole other world, creates thisdeep resiliency and this deep
vitality that's really, reallyhard to mess with.
So it breeds confidence and itbreeds, like this actual ability
to live a turned on life and Ithink it's neatly what we
deserve.
So it's very, very differentthan the original model.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Right, yeah, and I love that because it's, I mean,
everyone's different, right,everyone's bodies are different,
like everyone's a differentthing, so it's not like there's
no one size fits all, which itcould sometimes feel like, you
know, when you do go to like atraditional doctor, but I'm all
I mean, I understand too, likewe've been talking about, like
there's certain limitations,right, when you go see there's a
(15:30):
pine in a place.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Precisely that's what I try to make very clear to
people is I am one of them andthey are also great, right, so
you can be in both worlds, andyou're supposed to be in both.
You're supposed to be in allthe worlds that you choose,
right, that can benefit you in away that really creates the
sense of wholeness, right, andso there's a time and a place
(15:54):
you can go to conventionalmedicine.
There's really really powerful,um situations where that's
needed acute care.
You are bleeding, you arehurting, you have, like, sudden
infections, you have crazythings that need to be removed.
Please go there, um.
And it's really about bridgingscience with magic, right,
really bridging science withmagic, right.
Really bridging that beautifulpart of ourselves that's
completely untapped.
As women, we're literallytaught to be like men, right To
(16:19):
be on a man's cycle, and we'renot.
We're physiologicallycompletely different, and so
once you tap into it, yourealize it really is something
you can harness versus somethingthat you have to constantly
fight against.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And let me tell you why I was interested in this
topic.
So I started we hear it likehealth journey, right, going on
this health journey.
So I started doing that becauseI'm like, okay, like I want to
exercise, you know, whatever,like all that stuff that we do
or we want to do getting likewhat I thought was stomach pain,
(17:00):
like at the start of the year.
I'm like, okay, I'm gettingthis really bad stomach pain.
I went to the doctor likeseveral times and the doctor was
like, oh well, maybe it'ssomething you ate that's making
your stomach.
I'm like, oh, okay, that makessense.
But then it just never like gotbetter.
And I went back to the doctoragain and then they were like,
well, maybe it was like astomach flu.
And so I was like never gettingan answer.
(17:22):
And I actually posted like aTikTok video on my TikTok and it
went viral because apparently alot of people have the same
experience, you know, with theirdoctors and it literally like
it's still getting shared up tothis day, like that video.
So I was just sitting like atthe doctor's office, like you
know, trying to get answers forthis pain, and like all that
(17:45):
they would suggest is like OK,maybe it's something you ate.
You need to go on a diet likethat's going to solve right.
And I was like that's so sadthat so many people could relate
and like there has to be like abetter way.
And so, yeah, right, there isnow.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
So I think what's you know as I speak and as I can
dive into this deeper, peopleare like you know you need to
demand answers and I'm like, butthey don't have answers, right?
A lot of those people are alsomy clients.
So I work deeply in the worldof fertility and deeply in the
world of hormones as well, andI've reminded people that, like,
(18:25):
the person who's doing your IVFis actually my client, the
person who you see as aclinician is my client, right?
So there's this idea ofeveryone wanting answers.
If someone has stomach pain,for example, like you, the
easiest thing to do is literallylook into physically what might
(18:45):
be going on.
So initially, yeah, maybe it'simaging, maybe that's exactly
that beautiful bridge of worlds.
Someone should physically takea look.
Before that, someone shouldalso believe you, right?
That's the first thing.
Is that half the time, womenfeel like it takes us how many
years to get actually diagnosedwith our autoimmune conditions?
(19:08):
How many women where I justasked them how are you?
And they burst into tearsbecause they're saying that
you're one of the first peoplethat's actually made eye contact
with me when they asked me that, and it seems like you're
actually curious, and I am damncurious, because you're not
supposed to be suffering, right.
We're not supposed to besuffering.
We are so damn beautiful, right, and everything we've gotten
(19:32):
shit on over and over again.
And so, first, it's believe you.
Second of all, it's actuallythat's usually when conventional
medicine shines.
It's like rule out what's goingto kill you.
That's what I was literallytaught Rule out the things that
might kill them.
That would be nice, right.
Make sure that you don't havesome sort of crazy infection.
There's just been a crazy thinggoing on, and then you actually
(19:55):
have to use critical thinking.
So, right away, it's not aboutgoing on a diet.
What in the world does thateven mean?
Should you go vegan?
Should you go carnivore?
Should you be plant-based?
Is that the same thing asvegetarian?
All we've done is confuse thecrap out of people, right, and
so it really comes down to thefact that there's these
foundations that are constantlymissed in our quote-unquote diet
(20:19):
.
It's not about our diet, it'sabout nourishment.
Women all fundamentally needsimilar foundations, and then,
as you know your body, you getto personalize what you need on
top of that, right.
It's why some women needgluten-free.
Other women need to eliminatecertain foods for a certain
period of time, right.
(20:40):
But initially, what never cameacross for you is no one looked
at you and was like let's get tothe root of this, right?
Like what's the root of theroot of the root?
Okay.
Do you have parasites andinfections at the same time that
you have food sensitivities,that you also have toxins?
You're supposed to poop outtoxins.
(21:00):
You're supposed to poop outhormones, right?
So one of the easiest things todo is just take a look in and
once all the crazy things thatare going to kill you are ruled
out, you go into actual holistictesting.
It's just very complicated.
You take a cup and you poopinto it.
That's it, right.
And then you poop into it.
That's it.
And then you set it off.
That's it.
(21:21):
Someone else does the work foryou, and someone who should be
highly trained and qualifiedreads it like a story, and if
you're with a good clinician ora good coach, then what a lot of
us are is really goodstorytellers.
We finally tell the story ofyou back to you in a way where
the chapters make sense, notlike quick, you should eat more
(21:42):
broccoli or you need to suddenlyremove this.
I'm Eastern European.
We're gals, we love to live.
Generally, some people are like, okay, then just, but why, why,
what are we trying toaccomplish?
And so that's easily what wouldhave been done for you is like
let's actually listen to you,let's do something like a puke
(22:02):
that rules it out, and thenlet's take that deep dive.
I have never seen one singlestool test come back normal In
conventional medicine.
When I did that version ofstool testing, almost all of
them come back normal.
It's a completely differenttest.
And so people are like, yeah,yeah, yeah, they checked my gut,
it was normal.
And I'm like I don't think so.
(22:22):
Did they actually do the DNAstool analysis?
And they're like I don't knownumber one, or definitely they
did not, knowing which resourcesyou have available, because the
paradigm is shifting right now.
We've all been so disappointedin medicine, including those of
us who are in medicine.
A lot of us are just trying tolook for more answers, and I
(22:47):
think that's what I'm trying toraise awareness of is that there
is this beautiful new paradigmstarting, where we're actually
teaching women not only how tocrave more, but to be more and
ask for more and be worthy ofmore right, and it starts on
this biological level.
Why in the hell did yourstomach pains.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
I'm so desperate so just you know, in case anyone
was wondering like it actuallyended up being like gallstones,
so that was my pain.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
So I just wanted to go ahead and comment on that.
Before you get gallstones,there's so many other signs and
that's why so many women gettheir gallbladder removed now.
And that's why I ask women allthe time please know the status
of your liver, of yourgallbladder.
Why?
(23:36):
Because your gallbladder andyour liver work together to
produce a magical little juicecalled bile.
That's actually what breaksdown fats, but fats are the
building blocks of your hormones.
So that's why so many womenwith gallstone to gallbladder or
liver or whatever issue.
That's where so many hormoneissues come from.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
So that's how connected all of this is yeah,
so that's what I'm finding outnow, like just I mean, I mean,
at least it's nice to just knowwhat it was now, rather than you
know, I just didn't know for awhile, but yeah, um, okay, so
where could people find likemore information, like if they
(24:17):
were interested in learning moreabout you know, your services,
or just in general, like moreinformation about this?
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, so they can find me at wholewomanhoodcom.
So I'm the founder, I have awonderful team and it is growing
, and so my practice right nowis it is waitlisted.
It's a long waitlist and that'swhy I'm releasing a program
called Hormone Alchemy andthat's what I was talking about.
(24:45):
It's these foundations thatevery woman deserves to know.
So we go through everything,starting with your cycle.
What you were never taught howto actually revive your nervous
system, how to go through whatare the basics of your hormones,
what are the basics of your gut.
I still have yet to meet asingle woman who actually works
(25:06):
with the foundations, and thewomen that I work with are
amazing and they're smart.
They're just doing other things, and if you're really good at
what you're doing, you shouldprobably be really good at who
you're being.
This entire body shouldprobably be taken care of.
So that's launching.
People can find me on Instagramat whole womanhood, and I would
(25:26):
love, love, love if anyone who'slistening downloads my hormone
and gut revival starter kit.
It's where I go through thesebasics.
It's kind of the quick anddirty, quick start guide, for
what do you actually do rightaway that prevents gallstones?
I'm happy that you got thediagnosis.
Those are also painful, right.
(25:47):
It would have been real nice toavoid them to begin with, and
there's a lot of things that wecan do to make that happen.
And so it really is aboutcreating these foundations in a
body that you love andunderstand, and that's where it
starts.
So I would love to be aresource for women.
I send out a newsletter thatpeople literally just respond to
in person all the time.
(26:09):
That's meant to be these littlequick and juicy pearls.
This is what your recoveringgynecologist wishes.
You knew about your body, so Iwould love to stay connected
with women like that.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Sounds great.
I'm going to go sign up myselfafter recording this series.
It's really good stuff and I'mgoing to include that link for
anyone interested in thedescription for the episode.
So make sure to check it out.
And yeah, just once again,thank you for being on and
talking about this absolutely I.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
I think that we we just deserve it right.
We deserve it so much that,like, if we had answers and I
say that all the time what wouldyou do with your life if you
felt so damn good you couldn'thelp yourself, right?
What would we actually do?
And it's really beautiful tosee what women come up with.
The whole process is definitelyit's a transformation.
(27:06):
So thank you for having me here.
I can't wait to talk with youfurther.
Thank you.
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The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!