Dr. Sarah Marshall on What Is Healing? What Does It Take? Why Are We Here on HEAL?

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Dr. Sarah Marshall is the interviewee in the final episode of our inaugural season. She shares with us what healing means to her and how our health is connected through every part of our bodies and our lives. This episode is hosted by our producer, Kendra Vicken.

Referenced in the Show

Sarah’s Bio

Dr. Sarah Marshall is an educator, speaker, and advocate for the holistic healthcare model. She currently resides in Salt Lake City, UT, and, when not practicing medicine, can be found traveling, skiing, hiking, running, sailing, and generally having the adventures of a lifetime. Read Dr. Marshall’s full bio.

Kendra’s Bio

Kendra is a marketing expert and artist based in Salt Lake City, UT. In addition to painting and the work she does for her wonderful clients, Kendra enjoys beekeeping, holding her chickens, cuddling her dogs, and adventuring with her husband and daughter. You can connect with Kendra here.

Full Transcript

Kendra Vicken: Welcome to HEAL. On today's episode, Dr. Sarah Marshall shares with us what healing means to her and how our health is connected through every part of our bodies and our lives. I'm not your host. I'm your producer, Kendra Vicken. 

 (music) 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Well, this is different. 

Kendra Vicken: Yeah. You're on the other side of the mic this time. I mean, same mic, but other side of the interview. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yep. 

Kendra Vicken: Well, thanks for doing this. I think that, this season's been great and we've had so many great guests and we've gotten to talk about, you know, issues like fibromyalgia and, topical steroid withdrawal all the way to like depression and addiction and grief.

And I think that the one thing that our listeners haven't gotten to hear much about,  is your story and your relationship to healing. And I think this would be kind of a good opportunity to talk directly to Dr. Sarah Marshall and find out, you know, what she, what she has to say. And

Sarah Marshall, ND: I love it 

Kendra Vicken: and kind of how, how you ended up here.

And, and really, I, you know, let's start with that, you know, what does healing mean for you? 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Hmm. So for me, healing is about being whole. Like being whole and complete. And I add complete because that's more like the mental and life side of it. So healing is well there's healing, which is the action to get, to being healed, which would really, I think even a better word is being whole and wholeness for me is that everything works the way it's supposed to, as it was designed at the most optimal levels possible.

But there's also a component of what each person wants. Like what wholeness and optimal functioning is for one person actually could be different than another person. You know, we don't all necessarily need to be extreme mountain climbers or deep sea divers or ultra marathon runners. And those people are going to have different demands.

But I do think that at the core, physiologic level it's universal for every single person. Your stomach works when it has a pH of one, your intestines have a particular functionality to them that is universal for everyone. But then there's the other piece of healing and wholeness that comes into the mental, emotional, or spiritual, and like what kind of life do you want to live?

And that's where we get to color outside the lines and create our own lives. 

Kendra Vicken: Well, and that's where you have, you know, the slogan. I, you know, I think it's on your site and it's something that you and I have talked about, which is that, at least from my understanding, like being, being healthy healing for you means getting to live your dream life.

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. Like I think that's the ultimate goal. It's like why, you know, years ago earlier in my career, I used to put a lot of emphasis on like the conversation of well why be healthy? Like why health? Why do you even care? What's the point of doing all of this? And so that's where I challenge a lot of my clients is to look at, all right. Great. Well, what, what do you really want out of this? And usually the first response is something to the effect of, pain-free, not vomiting on a regular basis, like being able to function, you know, having energy at the end of my day, to hang out with my kids after I come home from work, which all of those things are super valid, but I usually challenge them to start to look beyond the management of their disease into like, literally what's the kind of life do you want to live? Like, do you want to be an ultra marathon runner? Do you want to be able to scuba dive or do certain things that currently, like one of my clients really her big commitment is she wants to be able to do rim to rim on the grand Canyon, North rim to the South rim, which is like something like some 26 miles, I think, or 26 down and I dunno, it's a huge deal and a lot of vertical change and she knows that that's going to be a whole different life and a different body that she's going to have to create in order to have that result. 

Kendra Vicken: Right. 

Yeah. I mean, and so for you, what, what I guess then just to get personal is, is your dream life? And how long have you been emphasizing, that piece, like that being healthy to have this, like, where did that, where did that come in for you?

And what does that look like? 

Sarah Marshall, ND: So I think kind of the answer in reverse,  I think I've had an intuitive sense or like an internal knowing about my wellbeing being correlated to the life I live, now that goes into my story. I had my first asthma attack when I was nine months old. Didn't have language, so I couldn't tell my mom what was going on. And it took them another year to figure out what the diagnosis was. I was just having these episodes and then it wasn't until I was about a year and a half old that they actually worked out that I had asthma. And that's pretty young even to develop that kind of a lung disease.

So from a very young age, I had the experience that, if I didn't feel well, I didn't really, I wasn't really happy with my life, but I also started to notice when I was stressed out and not happy with my life, my asthma would be worse. My allergies would be worse. Like I also so it went in both directions and then it just kind of was like this innate sense of things.

And I remember when I first literally stumbled upon naturopathic medicine, which I didn't know, there was such a thing as a primary care physician who specialized in natural healing. Didn't know that the field even existed. I knew about crystal therapy. I knew about meditation. I knew about herbal medicine.

I'd seen a homeopath in my childhood, which was actually the only two years of my childhood that I didn't have asthma was when I was working with a homeopathic practitioner and then the state of New York outlawed it. And she moved to Canada and I stopped working with her. And that was in the eighties.

And so, you know, I had this experience of some of the natural therapies in my life and the difference, but I just had no idea that there was such a thing as a physician of naturopathic medicine. So when I stumbled upon that reading a magazine in the Houston airport on the way, home from a surf trip in Panama, and literally saw an advertisement in the magazine that said, you will be a naturopathic physician, it was like a slogan for this ad, and I had like, what the heck is that? And I went home and Googled it. I started to read about the philosophy of naturopathic medicine and our founding philosophy is based on, tenant called vis medicatrix naturae or the healing power of nature. And that's kind of like the core platform everything else is based off of is that it's....I really am resisting using the word belief because I don't like when people are like, oh I believe in your medicine, 'cause there's a lot of science and like reality the physiology, but there is like a foundational philosophy. And in that philosophy, the basic premise is that nature naturally heals itself or you die. Like those are the choices, right? So there's this natural state of healing. There's this innate, internal ability and we call it like lovingly the vis in naturopathic medicine, which I think we actually have somebody coming up. there's another episode that you guys are gonna hear about soon that I've already recorded.

We get way into the philosophy, naturopathic medicine. So there's things to come, but the vis is like that life force energy that's in there. So then you get back to the question of like, what is my dream life? And like, what is this, how does this all connect is like, I don't, I don't know. It's probably like it's going to blend into my spiritual beliefs too, but it's like, for me, I think that the reason why I'll at least speak for myself, why I'm here on the planet is to fully actualize this thing called Sarah Marshall, like to be fully Sarah Marshall.

And I do actually have beliefs that, that I'm not, that's not all of who I am. Like there may be a spiritual self or some people talk about a soul or like their sort of greater consciousness. And then we come down and we incarnate into a being, and the being I've incarnated into this time around is Sarah Marshall.

And she's got brown hair and she's 5'8", and she was born with asthma and she had the parents she had and like all those things. And so for me, health and fulfilling on my physical body and fulfilling on my spiritual path and fulfilling on my most joyous life. That's kind of, it's all one thing.

Like we use language to divide them up. My body's doing this and I'm on my career path and I'm really happy about these things. But to me, it's like, ultimately it's all one unit of: am I happy? How happy can I be? How much joy can I have? How much? And it's like, my ultimate motivator is the experiences in life.

And. I want to max out those experiences at whatever level of life I'm at, like the things I'm doing now at 39 years old, I couldn't have imagined 10 years ago. And there were times in my life where, what maxed it out was like I had a dream to be a river guide since I was a kid. And then I moved out West and I finished college and I had a degree in professional chemistry that my dad had just sunk umpteen thousands of dollars into.

And the first thing I did out of college, go run rivers for like 80 bucks a day or something like that. And that was my job and I loved it and I did it for five summers and it was like, one of my favorite parts of my life. And I'm this like professional grad who has this like chemistry degree background and I'm running rivers and spending time like hanging out in the wilderness.

And that was so fulfilling for me of the experience. And so then it was like, okay, I did that for awhile. And then what's the next thing. I've been a race coach for a downhill ski race team. I've sailed. A racing boat from Hawaii to Los Angeles, 3000 miles across the Pacific ocean. Like I actually know what the center of the Pacific ocean smells like, which turns out doesn't smell like anything.

Cause it's just like completely neutral out there. So. For me, like there are things I'm now looking at in my life that matter to me, this podcast being one of them and reaching as many people and like expanding beyond my private practice to be able to make a difference for wider range of people.

But it's also like my growth, who would I have to be to be the kind of person that's known internationally and making a difference on all the continents in the world. Like I'd have to be different than I am right now. I would have to let go of stuff. I'd have to own things about myself. I'd have to evolve as a human being.

I have to, I definitely have to be willing to build a bigger team, which has always been one of my challenges. So thank you for coming into my life to help me with that. You know, it's like, that's the other piece and we'll go into kind of whatever else from here, but it's like living my dream life isn't necessarily just about accomplishing things.

It's also always been about growth and development for me and the physical body gives us a really interesting way to look at where are we stuck and where are we stopped? And where are we not on our path because it gets sick when we're not on our path and it gets mad and it hurts. Although I do also think that some people come into this life, like the way I heard it, one time is like the most advanced souls choose the hardest life.

It's like, they've done all the easy ones now. They're like, okay, give me the most challenging circumstances. And let me see if I can find joy inside that. Let me see if I can find forgiveness inside that. So like, It's not the truth. It's a way to look at it. But sometimes, you know, when I see people that are in some really tough circumstances and really hard lives, I look at it from the perspective of that.

Those are old wise souls, giving themselves a real challenge of can they find peace and gratitude and love and joy inside of that. And it's not to diminish anybody's suffering or experiences because we all deal with that. But, You know, so like who knows 

Kendra Vicken: It's a cool perspective though, because it's like, whether or not that's true, like it's an empowering way to look at things for yourself. Then when I go through a challenge, if I can look at it being like, life is a challenge, like there's, you know, this game and how can I find the joy and improve and grow here where that feels. You know, not easy or that feels difficult. So, I mean, like you said, like, obviously we don't know so much about, about that, what happens, you know, when you die, if you come back and whatever, but I do think that it is cool to, to view it that way. Like that view can be a healthy mindset when it comes to tackling challenges, whether that be physical or mental or emotional or whatever, anyway, at least like on an individual level, obviously putting that on somebody else can create issues, but for yourself, that can be a really empowering way to view that.

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. And it certainly, for me, it's been a way, like one of the teachings that I've worked inside of is practicing nonviolence and, you know That's nonviolence against others and nonviolence against yourself. And at this stage in my life, mostly what practicing nonviolence means is giving up grudges, forgiving things, letting go of resentments, letting go of regrets, expressing my love, sharing my gifts.

Like it's like that level. And so for me, when I look at people through that lens, it also has me be way more compassionate to things they might be dealing with. And like, I'm looking at them through a lens of love and nonviolence. That's been my experience. And then I get interested in what is it life really like for them? Like I'm not gonna make assumptions. 

Kendra Vicken: Right. Totally. That makes a lot of sense. And I loved the way that you talked about like things being connected as well. Like when we talked about that, depending on what issues you're having in your, in your body that can manifest as like cavities or teeth problems in like different areas of your mouth.

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. 

Kendra Vicken: Like to me, that is, that is crazy. And for the listeners who don't know my experience to naturopathic medicine before that, before working, with Sarah was, you know, close to none. You know, I've had some other clients who do sound therapy or have done acupuncture, but it's been a really limited exposure and with really specific modalities of healing, whereas like naturopathic medicine is more of that holistic approach, that organizing the orchestra of all the other doctors and all the other things that have come into play.

And so I've never had those high level conversations of being able to see how, how one issue affects another issue. And you've talked about that affecting things outside of you to. Like your relationship to sex affects her relationship with money and vice versa. And I think that's something a lot of people don't think about is that, is that connectedness within and without themselves as to how they relate to the world and to their own bodies.

Sarah Marshall, ND: I think that, you know, I've done a lot of transformational education and coaching work, and that's something we saw over and over again, which is, and, you know, you can have a breakthrough in an area like in a relationship, but you're in a breakthrough in relationship with your mom. Or you can have a breakthrough in your, like being confident at work and then you can't help it, but it's going to spill into every single area of your life.

Like it ends up being much more holistic and, you know... holograms are really interesting. And holographic theory is like a whole theory of looking at the world and in holographic theory or hologram at every level of the hologram, the image is complete and perfect and whole. So if you go all the way down to the microscopic level, the whole image is there.

If you zoom all the way out to a macroscopic level, the image is there. So then the question becomes well, which one's the right image. All of it. Right. Which is a little mind bending than how we typically deal. But if you look at our bodies, our bodies are actually holographic. And what that means is you can be, you are holographic as a whole individual person.

You've got your hands and your legs in your fingers and your toes and your face. And you're complete you've you know, and even if you don't have some fingers or you don't have an arm you're still complete, that's you, that's your whole holographic self. Right. And then you have organ systems. And your skin is one whole thing, organ system, and your stomach is one whole thing and your liver is one whole thing and your uterus is one whole thing.

And then you go inside of that and then there's levels of tissues. And then inside the tissues there's cells. And now we're getting way better at learning what's going on inside of cells, which are like giant universes. It's incredible when you actually deal with the spacial distances that like one, one thyroid hormone has to come through the extracellular matrix, make it to the outside of the cell, find the receptor site, get transported through the receptor inside the cell. Signals through G-protein, G-protein makes a cascade of all of these other molecules. And when you actually deal with the scope of the size, it's not that far off to say it would be like us going to the moon and then off to Mars.

So like these molecules are moving huge distances in very short periods of time, which is when we start to actually have to deal with the body as quantum. That's a whole nother podcast, but, you know, it's like it's holographic. So every level is whole and complete. At the level of the golgi bodies and the nucleus of the cell and the mitochondria of the cell, it's holographic; inside the mitochondria, it's holographic, it's whole at every single level. Now, then it gets interesting. If you zoom out, some people say, we're not, it's not about us as individuals. It's the human race. And then the human race is actually whole and complete as one unit. And that maybe humans are even more bee like, hive like, and that there's this universal understanding between all of us and that we exchange far more information telepathically or whatever you want to call that through the ether of universal consciousness between humans and groups of humans.

And there's all kinds of interesting anthropological resources, that kind of point to that being a real possibility. So you have to start dealing with it. So. So our lives are holographic, they're whole and complet at every level. You can look at the body and you can see what somebody is dealing with in their whole life.

So I actually do a lot of talks for like business people. And I'm often, usually the only health practitioner there, there's money people and there's marketing people and their social media people, and everyone's sharing about different ways to impact their business. And then I come on stage and I start talking about how their body and their health is like, you know, most of them are entrepreneurs and if you get sick, your income stops. So it's a really big deal to take care of your body. But then I start sharing like: Yeah. If you've got gastroenteritis or you've got certain kinds of issues in your GI tract, like one of the common ones is, you know, dealing with chronic heartburn or GERD, which is like a, all of a sudden, my brain is blanking now on the physiology of it, but you have too much stomach acid or you have too little stomach acid. Your stomach is not working properly. Right. Well, the stomach in Chinese medicine is all about delegation and being able to break big things down into usable parts, because if you think about the size of a strawberry and the size of a molecule inside the strawberry that strawberry's got to get chewed up, broken down all the way down to the tiny little parts so that your body can absorb it.

Well, that's what the stomach does. So people that deal with a lot of stomach issues tend to deal with worry. They literally ulcerate themselves if it gets bad enough with worry and stress and they have a really hard time delegating and they tend to not be good at breaking big things down into all of the doable parts.

And so I'll say that, and I watched like 10% of the faces in the audience are like, how does she know that about me? And then we would go through these other systems, but it's like one of my favorite things I learned from Chinese medicine practitioners is to look at the body like poetry. Everything's a metaphor.

And so, you know, if somebody like I'll use me as an example, one of my things that I still deal with is I've got a little squishy disc in my low back that kind of gets bulged out and I'll deal with low back pain. And I literally get weak and my low back is unsupported and it always correlates to a time when I'm having the experience of working too hard, doing things for other people and not having enough emotional or physical support coming back in the other direction. Now, what I've learned is that's more on me than it is on them, where I'm not making requests. I'm not asking for what I need, or I'm not doing the work I know to do, to refill my cup and take care of myself. But as soon as my back starts to hurt, it's a giant red flag for me to like look there in my life.

And I get on my inversion table and I do my stretches and I cut the inflammatory foods out of my diet. So like I do it from both sides, but it's all connected. 

Kendra Vicken: Well and that's, I mean, you definitely have an edge in knowing those connections that like normal people don't have, but what I think a lot of people don't think to do is seek out that information 

And in one of the episodes this season, it's escaping me, which one I can probably find it and link it in the show notes, but we discuss The idea of that like, they're essentially being like a body chart. Like if you're experiencing pain in this area of your body, it correlates to this, you know, like emotional need or vice versa.

Do you remember having that conversation at all? 

Sarah Marshall, ND: I'm gonna bet it's Robert, Cyprien talking about applied kinesiology because, you know, and that would be what episode 11. Cause that was, that's kind of the basis of inside of applied kinesiology, the way everything's connected and you know, I have injured my right knee.

And I'm a downhill skier. So any typical orthopedist would say, duh, you're a skier. You blew out your ACL. That's what happens to skiers. But I think I might have told the story in the episode, I happened to blow my knee out on what would have been my fourth wedding anniversary, seven months after my divorce and I was married to a ski patrolman.

So I'm at a ski resort, staring at ski patrol guys. Going skiing that day. I've been skiing since I was 2 and a half. Why that day did I roll my ankle, catch an edge and blow my knee on the first turn of the first run of the day? Like that was a hundred percent emotional. And I even know when I was going up the chairlift, how emotional I was, I was checked out and I wasn't present.

And so I even actually had this really spiritual body worker and she doesn't know anything about me. She'd never met me before and she's working on my knee and she looks at me and she goes, you're ex-husband's in your knee. So like that kind of stuff, right? Like, 

Kendra Vicken: Oh, wow. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: That's like kind of even further out there, but even just like pain correlations.

And it's not that the physical pain isn't real. It is real. And you can connect it to organ system function. You can connect it to emotional traumas. You can connect it to memories that we've stored in different parts of the body, like all that,

 Kendra Vicken: I think that a lot of people don't think about those connections and I, and I truly hadn't, but something you just said a little bit ago, which was something good happens to you, like you get a promotion or something, and then all of a sudden that impacts, like how you think about other things or, or your general outlook on things, which then can affect like how motivated you are maybe to like eat better or like just everything, like, kind of in our own thought process is connected.

It's kind of interesting. Cause I think about, you know, you and I had a conversation the other day where you were talking to me about how to think about my business. Right. And, and, and to talk to people who might be able to help me connect to other people who, who might be interested in, in working with me, who might, who might need help in those areas.

And I actually was just so excited by our conversation alone, that I have a friend who runs a marketing business in Arizona, very similar, like we could almost be competitor type business, you know? And I was like, I just have to share this with you. This was so incredible. And like this whole positive attitude, which affected her.

And then it did almost like exactly what you said anyway, because then she was like, well, you know, I do need help with my podcast. And I, she was not someone I want to reach out to for help. Like it totally was, you know, so it's like my. My relationship to business changed through that conversation with you, which then just made me more excited to talk about business, which then is getting me more business.

Right. And so then I'm stoked and I'm having, you know, not that I have problems in my relationship, I like barely got married two weeks ago. You know, like my relationship is great, but I just like that whole day, my attitude was great. I felt so  present and joyous about everything. And I just think , that is a very, very small and minute example, but of, of like one instance, being able to have this sort of  domino or ripple effect in how you think about your relationships with other people, your relationship with yourself, like, and I felt less tired because I was excited, you know? And it's like, there's so many things right. Where I can see that connection on an emotional level. And because I don't have like the background to see it on the, in the inside, I do think that it is interesting to know that that magnifies inside the body as well as, as well as outside. Do you have any, so you talked about your knee, but do you have any other like important examples of. Of healing or of those connections that have occurred for you. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: So this is so good. My brain just exploded. I'm like, we have to talk about nine different things. But, the other one I want to go to and this research is getting done more and more, but it's still like, it's pretty cutting edge where we're starting to truly map out like scientifically the connections between childhood trauma or certain issues that people deal with mentally, emotionally, that directly impact their bodies. Like we actually have hardcore scientific evidence that if you're empowered, your immune system works better. And if you're disempowered, it doesn't. This is not like, Oh, that's cute. No, like literally.

And so, you know, what's interesting. . I'm going to do that thing that you shouldn't do, or I'm gonna speak about something that I haven't really researched that much, but it's a really fascinating idea. And then we can back it up when we look at the show notes later. But my understanding is that they're starting to actually see that there truly are higher COVID infection rates in communities of color. And, and that there's nothing physiologic in our body different. We are the identical genetic human beings, but circumstances are very different for these different cultures and communities. And especially in the United States. Where there's food deserts. And there's a lot of what we're dealing with in these conversations of racism and where people have been discriminated and they've been left out and they've not been offered the same opportunities, even though every other thing is the same. And what that actually does to your immune system could be literally, we could be seeing the physical impact of our lack of compassion and companionship and empowering each other, showing up just like that in this pandemic, like that's like a big version then I will definitely get down into my life too. And like, what I was going to share about is there's this incredible doctor, mario Martinez he's actually was a psychologist or psychiatrist. I'm not sure which one, but he works in mental health originally, and he's now moved into a field of study that is what I did all my medical research in and in grad school and med school was psycho neuro immunology. And it's basically the Latin term for brain mind. Immune system connection.

And now there's also a field that psycho neuro immuno endocrinology, cause you know, let's just smash them all together. But the main ideas is we're really starting to see the interconnection between the regulatory systems of the body, the systems of the body that regulate keeping us alive, the immune system, the brain and the endocrine system.

And our stress levels and what happens to us, but we can get way beyond for a long time. We're like, yes, of course stress impacts health, but we've gotten way more detailed about like, literally specifically, what does that mean? Cause people fall in different categories and what Dr. Martinez started to look at is the difference between shame, isolation, and betrayal. And basically most people can sort of put themselves in a category, which one of these three, they tend towards, I tend towards isolation. Betrayal has a tendency where we look outward. Things are happening to us. We're being betrayed by the outside world. People, events, circumstances are doing it to us. And I want to be clear. There's nothing wrong with any of these three. These are all psychological states that we deal with. And there's a whole world of neuroscience about why one child will end up in a shame spiral, another child will isolate, and another child will go into blame. And it's literally like a split decision that happened in a moment of a traumatic event when you're a kiddo, then your brain gets so flooded with the amygdala hijack that it anchors that brain pattern in and it becomes a survival mechanism going forward because we're social creatures to survive in society is literally how we live and so we have all these survival mechanisms in our brain hardwired. So it's not like you like did something, you just, literally, your brain made a decision in a moment of survival and you ended up in one of these three camps. What's interesting about it is. Shame is inflammatory and betrayal is inflammatory. And isolation is like, I don't know exactly the best word for it, it's a, like a downward state into a D deficiency. That's the word I'm looking for! It's a deficiency state. Whereas shame has heat to it and it's inflammatory and there's like excess and betrayal has a lot of heat to it and there's even more excess.

And then you get into like, why is one person an anorexic and another person Bingy, it could literally be right here. Why one person's going to eat more food and another person's going to restrict. And so you'll see these patterns. My tendency is some were split between shame or isolation. And I have a bigger tendency toward isolation.

I will do things on my own by myself. And when you look at my pathology in my body, there's lots of things where it's tightening and constricting and closing down on myself. So initially in asthma, which is a spasm of the bronchial tubes in your lungs, which is a shutting down and closing in, tightening and spasming that then eventually I got my tonsils taken out when I was 18,which in theory was good. Cause I had antibiotic resistance, strep throat, but then now my body didn't have that part of the immune system to work off of and things just went deeper. So I started to get migraine headaches. Migraine headaches are the spasm and the constriction and the shutting down of the arteries in your brain.

So you lose vascular flow that goes into seasonal depression. In my college years, seasonal depression is a mental, emotional shutting down and closing in, and then chronic constipation develops, which I still have 20 years later with all the work I've been doing, which is a shutting down and closing in of the colon.

So we've literally just watched this pattern work its way through my entire body. And I have a tendency when stressed or pushed, I will shut down, close in, lock the door, kick you out, handle it myself and come out when I'm better. And so I have to like check myself that that's my pattern. And so it's really interesting, the work that Dr. Martinez has done, and he specifically actually has studied longevity. That's what he's been looking at is like, Really, what is it that has certain populations have more centaurians than others? And what his research has found is that really only maybe 30% of it has to do with genetics. The other 60, 70% really is culture that's around them and what he calls like the inherited conversations.

And one of the most fascinating examples he gave in an interview was menopause. So menopause is a normal physiologic state where the woman's endocrine system alters its expression. And there's less estrogen and progesterone and the ovaries stop producing it. And the adrenals take over and they produce a little.

Now, if you've been running the, can burning the candle at both ends and running crazy all through your reproductive years, your adrenal glands are going to be smoked. And why people have hot flashes and deal with really severe symptoms during menopause is often a product of toxicity buildup, chronic inflammation and their adrenal glands don't have anything left to be able to continue to produce estrogen and progesterone after menopause.

But what was really interesting was. He talked about the difference between menopause in Japan and in Uruguay, which is his native country. In Japan, the word for menopause translates into a second spring and they consider it this like next birthing process or moving into this next phase of a lovely experience of being a woman entering into your years of wisdom.

Interestingly enough, very few women in Japan deal with hot flashes or any sort of severe symptoms around menopause. They just like transition and it's this amazing shift in their life. In Uruguay. The word for menopause also translates into the word for shame. And in Latin American cultures, it is like rampant that people deal with horrible cramps and pain and emotional challenges and depressions and all kinds of things that they deal with going through menopause.

And now we could look at diet and we could look at those kinds of things, but predominantly what he's finding is the cultural context gives more of our ability, you know, to process this like thing that every single woman on the planet is going to go through. 

Kendra Vicken: I think that  makes a lot of sense. In one way, it sounds like groundbreaking, cause it's like, holy cow, that's like such a tangible example of, of our words and our culture being created within us. But I also think that there are like some really small examples of that in my personal life. Like, for example, with my seven-year-old, if I'm making something she hasn't eaten, she'll be like, do you think I'll like, it.

And if I'm like, yeah, I think you're going to love it. Then she's usually like, I do love it. It's so good. And if I'm like, I dunno, you've never really had it before, but just try it out. And then she tends to like, I'd be like, I don't really like it can, I just have macaroni and cheese, you know? And, and we, we do try to diversify her diet and I've learned a lot of her enjoyment of an experience depends on whether or not she feels, we expect she will enjoy it. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Wow. 

Kendra Vicken: And, and the same thing happens with chores, right? So like, if it's a chore day, it's not, you know, she's still pretty young. She has to clean her room. She helps with her laundry. She does, she's incredibly helpful in general, but, I think a lot about it's come from the way that we, that we've talked about it and it's like, do you want to clean the bathroom with me? I'm gonna clean the bathroom and listen to some music you want to clean the bathroom? And she was like, yeah, yeah, I totally want to clean the bathroom with you.

And part of that might be that she is a kid. She's probably not gonna want to do that with me when she was like 14, but

Sarah Marshall, ND: But you're planting seeds! But yes totally

Kendra Vicken: And at this point I like, there was a time, a couple months ago where I started cleaning the bathroom and she ran in and she was like, 

"you're cleaning the bathroom without me?"  (Sarah laughs) 

Sarah Marshall, ND: I love it!

Kendra Vicken: She was so upset, you know? Because we talked, I talked with her about it initially, like, Hey, this is going to be fun. And then if we, if we complain, we're like, Oh, it's a laundry day. Like I hate laundry day I hate folding laundry. And then I realized that that affects her because then today she's like, ugh do we have to do laundry today?

Whereas every other chores she's like down about it, you know? Yeah. And, and I think that that has, has such a distinct shift. And then there's a darker side of that too. Like I, I had already mentioned, I recently got married and so I bought my dress a while ago, and then COVID-19 happened. And I, all of a sudden wasn't working out at my gym anymore and I was still eating the same and I was stressed and everything happening now, so I gained some weight and so my dress didn't really fit me. And it was like, I didn't really think to try it on again 'cause it had fit me so well. And I didn't realize I was gaining weight and it's like, Right before my wedding. I'm like, Oh no, my dress doesn't fit me. And so I'm like, okay, I have to go on like a pretty strict diet for like two weeks and try and cut some of my water weight, get rid of like, I don't know, stop drinking beers for two weeks and see if that helps cut it back, whatever.

And you know, so that kind of conversation was around. And then I bought a pair of Spanx to make sure everything just like, looked nice in my dress. And she was kind of around for some of that conversation. And then the next day I caught her looking in the mirror and she was like, am I fat? 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Wow, that didn't take long, 

Kendra Vicken: Not at all, and she's seven. And it was like her overhearing me, you know, kind of in one particular instance, being like, Oh, I'm gaining a lot of weight, like I need to lose it. Like, I, I want my tummy to be flat for my wedding dress. And just instantly changes her expectations of her own body. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. 

Kendra Vicken: And it's like, if I had never said that, if I'd always been like, yeah.

You know, all bodies are great. Like I love my body. Like, this is just where my uterus is. It's okay. If it's a little bigger here, like, and so I kinda, I talked to him, talk to my husband and. Was just like, you know, I won't like, I won't talk negatively about my body with her, cause I don't want to create that expectation for her.

And I don't really even talk negative about  a lot of the pains of , cause we've gotten into a little bit, like she knows about menstruation and  we've talked in some details tells about that and she's always like, Oh, does it hurt?

And I'm like, yeah, yeah, it can sometimes. But like, if you, if you're eating healthy, if you're resting, you can put heat on it. You can like, you know, so I don't ever, I try not to talk about things like they're this horrible thing, because it is so tangible. 

How, whether or not she expects something to be bad or to be good, really impacts her enjoyment of those things.

Sarah Marshall, ND: And I think that, you know, where we can get ourselves into trouble is if we get too caught up on like censoring ourselves in order to like, as an in order to, in order to produce a result or whatever. And what I think is, and kids pick up on this. I mean, they it's like their little energy readers all the time.

It's not even really what comes out of our mouth. It's like the energetics of it or who we're being about it. And so there's a difference between complaining and authentically sharing something you're dealing with. Right. And so that's where I think like with anybody around us, because it's actually like....

I'm really sensitive to people's energy. And I can, you know, when somebody is inspired and lit up and they're really happy, like I feel how good that is. And if somebody is just complaining and they're just like upset, but they're upset inside of like, kind of being stuck in it. Right. It's like this energy suck for me, but yet I spend my entire day coaching people dealing with some really tough stuff.

Like I'll spend seven, eight hours on zoom, you know, on video conferences, talking to people every day that are not, it's not complaining in those conversations--Occasionally--but mostly they're sharing what they're dealing with inside of a commitment, to something. So like, that's the other thing, too. And to start to notice the difference, like, are we just being down on ourselves and complaining and bitching and moaning and groaning about something? Or is it literally like. Okay. Yeah. This like, this is like, and I'm trying to think how I would shift it around like your wedding dress or whatever, but like, you know, 

Kendra Vicken: Well, we were able to shift it. So, after she said that I was like, I was like one, no, you're not, you know, she doesn't like waste 40 pounds.

Like obviously she is not, she's not overweight. but I was like, no, you're not. And you know, being overweight also doesn't mean you're unhealthy. The problem is I've gained weight because I've been being unhealthy. I've made choices during this time to like, not keep working out at home, since I can't go to the gym where even though the gym's closed, I could have been doing this at home and I've been making the choice to because I don't have to go to work in the morning. I can sleep in. Cause I don't have to commute. You know, it's like, I'll let myself have an extra beer. And it's like, you know, I'm drinking more beer and I'm not working out at all.

And I'm home all day where all my snacks are. And so I was able to have that conversation with her and reframe it around, like the issue is that I'm not healthy right now. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. 

Kendra Vicken: It's not, you know what my body looks like now. I mean, I have a pragmatic instance right now where I have to fit into a dress cause I can't buy another one, but the issue is  that we need to be healthy and we need to eat healthy food and make healthy choices for our bodies and love them that way rather than like be mad at them for getting bigger. And she was like, Oh, okay. You know, and then I've never heard her say anything like that again. And, but now of course she like, like children do, are not afraid to ever call you out. You know, now I'll have like three beers and she'll be like, are you, is that a healthy choice?

Sarah Marshall, ND: They're our little  integrit  checkers our accountability people, that's pretty amazing. 

Kendra Vicken: Oh yeah. Yeah. She asked me this morning, she was like, I need to get my bike tire fixed. Cause the last time we went on a bike ride, her bike tire popped and she's like, I know that you're not, that now that the wedding is over, you're not trying to be so healthy anymore, but I'd still like to go on a bike ride 

Sarah Marshall, ND: oh my gosh, and out of the mouths of babes.

Kendra Vicken: And it's like, truly like an, obviously she doesn't. Okay. Yeah. My commitment to getting healthier is not necessarily different, but I think she does, like, she's not seeing me count my calories in my app anymore. And like, so she just, she was picking up on some of those things, which is kind of entertaining. But man, that connection with, with creative energy is so obvious with our influence over, over children. 

So makes sense 

Sarah Marshall, ND: And it's obvious there, but yes, and it's, it's there with all of us and it's in our, you know, and we have, I don't want to get too down on it, but we have a bit of a challenge in the culture that we live in to maintain that, you know, and that's like, that's one of the things too, where.

I think a lot of people put it, well, I know, people, but a huge amount. And I have this tendency, I put a lot of pressure on myself. Like, I mean, especially given what I do for a living. It's like, I remember, I think it was about two years ago. I, you know, I've got a pretty big following on Facebook and, and I actually posted really authentically, like, I've been a naturopath for 10 years. I've been in the industry for 15. I've been exploring diets my whole life, not like dieting, but like I was raised vegetarian and I checked out vegan and I tried out macrobiotic. I did this crazy thing called chronobiotic where you eat different foods based on the time of the day. And it was all based on like when the sun touched them.

So like you ate tree foods in the morning, which would hit the sun first, and then you ate middle ground foods in the afternoon, and then anything underground, like tubers and seafood at night. Try that one out. Like, I'm like, you know, I was playing with my body chemistry, like crazy. What happens when you change these different factors?

And my tendency is to always be like, it's me. I'm effed up; it's me. No, I just made a bad choice. I just don't have enough discipline. I, I, you know, like that so often is where we always default to like, if we can even vocalize any of that down below all of that frustration and criticism is actually apathy, apathy's below all of that, where you're like, I don't even care anymore, or there's no point cause nothing's ever going to change, but I really encourage people to be willing to look outside themselves at the environment they're surrounded in. Now I'm going to put a little, like there's a pitfall here, which I actually on a different webinar I was a guest in a like health summit and she asked me an interesting question about, you know, what do you think about, or how do you handle toxic relationships, something, something that line. And I actually. I don't believe in toxic relationships. I think that that's not an empowering way to look at any relationship with anybody. And I do know that some relationships are additive and they create life in you. And some relationships. It's not that, but you actually have control over how that goes.

You can do something about it, but still, if we look one could say our health is a product of the environment we live in. Now the cool thing is you actually do have control over that environment, but it's way harder to deal with enrolling your spouse and getting your kids on board and dealing with the snack vending machines at work, which right now we don't have to worry about, cause we're not going into work, but you know, there's, there's this world we live in and it's so interesting, cause like, okay.

I'm a naturopath I'm trained in herbal medicine. I'm trained in, you know, using food as medicine and doing therapeutic diets. Like I have all these things that can change the biochemistry internally. A lot of what I do with my clients is truly coaching and coaching is about altering somebody's view of life.

And like, that was exactly what you were talking about before with your business. You had one view, we talked for two hours, you had a new view, it looked different. And inside of that new view, there were new actions to take, including wanting to share. And this is a little bit of like, Looking at the man behind the curtain here.

I'm going to give everyone a hint into the whole reason why I want HEAL: The Podcast in the world is because the way that we're doing it alters people's view of what's possible when you listen to these podcasts and our guests are so authentically sharing their stories and their testimonials and what it's been like for them and what they've done, and what's possible.

It just alters something. You can't unsee what you've seen. So if I can open it up and I can have people discover that it's possible that you could go seven years without an epileptic seizure. That it's possible that you could actually work through all the layers of heroin addiction in the way that our guests have.

You know, it's like each one of those stories. And even if you're not dealing with that exact circumstance, you're going to map it onto your own life. And when that happens, Something new opens up. Right? So when getting that new view, it alters our actions and our behaviors. And so that's a huge part of what actually makes my practice more successful because.

To be totally honest. People are terrible at doing what you tell them to do. Here's actually huge amounts of study that have gone into this, and there's a bell curve and it's straight up and you get this. If you don't incorporate anything in the realm of coaching or altering somebody's view, you will get a very predictable outcome from any exercise routine, diet program, anything. Like corporate coaching is one of the big ones where they've started implementing all kinds of different corporate health wellness programs. And if they don't have anything like this in there, if there's no education that does this and you just make it available, people can do yoga.

You make it available that people can do these weight challenges. You like provide the education, just literally about the doing of the thing. Here's what you get. 60% of all of your population will take it on. They will try something. They will agree. They will sign up if you have that kind of a culture, but typically it's about 60% will at least be a yes to consider it of the hundred percent to begin with right of that 60%.

30% of them. So like half of them, but 30% of your original population will try maybe something and then immediately quit and move on and do something else or they will sign up and then they'll never actually take action. Then you're left with a 30% of your original population who will actually even take this on and move forward.

Then as you continue on, you will end up with 10% of your original, a hundred percent who get fairly decent results. And they take quite a light on, you'll get 3% who get extraordinary results and you'll get 1% that put up those numbers. This is also the true for sales. This is true for like any it's the exact same bell curve, no matter what you do, if you don't alter it.

And then here's what they found in their studies. Those 10% that are getting the results. Yeah, they were already doing yoga. They would have done yoga. They've done yoga before. They've tried diets. You didn't alter any of their behavior. You took a person who already does a thing, and now they're doing the thing inside the corporate wellness program.

So you haven't really altered anything about your predictable results. It requires a particular kind of education. To have that other 30%, 60% hundred percent make new actions that they wouldn't have already taken. And it all comes from altering the view, which this is actually the premise of transformational education and there's linear education, which is what almost all of us got in school.

And then there's transformational education and there's tons of amazing programs out there. Some of which have been mentioned in the podcast episodes already like landmark Tony Robbins, You know, Joe Dispenza does a lot of this work and his work around meditation and like how you can actually alter your view, but anything for a lot of people, a life changing circumstance, does it, you know, having a heart attack will do it.

Losing a parent will do it, almost losing a parent or a child. It will alter your view. One of my friends, brothers just got in a car accident two days ago that could have been fatal. And it wasn't. He actually literally got scraped up and he walked out of it. And it's like, life is not the same today as it was on Sunday before the accident happened, because it just like shook up that, wait a minute, what am I doing?

What's really important to me. So when we can alter our view, that's where the new actions come from and coaching can do it taking on an experiment for a week or 21 days or 30 days. So that's why some of those diet programs really make a difference in the longterm is because after you've done something, you committed to it for 30 days.

Then you go, Oh my gosh, my knee pain really is gone. It's really not worth it to keep eating gluten or night shades or whatever it is because it's so much more worth it to not have the knee pain. And me being in this world for a long time. I test those things all the time. I'm like, okay, I know that these foods aren't great for me, but let's see how much I get.

Now. I swing, the pendulum swings symptoms, come back. My body starts feeling a certain way and I'm like, Oh yeah, it's that thing. And then I tighten it back up and I have a naturopath chiropractor, an acupuncturist massage therapist, and at least two or three coaches around me in varying capacities to keep me in accountability.

And, and so that's that environment I've created for myself. So how the environment will alter your, your success rate. 

Kendra Vicken: Well, that makes me think too, like that idea of like, so you're coaching, you're changing people's perspective. And so I think a big piece of that is new information. And what you just said reminded me of a conversation, we had kind of when we first started this, you and I about this idea that, where the most people who haven't been exposed to naturopathic medicine or anything like that before who their experience with medicine and health is westernized medicine that they are like, well, yeah, I'm healthy because I don't have cancer or a chronic disease or something like that.

So then you told me that I don't know if it was at like a conference you were a part of, or this is like an intake thing you do. I don't remember that 

Sarah Marshall, ND: detailed, but the point is. 

Kendra Vicken: That you have people like essentially grade themselves. And so you're asking questions, they've never asked, you know, like how much sleep are you getting every night?

Like real sleep. Do you feel rested? Do you feel rested four hours after you wake up? Do you feel rested eight hours after you wake up? Like where do you regularly have pain in your body? And these are things I think most people ignore. Cause they're like, it's not diagnosable, so I'm fine. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. 

Kendra Vicken: And you don't realize you're not healthy.

So you're talking about like, well, I will test those things and I'll add some gluten or add this back in because I just want to see if it will be fine. And then symptoms come back and I wonder how many people. Myself included are living with, you know, stomach discomfort or like lack of sleep or whatever, but they're not changing because they don't know it could be different.

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. 

Kendra Vicken: Like they don't even realize they're tired because they've never experienced true rest. Or they don't realize that their stomach aches or is always kind of upset because I've never gone longer than a week without diarrhea or, you know what I mean? Like, whatever it is, it's like how many people think they're healthy because by westernized medicine's definition of health, meaning you don't have a diagnosable issue, think that they're fine. That they can keep eating that way. They can keep drinking that way they can keep sleeping that way they can, you know, whatever that put X thing in the box. Right? 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. 

Kendra Vicken: Because they're not aware of like what it actually looks like to be and feel healthy. 

Yeah. And that's an important thing.

I think we overlook is like, like it's easy for me to, again, healthy, you know, like I'm active. I, I don't like dessert very much and I don't, you know, like my, my weakness is definitely like salty foods more than it is sweet foods, then it's like, as we're having this conversation, not like symptoms, right? It's like, I do almost always have a stomach ache and I'm almost always tired. And my ankle almost always hurts. And it's like, but, but they're so normal that, you know, I'm like, I'm fine. I'm healthy

And that's where it becomes a really important to start having those discussions start doing that self audit of. Yeah, I'm fine. Where could I be living my dream life? 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. 

Kendra Vicken: Where could it be better? 

Sarah Marshall, ND: And I'm glad you said it that way. Cause one of the things too is I don't want to like now have everyone walk away and be like, I'm messed up and it's bad.

Right? Like, cause it's not gonna help you either. But is, one of the ways I put this when I share about it is it's like you have a health bank account. Now, if you went into your financial advisor and you said the following statement, they would think you're crazy. Oh my God, I'm set for life. I have $0  in my bank account, but I don't have any debt.

They'd look, sorry, honey, you got a ways to go until you're wealthy and you have what you need for retirement. Right? This is a very common understanding of what we need to do in our society. We have 401k programs and we have matching programs and we have all these retirements and pensions. We have this whole strategy built around and our jobs are enrolled in it and our bosses are enrolled in it and our culture is enrolled in it.

We've got this world, right? And there is an entire industry called financial advisors that have one purpose. And that's to manage your wealth. I've actually dealt with student loan debt and credit card debt, and it's remarkably hard to find experts in debt. Actually, they all want to be experts in wealth.

If we had this in the healthcare industry, our hospitals would be full of athletes. Looking to maximize their performance. And we would have very little need for doctors because almost everybody would be pain and symptom free building towards that future. So what I want to create is the distinction of: a disease state would be like you're in debt. And when you have these symptoms, it's like a negative withdrawal as your balance. But in your case, you do also have lots of places you've put deposits in. You cook many of your meals at home. You have a supportive environment of relationships. You do things that you love. You've got great hobbies. You just built a chicken coop. You have beautiful bees in your backyard. You're excited about your life. Those are all things that actually go into making deposits in your health bank account. When we're not shut down with COVID, you're exercising, you're at the gym like that. Right. And so for my new clients, and when I do talk about this, I talk about there's lots of different categories. I made up 10. You could come up with more or less or whatever, but basically there's 10 categories of ways that we can put deposits in our health bank account to build up our wealth. And you can take withdraws. 

You can go to Vegas and have a really big weekend. You can like do some things or you can run an ultra marathon, which actually usually takes a pretty big withdrawal against your bank account.

And you gotta make sure you have rest and recovery and afterwards to rebuild after that kind of a stress. So, you know, and then there's the unexpected things of. A child gets sick or you're a primary caretaker of a parent at home, or your husband is out of work and you've got to go back to work or you've got to work a double job.

If your health bank account was full, those things, just like your regular financial about bank account, you can figure out how to weather it. Right. But we don't operate in our culture this way. And a little bit of the bad news is the answer to your question: how many people are walking around like this? All of them. 

And how I know it's all of them is because in our culture at this time, it's so normal. We can't even wrap our head around anything else. Everyone will die of a chronic illness. Everyone. There's like a very small percentage of people who will be murdered or die in an accident. But. Everybody else.

And I don't think either of those are really great ways to go either. 

Kendra Vicken: Right, right, right. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Everybody else we'll die of a chronic illness. 

Kendra Vicken: I've never thought about it that way, but yeah, it is. I mean, it's not like,you all of a sudden have an issue 

Sarah Marshall, ND: I mean, who actually dies of old age in this country. 

Kendra Vicken: It's very few people. It's like the one person who looks to be 110 and it's in the news because it's like, wow, nobody does this. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Right. 

And, and even, you know, and now that's a whole nother podcast, which is our lack of power and compassion and distinction around death and dying, because then there's another part that I could easily hear somebody say, which is well, yeah, but we always, we live in a society where you have to have a cause of death, and so they have to put a disease down on there somewhere and like, and actually I should edit. It's not true that everyone will die of chronic illness. They will all die of a disease. Right. Now pneumonia is considered kind of like the graceful killer, because there'll be people where pneumonia will take them.

And you know, but typically if you really look, look at, just look in your own life, your grandparents, your aunts, and uncles, your own parents, you can list that it at least eight out of 10, if not nine out of 10 had pre conditions, they had diabetes, they had cancer. They've had this, they've had that, like I do health histories with all my clients and I ask them about their family history.

And I would say about one out of every 10 people that talk about family members, we'll mention a couple of family members that they don't think had any diseases. Now, one, we don't really know cause we don't always know our family history either, cause lots of people won't tell people about what they're dealing with. Right? 

But if you really look and we could actually pull up statistics and put a little thing in the show notes, if we wanted to about this. But in reality, my understanding and everything I've seen is. And we're all going to get this right. And most chronic illnesses start to show up in the fifth and sixth decades of life and your fifties and sixties.

It's not like all of a sudden you turn 50 and you get a disease. Like you were totally fine. And then on your 50th birthday, bam, it hits you. No, it takes 50 years of all those little symptoms that were warning signs. Your body was talking to you to tell you. Something's off this isn't quite right. I'm handling it right now, but I'm not going to be able to compensate too much longer and it gets louder and louder and louder.

And I'll tell you a few of the big ones that goes so under the radar and the biggest one, for my opinion, clinically is insomnia. Because sleep is when we heal and repair ourselves, our cells do all their cellular repair at night. The majority of our detox pathways are most active at night. It's overnight when we sleep.

And I know there are people out there that are like, but I can totally survive on four to five hours of sleep. You can survive on it. You will end up with a health condition at some point, and you'll never see it in the epidemiology. You'll never see it in the literature that actually says like, 20 years of sleep deprivation is the reason for this thing.

But if you didn't have that time for cellular repair and recovery and detoxification, you're never going to get there. And so there's a few of these, and we're now discovering a lot about the GI track and how important digestive health is and the microbiome. That's a whole thing. And we're starting to discover more and more about the importance of sleep and neurologic health and brain health.

That's kind of the next big conversation people are having. And so from that standpoint, your digestive health, but a lot of people don't have any digestive symptoms, but that does not mean that your digestion is working correctly because there's a whole bunch of other ways. Joint pain can be a digestive issue. Migraine headaches can be a digestive issue. Allergies, seasonal allergies can be a digestive issue. And those are things that like, that's a common thing that naturopaths know, that's not common in our cultural understanding. 

Kendra Vicken: Well, but I'm assuming that the good news is, is that, like let's say somebody who's 60 years old is listening to this podcast, right? And they're like, oh shit, I've, that's me. You know, like I did not take care of myself very well. And now I'm realizing that I'm having those issues. And maybe that is connected to my years of insomnia or, you know, my, whatever it is. 

I'm assuming that the good news here is it's not too late to like start working on that.

Sarah Marshall, ND: No, you know, I, this is truly my stand, but I truly do believe that the body's capable of healing anything. And I literally mean anything. Now, you might have a chromosomal defect and there'll be a few specific things that, but you can be whole and complete and healthy and empowered. Even with that thing. You know, some people, the whole diagnosis, all the actual criteria of that diagnosis are no longer observable.

And, and we have a big resistance to saying the word cure in this country, but call it what you want. Right. If you don't have any of the criteria left for the disease itself, some people. They might still have a marker or two, like I know people with ms that still have myelination issues when they go in and they do all the scans, but they have zero symptoms and their life is incredible and they feel really good.

So do they have ms or do they not have ms? Pathologically there's pathological changes, but they experience this really incredible high level of wellness. So. It's kind of like our guests, Ralph, about epilepsy. He's like, Hmm. I'd probably still technically have it, but I haven't had a seizure in seven years, so I don't even know what that means anymore.

I don't have seizures. Do I have epilepsy? Do I care? Right. That question comes up. So yes, I do truly believe that the body can heal anything. If it's put in the proper environment, here's the catch. The deeper, the disease, the more intense it is and the older you are, the more significant AKA drastic, severe your life changes will have to be to heal.

So, like, there's not going to be a little diet change that's going to pull you out of that. It's sort of the same equivalent going back to like, if we could put a number on how much debt you're in, if you are 70 years old and you haven't saved for retirement and you don't have anything put away and you need a million dollars to retire, you got to get some serious business going and you got to come up with a huge game plan, how to generate that kind of revenue.

Right. It's exactly the same. Is it possible? Absolutely. And literally there was a time where we had sanitariums in Europe, where you would go and that didn't have anything to do with mental illness, by the way. That's what they were called. You would go to a beautiful chalet in the mountains with fresh air and all your food would be prepared for you. And there would be hydrotherapy baths and steam rooms and massage therapy, and your whole world, they take the stress away from you and you just had one job and it was to heal. And they had incredible success rates with basically anything that wasn't like literally almost terminal. And even then it was amazing what actually could be done.

And that's where a lot of the original naturopathic and homeopathic work was getting done. 

Kendra Vicken: And that's like the opposite of a hospital.

Sarah Marshall, ND: Uh huh!

Kendra Vicken: Hospitals, like are so stressful. They're so stressful and isolating and, and cold. And. yeah, it sounds like the opposite of that,  which is really interesting, but it is good to know that, like at any point you realized like, Hey, maybe I'm not in my optimal health  and I feel pretty even, even for people who feel pretty damn good, you know, it's like, where can you inch more towards your dream life, going back again to that connectedness of like, well, now if you're maybe cognizant about your health, how might that affect your view of your business and your relationships? And it's like that pursuing that connection and, and pursuing that dream life is, it is a worthy goal, you know, whenever someone decides to take that on and, and like you said, it can be scarier if you're starting this with more of a, of a health deficit, right. Or we're starting later, it might take a bigger, a bigger sacrifice or a bigger change, but it's still very much possible, I'm assuming, to get to that point where you do feel like you're living your dream life, where you are, where you are building those really strong, strong connections in the different areas of your life. 

Kathryn Fiske: Well, and honestly, that's what you know, HEAL is about is, is capturing those stories of people that have done it.

Right. And like, I made this timeline up. I'm saying it right now. I made this up, but it's a really seems to be a pretty good rule of thumb, which is for every year you've been dealing with something, it's going to take a month to heal it. Now if it's been only one year and it's really short, that's kind of tricky, but it's anything longterm.

And when you actually, the thing you have to tell yourself, the truth about is how long have you actually been dealing with this? So if I have somebody who's 35 years old and they can look all the way back to being 5 years old and having pediatric migraines or abdominal migraines, we're looking at 30 years. And so that's 30 months or a little under three years, it's like two and a half years. And if you, if I have somebody who truly is all in committed in two and a half years, and I've done this. Over and over and over again, with hundreds of patients and many of them have been on this podcast already in season one, like Kore's story of healing fibromyalgia, you know, we're just now in June, you know, coming up on her one year anniversary of naturopathic care and she really has 32 years of accumulated emotional stress, emotional toxicity, physical issues. And like she can see threads all the way through her teen years. And it wasn't fibromyalgia that whole time, but it was like building up to that point. And in only 12 months we've had massive headway. Now she still deals with fibromyalgia flares and she has pretty severe nights sometimes of insomnia, but her whole sense of control over it is different.

And in another 12 months, she's going to be in an unrecognizable position of health and wellness. And it's really possible that in about 24 months of committed natural care, that's comprehensive, you've got to deal with it on multiple different systems. It's gotta be more than just diet. You've got to actually get other interventions in there.

You really, truly put two years into something you can massively alter almost any single chronic disease at age, usually 80 to 90% of symptoms can be gone in that time period. And if you actually look, that's not that crazy. When you do back surgery, they all tell you it's going to take you two years to heal.

And how many people do you know, two years after back surgery still deal with back pain? So like if you couple back surgery with chiropractic, massage, acupuncture, naturopathic care, nutritional intervention, you'd be like a superhero in two years. Right. It's really possible. And this is the part I want to like get out there is this isn't mysterious. This isn't like hard to find, just Google it. Right. And there are practitioners in every single city around this country and in many other places in the world, you know, that there's sometimes even more prevalent in other places in the world than they are here, that this really is like, just like, you'd go to a financial advisor and they'd be like, great.

Call me when you got $30,000 to invest, go do these actions. I mean, that's what I had to do. I walked in and he's like, Okay. I can't really help you til you make more money. So like, okay. So I've been working on that and I'd been like paying off the credit cards and disappeared debt. And I've got a whole new relationship with my tax accountant and I'm handling that.

And now I'm taking on cleaning up things on my credit report. And then once all of that stuff is complete. I'm actually in a new position to literally go in and start investing in my future in that way, financially, it's the identical parallel in our health. And there really are a lot of people out there that are experts in how you can build health wealth.

Whatever we're going to call it. 

I like that. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that does seem like what this is all about, right? Is is investing in yourself and investing in that dream life and investing in those connections and, and how that altogether is, you know, what heal means 

Sarah Marshall, ND: and it's possible. It's possible.

It's possible. It's possible. It's possible. It's possible. Like if I could stand on my soap box and it's just like, and there's not, you don't have to choose it. I mean, I have some clients that come to me and they're like, look, really, all I want is to be out of pain. And beyond that, I, don't not making you any promises.

Like they can't, they're like Nope, dream life, nuh-uh, but being pain free would be great. And we take it as far as we can go. You know, whatever their body actually needs for that. And like, Molly was a great example in our first, you know, inaugural episode of like she's six years into her journey and what has changed and what hasn't changed and what she still deals with and what she's completely free of, that she never deals with anymore, you know, and like I have similarly, like all the asthma's gone, all my internal, you know, chronic, I would not say by any means I have anything that's truly a chronic disease. I do have a couple of symptoms that stick around that I am very clear have got a really strong mental, emotional component to them. And at this stage, 16 years into my own treatment of myself with naturopathic medicine and homeopathy and biotherapeutic drainage and applied kinesiology, mostly the things that make a difference for me at this stage are more in the spiritual and emotional social realms. And I need to make sure I take care of this vessel called my body with the way that I eat and exercise and those kinds of things. But. And that's, I almost wondered if we were going to get here and maybe we make this a long episode. You can decide if we want to keep going, but there's a whole philosophy of healing that I have where there really are steps and there's the different phases and what each phase requires.

And like,  the physical interventions of diet and changing your biochemistry is a phase one process. And there are people out there that are like, diets don't really make any difference for me anymore, but it's because they've actually moved on to the next level. They need a different kind of therapeutic intervention at that point. And it becomes more subtle and more about energetic medicine and more about spiritual and mental, emotional health, which will then impact your physical body. But in the beginning, almost all my clients were going to just start with food, water, sleep, exercise, sex, you know, the five physical things that feed nourish our body.

And we deal with those five things for sometimes the first year to two. And then after that, the other stuff becomes more relevant as we move forward. 

Kendra Vicken: Yeah. And that's interesting too. I mean, it goes back. I don't know. The theme of this episode is definitely like connectedness I feel like. And, and it goes back to like that, that makes sense too, because in the same way that, you know, what you eat can affect how you feel, how you feel can affect how you sleep or vice versa or whatever it makes sense too that if you're investing in your emotional health, through a spiritual practice or mindfulness or, you know, whatever it is that feeds yourself emotionally, that is your self care. That's obviously going to affect how your body feels. And if your body feels shitty, it's going to make it harder to do those things. You know, you'll lose the motivation for that. And, and I, and I do think that makes sense. And just that awareness of that connectedness alone will inspire people to have that thought change in that and that life change that can follow that. I feel like, and I think it's a really beautiful picture to paint of, you know, no, no shame, no shame invoking, but the positive of like, where could your life be better? It's that exciting that it could be better?

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. 

Kendra Vicken: Not like, cause you're not doing enough, but like, 

Sarah Marshall, ND: no

Kendra Vicken: But man. Your dream life is, is possible for you. And, and what does it take to get there? And what ways can we do that? And, and like, let's get excited about that. And let's get excited about how great, how great your marriage could be, or your single life could be, or, and, or how great your health could be.

And whether that's you get really excited about business and you've got a new job or your like frame of perspective around your current job improves. And, and if you're not miserable there, then you're more excited when you come home. And if, when you're more excited, when you come home, you're more likely to be like in the mood to cook something awesome. And then you don't feel the need to like stay up and binge, eat or drink all night because your emotions are off, and then you go to bed earlier and then you're rested. You know, I just think that that's like such a good way to look at things and, and to see that ripple effect and to see that ripple effects work and in both ways, it's not just the negative way. It's like ripple effects work really well in the positive way too. And I think that that's that's, you know, the good news here, right. Is, is that you can, that you can have that dream life. And it's those small, small steps that that'll get you there. And that it's just that commitment to getting there, righ?. That will propel you. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: And I want to put in, cause we've talked about some pretty big heroic ideas so far, but actually something that I stepped into this year is, my understanding is a Japanese concept called Kaizen. And Kaizen is the art of making tiny, incremental changes, like tiny, like so small, your brain is telling you, there's no way that's going to make a difference.

Like one of the stories in the book, I read the book spirit of Kaizen, which we can put in the resource notes here is. This guy that wanted to lose weight. And he, he didn't really want to, his doctor basically threatened him with his life because of his cholesterol levels and things like that. And he was a consultant and he ate out a lot and he ate a lot of rich foods at restaurants and there's just no way he was going to make any major changes.

So what the coach told them to do in the beginning is to just set one, take one bite of food at the very beginning and put it aside and eat everything but that one bite of food. And that was the first action he took. And then it became set two bites of food aside and like eventually, incrementally over time, he was only eating half of his plate and taking the other half home and he ended up losing all this weight cause he just changed his portions, you know, when he was eating the same food that whole time. And so, but he started out with just eating everything on his plate, but one bite, but by setting it aside first, there was just this, like it was already done. Right. And that's really truly the spirit of Kaizen the way I used to say it, I didn't know it was Kaizen, is we'd play the one degree game. So like on a sailboat, right? I've done a lot of sailing. If you're off your course, by one degree, over a period of time, you end up in a completely different place. And so just one degree alteration can take you, if you stay there, can take you to a whole new place.

And so you do the one degree that you can do right now. And then you do the next one degree and the next one degree. And like, I often put almost all my clients on the paleo diet to start. Cause it's one of the most, anti-inflammatory easy access, whole food diets. There's a few alteration stuff, but almost always, I start people there, but many of my clients, it just is totally not what's going to support them and nourish them the most to dive all the way from where they are into eating only meat and vegetables and nuts and seeds. Right? So we start with the one degree and I asked them what that would be, you know, and a lot of people is changing breakfast so they can eat anything they want for lunch, dinner, snacks, everything, all we're going to do is alter what they eat for breakfast.

Then we're going to pick the next one. That would be the easiest for them to change. For many people, it's actually dinner. Because lunches are the ones when they're out and they're at work and whatever. So we just like pick and choose. And the other thing I'll do is I'll have them eat six ounces of protein, three times a day and six cups of vegetables a day and drink a gallon of water.

I don't tell them to take anything out of their diet. I just want them to eat all that protein, eat all those vegetables and drink all that water. Guess what happens? Have you ever tried to do that? There's not much room left. And all you've done is eat meat, vegetables, and you're completely hydrated. Right? So it kind of like naturally pushes it out.

And those are some of the mechanisms, I think, where we can be compassionate and gentle with ourselves and still end up in the long run, making a really big difference. Cause I don't want to leave people with like another way that it's possible is like the one degree game, you know, add 20 steps to your daily step intake every single day for the rest of the year.

Just do 20 more steps today than you did yesterday. And at the end of the year that's miles and miles and miles. Right. Right. Yeah. 

Kendra Vicken: Yeah. That's huge. That feels like a good place to wrap things up. It's been such a good season and, and we have so much more good stuff coming in season two. And, and what, what a beautiful journey.

And I'm just grateful to have gotten to embark on it with you and hear all of these episodes , it's been this really beautiful, beautiful journey. And I, and I hope it has been for our listeners too.

I mean, from what we've heard, it's impacted a lot of people in a really wonderful way. And I look forward to getting to do that again in season two here. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Awesome. Me too. We've already recorded some of the episodes and they're awesome. So I can't wait to launch that one. 

Kendra Vicken: Yeah, that'll be great. Well, thanks Sarah.

I guess this is a wrap on season one, huh? 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Awesome. Yeah, let's close it. And cut.

 (music) 

Thank you to Kendra Vicken for coming out in front of the microphone and being with us to interview me for our recap of season one, you can learn more about finding your own healing journey by going to SarahMarshallND.com or following me on Instagram at @SarahMarshallND. Special thanks to our music composer Roddy Nikpour and our interviewer and editor Kendra Vicken. Thank you for being here. Until next time.

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Healing Systemic Candida and the connection between Body & Soul with Physical Therapist Jeannie Sajonas