Trust Your Gut
Welcome to our Roots to Wellness space! I am excited to share with you what brought me here, and why the time is now that we start to reimagine what our personal health and wellness journey looks like.
Conventionally, we often don’t think too much about our health and wellness unless something is wrong – typically minor stuff as a kid such as an ear infection, cough or respiratory infection, a sprain or broken bone, etc. As we get older it becomes scarier as we hear words like pre-diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Then it cascades into the news that we have Type II Diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, COPD, or Cancer. We keep heading to the doctor to fix us. But chronic disease rates are at their highest and the climbing trajectory of us being plagued with something is hitting the 47 trillion-dollar mark worldwide by 2030. In Canada, we currently spend 93 billion annually on costs related to chronic disease. And yet, we continue to get worse. Our life expectancy has almost leveled back to pre-pandemic from taking a dip, but this is not without a much higher rise in living longer with disability and chronic disease – approximately 16 years’ worth, if you are lucky. I don’t know about you, but I want to experience my older years with a true sense of vitality where I can continue to enjoy my time adventuring and staying connected with my loved ones – true vitality!
By nature of design in our country, we have created a linear pathway in which we need fixing; we wait until something is wrong and then our clinician has an algorithmic approach to the fix which is often medication for symptom management or a “wait and see” what happens, hoping things right themselves. All the while, we have no idea what to do to change the trajectory. We add a medication or two to manage the symptoms. Within a year or two we add another three or four more medications to manage even more symptoms, not realizing that the impact of the earlier medications has led to the downstream impact of why we are now on seven different medications. You are a passive recipient of this approach; you are someone who’s goals are assumed by someone else, not actualized and owned by you. We are reactionary and left holding the pieces of what could be…what could have been.
Shifting “What’s the Matter with You” to “What Matter’s to You”
But what if, we shifted from “What’s the matter with you” to “What matters to you”? It is a simple reframing but a very powerful one. It puts the power back in your hands. It makes your health and wellness your responsibility. The others who help you achieve what matters to you, become your team and not your director. It invites you to become an active partner in your own healing, learning how food, stress, sleep, relationships, and land connection show up in your lab results, energy, mood, and pain.
This is where the Whole Person Health Approach comes in. It is founded in the science of Functional Medicine. Science that roots us back to our interconnected cells and how they are impacted by our genetics, environment, nutrition, stress, sleep, movement, and relationships. Instead of focusing only on a diagnosis or a single organ, it maps how different body systems—digestion, energy, immune function, hormones, and detoxification—are connected and how they become out of balance. The goal is not just symptom relief but restoring resilience and preventing chronic disease over the long term. It shows us how our body systems are all intelligently connected and how we have the power to influence how these systems work and express themselves over the journey of our life.
“The goal is not just symptom relief but restoring resilience and preventing chronic disease over the long term.”
It is this approach of Whole Person Health, providing the foundation of science, woven together with a framework that captures the very essence of whole self – The Seven Circles: Indigenous Teachings for Living Well, that I work with people to illuminate pathways to wellness that start at the root of who we are and how we came to be. Chelsea Luger and Thosh Collins, creators of The Seven Circles – which include food, movement, land, community, sacred space, sleep and ceremony – have graciously shared their teachings and framework with the world and given me permission to use it within my work. It is my honor and my responsibility as a woman, a mom, a nurse and a leader to create a safe space to share this with you and your family.
“You become more seen and more hopeful because it is your personal story, your culture, and your lived experiences are central to your health and wellness plan.”
With this approach you gain the understanding of what is happening within your body in a way you can relate to and understand – you learn to trust your gut once again. You use this knowledge and reconnection with yourself to spark the changes and growth of your health and wellness goals. You become more seen and more hopeful because it is your personal story, your culture, and your lived experiences are central to your health and wellness plan. You become the leader of your own healing and learn how to manage your life one small change at a time to promote the best version of YOU!
Let’s get started…