Supplements Revealed Episode 8 BONUS

[Music] [Music] next up we have Michelle Norris who is the co-founder of a very popular convention called paleo FX she has a unique context because she organizes a convention that brings in many many experts on a variety of topics which means she gets to see it all so we get one person who's got a breadth of experience that can share it with us right now enjoy this interview so Michelle thanks so much for being here thank you for having me so tell me who you are and what it is that you do well I'm Michele Norris I am the CEO and co-founder of pillow effects the largest paleo health and wellness platform and event in the world so that probably wasn't your goal in grade school so tell me how did this happen no it was not my goal in grade school I am I actually was very sick in about 2004-2005 I'm a trained chef my specialty was Italian and I made my own pizza and pasta dough and what happened was I was constantly sick I had been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome fibromyalgia IBS and what was interesting is I also had some you know you get into this place where there's things about your health and everything that just became part of your normal and so there was like low back pain knee pain that type of thing that was there that I actually didn't recognize or know was there it just was part of my day and so I had all of those things I had also been misdiagnosed with early-onset rheumatoid arthritis and I was just really in a lot of pain every time that I ate Keith decided to go paleo and after he had been paleo for close to a year whenever I would make any kind of dinners he if he wasn't if I wasn't making something he could eat that was paleo he would make his own dinner so after about a year of this he and he kept telling me through that year off and on he's just not somebody that would beat you over the head with anything he's kind of like a I call him like a wave like he'd come in and he'd go out and he'd tell you hey I think you need to check out this celiac thing and so I I'm just kind of like poo-pooed that off and everything and I didn't really know a lot about it I didn't know what it was about and so about a year I'm in making pizza and pasta dough and it's one of the kids birthday so I'm making a lot and there he is making his own dinner and I looked at him and said you're not gonna ever have my pizza or pasta are you again and he said no and I really think that you have celiac and you need to go get it checked out I did I was tested but at that time they tested for the wrong antibody so I was tested negative and so I went and saw a doctor I mean I was seeing a doctor and he's the one that tested me and what he said to me was your symptoms sound like you have celiac so what I wanted to do is cut into your colon and take a biopsy and I thought what I mean like why would you want to do that why can't okay I'll just you know how about if I just modified my diet so I actually went paleo and after three weeks all of my symptoms were gone and as you probably know rheumatoid arthritis is not something that goes away it is something that goes into remission well I don't have it and so that was something that was interesting then of course the knee pain and the back pain was gone that I hadn't even recognized it was just so subtle and in the background it's kind of like white noise and so that was gone I had clarity of mind and that thing is I wasn't happy about it because I had to give up foods that I loved I mean loved these foods and so I was in the state of denial thinking at some point in my life I'm gonna be able to put these foods back into my diet but what happened was I had been paleo for probably about 12 weeks and when you eat the standard American diet or the sad diet like we referred to it most women yo-yo we go back and forth so we'll have a whole slew of different sizes in our closet and not even notice when we're going up or down and so I had everything from a size 6 to a size 12 and what was interesting is I hadn't noticed that I was going down and our son played baseball and he had been out of season for about 12 weeks so I hadn't seen any of these parents for 12 weeks now mind you at this point but when their first baseball game came it I had only been paleo for six weeks and showed up to the game and all the parents were like oh my god you look amazing what have you done like you've lost so much weight you look so healthy you look so vibrant what's going on well I hadn't done anything and the thing is is that I had struggled with dieting and getting my weight down so much and I was back into a size six and didn't realize it and that was a lightbulb moment for me that was the moment that I realized that this was information that it could actually help people and Heath says that's the day a paleo evangelist was born so I at that point I had to I had was a food writer and a recipe developer for a lot of different sites and I had continued that even though I was paleo and I was you know feeling better and everything I was still writing those recipes those sad recipes and I realized that I had to stop that and so I started my own blog at that point and yeah you talk about being paleo or being on paleo what does that mean for me initially paleo was all about the diet it was all about the diet and the nutrition and I was adhering to a pretty strict Paleo diet at the beginning and really trying you know I don't always recommend that for a lot of people because there are a lot of people that have a difficult time going all-in and being able to do it all in one fell swoop so one of the first things I do is ask them remove sugar first and then gluten comes next and some of the other things but I went all in and I'm so glad that I did it was not easy and what there were times where it was very difficult I was addicted to having you know to dr. peppers a day and I had to switch from dr. pepper to an alternative soda that didn't have sugar in it adding you know getting all of that so for me it was initially about the diet and the nutrition and removing all of those things from my my diet there are people have no idea what the Paleo diet is this is so familiar to you and everybody in your world knows what this means what is the Paleo diet and what does it look like well I would say paleo is not a diet paleo is definitely a lifestyle and so we try to instill that in people that this is and pelo effects is not a diet conference it's not diet and nutrition it's there there's a piece of it there but it is a lifestyle conference and so what we believe is that there are six pillars of health there's physical health mental health emotional health relational health financial health and spiritual health and if you don't have all of those you can't truly be healthy and so we have all of that at pelo FX and we believe that when you got come into the paleo lifestyle you change your lifestyle across the board in all areas of those all the six pillars and it makes a tremendous impact in your life and in the people around you for sure so we like I said it's not for me it's a lifestyle now paleo the diet which is is a template it's there's no one Paleo diet but everybody has to find what works for them and so there's a jumping off point and in that jumping-off point what I would say is the Paleo diet is about removing processed foods from your diet it's about removing added sugars and removing grains removing all the things that are inflammatory so a Paleo diet would also exclude inflammatory foods like sometimes eggs and sometimes dairy and that type of thing we don't do any soy and we don't do any legumes gluten is probably one of the most inflammatory foods that's out there so that's obviously one of the first things we want to go so we would say you're going to try a template remove these foods for at least 30 days and then after the 30 days is up you can add something back in and see whether or not it's actually inflammatory for you because you're gonna know pretty turn quick whether or not it's a problem for you and then you're gonna have to go and tweak so Irish Lee started out on a very strict Paleo diet and then I moved more to primal and primal just means that you can tolerate dairy and I tolerate dairy my genetics actually show that I have the enzymes to break dairy down most people think that they're lactose intolerant and a lot of times they actually are not lactose intolerant what they're intolerant to is the way we process milk particularly conventional milk so we process it it's through pasteurization and homogenous ation and then what we do is we fortify it by putting back in synthetic vitamins generally it's the synthetic vitamins that cause a lot of discomfort and distress for people so when they actually have raw milk that has not had any processing they tend to not have any problems but by and large most people that believe that they have any issues with dairy probably should stay away from dairy and probably keep it out of their diet permanently if it causes issues so let's talk about pain you mentioned that you were in so much pain you would almost subconsciously believe that this is what it was like to be me right what was that like then when you shifted your diet and then all of a sudden these pains that weren't really the target started to go away did you test it enough to where those came back and have you modulated that yes so what's interesting is yes a lot of those pains were all completely under the radar like I wouldn't have been able to tell you I have really severe left knee pain I have really severe low back pain I just didn't even notice that it was there because we get kind of numb to those things and we get so disconnected from our bodies so we actually don't tune into the these are all signals from your body saying something's wrong you need to change something the problem is I wasn't connected to my body I wasn't connected to that that's a signal from my body to tell me to change something that we're having trouble we just mmm it just becomes part of the normal everyday life we become numb to it or we take even take painkillers to get away from it I didn't take any painkillers for it but I definitely noticed when it was gone and so that's one of the things too is that I think we have a lot of these myths around that oh well that's just normal because you're getting older you're just this is going to happen and so we have this belief that when we get older we are supposed to descend into this you know deterioration of our bodies our minds our everything and that these all come with becoming older and those are all myths that's all a lie the thing is is that we are absolutely made and created to live until the moment we die we are not meant to go into this go here and then this steep decline and it's a long slow agonizing sometimes painful process of dying that's not how it was intended to go it was intended to you're born you live you die that's it and the when you finally recognize and you are reconnected with your body and it's signals to you that things are wrong you can actually stop that and have a lot more longevity and a lot more quality of life and health and happiness because of it because there's a lot of people that are so unhappy because of how much pain they're in physically and they don't know what to do with it and most of it is tied to what they're eating so if you were counseling with somebody who was in chronic pain and even if their doctor had diagnosed their pain as being this disc or this other thing and they were open to seeing if they could improve their physician or the way they were processing this what would you have someone do the first thing I would do is say they probably need to do some type of elimination diet if it's paleo if it's autoimmune protocol that type of thing that would be the first thing to do because so much of our chronic inflammation pain and joints per tick you know bloating swelling you know aching this brain fog it's all most of that is caused by the foods you eat because at the end of the day foods are the ones that drive everything in your body they drive your entire hormonal cascade they dry I mean and that drives everything all your neurotransmitters are driven by your hormones so it's like if those are all off whack if you are putting in let me say this this is how we are as humans we take better care of our cars than we do of this vehicle and we get one of these we can replace a car at any point in time but we will go and do the maintenance on a car we will take care of the tires we will rotate the tires we will put in oil we will put in transmission fluid we will take care of the coolant we will do all of those things we take better care of that than we do of ourselves we'll put the right gas in it we don't put the right gas in this vehicle that's one of the problems that we have is we put the wrong fuel in this vehicle and then we expect it you know we're gonna feed it like a Yugo and we expect it to run like a Ferrari it's not happening and that's where there's this big disconnect and we have to stop that and so yeah that's that process of if you have pains and everything and they can come and a doctor is gonna come and tell you well you have you know you have an enlarged you know meniscus or whatever you have a bulging disc all of these things a lot of these things can be tied back to the way that you have been fueling this vehicle the Paleo diet or more specifically conversations about what we are really eating has become very popular is this a fad mmm-hmm if it's a fad it's the oldest running fad ever are the Paleo diet is based on the premise of the way that our ancestors ate the hunter-gatherers and so we can't completely mimic that diet and we're not trying to reenact anything here we have technology that's amazing and what we want to do is leverage that technology for the best possible ancestral health the thing is we need to use it smartly and and all of that but what this is is going back to the way that they did things and which is eating whole foods we have so much processed foods foods that we call foods with no breaks they're hyper palatable foods that are engineered highly engineered and in fact I wouldn't even refer to them mostly as foods because they're food like things they are Franken foods and so what they do is they actually turn off our satiety receptors so we have to continue to eat because we are not satiated our body doesn't think it's gotten enough and it hasn't gotten enough nutrients it's gotten enough junk and so we have to stop doing that and and recognize that we are our DNA as being used against us by big food companies because they all have food engineers that come in there and they make these foods so that we have to continually I mean that's why the tagline is bet you can't eat just one it's that's it you can't because you because of the way that it's manipulated with fats and sugar and salt your body can't it needs more and more and more and more it's it's really akin to a drug you your tolerance keeps going up and up and so you have to continue to consume more and more so I would just say that you know you that's one of the things we have to get control of it's all the processed foods we need to get rid of the processed foods I'm not saying that because cooking is a process obviously but what we need to do is get back to more simple foods more natural foods foods that you find in the outer perimeter of the grocery store or at your farmers market not the things that you go up and down the aisle for that are in a box if it comes from a plant eat it but if it comes made in a plant don't so those are the things that we would say as far as the Paleo diet but this is all goes back to our ancestry we are not adapted and evolved yet enough to be able to digest some of the things that we have created and that's just not gonna happen anytime soon and why would we actually why would we want it to what we want to do is to get back to what's actually natural and what was here when our ancestors got here I love your recovery and I love your story what would you say to someone who is in chronic pain for one reason or another and hasn't yet even considered altering their lifestyle or diet I think that a lot of times we are looking for the quick fix we're looking for the pill we're looking for that magic bullet that's going to take care of everything and all of our magically everything's gonna go away all of our pain and suffering will just go away and at the end of the day you're trading it's like it's it's the Faustian bargain you know you're trading that in for something probably a lot worse because of the most of the the drugs that are out there currently have so many chemicals and so many toxins in them that I was on medication from the time I was 17 until the 2016 don't even know how many years that was but I was on medication for a long time for migraines and I finally when I went paleo I got control over my migraines but I they weren't completely gone the reason they weren't completely gone is because I was still taking the medications and all of that didn't even connect for me even though I had been paleo for so long that didn't connect for me that I needed to get rid of the toxins I had mercury in my mouth I I finally I got the mercury out of my mouth went through chelation and actually had because of all of that process they'd said I had to come off of my medications before I went and did that procedure so I thought you know what I don't want to go back on the medications after this is done so I found some natural are alternatives to be able to keep my migraines my headaches at bay they were bad I mean they took away if I look back they probably took a good year of my life away over the course of time of how many days and how many weeks that I was in bed suffering and not being able to do anything completely debilitated by migraines and so I lost I would I would say probably very very easily probably a year of my life and I there was a better way but the problem is is that we don't educate ourselves we don't think through these things we don't think what's the long-term gain yeah right now I might put myself out of pain this very moment popping this pill but what's the long-term play what am I going to pay for it cuz you're gonna pay something for that that's not free and I don't mean money free I'm talking quality of life free something in your body is going to give up something for that release at that moment you're doing something so is that worth it to you that would be the first question I would ask is that really worth it to you because I think we we are so into instant gratification instead of making the long term plays that take us time to get us to a place where we are healthier where we stop having so much pain and so when I went through that process I thought I am I need to get off these medications i buy that point in 2016 I'm heavy into paleo I really know the drill I know that these these medications are probably toxic for me but it was the only remedy that I could even see until I found an alternative and really started searching I started using essential oils I started doing ice packs I started doing meditation I started doing all of these things that actually helped my central nervous system calm down so that I could actually free my all my blood cells and anything from you know constricting so in 2016 I ended up off of all of my medications but had a headache sense so the thing is is that even someone like me who knows that the system that we have currently is set up to maintain our disease or our issues chronic pain they they're set up to just manage that not help you get rid of it do you want to get rid of it that would be another question I'd ask do you want to get rid of it or do you just want to manage it I want to get rid of it I want to find the thing at the bottom of the the barrel the problem that started the route where it all started where it all started growing from so I can get rid of that root and and actually have it go away I don't want to just put it I mean we basically put you know band-aids on bullet wounds that's how we operate in all of this when we talk about particularly pain we're that's all we're doing is putting band-aids on bullet wounds let's finish on your really happy note I'm assuming as a chef that you found some wonderful things to cook that are paleo so how has that progressed well what's interesting is having my specialty be Italian you know I initially missed the pasta and everything now I don't I'm so happy that I don't eat any of that anymore and I actually prefer like zoodles which is zucchini noodles or any type of like you can do sweet potato noodles you can do um butternut squash noodles all of that and I mean all of those make really great pasta that actually has a lot more flavor and is a lot more nutrient dense for you so I love being able to play with that I don't get to cook as much as I used to and what I really like pillow fix keeps me pretty busy but I do really enjoy the foods that I eat now and the thing is is that the simpler that they are the better they are and especially if you're sticking to really good quality foods that are organic well and that's not the end-all be-all if the best thing that you can do is just have whole vegetables fruits that type of thing make the best choice that you can but I just love the way food tastes when it's very simple and you don't have to you know you're not having to mask it because it's got all kinds of stuff in it so yeah it's really it's been incredible I I think you actually I know a lot of people think that paleo is so restrictive I particularly think it's very freeing because you know that that foods that you're eating are actually nourishing and fueling this vehicle in this body and that you're actually making yourself healthier you're not doing something to be detrimental to your help and and then you know they just taste good well Michelle I love what you guys have created thanks so much for being with us thank you so much for having me I appreciate it the paleo world is an important culture in this thing called supplementation and natural health so I was really happy to be able to share this interview with you you [Music]

Channel: Supplements Revealed

Views: 6,206

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Id: RXNap6iliAc

Length: 25min 15sec (1515 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021