Lessons from 26 Years In Healthcare.

You would not believe how many times I had to be told by other people, and I wasn't listening quite honestly. I was hearing them, but I wasn't applying it to myself. Heather, you need to be a human being. What are you doing?

And I was going, oh my gosh, the pressure that I put on myself to prove that I accomplished something. So I was like, oh, if I did this one more thing and I checked this one more box and I was going to be exactly where I wanted. Nope. Now I had to do the next thing and then the next thing and then the next thing.

But then you're not being fulfilled by doing the next thing. Something's missing in that equation. Welcome to the Thrive Her podcast. I'm your host, Amy Sanders.

I'm a fitness and wellness pro, mom, stepmom, second wife. And master certified life coach. I'm here to help you manage your mind so you can uncover the most potent version of yourself and create a thriving life you love. Welcome back, everybody.

This is Amy Sanders, host of the Thrive Her podcast. And today I have another special guest for you guys. So Heather Hansen is here. She's amazing.

And I had the most awesome opportunity to meet her in real life. So Heather and I have been in this book collaboration. So you guys know that recently we published a book and I collaborated it with other women. She's one of them.

And so we've got to be in a lot of different like calls as we were going through all the things. And then the best part was when this world where we're just like hanging out online and meeting people online. We actually got to meet in person. And she's the most beautiful person.

It was so much fun to spend, I don't know, three or four days together and get to know each other even better. But Heather has been in the health care world forever. Was it over 20, 26 years in the health care? 27 years.

Long time. So for a minute, for a little bit, she's been in the health care industry. She's celebrated as the gut health paramedic. And she's also a bestselling author.

She's a speaker. She basically is the woman who does all of the things. Just a total leading wellness expert. And what I love is just like her take on health.

She also has had to heal her own body and using her own principles. She's been able to do that. We're going to talk about that. But she really focuses on how important it is to build connection, hope, and actually have a plan.

Because you don't have to live a mediocre life. You can live a thriving life. And that's what you are all about. So welcome.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here and to see your beautiful face again. It's been an honor to have you. Thank you.

Absolutely. I'm glad we're getting this conversation going because I just feel it's an extension from what we were doing when we were in Miami. I know. I want to go back.

I want all of us to hang out again and like just be able to spend so much time. It was incredible being around so many powerhouse women in different niches really making a difference. And just all of us just like spending that time and having that energy was just so awesome. It was so great.

And the most interesting part is when I showed up, I felt like I knew everybody. I met them first. And I was like, we had been friends forever. And then we just started our conversations.

And we knew some of the deepest, darkest parts of our lives. I know. Yes. But when you're writing a book, when you're writing those stories, all of the...

So we had countless hours. We had countless hours of us peer reviewing each other's chapters and like reading each other's stories and then talking about how scary it was to put them out there because that's also scary. Like, these are our personal stories. And so, yeah, it was amazing when we met.

It was like, hey, now we get to hang out in real life. It was so cool. It was so fun. So, Heather, tell us about your journey, like just your journey that took you down this avenue of what you do now.

Mm-hmm. Interesting. Okay. So my journey was pretty.

It wasn't too long, but I'm going to kind of start in the middle of it. And I had decided as a young girl, I always wanted to be in healthcare because I wanted to take care of people. I wanted to help them feel good. And I think a big reflection of that is because I grew up with all these symptoms that people couldn't help me with.

And I wanted to be the person that was going to solve the problem for people. And so going into nursing, I was able to really pour a lot of my heart into it and really helping people. But I also had my own problems. I was dealing with, I had a lot of symptoms.

I had been diagnosed with autoimmune thyroiditis. And I was basically told by a lot of my doctors, and I understand why they told me this. When I asked them, I just want you to tell me how to fix it. How do I fix it so that I feel good?

I don't want to live with migraines. I don't want to have these hormone fluctuations all the time. I didn't want to be bloated in the heavy periods. I wanted to know how to fix it.

And I thought it was going to be that easy, right? Just give me the script. How am I going to do it? Yeah.

The whole time, I began that there's no way to fix it. You don't fix this. You have autoimmunity. There's no way to fix it.

You need to learn to live with it. And then we're going to give you medications. And when they don't work anymore, then we'll give you different medications to try to manage your symptoms. And I was not going to accept that in my 20s.

No one was going to tell me this was the best my life was ever going to be. And I was going to figure out how I was going to fix it. And so one of the things that I had developed is one of the... ways that I could control life just a little bit was I could control my food.

At 15, I started restricting my food and then binging. And I felt really good when I restricted my food. I didn't have a lot of the symptoms. And then all the inflammation would come down.

And then I would go and binge. And then inflammation wouldn't come back. I'd feel worse. And so I really just got very upset with one of my doctors when I was about 25.

I had already had a hysterectomy at 25. And that didn't fix the problems. And so I decided I was going to... throw all my medication in the trash and sit there and think.

And I knew I felt better when I didn't eat. So then I started to realize that there were specific foods that were bothering me more than others. And I was able to go down that route with food and stress and exercise. And I was able to piece all those pieces together.

And then two years later, I felt amazing. And I had been working in a primary care doctor's office as a nurse at the time doing all of the things. And I... had the same patients for about eight years.

Oh, they're so young. Right? They're complaining of fatigue and not feeling well. And then their blood sugar was going up.

And they thought they were just getting old. And most of them were probably 35, 40. Gosh. That old.

Definitely not old, right? Don't tell me that's old. Exactly. There was this old philosophy is if your parents had diabetes, you were just going to get it.

There was nothing you could do about it. Just wait for it to happen. And I thought that was ridiculous. And since...

A lot of them had seen my progress in going through autoimmunity and my changes. And I was able to actually reverse my autoimmunity through the process where I didn't have any antibodies any longer. I decided I was going to teach my patients how to eat and exercise. And I thought it was that easy that we were just going to eat and exercise.

Right? We're just going to change that. Those were the things in my brain that made the magic happen. Yeah.

And it wasn't that easy. However, when I did bring in... It was this 12-week therapeutic. It was this 12-week lifestyle change program.

When I brought that into the practice, I would say 80% of the people got better. Wow. Much better and much quicker. And people were getting all the medications left and right for their diabetes or their high blood pressure especially, right?

Because hydration is really important, right? So we were learning the tools of what does the body actually want. But I had this little subset of people over here that they were doing the same things and not getting better. And I wanted to know why.

And that took me... It took me into a deep dive into gut health and the immune system. And I will tell you in 2010, 2011, it wasn't very popular to do this. No, it was not.

You don't do that stuff then? No. It just changed my life in a way. It changed my life tremendously because I could have had the life that I just listened to my doctor say there was nothing that I could do.

And then there was the take charge. Now we're going to figure out a different way. And that's how I evolved and got into my practice. And it was really trying to find a new cause for each person as an individual because everyone's very different on what they need.

So how... Okay, so today we're also going to talk about everything that women should know. What they don't tell you in the healthcare, right? So we're going to talk about that.

But with everybody being different, like how do you find out what works for someone versus someone else? You know, here... So even though everyone's different, some of the core principles really work, right? So we know that our brains definitely affect our physiology of our bodies 100%.

So what we're thinking is going to affect every cell of our being. And when we step back and realize we're not really meant to live with symptoms, things like brain fog and fatigue and struggling with weight gain or bloating and not knowing why. When you're getting dressed in the morning for work, you're like, I don't know what to wear because if I get bloated by the end of the day, this outfit's not going to fit. That's a...

That's not supposed to happen to our bodies. And so I think we've been programmed with our brains to think as we age, we're supposed to have these things happen, right? Our brain's not supposed to function as well. We're supposed to have fatigue.

We're supposed to have hormonal issues that are happening. And that's not really the case. It's really not. I'm getting older, right?

But it's really that stepping back that everyone needs to eat clean. Yeah. Super restrictive. Super restrictive diet, it just means healthy and clean.

Everybody needs to sleep and sleep well and wake up rusted, right? I thought for many years of my life that I only needed four hours of sleep. Not the case. That's because of my health problem.

I thought I was the one that didn't need it. Yeah. It didn't work out so well. And stress.

The biggest thing that I see for women is women push themselves too hard. They expect too much. And they tell themselves things that they would never tell anybody else. They're not good enough.

I'm not worthy enough. Oh, my hair is a mess. Oh, my. I have this wrinkle.

Oh, I can't go and do this. Oh, I'm just getting old. We tell ourselves these things and it really affects the physiology of our body to not function. That there is an answer to it.

So one of the things that I find with women is they have some symptom that's going on. And they go into the doctor. And they're looking for a solution. And some basic lab work is done.

And the doctor goes, oh, nothing's wrong with you. I'll see you later. But then the person leaves very frustrated and unheard and a little bit lost because no one's paying attention because they don't want to feel that way. And there's very simple things that you can do to implement in your life to really help all of these things.

And the number one thing is to listen to your body. If your body is telling you to listen to your body, then you're going to be able to listen to your body. If your body is telling you something by something being off, let's just use fatigue, right? Because that's a pretty common thing.

A lot of people are tired quite often. It's normal to be tired if you've overexerted yourself and it's time for bed and you're supposed to be relaxing. But if you wake up in the morning exhausted, something else is going on. And your body's trying to tell you something's going on.

And when you step back and look at things like, oh, did I drink enough water the day before? Did I even eat enough food? Because so many women wake up in the morning and they're like, coffee, coffee. Three o'clock comes around, they're like, oh my God, what is wrong with me?

I didn't eat lunch. Or breakfast, really. Could you even feed yourself? Yeah, of course you're tired if you didn't do those things.

So sometimes we overlook the very simple things of, did we feed ourselves? Did we hydrate? Did we get our exercise in for the day? We did those things.

Like really. Analyzing and writing down what's going on with us. And then we can actually act as detectives and trying to figure out. And oftentimes it's more simple than we think.

Yeah. So when it comes to sleep, everyone says eight or nine hours. That it? The magic numbers?

I would say there's plenty of science showing those numbers. And I would say eight hours is probably what women need. Yeah. If women gave themselves the opportunity to get the eight hours, they would accomplish way more in the day.

Because they would have the energy, right? Because it's a cycle that we get into. We think we don't have enough time to sleep because we have to do all these other things. We really don't.

It usually takes us longer. We just decide we do. All of the things, all of the things that are on our to-do list are our choices. Like we're like, we're deciding that that's what's on our to-do list.

You would not believe how many times I had to be told by other people. And I wasn't listening, quite honestly. I was hearing them, but I wasn't applying it to myself of, Heather, you need to be a human being, not a human doing. What are you doing?

Why are you doing this? And I was going to, oh my gosh. The pressure that I put on myself to prove that I accomplished something. So I was like, oh, if I did this one more thing and I checked this one more box, then I was going to be exactly where.

I wanted them. Nope. Now I had to do the next thing and then the next thing and then the next thing. But then you're not being fulfilled by doing the next thing.

Something's missing in that equation. So what about, so when you're becoming a detective, I'm just thinking about myself. So I have, I've always struggled with sleep. It's been something that's been constant.

And so it's like always been a battle and I'm always like trying to navigate it. How do I be a detective when it comes to sleep? So do you. Do you fall asleep easily and then, or do you wake up often?

Okay. I do both. So I do not fall asleep easy. And I also wake up often.

So there's that. So then I want to take something that helps me sleep or say, so then I'll take something, but I don't like taking something because then that's not natural. Like I'm like, our body is meant to do these. Like our body is meant to sleep.

Our body is meant to run. Our body is meant to like, when we feel it properly, it will work for us. I'm a huge believer in that. But the sleep thing has been my issue.

I'm like, how do I figure this out? So when you go lay down, do you have an evening routine that you do to compress? Okay. Does it?

Oh yeah. You fall asleep? Not really. So it does.

Like I, I have the things that do help me, but I'm still just like that piece. Like, how do I figure that out? And I'm just asking the question. Cause I, I know that I'm not alone.

I'm not alone. And women think that they don't need that much sleep. They're like, Oh, four to six. Four to seven hours, I'll be good.

You know, so there's a multiple components to it, right? So the things that play huge factors, so blood sugar regulation. So if the blood sugar is not regulated and the blood sugar is in this rock and roll rollercoaster, then blood, your liver work will convert glucose into glycogen or glycogen into glucose reverse. It will actually stabilize the blood sugar while you're sleeping.

But the problem is it wakes you up. And if the body is trying to regulate. Glucose in the evening time and throughout the nighttime, then your liver can't detoxify. So now you're not detoxifying effectively that natural cycle.

There are certain genetic components, which actually you and I talked about doing the genetic test. Maybe we'll do that on you. Is that, are you genetically a bad sleeper? I might be.

Cause it's a, most of my family's the same way. Like we all, yeah, it's just, it's a thing, which I'm also like one of those that when you keep telling you something, Oh, I'm a bad sleeper. I don't know that like you hang on to that belief and it actually can be true. So I'm like, is it my family?

Is this a genetic thing? Or is it just that we've been conditioned that this is like us for so long that we just believe it. And now we are like, I'm like, what is it? But I would love to be out of it or any of them.

So genetics, a factor. So for instance, genetically, when I did my genes back in 2013 or so, I was like, Oh, no wonder because I had a couple of converting minority transmitters effectively. So I wasn't even converting GABA. Effectively and serotonin effectively.

So it was really hard to quiet my mind and my time by myself. So that was a big factor that I needed to look at. Hormones are a big piece, especially for women and like 34, 35 through 60 hormones are a huge piece, right? Because your fluctuation is up and down.

So estrogen, estrogen can stay high, but when progesterone drops lower, because once you get out of child bearing years, your progesterone will be low because it's meant to help you carry a baby, but it also helps you sleep. Just around, it can be converted into cortisol to help with stress levels. So it really depends on stress levels, right? So you can have external stressors, but you can also have internal stressors.

So I do like to look at things that might be activating the immune system for people that they have a good evening. Routine, they're exercising, they know about stress impact. There's probably something creating some inflammation within the body and can be a specific food that they might be allergic to or sensitive to. And just discovering that and taking that particular food out while we work on healing and repair can be very helpful.

So I wish that was more of an easy question, but it could be a lot. I know. I think I'm like, let's dive deep into that. Yeah, or into this.

So when it comes to hormone regulation, what would you tell her to go get everything tested and see where we're at? And then what would you, yeah, whoever's tuning in right now. Whoever's tuning in. So what I would say with hormone regulation is I would write down a few things.

I would write down for hormone balance, especially. So when progesterone drops and estrogen stays higher. They're sister hormones, so they don't dance around. There's not really any really good test to test the hormones specifically.

So we'd want to monitor their menstrual cycle and see when the fluctuation comes in. But then we'd also want to do a few other things and really probably test adrenals instead and look at what the adrenal hormones are. Because that is what typically throws off female hormones in perimenopause. Yes.

Yeah. Perimenopause. When does that start for women usually? I know that's actually a hard question to answer, but.

It's, it fluctuates when you look now and when you're reading and looking at the literature and the research. I mean, women are starting perimenopause now in their early 30s. Really? Hey, dang.

It is our environments of food. We push our bodies to the max, right? Over exercising. I used to be one of those people.

I over exercised. I even read a book about adrenal fatigue while I was on my second workout training on a sterocon. It's so silly. But over exercising can actually push female hormones and use them up too fast.

And you start having symptoms. And so symptoms of going through perimenopause are going to be things like brain fog, fatigue, irregular menstrual cycles, weight gain around the middle. And then you start having symptoms of perimenopause. And it can be balanced again, but we need to look at some external components and just make sure that we're looking at the full picture.

So hormones are tricky. They are tricky. I feel like that is a theme every time I'm with any of my girlfriends or anything. It's like somehow we end up talking about hormones and about just all of those things.

because of what we're going through in fact and no there's no harm here I'm not there's I'm not trying to offend here at all but I got invited to a menopause like party essentially like women are coming together to talk about menopause and I think I'm in like denial because I'm happy that I'm happy that I got invited to this party because I like all these people going but I'm all wait do you guys think I'm in menopause yet I'm not there yet right am I supposed to go to this yet I'm like totally in denial about it but grateful that they wanted to invite me and include me and I'm like do I need to go am I there yet I don't know so you will be eventually so I will be it's just that word right I don't like that word either the word menopause it has this negative stigma right so my god now I'm old like I'm like there's no no hope now but really it's just the hormone transition phase that we're going through and there's so many ways to balance and that is so individualized too right there are some people that go through surgical menopause very young and there's women that have cancer and they go through a radiation menopause as well and then you have women like I don't know and I don't know or maybe they had an ablation and they don't even know if they're still cycling I guess it's very confusing on where the person is yeah it's like you feel like the means that you're old I'm like I don't want to that's what like the just the stigma is where I got that I'm like wait you know I'm not having a dance party you invited me to a menopause party not a dance party you know the first collaborative chapter that I wrote was in a book called redefining menopause and it was my journey through menopause but I had a hysterectomy except for one ovary back when I was 25 yeah and oh my good god I did not want to have a menopause because I was so into being there because I had by just had balance in my life after all years and now this was going to happen and I was very much in denial and I was looking at my lab work and I was pouty quite honest about the whole situation but then looking back and there's so much we can do to focus and control what's happening right it's just a phase that we're going through that's what hormone replacement therapy is for but all of the life balance is for and one of the things that I noticed and one of the things that I want to focus on with women is we're all aging and that's okay and we have to decide who are we in this decade of our life and as we transition into the next decade well we're never going to go back to the 30 year old self but we sure can figure out how we're going to be awesome in the next phase of our life and when you and I were in Miami and we're sitting around the brunch that turned into dinner and I was looking at a lot of the women there they were in their mid-60s and a little bit older like oh my gosh this is proof that you can be a better version of yourself and happier and healthier than ever because they were just radiating and glowing and I was like okay here it is so we just need to we need to just take time to not criticize ourselves but just embrace and take care of ourselves and do it in a step-by-step manner and not trying to get back to our 30 year old self I actually love thinking about it in this light that yeah yes we might be aging and we can't get away from that it's happening every single day we are a day older however we are becoming better versions of ourselves and that means that we can be radiant we don't have to feel like we're old I think when you look at your parents you look at other people I look at people that have gone before me like my parents I look at my parents bless their souls they don't take care of their bodies not even close to the way that I do and they have a lot of things going on especially my dad not as much my mom but because of just his lifestyle and so it's I think I attach that like that could be me but that doesn't necessarily have to be true we're taking care of ourself and we're coming from a holistic wellness approach like you're saying we can be radiant radiant like all those women at our brunch so we want to take care of ourselves and we're taking care of ourselves and we're going to brunch and how long was it four hours oh at least it was a lovely brunch but it was long it was so long we loved hanging out with each other but we're like do we have to keep sitting at this table it was a really long table and we're like why are they not bringing us the bill anyway but yes but so many incredible women were there I love that you saw that and you look you took that perspective because it's true we can be even better as we age we don't have to say that we're declining now absolutely and our brain is very powerful and our brains are 100% programmed on our beliefs by age five and so however we viewed the world and how we grew up our core beliefs got ingrained in our brains right it they got a size in our brain and then we continue to gather evidence to support it through our life but one of the processes that I've gone through in the last couple of years is when you actually look at your brain and you're like look at those beliefs good god they're not even true to begin with and here we are now I think for so long and it was a decision that was made and we can make a new decision we can be and show up and create the lives that we want to live we just have to decide to do it yeah that's what I love too just deciding it's like we can change anything I like to think of our thoughts beliefs or thoughts we have thought over and over and then now they become deep-rooted so the good news is that we can change anything we can change anything we can change anything we can our brain now the science shows that we can continually rewire it like even up into our 80s which is amazing further than that right once it's out there now all it takes is effort and the want and the desire to do it with your clients and how you help them rewire their mindset is huge right creating those new beliefs yeah and you're all about wellness helping women heal their bodies what would you say to someone who has tried all the things like she has not an immune disease she feels like there's no hope she's tried a lot of different programs different whatever medication what would you tell her you know I would tell her don't give up hope is the only thing that you have you just have to find the right person with the right knowledge that can support and help you walk through the process because autoimmune diseases are only getting higher in number we're just collecting them and that goes to show you there's so much to do is when you're looking at things holistically and when you're looking at the body with how does the body function and the physiology of it how is your mind and what is your brain telling your body and when you're looking at your really core source and just your being right your soul when you're connecting all those things together there's so much hope you just have to find the right person that can help guide you through things yeah no one should just be told there's no there's nothing we can do yeah and there are so many people that have been diagnosed with diseases or cancers and they may have been told that there was no hope for them there was nothing that was going to work however some of those same people decided they were going to do something about it and that was not going to happen and they were able to change it people do that all the time it's just that decision oh i'm gonna figure it out there's a way you just haven't found the way just yet do you believe that a lot of these autoimmune diseases can be healed i do i know there's a lot of conflicting information that they can't be i've seen it i've seen it happen over and over again and i will say it's not easy and it's not just oh i'm gonna do this couple of things for a very long time i'm not gonna do it very short amount of time it is changes in your life and habits that you develop to maintain it throughout life and it doesn't mean you have to follow a super restricted diet your entire life it doesn't mean that you need to be on 45 supplements and if anybody puts you on 45 supplements don't take them you don't have to be it's just a process it's a process of healing and if you're looking at things and you're working on the old crap that you've been burying for so i was able to connect my autoimmunity to a traumatic event that i saw when i was probably two or three and i saw it in a vision when i was doing energy work and i was so silenced i could not talk i could not speak i could not open my mouth i could not do anything because it's a oh my god i just connected those two things it wasn't i didn't know that affected the body but i never connected those to my thyroid equator yeah huge so ready to really work on something and work on the hard stuff the stuff that they've probably been pushing down for a really long time it's hard to go through it sometimes often but it's hard that's why people don't do it it's they think i think that people think it's harder than it actually is though it's hard of the fact that you have to make the change and then you it's a real commitment and you got to make that muscle stronger absolutely but you got to choose your hard yes life is hard i'm gonna tell you but i'm not done you know even though i felt really good and then i went sliding back just a bit with covid because of a lot of stress and things with my autoimmune symptoms like i felt them coming back but i knew there was something deeper and what it was really put so much pressure on me to and it was like it was pushing me into this work that i had to do so the symptoms were coming and they i was being guided very forcefully into the work that I was needing to do and I was clawing at I'd gone no I don't want to do it but that the forcefulness of it and then doing it it was like I was being pulled through the process after I just realized you really do have to work on these things so there's just so many things that people can do in a short amount of time to make lifelong differences yeah such powerful work such powerful work you're basically helping people feel better for real and creating longevity in their lives so cool absolutely and my girl would work with me for a short amount of time and learn their stuff so that they can go and live their life yeah yeah okay so with when someone comes to work with you what have you seen to be I know I'm sure it varies but what have you seen to be how long does it usually take before someone starts to figure things out and things start to fall into place usually within the first three months so many things fall into place right they're feeling better they're learning some tools and then looking backwards at that three months life changing right they're feeling better their energy is better their body's functioning better than they realize that it could and when simultaneously you're working on some of the mindset tools that are specific to the body and the body manifesting those as symptoms and you're working on the root cause then you feel like you're over the hump of it so cool okay what would you it really is it's like you're doing such amazing things I always love any interviewing women I think I love all of the interviews but just like women who just are totally making a difference and helping just move this work forward showing women that they do have control they do have power to change their stars they do it's there's always hope there's hope always hope and never give up and never let someone tell you that you can't do something I'm sorry just if you want to do it go do it go do it I always think if it's on your heart then that's like a nudge that's like a nudge saying your soul's okay let's try this so how would people get a hold of you so people can find me on my website at flourish nutritional therapy. com or on instagram under heather hansen or linkedin under heather hansen so they can find me on my connect with me I offer just get to know you consults going over symptoms just to make sure hey let's review your symptoms and let's see if it's a thing that we could work on or not I want to make sure that people feel safe and heard and they're in the right place to get the best results I love that and what would you leave with us one little nugget of wisdom before we sign off the best nugget because I just turned 50 six months ago or so is you only get better with age and don't let anybody tell you that you need to go back to a younger year you don't yeah I love this we can be happy in the age that we are well we get to either be happy in the age that we are or we're going to be very sad and miserable yeah so let's choose the first yeah let's choose the first thank you so much for being on the podcast guys we'll also have all of her information in the show notes underneath so make sure that you find her in the show notes as well as all the areas that she talked about and Heather thank you again for being with us I really have loved having you bye bye hey if you enjoyed listening to this podcast you've got to come check out my signature program Thrive Her Academy this is where we do real coaching and inner work transformation I teach you how to apply the strategies and mindset tools we talk about in this podcast here on the podcast so you can create that life and business that you love for more information go to www. amysanders. co forward slash services again that is amysanders.