MARTIN: Hi everyone, this is Martin Pytela for Life Enthusiast podcast and with me today a compatriot, Julie Michelson. And she is a warrior of the style that I am. And she shares a whole bunch of my genetics. And we get on just famously. And the main reason I want to talk about it is this, the genetics that we know this MTHFR cluster has one side is we're poor methylators. The other side is we're an awesome achiever. We are usually smart, talented, and super committed to great outcomes. Well, Julie is one of us. Welcome.

JULIE: Thank you. Martin, I'm so glad to be here.

MARTIN: Yeah, Julie, I think it would be smart if I would let you explain just how crazy it can get before we learn what to do.

JULIE: Oh, goodness. Yeah. I think I have a really good example from my personal experience. I was a single, newly single mom of three little ones under the age of five when I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I was in my early 30s. And totally didn't know anybody with RA, didn't have autoimmunity that we knew of in the family. Really a big surprise. And I was told by my doctors that I would decline, period. They would give me medications to try to slow the process and keep me as comfortable as they could, as long as they could. So shocker, I believed them. What did I do? I declined for 11 years. At the end of that 11 years, I was on ten prescriptions, including painkillers, you name it. I was taking meds for my meds. Right. Like half of what I was on was from for side effects of the other medications.

MARTIN: Yeah. Here's an interesting point I would like to dwell on.

JULIE: Yeah.

MARTIN: The mainstream medicine tries to treat symptoms rather than causes. And when you treat a symptom well, autoimmune diseases, all of them have a lot of symptoms.

JULIE: Sure.

MARTIN: And so you will end up with one pill for this, one pill for that, one for this, and so on. And then as you just said a moment ago, and you're stacking pills to deal with symptoms of symptoms.

JULIE: Yeah. Not the same stack I take today, by the way. Very different. Nutraceutical stack versus what I was on at the at the time. And unfortunately I had quit graduate school. I had to eventually quit work and just rest while my kids were at school so I could take care of them when they were home. It was not ideal. And in my head, at the point when I was in my mid 40's, my dad had passed in his sleep at, at the age of 54 and seemed healthy until then. And I was thinking there's no way I'm going to live to see 50 at this point, you know? And when I found out, my kids shared that fear. I made the promise to my daughter, who's my youngest, specifically, that I would try everything. And something in that moment shifted because I thought I was trying everything, because I tried every drug, every prescription they gave me. At that point, I had already gone gluten-free because my son was diagnosed with celiac. And I had accumulated, as you just mentioned, other diagnoses, fibromyalgia being one of them. So there's something in that moment of the try everything in my head was like even the stuff that I've been told wouldn't work or that sounded crazy or, and I actually didn't do anything that now sounds crazy, like changing diet. That sounded crazy at the time.

MARTIN: Yeah. It's interesting, right? Like you're told, they tried to medicate you for depression or something like that, right?

JULIE: Oh yeah. That was early on when they didn't know. And that's one of my biggest pet peeves is when they don't know how to help or they don't understand. My two pet peeves are: "Of course you're tired. You're a mom," when you talk to a doctor about fatigue.

MARTIN: They don't understand the level of fatigue.

JULIE: Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.

MARTIN: They are assuming that you're tired the way you'd be tired if you walked a nine flight of stairs up and down.

JULIE: Right.

MARTIN: No, you're tired like you did 900 of them, right?

JULIE: Exactly, exactly. So yes. That and then the offer of the antidepressant, when they just don't know what else to do for you. Those are my two big pet peeves. Well, now my new one is, people are still told when they're diagnosed, not just with autoimmunity, but any chronic illness that it's a permanent situation. And that's not true. Here I am, 55, still alive off of all of those medications, completely symptom-free. And life is bigger than it's ever been. And I feel better than I did in my 30's and 40's. So, they're wrong. And it's just that they don't know. And I say this all the time, my fiance's a physician. Nobody goes into medicine to hurt people. It's just that Western medicine is acute care medicine.

MARTIN: Right.

JULIE: That's where I'm going if I need emergency surgery. Honestly.

MARTIN: Yeah. Well put. They know what to do with an injury. Because it was developed during the war times, right?  It's saving your life, but they're horrible at maintaining it.

JULIE: No, they don't. There is no preventative medicine in classical Western medicine.

MARTIN: And I think my problem with them is that they have the hubris to want to own the whole thing.

JULIE: Yeah.

MARTIN: If they would just stay in their lane, which they are very good at. It's fine.

JULIE: Yeah. Yeah. I actually had a client a few weeks ago had said their primary care, said: "I don't know how to help you with this. You need a functional medicine doctor." And I was like, I want the name of that primary care because that's a great doctor.

MARTIN: Yeah. Somebody with bit of humility.

JULIE: Yeah, yeah.

MARTIN: I know my limitations. Takes a lot of knocks. So, I think they graduate from the school believing that they're close to God.

JULIE: Some do for sure.

MARTIN: Well, it's the method by which they're trained to tell them that you can fix anything.

JULIE: Right. Yeah. Except then they tell people you can't heal chronic stuff, which is wrong.

MARTIN: Well, so how did you do it?

JULIE: I did it -

MARTIN: Oh my God.

JULIE: I started listening to podcasts. Believe it or not. I think I was already listening to podcasts, but I started experimenting and trying things. Reading books. My brain fog was so bad at the time that I would read a book and like one little thing would stick. And I started with food, because in that journey over those 11 years, that changed to gluten-free. You'll be so shocked to hear, not at all. Was the one thing, not the meds, that I could feel a little bit of improvement in my pain. And so it was like, okay, that worked. What else can I do with food? And I didn't change anything that I haven't heard you talk about on the podcast either. Again, big shock, so rheumatoid arthritis, I know you talk about the diagnosis is tied to the location in the body. So this was autoimmune expression in my joints, really not a big surprise to hear that nightshades were an issue for me. Huge change in that. 

I grew up, my family was in the dairy business, dairy, cow dairy, not my friend. And so, I joke, I had to throw spaghetti at the wall approach to healing. I didn't know I wasn't a health coach. I didn't know what I was doing. I got really lucky. I was supposed to be doing this because with food and dedicated meditation practice, I started to improve in a way that was beyond remarkable. And the reason I say, there was a purpose is because knowing what I know now, if you had looked at my toxin panel, you'd have been shocked that I healed at all from just addressing those two lifestyle areas. Because I had mercury toxicity, lead toxicity, multiple mycotoxin challenges. My environmental toxins are through the roof. Back to that methylating challenge, right? My glyphosate is still high, and I've been eating organic ever since it was a thing. I grow my own food. I live in Colorado, so summer, spring and summer. But on paper shouldn't have been able to heal just with food and stress management.

MARTIN: Yes.

JULIE: But it really got the ball rolling.

MARTIN: And here we are. It's enough to,

JULIE: Move the needle. You know.

MARTIN: There's this little hill, right? And you're, you need to crest the top.

JULIE: Yeah.

MARTIN: To get to the other side of it.

JULIE: Yeah.

MARTIN: It's awesome.

JULIE: It is.

MARTIN: Now you're looking back at it thinking Holy smokes. That was a weird time.

JULIE: Yeah. Completely unnecessary. 

MARTIN: Yeah.

JULIE: Sadly, my rheumatologist, who was a friend, really bright woman, passed away from complications of autoimmunity and I think, like, totally unnecessary.

MARTIN: Yeah. And of course, she lived believing her education.

JULIE: In the medication.

MARTIN: When you go there, they tell you: "We know everything there is to know. And here it is." 

JULIE: Yep. 

MARTIN: And anyway,  that's the ones that come back saying, well, you know, steroids and painkillers.

JULIE: Yeah. Been there, done that.

MARTIN: Yeah. Okay. So here we are. You have gained a ton of wisdom by overcoming your own trouble.

JULIE: Yeah. And helping, and seeing. It's not me. I'm not special. This is how we're designed to heal. I mean, I am special, of course. But humans, we are designed to heal. That is how our bodies are designed. And so I see it, you know, time and time and time again.

MARTIN: Right.  So now you're in the business, right?

JULIE: Yes. Right. Drank the Kool-Aid. The healthy koolaid.

MARTIN: You undrank the Kool-Aid.

JULIE: Right? Exactly.

MARTIN: So. Well, what? How do you do it? What? What do you do with people? And who are the people that you like to hear from the most?

JULIE: Oh, it's such a mix, right? Because I get really excited when somebody is at that beginning of that hill and they know something's wrong. They're not diagnosed and they are not going to go there. Those are really exciting people to empower. But then I love the people that have had decades, like me, decades of decline and a list of diagnoses and symptoms because I love giving them life by helping them get life back. Right. It's all about empowering. And that is why I have a podcast. That's why we're talking on yours, is changing the conversation so that even if somebody is told by their doctor they can't heal, they've heard it enough from you, from me, from whoever they're listening to, to think that might not be true.

MARTIN: Well, I have had so many people throw back at me after I open with this message. You're a charlatan, and you want to take advantage of me.

JULIE: Sure.

MARTIN: Right? It bothers me a bit. Not for me, I couldn't care less.

JULIE: But it's sad for them.

MARTIN: It bothers me for them because I'm thinking, you are just so blinded by your indoctrination.

JULIE: Yeah, but they're not ready. They're not ready. I was that. I had heard, oh, so and so has RA and did this thing and got better. And in my head 20 years ago I was thinking, either they didn't have RA or they weren't, you know what I mean? 

MARTIN: Explain it away with logic.

JULIE: Yeah. And so you ask, how do I help people? That's where we start is mindset.

JULIE: Because if you're in that mindset of identifying with whatever your diagnosis is or your symptoms are, and you really believe that your your outcome is to decline, you're not going to heal that way. Even if you make the other lifestyle changes. So I start there. I joke, I didn't used to start there. I'm a better coach now, years of experience does does pay off.

MARTIN: Yeah. It's amazing how good you get when you do 10,000 hours of something.

JULIE: Right. Yeah. And so again, back to that whole body part diagnosis pill model.

MARTIN: You don't need a diagnosis. We know whether we choose to listen to our intuition or not. Like when something's off

MARTIN: Yeah, well the simple difference is when you focus on the organ, then you have a symptom. When you focus on the terrain, then you have a method. So if you have one fish or three fish out of the 20 in your aquarium that are sick, are you going to be treating the individual fish or are you going to treat the aquarium, the whole one.

JULIE: Yeah. Well, it's funny as a mom, my kids are adults now, but every, probably parent, not just mother can relate to that question. Why? Right. The kids ask all the time when they're little. We used to joke about it. I would be like, oh, your favorite letter. “Y” That's the missing question, right? Is why? Why do your joints hurt? Why are you fatigued? Why fill in the blank? However, that inflammation is expressing in your body.

MARTIN: Right. To flip it, to make it really simple, your arthritic or your joint pain is not caused by a deficiency in the "name the pill."

JULIE: Right. Yeah.

MARTIN: Okay. So here they are. They call you up, I guess there's a website, right?

JULIE: My website. Yeah. The easiest place to find me is JM.coach because my last name is spelled funny. And it'll take you to the website or the podcast or wherever you want to go. Speaking of the podcast, your episode dropped this week, so I'm very excited.

MARTIN: Great. Yeah. Awesome. Well, yeah. Let's hope people learn something. So what are we going to teach these life enthusiast people about? What can we add to the pile that they haven't heard before?

JULIE: Oh, boy. I don't know if it's a what they haven't heard before. Because I know,

MARTIN: In your words.

JULIE: You speak truth a lot. So. I think it's more of that underscore. I want to maybe highlight, this is old news for you, but maybe somebody need, like you said, needs to hear it in my words. I talked about food, and I've heard you mention this before on the podcast as well. We're complex human beings. And so even in my own story, I talked about food and toxins. We didn't talk about sleep and movement and and all of the components that help keep us healthy. But what we often don't realize is how intertwined they are. And so when I say food, I'm thinking of real whole food.

MARTIN: Yeah.

MARTIN: Yeah. Granny's cooking from 150 years ago.

JULIE: Yeah, yeah. And so you can't, if you're eating gluten grown in the United States, and then it's ultra processed and packaged and mixed with all kinds of chemicals and and things. You can't separate. That's a toxin.

MARTIN: Yeah.

JULIE: Right. So, there's no. I think maybe that's. Where am I going with this? That's the big takeaway is we have to change that mindset of one thing is going to fix this problem because one thing didn't cause the problem.

MARTIN: I have people ask me a question. What's the most important thing I need to do?

JULIE: Yeah.

MARTIN: I say to them, well, which is the most important wheel on your car?

JULIE: Right. Yeah.

MARTIN: I tell them toxicity, malnutrition, stagnation and trauma. You have to resolve it. All of it. 

JULIE: Yes. Yeah. So, you look at something like autoimmunity, especially and then trauma, I didn't mention in my journey. And of course, like every human, I have experienced plenty and needed to do work on that. Not necessarily in a way that, there are so many wonderful methods to work on trauma that you don't have to relive the trauma to move the needle necessarily.

MARTIN: What would works for you?

JULIE: For me, again, back to it was throwing spaghetti at the wall. So, you name it, I've probably tried it. Well, everything moves the needle a little, it's just like, it's not just one thing.

MARTIN: Julie. That was totally my method. I tried so many things. Yeah, not even funny.

JULIE: And I'm still, that experimental mindset is what helped me heal, right? So why wouldn't I keep it? I still try, I learn about a new thing and I try it if it's something health promoting. So, maybe not.  I'm discerning. I like science. I'm very science driven, but very open minded at the same time. It's the same with, I'm sure people ask you this all the time. You know what's one supplement that everybody should take?

MARTIN: Yeah. Right.

JULIE: Well, I don't know. Can I see their blood work?

MARTIN: Yeah.

JULIE: Or like you, okay, maybe if I know their genetics, fine. I could probably make some educated guesses.

MARTIN: Yeah. With the metabolic typing that we do, it's kind of easier.

JULIE: It's pretty clear.

MARTIN: You know which pile they're on.

JULIE: Yeah. So if I had found you ten years ago, how much faster would my healing have been?

MARTIN: Yeah. You would have made faster progress. Yeah.

JULIE: Yeah. We have to get over this. And it's the same with food. Well, what should I eat? Tell me what you eat. You talk about this all the time. Right. We shouldn't all eat the same thing.

MARTIN: No.

JULIE: But it should be whole, real food.

MARTIN: Yeah, I tell them you cannot touch refined flour, refined sugar, refined salt, refined plant oils and pasteurized dairy. Forget it.

JULIE: Yeah. I remember when, with the family being in the dairy business, I remember when ultra pasteurized.

MARTIN: Came on.

JULIE: Started to hit the market. And I remember my dad saying, this is terrible.

MARTIN: This is wrong.

JULIE: Yeah.

MARTIN: Yeah. Milk's supposed to last one day, not three months.

JULIE: Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, think about even. This is not where I thought this conversation would go, but think about breast milk, would you put a pump, a bottle of breast milk and leave it in the refrigerator for a month and then feed it to your baby? No.

MARTIN: Right. Or would you would you boil it first?

JULIE: Right. And kill all of the goodness? It just doesn't make sense.

MARTIN: The problem, of course, is that our babies are not cows. So feeding them cow milk is somewhat stretching it.

JULIE: We are the only animal that drinks another animal's milk. And again, sorry, dad, family was in the dairy business. There is a way, I understand how it happened, why we drink milk. And I'm not, everybody thinks that I was born a health coach, right? And I always say, I love cheese. I can tolerate some goat and sheep cheese just fine.

MARTIN: Yeah. Same here. 

JULIE: Yeah.

MARTIN: And do use it. I do eat it. It's part of my diet.

JULIE: It's delicious. Yeah. So whole, real, but understanding that what you what you identify as food. If it's not real food, your body does not identify it as food. And it's part of the problem.

MARTIN: Yeah. Okay. So I guess your coaching is mostly conversational then, right?

JULIE: Mostly, yes. Mostly conversational. So I work remotely. I do work in clinic with local folks in Colorado, which is fun too. But it's fun to be able to just help people. Yeah. And to talk to people all over.

MARTIN: Yes. Of course.

JULIE: Yeah.

MARTIN: Right on. Yeah. On your website, you put in autoimmunity for high achievers.

JULIE: Yes.

MARTIN: Explain to me what you got.

JULIE: Because there is no magic pill. And so the reason my target client is a high achiever is two things. One is I like a challenge. And so that developed out of a client I had early on who is a serial entrepreneur. He has multiple businesses. He travels all the time because people think, well, if I'm going to do the lifestyle things, then that means I can never eat out. And I have to stay home all the time. And so I like the challenge of helping people with different lifestyles achieve wellness. Figure out how to do it in a way that works for them. So, with the high achieving clientele, I tend to break a lot of the rules that they taught me in coaching school. As far as, I have been known to find a chef for someone. So that I can get the good food on their table. And that's that's how it's going to happen. I have clients where I have learned, and it's just like the rest of life, trial and error. This kind of developed out of, like, oh, some of these people, if I want them to show up on their coaching call, I actually need to book the call with their assistant, not them, because they don't run their schedule. So it's a different, just a higher level of, but it does take work to get well.

MARTIN: Yeah. On Life Enthusiast, we have ended up mostly with people who are less affluent than that. And so most of them are not willing to just say, okay, I'm starting with my $6,000 fee intake.

JULIE: No. And that's not necessary either..

MARTIN: I remember talking, Julie, I remember talking to a woman who spent $30,000 on functional medicine stuff, was no further ahead on what I was able to tell her after five minutes of listening to her.

JULIE: Yeah. No. And that's frustrating. And that's really, really sad. And that's another challenge these days, as somebody who has a functional medicine clinic. Functional medicine has become this catch all umbrella phase. I had a client that, I use extensive lab work to help people when possible, to help because that costs money, but to help people speed up their process. And I have a client who doesn't live locally, has a functional medicine doc, labs, all the things and I didn't, I don't ever do that anymore, I did her a disservice. I did not ask her for the labs because in my mind, functional medicine panel means an in-depth panel. They hadn't checked Omegas, it was not what I consider functional medicine. But it was marketed as such. And so.

MARTIN: It's by the numbers and big market.

JULIE: It is, it is. And I'm glad you brought that up. You don't need, people say this all the time. I'm sure you hear it with food. Oh, but it's so expensive to get quality ingredients or and I hear this even with my employees at the clinic of, 

MARTIN: Right.

JULIE: They want a bigger paycheck because it's hard to live.

JULIE: And I watch them get expensive coffees for each other. I'm like, if you took your high fructose corn syrup out of plastic beverage. I don't even want to call it a drink. And they're doing it every day, and it's like, wait.

MARTIN: There's a really interesting difference between Europe and America.

JULIE: Yes.

MARTIN: In Europe, healthcare is about a third of the cost, and food is about twice as expensive. And it's interesting that it's not relatively really expensive. It's just relatively expensive to their incomes.

JULIE: Right. 

MARTIN: But they're not worried or not afraid to pay for quality.

JULIE: Right.

MARTIN: And insist on it. Right. Like, in a restaurant it's cooked from scratch. From local food.

JULIE: Right.

MARTIN: It is not the chain method. Just hasn't caught on too well.

JULIE: Well, and even, this has been a hot topic in this country lately. I think coming to light or a little more awareness anyway, for a lot of people who don't travel internationally to take these chains or these big companies that are selling food internationally, they can't, they're not allowed to put the same ingredients in their food.

MARTIN: This recent story that Robert Kennedy got attacked by New York Times because he said that the Canadian Fruit Loops had fewer ingredients. And they said they don't have fewer ingredients. They have different ingredients. They're trying to catch him on the logistics.

JULIE: Like a little. Yeah.

JULIE: Semantics.

MARTIN: Right.

JULIE: But it's the same with fast food restaurants. And I know that always makes me sad, traveling internationally when I see American chains.

MARTIN: Yes.

JULIE: Because you go to a place that cooks real food, locally sourced and, and then people are going to an American fast food chain. I'm like, oh, but we have to make that choice of, okay, the only way to change the food, the broken food system in this country is with our dollars.

MARTIN: Yeah. That's it. You vote with every purchase. You vote for this thing to be made again.

JULIE: Yeah, exactly. And the understanding that all of those ultra processed foods are intentionally designed to be addictive and to get you to eat more of them like it's, if people really understood the the mind games going on behind what they think of as food. So I think that that myth of, yes, grass fed beef may cost if you don't live where I do and can't stock up on a quarter cow or something like that. So it may cost pound for pound a little bit more. But your health...

MARTIN: You don't have to pay for the health expense later.

JULIE: Yeah. Exactly.

MARTIN: Yeah. We should have some kind of a health insurance exemption for people who have woken up. That may be coming I hope.

JULIE: I love it. I think yeah, I think that it is interesting the two broken systems, the health care and food, and it's all interconnected. And so hopefully as one changes the other will.

MARTIN: The food industry breaks you. And the health industry tries to pretend to treat the problem, right?

JULIE: Yeah. It is. Let's create this issue and then we can give you some medication for it.

MARTIN: Oh. All right. Okay. So JM.coach, people go there and get really personalized high-attention treatment.

JULIE: Yeah. And there's even, I have a free little mini email course on the website that can help you identify, because we can't, nobody can make all the change at once. Right. We just need to get the needle to move and get the winds. And it is important for some of us, for everybody to know where to start so that when they make a change, they feel it. And so the mini course will run you through the pillars and help you identify like, okay, this is really.

MARTIN: Yeah.

JULIE: Where I should start.

MARTIN: Yeah. Move the big boulders early.

JULIE: Yeah, yeah. So it's all about just getting that motivation and propelling yourself forward. One doable change at a time.

MARTIN: Yeah. Right. So here you have it. A woman in her 30s heading for an insane asylum in a wheelchair.

JULIE: Yeah. No, literally that was right, the timing of my "let me look elsewhere," they were trying to convince me to get a handicap placard for my car, and I just didn't want to.

MARTIN: Oh, yeah. There are definitely two roads. Roads. The road less taken is the one that you and I took. And it says, yeah, it's harder, but boy, the outcome is way better.

JULIE: The payoff is really amazing. It is. So I appreciate all of the information you put out. Because it's all got value. It's just a matter of what somebody needs to hear in that moment. Right?

MARTIN: Well, thank you so much for the validation. Yeah, I'm sure we could just talk for a long time telling each other how, how we overcame.

JULIE: Sure, sure. But your story, your personal journey is so different from mine.

MARTIN: Yes.

JULIE:  Right. As far as experience. But not at the same time. The specifics are so different, but  when it comes down to okay how do how do we stay well now? Very similar.

MARTIN: Yes. And how did we get right, which is also similar. Which is this, do not try to deal with your symptoms. You must deal with the causes. And the causes are in the inputs.

JULIE: Yes. And one little other thing I want to say about the symptoms that we forget, and doctors don't typically tell us, it's your body giving you information. And the more if you ignore, it gets louder. That's how it works.

MARTIN: Yeah.

JULIE: Yeah. So I think if we had took that approach early on of like, again why or what is my body trying to tell me?

MARTIN: Yeah I remember Oprah Winfrey of all people saying, well, first you get the nudge, then you get the bump, then you get the kick, then you hit the wall, and then the wall comes down all over you. Now, at which point do you want to get the message?

JULIE: Right. Yeah. And again, the beautiful thing is, even if the wall has come down all over you, you can still heal.

MARTIN: Yes.

JULIE: It's just faster and easier if you just listen to that nudge.

MARTIN: Okay. So wherever you are, the listener, hopefully you are ready to heed the message. The message is loud and clear.

JULIE: Yes.

MARTIN: You need a coach because learning it on your own is slow. With a coach, it's quick.

JULIE: It is. I always say, if knowledge was the answer, then there wouldn't be coaches. Right. We help people. I say with the how, how do you do it? Right.

MARTIN: The shortcut.

JULIE: It's a shortcut. And a partner.

MARTIN: Yes. Accountability counts for something. We humans are designed to be team creatures. We are designed to be interacting.

JULIE: Yeah, yeah. And when you're not well, you're typically isolating and isolated. So. Yeah. And that's a whole another, the social component of wellness is important as well.

MARTIN: Right on. Well, there we have it. Julie Michelson, JM.coach

JULIE: Yes, sir. Thank you so much for having me.

MARTIN: It's such a pleasure. This is Martin Pytela, Life-Enthusiast.com, find us online. Thank you.