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Rebecca Kristene: Hi there. I'm Rebecca Kristene, founder and CEO of Rebecca Kristene Agency. I support health and wellness brands with their online marketing with expert copywriting and specialized strategies.

Today, I'd love to talk to you about holistic health and wellness. It's my passion and I'll take any chance I can get to share what an impact this way of life can truly have. Most of you have heard the term holistic health thrown out there a lot recently. It's become quite the topic and there's good reason for that to be honest.

When I talk about holistic health, I'm referring to a lifestyle where everything is connected, the way you live, the environment around you, what you eat, what you put on your body, the medicines you take, and even whether or not you have peace and meaning in your life, it's all connect. It took me almost 30 years to figure this out.

As a kid, I grew up eating the conventional American diet. Fast food like Wendy's, Arby's, and Burger King, tons of processed food, ravioli from the can, boxed mac and cheese, you name it. Most of the meals my mom made were meat and potatoes. Rarely ever did we have veggies on the menu. Breakfast was pancakes, french toast, muffins, donuts, tons and tons of sugar.

Fast forward, I get married at the ripe age of 19 to a Navy guy. I move away from home and almost immediately start having some serious health issues. First my bladder, then anxiety that was out of control, and then came vertigo and balance issues. I had two kids. And after each one, I felt like my hormones were getting more and more out of whack. And on top of this, my marriage was falling apart. The stress of such an emotionally abusive marriage was making my health even worse. I was sad and depressed, and I struggled with the lifestyle of moving every few years, starting all over and having to make new friends, a new community. It was crazy tough.

And at the age of 32, I was literally at my worst. My vertigo episodes were so bad that I had days that I would stay in bed. I felt like I was dying. I couldn't concentrate. The headaches were horrible and I felt like I was fading. I had no control over my life. When the episodes would calm down a bit, I still felt like I was in this bubble, almost like a drunken state. And I tried to push forward because that's what moms do. You don't have a choice.

But then, something else happened. My husband left us. My health was falling apart and he left me and the kids, mind you, with nothing. He cut me off financially and just left. And I remember panicking because I didn't even know how I was going to get groceries that week. It was that bad. I remember his exact words to me were, "Single women have to do this every day, so figure it out." I can't even explain the emotional side of this for myself and for my kids.

But on top of it, I was truly physically sick. Something was wrong with me. I had seen specialist after specialist at this point, and no one could give me an answer. So, they just wrote me prescriptions and I refused to take the medicine because I didn't want to put a Band-Aid on this. I knew something was wrong and I wanted to fix it. And this is when I learned about the importance of understanding holistic health and wellness.

I wasn't willing to give up, so I started researching for myself. The more I read about diet and exercise, even the impact of gratitude and joy, it all started to make sense. Then, I learned about what really changed everything for me, functional medicine. Functional medicine focuses on finding the root of your health issues, the underlying cause. In functional medicine practices, they actually don't want to just hand out prescriptions. They want to help you heal fully. I researched like crazy and I finally found a functional medicine doctor within an hour's drive from my home. I was hopeful for the first time in a really long time.

The first appointment was unlike any appointment I had ever experienced. The appointment was 90 minutes. Like, that is crazy. I'm used to those like 10 to 15-minute slots, rotating in, rotating out, way different. She asked me questions that gave her insight into my mind, body, and spirit. She took the time to get to know me and understand my symptoms and my concerns. I left that appointment with hope, hope that this doctor was going to figure out what was wrong with me and hope that there was a future for me.

So, we moved forward with the next step, testing. This is what I love about functional medicine and holistic health. See, in order to really understand the whole picture of what's going on inside you, they have to test you for everything. For instance, the GI-MAP tests for parasites, bacteria, candida, heavy metals, toxins, or anything else that could be causing leaky gut syndrome. By the way, if you're not familiar with leaky gut syndrome, spend some time researching it. It's when the lining inside your gut is damaged. Typically, holes and tears will form and allow substances meant to stain in your gut to leak into your body, creating inflammation and other serious health issues. In fact, most diseases and illnesses today can be linked directly to leaky gut syndrome. It's nuts.

So on top of the GI-MAP, my doctor also ordered a DUTCH test to check my hormones and a lot of blood work to check vitamin levels, thyroid function, you name it. She even went on to do an IGeneX test to make sure I didn't have any tick-transmitted diseases since I've found plenty of those guys on me and they're everywhere here on the East coast.

And there you have it, she tested me for everything under the sun because she wanted the whole picture. Then, she studied all of my results and figured out what needed to be addressed first. For instance, if you had low levels of, say, vitamin D and a parasite, you would need to treat the parasite first. If she treated the low vitamin levels first, it would be like a hamster running on his wheel, getting nowhere. So, just think about that for a minute. Think about how many people are on meds or vitamins or who knows what else, when there's something else big going on. We have to get to the root to be truly healthy.

So, my results came back and they were messy, like a total mess. I had numerous parasites including a tapeworm, several bacteria infections, H. pylori, SIBO and leaky gut. The inflammation levels in my body and my brain were off the charts. It was scary. So, I had an appointment with her, we went over my results, and she made a plan of attack.

I just wanted to point this out really quick. There's a significant difference between functional medicine and natural medicine. See, natural medicine is where your health issues are treated with natural remedies only. Functional medicine is a beautiful combination of alternative medicine and western medicine. This means there are some issues they may treat with medicine and some issues they decide to treat with herbs or supplements or a combination of both. In my case, the parasites had to go quickly so that we can move on to treating the bacterial infections. So, my doctor gave me a pill, one pill that would kill all parasites in 24 hours, Then, I went on to take another prescription to address some pretty serious infections, and one was in my brain. Within three weeks, I had taken all the medicine I needed to take before moving on to natural remedies. And after those three weeks, I would say 80% of my symptoms were gone, 80%. I had been dealing with these issues for 15 years.

I was over the moon happy, sharing my story with everyone, passing along my doctor's info to friends and family because, to me, it was a miracle. Here I was pretty much bedridden three weeks ago, and now I'm healthy enough to find a job and support my kids. I felt like I was dreaming.

After about six months of eating super healthy, getting daily walks in, seeing a counselor weekly and taking my supplements to rebuild my levels, I was an entirely new woman. I felt healthier than I had ever felt in my life. So, here I am four years later and still healthy. I continue to take daily supplements. I eat super clean. I still drink wine, but now I buy organic wine. I get my daily walks in.

Along the journey to restore my health, I realized that I needed to put the effort into more than just my diet and taking my pills. I had to address my emotional health and the trauma I experienced. I had to find friends to walk life with and be vulnerable with, and I did it. Through this entire journey, it was crucial that I ate healthy. I had to make sure that my body had everything it needed to heal. The pills and supplements were important too, don't get me wrong there. But what happens after you're done taking those? When your levels are back up and everything's fixed, you can't just go back to eating fast food, processed junk, sugar, and fake foods. Eventually, you'll just roll back to where you were. Your immune system will take a hit. You'll form leaky gut again, and the symptoms will start up. And I did not want that. I never wanted to go back to how I felt before.

So, I learned a new way of eating. Instead of satisfying a craving, I thought of it as nourishing my body. I thought of every single thing I put in my mouth as one of two things. It's either supporting sickness or supporting good health. That's it. One or the other. So, I stop buying seed oils, conventional meat, non-organic veggies and fruit, and anything processed, and I replaced them with coconut oil, avocado oil, organic meats, organic fruits and veggies, seeds and nuts because you are what you eat. How you feel is tied to what you eat, and I truly believe that food is medicine. Now, my entire family eats differently and I see such a difference in all of us.

I cannot imagine where I would be if I didn't learn there was another way out there, a way to live without prescriptions, without pain, without sickness.

And that's why I write for holistic health and wellness brands today. I'm crazy passionate about helping these businesses get their message out in front of people who truly need to hear what they have to say and to be a part of making a difference in someone's life.

Thank you so much for listening today. I hope sharing my story encouraged you, especially if you're someone in the medical field or you're dealing with a health issue yourself. My hope is that we can all experience a healthier life from the inside out.