Natalie: Hello, and welcome to another episode of “WTF Happened To My Body?”. This is Natalie Garay, and I am super excited to be here with Leslie, Leslie Jackson, because she has been talking about inflammation. And I love that this conversation has been coming up more and more. It's something I've started to hear more about and learn from my own body in the last couple of years.
So, super excited to have you here. Thank you for joining me.
Leslie: Of course. Thank you for having me.
Natalie: Well, yeah, of course. Sorry, I didn't know if there was a delay there or not. Leslie, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into the work that you're doing.
Leslie: Yeah, absolutely. So today I am a women's focused functional nutritionist and this career really came to me.
Also I in some ways definitely seeked it out as well too. But in the most simplest form, there's one word that really comes up for me when I think of why I pursued this path, and it was just frustration. I was just so frustrated for so long. Not understanding food, not, you know, also developing somewhat of like fear towards foods because I didn't understand what I ate and how my body was going to respond to it, if it was going to make me gain weight, if it was going to make me have acne, if it was going to make me feel bloated or anxious or give me a stomachache.
And I tried to lean into Western Medicine and to my doctor resources to get some support and answers, all really to come to find out that they didn't have any answers for me. So I decided that I was not going to accept my norm. Ten years ago, my norm was constantly anxious. Frequently going through bouts of depression, frequently bloated, frequently waking up with multiple new visitors of cystic acne.
And I just didn't feel good in my body. And I was just like, this cannot be my normal. I'm not accepting this as my answer. And so it really just motivated me to research and look for answers. And did I start on Google? Yes. I just started Googling my symptoms and Googling root causes and how can I heal my anxiety?
How can I get rid of this depression that, like, really robs me of my passion for things that I know I'm genuinely passionate about? How can I just live a higher quality of life and symptoms, and really everything that I was researching and finding was pointing towards food. Like, food, food, food, and movement, sunshine, hydration, community, connection, and that's when I started to get really excited that there actually was answers. Because I was really told that this is your option in the medication world, and that's it.
This is all I have for you. And the answer is that our bodies just fail sometimes. That was the answers that I that I was getting. And my intuition was like that I don't accept it.
Natalie: Yeah. B. S. I was going to say, what was it that they were offering you? And how long from that point until you started to find answers and feel better was that period?
Leslie: So their first answer was Adderall. Because I came to the doctor and I said I am coming to work and my performance is starting to decline. I can't focus. I have brain fog all the time. I'm gaining weight. My face is all broken out. And they said, okay, you have ADHD. And literally within 10 minutes, within 10 minutes, they had a prescription ready for me to order.
And then the other answer for my acne and for my bloating and for my really heavy, long periods was birth control. So I did both. I was on birth control. I was on Adderall. And it took me about two years for that to completely tank my system, and put me in one of the darkest places I've ever– I literally didn't know that your mental health could get that dark.
I'm grateful for that chapter of my life because it made me understand people who struggle with anxiety and depression in a whole new, more empathetic way. It's made me a better practitioner, but I went back to my doctor and I said, this is not working for me. I can't continue on Adderall.
It's severely dysregulating my nervous system. And the birth control has its own list of side effects. And they threatened to drop me as a client. They said, well, if you don't pursue this path, then we're not a compatible partnership. And I said, okay.
Natalie: Yeah. You said, no, no, we're not.
Leslie: We're not compatible! And so, I did discontinue all of the medication without professional support, which I do not recommend. Because I was not ready for the intensity of withdrawal symptoms and side effects that I was going to have from cold turkey stopping Adderall and birth control. I needed support throughout that process and there was a less painful way to go about it if I had had a health resource partner that genuinely wanted to listen to me and support me.
And it took me two years to get to the point where I wasn't waking up to depression and anxiety every single day. And a lot of different forms of support. So that was kind of the first chapter of my journey.
Natalie: And then in that time, you're basically just like limping along. You're trying to manage your life. You're trying to work in your previous work, which was not in the health wellness world. I think I remember.
Leslie: Correct. Yeah. I was in enterprise technology sales for about 10 years.
Natalie: Yeah. So you're trying to function all the while you've got a practitioner who doesn't necessarily know what to do. And you're like, no, you're, you're not firing me. I fire you!
Like, I'm out. So who was it that you did find to support you before you were able to then go and learn for yourself about how to support yourself? Because I want to get into your training and how you're now supporting women too.
Leslie: Yeah. So, I actually ended up finding a psychiatrist that openly communicated that they don't prescribe Adderall.
And I was fully dysfunctional. Fully dysfunctional, could not operate. And I did get on an anti-anxiety, anti-depression medicine that really helped me climb out of that valley and get to a place where I could get on my own two feet and start the healing process. So that's one thing that I do really love to communicate is that I am not fully against Western medicine.
Western Medicine was a huge component of my healing journey. It helped me to get on my two feet. But once I got my brain back, that's when I really started the research and found some education programs that really empowered me to understand my body and what it needed to be able to organically restore its functioning.
My gut health, my brain health, my metabolism, my immune system. And once I started tapping into these resources of gold, it felt like to me, I was just obsessed with learning and learning and learning. And then I continued to implement and implement and see extraordinary results. My brain fog disappeared.
I was able to relieve myself of social anxiety and really my personality, my peace of mind came back. And then the downstream effect of that was my inflammation and my puffiness in my face and in my abdomen, it just all released. And I really felt like I let go of it. And so, there was so many different side effects that once I started to learn the power of real food, of mineral-rich hydration, of sunlight, of community and connection and strength training and movement, it gave me my life back.
Natalie: Yeah, absolutely. And there's so – I kind of want to be like, so what is inflammation? Like, we don't really know, you know, a lot of what you're talking about. I mean, almost everybody's experiencing these symptoms, if not all of them, you know, maybe a few of them. And again, like you, they're all going to their practitioners who have no idea how to support them.
And then that's basically, you know, their general training and whether they've gone on to do more training to say, “Oh yeah, there is actually something else we could do.”
Basically, they just kind of come to a dead end like you. So, yeah, what is it and what's causing it?
Leslie: So, in the most simplest form, inflammation is your immune system's response to threat.
And in the scientific world, my explanation is, we are overly inundated with insulin, with cortisol, and our ghrelin hormones are raging. Which means, in translation, we are excessively over consuming sugar. Literally 2,000% more sugar today versus 100 years ago. We are chronically stressed and we are over consuming.
Our appetite hormone, ghrelin, is constantly asking us for food because the food that we're consuming is calorically dense and nutrient empty. And the downstream effect of that is our body internally is like a hurricane. It's trying to find a balance. It's trying to function. It's trying to get the things that it needs to be able to for ourselves to know what to do to regulate our hormones, to support our immune system, to keep our mitochondrial and bacterial health in our gut optimized. To keep the inflammation down in our brain and keep our brain protected.
And where we've really fallen short and gotten the messaging terribly wrong is being obsessed with our calorie intake and out of touch with our nutrients intake.
What I wish that more women understood is that our cells, which is, the engines of our bodies, don't run off of calories, they run off of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients. And that's where we're lacking and where we're getting in excess and there's just really no balance and our bodies just really aren't being given a true opportunity to show up for us, because we don't know how to give it what it needs.
Natalie: Right. Education is so huge and we're so lacking in how to support ourselves. Although I do think like with, you know, people like you and other practitioners who are finding out ways because of personal experience and wanting to share it with women that we're learning more and more.
And I think that's a huge key to someone saying, “I don't feel right.” And then going to their practitioner, whoever that is, because I think, like, the first person they go to is their primary care practitioner. Because one, it’s covered by their insurance and everyone's like, if I can avoid out-of-pocket, then I'm going to go to my primary care.
But unfortunately, a lot of time, it's a dead end again. So I'm excited about the work that you do, grateful for the work that you do. And I, like I said, it was something I started to learn about two years ago and again, and myself became obsessed with it. Because when one of the concepts I love is learning that the gut and the brain are connected.
And that when my mom was going through her dementia journey. Her functional medicine doctor said, the gut is the second brain, they say. And so, you know, the more and more I started to learn about it, I started to learn and go back to school myself. So, say someone is experiencing these symptoms, what would you say would be like the first thing to look at or the second thing to look at or to do?
Or even what could they go to their primary care practitioner and ask for if that's their first go-to, before maybe having to seek help outside of that.
Leslie: So my ideal first step is blood work. And where you will really struggle if you go to your primary care doctor for blood work is they won't want to do the paperwork and your insurance is not going to want to cover the extensive robust insights of blood work that we now have access to today.
And I say ideal because blood work is somewhat of a luxury in some scenarios. It is an investment. It's one of the greatest investments that you can make into your health. It's really important that we're not just checking our insulin levels and our cholesterol levels, but we're checking for our thyroid levels.
And our immune levels, our cortisol levels, and significantly important is our nutrient levels. We can see where we are lacking from a nutrient deficiency. And from my line of work, that's where I start. And I had a lot of women that usually when they first reach out to me, one of their first commonly asked questions is what supplement should I be taking?
And I am so grateful that we have come so far in the supplement space where there's some really quality bioavailable and absorbable and life-changing supplements available to us today. But there's very little regulation in that space of the wellness world and you can waste a lot of money.
First of all, the loophole of purchasing a product that's not bioavailable and doesn't have much potency of the supplement you think you're purchasing. And B, you could be purchasing a supplement that you personally don't lack in. And a supplement should be a supplement to the nutrients that you're consuming from your organic diet.
And so, when you can see where the gaps are in the nutrients that your body needs to be able to produce and function immune cells and activate your metabolic functioning, that is really where the first route is. That's the first route that I check, is your nutrient deficiencies. And then cortisol levels, I'm just seeing that in almost every client they're pretty high.
And that can really change the mode in which your body is functioning in, is what I'm really coming to understand. Like the mode that our body functions in whenever we are stuck in that sympathetic nervous system where we're stressed and our body is hypervigilant and it's really allocating a majority of our resources to our muscles and our brain and our eyes to get us to safety.
It's pulling away resources from our immune system and from our metabolic system and our hormonal regulating systems. And it's impossible to really find that balance whenever you're stuck in the hypervigilant space of your nervous system. When you transition into primarily being within your parasympathetic nervous system and your body feels safe to rest and digest and consume nutrients and absorb nutrients and balance your hormones and boost and support your immune system, it's a different way of life.
Like you fully experience your body differently. It functions night and day differently. And so I think not only are we lacking the ability or lacking the nutrient intake, but when we're constantly in stress mode and our body has very poor digestion tactics, plus there's a lot of inflammation in our gut from a lot of the chemicals that are in our food system today, we're really struggling to even absorb the nutrients that we do consume.
Natalie: Right.
Leslie: I know that sounds very kind of doomy and gloomy. I want to just really follow that up with like, every single challenge that I just shared is so overcomable. It's so solvable, so reversible. You just have to know what to do. And oftentimes you need a resource to support you in it.
Natalie: Yeah, absolutely. I think those are all important points and all important information to know. And like I said, going back to learning what I learned through my mom's journey. And then, when she developed dementia, and after she passed, I said that's not– I'm not doing that.
It's not happening to me. So I went to my functional medicine, the same one she went to, and I did the micronutrient test and the hormone test and the food sensitivity blood work. And like you said, it's not, you know, there is an investment in it, but it is basically your groundwork and your foundation for, where do I go from? Here’s your roadmap. And I just love that.
And, you know, same thing for my daughter, went through a health journey as well and we just looked at her blood work and what fascinated me about that is like, you know, if you're deficient in, let's say, making these up– D, B and C vitamins. You know, those are just very general ones, but that can be a huge contributor to your mental health depression, you know?
So why wouldn't we look at that initially, immediately prior to another, you know, avenue? I mean, that's me, that's where I would want to go with that. But I think that it's huge, I love that, that you said to look at the blood work. And so going back to someone going to their primary care practitioner and saying, I'd like to look a little bit deeper. What is it that they can ask for? If that's where they're going to go 1st to see, maybe they can get that blood work ordered from them.
Leslie: Yeah. So I do want to do a quick plug here. There are a couple blood work companies that you can order your own blood work without the order from a practitioner, called Function Health.
And for $500, you can order literally every single test that I just described plus more with one account. You don't have to have a referral, and it is $500. And they just recently started accepting FSA and HSA funds as well. So I am just so happy to see that there's companies that are bringing solutions to widespread challenges like that.
And then also InsideTracker, they're both functional medicine rooted, and you can access that blood work and insights through them. The other thing I really love about those two platforms is that they give you a gauge and really translate your blood work for you, where it will tell you if you're landing in the normal range versus the at-risk range versus the optimal range. And something that I've learned is that in Western medicine, it's really common for practitioners to look at your blood work and tell you that it's “normal”.
Natalie: Right.
Leslie: Because where you're landing is where they are commonly seeing Americans land. And where we are commonly seeing Americans land is not where we want to be. We want to be optimally restored, optimally replenished with nutrients, and you want to see your blood work ranges in the optimal range so that we can function optimally.
So those are two really great places to dig into if your primary practitioner is not supporting. Now, if you do go to your primary practitioner, especially if I were a woman over 40, I would be asking to get my thyroid checked. I would be asking for blood work in relation to insulin.
I would be asking about cortisol levels. I would be asking for gut health tests. Those are all really great places to start as well as nutrients, even just your primary nutrients. Vitamin A, C, and especially your B vitamins because those are so connected to your thyroid and your energy production.
I know as women, as we are aging, our energy is our goals. And getting any understanding of, so, what could be holding you back from not having the resources to access your highest favorite level of energy? You deserve that information.
Natalie: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned Function Health. That's actually one that I used more recently and prior to, or after going to the functional medicine doctor. And I love that he's making it more accessible to everybody. And like you said, the cost is a lot less than, you know, what you may spend it with a functional medicine practitioner.
And they do, they have a full dashboard that lists your ranges, which, like you said, tend to be a little different than what your primary would see. So it does a broader range. And then they give you your biological age and then make some recommendations for supplements and food.
And I think now they've added something else to it that I haven't tried yet, but I think that is a fantastic resource. So, someone comes to you, I would love to see, love for you to tell us kind of like your broad, general method of, you know. Say I come to you with my blood work and I'm, you know, got all the complaints of brain fog. I've got belly fat and I can't get past three in the afternoon without, like, needing a disco nap or something. What do you– a general overview of what that might look like for, you know, treatment or suggestions?
Leslie: Absolutely. So most of the time my clients come to me and don't have blood work.
They may have a very slimmed down, just fundamental blood work from their physical from last year. So I usually start with getting them lined up with Function Health. And then from there we create a prioritization list. Usually there's a list of things that need to be addressed and first and foremost, I always want to address insulin levels, because our insulin levels are one of the most direct inhibitors of inflammation in the body.
And really inhibits our body's cellular functioning to be able to even get to a point where we can solve other problems. I like to prioritize and it's really important to me to not overwhelm my clients. Because a lot of the teams, a lot of what I teach to my VIP clients and to my community clients, they've never heard it before.
It's never even, you know, crossed their journey. And some of the information that I have to share can be hard realizations to swallow, you know?
Natalie: It's hard to make adjustments too.
Leslie: It is.
Natalie: It’s like stopping a moving train and then trying to, you know, readjust everything. And I feel like food is the hardest, especially culturally, a lot of us are used to eating certain things on a regular basis.
It's just, yeah, it's a lot to take in.
Leslie: Yeah, so I really, most times, have to focus on unlearning first before I really download them on new information. So we prioritize, we identify where they have either self-identification blockers that are preventing them from believing that they are worthy of being a person that invests in their health.
Being a person that wakes up and does, you know, prioritizes 10 to 15 things throughout their day to take care of themselves. It's underspoken, the amount of self identity work that you have to do to transform yourself from someone who engages in quite a bit of self-deprecating types of habits, to self-respecting, self-loving, and self-caring.
And then we start introducing, and we start adding to our repertoire of foods that we love and genuinely enjoy. Most of my clients are between the ages of 30 to 50-55. And I have to remind them that all of the foods that they've been eating and sourcing and purchasing and cooking, they've been doing it for decades upon decades upon decades.
And there will become a time where all of these new foods that we're introducing will become mindless to have to cook and prepare. After it becomes habitual. And so that happens over time. So we filter in and crowd out inflammatory foods with anti-inflammatory foods. We create some fun, you know, I love incorporating people's partners into some of the suggestions that I give– go for walks with your partner, go to the farmer's market with your partner, do things together in community.
And incorporating some auditing of lifestyle practices as well is really the key differentiation between conventional nutrition coaching and functional nutrition coaching. What we understand now is how well we're sleeping and how well and consistently and constantly we're moving. That dictates a lot of how our hormones communicate with us about what we need nutritionally.
And so sleep coaching is usually pretty first base in the journey with me and my clients, because if we're not sleeping well, it just literally makes everything else in life harder. And it's a challenging category for mothers. So we get creative and we get integrative. Integrative is a key component of what I do with my clients because oftentimes they think that they have to add, and add, and add to their to-do list.
But there's no space to add, and add, and add. We're already using all 16 hours of awake time, if not more, already. So really focusing on incorporating movement into things and tasks that we're already doing. And trying to make things easier and simpler. The last thing I'll say is, you know, really one of my number one core beliefs is that creating health is, it can be simple.
And I'm not saying that it's easy, but creating health is way simpler than what a lot of core messaging in our advertising world will make you think to believe. So simplifying, prioritizing, unlearning, relearning, integrating, and making it, implementing those over a longer course of time so that their habits and beliefs stick long term.
Natalie: Amazing. Those are all– that's, I love it. So how can people work with you? What is it that you're offering lately? And also where can they find you?
Leslie: Oh, thank you. Yeah. I've put out a lot of content on Instagram. You can find me @LeslieJacksonWellness. And that's Leslie spelled with an “ie”. I, today, offer a 1-on-1 VIP nutrition coaching in three and six-month terms.
And I also just launched a really cool project that I have been brewing in my heart for years. And it's now come to life. It's called the Radiant Health Collective. And it is a space where ambitious women can come together and identify, prevent and reverse inflammation using food and lifestyle as medicine.
And I am their guide, but the community and the culture of the community is really where a lot of magic happens as well. That can be found on my Instagram profile as well. It's a very low barrier to access. It's $37 a month. And it's where we're changing the game for women and reversing inflammation.
Natalie: I love it. That sounds amazing! I am so grateful. And for you too, for you joining me and sharing about all this, and I'm so glad that you're doing the work that you're doing. And I'm even more glad that you are, you know, you found something that has healed yourself too. And now that you're sharing it with everybody, I think that is huge and inspiring.
And it's my favorite thing to see everybody feeling, you know, fantastic. So they can just continue on and do whatever the fuck they want. So I appreciate you for coming on to share all of that with us. We will have all of your links and information in the show notes. And, so everybody go and check out Leslie, Leslie Jackson Wellness. Thank you again for joining me. It was so great to have you.
Leslie: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad that our paths crossed.
Natalie: Me too. Me too! Thanks, Carissa!