Unlocking Health Through Nutrition, FDN & More with Evan Transue

0:00:00 - Speaker 1
If you've been dealing with chronic symptoms for years, you might be stuck wondering do I focus on this mind-body stuff? Do I go get more lab tests, do I change my nutrition intake? And it feels like there could be so many conflicting things coming at you, and especially when you bring in a history of any type of disordered eating or fear around food, we just add on layers. If you are relating to any of this so far, then we have this beautiful episode that is designed just for you. In this episode, I get to sit down with Evan Tran-Sue, aka Detective Ev. He graduated as an FDN, that's, a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner, in 2017. Prior to finding FDN, him and his mom had suffered with a variety of health challenges for over a decade, including, but not limited to, severe cystic acne, major depressive disorder, panic disorder, gerd and Graves disease. The FDN system transformed him and his mom's lives so profoundly that all of his work is now centered around spreading its teachings. Evan is now the host of the Health Detective Podcast, owner of Bucks County Light Therapy and Functional Medicine Center, and speaks professionally to middle and high school students about mental health challenges. He has been blessed to speak to over 50,000 students around the country and deliver over 500 professional presentations. 

Welcome, welcome, welcome to episode 79 of the Unweaving Chronic Pain Podcast. I am your host, dr Andrea Moore, founder of the whole self-integration method, and I am on a mission to move people from a life that is shrinking due to chronic pain and symptoms to a life where you get to step into your full personal, unique power and live life full out. If you yourself or anyone you know could benefit from this work, please give this podcast a five-star rating on Apple. This helps people find us and share it with a friend. And now getting into today's episode Welcome, welcome, evan. I am so excited to have you here today. Why don't you first start by telling people a little bit about who you are? Obviously, they got to hear all your formal credentials in bio, but tell people a little bit from the heart who you are and what brought you to where you are today. 

0:02:34 - Speaker 2
Yeah. So obviously, I mean we could do a four-hour podcast on that, but I'll give you the summary and then we can dissect it in any way that might be appropriate, if at all. I am someone who tries to live out in career all the passions that I have, right, and so it's actually kind of the gift of all the things that I went through health-wise, because I enjoy my work completely. Now I don't know what it's like really to say, okay, I don't want to go do this today. I kind of wake up pretty excited for it. 

So the reason that that happened, though, is because, at five years old, roughly speaking, I started dealing with my first health symptom. I know my parents great people didn't know much about medicine or health in general, and they weren't particularly unhealthy, at least by the traditional standards. Like my dad smoked, but he also worked outside seven days a week and was lean as can be. He looks like he's not even related to me, so dark. He looks like he's from South America. He's lived outside for 30 years, basically. And then my mom's same thing, you know, she was into exercise, ate normal food, but was always in good shape, and we equated that with health. Obviously, we know better now. But those two things can get kind of interchanged a lot or used interchangeably a lot, and so I started dealing with these health symptoms Wasn't happening all the time, maybe, you know, one day out of a month was bad, two or three days out of a month was bad, but they were severe. I had severe stomach aches. I actually started dealing with panic attacks, which is kind of odd because it was the first mental health symptom, looking back, that I had. It wasn't anxiety, generalized anxiety, that is, or depression. It just went full into panic attacks, which we don't fully understand still to this day. There wasn't any obvious triggering event, but, lo and behold, that's what happened. And so over time I got worse and worse. 

But I had pretty significant experience with Western medicine, although it wouldn't seem that way on the surface. My parents took me at five years old to the doctor and it's one of the only things I remember from five years old. I can't even see it fully visually in my head, I can just hear it. The guy, well-meaning doctor, said to us this isn't something to worry about. Evan gets himself a little too worked up and he's going to outgrow this. Now my five year old logic, which then turned into six, seven, eight year old logic. As I got worse, I kept thinking about what he said. Even as adults, right, we have doctors on a pedestal. They make very good income, they are highly intelligent, they're very educated, they're kind of winners in society by pretty much every standard. Right, we look up to these people, and that's true even when you're young. So I kept thinking in my head if the doctor can't figure it out, evan must be the problem, like if he thinks I'm going to outgrow it and I'm getting worse, I'm the problem. And so the worse my mental health issues got, the more silent I became about the things that were going on. And yes, there was physical health symptoms too at the time, but the main priority was the mental stuff. 

Unfortunately, this progressed for literally 13 years. I never really went back and got any help, but then I was forced to. I had a pretty serious situation at the end of high school. I started out in school at five years old, six years old or whatever it was in first grade as this, like nerdy straight, a teacher's pet, and by high school I got kicked out 17 days into my senior year because of issues with drugs and even violence. Nothing too crazy, but unfortunately that's where I was at in life. 

I ended up in juvie for a little bit. I spent my 18th birthday on house arrest and I'm spending one of my supposedly best years of my life. You know, it's supposed to be fun in that transitional thing from high school to college. I'm spending it on probation, you know, getting monitored all the time about what I'm doing, and it was my bad decisions that led to that. But it's also fair to say that the health issues that preceded all these things were very much intertwined with all of this. So I have kind of an odd view on like it's not for this podcast, but just how we handle these things, because I'm like, I made bad decisions, that's true, but it was also these things out of my control at the time that led to those decisions. It's very weird to try to wrap your head around what we're doing then in terms of, like the criminal justice system. Even it's like was juvie the right answer? Well, no, but I can't be with people if I'm being violent. So it's weird I go back and forth with that. I knew that wasn't where I was supposed to end up in life. Obviously, I think most people that end up that way do, but I wasn't ready to change it. It took about another six months, so I'm just thankful it happened at all. It's very odd to me. 

I made this decision that I was going to get better without knowing how that was going to work or what that even meant, and I'm a big believer. I'm personally a born-again Christian. I don't care what religion someone is. There's these very fascinating experiences that I've heard from people of all spiritual and religious beliefs that when you just decide on something, when it's all you're thinking about, when it's a powerful desire, something seems to move and you know the sea parts and you're walking right through towards it. And I just met the right people. I had the right experiences. It's so many things that I'm either the luckiest person in the world or there's something to it. 

So again, separate, nope, but just kind of a cool thing and I started learning about health. I started realizing that, yeah, I shouldn't have all these health conditions. I mentioned this off air, but I had seven different diagnosed health conditions mental and physical at that point by the age of 18. And I knew something didn't make sense with that. So thankfully, I had some of these experiences that got me into personal development reading, listening to audios of people who have been through stuff and then had to overcome it and what they applied to their life. That's still material I consume to this day. It's a staple in my routine. And then at the same time I'm learning about the health stuff and finding that I'm getting the needle to move a little bit with my health symptoms. So that's been a nine year journey. 

I'm 27 now, but that's kind of the summary of those things, because I took all this pain, I used it the personal development side of this and it was teaching me that that was actually an asset, right, I could use this. That's the trade off. Maybe the first honestly 18 years of my life did kind of suck in a certain way. I don't want to be too dramatic. I'm sure there's many people I wouldn't trade places with, but it wasn't great, especially with the mental health side. But the trade off for that was if you work on yourself and you switch that perspective and then you use it to help other people. The trade off for me is most people hate their nine to five for the rest of their life. I get the next 60 years to enjoy every single day of what I'm doing. So I look at that as kind of a win. So that's how I'm at where I'm at now. 

0:08:09 - Speaker 1
That is so powerful. And I love what you're speaking about of trade off there, because, man, I mean if that is not my entire message, right is that pain is an invitation. It's just, are we willing to open it and look at it? And it can be so profound. And I do find that it's so interesting that you speak on that, because I don't think I could have ever put that into such clear and articulate words as you just did. But it's like I work with so many entrepreneurs or people who are so dissatisfied in their life, right, and it's ultimately pain, mental struggles, things like that, and it's what was for my case, too, that got me to just wake up and be like what am I doing with my life, like this doesn't make sense, I don't like where I am and there's got to be more to this. 

0:08:53 - Speaker 2
Yeah, you come to a certain point with the routine mundane stuff. You're like there has to be something more to this, like this cannot be it for 80 years. 

0:08:59 - Speaker 1
Right, and I relate so much to the. I mean, while my experiences were not nearly as dramatic as yours and just like, oh gosh, I even want to just highlight what you're saying. It's like as a five-year-old, how that phrase stuck with you and what your nervous system made it to mean. Right, like that is what's so fascinating and I just love about like this type of work is our nervous systems make a meaning out of something and especially if anything before the age of like seven, eight, four, our brains are fully developed, it's like that just gets embedded into our system and that's such a common meaning is something. Is must be wrong with me, because as a five-year-old, it's not like you have control over anything else, right? So that's like the one thing it like makes so much sense that that's what our nervous system would make it mean. 

0:09:40 - Speaker 2
Yeah, and it was weird Cause I was like and I don't mean this in a bragging way I'm bad at a million things. I certainly wasn't good at sports but, like I was a smart kid and so I had the intellectual capacity to like, understand the significance of what was going on, but I didn't have the emotional maturity. So when you don't have the emotions and then you have the symptoms I mean again, this tricks adults sometimes, if they have their first panic attack, they usually think it's a heart attack, right. So if you're like five going through this stuff, I'm like okay, I know this isn't good, but I have no idea how to handle what the heck's happening. It's like all right, so I'm fine. 

99% of the time I get these 20, 30 minute bursts where I feel like I'm going to die and, despite having them before, I am positive this is the time and this is the one that's going to kill me, okay. And then we just go back to normal life. Afterwards I'm a little tired, but it's kind of normal. After that it's like wow, like yeah, it's hard Again, even as an adult. You're like this is a strange experience to have, let alone young. So at the same time, you know you connect the dots and the only thing I would change, unfortunately, is how I negatively impacted others. But I can't say I would change anything else. And this is that shift when you use this stuff. One of my favorite quotes is the final stage of healing is using what happened to you to help others. So when you flip that shift in your mind, I realized this made a powerful story. You probably read this in the bio. 

I speak to kids now on the side. It used to be just full time that became overwhelming in its own right. So you got a. You can't pour from a comp that is empty. I've realized that. But I was speaking to these kids and I realized if I didn't have this story, if I never got kicked out and went to juvie and stuff, you know what kids don't want to hear about panic attacks. They want to hear about how you got arrested and why the hell you're in their school. So I'm able to educate them about mental health with a very engaging story, like I rarely would have issues with kids acting out or anything. And again, not because I'm so cool but because I knew how to play on the drama of the story. And they're actually getting educated as we're going along and then just letting them know, like, hey, the answer here is to ask for help. Hey, like that's what you got to do. 

0:11:29 - Speaker 1
Yes, absolutely. And again, it's like holding this paradox of we need to be held accountable for our actions and we can also deeply understand and have compassion for why they are occurring, and even understand that we might not have the nervous system capability or control to have stopped them, but by understanding them and by being held accountable for them. That is what allows us to grow and move forward. And if you are a danger to society, like that might mean that right now, that that is the only option is to be that we can have a whole thing about as juvie really the best option? Probably not, but it was what was available at the time to keep others safe. Right, yeah, and that's so complex, but, yeah, so complex, it's so complex. 

What are the realities of our daily world versus what actually supports our nervous system? And I think we're moving to a place of over coddling, in a way of not holding people accountable for actions at the because. Oh well, because it's because of trauma, well, it's because of this, and it's like, yeah, that can be true. And the way we grow and actually heal is by facing Wow, I did this thing. It is not from a blame to place or a guilt place or, like some, you're bad and something is wrong. Place it's from a like Whoa, like, that's not who I want to be. 

0:12:44 - Speaker 2
Yeah, because the juvie in and of itself admittedly wasn't the worst thing. It was actually protection for myself and from anything else I was doing. You can't pretty hard to get drugs and juvie at least the one I went to so that was actually good. It's just that there is no we call it rehabilitation. There is none, and if I didn't get blessed to be in front of the right people after I got out of there, my life would have took a really different route. And I know many of the people, not like as friends really, but just you know, you have them on Facebook or Instagram or whatever. I know kids who are going through that same system at the same time as me. 

It didn't work out like it did for me and I'd love to be the person that can hop on a podcast and be like oh yeah, it's because of my hard working stuff. It's like, and sure, I made some positive decisions, but I wasn't even able to do that until I had those lucky chance experiences. I mean, that's one of the biggest things I do with the school stuff, right. I call my chance moments like the aha moment more or less right, like I had this awakening where I'm like I need to go do something different, and to me, the speaking in schools is more or less this is your aha moment. Not many people get this. Don't be stupid. Like you know, let's act on this today and get some help, and so that can be applied to almost anyone. It's not just kids. But yeah, if we have a wake up call to make changes for something going wrong in our life, not everyone gets that wake up call, so that's something not to be taken for granted. 

0:13:54 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I love that full appreciation of it. So, so powerful, yeah, and you were dealing with health symptoms that were being really overlooked. That was my experience as well. It's like I was struggling with ADHD. I would go to the doctors and I'd be like, hey, these are the symptoms I'm having. These medicines are making me feel like crap. And it was the same kind of thing where it was like, oh well, you're fine, learn to live with it, like, basically, suck it up, there's no help. And I did this where it's like I just had to start seeking it out for myself, because I was like this can't be the way that everybody feels like there's got to be a way to feel better. And so, yeah, what tell us about the road that way, what you went through to start to uncover your own symptoms. 

0:14:31 - Speaker 2
Sure. So the first thing that happened, insignificant as it might seem at first, is the group that I got into. That was actually a group I got into because of their goal, orientation and their willingness to dive into kind of personal development. I actually joined them because of that and then I realized and some people hate this, some people love it, doesn't really matter, I'm not a part of it anymore. It was a network marketing company. I had no idea what that was at the time, I'd never heard of these things and so neither had any of them. 

Really, that was kind of the beauty of it. It was a bunch of kids, you know, running around doing personal development and very seriously so, and the product happened to be a high potency multivitamin formula that was put into the wild least. The marketing said healthy energy drinks, weight stuff, like whether it's weight gain, protein shakes type of stuff. So I joined for the attitude and for the mindset. But I started consuming these things and I noticed that I started to feel better and my skin even got a little better at severe acne. But it was mostly the mental health stuff that got a lot better. I'm like, hey, this is interesting. Now, of course, correlation is not causation. So my initial thoughts were oh well, this is what happens when you get around good people. It's because I'm engaging in personal development that I feel this way. Well, as many network marketing companies unfortunately go through. They won the court case, but they got in some trouble initially because people thought they were doing something wrong. But that court case nonetheless destroyed the company more or less, and so we didn't have the product anymore, is my point. But I still have the friends. I'm best friends with some of these people to this day. Right, I'm going to one of their weddings in September. We got a wedding that I just did last year, so they're very close in my life. But the mental health stuff started coming back and so I didn't change the friends or the personal development In fact, that was probably more than ever before. 

But the mental health started getting worse and worse again, and I'm sure I didn't use as intelligent of a term at the time, but I had something go through my mind along the lines of can nutraceuticals be a part of your health? Like, does this actually matter? Like, is food more than just the fact that, hey, I'm skinny, so I can eat whatever I want? Can I actually not eat whatever I want, and there's other things that this can cause. So I just started research. I went on Dr, google, youtube, all that stuff. I'm looking these things up and, yes, you find some BS, you find some weird things on there. But at the same time, I wasn't an expert in scientific studies. I didn't even have a high school diploma technically, but I knew enough to know, okay, this pub med thing at that time we're at the time. This seems legitimate. This seems like a place where studies are published and I'm reading about how micronutrients can greatly impact mental health. So why did no one ever tell me this? But that's a different conversation, right? So I figure out this stuff. 

I realize that I'm on the right track and I just kept experimenting with different things. One of the biggest things for me. It might sound simple A lot of these things do right, simple or insignificant but I switched to an all organic diet. I'm like 19 years old. This is weirdest crap to do today, let alone 70 years ago, before this really got big on the internet. So you tell your friends you're going to do what Like? That's like double, triple the price. You don't have any money. Why are you doing this? And so I said I'm just going to try for 30 days to see what happens, and I switched my food around to all organic. I did lower the sugar content a little bit to be clear, but mostly it was just the quality of the food. My skin cleared up 70% in a month. It was unbelievable to watch what happened. And then I'm like I didn't, shame, I'm still eating gluten, I'm still eating dairy. I was eating a lot of that stuff. The only conclusion that I can come to is getting rid of a lot of the artificial stuff and just lowering the general toxic load. I guess, man, it was night and day thing for me. 

And the next step after that was Institute for Integrative Nutrition, a great program. I just didn't feel like I got enough quite from there to like go out, run a business fully help other people. And so I actually found FDN, functional Diagnostic Nutrition, because of IIN. So I'm very grateful for that connection. And FDN. Man, that was the thing. Now I always joke. They can't get rid of me, right? I'm doing the podcast for them, I'm, on course, enrollment calls, I do Instagram stuff. I love it, I love being a part of it, and I do have my own business outside of this, where I still work there. I just love supporting FDN as much as possible. 

0:18:15 - Speaker 1
That's amazing and that is so powerful. It really is just amazing how much changing what we put in our bodies can make a difference. And I feel like this can start to become a very controversial topic very quickly as well, because it brings up a lot in people. And I myself, I went to Nutritional Therapy Association I don't know if you're familiar with them and I also noticed massive differences when I just switched what I was eating. I mean, like I was drinking five diet coaks a day and eating Kraft, mac and cheese and Ben and Jerry's for dinner, but I was also skinny. 

It was that whole thing. It was like well, I'm skinny, why do I need that? Was so my mentality as well, I'm skinny, why does it matter? To me, that was the only thing that mattered, right? If you're skinny, that must mean you're healthy, which we know. That was so not true. 

And it was the same thing just dicking around on the internet. It was like, wow, protein is really important. I'm like what's protein? Why is no one talking about this? And I was like finding all this stuff about increasing your protein content really helps ADHD symptoms and anxiety symptoms and all these things I was struggling with in college, and that was before I went to NTA, but anyway. So it's like I went to NTA and I had such an interesting experience there in that I felt so much better temporarily and then flipped a switch into the fear and obsession and became so fearful about what I was eating Like oh no, I have eaten something that is not organic, I'm going to die. 

And I have finally gotten to a point where it feels like I have a really healthy balance, where it's like I do buy organic whenever I can. 

I eat clean. I know that I can only tolerate so much gluten dairy in my life before it starts to feel like not great, and so I can go out to a Mexican restaurant on the weekends and just fully enjoy it and worry at all or feel guilty whatsoever. Or I have in-laws that do not value high quality food and if I'm there I just enjoy it. Right, they're wonderful people. I get to enjoy my company and have no stress around it. But when I'm choosing what to eat for myself and what to go grocery shopping, I'm very intentional about what I put in my body, and I find so many have a history with food that is disordered or that has a lot of thoughts and beliefs and things about this, and we cannot lose the benefit of it, though, right, we have to remember that it's this balance. So I'm curious if you see a lot of that or how you work with things like that. 

0:20:41 - Speaker 2
It's an interesting dilemma. I've actually didn't even realize it at the time, but I was going through the same thing myself, right? Because the curse is that it works. You know, you change all this stuff. If you have severe health symptoms, you're gonna feel better. And then, of course, yeah, you become very fearful when you forget that you were eating five times worse, if not more, just weeks ago, and now one meal or one snack or whatever is the worst thing in the world. 

So the best way I can kind of represent this is I have a friend that her name's Lily, and Lily is probably the one person like I know for sure this opposite was actually hurting her worse, like the whole fear around food was actually hurting her worse. So Lily suffered with both anorexia and bulimia on and off as a kid and she has before and after photos of when she was doing the eating disorder stuff and then when she allowed herself to eat what she calls intuitively and now I'm not disrespecting her opinion. By the way, we've talked about this on podcasts together. I don't necessarily 100% back it. I mean, eating intuitively to her could be literal donuts from the shop down the road. I don't think anything is intuitive about that per se, but that's not the point. The point is, I am objective. I wanna know results more than anything else. Lily looks, sounds and just is healthier by every standard, doing what she is doing now than she was before, and so one way to think about this stuff and this isn't to freak people out, it's actually the opposite when you're operating in our modern world, unless you go full out remote, we are living in a toxic world. The damn rainwater has glyphosate in it, like, which is roundup. For those that may not know, we're in some trouble. So here's the thing. Then it becomes a thing of where are you going to allow your main source of stress to come from, because obviously human beings wouldn't have made it this far if we couldn't handle some stress. There's probably as an upper limit on that. I think that's why we're seeing so much chronic disease. But you gotta pick and choose your stuff. 

My dad I love him to death. He smokes two packs of cigarettes per day, but my dad has also worked as a landscaper since he was 17 years old and he's now 54. My dad is outside. He looks like he is from South America. He's tan, as can be. Vitamin D levels are probably great. 

I'm not advocating for smoking or eating bad, but he also does a habit that most of us suck at. He lives outside, he's working in the dirt, he's getting the probiotics, he's grounding technically. When he does this kind of stuff, that's really healthy and he's outside right, like he's just outside. That's great for you in general. So that's his stress. He's gonna smoke his two packs of cigarettes a day, something that I can advocate. No, not morally. 

But who am I to tell him that when I'm working at home half the time, sitting right now, and I'm eating perfectly or quote, unquote, perfectly, but it's my form of stress. So, like for me, I picked working and it sounds funny, but I love working. I have so much fun with the stuff that I'm doing, but I do realize it takes a toll. Just like you can't exercise 12 hours a day, you're probably not supposed to be working 14 hours a day, but I do love it. So if I nail my other stuff down, that's the stress that I can pick. So I think it's very individual. 

I mean, the real question that you asked was do I see a lot of this? Not as much in FDN, for one reason. The one reason is by the time you get to someone like FDN, you are quite ill Like this is not in your head. This is not, you know, being paranoid. I mean, most people are coming to us with autoimmune diseases that have been around for 10, 15 years. So, yes, the mindset stuff's still important, but these are people that, objectively, you look at their labs, they're a mess. You can't fake that. So that's when you draw the line the other way of. Okay, I don't want to be neurotic about stuff and allow that to be my form of stress now. But yeah, if you got seven different diagnosed things and nothing's working Western medicine-wise, no, I think that's okay to make some changes food-wise and habit-wise. So it's all about balance and remembering. 

As tough as this one is for me, because I'm a recovering control freak no one's getting out of here alive, and so you got to pick and choose your battles and you know what do you want your time here to look like? Because some people will even argue that, oh well, hey, I want to be healthy into old age. You know what? At the end of the day, living to 50 versus 80, I mean it's still a really damn short life, right? Personally, I want to live as long as possible and be healthy as possible. 

But I have friends that are competitive weight lifters and I mean they use performance enhancing drugs and they might pass away at 50 and then they're like you know what? I'm going to look good until that day and I'm going to love my life until then. So be it. So I've come to more acceptance with these things. You know, as long as you're not hurting me or hurting someone else, do whatever you like, and. But you got to have those conversations with yourself and actually figure out what works for you and most people they don't have those conversations with themselves. I think that's the problem. 

0:24:42 - Speaker 1
Yes, because that can be a very painful conversation. To have right, it's to be able to face and look around your life and be like crap, this is not what I wanted. This is nothing right. It takes a lot and this is where, like, being able to be with your pain is so important, and having the capacity to ask yourself those tough questions and face those realities is massive. It's much easier to just be like just kidding, I'm not going to look at that. 

0:25:06 - Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, because you end up in the wrong direction. Otherwise, like, we'll go into the performance enhancing drug thing. The problem is and I'm not accusing any particular friend of this, it's just thinking about it Okay, are you actually okay with your life ending at 50? Or do you want to just look really good right now so you can sleep with a bunch of people and impress people on Instagram and then you're good to go? And sometimes, unfortunately, it's actually that deeper stuff because they've never had that conversation. So they never wanted to die at 50. They're not okay with that, but they haven't had that conversation. 

Are you familiar with Ronnie Coleman? Because he would be the opposite of this. Okay, ronnie Coleman for those that don't know, one of the most famous bodybuilders of all time. The dude has had like a million surgeries. He still walks, I believe, with like some form of crutches. His back is messed up Steroids beyond belief. By the way. 

When they ask him, do you regret anything, he says not doing a third rep on 800 pounds for Squy. This man loves it. He doesn't care about the surgeries, he doesn't care about anything. He is so glad that he got to do that. So, whether or not he meant to do that. That's a man that had conversations with himself. He knew who he was. He knows what the risks are. I'm going to go do it. And he walks around more or less crippled right now, smiling and laughing, saying his only regret is not squatting 800 pounds for three instead of two. That is a passionate man and he's not hurting anyone else. I say, let them do their things. But you got to be able to get honest with yourself, and I'm skeptical of myself being honest with myself. I have to constantly check. I'm sure you're probably the same way. It's like you got to make sure this is the right intention. 

0:26:26 - Speaker 1
Yeah, especially when we have it's like is it our authentic intention? Or like what you said about somebody who just wants to look good on Instagram, it's like that feels really good in the moment, that I feel like what we should be doing, and it's like are you feeding into like a societal should, or are you feeling like really living into your own wisdom? And that is tough, and, yes, that is a powerful, tough thing, and that is a question I talk about with my clients of like what are your actual bad values? Like, what do you value? Not what you think you should value, not what your family think you should value, not what is going to make you feel more lovable and worthy to that person who bullied you in high school. It's what do you value? And that is a hard conversation. And when we can tap into that, though, it makes changing what you're eating so much easier, right, because it's like, oh, this makes sense that I would choose this thing that feels hard at the moment, because it's so worth this bigger why and vision I have for my life. 

0:27:22 - Speaker 2
Yeah, and I think especially my gosh with the social media thing. We allow our egos to get too involved in this stuff and then we can't hear the actual person in the background, like what they actually want. Another thing that was a blessing was getting kicked out of school because, granted listen, I don't want to sound like some hardened person. I went to probably the damn nicest juvenile detention facility in the United States. The food there was better than at my damn school. So I'm not some you know, hardened person. But in my perception at the time because a lot of my community it's not rich, but it's you go to college, you graduate high school. These are not even options to not do those things. And so my perception of myself at the time I was the biggest loser in the world. I have failed everything. I let everything down, and that sucked at first. But once I started getting off the pity potty and realizing, okay, what's the blessing here? The blessing was I couldn't lose at that point I could have went and done anything and it would have been improvement in other people's eyes. So then I stopped living for other people and I just said what the hell do I want to do? I can't be any worse than what I'm doing right now. Right, so what is it that I want to do? Is anything's a step up and those things? That's how you start. That's a great way to start those conversations. 

So it might be hard to embody if you've never been through something like that, and I wouldn't personally recommend getting arrested and having those situations. But you got to really ask yourself regularly what would I be doing? What would this look like if no one else was watching? And of course, humans are always having to. We're going to interact with other people. I get that it's not a perfect question, because if no one was here on this world, maybe you wouldn't be doing anything that you're doing right now. But we got to have those deeper questions and it's not supposed to be all topic. It does lead back to these health things of you got to know yourself, because then you can make the best decisions. 

There are some people listening right now that, yes, you would be better served by living a very disciplined life and utilizing some type of lab testing. There are others that that is not going to help you. The cons outweigh the pros and you're better off accepting giving this up. Letting go Right, letting go. There's a good book actually titled that, so you got to do that and only you can figure out what that is. There's coaches like us that can assist that, but I think at the end of the day, that's a very personal thing 100% and I think you're touching on something that is so huge. 

0:29:18 - Speaker 1
Is that so often in so many people listening are really into the mind body aspect, which is, I mean, what I now focus on? Like that is my passion. I obsessed with it and the biggest mistake I think people make in it is thinking that mind, body stuff. They put it all into the mind or all into the nervous system and forget we still have a physical body to care for. And mind body doesn't mean that you are neglecting your health or that you don't get lab tests or you don't go to the physical therapist or you don't go to the doctor If that's what your body is telling you to do. 

The key is that when you can connect to your own body, often you will get a very strong inkling to be like wow, I really need to investigate this one thing. 

Or that's where Evan's profile just pops up on your Instagram and you're like this is my guy Right. It's like you have that intuitive hit of this is where I need to go next. You're all of a sudden you look at your bookshelf and that book that's been sitting there for ages that you never read. I know that feeling Right is like, well, we have to have that connection and that's the guidance. Or it's like, okay, now it is time to start doing XYZ. That I knew I've heard this a million times get out in the sun. It's not new information, but it's like all of a sudden it just hits differently and you can embody it. And when we have our mind body connection, it actually allows us to take care of our body better, because it's being self-guided versus being in this fear like let's get every lapse has done to make sure that I don't have XYZ and I'm in a cycle of fear and anxiety and something must be wrong Often is where we get lost in it. 

0:30:46 - Speaker 2
Then yeah, the thing for me, because I was actually more reluctant to the mind body side before. I'm not reluctant at all. I've actually realized why I felt that way and there's dogma on both sides and you were going directly against that. So I appreciate that greatly. I realized why it happens. It's because it's confusing. The reason it's confusing is because right now the placebo effect works. That's how pharmaceuticals come to market. They have to pass the placebo. 

So on one end we know that human mind is so strong that we've actually made whole medical standards have to go up against it. But then, at the same time, if the mind alone just had these unlimited powers. I always bring up these two examples One, show me the person that doesn't die like ever. And two, show me the monk, the typical stereotype of someone that just focuses away all this stuff and has control over their body. Go, stick a monk on top of a cell tower and tell them to meditate away the issues that would come with that. Right, we know you're not going to live forever. You can't sit on the top of the cell tower and do that. But we also know that placebo is very real to the point that we have medical standards based off of it. I don't get that. I don't know how you measure that exactly, but there's obviously something to both. Then is the proof. I think that proves it. 

0:31:52 - Speaker 1
Oh, 100%. Yeah, I think that's really well articulated, but it's both and not an either, or, if you like. So often these worlds fight each other when it's like, yeah, we can all work together. It actually is a beautiful adjunct to each other, because one client in particular is coming up who she had really complex autoimmune conditions and some really complex symptoms that she had a massive amount of anxiety around and a really hard time speaking up for herself and had a really hard time articulating what she would need from a doctor. So what happened is she would go to these appointments and she had so much body shame that the second they would weigh her, she would shut down because they would then get in. She was morbidly obese or she was, and she would have so much shame about it. The issue would then start talking about her weight and she would never get to be like no, these are the symptoms I need you to look at, because that's why my weight is what it is, because I cannot take action because of XYZ Right, it's like she needed other symptoms to be focused on. What happened is just she would lose all of her personal power in these appointments because she was thrown into a free state. So in our work together, we worked on that piece, and then what ended up happening? 

Quite quickly, like within a matter of like two months, she was able to get this appointment with this new specialist Again, one that was just kind of handed to her by the universe right. All of a sudden she's like this is the person I need to see. She walked in, made it so clear of like today I do not want to be weighed, this is not helpful, it's a distraction. I need to talk about XYZ. And she got a diagnosis that changed her life for the better, because finally the root cause was addressed Wow, nice. And so many of her symptoms then were able to be addressed because she got the right testing done, the right medication. And all of a sudden it's like now you know things can fall into line. 

0:33:37 - Speaker 2
Well, the irony is, I'm sure she was much less mentally stressed after that too, and it all works together, oh 100% right. 

0:33:43 - Speaker 1
So it's like lab testing can be so beneficial because it can expose exactly what needs to be intervened on. So I'm curious if there are specific ones that, like you tend to go for, or like how do you work around lab testing? What's just like that, a really open thing. 

0:33:56 - Speaker 2
Which specific labs do we utilize? 

0:33:58 - Speaker 1
Yeah, like, are there specific ones that you recommend or is it very much based on someone's symptoms? Like, where do you go with that? 

0:34:03 - Speaker 2
Well, that's a good question, because FDM is based off a system, because what we try to avoid is the sounds like method, because we actually think that's what happens in Western medicine a lot and it creates huge issues. So it's not to say that there aren't certain disease states that lead to a predictable set of symptoms, but from a holistic perspective, it's almost irrelevant to us because we need to treat the whole body or address the whole body, not one specific thing. So a classic example that I'll read Davis, the founder of FDM, always uses, is all right, you got your hair falling out, we gain fatigue. Cold, dry skin sounds like thyroid. So now I think it sounds like thyroid, I'm going to run some type of panel, blood panel that will validate that. Hear me out, I'm actually saying this correctly. Worst case is that I'm correct, because now I pat myself on the back and think, oh yeah, it's just the thyroid and you get a supplement or medication and you're good to go. But the truth is there's so much going on under the hood that wasn't addressed there. So, fdm, we use a system of labs on every single person and then, if something else is needed because, yes, there are unique cases that can happen. But this system I'm very involved in this space and this system is the best that I've seen in terms of the predictability and replicability of the outcomes in the clients. Like. I don't know anyone who has not gotten 70% better within three months of doing an FDM program. Now some people stay stuck at 70, 80% and do need more. But the fact that I can pretty much guarantee that to someone when I'm talking to them or looking in their eyes, that's pretty profound promise to be able to give for people that feel like crap, like I did. 

And so what we use, we do food sensitivity testing, ideally USA or Canada based because we can use a better food sensitivity test, but we recommend that internationally as well we use a stool test. We are gonna look at other aspects of digestive function. We look at oxidative stress and liver function. Then we also look at a mucosal barrier assessment, so different than a gut test. We're in layman's terms, we're more or less measuring a leaky gut to a degree. We're gonna figure out what diet would be best for them, not in a dogmatic sense of a paleo, vegan, whatever, but actually like what macronutrients at certain times would feel best for you. And then there's a self correction sheet provided with that, so you can actually just figure it out yourself whether or not it was accurate. So that's been very helpful to me and many others. 

And then we do look at hormones too, because when someone's under chronic stress, we know their hormones got out of whack. It's just like where are we at? That's one of the best things that we can use actually to track the progress in the client, because if they have a proper hormonal response, okay, they might still be under a lot of stress, but we know that they're actually getting better. Obviously their stuff is in tank. So that's kind of the core things that we use. It ends up being five tests that we actually use on every single person starting out and remember these are generally very sick people that are working with us. 

0:36:31 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and I think that's important. So what would a typical person who you'd recommend, like turning to FDM, like any specific symptoms or length of time they've been dealing with it, or just anyone, be like hey, if you're experiencing XYZ, look into us. 

0:36:45 - Speaker 2
Sure great question. So obviously, and you know this, but I just wanna say for the audience, we don't treat anything specifically. But it also would be undeniable for me to not acknowledge or it'd be stupid for me to not acknowledge that undeniably, certain things do better with our program than not. A virtually any autoimmune disease does extremely well with what we're offering Mental health symptoms that are non-circumstantial. So what I mean by that is that's what I had in my opinion. Non-circumstantial is not a clinical thing, by the way, that's something I came up with, but I worded it this way because it led to understanding. For my own stuff. Circumstantial mental health issues mean that there was a circumstance or series of circumstances usually severe trauma might be abuse that led to the person's mental health outcomes. So, yes, if you had abuse as a child and then all of a sudden you got panic attacks, you don't need to be a psychiatrist to know that that's probably linked together. Versus me, I had not a perfect life, but it was decent enough. Man, I have nothing to complain about. So why am I dealing with panic attacks, depression, all those things? So the non-circumstantial ones, the ones that I had, if they're mystery mental health things, they do very well with our program. Anything GI-wise that had these severe GI symptoms and Western medicine can't help. We will definitely be able to help with that. And I'll also answer the question in the sense of like where is this not ideal? 

We do have FDNs that work with cancer patients. It is always always in conjunction with an MD or someone else, not because we can't help, but cancer is very odd. It takes over certain systems of the body that would actually help you heal normally. I mean the best bet with cancer don't get it Like prevent it. Honestly that's really the move. But if you have it, you know you want to do everything that you can. So we do work with that. It's not a perfect system for that. I don't know of any perfect system for that. So if someone came to me with cancer as an FDN, personally I refer them out. But we do have FDNs that work with them. So autoimmunity, the non-circumstantial mental health issues, gut stuff, and I should probably throw in their skin things as well. Considering how bad my skin was and it helped that. It's very good for that too. 

0:38:36 - Speaker 1
Awesome. Now, that's super helpful. And since you know, a lot of people obviously listening have chronic pain. I know I've seen nutrition help chronic pain, so I'm curious if there's any specific types of chronic pain that you would also throw in as. Oh, this is something to look at. 

0:38:50 - Speaker 2
Sure, so I don't take on a bunch of clients with I. Actually I have a business where we do red light therapy, so ironically we work with a lot of them in that capacity. But I know enough to say, okay, this is where I could see this all connecting. Obviously, one you need to address the mind, body stuff, Because of course that is a huge thing with pain. That's proven, yes. At the same time it's an odd story, but it's in my book. 

When I started using drugs, one of the things was an anti-anxiety medication, xanax, that I was getting illegally. I took the lowest prescribable dose at the time. I was an interesting character because I'm doing these illegal things, but I was also highly anxious so I didn't want to go over at the time, at least the amount that I was supposed to take, but I didn't get it from a doctor. So, yeah, trying to figure that one out, right. But anyway, I took this low dose and I remember I had chronic shoulder pain and that melted away completely. So I'm not advocating taking Xanax for your shoulder pain, but what I'm saying is I had these severe mental health symptoms and by lowering the mental health stuff, which was done temporarily with Xanax but can also be done through lab testing and figuring out the roots of that whoa shoulder pain goes away. 

I've seen food sensitivities, especially like people with fibromyalgia. That's obviously tons of pain, my gosh. You can wipe fibromyalgia out with the right protocol, and I'm not making a claim, I've just I've genuinely seen that in people. So that's yeah, so that can happen. So you do see these things where it's like whoa, when we get rid of the gut bugs, when we help you actually get rid of the food sensitivities and some of these other things, it can really help. 

The last thing I would say is not that I guess there would still be a bigger root to the pain, but if someone's so burnt out hormonally like when you look at their chart they don't have the proper responses to deal with a lot of the stuff that might just come up in life any single day. And so if you can't produce any cortisol anymore very minimal amounts you do need some to live. But if you're producing very minimal amounts yes, something that might otherwise be fairly benign to the average person you may feel seven out of 10 pain. So those would be the obvious connections that I would see in terms of how it could help people with chronic pain. I believe there are a few FDNs that kind of specialize in that stuff. But yeah, I would say it can help. It's just not as intuitive to me like where it connects. Just other than those examples. 

0:40:49 - Speaker 1
I know I got you and that makes a whole lot of sense. And again, it's like when you're doing the testing and the lab tests, it's like you have the numbers and you have the data to show you. And I think sometimes I know a lot of my clients is like they go and get all the tests and their tests are perfect, right, Looks like there isn't anything showing up on their test, so it's like that's also a sign. But I think it can be helpful to be like okay, as a ruling out as well. 

Yes, and it can be very helpful to be like talk about easing anxiety levels, where it's like, okay, it's actually not these things here's where I focus or oh wow, look at, this number is really needs to be attended to. So it's like numbers are can be very, very helpful. 

0:41:21 - Speaker 2
Yeah, if you've been struggling for a while, I think that makes sense, especially in a rule out sense, right, like if it's been going on for five years and nothing's worked. Well, yeah, maybe check this and yeah, worst thing that can happen is there's nothing and you know it's something else then, and that's why our labs are set up in a systematic type way, because you're going to find something. 

0:41:36 - Speaker 1
So yes, yes, well, evan, I want to respect your time and I feel like I could ask you a million more questions, but I'm going to ask you where can people find you, where can people hang out with you and For FDN, just go to functionaldiagnosticnutritioncom. 

0:41:51 - Speaker 2
We're also very responsive on Instagram. You can kind of find everything there. At FDN training I have a podcast as well. It's not a trade off to this podcast. It'd be something that you can add. In addition, we're really focused on kind of talking to extremely sick people, generally speaking. So it's very broad. I like yours because it's very niche. We had to kind of go broad with ours, but it's interesting because you do get every kind of medical case you can imagine. So that's there. And then for personal stuff, I don't typically work one on one with clients as much, but I do have FDNs that work for me, and so it's Bucks County like B-U-C-K-S BucksCountyLighttherapycom. That's our in person business, but we do offer online stuff and it can be found there. So that's for the lab testing side. It's actually kind of a perfect mix here. It's not that we're against it. We don't do the mindset stuff at all, like we refer out for that. We are the science lab thing. If you need that and want to do it in addition, it could be a really powerful combination. 

0:42:39 - Speaker 1
I love that because it's like I have moved totally into like the mind-body side of things. That's just mindset, it's like nervous system, right. It's like I was trained in how to do supplements and how to order and I'm just like that. I don't really like doing any of that. Yeah, but so I get to refer out to people like yourself and FDNs Very cool and other FNTPs who do that, because I just that's not where my passion is. I love like meeting people like yourself, right Again, it's like this like beautiful adjunct and knowing where your passion is and where you love to help people and yeah, it's awesome. 

0:43:06 - Speaker 2
Yeah, thank you, we need both. So thank you for having me Valuable? 

0:43:09 - Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely. So that's a valuable conversation, and talk to you soon. As always, thank you so much for choosing to spend your time with the Unweaving Chronic Pain Podcast. Please, if this has been supportive, share it with a friend. Give us a five star rating on Apple so others can find this valuable work, this valuable message, so we as a collective can get to the point where each individual is able to step into their full gifts, their full unique value, see their own worthiness, move away from chronic symptoms that are limiting them and start living life full out to make this world a better place. See you next week. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page