Michael Roesslein: Hello, and welcome to The Natural Evolution produced by Rebel Health Tribe …  And we’re recording an episode here with Kathleen DiChiara, whose name I pronounced on the first try perfectly. Kathleen, how you doing?

Kathleen DiChiara:

I’m great, thanks.

Michael Roesslein:

Awesome. Thanks for being here. I’m really excited to get into your story today. You were actually recommended by somebody in our Rebel Health Tribe audience when they found out about the podcast and they said, “You need to look up Kathleen and hear her story.” And I watched the video on your site and read through everything. And it’s really amazing. So I’m excited for everybody who doesn’t know you to get to know you a little bit and hear your story and hopefully they can relate to what you’ve been through and take as much inspiration out of it as I’m sure a lot of people have. So before we get started, if you don’t know Kathleen, she’s a leading expert in functional nutrition and gut health with a particular interest in how the loss of microbial diversity leads to chronic disease.

She’s a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner like my myself and bio-individual nutrition practitioner, integrative nutrition health coach, advocate, and professionally trained chef. For the past 10 years, she’s been committed to dismantling the chronic disease epidemic by teaching women how to reconnect to their nutritional wisdom so they can harness the power of their microbiome to regenerate health at home. Most of her research sits at the intersection of mindset, daily habits, and the microbiome, which she describes in her most recent award-winning book End Chronic Disease, the Healing Power of Beliefs, Behaviors, and Bacteria.

You broke into the field of nutrition to uncover the root causes of your own diseases and went from at one point competing in triathlons and working in capital markets at a fortune 500 company to becoming completely disabled at age 35. And also around the same time your son was diagnosed with autism. So we can tell the rest of the story on the podcast, but that is quite a U-turn from triathlons, fortune 500 work to completely disabled. And I would guess growing up, and even your early professional life, you were not anticipating a career in nutrition and microbiome and health coaching, correct?

Kathleen DiChiara:

That’s right.

Michael Roesslein:

So that wasn’t on your radar at all?

Kathleen DiChiara:

Not at all.

Michael Roesslein:

Okay.

Kathleen DiChiara:

I did love food. I always thought because I loved exercise and fitness and those kinds of things, which I had kind of a love for in my teens. And I always thought I was eating healthy and living a healthy lifestyle. So I definitely envisioned myself being health conscious, but definitely did not foresee this as… I had a love for business and entrepreneurship and those kinds of things, so I was very happy in that.

Michael Roesslein:

So you were 35. Did it take time to get to that point or was this an abrupt symptom onset? So you’re in your early mid thirties, you’re exercising a lot, competing in triathlons, working. How many kids did you have at that time?

Kathleen DiChiara:

I had two at the time, so I had two boys. I had a three year old and an 18 month old.

Michael Roesslein:

Okay.

Kathleen DiChiara:

And yeah, I was under a lot of stress. We had just bought a new house and we were still carrying the mortgage on the other house, which had not sold. And I was working very long days, so very long hours working in Boston and commuting from Rhode Island. And it was sudden onset neuropathy that I actually developed in my left leg. That’s how it came on. I think it was stress-induced, but I think it was also an inflammatory condition that was induced. And I also think I had undiagnosed celiac, which in hindsight, I didn’t know. I mean, I had conditions early on, even as a teenager, I had a duodenal ulcer that went undiagnosed.

I had cystic acne that I had been treated with Acutane and other aggressive medications. So the things that I know now obviously pointed out some red flags that I can see created some type of a pattern there. So there were some warning signs. So by the time that the neuropathy came on, it did feel very sudden, it felt unrelated and it was unresolvable. So it came on quickly, but then did not resolve on its own and I ultimately ended up needing back surgery. So it was related to a disc at an L4-L5. So I had a discectomy laminectomy, which means they carved the bone to get access to the nerve and then remove some portion of the nerve, and when I woke up from that surgery, I was paralyzed.

Michael Roesslein:

Wow.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Temporary.

Michael Roesslein:

Was it a surgical error?

Kathleen DiChiara:

It wasn’t. They did a CT scan immediately to see if they had severed the nerves in my lower back, which they did not. So that was a good sign.

Michael Roesslein:

More just kind of a trauma response from your body?

Kathleen DiChiara:

It was a trauma response. Yep, exactly.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. I’ve done a lot of study into trauma the last three years, and people don’t realize that you’re asleep during a surgery, but your body isn’t.

Kathleen DiChiara:

That’s right.

Michael Roesslein:

And so people often experience shifts in their health, in their emotional states, in all kinds of areas after surgeries. And they don’t think anything of it because to them, they went there, got knocked out, woke up, was finished, went home.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yes.

Michael Roesslein:

But the body goes through the process of the surgery.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yes.

Michael Roesslein:

Wow.

Kathleen DiChiara:

And what’s interesting about that, Michael, is I had had in 1997, so that surgery was in 2007. So 10 years before that, I had been viciously attacked by two 140 pound Akitas. So those are Japanese attack dogs that were… I was a runner at the time. So not doing triathlons, but competitive racer. I also owned my own transportation company, so I used to do livery. I had a livery plate and I used to do corporate travel. So I would pick up executives and take them from the airport to business locations.

As I said, I was kind of an entrepreneur chief. And I had dropped off a vehicle at a mechanic shop and went to pick it up myself. I went to work out at a gym and then I went to pick it up, and the two attack dogs got me in the parking lot and attacked me and bit through my quadricep, severed my IT band in my right leg. And then I went into shock. I actually thought I was going to be malled to death and killed. So I went into shock and the employees at that location peeled the dogs off of me, separated their mouths, and then put me in the back of a van and drove me to an emergency room. And I ended up having reconstructive surgery.

Michael Roesslein:

When was this on your timeline? This is before you got sick, right?

Kathleen DiChiara:

This is before. This is before.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah.

Kathleen DiChiara:

But to your point, I ended up having a posttraumatic stress disorder as a result of that attack. And it triggered a very severe fear obviously of animals, which I since had resolved, but I had to go through extensive therapy, physical therapy and mental therapy to get over that traumatic experience. And I suspect now that then to 10 years later, having the neuropathy, which was now in my other leg, but then having the surgery, sometimes I think that because we store memories in our tissue, when the body is then operated on, we can release information or trauma that is stored in our tissue, even if it seems unrelated to a previous event. So my suspicion for myself is that, like you said, even though I was unconscious during that procedure, I had a traumatic experience that my body went through and it went into shock. And that’s exactly what happened. Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

That happens all the time with body work actually. I have friends who are body workers and they’ll be working on somebody like massage or some other forms of body work, and they’ll tweak a certain spot and somebody will just start sobbing or they’ll freeze up.

Kathleen DiChiara:

I wrote about that in my book in End Chronic Disease, I wrote about one of the belief systems that I think drives chronic disease is that we don’t see the relationship between the emotions. And I wrote about that experience. I was having fascia work done as part of my recovery from my back surgery after the paralysis because I had to learn how to walk again, and I was getting fascia work at the scar tissue at my surgery. And I started crying and I didn’t know why, because she wasn’t doing anything that was painful. She was releasing the pelvic area and she knew she was actually trained in this work. She had trained out in Sedona and she was very, very well-educated on the deep tissue and the fascial work and the energy of what happens when people go through traumatic experiences.

And she said, “No, you have emotions are stored in the tissue and it’s just coming up and it’s perfectly normal and whatever is happening, just let it come out.” And it was beyond my control. I absolutely was releasing an incredible amount of emotion there. So I did talk about that. And one of the reasons I talked about that was because in my work now with nutrition, I talk about this with people, because I can dial in on your diet and you can have the perfect diet and have exercise and movement and all the things and yet, if you are not recognizing that the tissue and your body is really storing data and storing those emotions and holding onto things, then they’re not recognizing that that’s a healing opportunity and that you are potentially really holding yourself locked in. So it was really just for people to acknowledge that it’s there. Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

It’s incredible-

Kathleen DiChiara:

And to share that that was my experience, too, like you said.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. It’s pretty remarkable. I’ve been studying a lot in that area the last few years, and it’s helped me realize how incomplete my approach was when I was working only with nutrition and lifestyle and supplements and lab tests. And there’d be the people who get a little bit better, but not all the way better. Or they have relapses or there’s symptoms you can’t figure out and it doesn’t make any sense.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

I noticed that oftentimes they had extremely stressful life situations or really unhealthy relationships, or they’d tell me about some traumatic thing that had happened. So I started to kind of piece that together, but I didn’t know what to do with it. It was just kind of interesting. I knew that was outside of my scope and I hadn’t been through my own work in that area. So I really had no idea what to do. And I’m kind of seeing a lot of the functional medicine world be in that same place right now. They’ve realized that it’s the elephant in the room. That it’s the thing that nobody knows how to address or work with. And now I’m seeing a bit of a scramble to address it. And that’s actually a platform I’ve been working on for two years is to address that for functional medicine people and give them a place where they can send people to find that kind of work. But yeah, it’s super interesting and fascinating and it goes back to what medicine was before it is now anyway. Like that was always part of-

Kathleen DiChiara:

Like a full circle.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that went away for a while and now it’s now it’s back.

Kathleen DiChiara:

They do go away. We just covered it up.

Michael Roesslein:

So you woke up paralyzed from where, like the waist down kind of?

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Oh, and what was-

Kathleen DiChiara:

So I just stayed in the hospital for a week and then I was transported home and I was bedridden here. So at home we had a guest bedroom, which I stayed.

Michael Roesslein:

What was that like when you first realized you couldn’t move your legs?

Kathleen DiChiara:

Well, I mean the initial response, I was horrified in the hospital because I was alone. I was isolated. My husband was home with the boys. We had the two little toddlers and I couldn’t turn over. I couldn’t get to the phone in the room and I couldn’t get to my buzzer. I couldn’t buzz the nurse. So I-

Michael Roesslein:

You just had to wait for somebody to walk in?

Kathleen DiChiara:

I ended up getting to the phone to call him and I called him and I said, “I need help.” And he couldn’t, he said the hospital is closed but I’m coming. So he ended up calling a neighbor and had the neighbor come over in the middle of the night, or it was probably 11 o’clock at night or something. I must have woken up from my surgery. So someone was probably at the nurse’s station, but they weren’t doing their rounds or whatever. I remember it being really dark, and he broke into the hospital.

In other words, the visiting hours were over, so he waited for someone to leave and just went in and just found his way up to my room after hours and came in. And he basically was like, “What is the matter? What’s happened here?” And I was like, “I don’t know what’s wrong. Something’s wrong.” So from there, it’s kind of that whole experience of that whole moment isn’t clear to me about what transpired next, other then getting the CT scans. I mean, I know that the doctor was quite nervous about whether or not he had done some of damage and [crosstalk 00:13:57]

Michael Roesslein:

Right after the CT scan, he assured you like, “We didn’t cut your nerves. This should go away. Like it should get better.”

Kathleen DiChiara:

Right. So the goal there was then “Let’s just have nurses come in, physical therapists, they had therapists come in and let’s just work with you to kind of get it back.” And I was very focused on doing whatever I needed to do. I was determined to get well. I was definitely not a poor me. I was hyper focused on my choices. Like, “Let’s try this, let’s try that. Is there somebody else that understands this? Maybe there’s a type of sports therapist.” I went up to Boston. I said “Maybe they’ve known maybe athletes that had this. Maybe there’s been other traumatic injuries like this.” So I was definitely on a hunt to try to figure out all the things and I was very focused on helping myself do whatever I could. The challenge is there aren’t a lot of things in the toolbox in terms of what you do when somebody’s had that response.

So it’s kind of like, there’s nothing we can do for you because there’s nothing wrong, basically.

Michael Roesslein:

On your scans?

Kathleen DiChiara:

Right. So you just have to wait it out because when people have that type of a reaction, it’s basically medically called conversion disorder, which is like hysteria but it’s a traumatic disorder of the tissue. And so you have to wait for the nervous system to correct itself, basically. And that can go on for a week, a month, two months, it can be intermittent. It can come and go. And for me it was… I don’t even remember how long. Probably weeks where it was no movement at all, and then I got slightly better. And then I went into a walker and then I eventually went into crutches and then I had a limp.

Michael Roesslein:

How long was that period for?

Kathleen DiChiara:

So this was months and months and then probably a full year.

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:16:04]

Kathleen DiChiara:

So this was months and months, and then probably a full year where then I got put into a body brace, which they built like a cast, which went from my ribs to below my hips, which was a stabilizing cast. And it was built like a mold. And that was just to stabilize my torso so that I didn’t have any movement of the spine because with every piece of movement, I had any kind of fluctuation, I had excruciating pain. So they were going to put an insert, like a device into my spinal cord that basically severed all of the pain messages from going to the brain. So that was one device that was going to be implanted into my spine in addition to steel rods. Because I had what’s called facet syndrome, which is the facet joints deteriorating. And I also had a disc herniation up in C1.

I decided not to do any of that. I felt like at 35, there was no reason why I should start mechanically interfering with the spinal cord, putting steel rods in, probably would be a horrific thing come 30 years from now in my sixties and seventies. So I’m glad that I made those decisions not to do the interventions, and obviously I didn’t respond well to the laminectomy and discectomy so I don’t know how I would’ve responded to those even more aggressive types of treatments. So unfortunately, the options were [inaudible 00:17:29]. So about now we went on three years of intensive therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, acupuncture, every type of therapy you can think of. Medication, steroid injections, narcotics-

Michael Roesslein:

For three years?

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah, three years.

Michael Roesslein:

With little kids?

Kathleen DiChiara:

With little kids. And at the same time that I was getting my diagnosis, one of my sons was diagnosed with seven different developmental disabilities. So we had to take him to therapy. Speech therapy, occupational therapy. So he was going to therapy full-time and I was going to therapy full-time. So I had lost my job at this point because no chance that I was probably going to be able to return to work. So now I had lost the job that I absolutely loved, which I’d had for 10 years at the Fortune 500. I had worked up from an administrative position to the head of investor relations. I worked on the 20th floor of the Prudential center, overlooking Fenway park. I had a position that I just loved. And yeah, and I was devastated. I mean, I think I was more devastated because I had attached my worth to my career, and that was my identity. And I think that’s really the hard part. I think that we kind of get wrapped up in who we are, is what we do and it’s our work.

And then that kind of gets pulled out from under us. And now you have a traumatic injury, you can’t predict the outcome of your future. You have a child who now has developmental disabilities and is struggling and you don’t know where you’re going as far as your role as a mother, as a partner, and then you lose your career. So it’s kind of like all of those things are wrapped up into this one moment, but it’s very pivotal because you’re trying to make sense of it all, but you’re also the patient.

Michael Roesslein:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Kathleen DiChiara:

Right? So you’re the victim and you’re suffering, but there’s also this identity crisis and you’re trying to advocate for yourself. So that was really interesting. I think at the time I tried to kind of plug the holes in. So because I was struggling with the identity of losing my job, I joined the board of directors for a nonprofit agency here, so that I could plug my mind into something, even though my physical body was collapsing. And I served on their board for almost eight years and then ended up becoming the chair of the board. They serve over 40,000 people in the state with special healthcare needs. But I was like, “How can I give back to other people that are suffering, even though I’m suffering?” I don’t know if that’s normal, if that’s people who are in that place of literally at the bottom of the barrel. And they’re like, “Well, what can I do?”

But I actually encourage people to do that. I feel like the tendency is to feel like when you’re suffering that you don’t have anything to give. And I always think that whether you can be kind to someone else. It doesn’t have to be a lot. The reason I chose a volunteer position was because I wasn’t being paid, it didn’t have a huge time commitment, but I knew I could give them my experience. I had a lot of business experience and entrepreneur experience. So my intellect was still intact and it was only a commitment of once a month for a meeting. And so that was a huge contribution, but I think it was a lifeline, too, during a time of suffering to make that connection to other people that were suffering in my community. So that was kind of a profound thing for me that I think really made that time matter.

Michael Roesslein:

Hey, if you’re enjoying the show, make sure you head over to Rebelhealthtribe.com\kit. That’s K I T. And grab the RHT starter kit, which includes a sampler of four free videos from our professional masterclasses and webinars, the RHT healthy sleep guide, the wellness vault coupon book, which will save you money on all of our favorite health-related tools and resources, a professional product guide, and a coupon for 15% off your first order in our shop. That’s rebelhealthtribe.com\kit, K I T, and you’ll get all that delivered right away. Also, if you’re on Facebook, we’ve got a fun, engaging, and supportive group over there as well with thousands of health seekers, just like yourself. Just search for rebel health tribe, and you’ll find us. Thanks for listening, and now back to the show.

Kathleen DiChiara:

To answer your question about how long is that window, it was really stretched out. It was a long time of suffering. There was no like, “Oh, it got better every single day. And then all of a sudden, I threw the crutches out the window and ran down the street and it was like a hallelujah moment.” No, I mean, I had a lot of setbacks, a really, really difficult time and it was slow and it was hard. And there were a lot of times that I wanted to give up. But I think for me, what ultimately turned me to the field of nutrition that I’m in now is because I knew that the narcotics would kill me. I mean, I knew that my liver would never last. I knew that I was dying from the inside on the medication, but I didn’t have any other choice. I couldn’t turn off that whole system of pain. I had chronic pain, fibromyalgia, I was in early stages of MS at that point. They said there were lesions on the brain.

Michael Roesslein:

How was that found? You had symptoms aside from the surgical damage that they investigated for that?

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah. I ended up developing… Well, the chronic pain syndrome kind of went hand-in-hand post-operatively, and I think that really was just triggered, Michael, by the massive amount of narcotics as a result of the surgery. And then, so at that point now you’re depleting your cortisol. So you’re trying to deal with the pain, so you’re plugging one hole, but now you’re depleting it with a [inaudible 00:23:44]. You’re contaminating the liver. So you’re doing one thing and now the hormones are crashing. So now I’m at 35. Most women who get into 35, automatically you’re dipping in your progesterone, which is normal, but now you want to throw all the drugs at it, and I’m bedridden and I’m in a post-traumatic stress situation. And so what’s happening now is the body is starting to collapse. And now it also has to deal with the toxicity of the drugs, the steroids, the pharmaceuticals. So now it’s crashing.

So what I realized was, I’m going to have to dig myself out or the body is just going to fail. And so that’s what I did. I originally started studying herbs. I kind of had this inkling that maybe there’s something in nature that can turn off the pain signals, if they’re trying to turn off the pain signals in the brain. I was listening to what my doctors were trying to do with the interventions and then asking kind of the same question. If they’re trying to turn the inflammation off, if they’re trying to turn those pain signals off, perhaps there’s something in nature that has that same capacity. So it was kind of a curiosity, which I think was my nature anyway.

And so that’s what I started doing. Kind of asking those questions. So I started poking around and looking at herbs and those kinds of things, and that led down one path. And then from there, I got curious about different levels of labs. My cortisol was tanked. I didn’t have any cortisol, which obviously is an anti-inflammatory which turns off your pain signals, so that made sense. So I think from there, it was just the beginning of that detective or that self-exploration of kind of piecing it all together. And once you start unraveling that, and peeling back the layers, you realize, “Oh, there’s a lot here.” And once I started doing that, I kind of didn’t turn back.

Michael Roesslein:

So how did you manage two little ones while you were in that kind of… Because it’s not like you could run around.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Right.

Michael Roesslein:

I’ve watched it with my wife and a lot of people in our community that there’s almost an illness guilt or… Well, in your case, I don’t know. Illness isn’t the necessarily right word, but you’re not able to do what you feel you should be doing. And so there’s a shame or a guilt. I know that she always felt terrible about how much I had to do when I was doing all the shopping and the cooking and the taking care of all the house things and taking care of her and managing all the practitioners and stuff. And we didn’t have little ones during that time. So I can’t even imagine trying to throw that into the mix too, but I think I’ve heard from a lot of people that have been through similar situations, that there’s a lot of questioning yourself and beating yourself up for…

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah, there is. I think it’s a great question. I’ve thought about it a lot and it comes up a lot and I’ve been asked a lot in a lot of different… I’ve done interviews and I’ve done some TV segments where people have asked that question. And I think initially I felt guilty, but I’ve always felt guilty. I felt guilty going to work, I felt guilty as a working mother that I’ve not done the right thing. I’ve left my children. I’ve felt guilty as a mother that stays home because I’m not providing enough, I’m not doing it right.

Michael Roesslein:

Kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah. I mean, women questioning themselves [crosstalk 00:27:22].

Michael Roesslein:

A pickle that women in this society find themselves in pretty often, I think.

Kathleen DiChiara:

All the time. And I think my children were the motivation for what made me say, “I don’t want this life and I don’t want them to remember me sick.” I think it is very, very difficult for anybody, men or women, or anyone quite frankly, to have chronic illness and to be raising their family. And it ultimately was the motivation for me to pick myself up and say, “No one else is going to save me.” One of the things that I write about in my work is that you have to be your own healer and that doesn’t mean you have to do the healing. I mean, I’m advocating for people to reach out and get help, but nobody knows you like you do. And no one is going to advocate for you like you are. You’re going to advocate for yourself or your child, but your children can be the motivating factor that really pushes you to say, “I don’t want them to think of me as someone that’s sick and struggling. And I want them to remember me.”

But we can also teach our children empathy and compassion by showing them that “Yeah, I’m human and I’m having a very difficult time and this is a roadblock that I’m hitting, but I don’t expect to be like this forever.” And I think it’s the language that we use around it and how we frame it. I don’t think we have to burden our children with our suffering, even if we’re having a hard time. We think hiding it from them is probably doing more of a disservice. I know that when we don’t explain things in a way that helps children understand, there’s a lot of uncertainty. Like my father lost his brother at a very young age in Ireland many, many years ago. And I recently just learned about this.

I did not know this and they didn’t discuss it. They didn’t discuss why he died, only that he had an illness and when they got home from school one day, he was gone. Now, I don’t think that’s healthy either. I think to not talk about illness or chronic illness or the struggles that we deal with is equally as damaging. So I think you have to find that place that you feel comfortable with. It was very difficult. I think one of the decisions that we made was I rested in a guest bedroom instead of in our master bedroom. And I think that was a good decision because I didn’t want our master bedroom to be a place of illness or sickness. I wanted to really have that be our Haven, our place that was special for us. So there’s different things you can do. Maybe not everyone has that luxury of having an additional bedroom or space where they can rest, but there’s definitely decisions you can make along the way that help you to navigate.

Michael Roesslein:

Your boys now are late teens?

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah. We ended up having a third son later. So now we have a 10-year-old, a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old. Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Okay. And then the autism diagnosis for your son probably pushed you even more into the nutrition spectrum because nutrition and autism, more of a link than nutrition and obviously it’s important to recover, but I’ve been involved… I dated a woman for a while who was a special ed teacher at a school for kids with autism. So I got immersed into that world during that time and it was kind of before I got into all of this. So the autism world was my first introduction to natural health and nutrition and any of that stuff to where I went and got a master’s in exercise physiology to become a trainer. And I was going to work with athletes and that lasted a very short amount of time because I hated it.

And I started working with people who were… Back injuries or de-conditioned, or coming back from some sort of surgery because I found it more rewarding to help somebody be able to walk up the stairs when they couldn’t then to help somebody jump another inch higher or something like that. And the nutrition I learned in my grad school was very food pyramidy.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Like eat 22 servings of grains and don’t touch any fats and only eat whole grain this and brown rice and broccoli and tuna fish. And so I did that and I hated it. And I was like, “Am I going to be this miserable my whole life if I want to be in shape? Is this just what you have to do?”

Kathleen DiChiara:

Right.

Michael Roesslein:

And then at the autism events that-

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:32:04]

Michael Roesslein:

This is just what you have to do. And then at the autism events that she would take me to, I got introduced to like Price-Pottenger and, and Weston Price, and these things like ghee and fatty foods that were good for my brain and like all this stuff. I’m like, what is going on here? What are … these people are all crazy? This is nuts. This is totally backwards. And then she’s like, “Just read one of the books, because I was hoping if you could tell me if this stuff is legit or not.” I’m like, “Well, I don’t know. Okay.” So then I would be the liaison who had the education, who was helping the teacher figure out if the people at the autism conventions were like as fringe and lunatic-y as they’re made out to see, or if this is legit. And I’m like, I think this is all real.

And that’s when I found Jeffrey Smith’s book on GMOs and I read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. I found the Chek Institute and Paul Chek and I went through his training, which brought holistic approach into fitness. And then ended up at FDN, because as I went more down that rabbit hole, my clients kept getting more complex. Like the more complex I was able to handle, the more complex people were finding me. And I was like, this has to go further. And so then it was like booths at autism conventions that are what twisted my view from conventional university education on nutrition and health to what I now believe to be a much more accurate picture of what is actually good for us to eat. And I would guess judging by what I’ve learned of you today, you probably got pretty immersed in your son’s wellbeing pretty quickly. And you probably had a similar experience when you dove into that world.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah, I did. Yeah. It was my greatest teacher, I think, in terms of lots of things, not just nutrition, but human health and connection, and compassion, and people and all of it. When I did the nonprofit work, but then I also used to do support work for mothers who had children with special needs. And this was before the internet, when we had social media groups and everything. So we used to sit in coffee shops with our paperwork and write out our education goals and take big stacks of paper and really try to help each other navigate what it means to have a child with Downs syndrome or autism or other really complex developmental challenges navigate the school system and how to meet their expectations.

So yeah, I’ve always been very, very passionate about advocacy work and just acknowledging the best in everybody and who they are and how do they move through the world at their greatest capacity. I had no intention of doing anything for my son, other than just giving him speech therapy and occupational therapy and whatever therapy he needed to help him live an extraordinary life. He was very happy. I mean, he was non-verbal till he was eight, but also just a sweet kid. And we knew that he was struggling to make social connections because if you’re nonverbal and you can’t meet your communication goals and you have cognitive, processing issues and all kinds of other things, it’s very hard to navigate in our complex world. So those things certainly concerned us.

But it was my own challenges and my own recovery after really exploring the role that nutrition could play in helping regenerate the body and restore the body that I became just super fascinated with, are there things that his brain needs and his body needs that I just haven’t really paid attention to, that I just don’t understand? So I actually did get very curious about, are there things that I could do for him that I hadn’t really considered before?

So when we did look into that, or I looked into that more and paid more attention, that’s kind of where we started exploring the role of glyphosate. You know, we did that with me too. That’s when I started really looking at the microbiome and the role of glyphosate and its impact on brain health when we don’t have good diversity and low diversity and how that impacts inflammation and cognitive performance in the brain. I [inaudible 00:36:34] interested in [BDNF 00:36:34], which is how the brain is really processing neurons. And he had really significant cognitive processing speeds. So his ability to process data in the brain was so severely impacted. So that became really interesting to me. So yeah, we did go down that rabbit hole and he was medically undiagnosed at age 12.

Michael Roesslein:

Oh wow.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah. So he no longer meets any of the criteria. He’s now a straight A student at 17, high honors, no deficits, no vestiges of any illness, no cognitive delays. He was tested at age 12 and has no illness at all. No other illnesses, I shouldn’t say, I don’t qualify his autism as an illness. But he had other challenges. He had gastrointestinal illness, he had other developmental related things, and cognitive processing stuff. And he also had apraxia, apraxia of the body and apraxia of the mouth, which you may know with some of your study in the physical body, but that’s motor planning issues, low muscle tone, no ability to gain muscle. He’s very muscular. He runs track and field. And so yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Quite a turnaround.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah. So quite a turnaround. Yeah. So I think people always say, “Well, is it just because you change his diet?” And he doesn’t … he eats an organic diet and he doesn’t have glyphosate. And the answer to that of course is no, he did have extensive therapy throughout his childhood up until … from age three to age … or age two to age 11, speech therapy and occupational therapy and all those other therapies. But what we realized was that the glyphosate was really blocking and prohibiting a lot of communication in the body because he had poor gut health and he had poor communication. So he really wasn’t getting full advantage of those therapies.

So there was really … I think sometimes marrying those two things together was very, very beneficial for him. And there was a lot of pieces to that puzzle, really came together. So for us, that was something we did at the end, because we didn’t really understand what we were doing at the beginning or we didn’t have to see the value in it. So yeah, I mean, we talk about that. We ended up doing the documentary film with Jeffrey Smith and Amy Hart called Secret Ingredients. And we talk about that in that film. It’s about my recovery and our family’s recovery, but also include that story in there too just to help people to understand the importance of looking at the whole body and recognizing the connection of food, not being as the only thing, but an important piece of the puzzle and recognizing that.

And like you said, there’s always more to it. We always have to look more at the interconnectedness, the complex aspects of the human body. But if you don’t look at that piece of it, you could be missing an important part of it for yourself.

Michael Roesslein:

Wow. That’s quite a journey for two of you simultaneously it sounds like, and probably everyone else in your family at the same time. Because I know when changes like that are made, it’s not just you that’s doing them.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Well, you bring up a good point too. I often say when people are healing together, I talk also about this in my work now about living in congruence, that when we heal together, we are really serving as a catalyst for each other. And I think the reason why my son and I healed so profoundly is because we were really healing together. I don’t think that if one of us in isolation were doing it, maybe we would’ve had such a profound connection.

I do think that love is a powerful motivator, certainly between a mother and her child. I never underestimate that. I think it is a huge, huge factor. And I think when families heal together, that energetically is really a very, very powerful source of moving people forward. When people try to heal in isolation, even in their own family unit, I think they do get better and they make progress, but I do think that they do hit some roadblocks and there’s some stagnation that they can’t move through because they don’t have that collective support. So I do want to just point that out because you kind of said that and it reminded me. Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. It’s the connection and the support, whether from family or partner or community or friends that’s so essential in this regard. And I think it’s often overlooked and not really discussed very much either, on the functional medicine world. That’s another aspect that’s kind of glossed over a little bit.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yes.

Michael Roesslein:

And so right now I just was going to ask you about both your Nutritional Intelligence Academy, which you are teaching the individuals? Or is that for professionals?

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yes, I do give lectures. I’m often a guest lecturer and I give CE lectures at different institutions. But The Nutrition Academy is mine. That’s where I teach the public.

Michael Roesslein:

Okay.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:42:03] the public, yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

And then you’re also the founder of an organization called Nourish to Learn.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yes.

Michael Roesslein:

And I’m interested to learn a little bit more about that too.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah. So I actually … that is … I haven’t done that during COVID because you can’t get into [crosstalk 00:42:19] school settings.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah, schools.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah, exactly. A lot of the public schools, educating them on community foods and what foods really mean and kind of getting in there. So we had done a program here in our own local community where we’d got volunteers and we basically had local farms provide the food and we basically did what was called like a taste testing. And then the kids in the schools would try different foods. Because you have to remember that a lot of kids don’t have access to fresh produce and because they don’t have access, they don’t really understand it. They don’t understand the benefits of it. So it’s really taking that barrier away and educating them on what it means and what are the advantages to eating it and what are the benefits of eating it. So you’re kind of doing that. And then kids have the tendency to try things when they see their friends eating it and when they can talk about it together and experiment together.

So really taking some of those barriers away, and then also working on different programs to educate the parents on what it means to nourish your children in terms of how they’re going to be learning so better sports performance and education performance. Sometimes we see things as like I’m going to eat healthy foods so that I can be thinner or I can look a certain a way, but if you help parents and students understand that academic performance goes up, athletic performance goes up in direct correlation to their-

Michael Roesslein:

Behaviors, yes.

Kathleen DiChiara:

… nutrition-

Michael Roesslein:

It would be incredible if we could switch schools to serving kids actual food, like the outcomes of it. And not even just actual food, that would be step one. And then step two would be locally grown, organic food, really high quality food.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Right. Yeah. And I agree with that too. But here’s what I have found over the years because I have done work in public schools and I’ve worked with administrators and they have said you, even when we get to a place where we actually improve the quality of the food, the parents are still sending in donuts. Like if you don’t work with the parents and help them understand the connection as well, most of the food intake is happening at home.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. That’s true.

Kathleen DiChiara:

I mean, some of it’s not. A lot of kids are relying on the schools to provide some of their food intake.

Michael Roesslein:

Usually just lunch though.

Kathleen DiChiara:

But it has to be both. Yeah, it has to be both. We have to work on both at the same time. It can’t be one or the other. So you’re doing policy and system change, but also you’re doing education at home and helping to decrease some of those barriers.

Michael Roesslein:

It’s actually helped me have more compassion for my younger self that got in trouble all the time in school because I would eat like a giant bowl of sugar cereal and French toast sticks and orange juice and then go to school. And I’d be wired out of my mind and act like a maniac for the first half of the day. And then I would crash and sleep a lot in school. And both of those things got me in a lot of trouble. Everyone told me that I was bad or I was lazy or I was this or I was that.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Exactly.

Michael Roesslein:

And I was just having sugar rushes and crashes at all times.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Exactly.

Michael Roesslein:

And ADD and, yeah, it’s helped me understand a lot more about why I was challenged with the issues that I was. And now I notice if I eat a certain way, my attention goes really south really quickly, like my ability to focus. I’ve learned recently that I have pretty severe ADD and if I’m really careful about what I eat and some other practices it’s reduced by like half. And if I’m not, then I’ll have days where I can’t even keep track of what I’m supposed to be doing. And I run two businesses, I’m in two full-time trainings. It’s too much even with a full functioning brain. And then there’s days where I just am like, I can’t do this. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do. And I’ve noticed a direct link to how I eat. And-

Kathleen DiChiara:

Right. And I think one of the frustrating things about ADHD is that oftentimes people think it’s that the brain is hyperactive and therefore it’s too revved up. But the reason why people are craving the sugars and the coffee and the sweets and all those things is because the brain is actually slower and it’s looking for the speed in order to [crosstalk 00:46:30]-

Michael Roesslein:

Quick, fast fuel.

Kathleen DiChiara:

That’s right. That’s right. So it’s misunderstanding. You’re actually trying to fix it with the wrong foods and so then it’s creating the wrong reaction.

Michael Roesslein:

It’s like a short term fix that causes more of a long term problem.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah. That’s right. Exactly. So it’s just like, if we understood it better then we could provide other things to help you feel more comfortable. Yeah, so you wouldn’t be trying to fix it yourself.

Michael Roesslein:

And this brings up something. When we were in Italy two summers ago and our friends live in Lucca in Tuscany and they have a nine year old child who was born in Italy. They’re Americans who moved to Italy, but he’s Italian. It’s strange, their child has an Italian accent. It’s so bizarre. But at his school, there’s a chef and the local farms in the area provide the food and they have a menu where they don’t eat the same lunch twice in a month. And the kid comes home … and his mother is a naturopathic doctor and a trained chef. And the kid comes home and complains if she cooks the same meal twice within his memory of time. Like, “Oh, we just had this last week or whatever,” because he’s so spoiled with his meals at school, that they rotate every single day for the month, that he doesn’t think he should ever have to eat the same thing twice at home for dinner.

And I was just blown away at how different that is than the food culture here. Not only … and granted not everyone’s a naturopathic doctor, a trained chef, and has access to-

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:48:04]

Michael Roesslein:

And granted, not everyone’s a naturopathic doctor, a trained chef and has access to the type of food she can cook, but just to have a chef in the school and use freshly prepared meals and the kids get a different meal every day, and he knows that it’s good for him. He likes it, it’s exciting to him. When I was younger, if you’d have just thrown that at me all of a sudden, I would have probably revolted against it, I’d be, where’s my frugal ups and my co-hosts, but it was just so different. It was so different to see. And I said, I can’t believe how different that is from school lunches, where I came from. And they said, if you put that stuff in front of the kids here, they would throw it back in your face. And I was, that’s amazing.

And, he loves going to school to eat. And, the chef is their friend. They all bring him Christmas presents. It’s just so incredible. I was just blown away-

Kathleen DiChiara:

Totally different experience.

Michael Roesslein:

That culture with the food and the kids in the school. And I was, I can’t imagine how different their whole school environment is then because of the kids are not wired and crashing like I was all the time here. Their brains are getting nutritious foods and-

Kathleen DiChiara:

I make my boys lunches and we cook fresh and different meal every single night, which I did not grow up on. I grew up on processed food too. My mother was an amazing woman and an amazing mom, but she didn’t know what you know, and she did the best she could.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah, me too. I’m not saying those things to throw my parents under the bus too, they did the best they could too.

And I grew up with a big garden in the backyard when I was a kid, I ate a lot of stuff, like straight from the garden. We did eat a lot of fresh vegetables and things with the… Eventually the taco bell mixed in and everything else. But yeah, they did the best they could with what they knew how to do and so does everybody else.

Nobody’s intentionally harming their kids and nobody’s saying, let’s feed our kids trash at school so that they suffer. It’s just a lack of education and access you mentioned at the beginning too, the huge gap in access and what’s available, not only functional medicine, but healthy food. I mean-

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yes.

Michael Roesslein:

And we have a lot of work to do in that area, so.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Sure.

Michael Roesslein:

Well, I think… I don’t have any more questions. Your story’s remarkable. I can’t… Three years is a long time. Now, after the three years, that three-year window you mentioned after three years, you were kind of back to, I don’t want to say normal, but moving relatively well, or how long [crosstalk 00:50:32]

Kathleen DiChiara:

I would just say that was probably just the crisis part of it. Really this coming out of the-

Michael Roesslein:

Did you get back to a point where you could participate in [crosstalk 00:50:42] athletics type stuff?

Kathleen DiChiara:

Many, many years later, so seven, eight years later.

Michael Roesslein:

That is a long-

Kathleen DiChiara:

Like a decade. I mean-

Michael Roesslein:

That’s a long journey.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah. Yeah. And once you get out of that crisis mode and I mean, not everybody’s going to have anything that really shattering, I mean, one was pretty traumatic that I also think what’s important to keep in mind too, and that I like to remind people is when you’re going through it, it’s not your whole, your world doesn’t come to a complete stop. You still have to care for your children. You still have to feed yourself. You still have to, in many cases, people still have to work.

I lost my job, so I had to use disability money to pay for my care for my therapies, things that [inaudible 00:51:32] . If people can’t get that, then they have to keep working so they can then pay for medications. It’s a very, very difficult thing. I have under no illusion that people are really, really struggling.

That is really the problem. There is no bridge, there’s no gap between that acute situation and how you get out of it and how you transition. And so, one of the reasons why… I’m very passionate about helping people with chronic disease and ending this whole epidemic we have with chronic disease, because I think it’s strongly linked to our ruptured system and the way we care for ourselves.

So I don’t want to just keep focusing on how I’m going to care for those people and, providing the supports for them. We have to really just stop the whole thing from collapsing because right now we’re at… One third of our federal budget is the chronic disease and the whole thing is just a complete mess. But what I really feel it needs to happen too us is we need to have something that is a better support system for the patient to get them out of that acute state and phase into how they’re going to care for themselves long-term that really is part of that transition that looks a little bit more holistic and then get them out of the holistic management, what I call holistically managing chronic disease because that in and of itself is a problem right now.

What we’re doing now is we’re getting people off the medications and we’re switching them to supplements. And now they’re over supplementing chronic disease pain. So they’re taking very, very high doses of lots of different supplements to cover up chronic pain symptoms. I understand there is that gap where you’re replacing one less potent thing for another, but if you don’t stop doing that, which is what I was doing after that first three years, then you get into that five to seven year. If you keep doing that, you’re actually not well, you’re just managing chronic disease, but you’re using another set of tools.

And that’s where I kind of found myself at the end part where I thought, I’m not really thriving, I’m actually not well, I’m just managing and I’m using a different set of tools in the toolbox, but if I don’t go to my therapy and I don’t do acupuncture and I don’t do massage therapy and I don’t do chiropractic and I don’t take all my supplements and I don’t lay down six times and then I don’t…

Michael Roesslein:

Go south pretty quick.

Kathleen DiChiara:

I collapse, it’s no good. So I think the fragility of some people situation, what that looks like, that that actually isn’t health, and we need to be careful about what we’re calling health and what we’re maintaining. And we need to make sure that that is… That that fragility isn’t there, and that’s kind of where my work ended up last year, really looking at who are the people that are actually rebuilding health and reconditioning themselves out of it, getting out of that chronic disease epidemic there, kind of bouncing forward and, and becoming a better version of themselves.

They’re shedding that traumatic experience and ultimately moving forward, not going back to what their work is, just that’s not going to happen. It isn’t going to happen. I’m always going to have this vulnerability. We talked about this before we started recording. I have a vulnerability, I have scar tissue there. I have missing parts of my back. There’s no squatting. They’re not going put stack weights and started squatting. It’s not going to happen, right?

Michael Roesslein:

Triathlons aren’t [inaudible 00:55:02].

Kathleen DiChiara:

There’s no pounding. I mean, I’m almost 50… There’s certain things that my body is going to be vulnerable. And I have to be respectful of that.

Michael Roesslein:

That’s something I cringe when I see in a lot of the… I don’t go in them anymore, I used to be in a lot of Facebook groups. I don’t really go in mainly anymore, especially the chronic disease illness ones. And I get that’s a step on a lot of people’s journey where they learn things.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Sure.

Michael Roesslein:

And I witnessed a ton of like fatalistic-annihila… This is doom. No one can ever get better from this. That’s because the people who are better aren’t in the group anymore, but just a little suggestion. But I see so many people, I can’t wait to be able to eat X again, or I can’t wait to be able to do whatever again. I can’t wait to be able to drink wine again every night, or I can’t be able to… All these things, and it’s, no, that’s not a thing, it’s has to, because if you do X-Y-Z things and then you get sick and then you do all these things to get better. If you go right back to X-Y-Z things, what do you think the result is going to be? And for some people, and you mentioned therapy, there’s a processing that needs to happen around that to accept that because at first there’s going to be nothing but resistance because you want the thing that you can’t have anymore until you realize that not having that thing makes you feel better.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Maybe you don’t need that thing anymore. Maybe the thing that was something that you were using before, because your life wasn’t in alignment or maybe you weren’t really doing something that you were meant to do. And so now you-

Michael Roesslein:

I used to drink a lot. I was in the service industry for 10 years.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

I drank a lot. And when I was trying to change my life, I stopped drinking. And I was, “What am I going to do on a Friday night? Everybody’s out drinking. I’m going to miss all this thing and I’m going to do whatever”. And now you couldn’t pay me to go out and drink eight drinks on a Friday night. I’d be a mess until Wednesday.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Right.

Michael Roesslein:

And I thought that I needed that. There was an immediate panic, there’s a hole that’s gone. And there’s an immediate panic. And at the time I didn’t have the resources and the knowledge and the tools I have now to be able to help myself through that. So it was really hard.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Right.

Michael Roesslein:

I did it the hard way. I did it without the support and the help and the practices and the shifts and any of the things, I just cold turkey my whole life.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yep.

Michael Roesslein:

And it was hard, but there’s easier ways to do it and having support and people around you that, and you mentioned therapy and counseling and just really, yes,, there’s a processing that needs to happen. That’s not going to be my life anymore.

Kathleen DiChiara:

That’s right.

Michael Roesslein:

And that’s okay. It doesn’t have to be, I died and [crosstalk 00:57:41] this is new boring me. This is a new thing I get to do. And, I didn’t know what it felt like to feel good.

Kathleen DiChiara:

That’s right.

Michael Roesslein:

I didn’t even know because I never felt good. I just didn’t feel as crappy. I felt like moderately crappy then really bad and then good and good was never a thing. And a lot of people I think see that too. They think they were all great before then they get really sick and then they feel good when they get better. And they realize that that wasn’t good.

Kathleen DiChiara:

That’s right.

Michael Roesslein:

And this can be a new better, it’s a thing. And to embrace that and really to shine with that. And that’s why this season of this podcast that we’re doing this first season, that’s what I wanted everybody to see is that the new can be better than the-

Kathleen DiChiara:

It is better.

Michael Roesslein:

Before.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah, you’re right. Yeah. You’re cracking open a shell and it’s kind of a-

Michael Roesslein:

Painful.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yeah, it’s a new opportunity. You’re adding new things. And I also feel,… When you look at it that way, you have that kind of a mindset, you also create space for new things to come in, new people, new experiences, things that you just hadn’t expected. And I think when you’re always trying to go back to what you did, you just kind of reversing and then really just creating the same patterns again.

So what I like to look at in my own life and other people’s is what are the patterns that got you into that predicament? And then you want to break those patterns and create a new set of habits. Your beliefs kind of lay that foundation, which then created a new set of behaviors in your life. And then your behaviors ultimately develop, create your ecosystem. That’s your… You’ve got microbiome. It’s your behaviors that kind of drive that ecosystem and create that roadmap. And it’s just like what we talked about. By not going back and doing the things that you used to do, you’re really inviting a whole new set of experiences, people, opportunities, mindset. And from there, I think it’s a new adventure, which I think sounds the things that you like with your new adventures.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah, it all led me where I needed to be going.

Kathleen DiChiara:

That’s right.

Michael Roesslein:

So well, thank you so much for sharing this and for turning, what’s a really challenging situation and scary situation into something that’s not only benefits you and your son and your family, but also so many other people with the work that you’ve done.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Thanks.

Michael Roesslein:

And it takes a lot of people turning their challenges into gifts and into medicine for others to help pull everybody through because I’m sure there were a lot of people that helped you.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Yes.

Michael Roesslein:

And it’s really just paying it forward and helping others through the same stuff that we’ve gone through. So thank you so much. I look forward to learning more about your work and following what you’re doing. And I hope there’s more ways we can collaborate going forward.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Same feeling, Michael. I really appreciate what you’re doing and your new projects, and I’m really excited to follow you and see where that takes you. So thanks for doing that.

Michael Roesslein:

All right, thank you. Talk soon.

Kathleen DiChiara:

Great. Thanks, Michael.

Michael Roesslein:

And this brings us to the end of today’s episode. Head on over to rebelhealthtribe.com/ kit to access the RHT Quickstart bundle, which includes four full length presentations from our RHT masterclasses, two downloadable PDF guides and a 15% percent off coupon, which you could use in our retail shop.

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