(upbeat music) - Thank you for joining.

I'm your host, Leia' Love.

Welcome to Forum 360, where we have a global outlook from a local view.

Today we have Kim Hemminger who is joining us today.

Thank you for joining us, Kim.

- Thank you for having me.

- She is with Wellness Works For You She is the owner and she is going to talk to us today about how nutrition is one call away.

So thank you for joining us.

Let's get into it.

- Sounds good.

- So what is nutrition?

And you are a wellness practitioner, so tell me how those two merge together.

- Well, I've been a wellness practitioner, I'm 58 now and I've been a wellness practitioner for 22 years.

I know that 'cause my son was in, I was pregnant with him when I began my own wellness company, Wellness Works For You.

And when you think of wellness, there's this conventional model of wellness, but then there's also this very holistic model of wellness and nutrition is just really integral to that.

I mean, what we eat is going to impact every system of our body and either lead to inflammation or alleviate inflammation.

So nutrition's just a critical part of that and there's lifestyle piece as well, including sleep and movement and stress, all of that, and relationships, but nutrition really, really is important.

- Really important.

And I came to know Ms. Kim because I had an issue that I was struggling with and not realizing or understanding what it was.

I just figured I need to figure out some type of way.

So I started with my diet, with my nutrition, and by working with you, I was able to realize that my vitamin D was down, my vitamin B was down.

I was just really out of whack and out of control and that affected my mood.

And so since working with you, I've been able to have way more energy.

I've been focused even better, but I mean just most of all my mood that I have seen shift and it's amazing that food is literally your drug that I guess can be your drug or a good drug or a bad drug.

And so we're gonna talk from the focus of how to make it a good drug for you today.

- Okay.

- All right.

So what inspired you to get into this area?

- Well, so I used to work in the intensive care unit in my younger years and it was really that time I'd say when I initially got inspired to get into prevention and into wellness because I really realized that about 90% of the people in the intensive care unit would not be there if their bodies were healthier.

You know, so I mean, you can get cancer, you can have a heart attack, and still be a healthy person.

And if you are a healthy person, you can get through, you know, survive that heart attack and flourish and you can get through the cancer.

So I realized that the people that were there really had a lot of chronic illnesses, that's the reason why they needed the support of intensive care unit.

So prevention just kind of really came right in my face as really important when I was working in the intensive care unit.

So I ended up a few years after that, starting my own wellness company, but it was very conventional.

So the way I really got into more of the functional holistic model is more interesting.

It's actually was watching my son, Adam, who's now 28, watching him feel better through different nutrition strategies.

And interestingly, I was just a, I was a wellness practitioner doing conventional wellness and my ex-husband's new wife came to me and said, "Would you mind if I take Adam to a functional nutrition practitioner?"

I'm like, "Why?"

She said, "He has allergies and he's got some gastric things.

I thought maybe we could do that."

And I said, "That's fine."

So she did that.

And I had no idea what she was doing.

All I know is that I watched Adam make adjustments in his diet and I made a few adjustments in the way I was cooking and I watched him feel better and it really impacted his entire life.

So that was my real eyeopening right there watching my child feel better.

Yeah.

- Oh, I love it.

So who is your ideal client?

What are the most common issues that you come across?

- Okay.

So, you know, you can see my most ideal client.

That's really hard for me because I'm a big people person and my clients, right now I have a 17 year old and I have an 84 year old.

And I have a 78 year old.

So they really run the gamut.

And whenever I get a new client, I cannot wait to get to know them.

And it's always a different story.

So I'd say my most common client that I see, the one that I see most often are women between the age of 30 and about 65.

A lot of women my age.

And the reason why I think is because women tend to put their self-care on the back burner.

And also they're always trying to manage the home and the children and their work, so there's a lot of imbalance emotionally for them.

And we have a lot of hormone shifts that we go through, beginning in adolescence, having children, and then in later years as well.

So all those things coming together, stress, hormonal changes really cause big imbalances in the body of women and bodies of women.

And so they come to me with a lot of concerns, a lot of concerns.

- If you could tell that group something right now, like if you start to notice this, this is your sign right now, this is your warning.

- Oh, a sign?

A sign?

- Low energy.

Yeah, low energy is really big.

What happens is that when we experience imbalances in our body that come from our environment or from our experiences, so of too much chronic stress, not eating the right diet, not sleeping well, having a sedentary lifestyle, these kind of things will lead to imbalances in our body.

And when those imbalances occur, then we start having all these symptoms, which are not a pathology, there's no diagnosis for them, but there's these symptoms that we can't explain.

And people just, we just feel like we have to push through them.

And low energy is one of the biggest ones right there.

Also difficulty sleeping and gastric, a lot of gastric symptoms and anxiety.

I'd say those are some big ones.

- Okay.

That's good to know.

And I would like to focus a little bit more on the vitamin D just because I like that area.

- Vitamin D. - Vitamin D. So if somebody is deficient in vitamin D, what kind of can contribute to that?

What can they do to help with that?

If they are getting on the path of getting to you, what would be some of your recommendations with that?

- Okay.

So vitamin D is our sunshine vitamin, and so basically, we can get it from fish, fatty fish, but we primarily get it through the sunshine.

It goes into our skin and vitamin D is actually not really a vitamin, it's actually a prehormone.

And it is important for cardiovascular health, for our immune health, and also affects our mood and our energy.

So it's kind of a big deal, and in the conventional model of medicine, they want you to have an okay vitamin D, you have to be 30, if you hit 30, then you're fine.

If you're like 28, 29, you're okay.

But in functional medicine, we're always seeking to optimize your body system.

And when your body's not optimized, so if your vitamin D level's not optimized, you will have symptoms.

You may not have a pathology, low vitamin D, but you have symptoms of low energy, usually low mood.

And like I said, put you at risk for cardiovascular diseases in the future, and also associated with some cancers, prostate, and breast cancer.

So what do I tell people, first of all, we're in Northeast, Ohio, and it's mostly cloudy here.

So we have chronically people, most people have a low vitamin D, you can almost assume that, so it should be checked.

A lot of conventional doctors will kind of assume people have a low vitamin D and just recommend they take 1000, maybe 2000, at least in the winter time, because you're not getting that sun.

But what I like to recommend is for people is to get it checked, because first of all, we have absorption issues.

And so someone might be taking 2000 vitamin D, but they're not absorbing it.

And so is their vitamin D optimized or not?

We need to know that for that person to be healthy.

So I really recommend it them testing, and also people who have dark skin, you have to, I really stress that they get their vitamin D checked for sure.

- I agree.

And I didn't know about the cardiovascular, so that's good to know.

- One more thing is when you take your vitamin D you need to take it with food because it's fat soluble and people will just pop it in their mouth anytime, but it's not gonna get absorbed.

And so that's really important.

- So making sure that you take it with food helps it to absorb.

- Yes.

- Okay.

Your largest meal of the day.

- Is there anything else that could be off that would not allow it to absorb in your body?

- Well, it's a mineral, so, you know, calcium, magnesium, all of those are really important.

Most people don't have a calcium deficiency, but magnesium is very common.

- Okay.

And then how do you feel about depression?

Do you think that's chemical imbalance, do you think that can be treated with food?

You know, what are your thoughts with that?

Just a random thought.

- So I think that it's normal for all of us to have moods that are low sometimes.

And that's just part of the human experience and accepting that and learning to sit with that and be okay with that is really important.

But when people have a lower mood in the wintertime, we can kind of assume that there's something going on nutritionally or vitamin D or possible serotonin as well.

So I think if someone has depression and it's interfering with their life, I would, first of all, I think that they need to be with the counselor and that support is really important and medication might be important for them.

But what I do when I work with people is we address nutrition.

And I know that when we make changes with their nutrition, correct their imbalances, typically what I see is almost 50% of their symptoms go away.

It's remarkable.

And so sometimes we have this nutritionally self-inflicted depression going on because we're not getting the right foods where our blood sugar's not balanced, and many other factors as well.

- It's good to know.

If you are just joining us today, I am your host, Leia' Love.

And we have Kim Hemminger, who is the owner of Wellness Works For You.

And we are talking about how nutrition is a call away.

Alright.

So let's talk about gut health.

- [Kim] Okay.

- I feel like sometimes it's a bigger issue that gets kind of left out of the conversation a little bit.

So what are your thoughts about gut health?

- Well, first I’ll say, a lot of people will come to me and they'll say, you know, Kim, hey, I wanna lose 20 pounds.

Can you help me?

And you know, I'm not a weight loss practitioner, but I know that when we sit and talk and investigate and I'm able to identify what's out of balance in their body and we break it back into balance, they're gonna lose that 20 pounds.

And I share this piece with you to answer your question, because typically our gut health is one of the main things that's out of balance that leads to so many of our symptoms like low energy like we talked about a little while ago.

So your gut has so many jobs to do, primarily your gut, meaning your large bowel primarily, but we also have the stomach.

You have liver, all of these things work together, your pancreas, but the job, your gut, your bowel has to do is to absorb nutrients, but also to eliminate waste and toxins.

So if your gut is inflamed, if it's not working properly, you're going to not absorb nutrients.

You're not gonna absorb that vitamin D, you could eat this beautiful kale salad, but you know what, are you absorbing it?

You know, we are what we absorb, we're not what we eat.

So we have to make sure that gut is working and doing its job.

- And are there ways to help support that?

- Well, the first thing is to eat clean food, eat food that's whole form, make your own food as much as possible.

- Okay.

And give the definition of whole food because some people don't know what clean or whole means.

- Okay, so whole food, just food that's like in its most natural form.

So if you wanna have mashed potatoes, go buy some potatoes and peel 'em and put 'em in the pot and cook it.

You know.

- So not that stir and pour.

- Yeah, that kind thing.

And when you get it at a restaurant, you have to remember that their goal is to make you come back.

So there's a lot of extra sugar, there's a lot of fats in there that you wouldn't normally add.

There's extra salt, and maybe it's not really high quality salt.

So you have no control.

That's all, you don't have a lot of control.

I love to go out to eat, but I'm a control freak so I just tell them what I want.

Give me the salmon, plain, and vegetable with olive oil on it.

You can insert your control, but for the most part, you don't have a lot of control.

So whole food is food that it's really not been processed well, and clean would be foods that don't have a lot of, they don't have hormones or they're organic, so no pesticides, et cetera.

- Okay.

And then what are the pills that you can take... - B12?

- No, to help with your gut.

- Oh, probiotics.

- Yes.

- All right.

- Can you tell us about probiotics and how they can benefit?

And what they should look for to make sure that they're getting a good probiotic.

- So basically, our bodies, the whole outside of our bodies are covered with bacteria.

So our skin bacteria, if you think about it, our bowel is also the outside of our body.

We have our mouth, we have the anus, that's a tube.

So that's the outside of our body.

So that is covered with bacteria as well.

So our mouth, our oral cavity, our stomach is not, there's too much acid there, but the job of the stomach is then to, when you swallow bacteria, it's going to kill that bacteria.

So it doesn't, you don't get too much going down to your bowel area.

So we need to have this bacteria, and it's a balance of good and bad bacteria.

All right.

And the job of that bacteria is to really protect the integrity of the whole bowel.

Alright.

And our skin as well.

That's the job.

And if those bacteria become imbalanced, through antibiotics, through high stress, through a lot of foods that have a lot of chemicals in them, this all can cause a lot of them to kill off these bacteria, or these probiotics that are doing their job protecting our gut.

If they become imbalanced, then we experience inflammation in our gut.

And then that leads to a lot of other issues.

We could go into leaky gut, poor absorption, basically your gut can't do its job.

So think of the probiotics or these bacteria as the little soldiers that are protecting the integrity of your gut.

And you need to make sure that they're balanced, so if you have a high stress life, if you've had a lot of antibiotics, it's a good idea to take a probiotic or also eat foods that are fermented, like sauerkraut, yogurts, things that have live bacteria in it.

So we gotta constantly be replacing this bacteria.

- Okay.

That's good to know.

Now somebody comes to work with you, what does that process look like?

- Well, first, I wanna have a call with them.

You know, I have a complimentary call, about 30 minutes long, to make sure it's a good fit for them and make sure that I feel I can help them.

And so that's really, really important.

And so that's the beginning.

And then the next step is really critical and that's the intake session.

So they fill out a nice history form and they share their labs with me.

I do a lot of prep before we meet, but when we meet, it's usually hour and a half, two hour session.

And basically that is the time where I get to know them.

And so, yes, I've looked at everything.

I have some impressions, some ideas, but I want to fill in their story.

I want to hear the whole story.

And basically my job is like an investigator to look at the experiences and the environment, all these factors that have come into play that have brought them to where they are now with these concerns that they're coming to me with.

And so they leave always the first session with what we decide together are the very first steps that are critical for their journey of healing.

And, but when you ask, like, what does it look like in general?

It's a partnership is what it is.

And I see myself as their guide.

And while in our relationship, I may be the expert when it comes to functional nutrition, but they're the expert over their body.

Absolutely, 100%.

And my job is to empower them to then make the changes that are necessary.

- Okay.

And then, so if they begin working with you, some may ask, how long would it take to see results?

Or how long are your packages?

What is the timeframes on a minimum and a maximum?

- Okay.

So I like to work in a three month bundle, that way we have time to see changes happen, and I can track things and we can make adjustments.

So three months is pretty good.

That's a five session bundle there.

I can do individual sessions as well, but I try to steer people to the three month bundle 'cause that's where we're really gonna have the biggest impact.

- Awesome.

- I forgot what your question was though.

- No, that was it.

That was it.

- That was it?

I thought there was another one there.

- Yeah, just how long, minimum or maximum.

So minimum, they could do an individual session if they need to.

But on average, you wanna see them at least three months.

- But you asked when we will see changes.

So yeah, I wanna see changes, so it's different for everyone.

But if someone is not having, no matter what, they're gonna feel better.

When you correct imbalances, I guarantee them that you're going to feel better.

So everyone's changes are really different when you're gonna see them.

And most people will see changes within a couple weeks.

- Okay.

- Okay.

But sometimes if someone's not showing rapid changes, all that tells me is there is an underlying root cause that we have to look for.

So it's all about finding the root cause for what's ailing them and this imbalance.

And so if a woman is not responding well to the normal nutrition, getting more sleep and exercising more, I usually consider hormones or some other nutritional deficiency, or I hate to say it, but chronic stress is one of the biggest root causes that interfere with healing.

So I always start out with addressing stress from the beginning because we don't want that to get in the way of you meeting your goals.

- Okay.

I love it.

I love it.

In addition to being a functional nutrition and lifestyle practitioner, you are also a ReCODE practitioner.

What is that?

- Okay.

So it's all about the brain.

That's what ReCODE stands for reversing cognitive decline.

And I became certified as a ReCODE practitioner through Apollo Health, Dr. Dale Bredesen's program.

I did that a few years back and because I have a passion for brain wellness.

I always have ever since I was in college, really.

So, but basically I work with two types of clients.

I work with people who have dementia or Alzheimer's, and also work with people like me, I have a really high risk for Alzheimer's, I have a genetic risk, but I also, my father passed away at 78 from Alzheimer's.

So I also sometimes will have memory issues, but I work with people who basically are concerned about their brain health.

They wanna protect it, or they're worried because of their family history or they're having some subjective cognitive impairment.

They're having some memory issues or some brain fog.

So those are the two types of clients I work with.

- And do you have any books or resources or websites that you feel are good for people just to learn about their health in general or their nutrition that they can go to now to look at?

- Well, for the ReCODE, I'll say Dr. Dale Bredesen has a really good one, and that's "The End of Alzheimer's" and his book really outlines the process of filling in those 36 holes, those 36 factors that could be influencing your brain health and how we do that.

So that's an excellent source there.

- And how can someone contact you, learn more about your business so that they can begin their journey back to health?

- Okay.

So I have a website makingwellnesswork.com and you can go there, also, you can just call me 330-714-2465, and we can connect.

I also have practitioners I work with and they direct clients to me as well.

- Okay.

And if you could leave our guests with one piece of advice, a little nugget gem to take with them about being healthy, or just even taking care of themselves and their body and just noticing the signs, what would that be?

- So I would say, take time to slow down and smell the flowers.

I remember an acupuncturist said to me a long time ago, 'cause I tend to, I'm a very busy, busy girl, and I'm always doing so many things.

And what that keeps me from doing is sitting with myself and paying attention to how I feel and doing what's important to me.

And so he said, "Kim, your whole health and life will improve as soon as you slow down a little bit."

And I really, really took that to heart.

And so I try to do that.

And I really noticed that my health benefits a lot.

So if people can take time, at least 15 minutes a day, just to sit with themselves, pay attention to how they feel, check in with yourself.

And that's probably the biggest thing you can do, because like I said, stress does tend to get in our way of healing.

- I love it.

Thank you so much for your time.

- You're welcome.

- And your expertise.

- Sure.

- I hope you all enjoyed that.

Remember to check in with yourself.

I am your host, Leia' Love, thank you for joining us for Forum 360, where we have a global outlook from a local view.

Enjoy your week.

Thank you.

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