How To Achieve Holistic Well-Being In Your Midlife

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Welcome back to another interview on, “Reversing Chronic Gut Conditions.” I’m your host, Sinclair Kennally. Today I am joined by my wonderful friend and colleague Natalie Jill. So Natalie Jill is in midlife expert and you guys and what she’s going to share with us today is super juicy about her own journey and so many of you are going to recognize yourselves in it. But I really wanted to have her on because she is a phenomenal health expert and women’s advocate and she is really changing the way we think about midlife and how we age and what we can expect from our health and how to be our own advocates. Just phenomenal at that. So she actually has two bestselling books on Fat Loss and those sold out everywhere. She’s got a six figure fat loss business that transformed over a quarter million women’s bodies and health. And she’s over 50 years old. She’s been so vocal and really invites her community into her own health journey from, you know, fat loss through her decades and also recovering from injuries and now diving into really deep gut health issues and how to resolve those for good. So she’s a CEO, of course, and she’s looking at a globally recognized brand. She’s just phenomenal. So and she’s got like over half a million followers on Instagram that she takes through her own health journey. And she’s just a joy to learn from. So thank you so much. 

Natalie Jill

Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, thank you for having me. I’m saying thank you for being here. Thank you for having indicated it’s going to be very I can’t wait to chat. I always love chatting with you.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

All right. So Natalie and I have done many projects before together because we just love to serve.

Natalie Jill

And because we’re fun and we like to have fun together. We like to have fun together.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

I know, right? So I really wanted to do a deep dive on your own gut health journey today, because I think in so many people. So why don’t you start by walking us through when you first became aware of when you had your own deep gut health issues and what you had tried before that wasn’t working?

Natalie Jill

Yeah. So I thought I knew everything, like a lot of people. Like, I literally thought I’m like, I don’t have gut health issues, leaky gut. That’s for old people that take no care of themselves. Like I didn’t understand. I fully didn’t understand despite you many, many, many times telling me anytime I would talk about anything, you should check your gut, you should check for toxins. And I was like, whatever, whatever, whatever. So I would hear about leaky gut. I would hear about mold, toxicity or heavy metals or parasites, but I just didn’t fully understand how relevant they truly are being the root of so many things now, especially the time of this recording, I’m 51 and I’m in midlife. That is my focus with women. And for years and years and years, I was helping women with fat loss and health. So all through, if you think about women, I was navigating late thirties, forties and fifties as we approach menopause, perimenopause, all these midlife changes, natural things start happening with us anyway. So it’s a natural tendency to chalk it up to, Oh, it’s my hormones shifting. Oh, it’s my age. Oh, it’s this, right? We just chalk it up to that. And then you tie in the majority, not all majority of Western medicine doctors that will say the last thing they’re going to bring up is your gut health or the toxins. Right. They’re just saying, oh, it’s your age. Oh, it’s your hormones. Here’s hormone replacement, which is exactly what I was experiencing. So, yes, I had heard of gut things and toxins, but I turned my nose up like a lot of women and men do and said, I eat healthy, I work out, I’m aging well. Sinclair is wrong. That’s what I originally thought. I remember those conversations. 

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

I remember those conversations. Yes.

Natalie Jill

Yeah. Yeah. That’s what originally happened. 

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

But then things got scary for you and.

Natalie Jill

Yeah. So then I said it honestly. Sometimes it takes, you know, I really believe things happen for us sometimes. And I think that something massive was going to have to happen to me to get my attention. So I wasn’t paying attention to a lot of the signs. So in the last two years, the first thing that started happening was I started getting a lot of injuries, like really random injuries, like major injuries. I ruptured a disc in my lower back. I tore my bicep at the distal, which is a major thing. The same year I broke my foot, broke my toe. I had four surgeries in a year. It was like, really? And I still wasn’t nothing was coming up as, oh, you know, maybe there’s a bigger problem here. I’m just thinking, oh, I’m being careless. It’s just my age, getting more fragile, whatever. So that was kind of the first sign. It wasn’t enough to fully get my attention, what really got my attention, because I started just hyper focusing on eating, anti-inflammatory eating and unprocessed natural food diet, working out. I was doing all those great things that we should do as a baseline. Like, like anyone listening right now, those are just kind of like the foundational things that you should be eating unprocessed, natural, raw food. You should be getting in antioxidants, you should be getting in phytonutrients. I was doing all that. What had to get my attention was I getting routine bloodwork, which I do every 90 days. I had an elevated liver number. That was the first thing. 

Elevated liver number, elevated insulin, elevated blood sugar and I had never had any of those things before, so it was odd. So I immediately stopped all my supplements because the liver didn’t even occur to me. I should check, gut or do a liver cleanse or anything like that. I just said, okay, stop supplements, that’s liver. And I started trying to do what a lot of people in my position would do is I tried to control everything. I said, okay, I have type two diabetes in my family. I have Type one diabetes in my family. That’s not going to be me. I’m not okay with this agency being elevated. This is rare. They told me I was pretty pre-diabetic. I went and I was already eating very clean, unprocessed, natural foods. I went to extreme keto trying to get this under control like extreme keto. I was not cheating, it was extreme keto and, Sinclair, anyone listening? If you don’t know about blood sugar, normal blood sugar, healthy blood sugar would be anywhere between, call it 65 and 95 before you’re eating, right. And then at Post-Meal, it goes up, you know, 130, 140, 150 and comes back down. You’re fine, really healthy metabolic like, maybe you go to 110, 120 and it comes back down. Unhealthy would be which shoots up to 250 whatever. My blood sugar even after eating keto was all over the map, I would eat keto and it would go up to 250. It was driving me freaking crazy. I was like, What is going on here? And I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor and I was doing the finger prick. So this was not like a human error. I was checking so I would eat my blood sugar over shit up to 250. It was driving me crazy. I could not control it no matter what I was doing. I could not control my blood sugar. To make it worse. Not only was it just being chronically high blood sugar, it would crash really low down to 50 or so. 

So what ended up waking me up was I ended up in the hospital for three days, like huge medical bill later because I couldn’t get my blood sugar under control. My doctor is like, you’re going to have to get into the E.R. It was the low blood sugar that honestly brought me into the hospital. The high blood sugar just made me scared to eat, but when the low blood sugar, I couldn’t get it under control and I was going to massive hypoglycemia, hypoglycemia. That’s when I ended up in the hospital. And when I stopped eating, because one of the tests to get at the hospital was say, okay, let’s put you on a 72 hour fast and we’re going to force you into low blood sugar and will from there inject you with glucagon. And they had this whole plan. Well, what happened was when I went on fast, my blood sugar didn’t move, didn’t go up or down, nothing happened. So this was the first moment of an Aha with me, like, something’s not right here. Like, I’m not eating now and now nothing’s happening. So all the time while this is happening. Sinclair, kept every time we were talking or whatever, you kept subtly saying parasites can affect your blood sugar, heavy metals. You kept saying that to me, right? You did. You you weren’t forceful. You just kept saying, you know, hey, FYI you know, parasite. Yeah. But it just literally was not registering with me, so I went and I thought I was being really I went to a MD. I went to a functional medicine doctor. I went to an endocrinologist. The standard of care is go on metformin, right? The standard of care is going up to 50 is normal. It’s not, by the way, that’s not normal. If you have a healthy metabolic syndrome, you should not have high blood sugar 250 ever. The standard of care is pre-diabetic. Just manage it. The standard of care is go kiddo, start drugs. Whatever. The standard of care is not go test for toxins or test your gut at all.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Right?

Natalie Jill

Yeah. Yeah.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

That’s really well said, because I feel like you are one of my favorite things about you is you’re an advocate for yourself and you’re really clear on what your body should feel like when you’re well, because you’ve worked so hard at creating an experience for yourself. And so there are so many people out there, we hear that them being gaslit for years before they finally say enough is enough, and thank God you were able to stand up for yourself this way.

Natalie Jill

And it took me months because I will say like that endocrinologist said to me to 250 is normal as long as it goes back down under after 2 hours. And I thought that’s not normal. And then he said it for a standard American diet. I’m like, Do I look like I eat a standard American diet? Like that’s not normal. Now, other I will say, in fairness, I had other symptoms. I just didn’t I’m not somebody. Who focused on them. So I’m really tired. Really tired. Like chronic fatigue no matter what. Like I would want to go to sleep before eight. I would not want to wake up before seven falling asleep at 2:00 in the afternoon. Like I’m a high energy person and like I took everything in me to get my stuff done in the morning and I’m tired. So I just chalked it up to hormones and age. I did. Foggy Head did not think about that. Lots of pain for my injuries. Lots of pain for my injuries. Like. But again, because I’m always someone focusing on the positive, I just refuse to fall into that. I just whatever. I just dealt with it.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

I’m going to be listening like all these symptoms he’s listed.

Natalie Jill

Yeah.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Besides parasite.

Natalie Jill

Yeah. So I didn’t know any of that. So I mean, you kept kind of telling me I just didn’t want to hear it, you know? I just. I didn’t. I didn’t understand. It sounded like this foreign weird thing. So after all the money I spent and time, I think it honestly took me being in the hospital like that for a few days to really go, okay, something’s really broken here, and I don’t. I can’t control it. So that’s when I finally listened and I did a gut test. And that’s what you had been telling me about forever. Now, I had my own, like, stories around like, I’m not like you literally send your poop in the mail. Like, who know you could send that through the mail? Like, that was. Like what you’re going to do what? So anyways, I did it. I sent it through the mail. Somebody actually has that job where they unpack your poop. And I mean, I don’t even understand a lot of their pain, but I hope they’re paid well because that’s a really shitty job. No pun intended. But it is. So somebody’s job. Anyways. That right there came back with so much insight. And what I’ve learned is that that’s an even show. Even the whole picture like that only shows some of what’s going on. And I had red flags, but some of the things that came up, I had the one of the worst leaky guts that had you said you’d even seen when you showed it to yourself. You guys would never imagine that I had H. Pylori, I had e coli, I had I forgot what it’s called high glucans, d-glucose, high glucans something. You know how to pronounce that? I don’t speak like that. That was producing making my estrogen dominance, which we didn’t know. That was what was creating that. I also had yuck parasites. Three of them, three.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, sure. You got  Strongyloides. What else did you have?

Natalie Jill

Yeah. I’ve killed Strongyloides already. Now I physically saw it come out. That was traumatizing. I PTSD, but yes, it came out. It’s gone. Oh, I’ve heard that there can be friends. I don’t know.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, well, see, you’re in your early days to say that, but. Well, let’s hope so.

Natalie Jill

But I physically saw that come out. I seriously have PTSD from that. Yeah, yeah, but it’s out of my body. I’m glad it’s gone. So. Yeah, no, I had all my liver flukes like a lot, so Tim. So what’s amazing to me is how was I actually even functioning with all I had? Like all the stuff? And what I’ve heard is if I didn’t actually eat healthy and move my body and do the stuff, I would have been really sick. Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

And I mean, your body was clearly showing signs of just overload and distress from us and could not tolerate.

Natalie Jill

But it took it going to that extreme where it was now affecting my liver and my pancreas and my insulin levels. Now, I’m certainly not the doctor. I don’t have all the information you have. I have my own theories of what it’s all making sense now, but it’s really wild to learn how that stuff can really just be living on all of your organs and affecting everything.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah. So this is the part that I really want to highlight for people because people think, Oh, I have this diagnosis. And actually in our rapid gut reset course, we always talk about it for at least the duration of this course. I’m asking you to leave your diagnosis behind. So set aside and just focus on the signals of the body, because someone has interpreted those signals as a constellation of symptoms and applied a label. That doesn’t mean you know or understand the root causes for that label. And that’s been absolutely drive everything you’re talking about. And why would parasites be there? You know, a lot of people discuss it like, oh, you know, I didn’t go to Mexico recently or I haven’t been to Bali. You know, it doesn’t matter. Their sights are on food coming in.

Natalie Jill

You can get I’m walking barefoot outside, you can get on from your organic vegetables. Like there’s so many things. What I learned again, look at me teaching as if I’m the expert. I’m not, I’m the student, but learning. But what I did learn was that basically like if you have a healthy environment, if you are terrain as healthy, you’re those things will not necessarily survive on you. But once you have one weak, like one thing is not good, you start creating this not amazing environment in your body. It just attracts all of those things. So like, you and I could eat the same exact salad that has the same exact liver fluke from the watercress or whatever. And it doesn’t survive in you, but it does in me because of my terrain.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly it. So it comes down to your immune system. You know how toxic is your terrain, meaning, you know, your extracellular matrix in your body, how strong are your organs?

Natalie Jill

And you cannot tell by appearance because to other people I look extremely fit. I look younger than my age. When I’m healthy, I eat well. I do all the things. It doesn’t matter. I have one of the worst leaky gut you’ve seen.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, this is. This is, like, no filter. Natalie, because she absolutely glows in person. She radiates vitality. 

Natalie Jill

So the parasites they keep me going. It’s like you get four of us for the price of one. To bottle that.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Well, it’s one way to stay fit. They always eat first, so they.

Natalie Jill

Always do that. The explains why I was always hungry. I guess. Yeah, it’s so true.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Oh, yeah. Okay. So I asked. You also mentioned something that I think is really interesting. So liver flukes, really poorly understood as parasites. And have you seen any of those come out of this?

Natalie Jill

Seen all kinds of things come out. I’m literally I’m scared to go to the bathroom at this point, but I have to rally myself up at like I’d rather out of my body than in it. I’d rather.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, that’s right. So one of the mistakes people make with parasites, it’s like, well, I would have seen them if. If, you know, I would know if I had a parasite. But the truth is.

Natalie Jill

Because they live in your body like protocol.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, they’re smart. They know how to avoid getting captured.

Natalie Jill

So I had something come out of my body that, like, it was like. Like, I mean, that thing was living for years. I mean, I don’t know, because I didn’t eat that thing. I don’t know where, how that got in me. But that’s been grown for years. That’s so nasty.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah. You probably ingested eggs. You can also cough. Strangely, I come from eggs, storing. real food. Eggs. You ingested Strongyloides.

Natalie Jill

Oh, where does that? I don’t even know where that one comes from. But yes, I definitely.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Unruffled as it’s saying you can costs start to ladies eggs onto each other because down in your lungs and it’s one way you can transferred from family member to family member.

Natalie Jill

Interesting time to check out spot. Yeah good times.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah it’s so what has what has come out of this for you what how is your relationship to your body changed? What do you want the audience to understand from your journey?

Natalie Jill

So we’ve all heard that gut is the root of everything. We’ve heard this from the started 100 years ago, but we haven’t actually listened to that. I wasn’t listening to that. I didn’t understand it. And I think we as soon as we hear a leaky gut or gut health or we have, we assume these general things about it, like, oh, I’d have a stomach ache or I’d have I didn’t have any gastric anything I didn’t have I didn’t feel anything in my stomach. I wasn’t having stomach pain or bloating or gas any of that because of the way that I eat. So no, you don’t necessarily have those. I also would only think of a parasite as like a tapeworm, like you have a giant snake living in your body. That’s not the case either. So what I learned is, for whatever reason, Western medicine has not fully embraced really making this a standard, probably because what they know, they’re scared to share is that if we address these things, there’d be no need for everything else, because this is route costs. If you have to check your gut, you have to check for heavy metals, you have to check for mold. 

Those things all work together, by the way, like you address one without addressing the other. You’re going to keep getting the same problem. So what I wish I had known, which I wish I had known for my fat loss women for years is a test. So things that loss would have been easier for them. Yes, yes. Like I know the CDC will say 25% of people have things going on in their gut. It’s more like 50% really, I believe, or even more so if you think about it, people that are saying they’re not motivated, they have cravings, they can’t stick to a plan. Well, there might be something bigger than them. That’s the reason, for instance, killing off these parasites. I’ve been on a whole protocol and, you know, you kind of get your body ready for it and then you kill them. I have had wicked sugar cravings. Now, Sinclair, I don’t know if this is true or not. This is a story. I’ve decided this true, but I feel like those live off of sugar. So they’re dying and they’re thinking, feed me. So I’m craving sugar. So sometimes women are wanting to know why they can’t lose weight. They’re beating themselves up for cravings. They could have parasites that are craving them for them.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, that’s so beautifully said. We overemphasize, you know, the how we get these nervous system signals that are like rewards, you know, from sugar. And so we’re like, oh, you know, sugar is like quackery, but the truth is the parasites are driving most of that. So no.

Natalie Jill

They’re fully drug body.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Your body doesn’t want sugar. Your body knows exactly what it wants. It’s craving, you know, clean animal proteins. It’s clean craving, broccoli. It’s great. You know, those are real cravings.

Natalie Jill

But I think it’s.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Sugar is not.

Natalie Jill

When we start really having I went through it, I told you, I think I think you mentioned this a long time ago when we were filming stuff together, I had this weird clam craving for months, like I couldn’t get enough clams. I was eating a 5 pound of clams a week. It was weird. I couldn’t stop craving them. Now I don’t want clams, but there hasn’t been a connection there. Like there are some. You’re those things take over for you. They tell your body what it needs to live, probably because clams are dirty and gross and had other friends in them. So they were like, Bring us more friends. I won’t tell our friends exactly.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, it’s true. So many people have this sensation. I remember this really strongly when I had parasites, as if I don’t get some kind of carbs in me right now. I’m going to die.

Natalie Jill

I thought yesterday. I’m just saying I wanted like, peeps and jellybeans and all the things. And I think it’s that’s not you. That’s you’re killing the parasite, they’re dying. And they’re like, Feed. Me exactly what’s happening.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Okay, so if someone is considering, you know, what should they do in terms of their next steps.

Natalie Jill

You should give Sinclair literally all of your money because she knows what she’s talking about. I’m not even kidding. Now I go, Why? Why? We’re wasting money and time on all these other things. And, like, this is so simple. This is so simple. So, no, that’s what you should do. You should listen, and you should get her test and whatever. You should watch this entire series and you should listen and apply that stuff because it’s works and can save you a lot of time.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, it’s so true. I’m really it’s hard to watch people waste years and years of their lives and go like, Oh, I’m so glad I finally found you. So, yes, I’m so proud of you for digging in and doing the deep work. I know it was scary for a while, especially when you were ending up in the air and all the things and you really did the deeper work of assessing, you know, what was right for you. And I’m so excited that you’re sharing with people because more people need to understand. 

Natalie Jill

Yes, they do for sure. I fully believe this. This is like this, it’s totally changed me. I’m super on board with all of this now. I mean, and I never would have imagined any of this. I didn’t get it. But it took that level of me getting sick to understand it.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, well, and I love what an advocate you are for women like everything you learn for yourself. You’re, like, instantly sharing, like, hey, here’s how to stand up for yourself. Here’s how to look deeper. Here’s how to take care of yourself. So that’s just amazing. So where can people find you?

Natalie Jill

Gosh, well, you can find me any week from our podcast. Midlife Conversations is my podcast. Sinclair has been on there as well. You can find me on all the social platforms Natalie Jill fit anywhere and then midlifeconversations.com is my newer brand site. 

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Awesome. Thanks so much for all the work you do and I’m so proud of you past little parasites.