Living Wild & Well

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

Jana I’m so excited. This will be a lot of fun. I’m excited, so honored to be part of this.

Jana Danielson

Amazing. So let’s start. You dealt with chronic pain in your own body for 24 years and so help us understand what that was. What was it, what were you diagnosed as or was there a diagnosis or were there misdiagnosis? Diagnoses? And then what did you, what was the turning point? I feel like most people in our industry, we have to have that dark night of the soul, the rock bottom, whatever we call it. And so take us through that what your experience was like.

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

Yeah. So I grew up in complete chaos as we talked about in the beginning of the book, right on childhood trauma, lots of chaos. And grandfather died by suicide. I have a lot of suicide in my family. My mother had attempted multiple times, had a a bad stepfather that was a child molester. One was almost beat me to death. My senior year in high school one night and lots of trauma. I started with chronic diarrhea, all gut issues, bloating pain, diarrhea. I had my first of four colonoscopies at age 20. So 20 to 44 I had four colonoscopies. I was chronically itching diagnosed with lupus in my mid thirties and fibro, all within a couple of months of each other and then I was depressed and I was in a bad marriage and so I saw 10 doctors in 24 years. Then I ended up in nurse practitioner school at 40 and all but 10 doctors, 44 years. I was 44 years old before a doctor ever leaned into me and said, Dani, what are you eating? Don’t you know, your diet controls your symptoms. Do you take digestive enzymes and probiotics? And do you know your food sensitivities? 12 years ago next month, November the 10th when I did my food sensitivity testing. 12 years ago, my entire world turned around the entire trajectory of my life, turned around at age 44 whenever someone addressed what was at the end of my fork, right, they didn’t address the childhood trauma that didn’t come until later. But when I realized what I was eating could kill me or he’ll heal me, right? It changed my entire world and changed the trajectory of my life. My Children’s lives. 

I hope thousands of patients lives at this point and I hope the next generation, you know like generationally for my family. So yeah, I was misdiagnosed with the you know, I was put on a ton of pills. I was told there’s no cure for lupus Danielle. It kills women every day. What? This is the best rheumatologist at Vanderbilt University back, you know, 30 years ago, whenever, however many years ago, it was what I had no idea that you could reverse or turn around anything that you’ve turned on because I am living proof. Whatever you turn on, you can turn off if you were born healthy and I was you do not have to live sick. It’s very simple, but it’s not easy. And that’s why I wrote that book on the six steps. You know that I work with that are very simple, but they’re not easy. It’s not easy to eat well, sleep well, move well, poop well, distress well, right and commune well. So yeah, It’s why I do what I do and it changed my entire world. I feel better at 57, in January than I ever felt at 37 or 47. There’s not enough gluten in the world to go back to how I felt all those years not doing it.

Jana Danielson

So you touched on a couple of things that I want to look back to that I think are important for us to dissect a little bit for many people as adults, childhood trauma, whether it was, you know, dealt with or not, I think plays a huge role in our body’s ability to do what you said. If you know, if a gene could be turned off or you know, how does it, how is it or turned on? Can it be turned off? Talk to us a little bit about that piece and something called aces that maybe, you know, the people in our audience watching may not know much about and how did that play a role for you? 

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

Exactly. Right. I didn’t know anything about adverse childhood experience scores about childhood trauma until I was actually in my 50s, a patient taught me about this. The nurse practitioner school didn’t teach me that. And so aces childhood trauma, what happens to you before the age of 18? Right so 17 you know up until 18 and below can literally change the entire trajectory of your life. The higher the adverse the higher the trauma score the higher the rate of high blood pressure, cancer, chronic disease, diabetes, suicide drug abuse, drug use, drug overdose, cardiovascular disease. I mean the list goes on and on. And this is a study that was done in the nineties from Kaiser Permanente and the C. D. C. Together looking at 17,000 people in the Kaiser Permanente Insurance program in California. They interviewed 17,000 patients on multiple different forms of trauma. Physical, emotional, mental, physical, emotional, mental, psychological there we go. And living with a substance of abuse and violence against the mother. 10 questions. 10 questions. Were you raped or molested as a child? Right. Did somebody go to prison in your family where your parents divorced? 

Did a parent die with someone a drug abuser? Did someone attempt suicide? 10 questions. The higher the score the higher the ace score, the higher your chance of chronic disease and dying. If you have a score of four or more, you have a 1200% increase in dying by suicide over someone who does not have a score of four who has a one you have a 400% chance of higher rate of emphysema or car chronic bronchitis 460% chance higher higher for depression and the list goes on and on childhood trauma. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the former president Dr. Block says that it is the number one undiagnosed missed public health crisis in the United States is unaddressed childhood trauma. And when I addressed that, that’s when I took my healing to the entire next level. And it took a lot of work, a lot of therapy. I mean I actually went somewhere for six days and to on site and hammered out six days worth of experiential therapy, handling that trauma and forgiving and working through it. 

Your body keeps score Dr. Vander Kolk teaches that in his book, the body keeps score, your body remembers exactly what happened to you. And again, you know, people think they’re crazy or things are their fault. Absolutely not. So when I learned about childhood trauma, it took my patient care to a whole another level because I deal with mainly very sick. Sick very a lot of autoimmune disease in my, in my clinic, Hashimoto’s and multiple sclerosis and irritable bowel disease and things like that. And when I learned about trauma, it completely changed the way I practice and now every single patient like my new patient tomorrow, her her a scores of five, mine’s a 6. 5,6,4,3. I mean these are not good and she’s got Graves disease and Hashimoto’s disease both you know, she’s got to autoimmune diseases of the thyroid. We’ll think about what the thyroid is, that’s your voice, this is your voice and women have autoimmune disease 8 to 10 times more than men. Now there’s multiple reasons. It’s not just trauma hormones toxins. I mean we can talk about that for four days, but this is your voice right here. And I see a lot of autoimmune disease of the thyroid from my trauma patients.

Jana Danielson

Can you share like that’s heavy.

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

It’s heavy. That’s a whole summit, right?

Jana Danielson

That is a whole summit. It is. And let’s first of all acknowledge, I mean acknowledging health practitioner like you for making that a part of the healing process versus prescribing something for that. Do you have any maybe any stories that come to mind of a patient who you know, you could obviously keeping you know, we don’t need names or anything like that. But I would love to know how this works in real life with you as the practitioner in your clinic when you start addressing some of these pieces, what what miracles have you seen change in the body when this is because I would argue that how do you even start reframing mindset and motivation and and you know, will to live before you can address some of those past traumas.

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

Oh good Lord, that’s a loaded question right there. So I did when you were talking I had one patient. Well I’ve got two that came to mind this. This patient was the very first patient of mine that I ever had who had like a nine or 10. I mean every single question, every single box was checked right on the questionnaire. Her husband had died right in front of her, fell off of a truck and died. And she was suicide. She was 400 pounds if she was a pound I if she was in I mean she was at least 354 pounds came to me suicidal had been institutionalized multiple times for for attempting suicide, depressed, morbidly. Oh obese anxiety. She had multiple autoimmune diseases. I mean it was your classic what in the world? And she was on every pharmaceutical one could think of high blood pressure diabetes meds, right, cholesterol medications anxiety. She was on Xanax, she was on Valium and Xanax. 

She was on, I don’t know if it’s PROzac or Effexor. Anyway, she was on antidepressants as well, You name it. She was on it and she came to me morbidly obese and desperate and she had never all the time that she’s been spent in psych hospitals. Had never been given the adverse childhood experience questionnaire. Senate triggered her in there. She broke down, right, she broke down. She still wasn’t over the trauma of her husband dying and, so anyway we she’s still here. She is not suicidal now we have a long way to go because this is what I tell patients, look, you’ve spent 3456 decades, right? Going around this same mountain. It’s not getting better. It’s gonna take me longer than six weeks or six months to help you reverse this ship and turn it around. But when we do, the body wants to get better, all you have to do is give it a little something, you know this from your experience after we came there this summer, right? The body wants to write ship. 

So she is still here. She is alive. Is she thriving? I don’t know that she’s thriving. But she’s 75% better than she was. She’s lost some weight. She’s moving. She walked in the suicide prevention walk that we have through the American Foundation for suicide prevention, that was a huge step for her. So I have a couple of stories like this and it makes the biggest, I mean when they learn about this, they realized, whoa, I’m not broken. I wasn’t born broken. I turned every bit of this on and if Dani can reverse this then so can I and it’s baby steps, but it works. It works.

Jana Danielson

You mentioned earlier in our conversation or you refer to your six steps and you went through them. Let’s take a little bit more time and walk through them. So that if someone, you know, watching as a note taker, they have a chance to take some notes. I mean we’ll talk about where people can reach out and learn more about you and and get your book and things like that at the end. But let’s focus on the six steps that you’ve used. 

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

Common sense, practical medicine, that’s the whole byline, right for the book because I’m fairly intelligent, I’m pretty smart, but I’ve got more common sense than pretty much anybody. I’m not the smartest person in the class. Never was, but I’ve got a lot of common sense and when I started working this job as an integrative nurse practitioner, I’m family practice. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was like, okay, this can’t be rocket science. I was not taught any of this at Vanderbilt, never, not the first thing that your body can heal itself. And I started working with gut health initially, right? And I said, okay, we gotta eat well. So we are, eat well is the very first step for me. And then sleep well is the second step. I think they are side by side because if you don’t sleep well you’ll never eat well. 

So it goes hand in hand, you have to eat an anti inflammatory diet and anti inflammatory lifestyle. Maybe a Mediterranean lifestyle, maybe a paleo, I don’t know Mediterranean works for me, but it’s a one ingredient that lifestyle. So if you’re eating chick fil a McDonald’s cracker barrel, Taco Bell, I don’t know name your fast food place or name your favorite package processed bag food. It is creating systemic inflammation in your body. Every cell in your body is on fire and inflammation is the root of all chronic lifestyle diseases, diseases you weren’t born with right, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, lupus, diabetes created by your lifestyle, turned off by your lifestyle. So we start with one ingredient food, cutting out the top seven foods, you remember what they are, gluten, dairy, soy corn, sugar, eggs, peanuts, those are the top seven inflammatory foods in the United States. 

And it is everything an American eats gluten, dairy, soy corn, sugar, eggs, peanuts are in every single food. Every single processed packaged band, fake bag, fake food out, there should be banned. But it’s not in one ingredient food, one ingredient food right? Like chicken, lamb, turkey, pork, brussels, sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, I don’t know, cherries, grapes, I’m just making stuff up. That’s one ingredient food. It makes all the difference in the world when you cut those seven foods out and we discuss why they’re so inflammatory. Look at you.

Jana Danielson

Well, yeah, you know what your experience. Yeah, I think this is a good, a good time to just segue into what I experienced with Dani this past summer. And so I would always like that. I carry most of my stress and my gut all the time. And I about three or so years ago I got to the point where I would go to bed at night and I would look at my body in the mirror and I would think okay I’m not pregnant. I know that. But yet why at the end of the day am I looking five or six months pregnant every day? I wake up in the morning and I’m good like I look different what’s happening throughout my day and like you guys I’m a wellness practitioners, like I’m a Pilates instructor. I have an integrated health therapies clinic, I know what I should be eating. So I went to my naturopathic doctor at my clinic and she we did SIBO, so small intestine bacterial overgrowth tests. 

There’s two different strains. I think there are versions of it, right? I came back positive for both and at the time she offered me like we can control this with diet or we can fix it with there’s a new antibiotic that’s out and I was like oh okay and there was no coverage for it. I paid $1000 for this month of pills because in my mind I was like I haven’t taken an antibiotic since I was probably 12 years old with strep throat. This is gonna knock it out of the park right? And just so our audience knows like SIBO. I mean it’s good bacteria just in the wrong part of your gut, right? So I did my 30 days and which really I thought was the easy way out and within 90 days I was back to that same amount of bloating, discovered about an hour after I ate all these things, right? Dani comes. And so then I downloaded an app and I tried to control it that way. And Dani came to my house this summer, as we mentioned earlier in our talk and we were out for dinner or lunch actually one day just before they were heading to the retreat and I didn’t realize it, but I must have been squirming in my chair because she looked at me across the table and she’s like your guts bugging you, isn’t it? 

And you know my eyes got like big like pie plates and I was like yeah yes it is. And in that 15 minutes she had her next question was have you ever done an elimination diet? And right away, like the alarm bells went off in my head and I said yes and I’ve never been successful at it and please please don’t recommend that I do that. And her next, the next thing you said, I don’t remember is you said what if you thought about it in a different way? What if you didn’t frame it as eliminating foods or not allowing yourself to have certain foods, but would you take 30 days out of your life to start healing your gut to give your body a chance to start to heal so that you could see after 30 days where it was at and right away. When as soon as she did the reframe for me, I was like, well of course I would take 30 days. And experiment and learn and it was absolutely fascinating. 

You know, my 21 year old son at that point did it with me. He went through a few healing crisis is that I was messaging Dani about. But we did, we had such, what happened after 30 days was so astronomically amazing. And you know what gang? There wasn’t one day where I felt like oh my gosh, I’m starving. Oh my gosh! Right. And I thought I would, because prior to that, I don’t know if you guys know what I know in the U. S. You have those peach rings there, those chewy candies, that kind of power in Canada. We have fuzzy peaches and I used to lovingly tell people that I was the mayor of fuzzy peach ville because I love fuzzy peaches. Like I would have clients by me, the Costco sized fuzzy peaches for my birthday and Christmas and that was just my treat and that was my one concern was like my sugar was like my reward, like my treat to myself.

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

Right.

Jana Danielson

Right? And with the way you talk about this in your book with your six steps, there was none of that. And when it came time to reintroduce, I knew immediately what was going to be on for me and what was not. So the results were amazing. My skin, my hair, like I was telling Dani a few weeks ago I had to go and buy new clothes because two sizes and seven weeks. And then that was and she said to me, do not step on the scale, do not step on the scale because that’s not what this is about. It’s about healing your gut. So when you talk about eating well, that’s really what it was all about. So I just wanted to share that because I actually experienced it.

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

Yeah. And it works. I saw a patient today that I it was her second visit and I started her on just the elimination, that’s all I did. I didn’t do a detox, we just did the elimination gluten, dairy, soy corn, sugar, eggs, peanuts, and she was like 14 pounds down. 14 pounds today. She came in and she and then we got her food sensitivity results back today and she was like, oh man. And it was interesting, dairy was number one for her cow’s milk was number one for her and she was like, oh gosh, I was gonna choose to put that back in first because cheese, you know, everybody loves most people love cheese, but if she eats it, she’s gonna gain that weight right back and it creates systemic inflammation. So that’s what we’re trying to do is bring the inflammatory response down in your body. 

You are cutting out seven foods, but you also have to look at the hundreds of foods that God made for us to eat, right hundreds in season for us to eat. Now we’re getting into the fall. So the root vegetables and things like that. We don’t need a lot of butternut, squash and acorns, wash and beats and all the things the root vegetables which we should, we should hunker down and eat those things in the fall and lighten up in the spring and summer and we don’t eat in season and we don’t eat fresh food. So it’s reshaping the way you think and as you look at your cabinet say, that’s my cabinet behind here in my refrigerator and all those books or boxes, bags, cans, tubes, rolls, fake man made food as you run out of it. As you run out of it, don’t bring it back in, make a better choice. This will give you time then to learn and to research because I guarantee you if it was made in a plant by man, it is fake food for the most part. And if it’s got a label on the back of it, you know that long and you’re trying to read it that your body does not recognize that it’s the same thing with driving through your favorite chicken restaurant. 51 ingredients in a chick fil a sandwich. 51. 51. It’s about addiction.

I love a chick fil a sandwich, but there is nothing healthy about a chick fil a sandwich. I mean nothing, not the first thing. And so if you don’t, it has to taste the same in Franklin, Tennessee as it does in New York city. That’s addiction and that’s a formula. It’s a chemistry experiment and you and your Children are the chemistry experiment. Every single one of those restaurants have to taste the same no matter where they are in the country because nobody wants their chicken to taste different, right? Or their burger or their biscuit and cracker barrel where I am in the south, it better taste the same everywhere you go. So that is about addiction. If you don’t think the food industry is about addiction, you’re sadly mistaken because you can’t drive up, it’s 4:30 in Nashville right now you can’t drive up to the lake to any of those restaurants and just walk in or just drive up. There’s a line guaranteed for a reason. So diet is key. You got to eat well and I talked, I break it down in the book, very simple on how to do that. And as a country girl from Kentucky, I needed to know how to do it simply and it’s important, right one ingredient food. 

Cut those top seven foods out start drinking more water, no soda whatsoever. Not the first non zero. This is a lollipop which has got a lot of probiotics and stuff in its tonic water. It’s sparkling tonic. I mean it’s not, it’s not, it’s probiotics and all that, but no coke, no diet coke water, organic coffee, some tea, whatever. But keep it simple. Keep it simple. You gotta eat well, you gotta sleep well. I mean your body heals when you sleep. If you don’t sleep at night, you will never eat well and your debt certainly not gonna exercise well and poop. Well you we have to figure out how to get you to sleep. Now if your bedroom is full of electronics, electromagnetic fields and electronics and computers and phones and TVs and all that. You got to get them. If you’re sleeping on an electric bed and you don’t sleep well then you better unplug it because that $10,000 bed is destroying your sleep. You’re literally sleeping on a mind filled field of electricity. It’s fascinating. So your bedroom needs to be clean. It needs to be a sanctuary. It needs to be healing, healing and the bed is for sleeping sex only if you’re not doing one or the other. Get out of it. If you snore or your partner snores, you need to sleep, study and or you need to move to the other bedroom. If your partner’s snoring and you can’t sleep. I’m sorry. You need to, you need to be in a separate bedroom until they get themselves straightened out. Because if you can’t sleep at night, you are creating systemic inflammation in your body, systemic inflammation. Magnesium helps you sleep. 

CBD helps you sleep. There are lots of things. Lemon balm. Oh, good Lord Lagonda. I mean there’s a million things to help you sleep. Melatonin. If you have trouble going to sleep, taking immediate release melatonin. If you have trouble staying asleep, take a controlled release melatonin that releases at 2, 3 in the morning. If you wake up between two and four. Oftentimes, that’s blood sugar dropping in the night because we haven’t eaten well. I guarantee you you’re probably not eating enough protein during the day. So eat a little bit of protein at night before you go to bed and it’ll keep your blood sugar stable at night. There’s lots of little hacks that I talked about in there. But also give yourself some grace. If you wake up in the night, give yourself some grace. We used to do that. I wrote about it in here 1st and 2nd sleep for generations. They went to bed when the sun was going down here soon in a couple hours and then they would wake up four or five hours later in the night. Whatever they had sex. Nothing wrong with that. They had sex. 

They cooked the beans, stirred the pot. I don’t know what they did. Read the bible. So shoot, I don’t know, drink some hot tea, had some sex went back to sleep. That’s how they did it. And it was called 1st and 2nd sleep. If you can do that, then do that and give yourself some grace and then get up when you get up now with little kids and I understand all that you can’t do that. But sleep is so important. Go to bed, stay off your phone, stay off your computer, talk to your partner. It’s important when you eat well. You will also sleep well when you sleep well, you will eat well. Eat well. Sleep well. Move well. Well, guess what? The research is clear. The people who move better who move more eat better and sleep better. And the people who sleep better and eat better. Move better. It’s all connected. You gotta move your body. Our body is designed to move. Find a buddy. I got a girl supposed to be here over 430 but we’re running behind here, we’re gonna go for a walk. 

When you have a partner, you go, you don’t want to leave them hanging out there. I don’t care what you do, ballroom dancing, hula, hooping, push ups, Crossfit, whatever. If you feel worse though after you exercise, then you’ve got the wrong exercise yoga has been around for thousands of years for a reason. It works, Pilates works. Crossfit, Hotbox, Orange theory. All those are great, fantastic. They are. But if you are worse, if you feel worse afterwards, like you have to go to bed after you go work out, then that’s the wrong workout for you because exercise does create inflammation in your body in a good way, but too much of it creates bad inflammation, right? So movement is key. Jack Lalane was my favorite. He’s always dead. He’s not old anymore, He’s dead. But he moved. His rule was, I can’t eat breakfast until I exercise. So he exercised every morning, which for women is metabolically sound medical advice. It speeds up your metabolism for about 13 hours when you exercise in the morning. So it’s key some sort of movement doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy, does it? You know, it doesn’t, you know, because you know this.

Jana Danielson

Yeah. And I think there was a, you know, the late eighties and early nineties, you know, the high knees and where it was very ballistic and that was it. And I think so many of us believed that and still do we have to leave a puddle of sweat on the floor for a workout to be worth it. Or for it to count how, how much do my glutes hurt the next day when I sit on the toilet or I gotta lift, you know, and that’s, that really it’s not a self fulfilling prophecy at all. It’s just help, what happens is you get more and more disconnected from your body because your body realizes she’s not listening to me. So maybe I need to scream a little louder.

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

Yes.

Jana Danielson

Right? That’s what ends up happening.

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

I’d say this all the time. You know, your body gives you those red flags. Pay attention to it. Joint pain is not normal. It is not normal to hurt. And if your doctor or your nurse says to you when you’re just getting older Dani, that’s B. S. Our bodies, If they are not inflamed, they should not hurt. My hands should have not hurt in my twenties and thirties and forties. That was not normal. That was inflammation and that was food. You should not hurt. Well in general, you shouldn’t hurt. Pay attention to the red flags, headaches aren’t normal. Constipation is not normal, which we’re getting ready to talk about pooping. Diarrhea is not nor right. It’s just like in your marriage. If you ignore those red flags, man, it’s like whack a mole trying to get all that down. Listen, your body is telling you exactly what it needs. It’s also not normal not to sleep. So you have to figure out and go back upstream. What happened? What happened? When did I feel the best? You have to eat? Well, you have to sleep well, you have to move well, you have to poop. 

Well again, you won’t poop. Well, if you’re not doing those other things, right? We are designed to eliminate what we eat within 24 hours. If you’re not pooping a couple of times a day. There’s a transit issue here. It’s not you’re not getting that food as fast through your body as you should. It’s one tube from the mouth all the way down to the Anus. It’s one big tube. It’s fascinating. You should go to the bathroom like your dog. Does I have a poodle laying over here at 15 month old standard poodle. I always tell people you need to poop like a poodle period. Eat. It’s about 20 minutes later they go out there and they go to the bathroom and they come back. Most people who don’t go to the bathroom, if your doctor tells you it’s normal to not poop or to only have to have a bowel movement twice a week. You need a new healthcare provider because they’re not willing to help you do the hard work. It’s not normal. 

You should eliminate what you’ve eaten today should be gone tomorrow. Most people would actually have a bowel movement. If they were hydrated. We are so chronically dehydrated. It’s not even funny. So if you’ll drink the proper amount of water, not coffee, not tea. Those are dehydrating right. You have to drink more water for that. You would actually go to the bathroom. But maybe you need some magnesium right? Maybe you need some movement. Maybe you need more fiber in your diet. I don’t know. You probably know that answer. And some people say, well I haven’t I’ve never gone in the bathroom. My mom says they had to give me enemas as a baby. Okay, well then something’s not right. Right. Maybe you need a probiotic to put all the good bacteria back in your gut that we have disrupted through decades of dysfunction. So maybe you need a squatty potty right to put your feet on. Have you ever used a squatty potty?

Jana Danielson

Well, I’ve kind of made my own and I made my own from the kids when they were trying you know, learning how to go to the bathroom. They’re fantastic.

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

It’s the best thing. You will not want to go to the bathroom without a squatty body or something to put your feet on anymore because you get so used to it, we I can’t show you because I’m on this camera but we are designed to squat right to go to the bathroom, right? Other countries squat. I mean we found it barbaric, but it’s just like having a baby. If you squat it to have a baby, it’s much easier than it is to lay on your back. Well it’s not normal to just sit on the toilet with your legs hanging down like this to go to the bathroom, your anus and the recto the sphincter down there is kinked when you do that. But when you squat it opens up a squatty potty, get a stool, get a block. I don’t care. That is worth everything right there for somebody. They’re gonna love this just for that. Get your feet elevated. You have to go to the bathroom, don’t beat. You know, don’t drink a lot of caffeine, be hydrated, move your body, eat your vegetables, eat your fiber, you’ll go to the bathroom, eat well, sleep well, move well, poop, well, distress. 

Well, we are a nation of empty vessels, aren’t we? We are pouring from an empty cup. I mean just straight up empty cup. There’s money in there. But we are just straight up. There’s nothing left. There is nothing left and we are and we continue on. And as women technically, I guess technically we are not the head of the household. I mean, I guess, but some of us are, I am, I’m not married, but I mean if you’re married, you know, I guess the man and then us and all that. But I don’t know what to feel about that. But here’s the thing. We set the tone for the entire home. The woman does the second you walk through that door right there from coming home from work, you set the tone, whatever tone you’re in, the entire home is in that tone, right. That thing mama’s not happy. Nobody’s happy. It’s a fact. We have no reserve, we have no breathing room, no margin in our lives. We are so overcommitted over just we’re just exhausted and there’s no room for error, right? If one little thing goes wrong. I remember raising my kids as a single mom on food stamps and just in terrible shape. Any little thing that set me off. 

I was absolute a hole. And there I said some awful things we have to learn as women for sure to automate, eliminate and delegate everything we can in our life. E. D. Get it out of your life just like that automatic external defibrillator at the gym that brings you back to life. So will this in your life If you automate everything, you can automate it. What do you mean? Your groceries, your bills? I don’t care, automated. Whatever you can automate do it, eliminate everything else. We do way too much. We don’t need our nose and everything, eliminating that goes for people as well. You know, there’s nothing wrong with cutting out the soul suckers in your life. It’s the best thing I ever did. Get rid of two people in my life that I had been in my life forever. And I write about it in the book. You know, I don’t know how you can find them or how to get in touch with them. But I finally eliminate them. Same thing with studying boundaries with family. I mean it’s just pain and simple. You know it’s painful but it’s plain and simple. We teach people how to treat us. And if we don’t want to host thanksgiving in three weeks or I guess four weeks, I don’t know, three weeks. We don’t have to. Did you know that? You don’t have to host thanksgiving at your house. Well, I’ve done it for 10 years. 

Dani, who cares? If it causes you stress, then let somebody else do it and if they choose not to, that’s okay. Thanksgiving’s gonna come and go anyway and maybe you just do it a lot. But I am telling you, you have the right to set your boundaries and only say yes to what is good for you and your family. That is hard medicine because as women were involved in everything. But you know what matters your partner, your God, your spouse, your Children right there in that order. If something else is getting in the way of that, then you need to get rid of it. And if your job is killing you, then guess what? Finding a new job I did eight years ago, I left a practice that was destroying my health. Although I had a great job and a good business there. I left I started my own business. What’s the worst that happens? You go bankrupt? It’s pretty bad. But I mean I didn’t go bankrupt. But you know if something is not serving you well, you have the right to change it relationships. Marriage, sorry, you’re in a bad abusive marriage, you can leave. I did, I did, I was on food stamps, it was awful. So decreasing stress when we’re so stressed out, you’ll never eat well, you won’t sleep at night. I know I went through those years of that. You’re not gonna go to the bathroom, you’re not gonna poop. Well, you’re not gonna exercise. I am a believer. And so I do believe in God. Jesus put some space between he and his people. He did. If you read it the bible, if you do, if you don’t then buddha, I’m certain put space between he and his people as well when he needed time alone, build your self care into your world. 

Don’t have a world that you have to escape from for self care, build it in. If I didn’t want to do this podcast or this summit interview with you, I would have said no, I can’t do it, Jana, Jana, I cannot do it. I’m too overwhelmed. I had the right to say that. And Jana has said, oh, I’m sorry cause you’re gonna be so good, but okay, fine, but seriously, we have the right and it’s, I mean man start eliminating automating and delegating everything you can in your life, get some more breathing room so you can eat better so you can plan your meals right? Because if you don’t meal prep, you cheat when you’re not prepared, but when we’re not, we’re not prepared because we’re so overwhelmed over here on this side and then you have to commune. Well, community is key. It’s huge for me. I feel that community is one of the things that gives you life, right? We’ve witnessed that a few weeks ago, you know, at the community when we were in Arizona, I mean every, there’s all different kinds of community. Your church group, you’re a group. Ural annoying group, you’re in a group, you’re hiking group, your mom’s group. I mean it doesn’t matter your neighborhood, but we don’t cultivate community anymore very easily. We’re so involved in these phones were so involved with our own world. We need community. You heal when you have community. 

The evidence is clear when you laugh with your friends, your girlfriend, your guy friends, whatever, your couple friends, your immune system, I’m sorry your cortisol levels go down, your immune system goes up. It’s fascinating. Your white blood cells go down. You know, they’re not elevated or low there, they just level out when you have community, we are the loneliest society we’ve ever been lonely, covid 19, Put the final nail in the coffin for a lot of people when it comes to lonely and community and now we’re just now coming back out again, you know, and I’m on the board for the American foundation for suicide prevention phone calls, two suicide crisis lines went up, 800% during the pandemic. The fastest growing rate of suicide is age 10 to 24. 10 year olds. 10 year olds are killing themselves, unacceptable, unacceptable. 

And we’re in, we’re in trouble and it takes work and it takes effort to pick up the phone and say, Hey Jana, I’m gonna be in Mexico. I don’t even know her and I didn’t know her, right? And she started community right there. I reached out, she said, well stay with me. These are things that are stressful, sometimes right to have people in your house or to have a little get together. I had 98 women over Saturday night for my girls night. Yeah, you had to clean the house, but they don’t care about that. We were outside. We had a fire. We had tons of food and we laughed until 11 o’clock just laughing. It’s huge for healing. And when you have community, all the other steps start to fall into place as well. Again, it’s not rocket science. It is very simple, very simple, but it’s not easy. It takes work. There’s a difference between being simple and easy.

Jana Danielson

So Dani this framework, I mean, what you’ve really laid out is a plan and I think that’s what a lot of people feel like they what is my first next step. And so thank you for gifting that through your eloquent storytelling. And I want to know I have two more questions for you before we wrap our time together. What do you feel? And I know you’ve sprinkled some of this throughout your interview, but kind of pull it all together. What do you feel is not being talked about enough by others in your industry, like other health care providers?

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

Well others and I can tell well, okay, well there’s lots, but I guess we’ll just start with what I did talk about. I think trauma, I think childhood, I think we’re not talking at all about it now. My son is in medical school so far. They haven’t talked a lot, they haven’t talked anything about trauma. He’s in the second year. I’m hoping they do before. It’s over with. I think that’s a huge piece and we should all be trained on that. Right? How to talk about it, how to address it, How to say what happened to you? What happened? Were you born you know, healthy? I think that’s a big one and it is a huge piece for your tribe. That’s listening right now is you don’t have to wait for your health care provider to address that. You address it yourself. Google up adverse childhood experience questionnaire, take it learn about it. I think that’s a huge one. 

We’re not addressing trauma and we’re not addressing gut. I mean even functional medicine providers, I know you asked for one, but I have a lot of words. We’re not addressing gut, we don’t do it. Even like I said, even functional medicine, it’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do to change what’s at the end of your fork and healthcare providers don’t want to talk about it, but you can treat the thyroid all you want, you can treat the adrenals and the hormones and the depression all you want, but you will never be 100% until you heal the inflammatory response in the gut because the gut is the, is the hub, this is the center, the gut affects the adrenals, the adrenals affect the thyroid, the thyroid affects the hormones, it all affects the brain, the gut and the brain is 100% connected. You’ve seen this, your anxiety and depression go down. So I think the trauma and the gut are the two main things that we do not address. Even as functional medicine people makes me mad.

Jana Danielson

Well and I love I mean there’s so many, I mean we could go on for another hour on all the things I love about, There just is so much passion in how you deliver your message. But yet there’s also this beautiful simplicity to it and I hope that those of you who are watching and enjoying this conversation with Dani, feel that, right? So with that, that leads me to my last question, will you let us into the mind of Miss Dani Williamson and let us know what are you doing personally to ensure that you know your mindset stays front of mind and you can continue to show up as you for your community who have come to know, I can trust you depend on you and become healing, you know, a part of their healing journey. What do you do on a daily basis or a weekly basis to make sure that you can stay this authentic? Amazing you.

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

I sleep. I mean, I don’t know, this is the first thing that came off to my, I get a good night’s sleep. I am useless. If I don’t sleep, I would be absolutely useless as a health care provider if I didn’t sleep. And the random night that I don’t, I’m not nearly on my a game. It’s key for me. My diet’s already, I mean, you know, and I make sure I eat clean, I do, I’m not perfect by any meat. I’m actually on a detox right now and I cheated today because one of my former employees brought in a gluten free gingerbread cake and I was like, oh, I’m gonna just have, you know, and and I gave myself grace over it, okay, it’s fine, but I sleep, that’s the big one for me. The gut situation. The food situation is a no brainer for me now, there’s not enough gluten in the world to make me go back to how I felt 12 years ago period or dairy, which was the hardest sleep. 

Sleep is key when you are tired dang, it go to bed, you know, a woman, I mean I’m sorry when a man is tired, I don’t know your husband specifically but they go to bed where they do, they get up and go to bed. They brush their teeth if we’re lucky and they go to bed when a woman gets ready to go to bed. It’s 45 minutes or an hour later because you know, you gotta make sure the dogs got their stuff, the Laundry’s gotta be done, the food for tomorrow, whatever. There’s a million things you got to fold the clothes, put the clothes in the wash. It’s a 29 things that need to be done before a woman goes to bed. Go to bed, go to bed when you’re tired, go to bed sleep. I’m telling you your body heals when you sleep and it’s what I do. That’s how I take care of myself. And there’s lots of things I do, but I really do work on building my self care into my world. But I was 50 plus years old before I learned that took me a while. 

Jana Danielson

Again, you know, I think people who sleep well take that for granted and I think that we’re probably the minority in the people that sleep well.

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

Yes. All you have to do if you randomly get up and I don’t, I mean I couldn’t tell you last time I did. But if you wake up at two or three in the morning you pick your phone up, which is the last thing you should do. Right? But if you’re looking on Instagram or what you can see who’s on there doing stuff in the middle of the night or on Facebook. And it’s so sad because it is a worldwide problem. Sleep. We you all sleep when I’m dead. That’s not true. Yeah, you will. But you’re gonna die decades sooner if you don’t sleep now. And I’m gonna tell you something about. I know that we have to go but sleep apnea, snoring, untreated. Sleep apnea takes 10 to 16 years off of your lifespan. Jana, 10 to 16. If you snore, you may not have sleep at now. But there’s a 90% chance that you do. So chances are you have sleep apnea. If you snore, you need a sleep study, I don’t care. I know it’s not sexy. I don’t I don’t snore but and I’ve had a sleep study for all my patients. I did it lord from live from the sleep lab. But it’s not sexy to have a cpap on you. Right? But it will save your life. It will hands down save your life. So sleeping is key. It’s key.

Jana Danielson

And so tell us if there’s gonna be people here on the summit that are gonna want to connect with you learn about your courses, your books. Where’s the best place for them to find you?

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

Our website is DaniWilliamson.com real simple. There’s a $29 inflammation is the devil course on there. We just slash the price so that everybody can do it. I mean it’s just that you can go in and out of it my web, I mean my, we have a great newsletter that goes out so if you sign up for that, but check your junk because emails seem to go to junk a lot. DaniWilliamson.com. But Dani Williamson wellness, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, hundreds and hundreds of videos, free education on everything from sex drive to C. B. D to Lyme disease, autism, heavy metal. I mean you name it, I talk about it. I do a lot of cooking videos. And you know of course the book is anywhere you buy books, Barnes and Noble, Amazon all of that. You can order it online. It is a good book. It was a good book. But Instagram, Facebook, YouTube man, we give a lot of free education just like you do. 

People who do what you and I do in the, this world, We give out free education all day every day because we love what we do and we feel better just like the coach ball, I mean that coach ball has changed. Well we only have one left. I had made a complete, I pitched a fit in the office today over that one. I said, where, where our coach balls? I’ve got a summit with Hannah tonight, which means nothing right. But I let them, I mean it means a lot, but I mean it wasn’t live is what I was trying to get. And they were like, I don’t know where the coach balls, nobody knew they weren’t ordered somebody let slip. We give away so much education every day. So follow people like us and Dr. Hyman and you know, being Greenfield and I mean all the people, all the people who do what we do, and you’ll learn, but we have a lot out there for people. So our website is great. You can connect off there. We do have an online store, which is fantastic. And those are things that I’ve personally selected, you know, for people, I just love it and I want everyone to feel as good as I do. I want you all to listen to me because my family, zero zip, Nobody listens to me, my daughter and my son, pretty much my dad, my mom, everybody bunny bread, dairy ice cream and big gallon jugs. I mean they eat it all. 

I walked into my dad’s house recently and I was like, and he’s had two knee replacements, hands are all crippled up. Won’t listen to a word, wrote a book, gave him the first book. He never read it. So you all listen, I walked in and there’s bunny bread, there’s potato bread, there’s biscuits, there’s all kinds of crap on the kitchen counter I said, do y’all know who I am? Do you like, do y’all really know who I am. Do you know who your daughter is? Like, I’m 56 my dad’s 78. He said, what you talking about? I said like they come from all over the country to see me. I haven’t taken a new patient in almost a year because we’re booked solid Dad. They fly from all over. I know what I’m talking about. What is this bunny bread mess on the counter? This is nothing but inflammation. I pulled out. So please listen because what I do works, Oh yeah, it’s awful family. They don’t listen.

Jana Danielson

You know what, let’s all do Dani a favor and just listen to what she’s saying, right? And she does, she knows her stuff. And like I said, you got a little taste of this amazing soul. So Dani, I want to thank you for being here on the virtual stage at the mindset summit and thank you for how you serve, how you show up.

Dani Williamson, MSN, FNP

You are rocking it by the way, you are changing people’s lives and all of you that are listening this woman, If you don’t, if you aren’t brought into her yet, she is a game changer. She’s the real deal. There are very few people that you like just immediately and you knew like I knew this is a girl. This is a woman I’m gonna have in my life until the day I die. That doesn’t happen very often. And so you keep doing the hard work doing what you’re doing. Smart, smart, smart as a whip and look what’s on my desk. Yeah, she bought this for me in Mexico and all of these symbols mean something and I have them in my drawer right here because I always forget what they mean, but I have it right there on all the great things. See I haven’t, I keep this and so guys find you someone in your life. I mean they don’t have to live in Mexico. You know, find you someone in your life that you can connect with and make friends with. It makes a big difference. But again, if you were born healthy, you do not have to live sick. Always remember that, commit that to memory, put it on your phone, put it on your refrigerator. You are not designed to live sick whatever it is that’s going on with, you can be reversed. I’m living proof.

Jana Danielson

Dani, thanks again, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for being here for this episode of the medicine of mindset summit and we will see you on the next interview.