The Food-Mood Connection: A Natural Approach To Healing

Welcome and Sponsor Introduction 0:00

Hello, ladies, and welcome back to the summit and doctor Sharon Stills. You know that by now. And I am super excited, happy, honored all the things to be here with you, letting you eavesdrop on these really important conversations that can make such a huge difference for you. That's why we do this summits. That's why we take the time to produce these. It's no small feat. And but the feedback we get is always so heartwarming. And we hear how it changes your lives. And so we we keep on doing them, and we wouldn't be able to do them without the support of sponsors.

It's truly our sponsors that make it make it doable for us. And so we have one of those very special sponsors, Doctor Kelly Rutley, here with us today. And so I just want to first say thank you. Thank you for your support because your support of the summit speaks to your support of women who are struggling. And so let me tell you, let me read you her quick little bio so you can hear about her and all her awesomeness. She's a chiropractor, but she specializes in feminine fat loss and nervous system regulation.

She's built two chiropractic practices to success and helped thousands of women restore their physical and mental health using the protocols she now shares in podcast, interviews and summit. So we're gonna hear about that so people just like you plus had practitioners and health coaches can implement them with ease. She's been called the architect of simplicity in the health and wellness industry because she is skilled at simplifying the complicated. We gotta love that in an industry that can seem almost as chaotic as crypto.

She was diagnosed with Gad, which is generalized anxiety disorder herself when she was only 28 years old, and she now utilizes the tools she will share with you that allowed her to overcome anxiety and release herself from 15 years of benzodiazepine dependance. And to show you that there is freedom, there is hope on the other side. So welcome to the summit. It's really lovely to have you here. Thank you so much, Doctor Stills. I'm thrilled to be here. And I just want to. Right, right off the bat, just, tell you how much I appreciate the amount of work that goes into producing these summits and interviewing doctors and experts and everything that has to happen on the back end for this to show up in everybody's inboxes, because it's a lot of work.

And, it's for anyone, anyone who creates these. And I used to do these myself. Anyone who creates these has a commitment to their audience. And so I just want to honor you for the amount of work that goes into these. Yes.

Anxiety Diagnosis and Benzodiazepine Dependence 2:50

Thank you. It really is a lot of work, but it is a labor of love. Yes, it is so it's right. So I'd love first. It's always inspiring. Especially, you know, for those listening, if they are struggling with anxiety or depression, I think that's one of the the hardest health problems to really overcome because you have anxiety and depression. So it's hard to even believe that the things can change or gather the energy to go and make changes. And so it's always really inspiring to hear from someone who who's been there and who has come out the other side to like, give hope.

And so I'd love to hear your story of what happened to you when you were 28. You were diagnosed. You said with Gad the generalized. Yeah, yeah. So I was I grew up, I was a gymnast growing up and, had a lot of, injuries as a gymnast and, you know, just grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and the Silicon Valley, a very fast paced environment. And I was very driven, kid. And when I hit 28, I think I hit burnout, to be honest with you. And at that time, I really don't know what was going on with my hormones.

Because I was 28 years old and I was trying all different types of birth control pills and contraception. And, you know, God only knows what kind of chaos, metabolic chaos and hormonal chaos it was actually neurotransmitter chaos was going on in my body because nobody was looking at it back then. Right? So this was back in the late 80s, early 90s. And do you remember Phonebooks Sharon? Do you remember like the yellow I did? Do you and I can like, oh, I would imagine like your audience might remember those two like the yellow pages and the white pages and.

Yeah. And so I was 28 years old and I was starting to have panic attacks. I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart racing, and then during the day I was having straight up panic attacks, meaning like the kind where you're sweating and can't move. And you. I basically, you know, you feel like you're going to die. And so I opened up a phone book. The only thing I knew was to look up a psychiatrist. I'm 28 years old, right? And I'm like, take my finger. And I'm like, I'm put my finger on a psychiatrist called the psychiatrist, made an appointment, walked in, explain what had been happening, and he said, oh, this sounds like generalized anxiety disorder.

You know, no conversations about Ariana birth control, no conversations about hormones, no conversations about what are you eating? What are you not eating? Are you sleeping? How is you know, how's your your family life? How are things going, you know, with your relationships and friends? None of that. And he prescribed a medication to me. I went to the pharmacy. I picked it up, took the medication. I had the best night sleep I had had in years. Turns out, however, that that medication, and even though it was only 2.5mg of chlamydia Pam or otherwise known as Klonopin, that I would end up on that drug for the next 20 years.

Actually, yeah, 25 years. Same dose .05 milligrams. But I'm telling you, when I was in my 30s, that's when I went to chiropractic school. And you can imagine the philosophical mind F of a chiropractor learning chiropractic philosophy and studying how the body works and how the brain works and how the nervous system works, and then knowing every night I have to take this drug or I can't sleep. So, I mean, I won't go into every detail of it. I'll just tell you, I tried many, many times to get off of it and ended up going back on, I was using all of the tools that I was learning as a chiropractor, and then finally I became aware of the fact that I personally overproduce histamines.

And so it's called a subclinical mast cell reaction. And if you guys understand what a marcel is, I'll just make it super, super simple. The mast cell is what responds to allergens and creates histamines. Well, histamines. Too much histamine over a long period of time or chronically in the body creates the exact same symptoms as generalized anxiety disorder. So a few courses of Benadryl and an anarchist to me later, and I felt like a whole new person. So you know that that's a very simple and short story.

But I think the what I mean, it's a long story that I'm making short, but I think what it really illustrates is how easily we can fall for things when we don't know that there's an alternative. And, you know, spending many years on this drug, you know, had a lot of a big impact on my self-esteem and my confidence and just how I felt about myself and also just being labeled with a just with a diagnosis of anxiety disorder. Right. So I think the reason I like to share this story is there is hope on the other side of it.

And my advice to anyone who's experienced that experiencing this is just dig deeper, dig deeper, and find someone like Doctor Stills or a functional medicine practitioner, or someone else who will help you dig dig deeper into that diagnosis. Yeah, I think that's a really powerful this could be like the overarching banner if we had one flying above the summit, that your anxiety can very well be something going on physiologically, whether it's a deficiency in progesterone or a quarter is cortisol or 2000 or too much cortisol or too little cortisol, or your thyroid or your histamines or toxins or that there's so many places to look and that I always it's like, right, someone goes to a traditional doctor and they're like, oh, we don't know.

There's nothing we can do. And when someone comes to me, I'm like, oh my gosh, there's, you know, my job is to figure out what we need to do because there's so many different possibilities. It's my job to figure out what's that window in that's going to make the biggest difference. So I think that's story is powerful right. And it took a lot a long time to figure it out. But just that right now, you know I'm sure there's women listening.

Food, Ketosis, and Diet as Medicine 9:20

And that could be their answer. Yeah I hope so I hope so. It was interesting too, because I remember growing up and going, you know, going into the traditional traditional doctors and they would ask, you know, are you allergic to anything like no, that's interesting. Right. Doctor stills because I really thought I was allergic to nothing because I never had any allergic reactions or responses to anything. What if it turns out that I was living inside of an allergic response all the time, and so nothing I would never notice if I was allergic to something or not?

So yeah, it's just it's very interesting when I look back on it and I realize, gosh, we just don't learn any of this, you know? And sometimes we have to find, learn the hard way, but not anymore, thankfully. Yes. That's why we have summits like these, because that could be hard information to learn 30 years ago. Right. So for women who are listening, who are dealing with anxiety, with depression or sadness, what are some things you recommend like that they can do right now, like on their own DIY?

Yeah, I mean really right now on your own, I think the most powerful tool is and I think I'm singing to the choir when I say this, I think the most powerful tool is food. You know, using food as medicine the way it was designed to be used and what I have found in with myself, but also in my practice over the last 25 years, is that the the quickest way to get relief and results and get mental clarity, better sleep and more stable modes is to balance your hormones or foods. So dropping those carbohydrates down, you know, below 50g a day, making sure you're getting plenty of protein, protein forward, and also those healthy fats because those healthy fats are what create the satiety signals to turn on in the brain to tell us we're not hungry.

And then, I would always encourage almost all of my patients and clients, not all of them, but almost all of them, to get into nutritional ketosis. So that you can start, you know, your brain can start using those extra calories, those clean calories for energy, for brain energy. What do you think of the carnivore diet? I don't think a lot about the carnivore diet, I'll tell you. I don't have a strong opinion one way or another. A good friend of mine, Doctor Amy, a pig in is, a huge proponent of the carnivore diet.

I don't love the lack of fiber, and I don't love the lack of all of the other micro nutrients that are so important, you know, but as a as an intervention, I like to think of a lot of things like an antibiotic. So if it's being applied properly and is being recommended by a doctor who's used to, you know, guiding people through this, it's possible it could be a really good antibiotic like intervention. What are your thoughts about it? I'm I'm carnivore curious. I have a number of patients who are doing it, and you just made me think about it because one of the things I hear and I guess it's, you know, it's similar to what you're saying with keto, is like, everything gets.

But first of all, there stool tests surprisingly look amazing. But they their anxiety goes away, their brain gets clearer. And it's it's quite profound. I don't think it's a good idea to do long term for for reasons like you said, like I think you're you're missing things, but I, I like it as like you said, an an intervention. But I think like keto or. Right, like some ketone ness with your carnivore. But it really it's, it's so interesting to me because we have this food and this diet and then we have our food addictions and it like, can be a vicious cycle.

But the feedback we're actually in my family, we are getting ready to do like a carnivore. We're we're just going to do it right. We want to have the experience as, you know, I wouldn't do it more than two months. Yeah. Yeah, I like organic dark chocolate too much. Yeah, right. I know, I know, and I think it is interesting and I think, you know, we're just. I think it's just a really good. It's an important point to, I think, to just convey that people really need to be doing these things under the advisement of a practitioner like yourself.

You know, we have the benefit of having access to so much information now that you could Google, like, you know, audience members right now are going to be like carnivore diet. And then, you know, you're I had doctors. You'll totally get this. So I have a, I used to take, my patients through like a 3 to 7 day reset. So, you know, the reset would be right. It's like you're pretty much taking almost everything out except natural, lean, natural protein, veggies, healthy fats. And that's pretty much it, right?

For 5 to 7 days to 12 days maximum. I can't tell you how many people had that right. They had that protocol and I would see them like a year later and then like, well, what are you up to? How are you doing in there? What's going on? And they're like, well, I'm still doing that thing. And I'm like, oh my God, what? Wait, you're still doing that thing? There's like there's the like three food groups on there. That's not okay. So yeah, I think, you know, so you guys don't just Google Carnivore Diet and do it if you're going to if you're going to try it, I think you should do it with a trained practitioner like doctor.

Still. But the but the take home message is what you know I said what are some things DIY in the diet right. Like so often just because that's what I hear. My anxiety totally went away, whether it's carnivore or keto or or getting into ketosis. Right? So it's like that's something in our control. Yeah. That we, you know, not the easiest thing. Right. Because changing your diet can be challenging, but the benefits are almost always there from a mental perspective. Yeah. And I think that, you know, I think we could challenge whether or not it's easy right.

Or hard I think we we're really like look at what we're doing right now. Like we're on zoom. Your word. We're talking about food and we're doing all these things. I mean, this is a pretty privileged life. When you get to choose, do I want to do carnivore or do I want to do plant based or do I want to do keynote? You know, it's like, Dear God, let's get some perspective on what's hard. What's hard is suffering. You know what's hard is suffering with hormonal instability. And, you know, and we live in the most one of the most privileged countries in the world.

And, you know, Americans are suffering, are suffering a lot. You know, even though we live in luxury, whatever that means to you. Right? Yeah. So when you were asking me earlier, what are some of the other things I did, I really started studying the Blue Zone diet, and I started studying the blue zone style of living. And I got into float spa. Have you ever tried to float spa? Oh, I'm totally obsessed. I want to, we're building a new clinic in Scottsdale here, and I wanted to put a float tank in.

I have almost every other toy in there. We're on the second floor, and the landlord wasn't so sure about a float spa. I still may put one in down the road, but I love float spa. They're like being in the womb. They are, they are. So, you know, and that's a more complicated way, you know, to balance your nervous system and get out of that fight or flight or freeze response. And I think a lot of us live in and don't necessarily even recognize it anymore because you're so used to it. And that was certainly where I was at in my life.

But, you know, float spa as far infrared saunas and basic, you know, basic breathing exercises and long walks. So one of the things that I learned about as a practitioner, and I love

Movement, Nervous System Regulation, and Brain Health 17:20

sharing this with my clients and patients and and you'll like this one, too. It's, bad math. And I always say BDF is a BFD, so Bdnf is brain derived neurotrophic factor and brain derived neurotrophic factor is depleted as a result of chronic stress. Right. And who is in experiencing chronic stress? Brain derived neurotrophic factor modulates neurotransmitters. The neurotransmitter enters in our brain, right? And also promotes neuroplasticity brain plasticity. So to heal our brains, we need to increase the DNA because it's a BFD.

And the best way to do that is through daily exercise, movement and just walking doesn't have to be hit. Training doesn't have to be Tabata, doesn't have to be anything special or fancy. But just walking every day and getting your heart rate up a little bit, sweating a little bit increases. Brain derived neurotrophic factor. And that was, that was something that I think made a huge difference for me. I got into running, and I think running saved my life, right? Yeah. I mean, I always find if I'm feeling anxious, right.

Just stepping out of it. And often that is hitting the trail. You know, I live like it's a four minute drive and I'm in the desert hills, the desert mountains, you know, or just breathing or jumping in my cold plunge or just something to, like, going in the sauna. I did that this morning. Well, don't you think? Like, we know what feels good, right? We don't need tons of research papers to tell us that going outside and walking in the forest is good for you? Because you know what feels good? And we know what feels bad, right?

Driving in traffic feels bad. Walking in the forest feels good. Therefore, do I really need research papers to tell me you know what's good and bad for me? But you know our lifestyles now and again. Singing to the choir one more time. Our lifestyles just don't promote that type of living anymore. Yeah. So slow, slow living. But I think I was thinking, like, you know, when you have a moment, like just listening to what you said, like when you're having a moment where maybe, you know, you have a break from depression or anxiety, like really writing down the things that make you feel good and like, put them in a fishbowl.

And when you're having an anxiety moment, pull one out and go do it right and shift shift the energy and a walk is such, you know, even if it's even if it's cold, you can walk around your house and put on some music, have a dance party. I'm a big fan of the the living room, kitchen, bedroom, dance party. Then there's always time to dance. So what is, I have some notes from, your your questionnaire. What is flow rope movement to rewind. Oh, my gosh, I it's over there. I won't go grab it and show you, but, Yeah.

So I became aware of I don't know if you, you know Doctor Chatterjee right. He has a great podcast and he interviewed a gentleman by the name of Lawrence Van Ling and Lawrence Findling and trains runners to become more efficient and better runners. And one of the ways he does that, you would think, like maybe it's run faster or run more often, run every other day. Something about running? Well, no. He actually trains people to use their posterior chain of their body because we're so and so. The anterior chain is the front, posterior chain is the back.

And we live in this culture where we use the front of our bodies to grind forward. If you think about the metaphor of that right, we're grinding forward with the front of our bodies. So the slow rope is this beautiful technique where you just I mean, you can go to YouTube and look up slow rope, and holding this flower up and moving it in such a way is something sort of like that, where it's retraining our brains to use the back of our body, the glutes, the back muscles, the hamstrings, that turns out, makes makes me a better runner.

What? I didn't know is that using the slow rope was also going to balance the hemispheres of my brain and start rewiring, circuitry that had been offline for a very long time. So I use it for running, but really, I use it to calm my nervous system and to rewire my brain. After lots of car accidents in my teens and 20s, I had an SUV rollover. That was that's what got me into chiropractic school, by the way. The chiropractor stopped my migraine headaches with one adjustment. But you know, these things don't have to be complicated and difficult and hard, right?

They're just what you need to do. Is it like a five minute thing or a 30 minutes? Yeah, it's a five minute thing. And there's lots of different patterns that you can use, and then you can move the rope. And it's about alternating movements in your body. So we have become even a society that doesn't walk normally anymore. So you know, when you walk like your arms should swing in opposite direction of your legs. Some people, if you just watch people walk, there are people who walk without using their arms at all or the same leg and the same arm swings forward, which is an indicator of of circuitry going wrong in the brain.

So these are things that we get to, we get to do, we get to learn. And some of our very simple and very fun. I love that I'm going to I never heard of the flower, but I'm going to check that out. Yeah. It's like crawling right. Yeah. Exactly. And re pattern by learning to crawl and I yeah I watched my granddaughters when they started to crawl make sure they're crawling correctly because that tells a lot about the brain develop in the brain. Yes. Flora is cool though. And I you know, I knew what was really cool because if I was crawling around, my 23 year old daughter would probably not go, mom, that's really cool.

But when I was doing Flow Rope, she's like, mom, that's like the spider dancing. That's really cool. That's I'm like, I want to flow rope. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the other thing, which I love. And no one ever talks about this. You had mentioned so physio and I never know if I'm saying the word right, but I say so physio frequencies and I think those are like the bomb diggity. Can you speak to those. Same, same. And I, I can speak to them without getting into like the actual frequencies. But the stuff I say is so fake as well.

So faking frequencies, you can go to Spotify and just type in sulfate heal frequency, and it'll take you to playlists that have the heart. So so it's it's in sound waves right. Are in hertz. And each level of hertz applies to a different chakra right. And so we know that frequency medicine is real. I mean we use tuning forks, right. Have you ever used tuning forks for anything doctor sales. Yeah, we use we know sound frequencies are very healing. So just turning on so physio or so forgive frequency when you're cleaning your house or cleaning the bathroom or cooking is wonderful.

And it's a very easy and simple thing to do that has a huge impact. Yeah, I play them a lot. Like because you can you just go to YouTube, it's like, oh, it's so cool, what do I do? I want a little serotonin today. Doing it. Yeah. Hard. Do I want some full body healing? I often just play them in the background when I'm working on my computer. Yeah. You know, you can play them to help you sleep. You can play them to help you. You know, I think there's like but you know, it's like EFT tapping, right?

There's many things that you can do for free that you can just go on YouTube and gain access to. And these things make a a huge difference. They really do.

Practical Tools, Hope, and Closing Resources 25:10

They really do. And so, you know, we've got diet, we've got flow ropes, we've got walking, we've got frequencies like these are all really powerful things. And these are my favorite saying is not all medicine comes in a pill bottle. And there are no pill bottles involved in, in these things that we're talking about. And, you know, my, my, my vision is that we really see that we start to think of these things at least equally. Right? As, as as the herbal take that, you know, these things are powerful and we can do these things for ourselves.

Yeah, yeah. Yes. And try them all. And if one doesn't work for you, try something else. Try a combination of different things and and don't give up. I mean, I can't tell you, I, I don't even know how many times I tried to stop taking Clemens Pam to sleep, only to, like, within a few weeks. Just to be like, I. I can't sleep, right, I can't sleep, and then you know what happens if you can't sleep? 1 or 2 nights of bad sleep? That's not a good that's not a that's not a good outcome. Right. So I don't know I don't know what it would have been like if I had given up on myself, but I didn't.

I didn't, and I can tell you today, I that, you know, I feel like a completely different person. And I, I never had the level of conviction in what I do, what I do for a living, and what I did for my clients and patients that I do today, because I was finally able to do it for myself. And that was like my seat. My dirty little secret for many, many years was that, oh, I just have that little thing that I have to do, right? But it bothered me for such a long time and, you know, so don't give up. Try everything you know, there's no side effects.

Yeah, it just makes me think also. Right. Like find what works for you. Because EFT may be Jayne's answer, but Lisa's answer may be the frequencies or you know, so you have to see what works for you. What do you resonate with? And I'm just going to throw a plug in for chiropractic too, right? Yes, yes. We don't talk enough about chiropractic check in I am yeah I was just at my chiropractor yesterday. I love connection. Yeah, yeah I'm a huge fan of chiropractic and I, I often like saying I'm like, how do people not get adjusted and you know, there's lots of different chiropractors and finding the right one for you.

That also could be a little bit of a journey. So is there any other less thing last message. Last? No, I think that was it. I think it's just, you know, keep digging, keep looking, keep trying things don't give up and and decide like in a perfect world, what would your lifestyle look like if all of your problems were solved and you weren't struggling with anything? What would your lifestyle look like? And then just go for that and keep going in that direction. Because there is light at the end of the tunnel and you'll find the solutions that are right for you.

I love that. What is your where can the ladies learn more. What is your contact your website your. Oh we're actually giving you a free gift. And what I've done is I had a coaches certification training program where I taught coaches exactly how to apply the ketogenic lifestyle that I shared with you. We actually took a piece of our coaches training manual, and we're giving it to you as a free gift. In is called Eat Your Way Happy. And it's how to eat and move and live in a way that creates happiness and an optimistic personality.

And who doesn't want that? And you might lose some body fat at the same time, if you want to get a horrible side effect right, eat for what you have for beautiful, beautiful and anywhere like online are you do to. Yeah, I'm very easy to find. My website is Kelly Rutledge A.com. My name is spelled a little differently. It's K l l e which it's on my birth certificate. I didn't I didn't show up my own name there. Yeah. You just go to my website, you'll find me there. Cool. And that's routinely. Why has. Excellent.

Well thank you. We talked about some. I'm like I got my own Google in to do. I'm going to go to low rev. So we talked. Yeah those unique interesting things today that I think it's just you know for everyone listening it's like you're just kind of cast in a net and cast it wide and gather all these things and don't get overwhelmed. You know, just write them down, make a little map for yourself and just kind of, you know, find someone to work with, help you to realize what's going to work for you.

What are your underscores, the underlying root cause issues that need to be addressed. And, you know, then you can tell your story like Kelly is telling hers today. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you again for the sponsoring of the summit, for helping to help women find solutions so that you know you all who are listening. You can overcome whatever anxiety, depression, you know, distraction, ADHD so that you can then go love your life and live it to the fullest and share your gifts. And you know, that's just what we want for you all. So I'm sending you all love and thank you for being here, and we'll see you in another conversation.

So stay tuned. Thank you.