Annie spent years picking the salt off her pretzels. She was also a swimmer training four-plus hours a day, getting cramps so violent they pulled her out of the water mid-practice. Nobody connected the two. This was 2010, before anyone said the word "electrolytes" out loud, and her coach's best idea was pickle juice.

It worked. And it started a much longer thought.

This week Ryan and Annie take Matthew 5:13, "you are the salt of the earth," and refuse to treat it as a metaphor. Jesus picked salt on purpose. Salt is second only to water among the things a body cannot live without, it is how every nutrient moves in and out of your cells, and its whole job is to draw the flavor already inside something out to where you can taste it. Every one of those is also true of what he was asking of us.

Along the way: why the white stuff in the blue canister is not really food, what a boomer grandmother's low-sodium diet is actually doing to her, the difference between being unsalty and being far too salty with somebody who was not ready to hear it, and the four-word phrase engraved inside their wedding bands.

Plus the practical version. What to throw away, what to buy instead, how much you actually need, and the trick Ryan uses to kill a headache in twenty minutes.

IN THIS EPISODE

• (01:30) Memento mori, engraved in their wedding bands, and how you turn "remember your death" into something you can actually do on a Tuesday
• (03:30) Annie picked the salt off her pretzels but loved pickles. Nobody has explained this yet
• (05:00) The cramps that ended a swimming career, and the coach who prescribed pickle juice
• (07:00) "Run the race so as to win it." Where 1 Corinthians and a salt shaker met in her head
• (08:30) The salt hierarchy, worst to best, and why the bottom of it is not really food
• (11:00) Second only to water: the sodium-potassium pump, and why 60 to 70 percent of you is not water but fluid
• (12:30) "It's going to hurt my heart." What a generation was told about salt, and what it cost them
• (14:00) Salt draws the flavor out from within. So does Christ. This is the whole episode in one idea
• (17:00) Too salty: when the gospel lands on rocky ground because you oversalted it
• (19:00) Not salty enough gets you trampled underfoot. Annie's read on the back half of the verse
• (21:00) How the disciples stayed salty. Prayer, scripture read again and again, discipline, the sacraments, community
• (23:30) The swap: what to throw out, and the three salts worth buying
• (25:00) Electrolytes without the sugar, including a Catholic company making them
• (27:30) How much you need if you lift, if you are pregnant, and if you sit at a desk all day
• (29:00) Salt in your palm, water, headache gone in twenty minutes
• (30:30) Why electrolytes mean less coffee and steadier energy

THE SWAPS

Throw out the Morton iodized. It has been bleached of everything except sodium chloride. As Ryan puts it, not evil, just useless. Scrub a pan with it.

Buy instead:

• Redmond Real Salt
• Baja Gold Sea Salt
• Celtic sea salt (widely available; look for grey, damp, unrefined)

Pink Himalayan is a step up from table salt, though some of it is colored rather than genuinely mineral-rich.

ELECTROLYTES

• Flight Foods — a Catholic supplement company out of Tampa. Solomon Strawberry and Lauds Lemon
• Redmond Re-Lyte — Ryan's pick for sensitive stomachs
• Buoy — unflavored drops you squeeze into anything

Skip the sugar-based ones. And the simplest version costs nothing extra: a pinch of good salt in your water.

None of the above is sponsored. Nobody paid to be in this episode.

HOW MUCH

• Athlete, manual labor, sweating daily, pregnant or breastfeeding: every day
• Desk job, not moving much: a couple of times a week, and start moving
• Everyone else: good salt on your food, a little more than feels natural

THIS WEEK

Two things. Swap your salt. And when you stir it into your water tomorrow morning, let it ask you the question: how am I going to be salt today, and for whom?

Scripture: Matthew 5:13, 1 Corinthians 9:24

Recorded at the kitchen table under the patronage of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, physicians who healed body and soul without counting the cost.

Want to be on the show, or have a question for Ryan and Annie? There are forms at healthinthespirit.com, or come find us on Instagram and Facebook @healthinthespirit.

New episodes every Tuesday.

This episode discusses general health and nutrition and is not medical advice. It does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Talk to your own clinician before changing your diet, especially if you have kidney disease, heart failure, or high blood pressure.

This week the kitchen table gets a guest: Xavier Evans — Naval Academy graduate, United States Marine officer, lifelong friend of Annie's from Owensboro, and godfather to their son. He landed in Cincinnati as a plus-one to a wedding, and Ryan and Annie grabbed the chance to ask him the question this whole show is built on: how do the physical and the spiritual actually integrate when the stakes are human lives?

Xavier walks through the road from a small-town swim team to the Naval Academy, three years in Okinawa, and a year underway on a ship — 20-hour days, Marines carrying divorce and trauma, and an adoration chapel that doubled as the library. His answer to how anyone sustains that is blunt: you can't, not on your own. "My saving grace on that ship was the Eucharist." Along the way: why leading Marines is a ministry, how physical discipline and prayer rise and fall together, and the line he keeps coming back to — your life is not your own.

In this episode

• Why a small-town swimmer chose the Naval Academy — and how "the peace of Christ" sealed it
• The Academy as a "hidden treasure" of Catholic community
• "The reason you join is not the reason you stay"
• Leading Marines twice your age straight out of college — and why leadership is ministry
• A year on the ship: 20–22-hour days, and the Eucharist as saving grace
• "Most people don't rise to the occasion — they fall to their level of training and preparation"
• How to carry other people's wounds without letting them destroy you
• Why physical discipline and spiritual discipline rise and fall together
• "Surfaces and gaps" — exploiting the little pockets of the day for prayer and training
• Practical non-negotiables for the days you can't pray a holy hour
• "Your life is not your own" — and why your job can be a ministry, wherever you are

Mentioned in this episode

Gasper River Catholic camps · NET Ministries · the United States Naval Academy

Chapters

00:00 — Welcome, and meeting Xavier
 00:52 — Annie's intro: growing up together, swim team, and Gasper River
 02:18 — From the Naval Academy to the Marine Corps
 04:14 — Why the Naval Academy? A call to serve
 05:35 — "Fight mediocrity with your entire being"
 07:09 — "The peace of Christ fell on me" — finding the Academy
 07:55 — A hidden treasure: faith at the Naval Academy
 10:14 — "The reason you join is not the reason you stay"
 11:03 — Why leading Marines is a ministry
 13:00 — Why classroom leadership isn't enough without Christ
 15:44 — A year on the ship: 20-hour days and the Eucharist as saving grace
 19:12 — God equips the called — but we have to cooperate
 20:41 — "You fall to your level of training and preparation"
 22:03 — Carrying others' wounds without being destroyed by them
 24:22 — Body and soul: how fitness feeds the spiritual life
 25:54 — The 20-minute run that unlocks 10 minutes of prayer
 27:31 — Practicals: accountability and daily non-negotiables
 29:06 — "Surfaces and gaps" — exploiting the little pockets for good
 31:26 — Foundation builds on foundation
 33:32 — A new mission: mentoring future officers in Maine
 35:36 — "Your life is not your own"
 37:42 — Your job can be a ministry — you don't need the title
 39:25 — Closing prayer for Xavier and all who serve

New episodes every Tuesday, 6 AM ET.

Show notes, blog, and full transcripts: healthinthespirit.com
Follow along: @healthinthespirit on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube
Got a healing story, a question, or a guest suggestion? [email protected] / [email protected]

Health in the Spirit is recorded under the patronage of Ss. Cosmas and Damian, physicians who healed the body and soul without counting the cost.

This podcast is for education and encouragement. It isn't medical advice and doesn't replace care from your own clinician.

There's a sin most of us will never confess — and half the time we're celebrating it in the parish hall. Ryan and Annie take on gluttony: not the cartoon version with the Roman emperor, but the version that looks like a chocolate croissant every stressful afternoon, or the show you can't wait to get to once the kids are down. The question underneath it isn't how much did you eat. It's who's in charge.

Annie tells what happened the first time she went no-sugar — the yeast overgrowth and parasite that were driving the cravings, and the part she didn't expect: that stripping out the sugar left her feeling stripped, and showed her exactly how much comfort she'd been getting from the next treat instead of from God. Plus Thomas Aquinas on why even eating too little can be gluttony, why food is never a neutral decision, and a piece of homework that has nothing to do with your own plate: go feed your priest something that will actually fuel him.

Take the No Sugar Challenge
The challenge they mention is The Wellness Way's No Sugar program — 30 days, all added sugar and simple carbs out. The free guide, the foods-to-enjoy and foods-to-avoid lists, and the grocery list are here: thewellnessway.com/guides/no-sugar. If it's hard, that's your answer.

In this episode

• The health win / health sin, and stealing Sarah's weighted-vest walks from last week
• Why food may be the most emotional decision you make — three times a day, every day
• "You can't out-supplement a bad diet"
• Annie's story: the chocolate-croissant girl, a carrot cake a week, and the lab work that changed it
• Yeast, parasites, and the "monkey on your back" that keeps craving sugar
• Aquinas on gluttony — why too little, too expensively, or too greedily all count
• Proverbs 25:28: "a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls"
• Why "everything in moderation" falls short, and aiming for 95/5
• St. Zélie Martin: "I have a lot of wood to chop, and it is as hard as stone"
• Mukbang as a counterfeit of the communal, covenant meal we were built for
• The overweight-pastor problem, reframed: not judgment, but whose job it is
• Your homework: bring your priest or pastor one healthy meal — and the math on why it works

Mentioned in this episode

The No Sugar Guide — thewellnessway.com/guides/no-sugar
Our episode on The Power of Praise
Annie's testimony: Our God Is a Root Cause God

Chapters

00:00 — Welcome to the kitchen table
 00:57 — Health win / health sin: sleep, a 45-lb vest, and the Liturgy of the Hours
 04:25 — The topic: mukbang culture and the forgotten sin of gluttony
 04:47 — A repetitive daily decision, and why you can't out-supplement a bad diet
 06:14 — Food is the most emotional thing we do every day
 07:48 — Annie's story: the chocolate-croissant girl and a carrot cake a week
 09:52 — The lab work: yeast, a parasite, and going no-sugar
 10:30 — "I felt stripped" — the spiritual battle underneath
 11:04 — A root cause God: body and soul healed together
 12:14 — The no-sugar challenge as a diagnostic for what you're leaning on
 14:53 — Gluttony, the acceptable sin of the church
 15:05 — You can still enjoy the meal — the question is who's in charge
 17:16 — Aquinas on gluttony, and Proverbs 25:28
 18:55 — Why "everything in moderation" falls short: aim for 95/5
 20:09 — St. Zélie Martin, and being stripped of earthly attachments
 22:02 — The viral pastor clip: food is never a neutral decision
 23:00 — Who's ruling your decisions, and the ripple effect at home
 24:27 — The challenge: 30 days, no sugar, simple carbs included
 25:19 — What mukbang is, and the communal meal it counterfeits
 26:39 — Church potlucks and the food that makes us sick
 27:48 — The overweight-pastor problem, reframed
 30:46 — Don't condemn — feed them; one meal a day for a year
 32:01 — Change starts with you, then ripples outward
 33:11 — No sugar before the holidays, and closing prayer

New episodes every Tuesday, 6 AM ET.

Show notes, blog, and full transcripts: healthinthespirit.com
Follow along: @healthinthespirit on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube
Got a healing story, a question, or a guest suggestion? [email protected] / [email protected]

Health in the Spirit is recorded under the patronage of Ss. Cosmas and Damian, physicians who healed the body and soul without counting the cost.

This podcast is for education and encouragement. It isn't medical advice and doesn't replace care from your own clinician.

A doctor told Sarah Robinson her diagnosis was chronic and she'd manage it for the rest of her life. She told him four months. It took seven years, two miscarriages, a near-fatal drug reaction, and a lot of prayer — and this week she tells the whole story.

You know the appointment. The one where someone doesn't look up from the clipboard, hands you a word you've never heard, and tells you this is your life now. Here's your medication. Here's a diet that might take the edge off. See you in a couple of months.

Sarah Robinson had that appointment in September of 2018, the day after her birthday, in the same week she lost her first baby.

This week at the kitchen table, Sarah tells us the whole arc — and she doesn't tidy it up. Two miscarriages, the second one ectopic. An ulcerative colitis diagnosis she'd never heard of. A prescription she turned out to be allergic to, that two doctors later told her would have killed her if she'd stayed on it another two days. Fifteen days of bed rest at ten weeks pregnant, down to ninety-something pounds, watching her husband on the carpet begging God for her life. A season she calls her glass season, where she sat behind glass and watched everyone else live.

And running alongside all of it: a father who walked into a prayer closet with a bone to pick and came out changed. A four-year-old who spoke a promise over her mother's grief. A stranger at a house church who prayed over a wound she had no way of knowing about. And a vision of a room Sarah had never seen — that she walked into a week later in Mesa, Arizona.

What makes this one worth your time isn't the ending. It's that Sarah refuses both easy versions of the story. She won't tell you medicine is the enemy, and she won't tell you faith made it simple. She held both at once. She took the medication when she was pregnant and dependent and out of options, and she prayed the entire time. She calls grief holy, and says it never once cost her her faith.

There's a moment near the end where she names something most of us walk right past. We have no trouble saying I am forgiven because Jesus died. We have an enormous amount of trouble saying I am healed. Same cross, she says. Same sentence.

Sarah is also just a joy to sit with. There's a bonfire s'more confession, a running argument about weighted vests, and a story about how she cold-called our clinic and informed us we were going to be best friends. She was right.

If you've been handed a diagnosis and told to make your peace with it, this one is for you. Stay to the end — she prays over you.

Chapters

Time0:00 | Welcome back to the kitchen table
0:38 | Health win and health sin of the week
6:29 | "80% stewardship, 20% YOLO"
9:28 | Weighted vests, morning walks, and syncing your rhythm
12:45 | Sarah's morning routine — and why consistency changed everything
16:53 | Leeches and life givers: the friendships that fill you
19:19 | The cold call that started it all
22:11 | Belmont, Nashville, and meeting Jake
25:01 | "His spirit preceded him"
26:14 | Raised charismatic — where tongues was like passing the salt
27:35 | Her dad's prayer closet
30:53 | Falling in love with Scripture at a Nashville coffee shop
32:04 | "Like a thick velvet on your skin" — the first encounter
34:44 | 3 a.m., locked hands, and fire in both their chests
37:56 | "This life isn't just for random people"
41:42 | What Jake actually saw the night he noticed her
45:29 | "Every baby brings its own cake to the party"
47:07 | The first miscarriage
48:20 | Sophia: "God has a baby for us. He promised."
50:06 | The symptoms that didn't fit — and the colonoscopy
51:02 | The diagnosis, delivered without looking up
51:53 | "That word's not in my Bible"
52:30 | Allergic to the prescription — two days from fatal
55:05 | Dr. Snow and the first supplement protocol
56:36 | The symbolic dream, and the school it led to
58:37 | The healing class: pray for a hundred people
59:59 | "That produced a righteous anger"
1:04:01 | 2 Kings 2 — "it will never again miscarry"
1:04:55 | A stranger prays over her womb
1:07:44 | Hope in a Kroger aisle: "Get one."
1:11:39 | Ten weeks pregnant and the worst flare of her life
1:14:05 | The glass season — grief, despair, and faith holding at once
1:16:48 | The three questions Sarah asks every doctor
1:17:56 | The book she threw away
1:19:39 | "I have" vs. "I was diagnosed with" — why the language matters
1:21:43 | Forgiven and healed: same cross, same sentence
1:22:17 | On earth as it is in heaven
1:24:28 | Taking the medication anyway — faith for both
1:26:21 | COVID, pancreatitis, and the worst flare yet
1:27:26 | "Party gifts" — climbing the autoimmune drug ladder
1:30:01 | "Jesus, where are you?"
1:31:08 | Google, Mesa, and 90 million stem cells
1:32:20 | Walking into the room she'd already seen
1:34:07 | Finding Dr. Patrick Flynn and The Wellness Way
1:36:20 | "Do you believe I could have a baby again?"
1:37:28 | Test, don't guess — nine months of herbs
1:38:10 | The results, on the anniversary of the diagnosis
1:38:46 | The migraines she's still navigating
1:40:01 | Mercy healings and journey healings
1:42:03 | The tassel, the word, and where authority comes from
1:44:00 | What God is doing in Cincinnati
1:46:00 | A sick body can't serve
1:46:40 | "Christianized humanity" — a paragraph worth sitting with
1:47:33 | Planting a church in Maineville
1:48:58 | Sarah prays over you
1:50:51 | Closing blessing

Lines worth writing down

Mentioned in this episode

People

• Jake Robinson — Sarah's husband
• Dr. Patrick Flynn — founder of The Wellness Way, heard on The Spillover
• Dr. Jacqueline Berens — The Wellness Way, Colorado
• Randy Clark — the Anderson, Ohio meetings
• Dr. Josh Axe and Dr. Jordan Rubin — The Maker's Diet
• Judah Akers — Judah & the Lion, from the Belmont days

Scripture

• 2 Kings 2:19–22 — Elisha, the salt, and the water that would "never again miscarry"
• John 10:10 — life, and life in abundance
• Matthew 9:20 / Luke 8:44 — the woman with the issue of blood, and the tassel she grabbed

Also mentioned

• The Intellectual Life by Fr. A.G. Sertillanges, OP
• Glam and Glow — Sarah's business
• Sarah and Jake's church plant in Maineville, Ohio
• Sarah's single, "Daughter of Eve"

About the show

Health in the Spirit is hosted by Dr. Ryan DeNome, DC and Annie DeNome at The Wellness Way - Mason —...

Ryan and Annie interviewed a lot of midwives before their home birth. Every one of them ran through the schedule — first visit at 20 weeks, this at 22, this at 30. Hannah Penaluna did almost none of that. She talked about how she'd walk with them, and about inviting the Holy Spirit into it. This episode was recorded at her kitchen table outside Atlanta, and it covers a lot of ground: seven years of hospital midwifery in Australia, including a remote posting in the Torres Strait where she cared for a population with heart disease, diabetes and deep trauma; why 2021 made staying impossible; and the resuscitation she'll never forget — a baby with meconium aspiration who took no breath for fifteen minutes, parents praying in tongues over her, "House of Miracles" playing in the background, and an MRI weeks later showing a normal brain.

In this episode

• Why every clinician in her practice is required to have a personal faith, and how they ask permission to pray
• A client who realized that being prayed for was what brought God into her life
• Free miscarriage care, rising miscarriage rates, and why she says those babies deserve to be named and grieved
• Australian midwifery vs. the American model — and what it was like working high-risk in a low-resource setting
• The conversation with her husband over Sunday coffee that ended with a move to the US
• The resuscitation: what meconium aspiration is, why you can't see it coming, and what happened in that room
• Why she's now convinced the EMS team who walked in were angels
• What she believes God's design for birth actually is — and where she's grateful for the OR, the epidural, and the C-section
• The hormone cascade at a birth, and why midwives get called oxytocin junkies

Chapters

00:20 — Around a kitchen table outside Atlanta
00:51 — Meet Hannah Penaluna: Australia, four babies, three home births
02:14 — What made her different from every other midwife they interviewed
04:25 — Why faith is a hiring requirement in her practice
05:52 — The client who said prayer brought God into her life
08:14 — Praying over charts, and what it does to a difficult relationship
09:24 — Every baby is a miracle: on miscarriage care and grief
12:17 — Hospital midwifery in Australia, and the high-risk years
13:48 — Thursday Island and the Torres Strait
15:04 — 2020, 2021, and knowing it was time to go
16:18 — Praying with women when you're not allowed to
18:04 — The coffee conversation that moved a family across the world
19:34 — Why Georgia
20:53 — Building a practice from nothing
23:35 — A mansion in Buckhead, and God saying "I led you from that to this"
25:20 — The resuscitation: what meconium aspiration does
26:44 — "House of Miracles" playing as the baby was born
28:53 — The EMS team she's sure were angels
29:28 — Fifteen minutes, and an MRI that showed nothing wrong
31:40 — Clinical skill isn't the opposite of ministry
34:57 — What is God's design for birth?
36:56 — Growth, discomfort, and what we take from mothers when we remove it
38:13 — Labor land, the hormone cascade, and oxytocin junkies
40:31 — Sacrifice: the midwife's body, the mother's body, the cross
43:46 — Closing and prayer

New episodes every Tuesday, 6 AM ET.

Show notes, blog, and full transcripts: healthinthespirit.com

Follow along: @healthinthespirit on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube

Got a healing story, a question, or a guest suggestion? [email protected] / [email protected]

Health in the Spirit is recorded under the patronage of Ss. Cosmas and Damian, physicians who healed the body and soul without counting the cost.

This podcast is for education and encouragement. It isn't medical advice and doesn't replace care from your own clinician.

Ryan and Annie have one scripture passage they keep coming back to — the one they've built a marriage, a clinic, and this show around. It's Matthew 25:14–30, and most of the time you hear it when someone at church is about to ask for money. They want to take it somewhere else. Their reading comes down to a simple equation: your affinity (the gifts you've actually been given, the direction your heart already leans) multiplied by your capacity (not what you think you can carry, but the bandwidth God measured for you) equals your talents. Multiply that by cultivation and you get your return. What follows is a line-by-line walk through the parable, an honest conversation about doom-scrolling and buried gifts, and a hard question about what it would mean to hear "wicked and slothful servant" at the end.

In this episode

• The full parable read aloud, then broken down over six points
• The equation: affinity × capacity = talents, and talents × cultivation = return
• Why "his property" matters — you're stewarding something that was never yours
• On being told your gift was dumb, and how that buries it more effectively than fear does
• Charisms, and the figure from Randy Clark and Mary Healy's The Spiritual Gifts Handbook on how few people know they have any
• False humility: why deflecting a compliment may be the least humble thing you can do
• The health connection — stewarding a body so you actually have the energy to use your gifts
• "Genetics loads the gun; lifestyle and environment pull the trigger"
• Two action steps: start with personal prayer, then audit your time
• Why they've never owned a TV, and the one movie they've seen in a theater together

Chapters

00:23 — Back at the literal kitchen table
02:32 — Reading Matthew 25:14–30 in full
05:22 — Why this verse, and why not just about money
06:10 — Affinity: the gifts you've been given
07:01 — Capacity: God-measured bandwidth, not how much you feel like you can hold
08:16 — Cultivation, and what return actually looks like
09:56 — Charisms, and the statistic about how few people know they have gifts
11:42 — Failure as feedback, and a two-year-old learning to walk
13:55 — "He entrusted to them his property"
16:44 — If we all had the same gifts, none of this works
17:59 — He trusts you with small things first
19:55 — To whom much is given: an American examination of conscience
21:35 — Buried gifts, and the words that buried them
23:11 — False humility and the courage to use what you've got
26:56 — Doom-scrolling, honestly
28:19 — Where health comes into it: a sick culture is a dead culture
30:49 — Fear as a theological statement
33:18 — Dreaming bigger than a couple of vacations a year
36:05 — How this verse built the clinic
38:34 — Stretched capacity: marriage prep, two jobs, and expanding time
41:24 — Action step one: personal prayer
44:44 — Action step two: audit your time (and maybe throw out the TV)
45:34 — Closing prayer

New episodes every Tuesday, 6 AM ET.

Show notes, blog, and full transcripts: healthinthespirit.com

Follow along: @healthinthespirit on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube

Got a healing story, a question, or a guest suggestion? [email protected] / [email protected]

Health in the Spirit is recorded under the patronage of Ss. Cosmas and Damian, physicians who healed the body and soul without counting the cost.

This podcast is for education and encouragement. It isn't medical advice and doesn't replace care from your own clinician.

Praise doesn't come after the victory. It establishes it. Annie wrote that line in a journal and it turned into this episode. She spent a year with NET Ministries where an hour of praise was non-negotiable and often happened at 5 a.m., standing, hands out, whether anyone felt like it or not — which is where she learned that praise isn't a reflection of your emotions. Ryan comes at it from the other direction: a 2013 study where choir singers' heart rates synchronized with the melody and with each other, the vagus nerve running right past your vocal cords, and what singing does to a nervous system that's been stuck in fear. Plus the northern lights over a Wisconsin lake, an exorcist's toolkit, and one health sin involving two raw eggs and rice noodles.

In this episode

• Why praise is an agreement with who God is before the circumstances change
• Annie's year on the road: praise every single day, standing, using your body
• What happened to a group of missionaries knee-deep in a lake during worship
• The choir study: heart rates matching the melody, then matching each other
• Vagus nerve, vocal cords, and why an exhale tells your body it's safe
• Paul and Silas in Acts 16, David and Saul in 1 Samuel — praise before the breakthrough
• Neurons that fire together: what repeated praise prunes out of your thought patterns
• The simplest possible starting point, from a Kingdom Medicine speaker: if you only have ten minutes, just praise

Chapters

00:00 — Opening prayer
01:05 — Health wins and health sins (including the raw-egg noodle incident)
05:00 — Why praise, and where Annie's story starts
06:35 — NET Ministries: an hour a day, standing, no exceptions
07:59 — The lake, the lodge, and the northern lights
10:06 — Praise is not a reflection of your emotions
11:29 — The body-and-soul case for praising out loud
12:42 — "Whoever sings, prays twice"
14:35 — The 2013 choir study: synchronized hearts
16:03 — Dopamine, oxytocin, and communal worship
16:30 — Why the enemy hates worship
17:38 — Praise establishes victory: Acts 16 and 1 Samuel
21:41 — Music therapy, memory, and why melody sticks
23:14 — The vagus nerve and the hum of singing
24:38 — Romans 12:2 and renewing the mind
26:23 — Neuroplasticity: what praise wires in and prunes out
29:00 — Immune markers, blood pressure, inflammation
31:15 — Practical ways to start
34:17 — If you only have ten minutes

New episodes every Tuesday, 6 AM ET.

Show notes, blog, and full transcripts: healthinthespirit.com

Follow along: @healthinthespirit on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube

Got a healing story, a question, or a guest suggestion? [email protected] / [email protected]

Health in the Spirit is recorded under the patronage of Ss. Cosmas and Damian, physicians who healed the body and soul without counting the cost.

This podcast is for education and encouragement. It isn't medical advice and doesn't replace care from your own clinician.

Ryan was going to be a professional baseball player. He was so sure of it that at twelve, riding to a game, he made himself memorize the moment so he could tell the story later. Two years on, he threw a pitch that rolled halfway to home plate, and an MRI came back showing a bilateral fracture through his L5 — both of the little bridges of bone that hold the vertebra in place, snapped. No baseball. No running. No swimming. Six months to a year if he healed well. What happened over the next three months — a retreat he was dragged onto, a night of adoration, a healing service in Indiana, and a second MRI — is the reason he's a chiropractor today. His doctor's words: this might be the closest thing to a miracle I've ever seen.

In this episode

• Cradle Catholic, mediocre faith: God as "the guy I see for an hour on Sundays"
• The fall down the stairs in January, and the pitch in April that ended the season
• What a bilateral pars fracture at L5 actually means, and how close it came to something worse
• The Steubenville conference he cried about being sent to — and what happened during adoration
• The healing service, the prayer team, and ten minutes on the floor he doesn't remember
• The second MRI: not healing, but no evidence the bone was ever broken
• Why he now asks patients who've plateaued whether he can pray with them
• When sickness becomes an identity — and what has to be let go before healing lasts

Chapters

00:00 — Welcome and opening prayer
01:20 — Who Ryan is, and what the clinic actually does
03:19 — Growing up on the west side of Cincinnati, and a faith on autopilot
03:57 — Baseball, and a promise made in the back seat
05:37 — The stairs at St. Bernard
06:46 — The pitch that didn't reach home plate
09:13 — The diagnosis, and how bad it could have been
11:00 — Losing the whole summer, and getting angry
12:57 — Dragged onto a bus to Franciscan
15:12 — Adoration: "if this is real, give me something"
17:00 — Coming home a different kid
17:47 — The healing service in Indiana
20:04 — Resting in the Spirit, and waking up without pain
21:41 — Sprinting from the car to the front door
22:04 — The second MRI, and what the doctor said
24:13 — Why none of the rest of his life happens without this
26:51 — Doubt, and the one thing he can always go back to
28:00 — Ask for healing — and why sometimes it comes slowly
29:49 — Praying with patients who've hit a plateau
32:20 — Closing prayer

New episodes every Tuesday, 6 AM ET.

Show notes, blog, and full transcripts: healthinthespirit.com

Follow along: @healthinthespirit on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube

Got a healing story, a question, or a guest suggestion? [email protected] / [email protected]

Health in the Spirit is recorded under the patronage of Ss. Cosmas and Damian, physicians who healed the body and soul without counting the cost.

This podcast is for education and encouragement. It isn't medical advice and doesn't replace care from your own clinician.

Annie prayed the same prayer for about ten years. Every healing service, every time someone offered to pray over her, she asked for the same two things: the gut pain and the acne. The answer was no — or rather, not yet. This is the episode where she explains why she's grateful for that. Starting around age ten she dealt with severe acne, bloating so bad she looked six months pregnant, a personal record of twenty-one days without a bowel movement, painful cycles, and a brain fog that made college feel like wading through mud. She saw allergists and dermatologists, tried every cream and cleanser and elimination diet, and got nowhere — until comprehensive lab work found what nobody had thought to look for. God isn't a symptom God, she says. He's a root cause God.

In this episode

• Three ways God heals: immediately, slowly, and not yet — and what each one is for
• The full symptom list Annie carried for over a decade, and how normal it all seemed
• Why an immediate healing would have cost her something she now wouldn't trade
• What the comprehensive lab work actually found — and why four peanut butter sandwiches a day suddenly made sense
• How constipation, recirculating estrogen, and painful cycles turned out to be one story, not three
• Why the cross she begged God to remove became the doorway to their clinic

Chapters

00:20 — Just me today: the slow-healing story
01:03 — Immediate, slow, and not yet
01:58 — "Our God is not a symptom God. He's a root cause God."
02:24 — The symptoms, from age ten on
03:32 — The visible cross: acne, and feeling like a modern-day leper
04:43 — Everything she tried, medical and otherwise
05:57 — Ten years of praying the same prayer
07:08 — Why the waiting was the point
09:50 — Atlanta, chiropractic school, and finding The Wellness Way
10:34 — The stool test and food allergy panel
10:49 — A hidden IgE peanut allergy — while eating four PB&Js a day
13:16 — A parasite, yeast overgrowth, and the estrogen connection
14:12 — Why the brain fog was never really about focus
15:00 — What healing actually took, and the habits it rebuilt
17:13 — The wound that became a doorway
18:05 — Yes, or not yet — but never ignored

New episodes every Tuesday, 6 AM ET.

Show notes, blog, and full transcripts: healthinthespirit.com

Follow along: @healthinthespirit on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube

Got a healing story, a question, or a guest suggestion? [email protected] / [email protected]

Health in the Spirit is recorded under the patronage of Ss. Cosmas and Damian, physicians who healed the body and soul without counting the cost.

This podcast is for education and encouragement. It isn't medical advice and doesn't replace care from your own clinician.

Dom Valenti wanted to be a chiropractor. At sixteen, a radiologist talked him out of it. Years later an academic advisor looked at a C+ in zoology and told him he'd never make it to med school. Both were doors closing — and Dom now says both were God. He spent four years in a busy emergency room and works today in a cardiac ICU, and in this conversation he tells Ryan what he's actually seen: not lightning-bolt healings on the hospital floor, but what he calls micro-miracles. A 36-year-old stroke patient who hadn't been out of bed in seven days. A bath, a beard trim, some music, and a man fist-bumping the air from the edge of the mattress. Two old friends from Franciscan talk about what it looks like to bring God to a bedside when the system gives you seven minutes.

In this episode

• Why Dom deleted social media for a month — and what came back when the scrolling stopped
• The Arthur Brooks book behind it, and the "doom loop" that keeps people from the questions you can't Google
• Two closed doors that looked like failure and turned out to be direction
• A phone call from the nursing department that reached him at a rural Austrian train station
• What Dom means by "micro-miracle," told through one stroke patient in the neuro ICU
• His own healing: a shoulder he couldn't push up on for a year, and a men's retreat where nobody knew to pray for it
• The two-part rule for faith at work he got from a Catholic ethicist: be excellent, and be kind
• Why Ryan schedules an hour with every new patient, and what the Surrender Novena has to do with chronic pain

Chapters

00:23 — Opening prayer, then health wins and health sins
04:29 — Deleting social media, boredom, and where creative thought went
07:14 — The "doom loop" and why God speaks in the quiet
13:05 — Franciscan, households, and how these two know each other
14:56 — Wanting to be a chiropractor, and the advice that redirected him
18:49 — Finding nursing, and a competitive advantage he didn't expect
22:14 — The Austria semester and the phone call at the train station
26:58 — Why the ER, straight out of school
29:36 — Modern medicine isn't the enemy: where it saves and where it doesn't
32:25 — Have you ever seen a miracle in the hospital?
34:00 — The 36-year-old stroke patient, and what one nurse decided to do
40:03 — Dom's shoulder: healed at a retreat he didn't ask to be prayed over at
43:55 — Two goals at every bedside: make them laugh, bring God in
48:40 — "Be excellent at your craft. Be kind." Evangelizing at work
51:13 — Inside Ryan's practice: an hour a patient, and why that's unusual
55:40 — Praying for every patient, praying with some
55:47 — The Surrender Novena and letting go of "my diabetes, my back pain"
61:11 — Closing

New episodes every Tuesday, 6 AM ET.

Show notes, blog, and full transcripts: healthinthespirit.com

Follow along: @healthinthespirit on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube

Got a healing story, a question, or a guest suggestion? [email protected] / [email protected]

Health in the Spirit is recorded under the patronage of Ss. Cosmas and Damian, physicians who healed the body and soul without counting the cost.

This podcast is for education and encouragement. It isn't medical advice and doesn't replace care from your own clinician.