Inspired Living with Autoimmunity

If you've ever been told your pain was all in your head, this one is for you. Dr. Anna Esparham developed polyglandular autoimmune disease and severe fibromyalgia while she was still getting through med school and residency, and she walks us through what is actually happening in the body — nervous system and immune inflammation, interleukin-8, small fiber neuropathy, and the study that points toward an autoimmune cause.

Anna is a triple board-certified physician, so none of this is vague. She explains why the standard medications only reach pieces of the problem, why she says medicine got her 30 to 40% of the way and what took her the rest of the way, and how emotional pathways and pain pathways run along the same anatomy. She also shares the two-minute morning practice she'd hand to every person listening.

I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia about 15 years ago, and I learned a lot in this conversation. Whether you have fibromyalgia or not, this one is worth your time.

Heather Aardema woke up with terrible pain in her wrist and blamed her ski poles. It was rheumatoid arthritis. Her rheumatologist handed her brochure after brochure for drugs with side effects like liver damage, and when Heather asked about food, she was told there's no research and don't go looking. She went looking anyway, changed her diet, and around day 31 she woke up with no pain at all. She has never taken RA medication.

We also talk about clutter, and not the kind you're picturing. Heather's definition includes the stuff on your counters, the people on your calendar, the thoughts in your head, and even the air in your house. And we get into the part that stops most of us: she cites a study where people were told they'd die if they didn't change, and only one in seven did.

If you already know what you're supposed to be doing and still aren't doing it, this one is for you. Heather closes with one small step that takes a few minutes, and I tried it myself.

The root chakra is linked to the immune system and the adrenal glands. If you're living with autoimmunity, that's a strange thing to have never heard about. My guest Lisa Erickson is an energy healer and meditation teacher who spent a decade in corporate tech before her own health crises sent her in a different direction, and she has a gift for making this stuff plain.

We walk through all seven energy centers and what each one connects to physically — root and the adrenals, throat and the thyroid, solar plexus and digestion. We also get into why so many of us check out of our bodies when they hurt, why medical trauma is real trauma, and how survival patterns like people-pleasing and hypervigilance can actually be rewritten. Lisa calls it physical therapy, not surgery.

If you've been told to try yoga or meditation and it never stuck, this is a different door in. And Lisa's one starting step takes about as long as brushing your teeth.

ER doctor turned cellular medicine expert Dr. Siobhan Newman spent years saving people in a busy LA emergency room — and watching none of them actually get better. Now she helps people rebuild health at the cellular level, and her approach challenges a lot of what we've been told.

We get into why adding exercise when your mitochondria are already underwater just drives more inflammation, how the low-fat era damaged our cells in ways we're still paying for, and her "three nos" — the simple starting point she gives every patient. We also talk about why very low cholesterol is linked to worse outcomes, what peptides actually do (and why buying them online is genuinely dangerous), and why your gut is where immune dysregulation really starts.

If you have an autoimmune condition and you've been pushing through fatigue or following advice that isn't landing, this conversation will make a lot of things click.

I sat down with Johanna Dahlman, the Alopecia Angel, because she treats hair the same way I treat autoimmunity. The label on the scalp is not the disease.

Johanna reversed her own alopecia areata after years of appointments that either piled on pharmaceuticals or told her to live with it. In this episode she names the blind spots even functional doctors miss, why minoxidil is a lifelong trap with rebound shedding, and why hair is the whipped cream, not the cake.

If your hair is thinning with Hashimoto's, postpartum, or another autoimmune label, this one is for you. Stop treating it like a shampoo problem.

Rheumatologist and integrative medicine specialist Dr. Aly Cohen has spent 15 years connecting the dots between everyday chemical exposures and chronic disease. In this conversation we get into what's actually in your tap water (and why bottled water isn't better), the foods that support your body's own detox pathways, and why US chemical regulation is decades behind.

What I love about Aly's approach is that it's not about perfection. She started this whole journey because her golden retriever got a rare autoimmune diagnosis — and the questions she asked about his environment changed the way she practices medicine. Her book Detoxify lays out a one-swap-a-month strategy that anyone can follow, starting with the product that touches almost everything in your house.

If you have an autoimmune condition and you've been told your labs are normal but you still feel terrible, this episode is for you. We talk about self-advocacy with your doctors, where to actually spend your money, and how small changes add up to real results.

Dr. Casey Kelley got diagnosed with POTS in medical school after years of fatigue, dizziness, and a heart rate that wouldn't quit. She tried multiple medications — none of them fixed anything. It wasn't until she dug into functional medicine that she discovered her POTS was actually a symptom of adrenal burnout and chronic tick-borne infections. Once she addressed those, the POTS went away.

In this conversation, we get into what POTS actually is, why infections and toxins are behind so much of the immune dysfunction we're seeing right now, and the stress you've probably become "nose blind" to. Casey also shares her go-to breathing technique (and why box breathing can backfire), the three foods she pulls first with almost every patient, and the foundational pillars that apply whether you have POTS, autoimmunity, or just want to feel better.

If you've ever wondered whether your diagnosis is really the full picture — or you're stuck managing symptoms without understanding why they're there — this one's for you.

Dr. Cory Rice is a board-certified internal medicine physician who went from forensic science to running a functional medicine practice treating tens of thousands of patients in Dallas. In this conversation, we bust three autoimmune myths that keep people stuck — that autoimmune disease is rare, that there's one root cause to find, and that these conditions can't actually improve.

We get into why 80% of autoimmune patients are women, what hormones have to do with immune function at every age, and why Dr. Rice went from gut-testing skeptic to making a functional stool analysis mandatory for every single new patient. His take: if the gut isn't sealed, it doesn't matter how clean you eat.

If you've been told to just manage your symptoms and accept your diagnosis, this one's for you. We talk about what actually moves the needle — and why hope might be the most important deficiency to address first.

Functional wellness practitioner Hali Laricey reads standard lab work through a functional lens — and she's really good at finding answers in the labs your doctor stamped "normal." In this episode, we zero in on the CBC with differential, one of the cheapest and most common blood tests out there, and how its five markers can reveal chronic infections, immune stress, and early signs of autoimmune flares.

Hali walks through each marker — neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils, and basophils — with the functional ranges she uses and why they're tighter than what your lab report flags. She also explains why pulling three to five years of labs from your patient portal matters way more than any single draw, and shares a simple ratio you can track on your own to watch for flares.

If you've ever left a doctor's appointment holding "normal" labs while still feeling terrible, this one's for you. You'll walk away knowing exactly what to request and what to look for.

Tiffany Kaloustian was told lupus was basically the end of the life she expected. In her twenties that landed like a life sentence — heavy meds, little education, and a lot of grief.

We talk about what changed when she stopped wearing the diagnosis as her identity and started treating healing like a dance: hard days included, mindset and nervous system first, and food and root-cause care that actually moved her markers.

If you have been living under a diagnosis like it already decided your future, this episode is for you. Come for the honesty. Stay for the reminder that a label does not get the final word.