Many conventional approaches to health and wellness are widely observed, but they often fall short of helping individuals become healthier. Therefore, instead of focusing too much on medication and exercise, perhaps it is time to pay more attention to holistic nutrition. Zach Gurick is joined by Julie Hill, a functional medicine certified practitioner and registered dietitian in Fort Myers, who explains how to take charge of your health by revisiting how and what you eat. She explains how to determine the right diet according to your very own lifestyle to make the experience more aligned with your specific body needs. Julie also talks about using baking soda to wash produce thoroughly, keeping a symptoms journal, and the top allergen foods you should avoid.
The information presented in Fully Alive is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before making changes to your health regimen. Guests’ opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host, production team, or sponsors.
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Build A Healthier Body Through Holistic Nutrition With Julie Hill
Welcome to another episode of Fully Alive, where we are unlocking the secrets to your healthier, happier, longer life. This is a show where we explore science, facts, strategies, and soulful insights to help you thrive in every season of life. Our guest is a true leader in personalized root cause wellness. I’m joined by Julie Hill, the Founder of Integrated WellBeing, a practice grounded in functional nutrition, whole body health, and compassionate care. Julie is a certified functional medicine health coach and a dietitian with a background in helping people address everything from chronic GI issues to osteoporosis, fatigue, and inflammation, all through a holistic lens that considers not just symptoms, but the whole person.
In this conversation, we will unpack how Julie helps her clients connect the dots between gut health, stress, inflammation, and long-term vitality. We’ll explore why so many conventional approaches fall short, how to support your health through lifestyle and nutrition, and what it means to take charge of your health in a deeply personalized way.
Whether you’re struggling with chronic pain, digestive issues, or you want to optimize your health and feel more aligned in your body and life, this episode offers thoughtful, practical takeaways that will leave you feeling empowered and hopeful. Let’s dive in. Here’s my conversation with the insightful and compassionate Julie Hill.
Julie, it’s so great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming. It’s fun to be here with you in person. I’m excited for our conversation. I’ve been looking forward to this.
Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m excited to dive in and talk a little bit about wellness and overall longevity.
Expert Nutritionist Julie Hill
You’re a dietitian, and you have a company called Integrated WellBeing. I’ve been excited to pick your brain on all things nutrition and how that impacts all areas of our lives and our health. There are so many mixed opinions out there. I even hear so many different things from experts that I get to talk to from opposite sides of the spectrum. I’ll be curious to dive in and learn from you. Before we dive into some of that, I’d love to know maybe a little bit of your own personal background. What led you to pursue this field and this career? What was your backstory that led you into this?
I entered the health field as a kid struggling to regain my own health. I felt very out of control when I was little, going doctor to doctor, and getting prescriptions and a referral with no diagnosis. That continued for years until I was seventeen. I had seventeen medications and no diagnosis. By the time I reached the end of the pediatric world, we were making decisions to move and transition into the adult side of transitioning all your doctors over.
I had to have that mental check-in of, “There has to be something else out there.” I didn’t feel better. I felt worse. I had brain fog. I had all these symptoms from the medications. It felt like nothing was working, so I started doing my own research. I dove into medical journals that I could find that would give me some answers somewhere.
Back then, there wasn’t as much information on the internet to find, so the medical journals were where I sank into. I started teaching myself how to read medical journals at that point. If I didn’t know a word, I would look it up and then piece the rest of the article together until I found another word I didn’t know. I built my knowledge around reading medical journals, understanding how to decipher information, and understanding that there were a lot of things that I could do to improve my health.
One of the first things that I did was start a gluten-free diet. Back then, there was very little out there about gluten and how it impacted health besides somebody with celiac disease or wheat allergy. It was something that I decided to take out of my diet. I saw radical changes at that time. It was one of the first things that I had personally done that showed me what your lifestyle can do and can make changes positively. It still didn’t fix everything, but it gave me a very big, open-eyed viewpoint of, “I can start making changes here.”
You were seventeen. When you were a kid, you had all kinds of health issues or symptoms that no one could diagnose. You were taking 17 medications. As a 17-year-old, you started reading medical journals for your own learning and growth.
I felt there had to be another answer out there.
I love how so many people that I get to meet, it seems like their lives lead to their passion. Oftentimes, even some of the struggles that they face in life lead to their passion. Our pain leads to our passion, oftentimes. That’s amazing. That has inspired you then all these years to continue learning and growing in this field.
That was the beginning. I was a chef. I was in culinary school at that point. I completed culinary school and was in the chef industry, participating in multiple restaurants. I decided that that wasn’t a good career choice for me either. It was very labor-intensive with long hours. It was intense. I decided to continue my education with a Bachelor’s program in Nutrition and Dietetics. After that, a few years later, I completed the IFMCP program through the Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner Program.
You stopped eating gluten, and that made a significant difference. Tell us the rest of the story. How many medications are you on now?
Zero.
What else did you learn that led to going from 17 medications to 0?
I am on zero medications. I am very appreciative of that at this point in my life. I was appreciative of that back then, too. I understood that the medications weren’t fixing anything. They were covering up the symptom, but it ended up that the symptom then overcame the medication, and I ended up needing more medication or something.
It was to find the nutrition piece that then gave me relief. Before it was even touted as that, I found the anti-inflammatory diet by eliminating foods. I kept going down that pathway of educating myself and understanding that some foods were more inflammatory than others. Realistically, I did trial and error until I kept finding things that were working for me.
I did a lot of personal tracking. I was going through the education, too, with professional school to be able to connect those dots as well. The education that I was going through in college was more for personal use, even though it was directing my career path as well. As I graduated with the Bachelor’s program and got credentialed, I started working with clients and establishing my own clientele.
It was interesting because I started finding that my clients would get better with what we did together, and then 6 or 9 months later, they’d come back with the same problem or something would relapse. I said, “What are you doing differently?” They said, “Nothing.” We came up with a maintenance plan. They’d be like, “I was doing my maintenance plan and I had a relapse,” or “I started gaining weight again,” or whatever the scenario was.
I always had the head scratch of, “What next?” There’s something we didn’t address together. That led me into the functional medicine program. Before I even understood what the term functional medicine meant, I was already looking for that when somebody came in with PCOS or somebody came in with diabetes. I was already looking at more of what we call the pathophysiology of how the body functions and what organ is responsible, and going down to what we call the root cause of the problem to understand that there was further than just the diet modification that I could help somebody with.
First of all, did you ever receive an actual diagnosis for whatever your health issues were, or are you healed so there is nothing anymore?
At this point, I have no diagnosis.
Medications do not fix anything and only cover up the symptoms. You will only end up overcoming the medication and needing more medication. Share on X
You’re healed. You healed yourself through your own nutrition. Congratulations on that. That’s amazing.
Thank you.
Doing The Right Things In The Right Order
Walk us through when you have a new patient and they come to you with whatever ailments they have. It could be osteoporosis or GI issues. Where do you start, and then how do you lead them through a journey of changing their lifestyle and nutrition?
My biggest thing is that I have them fill out an intake questionnaire. It’s pretty lengthy with a lot of questions. That helps them to put those memories down on paper. Most of the time, we’re not going to recall all of our medical history. We don’t have a binder sitting at home necessarily that says, “On this date, this happened.”
We have a lot of conversations about, “When did this happen? How long has it been happening? What was surrounding it that happened?” A lot of stressors oftentimes come in. We also have a term of, “When was the last time you felt well? Take me back to that time.” Those timeframes make a big difference for me in investigating and asking more questions to drive to find that root cause.
Once we establish what that root cause is, sometimes, we need more information. I do a lot of lab testing as well to get more understanding of what is going on in that person’s body, because it’s usually more than one thing. There’s usually a multifaceted approach that I have to take and multiple systems. Even if it is the GI that they’re having, gastrointestinal problems, there are likely other problems. There are nutritional deficiencies, so they can’t heal from the inflammation. They’re still having problems with the symptoms. It’s a catch-22 a lot of times.
It’s broadening the ability to collect data to understand what direction we have to go in a prioritized standpoint. A big piece of what functional medicine has taught me is that if we don’t do things in the right order, we don’t get the right result. There are a lot of systems out there that work that way. To caveat with what’s out on the internet, a lot of people are doing a lot of the right things, but it’s not in the right order. They feel like they’re spinning their wheels and not getting better. They’re right because they might have either missed a piece or they’re missing multiple pieces. That’s where we get into trouble with personally guiding ourselves with some of these things.
I want my clients to be researched and understood a lot of these different things, but then what we do is pull it back in and say, “What’s important to you right now, not the 30,000 other people that might have this symptom, too? You are sitting in front of me. How can we identify and come up with a good plan?” The other thing is 1 plan, not 7 plans. A lot of people I get in are on multiple diets, multiple supplements, multiple medications, and multiple doctors. The thing is, nobody talks to each other, so it’s very confusing. I catch a lot of medication interactions sometimes, too.
You were talking about doing things in the right order. That’s a big proponent of the functional medicine approach. What is the right order?
That’s variable per person. What functional medicine teaches you is how to use your education and how to understand systems of our body and how to put that together from that foundational education of understanding what does the liver do, what does the GI system do, what does the kidneys do, what does the brain do, and what does the heart do, and how they all interact with each other. Every person standing in a line is going to have a different priority of how to achieve it. Even if they all had the same symptom, they’re all going to have a different prioritization of how to get there.
It’s very individualized.
Yes, especially on that level. Generally speaking, we have to think about the length and duration of how long you’ve been experiencing that symptom and the things around it. Was it caused by a chronic infection? We have a lot of viruses that can stick around. Other chronic infections are a major part of my practice as well as far as immunology and trying to clear a lot of that, and what we call the body burden, getting the body burden to not have so much to deal with that it’s not focused on healing.
Understanding Body Burdens
Say more about the body burden for those of us who don’t think about that.
Body burden can be in many different ways, shapes, and forms. It can be an input, so what we’re putting in. It can be external, from an environment. It could be something we’re breathing or putting on our skin, or something in our water that we’re continuously drinking that we might not know about. There are different burdens. A lot of times, people think, “Heavy metals.” That might be the only thing they think about, but we have so many different things that our body is responsible for detoxifying. The thing is that if it doesn’t have the right nutrition, it can’t do its job well.
I use the example of you having a car, and you put gas in your car. When your car runs out of gas, it’s still a good car, but it’s not going to work if we’re not putting in the right fuel, which could be a vitamin, mineral, antioxidant, protein, carbs, or fats. When we get into the pieces of nutrition, it could be a piece. It might not be food. It might be a piece of that food that is causing a roadblock or an inability for that process to come through to completion.
A lot of times, when we think of body burden, it could be, “I’ve had diarrhea or constipation for years.” That tells me that you have a high body burden because your detox systems are not functioning properly. People who don’t drink enough water, that’s a simple one. People who don’t sweat enough, that’s another one. Our breathing, sweat, urine, and bowel systems are four major detox systems. If any of those have any roadblocks at any one point, we can have a higher body burden.
That’s because we’re holding onto toxins or things that would naturally be expelled through those processes.
That’s correct.
Choosing The Right Diet For You
Is there a particular diet? It’s personalized for everybody, but do you promote a specific type of diet? Is it that when each person comes in, you’re looking at their specific biomarkers, doing some lab testing, and then recommending different diets for that particular person? Walk us through that a little bit. I’ve heard everything from 100% plant-based to 100% carnivore and everything in between. It’s like, “Maybe this is good for this person, and this is good for this person.” How do you determine that?
Number one, I always take into consideration the person’s preference, making sure that they’re getting enough nutrition. A lot of times, we can say one or another might be getting them to that end point, but I also think of the longevity of how long they are going to be doing that diet for and how restrictive it is. My general recommendation when we’re not looking at a specific disease state is a Mediterranean focus.
A high plant-based diet, and then have some protein in there. If you are on a plant-based diet, make sure that you’re getting enough plant proteins into your diet. A healthy blend between plant-based and Mediterranean is my recommendation across the board. However, there are differences depending on the person, if there are different metabolic concerns, or if there’s anything like diabetes or hypertension.
Label reading has been a big eye-opener for a lot of people. You can exactly understand what is in your food and have the opportunity to either put it in or take it off your cart. Share on X
For some of my clients with autoimmune, there are very specific foods that can upregulate their immune system. That’s something that I will take into consideration with them in that individual appointment. I get a lot of people who come in on a very restrictive diet. They can’t heal and can’t get better on a restrictive diet. It’s almost self-limiting sometimes to put yourself on a restrictive diet because you’re limiting how much nutrition you have in order to repair the problem that you already have.
For example, what are some of those foods for someone who has maybe an autoimmune issue that would upregulate their immune system?
Gluten and dairy are two of the top foods that can upregulate inflammation. It’s not necessarily autoimmune. Increasing inflammation is one of the things that those two foods do. Chemicals, pesticides, and herbicides in foods. Preservatives are huge. All of the citric acids, sodium metabisulfites, and BHT that we see in some of the preserved meats like salami, prosciutto, and things like that that might have a chemical preservative in it to make sure it doesn’t create mold and things like that during the food processing.
Realistically, I like to start people with what I call a whole food diet. If it’s in its whole form, it’s good to go. It still might be packaged, like a bag of apples or the broccoli that has plastic over it, but generally speaking, the food is in its whole form. We can cook it and add seasonings. We can transform that food, but try to avoid processed foods, something in a package that has a nutrition label. Those are the foods that we have to look through and label read. We have to understand what we’re putting in. Label-reading is a very big eye-opener for a lot of people, to say you can exactly understand what is in your food right there, and have the opportunity to either put it back or put it in your cart.
Those are the big, heavy hitters as far as things to avoid. There are also things like nightshades. There are the top ten allergen foods. I found a lot of people who might come in with an egg allergy, but they’re still eating chicken. Where did the chicken come from? It came from the egg. A lot of times, we don’t put those pieces together.
A common thing that I might see is that all of the testing that people come in with often gives me identification of what the actual problem is, even though it has nothing to do with the food. That’s a concept, too. I’ll use a lot of people’s lab data to interpret and understand more about what’s going on, to then guide them moving forward.
Top 10 Allergen Foods
Whole foods and avoiding dairy, gluten, and processed foods. You mentioned the top ten allergen foods. Could you tell us what some of those top ten allergen foods are?
When we look at the top ten allergens, we do have gluten, dairy, eggs, shellfish, fish, and then nuts and seeds, which are two separate categories. Coconut is technically a tree nut, but it can also be one of those allergens. Corn and soy are some of the top foods that can be allergenic. I find a lot of my clients are allergic to things like corn and soy, and have a true allergy. When we take those out, they see a big resolution in a lot of their symptoms.
Is there a test that you recommend that people do to find out if they’re sensitive or allergic to these foods or other foods?
It’s interesting that you ask. I’ve gotten away from food allergy testing. Most of the time, it’ll show up. A lot of times, I’m hearing it in the foods that they’re telling me they’re eating. To me, tracking is a way of data collection and making sure that we’re able to look back at the trends of, “When I do this, this happens.” Have a qualified practitioner be able to look at those patterns and decipher, “What are you doing at that point?” For somebody eating barbecue sauce, why is it that when you go out and eat barbecue, you always have a problem? It is putting all of those pieces together, asking more questions, and thinking about that out-of-the-box scenario. That’s a little bit where things get tricky.
I have to be very specific about what testing I do because most testing is out of pocket when you’re doing functional medicine testing. When we’re looking for that root cause, it can be a twenty-page result. What do we do with those results? I try to be conscious of what we are after first. Nobody is perfect, but I’ve found a lot of times that somebody is following a good whole foods diet, and they still have problems. That’s when we need to look away from whether the food is causing a problem.
Let’s think of the common, “I want to lose weight, eat less, and move more.” If that’s not happening, there’s another problem. It doesn’t mean restrict yourself more. It doesn’t mean do more exercise. There’s probably another problem that when you cut your calories and do more exercise, it’s not cutting it. It’s not getting you to that result. There are more than likely multiple things that might be causing that problem, and it likely has nothing to do with the food at that point.
Keeping A Symptom Journal
What are some things to look for? If I eat barbecue and I don’t fall asleep that night, is it that kind of thing where I’m like, “I didn’t sleep well. What did I eat? When did I eat?” Is it like, “I had bathroom issues.” Is that the kind of stuff you’re talking about that people would be looking for?
Exactly. One of the things that I promote is tracking symptoms more so than necessarily the food. I usually have them do a symptom journal. If they have that symptom, it’s like, “Let’s go back a couple of days, or at least that last couple of meals. Where did you go? What did you do?” A lot of people tell me, “I traveled,” or “I had family in town.” I’d be like, “It sounds like you were eating out a lot.” It is trying to identify what those major factors are.
With my experience in the chef industry, too, I’m able to understand a little bit more of the preparation, where they might be getting their food from, if something is high in fat, or if something might have been fried versus baked. I’m thinking outside the box there to put those pieces together with the client. A lot of times, it’s individualized in the fact that we have to look at the symptom and then backtrack a little bit. It’s also helpful to have that data moving forward.
The other thing is that when we make a change, it’s usually not immediate. For lifestyle changes, unfortunately, there is no magic wand. There’s a lot that goes into a lifestyle change. We have to change our brains. We have to change the habit. We have to change the function, and then we have to make it a real habit where we do it on a daily basis. Once we are able to do that, making a new habit can take 30 to 60 days. That’s where the tracking comes in, because I don’t know what I ate on Saturday last week. Do you?
No.
It’s about being able to look back and say, “You had problems on Saturday, too. Do you remember that?” They’re like, “No, I don’t.”
It’s for tracking it, then?
Yeah, and to walk into your provider and be able to show them that data and say, “Help me sort through this. What should I do?” Instead of eliminating everything, saying, “I can never go out to eat,” which likely won’t happen. It’s being realistic and trying to help the person be able to live a good quality of life. Food is very social. A lot of times, I get clients who don’t have that social engagement because they have so many problems with food.
I’ve heard some experts talk about trying to have a very diverse diet, like eating at least 30 different foods throughout the week. Up to 50 or even 70 is the best. You have people like Bryan Johnson, the Don’t Die guy, who’s like, “Eat the same exact thing the same exact times every day.” Where do you land on some of that?
Number one, if a person is very habitual with their food and it’s working for them, let’s make sure that it’s balanced. Make sure that you have good supplementation to prevent any deficiencies from what you’re not eating. It is making sure that they’re happy with it. It’s something sustainable. One of the things in my practice is making sure that they’re sustainable, something that they’re going to be able to do and able to facilitate.
I get a lot of clients who don’t cook. If I give them a bunch of recipes, it’s probably going in the trash. Making sure that they’re able to accommodate themselves and still have a quality diet is important. I tend to be on the side of variety. At the same time, if the person can track and show that they’re hitting those major points of, “I have a good balance of my macros. I’m getting my micronutrients,” then let’s say, “Let’s flush it out and see what the nutrition data says. Let’s do a nutrition test and see what the actual deficiencies are.”
More than likely, if somebody is being consistent with their diet, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but they’re not getting all of those nutrients. Vitamin A is from our yellow, red, and orange foods. We could say, “Let’s eat some more peppers or tomatoes and different colored fruits that are those colors.” If they’re not willing to do so, then it seems like we are going to need to supplement that. There’s always a backup plan. Even on carnivore and keto diets, it’s recommended that you supplement. That’s on an individual basis, but there are core supplements that come into those diets because they’re restrictive.
Taking Probiotic And Other Recommended Foods
Speaking of supplements, and there are other things I want to come back to, but I was listening to Dave Asprey. He takes 150 different supplements a day. He jokingly says, “I have expensive pee.” Are there some core supplements that you recommend to everybody, or are you having people do a test first and then try to get it from the nutrition, and then supplement? What supplements do you take personally, and what do you recommend for most of your clients?
I’ll break that down a little bit. The biggest thing, if we’re finding that there’s a deficiency somewhere, is making sure that we correct it and making sure that the diet is sufficient to support it. That’s my personal objective with my clients. If that’s not their objective and they would prefer to supplement something, I want to make sure that they’re coming in 100%. There are options, as far as that’s concerned. As far as core supplements, I do believe that everybody needs a multivitamin, whether it is vitamin D, magnesium, or fish oil. I’m a 50/50 on probiotics. I usually encourage probiotic foods over a probiotic capsule.
What are some probiotic foods that you recommend?
Sauerkraut is a big one, as well as fermented yogurt products. They can be dairy or non-dairy. There are a lot of pickled items. If we’re getting a wild pickle, like a real pickle, rather than a processed chemical pickle, then we can get good probiotics from that. There are also things like kefir grains and things like that. You can make your own kefir at home, like sourdough. Sourdough is also a probiotic. If your sour is starting to go down, you walk around outside and collect wild yeast in the air. Usually, that’s enough to repopulate it and get it going again. There are wild yeasts everywhere. That’s a big part of the beneficial probiotics that are in yogurts and sourdough breads.
That’s a popular thing, sourdough bread. One of my colleagues here, his wife has a starter. It has a name. Its name is Emma. He’s had it for four years and lives on his countertop. It’s fun.My wife tried it and it didn’t work as well. You have to feed it every day and stuff.
I know some pretty old sourdough starters. That’s excellent.
That’s fun. Vitamin D, magnesium, and fish oil. Is there a specific multivitamin that you recommend to your clients?
There are, but I’ll be honest. The stuff that’s at the grocery store is pretty hit or miss. The FDA does not regulate supplements. I am happy to make those recommendations and help people find the right thing. There are other formulations in supplements. One might be better for another person. There are genetic modifications. Nutrigenomics is something that I work with a lot. Those are the genes that participate in our lifestyle and are modifiable by diet and lifestyle.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of MTHFR, COMT, or MAOA. There are a lot of genes that play a role in disease state modification, but also in our general health and wellness. There are different foods, different products, and different supplements that may or may not be recommended for those with those types of modifications as well.
Do you do some genetic testing then on the front end?
I do. It’s not required, but in some of my cases that I feel have a lot of symptomology and they’ve been around a lot of doctors, they may need medication management, and they may not be getting the desired effects of their medications. Oftentimes, I do recommend genetic testing at that point in order to help us understand that functional medicine root cause going all the way down. That would be our base foundation. That’ll never change.
It is something that I’ll recommend occasionally, and mostly if something is very complicated and complex. If we’re trial and error, or the client has trial and error and is in a jam, that is when I recommend the genetic testing. Most of the time, I can hear it in what they’re telling me and how their symptoms are presenting. I’ll know that that’s the pathway I need to support for them. I’m able to, without the testing, understand if we support this with a diet or supplement, and what the outcome is that the client should receive. Based on their follow-up, reporting, tracking, and telling me how they’re feeling, we’ll know if we’re on the right track or not.
For those people tuning in who don’t have access to you, if they’re in another part of the country or something, is there a specific genetic test that you typically utilize?
I forgot the name. I’m sorry.
Washing Organic Produce The Right Way
That’s fine. We can skip that. I want to go back to something that you talked about, which is avoiding the chemicals in our food. One thing that I look at, too, is how we avoid glyphosate, which is in Roundup. Do you recommend whole organic foods? I hear that even what’s qualified or certified as organic in our country isn’t necessarily free of chemicals or glyphosate. Something that’s maybe certified grass-fed isn’t completely grass-fed or pasture-raised. We do not have very stringent regulations on some of those things. What is your take on some of that?
There are a lot of discrepancies in that. You’re right that it’s hard as a consumer to understand what is the quality of our food that we’re purchasing. My biggest answer is yes to everything. There’s a discrepancy. Here in Florida, we have mosquito control. You have your organic garden growing outside. Guess what? It got sprayed by our mosquito control.
I encourage people when they’re following organic measures, whether they’re gardening or purchasing organic, to still wash their produce. We don’t wash our hands with just water. We wash it with soap and water. One of the methods that I use for washing produce specifically is using baking soda and water. You can also use vinegar and water. That is also effective at removing the residual pesticides and herbicides.
There’s a study I read a long time ago that compared three different methods of cleaning vegetables. They used plain water. They used baking soda and water. They used a quat scenario. Quat is like ammonia or chlorine-based detergent. We’d see it for wiping down a table. It’s in levels that would be sanitized, so for a sanitizer.
If you are habitual with your food, make sure it is balanced and have good supplementation to prevent any deficiencies. Share on X
They did a study where they found that the baking soda had 85% removed all of the pesticides and herbicides out of the pores of the vegetables and fruit that they were soaking them in. It’s a method that I’ve used ever since I read that article. When I get home from grocery shopping, I dump everything into a bucket of water or the sink and get my baking soda in there. I soak it for about ten minutes. You can see all of the chemicals coming off the fruits and vegetables.
Do you sprinkle some baking soda in, or a certain amount, or it doesn’t matter?
I use about a quarter cup per gallon, but also, I’m not a good measurer. Use enough. One of my suggestions is that if you think it wasn’t enough, do it again. Repeat and see what the water looks like. Within about 4 or 5 minutes, you’ll start to see it looking pretty murky. You can see the films on top of all the pesticides and stuff that are coming off. It’s regardless of whether it’s organic or not. There are organic pesticides and herbicides that they’re allowed to use. When we’re searching for that quality food, unfortunately, it’s very difficult here to navigate and understand what’s healthy or not.
I imagine if you did that, then you would probably want to always do that because you would see, “This is all the stuff I’d be putting into my body if I weren’t doing this.” That’s probably a helpful exercise.
It is, having that visual and reminding yourself, “The grapes that I got from the grocery store.” I was grocery shopping and saw that they used sodium metabisulfite on grapes. That’s a high allergen chemical that a lot of people get very sensitive to. They can have GI issues, headaches, and migraines. It can interact with medications. There are a lot of different things that can happen with that chemical. It’s something that they used as a preservative on the grapes.
Was it mentioned on the label of the grapes?
It was written on the label.
If you put that in baking soda and water, does it remove that?
It will remove parts of it. The research article showed that it removed about 85%.
Even if that’s in your grapes, you can still buy them. If you clean them with baking soda and water, you’ll be relatively safe.
Good question. There’s something called the Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen.
I’ve heard of that.
That’s something that comes out every year.
It changes?
Yeah.
We need to look at that each year.
Every year, it changes. The thin-skinned vegetables and fruits are the ones that get the most pesticides. They’ll use waxes to hold the pesticide because one little bug bite, and that fruit is gone. An apple or an orange, if it has one little bug bite, unfortunately, it’s done. That impacts the farmer. It impacts us. It’s the whole thing.
There’s an understanding of why we’ve used these things. I don’t know that anybody can justify whether it was right or wrong, but in general, there’s an understanding that if we have more people on the earth, we need to feed more people. That was the original thought process with this. They didn’t understand the health impacts of all of this. A lot of the veggie washes that are in the grocery store use sodium lauryl sulfate, which is in hand soap. We’re adding another chemical to our food in order to clean it. It’s one of those double-edged swords that we’re probably getting the desired effect, but we need another chemical to clean the chemicals.
It’s marketing. It comes down to marketing. Somebody wants to sell their product. They thought of a great idea. It’s not to say that it’s not a good idea, but does it get us to a healthy place where we want to be consuming that chemical? When that comes in through all of our soap products and hair products, our body absorbs it. Unfortunately, that’s not a great option either. I still stick with making a volcano out of baking soda and vinegar to get all of those chemicals and pesticides off my fruits and vegetables.
That’s a very helpful tip. I’m going to start doing that, for sure.
It’s a cheap one.
Baking soda removes around 85% of pesticides and herbicides out of the pores of fruits and vegetables. Share on X
Looking Back To A Story Of Healing
Also, easy. I imagine you have all kinds of stories of clients who have come to you with different ailments, different symptoms, or different health challenges. Could you share a couple of stories of people where you’ve seen transformations, and walk us through from the beginning to where they are?
Thinking about some of my clients, there are so many, first of all, which is a good thing. We want everybody to have that positive experience coming out of things. Number one, their success is a big part of why I do my job, too. It’s to see them thrive. There was a client a couple of years ago who came to me with an undiagnosed polyneuropathy. She was practically wheelchair bound. She was in her early 40s. She had young children. She had to quit working. She was practically wheelchair bound. She had some crutches to get around the house.
The doctors had a lot of things coming back that were coming back negative or were coming back positive, but weren’t very specific. There are a lot of markers that we can draw and test for, but they’re not specific enough to tell us the why. They give us direction, but it’s not the final answer. She was working with a couple of regenerative physicians to fix the neuropathy, and they referred her to me, thinking that there was something else going on. To go into an inflammatory process and try to regenerate, you have to stop the inflammation. You have to stop the degeneration first in order to see a positive outcome.
You’ve got to fix the environment.
A simple example is if you step on a tack and you’re walking around with a tack in your foot, your foot is not going to get better until you remove the tack. If you medicate the tack, put stuff on it, and stop walking on it, the tack is still there. The healing process doesn’t start until you remove the problem. She was having pretty bad flare-ups. She ended up in the hospital, dehydrated. She’d have random bouts of fatigue, GI symptoms, and pain management issues to the point where she is hospitalized for these issues. One of my recommendations was that we test her for Epstein-Barr and some of the common viruses that we see in children.
Like mono?
Yes. What happens with these things is that they never leave our immune system. Our immune system remembers it. The interesting thing is that with her history, there wasn’t a point of no return. It was a very slow progressing thing for her. Once she had these things going on, it was happening quickly that she couldn’t get control of her symptoms.
The presentation to me was that she was having these flareups every 4 to 6 weeks, and then she would get 2-week flareups as well in between. You’re tracking this. She had this data that we could go back and look at. Based on the evaluation that I did with her, it seemed like she was having immune issues. That’s where my recommendation of looking for chronic infections came.
Her Epstein-Barr was off the charts. We started addressing that all holistically, so I cannot prescribe anything. It was all holistic antiviral support and getting her nutrition together. At that point, I recommended what is called an autoimmune paleo diet, which is a little bit more restrictive, but it was to get her to a point of healing. It was to remove as much inflammation and get her function back. It was a very short time that she was on that specific diet.
It was amazing. She had a goal. She came to me at the beginning of the year, and she said, “We have this trip that we’re going on with the family. We’re going to Spain, and we’re backpacking.” She’s in a wheelchair. I tell people, “I don’t have a magic wand, but let’s get to work.” It was amazing that within six months, she didn’t need the wheelchair. By that ninth month, she walked around Spain with her family. I suggested that she get walking sticks to help support her because she wasn’t strong enough.
We worked through the diet. We worked through the supplements. We worked through the lifestyle changes. It was a pretty aggressive support program for her. She was willing and committed. She made every single meal at home. She was very dedicated to the plan that we set in place for her. Her outcome was that she was able to pack around Spain, backpacking every day nonstop. That’s how they traveled. There weren’t cars, trains, buses, or planes. They were walking as a family. She was able to complete it. She was like, “I’m exhausted,” but she did it. She was elated.
That’s amazing.
Thank you.
You get to see significant transformations all the time, I’m sure.
There are so many.
Actively Working Towards A Healthier Body
What are you most excited about as you think about the future of functional medicine and your approach to the work that you do? What’s on the horizon that you’re most excited about?
The awareness that I’ve seen with people’s understanding of what’s happening with our food supply. I’ve had this information for over twenty years. It’s a big part of my practice in educating people on understanding why a whole food diet is important. We can go into the depths of pesticides, herbicides, and all those things, but starting with a whole food diet is the foundation of things. I’ve been seeing a lot of people moving in that direction. Honestly, it helps me to be able to help them better, too, when they’ve already cleaned things up, so to speak.
The word clean eating has been around for a while. I don’t discourage people from trial and error, but I also suggest that if they’re not getting anywhere, reach out for help. I see so many people who get themselves into a hole, and they can’t get out. A lot of it goes back to their nutrition. What I’m excited about is seeing people engaging with their food more and understanding that there is so much that we can do, depending on your age. We should be doing this from birth, if we can, and encourage our children, our children’s children, and our parents. There’s so much that we can do. Some people come up to me and say, “I’m a lost cause.” I don’t believe that.
It’s never too late. You can make changes.
The acknowledgement and saying, “What am I able to do? What am I physically capable of doing?” Our body is a beautiful thing. Our body itself wants to repair itself. It wants to function at high functionality. If we’re slamming the coffee every 2:00, there’s a problem. The body is saying, “I’m on an energy tank.” People are starting to identify that our food is our medicine, and what they need to do in order to achieve the best results.
People are also understanding that food may not be the only thing that’s participating here, but it does have a huge impact across the board because we have to eat to survive. There are all sorts of different things, but the awareness of seeing other people starting to understand that there’s so much that they have control over.
That’s great and exciting. Maybe there’ll be some changes to our food system in America.
I think it’s coming. When we look at some of the other countries, we’re one of the only countries that have pesticides, herbicides, and chemicals in our food supply. When we look at the “We can’t have ants. We can’t have pests. We can’t have this,” chickens, possums, and all of these other ecosystems are here to support.
Marigolds deter different types of animals and pests. I’m not a gardener by any means, but I know that there are different ways to garden that promote a healthy garden. In having free-range chickens, what should they be eating? Compost. They should be eating the ticks off of our tomato plants, aphids, and all of these different things. When we think about animal husbandry, gardening, and whether or not we’re doing it on our own, investigating and understanding where our food comes from is probably the biggest thing.
I feel like we’re also starting to transition back to supporting the small farmers a little bit more. The USDA supports the large farmers. It’s necessary. We have to produce to support everybody here, but it’s going to take time. Unfortunately, our environment is a little damaged from the use of a lot of this, too. We have to look at that as a factor, as well as starting to stop using the stuff that we know is bad. Something else that we can see on the horizon as well is awareness.
Get In Touch With Julie
I have one quick question. How can people find you and get all of this help from an expert like yourself? If they don’t have access to you, how could they get a nutrient test? What would be the best way to go about that for those who want to start there, like, “I want to check my nutrient levels and then optimize them.”
Those are available through my website. Anybody can come through and purchase that test. There are some state limitations, but that’s very limited. The majority of people who are outside the state of Florida can go to my website and purchase those tests specifically. The other thing is anything that I can do to support them. I may not be able to counsel them, but to support them, I always offer a free fifteen-minute call to everybody. They’re always welcome to call and at least get some direction on, “Who’s in my area? What should I look for? What are some basics that I can start with in order to understand my health better?” That’s something that I love to offer people.
Do you work with clients remotely as well?
My practice is 100% remote.
They could be anywhere.
I am still state-bound as far as my license is concerned, but there are a lot of shared states as well. A lot of snowbirds are in what we call green states for dieticians. I’m able to work in a lot of other states, but it’s licensure-based. I know those states. That’s also why I say, “Give me a call. Let’s see what’s going on.” Most of the time, my clients live in the state of Florida, but a lot of them travel back home for the summer, so I’m able to follow them there as well.
Where can people find you?
They can go to my website, Integrated-WellBeing.com. That is the best place to get more resources. My supplement company is there, as well as the lab testing company. They can fill out a form and directly book into my calendar for that fifteen-minute appointment. They can also call our office. That number is listed on our website.
This has been amazing. I’ve learned so much from you. Thank you so much for sharing your experience, your own journey, and your expertise with our audience and with me. It’s been a privilege and an honor to have you here.
Thank you so much. I was so excited to come. Thank you.
Thanks.
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What a fascinating conversation with Julie from Integrated WellBeing. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did and received some key takeaways. These are some of the things I’m taking away from that. For one, I’m going to start washing all my produce with baking soda and water, eliminating those chemicals, and avoiding as many inflammatory foods as possible, such as gluten, dairy, and other chemicals. Sodium metabisulfites, I’m going to start looking at labels for that. That’s something I haven’t done in the past, but I want to make sure I avoid those kinds of things.
It inspired me to track my foods and my symptoms a little better so I can optimize and realize if there are certain things that I’m eating or not eating that are causing me to feel better or worse, or to have other issues. Some of the things that we talked about, too, are finding ways to get those probiotics from natural foods, like sauerkraut, fermented yogurts, pickled items, and kefir grains.
We talked about the possibility of maybe some genetic testing and avoiding some of those top ten allergens, or finding out based on symptoms if you have some of those allergens to the top 10 foods, like eggs, shellfish, fish, nuts, seeds, coconut, corn, and even soy. This was a very insightful episode. You can find Julie at her website, Integrated-WellBeing.com, and book a free fifteen-minute consultation with her. What do you have to lose? Thanks so much for tuning in to Fully Alive. We’ll see you next time.
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About Julie Hill
Julie’s journey into Functional Medicine began at 18 as she sought to resolve her own chronic health issues that stumped the medical community. Through extensive research and trial and error, she discovered the link between certain foods and her symptoms, deepening her curiosity about the correlation between organ functionality and nutrition.
After completing two culinary degrees, she continued her education receiving her Bachelor’s degree in Nutrition and Dietetics from Eastern Michigan University in 2013. Her journey didn’t stop there, Julie earned her certification from the Institute for Functional Medicine in 2018 and continues her passion as a functional medicine and nutrition and wellness specialist in Fort Myers, and for helping others with their health and longevity as a certified Practitioner of Functional Medicine today.
