#180: Autoimmune Disease: How Health Coaches Can Drastically Help

Michelle Leotta:
Well hello there health coaches! You know, before we get into today's topic of autoimmune disease, I know that a lot of coaches in our community are newer to coaching either. You know, you just graduated from health coach school, or you maybe graduated a little while ago. We haven't quite gotten going yet. So that's why I'm hosting a free get together. I wanted to tell you about it today, cuz it's coming up next week on February 16th. It'll be an opportunity to meet each other, to meet me and chat about getting your business off the ground. So this is an entirely free event you can register at healthcoachpower.com/getstarted2022.

Michelle Leotta:
Now let's talk autoimmune disease. Now that we got that outta the way for all you new coaches. Whether you're new or you're more experienced, you may be thinking, can I work with a client that has autoimmune disease? Is that within my scope of practice? Do I know enough about it, right? It's it's a pretty specialized area. So last year in my own health coaching practice. And I wanna remind you guys that I've been a health coach now for 13 years and you can do a lot of good work with the basics you really can. I know I have, but last year I did a special training to amp up my knowledge and my skills around working with autoimmune clients. And I took a course with Mickey Trescott and Angie Alt from AIP certified coach. And I thought it was so super well done. I've done so many different courses. I thought it was so tight. such a great program. These two have so much to offer. So I invited Mickey and Angie to join us today. Hello there ladies.

Mickey Trescott:
Hey, thank you for having us.

Angie Alt:
Hi Michelle. Thanks for Having us.

Michelle Leotta:
I'm so glad that you could both make it. I thought with our schedule, what are the chances that everybody's gonna be available, but we did it so that's amazing. And I wanna hear, um, just to kick us off. I mean, when, even when I look at your practices, oh wow. Look what they're doing. Holy moly. And certainly a newer coach looks and sees what you guys are doing with your practices. It's like, you know, I'll never get there. So could you maybe each one of you could just take us back and uh, tell us what it looked like when you first started your health coaching practice and how does that compare to now?

Mickey Trescott:
Sure. I'll get us started I'm Mickey by the way. And uh, I started, uh, transitioning my career to health coaching after my own health crisis. So I'm sure a lot of people share this story. Um, a lot of he go through their own healing journey and it really inspires them to want to help with other people and make it easier. And that was definitely my story. So I was diagnosed with Hashimotos and celiac disease after. Um, what I thought was a long struggle. It turns out that a year is not actually that long in comparison to a lot of people's autoimmune journeys. Um, but once I started to put the pieces together, find those answers, um, nutritional therapy and feeling with food was a big part of my journey. And I had a prior background working as a personal chef. So I kind of combined, those loves, went back to school for nutrition and uh, started practicing then in addition to teaching people about food, including cooking and uh, that's what brings me here. Um, and of course, Angie and I were brought together by Dr. Sarah Valentine, who was also going through her own health journey at the same time as Angie and I, we all met together and supported each other through journey, our own journeys. And then, um, out of that spring AIP certified coach, once Angie and I had, um, some history working with clients to lean upon and collaborate with Sarah on some scientific basis for what we now know as AIP.

Michelle Leotta:
All right. So back then, when you first started, do you remember ever thinking, I don't think I'll ever be able to be a decent health coach. Like did you have those doubts in the beginning?

Mickey Trescott:
I think... So, part of my illness was losing my job, which, uh, you know, wasn't a great job, but it, it kind of ripped off that band of like, is anything else out there possible for me? I think I had known for a while that the service industry was just not really working out for me, but I didn't have a way out. Um, so illness was definitely my way out and while I was sick and while I was working on my own recovery, I had a lot of time to think about what would make me happy and fulfilled. And so I think I was coming at starting my practice at a level of just like being fired up about what I had learned and what I had experienced that really fueled those early doubts. Um, or I guess minimize those early doubts and like, and fueled my passion for it.

Mickey Trescott:
But I would say, um, you know, six months in, did I make the right choice? Am I gonna always have people calling to use my services? And I think the longer I did it, the more I realized just how many people need help and how few people are trained to actually support. So I know it can seem like there are a lot of health coaches out there. I definitely had that feeling when I was getting into it. I was like, I'm too late. And I mean, this was like 2013, you know? Yeah. Um, but the more I do this, the more I realize, like we really need an army of nutrition professionals to help people with these pieces because implementation of this stuff is actually really hard and coaching goes a long way. So, um, so yeah.

Michelle Leotta:
So you're pretty be fired up and yes, being, uh, unable to continue in the career that you're currently in. I know because I got laid off from my career in advertising, right? When I was thinking maybe of transitioning into health coaching and then just like that the bandaid gets ripped off and you're kind of like, here I am, let's do this thing. What an interesting story. So, um, Angie, what about you when you first started in your health coaching business? What was that like for you?

Angie Alt:
Yeah,I have a similar story in some ways to Mickey, um, and other ways, a little different, I have three autoimmune diseases, lichen sclerosus, endometriosis and celiac disease. Celiac disease was my final diagnosis and it took about 11 years to get there. So, I was really, really ill and very debilitated by that point, we were living overseas for my husband's career and it meant we had to change our whole life trajectory so that I could come back to the United States and get medical help, um, and find the right healthcare. And I'm sure lots of folks in your community relate to this. It turned out to not be very easy. It turned out that our medical system isn't really set up to help people with a chronic health condition, like many autoimmune diseases. And so that got me looking for other answers. I found Sarah Valentine and Mickey, and that's when I made the decision to start transitioning my career towards, uh, helping other folks.

Angie Alt:
You know, I came from this background of mainly accounting and I started the transition process into coaching eventually went on to get a nutritional therapy certification as well. And then I started for focusing on building, group coaching programs pretty early on. And yeah, in the beginning I thought I will be so lucky if I can keep this going for even a year. Eight years later, many thousands of group clients, couple medical studies, um, it worked fine. And like Mickey said, um, there are so many millions of people in our country impacted by autoimmune disease and we truly need an army.

Michelle Leotta:
We sure do. So. Hey, for those of you that are here live, and I know we have a bunch of you watching right now, if you have any questions for Mickey or Angie, as we go through today's interview, just pop 'em into of the comments and I'll work 'em into the conversation. The best I can. We've had people in the group interested in the AIP certified program. So, anyway, fire away, if you guys have questions, uh, for, uh, Mickey or Angie, whoever wants to take this one, can you talk a little bit more about why the medical community just isn't cutting it? Because I see this huge opportunity with health coaches working with autoimmune clients, you know, more so than with other types of diagnoses and, and illnesses. Can you talk more about like why the medical establishment is, is not suitable for actually helping with just about anything when it comes to auto immunity?

Angie Alt:
I'm happy to jump in here, Mickey, but you can certainly add if I don't cover all the bases. I mean, I think the truth is, is that our, um, medical community definitely plays an important role Mickey and I do not take a dogmatic approach that you should only have, you know, uh, natural dietary lifestyle methods over any conventional medical approaches, autoimmune diseases are really complex and complex problems re we need, we need nuanced solutions to resolve them. So that might mean combining. Um, but traditionally the medical path alone, um, doesn't seem to work with a lot of folks. And I think it's because our, our system is mostly focused on how to resolve acute problems. So like if you have a heart attack, our system is great for you, but if you have celiac disease, our system might not work as well. And that's where health coaches come in. I feel like we can be the bridge between what the doctor's office is saying and the person's real life. Um, we can help them actually implement things that they can do on their own that are more likely to help over a long haul with a chronic disease.

Michelle Leotta:
Do you wanna add anything to that?

Mickey Trescott:
Yeah, I think just what I would add is that our medical system isn't really incentive, advised to help people with chronic illness. I think it goes all the way down to our society doesn't know how to deal with people who have chronic illness, uh, friends, family support level, and then in the medical level there just really, aren't a lot of incentives for people, um, getting well and autoimmune diseases are very tricky. They are not curable. And so the medical profession. And also there's so many of them that they are seemingly rare when you look at them on an individual disease level, but with over a hundred autoimmune diseases, you add all of that up. And the people that suffer from them and overlapping autoimmune diseases, it really is an epidemic that know one specialty is really well equipped to actually tackle, you know? Um, so I think that's a big part of it.

Michelle Leotta:
Yeah. That's what really jumped out at me. I had never thought about it before until going through your course about how there's no medical specialty for autoimmunity. So instead someone's going to the endocrinologist or the rheumatologist just, or the whatever bouncing around, but there's no one that kind of holds the whole picture of auto immunity. And I thought that's what we can do as health coaches, you know, and I feel like I've, I've had clients even, gosh, even years and years ago who said, no one's ever listened to my whole story and helped me put the pieces together. And it's so incredibly valuable. We can do that. So just to help someone not just think about, oh, it's my joints that are hurting or, oh, I have this rash of my skin, but how could maybe this all be connected, uh, that, that was very eye opening when you guys pointed that out. So that is like the opportunity for all of you guys out there who maybe you've gone through an autoimmune disease, is yourself, you're going through it. Um, or you've worked with a lot of, uh, clients. You have someone in your family who's going through autoimmune disease. I mean, it's very tricky, I think is the average, like eight years for somebody to get a diagnosis. I feel like I've heard that.

Angie Alt:
Yeah. Eight years is about the, the normal journey with this stuff.

Michelle Leotta:
Yes, it's, it's crazy pants. So, uh, I know that I've had really great results recently, uh, with my autoimmune clients, largely based on what I learned in your program, a lot of it is helping someone see that they might need to talk to their doctor because their symptoms are pointing towards possible autoimmune disease. Like they just never would've even thought it, no, one's brought it up to them. Suddenly they're going, they're getting a proper diagnosis. Maybe there's some kind of medication, maybe there's not, and we're able to make such amazing progress so quickly, like within weeks. Um, so of my clients have been seeing really great results. So anyway, I, I, haven't been sort of working in this genre for too too long. Uh, but for you guys doing this for so many years, I thought maybe you could each share like your top or your most exciting client success story, someone going through, you know, the AIP protocol.

Mickey Trescott:
I'm happy to start, um, kind, I have a client that I'm just so fantastically happy for him. Um, he was an older man who had a family and suffered from a long term illness with multiple sclerosis, which, um, you guys are probably very familiar with. It's a very debilitating, autoimmune disease. There's a lot of very powerful drugs for it. Um, and it is one autoimmune disease that very predictably has a negative impact on the ability to function and quality of life very early on in the disease. So a lot of the conventional treatment is really aggressive. Um, and so this client came to me, um, because he had implemented AIP on his own, but he was having in trouble maintaining his weight and kind of working with some of the troubleshooting things about AIP. So he also had CIBO. Um, and so we worked together to find a customized elimination reintroduction, um, talked him through the management of the CIBO and the treatment with the, his doctor.

Mickey Trescott:
And once we got out of those woods, it took out maybe six to nine months. Um, we stopped working together cuz he was feeling great and kind of had a plan going forward. And I didn't hear from him for a couple years and he emailed me asking for a follow up session and I thought, oh no, you know, maybe like some of his MS symptoms came back, you know, thinking the worst, cause usually when we don't hear from clients, um, we assume they're off living their lives, doing great things. And he was like, oh no, actually, um, I just had a follow up MRI. I have all full reversal, no lesions of MS in my brain. My neurologist is just so thrilled. But you know, I'm still having like a little bit of trouble. I lost five pounds and I'm like, okay, great. Like let's get back in there. Let's, let's see how we can tailor this to help you keep your weight up. So, um, he's definitely someone who stands out to me as someone who it was just really fun to work with someone, you know, who his motivation was to be there for his kids, to see them grow up, to be able to play with them because he was suffering from a lot of MS related and fatigue and to see that go away and for him to have that outcome was really fun.

Michelle Leotta:
Oh, that's so fun. And a lot of times, I mean health coaching is such a female dominated industry. We forget to talk about our male clients. So I love that you, you know, you brought up working with the male male client. Um, and so I wanna ask, do you happen to notice any difference between working with men and women and bringing them through the protocol?

Mickey Trescott:
I mean, I have to say in this specific client's case, one of the reasons why I think he was able to be so successful, especially long term, he was on strict elimination even when he had reintroduced a lot of foods because of the potential severity of like MS is not something you just wanna like reintroduce a bunch of foods and see, you know. Those patients are very motivated. Um, he was able to maintain a high level of compliance because his wife was very supportive and she had a lot of time and she was a very good cook. And so I think acknowledging that piece, when people have support players in their life, you know, it can obviously be, um, someone's partner. If they're on board, they understand the reasons why they are undergoing these changes and they're willing to put in some work to help them. Um, it can really help them be success.

Michelle Leotta:
Oh man, that is so great. And hats off to that wife because it helps so much when there's someone else to share the cooking and the cleaning and everything else that goes into it.

Mickey Trescott:
And I've had a lot of other clients who really struggle because sometimes, um, it, it isn't that their partner doesn't wanna help, but they maybe they're busy or they work or, you know, they don't have the capacity. And even in some cases, the partner will sabotage the partner will say, why are you doing this? They there's no buy-in, they don't share the vision. And those are probably some of the most challenging situations where people have no support or they even have the opposite of support. They have some sabotage and some doubt, um, where within their own family

Michelle Leotta:
That happens. We have a comment here from Patricia. She, she says, this is such overdue, relevant and needed content. And I agree. I, I mean, autoimmune disease is just, I'm sure, you know, uh, off the top of your head, better than I do. It's been going up at a crazy rate over the past 10, 20 years. Yes?

Mickey Trescott:
For sure. You know, incidence is definitely rising and I think some of that has to do with diagnostics. I think a lot of people were probably previously suffering from autoimmune diseases and we didn't know what to call it, but I also think that our environment has changed a lot. What we have eaten, uh, is changing rapidly and, uh, were being exposed to all these different things. And unfortunately our bodies manifest autoimmune disease a lot easier, um, because of all of it

Michelle Leotta:
For everyone who's with us live, tell us in the comments, if you yourself have an autoimmune disease, if you, someone you love has an autoimmune disease, if you're working with any clients, I mean, just within this group, I feel like we all probably have connection to people who could benefit from the work that you guys do and the work that you're helping coaches to do. Um, I mean, we hear about it all the time within the coaching community, because like you said, a lot of us got here because we weren't getting answers. We weren't able to heal from whatever was bothering us and we found another way to do it. Uh, this is just so, so powerful. Anyway, Angie, tell us about one of your client successes.

Angie Alt:
Yeah. Well, I, I have two stories. The first is very short, but I wanna share it because I really wanna encourage the coaches that sometimes very, very small and simple changes can have a very, very big impact for your clients. And you might think, oh my my knowledge is very limited. I'm not a doctor. I can't possibly help. Um, but that's not true. One of my really big client successes was also a male. Um, he had celiac disease, but one issue that, um, he was from a culture where they spent a lot of time drinking tea and he was drinking like eight plus cups of black tea a day and no water. So, he wanted to go through all this very advanced testing. He wanted to go to this really high-end clinic in a major city. And I convinced him that we should start with hydration and just work on hydration.

Angie Alt:
And we resolved his histamine intolerance by working on hydration. So just so you know, the coaches out there know sometimes it's really simple, low hanging fruit that you can really bring to the attention of your clients and help them make really profound progress. One of my biggest success stories though, is with a woman I worked with a few years ago, she had an autoimmune, uh, skin related disorder called lichen planus. Lichen planus can not only affect the outer layer of the skin, but sometimes it affects the mouth, the gums, it can go even down into the throat. She had a very severe case that was just like that. She was herself, an RN. She had been to like the Mayo clinic. She had been to Cleveland clinic. She had even done treatments that basically involved a form of chemotherapy to try to control the situation it was causing difficulty for her to swallow.

Angie Alt:
She had started having trouble eating because she was choking on her food and it was just very uncomfortable. It was very painful condition. And we started making changes, worked on the autoimmune protocol, helped her bring in a lot of nutrient density, especially like omega3 fatty acids and other kinds of nutrients that support skin health and healing. And we made more progress than she had made in like 20 years prior with all those advanced treatments, being an RN herself and connected to her medical community. And when she went in for her checkup with her dermatologist, the dermatologist basically cried because they could not believe that she had finally made that kind of progress. So...

Michelle Leotta:
That gives me goose bumps.

Angie Alt:
Yeah. All these stories, even while, I mean, I'm... I know about the story that Mickey shared. I know about that client of hers, but every time I hear the story, it still gives me goosebumps and makes me so happy when I hear this stuff.

Michelle Leotta:
Uh, gosh. Okay. So here's everyone saying about their autoimmune disease. Tara says she has multiple. Jennifer says she has Sjogren's and, and she plans to focus on women with auto immunity in her coaching practice. Nell's here. You guys know Elli. She said, your course is the best investment she made last year. Amy Jo says she has several autoimmune diagnoses. Diane is here. Diane also took the AIP course and loved it. I think we took it together. Right, Diane? So, so this is like highly prevalent. It is really out there. There's so much that we can do as health coaches. So, question for you guys. How as health coaches who cannot diagnose or treat, uh, an illness, how, how do we go about doing this? How do we, you know, say, Hey, I'm gonna help cure your autoimmune disease without going outside our scope of practice.

Mickey Trescott:
Yeah, I think, you know, being very clear to use language like I do not diagnose and treat is really important right off the bat. And that's something that I do in my initial communications with clients. I do a free 10 minute chat just to see for a good fit together. And from there, uh, it's good to see the expectations if someone says, you know, you know, tell me about other people whose Hashimotos has been cured. You know, red flag, like, you know, well, I don't actually work specifically with Hashimotos. I can't treat your disease, but I can work with you to identify food allergies and sensitivities. We can work on restoring nutrient densities, supporting gut health, and I can help you formulate some questions to advocate for yourself, with your medical providers. And that conversation I think, being really forthright from the beginning that, you know, you are not going to be the medical provider, unless you are licensed and able to give that advice or run those tests, but that you're gonna expect them to go to their medical provider or have up partnership with a medical provider that can, um, do that for them.

Mickey Trescott:
And for people that come to me with very complex situations, I always ask, you know, who are you working for to follow up with your Crohn's disease, for example, your multiple sclerosis. Um, it's a really big red flag when they come in and they say I'm done with conventional medicine and I don't have any support. Um, then I know that they're gonna be relying me on me for information that I legally can't really provide. Um, and so having said that, I think that there is, um, kind of a movement within health coaches that have, we have all this information at our fingertips. Um, and we really want to be able to help our clients in a way that we're really set up and educated to help them with, instead of going down that route, really think about being that bridge, like Angie talked about being between them, um, and the, the medical provider and helping them fulfill that MVP.

Mickey Trescott:
Most valuable player, they are in the driver's seat. They're the one who gets to make all the decisions about their care. They're the ones that has to advocate with their providers. And they're the ones who, um, we collaborate with in order to make dietary changes and, um, and so on and so forth. And when we give them the information that provides them empowerment, um, they then have, um, ownership over their own journey and everything works better in that way. And so I think thinking of health coaching as, um, kind of like unlocking their inner, um, ability to really guide their own process instead of being, you know, a very alopathic conventional medicine view is like, I am the expert and I will tell you what to do. Don't have that vibe have more of a, you know, bringing out their, their inner, um, guidance there. So I don't know if that's helpful.

Michelle Leotta:
It absolutely is helpful. Cause we get the question all the time, even just forget auto immunity, but just in general, how am I supposed to health coach? How can I help someone with their health if I'm not allowed to do this, this, this, this, this, and, oh my God, I'm in a red state and all the rest. So there is...

Mickey Trescott:
You can notice things if you know about SIBO. I mean, it doesn't mean you can't talk about SIBO you can say, Hey, all of these symptoms, they, it sounds like SIBO, I can't dive knows that, but here's some questions to ask your provider. Here's some tests to ask your provider. There's nothing wrong with that. And actually that's how a lot of our clients have advocated for very specific things. I mean, Angie has a client that actually she has discovered that they've had endometriosis, they have uncovered cancer. Just because of her thinking, you know what? This does not seem like X, Y, or Z, you should ask your providers for some more testing. And that detective work is absolutely within our scope to then refer them to go ask questions to their medical providers.

Michelle Leotta:
Right. There is something to pocket right there you guys. That "I notice" idea. Go ahead.

Angie Alt:
Yeah. I was just gonna say that, you know what I would add to what Mickey say? Of course I agree with everything she just share shared. I would also say you know, I don't think of the autoimmune protocol as being a method for curing autoimmune disease. First of all, we should have really careful ethics, especially when we're working with autoimmune clients around words like cure and remission. Um, it's really tricky and they should really understand from the start, that cure is not realistic with autoimmune disease. Once the body learns how to have those antibodies, it will not unlearn it, but a better word might be rather than treat something like manage and management includes having like a set of skills, a toolbox full of skills that can help them manage this disease over the, you know, course of their life in a way that gives them the best quality of life. And I think of myself more like helping them build skills, you know, it's like really deep skill building process in part of those skills being how to best utilize their time with their medical providers. Like what kind of information can I share with them to help them get high mileage out of every appointment and really make that relationship work to its, its ultimate in the, in the end health coach should function in a way that relieves stress from the provider and the patient.

Michelle Leotta:
I like that image. That makes every doctor wanna work with us. Right. Well sometimes, sometimes not, but sometimes you really can form a working relationship or have that communication. I know you talk about that during the course.

Angie Alt:
Yeah, definitely. I mean having the opportunity to be part of the medical study process, you know, I got a chance to have a close relationship with a gastroenterologist and with a primary care provider who helped us with the Hashimoto study. And in both of those settings, it was great to see this really positive way that we could communicate and um, show each other how we could best support the patient.

Michelle Leotta:
Well I know, everybody is interested in learning more about what you guys offer. When is the next enrollment for AIP certified coaching and where should everybody go to learn more?

Mickey Trescott:
So we are actually enrolling starting tomorrow for our spring class. Yeah, I know very timely. And we will be taking enrollment until February 23rd or until class fills our class usually fills. So if you guys wanna join us, we recommend signing up maybe in the first few days. And then we will be have class from the very end of this month to the middle of April and then we'll be running it again in the fall. So, if the timing doesn't work for you guys, you can get on our interest list. The website, is aipcertified.com and we would love to have you.

Michelle Leotta:
Jennifer says she's on the wait list and she already bought the books. All right. Thanks for being here today. You guys, I really appreciate it. Thanks for joining us, everyone. This is an important topic to learn more about. Everyone can check out AIPcertified.com for more info on becoming certified as an AIP coach. And if you are newer to coaching and looking to get your business off the ground, remember you can join my free meetup. That's happening on February 16th by registering at healthcoachpower.com/getstarted2022. And we'll see you next week. Thanks again for being here today.

Angie Alt:
Thanks Michelle.

New Speaker:
Bye.