ATHE_Transcript_Ep 399_Dani Williamson
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] Okay. Full disclosure. So we had a little tech issue with the audio. And we lost the last minute of this recording, but I didn’t want you to miss out on this incredible interview. So I’m airing the episode as is, but I just didn’t want you to be alarmed when you hear this sharp cutoff at the end, that was this weird tech glitch.
So trust me, you are not missing anything important. All you’re missing is us saying bye. I’m so excited for you to tune into this interview. So if you’ve ever felt like I’m just stuck, or this is just the best it’s ever going to be, or I really can’t get better. Today’s interview with Dani williamson is going to help you turn that thinking around because, oh my gosh, where Dani came from and where she’s gotten to it’s just
incredible. Her personal story is the most mind-blowing one I’ve ever heard. And I can’t wait to share it with you. We’re going to be talking about dani’s new book wild and well six commonsense steps [00:01:00] to radical healing and these common sense steps are simple and yet, so super profound. We’re also going to be talking
element of illness and weight regain that we’ve never talked about it on this show before. And that she has shown has impacted probably 75% of her patients. And so we’ll talk about that as well. I’m not telling you what it is. I’m spoiler alert. Let me tell you a little bit about Dani, and you’re going to fall in love with her today.
During this interview, she owns integrative family medicine in Franklin, Tennessee, where she focuses on the gut autoimmune thyroid, which Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is her passion, hormone, and adrenal health with her patients, her approach embodies physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual process to heal.
She is also on the board of middle Tennessee chapter of the American foundation of suicide prevention and believes strongly in addressing issues of adverse childhood trauma in relation to [00:02:00] its overall long-term health conditions. And we’ll be getting personal. She’s going to share where she came from and also how.
Ended up in school to become a nurse practitioner on food stamps with babies and, you know, came through that. So this story is incredible and her insights and information are super actionable. And I’m really excited to share them with you today. Now, before we dive in. She has got a food swaps gift for you and turns out she has been using the Virgin diet in her practice with her patients for the last nine years.
I just love that. And so I’m always a fan of more food swaps. You know, that that is the big way that I teach you how to heal your gut and make all the changes. So you can grab those JJvirgin.com/Dani D a N I, and we will be right back with the interview. Stay with me!
Dani [00:03:00] Williamson. Welcome to the show. I’m super excited to have you.
Dani Williamson: Thank you so much. I’m thrilled to death.
JJ Virgin: Well, you’ve got a new book out. Oh my gosh. Hold it up. And for those of you that cannot see this and by the way, so your book wild and well, Dani’s six common sense steps to radical healing. You can’t see this, but this is one fiery redhead over here.
And so it just, it just fits perfectly the wild. Title and we are going to be digging into those six steps today. But before we dig into that, this is, I always like to kind of pull it back to how you got here. Like what got you started in medicine? What made you to go down this healing?
Dani Williamson: Well, the, the, the huge story is, well, I got divorced at 39 years old and I had owned a maternity and children’s store for 11 years.
I have a master’s degree in [00:04:00] fashion design. That’s what I did for 2017.
JJ Virgin: Well, that’s why you always look so fabulous.
Dani Williamson: So I was selling breast pumps and nipple cream and my maternity store for 11 years at mum’s the word maternity. And when I got divorced, I knew I had to do something. So I already was in women’s health.
Fast forward. I applied to nurse practitioner school. I was sick. I was on food stamps. I had two little children. I got accepted. It seems like. Yeah, right. All the things. So I, so I went to Vanderbilt on food stamps and a medical card, two little babies, and, with a degree in fashion design and decided to start in, into the medical world,
JJ Virgin: they must not have known what to make of you.
Dani Williamson: 24 years though. But prior to that, I was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. I was diagnosed with lupus at 35. I itched chronically for years, I was depressed. 10 doctors, 24 years, $200,000 in a, in a [00:05:00] education before a doctor ever leaned into me, JJ and said, Dani, what are you eating? Don’t you know, your diet controls your.
Or your symptoms for me. And it turned my entire world world around. I had just spent all that money in school and I never was taught what’s at the end of your fork will heal you or kill you simple as that. And so 11 years
JJ Virgin: ago, let’s hold, hold the phone. IBS. And they never asked you what you were eating.
Never
Dani Williamson: for colonoscopies. My first colonoscopy was at 20. My fourth one was at 44, never once. Did they say Dani? What are you eating?
JJ Virgin: What were you.
Dani Williamson: I was eating anything I wanted and I was hooked. I didn’t do drugs. I didn’t smoke. But Betty crocker
JJ Virgin: crocker was your drug. Betty
Dani Williamson: crocker was my drug milk, [00:06:00] chocolate icing.
So I would get so stressed out because I grew up in a complete shit hole of chaos, child abuse and things like that going on. And I would literally would pull that aluminum. Thing off of that red Betty crocker milk chocolate and eat that chocolate icing and boom, those dopamine receptors would hit and it calmed me down.
Well, nobody ever said that’s causing diarrhea, Dani, like massive diarrhea. I ate anything I wanted. I mean, anything processed, packaged, bagged canned, fake foods. And then I was on food stamps. So when you’re on food stamps, what do you do? You. You don’t know about eating well and you try to make those food stamps go stretch.
And so I fed my kids, packaged, processed, bagged food, and, but at the second I learned that I was not born with lupus. I was not born with IBS. I wasn’t born with anxiety and chronic itching. And if you weren’t born with it, you can turn it around. I’m telling [00:07:00] you my entire world changed and it changed the whole trajectory of my life and it changed the way I practice medicine.
And that’s what I’ve done for the last 11 years is start with healing. The gut. If you don’t heal the gut first, you’ll never get to the anxiety or the depression or the heartburn or the joint. And I’ve put everything under the radar. I am living proof, JJ, whatever you turn on, you can turn off or at least dial it back to the point to where it’s it’s under the radar.
So
JJ Virgin: if it’s okay with you. You kind of threw something out there in the middle of all of this, you know, beyond just like they never asked you what you’d eat. You said yeah. When I grew up, you know, I grew up in this with child abuse and blah, blah, blah. You know, it sounded like a ton of trauma. If you’re okay to go there, what I’d
also like to dig into, because yes, sounds like, you know, living on frosting, growing up challenging, but you were using it as a [00:08:00] coping mechanism for the trauma. You know, where was the trauma in all of these health issues and how much has that shaped what you do now?
Dani Williamson: Oh, well the trauma. It was the beginning of the health issues.
So I had a stepfather that molested me in grade school and he left and then I was 13 or 14. And my mom looked me square in the eye that morning and said, you caused me to lose the only man I’ve ever loved. Okay. That never got addressed. And then she married a third man who was physically abusive my senior year in high school.
And so the second I could get out, I left, but all, all of that trauma, all of that, my adverse childhood experience score is six, probably a seven. So it started, I don’t know what
JJ Virgin: the scale is for that. So can you just briefly briefly talk about that for people who don’t know what that is and
Dani Williamson: you know, or what happened to you before [00:09:00] the age of 18 that we know through decades now of research can set you up for a, a lifetime of chronic lifestyle disease.
Anyone with an adverse childhood experience score over four has. A well, six, me, have a 20 year shortened lifespan also have about I don’t know, 800% higher rate of suicide, which is very prominent in my family. My grandfather died by suicide. My mother attempted multiple times. I too was getting ready to drive off the foot of Broadway into the river one day.
And thank goodness my kids stopped me. So I, I should be a drug user by now. And the, the, the ACE questionnaire studied 17,000 people that were middle class to upper middle class, white in San Diego, California did not have a diverse population. And what they discovered from that, that study was that at least 68 to [00:10:00] 70% of every single one of those, those the people in the study had one adverse childhood experience score.
They were 50% more likely than to have a second one if you had one. So it’s childhood trauma or toxic stress. And the American academy of pediatrics says it is the number one public health crisis that we have missed in the United States. So it, it, it turned my practice around. When I learned about this, every single new patient in my practice, JJ gets the ACE questionnaire.
I cannot believe how high people’s scores are and what breaks my heart is that we’ve never, we’ve never thought to ask these people this never once. It’s you know, it’s heartbreaking. And you think about what’s happened the last year and a half, right?
JJ Virgin: Oh my gosh. With all of a sudden now kids at home and parents at
Dani Williamson: home, I’m on the board for the American foundation for suicide [00:11:00] prevention and suicide crisis.
Phone calls are up 800%. Since the pandemic started phone calls to domestic violence lines were down almost that much. Because the, the victim was stuck in the house with their abuser. They couldn’t call. The fastest age for suicide right now is age 10 to 14, the fastest growing rate of suicide, 10 to 14 or 10 to 24, 10 to 13 inside that demographic is the fastest age, 10 to 13.
So childhood trauma has got to be addressed from the very beginning from, with our children in the pediatric clinics, from anyone who’s practicing medicine. Needs to address childhood trauma if we’re treating human beings at
JJ Virgin: all, so we’ve got people, you know, I think of the demographic of our [00:12:00] show and, you know, it’s tends to be women 40 plus who are struggling with weight, weight, regain auto-immune disease, et cetera.
And you, you started first with like, they never asked what was at the end of my fork. And then you couple that with they never, you know, never address trauma. How much is trauma? This, these ACEs trigger for, you know, keeping weight on for auto-immune for any of these types of things that you’re dealing with.
What are you seeing in your clinic with this? And then I’m gonna follow up with like, what the heck do you do about it?
Dani Williamson: Right. Well, it’s a huge trigger. I’d say it’s 75%, 80% maybe think about trauma, chronic trauma as a child, right. That HPA axis that chronic turning on of cortisol and epinephrine and norepinephrine, never knowing just like with me, never knowing when that bear was going to come through that door.
And [00:13:00] so every time when I went to bed at night, I thought about that and I didn’t sleep. I didn’t sleep well because I never knew when someone was well, when one person was going to come through the door. It’s the exact same thing. That’s that chronic turning on stress, never being able to dial down that, that, that cortisol shooting out of those adrenal glands.
Well, what does that lead to? Well, adrenal dysfunction. Belly fat weight around the middle weight gain, unable to lose weight, chronic depression, anxiety. I mean, the list goes on and on. It’s huge. It’s huge for an, especially your demographic is my demographic as well. And when we start addressing that, so how do we address that?
Well, the first thing I do in the office is I do an elimination diet on them. Amen. It’s the funniest thing. No, you just have no idea. This is the book I sent my mom.
JJ Virgin: If you’re listening,
Dani Williamson: this is JJ. Virgin’s the Virgin diet. So I have literally [00:14:00] sold thousands of books for this woman, because when I got out of school in 2010, we were doing an elimination diet.
So we handed out handouts. Well, in 2000, when did this come out? 2010 came out in
JJ Virgin: 2012 and the elimination diet, by the way, wouldn’t you agree? Like the old elimination diet was not what it needed to be. It was complicated. It didn’t didn’t address the most common food. I didn’t understand it. Like why are strawberries and oranges on here?
Dani Williamson: Yes. Yes. And so I started with the elimination, because I was like, I don’t have any idea what these people are talking about. I’ve got a fashion design brain. I don’t know what they’re saying. Ashwagandha Rhodiola. These women were way smarter than me. So I started with elimination, which was perfect.
We’ll come to find out that’s where you begin. Anyway. And then JJ wrote this book that every single patient I started on and I still do to this day eight years later. The very first step in my [00:15:00] practice and I have a whole handout is number one. Begin the Virgin diet. And I send them to Amazon or Barnes noble to get the book eliminating the top seven foods for 21 days.
And then we get into food sensitivity and things like that. That’s how I get started. The second, you know, this, the second they start to feel better. They are motivated to keep going forward. But when I ask them to cut out gluten dairy, soy, corn, sugar, artificial sugars, and They’re horrified because I grew up in Gilbertsville Kentucky.
I’m in Nashville, Tennessee. That is the bulk of what we eat, you know, that. And
JJ Virgin: so the answer is that’s so awesome, because think how much better you’re going to feel quickly. Wow.
Dani Williamson: Bet. And so that’s the first step. And once they start getting that gut cooling that inflammation down in the gut, and we know the, the gut and the brain are a hundred percent connected.
So their anxiety gets [00:16:00] lower. Their depression gets better. Their migraine start to get better. We work on eating well, sleeping well then moving well, pooping, well decreasing stress and cultivating community. And I, and we tie it all in all six steps to healing and it works, but I really encourage them. You know, we can’t address this trauma until we get you in therapy and in treatment.
So I’ve got a tremendous amount of amazing trauma counselors in my toolbox that I send people to, if they can’t afford it, like I couldn’t, I couldn’t afforded it, this at all 11 years ago. So we have a sliding scale off group that I send patients to as well. And we work on it emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally, and sexually.
And it just works. It’s common sense medicine.
JJ Virgin: So this is something we have [00:17:00] actually never talked about. And I think it’s really important piece to think about in sounds like they can just go. Can, can you just take the assessment online to
Dani Williamson: see they can take it online? Absolutely. If you type in adverse childhood experience questionnaire, NPR has one on there.
They did a, they’ve got a beautiful test on there. You take the test and it gives you your results and it explains it. And then you can also, there’s an incredible. The deepest, well by Nadine Burke Harris, phenomenal book on ACEs, she’s a pediatrician, she’s the surgeon general actually in California.
And then of course the body keeps score. Yes. the body
JJ Virgin: keeps score. Okay. I’m glad you brought that up because I think that’s, you know, I talk a lot about things that can cause weight, regain, weight loss, resistance, and you know, this is one of those that we’ve never addressed before, but can absolutely be. You know, be a cause.
And it’s always interesting how they’re all related. You know, [00:18:00] adrenals are related to trauma is an adrenals are related to insulin is related to thyroid and that, so it’s all this web. Now, when you talked about the six, you rattled through them and I’d love you to take some time now and just give the like each of your six steps and key points about each one of those for the listeners.
Dani Williamson: Eat well, which we already talked about. So we start with an elimination. If you can’t eat well. You definitely are not going to sleep well. Your body heals when you sleep. And the, the, I have an entire chapter on making your bedroom a sanctuary, getting the electromagnetic fields. I can’t get away from the white in front of me.
The computer plugged in, in front of me, the phone right now, all. But in bedtime, your bedroom needs to be a sanctuary and you need to get the crap out of the bedroom. If you have a clutter junked up bedroom, you can’t rest. If you’ve, if you’re plugged into everything you can’t rest. So sleep is [00:19:00] key magnesium taking Epsom salt baths.
I mean, I go into that and I really work hard with getting people to sleep. Because again, if you can’t sleep. You definitely won’t eat well.
JJ Virgin: I’m going to tell you an interesting story that happened this summer. We have so, so my husband, when I met him, he said, yeah, I sleep five hours a night. I’m like, yeah, that’s not going to work.
I love you. And we’re going to start sleeping. Now. He’s the eight to nine hour sleeper. We track our sleep. This past summer, we rented an Airbnb. Crazy enough. This Airbnb, the master bedroom had, you know, was kind of a master bedroom bathroom, all open. And they had a stained glass window in the bathroom and nothing.
Dani Williamson: With all that lead with all that,
JJ Virgin: a mess all the way around. I’m like, oh my gosh. And so we had to sleep with eye masks on every single night, which is not comfortable, you know, I know, you know, it’s
Dani Williamson: like, I don’t know how people do that. Actually. [00:20:00] I took the, the Gauss meter, I always forget it. When I travel, I took it to our conference and Scottsdale or in Phoenix or Scottsdale last month.
And I Gauss metered my room to see how hot, where the electromagnetic fields were. And actually it was very good, but in most hotels, you’ll see, they are extremely high right at the head of the bed. So sleeping is key and you’ve got to make your bedroom a sanctuary. Eat well, sleep well move. Well, you have to move.
Your body is designed to move. You know, this better than any of us, and you don’t have to, if you are exhausted after you go to CrossFit, then guess what? CrossFit is the wrong exercise for you? And you tell a CrossFitter that they have to change from that for a while. They are mad
JJ Virgin: as hornets. I gotta tell you, though, I find for most women, CrossFit is not the right.
Dani Williamson: Well, that’s the reason I mentioned
JJ Virgin: I’m right there with [00:21:00]
Dani Williamson: two. Definitely not but boy. Oh boy. If you have to come home and take a nap, things are bad. You should have more endorphins. Your sex drive should be better after you exercise. Your energy should be better. So we got to find it. Whether it’s hula hooping, walking, yoga, I don’t care.
I just need you moving.
JJ Virgin: year at Mindshare leadership summit. I put dance breaks in all throughout so that people would move and boost their endorphins and have fun.
Dani Williamson: People were dancing at the stage. People were dancing in the aisles. People were dancing at their table. That’s outside. You got to eat well, sleep well move.
Well, you have to poop well Amen for the pooping. It’s as simple as that! I pooped like a goose for 44 years. Ridiculous diarrhea. Just constant. That’s not healthy either, but you need to poop. If you’re pooping every three days, every two days you are constipated. So we’ve got to work on pooping, but guess what? If you’re not eating well, if you’re [00:22:00] not sleeping well, if you’re not moving well, you’re not going to poop.
Well, it all. Together get a Squatty potty. I mean, I’ve got tip after tip after tip in this book on pooping because it’s huge for me. And again, that’s what the bulk of my world revolved around. Where are the public restrooms, right. If you’ve got massive diarrhea, that’s not normal. If you have to know where every restroom is in New York city, that’s a problem.
So we got to get you pooping. And most people are chronically dehydrated. I mean, even if you just drank enough water, Most people would get their bowels moving a little quicker. I have an 18 week old standard poodle I just got that dog is the happiest dog. When they poop. We should poop like a dog. You should eat and go and poop, not that much longer.
And they’re thrilled to death about it. So you got to eat well, sleep well, move well poop. Well, you’ve got to de stress. Well, stress will kill you. Stress almost killed me
JJ Virgin: do [00:23:00] to destress
Dani Williamson: well?
Well for me now I go and exercise more and you know, I set boundaries and there’s a huge part in this section of that distress.
Well, I automate eliminate and delegate everything I can in my life. I learned the hard way on that one. And so by setting boundaries, by cutting the soul suckers out of my life. The ones who werereally sucking the air our of me,, there’s nothing that says you have to have people literally sucking the life out of your body and you also don’t have to do everything.
What gets on your schedule? You JJ, Virgin, if she’s over, over or stressed out, you’re the one who said yes to that schedule. So we need to automate eliminate and delegate everything we can for me, man. My stress level is so much better than it was even two years ago. I’ve just learned to. To manage it better.
My mom has [00:24:00] Alzheimer’s right now. Well, she has Alzheimer’s period and she’s not going anywhere. I’m an only child. That’s very stressful for me, but I only do what I can, I can not. And I’m the only child and I’m the only caregiver of her, the woman who didn’t care for me, it’s been a real interesting experience for me.
So I’ve learned to set my boundaries. To set my boundaries and do it. So we got to de-stress well, and that’s different for everyone. Not everyone can quit their job. Not everyone can get out of a bad marriage like I did, but I tell people, find a plan and get out, do whatever it is to decrease the stress in your life.
And then you have to commune. Well, community is key for me. My stress level goes down last night. The book came out yesterday. I had a little party at a restaurant for just some of my closest people. I laughed that’s community. You heal when you have community.
JJ Virgin: That one has been. So[00:25:00] like if you look back thousands of years, This was so key.
Like this is we, we didn’t survive. And especially women,
Dani Williamson: you know, you bet. Well, and if you ever read the red tent right. About community. So, I mean, when you have your period and everyone went to the red tent, well, I always talk about this with people, you know, for, for people who believe in Jesus, Jesus believed in community.
He had community and he had flawed, flawed, flawed people around him and then inside his community of 12 there, he had even a tighter group inside that 12, you don’t have to have a hundred people in your community. It doesn’t take many roots to hold up. A big old tree community is key and we are the loneliest community ever.
The loneliest society we’ve ever been. And look at the last 18 months, two years. And I’m the cultivator in my world. I’m the cultivator in my neighborhood, creating the neighborhood cookouts I did last year during, during [00:26:00] COVID I’m the cultivator and my friends, somebody has to be the leader.
Sometimes you get tired of being the leader, but it’s key. It’s key for decreasing inflammation in your body for decreasing your cortisol levels. When you laugh with your community and you’re looking eyeball to eyeball to your people, think about what happened at the conference last month at the summit.
When we got to see each other eyeball to eyeball and people literally touch, we are designed to be in community. We’re not, not designed for social isolation. There’s
JJ Virgin: no such thing. And to be afraid of people, they do that in prisons to punish people. Yes.
Dani Williamson: Isn’t that something so eat well, sleep well. Move well, poop.
Well decrease stress and cultivate community. It’s common sense. And it’s what I do for a living. Thank you, JJ. Oh, I just love you. Thank you.
JJ Virgin: So that was [00:27:00] probably one of the most mind blowing stories that I’ve heard. I still getting over the fact that Dani went from having a maternity store and being a fashion designer to deciding to become a nurse practitioner and going into nurse practitioner school on food stamps with young. Holy smokes.
She is quite a brave woman, and to confront her trauma and now to help so many people with this as well, so I’m gonna advocate for going and taking that assessment, the adverse childhood experience assessment. And then also to make sure that you get her food swaps at jjvirgin.com/Dani. And I will see you on the next show.
Thanks for tuning in.