Ep 520: Healing Beyond the Diagnosis: The Power of Narrative Medicine With Andrea Nakayama

After a life-altering experience when her husband was diagnosed with glioblastoma during her pregnancy, Andrea Nakayama realized the healthcare system often treats illnesses instead of the individual. This inspired her to revolutionize the approach to chronic illness. In this episode, Dr. Jannine Krause speaks with Andrea Nakayama, founder of the Functional Nutrition Alliance, about her groundbreaking work in narrative medicine—an approach that focuses on listening to a patient’s story and addressing the nuances in the clent’s story often overlooked in healthcare.

Andrea shares how integrating health stories with clinical insights can help uncover the root causes of chronic conditions and why many people don’t improve despite doing “all the right things.”

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Key Takeaways:

• Your Story Matters: Chronic illness isn’t just about symptoms—it’s about the full context of your life and history.
• Listen to Your Body: Foundational health markers, like hydration and digestion, hold valuable clues to your health.
• Beware of Bias: Both conventional and alternative medicine can fall into one-size-fits-all treatment patterns.
• Joy Is Healing: Small, joyful activities can be as transformative as any supplement.

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Resources from the Show:

• Andrea Nakayama’s Website: andreanakayama.com
• Learn more about Narrative Medicine Meets Functional Medicine: Visit Here

If you or someone you love is struggling with chronic health conditions, this episode will inspire you to uncover the clues in your own story and take a holistic approach to wellness.

Our Partners

Podcast Transcript

5:05 – Andrea’s backstory

13:47 – The type of folks that are seeking help from Andrea

20:10 – Taking care of ourselves

22:44 – Poop talk

25:26 – Functional nutrition

30:13 – Poetry and your health

33:30 – Tapping into joy

39:52 – Client story

46:32 – Three tiers to epigenetic mastery

49:17 – Where to find Andrea online

[Preview] And that when we’re searching for that route, first of all, we’re stuck in a sympathetic dominant

fight or flight quest. What is it? What am I going to do about it? How do I fix it? That is not the

state for healing to occur. Like it cannot happen in that state. So that’s one thing that worries

me that I’m seeing more and more of with the promised land that we’re being offered on social

media that this test, this supplement, this thing will fix what’s wrong with you.

We outsource the healing to someone else and that’s the culture we live in that when we

go to the doctor, it will be fixed.

[Intro] Welcome to The Health Fix Podcast where health junkies get their weekly fix of tips, tools

and techniques to have limitless energy, sharp minds,

and fit physiques for life.

JANNINE: Hey, Health Junkies.

On this episode of The Health Fix podcast,

I’m interviewing Andrea Nakayama.

She’s the founder of the Functional Nutrition Alliance

and leads thousands of students and practitioners

around the globe in a revolution

to offer better solutions

to the growing chronic illness epidemic.

What’s unique about Andrea

is that she’s going back to basics

when it comes to listening to a client’s story.

And the nuances that could be at the root of the illness.

And today we’ll be talking about narrative medicine.

This is Andra’s big desire to bring attention

to narrative medicine,

but also to educate functional medicine practitioners,

like myself and consumers alike,

about this approach to medicine.

because not only do docs or practitioners like I have listened to your story, you listen

to your story and you may be able to find some clues within that story.

Let’s face it, functional medicine has kind of gone a little nutty for looking into really

expensive tests and following the treatment du jour.

Because of the time of this podcast recording, pots and parasites are the hot thing right

now.

Back when I was in naturopathic medicine school, it was adrenal fatigue.

Hey, let’s face it.

These things kind of run their course through the natural medicine space.

It’s like trends, but what I want folks to really understand is that these are trends

and a lot of practitioners can be biased by these trends.

Am I what would I be lying?

I said, I haven’t done that yet. Of course I have. I’ve done all of it. I’ve given too many people,

you know, too many supplements done over tested all of it. And I’m here to say, yep, made the

mistakes, not going back there, but also just to share with other folks that we have a better way.

And it really is going back to basics and Andrea is doing this and it’s called narrative medicine.

And she didn’t I talk all about this in the podcast. We also talk about social media noise

out there and how it’s really easy for folks with chronic illnesses to be sucked in thinking like,

“Oh, this is going to be the test. Oh, this is going to be the protocol. Oh, this is going to be

the magical supplement or magical tool or whatever it may be that is going to solve all my problems.”

And so Andrea and I are going to talk about how we can listen to our own stories a little bit more

and how Docs can listen to them too to find these little intricate clues and, hmm, little spoiler alert,

It may be lying in things you stop doing that you used to enjoy.

Now, if you were someone you know is struggling with a chronic health condition,

or you’re just wanting to learn more about how clues in your own story could be

sage advice to know what to do with your health to keep you healthy for longer,

to live a long, vibrant life, this podcast is for you.

All right, let’s introduce you to Andrea Nakayama.

Hey, health junkies. I have Andrea Nakayama on and we’re going to be talking about narrative

medicine, probably something you haven’t heard before. And we’re going to be talking about this

in the space of what I love working with folks on is mystery illness and tough cases where we just

can’t seem to get results anywhere else. So, Andrea, welcome to the Health Fix Podcast.

ANDREA: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here with you.

JANNINE: Oh my goodness, it’s been fun pouring over your podcast.

By the way, guys, she’s the host of the “15 Minute Matrix Podcast”.

Great stuff there.

And then also, you know, being the founder of the functional

nutritional lines, you know, for me, I love teaming up with

nutrition.

So I love teaming up with folks who have functional background

and nutrition who are not.

And I’m sorry, ADA.

ADA drill.

Let’s just put it that way.

So, Adriah, what brought you to going down the route of being a functional nutritionist?

What brought you to it?

What’s the backstory?

I know folks always love to hear backstories.

ANDREA: Yeah, thank you for asking that.

And I don’t think I knew it was going to be functional medicine nutrition.

That wasn’t where I was heading.

But what really happened for me was experiencing firsthand some of the gaps in our medical

system.

And this happened when my late husband, Isamu, was diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme,

a very aggressive brain tumor.

And he was diagnosed when I was just seven weeks pregnant.

So we hadn’t even announced that we were pregnant yet.

And it came out of seemingly the blue.

There hadn’t been any signs or symptoms leading up to it until some acute instances.

Looking back, we can see a couple of other things, but he was in his early 30s.

not really thinking, “Oh, it’s a brain tumor.” I mean, it’s really a brain tumor, right? So,

you’re definitely not thinking that. And so, we were catapulted into what I’m going to call the

medical system pretty abruptly. And I know people can relate to this if they’ve experienced it with

something that is acute, where you’re all of a sudden in the system. And I was surprised because

I had never really encountered the system in this way. And what I saw were two major gaps that

started me going down a different path. Those two major gaps were that people are treated like

their diagnosis and that everybody with the same diagnosis is treated the same. And so

that first surprise was, wait a minute, people are talking to him like he’s a GBM, a glioblastoma,

or I would walk out of my midwife appointment at the hospital and the nurses would be at the

station whispering, “Did you see the folks in room 20? She’s seven weeks or 10 weeks pregnant.

He’s a GBM. Like, we were our diagnosis.” And that’s how we were referred to. So that was very

surprising to me that we weren’t humans with our situations. And then that he was at that time,

this is early 2000s, he was a very young person to have this diagnosis that’s no longer the case.

There are more and more younger people being diagnosed with glioblastomas. But at the time,

the treatment protocols were very much geared towards an elderly population who were the majority

of the people who were having this diagnosis. So the treatment plans were very limited

based on everybody with the same diagnosis being treated the same.

So those were a wake up call for me at the same time while he was going through,

you know, surgeries and radiation therapy and experimental trial, chemotherapies.

I started to look at what else can we do? What else is there to support the body to heal from

the treatments and the body to actually fight the presence of a cancer. Cancer exists in a

terrain and that’s what led me to really looking more at dietary and lifestyle modifications

during that time. So just to sum up that long story, he saw me was given six months to live.

I was seven weeks pregnant. We can do the math. He wasn’t expected to see our child born.

He lived almost two and a half years, so he died when our son was 19 months old.

That son is almost 24 now, depending on when this comes out. So this is a long time ago,

and I’ve had a long journey since then. But I do believe that everything we were able to do in

addition to his medical treatment is what helped to sustain his life for the period that it was

sustained and at the level of health and vitality that he was living through that time. Eventually,

I found functional medicine and realized that terrain thinking was my jam.

JANNINE: You know, it’s funny how big diagnoses bring us here. I’m just my mom’s cancer diagnosis.

and seeing, you know, she was a nurse.

And she was, whoa, this is, yeah, now I’m now,

instead of a number, I’m just, you know,

the breast cancer, you know, in four.

It’s so wild.

And I know that a lot of people who are listening right now

can relate to, especially if they’ve experienced a,

and I call it mystery illness,

or a complicated condition.

ANDREA: Yes.

JANNINE: You know, this is such a it’s it’s so hard.

It’s so hard.

In that case, and you know, I think we’ll get to it probably here in a little bit

because I think a lot of people too, we have that side of where we identify

with the idea diagnosis to.

ANDREA: Yes, absolutely.

JANNINE: And envelop it.

And now this is another space where I try to work to be like, no, no, it’s

just it’s just for insurance purposes only.

ANDREA: Exactly.

JANNINE: You know, love that.

Oh, so we’ll get into that.

But now, of course, a lot of people

are going to be thinking like, OK, so all right,

he lived two and a half years, right?

So what kind of things in the functional nutrition space,

what kind of things did you guys dive into to a previous quality

of life?

What kind of things did you start with?

Yeah, well, I mean, it’s interesting to look back,

because at that point, I wasn’t in the health care field.

I loved to cook, but I have a whole different way

of looking at what we did in retrospect.

At the time I was thinking about what feeds cancer growth from a food perspective, from

a lifestyle perspective.

So you know, one of the first things we did was embrace more of an anti-inflammatory diet,

bringing in more phytonutrients, lots of colors.

At the time, and I’m not saying I’m an advocate for this, we eliminated all meat from our

diet except for fish.

So we were Pesca vegetarian, Pesca vegan actually.

So we were trying to eliminate the inflammatory foods, particularly sugar.

And Isamu had a real sweet tooth.

So I started to really experiment with how do we live into feeding our sweet tooth without

depriving ourselves, but also without fanning those flames of inflammation.

So really it was a lot of dietary stuff that I was doing that made me feel like I was actually

contributing to the situation. And that’s where I think nutrition started for me. I was already

into cooking and already into healthy cooking. We lived in the Bay Area at the time. But I think

it gave me some feeling of empowerment. And that’s where it really, really started to take off for me.

And this is again, I didn’t become a provider until after he passed. But for me, it was like,

like, oh, I can be doing something every day,

several times a day to support his body and my body.

I was growing a baby.

So I can support us through this activity.

And that’s where I started to research and look and see.

Meanwhile, we were going to yoga.

He was getting massages, acupuncture, doing qigang,

all things that I think he wouldn’t have been open to

until that occurred.

And it even amplified when there was a recurrence.

So there was the first part of like,

okay, we’re gonna deal with this.

And then when the cancer grew, it was like, okay,

we’re stepping this up even more.

And so I think that’s a situation people can relate to

as well.

Like you said, we think the medic, we outsource the healing

to someone else and that’s the culture we live in,

that when we go to the doctor, it will be fixed.

And when we’re in the mystery illness experience

or we have a chronic condition, it has to be a yes-and.

And you don’t realize that until you have to realize that.

JANNINE: Yeah, it’s so common.

I mean, even in the natural pathic space

I have folks that’ll come to me and like,

“Okay, Doc, fix me.

“Okay, Doc, tell me what to do.”

And it’s like, no, that’s not how it works here.

We’re gonna team up and find out what’s going on.

And I had mentioned before I hit record,

and it was one of the podcasts I caught up yours

where you were saying,

“This kind of medicine is not for everyone.

“This is for folks who are seeing the gaps

“and going, I want to take control of this.

“Give us a little more background on that

“in terms of your experience with it.”

so that folks can really get a sense of your experience

versus mine because they probably heard mine

like 400 times.

ANDREA: Yeah, and like you, my sweet spot

are people who are sick and not getting better.

They’ve tried the things.

They may be eating the elimination diet

of any number of sorts that they’ve read about or tried

or heard about or their cousin uses or whatever it is.

And they get more and more and more restricted

because they’re trying to control an outcome

and they don’t understand the entire picture

of what’s going on.

So for me, that was the initial experience

with my late husband, Isamu,

of seeing like those gaps in medicine.

But then as I started to grow my practice

after going to school, years of school,

putting myself back through school

as a single working mother at that point,

I really started to see more and more people

and hit those barriers because people were coming to me

for more chronic issues and seeing where we’re missing pieces

of the puzzle.

And that’s where I started to realize,

wait, this is a different chronic versus acute

are different situations,

but we’re putting them through the same system of care

and there needs to be a different way of thinking about this.

At the same time, I was struggling with my own health issues,

which were ultimately diagnosed as Hashimoto’s.

And so I was experiencing signs and symptoms

that I’m just gonna say that there are

there are a lot of tests and diagnoses to your

that come up at different times,

that people want to put on a situation that is unknown.

It must be that and you will relate to this in the naturopathic community and I live in

naturopathicville.

It might be parasites, it might be SIBO, it might be adrenal fatigue, it might be that

you need this test, you need this microbiome test, you need that.

And then everything is looked at through the bias of that lens.

So when I was struggling with my thyroid issues, it was before we know as much as we do now

about Hashimoto’s and the thyroid.

And the diagnosis to your was adrenal fatigue.

And given my situation,

that’s what I kept coming up against

when I was looking for health.

But that was coming from the bias

of everything must be versus what was happening for me.

I’m gonna say I come from a family,

the genes are energized or bunny genes.

I’m going to knock on wood that with all the stress I’ve been through, that my adrenals

are okay.

That wasn’t my issue.

My issue was my thyroid and hormone issues can really be confusing in terms of how we

actually see what is happening and what needs to be supported to come back to a functional

range.

So my story was searching, searching, searching, being gassed with a small G.

not major gas lighting like people often can go through in medicine, but I couldn’t find

an answer until I did my own research and actually went forward to a doctor to get the

diagnosis, which is out of my scope already knowing the diagnosis.

I already knew what was wrong with me, but I needed somebody else to give it the label

and I was already doing the things I needed to do.

So this is a situation I was finding repeated in my practice, people searching, questing,

not figuring out, thinking, oh, that’s it.

Oh, that’s the root.

Oh, it’s this microbial infection.

Oh, I have SIBO.

When that’s fixed, I’ll be okay.

And then no.

And then no, all the supplements, all the diets, all the diagnoses.

And I was seeing it over and over and over again.

So for me, that was the situation, long story of like how I was like, whoa, there needs

to be a different way.

JANNINE: It’s where I’ve come to.

It’s where I’ve come to as well.

I mean, have I given the multiple supplements?

Yes.

Have I tried to chase different, you know, things?

Yeah.

You know, you don’t, I think you get to a certain point in your career where you finally are

like, wait a minute.

Everything I’ve, you know, I’m not helping.

ANDREA: Right.

JANNINE: No, I’m not doing anything here.

And so you start to go, okay, we’ve got to go back to basics.

We’ve got to go back to basics and foundational and the thought process of do we need to keep

searching root and can we just be okay with getting healthy?

ANDREA: Correct.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that comes back to what you were talking about with that over identification

with the diagnosis.

And I think that over identification happens from some belief, again, that outsourcing

that if I have that, it will be fixed.

And then comes the disappointment.

Wait a minute, I have that and it’s not fixed

’cause it’s actually a chronic recurring issue

that our medical system does not know how to address.

And so that’s where I feel like that cycle

really gets into play

and that when we’re searching for that route,

first of all, we’re stuck in a sympathetic dominant

fight or flight quest.

What is it? What am I going to do about it? How do I fix it? That is not the state for healing to

occur. Like it cannot happen in that state. So that’s one thing that worries me that I’m seeing

more and more of with the promised land that we’re being offered on social media that this test,

this supplement, this thing will fix what’s wrong with you. First of all, most of us are not broken.

So like that’s really important for us to embrace.

And like you’re saying,

oftentimes I call it the simplicity on the other side

of complexity when we can embrace some of the simple things

with the understanding that a provider like you and I have

of how that influences the complex terrain,

that is really powerful.

And it puts the onus back on the person to take care,

take it of themselves.

And I’ll just give a quick example.

I had, I, for my book that I’m working on, I worked with a population of patients who

had been everywhere, done everything, been to every naturopathic, functional, taken all the supplements, done all the tests,

and really look at things with them through a different lens.

And I love looking at serum labs.

It’s one of my like superpowers to read between the lines as opposed to all the functional labs that

are expensive and not evidence-based necessarily and tell us clues but not determinants. And

I was working with somebody who was struggling with chronic fatigue. She was looking for

the infection that was contributing to it, the family patterns, all of the things.

I look at her serum labs and I’m like, are you hydrating enough? I’m looking at your red blood

cells and I see a pattern of dehydration and she was just like, what? And I was like, do you

hydrate? And she was like, no, I’m horrible at hydration. I can then explain how hydration’s impacting

her red blood cells, how her red blood cells are impacting her heart and her brain and therefore

her energy and there’s something simple but with the functional and physiological understanding,

I can make that connection for her. The truth is we don’t need somebody to make that connection

for us. We can say, “Am I hydrating enough?” 

JANNINE: Right. I mean, it sounds so simple and in reality,

I mean, I’ve come to that conclusion as well that the basic CBC so complete blood count guys and and CMP

Which is a comprehensive metabolic panel can give you so much– 

ANDREA: So much so much and

Guide us if we need more at this point in care

Right like I only want to test if I need more at this point in care when people are testing for

metals and toxicities. Like, I want to know, are you sleeping? Are you pooping? And is your blood

sugar balanced? Because yeah, you’re going to keep retoxing if you’re not pooping. Like,

that information about those toxins is going to be present. If I don’t do the investigation

to see, are you pooping? Well, what’s your poop like? Are there things we can do to shift your poop?

Meanwhile, we’re shifting the microbiome as we do that.

We’re shifting the inflammatory cascade.

Poop, just what’s in the toilet, not what’s in a GI map,

tells us so much.

And we overlook that in this quest for something fancier

that we have to assume is the problem.

JANNINE: Amen sister, that’s all we can say.

(laughing)

– That’s, I mean, is where I’m at,

is where I’m at with a lot of these things.

And you know, I love geeking out on tests.

And I definitely it’s not that I don’t want to,

but boy, every one of my offices is gonna be like,

why are we doing a CBC and a CMP?

I want to do this, you know, and it’s like, no, no, no.

We have to know, we have to know the basics

before we move on because I’ve done the mistake,

I’ve made the mistakes.

And likely, you know, you’re in this space

because you have to and you’re like, oh my gosh,

the headaches, if I just would have really paid attention

to the sodium potassium and chloride.

ANDREA: Yes, exactly.

JANNINE: like, ah– 

ANDREA: Exactly. 

JANNINE: It’s those things. So one of the things that I want to get into because I could

easily go on labs for hours and hours is the concept of narrative medicine. Because I’m pretty

sure that most folks, I know I haven’t talked about it at all. It’s yes. And it’s a concept that I

think is really important when we’re looking at the paradigm of what is really health. How does

really restore our health.

Is that even a, you know, like, because we’re not broken.

It’s more like, how do we just, how do we get back to vibrancy?

It’s kind of a big game.

My head about it.

ANDREA: Yeah.

JANNINE: Hey, health junkies, struggling with sleep as a former Insomniac.

I can relate.

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He has the Sleep Science Academy.

He’s been on my podcast twice and we’ve talked a lot about how to work on sleep.

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Devon’s program really does work with you to help you understand what is going on in

your brain and body when it comes to sleep.

And as a listener of the Health Fix podcast, he’s given us a code for 10% off of his program,

DRJ10.

So if you’re interested, use that.

I highly recommend his program.

So let’s get back to the podcast.

ANDREA: I’m going to put it in a larger context and talk about like quickly the functional nutrition

piece and the kind of map that I create that is the matrix, right? So I always say my mantra is

everything is connected. We are all unique and all things matter. Everything is connected as the

system’s biology. It’s understanding that God is connected to the brain, the liver is connected to

the hormones and detoxification, which is connected to the gut, the gut and the immune system.

Understanding those, that systems biology is key.

So everything is connected.

All things matter.

All are the things we’re talking about, the hydration,

the stress and resilience, the relationships and networks,

the nutrition, the exercise, the movement.

That’s the scale part of my matrix.

The physiology is the soup part.

Everything is connected like in a soup.

Then there’s the story.

And in functional medicine, we think of the story as the ATMs, the antecedents, the triggers,

and the mediators. But what I kept seeing as we moved through this path that you and I are talking

about where everything got fixated on what’s wrong with the body and what’s the protocol for

that thing that’s wrong with the body, that we were missing the story that has a place in functional

medicine but was getting subverted by this sexier seeming solution and protocol thinking.

And so I went on a quest for where’s the story in medicine? Where does it exist? And I went

through many different things to kind of anchor on the story that actually the data doesn’t exist

in isolation. It has a story to it. And I already knew about Columbia University’s narrative medicine

program, it’s like very young, it’s in its 20s. And it’s started by a doctor named Dr. Rita

Sharon, and it really is a pedagogical practice, meaning it is a practice primarily for clinicians,

physicians, who are looking to practice a little bit more of this understanding of the patient,

as opposed to bypassing it.

It is a small pedagogical practice.

What I’m going to say that I am doing with this practice

is taking this practice of active listening,

which is what it is, active listening, who are you?

And trying to put it into the hands of the patient.

How do we do some active listening with ourselves?

that practice that I’m learning to do as a practitioner in hearing you and sitting with you

and listening for the nuances of your story instead of having my bias, blah, blah,

lying about what I think is happening or what I’m going to do next, like really sit and listen.

How do I help a patient do that with themselves? So they’re not in the blah, blah, blah that’s coming

from social media or from their neighbor or from their practitioner who’s telling them to do a million

things, how do we slow it down and hear and understand the nuances of our personal journey?

And in narrative medicine, we do that through practice. And the practice is in engaging with

the humanities. So we may look at art. We may read a poem, which I will talk about was

weird for me at first and now is my favorite practice in this narrative medicine world.

We may interact with art or dance or music or whatever it may be because those are the humanities.

And when we sit with the humanities, we actually get in touch with the human nature that reminds

us of how to connect with the actual story, listen, pay attention to the nuances that

we are so quickly overlooking in our healthcare.

So long answer, but it’s something I’m trying to say, like here’s where it’s being practiced

over here.

And is there a way I can translate that to every human who’s suffering with something

that’s chronic, they’re sick and they’re not getting better?

JANNINE: That makes sense.

I mean, a lot of us will talk about music therapy, things of that nature, things folks

can incorporate.

So I’m hearing poem and bringing a poem into a visit with a patient or client, depending

on what folks refer to them as.

How would you do that?

Tell us.

how this comes in, how do we reuse this?

ANDREA: Yeah, well, I’m trying to offer

narrative medicine workshops at Andrea Nakayama

wants a quarter so people can come and try and practice.

And those are free, you know, I’m really seeing like,

can we put this into our practice?

But what I want to offer about poetry

is that, you know, I didn’t have a relationship

with poetry before this, even as somebody

who considers myself a writer, like poetry was not my thing.

But poetry can feel like chaos.

And our patient narratives are chaotic.

They’re not linear.

We don’t actually go to our doctor and say,

here’s the arc of my narrative of what happened in my life.

We’re often talking in all sorts of ways

that somebody, only somebody listening for the nuances

could hear and make sense of and really

hold the key elements out of and ask the right questions, get curious. And so what I love about

sitting with poetry in the narrative medicine practice is that we have a moment to feel what

moves us, what speaks to us. How does that make us feel? And then I offer a prompt that people

write for five minutes off the bat and the prompt might be related to the poem in some way, but it’s

It’s a jumping off point and we start to tell stories that we may not have had access to

that remind us of ourselves.

So for me, narrative medicine is a practice of self-empathy when we’re using it in the

way I’m talking about.

And it’s also the sweetest little mirror in the corner of our universe that reminds us,

“Oh, wow, me.

Oh, that’s me.

Wow.

know that story was in me, I forgot what it was like to be moved like that. And so for

me, it’s a practice of like, getting access to a different cellular level of self that

is a part of our healing journey that we’ve left behind.

JANNINE: It’s awesome. It kind of brings in for me and I just want to make sure I’m understanding

it but also kind of some of the things I do in my practice and see if we’re kind of putting together.

Often times I will have folks tell me what kind of music they’re into.

ANDREA: Yeah.

JANNINE: They resonate with and what relaxes them, what brings them joy,

happiness, certain else.

ANDREA: Yes.

JANNINE: And so I think folks who are listening may be able to go, oh, well, I haven’t listened to that

kind of music.

ANDREA: Exactly.

Yes.

JANNINE: So we’re getting to self, we’re getting to cellular vibration.

ANDREA: Yes.

JANNINE: Okay. 

ANDREA: Yes. And it may be through a form you’re not comfortable with if you’re coming into a setting

and then in what you’re offering it’s what you are comfortable with and feeling it. I’m just going

to give an example. I used to dance when I lived in the Bay Area. I danced Afro-Brazilian like pretty

hardcore. When Isamu got sick and I was pregnant and I had a baby and we moved, I stopped dancing.

And recently I saw a friend in New York who I used to dance with and she lives in New York now

and she said, “Have you been dancing?” And I was like, “No, but I’ve been meaning to get back to it.”

So I came back home and I was like, “Okay, I can’t dance like I used to. Is there some form of dance

that I can do?” And I looked around and I found a dance studio that looked really inclusive and like

just like a good time, but a dance class, I started going and I was elated. Now, if I work out in the

evenings, any kind of workout, like do a bar class or do something that’s more hardcore cardio,

that disrupts my sleep. The dance class totally helps me to sleep incredibly well, and I think it’s

because it’s not just the movement.

I have joy when I am moving in that class.

Everything else falls away.

I am not in a workout class where I’m just exercising

my heart rate and thinking when’s this gonna end.

I am like, smile on my face.

It is like 60 people like a dance party,

but I am following choreography, my brains working,

my body’s working.

I have so much fun.

and it’s making such a difference in my sleep,

even though I’m doing that class in the evening.

So it’s those kinds of things where like you’re saying,

you tap into what gives you joy.

How does that become a non-negotiable?

Yeah, I don’t drink coffee or I don’t eat gluten

and I go to sleep by 10 p.m.

Those are non-negotiable.

But so is listening to my favorite song

or going to dance class or making sure I take a walk

and listen to the birds or I have a friend who swims with the dolphins in Hawaii every day,

non-negotiable, right? So how do we know our non-negotiable hours beyond the to-dos

that we think are about keeping us healthy?

JANNINE: So refreshing because, you know, a lot of people will be like, uh, being getting healthy, you know,

all these to-dos, all the things that, like you said, all the things that, yes, are non-negotiable,

that we’ve determined through individual practice,

those are healthy people, but they’re monotonous, right?

And I think so many people,

I usually have a prescription of play of some sort or fun

or when we’re coming, you know,

and honestly, I think that that is very vital

to the nervous system.

And it seems like the narrative medicine

is really connecting someone back,

guess what they’re saying, but also getting that nervous system.

It was like you said, you slept better.

ANDREA: Yes. Yeah.

I mean, the things that we can do that have been left out of the equation,

watching the sunrise can help with your blood sugar through the day.

Like there is research around this and yet we’re taking supplements,

we’re eating low carb, sure.

Like I’m not against any of the things that I am talking about that,

you know, I think get thought of as a protocol.

Like there’s a time and a place for all the interventions.

My concern is that we left some on the table

that are actually the most joyful, the most playful,

the most resonant and give us life

as opposed to I am following this protocol.

And then like also just when we’re following those protocols,

how dependent we become on them

versus having some of that wiggle room

that allows us to live while we’re healing

or live while we may have to embrace some restrictions,

which is a truth for most of us

with chronic health conditions.

We have to embrace some restrictions,

but within there, if we don’t have wiggle room

And if we don’t have play, it is not going to be living.

And it’s going to feel really restrictive.

And those people I was talking about

who were part of my case study group, they’re angry

because they did all the things and they’re not better.

And so they’re angry.

They spent a lot of money, a lot of time.

It was super restrictive.

And so then where are they now?

Because some of that may be what they have to embrace.

but other pieces of it, including who they are

and what sustainable got left behind.

JANNINE: I can’t express, you know that enough.

I mean, that’s exactly what I see too.

It’s, we’ve lost the person and went full on into protocol.

And one of the things that strikes me

about narrative medicine and the concept of it

is really that I think a lot of folks

who end up with chronic illness or a mystery illness,

they lose some of the function of the things that they used to do or the things that they

love to do. And so going into an exploration of what can you do that brings you to play

is very interesting to me. Give us some examples of some of your tougher cases where say maybe

someone couldn’t dance anymore. 

ANDREA: Yes. 

JANNINE: How do we help them and how do we help folks who are listening

right now discover something using their own narrative? 

ANDREA: Yeah, I think that I mean first of all,

I want to say most of what I do now is teach other practitioners. So at the functional

nutritional alliance and at full-body systems, I’m training coaches, clinicians from all over

the world and all different backgrounds to work with this population. And I feel very fortunate.

So the number of clients I see these days is very limited. We do have a clinic at the

functional nutritional alliance, but we tend to work mostly with our students who want that extra

insight for themselves. That said, in my journey of working with thousands of people over the last

15 or so years, I think it really is tapping into what is possible at a pace that works for them.

So I’m going to give the example of a client I had for many years who was diagnosed with MS.

She had been a gymnast and a lawyer.

And at the point she started seeing me,

she was no longer practicing law

and she couldn’t do anything physical.

She had put on weight that wasn’t extreme,

but was extreme for her and her body.

And it felt like she wasn’t in her skin.

This is another place where I saw a lot of gaslighting

because even though she felt off in her skin,

People wanted to say, “You’re fine. This is all in your head.”

And she would come to me and just say, “It feels off.”

And I talked about like a layer of inflammation.

What is a layer of inflammation when you’re chronically inflamed feel like?

It feels like you’re not in your skin.

And so how do we honor that truth as opposed to gas lighting it as some

mind thing where she should have more acceptance about her body?

And there’s places for that reality too.

you know, so we have to really honor the individual.

But what we were able to do by addressing the inflammation,

addressing slowly but surely what was going on in her gut,

in her inflammatory cascade with her epigenetic factors,

the things that influence her genes

and her genetic makeup, is get her to a place

where she felt vibrant, able to move,

was able to start doing some gentle exercise

and ultimately get up to the point

where she was running every day

and feeling back in her body.

So I think we have to remember

that sometimes it’s the heel state versus the ideal state.

And if we’re saying, I used to run marathons

and I can’t do that anymore, okay,

you can’t run the marathon.

What was the feeling?

And how do you tap into that feeling of what running that marathon and training for that

marathon gave you?

What was that?

How do we do that discovery to really capture the anchor of what that gave you?

And then when we have that story, we have that understanding, are there other ways we can

touch that same sensation through a different way as we are on that healing journey. And

that’s what we were able to do with Melissa and her journey is take it slowly, but recognize

that there was going to be a slower path there, but she was still nurturing that part of herself

that was a gymnast.

JANNINE: That’s huge. That’s huge. And a slow path. I mean, I think we have to highlight this. And

this once again, functional medicine of this type is not a quick fix.

It’s correct.

It’s for, oh, you know, years.

Yes.

Average when you were working with clients in,

in what you see with your students, how many years does someone tend to spend

with a functional nutritionist or, you know,

provider of sorts that you work with?

ANDREA: Yeah.

I mean, my favorite answer to everything is it depends.

Right.

So it really depends on the case and where their starting point is.

I tended to work with clients for a long time

because they were starting to develop

not only the protocol piece, but the inner listening

and I was the person where they could bring those questions

and really start to continue to tune in and hone in.

Ultimately, I think like six months, a year,

depending on how acute the situation is

that is happening while they’re going

through a chronic situation,

making sure we have doctors on board.

This isn’t a practice that’s in my practice

is not instead of medical care.

It is in addition to medical care

and it’s really taking, filling that gap

that exists between your medical visits

where you’re really tuning into

how does this make me feel?

What’s that difference?

Is this something that I’m taking doing?

how do I understand what’s happening a little bit better?

So six months to a year, and I think like I had a rare occurrence where like people just,

we just had a relationship that was like their touch point with themselves.

And so it could go on a long time and I would start to spread it out more like,

let’s check in, let next month, let’s check in when you get your next labs

and start to put them more into their own agency

of tuning in and reaching out if they needed to.

JANNINE: I think that’s reasonable.

You know, I think a lot of people do wonder,

like how much time is this gonna take?

I mean, I’m asked that all the time.

And I’m like, well, we have to think about like,

I’m not trying to be how much time is it

till we fix the situation?

Like, ’cause we’re not correct.

And that’s the most important thing, you know,

I want everybody to listen in.

you know, everyone to listen into is that it’s not about fixing.

It’s about optimizing.

It’s about feeling.

And what I hear most from you is, is the part of feeling good in the skin,

feeling body and, and this is such an overlooked component because we drive.

And we’ve been, I’m going to say brainwash to go hard after.

ANDREA: Yes.

JANNINE: After the diagnosis and looking, looking at you and keep coming back to,

am I, am I me?

Am I living me?

‘Cause I really think even myself in my own life, right?

I got into practice, I got really heavy into seeing everybody.

And then all I was was the doctor.

Like I forgot who I was.

ANDREA: Totally.

JANNINE: Did, right?

You lose your identity.

That’s- – 

ANDREA: Yes.

Absolutely.

And our identity is always shifting.

You know, as a mother of a young adult,

I have to realize that my identity as mother

needs to change.

it needs to evolve.

And sometimes that’s being told to me in one way or another.

And I have to embrace and support that evolution of self.

So we’re always changing and evolving.

And I think one of the important things

about functional nutrition for me is that we’re in the soil,

that we’re looking at all the factors

that nourish the roots.

And to me with chronic conditions,

There are always three roots and that the diagnosis is the branch.

It’s the expression of what’s happening.

And for functional nutrition, there’s different systems that I have that help us

understand that, but one that reminds me of what you’re talking about, Janine,

is how I talk about what I call the three tiers to nutrition mastery.

It’s also in my brain, the three tiers to epigenetic mastery.

Tier one are the non-negotiables.

Tier two is deficiency to sufficiency

on the other side of that might be toxicity.

And tier three is dismantling the dysfunction.

Our culture wants to go to tier three right away.

And what I’m saying with the work that I do

is tier one and tier two also get to tier three,

but they do it in a slower and more sustainable fashion.

And that deficiency, sure it can be in hydrochloric acid

vitamin D or iron or whatever it may be, but it also could be enjoyed in love, in sex, in play.

It can be in so many things. And if we open our brains to where is there a deficiency,

and how do you recognize your non-negotiables, you are addressing that tier three, that dysfunction

that you are experiencing and we keep going by passing all of those other steps that soil,

that terrain in favor of how do I get at this thing and we’re not going to have sustainable

results there. 

JANNINE: I couldn’t agree with you more. I couldn’t agree with you more. I mean, it’s how

I look at it. It’s the foundations and yes, we, I kind of refer to feeling safe in your body,

feeling, you know, the nervous system, feeling safe to heal a lot of times, that nature, because

if we don’t have that, yeah, I’ve just seen it over and over again. I’m in a loop of totally

different diets and, you know, did you were right now, parasites and pots? You know,

ANDREA: exactly. So true. Yes. Yes. 

JANNINE: It’s just, it’s crazy. So at this point, I bet folks are like,

Oh my gosh, Ade there’s so many things we want to talk about in terms of how can we find you,

how can we learn more from you. And I do have a lot of coaches and practitioners who do listen to

this podcast. So definitely also you’re training with the Alliance. So tell us about your website,

tell us about the podcast. I mean, all of it. Give us all the scoops.

ANDREA: Yeah, thank you for asking and thank you for doing the work you do. It’s so important to

one-on-one sit with people and hold that holistic space. And I think we’ve even lost the word

holistic in a lot of ways. We think it’s about the treatment versus the perspective. That said,

you can find me at Andreanacayama.com. That will lead you back to all the places. It will lead you

to the Functional Nutrition Alliance. It will lead you to this podcast, as well as my podcast,

which I’m no longer producing, but there are 376 episodes, so some really good ones. And if you’re

signed up on my newsletter, you’ll learn more about those workshops where I’m inviting people to

practice narrative medicine. A lot of the writing that I’m doing there, I have a narrative medicine

newsletter that goes out once a month where I have a guest respond to a prompt. So there’s a

lot happening that’s narrative medicine meets functional medicine over at

AndreaNakayama.com. 

JANNINE: Gosh, thank you so much for opening our minds to a

different view when it comes to health, chronic illness, mystery illness, all

the things. I love it. 

ANDREA: Thank you. Thank you so much.

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