Maggie: 00:00:00

Welcome to Transform with Dr. Maggie Yu Podcast, where education meets results. I'm Dr. Maggie Yu, your guide with nearly three decades of experience in root cause medicine. Here, we dive deeper into the root causes of chronic disease through interviews, case studies, and trainings. Hi, I am Dr. Maggie. You and I help professionals launch the year of autoimmune disease turnaround through working with us through our online program today, we have Chris Wenzel who's joining us, and Chris has a year and a half since she's started our program. And I really wanna bring Chris on to actually show people what a year of autoimmune disease Turnaround really looks like. So, without further ado, I'm gonna have Chris introduce herself. Chris, tell us where you were a year and a half ago.

Chris: 00:00:56

Oh my goodness. A year and a half ago, I was a hot mess. You and I had spent time on the phone. I was at a dead end. I, I thought I was at the end, I thought I was dying. I had panic attacks. I had autoimmune disease. I had Epstein Barr. I was having rashes. I was having female hormonal problems. It was just affecting so many things in my life. First and foremost, I'm, I'm a wife of 22 years to my wonderful husband. I am a mother to two boys, a pre-teen and a teenager. And I have an amazing career for a tech company as an area sales leader. And it was just affecting so many different things I just didn't think I can turn out of it. I was doing the traditional approach. I was throwing medication at it. I was seeing doctor after doctor. At one point I had seen eight different physicians. I ended up in the emergency room with heart issues. I was wearing a heart monitor. I. I was losing my hair. I had just a really hard ability living every single day and trying to be the best wife and mother and career person that I could be. And I stumbled across Maggie and her approach is very different than the traditional doctors that you see a regularly. And, and I figured I had done everything else I had done. The traditional doctor, I had done the Traditional the neurologist, the endocrinologist, the gynecologist. I, I'd searched for answers for so long and I've been dealing with this disease for now, looking back almost 20 years, and it just compounded one after another. I. And I remember the call with Dr. Maggie where I said, I just, I don't know if, if I can go on, I don't know if I can get out of this. I just, I'm afraid I'm gonna die. I am afraid I'm not gonna be there for my husband and my children. And, and I remember her saying, you will if you don't take control of your life. And at that point I made a decision to enroll in Dr. Maggie's program. And it literally was a life changer for me.

Maggie: 00:03:02

You had a lot of career success up to that point. I mean, it wasn't as if you know, you were into the outside world. What would you say that you were a picture of somebody who was successful? I was, you had a lot of skills that you were able, you learned a lot of skills that you were able to apply to your work and to your profession.

Chris: 00:03:25

I hid my disease very well, and I hid it I hid it very well during the workday, and I came home and I was physically exhausted. I wasn't sleeping. In the evening, I'd snap at my children. I, I held it together, what I thought, held it together for my career for a very long time. And in my effect was, was being held hostage by this disease. And I, I was very successful, but I couldn't reach the levels of success that I knew I could until I dealt with this demon. And, you know, since then I, I've recently moved on to a different organization. I, I love my job. I have passion for what I do. I've since been promoted. I'm responsible for a very large business and team and, and I really enjoy Everything I do from an aspect of work and home, that joy I didn't have because I was so sick and I was just trying to get by every single day, I would think about today, not tomorrow. Can I get through today? Can I get through my work? Can I get home? Can I put dinner on the table? Can I be there for my spouse? Can I get in bed? Sleep 'cause that I was so tired I couldn't sleep. And then get up in the morning and do it all over again. Where now, you know, I'm thinking about, well what am I gonna do in six months and what vacation am I gonna take and my kids are gonna go off to college and what am I gonna do with them? That's fun this weekend versus I think this weekend I just wanna lay in bed and

Maggie: 00:04:45

sleep. To summarize what you just said, I would say it sounds to me like, let's say in two or three sentences, what do you think has been the impact of, once you've addressed autoimmune disease, what do you think has been the impact on, let's say your work in two or three sentence?

Chris: 00:05:02

Yeah. In two or three, once I attack the Godzilla in my life, I am able to clearly think at work I'm able to have the energy necessary to give to my team and my customers. And I'm able to have joy in everything that I do and not have to worry about. I. Ooh, that's a heart palpitations, or, Ooh, I don't feel well, or, oh, I'm so tired. I don't know that I can do another meeting today. I literally have joy every single day since I've gone through your

Maggie: 00:05:28

program, couple sentences has been the major impact upon your, the relationship with your children.

Chris: 00:05:36

So funny you say that. My my kids and I were in the car about six months after I started your program. I had also started an alternate homeopathic medication along the lines. And I was going to go pick it up and my kids said something, oh, mommy, are you, are you gonna go take the, the, the supplement? And I said, yeah, I need to, I need to take it to make sure mommy feels better. She goes, Wow. Mom, you were really sick. And I have to tell you, in the last six months, I don't know what you're doing, but we're so happy to have you back. And I have to tell you, I thought I was hiding it from my children and I wasn't. I was fooling myself. It was affecting them. They saw it. Their hearts hurt for me, and they had joy, that I was getting better. And that allowed them to be kids. It allowed them to Play and be free and not have to worry about, is mom okay? She's tired. She's probably gonna be cranky when she gets home from work. It, it released that from them. I mean, I

Maggie: 00:06:34

thought I was under the mistaken impression too, because I was doing well at work. I was, you know, making good money and to the outside world, I looked normal. In a lot of ways, autoimmune disease is like silent. It's like a silent killer that impacts upon People's lives 'cause we all look norm. Most of us look normal on the outside, all immunity. And we think we're actually hiding it. We may be successful at hiding it from our customers or from our employees that we work with, but we're lying to ourselves if we think we're hiding it from our children or our spouse.

Chris: 00:07:06

Yeah, we are. I ran into someone I hadn't seen in a year and a half, just this last week, and, and they looked at me and they go, you look so vibrant. You look so young, you've lost weight. What's go, what are you doing? What's your secret? And I said, there is no secret. I just was really, really sick and I'm not anymore. And I'm, I'm enjoying life and I'm, I'm doing the things necessary to keep myself healthy.

Maggie: 00:07:30

I love it. Well, let me ask a lot of people you've mentioned that you were able to apply a lot of skills. You probably have had a ton of coaching and learning for how to apply your skills towards work and success at work. Yeah. My question for you was you, you said that you weren't able to apply these skills to your health. Yeah. And my question is, why not? Why not? Why weren't you able to apply these same skills to success with health?

Chris: 00:07:59

Well, and when you think about your career, you, you learn from the mistakes that you make. You also learn from others. And being educated, I. And I wasn't educated on my health. I, I was living in a world of traditional healthcare, which I thought would protect and help me. I did not know that there was a root cause to everything that was going on in my body, and it was like an onion. You peel it back, there's layer upon layer upon layer upon layer, and you walk in and you talk to a doctor and you have thyroid disease. Great. Well, I picked up a pill and for me that didn't work. That didn't solve the problem. It actually made me sicker, but that didn't address my Epstein bar or my hormonal issues, or my tired, my hair falling out, my emotional, my panic attacks, all these other things. It didn't It didn't do anything for them because I wasn't educated in trying to find what the root cause was. And once I ended up getting the tools that I needed to understand how to kind of peel back the layers of the onion and go step by step to figure out how do I attack this disease, not just give it a pill, but truly look at the different aspects, the emotional. The food, the health and wellbeing, the me time necessary to relax and recharge the mindset piece of it. Once I had all of those tools like work, I was able to, to apply that to my health and, and make that turnaround. And, and I did that because I ended up getting the tools and I applied the skills

Maggie: 00:09:25

for that. I'm hearing that there's an educational model that we have towards business skills towards life, you know, life skills, but healthcare, and healthcare. We lack an educational model for educating people on actually the most important thing, which is the fight for our lives.

Chris: 00:09:46

I mean, you, you know, I, I am not against medic, you know, medical care. I think there, there's a place for your doctor and you need to have them in your life. But, you know, if, if we all think that we're gonna walk into a standard doctor under a 15 minute visit and talk about all the problems that you have, and many, many of us females have similar problems. They're, they're going to, you know, when there's a nail, they're gonna apply a hammer and not everything's a nail. Some people are screws, some people are nails, some people's are bolts and everybody has a different root cause. And once you get to the education to understand, I need to find out what that root cause is and then fix that root cause, so then I can go after another one and go after another one. Versus you go to the doctor, you might fix one thing, but you're not fixing all these other pieces, the domino effect that fall within it.

Maggie: 00:10:32

So cause and effect.

Chris: 00:10:33

Yeah, absolutely.

Maggie: 00:10:35

Absolutely. So let's talk about if you can give a little summary of in, in the, during the program, how did you feel we were able to educate you on cause and

Chris: 00:10:45

effect? I. So there are a couple things that work for me. You know, I, I like the online coaching model. I like a support system of having peers around me to that are going through the same thing that you can talk to. It's great to have, you know, you as a doctor and a nutritionist and, and all of the different pieces. But I had the educational component, which is the online portal that helped me understand week by week, chunking down my education, and then I had homework that I needed to apply, and then if I needed an answer, there was a weekly call that I could attend and bring my issues, bring, bring my tests, bring my concerns, not only to the, the medical team Also to my peers who are also going through similar situations that that could empathize. 'cause there's something to be said about the whole mindset piece of it where someone else is going through something similar and say, Hey, I did that and, and I do have this problem as well. And these were the three things I did. And it changed. Oh, okay. Huh. I'm not doing that. Okay, let me look into that. And it, and it really empowers you to take control of

Maggie: 00:11:48

your own health. I, what I'm liking hearing is, is that a lot of people think they're so used to a one-on-one model of medical care. And the interesting thing is it is the whole one-on-one model medical care that hasn't gotten

Chris: 00:12:00

you those results. No. It ha it hasn't.

Maggie: 00:12:03

And people don't understand the power of actually group coaching and learning as a group. What you're pointing out is, is that when someone else mentions a problem and you hear the solutions or their solutions or what I'm teaching about it in reaction to them, you are actually, you may not have even thought about asking that question. You may not even have thought it was related to autoimmune disease, and suddenly somebody's bringing up a question and it dawns on you that, oh my gosh, that's autoimmune.

Chris: 00:12:31

Well, and the interesting thing is I've been on the journey now for a year and a half. You know, since I started with you. I was through your program. I'm now a year out. I did an interview with you right when I left, and then now I'm doing one. There are things as I peel back that onion that are starting to uncover as I get healthier, there's still issues and I have to deal with them. And I'm going back to the tools that I got in the program. 'cause at that time, they weren't applicable to me. Now they are. And I feel like I can attack those things one-on-one as they come up. You know, if I have a low vitamin D issue, I know exactly what to do about that. There are things that I can do. When I learned in the program, at that point in time, when I was in the program, my vitamin D wasn't my biggest issue. It was one of the root cause issues, but it wasn't like the first thing I wanted to fix. Well, now I'm tweaking that. I'm tweaking a couple other things, and as I go after those different root causes, Every day I get stronger, I get healthier, and, and I just, I, I also connect with a lot of my old cohort people and we talk about things and, and you know, now I'm not in your program any longer. I. But I do have them to lean on if I have a question.

Maggie: 00:13:37

Yeah, we have, we have we actually have what's called pods now. So we actually assign people in groups of three or four when they start the program with people that are in the exact same place starting and we now have graduates That have even after their program continue to meet with their pods, like six months on, seven months on, and they actually talk about how to spend the biggest piece of support that continue even after the program besides the alumni group.

Chris: 00:14:03

Yep. And, and that's, that's it. When we invest in ourselves to get into this program, you know, we have to do the work. To make it happen. It's on me to do the work. It was on me to do the homework. It's on me to follow through and make sure my diet's on point, make sure my sleep's on point, make sure my supplement regime that's on me. But after I left, it wasn't like, bye Chris. You're on your own. I still have the tools available to me, and I still have the ability to connect with not only some of my peers, but on the alumni group with The team and say, Hey, what do you think about this? Or, check in with others and there's something to be said about the support that goes along that with your journey. And then secondarily, giving back to the people who are now coming in through the program, I'm able to say, Hey, you can be like this too. You can turn your health around on your own. You can empower yourself.

Maggie: 00:14:54

Love it. I have a question, which is, what do you think what surprised you the most about being in the program?

Chris: 00:15:03

What surprised me was the group model. I didn't realize how much I would get out of the group model, so that's number one, how much I would get by interacting. I'm like, oh, I just wanna talk to the doctor. I wanna have a, you know, half hour conversation. Here's my problems. Tell me what I need to do. I'm a, I'm gonna achiever, I'm a type A, I'm just, tell me what I need to do and I'm gonna do it. Check, check, check, check. I'll do it. But working with others, it really gave me the ability to open myself up to all the possibilities. Secondly when I think about is I didn't realize how much of this was mindset as well, how much Prior bad habits and mindset items. I personally had to deal with past traumas and such that I needed to uncover and deal with emotionally in order to get my health to where it needed to be. And that was a huge awakening when I had spoken to the other people. You know, a lot of us have similar backstories where there's some emotional trauma or some sort of abuse or something that's going on, and if you don't address it, it just manifests into disease.

Maggie: 00:16:04

I, I, I love that. Because I think because a lot of people look at me and I'm a medical doctor and we're a health program because we're turning around autoimmune disease. People think health. And I think what people are very surprised by that you're pointing out is the level of coaching around mindset, how people think. And I am a huge firm believer, and you know this 'cause I'm teaching the modules about this, which is that I think that the people don't realize that there is so much power in what you think the language that you use and the story that you tell in your head, what you think actually really impacts upon your health. Yeah, and

Chris: 00:16:40

me.

Maggie: 00:16:42

Me, the work that I've done on myself has been to really realize that when you change the meaning maker in your head, when you change the story in your head, everything changes.

Chris: 00:16:53

And, and we don't realize, you know, we're not taught this in school. We're not taught this for our doctor. Our mind and our stomach are connected. You know, our neurotransmitters, the food we put in our body what our body does, how it behaves, it is all connected. If you can't get this space right, this space isn't gonna get right. If this space doesn't get right, this doesn't get right, and it creates this cycle. Just churn and, and you gotta address it all at the same time. And if you don't, you address one of it, you might get a little better. Once you start really addressing all the pieces, the emotional, the physical, and, and the educational component. It just changes everything,

Maggie: 00:17:30

you know. This reminds me, you had said something that I think was really insightful because you say I'm the typical corporate type A woman. Which I am as well, And one of the biggest reservations you had in joining this program was saying, eh, group coaching program. That doesn't seem like an effective use of my time. Just gimme 30 minutes with the doctor and boom, boom, boom. Tell me what to do and I'm good. Yep. So, Tell me why this is actually a lie or tell me why this is actual BSS now

Chris: 00:18:06

that you realized it. So I didn't, I didn't get to the issues that I was. What I was doing wasn't working, going traditional approach that wasn't working for me. It might work for other people. I think that's amazing. But if that is not working for you and you are looking to step it up to that next notch, for me, getting into a group coaching program allowed me the ability to control of my own health. Not rely on someone else to gimme a pill and wait six weeks, gimme a, a medication, go get a blood work. I was able to do the tweaking necessary and, and, and the emotional social component necessary within a group setting and feel safe. I felt safe in doing it. I felt like if I made a change and something wasn't going right, I knew I had the online portal, I had my Facebook group, and I had you as a doctor to say, okay, hold on, Chris, step back. What did you do? What did you change? What do, what do we need to do now? And, and I felt safe that I could make that change and know that I have a support system around me to do that. I

Maggie: 00:19:06

think you're also pointing something else out, which is that I think there's a big difference between a doctor telling you in a 30 minute visit, boom, boom, boom. This is what you should do and what we're doing, because we're actually using an educational and coaching model to teach you how to think about it, so you can have the skills to figure out what the answers are, even on your own later.

Chris: 00:19:26

I mean, today I'm still working with a local homeopathic doctor on different things that I, I need, and we have a very consultative approach that we work on together. And many of the things that I learned in this program, we have a dialogue and she is blown away at the amount of education that I have on my disease and how to empower myself. And when we have a conversation, it goes quite quickly because she's like, You actually know what your body can and cannot do. You know what you need to do to be successful? I'm just tweaking the gears for you, Chris. And she'll throw a suggestion out and say, well, have you thought about this? And I'll say, well, actually that's not my problem, because if you look at this test marker, this is my problem. And she's like, oh, I didn't catch that. I didn't. You know, when you look at, everyone looks at iron, well, there's different components of iron you have to look for. Sometimes it's saturation, sometimes you have too much iron and it's showing up low. You have to look at the different markers and, and this program gave me the tools to say it's not just about the iron marker on the test. You know, it's all the different pieces that that fit within

Maggie: 00:20:24

that. Where are you

Chris: 00:20:26

at now? You have time. have time. You know, is my life perfect? No. I still am dealing with autoimmune disease. I have to be very, very aware of the decisions, the, the stress I put on my body. I. I have to take time for me. I have to eat right. I have to make sure my supplement regime is on point. I have to I journal, I yoga, I meditate. Those are all decisions I make for my self-help. But the things that have changed is I don't, I don't get up every day thinking, am I going to die tomorrow? And I was at one point, I'm not having rampant panic attacks, heart palpitations. I. Stomach pain so bad, I'm doubled over and trying to stand up right in a meeting. Pain in my back where I can barely walk. Muscle spasms, hair falling out exhaustion. I'm not snapping at my kids. I'm not you know, things don't rattle me as easily as they used to. My candida is under control, which was running rampant through my body, which was causing other issues. Just, it's, it's item after item after item. I feel like a human. And I have to say, you know, four, I didn't feel like a human. I felt like I was just living in the shell and I couldn't quite figure out how am I gonna get out of it? How am I gonna feel like a person? I

Maggie: 00:21:45

remember the first call. You said you felt like you were dying. I

Chris: 00:21:48

did. I did. And it was real, it was a really hard realization to me 'cause I was so scared and, and part of that was, and I didn't realize how emotionally broke I was. With regards to the brain cut connection, you know, at the end of the day, those, those feelings come from a place, it comes from the disease, you know, that disease continues to run, you know, rampant, and you start going in these cycles and you just gotta get off the hamster wheel at some point. Once you get off the hamster wheel, it's great on the other side.

Maggie: 00:22:20

What do you think because you said you felt like the, you've had dealt with autoimmune symptoms for at least 20 years. I have. What do you think was the financial impact of being on the hamster wheel of the conventional medicine with chasing the diagnosis and chasing all your symptoms over those 20 years? What do you think was the financial impact of what you had spent? Because

Chris: 00:22:39

I remember the conversation with my husband when I talked to him about investing in this program, and, you know, at the end of the day, it's, you're investing in yourself. It is, it is not something that you're gonna go to the Starbucks and buy. It's something that is a little more on the A pricier side in the sense that you're investing in your health. It's not a $200 office visit, but we looked at all the money I had spent all the doctor visits, the emergency room visits, the test visits, and it was upwards of $50,000. It's a lot. So when you think about the investment that I made in myself or my family had made in me In this program, I've gotten it back tenfold. I mean, I'm not having to run to the doctor. I'm not, I'm not on any, any medications that are, you know, things that I need that are $300 a month. I rotate through my supplements when I need them. My supplement regime was very high when I started. Now I use food as my supplementation. I know what I need to do to get what I need to get, but the costs are Significantly less to my family now that I invested in myself.

Maggie: 00:23:39

So you feel like the value, financial value dollar amount that you got from the program was at least half a million dollars?

Chris: 00:23:46

Financial value of the program? It, it, it, well, I think it was priceless. I mean, I have to say, I know it sounds like a MasterCard commercial. I can't put a price on my family's happiness nor mine. And that to me is priceless. And so the investment that I made is, is just tenfold over every single day. I get up, I have joy, I'm happy, my family's happy, and, and I, and I feel like I'm in control of my life, and there is, I can't put a price on that because having control of my life with something that I wanted, and I have it now. Has there been

Maggie: 00:24:23

a career impact on your life since you've done this program? What has changed in your career as a result of getting your health under

Chris: 00:24:30

control? So there's been a tremendous amount of change in progress. So I've since been promoted within my organization and I run a $800 million business. I have a very large team. I, I solve customers problems through technology. I enjoy my job every day. I get up. I don't worry about the pain that I have. I don't worry about did I sleep last night? I don't have the stress and the anxiety. Is there stress in my job? Absolutely. But I enjoy that stress. It's not dreaded stress. And and I, and I just look at all the possibilities for me and my career today and what I want to do, and it's limitless. I have so many options in front of me and all I know I can control that because I don't have to worry about my health. Health is, it's, it's, I take care of it on a daily basis. I maintain it, but it's not first and foremost center to my problems.

Maggie: 00:25:19

So for those of us who are professionals, autoimmune disease, it's the whole idea of what would life be like if health absolutely did not limit any of your options or choices. Absolutely, and that's where you're at

Chris: 00:25:33

a year later, health health affected so many different pieces and now it's not, it's not a, a concern. I literally know what I need to do to be successful. I know what my root cause are. I know what my triggers are and when, you know, I wake up, if I'm feeling a little bit tired, it's like, whoa, you know what? You took it a little hard yesterday. You need to make sure this weekend you do a little rest and relaxation. You need to take some time with the kids or the husband and you need to do something fun and. I'm very self-aware now where I wasn't, where before it was go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And I'm just trying to overcompensate everything in my life to cover up my health issues and now I don't have to do that. I.

Maggie: 00:26:13

I do have a question about, a lot of people think that a lot of people think that dealing with autoimmune disease naturally I'm an md so I'm a scientist. Mm-hmm. but I've also taken a lot of time and invested in myself to learn everything there is natural about how to turn around autoimmune disease. And a lot of people think that turning around autoimmune disease naturally means that it's not a scientific or data-driven approach. So I want ask you that piece, which is, what was your experience with the program as a scientific data-driven

Chris: 00:26:43

approach to I think it was more data-driven than any other traditional method that I had had. I actually had, on paper, I knew exactly what was going on in my body regularly. I knew from a hormonal, from a supplement, from a mineral I had a ton of data and I was able to make decisions on what I needed to do based upon the data that was in front of me. And the, the program offered me the ability to get data that I had never gotten from a traditional sense. That was actually the game changer for me. It was quite quickly, right around week two and a half, I started seeing little changes. And I remember like, oh. That changed. Oh, that changed. They were little, but you, you grab on these little glimmers of hope and, and, and it was like, oh, I wanna do this more. I need more data. I need more data. I need more reading. I need to apply it more. And it just was very exciting. It's very data driven and it's not just, you know, going outside and picking some berries and leaves and eating them and everything's okay. It's literally what am I missing or what am I doing wrong in my lifestyle that I need to shift or take in, in order to be successful?

Maggie: 00:27:51

And your numbers

Chris: 00:27:52

improved? Oh my gosh, dramatically. What would you tell someone

Maggie: 00:27:57

who's considering joining our program?

Chris: 00:28:00

If you are willing to invest in yourself and you're at that spot where you don't know what else to do, and you've done the traditional way and it's not working, consider looking at a program like this and do something different, but know that you have to. You have to put the work in in order for it to be successful. It's not going to be walking in a doctor's office, getting a lab slip, taking a medication. You have to do the work, but I promise you, if you do the work, your life will turn around and it'll be anything you want it to be.

Maggie: 00:28:37

Congratulations, Chris Wenzel, a year and a half later after our program to the new you and your new life

Chris: 00:28:44

and success in your career. And I have to say, if you have Hashi, you can lose weight. Just saying, I'm on the process right now. I have healed so much. This is now the thing I'm working on is. Is the other things that are just so hard to do. I'm now working on tweaking those little things and I'm doing it in a safe way and it's really exciting to watch.

Maggie: 00:29:04

Thank you for joining us for this interview, and thank you, Chris, for joining us a year and a half after the program.

Chris: 00:29:09

Thank you. Good luck to everyone.

Maggie: 00:29:11

Thank you for joining us today. If you're inspired to dive deeper and work directly with me and my team at Transform, click the link in the podcast description and book a call. For more resources and discussions, be sure to check out our YouTube channel and join our thriving Facebook community with over 90, 000 members. The link to join is in the description. Talk soon.