Functional Medicine Helps You Ask Better Questions with Jen Germain

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Our conversation today explores healing, self-advocacy, mindset, and what becomes possible when we treat the whole person with mind, body, and voice. Welcome to Connect, Inspire, Create, a podcast exploring meaningful conversations about life, work, creativity, and the ways in which we can grow. Let's slow down the conversation just enough to notice what inspires us and how those insights can help shape what we create in our lives. I am Carol K, your host, a gentle accountability and mental fitness coach, inviting my guests from around the world with a wide range of backgrounds to share insights on how they live, think, and navigate the wonderful challenges of just being a human in our world. My guest today is Jen Germain. So welcome, Jen. Thank you for joining me. Thank you so much for having me today, Carol.

It's a pleasure and honor to be here.

And I just want to let my listeners know a little bit about you. So Jen Germain is a certified functional medicine health coach. She is the founder of Compass Health Coaching and a leading voice in root-cause healing. After being diagnosed with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, Jen was told she would need medication for life. Instead, she chose to ask deeper questions. Through functional medicine, gut health, mindset, lifestyle changes, and the autoimmune protocol, she reclaimed her health and eventually turned her experience into a mission. Since pivoting from marketing into health coaching in 2022, Jen has helped more than 200 clients lose weight, reverse chronic illness patterns, and advocate for a better care and rediscover joy in their lives. So, Jen, that's the official introduction. And I am so looking forward to our conversation and exploring what you have, you know, worked through yourself and now how you've helping others, you know, find solutions. But I'd love to start with something just a little more personal. So when people first meet you, what is one thing they are often surprised to learn?

They're often surprised to learn that I was once a sugar addict and now I'm a health coach. When they learn that, they're like, really? That's possible? Yeah, it is.

Oh my, I know. That doesn't be a sugar addict. It's so beautiful when you can move away from that. I'm in the process of doing this. But I'd love to begin with your own

Diagnosis Shock And A Different Choice

story. So just take us back to the time of your diagnosis and what was happening in your life at that time. And how did that all feel? What was that all about?

Yeah, so it was it was a very uh dramatic time for me. I'd gotten sick in May of 2020, and there was a lot of obviously things going on in the world at that time. And at first I thought it was food poisoning, but then it continued. And it was going to the ladies' room up to 22 times a day. And finally in August, I had some issues with my legs, swelling, didn't quite understand what was going on there. And then I also started to bleed and stuff as well. And so my primary care physician told me, you know, he's like, well, let's do some tests. And my tests were my inflammatory markers were through the roof. They were triple what they should be. I was very anemic, uh, which explained the fatigue and stuff I was experiencing, but they couldn't explain necessarily some of the swelling in my legs as well as the bruising and stuff that was starting to come on my ankles and then on my arms. And so he sent me for an emergency colonoscopy in September. And from that is when I got my diagnosis. After I, you know, came out of the waiting room and recovery and sat with the doctor and he showed me the pictures of my intestinal tract and the Crohn's and stuff in there and what was going on. And it really did hit me like, wow, I have something that I've never really experienced before. I was relatively healthy my whole life. And while my mother had ulcerative colitis through her life, and I did have an aunt who had Crohn's, I knew that what they were going to give me was basically like medications. And that was not something I really wanted to do. In October, I was able to get into a rheumatist to see a rheumatologist. And he was the one that said to me, because I asked him, I said, Hey, can I do this through or manage this through lifestyle changes, nutrition, like that kind of stuff? And he said, No, you should be on a biologic right now and you should be on medications the rest of your life. And I've been following a woman on Instagram who was a cancer survivor, and she was the one that introduced me to functional medicine. I'd never heard of it. My mom was a conventional medicine nurse for 30 plus years, 35 plus years. And I'd only ever really heard of that. And so I started to dive into functional medicine. And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna try. I because I don't, I can't see myself living this way on medications and going to doctor visits all the time and doing biologics and possibly having high heightened risk of cancer, surgeries, colonelostomies, whatever else could be part of it. And I was like, I can't do that.

Right.

So I made an appointment with a functional medicine health coach myself in November. She put me on the autoimmune protocol diet. And from there, I started my healing journey. And it was six weeks that I was on that. And within six weeks, my after doing which is very strict autoimmune protocol diet or AIP, my inflammatory markers were normal and my anemia was gone. And I was finally on the road to feeling better. And I knew I couldn't keep that secret to myself. So that's why I do what I do now. That's what started my journey into helping others figure out what would work for them.

I love the fact that you know you you grabbed onto almost straight away that there has to be another way.

Yeah.

And that we, you know, I mean, be told that you needed to be on medication for life emotionally, that must have been devastating.

It was, especially given the fact that I didn't even like taking like stuff for headaches if I would get head on. With you, yeah. And I take that. Yeah, it's just like, you know, even like taking that kind of stuff, and I was like, it it just it didn't feel like me. And it and it didn't, it wasn't something I wanted to have in my daily life for the rest of my life. And I was like, no.

Yeah, I just a diagnosis like that can often feel like, oh my goodness, there's just there's there's no way out of them. But for you, at least you began, you know, to ask and explore fairly quickly. And then as you're conventional, as you know, you said your mom, you know, being in nursing, you know, often we're just surrounded by that. And so we we think that that is all there is. But

Functional Medicine And Root Causes

for somebody who's hearing that term, functional medicine, for the first time, how would you explain that to them in sort of an everyday language that they could get curious about?

So I would say functional medicine and everyday language is they look for the why. They look for the root cause. They're not looking on the surface level every time just to say, okay, what's the symptom and how can we suppress the symptom so that you feel some better? Functional medicine is looking for that root cause. They're looking at the upstream effect. So if you're having issues in your gut or issues in that small intestinal tract, where did it start? Did it really start there or did it start somewhere else? Because they're looking at you from a whole person perspective. It's not just the physiology, but they're looking at your mental health, your emotional well-being, your spiritual health, because all of that comes into play. We're such dynamic human beings. It's not just, you know, if you think about it, it's not just the in and outs. I mean, the signals matter, but we have so many signals that are coming into our body from different areas. So it could be environmental factors, it could be our emotional regulation, it could be relationships that we experience. All of those things matter in our overall health. And functional medicine takes into account all of those pieces of your life.

Okay, but yeah, it's it's fascinating, and it is so true. I mean, our bodies tell us so, so much. And as you said, just treating the symptoms, which is often what conventional medicine, and there are times when, you know, that might help, but digging deeper, you know, because conventional medicine discovered what you had, and then you were able to find resources. So

Autoimmune Protocol And Food Rebuild

how did the autoimmune protocol, because you said that was quite intense, how did that, could you tell me a bit more? How did that support your healing? You know, what are we looking at that makes it intense?

Yeah, so it's a very strict diet. So when when I did autoimmune protocol in 2020, I could only do pasteurized meats, certain vegetables, and certain fruits. There were no like spices or anything. It was basically just salt and no sugar, no gluten, no dairy. So all of those things that I'd always had, I had to do without. And the sugar was probably the hardest one, but at because I was in so much pain at the time, I really didn't care. When she said when I went into her office, it was a it was a Wednesday, it was November 11th, because I'll never forget it. And I went in and sat with her and she went over what the diet includes and the things that I would have to do. And I was sitting there thinking, okay, Jen, you're not gonna have sugar, you're not gonna have, you're not gonna have bread, you're not gonna have any of these things anymore, or at least for these six weeks. And I was like, I don't care. I want, I want healing, and I didn't want to be in pain anymore. And I'm an all or nothing kind of girl. And so it was like, I can do this. It was, it was, and then you know, when I looked at the scope of it, I'm like, okay, I want to do this right. So I went home, I ordered some stuff that I couldn't find necessarily in the stores off of Amazon. And I was like, okay, I'm going to box up the things that aren't open and take them to a food pantry. And the ones that are open are going in the trash. And I've not had refined sugar in six years because I never went back. Because that I knew what led me to where I was, and I didn't want to repeat the same things that I had done before. And so the autoimmune protocol diet opened a doorway to healthier eating. And I like to, I hate to say a diet because it gets such a negative connotation in today's world. So a lot of times I'll say like eating style or something like that. But it really a different way to look at how my body, what that food did for me. It wasn't just, you know, fuel to feed, you know, to feed me. It was in functional medicine, they talk about it a lot. It's information for every single cell in your body. And that is the most important part was that all of those meats and those fruits and those vegetables were providing sustenance for those cells, but they were providing information to say, okay, this is going to help create this chemical reaction. So then this immune function will help better. And then that's going to incur the healing that I was looking for.

And was that diet then diet done specifically for you? In other words, a functional medicine practitioner would have a different product, the different diet, or is that those kind of ingredients the general way of eating? We won't we don't want to call it a diet.

Yeah. Well, it's the general way of eating on that protocol. Um because the way that it's constructed, it's really trying to go bare bones and just say, here's the the essentials that you really need to help for healing. Because if you think about like my body was so inflamed, it was just it was on fire. So what I need to do was take out the gluten, uh, which can be very inflammatory for a lot of people. And I actually have not had gluten in six years either. That's one thing I kept out because I do have some issues with that. But then keeping out the sugar and keeping out some of the dairy, some of the dairy can be very inflammatory for many people. So it was really trying to strip down the way that I was eating to just give me the nutrients that my body needed to heal.

That's the way you're explaining that. Yeah. Yeah. This is what I need, as opposed to pushing all the things that we push in ourselves. Yeah. Or it's just a case of, oh, this is what we think we love, as you spoke earlier about having the sugar addiction. Yeah. You know, that you're not going and then simplifying it. So now you're eating has it varied much from that, or is it still fairly simple?

I still eat pretty simply, but it has varied. The the protocol itself is only really to be used between like four to six weeks, depending on the person, to bring down that. And then you actually reintroduce foods back in. So at the reintroduction phase, I would have a notebook and say, okay, when I was adding, like the first thing I added back in were eggs because I couldn't even have eggs on it. Okay. And so for the first six weeks, so I added back in eggs and I was okay with the eggs. And then I added in some other stuff. Then, you know, I kept adding things back in. And that's where you learn what your body likes and what it doesn't like, what could be more of a trigger. And so those trigger foods that you find for yourself, those will then be more either occasional, or if there's something like an allo, you know, an allergy, then you don't eat them at all. You know, so it helps you learn how your body responds to different foods.

Sleep Stress And Hidden Health Drivers

That's perfect. Just looking at this, you know, we talk about the root cause and root cause healing. You know, what are some of the most overlooked root causes that people just miss when they are dealing with stubborn, you know, health challenges or chronic illness?

So I think one of the biggest things that we dismiss, everybody does think about nutrition, I think, uh, because they're like, yeah, I'm not eating the way I should, or something like that. So a lot of people will at least be aware of that. But I don't think a lot of people are aware of sleep and stress. Those are two underlying that help us with healing, and we don't give them enough credit in our daily lives. Stress is one of those that people think, oh, I'm not stressed. But then when I ask them a few questions, they're like, oh, that's part of the stress response. It's like, yes. Because we become adapted to it. It's been, you know, especially in the US, where we have a little bit of that productivity culture where you have to be going 24-7 almost and not taking a break and just go, go, go, go, go, that creates chronic stress. And chronic stress can do a lot of damage to your body without you really realizing it until you're you're kind of down for the count. And the same can be said for sleep as well. If you're not getting good rest, your body can't recover, then you're actually going to see differences in your eating. You're going to see differences in your energy levels to work out or to perform, uh, or even cognitive function. So those two, I think, are ones that people don't think about as much as we all think about, oh, I need to exercise and I need to eat.

Right. Nutrition and yeah, yeah, that's sleep. But it's funny, I just saw a post on LinkedIn where somebody said, think of sleep as work, because your cells have work to do. You know, so your body has work to do. Yes, you're going to work. You need to show up, show up and sleep. I thought that that was that was quite amusing. But um, so the idea, you know, what you're sharing now of just listening a little differently to our bodies, you know, feels really important that that people, you know, bringing those things together. But moving into the mindset and the body, as you've said now, you said something which I must have picked up either on your website

You Can’t Heal A Body You Hate

or something. You can't heal a body you hate. Yes. What does that mean to you? And that's a super powerful statement.

Yeah. Well, I I think when you're trying to heal, your mindset does have to change. You have to believe that you can heal. And you have to, you have to love the body, even though at that moment in time it's not where you want it to be. It's carried you as far as you are right now. Like when I, excuse me, when I hit that moment of, you know, being, you know, going to the restroom 22 times a day, bleeding, having all of these issues, having such fatigue, like just taking a shower and then laying down to get dressed, like have enough strength to get dressed. Like you have to say to your body, you know what? You've carried me through all of that. You were still there the whole time. You were fighting for me that whole time too. And to get healing, you have to say, you know what? I love you. You've been there since I was a child. You know, you truly are my ride or die. Like there's no one else. 24-7, you're with me every second of every day until I leave this plane of existence. And you have to appreciate and love that body because it will still carry you. And if you hate it, all of those cells listen to how you think and what you say about yourself. We don't think they do, but they do. And it's very integral in a healing process to understand like this is the body that I want to heal. I want to feel better. And if I don't love it, how is it going to work for me instead of against me? Because if I keep saying to it, oh, you're not doing that right, or why can't you do this, or why can't you do that, or I hate you, or or feeling down about it, it's not going to perform the way that it needs to because all of those cells carry energy. And if you're giving that kind of negative energy to them, what are they going to do? You know, how would you feel?

That's a beautiful bridge because I think you know, I I I can't put myself in your shoes, but there's got to be a fear and a sense of giving up and a sense of there's no light at the end of this tunnel. But that if we can shift that mindset and to to just be tender and realize that our body wants to work with us, and so how can we, you know, how can we do this together? Um, and so I love that. You know, you talk about the whole body approach. Yep. So it's more than diet. Yeah, it's you know the stress, the sleep, the nervous system, the mindset, the energy that so what if if you had to just share with people that are listening now who kind of go, hang on a minute, I want to I want to explore this and I I'm listening, that I I need to kind of embrace my body and and let it journey with me. What are some simple lifestyle shifts that could make a difference that are make a meaningful difference right up right up front?

So I think one of the biggest things, if you can start with your mindset and saying, you know, either doing like some mirror work where you're saying that I love you to your body, like in the mirror, or I love you, like looking yourself in the face and looking yourself in the eyes and saying I love you, or just thanking your body for what it does every day for you. That, you know, starting small. If you can't say I love you, sometimes I know that might be a little hard for people to say, but it's like, you know, talk to your hands and be like, you know, thank you for, you know, carrying all of my groceries, or thank you for carrying me. You know, when I almost fell the other day, you caught me. You know, thinking of those little things and being grateful because gratitude will take us so far. And when we are grateful for the body that we have or for the things that it can do for us, it'll start that neuroplasticity in our brain to keep looking for the positive things that our body can and does do for us. So we will be on the lookout for it more. The second thing I would do or say is to actually sit and listen to what your body wants. We in our cultures, I think so much just push, push, push, but we're not taking time to sit and listen until the body starts to scream at you and say, okay, I'm done. Right. But to listen to some of those, maybe those aches and some of those pains and say, okay, where's this coming from? Why is this happening? Or like, what can I do? But to really listen to your body. So that mindset, listening to your body. And then if you're going to start, let's say if you want to start with nutrition, start small. You don't have to start like I talked about trying, you know, getting everything out of my house. And again, I'm the all or nothing kind of girl, but not everybody's like that. And that is okay. It does not have to be that way. You can really start small. So maybe instead of that candy bar for that mid-afternoon snack, you're having like some cheese and some and like an apple or a piece of fruit, but just start small and just make it consistent every single day. Or maybe it's if exercise is one of your things that you want to work on, getting up in the morning and saying, you know what, I'm going to do my exercise in the morning because I always make an excuse at the end of the day. So I'm going to get up, put on my clothes, and go for a 15-minute walk. Does not have to be, you know, it does not have to be the big grand, you know, grandiose things.

You can just start expert. Right. Yeah.

You don't have, yeah, you don't have to go into the gym and spend an hour. It can just start small. Something's so simple. Yeah.

I was something I'd get to start trying is an evening walk after eating because you know, we eat and then we tend to sit down and that food is sitting inside us and to sort of you know release the cortisol and get out there. And so it is, I mean, our bodies are healing machines if we give them a chance and and listen to some of them.

Self-Advocacy In The Medical System

So, you know, for somebody who is feeling as you know, stuck or dismissed or intimidated by the medical system, what does effective self-advocacy really look like?

So I would say if you know you're going into an appointment for something and you do have questions, write them down before you go so that you don't forget them. Because I know we get we go in there with the best of intentions, and we're like, shoot, I forget what I was gonna say or I was gonna ask. But write them down. And nobody knows your body better than you do, truly. You live in it every day. So when you have those questions and somebody says, Oh no, that's not, it's like you I understand where you're coming from, but I really Believe there is something wrong and we need to go deeper. If they say no, then you need to fire them and find somebody who will. Because truly they do work for you, not the other way around. Because this is your body that you're going to be living in for the rest of your life. They're not going to be experiencing the things that you experienced. Just like when my doctor told me you're going to be on medications the rest of your life. He wasn't living my life. He wasn't living the experience that I just had been through. And he wasn't going to experience all of the things that theoretically, from his take, I would have to experience.

Ahead of right.

Yep. So having that mindset to say, no, this is my body. And I know that there's something wrong. And if you they won't do it or go deeper, then find someone who won't change. Right. Yeah.

I know that you've shared that you've helped over 200 clients transform their health, which is awesome and wonderful. What patterns do you see in the people who successfully do heal and or make meaningful progress? What is there been a common sort of factor that you've recognized?

Yeah, definitely the mindset shift. That's one of the biggest keys is to believe that you can do it and to dismiss some of the narratives that we've had in our head for a very long time. Most of us, most likely, you know, most of my clients are at least maybe like mid-30s. And then I have clients up until and through decades, we've been telling ourselves a different story, like, oh, I always do this, or I never get this right, or I've tried this and it never works for me. Those are all stories and narratives that we tell ourselves. So if if it if you take those out of the equation and supplement them with something different, the whole story changes and the mindset changes. So when we have that mindset shift, you start to see them actually believing, yes, I can do this. Yes, I can do this. And then consistency. Nobody likes to talk about discipline and consistency because discipline can be a dirty word for some people. But discipline will actually get you farther. And again, if we take that one, that one snack and we just do that consistently, you're gonna start seeing results because that snack, which would have, with let's say a candy bar, your glucose would have spiked and you would have been hungry within two hours, right? And you would have wanted like more of that stuff. But with something that has the protein fats and maybe a little bit of carbohydrate, you're gonna have a lower glucose spike. So you're gonna have better energy. So you're gonna start, your body's gonna start to adapt to that, and you're you're gonna realize, you know what, I'm not as ravenous at dinner as I was with the candy bar, but now I'm hungry, but it's not like I want to rip every you know bag open and just eat everything when I get home. Yes. So you'll start to see those shifts and that discipline's creating that consistent discipline will start to get results, and that curtails into motivation. And then that motivates you to do more.

And Jen, I have to, yeah, when when you share that all, I think some of the things when you talk about discipline is celebrating what you do do when you do it from the mindset point of view, that if you take a moment, you know, even just to give yourself a little hug, yeah, or write it down or do a little dance or something and go like I I stuck with that. I did do that. Um you know, it's really because we talk about the rewiring of the neural pathways, yeah. And if we can reinforce those positive moments, they're gonna be more of them.

Yep.

And we're going to squash the the outside.

Career Pivot And A Gentle First Step

So yeah, you said in 2022 you pivoted from marketing into health coaching, just from the my my people that are listening from a business point of view. What was that career pivot? You know, how did it feel for you to, or did your marketing did you feel because I was in I've been involved in marketing for years, and I also feel that it always plays into what you step into next.

It does. I mean, it definitely stepped in, you know, it helped me with the way that I could do like my social media and like that kind of stuff. It it helped me to branch out. But I think the biggest shift was when I quit my day job and went to this full time and realizing that I'm my own boss and I had my own schedule. I I have I was making an appointment for for one of my dogs, and I was like, oh, I need to check. I'm like, no, I don't need to, I don't need to call off. I don't need to check my like I make my schedule. And it was just that realization to say, you know, I I have the freedom to do that. And that is one of the gifts of entrepreneurship is that you do gain that freedom. Um there's other things that you you also gain with that, you know, being the only person in your business that that it can carry some stress load and stuff that with that too. But to gain that amount of freedom over your schedule, over the things that you want to do, the way that you want to have your business, the way you that you want to help people, I think going from that marketing and and coming into my own business was definitely a shift, but it was it was a welcome shift and a definitely a learning experience.

Yeah, no, it is the whole business entrepreneurship and and even the discipline and the seasons for us, you know, to keep going through. But then that's also the importance of community and other um entrepreneurs that we connect with on whatever, whichever platform, whatever sort of group, yeah, you know, having masterminds, it's just talking to other people that we all go on this journey and sometimes need support from other business owners. Yes, we do. So if somebody is listening today who's just feeling a little discouraged in their health journey and they feel like perhaps they go, Oh, well, I've tried everything and it's still not working. What would be one sort of really gentle step that they you'd invite them just to try this week?

So if you feel that it's not working or things haven't, or you're not that you're stuck, I would say take all of the devices and put them away, get a sheet of paper, and you sit down with that and a pen and you write out what you, nobody else, no external factors, what you really want. What you envision for yourself, for your health. What does he or she look like? What do they do? How do they work? How do they how do they eat? How do they sleep? Because when you do that and you envision who you really want to become, that sends into your brain a vision of that's that you can attain. But don't depend on other people. It has to come from you, nobody else, yes, and what you want. And then what I would say is if pick the smallest piece of that to start with. So it's not overwhelming. So, like let's say that person will want to uh wake up and not hit the snooze button in the morning. Maybe that's it. And say, Okay, I'm not gonna hit the snooze button tomorrow because this person would not do that because they're gonna, you know, that's that's not part of everything.

Yeah, to a goal.

Yep. And so this person does this. So I'm gonna embody that one one trait and do that first, and then you start small. And then once you have that one down, like you said, you celebrate and be like, okay, I did it. I'm you know, I'm doing what she would do or he would do, and say, okay, so what's another step? And take it step by step. It does not have to be overly big, but I would say learn the vision that you have for yourself because that is going to help you get unstuck because it's gonna sort you, motivate you, drive

How To Connect And Closing

you.

That's yeah. So that's beautiful. Jen, for people that are listening today, how would they connect with you if they wanted to work with you? Where would they find you?

Yeah, so they can go to my website, compasshealthcoachinglc.com. They can also find me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn at Compass Health Coaching LLC. And I'm slowly but surely getting up my YouTube channel, which is at the same address as Compass Health Coaching LLC. Wonderful.

Well, I'll make sure that all those links are in the show notes so that people can connect with you. And Jen, thank you for sharing encouragement and get letting helping us get that out there. That's you know, people can explore ways and take control of their health. So for those that have listened to this episode, thank you. And if it has triggered something for you that you want to try, reach out to Jen, contact her, find out more. And if you have somebody else you think might just need to listen to this, please share us. And so until our next episode, wishing you ease and flow. Thanks, Jen. Thank you.