Introduction 0:00
She’s passionate about helping you become the best mama you can be and is pulling back the curtain on experts advice for every area of our lives from eating for wellness, the best advice for littles fashion and style and everything in between. Get ready to get real. This is not your mama’s podcast with your host, Christina Francy.
Cristina Francy 0:24
Hey friends, welcome to this week’s episode of “Not Your Momma’s Podcast” Today we are talking with Nicki Burnett. She is a functional nutritionist health detective and founder of taste Life Nutrition. She is also the host of tastes like nutrition radio and podcast, which streams every Thursday at 10am. Mountain Time. Nikki, it’s such an honor to have you on. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Can you introduce yourself to the audience?
Nikki Burnett 0:52
Of course. Thanks for having me, So as you said, Nikki Burnett, I practice functional nutrition. And what that means is I’m a health detective of innocence, I want to understand the root cause of dysfunction or to allow people to live optimally, right? SoI fully believe we have so many big things that we are here to do. But we don’t feel good. It’s hard to do them. And so I want to help people understand their bodies understand what their bodies need, get out of dysfunction, if that’s where they are, and then, you know, help to grow. And that includes generations, right? The things that we do today can affect generations ahead of us.
Cristina Francy 1:35
Yeah that is so true. So breaking down. In simple terms, what is functional nutrition for someone who is hearing that definition for the first time?
Nikki Burnett 0:52
Of course. Thanks for having me, So as you said, Nikki Burnett, I practice functional nutrition. And what that means is I’m a health detective of innocence, I want to understand the root cause of dysfunction or to allow people to live optimally, right? SoI fully believe we have so many big things that we are here to do. But we don’t feel good. It’s hard to do them. And so I want to help people understand their bodies understand what their bodies need, get out of dysfunction, if that’s where they are, and then, you know, help to grow. And that includes generations, right? The things that we do today can affect generations ahead of us.
Cristina Francy 1:35
Yeah that is so true. So breaking down. In simple terms, what is functional nutrition for someone who is hearing that definition for the first time?
Nikki Burnett 1:47
In simple terms, it is it’s kind of just what I said, it’s digging for the root cause. So what we do, we want to look at lifestyle, right, we want to look at everything that goes in, that includes though, trauma, relationships, how you talk to yourself, and then of course, what you eat, how you move, if you’re sleeping, all of these, what we would call lifestyle factors play a role in understanding how a body functions or if a body is dysfunctional. And so by understanding those and then running labs, this is not your everyday comprehensive metabolic panel, it’s really deep labs to understand what’s going on what the body’s trying to tell us. That’s what I see a lab report as right as is, the body talks to us through symptoms, and the body talks to us through these reports that we can find. And so through that, we can then understand what’s going on, create an individualized protocol to then allow the body to put it together to strategically and methodically move the body to a place where it is able to function better on its own. And, then we start to get rid of symptoms, autoimmune diseases start to get better, right pain and symptoms, and all of these things that we deal with on a daily basis, get better, because the body’s able to function better.
Cristina Francy 3:17
Yeah ! so talking about, gut dysfunction. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease last year of December, which is a huge part of our bodies, and it is related to like an auto immune disease. As you know, millions of people, suffer with gut dysfunction. Can you explain a little bit more about how the auto immune system is related to that, and like what people can do have a more functional body?
Nikki Burnett 3:53
So just for the sake of clarity, so it’s the immune system that is, some will say it’s dysfunctional. could it be a part of it? Maybe. But let’s look at it a different way. Let’s look at it as the body is so amazingly complicated, smart, and beautifully intricate, that what if it’s not so much dysfunction as a protective mechanism? So I think that’s It’s an intriguing way of looking at it, most people won’t see it that way. Most will say an autoimmune condition is a dysfunction of the immune system, or its attacking its own cells and tissues, which is kind of what’s happening. But I do believe that there’s an intelligence That is what we don’t understand. And so what do we want to do? Autoimmune diseases can stem from the gut, but especially Crohn’s disease, But , if it’s Hashimotos, autoimmune thyroid, if it’s attacking brain tissue, we can have autoimmune conditions that attack all the tissues of our body. But we can’t just blame it on the gut. This is where functional medicine functional nutrition comes in, because what was that trigger? So epigenetically, we may have the potential for specific autoimmune conditions. And that’s cool, because that’s the stuff, we can see in labs. But the trigger could have been trauma, infection, mold, toxicity, environmental toxins, the meat we eat, it can be a combination of all of these things that triggered this dysfunction. And then now you have this label, Which is really not you, it’s then going back and understanding what is it that we can do to release this burden from the body, so it can actually start to function properly again.
Cristina Francy 6:01
I know one thing that I enjoy doing to help kind of release, stress or tension is tapping, doing a lot of like, the tapping stuff has been really helpful. because it’s true, when I was diagnosed, I felt like, there was a lot of stress in my life, kind of always walking on my tiptoes. , what was happening during that time, I was just like, a huge sudden move out of nowhere. And, your body’s at like, a disease, because no matter what I was doing, I was trying to, hold it in my mind, like, everything’s gonna be okay, I can work through it, but it showed up in my body, it’s really important to understand. I feel like the autoimmune disease is sometimes stem from just stress alone, like stress of life, your environment, and emotions you know, your gut is your second brain. So it’s gonna, like, talk to you in a different way. And we have to listen to it, and sometimes listening to it is harder than, than we think it is. Because we don’t trust ourselves.
Nikki Burnett 7:12
Yeah, that’s a huge part of my message to people, whether it’s talking to an individual or talking to groups of people, because what you say is key taking is really taking a step back and learning to listen to our bodies, again, because what we do now, so often is, well, I have a pain. And so I’m going to take an ibuprofen, or I have a stomach ache. so I’m going to take an acid, I had this whole bunch of symptoms, and I don’t know what to do, and I just want to drink it away, you do choose your poison, right? But instead of saying, What is my body trying to tell me? what is it that I can do? Or who can I go to? Or what research can I do whatever it is that it looks like for each person to learn what it is that my body’s trying to tell me, so I can help it because really what it’s doing is knocking on that door and saying, Hey, I can’t do this on my own anymore. I need you to help to jump in because I’m all doing is trying to protect you but something but it’s not working the way, , is it due to micronutrient deficiencies. if you have a GI issue, whether it’s simple or a chronic autoimmune condition, you’re certainly not absorbing your nutrients properly. So what is it you can do to get those nutrients in so the body can function, this is the beautiful thing about food, as a nutritionist, it’s all of these lifestyle things that make such an impact. But the beautiful thing about food is it’s a language communicates to our cells in our DNA, what our bodies are supposed to do so if it’s clean, but it’s like okay, I got this let’s do this. And if it’s not if we’re eating food full of chemicals and pesticides , go on and on, then the body becomes confused, so it then it will start sending out those those signals saying I need you to jump in now.
Cristina Francy 9:24
Yeah. it’s so hard to kind of avoid the chemical sometimes because it’s in the soil of the foods that grow, in our corn and in our fruits and our vegetables and , we try our best to buy organic, but inflation happens and I think that people just need to try to do their best with the budget that they have, live in like this toxic bubble or laundry detergents have toxins in them, there’s only like three corporations that own like all the brands so they give you like an illusion of choice but you know, their whole, held under tight corporate umbrella. So, we have to, be smart and navigate the best way that we can.
Nikki Burnett 10:11
We do and you know, we have pretty good tools and resources to help us through some of that stuff because you’re right, it can be hard, especially when we don’t have an understanding of what to look for what’s fake, what’s not fake, what’s the quote-unquote greenwashing, you told? We’re told that these naturally safe cleaners are good for us when they’re full of toxins, but they say natural, right? And here’s some practice all the time. What says natural, doesn’t matter? It means nothing. But you know, my favorite resource is environmental working group.com or.org. You know, ew, G, so you can go to their website, you can put in whatever cleaner, whatever food, whatever ingredient, and just put an ew G, and whatever it is that you’re looking for, it’ll come up with a rating. I mean, the stories that I have about even my own experiences, what I’m pretty clean, I’m pretty good about what I do, and what I put into our environment, what I put into my body and on my skin. But I think I did my research and I look it up on Egypt, ew, G and this happened recently. And it comes out in F and this low.
Cristina Francy 11:28
Yeah it’s really good. And it’s like, got an F rating or like, that was a fail,
Nikki Burnett 11:37
So where people have this mindset, and I do, too, I hate wasting money. But I’m just gonna finish it. Because why don’t want to waste the money. There are some situations where I’m throwing it out. Because I don’t want to be exposed to it. I don’t want my dogs to be exposed to it. I want my husband to be exposed to it. This is not okay. So throw it away, and find the better options, because there are some great options out there for all of the things that we do. And sometimes if we do simple things, like going back to the cleaners, vinegar and essential oils, they’re inexpensive, they’re easy, and doesn’t take any time to do them. And it actually is healthy.
Cristina Francy 12:19
Yeah. It’s amazing. I just don’t see how it can be legal to put these chemicals in all of our foods, how is it even legal to do that, we’re like, the sickest we’ve ever been, we’re like the most obese we’ve ever been. And we’re like, the only country, just lab rats for the United States. they just do experiments on us, we have no idea what they’re doing just to see how we react, they can give two shits, if we get sick or whatever, the world we live in is crazy.
Nikki Burnett 12:55
It is crazy. What’s beautiful about though, is that I have a choice, whether I support these companies, or I say no, with my pocketbook, and put them out of business. And it takes education, it takes awareness, it takes an understanding, which is a huge part of why I do what I do, I want to get the message out there, we don’t have to be this sick. You know, it’s up to me on you know, going to ew G and determining, this food is it has, because I can’t afford to go just do all organic, which I get. This rate has the least amount of pesticides and herbicides. So let’s stick with some of these things. So let’s just eat it, ew, G, they’re clean 15. And they’re dirty dozen. So it takes a little time to continue to educate yourself, this is the stuff I love. So I do it all the time. But my goal is to kind of consolidate like what you’re doing right? You want to get good information out there. So people can start their own understanding learning process. And then when we start to stop buying some of this shit that’s out there and creating continuing to create harm, which again, as I said earlier, can be passed on for generations. This is when things start to turn around. And they are starting to think that we’re starting to see, with the movement of functional medicine and functional nutrition with the movement of, e WG as well as people understanding more about gluten haven’t think, that the Non-GMO Project, things like that, getting back to basics and, just avoiding the junk as much as we can.
Cristina Francy 14:48
Yeah. it’s all about having people feel like they can take back control of their life and any aspect whether that’s their nutrition, that’s their mental health. That’s just , getting back on track from like, the girl you used to be before or the woman you used to be before kids, or whatever it is, knowing that you’re not alone in your journey, and there’s people out there to help you like, it can help with healing yourself through nutrition. And, and I think that’s extremely important. It’s nice to have people around to help you hold accountability, and also just kind of see what you’re not seeing. And have the tools like the wood, the Epigenetics, understanding that and having someone like you with knowledge, so I think it’s important for people to feel that they can have a choice and take back control, and especially in the products that we use, and we can show it through our pocketbooks and just through always continuing educating ourselves.
Nikki Burnett 15:56
It’s true, you nailed it right on the head, I think because we all sometimes need somebody to look outside of ourselves, I can see this. And I know sometimes I have a hard time, sometimes thinking outside of the box because it’s stuff that I don’t know or experience. And, this is why I have hire business coaches, this is why I’ve hired mindset coaches, and this is why people hire me, is so I can if they, may not be as in tune with their body as they can possibly be in eating really well. But I still had the ability to come and see from the outside to help give guidance on, So let’s try this and see if this is maybe the better option. Because when we’re sitting in the middle, of a situation of a chronic condition, sometimes you’re just feel like I’m spinning out of control.
Cristina Francy 16:58
Yeah, then you work so hard. And then you don’t see results you’re just like, what’s going on? it’s definitely, like, dark night through the soul. But, if you come out on the other side, it’s great. Honestly, I think the thing that got me through it all is my mindset, surrounding myself with people who are knowledge in this space, whether that’s functional or Western medicine. I geared more toward natural stuff. I’m like, oh, man, I don’t want to be a product of pharma, where you have to be, stuck on medicine But, being truthful to yourself, where you are in life, sometimes like a hard decision, to leave someone for your sake of a toxic environment, or whatever that is, you know, like, just being really honest with where you are at is, what’s going to be the first step to healing yourself.
Nikki Burnett 18:01
I think that’s so true. Because it brings to mind it’s so interesting, you don’t know people’s stories until you start getting into it, and you’re just holy smokes man, people deal with a lot of junk. life can be really, really hard. And for her, and I didn’t know this until we were we got into it, but it literally was taking that first step. She was afraid she didn’t want to, she didn’t know what was gonna happen, you just get stuck again, sort of in that spiral. what’s going to help and I don’t know what to do in those first steps. And then she’s now on this step toward, just all the amazing things that still gonna be work, But she was so smart and so much to offer. And it helped her to understand her own history. So much of that created her blocks her from being stuck. she was able to start to move past that and able to understand that, and not feel some of the pain that she had felt in the past. It’s true, sometimes just have that little push.
Cristina Francy 19:23
So Nikki, before I dive into my four questions, do you have any last words before we begin?
Nikki Burnett 19:30
I think so. I have to put this out there because it’s the thing that I’m probably the most excited and passionate about. I work so much with people who are dealing with, the GI stuff, the autoimmune stuff, but it has all sort of culminated into expanding into preconception planning. And I keep saying it has to do with the epigenetics because it’s such a fascinating field and fascinating world of Have a really understanding the amount of control that we have as individuals, I think so often I’m just one person, I don’t have control over anything or my life is crazy, or whatever the case may be. But having this knowledge that my health today can have an impact on consumption, on pregnancy, on the baby on development of the baby, the development of the baby’s brain, their mental and emotional health as they age, and then for seven generations ahead, is what the data shows is our health today can impact seven generations, that’s hundreds of years that is of health, that we can create the health of the future. So I get all animated about it, because I get really excited about it. Because we can do something as individuals, we can do something about sort of this. you said earlier, this madness, that we’re in this, We’re sicker, we’re heavier, and our minds are in more anxiety and depression.
Cristina Francy 21:02
Well the amount of like Down Syndrome now, has increased tenfold, what is happening? What are we doing that is causing this because it used to be rare? when I was growing up? Now, it’s like, I don’t even know the number. I don’t want to say the wrong thing. But a lot more people have it, and it’s a lot more common, and what are we doing to our children?Is it our food? Is it the medicine, there’s something going on, and we need to get down to the bottom of it, I think, because we’re seeing it in the generations, like you were talking about it does affect generations to come.
Nikki Burnett 21:46
And so just for the sake of clarity, I’m sorry, I interrupted
Cristina Francy 21:51
No no it’s okay, we’re seeing it as basically.
Nikki Burnett 21:53
Yeah.for the sake of clarity, I just want to,for everybody else who’s listening, so there is no confusion. So Down syndrome is a true genetic condition.I don’t know the ins and outs of something like that. So in the fact that it is on the rise is unnerving to say, but want to make sure that when I talk about epigenetics, that epigenetics is the location on genes that turn genes on and off. So it’s essentially genetic expression, the epigenome is what allows for genetic expression, which is why we have so much power because we control what we put in our mouths ,on our skin, n our home environment, and what we put on our yards. So those are we have to control, although hard on the thoughts that we think to ourselves, there’s some things we don’t have control of certain traumas, the air outside, depending on where you live, so but there’s so much that we do have control of most of the conditions today that we deal with, some would say 95 to 98% of them are lifestyle or epigenetic, where is that the rest of it is truly genetic.
Cristina Francy 23:15
Yeah, Thanks for clarifying that. Okay, so Nikki, my four questions to you, first one, who and what inspires you?
Nikki Burnett 23:27
I’m gonna say, my clients truly inspire me. Because so often, they’re coming, not always, but so often, they’re coming to me, going through the whirlwind of the medical system, and frustrated and maybe even not listened to, I did a show on my labs are normal, but I don’t feel normal, you know, and we see this a lot where my doctors telling me I’m fine, but I don’t feel fine. And I want people to, be their advocates, And that’s, my clients who are coming to me, that’s really what they’re doing, whether it’s for their chronic condition that they’re dealing with, because they have to work really hard. And it can be hard, but it can also be amazing as we start to get through some of these humps. But then those who are, coming into my soulful conception course, which is the preconception planning, it’s the I want to do everything that I can to make sure that I’m creating the best for the future child or children. And of course, the my future ,family, for again, for years
Cristina Francy 24:39
And then my second question is, What is something you wish you knew when you were younger?
Nikki Burnett 24:46
I think that the impact of my actions on my health and, I was a little bit later in life to become a nutritionist. I studied nutrition, it’s been 25 years or more. But before that, say, I started studying nutrition after grad school. So prior to grad school, and from when I was a kid, we had gallons of ice cream. in high, we were eating nachos. And this, the amazing amount of terrible food I put into my body, is it’s crazy. And I should maybe be much sicker. The great thing, though, is we can reverse it. And so that’s, what I did, but I had my own chronic jump that I had to go through in order to get to this point. And so, I think that that had I known what we do. I grew up with my parents in a generation we ate processed food, what’s wrong with it? It’s food no matter what. And there’s just not the understanding that we have today. And that’s part of life. Part of growth is learning.
Cristina Francy 26:03
Yep. You got to fail to learn, and you got to slip, live, learn, and you’re always going to be learning. So my question to you is, what’s the central part of your daily routine?
Nikki Burnett 26:15
It is my morning meditation, Bible study, devotional. I’m not always amazing at it. But as I grow, and as I age, and as I learn, have sitting on my little couch right here next to me, it is that understanding of how important it is for setting my day, if I miss, then I try to do it at night. And just taking that time to be quiet. I just before you and I got on here. the sun’s out, and it’s beautiful. And it’s 77 degrees or something. And so I do my Bible study in the morning, but when it’s beautiful and sunny, that’s when I go outside, and I meditate and I try to just be quiet, which is hard. But be calm and listen. And that’s, listen for guidance, listen for wisdom, listen for whatever it is that I’m supposed to hear.
Cristina Francy 27:14
I think being outside is so recharging, and really great. So it’s like, anytime it is nice. I like to go for a walk and just like be in silence. And I get a lot of like messages when I’m out by myself. So my last question is the best advice you’ve ever received.
Nikki Burnett 27:36
Good coach.
Cristina Francy 27:41
Thank you, they definitely can be helpful. And help, like lead you to your goals of what you want to. where you want to go?
Nikki Burnett 27:49
I again, I think I said this earlier, but it’s in so many areas, we all need that help in different areas. it might be health, it might be mindset, it might be business coaching. there’s so many things out there to help. They’re there to help us grow, to see outside of ourselves. And yes, when we don’t know how to get to that next level, finding somebody who you trust to get you to that next level is I think it’s imperative.
Cristina Francy 28:20
Well, Nicki, thank you so much for coming on this week’s episode of “not your momma’s podcast” It was such a fruitful conversation. All of her links are down below in the show notes. Don’t be shy. Go say hi. And I will see you all in the next one. Thank you.