Wellness with Vanda
A women's health podcast where we'll be talking about hormones, mindset, motherhood, & everything in between. The host, Vanda, is a functional medicine nurse coach that helps women overcome hormone imbalance so that they can achieve optimal wellness. In her private practice she specializes in HTMA testing and DUTCH testing. Throughout this podcast she shares tips for boosting energy naturally, improve mood, recover from mom burnout, ways to increase fertility, ways to improve sleep quality, tips for pregnancy, tips for navigating postpartum and the fourth trimester, and more!
Wellness with Vanda
23: Win an HTMA Testing Package and Transform Your Wellness Routine
Unlock the secrets to a healthier you with our latest episode, where we're not just talking about wellness—we're acting on it with a fantastic Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA) testing package giveaway! Imagine the thrill of discovering exactly what your body needs to thrive. I've experienced firsthand the transformative power of HTMA, and now I'm here to guide you on this journey. From interpreting your results to personalized follow-ups, you'll get the full scoop on how to leverage this tool to make informed health decisions.
Hear about my daily dance with health, where simplicity reigns supreme, and small steps lead to big strides in well-being. I'll walk you through my own sustainable lifestyle modifications, inspired by HTMA, showing you how to seamlessly integrate them into your life—like adding a morning walk that's just as good for my soul as it is for my adrenals. We'll also explore the holistic health spectrum, from the rhythm of eating with mindfulness to the harmony of embracing stress and sleep management. With anecdotes about family nighttime rituals and the additional support from supplements and mineral baths, this episode is a heartfelt invitation to join me in nurturing your health in a way that's as unique as you are.
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Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. I am sitting here trying to debate which piece of news I want to start with. Do I want to start with the exciting giveaway announcement or do I want to start with the content that I want to really talk about in this episode, and they're both very odd to one another because they're both about HTMA testing. Let's start with the giveaway because I think that's super exciting and I want as many of you possible to hear it, know about it, be interned for it and kind of understand, like, why I decided to do this. So, if you get my emails or you follow me on Instagram, then you may already know that I am giving away one of my HTMA testing packages, which includes an HTMA test, my interpretation, the recording of me, like doing the interpretation, where I explain, like, what all the results mean and everything you know, the customized care plan that comes along with that, as well, as you'll get access to my hormone reset mini course and four check-ins with me after you get your results as you're working to implement things. Um, there is a process that you go through to enter this giveaway. Um, I have a minerals for mama's Instagram page. You need to be a follower. There there is an application with about five-ish questions. It's pretty short, just a couple of things that, like I would need to know about someone to make sure that H2A testing was the right fit for them. So you just kind of fill those out to give me a little bit of information and then you have to be in the US to be chosen as a winner and that's it. And so you've got until May 10th at 11.59 pm Eastern to get that application filled out and submitted to me that is a Friday and then the following Monday morning I will be announcing the winner of the giveaway in an email. I'm very excited about this and I decided to do this because I have seen how powerful HTMA testing was for myself and then for all of the clients that I have done HTMA testing with over the past two years. And although HTMA testing is one of the most affordable options in the functional health space as far as testing goes, it's still an investment and I know that pricing and cost can truly be a barrier for some people and I want to incorporate things in my practice, in my business, to where I can help remove that barrier and make sure that this testing is accessible to everyone. So that's one of the reasons that I try to keep my pricing as reasonable as I can. I offer payment plans to make things easier and I want to start incorporating kind of like get you know, like the occasional giveaway, maybe like a scholarship type program. I don't know. I don't have all of that worked out yet, but I just felt like to kind of I love the month of May. My birthday is in May.
Speaker 1:I live in Kentucky. It's derby season in May. Um, if you don't know what that is, it's like a huge horse race and it's hosted here in Kentucky. It's like a really big deal if you live in Kentucky and it's kind of a big deal all across the US. But not everyone is into horse racing. Anyway, I digress, it's like the weather gets nice here in Kentucky Once we hit May. It's pretty consistently nice and I just hit May, it's pretty consistently nice and I just I just love May.
Speaker 1:So I decided that I wanted to do this giveaway in May because I just I just have a lot of excitement in May and I think this is a really fun and exciting thing and I'm going to spend the next it's nearly three weeks really that you have to enter this giveaway and I'm going to be spending this time doing a lot of education about HTMA testing and why it's valuable and what types of insights you can get from HTMA testing. And then not only, not only just the like what you get from HTMA testing, but how you incorporate it into your normal day-to-day and I'm going to be showing a lot of that in my stories and in reels and posts over the next few weeks while we're in this like giveaway period. Because if you're new to me or you're new to the functional medicine space, I think that you know you don't know what you don't know until you know it. You know you don't know what you don't know until you know it. And HTMA testing like sounds cool, even just on the surface, like oh, I cut this piece of my hair and it gets sent to the lab and you learn all kinds of things from it. Like that sounds cool. But we need to like dig a little bit deeper than that. That way you guys can really understand, like how valuable this is and I just love HTMA testing and I think you guys have probably understand like how valuable this is and I just love H2A testing and I think you guys have probably figured that out by now, but I think it's so powerful because we learn about so many different body systems with just one test, and you know we don't get that with a lot of other options. So I would love for you to enter the giveaway. I feel like it's a pretty simple entry process. You will, like I said, just need a couple minutes to fill out those questions. Other than that, it's pretty simple to enter and you could win a free package, which is like a $500 normally priced package. So that's a pretty cool deal. So what I wanted to, that's like kind of the giveaway announcement. I'm very excited about it. I hope all of you will enter.
Speaker 1:Anyway, moving on from that, though, I wanted to talk today a little bit about, like I said, I'm gonna be doing a lot of education over the next several weeks in here on the podcast and just on Instagram and in my emails and things about kind of like what, what all we, how we apply, what all we learn from HTMA testing, because I see a lot of times people want to do HTMA testing to find out what supplements they should take, and that is a piece of information that we get Absolutely like, no doubt about it, that is something we learn with HTMA testing. But it's not the only thing that we learn and, to be honest, it's probably not even the most important thing that we learn. And, to be honest, it's probably not even the most important thing that we learn, because supplements are meant to be just that. They are meant to be supplemental to your other diet and lifestyle factors. They are meant to support your other efforts and kind of fill in the gaps where you maybe can't or just don't meet requirements in your normal day to day. But what I think kind of gets lost in maybe a lot of the advertising for HTMA or a lot of the education for HTMA testing that you'll see sometimes even myself and other providers do as well is that you really learn a lot about just how to shape your day-to-day activities and your day-to-day choices with your HTMA testing results.
Speaker 1:And I think when I start to talk about that, sometimes I lose people, because it's like people are resistant to change, like, just as humans, the way we were created. We are resistant to change and that's not something that we can necessarily help. It's literally just like the way our mind works. We like to keep things the same because somewhere in our subconscious we think saying the same means safety. Sometimes that's the case and sometimes it's not.
Speaker 1:But when I talk about the need or the opportunity to make diet and lifestyle changes, some people kind of shut down, because maybe they've worked through a program before or they've went on a diet before where there were extreme changes or extreme measures, like you had to totally cut out of food or you could only do this or only do that, and there's like this expectation for very black and white rules and expectation for perfection in order for the thing whether it be a program, a diet, whatever it was to work. And I think that's why I lose people sometimes when I'm talking about diet and lifestyle changes, because nobody wants to live by like hard and fast black and white rules, because I think that we all kind of know that is not sustainable. Sometimes it's not even achievable for more than a day or half a day. And that's something that I try to be very transparent about when I talk about like my coaching approach and my approach when I'm putting together care plans is that I put things together and I teach things and I present things in a very sustainable and actionable way because I want you, I want my clients that work with me and even just the people in my community that learn from me. I want them to actually be able to take what I'm teaching and take what I'm saying and apply it to their life for a period of time, like I was like not, I don't want to say forever, like nothing's forever Right, but I want you to be, I want it to be sustainable. I want it to be something that you can actually incorporate and make just part of your normal routine. So I wanted to kind of talk through like a normal day and how I have taken my own HTMA results and I use it to inform some of my decisions that I make, and I honestly don't really have this like planned out. I didn't write this out or anything. I'm kind of going off the cuff here because I felt like that would be the most authentic way to present it, because this is just how I live my normal day-to-day life and it's very sustainable. It's very, probably very, similar to how you live your normal day-to-day life.
Speaker 1:I think that there is this conception that if you get an HTMA test and you're presented with this care plan, that you're going to have to drastically change your life and I think the point I'm trying to get across is that, yes, there are changes that might need to be made, but it's typically not that far off from what you're already doing. And some people might hear that and be like, oh well, then why would I need the testing if I'm not going to make that much change? What really should be good news for you to hear that? Because it means that it's a more achievable thing for you to do and actually implement and like take action on and still get the results that you're looking for. That's one of the reasons why I like HTMA testing so much is because it's somewhat easy to implement the things after you get the testing done and you still get the result, which is what we all want in the first place. So I'm thinking about how I want it.
Speaker 1:So let's just like walk through a normal day and how I like start my day. So typical for me this time of year I get up, I help my husband as we get the kids ready and we get everybody out the door. Since I work from home, my husband takes the kids to the sitter and to school and stuff on his way to work. That's just like what works well for us. So in the morning time I have about an hour, sometimes just 45 minutes, to kind of like get myself ready, do like a walk or a workout if I choose to, or maybe something for the business, whatever it might be, before I start my traditional work day.
Speaker 1:Now, a lot of times I choose to utilize this time to go outside for a walk, especially this time of year when the weather is nice. I think a lot of you guys will already know that about me. The reason that this like and you're like okay, banda, but like how does that even tie to your H2MA testing results? Like that doesn't make sense. Well, not only do I just like to do that, naturally, but one of the things that you know has been revealed by my H2MA testing results and that I was not surprised by, given my like history with back-to-back pregnancies and breastfeedings is that my adrenals need a lot of support.
Speaker 1:So I'm constantly thinking about ways that I can better support my circadian rhythm and better support my body's ability to respond to stressors. It's like that idea of stress resiliency, because we can't avoid stress, but we want to like help our body cope and be able to respond appropriately in the moment when we're encountering stress. So it's been proven through like research that spending time outside can reduce cortisol levels and help with stress management in general. So by choosing to do that walk outside instead of in here on my treadmill or skipping it all together and giving some support there, then we also know that when we are outside in the morning time, from the time you wake up until about 10 am, our eyes and receptors that we have in our skin are taking in the rays from the sun and that is what kind of helps set and reset our circadian rhythm. So in the long run, I am also helping support my efforts to have good sleep, which, to be honest, is something that I do pretty well with when I don't have a newborn that's waking me up Because, thankfully, like we're at a point with the kids right now they're seven, four and two and for the most part they are sleeping through the night consistently and I just like to sleep.
Speaker 1:I've always been a pretty good sleeper. I've never been a night owl that like stayed up super late Cause I like, like I'm the girl that fell asleep first at the slumber party. Okay, I can't hang, I cannot stay up all night. I don't want to. I like to sleep. So that's always been something that, like, I haven't had to like work hard at to sleep. So that's always been something that, like, I haven't had to like work hard at. Um, it kind of comes naturally to me because it's just the way that my body works. I need my sleep, so that's one thing. So, like, typically, after I finish up my walk, I'm going to come in and I'm going to have some type of breakfast.
Speaker 1:And, nutritionally, one thing that showed up on my test was that I needed to be a little more diligent in how I'm putting meals together to support my blood sugar, and that is something that I have worked on to make sure that I have all of the necessary components in my meals. So, I've got some protein, I've got fat, I've got fiber and I have some. I do not restrict carbs. I know that that is a very common, like popular, thing a lot of people do, but I do not find that to be effective or helpful, so I do not do that. So, like you know, that is one way also that my HTMA testing results help inform my decisions.
Speaker 1:Like, yes, there are some mornings that I get up and I'm like you know what, today I would really like to just have some kids sugary cereal and go on about my day. But since I have this knowledge in the back of my mind that like I really need more than that in order to support my body the way it needs to be supported and also to feel well throughout the rest of the day, sometimes I will choose to move forward and have that cereal, but I will follow up with that by adding some collagen to my drink. I'll maybe have a yogurt afterwards or alongside it to get in some protein. I will add something like some type of fiber component, like maybe I put some like I don't know seeds or something in the cereal, like as I'm eating it. But I try to make sure that I have all of those components. So once I've kind of tackled breakfast, then I typically am fixing like my drinks for the day, cause I'm getting ready to like head to my desk and I'm going to be stationary for, you know, a few hours at least. Um, so I know from my HTMA testing results that my potassium level is very depleted. So even down to which drinks I choose have been informed by my HTMA testing results.
Speaker 1:I do a pickleball drink once a day, every single day. I also typically do an electrolyte supreme every day, that pickleball supplement. That drink is really high in potassium, so that's a specific reason that I choose that. The electrolyte supreme has a lot of different things in it and it's kind of like some general overall support. It also has some potassium in it, but it's kind of just like my general support.
Speaker 1:Now, as I'm getting my drinks together, I'm then typically taking my supplements. My supplements look a little bit different right now because I'm pregnant, than they would normally when I'm not pregnant. Um, but, and I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of like what I take when, because that is so individualized and I never want someone to look at like what supplements I'm taking and run out and just do what I'm doing, because that's the whole point of doing HTMA testing is that you know specifically what you need, not what I need. So, anyway, I will take my supplements and then I get my workday going, and some things that I've been able to incorporate into my workday that have really helped me and were kind of a result of insight that I got through my HTMA test was that I get up and I move throughout my day.
Speaker 1:Now, um, instead of allowing myself to just sit here for hours and hours on end working, um, I purchased a standing desk, um, and I already had a small treadmill that could be used as a. I will get up and leave my desk for my breaks. You know, as a working person, we are entitled to our lunch break and our two 15 minute breaks a day, and I think that a lot of us, if we're really honest with ourselves, are very guilty about never taking those 15 minute breaks, unless you're a smoker and probably the majority of you in my audience are not smokers. But anyway, we still are entitled to those breaks and we need to take them. So I have really pushed myself to be diligent about getting up and removing myself from this office that I have and actually doing the breaks, and a lot of times I will go outside. I might take an extra, like 10 minute walk or so outside, um, I could even do a very short, mind you, cause you've only got 15 minutes, but you can even do like a short workout or just some stretching, or like a really short yoga flow or something to like kind of get your blood moving around, um, and just get some like stretch and extra movement into your day, because when you're sitting all day things get tight and they tend to hurt and you know all of that.
Speaker 1:Then with my lunch and my dinner and even a snack if I need it that's another thing Like, I will let myself have a snack if I need it. If I am hungry, then I do not myself have a snack if I need it. If I am hungry, then I do not like have this rule that I can't snack. I try to be mindful of it and I kind of like clock that in my mind and say, okay, if I got hungry after my lunch, before it was time for dinner, how come, like, is it something that's related to my cycle right now? Is it because I didn't eat enough at lunch? Is it because of what I ate at lunch? And I kind of like talk myself through that to figure out why and sometimes there's not an answer Like, some days we're just hungrier than others and that is totally normal. That is part of being a normal, functioning, active human being. So I do not deny those to myself. I don't say like, oh, nope, you need to wait till dinner. No, you just need to drink some water. No, you just need to tough it out.
Speaker 1:So when I'm putting together lunch snack or dinner, I again am looking at that blood sugar balancing piece. Do I have all of my components here? How do I think that this meal, after I've consumed it 30 minutes to an hour after, how's it going to make me feel? Is it going to sustain my energy for what I need to do the rest of the day of the day? Then trying to think of, like you know, afternoons around here are kind of crazy my kids get home, we've got to do dinner, sometimes we've got ball practices, and through all of that I'm just trying to be mindful of, like what I'm allowing to stress me out and what I'm like no, I'm just not going to stress about that Like there are things in our life that we encounter in the normal day to day that like we could stress out about it and like, make it a thing, or we could be like no, I'm just going to let it go. Like. I think the first thing that's like come into my mind when I think about this is I have a four-year-old daughter, kenley, and she's very strong-willed and she likes to do things the way she likes to do them and a lot of that is around, like her clothes that she wears.
Speaker 1:We've been going through this thing recently with shoes, where she's got to be able to raise her toe up in her shoes. So she's like, really on this big sandal kick and you know what, sometimes the shoes that she picked doesn't go with the outfit she's got on, okay, or sometimes she wants to wear sandals when it's still like 40 degrees outside and it's not ideal. But sometimes and I'm not saying every time, but sometimes I can just choose to let that go and be like you know what, rock on, sister, you do, you, um ain't going to worry about it. There's other times where maybe we're like going to church or we got to go to the funeral home or I don't know we're, we're doing something where it does sort of matter what shoes she's wearing and I have to pick that battle. But there are other times and it's like it ain't worth it, it ain't worth arguing with her, it ain't worth the stress it's going to cause me to argue with her to win this battle. It just ain't worth it, um and I. There are so many other examples, especially when you have kids, of things where you can choose to just let it go, and sometimes we are.
Speaker 1:We have to teach ourselves that it's okay to just let things go sometimes. Um, so that has been a big thing for me, um, um, so that has been a big thing for me. Um, making sure that we have time as a family to wind down before everyone goes to bed and this is probably not like what sleep experts would recommend, but for my kids that looks like us turning the lights down, low or off in the living room and watching a show together before we do their bedtime tuck-ins and go into bed. I know that TV can be stimulating, I get it, but that's what works for my family. Like, that's the routine that we've gotten into with my kids and they love it. And if there are nights that we try to like skip that or maybe we're coming home from the ballpark late and it's like we really don't have time for that, it honestly makes bedtime a harder a lot of times. So doing those things to support their circadian rhythm as well and their little mind triggers that, hey, it's time to go to bed. You're also doing the same thing for you, like, because that's the routine we've developed for my kids. That's now also mine and my husband's routine of what our minds and our bodies expect before we go to bed. And then, lastly, I do have some supplements that I take before I go to sleep, mainly my MagSoothe, which is a product from Jigsaw Health that I love, and it's just supportive for a lot of different reasons. It's supportive to sleep, it's supportive to blood sugar balance and insulin levels and like combating some insulin resistance.
Speaker 1:There's probably other things that I didn't mention that I maybe don't incorporate on an every single daily basis, but pretty consistently like. One thing that just came to mind was my mineral baths. Like I try to do those pretty regularly, like a couple of times a week. Um, that's not to say it happens every single week, but especially in the winter months I get those in um a few times a week and that's just like another way that my body is able to absorb minerals, um, and it's an alternative pathway, kind of, because normally if I'm taking minerals in through my diet or through supplements or drinks, that has to go through my GI tract and like go through the digestion process and sometimes that's not easily or like well absorbed. But when I'm doing a mineral bath or I'm putting on magnesium lotion before I go to bed, that those are absorbed directly through the skin and you get to skip the digestion process. One thing that showed up on my HGMA test was that my digestion needed more support because my sodium levels are low and I might not be able to make as much stomach acid. So it's like I share all of this and this episode has honestly gotten lengthier than I anticipated. So I apologize for that.
Speaker 1:But I just wanted to try to like point out how, honestly, once you get your HTMA results and you may not feel like this right away like it's honestly sometimes a little overwhelming for people when they get their results because it's a lot of information. And it's honestly sometimes a little overwhelming for people when they get their results because it's a lot of information and it's a lot to take in and you're taking it in as a as like a non-trained practitioner. You know you haven't been trained on HTMA testing the way that I have and have all this background knowledge Like you're hearing these things kind of for the first time. That's one of the reasons why I do the recording of the results, as opposed to a live call with you where I would go through the results. That way, people have that recording and they can like listen back to it multiple times if they want to, or certain segments of it as many times as they want to, and I just think that that really helps kind of solidify some of the information and make it a little easier for you to take action on it and implement it. But, like I said, I just I wanted to show how, like different pieces of the HTMA results play into nearly every single part of my day now that I have them and I have this knowledge and it always will.
Speaker 1:So that is just kind of like another way and I really try to focus more heavily on just like the diet and lifestyle pieces as opposed to the supplements, because, like I said in the beginning, the supplements are meant to supplement and support your other efforts. They're not really supposed to be like the main thing or the main goal, because supplements are only going to get you so far if you don't also have supportive nutrition and lifestyle habits that you're working on as well. Supplements can only do so much for you. So I'm going to leave you with that today. Again, that giveaway is closing. Those applications are closing on May 10th at 1159 pm Eastern Standard Time. Please get those submitted. I've already had, like I announced this. I'm recording this on Monday morning and I announced it like less than four hours ago, and I've already had at least four entries before I started recording this episode, so I'm pumped about it. Um, I hope to see a lot more entries come in, um, and I'll talk to you guys soon. Have a good week.
