In this inaugural episode of The Wellness Mama Podcast: Simple Answers for Healthier Families, I discuss my personal journey and my reason for starting this blog and the podcast.
I also talk about what is next for the podcast and topics I’ll be covering in the future, especially my core topics on how to “RESET” your health:
Why A Podcast?
When my oldest son was just six weeks old, I was reading a magazine in the doctor’s office at my follow-up appointment and I read a line that hit me like a ton of bricks:
“For the first time in two centuries, the current generation of children in America may have shorter life expectancies than their parents.”
The article continued to talk about the coming rise in cancer, heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune disease and other problems. I looked down at my tiny, perfect infant and every cell in my body rebelled against the idea that he would have to suffer these problems.
I decided that a 50:50 chance of diabetes wasn’t good enough for our children. That a 1 in 3 chance of getting cancer was not going to cut it and that statistics like “95% of the US population will be obese in the next two decades,” needed to change.
That day, the mission of WellnessMama.com was born as I realized what an uphill battle we must fight to protect future generations. It started a personal journey for me to find ways to improve my own health and the health of my husband and children. It also ignited a fire in me to change these statistics.
My Story
I also realized that I was a victim of these statistics myself. I am the classic type-A first child. In high school I was senior class president, graduated with honors and was in 23 different extra curricular activities and several sports. I made the grades and was up late studying and up early for meetings at school so I didn’t sleep much.
Like most students, I figured I could eat whatever I wanted as long as i didn’t gain weight so I subsisted on fried foods, cafeteria pizza and coffee.
College was more of the same plus writing assignments that added extra hours and occasional travel. One summer, I walked across the country, literally, which was one of the best experiences of my life but also the most difficult until I had children.
I was with a group of students and we walked 15-20 miles or more a day each day, sometimes during the night. Combine that with bad food and stress and you pretty much have the breeding ground for health problems.
Fast forward a few years and I left the journalism dream to become a wife and a mom, which is definitely the best choice I’ve ever made, but five kids pretty close together also means not much sleep for about eight years.
Turns out that stress, bad food and lack of sleep are a great way to create problems like autoimmune disease, trouble losing weight and more.
Ever since that moment when I read that statistic in that doctors office, I’ve been on a search to create a better future for my children and yours but also to find answers to my own health struggles. I finally got some answers for myself lately and found out that I have autoimmune thyroid problems, likely fueled by my stress, lack of sleep and bad diet earlier in life.
I know first hand how difficult these challenges are and how hard they are to reverse once they are there, and I don’t want my children to struggle with this same fate.
My goal with this podcast and with WellnessMama.com is to address these topics and provide answers for your family. I’ll be interviewing health experts, other moms, doctors, researchers and getting their best advice to help
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Dr. Alan Christianson is a Naturopathic Doctor who specializes in natural endocrinology with a focus on thyroid health.
Chris became especially interested in fertility and hormone health when he and his wife had trouble conceiving and his research led him to unconventional answers about diet, lifestyle and stress. They went on to conceive and have a healthy (and beautiful) daughter and it is now a mission for him to help other couples do the same.
Bo told the other dad that growing up, he and his brother got a football for Christmas one year and would toss it to each other 1,000 times per day. They realized that it was a long time until next Christmas and that they had to make the football last, so they didn’t want it to touch the ground very often so it wouldn’t wear out too quickly, so that was their rule.
