In this powerful episode, we sit down with Sarah Reilly, who spent years battling mysterious symptoms before finally discovering the truth — undiagnosed Lyme disease. She then also uncovered additional autoimmune disease symptoms. Sarah opens up about the emotional and physical toll of being dismissed by doctors, the turning points in her healing journey, and the holistic steps that helped her reclaim her health. If you’ve been struggling and wondering why you’re not healing Lyme disease, or any other autoimmune disease, this conversation offers both validation and hope. Tune in to learn practical strategies, red flags to watch for, and what real healing from Lyme disease looks like from someone who’s been there.
I’m Sarah Reilly—a Functional Medicine Nutritionist whose own Lyme and autoimmune comeback ignited a 16-year clinical career. After conventional care failed me, I dug into root-cause protocols, blending nutrition, lifestyle reset and burnout recovery into a system that’s reversed inflammation for thousands. Today I’m known as the ‘secret weapon’ for leaders and athletes, because I don’t just mask symptoms—I rebuild resilience in body, mind and performance.
Visit her website and schedule a free consultation at http://getnourished.net
Follow Sarah on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/getnourished.sarah/
My youtube channel with videos of this podcast and more.
https://youtube.com/c/annalaurabrownhealthcoach
Check out my essential oils membership and coaching and schedule a free consultation. http://essentialwellnesscircle.com
Request a free foundations of wellness kit: https://forms.gle/jBoGuUSNJebET77B6
Watch my free 3 steps to an autoimmune energy reset: https://annalaurabrown.com/autoimmune-energy-webinar/
Interview Transcript
AnnaLaura Brown: So today on Autoimmune Rehab, I am happy to welcome Sarah Riley. So Sarah, welcome to Autoimmune Rehab. Why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit about who are you and what brings you on to the podcast today?
Sarah Reilly: Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I’m honored to be here. And um yes, so who am I? I’m Sarah Riley, functional medicine nutritionist um and owner founder of Get Nourished, a virtual nutrition practice. been serving clients in clinical practice for the last 17 years this summer and um love what I do and um have been working a long time in the realms of like chronic autoinflammation, chronic autoimmunity, chronic conditions such as that of variety sorts causing people to feel, you know, exhausted, inflamed, bloated, um at times overweight, and just really feeling like they have kind of lost, you know, lost control and they want to reclaim their body and their lives. And so, um, so I, um, I really really enjoy enjoy working alongside my clients as a partner in their health.
00:01:17
Sarah Reilly: And it was also a very long journey of my own, reclaiming my own health that brought me into this field. Um, and then also inspired my studies and and the direction that I’ve taken with it in functional medicine nutrition.
AnnaLaura Brown: Awesome. Yeah. And that’s typically how it works. Most of us that are in the field of helping people with autoimmune, we had our issues ourselves and that’s what got us into it.
Sarah Reilly: Yeah. Yeah.
AnnaLaura Brown: So, yeah, for sure.
Sarah Reilly: Yeah. Yeah.
AnnaLaura Brown: Absolutely. So, tell us a little bit about how that story started. I know we’re going to be talking about you had some struggles with lime, but also some other autoimmunity. So, how did that all start? Did you get which which one came first?
Sarah Reilly: I know. Oh, the chicken or the egg? It’s always a fascinating question.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah.
Sarah Reilly: Well, actually lime came first. Um, I was bit at 25. I just turned 55 actually a few weeks ago.
00:02:03
Sarah Reilly: And I was bit at 25. Um, and in in 1995, people were not talking about Lyme disease. And I had a bullseye on the lower left hand calf and we thought it was a spider bite. I just moved to South Lake Tahoe for the summer and, you know, got a lot of mosquito bites. But there was one mosquito bite that had a little black center to it that just never went away. And I proceeded to get more tired and my GI changed. And um and the stress and depression kicked in. And it was this long journey of about eight years before I was actually finally diagnosed. But in between that time there were a lot of missteps medically that really compromised my health and also I nearly lost my life two times um iatrogenically meaning at the cost of conventional medicine and there was a time and a place for conventional medicine but ideally the treatment and the procedures are spoton right um and these were unfortunately not um and so it it got very complicated um and you know I was just 25 at the at the height of that time when you’re like, you know, big dreams.
00:03:14
Sarah Reilly: I wanted more than anything to be a mama and to be a professional and to do both of them. My my goal in my head was to be like, you know, little CEO and um have my 2.5 kids in my white picket fence by the time I was 30. But by the time I was 27, I couldn’t feed myself with a fork or button my own pants and still didn’t know why because the pain in my hands and arms was so excruciating and I lost most strength and use of my hands and arms and still no one knew why for a number of years. And so I eventually pretty much you know lost everything. had to move home with my parents and um and you know SSI and the whole deal had graduated magnaum lad and it just none of it made sense to me like god what happened like how did this all unravel and then the deep unraveling came when a nutritionist and certain doctor thought oh this must be mercury poisoning we need to keelate you you’re going to get your life back and I remember saying anything it takes I’ll get my life back and And I said, “You got it. Let’s
00:04:19
Sarah Reilly: do it. Other people seem to be handling it fine.” Well, I had a DMPS cation push um at 2:30 p.m. in the afternoon, and by 6:30, I was in seizure, going blind, deaf, and paralyzed on my bedroom floor.
AnnaLaura Brown: Whoa.
Sarah Reilly: And my roommate happened to come home early from work that night.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah.
Sarah Reilly: Had she not, I wouldn’t be here. But she literally dragged me into Cedar Sinai. Thank God we lived around the corner from it. She dragged me in literally by herself into the hospital and I just last thing I remember was projectile vomiting and falling out of the wheelchair because I had no physical strength in my body. I was on the verge of cardiac arrest. My potassium sodium had crashed and um my liver and kidneys were shutting down because I was mobilizing so much mercury. And so um I woke up a few days later in leather restraints and a catheter hanging out of me unable to speak or process really information and my life changed in that moment.
00:05:13
AnnaLaura Brown: Wow.
Sarah Reilly: I had become a universal reactor, meaning I was now allergic to everything in the environment because the mercury had just completely I had mobilized stored stores, you know, from red blood cells and bone and muscle. And um it dumped to an industrial mercury poisoning level. And um the urologist who was working with me, he said, “I’ve never seen a case like this before in my 30 years of practice.” He goes, “I don’t know what they did to you in that clinic, but don’t ever do it again.” Um, and sadly the doctor and the nutritionist, they lied to the hospital about what I was given. So the hospital didn’t even have the accurate information of what I was dealing with.
AnnaLaura Brown: Oh my gosh.
Sarah Reilly: At first they thought I was a druggie. They were asking my roommate, “Are you sure she doesn’t do drugs? Like what’s going on here?” Because I was suddenly having an acute mercury poisoning incident. And this was on top of no one knowing I had Lyme disease still, right?
00:06:07
AnnaLaura Brown: See, you had mercury poisoning, too. Then you had mercury poisoning and you had Oh my god.
Sarah Reilly: I had mercury poison. Yeah. It would it had accumulated. it had bioaccumulated in my body. I think when I had gotten lime, like my body just kind of stopped methylating and detoxifying appropriately and stuff was just bioaccumulating in me. And they’re like, “Have you eaten seafood all your life?” I’m like, “No, I didn’t start having sushi until like, you know, a couple years ago.” And that was occasionally. And so I was bioaccumulating it. Um, but then I became toxicity induced loss of tolerance where I had lost my tolerance for self tissue. Enter the autoimmunity. Um and um I had lost my tolerance for the environment. So I had anaphylactic seizures from the random passing car or at night because we had just gotten new carpet when I had returned from the hospital. You know, new carpet had been installed in my apartment. So within a few days, my my parents had to come get me out of LA and I gave everything in a day away to Goodwill.
00:07:06
Sarah Reilly: And um you know I moved into the desert where I lived for about 4 years because that’s where there weren’t pesticides. Um when I first moved there there weren’t cell towers there. There wasn’t it was just kind of this pure environment they had created for me. But then Las Vegas built out so fast. What had become the outskirts where they originally lived within a few years was not the outskirts. And so um I desperately was looking for a doctor to help me. No conventional doctors knew what to do with me or even the alternatives. They’re just like, “Look, the cure could be worse than, you know, the the disease in this case.” um you know any attempt to keelate me or detoxify me or to do anything or even get rid of the lime. It was and finally I found out I had lime um and by chance at a little clinic in northern Reno and um and so it was one it’s never just it doesn’t autoimmune process doesn’t just show up out of nowhere.
00:08:04
Sarah Reilly: It’s like it takes pushing of the immune system. It takes exposure of antigens, you know, that the immune system says, “No, thank you. No thank you. No thank you.” Like, okay, you’re not listening. Boom. Here comes the gong. No thank you. And a loss of tolerance. And then you’re looking at these activated pathways of then, you know, tissue damage. And then you’re playing a whole another game, right? So, um, yeah, I still didn’t know I had Lyme disease when I ended up in Cedar Cyanide Hospital.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, this so all this so you found out you had lime, you moved to the desert, all this stuff happened after your first initial like experience where you almost died then.
Sarah Reilly: Um, had no idea. Still didn’t. The doctors weren’t looking for it. They were just running regular CBC’s on me and I kept asking, “Is there something else going on?” And then I was tested and I had like, I don’t know, a parasite or something.
00:08:52
Sarah Reilly: Like, they’re like, “Don’t be ridiculous. this isn’t lime. This is a parasite. Yet, I’m like, will you test me for lime? They’re like, don’t be ridiculous. It’s just a parasite that’s causing you to be so sick. But I’m like, I’m so sick. Like, is this really causing the loss of use of my arms and feeling like, you know, my arms had been blown off my body? And um and so I went into a hyperbaric oxygen tank in Santa Monica. And when they put me under atmosphere and I came back up, my eyes were black and my left leg was purple. And they’re like my my p my pupils were pulsing back and forth and they’re like we’re concerned you may have just had a stroke and they’re like the only time we’ve seen this extreme of reactions like both my legs were actually purple and my both my eyes were pulsing you know big black pupils small big small big and they’re like we’re we’re concerned about your brain you can’t go back into hyperbaric.
00:09:45
Sarah Reilly: Um have you ever been bit by a tick? The only time we’ve seen reactions like this is when we’ve seen someone who has Lyme disease and I’m like, “What’s that?” They’re like, “Ask your doctor. Ask your GI doctor. He’ll know.” And he’s the one who I went back and asked because I was in hyperbaric to quote unquote treat that that um you know that parasite so to speak with some really intense antibiotics of which I was having all this you know severe leg and hip pain. And um little did I know now I know that was a Herxheimer because I was giving being given the heavy hitter antibiotics which was hitting the lime at that time. But he thought it was just all the parasite. I mean I was having fully black white bowel movements. That’s not normal, you know.
AnnaLaura Brown: No. Oh my god.
Sarah Reilly: And I’m feeling like my legs had been blown off and I couldn’t walk. And um and so it just got so crazy and every doctor was like, “Are you crazy? It’s
00:10:38
Sarah Reilly: not that.” I’m like, “Well, then test me.” Right. And so he’s like, “Don’t be ridiculous. You know, this is cryptosperidium. That’s ridiculous. It’s not lime. And you just need to keep doing these treatments.” And so I trusted him and I did because there’s a certain point where you trust the person in the white coat. And you’re like, “Okay, I’ll do what you say to do if you say this is going to help me get my life back.” Because the last thing you want to be doing at 28 or 30 years old or 32 years old is you want you don’t want to be going to the doctor. You don’t want to be spending your time doing that when you have dreams of success and a family and having kids and, you know, getting married and all those fun things and travel in life. You know, you don’t want to be spending your time in a waiting room or in doctors who aren’t listening to you, you know. So, um, or in the pain and the fatigue and just missing out on life.
00:11:31
Sarah Reilly: So, so that was an evolution of of the autoimmune processes that developed for me. Yeah. started out with lime and then with a huge hammer of a real traumatic mercury poisoning event. Um, and then from there it went from like a severe neurological pain with the Lyme disease to a severe neurological nightmare after the mercury chilation. And that’s why it’s like when people say, “Oh, my doctor wants to chilate me.” I’m like, “Have they looked at your your auto antibodies?” No. What’s that? Well, until you know you don’t have auto antibodies to mercury, don’t even touch it.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah, you got to be careful like stuff is not juggling.
Sarah Reilly: right? Like people get too a little too excited on the whole detox train, you know? So, um, so there you go. That that’s how it ended up, you know, me in the desert living like the girl in the bubble with, you know, my world was I had a room about, I don’t know, 10 by 10 or something that had an infrared sauna, an organic futon, a glass desk, and an oxygen tank.
00:12:30
Sarah Reilly: And I spent most of my time in that room. And if my if anyone came to visit, my mom had to interview them like, “Did you shampoo your hair today? What did you shampoo it with? Are you wearing any perfume? Did you wash your clothes and you know, tide or anything conventional? My body, even if you couldn’t smell it, my body was having a violent reaction to it. Couldn’t process toxins, anything in the environment anymore.
AnnaLaura Brown: s***.
Sarah Reilly: So, I had to live in a really pure environment. And then eventually, a few years later, um I developed extreme electroensitivity. a year later actually um because of living on top of a fairly high voltage space. And so that was a whole another angle of my own personal autoimmune journey. And then eventually through the grace of God, I found a doctor in Mexico who saved my life and got me out of the cray cray. Right.
AnnaLaura Brown: Wow, that’s crazy. So, how did you find that, Dr. Mexico?
00:13:27
AnnaLaura Brown: Did you know somebody that knew that
Sarah Reilly: Well, well, I started researching people who were getting treatment for Lyme disease and I’m like, everyone who I talked to who’ done antibiotics there late stage antibiotics don’t touch and then the only people I talked to were who had done homeop homeopathy and I learned of a woman um a certain homeopathic doctor that had been on Rhode Island, worked a lot with Lyme disease. She was then in Malibu and I corresponded with her and spoke with her and then um she’s worked with her for just a little bit to take a few remedies and um it just wasn’t I was still deteriorating really really fast. I was like 82 lbs and just couldn’t walk very far and couldn’t carry on much of a conversation.
AnnaLaura Brown: Oh yeah.
Sarah Reilly: And I’d had just implications to my brain and my heart from the mercury and the lime and um and so and it wasn’t you lime always has little par partners with it and mine were part bartinella and from brillia the lime and then bartinella and besia and so it was like a trifecta of you know not so fabulous along with a lot of immune suppression from the the lime and so excuse me the mercury Um, so she said, “Look, I can’t I just can’t. There’s
00:14:42
Sarah Reilly: nothing more I can do for you. Conventional medicine’s going to kill you, and I’ve used all my tools I can with you.” And she said, “There’s a doctor in Mexico that I know works with really complex cases, and I think he might be your answer.” And I was like, “Are you freaking kidding me? Like, I can barely breathe the air in the United States.” I lived in Mexico when I was a little girl. I’m like, “How am I supposed to breathe the air and not go into, you know, anaphylactic seizures in Mexico?” And so um so any she’s like just trust me just get down there. So push came to shove a real traumatic push. My father saw one of my reactions in the middle of the night. Um my biological father who was phenomenal and he had come to help me get to this doctor in Malibu to actually see her in person. And that’s when she was really trying to convince me to see the doctor in Mexico. And um my father saw that night.
00:15:34
Sarah Reilly: I went into a um really really bad um uh EMF reaction, which for me at the time was um like they were like seizures, very scary.
AnnaLaura Brown: What?
Sarah Reilly: And he saw it and he was like, “This is ridiculous. Something else is going on. I am driving you to Mexico tomorrow and we’re going to go see this doctor.” So, my daddy drove me down to Mexico and um the doctor got me in and um he um he was the like the one doctor that looked through my big, you know, everybody’s got a binder, right? The medical binder of all your tests and everything.
AnnaLaura Brown: Mhm.
Sarah Reilly: He opened it up. Every other doctor just like, you know, threw it behind him and they’re like, “Yeah, everybody has big binders.” And this doctor actually opened it and read it from cover to cover and just I sat there in awe sitting in front of him as he read it. And then he looks up at me and he said, “Cancer easy this mu complicado. Give me one year.” And
00:16:40
Sarah Reilly: in that moment I just I looked at him and I was just I knew it. I was I’m like fine. and I’m going to hand it over to you and to God and pray that I can get my life back. And in a year, I was going back to school to become a nutritionist.
AnnaLaura Brown: Well, so would you say that that was when you had your big aha moment was right then when you were at that doctor’s office in Mexico or would you say it was at a different time?
Sarah Reilly: There were so many ahas, right? So many ahas in the journey. But that was my aha of true hope. That was my aha of getting out of what was a cage. Because I was told by many doctors and many environmental specialists, “Sorry Sarah, you damaged your immune system. You may as well go live on the top of a mountain in Montana where the air is really pure and clean. You can’t heal your immune system. It’s done.” And
00:17:32
Sarah Reilly: so there was a part of me at that time, you know, that prior to that, after all that happened at Cedar Cyanide and the extremity of my life flipping upside down overnight, um, and my ability to live in the environment, there there was a part of me that felt like I’d committed suicide, yet I was still walking the earth because I was no longer able to go to a coffee shop or a library or a movie
AnnaLaura Brown: Mhm.
Sarah Reilly: theater or out to eat or to live in the normal world in a day. I said goodbye to my life and my friends in LA and I had hopes and dreams there, right? And it was it was suddenly like someone took my life and said, you know, it was just like flipped upside down like no, this is your journey now and this is the journey. When someone has extreme intoxicity, loss of tolerance and that’s how delicate the immune system is. It can only take so much. And then there’s then push comes to shove and then the shove tips you over.
00:18:31
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah. Absolutely. Wow. That’s that’s really great that you were able to, you know, get started on that. So, what would you say like now, you know, things have changed fortunately, I feel like for the better. I feel like a lot of people recognize that it’s lime a lot sooner than your case, which is Yeah.
Sarah Reilly: Yes, they do now. Yeah. It’s it’s so much more talked about. In 95, no one was talking about lime, let alone in California. Maybe upper northeast coast, but not California.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah. Well, and now I think California they they recognize it a lot more even in California I think than what they used to.
Sarah Reilly: Oh yeah, it’s prevalent. It’s prevalent in California. Marin, Tahoe, so many places in California. It’s very prevalent.
AnnaLaura Brown: For sure. Absolutely. So what would you say how do you structure a typical root cause protocol for somebody that’s been newly diagnosed? Whether it’s lime, whether it’s mercury poisoning, let’s say they have Hashimoto’s, MS, lupus, you know, whatever the whole gamut, whatever they’ve gotten diagnosed with, how would you get started with recommending a protocol for somebody?
00:19:28
Sarah Reilly: Yeah, absolutely. Um, I take them through a process that is really customized for them. And so I believe in test don’t guess from the get-go especi if if it’s a complicated case long-term chronicity it’s you got to come in and dive deep with me. And so that’s where we begin with different functional testing looking at the baseline of functional blood chemistry analysis and looking for p looking at patterns there. And then typically, you know, just as a basic standard protocol, also doing an advanced stool analysis too, so that we can see just what is the status of the gut, the inflammation there, what bugs are hanging out there that can also be knocking on the door of autoimmunity because they’re such toxic little buggers, right? And so they’re going to be inflaming the system, adding to the whole pathway of look, anything that’s inflaming the body is going to drive those autoimmune pathways, right?
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah.
Sarah Reilly: one of kappa B to the TH17 to the IL17 then you’re looking at the fireball of tissue damage right so really doing a a full broad diet and lifestyle overhaul with my clients um and really beginning with functional testing those are the basic ones functional blood chemistry analysis and advanced stool analysis test um DNA PCR testing so we can see what’s going on there and also patterns in the gastrointestinal system and with digestion.
00:20:58
Sarah Reilly: Um, and also looking at things like short- chain fatty acids because those are really important and oftenimes overlooked, but there’s some really beautiful testing that we can do now to look at bile acid synthesis and also short- chain fatty acid synthesis because short- chain fatty acids, they’re kind of overlooked in the grand conversation, but they’re they’re immune modulating. Short chain fatty acids help turn on TH3, which is your immune modulator, right? And so that really helps to kind of put the brakes on the TH17 which can drive that pathway of tissue damage. And so we can do this in really fun, beautiful, balanced, tasty ways to help bring in balance and first of all balance, yes, in the diet to drive the microbiome to start signaling those beneficial things like short- chain fatty acids, but balancing the lifestyle with low stress and deep sleep. Right? Again, to stay away from the stress pathway. Another way with diet, staying away from from the stress pathway is removing inflammatory food triggers or cross reactors to the particular tissue that’s under attack in your body and also balancing the blood sugar because blood sugar goes low what are you going to do?
00:22:09
Sarah Reilly: You’re going to have a surge of cortisol that’s going to drive the pathway of 17 to IL17.
AnnaLaura Brown: Can you do this?
Sarah Reilly: So I have this whole initial phase just called balance, right? And in the first four weeks, I’ve got people with whether it’s Hashimoto’s, lupus, MS, um crazy autoimmune conditions I had actually never even heard before. In the first four weeks, they’re starting to feel the balance, right? They’re starting to feel the gas pedal let off a bit on that autoinflammation they have in their body, right? They start to feel the steadiness come in. Then the following month, we’re going to dive into really once we’ve got the labs back of a advanced stool analysis. We’re then going to take it a little bit deeper. Still maintaining balance, balancing diet and lifestyle, fueling that microbiome, but now getting really pinpointed on what’s going on in the microbiome and how to gently correct it to remove again deeper inflammatory food triggers um that may be aggravating the gut. and also removing microbes that might be aggravating the gut and the system as a whole and replenishing, you know, digestive juices and enzymes and um repopulating when and if necessary.
00:23:24
Sarah Reilly: Not always because probiotics aren’t for everybody. Um and you know, doing some really lovely repair. And all of this looks different for everybody depending on where they’re at. Someone might have a wiped out IgA, secrettoryy IgA due to having um you know autoimmunity. And that’s that’s the that’s basically you know the housing that’s like your innate immune system on the lining of all your mucous membranes, right? That’s like your innate initial immune area, your initial immune defense in your body. Someone might be wiped out with that or someone might be really high. So you got to take different approaches depending on where someone’s at. Someone might have you be expressing really bad leaky gut um or calop protectin um or betaglucaronadase and all these different things. We have to really take into account what’s going on with that individual. What do they really need? So I look at a web. It’s never the same for two people who might have Hashimoto’s. It’s never the same. I look at a web of that person and then I figure out, okay, where am I going to gently pull on that web for the greatest yield of result for that person?
00:24:31
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Because like I mean anybody that’s been listening to this for a while knows that I’ve interviewed several people with Hashimoto’s and even a couple different people with MS, different people with lupus, you know, different people that all have the same diagnosis of the same label, if you will, but none of them have the same story. You know, they all have different things that have helped them, different things that they’ve done to start their healing.
Sarah Reilly: Yeah. Yeah. Mhm.
AnnaLaura Brown: So that said, knowing that, you know, everybody has kind of a different story, there’s a little bit of different things that have to be incorporated in everybody. What three dietary or lifestyle changes do you feel like move the needle the fastest for most people given that there’s obviously going to be, you know, some variation for everybody based on their actual needs, you know?
Sarah Reilly: Absolutely. Um, first and foremost, nothing the needle will not move if they’re not getting deep restorative sleep.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah.
Sarah Reilly: It won’t.
00:25:24
Sarah Reilly: It can’t. It’s a gap stop. if they’re not sleeping, if they’re burning that midnight oil at 1:00 a.m. and then getting up at 6, it’s just not gonna it’s not going to click in. Or if they’re waking up in the middle of the night and staring at their devices, the blue light right into their, you know, pineal gland and they’re just they’re they’re not they’re not going to engage in deep sleep when you’ve really got to have that restorative time to re to restore the immune system. Um, sleep is a big thing. And then also, um, so often I have to pull people back on exercise. is they’re actually overex exercising. They’re doing these long duration highintensity exercising which is just pumping up their cortisol for extended periods of time and then that’s just leading into the whole autoimmune pathway and tissue damage. So, converting getting more gentle um and more gentle really focusing on maybe some burst activity intermittently few times a week along with some resistance training a few times a week and then doing some other gentle things like you know like Pilates and yoga and maybe they enjoy dance and it but these long 45 minutes you know heavy highintensity running on a stairmaster or going out for an hour run when you have autoimmune condition you just have
00:26:37
Sarah Reilly: to be really careful you’re going that you’re going to be tipping. You can tip the lever there and overstimulate.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah, absolutely.
Sarah Reilly: Yeah. And and then you know it comes down diet, you know, diet and lifestyle. So lifestyle, the exercise and the stress. I have a whole process that I take people through called the true vitality system and it addresses all of this and it it takes them through a very formulaic way from formulabased meals to a formula based day and how to create balance with ease and flow pretty fast and um makes it easy to implement it because it’s really the implementation that’s the key because it comes down to are you taking action consistently over time that can help lower cortisol on an overall basis. Create some basis of more parasympathetic like rest and digest mode in the central nervous system through your diet, right? Avoiding low blood sugar, getting in your protein and complex carbs and um just staying away from inflammatory food triggers like the gluten, dairy, corn, soy. And then oftentimes in autoimmunity, you got to pull out those night shades and the nuts and seeds, those higher lectin foods, right?
00:27:53
Sarah Reilly: um and those those different foods that are just can be aggravating and inflammatory to the system. Um and pulling those things out and giving yourself a period a good long period of time where it can be uninterrupted by those foods that are causing a bit of a flame. And you can get so much information too when you know what tissue is under attack, you know, and then to understand what foods crossreact with that, right? like Hashimoto’s, let’s just use that. The thyroid, you know, has a similar protein complex, gluten and dairy, soy, right?
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah.
Sarah Reilly: So, it’s like we know there like those aren’t your friend. They’re not going to be your friend, right?
AnnaLaura Brown: Nope.
Sarah Reilly: The thing is is that, you know, you may not quote unquote get rid of your autoimmunity because there’s always a place with a history of autoimmunity where the ditch is within reach, right? The ditch is in reach. the ditch of autoimmunity is within reach. So we want to keep ourselves away from the ditch, right?
00:28:56
Sarah Reilly: That ditch of autoimmunity, you know, a ditch is a flare and everybody knows their flare. And so stress, poor eating, um, all those things get you into you closer to the ditch. And so we want to maintain on a daily basis those things that help us stay far from the ditch. balanced diet and lifestyle in a strategic way for that individual that helps to remove the inflammatory food triggers, maintain blood sugar balance during the day, avoid toxins, right? Um it’s so so so big the whole picture. Um repairing the gut. Yes. Um gentle detox to then further remove gently. No yanking with like big heavy chelation out of nowhere to someone’s body, but just really gentle upleveling of those organs of detoxification in a gentle strategic way that’s guided by someone who knows what they’re doing. Um, and really formatting this for for someone’s unique body and their unique story and their unique goals.
AnnaLaura Brown: For sure. Absolutely. Yeah. So, what would you say is one of the biggest surprising misconceptions that people have about autoimmunity?
00:30:10
Sarah Reilly: Uh, you mean that the people themselves have about it or that people out there have that they can’t that they can’t improve it?
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah. People in general or even people that have been diagnosed, what would you say is their biggest misconception about autoimmunity?
Sarah Reilly: Some people think it’s a sentence.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree that’s definitely big.
Sarah Reilly: I just it’s just whatever. I just have Hashimoto’s. Wait a minute. You can modulate your immune system. You can do a powerful things with your diet, your lifestyle, right?
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah.
Sarah Reilly: Modulate it because this is autoimmunity, right?
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah.
Sarah Reilly: Immune system overactive. We can do this with proper diet and lifestyle. Do it all the time. Bring down those auto antibodies. People get their balance back. They’re like, “Oh my gosh, I feel amazing.” You know, I feel like I got me back, you know?
AnnaLaura Brown: No, but I think you’re totally right. You know, from all the people I’ve talked to, from my own experience, from people that I know that have had it, you know, a lot of people do think it’s they get it and they think they’re stuck with it forever.
00:31:05
AnnaLaura Brown: And unfortunately, regular health care, not traditional, yeah, well, more like traditional health care, not the, you know, holistic health care, but a lot of the traditional health care feeds almost off of that idea that you’ve got this diagnosis and therefore you’re going to have it forever, you know.
Sarah Reilly: Well, and there there are different meanings to you’re going to have it forever. Are you going to be, you know, at victim to it forever? No, not necessarily. If you can get these pieces of diet and lifestyle and some real functional care and maybe other alternative care under your belt to help um to help lower the flame, help lower decrease the flame of what’s driving the autoimmunity, what’s going on in the diet, the lifestyle, right? you know, all the infections, the toxins, the stress, these things that are like fueling that um tumble weed on fire going through the desert. You can calm it down and quench the fire with but it can flare up because th those antibodies are always going to be in the background.
AnnaLaura Brown: But the fire could still flare up a little bit every once in a while.
00:32:05
AnnaLaura Brown: So you have to Yeah.
Sarah Reilly: But it’s a matter of how are you fueling them? How are you fueling them with diet and lifestyle and environment?
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure.
Sarah Reilly: Yeah.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah, totally agree. So, what would you say, let’s see, what was the other question I was going to ask on here? Um, what would you say would be one practical tip that listeners can implement today to actually reduce their inflammation?
Sarah Reilly: Ooh, that’s a good one. Um, I would say what what would you implement today? I would say get the inflammatory food triggers out of your diet if they’re not out already. Get the gluten out, get the dairy out, get the soy out, get the sugar out.
AnnaLaura Brown: the sugar.
Sarah Reilly: Yeah, that’s just a I always that just seems so obvious to me, right? But yes, get the sugar out.
AnnaLaura Brown: It’s not obvious to a lot of people though, unfortunately.
Sarah Reilly: Get the sugar out for heaven’s sakes. Yes.
00:33:06
Sarah Reilly: Gluten, dairy, corn, soy, sugar, right?
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah.
Sarah Reilly: Fake foods. fake foods. Get the fake foods out, you know. Think protein, think colorful veggies, think Yeah. eating from the ground up. Healthy fats.
AnnaLaura Brown: Absolutely. For sure. So, I know we have a link that we will include for people to schedule a consultation with you, right? That’s what you sent over.
Sarah Reilly: Um Um Yes, absolutely. Um, I also have a link I can actually send you that you can put at the bottom of this that will actually be a um it’ll be it’ll be like a free giveaway that they can have access to.
AnnaLaura Brown: Okay. Okay, that’ll be good. And that links to your website, too, I’m assuming, so that people can learn a little bit more about you, too.
Sarah Reilly: Yeah. Yeah. You can put my website and then also this a link to this free free gift for them too.
AnnaLaura Brown: Okay, awesome. Cool. Yeah, we’ll do that.
00:33:56
AnnaLaura Brown: So, we’ll include the link in the description so you want to search for that so you can go check it out. You can connect with Sarah and if what she’s been talking about you feel like is really helpful, then reach out, get in touch with her. And one more question before we go is if you could go back in time to I don’t know what’s even maybe all the way back to your 25 year old self, you know, maybe around the time that you initially got bit and tell yourself a piece of advice of something that you know now that you wish you’d known then.
Sarah Reilly: Yeah.
AnnaLaura Brown: What would you tell yourself?
Sarah Reilly: Ah, wow. That’s so good. Umh. Um, well, here’s it’s that’s an interesting question and it’s a really good question. And here’s why it’s so interesting. Had I not traveled the journey that I did, I wouldn’t be where I am today, right?
AnnaLaura Brown: Yep. That’s how a lot of us are. Yeah.
Sarah Reilly: I wouldn’t be.
00:34:46
Sarah Reilly: And it was a brutal journey, man. And no one knows that but me and God. But it was a brutal journey that has shaped me and where I am today. And I wouldn’t be able to help people at the depth and scope and breadth that I can today had I not gone through what I did. those many years, right? But it sure would be interesting if my 25 yearear-old self, you know, if I just and I hate to look back with regret um because that just feels negative energy to me, but um you know, let’s say in the breadth of this journey, I would say just to always know it was going to be okay. Just like to always know it was going to be okay. And that’s actually something my father always told me. He’s like, “Honey,” he’s like, “You just have to I remember and I told him, I said, I feel like I committed suicide, Daddy, but I’m still on Earth.” And he goes, “Honey,” he goes, “I know this, and there’s going to be a day that you look back and you’re going to know that without this journey, you would have never gotten to where you are. And
00:35:47
Sarah Reilly: it doesn’t make sense right now, but you’re going to have a day where that happens.” And you know what? My daddy was right.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yep. He was absolutely right. Yeah.
Sarah Reilly: Yeah.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah. Awesome.
Sarah Reilly: Yeah. So
AnnaLaura Brown: That’s great. That’s awesome. Yeah. So, thanks so much for sharing your story with us. I’m sure you’re probably well, I mean, I know you are. We can tell those of us that are if you’re if you’re listening to this on audio, you can you’ll find the link to my YouTube channel and you can check it out the video, too. So, you can actually see what she looks like, see her expressions, that kind of stuff. But she’s definitely healthy and thriving today most of the time, I would say.
Sarah Reilly: I have strong arms now. These arms that move now.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, anything else you want to share? Last bit words of wisdom or anything that we haven’t talked about?
Sarah Reilly: Yeah, you know, I think um don’t give up. Don’t give up. Know that there’s always there’s always more help. There’s always resources. There are things that you may not know about when the when the you feel like in your darkest of nights, you know, don’t give up. Keep keep looking and searching. And um you know, it’s not all unicorns and rainbows for me. I still have flares. I still have episodes. I still have relapses sometimes, right?
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah.
Sarah Reilly: And um you know, I’m I’m working through something now, but I I know that this too shall pass.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah.
Sarah Reilly: And I know that I have more strength now than I used to when I go through a relapse or a flare or an episode.
AnnaLaura Brown: Awesome.
Sarah Reilly: Right.
AnnaLaura Brown: That’s great.
Sarah Reilly: Don’t give up.
AnnaLaura Brown: Okay.
Sarah Reilly: Thanks.
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