Healthcare Reform: How Christian Elliot is Transforming Healthcare for Autoimmune Disorders. Healthcare reform is badly needed for everyone but it’s even more important for people with autoimmune disorders. Learn how Christian Elliot and his company Health United is reforming and transforming healthcare for people with autoimmune disorders.
Christian Elliot is a husband and father of six, homeschooled kids. He has been full-time in the “alternative” health space since 2005, logging about 20,000 hours of 1-1 coaching—fitness, nutrition, life, and relationship coaching. He also has a Master of Divinity from Fuller Seminary. Christian is a co-owner of a newly established organization called Healing United—a Private Membership Association that is a collaboration between doctors and coaches working to demonstrate a new healthcare model. Christian doesn’t pull any punches calling out the medical system. His main focus is on creating holistic and personalized detox programs to help people overcome a myriad of otherwise “incurable” diseases. He hosts a podcast called Deconstructing Conventional.
AnnaLaura Brown: Hello, this is Annalaura Brown, host of the Autoimmune Rehab podcast, where we talk about how to actually thrive and heal your autoimmune condition rather than just covering it up with pills or changing your diet and hoping you’ll feel better one day. We feature solo episodes on helpful topics and interviews with guests who have actually walked in your shoes with autoimmune disorders who have years of experience in helping people to thrive and not just survive with autoimmune challenges. I started this podcast because I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s in 2018 and wanted to inspire hope and transform health for people with autoimmune challenges. So, keep listening and let’s get you the help and hope you really need. This is the autoimmune rehab podcast. Now, today I am happy to welcome Christian Elliot to Autoimmune Rehab.
AnnaLaura Brown: He is the founder of an organization called Healing United and he also has his own podcast as well that we will talk about in a little more detail called the deconstructing conventional podcast all about holistic methods…
AnnaLaura Brown: which is the main focus that we like to talk about here on autoimmune rehab. welcome to the podcast Christian. Why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself?
Christian Elliot: Thank you very much for the warm welcome and…
Christian Elliot: sure, I’d be happy to. you could I guess best describe me as a health coach and I’m somewhat of a unicorn in the health world. I don’t know how to tell you to get into the work I do, but I’ve basically created a niche helping people who’ve been rung out by the medical world or and or the alternative world who’ve just kind of run the gamut of the specialists marrying around and then the supplements that are voluminous and fill up an entire cupboard and you’re trying to like I’m not any better and I’ve tried all the diets and done all the things and here I am and I still haven’t made any lasting change.
Christian Elliot: And so I’ve just kind of I don’t know become the guy you go to when all the other things don’t work and you’re finally ready to face yourself and think, something about my lifestyle might be contributing to this and maybe it’s time for me to look in the mirror and go back to basics and fix really why my body broke down in the first place. So, we do that through kind of a blend of one-on-one and group coaching now. And it’s just an honor. It’s, transformation stories are normal for us, but for other people, they’re shocked that their body could heal the things that we think are normal to heal. Mhm.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah, for Absolutely. Yeah, and you’re right. there’s a lot of people out there trying to help people with either autoimmune conditions or chronic pain or chronic healing. But you’re right, it can be challenging because you either end up with, your traditional doctor who just wants to give you pills. you end up with a functional doctor or…
AnnaLaura Brown: functional coach, which a lot of times they give you way too many supplements and pills and things that could just be overkill, can cost too much money, or they want to run every lab in the book and then that costs a ton of money and…
Christian Elliot: right? Mhm.
AnnaLaura Brown: then it’s almost like which end of the spectrum do you go to? The traditional medical or the holistic that just ends up being too much stuff and too much money. And I’ve definitely been there, done that with, a couple of providers where I feel like, I think the reality is that they make a lot of money on their supplements and their pills and so I don’t necessarily want to say that they’re not helpful to some degree, but a lot of times sometimes I feel like it just gets to be too much. So yeah, there absolutely is a big need for that for sure.
Christian Elliot: There is and’ as much as we don’t like to say it in the natural health world, it’s for the most part the alternative world it’s still symptom management.
Christian Elliot: still reactionary. It’s not necessarily dealing with root causes. And even the moniker of specialization is sometimes the biggest impediment because the idea of specializing in a particular thing means you’re intentionally disregarding context. You’re intentionally looking at a small part of the problem. I’ve come to call specialists partialists because they’re looking at a part of it as if that part operates independently of all the other systems in the body. And when you can step back and get to basics, that’s really where it’s been refreshing to go, this is actually a simpler puzzle than all the specialization has made it out to be.” And most of the specialization you don’t need. if you figure out what burdens the body and how it heals, you start pulling those two levers. And sure enough, the body is the only thing that has the innate intelligence to know how to heal whatever it is.
Christian Elliot: And our work is as much as practitioners just to step back and say, “Where are you bogged down? How do we purify what has been in the gunking up your engine and how do we nourish it so holistically that healing is inevitable?” And sure enough, that simple formula has cut through so much fog and is I’m a proud supplement minimalist now and I don’t think most of what’s out there is needed. There’s a handful of things you can do that they are so dramatically needlem moving but it will force you to do a gut check and take some real ownership and that’s often the likeh can I just take a pill because I prefer it to be easier than just like I have to change darn it I don’t know that I want to do that or you’re excited for two weeks and then you get into it you’re like this is hard and I’m gonna have to stay consistent and so that becomes as much the puzzle worth solving it’s not that these tactics don’t work it’s that you have to work them and what does it take to do that?
00:05:00
Christian Elliot: So it’s as much look at not just the biology but the psychology of change and if you’re willing to wade into those waters most people want to pick one or the other or specialize within a small frag segment of one or the other and if you’re willing to just do both my goodness it’s much more fun at least for me that’s how I’m wired is I like to think big picture and think comprehensive and then okay what’s the leverage point for this person but biology and psychology don’t change the human nature is fixed And it’s fun to work with that.
AnnaLaura Brown: Eastern medicine, like acupuncture methods, that kind of stuff that’s thousands and thousands of years old. They don’t specialize.
Christian Elliot: Mhm. Right.
AnnaLaura Brown: You don’t go just to an acupuncturist just for your thyroid or just to one for your gut or just for one for this. They work with the entire body.
Christian Elliot: Yeah. Yeah.
AnnaLaura Brown: And that is part of the reason it is so effective is that it’s your whole body in sync.
AnnaLaura Brown: And yeah, you’re right. I mean, there is a place sometimes for some specialists depending on the specific thing you’re dealing with, but not as much as people think.
Christian Elliot: Mhm. Yeah,…
AnnaLaura Brown: Still to this day never been to an endocrinologist even though I have Hashimoto’s I stick with just regular functional family medicine doctor and that’s good enough I don’t need the specialist and sometimes people are a little shocked by that but what’s the point? They just want to kill your thyroid off basically.
Christian Elliot: that I just think of it as the specialist escalation ladder. You just keep going to a more extreme thing because we have to step back and say we have a method problem when we are approaching health that way.
Christian Elliot: It’s not that the body can’t heal, but there’s two main methods here. There’s a treatment paradigm which says the body makes mistakes and it’s up to us to intervene and the body’s battles for it and we will just kind of override the response it’s making say no that’s not appropriate. the body should respond this way because we know best which is full of hubris and symptoms and new symptoms and side effects. But if you can step back and say is There’s the treatment paradigm or there’s the healing paradigm. And healing is the body’s the healer. The body knows what to do. And our job isn’t to tell it what to do. our job is just to treat it more like a gardener and to tend it and to say what does it need and what’s working and what’s not and how do we begin to meet its needs. How do we take away what’s a negative input and how do we give it more of the positive input?
Christian Elliot: And once you get outside the treatment merrygoround where to me it’s like find symptom smack symptom is kind of the way that world works whether it’s medical or alternative and a healing paradigm says there’s no way we could account for the complex infinite math calculus the body’s doing every second to try to respond to in real time to what’s happening. Why don’t we trust it to do its thing? And then it’s like, okay, what are the impediments to letting it function optimally? And once your set of lenses and as an investigator is aimed at that, it’s so much easier to find this is where the person’s really stuck. And if we move the needle a few different ways here, sure enough, the body goes, watch what I can do when you take away that stimulus. Watch what I can do when you deeply. Nourish being more than food, it’s water, it’s movement, it’s hope, it’s many things.
Christian Elliot: But yeah, that has been a fun simplification and it’s fun fun for me to I guess you could say spar more iron sharpens iron rather than combatively but to spar with other health professionals and have their paradigm challenge mine and back and forth and what you’re thinking enough this is actually a lot simpler than we’ve made it to be and that the reality of business is that riches are found in niches but the reality of health is not that in a niche. Health is found in doing a lot of little things right over time. And if we can internalize that say it really is about going back to the basics etc etc then sure enough anybody can heal. Mhm.
AnnaLaura Brown: I’ve had lots of guests bring this up and people anytime you get an autoimmune disorder in the beginning you may not realize this but over time you start to realize and it’s not just even autoimmune it’s even other things like diabetes pain all this kind of stuff you might have a primary organ that might supposedly be the thing causing the problem…
AnnaLaura Brown: but that’s not the only source of your problem if you have cashones or…
Christian Elliot: Right. Absolutely.
AnnaLaura Brown: graves disease for example it’s not only your thyroid that’s a problem if you have a kidney issue it’s Not just the kidneys, there’s other organs that are affecting it as well.
Christian Elliot: Yeah. Correct.
AnnaLaura Brown: And so that whole body approach is definitely needed. Yeah, for sure.
Christian Elliot: Otherwise what you’re finding a lot of lab tests are this way. But they’re since a doctor has a really hard time with why is my body breaking down. That question is tough for them. You get genetic stress, aging, I don’t know. Or maybe you should talk to a shrink. That’s but what they’ll pivot to is like, let’s run some tests and see what’s happening. And what that if I can translate that for you, that means let’s figure out how your body’s breaking down, not why. And if you want to know to your point, yeah, if your thyroid is having a problem, that may just be the first gland to burn out, but it’s not like it’s the only system that’s having a hard time.
00:10:00
Christian Elliot: and it’s just the one that’s waving the white flag I can barely keep up with your lifestyle. can you help me out here? But the thyroid is no good if it doesn’t have water and food and oxygen and movement like it needs the rest of the systems. And so when you can think on a systems level, that’s where it gets to be fun. So yeah, that’s once that paradigm clicks, then we can get into the tactics of what does it look what is an methodical path back to healing that doesn’t just wear me out and cost me an arm and a leg and all the rest of that stuff. thanks for asking. I wasn’t really looking to get into health. I got into it by necessity. I was 27. I was about to get married and my health was not great.
Christian Elliot: The last two years of my life before that had not been remarkable when it came to health. I had overused a shoulder. I had a significant limitation. I couldn’t raise it above my head without significant pain. I couldn’t snuggle with my wife. There was so many aspects about life. I couldn’t work out very well. Weighted tables and that was a stress because I had to carry plates. And so I’m like where is this going? I’ve been to about a half dozen medical doctors asking them what can I do? And it’s just the same merry around of take this anti-inflammatory, let’s try a different one. and that doctor didn’t know. And so it wasn’t because you’re too young for cortisone and I don’t know if you’re ready for surgery yet. And so just it was kind of like take some painkillers and suck it up. And I’m like there’s got to be a different way. So in short version, I found a chiropractor put me back together in about six months and I became a voracious student of health. what else do I not know? How in the world did I miss this? And why is what he did for me not normal when somebody is having that problem? I was also sick all the time.
Christian Elliot: So he helped me just understand healthcare, what I thought was healthcare wasn’t really healthcare, it was sick care. And sure enough, I’m like, I just became almost I guess in your 20s, you’re more of that high energy like I’m just going to tell the world. and so eventually you mature in your ability to communicate and nuance your thinking. But that really got me into the wellness world. And then for 20 years I’ve been at it. And that’s been for nine years brickandmortar location with a very holistic team. and now it’s virtual and healing united came about because really co brought down some walls between disciplines. It helped a lot of doctors were humbled by it and how in the world did we get here and what is going on with the health care system and so I ended up speaking out and my name got out there and so other doctors reached out to me and then my network grew and so it really became a collaborative effort.
Christian Elliot: we actually started by focusing on people who had an adverse reaction to the co shots and how do we help them? And so it’s the Super Bowl meeting of the minds what in the world can we do for these people and there isn’t one answer because you start looking at what’s in them and you’re in just last year 55 undeclared chemicals in the top six rounds. You’re like There’s 55 ingredients they didn’t even put on the label. Where is this coming from? What is this doing? And you start to say we have to think differently because we can’t play biochemical whaole with all these things and never mind we might have missed some. We have to think how does the body purge and how does the body heal and you get a bunch of minds thinking on that problem and you start to go here are the best purifying agents. Here are the most powerful ways to nourish the body. Here are the alternative modalities that can really kick healing into gear. And to see that come together that’s what became Healing United.
Christian Elliot: it’s doctors and coaches and the medical alternative and coaching world collaborating which is kind of what healthcare could have been all along but our network became robust and then the podcast was birthed out of trying to solve that puzzle and I was like so I took the first 10 episodes just to try to lay a holistic solid foundation of thinking about health let’s get back to first principles here so we have 10 episodes of that and then it’s just a bunch of interviews across the spectrum of so many different ways to look at this puzzle of health. And the podcast, as you mentioned, is called deconstructing conventional. We had to say we got to deconstruct the way we’ve built this system and figure out what’s worth keeping and what we need to discard. And essentially, we’re trying to turn healthcare on its head and say there’s a much better model here when egos are put aside. Specialization is not as important, and we’re just here to solve the problem of the individual.
Christian Elliot: And so I’ve never had this much fun as a health coach as I do now because I get to rub shoulders with so many cool smart people and go to town just figuring out what do we do in this kind of situation. But sure enough, the answers have emerged quite easily and peacefully and it has been just an honor to do this work now.
00:15:00
AnnaLaura Brown: That’s awesome. That’s cool. So, you work with probably some doctors and other health care professionals as part of healing united to help people fix their health and…
Christian Elliot: Mhm. Right.
AnnaLaura Brown: I notice you guys focus quite a bit on detoxing from looking at the website and…
Christian Elliot: Mhm. What would Yeah,…
AnnaLaura Brown:
AnnaLaura Brown: other things like that. So, how would you say that you’re different from, a lot of the other health coaches out there? Or if somebody’s, maybe in the past worked with a functional health provider, how would you say that you would be, different than that?
Christian Elliot: great question. So, we differentiate in a few ways. We are holistic in terms of it’s not just a biology puzzle to us. So, we think physical, spiritual when it comes to health. And so for context, we come from a Christian perspective. So that we’re not upfront with it. it’s just who we are. And so that’s part of how we think. But we don’t try to separate the meaningful parts of who you are from what it takes for you to heal. And then detox to your point that is the major upstream problem that is ubiquitous to the human frame.
Christian Elliot: Right now we all have hundreds if not thousands of chemicals inside us interacting and creating new synergies and you can’t look at the health statistics from the 30s to today where 7% of the people had a chronic condition to six out of 10 today or obesity and how that has blown up just since the 70s something’s dramatically different. What’s different that most people can appreciate is we are toxic and it is that toxicity problem. If you can remove that burden, if you can purify the toxins you already have and then you can find a path to nourish the body, that’s what we simplify. The toxins are the biggest problem. And we can throw mental emotional toxicity in there. We can tap tip to aging and trauma because theyre But the biggest source of the problem where the most people can get the most leverage and feel better the soonest is if we get the crap out of the system.
Christian Elliot: That can be microbes, that can be chemicals, that can be plastics and pesticides but the purging systems that get rid of all those things are still the same systems. You don’t have a liver that masqueraded as a foot or two eyes in the back of your head. It’s all the same system that we know what these parts do. We just have to empower them to function. And sure enough, when you clean out the engine, we also teach people how to fast, which is the, nature’s best deep cleaning of cellular debris. Sure enough, the body’s like, ” I can run just fine.” Thank you for It’s like detailing your car. Let’s get this engine cleaned out. And sure enough, it works better. Mhm.
AnnaLaura Brown: college age, you really didn’t hear even in the media about toxins or things like that. But nowadays, things are coming out like crazy about all the plastics that are in things and whatever chemicals and everything else. it’s everywhere that people are talking about all the gunk that’s in everything from skin care to water to food to you name it to our hands.
Christian Elliot: Yeah. Yeah. in your mouth. Your dental health. it is really everywhere. And once you see the systems that were built that really don’t there your health is not their primary concern. They are happy to make money at your expense as long as it’ll keep making money and create this not so virtuous loop of feel a little bit better. Go back to symptom management. We’ll feel a little bit better. and that we have to have an honest conversation about that because the public health officials and politicians are never going to accept blame for anything. they’re always going to point the finger back at you. You just aren’t exercising enough. If you would stop, eating the bad food and just get off your butt, you would have better health. And why are you guys so lazy? that’s not an honest conversation. It’s not even half the equation. We have never spent more on healthcare than we are as active as we’ve ever been. And to think that somehow we just got lazy it’s not fair.
Christian Elliot: That’s not honest. And once we can start recognizing that and there’s silent spring many decades ago. There was a great book in 2006 called the hundred-year lie that pointed out this problem. I wish I could say it’s gotten better since then. It’s only gotten worse, but it’s been right here in front of us.
Christian Elliot: We just haven’t had eyes to see it until our faces were rubbed in it with co and so much has come to light to your point like this. It’s not weird to talk about vax injury these days. It’s not as weird to talk about fluoride being h questionable. It’s not as weird to talk about plastics and forever chemicals, right? It’s everywhere.
AnnaLaura Brown: forever chemicals in your fans and…
AnnaLaura Brown: stuff like Yeah.
Christian Elliot: What are we doing to our produce and our meats and maybe we should rethink this better living through chemistry slogan and maybe Sure enough, it’s a major part of our problem. If we can’t face that, we can’t fix it. And so, collectively right now, we’re probably 10 or 20 years out from the systems changing because they’re going to change in response to demand. So, that really puts it back on us as individuals.
Christian Elliot: We have to take ownership because there’s nobody coming to save us. The systems will continue to create the crappy food as long as we’ll eat it. So, we have to change that. And once we change that, so many of the mysterious problems disappear because the body had an oil change. it has a system that’s been detailed and it runs Once that clicks, healing is way simpler. Whether we’re talking autoimmunity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, autism, you pick the thing. it’s still the same root problem. So that’s why we focus so much on toxins and finding ways to get them out of the body. And sure enough, it works.
00:20:00
AnnaLaura Brown: So, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, we’ll link your website, the healing united below. We’ll link your deconstructing podcast below. Any other resources or anything you want to share or call out with anybody?
Christian Elliot: Yeah, you can find our social links at the bottom of the website.
Christian Elliot: So if you want to check us out, my wife it runs our Instagram channel and we’ve got the podcast is on the website, but you can find it most places podcasts are hosted. So yeah, you can have just some of the best stuff we know about best secrets we have are all tucked away on the podcast. And if you’re interested in more people, you can actually reach out and book a free 45minute consultation. So if anything we I said resonated and you’re like, can I just talk to you? You certainly can. So, just get on there fill out there’s a questionnaire so we get to know you a little bit, speed up the process of where you are and then we just hit the ground running with triaging what’s going on. Can we help or do we point you in another direction? But some of the best stuff we know, it’s all tucked away in the podcast if you want to go piece it together yourself.
AnnaLaura Brown: So, I will have it linked in the description for people to check out. And last question I always like to ask everybody is if you could go back in time, let’s say to you said when you were 27 that you first started having that real moment and tell yourself one thing that you wish you knew then, what would it be?
Christian Elliot: I think I would say don’t neglect the basics. when something else fails or when some stuff gets hard, go back to the basics. And the most basic one that gets overlooked that has typically the biggest benefit is exercise. If that is the one thing you’ve never done with consistency, I had a friend who’s been in the health world a really long time and one of the things she said is, what, I’ve tried, she knows more encyclopedic knowledge about so many things, more depth than I have. And yeah, she said, “You know what? The one thing I’ve never been consistent at that other people have is exercise.” And she looks at the health they have and the health she has, she’s like, “I bet you that’s the lynch pin. That’s the thing.” So, if exercise has not been your friend, if treating your body well in the movement rich world of options you have, then go back to basics. And don’t be surprised how much better you can feel if you just get moving again. and your version of moving is different than someone else.
Christian Elliot: But get out there and get back to basics and get moving. Mhm.
AnnaLaura Brown: Thanks so much for coming on and sharing with us. If you found this episode helpful, please rate leave us a rating or review and please share it with anybody else that you feel like could benefit. This has been the Autoimmune Rehab podcast.
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