In this provocative episode, Melissa Rose of Sagebrush Wellness, emphasizes a holistic, personalized approach to wellness, steering clear of traditional diagnoses and chemical medications.
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Transcript
Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we are talking with Melissa Rose. Melissa is the founder of Sagebrush Wellness and she is an applied functional medical practitioner specializing in autoimmune and metabolic diseases. That's mouthful. Welcome to the show, Melissa.
Yeah, it is.
Thank you so much.
For having me and be being brave enough to.
Try to put that all together.
Ohh it's a lot.
Well, I practiced it once.
Before I actually said it out loud.
There you go.
For the year, so.
There you go.
We were talking beforehand that you are not a doctor, but you are a practitioner. Do you want to talk about the difference between the two and why?
You chose to.
So it was a choice because.
When I started this journey.
You know, at first I.
Well, as I was finding my way, there were opportunities to become a doctor too. In fact, and I turned away from those on purpose because I love what I get to do. So the difference between a practitioner, or at least in my case, a practitioner and a doctor or an MD, is that.
I do not diagnose and I do not use chemical medications.
That's a plus right there in my book, so.
Right. I just don't think I could do it because our bodies.
Are so amazing they just need gentle helps.
Not a sledge hammer.
Right. There are a few times when we do need them. Need medical medications to be life saving issues, things for us. And I'm so glad that we have them in those moments. But when we're really look looking at complete Wellness or really becoming fully well.
That's deeper work.
That's not stat situations.
Yeah, I agree with you 100% there. I think the western medical system is really great for critical.
Emergency care, I mean, they're the best technicians in the world when it comes to putting stuff back together, but as far as chronic diseases and just.
Things that are kind of natural responses to what we're doing to our bodies.
I think I think we need to look more deeply at what the root causes are rather than just trying to.
Mask the symptoms.
I love what you just said.
I just wrote that in some marketing is that disease in the body is the logical response of our body to toxicity or imbalance or you name it either coming from outside the body or from inside the body.
And a lot of times but.
It's just the logical response. Our body isn't going.
I hate you or I'm broken.
It's not that it's the body going. Look, I I've done the best I can to this point I need.
Help and like especially when we're thinking about symptoms a lot of times we.
We get really upset or I do. It's like my first instinct is, you know, I've got a migraine and I'm supposed to be doing this, that and the other. And I need to, you know, really take care of my body and really understand why this happened and not do this again. But in the moment, I'm going.
You know, I'm growing up.
Got it. But really it's.
It's my body going. Hey, you.
Tapping me on the shoulder, I need you to listen to me. And now I'm like, OK, gotcha. I can grumble once and then that's good. But a lot of you know, for most of us, that is not how we were raised. That is not our choice. That is not our instinct if you want.
To say it that way.
No, it's not and really.
When it comes down to it.
Extra stuff to your body.
Just makes the problem worse.
And you know, there's all the side effects.
Whenever you ingest something suggested by Western.
Listen, even in the times when you need it for critical care, there will be repercussions and you know, consequences. Everything has consequences and you need to really consider those consequences, like antibiotics, is a really great.
Great one because everybody just takes them as though there's no consequence to taking a long series of antibiotics. But then if you.
Taking the antibiotics and knowing that you're killing off that bacteria in your gut, that's beneficial as well.
And opening yourself.
Up to other diseases out there that could be opportunistic because you've just wiped everything out.
That's people don't think about that. They just think, well, I'm just going to get rid of this.
One thing. Yep. Yep. I.
Prime example of that happened this weekend. We were visiting friends and.
You know, really looking at the repercussions of.
Allergy medicine over the counter allergy medicine and I'm like people do not understand how disempowering this is to their immune system because it's forcing a shutdown.
Of a vital.
Body response.
And instead of going OK what's causing this and how do we really hear the body and understand what's going on? Just shut it down so I can go, you know, play and ragweed and I'm OK, you know, and that the long term effects of that.
We need those in a. You know, if somebody's having a reaction and they can't breathe. Oh, they're so lovely at that moment, but there's still the repercussions. But we can always fill in the blanks after. It's not like you've done irreparable damage. But it's just, how do we really understand fully what our body is experiencing from some of these?
And being.
Aware before we make the decision to actually just reach for something at insides are another great example. People just take Motrin like it's candy, but Motrin will kill you.
We don't know how.
It actually works on the body. We just know that it blocks pain signals and relaxes your muscles.
You really shouldn't drive on it, and people don't know that either because it it's like having a beer.
Yeah. Or drink.
Yeah. Or drink with it.
Compounds it a lot.
Yeah, another one that I don't think people fully understand.
Is like.
Immune regulators or anything that we get for an autoimmune disease that's going to repress the immune system.
Just having this conversation again this weekend about, you know, how literally when you are on an immunosuppressed.
It suppresses the ability of the body to respond to anything and leaves you wide open, so even if you're doing blood work, you're sick. You're in the ER. They're doing blood work. It's going to look like everything is fine because your body is not being allowed to respond in a protective manner. So we can say ohh the body is doing this. We need to look.
At this we need these.
These tests, duh. You know, and we get to really unravel some of that.
It's the body is suppressed in such a way that we can't use the signals because the signals aren't allowed to happen.
I think it also messes with the body. I'd like your. I'd like you to explain autoimmune diseases to me.
Ohh, thank you. I love that question.
So an autoimmune we think about autoimmune. We've been told the body all of a sudden goes off the rails.
And attacks its own tissue.
Which is.
125% untrue, but that's what we've been taught as a society. So when an autoimmune disease actually is, is when the immune system is carrying so many buckets or trying to keep so many balls in the air, it becomes.
Either chronically suppressed.
Or chronically wide open with the gas pedal down, or flip flopping between the two so it's dysregulation of the immune system.
But the part I want us to really.
Hear in this is.
That the immune system doesn't go bonkers.
Without a reason, there's always a reason and a lot of times there's this many reasons.
And to understand those, address those and then the immune system is slowly able to recover and become what it's supposed to be, which is 9095% just surveilling and looking at the world and really paying attention, checking things out, making sure whatever comes in is safe for you and then only firing when it's.
Post to to be your protector.
That makes sense.
Makes total sense to me. I my mom and my I have a son.
It's the.
One that we were talking about.
Who struggles with psoriasis? And my mom actually died of psoriasis. She died of the medical treatment she got for it because.
She had really good insurance. They like.
To practice all their stuff on.
Oh, she wouldn't quit drinking alcohol and didn't fix her diet, which are like to.
Me the 1st 2 steps in.
Fixing your immune system.
Let's hear from you. What are your?
Thoughts on that?
Yeah, I agree. But for so is it OK?
If I use psoriasis as kind of a.
A play with here.
So for psoriasis.
We think of it as a single.
Disease process.
But the variety of what can actually cause that in a body is very wide.
So one of.
The most like the top layer things that I.
See is food sensitivities.
And the body not being able to clear well like very sluggish gallbladder, very sluggish liver bile flow is really slow, not good digestive secretions.
Biles, like Dawn Dish soap in the body, literally cleaning the digestive system three or four times a day, and certainly at night, you get an extra scrub.
Which helps keep everything running right, so food sensitivities, toxic build up. That's what happens when our body isn't able to clear well. But the third one that most people don't even think about.
That is very high on the list is parasites.
So understanding that and the terrible part about that, or at least to me is a little bit terrible, is that we don't have good tests for parasites. So when I.
You know, work with somebody who?
Has psoriasis. I am either using muscle testing or we're just going through the protocols and really working with that, but those are some of the like the top pieces. But for some people it's completely different. Why they can have it could be in a yeast overgrowth, it could be.
Do you think about a psoriasis case that was so unusual?
Mold toxicity. That's another top one. A little gal. Five. She had it all over her body like she would scratch.
Until she just left furrows on her legs and on her back.
But it was straight up Mold toxicity. Her body was trying to detox from it and her the rest you know, her detox pathways weren't open. She was in it all the time.
UM, it just really sent her over the edge.
You know, psoriasis, we think of it as one thing, but we have to also understand that there are all there. There can be all these possible drivers.
And for different people, those drivers are going to be different and you have to address it in.
A completely different way.
It's a symptom. It's not the actual.
An outcome.
Yeah, it's an outcome of a root problem that it can manifest the same even though the root problem is different. I think that happens a lot of different things out there. Arthritis is another one that we think of it ohh it's just arthritis.
Well, no, it's not, it's.
The root cause can be different in different people.
Oh yeah, in the same root cause same root cause can manifest in different ways for different people. So say for example it was a food sensitivity that was causing most of the psoriasis for this person. Let's just say it was gluten.
Just because everybody hears about this and it's sort of mainstream, but for this other person that is sensitive to gluten.
It may manifest in migraines that just won't stop. It might manifest in Ms. it might manifest in distinct neurological issues, numbness, full body numbness. It can transfer into.
Things like the beginning of Alzheimer's going back to the parasite piece, you know, even though for this pair, this person psoriasis, their psoriasis is largely being caused by parasites.
For this person with parasites, it can be schizophrenia. It can be major mental health issues. It can be joint pain that just won't stop no matter what you do. Even if you do all the right things holistically, diet, all the things, and you're still like, I'm dying.
It's how our bodies express what's going on inside.
And those expressions get names that become diagnosis. That's one of the reasons why I'm really tickled that I don't diagnose. I don't want to put a rock in somebody's backpack that they have to carry around all the time I have.
You know these five.
I call them labels and labels don't really help you solve any problems because usually it's a label over a symptom.
Or an outcome, not the actual problem, and it doesn't really help you find the actual problem.
Yeah, like when I teach practitioners that, you know, for a lot of people, they've been taught to, I'm going to use Sora as this. Again, if you have psoriasis, this is the protocol. Done. Nope.
You need to understand.
What is driving that for this precious unique person?
And then create their protocol and for a lot of practitioners that just those are mine a little.
But it sure.
Makes our clients happy.
Yeah, it's so common for people to have a chronic issue and go to the doctor and they run all the tests and then they run more tests and it costs you, you know, $10,000 and you don't have any answers.
I know my mom.
She spent.
Well over $100,000, it's probably closer to $1,000,000. She was ill for like 20 years and like I said, she had really good medical insurance and.
Yeah, they did all kinds of things, tried all kinds of things. Genetic they did.
Oh yeah.
Before the before the, yeah.
Genetic testing, yeah.
It wasn't genetic testing, it was genetic manipulation. They put genes into her to.
Oh my goodness.
Try to like.
It's just like the vaccines.
That it was.
Prior to that, that they were testing this technology out.
I remember her telling me about it, and I remember being horrified that you're just like.
You're changing your DNA.
And that can't possibly be good. I mean, we're not.
That good at.
Most of the things that we think we're going.
To just run out there.
And try. It almost always fails because it's so different from.
The natural way that that we were designed to operate. Yeah, but.
It is just like.
Yeah, so it.
It's sometimes I love that you brought up the investment that your mom made over all these years.
And I've had this conversation with so many people when they're coming in, they're coming out of the medical community, and that's what they've been all in and they've got insurance and they've been failed miserably by the medical profession. And so they're coming to me, and they're like, I really want to get better.
Help me get better. Help me teach me. Show me. And then when we talk about the investment.
And they're like.
Oh, you know, because.
I'm a cash practice.
And so to me, it's literally going OK how much have you spent in these years that you've only gotten worse?
I want one year with you and this is what it's going to be and it's like this much of what you've spent over the years that you've been ill.
And I'm going to teach.
You how to be well.
And how much more are you going to spend because ultimately?
Is my personal belief they killed her.
But you know, that's just my opinion.
And you can go and you can keep spending money or you can go and pay somebody cash and actually get the problem solved. Don't have medical insurance, you know, I.
It's just not.
Worth it to me. I'd rather just if I have a catastrophic illness. I do have a catastrophic.
Sort of policy, but.
Right, right.
So if I had to spend like 5 or $10,000.
On some medical assistance I we didn't wipe me out entirely, but I don't pay for like the go to the doctor because my nose is running problems I it's like.
You have to.
Really think about those kinds of things. If you don't have insurance, am I going? And why am I going? And what is the what information am I trying to get from the doctor because the doctor's not there to like magically wave a wand over you and make you well and he's only going to spend maybe 10 or 15 minutes.
With you.
So you need to know what the outcome is that you're looking for. If you're just fishing, then you.
Need to go.
See a coach or somebody or a practitioner or somebody that.
Yeah, has a lot of information that can help you, but isn't going to charge you as much.
As a doctor does for his time.
Yeah. So how do people actually work with you and what does that look like?
Umm, so the best way to come into our practice is actually just book in for an introductory.
Well, and you'll be talking with Mary Anne. She has walked her own autoimmune journey, and she's an amazing person. She's worked with us for about two 2 1/2 years in her own recovery journey. So who we are and how we work inside our practice, she knows intimately. And she's got the biggest heart of love.
So literally just booking in for an introductory call and then if you're a really great fit and you're.
Like, yeah, let's roll.
She'll book you in for your functional assessment call, which that will be with one of the functional medicine practitioners here. It may be with me or one of the other practitioners, but it's a 90 minute full scale review of everything that you've got going on, including a timeline that comes up to where you are now.
Review of symptoms. Full review of any reports in the past year. We want to know the historical like how did you get here? Right and then?
If that person, if you choose to continue with us and go for like the all in for a six month program, that's the shortest program we have. We have six month and then a year.
If you're like, Yep, I'm in. We'll book you in for that. Or if you're like, oh, you know, I loved all of this information. It was awesome for me. But I don't feel like this is the right time for me. You'll walk away with three powerful things that you can start doing now that can make a huge difference.
For you, even if you choose to not work with us because the other piece of this is, you have to be ready to.
Do the work.
To lean in to learn, expand, grow, make the gentle shifts.
And if that if you're not ready and you discover that in the functional assessment call, then we have. That's a gift for you. It's a gift. And we don't work with clients until they're ready.
Because they won't be happy and.
We won't be happy.
That's a really big point that you're making there that you have to be ready to make the changes that are going to be necessary because you can't expect to continue living in the same patterns that you're living in and getting different results because that, as we all know, is the definition of insanity.
And we know our.
Listeners aren't crazy.
Right.
Yeah, it's too crazy anyway.
Completely. Yeah. And I Honor people's journey because at.
Least for me.
It took me a.
While to get my head wrapped around the.
Fact that oh.
So I was really sick with Ms. right, could barely walk. Should have been in a wheelchair, but I would put the clothes basket on the kitchen chair and scoot it all over the.
House because I.
Couldn't walk without holding on to something. Total left side completely numb. Right side was nearly as.
Well, but when I started to do this work.
And really started to get better.
It took a while for this.
This guy right up here to go. OK. Amen.
I'm in and I'm ready.
And it it's not like all or nothing in the beginning. I mean, there's little things you can do to get prepared and then?
Then the bigger challenge is it's.
There was an old commercial about quitting smoking when I was young and it was the little guy. It was a cartoon character, ran up the ladder and then.
He rolled back down.
Ran up again, he fall back down.
And the tag line was.
You didn't start smoking in a.
Day I'm just going to take you a minute to quit smoking and it's about giving yourself grace to do it and recognizing that nothing is all or nothing. Nothing is always in the same spot. You know, we're evolving beings.
Our whole experience is.
Bunch of Dows hooked together. Is it just right now this is how you're feeling about this. And as you learn more and you get more information, it's easier to make.
Yeah, exactly.
Other choices, and they are just choices.
Yeah. I think the biggest thing for me was.
The dawning.
That I could.
Be well.
That my body literally could be well because leading up to the diagnosis.
And then after the diagnosis, even after I had, you know, walked away from the doctor's office, never to return.
And not do the chemo drugs that he was.
Suggesting for me.
I didn't know what to do, I just didn't know. I just knew I didn't want to do.
That, and I really didn't have options.
To even come to the realization that look what I was told, that I would be in bed like bed bound by the age of 45 and possibly dead by the age of 50 is not going to be me.
I'm 47 by the way.
UM.
That was the biggest shift was allowing myself to even get to the place.
Of oh.
What if?
And that's the power that labeling you.
Has over people.
When you have the label Ms.
And I remember a girlfriend of mine in her 20s got that label and she lived with the label for a while, but she never got really any worse. I often wonder if there was like something else going on that actually corrected itself and she didn't realize it because.
She's an old woman now.
That's better than the alternative. Cute.
But it's just.
Put it for her.
Putting a label on something where somebody is just like, well, I have this and it's all done. It's like, even like cancers, you know, when somebody labels you as having breast cancer.
Oh my God. And then you're a survivor, as though you're a victim and you know.
My heart goes out to people that do have cancer because it's a horrible thing, but it's not.
It doesn't have to be a death sentence, especially if you catch it early, and especially if you really.
Like go and seek out people that know what they're talking about to get help.
Yeah, it's.
And it doesn't have to include those awful drugs that are designed.
To kill you anyway.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I think that is something that we don't hear enough like unless we choose or filter where we get our information.
That's not the mainstream, you know, bombardment like every commercial between, you know, when you're watching a movie.
It's money driven, it's most medical facilities.
Are owned by conglomerates at the top that are only interested in helping their.
What are they called? Shares profit shares.
Board of investors, whatever they are, they call it the medical industrial complex and they really go after government money as much as possible because, you know, the government just prints it.
It's just like insanity to me. The whole medical system in the last probably four or five years has shifted so dramatically, where you might have been able to run into doctors that actually were interested in helping you get well.
Now most medical facilities hire people to just push procedures and tests and things that are very profitable for the organization as a whole. They're not really inclined to help you get better and labeling you it's just like.
We're just going to be in search of this label.
And so.
If you hang on to that, label it.
It doesn't really benefit.
You yeah.
So you have a label.
Empowerment is knowledge. Getting knowledge to be able to actually live your best life.
Here for a reason, do something with it.
Yeah, I often say.
And it was a long.
Quite a while after I fully recovered from Ms. it took me a long time before I could actually say this, but I feel like being that sick for that long with multiple sclerosis was.
One of the most gracious gifts I was given.
Because now having walked the recovery Rd. I know what it feels like to be really, really sick for a.
Long time and go through all these steps and go through all the feelings and all of the grief and all of the things.
But then walk the road to recovery and walk the road to being continually recovered.
That I can then teach and speak and work in my practice from that space.
So it was a gift.
A lot of times we.
Go through things and it really.
Pushes the trajectory of our life and is, and we were supposed.
To go through them, I feel that.
You don't have to be.
Stuck in them and it's.
No, no.
That it really does break my heart when.
I see people stuck in.
Discomfort, disease and.
And how it?
It impacts our life, the quality of their life in such a terrible way when it doesn't have to, and I think that's kind of why I do these podcast episodes is to get people to realize that they're you have options. There are choices out there that you can make that can help you.
I really appreciate.
And sometimes those choices.
Aren't as hard as we think they would be.
It can be so simple.
And don't.
Today I'm doing this.
And we'll see what tomorrow brings.
Can be their new start or the second day.
So there's so much potential. So you offer people a free consultation that's normally like close to $80.00. I think you were saying.
Right now we have a free consultation through the end of this month, so when this conversation goes live, it will be probably back up to the normal pricing.
OK.
One of the reasons we charge for that is to really kind of gauge your.
How do I say intention?
Because if you're really all in and you're ready to start making changes, 47 bucks is not going to be a big deal. You're like, OK, that's, you know.
Investment number one to really understand more fully what this journey with us would be, or with our practitioners and inside of our practice. So yeah.
Excellent, excellent. So is there.
One thing you'd like to.
Leave the audience with today.
So especially if you are experiencing an autoimmune or a chronic illness right now and.
You've got all the labor labels.
And you've been hearing our chat.
Today, and your brain's doing this.
Going in circles.
I would love.
For you to just spend like, take 3 deep breaths and let yourself kind of settle down and just get quiet in your mind.
And probably one of the questions that you have kind of spinning around in your mind is?
Could I really get better?
And when you settle.
And you get quiet, so you can hear the inner voice or your inner wisdom or intuition or whatever you want to call it.
Feeling inside and you can ask that question.
What if I could be well?
And start daydreaming, daydreaming.
A little bit about what, that's.
Going to look like or could.
Look like and lean in.
To do I think I could actually do that.
And you might even have a physical response like you may.
Feel that like.
I could it.
You might feel it in your head. You might feel it in your heart. You might feel it in your belly.
But really going OK.
Because if your body.
'S like oh.
Hear me, we can be better.
That's listening. Going OK. I do hear you, and that can help fuel your next steps, OK.
I can be well, what is my next step? What do I want to lean into for me right now?
That can be step #1 for me.
Being fully well.
Because in here right here, our body knows.
Sometimes we forget to listen.
Life is so busy it's easy to forget.
Thank you so much for joining us, Melissa and.
Welcome.
If you are.
Coming to the conclusion that yeah, yeah, I could get better. Talk to Melissa and her associates over at Sagebrush Wellness and.
Just have the conversation, see where it leads.
Health is health is something we all.
It's all right. We're all born with that.
It is.
And sometimes we forget that and we give it away.
Yeah. Thanks again.
Thank you.