Why Your Nervous System Holds the Key to Autoimmune Healing

Overview

In this episode, Rachel shares a conversation originally recorded on Miranda’s Wildly Thriving channel, where Rachel was interviewed about her own health journey, her RISE approach to healing autoimmune disease, and the deep connection between the nervous system, trauma, and chronic illness. Rachel traces her path from childhood lung infections and migraines through a decade of mystery symptoms, a diagnosis of Hashimoto’s, and eventually full remission. The conversation is candid, practitioner-to-practitioner, and covers why addressing root causes through functional labs, nervous system regulation, and mindset is non-negotiable for lasting healing.

You’ll Learn

• How Rachel’s Hashimoto’s diagnosis finally explained years of hair loss, heart palpitations, insomnia, gut issues, and panic attacks that conventional doctors dismissed or misattributed to anxiety
• What the three-legged stool of autoimmunity is, why all three legs, genetic predisposition, intestinal permeability, and environmental triggers, must be addressed, and why leaky gut is present in every single autoimmune case
• Why 80% of people who develop autoimmune diseases report significant emotional stress directly before their diagnosis, and how adverse childhood experiences measurably elevate CRP and baseline inflammation even decades later
• How the polyvagal framework organizes nervous system states, why living in chronic fight-or-flight or freeze suppresses immune function and shuts down digestion, and why building resiliency in the nervous system is not optional in autoimmune recovery
• Why the nocebo effect is as real as the placebo effect, and why believing your body cannot heal is one of the most powerful blocks to recovery
• Simple eye movement tools for vagus nerve regulation, including a thumb-spotting technique with head rotation and figure-eight tracking, that can be practiced at home to build nervous system flexibility over time
• Why somatic breath work and somatic experiencing can release stored emotional energy from the body in ways that talk therapy alone cannot, and why this is especially relevant for people whose trauma was relational and chronic rather than event-based
• Why Rachel does not recommend random supplement protocols, parasite cleanses, or food sensitivity tests without a full intake process, and why opening drainage pathways and repairing leaky gut must precede aggressive detox work
• What Rachel’s five red flags for a functional medicine practitioner are, including no nervous system work, no drainage-first approach, supplement bundles without customization, and no ongoing support

Sponsors

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Resources

• Natural Health Rising free health consultation: link in show notes
• Natural Health Rising community on Skool: low-cost platform with 12+ hours of content, recipes, handouts, and bi-weekly coaching calls
• Instagram and TikTok: @NaturalHealthRising

Everything is initiated within the mind. Believe in your ability to heal, stop identifying with your diagnosis, and then let the work follow from that belief. You are that powerful.