There’s no shortage of strategies for building a healthier body. But if you don’t feel safe in your body, none of them will work. Dr. Jill Carnahan learned this the hard way.
As a high-achieving physician who battled both Crohn’s disease and aggressive breast cancer, she realized the key to healing wasn’t just in protocols, it was in feeling safe enough to heal.
For years, she followed the rules: the labs, the diets, the medications, but realized there was something deeper to health. That’s when she began to connect the dots between her emotional history and her physical breakdown.
She discovered something most medical schools don’t teach: When your nervous system is stuck in fight-or-flight, your gut can’t digest, your cells can’t repair, and your immune system can't regulate.
Your body isn't ignoring your efforts. It's protecting you the only way it knows how. In this episode, Dr. Carnahan explains how unresolved emotional patterns can trigger gut dysfunction, autoimmune flares, inflammation, and even resistance to treatment.
She reveals why healing your gut starts with healing your story, and why no pill can replace the power of safety, connection, and nervous system repair.
If you’ve ever felt like your body is working against you, this episode might help you understand that it’s actually been fighting for you all along.
Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
The gut is ground zero
How does one layer of gut lining determine everything from your immune health to your mood, and what damages it in the first place?
When the immune system won’t turn off
Could mold, trauma, or long COVID be triggering mast cell activation syndrome?
Your body won’t heal if it doesn’t feel safe
Your mental health could be the missing link to a healthier body. How do trauma, toxic beliefs, and stress shape your biology? What do you do when your body is stuck in fight-or-flight?
The healing power of breath, belief, and rewiring
From breathwork to box breathing, what are some low-cost, science-backed tools that regulate your nervous system and accelerate recovery?