Hello! Welcome! Welcome! I'm Alicia Trotter, your host of trotting through life today. I want to start by sharing a little bit of my personal story, how my wellness journey began and what I've learned, and why I'm passionate about making it simple.

So let's back up a little bit to 2,007 I had just found out I was pregnant with my second, had a 2 year old with me. We traveled to Georgia to tell my grandparents that I was pregnant while I was there. During that visit, my grandfather, who was on a waiting list for an artificial heart who is also on oxygen full time, was outside showing my parents something to do with a car, because he always loved to tinker.

I was in the house still with my two-year-old. He came in and immediately went into the bathroom. When he came out he was fumbling in his pocket of his shirt for his nitroglycerin and the color of his face was gray. and I immediately knew something was wrong. He was trying to take deep breaths through his nasal cannula to get in the oxygen, and he sat down on the couch. He had a pacemaker defibrillator. All of a sudden it started shocking him and going off, and I knew he was having a heart attack. So I ran outside to where my parents were leaving and told my mom, you don't need to leave. We need to call 9 1 1. Grandpa's having a heart attack. So my grandmother went inside, sat down on the couch, held his hand, and comforted him as he passed away.

I called 9 1 1, and my mom called my aunt, who was a cardiovascular surgical nurse. By the time the ambulance arrived he was gone they hooked him up to the defibrillator, and of course it showed that he still had a heartbeat because he had a pacemaker. But we told them he had a DNR. So we had to provide it before they would not resuscitate.

Luckily my grandmother knew where it was, but that moment spiked my cortisol and sent my adrenals into fight or flight mode, which at the time I didn't even know what that was. Not being able to do anything to help or to save him was heartbreaking.

So fast forward to the time I had the baby another little girl. And I didn't realize at the time that when you get spun into an adrenal fatigue moment, an adrenal rush, cortisol moment. And then you are also say, pregnant how devastating that is to the body. Maybe you've heard of the body keeps score right when there's trauma. When there's injury the body keeps score.

So have the baby, life goes on, but I am barely surviving. I'm losing weight at such a rapid pace that people are asking my husband if I have an eating disorder.

I was eating tons of calories because I was starving, but because I was losing weight so fast and my breast milk supply was diminishing. The baby wouldn't take a bottle. It was just all of these things compiling on top of each other, and I did not realize that my adrenals still thought I was in the chase of a lifetime. So what ended up happening was, I was exhausted, thinking it was from having a toddler and a newborn, and so I would wake up 1st thing in the morning, go straight to the coffee pot, brew that coffee, put the sugar and cream in it. and live off of that coffee until about lunchtime. Then I would eat lunch. Then I would have to take a nap and then go about the evening.

Go to bed, but I would wake up at like 3 Am. Every single night, and I could not go back to sleep for about 2 h. So, though waking up, not being hungry. The living off the coffee with sugar and cream. The need to take a nap every single day, and the 3 o'clock nighttime wake up! That kept me awake for hours are all signs that I now know are high cortisol. That was a result of my adrenals thinking I was still in the fight of my life.

so years going on of that not knowing what it was or what to do, is what led to insulin resistance that then led to poor gut health.

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