Overcome - A Mental Health Podcast

Holistic Nutrition and Mental Health: Jayne Reynolds’ Journey From Panic to Peace

• Travis White | Mental Health Advocate • Episode 34

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In this episode of Overcome: A Mental Health Podcast, host Travis White sits down with Jayne Reynolds, BCHN®—a board-certified holistic nutritionist, certified nutrition recovery coach, and brain health professional—to explore the powerful connection between holistic nutrition and mental health.

Jayne opens up about her personal journey from years of debilitating panic attacks, ER visits, and overwhelming anxiety to discovering natural solutions that brought peace, healing, and hope. Through her story, you’ll hear how food choices, gut health, and lifestyle changes can dramatically impact emotional well-being.

This conversation sheds light on why holistic nutrition and mental health must be addressed together, and how small, consistent changes can help transform anxiety, burnout, and depression into resilience and strength.

What Was Discussed:

  • Jayne’s battle with severe panic attacks and her turning point toward holistic healing
  • The role of gut health and neurotransmitters in anxiety and depression
  • How nutrition, supplements, and lifestyle shifts support mental wellness
  • The overlooked connection between holistic nutrition and mental health in traditional medicine
  • Practical advice for busy moms and caregivers who feel overwhelmed
  • Why faith, hope, and support are essential for recovery

If you’ve ever struggled with anxiety, panic attacks, or depression, this episode will inspire you to look at healing from a new perspective. Jayne’s journey proves that lasting change is possible when we embrace holistic nutrition and mental health together.

Connect with Jayne Reynolds, The Mental Health Nutrition Coach, and discover more about the connection between holistic nutrition and mental health:

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Travis White (00:00)
Hello and welcome to Overcome a Mental Health Podcast. I am your host, Travis White, and I am very excited to be with you all today. This is a place for you to share your mental health stories. And I'm also excited for tonight's guest. I'm speaking with Jane Reynolds. Jane is a board certified holistic nutritionist, level two certified nutrition recovery coach, and a man clinics certified brain health professional. Jane, how are you doing today?

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (00:31)
I am doing fantastic. Thank you so much for asking Travis and thank you for having me on the podcast today.

Travis White (00:36)
it's pleasure to have you. I'm just going to turn the time right over to you. We'll dive right in and take us on your journey.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (00:41)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I got into this ⁓ field of work because I was struggling so much with my mental health. And I know a little bit before we chatted, you said that you had struggled with some of that yourself as well. And ⁓ it is really a challenge and it's very difficult. Mine started with the birth of my first child. I had an E. coli infection right after she was born and they took me into the hospital. They gave me seven bags of antibiotics over three days. And in the process,

They saved my life, there's no doubt, but it decimated my gut bacteria. And we look back on it now and we say, my goodness, back then we didn't know about the role that gut bacteria plays in helping to create our neurotransmitters and give us peace and joy and all those wonderful emotions. And so when we strip them out, it leaves us in this position of being really emotionally bereft.

I didn't know that we didn't know about receding the guts. didn't know about putting good probiotics in after doing such a hefty round of antibiotics. And so these panic attacks just started and they started really slowly. I would have one, you know, every couple of months. I thought that I was dealing with hormonal imbalances. I was a new mom. you know, postpartum depression is a real thing. The doctor was probably 70 white coat male, you know, saying, ⁓

You're just a new mom. What do you expect? You know, this is how it's going to be, but it'll balance itself back out. Well, it didn't. It just got worse and worse and worse over the course of the next seven years. And by the time it came to like this pinnacle where we absolutely had to do something about it, I was having anxiety attacks three or four times a day. They were lasting for an hour, hour and half at a time. I was calling my husband home from work. Frequently I had three children by that point. I have a

my eldest is 13 months older than the twins. So I had my hands really, really full. They were three and four. And I was just struggling to exist. Everything was triggering panic. I'd go to the gym because you'd think you try and do some exercise because it's supposed to be good for your mental health. And I'd end up flat on my back having a panic attack in the gym. I was not able to drive. I had chest pains. ended up in the ER one time thinking I was having a heart attack.

So all of these things just made living very, very difficult. And I can't say that I got to the point where I actually wanted to do something about hurting myself, but I sure as heck wanted to go to bed and go to sleep and never wake up because I just didn't know how to fix all these things that were going on. I was very frightened about everything that was going on in here because it felt so intangible. I didn't know how to get to the fixing part of that.

And I was a bit afraid about the stories that I had heard about getting mental health fixed, which usually involves some kind of inpatient psych stay, know, medications, all the rest of it. And mind you, at this point, I was on antidepressants and I was on benzodiazepines and none of that was helping. So, yeah, I was really kind of concerned about somebody coming in and taking my kids from me or locking me up and throwing away the key. It was a very

Travis White (03:45)
.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (03:56)
scary and very overwhelming time. The whole world was just a very overstimulating place for me to be.

Travis White (04:03)
Yeah, that is scary and I've been into some of those harsh panic, I should say, I don't want to use the word panic attack for me, but like really bad anxiety and some deep dark depression. So I've been in those shoes before and it's scary how overwhelming the world can feel in those moments. I'm curious though, the panic attack to you was it?

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (04:17)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Travis White (04:32)
Was it basically just like the hyperventilating lack of breath in the normal stuff or was there something specific to your panic attacks that you don't really see in anybody else?

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (04:44)
No, I think they were broad

in general, like everybody else's. I had chest pain sometimes with them, sweating, very nauseated, sometimes throwing up with it, just because I was so overwhelmed with things. A lot of shaking. I just remember just doing the, like, you know, I just don't know what to do with myself. Like, there's just so many feelings going on. Extremities being freezing cold. Like, my core would be warm, but the hands and feet would be freezing cold.

And then obviously not being able to think straight or make decisions or rationalize my way out of it because I was having very visceral reactions inside my body too. So I think they were fairly typical for what you would see when somebody's dealing with panic. And when we get to it, I'll talk about how that really probably wasn't so much panic and anxiety as it was low blood sugar, but we can talk about that in a few minutes.

Travis White (05:36)
Yeah, that sounds great to me. So what was your kind of a breaking point to actually go the holistic direction? What did that look like for you?

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (05:41)
Hmm.

Yeah, so I

had a friend reach out to me and, ⁓ you know, well, we'll take one step back from that. Actually, my mom got really ⁓ concerned about me, which I, you know, I have three daughters. I would be very concerned if they were in that position, too. ⁓ We have only had to take one emergency trip either side of the pond. That was her emergency trip was to come and see me and help when all of that was going on. And the first thing she said, and I just have to give credit to this.

Travis White (05:53)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (06:14)
was we need to pray and we need to get the elders of the church to come and pray for you. And I think that was a massive turning point. And it wasn't like I hadn't sought divine intervention. It wasn't like I hadn't prayed to that point. But certainly going through that process, the elders came, they prayed for me. And within two weeks, I started getting answers that I hadn't found for seven years. So I think that was a massive catalyst. So faith is a very important part of my journey in all of this.

But then the next thing that happened was a couple of weeks after that, a friend reached out to me and said, I see you trying. I see you doing all the conventional things. She was far more holistic. She was ahead of her time. And she said, I just think you probably need to speak to a naturopath. And I had no idea that a naturopath existed. I didn't know what they did. I didn't know why they were different from a regular doctor. so she explained and she gave me the name and number of her physician.

and I went to see her and we started with some really basic, basic things. I remember her standing there asking me, my husband was there, my mom was there and her saying to my husband over the top of my head, do you have any guns in the house? And he said, no. And she said, good. And I hated to tell her that my issue was with sharp objects. It was not, I couldn't care less about the guns, but I had to have all the knives and scissors put away at all times.

I just didn't feel like I trusted myself. And so we had a conversation. She started with some really gentle stuff. She wanted to do minerals. Let's make sure you've got all the mineral co-factors that you need. And we did that for a couple of weeks and it wasn't kind of fixing everything. So we did Bacopa, which became one of our go-to remedies for the family, which helps calm the GABA pathways. So she gave me that and that started calming things down a little bit. was very helpful.

But then she did neurotransmitter testing with me and we started looking at this amino acid piece of the puzzle. Where are my aminos insufficient? What do I need as the building blocks to help support my health? Because I was having panic attacks, everybody assumed that it was a serotonin deficiency and they had me on these SSRIs. But the truth was when we looked at my neurotransmitter pathways, the things that was struggling were my dopamine pathways.

And when we started supplementing with aminos, it started turning things around a bit. And then it was a few, probably a few months later, I always had gut issues. That's another long part of the story because obviously we had so much stuff going on. But we, I went to a chiropractor to talk about the gut issues and he suggested going gluten free for the digestive problems that I was having.

And so it took me about two weeks to decide to do it. Cause if you've looked, gluten is in everything. So it was a really serious commitment to take that out for two weeks. And about a week into being gluten free, I woke up one day and thought, I haven't had a panic attack all week. And they had been so intense and for so long and they were just gone. And I thought, my gosh, you know, if this is this one thing,

Travis White (08:59)
Mm-hmm.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (09:19)
that I was, you know, I didn't know about this one thing. What else am I missing? What else don't I know? So we got delayed food sensitivity testing done and you never looked back, right? I just made so many changes, started cleaning up my diet, taking out processed foods, and then decided that I wanted to go back to school to learn how to do this for other people. So that's when I got the board certification in holistic nutrition and started niching out with this mental health field and...

learning that there's a lot of people that really care about how we are supporting and nourishing our mental wellbeing. And so there's a lot of people out there, a lot of greats ahead of me to learn from, and it's been a fun path figuring that out as I go along.

Travis White (09:57)
Yeah, that's so cool. I did a lot of the testing too. I had some medical problems that resulted in really bad depression and anxiety and wasn't until last year that I actually went the holistic route and got some blood work done and started seeing a difference. I haven't gotten completely gluten free, but we pretty much eat gluten free in the house. And then we cut back. We have no sugar in the house. have some more. It's called allulose.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (10:01)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Travis White (10:26)
and I've seen a huge, huge difference in how I feel. Can you explain how physical nourishment impacts mental health?

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (10:31)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, that's a broad topic. I'm going to be teaching on it at Amon clinics next month. And I'm sorry, at end of this month, I'm super excited about it. And so I was just pulling that all apart this afternoon. Again, like, how do I concisely say this? I've got 45 minutes, right? There's so many different pieces from our the first thing that is like really, really crucial is making sure that your digestive system can actually receive the nutrients that you're putting in. So when you're cleaning up your diet, that's a really great start. And we always

Travis White (10:51)
Mm-hmm.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (11:06)
help our clients to start, you know, just replacing if you run out of regular bananas, buy organic bananas. If you run out of organic, regular peanut butter, buy organic peanut butter. We start cleaning these things up. But if your gut is so inflamed that you cannot absorb those nutrients that are going into your body, then you're not going to be able to utilize them. If you haven't got enough stomach acid to break down the proteins, then you're not going to be able to utilize those to make your neurotransmitters.

So when we're working together with someone, we're working really hard to make sure that they have a really good foundation for digestion. And then we start making sure that you can get all the nutrients. And there's a lot of truth to the fact that our soils are so depleted anymore that the carrot you eat today is not the same as the carrot that your grandmother ate, you know, even 50 or 60 years ago, because the quality of minerals and all of that properties in the soil have changed so much.

And so I do recommend often starting with a good multivitamin. And if you're going to do that, then avoid anything that's got so many of these have colors and talcs and gels that you just don't need. There are a lot cleaner options out there to get that broad spectrum nutrients into your body. A fish oil, you probably need a probiotic. You might need some extra vitamin D.

So we're gonna look at all those basic nutrients in a supplement form as we start introducing whole foods to benefit the body. And the reason this is so important is because your neurotransmitters are made from the foods that you eat by the gut bacteria inside your belly. So your serotonin, your dopamine,

like somewhere between 60 and 90 % of that is made in your digestive tract, not in your brain where we think it should be. And that if your gut is off, we've done experiments with mice where we've stripped their good bacteria out of their guts and watched them get horribly depressed because they can't make their neurotransmitters anymore. So we need, foundationally, we need great protein sources, clean protein sources that are free from hormones and antibiotics.

that are gonna interfere with your endocrine system and contribute to more problems with your mood and emotions, right? If your thyroid's not functioning, you're gonna be depressed or anxious, high or low, depending what it's gonna do. So we want really, really good proteins. We want low to no sugar in the diet, except for natural fruit sugars or complex carbohydrates. And the reason we need those complex carbohydrates

is because it generates a tiny bit of an insulin response and that pushes tryptophan over the blood brain barrier so that we can make serotonin. So we need a tiny bit. We're wildly out of control with that here in the US. We think sugar is fantastic and we ride these highs and lows all the time. So we need complex carbohydrates. They are also usually ⁓ vegetables, right? Vegetables and fruits are those complex carbs.

and they are loaded with things like vitamin B6, vitamin B1, vitamin B2. They might have, some of our plants have iron in them. Some of our plants have magnesium in them. Lots of them do. Potassium, these are all necessary for us to help make our neurotransmissors balance our electrolytes and keep homeostasis in our body. So protein sources we often do, I often recommend,

meat sources of protein. I can work with vegetarians and vegans, but I often find that when they come into my office, they're struggling with depression because they aren't getting enough protein in from the right sources. So we're working on cleaning that up. We're adding the complex carbs and then the healthy fats. our bodies cannot, our brains, they're 60 to 70 % fat and they cannot function without good omega-3s, a tiny bit of saturated fat.

that actually helps the Omega-3 work right. Olive oil helps the Omega-3s work right. So when we bring all those healthy fats in and are able to use them, gallbladder and liver are functioning properly, then they're gonna help start feeding the brain so that it can communicate all the things that need to be communicated to the rest of the body. Hydration is super important. It gets all the nutrients to all the parts of the body that it needs to go. It's a carrier inside the bloodstream.

So every single part of our nutrition and our meals is contributing to or on the other flip side of that coin, detracting from our mental health. If you're living off of McNuggets and french fries and soda, you are not nourishing your brain and you are not gonna have great mental health.

Travis White (15:56)
Yeah, I learned that lesson the hard way. I think for so long my body was kind of telling me, you know what, I've had enough with the junk that you've put into me. And that's why all this stuff was happening. It was just hard to clean up and get to good habits of eating healthy.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (15:59)
Yeah, I did too. We all were there.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Yes.

Yeah. And it really is because those foods are generally engineered to keep us coming back and wanting more. So we get very addicted to them very, very easily. The bite, the melt, the crunch, the satiation, it's all designed and created in a lab to make us want to come back for more. And when we eat whole foods, we eat a whole lot less of that junk food because we're satiated and we're not hungry for it.

Travis White (16:24)
Mm-hmm.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (16:45)
Yeah.

Travis White (16:46)
Yeah, and I actually never thought about that, but I've noticed it. Now that you say it and mentioned it, I've noticed that I don't eat as much. When it comes to mental health, why do you think the physical root causes are often overlooked in the medical industry?

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (16:50)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I think that's probably a, it's a big question. And I think it's a lot because we, it's a couple of different things. One is that we segregate everything out into specialties.

which we kind of have to do because no one physician could know every cell inside out, back to front for every function inside of the entire human body. I mean, it's just, don't get doctors that look at it like that anymore. You go and see a cardiologist or a urologist or a endocrinologist, right? And they're all looking at these tiny little pieces of the puzzle instead of looking at you as a whole being. And then from the nutrition perspective, our physicians only get about, my last,

understandings about two weeks of nutrition training while they are in school. Medical education is designed to give them the formulas to know what to do. I mean, they've got to they are super smart, and they have got to figure out what's wrong. And then they've got to know what the next standard of care treatment is. And they don't have all of the research backing and testing. And this goes back to how the system was set up 100 years ago, to say that

herbs, supplements, nutrients inside food make a difference. It's not in their standard of care. So we get this holistic piece missed. I was meeting with somebody the other day who had gone to see a conventional physician because she was struggling with some extreme symptoms. And the first thing that doctor said to her was, well, I don't know what these supplements are that you're taking. You need to just stop them all.

I don't know who told you you had a problem with this that you need to take that, but it's probably causing all the problems. It was nothing to do with it. We ended up finding her a more functional physician who looked at the situation, quickly gave her a diagnosis and told her she was on the right track. Right? So it really matters who's listening to you. And they are also governed. They cannot practice outside of their scope of medicine.

either, their governing boards regulate that very closely. And so you won't find a psychiatrist very often talking to you about changing diet and lifestyle. You might find a therapist who will talk to you about, know, maybe you need to do equine therapy or art therapy or get a massage or go get grounded, right? Go stand in the woods in your bare feet for a few minutes. But they still don't know about this connection with the nutrition piece. And to me,

that is so completely foundational and we are just missing it. And it does not, it feels very cynical to say it, it does not behove big pharma to encourage us to change our diet and lifestyle because it hurts their profit lines at the bottom, you know, at the end of the day, their profit margins. If they can't prescribe it and they're not interested. Yeah.

Travis White (19:55)
Yeah, exactly. And to me,

that's a big problem with the medical industry in general. And that explains a lot why they're so quick to hand out medication instead of looking for that root cause.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (20:07)
Mm hmm. Yeah, they have quotas that they have to

meet and, and X percent of clients coming into the office with these symptoms, you know, you've got high cholesterol, you need to be on a statin X percent of their clients. That's why they don't talk to you about changing diet and lifestyle before they put you on a statin. It's just a standard of care. So it is a very broken system. But every now and again, we find some wonderful physicians who are bucking the system and are really interested in this more functional

approach, which Europe has been all over for years. They're really much more open to that integrative, what can we bring in from both sides of Eastern and Western medicine.

Travis White (20:47)
Yeah, and I think like Western medicine, compared to like holistic medicine, think they, Western, I'm trying to think of how to say it. Western medicine I think does have its place and I think it's good for certain things, but it's very important to, I think, combine the two. Like you said, we need to figure out how to do that.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (21:00)
I do.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Yeah, we, you know, I, if I had my E. coli infection, I would not have dreamt of doing anything else than going to the ER and getting admitted to hospital because it was life threatening. ⁓ at one point I had, I had a hysterectomy, had endometriosis that caused a bowel obstruction many years later because the scar tissue grew around my colon and choked everything off. So,

Travis White (21:22)
Mm-hmm.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (21:34)
I needed to be in the hospital for the bowel obstruction. That is seriously dangerous. If I had been in a car wreck or broken my arm, I want that service. I want it to be there. I need that help. They've done miraculous things saving people with the advances in modern medicine. That is undisputed. But we are also living in an age where the rise of chronic disease and ongoing mental health issues is rising. And that isn't always the fix.

Travis White (21:42)
Thank you.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (22:03)
It can be sometimes. I am not anti antidepressants or medication if you need it for the time being. I used it for a year while we were getting my mental health sorted out. It took me a year to taper off the benzos and I didn't get off the antidepressants till a few years later when I really felt like I was stable and able to tackle doing that because it was hard. It was like going through addiction recovery. You know, it was really hard to get off of those.

And it on a really low dose too. It's quite alarming. But yeah, there's a place for modern medicine. But for some of these chronic ongoing conditions, we have to take responsibility for ourselves and start asking questions about what we're doing with our diet and lifestyle that impacts how we feel.

Travis White (22:45)
Yeah. And I'm right there with you. I had to take some antidepressants to get myself out of a rut. And once I started feeling better, I got permission from my doctor to taper off and haven't had to take anything since. And I've done that, I think, two or three times to get my mental health back on track.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (22:57)
Mm-hmm.

Fantastic.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then the other thing now, you know, I just have a slightly different perspective on it now too. To me, when I'm looking at somebody who's struggling with anxiety, it's rarely that they are benzodiazepine deficient, right? That we might be magnesium deficient because magnesium helps to support our GABA pathways. And we might be able to use something like Bacopa or ashwagandha or schisandra berry or licorice.

Travis White (23:12)
Mm-hmm.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (23:33)
to support the adrenal system and help prevent those anxiety attacks from occurring or to create a sense of calm. There are all kinds of wonderful formulas out there for that. When we look at the SSRIs, they're recycling. It's a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. So it's recycling the serotonin basically that you have in your brain. And we can supply the body with tryptophan or 5-HTP.

And those aminos in a supplement form give your brain the building blocks it needs to make serotonin all by itself. So we can do this thing now. We have to be very careful if you're on medication, because we could send you into serotonin syndrome very easily. So we don't want to do that. But there are ways and means of going about doing that. And as I tapered off, I certainly shored up all of those things with the aminos. They're really quite an amazing tool in our toolbox.

Travis White (24:28)
Yeah. So I'm just curious, what is serotonin syndrome? I've never heard that term before.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (24:34)
Yep, serotonin syndrome is simply when serotonin gets too high. so sometimes that can happen with medication and it certainly can happen if you're doing medication and something like St. John's Wort, Saffron, 5-HTP or Tryptophan that all increase serotonin inside the body too. So if you're combining those two together and it can be deadly. So you have to be very careful with it. But for a lot of people, it just makes them feel horrendously ill. They'll end up hospitalized with it. Yeah.

Travis White (24:38)
Okay.

Okay,

that makes sense. So, and I know you touched base on this before, but a little bit at the very beginning, I'd like to go into a little bit more detail. For someone that's stuck in burnout or survival mode or feeling that chronic anxiety, what are the few simple nutrition or lifestyle changes they can make to start feeling better?

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (25:25)
Yeah, so we do a couple of things. If somebody comes into the office and they're in a cute situation, right, where it's on, it's happening right now, the first thing we're gonna ask is, when did you last eat? The number of times that I have had clients in my office, I got to know one really well, so I was able to be this cheeky with him. But he called me, having a panic attack at four in the afternoon. And my first question was, what did you eat today? And he said, well, I got a Starbucks lemonade on my way to,

and I got Starbucks egg bites as well. And I said, okay. He yeah, but I didn't eat the egg bites. I just had the lemonade iced tea. I said, okay. And he goes, it got really busy at work and I forgot to eat my lunch. Okay. I said, have you eaten anything today? No. All right, it's four o'clock and you're having a panic attack. said, yeah, can't figure it out. I can't get warm. I'm huddled under a blanket. I'm shaking. My thoughts are racing. I'm sweating. I feel sick. Like everything's going sideways.

I said, right, I just want you to go in the kitchen for me and grab a handful of nuts. He was not dairy free, so he had ⁓ cheese. We got him a little bit of fruit. And I just stayed on the phone with him while he ate. And about 20 minutes later, he said, ⁓ my gosh, I feel human again. I feel normal. And I said, yes. I said, I've never had anybody pay me to simply tell them to eat. Like.

All you need, like you're a human being and you have to fuel your body. You cannot run all day not eating because you have low blood sugar. And that's what's happening, your blood sugar's tanking. So we are making sure out of the gate that everybody is eating some kind of protein every three hours. I don't care if you have a protein shake in the beginning. I don't care if you are grabbing a cheese stick as long you're not allergic to cheese.

You know, like whatever you need to do to just get some protein inside you every three hours. That's the baseline. And then we're gonna take out those added sugars that might be spiking highs and lows. And if we need to, we will do a supplement as well. So I do an assessment with everybody who comes into my office to make sure that their symptoms are all serotonin related or maybe dopamine related to see where they fall.

So we can do a broad spectrum amino that covers all the bases if they're high in all the areas. Or we could maybe do some 5-HTP or we could maybe do some adrenal support like Simbacopa that's very, very calming. And they can take when they're having an acute anxiety issue. Glycine sticks work really well for that too. Inositol works really well as a supplement for anxiousness. And that's tied in with blood sugar regulation. It works like.

a natural form of metformin. So we can do those things to help bring balance in those acute situations.

Travis White (28:13)
And all this is so cool. It's just like having personal experience with it. I just love hearing like more about stuff and connecting the dots more than what my doctors told me. It's yes.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (28:26)
Yes, yeah it's exciting stuff. Once you start

digging around it's really cool.

Travis White (28:30)
Yeah, and it really changes your perspective on like everything and like food wise and I mean, I could go into a couple other things, but it's really cool.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (28:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

It just starts making you ask, okay, I might be labeled as having anxiety or I might be labeled as having depression, but that is a symptom. So what is the root cause? And is the root cause really a lack of benzodiazepines? I mean, it really could be brain trauma. It could be environmental. There have been seasons at work for my husband and myself, both that have been so stressful that it has definitely triggered more

Travis White (29:04)
Mm-hmm.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (29:12)
depressive thoughts or more anxious thoughts, right, in seasons. But so it could be circumstantial, I guess is what I'm trying to say. And you could have been through a big trauma like a car accident, this made you very unsure about getting into another car and driving it again. So there could be these very real things that have happened around you. But also, it could be that your thyroid is not functioning properly, or that your blood sugar is too high or too low.

or that your liver is not clearing toxins out of your body very well. So not to make everybody paranoid, but just to start asking, well, what's going on inside my body? Like my favorite saying that I have is mental health is not all in your head. Cause it's not, it's like all inside your body. Those are usually the things. And these are great because we know what to do to fix these things.

the things that are like neck down, we know what to do with those. We know how to help you resolve thyroid issues. We know how to get your blood sugar under control. We know how to help you clean up your liver and get your gallbladder functioning properly. We know how to support your digestion. And when we can do those things, it makes a massive difference to how the brain is functioning.

Travis White (30:14)
So I want to take a step back to when you first started getting treatment and went holistic. How long did it take you to, like when you started taking supplements and doing all the testing and eating differently, how long did it take you to see results and actually start feeling better?

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (30:34)
It's a long time ago, it's 2004, so it took me 21 years ago, but to the best of my recollection, it took a few months for me to start feeling calm. And I do remember the doctor saying to me, how long did it take you to get into this mess? And I was like, well, like seven years. And she said, yep, so we're not gonna fix it overnight, but trust me, in six months to a year from now, and you're going to feel better.

So each different step made a massive difference for sure. Like the minerals and things, not so much so, you know, keeping me hydrated perhaps wasn't the right ⁓ piece in the very beginning. ⁓ But then moving further along and getting the help with the aminos, we can see effects from those within a week. We can see taking out delayed food allergies within one to two weeks. We can start seeing massive changes.

Travis White (31:12)
Thank you.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (31:28)
And the thing that I have to say about my journey is that we were piecemealing these things together. We were like, oh, what about this? Oh, what about that? Oh, what about this? Whereas if you come and see me today, we spend the first month figuring out the what about this, that's, and then we make a plan and we move forward. So we're able to get traction a lot more quickly because I have a lot better idea what we should be looking for. Well, we didn't know back then. We would just, you know.

Travis White (31:52)
See you again.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, thank you for filling my curiosity. You know, was that long ago. It's just these things hit my brain. was like, yeah, yeah. So thank you. Thank you for.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (32:03)
Yeah, you're welcome.

Yeah,

we will do amino acid trialing in office because they can work that fast. We can see results within 30 to 60 minutes ⁓ of whether it's working well for a client or not.

Travis White (32:18)
Cheers.

Thank

Yeah, that's so crazy. I think overall my health, took me about three months to start seeing a real change.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (32:30)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, it's not, you're rebuilding the body and we learned in school that the body heals in 28 day cycles. So it can take you at least 28 days for your body just to go, what are the heck are these nutrients that you've suddenly given to me and what am I supposed to do with them? And then it goes, yeah, okay, we need to, we're gonna do this, okay, we're gonna do that. And then you start sleeping better and then that builds on it, right? And you're hydrating better and that builds on it. So it can take a couple of those cycles to really start getting better.

Travis White (32:34)
But it's...

Mm-hmm.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (33:04)
And sometimes in the healing process in traditional Chinese medicine, they say you have to walk back up through the symptoms that you went through going down into the problem. And so you're walking your way back up out of this mess that you've kind of gotten yourself into often through no fault of your own. And so it can be a bit unpleasant sometimes to going through some of the changes that you're going through and your body might not like some of the pieces, but it's worth sticking with it.

and going on through it because you do get out the other side. I was non-functional and now I run my own company and see clients and I have three beautiful daughters and love their spouses. know, mean, life is good. It's really, really good compared to where it was.

Travis White (33:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think the hardest part for me was actually like when it came was probably the wasn't taking the supplements or getting any of the testing done. It was giving up the foods that I've really loved. I used to use like soda as a a vice to get through the day to get that dopamine hit. And I went pretty much cold turkey and gave it up. And it was like probably changing my

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (34:00)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Travis White (34:18)
diet was the best thing I've ever done. And I wish I could go back and do it way earlier in life.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (34:20)
Yeah, I had, right,

tell 17 year old self, right, not to start down that path. But we don't make changes often until we're at this crisis point. You know, I can preach from the rafters and it's a few people who are like, yes, I'm gonna do the smart thing before I run into the problems. Most people don't change things until they're really facing the crisis.

Travis White (34:27)
Uh-huh.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (34:48)
And I just on that note about making changes, I have had clients who have gone gluten free and dairy free and they're like, I am dying for mac and cheese. Like I love mac and cheese. I want mac and cheese. All I think about is mac and cheese. And I'm like, well, know, Annie's makes like a gluten free vegan mac and cheese variety. Like go get that and you know, fill your craving for the afternoon. And they'll come back and say, it didn't give me the buzz that the other stuff did.

Travis White (35:10)
One, two, four, ⁓

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (35:14)
Well, no, it didn't because gluten creates ⁓ gliomorphines in the brain and casein, which is the protein inside dairy, creates ⁓ caseomorphines in the brain. So it's giving you a morphine hit when you have bread and cheese. yeah, gluten free and dairy free mac and cheese is not going to light your brain up in the same way.

Travis White (35:36)
Yeah, was... Yeah, but I look back, I think back to when I was... I'm not saying I never eat sugar now, because I still have like a donut or cookie or whatever, but...

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (35:44)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (35:50)
I just think of now what even that donut does to my body. And now that I've healthier, it's like every time I go out, eat fast food, it doesn't take long for me to start feeling a little bit off.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (35:54)
Mm-hmm.

No, I really don't enjoy it. If we're in a run or in a pinch and my husband's like, we're just gonna go to eat an out burger. And I'm like, do we have to? Because tomorrow I'm not gonna feel good. really don't. I'd rather go home and make some food. And this brings up a really good point because you can get gluten-free donuts and you can get a Zevia soda. You can make all kinds of.

Travis White (36:05)
.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (36:28)
You can get sugar-free soda, know, whatever. It doesn't make that a health food. Just because it's gluten-free and dairy-free does not make it a health food. So we're working in our office to get you back to whole foods, to food prepping and making that as easy as we can, but cooking up, you know, chicken and beef and pork and fish, and then doing your side vegetables to go with it and making that meal, you know,

Travis White (36:31)
Yeah.

I'm not sure if you can hear me. ⁓

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (36:56)
the healthy thing instead of filling up on all of these highly processed, gluten-free, dairy-free, very expensive, ultra-processed foods, right? And every now and again, it was my birthday last weekend, I turned 50, we made a gluten-free, dairy-free chocolate cherry cake with coconut whipped cream frosting. ⁓

Travis White (37:05)
Mm-hmm.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (37:15)
and I'm still working my way through it because it was an enormous cake, even though like nine of us ate from it all weekend long and I came home with a few slices. So it's not about always keeping everything out, right? There are seasons of celebration, but also in the US, it's not like, I swear it's not like this in the UK. We celebrate everything and we celebrate it around the table. There's a national holiday every single month, Labor Day, Memorial Day.

Travis White (37:20)
Hehehehe

Mm-hmm.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (37:43)
You know, every kind of Juneteenth is coming up this month. There'll be somebody throwing a party somewhere for all the federal workers, right? So everybody's home. So we are always barbecuing. We've always got these massive plates of chips and cookies and cakes and like just all of this food that does not support our health. So I pick two things. I celebrate my birthday and I celebrate Christmas and I'm careful with what I put in on those days.

But I don't keep it from having me celebrate, know, those are good times to celebrate. But I do try and keep it low sugar and, you know, my exciting meal was Italian beef with baked potatoes and roasted vegetables. Like super exciting. We made it ourselves. Yeah.

Travis White (38:27)
you. Nice. You learn though

that making yourself is often so much better than the junk that gets put into your food, the oils that are used.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (38:36)
Yeah,

yep. Michael Pollan said, if you would just eat at home and make your food at home, you would be probably 80 % better than you are if you go out to eat all the time. have no, and again, not trying to be a control freak or create an eating disorder, but you don't have control over the ingredients that are going into your foods at the restaurants. know, so a lot of times it's soy oil, corn oil, a lot of seed oils, a lot of sodium, and you don't.

You don't have any control. I remember being told by one guy at a restaurant. I said, I just want steamed broccoli. And he said, health nuts special coming right up. Great. Okay. So he goes off and he comes back and my broccoli has got black lines all over it. And I said, well, what are all these black lines all over my broccoli? And he said, ⁓ well, when you ask for the health nut special, we put your broccoli in a plastic bag and we microwave it. And those are the burn marks, you know, from it being in the microwave.

I was like, that is not a HealthNut special. Do not microwave my food in a plastic bag. Like, you just destroyed it. Right, it's leached all the chemicals into my broccoli. So yeah, it's hard when you're eating out.

Travis White (39:39)
Yeah, Yeah. It's

like, what do think that bag is doing to that food?

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (39:52)
Yeah, absolutely. Do not microwave with plastic people.

Travis White (39:55)
That's funny. Most of your anxiety and stuff you mentioned came from being a mom and going through those motions. What advice would you give to a busy mom or caregiver who feels too tired or too overwhelmed to begin healing?

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (40:14)
Yeah, that is a very, very real question. And actually you may be quite emotional asking it because I think it is really hard in our society. We're often as moms, I can't speak for dads because I'm not one. So I don't know. But as moms, we are often wearing so many hats and we are carrying so many loads. At the time that my anxiety kicked off, I was trying to hold down a small job.

Travis White (40:27)
Thank

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (40:39)
as well as managing these little girls who were so small. And we had his mom and his niece living with us as well because they needed somewhere to stay. Obviously not the easiest situation in the world just because they had needs coming in otherwise they wouldn't have been there. And so there was a lot of pieces that I was trying to juggle. And I think the thing that became really apparent

was that when we put that off and put it off and put it off, we're constantly kicking that can down the road. I will, I used to joke, I'll sleep when I'm dead. I'll take care of myself later. I will deal with that later. Well, later actually comes calling and it takes you by the scruff of the neck and it makes you sit down and shut up and rest for a while. And it isn't fun when that happens. So if you don't prioritize taking care of yourself now, you have

you're borrowing from the bank, as it were, and going into the red the whole time that you're doing it, and that debt has to be repaid at some point. You cannot exponentially just keep drawing on that account. Your body won't do it. And so it is better, even if it's really hard, to find one moment this week where you just have some downtime. Find somebody else to take the kids, take a bath, go for a walk.

Do the things that bring you joy and not necessarily these overstimulating things like being on reels or watching a movie or any of those things, but just quiet time and space where you can allow your brain and body to just simply calm down a little bit. I wish I had had that common sense back then.

but I certainly have it now. And if it's been a difficult day, I'll tell my husband, I'm doing a castor oil pack tonight. I'm taking a bath tonight. I am not gonna be in here while the TV's on. I'm gonna go upstairs and just be still and be quiet. have got to the point, because my kids are all left home now, but an hour every morning is spent doing breathing practice and reading my Bible. I go for a walk every day. I do my exercises every day.

Travis White (42:37)
Thank

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (42:45)
Because if I don't take care of myself, I cannot be there to take care of my parents, my mother-in-law, my kids, who all have health stuff going on. You know, just, I run my company. You have to make time, but just a little bit. Just give yourself, if you're that busy and that pressed, just find half an hour to stop and to rest and to pour into yourself with the things that delight you and bring you joy and restore you the most.

Travis White (43:14)
That's yeah, that's that's awesome. I love that. And I think it's important to touch base on that because I for the first time in years, I've always been anxious, want depressed upon. But this last year, I saw anxiety hit my wife for the first time ever. And I remember making the joke like this isn't supposed to be you. This is a me thing. Like you can give it back if you want to.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (43:28)
Mmm.

Yep.

Travis White (43:36)
because

you know how to deal with it when it's in somebody else. So it's been different seeing it become a, like, know, her dealing with it instead of me.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (43:40)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah, and it's hard when you've got family members who are struggling with those things too. And that should not be touched on lightly. It is a burden. My husband, God bless him, has been a saint for the last 30 years because there are so many times where I will just get overstimulated and I know I just need to back off and be quiet. We ⁓ taught the kids to sign when they were little.

So he'll look at me across a room in a crowded space and I'll look at him and I'll just like, it's all done. And he's like, okay, all right. And we'll make our excuses and we will head out because I just can't do it anymore today. So, you I have boundaries in place, but he's had to deal with a lot too as the caregiver. And for those seven years that I was sick, it was unrelenting and he needed a break and he needed a rest. And that was really important for him to get out.

He built relationships with guys that he could go and he trusted implicitly and could go and say, I just don't know what to do. You my wife is falling apart and I just don't know. And they were able to guide him and coach him and pray with him and hold his hand through that process so that he wasn't alone in the journey because being a caregiver is really, really hard work.

Travis White (45:03)
Yeah, I can say just, it's like she, my wife has the kids all day. I usually mostly work remote from what I do for my occupation. So I see little bits and pieces, but I can tell you that I could not do what she's doing. Because we're at that point, we have three young kids. have a six year old, a three year old and a 15 month old. So it's a lot of work.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (45:11)
Mm-hmm.

Hahaha

Mm-hmm.

Okay. It's

busy. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Travis White (45:29)
You've felt it with how

far apart your kids are. But I am getting better at like, know, every night or as much as I can, you know, here's 30 minutes. I'll take the kids for 30 minutes. You go upstairs and you relax for a minute.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (45:34)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yep. We did ⁓ one of the things that was most beneficial that I learned in school was getting one morning each where the other person had the kids and we were just allowed to sleep. you just, you you shorted on your sleep, especially when the kids are little, they do not know the sun is up. It's five in the morning. So it must be time to be up. Right. And they haven't fallen asleep till nine PM the night before. But we would have one morning.

Travis White (46:04)
Thanks.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (46:09)
that I was allowed to sleep in and one morning that he was able to sleep in and we got up and we took care of the kids so that we could just rest and catch up a little bit. That one week it does, they say you can't catch up on your sleep, but I'm telling you, it makes a big difference if you can get a really solid eight hours without being interrupted. that was another one of the little things that we did. I probably wouldn't do it now knowing that all the things they say about TV and the kids' brains, but we definitely had a...

Travis White (46:24)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Thanks

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (46:36)
like Disney hour where the kids were safely in their room. They had a movie on on an iPad or something and we would go to our room and lay down for an hour as well. And they were a little bit older by this point, probably five, six and seven. But the rule was if you come and get us before the hours up, then we will extend your time in your room. So we just, I we would be able to sneak just a few minutes of being.

still and being quiet and having time for one another as well, because that was hard in a busy house with three kids. So as they got older, we dated them. So my husband would take out the eldest on week one, the middle child on week two, the baby on week three, and then he'd take me out on week four. And then the next month I would do it, the eldest, the middle child, the baby, and then I would take him out on week four so that everybody got some one-on-one time.

And even just getting away just with one person instead of the whole family was a good break as well for everyone.

Travis White (47:33)
Yeah, and we're starting to do stuff like that with our older two right now, giving them more one-on-one attention. And actually does wonders. Like you can tell a difference in their mood when they've had that one-on-one attention.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (47:38)
Yeah. Yeah.

It does. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Yep, for sure.

Travis White (47:50)
So I just have a few kind of wrap up questions for you. This one is a very general question, but I'd like to see the different reactions that I get because I can tell you that I don't think I've heard the same thing yet. What do you feel is the biggest ⁓ stigma to mental health?

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (47:54)
Yeah, for sure.

Mm-hmm.

The biggest stigma, my goodness me. I think one of the biggest things that I see is that people with mental health issues just get written off because we don't really know what to do with it and we don't really understand as society what to do with it. I just see people getting written off and that is so unnecessary that they're carrying around a stigma.

And when you get diagnosed with it too, you're carrying that on your insurance policies and all the rest of it. And so when you go to the doctor's office and you say you have something wrong and they look at you and go, well, of course you do because you have depression and anxiety. You're like, no, that isn't what it is. Like I need you to take me seriously. So I feel like the stigma is in what we're carrying around and how we are seen as mental, crazy. I mean,

There are so many derogatory terms used for people dealing with that or so much, well, we can't have them handle that because, know, they're depressed, whatever it is, just seen as having this lack of capability. And I just don't think that's, once you get to the place where you're more stable, I think it's possible to completely leave that behind and...

move forward with hope and enthusiasm and healing, to be quite honest, and move away from those stigmas. But I think that's the biggest thing I always saw, was just, it's them over there. We don't know what to do with that. We will leave the experts to deal with that. And then the experts don't know what to do with us either sometimes. And so it just, I do think...

Travis White (49:48)
Okay.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (49:50)
in the last few years that I've started seeing a shift and change in that. I've started seeing the Royal Family talking about it a whole lot more, know, just Prince William, Prince Harry have been talking, I just bring that up. Being a UK citizen, get a lot of that feed across my ⁓ desk. So I see them talking about it more and I see more and more places being more open. I'm looking through the health holidays for the rest of this year.

mental health awareness is on there an awful lot. think there are at least three months dedicated, May and September and October, there are specific, just generally I know those, dedicated to ADHD and depression and anxiety and suicidality and awareness and changing the stigma that goes with that and getting people to help. So yeah.

Travis White (50:37)
Yeah, I've actually noticed that too lately that I'm seeing more things like that come up where it's actually putting stuff out in front of people to make people more aware. So I love that answer. It's like I said, it gets on different every time and I love all the answers that I've received. And with we've discussed quite a bit today, is there anything that

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (50:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Travis White (51:04)
is on your mind that you'd like to discuss that we did not cover.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (51:09)
⁓ I don't think so because we really did recover the nutrition, the importance of nutrition. incorporated the importance of figuring out our physical health and making sure that's holding us up, a healthy digestion, how we can supplement to help us. So I think I'd probably just leave with, I joke a little bit, it's a bit tongue in cheek, that I feel like I'm a hope harbinger. Like I just want to bring hope to the people that I meet.

When we are struggling with depression and anxiety, so often we're stuck in this pit of despair, right? And we don't know that there is a way out. We don't know how to get there and we feel lost. But for those of us like myself and yourself who have walked that path and come out the other side, I love to be able to stand there and say, look, we did it. And if we did it, then I know that you can do it too. And let me come alongside you. Let me hold you by the hand and bring you with me.

And if you need to borrow my hope for just a little while, then you can borrow my hope for a little while. And I've had to do that. I've had seasons of it. In the last couple of years, I went through a very difficult business situation and my daughter was getting her MBA at the time and I borrowed her hope. Like I had to have her help navigating all of the relationships that were going sideways.

Travis White (52:23)
Thank

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (52:26)
It's okay to borrow somebody else's hope for a little while, but hope is possible and joy is possible and healing is possible and recovery and not going back. Sometimes we feel when we're getting away from the edge of that cliff, like it is still so close and we might go back over it at any given moment. But the truth is every single day you're taking another step further and further away and giving yourself a bandwidth between you and that cliff edge. it...

It can be a story of hope and healing and you can join us. We made it and I know you can too.

Travis White (52:59)
I love that, borrow someone else's hope. That's really good. Thank you so much for being on the show and spending time with me to have a conversation. I feel like these conversations are important.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (53:02)
Yeah.

Yes, I believe so too. If we can just reach one person and make a difference, then we have fulfilled a good purpose.

Travis White (53:21)
Yeah,

I totally agree with you. Thanks again, Jane, for coming on and thanks to all the listeners out there. The best thing you can do right now is follow us, subscribe, like our stuff, and share it. Thanks again for listening. Until next time.

Jayne Reynolds, BCHN® (53:25)
Yeah.