Therapist Unplugged
A therapist-led podcast brought to you by The Montfort Group featuring Laurie Poole. Straight talk about life, relationships, and mental health. Each episode will feature the unplugged views of guests and fellow therapists as we navigate hot topics, therapy trends and the world around us.
Therapist Unplugged
Healing from the Inside Out: Mind-Body Connection with Morgan Lewis
What if the key to mental well-being starts in your gut? In this episode, holistic nutrition consultant Morgan Lewis shares her journey from debilitating stomach pain to discovering the powerful link between digestion and mental health.
We explore how 90% of serotonin—the "happy hormone"—is produced in the gut, why the vagus nerve plays a crucial role in stress resilience, and how small changes in diet and lifestyle can transform your energy and mood in just days. Morgan also sheds light on the unique digestive challenges women face and why traditional health approaches often fall short.
Tune in for a fascinating deep dive into the mind-body connection and practical steps to heal from the inside out.
Therapist Unplugged is brought to you by The Montfort Group. Each episode will feature the unplugged views of guests and fellow therapists as we navigate hot topics, therapy trends and the world around us.
*The Montfort Group provides a serene, calming setting where you can feel challenged, supported, and motivated. Our skilled therapists bridge specialized backgrounds and varied philosophies together to create one unified strategy. Rather than steer you away from your own natural abilities, we help you maximize your unique strengths. We do not view a broken history as the end of a story, we see it as an opportunity for a new beginning.
Welcome to Therapist Unplugged. This is Laurie Poole, your host licensed professional counselor at the Montfort Group in Plano, Texas. I am especially excited to introduce today's guest, Morgan Lewis, an expert on holistic health and well-being. We are going to talk about mind-body connection, which is a topic I'm really passionate about and one that I don't think we talk about often enough and we don't really know a whole lot about it either. Morgan, I think you'll have lots of good info to share with our listeners today. Morgan is the owner of Three Pillars Wellness. She is based in Chicago, Illinois, and she helps women experiencing IBS, SIBO and digestive issues heal for good. As a certified holistic nutrition consultant, she utilizes diagnostic testing, holistic nutrition and lifestyle changes to empower clients. She believes in supportive care and forming a team with her clients, accelerating them along the way to make steps towards vitality. Welcome, Morgan, I'm so thrilled to have you with us today.
Morgan Lewis:Thank you, I am very excited to be here as well, and we have a really great and exciting topic.
Laurie Poole:We sure do, we do. And, Morgan, I want to start right off the bat with something I pulled from your website that really struck me as a woman who has suffered from IBS for years- full disclosure- all my clients now know. And it is this: it says, oftentimes doctors think symptoms are normal or in your head, and I am here to tell you they are not. I believe we know our bodies so innately and we should be the judge of our symptoms. If you believe something is wrong, it's worth investigating, and I know, Morgan, you did your own investigating early on and a lot of how your career trajectory has gone is based on your own personal experience. What can you tell us about that?
Morgan Lewis:Yeah, and hearing that back actually from someone else's words was really nice. Yeah, I mean, look, I think in terms of women's health, right, you see women and other clients for mental health. I specifically work with gut. There's a whole broad spectrum of symptoms that are, quote, common, but then we start to dig and are they normal, right? Like it's not normal to be debilitated all the time, and that was my experience. I had started high school. I think that's when my stomach issues really began to impact my life.
Morgan Lewis:And at that had actually brought me to multiple providers gastro, my PCP, you know a few other doctors and they really just thought I was kind of crazy and to the point where my family was like maybe it's just anxiety, like maybe that you're just making yourself sick with anxiety, and I was like I don't know, like I guess, sure, but it just doesn't feel like that could be the root here. And so I personally went on my own investigation and my mom had found a holistic nutritionist, and that is when I first learned, when I was 16 years old, the power of food impact your mood, your energy, your gut, your sleep, your self-confidence, right so many things. And so I had started changing dietary choices by then. I removed dairy and a few other things I had, you know, figured out were triggering me at that point in time. And fast forward go through college, move, change of life, stressful, you know all these things my stomach issues just erupted. I eventually got to the point where I would get such debilitating stomach aches I couldn't stand up and I would have to lay down, potentially taking a nap, and I just knew that that was not normal. And so I found an integrative provider in California.
Morgan Lewis:I drove, I was living in LA after college and I drove an hour and 10 minutes every time to see this woman, but she cured me. She did such intense testing I'd never seen before. Dual testing, she ran comprehensive blood work, so every marker, you know, not just a CMP and a vitamin D, full thyroid antibodies, the whole nine yards, food sensitivity testing. She ran neurotransmitter testing and I was just a picture of a mess, like I truly was a mess, and it all had started in my gut, Because what happened was I did not have strong digestive fire and then that set the ground for leaky gut. The leaky gut then spiraled into food sensitivities which were causing those symptoms, and because I thought I was eating healthy but I wasn't really eating healthy, right, this was the age of quest bars and protein chips and all these crazy foods. I had no good gut bacteria to feed my short chain fatty acids and neurotransmitters and I was so low on serotonin I was incredibly anxious. I was also having depression.
Morgan Lewis:I was borderline for hypothyroid, Hashimoto's autoimmune condition. I was able to actually reverse that, and so it was just a whole learning experience, really, of how it all starts at the gut and a lot of times we don't realize. Right, we're running around being like I have this condition, I have that condition. But if we actually take a step back and realize our conventional medical system, we've gotten really good at drilling providers into specialties. Right, there's a provider for every little nuanced issue Hashimoto, cardiovascular, you could go on and on.
Morgan Lewis:But the body works together, Our body works together, and so that is my biggest gripe. Like when you've got symptoms of low thyroid, then you also have mood issues and maybe your hormones are out of balance. Someone needs to be able to step in and say hey, everything is starting at the gut, because if you don't eat well, you're not detoxing your hormones well, you're not getting the nutrients to fuel your thyroid. Therefore, you're tired. If you are having anxiety, that's a side effect of the gut and the thyroid, right Like. I could talk about it for hours, but that's just a little glimpse into when I really learned the powers of this. And then, of course, you know, I went back to school and got certified and now I see clients in my practice.
Laurie Poole:That is absolutely fantastic. I think about gosh, the number of clients I have when I'm you know, when they complete their intake documents, the number of clients who will identify IBS irritable bowel syndrome as a symptom of something that they're experiencing like what I call when the body speaks, that their body starts to speak up about what's happening mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and then you bring into your practice words like neurotransmitters, neurons, serotonin, all of these things that we don't necessarily associate with the gut and how that and the other piece of it is that I find really fascinating is that the cells that we find in the brain are also present in the gut.
Laurie Poole:When you're talking about how the brain and the gut communicate and how the gut is identified as an emotional center of the body. So it makes sense All of these things are tied together because the body is. Is all these systems right? It's like a big system where all these parts are meant to work together.
Morgan Lewis:And I love what you said about when the body starts to speak, because symptoms are the way our body speaks.
Morgan Lewis:Going back to that quote, if you hear things, that's your body speaking. And we've been so accustomed to rely on other people for validation, right? I remember there was a trend of what I eat in the day, like why should we ever be looking at what someone else is eating when we're so bio individual? Why should we be following someone else's nutrition plan when that is not made for us, right? These are just little things. Not one of my clients is on the exact same protocol and that's because every person has individual needs and specifically with that, IBS, I think it's a really interesting topic about the mood connection, because we feel things that our emotions can drive. I mean, I'm sure you've read many books. The body keeps the score. About trauma all these other ones and you know, anxiety especially is very connected to IBS, because it's it goes back to that nervous system dysregulation and a lot of times when you're in that fight or flight or you tend to be a type a anxious person, you don't even realize that you're upregulated until you kind of have this like big moments Like for me.
Morgan Lewis:t was this awakening where I was sitting in the doctors office and she looked at me and I'll never, ever forget this. She said do you feel like you can't calm down? And I was like, what are you talking about? I meditate, I work out, like oh cool, and six months later I had run myself so ragged that I actually relapsed. Mono that I didn't have since I had it senior year of high school. Okay, and so this is just a story of the type A girls who we need to realize we cannot run on fight or flight. That is not productive and that's also not going to let your body heal, because what is exactly the opposite is the rest and digest, heal and repair mode. And so it's so. It's so connected. You know, there's so many ways that we could talk about this and I love it, it gets absorbed in your gut.
Laurie Poole:I mean, I've had periods where I thought I had, you know, colon cancer and I had nothing to do with that. It was. You know the symptoms of IBS and so on and so forth. So I think this whole experience of connecting with your body and really paying attention and as you say in that quote, we know our body so innately and we should be the judge of our symptoms yeah, if something's wrong it's worth investigating. But the secret is in this holistic approach and I'm wondering, Morgan, if you could maybe describe the three pillars of wellness that you use in your work with clients.
Morgan Lewis:Yeah. So the three pillars of wellness stands for body, mind and soul. I don't think you can have real optimal health for longevity if you don't have those three dialed in and they're not always going to be in sync at the same time. It's always a journey, right. There's no finish line.
Morgan Lewis:So, with that body, physically, how do you sit?
Morgan Lewis:How's your posture? How do you speak to your body, you know? Do you hold your breath? Do you allow yourself to take deep, diaphragmatic breaths? Are you clenching your core all day? Are you clenching your jaw, like, what are we actually doing with our body and how are we moving our body? Are we actually giving our body the movement it needs? We're moving beings. We need to move, we need to lift heavy things, we need to be outside right. All these things that we know are very healing.
Morgan Lewis:Mind, obviously, of course, the thing that we mentioned earlier how you speak to yourself, but also just how you actually can tap into that rest and digest mode. Are you able to shift into this autonomic and central nervous system and get out of that fight or flight and actually tap into the other side of it and be able to calm down in your own mind, even during stressful times. Do you have that ability? That's huge. And then soul like how do you actually see yourself? Do you believe you can heal? Are you connected to a higher power? You know what? What do you feel? And are you intuitive? Can we hone in on that, right? A lot of people do come to me and they've been so disconnected from their body because they've been fighting their body for so long, which I validate, because when your body isn't working properly, it's very easy to jump to "Oh, not this again. Why is this happening to me? Why am I in pain? X, y, z, like just fighting, fighting, fighting.
Laurie Poole:It can feel like your body is betraying you.
Morgan Lewis:A hundred percent, and so how can we make friends with that too?
Laurie Poole:Exactly how do you embrace that as your body being your ally? By speaking up and showing you that something's out of balance, the the focus becomes on the symptom as the enemy, and oh there, you see, the body's betraying us, and so on. It's a really interesting dichotomy, I think.
Morgan Lewis:Yeah, and it's hard. Like I acknowledge that this is really hard work. It's not easy. If it was easy, no one would be sick, right, like it's very easy to stay comfortable and stay in those same patterns of self talk and you know negativity, because that's what kept us there for a while and so you never could get worse, so might as well stay here. Or you know to ask people like what if it gets way better than you thought? What does that feel like?
Laurie Poole:You know, yeah, the what ifs, Before we get into the nitty gritties of, you know, neurons and the vagal nerve and so on. I'm really curious, Morgan, about the differences between. Are there differences between the way men and women experience digestive health and women experience digestive health, Because I know you're talking about women here, but I got to speak on behalf of men.
Morgan Lewis:For those who are listening and can't see, us so I was laughing, because I do work with men and I've had some awesome male clients, but most of my clients are female. Oh, this is a long conversation, Laurie, but the TLDR really is: Women are subjected to a lot more in society. I mean not only from a therapist lens of media and all this other stuff, but there's another lens of we are marketed to, we are sold this body type, we are given makeup prescriptions, birth control, everything to fix problems, right, and our bodies are under attack. Like there are thousands of chemicals on the market that are not regulated. That are known cancer causing, hormone disrupting, which is called disrupting endocrine system, they cause leaky gut, so they can affect the mucosal lining in your gut, which then can be the start of some of these IBS issues. And so I think, women, we have this really interesting rain barrel bucket, if that makes sense, where you know you're born with a little bit of genetic predisposition and then life happens and eventually our bucket gets super full and there will be this incident that causes it to overflow. For me, it was in college when I was having those debilitating stomach issues, a lot of stress, right. Some of these other factors really tipped me over. But for women, our bucket is so much fuller at a younger age, and so I see that we just have more severe issues early on.
Morgan Lewis:And you know, women are not studied. Men are super easy to study. I like to say women are the moon and men are the sun. They rise and fall the same every day. They wake up with a set amount of cortisol, they burn it off, they go to sleep and the cycle anews. Women run a 28, 31 day cycle. Our hormones are changing, we are confusing, we are not easy to study and therefore we have also been dismissed by the medical community for years, and this is something that has been a disservice truly to every single woman, because we are told just to go on birth control or just to go on a prescription, because it's not these doctors' fault that they don't have enough data or science to follow, because we haven't been studied, because we're more complex, and so the two things are really detrimental and I think people are starting to wake up and realize this is a problem. Also, women carry all the children and when women aren't healthy, it affects the offspring and so it needs to be corrected, but it's not. It's going to take a while because it's going to take a lot of advocacy to get people to wake up to this and see that it needs to be funded.
Laurie Poole:I love what you said about men are the sun and women are the moon, because that metaphor is used in astrology, it's used in mythology, it's used in many different contexts. But the way you described how men wake up with the same amount of cortisol, like what happens with them biochemically versus women who have, you know, a 28 or 31 day cycle, etc. It makes me wonder what happens to post menopausal women who are no longer in your eyes opening up wide. But as a post menopausal woman, I'm thinking oh my God, all those hormones have like evaporated, so what now.
Laurie Poole:But our body remembers also those cycles and those periods of time. You know, and it's just to me it's like it's very interesting how you've described that and what it is that makes women different, in addition to the fact that very little research has been done.
Morgan Lewis:Yeah, and it's really hard because when they have studied women, it's postmenopausal groups, because guess what they have in common with men? They're not cycling, and so you can easily see if something works in a postmenopausal woman she's not going through hormonal changes.
Morgan Lewis:So, that's why fasting when intermittent fasting came out and everyone was saying, oh, this is amazing for women Well, people weren't putting the asterisk. This research was done in post-menopausal women, not cycling females, right? So it's very, very interesting and it can get skewed very easily. But what you said about post-menopausal women, the biggest thing is the adrenals and that plays also into nervous system. Fight or flight, all these things that we're doing all right.
Laurie Poole:Well, let's get into some nitty gritty biology here, Morgan, because I think that there are some interesting things about neurons and something you mentioned when we were chatting before our interview today about the vagus nerve, is it and the connection? Can you speak to some of the issues about neurons, for example, who?
Morgan Lewis:Yeah, we'll keep this a little high level. I don't want to bore people. If I like, nerd out. But for people who are, you know, listening and they're thinking what is the vagus nerve? It's actually really interesting. So it's a long cranial nerve that connects the base of your brain to a bunch of organs in your body, but it also connects it to your gut, and so this is where people say you know, you get anxious, you get that stomach knot, you get excited, you get butterflies.
Morgan Lewis:We absolutely have that connection with our brain and our gut. They are symbiotic. What affects one affects the other, and so this vagus nerve is so incredibly powerful. I think we're still on the precipice of understanding how much it can do and really impact our health, but there's really interesting studies now regarding vagal tone, so meaning how robust and strong your vagus connection is and that outcome. So the stronger the vagal tone is equivalent to larger stress resilience, meaning if you have a stressful incident and you have a stronger vagus tone from your brain to your gut, you actually are better regulating your emotions and recovering from that stressful incident and therefore having less cortisol outflow and more balanced stress response overall, which is quite interesting. And the other thing, too, about mood and this gut connection, and we'll talk about serotonin. But those of higher vagal tone actually experience less anxiety and depression and even can feel better greater social engagement and connection, because it's also a part of emotional bonding, which is quite interesting.
Morgan Lewis:And so, for people who resonate with what I was saying earlier, right, the type A stressed out yeah you feel like you don't have a strong vagus connection and you're constantly stressed and having a hard time bouncing back. There are wearables now so you could look up vagus nerve wearables. One is called Apollo and they sit on various parts of your body so one can sit on your chest. There's some that loop behind your ears and those are expensive, but for someone who severely needs it they're very life-changing. There's some that sit on your wrist and they can vibrate and do other things to help tone your vagus nerve which is quite interesting.
Laurie Poole:What do you mean by tone the vagus nerve?
Morgan Lewis:So as life goes on, our vagal tone can decrease. So if we don't have, you know, good nutrients as part of it for our gut health, you could have traumatic brain injury, increased trauma, stress, all these things of just living right that could impact your vagus nerve and everyone's a little bio individual. So it just depends on what their threshold is right. But it basically means that connection is not strong anymore and so with that you can actually improve it. With those exercises you can also do other things at home that are free. So cold exposure is a really nice one. You could turn your shower cold at the end of it. That cold can actually stimulate the vagus nerve to like wake up and turn on.
Laurie Poole:Oh wow
Morgan Lewis:Yeah, gargling and humming, so that vibration in the throat can actually stimulate the vagus nerve to turn on. So singing is also a nice one too. If someone likes to do that in the shower, you could do it with the cold water and get a double double bang for your buck.
Morgan Lewis:And then breath work, meditation, deep breathing that's also very, very healing to the vagus nerve as well. So, if you like, yoga or yin yoga, meditation, hypnotherapy and breath work all of those things could be very powerful to help retrain that vagal tone, and most people who do have severe gut issues and or mood issues could stand to do some work on it.
Laurie Poole:Okay, so I'm just curious. When I think of toning, I think of a muscle. Y ou're talking about the nerve, like does the physiology of the nerve strengthen, or is it what flows through the nerve that gets toned?
Morgan Lewis:You know, I'm not exactly sure. That's a good question. I've always assumed that it would be the connection. The ability for the body to tap into it and basically have it respond better, right? So kind of like being able to, when you wake up out of bed and you feel good and you don't need a coffee kind of toning in that way like you're exercising its ability to turn on, so when you need it it can kickstart and activate.
Laurie Poole:Got it. Okay, that makes sense. All right, tell me about serotonin in the gut, because you know we hear about serotonin and the effects on the brain, we hear about melatonin, we hear about different supplements et cetera, but I think that probably most people don't realize that serotonin is produced in the gut 90 percent of serotonin is produced in the gut, in the gut.
Morgan Lewis:90% of serotonin is produced in the gut. So if you are looking to improve your feel good, happy hormone um, you know neurotransmitter look no further than gut health, right? Um, that is a profound amount, right? That's not 10%, that's 90, almost a hundred. And so, with serotonin, you need the raw materials to make it.
Morgan Lewis:The biggest one is tryptophan. So tryptophan is an amino acid. We can get it from some meat foods. There's also some plant based foods. So Turkey, I think everybody knows about. Yeah, yeah, thanksgiving we blame the tryptophan, which argue that it's the pies and the bread and all the other stuff. But yeah, tryptophan has got a bad rap. But you know, if you're eating a good amount of turkey you're not going to get tired. So that's a really good source. Eggs and the egg yolk. So the full egg. Salmon, wild salmon is great, and then pumpkin seeds. Those are both going to all of those are going to be rich sources of serotonin or tryptophan. Excuse me to then help with serotonin synthesis.
Morgan Lewis:The other thing, as well as having healthy gut bacteria, because a lot of the fiber we eat gets broken down into short chain fatty acids which fuel things like butyrate and other um byproducts in our gut that help regulate our mood and our neurotransmitters, and so that is where we start to talk about. I've been sharing this a lot. I've read it in a few books and some other herbalist and people I follow. The big thing now is 30 plant foods a week. Sounds like a know seeds, legumes, fruits and veggies.
Morgan Lewis:Most people are probably getting half of that, so we really want to add diversity. The reason being is that your gut needs diverse nutrients. It does not want to eat broccoli every day, even though broccoli is very healthy. It wants different colors, it wants different phytochemicals, it wants different antioxidants, and all of those different colors and pigments from our food are going to have different nutrient availability. So think of a pomegranate versus an orange right, totally different fruits, still fruit, but they're both going to feed different things in your gut, and so if you can start counting colors and diversity, that is also really going to help your gut, because naturally you're also going to get in fiber, because foods that are colorful probably have fiber in them as well.
Laurie Poole:Right, exactly, exactly. So I'm just curious now about whole foods and nutrition. You talked about the power of food. Is that that's what you're talking about when you just described those 50, those 30 plant foods with the colors?
Morgan Lewis:Yeah, that's an aspect for sure. So the power of food, you know it's a great, it's a great question. You know where, where does one start? Like, how do you actually start to feel those benefits?
Morgan Lewis:I think nutrition has gotten very confusing. You know, if diet, the diet industry, wasn't profitable, right, it wouldn't be a billion dollar industry. It's selling different ideas and fads and all these things every year. We really need to dumb this down, because nutrition does not need to be this confusing. We need to eat real foods, plants, proteins and food that comes from the earth. That is not in a package, or if it's in a package, you can read what is in that package, right? So we need to get back to the basics of eating foods that mother nature provided us.
Morgan Lewis:No one ever was unhealthy from eating fish and meat and eggs. No one ever was unhealthy from eating a variety of plant foods. Um, you know, there's this war on dairy now, um, and then there's a war on gluten, and it's like there's always going to be a war on a certain food, and I just think we need to strip it down and when you can start eating real food. That is where the power of nutrition comes in, because even in three days your cells of your colon repopulate. Three to five days the cells of your colon repopulate, which means what you start on Monday can have an impact by Thursday. I don't know any diet plan that works that fast.
Laurie Poole:No
Morgan Lewis:Never heard one.
Laurie Poole:Wow, That is amazing
Morgan Lewis:Yeah, like what you fuel your guts, if you started tomorrow and you ate all real foods nothing from a package, but that doesn't mean not eating right. Breakfast, for example, that could be two to three eggs with some chicken, sausage or bacon and a side of fruit and maybe chia seed pudding. That would be a big hearty salad. For lunch with the sweet potato and a piece of protein on top, maybe canned salmon, a piece of tuna, whatever protein that person likes. And then dinner could be grilled corn, a piece of steak, some sauteed greens. You know that's. Those are hearty meals. For three days. You would wake up and be absolutely flabbergasted at how much energy you have, how your bowel movements regulate and how you have less brain fog and joint pain.
Laurie Poole:Wow, okay, folks, you heard it here. Food, is a powerful- it's like medicine, but it's medicine better than medicine. It's better than medicine
Morgan Lewis:in my opinion, it is some, some medications we need right?
Laurie Poole:We do need meds, but what I'm saying is that when you can pay attention to what you're eating and and have that kind of a turnover within three to five days, of improved wellbeing, mood, brain fog, pain, energy, all of that. Wow, it's amazing
Morgan Lewis:And you know, I do this for a living. I sometimes fall off. I'm human. I go to events, I sometimes eat candy, I might drink a Diet Coke right, I've got my vice but when I get back to my basics, I always am reminded oh my gosh, this is so cool and this is so powerful. And it reinstills this notion that everyone should know this because, it's not.
Morgan Lewis:This is not information you need to pay for. This is not something that you have to spend thousands of dollars to obtain. You're already going grocery shopping. Might as well choose things that honor your body.
Laurie Poole:Absolutely, absolutely. Morgan, for any of our listeners who would like to work with you, how should they get started? Where can they reach you and what can they expect to experience?
Morgan Lewis:Yeah, so I work with clients right now in a one-on-one capacity. I also have a self-paced Break Free from IBS course. When new clients come to me, we do testing first. So if you have, or someone who's had, serious gut issues, you know it is a good point to test because for that person eating that meal plan I you know suggested earlier might just not work for them. We might need to do some tweaks before. So we always do some testing, a stool test typically, and then from there we hit the ground running. Um, we change diet, we look at the proper macros for that person. Are they balancing their blood sugar? Spoiler, that's a huge thing for mood. We should probably do a part two, um, and we really just overhaul the full body, mind and soul connection, as as we mentioned earlier, and just kind of addressing every aspect sleep, stress, relationships. How are they showing up for themselves? What do we need to add? And you know, sometimes I I give some tough love, I'm not the easiest.
Morgan Lewis:So, I'm all for sake of you know, feeling better. But it's hard work and most clients you know they're they get midway and they're like whoa, I never thought this was possible, to feel this way, and so the the work was worth it. But yes, you've got to be ready, you've got to be willing to to break up with some of the bad habits and be ready to adopt new ones and kind of step into that healing mentality.
Laurie Poole:You just said something about breaking up with bad habits, with old habits, and I think that for many people food is a form of self-medicating and it can be very difficult to release the attachment to the self-medicating. But if you can start to feel better and have results in a short period of time, it it, I think, over time, you know, and I'm sure it's a little bit like an emotional EKG. You know it's like an EKG. It's up and down and some, some weeks are harder than others, but what a, what a fantastic way to gain improved mental, physical, spiritual and emotional health.
Morgan Lewis:I validate that. I had history of an eating disorder myself and I understand how emotional food is. Right. It's not just food, it's community, it's joy. Sometimes it's frustration, it's pain right, it's all of these things. And so the other thing is part of it is that once you start to regulate your gut, you're actually able to have better conversations with yourself around your food.
Morgan Lewis:I know that sounds a little strange, but I believe that when you can start eating in tune with your body and regulating your emotions, regulating your blood sugar, you're able to feel more stable. Your emotions, regulating your blood sugar, you're able to feel more stable. And then you don't have these big anxiety swings or, you know, fixations, right. You can kind of calm some of that noise down and then be able to look at it from another perspective. And then am I choosing these foods that honor me? Because that's also a form of self-love, right, we do all these other things, but why isn't the food that we eat and how we hydrate ourselves and nourish our body? That's the ultimate form of self-love and respect, in my opinion.
Laurie Poole:Yes, it is. It really is. Morgan, this has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much. Where can our- how can our listeners reach you?
Morgan Lewis:Yes, so my handle is three pillars wellness on Instagram. Pretty active, they're all spelled out. There's some underscores three_p illar_ wellness. My email is three pillars wellness@ gmailcom. So if you need anything, reach out. They're pretty active and we can chat. So if you need anything, reach out there pretty active and we can chat. If you have any questions about this or needed suggestions about some devices or resources we mentioned, I'm also happy to share that as well.
Laurie Poole:Beautiful. Thank you so much for your time today. This has really been mind blowing, and I know our listeners have learned a lot, and we'll reach out to you with more questions, including yours. Truly, this is really fascinating stuff. Thank you for doing what you do. We need. We need this, morgan. This is really important information. Thank you.
Morgan Lewis:Thank you. Thank you so much for having me and back at you. You know healing is multiple care. You know you need multiple people on your care team, and so having therapy or having a talk outlet is also incredibly pivotal for that as well.
Laurie Poole:It's all related. It's all related. Thank you so much, Morgan.
