Our skin is the biggest organ in the body, a big indicator of what might be going on internally, and one of the first things people see when they meet us -- so it's important to take care of it.

Today I brought along Sonia Vargas, a licensed aesthetician and skincare healer, who specializes in holistic treatment and practices. Her drive to keep learning and her passion for helping others manifest themselves in her certifications, namely; Sculptural Lifting Technique & Buccal Facial Massage, Vodder Manual Lymphatic Drainage, Connective Tissue Massage, and Reiki.

She believes that skin treatments go beyond the surface and that it’s deeply rooted in the systems of the whole body. She believes that our bodies are capable of healing themselves naturally, leading to improvement in many skin-related conditions.

Episode Highlights:

• The difference between Holistic aestheticians and traditional ones

• What Reflexology is and what it can do for you

• Sonia’s recommended daily skincare regimen

• How other body systems can affect our skin

We expose ourselves to endocrine disruptors each and every day -- most of the time we aren’t even aware of it.

In this episode, I share with you six areas of concern for exposure to these toxins from within our very own homes. If we aren't conscious or careful, we run the risk of low-dosed and prolonged exposure that can negatively impact our health in the long run.

Episode Highlights:

• Everyday toxins we might not be aware of

• Endocrine Disruptors and where we can find them

• What we can do to lessen our exposure

Decluttering is more than just cleaning up. It’s organizing your environment and keeping yourself better in control of what you surround yourself with.

Clutter can be associated with laziness but this isn’t always the case. Often, there are deeper reasons behind clutter, and sometimes professional help can help explore and address this.

As a Functional Nutrition and Human Design Health Coach, I find that our environments play a bigger role than just being our surroundings.

In the last episode, I talked about hidden mold, but how about a problem much more visible to us?

Before we get into how to declutter, let’s first ask why we have disorganization and clutter, to begin with?

Joining me to help us answer this question is Carly Adams, a professional organizer, and owner of Tidy Revival.

Episode Highlights:

• What a personal organizer does, Carly’s personal story with clutter, and how she organized her life

• Big mistakes people make when decluttering and Carly’s steps to take instead

• How to stay organized after decluttering

• Practical tips to organize your mail, closet, laundry, storage, and much more!

Environmental impacts on our health are very real. Oftentimes we don’t even consider them as a reason for why we’re feeling sick, especially within our own homes.

Returning to the podcast is my friend, teacher, and mentor, Lara Adler, an Environmental Toxins expert and educator.

Lara joins me today to share her own personal story in dealing with mold.

Silent and unseen, mold can drastically affect your health especially when you have underlying conditions.

Lara goes into detail about her own struggle with mold, sharing:

• The signs and symptoms

• How she came to suspect and confirm mold exposure

• The steps she’s taken to remediate mold

• What’s worked, what hasn’t, and what life is like now

Lara also shares and provides context into what she’s learned through in-depth research.

After I first started on my journey to better health, I hit a plateau when I felt I wasn’t progressing as timely as expected.

When I consulted my doctor about it, I learned that sometimes the devil is in the details-- and I might not have been making the best decisions in the products I was using daily.

My doctor asked me, “What about toxins in your home? What’s in your tap water? Your everyday things?” and that’s what got me on this journey to discover the better, safer alternatives to my everyday products.

From makeup and personal care products to the Teflon pans and cookware we use. Though we may not be exposed to large quantities at a time, using these things daily exposes us to harmful chemicals that add to our toxic load, so much so that we can eventually feel its effects on our health.

In this episode you’ll hear me discuss:

• My journey and struggles to better health and how environmental toxins landed on my radar

• Everyday products that you’re using that can affect your health

• Reducing our toxic load

• Shifting to clean beauty and the unexpected but welcomed improvements it had on my skin and my confidence

Over the past 2+ years of the show, I’ve shared my health journey in a number of episodes, but recently I had an experience that shifted the context of how I view my health.

It’s had such a profound impact on me so, in this episode, I’m taking you behind the scenes with an update of what’s going on in my health and how a slightly different approach in tracking is helping me to get to know my body in a whole new way with a fresh perspective.

So you want to live a cleaner lifestyle but it’s overwhelming and you don’t know quite where to start. That’s where Emily Popson comes in.

Emily is the founder of the Pop of Health community and the creator of The Non Tox Box™, a series of stylishly curated and impactful boxes, with products to help you reduce your exposure to harmful chemicals in items that you use every day.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• How the Pop of Health Community and The Non Tox Box™ came to be

• How Emily runs these businesses as side hustles to her full-time job as a woman in tech

• The role exposure to toxins played in both of our early development and the emotional challenges we experienced from it

• A behind-the-scenes glimpse into how Emily curates each The Non Tox Box™ and a preview into the next soon-to-be-released bundle!

Gluten-Free vs Grain-Free. Organic vs Pastured. Eco-Friendly vs Safer vs Chemical Free vs Green vs Sustainable.

Its confusing to know what all these terms mean, right (we know because they’re some of the most frequently asked questions that we get)?!

In this week’s podcast episode, I’m joined by my good friend Katie Leadbetter of @cleaneatingwithkatie for a casual conversation as we debunk these terms and offer our thoughts on navigating around them.

Would you run before you can walk? Just like you can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet, you also can’t medicate or even supplement your way out of one either.

If you want to address the root causes of your health complaints and find a resolution for them, then the environment that your symptoms and illness manifested itself in needs to be addressed.

A sensible, flexible and bio-individual way to do this is through the Functional Nutrition framework. This is the framework that I’ve structured my health coaching services around and take all of my clients through.

So in this new mini-series of The Live FAB Life Podcast, I’m walking you through each step of this framework. In this first episode you’ll hear: 

• Why its critical to establish a solid foundation by removing obstacles to health and healing by taking care of the non-negotiables

• What the non-negotiables are

• How to start addressing the