Innovating Health with Personalized Wellness by Filipa Bellette

Episode Overview

Episode Topic:

In this episode of NutraPreneur, get into the transformative realm of Functional Medicine, where we introduce the core of holistic health practices with Filipa Bellette, Co-Founder of Chris & Filly Functional Medicine. Discover how Functional Medicine is reshaping the approach to wellness, particularly in combating body burnout and chronic health issues. This episode not only highlights the significance of understanding the body’s intricate systems but also showcases the personalized methodologies employed in Functional Medicine to achieve long-lasting health outcomes.

Lessons You’ll Learn:

Throughout the episode, gain invaluable insights into the world of Functional Medicine, learning how it effectively addresses the root causes of illness rather than just treating symptoms. You’ll understand the importance of a holistic approach that combines diet, lifestyle, and mental well-being, all through the lens of Functional Medicine. The episode will illuminate the pivotal role of lab-based diagnostics and individualized treatment plans, providing listeners with the knowledge to advocate for their own health in an informed, empowered way.

About Our Guest:

Filipa Bellette, a passionate advocate for Functional Medicine, co-founded Chris and Filly Functional Medicine, a practice renowned for its innovative approach to health and wellness. Her journey through personal health challenges and profound industry experience has cemented her expertise in using Functional Medicine to tackle complex health issues, particularly body burnout. This episode offers a unique opportunity to hear from an expert deeply rooted in the philosophy and practice of Functional Medicine, sharing transformative health insights and personal anecdotes from her practice.

Topics Covered:

This episode covers a breadth of topics centered around Functional Medicine, including its principles, the significance of comprehensive lab testing, and the integration of holistic lifestyle changes to enhance health outcomes. We discuss the innovative strategies Functional Medicine employs to unravel the complexities of chronic illnesses, spotlighting the customized, patient-centered approaches that define Filipa Bellette’s practice at Chris and Filly. Listeners will get an in-depth look at how Functional Medicine not only alleviates symptoms but also promotes long-term, sustainable wellness.

Our Guest: Filipa Bellette- The Functional Medicine Innovator

Episode Transcript:

Filipa Bellette: When we started changing the way that we practiced, it was different. Like old clientele and old followers, prospects, really just wanted and were expecting a lab test and some supplements and maybe a diet and just tell me what to do. But it doesn’t work, because if you’ve got deeper patterns, stuck, and you’re unconscious where it’s unsafe to be well for whatever reason, that’s why people get stuck in sickness because it’s unsafe to be well. Then they’re going to continue self-sabotaging, either through behavioral patterns or their body will just be like, No, I can see that you’re doing all the lovely, healthy things, but I’m not healing because you’re not listening to why I sent the pain in the first place.

 

Bethany Jolley: Welcome to NutraPreneur, the Neutral Industry podcast. I’m your host, food scientist, and nutraceuticals consultant, Bethany Jolley. Each episode, we’ll be exploring what it takes to thrive in the nutraceutical industry. From conversations with successful nutraceutical entrepreneurs to venture capitalists to tech executives whose innovations are reshaping the nutraceutical industry. We explore the innovations and trends that are shaping the next generation of nutraceutical businesses. Welcome back to NutraPreneur, where we dive deep into the innovations driving the future of the nutraceutical industry. I’m your host, Bethany, and today we have the privilege of speaking with Filipa, the visionary co-founder of Chris and Filly Functional Medicine. This celebrated practice is at the forefront of combating body burnout among high-achieving parents, offering holistic solutions that have garnered national recognition. From winning the Telstra Best of Business Awards to being featured in Forbes, Filipa’s impact on wellness is profound and personal, stemming from her journey through mummy burnout. It’s so great to have you today, Filipa. Thanks for joining us.

 

Filipa Bellette: Thank you so much. I’m excited to be here.

 

Bethany Jolley: First, I think it would be great for you to share with us the journey that led you to co-found Chris and Filly Functional Medicine and specifically focus on ending body burnout.

 

Filipa Bellette: I feel like my personal story probably goes right back to being a kid when I was shy, I would say anxious now, not that it was given the label back then. I think I hid it pretty well. But thinking back, I used to get nervous and so there were signs of anxiousness or nervous system dysregulation as a child that got worse in high school when all of a sudden, I didn’t even try hard to get good grades, but I think it was maybe like year 9 or 10. I started getting A’s and won the Dux at the high school end-of-year thing, and it felt good. And I’m like, oh, okay, so maybe I am good at something. So I developed patterns of overdoing, high achieving, and perfectionism because I was putting my worth based on the results that I could get from a scholarly point of view. But during that time, I ended up putting a lot of pressure on myself to do awesome, be the best, and get straight A’s. And if it’s an A minus, it was the worst thing ever. I wasn’t ever pressured by my parents to do that. It was all just coming from my lack of self-confidence and deeper unconscious core beliefs that I wasn’t good enough unless I got straight A’s. Anyway, I started having female hormone issues as a teenager and ended up with PCOS, but also it dysregulated my nervous system where I fainted, fitted, and peed myself multiple times when my system was too overloaded basically. I remember my mom at the time took me around to all the specialists and they had ECG and brain scans, and in the end, it was just labeled as vasovagal episodes where your body can’t control blood pressure very well. So then you faint. I had to fit in and pee myself often, which was embarrassing as a teenager. 

 

Filipa Bellette: I ended up going to university and then I did a PhD again. It was not necessarily because I wanted to do it, it was more because I felt like that was a thing that I was good at, and so there was a lot of pressure to perform. When I finished my PhD, I had my first baby. That’s where things started falling. Apart from a physical health point of view. Yes, I had symptoms showing up earlier, but after my first baby it was quite a traumatic birth and I couldn’t use my bladder for about three months. I had no sensation too, so I needed an internal catheter for three months. During that time I got a little UTI. I was on lots of antibiotics and had a baby that was screaming all the time. So add on this extra physical trauma to my body. I just started developing a whole heap of weird health issues that kind of went unnoticed from a GP or medical point of view. They did the usual blood tests. They’re like, “Everything is fine. What it’s like to be a new mum?” And I’m looking around at my friends and sisters and no one else is struggling in terms that they can’t get out of bed for multiple days because of chronic pain in my body. They’re okay mentally. Why am I having panic attacks that led me on my self-healing journey? I started changing my diet first, so really got into eating whole foods and nutrition and fermenting foods and sprouting foods and eating animal organs and all that sort of stuff. Over time, my body started healing and then I had my second baby, and this time I’m like, things are going to be so much better this time. I’m so healthy now, I eat well, but all the same, symptoms showed up again and I realized that just eating healthy food wasn’t enough. Like it wasn’t getting to the root cause. 

 

Filipa Bellette: That’s when I found functional medicine where I’m like, oh, now I can do lab testing, and I can see that there’s parasites and H.pylori and adrenal fatigue. So I started supporting those naturally with supplements, and nutraceuticals, which again was amazing and it healed my body. I was pretty much symptom-free for a few years until COVID-19 happened and I had my third body burnout experience, which a lot of people found is COVID stressful. Everyone has their own COVID story, but my body again just flared up with all sorts of symptoms insomnia, histamine intolerance, and this time no physical support helped. That’s where I was just like, I still haven’t got to the root. What’s going on? Yes, nutrition, healthy living, toxin-free, using lab-based nutraceutical supplements are needed to help support my body systems. But why is this not working anymore? For me, that’s where I dug even deeper and looked deeper into the nervous system and the unconscious mind. That was an internal tiger in my system. So it was really hard to heal my body when I had deeper baggage below the surface that also needed healing. That’s when we created our ending body burnout method, which looks at healing the body from a holistic point of view. So it’s not just physical, but it’s also not just metaphysical. It’s doing both in combination to get real results that also last long-term.

 

Bethany Jolley: Over 2000 clients, you helped in the last decade. What unique approaches does your practice employ to diagnose and address the root causes of burnout?

 

Filipa Bellette: We always start with testable and body systems levels because that’s the easy part. So in functional medicine, we test, not care. I used to practice where people would come with a bunch of symptoms and take an educated guess that, oh, maybe you have adrenal issues, or maybe there’s leaky gut, try this, try that but didn’t always work. So I find lab testing amazing because then we can actually look at the microbiome detoxification pathways meters and then create a really specific lab-based individualized supplement protocol and dietary requirements for that person. That’s the physical layers of how we start working with people. But generally, while we’re waiting to get lab test results back, we take people through our process called spark, which is the metaphysical side of things when it comes to healing, just in the same way that the body systems can break down. Sometimes it feels complicated when you’re experiencing burnout symptoms and chronic health issues. It’s like, I’ve tried so many things and nothing’s working. There are only so many ways the body systems can burn out. There are also only so many ways that the unconscious mind can burn out or become imbalanced as well. 

 

Filipa Bellette: Something unique that we do in our practice, that actually, I don’t think I have seen anyone else do this in the world, is looking deep into the beliefs that drive thoughts, feelings, behaviors, habits, or lifestyle and then eventually shows up in the body. So we’re taking people that process for them to identify their deepest roots. It’s generally at an identity unconscious core belief level. When you can address that healing by fast-tracking anything that you do from a physical point of view, the body is now able to heal the results also stick. We work with a lot of people who are running like those burnout-type patterns. So doing all the things perfectionism, people pleasing, burning the candle at both ends. You could eat the best diet, but if you’re still living out those patterns, the symptoms are going to come back at some point. That’s why the symptoms showed up again during COVID-19 time because I still hadn’t addressed the deeper programming inside my system.

 

Bethany Jolley: Considering the holistic nature of your services, how do you integrate dietary advice, nutrition consultation, and lifestyle changes into personalized action plans for each of your clients?

 

Filipa Bellette: The signature program is the ending body burnout method, and I guess we have levels of support there. So there’s private one-on-one for people who want specific, individualized, one-on-one feedback straight away. But we’ve also got a semi-private option that has some one-on-one support. But we’re also doing a group support online process. When we created our program, there were a lot of programs out there that were quite cookie-cutter in terms of coming and joining our group program, which we are thinking of offering at some point, but we want to make sure that if we do, it’s still highly personalized because everybody is different. That’s where I find the lab testing is really helpful because not everyone will go on the same diet. For example, we use so many different ways of eating to help heal the body systems. Sometimes someone might need to do a low histamine diet for a short period or an anti-candida diet if there are high levels of candida overgrowing in their system. Same with other lifestyle things like exercise. If you’re in the later stages of adrenal fatigue where your stress hormones are just so depleted, then I wouldn’t recommend going and doing boot camp or hit workouts because that’ll stress your system out even more. However, somebody may have stage one adrenal fatigue where it’s just early stages. They actually might benefit from something like that because they need to blow off some steam and clear some cortisol from their body. So that’s how largely, we tweak and individualize lifestyle healing recommendations for clients. 

 

Filipa Bellette: The metaphysical side of stuff, it’s almost the same for everyone. It always comes back to deeper, unconscious core beliefs of not being good enough, not lovable, feeling unworthy, feeling weak or incapable, feeling like they’re broken, unable to heal. There are different iterations, but when we can guide people to find that, then we help them to reprogram those beliefs specific to what is the root for them and also like clearing trauma and deluding past events that are still emotionally charged so that their system can return to calm. We have a saying too, around those deeper, self-limiting beliefs that every behavior has a belief underneath, including the way that your body behaves. So if you are sick, if you do have burnout symptoms or any other health symptoms, there’s a dysfunctional belief underneath that. If you’re struggling to eat healthy, if you’re struggling to move your body, if you keep sabotaging your best intentions that I’m going to have a better work-life balance but keep prioritizing work, then that’s a behavior and is a dysfunctional belief under that. So if you look at the world, everyone has them. The crazy thing is that only 5% of the population looks at the deeper root. So most people are dying with dysfunctional beliefs they created as kids, dying as children, which is sad.

 

Bethany Jolley: This episode is brought to you by nutrapayments.com. If your business needs credit card processing that fully integrates with most major neutral software platforms, offers the lowest industry prices, and has built-in features like recurring billing, $0 trials, and chargeback prevention, then visit us at nutrapayments.com for a free online quote. On a more positive note, to talk about just some of your achievements and recognition, winning the Telstra Best of Business Awards and being a finalist in the Australian Women’s Small Business Champion Awards is no small feat. I’ll have these accolades impact your practice and the way you approach wellness.

 

Filipa Bellette: The Telstra, people in America, listeners in America are probably like, what even are these awards? In Australia, the Telstra Best of Business Awards is probably the most highly regarded business award out of all the other awards. I remember when I just submitted an application for fun. I’m like, nothing will come from this, but look, this would be good practice and maybe I’ll get some feedback so that in years to come, when we are, I don’t know, our practice is better, then we may win. That was cool. So I’d been practicing functional medicine for quite a long, many years. So it would have been 2021 when we started doing that awards process for Telstra. Our new holistic way of practicing was quite new, so we just rebranded and moved towards actually healing the whole self. Around the same time, the awards were really good because it’s oh wow, okay, our ID has some merit to it because we’ve been recognized in this award and it then helped to build authority and reliability for clients or prospects to then see, okay, so what they’re doing might work for me, because when we started changing the way that we practiced, it was different.

 

Filipa Bellette: Like old clientele and old followers, prospects really just wanted and were expecting a lab test and some supplements and maybe a diet and just tell me what to do. But it doesn’t work, because if you’ve got deeper patterns stuck and you’re unconscious where it’s unsafe to be well, for whatever reason, like that’s why people get stuck in sickness because it’s unsafe to be well, then they’re going to continue self-sabotaging either through behavioral patterns or their body will just be like, no, I can see that you’re doing all the lovely, healthy things, but I’m not healing because you’re not listening to why I’ve sent the pain in the first place. It was the early beginnings of when, like now, what we are known for and what we love to do, and it’s the only way that I practice with clients is when they’re addressing the deep root cause. There’s awards were great for giving some proof of concept.

 

Bethany Jolley: Yes, you have to operate that way to be successful with what you believe in and what you’re trying to achieve. Your advice and insights have even been featured in prestigious media outlets like Forbes and Body and Soul. So how does this visibility influence your mission and the people that you aim to help?

 

Filipa Bellette: I think it’s the same thing as well. It’s so funny because the things that get published in those places, cause they’re also on our blog, but there’s something special about you, that’s now in Forbes or Body and Soul. The media is great. It’s great to help increase visibility. They push it out to so many people that we would never be able to get access to it unless we’re spending maybe millions of dollars on Facebook ads. And again, I think, too, when my work started getting picked up in places like that, it was confidence-building as well. I believe what we do, but now other people are seeing the value in that. This is again an idea, a concept that is working.

 

Bethany Jolley: You work with a diverse range of clients, so could you share with us a success story that stands out to you and highlights the transformative impact of your approach?

 

Filipa Bellette: I love all our success stories, and we have our podcast, and we have some gorgeous clients who have generously shared their stories, so I might not share theirs. If anyone wants to listen to those stories, they’re on our podcast. I’ve had some clients where they’ll either like email if they’re virtual, or sometimes we have some local clients and it’s a stack of paperwork of all the tests that they’ve done, of all the practitioners and doctors that they’ve seen, of all the treatments that they’ve tried, and they come to us almost as a this is my last chance. If this doesn’t work, I think I’m just going to have to live with this. So we do get a lot of people who have tried a lot of things. Sometimes there’s some missing physical stuff or it’s just, oh, cool, you have tested for this and this body system or organ, they look okay, or maybe that treatment didn’t work, but oh gosh, you’ve missed the neurotransmitters, or often something that’s quite missed looking at serotonin, dopamine, adrenalin. And that can make a world of difference. If someone is struggling with anxiety, depression, exhaustion, or brain fog. So thinking of our clients specifically and her chronic fatigue a lot of immune system issues anxiety, she was very depleted, she tried all the things. 

 

Filipa Bellette: Nothing had helped. And then I think it was as little as eight weeks in our program. It was probably more the metaphysical stuff for her, as she named her deepest root cause belief, and started reprogramming that and started shifting baggage from the unconscious state. Symptoms disappeared so quickly, and she had been on a 20-year journey trying all the things. So it’s not that anything that she had tried hadn’t worked, it’s just that her body wasn’t in the position to be able to heal. Then we were able to circle back and okay, now we can start supporting the adrenals, from a therapeutic nutriceutical point of view, and now we can start getting rid of that H.Pylori because your immune systems allow us to be able to do that now.

 

Bethany Jolley: This industry is constantly evolving with technology. So how has Chris and Filly Functional Medicine stayed at the cutting edge, particularly in areas like dietary advice supplements and lifestyle interventions?

 

Filipa Bellette: That’s where I come back to the functional lab testing is just so helpful and that is constantly evolving too. I interviewed for our podcast, the head of one of the lab testing companies in Australia, and she was talking about even still testing. They’re now using or starting to use a new technology called PCR detection, which at the moment on a stool test, you can only from a beneficial bacteria point of view, I think there are maybe ten different strains we can get access to information about. But with the new technology now, we can look at everything, millions of different strains, and then from there, look at genetic dispositions for someone who may be at risk of developing things like heart disease, cancer, or diabetes. So the lab testing too. So it helps to just fine tune and individualize what that person needs to heal than to also have optimal health. But it’s also great just for compliance because then people can see inside their body and they’re like, yeah, there’s some serious things going on here. I’m going to take this whole healing thing seriously. Whereas sometimes with that lack of evidence, people can be a little bit wishy-washy and hodgepodge with what they’re doing. So I find that just holds people in the space of healing. Then from a neuroscience point of view as well, like what we’re finding out about brain plasticity and how we can switch off physical symptoms using our brain, which is what we do in our program as well, is phenomenal. I feel like every health care provider needs to know this and needs to also practice this, or at least have someone they have in their community of people they can refer their clients to.

 

Bethany Jolley: You’ve mentioned you have a podcast and you also have some other resources like books and courses alongside your practice. So how do these tools complement your direct services and help spread awareness about preventing burnout?

 

Filipa Bellette: So I published my new book last year, Ending Body Burnout, which is the method that we take our clients through in our signature program. It is only $30 because we don’t have a lot of space for new clients. There’s a waitlist, and there are also people who desperately need to know how to heal their bodies, but they might not have the finances. So I wrote that book as really like a DIY tool that if you followed everything in this book, yes, the lab testing side of things, you might need to have some support there. But even then, if you just implemented sleep movement and nutrition in a way that’s going to help heal the body, have a healthy environment so that you can heal, and then the mind work, the brain nervous system unconsciously work, is simple stuff, but people just don’t do it. But if you do it, most people will probably get the benefits without actually needing to do lab testing. We also have a podcast which is a free resource, and we drop episodes on that every week. That’s looking at our holistic approach to healing. We do have some courses, and although they’re not easily accessible, we often use them more as courses for different free events and things that we have on offer. But if you’re on our email list, we’re often we’re doing a lot of free webinars and live events pretty regularly.

 

Bethany Jolley: Looking ahead, do you have any new projects or innovations that you’re excited about introducing into your practice?

 

Filipa Bellette: To create more accessibility for people, we are nutting out a group option for our Ending Body Burnout method, which will be a lot more affordable, but also still able to get individualized support. But also be creating individual programs and stuff for people inside that program. So that’s like the big one that we’re working on. Then you mentioned courses, so we’re working on some short courses that can either complement the book or provide more awareness, but each of the courses will have some sort of transformational promise. So you do get a result out of it. And look, this is probably more so in the future, but we are so keen at some point to create a functional medicine holistic healing school for practitioners in Australia, because there is nothing here for Australian practitioners at all. That’s going to be a big project. So that’s why I’m like, that might be very far in the future, but still preparing for it now.

 

Bethany Jolley: Once again, thank you so much for joining us today. This conversation has offered invaluable insights into the heart of holistic wellness and the fight against body burnout. We’re inspired by the dedication and innovation that you bring to the wellness industry. For those listening who are interested in learning more about Chris and Filly Functional Medicine, or accessing their resources will include links in the episode description. Remember to subscribe and share your thoughts with us on social media. Join us next time on NutraPreneur. As we continue to explore the dynamic world of nutraceuticals and wellness. Stay informed, stay inspired, and here’s to your health. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Nutra Preneur. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and better yet, leave us a review as it helps us grow the show.