The Functional Nurse Academy Podcast

Leaving NP School for Functional Nursing: Kelly's Story

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This episode is brought to you by The Functional Nurse Academy

Kelly Ann Shannon, founder of K. Shannon Functional Wellness, shares her journey from a career in critical care and cardiology to becoming a functional medicine nurse focused on helping patients address the root causes of chronic illness. She explains why she chose to leave nurse practitioner school in favor of training through the Functional Nurse Academy after becoming frustrated with a healthcare model centered primarily on pharmaceuticals rather than prevention and restoration of health. Together, we discuss the limitations of conventional approaches to chronic disease, the role of nutrition, lifestyle, inflammation, hormone balance, and toxic burden in improving health outcomes, and the importance of individualized care. We also explore cholesterol and statins, the appropriate use of peptides, and how today she is helping individuals experiencing weight loss resistance, fatigue, and midlife hormonal changes regain their health and quality of life.

Kelly’s website:

https://www.kshannonfunctionalwellness.com/

 Interested in functional medicine training and business mentorship?

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This show is also syndicated every Tuesday at 10am EST on The Nurses Report on America Out Loud Talk Radio 

SPEAKER_01

Hello, and welcome to the Functional Nurse Academy podcast. This is your host, Melissa Schreibwetter, owner and founder of the Functional Nurse Academy. I am joined today by another one of my wonderful Functional Nurse Academy graduates, Kelly Ann Shannon, who is the founder of Kelly Shannon Functional Wellness and has 30 years of combined experience in critical care, cardiology, and integrative health. Kelly earned her Bachelor's of Science in Nursing at Westchester University and holds a multi-state nursing license. She has completed advanced continuing education in functional medicine through the Functional Nurse Academy and the Wellness Forum Institute. She is board certified in functional medicine as a functional medicine nurse specialist through the American Association of Natural Wellness Practitioners and holds a certificate in holistic and integrative health. Through her practice, Kelly Ann helps her clients uncover the root causes behind symptoms such as fatigue, anxiety, digestive issues, hormone imbalance, inflammation, brain fog, and weight loss resistance. Her approach combines traditional nursing knowledge with functional and holistic wellness strategies to support the whole person, mind, and body. Her goal is to help her clients build a healthier foundation so they can improve energy, resilience, mood, and overall quality of life. She is passionate about help about healthy aging and helping her clients feel better in midlife and beyond. Welcome, Kelly. It's great to have you. Thank you. Great to be here. Thank you. Oh, and then one thing, I mentioned your business as it's Kay Shannon functional wellness, right? Oh, okay. Okay. So I will have that correctly in the show notes so that you all can find Kelly. But it's always so great to be able to, you know, meet with you guys face to face. There's always so many great things we can chat about with. And I love having just these really experienced nurses who have really just been in the middle of the conventional healthcare and they realize something is going on and then they change how they practice. Um, I think that younger experience is really interesting in critical care and cardiology. I would love to hear, you know, your journey from conventional nurse to being interested in functional nursing.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, great. Yeah. I um so I when I started my nursing career, I always had a mind on holistic, kind of like a more holistic approach to nursing with, you know, helping patients with guided meditation and healing touch and things that I knew would help calm them when they were in that hospital setting. And but I will say that I lost two uncles before the age, before I was 18 to cancer. Both of them were 39 when they died. And I also lost my mom's dad, my grandpa before I was born. He died at 56 from his third heart attack. And so those three deaths impacted me as a young person deciding to go into nursing. I just had this kind of itch inside me of like, why did they get cancer? Why did they die so young? They left young children behind. It's greatly affected our family. And so once I started working, I loved critical care, I loved cardiology. But I will tell you, over my first couple of years, I just noticed how much younger and younger the patients were getting and how much sicker they were. And so much of it I could already tell just by even not even being that experienced yet, I could tell it was lifestyle choices and food choices that were really impacting their health. And so I always had that kind of intuition of there's something we're missing in healthcare. We're just treating symptoms. And, you know, especially when you would put a person through, let's say, cardiac catheterization and they get an angioplasty and a stent. And then guess what? They came back three years later because nothing really changed for them. We just totally band-aided the problem and then they came back. Um, so yeah, so that kind of led me at a young age as a nurse in my 20s into my 30s of really questioning like, are we really making an impact on health? And I just always knew that I wanted to help people more, actually help them heal. So that was a big reason for me.

SPEAKER_01

And you have so much experience. And I just have to say, um, so you mentioned you have 30 years of combined experience. Your skin looks great. But anyway, um, I had no idea when I saw you that you had that much nursing experience. So that's really interesting. Thank you. You know, being in critical care and cardiology for so long and then noticing that trend that you start seeing younger individuals. Now, how many years was that for you working in the conventional setting?

SPEAKER_00

So I was in conventional medicine at the bedside from 1996 until about 2011. All of that in between cardiology, cath lab, electrophysiology lab, and then ICU, which then became CTICU, which then became a trauma ICU. So I kind of saw everything. Um, and my last two years were as a trauma ICU nurse. And I would just say it was just was it was traumatizing for me as a nurse to see what the human body could go through. And after two years, I just couldn't take it anymore. Um we I also lost my um my nephew, very young, to a cardiac um heart defect, a congenital heart defect. And that combined stress working in ICU, it was taking a huge toll on me. And interestingly, now knowing what the role stress hormones play in our health, now looking back, I can see that the high cortisol, the high insulin were running the show in my body for a long time. And I didn't realize it. So I just was a very stressful, you know, career. And I loved it until I realized how much it was taking from me as a person. And I kind of needed to step out of that and get into more of a community setting, work more on helping people avoid the hospital. That was that started to become a big goal of mine. Let's keep you out of the ICU, you know, keep you healthy. But yeah, for probably about 20 years of my career, I worked in critical care.

SPEAKER_01

So you know, when I started working as a nurse, there were so I would see these people, same thing, would come in with cardiac issues or they would have a stroke. And then it would really frustrate me seeing what the hospital would feed them. And but there's no denying that, you know, around 75% of these chronic diseases are lifestyle and nutrition related. But I was not seeing these individuals get proper counsel in that area. What did you see for these individuals that were coming in with cardiac issues? Did was there any type of talk about nutrition, lifestyle? What kind of food were they serving them?

SPEAKER_00

Well, my sister's a type one diabetic. So I grew up with um, she was diagnosed when I was about 10. Um, so I grew up really understanding like how how many carbohydrates you should be eating, and then how to make sure you're eating enough protein and fat to help balance your blood sugar. My mom's also a nurse and she was also a cardiac nurse for a long time. So that was great. I got to learn kind of found foundational metabolic health just by what our family was going through. Um, but yeah, your your patient's tray would show up and it would have, you know, a sandwich, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread with a side of pudding. And, you know, they're like, well, it's low fat. So we're making sure you're eating low fat. And I'm thinking to myself, all you're doing is spiking this person's blood sugar, putting more stress on their heart to and their liver to process all this sugar. Um, and then, you know, they're so focused on trying to avoid fat that they're feeding way too many carbs and then feeding into the obesity problem, which is also greatly affecting their heart health. So yeah, it's that low fat craze. I mean, I'm a I'm a a gen Gen Xer. Like we went, we watched our moms go straight to diet soda and you know, those little cookies that had like no calories in them. I mean, we we I saw the gamut of like diet trends and what was supposed to make people thin and healthy ended up making them very, very sick and and really caused an epidemic of diabetes. So yeah, not good. Not good.

SPEAKER_01

No, it there's so much common sense. Like, you know, when you have a tray just full of like processed foods and all of these mystery ingredients, is that going to be uh good for the body or is that gonna be bad for the body that's going to be stressful for the body? So yeah, there's so much, I just feel like lack of common sense. And the system is it, the system is so big and it's so big, it's so dysfunctional. And you know, even though there are good people working within the system, I mean, it is, I just, yeah, I I always hope that things will get better, but you know, I I think I have the most hope for nurses getting trained in functional medicine and really honing in on this health promotion because I, again, like the chronic disease epidemic is out of control. There are things we can naturally do to get people healthy enough to where we're not going to end up having these individuals, these, you know, young adults, or, you know, like what you said with your family members passing away at such young ages, you know. I mean, there's so many things that we can do to um really help to reduce this chronic disease burden. And I know that you mentioned that you wanted to practice differently and then you were in nurse practitioner school, but then you ended up doing functional medicine instead. Can you tell me about that?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so I think it was back in 2021, 2022, I had decided to go back to school for family nurse practitioner, and I got about a third of the way through the program. And all I can tell you is that I was just dismayed at what I was learning. And I started just thinking, I don't want to be prescribing all these medications. But the whole curriculum was based about based around what's the symptom and this is the medication that you should prescribe, and this is the safe dose, and this is how much you would never give somebody. And it was all about drug safety and who can have it, who can't. And I was, I was just that's not the type of medicine I ever want to practice. I want to really be able to help people get off of medication, you know, and not be dependent on medication. So I started searching around. It was in between sessions. My daughter was graduating from high school, so I took a little break for uh, you know, about six months to just let have some time with her. And and then um in that little break, I started thinking about I'm only a third of the way through the program. I have at least another year and a half of this and a lot more money to be learning information that is literally making me so frustrated. And I just, I'm like rejecting it. So I ended up searching around on the internet. I found a few functional medicine courses. Um, the ones that were specific to nurses, just looking through the curriculum seemed kind of basic and like stuff that I kind of already knew. And then I found Functional Nurse Academy and I had my little phone interview to kind of ask questions, and I got a taste of the curriculum, and I'm like, this is amazing. And I signed up right away. And I basically called my advisor for nurse practitioner school and I said, I'm just gonna take a break for a while. So I'll I'll call you if I want to pick it back up. And I can't even tell you, Functional Nurse Academy to me, from the moment I started, I felt like I was going back to med school for functional medicine. It it touches on every single body system, every single organ, every single hormone process, every single digestive process, detoxification, healing, cell renewal, like everything. And as I was going through the course, I started realizing like, holy crap, that's me. I've had that issue since I was 13, you know, and it led to all these other problems. And oh, it's just amazing. So I was so glad to find the Functional Nurse Academy. And I've never looked back. I recommend it to other nurses all the time. It's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01

Yay! And thank you so much for your feedback. And, you know, I hear this from nurses frequently that they want to do functional medicine, but then they think that they need to become a nurse practitioner to do this. And it's just not true. Because yes, if you're a nurse practitioner, you can have a medical practice and you can diagnose and you can treat, but then your liability insurance is going to be very, very high. And there are ways that if we do not have our NP, you can have a wellness business. And I know for me, um, I've had people that are like, oh, are you gonna go back to be an NP? And I just do not want to spend any more time um being indoctrinated in nursing school. So the answer is a big no. And you know, also uh if even if I was an NP, I I do not want to prescribe medications. I don't want to do it. And I see, like in in my business, if I need to utilize a prescription pad, um, usually it's because someone needs some thyroid hormone or some low-dose naltrexone. I will write a letter. I'll write a letter to their PCP and I would much rather do that. You know, collaboration advocacy didn't go back to school and it completely changed my role. So now, um, so how are you doing now with your wellness practice that you, you know, shifted gears from being an NP and now you're operating your own practice? How's that going?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, it's been so great. I officially launched my practice in January of 2024. So I'm about two and a half years in now. And I mean, just the fact that as an RNBSN, I can have my own practice. I never imagined that. I really, even going to nurse practitioner school, I thought I'd I'll always be a part of a team. I always see saw myself working with, you know, other integrative practitioners. But it has been life-changing for me. I love it so much. And I feel like for the first time in all of my years of experience as a nurse, that I'm actually impacting people's health now, getting them to a point where they are overcoming a lot of health issues that they've had for 15, 20 years. I mean, my specialty is more midlife men and women, and especially trying to heal the gut inflammation that's leading to all of these other the sequelae of that, the the high cortisol, the high insulin, the liver, sluggish liver, the the blood pressure issues, the cholesterol issues, all the things that when these my my peers in midlife, I'm 52, so the I'm working with people that I'm going through the same things. Um, this is the worst time to be put on medications because your body's detoxification and compens compensatory mechanisms are getting weaker as we age. They're not getting stronger. And then you add in medications that have an impact on the body. So it's there's gonna be side effects, there's gonna be some bad things that can happen because of them. I'm not saying nobody should go on medications. There's a time and a place where medications are absolutely needed. And I would never tell somebody, don't ever go on a statin or anything like that. But I would say, let's talk first. Let's see if we can work on that through lifestyle and nutrition for six months before you make that decision. Um, I personally had a family member greatly affected and hurt by statins to the point that she was in a wheelchair because of the muscle inflammation. Um, for me, like if I can help guide somebody towards correcting their high cholesterol before they have to go on a statin, I mean, that is such a huge win. And I have had clients that I've I've helped, including myself. I've helped myself lower my cholesterol significantly. And you know, and with cholesterol, you also you want a healthy health cholesterol profile. You don't want to have low cholesterol, you need cholesterol for every single cell in your body. We need cholesterol for our brain. A lot of people don't understand that that you actually really need cholesterol. So to take something that's knocking it out is not good. So to have to be able to have a healthy cholesterol panel, you might have a higher cholesterol. It might be 220, but if your profile looks really good, that's protective. So it's just educating and talking people through that. And yeah, so it's just it's just a lot. It's a lot of teaching.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and there there's and again, so much of it is education, but there is so much nurses can do. And that is another one of my conventional medicine pet peeves. I mean, I'm usually talking vaccines, birth control, statins, you know, because there's just so much there that people are not aware of. And with cholesterol, we know that it's so much more complicated than high cholesterol, bad. Uh, it's it's it's your cholesterol is dysfunctional. And again, you know, people will go on statins. And when an individual goes on a statin, that then increases their risk of developing diabetes type 2 and all kinds of other complications. And they're not educating the patients that going on a statin will lower your cholesterol, and then lowering your cholesterol, you need cholesterol for your production of your sex hormones, and it's also protective to the brain. And now we are seeing research that is showing that there is an association between statin use and dementia, which again, okay, association, of course, does not mean causation, but sometimes association later leads. We sometimes we later connect the dots to causation in some cases. But um, I've seen that too when I start working with a new client. I I love it when I get a new client and I'm able to get results with them in like a couple of weeks. Like it is like I get like giddy about it when they start telling me how much better they feel. But, you know, I have seen this time and time again where, you know, they have cholesterol that is high. And again, like cholesterol may increase as an inflammatory response. So the body is producing more cholesterol to clean up the mess that's going on in the body. It's it's really so complicated. But I see that once you work with people to get them eating real foods, work with them on their gut, decrease toxic burden. Uh, that is one of the markers that I feel like I see the most success with. I see it go down without having access to a prescription pad. I cannot give them a statin. But I find that the, you know, open-minded PCPs, if they see that cholesterol is becoming elevated, but then they have a motivated patient that is like, hey, let me try this nutrition and lifestyle first. A good primary care provider usually is going to be supportive uh of that, depending on the situation. But yeah, um, but yeah, yeah, that's great. And like, what are some other um it did do you have like a specific success story uh from a client that you've worked with?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think um one thing that I try to focus on is the weight loss resistance that kind of hits around perimetopause, menopause. And I've also seen it for the men, you know, hitting midlife and they start to get more belly fat um just from their hormones changing as well and inflammation going up. So I have a couple clients. One specifically I'm thinking of, she started working with me in December. She did so great. She followed, we actually did a functional stool analysis for her and we did a hormone, a Dutch test. And now she's perimenopause into menopause. She was about 50 years old, and she had struggled with 20 extra pounds for so long. She just said, No matter what I do, I could not eat anything. I could eat apples all day, I could eat celery all day. I just don't lose weight. And after working with me, we identified a bunch of issues in her gut, including like she didn't have enough stomach acid production, she wasn't producing enough digestive enzymes, she had overgrowths of bacteria, and she also had an elevation of the enzyme beta-glucaronidase. So she was having issues with recirculating toxins and not clearing toxins out of her system. And we started off with just nutritional diet and lifestyle, and then we got her test results, and I was just, she did amazing. Within about 12 weeks, she had lost 10 pounds. She said, I can't even believe I've shifted off 10 pounds. Like nothing has ever worked for me. And she was also sleeping well. She was taking ibuprofen multiple times per day for joint pain. She ended up not needing the ibuprofen anymore. Maybe like once every couple days, she would take it because she cleans houses. So she sometimes just feels sore. And but of course, I was like, well, try just to take some turmeric. You know, don't take the ibuprofen if you don't need it, you know. Um, but she just finally started shifting off that extra inflammation weight and just her fatigue went away, energy up. And she just was, she's like, I just feel like I have a new lease on life. I'm not tired and in pain all. the time anymore. And my clothes fit better. So yeah. And that's just one client. It's it's happening over and over again. And I'm just I'm so honored when somebody wants to work with me because that you know it is you put a lot of trust in your practitioners and I love that they trust me. And I just try to do a really good job of coaching them each week through this program that you can do it and it's so worth it to get to the other side of it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah. And I do think that that is a a pitfall of some of the larger functional medicine practices because with the and and that's another reason why I do not think that functional medicine should just be limited to MDs and advanced practice providers because then there's not enough qualified professionals to do this. And it's possible to get good outcomes without treating or managing medical conditions because when you just look at nutrition and lifestyle and and I do think that the prescribing providers they are overburdened with all of these complex issues where individuals have gone on one medication and then that medication causes side effects and they go on another medication. And then that causes more problems for them. And I mean I have seen I had I remember I had one client that um she had she came to me and this was a young woman like in you know her late 20s she had worked with a provider that had put her on she was on 20 different medications. And it was just it it was unbelievable. So you know I had referred her to a PCP in my referral network um for someone that would actually start taking a look and working on deprescribing as you know as necessary under supervision. But you know I do think that the prescribing providers the ones that are functional that are holistic they really have their hands full with all of these individuals that are on like multiple different medications and especially as people start making lifestyle and nutritional changes and then they may need to slowly start to titrate off. Have you had any of those cases where they were you know working with you and they were having such benefit that their prescribing provider was able to take them off of any medications?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah I think the biggest thing I've seen so far is I have a client who was on a significant dose of um uh levothyroxin for her thyroid support. She's been on it since she was about 20 years old. And so we just started really working on her gut health and balancing her hormones and getting her cortisol and insulin under control and just working on stress management because she just had so much stress. She had some trauma she needed to work through and she started seeing a therapist while we were working together. And here we are it's been about a year that we were working together and now at this point her her thyroid levels are getting too high. So her doctor's going to start tapering her dose um and you know that for me I would love to see her be able to just get off of the thyroid support but that may never happen for her. It just might be something that she always needs a little bit of but if she can get to a point where she is not as dependent on the medication and her body's starting to make more of its own innate T4 and we've worked really hard on her gut and her just her metabolic health so that she can convert her T4 well and her cells can use it. She's just feeling so much better. So yeah that that's been huge. I haven't had anybody else get off of medication like prescription but it's like they get to a point where they're like well should I ask my doctor is it okay to come off of you know my antidepressant or whatever and I'm like you talk to your doctor about it. I think there's no reason to not trial it and see how you do. Some people say once you're an antidepressant you really can never get off them but I don't believe that I just think that if you can heal the gut and work on inflammation and the person has that desire to you know be well and and they actually are feeling so much better, they may not need the medication anymore. They may realize that the depression symptoms were largely driven by inflammation. You know just having fatigue can feel like depression especially for men. They feel fatigued they think they're depressed and it's like well no I think you're just fatigued like we need to check your your hormones and we need to check your thyroid you might not have depression.

SPEAKER_01

And and again with with mental illness especially depressive symptoms there is so much evidence that neuroinflammation can cause depression and anxiety and we know that these inflammatory cytokines can cross a blood-brain barrier and you know I used to be I used to be a psych nurse and I just could not believe what the standard of care is like for these psychiatric patients. I mean it's terrible and I don't think it's a coincidence that so many of them had gut issues. But in psychiatry even though we know we know good and well that low vitamin D is associated with mental illness and neurological and immune system issues they're still not checking just basic micronutrients. And then of course the way that the appointment times are stacked they have no time for education on nutrition but even for depression I know that there's good data on the Mediterranean diet something as simple as the Mediterranean diet being able to alleviate symptoms but why could that be? It's because it is anti-inflammatory. But um but yeah it's such good stuff and it's just like you know it's just so I feel like it's so easy to to connect these dots but I know that there's so many people that are really entrenched in the system so many professionals that are entrenched in the system and they just they they just can't see it you know um that they're just not connecting the dots to the body being so interconnected. But we are about halfway through the show so we're gonna pause just for a moment. I do want to remind our listeners if you are a set up nurse and you were listening to this program, I can absolutely train you. The Functional Nurse Academy is the leading and the most comprehensive functional nurse training program on the market. Our graduates receive 90 nursing CEs and are also eligible for multiple board certification titles in functional medicine. They also receive live monthly mentorship and if you are interested in that program go to functional nurseacademy.com or you can meet with me live at my next informational webinar which you will find in the show notes this show is also syndicated on America Out Loud Talk Radio on the Nurses Report radio show and podcast so you can also find me there on any major app. Welcome back I am joined by Kelly Ann Shannon owner of K Shannon functional wellness dot com and we are talking anything and everything functional medicine. We're talking about how Kelly actually shifted gears from going through nurse practitioner school to becoming a functional nurse and starting her wellness practice. Welcome back Kelly thank you so things to talk about here and I I did want to touch back on the NP situation because I hear like I've even had nurses that have gone through nurse practitioner school and they find me and they find F and A and they're like okay so I got my NP but I don't want to practice as a nurse practitioner. Can I just go do your program and just do like a wellness business and I have heard this from so many of them that they like spend all of this money and all of this time and then they don't agree with what they are being taught. And I know for me you know I went to nursing I graduated nursing school back in um 2012 but now that I'm functionally trained I'm like well I didn't learn about the gut microbiome I did not learn about like you know vitamin D and magnesium and cord there's all these things they did it teach me. And then I'm learning that oh there are things that they taught me that are not correct. Just from your time in nurse practitioner school um were there things I know that you said it was very heavy on like how to prescribe the pharmaceuticals were were there other things that you were learning that you think may have been outdated or maybe may not have been correct?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah it was a couple years ago so I'm trying to remember um I mean I would commonly hear things like you know if they have an autoimmune condition it's never that's never reversible and you know they have to be on these medications the rest of their life even type two diabetes they would say the these patients have to stay on these medications the rest of their life that that was probably the biggest thing that I can remember just being like I don't think so I don't think that's true. I think you can actually heal autoimmune and you can significantly improve it. It's you know I feel like there was so much in that program that it was truly just designed I hate to say this but I kind of feel like this is like the the eastern or the western medical model is how to prescribe medication is what you're being taught. How to what medication to prescribe for what condition, what dose and who can have it and who can't and that's what I was learning. And but yeah I don't feel like there I can't really recall any other like you know glaringly like that's not right but that you can't reverse autoimmune or you can't reverse type two diabetes I just those are the something that definitely stood out to me.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah and so many providers now I'm glad that you're one of the ones that you were like hmm that doesn't make sense because I think that some some people they really believe it you know if they were taught this in school if their professor said it if it's in their textbook they really really believe it's to be true. And I just think that there's such a need for more discernment in healthcare. And I am developing the deep dive materials for Fectional Nurse Academy I am always looking in to what does the standard of care say and who is influencing the guidelines. And I see the same exact pattern every time that you have these large organizations funded by the pharmaceutical companies that influence the guidelines and what do the guidelines say to do guidelines typically say to use medication long term. And so it is because of functional medicine that I am well today and I am not like in my bed and unable to get out of the bed with you know chronic Lyme disease. And this is one of the most it's one of the most horrendous examples and there's so many people really suffering. But when I teach my students I really want them to understand what patients are being told when they are going through the conventional system because the providers really believe these guidelines that for chronic Lyme they're finally recognizing it as a thing but they're calling it post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome and they don't recommend retesting for the infection and they they recommend outdating outdated tests anyway but they don't recommend testing for an infection and they don't recommend treating the infection but they do recognize that some people that may have been treated for Lyme disease or had an acute infection may develop chronic symptoms but they say that there's no cure for it and they just ridiculously say that the infection should not be treated but instead long-term usage of SSRIs and pain medications. And I can of course right but and then I'm like okay and how much more need of pharmaceuticals are you then going to have if you don't treat the underlying infection and you just take these like long-term medications that have side effects. But I cannot imagine if I did not go through functional medicine and I listened to that garbage like I really don't know what condition I would be in. And I think it's so important that we get the word out that like people are getting better. And I remember being told in school that all of these chronic disease processes they just get worse over time you know and we just need to give them medications because medications I mean medication that's the best thing that they can do. So and I also think you know once people that there are people that are really pushing back against functional medicine right now. But then I also think that there are people that know someone that went through functional medicine and got better.

SPEAKER_00

And then when that happens that person goes and tells as many people as they know and it's growing um what are you seeing in your community like in the area that you live in do you see that people are more open to functional medicine oh for sure absolutely I actually was the lead nurse in a functional medicine practice right in King of Pressure Pennsylvania which is outside of Philadelphia but it's a pretty big area in our community and I was able to work in a practice with a sole provider um she was certified in functional medicine but she was you know traditionally trained through med school and herself just started questioning the the standard of care and questioning you know obviously like doctors are kind of run by the insurance companies they just insurance companies really determine a lot of what your doctor can even order for you or even tell you they're not even as a doctor you're almost not even allowed to tell your patient to take a to not take a statin if you have high cholesterol and you tell your patient as a doctor in Pennsylvania that yeah let's try you off your statin see if you feel better and they have a heart attack that doctor's liable that's a huge issue that drives those doctors of basically practicing out of fear for being sued um it's terrible. So she just got tired of that and left that model came over to functional medicine and then I got to work as her lead nurse for over three years and I got to see I mean when you start when you work in a practice and you see how many patients we see and then you go I'm on on social media I follow a lot of integrative practices and pages and I just think that people are really especially since COVID really questioning what is going on like if if the the health initiative during COVID was to stay home and don't go anywhere. Don't come to the hospital until you are having breathing difficulty I think right there people were like what like that does not make any sense and people started to question. So that's a beautiful thing. If that's the one good thing that came out of it people started to question what is what is actually going on with our our healthcare in our country is it actually designed to help me be well or is it designed to make people money because it seems like a lot of people are making money off of illness.

SPEAKER_01

Yes and I do not believe with the medical technology that we have that we we just you know we just can't get an autoimmune condition under control or you know I mean obesity is a chronic condition. So yeah and especially when you see so many people heal from these conditions. But um I that's it's like this in my community as well, you know, and I noticed after COVID because COVID was so asinine and I just don't understand these individuals in the system that thought it was a good idea to follow this guidance to where okay you can't breathe you know just why don't you just go home and wait you just wait till you turn blue and then and then come back. You know, oh and then no early treatment doesn't work. Yeah just just go home and just get worse. We're not gonna tell you to do anything. You just you just cannot make this stuff up you know but um but I think it's really telling what kind of provider that you are working with or when you are choosing your providers if you are working with a provider or another healthcare professional and if they were pushing back against that or if they were just falling in line, you know I mean I know for um the provider that I've chosen for my children, um I would never take my child to a provider that ever thought it was appropriate for children to take COVID vaccines or for toddlers to wear masks. I mean I I just I I really want to examine these people's brains. I'm like you went through all of this schooling but how do you not how how do you how can you not figure these things out? I just don't understand it. But yeah I'm seeing it was so absurd that there are people that I know that would have never questioned anything and they're kind of like they're wanting to seek out functional medicine but but with the interest getting high I do think that that system is feeling threatened. And I've seen again an explosion of just propaganda throughout social media. Have you noticed that like I've seen like an uptick of these very mainstream type influencers and it's almost like they all get a template and they all start talking about the same thing. But one of the things that they've been talking about is functional medicine and about how it's basically quackery.

SPEAKER_00

Have you seen that well no I haven't seen the the comments about it being quackery. I just seen so many more I would call them what they call themselves health influencers who are not medically trained which I understand some people can get into some sort of health coaching without a medical background of course I mean you can take courses and you can learn you don't have to have a degree but when you see somebody who you know is more of like a business person and they're just literally trying to sell you some kind of online program in functional medicine I'm like oh what are the credentials there? Like what are you getting? And they seem to have these huge followings and I so I just question them like I and I try not to compare myself as a as a provider who is on social media. I am promoting my goal really is I don't want a lot of followers I just want followers who value what I'm saying and that might turn into clients for me. That is what I want. I just want I don't need viral I don't want viral because I don't want anybody calling me saying let's come on this show for an interview because you went viral. No thank you. I'd rather just have enough followers that people are getting what they what like just good information from me. They're getting guidance from me and that the biggest thing for me is if a client refers people to me, that means everything. And that I remember during your training in the beginning of Functional Nurse Academy, well maybe towards the end of it when you start talking about the business development side and you said after a couple months of working with people you're probably not going to need to advertise because your referrals will just start coming in and they they sure did. It was it took me about a year to get to that point but now the referrals come in and I still advertise because I still I still want to keep growing um but yeah I just I think that it's I don't I see more of a I think I see I think the thing I'm super frustrated with right now on social media and kind of a health trend is to be super skinny and take a lot of DLP1s, lose all of your body fat, lose lose a lot of your muscles your muscle as well, just kind of lose the curves that actually make you a strong and vibrant person. And that's the health trend I'm having a hard time with right now. I feel like it's okay to use peptides in moderation there's a definitely a low and safe way to use peptide therapy um especially if you have inflammation and obesity there's it can be so helpful to help get your health back on the right course. But I'm seeing too many women who are already thin already you know look healthy go on peptides and just lose their body they just they lose their face they lose their butt they lose their boobs they're not healthy metabolically anymore. Those are the people who you're gonna see are going to end up being stuck on the GLP ones because their metabolic system depends on having good muscle mass and your bone density is what's going to get you to a nice old age being active and safe and that's the trend that I'm I'm more concerned about right now. And I, you know, I don't really know what to do about that. I wanted to try to educate people about peptide therapy because in my own working in the functional medicine practice and also I worked at a med spa. So I've been helping people with GLP1 treatments for about two years now. And my goal was always we're monitoring body composition every four weeks. We are not losing muscle and if we start to lose muscle we need to look at your dose and cut it back or hold it for a little bit like there's a goal of doing it safely low and slow is the way to go. So anyway so that's kind of the health trend that's been frustrating to me lately is this this selling skinny um people chase that and it's so unhealthy and it's it's just it's just awful because you know we're beautiful people All of us. Your curves are part of your story. And they're also part of your longevity. So if you take away everything that makes your body the strong foundation that you need, it's it's I worry for those people as they get older.

SPEAKER_01

You know, I do too. And again, I'm not completely against them in every situation, but the GLP ones can have very serious side effects and they're frequently being prescribed inappropriately. And I have seen numbers that when they're prescribed, when they when they are prescribed inappropriately, 40% of the weight loss may be muscle mass. And that's one of the reasons why so many individuals can't get off of them because they try to go off of it, but then they lost so much muscle mass. And muscle mass is really important for your metabolism. And so again, back to the education, I think that people are not being properly educated. And I had this uh one client I worked with, really healthy body weight, very healthy body weight, not overweight, but she wanted to lose 15 pounds. You know, she just wanted to lose the 15 pounds. And her provider was like, no, I'm not gonna prescribe this for you. So she was able to go online and find a provider that would. So it's it's really so easy for people to get the peptides. And I've also heard of other ways that people are getting them from less authorized routes, like people are getting them from China or have you heard about that as well? Like people can go and purchase peptides uh basically directly if they if it's for say research, like there's companies that say, oh, here's your peptides for research purposes, but that they know that people are buying them and taking them. But it's a loophole. And I just want to ask, since we're on the topic of peptides, so I see GLP ones being promoted widely, like your Ozimpic and Wagovy. It's all over mainstream media, it's all over social media, it's everywhere. But then I am seeing pushback, usually from you know, these social media health influencers that they're all about GLP1 agonists. That's you know, God's gift to the human population. But they're very against all of a sudden, like things like BPC 157, thymus and alpha one, and and all of this, what I think is propaganda on social media, started to happen after HHS loosened, loosened the restrictions on these other peptides. Can you speak to that?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, I think my well, I'll I'll be honest, when when I first was, when I was working at the functional medicine practice, and the doctor also got certified in obesity medic obesity medicine because she said, these GLP ones are not going anywhere. I need to know how to prescribe them. She said, we're gonna start doing a compounded form in our office because at that time, this was back in 2023, it was really hard to get, even 2024, it was really hard to get the commercially available forms because there was a shortage of the medication, a shortage of the pen needles. And so we we sourced, um, we were already doing IV nutritional therapy from a very reputable compounding pharmacy. So we reached out to them. They said, yep, we are compounding terzepatide and semiglutide. So we, you know, we basically kind of recommend you everybody has to start. We kind of we use the the commercially available medication guidelines for dosing. Um so we we started doing it and I was really against it at first. And I think I even heard you and maybe one of your podcasts talking about how everyone who was like so against the COVID vaccines and and pharmaceuticals now all of a sudden it's totally fine taking a GLP one. I don't know if that was you, but like it is kind of crazy. Like I'm not somebody who ever really wants to push a pharmaceutical, but I was so anyway, long story short, I started going attending like the lunch and learns that the pharmaceutical reps would take us out so that we could learn about it. And so I was listening to obesity medicine specialists talk about it. And there, I did have a lot of red flags in the beginning, but after working with it, really, and I'm truly saying, like low and slow, like we would never raise anybody's dose unless they had plateaued and they still needed to lose about 20 pounds. We didn't ramp people's dose up the way they do with stepbound and and Wagovi and Ozempic. They will just ramp your dose up. You will every month they'll increase your dose, even if you're not eating, even if you're constipated, even if you have nausea every single day. We didn't do that. Monitored side effects very closely. And what I started to see was especially our midlife clients were just haven't been able to lose weight in 25 years, finally starting to lose weight, were doing an in-body body composition, they are losing fat mass, they are holding on to their muscle mass, and they not only that, stopped having pain, joint pain, started noticing improvements with their gut health, some of them noticing less brain fog. So I started to think we need to look into peptide therapy a little bit more because it is doing a lot of good things if it is done safely and correctly, and you're just you're being monitored. If you're not being monitored and you're just getting it online and giving yourself some kind of dose that they're gonna recommend that you keep increasing because they want to sell you more. That's that's how it's sold. Um, it's just you can really hurt yourself. And so I definitely think there's I'm learning more about like the GHU, the the copper one, the copper peptide G H K C U, I think it's called, can really help with skin and hair loss as we get older. There's peptides that help with cognition. I'm all about it. If it's something that you think is going to, they're regenerative, you know? And a lot of times as we get older, we are not regenerating ourselves as healthy as we as we used to when we were younger. So I think there is definitely a space for peptide therapy, but it's just not a good idea to ever buy something online from a company that you do not know or you don't have a trusted healthcare professional guiding you towards that company. Because you, if you're injecting something into you or putting something on your body, you have to be really careful. There's some really toxic products out there that have heavy metals in them, pollutants, things that you would never want in your body. So yeah, I think that it's definitely a little bit of the Wild West out there. And I think more regulation needs to be put in place. But at the same time, I do like people being able to research and have freedom to find remedies that they need when they can't find somebody to order it for them, like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. Like these are treatments that you you can't always get from a prescriber. So I understand I don't want people to lose the ability to find what they need, but just use caution and make sure that you verify a product with a good practitioner that you trust and make sure that, you know, you kind of get some guidance on it.

SPEAKER_01

And it's also, I always say it is serious business whenever you are injecting anything into the body because the absorption rate is going to be so much higher. And yes, like the wellness industry, also with peptides, there's a lot of loopholes. So you want to make sure that whatever supplements you are taking, whatever wellness products, peptides, whatever it is, that this is from a reputable source where they are third-party testing the products. So, well, anyway, I would love to hear more about your business and your offering. So we have listeners that listen to uh listen to the show um from all over the country. And can you tell me um where are you based out of and what locations are you able to provide services in?

SPEAKER_00

So I'm based out of southeastern Pennsylvania, and um that's basically where I have the main source of my clients, but I also do practice telemedicine. So I can see people, I have a multi-state nursing license, so I am allowed to work with clients and all over the country as long as your state participates in that multi-state license. Um, the main format for my practice is one-on-one health coaching, where um basically we do a discovery call. I find out what kind of symptoms you're working, you'd like to work on, what are your health goals. And then we, if we decide to move forward, we have an intake appointment, a very thorough assessment of your health history, any possible toxicities, any um just things in your past that you may not have correlated to your health decline. Um, and then we decide on some testing. I typically really like to do some functional health testing, either some blood work, which I do through lab core, um, or some functional stool testing, or even some hormone testing, a urine metabolite test. Um, there's a test called the Dutch test, which a lot of people have heard about, but it's a really wonderful test to look at your hormone metabolism, your detoxification, and also like how well your nutrient levels are. So um, and then once we get test results, we have a big appointment to go over all of your all your lab results, kind of set a course to correct whatever's wrong, and really just from a foundational level, work on lowering toxicity in your life. And a lot of people don't even realize it could be the products that you're using on your body every single day, could be products you're using in your home. It could be mold in your house or your workplace, and you don't even realize it. Um, so we really work on that and we work on obviously nutritional, one-on-one coaching. And I really try to guide people. I have a patient portal through my EMR. Um, and so I tell people, just message me, use the food journal, write in there. I want to see what you're what are you eating? How did you do today? And I I just like a lot of touch points with my clients to really support them through the initial changes because making diet and lifestyle changes is not easy. And I will praise my clients up and down every day, like you did so awesome. I'm so proud of you because I know how hard it is. I've done it myself. And I have also fallen off the wagon and had to get back on, and that's okay. It's real life. We we just uh we adapt and go forward as we need to. Um, yeah, and so I would say mainly I do one-on-one health coaching. I am looking to develop some group coaching. I'm doing like a beta group right now to see how it goes. And I would love to be able to offer group coaching because I think that way you get in the door at a little bit less expense to try to work on some of these things, but still get the support of having a health coach, you know, guiding you through it.

SPEAKER_01

I love the group, the group coaching because that also opens a door for community and just access to where you as a practitioner can serve so many more people. But I love that you are doing all of that. And again, I talk about functional testing on here frequently. And, you know, for our non-medical listeners or non-nurse listeners that may be looking to work with the practitioner, there really are so many ways that a functional nurse can serve you. And I do get the question a lot like, how are nurses ordering labs? There are ways that we can order labs through physician services. So there's ways that we can partner with the laboratory to get the labs ordered for you that you need. And then that nurse can also collaborate with your healthcare team if there happens to be a medical need. But again, you know, in this like health and wellness side of it, it is just so key to have a trusted professional that can guide you and help with the support because um living in the world that we live in with all of this like convenience access to foods, and there's so many temptations for an unhealthy lifestyle. So it's good to have someone by your side that can help you to navigate. So well, this is great. So I will post your links in the show notes that way. If anybody is interested in working with Kelly, uh, you can book a call to do a free discovery call with her. And then so I will put all of your links in the show notes. Do you want to tell them um just where they can find you, like on social and website? Like what what are your biggest platforms?

SPEAKER_00

So my website is www.k Shannon Functional Wellness.com. And through there, you can check out all my programs. You can contact me. We can set up Discovery Call on the website. Um, I'm on Instagram and Facebook as K Shannon Functional Wellness. Um I guess you have to do the at sign at k shannon functional wellness. I do have a YouTube channel, but I am really bad at posting videos. But I'm there. There is some videos there, or there are some videos from probably a year ago, but you might find some something helpful in there. I do hope to get back to creating, but it just takes a lot of time and I'm I'm really working more on helping clients versus creating content because you got to go where the help is needed. Um, but yeah, that's pretty much that's pretty much where you can reach me.

SPEAKER_01

Awesome. Well, thank you for coming on the show today. That is all the time that we have today. If you want to learn more about the Functional Nurse Academy, please feel free to register for our next live webinar, and you will see that link in the show notes. You can also check out Functional Nurse Academy on our social media platforms or on our website at functional nurseacademy.com. Until next time, be safe, be well, and God bless.