• 01 Jul, 2024
• Jessica Melnyk

Revitalizing Recovery: Jessica Melnyk Unveils a Game-Changing Holistic Blueprint for Arthritis and Enhanced Mental Well-being

Magazica: Dear readers, we have today one of our distinguished guests. Her name is Jessica Melnyk. She is a registered holistic nutritionist at Jessica Melnyk Nutritional Consulting, and she has been helping people specifically with arthritis, and her approach is very unique. Her approach is holistic. So, we will learn about that. So many of our readers have talked about being worried about arthritis and seeking information about it, and for those who want to understand health in a very holistic way, today’s interview will be a gem for them. Jessica, welcome.

Jessica Melnyk: Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me here today.

Magazica: Okay, so let’s first start with the very first thing, that holistic approach to nutrition. Can you share how your holistic approach to nutrition differs from more traditional approaches to nutrition, and how this impacts the overall wellness plan you create for your clients? Please.

Jessica Melnyk: Absolutely. That’s a great question. So, with holistic nutrition, we really look to the whole person. The physical body is the main focus when it comes to illnesses that we’re dealing with. It’s kind of the most obvious thing. But I think conventional medicine and traditional approaches often don’t consider how our mindset and lifestyle are interconnected to our physical body, how it is responding, and how it is functioning or not functioning. So, with a holistic approach to nutrition, we use nutrition as the cornerstone and an approach that’s very specific to the health conditions that the person is dealing with. We don’t use a generalized approach. We use a very specific nutrition protocol.

So, in my case, I use a very specific nutrition protocol for arthritis and autoimmunity, and of course, the plans can be tweaked if the client has other health concerns along with arthritis or autoimmune conditions, because it is really common when we are dealing with chronic illness to have multiple illnesses. After all, again, they’re all connected with the whole mind, body, and spirit. And so, we have a very specific nutrition protocol. But then we also take into account the client’s lifestyle. We look at their stress level, we look at their mental health as well. And so, we have those types of discussions when we are doing the consulting work so that we can address those areas as well because they have such a huge impact on how we feel physically. So, we just take into account a very well-rounded approach, in addition to the specific nutrition protocol.

Magazica: Meaning that you’re very much, so much like as a layman, I’m understanding, as a very common person for our common readers, that whenever a client contacts you about any issues, or to seek your guidance in anything, you take the person as a total person, like the person, his or her unique condition, their unique lifestyle, their unique life situation. Considering everything, your guidance to their wellness is very customized, individualistic, and personalized.

Jessica Melnyk: Absolutely. And that’s my previous life and career as a social worker. So, it stems from that to looking at what a person’s life is all about, and you know, what can we change or adjust about that? What about their mindset and their perceptions of their situation? What can we work on? How can we help in that way as well?

Magazica: Fantastic. So, can you explain the core principles of anti-arthritis methods, and how it helps people at the root of their joint pain without medication?

Jessica Melnyk: Absolutely. A lot of the clients I work with either want to avoid medication or reduce or go off of medication because they’re worried about side effects, or they’ve had bad reactions to medications. Some clients are okay with being on some medication but want more control over their symptoms. With my approach, we try to remove all aggravators from their system so that their body can calm down and stop creating inflammation and triggers to the pain. For example, removing a food that may be healthy but is triggering their symptoms and pain. When we remove such triggers, our immune system stops attacking the body, which is where we get the pain in many cases with arthritis. Because we’re removing those triggers, the immune system can calm down and stop attacking the body’s tissues, and when that happens, our inflammation and pain subside.

So, removing those aggravators is the first thing we do through the nutrition protocol. But then we also have group support and one-to-one support with me. Anytime we make major changes in how we eat or our lifestyle, it can be hard to stick with it after the initial excitement phase wears off. That’s why it’s really important to have continuity with support so that people can reach out and ask any questions they have about the nutrition protocol, how to integrate it into their life, and even get support for emotional reasons, as that’s part of it too. Change can be hard and challenging, and there can be a sense of grief when we make changes in our lifestyle. So having that group support, community support, and one-to-one support to keep you on track is critical, as well as helping people integrate the process into their lifestyle so it becomes part of their new lifestyle. It’s even subtle things like learning how to do meal prep in a simple way. We help people figure out how to fit it into their day-to-day lives, how to get back on track when life happens, and what to do when on vacation or traveling. My core principles are removing the aggravators, having support, and being able to integrate it into your lifestyle.

Magazica: Perfect, these three points help us grasp what you mean by holistic. It sounds like you are trying to cover all grounds to make overall wellness possible. So then, as we always say in business school, let’s start with why. What inspired you to create such a marvelous program, so in-depth and rooted in each person, taking care of an individual like an individual, and to create this anti-arthritis method? How does it evolve with you and everything? If you could just enlighten our readers a bit.

Jessica Melnyk: That’s a great question. I brought about the anti-arthritis method program because of my health issues. I’ve always had a passion for health and wellness nutrition. It’s always been an interest of mine, and I, oh gosh, ten years ago now, had started experiencing arthritis symptoms, and it was really scary. There were times when I couldn’t use my hands or my wrists because I was so inflamed and in pain. Not being able to do my regular exercise because I had swollen joints, and sometimes, not being able to walk, depending on my ankle being swollen and inflamed, or my hip sometimes. So, I have an autoimmune form of arthritis. They haven’t been able to pin down exactly what kind because it can be mysterious. Thankfully, because of the nutrition protocol that I use and teach my clients, I’ve been largely in remission for the last decade. But I really wanted to share this with other people because I knew how terrifying it was to experience it myself.

The sense of the loss of independence, worrying that I wasn’t going to be able to work because my body wasn’t functioning properly, having fears about the future, and that insecurity. It really can take a toll on somebody’s self-esteem when they’re feeling disabled and not able to do the activities that they want to do, to take care of themselves, and also to take part in social activities and things that are important like that as well. So, I know the way I felt at the time when my doctor was telling me that essentially there was nothing, I could do besides taking medication lifelong, and I was really worried about the side effects of taking medications for a long time, and also just not feeling like I had as much control, even with medications. I wanted to be able to have more control over my symptoms, and how my body felt, instead of constantly being in fear that I might have a flare-up that was going to pop up at any time and not knowing if that was going to happen, or when it was going to happen, or which joint it was going to be affecting.

And so, I dug into the literature on that. Thankfully, at that time, through my first experiences with arthritis, I did go back to the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition and worked on my holistic nutrition certification there. And I learned and had the resources to figure out what was creating this problem for myself. And what could I do, things that unfortunately our doctors don’t learn about? They’re wonderful for so many things. But there’s just something they can’t know everything, right? And that’s where alternative healthcare practitioners come in, to complement the work that they do, so that we have other options and other choices and methods to help ourselves feel better and to improve our health. So, it really came out of fixing my own problem and really wanting to share that with other people, so that they didn’t have to suffer the way that I did at the time, and that they would have other options to improve their health.

Magazica: Straight out of the live experience.

Jessica Melnyk: Yes.

Magazica: And that is a very strong why. Thank you for sharing that wonderful background with all of our readers.

Jessica Melnyk: Of course.

Magazica: Now you have crafted this whole thing, this holistic approach for arthritis, considering a person as a whole. And you have not done it since 2020. Okay, so using your method, using your holistic approach, can you share a success story that you want to share with our readers? Please.

Jessica Melnyk: Absolutely. I had a lot I’ve been thinking of because I normally interview my clients when they graduate from the program so that they can share. I find those interviews so powerful. And I was having trouble deciding who to talk about. But I would say, the overall themes of the success stories, I would say, the first thing that my clients notice is an increase in energy, so physical, and mental energy, and also what comes with that energy is also improved mood. You know, I find a lot with arthritis, a lot of my clients can feel depressed because they’ve been dealing with pain for so long, and they’re struggling, and everything takes longer, everything is more difficult. Sometimes people have trouble asking for help, wanting to kind of maintain that independence and just feeling that struggle a lot of the time.

So having that lift, having that energy, that mood come back, along with the decrease in inflammation, the decrease in joint swelling, the decrease in pain. And then that’s when the mobility starts to come back. So really, getting back to activities from just basic day-to-day stuff, it becomes easy again. Just easy things like keeping your house clean, getting ready for work that doesn’t take forever, not having to wake up and do stretches in bed for an hour, just to get your stiff body going, being able to get out of bed, having good sleeps because you’re not in pain all night long, and it’s waking you up because you’re in pain. So just having that ease in life with the basic things. And then, being able to thrive more at work, not worrying about whether or not you’re going to be able to fulfill your duties at work and not worry about not being able to support yourself in the future, and then another really important thing, is having energy at the end of the day, to still have a social life and spend time with your loved ones if you want to, because often when you’re dealing with arthritis if you make it through the day, you’re pushing through all day long. You’re totally exhausted by the time you get home. And the last thing you want to do is anything, you know, like you just want to lay down. You want to rest because you’re tired, your body hurts.

And everything is just much more difficult. So being able to get back to those things that you really love, and having the energy to engage with your family, your friends, and resume the activities that you like to do, that you haven’t been able to do because of the pain. That’s kind of the overall theme that I get with my success stories. One of the unexpected things that have come up that I’ve noticed with my clients over the years is having other health conditions resolve themselves. I’ve had clients that had high blood pressure, where at the end of 3 months they were able to go off their blood pressure medication because they didn’t need it anymore, being able to go off their cholesterol medication because they didn’t need it anymore. Going from being pre-diabetic to having completely normal blood sugar. Having their family members or their spouses, who do it with them, be able to stop taking medications for health conditions because they don’t need it anymore. There are all sorts of unexpected benefits, too, that can come about, which is wonderful. But again, it’s because our body and our body systems are all interconnected.

Magazica: Having an enhanced level of energy at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day. Better mood, better sleep, better movement capacity. Kind of life is sorted, and as your approach is very holistic, I think that is one of the very grounding reasons that whenever the arthritis is being solved, the connected other health issues are taking care of themselves. Overall, your approach is very holistic. So, you are not treating only that, you are treating the overall wellness of the person. That’s the summary I got.

Jessica Melnyk: Yes, because our bodies are all connected. You can’t have one part suffering without other parts suffering, just like if you have one part benefiting, then other parts benefit too.

Magazica: And I think in my understanding, so far with your conversation, your main strength is the holistic approach, holistic wellness approach. So, you’re taking everything into account. That’s great to know. In your experience, how does nutrition impact mental health? And what are some key nutritional elements that can contribute to mental well-being? It is a question from our common readers. Please enlighten us.

Jessica Melnyk: I’ll try not to ramble because I could talk about it forever. So, you know, with the holistic approach we look at the whole mind, body, and spirit connection. And when our physical body isn’t well, that affects our mental health. It affects our mood because it’s all connected, just like if we are having a really happy life and things are going well. Usually, we have more energy, we just feel better in general, physically. So, if we look at arthritis, and we look at how that is affecting our physical body.

Let’s say I have somebody who comes to me. They’ve been dealing with arthritis for a few years. They’ve had this settled, steady decrease in their mobility, their ability to do things. They’re more worried about what the future is going to look like, they’re in pain. So, there’s fear that comes with that. Of course, that’s an emotion that affects our mood, that affects our energy levels. And it also is really common for people with arthritis or any other chronic illness, to develop depression or struggle with depression because of all the restrictions that that illness can really give a person.

So, not being able to do exercise that they would normally do or be physically active, which improves our mood. We know that not being wanting to be as social, so becoming more socially isolated because you don’t have the energy and sometimes the ability to do activities with your family or your friends that you would normally want to do. And so, then we become more isolated which contributes more to that feeling of depression and having a low mood. It becomes this vicious cycle, you know, kind of withdrawing because we are losing our ability and having that low mood, and then just continuing to kind of fall down that spiral downwards.

So, we’re going to have low energy. We’re going to just feel kind of sluggish, and maybe our brain isn’t even going to be as sharp as it would be if our blood sugar levels were stable. So, when we’re eating in a way where we’re getting good protein, healthy fats, and fiber, our blood sugar levels are going to be more stable, which also is going to help stabilize our mood and give us even energy as well. So, we’re not going to have the big surge and the big drop. Knowing how food can affect our blood sugar and how blood sugar affects our mood, and energy level is a really powerful tool that people can use. Something as simple as making sure that we’re not eating refined carbs and sugars by themselves or in large quantities can make a huge difference in how we feel and how our energy level is. That’s one example. I see the connection between nutrition and our health and mental health. When we’re not feeling well, it’s only natural that mentally, we’re not going to be doing as well. So, I see a very strong connection with that.

Magazica: Thank you very much. Can you please explain what is good protein that you have said like good protein?

Jessica Melnyk: Good protein depends on the type of diet people prescribe to. Having good quality animal protein sources like organic, pasture-raised, grass-fed beef, pasture-raised chicken or pork, wild fish, and seafood are all wonderful sources of protein that are going to have fewer hormones, antibiotics, or chemicals added to them. For vegetarians, different beans like lentils, chickpeas, garbanzo beans, and edamame beans can be good sources of protein that are more likely to keep your blood sugar stable than not having protein and eating, let’s say, a bagel with some butter on it for breakfast, which can be a disaster for being hungry halfway through the morning and needing a really strong coffee by 10 AM.

Magazica: Definitely. It’s not a very good thing. Now I’m learning a lot on this as well. Whenever you are drawing like this is the time, as you are saying, the overall environment we are living in itself, and the lifestyle, urban lifestyle specifically that we have, it’s kind of stress-oriented. We are stressed. So, whenever you are counseling anyone, how do you consider mental health, whenever you are doing counseling or consulting nutritionally like doing nutritional consulting? So how do you incorporate mental health considerations into that, can you please outline? 

Jessica Melnyk: Absolutely. Sometimes it’s incorporating some nutritional supplements that can help our body adapt to stress better. For example, our body goes through a lot of B vitamins when we’re stressed, it needs a lot of B vitamins. So sometimes, if I have a client who’s going through a particularly stressful season of life, having a good quality methylated B complex supplement can be really helpful to help the body adapt. B complex vitamins help improve our mood as well. They’re considered an adaptogen, so they help the body adapt to stress and replenish some of those vitamins that we would normally go through because our body, when we are stressed, is going through a lot of nutrients because it’s trying to provide our brain and our body with what it needs.

Another one of my favorite supplements is magnesium. It comes in many different forms, and I would talk to my clients about what their specific needs would be. Magnesium before bed can be a wonderful tool to help your muscles relax and help you sleep as well. So that’s something that can help with stress. Because obviously, we need good quality sleep to help with stress as well as to help the body and brain recover. So, I really take that into consideration. But as well, I think that’s important. And I work with a lot of women. I would say, mostly women. Because statistically, there are more women than men who are plagued with arthritis, especially autoimmune forms. And what we need to look at and what we talk about is how they are taking care of themselves. Are they taking any time for themselves? I often start my clients off, especially if they’re very busy, especially if they’re like a busy mom and have younger kids, just carving out, starting with 10 minutes a day just for you, whether it’s waking up ten minutes earlier or just having ten minutes at some point in the day where you can just focus on yourself, maybe do a guided meditation, go for a walk, have a bath, anything that helps you relax, and something that you enjoy, or even just watching a funny show that makes you laugh can be really helpful.

Everybody’s different in terms of what makes them feel good and what helps them de-stress. So just carving out that small amount of time. I see so many women, and we talk about this on our group calls as well in my program, as women, we’re socialized to be caregivers, wives, and mothers, and so many women are doing things like working, being moms, taking care of the household, and not to say that their husbands or partners aren’t helping. But still, statistically, nowadays, women are doing the brunt of a lot of that stuff, and the majority of a lot of those activities.

And we’re socialized to put ourselves last. We’re socialized to put everybody before us, and that can be really detrimental to our health if we’re never on the priority list. It’s almost foreign to some clients to make themselves a priority. It’s a larger issue and can take some time for my clients to get used to making themselves a priority and taking time for themselves. You really can’t improve your health unless you make it a priority. But that’s the beautiful thing about it, too, that does appeal to the caregiver type people is that if we’re healthy, then we can continue taking care of everybody else, and everybody else around us benefits. Sometimes, if that’s how I have to get in the door with people to get them to look after themselves, then that’s a perspective that we have to look at. It’s really looking at changing our perspective on self-care and the importance of it and were thought processes around that and trying to change some of those thought processes to get to a place where we’re okay making ourselves a priority and our health a priority. Does that make sense?

Magazica: It makes absolute sense. I can instantly relate to two of the most magnificent caregivers in my life. My mom and my wife. And whatever you say, they’re the living example of that. And I think, as you’ve mentioned, I can’t agree more. It made so much sense. So now our kind of question is that one of the wrapping ones is that. Can you provide an example of a situation where changes in nutrition had a noticeable impact on the client’s mental health like any example? And what was the change?

Jessica Melnyk: This is another one where I feel it’s a general theme with my clients. They really end up building their self-confidence through the process. But one example is one of my most recent clients. And I have an interview with her on my YouTube channel. If anyone ever likes wants to check it out. And I love this story because she started off feeling, you know, she was really doubting herself. She was really doubting whether or not she could actually follow through with the program because she didn’t want to fail, you know. And I think a lot of the people I work with have very high standards for themselves, as I’m sure you know, we can relate, we want to achieve. We want to do well, we want to, you know, feel good about ourselves. We want other people to be proud of us as well, and I think with have arthritis or chronic illness a lot of times.

People are shy about it, or sometimes they feel ashamed about it. I don’t think they should be, but they do, you know. And so, this client in particular, you know, she didn’t really talk to her coworkers about it. You know she was very, quite conservative, and didn’t share her health situation with many people because she didn’t want them to worry about her ability to do her job or just worry about her in general. So, she was kind of feeling self-conscious about her health and wanted to not share that. And so, what we’ve noticed through the process is that you know, she was kind of resistant at first, and she wasn’t feeling the results immediately. She said she noticed the energy improving right away, and so she was feeling. She noticed that within the first, few weeks kind of the mental and physical energy came back. But she wasn’t noticing a difference in her joints right away.

So, she was kind of those doubts were creeping in again. She was worried that oh, maybe I’m you know. Maybe this is why I wasted my time. Maybe this won’t work for me. Maybe you know. I’m doing it wrong and just doubting herself but what she did do? And this is why the group component of the program, and the support part of the program are so important is that she kept coming to the group calls. She came to her one-on-one calls with me. She kept reaching out for help even when she was in a bad mood and was struggling and having a bad day, she still showed up, which is exactly what I want my clients to do. I always say I’m worried about your feet. I don’t hear from you, because sometimes it means that you’re not doing well, but you’re not getting help, so I want you to come if you’re having a bad day, and I want you to tell me about it so we can talk through this. That’s what I’m here for.

As she said, it was about the week ten mark in the program, when all of a sudden things shifted, and she noticed a huge, significant difference in her mobility and how she felt overall. She’s back to golfing 18 holes. She’s back to swimming. She couldn’t even walk to the swimming pool from the changing room before, and now she’s back to swimming. She can get through 18 holes; it’s not a struggle. She’s super excited for the summer. She can do these things that she loves to do that she wasn’t doing last year, because now her mobility is back, and her pain has subsided. She’s able to do these things. And she said even her family noticed. She was with her grown sons a while ago, and they’re like, “You’re just, I can just tell, like Mom, you have so much more energy.” She’s more positive. She feels more positive overall. She’s doing more at work because before there were different events at work that she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to make it through because she wouldn’t be able to stand long enough or have the energy to sustain doing certain things. So, she’s back to doing these events at work. She’s enjoying her social times. She’s enjoying her connections with her coworkers. She’s enjoying the activities and the connections with her family, and she’s so proud of herself because she stuck with it even when it was challenging, she reached out for support, and she proved to herself that she could do it. 

And that’s what we all need sometimes, that support and that guidance. And it kept her on track, and then she was able to prove to herself that she was able to follow through. And so, I think that confidence that she built in herself, that self-belief is huge. She says, “Now I feel like I’ve accomplished the world.” And that’s just the most wonderful gift that you can get as a practitioner, to hear that.

Magazica: Fantastic. Hearing these examples from you and everything. Jessica, thank you for being with us and thank you for enlightening our readers that a very holistic approach can be connected with overall well-being, and they can get better with it through a consistent program, and through that, other health issues will most likely be solved or attenuated. Thank you very much for your time.

Jessica Melnyk: Oh, you’re so welcome! Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate being able to share my work.

www.jessicamelnyk.com

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