#36 The One Thing I Actually Agree With Doctors On: Supplements

In this episode, Jenny shares the surprising reason she agrees with doctors who say we don’t need supplements — 

As a former holistic practitioner and herbalist who sold supplements for a living, she bought every protocol, every powder, every miracle blend… and still stayed sick.

Inside this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why supplements don’t heal chronic symptoms
• Why people feel safer relying on pills than doing the deeper work
• What’s actually happening when someone says supplements healed them

If you’ve been told you need to try that miracle in a jar pill that everyone is talking about, this episode will be a refreshing, rebellious dose of truth.

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Thanks for listening! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Rebellious Healer, where we ditch the fear, decode the symptoms, and heal at the root instead of chasing fixes. I'm Jenny Peterson, former holistic practitioner, turned mind-body rebel. For 20 years, I've helped people get to the root of chronic symptoms by changing the subconscious patterns behind them. If you've tried everything, still feel stuck, and know there has to be a deeper reason your symptoms won't go away, you're in the right place. There's a lot I don't agree with in the medical world. But when doctors say you don't need supplements, I actually agree. Today I'm diving into a topic that might ruffle a few feathers, especially if you have a cabinet full of powders, pills, tonics, herbals, and bottles promising gut repair, detox, hormonal balance, or anxiety relief or whatever. Because the wellness world has sold us the belief that healing requires supplementation, that if you just take the right pill, the right blend, or the right protocol, the symptom will disappear. But here is the uncomfortable truth. If symptoms were caused by a missing supplement, you would already be healed. And yet people spend thousands, rotate formulas, switch brands, add more to the cart, and nothing changes. So today we're going to talk about why supplements don't heal chronic symptoms, why people feel safer relying on pills than doing the deeper work, and what's actually happening when someone says supplements healed them. Let's get into it. So years ago, before Mind Body Rewire even existed, I wasn't just someone who took supplements. I was someone who sold them. I was a holistic practitioner, a trained herbalist. I owned a beautiful health and wellness center where supplements, herbs, tinctures, and oils lined the shelves. People trusted me to guide them, and I did. I believed in them. I made a living from them. So when I got sick, I did exactly what I had coached other people to do. I turned to supplements, not casually, obsessively. I had a full schedule, a pill organizer, color-coded compartments, phone reminders, new products every month. If someone said, this helps anxiety, I bought it. If they said this repairs the gut, I bought it. This balances hormones, I bought it. And every time something didn't change, I assumed I was missing something. So I searched for the next blend, the next herb, the next magical protocol. I spent thousands. And I wasn't just a consumer, I was part of the industry. And I'm telling you, as someone who lived and profited from that world, it didn't heal me. Because supplements can shift chemistry, but they cannot shift subconscious survival programming. So that leads me to reminding you about what symptoms actually mean. Before we go further, we need to clear up one of the biggest misunderstandings. Symptoms are not problems. Symptoms are healing. A symptom appears only after something has been resolved in the subconscious, meaning your body finally has permission to repair. You cannot heal while you are in a stressed state. Healing begins once the brain no longer perceives danger. So a symptom is not the beginning of an issue, it's the resolution of one. Now, this is where chronic symptoms matter. If symptoms are lasting for months or years, they come and go, or they never fully resolve, it means the body keeps getting pulled out of healing and shoved back into protection mode. And that tells us something really important. Your subconscious is still reading something in your life as unsafe. And what pulls the body back into protection mode, it's not a missing supplement. It's not a lack of probiotics. It's not a magnesium shortage. It's the subconscious patterns that have been running your life for years. Patterns like feeling responsible for everything, perfectionism, never slowing down, people pleasing, self-criticism, guilt and resentment and anger, fear of symptoms, overthinking, constantly preparing for worst-case scenarios. Your body responds to your subconscious messages, not your supplement cabinet. If the subconscious still believes it's unsafe, the body stays in protection mode. And protection mode blocks healing. And this is why chronic symptoms persist. So let's talk about why supplements feel safe. People don't take supplements because they're weak, they take them because they're scared. When symptoms show up, the brain wants control. Supplements give the illusion of control. You're doing something, you're fixing something, you're preventing something, you're managing something. And honestly, taking a pill is easier than facing what's underneath. The subconscious patterns that are keeping your body in protection mode. Supplements let people avoid the real work. And they're a distraction disguised as healing. And here's why doctors are right when they say you don't need them. And that's the only thing we agree on. A doctor isn't saying that because they know that subconscious patterns are the root cause to your symptoms. We're still not on the same page for that. The only thing I'm in agreement with here is agreeing that we don't need supplements. And that's what doctors say as well. Supplements don't override a subconscious survival response. If the body still perceives danger, still doesn't feel safe, and is still carrying old programming, no pill changes that. You cannot swallow your way into safety. But I'm also not saying supplements are never useful. There is a time and place. Supplements can support you during acute situations. Let's say you have a cold and you want something that soothes your throat or calms a cough, maybe helps you sleep, makes you more comfortable. And that's completely fine. You're not trying to fix or override your body in those moments. You're supporting comfort while the body already knows what to do. Because in acute situations, the subconscious isn't blocking healing. The immune system is responding as it's designed. And the body is already in repair mode. A remedy doesn't heal a cold, it just helps you feel better and supports your body as it does what it already knows what to do. And speaking from experience, when you are experiencing a cold, having to decide which remedy to take, wonder why it's not working, etc., all of what goes into that is only delaying your healing. And it's actually stressing you out. I know it was always stressing me out. I would have my countertop lined full of supplements when I was sick or my son was sick. And oh, which one should I give him now? And like every hour I had, you know, my alarm going off to give him something different. That in itself is a delay in that whole healing process. And you'll be amazed at how much faster your body moves along when you just support it with good rest, trusting it, and hydration. And while we're here talking about that, let's talk about this idea of boosting the immune system. You can't boost a system that already knows exactly what to do. When you have a cold, your immune system is already activated. This is the army that comes out when there is a healing phase going on. It's already repairing, it's already responding. And you don't have to help it and you don't have to force it and you don't have to boost it. And this idea also that supplements prevent sickness, this is also false. The only thing that prevents sickness is addressing how you respond to life. Because if you are always responding as if there is a threat or in a way that doesn't feel safe to the subconscious, the body has no choice but to adapt. No supplements fix that. And so we've been fed false information based on false understanding of how the body actually works. And that's why supplements can be sold. It's based on false information and false understanding of how we are really biologically designed. And then we have people that say, I felt better when I took, you know, such and such supplement. And yes, sometimes you do feel better when you take a supplement. Not because the supplement fixed the problem, but because it supported the body while a healing phase was already happening, it soothed discomfort, it reduced fear, it created a placebo effect, or you made changes in your life at the same time that actually told your subconscious I'm safe. That's the dinger right there. Because real healing to the body is a feeling of safety. So if you took action in your life to change that inner safety while you were taking a supplement, then that is what created the healing. They can be actions like finally learning how to say no, sticking up for yourself, or setting boundaries around how much you do, uh, resting without guilt, letting people down and being okay with it, releasing anger and stopping overthinking, starting to choose yourself, set boundaries, start trusting your body, not panicking when symptoms show up. These are all actions that, if you do them, are messages of safety to your body that go, we can finally relax, we can finally heal. And if you do those things while taking a supplement, you might think that the pill did the work, but it wasn't the pill, it was the shift. It was how you started treating yourself. It was the change in what your subconscious believed. It was the action you took that told your brain, I am safe now. So for me, there came a point where I had to face something very real. I had been taking supplements for years, and nothing truly changed. I was standing in my kitchen staring at bottles lined up on my counter. Bottles I bought, sold, recommended, believed in. And I remember thinking, I'm doing everything everyone told me to do and what I'm trained to know and do. And I'm still sick. I wasn't healing, I was managing, I was surviving. So one day, I just stopped. No tapering, no weaning, just done. I said to myself, if supplements were the answer, I would already have been healed because I've been taking them for years. And stopping them was one of the most freeing feelings I've ever experienced. I didn't have to wake up and organize a pill holder. I didn't have to schedule dosages. I didn't have to panic when I traveled and carry an extra suitcase for just my supplements. I didn't have to spend hundreds of dollars filling my cabinets. I didn't have to treat my body like it was fragile and I didn't know what to do. It was the first time in my entire healing journey that I actually exhaled. But I will be honest with you, it didn't come without resistance because that was familiar to my subconscious, to my nervous system. Taking supplements was safe for me. So because of that, and because supplements were all I knew, they were what I taught, what I sold, what I built as a career. There was a part of me that thought and my subconscious that wanted to keep me in that place of safety. So those thoughts of, what if I get worse? What if I'm making a mistake? Those type of questions would constantly come up. And I just had to choose to not give them power anymore. And I realized that the fear was the problem, not my body. It was me fearing not having control and having to control my body. My body didn't need the pills. It needed to have that sense of safety. And once my brain finally stopped obsessing over protocols and fixing, my body finally had the permission to stop protecting. And that's what got the ball rolling. My healing really started there because I had to unlearn everything and be willing to start fresh and start over with a new way of thinking and also be real with the fact that what I was doing for years wasn't working, and I had to do something different. And I'm going to tell you, nothing got worse. In fact, everything got better from that moment. And it wasn't because I added something else to take the place of it, but it was because I finally let go of the control, got out of the way, let go the fear, and stepped into trusting my body. So I want you to ask yourself, how much money have you spent on supplements? Probably into the thousands would be my guess. And how long have you been taking them? And what has truly changed? Are they helping you heal or helping you avoid? And the toughest question, if you stopped taking them, would you panic? Because if the answer is yes, that's just fear coming up. And that fear can be overridden with an understanding of what's happening in your body, which I've given you today and in many other podcasts, that the biological reason for symptoms is that you are in a healing process. Your chronic symptoms indicate that it is being interrupted, and you have to find the pattern that is causing that interruption. And the fear goes away when we understand this biological understanding. So if fear comes up when you think about stopping taking your supplements, it's only because the new understanding of how your body works is not fully planted yet. You know, there's still a transition time that may need to happen. And I will say, instead of saying, well, I'll do it tomorrow, I'll feel better about it tomorrow, that the cold turkey part of it, like just stopping the supplements, is going to be uncomfortable. But when you experience that discomfort of going to grab the pill because it's your normal thing to do, and you stop yourself and you use your awareness to say, okay, I'm aware I'm grabbing for this pill right now. You know what? I'm good. My body is healing. And it's going to feel uncomfortable and it's going to take a lot of inner dialogue and conversation with yourself to kind of get through that moment of discomfort. But you can go back to what I've talked about in these podcasts of how your body is biologically designed and how you don't need these things for your symptoms to go away. And so when those old patterns show up, when you're stepping into this place of discomfort, it is very normal for you to feel like, oh, I think I might be doing something wrong. This is really scary. That is the best time to create change and actually start building safety in yourself and your body. And every time that habit, that pattern that comes up just so automatically that makes you want to reach for the supplement and you become aware of that and you stop it, you're chewing away at this fear ball and building the ball of trust. And just by doing us this simple action of letting go of your supplements can start the healing process because it finally feels safe to your body to not always be in this state of control and fear of what it's doing. So if the wellness world has taught us anything, it's that people love pills more than they love the truth. But the rebellious healer knows better. The rebellious healer doesn't need bottles and pills to feel safe. Your body isn't fragile, it isn't broken, it doesn't need to be boosted. It needs leadership, it needs safety, and it needs you. So the next time someone tells you healing takes another pill or another protocol, just smile and think, that may work for them, but I'm not outsourcing my healing anymore. Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.