Episode 111 | Jan 2, 2025

Beating Autoimmune Diseases, With Palmer Kippola

What if a diagnosis didn’t define your future but instead became the catalyst for reclaiming your health? This week on Health Coach Talk, Dr. Sandi welcomes Palmer Kippola, FMCA graduate, health coach, and bestselling author of Beat Autoimmune: Six Keys to Reverse Your Condition and Reclaim Your Health. Palmer shares her remarkable journey of overcoming multiple sclerosis (MS), defying the odds, and transforming her experience into a mission to help others heal from autoimmune disorders. Through heartfelt stories and actionable insights, Palmer dives into the strategies and mindset shifts that changed her life.

“What gets me so excited is when I work with someone and they decide to go on to become a health coach. This is the ripple effect in motion, right?… I am just a messenger helping other people find their freedom so they can create ripples in their own lives, with their families, and then their communities and beyond.”

Palmer Kippola, FMCA Graduate

Palmer’s healing journey began with a shocking diagnosis at age 19 and a grim prognosis from her neurologist. Determined to prove the experts wrong, she spent years exploring root causes and experimenting with ways to alleviate her symptoms. By embracing stress reduction, dietary changes, and functional medicine, she not only reclaimed her health but also uncovered the power of addressing the root causes of chronic conditions. Her father’s words, “You can beat this,” became her mantra and eventually inspired the title of her book, Beat Autoimmune: Six Keys to Reverse Your Condition and Reclaim Your Health.

In her conversation with Dr. Sandi, Palmer shares her FIGHTS framework, which outlines the key factors in healing from autoimmune disorders: food, infections, gut health, hormone balance, toxins, and stress. She highlights the importance of addressing these root causes, explaining how incremental changes can make a profound impact on health. Palmer also describes her collaborative approach as a health coach, working alongside naturopathic doctors to provide holistic care that meets clients where they are. Her toxin bucket analogy offers a clear and relatable way to understand how reducing toxic burdens can prevent autoimmune flare-ups.

For health coaches, Palmer’s story offers valuable lessons on guiding clients through transformative healing journeys. Her emphasis on creating a safe, judgment-free space aligns with the core principles of health coaching, empowering clients to make sustainable lifestyle changes. Palmer’s collaborative care model, which pairs health coaches with doctors, serves as a reminder that health coaches are integral to the larger healthcare team. Her work also demonstrates the ripple effect of health coaching, inspiring others to not only reclaim their health but also pursue health coaching as a career.

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Dr. Sandi: Today I am so excited for my guest. She is Palmer Kippola, and she is a renowned graduate of FMCA. And so I want to welcome you, Palmer.

Palmer: Oh, Sandi, it is such a pleasure to be with you. I’m delighted.

Dr. Sandi: Thank you. So, I have a copy of this book, which I’m going to show if you are watching it, and it is “Beat Autoimmune: Six Keys to Reverse Your Condition and Reclaim Your Health.” So, we’re going to be getting into that. But first, I would love to have you share your healing journey.

Palmer: I’m happy to. I have to take you back a little in time because I was 19 years old. I was home from college after my freshman year. It was summertime. I’m with my parents in Southern California. And one morning I woke up and the soles of my feet were all tingling. That feeling you get when you’ve slept on a limb too long and then when the blood flows back, it gets all tingly. Only this morning the blood did not flow back. But I thought, oh, it’ll just be fine. So, off to work I went. I had a summer job.

And over the course of the morning, that tingling just crept up my leg like a vine. And by the time it reached my knees, I knew something was wrong. So, I called my mom and dad who called the family doctor who said, “Get her to the neurologist at UCLA today.” So, that’s what we did. And we sat in that neurologist’s office and she had me do a quick exam. And with a spectacular lack of sensitivity and in a very short time, she said, “I am 99% sure that you have MS, multiple sclerosis. And if I’m right, there’s nothing you can do except take medication.” And we had no idea what MS was, Sandi. We had never heard of it. Remember, many years ago, people really rarely heard of, let alone got, autoimmune disorders. And fast forward to today, and this is very common.

We were terrified, and we left her office with very little information, very little hope. And I learned years later that she had taken my parents aside and said, “Get ready. She’s going to be spending her life in a wheelchair and you need to be ready for this.” So, off we went home without information, just scared. By the time we got home, the tingling was right under my collarbone, and that night my mom crawled into bed with me. And she’s crying but I’m crying harder because by this time, all of the area from the neck down that had been tingling had gone completely numb. And I would stay in shrouded in this numbness for a full six weeks. And all I could do was lie on the couch and watch the Summer Olympics 1984 that were going on TV.

And I am so grateful to my parents who were absolute rocks and to friends who came by and brought gifts and tried to cheer me up and so forth. And my mom would cry with me. Was I going to have to spend my life with my parents? Was I going to have to drop out of college? All of these questions, it was a great unknown.

And two things happened this summer that were really impactful to me that I’d like to share. And one of those was a family friend came over as I lay there on the couch. And she didn’t come with cookies, she didn’t come with movies. She came with a question and she said to me, “Palmer, why do you think you got the MS?” And I was taken aback. What do you mean why do I think I got the MS? Are you accusing me of…? Wait a minute. She left, but that question never left me. So, I lay there and chewed on that like a dog with a bone, completely numb, nothing to do, nowhere to go except contemplate that question. I have to say that one question became my North Star for the next 30, 40 years. And it still remains a top question, not just for myself but now as I serve clients, it’s the main question that we keep coming back to. Why do you think you got the fill in the blank?

So, the other thing that happened that summer was my dad was super motivational, Sandi. He would come by the couch, I’d be lying there and he would say, “Honey, you can beat this thing. I know you can,” which is why ultimately the book is called Beat Autoimmune for my dad. But who knew? He didn’t know that I could beat this thing. But I have to tell you, that numbness and tingling dissipated and went away for me to go back to college in the nick of time for my sophomore year. But it would take 26 years and seeing six neurologists over that time who all said the same tired refrain, “There’s nothing you can do except take medication.” But on the other shoulder, I had my dad’s voice saying, “Honey, you can beat this thing.”

So, I set out to conduct all of these experiments. I was going to do what I could do. I started with stress reduction because I figured the reason I got into this mess was stress, chronic stress. So, I started doing yoga in 1987. I started meditating in the early ’90s. And I have to say that when I relaxed, when I calmed down, the MS symptoms would calm down and go away. And conversely, when I was stressed out—exams at school, conflict at home, whatever it was—I’d get more MS symptoms or an advent of new symptoms. So, stress made a big difference, reduction of stress.

The other thing I tried was every diet known to man. If there is a name for a diet, I have tried it. I tried the Swank diet, which was purported to be the best diet for MS, low fat, high carb. I tried vegetarian, macrobiotic, vegan, raw vegan, Atkins, you name it. I tried it. And I’m going to get to the drum roll, which takes us to 2010. I finally thought, “You know what? I wonder if I should see a nutritionist. I bet something that I’m eating is causing me to feel this slight tummy discomfort after eating.” And I have been constipated my entire life. Maybe what I’m eating has something to do with that. Of course, doctors said constipation is just a symptom of MS, so learn to deal with it.

Well, I found a functional medicine nutritionist right in my town. And I went to see her. She did some testing. And sure enough, it comes back that I have non-celiac gluten sensitivity. So, I have this sensitivity to gluten, but I’ve been eating it with every meal for my entire life. I had no idea that what I was eating, including, you’ll appreciate this, I have a picture of me in my high chair as a baby with my arm in a box of Cheerios, literally with every meal, like pizza, pasta, sandwiches for lunch. So, this steady stream of gluten, I did it for a month. But in the first two weeks of removing all of the suspect foods—the gluten, the dairy, the eggs, all of those autoimmune suspect foods—I stopped having tummy trouble after eating. And within a month, I stopped having MS symptoms ever again, Sandi, full stop.

And I am very quick to add that I am not telling you or people that it is just about removing gluten and you are free of MS. I am saying my underlying triggers, my root causes may look very different from yours, from other people’s, and we’ll get to that, but I do want to say that gluten creates a leaky gut in anyone who eats it, and that is research from 2015. So, this is the promise. We now know there are so many of these root causes that we can do something about. And so that’s what I’ve decided to do something with my life about and here I am now working as a health coach.

Dr. Sandi: Well, what an inspirational story. And it sounds like, yeah, it wasn’t just the gluten, but those words from your father, “You can beat this,” that was a shower of chemicals from your brain that was anti-inflammatory. And that started you down this path of healing, which did include all of the mind-body pieces, all of the diet that you…yes, the gluten and like me, like all of those failed approaches that we had back then, which was the low fat and all of those other raw vegan ways of eating that we didn’t know better. We thought they were healthy.

Palmer: Didn’t know better.

Dr. Sandi: But now you are on the right track. And so you chose to become a health coach. Can you talk about that?

Palmer: Absolutely. So, after I healed, I had this cognitive dissonance, like how was it possible that six neurologists told me there was nothing I could do except take medication? But my felt and lived experience was, wow, there was so much I could do. So, I was in sales and marketing in the high-tech industry. I literally decided then and there to quit my day job to research autoimmunity full-time. In fact, I started out just researching MS because I thought this is what I have or had. I need to understand how it’s possible.

So, I quit my job. I spent four to six hours every day immersed in a biomedical database called PubMed, which is open and available to anyone who’s curious and wants to find information, looking up root causes of and solutions for autoimmune disorders, for MS. And what I found was so empowering and so exciting that I felt like I needed to shout this from the rooftops.

So, I started out deciding that I wanted to help other people. I had amassed a whole list of all the root causes that people needed to address and slowly. And then I decided to get my coaching certification with FMCA. And I’m so grateful that I did that because then I could hang a shingle with the certification for people to find similar results to what I experienced.

And I did. And I coached mostly women because autoimmunity is a women’s disorder. Unfortunately, most people, it’s like 80% female. And when people started addressing their root causes, they healed. And I thought, “This is remarkable. I want to write down all of these root causes.” So, what I did is I got out a piece of paper. I love writing things down and I put the root cause categories into a list of categories. And I took it around to different practitioners, to functional medicine doctors, naturopaths, immunologists. And I went to go meet Dr. Aristo Vojdani down in Los Angeles. And I showed him my list and I said, “Dr. Vojdani, what do you think of this? Is there anything that I’m missing?” He took a look at my piece of paper and he said, “Palmer, this is a book and those are your chapters.”

Dr. Sandi: Oh, yes. And that became the book.

Palmer: And that became the structure for the book.

Dr. Sandi: Wow. And I remember when you came to me and you were so excited and I said, “This is a book that really needs to be out there.” So, tell us about the book and the FIGHTS. This is your acronym for a framework.

Palmer: That’s right. That’s right. So, like I said, I didn’t set out to write a book, but I had so much passion in me and I still do to take a stand for people who are in a similar situation. They have an autoimmune disorder. They don’t know what to do. They go to the doctor and they’re given very little hope. And yes, there are other books on the market that talk about food and some stress reduction and whatnot. But all of those categories that I had come up with, that was a really meaty book, and I knew that had to come out.

So, like you said, I came up with an acronym. I’m a word person. I wanted people to have a word that they could remember for all the root cause categories. And the word that emerged is FIGHTS, which stands for food, infections, gut health, hormone balance, toxins, and stress. Now I always lament that I didn’t spell the word peace, but it really is much more appropriate for my dad telling me I could beat this thing.

So, each chapter in the book goes into some details about the FIGHTS framework. And if you think about it in two ways, that there’s one side of FIGHTS, which are the bad FIGHTS. These are the inflammatory foods. These are the gut infections. These are the hormone imbalances. This is the stress, the childhood trauma. But then you flip it over and you have the good FIGHTS, which is addressing each one of those categories, we began to create health one step at a time.

Dr. Sandi: That is so beautifully said. And it makes sense that this is FIGHTS because you are calling upon everything both internally and externally to create something that is going to destroy, that would be the negative. So, you are basically beating the condition.

Palmer: That’s it. May I use another metaphor that I really like to describe?

Dr. Sandi: Oh, absolutely.

Palmer: I like to talk about the toxin bucket. So, everybody can visualize a bucket and imagine that each of us carries within ourselves a bucket. And at the top of the bucket is a big opening, that’s our mouth. And at the bottom are some holes we’re supposed to be able to excrete things. Well, things can go into the bucket and they do like that Cheerios that I had as a kid, the sugar addiction, the cavities from all the silver fillings that I had as a result of that, those all fill the bucket. All of the antibiotics and then the yeast overgrowth, living in a moldy home, having mycotoxins from water damage. You see how the bucket is filling up.

So, the problem happens when we have too many things going into the bucket faster than we can excrete them out the bottom, the detoxification, getting things out. And then when it spills over, we get the leaky gut. And that is the pathway to autoimmune problems. So, the opportunity is to really envision what’s inside your toxin bucket and then take things out one at a time. And the beauty with this is you don’t necessarily have to tackle each and everything. For example, I have chronic Lyme disease. I have zero symptoms. I’m in better health than I’ve ever been in my entire life. And I still have chronic Lyme.

So, what I like to say is you just need enough margin in your toxin bucket. So, how you live… What time you go to sleep at night? Are you exercising? Are you adding weight training? Are you eating enough protein? Are not storing things in plastic or heating them up in your microwave? Each and every one of those things helps you to remove some of those elements from that toxin bucket so that you have more margin for your immune system to get to work protecting you instead of fighting you.

Dr. Sandi: That is such a beautiful, clear way and such a great analogy, because as you were speaking, I was picturing that. And I love that. And it’s one of the things that I think you are as a health coach and so many health coaches do so beautifully. And that is you take what are abstract, often complicated concepts and really boil them down to one picture where, “Yeah, oh, I get that. That’s clear.” And now you see, yes, I want to reduce that toxic load. I’ve got this bucket. I don’t want it to overflow into an autoimmune condition. I don’t want my body to start attacking itself. So, it was beautifully said. And I really appreciate that. You work with naturopathic doctors. Can you share what that looks like and how you work as a health coach?

Palmer: I love collaborating. And what I decided was that I did not want to go back to school to become a naturopathic doctor. And this is a lot of schooling. I have the utmost respect for these root cause doctors. So, I decided to create what I call a one plus one equals three service where I bring on a naturopathic doctor who specializes in complex chronic illness and specializes in the resolution of these, quote, mysterious environmental factors like mold, like Lyme disease, like parasites, all of the things that need to be addressed.

And together we get on Zoom once a month with clients. And what’s beautiful about that is that the health coach is in the room with the doctor. So, I’m clear that I don’t do the treatment plan. I don’t prescribe medications. I don’t oversee the tapering of medications. I don’t want to do that. And so this is what she is able to do is to sometimes we need beneficial medications to bring down levels of yeast or to address parasites, for example. And so having her be able to do that plus to oversee the treatment protocol.

And when I’m in the room with her, so to speak, I know the whole client health history. I know what their symptoms are. We are there as… It’s a team approach. It’s collaborative. It’s compassionate. It’s caring. And so once a month, it’s all three of us get together over Zoom just like this. And then the other meeting per month is just the coaching session with me. And so this is where I help people implement the treatment protocol literally. Like, how do you do this? And when do you take these supplements? And how do you sleep and poop and hydrate and all the things, right? Relationships, the levels of anxiety and trauma, but this is a safe space where all of it can be held. There’s no judgment.

So, having those two sessions each month, it’s like a safety net for people that they are held. We communicate with them throughout the month so they don’t ever feel isolated or alone. And I have to tell you, Sandi, that when I tried to heal, I saw 50 doctors, including holistic doctors who said, “This is just a Lyme problem, or this is just a mold problem.” And they weren’t willing to step back and look at the whole picture and not come at it from any biased perspective but from an open-minded, curious perspective. What’s going on with this one person? So, that’s the approach that I decided I wanted to create because I never had it.

Dr. Sandi: That’s such a great model. And to be clear, are these your clients or is this the doctor coming in with her patients and you are now the coach? How does that work?

Palmer: Yeah. So, it’s a little bit different than what you might normally see because I’ve got the book that’s out there and most people find me through the book or my podcast or from referral. They come to me first and I have that 30-minute discovery call. And so they’re my clients and then I bring the doctors in depending upon what the need is. Is this somebody who’s really suffering with complex chronic illness? And usually, that’s the case because they’re finding me either because they have MS or rheumatoid arthritis or lupus or Ménière’s disease. There are 150 different conditions. So, that’s how this works.

Dr. Sandi: That fits right in with my upcoming book, “Your Health Coach Will See You Now,” where it’s reverse-engineered. The coach is that first point of contact because you’re going to offer hope. You’re going to offer lifestyle change so that probably over 90% of people will get better without even a need for a doctor. But you cannot act alone. And so there are many times, as you point out, someone may need medication. They may need a surgical intervention. They may need the appropriate diagnosis. And that’s what a doctor will excel in. And so you find someone who shares the same values.

And that may be increasingly difficult because you are one example, as you’ve shared, but I hear this all the time. I got 10 minutes with my doctor. They told me, oh, medication’s the only answer. You will continue to decline. It was a gloom and doom picture. And even those words can exacerbate the condition. So, here you are finding doctors who get it, who are aligned, who understand root cause medicine. And so you can work collaboratively with them. And I think that is just such an effective model and a great way to offer collaborative care, because health coaches can’t do it alone, physicians, naturopathic doctors, any kind of professional cannot do it alone. You need a team approach.

Palmer: Yeah, you do need a team. I am increasingly convinced of that. And there are things that might get missed. People are busy. And when you’re both on that call together and I think… I don’t know how often a doctor sees the patient, for example, and then refers them to a health coach versus having the health coach in the room with them at the time. And that has made all the difference in the world for my clients because they’re getting that holistic support. I know exactly what’s going on. I’m the one that provides the follow-up summaries and so forth. So, I don’t know the difference between a doctor who sees a patient and then says, “Go work with a health coach. I’m sure they communicate and collaborate, but this just becomes a seamless, kind of, collaborative.”

Dr. Sandi: Yeah, it is just such a great model. So, what’s next, Palmer? Where would you like to go in terms of… You are really just such an inspiration for so many people who are suffering with autoimmune conditions, as well as for people who are thinking, gee, I would like to become a health coach. But where do you see yourself going? Where would you like to go?

Palmer: Oh, that is a big and beautiful question. And I see continuing to do what I’m doing and possibly expanding that. But when you provide time for service, you can’t scale.

I also have an online program called Beat Autoimmune Academy. And this is a terrific program for self-starters who want more help than the book, because the book is meaty. It’s more than 300 pages. And a lot of people prefer learning over video at their own pace, on their own time. So, I’ve got this program that combines this self-paced course, which is a combination of the best of my book plus the best of my functional medicine practice rolled into one. And it also includes live group coaching every month, because coaching in this group setting becomes just so beautiful. People love to share their own stories. And it’s just a beautiful way to heal together. And this way, I can serve people all over the world. And we’ve got people in Africa. We have people in Europe. And the time zones, people join us in the middle of the night because they want to be part of this. And it’s just beautiful.

So, I love speaking about freedom from autoimmunity and the potential that everyone has to heal themselves. And I also love, Sandi, and I have to say that what gets me so excited is when I work with someone and they decide to go on to become a health coach. This is the ripple effect in motion, right? This is what gives me so much gratitude about the MS, because it happened for me. I am just a messenger helping other people find their freedom so they can create ripples in their own, with themselves first, then with their families, and then with their communities and beyond. And that is what I get really excited about.

Dr. Sandi: Yes. And I love that interpretation “it happened for me” because I find that to be true. It’s often those circumstances we find ourselves in that are, it seems like at the time there’s no resolution and it’s all doom and gloom. And we don’t want to deny the reality that it was bad and turned into good, but with time we begin to see that it has happened to you and you can go on and, look, you changed your life for the better as a result. So, the book is “Beat Autoimmune” and it is available, I’m assuming, on Amazon.

Palmer: On Amazon right now in five languages actually. And it became a best seller on Amazon in eight different health categories. So, it has some staying power. People are finding it and you can heal and this is a great place to start.

Dr. Sandi: And Palmer, where can people find you?

Palmer: So, the best way, go to my website. It’s palmerkippola.com. And from there, I’ve got free resources on my website. It includes a blog. I have a podcast. You can find my book on Amazon. Reach out, get in touch with me if you want help. I offer discovery calls if you’re curious about that and that’s the best place.

Dr. Sandi: Check her out. Palmer, thank you so much. It’s just been so wonderful to have this conversation. You are truly an inspiration.

Palmer: Sandi, right back at you and I’m so grateful for you and what you created with FMCA because you are creating ripples of help in the entire world.

Dr. Sandi: Thank you for that.