Renegade Remission: Holistic Healing and Nutrition for Chronic and Terminal Illness, Cancer, ALS, MS, Dementia, Heart Disease

30. How to Eat Intuitively at the Holiday Table - Mindful Eating for Healing and Enjoyment | Day 6 of the 12 Days of Resilience

What if you could enjoy your favorite holiday foods and support your healing at the same time? For many people — especially those navigating chronic or terminal illness — holiday meals can stir up guilt, anxiety, and confusion about what’s “allowed.” Yet food is also tied to memory, culture, ritual, and joy. Today’s episode is about releasing the pressure and reconnecting with your body’s wisdom. During the holidays, food carries meaning far beyond calories: it’s tradition, celebration, nostalgia, and emotional comfort. But when you’re healing, this can create internal conflict — wanting to enjoy the experience, but also wanting to protect your body and energy. In this episode, we explore how intuitive eating, mindful presence, and self-compassion help you stay grounded at the holiday table. You’ll learn how to read your body’s cues, regulate guilt, and create rituals that make meals both nourishing and emotionally satisfying. By listening today, you’ll discover: * How to release holiday food guilt using gentle reframes and self-compassion * Mindful eating practices that help you slow down, savor, and prevent overeating * How to portion and choose foods intuitively, not reactively * Ways to honor both health and tradition without feeling deprived * Practical tools like the Pause Trick, hunger check-ins, sense-based eating, and boundary language * How to enjoy food as memory, connection, and medicine instead of stress You’ll leave feeling empowered to meet the table — and your body — with clarity and calm. Tune in to learn how to approach your meals with presence, joy, and intuition. Then try today’s mini-practice: * Ask your body what it wants before eating * Take one conscious breath between bites * And choose one meaningful ritual — gratitude, storytelling, savoring your first bite — to anchor you in joy Next up, on Day 7, we’ll explore gentle, creative ways to stay active through the holidays, even when your schedule is full and your energy is unpredictable. Disclaimer This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not offer medical advice. Consult your licensed healthcare provider before making any changes to your treatment or health regimen. Reliance on any information provided is solely at your own risk. This podcast explores stories and science around ALS, dementia, MS, cancer, mind body recovery, healing, functional medicine, heart disease, regression, remission, integrative medicine, autoimmune conditions, chronic illness, terminal disease, terminal illness, holistic health, quality of life, alternative medicine, natural healing, lifestyle medicine, and remission from cancer, offering hope and insights for those seeking resilience and renewal.

29. Healing Tools to Stay Regulated When Family, Grief, or Silence Hit Hard | Day 5 of the 12 Days of Resilience

Are you longing to feel regulated and restored during the holidays, instead of drained? This episode will show you how. Whether you’re surrounded by family who trigger old patterns or spending the holiday in quiet, longing, or grief, your nervous system feels it. And if you’re healing from cancer, autoimmune disease, MS, ALS, dementia, or chronic illness, these emotional states can directly impact inflammation, sleep, energy, and symptoms. Today’s episode is about staying grounded when connection feels complicated. Holiday stress shows up in two primary ways: overwhelm from people, or overwhelm from absence. Both can activate the same physiological stress pathways: increasing cortisol, tightening the chest, disrupting digestion, and pulling the body into survival mode. In this episode, we break down how to identify your triggers, how to regulate your nervous system when emotions spike, and how to create micro-moments of connection even if you're alone. You’ll learn practical tools to help you feel anchored even when others (or circumstances) feel destabilizing. By the end of this episode, you’ll know: * How to recognize your body’s early stress signals, before overwhelm takes over. * Grounding tools like box breathing, sensory anchoring, micro-breaks, and moment-to-moment boundary-setting. * How to navigate loneliness or grief without spiraling into emotional or physiological shutdown. * Connection practices that create meaning, even in quiet holidays — from micro-rituals to supportive calls to intentional presence. * How to reframe triggers and silence as signals toward care rather than signs of failure. You’ll leave with a simple three-part practice for staying grounded: awareness, regulation, and intentional action. Listen now to learn how to protect your emotional and physical wellbeing during one of the most complex emotional days of the season. Whether you’re surrounded by too much noise or too much quiet, you can stay connected to yourself — and that connection supports your healing more than you know. Up next, on Day 6, we’ll talk about intuitive versus emotional eating, cravings, and how to navigate holiday food without guilt, fear, or stress. Disclaimer This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not offer medical advice. Consult your licensed healthcare provider before making any changes to your treatment or health regimen. Reliance on any information provided is solely at your own risk. This podcast explores stories and science around ALS, dementia, MS, cancer, mind body recovery, healing, functional medicine, heart disease, regression, remission, integrative medicine, autoimmune conditions, chronic illness, terminal disease, terminal illness, holistic health, quality of life, alternative medicine, natural healing, lifestyle medicine, and remission from cancer, offering hope and insights for those seeking resilience and renewal.

28. The Healing Power of Gratitude — A 2-Minute Thanksgiving Practice to Reset Your Nervous System | Day 4 of the 12 Days of Resilience

What if practicing gratitude could shift your biology and reset your nervous system in less than 2 minutes? On this special Thanksgiving episode of Renegade Remission, we explore gratitude not as a mindset exercise, but as a biological tool that alters your stress hormones, inflammation levels, emotional regulation, and healing capacity. For those navigating cancer, autoimmune disease, neurodegeneration, chronic pain, or any serious illness, gratitude is far more than a holiday sentiment. Research shows it can lower inflammatory markers, improve mood, regulate the nervous system, enhance immune activity, and create a healing-prone internal landscape. Today we break down how gratitude actually changes your body — chemically, neurologically, and emotionally — and why this practice becomes even more powerful during times of fear, grief, or uncertainty. By the end of this episode, you’ll learn: * How gratitude lowers inflammation, including research showing reductions in CRP after only weeks of practice. * How gratitude shifts brain chemistry, reducing depressive symptoms by activating emotional regulation centers of the brain. * How gratitude supports your nervous system, increasing heart rate variability and lowering cortisol. * Why gratitude expands perception, creating a biological state where healing signals can take root. * A guided 2-minute Thanksgiving gratitude ritual you can use today — even if this holiday feels complicated, emotional, or heavy. This isn’t about pretending everything is fine. It’s about finding one real thing your body can anchor to — and allowing that moment to shift your internal world. Listen now for a calming, grounding gratitude practice designed specifically for people on a healing path. Use it today — before dinner, during a quiet moment, or anytime you need a soft place to land. Join us tomorrow for Day 5, where we’ll explore how to stay grounded when family dynamics feel triggering or when the holidays feel lonely. Healing requires emotional safety too — and we’ll walk through how to create it within yourself. Disclaimer This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not offer medical advice. Consult your licensed healthcare provider before making any changes to your treatment or health regimen. Reliance on any information provided is solely at your own risk. This podcast explores stories and science around ALS, dementia, MS, cancer, mind body recovery, healing, functional medicine, heart disease, regression, remission, integrative medicine, autoimmune conditions, chronic illness, terminal disease, terminal illness, holistic health, quality of life, alternative medicine, natural healing, lifestyle medicine, and remission from cancer, offering hope and insights for those seeking resilience and renewal.

27. The Gift of Stillness — How Micro Self-Care Protects Your Energy Through the Holidays | Day 3 of the 12 Days of Resilience

You don’t need an hour of meditation. You need a minute of presence. In the busiest season of the year, when time feels scarce and your needs get pushed to the background, stillness might be the most powerful healing tool you have, and it doesn’t require a schedule, a ceremony, or a quiet room. In today’s episode of The 12 Days of Holiday Resilience, we explore why stillness is a biological necessity, not a luxury. Even a single moment of intentional pause signals safety to your nervous system, steadies your heart rate, restores digestion, and activates repair pathways essential for healing from chronic or serious illness. We’ll talk about why self-care often collapses under holiday pressure, and how micro-rituals — tiny, repeatable cues of safety — can keep you grounded no matter how chaotic life becomes. By the end of this episode, you’ll discover: * Why stillness flips your physiology from stress to repair, boosting immune function and lowering inflammation. * How micro self-care practices work even when you’re exhausted, traveling, or overwhelmed. * Four simple micro-rituals, like the 60-second check-in, the pause between tasks, grounding during a healing beverage, and the 3-3-3 reset — that instantly anchor you back into your body. * Why consistency beats intensity, and how neuroscientists have shown micro-habits to be the most sustainable form of self-care. * How presence rebuilds trust between you and your body, restoring a sense of wholeness and inner safety. You’ll walk away with a self-care routine so small and powerful it becomes impossible to lose, even in the middle of the holidays. Listen now to reclaim the moments that belong to you, the pauses, the breaths, and the grounding rituals that keep you connected to your healing path. Join us tomorrow for Day 4, where we’ll explore the emotional undercurrent of the season — how to navigate big feelings, unexpected grief, and the quiet ache the holidays can awaken, while still finding gratitude and meaning. Disclaimer This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not offer medical advice. Consult your licensed healthcare provider before making any changes to your treatment or health regimen. Reliance on any information provided is solely at your own risk. This podcast explores stories and science around ALS, dementia, MS, cancer, mind body recovery, healing, functional medicine, heart disease, regression, remission, integrative medicine, autoimmune conditions, chronic illness, terminal disease, terminal illness, holistic health, quality of life, alternative medicine, natural healing, lifestyle medicine, and remission from cancer, offering hope and insights for those seeking resilience and renewal.

26. How to Keep Stress From Hijacking Your Healing This Holiday Season | Day 2 of the 12 Days of Resilience

What if the real Grinch of the holidays isn’t your family, the chaos, or the to-do list… but your cortisol? Today, we’re talking about the kind of stress that hijacks your healing without you even realizing it, and how to take back your calm. Welcome to Day 2 of The 12 Days of Holiday Resilience. Stress doesn’t just live in your head, it lives in your body. And for anyone healing from cancer, autoimmune disease, neurological illness, or chronic inflammation, stress isn’t just unpleasant… it’s physiologically disruptive. When your brain senses stress, it shuts down digestion, suppresses immunity, pauses detoxification, and pulls your body out of its healing state. Even perfect nutrition can’t override a nervous system stuck in survival mode. This episode breaks down exactly how stress impacts healing, and how simple, science-backed regulation techniques can help you shift your physiology back into repair, safety, and resilience. By the end of this episode, you’ll learn: * What stress actually does inside a healing body, and why chronic cortisol surges can stall remission. * Why nervous system regulation is non-negotiable if you want your body to repair, regenerate, and stabilize. * Three powerful, accessible tools, like the 4-7-8 breath, hand-to-heart grounding, and cognitive reframing, to bring your body back into safety anytime, anywhere. * How to recognize the signs of “holiday overwhelm physiology” so you can intervene early, instead of crashing later. * Why calm isn’t a mood, it’s a biological state that makes healing possible. You’ll walk away with practices that restore safety, lower inflammation, and give you back a sense of control in the midst of seasonal chaos. Listen now to learn how to reclaim your calm, regulate your nervous system, and create moments of internal peace — not as a luxury, but as medicine for your healing body. Join us tomorrow for Day 3, where we’ll explore how to stay consistent with the daily self-care habits that anchor your healing, even when the season tries to pull you off center. Disclaimer This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not offer medical advice. Consult your licensed healthcare provider before making any changes to your treatment or health regimen. Reliance on any information provided is solely at your own risk. This podcast explores stories and science around ALS, dementia, MS, cancer, mind body recovery, healing, functional medicine, heart disease, regression, remission, integrative medicine, autoimmune conditions, chronic illness, terminal disease, terminal illness, holistic health, quality of life, alternative medicine, natural healing, lifestyle medicine, and remission from cancer, offering hope and insights for those seeking resilience and renewal.