Shownotes
On The Soul Mirror podcast, hosted by Shreya, this episode with Amy Bel Bruno explores the deeper signals behind chronic symptoms and why many people feel unheard despite “normal” test results.
This conversation is for anyone feeling exhausted, dismissed, or disconnected from their health. Amy shares how stress, lifestyle, and unseen factors like inflammation shape our well-being—and how real healing begins when we stop ignoring the signals and start asking better questions.
About the Guest:
Amy Bel Bruno is a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach and functional health coach. She transitioned from a high-pressure television career after a personal health crisis and now focuses on root cause healing.
Episode Chapter:
00:00 The moment everything changed
03:20 What “root cause healing” really means
07:10 Why symptoms get ignored
11:45 When tests say “normal” but you feel unwell
16:30 Stress and the hidden impact on the body
21:10 Early warning signs we dismiss
26:00 Healing takes time, not quick fixes
Key Takeaways:
- Your body’s signals are early warnings, not inconveniences
- “Normal” test results don’t always reflect real health
- Chronic stress is a major hidden driver of illness
- Small lifestyle shifts can create long-term healing
- Patience and consistency matter more than quick fixes
How to Connect With the Guest:
Website: https://totalhealthwithcoachamy.com/
Instagram: @AmyBellBrunoHealth
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Transcripts
00:00:06 Shreya: She was a marathon runner, healthy by every measure anyone could see. And then one day, her heart started racing for no reason. She could explain. The dizziness came, the fatigue came, and eventually a diagnosis. But what came with the diagnosis was silence. No one asked why. no one looked underneath. Just options for what to do about it. Not what was causing it. The experience broke something open in her, and what came through that opening became her life's work. And today we are going to look underneath.
00:00:43 Shreya: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Shreya, and this is where we get honest about the patterns beneath the surface, in our minds, in our lives and today in our bodies. My guest is Amy Belle Bruno, a national board certified health and wellness coach who left a demanding career in television production after a personal health crisis to become a functional health coach specializing in root cause healing. She works with people navigating chronic inflammation, gut health, heart health, and the real, often invisible reasons their body is struggling. Amy, I'm so, so glad and honored to have you here.
00:01:24 Amy Bel Bruno: Oh, thanks, Shreya. Thank you so much for having me on the show.
00:01:28 Shreya: Thank you so much, Amy and Amy. I want to start with that moment you described in your story, the moment when you were given a diagnosis and a list of options, but no one asked why. So what did that feel like? Like not medically, but as a person sitting in that room, as a mom, as someone who had done everything right by the conventional playbook. Mhm.
00:01:52 Amy Bel Bruno: Disappointment. Disappointed in I thought I had done everything right. It was just soul crushing, to be honest. And, um, I felt like I let myself down and my family down somehow. It was just, you know, you feel like you're doing all the right things and then boom. And, you know, this is a common story. You hear a lot. I shouldn't be an exception to the rule, but it was definitely something I could have never seen coming.
00:02:22 Shreya: Yeah. Thank you for sharing this. And, uh, there is a phrase you use that I want to unpack. Root cause healing. It sounds simple. Almost obvious. Of course you would want to find the root cause, but the reality is that most of us spend years, sometimes decades, managing symptoms, without ever getting there. So what is the biggest misconception people carry about what their bodies actually mean?
00:02:52 Amy Bel Bruno: Yeah. Well, you know, I think the biggest thing is most of us live in a world of go, go, go. Um, and we, we ignore things, you know, especially if we're younger, you know. But really, when this all happened, I was relatively young to have this happen. But it's I think people ignore signs in their body and be like, oh, I'm just tired. I'm working too much. Oh, you know, I'm, this is maybe normal with the kind of lifestyle I'm leading. And the thing is, we have check engine lights going off. A lot of times we ignore it and tell the car breaks down. And I was no exception to that too, because if I look back on the journey, there were definitely things that were telling me something's not right, but I ignored them. And so when I talk about root cause healing, I will never not support our Western medical doctors. They're amazing. You know, they do really hard work, but they're not trained to look at it from a functional perspective. They're trained at to put out the fire right now. So what medication can I give you? What maybe procedure do you need and all things that you know, gosh, if we need them, that's great to have them. But we we're never really asked why, what's the why of this going on? And so that is where I talk about root cause. And there's so many things, you know, that we can unpack here and say, what is the root cause? You know, some people are living a very chronically stressed life and they don't realize that that is one of the number one toxins to the body is stress that will break you down. It'll cause, you know, leaky gut. It'll cause brain fog. Um, you know, inflammation is the number one thing in our body that's causing us all to, to have issues going on, but we ignore that. And this isn't to scare people. My gosh, we gotta live our lives. But you have to look at what's going on. And unfortunately, we go and get standard blood tests with our primary care doctors. And again, nothing against what they're doing. But a lot of times people's labs lab work comes back in the quote unquote normal range. And it's not a normal range if you look at it from a functional approach. And they're also not running a lot of labs that really will determine inflammation in the body.
00:05:11 Shreya: Yeah. And also, when someone has been told by multiple doctors that their results are normal, that everything looks fine, but they still feel terrible, what is usually happening in that gap between what the tests show and what the person is actually leaving?
00:05:30 Amy Bel Bruno: Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, so many times, um, I think people and are getting told, oh, your, your labs are normal, but they're going, but I don't feel well. And you know what? We have to be the CEO of our own health. And here's the number one thing I can tell people, if you in your gut don't feel well, if you I'm not just saying your stomach, but I could go on forever about your stomach health. Um, but if you don't feel well, and even if you were told your labs are, are in good range, then you have to say, I know something's not right and you have to keep fighting for your health and figuring out why and what those symptoms are. You know, there are a lot of lab tests out there today that you can take, um, and find out so many more things than that are that are being presented to us at our primary care doctor, our annual checkup. You know, I could go on just even about cholesterol. They do, you know, LDL, HDL triglycerides. That doesn't tell the picture we need. Lipo a we need lipo. B we need our C-reactive protein. We need we need a lot more testing to know what's going on. You know, people who've been dealing with a life of trauma, post trauma, that that is havoc on their body and it can start to manifest in autoimmune disorders and all kinds of things that people just don't know or they ignore because they're like, I guess I'm just destined to feel bad from here on out. And we're none of us are destined to feel bad. We can feel better.
00:07:01 Shreya: Yeah, I think that gap you are describing is where so many people lose hope because they have followed the system, they have done the tests. They are, but the system has essentially told them that they are fine when they clearly are not. And what you are pointing is, uh, at the system is often looking in the wrong places, measuring the wrong things, asking the wrong questions. Yeah.
00:07:29 Amy Bel Bruno: It's exactly it. And, you know, a lot of times, um, you know, I think most people are becoming more and more educated about their health, but there are some people who are still very old school. And if they're told, hey, this is in your head, you're fine. They walk away and they don't fight harder for that. And this is a day and age where you have to fight harder for your health. And we are being exposed to so much more than any generation before, as far as, you know, pollutants and chemicals in the air, mold in our homes, food that is sprayed with glyphosate and all kinds of chemicals. We're consuming this in mass doses, and it is causing us to all get sick at very young ages. There's a reason cancers on the rise for young people, uh, colon cancer, lung cancer, uh, gut health, all of these things. Why are they rising? It's because we need to do some more research on how we can get these pollutants out of our our bodies. And it's not a super simple, we're not going to be able to run away from a toxic world, but we can definitely make strides to make it better. And we also need to do the tests that help us find this out and not just rely on standard blood work.
00:08:48 Shreya: Yeah. And also, you came from a career in television with extremely demanding hours. And yes, you have said that, uh, that was part of the equation in your own health story, something you hadn't even considered at that time. Uh, now when you look back now with everything, you know, what was your body actually trying to tell you long before the atrial fibrillation, if I pronounce it correct?
00:09:16 Amy Bel Bruno: Yeah. Fibrillation. Um, you know, it's, it's interesting. And I want to say this when I tell people like, I don't want everybody to think like, oh, you have to do all these things, like go back to the basics in your life, right? And I'll. And I'll dial back to when my career like. Prioritize sleep. Set your circadian rhythm on a daily basis. Eyes to the sun. When you first wake up in the morning. If you can get out at the evening and put your eyes to the sky when it's getting, uh, when it's dusk. These are simple things we can do that help regulate our nervous system, because that's what's wrong. And now I will relate this to me. So we have obviously, we have a parasympathetic state and a sympathetic state in our body. And so it's fight or flight mode, which most of us have heard. And looking back on my career, you know, and I'm no exception, I know a lot of people working their tails off, working twelve, thirteen hours a day. Um, and I was doing this, you know, I was up at five in the morning. I wasn't getting home until six o'clock at night from my job. I'm at the time had two very small kids. I'm trying to be super mom like so many hard working parents are doing out there. You know, you shift hats the minute you get home. You have guilt over the lack of time you're spending with your family. And then I try to go out and go for runs because that was a marathon runner. And guess what it comes back down to? I realized for many years, for a majority of my life, I had been living in a sympathetic state in that fight state, that state that tells our bodies, you know, we're fighting a tiger in the wilderness. And like we did back in with our ancestors, I was never coming into a parasympathetic state and relaxing my body. I'm not saying that's the only reason this happened, but I looking back, I realized that was a big check engine light because I knew how much was on my plate. I was I, I was a person who prided myself to say, oh, I can get by on four or five hours of sleep. No problem. No, that is terrible. Now, if I don't get eight hours of sleep, that's that's a fail. Like please people, if they can take anything, sleep, get as much sleep as you can and don't, don't settle for four or five hours because it's ruining our bodies and you have to shift. I'm not saying that doesn't happen once in a while. And then I will tell you, I always had chronically low blood pressure. I was just like, because I was a runner. And, um, about a year before all this happened, I went for my checkup and my doctor said to me, oh my gosh, your blood pressure is high. That's so unusual for you. And I blew it off as stress at the time. But that was again, another little light check engine light that was coming on to tell me, hey, something's not right here. You're starting to have symptoms. And and that's kind of what happened. And then I started getting dizziness, heart palpitations, all these things that I waited until the last minute to go to the doctor and get checked.
00:12:05 Shreya: Yeah. Like what strikes me about that is how invisible that chain of causation is in that moment. Like you are not connecting the deadline pressure to the gut lining, to the heart rhythm. And I think they feel like completely separate things, but they are actually not.
00:12:25 Amy Bel Bruno: No, they're all connected It. And you know, that's, that's the thing. They were connected. And, you know, I had a bit of a time where I was like, oh my gosh, why me? I, I ate well my whole life I've been exercising my whole life. But you know what? It was me because it was if I didn't have that happen, who knows what would have happened? And it actually shed a light on me taking a deeper dive into expanding my world into, you know, my foods that I consume. You know, I hope my whole foods being trying to make it organic, pasture raised animal products, um, I'm very cognizant of all the chemicals that are in my house now. I don't have any toxic chemicals in my house and I'm working on, you know, the clothes that are that I wear. Like I'm really aware. I'm not, you know, listen, it's we gotta live. But what I can do to reduce my exposure to things that maybe were putting me at risk for more issues I'm trying my best to do. And that's what I do with all my clients. As a health coach, I try so hard to help them eliminate. You know, this isn't fear mongering. You do the best. It's about good, better, best, you know. Um, but if you can make super subtle shifts and keep working at it, you're going to make a huge difference in your health journey. And I guess the biggest message would be is if something seems off, it's off. So don't and don't give up. Don't. If a doctor tells you, hey, you're fine. I'm not telling you to disrespect your doctor, but they're busy. They are trained to put out the fire. As I said, they are not trained to say, hey, maybe you have leaky gut or maybe you have mold exposure. They're not asking you. Do you think you have mold at home? Yes. Uh, they hey, what kind of foods are you eating? Are you washing your fruits and vegetables in vinegar and baking soda before you eat them? So you're not getting the chemicals when you eat them? They're not thinking of that because that's not part of their training. And so that's where you have to go and be your own health advocate and say, okay, where could I be? Where could this be coming from? What, what deeper dive can I take. People have. It's true. Most of us have parasites. Parasites can cause a lot of problems. So these are things that we're not going to get from our conventional medical doctors. We have to dig deeper.
00:14:41 Shreya: Yeah. And I'm also thinking about the person listening right now who is exhausted, maybe has some digestive issues. They have normalized it, maybe a heart that sometimes races or skips, maybe just a low grade feeling that something is not right, that they have been ignoring because life is busy. So what are the early signals the body sends that most of us miss or dismiss?
00:15:08 Amy Bel Bruno: Yeah. So for somebody like me who had the heart palpitations and dizziness, um, you know, especially when women get to a premenopausal and postmenopausal state, they'll dismiss that a lot of times and say, oh my gosh, it's my hormones or it's PCOS. A lot of younger women are dealing with PCOS right now. And, um, that the thing is, is like, no, that that is something you have to say. No, that's not normal. I'm going to be honest. It's almost never normal for your heart to be racing and skipping. Sure. We have life, things happen, we get scared in a movie or we've had a stressful time at work. Or maybe some people who can't tolerate caffeine are drinking too much caffeine and it makes their heart race. But if you're experiencing things like that, that's like, that's a time to say, okay, time for me to take a look at this. Don't blow it off. I've got to go take a look at it. And people blow off things all the time. Like you said, I'm telling you, there's no reason. The number one thing besides, you know, you'll see with especially in my case with atrial fibrillation, it's one of the number one rising issues in health right now. Um, I believe it's like I might be off on my stats, but it's going to get to a point where it's like one in three people have it. And that's really scary. And it's not going to, I should say it's, you can treat it, but it can be debilitating for people. Um, but you'll see people all the time walk around going, oh, I'm bloated. I'm always bloated all the time. And they take it as like, that's okay. That's just, you know, I react to food or I'm bloated. No, that's a signal. Something's not right. If you're waking up or you're eating something and you're bloated after it every single time, you've got some serious gut issues going on and it and that's fixable. That's the thing. It's fixable. But I think a lot of us just get to a point where we're like, oh, that's my new norm. And it doesn't have to be for any of us. MM.
00:16:59 Shreya: I think that's so important to name because the dismissal often is not coming from outside. It's coming from the inside. And also, when someone comes to you, someone who has been through the conventional system and still feels unwell, where do you begin the protocol or the program? But the very first conversation, like, how do you start building a real picture of what's going on beneath the surface?
00:17:25 Amy Bel Bruno: Yeah, so that's one of my favorite parts. I like to just talk to people, get a little bit to know about their lifestyle, uh, what they eat. And as I always tell them, please don't tell me what you want me to hear that you eat because I'm human too, you know? And so just tell me about your work schedule, your family, you know, any kind of health issues that you've had along the way. And, um, so really doing a deep dive into their health history is where I start. And then I always start, I like to start with the basics, you know, instead of throwing a million supplements at people, which by the way, I think supplementation is very important. I think doing, uh, heavy metal detoxes and parasite detoxes, I think all of this is important. Start with the basics because the honest thing is most people are still living on a highly processed diet. They're not eating organic fruits and vegetables. They're eating gluten. Gluten is our number one enemy. And even people who. And I think that's the biggest misconception is people think, oh, if I, I should avoid gluten only if I'm gluten intolerant. No. Um, you know, Europe is one of the only places where they don't spray their crops with all the pesticides. But like here in America, you eat gluten. It's it's a bomb in your stomach whether or not you are gluten intolerant. Um, so, you know, sugar people, we consume sugar like crazy. And so these are just basic areas. I start with people like, where can we clean up what to do? And the biggest thing for anybody doing something is not to get overwhelmed. What's a doable goal in your world? You know, where can we start? Where can we make a tweak in your journey? And then we build upon it. But first and foremost, it's for me to establish trust with them, hear their journey. And most of the time, the biggest thing is most people don't feel heard and, and they're just craving to be heard and their story to be heard and believed.
00:19:20 Shreya: Yeah, I think I love that you are bridging those two because most people would never put them in the same sentence and like you you're helping them. And also root cause healing is not a weekend detox. It's a longer, more honest process. And for people who have been unwell for a long time, the road can feel overwhelming, especially when progress is slow or non-linear. So what do you tell someone who is doing the work and still having hard days? Like how do you help them stay in it?
00:19:52 Amy Bel Bruno: And you? That's exactly it. And that's what I tell them. See, the hard part is people forget how long it took them to feel unwell. But when they start to do a journey to feel, when they start to do this healing journey, they want instant gratification, right? We live in an instant gratification world, and I always tell them, it's not so easy. Like you got to give it. It's it took years in most cases for your body to end up feeling this way. It's going to take a while. It can take months. It can. Now, the hope is that you're going to feel some good wins in a couple of months or a few weeks, right? When we make some tweaks, but it's not magically going to be gone. So I just tell them, you have to have the same patience and commitment and just give yourself grace. It's a journey. It's and it's not an overnight journey. And for some people, you know, like you said, it's like suddenly you can't just do a detox and better for some people, there's too ill to even think about doing something like that. It's about just working on sleep quality food. Um, you know, just the basics, uh, meditating get their getting their system into a parasympathetic state. So they're not in fight or flight mode. They're in a homeostasis mode and healing the gut. It's a, it's a long journey there too, for most, most of us have leaky gut and it takes a while to heal that. But when you seal those junctions, junctions in your gut, inflammation starts, stops leaking into your body.
00:21:15 Shreya: That's really an honest answer. And I think it takes courage to say, uh, because we live in a culture that rewards doing more. And so many people bring that same drive to their healing journey, like pushing, optimizing, tracking and this is truly a very amazing conversation. We do like a very different kind of conversation. And thank you for bringing so much insight, so much new lenses into this conversation. And what I'm carrying from this conversation is something like, uh, you said, uh, as your own story and keeps returning to your work that your body was never working against, against you. Every signal, every symptom, every inconvenient flare. It was always trying to get your attention. Like the question was never, what is wrong with me? The question is, uh, like always, what have I not listened to yet? And if after this very beautiful conversation, my listeners want to connect with you and want to learn more about your work about like, explore the root cause healing or like simply find you, then where should they go?
00:22:20 Amy Bel Bruno: Uh, yes, please. That's great. And I love what you said. Yes. And I want to say that too. The body has an amazing ability to heal. And you, you said it right. It wants to heal. So that's the beautiful thing about our bodies. Our bodies want to heal and they can heal. Um, if and if anybody wants to find me, I'd love to connect. You can go to Totalhealth with coach Amy dot com and connect with me there. Or you can follow me on Instagram at Amy Bell Bruno Health and reach out to me there and DM me and I'll get back to you. But I would, I would love to connect with your viewers.
00:22:52 Shreya: Yes. And I will make sure to attach all these details and links below so that the listeners can find them easily and get in touch with you and for my listeners. And before that, like, Amy, thank you for the honesty and the heart you brought to this conversation. Like, uh, reminding us that the true healing starts not with a new supplement or a new, stricter routine, but with the willingness to actually listen to what the body has been saying all along. And to all my listeners, I want you to think about one thing. Your body has been telling you that you have been too busy or too scared or too hopeful it would just go away. To really hear that's. That's where the real conversation begins. And until next time, keep looking beneath the surface. The mirror always knows. And do not forget to hit the follow button. Subscribe and feel free to share your thoughts because your ears deserve premium content. Thank you.
