Inflammation can quietly build over time, becoming a hidden load the body keeps trying to carry. In this episode, we explore the signs of chronic inflammation—exhaustion that doesn’t make sense, recurring gut issues, brain fog, anxiety spikes, and that quiet sense of “I don’t feel like myself.” I share the Rain Barrel picture—how stress, chemicals, trauma, pace, and medication history drip into the body until it overflows. Not because you’re weak—but because your body has been protecting you for a long time. The gentle work is learning to release that load little by little with nourishment, safer swaps, and slower rhythms. You can find the full blog summary and linked research at BecomingNatural.com.

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Hosted by Penelope Sampler

Natural Wellness • Chronic Illness Journey • Faith & Wellness

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📌 Note: I share what I’ve learned on my own journey — the things that have supported me in hard seasons. I offer personal experience, thoughtful research, and lots of encouragement. This podcast isn’t medical advice, and it shouldn’t replace care from a qualified professional. Always talk to someone you trust before making changes to your health routine.

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Mentioned in this episode:

LUMEBOX — the red-light therapy panel I use at home and talk about all the time — is 50% off today only.
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And I don’t mean that in a fluffy wellness-speak way. I mean literally — red light helps your mitochondria do what God designed them to do: make energy, repair tissue, reduce inflammation. Your body is incredibly wise. Sometimes it just needs a little nudge of light. Here’s what I notice when I use mine: My skin looks more alive again.
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Go grab your LUMEBOX at 50% off before midnight. 👉 Just click the link in today’s show notes.

57 Inflammation: The Surprise Hidden Load Really Draining Your Body

Hey friend, welcome back to Becoming Natural. I wanted to hop on today and while I usually use notes to dive deep into some research, I wanted to speak to a subject I am getting more and more emails about and Lord have mercy, this is certainly my life lived and my forte.

While I have addressed many pieces of our gut and what I have learned about our body when it is healthy and what happens to it when we aren’t healthy, I really just wanted to hit this head on from experience, addressing my influx of questions from amazing listeners and as I actually begin helping a family member showing all the signs I had when I was young. Ive said a hundred times if I knew then what I know now, I would have treated myself differently. While I am not mad or bitter about my crazy long and painful route to wellness, I would LOVE to prevent anyone else from taking my path. I know that my experience was one of enormous growth for me not only in my faith, my marriage, my understanding of the body, but without that 30 year battle, I wouldn’t have started Becoming Natural. The Lord has amazing ways of bringing fruit from struggles. And I am embracing that.

I want to talk today about something that changed the way I think about health entirely. And not just “drink more water and get more sunshine” health… but the deeply frustrating, “Why am I doing all the right things and still not feeling well?” kind of health.

I always want to hi light that I am NOT anti-medicine. Western Medicine has made incredible strides in life saving measures for humanity. If I have an acute injury, I want to be at the ER in the care of a doctor stat. Where I do vear from my earlier belief is that the person with autoimmune disease, the ever increasing chronic illnesses population, the growing number of food intolerances…all the things that are more subjective and difficult to measure…this is where patients, like myself, are getting lost or even forgotten and left to care for ourselves out of frustration or in my circumstances, because my amazing doctors, whom I loved dearly, told me they didn’t know what else to do for me.

All the reading and studying I have done over the past 18 or so years has opened my eyes to a different way of looking at our bodies from treating symptoms to actually treating the whole body. Finding that root cause and treating THAT vs symptoms that ultimately become repeat offenders because the root was never fully treated.

This has been confirmed over and over again and I would highly recommend the book called The Rain Barrel Effect by Dr. Stephen Cabral. Ill link it up in the notes.
And I’ll tell you — when I first read it, I felt completely validated.

But spiritually, emotionally, physically — it’s all connected.

The Rain Barrel Effect gives language to that.
And I want to walk you through it like your sitting with me face to face. My body is proof. The fact that I am alive is proof that all the crazy rabbit holes I have been down have been worth the dives….some more valuable than others. As an umbrella, simply opening my mind to how the things be put on, in and around our body affect us as much as the food we eat or don’t eat. And I am still grasping the reality that our bodies were made so perfectly…with the ability to heal not just a few things, but our entire body is capable of managing all those toxins IF and only IF we put our bodies in an ideal situation…..meaning, stop with the junk, artificial foods, toxic chemicals everywhere we look. We can’t expect our bodies to completely heal itself when its dealing with so many enemies its trying to prioritize for us. We think “normal” is loads of sugar, fast food, skin care products loaded with chemicals our body can’t process. It is NOT easy to be “normal” {whatever that is} today even when we are trying to be healthy. There is just so much “bad” in our food and our products, “good ones” included.

SEGMENT 1 — THE RAIN BARREL IDEA

Dr. Cabral explains that your body is like a rain barrel.
Every day, drop by drop, things fill it:

Stress

Toxins in food

Mold exposure

Plastics, perfumes, cleaning chemicals

Heavy metals

Emotional trauma

Poor sleep

Antibiotics or meds that damage the gut

Our childhood environment and family health history

None of these things alone necessarily break us.

But the barrel keeps filling.

Until one day… it overflows.

And the overflow shows up as:

Autoimmune disease

Allergies

IBS or Crohn’s

Hormone imbalances

Anxiety or panic attacks

Skin issues

Chronic fatigue

Migraines

Doctors will often treat the overflow — the symptoms — instead of helping empty the barrel.

But healing begins when we address what’s filling it.

And the beautiful thing?
The body wants to heal.
God built healing into our cells. The Creator designed repair into our very DNA.

Not might.
Will.

But sometimes, we have to open the drain.

So, WHAT’S FILLING YOUR BARREL?

This is where we get real practical, real quick.

1. Environmental Toxins

Cabral explains that we are exposed to 100x more chemicals than our great-grandparents.
They had fresh butter. We have butter-flavored chemical spreads.

They washed with tallow.
We wash with “fragrance” — which is code for over 3,000 possible chemicals.

You’re not weak.
You’re overloaded.

2. Gut + Immune Stress

70–80% of the immune system lives in the gut.
Any imbalance (candida, leaky gut, mold, antibiotic history) keeps your immune system stuck "on."

That alone can overflow your barrel. And THIS we are going to circle back around to in a minute.

3. Emotional Stress

This part hit me.
Because sometimes the overflow is heartbreak, not food coloring dye #32.

The nervous system remembers.

But the Lord restores even that.

Psalm 147:3
“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”

Healing is not just physical — it’s whole-person restoration.

HOW TO “EMPTY THE BARREL”

This is where Dr. Cabral’s approach shines: gentle, steady detoxification.

Not starving yourself.
Not punishing your body.
Not “earning” healing through suffering.

But supporting your liver, lymph, gut, lungs, skin, and kidneys — the detox pathways God already placed inside you.

Step 1 — Remove the Source of Overflow

This is different for every person:

Reduce artificial fragrances

Replace processed oils with real fats

Swap plastic containers for glass

Drink filtered water (not expensive — just intentional)

Reduce inflammatory foods for a season

Identify mold exposure if symptoms point that way

This is not perfection — it’s subtraction of what harms.

Step 2 — Strengthen the Drain

Think gentle drainage and we have already talked about quite a few here on Becoming Natural.

Castor oil packs

Epsom salt baths

Dry brushing

Herbal teas that support liver (dandelion, milk thistle)

Deep breathing (moves lymph)

Sunlight exposure

Slow morning walks

The body responds to kindness.

Step 3 — Rebuild the Terrain

Once the load is lighter, then we rebuild:

Minerals

Probiotics

Protein

Whole food variety

Nervous system regulation

Scripture meditation

Safe relationships and healthy boundaries

Healing is not a product.
It's a process of coming home to your body.

My story began with emergency surgery when I was 24 because my stomach was completely blocked by inflammation. I couldn’t even drink water without vomiting. There was nowhere for my food to go. So, my surgeon gave me a second exit to my stomach in an effort to relieve the pressure on my God-made inflamed and blocked natural exit. It was a brutal surgery, but once healed, an amazing relief. Until it happened again 18 months later. And worse, the man made hole did not have a flap on it, like our natural stomach exit does. So, instead of food leaving my stomach and continuing to digest, I had stomach acids refluxing from my intestines into my stomach for years via that unprotected hole. Surgery after surgery to treat the symptom: inflammation ultimately ended up with the removal of 80-90% of my stomach due to all the ulcerations and perforated ulcers all over my stomach caused by the acid slowly eating the lining of my stomach away over time….brutal pain. And very risky surgeries that crescendo’d into my getting severely septic when our last choice was to remove the damaged portion of my stomach. That first surgery led to the next and the next and the next. However, had we known how to treat “inflammation” before that first surgery, I could have avoided all of it. There are now studies that show that overuse of antibiotics, specifically the cyclines lead to Crohns and specifically strip the lining of your stomach, weakening your stomach lining. My dermatologist wrote long term Tetracycline and Doxycycline as a treatment for my skin in high school. For that 6-12 months that I took those antibiotics because we thought they were safe. My derm never would have given me anything to hurt me, especially as preventative care. Turns out, it caused a lifetime of illness and pain.

What could I have done? Probiotics to start with as I had never heard of probiotics before. My gut biome was wiped out. NO good bacteria remained and the bad bacteria was fed by stress and carbs. The OTC medicine I took to soothe the burning was loaded not only with sugar, but with fake sugars that our bodies don’t even recognize. Strict diet changes for a few months could have helped me significantly and I firmly believe could have prevented that initial surgery….had we known better. We didn’t. But we do now.

As I have preached before and supported by science, our gut-brain connection is huge. Our stress and emotions directly affect our guts. When our gut biome is imbalanced, those bad bacteria push out the good bacteria and create “leaky gut” allowing cracks between our stomach cells to allow toxins our stomach knows how to handle to permeate the gut and get into our blood supply. Once those toxins hit the blood supply, those toxins become electric. They roam thru every organ in our body causing symptom after symptom after symptom…..symptoms that we visit the dr for and get meds for to temporarily relieve our issues. Until they return. BUT, if we repaired the gut biome by filling the body with good vitamins and minerals and protbiotics to bring those leaky junctions back together….we decrease the toxic load in our blood, decreasing the symptoms and continue to focus on creating a good gut microbiome. It doesn’t happen over night. It isn’t an instant fix. But we didn’t get into that pickle in a day or even a month or a year.

When we become aware of all the things we are fighting to protect our body and start with one thing at a time to reduce the inflammation, the leaking stomach cells while also recognizing that food is not the only source of destruction….body products, toxic chemicals, negative emotions and stress…and realize that sun and fresh air and a connection to nature not only feels good, but is objectively healing our body….that is when we will see improvements in our health. Remove the bad things, add more good things. Easy as that. Right?

So, the desperate emails I am receiving are exactly the questions I had before I knew all of this. How do you get rid of the inflammation? How do you help the gut microbiome? My family member is in terrible pain which breaks my heart. When they went to the doctor, nothing was “wrong”. They don’t measure yeast or bacteria in the gut as basic health checks. While good doctors are starting to see the whole body vs just measuring symptoms and writing a pill for acid reflux, there aren’t enough. The medical model I was trained in, goes against all of it. Doctors have to go against everything they have been taught. They have to understand nutrition with way more depth than they are taught in medical school….which is close to nothing. It is REALLY hard to go against the flow, against what is not only accepted, but going against hospital protocols put in place for doctors to follow based on reimbursement plans. The entire system needs an overhaul. And we are on our way. If this stubborn girl can see the light, many more will continue to come to the bright side of healing……not maintaining your health, not managing your illness, but truly healing. We were made from ashes and will return to ashes. We were given plants that worked for thousands of years before the last 50 years of increased use of pills. Why won’t they work now? I even thought I was too far gone to use homeopathic remedies. I was too sick. I was stumping the biggest names in gastroenterology. I needed more than that. Until 3 of the most empathetic GI doctors in Houston, the medical Mecca told me they had no idea what to do next. I had obediently done everything they offered. All the surgeries, all the meds, all the changes. I was miserable. And remained miserable. Until I was so incredibly desperate in the way that I actually thought I might die. I even dreamed of dying just to get relief from the chronic, completely debilitating pain I had day in and out. I dreamed of a Heavenly body. I was at the bottom of the proverbial barrel. Then for 2 years I had many more surgeries to remove my stomach, then more to repair the Knicks and holes that made me septic, praise the Lord, a surgery to remove the ostomy that was placed during one of those surgeries, another surgery to remove a surgical fistula and still more. Every surgery is dangerous. Every anesthetic, pain med, organ removal changed me. While I am “in active” related to my Crohns Disease, I am down 18 inches of small intestine and 85% of my stomach….all important pieces of my digestive system that were responsible for absorbing vitamins and minerals I need. I don’t have the musculature in my stomach to vomit. Odd side effect, but true. Do you see how that first surgery lead to a lifetime of surgeries? After my final surgery to zip me up tight from the hernia caused by 7 back to back surgeries….I promised myself I would never ever go back. And I knew after all the miracles we witnessed in my truly miraculous healing from sepsis I had to share my story. How arrogant I used to be about medicine over plants. I was trained in the medical model, I sold pharmaceuticals and I took more drugs and had more surgeries than I can list. If anyone is a poster child for doing a 180 its me. So im here for it. I am an open book. I have no pride to be lost, no story I won’t tell, no miracle I won’t share. I have stared down death and it did not win. God won. And my entire experience made me fearless and desperate to help even one person not go down my path. Modern medicine will tell you I am wrong. It will tell you you must take the drugs. It will tell you I am a fluke and that no one is healed from Crohns. But what if…..what if you can be? What if you check out your “rain barrel”? Slowly but surely remove those toxins, replace your good bacteria, heal your gut, get out in the sun, breathe the air, spend time in prayer, let go of negative emotions and even energy sucking relationships. What if you found that kind of peace that passes all understanding? It certainly can’t hurt you to try. It’s not always easy. But the 25 years of procedures, transfusions, medicines, surgeries, missed events, pain, fear, being a sick mom….that wasn’t easy either. And that was the “accepted” way to “Manage” my illness. Im not afraid to say it….absolutely nothing about my degree of illness was managed, maintained or even helped. I was dying a slow death. Until I every so slowly became a believer in another way of treating my body.

Real-Life Encouragement

If you feel overwhelmed — friend, hear me:

Your barrel didn’t overflow in one day.
And it won’t empty in one day.

But every gentle choice drains it:

Choosing peace over proving yourself

Choosing real food your great-grandmother would recognize

Choosing to step outside and feel sunlight on your skin

Choosing to rest when your body whispers instead of when it screams

Healing is slow and thorough.

You are not behind.
You are not broken.
God is in your story too.

If today’s episode stirred something in you — maybe that deep knowing that things could be different — I want you to hold onto that.

Your flourishing honors the One who formed you.

Take one step this week to open the drain.
Just one.
Your body will notice.

And I’ll be right here with you thru every step you take to working toward good health. It’s a leap of faith in more ways than one.

Until next time, friend — keep becoming who you were made to be.