Amber’s Journey From Desperation to Holistic Healing

Amber Conway (00:00)
I just kind of got to a place of desperation where I was like, okay, I’m either, I guess I’m gonna die trying, right? I’m gonna die trying to focus on how to get better because I know this isn’t my normal, but I feel like every practitioner I would go to, especially within the conventional field, I just felt so gaslit. And I was like, because they would just come up and be like, they’d shrug their shoulders and go, I don’t know what’s wrong with you. ⁓ You know, I was told to go see a psychologist. I was told go see a therapist. So you almost get this weird.

mentality of, guess I am crazy, it’s in my head, right? Nonetheless, I was like, okay, well, I guess I’m gonna try my absolute darndest to figure this out. So upon trying to finish my social work education, starting to research, trying to figure out what else was going on, and I stumbled upon naturopathy, and I ended up working with this individual who ends up doing something called an organic acids test, and I was sky high for oxalic acid.

Clint Powell (00:55)
How doing Amber? I will say, and I said this last time, wish maybe Brian, who is the guy that makes the magic here, maybe he is going to take a collage of all the stuff we do before we start recording. Just put those together. Yeah, they’ll have to be on another page though, because sometimes it’s not HR friendly because we’re back here sweating, the air conditioner’s broke, we’re saying wordy dirge, we shouldn’t say. Amber Conway, how you doing? Good.

Amber Conway (00:56)
Doing good? How are you?

I’m doing great, great. All right.

Clint Powell (01:24)
These podcasts on nutrition world they’re designed to be a little shorter But what we’re trying to do is capture the stories of people here at nutrition world at least at this point We may venture out and do some vendors and other people that work with us But you’re a coach here at nutrition world. We’re gonna start it with what do you do? Like who are you coaching? Who’s your clients? We’ll end it with that too and in the middle I just want to talk about your journey how you got to nutrition world and how you discovered what works for you and what doesn’t so What do you do in nutrition world?

Amber Conway (01:51)
So I guess I’ll start with my designation. So my background is certified nutritional practitioner. I would say, I I work with so many different types of clients, so many different demographics. But if I had to kind of summarize the main demographic, it would be somebody who is struggling with symptoms that they just want to get to the root cause of. They want a more holistic approach, namely that’s

typically things like autoimmune disease, right? Chronic inflammation, so multiple systems have gone awry. And then I typically will work with individuals, especially pertaining to gastrointestinal. Gut stuff. Gut stuff.

Clint Powell (02:29)
Is this the right word? Microbiome? Okay, I feel so small when I say that and somebody goes, what is that? go, you should call Amber. That’s such an easy question. I’m gonna you talk. Absolute microbiome Conway, that’s what you are. ⁓ And you had these problems yourself or issues and I like what you said real quick before we go down that road is I found that a lot of us and then the medical practice, the medical industry itself, we’re really good at treating symptoms.

Amber Conway (02:38)
We’re stop on our-

Clint Powell (02:56)
but we’re not always great at, okay, why did the symptoms keep repeating, right? And so with that being said, you were dealing with all these symptoms and you were kind of in that loop of the medical process, right? So ⁓ how far back did your symptoms start and how do they manifest themselves? as many as you wanna, you feel comfortable sharing.

Amber Conway (03:16)
Well, I always jokingly say, mean, how long do you have first off? I probably… 20 minutes. Yeah, yeah. So, I had ⁓ probably hundreds of symptoms if I really name them, but, you know, I would say my health journey really started in my late teens, early 20s. Okay. Now, again, in hindsight, I could probably look back as even a very young child, and I had just a lot of odd things happen, right? I’ve had chronic ear infections since I was young, chronic constipation since I was young.

you know, leading into my early 20s. I had, ⁓ you know, skin rashes coming up in high school. I had the cystic acne. I was on the birth control pill. I was on all these different things. you know, again, would I say I was an unwelcome child? No, I was relatively healthy, but I will say probably all those things did set me up, right, to have more dysfunction.

Clint Powell (04:04)
When did it become something you wanted to start researching? Because it sounds like if I’m dealing with one of those things from time to time, I can handle it, right? Yeah. It’s a flare up of acne. I got a stomach issue six months later. When did it become, when did it kind of all aggregate to such a stage? like, okay, I got to figure it out. Did they all hit you at once or you just got curious? How did that happen?

Amber Conway (04:23)
Yeah, that’s a good question. was in a way gradual. It kind of hit me, you know, without even realizing it. So I would say, especially when I went off to university is when I started having all these insane symptoms. And when I say insane, I’m saying like extreme debilitating fatigue. Like I get up, I’m trying to motivate myself to go to school, to my campus. And I’m like, well, I slept for two hours last night. I chronic anxiety. Haven’t gone to the bathroom in four days. I am in chronic pain. Like it just so slowly but surely started.

to experience different systems in my body become dysfunctional. I didn’t know how to name that at that point. I also wasn’t really intuitive. I was like, I guess everyone deals with this chronic constipation and the chronic GI issues. This is my thing. and I mean, I would always go to my primary care at the time. And I said, look, not feeling well, I don’t think this is normal. I mean, I would get so distended that I looked eight months pregnant. and I was a small, small girl. So.

Clint Powell (05:03)
is my thing. Everybody’s got a thing.

Amber Conway (05:20)
It wasn’t normal, but again, I would always do the conventional lab work that was also very, you know, minute and it. ⁓

Clint Powell (05:26)
work right just blood where they hit the bare minimums

Amber Conway (05:28)
where

are bare minimum? And it always came back normal. So my doctor would always say, well, you look fine. And I hate that. And you look great. And your labs are normal. And I’d be like, yay. But I feel like I’m dying.

Clint Powell (05:39)
So what kind of advice did they give you then? Did they give you advice like what’s what you eat? Did they do any allergy testing? What did they do or did just kind of rub the top of your head and send you on your way?

Amber Conway (05:51)
I will say we did check for celiac. I did do a scope and that was positive. So I definitely had celiac disease in my early 20s. I still have it of course, but that was a major diagnosis. But even with going gluten free, I still had so many different symptoms. And that’s what made me question like, what else is going on? ⁓ And so I will say like, again, a lot of the symptoms I dealt with, whether it was gastrointestinal, whether it was neurological, a lot of brain fog, I ended up having a lot of sensitivities, like light sensitivity, noise.

You know a lot of nervous system stuff. So yeah to name it. mean chronic pain chronic fatigue chronic GI

Clint Powell (06:27)
Did they come up, this is me being naive, I don’t know as much about your story, is there a diagnosis of this is what it is, or was it several things that you figured out? And then I’m gonna transfer into, or transition into how you got down that road. When did you start looking at something outside the medical? So was it one diagnosis, or was it several?

Amber Conway (06:47)
Yeah, I would say if I had to label it, the doctor definitely definitively celiac. mean, as a young kid, I was labeled with anxiety, depression, you know, and aside from that, she had a high ⁓ suspicion that it was fibromyalgia as well. So in terms of diagnoses, right, the labels, we could say that, but also that was really it. I mean, I had a lot of these abstract things going on that no doctor really could name.

Clint Powell (07:11)
Yeah,

and it seems to me, and again, you’re in the world, you correct me, it seems to me a little odd that we go, this is what you have, and no one says, now let’s figure out why you have that. Now I’m not saying there’s some things you get that’s just part of your DNA, no, it’s just what you are, and I’m fine with that answer, but it seems like we just to default, well, this is what you got. Great, so here’s, let’s treat the symptoms for the next 70 years. Exactly. Because usually what happens is one pill leads to…

Amber Conway (07:21)
Exactly.

Yeah, good I was not happy with

Clint Powell (07:38)
consequences or symptoms from the field. So when did it change for you? When do you remember the first time you thought, okay, I need to start doing my own research and asking somebody outside the medical loop?

Amber Conway (07:49)
Yeah, and it took me a while because I, know, my parents are their best, but we weren’t really a holistic family just because, you know, lack of knowing, right? ⁓

Clint Powell (07:57)
I

think that has not been a thing into the last 20 years.

Amber Conway (08:00)
Yeah. so, well, I just kind of got to a place of desperation where I was like, okay, I’m either, I guess I’m gonna die trying, right? I’m gonna die trying to focus on how to get better because I know this isn’t my normal, but I feel like every practitioner I would go to, especially within the conventional field, I just felt so gaslit. And I was like, because they would just come up and be like, they’d shrug their shoulders and go, I don’t know what’s wrong with you.

⁓ You know, I was told to go see a psychologist. I was told go see a therapist. So you almost get this weird mentality of, guess I am crazy. It’s in my head, right? Nonetheless, I was like, okay, well, I guess I’m gonna try my absolute darndest to figure this out. So upon trying to finish my social work education, starting to research, trying to figure out what else was going on, and I stumbled upon naturopathy and I ended up working with this individual.

who ends up doing something called an organic acids test. And I was sky high for oxalic acid and oxalates, right? You talk to Ed, you talk to him about his journey, very similar to my journey. came out in different.

Clint Powell (09:03)
That can create pain and inflammation, right? Is that just for joints or can it also affect other?

Amber Conway (09:07)
Everything.

It’s considered neurotoxin. And so for me, it wasn’t just ⁓ my spinal and my neck area that was chronically in pain. It was neurological symptoms, like cognitive symptoms. So the brain fog, I honestly thought I had like onset dementia because I had no memory as a 22 year old. I was slurring my words. So it affected me from that level, which is so scary to think about.

Clint Powell (09:30)
So, what do you do to fix that? You know what saying? That seems like a very big problem. And then, I’m a little curious if it’s neurological and it’s affecting you in these ways, can you request that as a blood test when you go to them? Let’s say I’m in the medical system. Let’s say I go to my conventional practitioner. Can I request those tests or is that something they don’t even put

Amber Conway (09:50)
But

there is a blood test for oxalates. The only dilemma is, know, given the information that we have currently, if somebody is extremely toxic with oxalates, they might test as low, right, as almost like negative that they don’t, they’re not, you know, dumping all these oxalates. If they’re very toxic, their system is so toxic that it’s not dumping it, right? When I would test oxalates, I, you know, from a blood perspective, I always was low because my body holds onto it.

Clint Powell (10:17)
Well, how did the test then that you took show you? Different kind of That’s what I meant. Can you ask that from the medical professionals or do they not even do that?

Amber Conway (10:19)
It’s a urine test.

They

don’t run organic acid tests. Wow. Okay. Yeah. And that’s the dilemma, right? The functional tests, even now that I run with my clients, it’s like the conventional system approach isn’t taught to do these. It’s missing such a big.

Clint Powell (10:33)
It’s missing. It needs

a wrench and all it has is hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox.

Amber Conway (10:39)
Yeah,

and I guess in a nutshell, so I started going on this journey of, and at the time I was also heavy plant-based, so vegan, to a T, all the foods I was eating were extremely high oxalate.

Clint Powell (10:50)
Give me a favor real quick, because I want to talk about how you give some advice to people, because we want to give a little bit of substance to this. And I love the story, but explain to people what oxalates can do and why it’s surprising. When Ed started talking about this and he started talking about some of my favorite vegetables, greens, and I’m like, what? Yeah, that’s a good, I love that. And he goes, yes, very high in oxalates. Two things, what are they, where can they come from? And does everybody respond the same way to oxalates or is it very individual?

Amber Conway (11:06)
All the best ones.

Yeah, so oxalates, the best way could describe it is if you think about the plant kingdom and the plant family, as evolution has gone on, right, they have to have these inbuilt defense mechanisms for their continuation of their species to survive, right? Animals, you know, from predators, they have their claws, their growls, their teeth, right? That is their way of, you know, continuing their species. Plants don’t have that. So they have inbuilt defense mechanisms or defense chemicals. Oxalates are one.

Things like lectins are another way. I always say to my clients, you might not have heard of oxalates. You’ve heard of lectins likely or nightshades, right? So all of these are plant compounds. They don’t all cause harm. It may be an excess for some sense of individuals they can, but yeah, oxalates are these chemical compounds or defense mechanisms that are naturally found in certain plant foods.

Clint Powell (12:07)
Do they affect every individual the same? Because it wasn’t spinach one of them. I’m trying to remember the… I like spinach, but it’s high in oxalates, isn’t it? Isn’t it high in oxalates?

Amber Conway (12:11)
Spinach, yeah.

Yeah,

it is. It’s one of the high ones. Spinach, almonds, sweet potato, chocolate, Michael loves it.

Clint Powell (12:21)
Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. This is a stupid podcast all of sudden. I don’t like this podcast. Enjoy anything. This is the last episode. Well, because I love a good sweet potato. So my question is, you know what’s not high in oxalates? Donuts. That’s for Ed Jones. Don’t eat donuts. He’ll hate this podcast. But my question, does that affect, if you eat spinach and I spinach, will it affect us to…

Amber Conway (12:41)
Not necessarily. There are certain pre-expositions, right? So people who have a higher fungal load in their body, right? Like higher yeast, candida, right? We actually can create this internally as well. If we’ve been exposed to mold, right? If mold has, and mycotoxins, aspergillus is one of those species that if it’s aspergillus, the type of mold or mycotoxin, I believe. If people are colonized with certain fungal issues, right? We can actually be internally creating oxalate as well.

Clint Powell (12:58)
Slow down a bit. What’s that word? Asperg-

Amber Conway (13:11)
⁓ So you also have ⁓ nutrient deficiencies that can exacerbate this issue, right? So B vitamins are very, very important. A lot of us are depleted in B vitamins, right? A lot of us are also high dosing things like vitamin C, which also creates more oxalate load. Stop it. There’s a lot of different things. And I had probably all of them. I had mold exposure, so colonization. I had a lot of Candida issues, so fungal issues in my body.

I also had male absorption issues, celiac, right? We can be ⁓ very extreme absorbers of oxalates if we already have damage to the intestinal wall lining. So I’m absorbing it at such a high And then I’m also B vitamin deficient. So I had all the kind of pillars to make myself more toxic.

Clint Powell (13:47)
sensitive to it right

How much money do you think you spent on the conventional side of medicine trying to figure this out?

Amber Conway (13:59)
I honestly blend it into both the functional and conventional because I mean in Canada obviously our free healthcare rate I mean I had some things covered but I never got to any solutions. ⁓ So then even in that journey I stumbled upon doing all these other holistic modalities. So if I had to average I mean probably 60 to 70 thousand and I wasn’t taking any insurance I couldn’t work like I couldn’t make that right.

Clint Powell (14:21)
You spent this money, you start going down this path, and this is where I have this conversation with some of my friends like, man, it’s witch, it’s hair of newt. It’s these things that don’t work, and then I meet someone like you, and it’s actually the proof is in the pudding. When you started actually changing your diet, taking supplements, did you start eating more meat?

Amber Conway (14:40)
Yes.

Okay. Well, that was my aha moment because I was gung ho plant based never eating animal product again, because I in my soul felt like that was the right thing to do. Lo and behold, it was the worst thing I could have done for myself, my anatomy, my biology, my blood type. ⁓ and so when I saw finally saw the undeniable truth on the page, I was like, ⁓ this diet is actually harming me. Well, how about

Clint Powell (15:02)
How you felt though? Did you start feeling and was it a long time? Did you have to detox? What was that transition from feeling bad to feeling better like? And how long did it take?

Amber Conway (15:12)
You know, I would say in the first couple months when I finally was like, all right, I literally have to eat animal foods and I started lowering the amount of high oxalate foods I was eating. I will say, I almost like, I didn’t fully bounce back, but I would say my severe debilitating fatigue, you know, went from zero to 70 % better. Like immediately within about a couple of weeks to a couple of months. So ⁓ that was an obvious like, okay, we’ve hit something here, ⁓ but the residual…

⁓ symptoms, residual issues of dealing with nutrient deficiencies for a long time, the oxalate burden for a long time. Like I still have damage in my neck because of that. And even now, if I were to eat too much of my favorite foods, potatoes, know, chocolate, ⁓ I will have the immediate impact on my neck.

Clint Powell (15:58)
That’s a great question. So you found out these things. Is there a way to manage them so you can have some joy in life or is it just no joy in life? No joy and you’ll be fine. Your neck won’t hurt but you’ll be miserable.

Amber Conway (16:05)
Yeah, no, no, and there definitely is.

I truly love the work of Sally Norton because she’s really… Who’s that Sally? Sally Norton. She’s really like the pioneer of ⁓ bringing the oxalate conversation ⁓ into medicine, into the functional world. Right? Before her, we were very much only talking about oxalate illness or oxalate toxicity in the chronic kidney disease section of health. So, ⁓ you know, she really talks about how it is… There can be a balance, but some very sensitive individuals have to be at a very low oxalate diet probably the rest of their lives.

⁓ And so for me, I’m still trying to find that balance every now and then I’ll have some of these foods, but binding with things like calcium or magnesium citrate can be very helpful. Supplements can help to draw it out or, ⁓ you know, avoiding the high hitters, right? Avoiding high doses of vitamin C. Or even if I’m having ironically a chocolate bar, I’m actually going for the one that’s more, ⁓ you know, more milk chocolate as opposed to dark chocolate, which is more concentrated with oxalate.

Clint Powell (16:50)
Is that

Amber Conway (17:10)
Keep in mind that dairy, that calcium that’s bound with these oxalate foods can actually help with binding up with some of that oxalate.

Clint Powell (17:17)
So you said something about vitamin C and then we’ll kind of work towards the end of your journey and what brought you to the nutrition world. If vitamin C is an issue, I’m assuming that vitamin C is something I need, it’s part of my immune system, helps me get better. Are there other supplements I can take that help with that or is that just one of those, hey, you’re at a lot, it’s just.

Amber Conway (17:35)
Well, and that’s the thing, right? Every nutrient that we have, herb, nutrient, vitamin, it’s going to work differently based off of the person’s history, right? Is that one? That’s very important. And I mean, unless you have an oxalate issue, I would be mindful of the oxalate intake from a dietary perspective. But again, I don’t think you have an oxalate issue. So I think vitamin C in your circumstances is totally beneficial.

Clint Powell (17:44)
Testing so important.

different

tests do you run for your or optional for your clients? Is there three, five, seven? Are there a number of tests you can figure out? And do you do that based off the conversation and the symptoms you’re having with your client?

Amber Conway (18:09)
totally based off of the conversation and they’re always optional. But if my client has already gone down the conventional row and they’re like, I don’t really have the answers that I’m looking for, this is where we get into the nitty gritty with the functional testing. And I run the GI Map stool test, that is fantastic for someone that has autoimmune or chronic GI issues long-term. ⁓ I run something like the organic acids test, which will check for oxalic acid, it’ll check for methylation issues, mitochondrial issues, it can check for some.

colonization of things like candida and mold. ⁓ And I would also run urine mycotoxin tests if somebody is suspecting they’re exposed to mold. Those are like the three main ones. There’s HTMA as well. It’s a hair tissue mineral analysis, so it’s looking at heavy metals. But again, I would say the main one is going to be the GI map and probably the organic acids.

Clint Powell (18:59)
to kind of give you a better overall view kind of let you know where to focus or enter.

Amber Conway (19:02)
Yeah,

yeah, it’s good looking at the optimal.

Clint Powell (19:04)
What brought you to the nutrition world?

Amber Conway (19:07)
You know, it’s funny because whenever I, if I move to a new place, I am looking for, you know, the holistic center of that city. And, you know, upon my research, I was looking for just that. I was like, what’s a cool supplement store, something that’s speaking my language of functional medicine, holistic health. Nutrition World popped up. And I think around the time before I had applied to work with you guys, I essentially went to the health fair. And I was like, this is so cool. I love this. It’s not just supplements.

Right. Everyone, the energy of everyone and just so much passion and love for what they do. And, ⁓ we were just exposed to so many cool things, right? Like they do local grass fed meats and they’re supporting local businesses. Like it’s such a beautiful harmony of everything that holistic medicine is, is about. So I just fell in love with that. Gosh. ⁓ a little over three years, believe. Yes. Yeah.

Clint Powell (19:54)
Have you been here?

post COVID.

COVID was a whole different world. pushed everybody, pushed a lot of people into an international world.

Amber Conway (20:04)
Yeah, and I was in Canada at the time so where you little crazy

Clint Powell (20:08)
That’s on my personal podcast. I loved your out was in Canada See if it was just as it messed up there as it was here and handled kind of weird ⁓ And so you like doing the coaching. Are you feeling better? Have you and I know it’s kind of rhetorical We talked about it, but you said you kind of alluded to it earlier about the celiac disease I still have it you still have these issues, but you overall your choice to go down this holistic path has made night and day difference

Amber Conway (20:10)
Yeah,

It saved my life. I genuinely don’t believe I would be here today without it. I genuinely don’t. Because that’s, think, the struggle that a lot of people deal with who are dealing with chronic illness and are not getting the… ⁓ not being seen or heard. There’s a level of hopelessness that you feel that is probably the worst feeling I would ever imagine possible. Because you genuinely… Like with the symptoms I dealt with, I was like, okay, just push for another day, just push for another week. Like you feel like your body’s letting go. And that’s the scary part. So he’s…

Clint Powell (21:01)
Spend

the money.

Amber Conway (21:01)
and you’re spending all the money that you don’t even have, right? So I always said even to my mom, I’m like, I’m never gonna stop researching. I’m never going to stop trying because if I mentally give up, then I’m doomed. I’m doomed. Because my physical body is already feeling like it’s giving up. So mentally, I have to keep fighting. And if I die trying, then at least I have that dignity to say so.

Clint Powell (21:20)
If people listen to this and they go, can relate to that journey. Maybe I think I’m more severe, maybe I’m not as bad, but I’ve spent time, I’ve spent money in this system, it’s not really working out. Maybe I need to sit with somebody that can relate to when I say these things. can be you know, trust from the get go. How do they find out more about you and how do they schedule a, maybe a consultation?

Amber Conway (21:40)
Yeah, so through Nutrition World’s website, there’s ⁓ a link at the top. It’s wellness consultations ⁓ and they’ll find my little logo there, Amber Conway. So I have my whole page there. I have my scheduling information. I do the 10 minute discovery calls if they just want to see if we’re a good match. And so that’d probably be the best way. Or I have my email, amber at nutritionw.com. ⁓ But truly, I just always want to say to people like you aren’t alone and gosh, I truly understand. ⁓

where you’re at because I’ve been there. And so I have sat in the seat of many of my clients. And if there’s one thing I can say to anyone, it doesn’t matter what you’re going through, mental, physical health does not matter. ⁓ It does matter, but it is like, want you to know that no matter what it is, I truly, in my soul, I’ve said this even with Katie in our podcast, healing is always possible. It’s just about figuring out the tools in your toolkit that will get you there.

Clint Powell (22:32)
Yeah, that’s at nutritionw.com is the website. So thanks for coming on. I appreciate two things. You didn’t have a cough and fit. I know, so proud of myself. Yeah, and no one had to see you drink out of that big jug of water you carry. look at that. Yeah, go for it.

Amber Conway (22:45)
I gotta show them.

50 ounces. You know, I could have had bigger. There’s a 70 ounce.

Clint Powell (22:49)
Do go through two of those a day or just one? Okay, one and a half. Good for you. did good. Well done Amber. All right. Thank you everybody. We appreciate you tuning in.

Amber Conway (22:51)
Look right now. Thank you.