891: Breaking the Family Health Code: How to Rewrite Your Genetic Story With Divya Gupta

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Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com. And this episode is about breaking the family health code, how to rewrite your genetic story with Divya Gupta, who I got to meet recently and knew I had to have her on this podcast. She is a seasoned functional nutritionist who specializes in empowering people to transcend their familial health patterns. Her unique approach combines her corporate experience with her personal victories over Hashimoto’s and gallbladder issues, enabling her to craft unique solutions for her clients. And she kind of bridges cutting-edge functional methodologies and practical real-world solutions. And you’ll hear that in her interview today and all the advice she gives. She’s an absolute pleasure to talk to. So let’s join her now. Divya, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

Divya: Thank you so much for having me, Katie. I’m so excited for our conversation today.

Katie: Me too. We got to meet at an event earlier this year, and I knew immediately that I was going to be so excited to have you on and to delve into a couple of your many areas of expertise. And I think the things we’re going to talk about today are especially relevant to a lot of the people listening, certainly echo parts of my own story, and I think really touch on an element of the recovery and healing process that doesn’t get enough attention and focus, but for me at least was absolutely vital. I feel like of our two conversations we’ll get to have, this one will be really foundational, I think, in laying the groundwork for the mindset. And then we’ll move into in our second conversation, some of the more tactical things related to autoimmunity specifically.

But to start off broad, I feel like your story is incredibly relevant to this conversation. And so I would love for you to share as much as you are comfortable sharing. And then I know we have some kind of mirror parts of our stories, so I’ll share mine as well.

Divya: Oh, absolutely. I’m very comfortable. I’m an open book sharing about my story because I think it’s so important to share because we don’t realize people are going through similar journeys. And it’s, you know, when we’re here, we always feel so alone until we’re like, I’ve been there too.

So I’m a very stereotypical Indian immigrant. So we are either doctors, engineers, or lawyers. So I took a very traditional route of doing my computer science engineering back home. And I came to the U.S., to do my master’s in information systems and management. And I worked in corporate America for 16 plus years. So this is a complete like 360 of what my, you know, what I went to school for.

And, you know, life was set. I was climbing the corporate ladder, everything on the white picket fence, the American dream that we, you know, we all like move here for. But along the way, I knew something was off and it was my own health journey, and also watching my mom go through it, decide, like, you know, that made me really more focused into my health and changing that story.

So while I was still in India, I was just 20 years old. I lost my gallbladder. We’ll get into the details and the connection in the second part. But, yeah, I had no idea what the gallbladder did at that point. The role it played and all I was like, you know, get me out of this misery. I know you’ve been through multiple childbirths. I’ve been through childbirth. And I would take that any day over the gallbladder pain. It was so intense. And at one point I’m like, I just want to die. It was this bad. And as a 20 year old, it was, I think, watching my mom was like, you know, seeing a child suffer and not knowing what to do.

But long story short, the doctor, you know, finally, when we did figure out it was gallstones, the option given was, oh, we can take it out. You don’t need it. Or, you know, you can live without it. So that was a route chosen. Again, you know, I could I, would I, should I, could I have been saved? I don’t want to look back that that was more than two decades ago. And my life moved on and I came to the U.S. In this new environment. You know, it’s, you know, an Ivy League school. The food is completely different. Living alone for the first time, you know, and traditionally we live with our parents until we get married in India. So for me, it was a big shift as a 21, 22 year old moving here.

And then a couple of years down the road, I got my Hashimoto’s diagnosis as well. And the doctor spent 10 minutes. I had no idea what an autoimmune condition even meant. At that point, how do I, what questions to ask a doctor as a young 20 something, how to advocate. Prior to that, I was dismissed by doctors when I used to go like, you know, I’m in a lot of muscle ache and joint ache. You’re like, it’s in your head, too young, you know, just, you know, I’m sure a lot of women and people in general have been, have had that experience.

But I get my diagnosis and get my medication and off you go. And I knew there’s more. And for me, the turning point for me, Katie, was my mom. When I got my autoimmune condition diagnosis, she got her second autoimmune condition diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. She already did have Hashimoto’s, though in India, they literally didn’t use that term. But she was dealing with a thyroid dysregulation, and her gallbladder was taken out even though she just had stones. She was never in pain. They took it out. Oh, we just take it out.

And I just sort of connected the dots that’s such so much similarity between our stories and our journey. But I’m just getting there. And if I don’t change anything, I may get to where she is sooner. Like, you know, she was in her late 40s, early 50s at that point. And I didn’t want that for myself. You know, rheumatoid arthritis is terrible to watch people in so much pain, like little like knuckle, little joints, and your life just changes. You’re just so, you know, stuck in your own box of what you can do.

And that’s when I decided I need to change my story. I will not let that be my story in this regard and really started delving into what changes can I make? What is under my control? And that’s what got me started on this journey of where I am today. And never in a million years, I thought I would be doing this. So I thank my mom in some way for going through that because it sort of propelled me to find my own path.

Katie: Yeah, I’m guessing a lot of people listening can resonate with at least parts of that story, certainly the being dismissed by doctors in the beginning. I know I’ve heard that from so many women, especially. It seems unfortunately like a very commonly repeated story. And I know I had that experience as well and was told, oh, that’s just normal when you’re a woman or that’s just normal when you’re a mom or like sort of get used to it. That’s postpartum life forever.

And then I think also there’s the flip side of when you do finally get a diagnosis, you get the at least the validation of being recognized that you weren’t crazy. Something was actually going on. But then at least in my case, I got told, okay, now this is lifelong. All you can do is medication. Diet and lifestyle have no effect here. There’s nothing you can do to improve this. And I know like that I had to learn for myself that that was not entirely the whole story. I’m guessing you did as well.

But I’m also curious if you could speak to having grown up in India and then having gotten that diagnosis here. Were there differences in how the medical community looked at that or the way that like any kind of ailment was handled differently at each place.

Divya: In India, the mindset, you know, there are a lot of differences and similarities too. Like we only go to the doctor in India if something is wrong. The whole concept of getting an annual visit, getting an annual checkup, which is more standard here, it’s not the case. So that was different. And there, the doctors really seem again, it’s not entirely, you know, I can draw a Venn diagram here, not entirely, but you know, you question, even now, you can’t question the doctor. Hey, can you, hey, I read this XYZ. They get really offended. I hear it all the time from even my colleagues who are Indians here and, you know, who want to talk to the doctors there for their family. They’re like, oh, we’re taking care of it. So they don’t want to be questioned. It’s like questioning their authority. So that’s the difference.

And I don’t think they’re entirely ever even inform what’s going on. As I said, my mom had an autoimmune condition. I don’t think she ever knew that term. Even my sister who lives here, she, I’m like, I always knew she had Hashimoto’s, but she like the doctor never really used that term. So she was surprised when I said, you know, you have those antibodies, so you do have it.

So that’s one difference. Okay. You know, go to the doctor when you’re sick. And over here, yes, there is some standard of care, but we, you and I know it’s not really until you’re outside they can diagnose or tell you, put a label to it. They really don’t know much about it. So that’s the difference.

And I think there’s a lot of similarities between the whole diet and lifestyle. It’s not really given the place it deserves and how much impact it could have. In one slide, there is not a lot of education. Forget about this. This was 20 years ago. Like, you know, nobody really told us what does it mean for the gallbladder? You know, we can just take it out. Hey, let’s dig into it. There’s no communication. There’s no education. And I find that similar here, too, when you go to the doctor. The doctor is not really spending the time with you to hear what’s going on.

So there are some differences, some similarities. And, yeah, in then, if we have the means, which is financially, if you have the means, you can go find a lot of people. That one thing I find at least different in India is you can, you can go to any doctor you want to. You can have the means, whether it’s within the state or out of the state, because the whole insurance system doesn’t exist per se. So you have that freedom.

And the other difference is that it was funny. You can go to a pharmacy and get any meds you want, even if you don’t have a prescription. Good sometimes to just say, I need this. You have a doctor, you know somebody to help, and it’s not regulated as well, so it can be misused as well. So the medical system, I think, across the world needs an overhaul.

Katie: I can agree with you on that. And that’s fascinating to kind of get some insight into those differences. And what really also stood out to me in what you said, I would guess people in the U.S. as well might have had that sort of experience of not being able to question their doctors, at least instances of that. I know I had that. And I know, especially with young children, I had many experiences where I ended up finding new doctors versus kind of arguing with the one that was there.

But I think that brings up a really important point, because something I say on here a lot is that at the end of the day, we are each our own primary healthcare provider, and that the best outcomes can happen when we work with a partner in that who has very specific medical knowledge and can help walk that path with us. But I think we give away our power to effect change when we let someone else actually sit in the driver’s seat of that. And it seems like that is a commonality in our interactions with the medical world, kind of in a lot of places in the world. And it’s something that I’m excited to help start to shift a little bit, even if it’s just in each of us individually in our mindset.

And you mentioned that your mom had the same symptoms and kind of was already on the same path as you and that you kind of wanted to be the cycle breaker and not go down that path. I think this also brings up important points that it isn’t just our genetics. There’s the, of course, nature versus nurture. There’s the genetics versus the lifestyle. And those things are always both shared in a family. So what was your process like in, first of all, recognizing that and then shifting your mindset and then practically how did you kind of change the path for yourself?

Divya: Oh, absolutely. And, you know, Katie, you bring up a good one. We are, I think the genes only impact 10%. Yes, we are born with the genes. It is, we can’t change that. I’m sure your audience have heard it and you’ve heard it. Our genes are like that loaded gun, right? It’s, we are born with it. What will pull the trigger of the gun is your lifestyle and your environment. And honestly, Katie, maybe when I know when I started on this path, I didn’t know that. I just knew I had to change and it can be different for me. And there has to be other pieces, things that I can do to do that.

So for everyone listening, you don’t have to just give up and just. Like you know it’s in my genes I’ve inherited these diseases heart diseases, diabetes, or all these metabolic conditions are diseases of our modern lifestyle and environment and our mindset and the stress we are in and it’s not our genes.

For me, it was like, you know, I knew I was young. I was like, I was 25 at that point. And I’m like, it’s, I couldn’t just imagine walking that path. I’m like, I had to start taking my health into my own hand. And something that you said, Katie, it’s so true. We are the CEOs of our body. Nobody can know our body as well as somebody else. Not even a doctor, not even a health coach or anyone you hire to work with. They don’t know. I still tell my clients, you know your body the best. I’m your guide. I’m going to partner in this journey, and you have to talk to me with what’s going on. So even now, like when you go see a doctor, if they are not partnering with you and not collaborating with you, you have the right to fire them and move on to a next doctor who is ready to work with you.

So for me, when I started, I was just like, okay, I can just control what I can. I was still in the corporate world. I was working for a top four consulting firm, traveling all the time. I was like the three, four, five, where Monday to Thursday, I was out. And I lived in New York City at that point, you know. So weekends used to be out, you know, at bars. Eating out was quite normal. But I started making really slow changes. I know diet was one place I could control. So changing the way I ate, even when I traveled, finding places at that point, you know, and reading up, getting more knowledgeable about and putting, you know, reading, consuming everything I could get my hands on. At that point, this was 15, 16 years ago, I didn’t know what to Google, like gut health. Nobody was talking about gut health or your digestion. So whatever I could get my hands on around nutrition, I would read, start changing the topic, started really controlling my environment.

And it started with baby steps. It wasn’t, Rome wasn’t built in a day. And I’m like, oh. This stuff works. I was feeling better, recognizing that I’m getting connected to my body. And that just, you know, steamrolled into what it was like, you know, lifestyle, the mindset, exercise, and then, oh, there’s always more to learn. I still don’t know everything. I’m still learning.

Katie: Yeah, I had a similar experience. And I think that’s the part that also bears repeating is those little baby steps can add up quickly. And I know from firsthand experience, when I was sort of in that experience of autoimmunity, I felt so fatigued and tired, and it felt overwhelming. And sort of baby steps were all I could do in the beginning. But I realized those little baby steps added up.

And just like there’s sort of a negative feedback loop when we’re doing all these little things that lead to us feeling not as good, when we start making those little changes, there comes a point when that feedback loop shifts. And now we have, even if it’s a very slow moving, we have a positive feedback loop that gives us a little bit more motivation and energy to keep taking those baby steps. And for me, that’s when I really started to see the shifts happening.

To your point, there was also a huge mindset piece here. And I would love to hear kind of what your inner landscape and mindset was like during that period of growth. Because I know for me, I had to learn to shift from thinking of my body is attacking itself and all those things were told related to autoimmunity and shifting my inner mindset to my body is healing. My body is infinitely capable of healing. My body is always on my side and just sort of reaffirming those things, which then became the sort of driving motivator for those baby steps. But I’m curious what your internal landscape was and what your mindset was during that time.

Divya: Oh, wow. You’re taking me back to a very long time ago. I think at that point, as you said, it was baby steps and I did not know what to expect. And, you know, the positive feedback loop was, I did not realize I was bloated all the time. I didn’t know. I’d like. I had this little, you know, you as a young, even now, like, you know, you always want to have those six abs and a flat belly. And I never had that, and I didn’t realize until I took out, experimented with taking our dairy out of my diet or gluten. I’m like, wow, I was, I just felt that was normal. That was step one of just getting aware of what I thought was normal, but it’s not.

So, and that’s what I’m like, okay, so that’s what kept me going. Okay, so what’s next? You know, had more energy, you felt more lighter. Even though I wasn’t, you know, with hypothyroidism, Hashimoto’s, people gain weight, that wasn’t my first symptom. Or, you know, I had not, that was definitely 20 pounds heavier, but you know, the way it was distributed, that wasn’t the biggest case, but I felt lighter inside.

So, my, I think my inner landscape was, okay, there’s more I can do to feel this way of feeling this good. And let’s, and I just, and I would talk to everyone about it. This is what I learned. You need to do this. You know, I became one of those people that people will get her out of here because she’ll be talking about this new smoothie she came across or new diet. You know, I’m being very honest, I don’t think I even learned what was the whole autoimmunity, the body attacking me until much later as I was digging into it. But for me, I just knew I liked the way I was feeling. And I knew there was more and I wanted to keep going, not knowing where this was going to take me.

And as a person, I’m very disciplined and consistency, that’s just part of who I am. So if I decided I was going to do this, I’m okay. Let me continue training the diet, doing juice cleanses, even by traveling, figuring it out. Like prioritizing my health first. I just do it. And I think now I can say it was, I know I could heal or feel the best. You know, I think how that framed my mindset was. But if I don’t take care of my health today or taking care of my health today will pay me dividends years and decades to come. So I can’t wait or carve out a time, the right time to do it, I need to do it today. I need to invest in my health today. I need to take care of, you know, really feed my body as a temple. Because even though it’s attacking itself, even though it’s maybe not perfect, but it does so much for me. So I need to worship it and take care of it. So that’s become my mindset. And that’s my number one, I think, tip for everyone, you know, take care of yourself today.

Katie: Yeah. And such a much more empowering place to come from is that like nourishing and nurturing and loving your body and supporting it versus trying to like deprive it or force it into whatever you want it to do. And I think like your story touches on really also the first step is recognizing that we are not our genes, that we have the ability to affect change.

And then for me realizing it’s not the symptoms necessarily that were the problem. They were actually just the messenger. And that was a big shift I learned internally. I think the Western model, and it sounds like maybe in India as well, there’s a little bit of this of viewing the symptom as the problem and sort of like trying to play whack-a-mole and deal with the symptoms. And when I started looking at that with a wider lens and realizing, oh, the symptoms are simply my body speaking to me very directly and either requesting something that it doesn’t have or telling me to stop doing something it doesn’t need. When I can think of it that way, I actually get all this insight and sort of like direct line of communication with my body. I slowly learned to make friends with my body. But I think like I said, your story illustrates it’s that initial shift of realizing we are not our genes and we are not governed entirely by our genes. And then from there, sort of doing that inner work, that self-experimentation, and then the outward work to start making those shifts based on what our body individually needs.

Divya: Oh, absolutely. We are definitely not our genes. And you’re right, symptoms are our body’s way of communicating to us. And as long as we can change that mindset that it’s trying to tell us something that it needs. Are we listening? And I think that’s the first, are we listening? Because we are so disconnected with our bodies today. Or how we are feeling awareness, like, you know, just because it’s so easy to pop up the, oh, I’m feeling bloated or acid reflux, pop something over the counter to make that symptom go away. Just suppressing that.

And I think somewhere we also suppress our emotions of how we are truly feeling in society as well, I just find it so similar. Like you’re feeling angry or discontent or disappointed or let’s just suppress it let’s just suppress it just, outwardly we need to be this person that people expect us to be, we’re going to be that. And I think those emotions can also are equally toxic. So stop getting connected to ourselves is so important. And something I realized very late. Or, you know, okay, not, I don’t want to say, at the right time, you know, in midlife, that’s a gift of midlife. You know, life gives us to start really unraveling that.

Katie: So true. And certainly still, I’m only like a baby on this journey as well, but learning that in hindsight, it’s easy to look backwards and say like, oh, every hard thing led to some beautiful things and find gratitude for them. And so some of my current work is to like find gratitude in the moment of the hard thing without having to know, to justify it by knowing what the good outcome is going to be and sort of like letting go of that, needing to even define this good or bad and to just find the gratitude in the moment. And I feel like there’s not only does that make the experience more pleasant, but there’s actually so much data behind when we’re able to even just shift our mindset into a state of actual gratitude, like our body responds differently to that as well.

Divya: That’s so beautiful. Yeah. It’s and it’s a mindset change. I’m a work in progress. Not every time I could tap into it. But yeah, that’s a good reminder. I’m going to put that again. When we go through hard things. We are lucky. I like, you know, it’s fun. That’s, that’s a lesson coming in, you know, we needed it. Or for me, it was. There are certain factors in my life just kept repeating, repeating, repeating itself in different ways with different people. And I’m like, okay, it’s not getting, I had to like learn to get out of the victim mode because I was there for a long time and started seeing it as, okay, this pattern is repeating. And I truly believe the universe, until you learn the lesson, it’s going to keep repeating the pattern. And then, okay, I got to get the message. I’m still working on it, know what’s next. That’s what life’s about is showing up and being your, living your true purpose and learning the lessons we need to learn in this lifetime and just knowing the past is repeating in your life for you to take a look at it okay what’s going on

Katie: Oh, such a good point. And yeah, those, it’s definitely like a mental, like when you can realize like, I’ve had that too, all these things, this pattern keeps repeating. Oh, and I’m the only common variable when it repeats and like, oh.

But I feel like your story is filled with so much inspiration and so much hope. And I think the perfect foundation for our round two of this podcast, which we’ll get to really delve more into the technical aspects of your recovery from Hashimoto’s, the link to liver and gallbladder health, and so much more. But before we wrap up this episode, I’ll of course put links in the show notes, but where can people find you online if they want to keep going on this journey with you and learning from you?

Divya: You can go find me on my website, divyagupta.net. And I’m quite active on Instagram. That’s @_divgupta. And again, it’s my Facebook page as well. And a LinkedIn profile because being in the corporate world, I had a LinkedIn profile as well. So those are, I think Instagram is the best place to find me.

Katie: Amazing. Well, I will have all those links in the show notes for any of you listening on the go. And for this conversation, thank you so much for your time. This has been such a fun conversation and I look forward to our next one as well.

Divya: Thank you so much. The honor is all mine.

Katie: And thank you for listening. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.