Hypnosis + Hormones: The Unexpected Female Reset
Field Notes: An Exploration of Functional Medicine
Release Date: 11/11/2025
Your Home Might Be Making You Sick (And You’d Never Know It) with Dr. Rob Downey
Field Notes: An Exploration of Functional Medicine
What if the headaches, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep, allergies, or “mysterious symptoms” you’ve been chasing for years aren’t just about food, supplements, or stress… but the environment inside your own home? In this fascinating episode of the Field Notes podcast, Dr. Rob Downey and Joe Rignola dive into the emerging concept of “functional medicine for the home” — exploring how air quality, lighting, EMFs, water, cleaning products, and even the items in your pantry may be silently taxing your body every single day. Dr. Rob shares why he partnered with Clean Elements and...
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Your Gut May Be Shaping Your Mood, Stress, Sleep, and Focus More Than You Realize with Dr. Shawn Talbott
Field Notes: An Exploration of Functional Medicine
In this fascinating episode of Field Notes, Dr. Rob Downey sits down with Dr. Shawn Talbott to unpack the powerful connection between the gut and the brain—and why your microbiome may have far more influence over your mental fitness than most people realize. Together, they explore how gut bacteria can affect stress resilience, mood, sleep, motivation, and even cognitive clarity through pathways involving neurotransmitters, inflammation, and the immune system. What makes this conversation especially compelling is that it stays grounded in both science and practicality: yes, there...
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NASA Meets Ancient Healing: The Chronic Illness Breakthroughs You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
Field Notes: An Exploration of Functional Medicine
In this fascinating episode of Field Notes, Dr. Rob Downey sits down with Greg Lee—a former NASA systems engineer turned acupuncturist and chronic illness specialist—to explore a radically integrative approach to complex health conditions. Drawing from decades of clinical experience, Greg explains how hidden drivers like mold toxicity, stealth infections, nervous system dysregulation, inflammation, and mitochondrial dysfunction can keep people sick even when their labs look “normal.” He walks through the tools he uses to uncover and address these deeper patterns, including advanced...
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You Can’t Supplement Your Way Out of This: What most people miss when they’re “doing everything right” with Christine Ruch
Field Notes: An Exploration of Functional Medicine
In this powerful episode of Field Notes, Dr. Rob sits down with Christine Ruch to explore one of the most overlooked pieces of true healing: the nervous system. Christine shares her own journey from being diagnosed with MS and doing everything “right” in the world of diet, supplements, and holistic health—yet still getting sicker—until she discovered that deeper healing required more than a perfect protocol. Together, she and Dr. Rob unpack how unresolved stress, trauma, hypervigilance, and emotional suppression can quietly block recovery, and why embodiment, surrender, and nervous...
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The Most Powerful ‘Treatment’ Isn’t a Treatment at All with Frank Alioto
Field Notes: An Exploration of Functional Medicine
This episode of Field Notes, hosted by Nurse Practitioner Heather Moon, explores the often-overlooked intersection between functional medicine and spirituality through a deeply human conversation with hospital chaplain Frank Alioto. Together, they move beyond protocols and lab results to examine how meaning, connection, and presence shape the healing process just as much as biology. Frank shares powerful insights from his work with patients and families in moments of uncertainty, emphasizing that true care isn’t about having the right answers—it’s about showing up, asking the right...
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The Hidden Cause of Hormone Imbalance Most Doctors Miss
Field Notes: An Exploration of Functional Medicine
In this powerful Field Notes episode, Dr. Rob Downey sits down with Dr. Jeff Brown to unpack a topic that far too many women have been told to simply endure: painful periods, hormone imbalance, and the deeper systemic issues driving their symptoms. Dr. Brown shares his journey from conventional medicine into functional and regenerative care, explaining why he became frustrated with symptom management and was drawn to a root-cause approach that actually helps people heal. Together, they explore why women are so often dismissed in traditional medical settings, why common does not...
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Doctors Told Her to Live With Migraines… Until She Found This. Kim Heintz
Field Notes: An Exploration of Functional Medicine
In this episode of Field Notes, Dr. Rob sits down with functional health practitioner Kim Heintz to explore the long and frustrating journey that led her from chronic illness to vibrant health. Kim shares how debilitating migraines that began in childhood eventually spiraled into anxiety, fatigue, brain fog, and digestive issues—symptoms that conventional medicine struggled to explain or resolve. After being told she might simply have to live with these problems, Kim began digging deeper and discovered the power of functional medicine testing, root-cause...
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Your Child Isn’t a “Picky Eater.” Here’s What’s Really Going On at the Dinner Table with Lena Livinski
Field Notes: An Exploration of Functional Medicine
In this Field Notes conversation, Dr. Rob Downey sits down with speech-language pathologist and holistic feeding specialist, Lena Livinsky to reframe “picky eating” as a whole-body, whole-family issue—less about willpower or “bad behavior,” and more about safety, biology, skills, and environment. Lena shares how conventional feeding therapy often over-focuses on behavior, and how working through her own child’s selective eating helped her connect the dots: when a child’s nervous system is dysregulated or their gut and sensory systems are off, eating can feel threatening, not...
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What If You’ve Been Looking at Mental Health All Wrong? The 4 Pillars Approach to Lasting Happiness
Field Notes: An Exploration of Functional Medicine
In this episode of Field Notes, Dr. Rob Downey sits down with integrative psychiatric provider Dr. Josh Waddell to unpack mental health through a functional medicine lens—moving beyond symptom labels and “chemical imbalance” shortcuts to ask what’s actually driving anxiety, depression, and emotional instability in the first place. Dr. Waddell lays out a clear roadmap for understanding mental illness as a progression—from real-world triggers to cellular/mitochondrial disruption to downstream neurotransmitter changes—then introduces his practical “Four Pillars” framework (Body,...
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Your Body Knows the Way: The Healing Conversation Most Doctors Never Have
Field Notes: An Exploration of Functional Medicine
In this episode of Field Notes, Dr. Rob Downey sits down with Dr. Jen Mann to talk about one of the most frustrating (and common) experiences in modern health care: the “mystery illness” — the symptoms that don’t fit neatly into a diagnosis, and the exhaustion that comes from chasing answers. Instead of defaulting to more tests, more protocols, or another “perfect stack,” Dr. Jen invites a different starting point: your body already has information — and learning to listen is part of the medicine. Together, they explore how healing can be both science and art… and how true...
info_outlineIn this episode of the Fieldnotes podcast, Dr. Downey interviews Natalie Lund and opens up about her unexpected journey through perimenopause and how it forced her to rewrite long-held beliefs about her body and identity. She shares how she experienced medical gaslighting when her symptoms were dismissed, and how she found real relief through hormone therapy and the mindset-shifting technique of rapid transformational therapy (RTT). She explores how hypnosis and RTT helped her reclaim control over her life, reset her mental and physical state, and begin seeing her femininity and wellbeing in a completely new way. The conversation offers raw personal testimony, practical tools for women navigating hormonal chaos, and a message that transformation is possible when you stop trying to live by old rules.
Timestaps:
(00:05:12) Realizing the symptoms meant perimenopause
(00:18:45) Doctors dismissed her pain and fog
(00:29:33) Discovering RTT & hypnosis as tools
(00:41:20) Hormone therapy changed her outlook
(00:55:10) Reclaiming identity beyond physical symptoms
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Key Takeaways:
Hormonal life changes demand identity transformation
Medical dismissal doesn’t mean symptoms aren’t real
RTT and hypnosis changed her internal narrative
Hormone therapy unlocked physical and mental clarity
Reclaiming femininity starts with redefining self