Functional Health, Bioindividuality & Creating a Low-Tox Lifestyle with Erin Trier

In this enlightening conversation, host Amy Mewborn sits down with functional health coach and wellness entrepreneur Erin Trier to discuss the transformative power of functional health and bioindividuality. Erin shares her personal health journey—from being an athlete and fitness enthusiast to struggling with debilitating anxiety, low energy, and postpartum challenges that traditional medicine couldn't address. Through her exploration of functional health, Erin discovered that the conventional "eat less, work out harder" mentality doesn't work for everyone, especially as women navigate hormonal changes in their 30s, 40s, and beyond. This episode challenges the one-size-fits-all approach to health and offers practical, actionable advice for women ready to take control of their wellness.

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KEY TOPICS DISCUSSED

• The Limitations of Traditional Medicine: How conventional healthcare is reactive and symptom-focused rather than proactive and root-cause oriented
• Bioindividuality: Understanding that every person's body is unique and requires personalized health protocols based on their individual physiology, genetics, lifestyle, and environment
• The Hormone Health Gap: Why traditional doctors often miss critical hormone testing (cortisol, sex hormones) and how this affects women's health, energy, and metabolic function
• Lab Testing: Normal vs. Optimal: The crucial difference between conventional "normal range" lab results (measured against sick populations) and functional health's "optimal range" testing
• The Midlife Health Transition: Why strategies that worked in your 20s and 30s often fail in your 40s and 50s, and how to adapt your health approach accordingly
• The Stressed-Out Woman Narrative: Breaking free from the "do more, try harder, grind forever" mentality that drains energy and disrupts hormonal balance
• Nervous System Health: How chronic stress and the sympathetic "fight or flight" state impacts weight, symptoms, and overall wellness
• Low-Tox Living: Practical, non-overwhelming ways to reduce toxic exposure through personal care products, home cleaning products, and environmental factors
• Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs): How everyday products affect hormone health, especially in young girls entering puberty
• Functional Health vs. Siloed Specialties: Why a "spider web" view of the body (where all systems are interconnected) is essential for true healing

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NOTABLE GUESTS & KEY MOMENTS

Guest: Erin Trier

Functional Health Coach | Wellness Educator | Advocate for Women's Health

Erin brings over 12 years of coaching experience and deep expertise in functional health and bioindividuality. A mother of four, Erin's passion for personalized health comes from her own transformative journey and her commitment to supporting her son, who has Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC), a rare genetic disorder. Her mission is to normalize conversations around health, especially for women in the midlife season, and to equip women with the knowledge to make empowered health decisions.

Key Moments & Quotes:

1. Erin's Health Crisis: "I was walking around with a weighted blanket...I had no energy, very low motivation, and it felt like who I was and what I had always known of myself to show up in my life was not there anymore."

2. The Turning Point: After her fourth pregnancy, Erin realized that everything she'd been doing to maintain her health was no longer working, prompting her to dive into functional health education.

3. The Body as a Spider Web: Erin's powerful analogy that the body is interconnected—"nothing happens in isolation. The body is a spider web and all of our organs are working together."

4. Breaking the "Sick People" Lab Standard: Amy's revelation: "When you go to a traditional doctor and run a lab, you are being measured against all the other people that ran that lab in the traditional medical space...you are being measured in the normal range against other sick people, not against what's optimal."

5. The "Whiny Woman" Label: The discussion references Dr. Sarah Gottfried's experience where perimenopause and hormone-related symptoms were dismissed as "WW" (whiny woman) in medical settings.

6. Amy's Cardiologist Story: Amy shares how she visited a cardiologist for 18 months with elevated blood pressure, but they never ran hormone labs—missing that estrogen depletion was the root cause.

7. Information Overload Warning: The hosts discuss how social media and influencer culture lead women to take 30-40 supplements daily without understanding their actual needs, spending hundreds of dollars monthly on ineffective supplementation.

8. Perimenopause Starts Early: Erin reveals that women can start entering perimenopause as early as their mid-30s—much earlier than most realize.

9. The Scented Candle Awakening: A powerful moment when Erin's husband walked into a room with conventional cleaning products and immediately got a headache, illustrating how toxic many everyday products are.

10. Generational Impact: Erin's commitment to teaching her two daughters about clean products and hormone health, hoping to break the cycle of uninformed health decisions.

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BOOK RECOMMENDATION MENTIONED

📖 "Good Energy" by Dr. Casey Means
Amy highly recommends this book as it explains from an allopathic medicine viewpoint how the medical system is structured and why a siloed, specialty-focused approach misses the bigger picture of whole health.

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ERIN'S EXPERTISE & OFFERINGS

• Functional Health Coaching for women in midlife
• Bioindividual Health Protocols based on targeted lab data
• Podcast: Available on her website with health education content
• Blog & Resources: Cleaner brand recommendations, product swaps, and functional health strategies

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ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS FOR LISTENERS

✅ Get Comprehensive Lab Work: Move beyond basic metabolic panels to include cortisol testing, full thyroid panels, sex hormones, inflammation markers, and iron/ferritin levels to understand your unique physiology.

✅ Challenge Old Narratives: If your old health strategies aren't working, it's not a failure—it's an evolution. Ask yourself: "What do I need NOW?"

✅ Start with Product Swaps: Choose one room or one product category (laundry detergent, skincare, etc.) and slowly replace with cleaner alternatives as you run out of current items.

✅ Prioritize Rest & Recovery: Stop the "grind harder" mentality. Your body needs fuel, rest, stress management, and boundaries to thrive—especially during hormonal transitions.

✅ Get Educated Before Your Doctor's Appointment: Equip yourself with functional health knowledge so you can ask informed questions and make empowered decisions.

✅ Understand Your Hormone Health: Request testing for estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and cortisol—these critically affect metabolism, stress response, blood pressure, and mood.

✅ Create a Sustainable Plan: A perfect plan you can't stick to is worse than an imperfect plan you can maintain. Health protocols should fit YOUR life, not the other way around.

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CONNECT WITH ERIN TRIER

facebook.com/ektrier

instagram.com/erinktrier

youtube.com/@erinktrier

 

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LIVING SIMPLER RESOURCES & LINKS

🏥 Free Living Simpler Health Resources: https://living-simpler.com/resources

📸 Follow Amy on Instagram: @amymewborn

🛒 Shop Amy's Top Wellness Picks: https://www.amazon.com/shop/amymewborn