Episode #013 — Decoding Health Mysteries with Kim Rogers

Melanie Branch: Hello and welcome to Trailblazers Rising today we have a very exciting guest on the show whom I have been following on TikTok for a hot minute now because she is really a trailblazer when it comes to the physical manifestations of neurodivergence possibly the causes who knows science is a funny thing that is ever evolving.

Kimberly say hello and tell everybody who you are and what you do

Kim Rogers: hi everyone I'm Kimberly I am both self taught and autistic and I um have created a whole chart around neurodivergence mental health and autoimmune

Melanie Branch: that is so incredible so I all of her links are going to be in the show notes so that you guys can go check it out but what first turned me on to you and made me go hold up wait a minute is you have this chart.

That is so all encompassing and detail oriented and makes so much fricking sense about these origins of neurodivergence right so my area of expertise is in Mindset and Energy for Neurodivergent Women Entrepreneurs right so it has everything to do with comorbidities physical manifestations of ADHD and autism and accommodations so that we can live our best most successful lives as driven women entrepreneurs right?

So I have extensive research background in Mast Cell Activation Syndrome pOTS PCOS endometriosis um Ehlers Danlos ahhh big one right uh dyslexia um dyscalculia all of those right and all of the executive functions as they pertain to Challenging ourselves as neurodivergent humans right so I forget what I'm saying mid sentence all the time.

I forget words in in word recall because my working memory between my working memory and my dyslexia and my ADHD we're lucky if I can finish any of the sentences but I always have my handy dandy notebook around me so that I can make sure I remember the important things right so like you said when we were talking earlier uh before we started.

Really understanding the why behind what like why these things happen is so important to being able to accommodate that need so tell me again or so that everybody can hear what really got you started in this really powerful research um

Kim Rogers: I it started with me realizing that I had ADHD uh and then my daughter being diagnosed with autism and her being nonverbal and being completely just the lack of information around why she was unable to speak with her frustration levels being so high and me trying to help her lower those.

Um so I've dug into the research to figure out why these comorbidities exist because they're just being completely sidestepped compared to the autism diagnosis in general and we really need more help with the comorbidities because with 80 90 percent of us having the same ones at some point it's gotta be part of the diagnosis uh so we can all get some symptom

Melanie Branch: relief.

Absolutely because here's the thing and I say this to anybody who will listen until I'm blue in the face as a woman who was told that it's anxiety and depression and that I would be able to take a pill and do some therapy and it would go away and I would not have these problems the mindset really had to shift.

into it's ADHD and autism and this is your neurotype this is how you perceive the world and how you interact in the world and it requires accommodations for the rest of your fucking life that really started making all the changes so when I was looking at your resources and seeing you know glutathione and all this other stuff on there I was like this bitch knows what she's talking about!

Where have you found the most helpful all encompassing research because I'm sure you know as well as anybody else in this field most of the research is done on fucking children so us women entrepreneurs out here who are just trying to figure out Wait how does ADHD affect me how does Ehlers Danlos affect me?

How does this affect me da da da da da there's so much out there that only points to I hate to say it little white boys yeah

Kim Rogers: I completely gave up on the research that was linked to autism for the longest time and I went straight for the biochemical pathways I looked at what could be causing these symptoms uh not the diagnosis strictly the symptoms.

And I came across BH works it was very bottom up I first it was a hypotonia what causes that uh oxidative stress what causes that you know and on and on and up and then I found BH4 and I was like that causes everything at the same time and my jaw dropped and I was like Oh here we go um and the whole chart was created.

Melanie Branch: Wow yeah so in the holistic natural pathic medicine world where I am not a natural pathic doctor but I do take a holistic approach to healing the body and supporting the body and the mind and the emotions and the spirit right they there's one creator I wish I could remember his name he was interviewed on a podcast about you know how do you avoid the lawsuits from Big Pharma.

I'm not on TikTok I'm allowed to say it out loud okay anyways this is gonna go on YouTube so who knows what they're gonna ban um but when it comes to that he said well you can't say the the name of the diseases you can only say the name of the organs or the areas or anything like that because they you know while they don't want you to say cure diabetes you can say blood sugar problem.

Right so has that been your experience to not anger the western medical world of you know we these medical doctors that go to school for 10 years and then do this and do that and they know all in their end all be all and they're going to give you a pill for a symptom and they're not going to treat the root cause.

What has been your way around that because I'm sure you're hitting wall after wall after wall yeah

Kim Rogers: actually I kind of again bottom up thinking my thought process through that was trying to avoid the stigma around autism socially I really wanted to focus on those biochemical pathways and just symptom relief.

Pick your symptom relief it's okay I have this symptom causes that what does that look like and how do I help that for example Uh lack of blood flow right that comes with POTS why what causes that on the nitric oxide pathway and how do I stop that gap uh has really helped me avoid the stigma both the stigma and the the

Melanie Branch: what's the word?

Backlash

Kim Rogers: the backlash scientific community

Melanie Branch: so with backlash I have been following you for a while and I know that there was one male it's always a male doctor who was stealing your shit and claiming it to be their own what happened with all that um

Kim Rogers: I talked to his son and I got a little spooked I was like I don't want any type of lawsuit at all.

I took it all down and I cause I found out That he was into certain activities that I just didn't want to promote any I had followers going and watching his content and I didn't want that at all so I was like I am just never speaking his name again his name is out of up to that

Melanie Branch: hmm it feels like that's going to be something you encounter a lot with the world of it because if we think about it my main question that I always ask myself is who benefits from this when it comes to anything right?

There's a woman um who is on all of the podcasts all the big podcasts right now she's on Mel Robbins she's on diary of CEO I forget her name off the top of my head but I have been following her very diligently again working memory um and she's an expert in um fasting especially for women and I'm like okay and she really knows her stuff and she's talking about all that and she's going on all the podcasts and we're learning all this stuff and her main thing that she says is the reason that it has such a stigma is because nobody makes money when your professional is telling you stop eating.

Nobody makes money when you tell somebody to eat less or to do this or to do that if you're not hawking something in particular right if you're telling somebody the solution is free and easy a lot of people stand to make less money because they are currently making money on you thinking that it costs money and you have to buy a thing.

So when it comes to when how do you handle These professionals with all their experience coming in and saying Oh you can't do that oh you can't do this when clearly you can and clearly you did

Kim Rogers: I usually poke fun at them or I ignore it I'll either attack it head on uh and make it very obvious what they're doing to kind of get the absurdity out there.

Um or I just ignore it because a lot of what I'm doing uh they're all supplements tryptophan's a supplement tyrosine's a supplement nitric oxide test strips are 10 yeah on Amazon uh and I mean and then you take supplements to increase none of them require big

Melanie Branch: pharma so yeah it's so incredible you know when we think about.

How you were able to put all this together with the research that's out there right because I don't know about you but like even when I do make it really big I don't want to spend my time on performing the research that's never been the part of the science that I like I like taking all the findings and then saying okay well here's how I'm affected and here's what the findings say.

So how can I make something that's going to fix me or address me or you know make it so that I can live a better happier healthier life cause as it is right now as a chronically ill neurodivergent woman if I were Still living by these neurotypical rules out here I wouldn't be successful I would be burned out.

I would stay in the cycle of burnout so you as a teacher who's been doing all of this how do you battle the burnout

Kim Rogers: um the chart has helped me battle the burnout a lot because I um discovered we have the brain chemicals that we have are high for too long it's not healthy for you and that depletes uh the CRH hormone so figuring out how to work around that and how to heal my system from those fight or flight hormones being extended for such a long period of time has really helped me.

And knowing even just to keep those low now activate the paracetamol so that you can rest and recover properly um it's all been so helpful

Melanie Branch: so helpful you know my whole life I'm 37 my whole life when my mom was alive she died in 2020 was a joke about how I don't poop how I am a chronically constipated.

Mel's never going to poop like if I was traveling my mom would text or call me and say make sure you're taking your stool softeners because you know you're really not going to poop when you're traveling and now with all the research that I've done in these past couple of years with my Ehlers Danlos my endometriosis and my chronic stress fight flight fawn or freeze I now understand that my digestive system has essentially stopped working because it was never there.

Given the support that it needed and the more stress that you have the more digestive issues you're going to have and especially understanding because I have a lot of friends that are like Oh no I have diarrhea all the time I'm not I'm not constipated not at all I get nervous and I go poop I have done so much research into neurodivergence and the digestive system and how that works for us especially with all these comorbidities that I am now telling you.

All of my clients like Hey um I need you to check out this creator and this creator and this creator who are you know like licensed in um nutrition and constipation especially in all this other sort of stuff because we are all misguided about what a healthy bowel movement is we're all misguided on what a healthy diet is.

We're all misguided on the right amount of sleep and rest and that sort of stuff and the rules and the directions that are on all the packages are pertaining to us they pertain to that neurotypical 24 hour man who runs on that circadian rhythm and we're in infra beings we're a 28 day cycle of hormones and energy and mindset and effort and what we're able to give the world.

So what has been one of your most surprising findings of like holy shit this whole time everybody was saying I needed to do XYZ but it's actually ABC

Kim Rogers: uh actually ironically the circadian rhythm is hooked up to serotonin serotonin controls the circadian rhythm once I realized that it blew my mind uh that's why the low serotonin that is seen in neurodivergence is the cause because serotonin also creates melatonin which helps you sleep.

Uh so just finding the extent that this is all connected and that no one has connected the dots was mind blowing because the research has all been there I have done no new groundbreaking research I have just connected the dots between everything

Melanie Branch: that already exists does it make you think that they have connected the dots?

They just know that they're not going to make as much money if they tell us about it

Kim Rogers: I used to think that until I started talking to people with PhDs then I realized very intelligent um I was such a big conspiracy theorist about all of it and then I started talking to them and even just going to my child's doctor pediatrician I was she was recommending vitamins and I was talking about no I need these because they have the active form of vitamins and your body needs to break those down into the active forms not just break them down to pee them out.

Like your body needs to use those and she was like what and I when I talked to has the textbooks they use in college to teach doctors are 30 years old and the research they have no clue any of the updated stuff

Melanie Branch: yeah yeah they really don't and there's more continuing education that a hairdresser has to do than a fucking doctor.

It's it's

Kim Rogers: to me how we we are all pretty movement on figuring out the the causes we can help each other uh it's this I love it honestly how there's this comradery between all of us and how do we help each other because they're not

Melanie Branch: that really is the mindset of of the neurodivergents that are really dedicated to a good life and a good quality of life and experiencing joy and safety and fun and Not just feeling like shit.

Like I didn't realize how much pain I was always in until I started not being in so much physical pain.

And

Kim Rogers: those of us that have the capacity to do research and share it are doing yeah it's

Melanie Branch: great yeah that's so so serotonin and you gotta take 5 HGTP to get your serotonin up right yeah that and

Kim Rogers: That and what that and where the hiccup is depending on where the hiccup the active form of vitamin B6 yeah is what is used in that recipe to create the 5htp And then the active form of folate is what's used um in the tryptophan conversion.

So it really depends on which one you're which one you need so it's it's crazy seeing the whole entire pathway and how it moves together what

Melanie Branch: has been your biggest roadblock

Kim Rogers: um probably the fact that I live in the middle of nowhere and I have no networking connections and I'm bad at networking being autistic.

I have no concept of how to move my way up to get this information in front of more people who need it.

Melanie Branch: I mean you have the drive and the calling so that's the good news the drive and the calling is something that cannot be trained or Taught or instilled um and really just getting yourself to that place of like this is what it is this is the information you can agree with it or not right because science here's the thing about science.

It's ever evolving it's ever changing it's the pursuit of truth and who's to know what is true because again like I said earlier I mean I was told with my digestive problems my whole life that I should be eating fermented foods but every time I eat fermented foods A I don't like them I don't like pickles.

I don't like kimchi I don't like any of that shit I don't like it that was my body intuitively knowing like hey this is not good for us it aggravates my muscle activation syndrome and makes me have a histamine response which in turn flares me up into pain and mental anguish and whatnot like I just found out one of the symptoms of anaphylaxis is thoughts of impending doom.

I just in these past 6 8 months started walking regularly and started understanding my Mast Cell Activation Syndrome and eliminating flare up foods from my diet and one of those is peanuts and I fucking love peanuts but I can no longer eat them because they give me hives and they result in the thoughts of impending doom.

So while I'm not going into a deadly anaphylactic shock I ate a spoonful of peanut butter six months ago before my walk just not thinking thanks ADHD running through life and not being cognitive or intentional with anything and I ate a spoonful of peanut butter before my walk and I'm less than a mile into it I had to turn around and go home because I had broken out in hives so bad.

And I my brain was telling me you're going to get hit by a car or you're going to break an ankle or you're going to get abducted and I had to turn around and go home and because I've done all this research and I take such good care of myself I was able to connect all the dots and go damn really got to make sure you don't have peanuts.

Kim Rogers: Yeah it's fascinating I actually recently learned about the gut brain access too which they don't tell people about the fact that those two are actually connected and the research is heavy

Melanie Branch: in it what tell me more about it

Kim Rogers: um so the neurotransmitters they say that they can't cross the blood brain barrier right?

But there is uh cell signaling from the brain to the gut for that uh for the production of neurotransmitters huh

Melanie Branch: yeah

Kim Rogers: the two both kind of have a communication system

Melanie Branch: that's so interesting oh um gee have you been are you familiar at all with the um the the goddess the mother of all things holistic and letting the body heal itself?

Um Barbara the Australian woman I forget her last name Barbara O'Neill and how much she talks about giving the body the right circumstances and environment to heal itself and one thing she talks about all the time is the concept of having heartburn or too much acid in the stomach right and she goes normally if you're having heartburn pains and problems or like stomach burning it's actually just that you're mucosal lining of your tummy isn't working properly.

So the acid is not too much it's just getting through into a place where it's not supposed to so and With things like heartburn it's not that you have too much acid it's that your little lever your little valve that keeps everything down doesn't work properly and then you combine that with Ehlers Danlos and the pack.

Yeah so then you think Ehlers Danlos my connective tissue doesn't work properly so my connective tissue for my digestive system doesn't keep everything moving down and it lets things back up.

Kim Rogers: Oh my goodness that explains so much especially while the mast cells are activated yeah it all it's amazing how it all just connects

Melanie Branch: it all just connects and makes sense but um you know one of the things that I make all of my clients do is use my energy optimization guide to get 30 to 60 days worth of data.

About your energy and how it ebbs and flows right so essentially every morning when you wake up you write down and you say Okay this is how many hours of sleep I got this is how I feel in the middle of the day you say Alright this is what I ate this is how I feel at the end of the day you say Alright this is how I feel.

This is what I feel like I'm ready for tomorrow I can recap my day la la la la you got to do that for 60 days and then we have enough data to look at and say all right this week I had a nap every single day at 2 p m what's different about this week this week I was voraciously hungry la la la la da da da da.

This week people were fucking pissing me off the whole time right but we have to have that data to be able to start making these connections right data is King when it comes to this because again now that we know this world was not set up for our success This world was not set up for our health right when it comes to traditional MDs They are here for the line of fine right?

They're here for when something does go wrong let's fix it but our approach or my approach is much more holistic and naturopathic and Lifestyle approach of like how can I take care of myself what's going to make me feel my best and that can change from day to day hour to hour because our energy levels can change so much.

Kim Rogers: That's amazing I love that I love the holistic it's The world was not built for our function at all we're all breaking down in a systemic level uh so taking a holistic approach and fixing you know everything as a whole is I

Melanie Branch: completely support that yeah it's so incredible so with your child being a non verbal autist and you having all of this information that you're putting together and whatnot what would you say to somebody else who's in a similar boat either Um with themselves or with their child what would be some of the best routes for them to start improving quality of life?

Kim Rogers: Uh first step I would say get them access to any form of communication uh communication uh uh language access deficit between the ages of zero and five can cause lifelong cognitive impairment so access to language while you figure out the cause I have a free resource on my website that has the information on what could possibly be causing it whether it's facial muscle oddities whether it's selective mutism from the fight or flight hormones being too high uh and figure that out with your child's doctor and um hopefully bring their frustration levels down because I know what that experience is like.

Melanie Branch: So frustrating so frustrating we actually have a student at the Neurospicy Academy who um We'll attend a lot of our live sessions and only type in they don't want to have their their microphone on because they're not feeling particularly verbal in that moment and to understand that that's okay and that it's not necessarily that you worked yourself to the point of shutdown.

It's not necessarily that you don't want to be around people that it's simply your neurotype saying I want to be here and I want to absorb all of it but I don't want to talk right because it used to be the approach a couple years ago at least in the world that I lived in and the mindset that I have was we're gonna get you to a point where you can talk all the time.

It's like maybe that's not the case maybe it's to be in an environment where not talking is okay yeah

Kim Rogers: it's like pushing someone past the point of diabetes it's like oh you don't process sugar correctly so let's just make sure that we start you in between meals because you don't deserve insulin you don't deserve those accommodations.

It's it's wrong because the child can't help what's happening with them internally they deserve the proper accommodations for what's physically happening inside

Melanie Branch: them yeah that's so my youngest my oldest um he's 15 now he didn't start walking until about 13 14 months um but he was talking at like eight months.

He was like cup mama all this stuff and then my youngest was the opposite he started running at 11 months and one week and not just while he was you know he'd do that thing where he would toddle take three steps and fall and be like fuck it I'm gonna crawl and then all of a sudden one day on his birthday we had to have his birthday party his one year birthday party a month early because my husband was going on a deployment and that day of his party He decided when I fall I'm getting back up and I'm walking.

I'm not doing this crawling shit anymore and from that moment on he runs he was a climber he was a jumper offer of things he never saw a bench or a table that he wasn't gonna climb and jump off of but he was going Uh Uh! For everything for a motorcycle out the window Uh Uh! Or he wanted more juice in his cup Uh Uh!

And then it turned into And I'd have to go Brody will you tell me what your brother's saying I don't know what he's saying right now and then all of a sudden one day it was words right so Everybody has a process to learning and communication and being okay with it because I know even with my very limited knowledge when he was that age um I wish I would have known more but again hindsight is 20 20.

I knew in my mind and my intuition that like he's fine this is not something that we have to change or battle or be concerned about you know he's hitting all of his developments on on time and whatnot so like let's just let the kid live and now he's you know in the gifted program and all that shit.

Neurodivergent as hell as we all are in this home there's nobody that is on the non neurodivergent spectrum of some sort so it's really like What can happen moving forward in our community with the amount of knowledge that you are you know equipping us with and with the amount of compassion that we have and understanding that we have of like hey I'd rather hang around somebody who goes into verbal shutdown and just wants to type answers to me than hang around some sort of neurotypical asshole that wants to talk about the fucking weather all day.

Kim Rogers: That there needs to be more understanding of the different learning styles I have a um a breakdown for parents too with nonverbal kids where your child could be learning a different way they expect all kids to just hear words and learn them some need to see them some need flashcards so they can use their hands while they're learning.

We all have different learning styles it's very typical for neurotypicals and we need to start working with our children so that they don't experience the level of trauma that we all did being pushed into this system that

Melanie Branch: doesn't work for us yeah yeah yeah yeah as a mom I know that I have done an extensive amount of trauma healing on my own self and my personal breakthrough that I felt really deeply that resonates with a lot of other people is that moment where instead of feeling the need to say well my parents they tried their best.

They really meant well I no longer feel the need to say that I can now just say Uh you know I experienced abuse of different forms and things that I shouldn't have gone through and whether they were trying their best or not is irrelevant to my healing

Kim Rogers: I had the same point with my mom we don't really speak anymore.

And I hit the point where I was like you love me at the capacity that you are capable of loving and I let her hold the responsibility of that

Melanie Branch: yeah you know when we realize too like what we're mourning is the loss of a relationship that we've created in our brain or a potential relationship this is how it could be if they would do the work and they would own up to their shit and they would you know come through this trauma healing shit too.

But once we understand we're only responsible for ourselves we're only responsible for our own healing and for filling our own cup and taking care of ourselves to our best ability because nobody else is here to take care of us once we you know hit a certain age and your parents are no longer responsible for making you grow into a wonderful human you're fucking responsible for yourself.

Yeah

Kim Rogers: I think everyone is a community is pretty much at this point where we're like okay this is where we're at how do we move forward we've all experienced trauma we've all gone through all of this how do we take this use this and help the next generation because there is no I sound bad to say it out loud but there's no saving the previous generation.

There's none unless they want that they have to want that we can't drag them with us they have to want it so we're just focusing on our kids and moving forward

Melanie Branch: yeah and we know it's possible for that generation because I'm seeing it in some people there are definitely some people in these older generations that are really like Damn I didn't realize that it was that bad when you experienced it.

Because to me it was a Tuesday and to you it was a life changing event

Kim Rogers: yes exactly that intrinsic motivation has to be there and I love seeing it when they have that light bulb moment and they're there with us I mean I wish my mom had hit that point too but I am so proud of the older generation that has been there with us.

I'm seeing uh the typical grandma with the cookie in the cookie jar having sit down talks with their neurodivergent daughters and their kids and how they're going to help change things and I love that for

Melanie Branch: them and us yeah it's so good so moving forward what are your plans to be getting this information out to as many people as possible.

Just keep plugging along on the social media and whatnot

Kim Rogers: yep and I've made a book so hopefully that gets more of a wider audience I'm doing advertisements on Google ads and Amazon and hopefully getting my story out there so more people dig into the research because it's a lot of content so.

Emotionally hook them so that they come with us on this journey and yeah I'm really excited about what the future holds oh and I'm looking at putting my poster in a conference I'm in talks with someone in the world who has been amazing he's helped me map out his own biochemical pathway and he has that up now.

I think he published that I will release his name if he allows me to on social media but I'm super excited

Melanie Branch: that's so incredible we need more people out here dedicating and devoting themselves to the pursuit of usable knowledge right cause we know especially with ADHD that it's not a lack of education it's a challenge with application and execution.

It's taking what we know and turning it into something that is actionable that can actually start providing the transformation and the change that will improve everybody's quality of life

Kim Rogers: exactly I've actually in the research it shows that it's a low dysregulated fight or flight response and when you're in a fight or flight response that executive function shuts down because you are in survival.

So we can't just turn that on so we have to Stop that fight or flight response first and it's been figuring out how to do that and ways to work around it with other people and the feedback from the community has been so

Melanie Branch: much fun that's so good that's so good I'm so glad that our community because there's communicated our community of neurodivergence can be very segmented and it can be Shocking when you anger certain parts of the community.

I've angered two different parts of the community before and I'm not willing to ever partake in that ever again so really You know going about it with the intention and the strategy is just as important as the desire and uh the know how yeah I

Kim Rogers: definitely dipped my toes in pretty hard at first not realizing what I was getting into.

And I think it's been really wild watching perspective shifts because I used to have people come at me so hard at first and now they realize oh this chart can help me I can get symptom relief from my comorbidities I really try to emphasize There's nothing wrong with the way we think is neurodivergence.

I love my bottom up thinking I love the fact that this um This hyper connectivity happening in my brain and I would never want to lose that but this the POTS uh the PCOS you know everything that comes with it I need to get some to

Melanie Branch: waste yes yes ab so lutely oh my god! I want to thank you so much for being on the show and everybody who is listening just know that all of this information So we talked about will be in the show notes so that you can access all of them because uh your resources are so fantastic and so helpful.

And again symptom relief is what we want we're not trying to change anybody's brain we're not trying to change anybody's operating system we're really just trying to maximize and improve so that we can all feel as good as is humanly possible

Kim Rogers: exactly yes

Melanie Branch: yay! Thank you so much for being on the show and we will talk again real soon and to everybody listening I love you all equally and for different reasons.

Take care of yourself and we'll talk really

Kim Rogers: soon thank you so much you have a good rest of your day yeah!