Tracy Harrison on Metal Toxicity, Health Coaches and the School of Applied Functional Medicine

The School of Applied Functional Medicine™ (SAFM) began humbly in 2009 because Tracy Harrison felt restless to make a substantial difference. She taught those first classes right in her kitchen! In 2011, SAFM was transformed into an online school. Since then, the school has evolved into a distinguished online academy.

Tracy Harrison is a powerhouse of applied functional medicine insight (among many other talents), which she generously and liberally shares with her students. Plus, her energy and lightness make this challenging experience fun. She’s an engaging speaker and inspired teacher - as you will hear in this interview. 

Tracy is the founder of Eat on Purpose Health Coaching (her private practice – which still has a perpetual waiting list!), The School of Applied Functional Medicine™, and the Good Medicine Movement™. Tracy has the mission to empower inspired health practitioners with cutting-edge competence in functional medicine know-how and the confidence to use it boldly, bringing abundance to both patients and practitioners.

When not out to change the world, Tracy enjoys following her passions, which include problem-solving, systems dynamics, public speaking, and inspiring people to reach for the powerful potential she sees in them. She lives with her sweetheart and beloved family of rescued puppies in the beautiful mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. Tracy loves evening fires, hiking, gourmet meals, and singing.

In this insightful and energizing conversation, Tracy and Freddie discuss the importance of seeking our her root causes on your health journey, why we should all have a goal of feeling fantastic (and knowing that it’s possible), what conventional and functional medicine both lack and one of Freddie’s favorite answers to what beautifully broken means.

Episode Highlights

1:53 - 3 factors that make The School of Applied Functional Medicine unique

6:09 - What does it mean to do the work, and why it’s essential

9:10 - Reminding the body that it’s fantastic and how to feel that way

14:33 - How Tracy started slinging health and wellness after watching ants for hours

20:46 - The origination of Tracy's passion for SAFM

25:51 - How can heavy metals, lead, and other environmental cues cause such negative health outcomes?

29:53 - One way to imagine how lead impacts the body

33:22 - How Tracy's fresh eyes helped her see a need in health

39:38 - What conventional medicine lacks

45:24 - What SAFM offers

48:38 - Why doctors and nurses need coaches

52:10 - Should clean food and proper health care be reasonably priced?

1:00:19 - "God was in the drug."

1:06:30 - What does it mean to be beautifully broken?

1:08:57 - Overwhelmed? Take this small step toward your overall improvement.

UPGRADE YOUR WELLNESS

Silver Biotics Wound Healing Gel: https://bit.ly/3JnxyDD
Code: BEAUTIFULLYBROKEN

LightPathLED https://lightpathled.com/?afmc=BEAUTIFULLYBROKEN
Code: beautifullybroken

STEMREGEN: https://www.stemregen.co/products/stemregen/?afmc=beautifullybroken
Code: beautifullybroken

Flowpresso 3-in-1 technology: (https://calendly.com/freddiekimmel/flowpresso-one-on-one-discovery)

CONNECT WITH FREDDIE

Work with Me: https://www.beautifullybroken.world/biological-blueprint

Website and Store: (http://www.beautifullybroken.world) 

Instagram: (https://www.instagram.com/freddie.kimmel

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beautifullybrokenworld 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Freddie Kimmel and Tracy Harrison (00:00.162)
What is wrong with your system? Because you are not designed to be this way. Again, every cell in my body knows that you're not designed to be this way. Nature would not design that. Nature does not design imperfect things. And so you must have an awful lot in your system that is dialed in suboptimally. And if we can be disciplined enough and thorough enough, I believe we can define those variables. And I was right.

Freddie Kimmel and Tracy Harrison (00:32.418)
Welcome to the Beautifully Broken Podcast brought to you by AmpCoil. I'm your host, Freddie Kimmel, and on this show, we discuss the common threats survivors share after walking through the fire, the practitioners making a difference, and the treatment modalities that deliver healing back into the hands of the people who need it most. Witness the inspiration we gain by navigating the human experience with grace, humility, and a healthy dose of mistakes. Because part of being human is being beautifully broken.

Freddie Kimmel and Tracy Harrison (01:06.882)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the beautifully broken podcast. We have a wonderful guest here. wanna talk a little bit about the School of Applied Functional Medicine. We have one of the creators of the program. And not only that, but you know, there's a lot of schools out there. There's a lot of programs offering people upgraded knowledge, support, wellness, kind of really a methodology.

And I think Tracy's is one of the most in depth, profound and rivals most, would rival most medical programs out there as far as training. Tracy Harrison, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I appreciate that introduction too. I'm really delighted to be here. Well, it's pure truth. And I know coming from a coaching background and having gone to a couple different schools and some different programs,

I know the unique nature that your school brings, the School of Applied Functional Medicine. Could we tell people a little bit about the program and what is involved when you enter into that training? Yeah, sure. It's really my passion. I know we're going to get into talking about the why, but the program offers advanced continuing education.

for a rich variety of healthcare practitioners. And I use the term practitioner very broadly. So everyone who is a student in our family of practitioners is an active professional, right? They already have their license or certification as required for their modality. They are in practice, whether that's entrepreneurial, small clinic, hospital system, integrative, functional.

conventional, whatever it might be. So everybody is doing the work. And we offer training in functional medicine that I think is unique in the combination of three factors. One is I'm a scientist by background. And so I'm a big believer in evidence-based education and rigor. And I think people are only able to really confidently

Freddie Kimmel and Tracy Harrison (03:22.644)
Speak to their knowledge when they have really learned it from a rigorous viewpoint I think as you can relate there's a lot of Fly-by-night educational programs out there, know quickie cliff notes to functional medicine and handy-dandy charts and where people get a lot of answers Or protocols, but they don't actually have a deep rich thorough understanding And so we're we're all about rigor and deep learning

But we pair that with two things that I have really noticed are missing in the world of advanced technical training for practitioners, which is first of all, that devil in the detail know how and know how is very different from knowledge, right? A lot of folks have pedantic learning, but they don't necessarily know what they're going to actually

Recommend to Fred tomorrow who's coming in at 930 a.m. And has these seven diagnoses and these 42 symptoms and this history and this diet and so we teach a lot of that tribal wisdom devil in the detail know-how that I Created a school and started offering because when I started learning functional medicine almost 15 years ago That was nowhere to be found a lot of a lot of science a lot of theory, but not a lot of know-how and so we also offer a lot of

Practical case examples so that people can really jump in the pool as we like to say in practice with real life complex patient and client cases not artificial or overly simplified ones, but real life complexity So that's the second thing but I got to tell you the third thing is my favorite part. I really My team and I really worked really hard to create a warm loving respectful family of practitioners

And it's all about the love and the support. We've got in any given time, students from about 50 different countries and 15 to 20 different modalities interacting together. And nobody's throwing each other under the bus. No one's judging based on credentials and everyone is sharing and learning and supporting and lifting each other up because being out here on the forefront of healthcare can be a lonely or intimidating proposition.

Freddie Kimmel and Tracy Harrison (05:45.038)
As we well know, right? You have to be a bit of a deviant in order to be on the edge of anything. And that can be rough on your heart. And so I really believe in the power of creating a true family where we're all different, but we all see our common mission and lift each other up into that light so that the next day we find the energy, we find the passion to go in and do it again. Yeah, it's so true that you said a couple of things that I just want to touch on.

What does it mean to you to do the work? Because you mentioned that about getting in, getting your hands dirty, getting into this training and that, it was almost like a qualifier. You're like, when you were describing the school, it's like, yeah, you want people to do the training, you want them to get the knowledge, but you want them to be out there using it. Why is that so important that they're doing it on the day to day? Yeah, that's awesome question.

I believe with every cell in my body that there are no quote unquote problems or challenges that humanity faces, that we don't have the collective wisdom and skills to not only manage but to overcome, to master. But what I know from personal experience is that when people don't feel well, they can't access their gifts.

and they certainly can't give them generously and fully. And so I really believe that as we build more of this movement of more proactive, preventive, patient-centric, root cause resolution approach to healthcare and all the different modalities that are out there, we create the opportunity to allow people to move from feeling

okay or tolerable or even quote unquote fine to getting back to feeling fantastic, which is really what I believe we are designed to feel. I don't think the human body is designed for us to kind of crutch through and most days suck and you know, but we just power through and and kind of tolerate it or make it through. I don't I don't buy that. I don't think that's how we're designed.

Freddie Kimmel and Tracy Harrison (08:06.306)
But I believe we're collectively as a species making a lot of choices that take us away from our natural state of thriving. And when people aren't thriving, they can't access the richness of their gifts and their wisdom and their intuition and their intelligence. We spend a lot of time in barka loungers, numbing ourselves with various things. And so I really believe that the movement for

not just disease management, but disease prevention, disease reversal, full disease remission, getting people back state. And it's not always something that you would do as a coach or practitioner, but it's it's this emotional component of of trusting that we're okay to thrive. It's almost like the body needs a reminder.