In this eye-opening episode of PCOS Unfiltered: Nourish, Heal, Thrive, I sit down with Bonni Wildesen Hise, founder of Wild, Free & Unbloated and co-founder of the Food Freedom Rebellion, to explore the powerful world of herbal medicine for gut health and autoimmune healing. From her 100-pound weight loss journey to becoming an expert in holistic nutrition and herbal medicine, Bonni shares how she helps women beat chronic fatigue, bloating, and autoimmune flare-ups—without restriction or quick fixes. You’ll learn how herbal medicine differs from supplements, the role of adaptogens and herbs in calming the nervous system, and simple ways to integrate oregano, rosemary, ginger, and others you can find at your local grocery store—into your daily life. If you’ve ever wondered how to use food and plants to balance your body, this episode will simplify it for you and change how you look at healing from the inside out.
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🌸 The mystery herb was clary sage 🤪 Great for reproductive health!!
(0:02 - 0:25) Hey there, welcome back to PCOS Unfiltered. I'm your host, Lindsie, and today is a special episode because we're diving into something new on this show, the powerful world of herbal medicine for autoimmune and gut health. I'm beyond honored to have Bonni Wildesen Hise, the inspiring founder behind Wild, Free & Unbloated and co-founder of the Food Freedom Rebellion with us.
(0:26 - 1:43) Bonni is a gut health expert who turned her own rollercoaster journey with gut issues, stubborn bloating, and autoimmune struggles into a mission to help women feel better fast without restrictive plans and absolutely no one-slice-fits-all solution. Bonnie offers deeply personalized nutrition and herbal medicine services, including assessments, customized meal plans, gut health restoration, and educational workshops grounded in holistic healing. She helps women ditch the crap that's chemical, refined sugars, additives, processed junk, and embrace natural solutions that actually work to balance their bodies and rekindle energy. In today's conversation, we'll explore how herbal medicine can support healing from the inside out and how Bonnie integrates these plant-based tools into her nutritional approach. Trust me, you're in for a ride. But before I go any further, I have something powerful to share with you. This October, I've been hosting a virtual event called Unwritten, Healing Beyond the Diagnosis. And if you're ready to finally go deeper than symptom management, this is for you. You'll hear real stories of healing from women who've been where you are, including Bonnie, and then practical tools that actually work, mind, body, and beyond.
(1:44 - 1:53) Tap the link in the show notes to grab your spot for the last session. You don't have to settle for managing it. It's time to rewrite the story your doctor never told you was possible.
(1:54 - 3:50) As a reminder, the content shared on PCOS Unfiltered is for informational and educational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests are not intended to serve as medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making any changes to your diet, exercise, or treatment plan. The information shared is based on personal experience and expert interviews and is not a substitute for professional medical guidance. Now grab your favorite herbal tea and let's get started. Hello, hello. Welcome. Welcome to Bonni. Super, super thankful to have her here. I'm going to be learning some stuff along the way, I think, with all of this. Talking about something I have not talked about before. Also, Bonni is one of the speakers for our event called Unwritten, Healing Beyond the Diagnosis. Depending on when you are listening to this, it is taking place October 9th, the 16th, and the 23rd. Bonni and myself actually are speaking on October 23rd. It's not too late to sign up. Even if you're hearing about this in the middle of the event, you can definitely still sign up. I'll have all the details in the show notes as well. Let's go ahead and dive in. Again, thank you, Bonni, for being here. I'd love to just hear, along with everybody else, about your story, how you got into herbal medicine specifically, and your story as to how you began focusing on autoimmune conditions as well. Well, it's an interesting story because a lot of people's stories start with, I had this autoimmune disease or illness or symptoms, and then I healed myself. Mine starts a little bit differently. Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here.
(3:51 - 5:57) I actually started out a fitness trainer after I lost 100 pounds. Hired a trainer, hired a nutritionist because I thought I knew what I was doing, and I didn't. They helped me lose 100 pounds. I was working in a job where I really just wanted to shift. I wanted to start helping people, so I became a trainer. The people that I was working with all had some degree of autoimmune dysfunction. Others had illnesses. One of my early clients, just within the first six months of working inside the women's gym and day spa that I was in, she could only eat seven foods. Her body was so reactive that she was limited to seven foods, and that was it. I did not know what that actually meant. I didn't know anything about autoimmune at the time. All I knew was I was a sports coach, and then I became a trainer after losing this weight. That was the level of my knowledge. Client after client for many years would come to me with one level of dysfunction or an illness or symptoms of some sort. I was exposed to it through all of my clients. What I was doing was helping them research to find commonalities, to figure out what the doctors couldn't figure out because, as many of you know, with autoimmune, if there's any level of dysfunction, sometimes it can take years for any test to show a conclusive diagnosis. You're basically trudging along like you're trudging through mud trying to figure it out. I basically just helped them. I helped them research and eventually hit a point where I moved to San Diego. The last year and a half in San Diego, I was struggling. I was living on couches. I was hopping from friend's house to friend's house, and I was barely surviving on less than a dollar a day. I was eating a lot of bean and cheese burritos because if you live in San Diego, you know the little taco deli spots. They pop up.
(5:58 - 6:54) It's a dollar. The burrito is this big. It's packed full of beans. It's packed full of cheese. I figured it was nourishment for at least a day and coffee and water. The coffee shops there, you basically can fill it up with half and half. In my head as a professional, I knew I needed calories. I needed protein. That would help me. Getting vegetables wasn't as much of a challenge because that's everywhere, but getting protein in was a significant challenge. That whole year and a half with the amount of stress that my life was handing to me, that was just a significant part of it. When I finally did leave and moved in with my sister in Austin to hit the reset button, I did not realize that when I healed, I triggered a lot of autoimmune related issues.
(6:55 - 7:23) They sprang their ugly heads on me two years later. I had turned 40. I went home for a visit and home for me is DC. I live in Texas, but home for me is DC. We are talking Philly cheesesteaks, New York pizza, bagels with the deli cream cheese that's like this high. Every time I went home, I would have one day where I ate all of those foods because I knew it was going to make me sick.
(7:24 - 7:38) I didn't eat like that anymore. I would feel sick for a day, got my favorites in, got my little dose of home, and then I would move on. This time when I went home, my body had had enough.
(7:38 - 10:56) I woke up the next morning covered my head or my face and my chest, my decollete covered in cystic acne and cramping so bad, I just couldn't see straight. Just overnight? Just overnight. It was crazy. It was definitely one of those eye-opening moments like, something's not right. The only symptoms I had had that year, I had turned 40 and then somewhere between my birthdays in February, somewhere between March and April, I started gaining weight, but nothing about my lifestyle had changed. I was doing amazing. I was doing well. I was working with Biggest Loser. I was working with clients left and right. We were doing half marathons and marathons and just loving life, but that's usually about the time that your body feels comfortable enough to release everything. I was like, that's exactly what happened to me. I reached out to a friend who had worked with clients alongside me and we went through. I did an elimination diet. I did the testing. I went to all the doctors. Basically, what we discovered was there was definitely a dairy issue. Soy for sure. It triggers a mood shift in me that is almost bipolar, so I refuse to eat anymore. It is the worst reaction. I've only ever seen it in one other person that their intolerance caused a mood shift and that was the only thing. Yeah, it's bizarre, but autoimmune in and of itself really has so many variations that you really can't nail down symptoms. When this all happened, I considered going back to school. After it happened to me, I went back and I got my degree in alternative medicine. My first two classes to get me started when I wanted to get started were herbal medicine and aromatherapy. I had never considered alternative medicine. I was going to school for holistic nutrition. That's what I wanted. I didn't want to do anything but holistic nutrition and maybe throw in some kinesiology. Within a week, I was sold because I had been doing things with my clients over the years that I didn't realize were herbal medicine and teas that would help their stomach, teas and supplements made from herbs that would calm some of their symptoms. Even things that I implemented because of my work with them because all of this, the catalyst for me happened in 2013. I had been training all these people for 10 years and had been encountering it with them for 10 years. So it's like I received the education and then had the experience. After that, I really, really have been focusing just on autoimmune dysfunction, on gut health.
(10:58 - 14:32) It's such a core focus on everything that we do. Those two classes, I fell in love with herbal medicine and I've been here ever since. That's great. I mean, that's such a powerful story. I think so many people can relate to that because it's years of ignoring things before things really show up. That also means that it takes a while before you start feeling better too. It does not happen overnight. I think that's what a lot of people have to remember. Yeah. For listeners who may not be familiar, what specifically is herbal medicine and how does that differ from just supplements that get talked about all the time? Herbal medicine, you can think of it like the spices that you put into your food, the things you put into your teeth. Specifically what herbal medicine is, is it's using plants and organic substances, things from the ground, literally rocks, dirt, crystal, things of that nature. Herbal medicine really does focus more on the plant life than anything else. What it is, is using those plants and the constituents and the compounds found within them. Really plants, every plant that you see can heal itself. If you ever notice when you have a house plant, let's say the end gets all brown and you trim it, it either regrows it or it just grows around it. Well, those healing constituents within that plant can actually be used to help us in the things that we need. Many, many, many moons ago, centuries ago with ancient practices, they realized certain things like fermentation for wine. That's actually an herbal medicine preparation. Fermentation helps our gut, it helps our gut microbiome, especially when you're coming out of colds and flus and illnesses, you need something to support that. By drinking the fermentations, they were able to maintain a stable gut, they were able to repel and expel pests and parasites. They didn't have modern technology to filter those things out of their water system. They had to find another way to do it. With supplementation, supplementation a lot of times is a process where they actually just derive one element. Like vitamin D3, for example, you're not going to get a plant to just give you vitamin D3. It's going to give you a multitude of other things because of how it's grown, because of how it has to survive and thrive in nature. That's the biggest difference is when you look at the plants outside your door. Dandelion, great example. Dandelion in the spring pops up everywhere and everyone thinks it's this horrible weed and it just keeps regenerating. Where it is, it clears its spot so that it can grow. It's a cleanser. It cleanses. That's what it does. The properties that you see it doing and the actions you see it taking in nature are the actions it takes within our bodies. It's the support that it gives us. That's a great comparison. Yeah.
(14:34 - 18:44) Explaining it that way, it's very eye-opening because you see it, but you don't really think of it that way until you just said it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What are some of the most common autoimmune conditions that you see for people that you work with and any specific symptoms or patterns that show up for those? The most common for me, I see a lot of chronic fatigue, a lot of fibromyalgia. I see a lot of Hashimoto's or suppose that Hashimoto's, which the reason I say it that way is there's a lot of people who come to me and they're doctors or themselves, they believe that they have Hashimoto's except more often than not, it'll end up either rheumatoid arthritis or fibromyalgia and a handful of have turned out to be lupus. Just like anything else, autoimmune hides the real deal. The symptoms that I see more frequently than anything else are all stemmed with gut health. It's the constipation, it's the severe IBS, IBDD reactions. I would say constipation, diarrhea, stomach cramps, and just that flu-like feeling and they don't know where it came from. You're eating something and then within 24 hours or 72 hours, because sometimes it's not immediate, your body reacts. One of the clients that I work with, she's actually one of my best friends now because we had to work so long on her stuff, she could not figure out what some of her triggers were. It turns out that her trigger was eggs and she didn't eat them very frequently, but her symptoms don't show up the day of, they show up four days later. Another one that she had was capsaicin peppers, which if you go into a restaurant and you say, I'm allergic to capsaicin peppers, nobody knows what that is. I don't know. You just have to say you're allergic to pepper and then they don't put black pepper and it's the same thing. That took a year to figure out because her reactions are not immediate. They're built on time. That is one of the things I see more common with my chronic fatigue clients is they build up, their symptoms build up. It's not something that happens immediate. They just know they're tired all the time when they should have energy, they don't. They're struggling with sleep. Fibromyalgia clients, usually they will come to me, they have a lot of cramping, a lot of body aches and they're in so much pain that trying to figure out what the trigger is, is extremely difficult. That makes it hard when you're trying to get a diagnosis, when you're trying to work with your doctor and figure out what is actually happening. I know I have my clients, even just for three days, keep a food log. I don't care what they're eating, but how they're feeling, what symptoms are they experiencing around it physically and mentally. Because like you said, I'm sure you probably do the same thing, but things can show up days later. I wish I would have known this way back when, because I finally had to put two and two together for myself. I realized what the culprit was, but I didn't really think to just start tracking it like that, like I said, even for just a few days, especially because we're eating a lot of the same foods every day. I talk about that a lot too in my episodes and stuff, just track for just a few days. Absolutely. When I start working with anybody, before we even get on a deep dive call, I ask for at least three days and I can track their poop.
(18:45 - 20:37) If I can, I've been lucky a few times, if I can, I get pictures of poop, but people just use the Bristol stool chart. That's funny. I don't think it's something that is as powerful and insightful as that. It's one of the best tools I've ever used to help figure out or help somebody figure out what's happening. That's again, one thing on my journey that I learned too. I mean, I have five-year-old twin boys, so poop is kind of a thing in this house now. It's a boy thing, but they hear me talk to clients and they pick up on just that word. It can be kind of comical with them in the background. What role can herbal medicine play in addressing the root cause? I mean, you mentioned your maritime off-gut health, but the root cause of autoimmune conditions instead of just masking the symptoms. Conventional medicine, what it does is it's going to give you something to help with a symptom. It's like a band-aid. You need something that's going to support you long-term, which herbal medicine is perfect for that. Herbs aren't necessarily immediate. There are a few that you will feel some benefits about or benefits from immediately, but for the most part, they're build herbs. Everything takes time and over time you start to feel better. When you're looking at herbal medicine as something long-term, autoimmune is long-term, whether it's a dysfunction or it's an illness. If you've gone that route, you always have to be cognizant of it. You always have to pay attention and manage your gut health.
(20:38 - 25:15) It doesn't mean you have to obsess over it, but you always have to manage it. An easy way to do that is by including herbal medicine because something as simple as eating a Mediterranean salad with a little extra oregano and rosemary will help ease gut symptoms. It helps decrease inflammation. Oregano, rosemary, garlic, thyme, if you're noticing a theme here, these are Mediterranean herbs. If you put those into your food, these are actually the herbs that help us fight off illnesses, that help our immune system calm, meaning our inflammation isn't going to be as severe if there is a reaction. It'll help us fight off triggers. What you're trying to do with autoimmune is you're trying to fight off the triggers. You're trying to avoid it as much as you possibly can. So conventional medicine, while it'll help in the immediate with, here's a pill to take care of this, but then now you've got to have this for these side effects. Herbal medicine is like having a solid base, having a foundation. You can add things in, you can take things out. You've got some adaptogens, some bitter herbs you can put into your food that will help with all of that without feeling overwhelming or feeling like you're a pharmacy. That's important what you said too, without obsessing over it. It's something that's always in the forefront of my mind, but when you really stress over it, if you're not perfect one day, that can just add more to it and can be a trigger itself. Exactly. Cortisol does not need any more reasons to spike itself. It doesn't need any more reasons. If you want to keep that cortisol lower, you want things that are going to manage long-term that aren't going to repel back to you or fight you back when you forget it one day. It's going to happen. It's okay. A lot of women with autoimmune conditions, even PCOS, we can be told that food might be the only way. How can herbs complement a better diet on the journey? There's a few ways. Herbs in general are your spices that you put in your food, but they're also teas that you drink, applications like lotions and oils. I use a tallow butter for my face that has some essential oils into it and some herbs because sometimes you don't need essential oils. Sometimes you just need the herbs. There's a lot of different ways that you can get it in without feeling like... I hate saying obsessing over it, but it's to say it without feeling like you're adding it in. It becomes just part of your natural day-to-day life. Fresh garlic is amazing for helping you with not only digestion, but helping with allergies, helping with colds and flus. So right now, colds and flus are going to spike because school just started, right? We're kind of a ways into school. So right about now, we're looking at these things. So you up the amount of garlic that's in the foods that you're eating, and now you're helping your immune system. But all you're really doing is eating a delicious meal and you don't have to just focus on, I'm going to put all these herbs in because they're doing this to my body and that to my body. You pay attention to the flavors. You have a cup of tea, like what I have right now. It doesn't look... It's red, right? It's passion fruit tea. There's no green tea in it. It's passion fruit tea. That's what it is. There's things like that. It's delicious. I love it. My kids love it. It tastes fruity. So it tastes like you're drinking something that's not water. But it's also passion fruit tea is actually amazing for the female hormones.
(25:16 - 27:34) It helps us regulate. It just kind of gives us a little bit of a cushy spot, you know? So when you're looking at herbs, you really shouldn't look at them only like, how can I include it in my food? It should be, how do I include it in my house? You could put it in cleaning products and now you have a diffusion. It goes through your olfactory system. The quickest way to get into your limbic system is your olfactory system. Yeah, that's a great point. And I'm assuming, I mean, obviously for something like that, you would need maybe an oil or something like that, but fresh over, I'm thinking spices. You can get garlic powder, you can get oregano as a spice, but you want to opt for more fresh spices, right? Yes. So the breakdown, and for those of you that have herb gardens, is fresh, frozen, dry. Okay. There we go. You could use essential oils in your cleaning products and diffusion. I don't recommend that you eat them, especially with autoimmune. You've got enough going on. You don't need to mess with that. There's too much that can go wrong. You can burn holes in your esophagus. It can trigger a pancreas issue. I mean, pancreatitis, I see that a lot with clients who have been consuming essential oils for a long time, and it doesn't happen to everybody, but it's possible. And if you're already struggling with one health issue, you don't need to try another. With a lot of the cleaning products that I use at home, I actually will use like orange peels. I'll put, what is it? Lemon peels, apple cider vinegar, put it all into a mason jar and let it infuse for a good two weeks. And then I'll pull it out and either put more vinegar in it, use a little bit of water, a little bit of hydrogen peroxide in there, especially for the kitchen and the bathroom, and pop it in a spray bottle. And there you go. That probably smells amazing too.
(27:35 - 28:31) I love the smell of citrus and I will put vanilla paste into it, not vanilla extract or the vanilla bean. I've tried to put vanilla bean into the infusion and it just doesn't work for me. It screws it up. So if I put it in after the fact when I'm mixing it up, then it actually, you can smell the vanilla and it's an amazing flavor. So what does the process look like when you work with a client? As far as testing, symptom tracking we touched on, or any type of profiles that you use to choose herbs for that client? We definitely do a deep dive. And depending on which program we're walking into, our deep dive with our one-on-one package is basically about four hours.
(28:32 - 33:37) It's our VIP day. We wrap it up into that and we deep dive into everything. Clients who are coming into the 90 day or even let's say the membership, it doesn't look like four hours, but you still, we still walk through a lot of things. Many of the people I work with are coming to me with tests already in hand. So if we don't need to do testing, we won't. We look at that, we look at your food and your symptom log. And then we start asking questions and getting answers. We definitely start deep diving so that by the time you're two weeks in, you are fully ready to step into the next role. And there's a couple of common herbs that I will recommend from the get-go, especially if I don't have a lot of information. It helps weed out some of the answers that we've been looking for or that we need to get started. A lot of the process that I use, it's three steps. We're going to start restoring your system. We're going to start resetting it. And then we're going to rejuvenate it because in the end, I want you to be able to walk away and have all the pieces of the puzzle pulled together, have the support system you need, have the education that you've needed about your own body so that you can constantly maintain this without having to go from working with me to working with somebody else to working with someone else. I mean, that whole process, even when I was a trainer, it drove me crazy. It was like, I don't want you to feel like you have to just hop people for the path. And I work with Kerri Pagliarini, as you know, she's the sugar knockout coach. And with our work together, it has really filled a lot of the different holes. So if there's things that I don't think of, she does. It's the most amazing partnership. That's awesome. And we follow the same process. And we have, you know, with our one-on-one, we start working together before we even get to the point that you've dropped a dime. Yeah, that's awesome. So are there any herbs that you use as a starting point for most autoimmune clients? I do. I am famous for recommending lemon ginger water. I am famous for recommending that they diffuse some sort of a calming herb. Sometimes it's lavender, but not always. More often than not, I want an evening tea that's got lemon balm of some sort. Or my favorite is Cava Cava. That is my favorite herb. The first time I was introduced to it, I was in herb class. I was in one of my herb classes, I think the second semester. And we had to watch Rosemary Gladstone make her Cava Cava tea. And she had just a little too much. A little too much Cava Cava root. You get giggly. At least she did. She got giggly. Oh my gosh. It was hilarious. And I loved it. And I went and I tried it. The tea itself tastes a little bit like dirt. So you have to make something in it. But when you mix it into the Cava Cava root, it masks the flavor. So I always put my passion fruit in there. I'll put peppermint in there. Yeah. I like peppermint with a lot of those. Yeah. Yeah. And it's calming. It is the most calming tea. And those are all really adaptogens. And that's what I'm looking for. It's something that's not necessarily going to have this extreme response for them. But it's going to help calm some of the nervous system regulation. And get their system to stop being in that fight or flight. You know, just let's just take it down a notch. We don't need to go big moves. We just take it down a notch. So I'm famous for the lemon ginger tea in the morning. And then vomit night and Cava Cava root at some point. That's awesome. Well, quality. You know, there's so much out there, especially even like with Amazon and all that now. So how what's a good way to tell that you get good quality, you know, products, whether that's in a teabag form, or, you know, the root itself, it depends on who the supplier is, like, there are places on Amazon, where you can get a lot of amazing herbs, a lot of the ones that come from straight from Australia, from the Asian countries, you can get those on Amazon relatively easily. It's really crucial to look at the company itself.
(33:38 - 34:04) Before buying an herb, one of my favorites is Standard Process. They actually started in Australia and have a US based office and production, everything here. They follow US rules. They're not allowed to bring Australia in without following US rules. And nobody is in reality, it doesn't matter where you are. When you bring it in, you have to follow those rules.
(34:05 - 36:30) For many of us living in areas like Oregon, Texas, California, Arizona, some of the other states, we have local herbalists who grow them for themselves. If you have someone like that, that is allowing you to see their farming process, that's allowing you to see how they grow them, how they process it, what their drying process is. So meaning they have classes, they have workshops, they have open doors to answer questions, and they're not hiding anything. Generally those you can feel safe consuming. One of my favorites to order from is Wise Women. They are very particular about who gets their stuff. There's also a herb shop in Austin, it's called The Herb Shop, literally it's just The Herb Shop. I love their herbs. The woman that owns it has been, she was amazing when I was in school. And if I ever had a question, I could call her, I could just, you know, hey, I need these herbs. Even if she didn't have it in, she knew who to send me to. And Rosemary Gladstone, she does Rosemountain Herbs. Oh, yeah, I've got, yeah. Yeah, she is one of the experts, one of the like experts in herbal medicine. So you can always trust her stuff. Nice. Okay. Yeah, I've gotten stuff from Rosemountain Herbs before. Yeah, they have great, great, great stuff. Wow, that was such an eye opening conversation. A huge thank you to Bonni for guiding us through the crossroads of herbal medicine, gut healing, and personalized nutrition. It's incredible how she's helping women move from bloated and exhausted to balanced and energized, not through fad diets, but through thoughtful nature power strategies that truly honor the individual. If you're ready to take back control of your gut health and explore herbal medicine in a safe, effective, and personalized way, be sure to check out Bonni's offerings, from personalized assessments and gut restoration plans to workshops and herbal educational resources. You can also grab a free personalized nutrition consultation through her website to start strategizing your healing roadmap.
(36:31 - 37:11) I'll link everything in the show notes for you. And if today's episode spoke to you, just imagine what's waiting for you inside Unwritten. This event is raw, real, and so full of hope, with speakers who get it, tools that help, and a community that truly understands. Click the link in the show notes to join us. Thanks for tuning in to this HerbalPact episode. If you found it helpful, please share it with someone who could use a natural pathway to healing. And of course, subscribe for more conversations that bring healing, empowerment, and rooted in truth wisdom your way. Until next time, keep nourishing, healing from the inside out, and thriving. Wild, free, and unbloated.