Chronic Pain, Hormones & Gut Issues Explained: How Nervous System Dysregulation Impacts Healing | The Healing Core Ep. 1

What if your chronic pain, gut issues, hormone imbalances, or postpartum struggles aren’t random—but signals from your body asking for something deeper?

In this first episode of The Healing Core, Dr. Maria—women’s health physical therapist and founder of Holistic Physio—shares her personal journey through chronic pain, gut dysfunction, hormone imbalance, candida overgrowth, and postpartum healing. After years of symptoms, failed protocols, and frustration, she discovered the missing link: nervous system regulation.

This episode connects the dots between your nervous system, hormones, gut health, and chronic inflammation—and explains why traditional approaches often fall short.

If you’ve struggled with:

•  Chronic pain or inflammation 
•  Hormonal imbalances or birth control side effects 
•  Gut issues like bloating, constipation, or candida 
•  Postpartum recovery challenges 
•  Feeling dismissed or unsupported in your health journey 

This episode will help you understand what your body is actually trying to tell you.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

•  Why stress and nervous system dysregulation drive chronic symptoms 
•  The connection between gut health, hormones, and inflammation 
•  How overtraining, undereating, and lifestyle stress impact your body 
•  Why restrictive diets and protocols don’t always fix the root cause 
•  How nervous system regulation supports real, lasting healing 

Healing doesn’t start with pushing harder—it starts with listening.

Listen now and begin healing from the inside out.
https://thehealingcore.buzzsprout.com

The Healing Core is a women’s health podcast focused on pelvic floor therapy, hormone balance, chronic pain, gut health, and nervous system regulation. Hosted by Dr. Maria Muto Rodriguez, each episode blends holistic healing and physical therapy to help you heal from the inside out.

Learn more and connect at: https://holisticphysiodoc.com/

Follow the show at the link, so you never miss an episode: https://thehealingcore.buzzsprout.com

Music provided by https://mibemusic.com/

Transcript

Why Mixed Signals Happen

Maria 0:02

If you've ever felt like your body was sending mixed signals, chronic pain, hormone health, gut issues, postpartum changes, and no one could really explain why, you're not alone. Welcome to the Healing Core. I'm Dr. Maria, a woman's health physical therapist, mom, and someone who's lived through chronic pain and a body that felt completely off. This podcast is about connecting the dots between your nervous system, hormones, and what real healing actually looks like. Because healing doesn't start with pushing harder, it starts with listening. Heal from the inside out. Start at the core. Welcome to the first episode of this new project, The Healing Core, a podcast dedicated to holistic healing. My name is Dr. Maria, and I am a woman's health physical therapist with sub-specialties in orthopedics and pediatrics. I really want to come in from an angle not only just of a clinician and professional, but from someone who has dealt with chronic pain for over six years. So now starting this podcast at this time feels very right because I've been wanting to really send my voice out there and share what I believe makes sense in the healing journey, but not only just from a physical aspect, but from a mental, spiritual, nervous system lens. And so I think by going through all of my struggles, I have really come to the understanding that I can't just treat a person physically. There's so much more that comes into it. And if we really tackle this from all angles, then we can physically feel better.

From Sports PT To Doubt

Maria 1:47

So let's first break it down as far as, you know, who am I and where I started off as as a clinician, because it kind of all relates into my health challenges. So I started my journey as a physical therapist in 2018. I was primarily treating in the orthopedic setting as well as the pediatric setting. So very different, but I loved both worlds and I wanted to just do both simultaneously. My main goal, though, was to be a sports medicine physical therapist. I wanted to work with the New York Rangers. I wanted to travel with them. I wanted to be that hot, it go girl, like this is my shit. And in order to get there, I obviously had to put my, you know, feet in the right place. And luckily, after working in a few clinics, I landed at Columbia University. And I was so excited to work at Columbia because I actually graduated there. So I got to work with a few of my professors, but most importantly, they work with the New York Yankees. And obviously, if I wanted to work with the New York Rangers, I thought working with the New York Yankees was just the great stepping stone. So I saw my mentors, my teammates work with these guys. And by the way, I had no idea about baseball at the time. Literally could just tell you you stand at home plate and you hit the ball. I knew nothing else. And so I actually didn't know like any Yankee player. I just saw these big, tall dudes. And I remember asking one of my colleagues, like, well, who is that guy? Like he's really big and he looks really strong. And they're just like, he is literally a professional player, Maria. And I'm like, oh, okay. So now I'm in this world and I get to see them do their rehab. And it was really great, of course, because this is what I thought I wanted to do. And after a few years working at Columbia and also just seeing like general orthopedics, it was the the clinic was located in Midtown. So I was seeing just the general population, business workers, desk workers. And so, you know, the chronic neck pain, lower back pain, some athletes, of course. And I loved it, but I was slowly losing interest in just working in orthopedics for many reasons. But just to kind of keep it simple and short, I really realized this is not where I wanted my future to be. And so now we arrive into 2020. And

2020 Stress And First Infections

Maria 4:15

as we all know, that is a crazy time in general. And everything is just, you know, super, super stressful and everything was in question. And I was already questioning my professional career. And then now we're literally questioning life and what we're gonna do. I also had to transition from in-person to then telehealth. And so basically, at, you know, a few months into all of this, I decided that, you know what, I just don't want to be at Columbia. I don't want to be in New York anymore. And I make this huge decision to leave and start my life elsewhere. Funny fact, transfer now to six years later, I still live in New York. I married a New York firefighter. So we'll get to where I kind of come back to New York. But I was under a lot of stress at that time. And during all of this journey of stress, which will be the theme of this podcast and how stress is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can disrupt your nervous system and just have a perfect domino effect of chronic health conditions. While I'm undergoing all of these life changes and stress, this is the first time that I start to deal with an infection, a yeast infection. Never have I had a yeast infection before, no vaginal infections, no nothing. And so I'm really shocked. I don't know what I'm doing different at the time that welcomed this. But now in retrospect, I can really see, in addition, with all of my personal and professional stress I had at the time, I was also overtraining, under-eating. And then that also led into binge eating. And I had a very big sweet tooth. And so here I am, you know, eating the cookies and eating the ice cream. And funny thing, I actually looked really fit at the time because I'm doing, we were limited in weight. So I'm doing a lot of cardio, a lot of jump roping, but essentially my body was shit and I just wasn't taking care of it. So here we are, we have the yeast infection. I didn't know so much about functional medicine at the time. I really appreciated holistic health, but was just not really in that realm. So I go to my conventional medicine doctor and they give me an antifungal. Take the antifungal, change literally nothing about my life and lifestyle, continue on what I'm doing. And then there lies another infection, which is not a yeast infection, but it's a bacterial infection. And so obviously, I have to go into a round of antibiotics now. So I go ahead and take that. Now I wasn't taking any other medications at the time, but I was on birth control, which I was on for probably at that point in my life, like seven years. And so I was relatively healthy and like didn't have anything else going on. But while I was taking the birth control, it was also playing an effect into my body, which I didn't know at the time. So taking a whole round of antibiotics. Now I am slowly kind of moving into the transition of me leaving New York. And ironically, as life kind of just, you know, throws a bunch of curveballs at your face, as soon as I'm kind of packing up to leave, I then meet my now husband and don't really want to miss out on this opportunity of like dating him, but I don't want to impact this decision of moving because I just met this new person. So I decided to continue to date him and I decided to continue to move to Pennsylvania. Essentially, we go into long distance dating, and that is a huge stressor for me. I am not the type of person that does well with long distance, which also kind of added into the pile of stress that I already had. And so I also am a very high-achieving type A overthinker, anxious person to begin with, which early life kind of manifests me into who I am at that time, which I didn't think that made sense for what I was soon going to be dealing with. But now, in which respect, I can really put it all together. So here I am in a situation that I thought would be super exciting to like leave my life behind and start something new, but I'm kind of bringing something new but old with me into this journey, which complicated it so much.

New Business And Getting Sicker

Maria 8:40

So now I'm in Pennsylvania, which is where I'm from. I essentially started a business in a already existing business with chiropractors. I'm super excited about it, but obviously very nervous. And while I'm doing this whole buildup of a new business, dating somebody new and all of this, I'm still getting chronic yeast and bacterial infections, not really understanding why. So I continue the rounds of the antibiotics and the diflucan, which is the antifungal. And then as I kind of keep this lifestyle going for at least a year, I end up having more infections, like things that just didn't necessarily make sense to me because I never experienced this before. Had an infection in my tooth. So randomly, just like my mouth is like blowing up and it's super painful. Don't know what kind of caused that. So go ahead and have it, go see a dentist, take more antibiotics for it. And then I go on a trip with my now husband, then boyfriend. We go to Europe for my 30th birthday, and he's totally fine, mind you, and I love him, but he's not the most healthy person. But yet he just doesn't get sick and like really just recovers super fast. It's wild. He had COVID for like two days because his body just like fights it super strong. And we go to Europe. I don't get COVID. This is also in the middle of 2021. And we go to Italy, which, if you remember, Italy was also not the best with COVID. I don't get COVID, but I get some sort of viral infection that they can't really test for. Eventually I make it back to the States and we're good. And still at this time, under all of this stress in transition, I am now noticing that I have abdominal bloating. Never in my life did I experience that. This was actually like one piece of my body that I didn't have any sort of body image with. I had a flat stomach. I felt great about that. Now I have all this abdominal bloating. And I feel that I have this weight gain that's not like true fat gain, but I just feel very puffy and I can't get my weight down. And it's extremely frustrating because during COVID, with all that cardio I was doing and exercising, like I felt lean and I felt great. I felt very light. And now everything is kind of just backfiring on me. I try working with a nutritionist. I do this hormonal health challenge. I want to try to kind of regulate my body because I'm not feeling comfortable and safe in it. And I just don't know what I'm doing wrong. I'm kind of theorizing that I'm under-eating and maybe that's the case. And I'm knowledgeable enough and even at that time to understand if you undereat for a while that your body goes into survival mode and just like packs on the pounds because it doesn't know when it's going to eat next. So I'm trying to kind of figure that out. And I'm slowly seeing results in a positive way where I'm like, I think I'm losing some of that puffiness. I'm feeling pretty good.

Back To New York And Birth Control

Maria 11:36

But of course, I decide to uproot my life again and I circle my way back to New York and leave my hometown, move to Astoria, Queens, which I am a Manhattan girl, love Manhattan, but sorry to say, my husband is not. And he's from Brooklyn. And so we decided to compromise. And he seemed happy at the time that we compromise in Astoria, but funny thing, he actually wasn't. But now he loves Astoria, so we're all good. So now we're here in Queens, and I just work for like a regular private practice, not trying to go super corporate or start my own thing just yet. And so now, you know, my life is completely changed. And accidentally I'm doing intermittent fasting, which is not great for the body, especially for women because of hormonal health, which I didn't know really so much at the time. But with all of this change and in question of what's going on with my body, and now that I left Pennsylvania to move in with my boyfriend, we were talking about marriage. We kind of knew that that's where we were heading. So I was then 30, he was 31. We wanted to have kids early on, soon after we got married. And so I felt the need that maybe it is best that I come off birth control. Maybe I figure out how to regulate my body because I knew I needed assistance once I came off the medication. And I also wanted to kind of track my cycle naturally. I had no clue how to do that at the time. So, of course, because podcasts are everywhere, I figured there has to be a podcast to help people with this. And luckily I did. I found several and I started doing research on the family awareness method. So I decided now this would be four years ago. I came off of birth control literally in January and was like, okay, we're we're gonna do this. Literally, cold turkey just stopped. Didn't even consult my GYN, just stopped. And I'm also doing more research of what does birth control do to the woman's body? And I now know that it kind of leaves you a little nutrient deficient. You can have lower levels of vitamin D, B12, and also it can affect your gut lining. Vitamin D and B12 help with your gut lining. So that kind of all makes sense. And I'm like, okay, but I don't really do anything different to kind of help my gut because I again am starting a new job, living in a new neighborhood in the same city that I had lived in for six years, but it's completely new. I'm actually driving all the way up to Westchester to work, even though I lived in the city. And it's just a huge transition. So rather than just giving myself time and space to really just settle in to literally in the new space that we're in and adjust to these little changes that I'm making, we decide to go full throttle and add even more to the mix. And this is just, I think, how the way that my husband and I work. We're just go, go, go, and we're here for it, and we're just gonna live life. So about maybe like two weeks after we move in with each other, he proposes. And so now we're engaged, and I have to plan a wedding. I would have loved to just be engaged and live that out, especially because we had also just moved in with each other. So it's like, let's just plan our feet down into the sand and like really feel this out. But we had also talked about being engaged for just about a year because we wanted to also just continue to move forward and have kids, hence the reason why I got off the birth control. Now,

Miscarriage And Symptoms Spike

Maria 15:24

okay, we're doing all that. I'm doing the family awareness method. I'm no longer on birth control. I'm accidentally intermittent fasting, back in this fast-paced environment, not taking care of myself, kind of back to not feeling so great, body inflammation. And then three months later, accidentally we get pregnant. And then unfortunately, seven weeks into the pregnancy, I lost that pregnancy. And obviously, you know, that was very, very sad. And we're, you know, emotionally kind of going through all of that, trying to navigate it. I handle that a little differently than my husband. So that put a little bit of friction on us. But, you know, we're doing our thing and we're trying to, you know, just move forward. And so this was probably in about March or April of the year of 22. And then as the months are going on, all of those symptoms that I was then feeling in the year of late 2020 into 2021, I was feeling tenfold. It was so much worse. I was getting facial acne, which I don't get facial acne. And maybe it was because I was on the pill for so long. But when you have good skin and people really compliment you for good skin, not like I was asking for it, once your skin goes to shit, like it's not fun. And as a woman, you can get really self-conscious when you're already an overthinker and you have low self-confidence and self-worth, like it's just not a good recipe. So that's happening. Chronic bloating is getting worse, constipation, pelvic pain, joint pain, weight gain, like the cluster of things that you just would not want to happen to your body is happening to me. And simultaneously, as I'm starting to feel these symptoms and as the months were kind of creeping on, I obviously wanted to, you know, heal my body. Like, I mean, question why did I have this miscarriage? What was happening to me? And, you know, you put the blame on yourself. Like, well, why? Is something wrong with my body when I was already feeling that way to begin with? So I find this individual named Nora, and she's absolutely amazing. She works with women to prep their bodies for pregnancy. And I felt that was what I needed, even though I, you know, wanted to prep for my wedding. I felt prepping for pregnancy is going to make you feel like the best version of yourself. So I'll feel really good for my wedding. Started working with Nora, and we're just, you know, learning about cervical mucus and tracking everything. And she has such a wonderful program that you do research on your own and then she guides you. You have individual sessions. But as we're working together and I'm telling her about my history and my symptoms, she was kind of putting on her thinking cap and is like, this is a little bit more. I think we need to uncover what you're feeling and why. Because obviously, if the goal is to prep your body and to feel great, we need to know why you're having these symptoms. So I'm on a whole supplement protocol that's different than just the generic let's prep your body with a prenatal with CoQ10. I've now deviated from that and we're trying to do other supplements. So I, this is like the first time that I'm like really diving into supplements and like nothing is making me feel better. And this is so much money because you're paying all of this out of pocket, which obviously, if you're not feeling your greatest, you're preparing for a wedding. And this is also, you know, I lived alone for quite a while, but like now I'm really a professional living alone. This is a lot of stress again, on top of the stress that I currently had from years prior. And all right, nothing is really working. We try one more thing to kind of help with my constipation. It's not really getting the result we want.

Candida Overgrowth And Strict Protocol

Maria 19:04

And then something clicked in Nora, and she was like, Maria, I think you're probably dealing with something called candida overgrowth. Never heard of it before. And I'm like, Well, what is candida? And then she explains it to me, and she's basically like it's a yeast and it could just overgrow a lot of your symptoms track down to this. And then as we're diving between my history of chronic yeast infections, BVs, the antifungal, the antibiotics, the infections, the tooth, the viral infection I had, I also had COVID, I think like three times in that time frame. I mean, and this is just year of 22. So I was easily susceptible into getting sick and not like me for the entirety of my life. And so, okay, fine. So then we did, we didn't even do a stool test, but we did a food sensitivity test, which are actually now in retrospect, I know it's not the best test to get uh to kind of figure out what's going on. But needless to say, that's what we did, and it worked because it showed that I had food sensitivities because my gut was so inflamed and that I had candida overgrowth. So now what do I do? I go on this very restrictive, very intense protocol. You literally need to kill off this yeast by not having any sugars. And it doesn't mean that, oh, you're just not gonna have cookies and cake and icing and ice cream. You cannot have any green. Like you can't even have corn. There are certain vegetables that you shouldn't eat. There are certain fruits that you shouldn't eat. So it was very, very, very specific. And for someone who has had a history of body image issues and overweight and to then uh under-eating and all of that, and already having history restrictive diets, may not be the best thing for me to do. And I can also be like very over-obsessive over things, but I just knew that I needed to do it in order to get over the candida. So I go into the diet. This is now confirmed and started in the end of October of 22. All these symptoms were essentially progressing and exacerbating from March of 22 to then October. Start the protocol in November. Pretty much healed myself by the time I got married. Success, loved it, felt great, no more bloating, constipation, maybe some pain, okay. But I am like doing what I need to do. I am going to the sauna. I am doing what I thought was like the best thing to help heal my body. I was not doing any nervous system regulation at the time, even though I was educated that we had to do that in order to calm the gut down, because the mind and the gut have a connection. But I just didn't do it, to be honest. And whether that's an excuse of just not having enough time, but didn't prioritize it and did what I did with the diet and the food restriction and the Sauna for detoxing and the supplements that I was on, and like, you know, didn't have kids then. So I was really focused on it. Cool. We were fine in January of 2023. I get married, wonderful, fit in my dress, felt super great. And then I'm like, this is awesome. But didn't come when you're on this super restricted diet. I didn't like tamper slowly back into having even like healthy foods, like yams and corn, and you could have rice, I think, but you know, you just you can't just go from having nothing to then everything. But guess what I did? I did that. I went from nothing to everything very quickly. And I mean, it was my wedding day, so I didn't want to restrict myself. And then we decided to take an extravagant trip to the Maldives for our honeymoon. And that was awesome. But what was also not so awesome, of course, was that it was so far to travel.

Honeymoon Grief And Symptom Return

Maria 22:57

But unfortunately, my grandfather was sick. And ironically, today marks exactly three years since he's passed. So while we were on our honeymoon, my grandfather like really, really, really plummeted. And he was not great at my wedding, which our wedding was January 14th, just for reference. And like literally fell two days later and just not great. And then he was in the hospital. So my mom calls me. She doesn't want to really tell me because she wants me to join my honeymoon. Long story short, we cut our honeymoon short, fly back to the East Coast and go visit my grandfather. And that was the last time I saw him, spent a few days there. So now we have high stress, not eating well, eating pizza and carbs and all the things I had to restrict. I'm not feeling great. I'm having the symptoms again, but there's no evidence of candida. So why am I having these symptoms? I'm in such a huge question of why this is happening. My grandfather passes. And then, you know, you're trying to kind of go on and you have the grief. My grandfather meant a lot to me. Um, he was like a very big maternal figure in my life. And so, you know, that was hard. And the symptoms are returning. And I'm in just such a big question, like, what am I to do now? And my package was ending with Nora. And, you know, she was just like, Maria, like, I think maybe we really need to get a hold on your stress. So I'm like, okay, okay, yeah, I know, I know. But I'm not really doing much to do that. Now, although I was not really listening to Nora's recommendation of prioritizing nervous system regulation, my body did my body, my body still did heal. It healed more on a physiological level where, you know, I wasn't testing for Candida symptoms anymore, and I wasn't highly sensitive to the foods that I once was. There probably still could have been further testing, like a stool test to kind of see what other imbalance I had bacteria-wise. But regardless of that, like I was at a pretty decent place. So, given that scenario, I actually was able to conceive and hold on to a pregnancy that was a wonderful, beautiful, minimal side effect, symptom-based pregnancy, beautiful birth experience. Everything was honestly super awesome about that time. So I'm extremely thankful for what I went through. So then I can actually bring my body to its best for that time and for the healing effort that I had put into it. What

Postpartum Thyroiditis And The Nervous System

Maria 25:41

I soon realized after pregnancy leading into postpartum and navigating through that experience was that there was still healing and more healing that I needed to do. And it was the diagnosis and struggle of dealing with postpartum thyroiditis. And even when that healed, hormones still weren't regulated, gut symptoms were still being brought up, constipation, pelvic pain, things of that sort were still manifesting, bloating, maybe not to the same significance as it once was back in 22, but the postpartum period was a really hard period. And finally, whatever it was that clicked, I think another podcast that I was listening to that finally really brought into my attention that nervous system regulation, cortisol regulation was really the answer. I worked with different specialists in the postpartum time that also highlighted on this feature like you need to get your stress under control. And I was so bothered by that because like I just didn't believe that stress could really just manifest all of these symptoms. I was led to believe that when the lab values are high or incorrect or, you know, pointing to something that really means that, you know, something is literally wrong. And that's a very conventional mindset. So I wasn't 100% convinced, but finally, literally after a year and a half, I was like, you know what? No, like I'm doing all the things and it's still not helping. So I started taking it upon myself to finally listen to that voice in my head and the voices around me. I dove into more of a yoga practice, Reiki practice, meditation in the morning, sunlight exposure in the morning, and listening to different activations and bot and podcasts that are very inspirational to me. And I started to notice a difference. I had less acne on my face because even in the postpartum time, I was experiencing that again. Inflammation was going down. I mean, I was seeing some positive effects from this work. And I'm like, okay, well, I really wasn't feeling positive after maybe going on another gut protocol after that stool test or taking the dim tea tox to kind of help with the estrogen buildup in my body. But listening to a podcast, listening to an activation, going to an energy healer, that was making a difference. So I had the buy-in and I knew the importance. I already was a clinician building into the belief that root cause is really where it's at. So this is really what helped me, you know, really listen and preach that we have to do this stuff.

Core Takeaway And What Comes Next

Maria 28:34

And this stuff is really what heals chronic pain. So to conclude and wrap up this episode, I want to end with saying that this entire journey, although it was non-optimal and a very long struggle, it basically helped me figure out what I wanted to do with my life. It changed my career. I now own my own clinical practice, holistic physio in New York City, where I primarily focus on pelvic floor conditions and women's health. With all of that research that I did in that time trying to help regulate my hormones, navigating pregnancy and postpartum, I really fell in love with it. And as I stated in the beginning, I was falling out of love with just general orthopedics. Obviously, I treat a little differently now than I did then. So I still do orthopedics and I merge pelvic health knowledge with the general knowledge of ortho, but it really helped me figure out that next step in my life. It also allowed me to figure out how to finish healing my body. That was the biggest piece of the take home from this journey and struggle. So nervous system regulation is no joke. If we bypass this, we can continue on with chronic pathways. The body is very intelligent, it's very smart. And if we continue to believe that something is wrong with us and we follow maybe perhaps more of the conventional path of looking at the physical symptoms itself of, oh, this measure is off, it's too high, it's in the red zone, let's do this protocol, that protocol. And we don't go down to essentially like what feeds into these pathways of pain, which is our nerves and our nervous system. If we don't calm that down itself, then we're just gonna keep regenerating pain and live in this chronic circle of it. So using and utilizing energy workers like craniosacral therapy or Reiki, someone who practices acupuncture or who just really believes in the down regulation of the system to help heal is what I'm all about. It's what I preach within my own clinical practice. It's what the foundation of this podcast is going to be about. The conversations that I have with those trusted practitioners is what I'm gonna bring to you guys. If you feel that you have a similar story to mine and you feel unsupported, you feel unheard, you don't know where to go. This is ultimately also the point, too, for you to get the inspiration, for you to figure out what works for you, because not each nervous system like regulation technique works. For some people, going on a walk in sunlight is where it's at. Maybe journaling is another feature where we can un where we can release these emotions that are stuck within our body. I just want to educate you. I just want to support you and bring a different lens to healing than what we may find out there. So I really appreciate your interest in this podcast for following, perhaps subscribing, and diving into these conversations with me. I'm glad that all of you are here and I can't wait to continue the conversation. If there's one thing I hope you take away from today, it's this: your symptoms aren't random and your body isn't broken. It's communicating. Healing isn't about doing more or pushing harder, it's about learning how to listen, regulate, and support your body as a whole, physically, hormonally, emotionally, and through your nervous system. Thank you for spending this time with me on the Healing Core. If this episode resonated, share it with someone who needs to hear it and make sure to follow or subscribe so you don't miss what's next. Until next time, heal from the inside out. Start at the core.