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Annie prayed the same prayer for about ten years. Every healing service, every time someone offered to pray over her, she asked for the same two things: the gut pain and the acne. The answer was no — or rather, not yet.
Annie prayed the same prayer for about ten years. Every healing service, every time someone offered to pray over her, she asked for the same two things: the gut pain and the acne. The answer was no — or rather, not yet. This is the episode where she explains why she's grateful for that. Starting around age ten she dealt with severe acne, bloating so bad she looked six months pregnant, a personal record of twenty-one days without a bowel movement, painful cycles, and a brain fog that made college feel like wading through mud. She saw allergists and dermatologists, tried every cream and cleanser and elimination diet, and got nowhere — until comprehensive lab work found what nobody had thought to look for. God isn't a symptom God, she says. He's a root cause God.
In this episode
Chapters
00:20 — Just me today: the slow-healing story
01:03 — Immediate, slow, and not yet
01:58 — "Our God is not a symptom God. He's a root cause God."
02:24 — The symptoms, from age ten on
03:32 — The visible cross: acne, and feeling like a modern-day leper
04:43 — Everything she tried, medical and otherwise
05:57 — Ten years of praying the same prayer
07:08 — Why the waiting was the point
09:50 — Atlanta, chiropractic school, and finding The Wellness Way
10:34 — The stool test and food allergy panel
10:49 — A hidden IgE peanut allergy — while eating four PB&Js a day
13:16 — A parasite, yeast overgrowth, and the estrogen connection
14:12 — Why the brain fog was never really about focus
15:00 — What healing actually took, and the habits it rebuilt
17:13 — The wound that became a doorway
18:05 — Yes, or not yet — but never ignored
New episodes every Tuesday, 6 AM ET.
Show notes, blog, and full transcripts: healthinthespirit.com
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Got a healing story, a question, or a guest suggestion? ryan@healthinthespirit.com / annie@healthinthespirit.com
Health in the Spirit is recorded under the patronage of Ss. Cosmas and Damian, physicians who healed the body and soul without counting the cost.
This podcast is for education and encouragement. It isn't medical advice and doesn't replace care from your own clinician.
Health in the Spirit is a Christian health and wellness podcast with Dr. Ryan and Annie DeNome, a chiropractor and a theologian raising a family in Cincinnati, Ohio. Each week they bring holistic health, the wisdom of the healing saints, and the teaching of the Church into one conversation about how to live well, body and soul. Rooted in Saints, Scripture, and the Catechism, the show explores what the ancient wisdom of the Church has to say about the modern health crisis: nutrition, movement, rest, healing, and raising a healthy family. New episodes every Tuesday, beginning July 7, 2026.
You found us. Come on in! We're just getting started. This is Health in the Spirit. I'm Annie DeNome, and I'm Dr. Ryan, and each week we're going to be sitting down with you at our kitchen table to talk about where modern medicine meets the wisdom of Christianity. So that we can learn how to take care of our bodies like we're going to live forever and our soul like we're going to die tomorrow.
Pour yourself something warm. And pull up a chair. Welcome back to another episode of Health in the Spirit. It's just me today. So pull up a chair to my table here, and I'm going to share a little bit about my health story and my health journey and how God has had his role in my healing journey and how it looks a little bit different than Dr. Ryan's and how he sometimes instantly heals people.
This one's a story of how God has continually shown me his healing in different ways, but it's been a slow journey, but a good journey, and I'm so glad that it's been this kind of journey. So there's three ways God heals.
Well, there's many ways God heals, but three kind of categories are sometimes it's immediate, you know, like the story in the Bible of the woman touching the hem of the garment healing in an instant.
When she had, when she was hemorrhaging, and she touches the hem of Jesus, that was an immediate healing. And I've seen immediate healings in different scenarios in my life. And then sometimes it's, it's slow. And it's a faithful change that transform as you walk it. And that's kind of my story.
And sometimes it's not yet. You know, sometimes we will never have healing in this life with certain issues. And the fullness comes in the next life. And so there's these, yeah, three ways that God heals. So sometimes immediate, sometimes slow, and sometimes not yet.
And I really want to dive in here on this episode that our God is not a symptom God. He's a root cause God. He heals all the way down to the source, because he wants to make us whole. He wants to transform us fully.
He's not just going to heal the symptoms because he's not that kind of guy. He is a wonderful God and he wants to make us whole. And so I just want to go a little bit into my story. I, for a long period of my life, probably maybe starting at 1011, I started to have really bad acne.
And that was like the first thing that kind of popped up. But I also had like bloating after meals. I looked distended or six months pregnant, even as a high schooler. Like I remember like, being like, what the heck is going on? Like I was a huge athlete. And I'm like, why am I like, why do I look so inflamed?
Like it just didn't, it did not make sense. And I had horrible pain after pretty much every meal. I had constipation. I was not pooping for like, I think my record was 21 days. And I had painful and irregular cycles. I didn't even know that that, like looking back, I didn't know that that was a problem at the time.
But now I know that it's, it's common, but it's not normal. And I had severe visible acne. Like I did not feel comfortable going anywhere without makeup. Most of the time it was like just, I totally wrecked myself confidence.
And I also had brain fog and ADHD. So getting through school and middle school and high school and even parts of college, it felt like waiting through mud. It felt like I needed either a crop ton of coffee, or I just felt like I could never focus and I had to reread things multiple times.
I had, I had fine grades in high school, but in college, I did not have good grades. So until the very end, when I started this healing journey. So, you know, it was a lot of different crosses, but the most visible cross was my acne. And, you know, if you're a high schooler, or if you're anybody who struggles with acne, you know that it's like this visible, like this visible cross, this visible insecurity that's just on your face, you can't hide it.
It's just there. It's the first thing that people see because it's on your face. And so it's a really hard cross to struggle with because it's so outward facing. It's not like you can hide it. And I just remember praying, you know, like, am I going to be like, is this like my cross forever, Lord?
Like I felt like the modern day leper, like it was not a fun process and it affected pretty much everything. And I remember, you know, trying everything in my, you know, from 10 on until just recently when I healed that I really wanted to eventually be, you know, one time I thought I want to be a dermatologist one day, or I want to, I want to help people heal from their acne.
I just knew it from the very beginning that I eventually this is going to be part of my story that I was going to heal from this and help people too. And here I am. I found healing and, and God, God really brought me along a journey of really getting down to that root cause and transforming me.
I just take the acne away. He wanted to take away and help me find out what was actually causing it. And, and I tried everything and nothing was nothing helped what was actually going on. Nothing pointed me to what was going on.
I went to an allergist, a dermatologist, like I got my allergies tested, nothing popped up like not the allergies that I, you know, got through a blood test showed up.
I went to a dermatologist. I was, you know, on different antibiotics, different creams. I tried every skincare brand. I even tried Manuka honey masks on my face. I tried cleansers creams prescriptions masks treatments, you know, and then then I tried the diet thing like cutting this out, adding that in, you know, I was cutting out dairy cutting out gluten.
And I also even went to prayer. And every time I went to a healing service or had a chance for somebody to pray over me, the one thing I asked for was my gut issues to go away and for my acne to go away.
And that like that is literally what I prayed to God for for about 10 years and nothing. And I kept going back to him and I kept becoming faithful and I, you know, going back to the woman with the hemorrhage it burned in my heart.
I'm like, Lord, I am touching your garment. I'm touching your whole cloak. Just why are you healing me? I was really frustrated, but I continually went back to the Lord. And I think that's what he wanted. He wanted my faithfulness.
He wanted me to grow in my faith. He wanted me to seek him. And I, you know, going to him continually time after time really developed my my intimate life with him, my prayer life with him, realizing that like, yes, he is the divine physician, but he sees all my suffering.
He's there for me at every moment. And so that was like the key point, I think that needed to happen. And then, you know, I reflect on like if he had healed me immediately, I probably would have said I probably would have stopped seeking him.
And or I would have, I would have seen him as almost like a genie, like, oh, he answered my prayer immediately. Like I can, that can be the pattern for the rest of my life. You know, I would have said thanks and moved on.
And additionally, in not that slow journey of healing, I also learned how to bear the cross. You know, I never would have learned what it was like to really bear across, especially an outward one, and really learn perseverance and what it means to carry across and how to turn suffering into something good.
And then through perseverance, which we learn in scripture gives us hope. So it, you know, I learned perseverance, I learned faith, I learned hope. And in the waiting, he was, he was building something that was lasting, which was a deeper faith.
And that's, that's really what he wants from us. Because this life is so short compared to the eternity that we spend with him in heaven. And that's what he really wanted is, you know, that foundation of a relationship with him.
So it was, it was hard though, to get a knot yet. But, you know, thinking about that journey with him, and growing in my relationship with him, I really learned that, and really trying to dive into my health, like our God is not like what I said before.
You know, he's not content with service level fixes. He's not a God who would just patch over a wound still broken underneath. You know, he's not satisfied with partial or cosmetic healing.
He wants to go to the source. He heals and he transforms. And he actually deals with the root of the thing. And truly, what comes out on the other side isn't just relief.
Like he just doesn't want relief. He wants a new person. So going back to my story, eventually, you know, after college, we, Ryan and I went to Atlanta.
We, he started going to chiropractic school. And we got involved with a group called the wellness way, which is our, you know, a network of chiropractors and health restoration doctors that really understand the full picture of the body.
And that all the systems are connected that our body was designed to heal. And sometimes we just need to figure out what is causing our body to react in the way that it is.
So we started to learn under a group called the wellness way. And I eventually got a comprehensive lab work, which was a stool test. And I also got a food allergy test.
I learned this is so crazy. So again, remembering my story, I had a ton of gut issues, brain fog, acne. So this is what I figured out.
I figured out that I had a lot of allergies, one being a hidden IgE peanut allergy. Now, this is crazy. I did not know.
So an IgE allergy is an allergy that you could have like an anaphylactic shock to it's like one of those immediate response allergies.
And I had no idea that I was allergic to peanuts. Mind you, this is back in high school. I was eating for peanut butter and jellies a day.
And then, you know, I love Reese's Cups. I loved peanut butter. I was eating peanut butter cliff bars, peanut butter all the time.
And like looking back when I got this result, I was like, Oh, my gosh, like my mind exploded.
Like every time. So I was eating two peanut butter and jellies for breakfast right after some practice.
And I was eating two peanut butter and jellies for lunch because it was just the easiest thing in the pack.
That's all we had. And it's just, yeah, super easy to carry throughout the day and it not get bad.
And I had the worst pain after eating peanuts in high school and just thereafter, like afterwards.
And it just clicks like, Oh my gosh, that is where that pain came from.
Like it was like somebody was stabbing my stomach with a knife.
And I like had to like just sit through class with this pain and like, look, six months pregnant.
Like crazy. So that was a huge thing that I found out.
I got out peanuts and I didn't have that incredible pain anymore.
It was a life. It was literally a life changing test.
So what's crazy is that I didn't know I had this peanut allergy because I like, I didn't connect the two.
Like I just thought I had mysterious pain. I didn't know what it was coming from.
I didn't know what food it was coming from or why I was getting it.
So it was really helpful to find out that I had that hidden peanut allergy.
And then I had also other food allergies like IgG allergies, which are delayed response allergies
that were also affecting me. And once I cut those out, I had a huge relief in that pain after I ate
and then also the bloating after meals. Like I didn't, like it was, it's rare that I look six months pregnant after I eat anymore.
And in my stool test, we figured out that I had a blastocyst, which is a parasite caused, you know, that usually comes through water.
And what do you know? I was an open water swimmer. I was a swimmer in high school.
Who knows if I got it from open water or whatever, but it's just so tell it like it was just so that all the dots were connecting.
And also too, I had a yeast overgrowth and overgrowth of bad bacteria.
And because I had an incredible constipation that kept the estrogen circulating throughout my system, which caused hormone dysregulation,
irregular and painful cycles. And then also too, that was those allergies and that Candida and the bad bacteria, all of it.
And the parasite was causing my brain fog and ADHD.
So getting this, like none of the doctors that I went to, like every even suggested, you know, an immunolabs food allergy test or a stool test.
None of them for years. I went to every kind of doctor, literally to figure out these problems.
And none of them suggested the comprehensive lab work, which was crazy because I got answers within weeks.
And then I had a game plan through my wellness way doctor.
We worked on a little bit of diet, lifestyle gave me some supplements and we really worked on my gut.
I even did a strict, you know, Candida diet, cutting out sugar so that it couldn't grow and really worked on the parasite and then Candida.
And after that, that was when, and working on that for a while was when my gut really started to heal and my face started to clear up.
So it wasn't a miracle moment. However, it was a door that opened that changed my life.
You know, these changes didn't just like relieve my symptoms like that.
I mean, it was, it took a lot of work.
It took a lot of digging up those weeds and those bad habits that I created my whole entire life.
And it took like me taking out things that I didn't even know that were bad for me.
You know, if God had just healed me in an instant, I wouldn't know that peanuts were wrecking me.
I wouldn't know that I had a parasite.
I wouldn't know that I had a use of a growth and I want to continue to eat bags of candy and late night Taco Bell runs.
And, you know, there was no more feeding the things that were making me sick.
And so I was rebuilding habits from the ground up.
And so in that it was this obedience to God.
I even leaned in deeper.
So I established faith with waiting for God to heal me.
And then when I figured out what was causing me to be sick, I leaned into that obedience and that reliance on God to get me through that healing process still.
So there was no him to touch in a sense, but just one faithful choice after another months and months and years after years.
And building these habits really transformed me.
They, you know, really made me a new person.
I was no longer the person who had, you know, this candy and this, you know, emotional reliance on sugar.
And was drinking a ton or not using my time well because I had a horrible brain fog.
And I, because I was able to root up all of that stuff, I could now be a better version of myself.
So this, this wound and this healing process, like truly became a doorway into something even better that I don't think I would have found if I had that immediate.
Response or that immediate healing.
So because we found, we worked through the wellness way and I had such incredible results, you know, we were able to be drawn into a network of health restoration doctors.
And now we have opened our own clinic because we're so enlivened about this, you know, possibility of allowing other people to figure out what's wrong with them and dig deeper into their, their issues.
And, you know, walking with others deeply in their health journeys and finding what, what are those triggers?
What is the body responding to?
And we've literally, you know, even had the chance to help others bring new life into this world.
So the very cross that I begged God to remove, you know, became the doorway for, for our whole entire lives, for our ministry, our jobs, everything that he's called us to.
And so at the end of the day, whatever your healing journey is, God is good and he's after the same thing.
He's after our hearts and he speaks to us and he, he draws us in in different ways.
He heals us either immediately, slowly or not in this life, all for our unique story to be able to lean deeper into him, to, to, to understand what suffering is, to grow in virtue and to become transformed.
Whether, whether whatever his timeline is, we have to really realize that faith heals the soul first.
And when we come to Jesus in faith and ask for healing, and, and one of these two things happen, there's either a yes or a not yet.
But he never ignores us. He never flatly denies us. He, he wants us to become whole.
Health in the Spirit is recorded under the patronage of Saints Cosmos and Damien, physicians who healed the body and soul without counting the cost.
If this helped you, share it with someone you love, rate us, review us and come sit with us again next week.
May God bless you and keep you healthy in mind, body and soul.
Amen.