What’s Shaping Autoimmune Care Right Now: Advocacy, Research & Community (Ep 57)

Below is the full transcript of Episode 57 of the Autoimmune Wellness Podcast. This transcript is provided for accessibility and reference.

Title: AIP Community Q1 Update: Events, Advocacy & Research (Ep 057)

[00:00:00] Introduction

Mickey Trescott: Living with autoimmune disease can feel deeply personal. The symptoms, the decisions, the daily trade-offs, all of it happens in your body and in your life. But the forces that shape autoimmune care are often much bigger than any one individual.

Research decisions determine which questions get asked and which don’t. Advocacy efforts influence who gets seen, who gets heard, and whose experiences are taken seriously. And community education shapes how information is shared, understood, and applied in the real world. When those pieces move forward together, they create meaningful change, not just for each of us as individuals, but for the entire autoimmune community.

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Mickey Trescott: Welcome back to the Autoimmune Wellness Podcast. I’m your host, Mickey Trescott, and starting this year I’m introducing a quarterly community update series here on the podcast. These episodes are designed to help you pause, zoom out, and get oriented around what’s happening across the autoimmune landscape, without overwhelm, fear, or chasing the headlines.

Each quarter, we’ll look at three consistent areas that directly shape autoimmune care: advocacy, research, and community education. The topics will evolve, but the structure and the voices will stay the same.

[00:01:21] The Regular Contributors

Mickey Trescott: In every quarterly update you’ll hear from three regular contributors.

First, Jamie-Nicole Martin, chronic illness advocate and founder of the AIP BIPOC Network, joins me to talk about autoimmune awareness and advocacy, including community initiatives, events, and ways to get involved in building more equitable support.

Next, sybil Cooper, a PhD trained immunologist and AIP Certified Coach helps us make sense of current research and emerging trends in autoimmune health, translating complex science into real world context.

And finally, Jamie Hartman, my partner and co-teacher at the AIP Certified Coach Program, joins me to share updates from the broader AIP community, including events like the AIP Summit, practitioner education and what’s coming up next for both providers and patients.

And before we dive in, a quick reminder that this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The conversations you will hear today are not intended to diagnose, treat, or replace medical care. Always consult your healthcare provider before making changes to your diet, lifestyle, or treatment plan.

[00:02:29] Autoimmune Awareness & Advocacy with Jamie Nicole Martin

Mickey Trescott: Let’s begin with our first quarterly segment on autoimmune awareness and advocacy. Joining me for the segment is Jamie Nicole Martin. Jamie is an AIP Certified Coach, a chronic illness advocate, and the founder and CEO of the AIP BIPOC Network. She lives with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and narcolepsy, and brings both lived experience and professional training to her work.

With a background in fitness and functional movement coaching, Jamie supports individuals and communities through AIP informed coaching and advocacy, centering equity, access, and culturally responsive care in autoimmune health.

Hi, Jamie.

Jamie Nicole: Hey, Mickey. How are you?

Mickey Trescott: I’m doing great. Thanks for being here.

[00:03:14] About the AIP BIPOC Network

Mickey Trescott: Before we get into specific programs or events, I want to make sure that our listeners really understand what the AIP BIPOC Network is. Can you briefly explain what you guys do, who it’s for, and why it exists within the autoimmune space?

Jamie Nicole: Absolutely. In essence, we focus on advocacy and not just policy, it’s people. It’s also community building. Our work is grounded in a dual framework, at the individual level that includes AIP informed education, support, and also healing. So that’s one aspect of the dual framework.

The other aspect of it is at the systems level, it focuses on access, inclusion and prevention. AIP! Personal healing happens one person at a time. Advocacy changes conditions for entire communities. We are about creating spaces where lived experience is respected and protected. Representation and access is not optional, they’re foundational to healing. So this work matters because healing is personal, systems are not. But both of those things are extremely important in this work that we do.

Mickey Trescott: Thank you so much and I really appreciate that explanation of how your work affects both the personal level and the systems level because we are all affected by these systems, whether we know it or experience it or not.

[00:04:41] ROCK Summit & ROCK Community Expo Feb 20 & 21

Mickey Trescott: That work is so important and the AIP BIPOC network hosts in-person events right now for people in Houston, with a couple coming up. Can you share the two events coming up and why they are important, even for people who aren’t near Houston to attend in person?

Jamie Nicole: Absolutely. I’m excited to tell you about that.

We have coming up in February Rock Wellness Weekend, which used to be just Rock the Block, in and of itself. So now it’s a two day experience that we’re hosting February 20th through 21st. Again, talk about systems level. It’s an experience designed to connect those systems with real community access.

Friday is the Rock Summit, bringing practitioners, advocates and people with lived experience together around research, opportunity, collaboration and knowledge. So “ROCK”, we’re bringing them together around those things.

Then on Saturday we have Rock the Block, which is a free community facing health expo focused on, again, “ROCK”, which is reaching our communities and kids.

Together, the summit and the Expo show how wellness, education, and equity work best when professionals and communities are engaged at the same time. These events raise awareness by making autoimmune disease visible across both professional and public spaces. This work matters because awareness grows when learning access and lived experiences are not silo.

Mickey Trescott: I love that and I look forward to the day when these events are really modeled around the country and that we have events like that for both the stakeholders, the practitioners and the community health organizations, and then the patients, which is really what you’re bringing all together.

So if you’re in Houston, make sure you guys check it out.

[00:06:32] AIP BIPOC Roundtables

Mickey Trescott: And the work that you do also connects the global autoimmune community, so you’re not just a local nonprofit, you’re also engaging in education and support for everyone around the world.

And you do that through the AIP BIPOC Roundtables. Can you spend a couple minutes explaining what they are and who they’re for and why they’re so meaningful to your advocacy work?

Jamie Nicole: Absolutely, they’re meaningful because this is how we started. That’s one way that they’re meaningful, just through conversation alone. You can make a world of difference because people see what it’s like to experience this and they don’t feel alone. But these Roundtables are intentionally designed as safer spaces where people can speak honestly without having to explain or defend their experiences.

And this is from the guests that we have to the people who are in the comments. Saying Amen, or just sharing their stories because they’re similar to what they’re hearing from our guests. These round tables are open to the community and for anybody, whether you are a patient, whether you’re a caregiver, whether you’re a provider, your voice in these conversations is important.

There’s a common theme. Conversations are focused on education, listening, and also identifying patterns that are often missed in clinical settings and in research settings. Over time, these conversations surface insights that help shape advocacy priorities, partnerships, and programming.

That’s why I’m so excited to continue these round tables monthly throughout the year because they are the basis of what we do outside of those round tables. So this ongoing dialogue matters because trust and solutions develop over time. It’s not a one and done.

People can attend, you mentioned when, where can they attend these Roundtables? They can start by registering online when we announce them, they’re typically the fourth Tuesday of every month. We have a registration link on our webpage where people can sign up to attend.

Mickey Trescott: Yeah, I love that. And if you guys follow me on Instagram I often repost AIP BIPOC network is on Instagram too. That’s where you can find the direct links and the marketing for whoever the speaker is for the Roundtables.

And I would really encourage you to attend those. There’s always really good, lively community discussions. It’s a good way to feel connected to the AIP community.

[00:08:45] How to Support the AIP BIPOC Network

Mickey Trescott: For anybody who’s listening and they’re like, this really resonates, I really want to support this work. What are some meaningful ways that our listeners can get involved no matter where they live?

Jamie Nicole: Absolutely. On our webpage, we have a way that you can support the AIP BIPOC Network. And it doesn’t matter where you are in the nation or in the world.

We have opportunities for you to contribute, whether it be volunteering online, helping to build out our database. Whether it be donating, you can donate to the AIP BIPOC Network. There are several ways that you can do that, including donor advised funds, you can set up your own team.

And then also just by sharing the work that we do, a lot of times just people seeing it on your timeline, or at your doctor’s office. We’ve had a lot of referrals that way as well.

Just getting the word out in your normal day-to-day conversation makes the world of difference to the work that we do.

Mickey Trescott: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jamie, for being here, and we’ll be sure to link everything that we talked about in the show notes, including the Roundtables, ways that people can support you and follow you on your website and social media.

Jamie, thank you for the work that you’re doing and for bringing advocacy and awareness into this space in such a grounded and human way.

Jamie Nicole: Thank you Mickey, it was a pleasure.

Mickey Trescott: So next we’re going to shift into the research side of this quarterly update. And joining me for this segment is Sybil Cooper.

Sybil has a PhD in immunology. She is also an AIP Certified Coach and is a functional medicine trained health coach specializing in midlife women’s health. She brings together a deep background in immunology, sleep, and metabolic health with her own lived experience navigating multiple autoimmune diseases, including Sjogren’s, myasthenia gravis, and connective tissue disease.

Sybil helps women address the root causes of fatigue, brain fog, hormonal shifts, and autoimmune symptoms through personalized, whole person strategies. So we’re going to give Sybil a call right now.

Jamie Nicole: Hi Sibyl, how are you doing today?

Sybil Cooper: Hi Mickey. I’m doing fantastic, I’m so excited to be here with you today.

Mickey Trescott: I’m excited to see you too. I really wanted you here for this quarterly update because you bring such a unique lens, both that deep research training, the functional medicine, and all of your rich lived experience. It feels like the right moment to zoom out and talk about what the science is actually telling us about autoimmune disease.

[00:11:15] Mayo Clinic Study: Prevalence, Methods, and Meaning

Mickey Trescott: I wanted to get us started with a study that you shared with me a couple months ago from the Mayo Clinic that really reframed things. They published a large study looking at how common autoimmune disease actually is in the US, and this is one of people’s most common questions when they are first diagnosed or they have a family member diagnosed with autoimmune disease. Can you walk us through some of the big takeaways from this study?

Sybil Cooper: Mm-hmm. Well, it was, you know, pretty shocking to read that this type of study really hadn’t been done before at this scale. The big takeaway is that over 15 million Americans are dealing with autoimmune disease. That’s a lot of people. That’s 4.6% of the US, which is a pretty significant number, have been diagnosed with at least one autoimmune disease.

And this figure, since 2016, there’s been like four other studies, some worldwide, some in the UK that figure was between seven and 10%. And so this number actually came back a little bit lower than that, but it’s still a significant public health challenge. As well as to the families that are involved when someone is impacted by autoimmune disease.

So it really confirms what we already know is that it’s a significant healthcare crisis.

Mickey Trescott: One of the things that really stood out to me was how conservative the criteria were. You know, when we’re looking at autoimmune disease, it’s challenging with some conditions to be put in a bucket and get a diagnosis, and those measures really vary when we’re talking about over a hundred autoimmune conditions. Can you explain how they defined an autoimmune diagnosis in this study?

Sybil Cooper: So basically you go to a doctor and you tell them, for example, you have, you know, dry mouth and dry eyes, and they may put a presumptive diagnosis code for Sjogren’s on your chart. And then they order antibody testing and then, you know, two or three months later they get the data that’s negative and they, you know, figure out that your dry mouth and dry eyes was due to some medication you were on.

So if you only looked at that one diagnosis code, that would falsely inflate how many people have autoimmune disease. So to get around that, they used two diagnosis codes that were more than 30 days apart as that being a confirmative diagnosis for an autoimmune disease.

On one hand it makes the data much cleaner. On the other hand, you’re going to miss the people who are very early in their autoimmune diagnosis journey, which we know can sometimes take five or 10 years, right? Or longer. In that way it’s it’s more conservative, but it gives us great confidence that this is actually the bottom floor of the number, that it’s not falsely inflated.

Mickey Trescott: Yeah, I really like that in the bottom floor because that ” who has an autoimmune disease” question really can encompass, depending on how you define an autoimmune disease. And we know that there are so many people that are in that five, 10, even 15 year range of having a subclinical symptoms, categorize them? We don’t know because we don’t really have this, it’s not black or white. So thank you for explaining.

Sybil Cooper: Mm-hmm.

Mickey Trescott: Further too, I’d like to clarify incedence versus prevalence. The study was in prevalence. Those are very defined research terms. What do people need to know about that?

Sybil Cooper: So prevalence is a summation of all the autoimmune disease diagnoses up until a certain point, whereas an incidence is like a specific timeframe. So say like in one year. So if something had a low prevalence, but a high incidence, say it’s something like COVID, right? It was a very defined period of time, it’s not chronic. We now know there is a chronic part to it, but it’s not a chronic disease process that takes a long term to get to the end point. But the incidence was very high.

As opposed to something where you have that’s chronic, and so the prevalence is high, and that’s going to have a greater impact on the medical system, on the healthcare system, as well as the families, even if the incidence is low. So the number of people impacted per year is low, but the people who are impacted, that number builds each year.

Mickey Trescott: That makes perfect sense.

[00:15:48] Most Common Autoimmune Conditions: What Stands Out

Mickey Trescott: So one of the most interesting parts of this study was the breakdown of the most common autoimmune conditions. Can you talk about what showed up most often, overall?

Sybil Cooper: The most common was rheumatoid arthritis. Followed closely by psoriasis and type one diabetes. We also saw high numbers for Graves disease and Crohn’s disease, which were fourth and sixth. Autoimmune thyroiditis, or Hashimoto’s, as most commonly called ranked fifth, with MS or multiple sclerosis ranking seventh, and then the other connected tissue diseases systemic lupus and Sjogren’s ranked eighth and 10th. Then rounding out the top 10 was ulcerative colitis in the ninth spot.

Mickey Trescott: I remember we were discussing being surprised at some of the conditions that didn’t rank as high as expected, especially Hashimoto’s. Can you talk about that, maybe why that might not have been a little higher on the list, which we generally say is, you know, the most common autoimmune condition.

Sybil Cooper: Yeah, we hear that, you know that statement quite often and you know, podcasts even in books. And I think it’s primarily because Hashimoto’s, it’s easy to diagnose because of the antibodies that are used as the primary criteria, and that’s often done by a general practitioner or a nurse practitioner.

Whereas the data that was collected for this study were five large scale medical centers throughout the US and so they’re just not seeing patients with Hashimoto’s.

Mickey Trescott: Yeah. In

Sybil Cooper: So I think it’s.

Mickey Trescott: specialists are probably seeing the most severe cases of whatever autoimmune condition fills their specialty. Like IBD, gastroenterology, dermatology. I think that’s spot on.

Sybil Cooper: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:17:45] Differences by Sex & Overlap

Mickey Trescott: The study also broke things down by sex, which, we found really interesting. What did it show when it comes to autoimmune disease in females versus males?

Sybil Cooper: In their study it was almost two to one: 6% of females were diagnosed compared to about 3% of males. I think that it was really important for us to embrace that millions of of men are being impacted by autoimmune disease as well.

Mickey Trescott: Yeah. And the top five conditions for men and women were very different. Can we talk a little bit about that too, and reference that list?

Sybil Cooper: For women, the, so the top five was rheumatoid arthritis, graves disease, psoriasis, autoimmune thyroiditis, and type one diabetes. And for men, it was psoriasis, type one diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis in that order. And in fact, type one diabetes had a higher prevalence in males than in females. So it definitely just highlights for us that this is a significant disease burden for for men as well.

Mickey Trescott: Yeah. Depending on the condition, the prevalence can be flip flopped, so good to know. Another stat that really jumped out was how many people had more than one autoimmune diagnosis. I mean, I’m a member of that club, I know a lot of us are members, but it is really good to have some information there. What did they find?

Sybil Cooper: 24% were diagnosed with more than one autoimmune disease, and it just highlights that our medical system is highly segmented. So there’s a cardiologist, there’s a neurologist, endocrinologist, whereas the immune system impacts the entire body. And so when you have one autoimmune disease, it increases the likelihood that you might develop another one.

And also it conflates the data, ’cause like I have probably three or four diagnosis codes for autoimmune diseases. So in the other studies that would be counted as four different people. Whereas in this study, it would accurately be counted as one. And so I think the data’s a little bit more clear.

Mickey Trescott: Oh, that’s really great to know.

Sybil Cooper: Mm-hmm.

Mickey Trescott: Thank you for the breakdown of that study, I hope that everyone listening found that interesting and validating and maybe have some information to share with their family or friends.

[00:20:20] Nobel Prize, T-Reg Cells & What This Signals

Mickey Trescott: Sybil and I also want to zoom out for the moment because we also had some big science news in the world right now. The 2025 Nobel Prize recognized the discovery of regulatory T cells or otherwise known as Tregs, which feels incredibly relevant to discuss, especially when we have an immunologist talking research today. So Sybil, can you explain what Treg cells do, and just briefly why this matters for people with autoimmune disease?

Sybil Cooper: Mm-hmm. I mean, back when I was in graduate school, in the nineties, it was really difficult to get funding to research the possibility of the existence of what back then was postulated to be “T suppressor” cells. Science, as much as we hope that it’s maneuverable like a jet ski, it’s more like a giant cruise ship, it takes a lot to turn it in a completely different direction.

But we have arrived in 2025 with the the Nobel Prize for Tregs. Think of it as you have a car, you have a gas pedal, you have the brakes, you have your cells that are surveying the body, that’s the gas pedal. They’re looking for the pathogens to combat.

The Treg cells are your brakes. You want the immune system to respond just right. Not too much, not too little. It’s the whole Goldilocks principle. The same way in the nervous system, we have the parasympathetic, which is putting the brakes on, and we have the sympathetic system that allows you to react to something.

You need that balance. You don’t want the immune system to wreck so much that you have collateral damage of other tissues, and that’s the role of the Treg cells.

Mickey Trescott: Awesome. And hopefully that means a lot more research in this area now that it’s exciting. And more treatments and more ideas for the ways that people with autoimmune disease can live better. Because T regulatory cells are definitely the window into how we make things better, right?

Sybil Cooper: Yes, because Treg cells, there can either be not enough of them, or the ones that you have are not functioning properly. So if we can discern in each individual which case is operating, then it’s more precision medicine.

Instead of coming in with something like prednisone or you know, some of the other current biologics that puts patients at risk for infectious disease because you’re basically shutting down the entire immune system. Now we can be very selective and just calm the immune system down if we know where to look.

Mickey Trescott: Awesome. Well, what I love about this is how closely it aligns with what this community has been learning for years, that supporting immune regulation through whole person care actually matters. And I will drop the link to the Mayo Clinic study and the Treg nobel Prize press release in the show notes for anyone who wants to dive deeper.

Thank you so much for helping us unpack this Sybil, and we’ll see you next time.

Bye.

[00:23:32] Segment 3: AIP Community Updates with Jaime Hartman

Mickey Trescott: For our final segment, we’re going to zoom out and look at what’s happening across the broader AIP community. Joining me for this segment is Jamie Hartman. Jamie is a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach and AIP Certified Coach and my partner and co-teacher in the AIP Certified Coach Program.

She holds a master’s degree in educational psychology and has more than 25 years of experience in education and instructional design. Jamie discovered the Autoimmune Protocol while managing her own post-surgical Crohn’s disease and has since become a leader in AIP education, serving as the organizer and the host of the AIP Summit, the AIP Summit podcast, and helping train the next generation of AIP practitioners.

Hi, Jamie.

Jaime Hartman: Hey, Mickey.

Mickey Trescott: I’m really glad to have you here for this segment because this is where we get to zoom out and look at what’s happening in the broader AIP community.

[00:24:31] AIP Summit Recap: Big Picture and Stats

Mickey Trescott: We just wrapped up the AIP Summit earlier this month. Can you start by reminding listeners what the AIP Summit is and why it’s such an important event?

Jaime Hartman: The AIP Summit is an annual gathering presented by AIP Certified Coaches, but it’s more than that. It started in 2020, really at the time, thinking it might just be a one-time event. But it’s expanded now to be more about an ongoing education resource for people. Community, a place where our audience can access expert voices in one place, and where all the AIP Certified Coaches can share their incredible wisdom.

Mickey Trescott: I love that, and it’s really been a rich resource for everyone since then. This year’s summit wrapped up a couple weeks ago in early January. What can you share about how everything went this year?

Jaime Hartman: We had 29 sessions, five of them were in French, which was really cool. This is the first time we’ve been able to use some multilingual support. We were able to use technology to make this an even bigger resource.

We’ve always had a global community, but now we’re able to integrate, accessing resources in other languages. So the presentations that were delivered in French and those that were delivered in English all had closed captioning that could then be translated by the individual attendee. In their own app, so they could get transcript or get captions in their language of choice.

So that was really exciting this year. And it’s really evolved over the years. Technology has been a big part of that. It started out being all about information and now it’s much more about community and connection.

Mickey Trescott: I’ve attended a lot of summits over the years and I think this one, I have to give you a big high five for just adapting with the technology and using it because I have never seen a summit that is adapted into all the languages for anyone, especially for free. I love that you integrated that and are working on making it accessible to everyone.

[00:26:35] Standout Talks and Trends

Mickey Trescott: So from your perspective as the host, Jamie, what were some of the standout talks or themes that really resonated with the AIP community this year?

Jaime Hartman: Well, we had a couple cooking demonstrations, those are always my favorite. I love watching people cook. We had the chef from Urban AIP demonstrating some budget friendly cooking techniques, which was awesome.

We also had a sprouting demonstration from one of our coaches over in the Czech Republic, Lucie Šitinová, which was very cool. Every year she’s done something really cool, and this year she shared something new for me, so I learned something there. There were a lot of presentations that touched on nutrient density, but lifestyle is probably even more key.

We had two presentations from the perspective of autoimmune athletes, which is really exciting. One was on sleep and hormones. Several were on how mindset and thought patterns impact the immune system. So we’re really seeing a lot of focus on all of the pieces, not just the diet, but all those other pieces that have so much to do with how we manage autoimmune disease.

Mickey Trescott: I really love that and I tuned into one of the presentations on AIP for athletes. And I think it’s a great expansion because some of our listeners might be in different subsets of the community and just finding the thing that they’re really working on right now, which for me is exercising and integrating that in a way that helps me feel good in my autoimmune body, I found that really helpful.

What do these talks reflect about where you think AIP as a movement is heading?

Jaime Hartman: Well, it’s really like what you were just saying, it’s a lot more expansive in scope, really supportive of people in all life stages. So the idea of both an autoimmune athlete and somebody maybe approaching midlife who’s recognizing that their hormones are impacting them now in a different way.

As a recognition that as we travel through life stages, we always say this, your body is always changing, your life is always changing, and so your implementation of what you learn through AIP is also going to change inevitably. And it’s just a good reminder of the fact that while we do the elimination phase of AIP for a discreet period of time, we’re living in an autoimmune body, forever.

And so there’s always these other pieces that can be addressed and readdressed, and adjusted and tweaked, and dealt with again. And they’re going to continue to be that way.

Mickey Trescott: I love that. And personally I’m very here for the discussion of AIP and autoimmunity and perimenopause and menopause.

Jaime Hartman: Mm-hmm.

Mickey Trescott: Which I was really happy to see a lot of presentations on hormones, but I think that’s going to be a big thing for 2026.

So for anybody listening, saying I’ve totally missed this, what are their options now? Because even though the Summit is done, I know that you’ve got some ways to support them.

Jaime Hartman: Right. So the annual summit happens that first or second week in January every year. But we’ve really recognized that there’s a hunger for more than just that one time dump of information. So we have an ongoing community now that’s part of the AIP Summit, really expanding that from beyond.

But that content that we recorded, we presented everything live and recorded, everything will be available for people we’re going to have three seasonal encores. The first one will start March 19th. So for anybody who’s hearing this now and is like, I really want to check that out, they can mark their calendar for March 19th.

They could also consider maybe becoming a member of our community. There’s a fee for access to the archives, but it does give you access to a lot of information as well as some additional perks. It’s not just a one-time event.

There was a time when we first started this where that was really what people wanted. They wanted to purchase this collection of information and download it, and now it’s more about community. That’s really one of the big things that I see evolving over time as I do this each year, is that it’s much more about that ongoing community now than it is about the individual, like just information dump.

When we think about who the membership is maybe best for, it’s for those people who recognize that maybe they have the knowledge right now, or most of the knowledge they need for their current season of life or their current moment, they may be looking for that to evolve with them over time and get that support from somebody who they know has walked that walk already and can be there with them and support them as they’re going through it.

Mickey Trescott: I love that. And I definitely see a lot more community engagement for the AIP world coming soon because social media used to feel like community, but it really doesn’t feel that way anymore. So I love that you have put this together in a way that people can connect on a deeper level and access that community.

[00:31:23] AIP Certified Coach Program: What It Is and Who It’s For

Mickey Trescott: Another big thing that is coming up is a new enrollment for the AIP Certified Coach program opening on February 11th. Now, our listeners have heard me talk about it but I would love for you to explain it clearly from the angles of both the providers and then patients.

Jaime Hartman: First from the provider perspective. So we have the AIP Certified Coach practitioner training program. It is designed for somebody who already has some kind of what we end up calling a base certification. That’s the lingo that we use, but they’re already a practitioner of some kind.

That might be a practitioner in the conventional medical sense. We’ve had doctors and nurses and physical therapists and dieticians. Those conventional doctors, have taken this program to become AIP Certified Coaches, but also like health coaches like myself or holistic nutritionists or other practitioners of different types. We’ve had fitness professionals, know lots of different people who have some kind of scope of practice where they work with people either exclusively or just as part of their client or patient load that have autoimmune disease.

So that’s who it’s for. And what we teach them is how they can help people use the Autoimmune Protocol themselves. So one of the things I think that we won’t get too deep into the details here, but I think one of the things that you really get when you take our program that’s unique that you, that’s hard to learn on your own is that initial piece of how do you evaluate if your client or patient is a good candidate right now for making those major changes.

And if they are, perhaps not quite ready, how do you help them get ready? I know that’s a big concern that we see a lot, the other side I see somebody who’s done AIP on their own and it was not really presented to them at the best time or the best way.

And so that’s an important skill that our practitioners learn.

Mickey Trescott: Awesome. And then for anybody listening who is interested in hiring an AIP Certified Coach, what can they expect and what does that look like? How do they find that support?

Jaime Hartman: They can expect to get, if they hire an AIP Certified Coach, they expect to get somebody who has that first primary training in whatever their area of expertise is. And then they have that additional training from us that helps them support you in a personalized way.

They are trained and able to help you with troubleshooting, help you investigate what might be going on if you’re not seeing the results from it that you thought you would, if you’re having any difficulties with implementing it or going through the reintroduction process, they can be an invaluable resource there.

Your other question, how can they find an AIP Certified Coach? They can go to our website, AIPCertified.com and look for the link that says ” directory” and they have a listing there of everybody who we have trained who’s currently practicing.

Mickey Trescott: There are practitioners, like Jamie said all over the natural conventional healthcare spectrum and even types of practitioners that you wouldn’t expect mental health, there are occupational therapists, there are physical therapists. So you know, if you have a very specific thing, don’t hesitate to search that directory.

And also a reminder that these are providers all over the world and speaking multiple languages. So of course they took. The program from us in English, but they may speak a different language that you share that, might be easy for you or even a family member.

We will make sure to link everything that we discussed here in the show notes, the summit membership, and those details about the AIP Certified Coach enrollment and directory.

Jamie, thank you so much for everything that you do to support and connect this community.

Jaime Hartman: Thanks for having me. It was an honor to be here.

[00:35:13] Wrap Up and Closing

Mickey Trescott: All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to this very first quarterly community update episode of the Autoimmune Wellness Podcast. My hope is that conversations like these help you feel more connected, not just to that information, but to the people, the research and advocacy efforts that are shaping the autoimmune community right now.

Whether you choose to get involved directly or simply feel just a little more oriented and supported, that connection matters.

I’ll be back next time with a Kitchen Confidence episode where we will get practical and grounded in the day-to-day of autoimmune wellness.

Until then, take care and I’ll see you next time.