The Advisor with Stacey Chillemi

Eating disorder recovery keeps failing at the same point, and every relapse feels like proof of weak character. It is not. Willpower was never the mechanism. Genetics, stress physiology, habit, and a nervous system wired by early trauma override logic long before you get to choose. Paige Gordon lived with bulimia for 22 years, found recovery, and now sits on the board of the National Eating Disord...

A surgeon who wants to keep you off the operating table could change how you handle pain for good. Dr. Ethan Kellum treats pro athletes and everyday patients with regenerative medicine, and he shares what he wishes everyone with chronic pain had known before saying yes to surgery or a prescription. He also covers how PRP and stem cells work, why inflammation and stress keep pain going, and how mov...

Most fertility patients go through months of stimulation cycles before anyone mentions there might be a simpler way. In vitro maturation (IVM) skips the hormones, the daily monitoring, and much of the cost — and it works.  Dr. Sherman Silber, one of the world's foremost reproductive microsurgeons, explains who IVM is right for, how it grew out of ovarian tissue preservation, and why breakthro...

That BP reading that spiked at the doctor's office? It might not mean what you think. Registered nurse and naturopath Joel Polley breaks down what your blood pressure numbers really mean. Why stress, sleep, caffeine, salt, and even fear can push them up, and what you can do today to bring them down. If you've ever worried genetics doomed you or that medication is the only answer, this conversation...

Another Monday, another plan, and by Thursday the takeout is ordered, and the blame lands where it always does: on you. Losing weight was never meant to be a lifelong fight, and the fact that it became one says more about the industry than about your willpower. Lean and healthy is the body's default setting; modern life just switched it off. Stavros Mastrogiannis, a Body Reset Specialist with thir...

Parental burnout is the drive home from practice with a headache, a kid in the back seat who stopped smiling, and the fear that you are still not doing enough. You did everything right, and your child is more anxious anyway. That is not your failure. Research shows the extra hour and the extra team add nothing and cause harm. Maggie Vaughan, psychotherapist and author of Beyond Perfect, helps fami...

Doctors could not explain what was happening to her mind. Grace King came out of a brain injury, a stroke, and a steroid overdose into years of psychosis and confusion, and she started writing everything down. Eight years of notebooks later, she has a great deal to say about scripture, free will, and why she believes obedience rather than belief alone was the missing piece. She also opens up about...

Your body has been warning you. Most women just get good at ignoring it. It's not failing you; it's asking for your attention. Michelle Ford, MPH, founder of Navigating Your World Academy, explains why physical wellness is the first dimension to signal something is off — and why symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, and headaches are rarely the real problem. She digs into chronic stress patterns, horm...

Autoimmune disease isn't a misfiring immune system — it's a brain that lost the ability to regulate one. Years of chronic stress, poor sleep, gut imbalance, and hormonal shifts can dysregulate the hypothalamus to the point where the immune system starts attacking your own tissue. Deborah Maragopoulos, a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner with 30 years in neuro-immune-endocrinology, explains...

Root cause questions rarely come up when a scan comes back clean. You are handed a prescription for the fatigue, the flares, the dizziness, and sent home with nothing explained. The check engine light gets covered, not answered. Dr. Anthony Salzarulo, a holistic health consultant and homeopath of more than thirty years, works from a different premise: cells malfunction for two reasons, and both ar...

Male infertility is a factor in half of all fertility struggles — yet men are rarely the first one tested, and almost never the first one supported. If you or your partner has been quietly carrying that weight, this episode is the conversation you needed years ago. Dr. Sherman Silber, one of the world's leading reproductive microsurgeons, explains what a proper male fertility evaluation actually l...

Heart transplant lists hold twelve thousand names, and for three and a half years he was one of them, losing strength while the woman he loved watched it happen. Illness usually pulls couples apart, and nobody teaches you how to stay close through it. Theirs got closer, on purpose, using something they had practiced for twelve years before he got sick. Gaylen Wilson is eight years post-transplant...

Some lives are built to last — Victor Bretting's runs eight generations deep in Texas soil. A childhood shaped by a missing father, a tireless mother, and nearly 50 years in concrete construction gave him a masterclass in accountability, perseverance, and what legacy actually means. In this episode, Victor gets honest about failed marriages, emotional walls, and the realization that healing starts...

Emotional literacy is not something you teach a child with a talk. It is something they absorb by watching you, every time you name a feeling out loud, own a mistake, or sit with an uncomfortable emotion instead of burying it. Dr. Deana Plaskon, licensed clinical mental health expert and author of Bella and Bird the Emotion Explorers, explains why the adult in the room is always the real lesson. W...

Hydrogen therapy is one of the fastest-growing areas in health science, and most of the products being sold are missing the single component that makes it work. Pure hydrogen is electrically neutral — it cannot neutralize free radicals or stop oxidative damage on its own. George Wiseman, founder of Eagle Research and nearly four decades into his research on Brown's Gas, explains the third gas his...

You are not overreacting. You may just be remembering. Trauma-informed life coach and author Ernest Ellender, PhD, explains why a small moment can trigger a large emotional response, and how to catch the pattern before it takes over. He unpacks how childhood stress shows up in adult confidence, work habits, relationships, and the guilt that follows rest.  -------------------------------------...

Gut skin connection explains the mirror moment so many women know: doing everything right and still seeing dull skin, redness, and hair in the drain. The problem is not the products. Ayurveda teaches that the gut whispers while the skin and scalp scream, and a dysregulated nervous system shows up on your face first. Mangala D'Sa, an Ayurvedic practitioner and founder of Chasma Skin, spent years ch...

Forty dark, urgent paintings, finished in a rush. Days later, the diagnosis. Emotional healing is usually sold as talking it through, and that leaves out everyone who cannot find the words. There is another route, and it runs through the body. Brett Ashby, an Australian performance artist and cancer survivor who paints portraits while riding a skateboard, has spent a decade showing what expression...

Weight loss that won't budge isn't a willpower problem — your hypothalamus is defending a weight your body thinks is safe, and every diet you've tried may have made that defense stronger. Deborah Maragopoulos, a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner with 30 years in neuroendocrinology, breaks down leptin resistance, the cortisol-insulin-thyroid triad, why GLP-1 medications only push one button...

You are not overwhelmed because you are weak. You are overwhelmed because you care. Sustainability leader Paula Rose Castronova joins The Advisor to reframe eco-anxiety as a signal rather than a flaw. She walks through a practical path from fear to agency built on awareness, acceptance, and action. Along the way, she connects burnout and disconnection to planetary strain, showing why the climate c...

He spent fourteen years pretending he was fine. Dave Mowry lost his business, his stability, and nearly his family to bipolar disorder and severe anxiety before a stand-up comedy class turned everything around. Today he performs, teaches comedy to others living with mental illness, and writes the books people say tell their own story back to them. Dave and Stacey talk about what those lost years a...

You feel most like yourself everywhere except home, and that contrast is getting impossible to ignore. Leaving a toxic relationship rarely starts with one big moment. For Sammie DeMarco, it started when concerts, conventions, and friends reminded her what peace actually felt like, while the criticism and tension at home kept wearing her down. She breaks down the trauma bond that kept her stuck, ho...

The stricter the rules, the louder the cravings — and Dr. Theresa DeLorenzo has spent 25 years proving it. A registered dietitian, doctor of clinical nutrition, and yoga therapist, she unpacks why restriction backfires, how the binge cycle forms, and what your cravings are actually asking for. Drawing from her own experience with weight pressure in competitive gymnastics, she explains how athletes...

Medicare changed in 2026, and the pharmacy counter is where most people find out. Two thousand dollars before the medication is handed over, or a doctor who quietly left the network. None of that is your fault. The premium is the least useful number on the page, and the line items underneath it are where the money disappears. Sandi Crawford has spent nearly twenty years as a licensed agent guiding...

Hydrogen water benefits extend far beyond what most people are using them for — and most people are only using one of the six ways this technology works. If you have been following the science of Brown's Gas and wondering what to actually do with it, this episode is for you. George Wiseman, founder of Eagle Research and a 40-year researcher on Brown's Gas, walks through every protocol in plain lan...