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With all the hustle and bustle of our daily life, we tend to overlook elements that can take toll of our health over time until it’s right there staring us in our face. Maria Aparis grew up in the entertainment industry. She was in the midst of all this splendor, going from fabulous red carpet events to hosting amazing parties, and then she got sick. Maria shares how she discovered how to heal herself from an autoimmune disease that almost left her shattered. She shares the wonders of this essential oil and hopes this can also bring healing to the hopeless and broken like she was before.
We have Maria Aparis. Maria developed revolutionary hands-on protocol that is named the Essential Gut Technique, which is a combination of massage, energy point triggers, reading techniques and essential oils. She created a certification program certifying students across the nation. She has a new bestselling book out on Amazon called The Essential Gut Awakening. Maria has provided luxury spa services to everyone from Academy award-winning celebrities, producers and directors, to Grammy-winning recording artists, sports celebrities, as well as major film studios and Fortune 500 corporations. She has been featured on ABC’s Eye on LA, CBS’ Lisa’s It List, KTLA Morning News, FOX 11 News, 9 on the Town, On Air with Ryan Seacrest, Entertainment Tonight and much more. She is also certified in Kundalini Yoga, meditation, Reiki, massage therapy. She is a raw food chef, a crystal and gem stone healer and fengshui. She has also healed herself from her own autoimmune disease by the protocol she has developed. Please welcome, Maria Aparis.
Listen To The Episode Here
The Essential Gut Awakening with Maria Aparis
EM 92 | Essential Oil
The Essential Gut Awakening: Mastering Hashimoto’s and Other Autoimmune Diseases
We have Maria Aparis. She wrote an Amazon bestselling book, The Essential Gut Awakening. Maria, how are you?
I’m so great, thank you. How are you doing?
I’m great. I’m very excited to have you on the podcast. Your story is one of the reasons why we have this podcast. You healed yourself from an autoimmune disease. You’ve had such an amazing journey and you even wrote a book about it and it’s a bestselling book. I encourage everybody to go out and get that now. Maria, I’m excited to have you on the podcast.
I’m excited to be here because it’s such a hot topic right now. The guts and autoimmune and empowerment for women to get our voice back.
Where are you from originally?
I’m originally from Southern California.
What were you into growing up?
At the age of nine, I started modeling professionally and I grew up in the entertainment industry. I was a print model. I did lots of cartoon voices, commercials, tons of stuff as a kid growing up and kept in that same industry. I started a spa in 2001. It’s called Spa On Location and it catered to the entertainment industry. I was going from amazing red-carpet events and hosting these amazing parties and then I got sick.
What was going on then? When did you start feeling sick and what was that? What happened there?
It started with some initial brain fog and some fatigue. It was like, “Where did I put my keys?” That type of thing where you don’t think about it but in retrospect, I would maybe have just put them down somewhere and forgot.
That’s a scary thing. Walking into a room and forgetting why you walked in there and stuff like that.
Those things start to happen more and more. What I noticed, because I had been a size two my entire life, was that I had put on five pounds. Five pounds for me as a 5’3” person, that’s a lot. Especially when I was doing print work professionally, every pound matters. I was like, “I’m not fitting in my clothes anymore.” I went to my initial general practitioner and asked him, “Is there something that’s going on with my body?” He said in the most patronizing tone you could possibly get and so dismissive. He was like, “Maria, you’re just getting older. You need to exercise more.” Hearing that, I was like, “If that’s it, I can do it.” What I didn’t know is that I had a very severe level of iron deficiency. I was 0.3 and I’m sure you know exactly what that means. That’s very low. He told me to exercise myself to death. That’s what his advice was. Going through all of these different specialists and doctors, Western medical, I went to naturopaths even.
The one key that seemed to be missing with everything that they were giving me was absorption. It wasn’t until I found supplements that were nano-enhanced, which means water soluble if you want to break that down into the simplest terms. They were getting, for the first time, absorbed into my bloodstream, into my body where it was able to accept the nutrients and then I started to feel better. This happened with the process of eliminating every single thing that everybody had given me and I went into essential oils.
How long was the journey between your going to all these doctors until you started doing the essential oils and everything that got you better?
I want to say about five to five and a half years.
That’s a long time to be dealing with it. Was it just brain fog? What else was going on?
I wish that were the case. Brain fog was one of them. It seemed that every time a doctor tried to give me something different, it would cause another reaction in my body. One doctor gave me a prescription that caused me to have tachycardia. It’s almost so bad where your heart feels like it’s expanding through your chest and beating so hard. It feels like a heart attack would feel. That was one and another one was a doctor had given me progesterone cream. She told me that I had an overabundance of estrogen in my body. Instead of leveling out the estrogen, she told me to put in progesterone. The progesterone cream that she gave me caused me to have the most severe menstrual cycles that you could ever even imagine. It was as if my ovaries were going through a meat grinder. This was happening every ten days for fourteen days straight. On top of anemia, you can imagine how bad it was. My hair was falling out in clumps. I had vertigo so bad that all I could do was just lay there and have the room just spin.
The myriad of symptoms got so bad that it was almost paralyzing in a way because you can’t function. The icing on the cake, at least it’s what I explained in my book, was when I went to the grocery store. I got groceries. I went back to my car and I didn’t realize why I was there in the parking lot. I had forgotten. I went back into the grocery store to try to find out if it would jog my memory. The guy at the cash register said, “You forgot your groceries. I wondered where you went.” I took my groceries. I went back to my car and I said, “The doctor did say I was getting older and maybe I’m getting Alzheimer’s.” I just fully lost it in my car. I was like, “This is my life now.” A part of the process of going through all of this was listening to my first instinct. My first intuition was that something was off in my body and I went for help. I didn’t get the right kind of help.
Was there any diagnosis yet of an autoimmune disease or not yet? You’re still trying to figure out what’s going on.
No, not yet. I went to see this naturopath and I felt like at nine months after I had started seeing her, and this is test after test. Right when I was ready to give up because I had just spent so much money, I was like, “This is my life.”
Were you spending on blood work, MRIs and other testing?
EM 92 | Essential Oil
Essential Oil: The gut is the Grand Central in the system. It holds the key to all wellness.
Yes, testing had to be done every three weeks because every time she would give me a supplement, she needed to know if it was working. In retrospect, if somebody comes to me and they say they have the kind of symptoms that I had, I immediately ask them, “Have you had your self-tested for Hashimoto’s autoimmune disease?” I’m convinced that I must have paid off her car or her second house or something in those nine months. Nothing was working and I could spot how she’s like that now and I’m not even a naturopath. She says, “I have a hunch that it might be something else.” After nine months of this testing and taking her supplements and all of that, she has a hunch. We take an additional test and she comes back and she says, “You’ve tested positive for the antibodies of Hashimoto’s.” I was like, “Great, now we have a diagnosis. I can work with that.” I started doing the things that she said to do even more so because now she said she could help me because she has a diagnosis. That’s not the case.
Eventually, it drained everything. It drained my energy. It drained my bank account. I said, “That’s it. I can’t do this anymore.” At the time, I owned a spa in Santa Monica and one of the ladies came in who was trying to get a job as a massage therapist. She asked if she could use an essential oil on my back. Honestly at that point in my life, you could have used WD-40. I said, “Just do it, let’s get this done. I need to be calm,” that type of thing. She used this oil and the second I breathed it in, it went right into my limbic system. Because I was at maximum adrenal fatigue and collapsed, it went into my limbic system and caused my body to experience the first calm in my life for a long time.
Do you remember which one it was?
It was a combination or a custom blend. I know it had cypress and some peppermint. It had some grounding earth oils in it.
Were you shocked?
I was completely shocked.
That’s wild. You’ve been feeling awful for five years and you just take a smell of this oil and it almost jilted your system a little bit.
I said, “Whatever that is, I need to find it.” I began researching essential oils. I discovered that clove is high antioxidant and lemongrass has a high anti-inflammatory response component to it. Then frankincense is the epitome of all oils. I began putting these on my thyroid every single day. I, also at that time, got certified as a Reiki healer. I began holding my throat and just saying, “Heal,” and sending it love and everything. Somebody in this particular company said, “We have supplements that have essential oils in them.” I was like, “No way. Absolutely not. I’m not taking any more supplements. Forget about it.” They said, “The essential oils are in them and you seem to be doing well with the essential oils. Are you sure you don’t want to try them?” I seriously fought against it and I’m like, “I’m going to do this.”
I tried them for a while and about three months later, this tumor formed on my throat about the size of a golf ball. I never felt threatened by this for some reason and this goes back to my intuition. It felt as if the toxins were being drawn out of my body for reasons. Every time I took a shower in the morning, I would hold my throat, especially that little tumor. A little golf ball is what I called it. I was like, “I don’t know why you’re here and why you showed up, but it’s going to be the most amazing thing ever and thank you.” I sent it so much love and I told it, “When we’re ready, I’m just going to swallow you and poop you out and call it a day.”
I kept that mindset. I kept that energy. I kept using the essential oils and I started to feel better. I started to feel like I was about 65% better. Then somebody reached out and said, “You know about hemp oil, right?” I’ve been researching cannabinoid oils. I haven’t tried it yet because I’m not looking for a THC. I don’t want the psychoactive effect. Trust me, I’m glad to have my brain back. I was like, “Let’s try it.” I tried this particular brand. I loved it because it was nano-enhanced. That was like taking a bowling ball, the large molecule and crushing it down to a grain of sand and then getting it into your body. The uptake was instant for me. Within about three days of taking this, I had clarity, focus and energy. I had the best sleep of my life. I liked it so much. I was like, “How do I become a part of this company?” This rocks and for the first time in all those years, I got my life back.
You probably never thought you were going to get back ever again.
No, this was crazy. When I started researching, where it all came from was the absorbency. We want to go back to why were the other supplements working and that keyword was absorption. Why is it so important to get that absorption into the guts? The guts, from what I discovered, was Grand Central. The gut holds the key to all wellness.
I think they’re saying 90% of our immune system is in the gut, maybe even more.
Through this discovery, I was like, “What if I start putting the hemp oil and the essential oil on my guts? Let’s see how that absorption works.” Even more so, I’m taking Zumba classes again and all these things started to come back into my life where I didn’t have the energy before. Through the gut, being a massage therapist and a Kundalini yoga instructor, I developed a protocol for the guts on how to massage the guts. How many times have you gotten a massage?
Plenty of times. I love it.
EM 92 | Essential Oil
Essential Oil: Some doctors are definitely open to the natural side. Others don’t even want to hear about it.
How many times have they touched your guts?
Never.
I developed a protocol. It’s called the Essential Gut Technique and it is specifically for bodyworkers, health givers, anyone, even you could do it on yourself. It’s a protocol that you use to help stimulate that colon flow to move what’s stuck energetically and also physically. I have helped people remove parasite nests the size of cantaloupes that were lodged in their ascending colon. Their skin has cleared up from psoriasis and rashes and stuff like that. I’m not saying this is the cure all. There’s no cure-all. There’s no one-size-fits-all for anybody. These are definitely tools that I wish I would’ve had years ago. I’m in a lot of groups and I’m seeing that doctors are super resistant to even having the test done. I don’t know if you found that, but if you go and request your antibodies test or TPO, a lot of doctors say, “You don’t need to have that or I’m not doing that.” I’m super passionate about finding doctors like you that want to work together as a team and set ego aside. This is not about you not knowing how to read those signs.
There are definitely some primary care physicians that are like that. Not all of them, but there are definitely good doctors in all those fields. You just have to work a little harder because some are definitely open to the natural side, others don’t even want to hear about it.
I think functional medical doctors seem to be the most open to it. They’re great. In fact, one wrote a foreword for my book. He is totally into being your partner in wellness and finding out, like a detective, what’s going on. The tests that you need to take are saliva, blood, hair, urine and stool. You want to find out what’s going on in your microbiome because if that’s where the key to wellness is, that’s where we should start.
Is your protocol mainly for autoimmune disorders? What if it’s just an IBS or something like that where it’s not labeled as autoimmune? It sounds like you’ve definitely helped that too.
Anyone and everyone who has a gut can benefit from the Essential Gut Technique. It helps clear out all of the toxins. It helps whatever detox process you’re doing or going through. I have my favorites obviously, but the detox process in itself can be emotionally detoxing. We call that quantum technology. It’s been where we’re holding things in ourselves. We have that stuck in our gut. We have that stuck in our energy and we want to move it out. This protocol, anyone can get certified. There’s no prerequisite for that. Anyone can do it and anyone can perform it. It’s non-invasive. It feels like a nice belly rub, but there’s more to it than that.
You combine the essential oils topically and the hemp oil. Are the supplements part of that as well?
No, the supplements are not.
The protocol is the essential oils and hemp oil together.
Yes, it’s actually a formulation that I did. It’s called Belly Awakening.
You have that specific. That’s perfect. You incorporated it all.
I did. I wanted to make it super easy because like I said, when you have brain fog and you have vertigo, you cannot sit there and search all these different places. Everything is in here in terms of where to find everything. The book gives you websites where to find these tools and how to order because I wish I would have had that years and years ago.
What was the timeframe? When did you slowly start to reintroduce all these amazing things back into your life? As you said, you were able to do Zumba again. From being at your rock bottom to taking these supplements, what was the process like when you were able to enjoy things again? What was the timeframe? Was it right away or was it up and down process until you finally got there?
It was more of an up and down process. I initially felt the energy. I got my energy back. However, I had to build my blood back up. That’s why it’s not a one size fits all. Doctors would always say, “Go walk. You need to walk every day.” I can barely walk up a step, one step without trying to gasp for air. I would never say that to anyone. It’s not a one size fits all, everybody needs to walk for fifteen minutes every day.
EM 92 | Essential Oil
Essential Oil: We always want to come from a space of how we can help.
The reason I asked you was that true healing definitely does take time. You have the people out there that will take that product. They use it once and be like, “I didn’t feel anything. It must not work.” You got to stick with something to know if it’s working or not. You’ve got to give everything a shot because sometimes it doesn’t work right away. Some of my best patients didn’t feel anything for two months down the road.
I’m so glad you brought that up because I have found that the more toxic a person is in terms of their environments. Do they use sprays and cleansers and stuff like that? Are they constantly breathing in toxins? Are they exposed to environmental toxins? I have found that those people have a harder time getting the supplements into their system. I feel like it’s almost a barrier. The body is saying like, “No, we’re still maxed out in our toxins that we’re not taking anything more.” I have found that the more toxic a person is, the more we have to start out with just the basics. Are you drinking enough water every day? Let’s change just your food right now.
You might not have to reinvent the wheel right away. Just figure out the basics first.
I’m not a huge advocate for pushing products on people. I like to start out with what’s the minimum invasive thing that we can do to start that process? Keep them more hydrated. You want to hydrate your body. If it comes down to that, then week number two. We go, “Did that work? Now how are you feeling?” It is a process. However, the response with me in the essential oils was instant. The response with me in the hemp oil was three days. I felt the shift.
At what point where you’re like, “I need to write a book about this and share this message with the world?” A lot of people get healed and they’re like, “I’m good now. I will continue living life.” What made you be like, “I have to share this with the world?”
My parents are the most giving people I can ever imagine. They have always taught me to be open in giving and sharing. One of the reasons was because I wanted to share this information. I kept seeing many of my friends, colleagues and even strangers suffering. I couldn’t, with a clear conscience, let that happen. I’ve always wanted to come from a space of, “How can I help? How can I be of service?” That’s how I grew up. With that in mind, that’s imprinted in my DNA. It basically uses my intuition and downloads it. I completely shared my story without any helpers. I didn’t worry about punctuation or grammar or anything like that. I just wrote.
I feel that it was a co-creation with the universe. It was like this book had its own energy from the very beginning. She wanted to be released on a certain date. She wanted to have certain components in it, that held it back from being released earlier. She was the boss. I was the facilitator of what this book wanted. I feel that that’s one of the reasons why it went to number one on its first day. It has momentum. It has an energy that wants to help people.
Aside from reading the book and everything, people with autoimmune diseases, do you coach people through that? Can people contact you saying they have this going on and you take them on as clients?
Yes, absolutely. I am a health and wellness mentor. I’m not a doctor, but I mentor clients and we work through the process together. I also have functional medical doctors, nutritionists, and chiropractors like you that I can recommend that people go see to get their testing. You can go to my website and get a free fifteen-minute consultation. I also have a gut course on the Ascension Academy Online. It’s called the Total Gut Masteryand it’s a six-week online course that tells you about your guts, how to cleanse it safely. The hemp oil, it explains the endocannabinoid system. It’s fully loaded with tons of information. I’m trying to give you as many tools as I possibly can.
You’re doing a great job. What is one piece of advice that you’ve taken with you over the years that’s resonated with you and that you would like to share with the audience?
My one piece of advice is going to be to listen to your gut. Trust your gut and in fact, I have a free gift for everyone. If you go to my website, MariaAparis.com or EssentialGut.com, you can download my free eBook. It’s called Trust Your Gut. It’s all about your intuition, your knowing, your being able to listen to what your body’s trying to communicate to you.
Maria, thank you so much. It sounds like the book has taken off. I’m going to get a copy myself. I can’t wait to read it. I would love to have you back on anytime to see how everything’s going. Give us an updated version if you find out anything new.
I would be honored. Thank you so much for having me.
You’re welcome. Thank you, Maria.
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