Light of the Night Wellness

11/03/2025

I'm super psyched to get into holistic dental health with you guys. This is a field which is truly mind-blowing in terms of it's relevance to whole-body health, and it's honestly heart-breaking that this information is not promoted in mainstream dentistry because it leads to an immense amount of profound human suffering.

We have drastically underestimated the importance of our teeth.

How do we know? Look at how the brain ranks the importance of teeth.

The mouth is hooked into an incredibly complex neural network directly to the brain.

Your teeth are bony imprints of the building blocks your body used to create its architecture. Minerals, nutrients, the immune system, and physical messages all combine to be your pearly whites.

Your teeth stay ALIVE, all through your life, constantly listening to the environment via a hyperconnected network. They sense, heat, cold, pressure, but also, an inner immune system that can invoke a response to heal potential threats (think tooth decay).

Yes, your teeth have an inner ability to heal tooth decay. They contain special SWAT-like cells that invoke an immune response. They require you to eat enough of the fat-soluble vitamins for strong teeth and bones.

Your brain devotes a large proportion of its 12 cranial nerves to the other oral and nasal structures. Pictured here are only the MAIN ones, there are plenty more.

For example, the tongue. If you look at the brain homunculus, it innervates roughly 45% of the cortical space that your brain uses to monitor muscle.

That motor function directly controls your airways, tongue posture allows opening of the throat, sealing the mouth for nasal breathing, and pressing against the palate.

The palate has its own set of nerves, that are heavily based in the parasympathetic autonomic nervous system. This helps to kick off digestive processes, and via the vagus nerve, communicates with your gut (the gut-brain connection). Research also shows bacteria communicate between the gut and brain via a specialized lymphatic system!

In kids, if we harness the tongue-palate connection, they breathe through the nose, and develop a nice wide palate, for straight strong airways and smiles.

10/29/2025

What does your gut say?

I'm now offering visceral manipulation through my craniosacral therapy practice. For so long with bodywork, I made contact with everything but the organs. I focused on bones, muscles, fascia, breath, and the nervous system. But our guts, our bellies, are integral to our health. Our organs perform all the functions that help keep these amazing bodies alive. Where would we be without digestion, nutrient absorption and delivery, and waste removal?

I'm really excited to have a hands on approach to listen and invite motility (movement from the inside) into the heart of our nervous system....our organs. Did you know the enteric nervous system (the nerves within the digestive system) has more neurons than the spinal chord?

Just like our muscles, the small intestine , large intestine, gallbladder, pancreas, liver, gallbladder, stomach, kidneys, heart, and lungs all are wrapped in fascia and can have holding patterns within the organs. Gentle contact can help release this holding and allow for better function of the organs.

Reach out if you would like to schedule a session at 360.460.1491 or book online at ivyphillipsbodyworkandhealing.com

Photo of the nerves of the large intestine from Frank Netter, Atlas of Human Anatomy.

11/05/2024

Howdy folks, hopping on here to tell you about how I'm re-launching my Nutritional Therapy / Wellness career! It's been a while since I've made a long, deep share on social media, but as per usual, this will be another deep sharing of the process of how I live my life, and now, how I work.

Many of you know that, after a lifetime of independent study in the fields of health, nutrition, and wellness, I graduated from my formal training in Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner Training Program with the Nutritional Therapy Association in 2018.

After having my business on hold while serving my primary role as Vincent's stay-at-home parent for the last 4 (almost 5!) years, I've had a lot of time to reconsider how I want to present myself in this role of helping people as a health professional which I am so eager to occupy in earnest again. Now that Vincent is in school for half days 5 days a week, I finally have time to devote to my calling!

When people ask me what I do, what do I tell them? What DO I do as a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (FNTP)?

I balk at how the words "nutritional therapy" are sorely inadequate at describing what I actually do. I decided that I definitely don't want to limit my image to that of "nutrition" because it's really a small part of what I focus on. The term "wellness" is much better suited to describe my broad focus and end-goal with my clients.

When starting a wellness business, choosing a business name is a non-trivial process. I wanted to put more thought into it this go-around than I had when I was initially starting up my business back in 2018.

Eager to just get started, I just called my business "Chelsy Iorio Nutritional Therapy" for being at a loss for another name. I already knew "nutritional therapy" was too limiting, and then my name... my name is kinda bonkers to spell - many of you still don't realize that first letter of my last name is a capital i, not a lowercase L, and it's funny to hear people outside of Pittsburgh (land of crazy Italian last names from which I hail) try to pronounce it.

Okay, so I'll call it "*Something* Wellness". What's that *something*?

I had still been at such a loss for what to call my business. I knew I wanted it to represent what I do and also to represent *me* as I fully ascribe to this aspect of Millennial American culture which emphasizes gushingly meaningful individualistic self-expression.

After brooding over it for years, I only recently landed on a business name which encapsulates the symbolic role I wish to play in my clients' lives and the world at large. I'll tell a short version of the story of how it came to be.

I'll also tell a kinda funny and surprisingly (to me) vulnerable story at the end of this post about a name which I liked but decided it was too weird for those who want to read about it.

THE BUSINESS NAME

As I prepare to share this, I'm sitting here thinking to myself, "Oh, Chelsy, you're such a silly, vulnerable, over-sharing creature." I do feel so silly and vulnerable sharing this, but I love it and it's me. Thanks to those of you who validate my over-sharing by telling me how much my stories touch you.

I have been engaged in a spiritual practice which has become very dear to me, as have the members of the community who I practice with.

My very dear friend, Doug, revealed a spiritual song of sorts, a hymn, that came to him about me, but maybe more accurately about the essence of my being.

It's called "Light of the Night" - the hymn basically acknowledges this quality in me which uses love and compassion to cleanse and illuminate those whom I encounter, leading them out of their darkness. The melody is so sweet and soothing to me, and those who have heard it have echoed as much.

The hymn is actually called "Luz Da Noite" which means "Light of the Night" in Portuguese, and there are some Portuguese lyrics to it. Though I have been learning Portuguese, I don't intend on practicing in Brazil or Portugal, so we're going to falamos Inglês for my business 😉.

Doug said the hymn wanted to be sang slow and soft as a waltz at first and then as a 4x4 upbeat march, which is overly-complicated and unconventional in this spiritual tradition, but that's me, so that is how it is sung. This kind of "more is more" quality really resonates with me and I love it 😂.

I'm posting the lyrics and a video of myself and Doug singing just the hymn together with Doug playing the piano at the bottom of this writing if you'd like to hear it ❤️.

I love this hymn so much, and I'm naming my business after it because, while I don't pretend to be a perfectly loving or compassionate being, I hold this archetype of "Light of the Night" so dear to me as my North Star for my own becoming in this life, and also in my work, which I couldn't possibly separate from my life. I feel like it is who I am at my core, and who I am at my core is who I work to embody more and more each day.

Thus, I have changed the name of my business to:

✨ LIGHT OF THE NIGHT WELLNESS, LLC ✨

FYI, it feels so personal and vulnerable to be doing this! This business name encapsulates how I feel about how I relate to you, my client, in my work: I see myself as a force of healing for those who encounter me in an emotional sense with the love and compassion I (mostly, but not perfectly) occupy in how I approach the world, and also in how I approach my nutritional therapy work.

This is what drives me: I love you! I want to heal you! I want to ease your pain and suffering! I want to see you thrive in all your human glory! I want to use my love and the knowledge my love drives me to pursue to teach you how to heal yourself! I am so enthusiastic about this!

So, in order to achieve this goal, I know that my first step in engaging with you must be to convey to you that I see you where you are and have compassion for you there.

In order for you to succeed at achieving wellness with me as your guide, I know that I need to make you feel safe with me. You need to be able to relax into the process with me by trusting that I will listen to you and that I won't invalidate or judge you. Nothing can move forward if we don't start there.

Then, I consider it my job to retain your trust by showing you that I am a capable and diligent guide throughout the process and that you are in good hands on this ride we are traveling together towards your health.

I will be chipping away at elaborating on my answer to the question of "What do you do as a Functional Nutritional Therapy PRACTITIONER (FNTP)?" in the coming days to give you all a better introduction to my work so that you can decide if working with me might be something you're interested in.

In addition to announcing my new business name, this post is serving as a soft opening for my business to start taking clients! I've been taking clients *really* casually up until this point the whole time my business has been in hibernation, but it's been messy. Now that I have ample time and have spent the last few months getting all my systems in place, I'm actually ready for the hoards of suffering, weary souls to bring me their woes and worries to soothe.

I want to be your LIGHT in the night of your suffering to guide you to a more illuminated place of WELLNESS. I want you to be well and I would be so honored to be a part of helping you find the light of your own wellness. I am so excited to be stepping into this role for my community.

This got really long so I'm continuing more of my short novel on how and why I do what I do in another post!

For now, please enjoy the lyrics and sound of the hymn which inspired my new business name. It really is such a beautiful song.

Stay tuned for more from Light of the Night Wellness, and go ahead and give my page a like and a follow. If I've helped you with anything over the years, please leave a comment or review about your experience!

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LUZ DA NOITE (LIGHT OF THE NIGHT)

Luz da noite, light of the night
Soothe and comfort
With calmness and firmness
Here in my heart

Luz da noite vem aqui (light of the night comes here)
Para limpar (To cleanse)
Para perdoar (To forgive)
Para luminar (To illuminate)

Luz da noite, healing light
Light of my heart
Be with me now
With all of your love

Luz da noite f**a aqui (light of the night stays here)
Para limpar (To cleanse)
Para perdoar (To forgive)
Para luminar (To illuminate)

Luz da noite, guiding light
Light divine
Light of mine
Light of my heart

Luz da noite vive aqui (light of the night lives here)
Para limpar (To cleanse)
Para perdoar (To forgive)
Para luminar (To illuminate)

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Okay, so the kind of funny story about the weird business name that I couldn't bring myself to use:

Many years ago, before I even went to Nutritional Therapy school, I was in a women's group with Heidi Mattern (it was so lovely). Heidi prompted us on a creative writing exercise in which we were to write a poem about ourselves as though we *are* a thing that we feel we embody the qualities of. I am obsessed with food and healing, so naturally my mind went to feeling like I embody or aspire to embody being a healing broth 😂 🤦‍♀️. To add nuance and meaning to it, I qualified this image of myself as a "catalytic cauldron of healing broth" - "catalytic" because I want to catalyze healing in people; "cauldron" for the quality of also being the magical, mystical, and overtly witchy vessel in which the healing substance is alchemized.

I ran the business name idea "Catalytic Cauldron Wellness" to a bunch of people, and, while some people liked it and understood what I was going for, I mostly got 😬 cringe responses because it was either too witchy, or it reminded them too much of a catalytic converter on a car 😂. Being the linguistical literalist that I am, I was annoyed by the push back, but ultimately agreed that it was just a little too weird for the general public. So, while I am fully embracing myself as Light of the Night, I am also secretly stirring my inner catalytic cauldron of healing broth to heal you all behind the scenes. 😘

Stay tuned for more half-baked though wildly enthusiastic ramblings about what I do and why and how much I love it.

08/29/2019

Aside from taking supplements, the best way to get omega-3's is by eating wild and pasture raised meat and fish, and plant-based sources like nuts, flax, and chia seeds.

Why wild and pasture raised? We are what we eat, and we are what our food eats: Conventionally farmed animals are fed primarily grains, generally corn, which has a MUCH higher ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids (~50:1!) than wild-foraged food. The necessary ratio of omega-3 to 6 for humans is 1:1.

Elevated omega-6 fatty acids contribute to inflammatory diseases like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, three of the most common modern causes of death in the western world. This is a big deal!

Being a ratio, this also suggests that we can maintain a better "balance" of 3 to 6 in our diets by avoiding foods which have an excess of omega-6, aside from just amping up omega-3 intake, which can be difficult to do with the typically astronomical omega-6 ratios in the modern diet.

As Chris explains in the article, "... the more omega-3 fat you eat, the less omega-6 will be available to the tissues to produce inflammation. Omega-6 is pro-inflammatory, while omega-3 is neutral. A diet with a lot of omega-6 and not much omega-3 will increase inflammation. A diet of a lot of omega-3 and not much omega-6 will reduce inflammation."

Some of the worst perpetrators of omega-6 overload are VEGETABLE OILS such as canola, soy, cottonseed, sunflower, safflower, sesame, peanut, and corn oils, all of which range from 2:1 (canola) omega-6:omega-3 to 75:1 (safflower)! (see the chart of these ratios in the comments)

Yes, vegetable oils actually contribute to the CAUSE of heart disease, which they have erroneously been purported to be the cure of. This fact is becoming more prominent in the conventional literature and will continue to do so in the years to come.

So are we supposed to go back to eating butter and lard instead of vegetable oil and margarine? Absolutely! Especially if it's pasture-raised! Not only do pasture-raised animal fats have better omega ratios, they also contain vital nutrients like vitamins A, D & K which help the body absorb minerals. Apply liberally on those veggies.

Locally in Port Townsend, we have several sources of pasture-raised lard from local pig farmers. I don't know of a good local source of pasture-raised butter, but the best deal by far is Kerrygold butter from Costco. Normally it's like 5 bucks for half a pound, but Costco sells it for like 8 bucks for a pound and a half. I stock up every time I go.

By studying macrophages isolated from mice and humans, researchers found that the omega-3 fatty acids activated the autophagy and specif**ally affected some proteins that transform the signals from the environment. Furthermore, the researchers found that omega-3 fatty acids dampened many inflammator...

08/06/2019

"The immune system determines levels of inflammation in the gut that are constantly shaping the way we digest food—how many calories get absorbed, and how many nutrients simply pass through."

Inflammation plays a critical role in determining how we digest food, and it’s only now starting to reveal itself.

06/24/2019

This is a great example of why nutrition matters!

Before you even watch this video, what's your first guess as to why muscles get tired with use? You'd probably guess that it has to do with energy, right?

While ATP (aka energy) is a limiting factor to muscle contraction, the limiting factors that come before that are MINERALS! - specif**ally in this case, it's sodium (Na), potassium (K) and calcium (CA) - though I'd be remiss not to mention that mineral balance is a complex game of cofactors. That is to say that simply consuming calcium, for example, does not mean that you can absorb and utilize it properly.

Cofactors like vitamins a, d, k, and c as well as other minerals AND body processes such as adequate stomach acid production all have sway over calcium levels in the body and even amongst various tissues.

I digress.

This is such a great example of why nutrition matters because it highlights the necessity to make sure we OBTAIN NUTRITION FROM FOOD so that the various functions our bodies perform can happen.

Almost everything your body does utilizes some nutritional element to achieve some task using the electrical and morphological chemical uniqueness of each nutrient. For example, the electrical charges associated with sodium and potassium are what make it possible for the muscle to contract. Other nutrients are used as building blocks for the tissues, themselves, etc.

The one thing this video doesn't mention as a limiting factor is the body's stores of the nutrients mentioned. Yes, with time and rest your MUSCLES can be replenished of these minerals from the stores located in other parts of the body via the circulatory system, but what if your muscles are deficient because your stores of these minerals are low? Then no amount of rest will relieve your muscle fatigue and you have a problem!

Indeed, undue muscle fatigue can be a sign of calcium and/or potassium deficiency (sodium deficiencies are rare in our society but can occur - and this is a serious problem). The possibility of deficiency of these important minerals highlights the importance of choosing foods which are nutrient-dense as well as maintaining the body's ability to execute proper digestion and absorption.

We need to think of every pang of hunger as an OPPORTUNITY TO OBTAIN NUTRITION rather than just an excuse to eat something yummy but devoid of nutrients. While food should be delicious and enjoyable, we need to remember that the ultimate purpose of eating food is to nourish our bodies with vitamins, minerals, fats, proteins, and other necessary components so that our bodies can function optimally and we can live healthy, happy lives free of disease and dysfunction.

05/07/2019

This is just one small reason among many why properly preparing grains, legumes, pulses and seeds is vitally important for extracting the nutrition contained in these foods, which is not necessarily available to us as humans.

If you think of a seed as wanting to become a plant only when the conditions are right, we can see why seeds keep their nutrition out of reach to organisms which may try to ingest them while they wait to become plants. Seeds utilize enzyme inhibitors and other phytochemicals which prevent their nutrition from being accessed by other organisms. This includes humans!

The human digestive tract cannot adequately neutralize these anti-nutrient compounds, and so eating seed foods which are not properly prepared means that we are essentially eating relatively empty calories, even when we're eating whole grains!

When you consider that each pang of hunger is a finite opportunity to obtain nutrition for the body to function properly, proper food preparation becomes vitally important for human health.

The nutritional analyses conducted on these foods tell of a storehouse of nutrition contained within, but they miss the fact that we humans cannot access this nutrition! This is not so much the case for herbivores who have a greater capacity to specif**ally digest these foods by virtue of their enzymatic potential and ability to ferment these foods in their many stomachs. Unlike these herbivores who were gifted with such digestive capacity, we humans were blessed with great minds with which to establish technologies to survive. When we ignore the technological wisdom of our ancestors, we devolve as a species.

Remember, human: you are not simply what you EAT; rather, you are actually what you DIGEST and ABSORB.

We would be wise to abide by the knowledge of our ancestors who, over millennia, learned how to use these foods with greater nutritional success by processing them properly. Our ancestors knew that nutrient density of foods is tantamount to the health of the body. If we don't heed this wisdom, it can be argued that we are better off not consuming these foods at all.

Are your whole grains and seeds good sources of niacin? That depends on you prepare them! Whole grains have 80-90% of their niacin locked up, and seeds have ...

01/09/2019

Gut bacteria regulate activation of vitamin A, having far-reaching effects on the immune system, namely autoimmune diseases like inflammatory bowel disease. Autoimmune conditions can be improved by improving vitamin A status, gut dysbiosis notwithstanding.

New research illuminates the vital role that moderate levels of vitamin A have in preventing the immune system from attacking the bacteria in our guts.

08/29/2018

08/20/2018

Nutritional Therapy can help!

Patients undergoing a panic attack (PA) or a hyperventilation attack (HVA) are sometimes admitted to emergency departments (EDs). Reduced serotonin level is known as one of the causes of PA and HVA. Serotonin is synthesized from tryptophan. For the synthesis of serotonin, vitamin B6 (Vit B6) and iro...