In this episode of Coming Home to Ourselves, Denise Elysa sits down with naturopathic doctor Lisa Ghent, ND, founder of Collaborative Wellness in Ladner, BC. Dr. Lisa has built her practice around what she calls sorting through complex cases, people who have seen countless specialists and still don’t have a clear picture of what’s happening in their bodies. It’s a population Denise knows intimately, both through her own decades of navigating complex chronic illness and through her work supporting others living with POTS, ME/CFS, hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and related conditions.
What emerged in their conversation wasn’t a tidy list of answers. It was two practitioners, trained in very different systems, describing the same interconnected body from two different angles, and finding they largely agreed.
A note before we go further: Dr. Lisa Ghent is a licensed naturopathic doctor, and the naturopathic information in this post reflects her clinical perspective and training, not medical advice from Denise. Denise is not a medical professional. Nothing in this post should be taken as personal medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have questions about your own health, please consult a qualified medical professional.
Why a Diagnosis Isn’t the Same as a Treatment Plan
One of the first things Dr. Lisa named in the conversation is a pattern she sees constantly with complex chronic illness. Patients spend years pursuing a diagnosis, and once they finally receive one, it can feel like the work is done. In reality, the label is only useful if it informs what happens next.
She described the body as an interconnected domino set, where treating POTS with secondary small fiber neuropathy looks nothing like treating MCAS with secondary POTS, and where understanding what came first, second, and third actually matters. Handing someone a list of seven protocols for seven symptoms isn’t support, and for a body that needs pacing, it’s overwhelming.
Denise has described her own way of seeing this in similar terms, as a web rather than a set of dominoes, where each symptom or need connects to the others rather than standing alone. Different language, same underlying recognition: a body living with complex chronic illness rarely responds well to being treated one isolated symptom at a time.
See Also: I Need to Name Something I’m Seeing in the ME/CFS, MCAS, POTS / Complex Chronic Disease Community
A Root Cause Naturopathic Approach to POTS, ME/CFS and hEDS
Dr. Lisa’s intake visits run 90 to 120 minutes, considerably longer than a typical appointment, because piecing together a complex case takes time. She described her own mind as building an interconnected map while a patient talks, tracking where symptoms might connect rather than assessing them one at a time. It’s the kind of listening she says she always wanted for herself as a patient, and it shapes how she approaches POTS naturopathic treatment and related conditions.
Denise’s own work sits alongside this from a different angle. She co-facilitates a group meditation and energy healing series through the BC-CLMF, working alongside Internal Medicine Specialists supporting patients with long COVID, ME/CFS, and fibromyalgia. Her focus there, as in her broader practice, is on somatic inquiry and nervous system support rather than diagnosis or treatment protocols. Both practitioners, from within their own scopes of practice, are working toward the same thing: helping people feel less alone in bodies that have often been dismissed.
What the Myers Cocktail Can (and Can’t) Do
A question came up in the episode about Myers cocktail IV therapy, specifically whether its benefits can compound over repeated infusions, and whether someone might eventually not need them at all.
Dr. Lisa explained that a Myers cocktail delivers vitamins and minerals, along with hydration, directly into the bloodstream, bypassing the digestive tract entirely. Because these nutrients are water soluble, the body draws what it needs and excretes the rest over time. For someone with suboptimal nutrient levels to begin with, repeated infusions can replete those levels more fully, which is part of why benefits sometimes last longer with each subsequent treatment.
She was clear that this isn’t necessarily a cure. She described it more as a bridge, something that can give a person’s system what it needs immediately so they have the capacity to do the other work required for those effects to last without ongoing IVs. Whether it can lead to lasting change depends entirely on what’s actually being addressed underneath it.
Pacing While You Feel Well: One of the Hardest Parts of Recovery
If there’s one thread that ran through this conversation with real weight, it was pacing, and specifically how much harder it is to pace when you finally have energy to spend.
Dr. Lisa named this directly: the restraint required to hold back when you finally feel a surge of energy is enormous, and it deserves real compassion. Denise added something from her own recovery that goes a step further. She has found that learning to pace while she was already feeling well was one of the most important pieces of her own healing, because the body doesn’t fully settle into recovery if it senses its needs will be ignored the moment things improve. In her words, “our bodies don’t feel safe to come fully into recovery if we are not going to respect our body’s needs in that recovery.”
This isn’t a skill either of them described as easy or fully mastered. Denise was candid that she still has to actively monitor herself around this, even now. Pacing while unwell asks the body to hold back. Pacing while well asks it to trust that holding back is still worth doing, which is a different and often harder task entirely.
Denise has also spoken elsewhere about the other side of this same coin: pacing isn’t only about holding a ceiling in place. It can also mean gently, deliberately expanding what the body can hold over time, so capacity itself grows rather than staying fixed at whatever felt safe during the hardest years. The two move together. Honoring pacing protects the progress already made, while expanding capacity, in small and considered ways, is often what allows there to be more life to pace within.
Rebuilding Trust with the Body Around Sleep
The two practitioners also found real common ground on one specific piece of recovery: sleep, and specifically the importance of circadian rhythm and the sleep-wake cycle. Dr. Lisa walked through the clinical side of this, explaining how cortisol and melatonin move across the day and what a healthy pattern of waking and winding down actually looks like. It’s a piece Denise also focuses on closely in her own work, understanding how that same rhythm shapes a body trying to rebuild trust with itself.
Where the two differed slightly was in the self-talk that supports that rhythm. Dr. Lisa’s guidance included the value of speaking to yourself the way you want your body to respond, telling yourself before bed that you’re going to sleep well. For many people, this kind of intentional self-talk can be a genuinely useful tool.
Denise shared that this particular piece doesn’t work for her, and explained why. After years of severe, unsupported insomnia going back to her teens, followed by years of interrupted sleep as a new parent, she found that affirming a good night’s sleep in advance only heightened her distress when it didn’t happen. What has worked for her instead, alongside the same attention to circadian rhythm, is building a felt sense of safety in her body even when sleep doesn’t come easily, trusting that a rough night isn’t dangerous rather than trying to will a different outcome. Neither approach is more correct than the other. They’re two different ways of getting to the same place: a nervous system that feels safe enough to actually rest.
Where ADHD and Executive Functioning Intersect with Chronic Illness
Denise raised something she has observed consistently in her own community: a significant overlap between complex chronic illness and neurodivergence, including ADHD, Autism and AuDHD. Pacing already asks a lot of anyone. Pacing while also managing executive functioning challenges, remembering in the moment that just because your body feels capable doesn’t mean it’s time to do everything, asks even more.
Dr. Lisa’s clinical approach to ADHD executive functioning centers on identifying a person’s specific strengths and weaknesses rather than relying on medication or supplements alone. She uses an executive functioning skills questionnaire to understand where organizing, prioritization, and working memory show up as genuine friction points, because even the most effective supplement or medication only creates the conditions for learning. The actual skills still have to be built.
Listen to the Full Conversation
There’s far more in this conversation than one post can hold, including Dr. Lisa’s honest take on using AI thoughtfully in a medical practice and Denise’s own reflections on information overwhelm. Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts. Members of the EmbodiedSoul with Denise Elysa community have access to the extended, uncut version of this conversation, including additional audience questions Dr. Lisa answered live. Learn more about the EmbodiedSoul community.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a naturopathic approach to POTS, ME/CFS, or hEDS typically involve?
According to Dr. Lisa Ghent, ND, it usually starts with an extended intake to understand how symptoms connect to one another, followed by treatment that addresses what appears to be primary versus secondary in a person’s presentation, rather than treating each symptom in isolation.
Is a Myers cocktail IV a long-term treatment for chronic illness?
Not necessarily. Dr. Lisa describes it as a bridge that can replete nutrient levels and provide short-term support, but whether its effects last depends on what other work is done alongside it.
Why is pacing harder to practice when you’re feeling well?
Both Dr. Lisa and Denise pointed to this directly. When energy returns after a period of illness, the instinct to catch up on everything that was missed can be overwhelming, and restraint in that moment is genuinely difficult, arguably more difficult than pacing while unwell.
Is there a connection between ADHD and complex chronic illness?
Denise has observed a significant overlap between complex chronic illness and neurodivergence, including ADHD, Autism and AuDHD, within her own community, and research is starting to explore this connection. According to PubMed, neurodivergent adults, including those with autism, ADHD and tic disorders, show significantly higher rates of joint hypermobility than the general population, and hypermobility appears to help explain the relationship between neurodivergence and symptoms of dysautonomia and pain (Csecs et al., 2022, DOI). A more recent study found that autonomic reactivity may be part of what connects hypermobility to neurodivergent traits (Quadt et al., 2026, DOI). This doesn’t establish that one condition causes the other, but it does point to a shared thread, involving connective tissue and the autonomic nervous system, that researchers are actively working to understand.
Where can I hear more from this episode?
The full episode is available on the podcast page, and members of the EmbodiedSoul community can access the extended version of the conversation inside the app.
Resources
The Podcast A new episode of Coming Home to Ourselves with Denise Elysa releases the first Sunday of every month. Available on web browser, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music and Amazon Music. Listen now
EmbodiedSoul with Denise Elysa Community The EmbodiedSoul with Denise Elysa Community is a desktop and mobile-friendly web app and community platform. Inside, members have instant access to over $1,000 worth of on-demand guided practices, workshops, ceremonies, meditations and more, along with the extended version of this episode. Denise hosts approximately 2–3 live events per month for community members. Explore the EmbodiedSoul Community
More from Dr. Lisa Ghent, ND Dr. Lisa Ghent is a naturopathic doctor and founder of Collaborative Wellness in Ladner, BC. Visit her website | Instagram
