Marie-Noelle Marquis (00:04):
Welcome to the AIP Summit Podcast presented by AIP Certified Coaches. Hi, I'm Marie-Noelle Marquis from Urban AIP.
Jaime Hartman (00:12):
And I'm Jaime Hartman from Ready Set AIP. And together our mission is to equip you with the tools, knowledge, and support you need to effectively use the autoimmune protocol, whether you are aiming to take control of your own autoimmune health or guiding others through it.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (00:27):
And today we're taking a closer look at one autoimmune warrior's experience with the AIP reintroduction process and the lessons we can all draw from it.
Jaime Hartman (00:40):
So we are really excited to be speaking with Laurane Chemenda this week. This is our first interview format episode with her, but she actually is a repeat guest because we featured the audio from her presentation that she gave at the sixth annual AIP Summit way back in episode 19. I'll make sure I put a link in the show notes for anyone who missed that and wants to go back and check it out. The key focus of that episode was on improving your gut health. And she also shared her story of healing with ankylosing spondylitis and a bit about her practice as a nutritional therapy practitioner, a restorative wellness practitioner, and of course as an AIP certified coach. So Laurane, thank you for being with us today.
Laurane Chemenda (01:26):
Well, thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here.
Jaime Hartman (01:30):
So as we said, we last heard from you in a content that you recorded way back in January 2025, more than a year and a half ago now. How have things been with you since then?
Laurane Chemenda (01:43):
Amazing. I've been really busy. Yeah, I've been busy. I mean, we're expecting our third child right now, so the personal life is very busy and we've all been very healthy and that's been amazing. But yeah, professional life has been busy too, and I've been working more and more with the French community and it's just become such a drive and a passion. And yeah, it's been amazing.
Jaime Hartman (02:11):
Great. Well, congratulations on the upcoming new edition. And we'll talk a little bit more at the end of the episode about your work with the French community. The main focus of what we're going to talk with Laurane listeners about this time is her reintroduction journey. So I'm actually going to turn the mic now over to Marie-Noelle to lead that part of the conversation. Then when we come back to me, we're going to zoom out to take a big picture perspective and talk about what we can all learn from Laurane's experiences.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (02:41):
Hi. Okay. So Laurane, thank you for being here. Thank you for joining us again. At the sixth annual summit, and then in episode 19, like Jaime mentioned, you shared that a combination of functional medicine and the autoimmune protocol over the course of 18 months literally saved your life. And then when we started, right? And then we started talking about recording this episode, you told us that your reintroduction story has been a five-year journey and that you're still in the process, right?
Laurane Chemenda (03:14):
I am.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (03:15):
So let's start by filling in our listeners on that. Tell us about your reintroduction experience, what it's been like so far.
Laurane Chemenda (03:25):
Yeah. And I want to premise with the fact that I'm realizing there's such a fine line between, am I still in the reintroduction phase or have I just found my diet? Have I just found what essentially we're looking to find when we're going through AIP and we're reintroducing and figuring out what works and doesn't work? Have I gotten there? And that's where it's kind of tricky because you feel, well, I feel so amazingly great that it kind of stops you from wanting to reintroduce more. And I feel like I've come quite far already. So maybe I can walk you through what that's looked like for
Marie-Noelle Marquis (04:08):
The
Laurane Chemenda (04:08):
Past five years and how far I've come. So basically I started off what is a typical reintroduction phase. I went through the methodology of taking a tiny amount, waiting 15 minutes, and then taking more, waiting longer. So you do this three or four times and then you take a whole cup or a proper serving and then you'll wait three to seven days. And so I did that at first because I was so methodical with the way that I approached AIP and super, super strict. And I respected and followed every single guideline, every single advice and rule throughout the whole AIP journey from the beginning to then the reintroduction. So I started off being very cautious of following every step the right way. But then as I was reintroducing or at the moment that I was reintroducing, I had actually done the full elimination AIP for six months, which is much longer than we usually would want somebody to do it.
(05:22):
But because I had had a slow start with seeing improvements and then suddenly I had amazing improvements, I was like, "This is amazing. I want to keep going." But then I realized you don't want to be on this elimination phase for a longer time. So I started introducing at that time and I felt so great that at first I was really strict and then I was like, "You know what? Life is amazing. I don't need to have all these boundaries and all these rules and maybe I can just figure it out and just reintroduce whenever I'm at a restaurant or whatever." And so that's what I started doing. And I started off actually with eggs in a very methodological way, and I did egg yolks and egg whites separately, but I did them first because that's what I missed the most. And then I moved on step by step.
(06:19):
I didn't really follow all the steps in the right way, but I moved on. And then I was like, "Okay, well pepper, we'll see or spices." I didn't really use the methodology. And I would just reintroduce as I was going to friends places, being invited over as I was going to restaurants. And that was kind of working for me, but I did it in a really, really slow way. And then I had quite a long pause because then I was pregnant. And when I was still reintroducing, probably a year into my reintroductions, that's when I got pregnant with my first child. And during that timeframe, I was like, "I'm not introducing. I'm not reintroducing anything." Because it's such a moment in life where things can go so well, but also so wrong in terms of how the immune system decides to function when you're pregnant, and then also postpartum that I didn't want to take any risks.
(07:26):
So I paused everything for a while because then I was postpartum and I was nursing. So I think I paused for probably a year and a half. I didn't try to reintroduce more.
(07:42):
And now I'm in kind of a flexible-ish AIP, but I'm still not eating at home. I'm still not eating nightshades. But if there's some paprika or a little bit of peppers in a dish or something at a restaurant, I'll just put them to the side, but I won't be picky in the fact that it's touched or anything like that. So I feel more flexible, but I still haven't reintroduced some of the big food categories, which is nightshades, which is most grains. I'm eating oats and I'm eating pseudo grains, but not any other type of grain. And then I'm not eating cow dairy, but I'm eating goat and sheep. So I found alternatives in all of this to make it work. And then all the spices, I don't care. I'm eating all the nuts and all the seeds and all the little things that are really hard, I feel like, to avoid.
(08:52):
But yeah, those are the main things. Soy is okay-ish, but you have to be careful with soy sauce, of course. So yeah, that's kind of where I'm at today.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (09:04):
So when you picked up after the year and a half, how did that like, "Okay, today's the day I'm going to start again. Let's pick up where we left off," or was there a particular food that you were more drawn to?
Laurane Chemenda (09:17):
Well, actually, it's funny, I was kind of taken aback because the first thing that I wanted to reintroduce was rice, because I really missed rice, and it's just so easy to add back into your diet. Keeping in mind, I was on a strict AIP. I didn't do the modified because this was 10 years ago, close to 10 years ago. And when I reintroduced rice, I spent my whole weekend in bed. I was absolutely exhausted. We had, well, an 18-month-old, and it was on a weekend. I decided to do that, I think Saturday. And I remember we went to the park with my husband, and I started having the worst headache and just feeling really just ill, just really tired and fragile. And so I was like, "I'm sorry, can you take care of her at the park? I'm just going to walk back home." I went back home and I stayed in bed literally all weekend.
(10:17):
And so that was a wake-up call for me, and I was just shocked because I didn't expect to have anything like that. But then again, the positive out of that is that nothing related to my ankylosing spondylitis came back. And that was my biggest fear because my ankylosing spondylitis was so intense, so violent, at least that's how I felt it. And it lasted. I had intense pain for four years that never stopped. And so my biggest fear was, am I going to go back down in that dark hole for the next four years if I reintroduce a food that's not right for me? And that wasn't the case. Sure, I spent a weekend in bed, but it didn't affect my joints. It didn't affect my immune system long-term. So in a sense, I was still relieved by that.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (11:19):
Building the resilience too, right? I think it's such an important point for listeners, because I think we all share that fear. What if I eat "the wrong food," and then everything's undone? But as we're rebuilding our health, we're building that resilience, right?
Laurane Chemenda (11:39):
Yes, exactly.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (11:41):
I mean, it's not a great thing to spend the weekend in bed, but how great that you felt it, it's so clear, right? It was like, "Yep, very clear. Okay, this felt like that."
Laurane Chemenda (11:55):
That's true, because I spent my whole childhood being sick and having cramps and spasms and diarrhea and being very tired and having dark circles under my eyes. And I was eating all the stuff, everything, a lot of gluten. I grew up in a French household, so there's definitely a lot of gluten in a French household. And of course, nobody knew. And I think it was just a very noisy. I had a very noisy body, so I had a lot of these symptoms, but I wasn't really deciphering, is it this food? Is it this thing? Now, I have the privilege of having a very quiet body and that the second that I feel something, I feel it really well so I can really listen to it. So that is amazing.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (12:47):
For people who are wondering the five years, so would you say it's life circumstances? Is it intentional pacing?
Laurane Chemenda (12:56):
I think there's a little bit of. There's three things. There's life, pregnancies. So like I said, I'm at my third pregnancy and I know that it's a moment in time where things can go back, spiral back. So I've been very careful during my pregnancies and postpartum, so that has really slowed things down. There's also this psychological effect of being afraid of adding more foods. And the worst part is that I've been lucky enough to not really have severe reactions to foods yet, apart from gluten, and I'm going to go down that road soon, but gluten has been horrendous. But other foods, I've reintroduced them fine, but yet that incident with the rice really kind of took me back and I was like, okay, I need to be very, very careful because sure, it didn't bring up my AS, but you never know. And even though I'm educated on this, and I'm an FNTP, and I'm AIP coach, and I'm very well educated on autoimmune diseases, and now that I'm going to be training other coaches, I know all of this, I have the knowledge, but the psychological unconscious mind is still hitting in when I see these foods and I'm like, I actually know that I have way more resilience now.
(14:34):
I understand the mechanisms behind autoimmunity, and it's really not and very rarely tied to one food. It's not about that. You get stuck in that mindset with AIP that this one food is the trigger, but it's not how it works, but your unconscious mind just kind of hits in. It's not terrible. It's not like every day I'm thinking about this, but I think that's one of the reasons why I'm so comfortable in eating the way that I eat today, because I'm really happy. I get all the nutrients that I want, I eat the way that I want, and I just feel content, but I know I need to push myself a little more.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (15:17):
Can you dive into gluten?
Laurane Chemenda (15:21):
Yes, I've actually never. I've done a few different tests, so now I understand that I have all the genetic markers. I have the HLA DQ1, DQ2, and DQ8. Some of them I have the two allos, some of them I have just one, but I have all the genetic markers that ties to gluten sensitivity or even celiac. Every time I do a GI map, which is a stool test, even though I'm not eating gluten, I always have my antigliadin IgAs that are off the charts, which is the specific little soldier that comes combat when there's gluten in the diet.
(16:02):
If you're not eating gluten and those little soldiers, the IGAs are still present specific for gliadin, glidin is gluten, then it just means that your body's so sensitive that it cross reacts with another food that it thinks is gluten, but it's not. And so that's where I was like, okay, I know I'm very, very sensitive. So I've never really planned to reintroduce gluten ever, and I feel great since I've eliminated gluten because I started eliminating gluten before starting the full AIP. But the very little times where I've had cross-contamination with gluten, oh my gosh, it has been horrendous. And so it's not so much like I spend the weekend in bed at rice, but it is intense pain. I would say more painful than my labors, than my contractions during labor where I have such intense spasms. And of course I have diarrhea and I spend hours suffering with spasms and with really, really intense pain in my gut where I actually passed out once because of the pain that just.
(17:21):
It's insane how it's really hard to comprehend how this pain can happen, but it just goes through my whole body. And then at one point I passed out. Oh my goodness. And it's just very intense. And so that's where I'm like. And this is like, I know where it came from. This was one time it was from soy sauce. So there's a little bit of gluten in soy sauce, and there was a little bit of that soy sauce in my salad dressing, and I ate one bite of the salad dressing, and I was like, "This has a soy sauce taste. I'm going to go check in the kitchen." I checked in the kitchen and they're like, "Yeah, there's soy sauce, but there's no gluten in there." I'm like, "Yeah, there is." They just didn't know. And then I was like, "Okay, I'll be fine." I was so chill.
(18:12):
This was two years ago. I was so chill about it. I was like, "Okay, I'll be fine, whatever. There's a tiny bit of soy sauce. I have that flexibility." Same as if there's a tiny bit of tomato, that's never been an issue. So I've never. Yeah. But two hours later, hell broke loose.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (18:35):
Yes. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, I'm sure many of our listeners can relate. I certainly can as well. I think it can hit us in different ways, but I definitely have vivid, intense, immediate reaction to the slightest amount as well.
Laurane Chemenda (18:55):
Yeah. But do you have a celiac diagnosis?
Marie-Noelle Marquis (18:59):
I don't have a celiac diagnosis, but also in my stool, my Jaima, my gliding bodies are really hot. And yes, for me, it's horrendous joint pain. I won't be able to move my hands or I have difficulty walking, and it unravels pretty fast, and then memory loss is brain fog that I forget, big chunk of time. Wild.
Laurane Chemenda (19:31):
So yours is actually quite long. You have a very long reaction.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (19:36):
I feel like it's a 72-hour thing. I'll start and then I'm like, "Uh-oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh." And then 72 hours later, I tend to be back to normal, but there's this everything freezes. And that's
Laurane Chemenda (19:51):
With a crumb?
Marie-Noelle Marquis (19:53):
Yeah, like, "Oh, this was cooked in this or there was cross-contamination, same. Yeah.
Laurane Chemenda (20:01):
Yeah. Well, I feel lucky enough that this has happened three times to me over the past, well, five years, and actually, yeah, three times. I feel very lucky, even though it was horrendous and it lasted hours, but it was just hours and it was just digestive. And so that, I feel quite lucky that it's purely digestive. My body's like," I need to get this out, "and then I'm okay. I mean, I sleep because I'm exhausted after that, and then I'm fine the next day.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (20:38):
Oh, that's good. Yeah. Yeah, it's so interesting. Thank you so much for sharing all this. Jaime, I'm going to pass the mic back to you.
Jaime Hartman (20:50):
Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Marie-Noelle, for the great questions, and Laurane, for sharing. Now, as I was saying at the beginning, we now want to take a zoom out view, a big picture view, and the lessons that our listeners can glean from your experience. And keeping in mind that our listeners are at all stages of their AIP experience. So let's maybe talk first to somebody who's just at the beginning. What do you wish, Laurane, that you had known when you were at the beginning about how the reintroduction timeline would actually work or actually unfold for you?
Laurane Chemenda (21:25):
I think at first I was so rigid, and that actually made it more complicated. And it's when I started being like, "Actually, I can pick this food from stage two because this makes more sense for me, and it's okay if I don't follow all of the steps." I knew a lot about myself too. I knew that I didn't have an allergic terrain, so I've never had any symptoms related to IgE-mediated responses, so nothing allergic. So I was like, "Maybe I can skip the first two little steps where you take a little bit and you wait 15 minutes." And that gave me more confidence moving forward in the reintroductions because it became less strict and less rigid, and I had just spent so much time being so strict and rigid, not just with my food, with my whole life. My morning from the second I would open my eyes would be an insane morning routine, and then I would have insane nighttime routine.
(22:34):
Everything was geared around, I need to heal. So when I let go a little bit, I feel like that was more helpful for me than when I was more rigid. I kind of wish that modified AIP existed at the time, because even though the strict AIP worked really well for me, it literally saved my life, and I will be entirely grateful my whole life.
(23:06):
I always wonder how I would've done on the modified version and how far I would be today, because I spent so much time reintroducing all these foods that are actually already in the Modified AIP version that you can still eat, like the pseudo grains and all the spices, like the seed spices and all that. So yeah, sometimes I'm curious and you can't go back, but I'm very grateful for modified AIP today that I use a lot with my clients because I feel like it gives them a little bit more flexibility, and then you're much further into your reintroductions already once you start them. There's only two stages in the modified AIP reintroductions. So yeah, it can be a little easier.
Jaime Hartman (24:05):
Yeah, that's such a great point to remind people at the beginning when they think about this. We need to be scientific and methodical, to go back to that word, but rigidity is not always our friend, and so it's a really good lesson there. Now, let's talk to those listeners who are actually deep in their own reintroduction phase and might be feeling maybe anxious that it's taking longer than they expected or they're encountering difficulties in the process. How do you reassure them?
Laurane Chemenda (24:41):
So remember that the timeline that is written in a book is an average timeline, and it's not based on every individual person in every individual case, and you are your own person, and a slow introduction is not a sign of failure, it's just that you are listening to your needs. You don't have the same path in life as your neighbor and as this other person that has been written about in a book, and so trying to still have a good rhythm, but just remembering that you can't put so much pressure on yourself and just doing things the way that feels right for your own body, for your timeline, for your health, I think that's the biggest thing.
Jaime Hartman (25:35):
Yeah. And then just finally, even broadly speaking, what would you say is, we like to call it signature coaching advice as an AIP certified coach? In other words, one key piece of wisdom or a point of view that you find yourself coming back to often with clients?
Laurane Chemenda (25:54):
I mean, what I see where I see people being the most successful is when they have people around them supporting them, and that can look like different things, and that can be a community and joining an AIP community, like the one that you have with the AIP Summit or a Facebook group, but that can also be working with an AIP coach or someone that can support you throughout this journey, or even reaching out to friends and family, but having that support and guideline of someone coaching you, I feel is necessary and where I see the most success.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (26:46):
Okay, Laurane, to conclude, let's talk about your signature program more in depth. So it's called Bianetoto Immune, which I know what that means, but I'm guessing many of our listeners will not. So please tell them what is it, what led you to create it also?
Laurane Chemenda (27:02):
Yeah, so Bianetoto Immune, which kind of translates to autoimmune wellness actually, Bianetri's Wellness, it is the first French platform dedicated to a functional approach for autoimmune conditions and dedicated to the autoimmune protocol. And so it's really just a hub where people can come and find a lot of free resources, and there's a blog with a lot of articles that are written by a lot of different AIP coaches. It's all in French, and so we have a little bit more French AIP coaches lately, which has been really nice, and a lot of these articles are also written by me, and I have helped from a few naturopaths too, and so we're really trying to build a good database with as much information as possible. I do webinars with functional doctors, with FNTPs, and naturopaths, and a lot of different profiles to talk about every topic that can relate to autoimmunity to help people.
(28:10):
And then we have a private community where we can all get together, and we have some calls every month, and then we have some topics that we talk about every week. And now I have a brand new practitioner training that's all in French, because I've been getting so many people asking me. Unfortunately, French people don't all speak English, actually, many do not. And so I have been getting a lot of people asking, "How can I train in the AIP protocol, in the autoimmune protocol, or autoimmunity? How can I know more about it?" Because there's so many specificities to know, especially when you have a French naturopathic background, a lot of the recommendations from the French naturopathic education doesn't work with autoimmunity. There's a lot of plants that don't work. There's a lot of things like that. Oh,
Marie-Noelle Marquis (29:05):
Interesting.
Laurane Chemenda (29:06):
Yeah, so I'm very, very dedicated to creating this whole ecosystem, and it's been an amazing journey.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (29:14):
How can our listeners find more information about the program for themselves or for someone that they know would benefit from it?
Laurane Chemenda (29:21):
Yeah, so they can go on the website. It's www. And that's going to be tricky, byanetchotoimmune.com. So maybe it's easier if they click on a link that you'll have in the description or something, because reading that out is going to be hard. And so they can go on the website directly. They can find us on Instagram @bianetrotoimmune, so Bianet Autoimmune, and that's our two main channels.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (29:51):
Great.
Jaime Hartman (29:54):
Again, we want to thank Laurane Chemenda for joining us today and for helping us, again, remind to you that the autoimmune protocol is so much more than a diet. It is really a framework with multiple components and multiple ways to approach it. Through this podcast, AIP certified coaches aim to bring you resources so that you can feel confident about doing AIP on your own, but with the knowledge that you aren't doing it alone.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (30:21):
We'll be back with a new episode in two weeks. You can find the AIP Summit Podcast in your favorite podcast player, so be sure to follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode.
Jaime Hartman (30:31):
And if you would like to leave us a rating and a review, it will help others find this podcast where we are committed to helping you use the power of the Autoimmune Protocol to elevate your wellness journey to new heights. The AIP Summit Podcast is a Gutsy By Nature production. Content presented is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
