Exclusive Interview With Leslie Parran – Wellness Champion Peacemaker
Leslie Parran is a leader in natural holistic healing from inflammation and pain. As a nurse for 40 years with advanced nursing certifications, Leslie helped patients with chronic diseases and pain. Now as a Board-Certified Functional Wellness Coach and Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner with several other holistic and functional practitioner certifications, she helps active and motivated people with chronic inflammation and pain move from pain to peace so that they feel better, move better, and live better.
Leslie is the Owner and Champion Peacemaker of Peace x Piece Wellness Coaching. As a functional practitioner, she uses in-home lab testing to uncover hidden metabolic healing opportunities such as food sensitivities, hormonal imbalances, gut pathogens, and toxins that can sometimes, unknowingly, lead to inflammation, pain, and chronic health conditions. As a health coach, she uses positive psychology and personalized holistic healing protocols including diet, rest, exercise, stress management, and supplementation to help her clients make their bodies work the way they are supposed to and achieve their wellness goals.
Leslie Parran, Owner, Champion Peacemaker
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
I am passionate about health and natural ways of healing. As an experienced nurse for over 40 years working with chronically ill patients, I now practice as a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner and holistic health coach, helping clients to take control of their own health.
As a mother of 4 and grandmother of 8 (with the 9th on the way), I enjoy being active so that I can play sports and tumble with my grandchildren. My husband and I love to connect with family across the country. We recently had 17 of us in our home for an extended period over the Christmas holiday and had all sorts of fun activities, especially for the 8 grandkids, all 6 years and younger. One memento of that is a picture that I cherish from one of my grandsons, who drew of himself and me holding hands in our snow gear sledding.
At one point several years ago, however, I was afraid that I may not be able to be the active grandmother that I wanted to be. I experienced significant arthritis pain as well as autoimmune thyroid disease that impacted my ability to be as mobile and energetic as I wanted to be with my grandkids. Then, I studied functional medicine, functional lab testing, natural healing protocols, and health coaching. Through several certifications, I was able to rebalance my own body and now help people online to achieve their health goals.
My husband and I also love to take long walks, cook together, take care of grandkids, and travel with our friends. We are enjoying being on a dude ranch part of the year, getting to ride horses and enjoy hiking in the desert.
What is your business name and how do you help your clients?
I am founder and Champion Peacemaker at Peace x Piece Wellness Coaching.With my 40 years as a nurse, board certifications in health coaching, and pain expertise in conventional, natural, and integrative therapies, I provide clients with specialized functional lab testing, natural healing protocols, and the coaching support they need to move from chronic inflammation and pain so that they feel better, move better, and live better.
What kind of audience do you target your business towards?
I help mid-life individuals who are seeking to have more active lives but who may be compromised by autoimmune disease or symptoms of chronic inflammation and pain and who want to take control of their own health. I help them to uncover hidden causes of inflammation such as imbalances in hormones, immune function, digestion, detoxification, energy, and neurological function, which may be causing their symptoms such as pain. Then, I help to support them to rebalance their bodies with an individualized healing protocol, which includes diet, rest, exercise, stress management, and supplementation. Who inspires you to be the best that you can be?
My family inspires me to use my strengths to be a loving, caring, and insightful wife, mother, and grandmother who is prepared to help them to learn adapt, and grow through life experiences. These strengths include love of others, love of learning, fairness, honesty, and good judgment.
My clients who are committed to learning and practicing new health behaviors to get well inspire me to understand how to best help them, through being an expert detective, correlating their lab results with their symptoms and assessments, and providing individualized holistic care. My mission is to help them move from pain to peace. This often means working on various pieces of an individual’s health.
For those who follow me on social media, I enjoy providing interesting health tips and information through my newsletter, blogs, and publications. What is your work inspired by?
My work is inspired by the evolving art and science of health and wellness as well as respect for the importance of collaborative work among healing practitioners to help people be well, get well, and stay well. I follow expert colleagues who are at the forefront of natural healing practices. Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
My own journey began as a nurse working in a hospital with patients with chronic diseases and pain, becoming a pain researcher, and then having my own health issues with inflammation and pain. Wanting to help my patients as a nurse researcher, I developed an algorithm a number of years ago to help patients wean off strong opioid medication that has been published in both journals and books. For a number of years, I was involved in helping the hospital where I had worked to develop guidelines on opioid use. I also studied holistic nursing and natural ways to help patients even if they required medication, to help them reduce their pain and medication requirements.
With experience as a nurse and nurse administrator, I became frustrated with the structure and limitations of the U.S. healthcare system with patients first presenting with disease and symptoms, and then, getting pills or surgery as the solution to their problem. Even my own doctors were limited by lab ranges and insurance company limitations on testing to manage my thyroid and arthritis issues. I felt stuck in my symptoms of inflammation and pain, and no progress towards a solution.
One day, I was literally locked up and my feet wouldn’t move after getting up from the chair when my grandson asked me to play hockey. I knew that there had to be a better way…I did not want to succumb to what one of my doctors ascribed to as “just getting older”. So, I decided to take charge of my own health and study functional medicine, which looks at the root cause of disease. I applied the concepts and lab testing to myself and through taking control of my own health, I was able to decrease my inflammation and pain about 90%. Now I feel better, move better, and live better than I had before. I play with the grandkids just like I’ve always dreamed of.
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