Episode 81: Thriving Beyond Adversity: Maddy Karlsson's Experience With Vaccine Injury And Rebuilding Vitality

Oct 20

The more I interview Limitless beings on this podcast, the clearer the realization that each one of my guests’ darkest experience in life has propelled them to their highest calling. On this week’s Limitless One Podcast, I have the blessing of interviewing Maddy Karlsson, an inspirational wellness influencer who shares her challenges of becoming vaccine-injured after reluctantly taking the COVID jab, and her two pronged healing journey combining allopathic and holistic medicine.

Madeleine Karlsson (@maddykarlsson on Instagram) is an Integrative Nutrition and Health Coach, Pilates Instructor, and Yoga & Meditation Teacher with over 15 years of experience in the wellness industry.

Maddy's approach is deeply rooted in her own journey, having struggled with emotional eating, exercise addiction, PCOS, Candida, leaky gut & auto-immune disease.

Her method is rooted in holistic health, emphasizing the connection between mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Maddy is particularly known for her work in helping individuals overcome emotional eating, reduce stress, improve their relationship with food, and move their bodies in a mindful way that gives incredible results.

Her platform, "Fit Body Fresh Mind," reflects her belief that true health comes from nourishing the body from the inside out, both physically and mentally.

Maddy is originally from Sweden but started her wellness career in Monaco where she spent 10 years before moving to Costa Rica. She has 2 dogs and a horse named Bill.

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Thriving Beyond Adversity: Maddy Karlsson's Experience With Vaccine Injury And Rebuilding Vitality

The more I interview limitless beings on this show, the clearer the realization that each one of my guests’ darkest experiences in life has propelled them to their highest calling. On this episode of the show, I have the blessing of interviewing Maddy Karlsson, an inspirational wellness influencer who shares her challenges of becoming vaccine-injured after reluctantly taking the COVID jab and her two-pronged healing journey combining allopathic and holistic medicine.

Madeleine Karlsson, @MaddyKarlsson on Instagram, is an Integrative Nutrition and Health Coach, Pilates Instructor, and Yoga and Meditation Teacher. With over fifteen years of experience in the wellness industry, Maddy's approach is deeply rooted in her own journey, having struggled with emotional eating, exercise addiction, PCOS, Candida, leaky gut, and autoimmune disease. Her method is rooted in holistic health, emphasizing the connection between mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

Maddy is particularly known for her work in helping individuals overcome emotional eating, reducing stress, improving their relationship with food, and moving their bodies in a mindful way that gives incredible results. Her platform Fit Body Fresh Mind reflects her beliefs that true health comes from nourishing the body from the inside out, both physically and mentally. Maddy is originally from Sweden but started her wellness career in Monaco, where she spent ten years before moving to Costa Rica. She has two dogs and a horse named Bill.

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Welcome to the show, Maddy Karlsson. How are you?

I'm really well. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

To give the audience a little bit of background on how we met, in my business, om.life Wellness, we were following you because you put out so much inspirational stuff. This was several years ago when we first opened. It so happened that you're friends with a good friend of ours, Jen Gonzalez, at Doody Free Colonics. We invited both of you guys to come in, We got to meet and became friends. We've been following your journey ever since. I am super excited to have this conversation and learn more about the depth of your work.

Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Nutrition And Holistic Health Coach

Before we begin, can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Yes. I'm a holistic health and nutrition coach, a Pilates teacher, and a yoga teacher. I have been in the wellness industry for fifteen years. I'm passionate about helping people understand their behaviors around food and embrace a healthier lifestyle from a place of love, not from a place of beating themselves up and not being hard on themselves. It is more, “I do this because I care about my body. I do this because I love myself. I do this because I want to feel good in my body.” It's a little bit of changing the rhetoric and being kinder to ourselves.

How did you get into this kind of work? I know we talked a little bit about some of the health challenges that you were experiencing early on in your life and how that propelled you into what you're doing.

I've always been passionate about health, fitness, and nutrition. It's always something that's interested me, but when I was in my late teens or early twenties, I went down this rabbit hole of obsessing over what I was eating, exercising way too much, and putting a lot of stress on my body to the point where I was injured and I was not feeling good. I was like, “I'm doing all these things that I'm meant to be doing. I'm pushing myself to the edge with all these crazy fitness fads and I'm doing all these crazy diets, but I'm not feeling good in my body.”

I had a breakdown when I was about 23. I was diagnosed with Candida and PCOS. I had a leaky gut. I was at a loss. I was like, “What do I do now? I thought I had been doing all these things that were good for me, and in the process, I've destroyed my health.” From the outside, everyone was looking at me and they were like, “Maddy's so disciplined. She goes to the gym twice a day,” or, “Maddy’s so disciplined. She's super controlling with her food,” but I wasn't feeling good, so I sought help.

I worked with a holistic health practitioner who helped me transform my relationship with food and diet. As a result, my relationship with exercise changed as well. I stopped using exercise to punish myself and beat myself up. The emotional eating went away. I stopped binging. I was a massive binger. I healed my gut.

I felt mentally so much better and so much more relaxed. There was a real shift in energy. When I realized I could get to that in a more mindful, caring, loving way than I'd done before, I was like, “I have to share this with the world.” That's how I started this journey and started training as a nutrition and holistic health coach, Pilates teacher, yoga teacher, and so on.

I love the fact that you're always traveling around the world. Have you ever played that game when you were young, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? That's like Maddy. Every week, you're in a new city. Tell us a little bit about how you've incorporated the work that you do with your, your love of living in different areas.

I have lived in quite a few places. I first discovered Pilates when I was living in Australia. When I was nineteen years old, I moved to Australia. It was in the early 2000s. Pilates was not very well-known yet. I discovered Pilates when I was in Australia. I took my Pilates teacher training when I came back to Europe in Belgium, and then I retook my Pilates teacher training in Costa Rica. I have often traveled to get really good training. I did some of the training for my Pilates as well in the US.

I created a business that's fully remote in order to continue traveling. For the past few years, I've been based in Costa Rica, but I do spend quite a lot of time in Europe. I love traveling, seeing what people are doing in different areas of the world, and learning from them. I love spending time in the south of France because it's a slower lifestyle. The culture around food and taking the time to find the right produce is so different from anywhere else in the world, especially the US, where it is more rushed. I'm learning what works in different parts of the world, integrating it into my own lifestyle, and then sharing it with my clients.

It is so you can provide the absolute best value based on the biggest perspective of living in all these places and learning from all these amazing people. That’s really awesome. Let me ask you a question before we start to get really deep into this conversation. What does living a limitless life mean to you?

Living A Limitless Life

For me, it's freedom in all senses of the word. You were asking about my travels and so on. For me, it's so important to have the freedom of my own time to decide how I use my time and my energy and to have freedom in my work to focus on the things that bring me joy. That is, for me, a limitless life. That's it. It is really about focusing on things that bring me joy.

What I've noticed, particularly over the last few years, is that when I am in my genius zone, then I feel energized, I feel happy, and I feel limitless, and the moment I stray away from that or I give my energy to things that don't fulfill me, then I feel a bit trapped and I don't feel good. It is fueling myself with my passions and what brings me the most joy.

That's inspiring. We're always perpetually working towards the ultimate freedom and everything like that. I love the fact that you were able to create an income stream, a business, and a lifestyle based on everything that you're passionate about. You have people that you coach. I have a lot of clients. Unfortunately, they're living from a place of whatever job they have, they have to be in that location, and then the actions and steps that they need to take are based around that.

It comes from a place of not being empowered rather than being connected or tied to a certain circumstance in order to generate revenue, raise their family, have a life, eat, live, and all these kinds of things. There's a separation in terms of ideology between people who don't live empowered and people who are living empowered. What do you think are the qualities of a person who's living empowered?

Living Empowered

Being able to feel the fear and do it anyway. There have been so many times in my life where I could have stayed in very comfortable situations, but it didn't feel right. I chose to jump before I could even see that there was a net. That takes a lot of courage. I understand that it's easier for me to say this because I don't have a spouse and kids, so it makes it easier.

Having said that, the fear is still a massive thing you have to overcome. Sometimes, people look at me and they're like, “You're so lucky.” I’m like, “I had to face situations that were really scary. I had to step into the unknown so many times to create this life. I didn't know if it was going to work out or not.” I still have moments where I'm like, “What am I doing?” I know we're going to touch upon this a little bit further into the episode, but I got very sick and I was like, “What am I doing trying to run my own business while I'm barely able to stay alive?” That was really challenging.

It takes a lot of grit or a lot of resilience and going ahead, putting one foot ahead of the other, and believing that things are going to work out. That's one of the things that my mom has always said to me. She has always said, “You can't see it right now, but it will work out. You have to have faith.” That's the quality you have to have, grit, be ready to face your fears, and have faith.

You can't see it right now, but it will work out. You have to have faith.

Belief in oneself is probably the most important thing to have in life. If you think about it, we could spend so much time thinking about what we're fearful of and then never take action. I’ve never met a person who has taken a massive action towards something that they want to do and regretted it. Either you learn a lesson or you become successful. In that way, everything is a success. Another one is having a great intuition and understanding that if something does not feel right, it's better to address that, think about it, and dissect, “If I continue doing this, is it going to bring me happiness?”

To the point that you made, it's easier to make those decisions when you don't have so many commitments, whether it's a house, relationship, children, and all that. What I would recommend for people who especially want to have a life where they're living from their purpose and passion is to start young, take those risks, and take those chances. Maybe if you have to get a job to support yourself, maybe have a side hustle.

Even if you don't make any money, it's going to give you more passion and more energy in this life to do what you want to do because it fulfills a need that you have or this longing. I believe everyone has this longing to live to their purpose. We could always do it in so many different ways, whether it's volunteering, a side hustle, or making it full-time in your life.

One of the other qualities is not paying too much attention to what other people think and not taking advice from people whose lives you don't aspire to. I made a massive decision a few years ago to leave Monaco, where I'd been living for ten years. I had an established business. I had an incredible life. Everyone was like, “Are you out of your mind? You're leaving here to go and live in Costa Rica in the jungle? What are you even doing?” I had so many people who came to me and said, “You're crazy. Don't do this. You're going to regret it.” I realized that those were all people who were living in fear of change for their own lives.

I also had, thankfully, people around me who were like, “Give it a go. Go. Worse comes to worst, you'll come back. Do this.” I looked at their lives and I was like, “These people have inspiring lives. They really inspire me.” It is not giving too much importance to what others tell you and looking at the lives of those who give you advice and see, “Is that the kind of life that I aspire to or not?” Maybe the advice that they're giving you is the advice that they follow themselves and that's why they haven't overcome fears and created a life that they truly love.

That is so powerful. Another word that is so deadly and is like a mind virus is the word someday. A lot of people say, “Someday, I'll open a business.” This was me for a very long time. In my early 20s into my mid-30s, I was like, “One day, I am going to open up a wellness center having all these amazing holistic modalities.” I created a story.

One day, I had an intuition and this moment of realization where it kicked my ass and said, “If you are not living your purpose right now, what the hell are you doing here? You don't want to die an old man and then have all these regrets in your head. That's the worst feeling in the world. Live without the limits. Whatever risks you take, something magical is going to happen based on that.” When you have courage in this life, the universe will give you the wind to help you with that, bring you into the situations, and help you meet the people that you need to. You're always being supported as long as you're supporting yourself and your vision.

The universe rewards the brave, right?

The universe rewards the brave.

Vaccine Injury

One hundred percent. Boldness is always rewarded. That's another one of my favorite quotes. Let's get into it a little bit more. When we spoke when you came by our center, you were telling me about the last year and how challenging it was. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience for you?

Yeah. In 2020 when COVID hit, I was in Costa Rica. The borders were locked. I spent the whole year in Costa Rica. In 2021, the vaccine was being rolled out. I had no plans on getting the vaccine because I was living in the jungle in Costa Rica. I was very healthy. I didn't have any fear of COVID. I didn't have any fear of getting sick. I thought, “Even if I do get sick, I'll be fine.”

Christmas came in 2021 and I wanted to go back and visit my family. I had a friend I was living with at the time. We didn't feel good about lying. That was something that was really tough for me. People were like, “Get a fake thing.” I was like, “What if I get caught? That doesn't sit well with me to lie about having had the vaccine or not.”

I didn't believe that I needed the vaccine. I didn't believe in any of that, but what I did feel was I wanted to show solidarity. I was like, “These people are getting it. I'm in super good health. Everyone who knows me knows that I'm the picture of health. I eat super healthy. I do meditation. I do yoga. I live in a blue zone. I'm full of energy. I surf. I'm a healthy, happy person. Even if this vaccine isn't a good idea, I'm going to do it because at least that way, I can have my freedom, I can travel, and I won't have this thing within me that's eating away at me feeling like I'm going to have to lie or I might get caught and so on.

I flew to the US because I couldn't get the vaccine in Costa Rica. I had the first shot and I wasn't feeling good at all but was fine. A few weeks later, I flew back and had my second shot. I flew to Europe and I spent Christmas with my family. My dad was in hospice at the time, so it was really essential for me to have proof of the vaccine in order to be able to go and see him because otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to go and see him.

From January to June 2022, I was feeling tired, but I didn’t credit it to anything. I thought life was a little bit difficult at the time. I had gone through a breakup. I was like, “I'm probably feeling a little bit down.” June 2022 came and I got COVID. I got really unwell. Despite having had the vaccine, I was unwell. I lost a lot of weight. I was nauseous. I couldn't eat. I had terrible headaches, body pain, and so on. A couple of weeks later, I was cleared and I traveled back to Europe, but I was exhausted. I was like, “This might be long COVID,” because I was feeling dizzy and I was having pain.

I went and did a blood test. The blood test came back and the doctor was like, “You have hypothyroidism.” I was like, “What?” I'm a pretty slim person. You wouldn't look at me and go, “She probably has a slow thyroid.” If anything, I might have hyperthyroidism but not hypo. I was like, “This doesn't seem like the right diagnosis for me.” He was like, “The numbers are clear. You have hypothyroidism.

He wanted to put me on thyroxine for my thyroid. He was like, “That's why you're tired. That's why your skin is so dry and so on.” I was like, “I refuse the medication,” because I thought, “I'm sure this is still the side effects of COVID.” What came out in that blood test as well was extremely low platelets. The doctor I went and saw specialized in thyroid health. Normal platelets are between 150,000 and 400,000.” My platelets were 39,000. Below 50,000 is considered dangerous. Below 20,000 is considered critical. I was at 39,000, which is a really long way away from the normal range which is 150,000. He was like, “Don't worry about that. That might be a side effect of COVID. Don't worry about it.”

I spent all summer exhausted. I was constipated for five weeks. It was awful. I was super bloated. I was tired. My head was buzzing. I had headaches. My eyes were super swollen. I was dry. I couldn't understand it. I was like, “I'm going to do the things that I know generally works.” I was doing yoga every day. I was doing meditation every day. I was eating anti-inflammatory. I was hydrating like crazy.

I then did another blood test a couple of months later and the blood work came back again at below 50,000. At that point, I'd gone to see a normal doctor. She was like, “This is really bad.” I was like, “I had 39,000 two months ago, so it's gone up.” She was like, “This isn't normal. You need to keep checking yourself.” I was like, “Okay.” She was like, “Do another blood test in 2 weeks, 3 weeks, or whatever.” I was like, “Okay.”

I flew back to Costa Rica and did not follow her advice at all because I was like, “I'll be fine.” I'm the kind of person who keeps thinking that if you stay positive and don't focus on the problem, the problem will go away. I was eating super healthy, doing my yoga, doing my meditation, and doing all this breathwork to help reactivate my thyroid.

About 3 or 4 months later, I was due to fly to New York. I was in the capitol and I walked past a lab. I was like, “Maybe I should do one of those blood tests again.” I walked in, and within an hour, the lab called me and they were like, “You need to come in immediately. You need to go to the hospital or go to the doctor.” I was like, “What?” I was due to get on a plane the next day to fly to New York. They were like, “No. You're not getting on a plane. You need to go and see a doctor or go to the hospital immediately,” because my platelets were that low. I scheduled an appointment. I didn't go to the doctor. I did go to the hospital and I scheduled an appointment with the doctor.

The doctor in my local village said to me, “You need to leave. You can't stay here. This is too dangerous for you.” I live in a village that is five hours away from the main hospital. We don't have a hospital. We don't have blood donors. They can't do anything for me if I get hurt when my platelets are that low. I was like, “I'm not leaving. I've been living like this for the past six months. I've been surfing. I've been horse riding. I've been doing all the things.” I was tired and I was feeling dizzy, and I was like, “This isn't me,” but I thought I had a burnout, so I took some time away from my work. I was like, “I'll be fine.” I kept soldiering on.

I went and saw a functional health medicine doctor. We spent six months together and she put me on a very strict detox protocol to heal my gut because we thought maybe this was coming from the gut. I did all the things, but after six months, I was still not better. I was starting to get really depressed. My energy was so low.

Every day felt like a battle, but I didn't want to think of giving up. I said to myself, “You have to keep going.” I was showing up on my mat during my Pilates practice every day. People were looking at me and they were like, “You look fit,” but on my face, you could see that I was withdrawn. I was unhappy. I was bitter. I didn't want to look people in the eye. When I saw people, I didn't want to see them. I was shutting myself down, and I couldn't understand why.

Eventually, I came back to Europe. I decided to stay in Europe for as long as I needed in order to understand what the problem was. My mom was eventually like, “You've done all the holistic stuff. You've tried everything you could. Now, you need to go to a university hospital and see a specialist in whatever it is, platelets or hematologists.”

I went and saw a hematologist in June 2023. She was like, “You have a disease called immune thrombocytopenia.” I was like, “How did I get this?” She was like, “It can come from the virus. It can come from several different things. It can come from the vaccine.” That's when I started thinking back, like, “When did this really start?” It started after COVID, but I'm pretty sure it started after the vaccine because there were times in those six months between the vaccine and when I got COVID where I was already feeling this dizziness and this weird thing where I was like, “Am I burnt out? What is wrong with me?” It appears that this disease came as a result of COVID.

I was diagnosed in early June 2023. It is already October 2024. I've spent one year figuring out treatment. As I said to you before we started this episode, I'm only starting to feel normal again. Unfortunately, I've had to go down the route that I was avoiding for a long time, which is medication. I'm happy to share more about that, but that's how I got to where I am and what happened.

Thank you for sharing that story. First of all, emotionally, it has affected you. Thank God you have such a positive mindset and that you're willing to try anything. The second part of it is we could be critical of allopathic medicine in so many ways. I publicly shared my views on this on social media and things like that. I come from a family of doctors. At the same time, there is a role for allopathic medicine. Without it, a lot of people wouldn't be here. It does help a lot of people. Having your experience going through both of them, the allopathic and the holistic side, are you looking at it more working synergistically or are you trying two different paths, hoping that one of them is going to work out better?

I'm still hoping that we can get to the source of the problem and heal holistically. What I realized is that my energy was so low and it was taking such a toll on my mental state that I needed medication to get into a higher vibration and into a happier state. We heal our bodies when we are in a happy state. We don't heal if we allow ourselves to drown in sadness.

Vaccine Injury: We heal our bodies when we are in a happy state. We don't heal if we allow ourselves to drown in sadness.

I never drowned in sadness. It was that I didn't recognize myself anymore. Even people who haven't seen me for a couple of months, they see me and they're like, “You're back. Maddy's back. You’re smiling again. You’re engaging again.” I didn't even want to make eye contact with people. All I could think about was when I could go back to bed and sleep because I was so exhausted. For me, the way I see it is I'm on this medication to help me get into a better state so that I can continue my search in a more holistic and functional way.

Also, one of the things that we don't often speak about is that it's exhausting to advocate for your own health. It's really exhausting to find the doctors, speak to the doctors, explain your problem to them, and go and do the test. I'm lucky I took insurance before I moved to Costa Rica but my treatments have been extremely expensive. We're talking in the hundred thousands of dollars. I've had to deal with my insurance at times. All that has been extremely draining. I needed to get back into a happier, more energized place.

I'm still working with a functional health medicine doctor. We've discovered a few things on a gut level that we've been working on healing that might help with my autoimmune. I've been doing the vaccine detox protocol as well. I'm still very much hoping to find the root cause. I am on medication to help manage my platelets because otherwise, it wouldn't be manageable. I ended up in a hospital because it was so bad. It was when I ended up in the hospital that I said, “I need to accept the fact that I'm sick. I need to accept the fact that I need to take medication because otherwise, I could die of this thing.”

After the medication, how are you feeling? Where would you say you are compared to where you were?

My energy levels have gone from a 3 to a 9 and a half. The worst part was my mind not being able to focus. I get up in the morning and I'm excited to do my work. Before, if I had to take it and type an email, it would maybe take me 2 or 3 hours. I'm back to normal where I can type an email in 5 or 10 minutes and send it away.

Also, I feel a lot happier. I was not recognizing myself. I was bitter and sad. It wasn't that I was bitter and sad because I was telling myself, “It's terrible. I'm sick.” It wasn't a victim kind of sad. It was more like, “I don't understand why life feels so difficult. I don't understand why I can't smile. I don't understand why I don't feel energized doing the things I love. I don't want to socialize. I don't want to look anyone in the eye. I'm tired and I don't want to do anything.”

The emotional side of it has to be so draining. What did you do during the darkest moments emotionally to maintain a sense of continuing and going forward, knowing that it's going to improve? In the midst of it, it's got to be so difficult.

I have had a pretty consistent Pilates and yoga practice for the past couple of years. I've been practicing Ashtanga for about 10 or 12 years and doing that every day. Even though my body was sick and I could feel I wasn't doing well, what helped me was keeping my body strong and having the muscles. Since I'm on medication and my blood work is better, I've started building more muscle. Before, I was doing all the things. I was doing Ashtanga, Pilates, and everything to keep my body strong. I looked fine, but I've started building muscle again and I have more muscle definition. I've managed to put on a little bit of weight and so on. I was doing it, but I wasn't necessarily seeing any changes to my body, which was fine. All I wanted was to feel strong. That's what helped me.

I remember my mom. The day I got sent to the hospital in the ambulance, in the morning, I did a workout. She was like, “Are you out of your mind?” I was like, “No. I need to feel strong because if I feel strong in my body, I know I'm alive and I know that I can overcome this. It gives me so much mental strength.” Yoga and Pilates were my daily ritual. Sometimes, people thought I was crazy. I barely had the energy to get out of bed, but I was doing my workouts, eating healthy, cooking, doing self-care, putting my legs up the wall, meditating, journaling, and hanging in there.

When you were talking to these doctors about what was going on and you mentioned it could be a vaccine injury, was there a lot of pushback from some of them or did all of them understand?

It is written in scientific papers that a vaccine because it doesn't mention COVID vaccine, can cause ITP or Immune Thrombocytopenia. There have been several studies that have shown that people have had ITP as a result of different COVID vaccines. When I tell my doctors, they're like, “It could be,” but they don't say anything more than that. Since this is idiopathic, which means that there's no explanation for it, which is one of the most frustrating things about this disease, it is like, “We don't really know. It could be, but it could also be this or it could also be that.”

I am a true believer that you can heal from anything if you put your mind to it or if you really are mindful of how you think, what you eat, and what you consume energetically, and make sure that you're surrounded by people who are kind, loving, supportive, and all that, and you're spending time in nature. I truly believe in our body's ability to heal themselves. I've healed from many things that were maybe a little bit less serious than this.

Vaccine Injury: You can heal from anything if you put your mind to it or if you really are mindful of how you think, what you eat, and what you consume energetically.

The most frustrating part has been that I haven't been able to heal from this despite doing all the things. That was even something that I struggled with on social media because at one point when I shared that I was opting for immunotherapy, which is a treatment I did in 2023 after ending up in the hospital, and was like, “I need to accept that I'm going to go down this medical route,” I had a lot of people reach out to me going like, “Don't do that. You need to do a detox,” or, “You need to do this,” or, “You need to do that.” I was like, “As much as I would love to believe that I can heal from this holistically right now, I can't. If I keep believing that I can, maybe I'll die. I'd rather go down the medical route, but that doesn't mean that I'm completely giving up.” That part has been very frustrating.

I can imagine. I'm the same way. I'm a big believer in holistic wellness. I got to see the allopathic side for a very long time. My parents are pediatricians. Any which way, I would be like, “I don't want that medication. I don't want that vaccine. I don't want any of it.” It started in 2020 when I had severe allergies.

It was year-round. It was terrible. I could not go a day without being sniffly, coughing, and all this stuff. I went to an ENT doctor and he prescribed this thing called Budesonide. It's this nasal spray. It's a steroidal spray or whatever. Ever since I started doing that, I haven’t had any allergies. I don't even need to take it every day. It kills whatever I breathe in the air particles. It helps with that.

There are ways in which allopathic medicine is helping. You have to follow your intuition. If you are at the point where you've exhausted so many different things on the holistic side, then you have to keep trying. At the end of the day, we know the body can heal itself. It needs to have the right environment and you have to give it the right fuel. Allopathic medicine, at some point, did come from nature. Everything here on Earth comes from that source of Mother Earth. We have to look at it from that perspective.

I started noticing that you were posting about this. Prior to that, I wouldn't have been able to tell because you were still posting about your Pilates and your coaching and you looked great. I hope it is a lesson for everyone that people can look great on the outside, but they might be struggling on the inside. Even when people come into my center, I always treat them with love and kindness because you never know. Even if they come in with some kind of attitude or whatever, you never know what they're going through.

Everybody has this individual journey or whatever happened to them in childhood. I try to look at them as the childhood version of themselves because we never know the kind of pain and what happened to them. Maybe even that day, something bad happens to them. We always try to maintain love and compassion for everyone. You cannot tell from a person’s exterior as to what is going on.

I love that because that's one of the things that has been very humbling with this experience. When people looked at me, they were like, “You look fine.” When I look back at the pictures of myself when I was really unwell, there were times when I looked unwell compared to how I look now. It's true. Most people looked at me and they were like, “You're fine. There's nothing wrong with you.”

You can walk into a place and have a terrible attitude. I lashed out at people. I was not nice to people. That felt really shitty. People were like, “What's wrong with her? What's her problem?” It's very hard to explain. You're like, “I don't even know what's happening to me. All I know is that there's this sadness, frustration, and anger within me, and I don't even know what to do with it anymore.” That was hard.

When you started posting about it on social, did you get any pushback from people saying, “That's not the vaccine injury. You're being anti-vax,” or anything like that?

No. Weirdly enough, most people were like, “I'm really sorry about that. You're a person who lives such a healthy lifestyle. It's scary.” Thankfully, I haven't had any of the people who said it can't be the vaccine. Maybe they believe it, but they won't tell me. Either way, I don't care. It is what it is. I've never gotten angry at anyone who pressured me to take the vaccine because if they'd known that this would happen, they would never have done that. I'm not angry. There's no anger there about the vaccine.

I know that a few people have reached out and said, “You should go to court. You should do this,” and so on. If there's anything I can do to make a difference, put my name to a case, and so on, I’d be happy to be an example of someone's life that has nearly been destroyed as a result of this vaccine, but I'm not going to put my energy into pursuing this or being angry with the government, Pfizer, or whatever it is. It's a waste of my energy, in my opinion. I want to live a healthy, happy life to the best of my ability.

Vaccine Injury: I want to live a healthy, happy life to the best of my ability.

That is so powerful. We have to focus on what we want, not on what we don't want. There are so many opportunities to dwell on things, experiences, and whatever. At the end of the day, we have the opportunity to think about how we want to feel at this moment and what life we want to create. We have the opportunity to think, “Is this thought going to support the future that I want to create?” It’s super important to see that in life. For anyone who's tuning in, there are always ways in which we can claim to be victims. Take a more empowered approach and be an example for others to see that in themselves.

There is one thing I would add. When I made that decision and was in Costa Rica, I was isolated there for some time. I hadn't spoken to a lot of my friends about it because I assumed that most people were going to do the vaccine. The people who were around me were the people who were the most vocal anti-vaxxers. I'm not even going to say what some of the people were saying because, to me, it was like, “You guys are crazy.” I 100% agree that maybe we don't need this vaccine, but what some of the anti-vaxxers were saying was so crazy that I was like, “I'm not going to side with those people.”

Afterward, what happened was that I realized that there was a silent movement of people who were not necessarily anti-vaxxers but people who chose not to have the vaccine. Some of my closest friends whose opinions I trust, like yourself and other people, chose not to have it. All I wish was that I had reached out to a few people or the people who were vocal and were saying, “I'm not choosing to do the vaccine because these are the reasons,” and so on.

The extreme anti-vaxxers were saying things that, to me, seemed to be crazy. They were saying it not from a health point of view, but it was some stuff where I was like, “This is insane.” I didn't want to believe in that. I felt there wasn't a middle ground of people who said, “We don't need this.” Does that make sense?

Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that people choose not to do it. That term anti-vax is so loaded. I'll give you an example. I choose not to want to have a cat in my house, but I'm not anti-cat.

Exactly.

I choose not to eat steak, but I'm not anti-steak. People can eat exactly whatever they want. It's almost like a psychological thing that they put people under this pressure and this crockpot of building the pressure. It’s like, “You're not able to work if you don't do it. You can't do this. You can't travel. You can't go to sports games, concerts, or any of that stuff.” Initially, I saw how deep the pressure was, so I took a step back.

I had no intention of doing it, but it showed me that if there's so much pressure on people to do it, what is their incentive for getting everybody vaccinated? That's what made me start questioning things. Going back on it, we can see that there was so much ill intention from the financial perspective. If you want to look at anything in life that goes on in politics and whatever, what is the financial incentive for the people who are pushing this particular agenda? I saw that it was a huge way to make money and then also disrupt things, change money from the middle class to people in power, and things like that. That’s where I came from.

I live in Jersey City, New Jersey. People are very into allopathic medicine and believe everything that the government tells them. They don't think that there are any nefarious reasons or anything like that. They would recommend that. Some of my employees got mad at me. There was one particular employee who was calling me out for not making everybody do the vaccine. I was like, “Whatever people want to do, that's up to you. I'm not involved in your medical situation. I am not going to tell you what to do or not.”

He was very upset when people didn't wear masks and didn't do the vax. He was very rude to people. It's crazy because I knew this person for five years and we had a good relationship. All of a sudden, over this one topic and a couple of other things, he completely turned on me. He was talking about me behind my back and all this stuff. It was interesting.

Also, a lot of clientele that were coming to me for a very long time were also very much into, “You shouldn't be speaking about not doing the vaccine or these kinds of things.” Fast forward a couple of years later, I've spoken to at least 150 to 200 people who have been severely injured and are clients of mine coming in. We see over 14,000 people so far in the couple of years we've been open.

I have one-on-one conversations with everyone when they come in. Many reasons why people are doing it are for detoxing, going into the sauna, or going into the energy enhancement system that you experienced. Since they've taken it, it has had a big impact on their life, their thinking, their mindset, and their energy levels. These are people who have run triathlons. These are people who were athletes. They were such great pillars of health. Unfortunately, it has affected them. It’s not everybody who's done it, but a great percentage of them. I'm able to communicate with so many people. There is something to it that is disrupting the balance in the body.

Pharmaceutical Industry

I hate to think of this as being a conspiracy, but I hadn't taken pharmaceutical drugs since before I got put on this medication. I'm on what they say is going to be a lifelong drug that's costing about $4,000 a month, and that's outside of any emergency treatment that I need or anything like that. I have become a huge profit center for the pharmaceutical industry. From being someone who would never really use any pharmaceuticals, I've become a massive profit center for the pharmaceutical industry. That, to me, I was like, “Was that what they had in mind?” I don't know.

Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt and they said they had the best intentions, they're still getting filthy rich off of it. The best-case scenario is that the money that they're making is a side effect. They've made hundreds of billions of dollars. Even if we zoom out and look at chronic illness in general, the United States spends more money on healthcare than any other country in the world. We have the most number of doctors and professionals working on this. We have scientists working on cancer research and all these things. How come with all that money, there's such little focus on nutrition?

Thankfully, we are having a lot more talk about this in Congress. There was a round table led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with a lot of health professionals who are at the cutting edge of what they do in terms of nutrition, psychology, psychiatry, and all these things. They talk about how crazy our whole healthcare system is in the United States. The United States is one example, but I use this example because it dictates policy for the rest of the world.

The Food and Drug Administration, the people that are supposed to oversee food companies and pharmaceuticals, are being funded by both. It’s this incestuous relationship where it is so crazy. I can't even imagine in what way they're incentivized to oversee and tell food companies, “You're poisoning people.” Companies that are chemical companies that used to make chemicals for the Vietnam War, World War II, and poisoning people are in charge of our food production. It does not make any sense.

I 100% agree with that. It's mind-boggling., When I studied nutrition, it was so eye-opening how simple it is to eat healthy and how complicated the food industry has made it for us. It is not only the complexity of the food, which about 90% of what you find in a supermarket is inedible and I wouldn't even call it food, but it is also because of the confusion around food. One moment, you should be eating this, and then it is like, “You should buy this. Fortify this. Buy that.” It's all profit-driven. People who make food don't have your health in mind. They have their pockets in mind and how they can profit from you eating certain foods.

The pharmaceutical industries, on the other end, are going, “We profit from making people sick. This is awesome.” It is the perfect storm to create confusion, chronic disease, and an absolute mess for people. That's why people feel so overwhelmed by understanding what they should eat to feel good. That's why my work feels extremely empowering because I really take people from that place of confusion and frustration to a place where things are simple and easy. They can fuel themselves with joy and great flavors from a place of love.

Coaching Program

Whenever you post your food, it always looks so fun and very colorful. Tell us a little bit about your coaching programs and how you work with some of your clients.

I have a one-on-one coaching program that I lead people through, which is really meeting the client where they're at. A lot of people come to me for weight loss. Other people come to me for gut issues. A lot of the time, there is an emotional component. That could be emotional eating or people feeling like they know what they should be doing to look after themselves, but they're simply not doing it. It is understanding where the blockages are and what we need to deal with.

Our relationship with the food is often a reflection of our relationship with ourselves. Having a happy relationship with ourselves, feeling fulfilled in our lives, and so on is going to make our relationship with food much easier. Instead of just focusing on the food, I focus on what's behind that behavior and how we can change that.

Our relationship with food is often a reflection of our relationship with ourselves.

A lot of the time, they come for weight loss. Let's face it. At the end, I ask them, “What's the biggest benefit from having done this program?” They're like, “I feel so much happier in my life.” I’m like, “How about the weight loss?” They've lost the weight that they wanted, if not more. They’re like, “That was amazing too, but I didn't realize how frustrated, upset, depressed, or whatever it is I was before.”

Over the years, I've worked with quite a lot of clients. More than once, I've had people who have been on a mental health medication and have worked with their psychiatrist to come off mental health medication because they've realized that they didn't need it once they started eating better, looking after themselves, doing the things that bring them joy, letting go of the things that were weighing them down, and prioritizing their own well-being. It's very powerful work and I love it.

I also have an emotional eating group coaching program, which I'm running. I like doing the emotional eating programs as part of a group because it makes people realize that they're not alone in their struggles and that they have a lot in common with other people who are emotional eaters, binge eaters, etc. That's a three-month program that I'm leading. It's extremely gratifying to help people.

A lot of it is self-reflection. I always say I'm just the one asking questions for people to understand things about themselves. That's what healing our relationship with food and healing our relationship with ourselves is about. It's self-reflection and understanding ourselves, our needs, and where we're falling short of doing the things that we need in order to feel good.

That’s amazing. We both studied at the nutrition school, IIN, which is the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. One of the big concepts they talk about is bio-individuality and understanding your entire life and your body. It's an ecosystem that has to work in symbiosis with each other. Your mental, physical, spiritual, all of it matters. If one cog is not working properly, then it's going to affect everything else.

From the perspective of you're stressed out all the time, not happy, you have anxiety, and you're producing all this cortisol, fat is going to stay on your body because your body is not processing these cortisol levels out and you're inflamed all the time. Everything works with each other. It starts with the mental aspect of it.

I love the fact that you go so deep with clients because there are coaches out there who say, “You could book a couple of sessions, and everything will be okay.” It takes a lot of time, effort, and change. It really starts with the person who wants to make the change. You have to want to change your body and change your life in order to make that happen. Nobody else is going to do it for you. Having you empower them or give them the feeling that they can be empowered is an important part of that journey.

That's one of the most beautiful things. When people take action to feel better in their bodies, what they realize is that they feel so empowered. I've had people who are like, “I changed careers, and then I met the love of my life. I moved to another country, built a house, and then started a business.” It's that empowerment part that once you have it in one area of your life, you translate it to all other areas. People start flourishing. It's amazing.

Is your Pilates coaching congruent with the health coaching, or is it separate?

I have a separate program, which is a membership platform called Fit Body Fresh Mind. It gives people Pilates, yoga, mindfulness, and recipes. It's all the tools that I use for people who want to do it on their own. It doesn't include the coaching. When I take on coaching clients, they get to use the toolbox and the platform. A lot of the time, what happens is that once they finish the coaching program, they continue as members of Fit Body Fresh Mind.

I have other people who are like, “I want to do your workout because I love them. They make me feel strong. They don't cause stress. I feel so much more relaxed and happy in my body.” They go on and do that. They start doing the recipes and achieve incredible changes on their own as well. It really depends on the type of person.

If anybody who is reading wants to work with you, what is the best way to get in touch with you?

It is probably on Instagram, or send me an email. My Instagram is @MaddyKarlsson. You're always welcome to shoot me a message. Generally, what I do is I jump on a call with a person to get to know what they're dealing with and see if we click because that's important as well. It's important to work with people you feel are ready for the support you want to provide them with and for that person to feel like I am the right person to support them. The element of trust and connection is really important.

My Purpose

Let me ask you a question. Why do you think you came here to planet Earth as Maddy Karlsson? What did you want to experience?

I came here to planet Earth to experience the struggles of not feeling good in my body and my mind in order to learn how to feel amazing. This last disease or challenge that I've been handed made me realize, “You are not doing this just for yourself. You are doing this so that you can connect with how terrible it feels to not feel good in your body and to fight and realize, “What is it that's going to make me feel better? You'll then be able to share that.” It is because of my self-experienced struggles with emotional eating, binge eating, this autoimmune disease, gut issues, and all these things that enable me to connect with people who are in these situations. If I hadn't experienced it, I don't think I would have that type of depth in my practice and work.

The reason I ask is because I see the common thread amongst all my guests and pretty much anyone who's living their purpose that I talk to. Sometimes, the greatest pain points or perceived pain points that we have in life are the propellants to help you live your passion and then not just help yourself but also help other people. Those are the people that are the most fulfilled.

When you're on this journey and you're doing everything for yourself, the feeling is not the same as if you share that with others. Everything I do, experience, and enjoy, I want to share it with the world and share it with as many people as I can because my happiness is also even more enhanced when other people are happy. When we start helping other people get to their happy place, then everybody becomes happier. That karma is returned. We're creating this perpetual motion machine as we light each other up and support one another in this life.

I agree. I'm so grateful to be able to do this kind of work. Even though it's been hard, I know that this has all happened for a reason and that it makes me a better practitioner and a better coach.

What role, if any, does God play in your life? What does God mean to you?

I do believe in a higher power. I was having this conversation with a friend. I know that there's someone up there who has my back and who I can ask for guidance. I don't necessarily believe that it's God as we picture him in a church or something like that. I also know there's a connection to that person and that we are, in a way, all connected together. That's my belief. Sometimes, difficult things happen for us not to feel sorry for ourselves, but it somehow redirects us or helps us see things that we wouldn't otherwise see.

Vaccine Injury: Sometimes, difficult things happen for us not to feel sorry for ourselves, but it somehow redirects or helps us see things that we wouldn't otherwise see.

There's this unseen power and force that's generating all of it for us. I truly believe everything we go through is perfectly aligned. The universe is working in our favor. This life is a beautiful experience. The people we meet, the experiences we have, the friendships we make, and all of it, if you look back and look at your life, you're perfectly great where you are. In order to get to this place, every decision you made was the perfect decision for you to be right here.

100%. That's one of the biggest lessons. It is to surrender and trust. I could have wasted a lot of energy going, “Why is this happening to me? I shouldn't have done that.” Instead, I was like, “Everything's happening for a reason. I need to trust that whatever happens is what's meant to happen.” There are some things you can't control, but you can control how you deal with them. I'm proud of myself that I managed to surrender, not fight in certain ways, and not resist my reality. Let's put it that way.

I can't wait to have our next conversation to see how you're doing in some time and see all the amazing progress.

Thank you.

What's next for you? What are you looking to create in 2025?

I want to go back to hosting retreats. I stopped that. I didn't do any retreats in 2024 because in 2023, when I was due to host a retreat, which I did pull off, I was in the hospital for ten days before the retreat. They were like, “You are not going anywhere.” I was like, “I'm going to Costa Rica to host a retreat,” and they were like, “Okay.” I had to have some emergency treatment. I don't think I want to do that again. I want to get to a place where I'm fully stable and where I know that I'll be able to show up. I do want to go back to hosting retreats.

I want to keep traveling, keep exploring, keep learning new things, and keep enjoying life. The past few years have been really heavy. I shared the things about my autoimmune disease, but I also had a car accident. I have a horse that is very close to my heart and he had a tragic accident where we thought he was going to die. It has been a heavy year on top of everything else that I was dealing with. My only motto is pleasure and enjoying myself, squeezing all the juice out of life that I can get, and not thinking too much about the future but being truly present.

That's the name of the game, being in the present moment. That's the perfect way to sum up this conversation. I want to thank you so much for coming on. It was so great talking to you and catching up. I love seeing your work. You inspire me all the time whenever I see your posts.

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for all your support. I truly appreciate you as a friend.

Thank you.

Important Links

Maddy Karlsson
@MaddyKarlsson - Instagram

About Maddy Karlsson