I have to be honest with you about something right up front: I showed up to this interview as a non-vegan. And I left this weekend as someone who ate more vegetables in three days than she probably had in the previous three months and genuinely felt better for it.
Dr. Monica Egan has a way of making you want to go home and cook broccoli. She is that convincing. Not because she lectures or judges, but because she is so clearly thriving that the argument makes itself.
Monica and I went to Palmer College of Chiropractic together in Davenport, Iowa. She has been in practice for nearly nine years at Monarch Chiropractic in Nevada, California, in Marin County, where she practices Blair upper cervical chiropractic alongside a technique called NAT and a deep commitment to educating her patients about nutrition and wellness. We recorded this episode on a family vacation together, sitting outside while our kids swam in the pool and our husbands handled dinner. It was exactly the kind of unhurried, honest conversation that never happens when life is running at full speed.
We had just spent a day at Sequoia National Forest. And even before we sat down to talk about veganism, I found myself thinking about what the sequoias had taught me: that fire, which looks like destruction, is actually part of how the forest grows. The trees are designed to withstand it. They come out stronger on the other side.
That is a pretty good metaphor for what Monica went through to get where she is.
She Chose a Different Path
Monica grew up watching family members battle diabetes, bipolar disorder, and metabolic disease. She was told, repeatedly, that these things were genetic. That her family history was her destiny.
She decided it wasn't.
"That's not going to be my journey," she said. "I'm going to choose a different path."
That decision, made young, has driven everything. She became a chiropractor. She studied nutrition. She ate clean. She did what she was told was right: paleo, low carbs, high protein, no grains. For years she followed the rules and felt, by most measures, healthy.
And then, at 35, she started running out of steam.
She was tired in a way that a pot of coffee couldn't touch. She was sluggish. She was having digestive issues that wouldn't resolve. She was also a mother of young children, running a full practice, sleeping less than she needed, and carrying stress she couldn't put down. Her health was declining even as she was helping other people find theirs.
That gap is the thing she couldn't ignore.
The Lymphatic System Nobody Talked to Her About
The turning point came through an iridology reading, a method of assessing health by examining the iris of the eye to identify weakness in the lymphatic system and organs. What Monica saw surprised her: her kidneys, liver, adrenals, and digestive tract were all backed up. Her lymphatic system wasn't draining the way it needed to.
She started asking a different set of questions. Not what should I eat, but why is my body not clearing waste properly? And what do the healthiest people in the world actually have in common?
What she found led her to the concept of alkalinity. The body is naturally alkaline. Most of what we eat, particularly animal proteins, metabolizes into acid. Acid is corrosive and inflammatory. Disease, including conditions like cancer, diabetes, and autoimmune disorders, tends to struggle in an alkaline environment. Monica started to wonder if her protein-heavy paleo approach was actually working against her own chemistry.
She also came across an argument for eliminating meat that she could not shake: meat sitting outside in 98-degree heat for two days would be something you would never eat. But meat sitting inside your body, which is also 98 degrees, takes one to three days to fully pass through a digestive tract that is many times longer than that of a true carnivore. The bacterial fermentation required to break it down is enormous. And the energy your body spends on that digestion is energy it cannot spend on healing and repair.
She wasn't convinced overnight. But she was open enough to try.
Five Months In
By the time we recorded this episode, Monica had been plant-based for about five months. And she described how she felt in a way that I found remarkable: like she had been drinking a pot of coffee without the coffee. Alert. Energized. Clear.
She wakes up more easily. Her digestion has settled. Her insulin and A1C numbers are improving. She is eating an enormous variety of fruits, vegetables, sprouts, and whole foods, and instead of eating protein directly, she is eating the amino acids that are the building blocks of protein, allowing her body to take exactly what it needs and build from there.
She is also spending far less time being tired.
Her daily rhythm looks something like this: celery juice in the morning, a generous serving of fruit, a salad without dairy, more fruit in the evening if she is hungry. She practices intermittent fasting to give her digestion genuine rest. She eats until she is satisfied, which turns out to be more often than you might expect when the food is this close to what the body actually needs.
I asked her about protein, because that is always the first question. She is not worried about it. There are hundreds of thousands of plant foods rich in amino acids. We have simply been so narrowly trained in what constitutes a complete meal that the abundance of what is actually available to us doesn't register.
Not One Size Fits All
Something I appreciate enormously about Monica is that she does not preach. She does not tell her patients they have to do what she does. She recognizes that every body is different, that every family situation is different, that change is a process and it has to start from curiosity, not shame.
What she asks is: what if you tried it for a month or two? Just to give your digestion a break. Just to see how you feel. And if you decide to eat meat again, go back to it with more intention, choosing clean, organic, grass-fed sources and paying attention to what your body tells you.
Her own kids are asking for spring rolls and dipping them in hot sauce. They are juicing celery and carrots and apples together and calling it theirs because they helped make it. Change in a family does not happen by force. It happens because the children see their parent thriving and they want to be part of that.
Monarch Chiropractic and Why She Named It That
Before we talked about food, I asked Monica how she chose the name for her practice. She had gone through nearly a thousand chiropractic practice names without finding one that resonated. She prayed about it. She quieted herself and waited.
Monarch came.
Monarch butterflies are known for their transformation and their migration. And for Monica, the metaphor was immediate and complete: she wanted to take people from a place of limited health knowledge into a place of genuine empowerment. The transformation from caterpillar to butterfly is not comfortable. It requires passing through something hard. But what comes out the other side is freedom.
Monarch Chiropractic. Transform Your Health. That is exactly what she does.
The Body Is Talking
Monica's closing thought for every listener is simple and I think it is worth sitting with: your body is talking to you every day. It is giving you signals about what it needs, what it cannot handle, what is working and what is not. The work is learning the language.
Nutrition is one of the clearest conversations your body has with you. Every time you eat, you are either feeding inflammation or cooling it. Feeding clarity or clouding it. Feeding energy or draining it.
Monica chose to listen. And the body she has now is the result.
Find her at monarchchiropractic.co, and if you are in the Marin County area and looking for Blair upper cervical chiropractic care alongside genuinely thoughtful wellness guidance, she is your person.
Listen to the full conversation with Dr. Monica Egan on the Well Connected Podcast: Live Your Life in Alignment. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
Find Dr. Egan at monarchchiropractic.co.
