Hormone Prosperity Podcast with Dr. Kyrin Dunston

Why Your Dysfunctional Gut Is Wrecking Your Hormones And What To Do About It

Wondering why your hormones are all out of whack? Ever feel like you’re maintaining a delicate balancing act, but the scales just can’t stay in place? Well, if that sounds like you, then it’s time to join us as we dive into Dr. Norm Robillard’s fascinating insights—on how an unhealthy gut might be disrupting your hormones. With decades of experience under his belt and countless research studies to back him up, this is one episode on midlife hormone balance that no woman should miss!

 

Norm Robillard, Ph.D., is the founder of Digestive Health Institute and creator of the Fast Tract Diet. He is a strong advocate of natural and integrative solutions for functional gastrointestinal disorders, various forms of gut dysbiosis and related health issues, helping people globally through his consultation practice. The Fast Tract Diet was presented at Digestive Disease Week to give gastroenterologists a science-based treatment option for functional GI disorders and dybioses based on Dr. Norms 3 pillar approach. His award-winning Fast Tract Diet mobile app and Fast Tract Digestion book series make it easy to implement the Fast Tract Diet.

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How an unhealthy gut may affect your hormones.

• What Dr. Norm’s 3-pillar approach is and how it could help rebalance hormones.

• The importance of probiotics in maintaining healthy gut flora.

• Why food sensitivities can play a role in hormone health.

• Plus, Dr. Norm shares his top tips for keeping your digestive system functioning optimally!

 

So don’t miss out – join us as we explore why your dysfunctional gut might be wrecking your hormones and what to do about it with our incredible guest, Dr. Norm Robillard! Tune in now—you won’t regret it!

 

Midlife women - let's take back our health and nurture our bodies, together! Join us for this eye-opening episode on why your dysfunctional gut is wrecking your hormones and what you can do about it with Dr. Norm Robillard! Tune in now to learn the secrets of a healthy digestive system and balanced hormones. It's time to start feeling like yourself again!

 

(00:00): “The best doctor gives the least amount of medicine.” - Benjamin Franklin. If your gut is dysfunctional and running you crazy and you think you've got hormone problems, this episode is for you.

(00:13): So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an ob-gyn, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

(01:06): Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me today for this discussion on dysfunctional gut issues. What's a dysfunctional gut? Well, think about your dysfunctional family. You know what I'm talking about, right? Holidays where people get drunk and fight start, or people are disconnected, all the dysfunctions that plague modern families. Well, your gut can be dysfunctional too, and maybe it's not something that you're aware of. What does that mean? How you evaluate it? My guest today is an expert in this and he is going to help you understand clearly how do I know if this is me, how do I get tested, what do I do about it? And really get the big picture and detailed picture on what's important. And we're gonna talk about Benjamin Franklin's quote, the best doctor gives the least medicines, not the most.

(01:57): I know some people who go to the doctor and actually get angry when they don't leave with a prescription. Is that you? I really hope not, but it's very true. A lot of people get angry when they don't get medicines, but you'll be healthier overall when you take fewer or no medicines. They don't really fix the problem, they just mask them. Your gut health and microbiome are essential for your hormonal health. I will tell you why in this episode. So you wanna stay tuned for that. We talk about assessing low stomach acid at the Heidelberg Test. If you're not aware of that, we dive into that and much more. So I'll tell you a little bit about Norm and then we'll get started. Norm Robard is a PhD. He is the founder of Digestive Health Institute and creator of the Fast Track Diet is a strong advocate of natural and integrative solutions for functional gastrointestinal disorders, various forms of gut dysbiosis and related health issues, helping people globally through his consultation practice. The fast track diet was presented at Digestive Disease Week to give gastroenterologists a science-based treatment option for functional GI disorders and dysbiosis based on Dr. Norm's three pillar approach, his award-winning fast track diet, mobile app, and fast track digestion book series make it easy to implement the fast track diet. Welcome Norm Robillard to the

(03:24): Show. Thank you Kyrin. Nice to be here.

(03:26): All the way from Boston, Massachusetts with a distinctive accent. I did live there one summer when I worked at the Harvard School of Pub Public Health doing research and it's such a unique accent that I would pick out anywhere I went in the world. So thank you for representing the Northeast

(03:45): , right? In fact, I've lived in California for 10 years and I came back and I still have the accent ,

(03:52): Right? So let's dive into this very important topic. We can't talk about digestive health enough when it comes to hormonal health. And if you're listening and you're still scratching your head going, Kyrin, I don't know why you talk about poop all the time. This is supposed to be about hormones, . You gotta get the memo that your poop is all about your hormones and your hormones are all about your poop. So there's this interconnection. So what really was your path to becoming so passionate about functional gut disorders? Well, let me back up. Let's start with what are functional gut disorders? I don't even think people are familiar with that term.

(04:32): Yeah, well they should get rid of that term as quickly as possible. It's been around a long time and it doesn't have much meaning now because when that term came up, it was, they couldn't find anything organically wrong with you. But yet you had these i b s type symptoms, bloating, altered bowel habits, gas belching, and so they would think, okay, well everything's working, but you have these symptoms. So it's a functional disorder. But we now know that in many of these cases, really the planes hit the mountain. It's not functional and we know a lot more about what's going on. You know, with the more common use of breath testing. We know that there's often an overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine and there should be very few microbes in the small intestine. That's where our own critical digestion takes place. So we now know there's overgrowths and there there's been some studies on which exactly which types of bacteria those are.

(05:34): And basically it's our own microbes overgrowing in the small intestine. And newest studies are starting to focus on some of these what they call proteobacteria like e coli and Klebsiella species. But others have been identified as well, also with various functional, what they used to call functional GI issues. They now know that there's alterations in or intestinal bacteria as a whole. So we have these FILA of bacteria and other organisms such as BDIs firm, acutes, actinobacteria and so on. And we know that there's some significant imbalances there in in people that have these conditions. So in other words, we're find as we find out more about them, they're not functional, they're dysfunctional gut health issues. So it, you know, takes 10 years for things to catch up with what's actually happening in terms of nomenclature and the dogma and the literature. Right.

(06:33): I agree. We should call it dysfunctional gut disorders, just like we have. Some of us have dysfunctional families, dysfunctional gut disorders. Exactly. So you mentioned symptoms of ibs. So how would someone self-identify? I could have a dis or now I'm saying I could have a dysfunctional gut disorder or I could have a functional gut disorder. How would they consider that that might be them? 

(06:56): Yeah, well I think that the symptoms of the, kind of the first sign, right? I mean we talked about gas and bloating. You might have a lot of belching or even flatulence, kind of some lower GI gas you might have cramping, reflux is one of those. In fact, acid reflux and I B s are very closely linked. Half the people with IBS have reflux symptoms and half the people with reflux have IBS symptoms. So there's a similar etiology there, but there's other ones, nausea, dehydration, fatigue. Some people don't gain weight or they lose weight. So there's a nutritional component there, which makes sense, right? If you have all of these microbes in your small intestine where, where your vili and the micro viop kind of the, the fibers on top of fiber fibers in all of the surface area in the small intestine, these vili are pretty kind of delicate.

(07:51): And if you have a lot of bacteria in that area and bacteria produce toxins and protease enzymes that can damage the vili and the little enzymes, the brush border enzymes that that radiate out from these microvilli. And so if you don't have those, you won't break down disaccharides, you won't complete the final breakdown of starches. You may not digest and absorb fats well. So the SIBO can cause this mal-absorption that ends up overfeeding these microbes. And when you overfeed these microbes, many of them produce significant amounts of gases. Hydrogen methane, hydrogen sulfide. In fact there was one microbiology study done on these gut bacteria. And if they feed these bacteria essentially one ounce of carbohydrates, right? So some, many of the carbohydrates we absorb into our bloodstream, but many we don't. We take just 30 grams of unabsorbed carbohydrates feed them to, to microbes these gut bacteria.

(08:56): They can produce 10 liters of hydrogen gas. So imagine, whoa, 10 liters of gas in your intestines from one ounce of of unabsorbed carbs. And of course there's a molecular food chain. Some microbes take the hydrogen that one type of bacteria produces and they turn it into methane. In the case of these akea organisms or sulfate reducing bacteria can take the hydrogen and turn it into hydrogen sulfide. So the bottom line is when you're not digesting and absorbing your food efficiently, you're overfeeding these microbes. They produce a lot of these gases and you can end up with a lot of these symptoms. So I think the symptoms to answer your question is the first sign that something's going on. And then you have to really begin to look deeper into what's happening.

(09:43): Right? So just to recap, cuz that was very rich, what you just shared is if you're wondering could I have a functional gut disorder? Basically if you have any of the symptoms that Dr. Norm is talking about, right? The excess belching, indigestion, heartburn, reflux, gassy if you poop less than every time you eat, right? So if you have any degree of constipation, if you have loose stool, hard rabbit pellet stool, you know any symptoms associated with a gastrointestinal tract that wouldn't be diagnosed typically by your regular H M O doctor cuz they're looking for a structural problem or maybe they would diagnose you with reflux, but they're basically gonna give you a drug for it. Can you talk about the pitfalls? Because some people listening are gonna think, oh yeah, I've got reflux, it's no problem. My doctor gave me this proton pump inhibitor and so I'm fine now. I don't have a problem anymore. Dr. Norm. Yeah, what what do you say

(10:45): To that? Yeah, my 18 years of consulting in this field as a consulting microbiologist, I really focus on holistic and dietary and behavioral solutions and perhaps some dietary supplements mostly aimed at improving digestion. Because I recognize that these proton pump inhibitors, for instance, and to a lesser extent H two antagonists, these types of medicines, they basically knock out the ability of your stomach to produce acid. And so when you do reflux and material comes from your stomach and gets up into your esophagus, it might not burn as much. And about half of the people with reflux get symptomatic relief from those types of medicines. Half don't. But the real issue is why are you refluxing? That's what you need to address. Because it's not just acid, it's stomach enzymes, pepin, it can be pancreatic enzymes when they look they find bile, right? Bile is something, it's a caustic molecule.

(11:50): Your liver produces these bile acids stored in your gallbladder, released into your small intestine to help digest fats. And all of these other functions are antimicrobial. But when they reflux back into your stomach and then into your esophagus, they're caustic as well. And the proton pump inhibitors won't do anything about those. And then on top of it, this long-term health consequences of removing your stomach acid. Mm-Hmm. , you may very well have not absorb vitamins like vitamin D, certain B vitamins, B12 because your stomach makes intrinsic factor that that is needed for B12 absorption. You might not absorb iron as well. Magnesium in particular, in fact on proton pump inhibitors, there have been cases with this hypomagnesemia low blood mag magnesium, which is a dangerous condition, cardiovascular metabolic health and even supplementing with magnesium doesn't always correct the issue. So there are long-term consequences of these drugs. And when I work with people, there may be a reason they need to be on a PPI to begin with. Say they have gastritis or an ulcer. Well that is one instance where those can be helpful, but the goal should be really healing that and then giving reflux under control and then getting off of these acid reducing medicines. I've worked with people that have been on them for 20 years. It's a problem at that point.

(13:19): Yeah, it's, I think they're really only approved for short-term use, but doctors put people sometimes on these who are taking them for years and it just decimate the rest of your digestive tract, which affects your hormones. Ladies

(13:35): . Yeah. And your microbiome. There's a number of studies saying that, that reducing the stomach acid on these drugs drives changes in your microbiome. So natural is always the best whenever possible. , that's my motto.

(13:50): So we can't talk about the microbiome enough. We've talked about, you know, how would I know if I had a functional gut disorder? Well actually let's go into this next. What type of evaluation should people be expecting to have if someone really is doing a root cause resolution approach and looking at why they have a dysfunctional gut issue, what kind of testing is available and should they look for an ask for?

(14:13): What I routinely use in, in my consultation practice is comprehensive stool analyses. Now those results won't necessarily tell you whether you have sibo. All right. Small, an overgrowth of bacteria in your small intestine. It's really looking at the composition of your stool. However, first of all, there are many types of dysbiosis. SIBO is one of them. There's also cifo, small intestinal fungal overgrowth. There's libo, what I loosely call libo for an overgrowth in urological biological intestinal overgrowth. And it's based on a couple of studies that are very convincing that you can't have an overgrowth in the early part of your secum and large bowel as well. Mm-Hmm , you can have these methanogens overgrowing that's called imo, forint intestinal methane overgrowth, people that are making too much methane. But you can also have significant imbalances in the composition of the gut microbes in your lo intestine.

(15:11): Right. And when you have that, what are the ramifications of that? So in these stool tests, first of all, you're going to look at a lot of other digestive markers. You're going to look at elastase, which is an enzyme produced from the pancreas. That is an important test. A lot of doctors use just that test itself to determine whether the pancreas is functioning and release, releasing other important digestive enzymes like amylase, lipase and protease. Elastase is just the test they use to assess the pancreas. You're looking at S I G A, secreted immunoglobulin A. In other words, how's your gut immune system doing? I G A is important for gut barrier integrity, for balancing the good and bad microbes. You're going to look at a whole variety of pathogens that may be your problem, right? You can roll in certain other testing, helico, pyuria, bacteria, infect stomach, clostridia, difficile, especially if somebody has chronic diarrhea.

(16:14): But then you also look at all of your, what I call commensal populations, right? The bacti, the firm acutes the proteobacteria on and on, right? A number actinobacteria bifidobacteria. And then you wanna know what do your populations look like in each of those high level and detailed species level breakdown compared to kind of the healthy consensus population. And so it takes a trained eye to really go through these tests, but there's a lot of actionable information in there when you do that. So for instance, what I like to see right off the top, I like to look at the firmicutes and the bact ADIs because those two Fila rep like and Utes are like bacillus and strap. And some of those species, lactobacillus, those are all Utes, bact, ADIs, that's bact, fragiles, bact theta, ITO micron and so forth. They're highly diverse, these two Fila.

(17:16):And they represent 90% of the microbes in your gut, just these two Fila. And so the ratio of those is really important. If you have a lot of these firmicutes over the BDIs that's commonly seen in I B s, it's commonly seen in epilepsy, it's commonly seen in obesity. And it's also common on a plant-based diet. If you eat a lot of plants and your digestion is working well, you may have too many of these firmicutes on an animal-based diet. There's more of the BDIs. And also that's more indicative when somebody is addresses i b s or addresses obesity or addresses the epilepsy. You see that shift. So there's just so much to look at in these comprehensive stool analyses, but there's some of the highlights. Yeah, it's very false.

(18:06): Yes. And I'm wondering if you can speak to the utility of, I'm not sure if you look at this cuz you come from it, gut health from a microbiology standpoint, but food sensitivity testing. And then if you could comment on, are these types of tests that your regular H M O doctors going to order and know how to read?

(18:26): Mm-Hmm. Yeah, that's a good question. Not all of them. Although if you go to certain websites of some of the companies that do this test, like Genova, they have a GI FX test, very good test. I use it often. If you drill into their website, they will point you in the direction in your state to doctors that routinely have accounts with them. You know, for instance, our Digestive health Institute has an account with direct labs, so we can get the test that way, but they'll point you in the direction of doctors that can order these tests. And you brought up an important point. You mentioned food sensitivities and while we're at it how about just kind of inflammatory conditions? Mm-Hmm. . And there are markers in this same test that look at that. For instance, calprotectin. Calprotectin is a protein released from activated white blood cells at the site of inflammation.

(19:17): And so if you have high levels of calprotectin, you're in an inflammatory state. Now it might be just a couple of hundred and okay, that's still high and you need to address it. But somebody with inflammatory bowel disease for instance, they might, might have levels. And I think the units are micrograms per gram of 2000. So it can tell you a lot. Now in terms of food sensitivity, there's EO eosinophil, protein X mm-hmm . And that's considered a marker of kind of food sensitivity. So that's another one you can look at. You can look at lactoferrin, you can look at if there's microscopic signs of blood in your stool because that's another sign potentially of inflammatory bowel disease or even colorectal cancer. So there's a lot in these tests and it's a really good thing to do if you have a lot of gut issues and, and you need to try to understand why and what to do about

(20:14): It. Yes. So I love these tests. I usually use the GI map, that's my favorite. It gives a lot of those markers that's, and you know, I was thinking earlier when you were running through the different species, the bacteria, some people will get tripped up thinking they have to know all these different names. I mean it's helpful if you do, but it's kind of like your friends at church that maybe you know their face but and you wave high, but you might not remember all of their first and last names. You don't need to. So don't feel like it's something that you have to memorize if that trips you up. But you can just learn the ones that are most important. Just like in your communities where you have friends who you know their first and last name, you know where they live, you know their phone numbers.

(20:56): So it's a similar type of community. So consider if you are a candidate for functional gut testing, having some of these tests, food sensitivity is something that I, I really recommend. I don't think there's a perfect food sensitivity test, but I think they all have their pros and cons. So you kind of have to, whoever you decide to work with, I do think having a guide with these types of things is very helpful. Pick which one could work. So tests, don't guess get an evaluation. What are some of the common things that we can do though maybe we can't afford testing. This testing is not inexpensive. I know. Mm-Hmm. , you know, the GI effects with Genova and the GI map or $500 or more. So not everyone can afford that. So what are some steps that people who are having functional issues with their gut might mm-hmm. just start to take from a general basis that could impact how their gut is functioning.

(21:57): Yes. In fact, you can do a lot. In fact, I'll usually start, if there is some testing, especially GI testing or say a SIBO breath test, I will like people to get those samples done before they start kind of some interventions. But oftentimes we'll just work by just taking a complete history of somebody, you know, how long has this been going on? Exactly what are your symptoms, what is your diet like? Is really an area that I dig deep into because I work with people that have very varied dietary preferences. I work with vegetarians, pescatarians, mostly omnivores, but a good number of vegetarians and pescatarians and once in a great while of vegan as well. But it matters because we had talked about this molecular food chain, right? When you consume food, right, it consists of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, right? Those are the three food groups.

(22:54): And while the microbes in our gut can utilize some of the amino acids from proteins for energy, there are some bacteria, these sulfate reducing bacteria for instance, that no tricks how to get energy from fats. It's not a high energy deal, but they can do it. But the microbes in our gut get most of their energy from carbohydrates. So if you're on a plant-based diet, you are consuming a lot more carbohydrates. And the five that I really focus on, and I look for when I, when people tell me what they're eating is fructose and lactose. Two sugars that tend to be difficult to digest, to absorb. And in the case of lactose digest with lactose intolerant people, but also resistant starch fibers and there's a huge variety of fibers and sugar alcohols. There's many sugar alcohols difficult to digest, but yet all of these are fermentable by microbes.

(23:51): And by the way, there is one kind of gut-friendly sugar alcohol called erythritol that won't drive these overgrowths and all this gas that we've talked about, but the other species can, if you're not digesting and absorbing these foods, well in fact we don't digest fiber by definition that you can overfeed these microbes. And there's a common belief these days that we're actually starving our microbes, that we need to eat more fiber and more fermentable material. More of these five types that I mentioned. I reject that if somebody's perfectly healthy and they're not having any of these GI issues, okay, I won't, I won't chime in, but for people that are having a lot of gas, altered bowel habits, bloating, all of these symptoms, I will really look closely at their diet and then focus in on their digestion and say, what, what's wrong here? Why are these microbes being essentially overfed in your case?

(24:47): And so it gets to kind of the mechanistic part of it. And so if you had to break down the fast track diet, that's a diet I created. I've written a couple books on it or my consulting practice, I always focus on these three important areas, diet and digestion, right? What are you eating and is that diet matched with your ability to digest and absorb those nutrients efficiently or is there a, a mismatch? So diet and digestion is big. And then the next part is root cause analysis, right? What are these potential underlying or contributing causes? As many of these, you know, probably a hundred if you consider the rare ones, but 25 or 30 or 35 are relatively common and they won't be common to everybody. So we have to, in most cases rule most of them out to really focus in on what is the most likely underlying cause or causes in that particular case.

(25:45): Cuz it's somebody that has hypochlorhydria, low stomach acid and there's all these risk factors and reasons for that. Is it somebody that has pancreatic insufficiency, right? We talked about the elastase test to measure that. But even if you don't it say you can't afford the stool test, you can just try a digestive enzyme that contains pancreatic enzymes. And the same goes with these brush border enzymes, these disaccharides, lactase, sucres, maltase, iso, maltase tris, it's many of them. They can be damaged on the brush border. It's not easy to get that test done. They usually use that test for kids with genetic deficiencies in these enzymes because it's a very dangerous condition. But we now know in adults with these functional GI issues, I, I'm using the term too dysfunctional GI conditions, right? , they, it's very common for them to have these brush border deficiencies. We now know very recent work up to 70% or more have these deficiencies.

(26:44): Testing requires endoscopy, taking biopsies, send it to highly specialized labs, probably expensive. But instead there are also digestive enzymes you can get that have brush border enzymes. So these are kind of workarounds. You can say, well this testing is too much, it's too involved. Instead I want you to try this particular dietary supplement that has either the pancreatic or the brush border enzymes and let and of course modulate your diet. I almost always recommend people to significantly reduce their overall levels of carbohydrates. Any more proteins and fats for the reasons I stated that those are less invasive or less li likely to drive overgrowths and dysbiosis. So reduce the carbs and then reduce in particular these five types of carbs I mentioned. And if you have a brush border deficiency, even the easier to digest starches may be a problem. In the fast track digestion books, I I break down starches into two groups, resistant starch starches that have more of a starch called amlo.

(27:53): It's harder to digest or le or less resistant star, which has more amylopectin, an easy to digest species of scotch. So jasmine rice and sushi rice, it's an easier to digest scotch, uncle Bens and wild rice and bosma rice, more of the resistant scotch. So I'll say, well if you're going to have starches stick with jasmine or sushi rice, I'll, I'll add some particular name brands that I like and cook it properly in a rice cooker if possible with plenty of moisture. And then limit your serving size, right? When you cut your serving size from a cup down to a half a cup, you cut these fp points that it's a calculation I created in the book to measure how much of these fermentable carbs you're consuming on whole. When you cut your portions in half, you cut these points in half and you cut your symptom potential in half. So I'll say eat less, follow these particular behaviors and practices or just avoid starches for the next month until we really get to the bottom of this.

(28:55): Yeah, I, you know, and when from a hormonal perspective, when you're saying sushi rice or jasmine rice, those are white rices, I'm thinking immediately, oh that's gonna mess up your insulin. Don't do that. Just don't eat it . No, but I hear very good point. I hear what you're saying looking at, yeah, right. So we've always gotta consider, you know, gut health with hormones and then hormones, he hormone health with gut health. And I think when we neglect one, we neglect to think about the other when we're, we're addressing one part that we can cause more problems. But yeah, so diet is super important. Sometimes you just can do empiric treatment if you can't afford testing, you can try a brush border enzyme or try adding retain and Pepsis. And I remember when I worked at the, the clinic in Atlanta, you know, getting at what is your stomach acid level? Do you have hypochlorhydria is really hard. Although most people over 30, and especially with each advancing decade, we increasingly have it till when we're in our seventh decade almost all of us have hypochlorhydria, meaning not enough stomach acid. So we actually had a Heidelberg machine

(30:05): , huh, wow, good for you to

(30:08): Test, right? Like who has

(30:10): That's

(30:10): Impressive Heidelberg machine.

(30:11): Yeah.

(30:12): Right. So some people are listening, you're going, what is a Heidelberg machine? So like I said, getting at a measurement of your exact stomach acid level is very difficult. But with the Heidelberg machine, you swallow a capsule and then it radio transmits the pH level to a de sensor outside and you get a computer readout of how your stomach acid changes over time in response to certain things. And it's this beautiful test. But like I said, you don't really need that test. If you're over 30, you probably have some degree of hypochlorhydria. You have gerd, you definitely do. If you've been on a P P I, you definitely do. So sometimes you can just treat empirically as that kind of, what is your approach to stomach acid disorders? Mm-Hmm. .

(30:56): Yeah, no, that's very good. And I, I wanna get into that, the Heidelberg and also risk factors for low stomach, but just wanted to comment on something you said earlier. Yeah, you bring up a very good point about, okay, the, the rices I mentioned that are less problematic for your digestion also going to raise your blood sugar more, right? They're higher glycemic index, right Rices, right. The bosma and Uncle Bens is a lower gi, lower glycemic index and higher FP and the jasmine rice and sushi rice, a higher glycemic index, higher gi, but lower fp. So they're easier on your digestive tract. If you have, you do need the brush border enzymes though, which complete the breakdown of starches. Amylase doesn't do all of it. You need the brush border enzymes as well. But let's assume they're working. And so Jasmine rice is a good fit for you in terms of your digestive wellbeing, but it, it is going to raise your blood sugar.

(31:47): And that's a point I do bring that up in my book. And that's one of the reasons we also recommend smaller servings of high GI, low FP foods because they will raise your blood sugar and the last thing you want to do is get into a situation with metabolic disorders or pre-diabetes or even diabetes, you know, insulin related illnesses. So we're very cognizant of that. So we know there is that trade off and so I'm glad you brought that up. Regarding stomach acid, this is really fascinating and I, I agree with you. Some people will just kind of say, well you're on a P P I when you get off the P P I, we're gonna make a lot of changes in dietary and behavioral changes get you off the PPIs and hopefully your stomach acid will pump back. Might be that simple. But for a lot of people they could have significant issues.

(32:33): They may have pernicious anemia. It's an autoimmune condition where your own antibodies are attacking these parietal cells that produce the stomach acid, right? And you wanna know about that if you have it. And of course you may also have low B12 levels because intrinsic factor is needed for absorption of b12, a Heidelberg test. And it's just fantastic that you once had one. I too bad. You can still have it. You can. I just received one of those test results this morning from one of my clients and was going through it. It's an amazing test. But before I recommend that to somebody, I really do look at the risk factors for hypochlorhydria and there and there's some risk risk factors for hyperchlorhydria too. Too much stomach acid. Mm-Hmm . But I look at whether they have had an endoscopy before. If they have gastritis, that's a big risk factor.

(33:22): And often gastritis is caused from a chronic infection with this bacteri helico back to Pylori. And so I wanna make sure they've been tested for helico back to Pylori. You can get it in a stool test, there's a breath test for it and so forth. I wouldn't recommend the blood test because that will just tell you whether you've ever had it. You wanna know whether you have it. So gastritis, whether you're h pylori positive or negative. If you abuse NSAIDs, non-steroid anti-inflammatories like aspirin and ibuprofen, that's very irritating on the stomach. Can lead, can lead to gastritis if you had Hashimotos, right? Hypothyroidism, autoimmune hypothyroidism, you're at greater risk for pernicious anemia. And so there's more of these. So working through these risk factors, I can usually reach a point where I can say, you know what, you're at very low risk for hypochlorhydria, let's move on.

(34:11): But if the answer comes back and says you're at a moderate to high risk for it, we might either take some action steps or let's look for a place near you, a practice near you that has the Heidelberg. So it's just, it's great you brought that up. And when you go to the Heidelberg website, I forget what the name of the website is, but if you just google Heidelberg acid test, you'll see the website. They do have by state places that still do the tests so you can find them. I'm really frustrated that every teaching hospital in every state doesn't have the ability to do this because for people that that aren't familiar with the test, you are not just measuring whether somebody has acid or not in their stomach, as you mentioned. You take this capsule, you swallow it, but it dangles on a string and they, and by the pH right, it radios up to a laptop and by the pH being really low you can see, okay, you're in the stomach and that's, they might put a piece of tape there and you know it's sting in the stomach.

(35:08): But the secret to that test is you can now tell what your stomach acid is and that capsule isn't going anywhere and they give you these drinks of sodium bicarbonate. Mm-Hmm That will raise the stomach acid back closer to neutrality six or six and a half, seven. And then they see how long it takes for your parietal cells to produce enough stomach acid to lower the acid back down to between pH one and two very acidic. And if it takes a real long time, then you may be diagnosed with hypochlorhydria. Now if it does it in 10 or 15 minutes, okay that's okay. But then they'll give you another drink and then once the stomach acid regains itself, they'll give you another drink, three or four of these. And so you can see if your stomach can reas acidify each of these times. If you end up with a space of about 40 or 50 minutes or an hour, then that might indicate that you have hypochlorhydria, your stomach just isn't able to keep up Reac acidifying itself.

(36:06): Yeah. And you know, after I was so excited to get to work with this machine, but I have to say after, you know, hundreds reading hundreds of these tests, I've never seen one in a human over 40 who wasn't having health problem, who was having health problems that wasn't abnormal. So I do think it's

(36:25): A great test. Well I seen, I've seen both and I've, I had one client that we suspect that he had low stomach acid. He was actually a hypers secret

(36:32): Secret, very interesting.

(36:33): Five minutes every time just making right stomach acid. So, and that can happen if you have dysregulation of gastro producing cells in the lower part of the stomach, which when those are expressed to stimulate stomach acid, they stimulate histamine release and that binds to the bridal cells and drive stomach acid. So there are a lot of possibilities that you pyloric sphincter in how healthy that's working can allow reflux from the small intestine back into the stomach that can throw off stomach acid results. So there's a lot of things to consider. It can be a little bit complicated, but I still think it's a great test right to look at in some cases.

(37:14): I do too. I wanna tie everything we're kind of talking about together with hormones for everyone because I know some people are still wondering K Kiran, why are you always talking about poop , we're supposed to talk about hormones so I just wanna tie it in as succinctly as I can. But your gastrointestinal tract is actually your biggest interface with the external environment. I know it's on the inside of your body, but you're taking the external environment and you are putting it inside of you. The surface area of your gut is as big as two doubles tennis courts, which is way bigger than the surface area of your skin. So everything you take into your mouth is contacting you. So it being the biggest contact with your external environment, it is the highest concentration of your immune system designed to protect you. It's your body's military all along your gastrointestinal tract.

(38:09): And that is directly related to your cortisol. Stress hormone is directly related to your immune system function is directly related to your gut function. So if your gut isn't right, your immune system's not gonna be right and your cortisol's not gonna be right. And your cortisol, I call her queen cortisol, is going to wreck havoc with your sex hormones. So you might have PMs heavy painful periods and you think all you've got is a period problem. No, you could have a gut problem or it's gonna wreck havoc with your thyroid hormone and you think you've got a thyroid problem cuz then you're overweight and tired and you don't have a primary thyroid problem, you actually have a gut problem. So if you listen to me long enough, you know what I'm talking about. If you're still scratching your head going, what in the world is she talking about?

(38:55): Keep listening, come meet me on social media, join one of my challenges, we will get you up to speed on why your PU poop is good. Poop is essential to hormone health. Thank you Norm for furthering the understanding for everyone today in a very deep and meaningful way about functional or dysfunctional gut disorders. Before we wrap up, I wanna just ask you a couple things. The first is you shared a couple quotes with me before we started that I absolutely love and you said from Benjamin Franklin, whom I love the best doctor gives the least medicines. Mm-Hmm , can you talk a little bit about that and then we'll go ahead and wrap up?

(39:38): Yeah, well in my fast track digestion books, I use a different quote at the beginning of every chapter. So I kind of like you, I love those. And the back one is your health depends on the bacteria in your gut. So I think that sums up a lot of what we were talking about. But in terms of the best doctor gives the least medicine, I mean I've really come to believe that and I've, I've been on both sides of the fence. I spent the first 20 years of my career after graduating from school in the Fama biotech industry developing new drugs. And I like the idea of working on these difficult diseases with unmet medical needs and coming up with, with a drug or a solution that that works for these serious conditions. You know, for, and I spent 10 years just on antibiotics and they're lifesaving medicines.

(40:27): I worked on the development and approval of ciprofloxin. They're lifesavers but they're also really rough on the gut. And so when I see more and more of these kind of strong medicines being used for people with these digestive health issues that I think could better be addressed by holistic means, especially antibiotics, because those are, those really disrupt the, the microbiome. It drives me crazy, but I think it's both the manufacturers that make money on the drugs, on the doctors, it's easy to prescribe something, but also patience. Well, I can just take this pill and keep eating what I want to eat. That sounds like a

(41:07): Good deal . But

(41:09): So when I work with people, it does take, you have to be willing to make some changes and to really look at things in a way that, you know, you may have to change your diet and change your behaviors and try some more holistic supplements. We talked about digestive en enzymes as many, many others and get away from these harsher drugs. So that's what that means. So first chapter of that fast track digestion, i b s book is all about the drugs for i b s and the conclusion at the end of it is it's a big fail. They, they're terrible and so we need to find a different way.

(41:42): Right. Awesome. Well everybody, norm is giving you a free copy of his hashtag Diet 1 0 1 ebook. We will have the link in the show notes, so definitely encourage you if you have dysfunctional gut issues to download that and read that. Tell everybody where else they can find out more about you and the work that, that you do.

(42:02): Sure. Every aspect of our work and also our consultation services, blogs, information about the fast track digestion books is one on i b s and Hot Burn. The Fast Track Diet mobile app I haven't really talked about. But this mobile app is, is just the greatest way to implement the diet. It uses this FP calculation and so there's, it's got a database of over 1200 foods and their FP values and a calculator to calculate this fp value for foods that might not be on the list. So those resources can also be found in the same place. Everything can be found@digestivehealthinstitute.org.

(42:40): Awesome. Well, I invite everybody who is interested to go and check that out and get that valuable resource. Thank you so much, norm for this deep conversation, deep dive into functional gut issues and what to do about them.

(42:54): Well, thank you Karen. Good questions,

(42:56): And thank you all for joining me for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Hopefully you've heard something here today that will be impactful for your health and your life so that you can make changes to move you towards the brilliant health that you deserve to be experiencing if you are not there yet. Stay tuned. Next week I will have another wonderful guest and episode helping you better understand your health and your body from a functional approach and how to improve it. And I'll see you again next week. Until then, peace, love, and hormones, y'all.

(43:30): Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

► Free Fast Track Diet 101 ebook from Dr. Norm Robillard - CLICK HERE

► Hormone Balance Bliss Challenge by Dr. Kyrin Dunston

Are you struggling to find the right solution to get your hormones and metabolism back in balance?

 

If you're feeling like nothing is working, it's time to try something else! Our Hormone Balance Bliss Challenge was designed specifically for those who are looking for a long-term way out of their hormone and energy struggles. We’ll help you understand what doctors aren’t telling about how hormones affect weight gain, energy levels, and overall wellbeing.

 

With our easy-to-follow 7 day plan, no more will you feel confused by your condition or overwhelmed about how to fight against it - we'll give you all the tools needed so that within just 7 days from now YOU can start experiencing true health bliss again!

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Essential Step 3 of 3 To Healing Your Hormones: Go On Your Own Hero’s Journey

Have you been feeling stuck and unable to move forward in your health journey? You are not alone! Midlife can be a tricky time, and it’s natural to feel overwhelmed. In this solo episode of Dr. Kyrin Dunston in The Hormone Prescription Podcast, she shares the third essential step for healing your hormones: recognizing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be.

 

You'll learn about:

 

- How to identify and unlock the limits you’ve internalized;

- How to recognize the gap between where you are now and where you want to be;

- What hero's journey are you on, and what hero's journey do you need to take?

 

Dr. Dunston provides insights into how midlife women can take their power back by reclaiming their unique identity and taking ownership of their health. It’s time for us all to break out of our comfort zones and transform into our true selves. So tune in now for an inspiring episode that will empower you toward your health goals!

 

It’s never too late to make a change for the better – so join Dr. Dunston to unlock the hero inside you, and take a stand for your brilliant health.

 

You can find this episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and other podcasting platforms. Follow along with Dr. Dunston's journey as she guides midlife women through hormone balancing to reclaim their vibrant health!

 

Listen now, and start transforming into the best version of yourself today!

You’ve got this – it’s time to become your own health hero.

 

(00:00): What hero's journey are you on? And what hero's journey do you need to take to balance your hormones and create the brilliant health that you deserve? Find out next.

(00:13): So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones in our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself again. As an O B G Y N, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue. Now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

(01:06): Hey, it's Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me again for this part three of three series on the essential foundational steps that you must take in order to balance your hormones and create the brilliant health that you deserve. Hopefully you watched or listened to video one or podcast one and two, cuz they set the foundation for this third one. So if you didn't check 'em out, go listen to those first before you listen to this one. So today we're gonna talk about the third essential step. I'm here in Tulum, Mexico, you might have been here, maybe you've been to Cancun. I've been to Cancun, very commercial and built up beautiful, right? Love the culture, love the people, and I decided to come here for some r and r and it's way less developed and natural here. So that's more my speed. I'm more of a nature girl than a big city girl, even though I grew up in New York City.

(02:07): So anyway, they have something very unique here that I kind of love and I bet you would love it too because it's a little bit of serendipity. So what is it that they have? The first day I was here, the internet was down in my condo and I had to do a live class online. So I found a workspace around the corner, which I walked to, and I saw this street sign that said, you are your own limit. It was a legit street sign, just like a speed sign or a stop sign or a sign saying, you know, exit 2 49 for this city. It was on the road and it said, you are your own limit. I had never seen a street sign like that, right? I've only seen traffic instructional signs or street name signs. I had never seen an inspirational street sign. And I saw it and I laughed because it was such serendipity.

(03:10): You know how something you don't expect to see, right? I thought it was gonna be a speed limit or instruction and it's like you are your own limit. So I laughed, I chuckled because I loved it because it's so true that we really are unlimited beings, our capacity, right? I think studies say that we only use about 10% of our brain power, and we have so much more. And I think we're kind of going into an age now where we're starting to learn about our gifts as a collective, as and as individuals and how unique we each are and celebrating the unique gifts that we have, right? One person might be in Einstein with a very high IQ and they solve complex math problems that may not be someone else's unique genius, but we're starting to honor the unique genius in each of us. But if we all think we're supposed to be like Einstein intellectuals with high IQ who can solve math problems, which kind of has been the paradigm for a long time in society, and we've all measured ourselves against that yardstick, how smart are we?

(04:20): How well are, do we do it math, right? Or can we write? Then we miss the uniqueness of ourselves. And so I, this sign spoke to me of you are your own limit that we're, we have these internal limits that we internalize the expectations that society places on us and then we stop ourselves from expressing who we uniquely are. Can you relate to that? I know I can relate to that and I know some of you I've talked to have done that too. So I'm not alone in this, but we're starting to express our own uniqueness. So what does this have to do with the third essential step to hormone balance and healing? Well, the third essential step is that you've got to recognize the gap from where you are that you looked at in step one, where you got brutally honest with yourself about what are all the health symptoms I'm having and what are the false beliefs I'm having about my health situation, right?

(05:30): So you got a really painful look up close, look in-depth, look at how bad it is and the pain that you're experiencing. You might also wanna write about how it's affecting your life, right? And the cost of being in that place. What does it cost you financially? What does it cost you in terms of time? What does it cost you in terms of unlived relationships and careers, right? So there are monetary costs, there are time costs, and there are intangible costs to all of the problems that we outline in step one. So you got really clear on that. And then in step two, I told you, get in touch with the vision for your life because those are your imaginable cell blueprint from your soul to where you are meant to go. And I invited you to write about it and do a vision board and get really clear on where you're going.

(06:25): So you have the pain and then you've got the pleasure. But next, you've got to look at the gap between these two extremes. Now, for some of you, it's not that big a gap, right? Maybe you've just got a few problems, you haven't been dealing with them for that long, hasn't affected your life and your relationships and your money and your time that much. And maybe your vision isn't that grand, right? We all have different size, different types of visions, so maybe it doesn't feel so uncomfortable. Although if you're lost and you don't know how to get there and you've tried a lot of different things, that gap can be very painful even though it's small cuz you have no idea how to get there. And for some of you that gap is huge. You're like, like I was when I was in my forties, a hundred pounds overweight, depression and anxiety so bad that it makes it hard for you to function on a daily basis.

(07:24): Your relationships are being affected by it, your work is being affected by it. You're on several psychoactive medications, you have irritable bowel, you don't know if you're gonna poop or not for days or weeks or poop 10 times in one day. You don't know what's going on with your stomach. You have no sex drive. Your relationship's failing because of it or whatever problems you have. That's what I had. My health was terrible. And as a board certified ob, g n, who was supposed to know more about women's health than anyone else, I was clueless how to get out of this. So my pain was severe and I even thought about suicide at times. It was that bad. I was that hopeless and desperate. And where I wanted to go was this beautiful dream that I had since I was a young person of helping women with their health.

(08:20): And I clearly was not in a position to do that. So my gap seemed as big as the Grand Canyon, and maybe yours does too. I couldn't see how I was possibly gonna get from that to where I am now, but I'm living proof that it can happen, right? And I'm also living proof that it starts with getting honest, honoring your dream. I knew that's this is what I was meant to be doing. I just didn't know how to get there. So getting honest about the gap, really going back to that step one and being honest and writing out like Scrooge in the movie, he looks at the ghosts of Christmas pass, come visit him, ghosts of Christmas present and the ghost of Christmas future. And he gets a real good look at where he was, where he is now, and how dismal his life is gonna be if he continues on this trajectory.

(09:18): I invite you to do that for yourself because otherwise I've seen women delude themselves for decades until it's too late. And I don't want that to be you. So until you get a clear picture of the trajectory that you've been on and where your health is headed and where you are gonna end up in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years, if you continue on the same trajectory, you really can't get honest with yourself. And until you get really honest with yourself about the dreams that you have. Now, some people, I do an exercise where I have you close your eyes and I'll give you a mini version of it. And then I have you pretend there's a book in your lap and you open the book to the current day and all the pages on the left of the book have been written on because you've lived all the days of your life up until today.

(10:16): And then in the page that's open is today, and you get to decide what happens that you write today. And then all the pages and the rest of the book to the right are blank. And you get to decide what's written on those pages. And we're always creating every single day. We're creating our health, we're creating our life. Most of us create by default. We just live the same thing that we've been living because we have habits and we just do the same thing. We don't know what else to do or we feel hopeless or we're otherwise stuck. So we're creating by default, but what if we could create on purpose? And it's that vision in step two, that's the imaginable cells of your soul calling you to the butterfly that you are. That is what you need to honor in writing those pages on the right, you get to decide.

(11:10): So you get in touch with the pain, in touch with what you want, and then you're faced with the chasm. And a lot of you, that's where you're gonna falter and stumble and not get up. And you're gonna go, oh, it's too much. I can't do it. I can't get from there to here. And if you've taken steps one and you've taken steps two, you absolutely can get from there to where you wanna be. What does it require? If you've really done a thorough job with steps one and two, it requires getting someone who knows the path who can help you bridge the chasm, right? In every movie you've ever seen Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, one of my favorites, hopefully you like it too. Does she get the golden slippers and go home by herself? She's in a strange land drop with munchkins , right?

(12:08): On a house, right? And she falls from the sky and she's in munchkin land. She's in a very strange land with talking tin men and lions and straw men that sing and dance. And all she wants to do is go home, right? So what's her pain? She's not home. She's not with her family. She wants to get home. That's her vision. Does she get there by herself? No. She has guides. She has the Tin Man, the lion and the scarecrow, and she has the good witch and they help and guide her on her way. She also has her dog toto and they help her on the path. Star Wars, another wonderful movie. Does Luke Skywalker know how to defeat Darth Vader by himself? Only he can do it. He has to do it. That's the pain he is experiencing. He can't do it by himself.

(13:12): He has to train and then he can accomplish the task. The Karate Kids has a big dilemma. His pain is he can't do karate well, and he needs to be able to do that so he can win. So what does he get? A guide wax on, wax off, who teaches him how to paint and do karate? So this brings me to the Hero's Journey. Maybe you've heard of that, maybe you haven't. So it's something that Joseph Campbell outlined many years ago about the mythic archetypes that we all play and take turns playing in life for women. A lot of us at some point play the Maiden. We play Theron. A lot of people, not just women, may not literally play the prostitute, but some of us in life will pay the play the prostitute in other ways. Meaning that we do something for somebody else that we don't really wanna do in order to get money.

(14:15): So if you're in a job that you hate, it's somewhat of a prostitute archetype. He also outlined the Hero's Journey. It's a journey that we all take usually multiple times in our lives in different areas. And it has 12 classic parts. You're welcome to look it up on the internet. I'm not gonna go through all of them, but all movies, all great movies follow this storyline where there's a protagonist who encounters a seemingly insurmountable problem early on, right? And the Wizard of Oz, she's in a strange land, wants to get home. Luke Skywalker and Star Wars has to defeat Darth Vader. Ralph Machio played the karate kid. He needed to defeat others in karate and didn't know how to do karate, right? So they're faced with this huge dilemma and they can't figure out, it's usually a matter of life or death or some, they're big stakes and they have to figure out how to accomplish the goal.

(15:23): And there's always a guide that's involved in helping them achieve the goal. So you are on your own hero's journey with your health problems. I know you don't wanna be , right? We're all the reluctant heroes usually on our journey, but you are. And the sooner you recognize it, the better off you'll be. And when you've seen clearly where you are and gotten honest, and you've seen clearly what your soul is calling you to do, which starts with healing, and you see the gap of where you are and where you must be, you are on the hero's journey whether you want to be or not. So accepting it allows you to lean into it and get better results because you know you need a guide and you can't figure this out yourself, right? So Dorothy didn't go online and Google, I'm in az. How the heck do I get the go the Ruby slippers and get home, right?

(16:18): Even if they had the internet nowadays, she wouldn't have been able to get the answer. Luke Skywalker didn't and couldn't, wouldn't Google. How do I defeat Darth Vader and Ralph Machi as a karate kid? Wouldn't Google be able to learn how to perform award-winning karate where he could actually defeat someone? Why? Because these are skills that need to be taught by other humans who know the path to through the difficulty. It requires coaches who have been there and done that and have the expertise to coach you real time into doing the thing. So you can't learn it from a blog article, how to Get Out Of Oz and Go home. You can't learn how to defeat Darth Vader from a podcast, right? It's just not gonna happen. It requires guides to surround you and love you, and nurture you and boost you and tell you the steps you need to do so that you can do the thing we talked about in the first lesson, how you've gotta be discerning about who you get to help you, who actually can help you.

(17:30): And then the biggest thing about the Her hero's journey that you'll learn is that they're actually two hero's journey to every hero's journey. And you'll see that if you look it up. So what do I mean by that? There's the journey that you obviously go on, right? So Dorothy wanted to get home from Oz, that was her goal, but there's a second journey that she went on that if we're paying attention usually gives the most meaning to these great films and stories. And that is who she became in the process of going on this journey. And if you watch the movie again, , I know a bunch, you gonna go watch it, you will see that she's a different person when she goes back home to Kansas than when she left. And Luke Skywalker has a new confidence and sense of self after he defeats Darth Vader.

(18:29): And Ralph Macio is a different person also. So yes, the goal of the journey is to bridge the gap and get where you wanna be. But it's also to become that person who could, who can and did do the thing. So my hero's journey was I was ob gyn in my forties with horrible health and I wanted to get here where I am now and helping other women. But more than that was I wanted to become the doctor who had all the tools who could help the women bridge their own gap. And so that's who I've become. And only you know who it is that your soul is calling you to become. And that first step looks like the health gap, bridging the health gap, but it's who you're gonna become because when you become competent in that, you get a certain self-assurance and confidence in doing so many other things in your life that your soul is calling you to do.

(19:35): So another set of street signs that I've seen here while I've been in Tulum, there's another one that's kind of iconic. You may have seen me or will see me on my Instagram channel by this sign that says Follow your dreams. Another just benign street sign that says Follow your dreams. And people say You haven't been to Lo to Tulum if you haven't gotten your picture in front of that sign. So I had to go get a picture so you can see it on Instagram. And then I saw another one that just delighted me to know. And so I use a bike here as my transportation traffic's terrible. So they tell you, get a bike. So I got a bike and I ride it everywhere to the supermarket to eat to the beach. And so I'm riding my bike down to the beach and I see these three triangular signs all in a row.

(20:24): 1, 2, 3, right? They're yellow with the black kind of outline. So they look like maybe they should be speed signs. But the first one says, if not, and I'm writing, writing, writing, the next one says, now writing, writing, writing. When question mark, I thought it was so cute, I had to circle back and take pictures of them. And maybe I'll post those on social media too, cuz they're super cute. If not now when? And if you're coming the other direction, it says it in Spanish so you can see it in Spanish coming one way and English and going the other. If not now when I don't know who pays for these street signs here in Tulum, I don't know if it's an interested, inspirational private party that just likes inspiring people. I don't know if the government actually funds these cuz they're actually, I can't see how an independent citizen could put a sign on the side of the road like that.

(21:27): So I don't know. I'm gonna have to research it. But in any case, I love it, I love it. I love little inspiration. I love inspirational bumper stickers or signs. And so that one spoke to me too, and I started thinking, what am I procrastinating on that I need to get moving on? If not now, when? Right? We have a begin date to our life and an end date, right? Everybody's tombstone has a begin date, a dash and an end date, and we're living the dash and it's our health that gives us that dash. When we run outta health, our dash ends and we get an end date, an expiration date, right? Whether we like it or not, it's a sad truth that most of us try to ignore, but it's a fact and it's honestly what keeps me honest. It keeps me moving forward.

(22:18): What do I need to be doing for women and for their health? How can I do it better? How can I do it more? What do I need to be saying? Where do I need to be showing up, right? So you call this fourth from me, that's why I'm here. And I want you to know, get honest. Step one about all the pain points you're dealing with. Get honest that the channels you're looking for answers in aren't gonna work. Get honest that it's not one thing. Get honest about all the time, money, and effort and tears that you have wasted in the wrong answers. Step two, I want you to honor your dreams. It is your soul calling forth what you came here to express. And that starts with great health. I want you to write it out what it's gonna be like when you accomplish the health you want and all the things you want in your life.

(23:11): And then three, I want you to honor that gap. And I want you to get clear on how you're gonna follow your dreams. How you're gonna not be your own limit. Like that sign said, you are your own limit. Most of us, before we even can get the help outside, we've stopped ourself. I can't afford it, it's gonna be too expensive, it's gonna be too hard. I won't be able to follow it, right? It's not gonna work. I don't trust myself, I don't trust them, right? We have all these stuck thoughts in our head. It's not possible for me. I don't deserve it. You identify all the stuck thoughts that you have that are keeping you stuck in that gap, right? And then you get eye to eye with yourself in the mirror and you examine, do I really want to believe this? And is it true?

(24:05): And would I say this to my friend? What do you say to your friend? It's not possible for you. You can't have that. You can't do it. You're not trustworthy, you're not worthy of the time, you're not worthy of the money, right? We say things to ourselves internally that we would never say to someone we love. So self-love is about speaking to yourself internally. Like you speak to your loved ones externally with the same encouragement, tenderness, understanding, and nurturing. So get honest with yourself about that and then honor the Tulum signed. If not now, when there's so many people who, I'll say some people who say, oh yeah, I know I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna take care of that when I retire in three years. I'm gonna take care of that when I get off. Nice shift. I'm gonna take care of that when, when, when, when.

(25:09): Right? So meanwhile, health problems are accruing all the ones that you know about are getting worse. And the problem is that there are a lot of them that you don't know about that your hormone imbalances are affecting. So I hope you've enjoyed this series. I thought it was super important cuz I see people all over the internet talking about, here's the one thing you need to do. Take this one supplement for your hormone problems. Here's the one diet you need to follow. And I'm a much deeper person who takes a deeper approach and who recognizes that my journey to health and healing actually started years before I discovered a root cause approach. And when I saw that, yes, some people picked up the tools, I taught them and their health and life were forever changed. But some people did the tools for a while and did get results, but then they stopped and some people could never pick up the tools.

(26:05): I went back scratching my head and going, what am I missing? I realized that my journey didn't start when I thought it started with the learning the tools of a root cause resolution approach. It actually started several years before when I got thrown off a horse and broke my foot. And that's a story for another time. So you'll have to come back so you can hear that story. But this is your story and that's what this is about. Your story, your unique, beautiful personal soul's story of your journey in this life. So I wanna make sure that you get the foundation of your house that's gonna stand for you valid for the rest of your life through storms and hurricanes and wind and earthquakes. We gotta go down in the ground and dig the foundation. And these three steps that I've taught you about are gonna give you a solid foundation that's gonna last you the rest of your life. So I hope you enjoyed this. If you have any comments, please jump on Instagram or Facebook at kyrindunston MD and tell me about it. Tell me your thoughts. Tell me what you're thinking. Tell me about your dreams. Tell me about your pain. Tell me about the gap and how you're gonna navigate it. I really want to hear about it. Thank you so much for joining me. I'll see you in the next episode. Until then, peace, love,

(27:36): And hormones y'all. Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

► Hormone Balance Bliss Challenge by Dr. Kyrin Dunston

Are you struggling to find the right solution to get your hormones and metabolism back in balance?

 

If you're feeling like nothing is working, it's time to try something else! Our Hormone Balance Bliss Challenge was designed specifically for those who are looking for a long-term way out of their hormone and energy struggles. We’ll help you understand what doctors aren’t telling about how hormones affect weight gain, energy levels, and overall wellbeing.

 

With our easy-to-follow 7 day plan, no more will you feel confused by your condition or overwhelmed about how to fight against it - we'll give you all the tools needed so that within just 7 days from now YOU can start experiencing true health bliss again!

Join us today on this journey into hormone balance bliss - CLICK HERE to sign up now and get started on reclaiming your mojo!

 

Essential Step 2 of 3 To Healing Your Hormones: Honor Your Dreams

Do you know what is holding you back from feeling like your best self? Many women reach midlife and realize that their dreams have been put on the back burner. You can regain control over your health by learning to honor the desires that come from deep within.

 

It starts with understanding that honoring your dreams is a key factor in balancing hormones, as it helps connect you to the energy blueprint of your physical body. This connection allows you to gain clarity and focus on healing your health.

 

It's time to begin listening more closely to yourself, believing in yourself and taking action toward making positive changes in life. Allow yourself to move forward with confidence, following your intuition with trust. Take one step at a time! With each step, you will feel empowered to live a life that is truly in alignment with who you are.

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

 

- Why honoring your dreams is an essential step in balancing hormones

- How to identify the desires that come from within

- How to trust and take action on your desires

- Tips on how to move forward with confidence, following your intuition

 

Tune in for more inspiring insights and steps towards healing your hormones! Join Dr. Kyrin Dunston as she guides you through the journey of honoring your dreams. Ready to reclaim control over your health? Let's get started!

 

Listen to this episode and start living the life you were meant to live. Honor your dreams today!

 

(00:00): Do you honor your dreams or do you suppress them? Why is honoring your dreams an important step in balancing your hormones? Find out next.

(00:11): So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an ob gyn, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40 in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue. Now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

(01:04): Hey, it's Dr. Kyrin. Welcome back to another episode where I'm gonna give you the second essential step out of three to balancing your hormones and creating the brilliant health that you deserve. So in the first step, we talked about how you've got to stop lying to yourself. You just gotta stop, right? You've gotta get honest, get out of delusion and denial and get honest. If you didn't listen to that one, go back and listen to that episode today. I'm gonna talk about the second essential step, and it's gonna surprise you cuz I know you're waiting for me to say, get tested, take a supplement, do this right? And we're still building the foundation under the house that's gonna hold that house for years. So the second step you need to take is you need to honor the value of your dreams for your life. That's right.

(02:02): Honor the value of your dreams for your life. So I know you're scratching your head and going, what are you talking about? What does that have to do with my health? So I wanna start by telling you about butterflies. , right? Butterflies. Everybody's fascinated with them. They're beautiful. They're just like little tissue toilet paper that fly around in the air, and they're absolutely beautiful. I'm fascinated with their lifecycle. I remember going to the Calloway Gardens outside Atlanta in Georgia a few years back, and they had the blue morph butterflies, and you could see them in all different stages of their growth and development going from basically a worm or caterpillar into their chrysalis and being birthed as a butterfly, and then they had a whole atrium full of butterflies flying around. It was wonderful. Well, butterflies have something called imaginal cells. So what are imaginable cells when that caterpillar is crawling around and then it wants to transform into a butterfly, or it gets the internal evolutionary signal that it's time for it to become a butterfly is more correctly stated.

(03:16): It starts attaching to a leaf and then it starts spinning this chrysalis around it like a little cocoon, right? There is something inside the caterpillar and the cocoon called imaginable cell that actually hold the blueprint for the caterpillar to become a blood butterfly. And in some respects, it is these imaginable cells that set the evolutionary signal for the caterpillar. It's time to go make your chrysalis and get still because transformation is coming, and then it sets the blueprint for all the other cells to organize in the structure of a butterfly in the beautiful colors of a butterfly with the gracefulness of a butterfly, the agility of a butterfly and all the butterfly attributes that we love. It's the imaginable cells that set this. So what does this have to do with you? You have imaginal cells too. Yours are energetic, but when you want to heal your health, maybe there are other things that you want to heal in your life.

(04:37): Maybe your health is stopping you from having the career that you want, the finances that you want, the relationships that you want, the fun, free time and adventure that you want, right? Because health is the prerequisite for all of these things and you get that call. It's coming from inside you, right? The symptoms that you have with your health are actually not a call that you need a drug or surgery to stop the symptom, even though that's what we're taught from corporate medicine, right? We've been taught that, oh, when we have a pain or an illness, it's a sign we need to go to the doctor to get a drug or a surgery to fix the symptom, and when the symptom's gone, we claim victory. It's actually not what symptoms means. Symptoms in your body is your body trying to talk to you about what it needs and wants in order to come into balance because your body naturally wants to heal and it will heal when everything that's preventing it from healing and everything that will support it in healing is present, right?

(05:42): The preventing things are gone and the supportive things are present. So if you cut your hand and it bleeds, if there's no dirt and debris that could prevent it from healing, your body will send healing nutrients and cells to the area to create a scab which protects it and allows it to heal. But if there's a heap of dust and dust and dirt and debris in it, that will prevent it from healing. Or if your body doesn't have the fibrin and white blood cells descend to the area, it won't heal. So your body has that system for everything, right? If you're getting migraine headaches, if you have a weight problem, if you're tired, if you have GERD or reflux or you have irritable bowel, your body wants to heal. So when you have chronic symptoms, what it means is you have issues present that are preventing your body from healing, and you don't have the supportive forces there to nurture your body to healing.

(06:43): So your body wants to heal, it wants to come back and balance. So when you get that call, I wanna heal this problem. These problems, like in video one I talked about for the woman over 40 who's focused on our migraines, but she also has a weight and fatigue problem, rash and also reflux and irritable bowel. You gotta get honest first, but that desire to heal your health actually comes from inside and it's the first step. It's the first evolutionary step in you living the life that you are meant to live on this planet. We each have a unique thumbprint fingerprint, right? We each have a unique iris. We don't have an iris like any of the, any of the seven or 8 billion people on this planet. We are each precious and unique in our own right, and we each have our own song to sing, our own story, to write our own, whatever it is we came here to create.

(07:52): Our energy signature will never be recreated in all of the millennia of this galaxy. So you have an evolutionary drive that comes inside from your soul to fulfill your potential in this lifetime. And your soul knows that without physical health in this human body, you won't fulfill your potential in this lifetime, whatever that looks like for you. So your soul provides this energy blueprint that is the framework of your physical body, and it calls you to health and healing and wholeness and expression. Those are your imaginal cells. So you've got to honor the dream that you have. It's been said that if you bring forth what is within you, it will save you. If you don't bring forth what is within you, it will kill you. And I do believe this to be true. If you live with unfulfilled dreams, it causes an erosion of your morality and your dignity and your soul.

(09:07): I believe we all have a moral obligation to bring forth what is within us because I also believe that our souls don't evolve alone. They involve with concert, with all the other souls on the planet, and that our desire to give something to others means that they are actually calling for that thing from me. They are calling for it from you because some people are only going to hear the song that you're gonna sing from you. They're only gonna read the book that you would write from you. They're only gonna hear it from your voice, from your perspective. So these are our imaginable cells, right? I know that most of us think that our dreams come from us, that we make them up in our minds because that's what we've been taught. But something that I believe, and I'll be talking about this in more podcasts and videos, because it's based on my experience and also my research on the nature of science and spirituality, where they really have bridged is that your dreams were implanted in you and came with you from the soul that inhabits your body and that you have this constant evolutionary drive to bring those dreams to fruition because humanity is calling forth from you.

(10:35): Those are your imaginable cells. So in order to heal your hormones, you not only have to step one, get honest and get outta dishonesty and delusion, but you gotta step two, honor your dreams. Because if you don't honor the evolutionary impulse of your soul to heal your body and bring forth what is within you in this lifetime and fulfill your potential, you actually will never do it If you just say, oh, those are just dreams and fantasies. I don't deserve it. I can't have it. You start shutting down the life force that your soul is trying to bring forth, and part of your hormonal balance comes from that life force. So you've got to write your dreams down in a vision, and I teach you how to do that when I work with you. And you could start today just by writing it or doing a vision board, and you've got to honor it that this is my potential in this lifetime.

(11:43): This is what I'm called to do with my unique BRI blueprint and getting my health straight is the first step on that journey. It is the vision that will pull you through doing all the things like I like to say that are necessary to get your hormones and your health in order because it's not one thing y'all, hopefully I dispelled that myth in in the first lesson. It is not one supplement, it is not one diet, it is not one thing. It's all the things, and it is the vision of what you know you are becoming and creating in your life that will sustain you through the steps that you need to take that come after the first foundational death. Michael Beckwith is quoted as saying, pain will push you until your vision pulls you. And I remember the first time I heard that, I didn't really understand what he was saying, but then one day I did, I kept hearing him say it.

(12:44): What is he talking about? What is he talking about? All that pain that I was in when I weighed 243 pounds and I had chronic fatigue and depression anxiety, and my hair was falling out and I had no sex drive, and you guys have heard this story, right? No answers. Board certified ob gyn couldn't fix it, and I was a hot mess. Pain was pushing me, pain was pushing me to despair and hopelessness. Pain was pushing me to go to many doctors and keep testing myself and say, something's gotta be wrong. But I didn't know how to get honest at that time. So I kept going to myself $30 h m o copay doctor at the time, and my doctor at $30 h m o copay doctor and doing the things only in my small myopic sphere of knowledge and vision. And it wasn't until a patient actually taught me about a root cause resolution approach and that I started getting trained in it that I could actually get the big toolbox that I have now.

(13:44): Then when I started doing the foundation like I'm teaching you about and working with my hormones, which is the foundation of a woman's health, then I started feeling better. I started losing weight, I started having a little more energy. Then my vision started pulling me. I was like, if I can achieve this just with these few steps, I want the whole thing. And so my vision started pulling me. And the same is true for you. Some of you right now I know are sitting there going, oh my gosh, it's another doctor. What is she pedaling some drug that I'm supposed to take or something like that, right? And I get it. You're disillusioned and disgusted with the gaslighting that you've gotten from mainstream medicine. I was there with you, so I totally get it, and you feel hopeless and you feel helpless and you've tried some different things and they haven't worked, or you got a little success and then you backslid and you're like, who can get me where I need to be?

(14:41): And you don't trust anyone to help you, and you don't even trust yourself anymore. You think, I can't even do this. I know because I've been there, so, so what I want you to know is honor your dreams is the second step. Number one, get honest. If you didn't watch that video or listen to that podcast, go back and watch it and get honest. Get out of deceit with yourself. And then number two is honor your dreams. They are the breadcrumb trail leading you to the end of the rainbow where the pot of gold is your personal pot of gold, which is fulfilling your purpose in this life, and that requires that you have the excellent health that you need in order to do the thing. Whatever the thing is, whatever it looks like. You wanna go back to school, you wanna a relationship, you wanna have kids, you wanna be with your kids, you know, be around and healthy and participate in their lives.

(15:42): You wanna be present for your grandkids, whatever it is, right? You wanna travel, you wanna write a novel, you wanna sing whatever it is, right? We have an evolutionary impulse, just like the imaginable cells in the butterflies. So will you honor? Yours is my question. That is the second step that you need to take. So I want you to go and write your vision down for your life in all areas for your health, what it looks like when you've achieved the health that you want, how you feel, what it sounds like, what it looks like, what it smells like, what people are saying, what you're hearing. I want you to write it down for all areas, your relationships, how they improve, because I know your relationships are suffering, your health is suffering. What your finances look like, your career, your creativity, your creative expression, your fun, your free time.

(16:32): Write it all down. Do a vision board and honor it and know that this is not some pie in the sky dream. This is your soul telling you what you came here to do and then get about the business of doing it. I'm gonna tell you in podcast and video three, the third of the three essential foundational steps to getting your hormones balanced and getting your health in order at midlife. So I hope you'll join me for that. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'll see you in the next episode. Until then, peace, love, and hormones

(17:13): Y'all. Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

► Hormone Balance Bliss Challenge by Dr. Kyrin Dunston

Are you struggling to find the right solution to get your hormones and metabolism back in balance?

If you're feeling like nothing is working, it's time to try something else! Our Hormone Balance Bliss Challenge was designed specifically for those who are looking for a long-term way out of their hormone and energy struggles. We’ll help you understand what doctors aren’t telling about how hormones affect weight gain, energy levels, and overall wellbeing.

With our easy-to-follow 7 day plan, no more will you feel confused by your condition or overwhelmed about how to fight against it - we'll give you all the tools needed so that within just 7 days from now YOU can start experiencing true health bliss again!
Join us today on this journey into hormone balance bliss - CLICK HERE to sign up now and get started on reclaiming your mojo!

 

 

Essential Step 1 of 3 To Healing Your Hormones: Stop Your Dishonesty

Have you been telling yourself lies about why your hormones can’t be balanced? Or do you think that balancing hormones is impossible?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston wants to prove to you that it's possible! In this episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, she will explain the three essential steps needed for successful hormone balance, and why those steps must be taken for you to experience hormonal prosperity.

This episode will tell you about:

• How dishonesty is sabotaging your hormonal health
• The first essential step to achieving successful hormone balance
• Why it's important to take these steps to experience hormonal prosperity
• How to find the root cause of your hormonal imbalance

And much more!

Don't miss out on this powerful episode as Dr. Kyrin Dunston reveals the key to unlocking hormone balance and prosperity today! Tune in now and take your first step toward restoring your hormonal health. Join Dr. Kyrin Dunston for this inspiring episode of Essential Step 1 of 3 To Healing Your Hormones: Stop Your Dishonesty!

 

(00:00): How are you being dishonest with yourself and how is that preventing you from having balanced hormones? Stay tuned to find out.

(00:08): So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us, keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an ob gyn, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue. Now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

(01:01): Hey, it's Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me today for another episode of the Hormone Prescription Podcast and my YouTube channel. Today I wanna talk to you about the first of three steps that you need to take in order to balance your hormones. And it's not what you think. So you wanna stay tuned, so you wanna listen up. Most people think that the first step in balancing their hormones is what diet do I need to follow? What supplement do I need to take? What exercise do I need to do? What tests do I need? But they've got it all wrong. They're actually three essential steps that everybody must take in order to successfully, and the keyword is successfully balancing their hormones. Without these steps, you don't have a solid foundation on your hormone balance and your hormonal prosperity. So even if you have some initial success, you're eventually bound to fail.

(02:04): Just like building a house on no foundation will never build a stable house, right? If you don't dig into the ground and put some type of cement and rebar and pilings or something deep into the ground to be a solid foundation for that house, you won't have a safe structure above ground. You've gotta dig into the ground first. The same is true when you're trying to repair your health and your hormones. So that house, if you think the first thing you need to do to build a house is go buy some lumber, and then you just start cutting lumber and nailing it together above ground, what's gonna happen when the first wind comes, that house is gonna fly away or fall down, right? So it's the same with your hormones. You need to dig down into the ground and put a solid foundation for your health and your hormones so that you do it the right way and you go about it the right way in a methodical way, just like in following a recipe, right?

(03:12): You don't look at the ingredient list and then read the instructions and then just decide, oh, I'm just gonna put these ingredients together cause I want to, right? Pick, pick two out of 'em, right? And say, oh, I'm gonna mix those together and not follow the directions, right? Everything has a sequence, particularly for things like baking or dishes that require several steps, right? If you're going to make a great taco, you don't just take raw chicken and raw corn and raw onions and raw avocado and throw 'em all together, right? There's a sequence of steps. You gotta season the chicken, you gotta cook the chicken, you've gotta crush, crush the corn, you've gotta make the taco, right? That has its own process. You've gotta slice the onion, you have to prepare the avocado. And then when you put them all together, yummy, yummy, yummy. I think you get the point, , there's an order to these steps and you need to follow the process.

(04:18): And a lot of people would have you believe that, oh, you need this test first. Oh, or you need this supplement, right? That's gonna fix it. Or you just need a prescription for hormones, right? And what I wanna tell you is that's all wrong. There is preparatory work that you need to do first. So I'm gonna talk to you about that in these next three episodes. So number one of three is you need to get a reality check and get honest about what's really going on for you. You may not realize it, but if you think about the biggest problem that's bothering you that you think is related to your hormones, let's say that you're in your forties and you are getting terrible migraine headaches before your period, and that is driving you crazy. Your doctor has you on some medications for that that you're having to take every month and all you wanna do is just solve your migraine problem cuz you think that's the only hormonal problem you have.

(05:26): And so you want the supplement, the diet, the food, you know, exercise, whatever it is. But I want you to back up and you've gotta get honest in this step because our dishonesty is what is keeping us from finding the answers that will actually get us where we want to be. So what do I mean by that? If you're honest with yourself, your migraines are not the only problem that you're having with your health, right? Let's be real. Most women over 40 suffer with several health related symptoms. So what am I talking about? Most of us over 40 have weight issues. In fact, 60% of us have weight issues where we're overweight or obese or morbidly obese. Majority of us suffer with energy issues and fatigue. We may not notice it cuz we're medicating it with caffeine in the morning. And then we're using downers like alcohol to wind down in the evening.

(06:29): So right there, majority of us are overweight and tired. So you're lying to yourself if you say that my only hormonal problem is that I have migraines, you might write off your weight problem and energy problems that you don't eat a perfect diet or you're just getting older. And what I wanna tell you is that all of the symptoms that you have in your body related to your health have some connection to hormonal balance. I wanna repeat that. So you hear me clearly cuz you're not gonna hear this at your regular doctor's office. Every single midlife, metabolic mayhem symptom that you have, the 60 or so symptoms that women over 40 and sometimes in their thirties can start experiencing somehow is related to hormones. Also, when you get a disease diagnosis, whether it's hypertension, diabetes, autoimmune disease, you name it, there is some connection to your hormone balance.

(07:32): Hormones form the foundation of a woman's health. So you've got to get out of your dishonesty. And for a lot of you, it's your naive K because nobody told you this, it's not your fault, right? We weren't educated on this. I wish we would have this in our grade school and high school education at age appropriate levels, but we don't. So you're left to your own devices cuz you're not gonna learn this in the doctor's office. Well that's what I'm here for, to help you understand everything that's plaguing you with your health has some toe in the hormone imbalance syndrome, right? So if you're having migraines and you've gotta a weight problem and you're tired, let's list some others. Your skin is having a problem. You get this crazy rash, you only get it at certain times of the year in certain areas on your body, but you've been to the dermatologist and it plagues you and you can't figure out what's wrong.

(08:31): Probably nobody looked at your hormones or talked to you about that. That could be hormonally related. Oh, and by the way, there's certain things that when I eat them, I don't know what happens, but I get this kind of indigestion and I might belch a lot, right? And I'm pretty regular maybe with my bowel habits, but every now and then something will throw me off and I don't know what it is and I, I get bloated and gassy, right? And you've been to the gastroenterologist, you've been to your interns or family practitioner or gynecologist and they've run tests or maybe they haven't and they told you, oh you just have a little irritable bowel or you just have a little reflux, right? And what do they do? Give you some medicine. So here you are in your forties and only thing you're online looking for answers to is your migraines.

(09:19): You'll never find the answer that will fix the root cause of those migraine headaches. If you don't get honest about all the symptoms that are plaguing you with your health, what I call midlife metabolic mayhem, the 60 or so symptoms that many women over 40 and some even over 30 start experiencing as they go into hormonal poverty. That's where they don't have the hormones to support the high level of health that they may have been enjoying. And I have other videos and podcasts about that. So you have to get honest, honest with yourself and get out of your delusion and your dishonesty that this is the only problem and looking for answers to that. You gotta take an inventory of your health and write down all the things that are plaguing you. Everything even if you don't think it's significant, brings to mind a woman who recently went through one of my programs who actually happens to be a physician as well.

(10:22): We'll call her Sally, that's not her real name. And she got honest at the beginning of the program cuz that's where I start everyone. We have inventories, we're checklists where you go through symptoms related to all the hormones. And she did it as honestly as she could at the time. Fast forward a year later, she did all the work with me and she came on the zoom one day and she said, Karen, I'm growing eyelashes again. What she said, I didn't even mention it when we started the program because I didn't think I'd ever have eyelashes again. I had been to the dermatologist and basically they didn't have any answers for me and they had tried me on some of the medications for eyelash growth and it didn't really help. So I thought that that was an unanswerable, unsolvable problems. So I didn't even mention it, right?

(11:21): So she was in the delusion of corporate medicine that this problem can't be solved. And then she came on the zoom and said, I'm growing eyelashes. And she was like beside herself with joy about this because she had frankly given up. And you know that you've given up on some of your symptoms too. I know you have cuz I talk to you every day. Women just like you, you think doctors have dismissed you so many times and ignored you so often that you have come to believe that you are defective when the truth is that the solutions that most doctors are offering are defective and incomplete. And there is nothing wrong with you. And I always say if there is a health problem or symptom or disease and it hasn't been solved, it's because you haven't uncovered the right stone. You haven't asked the right question or done these foundational steps.

(12:23): One of which is getting honest. The truth is, when you go down to the roots of a tree and you fix the roots, all the leaves and branches improve. And with mainstream medicine right now, you go to the dermatologist for your hair, skin, and nails. You go to the gynecologist for your female in fertility and reproductive issues, you go to the gastroenterologist for your GI problems, et cetera, you know the drill, right? So you're all on different branches of the treat, but with a root cause approach, we go down the trunk into the roots and solve it. And when you fix the roots, ev all the leaves and branches get better. So this is why it affects your neurological problems, right? Your migraine headaches, your gynecological problems, maybe you're in your forties as described and you're also having crazy heavy crime scene periods. It will affect your dermatological problems, right?

(13:14): That rash that you keep getting, it will also help you with weight and energy, which really doesn't have a place in mainstream medicine. It's not something that's dealt with. So hopefully you're getting the picture that the first is you need to get honest with yourself, get out of delusion, get out of dishonesty, recognize that all these symptoms are related and make an inventory. If you come to my hormone bliss challenge, I give you a symptom chest checklist for each hormone so that you can see what symptoms are related to what hormone we launch these periodically. And the link will be near my bio. If you're listening to the podcast, it'll be in the show notes. And if you're watching this on YouTube, it will be below the video in the show notes as well. So come join me, get out of delusion and dishonesty. You're not going to get where you want to be without it.

(14:10): If you keep believing and saying the mantra of, oh, I just need to fix this one thing, you might fix that one thing probably with a medication to suppress the symptom, right? That's currently how migraines are treated, but you'll never fix the other hormone related problems that you have, right? So your weight, energy, rashes, irritable bowel, gastritis, all the things, right? All the things like I like to say. So first step of three for that foundation in the ground when it comes to healing your health, and that starts with hormones for women, is to get honest with yourself. Another place where we sometimes lie to ourselves, I know cuz I did it too when I was a mainstream OB, G Y N, is that there's one shot wonder answers, and I think we've covered this a little bit already, but we might get that our $30 H m o copay doctor doesn't have the answers.

(15:13): But then we're on the internet looking for alternatives and we wanna know the one supplement that we need or the one diet that we need that's gonna solve the problem. You know, you've done it. I did it too, right? There's no shame in it. It reminds me of a colleague of mine, a general surgeon who I used to actually do surgery with a lot. She was an excellent surgeon and I used to go to the health food store after I got healthy and got on my journey all the time, never saw her in there. And then one day years later, all of a sudden I saw her in there and we'll call her Katie. I said, Katie, what are you doing here? And she said, oh, I was diagnosed with colon cancer. This is a while after I had stopped going to the hospital cuz I was doing all my work with women on healing so they didn't have to go to the hospital.

(16:01): And she said, I was diagnosed with colon cancer, I had surgery, I had some chemo, and I'm here looking for supplement that will help. Don't be Katie, right? Maybe if she had addressed her health issues and known about them years before, I don't know, maybe she wouldn't have gotten colon cancer. I have no idea. But there are no one shot wonders, there is no one supplement, there is no one diet, there is no one thing you are going to do that you're gonna go like bingo. That's it. All my health problems are solved. So you've gotta get honest about yourself and you've also got gotta get honest about who can actually help you. Who's the expert? So you're online, you're looking for the one shot wonder, and you see this person who calls himself a health coach and they do have some type of certification and they're selling some supplements and they tell you, you take this one supplement, I'm gonna sell you six months at a discount and everything will change for you, right?

(16:59): Maybe they tell you a diet to follow too or some other things to do. Maybe you even pay them a lot of money to go into their one-on-one program, but you don't actually get the results that you think you should or that you were promised. Now, why do I know this is a thing? Cause I have a lot of colleagues in this field, many of whom are health coaches, nurse practitioners, et cetera. Some of them are the real deal and some of them aren't. It is very hard as a consumer from the outside for you to be able to discern who really knows what they're talking about and who doesn't and who can take me all the way and who can't. So that's one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about being out here, educating and teaching you, because I have not only the MD credentials, but I essentially have the ND naturopathic doctor credentials because I completed a fellowship from the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine in metabolic functional and anti-aging medicine.

(18:03): So I have a ginormous toolbox. There are some things that I don't do or can't do and I send people to those experts, but I understand what it takes from a root cause to fix all the roots so all the leaves and branches get correct. And unfortunately, there are a lot of health coaches out there who will say things, for instance, like, oh, when you're in hormonal poverty, you don't need a prescription for hormones. And that's just patently not true. And maybe they haven't had the education or training to understand the absolute necessity for all the cells in your body, inclu, including the cells in your brain, the cells in your eyes, the cells in your heart, the cells in your immune system to have adequate estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. This is the biggest place I see that people miss. So you don't wanna miss that.

(18:59): So you've gotta get honest about all of these things, right? Honest about your symptoms, all of them that are related to your health and hormones, honest about who are the experts who can take you all the way and help you honest about not going to the hardware store for milk, right? Your regular doctor isn't trained in this. It's not their fault. and honest about being discerning about the credentials of who is out there saying that they can help you honest about it's not one thing. It'll never be one thing. I know we all want the one thing. Maybe you can find the one true partner for life, but when it comes to your health, there's just no one thing. So getting honest is the first step, getting out of dishonesty and delusion. Thanks you so much for joining me. I will have step two in the next podcast and video, and I look forward to seeing you there. Until then, peace Loving hormones, y'all.

(19:55): Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

► Hormone Balance Bliss Challenge by Dr. Kyrin Dunston

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The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body’s Fear Response

Do you ever feel like fear is controlling your life? We've all been there. But in this episode, Dr. Ellen Vora gives us insight into how to regain control with her expertise on the body's natural fear response and the tools we need to manage it effectively. Join us to learn more about understanding and overcoming anxiety so you can live a life that feels right for you!

 

Ellen Vora, MD is a board-certified psychiatrist, acupuncturist, and yoga teacher, and she is the author of the bestselling book The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response. She takes a functional medicine approach to mental health, considering the whole person and addressing imbalance at the root. 

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What the body's fear response is and how to recognize it

• The importance of addressing anxiety holistically

• Tools for managing anxiety in the long-term

• Dr. Vora's personal story and journey with healing from anxiety

 

Tune in to gain greater insight into your own fear response and learn practical tips for regaining control. This episode will help you reclaim your power over fear and live a life full of joy, peace, and resilience. Let's jump right in!

 

Don't forget to share, subscribe and leave a review if you like what you heard! We look forward to hearing from you! Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you next time!

 

(00:00): Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way. Alan Watts. In this episode we talk about if you're suffering from anxiety and or on medications for anxiety, what you might be doing wrong in your approach, and how to recognize and solve the underlying problem. Stay tuned.

 

(00:29): So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an ob gyn, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

 

(01:22): Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyirin. Thank you so much for joining me today. Today we are talking all about the anatomy of anxiety with a true expert who's written an amazing book and has incredible insight. She has a similar journey to mine in that she was trained as a medical doctor. She went into psychiatry and really realized that we weren't helping people with giving drugs and doing surgery, and she found a better way. And now she has dedicated her life to educating others about the anatomy of anxiety and what's really going on behind the scenes. She is an incredible person. She offered this quote to me that I love from Alan Watts, who's an amazing philosopher. And this is what it says, problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.

 

(02:20): So what does this mean? It means if you have a problem that hasn't been solved, you're asking the wrong question. And I once was in a coaching program with Mary Morrisey, who's amazing coach and spiritual leader, and she was talking about the importance of the right question and that if given an hour to formulate the answer to a problem, you should spend 55 minutes on formulating the right question that will give you the answer. And I have found that so much to be true. I always tell people with your health that if you, you have persistent health symptoms, diagnoses, medications, problems, whatever you wanna call it, something's not right with your health, then you haven't asked the right question. It's asking the right questions that is invaluable to fixing your health. And unfortunately, as a mainstream doctor, I didn't know the right questions to ask.

 

(03:20): Now I know the questions to ask, so I'm gonna help you ask the right question. And if you're dealing with anxiety, which millions of us do at some point in our life, many of us chronically, or we've got a loved one who's dealing with it, and it can be debilitating, prevent you from having relationships or working and all kinds of things. And if that's you or someone you know, you wanna listen up because you need to know about the anatomy of anxiety. And Dr. Vora is an expert at this. She's really taken a deep dive in her book. She's a beautiful way of looking at it. I'll tell you a little bit more about her and then we'll get started. So Ellen Vora is a medical doctor. She's a board certified psychiatrist, acupuncturist and yoga teacher, and she's the author of the bestselling book, the Anatomy of Anxiety, understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response. She takes a functional medicine approach to mental health, considering the whole person and addressing imbalance at the root. Welcome, Dr. Ellen Vora to the show.

 

(04:18): Thank you so much for having me.

 

(04:20): I am so excited to dive into this topic with you. A lot of my listeners know that anxiety was a huge part of my story. I didn't really suffer from anxiety at a young age. It wasn't a problem and it really started in my forties and it got so severe that everybody knows this for that and depression. I was on five psychoactive medications at one point and the doctor told me, you will never get off of these. I couldn't even hardly function even with those five medications, I was so anxious my body would tremble, but I had nothing to be anxious about. And I know that you talk about this , so I kind of wanna dive in there. And this is for the people who have maybe been dealing with their anxiety their whole lives. Maybe they just deal with anxiety most recently. Maybe they have a loved one who has anxiety. It's so problematic and it's so debilitating. So I don't even know where to start. So I'm gonna just say, Ellen, start . Start where you think, why is this such a problem that affects so many people?

 

(05:30): Yeah. So the way you and I were both taught to think about anxiety, you know, we were taught in medical school to evaluate it according to the D S M, our Bible of mental health, a diagnostic statistical manual. And we're really most of all indoctrinated with the idea that our mental health issues are the results of a genetic chemical imbalance. This is our monoamine theory of depression, where we say it's your serotonin. You were born with jeans that meant that you had low serotonin, but that's okay cuz you're alive in 2023 and we have a pill that can fix that. So here, take this pill and it will fill up your empty serotonin tank and everything will be honky dory. Again. It's a nice story. I think it came primarily from well-meaning scientists using deductive reasoning when they saw that certain tuberculosis medications that manipulated serotonin seem to raise some people's moods.

 

(06:23): But it turns out it's not a true story. And it, you know, that the idea there, the implication is if you take these pills, it's gonna fix your depression. I think many people listening who have had an one or another experience with psychiatric medications, even if they're net on the whole helpful, this story's not quite so clean and simple. And so I also think what's important is that when we focus on the genetic chemical imbalance, that is our least hopeful narrative when it comes to mental health. It tells us it's a fixed trait, it's our destiny. We're broken, we're stuck. And I have observed through 10 years of practice that this is patently false. This is not true of mental health. And while genes do play a role, it is only ever a predisposition in functional medicine. As you know, we say genes loads the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger.

 

(07:18): So when we only focus on genes, that keeps us feeling like this is our destiny. I will always be depressed, I will always be anxious when we shift our focus to the environmental influences that also have an enormous impact on our mental health. Well, there's something we can do about that. Sleep and nutrition, inflammation, hormones, gut health, and then more psycho-spiritual aspects of mental health, community nature, feeling of a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives being of service. All of this also impacts our mental health, and there's a lot more we can do about that. So I prefer to shift our focus to what we can control. And I want people to know they're not stuck even if they've felt depressed or anxious. You asked, why are so many people anxious right now? I think that there's two big reasons. When I think about anxiety, I, I divide it into two categories.

 

(08:09): False anxiety and true anxiety. Where false anxiety is physical anxiety, it's based in the physical body and it's avoidable, it's related to inflammation or sleep deprivation or a blood sugar crash or a hangover. And we are these days swimming through a cesspool of causes of false anxiety. We are all inundated with environmental influences that are making us more anxious than people were even 30 years ago. But then the other piece of this is our true anxiety, which is purposeful anxiety. It's not something to pathologize, it's not something to suppress. And we don't get to fix it by simply going gluten free or switching to decaf coffee. This is our inner compass. It's nudging us, asking us to slow down and pay attention to what's not not right in the world. And these days we are also inundated with quite a lot that's not right around us.

 

(09:01): So we come by our true anxiety, honestly. And the good news is, whether it's our false anxiety or our true anxiety, there's a lot that we can do to support ourselves. And so I think that we are all so anxious these days, but we've been trained to think about mental health incorrectly, letting us feel stuck and thinking that the menu of possibilities to support our mental health is just medication and therapy. And I want people to know, first of all, there's always reason for hope, never a reason to despair. And that there's so many other strategies we can take to support our mental health.

 

(09:36): I think that is so important. And I love this, the concept you have of false anxiety and true anxiety. Is that what you called it? Yeah.

 

(09:45): Yeah. I think that's brilliant. Because , the body can cause anxiety and most people think, oh, it's a mental process, it's a mental problem. And like I said, I didn't have any reason to be anxious. There was no mental issue. Well, I was kind of on off my path and I think that , that was the problem. , I was so off my path, but also I had so much inflammation and hormone imbalance and toxicity and my body was, I didn't realize that that vibrating tremoring shaking was my body screaming that it needed help. You know, because we were both trained the same traditional medical doctor program and what would we do? Pill for every ill surgery for every symptom. So that's what I went to a doctor like that, a psychiatrist, and he just kept prescribing and kept adding. And you know, thank God, fast forward, I am off all psychoactive medications. I don't need any, once I fixed all the underlying problems and got on my path, ,

 

(10:52): That's exactly it. The false and s true dichotomy. And I think, you know, not to project, but I was in the same situation where to be a medical resident, I was in so many false moods because I was inflamed, chronically sleep deprived, absolutely malnourished, you know, overfed, but undernourished and my hormones were all whack, which is a consequence of everything else. Yeah. Out of balance. And so I had a lot of false moods. But there's also that true mood that is if you went into medicine because you actually wanted to make a difference and support people, for many of us, we wake up to the the deep crisis and disenchantment of what is the system I'm a part of? I'm not convinced that I'm helping people. I'm not convinced that I'm not harming people. And so that's true Anxiety right there for you, a textbook example, and it's beautiful that you were aware of both of these things.

 

(11:44): It's unfortunate that our system these days is such that if you go in and you say, I'm really not feeling okay, all we know to offer people is medication. And there's a path there that is concerning to me. And it's, it's difficult to convey this without, I don't mean this as an non-pharmacologic path. I'm a psychiatrist, I prescribe medication. I've seen them benefit people. Absolutely. But what I see so often is someone says to their primary care doctor or their psychiatrist, I'm not feeling great. And they say, you know, in the 15 minutes they have with you, well, okay, like take Lexapro. And then you start Lexapro, and then you get sexual side effects, then you add Wellbutrin, and then maybe you're not really sleeping and you add Ambien and then you can't really focus during the day. You add Adderall and then you're anxious and then they add Xanax.

 

(12:30): And before you know it, you have a cocktail of medication. And the piece of this that's most damning is that it's delicate to talk about this without, I recognize some people really need their medication. Sometimes we need more informed consent. But I think what also happens is that the medications themselves can make us more fragile. The medications beget the need for themselves. Take Xanax for example. It's very effective in the short term, in the medium and long term. It exacerbates the very problem it's set out to treat in the first place. It makes us more anxious. And we can talk about the biochemistry of that. So once somebody's on a cocktail of medication, not only are they deeply plugged into the system, but they're very neurochemically fragile at that point. And it's hard to be well on your own. And you start to think of yourself as very sick and needing a lot of medication, needing a lot of support, you're spending a lot of time standing online at the Walgreens. And it just, it leads people down a path that I, it makes me from some days sad and other days outraged to think about how many people we've plugged into this life without first asking, how are you sleeping? Do you have community in your life? What's your diet look like? Are you pooping every day? Simple diet and lifestyle strategies that we can do to address mental health At the

 

(13:47): Root, I think, oh gosh, everything you're saying is just giving me chills because ev people need to hear this. So if you're listening , maybe if you need this information, yayu, please share it. It is so vital because we have a mental health crisis and it needs to be addressed and people aren't going to get this information in their doctor's office. So please share this with all the women in your life. So I wanna dive in because you said ha, if you, that we don't ask about how are you sleeping? We don't ask, do you have community? We don't ask, are you pooping every day? And there's some people listening who are going, if I have anxiety, why would someone care if I'm pooping every day? If I'm anxious? Why do people care? Why should the doctor care if I have community? So can you start to help people understand what, what's going on? Why, why is this important? Right? We've established that the gene hypothesis is not a thing, but help them understand why, how this is, what's the manifestation of how does anxiety come about through the body?

 

(14:49): Yes. Great question. And so fundamentally, first we just have to acknowledge that we are taught to think of mental health from the neck up to say, here's where mental health happens and only here. And that's of course a very modern and very western view of the body as discrete organ systems that aren't talking to each other. There's a line in my book, which is, your brain and your gut are talking to each other, even if you're a psychiatrist or your gastroenterologist are not. And eastern modalities have always appreciated this, right? Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, they know about the richly interconnected web of communication and interrelationships between all of our organs and our organ systems. And so it's crazy to the way, I mean, at some point we're all gonna see it. We're gonna be like, wait, that is bananas. That we think that mental health is just the brain.

 

(15:35): The brain is a piece of flesh. It is impacted by everything else going on in the body. If you are inflamed, if you are micronutrient deficient, if your blood sugar is crashing, you better believe that impacts your brain health. And good mental health is in many ways a reflection of two main things. It's good physical health, it's a reflection of good, healthy brain health. And it's a reflection of us getting our fundamental human psychospiritual needs met. And so when those two things are in place, we tend to feel pretty good. Trauma is its own consideration, which we can go a bit more into. So if you take the gut, for example, when someone's thinking, well, I'm anxious, why are they asking me about my pooping? That seems crazy. , that's, that's my, that's my digestive tract. Well, three main pathways for how our gut is impacting our brain health.

 

(16:20): I'll first just open with the fact that we are now at a point where publicly we have a conversation about the fact that our brain impacts our gut. We know now that if we're anxious, if we're chronically stressed, this will impact our digestion. Someone with IBS or irritable bowel syndrome might say, I know that stress is impacting my ibs. So we appreciate top-down communication, but where we're headed is that we also have to appreciate it is a two-way street. It is a bidirectional relationship between the gut and the brain. So just as there's top down communication, there is also bottom up communication. The health of the gut is impacting the state of our brain. And it's happening along a number of different pathways. One very simple one is that there are bacteria in our gut that are involved in the synthesis of certain neurotransmitters. We talk a lot about serotonin, but my pet favorite neurotransmitter is gaba.

(17:15): We don't talk enough about gaba. It's critical to anxiety and it's manufactured by certain B species that we're supposed to have in our gut. But if we're taking multiple courses of antibiotics and we're not consuming fermented foods and we're not around soil or animal feces, which sounds gross, but this is part of how we maintain a diverse ecosystem of beneficial bacteria in our digestive tract. If we're missing critical microbes, we might be missing critical neurotransmitters like gaba. And then there's the fact that our gut is involved with inflammation, which itself directly, directly impacts brain health and anxiety levels. But the one that I find most interesting is the communication along the vagus nerve that's basically reporting on the state of affairs of our gut up to our brain all the time. And if it's saying everything is copacetic down here, go have a great day.

 

(18:05): Well that's great, but if your gut is in rough shape, if you've taken antibiotics, if you've consumed pro processed foods, if you're inflamed, then it's sending a memo constantly up to the brain saying things are rough down here, feel uneasy. It's designed to motivate us to rest, to make different choices so that we can heal. But instead, I think a lot of us go through our lives in a state of chronic low-grade anxiety just because we're in a state of chronic poor health of our digestive tract, which we come by honestly, because modern life makes a broad assault against the health of our guts, from our chlorinated tap water, antibiotics, processed food, alcohol, NSAIDs, lack of exposure to fermented foods and and microbes. And so here we are, all of us with really unhealthy guts and it's directly impacting our mental health.

 

(18:55): So important, the information that you just shared. And I was listening to, I'm listening to Peter Levine's new book about trauma and memory, and he was talking about the ratio of the ENT nerves. So the nerves in the VA that bring information from the gut, the ratio of those to the efferent that innovate the motor is five to one. Yeah,

 

(19:15):

 

(19:16): , and I had forgotten that from med school, but wow. So your body really prioritizes what is going on in the gut, which I believe in Chinese medicine they call the second brain. And so I think most people just don't get it. And you know, we're downing, and I can be guilty of this too, sometimes eating proc over highly processed foods. Oh you know, those chips are so good and , things like that. And then, and then I might wonder the next day why, and I'm not feeling great. I mean, at this point I kind of know, so I'm not willing to pay the price. But every now and then I do. But your gut is so key. So everybody listening, this is why what your poop habits matter and pooping once a week is not okay. If you're listening, I, so many people come to me and they say, well, I only poop once a week. I've been that way my whole life. That's my normal. And I'm like, yeah, but that's not okay. All right. So this false anxiety that's coming from the gut, everybody, if you're having, so some people are listening and they're thinking, oh, okay, I identify with some of these things, Dr. Ellen I'm gonna go to my doctor and ask to be referred to a gastroenterologist. So what's gonna happen is that idea,

 

(20:27): This is a big problem. Broadly, this happens with mental health too. We think like we just need better access. We need better access to mental health care. Like, oh, now you just gave me a light bulb aha moment that my gut is impacting my mental health. So let me go see a gastroenterologist. We know how this story ends. If you see that psychiatrist, if you had better access to mental health, you walk out with a prescription and it leads to more prescriptions if you go to see a gastroenterologist. All due respect, I, some of my family friends, I, I love my gastroenterologist buddies and colleagues. I think they're brilliant and wonderful healers. But the training in medicine, we always have this saying garbage in, garbage out. They are not trained to do any kind of root cause resolution or to approach the chronic degenerative, chronic low-grade inflammation issues in a supportive way.

 

(21:14): We are taught to react in, in a quite a heroic way to problems. So we have lots of great suppressive medications that can squash your immune system, that can basically say, well you're inflamed in your gut, let's just shut down the immune system. And then inflammation is gone and you feel better symptomatically temporarily. But we've done nothing to address it at the root actually we've done something, we've exacerbated the original problem. So I think that the problem is our training and if you are having an aha moment, which is that you have unhealthy gut health and then that's impacting your mental health, you're probably better served going to see a naturopath or a functional medicine doc. I think that they actually are virtuosic at understanding how the gut gets out of balance and how to support that. That will make an enormous difference in your mental health but also in your physical health more broadly. And even just improving your gut health is a direct impact on our quality of life. Going from pooping once a week to pooping every day is, it changes everything. And how we feel. I've got, I've gone on that journey myself

 

(22:15): And . Yeah.

 

(22:17): To actually have that working every day is victorious. I never, I still don't take it for granted at this point, probably like 20 years into that. So I think that you'd wanna get your care in a more holistic setting so that you're not just suppressing functions in the body. Symptoms suppressing it turns out is it's a beautiful thing that western medicine can do when the problem is really big. If you have already had a car accident or a heart attack or you already have cancer, I think our ability to do heroics and suppress symptoms and really fundamentally change the body is a beautiful thing about Western medicine. But so much of what ails us are these subtler, chronic degenerative diseases, chronic inflammatory conditions that are as resulting from modern life. And when we go in with heroics, we actually make the original problem worse. So you wanna go into a holistic treatment where they're thinking, oh, here are the inputs that are irritating the system. Here are the inputs that you're missing. Let's give the body what it needs and then trust that the body knows what to do with that. And it can heal itself.

 

(23:17): Does body super intelligent like , we couldn't create a human body and it knows what to do. So sometimes you just get out of the way, get the things out of the way, blocking it, give it the things it needs and then watch it heal. And you know, I had this vision when you were talking about the pooping, cuz I went through that phase two now it's like when you make a beautiful poop in the toilet every time you eat, cuz that's how nature created you. You literally should jump up. Like you gotta field goal and be like, yay , yay me. Right? Not just for little kids anymore that yay you pooped in the potty, but yay pooped in the pot.

 

(23:58): A hundred percent .

 

(24:00): I do wanna talk about trauma. You mentioned it earlier. It ended up being a huge part of my story, which I actually didn't know. I didn't, I knew I had a crappy childhood. My mom used to have this tote bag that was of this, this cartoon woman and and it said let's put the fun back in dysfunctional. We had dysfunction in my family for sure, but I didn't know that I had trauma. And then that was part of this, the latter part of my journey. After I healed my gut and got off all the medications, well then my body was like, well now we gotta deal with this residual trauma. And so that was another part of my journey. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that and how it relates to anxiety and what do you do about that?

 

(24:45): Yeah, I mean trauma is such a big and heavy topic and I think that the tricky thing about it is that the brain learns that's what brains do. And when you are in an unsafe environment, a chaotic environment, a dysfunctional environment, when there is a real risk to your bodily safety or to somebody near to you, very understandably, the brain adapts and it learns to be hyper-vigilant, to be on high alert. And that's an adaptation in an unsafe setting. If you're living in a war zone, if you're in a traumatic childhood, you want to be hypervigilant in a state of hyper arousal. This keeps you safe, it helps your survival. So I think it's really important to first just give grace and compassion to the fact that this was how your brain and your body responded. The tricky thing is that if you're lucky enough to then no longer be in as unsafe of an environment, this adaptation becomes a mal adaptation because now you are stuck with the foot almost stuck on the accelerator pedal, your limbic system, your amygdala, your brain is stuck and locked into a position of hyper arousal and hypervigilance.

 

(25:50): And not only is that a really unpleasant and anxiety provoking state to go through life and it, you're basically perceiving threat even when there is none. It distorts your view of reality. But then also it's very hard to heal or be well in other ways because a lot of our healing hinges on a particular fulcrum in the nervous system. Whether our nervous system is in a tone of sympathetic or parasympathetic. And now with polyvagal theory it's more complex. But I think that, you know, the most simple understanding is are you in a state of stress or are you in a state of relaxation? And when you're in a state of relaxation, your gut can heal, you can sleep deeply and well and then everything else can heal while you're asleep. You can feel a sense of calm and awe and gratitude. And when you're in a state of stress, everything is, there's a triage mechanism that happens in the body.

 

(26:38): The body basically says, this is not the time for housekeeping, this is not the time for healing or repair work. This is the time for dealing with the threat. And so we can go our entire lives triaging out of housekeeping, triaging out of repair work in our bodies because our body is still stuck in that state of we have something to be stressed about. And so the trouble with trauma is when we get stuck. And that's where I think trauma focused therapies that work at the level of the limbic system, whether that's E M D R or somatic experiencing therapy or something like DN r s or primal trust, something that's going in and with precision really reprogramming the limbic system and where it hangs out so that it can start to understand that was then this is now. And we don't, we no longer need that now maladaptive state of hyper arousal. And I think that that can help people who have a history of trauma move forward from a place of a calmer limbic system, the ability to be in a state of relaxation.

 

(27:37): So some people listening, because this was me before I realized I had trauma, are thinking, oh, I don't have any, I didn't have any trauma . I'm just wondering how would somebody know that you might be talking to them that they might be a candidate for having trauma. So if you could talk a little bit about what trauma is. I mean I used to think, you know, nobody beat me when I was a kid. I didn't have trauma, right? I didn't have this extreme thing so I didn't have trauma. And then come to find out I had a lot of things I didn't remember that happened and that I did qualify. So I just want to wondering what you might say to those people who are wondering, could this apply to me? I

 

(28:24): Think it's a really good question and I'm not sure I have a great answer. I think that one thing I'm always on the lookout for is like a heightened startled response. Like , you know, somebody closes a door behind you and you jump at a proportion to what it is like, is your body basically perceiving threat disproportionate to, to what's happening around you? Any state of hyper arousal. But I think that I'd be so curious. I think in a way I am, I have a handicap, which is that people come to me already saying I need help. And so I think I'm less good at the phase that happens in the lead up, which is going from, I'm not sure I have a problem to realizing that we do. So I'd be so curious to hear what shifted for you and how did you start to pick up on the fact that you were holding trauma?

 

(29:09): Oh, , that's a long story. Let me see what the short version is. But basically, you know, there's this compulsion when you've had traumatic interpersonal relationships, particularly with your primary caregivers when you're young to have that repetition compulsion. And so it was a repetition compulsion relationship issue that sent me into having acute P T S D symptoms. And then it was, oh my gosh, what is happening then? Then that's when I discovered, oh yeah, I was traumatized. And through some of the modalities you mentioned then uncovered memories ca you did go through an alphabet soup there, kind of, which I know some people Yes. Are going what, so for those people who, you know, even have an inkling that it might, this might be who you do want and I would love it if you could talk about what is a trauma informed therapist, what credentials they might have, but also some of the modalities you mentioned.

 

(30:09): Yeah, so let's see if I can define those. The alphabet soup, I think the first one I said was E M D R, which I believe stands for I movement desensitization and reprocessing. Reprogramming, I mean one of those. And so this is a wonderful non-invasive modality. That's it really. It's, it uses a smart way of kind of distracting the mind as it helps you work through trauma. I think that's a big part of all of the trauma focused therapies is that in a way we need to access the amygdala, the limbic system where the brain is holding onto these memories and work through them without tripping a wire that sets off an all out stress response because then we're just a, an animal against a wall in a very defensive stress response and not a lot of fruitful work can happen in that state.

 

(30:55): So a lot of these therapies really figure out a way of, of kind of working around and not tripping that wire in the first place. I mentioned Somatic Experiencing Therapy, a very body-based therapy. I also mentioned D N R S, which stands for Dynamic Neural Retraining System. Hmm. And that, you know, people do rounds and there's a lot of difference in terms of how you talk to yourself and how much you focus on symptoms. And so all different ways for reprogramming. And then Primal Trust is kind of this newer version of of DN r s that I actually really like the evolution there, which is recognizing that there is a body, there's a, this is just like the true anxiety, false anxiety dichotomy that some things are related to our trauma and some things are related to inflammation and caffeine and gluten. And sometimes we need to discern which one to, where do we need to make changes and where do we need to accept and recognize that it's our nervous system creating our symptoms.

 

(31:52): Okay, thank you for explaining that. And if, if someone also suspects that this, they might be a candidate, how do they find someone who's actually skilled at working with trauma?

 

(32:04): Yeah, so if you're wanting to do therapy around trauma, it's really important to make sure that someone has, I think, self-described as a trauma-focused therapy. Because any kind of therapist, whether it's a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a licensed mental health counselor, family mari, marital therapist, basically if we're not trained and I'm not right, if you're not trained in, in trauma focused therapy, then what you do is you do talk therapy. And talk therapy is not only often ineffective for trauma but can be actively unhelpful, can be retraumatizing. And so I think it's critical to work with one of these less verbal, more limbic based modalities. And so look for those words on someone's website. And if you wanna start by doing something on your own, if you kind of have the safety and the leeway to do that, something like Primal Trust is a good place to start. This is something you can do for yourself and there are support groups you can join, there are coaches you can work with and that's a really nice system. And if you're not finding the perfect word of mouth trauma-focused therapist in your area that's affordable and taking new patients and working with your insurance, starting with something like Primal Trust is a great, is a great place to start.

 

(33:13): Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing those resources. We have to talk about this topic before we wrap up, so hopefully everybody listening will give us a little few more minute leeway. This idea of being off your path and what is your path and how does that create anxiety? That was a huge part of my story and exactly what you described, Ellen, where I had gone into medicine because I knew I wanted to work with women and help them with their health. And I said, well how, what will gimme the biggest toolbox in order to do that? So of course I went and got my medical doctorate and then was disillusioned when I was in practice that exactly what you said, I started saying, are we really helping anyone? We're harming people. And that was off my path, but I didn't know what to do about it and of course had my own health challenges so that discordance created this anxiety. So I'm wondering if you can talking, talk about that a little bit.

 

(34:09): Yeah, I mean and it's, it's interesting I think even how both of us, I've never thought about it this way before but in a meta way getting off our path was a very critical part of our path . And so go figure, you know, it's just giving people permission to slow down, get still and just tune in like how are we doing? Like not like are your parents approving of what you're doing? Do your friends, are they impressed by it? How's your bank account? But like how are you really doing? What are your values? What kind of life do you wanna live? What makes you feel fulfilled? And is that happening or are you on track towards building a life where that is happening? And if you feel like you might be way off course, we have a world that gives us a lot of junky values where it tells us like here's what you should be striving for, have this kind of skin and this kind of car and this kind of money and this kind of impressive job and this kind of attractive partner and have these perfect kids.

 

(35:05): And you know, it tells us, here's what Instagram is telling you what we like, you know, literally what we like, what get gathers likes and who is to say any of that is what fulfills you or what feels right or familiar for you. And so I think it's just so important to step out of the framework and the conditioning that we've all inherited and just know for yourself what is right for you. And then make sure that you're actually on the path towards building toward that if you don't already have it. And it's certainly not moving actively in the wrong, wrong direction. And so this sometimes has a lot of inconvenient truths, it can blow up our lives, right? You can feel like, you can feel like you just gave 10 years a lot of student debt, blood, sweat and tears to medical trading and you're like, holy, I'm harming people.

 

(35:52): What the hell did I just do . And so I think that I love my friend Brit Frank, brilliant therapist and she says, choose your hard. And there are these moments when you realize you're off your path and you're like, it would be really hard to get back on a path and it would be so much harder to live the rest of your life this far off your path. And so sometimes we really do have to choose that short-term, really hard blow up our life change to get on our path. And I will be the first to admit it is scary and difficult to do this. But it has to be a, a dance where you're constantly checking in with yourself and from a place of radical self-love and self-worth and also self-love and self-worth that helps guide us back. But also, and this one's big and sometimes harder for us to realize this is my worldview.

 

(36:38): It doesn't have to be everyone's but a recognition that we have a unique set of gifts and perspectives and insights and talents that we have to offer this world. It's a contribution that we only us can uniquely make. And I think I have a lot of friends right now, they're coming to me and being like, how do I change my career and do something more meaningful? And they feel like, how would I have the audacity to think I could be an artist or I could be a healer or I could be a writer, whatever it is. And I think the question is really like how could you have the audacity to think that you should suppress these gifts? Like this world assigns you a mission, we desperately need you doing that work. Who are you to block that from being manifest in this world?

 

(37:22): Oh my God so beautifully said. It reminds me of Maryanne Williamson's. I think it's in Return to Love where she says like, you know, it's not our darkness that scares us, it's our light. And who are we not to express our light? And that's really one of the reasons that I do what I do is because I think some people are only gonna hear it from me. Some people are only gonna hear it from you Ellen, right? So if your unique voice is missing from the choir that's singing the song of true health and healing, then there are women and men who aren't gonna hear it and they're not gonna get the memo. But you listening, you're so lucky cuz you are here and you heard it from Dr. Ellen yourself. So for me, a key part was being off the path and I didn't know, I knew I was on the wrong path, but I didn't know what the right path was.

 

(38:15): And through a series of synchronous events, the universe conspiring to get me on the right path, you know, I got there. Unfortunately, I did have to blow up a lot of things in my life and I'm all the better for it. So yeah, choose your heart. I love that This has been so rich and so wonderful. I am so happy to have you here. I'm so, if you're listening, you just got a huge big gift to hear this woman share her brilliance and her journey and I so encourage you to get her book. She has a free gift free, we're gonna tell you about that. The link will be in the show notes. So tell them about your free gift, your book, where to find you online.

 

(38:56): Sure, yeah. At one point you were asking like, you know, if you go in, if your doctor's asking you like, well, you know, you're feeling like what does white gut have to do with my mental health? I was just thinking like , the only way I can summarize that is the two 50 pages of my book that are like, here's what your gut has to do with your mental health and here's what your thyroid and your nutrition and your hormones and your caffeine consumption and alcohol and so on and so forth that a lot of that's not fun. Like the chapters on alcohol and caffeine, everybody's least favorite chapters but impactful, right? Nonetheless. So my book is called The Anatomy of Anxiety and it really details this concept of true anxiety and false anxiety and, and how we can work with both and experience less anxiety, but also to fuel, let that purposeful anxiety, fuel purposeful action. My free gift is, I think it's called Dr. Vos Four Keys to Health. And it's like, it's the one page version of my book . I said my best to make it concise if people wanna interact. I'm pretty active on Instagram. I'm at Ellen Vora, md.

 

(39:55): Awesome, thank you so much Ellen. Any last words you want to offer? Everybody listening before we go?

 

(40:04): I think in addition to everything else we've covered, if there's two things that Trump all like everything, how we support our mental health, I think on a physical level at sleep, if you could focus on only one thing, it's prioritizing better sleep, which in the postmenopausal or perimenopausal body is always its own special tricky journey. But there are things we can do That's chapter five of my book. Even though perimenopausal sleep is is tough, there's still things we can do to support it. And then I think community on the psychospiritual end of things, if you could choose only one thing that trumps everything else, it's just prioritizing, making sure we're actually connecting with the people that fill us up. And it's hard in modern life, but it's really worth fighting for.

 

(40:47): So important I call sleep the nectar of life. , I preach it all the time, but now I realize I forgot to ask you such an important question. So if you'll allow me one more. You know, this time of life, midlife and beyond, I think, you know, I think it's so the Dai Lamas quoted as saying that the western woman will save the world and I think it's the western menopausal woman. Mm. And I'm wondering apropo, our que our conversation about life path and blowing up your life and switching your path , and I see so many women who are stuck in these lives that they've realized they're not really in alignment with, whether it's a marriage or a job or a career and they wanna make changes. I'm just wondering if you have any insight or or words of wisdom for them about, you know, I can't remember and maybe it's in the book of Thomas, in the Bible it says, if you bring forth what is within you, it will save you. If you don't bring forth what is within you, it will kill you basically. That's my paraphrasing. Yeah. Can you speak to that?

 

(41:50): Oh, I love this question. I mean, I think about menopause. Let me see if I can do this in like less than an hour. . So I think about, I don't know if you were taught this, I think I was actually taught this undergraduate and not medical school, which is that menopause is this oddity evolutionarily because it's by definition post reproductive. So it's very hard for us to select four genes that make for a better menopause. It doesn't work for survival of the fittest because even if somebody did have a mutation that gave them a better menopause, then you know, it dies with them and there's no way for them to have had a more successful reproductive life for having that gene. So in a way the body reacts in a way that would be adaptive to something that happens in the reproductive life. And so in many ways that crash in hormones, if it resembles any crash in hormones in our reproductive years, it's actually the postpartum period.

 

(42:39): So in some sense, the way our body reacts in the menopausal years is what would be adaptive in the postpartum period. You should mobilize calcium from your bones to make breast milk. You should radiate heat to keep the baby warm. You should have very superficial sleep so that you'll wake up if you hear the baby cry. And it's like, well that's all well and good if you have a newborn. And man, is it a bummer if you're in your forties and fifties and you're just trying to live. But I think that it comes with it, this concept of it's a bit of a rebirth, but there isn't a baby. This is a rebirth of a a different and in certain ways truer version of ourselves. And I think that estrogen is the hormone that helps us keep the peace. Because in primate populations, the more interpersonally effective you are, the more reproductive successful you are.

 

(43:25): Estrogen makes us say yes and nod and smile and suppress our own needs in favor of other people's. And that's fun, but it's not necessarily our deeper truth. And so we have a cultural attitude, which is that menopause is unfortunate because we don't value wisdom and age and we only value youth. And this is a whole other problem. But can we reframe the whole dang thing to realize this is a rebirth when we have waning levels of estrogen and we no longer are hormonally programmed to keep the peace and suppress our own needs in favor of other people's needs. This is a rebirth where we are the baby, where we get to say, it's my turn and here's my truth and here's what I know I want and it's gonna ruffle some feathers and not everyone is gonna like this. And that no longer really matters to me.

 

(44:16): , I love that. Oh my gosh, that is spam. Okay, it's gonna take me like a week to unpack what you just said. That was amazing. I hope you all heard that. If you need to listen to that again, because that's just so insightful and revolutionary and I love it. Thank you again so much for being here. Thank you for sharing just your brilliance and beauty with everyone. I hope you will take action listeners from what you have heard today. You know, always I, I know I beat the drum of the sleeping, the nectar of light, but it really is. So go do that and get yourself pooping every day and give yourself a high five when you make a nice Nike Swoosh in the toilet . So this and more information on how to get your hormone today. We'll have another great rest for you next week. Thanks so much for joining me and until next week, peace,

 

(45:15): Love, and the

 

(45:16): Hormones y'all.

 

(45:17): Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

► Get a FREE copy of Dr. Ellen Vora's "4 Keys to Health." - CLICK HERE.

 

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Where You’re Wrong About Doing A Detox - Essential Keys To Success

Do you feel like you’ve tried every diet and detox under the sun without much success? You may need a new approach to health and wellness.

 

Join Dr. Laura Belus, a licensed naturopathic doctor from the Greater Toronto area, on this special episode as she shares her insight into how to get your body back on track with powerful lifestyle changes that can make a world of difference!

 

Find out more about her journey to natural medicine for relief from migraines & acne and learn essential tips for weight loss, stress management, greater energy & better digestion through proper detoxification and hormone balance.

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

- The importance of detoxing for better health and vitality

- Keys to successful detoxification

- How to balance hormones for optimal health

- Tips for a healthy diet & lifestyle habits that promote wellness

- And more!

 

Don’t miss out on this life-changing information and tune in to this inspiring episode to get the essentials on detoxing and health!

 

(00:00): Forward in life is forward in life leap and the net will appear. Dr. Laura Bela, find out how you are doing detox wrong and most importantly, how to do it right.

 

(00:15): So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident and master midlife. If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself again. As an O B G Y N, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40 in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

 

(01:08): Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kiran. Thank you so much for joining me today. Today we are talking about doing detox. At this time of year, so many people are trying to do a detox and there's a lot of confusion about what really is a detox, what's a detox versus a cleanse? How do I properly do a detox? Do I need a detox or do I need a cleanse? , what am I missing? And I find that so many people get this wrong and it's not disastrous to get it wrong, it's just that you're not gonna get the benefits that you should get from a cleanser detox if you do it incorrectly. So you wanna make sure you're getting the most bang for your time and your money and effort invested. So you wanna listen up today to Dr.

 

(01:57): Laura Belus cuz she specializes in this. I'll tell you a little bit about her. Well let me tell you a little story first. So I used to work with this massage therapist and we would talk about all kinds of health things. She knew what I did, she loved what I did cuz she was all about treating things at the root cause and not just medicating symptoms. You guys know, you know, cuz you're about it too. She said to me, I got this detox supplement at the health food store and I took it for a month and I feel so much better. And like I always tell you guys, I don't preach to people who don't ask for the information. So I just said, oh great. But I knew all the health problems she was dealing with and I knew that wasn't the only thing she needed.

 

(02:41): And I was glad that she said she felt better, but I knew how good she really could feel. So, you know, she wasn't interested in learning more. Not everybody is. We help the ones who are swimming towards us who wanna be helped and who wanna be taught. So don't let that be you. Don't let that be be you at the supplement store asking the clerk at the health food store who has a high school degree who doesn't really know about this. Come and let's talk about it with Dr. Laura Bela. She's an expert and you'll get the information you need. So at this time of year you can do your detox, right? I'll tell you a little bit about her and then we can get started. Dr. Laura Beis is a licensed naturopathic doctor practicing in the greater Toronto area. In her early adult years, her recurrent migraines and acne led her to natural medicine for relief. She now focuses her clinical practice on detoxification and hormone balances for weight loss, stress management, greater energy and better digestion. She believes in making simple yet powerful changes to diet and lifestyle habits that create lasting results. Welcome Dr. Laura Belus to the podcast. Happy

 

(03:50): To be here.

 

(03:51): Super excited to talk about detoxing and why everybody's doing it wrong and what they don't know that they should know because this is the time of year when people are doing detoxes and like we were talking before we got started, about the difference between a detox and a cleanse. Ladies listening, do you know the difference? So we're gonna dive into that, but why is detox so important? Why do we even need to do one? Let's start there.

 

(04:18): That's a great starting point and I think an important piece to, you know, really highlight. So detoxification is already a natural part in the body. Our body is always detoxifying and that's an important piece to know. It's a natural part of the body. It's not something we have to start doing. However, detoxification is literally like a waste removal plant in our body. Our body clears things it doesn't need, it packages them numb, it packages them up and then it sends them out of the body in various ways. But sometimes in our modern lives we are inundated with so many things, whether that's the food we're eating might not be free of pesticides, it might be the air we breathe, it might be a lot of the chemicals in our body and personal care products. The reality is our body and our liver specifically is working over time to detoxify these things from our systems. And let's be honest, there's a lot going on and sometimes the body needs a little bit of a help and that's why doing a focused detoxification plan or supporting your body's liver detoxification naturally is so vital now more than ever.

 

(05:33): Yes, it's super important. I always say our body is a city and every city has a sanitation department , so we've got one but it gets, it's so sluggish. And what is the difference between a cleanse and a detox?

 

(05:48): Yeah, so a cleanse really it gets a lot of publicity. You know, it's definitely a more of a buzzword. A cleanse traditionally is a liquid or almost liquid based diet for one three even seven days. And it's intended really to focus on resetting the digestive system. Our gut from people that have a lot of digestive issues, bloating, maybe they've been quite sick digestively and they're slowly trying to get back into things or more famously a lot of people are familiar with perhaps green juice cleanses where they're drinking a lot of fresh juices all day. It's limited, it's a low calorie, liquid-based diet. So it does give the gut a bit of a break. It doesn't make your digestive system work really hard to break down solid foods because solid foods need to be digested and it takes a lot of effort to do that. But a cleanse is really focused on gut restoration. It's almost like hitting the reset button. It doesn't do very much for liver health. It is a quick reset for some people, but I normally don't recommend cleanses for most of us. And if I do recommend a cleanse it might be a one day reset. Just to reset the, the digestive system, it doesn't really focus on liver detoxification.

 

(07:05): Okay, so liver, I call that the sanitation department and you gotta love your liver. So can you talk a little bit about why the liver should be the focus of your detox? What's going on in the liver that's so important when it comes to detoxification?

 

(07:23): Yeah, so the liver is really, I love that analogy, the sanitation department because it is, it is, it's filtering so much blood through our circulatory system from our digestive system running through and it is cleaning out and picking out all of the not so nice things that are in our circulation are in our bloodstream and it's packaging those up that takes effort. It's sort of a two-step process for those that that are interested more in the science side of it, it's a two-phase process where your liver packages up these toxins or these chemicals or these pesticides, whatever you wanna call them, and it packages them up into two phases and after the second phase it dumps it into the digestive system or back into the bloodstream where you can sweat it out, you can pee it out or you can poop it out. And that's a very important part of getting these toxins or or these chemicals out of the body. The liver is responsible for that packaging process.

 

(08:18): And so what kinds of things are happening to us on a daily basis? Things that we're coming in contact with maybe eating, drinking are impacting our liver. Why isn't our, so when I was in medical school , I was taught that you don't need nutritional supplements, vitamins, minerals, et cetera because you get it from the food you eat, which is totally wrong, right? And then I was also taught that you don't need to do any detox or cleanse cuz your body takes care of it itself. So I think more and more people in this day and age are aware that that's a fallacy. Why is that a fallacy? Why can't our liver just take care of what it needs to take care of in this day and age?

 

(09:00): And that's a key point what you just said there in this day and age, that is the key point that that I think the listeners hopefully are are tuning into because this day and age we are number one living very stressful lies when you add stress to the mix, people say, so what stress or the main stress hormone that we produce cortisol, many people have heard of that word before. That has to be broken down and processed by the liver as well. Well now if I add a huge bucket of cortisol for my body to produce or to clear out day in and day out, that's c clogging up the sanitation plant that's clogging up the pipelines. I add in maybe a few extra coffees or a couple extra glasses of wine during the week sugar. Right? A lot of us are grabbing sugar or sugary sweets for that pick-me-up in the afternoon. These are hard to process items for the liver. Yes the liver can do it, but once we start to get stacked items that are not working in the liver's favor, there is an overburden we need to, to interject, we need to add in some supports to get that assembly line cleared and that bucket empty once again.

 

(10:07): Yes. So clear talk. You mentioned alcohol. Can you talk a little bit about alcohol in the liver? Because I remember back when the French paradox came out by Walter Willette and everybody's, you know, they had a justification for drinking their two glasses of wine every day, but nobody talked about what it does to your liver. Can you talk a little bit about what alcohol does to your liver?

 

(10:30): Yeah, so the liver does, and again let me first start by saying that genetics play a role here. Some of us are faster metabolizers or we can break down alcohol more efficiently than others and there's different ethnicities that have a better time or an easier time breaking that down and and others not so much. And that's based on an enzyme that pretty much degrades or breaks down alcohol. So it can be flushed out of the system. But there again, there are two phases to this and if we start to break down alcohol and there's too much already in the system in phase one or part one of this detoxification, the body becomes quite toxic. That phase one, that first step of the liver detoxification process, that's often what leads to a hangover when we've consumed too much alcohol and many of us know what that feels like.

 

(11:15): But even if we add alcohol to an already overburdened liver, it might not be the amount of alcohol per se that might be an extra glass of wine or even just a single glass more regularly. It might push the body or the liver over the edge and it cannot clear things fast enough, quickly enough and on a regular enough basis so we can feel toxic, sluggish head, ay hives, you name it. A lot of odd, sometimes symptoms can come through and that can be because of this burden of alcohol not being fully broken down and metabolized.

 

(11:49): Yeah, I think it's something that people need to be aware of and people, people say, oh Dr. Kyrin, you're such a kill joy, you're saying none of us can drink. That's not what I said. , you have to look at your individual biochemistry and where you are and maybe there might be evidence that you need a break for a while, but doesn't mean forever. All right, so let's dive a little bit more into it. You mentioned phase one and phase two detox. I don't think in the liver most people are aware of that. So how exactly does your body use the liver to get rid of things? What is it doing to them?

 

(12:27): Yeah, so the two phases of lead liver detoxification are essentially there is a biochemical process going on. So we we're removing and adding various molecules. If we go back to high school chemistry class, whether it's an oxygen or a hydrogen, we're taking off and putting on different molecules to these starting items. So whether it's a, a pesticide for example, or alcohol, we'll use alcohol as an example. And phase one is making it, it's basically starting the process. Phase two, a second phase, a second process. A bunch of different enzymes have to go in and make that item more water soluble. And that requires different items, different antioxidants or different components to help phase two. And then once that, that item is now or that alcohol is now water soluble, it's more, more or less inert. So it doesn't really can, can't really create problems in the body.

 

(13:18): It can now be safely expelled, whether that's through the kidneys and in the urine or in the gut through the stool or sweat out or breathed out by the the lungs. I forgot to mention that earlier. So there are various processes, both of them are distinct. Phase one is in many ways making this item potentially more disruptive for a short period of time. And then phase two jumps in and adds a a molecule or adds a component to that phase one portion and says, okay, we've packaged you up, you're now safe, you're not gonna cause any more problems and now it can leave the body. We have to highlight phase two is arguably much more important than phase one when you wanna feel your best and detox effectively.

 

(14:03): And isn't this where a lot of people get into trouble because they're only stimulating phase one and they're pushing all these substances to become water soluble, meaning they can go more places and do more damage And they're not addressing phase two properly

 

(14:17): A hundred percent. I think that's really when we think about oh let's give our body all the B vitamins or all the antioxidants, those are heavy hitters for phase one. Those even some herbal ingredients milk thistle, a lot of people are familiar with that herbal ingredient. Yes, to an extent they can touch on phase two, but phase two again has a very unique component. It's not about breaking things down, it's actually about safely packaging them back up so that they can leave the body. And phase two requires a different set of nutrients and components that I don't think a lot of people, I know a lot of my patients sometimes neglect that and that needs to be looked

 

(14:56): At. Mm-Hmm what kinds of foods and nutrients are needed in phase two? So

 

(15:00): Phase two detoxification, this is where our amino acids come into play. And when I say amino acids, I mean the components of proteins. So definitely I'm thinking of glycine, I'm thinking of my sulforaphanes in terms of my broccoli family of vegetables, n acetyl cystine or N A C for short, the cystine component. These are all components that support phase two. And I wanna highlight that there are many micro processes always happening in the liver. It's not just what do I take for phase one and what do I take for phase two. There are a lot of these nutrients that play a role in both phases. But when I think about phase two, I'm really thinking about my amino acids and my sulfur or my broccoli and brassica family of vegetables. Those really have some additional support on that phase.

 

(15:52): Right. And I'll just add the methyl groups cuz I happen to be a poor phase two detox. Yes. Cause I have the SNPs with the methyl groups. My body has a problem with that. So that's caused me huge problems. And I find with a lot of my patients that's true too. So I think getting the genetics done. Yeah. What role does a genetic profile play in assisting you in doing a proper detox?

 

(16:16): And that is something I think, I think that's where medicine and health is going in the next, you know, five to 10 years. I'm starting to see a lot of, a lot more of my patients interested in genetic testing. Maybe have had a few SNPs looked at, you know, and they are interested in figuring out how their body processes and breaks various things down the liver. The, the SNPs or the genetic components really play a role in how effectively your body can break down certain chemicals or certain items. And again, this is an ever-growing field in the liver. So caffeine is a big one. Methylation, which is an important portion of phase two detox, detoxification, alcohol, certain medications, right? How well does your body break down or detoxify These components can really tell you, hey, do you have to be really strict on avoiding caffeine during your detox? Or hey, do you need a little bit more methyl support during your detox? Especially when we're focusing on phase two. So this is a, a very emerging and still very new area, but it's rapidly growing and absolutely it can customize how you take your detox to the next level.

 

(17:26): Hmm. Yeah, I think that's key. And what about phase three detox? Do you wanna talk a little about that? Well,

 

(17:32): Phase three detox is really important because I think, you know, especially when I was studying as well, I found when I, when I was talking about liver detox in the beginning of my practice and my career, it was sort of assumed that there was this elimination process. But phase two really is that final step in the body getting rid of waste and those toxins out of the body. Specifically, I, I wanna touch on estrogen for a moment. So estrogen a very vital hormone for, for us women and our body detoxifies it along with many other hormones. But once it leaves the liver, now it's, it's in circulation and, and on its way in digestion to leave the digestive tract. Your body, believe it or not, does have different enzymes in the gut to help your body either flush estrogen out and keep it moving or unpackage that estrogen that was ready to leave and recycle estrogen back into circulation, which many of us don't want. We're trying to get rid of excess estrogen. So I wanna highlight that phase three is in short, how effectively you poop out your, your toxins. But remember that's just one component. It could be kidney function with your urinary tract, it could be sweating, are we sweating during a detox? Are we eliminating things through the skin? It's that final stage of getting everything that we don't want outta the body.

 

(18:54): So key. Let's talk a little bit more about estrogen detox, cuz I think that is a concern particularly for women at midlife before they go through menopause. Most women are hypo hyper estrogen, so they need to be getting rid of estrogen. So do you wanna talk a little bit about the path that estrogen takes? Because we talked earlier about how all the chemicals that come in your body, your body has to detoxify. But what most people don't realize is that everything your body makes it has to get rid of somehow. Right? just like right when you do crafts inside your house, you've gotta do something with those crafts and all the scraps that you made or trash that you made when you make it. So can you talk about how the body, the full pathway gets rid of estrogen and where are some of the stumbling blocks?

 

(19:43): This is, you know, this is a whole can of worms in so many ways because like you just said, it is so vital that women understand what estrogen is doing in their body. There are various times in our lives where estrogen sometimes does do a bit of a rollercoaster. And I find in my practice, perimenopause is a very turbulent time for a lot of women. And if we are pre perimenopause, well then, you know, let's say in our early forties we've still got regular cycles, but we might still be dealing with heavy flow, lots of clots, long periods, painful periods. And I always encourage my patients to get an idea of what estrogen is, is going, what, what's going on with their estrogen in short. And the, one of the best ways to do that is to see what we call your estrogen metabolites, your breakdown products of that estrogen hormone as it makes its way out of your system.

 

(20:36): And that's often why I I personally use the Dutch urinary metabolites test, which is a hormone urinary hormone test. We can see how your body, what your, your body does with estrogen in theory. And what we see is, is it effectively leaving the body And that unfortunately can't be measured as accurately in the blood. And this is where women can really see is my body recycling estrogen, which we often refer to as making 16 oh estrogen or the 16 pathway. Is my body making inflammatory estrogen or the four oh pathway when we measure that breakdown product? Or is my body really good at getting rid of estrogen safely without causing too many symptoms? And that is the main and the protective pathway, which is the two oh pathway. And these are just sort of sciencey names for those specific breakdown products of estrogen. Mm-Hmm , there's three pathways and we all should know what our body's doing and which pathway is perhaps taking the reins in our bodies.

 

(21:37): Yeah, I think that's super important. And I, you know, as you're speaking, I was just wondering, do you ever recommend that women who are have reached menopause go on hormone replacement without having a urinary metabolite test for their estrogen? I mean, it's something I require, so I'm wondering what your thoughts are.

 

(21:55): Absolutely. It is really in a serious conversation. We have, you know, g starting hormone replacement therapy in any way, shape or form supports. We need to see what's going on. We assume, assume that estrogen is lower, we're not getting our psycho, we might have some symptoms, but that assumption really doesn't hold up for many women in terms of is their body safely and effectively clearing that estrogen out, especially if there's a family history of any estrogen sensitive cancers. We're really looking to get the full picture before we start any hormone supports. And that just gives women the power to understand and to, and to really, you know, use that information to their advantage to feel their best during hormone the supports or

 

(22:39): Not. Right. And I'm just wondering, is it the same in Canada as it is in here in the US because the mainstream treatment for women with menopause, well first they say hormone replacement for the least amount of time and the lowest dose possible for symptom management only. There's no testing. They just give you a standard one size fits all dose, no testing of metabolites, how you're breaking it down and there's no follow up testing to see if you're on the right dose. And I'm just wondering, is it the same in Canada?

 

(23:07): Well, yeah, you know, in, in many ways it is, you know, as a practicing naturopathic doctor, I focus on bioidentical hormones in my practice. But the conventional primary care practice here in in Canada is very much that way. We're giving oral hormone doses. We are not doing pre or post or during testing. We are not determining what that woman specifically needs. And there's a lot of gray area in terms of, you know, is this the most effective treatment for that woman? And just because a woman's not feeling great going up on a dose of estrogen, for example, or both hormones might actually make a woman feel worse because they can't metabolize estrogen effectively. There could be genetic reasons for that. So we wanna make sure their body is functioning well before we start adding hormones to the mix. Because if we're gonna give you hormones, we wanna make sure you can use them and actually feel better.

 

(23:57): Absolutely. Okay. So that's interesting. It's pretty much the same, it sounds like . So phase three detox. Yes. Pooping. We have an epidemic of people not pooping Absolut. Absolutely. And can you talk about what should be optimal in terms of pooping? Like how are we biologically programmed to poop? Cause the mainstream definition, they don't consider it constipation until certain things happen. So can you talk a little bit about that so people listening can really get a good idea? Am I coping the right amount or not?

 

(24:28): Yes. And and on my intake forms, you know, I'm always talking about with my patients, okay, like how often are you going to the bathroom? And I will comment on frequency first and then I'll talk a little bit of bo about other areas that we wanna consider. But frequency, the, the normal optimal, let me not say normal, optimal bowel movement frequency is one to three times a day. And generally that coincides with the number of times we eat main meals. And if we go back and think about any babies or young ones in our lives that we can recall, we probably thought, yeah, every time they ate, they pooped. And somehow when we started right, adding solids to the mix, things do slow down. Granted they slow down, but for many of us, when I tell patients one to three times a day is normal, they're shocked.

 

(25:13): They don't think, they've never been told that. And it might not be your normal to be three times a day, but one or two times a day is really, really optimal for majority of us. And if we're doing any kind of detoxification, if you're not going once a day and you don't feel it's a complete bowel movement, meaning you don't feel you're empty. A lot of women intuitively, we, we feel the difference of yeah, doesn't feel like I'm, I'm emptied out or, or that felt good. I'm like, reset. If you don't feel empty, that's the first place we start. We don't even think about a detoxification program until you are going every day minimum once and feeling empty, no point clearing things out and having it and have nowhere to go. We've gotta make sure that that bowel movement frequency is there right from the beginning.

 

(26:00): Right. It's kind of like when your toilet stopped up, you don't put more material in water in the toilet, it's coming overflow. It's the same, like you gotta have the outlet working. So that phase three has to be cleared out. What do you think most people get wrong about doing a detox?

 

(26:18): Ooh, hell, you know that, that's a great question because you know, we, we've touched on a few points. Not supporting phase two is perhaps new to a lot of people, but focusing on those phase two nutrients is key. Especially if you're feeling really overburdened. So people say, I don't feel well, I know I should do a detox. I, you know, I I've been on several medications, maybe I've, you know, been overindulging, caffeine, alcohol, sugar, I wanna reset the body body Well, and you've gotta focus on that phase two because it is that critical component so that you continue to feel okay during a detox mm-hmm. , if you're full of a headache, you're lethargic for seven or or 10 days during a detox, that's not normal. That means that there's either too much happening too soon or we're not focusing on phase two. So those, those nutrients, those amino acids, the methylation products and the sulfur components are so, so key.

 

(27:09): The second component I will say is people don't ease into a detox. So that kind of relates to the first point. They just go cold Turkey. I, when I first did my detox, oh, going back here probably 15 years, I had migraines, I had adult acne and my naturopathic doctor at the time said, Hey, you're gonna have to come off coffee, don't think about coming off your three cups a day tomorrow. And I'm still glad that she told me that because we still gotta function. Many of us are still going through stressful lives and busy to-do lists. We do not wanna go cold Turkey on a lot of these things In our daily routine, I recommend easing into a detox, reducing caffeine and alcohol over a week slowly and supporting your lifestyle. Don't give yourself a thousand things to do during a detox that hurt, that hurts the detox. Give yourself the opportunity to detox. When you've got a little bit of breathing room less to-do list, you can sleep a little bit better and you don't, you don't feel like your stress is at its highest during that time.

 

(28:13): Yeah. I, I'll echo what you just said is, you know, it's not just detoxing your body. I, I ha have this friend and many years ago she said to me, oh, Kirin, I got this detox supplement at the health food store and I took it for a month and now I'm detoxed and you know, I don't give my friends an unsolicited medical advice. So I said, oh, that's great. But what I was thinking to myself is she didn't do a lot of other things like change her diet and change her cough, caffeine intake and she didn't slow down her life because like you talked about at the beginning, that stress leads to cortisol and your liver has a part in clearing that. So making a detox, not only a time to clear your body biochemically, but also clear your life, I think is something that's key. So what role might other detox modalities play in doing a quote unquote official detox, what I call a 360 degree detox, so things like sauna, lymph, drain edge, anything else that people should consider adding? Oh,

 

(29:22): I love that. Yes. And, and as a naturopathic doctor, like we, our philosophy is like whole person, you know, like all aspects you know, of, of the body need to be looked at. I'm big on a couple of things. So full body detoxification, any physical modality, infrared, sauna even steam saunas are great, dry saunas are great. Infrared are, is my preference during a detoxification, dry skin brushing, which can, you know, small circular motions from your extremities, from your hands and feet up towards your heart before showering is a wonderful way to stimulate your lymph. Any slow movement. So Pilates, yoga, gentle walking in nature, natural ways to, to boost your circulation and improve clearance of all those toxins gently. Mm-Hmm. is, is great. I'm also big on the tech detox side of things. So detoxing the mind is really, really wonderful, but really challenging in our mo in our modern days.

 

(30:16): So during a detoxification supporting some tech free time, maybe giving yourself that one or two hours before bed. I mean, ideally we should be doing that most nights, but let's be honest, many of us aren't during a detox. Just take a step back from tech a little bit. It gives your body a little bit of a chance to, you know, reduce that screen time, sleep a little bit more deeply. And you know, our dopamine in our, our other neurotransmitters, our reward centers of the brain can kind of get a bit of a reset. So we're not always looking for that high from the tech side and, and social media and all of that. So it's a wonderful way to do kind of body spirit, mind physical and non-physical.

 

(30:51): Okay, we're gonna wrap up shortly, but what does sauna do for people? Can you help them understand? Cuz I think people think, oh, I heard I should do sauna, but they don't really understand what it's necessarily doing for them. And why is same thing for limp drainage, why is that important?

 

(31:10): Yeah, so sauna again, various types of sauna. They've been studied for different types of detoxification, but essentially what we're doing is we're heating up the tissue. Infrared saunas not a hot sauna if you've ever been in one, it's, it's for people listening, it's a, it's a warm room and it's relatively dry. But as the 20 minute session kind of wraps up, you can you start to feel a little bit sweaty. But what we're doing here is stimulating basically clearance of toxins within the cell. So that heat, depending on, again, the type of heat, is it a moist heat, is it a dry sauna, is it a steam shower? That will elicit different types of sweating and different types of elimination through the skin. So we're looking at skin elimination. In short, you're sweating, you are bringing toxins that are water soluble. So some metals some contaminants in our supply, in our water, in our personal care products are excreted in the sweat. So those would come out in the sweat. And that's a wonderful way to amplify a detox and I really encourage people to do it. Of course, if you have any medical conditions, you always wanna talk with your medical provider beforehand. Mm-Hmm. some people overdo the sauna if they're not drinking enough water or don't have enough minerals, they can feel lightheaded. We never want that to, we never want you to get to that point. It doesn't have the effectiveness if you're feeling drained after a sauna experience.

 

(32:25): Awesome. Did you have anything to add otherwise on limp?

 

(32:29): Oh, the lymph piece. Yes. Thank you. I wanted to say limp is an important PE for people to understand. It's not the bloodstream, it's a small highway of vessels that clear out a lot of our immune cells. A lot of our waste products go through the lymph related a lot to immunity. And gentle motion actually is what stimulates the lymph node. So the lymph supply. So if we're clearing gunk and junk and trying to amplify our immune system, gentle motions, dry brushing, gentle lymph massage, as you mentioned, these are wonderful ways to, again, clear, stagnant, stuck things that might be in our body that need a chance to eliminate during a detox. So gentle therapies work wonderful for lymph and that can be done at home.

 

(33:11): Yeah. This has been such a great conversation. I know people listening have gotten so much out of this and they really are starting to have a deep understanding of what a detox needs to include, what needs to be addressed. I love this quote you shared with me before we got started. Aim to be just a bit better than you were yesterday and also forward is forward and another one le and then the net will appear. They actually all go together. I think so beautifully. If you're listening and you've been inspired by what Dr. Lar has been talking about and you wanna know more, she has actually a free gift for you on her website. We'll have the link in the show notes. Do you want to tell them a little bit about what they'll find there? Yeah,

 

(33:58): So you know, it's my three day mini detox and it's a wonderful gentle kickstart to full detox. Three days for many of us is doable. It's not very restrictive, but it keeps out the key liver burdened items and it really inspires you to kind of kickstart your health with a three day reset. And I encourage people to try it and see how they feel even after a short three day period.

 

(34:24): Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much for that. Where else can they find out more about you, Dr. Laura? So

 

(34:29): You can go onto my website, dr laura bellis.com or find me on Instagram. That's normally where I hang out at Dr. Laura Bellis. I'm always posting tips and items, whether it's about hormones or health or nutrition, all on Instagram or again on my website and blog.

 

(34:44): Awesome. Thank you so much for your passion for helping people become as healthy as possible and for the path that led you there and for sharing your expertise with us today.

 

(34:56): Thank you so much for having me.

 

(34:57): And thank you for listening to another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Stay tuned. Next week we'll have more impactful information. I wanna challenge you to take action and do just one thing in terms of your detox today that will move you forward because forward is forward. Thanks so much for joining me and I'll see you next week. Until then, peace, love, and hormones y'all.

 

(35:21): Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

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The One Thing To Fix Your Fatigue

Have you ever felt like you're always tired and have no energy?

 

Midlife women are more prone to feeling exhausted and fatigued, but the new episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast is here with all the answers. Tune in to hear our special guest, Dr. Evan Hirsch, discuss the one thing that could revolutionize your life and get you back on track when it comes to energy levels!

 

Evan H. Hirsch, MD, is a world-renowned fatigue & Long Haulers expert and is the Founder & CEO of the International Center for Fatigue. Through his best-selling book, podcast, and international online programs (that can be accessed from everywhere), he has helped thousands of people around the world resolve their chronic fatigue & Long Haulers symptoms naturally, and is on a mission to help 1 million more. He has been featured on television, podcasts, and summits, and when he's not at the office, you can find him singing musicals, dancing hip-hop, and playing basketball with his family.

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

 

- What is the “one thing” that can help you finally get back on track with your energy levels

- How to recognize fatigue and be proactive in addressing it

- Tips for managing stress, getting adequate rest, and leading a balanced lifestyle

- And more!

 

Don't miss out on this exclusive episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast with Dr. Evan Hirsch, and finally get the answers you've been looking for to resolve your fatigue once and for all! Tune in today and take back control of your energy levels.

 

(00:00): If you wanna learn how to play the piano, you hire a piano coach. If you wanna learn how to increase your energy, you hire an energy coach. Whatever you want to do in life, hire a coach to guide you there faster and safer. Dr. Evan Hirsch this and more in this episode. How to Get rid of Your Fatigue.

 

(00:22): So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself again. As an O B G gyn, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40 in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

 

(01:15): Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kiran. I'm so glad that you decided to join me. Today we're talking about fatigue and some of you still haven't solved your fatigue problems from last year that you had because you don't know what to do. I get it. So this is why I wanted to have my gift on today because fatigue is universal. The majority of people actually will go through periods of time in their lives where they are more tired than they think they should be and they don't have their energy restored from rest. It's very common. It's actually more common among women over 40. So that's why we're gonna talk about it. It's usually an often associated with weight problems, weight and fatigue. Problems go hand in hand because of the way the body functions. And if you stick with me long enough, I will teach you about that interaction. 

 

(02:08): And my guest today really has drilled down on fatigue and has helped so many people to fix their fatigue. You know, fatigue was such a big part of my life before I got on my healing journey over a decade ago, that there were times where all I had the energy to do was work and sleep. So even though I was a, a mom and a wife and had, you know, so many other roles in my world, I really only had energy for two things. And I was sleeping and working. So all my relationships suffered and my self-esteem suffered. My relationship with myself suffered. It was really a hard time. And maybe you can relate, maybe it's not that severe for you, maybe it's more subtle. But if you take a look at your energy level compared to when you were 20, I think that's a great gauge.

 

(03:00): You really should be able to have the same level of energy at 60, 70, 80 that you did at 20. There's no reason that you can't have that. But you gotta know what to do to avoid the deterioration that the majority of people succumb to cuz they don't know and they think it's quote unquote normal for them to get tired as they age. So they just accept it. They don't know what to do about it. Unfortunately, mainstream doctors aren't taught this either. So Dr. Evan and I are gonna dive into it nitty gritty, what do you need to look at? What do you need to start working on with your fatigue? I will say it's simple and straightforward, the steps you need to take. And most people do best with a guide, a learned guide to do this process because there are some intricacies. So I'll say it's simple, not necessarily easy.

 

(03:53): But for those of you who are like, I'm sick and tired of feeling this way, we've got the steps. So I'll tell you a little bit about Dr. Evan and then we'll get started. Evan Hirsch is an md, he's world renowned fatigue and long hauler's expert. He's the founder and c e o of the International Center for Fatigue. Through his bestselling book podcast and international online programs that can be accessed from everywhere, he has helped thousands of people around the world resolve their chronic fatigue and long hauler symptoms. Naturally she is on a mission to help 1 million more. He's been featured on television podcast summits and when he is not at the office you could find him singing musicals cause he has the energy to do that, dancing, hip pop, and playing basketball with his family. Welcome Dr. Evan Hirsch to the podcast. Thanks

 

(04:38): So much for having me on. Dr. Kyrin,

 

(04:40): Really happy to talk about fatigue again because this is something that people are really struggling with now more than ever. I think we've come out of lockdown. People might have been a little hesitant at first, but now it seems like everyone's on full tilt trying to make up for lost time. And a lot of people are hitting a wall, especially if they got covid, they're really hitting a wall. I have some colleagues and friends who are in that situation. So I think it's very timely. Why is this such a big issue for us in this new year? More than it has been before?

 

(05:16): Yeah, so my perspective as a functional medicine and environmental medicine physician is really one about the total body burden. And as we go through life, we accumulate things. Sometimes it's physical things like heavy metals or chemicals or molds or infections. Sometimes it's mental. Maybe we get, you know, a lot of news, a lot of negative things coming into our minds. Maybe we've had trauma. So that kind of bleeds over into the emotional, maybe it's spiritual, like we're not living our path. And when you get all of those things together, like the the instability that we've seen over the last few years, whether it's financial, whether it's physical or health wise, it all accumulates and then it makes it harder for people to manage their daily lives. And all of this going on with the difference between what happened when we were growing up where you could have a one income household now where you need two income households, right? So then there's more stress at home and there's more challenges raise raising children. And people are wondering why is it harder now? And it's just this accumulation of things over time. And so that's why it's so important to have practices and to take time for making sure that you're being as intentional as possible with your life.

 

(06:33): It is so important to make sure you're being intentional and taking time. Everybody knows you probably need to change your diet, you might need to take some supplements, you probably need to change what you're eating. But I would just wanna highlight what you're saying because I think that that's the piece that everybody misses. Like nobody's willing to slow down and sit their butt down and actually meditate, right? Nobody's willing to, you know, start saying, no, I can't host that pta, you know, committee no to this start saying no and really change the way they live their lives. So maybe we even start with that because I think it's the simplest thing that you listening you could start doing making changes to that today and it would start to impact your energy level. So can we talk a little bit more about that? What are some key factors in that lifestyle component?

 

(07:32): Absolutely. And you know, I just got so excited what I heard you say no because this is one of the really big things that I love to chat about. You know, Warren Buffet said that people who say no a lot are really successful and people who say no all the time are the most successful. And the reason why this is, is because when you're saying no to something, you're saying yes to something else, right? And so if you're saying no to that p t a meeting, you're saying yes to spending more time with your family potentially, right? And so that's one thing that we have to balance. And I was actually talking with a couple of colleagues this morning about values and figuring out what your values are. And for me, a major value that I have is fun. But guess what happens when I chart out what I'm doing during my day, I'm working from this time to this time I am doing helping out at home with this and this whatever. It's like where is the fun If, if one of my top priorities is fun and I don't have fun for like a half an hour every single day, guess what? I'm not gonna be fulfilled. Right? So it's just really important to take a look at that and say and realize that, okay, what do you wanna say yes to? And if you're saying yes to that thing, what do you have to say no to in order to make sure that you're saying yes to that thing?

 

(08:50): I think that's so important. Everybody listening knows that I went on this four month trip to Africa and I have to tell you it was one of the most beautiful things ever because number one, people knew I was outta the country. So they didn't ask me to do stuff . And especially at the holidays when it can be so time consuming. It was so refreshing to not have a Christmas tree, not have to do all the things around the holidays that you do in the US And I just had the most relaxing time. And I think that I've brought that back with me so that next year I have a like neurologic memory of what it feels like to do the holidays calmly and insanely and mindfully. And I'm gonna do it the same. So yes, saying no is huge. I think it's one of the hardest things for women to do.

 

(09:39): I know it has been hard for me, but it's hard one over the years that now. And I love, oh gosh, who was it I heard say, was it Marie Forlio who says, she says, my automatic response now is no. And then she says, but I always reserve the right to come back later and change it after I think about it. But it's so much harder to think in the moment, do I wanna do that? Do I not wanna do that? And so if you just say, no, I'm sorry I can't, if that changes, I'll get back to you. Bingo. You, you've given yourself time to think about it, right? Yeah.

 

(10:11): I had Cassie Bjork on my podcast a couple months ago and she used a similar phrase. It was, I'm unavailable for that right now.

 

(10:20): Yes, right. Which

 

(10:22): Is so good. It's just like I'm unavailable for that right now.

 

(10:26): Yes. And I'm available for my epso salt bath and you know, cuddling with my kitty cat. So I challenge everyone listening to just say no to a few things today. Just try it out and see what happens. And let's dive a little bit deeper though, cause Covid has come and I had it. I don't Did you have it? I haven't had it, yeah. Lucky you. I got it. I did think I was gonna die and then I did recover, but for a few weeks I was extremely tired. I have a very good friend who has had chronic fatigue for over a year now. Ever since she had it, her hair has fallen out and she's really struggling. So let's maybe talk to the people who have legitimate medical things. Not that the things we were talking about aren't legitimate medical cause they do affect your hormones, everybody listening, your cortisol, your progesterone, everything, thyroid, insulin. But let's get into a little bit talking about covid.

 

 (11:26): Absolutely. So unfortunately what we're seeing right now is very high percentage of people who get covid and get five or so symptoms when they have covid, even if they're very mild, about a third of those people can potentially move on to having persistent symptoms or long covid or long haulers, whatever you want to call it. And so that's a tremendous amount. You know, if you're looking at a a billion people, which is about the number of people, people who've had covid, you know, it's, if you're looking at 10% of that, that's a hundred million. It's just, and so we're talking about like the size of the United States. 300 million is really what's projected once everybody has covid. So I don't think a billion people have had it, but that's like the projection of where it's going. So that's like the size of United States of people who would have persistent symptoms.

 

(12:14): Now there's over 200 different symptoms that people can end up having that will persist. So pretty much any new symptom that you have after a cold could potentially be long covid. And we actually have a long covid quiz on our website for those who are interested. But it's a big problem. And some of the reasons why people are, are not getting the help that they need is because you go to your local covid clinic and you've got a GI doctor to help you with your diarrhea and you've got a pulmonologist there to help you out with your shortness of breath and you've got a cardiac doctor there, cardiologist to help you out with your heart palpitations. But the reality is, is that it's all from a persistent infection. So the virus gets inside your body and coupled with a number of these other causes that we're gonna talk about ends up causing problems, bypassing the immune system and ends up causing inflammation. Depending on where it is in the body, it'll cause different symptoms. And so if you're looking at getting at the root cause, you have to make sure that you're actually addressing the virus that is persisting in the body.

 

(13:19): So for everybody listening, we talk about, oh I'm so tired, I'm so tired. But when is just fatigue? When does it become a medical issue? And same thing for covid, what are the symptoms that someone would know they're in that long covid category and what are the symptoms of someone who has a high enough level of fatigue? Is there a certain amount of time it has to persist? Is there a certain degree? Can you talk a little bit about how they can identify if they're in a category that needs to be evaluated or not?

 

(13:52): Yeah, so it's generally symptoms that are lasting longer than 30 days. And for some people it's loss of taste or smell. For some people they're spontaneously sweating, sweating. For some people they have awful sleep. But it's new symptoms since 2019, November, 2019 that resulted. I mean some people don't even realize that they had it right and then they, but then they get these weird symptoms. If they're lasting for longer than 30 days and it's negatively affecting your life, it's something that should be evaluated. Now, whether or not somebody is fatigued is very interesting because there is an actual criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome, but fatigue, there isn't. And so this really has to do with what you're able to tolerate. And as humans, you know, we're incredibly adaptable. We just think, you know, quote unquote, we're getting older, but in reality there's something wrong that if we don't pay attention to it, it's gonna cause problems later.

 

(14:45): So if your energy is not where you wanna be and you're surviving on caffeine, energy, drinks, whatever it is, some sort of stimulant that's going to give you the energy that you need, and then maybe you need something to help you fall asleep at night, it's a problem, right? And so you can keep trying to adapt and trying to take things to fix it as a bandaid. But the reality is is that there's 39 different causes that we're actually looking at of fatigue. And everybody that we see who has fatigue has a combination of 20 or more of these causes. Now with long covid, that's just another one of those causes that's into the mix that we see. But everybody has a combination. So it's not like you have one problem and that if you fix that one problem that everything gets better.

 

(15:31): Right. And I think that's super important to highlight because we're really taught in the medical model that both you and I were trained in to look for the one thing, one problem, and the one medication to give and the one surgery to do. And now because we've had a advanced training, we know that that's a bunch of baloney. But I think the average person doesn't get it and they just wanna go to the doctor and get a diagnosis. But this will be a little bit of a fun walk down memory lane. How did you used to evaluate people who came in who said they were too tired for too long, like they had chronic fatigue? What we're gonna talk about, what's a mainstream medical model that both Dr. Evan and I used to practice?

 

(16:15): Yeah, no, there is a caveat here because I became board certified in holistic medicine when I was in residency.

 

(16:22): Oh you did? Okay.

 

(16:23): . So I didn't have a ton of time like that, but still, you know, it was thyroid, it was thyroid, it was anemia, you know, whether it was iron deficiency or something. That was another thing that I learned. I mean B12 and folate and you know, all these other things we really didn't talk about because of the levels that we were looking at, you know, the quote unquote normal range. But there's, how many times did we, you know, say, Hey, you know, your thyroid's fine, you're you, you're not anemic. Doesn't look like you've got hepatitis or any sort of severe cardiac or lung issue. I don't know how to help you.

 

(16:58): Exactly. I did know that that's what we're taught as doctors. And can you talk a little bit about that? You, you held up your hands in quotes, but they can't see you the normal range because a lot of people will come to me and they'll say, oh no, it's not my thyroid. My doctor checked my thyroid and my labs are normal and I ha have to explain. Yeah, well 80% of the time when they say it's normal it there's a problem. So can you talk a little bit about that?

 

(17:28): Absolutely. So the normal range that you'll see on a laboratory test, what that lab company does is they take, it's a population based range. So they take everybody who's done the test and they create a bell curve and they chop off the top and the bottom fifth percentiles and they call that normal. Now if all the, and I did the quotes again now, all those, all those, so you're taking a population of sick people, 70% of everybody in the United States is obese, right? So taking all those people and you're trying to, and you're calling that normal, what we're looking for in functional medicine is optimal. And so your ranges are always going to be generally a lot tighter and usually higher. Especially when you're looking at something like thyroid or, or whatever. You're gonna wanna make sure you're looking at an optimal range,

 

(18:16): Right? So that's key everybody. So just cuz they say your labs are normal doesn't mean they're optimal. There's a difference. All right, so you got persistent symptoms, you can definitely take the quiz on Dr. Evan's website. If you have had covid and you're, you think that you might have long covid or long haulers and I, I say for chronic fatigue is if you're not, if you feel tired on a regular basis, you wanna nap, you wake up unrefreshed, you're not able to keep your joy in life and keep up with your usual activities, that's a problem. And if it persists for more than a month, but definitely three to six months, you wanna get that evaluated. And the key thing that I wanna highlight that you said is, you know, some people push through and they're like, oh, I'm fine, I just have some coffee and I keep it moving. But the problem is that the reasons why you're having that chronic fatigue problem are going to be causing other problems for you in the future that you're not aware of. And that's just not something that mainstream doctors are taught and they don't know how to evaluate it. So you need a specialized evaluation to get at, how many factors did you say that you look at

 

(19:29): Now looking at 39 different causes? And don't be overwhelmed by that. You know, as you're listening to this, just realize that, you know, you invest the time, you know in a year from now you've moved through a process and you're gonna be a very different person for the rest of your life as opposed to going to doctors time and time again with band-aids that don't work for the next 20, 30 years.

 

(19:52): Right. You wanna get to the root cause so you can fix it for the long term. Right. And can you talk a little bit about what kind of things should people have done in an evaluation for fatigue?

 

(20:07): Absolutely. So when we look at these 39 different causes, and if you've heard me speak before, it keeps increasing as I learn more. And so you may have heard me say what wasn't it 33 before? Yes. Well now it's 39. But we look at we break up these causes into deficiencies and toxicity. So deficiencies are things that are not in the body that are supposed to be in the body. These are deficiencies in hormones and nutrients and mitochondria and lifestyle habits, neurotransmitters. And then there's toxicities. These are things that are in the body that aren't supposed to be in the body. So these are things like heavy metals and chemicals and molds and infections, whether it's parasites or viruses or bacteria or yeast or dental infections or sinus infections, allergies, negative emotional patterns or trauma electromagnetic fields, structural issues where you've, let's say you've gotten into a car accident or something like that or had some sort of injury.

 

(21:05): So all of those need to be looked at. And you know, one of the thing that we learned in medical school that is actually true is if you don't think about it, you're not gonna diagnose it. Right? Right. And so it's really important to make sure that you have a really broad differential, that you're looking at a lot of different causes to make sure that you leave no stone unturned. Because if, let's say you've got, you know, 20 out of 39 different causes and let's call those each a nail in the bottom of your foot, you pull out one nail and you still have 19 nails in the bottom of your foot, you know? Mm-Hmm. . So you pull out the gluten nail but you still don't feel any better. But let's say you pull out the mercury nail and the Bai nail and the parasite now and whatever, you get a mass effect where all of a sudden you get a big shift and you start to feel better. So you have to make sure that you're addressing all these things. Otherwise there's one nail that's left in the foot that really hurts. And if you haven't addressed that, then you're not gonna get all the way to the finish line.

 

(22:01): Yeah, it's so true. I see it even in women who go through my hormone program because a key part of having hormonal balances, you gotta fix the gut, you gotta address the mitochondrial function, you gotta, and then they say, no, I don't need any of that other stuff. And they never experience what's truly possible for them. But you know, you can lead a horse to water, you can't make or drink. And so really educating, I want everybody here listening to get that you have to take a Wyatt Castle wide net and have a comprehensive evaluation. So what kinds of things would go into treating, I mean you talked about all the items that go into that, into the evaluation and just how numerous they are, the problems that you can have, toxicities and deficiencies. Do you wanna pick some of the most common ones that you see and talk a little bit more in detail about what, like Canada, that's something that's hu rampant , right.

 

(23:02): Particularly in women, you know, Canada, which is yeast, is promoted by a lot of the hormonal contraceptives that we use. So a lot of women will have problems. It's promoted by our high glycemic index diet and lifestyle. And so it's opportunistic, it's waiting there. And when it's, you know, dark, warm and has sugar, it just proliferates. So can you talk a little bit about what you might see if someone had candid, how they might know they have it, what testing might be done, and then how do you start approaching and helping that person to rehab their body so that they can get rid of the fatigue?

 

(23:40): Yeah, so specifically with Canada, we're looking at a stool test that would potentially be positive. And you want to use a functional medicine laboratory. Your regular stool test with your doctor is not gonna do the trick, whether it's Canada or whether it's some other yeast. And then your symptoms, you know, do you have itching? That's really the biggest one. Is it itchy ears? Itchy anus, itchy skin? Do your symptoms get worse? Do you get brain fog potentially when you eat sugar? You know, are your symptoms worse when you sugar, when you go off of sugar, do you feel worse? You know, because essentially you're, you're killing off the Canada and it's it's dying in the body because you're starving it. And then in order to, and so for example, you know, what we do is we want to push it out, we want to starve it.

 

(24:24): So we started it with an antifungal diet, which is gonna be low sugars, you know, meat and vegetables, maybe a little bit of fruit, but maybe not depending on the person. Ideally no fruit, no additional sugars. And then we want to push it out with a probiotic. We want to kill it with an antifungal. And we're using all natural antifungal in our practice. And then you wanna, you wanna heal the gut and you wanna bind up the infections with some sort of binder. We're using some immunoglobulin in order to be able to do this. So that's just kind of an example.

 

(24:58): I know some people are like, oh my gosh, we, I have to do all that. That sounds like so much. But I love this quote that you shared with me before we started recording. The body loves small changes and also slow and steady wins the race. So you don't have people do all of that at one time, right? No. Okay.

 

(25:18): Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah, and it's, you know, as humans we overestimate the amount that we can get done in a day and we underestimate the amount that we can achieve in a year. And it's just really important that every single day, and this is a mindset component that we talk about in our program every single day, you just need to take a step forward, do the next thing, right? Baby steps end up leading to success.

 

(25:41): It's so true. You know, when I was in Africa, my workout program was totally derailed cuz I didn't have my usual gym. And, you know, mere survival on a daily basis was sometimes challenging. And so now I'm back in the states and I went back to, I got back last week and I went to go work out this morning and of course my fitness level has dropped over four months. And I just kept telling myself, you showed up, you did your best. That's what counts. Mm-Hmm , you know, just make the investment and don't look for the outcome. The outcome will come. So you just slow and steady wins The race body loves small changes. And so everybody listening, you know, it's, it's New Year's just passed, you probably made some resolutions. And if you're listening to the podcast, you're doing something good for yourself, you're investing in your health. So Rome wasn't built in today, right? It takes time. So you need to do these things over time. And particularly if you're dealing with chronic fatigue, you do need a stepwise comprehensive approach if you want the best outcome. So what else is important to know about, you wrote the book Fixture Fatigue and what else might be involved in the evaluation or treatment that people might wanna know about?

 

(26:57): So I take people through a four step process where the first step is to determine the causes that they have. Now, fortunately, of those 39 different causes, 75% of those can be determined by symptoms alone. So people join our program, they go through the questionnaire and I'm gonna know 75% of their causes right out of the gate without even any having any labs. And so then we fig then the rest of the program is just applying the, the treatment for the particular cause that somebody has. And so we start off by replacing the deficiencies first. Now big picture, this process is all about removing the toxins in step four, the heavy metals, the chemicals, the molds and the infections, et cetera. Cuz those are actually causing the deficiencies but we need to replace them. So the big three is called is the adrenals, the mitochondria and the thyroid. And so opting, optimizing those first is kind of what you were talking about where it makes people feel better and then they don't want to go into step four

 

(27:57): , I'm good, I don't need any more help. You're like, no, you don't see the, the pothole you're getting ready to fall into. But

 

(28:05): Exactly. And so, and sometimes you can, you can optimize those until the cows come home and you're still gonna feel badly because your system is overwhelmed by one of these other toxins. So we replace things in step two in order to make you more resilient and deal with the stress of of step four and removing those things out of the body cuz it is gonna be stressful physically, not just psychologically. And then in step three we open up the drainage pathways. So the liver, the kidney, the lymph, the intestines. We wanna make sure that we're able to get the toxins out of the body. So I envision this kind of like a funnel where we're gonna be dumping things into this funnel. We have to make sure that those pathways are open. Otherwise as we start to dump heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections, people start to feel worse. So we open those things up in step three and then in step four we're removing all of these toxins and they're very much interlaced where the heavy metals, chemicals, molds and infections are all kind of feeding off each other. They're bound to each other. So when you start to remove them, you wanna make sure that you've got something that's going to address these things as they start to be released and dealt with.

 

(29:13): Yeah, I know some people right now are like, what did he say? I don't know how to do this. It sounds so complicated. It's like the car mechanic when I go and I'm like, when I push the start button in my car, it won't start. And he goes, oh well the catalytic converter such and such and so, and I'm just like, glaze over. So folks, this is, it's very complicated. Just like cars are complicated, your body's even more complicated. So it does really require professional involvement to do it right? I'm all for diy, I love to DIY things myself, but at some point, you know, I want the tile in my bathroom to look good when I'm done , I'm gonna hire a professional. So you know, you can read Dr. Evans book at the end of the podcast, he's actually gonna give you a free copy. So you wanna stay tuned for that. And you'll see that he really is an expert about fixing fatigue. He knows all the ins and outs so you don't have to just like when you take your car, you don't have to know. But what are some things, maybe there's some people listening, they're not overly tired but they're listening cuz they're thinking maybe Dr. Evan can tell me a few things that I could tweak in my diet, exercise, lifestyle supplement regimen that might help me feel better. What would you say to them about that?

 

(30:36): Yep. So that, and that's really the first place to start. You know, most of the time when I see people, they've already done that and they've, they're eating a perfect diet. You know, they're meditating, they're working on their sleep, you know, they're doing all these things. So the goal that I have found is that, is that you want to be eating as close to a paleo diet as possible. So meat and veggies, you want low on sugars, low on carbs, you wanna make sure you know, protein fat and local glycemic carbs is kind of where it's at. You know, half of your plate should be vegetables, eat dinner for breakfast, you know, so you know, have a salad, have you know, roast some veggies, that sort of thing and make sure you're, you're having meat if you don't consume meat it's a little bit more challenging but you wanna make sure that protein fat and low carbs is what you're looking for.

 

(31:23): And then in terms of your sleep, the, the closer you get to sleep closer you get to nine o'clock the better. So I used to say 10 o'clock and then myself and a bunch of people in my community got oral rings and we and it said well and then actually it should be earlier than that. And I started testing it and seeing with other people and sure enough their scores went up and they felt better. And so we really want people to be going to sleep closer to nine o'clock and sleeping for at least seven hours, seven to nine hours generally. The other interesting thing too is that the later that you eat food, the more it can have effect on your heartbeat and co your heart rate and consequently the worse your sleep can be. So really trying not to eat after 6:00 PM is ideal or six 30, something like that.

 

(32:13): But the earlier that you can stop eating then and having a period of fasting before you go to bed, that can just be incredibly helpful because it takes a lot of work to digest food and so your heart rate will stay up and your body doesn't realize it's time to sleep. And so that can negatively affect your sleep. I mean going to bed and waking up at the same time every day is always a good idea. And then of course we've got all of our screens, we wanna make sure no horror films in the evening, no fights in the evening. We want to get into the parasympathetic as much as possible. Wearing blue light blockers, putting blue light blockers on your phone, putting it in night mode, that's oftentimes a way to do that. But that's sleep, that's food. You wanna make sure you're drinking two to three liters of water a day when you're going through a detox and you're removing some of the, the crap in the body that's there.

 

(33:01): We recommend people consuming, regardless of your weight to be closer to about three liters unless you're a child or a teenager. But then the last thing is movement. You know, where ideally you'd have what I call the Goldilocks dose of movement where if you move too much, it makes you feel worse. If you move too little, it makes you feel worse. So you wanna find that ideal dose, but you have to pay attention to how it feels in your body. And if you're fatigued then you may be able, you may be saying, you know, I can't move at all and that's okay. Just when you can, you know, do five jumping jacks or do some burpees, if you can do those or do walk around the block, you know, whatever you can do that's not gonna make you feel worse, go ahead and do that cuz that'll stimulate a number of things.

 

(33:44): You know, exercise and movement. I call it movement more than exercise cuz sometimes people have a hesitancy to, they don't like that word exercise. Sometimes it's dancing, that's really great. One or playing basketball or whatever's gonna be fun. But you know, if you look at the research movement is like a panacea, it's like a cure for everything. Yeah. It helps with detoxification and mood and, and it's so interesting to see it in my 14 year old too. It's like she's pretty sedentary and then she goes to karate and she moves around and she gets all sweaty and her mood is so much better. And so it's just really an important reminder for all of

 

(34:21): Us. So true. I think those are just great baseline lifestyle habits to aim for for everybody. Especially if you're feeling fatigued. I have to ask you because it's all a rage right now. Do you think if people are having chronic fatigue, that they should intermittent fast? We're not.

 

(34:40): I think intermittent fasting is excellent. However, it can also be stressful on the body. And so if your adrenals are compromised, which is a gland that manages stress in the body, then potentially you can't, you don't want to do anything that's gonna kind of put you over the edge. And so I tell people to test it if they want to try it, if they feel worse then it's too much and they shouldn't do it. But if they can tolerate it, then eating two meals, eating all your meals or two meals within a six hour period from like 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM can really do wonders for the body.

 

(35:12): Yeah, okay. I wanted to make sure to bring that up. And the other thing is, whenever people hear about a functional approach, a root cause resolution approach, and we start talking about labs, what's the first thing they say? Oh is my, can my regular doctor do it? Does my insurance cover it? So can you talk a little bit about that? I think it's super important because I think, you know, when I weighed 243 pounds and I finally found someone who looked like they knew what they were talking about, like same stuff we're talking about who might be able to help me, I was so desperate to get better because I was chronically fatigued, my hair was falling out, I had anxiety, depression, all kinds of maladies. And they said, well you need these two tests, each one costs $500. I was willing to pay it. But I sometimes see people and they say, oh I'm not gonna pay that if my insurance doesn't cover it. So can you talk a little bit about the, the cost of tests?

 

(36:12): Absolutely. So, you know, we're looking at 39 different causes and like I said, 75% can be determined by symptoms alone. But there are 25% that really need lab tests and those generally run around $1,500. And what I tell people in our programs, you know, aren't cheap, you know, and so it's an investment. No, you know when you go this route and you're actually looking at the root causes because you wanna get rid of 'em, cuz guess what? These root causes of fatigue and other issues are also the same root causes of heart attack, heart disease, strokes, Alzheimer's, and cancer. So you deal with it now or you deal with it later. And so the way you have to think about it is as if you're getting a master's because it's gonna take that long, it's gonna take a year or two, you're going to get all this knowledge that you're going to be able to use further and you're basically fixing your problems so that the rest of your life is amazing.

 

(37:05): You know, like I was hesitant about or going into residency cuz I already knew that I wanted to practice in this way and I didn't wanna do a conventional residency, but I also knew that if I did a residency, it would give me lots more options and I would learn a ton more information. And I'm so glad that I did, you know, it was really hard on me, but I learned so much that enables me to help people today. Mm-Hmm . And so you're making an investment of time, money, and energy so that you can get something at the end of it. You know, like you went to college, like you got a master's degree. This is just another way that you're making that investment in yourself so that the rest of your life can be amazing.

 

(37:45): I, I say amen to that. And I know there's some people listening who think, oh, Dr. Evan, this is just a factor of me getting older. Everybody gets older, gets tired as they get older and they think that they can't be helped, they think, oh, my fatigue's not that bad. I don't have any of these underlying toxicities or deficiencies he's talking about. And so is getting tired, quote unquote normal as you age.

 

(38:12): I have a, a client who's 68 who says he feels better now than he did when he was 30. Right? So generally it's really a mass effect. It's a total body burden. The longer , the longer you're in port, the more barnacles you get. So the longer you're on this longer you're on this earth, the more toxins you get. You know, my story was, you know, I came out of my mom's womb and she dumped all her good stuff and all her not so good stuff into me. And then I ate gluten and dairy growing up and I was constipated for the first 25 years of my life until I realized that it wasn't normal to poop once a week. And so I couldn't get rid of any toxins that I was accumulating. I ate a lot of tuna fish, which has mercury in it, and I had mercury fillings and so that was accumulating in my body. Didn't eat organic food, had pesticides, got formal, the high poisoning from gross anatomy class, lived in moldy buildings, kissed people who had Epstein bar virus in lime, grew up in New Jersey, right? And so went through residency and then boom, you know, like, so that was the story that I had where I thought that it was all of a sudden it was residency, but the reality was is that it was this accumulation. And so you're, you're just unwinding, you're peeling this onion, getting at all of these different causes along the way.

 

(39:31): Yeah. I thank you for sharing that because I think people can get the idea that you don't have to be doing anything wrong to have a significant toxic and deficiency load. We all have it, it's just a matter of degree. And what you see with aging is not quote unquote normal aging. What you're seeing is the accumulated effects of toxicity deficiency stress on the body. And that's why you see some 90 year olds who are, you know, running marathons and you see some people who don't even make it to 90 is because of this variation. And we blame it mostly on, you know, genetics. But that's a fallacy. Great. So thank you so much for highlighting that and we're gonna wrap it up. This has been great. I think everyone's gotten a lot of value. Dr. Evan has given you some tips of things that you can do, start doing this week, right?

 

(40:30): Start making some changes. You can tweak your diet, tweak your sleep schedule, tweak your movement. Some things to think about in terms of you can go take the quiz on his website to see if you've had covid, do you have long covid? And maybe it is time for an evaluation, maybe you wanna get to the root cause of it now so that the rest of your life can be amazing. Like his 68 year old patient who shared that he feels better than he had. I mean, I, I feel better now than I did when I was in my twenties for sure. And I attribute that to every, everything that we do, all the work that we do with ourselves and that we now teach others. So maybe it is time for that. Dr. Evan is giving you a free copy of his book Picture Fatigue. We will have the link in the show notes, so if you're driving, don't try to write that down when you get home. You can just click the link. Evan, you wanna tell them a little bit about the book?

 

(41:26): So the book was written in 2017, so it's been, it's been about five years right now, but it gives you a nice outline of the four step process. And if you do like what you're hearing and reading and you're interested in getting on a free call for your 20 minute call to see if we're a good fit to work together, those are available. You can also text us from our website, energy md method.com in the lower right hand corner, it goes directly to me so we can text back and forth, which is kind of fun. So we can see, you know, if, if we're a good fit. And I can answer any questions that you have. But the goal really is to, you know, so much of this is, is mindset, and yes, we wanna work on the physical, but you know, like we talked about initially, anything that you're saying no to, you're saying yes to something else. Anything that you say you should do, you have to be careful. Otherwise you're shooting all over yourself, right?

 

(42:19): . Yeah,

 

(42:20): , you wanna make sure that you're being intentional with your choices.

 

(42:24): Yes. Well, thank you so much Dr. Evan Hirsch for joining us on the Hormone Prescription Podcast today. Thank you for your path, your expertise, your wisdom, your caring, your passion for helping people fix their fatigue.

 

(42:40): Thanks so much for having me

 

(42:41): On. And thank you for joining me for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kiran. I hope that you've learned something today that is going to positively impact your health. I challenge you to implement just one thing, post about it on social media, media and share it with me and look forward to hearing about your successes, and I look forward to seeing you again next week on another episode of The Hormone Prescription. Until then, peace, love,

 

(43:10): And hormones y'all. Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

► Get Dr. Evan's FREE PDF copy of his book, "Fix Your Fatigue: The 4 Step Process to Resolving Fatigue and Achieving Amazing Energy." - CLICK HERE

Visit his website to learn more about him and his works.

CLICK HERE to book a FREE 20 min. call with Dr. Evan Hirsch.

 

► Feeling tired? Can't seem to lose weight, no matter how hard you try?

 

It might be time to check your hormones.

 

Most people don’t even know that their hormones could be the culprit behind their problems. But at Her Hormone Club, we specialize in hormone testing and treatment. We can help you figure out what’s going on with your hormones and get you back on track.

 

We offer advanced hormone testing and treatment from Board Certified Practitioners, so you can feel confident that you're getting the best possible care. Plus, our convenient online consultation process makes it easy to get started.

 

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Tame Your Anxiety And Have A Happy Brain: Lessons From The Mammalian Kingdom We Can All Use

Have you been wondering how to manage anxiety, especially in midlife? Dr. Loretta Breuning is here to provide us with the answers! Join us on the latest episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast and learn how the lessons from the mammalian kingdom can help us all have a happy brain. Not only will you learn about how hormones work within our bodies, but also gain insight into how simple changes in our environment can drastically change the way we feel.

 

Dr. Loretta Breuning, PhD, is the Founder of the Inner Mammal Institute and Professor Emerita of Management at California State University, East Bay. She is the author of many personal development books, including Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain Your Brain to Boost Your Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin, and Endorphin Levels and Tame your anxiety-rewire your brain for happiness and others.

 

As a teacher and a parent, she was not convinced by prevailing theories of human motivation. Then she learned about the brain chemistry we share with earlier mammals and everything made sense. She began creating resources that have helped thousands of people make peace with their inner mammal. Dr. Breuning's work has been translated into twelve languages and is cited in major media. Before teaching, she worked for the United Nations in Africa. Loretta gives zoo tours on animal behavior, after serving as a Docent at the Oakland Zoo.

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

- How the mammalian brain works

- The hormones that can affect your emotional state

- Simple strategies to rewire your brain for happiness and reduce anxiety

- How our environment plays a role in affecting our moods

 

Listen now to this powerful episode with Dr. Loretta Breuning and learn how you can have a happy brain!

 

(00:00): Nature is designed to habituate to the emotions that we already have. Stay tuned to find out why our happy chemicals are not designed to be on all the time.

 

(00:13): So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us, keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an ob gyn, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

 

(01:07): Hi everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me today. Today we're gonna be talking about stress. Again, I know it's such an important topic, but we're gonna be relating it to your happy neurochemicals. We're going to be talking about dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin and endorphins and how you can optimize these neurochemicals for your hormonal and overall health and wellbeing, how you can get out of anxiety and many other things. She has a unique perspective that's comes from the animal kingdom, which we're a part of, but we're a little bit different and we're gonna talk about how we're different and how that affects our health and ways that you can manage your neurochemicals that other animals don't need to worry about. I'll tell you a little bit about her and then we'll get started.

 

(02:05): Dr. Loretta Bruning is a PhD and she's founder of the Inter Mammal Institute and Professor Erta of Management at California State University East Bay. She's the author of many personal development books, including Habits of a Happy Brain, retrain Your Brain to Boost your Serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and Endorphin levels. And the author of Tame Your Anxiety, rewire Your Brain for Happiness and other books. As a teacher and a parent, she was not convinced by prevailing theories of human motivation. Then she learned about the brain chemistry we share with earlier mammals and everything made sense. She began creating resources that have helped thousands of people make peace with their inner mammal. Dr. Bruni's work has been translated into 12 languages and is cited in major media before teaching. She worked for the United Nations in Africa and Loretta gives zoo tours on animals' behavior after serving as a docent at the Oakland Zoo. Welcome Dr. Loretta Bruning to the podcast.

 

(03:05): Hi. So nice to be here.

 

(03:07): I'm really glad to have you here. I think people are dealing with so much stress right now. Stress levels are at an all-time high and we can't talk about it enough. How can people get regulated out of the stress site, be happy in their lives, experience joy? I mean, after all, I think that's what we're here to do ultimately, but there are a lot of things that get in the way and I'm curious if you can share with everyone how did you get interested in brain neurochemical chemicals and how to have a happy brain? What was your path?

 

(03:42): Like many people, I grew up around a lot of unhappiness and I didn't have a good explanation for it. So I think I was always curious like, what is everybody so upset about? So I was always looking for that and nothing ever seemed like a good enough explanation. I studied academic psychology my whole life, so I knew all the theories, but they still didn't really explain it to me and especially becoming a parent and you think, okay, now gonna start over and we're gonna do everything right according to the book, you know? And I was like, no, that doesn't work. Kids are unhappy. My students were unhappy. So then I had to rethink what I had learned and I stumbled on a lot of animal studies monkey studies, and that triggered, you know, cuz when I was like 18 years old and started studying psychology, there were a lot of monkey studies and that's what got me into seeing that the chemicals that make us feel good are the exact same chemicals in animals and they're controlled by brain structures that animals have too. And to me, that explained everything first because a monkey is constantly making decisions. What's gonna make me happy? Oh, if I get that banana, how can I get it? And that's the job our happy chemicals do is reward us for those actions. And then that this whole animal brain is not capable of using language. So it's totally separate track from the stuff we're telling ourselves in words.

 

(05:20): Yes. You know, I think that we forget that we are animals and that we have the same brain structures as other animals and that our brain is really designed to keep us alive, but some of those systems can act negatively in humans and actually make us sick when we don't understand them and use them properly. And I think this is super important for women at midlife because we've kind of, most of us been using our brains and our systems unconsciously, and we don't really start paying attention to how they function until we hit midlife. And the cumulative negative effects start encroaching on our good health. And then we wanna know, oh my gosh, I don't feel well. And we discover that our brain neurochemistry is part of the reason why we don't do well. How can we work with it differently? So can you talk a little bit about the different brain structures and kind of how our neurochemistry works and then we can kind of dive into what people might be encountering in terms of maladaptations of these systems that causing them problems? Sure.

 

(06:36): So you've raised so many good issues and I'm gonna try to simplify. Sure. Get to the point as much as possible, but there's so much. So I always like to focus on the positive, you know, what can we do instead of just focusing on the problem? So the reality is that our happy brain chemicals are not designed to be on all the time. You hear about dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphin and you think, oh, other people must be just getting this all the time and what's wrong with me? And yet, when you know the job these chemicals do, you know that their job is only to be on for that moment to spark you into action when that action is appropriate. So for example, like a lion is looking around for something it can eat and if it runs after everything, it's not gonna get anything and it's gonna die of starvation.

 

(07:30): So dopamine turns on when it sees something it can get, and that's what our good feelings are like for that appropriate moment. So when we're not having that spark of joy, it's like no big deal. That's to the self-acceptance of my brain is designed to go up and down to navigate where should I use my energy? What's a good opportunity? And the other part of that is, well, how do I know what's a good opportunity and where should I use my energy? Well the amazing thing is my dopamine pathways are built from my own dopamine experience in my past. And your dopamine pathways are built from your past. So every little toddler is like trying to get that ball and get that cookie. And yet we're all building our pathways from our unique individual experience. And when I know my own pathways, that liberates me from being limited by them because you may think, oh, the only way to feel good is by repeating this behavior that triggered my good feelings in the past. But when you know that it's just a pathway, then you say, oh, there are thousands of other ways to be happy. I'm just doing this one because that's just the accident of my past experience.

 

(08:50): Yeah, we really are very programmed throughout our lives as to what's gonna make our dopamine reward pathway go up, what's gonna make our serotonin go up. It's gonna differ for every person. But I totally identify, and maybe you listening identify with this too, that I do wanna be happy all the time. Loretta . What's wrong with that? And you know, I think we see other people maybe on social media or friends that we have who really do seem like they're happy all the time. Why can't we be happy all the time?

 

(09:25): Okay, that's a great question. So first let's distinguish happy chemicals from unhappy chemicals. Okay, so I don't want to feel like I'm gonna die in every minute. So that's, yeah, like in in the animal brain, you are trying to escape from predators and starvation and the human brain is capable of imagining predators that are not actually there. That's how we stress ourselves. So we feel like we gotta run from this predator all the time, and that's horrible feelings. So absolutely, we should definitely wanna get away from that because that's the job our brain is designed to do is escape that threat. But if I want to feel joy every minute of every day, that's not realistic and I'm gonna end up disappointing. And if I tell myself that everybody else is feeling joy every minute of every day, then I'm gonna end up, you know, feeling left out. So, you know, there's this current movement of trying to feel the pleasure of small things. I think that's great, but the way the brain works is it habituates to what you already have. So if I think, let's say if I only get a date with this one person, I'll be happy forever. But then once you get the date with that person, you're not happy forever. Right,

 

(10:53): . So

 

(10:54): If you think, oh, if I only get this promotion, I'll be happy forever. But you get the promotion and you're not happy forever. So the reason is that our brain is designed to habituate to rewards we already have. So it's like saying that when my ancestors were hungry and they thought, oh, if I only found a tree full of riped fruit, I'd be so happy I'd, you know, I'd never be unhappy again. And they'd find the tree and they'd stuff their face with riped fruit. But if that made them happy forever, then they would not get any protein. They would not search for water and firewood. So our brain is designed to focus on the unmet need and to take for granted what you already have and say, okay, been there, done that. Now what else can I get? So that's the norm , which

 

(11:48): Yeah, I think everyone can relate to that. And I remember when I was younger, I would always think, I will be happy when, fill in the blank, you know, when I graduate high school, when I graduate college, when I graduate med school, you know, when I get married, when I have a baby. And like you would get to that and you do get that initial boost of, oh my gosh, this is so great, I'm so happy. And then it just becomes a factor of your life and it doesn't give you that dopamine kind of hit or serotonin boost. So I know everybody listening can really relate to that. And I love that you explained it, the nature's design to habituate to the emotions that we already have. And it is does confer survivability not only on the animal kingdom, but humans, which we're a part of the animal kingdom, but I think that sometimes we think we're superior because we have these huge four brains and that we should be able to surpass that. So how does someone who's maybe feeling dysthymic or even depressed really start to work in their lives to change their neurochemistry to a more positive state where they can get those boosts?

 

(13:03): Sure. So first is to understand that whatever triggers the happy chemical is based on not what you're telling yourself in words and philosophical abstractions, but it's a real physical pathway built from past experience. So a simple example would be, you know, if you give a child a cookie when they do a certain behavior, they're gonna repeat that behavior. So even if you're sad on some level, you got rewarded for being sad in your past. Mm-Hmm. because you felt like, well now I'm doing my share in carrying the load by being sad or something like that. So once you say, my sadness is a real physical pathway in my brain, my feelings about what it takes to turn on a reward chemical, those are real physical pathways in my brain. And I can build new pathways to have new expectations about how to turn on my happy chemicals. But it's hard to build new pathways in adulthood. It's exactly like learning language. When you're a child, you learn language easy. But if you try to study a foreign language in adulthood, it takes a lot of repetition and it feels like real work. And that's what it takes to build a new path to happy chemicals when you're older. Okay. One example.

 

(14:30): Sure. Yeah, that would be great.

 

(14:32): So, so the typical example would be negative expectations. Like if you think people don't like me, nothing I do works. Everything I, everything goes wrong in my life, you know, every, everyone can look for that o, that whatever is their own loop. And then look for, well, how did that pathway get built in my past? And then every time I feel it to say, oh, it's a real physical pathway, what other pathway could I have that would feel better? So my personal example was I always felt like people were criticizing me. Like I would jump to that conclusion all the time on no evidence at all. And then I would feel basically the terror of my childhood of being attacked and criticized. So what other pathway would I like to have will to just say other people are fine with me and I can feel good whether or not I have their approval. So I tell myself that, and the first time I do it, it sounds wrong and stupid and unbelievable, but I know that I, if I repeat it over and over and practice it, that I will build a real physical pathway in my brain and then it will just feel like my new normal.

 

(15:51): Okay, yeah, I love that. So we can change our neurochemistry studies have clearly documented that I know that some people listening deal with a lot of anxiety. You know, as our hormones change at midlife, when our estrogen starts going up and our progesterone starts going down, which can happen as early as 35, but definitely starts happening from 40 to 50. And by the time you hit menopause, you're really solidly in that category. You lose that ameliorative effect of the progesterone, which is the anti-anxiety hormone. So a lot of women at this stage of life deal with a lot of anxiety. What are some tools that we could start to use to help mitigate that?

 

(16:38): Sure. So to boil it down to one word that I use is called legacy. So legacy means my sense of what I can create that will live on after I'm gone. And the reason for this is if you think that we have this big human brain attached to this animal brain, so the animal brain is programmed to just search for survival and to fear survival threats. But my big human cortex can abstract and think about the future and it knows that I'm not gonna survive and there will be a future that will go on without me. And that is terrifying. And we can terrify ourselves all the time. Now, in the world of our past people died young, but they had children young. So if you had children like at 16, then you'd be a grandma at 32 if you lived that long. And so when you saw your grandchildren, you had a sense of legacy because you taught them how to chop vegetables and you saw them do it, and you had a sense of yourself living on after you're gone.

 

(17:46): So that was your legacy. And there was no, no birth control. So people were so busy taking care of children that they didn't have time to worry about dying as much, and they, they couldn't call 9 1 1, they couldn't get lab tests. So they just focused on like the next emergency of, you know, a kid's crying, how can I get food? And now like we don't really get to watch our grandchildren grow up for so many reasons. So we don't have that automatic sense of legacy. So we have to constant, consciously create a sense of legacy in one way or another.

 

(18:23): Yeah, that's, that's an interesting concept I hadn't thought about, but creating something for the future. And you're reminded me about the short lifespan that just a few hundred years ago we have, and I, I think it would be so interesting to see a study about people's ability to be in the present a few hundred years ago when they knew they were only gonna live, you know, 30 or 40 years. I bet that really focused them on, I gotta make the most of this time Yes. That I have. Whereas now we've got, you know, on average, I think 82 years in the US as the American lifespan for females. And I don't know about everybody else, but I feel like I waste a lot of time because it's like, oh, I won't do that thing now because I've got another, you know, few decades where I could do it. Whereas if I only had 32 years, well my life would've been over a while ago, but it really would've focused me. How do you think that has changed over time?

 

(19:25): Well that's, you know, to focus on the positive again. Yeah. Pause is a time when you say, geez, if I wait to be happy, I may wait too long. , you know, and so is it worth wasting another minute of my life worrying about X, Y, and Z? And you could make good arguments with your conscious verbal brain, oh, I should worry about X, Y, and Z. But then you could say, you know what? I could let it go because I'm not gonna get back the time that I waste on that. And also there's a lot of fearful images about the future, like even though I may live till X number of years that I'm gonna have a decline. And if you focus on that, then you're gonna be feeling the decline now. Mm-Hmm. . So it takes a real conscious effort to redirect yourself, you know? And like every time you see a wrinkle, for example, to instead of seeing that wrinkle as evidence of decline to say, this wrinkle gives me permission to stop worrying about X and to just start being happy. Now,

 

(20:34): I'm glad you brought this up. I recently came across an article in my newsfeed about the high demand for older aged female models. Recently there's been a boom and even 70 and 80 year old female models, right? Everybody is really starting to honor older women, their wisdom, which is what I think we really is the gift of menopause, is that the wisdom that we carry. We have lived long lives, we've seen a lot. I remember an attorney telling me once that when he went to jury trials and they did the voir deer where they select the jury, his favorite jurors were older women. And I asked him why. And he said, because they have been there, done that, seen everything. But they also have a lower ego and the maturity to understand the nuances of guilty, not guilty issues, which some younger people don't have. So all this to say also, I see in your bio, you've done a lot of interesting things. It says that you used to work for the United Nations in Africa, so you've lived a lot of life, you're at a certain stage outside of the work that you do with helping people to boost their neurochemistry. Just from a personal perspective, what would you share with the audience that would say, what are your biggest lessons learned at this stage of life, looking at life that that might be meaningful to them?

 

(22:08): Sure. So first we say, I have power over my own brain. I'm not gonna be happy from something outside myself. So if I wait for the world to make me happy, I'm gonna wait too long. . So what can I do to make myself happy? But of course we all know that that doesn't mean short-term happiness. Like you sit around and eat a pint of ice cream. So how do you balance this long-term versus short-term? So I talk about having a long-term goal, a short-term goal, and a middle-term goal. And in order to reach your goals, a lot of times, well, so a short-term goal is like I can reach it today, so I'm gonna get some hit of dopamine every day. That nice sense of accomplishment by setting a realistic goal, by breaking down what I want into small steps that I could actually do.

 

(23:00): And then the other part is like to achieve long run goals, I might have to do some things that are uncomfortable. So what can I do about that uncover? Well, instead of getting into like a cortisol spiral where you know I do something that feels bad and then that triggers another bad feeling and another, and another, I say to myself, okay, I'm gonna do this thing that makes me uncomfortable. I'm only gonna do it for five minutes. Or what, whatever's that reasonable chunk to tackle that obs obstacle. And then, you know, if I were gonna have a cup of coffee and a cookie anyway, I need to save it until after I've done that difficult thing. So that whenever I have it down, that I have an up that I can look forward to. And I have plenty of ups that have no calories, which in my life is comedy. But people can find their own.

 

(23:52): I love comedy cause laughing is so good for your neurochemistry . Yeah. Talk a little bit about laughing and what are some of your favorite things, ways to engage with comedy? Do you like standup movies? Like how do you get laughter in your life and what does it do for your neurochemistry?

 

(24:10): Sure. So laughter triggers endorphin, which is the body's natural opioid. And this is a widely misunderstood chemical. So an opioid is there to relieve pain and in the state of nature it's triggered by real physical pain. But because we have deep belly muscles that we don't use much, when you have a belly laugh, you get a little bit by giving those muscles a workout and you only get a little bit, but then you can laugh more and get a little bit more and it's the only healthy way to get them really, or the main healthy. And I explained this all in my books, so the way I get it. So I don't like bitter angry comedy and it's hard for me to find like truly uplifting comedy. And I know that if I look for comedy when I'm in a bad mood and like nine outta 10 of them are gonna be bitter, then I'm gonna just end up feeling worse, right? So I keep what I, I call, like when you're on a diet and you fill your pantry with healthy snacks mm-hmm. . So I fill my pantry with healthy comedy and I have a list of things that are ready for a bad day. So I know that when I'm in a bad mood, I have something uplifting that I could go to and I, I make that list on some other day rather than waiting until I'm in a bad mood.

 

(25:32): Yeah, I love that. And I love to laugh too. So one of my favorite go-tos I'm gonna share with everyone cuz you can use this, is I found this TV channel I, I'm sorry I don't re exactly know what it's called, but it's all videos of animals unscripted, they call it. Oh,

 

(25:49): I didn't write that down. .

 

(25:51): It's animals just doing what animals do mostly pets, right? Pet cats and dogs. They are hilarious. So it's just one video after another with no narration, no introduction of pets and Anna, there are some birds and different lizards and things doing the crazy things that animals do. So I'm gonna put a plug for that. And I'm also gonna put a plug for a re a movie I saw recently, I think it's from New Zealand that I think is hilarious. It's called The Breaker, uppers and . I literally laughed out loud so many times in that movie. So I gotta put a plug in for that. But I agree with you, laughing is huge. Another thing I wanted to touch on is that, you know, a lot of the people, women I work with, this might be you if you're listening, they're not so much concerned with their own worries, but worrying about others in their lives and what other people should be doing and trying to control them. And this one has to do this and what if they, what if my kid, you know, moves across the country to another state with my grandkids and then I won't be around them and they want to control what everyone else is doing. They're worrying about what everyone else is doing. You shared this quote with me before we started about it says, it's hard enough to manage your own brain, so stop trying to manage other people's brains. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that.

 

(27:18): Sure. So the feeling that I can only be happy if other people do X, Y, and Z, that my happiness depends on them. If you think that you'll never be happy . So it's just, you just gotta make a deal with yourself. I'm gonna be happy no matter what anyone does. And the simple way to do that, if I give you a visual image, if this other person does something and I think, oh no, I can't be happy because they're doing that, is I'm imagining that there's only one path to happiness and that person is blocking the path. But instead I'm gonna think there are thousands of paths to happiness and if this person blocks that path, I'll just find another P.

 

(28:04): Yeah. So stop focusing on everybody else . And you know, and it goes along with that same desire I used to have, well I'll be happy when this happens For me, that happens for me. And a corollary is I'll be happy when X person stops doing Y or X person starts doing why. And really I have decided at this point in my life that happiness only happens in the now when I'm happy with myself. And it really doesn't have anything to do with anything to do with what anyone else does. And I can choose that. Yes,

 

(28:41): I I a way of saying that. I always say my husband gets on my nerves, but it's my nerves . So, but it's fine. I, it's my job to adjust my own nerves to love him for what he is. And I don't even have to love him in any specific way. That's my job to just decide,

 

(29:01): Yes, to decide it's a decision. I know the name of your company's inner Mammal Institute and you take people on zoo tours to see animals behavior and I'm wondering if you can share with everyone, what does that do for the people who participate? How does it enrich their understanding? Sure.

 

(29:21): So I learned so much by watching nature documentaries and the simple fact of life in the interest of time, I'm just gonna say it straight, like animals are quite nasty to each other. And I learned that from watching nature videos. And yet what I learned from academic social science is that the state of nature is all peace and love and something has gone wrong with our world, but that's just not true. So we have this animal nature which is very motivated by self-interest and we really struggle to manage and navigate and control this inner mammal that is just wanting to grab the next banana. So how can I manage my inner mammal? And like I always feel like other people wanna grab my banana. That's easy to see. But what about my own impulse to get another banana and my feeling of like they took that banana at my expense.

 

(30:20): That's how the mammal brain works. So nobody likes to see this in themselves, everybody wants to see it in other people. So that's why we really need to be exposed to the reality of animals. Now to tell you the truth, you don't visually see that in the zoo because the pet world is not the same as the state of nature where animals are not fed. They have to get their food, they have to hide from predators. So the zoo tour is really a fun way to talk about this. But if you watch the nature videos of David Attenborough, especially his early series, then you really get get the facts. And I got them then from that like evolutionary biology books is how, and I have a reading list on my website and it's all in, in all of my books. I put this in a simplified form of why animals are nasty to each other and how we can feel it and manage it and relax with

 

(31:21): It. Yeah, you know, it's interesting, I just came back from four months in Africa and went on safari a few times. So I got to see those wild animals in their natural habitat habitat. And it was very instructive to see how they work both communally but also very selfishly in some ways. And I saw what good boundaries the animals had because at certain points in their existence, well for instance the wiles at one point we were driving up to, so in this Serengeti, or no, we were in the in goro goro crater in Tanzania. And most of it was extremely dry so there wasn't a lot of vegetation for a lot of the animals to eat. And then we came upon this place where there was a river and it was very green and lush and there were almost no animals there. And I said to myself and to the guide, why don't they just come over here and eat and drink water?

 

(32:22): And he said, because the lions know that that's where the animals are gonna go to eat and drink water. So they're afraid. And then I saw this group of will to be standing right outside this lush area and they were all huddled together facing the same direction. And one was out in front and he said, you see those will to bees, they are discerning. Is it safer, is it not? Where is the sun in the sky? What is the wind doing? What time of year is it? Is the lion gonna attack us now is it safe to go drink the water and eat or no? And so they were working communally, but then other times you would see them when there actually would be food and one would be pushing the other to try to get more of the food or more of the water. And so it was very interesting to me to observe that. Well

 

(33:14): I love those guides because they tell you the truth. Yes, don't get from academic psychology because academic psychology constructs this unrealistic, idealized world of peace and love, which is not what nature is about. And you get it from those tour guides and and you can get it without if you can't go there. You know, nat, a lot of some nature videos, you know, some of them are still hooked on the, the other unrealistic belief. But another simple example about the wildes that I learned from a nature video. So in order for them to get from, you know, they follow the grass year round, you probably saw how they migrate to wherever the grass is, but they have to cross a river and while they're crossing the river, they could die from a crocodile, they could die on the other side, you know, from a predator and then they could die when they jump in because another will toes could jump on top of them.

 

(34:15): So it's very difficult to make that decision. When am I gonna jump? They'd really rather not jump cuz the crocodile might get them, but if they don't jump, the rest of the herd piles up behind them and pulls them in and then they don't even get to jump, they just get shoved in with without balance. So they're constantly making this very difficult decision and you could see your own terror of like when you're a kid, like, do I jump or not? And so even what looks like herd behavior is a constant calculation of how much do I follow, how much do I, you know, take a step in a different direction. And our brain is making that decision every minute of every day. Am I gonna just follow the guy in front of me or am I gonna take a different step in a different direction? And you're calculating that with your best guess, which can never be perfect.

 

(35:09): Yeah. And I love what you said earlier about the fact that other mammals don't have the ability to imagine danger and humans do. There's a great book I wanna share with everyone called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers that clearly explains why zebras don't get ulcers, they don't have the imagination faculty and they really go through a process after they are stressed. So for instance, we, we saw this crazy wild chase of a leopard going into a herd of various types of gazelle like creatures and how they responded and, and I really got to see what's outlined in that book firsthand where these animals, when they go through a stress like being chased by a predator, they have a discharge process that they go through afterwards where they shake, and maybe you can talk a little bit about this and how it might apply to us. They go through a process to discharge that stress and reregulate their cortisol stress hormone, which I talk about all the time. This is really what's killing us. So how can we take that instructive information from a zebra's behavior and use it for our superior mammalian brains?

 

(36:23): Sure. You're also referring to, and and it's slipping my mind, there's a a book by another guy Levine about this shaking that goes on. So the idea is they discharge the stress and then they go back to what, what do they go back to? And this is what I talk about in my anxiety books. They go back to meeting their survival needs because if they just worry about predators all the time, they're gonna starve to death. So if they say, I'm not going out into that world unless it's a hundred percent safe, then they would to death. So hunger motivates them to deal with risk, to deal with potential danger to go out and meet their needs and only worry about danger when it's really there. Now the big human cortex says, oh no, that's stupid, I'm going to anticipate threats and avoid them. But if you spend your whole life anticipating threats and avoiding them, you're gonna just worry constantly.

 

(37:26): That's because our basic needs are met, that our lives are so comfortable that we could just stay home and do nothing unless we think it's a hundred percent safe. And one thing I blame this on, that's funny, I'm a bit older than you, I think I remember the years when, so cars broke down all the time and people said, oh, American cars are so bad, we should do what the Japanese did. And this is what I taught in the early years of my academic career. So the Japanese had this way of anticipating things that will go wrong in the production of a car and solving it at the source, fixing it at the source. And they said, that's what we have to do. We have to anticipate defects and fix 'em at the source. And so the whole education went on this bandwagon of anticipating threats and figuring things and preventing them so that quality would be a hundred percent and that had value, but it really made people nuts because now people think nothing can ever go wrong. We anticipate every possible threat and they literally, it's called the Toyota method that every tiny defect is a crisis because if you don't fix it now you're gonna produce a thousand more cars with the same defect. So you have to treat it as a crisis. So we were all indoctrinated to treat every tiny little problem as a crisis.

 

(38:51): Yeah, I think that's a great example. And you know it's done well for the car industry, but as a human species we really can't live that way. And thank you for saying that about the the worrying. Cuz there was something I was worrying about this morning and as we're talking, I'm thinking, why am I worrying about that? If it becomes a problem, I'll deal with it. I'm not gonna worry about it now

 

(39:16): . Yeah,

 

(39:17): Yeah. So can

 

(39:19):I give you another example of this that I think is very common? So let's say you get an email that asks you to go to some website and do this or that, and let's say it's something that you wanna do. So okay, I'm gonna do it. So you go to that website and you think, oh, this'll take five minutes and then a half hour has gone by and you still haven't done it. And like somehow I get really upset when I can't get something technical to work. It's really the problem is that I'm connecting it to every failure in my past is a real pathway in my brain. So one little failure today activates that old pathway like it's my failure pathway. You have your failure pathway. And what triggered it was really the expectation that I could do it in five minutes. So all I could do is just tell myself this is something hard, it's gonna take a while, and then all of the problem goes

 

(40:15): Away. Right. No, I love that. It really is how we frame the problems that we have. It's not the problems themselves that are the problem. What you think is the problem is not the problem, it's how you're thinking about the problem. So our thinking is always the problem. I know you have some great resources for everyone, but before we wrap up, I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the importance of oxytocin. That's another hormone. I don't think we talk merely enough about its importance and how to nurture our oxytocin.

 

(40:47): Sure. So in the animal world, animals seek groups for protection from predators. And in the oxytocin is the chemical that rewards you when you feel protected by a group. But this has been idealized in an unrealistic way in the current human dialogue. So we think that we should be protected all the time. And in fact, that's true for babies and that's why, as you know in the medical profession that oxytocin is central to maternal birth and lactation. But in the adult world, you're not meant to get this protection that you got as a child. So oxytocin moments are difficult and rare. Now how do I get my oxytocin moments? Well, whatever triggered my oxytocin when I was young built real physical pathways that tell me how to get it today. But that's also quite limiting. So the famous example is if you smell the cooking that reminds you of trust and bonding moment of your youth, then you seek that you want that, you think that will make you happy.

 

(41:57): But what we really want is protection. And in the adult world, we're never gonna get the protection of a child. And even when you were a child that protection was not perfect. So we have to accept that I have this natural logging for protection and I'm only gonna get moments of it rather than to have this perfect protection. So a simple example of a moment of it is people go to a concert and they're in this building with like thousands and thousands of people, whether it's music or a speech or an athletic event that you feel like you're sharing something that's important to you, but they're not really protecting you. Another example is if I tell my life story to a train a stranger on a plane, they're not gonna be there for me in the future. So it's like you look for these trust moments because letting down your guard is what is the oxytocin feeling? And what was so impactful to me, I learned that reptiles only have oxytocin when they're mating, which lasts for 10 seconds and the rest of the time no oxytocin because they don't trust their fellow reptile. So oxytocin is that feeling that I can barely tolerate your presence just enough to reproduce .

 

(43:24): . That's hilarious. , yes, oxytocin. I mean, people may know it as being the hormone that go is what causes labor in women, but it's also involved with milk production and bonding and connection and it interacts with your other hormones as well. So I'm gonna leave you all with a mandate to do something with your oxytocin today. What could you do to get some oxytocin just on a daily basis? You know, I think the past few years where a lot of us have been so isolated, we were legally bound in some instances, to not leave our home for much really has put a toll on our oxytocin, which unbalances our entire hormonal neuroendocrine cascade. So getting back to normalcy where we have in-person human interaction is key. So I want to challenge everybody listening to do something about your oxytocin to boost it going forward. And Loretta has a lovely gift for you and we'll have a link in the show notes to it. Do you wanna tell them a little bit about your download anxiety? What turns it on, what turns it off?

 

(44:41): Sure. It's a free book, P d F. It's the shortened form of my larger book, which is called Tame Your Anxiety, rewiring Your Brain for Happiness and Explains something. We haven't talked much about cortisol, the chemical that gives us the survival threat feeling and to sort of accept our own cortisol. It has a natural job and then to get real about the ability to manage it rather than to just let it take over and spiral.

 

(45:12): Awesome. Well thank you so much for that free gift, Loretta. If you are dealing with anxiety, I invite you to click the link in the show notes and learn what you can do to start taming your anxiety. Thank you so much, Loretta, for joining us for an episode of the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

 

(45:33): Sure. Thanks for the great

 

(45:34): Questions and thank you for joining us today. Hopefully you will implement some of the things that we've discussed so that you can move towards greater hormone balance and brilliant health. Thanks again and I'll see you next week for another episode of the Hormone Prescription Podcast with Dr. Kiran. Until then, peace, love, and hormones

 

(45:54): Y'all. Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

► Get a FREE copy of Dr. Loretta Breuning's Anxiety: What turns it on, What turns it off. CLICK HERE.

 

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The Essential Hormone Balancing Tool Almost Everybody’s Missing - What Is HRV & Why Is It Necessary?

Do you feel like you have lost your balance in life? Is your hormone fluctuation disrupting your overall health and well-being?

 

This week on The Hormone Prescription Podcast, we are delighted to have Dr. Jay T. Wiles, an international speaker, scientist, clinician, and influencer on the subject of heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback and how it can help restore balance in your life.

 

Dr. Wiles will discuss why HRV is so important for midlife women and how it can be used as a powerful tool to create hormonal balance through breath-work exercises and other techniques. He'll also explain the effects of stress hormones on health performance and optimization, providing practical tips on how to manage stress naturally through diet, exercise, lifestyle changes, and more.

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

- What is heart rate variability and why it is important for midlife women

- How to measure your HRV and optimize its impact on health performance

- Practical tips to manage stress naturally through lifestyle changes, such as diet and exercise

- The connection between the human stress response and health performance/optimization

 

Don't miss this opportunity to join Dr. Jay T. Wiles in unlocking the essential hormone-balancing tool that almost everybody's missing! Tune in now for an insightful conversation about HRV biofeedback on The Hormone Prescription Podcast.

 

(00:00): "We suffer more often in imagination than in reality." - Epitectus And this affects your health and your hormones. Stay tuned to find out how.

 

(00:11): So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an ob gyn, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

 

(01:05): Hi everybody. Thanks so much for joining me for another episode of the Hormone Prescription Podcast with Dr. Kyrin. Today my guest is gonna help you get a concrete idea about what stress is doing to your body and how to know exactly what it's doing in an objective and quantified manner. He uses one of my favorite tools. Maybe you've heard me talk about H R V heart rate variability in a very unique way. So you're gonna wanna stay tuned and listen up. He really is a proponent of health and helping people optimize their health and has created some great tools that you can use. So I'll tell you a little bit about Dr. Jay Wiles and then we'll get started. He's an international speaker scientist, clinician, influencers, subject matter expert and authority on the interconnection between the human stress response and health performance optimization. Dr. Wiles is a clinical health and performance psychologist with board certification and heart rate variability biofeedback and peripheral biofeedback, and works as a leading consultant in psychophysiology to health influencers, professional athletes and teams, executives and high performers.

 

(02:20): He is the co-founder and chief scientific officer of Hanu Health and stay tuned to find out what HANU means. He has pioneered new and innovative means of using heart rate variability, H R V and respiratory training as both diagnostic indicators of the dynamic nature of the human stress response alongside therapeutic tools for regulating and conditioning this response for PCU performance. Dr. Wiles has an extensive history of working with top performing athletes in the PGA L P G A M mls, MLB, A T P and W T A. That's a lot. His consulting firm, thrive Wellness and Performance, has held contracts with leading biotechnology and health technology organizations where he has engaged in research development of therapeutics and development of behavioral retention programs. Dr. Wiles has operated as the co-host of the Ben Greenfield podcast since 2019 and host the Hanu Health Podcast. Welcome, Dr. Jay Wiles.

 

(03:22): Hey, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

 

(03:24): So I'm really excited to talk about this topic in the unique way that really you pose it because I think heart rate variability is very complex and people's eyes glaze over the minute you start trying to explain it, but really you come up from it from the perspective of stress resiliency, which everybody's interested in. So let's start out by talking about stress and you know, what it is in a, from a more scientific biologic perspective and why people should be important about its effects on their body. And then we can get into this unique way that you have for people to really monitor their stress so they can manage it better.

(04:11): Yeah I think first and foremost, I always like to dispel the myth that stress is the bad guy. I think so often we, you know, read in the tabloids or we hear on the news or we listen to podcasts that stress is bad. Like it, it's just inherently this bad thing. And I would actually argue the exact opposite. I would argue that stress is inherently good. Now it's the compounding nature of stress that can be problematic to people's overall health and their wellbeing. But stress in and of itself is simply a warning sign. What stress is is a mechanism of taxation. It is just saying that your resources are being taxed. That can be physiological resources, that can be psychological resources. It's re experiencing some level of taxation and there are warning signs that we receive from that taxation that hopefully should signify and kind of ho help us to hone in that we need to either do something effectively to help ourselves out of this situation or maybe just acknowledge that what's going on isn't going to inherently harm us and therefore be okay with it.

 

(05:17): So more of like a mindful approach to stress, but kind of from the get-go. Stress in and of itself is not bad. It is inherently good. So we should always come in with the mindset that it is not this kind of, you know, nefarious thing around the corner. So when we think about how stress affects us from different perspectives, it affects us physiologically, it affects us psychologically. If it ever affects us psychologically, it always affects us physiologically. And then vice versa as well. It's a bidirectional two-way street. They're very much interconnected. And again, what I always come down to is that it is not just the singular experience of stress, but it's the compounding of stress experience that is the thing that can be problematic for people. Has it stacks up without dealing with it or acknowledging it or learning how to regulate it. That's where we find more problems.

 

(06:08): Yeah, we need stress to live actually , right? Yep. We need the stress of gravity on our bodies to make our bones strong. We need a certain degree of stress. They call it eres, right? You have a very unique perspective. I think a lot of people think about stress and they don't. It's just this nebulous concept, oh, stress, I'm stressed, I have too much stress, I need to de-stress. And you know, people tell them to meditate and there's really not a lot of objective data on am I meditating properly? So then people don't do it because they don't get immediate feedback. And you really kind of took a tool that is near and dear to my heart and positioned it in a way and educate people in a way that helps them monitor their stress. So talk about the technology that you use and how it can help people quantify and monitor and manage their stress better.

 

(07:06): So you're right in the fact that a lot of people are able to tap in to understanding their stress subjectively if they actually take the time to check in subjectively. But unfortunately, not a lot of people do that. And so what we see in the psychological literature is that a lot of people just simply kind of move along throughout their day, kind of compressing and compartmentalizing stress until finally they either do one of two things, they explode or externalize or they implode and internalize. And this happens to just about everybody. So one of the things that we are trying to do that has been kind of in the works for many, many decades now, is how can we help people to increase their awareness to the effects of stress and also those things that are triggering stress objectively? Well, there are are invasive ways of doing it, right?

 

(07:55): We can look at cortisol, we can look at neurotransmitter production, we can do those things, but it's debatable on number one, like can we give an accurate interpretation of that data for stress in terms of psychological stress? We can in some sense, but in other sense it's a little bit difficult to determine what came first, the chicken or the egg. But also too there are non-invasive ways of doing it. And the single greatest way of doing that, single greatest non-invasive way of tracking changes that are occurring in the human stress response or changes in the nervous system would be looking at something called heart rate variability. So heart rate variability isn't a new biometric, it's one that's been around for quite some time. But what we're learning is more and more how to not just use it as a mechanism for measurement, but also how do we use it to improve outcomes both acutely and then in the long run.

 

(08:47): So heart rate variability kind of at its most simple form is looking at what are the dynamic changes that are occurring in the nervous system at any given moment. In other words, it is a metric that we can use to determine changes in people's stress response as people experience stress, we see changes in in heart rate variability as people experience relaxation. We see people's changes in heart rate variability. When I explain heart rate variability, it's kind of like you mentioned earlier, it is something that sometimes people, it will just kind of, people will gloss over, like it kind of goes over their head. Like it's, it's a very in-depth type of metric, right? So I like to break it down in its most simple kind of form. A lot of people intuitively understand heart rate, right? So if you, like almost every watch now where people are just used to heart rate monitoring, if you see that my heart rate was beating at a rate of 60 beats per minute, well that means that in a span of 67 seconds, on average, it was beating every single second.

 

(09:47): So there was one min, one second in between every successive heartbeat. Well, for heart rate, that would be true. That would be an average of one second in between heartbeats, which would make 60 beats per minute. Now is that what's actually occurring? And the answer is no. That would not be what is actually occurring. The heart is pacing itself every single one Second, if it were, then if we go back to this metric that is heart rate variability, that person would have zero variants. So zero variability between the difference in time between successive heartbeats. That means that the heart is pacing itself like a metronome, which is not a good thing. It's actually what we see happen actually prior and during when people are having heart attacks is their heart rate variability reduces to basically zero because the heart is pacing itself. That's a sign of a lack of adaptability.

 

(10:38): The nervous system is, is unable to adapt. But what heart rate variability is, is it's looking at the changes in time that are occurring between your heartbeats, between the space of tumble. We call time in between heartbeats. One of the best ways to explain this is that a healthy nervous system, one that is able to adapt to stress is one that is going to be highly variable. And that may sound weird because a lot of people may think, shouldn't my heart be stable? Well, heart rate stability is very different than heart rate variability stability, which is a bit of a mouthful, but let me explain. When a natural healthy individual who is, who is, let's say more or less free of stress or quite relaxed, we see this natural event occurring in their breathing patterns and how it relates to heart rate. So we know that there's a natural phenomenon, a, an arrhythmia that occurs when people are breathing as they inhale, heart rate speeds up and as they exhale heart rate significantly slows down.

 

(11:38): We call that respiratory sinus arrhythmia or rsa. And what we know is that when someone has a huge increase in heart rate when they inhale and a huge decrease in heart rate as they exhale, that increases heart rate variability and creates more of what we call a resonance within the cardiovascular system. A process of what we call increasing the sensitivity of something called the barrow reflex mechanism, which is our body's maintenance of a blood pressure. It's a system when those two are acting in resonance with one another or in accordance with one another, the person that's going to feel that sense of relief, that sense of relaxation. But as someone experiences more stress, we see those two things go out of phase with one another. The blood pressure regulating mechanism in somebody's breathing rate and the way that they're breathing as well, which can cause heart rate to go up and heart cause heart rate variability to go down.

 

(12:32): So heart rate variability again is something that we can look at as a number and help us to determine like what is going on within the state of that person's nervous system. Because as that number goes up, we know that their parasympathetic or relaxation break is engaging. And as that number goes down, we know that something is causing a withdrawal within the nervous system and there's natural occurrences, the up and down that happen throughout the day. And then there are things that can trigger it and can cause more of a significant result in our decrease in heart rate variability indicating that someone is experiencing stress. So that's a long-winded way of kind of explaining what heart rate variability is, but that's the primary metric we're using in the technology that my company hanu, H A N U, what we created, which is a way to measure that at all times, which is very different than what most wearables are doing now, which are really just kind of looking at it either overnight or it's a spot check like let's say in the morning or some other time during the day. We're looking at what are those subtle changes in heart rate variability throughout the day that would indicate that person may be experiencing something that is triggering a stress response and their nervous system is having to kick in the high gear to respond. And the whole goal is to be able to catch it early so that we can intervene with different types of therapeutics to teach people how to better self-regulate that response.

 

(13:49): Yeah, I think H R V is such tremendous technology. I know that they've done some studies on covid infection looking at the H R V or heart rate variability profiles of those people who have a higher fatality rate, more severe disease compared to those who don't. And it's, it's really striking. So I love H R V not only for looking at stress resiliency, but looking at overall state of health. I used to have this rather expensive machine in when I had a brick and mortar office where we would get H R V profile every which way but loose That would really give us data on the overall health of a human. So I, I think it's valuable. So if, if people listening, you're concerned about covid or getting any type of illness and you really wanna know how fit is my system to handle it, H R V is is also useful for that. And the better your H R V V, the better you're fair if you do get a viral infection or any other illness. So I think it's super important. How do you counsel people that they can use H R V for more than just checking their stress resiliency

 

(15:03): Mm-Hmm. ? Yeah, so the one big one would be with athletes who are looking to increase performance in recovery. So what we know, again, if we're looking at heart rate variability, it's a proxy for changes that are occurring in the nervous system. And so one thing that we know is that if someone is either overreaching or over-training as an athlete or if someone within the performance space we know that we can actually use it as a mechanism to determine how well are they recovering? Is their nervous system adapting to their training or are they overdoing it? There's too much taxation on the nervous system and therefore that's represented in a decrease in heart rate variability. And when we see that, especially when we see a trend of a downward or of downward heart rate variability, we can then intervene and say, okay, we need to either kind of pump the brakes here.

 

(15:48): We need to pull back maybe today's a little bit of a lighter day or maybe we should kind of recenter or refocus your training because you're overtaxing the nervous system. And for an athlete that can obviously lead to things like injury, it's gonna decrease overall performance because these individuals are gonna be kind of operating on a kind of a lower playing field if you will, because their nervous system isn't able to handle the amount of load. And so that's one way that we use it a fair amount is kind of looking at recovery for athletes. The other thing is just really kind of understanding what are those internal or external things that are causing changes in the nervous system overall. These can be things like looking at like what are the effects of eating and nutrition and what you're putting in your body and how does that impact the nervous system?

 

(16:35): We've seen really interesting manifestations within the context of those we worked with at Hanu when people were eating highly o like overly processed highly sugar-laden foods or they're eating highly inflammatory oils, fried foods and the effects of that has on the nervous system. So we can see kind of after they eat these foods, how long do we see a suppression and heart rate variability that is indicative of somebody who has basically inflamed themselves with the type of food that they're eating. So we've actually worked in conjunction with many functional medicine practitioners who are kind of utilizing more or less like a elimination diet and reintegration mm-hmm diet and kind of determining kind of the effects of certain foods even on these individuals nervous systems. So it can be a really great proxy. And then we also use it too to determine the effects of other things that people may be integrating into their health and wellness routine.

 

(17:26): So one big one right now is sauna use and there are some individuals who will respond really well from a nervous system recovery perspective to sauna. And there are some people who quite frankly are just overdoing it. And we'll see a kind of just this really tax nervous system that is elongated because they're either spending way too much time in the sauna, they're doing it too frequently. And the same thing with like cold plunging. So you can really use it to kind of test the efficacy of different things, but also look to see how much of an impact is that having on your nervous system. We've done it with supplementation, we've done it with a lot of other things and especially in conjunction with other biometrics, other blood work biometrics. This is one that's readily available to a lot of people and is non-invasive, especially when we think about not having to do blood work.

 

(18:13): And just kind of looking at kind of these things in conjunction. One more that we we've done, which is really interesting and we're looking at publishing studies in this domain is looking at the fluctuation of blood glucose and how that affects heart rate variability and nervous system taxation. And as you might expect though, there's not a lot of published literature. There is some but not a lot. As people have more glycemic variability, they have more suppression of autonomic nervous system functioning or a heightened stress response. So the glycemic rollercoaster leads to suppressed H R V and increases someone's stress, experience and stress in and of itself can cause the glycemic variability rollercoaster. And then in is manifested in a reduction in heart rate variability,

 

(18:54): Right? So translation, everybody glycemic just means your blood sugar. So he's just talking about the blood sugar rollercoaster that I always talk about that you're on when you're eating the SAD diet, the standard American diet with you know, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, soda, all those things, your blood sugar's going up and down. And I'd love to tell people, everybody thinks when you first tell 'em about heart rate variability, that it's a measure of your heart function. And what I tell them is no, it's measuring your nervous system function. Mm-Hmm . So that's how you have to think about it. So what does stress effect your nervous system? It's me. H R V measures your nervous system function. And so it's really, I love it cuz it's a way to get at the really core part of what determines your overall health, your sympathetic nervous system, parasympathetic.

 

(19:46): I think it's so important. I wanna just offer this quote that you shared with me before we started because I think it really gets to something that we're talking about related to stress. We suffer more in imagination than in reality. It's so true. Right? Right. Now how many people, you know, everybody listening, what are you worrying about right now? What's preoccupying your mind that you're obsessing about rolling over in your head 10 different ways, 10 different times? And how many of the things you've ever worried about like that have ever happened, right? Most of them don't ever happen. But what you don't realize is that what you're worrying about and suffering about in your imagination is affecting your health. So Dr. Jay, can you talk a little bit about that? Cuz I know there's somebody listening right now who's worrying and imagining negative outcomes. What is she doing to her heart rate variability and her overall health? That

 

(20:44): Quote is a great quote that comes from one of the stoic philosophers, Epictetus. And it's resonated because it's actually kind of one of the core foundational statements of C B T or cognitive behavioral therapy, which is a predominant therapy or psychotherapy modality. And one that I was heavily trained in kind of back in my my student days and and utilized quite frequently. And we build a lot, we're building a lot of the things into the application or platform that I teach or or am making. One of the things that I always come back to here is that we are really good about not being present. We're really good about focusing on those things that occurred to us in the past or trying to predict or forecast the things that are going to occur in the future. And what we know from hardcore research is that our predictive ability of what's gonna happen in the future is very, very poor.

 

(21:39): We're not very good at it. Well why is that? Well, we catastrophize, we concoct worse case scenarios. We generalize, we see things in black and white. A lot of those are the cognitive distortions that we can have in our head that cause us to have this narrative, this high level storytelling of what we believe what could happen. But it never comes to fruition or barely does. Or if the thing that we are predicting happens does happen, it's almost never as severe as what we anticipated. So in other words, we elongated our suffering. So even if we do suffer, we elongated it by worrying and causing all this immense amount of stress to build up. What does that do to the mind and body? Well it has extremely negative effects. First and foremost, we see that it causes significant disruption in hormonal functioning. I know that's a huge component obviously of this podcast, but we see huge dysregulation of what's called the H P A axis, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis.

 

(22:41): So huge dysregulation in our secretion of cortisol, huge secretion of adrenaline and neuro adrenaline or epinephrine and nor epinephrine. And when these things happen acutely or kind of just in real time, short term, they can be quite effective. They will save your life. But when they happen over and over and over again, or it's this constant kind of low state of stress or medium state of stress, not like the real height one that can be, or I should say is worse than kind of these just kind of acute stresses where we dump cortisol, we dump adrenaline, and then all of a sudden we clear it. The problem here is that more and more this happens, the more and more we see increased heart rate in which we know is really bad for our overall cardiovascular health. The high resting heart rate due to stress and the secretion of these hormones and neurotransmitters is not great on the body.

 

(23:30): Our heart only has a finite amount of times that it's gonna tick and we don't know how long that's gonna be. So any way that we can preserve those ticks of the heart the better. The other thing too is kind of the immense amount of dysregulation that can happen with things like blood pressure. We do know in fact that these things can significantly impact people who have hypertension or lead to hypertension certainly will exacerbate people who have, again, high blood pressure or hypertension. And we see this also too in just dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system. And this will manifest by dysregulation and heart rate variability. So low heart rate variability because someone is stuck in their head and level of thinking. And what I always say is this is outside of anything that you're putting into your body. So outside of, you know, any caloric intake or exercise or these other things that we know are going to influence the autonomic nervous system, this is simply just the brain just being stuck in our own thoughts and catastrophizing and concocting worst case scenarios.

 

(24:31): So we know that our imagination can be quite helpful, but it also can be to our detriment and can lead us down a very destructive path. Which is why I say like there's so many tools and techniques and great therapies that I recommend that kind of utilize this objective data and really is more about kind of turning in and changing your physiology. But another way of changing our physiology is changing our pattern of thinking. It's identifying what are kind of those distorted ways of thinking that really lead us down and spiral down into a really bad path. And how do we kind of modify those and work through those because we know that those can spiral down into anxiety, depression, other mental health related concerns, but can actually be caught early through things like monitoring, self-monitoring. So kind of monitoring thoughts and being aware of them, but also objective monitoring and looking at kind of the impact on the nervous system by looking at data. That was probably more of a long-winded way of answering that question, but, but thoughts matter. Inherently they matter.

 

(25:36): They do, they're so important. You know, what you think is affecting your health. I talk about that a lot. I know some people are probably wondering right now. Okay, we know Dr. Jay, you've got a company, we're certainly gonna talk about that. But what are all the different ways, we touched on it earlier of measuring H R V cuz some people listening probably are thinking, oh, I wanna do that. I hear how valuable it is. What are the different methods that we can use and how might somebody start to integrate this into their life?

 

(26:08): It's a a great question. You know what I, the wearable space or wearables have become ubiquitous. So I mean you can look on me right now. I have a Garmin, I have an Aura, I have a whoop and then my hanu is is on right now . So I have so many like different types of wearables and you know, one of it is because I'm just very interested in data and I don't expect people to be nearly as interested in data as I am. But I also use them and monitor them for, for different reasons depending on kind of like my goals and what I want to get out of them. The great thing about wearables being ubiquitous is that also heart rate variability being a metric that they collect that is also readily available in a lot of these different wearables. So, so all of these Garmin, you know, got or I got whoop and then obviously hannu, they all track heart rate variability.

 

(26:52): They do it very differently both in how they're measuring but also when they're measuring, which is really important And there's plenty of really amazing apps out there, you know, even outside of Annu as a platform, like we're a mental health platform. But you can also look at, you know, companies like Elite HR V and H R V for training which do H R V monitoring a little bit differently, but again, readily available and accessible to a bulk majority of people. So I always tell people know kind of why you're measuring and know what you're measuring. So the why can be a, a wider array of things that we just mentioned. Nervous system recovery for athletics and and performance. It can be for stress monitoring. So just kind of know your why and there's different platforms for kind of different reasons. And then also know kind of how it's measuring and what it's measuring.

 

(27:37): So for instance, at Hanu we use a continuous wearable E C G that's gonna give us high quality, accurate data under just about every single condition. And that is actually looking at the electrical output of the heart. So it's looking at the direct signal of the heart as opposed to some of the other wearables are using light sensing based technology, which is an indirect way of looking at the heart. So it's not picking up the electrical pulse, it's looking at a waveform that is basically a light that's shining through the skin, picking up, kind of changes in in blood flow kind of with within the capillaries. And then it's saying that must be a pulse so therefore there's a heartbeat. What makes that really great is that it's non-invasive and it's kind of just readily like you're able to put it on and go.

 

(28:22): Ours you're able to put it on and go as well, but you know, it's around kind of the, the, the chest or the sternum. So therefore it's a little bit more invasive than, you know, getting it on the wrist or the finger. The reason though that the wrist and the finger can be problematic is that when you're moving that provides a lot of what we call artifacts. So a lot of noise and it's hard sometimes to pull the signal. We can approximate heart rate pretty well, but heart rate variability can be very difficult. That's why most of these devices require you to be a very still when you're taking heart rate variability or it takes your heart rate variability when you are asleep, which is something like Aura does or a whoop does. They're looking at HR V when you're asleep, not when you're awake because when you're moving it's very hard to get that signal.

 

(29:02): Whereas with an EC G you can get that all the time. So these platforms are great because you know, you can look at recovery of the nervous system. You can look at kind of you know, is there kind of a downward trend of heart rate variability and that's kinda the information that you're gonna get. But if you're looking at kind of a mental health perspective throughout the day, then it might be great for you to have something that is continuously looking at changes in heart rate variability so that it can tell you kind of in the moment to provide that kind of trigger to you and say I see something kind of going on right now. It might be time for you to either take a break and we can either do some meditation, some biofeedback, some breath work, you know, whatever it may be. Like that's kind of more the intention of wearing something that is continuously monitoring those metrics. So it really just kind of depends on, you know, your goal. Like are you looking more just to kind of spot check for recovery, kind of check in with the nervous system or do you want to have something that's monitoring continuously so that you can adapt and make changes throughout the day or kinda learn to become more self-aware and learn how to better self-regulate.

 

(30:07): So as you're talking, I'm kind of getting that because I'm familiar with all these other devices. I haven't been thrilled with the utility, clinical utility for people of certain wearables. Like the Ring, I basically have people use something that they do an intensive evaluation, you know, periodically throughout the day in the morning and evening. But you know, as you're talking it's, it's sounding kind of like continuous glucose monitoring, which when I first heard about it I said, well that's great for diabetics. But then some of my colleagues started using it for their coaching clients who are more in the wellness space. And I thought wow that's, and this is kind of my reaction to a lot of the things that I've learned over my past 12 years into becoming fellowship trained in functional medicine. At first, like when I heard about IV therapy I s VI micronutrient therapy, I said, that's so extreme and so unnecessary.

 

(31:00): And then when I learned about it I was like, that is so necessary and so valuable. And I find that this is the journey that a lot of lay people have to go through as well. When they first hear about these things, they first hear about all the types of testing and evaluation and treatment that I use, their first thought is, that's so radical. I don't need that. You know, it's not offered at my H M O doctor's office. I don't need to pay for that. And then when they learn more, they listen to the podcast, they learn more, they say, oh my gosh, I have to have that. So as you're talking, cuz I know when I first heard about what your company offered, I thought I don't need to know that much about my H R V, but as you're talking I'm thinking it's just like continuous glucose monitoring.

 

(31:45): Yeah, it's continuous H R V monitoring and how valuable that could be. Like if I'm sitting here doing work like I've been doing for a few hours, I might not cognitively or consciously realize that my body might be going distress mode. It might take me much longer and it usually does cuz I'll work like crazy and then hours later I'll go like, oh my gosh, I'm so exhausted. Mm-Hmm . So anyway, I know I'm kind of on a monologue, but I love for my audience to really be taken through my thought process journey cuz I think it helps them become more educated about how to think about their own health. Right. So what are your thoughts?

 

(32:24): We make the comparison to continuous glucose monitoring all the time. What we know is that the rollercoaster that people can experience in terms of blood sugar fluctuation can cause a lot of deleterious effects. So the idea would be is to instill as much stability as possible without, you know, with the knowledge that like when you eat certain foods, like you're gonna have an increase in blood glucose, but it's the ups and downs and ups and downs and ups and downs and ups and downs all day long that happen. You know, the first thing you wake up and you eat that sugary pastry or donut that kind of kicks start the day that can cause those problems. Heart rate variability is very similar. So like within our application what we do is that when you first put it on, we're monitoring to figure out what is this person's baseline range, which in Layman's peak is kind of like what's their high average, what's their low average and then what's kind of right in the middle?

 

(33:17): Like where do they normally hang out in terms of their heart rate variability? And over time we're able to kind of refine that window, you know, based on context, situation, a lot of other things. And what we're really looking to do is say, okay, how often is their heart rate variability significantly changing and one way or another how much are were they dropping outside of their baseline range? Which is significant, which means that their nervous system is experiencing enough taxation for us to be alerted to it. Okay, interesting. What's going on here? And then also in the other direction, when are things kind of going up above their baseline, which may mean that they're really primed, they're in a very relaxed state, maybe they're meditating, maybe they're doing biofeedback. So we're able to kind of look at that throughout the day. So for our goal, just like what you mentioned earlier, is to be able to provide a signal, a level of awareness to people when it makes sense for us to provide that and say we see something going on right now and maybe you're writing those emails or whatever it may be.

 

(34:16): This is a huge one for me. I always like to tell this story. And a lot of people don't realize they're doing this until they realize they're, they're doing this mm-hmm. , which is something called email apnea. It's the holding of your breath when you're typing in email. And a lot of people do it and especially if you're writing a lot of emails, like you'll see your nervous system like it really taxed like your hurry very belly will drop because I mean, it's a stress response. You're holding your breath without being consciously aware of what's going on. And so a lot of people are like, oh my goodness, I didn't realize I was doing that until I started seeing, yeah, my heart rate variability was dropping. And then now that I'm kind of pacing my breathing and getting back into more of this relaxed parasympathetic state, like now I'm regulating myself better and I'm not seeing kind of these huge drops that we know that more and more that we have of them and the more and more severe they become, the worse it is for our overall psychological and physiological health.

 

(35:10): So our intention is to work very similar to a blood glucose monitor continuously saying I am monitoring kind of with my, you know, microscope what's going on within your nervous system. And when we see a significant event in your nervous system occur that we feel like, yep, that's enough to alert them, the user will get an alert and they will and will say, okay, it's time to check in. Number one, we want you to say what's going on here and is it affecting you subjectively mm-hmm . Because when you look back in retrospect, we want to be able to say, oh yeah, over the last week or last month, you know, the thing that was really getting me was my commute. Like I was out riding, you know, in the middle of New York City. I have to commute in the middle of that for an hour and my nervous system was wrecked for that entire hour every single day.

 

(35:54): Now there's the opportunity to do something about it, you're aware of it. Now let's learn how to self-regulate within that in that moment. Identifying the triggers is always important because it leads to us becoming more self-aware. But the kicker is learning how to regulate yourself in that moment and in time because we can have all this great data and information and, and it's most basic form. It's just data, it's just information. It's what about the step that comes after it? How are we gonna condition a new behavior that's different than what you might normally do because maybe your normal commute behavior is, you know, spurting out curse words, shooting the bird, like, you know, being aggressive. Don't do that. Yeah, don't do that. Maybe the new behavior is learning how to self-regulate in the moment so that you aren't feeling all that tension, all that emotional dysregulation that may manifest itself in you yelling at your family when you get home after your commute. Or you know, writing a nasty email when you get home because you're already pint up and frustrated and you're like, now time to release the anger. All of these things are connected to one another. And while we talk a lot about the data and the science, it all comes down to learning how to better regulate yourself. Learning how to better emotionally regulate yourself mm-hmm. so that it doesn't negatively impact all of these areas of life that maybe it is impacting now.

 

(37:06): Right. That's a great thing. Topic to touch on before we wrap up is what are some things that people can start to do just even today if they notice that they're in the stress state, where they certainly, if you're listening, you need to start checking your H R V for sure. But what are some things that people can do?

 

(37:26): Yeah, the great thing about this is that the most, the most efficacious or effective tools that we have that we've seen in the literature and the research literature are ones that are readily available and easily accessible to everybody at any given time. Regardless of whether or not you have a monitor or any ti or you're, you're looking at any different biometrics, which is a phenomenal thing that we have been built and designed to be able to regulate utilizing what's readily available. So I know that sounds cryptic, so let me just explain what I mean. , what I mean is, is in

 

(38:01): English, in

 

(38:02): English, right, in English breathing, breathing is the single greatest way to send a different signal to the nervous system. If you want to relax in the moment and train your nervous system to relax in the moment, learning how to change the mechanics of your breathing change and then changing the cadence or the speed of breathing are the two greatest things that you can do. A lot of times when people are stressed, we breathe what's called thoracically or in other words from the chest. It's a shallow, inefficient way of breathing, but we do so. And if we do it fast enough, we call that hyperventilation, which happens if somebody's having a panic attack. And what we see is people who have a panic attack, heart rate flies up the roof, the heart rate variability sinks like a rock. So what we can do in the moment though, is just simply change two things.

 

(38:52): One is the mechanics, moving it from the chest down to the belly, engaging what's called your diaphragm, which means pushing the diaphragm towards the pelvic floor, allowing the stomach almost to balloon of the lungs to expand breathing what we call low, slow and deep, not taking in as much air as you can that can be problematic, but breathing low, slow and then deep into the lungs. That can excite our vagus nerve increase what I'd mentioned earlier, what was called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, which is the speeding and the slowing of the heart and then work on exhaling slowly and then also doing it nasally from the nose. A lot of people when they get stressed, they breathe from their mouth. So breathing from the nose and changing the mechanics. And then the second component, what I mentioned was cadence. The simple way to do this is just inhale to account of four and exhale to count of six.

 

(39:43): If you do that, that will put you at a pace of six breaths per minute, which we know is a pretty good sweet spot for a lot of people. And you can make it also too, just an even breath, five seconds in, five seconds out. But breathing is single-handedly the best way of doing this. And again, readily available to you at any given moment in time. No one has to know you're doing it, which is the beauty of it. , you know, we just add the data component in terms of are are my company hanu? Because it helps to condition the behavior. When you can see your nervous system making significant change, you want to come back to it cuz you're like, oh, it's not just subjectively I feel better, which is good. That's the key. We want you to feel better like that is number one.

 

(40:21): But if you want to condition a behavior, seeing those data change, well that just reinforces that this right here is working. Like I see change in my nervous system, it's responding, it's adapting as we think it should. So breathing as key point number one. Number two thing that I, that I recommend, which is also readily available to us, would be kind of the mental battle aspect. And the biggest tool that I use is a tool in C B T called cognitive distancing. A lot of times when we're in the moment and we're feeling stressed, it is very easy to get wrapped up into the mind. I think that the first thing you should do is try to send a different signal physiologically. But the next thing is also to take a different approach psychologically or what we call cognitively. The one thing that we can so easily do is get wrapped up in that cognitive spiral that we were talking about earlier.

 

(41:13): However, a great tool that a lot of people have been have found to be effective is to remove yourself from your cognition with something called cognitive distancing. And what this strategy looks like is basically taking like an outsider view of what is going on that is purely objective, viewing things as neither good nor bad, almost just like you're a scientist and analyzing things just as what they are. So it's taking yourself away from kind of all of the impact and emotional thinking that happens and saying, I'm just gonna take an outside's view at what I'm thinking and just kind of look at it, be mindful of it. What that distancing does is it beautifully allows us to not be so wrapped up in all of the emotional characteristics that are involved and simply just see it for what it is. And so many people say that when they impact their physiology and when when they engage in this cognitive distancing strategy, people just feel more relaxed because they feel more in control.

 

(42:14): The thing that can so dysregulate people is when they feel like they are out of control or they have no impact on their emotional regulation or experience and when that occurs then we see the emotions start to ramp up and they lead to more negative behaviors. But if we can change the physiology with the body, so change the body with the body and then move to cha helping to rework our thinking, those two combinations of therapeutics have just been identified to be extremely effective in helping people to just calm down in the moment which is needed for everybody. Yes.

 

(42:50): Okay, great. Those are some great tips. I love breath work, talk about it all the time. And also changing your thoughts cuz that really does program your body's health. And if you haven't heard me talk about that, you need to listen to more of my podcasts cuz I talk about it all the time. Dr. Jay, this has been some great information. I love the conversation about one of my favorite tools, heart rate variability, where can people find out more about you? And I know that you have a special offer if they do wanna check out Hanu for them. So tell them about that and we'll have the information in the show note.

 

(43:26): Yeah, thanks for allowing me to do that. So if you just go head on over to hanu Health, h A N U and Hawaiian Hanu is Hawaiian for breath, which is our main strategy that we use for self-regulation. So hanu health.com if you use the code hbh 20, that's Hbh 20, that'll get you 20% off the platform. You know, feel free to kind of look at over, we have a lot of education and articles and videos and our own podcasts, the H new Health podcast. So we try to provide as much information out there as we can. Like, you know, the one thing that we realize is that it's dense, like heart rate variability, you know, psychophysiology, it's dense and people already probably listen to this podcast and they're like, yeah, that, that sounds like it's a in-depth thing. The great thing though is that it's utility. Once you kind of understand just the basic platform, it's utility is just so incredibly vast and wide and something that again, I mean I might sound like the fox guarding the hidden house, but something that everybody should be checking. And they will find such improvements in overall health outcomes if they understand what they're looking at and then understand kind of how to utilize that metric in these, in these training therapeutics.

 

(44:33): Mm-Hmm. . Yeah, and I just want everyone to know, I always try and tie things back to hormones cuz it is the Hormone Prescription podcast that improving your H R V will improve your hormone profile. Mm-Hmm. . So they are intimately an intricately related and you improve one, you improve the other vice versa. So I wanna leave you guys with another quote that Dr. Jay shared with me before we started because I think it's really sobering and hopefully will help you focus your mind for the rest of the day and get out away from all that extraneous stuff, the things you're imagining in the future that could be negative, that could impact you negatively and the things you're ruminating on from the past that you have no power over. And here's his quote, you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do, what you say, and what you think. Dr. Jay, anything you'd like to share about that?

 

(45:31): Yeah, if anybody has heard the, the two quotes that I mentioned there, they'll know that these are both stoic quotes. Epictetus first and that was Marcus Aurelius. And I love that one because it hones in on the shortness of life. Not something that we should fear death, but something that we should use as a motivator is that the time here is very short. And so if we are going to spend so much of that time allowing anxiety to rule us, allowing it to kind of dictate the things that we do in life, how we act, who we associate with, then we're gonna leave life unfortunately with some regrets and nobody wants that. And so knowing that life is short, we should actually use that as a motivation to go out there and just live life and enjoy it and be happy and be healthy and just follow that path. And I think it's really great wisdom.

 

(46:20): Yes, go live your life, be happy, joyous free. Thanks so much for joining me for another episode of the Hormone Prescription Podcast. Thank you Dr. Jay for joining us. Hopefully you've learned something today that you can put into practice. Don't just be entertained and educated, but take action. Maybe just do some deep different breathing like Dr. Jay talked about. That's something simple that you can do right now. Thanks so much for joining me and I'll see you next week on another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kirin. Until then, peace, love, and hormones y'all.

 

(46:57): Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

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Stop Blaming Aging For Your Slow Metabolism

How is aging affecting your metabolism? Are you looking for a way to turn back the clock and make it work like it did when you were younger? This week's episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast is all about how to stop blaming aging for a slow metabolism, featuring special guest Kate Deering.

 

Kate has been helping women achieve optimal health and wellness for 25 years with her holistic approach that includes diet, stress management, exercise, posture, sleep, digestion, hormones, mindset, and lifestyle. And she knows what she speaks - she holds certifications as a CHEK Exercise & Holistic Lifestyle Coach, Olympic Lifting Coach, and a Certified Nutritional Consultant. Not only that but she also has a degree in psychology and exercise physiology!

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

- How to recognize aging's impact on your metabolism

- Tips on how to keep your metabolism running efficiently as you age

- What dietary changes can help boost a slow metabolism

- The link between hormones and weight management

- Ways to develop an exercise plan that’s appropriate for your age and goals

- Plus, much more!

 

Join us this week for an informative discussion about how to stop blaming aging for your slow metabolism with special guest Kate Deering. You don't want to miss this one! Tune in now.

 

(00:00): You have to get healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to get healthy. Dr. Schwartz fame, stop blaming aging for your slow metabolism. In this episode, I'm gonna tell you why.

 

(00:14): So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an ob gyn, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

 

(01:07): Hi everybody and welcome back to another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. I hope you're having a wonderful holiday season. Thanks so much for joining me today. My guest today has lots of certifications. She's been dedicated to helping women improve their metabolism, their health and fitness for over 25 years. She's really smart and goes really deep into the science. So I think you're gonna like her. She's gonna help you understand a lot of things. When people hear that I lost over a hundred pounds, they assume that I did it by cutting calories and exercising. And of course I didn't do that at all. I did what we're gonna talk about today to improve my metabolism. I could have just sat there and blamed it on my age, but I didn't. I found out the truth about what truly drove my metabolism and my weight gain, including hormone balance, which a lot of you have heard me talk about.

 

(02:03): So we're gonna dive deep into that topic today and really help you get some answers on why you need to stop blaming your age for your slow metabolism and what you need to do to get your metabolism boosted. And why eating more and not less is key and why eating more carbs is part of the answer. I know you're surprised to hear that we're gonna get into it. So Kate Deering is my guest today. She holds certifications as a check exercise and holistic lifestyle coach, Olympic lifting coach Z health practitioner and certified nutritional consultant. She's worked for 25 years helping women achieve optimal health and wellness, using an holistic approach, incorporating diet, stress management, exercise, posture, sleep, digestion, hormones, mindset and lifestyle. She also has a degree in psychology and exercise physiology. So she's very well-rounded and has a a lot of breadth as well as depth that she's gonna deliver to you today. And I hope you'll help me welcome Kate to the podcast.

 

(03:07): I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. So

 

(03:09): I always like to start with people talking about why they do what they do and you have some unique certifications and experience. You've been in the health and fitness industry for over 25 years and I'm wondering what drew you to get the certifications and trainings that you've acquired and what makes you so passionate about helping women at midlife boost their metabolism.

 

(03:35): ? Well, it's a great question and I, I think the driver for most of us is always, we have our own experience that leads us down a path that we try to look at all the, the, the information that is readily available to us. Maybe it's through the medical space or maybe it's just what nutrition is offered in the, the standard American diet. And you find that that isn't working for you. And so you start going down different paths. And so for me, yes, I've been in this space for 25 years. I've always had an interest in people. I actually have degrees in psychology and exercise physiology and how to improve either performance and your experience here on life and so forth. And I've certainly had plenty of experiences in my life where I thought I was doing the healthiest things for myself because it's kind of what I was taught, especially in down the path of, you know, let's get fit and healthy.

 

(04:28): So maybe go down the eat less, work out more. And did that kind of approach a good bit to my twenties and thirties and then all of a sudden that when I was about to hit 40, it's didn't seem to be working. And the the tighter and more stricter I became, the more walls I seemed to be hitting. And you know, I kind of was thinking, well that must be just what happens in your forties. That's what everyone keeps saying. You hit this wall. And then I started to learn about metabolic health on a a different spectrum and looking through health with a different lens. And until we kind of change the lens of how we're seeing things, we're gonna keep going down the path I believe. So we have to kind of take a different perspective. And the perspective I learned was based on the work of Dr.

 

(05:11): Broda Barnes and Dr. Ray Pete. And it's essentially you're defining health as how well your metabolic rate is working. And if we understand that metabolism is basically the sum of all chemical process in your body or, and or how well your body is taking food and producing energy. And so how can we measure that is the question. And the way I would measure it is your heat production because heat would be a product of how well your body's producing energy, your temperature. So temperature and pulse would be ways to monitor how well your metabolism is working. And then if we think about it as it's the sum of every metabolic process, well then that would be how well you are digesting. How's your cycle? Do you have PMs or do you have a lot of menopausal issues? If you're at that stage in your life, how are you sleeping?

 

(05:58): How's your skin and hair? We know that when you are producing energy at a good rate and you're able to use food and then make energy for yourself, you'll have plenty to run your body optimally. If something starts to interfere with that, then you're gonna start to become compromised. And then what you tend to see is the opposite. Bad digestion, a lot of PMs issues, you're cold all the time. You might have a really low pulse, you have a lot of sleep issues, brain fog, all of those things start to occur. I stop looking at each symptom independently and because again, when we, when we look at how metabolism works, it kind of is the sum of all those products. So from my perspective, if we, if I could find a way to increase the body's ability to turn fuel food into fuel and produce better energy or more energy for your system, then ultimately what happens is your body just starts to function better without addressing each symptom independently. Mm-Hmm . And so if you can basically like say what, what does that all look like? And so there are certainly a series of things that you can do to help that happen. And it's not just kind of do this or that. It's always finding where the invi the individual at is at the process and working with them within that space and then slowly trying things to again help their body produce energy better or there's more accessible for them in their body and their metabolic health so that things just start working better for themselves.

 

(07:24): Okay. So let's start a l with a little basic, cuz I know some people are pretty advanced to listen to the podcast. They're, they, they're all about knowing about their metabolism. But what is your metabolism and why is this an issue as people age? I love how you say stop blaming aging for your slow metabolism, but let's break it down. What is your metabolism to begin with and why is it a problem for women as they age?

 

(07:49): Yeah, that's a great question and you can kind of define it a few different ways. One would be, like I said, it's the sum of every metabolic process in your body. So everything your body is doing takes energy. And so metabolism is essentially how your body turns food into fuel. And it essentially goes through a process. So we can look at it down at the cell level cuz all your cells are basically producing energy in their mitochondria primarily so that, that you have energy to do what you need to do, but you also need energy to run everything in your body. In fact, most of the energy that your body produces is used to run your body. We refer that as the basal metabolic rate. So 60 to 70% of the energy you produce is just utilized to do your systems, meaning digest food to keep your muscle and your, your your, your bones and have your nervous system working and all these things require fuel.

 

(08:43): And if at some point you start to run at a deficit, then your body always goes through this adaptation and will actually slow down metabolic function. And we see this when people diet and if they, they diet long enough, what normally happens, well you don't sleep as well, you're not digesting as well. You might start to feel tired or fatigued or you might start to feel wired because now your body's trying to produce energy via the stress response. And then you start to get a little bit jittery or it might even feel good initially because the stress hormones can feel good initially. So we start to see these responses your body's giving you. But if you're all of a sudden like going into your forties and fifties and saying, I still wanna lose weight, but yet you have a series of symptoms occurring, right? Let's just say you have horrible periods or you have all these sleep issues and you're unable to lose weight or you can't hold muscle tissue or you're getting all these brain fog or other issues, then we've gotta work on those symptoms first.

 

(09:44): Because what I know is that your body isn't providing you enough energy to run your basic functions because either you're too stressed out, you're, you're using it too other ways or it's gone through too many adaptations to slow it down. Cause we always have to remember the number one thing our body is trying to do is keep us alive. It isn't trying to procreate, it isn't trying to really digest your food, it's not trying to do any of those things. It's trying to keep you alive. So it's always in this energy preservation space where if you don't give it enough, it's going to adapt to that. And if you do it long enough, you'll have symptoms and then it'll look like illness and disease and so forth and so on. And so when I look at it say look, we can say well that just happens with age.

 

(10:26): And I say, well usually what I see is it just happens more time on this planet to stress your system out . And so, and that will come with age, but if we actually treat our body differently and actually provide it with enough fuel, minerals, nutrients, space and time to heal, then we can actually reverse that process and allow the system to do what it needs to do. And so we don't have to use the age factor to say, well this and, and there's just succumb to this is gonna happen cuz I'm getting older. We should know that there are things you can do to kind of fix that or reverse that so that you don't have to say that, that it is a product age. It's just a product of how you're treating your body.

 

(11:04): Right. I love that. It's so true. It's not age and and you know, it's just coincidental that as we get older, but we're also spending more time on the planet getting our body stressed out and yeah really that is the key factor. It doesn't have anything to do with our age. And you know, if you look around, there are plenty of women who are older who don't have metabolism problems, don't have weight problems, don't have health problems. And so what's the difference is that they're probably managing the various stressors that are insulting their body as they age. You know, another, could you share this quote with me before we started from Dr. Schwartz being about you have to get healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to get healthy. And really that's how I lost over a hundred pounds. People ask me all the time, well how did you do that?

 

(11:51): Did you starve yourself? Did you, you exercise like crazy? No, I figured out the secrets to hormonal balance, detoxification, mitochondrial function, all the things that you and I both teach about. And then when I fixed that, the weight just came off. So how do you get people to shift their mindset? Women over 40, 50, 60 who are really, I mean we've had drilled into us from the time I was a little kid, I remember having drilled into me, it's less calories and more calories out, right? Cut your calories in, expend your calories. That's how you lose weight. And how do you help people to understand that that's, it's not a numbers game, it's not a math problem.

 

(12:34): That is a good question and it is a complete mind shift. And even for me it took a lot of unlearning cuz I was brought up in that space and that's, it was dug into me and I and it works until it doesn't work,

 

(12:46): Right

 

(12:47): . And that's the problem and that's, and when it does work, you know you can have it work pretty quickly, right? It's also a space, if you just grind it out and you, you know, you're like balls of the walls, you can have it happen but it's not sustainable over the long haul and then, then it's just, and so you're gonna get into trouble eventually and it doesn't work because you're, like I said, your body will go through adaptations and we now know that like exercise is actually not a great, certainly cardiovascular exercise is a great long-term approach for long-term weight loss. Because when you start putting, cuz exercise is a stress on your system, right? You're stressing your system to use fuel faster and if the fuel isn't available, then yes, it'll try to use what's on you, which is body fat. But it also will use a percentage of muscle tissue, connective tissue because those are also regulators.

 

(13:38): You need to regulate your blood sugar. And so when all those things happen, anytime we put a stress on our system, our body says, hey, at this point in time she has more demands than we have coming in. So okay, we're gonna use some of our other resources, however we're going to slow other things down to adapt to this stressor because again, number one thing your body wants to do is keep you alive and it doesn't want you to burn off all your muscle tissue to try to regulate blood sugar so that you can keep going. So it's always adapting to this response. And in your twenties it kind of, you do it and it can fix itself. It kind of goes okay, you know, she's lost some weight and we, we will kind of try to autoregulate a little bit, maybe a downregulated metabolic rate just a little bit.

 

(14:22): But then you do it again and again and again and by the time you're in your thirties and forties and you've hit that system, you know, 30 or 40 times it is now downregulated 20 30%. And now it's just so much harder for your system to push through that cycle. And usually at the same time now you have a bunch of symptoms, right? You have, you've had bad periods for 10 or 20 years or now you're having menopausal symptoms or perimenopausal symptoms and they are horrible and that's not normal, I guess it is, is normal cause a lot of people have it, but it doesn't have to be normal. You don't have to go through those if the body is in a better space. And for me I try to address it and get 'em to shift because I want 'em to look at the definition of health differently.

 

(15:05): Look, health is not just how thin you are and how good you look in, you know, your swimsuit health is a product of, again, it what is your temperature and pulse. If you're 96 degrees and a lot of women are, then that's a problem. You're not producing a lot of heat and that's a factor of metabolic health. So I look at, are you running around 97.8 to 98.6 degrees through the day? You know, is your pulse 40 or is it between 75 and 90 beats? And you know, believe it or not, it's better to have a pulse a little bit higher even though your doctor, you know that when you're running your marathons it's, it's down at 50. But that is an adaptation that occurs to kind of keep up with that activity. And then we wanna look at your digestion again, how your menstrual cycle, how's your libido, what are all these factors doing and what do they need to function?

 

(15:54): And they need energy, right? You cannot run on thin air. And so, and you also need a lot of nutrition and if you're eating crappy foods and we're not enough, we are going to see dysfunction at some point in time. It's just, it's going to happen. And if you just keep thinking, well I still need to work out more and exercise, it's just a matter of willpower, you are gonna make yourself absolutely crazy and, and then you feel horrible and then your whole life kind of starts to crumble down because you don't have the fuel to keep up with it. And so you know, the next thing you know you're going to your doctor and he is putting you on antidepressants and anxieties, sleep medications, everything. And you know, to kind of alleviate some of these symptoms when in fact look we have to address the underlying problem, which from my perspective is you have core cellular function, you're noting energy. Well wherever that is, align the system and that's what we need to improve.

 

(16:46): Yeah, and food plays a huge role in this. What you are feeding yourself and this whole concept of calorie restriction and a lot of diets are poor quality calories. I know you have a free guide that you're gonna offer everyone, we're gonna have the link in the show notes, but you also cover your top 13 metabolic foods in there. Could you just mention maybe three of your favorites that people might consider adding to their diet? That would be something to help with their me metabolic rate.

 

(17:15): Yes. And again, we, from my perspective, I come from the context of always improving cellular function. Now I always, I do have foods I suggest, but all those foods might not work for everybody depending on where they are in their healing cycle. And so, mm-hmm , I am a huge proponent of carbohydrates but the right carbohydrates because carbohydrates are your best source of energy to, for yourself, your cells prefer carbohydrates to run. Now a lot of people, especially women in their forties and fifties say, I eat carbs and I just blow up and then I don't do well with 'em so forth and so on. But if that's the case, then we have to find out, well what is going on in your system, right? Why are you not using those properly and can that be addressed and can that be fixed? Because if your body's utilizing other resources, fats or proteins as fuel, which it can, your body's awesome and it can use other resources, in my opinion, it's not the ideal source of fuel.

 

(18:12): Your body's actually function best utilizing carbohydrates. And so we wanna get the body to use those primarily. And the ones I like are more like fruits and roots, high nutrient rich carbohydrates that your body can help assimilate and there's tons of minerals and nutrition from 'em. And so I like actually a lot of simple carbohydrates cuz it's easier for your body to break these down. I definitely come from a space where we wanna give your body foods that are not super challenging to break down because what I see when someone's in dysfunction, 95% of those people have poor GI function. If you have poor GI function, again, it's another system of your body that requires energy to function. If that's not working and we give it really, really hard to digest foods, you're going to have problems. They're not gonna break 'em down properly, they're not gonna get what they need. Maybe they're filled with nutrition, but if your body doesn't have the fuel to break that system down or that food down, then you're just gonna poop it out. So I love fruits and roots, you know, like potatoes. Those are great sources of energy in my opinion. Just on the caveat. Okay. I never, okay,

 

(19:17): , hold on, I'm gonna, you're slaying a few sacred cows here so let's, I wanna dig into this a little deeper cuz some people are like, what? Eat carbs and lose weight. Wait, I, I like what she's saying but, so you're saying eat fruits and roots and fruits and roots have been fairly vilified Yep. By most people. And then you're talking about things that are easy to digest versus hard to digest. So can you break be more specific? What are you saying is hard to digest that people can't get nutrients out of? And what are you saying is easy and then also break down, why are you a proponent of fruits and roots for helping metabolic rate?

 

(19:55): Yeah. Oh that's a good question. Again, if we come from a place of h how, when you look at optimal metabolism, the fuel source that we are using is carbohydrates. Carbohydrates will run through the system much quicker than fats and to be utilized as energy. Yes, fats will contain more energy, but when carbs are being used, they actually go through the system in a quicker space. And so we want energy that's being used quickly. And so carbs are gonna be your most, primarily the best source of fuel. Now as you age, the body can have issues digesting carbohydrates and it's normally because that system is in a chronic stress state and they're starting to run other systems that are kind of regulating them at that time. But if we can get 'em out of the stress state and get them to utilizing carbohydrates better, then we'll bring those stress hormones down and their body will start to auto-regulate.

 

(20:45): I like fruits and roots because they're, they're high nutrient rich and if they're prepared properly, they don't tax your GI system as much as other foods like breads or grains or pastas or even legumes. Nuts and seeds of course. And even a lot of raw green vegetables, which I know is gonna be very controversial. But again, if you eat a raw salad which doesn't have a lot of fuel in it, it might have a lot of nutrition, but our body's gonna have a challenging time breaking that food down. And because I'm trying to give it fuel to run and I know when your body is under a lot of chronic stress, the GI system is the one of the systems that gets really affected. In fact, the GI system works best in that parasympathetic state. And if somebody's in a stressed sympathetic state all the time, the GI system just doesn't work properly.

 

(21:37): And so if I give it a ton of food and, and I try to push it through the GI and it's hard to digest, guess what? You're gonna see that food in your stool the next day. We're not gonna be able to break it down . And so, so true really irritating to the GI system and we need to give it foods that are not gonna be irritating. So again, I'm certainly not suggesting to everybody go out and they eat a huge bowl of potatoes or fruit by itself. Those foods are not, they shouldn't be consumed. I always balance all my, my carbohydrates with protein and some fat so that it does help go into the system a little bit slower and it can help regulate your blood sugar a little bit better. But we still don't want a tax, right? Because your GI system is the entry way for all your nutrition and energy.

 

(22:26): And if it's in dysfunction, if you're having bloating and, and SIBO and leaky gut and all of these things that are maybe not allowing your body to digest food properly, then even if you're eating the best of diets and the most nutritious of diets, if you can't break that food down, who cares? Doesn't matter. It's just gonna be pooped out, it's gonna irritate your gi, it's gonna make you constipated, whatever, doesn't matter. And so, but if we actually give it some stuff that's easier, then all of a sudden your body's okay, we don't have to work so hard so we can kind of operate, you know, 70% cuz you're not really taxing us so much and we'll actually give you the fuel that you need so that your body can have fuel to run. It is a mind shift, right? Because you have to know, you have to increase your body's ability to utilize energy and that means you've gotta teach it to utilize more calories.

 

(23:18): You've gotta teach it to actually know that calories are available to coming in. Cuz if not, it always is going to adapt to, to it. Your body does not care if you have an extra a hundred pounds on you and it's like, oh look I got a ton of extra weight on me. We'll just use that. It doesn't work that way. Your body will still adapt to a slow metabolism with extra weight on you. And so you have to increase overall basal metabolic rate so it, it starts utilizing that energy better. If not, you're gonna be eating less and less and less and feeling crappier and crappier and crappier and, and, and you can't live that that, right? As soon as something comes or happens, you just binge and eat everything so your body doesn't go into, you know, complete craziness, right? And then you go, you yo-yo yourself all the way, you know, into gaining another 20, 30 pound you're miserable.

 

(24:06): I remember seeing the study on the biggest loser contestants Yep. Right? Showing that how their metabolic rate slowed when they lost the weight on the show, but then it went even lower after and invariably they all gained the weight back within a couple of years. And I don't know what it's gonna take for us women to really get that out of, out of our heads about the, the calories and minus calories out myth. But I, I think you, you are really making some great points. I do wanna jump to another topic cuz you have such varied experience and certification and just the way you envision a person's health. You talk about posture in addition to wellbeing being about diet, stress, exercise, sleep, digestion, hormones, mindset, lifestyle. You also mentioned posture. Can you talk a little bit about that? Cuz that's not something that most people I think are aware affects their metabolism?

 

(25:03): Well I think we can just go into essential structure and again, if you're somebody that is hunched over and you can just see this from kind of today's society and everybody's looking at their phone or they're on their computer, right? So they're all just kind of hunched over and kind of in this kind of kyphotic state all day long. Well again, how does our GI system work and how does all of our systems work when we're kind of just compressing it all day long? So, you know, I always, I I get people in front of me and they, they're coming in and they're hunched over head forward. They got kind of forward head posture, shoulders are rolled, hips are starting to get tucked and I show them this posture a little bit exaggerated. I'm like, well this is your future. This is how you're going to function.

 

(25:46): And again, when our body starts to kind of maintain these structures and aren't ideal for it, the brain gets quite used to that and then it starts to go, well we don't actually need to stand up. So it starts to lose function and it starts to just stay. And, and I don't know if you've ever seen like people that aren't extreme, right? They're like completely leaned over and they can't like even stand up any longer and you're like, how does that even happen? Well it doesn't happen in a month or a year, it happens over decades in time without correction. But what I can say to you is if you were in the compromised position all day and you're leaned over and you're leaned over, that is absolutely gonna affect how well your GI system is functioning. And again, if we know that, that the GI is the entryway from everything from an outside world into your body and that's being compressed and compromised, then we can suspect that somewhere along the lines your body's gonna have some issues with digestion somewhere. Because in that compromise and compressed position. So obviously it's one of, I think many pieces of the puzzle to try to get somebody healthier. Certainly the food and everything else is a, a big part, but working on your backside and maintaining and learning how to sit upright and stand upright and look forward and you know, not looking to your phone all the time is certainly yeah. A big part of trying to improve your

 

(27:05): Health. Yeah, you know, this first came to my attention really, there was this brilliant chiropractor in Atlanta when I was working there and you know, he was talking about the structural integrity and how it puts when you don't have it, lack of structural integrity puts torque on the nerves, particularly like you say the digestive system, the autonomic nerve parasympathetic nervous system and then they stop functioning optimally and it affects digestion and hormone balance and everything else. But I just wanted to highlight that for everyone because you know, I think everything relates to hormones cause it does and posture relates to hormones, relates to metabolism along with what you're eating and your exercise. I think we're really trained to believe that it's, again, only about diet and exercise. I think most people are getting the stress piece. What are some of your top tips for women over 40 to really get a reign on how stress is affecting their health or mitigate the effects?

 

(28:03): Well I think a good thing to monitor is certainly your sleep. If you're finding that you are not sleeping well, then that's a sign that your system is under fueled to me. I mean, sleep is a, a high metabolic function. Like, you know, young children think about what young children know, they can sleep 10 to 12, 12 hours, they can sleep anywhere and they just fall asleep in our deep sleep . And so it's a high metabolic function and as we age, obviously sleeps becomes more challenging and we don't sleep as deep and we don't sleep as long when you wake up and so forth. So how well your sleeping is certainly a sign that if you're sleeping poorly, that things aren't going in the right direction. Some easy tips are like go out and get morning sun. Your body likes the sun, your circadian rhythm likes the sun.

 

(28:46): So getting sun into your eyes in the morning or at least getting out through the day and getting sun on you is a, a good way for your body to sleep better. Certainly making sure you're eating enough through the day and making sure you're eating balanced meals through the day. One of the things I like to address with people is regulating their blood sugar. If your blood sugar is all over the place, it's going to elicit stress responses all through the day because your blood sugar is what basically keeps you alive. If, if you, there's not enough fuel in there and all of a sudden there isn't any, you die. So there's a, you know, a regulatory system if you're starting, if your blood sugar gets too low, if you start to go hypoglycemic, your body's gonna send out a stress response. Your stress hormones, adrenaline, cortisol, glucagon are all gonna elevate to try and either break down tissue or release storaged sugar to regulate you.

 

(29:34): And if that's happening all day long because you're not eating or you are eating the wrong foods, then you're keeping yourself in the stress response all day. And so we have to get yourself and that's not gonna make you feel relaxed and it's certainly not gonna make you sleep. Well, making sure, and a great way to do that is, you know, having balanced meals throughout the day. So whether you're eating three meals a day or six meals a day, find a frequency of meals, it feels good to you. If you're eating a meal and you're like, I'm gonna eat three, but you're hungry after two or three hours and you probably need a snack in between your meals, we want you to feel satiated during the day. We, I don't want you to feel hungry, especially if you're trying to fix things. And what we have to understand is your body actually needs to heal and it needs to fix metabolic functions then that's a different space than you trying to lose weight in my opinion.

 

(30:27): Sometimes you have to kind of fix the foundation first to get the body like so, so the body can lose weight a little bit healthily versus just trying to stress the weight off of you, which most of us have been doing most of our lives. So it's kind of, you know, people refer to it as reverse dieting where you start to slowly eat more food so your body get used to having more fu fuel available to you. I just say it's improving metabolic function cuz we monitor your metabolic processes to see how well you're improving. There's a lot of different things. So again, I would say getting light, eating balanced meals throughout the day is important. And then of course, adding some of the foods, the, I would suggest, and again, those could be fruits and roots and maybe avoiding some of these hard to digest foods like nuts scenes, legumes and raw feed greens, , which I knew will be controversial. And again, I'm not saying these are bad foods, I'm just saying if you have some GI dysfunction and you need improve metabolic function, they might be better to limit them or even avoid them for a while while you improve those things and then you can slowly add them back in mm-hmm. into something you wanna do.

 

(31:32): Okay. Those are great tips. You mentioned something in there, reverse dieting, but I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that. Could you clarify?

 

(31:39): Reverse dieting is a term that's being kind of utilized. It seems right now where it's dieting as we think of it's eating less and, you know, and slowly eating less to lose body fat. Reverse dieting is actually teaching your body to eat more and so that your body adapts to a space where now it's getting more comfortable eating, you know, 2000 calories versus the 1200 calories. And so it's a process that you would take someone through, whereas, you know, maybe if you're, if someone's coming to me and they're eating 12 to 1400 calories and they have a bunch of symptoms, I'm like, well, we're not gonna heal on that. It's not enough fuel. I actually, my clients eating anywhere from 1900 to 2,400 calories before we would actually start to initiate some sort of deficit to try to initiate weight loss or add some activity or something in.

 

(32:27): So I want their bodies to be primed. I want them to have tons. I I really wanna teach people to eat as much food as they possibly can to, to maintain good metabolic function. And yes, with some people initially that might result in some actual weight gain and either a, they might need it or their body just has to go through a a time where it's saying, Hey, you know, you've been starving me for the last three decades, , it's gonna take a little time for me to adapt to this new energy increase and it couldn't come with a little bit of weight gain, but we try to minimize that. But what I look for versus just what's on the scale, I'm gonna look for well how your, well your clothes fit. Because certainly if I can get you enough fuel, you're gonna have better anabolic function, so you'll be able to maintain muscle, you'll be able to increase muscle faster.

 

(33:15): And again, it's something that happens in women in their forties and fifties, sixties is they have a harder time maintaining muscle mass and muscle is incredibly important as we age, we know that women who have the most muscle mass will be most healthiest or have the least amount of bone breakdowns and so forth. So we wanna create an environment, their body that is able to produce and maintain muscle. If the body's constantly stressed because you're going down these stress pathways, it is gonna have an incredibly hard time doing that. You'll end up just losing more muscle mass. And that is not something do as you age.

 

(33:49): Right. Thank you for explaining that. I love that term and it, it really reminds me of Dean Ornish with his eat more, way less, you know, most of us are eating poor quality, wrong macronutrient and micronutrient not dense foods. And so really this concept that you do need to eat more, but also a better macronutrient and micronutrient profile, I think is really huge for women. And, and if you're listening, I hope you really hear what Kate is saying because it's key to boosting your metabolism. Your metabolism is not decreased direct because of your age. So just stop blaming it on your age. You've got to really take a hard close look at the stressors that are impacting your health that we've mentioned throughout this episode. Hormones being one of them. I loved how you tied in the whole cortisol stress cycle to digestion and what that's gonna do overall. So I think this has been really valuable for everyone. Thank you so much for joining us, Kate. You have this free guide, understanding Metabolism and your Top 13 me Metabolic Foods for everyone to download. We're gonna have a link in the show notes. They can also check out your book, how to Heal Your Metabolism, stop Blaming Aging For Your Slowing Metabolism. If you wanna, what would you like to tell them about these resources and where else people can find you and get more information?

 

(35:17): Yeah. Well, I have an Instagram account, it's Kate during fitness. I also am on Facebook at Kate during fitness. My website is kate deering.com. I'm actually working on a second book right now, which is gonna be heavy on one thing I've been asked since I've wrote the first one is a lot more recipe type things and, and kind of a more directional way that people can utilize this information to help themselves. I, you know, I I definitely come from a, a place of specificity, a spec being specific, meaning everyone is a little bit different. You kind of have to find your own path. It's what I provide is a lot of information to help people try to understand their body better so they can learn what to measure and how to keep up with things. And so they can see kind of direct their own path. And I, I think the more you learn about yourself and how well your body functions, the better off you're going to be in life. We don't teach, we don't really teach that anymore and I think it's just a, a really good way for you to kind of improve your health without lots of drugs or supplements or so forth and so on. Awesome.

 

(36:18): Well, thank you for those great resources. Thanks for the wonderful information and inspiration and I hope everybody listening, you'll check out Kate's website and download her free guide, check out her book and all of the offerings that she has. Thanks so much for joining me for another episode of The Hormone Prescription and how will you take this information and implement it in your life to make positive changes? Let me know about it on social media. I look forward to hearing about it, and I look forward to seeing you next week on another episode of The Hormone Prescription. Until then, peace, love, and hormones, y'all.

 

(36:55): Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

► Get Kate Deering's FREE Guide on understanding metabolism and her top 13 metabolic foods. CLICK HERE.

 

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