Hormone Prosperity Podcast with Dr. Kyrin Dunston

Joy Is Your Justice - Why You Need To Reclaim Yours Now To Improve Your Health

Is joy the missing piece of the puzzle in your life? Do you want to feel more energized and connected to yourself? In this special episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, our guest, Dr. Tanmeet Sethi, will help midlife women to reclaim their joy and use it as a powerful weapon to improve their health. Tune in to learn more about the importance of joy in your life, why you need to embrace it now, and how you can start reclaiming yours now!

 

Tanmeet Sethi, MD, is a board-certified Integrative Family Medicine physician who has spent the last 25 years on the frontlines locally and globally practicing primary care and trauma work with the most marginalized communities. As a mother, she has received the impossible news that her youngest son has a fatal degenerative disease. She weaves together the expertise of both acquired knowledge with lived experience and translates them accessibly through the blend of ancient spiritual traditions and modern neuroscience. She is trained in Psychedelic Medicine, Integrative and Functional Medicine, and is a clinical researcher of psilocybin at the University of Washington. TEDx talk on gratitude.

 

You will learn:

 

- Why joy is essential to your physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

- How to recognize when you are missing out on joy in your life.

- What tools and techniques you can use to rediscover and reclaim your lost joy.

- Strategies for incorporating more joy into your daily routine for improved health.

 

Don't miss this inspiring episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast with Dr. Tanmeet Sethi! Join us as we discuss why joy is your justice - why it's so important to reclaim it now and how doing so can improve your health. You will leave feeling inspired, energized, and motivated to create the life of joy that you deserve! Tune in today!

 

(00:00): What your mind can't resolve, your body will hold onto Dr. Cei. Find out how to let go and reclaim your health now with joy.

(00:18): 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.

(01:12): Hi everyone. Welcome back and thank you so much for joining me today for the podcast. So glad that you're here, my guest, you are gonna love and be inspired by her. She has a powerful story and you know it's a shame that sometimes our purpose comes from our pain and sometimes that's where the greatest gifts come from. If we say yes to the call, to the invitation of the pain, to lean into it and find the answers, when we get those answers, we can then bring them back to our tribe, all of you and me, to help them overcome similar struggles and improve our health. I think that almost every doctor and healer that I've had on the podcast has a journey of pain that led to some breakthrough that caused them to seek new answers. And then that's what they're doing here is bringing them back to the tribe, which is kind of brave and revolutionary.

(02:11): So I think you're gonna really love my guest today. I know I did after meeting her and speaking with her. So I'll tell you a little bit about her and then we'll get started. But first, the title of the episode is Joy is Your Justice. And I know some of you are like, do I wanna listen to this? What am I gonna get out of this? What does this have to do with my health and my hormones? Well, she's gonna tell you because she too brings the science and that's why I love the incredible guests that I have on the podcast. Cause they bring the science that brings the truth and then you can just cut through the nonsense and know what's true about your health that you're not hearing elsewhere. So I'll tell you a little bit about Dr. Tanmeet Sethi. She's a medical doctor and board certified in integrated family medicine.

(02:59): And she spent the last 25 years on the front lines locally at globally practicing primary care and trauma work with the most marginalized communities as a mother. She's received the impossible news that her youngest son named Zin, has a fatal degenerative disease. She weaves together the expertise of both acquired knowledge with lived experience and translates them accessible through the blend of ancient spiritual traditions and modern neuroscience. She's also trained in psychedelic medicine. We're gonna have her back another time to talk about that cuz that's a whole episode in itself. Also, she's trained in integrative and functional medicine, and she's a clinical researcher of psilocybin at the University of Washington. And she has a wonderful TEDx talk on gratitude. So please help me welcome Dr. Tanmeet Sethi to tell you why joy is your justice and why you need to reclaim yours now to improve your health and many other things. Welcome Dr. Tanmeet. 

(04:07): Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.

(04:09): I'm really excited to have you. We had Dr. Ellen Vora on and she was amazing and lovely, and she recommended having you on and told me all about you, and I said, yes, absolutely, please. And I know you have a book that you're getting ready to publish, and so it was kind of challenging to get it set up, but I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you for joining us.

(04:37): Oh, thanks. I'm so excited to really spend some time with you and your listeners.

(04:42):

And the first question I have to ask you is, as a physician, how did Joy become the topic for your book?

(04:53): Yeah, well, there are a couple of different reasons. One is that as a primary care physician for the last 25 years, I've really found that a lot of what I do is really managing spiritual needs in the exam room. People really feeling lost and disconnected and feeling like they've lost meaning in their life, and also managing all the physical symptoms related to stress and really trying to help them navigate how they refined meaning and joy in their lives so that they can actually have a better quality of life. And so that was an ongoing theme in my visits as an integrative physician, I do a lot more counseling around lifestyle and spirituality than most docs do. And so I was really doing a lot of that. And then on top of that, you know, something happened in my own life that was really tragic, which is that my second child was diagnosed with a fatal disease.

(05:50): So he has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which is for your community, is like an a l s for children. So it's degenerative and fatal. And he was diagnosed when he was three and while I was pregnant with my third child. And so I really had a really big milestone in my life where I realized that as doc who had been practicing and advocating for patients and doing a lot of social justice activism in the community, that this was finally something I couldn't really fight against. There was no cure, there was no hope. It felt like, and I really had a point where I realized how am I going to truly have joy in this life? You know, sure, I can fake it or I could function, or I could, as people were saying, think positive, which really drives me crazy, which you'll read about in my book. But I finally had to figure out how do you hold joy when you have something that is completely unchangeable? And that really was an ongoing theme for a lot of my patients who are managing trauma, oppression and suffering. And so it really culminated in my personal and professional lives.

(07:02): Yes, I'm sorry to hear about your child having that. And I can imagine that reaching for joy and figuring out a way to do that is al almost, it's a spiritual practice. And that I know having worked with patients clinically for many years, that it's not so much the physical ailments, but I actually was hearing Dr. Gabo matte, I love him, talk about instinct, the myth, myth of normal the other day, and the statistics on really that all physical illness is emotional, spiritual, mental, it, all of it, almost a hundred percent right? Except for the, the less than 5% of genetic disorders. And the fact that mainstream medicine completely, almost completely, let's say, ignores this fact in this day and age is, is really a travesty and does a disservice. So I want everyone listening to know that all of you should be treated not just your physical body. And there are clinicians out there who can work with you on that life, Dr. Tanmeet. So you had a tragedy and were trying to figure out how to find joy. And so what were the steps that you took to figure that out?

(08:25): Yeah, . Well, I feel like that's the whole book, right? Is all the tools I used. But what I would say is that what I really, just to give everyone a sense of how it all started is that I think it really started with one really big milestone question, which was right after Zin was diagnosed, and I talk about this in the book, is that my husband and I were sitting there kind of going through the expected and normal, why me, why us? Why him? Why, why, why? Feeling unfair, feeling like we didn't deserve it, feeling like there was no way out, which is what we all say, why me to everything, right? Whether it's traffic in the morning or it's a devastating diagnosis, right? And it's natural. It feels like how could this happen? But there was a pivotal moment there where we looked at each other, and we still can't remember who said it first, but we said, why not us?

(09:22): Why, why not him? Why not us to lead this life and still find joy and meaning. And also you can see how, why me is a very victim, powerless role. Mm-Hmm. , you can feel your body even contract and hunch when I even remember saying that. And when I say, why not me? My body opens up, I feel expansive, I feel powerful. And it defeats all those really kind of ridiculous, if you think about it, ideas of why me? Because it kind of insinuates that tragedy comes to those who deserve it. You know that why me as I deserve this, when you realize that bad things just happen, bad, bad, bad things happen. And it's not because we deserved it. It's not cuz we did wrong or did bad, it's because we're human and we're leading this human life. And why not me opens us up to also the humanity of all of us who are suffering and managing that which we cannot understand.

(10:25): And so that was really the beginning of this journey, I was really saying, why not us? Why not us to teach all of our children that life does not need to be dictated by the length of our lives or the dreams that were now shattered that we had conceived of, that he would play sports or go to college, or, you know, have a family, kind of the general things we think of and why not open ourselves up to the dreams that can be created once we let that go. And once we did that, it's not that it was easy, let me tell you, it wasn't an easy journey. Joy isn't an easy practice, but it is actually quite simple. And every day, if you commit to it as a healing practice, it becomes a way of life instead of a destination to get to. I

(11:13): Love that you, you turned it around to why not us. And I've heard people say that, and it's by no means on the same level, but even just this morning, the airline ripped apart my luggage and I just, I went to pick it up, the carousel and the whole handle that, that you're supposed to drag it with on wheels just came flying out and it was a big gaping hole. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And I've seen people spin out about a wheel getting broken on their luggage, and I just, it's not worth it. It's just luggage. It's different when you're talking about human life. And so I think it's, it's such a testament to you and your husband's fortitude, insight, openness to be able to make that pivot with such rapid pace. And I know that you talk about the crucial distinction between joy and happiness, and yes, people sometimes will say, well, I just wanna be happy. I just wanna be happy. What is the difference?

(12:12): Oh, it's so big. It's really so big. And I'll tell you, I was much happier before my son Zubin was diagnosed. But I am way, way more joyful now. So I'll tell you the difference is that happiness is a cognitive evaluation. It's a sense of how things are going, and it's attached to outcome. I will tell you, there's nothing, let me preface this by, there's nothing wrong with happiness. The more the better, right? It's a pleasurable feeling. Mm-Hmm. . So I'm not discounting that happiness is wrong or bad, but there is a difference because happiness being attached to an outcome and how things are going, keeps it in the brain. Also, it's a very mind, head, heady kind of feel, experience. I shouldn't say feeling. And joy on the other hand, is a deep embodied feeling. My, one of my favorite quote quotes is actually from Rumi, who says, when you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in.

(13:07): You are a joy. Because joy is that deep, deep primal experience that no one can take care of us, take away from us. Happiness is, you can think of it as being given to you because it's attached to those things and that outcome. And they're all good like jobs or families or whatever. But joy is something no one can take away if you really dig deep down into the core of your body. And that's what a lot of the practices in the book explain that if you can lightly step into your body exactly where the pain lives, you can access joy. Because joy actually draws on the same deep well as your pain and as meaning in your life. So if you can really meet your pain with love and acceptance, you can actually feel a joy like you've never felt before. And so really, I also wanna just tell people, I feel this very strongly.

(14:07): I'm someone who's worked with marginalized communities for my whole life. I myself experienced racism throughout my childhood, death, threats for my family, all kinds of things. I'm also still a brown woman who looks like a terrorist family to everyone in this country. You know, that kind of thing lives on. And at the same time, I have the right, not just to suffer as a human, but to live with joy. And so joy is my act of resistance. It lives in my body, and every time I access it, I'm actually boldly saying to things that have taken my power away, that you may have done that. But I still stand here and I still rise despite that.

(14:47): It is so powerful when you, you, some of the things you just said, I get got chills all the way through my legs, that joy draws from the same deep well as your pain. And that's so powerful. And joy is something no one can take away. And happiness Yeah. Is given to you by things. I'm happy because things are working out the way I want. But are you joyful? You know, even if you have a cancer diagnosis on your way to the doctor, are you enjoying the people that you meet and the sunrise and the trees? And I watched the movie Soul from Disney recently. I don't know how I missed that one. I

(15:22): Haven't seen that.

(15:23): And oh, it was amazing. A friend recommended it this weekend. And it basically is about exactly what we're talking about, finding the joy in a leaf, falling off a tree onto the ground, finding the joy in the simplest of things. And you're right, no one can take away your right, your ability, your desire to, I see it as a gratitude practice, really. Yeah. Because you're appreciating these small parts of your day in the now, and that can tap into the joy of just being alive.

(16:02): Right. And there's another big difference, and you can feel, it seems so simple, but it's hard to see it until I could see it, right? Is that happiness feels very binary. So people think, if I'm sad, I can't be happy, and if I'm happy, then I don't, you know, I'm not sad. So it's very binary. And so it is a way because of the confusion between happiness and joy. People feel joy is binary, but it's not because the thing is, joy actually acknowledges all the pain, the sadness, the grief, the, the hard and all joy is not a solution. It's not a binary, I am joyful or I'm not. It's a way to hold everything. So I can be deeply sad in one moment about, I'll take, give for example, my son. You know, things aren't so, it's not like it's easy. He's actually declining steadily.

(16:53): It's getting harder and harder. And I have grief every day, things that we lose every day. And I can be deeply sad about that. And in the same moment, I can feel joyful that I'm alive and can feel that sadness and that I'm so, my humanity has not been stripped away from me. Because one thing that trauma, oppression and suffering do is strip our humanity away and make us numb to life in general. And if I can feel the joy of that leaf falling, the walk, the fresh air in the same moment that I'm crying about my son, then I have won. You

(17:31): Sure have you really have. And I think we can get so tied into the, the purpose of our existence is this materialistic. I've got more stuff, I've accomplished more things. I win, I'm happy as, and anyone who's done the things and earned the money knows that doesn't bring joy. Usually . It's not what happens. And so I've heard people say we all have, well, you should look on the bright side. Yeah. Find the silver lining to the cloud. And you say that that's not going to bring joy. Can you talk a little bit about that?

(18:08): Yeah. And it's actually one of the big reasons, you know, I mean, my book is really about joy in this whitewashed wellness world of these contrived positivities, this toxic speak of look on the bright side. I mean, you can't think yourself on the bright side of oppression and poverty. Come on, give me a break. Right? You can't think yourself on the bright side, out of deep hate and racism. I mean, this just doesn't work. It doesn't work. So, you know, people get your mind on straight, you know, that's easy for someone with a lot of privilege, but not for someone who's either in a marginalized community in poverty or, I mean, I could name all the things, right? What I really talk about is how that kind of toxic positivity actually is so harmful. I think it's dangerous because what it does is it doesn't let you be seen, right?

(18:59): So anytime that I'm really sad, of which there are many, many, many moments, , and someone says to me, at least you have, oh, I mean, the amount of time at least you blah, blah, blah. Oh, I can't imagine. You know, they go on and on about they're trying to be good. Really they are. I have empathy for them, they just don't know what to say. But every time they do that, no one's acknowledging that I'm angry or sad or frustrated, and that's all I need to feel in that moment. And actually, a true joy practice is feeling what you feel and then allowing that to move through you. There's good science I talk about in the book that shows that if you suppress those feelings, you actually activate your threat centers more. And so we think, look on the bright side, just push that away.

(19:50): But actually we're stimulating all those threat centers in our amygdala, in our limbic system, which then stresses our sympathetic nervous system out, which causes more cortisol release, which reeks havoc with our whole body. Right? Our hormones, as you talk about a lot, right? I mean, so brightness, looking on the bright side, toxic positivity, I feel is actually quite dangerous. I honestly will tell you, I never ever tried to cheer someone up. What I do is try to sit with them in their pain and hold them so they know that they're not alone. Because actually the isolation of sadness and grief is damaging. Right? And so when someone says, look on the positive side and you can't do it, what do you feel more excluded, more stressed out, more unseen

(20:39): And ashamed.

(20:40): Exactly. Exactly

(20:42): Right. And we really do have this almost toxic avoidance of negative emotion, sadness, particularly for women. Anger, grief. We don't know how to grieve. We don't know how to be sad. And so I think that's what, when people wanna placate and say, oh, well look on the bright side is they're uncomfortable with their own grief and pain and sadness. So they can't sit with you in their, and I love what you're saying about how it affects your limbic system. And you know, everybody listening, I talk about hormones all the time, but one thing I can't talk about enough is that it's not a mind body connection, it's a body mind. You have a body mind, right? . Right. And it's psycho neuro endocrine immunology. Right? It's all one system. So you are affecting your hormones when you don't allow free flow of emotion.

(21:37): Yes, exactly. Exactly. You're actually, you know you're actually getting more stuck in physically, energetically, and biochemically, and most of your listeners probably know this, but the more cortisol we make, the less we're able to make our reproductive hormones and manage our testosterone, estrogen, progesterone. I mean, all of those come from the same precursor as cortisol. So the more we're stressed out, right? And people will say, well, I can't change the stress. No, we can't change what's in our lives, but we can change how our nervous system receives it, and we can change how our body feels it. Right? And so it's why I'm sure you've experienced this many times clinically, but people will often tell, you know, I I manage a lot of symptoms that frankly don't get a diagnosis, right? Mm-Hmm. , I mean, there frankly not an answer. And so people will say you know, I just don't understand, I don't understand.

(22:34): And I always say, what your mind and heart cannot resolve, your body will hold onto. And that's something to understand that it's not making it up. Your body is actually holding onto what you have been unable to navigate. And that doesn't mean that you were wrong or bad, it means you just needed more time. You, your, your nervous system does what it needs to do to protect you. It's a beautiful intricate system, but sometimes it serves us for too long, you know? And then we need to help our nerve, our nervous system, come to a different place. So it's really about joy as an ongoing practice. It's really, if you ask me, been underestimated and under really realized in this wellness world of that you just find joy. Have you found joy? Right? I found joy. It's,

(23:29): I found it at the Walmart . Yeah. It's

(23:32): Seeking joy every day, every time you can, because the more you swim in joy, the easier it is to hold the hard. And the more you swim and remember the joy and hold onto that, it reminds you that there are ways that you can come back to it. It's like a soothing mantra, right? It's not meant to be, I realize a destination, a place you get to like some nirvana land. So that's why I can say I cry a lot. I scream, I'm angry. I'm angry a lot. Let me tell you, this world is not easy. This world me off every day. The amount of violence in inequality, oppression, ongoing hate and division, it's really quite frustrating and stressful. Right? And at this, no matter what side, quote unquote, you're on, this is not about who's right and wrong, right? It's just, it, it is easy to suffer in this world.

(24:31): That's what I would say. But my anger, or my stress, or my frustration around that is actually held by my joy. Because my joy allows me to feel all that and know that I'm also flowing in between that and gratitude, love, self-compassion, and my breath, you know, all and on and on. Mm-Hmm. . And so I just think that people need to understand that joy is really a revolution. It's not a place to get to. It's an ongoing act of resistance. And it's your way of actually boldly calling out to this world that you are actually good and you deserve to be here,

(25:10): And you deserve to have grace and flow, and I'm gonna say happiness, but in the moment, the joy. Yes. Yes. Right? So what does that look like for you on a, on a day-to-day basis? I have a friend, and she shared with me something that she and her husband do every night at the end of the day before they go to bed with their pillow talk, is they ask each other, what was your favorite part of the day? What part of the day or what happening or thing in your day brought you the most joy? And they share that with each other. I

(25:47): Love that.

(25:48): So yeah, they don't do the gripe session, they ask mm-hmm. , you know, what brought you the most joy today? And I love that. How, what does it look like for you?

(25:56): I'll tell you what it typically looks like, and I'm also gonna tell you, some days it doesn't look like this at all. I'm gonna be real with you. And then some days I forget to do things. Or some days right? It's just too hard. And those heart. And so I'll, I'll tell you what I do is that in the morning, I really try to commit, and it, it happens most mornings to sometime alone in the darkness of the morning. And in that time, I use breath and some movement to really help me come to my center. It's a time for me to check in with myself actually. And I tell people this, it's my form of resilience. I really don't like the way resilience is handed to us. And my form of resilience is to check in with myself and say, what do I need today to be who I need to be, be today?

(26:43): And maybe that's more breath, maybe that's more exercise, and maybe that's none. Right? Maybe it's such a busy day that I just need to remind myself to breathe a little. I really check in with myself every day. I also do a gratitude practice at dinner with my family. So we do an up and a down and a grateful is what we call it. So what was our up of the day? What was our down? And that's the best way for me to find out what's really happening with my kids . And I think it also just models that sadness is there, things let us down, you know? It's okay. We don't need to brush them away. But I'll have some nights where, you know, one of my kids, mostly my son actually will say, I don't have a down. And I'll say, okay, you're, you don't have to have a down, but you have to have a grateful mm-hmm.

(27:29): . There's just no way. You cannot leave this table without a grateful mm-hmm. . And, you know, and they never do. But those are the ways that we institute it in our family day-to-day. But it is much more insidious than that. So it's, you know, when I take a walk, I try to take at least a short walk every day outside so I can re sort of convene with some greenery and the fresh air. I live in Seattle, so that's challenging. But I try my best. And it is often just a simple feeling my feet on the earth and reminding myself how grateful I am that I got. One more day, I got a day where I got to walk outside my house. If it's been a very hard day, and I've done no gratitude practice, no breath, no movement. That's a rare day. But it happens where I've done none of that.

(28:17): I go to bed at night, I close my eyes, I take a few breaths, and I do a little, I guess you could call it a prayer, but I do a little meditation to the river gods, I call them mm-hmm. . And I say, you know, I did not flow down this river the way I wanted to today. May I flow tomorrow in a different way? And I really just give myself that grace and that self-compassion. And so it really comes in just at all points of the day, something bad will happen, my luggage or you know, whatever, something bad will happen. I'll get upset, I'll get annoyed, I'll get stressed, and then I will come back to my breath or a walk or my gratitude practice pretty quickly, you know, and just use those as ways to hold them. It doesn't mean the sadness passes or the anger passes right away. It just reminds me that it's all okay. Mm-Hmm. , whatever I'm feeling. Does that make sense?

(29:16): Absolutely. Absolutely. And I, I love those times of intentional practice at different times of the day that you're mentioning. For me, nature, it's all about nature. , the way the sun filters through the blinds or drapes, the way the trees sway in the wind. I mean, it's just the simple, oh, and birds. Birds so much

(29:39): Fun. Oh, yes, yes, yes. So, I mean, there's so many ways, right? And I mean, you know, some days I could almost cry that hot water comes outta my faucet when I want . You know? And you know, you can really have awe at so many things in this world. And at the same time, you know, we can get swamped in our suffering, right? Because suffering, what it does is create such a narrow sliver we can't see past it, right? And it's all about these practices that I talk about are really about expanding ever so slowly, gently, that sliver so that you can see more. And really, joy practice is all about that. It's about seeing more. So yes, I'm angry, yes, I'm grieving, but can I just see a little more, can I see a little more today? And really, you'd be amazed at how that can change your life.

(30:34): Yeah. I find that the more, more I appreciate, the more I get to appreciate more things come into my awareness. And you shared this quote from Alice Walker that I, I would love for you to talk about the grace with which we embrace life in spite of the pain. The sorrow is always a measure of what has gone before. Can you talk a little bit about what that means?

(30:57): Yeah. I mean, the reason that quote means so much to me is that for me, it really embodies a very deep reverence I have for ancestral lineages. Hmm. So you know, I actually really feel strongly, there's actually studies to show and, and epigenetics and studies to show that trauma lives in our bodies, right? Mm-Hmm. the trauma that our ancestors have experienced lives in our bodies as well, and we can do things to change that. But just, I also think their re their persistence, their resilience lives in me. I also think that everything that my ancestors have gone through has helped shape who I am and has given me the privilege to be here on this earth. And I actually not only mean my blood lineage, which I, I have deep reverence for, but I mean my global ancestry. And so I think of everyone who has ever fought for justice and what they have taught me, that that is the reason I have the privilege to stand on this earth and fight for justice myself.

(31:58): I think of everyone, all the mothers. Sometimes I just sit and do a meditation when I'm feeling very hopeless or sad, I do a meditation to all the mothers who have suffered before me and yet moved forward day in and day out. And I gain strength and love from them. And I say, I too have the privilege to stand here and do that. You know? So for me, the grace of, I mean, the ancestry of the land I live on was not my, is not mine, right? It, it was taken from people who toiled and tended, in my case, as the Duwamish people where I live, have still toil and tend to this land and yet get no equity. Right? And so everything I have the land I live on, the soul I inhabit, the ability and capacity I have to fight for myself and others is all a measure of the grace of those who have walked before me. Always. And if you think about it, that's a gratitude practice, right, too.

(32:58): It is. And I, I think it's something that we don't think about that often most of us or talk about, but the, the idea that everything that we've received in this lifetime is standing on the shoulders of everyone who came before, I think. And, and I think having to be intentional about gratitude is necessary. I don't know that it's the default in, at least the way I was raised, it, it wasn't the default. And as I've gotten older, it's something that becomes more and more the default . It's like, oh my gosh, you know how much I have been given in this life, this human body, this ancestors who did all this hard work, and yes. Did they pass the trauma down? Yes. But they also passed a lot of other things down.

(33:51): Right? And I will just give the caveat, because I think gratitude, you know, really becomes a contrived platitude. And, and actually people really get turned off whenever you say gratitude sometimes. Mm-Hmm. , because they say, well, I, I don't wanna be thankful right now. Like, that's contrived positivity, right? So I get a lot of questions around, how is it that you want me to be grateful right now? How can that be possible? And I, and I always say a couple of things. One is it's just an invitation. So really no one should feel forced to feel grateful again, that's not okay. Two, I actually, I did a whole TEDx talk on this. So it, you know, I feel very strongly about it, but I was taught by a mentor to thank my son for his disease and for this pain in my life. Now, I'll tell you, when she told me to go say thank you, Tim, every night after he went to sleep, I said, there's no freaking way I'm doing that. You know, like, how could a mother be thankful that her son is suffering and will not be here? That felt like blasphemy to

(34:54): Me, right? Yes, I get that. And

(34:56): At the same time, , you know, I was like, well, what the hell I got nothing else. And also, you know, this sucks. So I'm gonna try it. And I tried it. And that's what the Ted talk is about, is it opened me, I had never once in my life thanked any pain in my life, ever. And what happened for me after that was monumental, because thank gratitude is not about contrived positivity. It's about saying, here is what is, and here I am with it. It allows you to say thank you, means you actually face what's happening. You don't resist it. You don't say, I wish, wish it weren't happening. You say It is happening. It's horrible, it's tragic. It's actually the most devastating thing for me. And yet it's happening. I cannot change that. Now, when you look and face that you can have more clarity, you actually, there's neuroscience around this that you actually feel less threat. You dampen that threat center, you get more clarity in the parts of your brain that need that, and then you get compassion for yourself. It's, it's actually quite a intricate beautiful process. And then after that, you really understand that it's not the pain that I'm, I'm not thankful my son's suffering. That was contrite, that I thought that was trite, that I thought that was what she was saying.

(36:23): Right?

(36:23): It's that I'm thankful for the gifts that I now see despite the suffering, right? And so it's not that I don't believe in this. Everything happens for a reason. I actually don't believe that. I don't believe it's all good. You can find a silver lining. I don't believe that. What I believe is we have suffering and then we make meaning out of it. And that's what leads us to joy. And so my meaning is big, you know, my son. It is a constant grieving process for us. And at the same time, I mean, I would not be who I am today. I would not be the teacher that I am. I would not be the physician I am, I would not be the mother that I am. I would not, my children have a deep sense of compassion and understanding in this world. I am not saying it's great, it happened, but it did happen. And now what can I make out of that? Mm-Hmm. . Because none of us deserve pain or suffering, but we all deserve the right to make meaning and joy out of it.

(37:27): And I guess that is the ultimate justice, right? Yes. What, yes, exactly. What could destroy you, you're going to turn and churn and use to support your joy in this life. I think that is the ultimate justice. And I know that you talk about how the vagus nerve creates a literal link between joy and justice. How does that work? Well,

(37:52): The vagus nerve, as many people might know, is the main nerve of our parasympathetic nervous system. And a vagus comes from the Latin for wandering. So it wanders from the base of our brainstem all the way through our chest to the deepest organs of our gut. And there's more traffic from the vagus nerve to the brain than the reverse. And what that really means is that our nervous system is giving us information constantly. Our body is giving us information. And so it's not about changing your thoughts or making life, right, because you think it's right. It's about noticing that if you can settle more comfortably in your body, more peacefully in your body by activating your vagus nerve. And there's a vast amount of ways that I describe that, and I'm sure people have heard about meditation doing that and so forth. The more you can calm your body through your vagus nerve, the more information you can send to your brain about how to interpret and translate this life as one of justice. The more you can stand boldly in this world and say, I am peaceful and calm in my skin and I'm here to stand up and be here in this world other, rather than contract it powerless, oppressed all the time, right? The bo the world will continually oppress us, will continually try to strip our power away. And the way to take our power back is in our body, period. I just really believe that.

(39:22): Yes, I agree. And the parasympathetic nervous system and hormones are intricately linked together, like you mentioned cortisols. Do you wanna tie that in for everyone so they get a really clear picture of what, when they're not in joy and they're not in gratitude and appreciation and they're in that victim mentality, how that affects the nervous system and the hormones?

(39:46): Yeah. So there's different hormones. There's the neurological hormones of serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and so forth. And then there's the reproductive hormones, right? A progesterone, estrogen. And there's different ways that it does that. One is, as we described, that the stress hormones go down. And so then we can put more energy into making our reproductive hormones. It's why people, you know, people will say like, oh, you don't have a libido cuz you're stressed out and people will think that's all in your head. It's actually not. You cannot, you know, I had a patient once where, you know, we looked and I showed her, you know, with testing to show her her hormones, what we were saying, I said, look like there's no juice here. Like there's just no juice, right? Like, how would, it's not your fault that you don't wanna have sex. It's your body saying, we don't have time for sex.

(40:35): We're trying to take care of danger. Right? And so there's this intricate relationship between our nervous system and our hormones. There's also an intricate relationship between our serotonin and dopamine and oxytocin. The more you practice these tools that calm your vagus nerve, the more you stimulate dopamine, which brings reward into the brain and asks us, it puts us, you actually said this in the beginning, I thought about it when you said this, that the joy builds on itself. The neuroscientists actually called a spiral of joy. The more you notice, acknowledge and swim in the joy, the more dopamine is secreted to remind you to want it again, to look for it again. The more you do these practices of gratitude, self-compassion, et cetera, the more you produce oxytocin that makes you want to connect and tend to not only others but yourself, right? Mm-Hmm. . And so there are ways that our vagus nerve and our nervous system are the main regulators of every way that actually leads us to wellbeing. All the things people talk about, all the medications, all the practices, they start right there. I would imagine many of your listeners are very much wanting to feel more energy, feel more alive.

(41:57): Yes.

(41:59): , right?

(41:59): Yes. I mean people, women, there's such an epidemic of, I hear this so many times, I've lost my joy and I don't know how to get it back. I don't have the joy. I mean, sure, there're what I call midlife mayhem. The 60 or so symptoms that women start experiencing once they hit 40 and above, sometimes in the thirties. And they're those physical complaints. But the result, and I guess it's compounded because the hormonal poverty is what I call it that they go into and that includes neurotransmitter poverty. Cuz neurotransmitters are, were intimately, they're brothers and sisters to hormones. Yes. Is that there's no joy.

(42:40): Yes. Yes. I love that description. Hormonal poverty. I'm gonna remember that one. I love that. And I also love it because what we don't realize is that it's such a form of justice when we can replenish those hormones as well. Now we don't, I'm not saying everyone can solve all their problems with tools, mind, body medicine tools, but you sure as hell can help them and sometimes solve them. So you really just reminding people when they say, I can't find the joy. I would say, you know, it's time to step into your body. It's time to get back into your body out of your head and into your body so your body can mind your mind. Right. I mean, , I think it's more like you said, body mind than mind body. It's just, you know, Bessel VanDerKolk has well established this concept that trauma lives in our body. Mm-Hmm. and I actually, you know, I explain to people all the time, patients and people I work with in trauma groups, that trauma lives in the body. But that's also where it can heal. Understand that, that you actually need to get into your body to heal it. And so we need to do certain practices to step back into our body. It's not just thinking ourselves out of everything. In fact, only that will not do it.

(44:01): Right. I love this conversation and I'm gonna encourage everyone to get the book. We'll put all of your links in the show notes and I'm gonna have you share with everyone, and I agree with you. I just wanna be clear that neither one of us is saying that if you do a joy practice, you're gonna solve all your hormonal, neuroendocrine, immunologic health problems. But I say you have to do all the things. They're so tired of me saying that all the things , it's like a puzzle. And if you're missing any one piece, it won't work. So a joy practice, I would say is necessary but not sufficient. Without it, you'll never achieve what's possible.

(44:40): Yes. Yeah. And I think that's the main thing to, you know, Brian Stevenson is one of my justice mentors. I don't know him, but he's my mentor from afar. He says hope is about seeing the unseen. And I really believe that he's really helped me feel that, you know, because he fights for against the prison slave system. Really? And I mean, what more, what could be more hopeless at times, right? Mm-Hmm. . And what he says is, the reason I can do this work is because I commit to seeing what cannot be seen.

(45:13): Yeah. Isn't he the one who did the a Ted talk with something more views than he's like in the top 10 of all TED Talks?

(45:20): I'm sure he is. His TED Talk's amazing .

(45:22): Yeah. Right. Yes. So I think it's super powerful. I think your story is super powerful. Hopefully you're hearing what Dr. Theit is saying and if she can do it, we can do it.

(45:38): Yes. Right. I'm not, I'm not special. Yeah, for

(45:41): Sure. Yes. And how is your son Zubin doing?

(45:44): You know, his spirit seems to get stronger the more his body breaks down is what I would say. But he is declining. Yeah. So we're in a hard place,

(45:54): But I'm sorry to hear that. And, and in the same breath, it sounds like you have a powerful, grounded spiritual practice that will hopefully help.

(46:05): Yeah, and I appreciate that and I would encourage everyone to really understand that. I get a lot of people who say, I can't imagine, you know, what you're doing or how you do this. And in on the days where I have the energy to not just say, okay, I'm walk away. I tell people, you know, I would urge you to imagine, I would say imagination is the bridge that you need to imagine my pain will allow you to become closer to yours. So saying I can't imagine is also not seeing what's possible. If I can do it, I'm only human, then you can do it too with whatever your pain is. So build bridges of imagination every chance you get.

(46:44): That's so powerful. And as you were saying it, I'm thinking that's what the capacity of empathy is that you can imagine. Yes. And then you can be with someone in their pain and in their devastation. That's so powerful. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yes. And please tell everyone where they can get the book and where they can find out more about you and connect with you.

(47:08): So the book is Joy is My Justice, and it's on every book Online seller or in your bookstores. Or you can go to my website, which is www.ceimd.com. I'll give you that link. Yeah. Okay.

(47:23): Either we'll have it either show notes. All right. And on social media.

(47:26): Yeah, I'm mostly on Instagram, so I, I love to connect with people there. So my handle's md, so yeah, that confined, please. I would love for people to tell me what their biggest takeaway is, and maybe let us both know and feel free to tag us, because I love hearing from people who are moved. And I mean, you know, I'm sure you felt this in your career, Karen, but story is medicine, right? And that's how we really connect to each other and how we also heal. So when I hear people how story moves them, it's really a healing practice for me too. And so I really would love for anyone to connect.

(48:06): Yes, please do. And as we were talking, it was reminding me of, is it Rachel Naomi Reman at my grandmother's table? Who, yes. Is that the book? Yes. So if anyone's listening, also another second book to get is her book. It's Beautiful Stories. Yes. That will really warm your heart. And not in a cliche way, but in a soulful way. So definitely look, get joy as my justice and read it, but I'm excited for its release. And thank you so much for joining us today.

(48:41): Oh, it was really an honor to be with you. Thank you so much.

(48:44): And thank you for listening today and joining us. We're so grateful that you chose to spend your time with us today, and hopefully you heard something that you can use to positively impact your life, and by doing that, you'll impact your hormones positively. And you know I'm all about the hormones. Thanks so much for joining us. I'll see you again next week for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kiran. Until then, peace, love, and hormones y'all.

(49:15): 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 Mystery Of Your Quantum Biology Explained And Why It’s Vital For Your Health

What do you get when you combine cutting-edge science and ancient holistic health wisdom? You get a truly enlightening conversation with Dr. Kyrin Dunston and Dr. Catherine Clinton on the latest episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast: "The Mystery Of Your Quantum Biology Explained And Why It’s Vital For Your Health."

 

In this fascinating discussion, listeners will learn how incorporating quantum biology into their wellness practices can help them reach their full healing potential. Using her background in both conventional medicine and energy work, Dr. Clinton shares unique insights from her years of experience helping people recover from chronic illnesses like Lyme disease and autoimmune disorders. Tune in for a thought-provoking exploration of the powerful connection between quantum biology and our overall well-being!

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What quantum biology is and how it can impact your health

• The key principles of energy medicine and how they can help you heal

• How to use quantum biology to create balance in the body and restore harmony in the mind

• Proven tips for boosting your energy levels naturally

• How to tap into the power of your subconscious mind for healing.

 

Explore with us how unlocking the power of our quantum biology can lead us to a new level of physical, mental, and spiritual health - tune in now! Don't miss out on this transformative conversation. Be sure to subscribe today so you never miss an episode.

 

(00:00:00): Life is water dancing with the rhythm of the sun. Dr. Catherine Clinton confused about what that means for your health and your hormones. Stay tuned. You're gonna find out some of the most revolutionary information for your health that you haven't heard before.

(00:00:18): 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.

(00:01:12): Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me today. Om g I'm so glad you are here for this. This is revolutionary information that you are going to hear explained by a master who is brilliant and has synthesized complex research into common sense knowledge that you can use to implement to help transform your health today. And that is not an overstatement of the promise of this show. I am going to shoot shout from the rooftops about Dr. Catherine Clinton and she has a book coming out. It's revolutionary information that you are not hearing anywhere even from me. So you're definitely gonna wanna hear this and I'm gonna tell you a little bit about her and then we're going to get started. Let me tell you, she makes the woo-hoo real cuz she comes with science and she avoids all the esoteric talk that sometimes we use, including myself, to talk about these topics about why sound and sunlight are vital and water certain types of water to our health and vitality and mitochondrial function.

(00:02:26): So Dr. Catherine Clinton is a licensed naturopathic doctor. She spent over 15 years helping people overcome their health issues. She was diagnosed herself with two autoimmune conditions and Lyme disease. While in medical school, she began the long and difficult journey of a healing path that led to the commitment to help others to not only heal physically but to return to the relationships that we've evolved over millennia for a deeper sense of health and belonging because it's science by healing herself in patients like her, she discovered that true health comes from our relationships. Dr. Catherine has learned how our quantum biological system is intimately and inseparably connected to the world around us. Our relationship with the dirt beneath our feet, the sun, the wind, the water, the plants, the seasons, each other, that is the real medicine. Her mission is to empower as many people as she can with this knowledge to encourage the paradigm shift we so desperately need. And that is ongoing. It is a revolution in health and healing and medicine. Please help me welcome Dr. Catherine Clinton to the show.

(00:03:34): Thank you so much for having me. It is an honor to be here talking about some of my favorite topics with you.

(00:03:41): I am so excited to have you on the show and talk about your favorite topics because women aren't hearing about this, almost nowhere are they hearing about this. And it actually is information that is so vital to creating the optimal health that women over 40 deserve. That if you miss this piece people, you're not gonna get to the level of health that's possible for you. So I wanna just start out by asking you so we can give people a framework to where they're going, what is quantum biology ? Can you just explain what it is and why it should matter to

(00:04:25): Them? Absolutely, absolutely. So when I was in school and actually this model is still being taught in school, we were taught that biology ran on chemical processes. So we learned that it was all key and receptor locks. So you have these receptors and you have the keys floating around in the cell, outside the cell and they're bumping around into everything and eventually they find they're perfect receptor in that key in the lock model and then biological action can happen. Now that's true, but now we have much more sophisticated imaging and technology that we can tell that there's actually a whole nother layer to our biology and it's quantum in nature. We're actually now able to measure things on a nanoscale, which really talks about the interactions in a quantum physical way. And so it's a really exciting time because what we grew up with learning in school, it's practiced in medical school, is really this Newtonian biology, this Newtonian physics that boils everything down to chemicals.

(00:05:44): And what we're seeing now with the research is there's another level of interaction that's happening in our biology on a quantum level, on a nano scale. And what's really exciting about this is that it interconnects so many different pieces of the puzzle that have been missing for so long because we know that every cell in our body and we have trillions and trillions of cells e each and every one of those cells is completing over a hundred thousand tasks each second. It's completely impossible using that Newtonian model. So what quantum biology offers us is a new understanding. It doesn't negate that these lock keys fit into the locks and adjusts the shapes of the protein and then chemical reactions occur. It doesn't negate that it adds a deeper explanation of what's happening on a quantum biological level. And this is exciting for a deeper understanding, a deeper depth of knowledge. But it's also really exciting because it interconnects so many different pieces that stood isolated in the other model. And in quantum biology it's so interconnected.

(00:07:01): Yes, so important. You know, and I just wanna kind of summarize for everyone you've been taught, we were all taught that our bodies are basically machines, biochemical and physical machines that act like a train or act like making aspirin in a laboratory. And that it's as simple as simple as chemical reactions and mechanical reactions. And that's just not true. We are very complex human beings to a smaller particulate level like Katherine saying. And so it's this nano or quantum level that is the missing key in your healing. And this is why it's vital that you listen and pay attention and start learning about it. I know some people when they hear quantum physics, their eyes glaze over and they go, oh, it's complicated. I can't understand this. Yes, you can understand this and Dr. Catherine is going to help you understand what it is, what it means, how you understand it, how you work with it, with your health, and give you some specific instances like with the water that you're drinking so that you can start using this in your life today to start improving your quantum biology.

(00:08:19): And she's got some great programs we'll tell you about later and some great free offers that will start you on this path. But it's super important. So how did you become interested in this, Catherine? Because you're a naturopathic doctor and I know a lot of wonderful naturopathic doctors, I always say I had to be an MD first to get enlightened to go and be, get the training that naturopaths get by doing the functional metabolic anti-aging medicine. And I guess I consider all naturopaths smarter than MDs cuz you knew about it before we did and you went that way. But how did you become interested in this? Because it's not something that most naturopaths even are aware of or teach

(00:09:04): About. That's so true. It's really, really cutting edge and anybody over 40, I'm 47 should know this information to help with their hormonal health. It's really absolutely foundational and quantum physics does immediately sound complicated and hard to understand. But it's really, really simple steps we take. And there I was in naturopathic medical school and I was diagnosed, it was my second year, it was sort of that initiation year, long hours, long clinic hours. And it was this proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis was, which is an autoimmune condition that affects the colon. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto thyroiditis was is an autoimmune condition that affects the thyroid gland. I had multiple GI infections, and I was diagnosed with Lyme disease. It was really a healing crisis. So I was able to take time off school and heal. I was in the perfect place, right?

(00:10:11): I was going to naturopathic medical school. I was right down the hill from a very open-minded, alternative minded allopathic school for MDs across the river from an acupuncture school. So I had so many modalities at my fingertips and I was able to put the physical pieces back together so that I could go to school again, finish my clinic hours, start my practice. But as anyone is listening who has suffered from chronic disease, they know that getting back to that picture you were before you were diagnosed might mean that you are again productive member of society. But it's not the picture of vital health. And so that's where I was sort of existing and I started researching psycho neuroimmunology and mitochondrial function and it was really at the crossroads of those two subjects. And psycho neuroimmunology is just a big fancy word for how our thoughts and our emotions impact our immune system, our inflammatory state, our hormonal state, our neurological state and wiring.

(00:11:21): And so from there I started looking at mitochondrial function and it was like the doors to quantum biology just flew right open and I haven't left because it's such an amazing piece of medicine. You know, we've really, our western society has really kind of extracted us as humans out of the ecosystem. You know, we are the explorers, the investigators, we extract things from the world around us. And what this whole journey has really taught me and learning about quantum biology has taught me how interconnected the world is and how, you know, for years and years I would go out to nature to get my vitamin D, to get my vitamin N right and ground with my feet on the earth to get those electrons. All these different quantum biological actions. But I wasn't in relationship with the world around me. And that was really the piece that started to piece the whole puzzle together.

(00:12:28): You know, I often talk about it as like, you know, we've all put together puzzles and you've put in a piece that's in the right spot, it's in the right spot in the puzzle, but there's one little piece, one little edge that's kind of flipped up and not down in the puzzle. And that's kind of how life was before I started really adopting these quantum biological practices. It was, I was in the right spot, I was doing okay, but there was this constant irritation from not belonging to the world around me. And quantum biology really helped open up that window. It helped me see that I don't end at the barriers of my skin, my hormonal makeup, my physiological state is based on the information that my body receives from the world around me. From the temperature, from the sun, from the weather, from the ground. I mean it's absolutely amazing once you start putting the pieces back together. And that's where I am and I love to talk about this.

(00:13:34): Awesome. So as you're speaking, psycho neuroimmunology is something that I think is super important, how your thoughts affect your body processes. And I think that people almost use that as a platitude and then they dismiss it. They're like, oh, thoughts become things. Oh, think positivity. And I actually interviewed this wonderful doctor, Dr. Theit Sethi, and she has a book coming out about joy and kind of the biochemistry, the effects of joy on the body and how it affects the body in terms of your nervous system. And she touches on immunology as well. So this is a great conversation to have shortly after her podcast comes out and I work in my programs a lot with heart rate variability and blood sugar and insulin. And people start freaking out about why is my heart rate variability not better? Usually most of us women, ours is tanked by the time we're over 40 and has very low variability.

(00:14:40): And with our, their insulin, it's so labile. And they'll say, well I didn't eat anything with sugar, I didn't eat any high sugar items. What's wrong? And I go, go, well what was your emotional state this morning? What were you thinking about? What are the thoughts, conversations you're having in your head? I think it's estimated we think 70,000 thoughts a day or something like that. Most of them are the same all the time. So if we kind of grow up having a fearful stance to life, fearful thoughts, if we have a angry stance, they're angry thoughts and that we circle these, these thoughts continually, we recycle these emotions and we have kind of, I think it's said three to five emotional states that are our go-tos. And what people don't realize is that's affecting your health through quantum biology that affects your blood sugar and your insulin that affects your heart rate variability, that affects everything. And you're saying mitochondria, which I didn't even know. So how do you help people understand that the thoughts they're thinking, the emotions they're feeling, how connected or not they feel to the external world and other people in nature, how safe they feel? How do you help them to make that shift from understanding that this is real and measurable and it's something they need to pay attention to?

(00:16:02): Yes, absolutely. I usually, in my patient visits, the first one I start with education. You know, as a society where really right-brained, we like to analyze, we like to have the facts in front of us and myself too. And so that's usually where I start with patience. I let them know the facts about it. I mean, Martin Picard has done amazing research showing that our emotional states impact the amount of a t p, the energy currency of the body that the mitochondria make. It's absolutely fascinating. So what I do is I walk patients through some of the science around that. I talk about how our emotions have predictable effects and you know, so many of my patients, myself included, either are dealing with some level of anxiety or depression and when they hear that our thoughts impact our health on such a fundamental level, there's a resistance or a fear about that, right?

(00:17:11): I recognize that because as someone who has dealt with anxiety in the past, and I'm sure I will in the future again, is that, you know, there's this idea that negative emotions, we need to get rid of them. But I think what heart rate variability and what heart Math Institute has done such a wonderful job with research is that it's not so much that we're not meant to feel these emotions of anger or fear or frustration. We are, we're humans, right? With this full spectrum of emotion. But it's when we get stuck in one of those emotions that we have this one way drive in our biology. So if we're always anxious, if we're always angry, if we're always fearful, then we will always be propagating that biochemical response in the body. And it's not just biochemical, right? There is a predictable heart rate variability to it.

(00:18:14): There is a predictable mapping of emotions that people have done just with electrical conduction and infrared heat showing that, you know, some of the more depleting emotions actually map cooler on the body so that there isn't this conduction electrical conduction throughout the body. It's absolutely amazing. So Karen, what I do is I really look at the science behind it and I try to pull in their brain first, right? A lot of people that come to see me are usually on their last doctor, they've seen specialists, nothing has worked out. They're coming with a lot of resentment and frustration on, on how to get better. But at the same time, they've been doing the work, they've been researching, they've been looking for answers. And that's where I start, here are some answers. Here's what your body does when it's angry, here's what it does when it's calm in a state of gratitude.

(00:19:17): And from there I can pull them into a situation where I, maybe they came in for autoimmunity, maybe they're dealing with hormones. And what I'm doing is I'm laying down some science for them to get that mind on board. And then what I'll do is I offer them a challenge. And we haven't quite gotten there yet, but the most common challenge I do with my patients is getting up and seeing the sun for 10 minutes before 10:00 AM and lowering the lights at night and I'll see them in a week or two. And honestly, I've never ever had anyone come back saying, okay, I did that circadian alignment and nothing happened and what now, you know, everybody comes back and reports a difference because what we know are these quantum steps like aligning with the sun and having circadian alignment with the sun allows for such ease in our body.

(00:20:26): It actually initiates and stimulates a whole cascade of biological action, including our hormones, right? Our hormones are sinking with the sun. And when we're out of alignment, that quantum biological action that happens from one photon hitting our retina, being propagated to all of the circadian clocks throughout the body, just that one action can sink those hormones in a way that other therapies can't. And so that's what I do is I lay the science out for them so they know that when I'm saying quantum, I'm not talking about crystals and sound healing, although those aren't bad. I'm talking about what's happening on their body on a nano scale and that it's real and that the science is finally catching up to what we've al always felt right. We've always intuitively felt a difference in our body depending on our motion. But now we have the science to show it.

(00:21:32): We always knew that we felt better waking up in the morning and going to bed when the sun went down. But now we have really robust research showing how that affects our home loan health, how that affects our biological cascades throughout the body. So I usually start with sciencey stuff to get their mind on board cuz I know that they've been researching and looking for the answers. And then I give them a practical, easy, free, accessible step like aligning with the sun so that they can see that quantum biology in action so they, they can feel it and experience it and then they're on board,

(00:22:12): Right. Appealing to people's logic and minds. And I'm just wondering though, I mean you haven't stepped on anyone's toes in terms of religion or anything like that. I find that sometimes when I bring up these more esoteric concepts, and maybe I need to do what you do is just bring the science, , bring the science. But I find somewhat sometimes people say, well that sounds woowoo in new age and you know, I'm a Christian so I don't wanna hear about that. But you've expressed it in a way that doesn't step on that because as I view the literature and the science, quantum physics has bridged the gap between spirituality and I'm not talking about religion with that and science and it is this level of our health that kind of explains these forces that go between human beings among are a universe in a very tangible way. Have you ever gotten any pushback from that arena, from people?

(00:23:18): Honestly, I have not. And I think the reason is quantum physics and quantum biology opens up, like you said, that meeting place of science and spirituality and then wherever the person in front of me is at Christian, Buddhist, atheist, all of it, they find meaning in that and they can place their religion and their beliefs in that that because it's not coming with any, the only thing it's coming with is this deeper understanding that there's much more at play in the world, in the universe, in our bodies than we're giving credit. And people are happy to plug that into their worldviews and say where that's coming from. We still don't know as a science and I'm not sure we ever will, right? There's this gap that we have as humans where we always think that we're onto the final truth and it's always just the to the next thing, right?

(00:24:23): So I think it's a beautiful, quantum biology is beautiful in that if I always spoke about it in a woo way, but I try to really stick to what the research is saying and how that impacts our biology and that leaves the door wide open for people to plug in their own belief system. And boy do they ever, if you look at my social media, we've got people from all different religions and backgrounds that find a place for quantum biology in their belief system. So I think that's the beautiful thing about it is it really doesn't come with one, but it comes ready to plug into anybody's

(00:25:05): Life. Okay. Oh, I love that. So I'm gonna do, I'm gonna shift and go more to just presenting the science and then allow people to let that go where it will. Kind of like when you pour water into an ice cube tray, it fits the mold of the ice cube tray. And then people can have whatever shaped ice cube they want to assimilate the information. And maybe I've presented it in a way that has immediately butted, which is my nature as a New Yorker, I come head on you. Some people don't like that. And so I will more stick with the science. I'm wondering if you could say more about quantum biology in relation to mitochondrial function. I think that mitochondrial function is something that's often overlooked by a lot of people even who do a root cause resolution approach. They don't, they talk about hormones a lot, they talk about detox, they talk about gut health, but they don't talk about mitochondria. And that's one reason why I created a program that includes that. How does quantum biology, you talked a little bit about how it works with mitochondria and the thoughts that you think. Can you say more about that?

(00:26:13): Yes. You know, I would love to talk about mitochondria and it will be much better if I can talk just a little bit about structured water before. 

(00:26:23): Oh please. Let's talk about, well first tell everyone what structured water is and please talk

(00:26:29): . Okay. So thank you. I, we just need to get a little bit of meat under our belt before we go onto the mitochondria. So structured water, the idea that there's a different phase of water beyond the solid ice, the liquid water we drink or the gaseous steam we see on our teapots, there is a fourth phase of water. It's gel-like, it's more viscous and people, researchers have been talking about this for a very long time. But it wasn't until 2003 that Gerald and his team out of the University of Washington identified this fourth phase of water and he termed it easy water, which means exclusion zone water. And he did that because as this gel-like viscous water starts to form on ourselves, it excludes things, it pushes them out. And what he found was that the water we're used to drinking H two oh turns into H 3 0 2 against our hydrophilic surfaces.

(00:27:36): So hydrophilic water loving that would be our cell membranes are vessels, our fascia. All of those things are covered with this fourth phase of water. And what Paula and his team from the University of Washington found was that as this structured water forms against our cell membranes, it forms one sheet. And the hydrogens in this structured water are more tightly bound. They create this lattice sheet, it's hexagonal almost like a honeycomb. So as one sheet of this gel-like water forms on our cell membrane or our vessel or our fascia or d n a or our mitochondria, it acts as a template for more layers of structured water to build. And what researchers have found is that, you know, if you're very math minded, you would've noticed that H 3 0 2, it's missing the hydrogen. And as the structured water forms on our cell membranes, it kicks out a proton, a positive hydrogen and creates what researchers are calling a proton rich zone or a proton wire.

(00:28:56): And what researchers have done, they put electrode in the structured water that's forming on the cell membrane and one in this proton rich zone. And what they found is the separation of charge, just like the separation of charge in a nine volt battery, the separation of charge between the structured water and this proton rich zone is enough to light a battery. That's what they found in the research lab. And it's enough to create biological action. And so this has been validated and reconfirmed by scientists across the globe that we have this fourth phase of water that is the structured water that is lining our cell membranes, our vessels, our fascia, and our mitochondria. And our mitochondria are very interesting. They're a wonderful study in quantum biology because they have the structured water that forms on the outside of them and the inside of them. And if we can remember back to our middle school biology class, our mitochondria, those little bean shaped organelles that are inside of our cells now a heart cell might have thousands of mitochondria keeping our heart working.

(00:30:15): It's high energy. Same with the brain, right? So it's not just one mitochondria perce, we have lots and lots of mitochondria in our cells and these are what are creating our A T p, our energy source. And Dr. Wallace Douglas Wallace has done amazing work with mitochondrial function and demonstrating that any dip in mitochondrial voltage or a T P production presents as chronic disease cancer, autoimmune conditions. I mean he's really looked at almost every disease we know of and it has this mitochondrial component. So when we're talking about health mitochondrial are foundational to our health and coming from that Newtonian bio biological perspective, you've got mitochondria that take energy from food and create a t p. This is true, but looking at them from a quantum biological perspective, we see that these organelles, these mitochondria are covered in structured water on the outside of them and on the inside of them.

(00:31:30): Now the inside of our mitochondria has the inner mitochondrial membrane and that membrane holds the proteins of the electron transport chain. And that E T C, that electron transport chain is where that A T P is created. So if we look at what's happening in the mitochondria from a quantum biological perspective, what we see is that these electrons from our food are not just bouncing down the chain like we learned in middle school biology or in medical school, right? What's happening is there's fundamentally a quantum biological action happening. These electrons in the E T C of the mitochondria are quantum tunneling, meaning that they are using quantum phenomenon to move. They are not being kicked over an energetic hill like a soccer ball because of their quantum nature. They're able to travel in multiple different paths. Now this is what we saw with some of the quantum biological research that came out of Berkeley and M I t with Seth Lloyd.

(00:32:47): They were looking at photosynthetic bacteria and that's exactly what they saw. These electrons were able to take multiple paths to the photosynthetic center to create energy for the plant. They were able to take multiple paths because of their quantum nature. And that's why photosynthesis, that's why mitochondrial production of a T p is nearly a hundred percent efficient because it utilizes these quantum phenomenon. So what we see is that our mitochondria and those proteins in the E tc, they are actually utilizing quantum tunneling. They also, when we talk about mitochondria, you've got the flow of electrons, but there's no a T TP unless protons are going through those proteins as well. And what we see clearly is those protons are being shuffled down that structured water zone that's lining those pro proteins in the E T C. So in the mitochondria you've got quantum tunneling of these electrons, you've got protons jump conducting on the structured water that's lining the proton proteins in the E T C and you have the ability of these proteins and the structured water that's covering them to capture photons of light and utilize that to make more a T p.

(00:34:25): So what we're seeing now is a completely expanded vision of our mitochondria where it matters about that structured water zone where it matters about the ability of our proteins in the E T C to come together so those electrons can quantum tunnel. We see that those structured water covering these proteins plays a fundamental role in our A T P production via that proton jumping. I mean it's absolutely phenomenal and it shows us that there's an interconnection on a much deeper level. You know, when we talk about mitochondria ATTP is what we think of, but our mitochondria are actually also creating deterioration depleted water and infrared energy with the spinning of that a t P Synthes. And what those two things do, they structure the water inside the mitochondria and outside the mitochondria so that we can create more energy. We're starting to see the picture expands so that it's not just food that's driving atp, we could have told you that, right?

(00:35:47): Looking at what happens with too much food, there is another way to create energy in the body and it has to do with this nanoscale movement of electrons, of protons, of photons of light or phonons of sound. There's amazing research out there showing how sound impacts our A T P production in the mitochondria and how would that work? Because that structured water, that fourth phase of water covering the proteins in the e tc, in the inner mitochondrial membrane, as well as the structured water covering the mitochondria, have the ability to pick up on this frequency information and use it for biological action. It's really, really amazing.

(00:36:41): Absolutely fascinating. So we make our own structured water that facilitates our mitochondria, but photons can stimulate it and sound. How does that work that, how do photons get to our mitochondria? How does sound impact it? Just through the, can you talk about that?

(00:37:00): Absolutely. So when we are talking about mitochondria and when we're talking about quantum biology, a lot of interchanges happening on the electromagnetic frequency that's given out, right? So that's where phonons of sound come from. They actually can change the shape of a protein and we know that that's where biological action starts, right? Is with the changing of those proteins. Let's see, John Stewart Reed and professor son G of Korea have done amazing research with sound and its effect on our body. They've shown quite clearly that sound creates that infrared energy. And what are all these researchers using to build that structured water zone? They're using infrared energy. So when I talk about Gerald and his research looking at the structured water and he sees it building, he's looking at something inside of water and he's shining an infrared light on that. And our biggest source of infrared energy on this world is the sun.

(00:38:17): And so our mitochondria, like some other things in our body, our fascia, our D n a, have this unique liquid crystal ability and here we go with another woo sounding terminology. But liquid crystal is what we use in our technology. It's a term that describes something between a liquid and a solid that acts as a collective, right? So these computer screens, TV screens are smartphone screens. The reason we can watch these beautiful pictures on them is because the liquid crystalline structure of the screen is hit by polarized light and collectively changes to create these beautiful pictures. The same thing is happening in our body. Our mitochondria are able to pick up electromagnetic frequency and change biological action depending on what that frequency is saying to the mitochondria. Again, back to Martin Bacard and his work with mitochondria and emotional states and how that impacts health and mitochondrial function.

(00:39:34): He also did research on music and different hurts of music and how that impacts our mitochondria. And it does, it does dramatically impact the production of a t P and energy. And it's all because of the ability of the mitochondria to pick up on this subtle frequency information. Whether it's a phonon of sound, whether it's an E M F, electromagnetic frequency of thought, photons. We actually get through our skin and the options in our skin as well as the option in our retina. So what's beautiful about our bodies is that in our hypothalamus we have the su cosmic nucleus, which is sort of our, our timekeeper of the body. So when light hits our retinas, it goes right back into the S C N and the hypothalamus are master clock and then that vibration, that photonic frequency of light depending on what kind of light it is, that frequency travels throughout our nervous system via the vagus nerve and hits all of the other circadian clocks that are throughout our body.

(00:40:59): And this is all a frequency exchange of inter information. And it's really, really exciting once you start teasing it apart and getting it down because it completely opens up a new view of the body. Not only do we have that central timekeeper in our hypothalamus, every single one of our cells has a circadian clock. It has its own relationship with the sun and the rhythm of the sun. And what we see in modern day life is that so much of our living and lighting is working against that natural attunement. But these mitochondria, same with our fashion, our D n A, they're liquid crystalline in nature compounded by the structured water that is also liquid crystalline in nature. Simply meaning that it responds as a collective to frequency information in the environment. Whether it's a phonon of sound, a photon of light, an E m F of a thought. It's really, really exciting that science is starting to validate some of the things that we've always intuitively talked about, right? Oh that person's vibe makes me feel this way or ooh, that music just completely soothes me or, or has me on edge, right? These experiences that we've had as humans now the science is finally catching up and it is an exciting time to be alive.

(00:42:39): Wow, this is so fascinating and so wonderful and I'm gonna tell everyone about the courses that you have. If you wanna learn more, I'm for sure gonna take 'em cuz you explain it in a way that is so make sense that I've never heard someone explain it with clarity and in plain English that's beautiful and it's science backed. I do wanna ask you a couple more things and I know that you offer way more in your courses in terms of how can someone start attuning to these different sound and light frequencies. You mentioned visualizing the sun and being out in the sun. Are there other methods that you'd like to

(00:43:22): Share? Absolutely. I'll give you my top three.

(00:43:25): Okay, great.

(00:43:26): . So, and they are all free. There's so many wonderful supplements and devices out there, but I rarely talk about them because I really want people to experience this information in a way that's most accessible and that's free. So my first foremost is aligning with that sun. So what I tell people to do is seeing the sunrise is optimal if that's not going to fit into your daily life. Getting outside for five, 10 minutes before 10:00 AM sets us up with so many different things. The frequency of light when the sun is rising or setting is full spectrum and it's heavy on the redder tones and the redder frequencies. And what these frequencies do is they initially some of that hormone health and those hormone cascades, we see that that light in the sun in the AM before 10:00 AM sets us up with a big surge of serotonin.

(00:44:42): And that is hitting us on many different levels. We think of our mood right and our productivity and our creativity, but serotonin is also working with our hormone health, with our immune status, our inflammatory status. We see that this early am sunshine is also setting us up with our dopamine release and that ability to stay focused and stay happy. Now when the lights lower as the sun goes down, if we can lower our lights inside as well. This sets up the flip side of that, that serotonin that was dumped in the morning and hasn't been used gets turned into melatonin. And this is our ability to sleep well as well as you know, those are really melatonin kind of serves as these sentinels. So with proper melatonin, our mitochondria can get rid of the cells that are tired, broken down, cancerous that shouldn't be in us.

(00:45:50): So it's really important to be getting both sides of that yin young rhythm of the sun. Now I live in the Pacific Northwest in Oregon. It is gray. A lot of our, a lot of the year we don't see the gorgeous sun, we just see the gray. And that is medicine too. It's the natural full spectrum light. It does not have to be cozy, tropical, wonderful sun. It just has to be the sun where you are at, there is medicine in those gray skies as well. And just to add to that, being in Oregon in the winters, it gets dark around five o'clock. So do we go to bed at five o'clock? No we don't. What we do is we transition to more of those lower frequency lights. So I use salt lamps. My kids have these little red light readers so they can be in charge of their own light.

(00:46:52): We have incandescent bulbs in the kitchen in case that needs to go on. But the shift from lowering those lights and getting that am sun is dramatic. So that's my first and foremost is aligning with the sun in that way. Getting out in the sun as many times as you can throughout the day. Taking your 10 minute break outside, this is going to have effect on your biology that you can feel. And so that's where I start most people with because I love the ones that you can feel immediately cuz then I can add more stuff on there, right? So yes, that's my first one is aligning with the sun. And it has that bright and dark phase. So we wanna get that am sun and we wanna lower it in the pm. Now if we could stack another habit onto that exposure of the sun, it would be some grounding.

(00:47:53): So getting bare feet in on the ground touching a tree. What we see is that our earth is lined with an infinite sea of free electrons. And when we come in contact with it, our body can actually collect these electrons and use them in the electron transport chain for more energy in that mitochondria for more structured water in the mitochondria and outside. So that is one that is really, really small but profound. And again, it doesn't have to be ghost down barefoot in the snow because you live somewhere that's snowy for months out of the year. That can look like touching a tree, sitting on a tree, a rock, the beach, the sand. Anywhere where you can come in contact with that infinite sea of electrons that's covering our earth. Another way to do that, if all of those options are not an option is coming in contact with negative ions.

(00:49:02): So let's say we're somewhere very cold and we have to stay bundled up and all we can do is walk around in the snow and in the snowfall, that snowfall has negative ions that impact our biology in a positive way, help structure that water as well. So those two, getting outside, being aligned with the sun, tending to that relationship with that circadian rhythm as well as grounding. And then the third one is probably my favorite and easiest one to do is using something gratitude practice, a mindfulness practice. My favorite is the heart math institute's heart coherence exercises. And they are walking you through exercises where you create, create this coherence in the body. Quantum coherence refers to two or more objects vibrating and resonating and working at the same frequency. And so when we're talking about heart coherence, we're talking about our actual human heart working in coherence, working in the same frequency as our mind.

(00:50:28): So when we are in a state of heart coherence, we see that we are innovating our frontal low, making calm, rational decisions. And we're not innovating that amygdala that's in charge of fear and rash decisions. Our blood pressure changes, the whole state of the body changes in response to this state of coherence, of quantum coherence. It's absolutely amazing. So if anyone out there is listening and wants to expand on their gratitude practice or their mindfulness practice, I love heart mouths, heart coherence exercises. Youtube has tons of 'em. And simply when I can't get the time to do that, I will take 15 seconds to take stock of what I am grateful for. And that energy of gratitude actually initiates that state of coherence and that coherence can be measured with heart rate variability and we can talk very sciencey about it. But on a very basic level, an emotion like love or gratitude when we embody it with breath, can actually change the state of frequency and coherence in our body and heart Breath Institute has done a great job researching that out and giving us lots of science behind it.

(00:51:52): But the basic idea is that taking a second to tune into those emotions and feel them completely rewires our physiology in a state of coherence so that we're able to have that quantum biological flow of information. And so those are my three favorites. Having some kind of practice to bring coherence in, whether that's mindfulness, meditation, gratitude, heart coherence exercises, having some relationship with the world around you where you're grounding and coming in contact with the earth, with nature, with the plants. And then aligning with our biggest source of energy, our sun, and aligning with that in the morning throughout the day and then following its lead and lowering the lights at night. This is something that I wish every single ob GYN would be talking about with their patients, not only for fertility, but what this is what has a massive impact on the state of our hormones as we enter into that perimenopause menopausal stage in our life. And so I'm really excited that you are talking about it. That we are talking about it. I love to get this information out there.

(00:53:18): Yes. And what makes you say that it's particularly important for perimenopausal menopausal women? Is there a special reason just cause we're so struggling with our hormones or

(00:53:29): Struggling with our hormones? Yep. That circadian alignment with the sun sets up that cascade of hormones from so many different levels. Our cortisol, our leptin, our serotonin and melatonin, our dopamine and our mitochondrial function, right? Our mitochondria are making that pregnenolone that turns into our sex hormones and our testosterone and our estrogen and and all of those things that we start to really examine once we're past 40. They have a foundational root in our relationship with the son. And I would even go so far as to say that a lot of the struggle that we're seeing hormonally in women and men has a layer in that disconnection of circadian rhythm, krono disruption they call it in the research. It has such a fundamental role in the proper release stimulation and propagation of these hormones. It's, it's really phenomenal.

(00:54:48): Absolutely fascinating. I could talk to you for hours, but I know people will probably say, Karen, you're talking way too long. I do. We're gonna share about all your things with everyone, but I have to ask you about this wonderful quote that you shared with me before we started. If you can talk about what it means. Life is water dancing with the rhythm of the sun.

(00:55:10): Yes, absolutely. And so that is talking about how, whether it's our biology, our cells, and our mitochondria like we are talking about, or whether it's a giant sequoia tree pulling water up to the very tip top branches that's being powered by this beautiful interchange that we see with structured water and its ability to pull energy from the sun and use it for biological action. It's not just us, it's the plants, it's the animals, it's our own bodies. Utilizing this dance where that structured water can pull in a photon of light and create biological action, create biological movement because of the two interacting together. And it's something that I, that's the riff on a quote from Albert St. Georgie and he was a Nobel Prize winner that went on to research exactly what I'm talking about, this so-called water battery in our, our body and how it is what's powering life here on this planet. It's absolutely fascinating. And each day, each week that rolls on, there's more and more validating research about this beautiful dance between water and light and how it powers life.

(00:56:44): I love that. I love you and I'm so grateful that you are on the podcast talking about this. Everybody listening, you just got a gift. You are getting a gift right now. And Dr. Katherine has more gifts for you. She has a Rewilding, our Terrain guide and then also our structured water guide. We'll have the links in the show notes. Do you wanna tell them a little bit about those?

(00:57:09): Sure. Yeah. Those are a couple free guides that walk you through how to kind of facilitate this relationship with the world around us and some of the obstacles that might be getting in your way to having that relationship. So Rewilding is just about how to do that, simple steps to create that relationship. And the structured water guide is just as it sounds, it talks about what I'm talking about when I talk about structured water. There's lots of like devices out there talking about structured water, lots of marketing. And what I'm talking about is different as it always is the case with marketing and marketing budgets, right? , right? The biggest gets the most attention. But this structured water guide is talking about what I'm talking about, this biological water that's inside of our body, inside of ourselves, and really empowering this biological action. So both are just ways to facilitate this change in looking at the world around us as part of us and utilizing it for better health.

(00:58:28): Thank you so much for those. I invite everyone to please, but if you're not driving, click the link. Go download these guys and get guides and get started. And Dr. Katherine, tell everyone where they can find out more and interact with you. Tell 'em about the courses that you have. Tell 'em all the things.

(00:58:48): Absolutely. Well, my name is Dr. Katherine Clinton and that's where you can find me on Facebook, on Instagram, on YouTube. And my website is Dr. Katherine Clinton dot com. Same name everywhere. Keeping it easy. And I offer classes, I'm constantly sharing information on social media because my goal is to get so many of us acquainted with this information and stronger and more resilient so we can sort of demand the changes that we need to see in the in medicine and healthcare in general. So both of those social media tags, all Dr. Ka Clinton, my website, and I've got a book coming out at the end of September. Well,

(00:59:38): I was say, please tell me you have a book coming out . So wonderful. Does it have a title yet?

(00:59:46): It does. It's called Interconnected.

(00:59:49): Beautiful. And I want everyone to know it's Catherine with a C, not a K. So make sure you spell it right. And what is your favorite social media hangout? I

(00:59:59): Think I'm most active on Instagram.

(01:00:02): Awesome. Thank you so much for the journey that brought you to this place, that you have this wisdom and brilliance to share with other people, especially other women, and make it accessible to them so that they understand it and they can start using it and really achieve what's possible for their brilliant health and especially in the latter part of life and for sharing it on the Hormone Prescription Podcast. Thank you so much. Thank

(01:00:35): You so much. It was an honor to join you here. I love your work. I love what you're doing. So thank you so much for having me today,

(01:00:43): , and thank you for listening to another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kiran. Thank you so much for choosing to spend your time today with us and learning empowering information that you can start using today to improve your hormones and your health. I look forward to talking with you again next week. Until then, peace, love,

(01:01:04): And hormones. Yo, 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 your copy of  Dr. Catherine Clinton's latest guide "Rewilding Our Terrain."

CLICK HERE.

► Get your copy of Dr. Catherine Clinton's latest "Structured Water Guide."

CLICK HERE.

 

► 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.

 

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Secrets To Boosting Longevity - It’s More Than You Think

Living long and living well are two essential elements for a happy, fulfilled life. But, how can midlife women achieve this? On this episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, Dr. Suzanne Turner reveals the secrets to boosting longevity and how it’s more than you think.

 

Dr. Turner is the founder of Vine Medical Associates and the VMA Residency. Double Board Certified, her thriving practice treats executives and athletes from around the world. Practicing Cellular, Longevity, and Performance Medicine, Dr. Turner has special interests and experience in bioidentical hormone therapy, metabolic medicine, neurodegenerative disease, and human performance optimization. She also has earned Advanced Certification in Endocrinology and Peptide Therapy. Dr. Turner is the leading expert in peptide therapy in the Southeast. She is an award-winning teacher of medical students, residents, and physicians while on the Faculty of Emory University. She has also served on the faculty of A4M, IPS, BioTe, SSRP, and ACAM. She has been featured on several podcasts including Super Human Radio Network, TRT Revolution, Relentless Vitality, Younique Medical, and Health Matters. Dr. Turner spends her free time with her husband and family, studying cellular medicine and Christianity, managing her urban farm, and powerlifting.

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

 

• How to understand the different approaches to longevity and health

• Why bioidentical hormone therapy is important for midlife women

• What are the implications of metabolic medicine, neurodegenerative disease, and human performance optimization

• Dr Turner's top tips for leading a long and healthy life

 

Don't miss this enlightening episode with Dr. Suzanne Turner as she reveals the secrets to boosting longevity – it’s more than you think! Tune in now and start living your best life today!

 

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(00:00): Muscle is the currency of aging. Carl Lenore, what can you do now to boost the life in your years? 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. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast. 

(01:04): Everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kiran. Thank you so much for joining me today. You are gonna love, love, love my guest today because I love her after just talking to her for a few minutes and you're gonna hear our conversation. She, like me as a medical doctor who went from the corporate sector into enlightened medicine, is what I call a functional approach, root cause resolution approach. Her story's a little different about how she got into this, so you're gonna wanna hear that you've heard a lot of my other guests share their stories. I'm always fascinated by how people evolve their viewpoints in the world. And so you'll wanna hear hers. She has a wonderful practice in Atlanta and helps people heal and she loves to focus on longevity and she has a ginormous toolbox of modalities to help you maybe increase the years in your life, but definitely increase the life in your years.

(02:10): She's gonna talk to you about the difference between health span and lifespan and most importantly, how do you test to know what your aging status is? Are you older physiologically than you are chronologically? She's gonna tell you how to know and she's gonna share with you some of the best tools and strategies in her toolbox that you can start using today to put more life into your years. I'll tell you a little bit about her and then we'll get started. Dr. Turner is the founder of Vine Medical Associates and the VMA Residency Double Board certified. Her thriving practice treats executives and athletes from around the world practicing cellular longevity and performance medicine. Dr. Turner has special interests and experience in bioidentical hormone therapy, metabolic medicine, neurodegenerative disease, and human performance optimization. She also has earned expert in peptide therapy in the southeast and is an award-winning teacher of medical students, residents, and physicians. While the faculty of Emory University, she's also served on the faculty of a four m i p s, Biot, S S R P and Aamp. She's been featured on several podcasts including Superhuman Radio Network, T R T Revolution, relentless Vitality, unique Medical and Health Matters. Dr. Turner spends her free time with her husband and family studying cellular medicine and Christianity managing her urban farm and power lifting. Please help me welcome Dr. Suzanne Turner.

(03:42): Hi Kyrin. Thank you so much for having me on today. I'm really excited to get to talk with you.

(03:46): Yes, I'm very excited to talk with you. We both were in Atlanta probably at the same time, but I never had the pleasure of meeting you. We have colleagues and friends in common and I love what you're doing and what you offer women. So let's dive into talking about longevity for women and what's involved with that. But first I wanna start because you are also traditionally trained physician, right? Yes. If you could share with everyone kind of your journey from what I call corporate medicine Yes. To enlightened Medicine. What happened there?

(04:24): Well, actually I think it was mostly patient driven. So the practice that I started, I had probably half and half men and women and several of the women came to me and said, Hey, will you write these bio identical hormones? And I said, I don't know what that is, but okay. So I wrote for their hormone therapy and the the compounding pharmacist called me up and said, Hey, we love that you're writing for these but you clearly don't know what you're doing.

(04:52): . And they said, well, can we send you to a class? So they sent me to this little quick weekend course on biodentical hormones and it was really just a very skim introductory course called get Out of Line. It was about how do you stop following the person in front of you and really be the leader in what you're doing? So I just got all of a sudden this hunger for learning about hormones and learning other ways. I've heard you talk about your toolbox got bigger or you added things to your toolbox and that really is how I feel about it. I'd gotten a bunch of people better, but there were several that were just hanging on and not quite continuing to do well. And so having this whole new thing where I could help patients with both, with adding in hormones and then as I went on, adding more things, the whole perspective of this not being disease centered, but being cellular or organ centered and how do we manipulate the way that the body responds to its environment?

(05:54): It was a completely different way of thinking about medicine. I think I just continued. So then I found the American Academy of the anti-Aging and regenerative medicine like you and spent many years learning layer after layer after layer of complexity, adding things to my toolbox learning from other people. I think we spend a lot of time learning now, speaking with people like you, with other friends that really help us to learn other ways. We've just added ozone therapy and neurotherapy to our practice, which have been huge benefits. So there's so many things we can do for that patient that's just not getting better and oh, okay, well then maybe this is a matter of looking at how your cells process energy, how your cells speak to one another or communicate how your nervous system controls the way that your organs work. So it's been a fun journey.

(06:47): Yes, it is. And I love that you learned out from a wanting more place. So many of us learned from disasters and then when we couldn't find answers we had to seek elsewhere. So it's very inspiring to hear your story and I want to talk a little bit about longevity. There have been some experts in the more mainstream medical field who have said, no, you can't really impact longevity except don't smoke, don't drink too much, and kind of the usual party line that everyone hears. You know, eat the sad diet, exercise more, right? All the things we hear, but there really is so much more that you can do to impact longevity. So how did you become interested in

(07:38): That? I think it's because the patients, again, it's the patients who came to me and said, how do we make sure it really, the specific patients are the ones who are the entrepreneurs or the head of household or the family member who says, I want to, I've seen my mother much like you. I've seen my mother or my father go through this horrible end of their life that they, I didn't want them to go through. How do I keep myself from getting there And I have, they have a passion about something they're doing. Like maybe they own a coffee company or maybe they own a skincare line and they love what they're doing and they're passionate about helping people in that way and they wanna be able to continue to do that. So when my patients come to me and tell me those stories, it really inspires me to provide them that opportunity to continue to be so, I see myself as one of their team members in helping them to be able to continue to pursue their passion as long as possible.

(08:34): I'm not necessarily talking about increasing their number of days or years, although that is something that everyone's rushing to, to, to find the research for and maybe probably has been doing for, has been for years. I'm really talking about changing the shape of your health span from a long oval type shape into a square so that you increase your health, you stay at that lovely, improved health all the way until you're ready to pass and then you go so that there isn't this sort of long drawn out disease state at the end of life that we continue to see. I would hope that you would be able to continue to do things that you're passionate about, speaking in front of audiences and teaching about hormones until right up until the day before you pass and that that you would not have that long drawn out, prolonged ending. So when I'm talking about longevity, I'm really talking about longevity of health span. Although the research is out there and currently being done on improving the length of life, I feel like if my length of life is, if my life is not full of health then I don't really want the extra length of life.

(09:46): I totally agree , we don't wanna live in a disease state and currently so many of us once we pass 50 are in a disease state. I think it's over 50% of us are on five or more medications after the age of 50, which represents chronic disease management and all the risks that chronic disease carries. So increasing our health span, and I know some of you listening are thinking, you know, Dr. Kyrin, my health is a mess right now and I'm in midlife metabolic mayhem. Or I, you know, I can't lose the weight and I can't sleep. I'm not worrying about increasing my health span. But actually the same tools that Dr. Suzanne and I are gonna talk about are will also help you get out of midlife metabolic mayhem and correct and reverse disease and improve your overall quality of health. So you definitely wanna listen cuz she's gonna share some tools with you that we haven't talked about on the podcast before and I think you're gonna wanna hear this, I have to ask you first, you have this wonderful quote on your Instagram and I love your Instagram cuz it really shows who you are and your life.

(10:58): So everybody, you definitely wanna check it out. We'll give the link at the end that muscle is the currency of aging. Muscle is the currency of aging. Can you talk about what that means?

(11:11): I have to confess, I stole that from a friend Carl Leor who's a wonderful podcaster as well. This is about, we have to realize that the exercising muscle, it's not just that your doctor's telling you to exercise. Wow. Wow. That's true. Okay, I know about that. This is actually, we know that the exercising or the contracting muscle secretes signals that tell the rest of your body, this is a young person begin to unfold the D N A unfold, the protein processing that in a way that is much more youthful. So an exercising muscle will communicate to the rest of the body that this is a young person and that youthful things need to be happening. So even if you are unable to exercise, there are other things that we can do to help with that. There's a relatively new device called M sculpt that works on helping people who are unable to exercise.

(12:06): Now it's marketed for weight loss, but what's exciting about this device is it's able to help with people who are unable to exercise or have injuries to actually as behave as though they were exercising. So it gives that same release of youthful signals that you get. I think most people are able to do some form of activity and even if you are, you know, walking to your mailbox standing up or sitting down at your desk, I tell my 96 year old patients that one of the things they can do is just standing up and sitting down from their dining room chair. Just getting that kind of activity is going to be beneficial for your overall health because your muscles as they move and contract are sending signals to the rest of your body to be more youthful and to produce proteins in a more youthful manner.

(12:54): So then all the things that happen with age where we collect more junk in our more trash in our cells where we damage the cells to the point where they become like zombie cells, all of those things are less likely to happen because of the signals that our cells are getting from the exercising muscle. So there's a reason to exercise this, not just my doctor says I need to exercise or I'm trying to lose weight. Although both of those usually are present. The biggest reason is because of this youthful communication that an exercising muscle will give you.

(13:28):Where are women getting it wrong over 40 with maintaining or building muscle mass? How are we getting it wrong with our hormones with the exercises we're doing or not doing? Why do we struggle with losing muscle mass? Cuz that's a huge problem for women. So where do, yeah,

(13:47): I love the new, it's one of the hashtags I love. It's it's strong, not skinny. I love that because it's, it moves the focus away from being very, very thin to being very, very healthy. And the idea that one of the things I hear my patients say a lot is, I don't want to do any weight training because I'm afraid I'm going to be too bulky. And that makes me a little bit sad because I think it's one of the easiest, fastest way for women over 40 to lose weight. And so patients that I can finally convince, okay, you don't need to be in the gym, do on the treadmill for 45 minutes every single day. You can do a hit exercise program that's just 15 really probably we can get away with four to five minutes of high intensity interval cardio and the rest of the time you can do some weight training because that's where we get our fat burning.

(14:39): Again, that's where we tell ourselves to choose to burn fat as an energy source. If is in that 70% maximum heart rate range, it's not in killing yourself on the treadmill, it's in that lovely 70% max heart rate range, which we usually will get with a good weight training program. Now I definitely recommend people use a trainer, especially if you've just started doing weight training. I have been doing this for several years and I still use a trainer because I wanna make sure I don't injure myself. So injury is a little bit worse of course. So I would rather not have that. I want longevity of my ability to exercise as well. So I have someone who guides me through the things that I do in the gym, the way women are because we don't have a lot of testosterone and particularly as we approach menopause or in that midlife mayhem, we will deplete ourselves of testosterone.

(15:33): And so it's actually testosterone and the way you train that will build a bulk of your muscle. It's pretty difficult for women to build bulk. They really have to eat a lot and they have to do exercises in a particular way in order to bulk even at that. Most of the women who you see that are that bulky kind of bodybuilder look, those women usually have, they have given themselves some sort of hormonal treatment, not, not like menopausal hormones but additional hormones that will allow them to be that size. Otherwise women are less likely to grow what we should see to hypertrophy or thicken the muscles. Like you talk about bulky, what we instead will see is more definition of the muscle because you're burning the fat around the muscle, so you're maintaining your muscle mass, you're burning the fat around the muscle to be used for that muscle to contract. So typically I recommend that women over 40 really put the majority of their energy in exercise toward muscle, toward lifting weight, some sort of resistance exercise.

(16:39): Okay. Yes. And I find that maybe it's post Jane Fonda aerobic exercise era when people say exercise, like we have in our minds says women over 40, oh Jane Fonda, right? But I think it's time that we changed that visual and I don't have a visual representation of who represents probably Deborah Atkinson , you know, flipping 50. She talks about that all the time. And you don't need more aerobics, you need more resistance training. You mentioned testosterone and that's something that I'm very passionate about because you know, the official corporate medical statement summary on testosterone use in women is basically no. And it's so vital for our brain function neurotransmitters, our bone mass, our muscle. Can you talk about the importance of getting your testosterone tested and treated?

(17:37): Yes, over our lifetime, even including in our twenties, testosterone is one of the greatest hormones that's produced and I mean greatest in volume of hormones that's produced by women's bodies, which doesn't seem to be, that doesn't make a lot of sense in our minds, but this is the reason why it's so frustrating. So I just competed in a power lifting competition and I was required to come off of my testosterone in order to com do that competition. I think this is a travesty because this, I'm gonna spend the next several months dealing with my midlife mayhem again as I cover the loss of testosterone and coming back, getting back on it again. And I don't take a huge dose of testosterone. I'm, I'm really just at a moderate appropriate dose because without it, my testosterone, of course I'm 50, my testosterone is very low with testosterone, I sleep better, I'm more calm. Things around me don't bother me. And that's the case with most of my patients. Much like you I'm sure is that they're able to sleep better at night. I tell women things like socks on the floor don't bother you .

(18:46): And it's because if you think about it, your husband doesn't, it doesn't bother him. When he sees socks on the floor, he walks right past it. It's because our minds are so diffusely aware. If you're familiar with the work of Allison Armstrong, we have such diffuse awareness when we're in that estrogen cycle and if we are on testosterone, it really helps with bringing some focus to our activities in our day. So I'm a big fan of testosterone and again, not in a, an overdose or super physiologic dosing, but in a necessary for functioning to day-to-day. The dose I take is about one 10th or one 15th. The dose of that I give my husband, it's a way smaller dose, but it's perfect in just what I need in order to function properly in on day-to-day.

(19:31): Right. And I love that you brought up Alison Armstrong. I'll just say a little bit about her for everybody listening. She's basically, I guess a woman's dating coach, but she really is very clear about the different psychological profiles that is related to hormones for men and women and how we function differently because of the our hormonal milieu. And so I love that you shared that about our brain because testosterone is super important for that dopamine and the focus and the drive and not only our muscles and our bones, but it's very important. All right, so what else is important when we're looking at increasing our health span?

(20:15): I think several things are important. One of the ways that muscle also works. And so this is, it's, I'm gonna tie this into what we just talked about is by increasing the ability of your cells to produce protein and increasing the ability of the cells to produce energy. So I hear a lot of women that are in that midlife mayhem talk about being fatigued. So one of the things that we can use, there's a old drug that was found on Easter Island that is sort of like an old antibiotic, although it functions differently than that. It's F D A approved for use for kidney transplant patients and that's in a fairly high dose. When we use this in a much lower dose, we can find that that we are able to turn off the go, go, go, go, go mi mindset of ourselves and turn on the rest and repair mindset of ourselves.

(21:10): Those two aspects of how we see and use energy in ourselves need to be in a really good balance, the calm down, rest and relax as well as the go-go, let's build, let's grow, let's develop. We want that, but we also want the rest and relax. It needs to be in this good balance. Much like we've probably talked about with the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Those all exist, those dichotomies exist at the cellular level. So one of the things that it's drug is called rapamycin. It's used in much, much smaller doses and there are some really interesting studies about it improving the longevity and the number of years of mice and sea elegance, which is a worm that has very similar D n A to ours as opposed to dogs that don't have similar the for using animals for research rats or mice.

(22:03): And the sea elegance has a very similar d n A to us so we can use those to study and rapamycin, because it's been around for a long time, it's been used for many, many years treating kidney transplant patients. We're using this in really, really tiny infrequent doses for every once in a while to give your cells a rep and a chance to recover from all the things we do in a day. So that also sort of, so rapamycin is one option, but we also use that rolls over into the idea of how important sleep is. So one of the things that's the tenant of health for me is going to bed at eight 30. And the reason this is important is because during sleep, this is when your brain opens up what we call the glymphatic drainage system. This is sort of the trash or the sewer system of the brain.

(22:52): It's closed during the day and at night while you're sleeping. It opens up as long as the body's not doing anything like digesting food. So this is one of the reasons why your Dr. May say for you to wait at least two hours from eating to going to bed because that gives your body time to handle the food and then it can focus on that recovery and repair. During sleep is when that glymphatic drainage system opens up, all the trash can be cleared away. The immune cells can take the trash, bundle it up, put it out into the glymphatic to be moved away. The systems can be all things can be filed away like where they're supposed to be in the brain and the next morning you can wake up refreshed because all of that was able to happen. So in our patients who aren't sleeping, we need to be really focused and helping them to make that a priority, not only as far as setting aside the amount of time that's necessary, but also in providing them ways to help them with sleep.

(23:52): That list is very, very long, but getting adequate number of hours of sleep and the research is around seven to nine hours per night and then also getting enough of the kinds of sleep we need. So the same thing happens during sleep on a nightly basis in the brain. That can happen during the day with using something like rapamycin. The other interesting thing is doing a 12 hour fast overnight. And that's probably the only thing that's been proven in humans to promote longevity is calorie restriction. This is really hard to do long-term, so it's not something that we, that we definitely recommend for everyone, but one of the things I do recommend for everyone is a 12 hour overnight fast. This is, it seems like 12 hours overnight. That seems like it would be easy. Well if you eat dinner at six o'clock at night and don't eat anything again until six o'clock in the morning, that sounds pretty easy.

(24:46): But most of my patients have a hard time getting that 12 hours in. What's interesting is if you fast for that 12 hours, we know that the brain will begin to produce a protein or a fat rather called butyrate and butyrate is used by the cells as an alternate fuel source and it triggers that same response as the rapamycin does to help the body with that process of autophagy or rest and relaxation. So an overnight fast of 12 hours is cheaper than getting rapamycin of course, and is a really simple way that everyone at home can be involved in their own longevity is by setting aside that time not only for adequate rest but also for fasting overnight

(25:30): Regarding fasting because it's very popular right now all kinds of fast dry, fast wet, fast water, fast juice fast. But intermittent fasting is a huge topic and there's several best selling books on it. What about longer intervals of fasting? What is the research saying about that?

(25:50): It's, I think the research is still up in the air and what really works in the research is fasting in the morning and is early, I'm sorry, is is evening fasting, which is much more difficult for most people to do. Most people don't mind fasting in the morning, but they have a really hard time fasting in the evening and as we just talked about, it runs right into your ability of your body to rest and and recuperate and especially the brain to repair the things it needs to overnight if you're bumping that up too close to your sleep time. So I really encourage people if they can, to push that fasting window up against their dinnertime and make that dinnertime be earlier in the evening. Then you get that full 12 hours of overnight sleep, I mean of overnight fasting for the brain to be able to begin producing butyrate so that it can cause all the healing that the cells need through that time when it's produced.

(26:46): Okay, alright. I want us continue on tools to improve longevity, but I wanted to ask you about how do people know how old their body thinks they are? I mean sure we have a chronological age, but for some of us, and I've seen some inventories where people can do answer questions about their health and then it spits out kind of what their, and I forget what Eric Braverman calls it, their true age and your, you can find out does your, is your body functioning at an older age or a younger age or your age appropriate? Where are you? But there's some clinical tests that can be used, correct?

(27:27): Yes. So I think the simplest way for us to look at that is there's a couple of simple markers that are probably on everyone's last lab test. They're not going to give you a specific age, but it is something for you to monitor over time and it's again, something probably everyone's had done on their most recent lab tests. If you look on your complete metabolic panel, one of the tests that's on there is called an albumin. The goal for albumin is for the level to be four and a half or greater. If you're four and a half or if you're less than four and a half, your risk of aging and your risk of mortality from all causes goes up. So I just encourage people to watch their albumin level. We wanna see that it's either staying the same or improving and that's a general good marker of how well your health overall is.

(28:20): The second easy simple marker is in your complete blood cell count and that is a lymphocyte count. We want that lymphocyte count to be greater than 35. When you, as we age, one of the things that causes us aging is that your immune system declines in its ability to function optimally. We know that this has happened with our most recent virus that's gone through and most of the people who were unable to tolerate that were people who were elderly or over 75 80. And part of that is because their immune system is also aging. One of the ways we can look at that is looking at the lymphocyte count, which is look is one of your immune cells and we want that level to be greater than 35. A less than 35 is concerning that you will not be able to fight off viruses or cancer should the two of them come your way.

(29:12): And so those are two things you can monitor generally in every lab test. Now a little bit more specific are two different tests and one is called a beta-glucan assay. This can let us know whether or not you also gives you an approximation of what your age is because we accumulate this as we age. There are specific labs that do this. The second one is called true age and it is an epigenetic test, which means you know, you have, you know about people who have genetic variations in their D N A from birth and they have changes that make them more susceptible to things like down syndrome for example. Well those various genes and all of our genes will change the way they are expressed based on what's happening in your environment. So a more appropriate environmentally induced aging marker is this epigenetic test. They're looking for specific changes on specific pieces of D N A that are more common with aging and they can give you both a rate of aging as well as an proposed current age based on all the patients they've had do the test.

(30:25): And so there are several companies that do a test like this. I use one called True Age, there are lots of others. And they look at your epigenetics to see whether you are how quickly you are approaching aging. I really am concerned about the rate of aging. So for every one year of age, how many years older are you? And I'd like to see that number be one or less so that you are not continuing aging. And again, one of the ways we can fix that is what we've already talked about with contracting muscle and adequate sleep and overnight fasting.

(31:00): All right. Where are we with telomere length at this point clinically? What are your thoughts on that?

(31:06): So what's interesting is telomere length, it tends to be associated with aging. We know that again with the most recent virus that people lost a good bit of telomere length. The jury is still out whether extending telomeres will affect your longevity in the long run. So we are still looking at that research to see whether or not there is a benefit. We know that a shorter telomere length is associated with a shorter lifespan, but it's not necessarily correlated with a lengthening of that. Telomere is not necessarily corded with a lengthening of lifespan. So again, the jury is still out. There are several companies that have products that are beneficial in lengthening T telomeres and I am not convinced of the information yet. It's the jury is still out about whether that telomere lengthening will extend lifespan.

(32:00): Right. And just for anyone who doesn't know whatt mirrors are, they're kind of like the binding on your end of your shoelaces that you have on all strands of D N A that kind of holds it together and they shorten over your lifespan and like Dr. Suzanne was saying, you're at increased risk for certain diseases when they're shorter. So that's what telomeres are. Alright, so we're working out at the gym doing, getting our muscle mass, we're doing resistance training, we're sleeping, we're doing a 12 hour fast. What other things have been shown or clinically

(32:38): Proven to help us improve our health spans? There was a big study that was done called the trim study that's probably the most significant one that's out there. And it was done with growth hormone, growth hormone and the, the study was intended to see whether or not growth hormone would improve lifespan and giving people growth hormone would improve their lifespan. Well one of the side effects of growth hormone is increase in blood sugar. So they also gave those patients metformin to cut counteract the increase in blood sugar from the growth hormone. The other thing that growth hormone is known to do is increase cortisol or stress hormone. Who needs that? So they gave those people D H E A to help counteract this, the ef, the growth hormone side effect of raising cortisol. So the study was done with growth hormone, D H E A and D and metformin.

(33:31): So this is one of the places where the hype around metformin began. Metformin has some benefits in, this is what I was getting to. Metformin has some benefits in improving lifespan in animal studies. The concern I have with metformin is its mechanism of action. Number one, its mechanism of action is at the mitochondria or the energy generating level. This interferes with the ability of cytochrome one, which is one of the little things that helps your mitochondria to make energy. It interferes with that function. So I don't want any of my mitochondria to be fun to be messed with. I get concerned when I see that when I hear about mitochondria because mitochondrial dysfunction is one of the causes of aging. So it just doesn't jive in my mind to use metformin, although there's a lot of research out there that's very interesting and ongoing about using metformin for longevity.

(34:26): It just makes me nervous because of its mechanism of action. The second thing that metformin does, mechanism of action-wise is affects your microbiome. Which if you have a terrible microbiome might be a good idea if you have a great microbiome. I don't wanna mess with my microbiome. I think our intestines speak volumes to our entire bodies. I think the food that we put in tells the microbiome to be what it is and it will send signals back to our body to be more youthful, to be more energetic, to be more calm. All the things. I listened to your last podcast about anxiety and she was right on about the microbiome really affecting our anxiety. So I get concerned about, about messing with the microbiome if we don't have to. So metformin is a little concerning to me. The study was done with growth hormone and last I understood they were actually looking at using an a peptide called liraglutide, which does not have the glucose raising or the cortisol raising effects of me of growth hormone. So I'm interested to see the research on that. That's still pending lilu most people are probably familiar with it as as Victoza or Saxenda, which are, which is used for weight loss.

(35:37): Okay, awesome. All right, so what other tools are available? You mentioned peptides, you are an expert in peptides, you have all book coming out on this topic. What we've covered a little bit of that on the podcast, but can you speak to peptides that might specifically improve health span?

(35:57): It's one of the things I think is really interesting and helpful because of how they work. I think there's two in particular that would be beneficial and there's several of them probably that would be helpful. But let's just talk about two, I think thymus and alpha one, which is comes from your thymus thymus gland and can help to rebalance the way your immune system functions. When we get a vaccine, when we have an autoimmune disease, our immune system is really shifted over to one side where it's primarily focused on making antibodies. We don't want our immune system to be focused in that direction because then it's unable to fight things like viruses and cancer. And this is an oversimplification of the way our immune system works. But there, if we're talking about in binary language, that's really what we're looking at. So if it's busy making antibodies, it's not gonna be busy making things, what we call natural killer cells that can fight off bacteria, I'm sorry, viruses and cancer.

(36:53): Oh, I'd love for it to be more balanced. And one of the ways we can do that is using this peptide that's naturally occurring in the thymus gland. It's depleted in patients we know that have things like rheumatoid arthritis, MS for example. And so we love having that extra ability to give ourselves depleted thymus and alpha one if we are able to find it. That's a little bit of trouble right now. I like it because it works on that immunosenescence or the aging of the immune system that occurs as we age. The thymus gland, which is where your T-cells come from. Everybody's familiar with this conver you, I couldn't have had this conversation several years ago cuz no one would know what we were talking about, but right. The recent virus we have all this, people are familiar with these terms. You are a thymus gland where your T-cells come from gets replaced with fat as we age.

(37:42): And so that's part of the problem with aging is your immune system's unable to fight off things that used to be able to. So if we can give you something like thymus and alpha, we stimulate your baby T-cells to become cells that can fight things off, then we have this better balance. So I think thymus and alpha would definitely fall in my toolbox of anti-aging. The second thing would be to use a growth hormone secretagogue. The reason why I like the instead of growth hormone itself is because they're increasing the ability of your body to produce its own growth hormone. Again, as we age, we know we hit that midlife mayhem and we deplete our bodies not only of testosterone melatonin, estrogen, progesterone, but also growth hormone. And so if we can allow our bodies just to make the amount of growth hormone that it would've made in our twenties and thirties, that it would na you won't overdose on the growth hormone because you're not giving yourself actual growth hormone.

(38:40): You're giving yourself an it's, they're usually analogs of growth hormone releasing hormone, which is also naturally produced by the brain. We know that these are associated with improvement in longevity, especially in animal studies. And so this is one of my favorites to help to put people on for improving their longevity. And we can follow that again with a true h test and see how they're chronologically versus biologically improving in their age. So those would probably be my number one. And number two, anti-aging. If we're talking about appearance as aging, one of my favorites is using the copper peptides. And so growth GH HK is the amino acid sequence that it's called. Most of the peptides have a letter and number name on them because they're, they're still in research use. And so G H K has a copper p attached to it, so it's blue when you see it.

(39:31): You may see several skincare lines that have a G H K that have a blue coloration to them and these can really help to restore the skin. They have been compared against re A and vitamin C with better than re A and vitamin C outcomes in the research. So very interesting anti-aging for the skin. What's very interesting recently is I've been recommending these topically for people to use for hair loss and we've had several patients lose their hair in this most recent pandemic. And if they use this on their scalp with a derma roller, we do it a couple times a week. Many of these patients will, we're seeing some really amazing results with restoration of hair. And this is not even using p R P, it's just using the, the DRO and the the medical grade J H K C U serum.

(40:25): Awesome. Yeah, this is so much good information and I know you could go on probably listing things. I'm thinking, oh, we didn't even talk about oxygen therapies, but I'm gonna tell everyone they just need to read your book , where you're gonna talk about a lot of this. And I thank you so much for joining us. I want everybody listening to really hear that you can improve the quality of your health throughout your life. Juries is not in yet on whether we can actually increase our years, but we can certainly increase the life and the years that we do have. So where can everybody find out more about you?

(41:08): My website is Vine as in grapevine medical.com on Instagram at Dr. S Turner, d r s Turner. I'm on Facebook, vine Medical on Facebook. That's the best places.

(41:21): And talk a little bit about your book. What are they gonna find there?

(41:24): So it's pretty exciting. I'm about halfway through. We're expecting it to be published in November. It is about how to restore your youthful self, recognizing yourself in the mirror again, there I am. And particularly with use the use of peptides.

(41:42): Awesome. Well we look forward to that. And thank you for the wisdom and information that you've shared. Thank you for your passion and for your willingness to get out of line. I too started with Dr. Taylor and for everyone listening, Dr. Taylor Eldridge Taylor used to run a program called Get Out of Line for physicians who really recogniz that particularly as women in medical weren't being served properly. And he started by teaching other doctors about natural hormone therapy and then expanded. And then both Dr. Suzanne and I went onto the A four M residency, as she said, or fellowship. So thank you so much for your bravery. A lot of people lay, people don't realize how brave it is for doctors like you to get out of line and say no to the drug and surgery paradigm and walk this path. It's very courageous and I thank you for doing it. I'm so grateful that you just said yes and that you continue on this path. Thank you.

(42:46): Thank you Dr. Ki. I appreciate you so much

(42:48): And thank you all for listening to another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kiran. I know that you loved the information that Dr. Suzanne shared and that you two appreciate her path and are looking forward to her book. So definitely check out her website, check her out on social media, subscribe to her channels so that you can be one of the first to know when her book is available. And I hope that you learn something today that you can implement in your life to change your health and transform your life to what you deserve it to be. I will see you again on next week's episode. Until then, peace, love, and hormones

(43:27): 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.

 

► Learn more about Dr. Suzanne Turner - CLICK HERE

Follow her on Instagram.

 

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What If It’s Not Depression?

It's horrifying!

 

But when life throws a curveball as it did for Dr. Achina Stein, she faces that challenge head-on and learns to understand, accept, and even embrace the unexpected.

 

Join us as we explore how to recognize if you're experiencing something other than depression and how to transform your experiences into feelings of empowerment. Dr. Achina will inspire you with her own journey of transformation and self-love so that you can walk away feeling grounded, inspired, and encouraged in your own life no matter what challenges come your way! Don’t miss out on this inspiring conversation—tune in today!

 

Dr. Achina Stein is a DO physician, Board Certified psychiatrist and has been in practice since 1994. She is a certified practitioner of the Institute for Functional Medicine, a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and an Azarias Energy Healer. She was awarded the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award by NAMI-RI in 2008. Located in Rhode Island, she is the co-owner of private practice, Functional Mind LLC.

 

In this episode you'll learn:

 

• How to recognize if you're experiencing something other than depression

• What steps can be taken to transform experiences into feelings of empowerment

• Dr. Achina's inspiring journey of transformation and self-love

• Tips for maintaining resilience despite life's challenges

• And much more!

 

Don’t miss this empowering conversation with Dr. Achina Stein—tune in today! You will be inspired, encouraged, and motivated on your own journey of understanding and acceptance. Join us as we explore how to turn crisis into opportunity and find the strength within ourselves - no matter what comes our way. Together, let's start creating a new normal!

 

(00:00): Every crisis is an opportunity. Dr. Achina Stein, what would you do if your 14 year old stood on the balcony of a five-story building, getting ready to jump off and kill himself? Find out what this doctor did next.

(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 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.

(01:09): Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. I'm so glad you chose to join me today. You are gonna love this delightful conversation with my friend and colleague, Dr. Achina Stein. She has an incredible story of healing and transformation. She talks about how she turns crisis into opportunity, how she maintains resilience despite many challenges in her life. And you're really gonna learn from this cuz midlife can be a challenging time and our resilience can be tested. Am I speaking the truth or am I speaking the truth? Yes, it's true. So you've gotta have some skills. Dr A has got skills, and a lot of this was honed through her childhood. She's gonna talk a little bit about that. But she came to this real turning point where one day her 14 year old had a fight with his brother, walked into the other room and got on the, the ledge at a five-story building with the intention of jumping off to commit suicide.

(02:10): How would you handle that? Well, as a board certified psychiatrist, it completely became an inflection point for a unique direction that you're gonna benefit from today as to how she views mental health. And if you're suffering with depression, anxiety, or just even a little dysthymia, you don't feel like yourself. These are very common symptoms of midlife metabolic mayhem. You wanna stay tuned and you wanna listen to what Dr. Aina learned, how she turned that crisis into an opportunity and all the resources that she has available for you. Because I'm telling you, you, you wanna listen, you just wanna listen. , she's really a light of hope and a beacon for what's possible at midlife and beyond when you do the work. So I'll tell you a little about, bit about her and then we'll get started. So, Dr. Aina Stein is a physician who's a board certified psychiatrist.

(03:06): She's been in practice since 1994. She's also a certified practitioner of the Institute for Functional Medicine, a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, A and Energy Healer. She was awarded the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award by NAMI Rhode Island in 2008, and she's located in Rhode Island where her practice functional mind L L C is located. She is the number one Amazon International bestselling author of What If It's Not Depression, your Guide To Finding Answers and Solutions. She has a YouTube channel and podcast by the same name and has been a keynote speaker and interviewed about her pioneering work as a functional medicine psychiatrist on many podcasts and summits. As a companion to her book, she offers programs to find and reverse all the root causes of your depression like symptoms. It's a perfect alternative to medication for people with chronic mild to moderate depression like symptoms that do not spread respond to antidepressant medications. And she also offers a course on how to manage antidepressant withdrawal symptoms and how to taper off SSRIs Footnote, please do not get off any medications after listening to this podcast. You must always consult with your physician before doing so. Welcome Dr. Aena Stein. Oh,

(04:24): Thank you for having me. It's always exciting to be here.

(04:27): I'm really happy to have you on this show today. I remember when I first met you and I learned that you were a psychiatrist who was also functionally trained like I am. And you told me the story of how you got into becoming functionally trained. I think that it will really speak to a lot of people. As everybody heard in the intro, you're an expert in psychiatry, you're an expert in functional medicine, and you really take a very unique view about what if it's not depression. You know, and maybe we should actually start there before we get into your story. Depression is really at, would you say epidemic levels? Talk about why do we have such a problem and what is the scope and degree of the problem?

(05:17): The amount of people that are suffering from depression is always skyrocketing. It seems like it's never ending because even, you know, 20 years ago or 25 years ago, depression rates are increasing, depression rates are increasing, and it seems to be a problem every year that does not get addressed. A lot of it has to do with access, some of it has to do with stigma. Some of it has to do with the fact that the only solution provided is medications and psychotherapy. Mm-Hmm. , you know, which is where, you know, I come in. It's, we're not looking at the root cause of why people are having depression and anxiety. We're just going through a decision tree through a book called the D S m diagnostic Statistical Manual for Psychiatric Illnesses. And it's going down this decision tree to arrive at a diagnosis and then just basically matching a pill to an ill.

(06:13): And you know, there's a place for that. There's a place for prescribing medications because there are situations where you need to shut down certain symptoms acutely because it can lead to serious things like psychotic symptoms or suicidal ideation or an attempt. So you really, there, there is a seriousness to it where it can, it can be lethal with some of these mental health issues, but there is a limitation as to what these medications can do. And we we're finding that on a long-term basis they start failing or they are not taking care of all of the symptoms or, and or there's a whole slew of side effects that people suffer from when they take these medications. And so it's, it is finding arriving at that diagnosis is important, but then also understanding why is this happening? What's going on in the body, mind and spirit that came together and manifested as the these symptoms and that it's not all in the head .

(07:20): For years we've, you know, assumed or made this, this decision that everything is in the head when no, there's lots of things that are happening in the body that affect the brain, which is your hardware, which then can affect your mind, which is your software, right. If you wanted to use, you know, computer analogies and so they're connected, you're not walking around, there's not this head bouncing around without a body. It's all connected and there are lots of things that can happen in the body that can affect the brain and the mind. So we've, as psychiatrists, as traditional psychiatrists and as well as other mental health professionals have been trained to just look at the biology of the brain, the psychology and the social aspect of how we are interacting with the world and how this, how the world you know, affects us. And just those things. And so psychotherapy does help to work on the psychology and the social aspects and the medications are meant to work on the biology, but that's just not enough. It's not enough. And there's so many tools, so many tools out there that we can use to bring the body back into balance, body, mind and spirit back into balance.

(08:42): Right. And so you were trained traditionally in a traditional medical model, what I call a corporate medical model like I was . And it basically is following protocols, follow the recipe to make the diagnosis and then give the drug or do the surgery. Very reductionist viewpoint. And a lot of diagnoses are actually symptoms. Like depression is a symptom. It's not telling you what is causing the problem. Irritable bowel syndromes another one of my favorite categories cuz it's a symptom. It doesn't say what's wrong or what's causing it. Mm-Hmm. . So I had my journey of really questioning are we really helping anyone because nobody seemed to get better despite what medications we gave them or what surgeries we did. They just had this ever, ever spiral downwards down the drain of more and more symptoms as they aged. And this really half lived life as a result. And I, I started questioning and then my own health was failing, which everybody listening probably has heard me talk about that, so I won't go into it again. But what drove you to say, okay, it's more than just depression is a diagnosis and we give you a pill to control the symptoms. What made you start digging deeper?

(10:04): Well, you know, I was one of those psychiatrists that I think spent more time with patients than the 15 minute se sessions. I never took a job that required me to see patients for 15 minutes. So I would really dig deep in terms of getting the history and trying to connect the dots. But again, it was still a biopsychosocial model and it came to a head for me when my son at the age of 14 overnight, literally overnight had a tiff with his brother and was suddenly out on out the, had gone out the window of this flat that we were staying in. We were in France actually when my husband had sabbatical that time we were staying in this flat and he had suddenly disappeared from the room or the, the stu you know, it was like a two bedroom small area. And I was looking for him, I'm gonna look out the window and it's like, oh my gosh, he's on a ledge standing on the ledge ready to jump.

(11:01): He had a sudden urge of suicidal ideations and wanting to jump off this ledge. That was five stories up. And that came out of the blue. He had a little tiff with his brother and what typical teenagers have , you know normal stuff with your siblings. And then suddenly this was his reaction and it all came suddenly. And here I am a psychiatrist. There was no no way for me to know that that was gonna mm-hmm , there's no signs of this other than typical adolescent boy stuff, you know? So there was just a absolutely no signs of this. And so when we returned home, obviously I was flabbergasted and my wheels were starting to turn and trying to figure out what went wrong, what would I do, what did I miss, why didn't I see this? Got him to see a psychiatrist and ultimately he ended up being on four medications.

(11:53): He was given a diagnosis of major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, a d d, and had sleep problems. And some of this was due to medication side effects and Okay. Yeah. His mood was better. And he was seeing a therapist as well, but he was a zombie. I mean, he was no longer suicidal, but he was a zombie, this guy. Mm-Hmm. , this kid could not function. And there was this symptom though, that he had. And, and I always wonder, would I've done what I did to find more, more solutions if, if this symptom dis didn't exist was a neurological symptom because I was still, you know, in deep in the whole, you know, traditional model. It was a neurological symptom that he had that was double vision. He no longer could read books. Mm. And this was a kid who had never had a d d, he had a photographic memory.

(12:46): He, you know, he could read something and no knew it. He wouldn't have to ever read it again. And he couldn't even read anymore. And here like, oh, what's going on here? There's something going on here. And I would ask about this, well what about this? Why can't he read? Why can't he read? Oh, you know, he has a d d like, wait, no, you don't understand , he was reading fine and this is now different. Like just trying to even explain what happened was like brushed aside and I'm sure a lot of your patients and my patients have felt brushed aside or symptoms minimized. And it's like, you're not listening , you don't understand this was a kid that was perfectly normal, you know, and here he is like a blob. Anyway, it was really eye-opening experience. So I started hitting the books and trying to figure it out.

(13:35): And serendipitously came upon functional medicine. I had no idea what functional medicine was. and found a functional medicine doctor, had him, had my son see him and you know, did the whole functional medicine approach starting with diet. And we started with him on a gluten-free and dairy-free diet and it within, and we did all this testing. But in the, in the time before we even got the testing back, my son felt considerably better considerably. In fact, you know, when I say he was normal, I thought he was normal. But he had years and years and years of constipation y severe constipation to the point where he sat like a bird on the toilet seat so that he could have a bowel movement. And constantly being told to give him laxative, he had severe eczema to the point that his knuckles bled and he looked, his hands were so raw that we basically, cuz he was so into dinosaurs and we told him he, that he was part dinosaur at the age of four, you know, because like, oh, you're just like a dinosaur . That's why your hands look that way. And it's like, so I mean it was, this is how long he'd suffer from that and that just became his normal. So, but that's not normal. It's not normal to have knuckles bleeding. It's not normal to sit like a bird on the toilet. That's not normal , but

(14:55): Right. But in our American culture that is tolerated as normal, it's very common for kids to have that, for adults to have that where they don't poop every time they eat, which is the way nature made us where they have chronic constipation and they think their doctors aren't concerned. So I shouldn't be concerned if you're listening, that is not okay y'all. Yeah. And it's not okay to have eczema. Right. You just shouldn't have it. And you know, what you're saying is what you said about him having difficulty with the reading because of his vision. We as doctors lead people to believe that symptoms are not related to each other. . Right, right. And they just come out of the blue. And I always like to say they don't come out of the blue, they come out of the oblivious. Cuz we are clueless. And unfortunately as doctors, we mostly are.

(15:44): So I just wanna highlight that for everyone because women at midlife, she's using the example of her teenage son. But if you're listening, this is you. Right? Right. You think your hot flashes are not related to your hair loss. And that's not related to the fact that you only poop every other day, or you drink coffee every morning to poop, or that you need coffee in the morning to wind up and wind to wind down, or that you just don't feel like yourself. Or you're carrying their 30 extra pounds or you have irritable bowel or you get migraines or you have anxiety. You think they're all not related. So you're running around going to this doctor and that doc, you go to the psychiatrist, you're going to the neurologist, you're going into the gastroenterologist, you're going into the gynecologist. And what you need to do is realize everything is connected

(16:27): . It is, it's all connected. And you know, and it's good that they're going to these specialists just to rule out the biggies, the big bad things and say there's nothing wrong with you. That's good news as far as I'm concerned. But, you know, getting back to my son, you know, we put him on a gluten dairy free diet and literally within a month or two, his eczema and constipation cleared up. Okay. And at this point, my son was on board like, wow, this was a huge change. And he was completely on board to do the whole nine yards. And so we found with the testing that he was also soy in soy sensitive. So once we pulled the soy out, that's when things really started changing. And of course, with, and he had celiac disease, I forgot to mention that. Oh yeah. So we, we learned that he had celiac disease and because of that, for years he was malnourished and not eating, not getting the nutrition due to the celiac's disease, but also he only ate white food .

(17:21): So when you're not eating all the, the good healthy foods that in order to get your nutrition, you're gonna be nu nutrient deficient. For sure. And of course he had a gut dysbiosis and you know, all of the other things that we find when we, when we dig deeper and deeper. But ultimately he was able to come off all of the psychiatric medications completely. And by two years, at the end of two years, his diplopia, which is, you know, the double vision cleared up as well. So, and that the reason they're all connected is because his whole body was inflamed. And the reason this all happened at the age of 14 and not at 2, 3, 4 and earlier when he had these other issues, was because he hit puberty. This, this hormone surge occurred. Right. So, you know, hormones really tipped is what the, what tipped the him over in terms of having this explosion of these symptoms that were really brewing under the surface the whole time and not knowing it.

(18:19): So of course, you know, once you see this happen, you just can't unlearn that . And and so I did a deep dive and functional medicine and became certified. And that's all I do. It's all I do is functional medicine. I have a handful of psychotherapy patients, but it's really, that is what I do day in and day out. And I can't see it doing it any other way. Yes, there's patients that I give medications to, but, but it's because, you know, they can't function. It's because they're suicidal. It's because they're psychotic. It's, it's gone, gone. You know, they have serious, serious issues mm-hmm. . And so for me, medications is the last resort, or if it's in an emergency as opposed to, I think functional medicine should be the primary start of everything that is mental health. Absolutely everything.

(19:10): I totally agree with you. It would've saved me a lot of time in agony and, you know, really what you describe, you know, it was, it's it's a huge crisis in your life. You, your 14 year old son is going on the balcony to jump off. That's a huge crisis. And it, how you describe your path through that really resonates with me. The quote that you shared before we started about every crisis is an opportunity. And you, you recently you were sharing with me before we started recording some other crises that you've had recently and how you really take a different attitude from a lot of people about the crises in your life. And I, I think that how you live your life is very instructive for other people. You're a role model. So can you talk a little bit about that?

(19:58): Yeah. So Yeah. Recently, I've actually had a lot going on last year. Besides my website being hacked, I didn't even mention that my website was hacked. My active campaign was hacked where, you know, bills were run up from someplace in the Philippines. And I had literally $58,000 on my credit card because it was hacked. It was so many one thing after another. And then going to France and traveling there and changing my schedule and coming back from this trip where my husband was on sabbatical and I was seeing patients from there. Just a lot of change. A lot of change. A lot of change. And then coming back to find that my office was flooded. So I had to, the only thing I could recoup was a few pieces of furniture that I put in storage. So, you know, when things happen, I always believe that things happen for some reason.

(20:52): You know, I, I may not know what the reason is, but I, I look at it as an opportunity to sort of reassess, okay, what's going on? And, and how can I pivot from this? So how can I pivot? How can I make this, how can I use the situation to make my life better? And I tend not to react or overreact to a situation. Sure. Change is hard, but, you know, it doesn't have to be a crisis. It can be an opportunity for reassessment breathing into what's going on right now. Maybe this happened for a good reason and how can I use it to open, open another door as opposed to feeling trapped. You know, a lot of times people feel trapped or they feel stepped on or they feel like this is the end, you know? Right. Life is over, you know, and it, it doesn't have to be that way.

(21:42): It's all a, it's really about a mindset change. And I've always lived in this mindset always, even as, as young as the age of 16, always had this. And I had a pretty tough ti a childhood. I, a very, very tough upbringing. Whether my mother was very ill, I was the oldest of four. I had to raise my brothers and sisters . I had a very volatile father, you know, so it wasn't, you know, I was not born with a silver spoon, but sometimes people have accused me of that, of a silver spoon in my mouth because, because I'm so optimistic and, and mm-hmm. how I approach the world. So they think, oh, I must have, I must have been born with a silver spoon in my mouth. . So, but that's not the case. No. I've been around the block a few times. Mm-Hmm. . So. Right.

(22:26): So we were talking about this concept of resilience and how you seem to have an abundance of resilience. How do you think that other people can cultivate that? Because I think at midlife in particular, which you're, I think that you're at midlife also. Yes. That it can just seem overwhelming. The myriad health problems, maybe for some people career and or relationship problems, maybe not, but the myriad health problems, which I call midlife metabolic mayhem mm-hmm. that start accumulating as we pass 35, 40, definitely 50 and beyond. And I see so many women, particularly in my hormone bliss challenge, who just, they feel so overwhelmed, they don't even know where to start. They've lost that sense of resilience that you're talking about. So how can women at midlife cultivate resilience?

(23:20): There is a long answer to that, that question. And people are interested in knowing my whole approach. They're welcome to download the five Rs of emo of emotional restoration. I, we have the five Rs of gut restoration. I created the five Rs of emotional restoration. And it really starts with breathing, you know, that's it. You know, you want to breathe and notice what's happening around you without any judgment and to sort of observe, observe what what's happening around you. Maybe journal, somehow write it down, put it down on paper so that you can look at it later. But just sort of almost like emotionally have it fall out of you onto paper as best as you can without any judgment, without any analyzing. And to, you know, come up with one thing that's a low hanging fruit that you can start with. If you have a lot of stimulation, things coming at you, one after the other, and you're overwhelmed, I mean, it's usually overwhelm occurs that you're not able to process what's being thrown at you, so to speak. Right. So you wanna just start with one thing, and breathe through it. So use your breath to notice all of the things that are coming at you. Write it all down, write it all down, and then start with one thing and put one foot in front of the other. You wanna act. Once you know what that one thing is, then you want to act because it's actually more overwhelming to be in limbo, you know? Mm-Hmm. ,

(24:50): I act. That's so true.

(24:51): Right. It's horrible being in limbo, and I actually use that word with my patients a lot. You're in limbo, , and then, then, you know what I mean? Because, you know, they have all this stuff in front of them and they can't choose. Or if they choose, they don't act. It's like, just put one thing in front of the other, one thing in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, and then you, you'll actually accomplish those things. You'll accomplish it. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

(25:15): . Okay. Yeah. And I think it's, it's also this concept of learned helplessness and, and there are some women I'll talk to and they're like, oh, I wanna, you know, work with you to get this my hormone straight. And they're like, but I'm gonna wait until I retire in three years , or I'm gonna be on night shift for the next six months. And so now's not a good time. You know? And so I just find that it's not often our health problems that are keeping us, holding us hostage. It's our beliefs about our health problems. How do you help people to unpack their beliefs and really open 'em like a suitcase full of clothes and look at them and see which beliefs serve them and which don't and help them get rid of or transform the ones that are keeping them from moving forward in life.

(26:03): I love this quote that you wanna live as if your life depends on it. People, when they learn that they have cancer or they learn that they Right. So many things go out the window , right. And you know, when you have something come up like that, your whole life priorities change. And that's how I think if you can start looking at it like, you know, that woman that you mentioned, oh, I'm gonna wait till I retire. You could be dead by then, . You

(26:32): Know? Right. Exactly. That's

(26:33): What I, that's the first thought that came into my mind. Like, why are you waiting? You know, you could be dead. My mother was very, very ill and she died at the age of 63. And you know, I don't know about you, but I think a lot of people when they think about aging, that they think about when their parents, you know, passed away if they, if they have passed or how long they're living and how well they're living because you're, you know, genetically, you're kind of can fall the same pathway, follow the same pathway, but you have a lot of control over making those changes. You actually have a lot of things that you can do to improve your path. I turned 60 this year and so I'm thinking, oh my gosh, in my, the first thing that pops in my mind is like, I got three years left .

(27:19): So I am literally doing a whole life review now. I know that most likely, cuz I am pretty healthy, I'm very healthy, I play ultimate Frisbee. I work out, I have a very busy practice. I'm very active and I know that I'm gonna live beyond that. But it makes me think like, wow, that's like, wow, I'm, I'm gonna be 60 this year and I'm gonna really change everything that I can to make, to live the life just the way I want it now. , right? And so if that, and health is so important in terms of your quality of life, you know, so very important. And so it's looking at those things and if you look at life that way, your priorities will change so quickly. Yeah.

(28:07): It's so true. When you speak of cancer, that's what everybody's afraid of and that, you know, one in two of us will get it in our lifetime. So you've got a 50% chance. I remember this story about a woman who was a general surgeon in the town where I practiced gynecology for many years and she, one day I saw her at the health food store in our town and I had never seen her there before and I was in there all the time. So I said, well, what are you doing here? And she said, oh, I was diagnosed with colon cancer. Hmm. And I'm looking for supplements that can help me. She literally said that and I felt so sad because maybe if she had been at the health food store looking at supplements and really improving her health 5, 10, 20 years before, who knows, then she wouldn't be there after the fact.

(29:00): And it's true that when you get a cancer diagnosis, people are willing to change everything. So like when I do the salivary cortisol test and someone comes back like I was when I first did it what, 15, 14 years ago, and I was a flatline, cortisol stage three of genome fatigue. I'm like, you need to act like you have cancer. That's how serious this is. Right? And the people who get it, they get better and they go all about their lives. And the ones who don't, they just keep dragging, dragging, dragging and living half of a life usually emotionally and mentally as well.

(29:36): Yeah. Cause there, and usually the thing that that, that it's those beliefs that I'm not good enough, I don't deserve it. I'm not important, I'm not lovable. There's all of these reasons that people have in that's operating in the background that they don't even have a conscious connection to. But you have to sort of look for that. And a lot of it is rooted in trauma, whether it's a big tea or a little tea, you know. So if you don't have your needs met at certain critical points in your life that can feel like you, you know, aren't lovable or not deserving or if they're, if you had a hypercritical parent or a judgmental parent or a micromanaging parent, you know, which translates sometimes as I don't believe that you can do it, so I have to do it for you, kind of kind of thing.

(30:25): So then you have a loss of confidence in yourself or doubts about yourself. There's all of these experiences that people have in their earlier childhood or even teens and young adulthood that can impact you. And so it's looking for those threads as how that's connected to now. And so when you're finding that you're not moving forward, let's say you are working with someone, a health coach or a doctor, and you find that you're not moving forward in your plan to think about what's going on with me and, you know, that is getting in the way and sometimes it's a part of you, I don't know if you were familiar with internal family systems, which is mm-hmm. part, some people call it parts therapy. Yes. It is tuning into tuning into what is that part of me that's getting in the way? And a lot of times these parts are there to protect you because they protected you at a, at a younger age.

(31:20): And so avoiding something or not doing something is generally a, a pro going into protection mode. And what you need to do is tune into that part of you and recognize, okay, you protected me then, but I, you're not really protecting me now. You're just getting in the way of me accomplishing my goals. And so it's trying to figure out how that part is protecting you and asking to step aside and almost give it another job, so to speak. So in the same way that if you had a 20 year old company or a 30 year old company and you know, the environment changes, the culture changes, and you have to sort of, you know, maybe move staff around. So you might have an employee that has had a job for 20 years and that's going to be phased out because of technology, let's say.

(32:10): And you have, you don't wanna fire them and you by the way, you cannot fire a part. It's very hard to do that. It's better to give them another job, . And so you want to put them in a different department and give them another job and thank them for all their years of service. , you know, you kind of even wanna talk to that part of you because what happens is that people get angry at their, at their parts, they get angry and they at themselves and it's like, I can't believe I said that. What's wrong with me? You know, as opposed to, oh no, the reason I said that was because I defended myself. Because when I was younger, you know, my father yelled at me and, you know, I needed to defend myself in order to protect my little br like there's all these stories mm-hmm.

(32:54): , right, that are connected to the past about why you had a certain behavior. And so because you're older now and have more control, more independent, you can make decisions that you couldn't do when you were a child. You have to sort of give that part of you that protected you during that situation and sort of glean into that part and let him or her or it know that things have changed. I'm older now and I need you to change with me. And here I'm giving you another job to support me in my endeavors so that you can flow, you know, and not have these barriers. Mm-Hmm. constantly being hit by these barriers. So everybody has a whole host of parts that interfere in their ability to reach their goals. Whole host.

(33:44): Yeah. Thank you for going through that. And for anybody who wants to look more into that, I believe it's Richard Schwartz who developed Internal Family Systems and ultimately that was a part of my recovery too. But first I had to get my body not inflamed to get, cuz I always tell my story, but I won't go into it again. Yes. About, I was on five psychoactive medications, so cleaning up my body, fixed that and I got off the medications, but then had to do a lot of internal family systems work and things like that. But for everybody, we, Dr. Aina has some wonderful freebies. Before we wrap up, we're gonna tell you about those, but can you talk about the absolute necessity of hormone balance and gut health? The two are intimately related for helping depression, anxiety, all mental health problems.

(34:31): Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned cortisol. Cortisol is a major piece and that's unfortunately not even looked at in the conventional world in the way that we look at it. They only look at it as, as an extreme, as Addison's disease or Cushing's disease, and they just do one morning test. And if it's not high, then they, or too low, then it's like off the table completely, unfortunately. But, you know, adrenaline surges can cause all sorts of problems due to stress, which then releases cortisol chronically. And if you're a child that's been traumatized at a young age, or have lived through very difficult situations, those cortisol levels start at a very young age being chronically elevated at a very young age. And that can affect your development as emotionally as well. So there's higher rates of depression and anxiety as a result of chronic cortisol production from stress alone.

(35:32): So when you're tapped out, then it does cause you to have, you know, absolutely no cortisol and sometimes people need to be put on medications to raise their cortisol levels. So that in itself causes a change in sex hormones. So in order to, in order to, and your, I'm sure your audience already knows that, that when cortisol's high, then there's a drop in the sex hormones, progesterone and testosterone and, and estrogen. And so what we don't realize or don't really connect with when it comes to mental health issues is that there are certain periods in our life when those, there are changes in hormones that that can lead to depression and or anxiety and even psychosis. And what we should be doing is even in an acute situation, is looking at the hormones and, and providing hormones right there on the spot. I had a patient who had two miscarriages because she did not make the progesterone that was necessary to pro, you know, the, the baby, right? You need proje, progesterone is pro gestation, right? Right. So you need high levels of progesterone and she would lose the baby because the progesterone levels dropped. So they put her on progesterone, high levels, high doses of progesterone through pregnancy, and it was a viable pregnancy, delivered it. And then once she delivered it, they stopped the progesterone and she became a acutely psychotic and depressed. It's like, and then what did they do? She was admitted to a psychiatric hospital multiple times and all they used was antipsychotic medics, like just put her back on the progesterone.

(37:14): Oh. I mean, like, how does nobody

(37:17): See that? Like, how does nobody see that? And so I put her back on the progesterone when she came into my door, like, oh my God, you need progesterone . And I put her on h you know, like 200 milligrams of progesterone. She felt significantly better and obviously we had to adjust it, but like right from the get-go, I put her on progesterone . So

(37:37): I know, I I I just wonder if people listening get how once you're trained in the functional root cause model, like Dr. Aina and I are, we look at the way we were trained for mainstream medicine and it's absolutely insane. It's like nobody's thinking , nobody's paying attention. What are you doing? So anyway, proje, I love progesterone. I

(38:02): Call it the I do too. If

(38:04): You feel good sleep well, anti-anxiety, anti-depressant, lose weight, diuretic happy hormone.

(38:09): Yeah. I tend to use progesterone from the get-go for c certain women, especially if they're a perimenopausal or menopausal, if they're having anxiety and sleep and mood changes, especially if those symptoms occur, you know, soon after having the hormonal changes that are part of life, you know, part of a woman's life. And so to make them comfortable, but ultimately, I don't want necessarily to just leave it at that. I, I do the, the whole gut restoration. There's a reason why you're even going through that. You right. There's the hormones were already off even before those changes. So you wanna find out, well why, why are they off? So, so much so that you even need these hormones. So there's hormones for the person who's inflamed. Right? Right. And then there's hormones for the person who wants longevity. And those are two different kinds of people I think, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean that person who's inflamed isn't gonna stay on hormones. They might, but they might not need as many hormones or as much Right. As, as you're taking care of the root causes of inflammation. So you would probably know that better than me because you do that. Oh, day, day, day to day. But

(39:22): Yes, I mean, as you clean, get what I call clean quote unquote, and uninflamed your hormone needs can change. Absolutely. Yeah. But talk a little bit about gut health, because that's was a big issue for your son. And I think we can never emphasize enough for everybody listening because people really don't get this anywhere else. That your gut health is directly related to your hormones. They are besties, they walk down the street holding hands and kissing all the time every day. They are intimate partners. If you'll never get your hormones balanced, if you don't fix your gut. So can you talk a a little bit about that as we wrap up and then we'll definitely tell everyone the resources that you have for them, but can you talk about

(40:10): That? Sure, sure. I mean, the gut is where 80% of your immune system is, and it's also 80% of where your serotonin and dopamine and you know, the neurotransmitters are made. And so if your gut is inflamed and there's lots of reasons why it can get inflamed, it can get inflamed from foods chronic infections, toxins, stress, all of these things can disrupt your gut lining, causing increased gut permeability, resulting in a whole host of problems. So when you have increased gut permeability, that's when foods can cross over into the gut lining causing your immune system to be activated. And that can result in food sensitivities. It opens, it can cause certain pathogens, bact, whether it's bacteria or viruses or candida, parasites, they can all get into that gut lining and again, activate that your immune system. So there's, you have your immune system that's very vigilant and when there is a breach in that lining, different things can surpass that.

(41:21): And the toxins are the last thing, you know, that can surpass that lining and basically get your active, your immune system activated and causing inflammation. So what we do is initially remove, do what we can to remove those foods. And the top two are dairy and gluten, but there's many others that I won't get into. And we wanna remove those infections, we wanna remove whatever toxins that might be in your environment or what you're putting into your body that could be causing inflammation. And the last thing is stress. So, you know, I've talked about the shift, what you wanna shift your body. It's looking at stress hormones, , infections, foods and toxins. Not necessarily in that order, but looking in those five categories about what could be impacting your immune system. Mm-Hmm. . But the gut is where we want to start and we, you know, removing those things, replacing what's been missing.

(42:20): Cuz many times when there's inflammation in the gut, you're not able to absorb the vitamins and minerals and phytonutrients that your body needs. We wanna reinoculate the gut because that's where your second brain is. It's your gut microbiome. is, that's your second brain. And I always wonder if that's really the first brain sometimes. Yeah. So we wanna make sure that your microbiome is healthy. So reinoculating it with probiotics and eating fermented foods, sometimes prebiotics, feedback, gut lining, and on the repair of the gut lining, close off that leaky gut or, you know, decrease that permeability. So, and then it's really looking at what were the factors that caused all of this to happen in the first place. So in order to rebalance it and know where your points of vulnerability are, everybody is vulnerable in different places and everybody has different strengths. So it's knowing where you are vulnerable and kind of padding those areas.

(43:17): And so if you are an anxious person and, and you get stomach aches anytime you're anxious, you see that gut ring connection, it's usually the gut. A lot of times people think it's the brain or the anxiety causing the, the gut symptoms. It's really actually more often the other way around. It's your gut that's causing the anxiety. So, so making that connection and you can definitely do things to improve that connection. We call them vagal nerve stimulation exercises. But even taking cold showers, singing, humming, there's all sorts of things that you can do to strengthen that connection. So that's a lot

(44:01): Yeah. Say,

(44:02): Yeah, that's a lot. So I don't know if I fully answered your question, but that's I think that's it in a nutshell,

(44:10): In a nutshell. And, you know, I just wanna add for everyone, your enteric nervous system, the nervous system around your gut, that Ives your gut has as many nerves in it as your brain in your cranium, right? So it really is a fully functioning brain and it directly is communicating with your hormones and your immune system. And so you've got to get your gut straight to get your hormones straight. But yes, no, thank you for going through all of that.

(44:41): Yeah. It's, it's all connected, like you said.

(44:43): Right. And so Dr. Aina has her book, she's got the first three chapters of her book for you. What if it's not depression or bestselling book? And we'll have the links for all of these in the show notes. So please don't try to write them down if you're driving or doing something or you're operating heavy machinery. And then she's got a couple other resources for you, another freebie called Food for Your Mood and the five R's of Emotional Restoration Workbook. Do you wanna tell them a little bit about what they'll find there?

(45:13): Sure, yeah. I mean, the food for your mood is something that, and anyone can just start, I, everyone should start with a change in their diet. That's the first thing that I have people do. And so that's a great place to start if they want to know what foods to eat that will help improve your mood. And the five Rs of , I'm trying to remember name of my, my own thing, , the five

(45:38): R, I do it all the time.

(45:42): Is basically a workbook that you can do download and do, it's ba the five Rs for the are reflect where you improve your awareness and be conscious of what's happening around you. We talked a little bit about that reframing what's happening by removing and replacing negative thoughts and emotions. Resetting. So reset. And that's where the balancing the microbiome and the gut brain access comes in and resisting, resisting. And it's finding the internal and external roadblocks and rather than acting past them and often making not the best decisions to notice and take in what's happening for me that we're, you know, it's, it's noticing an emotional resistance and also looking at your external roadblocks as well. That's getting in the way of you meeting your goals and then repi. So it's breathing and meditating and connecting with your spirits. And so all of these things are really important to strengthen that physical health, mental health connection.

(46:46): Awesome. Thank you so much for these wonderful resources. Again, everybody listening, we'll have the links in the show notes. Go start with your food. Always. I always start with food too, and five hours of emotional restoration workbook. It sounds very valuable to me. I'm thinking I'm gonna go download it. And I know your book is absolutely wonderful and I, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you, how's your son doing now?

(47:12): Oh, he's doing great. He actually did really well two years, like I said, two years after. And he was off of medications. And then, you know, this is something important for your audience to know is that, you know, he kind of fell off the track a little bit because he became a college student and what happens in college, right? Yeah. You, you drink, you stay up late at night. So his sleep was off and you know, he's putting toxins in his body. , pizza, pizza eating pizza. Exactly. He was no longer gluten or dairy free. And, and then the stress of being in school, pulling all those all-nighters, just trying to ac you know, finish your task. By the time college was over, he was a wreck. . I mean, he was a wreck. But the thing is, he knew exactly what he needed to do to get back on track and within six months he was back feeling well again.

(48:01): So, you know, that's the beauty of functional medicine that you, you know, when you learn these things and you have these habits in place that you know that are working for you and you, it's really, really, really important to journal about this because you are not gonna remember really important to journal about what it is that, that were your big things that made a shift in your health. Because there's going to be a point in your life where things, you're gonna get off track, things happen, right? But if you know what the top three things are to get back on track, it's like you go right to them and that's really, really important. And so he knew exactly what he needed to do, , and he did them. And it didn't take that long, you know, instead of two years, which was an a culmination of 14 years, it was six months.

(48:53): Right. Oh, that's awesome. I'm glad to hear it. And thank you Drena so much for coming and sharing your light and your brilliance and your journey with us today. A lot of people listening who on listen, regular listeners of the podcast, you kind of get about a root cause resolution approach. But one thing you probably don't know is how brave and courageous it is for physicians like Dr. Aina to step out of the line and say, I don't agree with what's being done, and to actually create their own path to do something right that helps people. It's extremely brave, extremely courageous, extremely hard. So thank you for doing what you do and being here.

(49:36): Oh, thank you. Thank you. That really touches my heart. When you said that , it really is like, like yeah, you know, that was hard, .

(49:44): It's very hard.

(49:47): Was hard. Yeah. Yeah. That was, thank you so much for having me.

(49:51): So thank you so much and thank you all for listening and joining us today for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kirin. Hopefully you learned something that you can use in your life to start to transform your health and your life to the high level, the brilliant health that you deserve. I look forward to seeing you next on the show. Until then, peace, love, and hormones, y'all.

(50:18): 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.

 

► Download Dr. Achina Stein's first 3 chapters of her book - CLICK HERE. 
Food For Your Mood - CLICK HERE
5Rs of Emotional Restoration Workbook - 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.

 

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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!

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 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

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!

 

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.

 

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(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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