#122 Supplements & The Highly Sensitive Person

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions. Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson, and today I wanted to talk with you about what I call sensitivity, high sensitivity to supplements. Sometimes that's nutrients, sometimes that's herbs. And I think it's more common than it's acknowledged. I was thinking that often we're hearing about a person who might be highly sensitive in their nervous system or with their emotions. Perhaps you've heard of that, a highly sensitive person. But what I want to talk about today is being sensitive or highly sensitive to taking nutrients, herbs, even medications. And maybe some of you listening can understand what I mean and identify with that yourself. I myself would consider me to be a highly sensitive person throughout my life from a young age. And some of you may know that my father is a pharmacist. So in my childhood home, there was always medications around, whether they were samples from pharmaceutical companies or from the pharmacy. I quickly figured out that if I took, let's say, an Advil, I was very likely to react not to the ingredient in the Advil, but to the coloring and the coating on the pill, for example. So I'm the kind of person who is sensitive even to color. And sometimes it's like the. The shininess that makes the pill shiny, or sometimes it might be other ingredients in pills, whether it's a medication or a supplement, let alone a food, right? So I was one of those people where I would even get a canker sore just from taking an Advil. So I, from a young age knew that my body was responsive and reactive, and I knew that I was going to have to really be careful and mind whenever I took something, even when I was in naturopathic medical school. And at that time I was having migraines and other symptoms like severe menstrual cramps. And so I would go in to see the naturopathic doctors in the clinic, and I went to see the acupuncturists, and they would recommend different nutrients and herbs for me to take for my symptoms. And lo and behold, I would even react to the nutrients and. And herbs and sometimes even to different kinds of treatments on my body. So I again was like, well, it's not just medications that I'm sensitive to. I'm also sensitive to natural substances. And so it made me, I think that pushed me to have to really think things through and figure things out. Because it wasn't as simple as just taking a standard combination or formula because my body was going to pick up on it and make me feel worse. I ended up feeling worse from taking supplements or certainly from doing, like, a liver detoxification. Most people will go through liver detoxification and feel better. If I went through often what would be considered a liver detoxification, I would feel so much worse I couldn't even do it. So I had to figure out how to help a sensitive body and a sensitive system. And that's how I have really even identified that this is a thing, that it's a thing to be sensitive. And I can't tell you how many patients who come to see me say, report this to me, even within the first 15 minutes of me talking to them. They will say they've been to different practitioners and tried different things, and they end up feeling worse. This is often the case for someone who has an MTHFR gene variation, and then they go and are recommended to take methylfolate, or they take methylfolate on their own and they end up with a headache or fatigue or anxiety and feeling worse from the additional methylfolate. That's just one example of even a nutrient that if your body's sensitive, then a standard dose, what might be a standard dose of a nutrient for most humans may be too much for your body. And so this is why it's so important to know your body and know when you need to dose low. Interestingly, what I find is it also usually means that your body will respond positively to a low dose. It's so interesting, right? You would think, oh, well, I still need this same dose as this other person, but I feel worse when I take that. So am I ever going to get the benefit? Right? And sometimes people in this, people who are sensitive to substances end up feeling hopeless because they feel like, how am I ever going to get the right dose to achieve the benefit? But what I end up observing is that those of us who are sensitive end up having a positive response to a lower dose. So you likely don't need to take as much as another person in order to get the same benefit. That's cool, right? So your body's actually saying to you, hey, I don't need the same standard dose. As everyone else, I need a lower dose and I'm going to benefit from that lower dose. So how are you going to figure that out? Right. How are you going to know? Well, one thing is you might already realize that you're sensitive because maybe you've tried taking supplements and felt worse. So if that's happened, that already should give you the signal that you're a sensitive person and you need to try a lower dose. What I do with my patients in my practice is I tend to start everyone at a relatively low dose if I don't know if they're sensitive already. I always tell all my patients, no matter what we're doing, no matter what the lab result says, we're going to start at low dose. Right? So if the standard dose, let's say, is 5 milligrams of a substance, we're going to start with 1 milligram and we're going to introduce it. One that be the only new thing you introduce on that day. And you're going to take a single dose and you're going to reduce all the other variables in your life as much as you can so that you can observe. How do you feel after taking that starting dose? Do you feel a difference in your energy level, your mood, your focus, the way your body feels? Do you get a skin rash? Do you get a headache? Do you get a digestive change? Loose stool, Whatever it is, you just are observing, hey, how do I feel after that single low dose? And then that went okay. Then you're like, okay, we made it through the first dose. Let's try taking it several days in a row. How does that feel? Before you try to increase the dose or before you even try to add in other additional herbs or nutrients, you want to kind of do a test dose and make sure you're feeling okay. Now, sometimes if you're a body that is not so sensitive, you might be able to add in a combination formula, which means you might be taking in several nutrients and herbs in a formula. So you're going to want to take that one formula and notice that combination. How do you feel before you add in an additional combination of supplements? And if you're a very highly sensitive person, you likely are not going to do well with a combination formula. In your case, we're likely to want to do, let's say, vitamin C separate from zinc, separate from herbs. Separate. Right. We have to have separate formulas. And now sometimes you're like, oh, my gosh, it's frustrating because I have to have everything separate. But actually it Makes so much more sense for you. Because if you, this is what I oftentimes still have to do is I take my ingredients in separate formulas because this way my body can accept it and utilize it and not react to it and I can observe better. How did I do with just green tea by itself versus green tea with three other ingredients? And so then I can test it and I can feel comfortable with it. Because as you, I say make friends with the nutrient or herb or other supplement that you're taking. We want you to get to make friends with it and it's a lot easier for you and your system to make friends with it. If you're starting with any individual doses of individual ingredients and small low doses right now you go, oh, that felt okay. Now maybe you don't aren't getting an effective dose yet, so you might not feel better, but at least you don't feel worse. That's my first goal. When I'm starting a new supplement, I want to at least not feel worse. Then I know I'm at this at a good low starting dose. Then if we want to increase the dose, we can increase it slowly and we can observe for when we do reach an effective dose for you, which might be very different than the next person. Let's take theanine, for example. Some people, maybe 100 milligrams of theanine they start with and they maybe they're like, well, I don't feel worse, but I don't feel really anything. So then we say, okay, go to 200 milligrams. Maybe you need to repeat the 200 milligrams every four hours. Now you start to feel calmness from the theanine. Then we can find what's the effective, not only single dose, but what's the effective interval of repeating that dose for you during the day. And it's different for each person. But as long as we're within the dosing range for a 24 hour period, we can do that. We can figure out what's your effective dose. And it might depend on the day for certain supplements. I might say to a patient, hey, here's your dose, your daily dose. But if you're under more stress this day or this week, you're going to want to increase to your dose that you take when you're under more stress. Because what we know is that as humans, when we're under more stress, whether it's psycho emotional stress, physical stress, if you have an infection, if you have, you know, you just have more going on, likely you're going to need to increase your doses because your body's going to use these nutrients faster and more when you're under stress. So you might need to increase your B vitamin dose, you might need to increase your magnesium, magnesium dose. You might need to increase the supplements you're taking to keep your bowels regular if you're traveling and traveling is a stress for you. For example, if you have an infection, you're going to need to increase your dose to help your immune system fend off that infection, right? So we can modify the dose based on what's happening in your day to day life at that point in time. So this is where you want to be. As you're a sensitive person, you probably even want to be able to modify your doses more so than a person who is not as sensitive. They might be able to stick with kind of a standard dose all the time. But when you're a sensitive person, your body's more likely to respond to the stress you're exposed to. So you're going to be more needing to modify your doses as needed based on your stress exposure, right? So now instead of fighting against yourself and your body, right. Like sometimes when we're sensitive people, believe me, I've been there. I would be mad at my body, like, oh, I wish my body wasn't so sensitive. I wish I didn't react to these things. I wish I could just take the same dose as everybody else. But once I really accepted, hey, this is my body, my metabolism is sensitive to stress, my body is sensitive to different ingredients. Once I accept that and I actually give my body the nutrients and herbs it needs in the way that it can best receive them, now I get such a different response. I actually can get the benefit of those nutrients and herbs without feeling worse. And then I appreciate it.

I'd rather modify my dose to feel better. I'd rather take my supplements separately if I'm going to feel better, right? The ultimate goal is for you to feel better. And if you can know your body and address it as it needs, that's going to be a win win for you and your body, right? So that's how I look at it. And the other thing is that some people need to even go below the low dose, right? So I was saying, like, let's say with Danine, 100 milligrams might be a low dose compared to 400 or 800 milligrams, right? But some people, their dose is even lower than the low. I have some patients where we need to literally open the capsule and take a sprinkle dose. I call it a sprinkle because by the time you open the capsule and you get a little sprinkle of the powder, it's less than you could measure, right? It's not even. It's less than an eighth of a capsule, it's less than eighth of a teaspoon. It's the tiniest sprinkle that you can get of powder. That's a sprinkle dose. And for a lot of people, we need to start with sprinkle doses, especially if you're having a lot of symptoms. So if you're experiencing a lot of pain, a lot of anxiety, a lot of inflammation, a lot of fatigue, if your symptoms are severe, we're likely going to need to start with the lowest possible dose, these sprinkle doses. And I know it doesn't seem right because you're like, I feel so horrible. I'm going to need a big dose in order to feel better, right? That's how we logically think if I feel this bad, I'm going to need a big dose to feel better. But actually, there's this paradox that exists in our bodies, especially when you're a highly sensitive person, which is if you feel this terrible, you actually need to start at the lowest possible dose. Because what happens is when our bodies are feeling horrible, it means that our metabolic systems are in a total overwhelm. And if we put in high doses of a substance, even if it supposed to be good for us, even if it's vitamin C, even if it's glutathione, even if it's an antioxidant, right, that's supposed to make us feel better. If your system is in an overwhelm, even something that's supposed to be good for you can make you feel worse. Because your body's in a protective response, it's going to see even something that's good for you as a potential harm, right? Because the body's in a protective mode, it so stressed that it's starting to perceive even good things as stressful. Sometimes you may even notice that in other ways too, where you're like, I'm so stressed that even music sounds too loud or a hug feels like too much touch, right? Like our nervous system can be so overwhelmed that everything is overwhelming. And so how are we going to get around that? Especially if it's anxiety, if you have such high anxiety that you're anxious to take a supplement, even if that supplement might help you, it doesn't matter if you're Taking the supplement, the best supplement ever. If it makes you feel more afraid, it's just retriggering the same anxiety. It's not getting us anywhere. So we have to figure out how to outsmart that system. How do we actually help your body break that pattern?

Something a lot of people don't know is that too much stress can actually create an abundance of health problems like high blood pressure, high blood sugar, anxiety, migraines, insomnia, even fertility issues. This is because high stress puts your adrenal glands on overload. They release cortisol and adrenaline, which controls your digestion, hormones, immune system, energy focus and even your emotional response. So how can you beat stress when you don't know where to start? That's why we have a free 7 day stress reset program. It's designed to help support weight loss, digestive healing and hormone balancing. It includes support for integrating self care. Daily tips come to you by email and video. Gluten free dairy free meal plans as well as grocery shopping lists, journal pages and more. This free program will help you beat stress and put you on the path to wholeness in your body. Get your plan now for free@drdonnie.com well.

What I found to be very effective is to go to the the smallest possible dose for a couple reasons. One is a tiny sprinkle dose, first of all is least likely to trigger a reaction, so we're the least likely to have a negative response to the substance. Also, your body is most likely to respond to a tiny dose because it needs tiny doses when it's in overwhelm. And also when you start with a tiny dose, you can say to yourself, I'm starting with the smallest possible dose. So if I do have a reaction, it's going to be the smallest possible reaction, right? So this way you can get around the anxiety and fear and you can say, I'm going to start with a single ingredient of the tiniest possible dose and I'm going to see how that feels. And what happens is sometimes we start with these tiny, tiny sprinkle doses and we gradually work up on the dose, sometimes over weeks to months, very slowly. As we do that, the metabolism is shifting, the body starts to feel more safe, you start to feel more safe, you start to feel more confident, you feel more comfortable. You make friends with those nutrients and herbs that we know can help you. Now, to me, I always wanted to know if I'm going to do that with a, if I'm going to take that much time and effort to introduce a nutrient or herb into my system, I want to know, I have a really good reason why doing that with that nutrient or herb. Right? So that's why I like to use testing to identify what exactly is depleted, which nutrients are depleted, which amino acids are depleted, which neurotransmitters are depleted, which hormones are depleted, which antioxidants are depleted, what exactly is depleted, so that when, if we're going to take the time to introduce something, we know it's the real nutrient you need. I also had to figure out the correct sequence because patients would say, well, here's these potential five or ten substances that my body needs, but I can't introduce them all at once. So how do I prioritize what to do first? And so this is why I developed what I call my stress recovery protocol, because it guides us on what to do first. If we jump to phase three of the protocol, we might be increasing our risk of having a reaction. But if we start with step one, phase one of the stress recovery protocol protocol, we're least likely to have a reaction. That's how the stress recovery protocol was created, is based on what is the prioritization of the sequence of bringing your body out of this stressed state, what in the researchers call the cell danger response. It's literally that every cell in your body is so stressed. Not only are you stressed as a human and you may or may not even realize it, but your cells are stressed. Asked, how do you know that you have a cell danger response? Well, if you feel extremely tired, anxious, in pain, whether it's head pain, joint pain, pain anywhere, weight gain that you can't lose, or weight loss and you can't gain the weight, autoimmunity or any other health issue that we know is based on high inflammation, then we know that your in a cell danger response, the stress around you has become internalized and now is stress inside of every cell. And now they're not going to be able to metabolize or even use. Especially if you turn on the faucet and give a high dose. The cells are like, I'm sorry, but I can't even use this good stuff you're giving me because I'm so overwhelmed. Right. That's how we feel in our life sometimes, and that's how your cells actually feel. So how do we get, how do we help with that? Well, we start by tiptoeing. I think of it like tiptoe. We're going to tiptoe. We're going to dip our toe in the water. We're going to go as slow and as quietly and gently as possible. Because actually our bodies will pick up on that. Our bodies will pick up on the smallest little whisper. That's why sometimes we use remedies that are even only energetic, like a homeopathic remedy or reiki, which is an energetic type of medicine, or just being present and listening, or there's so many forms of healing, even sound therapy, right? That's just the most gentle, subtle therapy to start to shift the pattern. It's amazing how sometimes the most gentle, subtle shift creates the biggest change because it starts to send your whole system a different signal. Signal is everything's going to be okay, Everything is all right. We can turn off this danger response and protective stress response and we can start to just let everything take a breath and start to function optimally again. And little by little, it builds just as much as the danger response builds up a snowball in that direction. We can build up a positive response in the direction we want to go to help you feel better. But we have to just trust that process. And little by little, little implement. And if your body responds negatively, my rule is always if you feel worse for whatever we do, whatever you're doing, if you notice, and this is why it's so important to become so observant of your body and its signals. If you feel worse in any way, we gotta back off, slow down, decrease your doses, take a break, reevaluate, and say, what did we just add that triggered that, that stress radar system? We need to back off and go slower. We need a lower dose. Your body actually imagine that might need a lower dose than you realize. This is why I always am wanting to individualize and customize doses. For L supplements, even for hormone therapy, we want to be customizing and evaluating the dose and to know that these doses might change over time. As your body heals and recovers, your dose could be different from one day, one week, one month to the next. That's why we always want to be evaluating and responding and listening to your body to say, hey, the dose you needed now could be not the same dose you're going to need in a month or three months or six months from now. And that's why it's very important to me to ultimately get to the point where you know your doses to help maintain optimal health. The point here is not to just everyone take one size fits all supplement or dosing. We can know that a lot, what a lot of humans benefit from, and we can look at the research and see what's most likely the case. But we also need to individualize it for you and for you to be working toward the goal of knowing what is the right amount for your body. It took me a long time to get there. It's not something I got to in nature pathic medical school or in the first 10 years after I graduated from naturopathic medical school. It's now I'm 22 years in practice and that's 22 years practicing on myself too to figure out what is the right amount for my body on a given day. And then I have to monitor with test results, blood work results, let's say with mthfr I monitor my homocysteine level for thyroid, I monitor my TSH free T3, free T4 for cortisol, I monitor my cortisol levels. Estrogen, I monitor my estrogen detoxification pathways. I do these tests on myself. That helps me to also know that I'm at a dose that helps me maintain over time. Right. That's the thing. You don't want to just take something and fix it temporarily. You want to know what does my body need on a daily basis or a weekly basis? Some things you don't even have to take every day. Some patients of mine, they just know, oh, I need to take this Monday, Wednesday, Friday to maintain optimal levels. Right. We don't have to be stuck with a daily dose. What we should be stuck with is what does your body need Based on your like I have some patients who go from working in a very stressful job and then they retire and their doses shift. They don't need the same doses when they retire because their stress levels decrease. They have more time for self care. And this brings me to self care which is ultimately the foundation of all of this. Yes, we can be using different nutrients, herbs. They're amazing. These are are resources from nature that help our human bodies function, especially when we're under stress. Nutrients, herbs, we can use homeopathics, we can use peptides, we can use different body therapies. There's so much we have access to but I always emphasize that we need to be maintaining our foundational self care.

Front foremost every day. And that's why in my book Master your Reset, your Health Health, a whole section of the book, part two of the book is focused on care. C for clean eating. So what are you eating to optimize your health and, and give your body the healthy signals, not stress signals. A is for adequate sleep. How are we going to make sure you're getting adequate sleep so you're Sending healthy signals through your body. R is for recovery activity. Everything from meditation and music and dancing and whatever brings you joy and helps your body reset from stress. And E is for exercise. How do you move on a daily basis to help your body maintain optimal health? So there's this foundation of what are you going to eat, how's your sleep, how's your recovery and reset activities and how's your exercise when we these are not even things. This is not supplements or herbs. This is your just daily self care of your human body that is essential has to be there. That's like just a must. If you don't feel like you have your care down, I wouldn't even try taking supplements. Let's get the care down first. Which is why I created my seven day self care stress reset. I'll give you a link because if you're feeling like oh my gosh, I don't even have my, I feel like I need to help my body recover and I, I don't know which supplements to take but I don't even have my care yet. I want you to focus there first. I want you to get your self care completely optimized where you feel confident and you're like I know what to eat, how am I going to get good sleep, what recovery activities I'm going to do every day and I'm getting my exercise happening. So if you need help with that, definitely sign up for my 7 day self care reset. It's time. Let's start with that and then once we're getting that care mastered then we can say okay, what do we need in addition to self care? Are there herbs, are there nutrients? And if so, and if you are a highly sensitive person, we're going to need to implement that very gently, very carefully and really listen to your body so that and according to my stress recovery protocol so that you're most likely going to get the benefit and the least likely to get any setbacks. My goal is for you to be efficient with this. How do we get you from where you are now to feeling better in the most efficient fashion? I don't know why, I guess I'm obsessed with efficiency for some reason. But I really believe that you deserve that you deserve to feel better as efficiently as possible. And that's why I encourage you to get your self care in order and then implement the stress recovery protocol based on your body. Which is what in the book I teach you to do this, the stress type quiz so you know what your cortisol and adrenaline are. You can Even test your cortisol and adrenaline through testing from my office. And we can do, and I teach you the blood work to do and the food sensitivity test to do. Basically, we need to do tests to find out what's out of balance so that we can be efficient about getting you back in balance. Right. Like if we're just guessing and you're just taking supplements because someone at the store or someone online said it sounded good, but you don't know for sure that that's the right thing for you, that's not efficient. That's just throwing darts at the wall and hoping you hit the target. For me, I'd rather be efficient. So I say do these tests. This is what I teach you in the book master your stress book, and this is what I teach you in my programs. And when I work with you one on one, here's the tests that are going to give you the information about what's out of balance for your body. And then I can give you, here's the exact herbs and nutrients that make the most sense based on my protocol for you to integrate. Now it's just a matter of finding the right dose for your body. And again, if you're a highly sensitive person, it doesn't mean that you can't do this. You can do this. I did it. I built this based on being a highly sensitive person and having many, many, many highly sensitive patients over the years. So I had that in mind when I created this protocol. In order for it to work for me and in order for it to work for as many people as possible, we can implement it. Don't give up. Just because you react doesn't mean that you need to give up. It means we need to be thinking it through more carefully. And tiptoeing and giving your body a chance to give us the feedback so we can implement little by little. And what I can tell you is pat after patient makes it through that and they get to the other side and they're like, I can't believe it. I actually was able to know what to take, when to take it, how to take it in a way that my body could benefit from it and get out of this cell. Danger, stress response that I was locked in for so long. And once you have freedom from that, you don't want to go back. You're like, I'm going to keep taking good care of myself. I'm going to keep taking the nutrients and herbs that help me maintain my wellness over time. Is very motivating because you work so hard to get there and then you're going to be like, ah, now you know your body. Why would you go back? Why would you do anything different? Now you're like, I know what my body needs. I'm going to keep doing that going forward. It's so cool, so exciting. I love talking to patients when they reach that point. I love talking to patients every day anyway. But when they reach that point where they're like, wow, I know what my body needs and I know how to maintain it over time. And now I just get to keep on going with it. And it is one of the most rewarding things about what I do. So thanks so much for joining me. Be sure to check out the links below. Get the Master of Stress book if you don't have it already, and let's get you headed down this path of.

Reversing the effects of stress and really helping you to optimize your health. Reset your health. That's in the title of the book, Master your stress. Reset your health.

Health.

I'm here to help you do that. And even if you are a highly sensitive person, especially if you're a highly sensitive person like me, this is the program that's going to help you to know how to navigate and how to prioritize and how to strategize for your wellness. Thanks so much for joining me and be sure to like and subscribe so you get my next episode of How Humans Heal. I can't wait to share more interviews with you and more insights from me and to hear from you what I can do, what I can share to help you. Thanks so much for being here and I'll see you soon.

Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review and for more resources, visit drdani.com.