Hit Pause On Menopause with Dr. Anna Cabeca! | How Humans Heal Podcast

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donni Wilson and I am so excited to introduce you to Dr. Anna Kabeca today. She is an OBGYN, so specializing in women's health and in particular she is here because she is on a mission to help women in peri and post menopause and especially to use food as a medicine in her books. And her latest book that just came out called Menupause. Thank you so much for joining me today and I'm so glad you're here.

Oh my gosh, I feel blessed to be here. Thanks for having me.

Oh my gosh, how cool and how exciting. I mean, show us again this newest book, Menupause. And I know this is like you've started with your prior books and it's led up to now really helping us to know what to eat. And this book, Menupause is available anywhere. Normally you would order books like Amazon and then of course we want to come to your website so we can get all the support with using it. But please tell us like, what was your inspiration for this book and what was your inspiration to just do what you do every day?

Yeah. So definitely my mess became my message. So just showing you Menopause. It's a great title to really have some fun and bring up conversation around menopause because it's something that's not talked about. I mean, and so I had early menopause at 39 and that took me on a journey around the world to reverse that early menopause. And I didn't intend to, I mean, because I'm a physician and we don't talk about reversing a diagnosis per se. Right. And especially something like, you know, had infertility, failed the highest round, highest doses of injectable meds and I was told the only option I would have would be egg donation. And then, you know, it was like full blown menopause and it was really post traumatic or you know, stress induced menopause perimenopause symptoms. And that was, I mean it was really devastating. I didn't know that we could turn that around. And so since I did and became pregnant naturally at age 41, that really did help me bring in world medicine. And that's one of the things I do in my new book, Menupause, I talk about menopause around the world and food and recipes from around the world in each of the different five menu plans to kind of bring in worldly wisdom. And especially because America is such a melting pot, not everything works for the same genetic kiss.

I think that's our ancestry and I think that's really important to know. And I'm first generation American and my mom and her other two brothers that came to the US died prematurely and having more chronic disease on more medications than any of her siblings that stayed in a war torn Middle East. And so I find that that was like that seed in my brain that really helped me kind of think and investigate and ask questions and try to understand what's happening, what's happening to her body and do we use food as medicine to heal it as well as lifestyle, as well as empowering our more important, most important hormones?

Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for sharing that and how amazing that, I mean, thank you for sharing your first of all, your health story. Because I know as a practitioner too, we're kind of taught not to talk about our own health struggles. And here you are as OB GYN talking about your struggles with women's health related issues and what that taught you, that you, you didn't just follow sort of like the usual, you started asking questions and saying, hey, what's really going on here? Why is it that I moved to my family, moved to the United States and started eating differently and then all these health issues started developing and I think a lot of listeners too, will we feel that way, like we start asking why? And also how do I prevent myself from going through that same thing, right? How do I prevent diabetes, heart disease, dementia, all of that? And I agree with you. I mean diet is such an amazing tool for us to be able to do that.

It is essential. And I think that's where we get empowered, become the CEO of our own body. When we are empowered with food as medicine and it does make a difference. I will say there's the 90% as a physician, as a consultant to other physicians and longevity practices, age management, hormone balancing, et cetera, that we can spend money, we can do peptides, we can do stem cells, we can do lasers and radio frequency and we've got a lot of cutting edge stuff and very expensive and we can spend your money. But this is the 99%, right? The food as medicine is the 99%. And the self discovery, the personal buy in and the ability to see in a very quick amount of time that yeah, things can shift, I can feel better. I mean, I've been well over £240 with tremendous hair, with fatigue. It hurt to put my feet on the floor in the morning. I mean that was back in my early 40s. And so understanding how we can heal our body. And now I work out. I do infrared yoga here in Dallas and I work out with like, you know, other yoga teachers, I mean, essentially and sculpt teachers. So, you know, it's been one of those journeys to empower my body so that now, at 55, as a new grandma, that I can live out the second spring of my life with a new vision for what that looks like.

Wow. I mean, was there something that just made you, like, make that kind of change? Because that's a huge transformation you're describing. And I think a lot of people probably are finding themselves feeling that overwhelm and feeling stuck and feeling like, what's going on in my body and how could I ever change it? You know, it feels impossible sometimes, but you're telling us it's. It's not impossible. It's possible you did it.

And I think what I love is that often it comes down to our why. What is our why? What is our why for living? And now look, I have been, and I say this with complete compassion because I have been to the place where I didn't want to live anymore. I couldn't imagine living another day or going through the unbearable of facing another day without my son who we lost in an accident. I couldn't imagine how to do that, right? So if someone is coming from and just thinking, gosh, I don't even. I can't even think of a why to keep going or why I should even try again. Let me give you a couple options. There are a couple things. One, sometimes we have to think, well, I can do this for my children. Well, that's really important. And we can say that may help, but we have to really do it for ourselves. We can say, I want to lead by example for my children. If they were suffering like I'm suffering, what would I want them to do? How would I want them to live? What's the next right step I would want them to take? There's that and then there's the biblical side of me that says, okay, where we're given a certain number of days of life, right? How are we supposed to live them? And I don't want to be living out those days in a nursing home with dementia, in pain, on meds. I don't want to be living out my. I want to be, you know, God willing, living out with my granddaughter, my great grands, and flying first class, you know, flying my private jet or, you know, airplane around. So that's what I want to be doing, right? Taking Them horseback riding, going along trails like I do with my daughter. So I want to be able to do that. So some. We have to have that vision for ourselves. We have to get into our why, and we have to get that kick in the butt to say, look, I've known people, you know, and I have my uncle, my dad. Oh, my God. I have so many good stories, Donnie, but I know you've got lots of questions.

I love your stories. And you're right. It's like sometimes we are kind of faced with it. Like, what am I really wanting in my life? And what do I want to choose to change what's going to happen in the future? But, yeah, tell us that story you were thinking of.

Well, the story that came to mind. I was thinking of my father, who, when he was the oldest of four brothers, and when he was 79 years old, he was really struggling. My mom had passed away a decade earlier from heart disease and diabetes. I wish I knew then what I know now. That's why I talk about balancing our hormones, prevent diabetes and reverse it. But. So dad was 79, and he came to visit us. And at that time, my son was a toddler crawling around and. And he was irritable and, you know, cranky, was just sitting on the couch, you know, or not moving so much. I was like, dad, what's going on? Because my dad was a naval attache. In other words, he could get people drunk and get them to talk about anything. Right. He was World War II. He was, you know, he did espionage. He was amazing. Amazing. Never met a stranger, could find the good in everyone. And here he was, irritable and cranky, and it just. With that, just a thanks to all veterans, everyone who served in the government and everything. I'm so grateful. And I've lived it through my family, too, and me, myself. But. So dad was 79, and I said, well, let me call you. Do you want me to call your doctor and ask him what we should do? Because I don't like seeing you this way. Because I don't like to feel this way. He goes, yeah. So I called his cardiologist because, you know, my dad was standing, didn't want anyone to interfere with the golden doctors. And I was a physician in solo practice at that time. And so I called his cardiologist, who I knew well because he was the cardiologist to attain care of my mom. And I said, you know, Dr. G, you know what? Dad's not doing well and this and that. And he goes, you know, Anna, your dad, 79. He's lived a good life. And I waited for him to say something else and then in my mind I could hear him just kind of wiping his hands of my thumb.

I'm like, what? Wait a minute.

I mean, he's absolutely true dad at 79. Wow. He's outlived most everyone at that point. He's. He's done pretty well, right? And I said, well then do you mind if I intervene? I've been doing this dysfunctional medicine and hormone stuff. He goes, go for it. And so I said to my dad, I said, dad, are you done living because your physician's done with you? And he laughed and he said, oh, I'd like to see 80. That was the one goal my dad had. I'd like to see 80 even just one more year. One more year. Small steps, right? One more. I'd like to see 80. And I said, okay, well, your doctor's giving me permission to mess with your meds and to do stuff. So I ended up very quickly taking him off three of his prescriptions, putting them on supplements, like.

Some CoQ10, some carnitine, some multivitamins minerals, some testosterone things, right? Yeah.

So put them on these.

And had him follow an early version of what I now call my Keto green detox. Within 30 days, he went from injecting himself with 120 units of insulin a day, this 79 year old man, to 20 units of insulin a day, to 20 units. He lost 30 pounds and he got off the couch and was out on the tennis court with the kids.

Oh my gosh. Goosebumps.

Not only did he make his 80th birthday, but he made his 91st birthday.

No way.

91 good years. He outlived in spades by decades. His four. His younger brothers, his four younger brothers. He outlived them by decades in quality of life as well as number of years.

Isn't that something? And so it just shows you, like, you can make these changes anytime. Like you, some people think, oh, it's too late, it's not going to work. But like here he implemented it at 79 and lived more than another decade. I mean, it's so amazing.

And it's good years, good quality years with a sharp brain and thriving, I mean, and going out and having fun and, yeah, enjoying grandkids.

It's so amazing that you, you know, you were able to help him with that and to then take what you learned from yourself and your dad and all of your patients. I'm sure to put it into these books and say, here's what worked, you know, like you're not just keeping it to yourself, you're saying, hey, this is what works. Here's how others can do the same thing for themselves and their family by just following these similar approaches, right?

Absolutely. When we get to the underlying, underlying issues that are causing the problems and it's a problem in our medical systems because you specialists that are very specific in what they're looking at, right. We're not looking at the whole picture. We have to look at the underlying underlying reasons. And I'm pretty lazy when it comes to these things. And I want to do the smallest change that's going to have the biggest effect. So where do we have to go? We have to go to the cellular level. We have to get keto green, we have to do intermittent fasting, we have to supplement in America today. We have to get enough sunshine and vitamin D. We have to detox from EMF and other toxins. We have to support a bot. And when we do these things, we address hormone imbalance, inflammation and adrenal dysregulation. And when we get a handle on those, when we get rid of those imbalances, everything else clears up all those symptoms, whether it manifests as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, dementia, we can clear it up. It's never too late and it's never too early. So start as a role model for your family and friends around you. And if we can't find that, why then you go to that thinking, well, do I want to live it in pain and demented or do I want to be empowered and have fun to the last day of my life? God willing. So that's how you know that was my rub.

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Oh, I love it. And thank you so much for. Yeah, you're just getting inspired and taking that leap to, you know, because you then left your standard practice and this is what you do now is help people to change their. Basically transform their lives and transform their health.

I could only see a certain number of people, right. And especially when I went to my high level concierge, maybe you know, less than 1,000 a year in that level. Right. But here. And something that I wanted especially because I was, I burn out pretty well from my medical practice and concierge. But I wanted to empower people with the 99%. Right. With the 99% that they have power and control over. Like how do I, I fix my hormones, how do I improve my metabolism and my mitochondrial function, how do I heal the cellular dysfunction cell membranes? And I want to empower people. And food is medicine. And beyond that, the hormone fix is my first manifesto. Then I wrote Keto Green 16 and really talk about mind, memory and mood and food.

And now menopause six day plans that pause something that we may not even realize is causing us problems. And then creating community around this. We can do menopause together. We can do for six days. We can do anything. And because within 72 hours, so within three days our gastrointestinal mucosa completely regenerates in six days you've got two of those cycles so you can really get some good healing done in these plans. I formulated them to really to really target and heal our bodies no matter what we're dealing with. It's really, it's going to be, it's fun. It's fun and easy and we can do anything for six days.

I love that. I love your strategies too. I say the same thing. Like this is one of the best ways to multitask is to choose to make a change like a dietary change that has this ripple effect over all kinds of systems. It's like you're doing one change, but it's having a huge positive influence.

And to teach people how to avoid inflammatory foods. Because sometimes I know people that are afraid, well, if I avoid these foods I'm used to eating, whether it's gluten or it's sugar or processed foods. If we're used to eating these foods, we feel like, well, what am I going to eat now? Am I going to have only cardboard to eat? People will think.

In these menopauses has color pictures and your recipes. So it's like people can feel excited and see visually this is, you know, this is the delicious food I'm going to make. So it's like, you know, it's so perfect to inspire everyone. Especially too, like you're saying, to be able to have work together, come to your website, Dr. Ana Kabeca, and just have the community support around this. I wanted to touch on how you mentioned that your recipes are based on. On recipes from around the world. Because what that makes me think is about the blue zones. Like, we know that there's areas of the world where people live longer and often the places where they live longer, they are eating whole food diets. Like they're focused on their fruits, vegetables, healthy proteins, healthy fats, right? That's where we're like a Mediterranean diet, which there's so much research to show that the Mediterranean diet reverses health issues. Well, what really is a Mediterranean diet? It's eating these whole healthy foods, right? In a healthy way.

What are healthy people around them? Good community with people you love and connect with. Hence the oxytocin. I was thinking, I think a lot about that. Like in one of the breakout bars, there's menopause around the world and then one is rituals. So saying grace, cheering, toasting, blessing your food and your friends at the table, that brings in oxytocin that counteracts cortisol on our physiology from chronic stress. So I always laugh when I hear the resveratrol and red wine. I need to drink that glass of red wine. Do you need to drink that glass of red wine by yourself at night? Every single night? No. That is definitely destructive to you. Where does the red wine and the resveratrol come into play? It comes into play because you're with friends and family in this Mediterranean lifestyle that you enjoy being with and they have your back and they are there to encourage you. Hold your lines, see your visions. I mean, you're just as fun. They're there to have fun with you. And that is oxytocin. And so that is where healthy community comes to play. And this just came up in my head just thinking about it. Sometimes we were, you know, like, I tell my kids, show me your friends and I will show you your future. Right? We say that the five people around you have the greatest influence on you. How are you influencing them and how are you allowing yourself to be influenced? And there is an effect. There is absolutely truth to that. And so if you are there and you are aging and feeling tired and fatigued and you are around people that are focusing on the negative, it's time to change. It can be the positive change for all of them or you can make changes in those relationships, focus on the positive, put clear boundaries up. Like, you know what, let's not talk about negative. Let's focus on the good stuff that we're doing. And how are we say, for example, we're addressing this problem of leaking bladder. Well, how are we correcting that? How are we fixing that? And then of course I would come in, well, are you taking care of your lips above and below your hips? There's jalva for that. So how can we address and bioidentical hormones for that. So how can we address the problems we we're complaining about? And what responsibility do we have? That's what I want people to know. I want them to feel the power of their own control over their physiology and health. Menopause is a quick fun way to start or to excel or to continue or to fine tune wherever we are in our journey. And I've done every one of those plans. So from autoimmune to vegan to carnivore, to cleanses. Right. And to carving up. So those are five common pauses that I often encourage my clients to do. To overcome a plateau, to get through some symptoms they're still struggling with, to see what their next step is, to shift their, you know, to shift their mindset around their possibilities. And it's often.

You know, it's often just a quick little simple change that has to happen. So I'm excited. I've already started to get great feedback from people I've had been blessed to give or my publisher has been blessed to give early releases too. And we did one of the programs, we were able to release one of the plans to my girlfriend, Dr. Community, my private membership club. And we did the cleanse together and the results were amazing. In fact, one of our clients stories was just featured. If you are going to the grocery store and you see first for women magazine, you see Tricia Yearwood, the beautiful woman on the COVID Right? On the COVID it talks about my plan and Dr. Anna Kabeca's six day plan. So that is the one we did. And we have an amazing Testimonial client. Lost £11 in six days and felt amazing. And so I am happy to share that this information with everyone out here because it is empowering and it can be struggling and continue to focus on the negative or we can take the next right step.

Oh, I love it. And basically I think what you're saying is this book can Fit for a lot of different scenarios. If a person is maybe you feel like you're wanting to do a cleanse. Okay, get this. So you can do the six day menu pause meal plan as a cleanse and then you might, might then decide okay now I'm going to shift and do maybe the more autoimmune anti inflammatory version where I might then find that I need to carb up and do the carb up version. I don't know. Is that how you see people using it?

Yeah, I definitely especially getting started, the way I put the order in the book is the logical way for me to send people through the plan. But it may be different for everyone. We actually have a menu pause quiz. It's dranna.com mpquiz and you can take the menupause quiz. The beginning of each chapter kind of gives you questions if you feel like I just want to start with one but I feel like starting with keto green extreme following eliminating nightshades, lectins, oxalates, that's powerful. And then going into plant based because we need that plant diversity increases gut microbial diversity which improves immune function and decreases inflammation and relieves constipation. Constipation is one of the biggest problems, especially in the keto world. And then going to carnivore because our GI tract is pretty well and our enzymatic function is pretty well destroyed. And so we move to a complete carnivore plan especially when we have skin issues. This is not a plan that women do well long term but it is a pause. It is a pause and then the cleanse to further improve have radiant skin, beautiful elastics, anti aging to extreme right. So that's the cleanse plan. We do a liver gallbladder flush in the morning and I had some people in my girlfriend doctor community complaining. It's like I can't drink this olive oil lemon juice blend actually a very beautiful recipe and I can't do this. But by day three they're like oh my God, can we keep doing it? Let's do it for the six days. Let's do it for the six days. But it was beautiful how they felt nourished and energized and no hunger felt pretty significantly balanced. So I think that's, that's powerful. And then sometimes in my keto green world, women have been restricted for so long and they're not sleeping as well or feeling as energy or they hit a plateau in the gym. Debbie Potts for instance, the Olympic athlete trainer, low carb athlete. She was having struggles. So she needed the carb plan for a bit and improved her performance in the gym and helped her get a better night's sleep. That is powerful. Sometimes we've been so carb restricted we're afraid of carbs and like, nope, here. A very balanced, friendly, hormone balancing way to do it. And so that's. It's been fun. It's been fun thinking about it. It's been fun working with the title menupause and it's great fun seeing the results and it comes out to, you know, everyone I've already seen on Facebook and Instagram, people messaging me, I got the notice that my book's being shipped, whether they got it from Barnes and Noble, Amazon, or they've been notified by their local bookstore that it's ready to be picked up. So tomorrow. So that's when it can be at people's doors and opened up on the shelves at bookstores.

I love it. Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for coming to tell us all about it and tell us about your story and how you've really, you know, used your passion for your in your own health and your family to, to find this information and share it with everyone. I really think, I just know it's going to create a lot of transformations in people's health. So thank you so much again for joining me. Dr. Anna.

Oh my gosh, anytime. And thank you for all the work you do and I'm looking forward to having you on the Girlfriend Doctor show to talk about the effect of stress and how to improve your health.

Definitely. Which reminds me, if anyone wants to find you on Instagram, it's the Girlfriend doctor, right? And I love that name. It feels so good because then it's like, you know, it's like that's what we want. We, you know, to have a doctor as a friend to help guide us. So thank you.

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