Hormones Interaction with Weight Loss and Fertility with Dr. Bindiya Gandhi

Hi, I'm Dr. Donni Wilson. Thank you so much for joining us here on how humans heal today. I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Bindia. She is in Atlanta, but I think she helps people more than just in Atlanta. She specializes in hormones and how hormones relate to weight loss and fertility. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Donnie.

Of course, of course. I mean, of course. Hormones can be such a mystery. So can fertility and weight loss for many, especially women. Right? So we want to know your insights and your secrets to understanding hormones and how to help. But first, just introduce us a little bit more to you. I know you have three children, so you've been through fertility yourself. And what got you on this path to more of a functional medicine approach, because you're a medical doctor, but that's your original training, but really you're taking a functional medicine approach to helping women with their hormones. So tell us more about how that happened for you.

So, you know, I always thought I was pretty healthy. I thought I ate well, exercised. I thought I was always doing the right thing. I got into yoga in medical school mainly because at the time it was kind of like trendy. Madonna was doing it, so I was like, oh, Madonna's doing it. I've got to try yoga out, right? So I thought I was doing all the right things, but little did I know I actually was not. You know, I was eating whole wheat all the time because it was the right every. But that was what you did back then. It was like whole wheat pasta, whole wheat bread, whole wheat, this. And I thought, like, that was the best thing for my body. But long story short, I was actually harming my body without realizing what I was doing. I started eating. You know, I thought I was eating healthy. I ended up being in residency, having all these ailments that started happening. So I was chronically constipated. I had acne. I had chronic headaches, like tmg, TMJ symptoms, clenching my jaw. My cycles were irregular. I just felt crappy, fatigued all the time. And.

I kept going to my residency program and trying to get some answers. And they were like, oh, you just need birth control. Oh, just take the migraine medicine. And I was like, something's not adding up. Like, something's not making sense. I can't keep taking Midol and all these things, these pain relievers and everything just seems awry. Like, that cannot be my new normal. And it wasn't until Dr. Donney had a rash on my face that really got my attention because it was on my face. And now I was like, okay, something is definitely off. I remember asking questions after I had tried antiviral medications, antifungal medications, steroids, topicals, you named it. I tried spend thousands of dollars because I was desperate to get this rash off my face. And it would go away for like a couple days and it would come back. And I just remember being like, something is just not right, guys. And I had had biopsies and everything done. And I even kept digging deeper, like, is it a nutritional deficiency? Like, do I have an autoimmune condition? Is it like, what's going on? And.

It wasn't until the allergy immunologist basically, like, brushed me off and was like, nothing's wrong with you. We don't need to do testing. It's in your head, essentially. And I just remember leaving feeling so def needed. And I was like, I cannot live like this. Like this. This doesn't make sense. And I was fortunate to have worked with a really great functional, integrative medicine doctor, long story short, found out I ended up having celiacs. All that whole wheat I was eating that I thought was so healthy it was harming my body. Yeah.

Just a whole slew of problems. And at that time, I was like, I was so grateful to have realized it because once I cut the gluten out, once I started rehabbing my gut health, oh, my goodness, life got better. And it was a great timing because I had just. I think I was 30 when I was diagnosed with it, and I knew I was going to get married. I wanted to have babies. And I know there was a link between celiac and fertility. And I was like, oh, my goodness, this is great. I found this out now right before I was about to get married. So I can heal my gut. So when I'm ready to have babies, it'll be easier to have babies. Well, it's not so always easy to have babies.

Then you ran into the next roadblock. But this is so interesting because it's like you were here, you were in medical school and residency, and you kind of became your main, you know, one of your main patients. You are your own patient trying to figure out, how do I diagnose what's going on with me? And kind of really coming face to face with. With what's available in them. In the standard medical approach. Like, the standard medical approach is like, okay, here's a pain medication or an anti inflammatory or an antimicrobial. But. But you're like, no, I'm dealing with something else here. And you were driven to figure it out for yourself.

Yeah. And, you know, at the time, like, I'm not gonna lie, I wanted, I desperately wanted those creams or the antiviral or anti medication, whatever it was, I wanted it to work because I was like, it's a rash on my face and I need it to go away. Yesterday, like, I was desperate to try everything, but everything I tried, I wasn't getting the results and I just. Just didn't make sense. Like, I was just. I just remember feeling frustrated, depressed too, because. And then a vicious cycle because I would cover it up with makeup and it would make it worse and it would just. Just be this, like, vicious cycle of it being irritated and. But I. I was so paranoid that people could only see this rash and not the rest of my face that I was like, I need it to go away.

Highly motivating. And it also shows you how often celiac disease actually gets missed, even in conventional care. Like, because a lot of times practitioners don't realize that it can present as a rash on the skin. For example, people think, oh, this person's going to have diarrhea or, you know what I mean? Like, severe malnutrition symptoms. And that's not necessarily the case. Right. Who are listening and like, oh, hey, you know, when should someone really be tested for celiac disease?

Yeah. And in my case, I had. Looking back, the two biggest signs, I guess were chronic constipation. That I thought was normal. Right. I wasn't the diarrhea patient that I had learned about textbook in medical school. I was the opposite. Chronic diarrhea. And I was ridiculously anemic. Right. But I always thought that was my normal. I always was anemic as long as I could remember in high school. So I didn't think anything of it. Right.

But once we actually tested for celiac, because I kept pushing and pushing and pushing and it was kind of like, oh, well, that's like the last thing on the differential anyways, you know, because it wasn't the typical. Again, it wasn't the classic typical textbook herpetic form rash. Right. And even when, when, when the dermatologist had done the biopsy, it didn't come back as that. Right. It was. They. Well, in their defense, they just did a biopsy and just, Just to see if it was fungal or not. They didn't do. They didn't test. They didn't send it off to path for other stuff. So I mean, there's so many different, like, nuances that now that I' that I can go back and say, well, this is why. And.

But it does. It often gets missed. Even gluten sensitivity, even if it's not the autoimmune form of celiac disease, it gets missed. And just for listeners to, you know, be like, thinking, hey, if you're having unresolving symptoms, it may be worth getting tested for for both gluten sensitivity, which is what's much more common than celiac disease, or. And you may need to go through the process of getting an endoscopy and a biopsy to find out is it really celiac disease? How long did take once you started avoiding wheat, all that wheat you were eating?

Oh, my goodness.

How long did it take for you to start to notice a difference?

Probably. Realistically, honestly, it was probably like a good two months. Right? Because, like, that first month.

And everybody kept saying, they're like, oh, well, now you're going to eliminate gluten in three weeks, you'll be back to normal. Right. I was not necessarily back to normal. I think I had done so much damage to my GI tract. Now my rash and a lot of the symptoms definitely lessened, but, like, the bloating and the GI issues, it didn't really fully resolve until, like, probably like, close to two months. And that was, again, me being strict with it because there's a lot of things that. There's still a lot of things early on that I know I was eating gluten without even realizing I was still eating gluten. Right.

Like, I take time to figure it out. Yeah, yeah.

Like, I had. I had. I was really particular about making sure everything I had transitioned to were gluten free, but I wasn't aware or I was still learning that, you know, there's gluten in your hair care products and other stuff. So then it was like, once I realized, oh, my goodness, you're still using gluten in this, then it's so much better. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I had been similarly searching and searching when I was in naturopathic medical school trying to solve some of those same symptoms you described. So I was in a parallel universe over here going, how do I solve this? And ended up finding that I had pretty severe gluten sensitivity, but it didn't. It wasn't the first thing that anyone figured out at the clinics. It took me doing multiple tests and finally deciding to eliminate it when I was like, oh, my gosh, the migraines got so much better, and my everything feels so much better. I Wish I would have figured this out a long time ago. And it takes time. I always say it takes. There's a transition of learning to eat gluten free. And it also takes time for the gut lining to heal and recover.

So it takes the time for the body to heal. And it's not just about avoiding gluten. It also has to be, how do we help your body recover from gluten?

Yes. Yes, for sure. And in my case, like, it. There were still times where then I think there was part of me that was a kind of in denial. And like, are you. I was like, when I tell you, Dr. Donnie, when I found out that I had to, like, I was so depressed. Like, I was. I really went into, like, this weird. Like, I was. And it was. Right. It was literally a couple days before Thanksgiving. And so I was just like, so defeated. Like, you're telling me I can't eat, like, Thanksgiving meals, you know? And it's like, oh, my goodness. It was. It was.

And I ended the world. Yeah.

I really felt like it was the end of the world. And I was like, why me? Like, nobody in my family has celiac. But then I'm like, okay, this makes sense. I'm the smallest in my family. Everybody's like, seriously, like, every. I have a brother who's like 6:1, and my parents are like, normal, average size. Like, you know, for Indian parents. Right. And here I am, like, 5 foot, and I'm like, it all makes sense. Like, it all makes sense.

You're like, I've probably had this been going on for years.

Yeah.

Life. And now finally I can, you know. Yeah. Start to address it. And it's. No. I love. Thank you so much for sharing this because I think it's just for people to know that. How intense that diagnostic process can be and how long it can take, even for someone who's training and trained as a medical doctor, it takes. It takes time. And then it takes the process of learning how to eat that way. Now, in your case, as you alluded to, like, then you said, okay, now I'm ready to have babies. How am I going to get my. You know, And I have seen. I've seen cases where fertility issues were just figuring out that they had celiac disease and avoiding gluten and they were able to get pregnant.

That.

Right. But sometimes, like you alluded, there's. There's the next hormonal thing that pops up and you're like, oh, now what do I needed to figure out? So tell us your next phase of Your life where you had to figure out your fertility.

Yeah. So, you know, again, like, I was like, when my husband and I got married, we knew we didn't want kids right away, but we knew we wanted kids, and we figured, okay, well, you know, we know the physiology of how you have kids and all that stuff. And so after, literally after a couple months of trying, I was like, okay, what's going on? Then the whole stress factor comes in at this point. Like, I was working a very stressful job. In fact, it's like, so crazy how the universe works. Here I am helping other women get pregnant, right? Identifying if they've got autoimmune issues, whatever, putting them on protocols and plans, and I'm helping them get pregnant. But I couldn't get help myself get pregnant. Like, seriously.

And I was like, okay, what's going on? Like, I feel like I'm some sort of hypocrite here. I can give all the best advice, but I can't even bear a child of my own. Again, I ended up having some hormonal issues that.

Genetically, you know, I was estrogen dominant without even being aware I was estrogen dominant. And it took me a while, so my gut lining was healed. I did a lot of work on that, then started rebalancing my hormones. I was like, what just happened? Like here, you know, all these years of, at the time, birth control pills. I was on birth control for many years, and it was all the hormones that I was on. Thought you stopped birth control, you get pregnant, doesn't work out that way. Did a lot of hormone balancing. And that's when I started learning about leptin.

Because there's this whole.

There's different phases. There's having high estrogen, and then there's the other extreme of having low estrogen. And both impact fertility very differently. And for me, yes, I was estrogen dominant, but then I also, because I was estrogen dominant, became low estrogen because I was afraid of too much of the estrogen. And of course, in our family, we have strong family history of breast cancer. So I was very like, okay, we've got to eliminate my estrogen. But on the other hand, when you have too low estrogen, it starts impacting other things. Leptin is one. Low estrogen and leptin go really high hand in hand. Meaning when your estrogen levels drop, leptin levels drop, Your body thinks you're starving, your body thinks that you're not healthy enough, and so you're not going to get pregnant easily. Right. And so it Makes it, it makes it challenging. So once I started realizing, okay, I'm going from extreme to extreme, like, I've got to get to the middle ground, it was easy to get pregnant.

Well, this is the thing, I think so often we do see our world as black and white or either or, you know, like, and it's, it's easy to try to solve it that way. Like, if I have too much estrogen, let me turn it off, or if I have too much cortisol, let me turn, turn it down. Or you know, like, we're just this, we're trying to just flip the switch. But actually when it comes to hormones, as you're saying, it's about how do you get the right balance, how do you get the right amount so your body gets the right signals, just the right amount of estrogen and progesterone and leptin and all of them so that your body gets the right signals. So if a listener is, you know, how would a person sort of start to know that this is even a possibility for them?

So what I always have people do. So for people listening, first of all, they're like, what is leptin? I don't even know what leptin is. I've never heard about this before. I've never had it tested before. So, guys, leptin is a hormone that is produced by your fat cell and actually communicates with your brain. It's actually your satiety hormone. It lets us know if you're full, if you need to eat again. And when this miscommunication is off, this is often when there's something called leptin resistance, right? And this is why people have weight loss plateaus where they lose weight and then they wait stalls or this is why they have difficulty losing weight, right? No matter what diet or protocol that they're doing.

So leptin is a really important hormone. Now I usually will say, you'll start noticing, you may suspect, I should say that you have a leptin issue. If you have things like you're constantly snacking, you're craving sugary foods, if you feel like you're hungry all the time, if you just ate and then like an hour later, like, I need to eat some more. There's probably miscommunication going on. And guys, to anybody listening today, I want you to go to my website, take a free 11 question quiz and see if you're leptin resistance, if you're leptin sensitive or leptin clear. Now, unfortunately, most.

Conventional medicine doctors do not Check for this leptin level. And even if you go to an endocrinologist, which is like a hormone specialist doctor, they don't check this level either because they don't know what to do with it. It's a fairly newer hormone. And so I always really encourage you, if you take my quiz and you realize that you may have leptin resistance or you're sensitive, then work closely with an integrative and functional medicine practitioner who's able to help guide you and put you on the right program and protocol. If your leptin is off, and it can be off either too high or too low, and both is a problem. It needs to be literally just right. Again, it's one of our Goldilocks hormones. And for different phases of your life, you just want it to be where it needs to be.

Definitely, yes. I mean, I remember when I first was reading about leptin, I was like, it makes so much sense that there's a hormone that has to do with fullness, hunger and fullness.

Yeah.

And yet it wasn't. It wasn't in this, you know, the beginnings of my. When I learned either, you know, it's was. It's like they just realizing about this hormone and all. And I think we're gonna know. Learn more about the interconnections of leptin going forward. But it's like, first thing we realize is, hey, this hormone has to do with hunger and fullness signals and the resistance. When we say leptin resistance, sometimes people have heard of insulin resistance, which is when the cells are not responding to the insulin, and so you end up with higher blood sugar levels. Some tell us more, like with leptin resistance, that the cells are not responding to the leptin correctly.

Yes. And this is. This is exactly what's happening. Right. So your cells are not responding to the leptin. You're not getting the message. And this is why you don't feel full. Like you feel like you need to e. You're either overeating at meals, like your portions are just larger because you're just not satisfied. You're just not. Essentially, you're just not satisfied. Now, the other important thing about leptin, not only does it regulate your appetite and your satiety, but it also regulates how you burn fat. Right. So it's like this whole.

Mechanism of action that's happening that's impacting your metabolism, and that's why it's so important. Leptin also communicates with your other hormones. It communicates with your Insulin, it communicates with, like I mentioned, your estrogen levels. It communicates with your adrenal stress hormones. So it's very important to kind of be aware just leptin by itself, but also how it communicates with your thyroid hormone and what it's doing there. So it very, very much interacts with all the other hormones and it's understanding what's going on in the big picture to then be able to balance.

To balance your hormones and general so you can achieve the right weight loss or whatever your metabolism you're trying to achieve.

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What I'm hearing you say is as leptin is more optimized in that Goldilocks zone, that it ends up sending a signal to all these other hormones. So now your thyroid's behaving more optimally cortisol and your blood sugar. So it's like a ripple effect.

Yeah, and sometimes it's hard to, to identify, you know, Dr. Donnie, like which came first? Is it that your thyroid got awry first and then leptin got impacted, or is it that leptin got impacted and then it impacted your thorough? I'm not really sure and I don't know if we have the answers to that.

But it doesn't really matter because the solution is the same.

Exactly, exactly.

So we can, because I see that like a lot of times I almost think of it like, see, see, I'm curious if you like this analogy almost. You know where we think we think about these spinning plates, right? Like we can have all these spinning plates at the same time and you need your, you need the thyroid hormone spinning and you need the estrogen and the progesterone and the. And then you also. If, but if we didn't know about the leptin plate and getting it spinning right, then the others may never be fully optimized. Yes, we don't want to miss the leptin plate. Spin it right too. So. And this can affect fertility in addition to your. I mean, it makes sense that it would. May affect body weight. Right. Because if you're. And to know that I always like to stop and think because like when we're eating, we're kind of relying on our body to tell us when we're full. But actually there's a big delay normally in that signal for fullness. But when there's leptin resistance, you may never get that signal. So you're, you're thinking your body's going to tell you when you ate enough, but it's not. You have to, you almost have to create an external regulation of being. Talk us through. Like, what do you do if you have leptin resistance? How do you, how do you manage your eating? Your, you know, knowing when to eat and when not to eat. If you're leptin, you can't count on the leptin to do it for you.

No, you can't. Can't. You can't count on the natural body physiologically cues to kind of say, okay, stop eating, you're full. Right. And unfortunately we eat with our eyes. So if it's in front of us most of the time we're going to eat with our eyes. And like we're just. Yeah, we're not paying attention to. It's so easy not to pay attention what's on our plate. Because. Because, yeah. So.

And if we go to a restaurant, they serve us huge serving size. Right. And so then you feel like I'm supposed to eat all of this.

Yes.

But actually that's likely not physiologically. How much?

Yeah, exactly. You know, everybody, you've got to go back to simple things like portion control just initially just to. Okay, what is one cup of rice? Like, I see so many people in there and they're like eating like three cups of rice. And I'm like, no, no, no, that's. First of all, three cups is way too much. You're essentially causing leptin resistance by over as well. Right. There's other things that cause leptin resistance too. Right. Not just overeating. Yo yo diets that we've done in the past. Inflammation, toxins. So many other things that are impacting our detoxification system. So all these different things over time are impacting this hormone leptin. And I'm getting ahead of myself. But leptin is also metabolized in the liver, right, where your detoxification happens. So that's why it's important to kind of look again, look at the whole picture to figure out where in the puzzle is it, is it going awry? Yes, we know how it impacts other hormones. Yes, we know how to fix it. But where, where and why is this happening? Most people, unfortunately, females, have been dieting since they were like teenagers. You know, it's like. And that yo, yo dieting has really impacted our metabolism. Extreme diets, intermittent fasting, as much as I think it's a great tool for some people, when the body also thinks you're starving, yeah, it's going to hold on to weight. So leptin is so responsible for so many, all these different things that are happening in our body.

One thing that I want to, I really want your audience to listen, Listening today to kind of take away from this too, is both extremes. Whether it's low or high is problematic, right? Especially when it comes to fertility, though. I want to, I want to stress this when, if it's, if leptin is too low, you're not going to get pregnant easily. It's going to be harder for you to get pregnant, right? This kind of goes along with that female athlete triad syndrome, where you have a low estrogen, right? Your bones are osteopenic, you know, you're over exercising. Whatever that population, you're going to have trouble conceiving because your leptin is low. The other extreme is if your leptin is already high and you already have leptin resistance, then it's, then when you do get pregnant, maybe a little easier for you to get pregnant, but then you're more likely to have gestational diabetes and other problems in pregnancy and a complicated delivery. So we, we don't want it to be high or low. We want it to be literally just right in the middle.

And I love that you're bringing awareness to, well, to all of this. But also what you were saying about intermittent fasting, because it is such a trendy thing and often that's one of my concerns too, is if we push it too, it's tempting, right? We can, we can push ourselves pretty far. We can push ourselves, you know, maybe the direction of overeating, we can do we end up doing that, but we can also push ourselves in the direction of fasting for Too long and basically hitting that starvation signal. And it's. And we think we're doing the right thing. We think we're trying to lose weight by. And we're like, okay, this is a good thing. But if we overdo it, it ends up confusing these hormone signals.

Yeah. And I'll give you an example too, Dr. Danny, specifically in regards to that. And again, my hormones have been on both extremes. My estrogen, your estrogen, not just mine. But when your estrogen levels get too low, guess what ends up happening. Happening. You skip a cycle. You don't have a cycle that month. Your. Your body doesn't think you're. You're stable essentially to. To ovulate, you're not ovulating. And when you're not ovulating, you can't get pregnant. So all these things can happen. And having your cycle, as annoying as it could be, we need that every month. And when we don't have that every month, then the body's trying to tell us something and we need to pay attention to it. It's not okay for you to skip a cycle. And, you know, because something underlining is going on.

Yeah. It's such a good. It's such a good realization to be like, okay, because. Yeah, if our body's in a stress state, it's gonna turn off a reproductive function. It's gonna say, okay, let's. Let's turn off the ovaries. Let's not ovulate. Let's save it for when. When she is calm and ready for. For pregnancy.

Exactly.

And so that's a good point. If you're missing a cycle or you're. Or if your cycle's too long or too short, this is telling us that the O. Getting the right signals. And I love that you're, you know, also taking us to a big picture and asking the question, why? Well, why is that? Okay, let's. Because that's where we're ultimately going to be able to solve these things is when we answer that question. Okay, is it. And it could be different for each person. Right. It could be that this person is either overeating or that and their leptin's high or they're. They're fasting too long and now their left is lower and.

Exactly.

So we need to go ask the question why and then solve for that.

Exactly, Exactly.

Yeah.

The other thing that people don't pay attention to, but it is a big deal, is mood. Mood is also impacted by leptin. When your leptin levels are really low, you tend to have a little bit more anxiety as well versus when your leptin levels are normal.

So yeah, interesting, interesting. And so it comes down to eating just the right amount that your body can digest and physiologically use at that moment in time in intervals in between that your body can then reset the hormone signals and then, and then have of course overnight fast, but just not so long that it ends up.

Yeah. And this is, this is also why like again, I love intermittent fasting. I think there's a rhyme, reason and a tool for, for many people, but there's the extreme of it. I don't think you need to be doing 24 or 36 hour fast. And especially if you're a female in the reproductive years, you need to be very sensitive to your, your genetic and your body makeup. Because someone like me who intermittents fast, I'm going to drop my leptin the other way. I'm going to skip a period, I'm going to drop my estrogen levels, really, you know what I mean? So it's finding that right balance. Okay, maybe I just do intermittent fasting and I do a 14 hour fast three times a week and that's as good as I can go, you know. But you have to know your body type, you have to know your limitations.

And know when you actually have to eat more food essentially.

Now I was going to say in terms of someone who's listening and is kind of wondering now about their leptin, we can do it in a blood test. So even though it's not, most doctors aren't ordering it. So you probably have to ask to order it. But tell us more, like what should people be asking when they order to get their leptin tested? Yeah.

So I will tell you this again. Being a medical doctor, doctors don't really like it when patients come to them and they're like, can you order this? Test me. If you know more than your, your conventional doctor, they're offended already.

Let'S be honest. Right. But if you're working again, this is why I encourage that you work closely with an integrative and functional medicine doctor. But even if you ask your primary care doctor if to check your leptin level, the reason why they usually don't is because they don't know what to do with the results. They don't know how to interpret it, they don't know how to treat for it and it's a liability. So that's essentially what it comes down to. So it's not because that they don't want to help you out. But, but if they're not sure.

If they don't, if they're, if they're not comfortable with what they're going to do with it, they don't want it on their hands. And so that's the real reason why conventional medicine doctors don't want to test for it because they don't want to have to be responsible legally for this lab level.

So you see, you're saying better to just know that and work with a practitioner who understands it. And then they're going to, they're going to not only be able to order the test, but help you with what the result says.

Exactly, yes. That's essentially, honestly, that's really what it comes down to. And it's really unfair to put, you know, have someone who does primary care or whatever, you know, order this test and have that on them. So they're not familiar with it, they don't know what to do with it. And so just work closely with the integrative and functional medicine doctor. You know, there's people like myself, and I'm sure people like you, Dr. Downey, who see people all over the country virtually in person as well. And so we can, we can help order this test for you appropriately, get it covered by insurance and also interpret it accordingly to you, you and your genetic makeup and your body type. Essentially, when we're looking at leptin, we were looking at many things, right? We're looking to see it's not high, it's not low. Sometimes I have patients come to me with the leptin levels are like 100 or 50s. And we love, in a perfect world for it to be between 7 and 10. That doesn't help in every patient, you know, and there's so many different factors that have to look at too can. And realistically, can I really get someone who has a leptin level of 50 down to 7? Maybe, maybe not. You know, now when you work with.

Patients, do you find that you're working a lot with patients who are working with fertility or weight loss or what are the main areas?

So a big, wide array of patients. A lot of females. My practice is predominantly females. A lot of females will come to me because they've got a little bit of weight loss resistance because they've, they've hit a stall. They've tried every diet in the book and it's not working anymore. And they just need to reset their metabolism. So that's essentially why a lot of females come to me. But I do still get a good Slew of female patients who are having difficulty getting pregnant and they need like that one last resort. What can I do before I start IVF or what can I do in conjunction to IVF to like optimize my, my fertility? So, yeah, we work with a wide array of patients and I know that.

You just had a third baby.

Yes.

What did you. Was this part of your fertility story, managing or optimizing your leptin or what do you, what did you do?

No, I mean, fortunately, I think once I realized my estrogen levels were just on the extremes, I was able to kind of balance that out nutritionally, naturally and had no issues, you know, with fertility and pregnancy after that. So. But like I said, that also goes back to, even as a practitioner, again as a provider myself, don't always think you know everything or always don't always. You need another set of eyes sometimes. Right. As practitioners, sometimes, like we can also get very narrow minded. Right. And so we need other interpretation eyes on our health so we can stay in the best health, essentially.

Yeah, no, it's such a good point. Like, you know, just to like any of us can get sort of like blind vision, you know, how to just kind of open up our eyes and go, hey, wait a minute, what's really going on here? And especially if you're finding with your health that you're stuck, whether it's with losing that extra pound or, you know, you're like, I'm doing all the things to get pregnant, but what like, I love this message that, that our body, you know, oftentimes there is something we can figure out whether, whether it's the gluten was a, you know, there's often like, it seems like the mystery, right? The unsolved mystery. But then you've solved, you've found a couple of these that are more common mysteries than we realize that, you know, how many people have a gluten as an issue that was behind the scenes and they didn't realize, or leptin as an issue and behind the scenes and they didn't realize. So I can see that you're, you're the kind of person who likes to solve those mysteries, right?

Yeah, listen, if I can solve them on myself, hopefully I can solve them on you.

I love it. And I think a lot of people listening, they're like looking for someone who's like, hey, let me think outside the box and figure this out. Because our bodies, a lot of times I feel that way too. There's oftentimes a way we can figure it out. But we have to kind of look at the physiology, be willing to do tests that may not be in the standard test, be willing to look at our patterns, like, even our patterns of eating that are maybe a societal norm of how much we eat or which foods we're choosing to eat that may not actually be optimal for our human bodies.

I know. I mean, when I go back, when I honestly think about the time Dr. Donnie, like, I was in medical school and it was like this whole wheat craze, and I was obsessed about everything that I purchased. Had to be whole wheat. Whole wheat. And I look back now and I'm like, I was listening to. Like, who was I listening to? Who made up that rule and told us that we should be eating whole wheat? Everything.

I know, every meal. And here I am, like, seriously, I was poisoning my body without even realizing I was doing it, you know, And. And. And then I was in medical school learning about these. These. These conditions and things, and it was like, oh, you're just a medical student, you know. You know, you're. You're. What is the word?

Yeah. When you.

Hypochondriac. Yeah. Yeah.

You think you have every condition. Yeah.

You're like, oh, you're probably a hypochondriac because you're reading about this, the text. But then I'm like, oh, okay, maybe. Maybe I, you know, you start second guessing. Maybe, maybe you're right. And then things keep getting worse and you're like, what? Like, and when I go back and think about the time I was in medical school and I remember having such excruciating abdominal pain. And, like, I just thought that was normal. I really just thought it was my normal. Like, oh, doesn't everybody have abdominal pain like this? You know, isn't everybody constipated? Like, I didn't even think twice to ask my colleagues and my friends about, like, their symptoms because it was so normal for me. I just thought everybody was going through something like this.

Well, that's the thing. We get these symptoms and we. It's so common that we accept it as this is how my body's going to be. But actually, sometimes it doesn't have to be if we. You can work with someone who can help you figure it out. Well, Marshall, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us today. I want to make sure everybody, you know, knows how to reach you. And your website is under your name, Dr. Bindi dot com. Right?

Yeah. Dr. Bindymd dot com. Yep.

I'm gonna put a link and. And I Know they can also find you same thing on Instagram. Is there anywhere else that they should be watching out for you?

Yeah, if you. You guys, I have a free link, a free PDF that you can download on five ways to reset your leptin so you can go to Atlanta. Wait.

And you can download the free PDF and send me a message. I want to know that these things are working or if you're. If you want to work closely with me. We even have a 30 day metabolism makeover course for a lot of people that you can do anywhere in the world, around the country, wherever you are. So we have so many different things. We're just here to support you because we know that this is when it comes to weight. I know so many people are struggling and I think they're finally just looking for answers and, and hopefully we can help.

And that's the thing. Yeah. It's like sometimes we. What comes to mind is at first we're almost like first we're angry at our bodies because we're trying to lose weight, but our body's not doing what we want it to do. And then we sometimes get angry at ourselves because we're like, oh, I did this to myself. Sometimes you have to kind of work through those to get to the point where you're like, okay. It makes. Especially coming out of the pandemic, I mean, so many people with. Where during the pandemic they were eating more or drinking more alcohol. And then this. I think the. Probably left in resistance is way more common right now.

Oh yeah, yeah. Unfortunately it is a lot more common. Yes.

So it's like we kind of are getting to a point where I think it's like, okay, enough already. I need to just make peace with my body and understand why the weight gain happened and under. Make peace with myself because I'm only human. We're all only human anyway. Right. We've all been there. We've all eaten a larger meal than we needed to before. Right. So we can. It's not about being perfect. It's not about trying to, you know, become the perfect body, but it's about how do we help you to understand these signals in your body so that you can make different choices. Right. Like, how do we. And I think that's what you teach in your, in your, in your 30 day program. It's like. Right, like.

Yep, exactly.

How do we make peace with your body and learn how to feed yourself in a way where you can re. Optimize these hormones?

Yeah. Essentially it's retraining Your mind, your body and your soul to work in conjunction for you to get your metabolism working the right way. I mean we've just been dieting for so long. We've just been on these different roller coasters and these different trends as they come in thinking that's what we need to be doing because that's what the ladies whatever is fat is and we're just negatively impacting our metabolism. And this is why I was just talking to Dr. Jeffrey Bland about this today. This is why we need personalized medicine and this is why it's important to kind of learn about what is going on with your body so we can fix your individual makeup specifically.

Yeah, yeah. Because it's. Then we're really being compassionate and accepting of ourselves and saying, hey, hey, what do you need that's really going to feed your body best? And you, then you end up feeling better about yourself too in the long run. So it's like solves many of these issues all, all at once.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

I love that. Oh my gosh. And I love. Yeah, Jeffrey Bland. I trained with him at best year way back when.

Oh, did you? Oh my God, that's awesome.

Yeah, yeah. So I'm so grateful to have that. And yeah, it is, it can be a mindset shift out of that kind of like usual weight loss paradigm. But I am really glad you are helping people to say yes, there is a way to lose weight in a healthy way that you can then maintain over time.

Yes, exactly. You nailed it. That you can then maintain over time. These are lifestyle changes. This isn't a quick fix. These are things that are going to give you long lasting results. This is why diet is a four letter word. It does work.

Sorry, I had to say that.

I know. Diet is a four letter word that doesn't work. I love that. Yeah, like we need to shift this whole paradigm and I love that you're doing that. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for what you do and for sharing with us here today and I look forward to everyone connecting with you for more support with that and, and yeah, thank you so much again. Thank you.

This is wonderful being on.

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