Breaking the Midlife Symptom Cycle

Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Sanda Moldovan, periodontist and nutritionist. Welcome to the Holistic Dentistry Podcast, the show that gives you the tips and tools to detoxify your mouth for a healthier body as we explore together the root cause of disease. Remember, you're not healthy until your mouth is healthy, so take care of it in the most Natural Way. Okay, hi everyone, welcome to today's show. And with me today, I have my dear friend Laura Frontiero, and we're going to talk about why you're still feeling with chronic fatigue, brain fog, inflammation, but you're doing all the right things. We're going to get to the root cause of those problems. And I want to say a few words about Laura because we've known each other now for a few years. She always impresses me with her knowledge whenever I have health issues, I actually call Laura and ask her, you know, what's this? Like when you told me to do the HCL challenge, for example, and that actually worked. So you were actually a nurse in traditional medicine and you decided, okay, I've had enough of this. I want to do functional medicine. And you went on your path fearlessly, may I say, and here you are today. You produced over 10 summits and different masterclasses in the health space as a functional health coach. And you've transformed the lives of so many clients, probably thousands by now. I know because I'm seeing some of those clients and that they're feeling better. They have more energy, less achy joints, clearer thinking, and all because of what, you know, your methodology at BioRadiant Health. So welcome to the show, Laura.

Thank you so much. It's so fun to be here. Yeah.

So, so what led you on this path of, okay, I'm done with traditional medicine. I'm going into functional medicine. Yeah.

I worked for over 2 decades as a nurse practitioner in one of the largest, uh, health organizations in the country. And once I learned about, you know, the gut microbiome, and once I learned about what inflammation really is in the body, and once I learned about mitochondria and those little energy-producing organelles, and once I learned about how the systems in the body work together, you can't unlearn it. And I couldn't really. You can't unsee it once you see it. And there wasn't a way for me to help people in the Western medicine space with this new knowledge in the capacity that I was working. So it was time to exit stage left and do my own thing. So that's really the short of the long of it. I just wanted to help people in a different way.

Yeah, I love it. And, and what do you focus on? Like, tell us a little bit about your methodology. I know you have different pillars on how you achieve optimal—

Yeah, well, you know, I think It's funny, like, you called me up and said, hey, Laura, I have this, like, issue going on. I said, well, do a betaine HCL challenge. Uh, you know, if you're having brain fog, if you're having low energy, if you're having, um, unresolved health issues, the first step is to extract the nutrition from your food so you can actually use those nutrients to heal. And that's one of the things that we did with you with the betaine HCL challenge. It allows you to extract those nutrients from the food so that every system in your body works better. So, we start with the digestive tract. We start with supporting people build up their digestion, improve it, bring it back online, work on that gut microbiome and all those good healthy bacteria that are in there to help you thrive. Then, we focus simultaneously on cellular mitochondrial energy production because if you're going to heal your body, you're going to need more energy production to do it. So, it's kind of like I always talk about energy is there's that physical energy we feel that gets us through our day, like the energy that prevents us from having a midday crash. You know, do you have energy still at 2 PM or do you feel like you need a coffee or a nap? So, that's kind of the physical energy. Well, guess what? All that energy need is happening at the cellular level inside your body that you're not even aware of. It's kind of like this invisible process happening in the body. So, we have to build that up for you to heal, for you to feel better in your body. So, we really focus on gut and mitochondrial health to begin with. And then, from there, we work on deeply detoxing the body. And this is where you actually come into our programs. I always say, like, you're permanent faculty in BioRadiant Health at this point. Because you teach in my detox programs and you teach about the importance of oral health and the oral microbiome and detoxing there. And at the mouth—

I love working with you.

This works so good. Yeah. So then we go into deep, what I call deep body detox. So we go investigating and finding what toxins are in your body. Is it herbicides like glyphosate? Is it heavy metals like mercury or aluminum or cadmium or uranium, a radioactive element? Is it environmental toxins like phthalates and phenols and you know, all industrial chemicals that, that we're just breathing, eating, drinking, being exposed to. So we get those things out of the body and guess what happens? People feel good. They get their energy back, they get their brain function back, feel like, wow, my hormones are feeling more balanced. I don't even have to take as many hormones as I used to. Their labs get better, their thyroid levels get better, their blood sugar levels get better, their overall cholesterol levels get better, their blood pressure gets better. I mean, we hear it all in the detox programs of, oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, I decreased my medication. My doctor's so impressed by my liver function now, or just insert lab. We've heard it all.

Can you think of like one exceptional patient, you know, over the years that you've treated that really got outstanding results?

Oh my gosh. I mean, I can think of hundreds. So like you, like, I mean, that's easy. So like you said, you know, we've worked with thousands of people through our programs at this point. And I would say that, you know, just, just yesterday I was, I was doing some coaching calls with some of our clients, and I'll tell you about one right now just that just happened. So this woman has chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, Lyme disease. She's got just a whole bunch of chronic conditions happening. She's seen 10 or so practitioners over the last 40 years, and she's been with us now for 6 months, and she was literally in tears yesterday and saying I've never felt this good. I just went on vacation with my daughter. I was able to keep up. I was able to have fun. My family is noticing that I'm changing. My husband notices, my daughter notices, my friends are noticing. And then she said, I really want them to have this too. I really want the people in my life to know that you can always, you know, improve your health. And she was just in tears, so thankful that finally she found a way to solve this. Now she's still working on it, right? She says, I still want more energy, I still want to feel even better. And she said, but this is night and day from what I felt like before.

That's really amazing. And you were able to help her with that in 6 months?

Yeah, 6 months she's been with me.

Yeah.

Yeah. And this was after like 30 years of trying all these different things.

Yeah. And a condition like fibromyalgia, right? I love these labels in medicine, you know, let's just put a label because we don't really know what it is. And a lot of people Oh, it's— you can't do anything about it. I have a lot of patients also that come and say, oh, it's just fibromyalgia. I have a pill for it. But, um, do you find that, uh, obviously reducing toxins, usually fibromyalgia symptoms get better?

Yeah. Any of these chronic label conditions that the Western, um, you know, community doesn't quite know how to fix other than give a prescription and live with it. It's a multitude of issues that are creating the root cause, the underlying reason why this is happening. And so it's It stems from dysregulated gut function. It stems from dysregulated cellular health and energy production. It stems from toxins. Toxins, you know, toxins are a big problem because they block receptor sites in cells where nutrients get in, where hormones get in, where messengers get into a cell to give the cell the instructions of what it's supposed to do next for the body. And, when all that system is gummed up and blocked, then you get a label of chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, like all these things that we really don't know in the Western space what even causes it. I mean, there's a lot of theories for sure, but what is it?

You did mention that you're doing first gut healing and then detoxification. Is there a reason for that?

Yes, because it works better. First thing that we wanna do is create safety in the body so that your body can actually release toxins. So I don't think people realize that toxins get stored in the cells. So when the drainage pathways in the body, which is, which includes the gut and the digestive system. There's many drainage systems in the body, including the lymph, the fascia, liver, the kidneys, the urinary system, the skin even being a drainage organ. One— and, and what we do in that first program is, is open up all of these pathways right along with the gut. We get everything moving and open. Once that happens, the body is— can safely start to release toxins. So we trap them. The, the toxins stay trapped in our cells because there's no safe way for them to get out. It's like a— it's like like a clogged up sink. And so we come in and unclog the sink and unclog all the pipes in the body so that toxins can start freely moving out. Once they start to move, then we start doing deeper detox, because the last thing I want to do is mobilize toxins out of the cells, but there's no way for the toxins to get out. That's when people feel worse on a detox, where they feel like they crash. It's called a, it's called a Herxheimer reaction. Where all the symptoms get worse. It kind of feels like you're coming down with the flu. Your body starts to ache. You might feel nauseous. You might feel headachy, wiped out, fatigued, feeling like you need to sleep. And trust me, if some— if a practitioner makes you feel like that, you are never gonna move forward with that protocol. Like, when I did that, it made me feel lousy. I'm never doing that again. So we make sure that people are supported, and the gut microbiome is a great place to start because that— those gut bacteria in there they are so responsible for more than just digesting your food. Those gut mitochondria, uh, bacteria are actually communicating, sending messengers to your body, to other systems in your body that, okay, there's safety here, now we can start moving toxins out. So also, the bowels are the main exit strategy for toxins. We definitely want toxins funneling to the bowels and out of the body. We'd like you to flush those toxins down the toilet every day. We actually don't want toxins going through your skin or coming out your urine. Ideally, ideally everything's moving to the bowels. So we see in our community, I would say 80 to 90% of people who come to us are not pooping every day. They're not, or if they do, it's only a tiny amount and they, they may not feel like they have trouble with constipation. But if you're not pooping a lot more than this much every day, then, then you are and you're gummed up. So we want to get that going. I had a lady yesterday who told me, I used to only poop once a week and I wouldn't have classified myself as constipated, but now I see I was.

Oh my gosh, yeah, I see this a lot. There's definitely a constipation epidemic. I see it in my practice too. Yeah, it's like, how are you going to heal and detoxify? You know, especially there's a lot of toxins in the mouth too. We need them to have good moving functions, good lymphatic swallowing them, right?

They're swallowing those toxins in the mouth right into the GI tract.

Exactly. Yeah. Now, I love your approach because it makes sense. However, you know, I see so many people trying to DIY their own detox program. Oh, I'm just going to do a detox on my own because it's easy. I'm just going to buy something off the shelf. So what do you think about those detox kits off the shelf?

It makes me nervous. So detox is not a weekend thing. It's not even a 7-day thing. Like, oh, I'm going to do a detox this week, or I'm going to spend 2 weeks detoxing my body. That's actually laughable. You won't actually deeply detox much. So it makes me a little nervous. Like I mentioned, there's some things we should do ahead of time before you start really mobilizing toxins. So most of our community stays working on their gut microbiome for at least 1 to 3 months before we start doing deep detox. So that would be, you know, if you have mercury in your brain and we wanna get that moving out, to— let's say you have brain fog and, and anxiety and there's metals in there. If we want to get that out, we want to make sure that we've spent enough time prepping your body so that once it moves out of the brain cells, it actually gets out of the body right away and just doesn't displace to a new spot. So this is, um, I think a big mistake in trying to do a quick kind of crash course detox. In our programs, we really handhold people along the way. We have calls every single week, and the show-up rate's crazy. The whole community shows up to ask questions and make sure that they're— they've got this right and get help tweaking their protocols. And we find that people in community do much better than trying to do this on their own. It used to amaze me the amount of questions that would come up, but it doesn't anymore. There's so much unknown and questions around detoxing, and so we had to create a space where people could get every question answered all the time. People want to do it right, and they want to make sure they're not hurting themselves. That's, that maybe distinguishes my community from others is they're super dedicated and committed and they want to make sure that they're doing it right. And we've got people who are cancer survivors. We've got people who are, you know, have multiple chronic health conditions and then people who are just, hey, I'm 45 and I don't feel as good as I used to. What can I do preventatively? Right. We have that too. So every, everything in between.

Now, speaking of the midlife symptoms and being toxic, right, a lot of people are probably listening and like, How do I know I have toxins? What are some of the symptoms?

Yeah, so a toxin doesn't just like raise a flag and say, okay, I'm here, right? There's, there's a— you kind of chalk it up to maybe I'm just feeling older, and you, you start to accept the way that you feel. So let me explain. So maybe your energy runs out by 1 or 2 PM, and you feel like, gosh, there's so much more I want to do on my list today, but I just don't have it anymore. Or maybe the symptom of a toxin is I'm starting to be less creative than I used to, 'cause my brain just doesn't kind of think of the creative things anymore. Or maybe I have a short fuse and I'm a little temperamental with my family or my loved ones. Or maybe I kind of have circulating thoughts. I mean, we label that as anxiety, right? I hate that word. Anxiety is a tough word 'cause it's a label. But those kind of constantly thinking about all the things you have to do and all the things on your list and will I be able to do it? And will my family be okay? and that is, um, so if that starts to ramp up, that can be a sign of toxins. Joint pain is a big sign of toxins. Feeling like your skin is dulling and aging and just not looking as vibrant as it, as it once was. Disrupted sleep. And then all the digestive things. So, so toxicity can manifest as abdominal discomfort. It can even be creating, uh, diarrhea or constipation. And it's because The reason that there's so many digestive symptoms along with toxicity is because the bugs in your gut are trying to handle all those toxins and they're actually thriving on those toxins and creating more digestive symptoms. It's kind of a crazy thing. If I could explain a little deeper, your immune system actually is a, is a fascinating system. It will allow parasites and bacteria to actually thrive in order to solve a a more dangerous problem, which would be certain chemicals or metals or mold mycotoxins. Those are actually more dangerous to our cellular health and our organs. And so your immune system will kind of back off and allow that parasite or that bacteria to be there because it's soaking up those toxins. Well, by nature, those bacteria and parasites also, they create havoc because they have— they secrete biotoxins that make us feel sick. So that's kind of the digestive link there. So, so all that to say, pretty much any lousy symptom can be connected. Wow.

That's impressive. And there's so many people having symptoms from mild to severe and they don't think about, oh, it might be my gut. Let's say the soles of the feet. I had a patient the other day. He's like, oh, the soles of my feet hurt every morning when I get out of bed. Like, wow, that's definitely a sign for toxins. Yeah.

Pain, right? Pain and fa— so fa— so probably if it's the soles of his feet, he probably has congested fascia, right? So we have fascia in every square inch of our body. It's even in our eyes. It's not just the wrapping around a muscle, but fascia is interwoven in all the extracellular spaces. And if that's hurting, it's probably congested and it probably needs some, some fascia and lymph release there to get things moving. He has stagnation, right? And that stagnation creates creates pain. And those stagnant spaces are perfect pools for toxins to accumulate and create symptoms.

Wow, that's amazing, Laura. You're a wealth of information. And I want to mention, like, a lot of people actually that are listening to this, they're probably thinking, you know, I do all the right things. I healed my gut, or so, you know, we think. I did a detox. I'm still not feeling right. So what do you do for those people?

Yeah, so we, we meet a lot of people in the community who are doing many things right. So let me give you some examples. So common in our community is the woman or the man who prioritizes sleep and makes sure they get to bed by 10 o'clock every night, getting a solid, you know, 7 to 8 hours. They're working hard on their food intake, they're eating organic, they're avoiding seed oils, they're eating minimal processed food, you know, cooking food at home, trying to eat food minimally processed, the way it comes from basically the earth to our plate. They are, they're moving their body, they're getting their steps in and probably lifting weights. They are taking a probiotic, taking, you know, a healthy supplement. I think this will support my mitochondria, and I think this will be a good vitamin for, you know, for overall nutrition. So they're doing things that they think are good to help, and yet they come and say, I can't get a breakthrough around this. I can't, like, it's just getting worse. Why can't I get my energy? Why can't I get my brain function back? Why can't I get rid of this joint pain? Why can't I get rid of these digestive issues? Everything I try, it doesn't work. And so this is common. And really, the— there's some underlying issues we need to address here. So it's— those lifestyle things are very important. And if you weren't doing those lifestyle things, imagine where your health would be. So first thing I want to do is congratulate and really acknowledge everybody for doing the right things. But if we just turn some little dials and, you know, flip some switches and levers just a little bit more, we could get you to that spot. So, what we need to do is address kind of 4 underlying big things that are holding people back. And, that's infections, toxins, nutrient deficiencies, and embedded in our body is stress and trauma. So, being able to support the nervous system is very important as well. So, not to say that all those things aren't important, but there's a few extra little layers to this. And, in the right order and systematically to support each system so that it builds on itself and then you start to have breakthroughs.

Amazing. Now, I know you're having a masterclass coming up and we're going to put the link and all the information, the date and the time in the show notes below. Tell us about that.

Yeah. So this is my Break the Midlife Symptom Cycle class. And what we're going to go into is kind of those 4 things that I just mentioned. We're going to go deeper into those and explain what to do about it. So how do you solve infections, toxins, nutrient deficiencies, and how do you resolve that stress and trauma? Like, what are the pieces that will help support that? So, we're going to dig even deeper into that and hope that people leave with answers and a kind of a roadmap and a guidebook of this is the next step to actually solve this. And, you know, what we really focus on in my community is giving people what we call a lifetime protocol. And actually, one of my clients named it that. So, a particular client went through and she said to me, "This is a lifetime protocol. I can do this. I can help myself the rest of my life. Like, someday when I'm not with you, Laura, I'm going to know exactly what to do when these Symptoms hit me. So that's our goal, is that you get a lifetime solution of how to really solve these things. Amazing.

Now, is there a cost for this class?

No, it's free. Amazing.

And who doesn't love that?

I mean, this is about leaving legacy, right, where you are impacting as many people as you possibly can with this information. I always tell my community, we're making a healing army. You are a healing army, and we're rippling this information out, and they're— and they're doing it. They're sharing it with their families, their loved ones. They're teaching their families how to get well. It's, it's, yeah, this is the legacy product project at this point. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's so needed in the world. You know, I see people at the office like sicker than ever, younger people that are looking for answers. And if anybody listening to this, please share this information with a loved one and join the masterclass for free. I mean, Laura is the best health coach I know to lead you through process to get optimum health. Laura, any other last words that you want to add?

Well, I just want to— I think the last words that I always love to leave with are inspiring and full of hope because, like I shared the story of the one client I talked to yesterday who she's been at this for decades and finally, finally had a massive breakthrough in her health. And so I don't believe it when people say, I can't be healed, there's no hope for me. So that's what I want to share is a message of hope. I literally can say We have never had a single person fail at getting better in our community as long as they kept putting one foot in front of the other and helped us help them. You're like a puzzle, and we just got to figure out the missing puzzle pieces and keep, you know, fitting them into place until you finally get this completion of this beautiful puzzle and you figure out what's— what, what you truly need to help you. And so that is it. Just a message of please don't ever stop. You should have high energy as you age. Your brain should be on fire and working rapidly as you age, but on fire in a good way, right? Your, your joints should not hurt. Your digestive system should move smoothly. You should be able to poop every day. You shouldn't have abdominal pain. You should be able to tolerate healthy foods, and, uh, you should be able to sleep well at night. So these are non-negotiables as we age. We all should have this. And if you don't have this, then it's just a matter of figuring out what is the missing piece for you. So I hope you come to the masterclass and learn about that, because I guarantee one of your little puzzle pieces is there.

Yeah. And I always say, if we create the right environment in the body, it will heal. It always wants to heal. So I love that you, you help people do that. But where can people find you besides the masterclass?

Yeah, so definitely grab the link in these show notes so you can grab that. I'm also, uh, my website is laurafrontero.com. My name is spelled like the great frontier with an O on the end. Don't leave out the I. Italian husband's name. Uh, but yeah, that's the easiest way on Instagram at Laura.Frontero.

Okay, thank you so much, Laura, and thank you so much everyone for joining us on today's episode into looking at the root cause of why you might be doing all the right things but still feeling terrible. I hope you got a lot of great tools for your own life, and don't forget to join the master class Click the link below. Until next time, stay healthy. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please make sure you check out the show notes for any links mentioned in the show. If you like today's show, please invite your friends to listen as well. That would mean a lot to me. Do you have a question you'd like me to answer? Message me on Instagram @DrSandaMoldovan. This is Dr. Sanda Moldovan, and remember, Your mouth is the gateway to your health, so take care of it in the most natural and best way possible.