100th Episode! Healing Burnout and Your Health, with Raewyn Guerrero

Hey beautiful, it's Dr. Tabatha. I want to share something with you that I believe God is doing right now in women's health. We're in the middle of a massive movement and most people don't even know it. Every single day, 6,000 women in the U.S. enter menopause. That's over 2 million women a year, and by 2030, that's more than 1.2 billion women worldwide. So here's the thing, most of these women feel exhausted, bloated, anxious, disconnected from themselves, and the medical system is Doctors are handing out prescriptions and quick fixes, and no one is helping women heal from the root cause of their issues. That's where Fast to Faith coaches come in. As a certified coach, you'll be equipped to help midlife women balance their hormones, heal their gut, regain their energy, and reconnect their faith, the foundation that so many of us have been missing. And from a business standpoint, woo, this is one of the most lucrative untapped opportunities in the entire health coaching world. The global health coaching industry is expected to reach over $33 billion by 2023, and midlife women are the fastest-growing, highest-spending demographic in that space. Most importantly, these women stay with their coaches. They invest deeply because they are desperate for lasting transformation— body, mind, and spirit. So if you've been feeling that pull and that whisper that you're meant to do more, This is it. Now is the time to rise, to serve, and build a purpose-driven business that not only changes other women's lives but transforms your own in the process. Because when you help one woman heal, you help her family, her marriage, her faith, and her future. That's the ripple effect that we're creating with Fast to Faith. So join me, click the link to come watch this webinar. It might be the one thing that really moves the needle for you in this Next season. I can't wait to see you in there. Hi, I'm Dr. Tabatha, the Gutsy Gynecologist. I'm a triple board-certified OB-GYN and functional medicine physician. I've embraced the world of functional medicine and wellness through my own personal health journey, and I'm super excited to share my wisdom and unique perspective as it pertains to women's health. After caring for thousands of women, I've come to realize that your gut health determines your gyn health and your overall And it's a super gutsy thing for me to go against conventional gynecology practice to bring you the truth. No more Band-Aid medicine, ladies. We're talking root cause resolution on this show. So if you're struggling with hormone imbalance, weight gain, period issues, anxiety, insomnia, you name it, then you've come to the right place. And I want to be your gutsy gynecologist. So welcome. Yay, I have a new name, The Gutsy Gynecologist Show. So I'm switching things up. It's my 100th episode and it's time to keep growing and move forward. And what I've realized is, through helping thousands of women over the past 20 years, that it's almost always your gut that is the culprit for your root cause of your issues. So much of your gut causes hormone imbalances. Food sensitivities, autoimmune conditions, you know, mood disorders, you name it. So what I have found to, you know, really help women is to evaluate their gut, get their gut dysbiosis taken care of, get their gut functioning again. And that includes the liver. The liver is a major organ in our digestive system. And so if you aren't loving on your liver and helping your liver do its detox processes, properly, you're going to have hormone imbalance, you're going to have high toxic burden, and that is going to affect everything. It's going to affect your mood and your weight and your sleep and your skin, your everything. So my focus, my mission is to help you guys understand, like, to balance your hormones and have amazing health and a strong immune system. system and lose weight and just feel amazing mentally, you have to have good gut health. You have to have proper functioning liver. So much of it comes back to your gut. So the other piece of the Gutsy Gynecologist is I am ready to take on the conventional gynecology system. Like, I'm ready to call BS on that and Say, you know, your pills and your surgery are not the answer. That is not what will help women reclaim their health. That is a Band-Aid solution, and it's causing new problems and new issues. And so it's time that we call out conventional gynecology. And that's a gutsy thing to do, you know, because I am going against the system. But our system is broken, and it is really Causing so many new issues. It's really hurting us as women to just hand us birth control pills and to cut out our uteruses. And I'm just— I'm done with it. And so I hope that you guys will continue to follow me and support me on this mission because it's about you. I'm doing this for you. I'm doing this for your sisters and your girlfriends and your daughters and your mothers. Like, we need to support each other and say enough is enough. We need to stand up and say we want different options. We don't accept this Big Pharma broken system any longer. There is a better solution, and it's finding the root cause of our issues and actually addressing them and confronting our poor diet and lifestyle decisions and making those hard changes. And so I need you to be gutsy with me because we need to all band together and Really help each other out and say, you know what, we're going to do things a different way. We're going to focus on self-care and self-love. And that isn't an ego thing. It's actually a survival thing. And it's a beautiful thing that we need to support women and each other and teach our daughters how to do that. So I hope that you're with me for this. If you are, please hit subscribe, give me a 5-star rating, and then share it with every woman you know. Like, Share my podcast on your social media platform. Shout me out. Like, let's band together and get the message out there that you don't have to keep going to your white coat doctor who dismisses you and throws another prescription at you. That's not the solution. So I'm really excited. This is going to be an amazing year. And let's kick off my first Gutsy Gynecologist Show episode. And definitely stay tuned for this one. You know, and the best thing about podcasts is if you don't have time to listen to the whole thing, that's fine. Pause it and come back to it. It's always here. You can listen to old episodes. You can go back and listen to episode number 1 of The Functional Gynecologist. Like, podcasts are awesome that way. So today we're going to talk about burnout and how that affects your physiology and My guest today is going to give you really awesome, simple tips that you can actually start to incorporate to shift your health and make changes in your health. We advocate doing testing, not guessing, and doing all this individualized medicine, but there are some basic requirements for us as humans to be our best self. It's like how we recharge our phones every night. There are certain things that we need to do to recharge as human beings— getting enough sleep, going outside, feeling and seeing the sunlight hit our retinas, feeling the ground's energy come through our body. So many basic things. So this is a great episode. Let me just sing her praises real quick. My guest, Raewyn Gruera, she is the Gutsy Executive Coach. I love that. I love that we have the same play on names. She's committed to helping you eliminate the guesswork around your stress so that you can fine-tune your biochemistry and become the CEO of not only your health, but your life. After years of chasing symptoms in conventional medicine to address her anxiety and irritable bowel, she discovered the evidence-based systems biology framework of functional medicine and functional diagnostic nutrition. This approach revealed how the gut is connected to the brain, to hormones, to the skin, to pretty much all health, like I mentioned. So armed with that knowledge, Raewyn retrained as a functional health coach. She left her corporate wellness job and set up WellWorks, her online functional medicine practice and corporate wellness consultancy. So she now has a team of practitioners, That work with her, and they believe in lifestyle and integrative medicine as passionately as she does. Her mission is to awaken everyone who comes her way to the innate wisdom of the body, and the most cutting-edge natural solutions allow true healing. So while leading Wellness at Barclays between 2011 and 2016, Raewyn was a member of the all-party parliamentary group of mindfulness in the work place. She's from London, y'all. She's been featured in Huffington Post, the CW Network, numerous podcasts discussing a nutrition and psychology approach for sleep, panic attacks, and anti-aging. By offering a personalized roadmap for how to eat, think, sleep, and move through the insights she gained from functional labs, she's set to change the face of healthcare and create a well world. So I love everything she's doing. You're going to get a lot of golden nuggets in this episode today. So here we go. Well, welcome, Rae Wynn, to the Gutsy Gynecologist Show.

Thank you so much. I'm very excited to be here.

Yeah, I'm really excited for this conversation because I feel like we are kind of on the same mission. We're trying to help women realize that so much of their health stems from their gut, right?

Exactly. And that's been my story, you know, the whole gut health, gut-brain, gut-hormone connection. That's, that's been the whole basis of all my work and my journey.

I would love for you to just share with my listeners this journey, because I feel like we can learn so much from each other's stories. And I love that you, like, turned this into your whole life's work and passion. It's amazing.

Yeah, it's quite a funny story because I think it started off very, very early on. You know, I was a very sickly child. I was on a ton of antibiotics. I was thinking about probably about 50 courses of antibiotics in my lifetime, always with like a chronic sinus infection, tonsils. They wanted to take my tonsils out when I was 7, and I got up and ran out of the ENT's chair. I was like, nobody's putting a knife near my throat. I knew at 7 o'clock, at 7 years old, like, that was a very, very bad idea. So I ran and then, you know, moved to the UK in my 20s, and then the lack of vitamin D after growing up in the tropics, like, my immune system took such a big hit then too, and I was always sick again. And the only thing I knew was go to the doctor, they'll give you antibiotics, and then you'll get over it. But then it just kept happening, and it was just recurring and recurring. And by then I started acquiring all these other horrible, you know, gut-related symptoms. I became lactose intolerant. I couldn't eat pizza anymore. I was a real bummer. Couldn't eat ice cream anymore. And these were staples, you know, in your youth, right? Like, you live on sort of like all the junk food, but couldn't eat all these things that I used to enjoy. And, you know, started developing all these— I had eczema, terrible migraines, and my hormones had never been happy, but they became so much more like, you know, the symptoms were much more pronounced as I got older. So by the time I kind of hit my 30s and I wanted to get pregnant and that became a real issue, I realized, well, something's not working. Like, whatever I'm doing is not working, and I am more tired than I have ever been in my entire life. So I had to figure, figure it out and started looking down alternative routes because the traditional route is the, the only solution that they had for me. And when I say the only, it's like I had been to gastroenterologists, endocrinologists, urologists, um, all the -ologists, had seen them all, and everybody just said, well, just take this pill. And I remember one urologist wanted me on fluconazole for like over a year. She said, you just take this once a week and you'll be okay. And I'm like, I started researching. I was like, doesn't it screw up your liver? She's like, well, there's this one study that says that it doesn't. I was like, one study? You're basing like how you recommend medication to people based off of one study? And of course it didn't work for me. Um, so I kept looking and, um, eventually had a burnout in the middle of all of that, like while I was doing my corporate job. So I was in a banking industry where everyone was working, you know, 14 hours a day, Sleeping for five hours a night and thinking that they're all winning, and going to spin classes for two hours every evening or running first thing in the morning. So my hormones just tanked completely because I thought I was you know keeping up with everyone else. But after ten years of doing that, you you collapse. You you let your body goes into the exhaustive phase and you break down. So I had to figure something else out that wasn't about medication. And I had seen how medication had ruined people in my family. My grandfather had been on Valium for anxiety for over twenty years, and It led to multiple strokes and vascular dementia. So I knew medication— I didn't want that for myself. I was like, I'm not going to end up dependent on medication for 20 years because I see what the long-term effects are like. They're designed for short periods, not for chronic conditions. There's got to be a solution to the chronic conditions. So that was my first step into the world of nutrition, functional medicine, and trying to figure out what is it that I'm doing that's causing this situation in my body, that's causing all of this dis-ease. So, you know, several practitioners later, I eventually found someone that worked really well for me. And she now works with me, which is what's amazing about the work that I do. Like the people that I've gravitated to that I found like, okay, you know what you're doing. And, you know, you have the right— I don't even want to call it bedside manner, but just like the right energy. Like you've got a good heart. You really are genuinely into helping people. I've stuck with those people rather than the people who are just out to, you know, churn you in and out of— because I've tried several different functional medicine doctors and therapists and nutritional consultants, but ended up with this one lady. And then she became my chief nutritional advisor when I set up my business.

Oh my goodness, you said so many important things there. And the biggest thing was you started asking why. Why do I have this disease going on in my body? You know, is it something I'm doing, the life I'm living, the food I'm eating? Like, you started asking and searching for those answers. And oh my goodness, the idea of taking fluconazole for an entire year, like, that's just malpractice in my mind. And it's really sad that that is the option that you were given, you know, when really that is not the solution. We need to figure out why do— why do you need that for so long, right? Um, So I would love for you to just talk about, like, you figured all of this out and now you understand this connection between the gut and the brain and our hormones and everything like that. Where should women even begin? Should they just start asking, what's going on in my body? You know, what can I do? Do they need to seek somebody out like you?

I think that's such a wonderful Starting point for us to— where do you begin? Right. Because when I started, I didn't know where to begin. You know, I was trusting of the medical professionals who I had been seeing my whole life, that my parents had been seeing their whole lives. My dad actually used to run a wellness center, but for medics. So it wasn't actually a wellness center. It was more for like an insurance company.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, I've always been sort of suspicious of them when I had said things like, well, I have— I'm always getting these colds and flus. Maybe I should try like some echinacea. And I remember one of the doctors looked at me and he said, And maybe that's why you're getting your colds and flus, 'cause you're trying all this herbal nonsense. So back then, like I was 16 and I thought, whoa, like that's— have you researched it? Like I've been reading up on it. It seems to be something that helps the immune system. Clearly my immune system's not functioning 'cause I'm sick all the time. So maybe I should start investigating what are the things that could help it. Now, obviously back then I was still looking in an allopathic kind of way, right? I was like, okay, colds and flus, what solves that? Oh, echinacea. Not like what's wrong with the immunity? Like, how do you get to that? So for women who are sort of starting to question what's going on with my body, start paying attention to the clues that it's giving you. Like, you know, do you have a sore back at a certain time of the month during that 10 days before your period? That's called your luteal phase. Look at what's going on during those 10 days. That's a really big indicator of health. Like, what's going on with your period is a huge indicator of your health. And for me, I used to be extremely depressed, irritable. I remember seeing a psychologist who said, well, you know, you can go on antidepressants just for 14 days days of the month. And I looked at her again and I'm like, but that's not the solution to my problem. Like, why are my hormones so off that I would need to go on antidepressants for 14 days of the month?

Right.

That people can just cycle through that and go do that for the rest of their lives? Like, she just seemed to think that that was an okay solution. So if someone makes these sort of recommendations to you, be like, well, how long should I be on these things? And for, you know, that's probably one of the first questions you should ask. Oh, so you think that's an option? How long should I do this for? And if they say for the rest of your life, then you're like, okay, I need to find another doctor. I need to find someone else. Because the idea behind a lot of these medications is that they are designed for short-term usage. The long-term effects, side effects, are so detrimental to your liver, to your gut, all the things that you actually need for producing healthy hormones. So if you end up being on them for a long period of time, you're just going to end up screwing yourself later on. So look out for the signs and symptoms that your body is giving you. So sore back, sore boobs, migraines, dodgy skin. A lot of people come to me with chin acne. They're like, it only happens like in the 10 days before my period, or back acne. I'm like, okay, these are signs that you're not detoxifying well. These are signs of an elimination problem. And I don't know about you, but if you ever go to your doctor, like when I used to, no one ever asks how much water are you drinking, what kinds of foods are you eating, how often are you eliminating. And when I see my clients and I— one of the first questions I ask is, how often do you poop? And they're like, why do you want to know that? I'm like, Because this is like, this is another key indicator of health, right? The period is one and the pooping is the other. I actually call it the 4 Ps: the peeing, pooping, perspiring, and period. So if your pooping is like less than twice a day, then you're technically constipated. People don't understand that. They're like, but I'm going every day. I'm like, yeah, but you should be eliminating pretty much almost after every meal. So if you're having 2 meals a day, you know, at least you're going for the time because that means that you're absorbing, breaking down your food properly, and clearing it out. If not, then your your body. your body's not— you're— it's slow. You've got slow motility, probably a slow oxidizer. So these are all signs and symptoms that you could be paying attention to and knowing that, okay, this is something that needs to be optimized. Because maybe I am going once a day, but if I should be going twice, what do I need to do to make that happen? And then what are the consequences of me not going, um, you know, more than once a day? Is my skin not great? Do I have migraines? Do I have too much estrogen floating around and I've got a sore— I've got sore boobs, sore back? Um, you know, all these of signs and symptoms are the things that I like people to start paying attention to. And when we do begin the initial screening process, I get them to fill out like these crazy extensive forms so that I can get a really clear picture of what I'm dealing with and what they're dealing with on a daily basis. Oh my God.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. That's exactly what I have my patients and clients do. And it's not a day goes by where I don't get a woman who has a bowel movement like once a week and just that's her norm. And so she She accepts that and thinks it's okay. And meanwhile, she's completely backed up full of toxins, like you said, with the acne and the migraines, and she can't lose weight, and the fatigue, and the estrogen dominance. Like, it all just comes back to your gut. So what are some quick, easy things that women can do to stimulate their gut motility? You mentioned a couple of them, and I think we overlook the easy stuff like drinking more water, right?

Yeah, really simple. And I keep a bottle next to my bed so that when I wake up first thing in the morning, I just take a giant gulp of it. I actually put a little bit of salt in it too. So I add Elements, the salts, because they've got that perfect balance of minerals. So mineral balancing is really important to me. So popping those in, you know, more potassium, more magnesium, a little bit of sodium. Obviously, you don't want to overwhelm your system, but just enough so that it kind of keeps the adrenals in a good place. And the magnesium is really good for stimulating And gut motility as well. Lots of vitamin C, fibrous fruits and vegetables, good fats. Believe it or not, we have demonized fats so much that we're afraid of it. We don't realize you actually need fat to be able to go to the bathroom. So it's not just about the fiber. You need to be consuming good fats. So avocados, if you have smoothies in the morning like I do, you know, you can pop some avocado into a smoothie. Well, not some, but one. One avocado into a smoothie. You can add some seeds, provided you don't have any, you know, intolerances or anything. Like one lady I tested recently, she had pumpkin seed, um, food intolerance. I was like, oh, that's a real bummer because it's so full of zinc and a bunch of other really great things. But she's like, I can't— she couldn't have pumpkin seeds. So once you test and you know what foods you should be eating, that's also a good thing, um, to increasing gut motility. You can test to figure out like what's going on with you. In fact, that should probably be your starting point. Like do your functional lab work. See what's actually happening with your body, and not just taking these generic stuff that you find in Cosmo or wherever, whatever magazine fad is the latest diet or thing that you're picking up, and just actually figure out what's going on for you. So starting with testing, then looking at including more fat and good fat, and then fiber, drinking lots of water. Think that would be right there, and sort of giving your your gut a break as well because we snack so much. So So I, I try to sort of eat within like a 6-hour window and we kind of cut off eating from about 5 o'clock here in the evening. So we sort of kind of have like, you know, I'll have like a, not even a Bulletproof Coffee. I'm kind of off of coffee right now too. So that's another one. Um, not on any stimulants, but I'm on this, um, inulin on chicory. Um, because that's also great for its prebiotics. So it's a prebiotic fiber. It's great for getting the gut going. So I'll have that instead with a little bit of like powdered mushrooms, like reishi or some kind of adaptogenic Herb, along with a tiny amount of collagen and hot water. And obviously hot water is great for stimulating all kinds of things. So starting your day off with some warm— some something warm like that would be great. And then, you know, not having any food for a few hours until about noon and then having your last meal at 5, that actually helps because it gives your digestion a little bit of a rest too, rather than constantly clogging it up. Mm-hmm.

Because that's what it is.

That's, you know, unfortunately we eat that way. We're sitting at our desk. And we're snacking or we're driving. For me, it's driving. Like, when I'm driving, I'm constantly reaching for something. So I have to know, like, if I'm going to reach for anything, it's got to be like an apple, you know, not junk food, because it's very easy to grab chips. Yeah.

Oh my gosh, what an important point. Like, give your gut a break. Give your pancreas a break from making all of that insulin all the time to handle all that blood glucose. I think that's really important. And we've got We've gotten so into snacking as a culture and like, oh, I just eat every couple of hours. I've got to keep my blood sugar up. And it's like, that's just a bunch of crap that was all created by the snacking industry, right?

Mm-hmm.

So we really do need to get back to how our physiology was created. So I love all those tips. I think that's super important. Like myself, I will fill up my water glass before bed because it comes out of my filter. filtered fridge cold, and I want to drink it warm in the morning. So I do it at night and then I drink it in the morning. You know, I think little things like that, and like you said, adding the salt or the lemon, like, to stimulate that gut process to get going for the day, that's so important. So I love all of those tips.

Thank you. No, pleasure. And they're so easy to do, right? Like, none of these are like, you know, having a bottle of water next to Not hard. Ordering some element from Amazon gets delivered to you the same day. Just putting a sachet of that—not hard—into your water. So, and carrying that around with you because like when I drive, that's one of the things I do. I'll keep my water bottle with me with the salts in it. So that keeps me hydrated and keeps my adrenals in a really good place as well because of the salt. So there's so many simple little hacks or pearls or things that you can do to to keep your blood sugar, your adrenals, your you know your cortisol. everything in check while you go about your day. And, you know, the world, the world's definitely changed a lot since we were younger. You know, I don't think we ever worked at this pace that we work at now. You know, even working for myself, I sometimes have to catch myself and be like, hey, I left corporate because I don't want to live like I'm on a conveyor belt running from the next thing to the next thing to the next thing. Like, I need to stop and breathe. I need to have moments of pause. I need to be able to go outside. Mm-hmm. Probably one of my favorite hacks is actually if you want to reset your nervous system, get outside. At one point, I was doing all my consults outside because I was just so much happier when you know you've got obviously it's winter, so it's not ideal right now. But you know in the summer or the spring, and you can get outside and let light hit you and hit your skin and your head and your arms and your feet, and you know your eyes. Like these are all things that help your circadian rhythm stay in balance. Because we're not meant to be in front of screens all day. We're meant to be outside in clean air, in nature, looking at trees, maybe climbing a mountain or a hike or doing something that's actually grounding. Being barefoot as well, like not wearing shoes, which is one of my favorites. I don't really like shoes. I am with you.

Oh my gosh. My family's made fun of me my whole life because I'm always in my barefoot.

Barefoot. Yeah, same. Like my husband, he's like, don't you put some clothes on? And I'm kind of like, why? Like, I just want to go outside and get the sun touching my skin, you know, and get my feet on the earth because it feels good. It feels so much better than being confined and cooped up and, you know, staring at a screen all day. I do worry for our children because—

Yeah.

They are, you know, tuned into the screens from the minute they get going. And for, you know, for me, I didn't have like a mobile phone until I was 19. That was in 1997, '98, '98. And it was one of those horrible things with a giant antenna, like Motorola. You remember it was a brick. It was like an actual brick, right?

Yeah.

And so, and I think my first smartphone where I had like a screen and stuff, that was, I don't know, 2010, 2011, must have been 2011. So, you know, the kids now, like I was already in my 30s when that happened. But children are growing up with these things and we're having a lot of problems with them being able to disconnect and being able to connect with other people and humans and communicate. And you can see it happen. You know, you go out to dinner, it affects adults in a huge way. Like you go out to dinner and you see people, they're all on their phones and they're not talking to each other. And I, you know, we have a rule, Rita and I, we're just like, put the phone away. Like if we're sitting down, we are not doing this. Like we're not gonna be on our phones. And I get irritated sometimes if I hear it pinging, I'm like, just turn off those notifications.

You know?

because they're disruptive and they're interrupting actual real connection with the people in front of you. And that's a big thing. And I don't know if you know this, there's a stat, I can't remember where I saw it, but when we're on our phones and we're scrolling, we're actually holding our breaths. So the not breathing is a huge factor when it comes to stress, when it comes to pain, when it comes to cortisol.

Yeah.

So when you stop breathing, which is obviously bad in any, you know, you might die, but holding your breath, it's actually creating like a state of fight or flight the entire time that you're doing that. So being on the phones is telling your body that you're in this constant state of stress, and then that slows everything else down. Because when your body's thinking it needs to flee or fight, digestion slows, hormone production slows, so fertility becomes a problem. So if you're always on that thing, you're obviously going to end up with a ton of Of hormonal issues as well as stressful, you know, and stress is you know cortisol is a hormone as well. But I'm thinking like fertility issues. You're going to end up with a lot of these issues, and you know you might not have great periods. You might not be able to think clearly because that's the other thing, like the lack of oxygen to the brain. You end up having brain fog and and being so distracted that it's impossible to hold a thought and stay focused. So and these are all things that lead to burnout. Like this is how burnout manifests. manifest, you know, not being able to think clearly, not being able to make good decisions, not being able to remember things. I remember at the worst of my burnout, I couldn't figure out where I put my keys. I was always losing my keys. And I used to think like, if only I could have a find my keys app that I could figure out where this thing was. So, you know, not being able to remember, memory goes, brain fog, all these things that we don't always associate with, well, what is it that I'm doing that's contributing to this? Maybe being on the phone is one of those contributors. You know, the lack of breathing is a contributor. If you're sitting at your desk and you're holding your breath the whole time as well, and you're responding to emails that have got you in a stressed-out state, perhaps that's also part of, you know, maybe your lifestyle is contributing to it. So I think there's so many ways that we could start to become more mindful of the way that our behavior is influencing our physiology.

Oh my gosh, that's such an awesome point. I can't— I have never thought of that before, like the fact that you probably are holding your breath And you're really just driving that sympathetic mode. And I can feel it in myself when I'm going through emails that I'm annoyed with and reading stuff I don't want to deal with. And I see it in my children when they're on TikTok and things like that. They're hunched down, so they're not taking deep breaths, and they're getting emotionally charged.

Yeah.

That makes so much sense. I think it's just so important to get off of those things and experience life, experience this real connection and communication with people. I love that. You know, I recently had a patient who she just could not get out of bed in the morning. She was having that adrenal exhaustion. And I literally said, you have to go outside and at the sun, like, within 5 minutes of waking up. And she did that for, I think, 2 weeks straight, and she had a huge shift. And it was so beautiful to see because we didn't do a bunch of major intervention. Like, that was the first thing that really got her going. And once you get out of bed and you feel like you have some energy, then we can do the work, right? But you got to start somewhere. So I love all these tips that you're giving because I feel like we just have to start to do something different than we did yesterday and the day before and the day before. You know, that's the only way to get over burnout, right?

And that's— I mean, you've just given me chills by what you said. We didn't do anything crazy. You just got her to get up and go outside. You know, everyone shows up thinking like, okay, we're going to do all this fancy testing and we're going to I'm going to take all these supplements. And I'm like, yes, that's part of it. But there is a reason why we call it DRESS, because diet and supplements are just part of the equation. But rest and stress reduction— stress reduction isn't just psychological stress that you've got with your work or your husband or whatever. Stress reduction is about what are the other stressors in your environment? What are the ones that you're being exposed to daily? So are there environmental toxins? Is it a lack of sunlight? That's a that's seriously toxic. Not having enough sunlight—that's a lack of you know that's that's a stressor. So we want to be able to remove some of these stressors and change what we can in your life so that you're more in tune with your body. Because I think a lot of the time we've forgotten that we're actually biological beings. We're not robots. We don't run on batteries the way that that machines do, and we can't just and our version of a reboot is to get. Decent sleep and to get outside and to get and get in touch with the earth, right? Like a reboot for a human is go outside, go see the sun, go spend some time with your skin getting light on it. You know, hang out with your children or hang out with your friends as opposed to like talking to people on social media. Go actually meet real people, hug them. You know, hug people. I just came back from. from a trip to Trinidad where my mom isn't very well and they had a massive curfew going on. They've been locked down for over nearly 2 years, kind of like Australia. So I was probably one of the first people who was flying in from abroad. And because I've been living, I've been living in London, Mexico. Well, the minute London got crazy and started locking everything down, I was like, okay, I'm checking out, I'm heading to Mexico. So got to Mexico and, you know, people are very warm and it's outside, you're outside, um, and sunlight obviously is So I don't really worry about a lot of the things that everybody else is worried about because I take care of myself and my immune system. And when I got to Trinidad, where it's a very sunny, warm place as well, but everyone's, you know, covered, and I started seeing people that I hadn't seen in a long time, and I run up to them and hug them, and they were like, what are you doing? Like, why are you hugging me? And I'm like, well, I haven't seen you in like 2 years, so I'm excited to see you. That's so nice. And they're like, aren't you afraid? I'm like, no, like, why would I be? I was like, hugging is like oxytocin, and that's actually helpful for your immune system. And these are things that we need to be— this is actual science, right? But people don't seem to connect those dots. They think, oh, like, you might— they're afraid of you because you might be contagious of something. And I'm like, I already told— I was like, listen, I had it back in January. I'm immune. I'm like, I'm pretty much Bulletproof. I have nothing to worry about. And I didn't even really— for me, I didn't even know I had it until I lost my sense of smell. So I, you know, I didn't have the fever and I track everything, like I wear an Oura Ring. So my body temperature hadn't really changed, not by very much, like by 0.1, you know. So nothing was really going on until I lost my smell. And then I was like, oh boy, I think this is what this is. And, you know, I just started upping all my zinc and all my vitamins and It was fine, and you know, so I keep telling people. I said, if you do what if you give your body what it needs, it's going to be okay. You know, and the only reason I think I had gotten it as well is because I had been on I'd been on a plane. I'd just gotten married. We'd had a couple of stressful weeks because there was lots of stuff going on with planning a wedding. Sleep definitely had fallen off like I was not sleeping during the two weeks leading up to the wedding and the honeymoon and all. And then you know we got to on the honeymoon. And just drank a lot, and that kills your immune system.

Yeah.

You know, so I'm not perfect. I am not like— so, you know, I'm a real person. I, I like to go out and dance. And, you know, for a wedding, we wanted to just have a really good time and we had everybody else having a really good time. So we all relaxed, enjoyed it, um, went on the honeymoon, drank a lot of margaritas, a lot. And, um, and then I was like, okay, and my body just— it kicked my ass. It was like, all right, you screwed up, now you gotta get back You know, this is how you keep in balance when it tells you, like, right now you're depleted and this is why you got sick. So I'm like, all right, now I've got to pay attention again. Now I had my moment, my month of, like, excess, and then I had to get back on track.

I think that's the best way to live. You know, you really— like you said, nobody is perfect. You're going to have moments where you're in excess, you're enjoying, you're having fun, and your body's going to let you know when it's too much. And I I just think we really need to stress the point, like, we cannot live in fear. These viruses have been here long before we ever existed. We need to coexist with them. We need to figure out how to strengthen our immune system and get healthy so that we can continue to coexist with whatever viruses come our way. And like you said, hugging produces oxytocin and Having those physical connected relationships is good for your physiology, right?

Yeah, it's your biology. You know, if you flourish when you, you hug people that you love, you know, and they flourish as well. So it's been very sad to see the way that things have devolved over the last 2 years where everyone's afraid of each other. And we're very lucky, you know, we, we live quite far away from a lot of other people, but the people who are around us No, you know, everyone's very warm, very friendly. We don't really worry too much about a lot of things. And and luckily as well in San Diego, there are quite a few you know functional health nuts. I you know that's how we're branded. We're health nuts. And like well, that should be a good thing. Like being branded a health nut in this day and age, right? Like if you are someone who is actually paying attention to how your body functions and what you put into it and knowing what you're going to get out of it and actually testing and not guessing. You know we. Because let's face it, right? Like, 10 years ago, I wasn't doing any functional testing. I was doing all the things that I thought were healthy. I was eating low fat. I was a vegetarian. Yeah. I think everybody I know who went through this journey has been a vegetarian at some point and realized it totally sucked. I hope you are not a vegetarian, by the way.

No.

Okay, good. So I was a vegetarian. I was eating low fat everything. I was afraid of meat. Like, I was actually afraid because I'd been fearmongered into thinking that it was going to kill me. And the doctor, I remember I'd seen my doctor and he said, well, why aren't you eating meat? And I said, well, isn't it really bad for you? And he's like, who told you that? And he's like, you need a steak. You're like anemic. Like, please go out and get a steak. He's like, and I'm like, but what about all the— he's like, there's nothing wrong with you getting a nice decent cut of red meat. And he didn't talk about grass-fed and stuff back then. That was like, it was in the early 2000s. I think it must have been like 2004. And I had been a vegetarian for years at that point while I was at university because I thought I was doing the right thing by avoiding Avoiding meat, not realizing how much it was screwing up my body. And even when I started to eat it, I would eat it like once a month. I'd have a steak once a month around my period, you know. And when I'm like, I really could have been doing grass-fed organic for a really long time and benefiting from all the omegas and all the wonderful good fats that are in, you know, obviously if it's clean and organic, those are the things you're going to benefit from. But I didn't know what, you know, you just don't know back then when you're young. I was in my 20s. I didn't have a clue. So I, you know, I avoided red meat thinking it was very, very bad for me because the food manufacturing industry was trying to push us to eating more grains, right? They wanted people eating more grains. So I lived on Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes.

Oh my God.

You know, like sugar. I was living on sugar and couldn't understand why, why is my gut in a mess? And living on, on, um, not Coke Zero, what was that thing? Oh, Diet Coke with lemon. Um, because when you're a student you need caffeine, and I was like, Diet Coke with lemon because it's got no sugar, But it's full of aspartame and screwing up my brain, screwing up my gut. So I did all the things that the marketing and manufacturing industry were telling you. These are the healthy things to do. Like, I'm not having any sugar. I'm on Diet Coke. I'm avoiding meat because it's toxic. I'm avoiding fat because that's toxic too. Everything that I know now has just debunked all of that. It's such a lie. There's so many lies.

Exactly. Those were all It's all fabricated by the food industry to sell their crap, to sell their toxic chemicals. I mean, I—

To sell stuff in boxes, right?

Yeah, boxes and bags. And Diet Coke, diet pop in particular, is like the most toxic thing you could obviously drink, you know? So I hope everyone listening knows that and has gotten off of that wagon. No diet pop, no fat-free, low-fat foods. Like, all of that stuff is full Of added sugar and chemicals that make you fat and make you sick.

They make you sick. The neurotoxins alone from like the aspartame. And I remember now with my grandfather, in addition to the Valium, he lived on Diet Coke. Like, he thought Diet Coke was like the best thing ever because he had been told, you know, whatever, like, you can't drink real Coke. And he ended up with dementia. So I'm kind of like, well— and then there was a study that came out a few years ago, might be like 5 years ago now, where Diet Coke was linked to Alzheimer's and Yep, exactly.

So eat real food, drink water, drink stuff that God made. You know what I mean?

Honestly, if we were going to say the top 3 things you should do or 4 things, eat real food that does not come in a box and anything that your grandmother can't pronounce, don't touch it. Right. Yeah. So, and then the second thing, go outside, right? Spend most of your day outside if you can, at least an hour. hour outside, right? And move while you're doing that. Don't just sit there, like, move, right? So that's actually 2 for 1. And then the third thing is drink, you know, filtered, purified, clean water. Don't drink the stuff that's coming out of the plastic bottles because that's just full of microplastics that you're going to be ingesting. And please don't drink the municipal city water. We went somewhere the other night because we were desperate and we, um, we didn't want to cook and we said like, well, let's just go to the closest thing around us. And because we're far away from a lot of things, we just went to this little Mexican restaurant and they, um, I sat down and I said, can I please have, um, uh, some sparkling water? And they were like, oh, we don't have that. And I said, okay, well, can I have like a bottle of still water? And they were like, no, we don't have that either. I'm like, you don't have water? I was like, okay. They said, well, we have tap water. I was like, all right, well, bring it. Let's see what happens. Took one sip of it and I'm like, oh my God. Okay. No, I can't actually drink this because I can taste the fluoride and all the toxins and all the chemicals. And so that's cool. You know how I figured it out? I said, do you have a vodka tonic? And they said, yeah. I said, okay, just bring me the tonic without the vodka. And they were able to. Then I was like, that's my sparkling water. So I was able to get around it that way.

That was brilliant. Yeah. I mean, I realized the other day I was filling up my cat's water dish and I don't wash it on a regular basis. I just fill it back up. She's just the cat. She's drinking out of her water dish.

Ooh.

There is a thick brown rim around it where everything in the water settles and gets onto the sides. And I just thought, there's so much lead and iron and toxins in this water. It really clicked with me because you don't see it in the water. The water's clear, But it condensates all along the edges. And that is really a clear indicator, like, yeah, you do need to filter your water. Quit living in denial. That's just the truth of it all. And I live in Michigan and we have horrible water. And we have children who have mental issues because our lead is so high and it's a health crisis, yet it's just swept under the rug and not talked about. And we act like, oh, the water so clean because it's chlorified. But then I think about people on birth control pills and antidepressants. When they pee those out, those don't get filtered through our water. You know what I mean? All of those toxins stay in our water supply. Don't you believe that as well?

Absolutely. And in England, where I spent 20 years of my life in central London, the water is recycled and they say it goes through 10 stomachs before it hits you, which alone just was disgusting to think about. Yeah, because they were— it was all ending up in the Thames, in the River Thames, and then being recycled and filtered back into you. So you were never getting fresh clean, you know. So I've been filtering water from as long as I can remember because I just— the minute I got to the UK and I realized the situation there, like despite the rain, it didn't ever really rain. It just used to kind of like miserably drizzle on you. So you never really got like proper rain and The water situation—that was a pretty bad deal with. Yeah, I figured that out very, very quickly on as I got to start filtering water, and it's one of the things now that I don't assume anymore because I've had some people initially when I first started practicing, I didn't really stress the importance of clean filtered water, and then further down the line, like stuff was coming up, like they were recovering in certain places, but other things were showing up, and I'd be like, yeah, then I'd ask the question maybe after. After like 3 or 4 months, I'll be like, tell me about, like, tell me about your water. What are you drinking? They're like, oh, do you drink bottled water? No, I just drink tap water. I'm like, okay, now we know what's going on, why your hormones are kind of messed up, one of the contributors to your metabolic chaos. So I'm like, okay, can you please go and get a filtration? And like, it doesn't have to be a super fancy reverse osmosis, although that would be ideal, but at least start somewhere and get something that at least takes most of the toxins out of your water and purifies it. So now I've gotten fancy and we've got the reverse osmosis, and I'm very— I want to get one for the whole house, not just for the kitchen, because I even think like the water that goes into your hair, all that stuff that, you know, because your skin's an organ and it's absorbing things. So you're showering in water that's not ideal either. That's contributing. Like you talked— you just talked about lead. There's something else I think, and it's weird because in Trinidad, like everyone on my mother's street has had cancer. Every single house, every single house. And I have been saying it for years. I'm like, there is obviously the way that people eat, definitely a contributor. But I said, there's got to be something in the water here. Either it's the lead, it's arsenic, there's some heavy metal that is— and because the functional testing isn't available there, I can't figure that out. I guess I could have taken some HTMAs and kits and cut off people's hair and try to figure out what's actually going on here. What are we all exposed to and why are you not detoxifying properly? But I didn't. I was kind of preoccupied with other things. But yeah, that's probably something that I'm going to do going forward. Like when I go back, I want to start like testing all the people in my mom's neighborhood and figuring out like what's actually happening here, because why is everyone sick and why do they all get sick? And they get sick young. They're like in their 50s and they're sick, you know, 40s and 50s getting sick. Oh my God. So there is— there's something to that. It's not just the food. I definitely think there's an environmental— either they're bathing in it, they're brushing their teeth in it, you know, all those The gums are very porous as well. The tongue, the mouth. You've got the thinnest mucous membrane underneath your tongue. That's where anything— when I try to give people vitamins, I'm like, well, the best place to do it is to get it liposomally under your tongue because it's going to hit your bloodstream straight away because that's your thing. But if you're brushing your teeth in toxic water, that's the exact same thing that's happening to you as well. You're getting toxins straight into your bloodstream just through that.

Yeah. Oh my gosh, I couldn't agree more. I live on Lake Michigan and there is so much cancer on the lakeshore. So much pancreatic, stomach, breast. I mean, just the numbers should not be as high as they are. And around the turn of the 1900s, we became so industrialized and we just had factories like—

Dumping.

Every 30 miles all along the lakeshore. And we're fishing in there, we're drinking from there, we're showering from there. And it's toxic. I feel like it's gotten better, but we still have a long way to go. And I I don't think people realize.

No, they don't connect that dot, those dots there. Like, well, what is it that we're eating, drinking, bathing in that could be a contributor? So I talked about stress reduction, and that's a stressor. That's a stress. It's not a psychological stress, but it's causing all sorts of other distress in your body by knocking things out of whack. So we could talk about this all day, by the way. I know, right?

We could just go on all day long. You and I practice so similarly. It's wonderful to be with like-minded people who get it. But thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge because people just— I don't think they even know a lot of the basic stuff. And so this is really important. Get back to basics, like clean up your water, get outside, move your body, look at Your diet and individualize, like you said. Like get testing because not everything works for everybody. You are an individual. So where can my listeners find you and work with you?

Thank you. Well, I'm on Instagram. Like you said, I'm the gutsy executive coach. I love working with women in their mid-thirties to fifties, and I have a wonderful free Facebook community called Well Works World or the. Well world, because that's my mission to start creating a well world and helping everybody around me. Like anyone that comes into my orbit, that's what I want to do: help them wake up to the amazing innate wisdom of their bodies and the fact that the body will regenerate if you give it what it needs. So please feel free to connect with me on Instagram, on Facebook, on my website well-works.co. It's not dot com. Everybody gets confused, but it's dot co well-works.co. And I hope that we all get to see each other very, very soon. I see you either in the Facebook group or on Instagram or, or, or you reach out via the website.

Awesome. I have all those links in my show notes so people can find you and connect with you and then look for your book that's coming out, Corporate Dropout. That's exciting. So hopefully we'll just have to have you back and talk about that a little bit more. So thank you so much, Raewyn.

Thank you, Dr. Tabatha. This was so much fun.

Oh my goodness, I got so much out of that episode. How about the fact that we hold our breath when we're on social media? So true. Oh my goodness, I started thinking about it and it's like, you do, you hold your breath, you take shorter, more shallow breaths, and we need to stop that, especially for our Like, that was— that hit me home. So that was my golden nugget for this episode. Whatever yours was, I hope that you start to incorporate it into the changes that you've made and you keep doing this every week because this is a journey. We're in it together. And you really can create a whole new you in the span, you know, of whatever time frame you you want— a year, 6 months, whatever works for you. But if you make little baby-step changes, consistency creates change. So if you add on that nugget and you keep evolving as a person and going down this health journey and of healing, you're going to be a new person, a healed person who feels amazing and has an amazing So if you need guidance, reach out to Ray Wynn. Reach out to me at drtabatha.com. T-A-B-A-T-H-A, no I's. I will work one-on-one with you. That's what I do. I'm licensed in over half the country. And sometimes women need one-on-one help. Sometimes you need testing to see exactly what's going on in your gut microbiome. Are you making digestive enzymes? Are you reacting to foods that you shouldn't be? Do you have a high toxic burden, you know, heavy metals, viruses? So many things that we can test in functional medicine. It's amazing. So I am here for you. If you want to work with me, just check me out at Dr. Tabatha. Please follow me on Instagram. Ever since my old IG got hacked, please don't follow me on Dr. Tabatha at Instagram. Um, that was hacked by some evildoers, but follow me at The Gutsy Gynecologist and on YouTube and now TikTok. I don't know why I'm doing it, but we're giving it a try, right? Like, I just need to reach as many women as possible. I need your help to do it. And so I'm getting out of my comfort zone. I'm doing things that scare the crap out of me. And I hope that you do too. I hope that we can all do this together and create a movement, create an amazing, beautiful shift. So go follow me @TheGutsyGynecologist and meet me back here next week. In the meantime, have an amazing, kick-ass week and do something for yourself and let me know what it was because I'm here for you. All right. Bye, ladies.