#119: What Food Actually Does to Your Body with Devin Stone

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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.

Hi, ladies.

This week we are talking about food and why it matters what you put in your body. So I'm really excited about this interview because, you know, we talk about root causes and all these, you know, mystery illnesses and major dysfunctions of our systems, but we sometimes miss the basics. We sometimes forget, like, do we have our food dialed in? Do we have our sleep dialed in and our movement and all of these basics? that are super necessary for your body to function. So I'm really excited to talk to my guest today because he has studied everything under the sun related to medicine, and now he's finally finishing up a degree in naturopathic medicine. And so he's like in the trenches of, you know, just having learned this stuff. It's all fresh in his brain. And it's just a good reminder for the processes that are going on in your body. So this was a really great discussion today. I hope you'll stay and listen all the way through. We're going to talk about, like, how to know you're making good food choices, what to look for. We also talk about supplements and how they're not all created equal and how to— Figure all of that out. But you, as a woman, should understand everything that we talk about today. And so I think it's really important we debunk a few things that, you know, a few myths that were created by the food industry, all of that. So many good nuggets today, so many good pearls of wisdom. So listen, share it with everybody you know, hit me up with your questions and your comments. I want to hear what you're thinking because I'm doing this for you. So I wanna know that you're getting value out of it. And if you are, I would be so honored if you'd hit me up with a 5-star review. That would just be so amazing to let iTunes know that this stuff is important to you and you wanna keep it going. So thank you. I'm like so honored. Let me just sing his praises real quickly and get going. Yes, it's another man. Devin Stone is the founder of Stone Naturals, Over a decade ago, he started a well-known integrative medicine clinic in Hollywood, California. There he had the opportunity to work with many athletes, celebrities, and other amazing people. He then went on to learn regenerative medicine from the University Utrecht in the Netherlands, and he's currently completing his naturopathic medical degree at Bastyr University. Early on, food became a central theme in his life for many reasons. He found cooking to be a creative outlet, and he enjoys all aspects of food. But more importantly, he noticed that many people had ailments that could be linked back to the food they were consuming. So realizing the food system was a culprit to so much of our diseases, he found it important to teach people how to eat real food again. So if you follow Devin on Instagram @dstone008, You'll see a ton of amazing posts, so much good information on just like why food is important. And that's how I found him, was on Instagram. So follow him, he's got a great account. But really listen to this episode and share it with people you know, because we need to get back to the basics and we need to understand why we're doing what we're doing. And so this is just a really great episode. Here we go. Well, welcome, Devin, to the Gutsy Gynecologist Show.

Well, thank you. Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm excited to get into our talk here.

I am too, because I think there are so many women out there who are just going through their day. They're like, you know, from dusk till dawn, they're not stopping and they're just grabbing whatever is handy to eat. If they have time, you know, they're shoving it down their throats in 5 or 10 minutes during meetings or phone calls or whatever. And I just I want to talk about the importance of like really respecting food, respecting what you're putting in your body and how, you know, we just need to look at it from a different mindset and different perspective and how that can shift our health. Right.

Totally. I completely agree. I mean, that's why food as medicine is one of my fundamental aspects of how I work with patients today. And I mean, you could just see so much promise and hope if you work with some of these fundamental aspects like we're talking about.

Yeah. What has been like the biggest thing that you've noticed working with patients on their diet?

Definitely, I would say there is one, just a lot of confusion around diet overall. People often kind of follow trend diets or have no idea exactly how to eat for themselves. So really kind of focusing on this and trying to find a personalized diet plan for someone is really kind of where we see the best benefit because Out there, I mean, there's so many different variations on how to eat. There's a lot of information online that people get very confused of what to do, and they might follow one of these trends, but it might not be actually the right diet for themselves. Because end of the day, what you eat is so specific to who you are, where you are in your health journey, and that really takes a lot of consideration and understanding to kind of pinpoint exactly what someone needs to eat on a daily basis.

Oh my gosh, I couldn't agree more. Like, it needs to be individualized. And what I've found over the past couple decades is not only is it individualized to you, but to you during what season of life you're in. Like, I see women who shift the way they need to eat depending on stressful events in their life and medical issues they've had, or, you know, going through pregnancies or menopause, and they've like needed to shift how they eat. So I love that idea of like figuring out what's best for you. But today, let's just talk about like some basics. Like everybody needs to clean up their diet, right?

Oh, definitely. So I completely agree. I mean, there definitely are some basics that everyone should be focusing on. And I would say that kind of just starts with eating true whole foods again. That's something that is so missed in today's society because, I mean, everyone is so busy, it's easy to grab fast food or even processed foods at the grocery store. However, kind of going back to how our diet originally started as humans, I mean, we ate whole foods. And that's what we really need to focus on, meaning your vegetables. If you are a meat eater, eating good meat products, stuff that you kind of recognize as a true food and not something that when you flip the package around, it's a whole list of ingredients that a lot of the times most people don't even know what they mean, but they still consume it anyways. So I would say that is one of the biggest bases is just Going back to whole food diet from there, it kind of goes even further for me to look at. I mean, how food is actually made as well because today's I mean especially conventional farming system. There are so many negative aspects that actually get into our food, like pesticides, heavy metals. I mean, you name it, and we're consuming those on a daily basis, which at first doesn't sound too scary. But after years of doing this, I mean, they bioaccumulate in our bodies, store in our fat, store in our bones, and we do see a lot of disease processes. these happening because of this fundamental reason as well.

Yeah, exactly. So we need to stop eating out of boxes and bags and actually eat food that was like grown in the ground, looks like God, how God made it, right? So how did you get into loving to cook food and all of that? Because I, I think sharing your stories is so powerful and I would love to encourage women to like take time to actually prepare and cook their food, because I think they would enjoy it more and get so much more out of it than just like heating up something frozen that they got in the mail. You know what I mean?

Oh, definitely. So yeah, I would say for myself, um, mostly probably started with my mother. She was an amazing cook. And I would say when I started undergrad, kind of leaving the homestead for the first time, when you don't really know what you're doing, to begin with, really started to miss like the foods I was eating. So at that time, I kind of started just dabbling around in food. I mean, not really knowing what I was doing, burning things, adding salt instead of sugar at times. I mean, you name it, kind of all was happening. But from there, just kind of kept growing into understanding food more and more. And then especially now that I started my naturopathic medicine degree, I mean, food is such a fundamental aspect of our education and kind of the more you learn about it, learning how phytochemicals and vitamins and minerals, how they affect different cellular processes in the body, you really start to understand where disease could happen from a biochemistry level. So that was one aspect, just understanding how it directly affects my own health. And 2, also just seeing patients that I'm working with, you really kind of see where maybe some of the issues started with themselves. I mean, there are so many aspects of health overall, but food could be one of the major factors. So just kind of changing their diet and cleaning it up, you see a lot of benefit happening there. So, which is amazing because, I mean, conventionally, so many people will turn to different medications and whatnot right away to help restore like even gut health or whatnot. And oftentimes this could be corrected very easily through just diet and just changing your diet can be free. And for myself, I'd also say I just absolutely love cooking. For me, it's kind of like my outlet in life, being in the kitchen and kind of creativity for me as well. I highly believe everyone should a creative outlet to kind of stimulate that part of the brain. And for me, that comes through food, through kind of the smells, the, the taste you get, and then even from like the plating aspect to like what the presentation looks like. So, um, for me, it kind of goes both fold, um, keeping myself creative and then also just the health factor behind it.

Yeah. Oh my gosh, I love that. Well, you hit on something super important. So I hear all of the time people being told by their conventional doctors that Vitamins aren't that important. You can take them if you want to, but they're probably not doing much good. Let's talk biochemistry because, you know, I went to medical school, I learned all that stuff, but then you get pushed into this conventional medical system that's so broken and based on Big Pharma that you forget, oh my gosh, yeah, I do need B6 to methylate and do those kind of normal biochemical processes. Like, please explain to my listeners how important phytonutrients, minerals, vitamins, all that stuff really is. What's going on?

Of course. I mean, to kind of break it down, I guess, on the most basic level, I mean, we could just put it as we are what we eat. End of the day, every single cell in our body, it turns over. We have to restore its function. So the way that that happens is by the food that we consume. So if you're not giving your body the right nutrients to actually replace cells, you're not going to actually be able to rebuild and restore. So that's one aspect. And the other aspect is the actual biochemistry pathways that you're talking about. So basically, we could put it as every single day our body is doing, I mean, thousands and thousands of processes in our body just innately without us even thinking about it. It's the way we metabolize, we're making hormones. I mean, you name it, there are all these processes happening without us thinking about it. And in order for those to happen, there are these little agents in our body called enzymes, and they basically are like our factory workers that make all of these things happen. And they need vitamins, they need minerals. I mean, if we look at just magnesium, I mean, there's hundreds of processes in our body that utilize magnesium. B vitamins, like you were talking about, also are very important. I mean, even when it comes to how our genetic code is expressed, meaning how we actually make different proteins in our body, we need B vitamins to actually either to methylate different gene codes to actually make the response to create a different protein in our body. So without these minerals and vitamins, I mean, that's when we start losing the ability for our body to function how it actually should. So, and there's some really cool ways to actually even see like what our body is missing. I mean, in practice, I use quite a bit a test called SpectraCell. It's a blood test that we send in and we can actually test all of your different minerals, your different vitamins, vitamins, your different amino acids, your healthy fats in your body. And based on this, I mean, you could see black and white exactly where deficiencies may be. And based on those, you could kind of correlate them with the different disease processes we see patients having. And by just restoring this simple function, I mean, we know exactly what is missing. You see health coming back to someone.

Oh yeah, without a doubt. I think it's so important because Even I see women who are taking supplements and they're still depleted, you know, because of the lack of nutrition in the food they're eating, or their gut is a mess and they're not even absorbing the supplements they're taking, right? So I love the idea of testing and not guessing and seeing what we actually need, because I, I just think that's so foundational. And we try to like jump over that and do all this other complicated stuff. We're like, do I have Lyme? Do I have mold? All these things.

Yeah.

Yeah, you may. Those are really important root causes, but sometimes it's just that you are deficient in your basic necessities, right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

And I think it even goes one step further, especially with the supplementation world. The supplement world— another reason I got into naturopathic medicine, I've been designing supplements for quite some time. And that world is a very underregulated world. Just in general, I mean, so many supplements out there, they have a lot of negative additives in them like heavy metals, which could affect our body, pesticides. So one, you might be supplementing and actually putting something kind of poisonous in your body. And then another big factor is a lot of supplements out there, they don't even have a true therapeutic dose in them, meaning that if we actually look at research, you actually need a certain amount of different vitamins for the work to actually happen within your body. So when we turn around a lot of the bottles and we see, yes, maybe it has a B vitamin or magnesium or something in it, but it's never really to a level that your body could actually utilize to restore health again. So that oftentimes, I think, confuses a lot of people too, is because they might be supplementing, but they often can be doing it in a very wrong way. So that's why it really takes kind of proper education and working with someone that could help direct care in the proper way to really restore all of these in the right way. And when you do, Like we were talking about, that's really when success starts happening.

Oh my gosh, that's such an important point because I will get patients who they've been taking their drugstore vitamins for years, you know, and we check their levels, their vitamin D is 20, and they're like, well, I take vitamin D, you know, and they don't feel any different when they take these supplements. And I think your point is so important. It's that you're not taking anything good quality that you're absorbing to any sufficient level to actually be beneficial. And it's probably filled with heavy metals and gluten fillers and everything that's contributing to your inflammation and disease process. So super important point. How would women know if they're taking a good supplement? What should they look for?

Of course, I'd say some of the basic standards are one, just how it is manufactured. So the most basic manufacturing process is what's called GMP certification. So that, for one, will just know that it's going through a regulation at the actual factory level that has to meet FDA standards. So that is one. So you just know it's being made in a clean environment, it meets all the factors for packaging. The second, I would say, for me, I really only utilize supplements, vitamins that come from real whole food sources. So if we look at the vitamin and supplement market, about 95% of the products that are out there are synthetic made, meaning they're kind of a fake version that's made in laboratories. Compared to food products, when vitamins actually come from there, they're actually better quality of vitamins. For instance, if we look at vitamin C, vitamin C is actually a complex, has multiple parts to it. Conventional supplements that are made synthetically, it's only a piece of that actual vitamin called ascorbic acid. So you're actually not even getting the whole nutrient. And if we look at this also with like vitamin E, for instance, it also is a complex as well. And in the synthetic world, they only take alpha-tocopherol traditionally, which is also just one aspect of the actual vitamin. And you look at a lot of the research out there when they actually utilize alpha-tocopherol in studies, it actually is linked to different cancers like breast cancer if you're taking the synthetic version. And there hasn't really been too much publication on why that is, but really the theory behind it is that we're thinking is It then to actually make the full vitamin E vitamin, it's actually pulling the other nutrients from your body to actually create that full vitamin like selenium. And when this happens, you're now taking away from your body in reality. So going back to a whole food source like taking vitamin E from sunflower, which is one of the major ways we get it from a whole food, you actually don't really see these negative effects happen. So that for me is one of the biggest factors is also where you get it from. And for me, it's kind of the way I like to practice going back to nature. Always nature does things perfectly and knows what it's doing. So oftentimes when we try to intervene, that's where we see some complications happening.

Oh, amen. I couldn't agree with you more. I think that's such an important point. And so let's talk about food. So first, we just need to stop eating out of boxes. boxes and bags. We need to like start preparing and actually eating whole foods. What do you think most women need on a regular basis?

Of course. So, um, I think that's a— I was kind of thinking about this a little bit before our talk, just around most likely what your audience would be. And one of the huge parts that's happening with women today is we're seeing a lot of hormone disruption and dysregulation. I mean, it's just across the board. I mean, I would A lot of the females that we see in our clinic, we're seeing dysmenorrhea, I mean amenorrhea, meaning changes in their menstrual cycle or just having no more menstrual cycle. And when they're tested, we can really see their androgen hormones especially just very, very out of the normal. And a lot of the times this does come from food. And with food, you could either make the problem worse or make the problem better. So for instance, what that's looking into is if we're looking at kind of our prepackaged foods like you were talking about, a lot of them do have in there what we call xenoestrogens. They might be, meaning estrogens from outside sources, and some of these might be from different chemicals that are actually sprayed on the products to help with farming practices, or even so many of our products today are put in plastic packaging that we heat up within, we heat the food up in them, and when that happens, Typically, xenoestrogens from the plastic will actually leach into our food, and then we're consuming them on a daily basis. So when this happens, we're getting a huge influx of basically a fake type of estrogen in our body that changes the whole hormonal cycle. On the opposite side, though, we can actually use food to help with our body. I mean, that's what's really amazing if we look at really using food in the right way as medicine. For instance, just a like fiber-rich diet, which today the American diet has about a third of the fiber in it that we require. And fiber is so important for hormone regulation as well. It helps pull out the extra estrogens and sorry to say, but puts it into our poop and we poop it out afterwards. And that really helps kind of restore function there. On another level as well, we could actually use foods to help restore especially a female cycle. So something we work Quite a bit with if a female is having her cycle changed, like having dysmenorrhea, we will actually utilize something called seed cycling where the first 14 days during the follicular phase, we'll use pumpkin seeds, we'll use flaxseeds because these foods are naturally rich in estrogens. So we could actually kind of promote the estrogenic phase to restore and then the second half of the cycle in the luteal phase, we'll use sesame seeds. And these are richer in progesterone. So we could actually help kind of bring back the cycle and how the body should be cycling just with foods alone. So these are just a few of the, I mean, the many, many ways we could look at food could either help or kind of take away from the body. And we know very, very well today, I mean, these processes happen.

Yeah, I hope that women listening are feeling encouraged because this is all So doable, you know. It's like they can take this into their own hands and actually start incorporating it. You don't need to go see a doctor and spend a bunch of money. Like, you can literally just start changing what you're putting in your body and see a different outcome. So I think that's so exciting. Um, let's talk a little bit more about— you mentioned like xenoestrogens. You can really get into this picture of estrogen dominance, the That's, you know, really common with the ladies I see. And I think they struggle sometimes to understand that it's not about just producing too much estrogen or having too much estrogen, but it's about not metabolizing and removing it efficiently. So you mentioned the fiber, which is super important. Like, we got to get pooping every day, ladies, every day. That's why I'm the Gutsy Gynecologist. But let's talk about the liver as well because it's super important for hormones, right?

Of course. So yeah, the liver, as we know it, is one of our major organs for detoxification, for processing different chemicals in our body, hormones in our body. And once again, I mean, in order to do this, we need to give our body the right chemicals, the right nutrients in order to do, once again, these different biochemical pathways that it's doing in order to help restore function. So, and oftentimes, once again, this goes back to food, what we're giving our body in order to actually have these happen. So something we work with quite a bit is looking at foods that are, one, rich in sulfur products, which would be like our brassicas, meaning cabbage, meaning Brussels sprouts, these types of foods, they are rich in sulfur. And why sulfur is so important is we have an antioxidant in our body, which is considered like our master antioxidant called glutathione. Glutathione is really important for detoxification, removing free radicals, and as we eat these sulfur-rich foods, we actually help restore and rebuild more glutathione in our bodies. So this is just one of the many areas. Then we could also look into the B vitamins that we're talking about. The B vitamins are so important as well for metabolizing hormones. They're pretty much in every single cellular process in our body, and this is just one So if we do this and actually help support our liver instead of adding in more chemicals or processed foods, all of this that actually kind of makes our liver more sluggish, we could in turn give it the right nutrients to help with hormonal dysfunction. So just like you're saying as well, I mean, we see so many people with too many estrogens, we see PCOS all the time. And if we help give back the right foods, this is one of the many natural treatments methods that we could utilize to help with this.

Yeah. What are your favorite foods for B vitamins?

Ooh, so it really kind of depends. I say a lot of the darker fruits and berries I utilize a lot. And then this is always kind of a weird one, but organ meats. Some people might not agree if they're on a vegan type of diet, but the organ meats are some of the richest in the B vitamins. vitamins out there possible, meaning liver, kidney, heart. And when we eat these meats, this is where we really get a lot of the B vitamins, especially B12, because B12 is traditionally not found in the plant kingdom. We could get it really from meat products, as well as nutritional yeast is one way to kind of get around that. But to really get adequate levels, this is oftentimes a good product to work as long as it meets your dietary beliefs. If not, there are other ways to supplement as well, but from a whole food source, that traditionally is the most nutrient-dense version of it.

Awesome. Yeah, and it's important to just know, like, if you aren't eating animals, you could be deficient in some things, and you definitely want to make sure that you're supplementing and having a well-rounded diet. So I, I love everything you're talking about. I love that you mentioned the phytonutrients a little bit with, you know, we got to have antioxidants and make glutathione. I would love for you to just touch on eating the rainbow and what are phytonutrients, why are they so important, and why are vegetables different colors?

Definitely. I mean, that's a very fun topic to talk about because if we look at, I mean, just starting with conventional food and most food out there, it's very bland. I mean, we see browns and just kind of colors on that spectrum for the most part. And when we look into how we traditionally should be eating, it is, like you said, a rainbow of food, meaning that if we look at our plate, we should see many different colors— our pinks, our reds, our purples, our greens. And each one of these colors actually is a different phytonutrient. might be a different vitamin and different phytonutrients that they all do different things into our body. So by having this variety, we're actually going to give ourselves the ability to have the most nutrients available. And that will help our body from inflammation to detoxification to, I mean, helping with hormonal regulation like we were talking about. This is really how we get the most nutrients in our bodies by just eating this way. So that is just, I mean, a very simple tool to think about is when you look at your plate, how many colors are actually eating on a daily basis. Because if you're not seeing a variety of colors, you're not going to be getting all the nutrients your body really is requiring.

Yeah, without a doubt. What do you think is the number one worst food or Frankenfood out there that people need to just not even touch? Like, I know what I would say. I want to hear what you would say.

Man, uh, let's see. Um, I mean, if we look at— I know hot dogs are like one of the worst ones out there. Any type of— I mean, that, that always is one out there. And then for me, it's just anything really in plastic. Plastic is on everything these days. So that, like we were talking about, really leaches into our food. It causes so many issues, not to even mention how impactful it is on our environment, which which then ends up affecting us as well. And we also see, I mean, just even all of our fish out there now, we're talking about majority of our fish that we're pulling from the ocean have microplastics in it. So plastics, which then we consume, these plastics are just everywhere and causing a lot of havoc. So that would be one. I would also say, I mean, different like fillers and preservatives that are in food as well can be very harmful. Lastly, just any food that is conventionally grown that has pesticides on it. And this is something I talk about quite a bit on my end, is the pesticide glyphosate. It's— I mean, Roundup as we know it traditionally is everywhere. It's sprayed on food. And we're now finally— the word's getting out how this is causing cancers. This is causing also hormonal issues in the body. And oftentimes, yes, we could still be eating a food that looks good, a whole tomato, Or cabbage or anything like that. But still, with this product on it, it still is causing harm to our body.

Yeah.

And I think I'd like to know what your food is too.

Oh yeah, yeah. I was gonna say Diet Coke. So it's not really a food, but oh my gosh, is that shit toxic. Like, if you want to destroy your hormones and never lose weight and never have energy, just drink Diet Coke, right?

Oh, I agree. I mean, such a misleading marketing term. Yeah, we don't have the sugars in it, but all the phosphorus and havoc it causes on our kidneys and hormonal issues. I mean, it's, it's very, very misleading.

It's so toxic and it should be illegal. It really should. So you just made me think of something else that when you were talking about the phosphorus is I have a lot of women who are afraid to stop drinking cow's milk and eating all this dairy they're consuming because they've been fed the lie that they need to get all this calcium in their diet for their bone health. Can you just like debunk that right now?

Oh, definitely. I mean, this is sadly something that was kind of pushed, um, years ago that milk is— I mean, builds strong bones. We all think about the milk Got Milk commercials. I mean, we all know it. And really, the push was drink milk, you're going to get calcium. And that's almost the only way you could actually have strong bones. So I mean, but we really know there are, I mean, so many plant sources of calcium, you can get it through different fish products. There's so many different ways to get calcium in our body. Just kale alone, a serving of kale has almost as much or more calcium than milk has itself without all of the inflammation that milk causes. And one of the big parts about milk too is the way it's conventionally made is cows are often fed corn and soy in order to be farmed today. So they're not also getting this full healthy diet like we need. I mean, we're all animals. End of the day, we need the right nutrients in our body. And they utilize these different products to kind of fatten them It's cheaper to do. And when that happens is it actually causes a different type of a protein called casein that is highly inflammatory in the body compared to if we give them a true grass-fed diet, the way cows should be eating. It's a different form of casein that's not inflammatory to our bodies. So, I mean, that's just one of the many aspects. And I mean, when we look at ways of helping restore function to people, some of the most basic foods we try to get them off right away is dairy, it's sugar, and alcohol. I mean, if we can remove those 3, and oftentimes wheat products as well, if they're sensitive or intolerant to gluten, really removing those 4 items right away, I mean, we're going to decrease inflammation. And if we look at any disease process in the body, it is inflammation. So those are just some of the most easy ways to start getting on a healthier diet and And sadly, yes, dairy is one of those, and it's more actually removing from your health than promoting health in any kind of way. Yeah.

So I hope women understood this. It's not just that you don't tolerate it, it causes you gas. That's a lactose issue. That's the sugar in the milk. Milk is inflammatory for other reasons because of what they feed the cows, how the cows are raised, how it's processed. And I just don't think we need all of that growth hormone in those proteins. proteins as grown women. So I love that idea. Get, you know, get rid of the sugar, the alcohol, the dairy, and probably the gluten, and you're gonna make significant headway. And you might not even need help after that. Like, I've seen that alone clear up so many issues for people. So I would love for women to just start with these basics that we've talked about because I think it can totally Oh, definitely.

So, and I mean, these are just simple changes as well. It's not having to go to your doctor's office. It's not having to spend a lot. Actually, you're going to be spending less because you're removing some foods, but it's just an easy lifestyle change. And yeah, so this is why I like food as medicine so much, because I mean, it's really starting at the basis. It's what we really need to change to begin. The way that I think about it is that we're trained in naturopathic medicine, we have something called our therapeutic order, which we first kind of start with establishing what we call our foundations to cure. So this is removing bad things from your body. This is making sure just your basic lifestyle things are in the right order. So your food, your exercise, even your relationships with people. And then we start moving up our therapeutic order into nutrients or into supplements and then into medications and then into surgeries. But We oftentimes can not even have to go higher if we really establish these foundations first.

Yeah, exactly. I think that's so important. So you're going to be graduating soon, right? You're going to be practicing in California, is that right?

Yep, that's correct. I'm graduating this June, then I have to take my second set of licensing exams, and then hopefully we'll start practicing around October this year. And I plan on staying in San Diego. I moved down here from school, for school, and just fell in love with it here. So most likely we'll be staying down here for some time.

Well, that is super exciting because I get a lot of women reach out to me from California and they are looking for help. You know, I'm not licensed in California, so I can only do so much, but I love having more resources. So this is awesome. I love it. And any idea what that practice looks like at this point, or is it still kind of up in the air?

Yeah, I really just want to do family medicine. For me, I like the versatility behind it, always keeping kind of my brain open to all types of ways of healing and kind of coming from the natural world as well. I mean, we, yes, as primary care practitioners, we can do a lot, but I really like the aspect of kind of working with family directly and guiding them in any kind of way, because it still takes referrals to specialists like yourself. I mean, we can't do everything. But helping guide someone with the proper education and teaching them more about their bodies so they could be their own healers and seek out the right people afterwards. That's really what I fell in love with quite a bit. So that's going to be my next step is family medicine. On the side, Throughout the last year, I've been working a lot in the integrative oncology space with some patients. I definitely will work there as well because this is something that is so important as well, is helping patients in the oncology world that I've seen with everything that we're talking about as well, with nutrients, with supplements. Because yes, I still highly believe in the conventional treatments, but oftentimes those deplete even more nutrients. Their body is not as supported as much if they're going chemotherapy. There also are a lot of nutrients we know that support fighting cancer. So this is something I found myself gravitating towards a lot, which was something I never thought of beforehand. I— when I went into medical school, I wanted to stay very open and see what I felt very connected with. But kind of working in those 2 spaces is where I know I'll be doing some work in here coming soon.

I love that. Oh my gosh, I was just thinking, like, I've had so many patients with breast cancer, and unfortunately their oncologists have told them, like, your vitamins and minerals aren't really that important, or your diet's not really that important. You don't have to change things up. You don't have to get rid of alcohol. You don't have to get rid of sugar. Oh my gosh, could you just speak to that? Because that breaks my heart.

Of course. Yeah, I mean, we— for 2 ways. I mean, one, we know there are a lot of nutrients that will help with especially like breast cancer like you were talking about. I mean, one being melatonin is— there's so much research out there now with melatonin for helping with breast cancer. Also EGCG, which comes from our green teas. I mean, there are so many nutrients that have tons of research now that have been used especially in the Eastern world for years that we can help support cancer with. And on the other aspect as well, if we look at the different chemotherapy agents that are out there, I mean, if you look at their side effect list, they do deplete a lot of different vitamins, especially B vitamins. That's why we see peripheral neuropathy happening, meaning losing sensation and having nerve pain in our distal joint or distal limbs. And this oftentimes can be prevented if we put them on a right nutrient plan beforehand. So it's not saying we got to disregard the conventional treatment, Because that saves lives daily. But working hand in hand with one another, it really sets a patient up for the most success, having less side effects and getting back to who they are faster, quicker, and better.

So yeah, oh my gosh, love it. So many good points. So at the end of everything, it's like what you put in your body actually matters. It can be the difference between being healthy or not. So I love all the work you're doing. Thank you so much for being here. This was awesome. And tell my listeners where they can find you.

Of course. Yeah, thank you so much. It was fun talking about this aspect of medicine with you. But yeah, best place to follow me is on Instagram. My handle is @thestone008. And just really try to put out as much information out there because at the end of the day, my goal is you are your own best healer. So understand your body best and understand what works for your body and focus on that. So hopefully it can provide some good information for everyone.

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Of course. You as well. Have a great one, Dr. Tabatha. All right.

I hope you got a ton out of that. So many good golden nuggets. I love that God created our rainbow of vegetables. And he created the different colors to go along with the different phytonutrients in each of those vegetables. I think that's so cool. You can go back and listen to like one of my very first episodes way long ago called Food as Medicine, where I talk about that in detail, where I go over like what's in the red vegetables, what's in the green vegetables, what's in the purple vegetables. That's a really awesome episode. Episode. It takes this to a whole deeper level, but I want to just get back to basics. I want you to remember that when you're starting to slip again and you're not feeling the hottest, always check what you're putting in your body because that's probably one of those culprits, right? So I just really quickly wanted to read one of my 5-star reviews because I thought it was so awesome from Oh, MSP Cat. Dr. Tabatha is the real deal. As long as a longtime critical care nurse, I strive to always be learning more about health and my own personal needs. I was shocked to find out that during perimenopause there was so little help for us out there, but now thanks to the hard work of Dr. Tabatha and her colleagues, I feel saved. There is hope and finally a gynecologist that will listen to you. Oh my gosh, that fills my heart. Thank you so much, MSP Cat, because that is why I do this. So I want you guys to leave me those reviews because it fuels my fire to keep going and, and never give up this mission that I'm on to help you reclaim your health and take back control. Because I know you're not being heard by your doctor. I know you're being dismissed. I know you're being disregarded or just looked at like you're crazy, and you're struggling because you're still living with those issues that you're having that are being dismissed. And it's not right. It's not okay. So we need to band together. We need to just break free from the broken medical system and figure out a different way. And that's what I'm here doing. And I hope that you'll continue continue to be on this journey with me and to share it with all the women you know, because that's really the only way we're going to fix anything and hopefully make a better future for our girls and everybody else. So thank you so much. Keep doing an amazing job. Shoot me your questions or comments. I am here for you. Follow me on Instagram and TikTok at the Gutsy Gynecologist. You can follow me on Facebook at Dr. Tabatha or go to my website, drtabatha.com. All right, go have a kick-ass week. Bye, ladies.