#153: Get the Func Out with Dr. Peter Kozlowski

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.

Hi, ladies.

Welcome back. I'm really excited for this episode because my guest today is going to talk about the mind-body connection as it relates to functional medicine. Honestly, functional medicine trains us to look at those connections, the mind-body-spirit connection, because so much of it affects our health and our ability to heal. So my guest talks about how this affects your gut health and your hormones and everything in between. And his books really talk about this in detail. But I think it's a really important piece because I see this in my practice every day. Women will be struggling to heal their gut or balance their hormones or get their energy back or support their adrenals. things like that, while they have trauma going on, you know, that they haven't dealt with, or ongoing stressors of a job they hate, or a fractured relationship that isn't being addressed, or whatever your trauma, drama, all of it is, it impacts your body's ability to heal because our cells actually hear The emotional turmoil that's going on in our brain. It's, it's a really cool, um, new science. You know, Dr. Joe Dispenza is doing a ton of this research where our brains, when we have thoughts, when we feel feelings, we have emotions, they produce chemicals, and those chemicals Cause reactions in the body, and they can cause destruction or they can cause healing. And so literally, he is, you know, having people with stage 4 terminal cancer who go into remission by focusing on their thoughts and their feelings and their behaviors, like doing that mind piece of it. Because those chemical reactions change how the cells are responding in healing. It's incredible work. So if that is something like you really want to dive into, like check out Dr. Joe Dispenza. But I truly believe our bodies want to be in balance. They want to heal, and we keep messing it up. We keep interfering it with all the And toxins in our environment, with all our crazy, stressed-out lifestyles and our bad habits of not sleeping well, drinking too much alcohol, eating terrible Frankenfoods, all this fake food. So much of that impacts our physiology. Our physiology is like what's happening at the cell level, all these processes that are going on. And so It's really important to put all these pieces of the puzzle together. So I have been working diligently to create a program called Fast to Faith because what I have seen a huge need for— I needed it myself and in the people I know and love, but just all of you guys, all my patients— We have been disconnected from our higher power. And I'm a Christian. I believe Jesus, like, literally walked this earth. He, you know, it's Christmas time right now. I believe he was born, he walked this earth to save us. And if I don't connect with God and with the Holy Spirit, I don't feel well physically. My physiology suffers. I have more gut issues. I have more fatigue. I have more joint pain. I can get a lot of it dialed in by getting my hormones balanced and making sure I'm eating right and doing all that stuff. But I promise you, when I'm disconnected from my Creator, life is harder. And when I'm dialed in and connected, I'm like reading the Word, you know, the living, nourishing Word of the Bible. I'm feeling the Holy Spirit. I'm connected with my Creator. Life is so much better. Things are easy. Things fall into place. I feel gratitude. I feel joy. I enjoy life. I even enjoy the struggles of the journey. So we're all going to have struggles, right? Like, that is part of being humans. We're all broken human beings and there's a journey and you can either be miserable and struggle to get through it, or you can feel— Faithful that your Creator has got your back and is going to get you through this. So I've literally been working my butt off trying to create this program, Fast to Faith, where it's teaching you to fast your body and to feed your faith, to feed your soul, to nourish your soul, to nourish your spirit, to heal your body. And I really hope that you'll join me in this program. It's going to launch for Lent, which is February 22nd. It's coming up right around the corner, right by my birthday, and it's a 40-day awakening. So for 40 days, I'm gonna get you connected with your Creator. You're going to sit in the Word. You're gonna read some scripture. And I don't want anybody to be intimidated by that because the Bible is big, and I can't quote scripture off the top of my head or anything like that. So a lot of people are, you know, a little bit apprehensive because they're like, oh, I don't know the Bible, I don't know how to read it, I don't understand it. You don't have to. Like, this program is so simple and so straightforward. Literally, we give you a couple sentences, you're going to meditate on that, you're going to help incorporate it into your life and, and be reminded what God is trying to tell you in your daily life and what you are supposed to be doing on your journey, and I incorporate fasting. I teach you how to go from a sugar burner to a fat burner. I help you eat the foods that God made instead of all these Frankenfoods, and you're going to get back into balance being the woman that God created you to be. So it— this 40-Day Awakening is so exciting. It's just a beautiful transformation. And I would be honored and so excited if you would join us for this, but there's going to be more to come on that. But be looking for that, okay? So if that interests you— If you're not a Christian, you don't want to read the Bible, that's not your thing, I would encourage you to still sit and figure out what do I believe, what do I need from my higher power. Because I promise you, we're not just humans here for this short existence and that this is all there is. I just don't believe that at all. I believe there's so much more to this life than the physical, than what's going on. When I see the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza and everybody studying quantum physics and all the energy fields, how we're connected in this universe. Like, there is more going on than what we can see. So much more going on. And I would love for you to tap into that a little bit because that is where the healing magic is, you guys. That is where the transformation lives. If you really want to turn around your health and like be this badass, amazing woman who has tons of energy and does all the stuff she dreams of doing and has connected, loving relationships, all of it. Like you, that's your superpower is tap into your faith and rely on God. Rely on your Creator. That's where the power is. So I hope you'll join us for that. So let me just sing my praises of my guest today really quick before we get going. Dr. Peter Kozlowski. He wrote his second book. His first one was Unfunk Your Gut: Boost Your Immune System, Heal Your Gut, Unlock Your Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual. Health, and then he has another one coming out. So check those out because it's really helpful to understand the root of functional medicine. Like, why is it different than conventional medicine? How does it work? And what's the difference, right? And realize that that's really helpful in getting to the root cause of your issues if you can figure out that mind-body connection, figure out why stuff is happening, as opposed to this Band-Aid medicine approach of just give me a pill for an ill, a surgery for a symptom, whatever. So he does a really good job of talking about all of this. So let's see, he is out of Bozeman, Montana. That's pretty cool, but he's back in Illinois now. So if you want to work with him locally, you can do that. I think that's really cool. But his book is simplified, it's research-based, there's a lot of case studies, so you might see yourself in there and get some ideas of how functional medicine plays out when we're talking about healing, you know, what the process looks like. So that's really cool. So let's jump into it and Please share this episode with somebody you know because we are a sisterhood. We need to support each other, right? And then think about like, what's your golden nugget? Because I'm going to ask you when we are all done, what's your golden nugget from this episode? What can you— what is one thing you can take from hearing this conversation that you can start incorporating into your life to help you with your shift? So, all right, here we go. Well, welcome, Dr. Kozlowski, to the Gutsy Gynecologist Show.

Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor.

Yeah, I'm really excited to talk about your book because it is all I preach about. You know, when I talk to women about getting their health back, it all begins in the gut. So what led you to even write this book, Unfunk Your Gut?

It was a life goal of mine. And so it was something that I always wanted to do. And I guess I didn't know what I wanted to write about. My goals in writing books was to be different, to do something different. And so the big thing that I needed was just more time with patients. And so I've been practicing solo for 9 years and started training in functional medicine 12 years ago. And The timing was right, and I was taught, like you probably were, from my first functional medicine conference, start with the gut, start with the gut, start with the gut. And so that message was ingrained in my brain, and that's kind of what came out when I started writing. It was gut health and, and my experience of working with the microbiome, working with SIBO, working with food sensitivities, and The biggest thing that I think I put out there is the connection to mental, emotional, and spiritual health, right? And I think a lot of practitioners in our field get so excited about the testing, about the supplements, and they forget the center of the matrix, which is mental, emotional, and spiritual health. And in functional medicine, we're taught to kind of look at the body like from this thing called the IFM matrix, and it's all the different areas we look at health. but right in the middle of it is the mental, emotional, and spiritual part. And the connection that I put together over the years of treating SIBO, of treating Candida, of treating dysbiosis, IBS, I was seeing a recurring theme. And I can put people— I could take 100 patients with SIBO and put them all on the same treatment plan, which works, and half would get better and half would not. And That drove me nuts as a perfectionist. That, that's all, that's what keeps me up at night is like, why are people not getting better and why can't I make them better? And what I started seeing over and over again was that the, the biggest roadblock was the not addressing mental, emotional, and spiritual health, the gut-brain connection, the effect of the sympathetic nervous system on the gut. And so that, that was kind of my goal because there's a lot of great gut books out there, but I don't know that there was one that put it together the way that I felt like I could because of my experience. My own story is I'm a recovering alcoholic, and before I went to treatment and tried to figure out my own issues, I thought I was king of the world. I thought I knew it all. Like, I was your classic Typical egotistical doctor that that knew it all, and when I was an intern in residency, I realized that I had a problem with alcohol, and I was never a daily drinker. I never had problems at work, but it was just like I had no idea how to deal with life without alcohol because I started drinking at a very young age, and it it worked for me. And when I went to treatment. The whole point of treatment was all about the underlying cause. Why? Like we never actually talked about the drinking, and I was like confused. I was like, when are we actually going to deal with my drinking? And it was it was just no. What happened, right? And and why? You know, why do you do it? And from my own experience, I learned that I'm a first generation American, and and I grew up very insecure. My parents are immigrants from Poland, and. Even though I had friends and was popular growing up, like, I just never felt like I fit in. And when I was introduced to alcohol, it made me fit in. And they say when you start drinking, you stop maturing. So I stopped maturing at like 12. And so I was 28 and, and couldn't even name an emotion or a feeling when I, when my therapist asked me for the first time. So it was a journey and a struggle, and there's been lots of ups and downs. But that's, you know, my own story of, I guess, how I became so aware of mental, emotional, and spiritual health and the effect it had for me. That experience opened my mind when I was introduced to functional medicine that like, hey, look at this. Because when I started residency or med school or any of it, I would have laughed in your face if you would have told me functional medicine, and I probably would have made fun of you. But it was my own kind of experience that changed my life and then made me open.

Wow. Thank you for sharing that. I just want to honor you for that because that's huge. And I get patients all the time complaining about their egotistical doctors and their closed-minded doctors. And for you to go on this path and to admit, like, I really didn't know and I needed to fix my own issues. But you hit on something so important, like the why. That is what we learned in functional medicine, right? It's not what exact bacteria do you have in your gut. It's like, what is driving this process? Why is this happening? And so that, you know, piece that you've figured out is crucial. So show me the difference between how you tackle somebody's gut issues, you know, and do that mind-body-spirit connection versus someone who's not really addressing that?

Yeah, it, my experience is, is that somebody that's not addressing that will never get their gut healed. And, and that is, I do things probably just like you, very objectively. So I love to run lab tests. I love to run my functional medicine labs and look at a comprehensive stool analysis, look at a SIBO test, look at an oat test, And so I really like to get objective data to show people. And one of my favorite things on a stool analysis is I always say, I can see how stressed out you are in your gut. And when you do a, a comprehensive stool analysis, when your Enterococcus, your Bifidobacterium, and Lactobacillus probiotics are suppressed on a culture along with a suppressed secretory IgA, that those are the markers of the sympathetic nervous response. So I can show my patients, I'm like, listen, like you are the, the, I can see the effects of chronic stress on your gut. And, and I can promise you, no matter how strict you stay with your diet or what supplements you take for how long, you're not going to get better. It, it's going to be this up and down. And, and so a lot of people won't come back to me cuz they're like, well, I just want the right diet or I just want the supplements, so screw this guy. Or they dig into it. And, and I share some of those stories. I mean, one of the things that helped me write my, my 2 books is my patient stories and, and using examples of, of what I've seen working with people. And, and in Unfunk Your Gut, I had a woman who was covered head to toe in eczema, and she was in her 50s and, and had been all over the place, every dermatologist you could think of. And we found a Candida overgrowth. And so I was kind of excited. I was like, you know what, we're gonna treat the Candida, it's gonna get better. And month into Candida treatment, she was seeing nothing. And, and from her story, I heard a lot of trauma and a lot of stressors. And I kept telling her, please, please dig into this. And she started, and then all of a sudden she walked in one day completely clear, not a single issue. And now that was 7 or 8 years ago, and now she like leads self-help groups and all this stuff and, and doesn't take anything. And, and she was hopeless when she came in. But it wasn't just the Candida. It was— I think the bigger piece of it was the trauma and the mental, emotional, spiritual part. And she ended up agreeing.

I think that piece is key. Oh, my goodness. I see that all the time in my practice. And the trend I've been seeing over the past year is low secretory IgA. I don't know if you've seen it too, but it's just— I think it's getting through this pandemic and everybody's been stressed to the max. Nobody has any IgA. There's like no immune support. And so you're just— it's like open field day, you know, you're exposed to everything and there's no immune response. So I think it's so important to look at that data and see that kind of stuff. But you're right, like realizing that you can't just support your immune system production of IgA, like you have to figure out that stress component or that trauma component.

Right.

Or whatever is driving it from a deeper spiritual issue. I love that. I think that's so important.

Yeah. And so that's how I try to work with people. I mean, I can show them objectively that, like, hey, look, I see the stress. So this is very real. I'm not making this up. I like to do adrenal gland testing and cortisol testing as my other stress test to show people that their cortisol is imbalanced. And that's what my new book that came out, Get the Funk Out, is about is hormones and toxins. And, and so I get into the adrenal gland testing and like, I, I get how difficult it is. So I, I, I don't judge anyone. I don't like, I'm like, you're not doing this right. And, and like, you're a bad person because you don't wanna dig into this. Like, it is extremely painful. I, I didn't wanna do it. I still a lot of days don't wanna do it, but I know what happens to my health when I don't focus on that part of my health. And so it takes time. And even with some of my patients, even if I'm just planting a seed that 3 years down the road, they're like, maybe that one guy was right, that maybe I've tried now literally every test, every supplement, and maybe I am missing the certain component of it.

Yeah.

So my goal, and it's hard because, well, people are like, well, how do I fix it? That looks different for all of us. And, and so, you know, I can talk about tools like meditation and breathing and HRV and, and exercise and sleep and all this stuff and, and different types of therapy, but different things work for different people. And, and so it's, it's a journey that, that most of us go on to find what works for us and What works for me today is different than what worked two years ago, or what probably will work a year from now. And so it's constantly kind of adjusting to life and and just staying aware. Like the first step in recovery is is admitting there's a problem. So for me, that's probably like I'm so excited when when I do a follow up and and people come back and they're like, you know what? I really thought about it, and you're right. I think there's more to this. And to me, I'm like that. That's more exciting than detoxing someone from heavy metals or mold or dysbiosis. That's what I'm like, wow, I did my job that even you're just aware of it.

Yeah, I think that's key. That is so important. And I want to go back and talk about the adrenals a little bit more because I hear from women all the time like, well, yeah, I'm stressed out, but isn't that just life? And I think because we're all stressed out and we're all feeling it, we take on this idea that it's normal and it's acceptable. And I try to explain, like, it might be— you might be handling it mentally, but your physiology is not handling it. Your physiology does not think it's normal, and it's responding by affecting your hormones. Like, you had this testosterone issue at a young age because of this. Am I right?

Yeah.

I would love you to share that story because even though you're a man, my listeners are women. Like, how stress affects our hormone production, utilization, all of that, it doesn't matter what your gender is. And I think some women would be interested to hear this piece of the testosterone issue because I get a lot of women saying, help my man. My man has issues. My man has sperm problems or he's tired or he's overweight. And a lot of it is being driven by this chronic adrenal cortisol stress problem, right? Can you just talk about that for my listeners?

So my story, yeah, I was diagnosed with low testosterone at 32, I think, which was probably something I never even wanted to talk about, but now I wrote about it and talk about it. And it's okay. And I had come out of a relationship and it was ugly and abusive on my ex's end. And I took some time to recover from that. And while I took some time, I decided to dig into the field of environmental medicine, which is a branch of functional medicine, which is what I wrote about in my new book. And I trained with a doctor, Lisa Naj, who's in Martha's Vineyard. And, and I, so I spent a couple weeks with her learning environmental medicine and all the things that she was doing. And while I was there, I was kind of talking about my life and she was like, I think you have low testosterone. And my response in my head was, fuck you. Like, like, and I was just like, I'm like 32, so no. That's wrong. But to humor her, I was like, sure, let's test. And she did a urine test, which I'm personally not a fan of, but it said my testosterone was super low. And so I was like, can we confirm this with a blood test? 'Cause that, that's my personal preference for testing most hormones. And so we tested and my testosterone was like 200.

Wow.

Which on a range, one of the things that we've learned in functional medicine is The, the ranges are psychotic a lot of times cuz a testosterone from 200 to 1,100 is reported as normal on a lab test. And, and obviously at 32, 200 is not normal. And so I was like blown away and devastated and, and I started thinking about it and, and it kind of made sense. Like my biggest complaint probably going into it is like, I've always been an athlete, sports, loved working out, but My body never looked like my friends did, and, and that would work out with me. And that was, you know, growing up I ate a standard American diet. Like we would go to the gym and then go get cheeseburgers or Italian beef sandwiches. But then I changed my diet once I started functional medicine and I still like, I was like, I never was happy with the way I looked. And that would probably be my biggest complaint. And then, and then probably lower sex drive than I would think besides, but my cure for that was alcohol. So that was another reason I drank because I think it masked the low sex drive that was coming from my low testosterone. But then the drinking and all the things I did wrong would raise my cortisol like crazy, which lowered my testosterone again. So it was a really nasty cycle for many years, but it worked for me because I had solutions. Like if I would drink, if that's You know, that worked for me. And so that stopped working for me. So then I was excited to go down this road of like, hey, I should get my testosterone up. And so she recommended and, and I agreed to go on a testosterone cream. And, and so I started it and within like a week I was like, oh my God, this is incredible. Like everything was just better. I mean, it took weeks or months. Like I didn't change my diet, I didn't change my exercise, but like now all of a sudden I had like a 6-pack and I, could lift weights and play 2 hours of basketball on the same day. And it was just like I was living the dream. And I didn't really think about the side effects. I did some lab tests, my levels. So that's a big thing that, you know, a lot of men or women, when they think of like testosterone replacement, it's like Barry Bonds or like, you know, steroids or like the, the huge guys in the gym like that. That's not when I do testosterone replacement. I'm not trying to get my testosterone to 2,000. Like arguably an optimal testosterone is about 800. And so that's what I, what I did. I had a, it was a real, it wasn't a high dose and, and, but it kept me around that 800 and, and it was life-changing and everything was just great. And I, so I didn't really think about side effects 'cause I didn't have any that I could see or feel like everything, I just, everything was better. And then I met my wife and when we started dating, like we, a goal of ours were, was both to have kids and I was like, In my mind, I was like, well, this testosterone that I'm on, I'm going to be so fertile. I'm going to be super fertile, and it's going to be awesome. We're going to have, like, 10 kids, and it's going to be great. And I was like, but let me do a sperm analysis. And I did a sperm analysis, and it was zero. And that was one of the worst. I've had a lot of bad days in my life, but that was one of the worst for sure. And I did what I tell every single patient not to do. I got online and I started reading.

You started Googling.

Yes.

Oh my gosh.

If anybody read my first book, Unfunk Your Gut, you know that I hate the internet. And I don't— I mean, it's a gift and a curse, but I just really try to encourage my patients to find a doctor they trust and get off the internet. But that's not what I did. And so Within a few minutes, I convinced myself that I would never make sperm again because that is a possible outcome. If you're on testosterone too long, you will stop. The older you are, that's the greater risk. So if you go on testosterone at an older age, you're more likely to not be able to make sperm again. So I love to explain the why. So the mechanism, like, I think most people would think testosterone equals fertility. That was me and that's what I thought. And that is true for the most part except our testosterone, or even for a female, the estrogen and progesterone production from the ovaries work kind of like the thyroid. And that's something that most people are more familiar with is we have our gland that makes hormones. So in this, for me, we're talking about the testes and then we have our pituitary gland that controls that production. And so I'll use the analogy of the thyroid first. Most people that are familiar with the thyroid are familiar that their doctor tests their TSH, which I would sometimes argue that that's like the most worthless thyroid test.

Right.

But whether we're talking the testes, the ovaries, the thyroid, and the pituitary gland, the analogy that I use is it's like you're a heat— the heat in your house or office. And so what that means is, is you, when I walk into my office, I set the temperature at 68 degrees. And when the thermostat detects that the temperature goes below that, it sends a signal to the heater to make heat, right? Well, that's how your thyroid works. When your thyroid levels drop, your pituitary gland is the thermostat and it releases a hormone called TSH. And the TSH turns the thyroid on to make more thyroid, right? And so in regular medicine, we assume that if your TSH is high, your thyroid is low, right? And, and so there's this negative feedback system. The same thing happens for testosterone production. When the body detects that there's not enough testosterone, it makes similar hormones called LH And FSH. And so when those elevate, it tells the testes to make more testosterone. When you take a hormone exogenously, so like basically if you are taking hormone replacement, it turns off the signal from the brain to make TSH or FSH or LH. So somebody on thyroid medicine is not going to be making a lot of TSH because the thyroid levels in the body are fine. So the brain's detecting, hey, we don't need to make any TSH. Because the thyroid levels are great, and that's fine if you're on hormone replacement. Well, what happens when you're on testosterone replacement is, since I was putting testosterone on twice a day, I was telling my brain to turn off LH and FSH. And that was fine for my testosterone, but for a man, LH tells you to make testosterone and FSH tells you to make sperm.

Right.

So when you're on testosterone, you shut down your FSH and LH production. So basically, your— my brain for a few years told my testes to not make any sperm, and, and the signal was completely shut off. And so that's what happened to me. And so I, I've tried to counsel men on that because, I mean, unfortunately, um, Both men and women are getting diagnosed with hormone imbalances more and more and more and at younger and younger ages. And so many people are— know someone that's on hormone replacement and they're doing great, so they come and they're like, hey, I want to go on hormones too. For me, with a man of reproductive age, I'm like, I don't think testosterone is a good option for you. Because unless you're— unless like family planning is not an option, because I would never want to put a man on testosterone for 3 years and then he meets the love of his life and he wants to have kids, and then all of a sudden he can't because, because he was on testosterone. The interesting thing is that even at a low testosterone, I still was fertile, so I could have had kids if I would have not gone on the testosterone replacement. And my story in my book is that now I make sperm again. And so that That issue is behind me. I think the best thing I used besides a handful of supplements was clomiphene, which is— many women are familiar with clomiphene for ovulation and it stimulates ovulation and that's because it makes your FSH and LH levels go up. So, for a man, if I raise my FSH and LH, that's going to put the signal to make sperm and testosterone in overdrive. So, a lot of men use clomiphene just to raise testosterone. I used it to make sperm again. And I tested after 6 months and it was still zero. And then I tested at 12 months and it was normal. And so somewhere between 6 and 12 months, the production started again.

Thank you so much for sharing that. I think that's so important because this literally parallels what happens with women who take birth control pills, right? They're literally On hormone replacement. That's what birth control pills are. They're shutting down your own production. And more often we're seeing women, they come off of that to get pregnant and now they can't get pregnant. And you're saying the same thing is happening with men. They're having hormone imbalances younger and younger. We could go into all those reasons, the xenoestrogens, the plastics, all the environmental toxins. But I love hearing that you reversed it, that you were able to turn it around because those organs do want to function. Your body does want to be in homeostasis. It's just we have to, you know, remove what's impeding that. We have to stop preventing it. And so thank you for sharing that story because I know there's somebody out there who's like struggling with fertility and it might not be totally her issue. It might be her partner. And I think a lot of times REIs and OB-GYNs, they really don't take a lot of stock into that part of it. It's like, oh, we'll do a basic semen analysis. If it's not great, just do IVF. Like, they totally, you know, or push you onto donor eggs or something. So it's really encouraging and exciting to hear, yes, there is a way to turn this kind of stuff around. I think that's really important for women to And the fact that you, you know, I don't love hearing that you didn't change your diet or anything else, but that you had some success. So let's hear about, like, how—

I had changed my diet before that, so that, that was something I was already working on.

So that you were already working on all of that piece?

Yes. My, my gut was very imbalanced. I had dysbiosis. I had a parasite. I had high levels of lead. So I have taken myself through the functional medicine process of getting my diet right, looking at food sensitivities. I do an elimination diet every year just to check in. I'm very lucky in that I don't have any food sensitivities. And growing up and living in Chicago, there's, there's a lot of good, bad food around. So sometimes I do like to have a cheat meal. But my gut was a mess and, and it was, I spent a lot of time abroad and traveling and I think I picked up all types of weird stuff with the binge drinking too. The lead, I mean, I had no reason why I should have lead in my body if like there was nothing in my history that you would think. But that's, you know, in, in my new book, Get the Funk Out, I have half of it's on hormones and half of it's on toxins and, and the connection between the two. And my argument is, is that if I could just pick any one functional medicine test for people I didn't know anything about, I would actually do heavy metal testing, which for a lot of people sounds a little crazy. And even most people know me for gut health, but I'm more and more convinced that our toxic environment is, is a massive player in this and even preventing people from getting their guts right. I think both things are important, but definitely dysbiosis, parasites, lead were part of my story. I don't know how long they were there, you know, and did my lifestyle of a standard American diet, you know, make the lead worse and the dysbiosis worse? I think so for sure. So it was a process of years of getting things right, of getting my mental health right, of getting my diet figured out, getting the lead out, getting the dysbiosis Right. But I think that that's also an important point is, is a lot of my patients come in and they're like, well, I've been on thyroid medicine for 30 years. And, and I always start a visit with, what are your goals? And, and they'll say, I wanna be off my thyroid medicine like by next month. And that happens sometimes, but also I am not against hormone replacement. And doing things to support hormones. Because like for myself, you know, I got all that stuff right, but my testosterone's still not going to 800 without support. I still need to do stuff. And that's the, you know, I think the bigger picture, the argument that I hope that we start testing for these things at pediatric visits. And, and that because I don't, you know, if I would've found the lead or the dysbiosis 5 years earlier, 10 years earlier, 20 years earlier, Maybe I wouldn't have ended up with low testosterone. And so, you know, that's what I always hope is that when someone goes to their pediatric visit that there's a stool, comprehensive stool analysis and a heavy metal test ordered and, and, and oat and anything else. But not realistic most likely. And, and so yeah, it's that, that's I guess some more of my story and things that I had to do to kind of clear up my body.

Do you know if your estrogen was elevated back when your testosterone was low?

It was not.

Okay. So you're just, all your hormones were suppressed.

Yeah.

Pretty much.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think diet has such a huge, you know, deal to do with all of this because we're heating all of our food in plastic now. Everything's like packaged in plastic. We drink out of plastic all day long.

Like all of these There was a news article 2 days ago from New Zealand. I don't know if you saw it, but they found massive amounts of microplastics in the rain.

It's heartbreaking.

And they found those same microplastics in the testes. So, I mean, all the things that you mentioned, and it's even in our rain now. So it's like, And something that someone mentioned to me the other day is they're putting microplastics into clothing, like athletic clothing. And so for years I've spent teaching my patients to read labels with food, but now it's like you have to read labels with your clothes and what are they putting into it? Because we absorb those toxins through our skin.

We do. And they're in our cleaning products and our laundry detergent, all those Plastics. Oh my gosh. So hormone disruptors, right?

Right. And so that's what I write about in this book is the mechanism that these toxins are fat soluble and every cell in our body is surrounded with a membrane that has fat in it. And so these toxins, if we don't break them down and excrete them, they get stored in our tissues. And when I Still in my first year of training of functional medicine, I worked with Dr. Susan Blum in New York, and she taught me to think of the thyroid as a sponge for toxins. And Hashimoto's is the most common autoimmune disease. And from a traditional medicine standpoint, we just kind of say we have no clue why that's happening. So here's Synthroid. But an autoimmune disease is when the immune system identifies your own tissue as an invader.

Yeah.

And so if your thyroid was full of lead and mercury and mold and glyphosate and plastics, it would kind of make sense that your immune system would recognize it as an invader, right? And want to get rid of it.

Exactly.

It's almost— I can think about it that our body's actually making like an appropriate response against the thyroid if it's full of toxins.

Yeah, I truly believe that our body is never working against us. It is always working to try to keep us in balance. It, it knows what it's doing. You know, like when you're saying it's attacking the thyroid, but it's doing that for a purpose because your thyroid is full of toxins or a virus or something like that. And so your body's trying to get back to homeostasis, I believe, and my core. We just have this innate intelligence that our body can figure it all out, but we just keep bombarding it with stuff and it's just trying to work back to normal. So especially for my women with thyroid issues, you have to figure out why. Why is that happening? Organs don't just stop working. You know, like, I was trained as a surgeon, just remove the offending organ. And that is such a wrong way of thinking about things. Like, organs don't just stop working or become dysfunctional. We should not have to remove them or radioactively kill them or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, let's figure out why. I love that you address all that in your book.

Yeah. And that's where hopefully this testing is done early on, because our accumulation of toxins start before we're even born. Right. And they cross the placenta, and they've found hundreds of toxins in umbilical cord blood. And so most of my patients that I diagnose with a heavy metal toxicity or mold or glyphosate or whatever, they want to know when. Like, when did this happen? I'm like, I don't know. It started before you were born. Most likely it would have been great to have a heavy metal test when you were 5, then I could tell you, hey, you probably got this from mom or from your organic Gerber baby food, which in 2020 they found, like, 400 times the amount of mercury in organic Gerber baby food. And that's 2020. So you can imagine what it was like 20 years ago. And so instead of trying to reverse Hashimoto's, it would be awesome to keep the body healthy and clean. And that's, I guess, my hope and goal for functional medicine in general, is that my practice should be 99% preventative medicine. And when I do lectures or talks and people ask, I'm healthy, why should I come see you? That's the time. It's— but my practice is 99%. I've been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis or Crohn's. I've been on 3 biologic meds. I've been to Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic, and I'm out of options. So turn things around by the new year or whatever. And, you know, we've been very blessed and lucky to have awesome success with a lot of people, but it would be awesome to just prevent that stuff from happening. So even like if a woman comes to me for pre-pregnancy pregnancy planning, the first thing I do is detox. And I don't just detox everybody. I do the testing for the toxins. And if there are any present, that's the first thing that I'll do is help get those out just as a form of preventative health.

Yeah, I think that's really important. But unfortunately, like you're saying, so many of us are sick or have chronic conditions by the time we're in our 20s just because of the environment. And I think It's okay to not feel ashamed and not feel like you did something wrong. You know, like you were saying, it's it's just the way the world is nowadays. And you mentioned a couple times people want that quick fix. They want to you know see you and then be better in a month. And we have to really shift this mindset because it did take years for us to get to that point of dysfunction and disease. And it's not going to take 2 months or 1 month to turn it around. You know, you might start seeing symptom relief and seeing some big shifts. Like, I have a Healthy Her program that's typically 3 to 4 months, and a lot of shifts happen. But there's a lot of long-term work that still has to be done, namely the adrenals. They take a minute to get back into balance, right? I mean, What kind of time frame do you tell most patients, or do you not?

I don't. And that's actually a— I've had a few patients over the years that have asked me to give an exact date, or like, if I follow through with what you say, I want you to guarantee that 3 months from now or 6 months from now, this will be gone. And so for me, I'm just kind of like, right away, I honestly don't think I'm a good fit for you because I would never guarantee something like that.

Right.

The outcomes are completely out of my control. And so when a patient leaves my office, I have no clue what they're going to follow through with, if they're going to listen to 5 of the things I said, one of the things I said, 10 of them. Because of the mental, emotional, spiritual component the most is why I'd never guarantee an outcome, because I can give you a very effective treatment plan for dysbiosis or a low secretory IgA or Candida or SIBO, but you can definitely stop it from working by not addressing the trauma, by living in the sympathetic nervous response. I can guarantee it's not going to work, or it'll be like up and down. In my opinion, the objective stuff is easy. Like, I could guarantee I can get the heavy metals out of your body. I can guarantee I could get the mold out of your body. If you stop exposure, but I can't guarantee you're gonna get better because it, the mental, emotional, spiritual part will stop any of it from working. You'll stop your ability to detox and, and you won't heal your gut. So I always warn my patients, I, I'm not gonna give you something to feel better today or tomorrow. Like it usually not. I don't know, there's been a couple times, but this is You know, I will give you the tools. We will try to support you, but it only works if you work it. And something else I've seen over the years is just we've had a lot of wives or husbands or kids or parents call and be like, "Hey, I'm scheduling a visit for my husband or my wife or my kid," and and we don't accept that. We say we need to talk to the actual patient because. But it is a process and it will not work if somebody's not interested in it. Like if, if, if someone has no interest in, in trying functional medicine or, you know, adjusting their lifestyle, I don't like to waste my time. I don't wanna waste somebody else's time. And, and so unless we actually can speak to the patient and hear that they want to come in and that they're interested in this, we won't accept them because this, this really only works if, if If, if you work at it.

Exactly. I think it's so important to realize that it's the total opposite of conventional medicine, right? Like, it's not a quick fix. It's not a, you know, a quick surgery or whatever to get rid of your symptoms. It's actually to fix the root cause of what's going on. And that takes time and it takes buy-in from every aspect of your life. You have to be committed. You have to make your health a priority. You have to shift how you're eating, how you're sleeping, how you're moving, how you're thinking, how you're processing, all, all of it. So yeah, so many important points. I love it all. So thank you so much, Dr. Kaz. Where can we get your books?

They are on Amazon or Barnes& Noble. They're at your local bookstore. Not in most local small bookstores probably don't have them, but they can order them and have them within 2 days if you want to support small businesses, which I totally get. There's a link on my website, doc-koz.com. So there's a link there to Amazon to order it. They are both spelled func, F-U-N-C. So Unfunk Your Gut and Get the Funk Out. And that comes from t-shirts that we used to have at my office that said, we put the funk in functional medicine.

So that the titles are spelled F-U-N-C.

And Unfunk Your Gut is all about diet, gut health, and mental, emotional, spiritual health. And this new one, Get the Funk Out, there's a chapter on thyroid, adrenal glands, insulin, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, what is detox. And then there's a heavy metal chapter, a mold chapter, and a chapter that's all about the other toxins, how to test for these things, what labs to use, how to interpret ranges. So I get into charts of of, of the thyroid and what is an optimal T3 and T4. And, and so I think the coolest feedback I've gotten from, from people is just even if, if someone didn't come to see me, they, after reading my book, they felt way more prepared for a functional medicine visit. They knew what questions to ask, they knew what labs to look for, et cetera. So yeah, and a lot of patient stories of, of Working with everything from infertility to high blood pressure to autoimmune disease. In my first book, the recipes were written by one of my patients. She was— she's a chef who's been in remission from rheumatoid arthritis. I think this will be 9 years just through diet. And so she was very passionate about the cooking, and so she wrote the recipes and even shared her story of what it was like working with me and how she felt. So it It's pretty cool.

That's awesome. I love it. Okay. Well, all those links are in the show notes. Everybody needs to check it out. Thank you so much, Dr. Kaz. You're awesome.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Okay. I hope you got something out of that. I love being reminded and helping remind you guys that the mind-body-spirit connection is so real. And it's ongoing every second. Like, your cells inside your organs, inside all of your systems, like your skin, are literally just a bunch of cells connected, right? You can see them. Your hair are cells. Your tongue are cells. Your stomach are cells. Like, everything are cells. They are hearing your thoughts and your feelings. They are responding. to your nervous system and to all the chemicals produced. And your nervous system, if it is stressed out and in a dysfunctional pattern, it's constantly in the sympathetic overdrive, not functioning well, your cells are going to struggle to heal. So I really want— I hope that was your golden nugget, like Yeah, I do need to deal with this piece. I need to have those difficult conversations with my husband, or I need to reach out to my kid that I've been estranged from, or I really need to look for a new job, or whatever it is that is weighing heavy on your heart. I would love for you to say, I need to reconnect with my Creator. I need to find a Church home. I need to read a book about mindfulness. I need to do some Joe Dispenza meditations on YouTube. Like whatever works for you personally, I'm not trying to push anything on anybody. What works for me is sitting in the word, being reaffirmed that I'm a child of God. I'm enough. He's got my back. His timing is all I need. Like, I, you know, a lot of us are these controllers. We want to control everything in life. We want to control how quickly our body transforms, how quickly we heal or recover from being sick. We want to control all these things, and we have ideas and plans, um, laid out. Like, I expect to do this and have this response and reaction in my life. And you have to remember that the universe or God or whomever has your timeline laid out, and things might not go the way that you want them to go or that you plan for them to go, but I guarantee that it's because there's a bigger, better plan and response And result. And you just need to trust that timing that God has for you. That's like— that's been so freeing for me, is to trust that whatever has been tried to be for my harm, God is going to create for my good. Whatever— whenever things don't work out the way I planned, I know it's because he has a bigger, better plan for me, and I just need to be patient and trust His timing in my life. And when I just rely on that, when I rely on my faith completely, life is so much more joyful and, and smoother, and it seeps out into every aspect of my life. So I hope you'll join us for the Fast to Faith program that we're going to launch in February. But let me just real quick, because I got a really cool— oh my goodness, what do you call that? A review, um, 5 stars, amazing exclamation point on Amazon. I don't know if you can see that. Thank you for creating this podcast. It's so refreshing to hear an OB-GYN who is trained in functional medicine and seeks to solve the root problem, not just treat symptoms. You have covered so many topics that I can relate to. Keep doing the work that you're doing, exclamation point. And that is from Nurse-907. That fills my heart. Thank you, thank you, thank you for reaching out, taking the 30 seconds to write the review. I appreciate that so much. Like, I would love it if you guys would just take 30 seconds and write your review. Give me 5 stars if that's what you're feeling. Share it with a woman that you know, or all the women you know, because seriously We need to understand what's going on with our bodies. We need to understand how our daily lives are impacting our health, so that we can create the future that we deserve, that we want, that we know we can have. And I know you can have any of it. God wants us to prosper and have abundance and live amazing, beautiful lives. But we have to lean into it, right? We have to lean. Into that. So this is all the kind of stuff we're going to talk about in the Fast to Faith program. So I hope to see you there. Okay, go have a fabulous, amazing week. Um, love you guys. See you soon.