#190: You Need to Heal Your Gut to be Healthy!

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. Hey, guys. Hey guys, so I just did a masterclass about how your gut health determines your overall health. Like, really, our gut impacts everything. It impacts our hormones, our weight, our thyroid, our mood, our thoughts, our relationship with food— all of it. You guys, this information is so important, and the women on the Zoom call were giving me so much amazing feedback afterward, like, oh my gosh, I had no idea, this is incredible, why didn't I know about this, everyone needs to know about this. And so I've decided I'm gonna send this out as a podcast episode because you do need to know this. Like, every person needs to know this. So I'm just gonna play the masterclass and you're gonna so many amazing golden nuggets that you can start shifting the way that you feel today. Literally, I have some good things in there. You're gonna be like, oh my gosh, I need to try that, I need to do that. And if you haven't signed up for the masterclass, there is another one. It's a 3-part series, and when you sign up, you get the recordings of all 3. And I'm doing The third one this week. It's such incredible, important information for all women. So I hope you just sign up for the masterclass so you can at least get the replays if you don't make it live. But here is masterclass number 2, Your Gut Health Is the Future of Health. Thank you for showing up, for playing full out, for being committed to giving yourself some time today. And I honor your time. I appreciate it so much. And I hope you get so much value out of this because I'm pretty sure I'm going to say things that are going to surprise you and shock you and might get you a little stirred up, but I don't want you leaving here frustrated and angry. I want you leaving here excited that you realize there's new possibilities to breaking through your weight-loss resistance and your health struggles and that there's hope. So bear with me. If you can't stay for the full thing, make sure you watch the recording because— You need to hear what's happening toward the end because I want you to realize that you don't have to struggle, okay? So I'm just really excited that you guys are realizing that your relationship with food is complex and that you actually have a lot of control over it. It just requires getting mindful, paying attention, asking questions about what you're doing every day. Today I'm going to talk about why some people do all the right things and they still stay stuck, or they do what their doctor recommends and they just end up with new symptoms, which can be super frustrating because we trust our doctors. It's been ingrained in us that the white coat is going to save us, the white coat is going to fix us. As a white coat, I was trained to believe I was the fixer, that I was the healer. And that patients needed to listen to me and do what I say and not question. It was a very paternalistic way that I was trained to think and behave. And unfortunately, that's just our medical system. And I'm here to tell you that that's not the way it should be. You are your own healer. I can guide you, Ashley, Morgan, you know, people in the wellness space can guide you, but honestly, it comes down to you. taking some action. And you can't take action if you don't even know there's another way, if you don't know what's wrong. And so it's really important to look at yourself from a perspective of like an entire being, a whole bunch of systems all combined together to create this one being. So you have your endocrine system, your GI system, Your mind, your activities, your lifestyle, your environmental toxins— all of these things are going into this big bowl of soup and being stirred up and served up as something called you. And so we have to figure out, how do we see what's in that bowl of soup? How do we see what makes you up and why you are the way that you are? So what we're going to talk about today is the future of medicine, and it really is individualized care. It's you specifically, and it has to be tailored to what's going on with you. So I just want to ask a question. We're going to use the chat. Who here has ever had a round of antibiotics? Has anybody ever been prescribed antibiotics and taken antibiotics for something in their lifetime? Everybody. If you haven't, please say, I haven't, because I will be in shock. But more importantly, who here has had more than 5 rounds of antibiotics in their lifetime? I'm trying to find out who's had more than 10, who's had more than 15. I can say personally, I've had more than 20 rounds of antibiotics in my life that I can even just think of off the top of my head, which is Crazy sad, but way too common. Oh my gosh, you guys, so many of you have had long-term antibiotics. Like, we used to give years of antibiotics for acne treatment. Like, people would be on doxycycline for 2 years at a time. So I have taken, like I said, many doses of antibiotics because I had chronic Ear infections as a child. Like, everybody around me smoked. Everyone except my mother, thank goodness. So by the time I was 12, I had irritable bowel syndrome. By the time I was 15, I was on birth control pills because I had a boyfriend. Um, then I got chronic UTIs and yeast infections. Every— I swear, like, every time I had sex with my boyfriend, I paid the price. Um, at 16, I had to go on a longer course of antibiotics for strep throat, and that's how I ended up pregnant. So nobody told me that my birth control pills wouldn't be effective on antibiotics. So teen mom here, high school dropout, the whole bit. You guys probably know my story, but some of you might not know that after I had my daughter, I went into this hyperthyroid storm where I dropped I don't know, 60 pounds. I was shaking and jittery. I was sweating all of the time. I was a terrible wreck. I had chronic diarrhea. And it turned out that my thyroid was being attacked. I had Hashimoto's and my thyroid was spilling out all of its hormones into my bloodstream, causing this hyperthyroid storm. And so they sent me to the hospital, strapped me up on this table, And injected me with something. And I really didn't understand at the time what had happened to me, but years later realized that I had radioactive iodine therapy and they killed off my thyroid with that medication. And so I've had to be on thyroid medication on and off since I was 17 because of that treatment. And yeah, it wasn't informed consent. I didn't know what I was signing up for. I'm not— I wasn't really sure. What had happened, but I didn't question it at the time. So I went on to med school. I had chronic heartburn and constipation, diarrhea, gas, bloating, chronic nausea, stomach pains, like all of it. I went through typical standard conventional treatments. I had a scope done where they put a scope down your throat to see what's going on. I had CT scans, MRIs, ultrasounds, X-rays. I was given Nexium, Prilosec, Bentyl, Pepcid, Zantac, Prozac, Effexor, Miralax, and that's not all of it. But I got to the point during residency where I developed eczema on my hands. My skin would just itch and burn and crack and bleed. My doctors told me I just— it was because I was wearing gloves and washing my hands all day, and that was the problem. So I lived on like chronic steroid cream. I couldn't put enough steroid cream on my hands. I was so embarrassed and I was constantly distracted by this itching. So embarrassed, to say the least, because I also had anal itching. I had to see a GI doctor, a colorectal surgeon, another gynecologist, a general surgeon. Nobody could fix me. Nobody knew what was wrong with me. And I suffered like this for decades. So, you know, you guys, I shared my story with you. Like, I had to go on to have chronic pain, chronic back injury, and eventually just break myself until I found this whole world of functional medicine, which is a completely different way of looking at things. And I learned how to heal myself. Like, as soon as I removed gluten from my diet, everything started to shift. And it was like a domino effect. From the time I was an infant through all those antibiotics, everything that was happening was impacting my health and compounding the situation. And conventional medicine trained me and teaches us that our systems are in silos. Nothing's impacting the rest of the body. Your GYN issues have nothing to do with your gut issues, and your skin issues have nothing to do with your gut issues, and your mental issues have nothing to do with your gut issues. And it's all a lie. It's all wrong. And so I'm really here to show you that it's not only what you're doing or what you're exposed to, but it's how you're being treated from conventional medicine. Right. All of this is impacting your health and creating a domino effect and probably causing new symptoms and new issues. So please let me know if this resonates with you because this is what I hear every single day in my office. from patients is, I've been through the gamut. I've had every test. I've been on every medication. I'm no better, or, I had temporary relief. Now I'm worse. And it's super, super frustrating. So honestly, the future of medicine is individualized care. It's actually treating the root cause. But here's the bigger thing. We have to treat the non-human side of us. Because did you guys know that our body is made up of more bacterial cells than human cells? So you are actually more bacteria than you are you. And we have to acknowledge that because they are running the show. They are working in unison for their own good and their own livelihood to survive. And they don't necessarily care about you, especially if you have the wrong bacteria or the wrong yeast living So yes, you guys are all feeling me. Irritable bowel syndrome, eczema, depression, gut issues. Yes, exactly. So I want you to realize, like, even something as simple as the cravings that we were talking about on Tuesday, like, those might be bad bacteria sending chemical messages to your brain telling you to crave those things. It's not always you. This is not in your head. You're not crazy. It's not about lack of willpower. It's about who's running the show in your body, who's in charge. And surprisingly, we're not really in charge all the time. So if you are feeling like you have those out-of-control cravings or you have chronic illnesses, issues, things that you can't get control of, um, then it might be coming from your gut. So. We are trained in medicine to say you have a chronic medical condition if you've been suffering for over 6 months. So let's think about some chronic health issues: heartburn, weight-loss resistance, cravings, headaches, eczema, mood swings, painful periods, heavy periods, constipation, diarrhea, bloating, trouble sleeping, hair loss, dry skin, low energy, nausea. Like, the list goes on and on. and on. These are chronic medical conditions. We're trained to think that only really crazy stuff like Lyme disease is a chronic condition or fibromyalgia, but these are chronic conditions. If you've had this problem for more than 6 months, you need to evaluate your gut. So if you've had symptoms longer than 3 to 6 months, you have a chronic illness. You have something going on. So everything I taught you on Tuesday about blood sugar regulation is really important for your weight and your health and overall inflammation, but that also impacts your gut. And regulating your blood sugar alone or getting control of what you eat and how you eat, that doesn't always reverse chronic illness. So sometimes we have to be proactive and we really have to— Evaluate what's going on with your microbiome and all of this. Okay? So, like I said, I didn't learn nutrition in medical school. I didn't learn how the gut microbiome controls everything in our bodies. I do remember toward like the end of residency, flesh-eating bacteria started showing up in the news. Do you guys remember that? Like, scientists have known about antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria since the 1940s. But we just have carelessly prescribed antibiotics for everything, like viral infections, inflammatory processes without any known infection. And this has created things like MRSA. MRSA is a really bad skin infection that's hard to treat because it's resistant to the antibiotics that are supposed to kill it. C. diff is a raging hospital-acquired infection that can cause you to have diarrhea 20 times a day. And these kind of things happen because we are so careless as a medical society. So I just want to share my screen really quick because I was trying to pull up some stats. So at least 250,000 people die every year because of wrong decisions by doctors and medical professionals. So this article was in 2017 in PubMed. Medical errors are the 3rd leading cause of death. After cancer and heart disease, that's really scary. That's crazy. You know, think about it. Have you had a loved one that died during the pandemic and they didn't really give you a reason? It's because it's the third leading cause of death: medical errors, including giving antibiotics when not necessary, giving the wrong drug to somebody, giving the wrong dose to people. One team not talking to another team. Somebody has a hip surgery replacement and they don't talk to the internist who's managing the medications and, and like things get missed. It's terrible. Like every time I think about this, it reminds me of my previous, my mother-in-law from my previous marriage. She was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through chemo, reconstruction, the whole bit. She was put into chemical menopause and she felt terrible. Then she got in a car accident on Thanksgiving and required over a dozen facial surgeries for reconstruction, and she became addicted to pain meds. She couldn't even function on her own, so she moved in with us. She moved to town, and her new doctor in this town gave her a fentanyl patch for pain but didn't talk to her about the fact that her previous doctor in her old hometown was giving her pills for her pain. And so she was taking all of that opiate. And she overdosed and died in her sleep. Her doctors, her surgeons, they were not talking to each other. And so this scenario happens every day. And like, finding her was a very traumatic situation and it made me very angry because it could have been prevented. You know, like me, all the stuff I went through could have been prevented if somebody would have stopped to say, okay, Why is she having heartburn in medical school? It's because I was drinking five dark roast Starbucks a day and not sleeping to try and study and get through my tests, and I was stressed out to the max. I had a failing marriage, you know, but they they were just masking my symptoms. So Prilosec, Nexium, all these heartburn medications. These are one of the biggest problems that we have going on in the country because. It masks the symptom of heartburn, so you feel better temporarily. Your doctor's proud that they fixed you, but unfortunately, that isn't the problem. The problem is you probably have an H. pylori infection, or the sphincter between your esophagus and your stomach is relaxing and allowing stomach acid to get in your esophagus where it doesn't belong, and that's why you feel the burning pain. So It's not that you have too much stomach acid; it's that you have it in the wrong place, or you have the wrong bacteria causing issues in your stomach. And so, if I would have known that and treated my H. pylori two decades ago, I wouldn't have had anal itching. I wouldn't have developed eczema. I wouldn't have had chronic depression and been on three different SSRIs that took me years to get off of. Like all of this was so unnecessary. Okay, the same thing happens. with Motrin and ibuprofen. It causes temporary relief of your pain, but it's destroying your gut lining in the process and causing you new issues. It's setting you up for these chronic issues that you've all raised your hand and was like, oh my gosh, I have that. So we have to figure out what is your root cause issue. And just because I had H. pylori and leaky gut It doesn't mean that you have that. It might mean that you don't make enough digestive enzymes or that your liver detox pathways aren't working, you know? So what works for Ashley's problems might not work for my problems. Does that make sense, you guys? And we also need to talk about biofilms. This is something conventional medicine does not understand, even though it's everywhere in the literature. If you go to PubMed, you type in biofilms, you'll probably get 10,000 research articles. Yeah. But I want you to understand a couple of things. Let me share some pictures because sometimes pictures are easier. This is a picture of H. pylori hanging out in the stomach. This dark maroon color should represent the blood. This layer of cells is your stomach cells, and there's this green mucus layer. That mucus barrier is made by good bacteria, and it acts like a wall or a barrier to protect things from damaging these cells and getting through these cells. But here comes H. pylori. They look like crazy little messed up forks, and they get into this mucus barrier, and they actually eat it. They eat this mucus wall to the point that it destroys the cells all the way down to the connective tissue inside. sometimes the bloodstream and cause— that's an ulcer. That is a stomach ulcer caused by H. pylori, and sometimes it can bleed because it gets so deep. So you can see that there's 2 things going on just in this one example, is bad bacteria are causing destruction, but good bacteria had to be present to even make the mucus barrier in the first place. And so it's not only important to kill off bad things, but good things. So this biofilm is good. Our good bacteria make it, but bad bacteria also make biofilms. Think about it like pond scum. If you, if you've ever seen pond scum, it's like this gooey layer over top of the water, and a lot of things live on there and collect on there, and bugs hang out there and moss grows and all kinds of stuff. And that's literally what happens In your GI tract, you get this this mossy film, this pond scum. You can see it on teeth. You get dental plaques. That is a biofilm that your bacteria are creating. And so, if you are allowing bad bacteria to create biofilms, then they're impenetrable. Antibiotics can't kill them off. Things can't get to them because they're hiding in there, and you can't kill them off. So it's really important. that we understand that these guys are smarter than your typical doctor. These bacteria, as soon as you start to mess with them, they change. They change their strain. There's like hundreds of strains of H. pylori. They change what they're doing to keep hiding and to protect themselves. And so you have to be super strategic about what you're doing. And that's why a lot of people who just randomly take some supplements or antibiotics, they might have a little bit of improvement, but then it gets bad again because you didn't actually get rid of the biofilm. You didn't kill it all off. And so this is a big piece of what I do in the practice is we'll do specific stool testing and we'll use certain potent herbs to kill off that biofilm to then get in and kill off H. pylori or yeast overgrowth or whatever that is. So it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. You have to know exactly what's going on in the gut. And let me see if I can share that again because I know I've shared this before, but I think people like seeing this stuff. Oh, and here's a picture of leaky gut. So again, this is in the intestines, your good bacteria making this mucus barrier, trying to protect you. These are the little gap junctions that get broken when you have leaky gut. If these little doors are broken, things get into your bloodstream that shouldn't, like viruses, bad bacteria, toxins, food particles, different things, and it causes A response from your immune system. And so this is all healable, but you have to know that it's happening. And we can actually measure something called zonulin that gets released when these gap junctions get broken. And so if your zonulin's elevated, you know you have leaky gut. So for like this person, let's just talk about her for a second. So I had I had a 48-year-old patient. She was having heavy periods, weight gain, of course. She was feeling super just irritable and not like couldn't stand being in her skin. She was having sleep issues, constipation, only having bowel movements a couple of times a week, low energy, difficulty concentrating. And then she started noticing itchy patches around her scalp. She went to the dermatologist. She got some steroid cream. She went to the gynecologist. She had an ablation done for Her heavy periods. She ended up getting sent to the gastroenterologist who did a colonoscopy and said, you just need Miralax every day. And if it gets really bad, use magnesium citrate. Her primary gave her Ambien to sleep and iron for her fatigue. The iron just made her more constipated, required more Miralax, and it usually didn't give her her regular bowel movement. It just would cause like diarrhea. So that really affected her ability to go out and do anything because she felt like she always had to be around a bathroom. So she saw me talking about constipation related to estrogen dominance, and she made an appointment with me. We did stool testing and hormone testing and the whole thing, and she ended up having H. pylori. So she had— this is her stool test. She had elevated H. pylori, that bacteria in her stomach, and her beneficial bacteria in multiple areas was really low. So she was struggling to digest her food properly and to have that mucus wall protection and other things. She had bad bacteria overgrowth. Too much streptococcus and citrobacter, and then she had Candida, which is yeast. Candida is the most common form of yeast. They measured different five different species of yeast, but Candida is the one that causes vaginal yeast infections and rash under your breasts and things like that. And it wasn't like in the red; it wasn't obviously elevated, but it's because it was hiding in a biofilm. She had recurrent vaginal yeast infections. She had this itchy scalp. scalp thing going on. And it was because she had way too much yeast overgrowth in her gut. So the other piece of the stool test, we looked and she wasn't making enough digestive enzymes, so she wasn't breaking those food particles down all the way. And a lot of times that's because H. pylori changes what's happening in your stomach. And she had elevated zonulin consistent with leaky gut. But here's a really important piece. Her IgA level was very low. And IgA is the part of the immune system that protects you from the outside world. It covers your skin and your respiratory tract, your nose, your lungs, your, your GI tract, and it acts like the bouncer at the club. It stands at the door and decides who's safe to come in and who has to stay out. And it decides Is this safe to enter the body, or do I have to get in a big fight and prevent it from entering the body? And if you don't have any bouncers at the front door and your mucus wall is broken down and compromised and being destroyed by H. pylori, and the doors are wide open, all 3 of her barriers were compromised. And so it was a free-for-all. Everything under the sun was able to just go into her bloodstream through her gut and cause an inflammatory response. And these bad bacteria make lipopolysaccharides, which are horrible toxins. And all of these responses drive inflammation, which drives the eczema. It drives the headaches and the weight loss resistance and the heavy periods because you're not metabolizing your hormones and your liver can't function. And the list goes on and on. And it wasn't until we saw exactly what was going on with her microbiome And treated that specifically, that she finally shifted like 2 decades' worth of problems. We got rid of the estrogen dominance. She was pooping every day, you guys. She was like the happiest person in the world because she was having formed bowel movements without assistance. She could just go about her life. She was sleeping at night. Like, This kind of work just fills me up and is so rewarding because people finally make a shift when they've been struggling for so long. So I just geek out on this. I apologize. I just love it so much because I know how it feels to just be, like, at a loss. Like, is this really my body and my life? Is this how it's going to be? It's exhausting. It's exhausting. It's like you want to rip your hair out. So again, I just want you guys to realize, like, I was chief of staff of the hospital. I was board certified. I knew everything there was supposed to know about medicine and obstetrics and gynecology and be a women's health expert. I even got trained in menopause through the North American Menopause Society. And I still didn't know any of this. I did not know this. And so I'm so glad that you're here because you know more than your average doctor as of today on what's happening in the body. Okay? That's pretty cool. You actually know more than your doctor right now, and you are equipped to be able to go out and research and read about leaky gut and read about food sensitivities. I just had somebody yesterday. Who said their diet— their conventional dietitian didn't believe in food sensitivities. They said it was a waste. I hear this all the time from immunologists. People go and are told those tests don't work, they're not accurate. It's because that is what they were trained. They don't know the truth. The truth is out there. The research is there. But our medical system hasn't caught up. Our medical system is still training us the way they were 50 years ago. So it's not that stuff doesn't work, it's that they don't know about it yet. So I'm going to stay calm. I'm going to stay calm. I mean, and we, we could go on all day, like, talking about toxins, heavy metals in our water. I live in Michigan. Flint, Michigan has the worst water in the whole country. And we have children who can't even stay in school and get through 6th grade because their lead levels are so high that their brains don't work. Like, it's an Outrage. It's not okay. And we just act like, well, that's just them. They have behavioral issues or they have ADHD and that's their problem. No, we're poisoning them. That's the problem. So there's all kinds of things that need to be evaluated in addition to cleaning up your diet, getting mindful about what you're eating and when. But there's things that are happening that you just might not realize. And that your doctor doesn't know how to test for. So if you feel like you're being gaslighted, you're being dismissed, told you're crazy, there's nothing wrong with you, they've done all the blood work and told you like you look fine, it's because they're not doing the right testing. They're not looking at the right things to figure out what the heck is going on. So you know. Fibromyalgia, all these mystery diseases, they're not actually mysteries. They're just mysteries to conventional doctors. So the future of medicine is customized care, right? It involves testing, like the stool testing I showed you. It involves customizing your meal plans based on your food sensitivity tests so we can actually stop the inflammation and the immune response that's happening. To heal your gut. And some of you on here, you've been through our Healthy Her program, and so you know about this. And it's like, that is the only way that you can make a shift. Now I'm looking at the chat. Does LDN help with leaky gut? Can leaky gut cause urinary tract infections? Absolutely. So it all comes back to the gut. When I mentioned that I kept having UTIs in high school, It's because my gut was a raging mess. My diet was terrible. I was stressed out, but I just had a bad microbiome, and I kept getting antibiotics. So my good microbiome never stood a chance because when you take antibiotics to kill bad stuff, it kills all the good stuff, and you need a good microbiome. You need a balance. Like we're supposed to coexist with bacteria and these other organisms in the world. We're not supposed to live in a sterile environment. That was one of the biggest lies that we were told during the pandemic. A good way to be healthy and thrive is to have a good defense, and that means a strong microbiome and a strong set of good bacteria fighting the fight for us. It's not living in a sterilized way. That's not how it works. So how do we find a functional doctor in your area? Okay, I get this every day. You can go to ifm.org. That's the Cleveland Clinic's Institute for Functional Medicine. That is through where I was trained. That is the program started by Dr. Jeffrey Bland and Dr. Mark Hyman 30 years ago. You can find a practitioner possibly in your area through that. You can just Google functional medicine doctor near me and understand that Functional providers have human faults just like conventional doctors and providers. Not everybody has the same level of training or the same level of understanding, so they might frustrate you the same as your conventional doctor. Nobody's perfect, but all you can do, I say, is go based on recommendations, word of mouth, talk to who your friends See, find somebody that you feel comfortable with that doesn't act like they know everything, because as soon as a doctor thinks they know everything, they're going to get into trouble. And my team, we're licensed in over half the country, so we, we see people virtually all the time as far as Hawaii. And we do all this testing. These test kits can get sent to your house. It's incredible You know, what the pandemic has done for us, opening access up to everyone. I don't have to just see people in Spring Lake, Michigan, or Grand Haven, Michigan. I see people all over the place, you know, Georgia, Washington, Idaho, all these places. So we are obviously here to help you if you feel like that's something you need to— would like to have help with. So So what do you recommend instead of Advil or Tylenol? I recommend figuring out why you're in pain. The majority of my back pain and my chronic pain issues were from the fact that I wasn't healing my gut and calming down my Hashimoto's autoimmune response, and I had too much sugar in my diet. Sugar causes major inflammation and pain. I now realize if I have ice cream, I'm going to be in pain for a few hours. Like, that's just how it works. So I had to really heal my gut, avoid gluten 100%, and then figure out how to start moving my body again in a way that helped support my fascia and get balance of my muscles. You have balance like in the front muscles and the back muscles, and for the majority of us, we have an imbalance. One side of us is stronger than the other. For me, when I sit in a chair all All my front muscles are constricted and contracted and shortened, and my back muscles are all stretched all day long because I sit like this and I hunch. And so that imbalance really puts a strain on the fascia and the joints and causes chronic pain. And so I'm constantly working, you know, through Pilates to strengthen and lengthen my front muscles and to contract and shorten my back muscles. So it's things like that. I mean, everything's connected, you guys, and you need someone who understands that and is really taking comprehensive approach when they're looking at you. So super important. Let's see what else we got. Even if we're not licensed in your state, we can often help you because the cool thing Yeah. The other thing is functional medicine tests aren't controlled by insurance. Some people see that as a bad thing because they're not covered by insurance, but it's actually a good thing because that means you can get the test without a conventional doctor ordering it. And so we can give you tests even if we're not licensed in your state, and we can coach you back and help you understand the shifts that you need to make. We might not be able to prescribe medications, but that's never my first-line plan in the first place. So there's help around all of this. Can I get off my thyroid meds? Oh my gosh, I just did an amazing call on this. But Tamara, please check out my thyroid podcast episodes because I do talk about this. It definitely depends on why you were put on thyroid medication in the first place. And the thyroid never goes bad in a silo. It's not that your thyroid poops out and becomes sluggish. Your thyroid is responding to what's going on in the rest of your body. So you have to know what's happening in your gut, with your adrenals, with your sex hormones, with toxins, all the things to figure out why your thyroid was struggling in the first place. My thyroid was acting crazy at 17 because I had a very traumatic delivery and my stress and cortisol production was through the roof and my gut was a hot mess and, you know, all the things. So I wish I would have known that. If you have tons of emotional trauma, is it not even worth it to address the physical stuff? Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry that you're feeling that way. It's all the more reason to address the physical stuff because it all is connected. In order to shift your mindset and your thoughts around trauma, You, you do have to start to physically feel better, or it's hard to get out of that negative darkness in your mind. So, um, one of my good friends, Dr. Amy Epigean, runs a program called The Biology of Trauma. It's incredible. I recommend you look her up, um, because that's some deep work. But what you are feeling and experiencing emotionally and mentally is shifting your physiology. It's causing gut problems, it's causing adrenal problems, and then those problems are keeping your emotional and mental issues stuck where they are. So you have to break that physical cycle, that issue that you're having. So Biology of Trauma, Amy Pigian. I'll have to spell it for you because it's kind of a weird spelling. Absolutely. Don't give up. Like, that can be the most rewarding thing that you ever do. So I would tackle that head on because as soon as you can start to feel different physically, then you can shift emotionally. But I promise you that your thoughts create physical chemicals in your cells. I talk a lot about this in my book that's actually coming out for Lent. Because whenever we have a thought or a feeling, our brain tells our chemistry to make different chemicals. And so that is why our heart begins to race, why we get a little queasy, why we get butterflies in our stomach, why we get sweaty palms, because that's the physical response to the mental thoughts that we're having. And so we need to be able to shift all of that. And it's a two-way street. It's going brain to body and body to brain. And then you have the soul piece. How is the soul related to all this and who's running the show? So if you can stop letting your body run the show and your prerecorded messages and your trauma from the past run the show, you're going to make a huge shift. So I'm going to be praying for you because I know that you can figure that out. Why is gluten such a bad thing for so many people? Oh my goodness, you guys. Yeah, this is a really important question. There's a few reasons gluten is bad. Originally, we figured out that there's something called molecular mimicry, where the protein in gluten looks like the protein in our thyroid, and your immune system, every time it sees that gluten protein called gliadin, It attacks your thyroid because of that molecular mimicry and that confusion. But that is one tiny piece of the puzzle. Now we're understanding the more stool testing we're doing, the more function testing we're doing, that the IgA, the bouncer at the door in the gut, is responding to gliadin. It's angry with it, and it's because we've genetically modified it so much that it's nothing like the bread that Jesus ate. It's nothing like the original wheat that our bodies were meant to eat. We've genetically modified it so much that our body thinks it's a foreign substance, and so our IgA branch starts attacking as soon as it sees it. And so that perpetuates leaky gut and depletion of our IgA levels. And I would say for the majority of people, That's the gluten problem. So even if you don't have Hashimoto's or celiac disease— celiac disease is where the cells in your small intestines actually get destroyed from that gluten response, and that increases your risk of colon cancer. So celiac really can never eat gluten. But I would say at least 70% of the population has a response to gluten in this day and age. And we know that it's because it's genetically modified and full of pesticides, because these same people that have such issues don't seem to have the same response when they eat gluten in European countries that have not genetically modified their gluten the way that we have. And so, unfortunately, we kind of did this to ourselves as a society because in the '60s and '70s we decided we needed to mass-produce Wheat to be able to feed more people and to make products cheaper and to make high fructose corn syrup. We modified corn and we kept just modifying all these things and soybeans and everything else. And we thought we were doing such a great thing, like, we're going to make food cheaper and more accessible to everybody. And unfortunately, all it's doing is destroying our health. health. So, um, I hope that helps. My favorite books about gluten, um, No Pain, No Grain, and, um, Wheat Belly is a really good one. Um, Dr. Peter Osborne is my favorite person related to gluten. He's, he's the bomb, and he's really good on YouTube. So I think we kind of did the self-assessment. You guys figured out Like, yes, I have chronic problems. Hello. Weight loss resistance, UTIs, cravings, mood shifts, bloating, gut issues, headaches, recurrent colds, infections, things like that. So I really invite you to start loving on your gut, thinking about what can I do to heal my gut and shift my gut? So everything you started on Tuesday with your commandment And cleaning up the diet, that's going to be super important. But I want you to realize that it might be more than that. I would say for probably— this is a guesstimate— 30% of women, they are going to need more than just the basic foundational shifts of cleaning up the diet, changing when, how they're eating, getting, you know, control of their stress. I would say about 30% of you are going to say, I need help. I need actual stool testing. I need other testing, because you're going to do all that and not make the shift. So, yeah, awesome. There's one last question about what stool testing should we ask for? Oh, that's a good question. Okay, you guys, don't ask for stool testing from your conventional doctor, okay? The only stool tests they understand to order are for active infections like traveler's diarrhea, C. diff. Like, I just— I'm having diarrhea 20 times a day. They're going to check for, you know, like food poisoning and those types of infections. That is not the stool testing that I showed you. The stool testing that I showed you is comprehensive. It's showing what's everything that's living in your gut, how your gut is functioning, how your immune system is responding. That is a functional stool test. And that was only one company. There's multiple companies in the functional space, but that is my favorite one. It's called GI-MAP from Diagnostic Solutions, and that you have to get from a functional provider. So just know that if you ask for a stool test, or they might just order you like an occult blood test, or who knows, it just— they I don't know, unfortunately. So I hope you guys got so much out of this, and I hope that you're excited to research and dive deeper into this. I will tell you, Mark Hyman is a great person. He has a podcast called The Doctor's Pharmacy, but you can go down all kinds of rabbit holes once you start looking into functional medicine. So remind yourself yourself to stay focused and to stick with big picture basic things to begin with. Don't go down the rabbit hole of, I have chronic Lyme and mold disease. Like, make sure you got your bases covered first. Make sure you have a good healthy eating pattern. Make sure you've evaluated your basic gut and adrenal gland function and all these basic things. Don't go down these crazy rabbit holes. We call them zebras. Like, most people are horses. Not many people are zebras. Zebras are unique. So look for the horse situation. Does that make sense, you guys? Share your ahas in the Facebook group and definitely tell us your chronic health issue and what's like— what are you gonna do about it? And we'll, we'll definitely help you any way we So thank you for your time. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You guys are awesome, and I'm just so proud of you for showing up for yourselves. So keep filling up your cup, and I'll see you guys soon. Oh my gosh, I hope you got so much out of that episode. Please hit the subscribe button so Apple knows that you guys care about this, or if I'm— you're on YouTube, hit the subscribe channel. So that you'll get notifications, get the little ding that I have new videos for you. I am here to tell you the truth that you're not getting from your doctors, okay? So stick with me. Tell me what else you want to hear about. Send me a DM. I am listening. I am creating based on your feedback of what you need and what you're confused about, what you want to hear more of. So Um, this is my purpose in life, is to help give you the truth and give you options and have a voice in your health. Because honestly, you are the only one who can make yourself feel better. Doctors can only guide you. So you let me know what you want to hear. I'm here for you. I would be so honored if you would take this, like, 30 seconds to give me a 5-star review. Um, but otherwise, go have an amazing week. Let me know how this impacted your life, and I'll see you soon. Bye, ladies.