Episode 19: Become your own Health Advocate with Misty Williams, founder of HealingRosie.com

Hey beautiful, it's Dr. Tabatha.

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Hi, I'm Dr. Tabatha, the Functional Gynecologist. I'm a 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. So if you're struggling with hormone imbalance, weight gain, period issues, anxiety, and You name it, then you've come to the right place. I want to be your functional gynecologist. So welcome. You're gonna love today's episode of the Functional Gynecologist. I'm inner. Viewing Misty Williams. Misty is a 15-year entrepreneur and digital marketing strategist, but she spent years struggling to reclaim her health and vitality after a botched surgery. She had debilitating brain fog, extreme fatigue, her hormones were imbalanced, and then she had a huge unexplained weight gain. After her doctors told her they didn't have answers outside of medications and surgery, Misty embarked on the arduous path of finding answers to reclaim her energy, brain power, and figure. She founded healingrosie.com. It provides women with the resources and community to successfully confront the unexpected chronic health issues that are often experienced by high-performing women as they age. This is a great resource, and I know that you're going to love listening to her story. And our frank discussion about conventional medicine and how it's failed us as women. So I want you to listen to this episode today and feel empowered and know that there's other women that have your back and they can help you through your health journey. There are answers, there is hope. So enjoy.

Well, welcome Misty to The Functional Gynecologist. I'm super excited to have you on my podcast I want you to share your story because I know you're not only going to give women hope, but you're going to help give them tools to reclaim their health. You know, I know you created a website called healingrosie.com to help guide women through their health journey, but can you tell us, like, what was the impetus behind this? Because I know my listeners are definitely going to resonate with your story.

Yeah, well, I probably have a lot in common with the people in your Community, actually, because my journey started with a routine physical. where I asked my doctor to check my fertility. I was 35 years old and really interested in being a mom one day. And I hadn't tried up to that point in my life to get pregnant and knew I was getting older. So they did an ultrasound to see how everything looked and found that I had a cyst on my left ovary that was very large, cantaloupe-sized cyst. In fact, the tech was like pushing on my abdomen as they were doing the ultrasound. And, you know, they say, we can't tell you anything that we're seeing on the screen.

Right. Right.

We're gonna have to give this to your doctor. So she's pushing on me going, do you feel that? Oh, it's something. And I'm just like, what is— what is she seeing on the screen? But I did have a cyst on my ovary that was large. And the gynecologist told us that I needed to have it removed. They booked surgery immediately. It was supposed to be a simple outpatient procedure where I go in, it's a 25-minute surgery for them to remove the cyst. And stitch me back up and they would send me home. And I'd have a follow-up visit the following Monday. This was a Thursday. That's important. Following Monday, I would have a follow-up visit with my doctor. And turns out that once they opened me up, I had endometriosis.

Mm-hmm.

And my abdomen was covered with scar tissue. So the 25-minute surgery turned into about a 2.5-hour surgery. Coming out of that surgery was really, really challenging. I remember feeling like I was in that The follow-up stupor for a really long time from being under like that.

Right.

And sent me home and things seemed fine at first. I went probably about 12 hours, was in a little bit of pain, but, you know, they give you meds and stuff. So it wasn't until about the 14, 16-hour mark that I started vomiting. And I continued to vomit. I couldn't keep down food or water. And this, of course, we're going into the weekend here. So it was Friday, I called and left appointments with the doctor, didn't hear from anybody. Saturday, I'm calling, you know, leaving appointment or leaving messages, not hearing from anybody. Finally, I got a call from an on-call doctor Saturday night who knew nothing about me or my case and just said, if she gets dehydrated, Take her to the emergency room. And of course, I am a patient who— this doesn't happen to me every day. I don't even know what it means to be dehydrated. Like, how do I even know if I'm dehydrated?

Right, right.

Looking back, I'm sure I was dehydrated. This had— that was over 48 hours without any liquids that stayed in my body. But, but I didn't know it. And so Sunday goes by, Mondays go by. And of course, Monday, I'm supposed to have the follow-up appointment with my doctor at 3:30. And at about 4:15, I called the office because I hadn't heard from her, and apparently she went home sick that day. Nobody had told her that I'd called.

Hmm.

Um, and so the next day, a Tuesday, I showered, got dressed, and planted myself in her office at 9 AM. And the front desk told me that she's not going to be in until 12:30, I should go and come back, and I just told them I wasn't leaving. You know, at this point I had no faith and trust that anybody in the office gave, you know, 2 flips about my situation. And about 10:30, the doctor called and asked to have me put on the phone. Apparently they'd gotten a message to her and she sent me over to Baptist Hospital to the emergency room where they did a CT scan and discovered that they'd stitched up part of my small intestine and that's why I wasn't keeping food or water down.

Yeah.

For all of that time. So I went in for another surgery and They admitted me for 3 days, gave me Ambien to sleep. I remember thinking, why is she giving me Ambien to sleep? Because I'd never had any sleep challenges before in my life.

Mm-hmm.

And the reason she gave me Ambien to sleep was that my body had been under a tremendous amount of stress. And so perhaps she anticipated that maybe I would have trouble sleeping. And as it turns out, I had been under a lot of stress. And after I was dismissed from the hospital, she sent me home and I didn't sleep for 144 hours. I went over 6 days without sleeping a wink, which I don't know if you've ever gone through that with yourself or any of your patients, Tabatha, but it's torture. I thought I was losing my mind. It was— I was laying in bed, I remember on night 2, just like, why am I not sleeping? And just begging God for sleep. And 3rd night, same thing. 4th night, same thing. 5th night. I mean, it just was like, it was torture.

You're going crazy.

I totally thought I was going crazy. I was emotional and weepy. I couldn't focus worth anything, you know, like I just— it was insane. And, you know, normally I probably would have called my doctor and asked, like, what do I need to do about this? But because of what I'd just been through, I didn't feel like my doctor cared. And I didn't feel like anybody in her office would have done anything to help me anyway. So I I ended up finally on the 7th night falling asleep, thank God. And, um, and that probably is where I really started getting interested in sleep. You know, I think up to that point I took sleep for granted. I was always a great sleeper. Um, but after that, you know, going through that crazy experience, and then on the other side of 6 days without sleep, I was experiencing unbelievable brain fog. Like, my brain just Would not work. I remember sitting on the couch. I had my computer on my lap. I was trying to get caught up on work, and like I'm I could feel my brain processing in the way that it used to process, except now it seemed like cotton balls were all stuffed in my brain. My thoughts couldn't get through, and of course I had crazy fatigue, and just I my whole body felt off. And so I went back to my primary care doctor, and that. Something clicked like, well, maybe my primary care doctor will help me out with all of this stuff. I could tell that something was really, really wrong post-surgery and went into my primary care doctor and told her what was going on. And she basically told me that my labs were normal and everything was fine and implied that I was completely just making it all up in my head. Maybe you're just becoming a hypochondriac from this experience. And I just pushed and pushed and pushed like, how can you say my labs are normal and things are fine? Cut me open and removed a body part. So during the surgery, I they also took my left ovary, and of course did the excision surgery to remove all the endometrial tissue that was implanted all over my abdomen. Like I mean, my body's mutating. You know something is wrong. And she finally said to me, Misty, even if I did run labs, I wouldn't know what they meant. And that it's like the floor fell out from under me then. Like I just could not believe. That I'm talking to someone who's supposed to be a primary care physician who has spent all these years in med school and their job is to help us navigate this health terrain and they wouldn't know what labs meant? Like nothing? You don't know anything? Like it just, it was like, it was my first experience as a patient with the conventional medical system and it was mind-blowing. And she finally, at my just utter insistence, Sent me to an endocrinologist in her practice, and that endocrinologist said the same thing. You know, your labs are normal. I will run some more labs. We will check everything out. She's kind of patronizing me, you know, and while we're talking, she comes over and starts feeling around on my throat. She says, I think you have nodules on your thyroid. Let's take you back for an ultrasound. So she took me back, and sure enough, I did. They were very, very large. And I asked her, you know, what causes thyroid nodules? And she said that they don't know what causes thyroid nodules. She could refer me to a surgeon. And incidentally, when I had gone back to the gynecologist after the OB-GYN, after my first surgery, and asked her, you know, what causes endometriosis? What do I need to do? She said, we don't know what causes endometriosis. You can Google it. I can put you on birth control and we can do surgery again if it comes back.

Hmm.

So I'm like seeing that this medical system is set up to do surgeries when things get bad, but it's not intended to help me curb things getting bad. Like, what do I need to do so things don't get bad? Like right now, my body's mutating. She came back, you know, referred me to a surgeon. My labs were all normal. Everything's fine. And I'm just at this point, I'm like, I'm just beside myself. It had been 6 months since the surgery, and I felt like I was just spiraling down, down, down, down, down. So, you know, I'm one of the fortunate ones that, you know, through grit and tenacity over about an 8-year period, I eventually did find doctors to help and protocols to help. And I started learning what I could do for myself as a patient. But, you know, certainly in the beginning of my journey, I felt like I was just running into dead ends everywhere that I went. I I never went back to that endocrinologist or that my primary care doctor again, or the OB-GYN again. Like all of them in my mind were like banished, and I started looking for other doctors, and I had a I had a hard time for a while finding someone. But eventually I had doctors running my labs. I found the ancestral health community. I started learning about all the lifestyle stuff that's really important for us to have good health. And two years after My surgery, I had mercury filling improperly drilled for my teeth, which I didn't know was improper. So I had a mysterious 45-pound weight gain, like out of the blue. At this point, I'm like fully paleo and I've cleaned up the house and, you know, there's no chemicals anywhere in my home. I have all like, you know, wool rugs, natural fibers everywhere. EMF, like Wi-Fi is off in my house. I'd gotten the meters and everything. I was working out with a trainer and it's like, how am I gaining 45 pounds?

Mm-hmm.

So it was— I've been through some things that are pretty stunning, but all along the way, I think what I've learned, I learned way more about the human body than I ever thought I would and how things work for women. But most importantly, I've learned how to advocate for myself. And that's really the ethos of what this community is that we've created together. And I say we, because certainly it's not just me that's made Healing Rosie what it is, but there's a whole community of women Some of them who were where I was early in my journey, some of them who are where I am now and are committed to supporting other women. But, you know, it's really challenging for us out there. Doctors don't— I have since learned, and I'm sure you've talked about this on other podcasts, that they did not even use women in their studies until the '90s.

Right.

Women were not even part of studies in medicine until the '90s. So, you know, we're in a— We're in a situation where, as the female perpetuator of the species, our bodies is extra sensitive to our environment and our environments have become very toxic. And we also have the unfortunate reality of not having medicine studying what's happening and what the effects are on our bodies beyond the last 20 years. It's kind of crazy. So yeah, it's the Wild West in some ways.

It is. And you've hit on a lot of things. One thing that's really key is you have such a strong personality and you, you're not a quitter. You're very tenacious. And so you kept searching for answers and pushing. And I feel like there's a lot of women who were raised not to be that way and maybe they're a little more timid or they feel like it's disrespectful to question your doctor. And so that's why I think your group, Healing Rosie, is so important. So important because there's so many women out there who don't feel confident enough to raise their voice and say anything, and so they struggle and suffer in silence.

Mm-hmm.

So I love that they can reach out to you and you can say, here you go, this is what you need to ask, this is how to do it. You don't have to ruffle feathers and be the cowboy that I am, but, you know, Find your way and ask for answers. And if you're not getting the answer you like, go somewhere else and it's okay. So I think that that's amazing.

You know, I felt like I was ruffling feathers a lot in the beginning. I don't feel like I ruffle feathers ever now. And I think, I think the big difference is finding doctors who are inclined to want to help you in the way that you want to be helped. You know, this idea that you're going to take this, like what you learn in this amazing functional medicine, integrative health space that we're all part of, You're going to learn this stuff and take it to your doctor and teach him or her is a pipe dream. It is a farce. If the doctors wanted to learn this stuff, they would go learn it. So you're, you're not likely to have much luck going to a doctor who's not already open to this way of treating patients and get results from them. So you're going to have to find another doctor. And I know that's intimidating.

Mm-hmm.

And it can feel overwhelming. And how do you even go about finding someone? And we can talk a little bit about that if you think that's something that would be helpful to your audience, but The important thing here is that you know that getting the kind of help that you ultimately need is going to require you having a partner, someone who wants to offer that help and give it to you. And like, I certainly was very tenacious and I do have a tenacious personality. And listen, if you, if you could have convinced doctors to help you who weren't already on this path, I would have done it.

Exactly.

It does not work like that. You know, it doesn't work that way. We have to find doctors who want to help us already.

And I can honestly say I was a doctor in the conventional world for, you know, over a decade, and it's not necessarily that they don't care, they don't want to help, but they don't have the tools. They have the training that they got in medical school. And if you're lucky, they go to a conference once or twice a year. for any updates in their specialty, but there's really no time for them to continue to learn and do research and see what new is on the horizon. So a lot of times you're going to go to your primary doctor and they're not going to have any idea what you're talking about if it's coming out of new evidence and new literature because they just don't even have time to even go there.

Right.

They're just trying to, like, see their patients every 15 minutes and, you know, do what the hospital's requiring them to do. I know myself, I was an obstetrician, so all I cared about was taking a nap, you know, in my—

Right.

My free half an hour that I would get. I'd be like, okay, I'm going to try and get some sleep today. I'm not going to go perusing PubMed and looking at the research and learning about the gut microbiome. You know, it was only through my own health painful journey, pain to purpose, that I finally Stopped and did that. So yeah, what are some tips that you would say to my listeners, like, here's how you can find a functional medicine physician or a health coach or someone to help you navigate this journey?

Yeah, you know, I think there's a couple of prongs to navigating well. Number one, you really do have to commit yourself to learning. Because no doctor is with you at home, and the number one reason why we get sick is because of our lifestyles. And so we have—we all have to be committed to learning what about our lifestyles are toxic and what changes we need to make. That's where a health coach can be really helpful, and in just being a student yourself. I mean, we're—we've got summits that are happening like every single week in this space on a variety of topics, and there are so many great. practitioners and experts who are prolifically creating content. There's podcasts like yours, and, you know, there's so many ways that we can learn if it's something that we really care about and we want to learn. Like, it's definitely more accessible now than it was even 10 years ago when my journey started. So, so that's the first thing is like, you know, there is a part of this that's the responsibility of the patient. It's not—

Mm-hmm.

The doctor isn't going to fix everything. You know, there's certainly Some value in having an awesome doctor and practitioner on your team. There's tremendous value in it but even they, they're going to write you a prescription and a protocol maybe and you still have to do it and if your lifestyle is putting garbage in while you're trying to clean it all up, then it's going to be a hard row.

Uh-huh.

So that's the first thing I would say is that everything isn't fixed by a doctor and I think it's really important that We acknowledge that and and face the reality of that. You know, the second thing is that I do think it's a pipe dream that your doctor is going to fix you entirely, and so you need to have realistic expectations of doctors and what they're going to be able to do for you. The way that I recommend women in our community find a doctor is is go to your local compounding pharmacy and ask them because the doctors, especially someone like you, Tabitha. who are writing prescriptions for bioidentical hormone replacement therapy and things like that tend to be definitely more on the functional slash, you know, how do we actually support your body in functioning better? So that's a really great way to find a good doctor. I love that tip. Yeah, and typically the compounding pharmacists, over time, they get to know these doctors and they'll know who's good. So that's a really great way to do it. Another thing is going to ifm.org/find-a-practitioner and you can put in your area or your zip code, maybe your area code too, and then they'll tell you who's in your area. One thing I will say though, just because someone is in your area and they have the functional medicine label on them does not necessarily mean they're a good doctor. So you still— this is why I think being part of a community like Healing Rosie is so helpful. Prepare notes. Like one of the things that happens a lot to women in our community is they'll go to doctors, and the doctors tend to be really conservative. Like we want to fix all these symptoms just with diet and lifestyle alone. Like they're really slow to put them on thyroid support if they need it, or put them on hormone support if they need it. And the thing the tricky part about that, and I'm dealing with this with my cousin right now. She has been working with the functional medicine doctor for a year, and I remember when I first talked to her saying. Your thyroid is low. Give it 90 days on this program, but if it's not getting better, you really need him to write you that prescription for thyroid support. Her doctor's a man, and there's a lot of wonderful male doctors out there. I definitely don't think that male doctors— there's anything wrong with— in fact, all the doctors that treated me like crap in the beginning were women.

Oh, no.

It isn't that, but men really don't understand what it's like to be a woman dealing with flabby, foggy, and fatigued. That's just the reality. They have no concept. Of what it's like to like soldier through your day knowing that you have commitments to your family, to your husband, to your kids. You're not going to let anybody down. So, you know, you put on a brave face and you go through it, but inside you're like so wrecked, you know.

Mm-hmm.

So, so I would— I'm just saying that because it's important that you know, and I'm— in whatever way that it's helpful to have someone give you permission, I'm giving you permission to expect that your doctor is going to provide a certain kind of support. And if you're not getting it from that doctor, find another one. So she's been working with her doctor for a really long time. He's not providing the support. Someone else in the community reached out because she's like, I'm looking at my labs. I'm not sleeping at night because my progesterone is low. I can see it on my labs. I've done everything else and my doctor just won't prescribe the progesterone. And she's like, prescribing hormones isn't a long-term solution. And this is the reality of what it's like as a patient, what it's like as me and as so many women who are probably listening right now. If you're not sleeping, you're not healing, period.

Truth.

If you cannot sleep at night, you could do that protocol till the cows come home and you are not going to get any better. If your body cannot go into parasympathetic rest, restore, repair, you will not get better. And so a major way that we can support our own healing is supporting our hormones. And supporting our thyroid so that we're getting good sleep at night.

Yeah.

So I'm looking for a doctor— when I'm looking for someone, I want someone who is going to be what is probably considered more aggressive in prescribing thyroid and hormone support because I know that when I get that support, I can function.

Right.

I can follow the protocols. I can put the time into meal prep. I can do all the extra stuff for family that I might need to do. I'm able to function every day.

Mm-hmm.

So that's what I'm looking for in a doctor. You know, there are chiropractors who are trained in functional medicine. I really like getting referrals, you know?

Okay.

So the more you can get referrals and get someone else to say this person was amazing. There's a lot of options online. There's programs like SteadyMD where you get basically a primary care doctor concierge medicine, and I think their functional medicine program is like $199 a month or something. But you get as many appointments as you want, unlimited access to your doctor. I mean, there's a lot of programs available now. Many doctors are going to a model similar to that in their clinics to be able to support patients because the health insurance piece is kind of tricky.

Oh yeah, don't get me started on that discussion.

Yeah, I know. So, and you know, one of the things they say, just a little tip on the health insurance front, because a lot of times finding a really good doctor It's hard to find them that are in-network for your health insurance. And I really recommend to the women in our community to get the paperwork and file that out-of-network doctor appointment and get whatever reimbursement you can. But whatever labs that doctor orders and whatever prescriptions would be covered by your insurance, you will still have coverage for those things. And that is way more— that's going to hit your pocketbook a lot harder than finding a doctor in-network who won't run your labs for you and write the prescriptions anyway.

Right.

You know, and then you're, then you're stuck and you're suffering other ways.

So that's definitely a great point. I think it's so important that you find a doctor who cares about your quality of life and your ability to function every day.

Yes.

You know, it is a journey and you want the best outcome, but you also want to be able to function every day and take care of your kids and do your job and all of that. So sometimes I'll explain to my patients, you need thyroid support or hormone support because those organs are under attack. And until we get that attack to calm down, they're not going to be able to function. And if they're functioning well, you're going to be able to fight that attack a lot easier and heal a lot quicker.

That's right.

So I completely agree with you. You know, we need to end the suffering. It's not necessary, right?

And it almost sometimes feels like there's this attitude of like, well, I did get a little bit of healing. I do feel a little— I even did that with my cousin. She's like, well, I do feel a little better than I did. And I'm like, yeah, but is that your goal? Like, are you still utterly exhausted all the time? And, you know, and when we're tired, you know what that means? When we're tired, it means we're short-tempered. It means we don't have the emotional reserves to deal with the stressors of life.

Mm-hmm.

So the stressors of life, their impact on us is magnified because We don't handle them well, and all of that impacts our bodies. And you know what all of that does? It makes our hormones worse. Yes. So there's this spiraling down that's happening, and we're really hoping that the diet and lifestyle changes all make us better. But man, it's just— the speed is not fast enough. I mean, it's like having a car that just can't move into 3rd gear. You're not going to ever get up that hill if the car can't go fast enough that It can outrun the gravitational pull, you know, pulling that car backwards down the hill.

Yeah, exactly. I know. I have so many patients who say, when they finally do feel better, I didn't know I could feel like this, because you've been so miserable for so long that becomes your norm and you don't even know what to look forward to anymore. So I can see where people like your cousin, they get stuck and they, they start to settle because you lose hope.

And yeah, it's boiling the frog slowly too. You kind of forget what it feels like to feel just amazing in your body, you know?

Yeah, and every woman deserves that. Oh my gosh. So you mentioned sleep a few times, and that is, you know, so key. I can attest to that as an obstetrician. I went 15 years without sleeping And now that I'm no longer delivering babies, I'm getting sleep and I am healing so much quicker, you know, restore, repair, regenerate. You have a sleep summit coming up that you're part of. Tell me about that because it's so important for women.

Yeah, well, you know, I've had so many struggles with sleep, not only the 144 hours without sleep, but I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine who's a chiropractor. a couple months after my surgeries, and the first question he asked me was, how are you sleeping? And my response was, I mean, fine. I'm getting to bed. I mean, I'd never really had trouble sleeping. He said, what time do you go to bed? And I was like, yeah, probably like 2 AM. So he's like, what's it like when you wake up? And I'm like, well, I'm just waking up, so I'm feeling like really groggy and You know, I'm— it's because I'm waking up. I've just been sleeping. And he said, all right, no more 2 AM. You have got to go to bed. You're not even— you're not even asleep during the time when your body makes hormones. So you've got to get to bed. I want you in bed by 9 o'clock. I did that for a while. Um, now I'm more like about 10 o'clock. Um, I want you in bed by 9 o'clock. And he said, when you wake up in the morning, you should feel refreshed and ready to start your day. And I remember going, like, that's—

Uh-huh. What the heck is that?

I have— I had my entire adult life, I had never woken up feeling refreshed. And so I decided I would follow his advice. I was pretty desperate at this point. And of course, I'd go to bed at 9 o'clock, couldn't fall asleep. It took me 6 months, 6 months to shift my sleep so that 9 o'clock rolls around and I'm actually getting tired. You know, I would get my second wind about 9:30 that would like propel me to 2. So my cortisol was jacked all over the place, of course. And I started doing cold baths. That actually was like kind of the trigger that really helped me kind of lock in this new pattern and rhythm for sleeping. I would get in about 62-degree water at night for maybe 40 minutes.

Hmm.

And I would sit in a cold bath. And, you know, there's lots of people in our space who talk about the benefits of cold therapy. Um, we have Wim Hof, of course, who's the extreme version of jumping into ice. He's known as the Iceman. But, um, but, you know, there's lots of people in our space who talk about it. Dave Asprey's talked about it quite a bit. Ben Greenfield's talked about it quite a bit. You know, we've learned a lot about, you know, the effect of cold on recovery in the body, um, and how, how helpful it is. But it really helped me get my sleep dialed in. And ever since then, I've had this fascination. with sleep because I was so impacted and I, you know, started learning a lot about it. And then as my— after the mercury fillings were improperly removed, I had 45-pound weight gain. My hormones all crashed. I did a Genova complete hormone panel, which is kind of like the Dutch test, and it showed that like all my hormones were zero, my methylation was zero, like everything was totally tanked.

Uh-huh.

And then I started having sleep issues and I've had Sleep issues where progesterone helped initially, and then over time as I've gotten older, I'm still like right now working with my doctors on my hormones. Still, I've been detoxing metals for the last couple of years and really trying to get all this mercury out of my body. But my hormones just took such a beating from that, and and so I've dealt with the night sweats and the hot flashes, which is just so miserable and so. Estrogen has been my friend during during those seasons. You know, right now I'm I'm basically on hormone support across the board, and it makes a massive difference for my sleep. So sleep is something that because I've had so many things affect my sleep and my body's ability to sleep well, it's it's something that I've made a point of study myself. I've learned a lot about what helps us to sleep better. I've been wearing amber glasses since 2012. You know, after dark, the amber glasses go on and, you know, I'm really trying to keep my body trained to go to sleep when I'm supposed to be sleeping. So I developed kind of the idea and the framework for Your Best Sleep Ever to help all of us who have struggles around our sleep. And certainly there's a lot more than the hormonal stuff. I mean, people are dealing with sleep apnea, they're dealing with physical pain that's keeping them from being able to sleep at night. Structural stuff is keeping them from sleeping. Blood sugar issues are affecting their ability to sleep well. Being in these artificial environments that we live in impacts our sleep. Not understanding, like, what our bodies need to sleep— like, I just added room-darkening curtains, and oh my gosh, that— I could not believe after all the improvements I've seen in my sleep, that was another one.

Yeah.

Made it even better. So, you know, this is pretty deep topic. And, you know, we didn't only talk about sleep on Your Best Sleep Ever, but we also recorded tons of interviews on energy and fatigue and like what causes that and what do we need to do to get our energy back. So I'm super excited about this, this summit that partnered with Health Talks to put together for not only the Healing Rosie community, but, you know, the community at large. I want everyone to have the support they need to sleep well and to hear from the experts on this topic so that they can learn what might their unique situation need, you know.

Right, right. And this is an online summit, so anyone can join, correct?

Anyone can join. That's right. Yep. You can join and, and you can sign up, watch during the 16th through the 22nd, I believe, is the dates of the summit, where you can watch all of the interviews. We'll have probably around 6 interviews a day, 6 to 7 interviews a day going live. And then the following weekend will be encore weekend. So you can, you know, catch interviews that seem really relevant for you during the, during the week. And then of course you have the option if you want to add these interviews to your health library, you can do that. Lots and lots of purchase bonuses available. So many people, you know, are coming around and resonating with the vision for what we want to do with this. event and chipping in to make sure people get the resources they need to heal. So it's super exciting.

That is wonderful. So that link will probably be on healingrosie.com and on your Facebook. Um, am I able to put it on my podcast link?

Yes, you can absolutely— you can absolutely create a link, um, yourself to direct people, um, through your link. And, um, and if you're part of the Healing Rosie Community. We, we have graphics plastered everywhere.

Perfect.

You can definitely find us that way too. But, you know, sign up and come get a great education. Join in with the community. We're going to be doing lots of ask me anythings with our speakers in that week between the summit airing and then the encore week so that people who watch and participate have the opportunity to get their questions answered, which is You know, just— we did that with the last event that I did, the Fix for Female Hormones that I did in 2018 with Health Talks, and it really adds another dimension to the whole experience because not only do you get the opportunity to learn yourself, but you get extra help in figuring out how to apply this to your unique situation, you know. So yeah, the how-to is wonderful too.

Oh, and the Fix for Female Hormones is still available.

It is, right? It is. It's still available. I believe the URL is fixyourfemalehormones.com.

Okay.

So yeah, you can go check that out.

Yeah, everybody go check that out. That's fabulous.

Yeah, we've got about— there's fewer interviews with that one. I think I had around 25 or 30 interviews.

Okay.

But yeah, I mean, I even doing these summits, I learned so much too. And just, I'm able to incorporate a lot of new distinctions into the programs that we create for the community because I I want people— I mean, it's, it's challenging navigating this as a layperson. And, you know, the more distinctions and things that I can learn, the easier it is for me to kind of sequence this for members of the community. But I want everybody to get the help and support they need and to feel like they're not alone on this journey. I, for years, I felt like I was doing this all by myself and it sucked.

Yeah. Oh, it's so amazing that you're doing this for women. They need someone to hold their hand. They really do. Do you work one-on-one with people, or is it all in the group setting?

It's mostly in the group setting. We have the Facebook group. Um, I do have a program called My Body, My Healing that, um, is 5 modules taking them through, you know, how do you advocate for yourself and find a doctor and work with your insurance companies, and what are the protocols that really work, and let's figure out this hormone thing, and what are the labs we need to run. Like, you know, you Really want to give people a good education and give them a lot of tools so that they feel in control of this journey for themselves. And sometimes in that program, I'll work with people one-on-one. But, you know, mostly it's in the group setting. I really— I'll get emails from time to time from people and, you know, I'll try to be helpful if I can in those situations. But what I really love is when people post in the group.

Yeah.

And then that way, that conversation isn't just me and the person, but a lot of other people get the benefit of Seeing this conversation happen, you know. Sometimes you don't even realize that what you're struggling with is something that you can get help for. You know, you don't even—it's not even, you know, dawning on you that there's another way of going about a problem that you're having. And that's what's really powerful about this community. I mean, the Facebook group every post gets twenty, thirty comments.

You know, because—and people are posting about everything. You know, I'm on there and I'm like, wow, they're talking about. They're talking about Epstein-Barr. They're talking about mercury. They're talking about endometriosis. It's fabulous, and people are teaching each other. They are.

I just think that's great. It's one— it's a— it's— we lift the boats together, and there's so many wonderful women who've, just like me, been on the journey a long time. And over time, you learn a lot, and you get to the point where it's like really gratifying to be able to give back and to help your sisters and to give people a hand up, you know. That's really what my vision was for this community from the very beginning, and it's wonderful that so many women are engaged in this vision with me because there's no way that I could personally support everyone in the way that people are getting support in that community. I mean, it's, it's truly a place where we're all doing it together.

Yes, that's— I feel the same way. Like, I have people who come to me, oh, you're my last hope, I've seen every doctor, and There's only one of me and there's so many people who need help. And so we need to band together and just educate the masses and help each other, you know, extend a hand.

Totally.

And you had mentioned that you have, um, kind of your lab cheat sheet. That's something that I really like that you offer. So tell us about your lab sheet.

Yeah, well, we had— it's the lab tracker, the Healing Rosie Lab Tracker. I've partnered with a couple of really awesome practitioners in our space to curate the optimal lab values. What happened for me in my journey, and I touched on it when I was sharing about it earlier, is I went to my doctor and I was like, I think we need to run labs and see what's going on. Her response was, finally, even if I did run the labs, I wouldn't know what they meant. Over time, I learned that the doctors don't even know what labs to run. There's also resistance even though there's a problem, and I saw this with Gynecologists and stuff, like, how about you run all my hormone labs and let's see how everything is doing? And there's like resistance. Well, what? We don't need to run all your hormones. Like, the standard of care is not to run all your hormone labs, okay? That's just the standard of care. So I— if you don't have a lab to show that your thyroid is actually low, the doctor is never going to be able to prescribe you thyroid support. I suspected I needed support for my thyroid, but I remember going time after time running, please run thyroid labs, and they would say, your thyroid labs are fine. It wasn't until later that I learned that first of all, they're running the wrong labs based on science from the 1960s. Second of all, they don't even know the labs to run, but then they're also using conventional lab ranges, which they're really disease ranges.

Uh-huh.

They're measuring for, are you in an advanced disease state? If you are, Then we have a protocol to put you on some kind of prescription drug or do a surgery or whatever, right?

Mm-hmm.

But if you're— if you're what they call subclinical, meaning you're— you're trending toward having blood sugar issues, having prediabetes, or you're trending towards some of these things, they're never gonna catch it. It's not until you're in a really advanced disease state are you going to get any help from them. And by then it's like, Oftentimes too far gone. Like, it's, you know, how do you really recover? So the Lab Tracker tells you, here's the optimizing labs that you need to run, and here's the optimal values which are used in functional medicine. And not everyone, just so you know, not everyone in functional medicine agrees completely on what those optimal ranges should be, but it's a whole lot more useful of a tool than the conventional ranges. And then you can see for yourself. You have something you can give your doctor to say, these are the labs I want run. You can also go to a consumer lab company and run the labs yourself. You don't have to go through your doctor to get your labs run. And you can also start making sense of it for yourself because we have in there what it might mean if they're high, what it might mean if they're low. You know, it's not a super linear thing with lab work where like, you know, if a value is this, then this is the treatment protocol. You kind of combine your labs with your symptoms.

Yeah.

And there's a little bit of reading the tea leaves, but as a patient, I am so much more empowered when I know what labs need to be run and I know what the optimal values are. It opens up the conversation. So I will get my labs done before my doctor's appointment. I go through myself and then I go into that appointment armed with my questions. Here's what I'm seeing in my labs. Here's what I'm seeing with my symptoms. You know, what do we need to do? If there's something I want to pursue, I talk to the doctor about it.

Uh-huh.

I can actually show up for this journey. Otherwise, you're just at the mercy of whatever the doctor says to you, you know, which may or may not address the underlying symptoms that you're dealing with.

Yeah.

So yeah, it's a great tool.

I love that. I love that. Makes my job so much easier as a physician, I'll tell you that. You know, when the patient's a little bit educated and they're ready to have those discussions. And so I really appreciate that. Well, I, I'm just so happy you shared your story. I just think it's so important for us women to learn from each other And lift each other up and be on this journey together. So I appreciate what you're doing in this space, and I know thousands of other women do as well. So where can we find you? Remind us again.

Yeah, well, the website is healingrosie.com, and from the website, you know, you can find your way to a lot of the other properties. But on Instagram, we're @rosie.radio, and there's a Facebook page, Misty Williams Facebook page, and there's a group on Facebook, Healing Rosie, and I feel like a lot of the magic happens in the Facebook group. You know, that's where the women are all really coming together to support each other. And, you know, we have a YouTube channel too. And I mean, there's, there's lots of different properties. I mean, once someone's on the list, you know, you'll get links to the different places so that you can find content that'll, that'll support you. But healingrosie.com, you can find everything there.

Wonderful. Well, I'm so glad you took your pain and created your purpose and you're sharing it with all of us. So beautiful. So thank you so much.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure chatting.

You as well. Take care.

All right, we'll see ya.

Okay, ladies, thank you so much for joining me on that awesome episode. I'm sure you loved her like I did, so check her out. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please hit the subscribe button and give me a 5-star review or whatever review you think is appropriate. I just want to know that you guys are listening, and I want to know how you feel about it. If there's something else I can talk about or improve upon, don't hesitate to reach out to me and let me know. And share it with everyone you know. We got to get the word out. We got to support other women and lift each other up. We're in this together. And send me your questions. I would love to shout you out on my question of the week every Friday. Because I want to know what you're concerned about, and I want to help you navigate your health journey and give you the answers that you need. So shoot me your questions. Contact me on Facebook or Instagram at Dr. Tabatha—that's three A's T A B A T H A, no I—or check out my website at www.drtabatha.com.

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Supporting each other, and know that you've got this. Take care.