Episode 44: The Functional Approach to Fibromyalgia, with Dr. Rodger Murphree

Hi, I'm Dr. Tabitha, 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, insomnia, you name it, then you've come to the right place. I want to be your functional gynecologist. So welcome. Hi, friends. I'm so excited about today. We are going to be talking about something special super important, fibromyalgia. So even if you haven't been diagnosed with this, I still think you're going to want to listen to this episode today because the symptoms that are associated with this diagnosis are rampant. Like, we all could probably check the boxes on these symptoms. Anxiety or depression, fatigue, joint pain, muscle aches. I mean, the list goes on and on. I was at a point in my life where I actually thought I had fibromyalgia and was on that path to finding a physician to diagnose me when I stumbled upon functional medicine and realized the root cause of my issues. And what I realized was fibromyalgia is a constellation of symptoms. It's not really figuring out the root cause of your issues. And when I met my guest today, I was just so excited to hear that he is treating fibromyalgia from a functional medicine standpoint. He realizes that labeling you with a disease based on a bunch of symptoms and then finding a corresponding drug to treat it is not going to heal you. It's not going to get you well in the long term. It's not going to get rid of your pain, make you feel better. So if you yourself aren't dealing with this, you might very well have someone in your life that you know who is struggling and dealing with these issues. So I'm really excited to talk to Dr. Roger Murphy. So please stay with me for this whole episode. And like I've said before, if you don't have time to listen to the whole thing now, the beauty about the podcast is you can hit pause and come back later. You can come back the next day, next week, whenever you have time. I love listening to podcasts for that reason because you, you can always pick up where you left off. You can listen again if you feel like you missed something. You're like, hey, what were they saying? That was really interesting, but I don't remember the details. You can listen again. We are here for you, so please listen to this episode as I interview Dr. Roger Murphree. Welcome, Dr. Murphree, to the Functional Gynecologist podcast.

Hey. I'm so excited to be here. This is going to be a lot of fun.

Yeah, I'm super excited, too, because you have something awesome coming out that you've been working so hard on. The fibro summit, right?

Oh, yeah. So it's nine months of intense love and joy, blood and sweat. But no, it's. The five row summit is a labor of love. I'm just really excited about the opportunity to share that information with individuals who are looking for answers and haven't been able to find them.

That is wonderful. I think there's so many people suffering out there. You know, women especially. I see them so often. They've run the gamut of doctors. Right. They've had all the tests that come back normal, and then they find someone like you, and you actually have success at helping them, right?

Fortunately, I do. And, you know, I've been doing it for 20 years, so I've had some. I've had some practice and trial and error, but, yeah, it would be difficult. I mean, just putting myself in their shoes, as I often try to do. And then, I'm sure, you know, you encounter these patients as well. They've kind of been everywhere and tried everything. They're kind of get on the. They get on the medical merry go round, one doctor after the next. And, you know, it's really a frustrating illness to have because there's not many doctors that understand it.

Yeah. So explain what the most common symptoms are. What are people coming to you complaining of?

So for those of you who don't know what fibromyalgia is, and there's probably a lot of people that still don't. I mean, I get that question a lot. You know, what is fibromyalgia? Fibromyalgia syndrome. It's a group of symptoms that people have in common. So diffuse achy, sometimes disabling pain, exhaustion, you know, fatigue, brain fog where you can't, you know, mental clarity is off. Oftentimes they have low moods and anxiety, restless leg syndrome and irritable bowel syndrome. These are the common symptoms we see with fibromyalgia.

Okay. And, you know, that list of symptoms is so common for other things that women suffer from. Right. Like hormonal imbalance and thyroid disorders. They probably have. Do you find that when women come to you, they've already had all that ruled out? Or not necessarily had a good evaluation. Evaluation done.

Yeah. Tabitha. So what I see is typically, by the time they find me, they've been to, you know, half a dozen doctors, and over, you know, typically three or four years, they've had all these different tests done to rule out autoimmune disease or ms, you know, thyroid issues. And then finally they, you know, they run the gamut of all these different doctors, and finally, someone puts the rubber stamp on their forehead that says, hey, I think you got fibromyalgia. And then the problem is, is once they get that diagnosis, it follows them the rest of their life, and they're treated differently. And, you know, and so from a patient standpoint, you want to know what the heck's the matter with you, right? So you want someone to be able to tell you, oh, yeah, you have. You have this. So when they get the diagnosis, the first reaction a lot of times is, thank goodness someone finally tells me that I've got something. I'm not crazy. But then what they find out is that the conventional treatment for it is typically just learn to live with it. Here's a few drugs that we've got to suppress the symptoms. That's unfortunately kind of common in conventional medicine. But, you know, you just have to learn to live with it.

Yeah. So tell me, why do you think some women develop fibromyalgia?

No, it's interesting, and I think you. I think you would find this interesting. I know when you. You. And you did a great job, so I'm really excited to have you on summit in the fibro Summit. You know, we talked a little bit about this, about why women, you know, why is it, you know, fibromyalgia affects women typically between the age of 40 and, you know, into their late 60s, early 70s. And the question is always was, why? It's women. Why is it 98% of people have fibro women? And obviously, the first place you're going to think is hormones, right? And so I really think there's something with estrogen, progesterone that we've not found that I think is probably there. But the other hormone that I think is the common denominator for fibromyalgia is serotonin. So serotonin, this brain chemical, I find in working with fibromyalgia patients, either men or women, I find that for women, typically, they get low in serotonin. So if they have anxiety or depression, they're low in serotonin. Men tend to get low in norepinephrine. Another brain Chemical. And this is research I did years ago writing another book that I wrote, treating and beating anxiety and depression. Now, whether that is scientifically valid, I don't really see that in the literature, although people do speculate about that. But when you get low in serotonin, you lower your pain threshold, so pain becomes more magnified. And that really is the driving force of fibromyalgia, is that their pain threshold is low, and so pain is magnified. And it doesn't matter what's triggering that pain. It can be osteoarthritis, you know, wear and tear, degeneration. It can be an autoimmune disease, autoimmune arthritis, like Sjogren's or Ryder's. It can be osteoporosis, bone loss. It can be old scar tissue. But once that pain threshold is lowered, and they also develop a thing called central pain sensitivity, where their nervous system is overloaded, takes in stimuli, and it's accentuated, including the pain stimuli. So they experience pain in a magnified way that others don't.

Yeah, I think you're right on with all of that. And the drug companies realize that as well, because now they market the antidepressants, the serotonin reuptake inhibitors, for pain management of these illnesses. So do you find that the pharmaceuticals help with fibromyalgia, or. We need to go deeper and get to the root cause.

You know, so well as a functional medicine practitioner, you know, really what you want to do is you want to find and fix the underlying causes of these symptoms, no matter what the illness. And in fibromyalgia, one of the real problems is. Or challenges is there's so many dad gum symptoms, you know, like, you know, they have trouble. I didn't mention this earlier, but they have trouble with their sleep, the brain fog. I mentioned the ibs, you know, the problems with loose bowel movements or constipation or stomach pain or the chronic pain, the low energy. If you go the conventional route, which is all about suppressing symptoms, with medications, there's. There's just too many symptoms to suppress. So before you know it, with fibromyalgia, you're on half a dozen to a dozen drugs. You know, you're a drug to put you asleep, a drug to wake you up, a drug to speed you up, a drug to slow you down. I mean, it just. It's a recipe for disaster. You cannot drug your way out of fibromyalgia. In fact, I would say, Tabitha, that drug therapy is a hindrance to getting over Fibromyalgia, it actually creates more problems than it helps, at least long term. And I'm not anti drug. I'm not. Thank goodness we have them. Thank goodness. But in a chronic condition like fibro, the only way to feel good again and to stay that way is you have got to get healthy. And drugs, at least long term, they don't make you healthy. Now, they can be life saving, no doubt about it. And sometimes they are your only option and sometimes even your best option. But with a chronic illness like fibroids, it just creates more problems.

Yeah, I would totally agree. I mean, I was going down that path. I could see being labeled fibromyalgia in my own future. And so this really hits home for me because having Hashimoto's autoimmune thyroiditis at age 18, having Raynaud's syndrome, having IBS, having all of these chronic problems, you know, chronic knee pain, chronic joint pain, like, the list kept getting bigger and bigger, you know, and I was only in my 30s by this point on all these medicines, I saw, you know, my future being called fibromyalgia because I was to the point where I couldn't function. I was in so much pain, I was so exhausted. Like all of those symptoms you're describing, right? So I feel like women can go down two paths. They can go down the, yep, you have fibromyalgia. Here's some drugs to mask your symptoms. Or you can go down the path of, how did I get here? What are my root issues that I need to address and reevaluate, you know, because that's what I did. I completely revamped my diet and my life. I started sleeping again, I stopped eating processed foods. I got rid of my crazy job stressors. And when I reclaimed my own health, all of those symptoms started dissipating. Right? Like, I still get some of that stuff every now and then, but it's not my daily life. You know, it doesn't consume me, it doesn't run my life. It's more of a, you know, I do something stupid and I pay the price now. So I feel like there's so much hope for women with these list of symptoms or this label of fibromyalgia. And I feel like you have done such a great job at like showing them. Here is the answer. Here's the solution, right? So explain to me a little bit about your Murphy method.

So it's real original, the Murphy. So. And someone tell me one time, you know, Dr. Murphy, you need to coin, you know, your Protocol, something that people can remember you by. And, you know, I racked my brain forever. And just finally, I think one of my assistants said, you know, it's the Murphy method. It's just what you've done forever. So. But the Murphy method is really based on what you and I have been trained on in functional medicine, and it's really based on finding and fixing the underlying causes of the symptoms. And that's really the, you know, that. That sounds simplistic in a way. It's kind of like when I say, I always tell people that the only way, you know, I mentioned this earlier, the only way to feel good is you got to get healthy. But that means different things to different people. But look at if you've got a symptom, if you kind of think about this, you know, it totally makes sense. You know, a symptom is a warning sign. That's all it is, that something's gone wrong in your body's ability to operate correctly. You know, we're, as you know, we're healing dynamos. We, you know, we have a new stomach lining every three days with the actual surface cells that contact food being renewed every five minutes. It's amazing. It's amazing. But with the Murphy method, it's really about finding and fixing the underlying causes. And the place to start for fibromyalgia, and I think really by anybody with a chronic illness, is making sure that they're getting deep restorative sleep. That's number one. Because if they're not getting deep restorative sleep, they're going to deplete their stress coping chemicals. And when they deplete their chemicals like serotonin now, they lower their pain threshold. Serotonin is the happy hormone. So when your serotonin is compromised, you tend to be a little more anxious, can have problems with low moods. You have more serotonin receptors in your intestinal tract than you do in your brain. So you can have problems with IBS when you get low. You can't regulate your. Your bowel movements. Then number two. So it's sleep's number one, making sure you're filling up your stress coping savings account with deep restorative sleep each night. Then number two is fixing any problems with our hormones, the adrenal glands, the thyroid, these glands that help the body work like it's supposed to. I find that 70% of my patients with fibromyalgia have something wrong with their thyroid, and 85% have something wrong with their stress coping glands. The adrenal glands. Then Number three, I really believe with fibromyalgia you have to saturate the cells with high doses of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and essential fatty acids. These are the building blocks that make the hormones, that make the enzymes that make the chemicals that allow the body to work at optimal levels. And without these, these nutrients, the body can't operate like it could. And you can't do it with the centrum silver or one a day. You know, that's the, that's the. Based on the rda, which is the recommended disease allowance. Right. It's just enough to keep you from getting beriberi or scurvy. It's really not going to do anything. And then, and then last, you've got to fix any type of gut issues because as you know so well as an expert in functional medicine, really the health of our gut, our digestion, our elimination, is crucial for overall health. So those four things really make up kind of the Murphrey method is focusing on those four things not to be too long winded. I am sorry, but the purpose of that is if you have got 15 tacks in your foot and I pull out one or two tacs, you're not going to know much of the difference. But if I can pull out 10 tacks rather quickly, you're going to notice a difference. And these four areas, if we can fix these four areas, focus on those and start to fix those. Those are the main driving underlying causes of the symptoms of fibromyalgia. You know, people want to do all this colon cleanses and parasite. You know, I don't even know what all they want to do, but they miss the point. It really boils down to these four key things. If you get these right, you're going to find that you're dramatically improved.

Yeah, I think you are so right on. I mean, I'm living proof that you need sleep. Ask any obstetrician, they will tell you that it's just you can't function long term without good restorative sleep. Because it's. I think of sleep as like the beginning of your day. Like if you didn't sleep well, your day is gonna go poorly. Right. It's not the end of your day, it's getting restored to start your fresh new day. And so I think that if you really make that a priority and get some good restorative sleep, then you might actually have energy to move your body and prep your food and make good food choices. And I love that you are saying you can't just use the recommended daily allowance for vitamins. Because like you said, that is just the minimal dose that's going to prevent a really bad disease. It's not our optimal functioning dose. The ranges that we use developed back in 1950s for, you know, those are way off. So I think having a pharmaceutical grade, you know, supplement that we know is efficacious is actually going to optimize your levels. I think you're right on with that because some people just think vitamins are, I don't know, make to make you feel good or whatever, but they're like necessary cofactors for your enzymes and your hormones and your neurotransmitters. Right. I think even doctors, conventionally trained doctors, forget how important and essential they are. So I love that you actually address that. That's great. Do you do testing with your patients or do you just go by symptom management trying to get to the root of the cause?

No, you know, as a functional medicine practitioner, I really believe you need to test. I think really ideally that is the way really define what's going on. If you don't test and be thorough with your testing. It's a lot of guessing. And people can read my book. And the Murphrey method is discussed in there. It's called the Jumpstart. It's part of a spin off of the Murphy method called the Jumpstart protocols, which you can do it yourself. But really for the complicated patients that I work with who work with me one on one, I'm blessed to work with patients all over the world, but you know, by phone now and they really need testing because as you know, just like you mentioned Hashimoto's, I mean, Hashimoto's is something that's missed, I mean, chronically missed in conventional medicine. I find that I have so many patients who have the beginning of Hashimoto's and it's never been found. Their tsh, the thyroid stimulating hormone, which is a normal test done by most doctors for thyroid, that's normal and can be normal for years until your thyroid eventually burns itself out. Then and only then does your TSH elevate. And then they say, oh gosh, you got a problem with your thyroid, we got to put you on some Synthroid. But that could take, that could take years as you know. So I really believe that testing is really important.

Yeah, yeah. And meanwhile you're feeling horrible all those 10 years, right. Because even though your levels are in this so called normal range, your cells can't hear the signals, they can't Utilize the hormones. So nothing's optimized. And I think that's such an important point. Like, someone might say, well, I've had that tested and I'm fine, but have you had it tested appropriately? So I think if people have been told that they're fine and they don't feel fine, they need to keep searching. Right. They need to seek someone like you out, because there are other ways of looking at it and getting to the root causes. So important. I just. I can't emphasize that enough, you know.

Well, you know, so if they come to see you and, you know, they're working with you, they're going to get a very thorough thyroid panel. But most people, when they go see their doctor, and I hear this over and over, you know, they go to the doctor and their hair's falling out. You know, they get. Maybe the lateral third of their eyebrows are thinning out. Their hair, their head hair is thinning out. And as a woman, I mean, that's, you know, it's terrible as a man, but as a woman, it's really, you know, shocking and frustrating and can be, you know, create a lot of inner stress, for sure, but. And then they have no energy. Maybe they're gaining some weight, dry skin, brittle nails, constipated, all the things that go with low thyroid. And their. Their doctor here, she says, oh, gosh, you've got all the symptoms of low thyroid. We're going to, you know, let's do a test. I think you might have something wrong with your thyroid. Then they do the TSH and the maybe T4 that comes back normal. And they tell them, hey, good news, everything's normal. And then the person's left with, what the heck is the matter with me? You know? Right. So I, you know, for my patients, I know, like, we've had this conversation. You know, when you're getting your thyroid tested, you really want to check free and total T4, T3, TSH, T3, uptake, reverse T3. Not a lot of people talk about that. And then check for thyroid antibodies. I think everybody needs to have their thyroid antibodies checked and have them checked periodically if they have a real chronic illness.

Exactly. You need to know if your body's attacking your own thyroid. That's a big deal. And conventional doctors aren't trained to check that because there's no pill to treat it. Right. So that doesn't mean it's not important, and that doesn't mean there aren't treatments out there. I will tell you myself, just removing gluten from my Diet saved my thyroid. Like, I. My immune system stopped attacking it, and now it functions on its own. And it's amazing just by doing that one thing, you know, are there any specific diets that you recommend for all your patients or is it pretty individualized?

I think, Tabitha, that food allergies are the great masquerader of all symptoms. And having said that, I think that if you got a chronic illness, you want to know what it is that's helping trigger or fuel this chronic illness and these symptoms. And one of the things that can do that is just the foods that you eat every day. I mean, you contact the world from outside, gets inside by the foods that you eat or drink. So if they're working with me, then I do food allergy testing, do the ELISA test to look to see if they have any delayed sensitivity allergies for two foods. In my book, I talk about just doing an elimination diet. So I encourage everybody to come off all dairy, all gluten, you know, so wheat and barley and millet, spelt and rye, all nightshades, which are eggplant, tomato, potatoes, tobacco. Try to steer clear. Can't, can't do it. But try to get as much sugar out of your diet. No artificial sweeteners, no eggs, no citrus. And so people say, what am I going to eat? What am I going to eat? Look at all those vegetables that are out there. And we're not taking away any animal proteins other than dairy. So you certainly can certainly have chicken and beef and those kind of things. But what people find, and I'd say probably 70% of people do the elimination diet, they're going to find one or more food or food groups that when they go off of them and then they re challenge them in three or four weeks, they add them back in their diet, they get a negative reaction. And that could be something subtle like bloating and gas, or it could be something very dramatic like a migraine headache. But until you know that, you don't know. Right? And the only way to know is to get it out of your system and then to challenge it back in. And I find that when I'm working with my patients to do the food allergy testing they got, depending on what their results are, they may go off these foods for a month, or if it's a real severe allergy, may go off three months. But over that period of time, as we're working to get them healthier and healthier and healthier, they can add back, typically about 90% of those foods back. However, there's typically going to be a couple. And sometimes that is gluten, especially with Hashimoto's, as you found out, that they can't put back in their diet. If they do, it doesn't take very long before they realize that it's got them back in a flare, got them back into the symptoms as they're trying to avoid.

Mm, yeah. And at that point, it's a lot easier to avoid those foods because you have that negative association with how you feel. Right. So I think it. I find the elimination diet super empowering. I just think it's a great reset. It calms your immune system down, you start to feel better. And then when you reintroduce and you have those negative symptoms, it's so much more obvious. And then you can feel empowered to be like, okay, I'm gonna choose not to eat that anymore because I have conf over how I feel, you know, And I just find so much power in that. I think it's a great way to do it. So, yeah, usually do that or with the food sensitivity testing, see what is your immune system reacting to? Right. I mean, we really do need to calm the immune system down. I think that's key.

Well, especially in fibromyalgia because it's overreacted. You know, it's. And can be overreacted with. That's Hashimoto's or some of the other issues that are going on that the body's attacking itself at. Yeah, definitely. I think that, you know, food is our medicine. Right. And you know, let food be your medicine. That was a very wise saying. The thing about diet though, for most people is it's the long game. You know, it's. It's not going to, you're not going to see results into, you know, a week or two or three. Now you can lose. If you're trying to lose weight on a keto diet or some of these other diets that are out there, which are fine, definitely you can lose weight on. But as far as really dramatically improving the symptoms of a complicated illness like fibro, you can't get well without doing it. You're going to have to do some other things as well to make it all come together.

Yeah, it's like a multi system dysfunction. So you got to work out all the areas. Right. So that leads me into your summit. Tell me how you have people from all specialties chiming in to teach people about fibromyalgia. Right?

Yeah. It was so much fun. It was so much fun doing and getting to meet People like yourself and just having really stimulating conversations. Because sometimes I think we feel like we're kind of on an island. The kind of medicine we do, which I call good medicine, you know, Jeffrey Bland, functional medicine, that's what he called it. And Sydney Baker, Sydney Baker was another one. They talk about good medicine. And sometimes it's easy to feel like you're all alone in this universe trying to spread this message about this new form. But it's going to be the form of medicine eventually. But you feel like you're all alone. But I will say this is that I think the public is. They're demanding this. You know, they want what you teach, what, you know, the way that you practice. That's what they're looking for. They're looking for somebody that can help them navigate their health and not just give them a pill. You know, that's that, that passive type of therapy, I think is, you know, eventually is going to go away. I hope you're getting more and more people that are proactive and they want to know, you know, Dr. Barber, you know, what can I do that's going to allow me to, you know, to think better or have more energy or to sleep better? And then when you start to mention, oh, ambient or, you know, that's not what they're looking for.

Yeah, you're right on.

Yeah, but the summit, the fibro summit, real excited. But Dr. Barber's on here. She's doing one on hormones. Talk all about hormones and some other issues and fibromyalgia. Then I have Dr. Christine Christiansen. She's talking all about mold. She's a mold expert, which is fascinating. I don't know about you, Tabitha, but up until just, I mean, every once while I get a patient that had some mold issues, you know, you keep, you know, they're not getting better, so you keep investigating, investigating, investigating, and I run into that. But it's funny, I think the universe kind of brings you these cases in in secession. You know, once you get a little. You get kind of better at it, you know, then they start coming. You know, I think, I think something about the universe is setting you up in a good way. That. Okay, I can handle that. Sure. And then, you know, they find you. Right. So mold expert we have, we do two presentations. One on Hashimoto's all about autoimmune thyroiditis. Dr. Ina Toppler. And then Dr. Justin M. He talkswe go into all about thyroid issues. Dr. Kaplan, she's just a world renowned autoimmune doctor, but we talked about some autoimmune issues. But we talk a lot about this thing called adrenal fatigue. When you get up and go, has got up and went, and you find you really can't handle stress. Stress becomes really magnified because you just. You can't handle it. So we talk about that. But, you know, I was just really fortunate. You know, I really got to meet some amazing practitioners. And there's information about sibo. There's information about interstitial cystitis, which I know is a big, big thing in your. In your. In your specialty, pelvic pain. We talk, you know, so there's so much. So much, so much. Yeah.

I'm super excited. I think that's gonna be so great for everybody out there who are looking for answers. They're feeling frustrated. Right. And the summit is free to watch. Correct. And we'll have the links out there. The links will be in the show notes for this podcast. And then, you know, if you feel like you want to work one on one, you work one on one with people, right? If they want a deeper dive, sure.

Absolutely. So they can learn more about me@yourfibrodoctor.com there's all sorts of free resources on there. Blogs and videos and all sorts of great things that are available just to check out, just to see if it's something that can benefit your health. Protocols for people to take advantage of.

Perfect. Where else can they follow you at?

Well, so one of the things, if you do have fibromyalgia, that I would encourage you to do along with taking advantage of the free summit, I mean, that's just going to be a wealth of information you can take advantage of. The other place is still at yourfibro.doctor.com. but if you go to my store, your fibro store, if you look at the. There's some free videos on there that are called the jump start videos. And those videos, they're about 10 minutes each. But what they're designed to do is explain who gets fibromyalgia. Well, what is fibromyalgia? Who gets it? Why do they get it? And then, more importantly, what you can do to start to overcome it. And then it goes into, what is, you know, why is deep restorative sleep so important? And then I go through all the protocols, and then why is it important to have the right combination and dose of these vitamins and minerals, amino acids and essential fatty acids? And I talk about that and the protocols for that, and then all about adrenal fatigue, why you need to fix that. So you don't have fibro flares. You have more stamina and resistance to stress, have more mental, physical energy. And then last, its protocols all about digestion elimination, in particular about irritable bowel. But if you have fibro, I really encourage you to watch those videos. And then if it resonates with you, you know, there's the protocols are there. You can buy that. You know, you can get the supplements over the counter and find them different, you know, they're different places and, you know, it's just a great place to get started.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. You're a wealth of knowledge and I think an amazing resource for women. So I'm really glad that you came on the podcast.

Oh, well, you're, you know, thank you so much, Tabitha. I mean, I always say that, you know, I'm just, again, just really lucky to have met, to met so many people just like yourself. I mean, if I, you know, you're, you're, you are the doctor that people are looking for. You know, if you are, you know, female and you're looking for an obgyn, you know, to find somebody with your knowledge and talents and to be open minded and conventional medicine and functional medicine, it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack. You know, they found you, you know, so it's just so great that they've got you to have as a resource and, and thank you so much for the podcast and having me be on it. I'm flattered. Thank you.

Yeah, anytime. So you're always welcome to come back. This was fabulous. I'll make sure I have all the links for your site and everything in my show, notes for my listeners. And I'm excited to see the Fibro summit. So September 28th through October 4th, right?

That's it. Yeah. Great.

Okay. Well, take care.

Thanks. You too.

Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. I hope you got something out of it. It's really important to understand the difference between conventional medicine and functional medicine. There is time and a place for conventional medicine, but when you're dealing with chronic disease or diseases that have made their diagnosis based on a constellation of symptoms, then, you know, you need a functional physician who will get to the root causes of the issue so that you can actually fix the problem and it doesn't keep recurring, or if it does recur, you know what to do to get that back into remission. Such an important distinction. I really want you to take one golden nugget of information from this episode. Add it to what you've learned from the prior episodes. Because I promise, if you make one little change, one little baby step every week and are consistent, constant with your changes, they add up. And it's not a one plus one, it's exponential. They multiply upon each other. And you will reclaim your health and get back to being the amazing woman that you're supposed to be. Right? So that is my goal for you. But I need you to do the work. I need you to find what needs to be dealt with and start working on it. Please don't hesitate to shout me out on Facebook or Instagram @Doctor Tabitha. That's three A's. No I, T, A, B, A, T, H, A. Tell me your questions. I am here to serve you. I honestly do this for you. I don't get paid. This is, you know, not my day job. I do this as a side hustle because I have a strong desire to help you. I want you to live your best life. This is a sisterhood, not a competition. We're all in this together. And I just want to lift you up and help you be the amazing woman that I know you can be. And I want you to believe it as well. So please shout me out. If you tag me and share my podcast, I will send you a free gift. That would be so amazing. So thank you so much for trusting me to be your functional gynecologist and go have a kick ass week. Bye.