Natural Vitality + Life Balance with Sara Gottfried MD

Welcome to Mama Goddess. I'm your host, Alexandra J. Johnson. This podcast is all about rocking your goddess life, creating vibrant health and celebrating motherhood and family life. It's about living an authentically awesome life. Let's have. Hello and welcome. I'm Alexandra J. Johnson and today we have my favorite doctor, Dr. Sarah Gottfried. She is a Harvard MIT trained physician scientist with more than 20 years of experience. She's also a speaker, a yoga teacher, a mom, and the author of the New York Times best selling book, the hormone cure. Welcome, Dr. Sarah.

Hey, good to be with you, Alexandra. How's it going?

It's going great. It's so good to see you. I always, I always love connecting with you and I so appreciate your brilliant brain.

I'm just a mom trying to, you know, do what I can to live this amazing, precious life. So, yeah, right there with you.

That's awesome. Yeah, but you do, you're very smart. I mean, you just got a good brain. Like, I love how you break everything down for us that maybe don't, you know, we don't have the Harvard MIT trained physician scientist background, but you can break it down so that we can understand it. Super helpful.

Well, we need to break it down and we need to have some fun. That's part of being a goddess.

This is true. Okay, well, speaking of fun and not having fun, let's talk about stress. Because the more that I read on it, it seems like most women are stressed. And I'm just curious, like, what is your definition of stress? What is it our bodies and what do we do about it?

Yeah, well, stress, I think, has become this five letter word, right? It's this bad word. Most of us think that we've got to avoid stress or reduce stress, and I'm not about that at all. I actually think that stress can be a good thing for people who are trying to be productive and not apathetic. You need a certain amount of stress, good stress that allows you to be pulled forward by your vision. The problem is when you have stress that overwhelms your capacity to work with it or dance with it. That's what tends to create health problems, especially if you believe it's a serious health problem. I think of stress in a few ways. I like to define it in a biological way. One of the ways to do that is to look at your cortisol levels. Cortisol is one of those stress hormones. There's a bunch of them. There's also DHEA and testosterone. I think of stress as being when your hormones start to get out of whack when you have too much perceived stress, because it's all about your perception and not necessarily the amount of tasks and duties that you have on your plate. It's about how you perceive them.

Okay, so let's talk about that, the perceiving, because obviously that's a huge thing of how we can actually perceive stress in a different way. Can you give us some examples or how we can start to do that? Because most of us can look at our to do list or whatever, and we're just like, oh, my gosh, we can't imagine that there's a different way of looking at it.

Yeah, well, there's a few ways into this shift when it comes to your perception. And maybe it's helpful just to start with some of the science because there's some really interesting work on this. There's a woman named Elizabeth Blackburn and at the University of California, San Francisco, and she got the Nobel Prize for this work. So it's pretty cool. She looked at mothers, and I think the mothers who are listening to us can relate to this. But even if you're not a mother, maybe you're a mother to a cause or you're a mother to an animal. You will understand what I'm talking about. She looked at women who had a child in the intensive care unit compared to women who have a child who's healthy. She compared the telomeres of these two women. Telomeres are the little caps on chromosomes that determine how fast or slow you're aging in a biological way, as opposed to a chronological way. You want your telomeres to be long and lovely because it just helps you slow down the aging process. She found she was thinking that the women who had the sick kid would actually have the shorter telomeres. They would be aging faster. But what she found was actually it was the perception of stress. Not necessarily having a sick kid, but having this perception that you're completely overwhelmed or burned out and you can't handle yet another thing. Those are the pieces that predict a biological effect, much of which is related to cortisol and how cortisol is being used in your body. So what do you do to work with this in a different way? Well, I have about 97 strategies in my book the Hormone Cure. I'll name a couple of them. And I think you and I have talked about a bunch of these as well. Many of these things you do. So you're a yoga teacher? I'm a yoga teacher. I started practicing yoga with my great grandmother. About 40 years ago. And I still, I don't do a 90 minute ashtanga class like I used to or my store, but I'll do a 5 minute Yin pose every morning or a 10 minute, I'll do saddle pose which is a sacral release. Or I'll do five minutes of heart math like with my iPhone. I got my iPhone right here and I'll do some heart rate variability testing training. So these are some examples of things you can do that get you out of that hamster wheel of. Oh my gosh, I've got so much to do. For instance, I, I was so looking forward to talking to you today and I got a text from my daughter kind of in between my videos today. She's 14. And she texted me and said, mom, I forgot my lunch. Can you bring it to school? And I started thinking about it. I was like, when am I going to fit that in today? How am I going to get her some food so that she gets some nutrient rich stuff and isn't going to the vending machine? How do I fit it in? Instead of freaking out, I just kind of took the necessary steps. So I think a lot of it is about perception and I'm going to go a little bit woo woo on you here. I think you're okay with it. A lot of it is developing this witness self, like developing this observer. Eckhart Tolle talks about this a lot. And I think the awareness practices are what help you do that so that you don't, you don't get on the hamster wheel and just start churning. Instead you can say, I got this challenge. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole of freaking out about this.

Right. And then that's just a practice, right? I mean, that's something you have to be committed to, to kind of rewire our brains. Because if we're wired for stress, right, we kind of have to do something consistently to change that.

Yeah. There's actually some really interesting science on this too. I think for a lot of us, we got wired for a certain level of stress. Maybe in utero if your mother was stressed. And frankly, I don't know many women who aren't stressed during pregnancy. Maybe you're the exception, Alexandra.

I wasn't stressed. I love being pregnant.

Oh, good. Yeah. Well, it totally becomes you and your son is amazing. But I think your mother's, maybe she had some economic hardship or maybe the relationship with her partner wasn't going well. There's all these different reasons why women have a certain level of stress when they're pregnant. And when you're in utero, you can become programmed to that. I mean, we've proven this over and over again that you might be used to a certain level of high cortisol in your body as a result, or you might be used to a certain level of drama and conflict. And so you end up kind of recreating that as a pattern, unless you interrupt that pattern by developing some of these awareness practices.

Cool. So you do the heart math, right? What do you recommend? And are you a trained heart math? Is that right?

So I train, I teach people how to do it. I'm a big fan of heart math. And for people who want to learn more about it, you can go to heartmath.org they've got some really good research there. And what I do is I meditate. I've been meditating since college. And I'm also a little bit of dopamine girl, meaning that I like kind of the shiny new objects. And so I like to mix it up when it comes to my own awareness practices. So right now I do probably about somewhere between 10 and maybe 30 minutes of heart math every day. I tend to do it in the morning before my kids get up, and then I also do it before I go to bed. The way I do it, I used to use the M wave, but now you can turn your iPhone into a biofeedback machine. And I just use the little earlobe clip and I breathe with. There's a sensor that you can use on your iPhone. There's a free app for this. So that's. That's what I do to do my heart rate variability training.

That's awesome. I love my heart math. I'm curious, maybe it was on the website, but where should you be in the heart math? What's the good. When do you know that you're in the great spot? What are the numbers?

Yeah, so the science here is that it's measuring your pulse, but it's also measuring the time between each of your heartbeats and that you want to have some consistent variability with. You don't want it to be exactly the same amount of time between each heartbeat. A lot of people don't get that. So I think that's an important piece to understand. And the way that your heart rate varies can predict your stress resilience. So if you're a stress case, you're not going to have much variability. And so you can train with your breath and a lot of their exercises involve activating the heart, like thinking about someone that you love or imagining a favorite scene. For me, I grew up on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, so I always imagine the sight and the smell of being on the Chesapeake Bay in the summer and catching crabs and going swimming and being with my cousins. That totally activates oxytocin and that helps to modulate cortisol so that your heart rate variability is what you want. The goal, the kind of thing you're going for, is to have coherence. Kind of this balance between your sympathetic nervous system, your fight or flight system, and your parasympathetic nervous system, your rest and digest. So you want to have this really lovely balance between the two. And that's what coherence is.

And then. So you should do it. You said you do it 10 to 30 minutes. Do you recommend people to do it? Is that what you would recommend to do this kind of 10 to 30 minute practice?

That's what I recommend. I mean, when you're trying to rock your goddess life, let's be honest, it's not like I have three to five hours a day to rock my goddess life the way that I would like to. So I try to fit it in on the margins. And sometimes it's 10 minutes at the grocery store where I'm doing my heart rate variability training. Sometimes it's sitting on the floor before my kids get up in the morning, but sometimes I'm trying to fit it in somewhere. So, yeah, I would Recommend Starting with 10 to 20 minutes. I think that's kind of the minimum effective dose to see the benefit of it and to notice it and it's, you know, the way it feels. We can even do this right now. Like, if you. If I just like, stop talking so fast and get back in my body and take a big inhale, like a five count inhale, and then exhale down into my hips. Like that flips the switch. It gets me out of my. Oh, my gosh. I just had to race and get lunch to my daughter and get back here for Alexandra and for all of our amazing listeners. And it gets me back into my body, like, oh, I can do this. I got this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool. And then if you're feeling stressed, you could just even do it for like a minute, right? Like, if you had the heart rate verit, you don't have to have it, but it's is helpful. But I always find it super helpful to just gauge where I am. Like, it tells you.

Well, I think a Lot of people, you know, that's a good question. Like, why do you need to bother with the technology? Can't you just take 10 deep breaths in and 10 deep breaths out? I think for a lot of us, it's enchanting to have the feedback of what's happening with your breath and what's happening with your stress response. So when you measure it, that's where you benchmark it and then you know what you need to do to improve. So I think there is a lot of benefit to actually measuring. But, yeah, you could do this anytime. I mean, the breath, I think, is one of the best reset buttons we have when it comes to the stress. That's like a runaway train and, you know, out of control.

Right. Awesome. Very cool. Okay, so moving to diet, because diet obviously impacts stress as well. What is like the ideal diet? Is there like an ideal diet for a woman? How does a woman find her ideal diet? Is it vegan, Paleo? A little bit of both. What do you think?

Yeah, wouldn't it be great if there was a one size fits all when it comes to diet and being a goddess? But the truth is we're all like beautiful snowflakes and we need to adapt and we need to perceive what is the right fit. So I have a lot of ideas about this because I've been helping people figure out what foods to eat for 20 plus years. My next book is about this. So I've got a book that's coming out in March of 2015 called you'd body Cure, where we go through how women can eat to reset their seven hormones and metabolism. But here's what we know. I mean, if we just take cortisol, the main stress hormone, there's certain foods that tend to trigger cortisol, trigger too much cortisol. So if you're eating foods that you're intolerant to, and the most common ones there are gluten and dairy. Those are like the two biggies. Sugar, also, those raise cortisol. Another issue is if you're too extreme with going low carb, which I think is one of the tendencies. One of the pitfalls of going with a paleo type diet is that you can raise cortisol and you may find that there's more stress in your body than you want, and it's actually coming from your food plan. Now, this is an interesting one because a lot of the women that I work with who have hormone issues.

They.

Have adrenal fatigue, some degree of adrenal fatigue, and maybe thyroid issues. And if you go too low with the low carb, it can actually cause problems with your adrenal function and repairing your adrenal function and also with your thyroid. So you want to figure out over time, okay, here's my target zone when it comes to carbohydrates and for women who have any adrenal issues. And frankly, that's like 99% of the women I work with. And for women who have thyroid issues, you want to figure out, okay, what is that sweet spot when it comes to carbohydrates? Generally, you want to plug in your carbohydrates first. That's kind of an important thing to focus on. I find that most people need somewhere around 25 to 50 net carbohydrates a day. You can probably get away with a little bit more. If you're high stressed or you exercise a lot or you don't need to lose weight, you could probably get away with more. But we're talking here about slow carbs. We're not talking about a cinnamon bun. We're talking about sweet potatoes and vegetables. Vegetables, vegetables. That's always the answer.

So starchy vegetables. What would be an example? How would you get to 25 to 50? What would be. What would somebody need to eat to get to that?

We're talking here about net carbohydrates. And this is basically your total carbohydrates. And then you remove your fiber to get your net carbohydrates.

Got it.

This is how I eat. I'm in a phase right now where I'm getting a little bit leaner because I'm doing a gong that's like another conversation. But I'm doing this gong where I'm really watching my fiber really closely and watching my carbohydrates. And so I have. In the morning I'll have a breakfast, and that's where I will have my grains, if I'm going to have any grains during the day. And I'll eat some steel cut oats or oat groats or something along those lines. And also some blueberries, maybe some eggs or I am eating dairy right now, so I'll have maybe some Greek yogurt. So that's what I'll have for breakfast at lunch and dinner. I have very few carbs I just had for lunch today. Turnips and beets, green beans and some lamb. And then for dinner, I'm probably going to have some fish and some greens. I've got some kale and some chard upstairs that fits within this range. That we're talking about in terms of net carbohydrates. Hopefully that's helpful. But this question you asked about vegan Paleo, what's the answer? I really feel like that's such an individual decision. It's almost like religion. I can't tell people what religion to follow and I can't tell people what diet to follow. There's environmental arguments, there's individual biochemical variability, there's ethical issues. I think what I tend to follow is kind of a vegan paleo plan with a little Greek yogurt added in. Greek yogurt on top.

That's awesome.

What about you? What do you follow?

I think I probably like that. I mean, I was very hardcore vegan for seven years, had a vegan pregnancy until two weeks before my son was born, and then I started eating animal products. So, yeah, I'm the same, but I lean to. Yeah, I'm probably that. And I would have a little bit of butter. Probably would be my dairy on top.

Yeah, okay. That's your dairy. Well, it's a good point. And I think you're talking about attunement. You know, up until the last two weeks of your pregnancy, you were vegan. And then for whatever reason, you started craving some animal products or you decided to bring it in. And I think listening to that inner intelligence is such an important part of this for some women. I went vegan after I did my anatomy lab in medical school because I was so grossed out by the fat that I saw in cadavers. This little freaky here for a moment, but I went vegan. And I still remember I lost so much body fat. My boobs were teeny. They were more like bee stings instead of normal breasts.

And.

And my sex hormones went way down. And I need a certain amount of animal protein to be able to kind of hit the mark with my adrenal function. So that's the kind of information that we want to be gathering and then blending it with ethical concerns and environmental issues. I like animal products, but I'm also an environmentalist. And so I've got to find my way with reducing my footprint, but eating the kind of food that my body is most nourished by.

Yeah, yeah, totally. I love that. Yeah. And it's. I love that because I think you can get it in different spots, Right? You do go paleo and you might miss something. You go vegan and you miss something. Like, I loved being vegan until I didn't. And early on, probably five years after vegan, I was vitamin D deficient and B12. And yeah, it just clearly wasn't working. But I wasn't ready to eat animals yet. And then I did and my cholesterol was 99. I mean, just sounds absurd now.

I'm really glad you raised that. My cholesterol was down there, right there with you when I went vegan. And the point here is not that you shouldn't be vegan. That's not what we're saying at all. What we're saying is be aware of your body and how it's responding to food as information because your cholesterol gets made into all of these lovely sex hormones. It gets made into cortisol and progesterone and testosterone, dhea, estrogen. So I imagine if I went back and tested my blood when I was in medical school, I imagine my. I know my cholesterol was low, it was about 120. And my pregnenolone was low, which is the hormone that's made out of cholesterol and then gets made into these other hormones. It's kind of the mother hormone of all. So that's what we want to be watching. And I see that with a lot of vegans or people who are plant based that their pregnenolone is really low and then they have low sex drive or their energy is really low. So that's what you want to be tracking.

Very cool. So I'm curious on. I know that you offer cleanses and stuff. What is your thoughts on cleanses? Can we cleanse too much? You know, because there's. Yeah, I would just, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. And what's the balance of like cleansing and then retoxing and the yo yo and that kind of relationship with food that I know I've had too, of like wanting to do a cleanse because I didn't eat super great and then you don't eat great and then you want to do another cleanse and it's kind of that back and forth. So I just said a lot there. Go where you want to go with it.

Yeah, well, I think that's real life. I think you described it beautifully. I think there's these phases of detox, retox, detox. A lot of us have tremendous fun during that retox period. But there can be some collateral damage, right? I mean, I can tell you I'm in my 40s and I can't have two glasses of wine at night and sleep well through the night, wake up feeling like yay in the morning. I'M thinking, where's my coffee? I need some more toxins to cope with this toxin that I had yesterday. And I start making toxic decisions instead of when I'm doing a detox. And I'm doing a detox right now. I teach a detox twice a year online. When I'm detoxing, I will have a green smoothie for breakfast. Then I make green smoothie decisions all day long. I just got this idea from my friend Kevin Gianni, who was talking about how if he has a green smoothie for breakfast, first of all, he's lost 30 pounds this year just making that one change in his health. But when he has a green smoothie for breakfast and he's detoxing, he's activating the innate intelligence of the body. He's then choosing the really healthy salad at lunch. He's making decisions about his life that are congruent with that green smoothie. So you're setting the metabolic tone for the body. And it's also, I feel like it permeates so much of our decision making, like every little decision. And we want to be mindful of that. It's not just the green smoothie in isolation. It's kind of all the other peripheral help that we get with it. You asked the question about detoxing too much, and I definitely think there's a risk to that. Detox, I feel like has become such a buzzword. I remember seeing an Ayurvedic physician. I did panchakarma. I used to do panchakarma a couple times a year. And he said to me, you can't do panchakarma. Like, you need to build up a little bit right now. And you can't just keep detoxing. You've got to periodically just focus on repair and not being so aggressive with cleaning out the toxins. So I really believe in that. I think Ayurveda has a lot to teach us. And just as you can overdo it with cortisol and become a cortisol junkie, you can overdo it with detoxing. So you want to find the right balance. I tend to think that somewhere around twice a year is a good frequency for detoxification. In Chinese medicine, they do it five times a year with the change in seasons. And it sort of depends on how you define it and how aggressive you are. But again, that should be matched to your own physiology. Some people need a more aggressive detox. My detox right now is a little more aggressive because this is another topic altogether. But I measured My heavy metals and my mercury and lead were high, so I need to get those out, and that means my detox this time is a little more aggressive than I would be otherwise.

And what do you think the mercury in lead was from?

Good question. Well, I first measured my mercury level, unfortunately, after I had my babies. For people who are listening who haven't had babies, or you've got another baby in your future, I would recommend you test before you have that next baby. I had a medical office right next to a Japanese restaurant, and I ate there two to three times a week. And I think that's how I got toxic initially. It's basically the coal that we are using around the world, especially China, gets into the ocean and our fish are polluted, tuna especially, and other bigger fish. But I went through chelation 2006, 2007, I chelated, and I got all the mercury out, and I was normal, normal, normal. But now I'm 47 years young. What happens is that when you get exposed to heavy metals and you're female, if you're under 35, you store a lot of it in certain tissues, especially your bone. And then when you're older than 35, it's kind of like a trust fund. You make deposits in your bone until about age 35, and then you start making withdrawals. And I think one of the reasons why I'm now toxic is that the stored mercury that I've had from having amalgams when I was a kid, having the sashimi at the Japanese restaurant, maybe some vaccines that I had when I was younger, that's all getting released from my bone. And that's why my level is higher. And lead is an interesting one. I just want to say this because some of us goddesses love our lipstick. And the average woman consumes about 10 pounds of lead from lipstick alone over her lifetime. So you want to make sure that you're using lipstick that does not have lead in it, or if you're a gloss girl, make sure your lip gloss doesn't have lead.

Wow. That's crazy.

Yeah.

Wow. So where does somebody get these tests? Like, can you do it online? Is that something you can do some.

Of this testing online? I happen to do my testing with a good friend of mine who's amazing, who's in Arizona, and he does a lot of his work remotely. His name is Dr. Alan Christiansen. I did my testing with him, and he has a program where you can do some of this heavy metal testing and kind of do a reset. I recommend that for people who are detoxing because it's good to get your base case and then see what happens over the course of your detox. The other thing you can do with mercury, you can order a kit from Merk Out. Merkout is one of those labs that will send you some of the chelators so that you can release, you can provoke release of heavy metals and then you can measure your mercury in your urine. You can also do a hair analysis and look at heavy metals in your hair.

And is this like a big problem for women, do you think?

I think this is a major problem. When I look at some of the issues that hold women back from being a goddess, one of them is estrogen dominance. Having too much estrogen compared to progesterone. And I think mercury is a big part of that. When I look for it, I see mercury in a fair number of my patients. It can also slow down your thyroid. It can cause more stress in your body. I happen to not detoxify very well when it comes to mercury, so it's something that I should just periodically be testing. I think it is common. It's something that people should be measuring, but it's also part of a bigger integrated functional medicine assessment I should maybe mention here. If you want to work with someone who does this kind of work, you can go to functionalmedicine.org I'm just like, I have so many URLs today.

That's awesome. That's good. We'll take it. Nice. So what is the. I'm curious on the relationship with food. I think I got this. I'm pretty sure I got this book from you from one of your blogs. Do I have it right here, this book? Can you see it?

Oh yes.

I think you wrote about that or something. And like the balance of kind of because there's more of like restrictive way of going about your food and then there's more of like being open and all about the pleasure. So what's your thoughts on that?

Oh, this is such a juicy topic. Oh my gosh. How much time do we have? Yeah, well, I'm a food addict, so I didn't realize this about myself until about 2008, but I have an addictive relationship with food and it began pretty early for me. I. You can't really tell from the outside because I am careful about it. But I think a lot of people have addictive relationships to food, whether that's sugar or flour or hyper palatable processed foods. I feel like we've been crash test dummies for the food industry in many ways. And we've become more addicted to food. Yes. I think there's this outside in way of dealing with food, which is more restrictive and kind of like a drill sergeant like, you will not eat this. No sugar, no artificial sweeteners, no gluten, no dairy, no this, no that. I have a very dear friend that I go running with every Sunday named Jo, and she's so funny. She'll just say to me, okay, the second somebody tells me I can't do something, I'm a rebel and I am eating it. Like, that is not the way to work with her. Right. So some of us don't respond very well to the drill sergeant. I happen to do pretty okay with the drill sergeant. That's what works for me. I just know that cutting out the gluten and staying away from sugar and no Diet Coke for me, staying away from the artificial sweeteners that happens to work for me. I don't rebel. I don't rebel. I'm able to kind of find the grace in that. And it's a container that really works for me. So I guess what I'm saying is when it comes to relationship to food, we need to find our path. Like, the first question is to say, do you eat when you're stressed? Does it make you crave carbohydrates? Are you addicted to your latte every morning or whatever other caffeinated beverage you have? What is it to you? Like, what is it? What's the need that's being fulfilled by this food or this drink? And how can we address it with the way you architect your day so that you're not relying on these crutches or these fake sources of energy? So I think food addiction is like a gigantic topic. It's a physical problem that really requires a spiritual solution and an integrated approach.

Hmm, very cool. Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that because I think so many. I mean, I totally. I mean, I've been working on food for what I started in college. And, you know, I've said it in this series as well. Like, I didn't. I thought I kind of had it all organized and I'm like, oh, I got my. I'm in my flow. And then I had a child. And then I was like, wait. All of a sudden I wanted more chocolate and I wanted more of this. And kind of the old patterns came up. I still still eat really great food, but I started just noticing I was eating more of it. And, you know, I wasn't hungry, but I was just Snacking. And. Yeah, it's just. It's very. It's a really interesting topic, I think, for us women too. Like, what is it about this food?

Well, yeah, and Janine Roth, I think, has done such a beautiful job with this, as well as the founder, the leader of Siddha Yoga. You mentioned yoga discipline and held up her book earlier. I think a lot of people are so articulate about this. And I even talked to the woman that wrote the foreword to my book, Chris Northrup, about it, because she said something that just totally hit me between the eyes when I first heard it. She said, for women, especially mothers who are trying to hold it together, maybe you're working outside of the home. You also have this life that you're trying to create with the people that you love, your family. You have to have this really strong inner self to be able to manage all the arrows that are coming at you. And if you don't, if there's some weakness there, it tends to show up in one type of addictive pattern or another, whether that's eating too much chocolate or, you know, I could binge on sweet potatoes before I got into recovery. Like, it's not. I'm not just saying it's cinnamon buns. It's healthy food, too. I would eat too much of it. And so I think this, what Janine Roth talks about, which I think is really profound and part of goddess work, is that when you're craving the chocolate or the sweet potatoes or the cinnamon bun, it's about something so much bigger. It's not just your weight. It's not just trying to get the fuel that you need. It's not just eating for emotional reasons. It's also this search for God and for the inner divinity because many of us are missing it. And it can show up as food addiction.

And do you think that was part of big part of you, like, or your process? Did you feel like as you were working with it and you started to incorporate more of the God and the connection to spirit or whatever it is, that. That. That helped for you?

Definitely, definitely. But it's not like an on off switch, right? I mean, I can't say that I started to heal my food addiction and, you know, Suddenly I dropped 25 pounds and I was wearing my size 2 jeans for the rest of my life. No, it's. It's this process and there's always new layers to it. Right? There's, you know, for me right now, it's. It's about, you know, I have two kids and my. I mentioned my 14 year old for getting her lunch today. I also have a nine year old daughter and our life, you know, sometimes it feels like a tornado in our house. And my practice right now is to try to find the eye of that tornado. Like how do I, how do I find the inner stillness and the grace? How do I access it? Sometimes it's with my iPhone and heart math, but sometimes that doesn't touch it and I need to try something else. So. Yeah, it's an ongoing practice.

Yeah. And like what you're saying too, I'm just thinking of, it's like that returning home to ourselves consistently. And I love Jeanine Roth and she's in this series as well and she's just like of that grounding and like we step away from ourselves, we step out of ourselves so many times and you know, if we're actually embodied and grounded and centered, we're not going to probably go to the food. But it's when we're all like frazzled and stressed out that we go to the food.

Yeah, I agree with that. I think, you know, that resonates with me similar to what Chris Northrup was talking about. You know, when there's this hole and you're trying to fill the hole, I think that's when we tend to go to the food or we pick a fight with our husband or we feel a little victimy about being a mother and all the things that come with that. Or we maybe don't get the self care that I think is so crucial to really feeling full. Like feeling like you're giving from overflow instead of giving from a depleted state which never works and pretty much always backfires, right?

Totally. Well, and I love it too, like you were saying it earlier, I forget what you said, that you needed a toxin to kind of combat your other toxin. So it's like when we do overeat and then you wake up and you feel tired the next day and then you want to go for it again. You know, it's like it's totally just messing up our entire system. Right?

I mean, yeah, it's the opposite of the green smoothie effect. Right. You know, you, the example I was giving was having two glasses of wine and I did this recently. You'd think you would learn.

I know, right?

You know, you still keep making this mistake, then like the 10th time you finally learn the lesson. But yeah, you wake up after you go to sleep better after having a couple glasses of wine or cocktail and then you don't sleep as restoratively. So you wake up with that deficit mindset and your cortisol's higher, so you're going to crave sugar more. We want to prevent that. We don't want to just rely on willpower to be like, no, I'm not having the gluten. No, I'm not going to drink three cups of coffee this morning. We want to establish these habits that we return to every day that allow you to really have that sense of grace, hormonal grace and biological grace.

I'm curious on just with the moods, kind of the moods that we can have and how food impacts that. And talk to us about the gut. Like, how is the gut impacting our hormones, our gut, mind, our mood, like all of it?

Oh, this is good stuff. So I'm going to go to the place where I'm totally geeking out right now because this is so interesting to me. Your gut is so important. I think about all the levers that you have when it comes to hormonal balance and really feeling like a goddess. One lever is definitely your hormones and the control system for it. Your brain, your hypothalamus, pituitary. It talks to your adrenals and your ovaries and your thyroid, the HPA tg. So that's lever we've been talking about. That another lever is your gut. Your gut is so crucial and included in your gut. I would also put your liver, because your liver is pretty much the toxin processing factory for your body. It's where you detoxify the alcohol, the extra estrogen that you get. That's where it gets processed. Everything comes down to the liver. There's other systems, too, that you want to be mindful of, but those are maybe the two most important levers. And I just have been looking at some of this really interesting new science on what's called the astrobome. So I imagine many of our listeners have heard of the microbiome. It's the set of bacteria that we carry in our gut and elsewhere in our body. They outnumber human cells about 10 to 1. Their DNA outnumbers human DNA by about 200 to 1. So it's really important. There's a subset of those microbiota and their DNA that control your estrogen levels and control your hormone levels. The ones that control your estrogen levels are nicknamed the estrobolome. What's so interesting to me is that you can really modify whether you have too much estrogen or too little estrogen with the way that you eat, move, think and supplement by affecting your Microbiome. And for some people, the way this shows up is they have dysbiosis, they have too many of the bad bacteria compared to the good bacteria. It's kind of like a frat party is happening in your gut. And when you have dysbiosis it makes more beta glucuronidase, which is an enzyme that just makes you hang on to estrogen. You can't poop it out like you're supposed to. So this is a lot of like techy, sciencey stuff here. The short version is that you can take care of your microbiome with the way that you eat, move, think and supplement. And we've talked about thought and some of the practices that help with that. We talked about cortisol and kind of managing the stress and we've talked a bit about food. There's certain foods that are just super good for you, like the cruciferous vegetables. Can't say enough good about them. I think we should be eating a pound of vegetables a day, maybe two pounds. In my detox, I'm eating about two pounds a day. And that is the right amount of fiber for me to manage my estrogen levels and my estrobolone.

That's amazing. Two pounds.

That's great.

Nice.

And there's many other things too. About 95% of your serotonin in your body, one of the happy brain chemicals is derived from your gut. And if your gut is ill and you're not going to make as much serotonin and it's a really important gatekeeper for your appetite, your weight, your mood and kind of managing the other neuro hormonal symphony that's happening in your body.

Right. And then there's the, if you, if that's all messed up, you're going to have more cravings, you're going to be crankier, like life is just going to be harder. I'm always fascinated by how much food impacts that. Like it is nuts.

Yeah. The food mood connection I think is so important. And you know, I was brought up in a conventional medical paradigm, so this is not what I was raised with. I was raised to, you know, someone comes in with what seems like a bacterial sinus infection, give them antibiotics next. And we really have changed so dramatically in the last five to 10 years in terms of looking at the damage of giving antibiotics. We haven't even talked about antibiotics in the animal meat that we get exposed to. But the way that the microbiome has been shifted by some of these practices that we have in conventional medicine. I think is really important. And this idea that you should use some sort of prescription to deal with your mood I think is also well intended, but hasn't worked out so well. One in four women over the age of 40 is taking an antidepressant. And that just makes me sad because it's only been proven to be effective with severe depression, not with mild to moderate symptoms. Like, your food is a much better place to focus if you have mild to moderate symptoms of depression.

Wow, that's amazing. That's amazing. One in four OGs. I mean, that's a lot of women that are having this challenge.

Millions, millions of women. And if you watch the ads on tv, I don't watch TV anymore. But if you watch the ads on tv, it just seems like that's the only answer. Oh, I feel grief or I feel miserable or I don't like my job. Why don't I pop an antidepressant? And there's a lot of risk associated with that. It makes it harder to have an orgasm. It can give you an increased risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer. It tends to flatten you out. It's much better to focus on your food.

Okay, so I'm curious on this. You were saying, like, the antibiotics. So for most of us, we had antibiotics. I grew up, I feel like, on antibiotics because I always had strep throat. And there's the birth control, and there's just. And the standard American diet. So I'm curious, let's say you have that. Most of us have had a conventional upbringing. Not everyone. But can you change your genes? Can you actually change them? Can you talk to us about epigenetics, genes, how we can actually do this, and if it's possible?

Sure, yeah. This is another super exciting area. I think it's tied for first place with the science on the microbiome. But epigenetics is so exciting because a lot of people assumed, especially with the Human Genome Project, that what you were born with genetically was your blueprint. It was sort of, you know, that's your destiny. And it turns out that somewhere around 50 to 80% of how your DNA is expressed can be changed with the way that you eat, think move supplements. So that is an incredible opportunity. It's also a sacred opportunity. Like, you want to step into this and not just turn your power away, to turn your power over to your conventional doctor. So that's the promise. That's the exciting part, that 50 to 80% of how your DNA is expressed can be changed or leveraged with how you live your life. And then we want to get specific about what that is. I mean, we know. Let's go back to vegetables. We know that vegetables are one of the best ways of improving the way that your DNA is expressed. And this has been shown over and over again. If you just take cancer, for instance, and you ask 100 oncologists who know about nutrition what to do, they're going to say, vegetables, vegetables, vegetables. Stay away from the sugar, maybe stay away from the gluten, kind of depending on how much they know about the gut. And they may even be cautious about fruit because fruit has fructose, and that can sometimes grow cancer cells. So we've got a consistent answer here about vegetables, vegetables, vegetables. And that helps you with the ostrobolome. It helps you poop out the bad estrogens after you use them and not keep recirculating them. And then another movement, I think, is another really important part of epigenetic change. Doing things that you love, having pleasure, this big part of being a goddess. One thing I started doing recently, I go to the gym and I do weightlifting. I especially like to do it with girlfriends, because then you get the oxytocin, plus the growth hormone and the testosterone. That's like a beautiful thing. It's like a fun little party. And I also love to walk after dinner with my husband because it allows me to stay current with him and to bond with him. We get a little bit of exercise. I'm not raising my heart rate very high, but it's really good for leptin, that hormone that controls your hunger. So it allows me to. Especially if you had more carbs at dinner. It's just a nice way to have a constitutional at the end of the day. So movement's really important, and mindset's important, too. This is like the work of Bruce Lipton, you know, that your beliefs become your biology.

That's nuts. It's just. I mean, it's nuts. Amazing, right?

It's good stuff. It's really good stuff.

It's crazy. Awesome, obviously, you know, but, like, what we can do, you know, and just the empowerment and inspiration that we can take our power back and become healthy.

Yeah, it's. You know, it may seem like a kind of a daunting task, but it's. The baby steps add up to major transformation. You know, we were talking earlier about negativity, and I was thinking about this idea that our brains are sort of Velcro for the negative. You know, we tend to attract the negative. I think there's an entheos conference on this, right, With Rick Hanson. Yeah. Talks about this. But there's these lovely kind of sideways steps that we can take to change and promote the good and hang on to the good and set not just the metabolic tone for the day, but maybe set the spiritual tone for the day or the emotional tone for the day with the way that you get really intentional about your morning. So there's lots of ways, I think, to get some of these things that we've been talking about. The food addiction, the hormones out of balance, the crazy stress and set the intention in the morning that I'm good, I'm going to attract the positive. I'm going to figure out how to really get my biology to work for me today and not bring me down.

And that takes, like, the baby steps. And then also it takes, like, I'm always astonished how much commitment it does take to actually kind of live. You know, one of my friends, Pilar, which I'm sure, you know, being healthy is a revolutionary act. Like, it's like such a revolutionary act for you to take the baby steps, even in our culture.

Yeah, I love Pilar. I've got her poster here somewhere with her, you know, 101 revolutionary acts. And, you know, she's great because she really understands nuance and she understands paradox. You know, I love on her list. I forget where this is. You know, maybe like number 60 or 61 or something where she says, you know, go to the doctor, attend to the things you need to attend to. And then her next one is question your doctor. Like, fight them on stuff. And, you know, don't just buy into their belief system. And it's both. Like, it's not either or it's, you know, I love that she gives those baby steps, like the little things that you can do that add up to such a major transformation over time.

It's amazing. Okay, so I have we kind of talked about exercise, so I'm curious about exercise and sleep. How much exercise? Obviously, I know it goes back to the bio individuality, but is there like a sweet spot for how much we should be raising our heart rate and not. And, like, how do we find that sweet spot?

Yeah, well, some of this is genetically determined, so I'll give you a couple of. For instances here for my genes. I've tested my DNA. Backwards, forwards. It's a little bit ridiculous. My husband's like, will you stop doing those tests? Like, give yourself a little bit of a break. I know for my biology that I need about 50% weight training and about 50% cardiovascular training. So that's what I know is a good fit for me. Some people do better with more cardio. Other people do better with burst training or high intensity interval training. I'm a big fan of burst training. I think that's really good for the female body especially. But a lot of this is. It depends on how much stress you have. It depends on how much time you have. No, I remember before I had kids, I used to. I think I heard from Oprah that the magic number was nine hours. If I could just do nine hours of exercise. Like that was the magic a week for having, like, each week having a perfect body. And first of all, I found it hard to find nine hours. And second of all, it didn't quite achieve the response that I had hoped for. So this is one of those places where it takes some trial and error and trial and success. I think we want to have some cardiovascular training because we know that's really good for neurogenesis and biogenesis to make new mitochondria and to make new nerve cells. We also want some burst training to be strong and lean and boost metabolism. And then we want flexibility and getting some stretching in and doing that in a way that prevents you from injury. So I think it's all of those things and it's also figuring out the mashup that really works for you. I can't go to the gym like I used to, so I do more. I've got a 14 year old who loves volleyball. And so we'll do burpees in the morning before we have breakfast. And that'll be some of my burst training. Or I'll do a plank. I'll do a plank for two minutes before I hop on video call like I did with you today. And I'm a big fan of just looking at how you can fit it into your life. Like, I'll do a wall sit while I'm brushing my teeth for two minutes with my Sonicare toothbrush. So we'll figure out how does it fit in? How do you. Can you do 12 push ups before you get on the phone? Can you work this into your life so it doesn't feel like something dramatic? But let me turn this back on you. What have you found to be the minimum effective dose of exercise? Like, how have you figured that out for yourself, Alexandra?

Yeah, I mean, I played sports in college. I mean, I've been an athlete for most of my life. And I tend to go hard. You know, I've gone hard and I felt Good. Until I didn't feel good in my 20s and my body started breaking down. But for me, there's. I definitely the high intensity. Like, I. I don't do it crazy high, but even like 15 minutes is. That's kind of like my go to. I got 15 minutes. Let's do a high intensity. Lunges, squats, burpees, some row, you know, step ups, and I'm good. That's kind of my. That's my favorite. And that feels good. If I. If I go four days without doing that, I start noticing it in my brain and noticing it in my body, and I'm a little bit cranky.

Yes.

So I noticed. That has helped. And then I'm walking. Like, I try to walk 10,000 steps. I probably do eight to 10,000 steps every day.

That's awesome. Yeah. I wear an up and I track my steps.

Thanks to your.

There we go.

Sarah got me one of these.

She has told me that. Yeah. So I got the red one, you got the black one. Yeah. So I love this accountability piece. I'm with you. I always try to get my 10,000 steps. We know that walking, like, nine miles a day is one of the things associated with longevity. So sometimes I'll get up to nine miles. Five miles is about 10,000 steps, and I love that 15 minutes. Most of us can find 15 minutes. And I agree with you. I feel like that is the shove or the push, the nudge that your mitochondria need, your cells, need your muscles, your brain to really be at peak performance. And it doesn't have to be an hour and a half at the gym. It can be 15 minutes.

Yeah. Which I love. And that's been helpful for me as a new mom most days. I mean, I like to work out, but if I had the option, like, go work out or go read, I'm probably gonna choose to go read. Like, I would much rather do that. Once I get into the working out, I love it, but it's like, the actual start. So for me, the 15 minutes, it's over before you start. Like, 15 minutes is easy. Anybody can do 15 minutes. So that totally helps me. Just like. And sometimes if I don't want to do the 15, I'll set. I have a little Tabata app. I'll set it for, like, 10 minutes. Okay. Just do it for 10. And usually I want to do more, but it can be challenging to not. I just don't want to do it sometimes, but I feel so much better when I do it.

Well, I love that you're being honest about that. And so there's another takeaway is to get a Tabata app. That's a good one.

I love my Tabata app. Tabata Pro, I think.

Okay. All right, everybody, listen up. Tabata Pro.

Tabata Pro. My son likes it. He always laughs. I'm like, will, you want to work out? And he goes, because it has a beeping. He's like, beep, beep, beep.

Awesome.

Okay, cool. So everybody has to find theirs. But the high intensity is good. The walking is good, and, like, kind of a yoga relaxing kind of. And finding that balance.

That's right. And, you know, I used to do more yoga. I do a little less yoga. I do more breathing now, and I also do more rolling with, you know, my. I roll out my muscles because they, you know, especially my hips tend to get so tight. That's where women store all their emotions. So you got to roll out those hips. That's another very important point.

Totally. Do you use a foam roller?

I do.

Nice.

I want to get one of those little ones that you can travel with. That's my next purchase, along with the Tabata app.

Do you have a myofascial ball?

Oh, I think I need that. I don't think I have that.

I don't think I have it. I don't think I have it in here. It's this little ball that. It's similar to a foam roller, but you roll it on your hips, and you can sit on it, and it's, like, magical. You can put it in the car. Yeah, I'll send it to you. So you can probably search myofascial ball and find some exercises online for those of you that are watching. But I love it. It's just this little ball, but you can feel it. You definitely feel the burn.

Right on, right on. So you wanted to ask about sleep. Should we talk about sleep for a moment?

And then we will wrap up. So, sleep. How do we have optimal sleep? What are your sleep tips? How do we know if we're getting enough sleep?

Yeah, well, there's a couple ways to know. I mean, I love the up because I can track my sleep as well. My deep sleep versus my light sleep. And I'm trying to. I try to be really consistent about being in bed by 10. That's a very important tip. Shut down the artificial light as early as you can. It's interesting. I have so many people who say to me, who work with me online, who say, oh, I only need six hours a night. I'm good. I need Five hours a night or seven hours, I don't need any more than that. And the truth is, only a tiny little minority of people can survive on six hours a night. The rest of the people who are getting so little sleep are racking up the sleep debt and they have quite a bit of biological cost going on in their body. It can shorten your telomeres, remember you want them long and lovely. It can also raise cortisol, it can make you store belly fat. So we want to really attend to sleep. So one tip is to be in bed by 10. Marci Shamoff calls it the Angel Train, which I really love. You know that you've got to be in the station ready to catch the train at 10 o'. Clock. Not like, you know, run, run, run, run, run. 17,000 emails and then you go to bed at 10. It's that you want to do this nice little wind down like you do with the baby, putting the baby to sleep. Another one is to cut out the alcohol. So we know that alcohol is going to disrupt your sleep. So I'm not saying you got to cut it out completely. You could just cut back, maybe have better quality. But reducing alcohol is really important. And then another one is being really careful about caffeine. It's one of the reasons why I think it's so beneficial to go through a detox a couple times a year and get off of the caffeine completely. Every time I do it, I sleep about another two hours at night and I feel so good and the whites in my eyes just get so super clean and they pop and it's so good. Your eyes are like the window of your liver. So that's such a good thing for you. Then I also really love. There's a supplement I talk about in the hormone cure called Cortisol Manager and it's got some phosphatidylserine in it and also some ashwagandha and that's a great supplement that can help you do that. Wind down and be ready to catch the angel train by 10.

Nice.

So those are a few sleep tips.

Nice. So the ashwaga, like that, is that an adaptogen?

Is it a. Ashwagandha is an adaptogen, it's ayurvedic and it's a double adaptogen, theoretically that it doesn't let your cortisol get too high or too low. And I find it's really helpful for people who have difficulty falling asleep, like they're anxious or they just get a second wind at night. It can be a really good solution for them. And you also asked, how do you know if you're not getting enough? I think if you're using crutches like you need caffeine, that may mean you're not getting enough. Another one is how long it takes you to fall asleep. So a lot of people say to me, oh, my sleep's fine. As soon as my head hits the pillow, I'm like, out. And that's actually a problem. That means you have a sleep debt. It should normally take you about 20 minutes to fall asleep. If you are flushing 20 minutes, so that's normal. More than 30 is a problem, but you want to be getting enough sleep so that it takes about 20 minutes to fall asleep.

Interesting. I'm definitely a faster sleeper. I'm like, down.

Well, pretty much anyone who's got a kid under five is going to have some sleep debt. It's guaranteed.

That is for sure.

Okay.

Awesome. Fantastic. So where can people find more about you and your work and your book and your new book coming out and all that goodness?

Yeah, the best place to go is the mothership, which is sarah gottfriedmd.com S A R A G O T T F R I e d m d.com Fantastic.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thanks for your brilliance and your awesomeness and your just sharing your personal experiences too. Super helpful for me and I know it's going to be helpful for everyone else.

Thank you, Alexandra. Great to be with you. Love you. Love your message. Bye, everybody. Bye.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mama Goddess. Sending you lots of love and blessings. If you'd like to connect more, go to mamagoddess.com until next time. Keep rocking it and have an awesome day.