Ep. 87-Go Beyond The Diagnosis with Dr. Kylie Burton

This is the You Winning Life podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence.

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Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, trainer and certified entrepreneur coach, Jason Wasser.

All right, welcome back to the You Winning Life podcast. Today I'm really excited to be hanging out with someone who is in the world that I am super passionate about. If you know, uh, anything about what my private practice has done, the Family Room Wellness Associates, we've gone beyond the traditional therapy and moved more into integrative mind-body wellness. And that also includes the modality called neuro-emotional technique, which originally came out of chiropractic, as you may have heard in previous episodes. And today I am going to be sharing some time with a practitioner who goes off into another part of the world of integrative wellness that I love, which is functional medicine and chiropractic. So today I have Dr. Kylie Burton. She is a— obviously a chiropractor and functional medicine practitioner. And she has graduated with a Doctor of Chiropractic, a certificate in functional medicine from the Functional Medicine University, which is an incredible online program for practitioners. And we're gonna get into some really cool topics. So thanks so much for hanging out with us today.

Thanks for having me, Jason Wasser. I'm super excited to share this alternative world known as functional medicine. Some people understand it and some people don't. So when you hear the term functional medicine, just think about why. When you go to your doctor and you say, well, why am I not pregnant? Why is my thyroid still struggling? Why am I still experiencing depression symptoms even though I'm on some SSRI? And they always don't really have a very clear response for you because they're not trained. And it's not that your doctor— your doctor is doing their best. They can to try to help you. But the toolkit that they have is very limited if you don't fall underneath an umbrella. So if your symptoms don't fall underneath an umbrella, they can't give you a diagnosis and therefore they can't give you a pill to, quote, manage your symptoms. Right. Yeah. But functional medicine dives into the whole why. Now, once you figure out the why, you can then figure out the right treatment plan to resolve symptoms and so people can get their lives back. Whatever that back means, whether it's you being an energetic mom, whether it's you having time to make dinner, and/or you're being a grandma and actually wanting to go spend time with your grandkids because you know how exhausting it is, or if it's you simply wanting to become a mom and get pregnant for the first or third time, how— whatever the case may be. So that's where my passion lies. And the funny thing is, is I actually grew up all in Western medicine. You got sick, you went and got an antibiotic, and that was just life. Like, when I was 18 years old, I was a senior in high school, I was on 9 different medications. And that's just what we knew. So we didn't know anything different. I didn't even know what chiropractic was my senior year of high school.

Or that chiropractors could eventually do any of this stuff as well. Yeah, this was part of their purview.

You know, they just— I just— when I got introduced to it, it was like, oh, they crack backs and they crack necks, you know, that's it. And in reality, chiropractors are some of the best doctors in the world. And if I were to go back and do everything again, I would go DO and still specialize in the functional medicine. But just the DO gives you more leverage in this culture. DCs, chiropractors are like, oh, well, you just crack necks and backs. I'm like, actually, I don't even own a table. I do all functional medicine. So it's my passion and I'm super happy to share it with you today.

So let's, let's, let's unpackage a little bit of what you just said, because a lot of what you, um, what you shared sounds like you're focusing in more on women's health. But as we're talking, because I know we're going to get into some topics about women's health, but a lot of this also applies to those who are not women, because we're going to get into stress handling, we're going to get into, uh, supporting your partner if they are going through this stuff, or if you're going through this stuff yourself. So even though some of the things we might be talking about today might be tackling more from a women's health perspective. But those of you who are partners to someone who are listening to this episode and might be like, "Wow, this might be what my partner is going through," or you know they are going through this, or some of these signs and symptoms are showing up, but there's never been a diagnosis, so to speak, or there hasn't been a down-the-rabbit-hole approach to solving these problems, pay attention because we're going to unpack a lot of good stuff today. So, let's start off at the top of this, the food chain of everything going on, right? We're in the holiday season. It's the end of 2020. And although this episode may not be released until a little bit later on. But, you know, some of the things that people are going through right now, right? We're midway, if not hopefully near the end of this pandemic, but we're in the middle of a pandemic. We're in the middle of tons of political toxic crisis going on around us. We're in a very big upheaval. And most of us are used to like one crisis at a time. And now we're really juggling like which do we have our time, effort, and energy to get into. And one of the words you used a few minutes ago, or phrases, was adrenal fatigue, and right, that's, you kind of alluded to that. So let's start there, right? We're in this holiday season, a lot going on. Do we see our family? Do we not see our family? Is this stuff real? Is this not stuff real? Do I follow this science? Do I follow this science? What are some of those tips right off the bat that you're giving to your clients right now as we're going into this winter season?

For me, I harp on vitamin D. Vitamin D is like one of the best and easiest things that you can take. That's totally gonna curb any anxiety and any depression. I know you're in Florida. I'm in Utah where we're entering winter season. It's cold. I mean, it's 30 degrees outside and seasonal depression is a big issue, too. So most people say, oh, well, I take vitamin D. Well, how much do you take? I think I take like 2,000 IUs. That's a great place to start, but it's not going to help you feel good. It's not going to give your body what it needs to actually curb that anxiety and to curb that depression. The way I tell people is we're going to jack it up. That's one of the very first things that we do because you get such quick benefits so fast simply off of this one vitamin. So my protocol, which I would love to share with you and your listeners, is I do 25,000 IUs of vitamin D per day. Now, IU is just the way that they measure it. So if you were to go pull your vitamin D from your shelf, look at the serving size. It will say IU on it. That's what I mean when I'm saying IU. So 25,000 per day for a month, then 20,000 per day for a month, down to 15,000 for a month, down to 10,000. You probably want to maintain more at that 10,000. Now you're in Miami, right? Yeah, or just outside Miami.

Yeah, just like that area.

The sunshine is very bright all year long, and I have people even from the Caribbean who are like, well, I live in the Caribbean, I'm outside all day long, but yet my vitamin D levels are 28. They're extremely low and I can feel it. Why is that possible? How is that possible when I'm out in the sun all the time? And the reality is, is that sunshine has to go through so much crap to get to your body. And now our bodies are constantly fighting and dealing with other stuff from the environment that it's not very efficient in making vitamin D. Agreed.

So it's interesting, right, that vitamin D— and this is one of the things that I talk to every single one of my clients, and I try to make sure that they're all on it right off the bat. And even though, like you were just saying, we are more exposed to sun here in the south, in the South Florida area, right, or in the Caribbean area, um, below the equator, right, and below the— right, I mean, or at least getting closer and closer to the equator, excuse me, right? I haven't found— I would say 99% of my clients, when I've looked at their labs, have low vitamin D. I've seen one client who has not just normal levels but according to the functional medicine numbers and I'll— what I say by functional medicine numbers for those of you who are not familiar is that they tighten up the numbers a little bit and they kind of streamline it in order to say like these things in this lab are not one-offs as they're— that they're not disconnected from everything else. But if you have this number showing up here, you wanna look to these other places to see how it cross-references. But when they talk about within normal limits, you're talking about the average, so to speak, the average American. And unfortunately, the average American is like you were saying like when you were in college, multiple medication. They're eating not healthy food, the Standard American Diet, or the SAD diet. They're eating junk food, they're eating high-processed foods, sugars, high fructose corn syrup, uh, fake sugar, stuff like that. So therefore, even if you are living in South Florida and you're out in the sun, you may not be able to assimilate it. Like, cuz right, your gut can't absorb it. You might have other issues going on. Magnesium deficiency is one of the reasons why people might have a vitamin D, right? Uh, they're not able to absorb their vitamin D if they're, even if they're taking it. I'm one of those people. So, This is a huge, huge thing. And in fact, there's a practitioner that I'm not sure if you've heard of, Dr. Alex Vasquez, and he is like the mack daddy apparently on all vitamin D. And here's the interesting thing that I found while you're talking about this, and I'm so excited because I haven't been able to talk to someone about this on an episode before, is that even for men, the vitamin D effects are so powerful when you're— when you have deficiency that they're finding a significant contribution and connection to erectile dysfunction with vitamin D deficiency.

Really?

Really, which is, we can go with the joke of maybe that's why it's called vitamin D. But it's— but real, like, so now, like anybody I'm seeing who's having any, for sexual health challenges, I'm saying, let's check your numbers, right? But majority of my clients, I've had one client with optimal vitamin D levels in the last 4 years. And I see a lot of people who have darker skin tone than we do, right? They're either from the Black community, Afro-Caribbean community, and I have them all like loaded up because they're highly more susceptible right now to the pandemic, as we see by the research. And I'm wondering, from your perspective as a practitioner of this, does the skin tone— like, depending on someone's ability to absorb the sun also depends on your, your skin tone. So is that why we're seeing like why those, you know, the client of yours from the Caribbean might have lower vitamin D may not just be a gut issue, but it can also be a skin absorption issue.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm a redhead, pale as a ghost, and I can get it quite easily because I haven't really dove into why, but I guess like from what I understand— and correct me if I'm wrong— but from what I might understand, it would take me like 15 minutes to get it from the sun versus somebody else with darker skin who would need it more for like an hour. Right, right. Now, like I said, I go out to the sun, I go outside and it's 30 degrees outside, I'm completely bundled up. And I've gone to Chicago in March and literally people are walking down the streets and the only things you can see are their eyeballs because it's so cold. So you might be bundling up and if you're not allowing the skin to see that sunshine, then you're not gonna get it as well.

Yeah, yeah. So I know we definitely wanna come back to that and I'm sure we might come back to vitamin D, but that's number one, right? Everybody needs to make sure, check your vitamin D levels, right? So they're talking about with what's going on in the world anything below 40 is considered very, uh, threatening to your health and well-being as it goes and relates to the pandemic. And there's tons and tons of research, uh, on that out there, and we'll link that in the show notes, especially, uh, some research that I found, uh, the other day, uh, that shows like it's a 50% increase in, uh, morbidity and, God forbid, death risks if your vitamin D is below 40 as it relates to what's going on in the pandemic right now.

Yeah, I try to get patients up above 80, and I've seen— I mean, you know, when you first pull labs, I, I pull medical records because they've already had labs taken, so might as well use it and actually get answers from it instead of just being told that you're normal and go along on your way. They— I've never seen anybody in that optimal range, and for me it's between 80 and 100. Except for one person, and that one person who had been doing my vitamin D protocol for the last 3 months from me preaching on Facebook, she's like, I feel so much better. I'm like, well, look, your vitamin D is 108. That's awesome. What did you do? She's like, I've just been listening to you and doing what you said. Right. Whereas before it was, you know, 45 or something like that, but still within, quote, normal range. So the physician didn't do anything about it. And now it's like now she's telling me that her symptoms of SAD are gone. The anxiety is totally curbed. And yeah, it's from just simply taking vitamin D. And not only does vitamin D help with our immune system, but it can help mitigate stress and who knows whatever else, because vitamin D is like required for every single pathway in the body. Every single chemical reaction that's happening, you need some vitamin D. Yeah.

And those of you who are now thinking about like, okay, I need to get some vitamin D into my system, you want to make sure that it also has vitamin K, because that, across, uh, I guess, a bioavailable vitamin, makes the body assimilate it significantly better. So you want to make sure you get that vitamin D with the vitamin K together with—

and eat it with food too.

And eat it with food, right? Most likely more fatty foods, right?

With—

yeah, because that helps, so it helps the absorption. So cool. So that's number one. So what's another thing off the top of your head, like, just right now that we can be— right, first, I mean, again, stress handling is huge, and stress affects everything, especially our gut. Right? And then how we're digesting and processing everything. Because how, you know, I see what's going on in the world with the difficult— like, how can we digest all this? Like, it's too big of a bite, too many, too many things on the plate.

Turn it off. Yeah, turn the TV off, turn the radio off, throw on some music. I mean, I don't pay attention to it because I literally just say, I don't have energy to put into this stuff. I have so much amount of energy, and it's got to go into, you my kids, helping my patients, the business side of things. Like, I'm a mom, a doctor, a wife, uh, entrepreneur. I have all these hats I have to wear. I'm not dumping energy into that. And so I've totally just separated it. If it comes on, I'm trying to watch an athletic game, which I've— you— I love sports. I used to be a sports addict. Um, but when you go into chiropractic school and you're taking 35 credits at a time, you don't have time for sports anymore. So I've gone away from more sports. I do, I do them on occasion. But if their commercial comes on or if something comes on, just change the channel or shut it off. Yeah. And really, that's what I tell my patients when their anxiety is so high or they're so worried about what's going on. Stop scrolling through Facebook. Stop listening to it on the radio. Stop watching it on the TV. Like, you know what's happening. That's all you need to know. Don't get caught up in the details or caught up in some research article that is using fear to try to get people into action.

Yeah. So one of my biggest frustrations is going into a doctor's office, and in the waiting room, they have the news on, right? You're already coming in, you're possibly not feeling well.

You got white coat syndrome.

Right. And now you're being— and you're being over-bombarded with more stress-related things right in front of you. So I made a commitment that years ago in my private practice, when I put up a TV in my waiting room, I only put on, like, at that time it was DVDs. So I had like, you know, The Secret and I would rotate it between like The Secret and Boy Meets World episodes, right? Just for levity. And they'll just feel like that, like, and Saved by the Bell and like all those like timely and '90s awesome, like, you know, fun, entertaining shows. Because at least could be some laughter in the background when you're coming in for therapy. And then when I moved, then when I hooked up an Apple TV, to it in my new office, my former new office that I'm, you know, I created a YouTube playlist and it was with Dr. Joe Dispenza and it was mind-body stuff and NET and, you know, TED Talks and stuff like that. So if I can get them for 10, 15 minutes and at least maybe change their mindset while they're waiting, I can indoctrinate them.

Yes.

Right? I should be getting them prepped for what they're going to be doing with me. So I have this like 30-video-long playlist that would just constantly, you know, be on rotation and never had the news on and never— and I always wanted to make sure that mindset was there from the second they walk into my office.

And I'm completely virtual and I've been virtual for about 2 years now. So I was virtual before it was cool to be virtual. Yeah. But the way I always start off my conversations with people is they have to tell me something that they're grateful for. And sometimes it's like, oh, I'm not— I don't— they have to think about it, but then it completely changes their mood. Yeah. As soon as they start saying, I'm grateful for XYZ. And then even I've been using this in practice a lot for myself the last month or so, because I just, I just became so complacent about life and where I was, and it was starting to affect me and affect my relationship with my kids and my husband and just being me being short-tempered and not patient like I usually am. So I, every night I write down something I'm grateful for. And it's really helped me. And then I love it with patients because it completely changes the mood of the conversation we're about to have. Yeah. Simply stating something you're grateful for.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is huge, especially when you're not feeling well consistently and you have no answer to— and you've not been given an answer by other practitioners. So when they come to someone like you and I, they've probably already been to multiple people with multiple possible diagnoses or no diagnoses. It can go either way. So yeah, so let's get more into that, right? So let's talk about— I don't know, do we want to start off with adrenal stuff? Do we want to start off with— you know, I know one of the things that I would love to talk about is there's, you know, from the women's health perspective, is all the pressure that they're under, even when they're right, and then the pressure of parenting, the pressure of getting pregnant, and all that stuff. So I'll let you start where you want to start and let everybody bask in the knowledge.

So I love labs. Numbers never lie. However, when you constantly get told that your labs are normal— why do you feel like this? Why can you not get pregnant? Why did you have a miscarriage? Why can I not make dinner at night? Why is— does so-and-so able to keep their house clean and manage everything that they're doing and I can't. And so many times when you get— you keep getting told your labs are normal, you're fine, go take an antidepressant, go take an anti-anxiety pill, you know, it starts to get messed with their heads, especially women. And I've had a lot of people, a lot of women say, well, then what's wrong with me? And they place it as a burden upon themselves, especially when it comes to infertility and the miscarriage struggle, because So oftentimes that somebody looks at the hormones of a woman and says, well, that's your problem. You can't, you can't get pregnant till you lose weight. I guarantee you she's tried every diet under the sun and it hasn't, quote, worked. She hasn't lost that weight. For example, I had a patient, she was on like an 18-month infertility journey, done, dropped thousands of dollars. And eventually somewhere along the lines, she got diagnosed with endometrial cancer. And endometrial— your endometrium is the lining of your uterus. That's what you slough off every month of your period. And so she now— it's now cancerous. And I'm thinking, you know, in the last 12 months, how many injections have you had? How many hormones have been placed in your body? What is your body dealing with? Like, literally, your fertility treatment probably gave you cancer. And that's something that we don't want to think about, nor is it ever thought about. And if it is, like, oh no, that's not possible. You know, fertility treatments are the only way to go, right? So when it comes to infertility and miscarriage, um, let me rewind 3 years ago on December 3rd, 2017. I was 20 weeks pregnant. I had just had— I had a 9-month-old baby at this time. Yep. I'm one of those people. Who got pregnant short months after labor and delivery, and, um, everything was fine. My first pregnancy was absolute torture. I was throwing up for 7 months, and it was— I actually became a mom the same week I became a doctor, so I was managing all of the school on top of this pregnancy, which was just making me very sick. And then second pregnancy came, and I was devastated. I cried and cried and cried because there was no way I could do another 9 months of this. On top of, I'm supposed to start my practice in a month and now I'm pregnant with another baby. So there's just a lot of turmoil in my mind. Um, but now after what had— what happened 3 years ago, I'm very, very grateful. Getting pregnant and staying pregnant and having a baby means much more after you've experienced a loss. And it doesn't matter if you lose a baby at 6 weeks in, if you lose a baby at 20 weeks in, it's still part of your heart that gets broken because it's a body that you're carrying. You're excited to have a baby, you know, your life's about to change. Who knows, you've been trying for however many years to have a baby and now all of a sudden they're gone. For me, it was the most common avenue was the number 3 avenue of a miscarriage. So let's talk miscarriage, because so oftentimes we have a miscarriage, and I know I did this, I immediately asked, what did I do wrong? And usually it has nothing— 99% of the time it has nothing to do with what I did. It just— the number 1 reason is that the genes don't mesh. You know, that's the most common form of a miscarriage is that body literally aborts it because the genes don't mesh, right? The number 2 problem is low progesterone. Progesterone's supposed to spike when you get pregnant. It's one of the ways your body knows that you're pregnant, and if it doesn't, we can have a miscarriage. The third instance was what happened to me— a stressor. A stressful event caused my pregnancy to terminate early. I got sick over Thanksgiving weekend. I had the flu. It went rampant throughout the entire extended family, my immediate family, to the point where we, we all got it. We were all throwing up for 48 hours, couldn't keep anything down. Here I am, 20 weeks pregnant, and I'm just telling myself, I can— it's going to be okay. We're going to get through this and it'll be okay. Well, Monday came. And Monday I started seeing some warning signs that things weren't right, but I didn't know that they were that wrong. So I went through the week thinking it's gonna, it's gonna be fine. I'll just get through my— I'll get to my 20-week appointment and I'll tell her what's going on and it will be okay. You know, I just— you don't, you don't want to realize what's going on because you don't want to accept the results of it at the time. So the night before my appointment, I didn't make it to my appointment. I got woke up. I was woken up by my water breaking. There was water all over the bed, and I just thought, I'll go clean up, I'll go to the bathroom, clean up, take, you know, change clothes, change the clothes. I'll just sleep it off. It's gonna be okay. Got back into bed, contractions started. That's when I was like, honey, I wake up, you got to take me to the ER. We're in trouble. So by the time we got to the ER, you know, I'm bleeding everywhere. It's just a mess. And so they take me straight into the— straight into the back room. When it was probably less than 30 minutes later, contraction after contraction after contraction. And at this point, I had never experienced a moment in my life where I felt like my body had betrayed me. And so many times I hear women say, I don't even know who I am in my own skin anymore. Like, my body has betrayed me and I don't know what to do about it. And now when people tell me that, I'm like, I get it, I totally understand. When someone says, I've had a miscarriage but it was only like 8 weeks, so what, you still had a miscarriage. And now my response is much more empathy, empathetic, rather than what it was beforehand was, oh, that's okay, you'll be fine the next time, just sleep more. Now I get it. And for those of you who haven't experienced a miscarriage or or who have, or you know of somebody who has, um, the best things that you can say are just words of encouragement. Don't ever offer advice. That's like the worst thing you could do to somebody. They don't want to know what you want, you want to say. I guarantee you they've searched Google a million times. So this happened in my life, and I would say about 30 minutes, you know, after arriving in the ER One of those contractions hit and my baby came out. Now I could just feel it, you know, I get his— I— so I started bawling. I had no idea what, what to do. Blood is everywhere. I can't control anything my body is doing. And, um, finally at the end of the day, I was in complete shock and I didn't know what to do. Here I, I have this little baby, she's the size of my hand. They, they asked me, okay, what What do you— do you want to take her home and have a funeral? Like, what would you like to do? You don't plan for those kind of things.

Yeah.

And in the moment, it's like an emotional decision. And with my husband's history, he didn't want anything to do with it. It brought up a lot of negative emotions with him. And so we just decided to let the hospital do their thing. And, and 3 years later now, December 3rd was the anniversary. So just a couple of days ago, that I wish I would have done things differently, in the fact that I wish I would have had more of a memory of it. Because literally, I— what I do have is they took her— somebody, some, I think a Utah Share organization took her body and they gave me like imprints of her hands and her feet. And that's really all I have left, knowing that I do have an angel around me at all times. Um, but I would have gone back and done things differently. And if— and I know other women and other moms say that too, and it's okay. We totally can. But the emotions that come along with it, they're going to hit you at any time, any point of the year. Um, I mean, you can go to the grocery store and they can flare up. You can, you know, just be laying in your bed thinking at night and it can flare up. Let your emotions roll. I mean, you're huge into emotions doing the N.E.T. stuff. And if we don't let them come up to the surface and if we don't let them out, they're going to just hang out inside of us. And eventually down the road, they're going to cause physical symptoms. Yeah.

It sounds, you know, the process sounds very similar in a different way. It's different, but, but the emotional process and the way you're describing it is that it's a post-traumatic stressor. And like you're saying, if it can still pop up, no matter what, no matter where, you don't know what can trigger and bring you back there. Right? That's, you know, an unresolved stress pattern, like you said, and it can affect both your emotional and your physical wellbeing. And I do want people, you know, and maybe you can talk about this, but I want people to understand like how common, unfortunately, this process is.

Yeah. You never think it's going to happen to you until it does. I never once in my wildest dreams thought I was going to lose this pregnancy. To me, I got pregnant and it's going to end up with the baby at 9 months old, healthy pregnancy, healthy mommy. You just don't, you don't plan on it. You don't think about it. But here's the sad part. 1 in 4 pregnancies, 25% of pregnancies end early in miscarriage or stillbirth. Yeah. 1 in 7 couples struggle with infertility. So who, I guarantee, you know, somebody who's had a miscarriage, if not more, I guarantee, you know, somebody who is struggling with infertility, whether they've been verbal about it or not. And that 1 in 7 number, I would say it's higher because people don't— those are, that's only those who have been diagnosed with infertility. And you have to struggle with infertility for at least 12 months to get the diagnosis. And that's if you even go to tell your doctor or to your gynecologist or to a fertility clinic, like somebody has to give you that diagnosis. But many people, more people are suffering in silence and they're suffering for 8, 9, 10 months. When every month that period hits, or, or if you have PCOS and your period goes 100, 100 days long, now you're— now after day 14, you're literally getting screwed in the head because you think you're pregnant, and then all of a sudden the test result comes back negative. The period comes, comes in, you know, a month or two late. It's just these mind games that people are going through, and they're doing it in silence. Yeah, and so many people are suffering, and it's, it's just crazy to me. Um, so we've covered what causes miscarriage. Would you care if we covered what causes infertility?

Yeah, because what I was just gonna bring up was, um, secondary infertility, right? And I believe that's the right phrasing, where it's you might already have a child and then you have a difficulty getting pregnant again. And that's a big— and a lot of communities with, you know, especially in cultural communities that have pressure to have big families where they might have had— Right, right. Or the Jewish community, and certainly, you know, more Orthodox Jewish communities, and any religious community, right? It's, it's— you might have 1 or 2 children, and then it's— right, it might be difficulty to, to conceive post, and then there's all that, what's going on, why aren't you having more children, all that stuff is there. And, you know, it could be still related to the medical or biochemistry thing. Um, yeah, and I definitely, you know, I definitely want to talk about that, and I want you to talk a little bit more about the PCOS process, because I know there's so many people who maybe have not been— many, many women who have not been diagnosed with PCOS and don't really, you know, the hand-in-hand correlation to that in this process, especially, again, stress handling, biochemistry, all that stuff is all—

For sure. So when it comes to infertility, there's 3 things. And before we jump into that, real fast, I just want to say, if you've— if you, like you said, Women can have 2 or 3 kids and then all of a sudden not be able to get pregnant, or they've really, really fought for those 2 or 3 kids and now they're fighting even harder for the 4th or 5th. So just because somebody has kids doesn't mean it was an easy journey. It doesn't mean that their journey currently that they're currently on is easy as well. So just don't assume, don't judge, don't, don't say things to people that you shouldn't be saying. For example, I had my— when my little boy was 2 years old, Somebody said to me at a party, hey, well, how old's your little boy? I said, 2. She was like, well, aren't you due for another one?

Right.

Actually, you know, we lost his little sister a year ago. Dun dun dun. Like, don't say it. Okay, cool.

Yeah.

So when it comes to infertility, the most common avenue of infertility is PCOS. And that is polycystic ovarian syndrome, where you have cysts on your ovaries. And the way the, the Western medicine approach is to it is it's incomplete. They have a great start, but they're not getting all of it. And if you get diagnosed with PCOS, they're going to give you metformin. Metformin is the blood sugar control pharmaceutical. I use my own version of it. Natural version is cinulin. But that is the first place that you start with PCOS. But it's only part of the puzzle. And that's why so many women get the diagnosis, they get on metformin, they might lose 10 pounds, they might feel a little bit better, but it's still not completing the puzzle of my cycles still aren't regular. And when it comes to birth control, please, please, please, please, please don't use birth control as a Band-Aid. When I was starting to look into birth control, I was terrified of it. Remember, I'm 18 years old on 9 different medications, and in my mind, birth control causes infertility, when in reality it's not the birth control, it's the fact that birth control was used to cover up hormone chaos. And as soon as you take the birth control away, the hormone chaos returns, and then the infertility is a result because the hormones were never fixed to begin with. They were just plastered with some manage— birth control where you can put it in for a month or take it for a month and then take it out and now you have a period kind of thing.

And that goes back to what you were describing before about the why behind and what makes functional medicine different is that in a lot of medical perspectives, they'll put a Band-Aid on top of a Band-Aid to cover up another Band-Aid to make sure that the, the side effects from the third Band-Aid is being taken care of by the fifth Band-Aid.

Yeah, right. Yeah, my 9 different medications were mitigated by actually fixing the the acid reflux and getting dairy out of my diet.

Right, right, which is going back to the causes and the systemic cause behind all of it, the root causes behind it, which is a very different lens. But it's so funny how simple and practical it is and it doesn't take that much more time than, you know, the regular doc. Sometimes once you see a pattern in someone, it's not gonna take any longer time than an average doctor's visit, but just unfortunately the average doctor are not trained to look at it through this lens. Why functional medicine is having an uprising right now, right, practitioners, right?

Yep. So PCOS, the first instance is metformin, blood sugar control. The second big problem with PCOS that, that doctors aren't trained to figure out is the high testosterone. This is when women are like, I exercise, I eat right, and it's still— the weight's not coming off, or I have to shave the little mustache every day because I've got the facial hair. Or my periods, you know, are 9— sometimes they're 90 days apart, sometimes they're 15 days apart. I have no idea, and the only way I can figure out my period is to use the birth control. But now I want to get pregnant, so I can't use birth control. It's just this mess. So the two things I commonly fix with the PCOS is one, the birth— the blood sugar control. Now, are you a fan of intermittent fasting?

So I'm doing more and more research on it. My chiropractor here is a huge fan of intermittent fasting. He's also a a pretty well-known, uh, player in the applied kinesiology world.

AK world, that's where I got trained into. I, I'm not a fan of intermittent fasting when it comes to PCOS. Um, and for myself, like, if I go 4 or 5 hours too long without eating, I start getting lightheaded and I start to get those, those low blood sugar signs where it's like, okay, you need to go get some food. When it comes to PCOS and balancing blood sugar, I have 3 dietary rules. The first dietary rule is to never skip a meal. I know as a busy mom, like when I went from a brick-and-mortar practice to a virtual practice and I'm at home, I'm thinking, oh, you know, food's always upstairs. Yeah, right. I'm worse at eating now home than I was with the brick-and-mortar practice having like a set schedule. It's tough. And you have to sit down and be disciplined on yourself and say, go eat food. Take 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and go eat some food and chew it and digest it.

Yeah, right.

The second one would be when you have, like, say you want to go grab an apple for a snack, grab some peanut butter or some almond butter or some something that has fat and protein with it. So when you, when you're eating a carb, be sure you add something else to it. Grab a handful of nuts That's really easy too. Then the third rule is you got to have a hearty breakfast. Breakfast is to me the most important meal of the day. If you can make that meal— not cereal, you're talking get some proteins, get some fats. For me, I always cook eggs, some form of eggs. My little 3-year-old boy loves his bacon omelets. So we have a bacon omelet probably every other day. We do bacon, sausage, eggs. Hash browns. I mean, we— I make time to cook breakfast because that sets us up for success for the rest of the day. If you're grabbing a toast, if you're grabbing cereal, if you're grabbing something that just has sugar, you're setting yourself up to fail. You're going to crave more sugar throughout the day. You're going to be hungrier throughout the day, and you're going to think, well, why can't I just fight this? It's, it's not your ability to fight. It's that your body is— you told your body first thing in the morning I want sugar. I ate sugar. Now I need more sugar. And I'm just going to keep wanting more sugar. And I'm going to feel more dehydrated too because of that choice you made beginning of the day. So that's like the very most important choice you can make. What are you going to eat for breakfast? Not what you want to wear. Yeah, what you're eating for breakfast, right?

And, and I also know that people should be aiming at a certain amount of protein in grams based on their body weight. And they should experiment with that because what I'm understanding, what I'm researching, and what I'm experiencing also for myself is that there's an amount of protein in grams that you should have per meal that should allow you to get through to the next meal and feel like a rock star without that blood sugar crash, without the sleepiness, especially those who have that in the mid-afternoon post-lunch coma, right? But there should be a— there's a percentage And I'm not sure if you know that equation of what it is, but like, I know my husband would—

he's a bodybuilder, but I don't know it. Yeah.

So I know for me, like, I was told between 15 and 20 grams of protein per meal for myself, and to find that sweet spot too that'll carry me from one to the next. And, um, so people can start looking around when you're talking about breakfast to make sure that there is a good substantial healthy protein, right, with— you said with the carb, if you're going to do the carb versus is a, you know, yeah, really what's really popular right now is the keto diet.

Yeah, it has been popular for over a year now, um, but that's because they're eliminating so many of those carbs, those sugars that messes with the blood sugar, that messes with your head, that, you know, the whole cascade. So that's the first part when it comes to the PCOS. The second part is what do you do with the high testosterone? How do you get that down? Now if you were to look at hormones testosterone gets converted into estrogen, and your body needs some tools, needs some supplies of specific things to help that conversion process. And two of those big tools are DIM and IC3. So one of the supplements I use, it's called Femikrin, it has these components in it that's going to help your body go from testosterone, high testosterone, mitigate that, get it lower, and turn it into estrogen. Now you lose the weight, now your hormones, your cycles are more regulated, and now you don't have to worry about the facial hair. In women, that's the missing piece of PCOS that the metformin only takes a piece apart— piece out of. But when it comes to medical world, they see low estrogen, high testosterone, they're just going to give you estrogen. That's what they know. Whereas if you go back to Okay, if this is just this chemistry process, because that's all it is, testosterone— what does testosterone need? What does the body need to make T and turn it into E? And then you just give the body those products, right? So that's an easy way to conquer PCOS. And what I've seen is when it— when you do the protocols right and you take the right supplements and you manage the diet really well, it can be as soon as 3 months you go from infertility to pregnancy, it can be as easy— like, it can take 6 months. I've never seen it even take up to a year. And I've worked with an individual who had IVF 4 times. She was 24 years old, had cysts all over her ovaries. She's pregnant in 6 months because we literally just fixed her hormones. We weren't trying to shove chemicals or, you know, take out her egg and then fertilize it, or fertilize it and then put it back in her unhealthy body. We got our body healthy and from there it took care of itself.

I've also heard for years, whether it's from clients or people I've met, that they've been taught that PCOS is not reversible and not healable.

Yes, yes.

And I've gotten into friendly arguments with them because in the lens like we're talking about, it's not healable, right? It's, again, it's— not the lens that you and I were talking about, but the other lens, right? It doesn't— because it's like, "No, we're just going to have to figure this out and we'll do the best we can." Yeah, it's a diagnosis that goes against you for the rest of your life.

Good luck managing it.

Right, right, right. So I want people to hear that, that if you're listening to this or you know someone who has this, the PCOS process can be changed. Most of these things— and that's the beauty of the study of epigenetics, right? Through the proper nutrition, through the right supplementation, through exercise, through mindfulness, through the right therapy, you can actually have a change in your genetic expression. And then that's where that field with Dr. Bruce Lipton and Biology of Belief, that's, which is an amazing book. And if you're not a book reader, just go watch his YouTube video and save yourself the time, right? All of his YouTube videos on, on, on epigenetics and changing your, your, your genetic expression and predisposition to a lot of these things. But that all comes from everything. That you and I are talking about.

Yeah, I mean, once your body goes through enough, it turns on the gene. You can help turn it off and get your body back into healthy form if you do everything right. That's what I— what's why I try to help people with is let's just get— in fact, I call it beyond the diagnosis. I don't care what your diagnosis is. I could care less. What I want to know is what's happening inside your body and how do we fix it. The diagnosis just tells me what symptoms you're presenting with, what symptoms your body feels like presenting with. Something's going wrong. Let's just figure out what's going wrong and fix it.

Yeah. And it's literally like you're just finding— it's so succinct. You know, when you look at things, there's been times and I tell my clients, like, you know, I'm not certified in this. I've taken workshops. I'm not giving you any medical advice. I'm just pointing out things that I want you to go back to either I'll refer you to a functional medicine practitioner or I want you to go back to your doctor and ask them on these things. You're saying my lab is normal, but why is this number higher? And if I look at it from this other lens, this is indicating possibly a thyroid issue and you're telling me my thyroid is fine. And how many people are misdiagnosed or not— or underdiagnosed with a thyroid-related concern? When they're told they're within normal limits and how much of everything we've been talking about, right, is connected back to, to a lot of this.

Yeah, the thyroid could be a whole episode in and of itself, but think about it. If you've been told that your thyroid labs are normal, you're like, my hair's falling out, I can't lose weight, I have no energy, I have all the signs of thyroid, then why is it normal? The normal lab range is literally like trying to find your favorite restaurant somewhere between California and New York. Good luck. Whereas the optimal lab range, what we've kind of been alluding to, is more— for me, it would be more like, okay, your favorite restaurant is in the Wasatch Front, your favorite restaurant is in Miami, your favorite restaurant is in Chicago. Like, it narrows it down so much, and now you can go from I don't feel good to now I'm back to being myself versus a disease and feeling healthy. Yeah, if you want— you actually want normal labs. If you don't have normal labs, they're going to say, oh, you have liver disease, kidney disease, thyroid disease, like name it. They'll just put a name on it, give you a pill. So you want the normal labs. But the difference is, is the normal labs versus the ideal lab range. That means if you're in the ideal range, you feel good. If you're not in the ideal range, you feel like crap. Just not crappy enough to get a diagnosis.

Right. And then when I— and I noticed also one of the things that I find when my average— when my clients on average do a comprehensive metabolic panel, which is the average blood test that most people take, and they do a thyroid test on that, they're only testing 2 of the many.

Or 1.

Or 1, right. But I haven't seen more than 2 or 3 of the many. On the average, you know, and, and it doesn't give you an adequate wide view of everything that's going on.

Yeah, I tell people you're missing puzzle pieces. Yeah, your puzzle, your puzzle can't be complete with these puzzle pieces missing. You got to have all the puzzle pieces, right? And for me, the puzzle pieces would be TSH, free T4, free T3, TPO antibodies, TG antibodies. You can throw in reverse T3 there. But if you're looking at, okay, I'm going to my doctor, I'm going to go get some thyroid panels, what should I ask? To ask for. And I, and I will email people, I'll send Facebook messages to people. They'll reach out, hey, I got an appointment in a couple of weeks. What labs should I ask for? And I send them a list like CBC. I mean, I just go off. The more, the better. The more puzzle pieces you can get, the better. And when it comes to infertility, let's just talk on this one instance because it often gets missed. So you have PCOS, then you have endometriosis. Endometriosis is the heavy, painful periods. The, um, that it can even be painful, painful with intercourse. So real quick, we'll just know that endometriosis starts with the liver because the estrogen levels are usually high, and estrogen has to go through the liver, get broken down, and then eliminated. If the liver is so busy dealing with other crap, the estrogen is just going to hang out for a little bit, go back into the body. And now your estrogen keeps getting higher and higher and higher and higher. Your periods keep getting worse and worse and worse and worse. And there's really no answers besides birth control. Birth control usually makes it worse because it's got estrogen in it and it's just compounding the effect. So if you have endometriosis, start with the liver. The third thing would be this thing we call infections, a low-grade hidden infection. And you're actually one of the very few people I've talked to about this infection type thing who would understand it, right? Right.

And they can also be called subclinical infections depending on the, the, the languaging of the practitioner.

Yeah, I call them hidden low-grade infections because if you were to go tell your doctor that you have an infection, he's— they're going to laugh at you and think you're crazy and think I'm crazy. The difference is, is we're going to take that normal labyrinth and condense it into a smaller labyrinth. Now it's like, okay, I I might have a little bit of a virus in me, or the virus might be a little bit active, but it's not active enough to create a positive test. So if you go back, if you're struggling with infertility, if you're struggling with chronic fatigue, if you're struggling with whatever the case may be, and you've tried so many different avenues, chances are there might be a hidden infection inside you that's causing your body to stop thriving and simply survive. And the way you can identify that is this one marker called WBC. White blood cells. It's within the CBC. I guarantee if you've taken blood work, you have this lab. It's the number one labs everybody— every doctor takes to just rule out anything and everything. I also guarantee that this lab you've been told is normal. It might be normal, but it's not ideal. Okay, so go check out your labs. If that WBC marker is less than 5 or greater than 8, there is a hidden infection that your body is constantly fighting, and that is actually a big-time factor in infertility.

Yeah, and it's so simple, and it's right in front of our faces so many times. And I love doing this. I love doing exactly what you're doing. I've done this with a handful of my clients. I'm like, you know, just go get your labs for me. What's going on? Like, you know, I want to get your vitamin B12 check. I want to see especially, right, 1 out of 10 people who have vitamin B deficiency will have neuropsychiatric-related symptoms, which a lot of people don't know. So right off the bat, let's make sure you're getting your vitamin B, especially if those are— they're drinking and they're a partier part of their phase of life or they're alcoholics. Vitamin B is a stress handling, but it's also— it gets deficient when the body is exposed to too much alcohol. So I know it's something that goes correlation between that. I want to add something that's so important that I want people to take away on top of what you just said, is that when you are working with a practitioner such as yourself and you get sent to a doctor to do labs, a lot of times they'll tell the patient, we— what— we're not sure if we'll cover that lab. We're not sure if you're— so you're— so I want to tell people, this is the words you need to say: don't worry about it, I'll pay for it if it's not covered. 99% of the time. I haven't seen anybody in all the years, including myself, who has had to use those words to my practitioners who think I'm crazy for asking for all these things and said to them, "That's not your problem." That's true.

You're the one with the money in your pocket.

Right.

Right.

Well, we don't know if your insurance will cover that. Not your problem. I'll pay for it if it does. I haven't had one lab that I've had to pay for out of network or in addition to what was covered. And they've sent back, and I'm talking about random stuff like the MTHFR, testing for that and genetic testing and some other things over the years, nothing has been denied by my insurance. So I want everybody who's listening, if you're going to go and you're going to ask, you're going to work with a functional medicine practitioner, whether they're a chiropractor, nutritionist, but someone who works, specializes in functional medicine. You can work with Dr. Kylie. Your doctor is just responsible for writing that script. You're responsible to say, don't worry about it, anything that comes out of network or out of pocket, I'll cover it. And your job is to make sure that you get a copy of your labs. Don't just let them say everything is within normal limits, we didn't find anything. Get a copy of your labs and start keeping it as a folder. Because when you're working with practitioners, right, every 3 to 6 months they may want you to get new labs, and you want to have it right. And you might want to— you're going to start wanting to build a landscape of, of labs. So this morning, a good friend of mine who's a chiropractor, um, uh, I was just, you know, checking in with him on, you know, stuff. And, um, he's like, oh, send me your labs and your, you know, an assessment from one of our— one of the companies that we partner with, Designs for Health, or Apex Energetics, and they have a whole great questionnaire and, you know, some of those questionnaires, I'm like, "I have to find it from 6 months ago or from a year ago." And so you can see a landscape over time of what's going on with the symptoms that correlates with the blood lab. So I want everybody to make sure that when you're gonna go out, if you're struggling with any of this or anything else that's going on, get a copy of your lab but tell your practitioner, "Don't worry about it. Put it in there." put it in my script, and I'll deal with it if it shows up as a bill, and it's not going to be as expensive as I think it's going to be, even if it is.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And the more numbers you can get, I mean, ultimately it's priceless because if you can have the right person looking at those labs, you're going to save yourself not only years of not feeling good or years of infertility treatments or, or whatever the case may be, but thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars as well. Yeah, simply by getting a few more additional labs, right?

The only kickback that I've ever heard is for the thyroid panel is that they're like, well, I have to send you to an endocrinologist to order those. In other words, an endocrinologist has to order those for you, which I don't know if is necessarily true. I think any doctor can enter any labs. I think they just don't— they're just CYA-ing themselves. But if you push enough, my guess is— or you might need to find a new practitioner, a new general practitioner who is okay taking those things and interviewing them before that. What is your— you know, I had a doctor who was my first— he was my childhood counselor when I was 3 years old. That's how long I've known him. And I used to tell him coming in what I wanted, and he used to like roll his eyes like, 'Oh, you're crazy.' I'm like— and then when I left his practice and I had someone like recommended, like was like looking for a practitioner on Facebook, and I recommended someone else, he messaged me. He's like, 'How come you didn't send them to me?' I'm like, 'Here's why: because you laughed at me.' in my face. And when I would come in saying, this is what I want, and this is what I'm finding, and this is my area of—

I have people who are more experts at this, or they pull out Google right in front of you and start Googling your symptoms to see what's going on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's— well, you know, nothing shows up. So, right, so that's part of the challenges. And even myself as a practitioner, knowing an advocate, you know, the biggest, the most dangerous thing, unfortunately, to, to MDs sometimes are or self-advocate informed clients. So, you know, I want to challenge people in there to—

Yeah, people are having to do the self-advocacy because they're not getting answers when they do go into the doctors.

Yeah.

And the way I get labs is I— if they don't have them in their possession, it's always easier if they have them in their possession. You can pull medical records, and by law, doctors have to have medical records for the previous 7 years. But, you know, nobody goes through and eliminates their stuff, and if they do, props to them. But I pull records as far as they go back so you can get the full story. And people will say, well, and I asked them on their calls, when was the last time you felt good? Oh, I think it was, it was like 7 years ago. Well, what happened 7 years ago? Something usually always happens. Yeah. You can trace the history from previous before, you know, when they felt good, then what happened. And then you can see it all in the numbers. If you have it, your doctor has it because they have to have it by law. You just have to get it. You just have to go ask for it. So it might not even cost you anything because you've already paid for it. You've already donated the blood. You've already given the time, spent the energy. Let's go get it. Let's go get access to all of them.

Right. And that helps because it gives, again, a massive landscape over a period of time to see what's been going on and fluctuating, if there is anything fluctuating or if it's relatively stable or if it's actually getting worse and you can see that charted out right in front of you.

Yeah. Pretty cool stuff. Numbers never lie.

Yeah, the numbers, numbers never lie. So just to wrap things up, so we talked a lot about today. We talked about infertility, we talked about stress, we talked about thyroid, we talked about vitamin D. So, you know, we'll put in the show notes the, you know, the research on the adequate levels of vitamin D. There's an amazing study, that was done by, I believe the, I think this is Boston University School of Medicine, about adequate levels of vitamin D reduction, reduces complications amongst, those who are afflicted with the pandemic, with the virus that's going around. Um, and it says that you have to be at a minimum of 30 to, to have this. So though we really want to make sure that people are taking their, you know, they're getting their vitamin D like you suggested before, but anything below 30, if you look at your labs, you wanna immediately, immediately talk to someone, a practitioner, and you're, alert yourself to a practitioner. 30 is pretty low. Yeah, yeah, and that's what they're saying is, so the higher you get, the better off you're going to be, and that was with patients older than 40 years old, that these patients who were vitamin D sufficient were 51.5% less likely to die from the infection compared to patients who were vitamin D deficient or insufficient below 30. So that's at the low end of the chart, right?

So can you talk about— Yeah, 30 would be the very low-end border of the quote "normal range." Right, right.

And I've had clients with 17 of vitamin D and lived here in South Florida and ran and goes running. So, you know, there was other stuff going on and autoimmune stuff and depression and vitamin B was low. So all these things, so those of you out there and you're like fascinated by this and you're like, okay, I never knew I can look at these numbers from a different perspective. There's a whole entirely different framework and lens in which this can be interpreted that can help you in such an insanely simple and practical way. And there are amazing practitioners out there like Dr. Kylee who is doing these type of things. So I know that as our time wraps up, I just want to give everybody your website. It's Dr. Kylee, K-Y-L-E, burton.com. And there's so much good stuff on her website. Not only that, but she also has her own podcast called Beyond the Diagnosis, which I recommend. And well, in the next little bit, we're going to be doing an interview swap.

And I think you're gonna come join me.

Yeah, we're gonna talk about neuro-emotional technique and a bunch of other mind-body healing and probably some other functional medicine stuff.

But yeah, I always tell people, if I knew 5 years ago I would be treating emotions like I am now, I would have laughed at your face. You have to treat emotions if you're going to get physically better too.

Yeah. Yeah. So those of you who want more information, especially as it refers to women's health, then Dr. Kiley is for sure your go-to resource on this. And I'm so glad we connected because when I saw your profile in the podcasting connection world, I was like, this has to happen. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, you might as well have a degree next to your name with like a DC because you know everything DC knows and probably even more.

I can't adjust and I'm not licensed to, so I want to make it clear that anybody who hears me talking about these things— we were joking before that people who meet me who are chiropractors assume within 5 minutes if I don't tell them that I'm a therapist, that I'm actually a chiropractor based on my conversations and research that I've been doing over the last couple years. But I definitely attribute that to my amazing friends slash now family members. They've become family in the NeuroEmotional Technique community, and a good percentage of them are chiropractors. So I, I sit at the dust of their feet and drink in their words thirstily and absorb as much as I can because I want to be a great resource for my, for my clients no matter what. And I think we all need to be that as practitioners, to know things a little bit outside of our realm so we know who to refer to for that.

Yeah, I have a mentor who's definitely taken me from point A to point X I don't say point B because point B was what I knew where I thought I wanted to go. He introduced me to a whole another world that I didn't even know existed, like this whole idea of running a practice online. And it's—

yeah, awesome, perfect. So, so good. So maybe next time we get together we'll talk more about the thyroid because that's a big happy place to go to. And, uh, we'll definitely reconnect in the near future. So again, thank you so much for hanging out with us. And guys, again, please check out her podcast Again, it's, you know, we just talked about it, it's Beyond the Diagnosis.

Beyond the Diagnosis.

That's it. And if you got any value or if you know anybody who would value or benefit from today's episode, please share it with them. Also, we highly benefit from taking 3 minutes, going to iTunes, leaving us a starred and written review on the podcast. Not only does it give us some feedback, give me some feedback, well, you can do this for Dr. Kiley's when you listen to hers as well. It gives us feedback on how we're doing, what you got value out of, but two, it helps us get found in front of other people as well, right? It helps boost the listenership with the more reviews we get because that's telling people that there's value being offered. And if you want to reach out to me directly, uh, you can do so. There's been some recent Instagram changes. Um, my account got hacked or shut down. Unfortunately, I don't— I'm trying to figure out what's going on. So by this time. Hopefully it will be resolved by then, but you can follow me on my secondary Instagram account, which is linked directly to the podcast, which is You Winning Life. And again, thank you again for hanging out with us today.

Thanks for having me, Jason Wasser. Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribe so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at You Winning Life.