Is Adrenal Dysfunction Behind Your Weight Gain? with Marcelle Pick

Hey JJ Here. Every year around this time, I get the urge to make my home feel a little extra special. A space that feels just like the holidays. And Wayfair is my go to for that. Think cozy textures, twinkly decor, warm lighting, and all those little touches that make you want to curl up with a good book and a blanket. You'll usually find my books stacked on a great little end table I got from Wayfair, proof that function and style keep can coexist. Now, whether you're adding last minute hosting essentials, picking out gifts for loved ones, or refreshing your decor for the season, Wayfair makes it easy with beautiful finds, great prices and fast delivery. And when the holidays wind down, Wayfair has everything you need to tuck it all neatly away. Smart storage solutions for every room from the kitchen to the closet. Plus, with free shipping for any order over $35, that that's fast delivery and a total peace of mind. It's the perfect mix of joy and order, bringing the holiday spirit in, then storing it all with ease. If you're ready to make your home feel as good as it looks, get organized, refreshed and ready for the holidays. For way less head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. Wayfair Every style Every home that's W A Y F A I R.com hey, it's JJ here. You know, I've been talking about environmental toxins forever and laundry detergent is a sneaky one. A lot of them contain harsh chemicals like dyes, preservatives and even UV brighteners. Those brighteners don't actually clean anything, they just coat fabric so your eyes think things look whiter or brighter. That's more chemicals I don't want on my family sheets or skin. And if you've got sensitive skin or allergies around the house, this can be a big problem. That's what got my attention about Earth Breeze. It looks like a dryer sheet, but it's actually laundry detergent. You toss one in the washer and that's it. No pouring, no mess, and no heavy plastic jug. Their packaging is lightweight cardboard, which helps reduce plastic waste. And if you choose the fragrance free option, it's gentle, hypoallergenic, non irritating and non sensitizing. I really like how simple it is and how fresh and clean everything comes out without those unnecessary chemicals. Right now you can try Earth Breeze for up to 40% off with free gifts@earthbreeze.com virgin that's earthbreeze.com virgin for up to 40% off plus free gifts on your first order.

This episode is brought to you by Buffalo Trace Distillery. Powerful yet smooth. Contained but never tame. Proudly going their own way but never going alone. This is the spirit inside Buffalo Trace Bourbon made at Buffalo Trace Distillery. The world's most award winning distillery, Buffalo Trace is always perfectly untamed. Distilled, aged and bottled by Buffalo Trace distillery, Franklin County, Kentucky 90 proof 45% alcohol by volume. Learn more@buffalotracedistillery.com Please drink responsibly.

I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout.

Sorry mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author.

Yes, I'm a certified Nutrition Specialist, Fitness hall of Famer and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can. And that's why I created the well.

Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify.

The science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you.

Look and feel right now and have.

The energy to play full out at 100. I'm really excited to talk about adrenal dysfunction and weight today because I just don't really know how you go through life and not have some adrenal stuff come up, especially as a woman. And you know, I'll tell you a little funny story that happened to me and if you've been listening to the podcast, you know, the last couple years during the pandemic, I went to a Dr. Joe Dispenza week long meditation retreat having really never successfully meditated and not really knowing what I was getting myself into. I'd listened to Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. I really loved Dr. Joe's work, but we were supposed to do this program before he came and I did the program, but I didn't do the meditations because why would I do that? I'm going to the meditation retreat, right? And boy did I have something coming. So I go through this seven day meditation retreat where you do 35 hours of meditation along with a lot of lectures. Literally you're down there and it starts somewhere between 6:00am and 4:00am every morning and it goes till like 7:00 clock at night. Okay you are all in it. By the end of that first week, I realized that this was like taking your nervous system to the gym. And this is how I could make sense of it with my exercise physiology brain, that I would not in any way, shape or form expect that I could go to the gym for a week. And all of a sudden, boom, I'm in great shape.

I'm done.

Boop. Check that off the list. Much as I was hopeful that that would be the case. And so what I decided to do was commit for six months, commit to this, and commit to a daily practice. Now, this was ridiculous because all of a sudden, I was going to start adding 30 to 60 minutes of time meditating into my already packed calendar. But I decided to do it. My husband committed with me, and we actually signed up for the next meditation retreat. This was April 2021. Now we're going to go to the Next one in June 2020. But I just knew this is what I needed to do next step for my health, because I'd had shortness of breath, anxiety, adrenal stuff forever. So during the next one, I still didn't feel like I was really, you know, I really am more of a left brain person. I love math because, you know, if you're right. And I was like, I still don't know that I'm really getting this, but I'm seeing everybody around me making great progress, so I'm sticking with it. And again, that wasn't six months yet. Went to another one in September and another one in January. By that point, I'm like, I'm starting to notice a difference. And so much so that my coworkers on my team were like, hey, we really have noticed a shift in you and keep going. But the funnier thing that happened, and I had the good fortune to be sitting with Dr. Joe at dinner one night, and I go, you know, I have lost £5 sitting, doing nothing. Because this whole thing is, you're going to be nowhere. No body, no thing. And I was like, I have been doing no thing, and I have lost five pounds. He goes, yeah, it's called the nothing diet, which we laughed about. But that's the reality is I finally got out of flight or fight. I stopped having shortness of breath. And so I am super excited to talk with Marcel Pick today. And we are going to unpack all of this because this is such an issue, and it's kind of hard sometimes to grasp because it's not so tangible. But today we're going to talk about how to really identify the symptoms of adrenal dysfunction, how you can test for it, what leads to it, what things you might be doing every day trying to be healthier that could actually be creating more of a problem. Yep. We have some great resources for you as well, which you'll see in the show notes, including, including our Healthy Hormones program. Free. So let me tell you about Marcel. She has been a friend now for gosh, I think at least 15 years. And when I first met her I'm like, oh, this is a woman I need to know. She is literally the OG of hormones and adrenals are her most favorite thing. She's an OBGYN nurse practitioner and she co founded the world renowned women to Women Clinic in 1983. Now this was like revolutionary when she founded it because it was a women's clinic for women by women that was, you know, integrative, wellness oriented. Sounds like, oh, of course. But back then that was like, wow. Early on in her career she discovered functional medicine. She was one of the first people to become certified as a functional medicine practitioner. She's got her BS in nursing from University of New Hampshire School of Nursing, a BA in Psychology from University of New Hampshire, Ms. in Nursing from Boston College, Harvard Medical School. And she's certified as an OB GYN nurse practitioner and a pediatric nurse practitioner. She's a member of the American Nurses association and the American Nurse Practitioner association and she's a faculty member of the Institute for Functional Medicine where she teaches on hormones and she's a medical advisor to the healthy living magazine. Plus she writes for her website, marcelpic.com, p I c k and she lectures all over the place. She has written a load of books, the Core Balance Diet, Is It Me or My Adrenals? Is it me or My Hormones? And been all over the media including Dr. Oz, Fox, ABC, Glamour, Elle, Women's World and also did a public television show. So you are in for a treat. Marcel's been on the show before. We'll also link to her other episodes because she is just a wealth of knowledge. And as far as someone to talk to about adrenals, this is your go to. So enjoy the show and again check the show notes. And I'm going to put her Healthy Hormones program also@jjvirgin.com forward slash. Marcel. I'll be right back with Marcel. Stay with me.

Hey jj, Virgin here. Okay, real talk. So often the holidays sneak up on me, travel gifts, hosting, you know, all the things and suddenly it's like, wait, who spent what and where? And I know I'm not the only one who's looked at a bill in January and thought, wow, that escalated quickly. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface. Online, on your laptop or on your phone. Monarch lets you link everything and gives you real time visibility so you're not shocked later. Right now I've been checking the holiday spending category so I don't accidentally start the new year with that dreaded debt hangover. And honestly, just seeing everything laid out is already helping me stay more aware. This season. Monarch does the heavy lifting. It links your accounts in minutes, gives you smart categorization and super clear visuals. Yes, that end of year reset could be a real goal this time. Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use the code virginonarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with the code Virgin.

The holidays are almost here, but there's still time to score great gifts at Dick's Sporting Goods. Find everyone's must have gifts from Nike, FP movement, Adidas and more. Need your gifts fast? Stop by your local Dick's or shop dicks.com for fast shipping, curbside pickup or same day delivery. Every holiday starts at Dick's.

Welcome back. And back. And back and back. Marcel, it's so good to have you here.

It's always great to be here as well.

Well, I'm in love with what we're going to talk about today. I know both you and I have experienced these issues personally and you are the literal og. I mean, to me you're the OG of everything hormones like you are it founding Women to Women and all the books and PBS and everything else. But this especially, cause I know this is really your passion is to talk about how stress, how adrenal dysfunction can impact your weight. And I really am looking forward to digging into this. And where I would love to start is to go back because looking at where you were and looking in the 80s when you founded Women to Women, which was like this novel idea back then. Oh, a clinic for women by women. Wow. But back then when no one knew where adrenals were. I just wonder like, what's the difference now? Like, were a lot of women walking in back then with some kind of adrenal dysfunction? Is It a bigger problem now? Is there just more awareness? What's the big difference?

I think it's a bigger problem. I mean, I think social media, the news, you know, what happened with COVID the world. You know, the interesting thing is I was one of the women that was marching for the era and I was in Washington all white with all the other women. And I think in some ways it did a disservice to us because not only then did we have to be CEOs of companies, but we still had to be mothers and we still, I know I can't do it all and we're all trying to do it all way.

We didn't win anything there. It's like you got the promotion and you just got more stuff to do.

And I, I think we women tend to not be so great at self care anyway, so it just made it that much worse. And so, yes, I think since 1985, when we founded Women and Women, it has gotten worse. And I think at the time also women felt like they weren't being listened to. And now the appointments are shorter, so they're having the same comment, which is, I'm really not listened to them. And healthcare is in such a crisis that it's become much, much more problem.

I just think we've got to get that message out that women do not work like men.

Oh my God, hands down. I mean, we don't interpret information in the same way. We are very oriented toward collaboration and not unilateral decision making. And we are feelers. Sometimes it takes us a little time to kind of gather all that information. And we don't do it in the same way men do, but we're being expected to do it in the same way. I had to represent my company, even though I wasn't kind of the head cheese at the time in a lawsuit. And I remember just thinking to myself, I've got to get iron ovaries. Because the lawyer was on the upper side of the table and I got enormous, gigantic ovarian cyst the next day. Oh my God. And it went its own, but it was 8 centimeters. I mean, it was huge. And I could feel it happening at the time going, oh my God, I was kidding.

I don't need an iron ovary.

I think women are having to feel that way and it shouldn't be that way at all. We're equal, but different, period.

So do you think that's why there's. And I'm just assuming maybe I'm wrong, but I'm assuming that this is more common in women than men. So that might be a wrong assumption. So I guess the first question is, is adrenal dysfunction more common in women than men? And if so, is that the reason why or what else?

No, I think that's the reason why. And I think that women are not great at being able to see, you know, I don't feel good. They push a little harder, Especially since the feminist movement came out, you know, Well, I can do this all. Well, no, we can't. For the longest time, I wouldn't have people help me with my suitcase when I'm on the airplane.

Me too.

But that was a big stretch for me is being able to say, look, I am an equal to a man. But I'm also very different in terms of my thoughts, my behavior, my strengths. I'm not as strong.

My.

Yeah, I love what Alison Armstrong says is men are not hairy women.

No. For a long time, you know, I wanted that equal talk about how you feel. And now gag me. I mean, that's. I want. I want what men have to offer, which is quite different.

Right. So the big question for someone listening, because I feel like this is still a little bit intangible, is what really is adrenal dysfunction? I still remember 20 years ago, I was working with a doc in Century City, and he was fairly integrative because as a traditional doctor, he went and took acupuncture, right? So he was more open and integrated than most. And I did an adrenal salivary test on him and he was flatlined and said, you know, you've got adrenal exhaustion. And his wife was an MD who was teaching at the medical school at usc. And she goes, that's ridiculous. There's no such thing. You're just burnout. And I go, I think that's the same thing. We're just using different language. So, you know, let's unpack what really it is and how someone would be able to identify it.

So we don't ever talk about adrenals. That's the problem. We just talk about em in the kind of alternative functional medicine world, but in the conventional community, we never talk about it. And if you're tired, you know, at your iron level, or you're depressed, or you've got a thyroid problem, or, you know, you have a serious kind of condition, otherwise you probably just depressed. It's nothing. And what we know is that the adrenals are crucially important to our health and wellbeing. They are the size of a walnut. They sit on top of the kidneys. And they're the mechanism in which we're able to deal with the stress that we have in our lives. Fight flight. You know, 2,000 years ago, they would come to our rescue when we had a battle coming and they would be really, really helpful. And then the battle would go away or we'd be dead. And we didn't have what we have now, which is constant 24,7 stress. And the body's meant to have the balance of that, which is that we've got a parasympathetic nervous system and a sympathetic nervous system. The drive is the sympathetic, the parasympathetic is the brakes. And if we don't have that kind of reserve break time, which most people don't have, ultimately cortisol produces and produces to help those adrenals. But at some point they can't do it anymore. And the body can't live without cortisol. So it will produce cortisol at the expense of our sex hormones, I. E. Estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and dhea. So for many people it causes enormous hormonal dysregulation. And we have different forms of adrenal issues. She has that person that's wired but tired wired all the time. They can't sleep very well. They get up and they're just kind of wired. Then we have the person that I call the workhorse in my business. So they're up and down throughout the day. Sometimes they've got energy, sometimes they don't. And then we have, you know, we call the flatliner. The bad news is that in functional medicine, we don't call adrenal despair or whatever. We call it adrenal dysfunction. The adrenals are not working the way that they should. Adrenal fatigue. Do the adrenals really get fatigued? Well, they probably do, but it's not a great medical term. And the American endocrinology of society has basically said there's no such thing. Well, that's unfortunate because there are so many people, especially women, that are pushing the envelope. You know, it's like what I say to people is, you know, you're running with a stress fracture. When are you going to give yourself a little bit of a break here? Quiet it down or doing, you know, mountain climbing or being pregnant and just pushing the envelope. It's like the body's talking to you. Listen, so how do you know you can't fall asleep at night or you sleep well and you wake up exhausted or mid afternoon, you're exhausted your get up and go is get up and gone. You don't have the stamina. You can't think clearly. You have foggy thinking. You may have more, you know, headaches than you used to have. You have reactions to food that you never had before. And the bad news is we now have a lot of the scientific research that shows us with adrenal issues, we have more autoimmunity, we have more, you know, immune issues, we have more hormonal dysfunction, we have more digestive issues, we have more thyroid problems because it intervenes on that level. So it's a significant problem. And it increases metastatic cancers. It's like, yeah, we gotta pay attention to this. This is a big deal.

So lot to unpack there. And I'm thinking of your book, Tired and Wired. Probably everyone listening has been in that state, the tired and wired state. And it's the worst feeling. Is that tired and wired state. Is it the first sign? Like, where is that in the cause? I know there's different stages here, but, like, when you just listed all of these things that adrenal dysfunction can cause or exacerbate, you kind of wonder, what are some of those earlier signs that people probably are missing? Is tired and wired one of them, or is that, like, further down the line?

Well, tired and wired is one of them, but one of the things that people start to notice is their road rage is higher. Know what used to be a situation that they just had a normal reaction to, they have an enormous reaction to that's already telling us that the DHEA level is compromised. When you're feeling like you've had a good night's sleep and you wake up in the morning, you're just a little bit more tired than usual, but you can kind of get it. You have a little cup of coffee, or you're starting to want more coffee to get through your day, or you're wanting more sugar because sugar gives you momentary energy, but then you bottom out on the other side. So it's really understanding that when you're not feeling yourself, we have to unpack what that might be, especially if you look at the stress that you have in your life. When I say, on the scale of 1 to 10, how high is your stress? 7, 8. That's okay short term, it's not okay long term, because ultimately it will get.

You one of the challenges there is. I think people think stress has to be something super stressful.

This episode is brought to you by McAfee. I got a message that our flight was canceled, but they can put us on another flight, and we just need to confirm our credit card info.

Wait, I got a security alert from McAfee.

It flagged that message as a scam. McAfee's scam detector automatically spots and alerts you to suspicious texts, emails, and deep fake videos. Learn more@mcafee.com online protection. So here's the interesting thing. So my father introduced me to the ACE study in 1998, long time ago. He was a psychologist, and he was working with Albanians and Serbs at the time doing conflict resolution. And he said, this is something you might want to look at. Well, the interesting thing is Felitti, and I don't know if you know how that study started. He was working with women that were significantly overweight, a hundred pounds or more. And he had them on a liquid diet, and they were all losing weight, and then half of them dropped out. When they were successful, and he pulled one of the women back by mistake. He asked her, how much did you weigh? He wanted to ask her, how old were you when you were first sexually active? And she said, 30 pounds. He pulled many of the women come back and found that 85 to 90% of women been sexually abused. And he was in at a conference with the cdc, and the CDC researcher said to him, well, that happens to them, but I'm sure it's not true in the general population. So that's how the ACE study was actually started. And they looked and they got 17,000 men and women, and they looked to see if they had adverse events as a kid, did it impact their health long term. And the answer was, oh, my God. At the time, they had questions up to 10. If you had a score of 4 or more, your chances of heart disease were increased by 165%. Cancer, early death, smoking, addiction, and metastatic cancers. So that study is an ongoing study. It's one of the largest studies in the history of medicine looking at it's not just today's stress, it's our historical stress. And the body doesn't know the difference between today and yesterday. So if somebody's screaming at you, it sounds just like what you heard as a kid. Cortisol levels go up until you actually get the frontal cortex, the front part of your brain, to be localized and say, wait a minute, you know, that was yesterday. And do some techniques to really help you. And that's where PTSD comes in. It's the body still remembering as though it just happened.

It feels like an ACE questionnaire should be really part of, like, annual exams, doesn't it hand Stan.

I did it. I mean, when I was in practice, I was doing it. And it was interesting. I was at a conference getting my cus at Harvard, and they were talking about opioid addiction. I raised my hand to know, is anybody doing an ace score on these people? Because you can predict who's going to have a problem. They didn't even know what it was. So unfortunately. And Felitti was going to retire. And then he said, no, this is too important, this information. So there are communities that know it and there are other communities that don't. And the part that's so important that I'm passionate about is that we can change it. You know, it's not so hard. You don't have to go into 14,000 hours of therapy every day. It's really understanding. And I had somebody in my weight loss program. This is a great example of this. She'd lost 40 pounds. She looked amazing. All of her friends were really excited for her. Cause she did quite quickly and they were saying things to her and she became embarrassed and she started overeating again. And so we dug deeper. And when she was a young girl, what her mother said to her all the time is, don't you ever think you're better than anybody else? Every time somebody said that to her, it triggered that experience. And when she unpacked that and really worked with it was like, oh, I might not be better than, but I'm as good as. And so she's now kept the weight off for a couple years.

I just wonder how many people are actually able to figure out where that is coming from. Sometimes it's an obvious thing, but like, how often it just was told to you and you just incorporated it into your tissues and it just became reality and you forgot about it, hands down.

I mean, that's why sometimes it helps to have coaching or it helps to have somebody really unpack that. Or even doing Feldenkrais or polarity therapy. When you have that deep kind of massage, people are sobbing on the table because we store so much of that in our tissue. And you can see it from behavior. And there's different modalities. I mean, there's the Hoffman process, there's Joe Dispenza's work, there's Annie Hopper's work. I mean, there's people that do trauma work. So a lot of things are out there. But a lot of times, jj, these are not traumas as we think of them, but incredibly hurtful that you keep the rest of your life. And as we unpack that. What I say to people is, look, if you don't deal with your story, your story will deal with you at some point during your life. It would benefit you to unpack that. Because we all have stories. We all do. Yeah.

Yeah. I wonder how often it's just some flippant remark a teacher made or a parent made. And, you know, having now gone to six Dr. Joe retreats, the first time I went, I was like, what is that? And I'm like, tell that person to knock it off. Because people will shake, they'll scream. And you're like, you're messing up my meditation over here.

Right.

And then you realize, first of all, you're like, I want to have that. You know? But you see people shaking just like an animal shakes it off. It's like they're just healing their nervous system. It's stunning.

Yep. I have always had an outrageous kind of mindset, and now practice was that way from the very beginning. Out of nowhere, we just closed practice, we stopped surgery, we rebooked them, and all kinds of stuff. And we went to an Ann Wilson shape retreat. And that was really about codependency because they didn't have to dispense at the time. And then we had that same experience, you know, that people were shaking and screaming and yelling and doing all this deep work as they uncovered some of the pieces that had been carried that co created some of that codependency behavior.

So let's pop back over to hormones, since you've been at that for so darn long, and really talk about it in terms of perimenopause and menopause. Because one of the things that I've always looked at is, boy, if you want to be able to have a easier time during that time, first step is to look at your adrenals. So I'd really love to unpack why that's important, how they interact with, et cetera.

So the interesting thing is that for so long, when we talk about hormones and people say it to me all the time, is it me? And that's why I call my book, is it me and my Hormones? If we look at the biochemistry of the adrenals, the adrenals, as I mentioned, cholesterol normally makes and helps produce estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and dhea. If we have a need for cortisol for too long or too much as a defense mechanism, there's an enzyme for fancy word, it's called 1720 lyase that actually blocks the conversion to estrogen, progesterone. And testosterone. So you're making lots of cortisol, but you're then becoming low in those hormones. And the first hormone that goes down is progesterone. So what we see in people that are had very bad pms. I used to see a lot of people in my practice and again we were one of the first practices in, in the country prescribing bioidentical progesterone for people with PMS. And I would sometimes have people on up to 400 milligrams a day depending upon that. But I would always say to them, look, PMS is an exaggeration of how we feel all the time. Only premenstrual don't have defense mechanisms to deal with that. So as we corrected their stress and their emotional kind of baggage and then got them on progesterone, many of them, even if they were suicidal, got much better. And in perimenopause what I say to people is, look, menopause is a journey of self discovery. Who am I, what am I going to do for the second half of my life and how do I get there? And what are those things that are under the carpet that I didn't have time to deal with when I was a mother and working and all that? Because it all comes out in menopause. So it's a time in which if we start to look at the adrenals, we start to ask the questions, you know, have I taken care of myself well? And if I haven't, what were the messages I got as a young girl? What do I think about myself? Self esteem is a huge issue for so many women. I'm not tall enough, thin enough, big enough, whatever it is, really digging deep into those things. And when you're a mom you don't have time to do that. But in perimenopause menopause you do. And that's the time to really look at uncovering that. Cuz the adrenals trump hormones and the adrenals trump thyroid. The other thing that happens is that we've got thyroid hormones and if you have too much cortisol it increases reverse T3, which is the breaks thyroid so that our thyroid's not working properly either. So we've got a double whammy and hormones are crazy and our thyroid's up and our cortisol's up and we're just not knowing kind of where to go. And a place to always, always start is with the adrenals. And many times I could get hormones normalized when we dealt with that cortisol production. And sometimes for me it was most helpful to get it tested because I thought I knew what somebody was and I was completely wrong. And sometimes I see very high cortisol and I expected to see it very low. That was a wired and tired person. And people that are just exhausted, then we have to talk about what do they need to do to rehab. Because sometimes it takes six months to a year. And I would see in my practice people coming back and back, I'd get them better, they'd come back because they never dealt with the caused what caused that deep emotional stress for themselves that Joe Dispenza talks about so well.

What were you doing for testing?

So it's a cortisol that's done with saliva and then you're looking at the morning. Some people use as soon as you wake up, then a half hour later, then noon, then four in the afternoon, then at nighttime. And you can see the pattern. And what we do in the labs is we're doing a 24 hour cortisol. Well, that's not going to help me at all because yes, it's going to help me make sure they don't have Cushing's syndrome, which is way too much, which is a medical emergency, or too low, which is, you know, Addison's. We don't want those. But you don't see that very often. So if I'm doing a 24 hour cortisol, I don't get a sense of what the pulsatill experience is during the day because you want it to be high in the morning and low at night. And sometimes they're up and down and sometimes they're flat lines and sometimes they're high all the time. So you get a sense then of how to intervene because we do have amazing herbal interventions that are called adaptogenic herbs. So if they're high, we can bring it down. If they're low, we can bring it up. And we can also use that for people that can't sleep. Phosphatidylserin is one of my favorite adaptogenic herbs that brings cortisol levels down. What about diet? Well, in that situation, intermittent fasting is not such a great idea because the body's already stressed out. Do I use intermittent fasting in my practice? Hands down, we know the research is there, but for those people with adrenal issues, I don't recommend it because it's too long without food and the body has another stressor then I on board. But it's protein, it's not sugar. It's lower carbohydrates. It's healthy, organic food. It's being aware of the skincare products, anything that taxes the body in any way. The ingredients that you clean your house with. What is your water? Do you have a filter on it for chlorine? Because we're soaking this great hot water, and it's like, no, it's got chlorine in it because we're using public water. All of those things make an enormous difference.

I think that's really important. One of the things I like to say is that we've got to look at these diets as tools, not religions or absolutes. Like, intermittent fasting is a tool that can be very therapeutic, used in the right time, and exercise is the same. And I think that's an important thing to look at right now, because a lot of the things that we would look at as healthy, and especially for women who I feel like so often are trying to drive their body to something that's not realistic for their body type, right? And they're seeing everything out in the media, and they are literally over exercising, undereating, fasting, and crashing themselves. So that's the other piece of it is like, what are some of these things that are considered to be healthy that may not be healthy at this time? Because it's about doing the right thing at the right time in your life to get the right effect. So someone who's adrenally exhausted, intermittent fasting is not gonna help you. But what are some of the other things that would be issues during this time?

So, you know, what's interesting, jj, is that it's also finding out what foods your body's liking. You know, is your gut microbiome healthy and healthy? You know, one of the things that we know is that the uterus has a microbiome, so that can actually affect how much cramping you have and how much bleeding you have. The vagina has a microbiome. The lungs have a microbiome. And now we're starting to understand that the endothelial vessels, the endothelium, has a microbiome. So it makes sense. I mean, our body's mostly bacteria, so it's understanding that we're all different. You know, what works for you doesn't work for me. Looking at, are you someone who does better with low fat carb and balance is helpful? What foods work for you? Dairy's not a good thing for most people. Gluten's not a good thing for most people. And for some people, you know, it's soy and even almonds. I see allergies to almonds all the the time. So it's truly being loving with yourself and saying, you know, what does my body need? And, you know, the world is on Ozempic now or semi glutider now. The new one is Manjaro, and those are fantastic for people that are diabetic. I mean, Oprah Winfrey is skinnier than I've ever seen her and is doing very well. But is it really appropriate for people that have 15 to 20 pounds to lose, that are not diabetics? I have big concerns about those people because if they stop using that medication, they do gain their way back. It's understanding that we're different and that we have to treat our body. Not going and running a marathon with a stress fracture. Just saying, you know, what do you need? What is the thing that's going to comfort you more? How do I learn not to be so codependent? How do I learn how to take care of myself? What is my adrenal reserve? You know, what are those numbers? What do they look like? And what nutrients do I need that are adaptogenic, perhaps to help me with my lifestyle? And how do I walk my talk. I might be talking about doing all these things, but I don't do it. Because how you teach your children is by what you do, not what you say. All of those are hugely important. And understanding that we do have historical stress, you might not have immediate stress around you, but if you're someone that's beating yourself up and intermittent fasting and, you know, using a whip on, I've got to do this, that and the other, it just. It doesn't work. And at some point it really backfires on you.

Yeah, I just saw a girlfriend I hadn't seen for a while and she had decided she was going to do one meal a day and had been doing it for over a year and looked like she'd aged. She'd gotten fluffy because she's losing her muscle. I'm like, would you knock it off? Like, this is not meant to be a way of life. This is a intervention therapeutic. You know, I hear all of this and I think for the person listening who maybe is more of a conventional doctor, and I can just imagine them going into their doctor wanting to get a test and knowing how that's not going to work very well. Like, where does someone go who wants to do an adrenal salivary index? Who wants to work with someone who understands this? Because I don't think it's our job as consumers. Like, I don't think it's the patient's job to educate the doctor. I think it's the patient's job to find a doctor who is on the same page with them. And I'll tell you an interesting story. I have a girlfriend who broke her jaw. It was just before we were all going on a trip and literally had to get her jaw wired. And she's in seeing this dentist and the dentist is telling her all this horrible stuff that is going to happen because she's had this happen. And she said, you know, I need you to hold the vision of perfect healing for me. And if you cannot hold that vision, you are not my doctor because, you know, thoughts create. And so I think it's really important, you know, if this is something and everything you've said today on this interview, Marcel tells me that this is like the first place we should be looking. Gut problems, we need to look here, hormonal problems here, thyroid problems here, autoimmune here. Like, we've got to be looking at this connection. And yet in more of the conventional space, it's not looked at at all. And I just was listening to a podcast the other day that kind of dismissed this testing and I'm like, come on. So what is the person listening? Who's going, you've described me. What do they do?

So the Institute of Functional Medicine, or ifm.org has practitioners. You can find a place that says find a practitioner there. And they have practitioners literally all over the country. I teach for them still and do the hormone maga, which is coming up in a couple of weeks, training doctors because it can get certified that way. I'd recommend you do work with someone that's certified and if all else fails, then you can go to life extension and get the testing, because they do have testing that you can do yourself.

The Hopkins have their lab, your lab test too. We'll put all of this in the show notes, including ifm, the ACE study, how to get an adrenal test. But they'll still need someone to work with there. Absolutely.

And that's the hard part. We don't have enough functional medicine docs around. And the bad news is for many people, they get frustrated because they're not taking insurance. And I just want to explain to people why that happens. And that is that the insurance industry is not very loving of us that practice functional medicine. We're not allowed to have 30 minute appointments. And I got my hand slapped all the time because I did insurance until I left a year and a half ago. So that's why they have to go over so they can spend 45 minutes for an hour and a half people to really look up what's going on. I mean, I've spent an hour and a half or two hours with people that I do in my, what I call VIP program, which is not in the insurance model, just doing one on one with people and really getting deep into were you breastfed, were you bottle fed, how many childhood illnesses do you have? All of that gives us information about the gut and gives us information about your health and your status as well as your emotional history as well. So we're trying to train as many as we can. We do generally 700 people five times a year. So the numbers are going higher, but we still don't have enough trained in functional medicine.

Meanwhile, they have your book. We're going to put everything about Marcel in the show notes because you have so many resources. You're also giving everyone your healthy hormones program for free so you can get started right away. And I'm going to put that@jjbirgen.com Marcel and I think the very first thing is to really look at those symptoms and go, have I addressed this piece yet? Because quite often you're sitting, you're going, I, I've tried all these things. They haven't really moved the needle. Well, the biggest piece of functional medicine is to go to the root cause.

And they can also go to my first book, which is called the Core Balance Diet, which has got all the areas. You've got a quiz for adrenals, a crispr hormones, a quiz for detox, for the gut, a crispr emotions. You know, on my last chapter in my book is are your issues in your tissues? So they can go and take a quiz there and see what is my biggest game, you know, game issue here and then do something about that as well.

Awesome. Thank you so much. And again, JJVirgin.com Marcel to get the healthy hormones program. And I will put all the things we talked about today in the show notes because you mentioned a lot of great resources too. So there's lots of ways to get help. If you're listening, and this is really one, I don't know that I ever told you this. Marcel. I took my first adrenal test way back when with Bill Timmons. Do you remember him?

Yeah, absolutely.

And he absolutely forced me to do it. And boy, was he right. And so then it was a whole, whole story of I would get them back in balance and I'D blow them out again, get em back in balance. And so this is such a big thing and quite often it makes us really reflect on our whole life and go, no, actually you can't get up at 5am, study for grad school, go do mom stuff, run, work all day, then go do mom stuff, then study some more, then try to go to bed at 10 or 11, throw a workout in somewhere like, no, you can't do that and stop it.

And I think that's the key point here, jj, is that, you know, you do your adrenal test, you do the adaptogenic herbs and you think I'm done. And the answer is no. If you're doing the same behaviors, that's the definition of insanity. Expecting results.

The herbs will get you out of the woods, but they didn't fix the original problem.

So, and I used to say is, look, I can get you feeling better so you can go do the deep work that got you here to begin with.

Yes. Very good. All right. Thank you so much for your time today. As usual, it's been amazing and I so appreciate everything you do. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and more importantly, that you're built to last.

And check me out out on Instagram.

Facebook, YouTube and my website JJ virgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast so you don't miss a single episode@subscribetoj.com See you next time.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I tag all things Books and Reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website. What should I read next? Podcast. Com to find out more.