The Adrenal Transformation Protocol with Dr. Izabella Wentz

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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 that 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. So I think we can all agree that the last couple years have taken a little toll on our health, especially in terms of the stress that we've all been under. And so I was really excited when a popular guest of our show and A longtime friend, Dr. Isabella Wentz, who wrote the number one New York Times bestseller Hashimoto's Protocol, came out with the Adrenal Transformation Protocol and this is something that she's been working on for the last five years. It just happens to be so timely that she is publishing it now. I will link in the show notes which I'm going to put@jjvirgin.com Drisabella and that's D R I Z A B L L A our last interview and also the links to all of her books. You're also gonna be able to get her ABC Guide to Adrenal Transformation. So while you're waiting for the book, you'll be able to download that right away. Let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Isabella Wentz. She is an integrative pharmacist who got into all of this because of her own Hashimoto's thyroiditis. She had a literally decade of these debilitating symptoms. No one could figure out what was going on. Then when she got diagnosed she really dug in to figure out how was she going to heal herself. So similar thing happened by the way with her adrenal health. So boy her issues have really become things that have changed people worldwide. So she has now written several best selling books. Again the New York Times number one bestseller, Hashimoto's Protocol. She also wrote the New York Times bestseller Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. And she also wrote Hashimoto's Food Pharmacology which is nutritional protocols and healing recipes to take care of your thyroid health. And so this book focuses on resetting the body's stress response through targeted safety signals and features a four week program that has already helped over 3,500 individuals and it has an impressive success rate with over 80% of participants improving their brain fog, fatigue, anxiety, irritability, sleep issues and libido. If I've just named any of the things that you're struggling with, then stay with me. You are in luck because Dr. Isabella Wentz is here to the rescue. I'll be right back.

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You to suspicious texts, emails, and deep fake videos. Learn more@mcafee.com online protection. I still remember back when I was. I think I was probably right. Mm, 38, 39. And I was going, I went to a lab lecture on adrenal salivary testing and, you know, adrenal dysfunction and cortisol and all of this. I thought, that's interesting. And the lab director's like, you have to take the test. And I go, I'm fine. Anyway, I take the test. He calls me himself because he's like, you are so adrenally exhausted. And that was when I started to really deep dive into all of the adrenal stuff. And I remember I was working with a client and he was a medical doctor in LA and his wife was a medical doctor who taught at medical school at usc. And so I ran this test on him and I said, and he had big time adrenal exhaustion and. And I suspected it. And he went and told his wife and she says, there's no such thing as that. You're just burnt out. So I'm super excited to have Dr. Isabella Wentz back. You know her from Hashimoto's protocol. And really, you're the go to on everything thyroid. But now you're also going to be the go to on adrenal dysfunction and adrenal transformation. And I'd love you first to start there because I feel like that was what, 20, over 20 years ago? I feel like we're kind of starting to get this now. But do people, are people recognizing that adrenal dysfunction is a thing yet, or do they still think it's like some bogus made up thing?

Oh my gosh. So if you talk to a conventionally trained doctor, they will say that adrenal fatigue doesn't exist, Right? And I know about a decade ago people were saying leaky gut does not exist. And yet you pubmed and search like the medical version of leaky gut for intestinal permeability. And holy cow, there are so many studies and same thing now with adrenal fatigue, right? So you can call it burnout. That's the correct term for it. You could call it adrenal dysfunction. The scientific term for it, it's hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis dysfunction. Doesn't quite roll off the tongue, but There is a lot of scientific research behind that. And essentially what it is, it's the body is stuck in this chronic stress response where your body's breaking itself down rather than building itself back up. And you have this cluster of very frustrating symptoms that are taking your vitality from you. And unfortunately, conventional medicine still doesn't have an answer. They'll say, you know, you have brain fog, fatigue, have trouble falling asleep. You might have anxiety, a mild form of depression, irritability, all of these things. And they'll say, here's an antidepressant, here's sleep medication to help you sleep. Right? Do you need some anxiety medicine? And it's just unfortunate because it all has to do with. With how our body responds to stress. And we need to really work on our stress response and not just through, like, meditation, right. It's an actual physiological process.

Now, I feel like that possibly there might be a lot more light on the subject now after the last couple of years, because if anything was going to push us over the edge, it was what we just went through. Someone who just heard and you just listed some of the symptoms. But it would be great to hear all the different symptoms of this, and then how would one go about really getting diagnosed with this?

So you can have brain fog, fatigue, especially morning fatigue. You're somebody that just kind of feels very groggy in the morning. You have a hard time getting out of bed. Perhaps you get a little bit more energy as the day goes on. Perhaps you don't. You might have a 3pm slump where you just get really tired all of a sudden and irritable right around that 3pm mark. As the day goes on, you might feel like you're getting tired, but also getting more wired. And towards the evening time when it's really time to go to sleep, right, and get settled, you come alive and you might be that night owl where, you know, you know, it's time to go to bed, but you're just laying in bed and you're having a hard time falling asleep. You might be waking up throughout the night. You might have unrefreshed sleep. And some of the physiological patterns that go along with this is you might have salt cravings. You might have trouble with bright lights. You might step outside and be like, whoa, I. I'm blinded by the light. What am I, a vampire? Right? You might be somebody that is addicted to coffee in the morning. You're like, you know, if you're that person crawling to your coffee machine first thing in the morning, there's A good chance that. That this is you, right? And then you might be somebody that may be dependent on wine or alcohol in the evenings to wind you down, to kind of get rid of that, like that spitting mind and all of. All of those thoughts in your head. And then some of the other things could be standing up too quickly, and then you feel very faint. And typically, women with anxiety and mood swings and irritability, libido issues, pain in their bodies, these are. This is all the whole cluster of symptoms of that adrenal dysfunction state where we're really stuck in that place where we're just stressed out chronically and our body is not thriving.

So someone who's listening who went, oh, that's me. That's me. That's me. Oh, that's me. Is there beyond just the subjective things? Are you having people confirm this with something like an adrenal salivary index? Are those useful? Are symptoms enough, like, what's the stage to really understand what's going on?

I love tests. I do them on myself, every client, on my husband, on my child. When I had a dog, you bet you my dog. Was testing done, too. At the same time, I know testing is not necessarily available to everybody. So the program is based on your symptoms, and I teach you how to go by your symptoms to figure out where your adrenals might be at. So I've done a lot of testing over the years, and the tests that I do recommend that have more accurate patterns are gonna be the ZRT adrenal saliva test and the Dutch urine profile test for adrenals. This is something that can be incredibly helpful if you're the kind of person that doesn't believe you have something and you just need to see it on paper. Right?

Like when I first had that one done, and I was like, no, I'm fine. I'll tell you a little funny story, Isabella. I worked with Alan Christensen. Our buddy did this with me. I would work through all this, heal my adrenals. Then I'd do another adrenal test. He's like, it looks great. Then I go, trash them. Then he'd go, all right, you gotta get tested again. I'm like, I don't do that anymore. But I did it about four rounds worth before I just went, stop doing that. So I do think for type A people who won't believe it, that this testing is so fantastic. But you can do then just through symptoms. And I'd love you to explain cortisol and DHA and how these things are supposed to work. You can tell through symptoms alone where someone is in terms of adrenal dysfunction.

Absolutely. So typically a person who's very tired in the morning and has trouble waking up, they're going to have low morning cortisol. Right? A person that kind of jumps out of bed with like, holy cow, I'm late for everything. And just with that surge, right? That is a person that's likely to have too much cortisol in the morning. So typically, you know, for some people they're like, well, isn't that normal? It's common, but it's definitely not normal. Typically you should wake up energized, bright eyed and bushy tailed. But you shouldn't feel anxious when you wake up in the morning. You shouldn't feel exhausted when you wake up in the morning. You should wake up feeling energized, right? Feeling good. And so I could tell when somebody talks about how they feel in the morning, what their cortisol is going to be like throughout that time. For the evening times, I can tell what their cortisol is going to be like if they have. Are you going to sleep just fine? Okay, probably. Then your cortisol is what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be low in the evenings. Are you having trouble falling asleep or having night wakings? Chances are that your cortisol is going to be too high in the evenings. Right. There's a great way to tune into your body with this and some of the other hormones that come into play. Dhea. If you have a lot of pain in your body, if you have low libido, there's a chance that your DHEA levels may be off. Right. If you're finding that you're aging too rapidly, there's a chance that perhaps your DHEA levels might be low as well. What I used to do is I used to test people and then give them little bits of those hormones, right. To get them to match what they were supposed to have throughout the circadian rhythm pattern. But what I've done over the last five years is I've really focused on kind of natural ways to do this. So where people can do that in their own homes without necessarily having to test or work with a doctor and without having to use like hormones and glandulars. So the reason for that is because when I was a nursing mom and you know, you've burned out your adrenals a few times. I have two, so I've healed and burned out my adrenals and healed them a few times. The last time was when my son was eight months old, he still was not sleeping through the night, and so that meant I wasn't either. And then I was like, okay, I know my adrenals are crashed. I did the test that confirmed it, but I couldn't take the hormones like the pregnenolone that helps us create more cortisol. I couldn't take dhea, and I couldn't sleep, which is another good thing to do if you have adrenal dysfunction. And a lot of the protocols that are kind of the foundations in functional medicine and natural medicine weren't available to me, so I just kind of created a different path to healing.

That's actually awesome that you were able to do that, because when you look at it, I think it's actually a smarter way to really go about doing this because. And I'd love you to talk about, like, the different things that can cause you to start to go into adrenal dysfunction, because it's kind of doing the opposite of what got you there. Right. So what are some of the things you talked about? I mean, being a young mom, how that doesn't do that to everybody. I know after my son Grant, you know, once things started to settle down and he was out of being in the hospital for four and a half months, I tested his adrenals. They were great. Mine done. You know, so, you know, what are some things that can move someone's can. Can impact their adrenals and start to make them get out of rhythm.

So any kind of stress, whether that's caregiver stress. Right. Caregiver being fatigue when you're caring for somebody. You know, a lot of these psychological stressors, you can have family drama, you can have an annoying boss, you can go through a divorce. These are very tangible stressors that I think a lot of us can agree upon. Being stressful, also. Positive stressors. So you got a promotion. Hooray. Also, there's more responsibility with that, and maybe you're pushing yourself beyond your limits. That can be a stressor. You got married or had a baby or moved to a new city. You know, that can be a stressful time as well. So there's also past history of trauma that can be a little bit less visible to us. So we may be carrying these stressors around with us that are kind of deeply rooted, and we may not even be aware. Right. That they're there or how big of an impact they can have on us. But people with a history of trauma, their HPA access is kind of tuned into be like, on alert at all times and they're shifted into that fight or flight state. Their dial is just turned up a little bit more than everybody else's. And so they tend to get overwhelmed with daily stressors too much. I know I was speaking with somebody that had survived like a mass shooting. They went into a store and there was a shooter there. And you know, she has ptsd, post traumatic stress disorder from that instance where every time she comes back into a store she has to look around and you know, she just gets into that fight or flight mode and, and that's very understandable that she would respond that way. But there might be things that happen in our lives that maybe weren't super big traumas, but even little traumas that add up some childhood issues that can lead us to be more into that alert state. So this is kind of all the things psychologists talk about and I love that body of work. But from a physiological standpoint, there's also things we can do that can shift us in that stress response. And that's going to be things like sleep deprivation, under eating, over exercising, right? Overworking, all of the things that we kind of do in modern life. Maybe just think that's what we need to do to lose weight, right? Then there are things that are going on in our bodies. So hidden sources of inflammation. These could be infections, this could be toxic exposure. And oftentimes I'll talk to people that are like, my life is good, I don't have anything bad. You know, I don't, I don't have drama in my life, I don't have drama in my marriage, but why do I feel so bad? And a lot of times it can be these hidden sources of inflammation that send out that stress response to our body. Every time we're inflamed, the body gets a message to release cortisol. Cortisol is our natural anti inflammatory and so that can shift the body into that state. And then I know something you and I are both passionate about. Blood sugar issues, right? Anytime we have blood sugar issues, we eat too much sugar. That's going to put us on a blood sugar and a cortisol roller coaster.

You know, you hear all this and I'm kind of, I was going to say, so how common is this? I'm like, well, who doesn't have this is the bigger question. I mean, unless you're actually paying attention to this, I mean this just kind of seems like a modern day common thing, first of all, because it's basically celebrated to overwork and to overwork out like stress is a badge of honor and it shouldn't be. It feels like this must be unless someone's aware and actively working through it. It's probably pretty darn common, huh?

Especially in the last few years. So I used to see a lot of it. I would say 90% of the people I worked with with Hashimoto's before 2020 would have this pattern of adrenal dysfunction. And I created a program for my people with Hashimoto's to just support their adrenals. And after 2020, the initial launch of the program, people were saying, I have a friend who doesn't have Hashimoto's. Can they join? Because they have all the symptoms. And, you know, I have a family member with this condition. Not Hashimoto's, not thyroid issues. And soon enough, a lot of the program participants were not people with thyroid issues, not people with autoimmunity, people exposed to day to day stress because there's so much of it. You know, you turn on the TV and you hear threats, right? You hear about all of the things happening in the world, and that could really shift you into that survival and fight or flight mode. If you're really dialing into that and if you're not consciously protecting yourself from that.

How typical is it for adrenal dysfunction to go hand in hand with thyroid? And then I'd also love to address this and menopause, perimenopause and menopause. There needs to be a whole program just for that. So let's address just other hormones and adrenal dysfunction and how they go together.

All of our hormones talk to one another. It's amazing how they can do that, right? And so there's always these feedback loops between. Let's start with the adrenal glands and the thyroid gland. When somebody is hypothyroid, the body, in an effort to kind of conserve and protect us, will actually conserve cortisol levels. So the body will slow down its breakdown of cortisol. When we are hypothyroid, the person will perhaps feel awful. Good chance they will. And they'll go to their doctor and maybe they'll get a diagnosis of a thyroid issue. If they are hypothyroid, they'll get on thyroid meds. And what can happen is initially they feel better, but after a while they'll say, I'm actually more tired. I'm kind of crashing right now. What just happened? And what can happen is when you get your thyroid hormone normalized, this can actually unmask an issue. With having not enough cortisol or those crashed adrenals, because the cortisol clearance normalizes and increases. So a lot of times I'll say to people, you need to support your adrenals if you have a thyroid issue. More than 90% of the people I've worked with that I've tested. Right. They have some degree of that adrenal dysfunction. On the flip side, I'll have people who I don't have thyroid issues that have come to me. Like, I have all the symptoms, my doctor did all the tests. I don't have thyroid issues, but can I consult with you? And a lot of times, yes, they have the weight gain, they have the fatigue, they have the brain fog, so on and so forth, and will look at what's going on with their body. And it's because they have too much stress and too much cortisol, and that's causing them to produce something known as reverse T3. And this is, you know, for, if you have Hashimoto's, I'm not going to be testing you for reverse T3, and I'm going to just focus on your other issues with Hashimoto's and always focusing on your adrenals. But if you're somebody that doesn't have thyroid symptoms and is trying to get a diagnosis, doing a reverse T3 test might be helpful, because this is something that rises up when we're stressed out, and it's the inactive thyroid hormone that sits in our thyroid receptors, and then the active thyroid hormone can't get in. So you can basically become hypothyroid without actually having a disease or any kind of thyroid disorder. This is another kind of pattern. And then, of course, female hormones. Oh, my goodness. Right. So, you know, we know the peak times with women getting diagnosed with thyroid issues are going to be puberty, pregnancy, and perimenopause. And those hormonal shifts are going to play a really, really big role. Another big thing that happens in perimenopause, when our production, when our ovaries don't produce as much of our progesterone, that production kind of gets outsourced to the adrenals. So after menopause, and I had to like double check this statistic, about 70% of the female hormone production actually happens within the adrenals. And so the women who are going through perimenopause and they haven't addressed their adrenals, they're going to have a much harder time than the women who are focusing on their stress response during that time. Period. Progesterone is something that drops initially during our perimenopause years. Right. And then we can become estrogen dominant and we can have, you know, weight gain, really heavy menses, irritability, and sleep issues. And a part of that plan is actually focusing on the adrenals, because if we're not focusing on keeping them in balance, then the adrenals aren't able to produce enough progesterone for us. Because that progesterone, there's a pathway of hormones that are made from cholesterol. One of the first ones is pregnenolone, which is a mother hormone. And that can make us progesterone, it can make us dhea, it can make us cortisol. When we're in a stressed out state, that pathway is going to be prioritizing cortisol production. And our progesterone and dhea, our youth and libido hormone, those are going to suffer. Right.

Some people think nature is like this, but actually it's like this. That's why Columbia engineers. Everything we make for anything nature can throw at you. Columbia engineered for whatever.

I say. If you're. If you're 35 to 45, your total focus should be getting as adrenally healthy as possible. So you will sail through menopause. You want an easy menopause? Get your adrenals dialed right.

It can come as a shock. It could come as a big shock because you've been doing the same things, and all of a sudden you turn, you're 34. You're on top of the world. You turn 35 and you're like, what just happened?

And then you turn 40, you're like, what? What? And I'm. I'm turning 60 in a week.

No, you're not, Jason.

And you don't. You have your birthday right around mine. Aren't our birthdays around the same.

Has his.

Oh, his birthday. Okay. I knew. I knew there was a wentz that was around my birthday. I knew one of them was. So. Yeah. Which. It's way smoother sailing. Get through all that. That's all I have to say. Gosh, you know, if I had all of that to do over again, I would have really paid more attention to my adrenals. What a difference. And so I think back to all of the things that we've heard over the years about what you do when you have adrenal issues. Early on, I worked with this doctor, Dr. Diana Schwartzbein, who. I mean, what a great education I got, helping her put on seminars and her whole thing was, you've damaged your metabolism. You're either adrenally exhausted or insulin resistant or both. Right. And so she worked a ton in a dream. This was before anyone was talking about this. This was literally 20 plus years ago. But you know, I look back at a lot of the things that have been recommended over the years and that's what I'd love to hear now. Or what are some of your things? Because, you know, it's vitamin C and tapping and, you know, getting good sleep and not over exercising. What are some of the things that, that you are taking people through to help heal their adrenals?

So all of the things that you talked about are fabulous ways to support our adrenal health. My program focuses on some core things like balancing blood sugar. So we really focus on making sure you're getting enough protein and fat to shift your body more into that anabolic repair mode, out of that catabolic breaking itself down mode. You know, the type of exercise you're doing. You're an expert on this, but we're doing more weight bearing exercise that makes you feel good versus some of the, you know, if your adrenals are crashed, probably not a good time to train for a marathon, right?

I don't think it's ever a good time to train for a marathon. That's just my personal opinion. You know, you brought up blood sugar and I just want to make one note that I didn't understand why it was happening when I first started to see it, and then I started to use it as a way to see if someone had adrenal dysfunction is I take someone who had a great diet, their triglycerides looked great and their fasting blood sugar was up, it would be always over 90, usually around 100. And you're like, what the heck? I can tell that your, your diet, it's not a diet thing. And that's when I went, oh, this is a stress response.

Absolutely. Cortisol, having too much of it can be an issue with people and puts them at risk for metabolic syndrome. It puts them at risk for diabetes, obesity, especially that belly fat, because we have more cortisol receptors in our belly. Right. This is a, a huge reason and one of the reasons why a lot of women that go through the program, they'll say about 80% of them get to a healthier weight. You know, we're not losing £50 in a month, but generally people will see they'll lose five to ten pounds. And oftentimes they're eating more than they used to. And they're exercising less or, or, you know, not. Not doing the same type of exercise that they used to. So part of that is the nutrition component. Right. I'm really focusing on eating, blood sugar balanced. We're connecting to the circadian rhythm. So you're focusing on eating a lot of your foods during daylight hours for some people. I know I start with working with people that wake up in the middle of the night. So we're like, keep a banana by yourself.

Oh, boy.

To go back to sleep. But ideally, we're incorporating a plan that helps you to meet you exactly where you are and that helps you kind of get into that rhythm of when it's daylight hours, it's time to eat and it's time to have energy. And when it's nighttime, it's time to rest and sleep and. Right. And you're not going to be waking up in the. At 3am hungry. That's another part of the plan. And then I focus on restoring some of the nutrients that are lost when some people, when people are stressed. So these are B vitamins, vitamin C, magnesium, electrolytes, and then utilizing adaptogens, which are herbs that really help us balance the stress response. They make us more resilient. So if you have too much cortisol, they bring it down. If you have not enough, they bring it up. And I think probably a lot of these things have been in place for years and they work really, really well. Some of the unique aspects of my program are that I focus a lot on mitochondrial function. The abbreviation for adrenal Transformation Program is ATP. Right.

So that's perfect.

Yes. There's a reason for that. So the ATP is our energy molecules that the mitochondria create for us to give us more energy in the bodies. And part of why a lot of people have this is because their mitochondria are not working properly or they're damaged. And so I focus on a lot of the things that adaptogens actually help, and a lot of the vitamins actually help with mitochondrial health. But we also utilize L carnitine and D ribose to really support the mitochondria. So if you get on L carnitine, if you get an acetyl L carnitine, your brain's going to work better. This is probably why 92% of the women that go through the program, if they utilize L carnitine, they'll say, my brain fog has improved in just a few weeks. I've had this forever. Right. And also their muscles, like their muscles kind of improve and they're able to lose the weight, they feel stronger, they feel better, and they're able to transport more fatty acids into their mitochondria to produce some of this ATP. They're able to sleep better throughout the night and they're just become more tolerant of exercise as well. So a lot of why some people can be very intolerant to a lot of stressors is because their mitochondria are impaired. So this is a big part of the program. And then I also focus on raising the secretory IGA levels of the gut. A lot of the inflammation that people have that in modern times is coming from our gut. And so one of the immunoglobulins known as secretory IGA gets really depleted in our intestinal tract when we're under a lot of stress. And this can lead to chronic infections. So you're that you go out for sushi with your friends, they all feel great, you come home with diarrhea and you just feel off something happened, right? So we're not able to clear pathogens properly and we're more susceptible to things like food poisoning, respiratory illness when we have this low level of secretory iga. So taking beneficial yeast, Sarcomyces boulardi, will raise that to healthy levels and you have less inflammation in your gut, you overcome some of the pathogens naturally and you have fewer food reactions. So this is kind of a part of the replenishing what gets really depleted when we're under stress response to kind of shift you back into baseline and to get you back into a thriving state within a shorter amount of time rather than just kind of managing you with dosing hormones.

I can't think of a better time for your book to come out than like, you know, post pandemic. I love the fact that Adrenal Transformation protocol is ATP. That's just fabulous. Now I'll never forget it. And if you've been listening, going, holy smokes, that's a lot of information. It's all laid out for you. So, you know, one of the things that Dr. Isabella does amazingly well is really lay things out in step by step protocols, things that are complicated and difficult that are now simplified into easy action steps. So I think like you did that with Hashimoto's protocol. Crushed it. And same thing here now with the Adrenal Transformation protocol. So here's what's awesome. If you've been listening and going, you are totally describing me, then get the book, it's on Amazon. And while you're Waiting for the book. You're going to be able to grab the ABC Guide to Adrenal Transformation so you have something that you can read and start working on while you're waiting. And we are going to put that at Dr. Isabella. What we'll do is jjvirgin.com Dr. Dr. Isabella and what's in that guide for them to know that they'll be getting?

It's the ABCs of adrenal support. So I focus on utilizing some adaptogens. I'll give you a little bit more information about which ones to choose, what they do. Then we're focusing on B vitamins, vitamin C, electrolytes and magnesium. That'll be outlined for you, what to look for, and then some stress reduction techniques because I know we could all use them.

No kidding. I don't know. I haven't talked to you for a while, which I'm super excited to see you in a couple weeks. But the big thing, the big change I made during the pandemic, besides moving states, is I started going, which I think is really funny that during the pandemic I started going to meditation retreats, you know, breathwork meditation retreats. And I have been consistently meditating every single day. And I was having this joke with Dr. Joe Dispenza because I've been going to his retreats and I go, you know, I started meditating and lost five pounds. And he called, yeah, it's the no Thing diet. And it's funny. It's like you can teach this stuff for years and go, yeah, this is all the things stress does. And, you know, it took about six months to really get my nervous system to go, stop it. You know, calm down. But boy, the shift is dramatic. And I think we have to look at this. You know, it's so much easier to look at weight because you can step on a scale now. You can see your body fat and your muscle and really. But you know, I wish, I wish there was a way that we could kind of see into our adrenal health every day. Because if you improve your adrenal health, which you can do with the Adrenal Transformation Protocol, this impacts everything in your life. Like, it's amazing, the difference.

Absolutely. It can be such a big game changer. And I do cover also transformational techniques in the book. So things like meditation. I mean, if we're, you know, going back to us, we got burned out a few different times. And there's a reason for that because you can, you can, you know, put band aids and plug up you can replenish yourself and eat all the right foods, but if there's still underlying trauma or you don't have daily habits or good boundaries in your life or just perhaps there's things you're that are working against you in your life, then you really want to work on those. So I do talk about the meditation or chanting or yodeling, other ways to shift into that parasympathetic healing state out of the fight or flight state. And this can be such a huge game changer. I know people are like, I've heard that so many times. But it's like, but have you tried it? Right?

Yeah. Have you tried it? And really, like, literally I made a commitment because I went, you know, you would not expect to go to the gym for a week and go, wow, I'm in shape. No, you wouldn't do that. Like, you'd say, okay, I'm gonna give myself at least three months. I literally said, I'm gonna give myself six months. The transformation was unbelievable. But it was over time. Not overnight, it wasn't. One day I woke up and went, wow, I feel so much better. It was like. It was just this very, very subtle thing that all of a sudden you look back and go like. Like, I feel like a different person. So give yourself that gift. Because what it really sounds like with this protocol, this is the way that you won't do what Isabella and I did over and over again. Because there's no reason to. To. To do that like that. I just look back and I go, what was I trying to prove? Like, you know, continuing to do this, it didn't. It didn't serve me, and it definitely didn't serve the people around me. Holy smokes. So again, I'm going to put that guide@jjvirgin.com Drisabella that is-R I Z A B L L A. And remember to grab your copy of the adrenal transformation protocol. And thank you for coming back. Isabella. It's so good to see you.

It's always so great to see you, jj. Thank you so much for having me.

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.

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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 whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.