The Brain Fog, Fatigue & Hormonal Birth Control Connection with Dr. Jolene Brighten

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Sweet Ray Ban Meta Glasses available at Ray Ban stores and other authorized retailers. Welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show with celebrity nutrition expert, fitness hall of famer and four time New York Times best selling author, JJ Virgin. JJ is a warrior mom whose knowledge and expertise have helped change hundreds of thousands of lives. With over 3.5 million podcast downloads and appearances on Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, the Today Show, Rachael Ray, Larry King Love Whoa, whoa, whoa. This show is about you, not about me. I want to help you find practical, real world ways to dial in your health and mindset so you can finally lose that weight and feel strong and energized. Stop settling for less than your personal best. It's time to find out how to look and feel better than ever. And I'll be right here with you the whole way. Hey, welcome to this second podcast with Dr. Jolene Brighton. If you are going what second? Back it on up and make sure you listen to episode number one. We are doing a deep dive two part series into the into the pill, basically into hormonal birth control. But we're going beyond just the pill because there are other forms as well and I have got my go to expert on this with me, Dr. Jolene Brighton. As we were looking at the subject I go this is way more than we can put into one podcast. This needs at least two. And after talking to her I was like, you know, it really needed like four or five. But we'll bring her back and we'll also be jumping on. We're gonna do an Instagram live. She's got a book coming beyond the Pill. You want this book? You can pre order it now on Amazon. We'll put the link in the show notes@jjvirgin.com pbcs that's post birth control syndrome because you're going to want to grab that. So last time we talked about the pill, what it can be doing to you, all about really it related to weight and metabolism. This time we're going to be diving into brain fog and, and fatigue. So I mean some of the most common things that I hear that I see and I always knew these, that the pill caused issues while you were taking it. I was not aware that these issues could then keep going long term. Now what's important is they can, but you also have a lot you can do about that. And again, that's in Dr. Jolene Brighton's book. It's also she gave us a guide, a free guide. You know how much I love free A gift for everyone where you can get started right away. So let me tell you a little bit about Jolene. She is a doctor of Naturopathic Medicine from the National University of Natural Medicine. Before that she got her undergrad at Cal Poly SLOW in nutritional biochemistry and clinical nutrition. And while there she did nutrition research exploring the interventions for maintaining healthy hormones and body composition as we age. Like what a cool subject. That's why I just wish I could just be in school forever. And then graduates from undergrad and from naturopathic school and goes on to found three clinics before the age of 35. She's currently the Medical Director of Reubis Health in Portland, Oregon. She continues to keep her education up. She got postdoctoral education and training in functional medicine and clinical nutrition through the Institute of Functional Medicine and continues there as well. Which is so key important. You know, that's that's where I refer everyone. If you need a functional medicine document, IFM is your resource. We'll put that in the notes too. Then she went on to publish her.

First book three years ago, Healing your.

Body Naturally After Childbirth the New Mom's Guide to Navigating the fourth Trimester. It was an instant bestseller and has helped thousands of women heal themselves after birth. Now she's going to be helping hundreds of thousands, probably millions of women heal themselves after post from post birth control syndrome with her book of course coming out beyond the Pill. Plus she's a frequent speaker for both the public and medical professionals. She's a regular contributor to Mind bodygreen and has also been featured in the New York Post, Forbes, Grazi and Fitness. She is super duper qualified to be talking about what she's talking about and absolutely passionate about it and a world class expert on it. It is really fantastic. Now before we dive into the interview, I'm going to share do a shout out for this episode. Every episode we do a shout out for someone who has left a review on itunes. We super appreciate those. They mean the world to me and my team. They also help people come in and check in things out, make that decision to take the plunge and join our community and start listening to the podcast. By the way, if you have not Actually joined the community by subscribing. Make sure you do that, because I want to make sure that you do not miss out on any of these episodes because I'm going to be doing more of these series. I think it's super cool. It lets me dive in deeper to the subjects. So this one, the headline is Love JJ Virgin Podcast episodes five stars. And Apple Podcasts by Shell R from the usa. I love all the episodes. Quick, informative, and very motivational. I love her products, too. I have a lot of food sensitivities, so her protein shakes and bars are perfect for me. Yep. I actually had to go and create those things myself because, gosh, when I first started talking about food intolerance and food sensitivity, which was a long time ago, people first of all thought I was insane. And, you know, sometimes I am a little insane. But, yeah, that goes without saying. We all are, you know, now it's kind of an accepted thing. Oh, yes, I have a food intolerance. I have food sensitivities. But, boy, back then, I mean, even finding things that. That didn't have gluten was a challenge. So I set out to make sure that I had totally pure stuff that didn't that you could trust. So I'm glad that you love the podcast.

All right, welcome back Dr. Jolene Brighton.

So glad to go deeper in the subject of beyond the pill with you.

Totally. Round two. I hope you all caught episode one where we definitely covered a lot, and I'm excited to go even deeper now.

Yes. So episode one, we really talked about metabolism and weight gain. Where we're going to go with this one is talk about fatigue and brain fog and mood. Let's, like, dive into if someone. So all this brain fog and fatigue, which I got to tell you, when I was growing up, I never once heard my mom talk about brain fog or fatigue. No.

Right.

You know, like, it just. It wasn't like you didn't see, you know, the copies of the big magazine talking about brain fog. Like, it just, you know, I don't know if it's just now we talk about it or is this a new thing? What is it?

No, I. I really do think it's a new thing. I mean, if you look at the impact of environmental toxins on our brain health alone. I mean, and we're inundated with way more environmental toxins than we've ever been before. But at the same time, how many of us have been on hormonal birth control? I mean, like, all of us, myself included. That's why I don't judge anybody who's ever taken it, because, like, that would be judging myself. That's fun. But we look at, like, hormonal birth control has such an impact on mitochondrial health. Now, women, where is your mitochondrial concentrated? It's concentrated in your ovaries and your brain. We talked about this in the first episode, but I think it's really important to understand that hormonal birth control depletes your CoQ10, which if you don't have CoQ10, you can't make energy, and you certainly can't run the processes in your brain so that you have a clear brain. But the other issue with that is that, you know, hormonal birth control, as we've been talking about it, raises cortisol binding globulin and thyroid binding globulin, which is exactly what they sound like they do. Cortisol binding globulin grabs onto cortisol and thyroid binding globulin grabs onto your thyroid hormone. And any one of those hormones alone being low, that would lead to decrease in brain health in brain, brain energy and your energy overall. But we can't forget, like we talked about in the first episode, that hormonal birth control also causes insulin resistance. And, you know, insulin resistance, that's going to cause a lot of issues with your glucose metabolism, which is your blood sugar, and it's what is well recognized now as type 3 diabetes. But dementia. So what is happening in our brain? And sadly, you know, there are women who are in, you know, their early 30s who are starting to have dementia, like, symptoms.

I mean, that. That's crazy, right? That's just insanity.

But look at, like, the fact that hormonal birth control, so this birth control that they're on to prevent having a baby depletes B12. And, you know, back when I was getting my nutrition degree, it was like we were taught, okay, B12 deficiency causes irreversible neurological damage. So what was that back then? Back then, like, 20 years ago, that was. That was dementia. I mean, we were talking about dementia with B12 depletions. Now, now we know, thank goodness, that, like, there is no such thing as irreversible neurological damage. I mean, brilliant people like Dr. Bredesen and Dr. Perlmutter have shown us that, like, at 80% damage, you can still reverse the brain. So if you're listening to this right now, you're like, Dr. Brayton's freaking me out, JJ's freaking me out with of this dementia talk. Know there is so much that you can do to banish brain fog and to get your mind, your mood back.

Yeah, no, it's just, it's just helping, you know, A, you're not crazy.

I think this is the first thing.

You're not crazy. This really is happening. And you know, the way you just explained it. So if you do raise these binders that then lower cortisol, make you tired or lower thyroid function, once you go off the pill, you've are what, what happens? How do you get this back? And you know, how can you tell? Because should you. When you're off the pill and I'm assuming this could be, I'm not, I'm talking either right away or years later because I'm assuming a lot of people listening. It's probably been years. How would you know if this is an issue for you? Yeah.

So, you know, so many women will start hormonal birth control and they're like, ever since I started there was a problem. And it, it almost never starts right away. If you're listening to this, it isn't like you pop that pill and within a month you feel different. But it's something that it takes a experienced clinician going through your timeline and really all it is, what I, what I like to say about health is, is that you have all the answers you need, but it's like holding a book that's too close to your face, like you can't read it. And all you need is, is an expert. I'm doing air quotes to stand back and be able to say, oh, here's everything you told me. And in that moment, you're going to know. You're going to know. Oh, that makes sense. So much sense. So, you know, when we come off of hormonal birth control, it won't all naturally reverse itself. And this is something we've come to understand especially, you know, in high think. In 20 years time, we're going to call the gut the first brain. Right now we're like, it's the second brain. But we know that those gut bugs and the function of your gut impact your mood, your metabolism, and also your brain's ability to function on so many levels. And hormonal birth control, it messes with your microbiome. In fact, it causes a decrease in microbial diversity and leaky gut, which can lead to food sensitivities. So for some women, they keep having food sensitivities go up and up and up and they're like, I can't eat anything. And it's because of hormonal birth control. And when they come off, it won't necessarily. It won't necessarily just all reverse itself without doing some effort around that. But you've got to get tested. I mean, this is a big thing I talk about and beyond the pill. In fact, I have a whole chapter dedicated to you have hormonal symptoms. Okay. What are your symptoms? What might these mean? What should your doctor investigate? What lab testing should they do? And then what should you do in the meantime while you wait for your lab testing? Because I don't know about you, but I don't want to wait around for like a week.

I'm like, that's how I wrote the Virgin diet. I was like, oh, while we're waiting for the food sensitivities, we could actually start working on this. So what tests specifically for fatigue and brain fog? What are the tests? Yes.

So number one is you got to test your thyroid. And if your doctor stops at a tsh, which is thyroid stimulating hormone.

Yeah.

They probably don't know what they're doing. So TSH is what your brain says to your thyroid. So if your doctor's measuring a tsh, that's a brain hormone, that's not a thyroid hormone. Thyroid hormones are free T4 and free T3, but your thyroid primarily makes free T4. You depend on your gut, your liver, and your kidneys and other other organs to convert that free T4 to free T, which just so happens that, like the liver and the gut, they take a huge hit when you're on hormonal birth control. So you have to look at free T3 as well and reverse T3, because if you're pushing reverse T3, which is. I call it the hibernation hormone, you're going to have brain fog. You're going to gain weight, you're going to want to go to bed, and you're going to be really, really cranky. You're like a bear in winter. Like, nobody come near the cave. Like, you don't want any of that. So you have to look at that, because that could be what's going on with inflammation, insulin dysregulation, gut health, and your adrenal glands, which hormonal birth control can affect all of those. And then you need to look at thyroid binding globulin and tpo. So TPO antibodies and thyroglobulin antibodies will tell you, do you have an autoimmune condition which absolutely can be triggered by any hormonal fluctuations, whether that's perimenopause, menopause, having your period for the first time or starting hormonal birth control or coming off of it. Now, certainly if you have brain fog, fatigue, you have to check cortisol. And that can either come by way of a four point salivary cortisol. That means you spit in tubes for four times a day or a urine cortisol. And I actually prefer doing a urine cortisol and cortisone and precision analytical, which is the makers of Dutch test, they do this beautifully.

We'll put all of this in the notes, guys. Jjvirgin.com PBS/birth control PBCs. So don't worry. Everyone's like, oh my gosh. All right, so go back.

Yeah, yeah. So urinary cortisol versus cortisone. Why do we look at that? Well, sometimes we make enough cortisol, which is active, but we deactivate it into cortisone. So now we're feeling sleepy and tired and sluggish and we're having brain fog. But it's because your body is saying, girl, you are producing way too much cortisol pro aging hormone. You are aging at the cellular level. Nobody wants that. And so your body dysregulates that whole process and converts everything into cortisone so that it keeps you safe. But that can also be problematic for you. Now, the other test that I would say, get a DHEA sulfate and the DHA sulfate, that's a hormone coming from your adrenal glands, that's an anti aging hormone. And then getting an insulin and a hemoglobin A1C. Now, we talked about blood sugar dysregulation in our first episode together, but hemoglobin A1c is not often run by doctors. They will want to do fasting insulin and fasting glucose. But the problem is, is that, okay, fasting glucose is one snap.

They don't even want to do fasting insulin. Are you kidding?

You gotta beg for that sometime. Yeah, but the hemoglobin A1C is what your blood sugar has looked like over the last three to four months. And that's absolutely essential because while you're fasting insulin and your fasting glucose may appear normal, your hemoglobin A1C may show that on average, your blood sugar is a lot higher. And you know, your doctor, like, if these are abnormal, your doctor can go even deeper than that to test, you know, other markers. But to me, in women's health, these labs should be the basics. Like, this should be what every woman gets at every annual exam. And certainly if she has fatigue, she's having brain funk, she's having weight gain, she's having any symptoms of hormone imbalance. These tests should absolutely be run.

And I just want to calm everybody down. If you're thinking, you know, I go to my doctor, hmo, they won't run this stuff. Do not worry, because I will put in the resource for our buddies, Dr. Allen and Amy Beth Hopkins. We have resources for labs you can order directly. And by the way, it's usually less than your copay. So, yeah, you can get all this run. You can take your health. This is. We are big in this community of taking our health into our own hands. And, like, not, you know, like, just because we can't get someone to order it doesn't mean that you can't have these things. We should. I. I'm of the, like, we got to learn this stuff. We've got to have access to it. And then you hire your doctors, your functional medicine practitioners as your consultants, and we have an amazing crew of. Of them around, and you educate yourself.

I love, I just want to say I love that you're giving that resource because you know that we've almost been conditioned with these, with this insurance model where it's like, well, only if your doctor runs it do you get these labs. But do you know when your doctor runs it, especially with an hmo, is when, like, without a shadow of a doubt, they're signs of disease. That's too late. It's too late.

Yeah. You didn't one day, you didn't wake up diabetic. Yeah, this happened over 10 to 20 years. These things happen over time. And by the way, like, by the time your TSH starts to go up like this, 10 years in the making, you have signs all along the way, and it's part of your job as an owner of a body to start to recognize, oh, gee, my weight went up for no reason or went down for a reason. My temperature, temperature is higher. That's why I love like, you know, I've been using the OURA ring just to look at what is my resting heart rate when I'm sleeping? What's my temperature like when I'm sleeping? You know, this is. We need to monitor these things because when they shift, there's a reason. And the reason usually isn't a deficiency in the birth control pill. I'm just guessing.

Oh, yeah, just guessing. And like, what you're saying right there, though, is that you know your body better than anyone else, and so why should you wait for some like, like, I'm doing Air quotes again, expert to tell you that what you're experiencing is not normal. Like, you know that, you know that what you're experiencing is not normal. And if your doctor denies you lab testing or any further investigation, get it yourself. Because you like, I don't know about you, but like when you look at the research and it's like it takes 17 years from the time a research study shows without a shadow of a doubt something is an issue. It takes 17 years, that's almost 20 years for medicine to adopt that. I don't know about you, I don't have 20 years. I do not have 20 years to wait for medicine to validate my story.

I'm like, listen, I'm just going to be doing all these things over here.

Yeah, right.

And, and I will be one of the ones that helps get this into the medical community because we can show, I mean, like, you know, I have a son who recovered from basically dead on the pavement experience because of stem cells, because of high dose fish oil of all these things. They're like, oh my gosh. Alternative. I'm like, no. So again, this, this community is very much into this and taking responsibility. And I just want to remind you, you can get these labs done and then look for a doctor, look for a healthcare professional that, that is thrilled that you're coming in, going, here are my symptoms, here's what's changed, here's what I've looked at, here's what I'm taking.

Oh, God, I love you.

Supplements. Right? I mean, but that's because that's the type of practitioner you are. And that's, that is the doctor you're looking for. Any doctor who poo poos you, you know, I had one at, when we, when Grant was in the hospital, said, I'm letting you do those little essential oils and those little supplements. I'm like, oh, okay. You know, okay, you so you know. And so just again, you look for those people. You're hiring these people. They are consultants. That's the big thing I always want to emphasize.

Totally.

That's what you're looking for. Now let's talk about, let's go into moods and then I want to also want to talk about bioidentical hormones because that's going to come up. What about anxiety and depression and birth control pills?

Oh my gosh. Okay. So with hormonal birth control across the board. So if you're thinking, well, I didn't do the pill, IUD patch ring NuvaRing, you, you know, you insert an implant into Your arm, you get the shape shot. Like we all, we know there's an association. Now, where we are at with the research in science, we cannot say causation. We can't say hormonal birth control causes these symptoms. Albeit women since the 1960s have been complaining of all of these symptoms since the introduction of hormonal birth control. And it is, you know, side effects are the number one reason women jump out of the trials with hormonal birth control. And, you know, it was just a couple years ago that we started saw the largest epidemiological study to come out where researchers followed over 1 million women. Now, they were age 15 to 34, but they followed them for 13 years. And what they found is that if you started hormonal birth control, you were more likely to be diagnosed with depression after being on hormonal birth control. And women who are prescribed the combination pill, I.e. estrogen and progestin, the most common prescription, were 23% more likely to be prescribed antidepressants. Now, there have been other studies that have shown that women experience anxiety at higher rates when they begin hormonal birth control. And, you know, we can look at just what we were talking about before the adrenal and thyroid dysfunction. I mean, adrenal and thyroid issues alone can lead to anxiety and depression. But with hormonal birth control, there's another layer to it, it in which it's inflammatory. So it raises C reactive protein, which has been shown in studies, your doctor can measure this. They can take a C reactive protein measurement and see that you are more inflamed on hormonal birth control than when you're off. Now, this lends to the cytokine theory of depression, which is that inflammation disrupts the brain's patterns and can lead to anxiety and depression. Now, if you are someone who subscribes to the serotonin theory of depression, which, you know, there's both theories and like I'm, for one, I'm interested in all the science that comes out. Then we can understand that hormonal birth control disrupts the tryptophan pathway, which is how we create serotonin, in which you don't make these yummy neurotransmitters. Oh, no, no. Instead you make neurotoxic. Now, one is because you are depleted in B6 and magnesium. There's also that inflammatory component as well. So while you're on hormonal birth control, not only do you not, you do not make neuroprotective like neurotransmitters, but you make ones that actually sabotage your brain health which sabotages your mood and your ability to think and function in the world.

World. So final question. I, it's like I feel like we should have done like a five part series and I just want to remind everybody you've got your book beyond the Pill. I'm also that you're going to want to grab like details on everything, but more importantly what you need to do to recover from all of this. And then also you're giving everyone your guide and you can get that at jjvirgin.com forward/p b, CS for post birth control syndrome. Now before we go, I just want to address bioidentical hormones.

Totally.

Because you know, what is the difference? Because again, I'm thinking people probably going, well, but wait a minute, I'm, I am using a patch or you know, I am doing a pill. So what's the difference saying say a, an estradiol patch or prometrium, you know, oral progesterone or doing a shot of testosterone. What is the difference between bioidentical versus these synthetic hormones?

Totally. So first thing I want to say about prometrium is that that's the bioidentical progesterone that most conventional docs are comfortable with. But you have to recognize that it's based in peanut oil. And I know your work and I know you're talking about food sensitivities and I have seen that women will fail again. Air quotes. Prometrium. Because of the inflammatory, like basically the inflammatory oil, it's suspended in that peanut oil. So just because you don't succeed on prometrium doesn't mean all bioidenticals are bad.

I love that you're bringing that up. And there's also, you know, there's, there's, you can use creams, you can use, you know, you don't want to do oral with, with estrogen, but you can do, you know, you can do creams with progesterone, you can do patches and, and, and pellets. And so there's all sorts of different ways to do things. So again, you're not just stuck with one delivery system. I could not use creams with testosterone at all.

Yeah.

And I do great with a shot. So that's the other side to think about. All right, so let's dive in. What's the difference?

You know, that's, that's so true. I mean it's about what's true for you and, and recognizing with hormones. There is no one says fits all so, yeah, I mean, with bioidentical progesterone, we like to use oral when it's. When the main issues are like anxiety and sleep, because oral tends to have an effect on the brain so we can sleep better and it stimulates gaba. But some women do excellent with progesterone cream as well. Now, anytime we like to have estrogen on board, I also like to have progesterone. Now with bio identicals, those are nothing like what a chemist made in the lab. That is what's coming in synthetic birth control. And I want you to understand this. Hormonal birth control is meant to be such a high dose that it shuts down your brain from communicating with your ovaries. Bioidenticals don't care because your brain, your ovaries are done making babies. They don't want anything to do with that. Now, bioidenticals are a lower dose. And they, you know, I, for one, I will say I'm in my 30s and I have treated enough perimenopause and postmenopausal women that I'm like, sign me up for those bioidenticals, because one, they maintain brain health, two, they maintain bone health, and three, they maintain musculoskeletal health. Like those three alone are the secret to longevity. And bioidenticals, they act with your body. Whereas synthetic hormonal birth control is meant to come in and shut down your body's natural mechanism and what you need to use for bioidentical, that dose is so very low to get the benefits compared to what it takes to shut down your entire reproductive system. Now, like I was saying, if you have estrogen, I like to bring in progesterone as well. There are some docs who will say, well, if you don't have a uterus, go ahead and leave out the progesterone because there's no endometrial stimulation. But uter the, you know, it's not just your uterus. I mean, your estrogen is stimulating your breast cells and other tissues as well. And, you know, progesterone has been shown, like I said in our last episode, it's going to help with water retention. But there are a lot of benefits to the brain and to your mood. And it's. We're starting to learn more and more the progesterone benefits the body overall. Now with testosterone, I just, I just want to say I love that you bring up testosterone because I think so often the story goes that testosterone is a male sex hormone. And women don't need that. And it's just about libido. Except it's not. Not if you're depressed, you can't get out of bed during the day, you're feeling lacked of motivation, you don't have joy in your life anymore, and you're fatigued throughout the entire day. It may be that your testosterone is too low. And if you wave to somebody and your arm keeps wagging, that could be a sign as well that your testosterone is too low because now your muscle mass is declining. And if your muscle cells start deleting, then your fat cells will come in. And that's when we develop sarcopenic obesity, which is effective. A fast track to chronic disease. And what's the like the name of the game at the end of the the day is prevent chronic disease. And so bioidenticals are absolutely so different. And I also would throw DHEA into that as well. I think there's great studies on strengthening the pelvic floor, helping prevent or reverse urinary incontinence. And DHEA is an anti aging hormone. And it starts to decline in like in our mid-20s. And there are experts who have said when DHA declines, that's when we start aging and that's like the end of our youthfulness now.

Well, and then when you're under stress, you lower DHEA as well.

So.

Right, you know what, I've got to put a, I'm going to do a little ping in our show notes too for our buddy, Dr. Anna Kabeca's Jova cream that's got DHEA. And it's like the perfect thing. And the other thing that I love here, and this is my take on bioidentical levels, fix your adrenal and thyroid because if those are not working well, nothing's going to work. And your liver, that's step one. And your liver balance your blood sugar. So really good diet and lifestyle habits. You cannot sleep like crap, be stressed out, eat a bunch of garbage and not exercise and then go, I'm going to balance my hormones with bioidenticals. No, that is a joke. No. Then you know you want to do lab testing. The Dutch is great, but ultimately the best test is going to be how do you feel? And really learning, especially if you're going through menopause where things are all over the board. It's not like you're going to take a hormone test, a snapshot in time, but the next hour, day, month, it's totally different. So you've got to really be able to see, feel how you feel too. Like I could tell if my estrogen dropped because I wouldn't recover from a workout. My gums would bleed just a little bit. I could tell if I needed progesterone because I didn't sleep as well and I got just a little anxious. I could feel my testosterone with how well I was working out the gym. So you can start. You, you've got to feel these things.

Yeah.

This is the information you need. It does not matter what a lab test says if you go. But I just don't feel right. Right. You know, so it's really this comprehensive approach. But I wanted you to bring that up because I think people are like we'll lump all hormones together. And the best analogy I could say is, you know, it's like saying farm raised salmon and wild salmon. That is what synthetic hormones and you know, natural hormones bioidentical ours. They're entirely different things. It's corned beef, corn fed beef and grass fed and finished beef. They're entirely different things. So just think of it like that and tell everyone what they're going to get your guide when they go to jjvirgin.com pbcs yeah, so you're going to.

Get the entire outline of what to eat to optimize your hormones on or off of hormonal birth control. If you are experiencing post birth control syndrome which is the long term side effects and consequences that come up with using hormonal birth control. And it's a whole gamut of system symptoms that I list out in my book beyond the Pill. It'll help you start to fast track and reverse that. You're going to get adrenal tips, thyroid tips and liver supportive tips. Plus you're going to get some mind body support. So, so what should you do in order to support your entire system to heal? Because at the end of the day, wherever you're at in the spectrum of your life and your hormonal health, I want to help you optimize and live at your best. So I put together this entire guide for you so that you can feel amazing every day in your body.

Awesome. And again jjvirgin.com pbcs I put a ton of resources because I'm listening going okay, we're going to put in a bunch of resources from the call. Also remind you that you can grab Jolene's book Beyond the Pill easiest places Amazon. We'll do a link to that as well. And thank you so much for all of your time for our two sessions. We'll have to have you back and do some Instagram lives too. So thank you so much. This information is. I. I know that you are taking a lot of hits getting this information out in the world.

Oh, totally.

You know, I appreciate when you're doing in the yes, this is big stuff. Needs to get out there and I just appreciate you so much.

Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. I appreciate your audience. I know that you have cultivated some of the most brilliant women on the planet, so being able to share with them is such an honor.

So now after the break, we're going to be answering a listener's question, so stay with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. This one comes up all the time. This is so Key important, too. And again, if you're not jumping on my Facebook and Instagram lives, be sure to go connect with me. JJ Virgin official on Facebook. JJ Virgin on Instagram. You'll see the little blue check marks to say it is me. And that is where I love to pull questions down. Dr. Brighton and I talked a lot about blood sugar balance on both of the episodes. And then when this question came up from Tara, it's like, all right, there's my question. It's like, jj, you talk all the time about blood sugar balance. Okay, yeah, I admit, I do, I do, I do. But it is so important. She goes, what? What is the simple way? Because I see that I tend to ride high. And by high I mean I tend to be 90, 95 on my blood tests. And I know that that's not good, but what can I do? I feel like I eat healthy. All right, so I'm going to give you some things to think about. First of all, this is super important. Even if you are, let's say you can have higher blood sugar even if you're eating well. So I'm going to give you a couple things to think about there. But if your blood sugar is even 90 on your fasting blood sugar, you can actually end up with five times the risk of dementia. Now in the show notes, I'm going to put a link to my podcast with Dr. Rita Marie Loscalzo. She I love the way she talks about testing blood sugar functionally, where you have a little blood glucose test and you test to really see how your body's responding to foods. Because you may not realize that, first of all, you might not realize how much sugar is sneaking into your diet. That's the sugar impact diet. Take the sugar, the sneaky sugar inventory. So it could be where it's sneaking in, it could be how you're eating it. Right. Maybe you're sitting down and eating two pieces of fruit, nothing else. And maybe there are things like, you know, some of the tropical fruits that are going to give you a bigger hit. Maybe you are not getting enough fiber in your diet or not getting enough fat. I talk about the trifecta for blood sugar balance being eating fiber, fat and protein because it's going to help balance blood sugar and help improve satiety. So you're not as hungry and your.

Blood sugar is more balanced.

Interesting. When you're. When your blood sugar is balanced, you're not as hungry, Right? So they work hand in hand because that's helping you become a fat burner, not a Sugar burner. But I want to throw one more kind of curveball out to you. You could be doing that. All right. But if you're under stress, you can end up with elevated blood sugar. Because one of the things your body does when you're under acute stress is it goes, oh, my gosh, I gotta run from the lion, run from the tiger. Boom. Breaks down muscle, jacks up blood sugar so that you can run away. So one of the things you want to look at is if you're really, if you do your diet journal, if you start doing that blood sugar testing I talked about in the podcast or Dr. Reed and Marie talked about in a podcast we did together. And you're seeing that you've got this elevated fasting, but maybe your blood sugar is, is doing, you know, is responding like how it should with food not coming up too much, coming down. And it's really just more of an issue of it elevated, not, not from a food situation. It may be a stress situation. And that's where doing salivary testing, Dr. Jolene talked about urinary testing, doing some cortisol testing to see what's going on with your adrenals. Are you in more of a higher cortisol state? Are you breaking down things that could be leading to this, too? So this is, it's kind of a bigger concept of you really want to look at this full, from the full spectrum of what is really going on. Because, you know, to be, to be totally healthy, you've got to consider how you're eating, when you're eating, what you're eating. Like, you know, are you eating rushed, you're taking time for your meals, what time are you eating? You want to be eating, you know, an early dinner, giving yourself that good overnight fast, giving yourself a 12 hour overnight fast, throwing in some intermittent fasting, getting a lot of fluids, managing your stress, managing your sleep. If you're not sleeping well, you'll have elevated blood sugar too. So there's always more to this. And exercise can be tremendously helpful here too. So that was sort of an answer. Non answer. I always start with the food that fat, fiber, protein, trifecta. The Sugar Impact diet can be super helpful here. Start doing the testing Dr. Rita Marie talks about in the podcast. We'll put in the show notes. And if you still see that you have an issue, then I want you to dig deeper. How's my sleep and how stress. Have your doctor do blood sugar, insulin and hemoglobin A1C and vitamin D. But then do an adrenal test and start to look at sleep and stress as well. You know, wear an aura ring. We'll put a little link for that that can tell you how rested you really are, what quality sleep you have. I've been wearing an OURA ring and a Fitbit because I'm really monitoring this right now to really start to get dialed in with how is my sleep looking? Okay, that's it for this week. Thanks so much for tuning in. Remember to subscribe so that you never miss an episode, and if you feel so inclined, I would super love to be able to do a shout out for you in the next podcast for the review you live you left. And yes, that was a big, big hint. All right, see ya. That's all for this episode of the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show, which marks another step towards a healthier body and mind. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show and we'll talk to you next week.

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 check 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 whatshould I read next podcast.com to find out more.