The Thyroid-Histamine Link with Dr. Becky Campbell

Hey, J.J. here. Can you believe how fast the holidays are knocking at the door this year? One minute it's pumpkin spice season, the next you're getting your guest room ready and wondering where their wrapping paper went. And that's when I turned to Wayfair. From bedding and towels to holiday decor and last minute stocking stuffers, Wayfair has everything you need to get your home and holidays together fast. And for way less. With Wayfair, I know I can refresh my guest room in no time. Maybe I'll add a soft new comforter or a few holiday throw pillows. With Wayfair, it's so easy and everything arrives super fast. Plus, there's free shipping for any order over $35 easy and total peace of mind. So whether you're hosting, gifting, or just adding those final festive touches, Wayfair has your back. 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. 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's 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 all always perfectly untamed. Distilled, aged and bottled by Buffalo Trace distillery, Franklin County, Kentucky. 90 proof 45 alcohol by volume. Learn more at buffalo trace distillery.com Please drink responsibly. 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 Doct, Dr. Oz, the Today Show, Rachael Ray, Larry King Live.

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, hey, hey. I am excited today. I'm always excited about these shows. I totally love doing this and I'm super grateful that you're here because if you weren't here, I wouldn't be able to keep doing this. I'd be really lonely. So one of the greatest pleasures of my life is going to events and conferences and meeting amazingly brilliant people because now I can bring them on over to you. So that's one of the great values of having this show, is that I have a great place to share all this incredible information with these brilliant people I meet. And a lot of us on this, on this show, in this community struggle with a thyroid. I personally had Hashimoto's and worked with my buddy, Dr. Alan Christensen with my thyroid issues. And so we've had a lot of thyroid experts on the show. Dr. Isabella Wentz, Dr. Alan Christensen, Dr. Amy Myers, to name a few. And I was talking to Docy Becky, Dr. Becky Campbell. It's hard to say that three times fast, who's a board certified doctor of natural medicine. And she started telling me a connection, a thyroid connection with some foods that I had never heard before. Now, you know, I'm obsessed with food intolerance and gluten and all those things that can get in the way of you losing weight cause you gain weight, mess you up. And so when I heard this one I'm like, this is going to be good. You guys are going to be super excited to hear this information that she has. A lot of it is in her 30 day thyroid reset plan and she is releasing her next book. And this will give you a little hint of where we're going. Four phase histamine reset plan. So we're actually going to talk today about thyroid and she's going to give you some different ways to look at thyroid, including a way to look at a test that uncovered her own thyroid issues when nothing else, they weren't showing up anywhere else. But then we're also going to make this connection with thyroid and histamine that is absolutely fascinating. If you are struggling, if you are not getting where you need to be with your thyroid disease, this could be why. So listen, listen up or you got a friend who's got it. Etc. So also Becky has given her thyroid guide out which you can get at jjvirgin.com forward/thyroidguide. We're also going to be including in an infographic and some more issue information on histamine as well. So lots of goodness in the show notes as always. So again, jjvirgin.com forward/thyroidguide to grow. Grab all of that. Now, before we dive into the show, I wanted to do a shout out to Sefco from Canada. Love my Canadians. Love them, love them. Going to Toronto again in a couple of weeks and I cannot wait. I absolutely, I, I love Canada. I love Montreal. I love, love Montreal, by the way, love Toronto. I love Niagara on the lake. I mean there's just so many awesome places in Toronto. Oh, and Vancouver. And then of course my buddy Dave over on in British Columbia. So anyway, I digress. Let me share this from SEO. Fantastic, fascinating show is the title. 5 stars. JJ is so direct and to the point, but also fun. Her enthusiasm is contagious and I love how she explains different concepts in such an easy to grasp way. The interviews are always great. I recommend this podcast to anyone who with even a passing interest in health or diet, you'll be hooked. All right. I love that because you know what I really strive to do? Okay, yes, I am direct. I like to think of myself as tough love with love. But what I really do strive to do is take concepts, make them simple, easy to grasp, but also super actionable. So you go, okay, I heard that. Now what do I need to do? So I love that you said that. I super appreciate it. And if you've not jumped on over and left a review, by the way, any review Three star, four star, whatever. Like, whatever you're feeling. I would love to get these reviews. This is how we decide where we're going with the show. What's working, what's not working. If there's something you'd like to hear more about, let me know. So that would be awesome because I am always looking for other subjects and stuff based on what you tell me you want. You see, that's how it works. All right, another thing I want to share with you, another favorite before we dive into the interview. So listen in, and I'll be right back.

Hey, it's J.J. here. Now, let's be honest. The holidays are basically a financial ambush. Travel, hosting gifts, surprise holiday school things. Suddenly you're wondering how December turned into a spending spree. 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 on your laptop or your phone. What really grabbed my attention is how fast those little holiday expenses pile up with Monarch. Seeing everything in one place makes it a lot harder to accidentally overspend. And honestly, I appreciate anything that keeps me from starting January with a money hangover. You'll love exploring the holiday spending category. Imagine how good it will feel to actually see what's happening before your credit card statement does that whole dramatic reveal thing. Monarch basically shows you exactly where the money is going in real time, and that level of clarity could change everything. Right? Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use the code virgin@monimal.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with code Virgin.

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.

Dr. Becky Campbell, welcome to the show. Excited to have you with me.

Thanks. I'm so excited to be here.

Well, we are digging into Thyroid today, and if. If you're listening, you know that this is a very popular subject in my podcast, but we're going to take a different route today because we're going to talk about some triggers and some foods. There's some really cool information. But I know we've had a chance to talk offline, and I think your story of how you got into this is super fascinating. So let's start there with how you Got so interested in thyroid disease.

So I was in college, and I was under a large amount of stress, and I never had a weight issue before, but I suddenly gained about 30 pounds. And it seemed like it was overnight, and. And then I was just really, really tired. I ended up getting strep throat six times in one year, and my hair was falling out in clumps. And I knew something was wrong. And, you know, I went to a bunch of doctors. Nobody had any answers for me. They, you know, use the conventional lab ranges to test thyroid. So my TSH was right at the top of that range. So they told me I was normal. And it wasn't until I found more of a holistic type of doctor that was willing to do more thorough testing on me that I really realized I did have hypothyroidism. And that's where a lot of this was coming from. And then more. So they were looking into kind of, well, why do I have hypothyroidism? And then I, you know, completely just changed the way I felt. I dropped the weight. I was, you know, not tired. I wasn't losing my hair. And I just knew, you know, I had to help other people with this because I knew there had to be tons of people suffering with the same issue.

So what do you. What did cause this?

Well, I had, you know, the biggest cause of hypothyroidism is Hashimoto's disease. And that's where your body is attacking itself at the thyroid gland, and that's causing destruction of the tissue which depletes the thyroid hormones. And I actually was testing negative for this. So there's these autoimmune markers that you can run to see if you have Hashimoto's. And for a really long time, I mean, maybe 10 years, I tested negative. And it.

Was they elevated at all or were.

They were within the range. So they were like, one of them is the 0 to 34 range. It was about 10. So it was not. And, you know, even functional medicine practitioners usually typically stay within that range as far as waiting until you go out of the range to diagnose you. And so, you know, I definitely know that, you know, gut issues were causing my problem, and cortisol issues were causing it in viruses and heavy metals. All this stuff was definitely triggering my body to do this. But I was just didn't understand how I couldn't have Hashimoto's, since about 90% of people with thyroid issues do have Hashimoto's. And it wasn't until I had And I had a few ultrasounds. You know, I had lots of nodules, but no one ever diagnosed me with Hashimoto's on there. And it wasn't until I actually learned how to read the. The results myself, and then actually teamed up with some other endocrinologists who helped me find out that via, you know, ultrasound is how we discovered that I had Hashimoto's. And So it's about 20% of people with Hashimoto's won't have those antibodies present, but then you can see it on the ultrasound. So, you know, that's really.

Wait a minute. You could see it on an ultrasound, but you're telling me, like, you had to go learn how to read ultrasounds because it still was being missed that way, too?

Yeah, yeah.

That's crazy.

And I see it in patients now, too. You know, they'll. They're. Their doctors will even say, you can't tell if you have Hashimoto's on your ultrasound, and you definitely can. And then some radiologists will write on their report that they have Hashimoto's that was found on the ultrasound. I mean, you absolutely can find out, and it's the only way you can find out for some people. So, you know, if there's ever someone who is coming up with those negative antibodies, you know, it's really important to know if it's an immune system issue. That's what Hashimoto's is. It's an immune system issue causing the thyroid to do what it's doing. So I always tell them, go get an ultrasound, and then I'll read it because it's missed so much. It's crazy.

That should just be standard of care.

Yeah, it should. It definitely. So there's a lot of things that should be that.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. It would seem like if you walk in with symptoms, you should be tested, and that should include an ultrasound. So let's kind of walk through that whole process. Just for people listening, we have talked about these things before, but this is a different take. And you are the first person I've ever heard say that you should get an ultrasound and that some people won't show up with the titers and will show up with it on an ultrasound. So this is, like, groundbreaking stuff. So for people listening, what would be some of the signs that they could have an issue either either hypo or hyperthyroid?

So looking at symptoms for hypothyroid, you know, you would. It's usually weight gain is one of the biggest things you see first, it doesn't always have to be, but it's a pretty big sign. Hair loss, fatigue, feeling, you know, cold all the time. You know, usually especially your hands and feet, just, you can't warm up. Sometimes, you know, you feel a little bit depressed or constipated. It's, you know, it's your metabolism, so everything's slowing down. When you have hypothyroidism, which is the under function of the thyroid, and then with hyperthyroidism, it's the opposite. So everything's split, beating up. So you're losing weight, you're anxious, you're hot all the time. You know, those types of symptoms, you know, which are just. They're kind of pretty much the opposite. But some people can go in and out of hyper and hypo, actually. So if you then go to a doctor, what happens a lot of the times is they're not even testing the markers for Hashimoto's. They're just doing a TSH.

Yeah.

Which is.

They're not even looking at free T3. They're just doing.

Or they're doing a free T4, which is ridiculous because it's. That's the inactive form of thyroid hormone. So it's, you know, and I've seen people who have like a pituitary suppression pattern where their pituitary is not telling their body, it's not raising their TSH in. In response to low thyroid hormone levels, which is what normally happens. And so their TSH will be like regular. It'll be about a one, let's say. But then their T3 and T4 are really low. So that's actually a whole nother issue. That's a pituitary suppression pattern. So testing TSH alone is. Is a terrible idea. You're really, really missing out when you do that. So. So anyways, you would want them to run a full thyroid panel. And I'll actually give you guys a download that has my full thyroid panel. What to ask your doctor to run, what everything breaks down to, what each marker means, what. What range it should be in. And. And then.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah, we'll put this for everybody. We'll put that@jjvirgin.com ThyroidGuide make it easy. There you go. Thyroid guide. So that's fantastic, because now you have something that you can go armed into your doctor. And by the way, if you go armed into your doctor with this, with some suspected symptoms, you go armed saying, this is what I want. They refuse to do it. It's Time to find another doctor.

Yeah, fire them. You should fire them. Because honestly, I can't tell you how many people do go in with this guide. And the doctor themselves don't even know what these markers are.

They.

They don't even know what is reverse T3. Why am I testing it? Why am I testing free T3, which is. Is really. They should know that. And so then they'll refer you to an endocrinologist, but they won't even refer you to an endocrinologist unless your TSH is really high out of the range. So it's. The whole process is not done right, in my opinion, at all. So. Yeah.

And it's so common that I'm hoping this will start to shift. And why, I mean, you started mentioning some of the triggers for you.

Yeah.

But I know you treat a lot of this now like what? You know, it's getting really a. Why is it so common and what are a lot of these triggers? And I would assume that a lot of these triggers that are, that are out there, that are making it so common.

Yeah. So I think that there's a lot of talk about, you know, Epstein Barr going on right now. And for me, I know I did have Epstein Barr and that whole cascade of the strep throat. And then I had an Epstein Barr at that time. And, you know, I didn't realize it, but I literally could not get out of bed and I would sleep for 12 hours. So now looking back, I know that, that I had that. And, and then, you know, when I had the. All of the different times I had strep throat, they would give me an antibiotic and they would give me the shot of penicillin. And I remember that day, I would literally that day get a yeast infection. That's how strong this stuff is at wiping out all the good bacteria. And since I said that Hashimoto's is the biggest cause of hypothyroidism and that is an autoimmune disease. The immune system is primarily located in the gut. So if you're wiping out all the good bacteria in your gut with antibiotics, you're going to start to develop candida and bacterial issues. And I even had parasites. So I think that that is a root cause of most autoimmune disease. And I really do see, I mean, I would say 98% of my. The people who come to me with hypothyroidism and Hashimoto's have a gut infection, whether it's a small intestine bacteria overgrowth or Candida, or bacterial imbalance in the large intestine or parasites, they have something, and almost all of them have leaky gut. So, you know, first and foremost, I look at the gut, and then, you know, again, I look at viruses, because a lot of people have had these viruses, and they can lie dormant and they can settle into the different organs in the body. And the thyroid is a good place for that to happen. So I see that being a lot of people's story of what kind of drove this in them. And I think if you're 35 or older and you've had a cavity, you've had mercury put in your mouth, or any different dental work, they've used mercury. And so the same thing can happen with mercury where it gets into the soft tissue of your body and all over your body. And the thyroid is another place that can happen. So I think that. That those are the main reasons that. And then all the stress we have. I mean, there's so much stress. You know, everyone's getting busier and busier and taking on more and more, and, you know, having a family and doing all this stuff, it's. It's a lot of pressure and a lot of stress. And that affects our adrenal glands, which secrete cortisol, which is our stress hormone. And the adrenal glands and the thyroid gland run on the same axis. So one affects the other, you know, greatly. So I think that these are really the main reasons I'm seeing. I think we're seeing so much hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism these days, and especially in women, you know, and I think it's mostly in women due to the. The different hormonal changes we go through in life, you know, with our medicine and having kids and menopause and all that.

And we also handle stress differently or. Or not. I think we also have a different approach with that as well. So are you seeing when you start to heal the gut and deal with stress? And I'm going to bring up another thing here, too, but are you seeing that you can start to turn this around?

Oh, yeah, big time. I mean, I see the main thing. I think that's the most important is, you know, everyone says, I want to get off my meds. And I think that that is not the really the best way to look at this, because overall, thyroid medication is one of the most benign medications you can take. And I try to make it very clear to people not to feel bad about having to take it if you do. But I think what you want is to stop the progression of the disease in its tracks, and you want to get to where you feel good again. And so for some people, that looks like getting off their meds and feeling great. And for some people, they stay on their meds, but they don't have to keep increasing, because that's what usually happens if you do nothing. And then they can start to lose weight and have that energy and, you know, have no more brain fog. And that's what we're really striving for.

So I know one of the things that you do, and I always love. I always love when food's involved, is that you have very specific foods that you tell people to eat, and then once you tell people not to eat and then some discoveries around that. So let's dig into that.

So typically, you know, when you have just. If we're thinking thyroid issue, you're going to start eating a lot of, you know, healthy fats, which would include avocados and, you know, fish, you know, low mercury fish and that type of stuff. And you're going to be doing fermented foods, especially if you've been told you have leaky gut. People pile on the fermented foods, and that can be really great. And it is how I work with thyroid patients, but something that happened with me, and this is how I learned about it, and now that I see in other people is, you know, they start a whole 30, or they start keto or they start Paleo, and they're eating a lot of avocados and like I said, fermented foods, and, you know, even apple cider vinegar, which is a fermented food, but, you know, using that as their salad dressing every day, and lemons and limes and tomatoes and spinach, and they're getting worse. So what I really started to discover was something called histamine intolerance. And what it is is that those foods are high in histamine. Even though they're. They're high in nutritional value for some people, they're. They're really not good. And so you can tell if someone's eating a lot of fermented foods and they're starting to feel bad that this is kind of my next step with people is then we start looking into this. And this was me. I was eating all these fermented foods because I love them and because I was told they were great for my gut. And I was getting rashes on my face and in my scalp, and I was getting crawling and tingling sensations on my body and feeling really Weird and getting migraines and all these weird symptoms. And this is how I really started to discover histamine intolerance and started it. You know, whenever I see this in a patient, I think this right away. So not everybody has an issue with those foods, but some people are lacking the correct enzyme to break down histamine. And so histamine builds up to an intolerable level for them and it causes a lot of symptoms. And there is a histamine and thyroid connection. And I do talk about that a lot. And I do notice that people who come to me with hypothyroidism can have an issue with reducing the histamine. What? You know, that they're eating and getting through their food. And then in response, also, you know, increased mast cells, which are the cells that produce histamine and release histamine, that can also lead to autoimmune disease. So they kind of can run off of each other. One can cause the other. So it's a different way that I talk about thyroid than a lot of other people do. And it's something that I really work with a lot of people, and I'm seeing it more and more and more these days, this histamine intolerance.

And so do you think that is the histamine? Because you just said the thyroid problem could cause the histamine intolerance, but the histamine intolerance could cause the thyroid problem.

Right.

So first off, are there any tests that you could do to find out if you have a histamine intolerance or is the best test it sounds like symptoms like eating it and connecting the dots? How do you know?

So the best test is to eat high histamine foods. And I've written about this on my website. You guys can see, even on my Instagram.

Definitely put that in the show. Notes to how to follow you, because I've seen some great infographics and stuff. Stuff you have on it.

Yeah. So take that infographic and eat those foods for a couple days and see if you either get any new symptoms or if the symptoms you already have increase. And then get off of those foods for seven days and see if you feel better. And if you feel better, you most likely have histamine intolerance. And. And the biggest thing here connecting these two is that the cause of both of them can be the same. It can both be very gut related. So the enzyme I was talking about that breaks down histamine is called DAO enzyme. And that is. Is a lot of the times if you have an issue with your gut, you're going to have a reduction in that enzyme. And then back when we talked about autoimmune disorders, if you have the infections in the gut, you're going to have a decrease in the function of the immune system. So it's. It all kind of ties together and they all play off of each other. And it's really, you know, looking at the gut is how I work with most people, but I have to alter the diet based on what you have going on.

Now, if someone's histamine intolerant, can this be fixed or are they always histamine intolerant?

If they just have histamine intolerance to caused by something like a gut issue or vitamin deficiencies, you know, there's different causes, gluten intolerance, different things like that, which again, are the same underlying causes of thyroid disease. You can get rid of histamine intolerance. Most people, I find, have histamine intolerance from having something called mast cell activation syndrome, where the mast cells that produce histamine, they're triggered by. There's over 200 triggers to cause the mast cells to release too much histamine. And so your body just can't keep up with that overload of histamine. And then if you're lacking that enzyme to break it down, you just have this. This overload of histamine. You just start having all these symptoms. So if you have that, that's something you would know if you've probably kind of always had issues, you know, even as a kid, you can remember, you know, you got hives or you got headaches as a kid, or you were dizzy a lot then. It's. It's maybe not something you'll completely get rid of, but it's very, very manageable. It's, I mean, to the point where you don't feel like you have anything going on.

And again, the foods high in histamine. Give us the list of those again.

So fermented foods are really high. Avocados, spinach, tomatoes, eggplant, citrus fruits, dried fruits, aged anything aged. Aged cheeses, aged meats. So like salami, like a charcuterie board, is the. Just a histamine nightmare. It's like the best tasting food, but that's. If you think of that, everything in their olives, you know, anything made in vinegar, that type of stuff. And. And then leftovers can be a problem too, because the longer food sits, the more histamine it produces. And also, people who have leaky gut are also told to do bone broth, which can be great for some people. But the long, you know, when you put make bone broth in the slow cooker for 24 to 48 hours, that can be a nightmare for someone with histamine intolerance. So, you know, it's. It's hard. You have to really pay attention to, to how long things are cooking and how long they've been sitting. And, you know, it can be kind of cumbersome at first when you first realize you have a histamine issue because you have to freeze a lot of stuff. And, you know, some people can handle leftovers, some people can't. But a lot of times you have to make what you're going to eat and you have to freeze the rest. And, you know, it. It's not forever. It's really just more in the acute phases. And, you know, I do teach people in, is how to go through all of this. But those are the typical, biggest triggers for histamine intolerance.

I think the big takeaway here that is so, so critical is that, you know, we hear about all these healthy foods and we tend to get, you know, when kale was. Everyone was eating kale. And then it's avocados and then it's coconut. It's like, maybe, maybe not. And that's, I mean, that's the bigger overarching is, you know, as we start to get more and more and more into personalized nutrition, we'll realize that, you know, there is no, there's no one thing that's great for everybody.

There isn't.

No.

And I tell everybody that. I say, like, people will be like, what do you think of keto? And I. I'll say, I think it's good for some people. For some people, I think it's terrible. It really depends on the person, you know, and. And everybody's different and everyone's going to respond differently to foods. I mean, I think that there's some universal foods that are just going to cause tons of inflammation in the body that everyone should never eat. But, you know, I can't say that everyone should eat every, you know, quote, unquote, healthy food because it's going to react differently for two different people in their bodies.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think we're probably in line on the gluten and sugar story. So I want to remind everybody, jjvirgin.com forward/thyroidguides you're going to get. And I'll also put links to Becky's Instagram and Facebook because she has great infographics on this and I know you probably I had never heard the the connection between thyroid and histamine before. So really interesting stuff. And if you're still struggling and frustrated, this is a great next rock to turn over. So that guide will start helping you get going along with all her social stuff because you put a lot of great info out there. So thank you for that and thank you for today. It was awesome. Super appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

All righty. This is when we answer a listener's question, it could be yours. Hope you're jumping on Instagram and Facebook when I'm live and connecting with me because I scour those for questions. Plus I grabbed some from my membership community as well. So always love to get questions from you. Again, it's JJ Virgin official on Facebook and JJ Virgin on Instagram. So be sure to grab me live when I'm there or in my membership community on Facebook. So I thought this made a lot of sense. You know, a lot of adrenal issues go along with thyroid issues. As you heard Dr. Becky talking about the gut and stress and thyroid and way back when I used to work with a doctor who did a lot of adrenal work and she would take people off of exercise altogether. I'm just using that as kind of a frame for this now. I started out in this world paying my way through graduate school in exercise physiology and biomechanics and then doctoral school as a personal trainer. And so it's most of my grad work was biomechanics and xviz and sports medicine and psych. And then I started in the nutrition side as I got in doctoral school. But it never made sense to me to just not do any exercise at all when your adrenals were taxed because you can with especially like high intensity interval training, you can start to retrain your nervous system. You can start to free train your sympathetic nervous system to handle stress better. So for me I thought, you know, here's what exercise does and it's progressive, right? And super personal. So you push the body and then it comes back stronger. You push the body and comes back stronger. So if you are under stress, first off, I want to teach your body how to handle stress better. And so and if you are fatigued, I want to give you a little bit of stimulus and then have you rebuild and a little bit rebuild. So what I would tell you super important is to a, listen to your body, B, work with a good certified personal trainer or even better, a physical therapist in Fact, I'm going to be interviewing Emily Kaibard on this very topic. But I would tell you to really work up to this. So when I've worked with people who've got, who are under a lot of stress, and this isn't during the initial time when you're your elevated, your cortisol is elevated. When that was going on with me, with my son in the hospital, I would go out and do high intensity interval training. And I would also do some calming work, things like tapping, being mindful, doing flexibility stuff that would help lower my stress hormones. I put a lot of this in the FAST fitness program. We'll put a link to that as well to help you balance your hormones, which is super important. But as I started to work with people with burned out adrenals, what I work on is just five minutes to start. And there's a couple reasons this is important. Number one, we can do anything for five minutes. Well, not anything. You couldn't sprint all out for five minutes. But you know what I mean. If I said, okay, we're going to do one set of body squats for 30 seconds and then we're going to step in place for 30 seconds and then we're going to do a wall squat or a, a, a wall push up for 30 seconds and then we're going to do arm circles for 30 seconds, you're getting the point. So I would start with very key exercises, very focused on stability and then build from there. And what I started to find was that worked really well, but you just want to start small and build on it and use your own body as guide. You know, when I do high intensity interval training with people or bursting to blast fat, it's relative to the person. It's very personal. Someone might be able to go run sprinting down the street, someone else burst training for them might be walking up, up a hill. So it doesn't matter. It's whatever you can do for 30 to 60 seconds all out and no longer. So that is my key takeaway. If you are under stress and it's not the acute high stress because that's different. That's where we want to lower cortisol and that's something like tapping works really well there. And we'll put in the show notes for tapping or Ziva meditation. But if you have got exhausted adrenals where you're just tired and probably now it's playing on your thyroid and you just feel like you're not getting anywhere, this is where doing small amounts of exercise, that stress you a little bit and then you recover can help your body get better and build. So that is where I would recommend. Alrighty, if you've not left a review yet, this is my big ask for you to jump on over to itunes and leave a review so I can do a big shout out for you on the next show. See you next time.

Bye.

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.

Foreign.

Toyota Thun is on, so stop by your local Toyota dealer and test drive a stylish new Camry or sleek and capable Corolla with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit buyatoyota.com for more Toyota let's go places.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Boeckle, 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 take 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.