Navigating Bloating in Perimenopause: Insights with Lara Frendjian

Welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons. And today I'll be speaking with Lara Frangin, who is a registered holistic nutritionist and founder of Nutrition Her Way. She specializes in helping women over 40 regain their energy, body confidence, and health so they can live out their life's passions. But before our conversation, if If you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show, be sure to do so. And if you want to get transcripts of the podcast, pop over to my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, and sign up for my newsletter. You'll also get my free ebooklet, Finding Your Root Cause Through Stool and Organic Acids Testing, when you sign up. And if you haven't yet done my quiz on which stool test would help you get to your root cause, you can find a link in the show notes and take that. Now on to the show. Welcome to the podcast, Lara.

Thank you so much for having me, Lindsey Parsons.

It's my pleasure. So let's start with your story because I know you went went through a period of uncontrollable bloating and weight gain in your 40s that you dealt with sort of indirectly. And I think this is an approach that I don't often consider for my clients. So, yeah, let's hear about that.

Okay, sure. So, yeah, I mean, I was a practicing nutritionist, so nutrition is my second career. I started off in finance and accounting. I was a controller for many years, and nutrition was just a passion of mine. So I started to practice. I was practicing for a number of years. I was feeling great energy. Everything was working really, really well until I started to approach my 40s and things just suddenly seemed to shift and, and it felt like a little bit overnight. But if I think back, I know that there were signs that things were starting to shift. So, you know, my cycles were changing, for instance, you know, they were getting after my second daughter, who I had in my early 30s, my periods were just closer together and then they suddenly became really close together and a little bit erratic, but I didn't think much of it because it was, it was just sporadically would happen, you know, it would be like 26 days and then I would miss a period and I'd be like, oh, I wonder what happened. And then it would continue. So I didn't think much of it. And this happened for a number of years and then suddenly everything shifted. Meaning I started to not feel like myself anymore. I started to notice that I was putting on weight, especially in my midsection. I noticed that my energy was lower than it used to be. Like, I feel like I need a nap now. I would push through it, but I felt like I needed a nap, and I hadn't felt like that since my kids were little and I was up with them all night, right? Like, and what got me the most is that my mental health was not good. I was feeling anxious and irritable and just wanted to cry and and didn't know why. And of course I was bloated and everything was uncomfortable. My clothes didn't fit me the way they would. And I developed eczema. I never had eczema before. And on all of this just felt like overnight, which of course it wasn't. Now, if I think back, there was, um, something that tipped me off. But I went to my doctor, explained what was happening. She checked some of my labs and she said, everything is okay. It's Perimenopause. If you want, you can go on the birth control pill. There's really nothing else that I can do for you. And that was the first that I'd really thought about perimenopause because, I mean, I was a nutritionist. I was helping just generally people. I was focused on gut health, actually. And all of this was happening to me. And internally, I felt like a fraud because here I was helping other people and my body felt like it was falling apart. And that's when everything shifted and I shifted my focus and I started to study other things and learn other things. And I realized that I was doing some wrong things that were impacting my body in a negative way. And I needed to do things a little bit differently now that I was in this phase of life. And here I am, fast forward a number of years and yeah, all of that is gone behind me and now my health isn't Perfect. I know my hormones are still shifting, but I don't have any of the symptoms that I was experiencing before, even though things are still changing. So we are going to go through changes. It's just we could thrive through the changes or really struggle through the changes. And I want to get people on the other side of thriving versus the struggling.

Yeah. And how— what turned it around for you?

Okay, well, So I understood first what was happening in my body. So I recognized that there were hormonal shifts that were happening and that I needed to address them. And the crux of it for me was stress, lifestyle stressors. I had traveled to Cambodia with a colleague and we had done work there and that when I came back and I thought I picked up a bug or something there and we were so cautious and careful. Now in retrospect, I realized that it was not a bug. It was just that travel. The things that I experienced there were extremely stressful. And I know, I mean, I realized back then that it was stressful, but I didn't realize the implications that it would have on my body because my body was already under stress with all the hormone shifts that it was starting to go through, or that it had been going through for a number of years. But that kind of just trip things up. So that's one. I recognize the importance of stress management because we can't get rid of stress. I recognize the importance of nutrients. So I was supplementing with some of the generic things that we think of, you know, like zinc, let's say for example, you know, to boost your immune system and vitamin C in the form of ascorbic acid. And what I didn't realize is that these were causing other nutritional imbalances. So what I learned was it's very detrimental to just supplement with just generic stuff that you hear. So what I learned was that there's a real connection between minerals and hormones and understanding what is happening to your body is really important and supplementing with the things that your body needs. Is really important. So I studied these things. Like, I delved into it. I studied, I researched, I came under other people and learned from them. And I learned how to read the hair tissue tests and blood work in terms of understanding your nutrient status and things like that. And then I moved away from fully plant-based. So I was eating a plant-forward diet, which I still do, but I integrated animal proteins and I integrated animal fats back into my diet, uh, because my body needed it and everything shifted. So those were the 3 main things that I did.

I do find that a lot of clients who were vegan or vegetarian will eventually realize their body is not getting as much protein as they need on, on that system. Or, or even more specifically, people who are on vegan or vegetarian diets who end up with some type of a methane, SIBO, or emo presentation, and that diet is just not working for them because they're eating the things that are feeding them the archaea and fueling that growth.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. And yeah, it's really important to listen to the, like, if I were to go back, like, it's important to listen to the whispers that the body gives you before it starts yelling. Because there are, they are there. I just, I was choosing not to hear them out. Yeah. Yeah.

It's very easy to underdo protein because we've sort of been told, oh, animal protein is bad for you. And there's a lot of, I don't object to people having a vegetarian diet if they can somehow pull it off, but you probably are gonna need some protein powders unless you can, because you're just gonna have to eat so many carbohydrates to. Get the protein you need. And what do you think of as a minimum amount of protein?

I'm, uh, right now I've moved towards higher at the end of protein. So I'd say 25% minimum, 35% is where I like to see it.

Of calories?

Of calories. Yeah.

So how do you start working with clients who have gut health issues like bloating?

So the first thing is I do an intake. I understand what's happening to their hormones. So I don't understand if they have histamine issues, if they have cortisol issues, if they've got any diagnosed diseases related to their gut. So I approach it from a different angle where I used to attack the gut specifically. I approach it from an overall, and only if we need to address the gut directly, do I go there? Because the women that I'm working with aren't necessarily coming to me because they have Crohn's or colitis or SIBO. They're just not feeling well, and it's just— they're tired or they're gaining weight. A lot of the things that I described that I was experiencing, those are the women that I'm seeing. Usually 9 out of 10 times, when we address all the other stuff, we reduce the stress, we work on the minerals, we replenish the nutrients, we, yeah, balance the iron, et cetera. We reduce the histamine load, estrogen's good. Once that happens, usually 9 out of 10 times I'm able to help them with it. And where I can't, that's when we go deeper into the gut health.

Mm-hmm.

But yeah, so we do, I, I ask them to run panels, blood work through their doctor. I do run hair tissue tests through the services that I provide. They send it into hair tissue analysis. And then that, in addition to their lifestyle intake, it gives me a really good picture of what's happening. If we need to, we do a Dutch hormone test and that gives me— but because I've worked with so many, based on their symptoms, I'm able to decipher what's happening with their hormones. And only if the situation is really stubborn and we can't deal with it do we do the Dutch hormone test, just to save the money, really, is why I put off some of the lab work. And yeah.

So when you had bloating, and then when your clients do, who are not coming specifically about gut, but bloating is part of the picture, is this more bloating associated with their cycle, or is this bloating like every time they eat?

Every time they eat. Yeah. Yeah.

And that resolves from a hormonal perspective then.

Yes. Yeah. It's often related to cortisol, right? Stress causes impact on your gut bacteria. But so do our shifting hormones, just especially in our early forties up until menopause. What's happening is estrogen is, yes, declining, but progesterone is declining even faster. What happens is that we, we have this like estrogen dominance picture. So we have more estrogen in relationship to, to progesterone. And this estrogen dominant person will have more histamines in their body, like their histamine load. They won't be able to clear the histamines. So there's a real correlation between histamines and estrogen. And once we're able to increase their progesterone, in terms of the, the bound, the ratio, that histamine generally goes away. And, and, and once we're able to balance the cortisol levels and bring them down, their histamine load will go down and they won't have those reactions that they used to.

And so are you starting from addressing cortisol imbalances when you're dealing with estrogen?

Yes, that's where we're starting. So we work on it hand in hand. So I take them through this process of understanding what is happening to their body from a hormonal perspective. Reducing their stress load. It's multifaceted. Okay. So when I say reducing their stress load, I'm talking about eating the right food. 90% of the women that are coming to me, they're like, I eat healthy. Most of them are undereating. Most of them have a predominantly carbohydrate-rich diet. So just shifting that around and having a balanced meal and eating enough. Well, their cortisol levels come down, their energy levels go up, and they feel better, and they're able to move more. Like, it's just this snowball effect of these shifts. And I was going to say tiny shifts, but for most of us, they are quite big shifts because just to wrap your head around, you know, I'll say, I'll talk about carbohydrates. Everybody thinks of bread, right? Bread and grains. No, all our fruits and vegetables, all of them are carbohydrates. And understanding the differences in the carbohydrates and some of them are low, et cetera. Yeah, just doing that, the nutritional stuff, adding a little bit of movement, getting sunshine, getting access to red light, breathing, having a healthier mindset, right? This. I get a lot of chronic dieters who are in or out, 100% in, they're dieting, or they're not at all. So just shifting these mindsets reduces our stress load. So what I do is just, yeah, multifaceted. And it— I have like a program that I run them through, but everyone's starting point is a little bit different and everyone's focus could be a little bit different because someone could have a really healthy mindset and they're not dieters. It's just where I was, the body just did what it did because of some things that happened in their life. So we— so my starting point would be different than your starting point because I have different issues than you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hey, this is Lindsey here, just letting you know that if you're tired of dealing with digestive issues, like bloating, indigestion, soft stool, diarrhea, constipation, reflux, IBS, IBD, or the numerous health conditions that come about when your gut is off, like brain fog, weight gain, UTIs, fatigue, mental health issues, or complex conditions like fibromyalgia and ME/CFS. That's my specialty. With my 3 or 5 session gut health coaching packages, we'll discuss different stool and functional medicine tests to find out the root cause of your symptoms. I'll interpret the results and provide clear explanations, empowering you to make informed choices for your gut and overall health. And together we'll develop a customized action plan based on your test results so you can find relief and regain your health and vitality. I come from a functional medicine perspective, trying to incorporate the latest peer-reviewed research and educating you on protocols used by functional medicine practitioners, but devoting lots of time and support to my clients the way a doctor simply can't. If you're interested in a 3 or 5 session Coaching package, you can sign up for a complimentary 30-minute breakthrough session. Or if you can only afford one appointment at a time, you can book an initial 60-minute consultation. Links for those are in the show notes. Now back to the show. Of course. Yeah, I know everyone's so unique.

Yeah.

I always find it funny when people say, I've got a healthy diet. And mind you, I don't see a lot of people like this because by the time they've found me, they've done everything diet-wise a human being can do. They've gone through the paleo, they've gone through the keto, they've, some of them have gone to carnivore, whatever they can do to reduce their gut symptoms. But that being said, occasionally you do happen upon a person who's, I've got a healthy diet, but they've really done, had no interaction with functional medicine or with, they just found my podcast cuz they were looking for gut problems. And you're like, oh, okay, what's your diet? I have a bagel for breakfast and then I have a sandwich for lunch and I have, maybe I have a, a meat and veg and a grain for dinner of some sort. And then whatever they may add onto that snack-wise. And you're like, yeah, that's not actually a healthy diet. That's a healthy diet compared to going to McDonald's every day, but that's far from a healthy diet.

It's true. Yeah, it's true. Yeah.

Yeah. But what I should just ask is, what do you do for grains and carbohydrates? Like, that's the main question because that's always where the crux of the problem lies.

Yeah.

And then of course, when you pull those out, it's okay. Now fill it back in with the stuff you're supposed to be eating, the protein and the fruits and vegetables and the healthier grains and such. But anyway, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

That has some nutrients. Nutrient-dense foods, right? That's the key.

Yeah. And then their nutrient— like, one of the things I do is I get them to track their meals, and I'm not just looking at their proteins and carbs and their macros. I'm looking at their micronutrients. So suddenly their potassium levels go, like, skyrocket when they start to replace their bread with a sweet potato or squash or something. Like, it just— their nutrients just skyrocket.

Yeah, I know. Everybody I test is low in potassium. Everybody.

Yeah, I know. It's quite exciting when it happens. Yeah. It's really hard to get the level of potassium that you need unless you're eating a really, like eating the rainbow and eating a range of foods and reducing your, yeah, your grain, your pasta and your bagel and yeah, your sandwich and yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think the only person I had who tested high in potassium was somebody who was using one of those potassium salts that you use when you're on a keto diet. I think that was the way. Are the folks that you're seeing also having issues with their moods or their emotions or things like that as they head into perimenopause?

Absolutely. Yeah. That's one of the things because a lot of us could handle let's say the weight gain, right? We can deal with it and we find our old thing that we used to do, or we find our thing. I find that the issue that gets most of my clients is the mood changes, is the depression, the anxiety, the irritability, the place that where I was, where I felt like I was losing my mind. Like I went to my doctor and I'm like, I don't know what's happening to my brain. I just feel crazy. Like, I just, I didn't know how else to describe it. I just was losing my mind and nobody else knew, right? I wasn't even talking about it to my family, but internally I felt like if someone puts something, another to-do on my desk, my reaction would be like to just burst out into tears. I had nothing left. And it was just, I don't know, like if a deadline moved up, it would be like the end of the world. It was really strange. So yes, absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. It's funny. I never went through any of that in perimenopause. In fact, perimenopause was like a non-thing for me. I just went straight to menopause and then it was just hot flashes that were insufferable. So I ended up, so I started with hormone creams to see if that would be enough for me and to help with the hot flashes. But ultimately I had to go for the estrogen patch and for the progesterone pills, which I believe are all bioidenticals. Hope I'm doing it the right way. At least that's what my doctor said. So I'm curious, do you use creams at all or, or do you get at these estrogen and progesterone indirectly or?

Yeah. I don't start off there, so I'll start off with progesterone boosting foods and estrogen balancing foods. So we're, we're focusing on things that are gonna help cleanse the liver and help the body clear estrogens better. Like what? Lemon, ginger, turmeric, rosemary. What's it called? Beets, beet greens. These are all carrots, raw carrots. So these are all clearing foods. Flaxseeds, I do like to include because they do have— they've gotten some research benefits to helping with estrogen levels, whether they're high or low, they do help them. And then progesterone-boosting foods like these are all your potassium, magnesium-rich foods. And of course, some supplementation. Everybody needs magnesium in their diet, either through food topically, depending on where your gut status is, and/or supplemental magnesium. So this is where I start, and it looks a little bit different for everybody, of course, and some people will need other nutrients, but that's where I start. Ultimately, with some, myself included, I do progesterone cream over the counter or a bioidentical, very small dose supplemental magnesium, which are extracted from wild yam. There's one company that I love, and I do use theirs, and I find it's very low dose, especially—

Did you just say low dose magnesium, or were you talking about—

Did I say magnesium? I meant to say progesterone, progesterone, bioidentical progesterone. And yeah, once we— and yeah, and progesterone cream. Did I say magnesium cream? There are magnesium creams.

But I could have sworn you said magnesium and I was like, magnesium extracted from a yam. Why not just take magnesium? You need special magnesium from yams.

So yeah, progesterone, my apologies. So yes, progesterone creams and progesterone drops, bioidentical progesterone drops. And I, they're very low dose, especially when you look at the prescription progesterone. And generally that, that truly does it. If their blood work is still coming back wonky or their symptoms are still existing, then they work with their doctor in order to— because I can't prescribe, right? Like, I'm a holistic nutritionist. So then they work with their doctor in order to get bioidentical progesterone or estrogen. 90% of them don't have to go there once their, you know, lifestyle and diet is dealt with. And then that's not something we have to deal with. But some of them still do. Some people still do. And that's Okay. As long as they're bioidentical and you're, you've got both the estrogen and progesterone together, cuz that's where we are in our research right, right now is that when the two are together, then, then yeah, it's safer. Yeah.

It's safer cuz you don't want the lining of the uterus getting too thick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so what kind of interventions do you use for unbalanced cortisol and DHEA and So the lifestyle will help.

Potassium, potassium, sodium, magnesium are your friends for cortisol, balancing out cortisol. So, and lifestyle shifts for the ones that we can't, are having a hard time or they're having these reactions, these cortisol spikes. So we will do some saliva testing through the Dutch hormone test. And some of them are like spiking cortisol spikes and then it spikes further and that's not supposed to happen. It's supposed to come down through the day. So often changing our lifestyle will help. It's like looking at what does your morning look like? What are you doing? Are you having coffee on an empty stomach? Are doing a HIIT workout first thing in the morning?

High-intensity interval training.

Exactly. Thank you. Are you staying up late at night watching TV and you've got all this or scrolling on your phone? And not— you've got this blue light infiltration in your life. Truly, I find these lifestyle interventions, like, it sounds like, oh, whatever, I'm not stressed. These are just— no, they have profound impact on our lives. They have a profound impact on how we sleep, how we feel, how our digestion functions. Like, the way that we live today is the most abnormal way of living. In the walls with heat and without sunlight, without stepping outside. Like, we can go on for days now. Like, most— a lot of us work from home. Many of us don't, but I work from home. My husband still works from home since the pandemic, and this is our life. So we don't necessarily have to step outdoors, but we need to. We need access to air and natural light and all of that. So it's really being aware of your day and shifting things around. And it sounds very simple. It's very hard to do. But once we do it, it's— I find cortisol, DHEA, they all behave and we don't need to do anything further. I do work with the adrenals and adrenal tonics and maybe some herb that we introduce to the body. But bang for your buck, this is the best place to start, is look at your lifestyle and just think back to if this was 150 years ago, what would I be doing? What would my day look like? I would wake up with the chickens and we'd go outside, we'd feed our animals, we'd collect some eggs. We were forced to move first of all, and to go outdoors. It was just part of our lives and we didn't think about it. And our lives today are very different.

Yeah. So you recommend getting out in the sunlight first thing in the morning or doing some HIIT training?

Yeah. Don't look at your phone first thing for the first hour of every evening.

Yeah.

True.

Thought that had the same kind of blue light that wakes you up.

No. You know, our— what should be waking us up is red light. So sunrise is red light. So getting access, if you can, to that.

I can't remember the last time I've seen a sunrise. Is—

well, and now we have red light machines that we can turn on to mimic that.

I used to have a sunrise clock and it didn't have red light, but it slowly got light because I couldn't bear waking up before the sun rose. I felt it was so unnatural.

Yeah, yeah, it is natural. And I don't necessarily do that. I just don't turn on my phone in the morning. It's not on for the first hour. And I step outdoors. As soon as I wake up, I turn on my red light machine. It's my best friend. It's in my bedroom. I turn it on at night as we're getting ready for bed. It's on. It mimics basically sunrise and sunset.

And what is it, a special thing or can you just buy a red bulb?

There are different, I think there are different wavelengths. And so there are companies, it's still cheap, it's $30. You could get, buy a red bulb and stick it in, turn it on in the morning, turn it on at night before bed. And they've done some sleep studies in that it improves the quality of your sleep. So I actually always start with the night before. So what are you doing? Before you go to sleep. Because if we could improve the quality of our sleep, we improve all of our hormones. And a lot of women are coming to me for weight loss. Yeah, you— if you improve the quality of your sleep, you will improve your metabolic rate. They've— right, they've researched this. Your detox pathways are clear at night and you're— there's cancer-fighting cells that are scavenging during your sleep. So if you're not getting good quality sleep, you're really setting yourself up for things down the road, which you don't want. We start at night, so don't scroll on your phone, put the red light on, read, do some deep breathing.

Yeah.

Meditate, pray, whatever you do to calm down your nervous system. Don't have your TV in your room. Just keep your room cooler. And put the covers on. There's research there. Yeah. Starting with sleep is, it's a really important piece. And then how are you starting your morning? If we could just get those two right, things function better during the day. Our mental health is better. Yeah.

I have a lot of folks who tell me, and I am a bit familiar with this myself, but trouble with waking up. Maybe not so much in the middle of the night, but that's also a situation, but waking up maybe just a little bit too early and not being able to get back to sleep. What do you recommend for people in that situation who've already done all the sleep hygiene things?

Looking during the day to make sure that they're getting enough sodium, potassium, magnesium.

Hmm.

Okay. That's really important because that if you're waking up and you can't fall back asleep, it doesn't matter when, right? 3, between 3 and 5, I think in Chinese Chinese medicine is the liver hour, like when the liver is most active. And from a hormonal perspective, cortisol is just spiking when it shouldn't, or spiking a little bit too early. So is that when you normally see— is that when people are waking up between 3 and 5?

Yeah, I would say so.

Yeah. So cortisol spiking too early, and what you want to do is make make sure that you're doing the other stuff, right? The lifestyle stuff that we talked about. Changing your morning, like the morning dictates what happens to cortisol later on in the day. What happens to cortisol and melatonin later on in the day. If you fixed up your night, okay, and you haven't, and you're still waking up in like a panic, going on your phone, checking your email. Getting access to this nice blue light first thing in the morning, which is not nice, right? If you're do— still the morning is messed up, that will impact you. Okay, so let's say we clean up the morning, we've got a nice relaxed morning, we're doing our thing, we've got a rhythm. You go outside, you're walking, there's some breathing and red light and all of that. So it's a nice calm morning. And a nice calm evening, then we look to see what's happening during the day. Are you, is your stress crazy during the day? Do you have any coping mechanisms, stopping breathing, et cetera? And then we look at the nutrients. Are you getting enough of the minerals that I just talked about? That usually does it. Okay. So if it doesn't, then progesterone cream would definitely help. Cause it could be progesterone and cortisol. When progesterone is low, you feel a lot of the anxiety that we talked about before. And it's really stressful on the body when progesterone is really low. So cortisol naturally spikes. And if that's not helpful, then putting in maybe a magnesium bath, foot soaks, taurine. Taurine is a mineral that helps with relaxation and it also helps with magnesium absorption. We have to be careful with it because some people are really reactive if their other minerals are out of balance. Basically magnesium moves way quickly and the taurine isn't— it causes more like heart palpitations and anxiety. So I wouldn't— if you're going to experiment with taurine, I would start with a little tiny amount. And I would try it in the morning to see if your body reacts well to it. If it does, then you can test it out at night.

That's good to know. When I have clients dealing with diarrhea or loose stool, I always tell them about tributyrin, which is the best absorbed form of butyrate, which is normally made by bacteria fermenting fiber in your colon. Supplemental tributyrin can help slow your motility down and feed the cells lining your colon, firming up stool and helping create an oxygen-free environment in the colon. Which helps the butyrate-producing bacteria to survive and multiply. Those bacteria are often wiped out after taking antibiotics, which is why tributyrin is a great accompaniment and follow-up supplement if you have to take antibiotics. My new supplement, Tributyrin Max, has 750 milligrams of tributyrin, which is the highest dose currently available in a capsule. You can find it at tributyrinmax.com— that's T-R-I-B-U-T-Y-R-I-N-M-A-X dot com— and use code INTRO15 for 15% off of your first order. And so do you find that since you do the hair tissue mineral analysis, do you find that a lot of people are low on sodium?

Yeah, definitely. Sodium, potassium are usually low. Magnesium, it's a toss-up, a toss-up between being really low or they're leechers, meaning it goes like it's through the roof high. Calcium, magnesium is really high, and that means they're just not Magnesium is supposed to be inside the cell, intracellular, and it's just leaching outside. So we have to do other things in order to help the body absorb the calcium and the magnesium.

Mm-hmm.

But yeah, so to answer questions, yes, usually 9 outta 10 times sodium and potassium are both really low.

And why would somebody not be absorbing magnesium?

Usually potassium. So all of our minerals work hand in hand. So if potassium is low, then their magnesium absorption rates are gonna go down. Mm-hmm. And because of deficiencies in our food, not only of magnesium, but of potassium, of boron— boron is a cofactor for magnesium absorption, and taurine is a cofactor for magnesium absorption. So all of these things really work together, work hand in hand. And then we see like nail breakage, nails not growing, osteoporosis, hair not growing and breaking and things like that.

Okay. You've brought up a topic that I've been struggling with for forever. My nails are terrible.

Okay.

I shouldn't even admit this because this is like the one problem I can't solve. I've solved every problem but this one, and I have tried every nutrient that I could possibly imagine to try and get them. I actually haven't really, I haven't tried that hard on potassium. What do you think could be at the root of this? It's not iron.

No.

My TSH is totally normal, but I do have Hashimoto's, but never had to medicate for it. Tried collagen, tried biotin.

Okay.

Multivitamins. They just break and they've got lines and they're terrible.

So what I normally see helping with that is enough magnesium in the body. So enough magnesium supplementation.

Taking 340 a day.

Okay. Of what form? What form?

Lysinate.

Lysinate. Good. Next would be boron. So you would need some boron and then finally taurine and possibly some vitamin K. Have you done a hair tissue test?

I did. Yeah, you did.

Okay. How was your calcium?

It was high. It was high, like through the roof high, or it was, I'll open it up and I'll tell you. Okay. Might as well. Let's see. Calcium. I was at 1190 on a reference interval of 300 to 1200.

1190.

Yeah.

Okay. So you were just at the high end, so you weren't through the roof, right? Right. Like it wasn't off the charts. Okay. That's still too high, right? It was. Yeah. Yeah.

I cut back on the supplementation. I, since I didn't eat dairy, I was supplementing several times a day. So I dropped to once a day, more or less.

You were supplementing. Okay. Okay. I don't, unless I see calcium shell, like through the roof high, it was probably high. Have you done it again? Have you repeated it?

No, I haven't.

Okay. So I'm very careful. I hardly ever recommend calcium supplementation because I do know that once we balance the other nutrients, calcium behaves just fine. So vitamin K. Yeah.

And boron. I take K. You do? Yeah. I take K regularly. Boron was right in the, actually it was sort of on the lowish end. I don't know. The scale was 0.25 to 1.5 and I was 0.38.

Okay. Yeah.

Magnesium was right in the middle of the range. Potassium was sort of on the low end, 8 to 75. I was 20.

Okay.

Yeah. I was hoping that this was gonna be like the, something was gonna help me with my nails and this whole thing and, and nothing really came out other than that my iodine was high and my, yeah, iron was low, but this isn't a good way to measure iron, right?

No, for sure.

Hair tissue mineral analysis is not the ideal way to measure iron.

Neither is it for the other things. So I don't rely very heavily on it for anything, for the hair tissue test, anything outside of the 4 electrolytes, sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium. So those show up really well on the hair tissue test. Everything else is outside of the heavy metal. I'm not really, I'm just looking at it as a, okay, is everything high or is everything really low? And generally it comes, everything is. Is low. So what I would focus on for you is making sure that you have the boron, maybe upping the magnesium and trying another form of magnesium. I know that it's good to have different forms through supplementation, like, like a 3 and 8 or a malate, or— I like malate and I like borate. So those are the two that I like.

Oh, I guess that would get you some taurine. Yeah.

Some extra taurine. And then, so I would start there and then see if that's enough taurine. I'm surprised I wouldn't, which K, yeah, we could talk offline. I could give you, I could give you the vitamin K that I like.

I've done the K2 MK7 for a while and then I, MK4 is really the one I try and get more of. So, okay.

I'll share a company that I like. Yeah.

You could, you can share it online. I mentioned brands.

Yeah. Lifeblood. I love Lifeblood products. They have— he's got great products that I just— I had. So I'll give a minute. My mom has osteoporosis. She's extremely tiny. We're just very small-framed women in my family. And so osteoporosis is prevalent. Doing the magnesium, we were doing the boron, and then I finally put her on— and we've done vitamin K from other brands, before, and nothing helped. I put her— we— she is on some supplement, calcium supplements, very low dose, but I put her on the Lifeblood Vitamin K, the drops, 10 drops. He's got 2 different forms. Her nails used to split, so they would just grow to a certain length and then just split down the middle in 2 because she had— yeah, they no longer split. Every time she comes over, she shows me her nails that are now growing. Now she's in her 70s.

So how many micrograms is that at 10 drops?

I don't know. I'm not sure. I just follow the dosage that he recommends, which is 10 drops. And she's actually not even taking it every day. I think she's like, she keeps forgetting, but she at least 3 to 4 times a week she's doing 10 drops and she's seeing the benefits. And the boron did help the lines diminish on her nails and she Show me her smoother nails, but they would still split. Once we introduced the K, they no longer split.

Mm-hmm. And is this boron doses like you would get in a multivitamin or is this like extra physiological doses?

3 milligrams. You can start with 3 milligrams.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'll try that. I'm like, if I could just solve the nails, like everything would be perfect. That's probably an exaggeration. There's always those tiny little things we just can't quite fix.

Yeah.

I know. About our own health, even as we manage to help others.

No, I know, but still. For sure. You know what? And we're human, right? These are human bodies that are imperfect. It's okay. I say that because sometimes as practitioners we feel this, we have expectations of our bodies to be perfect. Yeah. And they're not, but they are getting better and better and better. And that's versus the opposite, 90% of the the population is getting worse and worse and worse. 99, right? As we age, we should expect things to get worse. That's what the world tells us, but you're not, right? You're improving your health and kudos to you that you have Hashimoto's.

Yeah. And I think people find us because we've had the kind of things that they are feeling, experiencing, and they wanna—

Yeah, exactly.

Be with somebody who's experienced what they've experienced because it's not just about how can we How can we fix your problems, but how can we empathize with your problems as well?

And yeah, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Makes us better practitioners. Yeah.

Okay. Any final thoughts about, about your work with clients and all that? And then tell us how people can find you.

Sure. I guess final thoughts is, I guess if you're listening to this, you know that you don't give up on your health and you don't throw in the towel. I just wanna encourage people that there is hope. There's the body. I find the body is like holding its breath, giving you all these signals for help, and it's like holding its breath, just waiting for you to give it what it needs. And then once you do, it starts to thrive. And we can— I work with women in their 40s, and a lot of people feel like this as things shift and are getting worse. And we're told that, oh, we're just going to grow old and it's downhill from here. It's really not. I'm 47 and I feel better than I have, than I did even in my 20s. I can honestly say that I have more energy. I have more vitality. I have a more positive mindset. So there's just hope and it just takes a little bit of time and a little bit of guidance from the right people. And it's trusting that your body can heal and trusting the practitioner that you're working with that they can guide you down the right path.

Yeah. Yeah. And where can people find you? And you work— do you work with people one-on-one?

So I work with people in a one-on-one setting. I have also courses that they can go through on their own. So different ranges of products depending on where your budget is and where your time is. They can reach me on my website, nutritionherway.com, as well as on Instagram @nutritionherway. It's the same handle on Instagram and Facebook. And I do offer free weekly trainings on where to get started. So they can— I'll give you the link to that and maybe you can include it in the show notes. Every Thursday from 1 to 2 p.m. Eastern time. And it's just to help you get started on your health wherever you are on your journey.

Yeah, be happy to include that. Thank you so much for being here.

My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Well, Lara seems like a great resource for women in that perimenopausal space struggling with these hormonal, mental energy, and weight gain issues. So if that's you, check out her website, which is in the show notes. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can buy supplements at a discount from my FullScript Dispensary, order tests at a discount from my Rupa Health Lab store, or use my affiliate links to eVitamins, which I've learned is available in many different countries, so just click the language button at the top of the page to select your country after following my link, Bulk Supplements, or Amazon. If you'd like to connect with me online, you can follow my High Desert Health Facebook page, join my Gut Healing Facebook group, or join my newsletter list at highdeserthealthcoaching.com. .com, as well as follow me on X, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. Links for those are in the show notes. Thanks for joining me today, and here's wishing you all the perfect stool.