“Feel Like Crap Syndrome” – The Hidden Stress Behind Hormone Imbalance, Fatigue & Burnout with Dr. Pingel

Welcome back to the Senergy Podcast. Today's guest is someone who brings both passion and precision to the conversation on burnout, hormone imbalance and root cause medicine. We are so thrilled to welcome Dr. Tricia Pinkel, a naturopathic doctor, speaker, and author of the powerful book Total Health Turnaround. Known as The Adrenal Whisperer, Dr. Pingel has helped thousands of people overcome chronic fatigue, anxiety, hormone chaos, and mystery symptoms that conventional medicine just often overlooks. Her signature approach, tackling the root of modern day burnout, cortisol overload and adrenal dysfunction. In this episode, we're diving deep into the stress response, why it's breaking down, how it's silently affecting everything from your energy to your gut and thyroid, and most importantly, how to restore balance. If you're tired of being told your labs are normal while feeling anything but, this episode is for you. So sit back, grab a cup of coffee and join us. Let's welcome Dr. Tricia Pingle.

Dr. Pingel, thank, thank you so much for being here. I think we're gonna talk a lot today about the feel like crap syndrome. We get that question a lot. My doctor says I'm fine, my labs are fine, but I still feel like crap. So I'm so glad that we have you on to dig into that and really talk about the modern day challenges of being over scheduled, undernourished, sleep deprived, and we're still trying to make it through the day.

Oh, I'm so excited to be here and talk about it. Let's bring it on. Let's do it.

So what do you think when you start thinking about breaking down the stress response for people, like when you're having everyday conversation clinically, like, how do you get to that moment where they understand that all the things they're doing on a day to day basis add up to this load that their body can just no longer endure?

You know, it's funny, I have a little trick that I've tried. You can try it too.

Okay.

Put your cell phone in a drawer and go somewhere because you start feeling your pockets. You're like, oh my gosh, where's my. Oh my gosh, where is my phone? And you start freaking out and right there you can automatically get a sense of how on alert are you as a baseline. I think one of the biggest things that I have seen, and maybe it's my generation, coming from a generation where we had phones that were connected to the wall and an answering machine and we went to work and came home and checked our messages and if you Missed us. You missed us into this technology boom where we're connected all the time. We're emailing at midnight. We have autoresponders going off, we have bings going in. Our bodies have naturally adapted to that stimulation, and it's no wonder we're tired. If you were in the woods and you were running from a bear and you ran the corner and there was another bear and another bear and another bear and another bear, you would be exhausted. But what happens is we think we're not stressed. This is just normal. I just, I'm just busy. I just have a lot of things to do. And what happens is we've adapted so much to this stress that now we're showing up with symptoms that look like we're tired and fatigued, understimulated, when in result, we're actually overstimulated. So most people, if I ask them to leave their phone at home, can immediately relate to the fact that they might be a little overstimulated because they have to get home to check it. Because what if someone needed them? Yes.

I am pretty sure I've driven home a great distance when I've left at home, and I'm admitting to that on this podcast. But, you know, because you do, you're like, what if, you know, what if my kids need me? What if? Yeah, it's a lot.

Yeah. I mean, they could just track you. I mean, I guess you don't have your phone, but I'm just thinking, what did we do, you know, when we rode off on our bike and our parents didn't know where we were? Now, granted, we're in a different world. I don't want to sound like an old lady, but at the same time, it really is having an impact on our health. And I have seen this continue to grow over the past definitely 10 years, particularly as women are entering menopause perimenopause. As we're starting to see so much thyroid disease, we're starting to see a lot of gut issues. We're starting, starting to see higher cancer rates and cardiovascular rates and inflammatory disease. And I started to say, gosh, what's the one common factor here? You know, of course our food has changed, our soil has changed. You know, we have more toxins. All fair, fair points. But those just call cause additional stress on top of our already stressed out bodies. And so it's just a compounding effect. And I think we're seeing that, we're seeing that in just disease development in general in our country. And I really want that to Change, because we're also losing our joy.

So we've got to change the conversation around what's acceptable, what's expected in a day, in a given day, Right? Yeah, that's what I hear you saying. It's like we're living over sympathetic, overdriven lifestyles and we're thinking that that's just life, that's just normal. How do we step back from that and make that change? Right.

Yeah. And how to, you know, are we successful because we're productive? And if we're productive, does that mean we have to over schedule ourselves? Like, what is the definition of success? And as a mom, I look, I look to my children and I say, well, what am I teaching them? What am I modeling for them? Right? I'm modeling them that we have to be really busy to be successful, that we have to be connected all the time, that we have to have all the things right. And that is not going to set our children up for a healthy lifestyle either. So I think we're really starting to see that. And I think a lot of people are having that aha moment of like, oh, like we're not going in the right direction and we need to start to really pay attention and listen to what our bodies are telling us so that we can make an actual change. And that often means not saying yes to everything and not over committing yourself and leaving your phone at home, God forbid.

It just seems like a big change to make. So where do you start when you have that person sitting in front of you, right. With all of those things and without minimizing or making them feel guilty for that, where do you start with them?

Yeah, I think unfortunately a lot of us don't start taking action until we hit our bottom. I know for me, I was treating adrenal fatigue for 10 years just successfully, but then found myself at rock bottom in adrenal fatigue and unable to sustain what I was sustaining. And you would think I would have noticed, right? So there's no shame in this. I treat adrenal fatigue and it went right past me, you know, So I think this happens all the time. But I think the first thing is you just step. And I think the first step is recognizing how is the busy lifestyle, the stress, how is it impacting you, and making note of that. The second thing is to just make a small change. Perhaps you, instead of keeping your phone in your pocket, you keep it, you hang it up on the wall like we did when we were younger. You put it, you put it on it, you put it on A desk, and you go do your stuff around the house and then you check it less often. You know, it's little things. And I think most importantly, and what most people miss, particularly women, is we don't do things that bring us joy anymore. We have to take time to bring joy back into our lives. When you have joy, you forget about those other things. You start to reprioritize. You realize what is valuable to you. I'm so grateful for so many things in my life, but when I'm busy, I forget how grateful I am, right? So when you're grateful, you raise the frequency of your body. And the stressful things coming at you aren't as stressful. I mean, you know, it's so funny when you said, like, how do you say this without shame or without blame? You know, everyone thinks the stress is going to go away. I'll give you a straight newsflash right now. It's not going anywhere. This is going to get worse. There is going to be more stimulation, more crap. It is never going to stop. And people say, oh, I'll start after Christmas, or I'll start after the kids graduate, or I'll start, it'll be better then. When the stress dies down. That's my favorite. That's my favorite favorite line. People tell me, when the stress dies down, I'll start that. Okay, never see you. It will never die down, ever. But you can change the way you view and have perception towards the stress. So you could have two people in the same room, face the same bear, and one, it rolls right off their back. They handle it with ease and they move on. The other one freaks out, breaks down, and their whole life is ending. We have the power to shift our mindset, our thought and our actions, right? So it's one decision at a time, guys. Just one. Something comes at you, just make one decision. You don't have to worry about the next decision.

So I love, I love what you said. I want to go back to the gratitude thing because I think that is such a profound, understated comment about raising the frequency of your body through gratitude. And I think we tell patients all the time to develop a gratitude practice, focus on gratitude. And it doesn't resonate as well as it should be resonating. When you realize it's our re. It's our defense system in the body, that raising of that frequency is our defense system against all of the stress that's coming in. Because the world is not stopping. All of the things are going to be all of the things. But the way that we're able to endure the things and find joy in the things can be found in that practice of gratitude.

Yes.

And I also think that joy, unfortunately, having worked, you know, 19 years now in this functional medicine space and making a lot of assumptions, as we probably all did in our naive early years of practice, that older people are elders. They know how you know, they know what brings them joy. There was an assumption that I truly felt like they should know. Right. And the truth is, is that many people don't even know what gives them joy. So we say that to them, like, find what gives you joy. And sometimes there's a deer in the headlights look.

Yeah. And you know how you find it. I had to do this. Yeah. Is because there was that point where I was at my lowest, where I had zero joy. I didn't enjoy my children, I didn't enjoy my life, I didn't enjoy my career. I felt like crap. I thought, how am I going to move forward without my family? You know, when you go through grief and you go through loss and, and, and you're an overachiever, so you want to keep powering through and putting on that happy face and you lose that connection between your heart or your heart chakra and your head, you know. And one of the best things that I did was I asked myself what did I love to do when I was a kid if I was stuck by myself alone, which was often. I'm a Gen Xer. I was alone a lot and I had nothing to do. I had no phone to entertain myself. What did I do? And I did two things. Number one, I danced. I've always been a dancer. Love dance, love music. My dad was a musician. And when he died in my 20s, I kind of stopped listening to music as much as I used to. I think it made me sad. So I thought, well, I can't deal with this. I got to keep going forward. So bringing the music back. And the other thing I did was I love to build out of my books and boxes and whatnot. I would build houses for my dolls. I'd love to decorate. So when I, what I did is I started saying, okay, I'm just going to start moving furniture around, maybe painting things. And I'm also going to go back to dance class. I'm going to walk into a class with 14 year olds at 40 some years old and I'm just going to start dancing again. And as hard as it was and as challenging and as much as I thought I was a loser, there was something that Went spark. And I was like, wait, I like dancing, right? And the more I did that, the more I was able to do it more. And then all of a sudden, all the other things that I love to do started coming to the forefront, because I was going in there as you were talking about, with gratitude and energy. We are energetic beings. We pass energy, right? So when you go into a dance class, you can't think of anything but feeling the music, hearing the music, putting the moves where they need to go. You can't think about what you're going to make for dinner or who's going to call you the next day or what email you're missing. You can't think about it. You just have to dance. You have to be present in the moment. And when you start to do things that you enjoy that make you present in the moment, you start to find that that feels good. And when that feels good, you start making more priorities for other things to do that bring you joy. So if you're really struggling, if you have that block, you're like, I don't even know what I like to do anymore, Dr. P. Like, I'm done. What did you used to love to do? And just do it. No apologies. Authentically, you. Who cares if you suck? I mean, like, who cares? Nobody cares.

What have you got to lose at this point? Right?

Do it for you. Because you, first of all, everyone listening, no matter where you are in a health journey, whether you're at the beginning, the middle, the end, whether you've recovered or haven't recovered, you are so worth that moment, that moment of just doing something you enjoy to do or at least trying it and seeing what you love to do. I just think we. We put ourselves on the back burner so quickly to serve everybody else and what everyone else loves to do, right? And then we don't have time. And that time freedom comes from doing things that you love to do, because when you do that, you have more room to serve others. So just wanted to remind the listeners of that. You are 100% worth that effort. Yes.

And modeling that, you know, you go back to your role as not just a physician, but as a mom. And what are your girls looking at? Or what are your children looking at? And, you know, and what are we teaching for them?

What are we teaching, right? So if we were to ask ourselves, okay, if everyone. If our children. I have two boys, teenagers, right? They're now at a prime time. They're definitely watching me. There's no. No question. And if I. If they did What I did. If I came downstairs one day and they were doing everything that I was doing, would I be proud? Would I be concerned? Would I want to step in and help them? I mean, we always want to do the right things. Right. We want to eat right. We want to make sure we get out all the, the artificial flavors. We want to make sure we're on all the trends for health, want to make sure we're doing everything right. And that's great, right? I mean, it's great. But at some point we have to recognize that the way that we keep our children healthy or even people in our circle, our employees, our friends, our parents, whatever, is by modeling an energy and a gratitude and the behavior that we expect from them. Yeah. So if I'm giving them unrealistic expectations, if I'm doing one thing and I'm telling them something else. Right. It's really important to do stuff for yourself. It's really important that you go out and do sports. It's really important that you eat right. It's really important that, you know, take time. And I'm not doing that. They don't hear a word I'm saying. Right. They're going to follow what I do. And that's a huge wake up call for a lot of parents. Just ask yourself if they walked in doing what you're doing, if they had their phone in their hand all the time, if they were constantly being interrupted by tasks, if they didn't have time for you. That's the one that killed me the most when I was working so much was, hey, mom, can we go here or there? Oh, dude, I just don't have time today. Or I just, I got. I just can't do that right now. I mean, literally, you could take a dagger and stag it. Just stab it right through my heart. Because I know probably just as much as many people out there that life is so precious and so short. I lost my parents young. They did so many things they didn't accomplish because they were waiting for that moment. They were waiting for the stress to die down. They were waiting for when they had more money or they had more time or they got that big deal or whatever and died. That was a really profound moment for me because I thought, well, wait a minute, my child's only going to be this age for so long. They're only going to want to do that with me for so long.

What a tremendous perspective. You know, I wondered what made you so passionate about this particular aspect. And that's it right there. Your life Experience showed you that, listen, joy is in the moment, and we are not guaranteed another moment beyond this one.

And what do you regret or what do you have gratitude for? My mom, before she was dying, I said, do you have any regrets? And she looked me in the eye and she said, I have one regret. I wish I wouldn't have spent so much time worrying about that £10 that I wanted to lose, because I would give anything for ten pounds right now. And she was. She was dying of cancer. She couldn't go to the bathroom by herself. She couldn't even walk. Right. So that £10 would have made the difference between her being mobile or immobile. It would have made the difference between her length of her life. Right. But when we're sitting there focusing on all these things that were made, now, maybe you're doing it for yourself. Maybe you want to be healthier and you feel like you should lose something great. But I think focusing on being stronger, focusing on your labs, being positive, probably would be a better focus. And the weight just comes with that. Right. As opposed to looking at, what are we supposed to be? And not to digress too much, because we can talk about this if you want or not, but I grew up in the modeling industry. I've been a fashion model from the time I was born. And my entire life was based on what other people wanted me to look like or what other people wanted me to say or what other people felt I should be doing. It was never like, hey, Trisha, what do you want? And I'm not alone in that. I think a lot of people, particularly women, don't stop to think about what they actually want. They just serve. I agree.

Yeah. Or fill a role.

Right?

Fill it. Fill the expectation of what they think is expected. Maybe not even what's explicitly said, but what's expected. What they. The undertones of what's expected. I think you're right about that.

And that's the bear, right. It's that expectation that we've put in our head and we've anticipated of what success is supposed to be. What's a woman supposed to be? What is a mom supposed to be? What is a worker supposed to be? How am I supposed to have work, life balance? And then we start to create all these scenarios in our brain and in our subconscious, and they bring up moments of fear, of failure, and we power through because we think that's what success is, when in reality we need to let go a little and we need to calm our brain. And how do you get energy when you have stress. Everyone wants to know, right? You don't stimulate it. You calm, you calm the body. Calm and connected. You are already overstimulated. That's why you can't remember anything because you're, you're just running. You're not going to remember what the flowers look like that you ran past in the woods when you're chasing bears. I mean, of course you're going to have brain fog, you know.

So I think our listeners can relate to low energy being a result of chronic stress over time. But my heart is like, why do we let them get there? Like why does it have to be fatigue? Why does it have to be that they have burnout and they can't get through the day because they're so anxious that they haven't gotten all the things done. So what are some other things that show up in their body, other signs that hey, this may not be going the right direction? What can we be doing earlier in the cascade before we get to full out exhaustion and fatigue?

It's a tough question because I think everyone is so different. I see symptoms anywhere from some of the commons of hair loss, you know, fatigue, but maybe not all the time. Anxiety, but maybe not all the time. Sleep problems, but maybe not all the time. Heavy periods, but maybe some months and not other months. Right. So a cortisol is a roller coaster. It goes up and down and so you'll see a wide variety of symptoms. I think that if there's, if someone really wants to self reflect, let's say we're talking to someone in their 20s or their 30s, maybe early 40s, before their hormones also start playing with them and throwing a whole picture here? I think it really does come down to do you find joy in anything that you do? Are you taking those quiet moments if you're finding that you don't have time or you catch yourself saying that all the time, I don't have time, I can't, I can't, I, you know, or I have to start changing those words to get to and I can or I choose not to. Noticing some of those things earlier and changing your language can help change your brain to prevent this from going further. So if I could go back and talk to my younger self, if I could go back to my 13 year old self who's, you know, on a big poster or at a photo shoot and standing there in the corner totally feeling like, oh my God, I hope these people like me. If I could go back and just say, Trisha, you should be so grateful, like show gratitude for this experience. Because this experience is going to teach you skills to help you in your future self when you're going to be on camera all the time and helping others. This isn't about you being pretty or this isn't about you being perfect. This is about you learning how to connect with people from different perspectives. You know, if I could go back and look at the get to instead of the have to. So if you're noticing you're saying those things, you're limiting yourself based on the can'ts. The have to don't have time. That is a serious sign that you're already in adrenal fatigue in some stage and that you need to stop, take a moment and listen. And there may be other symptoms present. Anything you know, thyroid issues, gut issues, constipation. I was constipated for almost my entire life. A doctor never asked me, did, never asked me, not once if I went to the bathroom every day. Not one doctor in the history of my doctor visits of having acne, fatigue, stomach bloating.

Dr. Pinkel, so many people are told they don't have to have a bowel movement every day. It's normal. It's normal for them because their pattern has always been a certain way every three days, right? It's normal for me. So let's dispel that right now. That is not okay.

If you had a baby, all the parents out there, you have a baby, you have an infant, it goes one day without pooping, what do you do? You freak out. Why? Because they're supposed to go to the bathroom. But we aren't like, well, here's the thing guys, if you're running from bears in the woods, you are not going to stop to go to the bathroom. You don't have time, you will die. Or if you do, you're gonna have diarrhea, you're gonna get out as fast as you can to keep running, right? You have to recognize that when you are in a fight or flight, your normal everyday processes downregulate your digestion of nutrients downregulates your immune system function, right? Your, your brain activity, right, Your sorry, A mood, mood, heart, immune, gut, every other system, right, is impacted. When you are running from bear, you don't clear out your toxins, you don't empty your garbage, right? So that then causes inflammation in the body. And when you cause inflammation in the body, it's going to show up somehow. And depending on your genetics and your environment and the other toxic loads going on, it's going to show up in A specific way. So we have to recognize that how we heal. And even speaking to vanity, people say, well, what do we do about our wrinkles and our gray hair and our. Well, when you're running from a bear, you're not repairing your cells. You don't have time. If you're not sleeping, you're not repairing your cells. And I think going back to the basics. Right, so if we're not going to the bathroom, that's a problem.

Yeah. So let's connect some dots. So we've got high stress, high cortisol, right?

Well, not necessarily always.

Well, dysregulated cortisol, let's say that.

Yes, yes, yes.

And then cortisol is creating all these downstream things that you talked about. Heart health, gut health, brain health. All of that's coming from dysregulation in cortisol, right?

Yeah. Because our body has to make a decision, are we going to live or are we going to die? So is your body going to make testosterone and give you an awesome libido when you're running from a bear? No, it's going to say, forget it. Is it going to clear the toxins? It's only going to clear what's most immediate, fasted as an urgent. Right. So maybe it'll clean the bottle of wine you drank last night, but it's not going to go out and clear the, you know, the toxins that came from the scented lotion that you used last week. Like, it's just the body has to make a choice to live or die. And cortisol has a hand in all of that. One of the biggest things I see people do wrong when they treat adrenals is someone comes in and says, I'm tired. They run a cortisol test. Maybe it's a single blood test, maybe it's a four point saliva, maybe it's whatever. And the cortisol comes back low. And they assume that the cortisol is low all the time. And that is not the case. Your cortisol could go up. If you're scared to death of needles and you go get a blood draw, it could shoot up. Right. That doesn't mean that 10 minutes later it isn't low. So this comes down to a rhythm. So what I see a lot of people do wrong is they give the patient more stimulants, they give them adrenal glands and they give them hydrocortisone and they just assume that they have no function and that burns them out further. I think it's really important to understand that cortisol is a rhythm, and it's a rhythm in the endocrine hormone system that plays with all of the other hormones in the endocrine system. So we have four basic aspects of that. We've got the adrenal hormones, we've got the thyroid hormones, we've got the sex hormones, and we've got the blood sugar hormones. Right? So. And they're all like a scale. So if you tip one, all of them have to adjust. It's actually, to be honest, you guys look at this biochemistry, like, brain nerdy. I love that. I think it's so cool that I can do one thing and the whole entire body will adjust to it. That's freaking fascinating to me. But if it's adjusting in the wrong way, that's not helpful. But a lot of people will go in and say, I'm having hot flashes. I think I'm in perimenopause. I'm tired. My hair's falling out, I'm wrinkled. And the doctor will say, yep, you're in perimenopause. Here's your estrogen. And then nothing gets better, because you can give all the estrogen you want, you can give all the progesterone you want, you can give whatever you want. But if you're not paying attention to cortisol, it will backfire on you, because cortisol will always, always win, no matter what. Because if it doesn't win, you're in the woods and the bear is eating you. It doesn't have an option. And so you have to look at cortisol as part of the hormone picture when you're treating any hormone irregularity. And so that's kind of my tidbit there. And I see people do that wrong all the time. I very rarely have seen Addison's or Cushing's in my career. I always find people in between where their cortisol is going up and down, different rhythms, different times, and no amount of test can always pick all that. It comes down to really paying attention to the symptoms you're having and how you feel and connecting.

We so appreciate that discussion, because that's something that Kelly and I, in our practices for a very long time, have been steadfast in getting people to understand is that you can't put your blinders on. You can actually put something, somebody in harm's way by just putting those blinders on and going after one thing. It's really looking at that cascade, that harmony. And when you were talking about rhythm, you put all of those rhythms along with seasonal rhythms.

Right.

Of life rhythms. You know, it's that blend of all of those things. And that is a skill set that's developed over a period of time as a clinicians that doesn't come when you first get into the field. It comes with listening to your patients and really understanding and hearing them and trying. I mean, it's the practice of medicine.

Right.

I mean, that's the truth of the matter. It is. So I just really appreciate that you said that because I think too often people are looking for that quick fix. They're looking for that one thing that's going to change them. And they, they're oftentimes looking for that one thing in a pill or a potion or whatever, you know, a single modality. And the reality of that situation is it's not usually one thing in a pill or a bottle. You said earlier, you know, your perspective on that is the one thing could be just understanding what gives you joy and being in pursuit of that first. Right?

Yeah. Or just calm. I mean, just being calm can change your sleep, it can change your metabolism, it can change your immune system. So learning how to breathe, learning how to calm the body into a parasympathetic state. This could be with eye movements. This could be with supplements like L theanine or phosphacyl serine. This could be with adaptogens. In some cases, this could be with just finding something joyful that removes you from that chaos. It could also be from a very strategic mindset, choice and practice. Just as we practice medicine, you have to practice calm and we forget how to do that. And that is how we heal. So 30 supplements that have great mechanism of actions that have been well studied for this or that. Yeah, they have, but they were studied in people that were probably calm. So when you add the, the stress portion onto it, sometimes the big light bulb, the big change, the big single thing that makes it impact is changing your body into a parasympathetic state or a calm state and then seeing how much more you absorb those nutrients in your food and those nutrient supplements and the, the adaptogens and all of that, because there's, you're not going to absorb them when you're running from a bear. So you're wasting money and that quick fix, I mean, it takes us 20, 30 years to get to where we are and we expect that it's going to go away in six weeks. Yes, but I see people within days see something positive when they're paying attention, number one, to the right thing. Yes. You have to pay attention and be open to what that change is going to be. Because you never quite know what it's going to be. You know, like you come in saying, well, my goal is to not have hot flashes, right? But you're also not sleeping well and you also don't feel joy. And so you start some therapy and you still have hot flashes, but all of a sudden you're feeling more joy, but you're so focused on the hot flashes that you don't recognize the joy. So I think understanding that you can't control how your body is going to heal or what your body is going to say to you, all you can do is listen, lean in, listen, support it, give it the tools it's need, and then have gratitude for what's happening. As a process, it's going to take time. I am still healing from my adrenal fatigue, but this was nine years ago when I hit my bottom and I have so much energy, it's freaking ridiculous. And I'm happy most of the time and I'm gratitude and I do what I love and everything that I do in my day, for the most part, makes me happy. Could I even get better? Of course. But you know what? This is. I am. Oh, on my wall today, you are exactly where you are supposed to be. What happens tomorrow is up to you. Tomorrow is another day. Yep. It's. It's a journey, it's a. And it's a growth experience. And when you look at life through the lens of growth and opportunity, as opposed to anger, fear, you literally change the physiology of your body. And this has been well proven. Right?

What I hear you say, with people struggling with a chronic situation, whether that's a chronic disease state, adrenal issues, is being curious about how healing is going to show up. Lean into the curiosity about what your body's telling you so that you navigate that in a way that you, you have joy. You're able to see the joy in the small things that happen. So you also mentioned earlier the connection with blood sugar. And I think for me as a clinician, you know, I've been in this arena for over 20 years now in the functional space, I had nine years prior to that where I learned all of the things not to do. And then in the functional space, I still learn things not to do. And adrenals was one of those things. Right. I was super curious about adrenal health and adrenal function early on, but it took me a while to figure out that strong connection with blood sugar. And once I started hitting that hard early. People got better so much faster and seemed to have better resilience long term. So what would you say about that? Is that something that you really work on with your patients as far as having them establish good habits that support blood sugar control?

Each chapter of my book talks about these different aspects. So one of them is on blood sugar and cortisol. And I think one thing to remember is that when your body is in a protective mode, when it's in a fear mode, when it's running from your bear, it's going to work with insulin to store fat for future resources. So if you're starving your body during this time, your body is more stressed out. You know, I think to, to preface this, I think it's, it's, it's best to understand that there are external stressors, which most of us know that's life and then there's internal stressors. Internal stressors are what are going on inside the body that are causing stress. Let's say it's a B vitamin deficiency or a vitamin C deficiency.

That's a big stressor to the body. Yes.

Or infections or whatever. Right. Viruses.

Yeah.

Heavy metals. Even toxicity exposure, like water damage exposure can be like that. Alarm signals continuing to go off. They could be doing all the things, eating well, working on their sleep, working on controlling blood sugar. It probably won't control under those circumstances, but it's like that light is still flashing really brightly. Yeah.

And insulin. If insulin goes up to start to pack more pounds onto the abdomen and we're starving it, we're not giving fuel to our machine. We're going to put on more fat and we have to do that through insulin and blood sugar. So we're, we're starting to now, and I talked about earlier those four aspects and one gets thrown off. Well, now we have another stress. Now cortisol starts to adapt to that. So then this becomes a vicious cycle. And if you just think of our body like a conveyor belt, it's like you have a product. Our product is energy. That's what our product is. We make energy all day long and we make energy to do whatever we need to do with it. So if you have this normal course internally where everything is there, you know, the B vitamins jump in, the magnesium, the selenium, whatever you need to make your energy right. We get through to the end and everything goes without a hitch. Our internal environment is not stressed. But if we have a hitch in that, let's say that something doesn't show up that Day, let's say that B6 said, you know what? I'm sick, I don't want to come in today. Well, now we can't make serotonin, right. So that's backed up. Now we can't, you know, go towards some of the hormone, you know, transitions. We need to do the management of insulin, whatever we need to do. And so the body has to halt, it has to adapt. So it either needs to bring someone in from a department that has no business being there, that's going to sit in there and do the job and do it poorly, or it's going to halt and we're going to get backed up. And this causes stress. Not only does it cause a problem with the product production, but it also kind of ticks off the workers. Right. Because now so and so didn't show up and now so and so has to work a double shift. Like, I just think about that in a factory, we are a factory. Blood sugar is one of the things that I think we hyper focus on the blood sugar aspect of it. But we don't always pay attention to how that's impacting the entire factory, how that's impacting cortisol, the stress on the system. So we go there and say, okay, well, a low carb diet. Well, maybe not if you were running from a bear. How are you going to run if you don't have carbohydrates in a moment's notice? Right. Now the cool part is, is if we just changed that big bear into a cute little bear cub and we just decided to see the path over here instead of focusing on the path over here and we could divert that bear because we just didn't really care. We wouldn't worry so much about what percentage is carb or fat or whatever because we're using what we need. So I think we kind of get caught up in a cycle when we focus on blood sugar. Of just looking at blood sugar. Yeah, right. And not understanding the big picture of that. But they are absolutely related. Not to mention the inflammatory component of cortisol on top of insulin resistance, which then causes further problems. Right. Which is why we see diabetes. Going more to cardiovascular disease and to other inflammatory overlapping conditions. It just piles it on and piles it on. We need to produce energy and we need to produce it in a state where all the workers show up, everyone's on time, everyone knows their job, there's no garbage being dumped on the thing. You know, someone actually cleaned it. You know, I always think of the liver. It's like I Think of them like the janitor comes in at night while you're sleeping, takes the garbage out. Well, what if your company. No one ever took the garbage out. What if there was sticky stuff all over the conveyor belt? Right? You wouldn't get your product out in the same way. It's no wonder we're tired.

I love what you said earlier because I do think that people don't really understand that analogy of how you see the world. It's the perception of how you see the world. And I think one of the best analogies of stress, by definition is any demand for change. Good, bad or indifferent. You, stress, distress. But looking out, I remember I was the world's worst, worst flyer. Like I getting on an airplane, I was like super anxious. I was like the two brown bag kind of person. No one loved to sit by me, right? And so looking out the window, it's one person over there going, oh, my gosh, this is beautiful outside, right? And the other person going, like, I'm gonna get sick. It's the same. It's the perception of that. And, you know, I love that because I think that it's powerful to change how you see. It's stepping back and looking at that same struggle, whatever that is, through a different lens, same picture, and starting there was just profound for me when I understood that, is that I had the power to change that.

This is not out of your control, right? And it's literally just shifting the lens to a different frequency. Instead of looking at it in anger, fear, blame, disgust. Right? I mean, I. It's like inside out, right? Inside out. And 1 and 2. Instead of looking at it from that lens, looking at it from a place of love, gratitude, opportunity, growth, perspective. I think curious is a great word. Like you said earlier, curious. I think curiosity is so important. And if we go back to us as children, what were we? We were curious, we were curious, we were experimental. We did things that made us feel good, right. Without a substance or, you know, we. We found things to entertain ourselves, and we've lost that. And I think it's just getting older sometimes. And maybe it is just all of the things being thrown at us, even with health, you know, do we eat seed oils? Do we not, you know, do we have keto or do we do paleo or do we do. I mean, like, there's all these. Even in the healthcare world. It's. It's overwhelming. And I think it comes down to really just honing in on what does your body say it needs and what are you giving It. And are you coming at it with love and gratitude? Because when you are in pain, when you are in a disease, it is really hard to be joyful. I get that. I do. There's a moment there. But you can look at your body as okay body. I hear you. What do you need me to do versus okay body? I hate you. This is never going to get better. This is miserable. Right? There's two different ways to talk to yourself. If your body was your child and your child came home and said, I have had a horrible day. Everybody hates me at school. I'm a loser. I'm fat, I'm ugly, I'm not worth anything, what would you say to your child? You wouldn't say, yeah, buddy, you know what? You're right. No. Right. But to ourselves, when we start to put ourselves down and we start to talk about all our flaws and we start to get angry at ourselves, why aren't we talking to ourselves with the same love and gratitude that we would talk to our child with. With? I mean, we are all we have, right? When we're gone, we're gone. So coming at all of this, everything, no matter where you're at, coming at it from a place of support and love for yourself, I think is the key. When people ask me, what's longevity? How do I age well? How do I stay as healthy as I can? We have no control over our timeline. You know, my mom, My dad was 59. My mom was 69. Vibrant times in their lives. Very powerful times of their lives. You know, my dad walked downstairs, opened the fridge to have breakfast, fell to the ground with a stroke, was in a coma for two months. We had to take him off life support. He didn't know. He didn't wake up that day and say, oh, today's my last day. Right? If he would have known that was his last day, would he have handled the day before differently? I don't know. Right? But we don't know. And all we can do, we can't control when we're going to go, but we can control what we do today. We can't even control what we did yesterday. It's gone. It is what it is. But we can control what we're doing right now. And just that mindset shift can save your life. It can change your physiology, it can change everything. Change your blood sugar, it can change your gut health, it can change your immune system, it can change your mood, it can change your brain chemistry, it can change your hormone balance, it can change your thyroid, it can change your Nutrition, everything. And just making that one different choice today right now.

I love that. One of the things that Lori and I implemented this year with our team and with the patients that we serve is the miracle morning. You're starting the morning very intentionally with gratitude, with affirmations, with some visualizations, with scripture, movement, whatever that needs to look like for you to kind of armor up to go out in the day and to your point, pick what you get to focus on instead of letting the day drag you along. And that's really what I hear you saying, having some type of practice in your life that allows you to have the lens on, to see things differently so that the stressors of the day don't take you down.

Yeah, you don't have to go to the grocery store. You get to. You get to put yourself in the car and drive yourself. There's a lot of people who can't do that, but we think of, oh, I have to. Oh, I have to go to the bathroom. That's my favorite. Oh, I have to go to the bathroom. No, I mean, like, going to the bathroom is normal. It shouldn't be something that takes you out of your day to have to do it. You get to. Like I said, my mom couldn't without help. She could not go to the bathroom. How many times do you go to the bathroom every day without assistance? Yeah, it's the little things. Because once those are gone, once you do have chronic disease and some of those functions go away, you're going to wish you were before. It's like when we look at our body and we say, oh, I wish we look like we did when we were 20. I'm 49 right now. When I'm 69, I'm gonna look back and be like, damn, I wish I look like I did when I was 49. It's all a perspective lens. Right. And how we look at the world. So it's exactly what I'm saying. And not just for fluff, because it will actually change your cortisol rhythm. And when you change your cortisol rhythm, you change your health in every single way. So I think that's the best thing you can do.

Absolutely. You know, we also talk about how neuroplastic the brain is and how we have such power in changing those pathways. And I think sometimes, you know, we, as we talk about connecting dots and trying to figure it all out, and sometimes we have a feeling or a emotion or an in, you know, an inner signal that. That we don't really know what that is. And There are triggers around us that we have to also learn is kind of being, giving ourselves grace and space to also connect those dots too. And then really being in relationship with a qualified healthcare practitioner to help you figure it all out. Like, you don't have to have it all in you. You have people out there like yourself, you and Kelly's practice in mind, that we really do have a passion to come alongside of and help you see sometimes what you don't see because there are blind spots too.

You don't have to know how to do it, you just have to commit to doing it or working with someone to help you. Like and asking for help. Women ask for help. We just don't. Yes, we just, we're just going to do it all ourselves. You know, we got this, we've got this. We can do it all. But we shouldn't.

That's right.

You know.

That is so right.

You speak our language. We love you. I do have to ask this though. You know, we know that in, you know, our traditional training, you know, it's very, you know, algorithmically big pharma based. And so we all have that story. And you've kind of hinted to, you know, or shared actually very with vulnerability, your story. And I know that you've, you've done that a lot and that resonates with so many people. But what was that moment for you that you knew you wanted to be a physician first of all, and then from there, what was the big moment that you, you took the turn towards functional medicine? I just have to know.

There were many things that led me to being a physician. If you would have asked me when I was a kid if I wanted to be a doctor, I would have said no. But I was very interested in the brain, oddly enough, just, I just was interested in behavior. And I went into veterinary medicine because by watching animals behavior and you could figure out what was wrong with them. You could watch their body language. You know, you had to learn to communicate in a different way. You had to watch signals and look at labs. They couldn't tell you what was wrong. And loved that. I loved that. I was very good at that. But I was going to become a veterinarian. I was working towards that. I was working as a vet tech and my dad had a stroke. And I got a call. I was 24 and I got a call and they said, you know, I don't think he's going to make it. And when I got there, I just saw the lack of support, the lack of communication, the lack of Education. I came in there understanding what an MRI of the brain was. I knew what the brain chemistry was, I knew what the brain was. And I kept asking, well, what part of the brain has been impacted? Oh, you know, well, he may get better or not. And I'm like, no, you're not talking to me, you're not communicating with me. I'm not dumb. I, I, I want to understand. Well, they didn't want to tell me what was going to happen. Oh, we'll just wait and see. And I was sitting there at 24 years old having to make a decision if I was going to allow my dad to live or die. And they weren't giving me information. And I think there was something in me in that moment that said, I can change this. And I don't think I really knew what it was at the time. I just knew something had to change and I had the power to change it. And I switched to naturopathic medicine. I didn't even look at conventional medicine because I didn't even, I just said, I, I don't, that's, I can help people that way. Yes. You know, and in all credit to the Doctors, I'm not Dr. Bashing, I'm not. My family members that were doctors like, I, yes, but they're pigeonholed by a system that is telling them how to practice medicine. They can't go outside that system most of the time. You know, I worked with my father in law, who is a pediatrician, and he had to follow a computer program and if he didn't ask the right questions or if he asked questions outside of that, it had to build differently. He got in trouble. Right. If he didn't give an antibiotic. When a child came in with a virus and he didn't think they needed it, he would get docked or he would get a bad review and then he would get knocked down. So in all fairness, they're under a lot of pressure. I don't think it's that they don't want to help. I think it's that they're in a system that doesn't allow them to help. And I saw that at a very young age. And that's how I ended up in naturopathic medicine. And it was a very roundabout thing. I mean, I was expected, I was voted most likely to be famous. I mean, my, my, my family was like, you're going to be on stage somewhere, you're going to be in the movies, you're going to be, everyone thought I was going to just model and act and that's what I was going to do. I think I surprised pretty much everybody became a doctor and then went into naturopathic medicine on top of it. But I think also what also started to stem with that is as I started learning more about naturopathic medicine, I was able to heal acne and gut issues that had been overlooked in me and dismissed throughout my entire life by going to the doctor as the patient and not being hurt. So I think that big message there is I didn't feel heard as a patient, I didn't feel heard as a family member. And I knew enough to know that our body is so much more powerful and can do so much more than we even give it credit for. And we need to stop treating patients like they're idiots.

Listen, we could spend the whole day together. We are speaking the same language. We're talking about things very similar to how we do in our clinical practice.

This.

And so how can people find you? Like, what's the best way to connect with you out there in the world?

Drpingle.com Great start. If you like dance, you like fun, you like joy, come find me on Instagram. I do not like social media for the adrenal aspect of it. So I made a choice that when I use it, it's only full of stuff that's helpful, positive, joyful, and doesn't keep you on it forever. So come dance with me. Come learn some stuff. You can find me on YouTube. I mean, you can find me all over the place, but my website has links to my book. It has links to all my social channels, free resources. If you're looking for things, I have that on there as well. And most importantly, you know, we're out here forming a community through stress. We lose connection and we feel very alone and we feel like no one else can understand. And I think that community is important to healing. So if you do find me, you do reach out, out, please say hi. Like, just say, hey, this is where I heard you from. I live in so and so and blah blah. Because why am I out here if we're not forming a community of love and gratitude and connectedness? So, yes, don't just be a stranger, absolutely love it.

We heal and we grow in community. And I love that you are like that. And thank you so much too for taking time out of your really busy schedule to be here with us today. We do share so much of the same thing, just this passion to really help people thrive and live healthfully. So thank you so much. I am sure that people will be reaching out and I actually look forward to meeting you in person real soon. Hopefully.

Hopefully. I would love to meet you in person and thank you so much for having me. I'm very grateful for both of you and everything you're doing in getting this medicine out there. Thank you so much.

The Senior Energy Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor patient relationship is formed. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have, and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such condition.