What I Actually Do for My Health: My Real Routine, Supplements, Treatments & Truth Behind the Scenes

So, today, we are doing an Ask Me Anything episode. And y'all, honestly, the entire episode is about me. You had so many questions for me personally. So, we're going through my wellness routines, my supplements, my medications, my beauty strategies and procedures. And honestly, we're talking about things that I've never shared openly. Before, and I feel like if I'm going to, this is the platform to do it. None of this is advice for what you need to do. This is all just about me, and it's kind of raw and unfiltered. Okay? So, we are getting personal. If you don't wanna hear about me for the next 45 minutes, now is your time to check out. But if you're curious, let's dig in. Today, I'm a hot mess, if you can see me, if you're watching via video. But I'm gonna come as I am here and show up anyway, and just have the real talk of sometimes life's hard and messy. And difficult. And many of you know, I lost my brother in November, and it's now April, and y'all, it's freaking hard. Like, it's really hard from a mental health perspective, from someone who takes really, really good care of herself to— I haven't really been taking very good care of myself. I've not been in the best place. From a mental health perspective, and haven't really said that except for right here, right now, publicly. But hey, this is the place where we'll get real! So, let's do some Ask Me Anything! Right out of the gate, someone said, "What peptides do I use?" So, I, right now, over the last, I guess, month, maybe, have been using GHKCU for skin and hair health. You guys know I'm always on my skin journey, but my hair is so damaged after a bleach session. This is extensions because probably 60%, 50% of my hair was fried off this alone. These are all broken pieces. I have my hair parted on the side right now because it's So incredibly bad, I have bangs. So I've used GHK-CU. You all know that I use NAD+. Sometimes I will use BPC-157 for inflammation, for recovery, and I've had a hip injury that's been going on now for the better part of a year, so hoping maybe that can help. Again, we're getting personal today. My brother was 6 years older than me. And when he passed, I think many of you know that we had no idea what happened. It took us 3 and a half months to get answers from the medical examiner. And he had a heart attack. Um, if you have ever seen him, he does not look at all to be at risk for a heart attack. He had a perfect calcium score in the last year and a half. Before he passed, which is like the gold standard for screening for heart disease risk. So I also am trying to begin taking a GLP-1 for heart health and heart prevention because him and I are like genetically identical. We're like twins, 6 years apart. We're clones of one another. And obviously I too am going to get a full cardiac workup. I go in a few weeks to get a CT angiogram and a Cleerly. I'm actually going to bring on one of the, the physician who's kind of guiding me through this process. And I'm really looking forward to that. I think over the next few months, years, you'll hear more and more about the evolution of the conversation around heart disease. And I know I talk a lot about GLPs and heart disease, so I'm trying to add that into my repertoire. I've been off GLPs for years and years and years. Most of you know Rosie, my daughter, was not doing well from a health perspective, and I lost kind of a bunch of stress weight in a very short period of time. And so I wasn't able to take a GLP for a long time, but I think I'm finally back to my normal baseline. So I've started that as well. I know that we kind of started off on a Bit of a dark fit, but it'll get better. Sorry guys, it's a rough day today. Let's keep going. Another question is, I would like to learn more about your diet to keep your thyroid healthy. So let's talk about at my best, because I'm not at my best and haven't been for a few months now. But, you know, I try to eat a high protein diet filled with a lot of different vegetables. I try to eat a salad every day for lunch during the week, Monday through Friday. For the fiber, for the micronutrients, for the antioxidants, for all of that. So that is kind of my lunch. Breakfast is kind of touch or go for me. I usually, I try to intermittent fast again. I'm off my game. For me, that makes an incredible difference in my inflammatory levels. If I don't do that, I'll eat a protein for breakfast, eggs. Sometimes I'll eat eggs and a Chomp bar. Chomps are like what get me through a lot of the time. When I'm in a rush, etc. So let's talk about what's your skincare routine. We're getting really personal today, guys, and I'm sharing things with you that I've never shared before because I think they deserve a deep dive. What's your skincare routine at home versus in-office treatments? My skincare routine at home is kind of a lot of the things that I've shared with you. I recently incorporated in SkinCeuticals Vitamin C Ferulic— Ferulic? I don't know. The Iron Vitamin C Serum. I put that on first and then I use Stem Serum, which I have right here, but you guys have probably heard me see it. It's called The Stem Company on Instagram. It was started by Dr. Nathan Newman, who is a leader in stem cells and has been using Stem Regent— excuse me, stem cells for 25 years. And then I've been using an elastin serum that I'm happy to share with you guys. I just shared it recently on social. That's temporary because of a procedure that I did that I'll talk about in a second. And then lastly, obviously I use OneSkin, like everything. Those are my skincare staples. I, in a perfect world, I would be on tretinoin as well. Um, I've been off tretinoin for about a year. I'm trying to get back into it. In the last couple weeks. Tretinoin is a form of Retin-A. It's a prescription. It's incredible. I highly recommend it and start at 0.025, the lowest dose, and then you build up tolerance from there. And then lastly, I use azelaic acid prescription sometimes as well. Again, a lot of that is in response to a most recent treatment that I had. So in-office treatments, let's talk about it. This also builds into plastic surgery. Someone asked if I had plastic surgery. I don't know where it went, but it's here. So we're going to talk about all of that at once. And again, I haven't shared a lot of this with you because I'm kind— it's a process that I'm in actively right now. So I do Botox. I've done Botox for years. Sometimes I'll go 9 months without it, but it really is helpful for me. I know that comes with risks. I'm okay with accepting those risks. Risk versus benefit is each individual's person personal choice. I'm not making any recommendations for what you all should do, but I am in the media a lot. I'm going into a book launch next year where media is going to be even more ramped up. And so right now I'm in this investment aesthetically into myself to try to look my best by next year, even though I've absolutely been horrible at taking care of myself the last 4 months. Full disclosure. So in the fall, I had an upper blepharoplasty. My skin on my eye had become hanging very, very low. I went in, I knew I wanted that, and I knew I wanted a skin pinch. I wanted that for years. I was just trying to find the time to make it happen. When I went for my consult, the clinician told me that I should have a lower blepharoplasty too. And in full transparency, I did, and I hate it. So I was left extremely hollowed out under my eyes. Basically all of the fat was removed and it just looked really bad. It looked not like myself. If you look at some of my older videos from the fall, you can probably see it even with a filter on. It was devastating. So you want to be really careful. Before you go into any kind of surgery. I don't think my situation is unique. I should also preface this by saying last year I went and had stem cells injected into my face. Loved it. I will do it again probably in another 5 years. It just works to rebuild collagen, strengthen the structure underneath your skin, etc. There was no fat involved in that, so it wasn't like a fat transfer. It was just stem cells isolated. Nothing that took up space. That was last year fall. I did a bleph, and now I'm in the repair process of dealing with fat. So I had a fat transfer from an incredible physician in San Francisco. His name is Dr. Prim Tripathi. If you're on TikTok, you've probably run across his videos if you look at skin talk whatsoever. I flew there to have that done. It's a two-part series. Like, it's just a very small amount in my under eyes. Last time he added a little bit in my temples, so, so small, not really noticeable. But I'm going back again in a couple weeks to do part two of that, literally to repair what happened from my lower bleph. So that's that. When I was there last time— I'm kind of rambling, so I hope that we're all good with this— but when I was there last time for my fat transfer, and I didn't want to share any of this with you in case I hated it too and I wanted to be careful and cautious. When I was there last time, he also did a laser under my eyes that was amazing. It was called a TRL laser. I'd never heard of that, but it's kind of a fully ablative laser. I'll try and pull up a picture of myself for anyone watching this. If you're not, you might want to consider watching it. It's a fully ablative laser that I did under my eyes It was the most intense. I flew home that same day and it was, y'all, it was not chill. So I'll show you a picture of that. I also got little sebaceous things on my sebaceous hyperplasia on my forehead ablated, so you'll see little red dots. But this was me after my laser. So intense. My husband was so angry at me. He hates when I go on these adventures. Very, very puffy, but in a week it was better. I'm still a little red. Obsessed. I want to do my whole face one day, but it's not for the faint of heart. I would say— here's one more. I have a pretty high pain tolerance. It was intense. If I did my whole face, I literally— I think I'd have to take medication because it was so bad, and I was on the airplane flying home when it happened. It was terrifying. So that is kind of my jaunt with plastic surgery. I have also shared this— I had breast implants in 2018 after my second daughter Rosie was born. I had pancakes, pancakes for boobs. She ruined them. She's cute, but they're gone. And I just didn't feel like myself, so I did have silicone breast implants placed. Really wish that I had saline placed. I don't regret that. I definitely know that breast implant illness is real. It can worsen autoimmunity. I've had patients who have had breast implants, had them removed, it was life-changing for them. I've had other patients do the same, no change, it seemed to be unrelated to their Hashimoto's, etc. So that was another question I got. I think that is such a weighing of pros and cons. Like, if I personally had reasonable, like, breasts after my second child, I would not have done it. Like, if I had A's, whatever, wouldn't care. But it was just next level. So very, very happy that I did. Still happy that I did. Someone asked about getting them switched out. I think that's incredibly important. If you know you want breast implants, they need to be replaced at appropriate times. To minimize poor outcomes. So I hope that helps. Do I take supplements daily? I do. I've gone through these before and I don't have them handy, but I'll tell you what I take. So obviously I take my thyroid medication. I take astaxanthin. I take TruNiagen's NAD precursor, it's NR, every day. Live and die by that. Is it expensive? Yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely. For me, it's life-changing, and it's life-changing for so many other people who've tried it as well. My patients, our clinicians, our team at MTC. I take Methylene Blue every day. I add that to a little bit of Mary Ruth's Lymphatic Drops. You guys know I'm a puffy girl, so I do those in the morning. That's my little morning tincture. Methylene Blue helps give me so much energy, so much cognitive power. And I also have very, very poor mitochondrial function. I think that's in part why I am so religious about taking NAD precursors because they give me so much energy. And I also take Mito NRG, which we will be releasing our own product for mitochondria very soon. So stay tuned. We're really, really excited. So those are my morning supplements. Nighttime supplements and medications. I take progesterone, I take A sleeping supplement will be releasing very, very soon as well. I have a lot of trouble sleeping. I'm starting, uh, niacin sustained release really soon. I know I'm missing other things for my sleeping supplements. For my hair journey, I'm doing minoxidil and spironolactone orally, both in small amounts to promote hair regrowth and retention. I also take Nutrafol. In the morning, I forgot, I also take Timeline Nutrition's gummies. Love them. Never miss a day. My wellness routine. Gosh, y'all, is this whole podcast literally just going to be about me and myself and I? Oh goodness. Okay. My wellness routine. So again, y'all, this girl is not on her A-game. She is struggling and has been for a while. So Oh, it's sad because it's like the most exciting point in my career and I'm just like pushing through. But I'm sure so many of you can relate. When I'm on my A-game, I do intermittent fasting 4 or 5 days a week. I strength train 3 days a week. Right now I probably do it 2 to 3 days a week. I try to walk, but I've been horrible with that lately. After I go and have my full cardiac workup, I am going to start doing HIIT for cardiovascular health. And that's something that I think you'll see me talk about and evolve that conversation more and more. I don't recommend HIIT to people in early stage thyroid dysfunction who have not fixed it, who have not addressed their adrenals, et cetera. But once you have, I do think it's an important part of people's long-term recovery. I also do a ton of weird stuff. For my wellness routine? Yes, I do. So outside of, you know, trying to manage my stress, which is a little difficult for me and a never-ending kind of journey, I— the weird stuff that I do is I definitely do red light therapy. I use Sunlightens red light. I do have a discount code I can track down for you guys. I need to just add it into my profile on Instagram. I do sauna, again, Sunlight and Sauna. I have two. I have like the standard Sunlight and Sauna. It's called the Signature Series. It gets a little hotter, but I also have the Solo one that if you listen to my podcast with the founder of Sunlight and Saunas, you'll hear about. I wanted to try it. I was worried it wouldn't get hot enough. It bakes me. It takes me 45 minutes to sweat in a sauna. I can only be in the Solo sauna. It's like portable, almost like you pull it up over you. I can only be in there for— I've worked up to like 30 minutes now. It took me weeks to get there. Love sauna. It makes me feel clean from the inside out. Really? Well, less weird stuff I do. I go and have a true niagen IV every month. It's the thing that is keeping me going right now and has been since my brother passed. It gives me energy, it improves my cognition. It's my lifeblood right now. I went today and I was like crawling to the finish line to get there and make it for today's appointment, really hoping how I feel turns around in the next couple days. So when I have energy, when I feel good, every other aspect of my life is better. I know it's the same for thyroid people and I'm just in that, I'm in a rut right now with that. So it's absolutely life-changing. I actually don't recommend regular NAD IVs. Not only are they expensive, True Niagen is expensive too, but True Niagen doesn't have the side effects during, which honestly I would tolerate. Like, NAD IVs are extremely uncomfortable and they take like 3 or 4 hours to administer. I could deal with all of that, but they make me feel horrible afterwards and don't make me feel better. True Niagen IVs make me thrive. So that's another one that I do. Two kind of pretty weird things, three that I do. Number one is I have a Bimini hydrotherapy bath. It puts nano oxygen into the water. I actually got it for Rosie, but I use it too. Puts it into the water in such nano small particles that it fluidly goes into your system and is almost like a hyperbaric chamber, but you get to just relax in the bathtub. So that's number one weird thing. Number two, I do ionic foot baths. I did them, didn't believe in them, they were used at Alive and Well where my office used to be, but I was like, oh, I'll try them while I work there. I would just go and do it, and I was like, wow, I feel really good. Like, I feel less inflamed, I feel less puffy. And so during COVID when I didn't go to Alive and Well anymore and they weren't really operating, I got my own. That was 2020, and I've loved it ever since. So whatever kind of magic it is, it works for me. And The last weird thing that I do is called an Avasen. It's a device— I really want to have them on the podcast soon. It's a device that also I got for Rosie that can help to reduce inflammation. It's kind of used quite a bit in the autism community. This is not medical advice. This is definitely not standard of care, but it's supposed to help a lot with inflammation. So I've been exploring that for the last month. I do kind of think it helps. So that's another interesting thing that I do. The one thing that I just remembered for beauty treatments and office treatments is I've done Sculptra and I actually like it. Stimulates your own collagen production. It's not like filler. So I didn't wanna leave that out. I think y'all, we have gotten through my questions for my own life. Oh my gosh, I think we did it. Oh, last one. How is your daughter doing, the one with the genetic disorder? So that's Rosie. Rosie has a very, very rare genetic disorder that when we found out there was 34 kids in the world that had it. Now there's close to 200, 160, 170, that leads to autism-like presentation, intellectual disability, motor delay, global developmental delay, a lot of things. And most recently Almost 2 years ago now, she began having seizures. She's been seizure-free since June 6th, 2024, which is everything. Many of you have followed me for so long. Her presentation of seizures was not like a, just a regular seizure. Um, her first one ended up in me having to give her CPR and went into cardiac arrest. So horrible, horrible experience. And the second one was ongoing. It wouldn't stop until the ambulance came and gave her an injection. And that was like 9 or 10 minutes. So anyway, we are very, very grateful that Rosie is not having seizures. Um, we've started a little bit of more progressive treatment. There is no treatment for her condition as of yet. They are trying one right now. They're doing a trial with a very limited amount of people in her group. Which is pretty special to watch. Um, one of the girls, I won't say her name, but was non-verbal. And I saw a video of her a few weeks ago where her mom was recording her, and she walked in the room and she's like, what did you say? What did you tell Mama? And she pointed to her mom and said, get out. And that's exactly what Rosie would say too. Stop like helicopter parenting me, Mom. Go away. Um, she has so much personality and just is everything. So she is doing really well. We started some progressive treatments on her because she was not doing well around the seizure time and for months after that. And she's just doing the best she's ever been. Like, she's thriving. We went to SeaWorld over spring break, which we don't go out to eat with Rosie. We don't go anywhere. It's incredibly difficult. She likes to be in her little place, but She's done so well that we took her to SeaWorld with the rest of our kiddos and just had the best time. Like, we got to stay and watch what used to be called Shamu— now I don't even know what they're called— but the orcas show and the sea lion show, and just, it was so special. So Rosie is doing amazing. Okay, so we have a couple more questions about me, myself, and I, and then we'll wrap up this episode, but I didn't go into this thinking this was gonna be an all about McCall episode, but you guys had enough questions to make it worthwhile. So one is, do you yourself use a GLP? If yes, why? So the main reason I'm restarting a GLP after years and years of not even being on it at all is because of what I mentioned about my brother dying of a heart attack at 48 years old, completely unexpectedly with no known risk factors. None of my parents, no one in my entire family has ever had a, an MI, a heart attack. So it definitely caught us all off guard. And we are so similar in our phenotype, even our genetics. I've run both of our genetics years and years ago. So that's why, um, outside of that, even outside of that, I would have wanted to restart a GLP for inflammation now that I've arrived back at my normal weight. So For me, I am an incredibly, incredibly inflamed person. My whole health journey revolves around reducing inflammation. And I know some people are like, what does that even mean? It means you probably don't have inflammation, but people who do know they are puffy, they are malaise, they are fatigue, they are foggy, they're swollen, they're reactive. They have to live just right for things to go okay. And so That is why. One other question that I got was what thyroid medications I'm on. So I personally am on RenThyroid plus Cytomel. I used to just be able to be on a desiccated form of thyroid. Years ago it was Armour. When stress kind of started picking up in my life, my conversion was not good enough anymore to support only being on a form of natural desiccated hypothyroid. So at that point I added in lyothyronine, technically not brand name Cytomel, which is pure T3. A lot of questions too about Armour versus Synthroid. I'll be candid with you, I love Armour. I took Armour. Armour gave me back my life in the throes of my thyroid dysfunction. So incredibly grateful for it. In fall of 2024, we started seeing variants in Armour. In our patients. And that's the first time I've ever experienced that. And the thing about when you do one thing all day, every day, you are able to pick up on these things. The way that Modern Thyroid Clinic works is we're not guessing with people's thyroid medication. It's not like, well, we'll just increase you some and we'll see what happens. When we increase someone's thyroid medication, we know where their labs will land within a very small radius. And what was happening is we were seeing lab results be unpredictable, which is not a normal thing for us. And honestly, it just doesn't happen. So I didn't say anything to our clinicians and they came to me and said that they're noticing this. And I'm hoping and expect— I feel like it's resolved. They changed manufacturers around that same time of where they were sourcing their cows, I believe. And so I'm hoping it's all resolved and, and it was self-limited and they sorted through it. Ren thyroid has an extremely narrow margin of error. That is why I love them so much. The whole beef with NDT is it's unstable, it's unpredictable, and most of them are not unstable and unpredictable. There are some that are. We generally do not use those. Um, ren thyroid has an extremely narrow therapeutic error or dosing error. And they test and retest and test and retest to prove that to me. I've personally visited their manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania and they have very limited fillers, carefully selected. And so I personally am on that. I love RenThyroid. We've had so many patients change to it and absolutely it'd be a life-changing experience. Everyone is not the same. There is no one size fits all. So, that is why I'm on Ren-Thyroid. Do I still prescribe Armor? I do, absolutely. So, for whatever that's worth, I hope that that was helpful. Let me just run through and make sure I'm not missing— Oh, yeah. Last one. Are you personally taking on new patients? I'm not. I'm in a season right now of like writing a book, just finished that, working on book cover, working on book launch. Running the clinic, marketing the clinic, expanding constantly so that you guys can have access no matter which part of the country you're in. And there's a give-take. I'm also a mom to like 6 children, one of which is special needs, and my other daughter Weston is still 12, and then I've got 4 bonus kids. So there has to be a balance, and there's got to be— something has to give. And what I didn't want to happen was the experience and the care of my patients to be sacrificed. Meaning I'm going to do all these things, but something's going to come at a cost, and I didn't want that to be the cost of our patients. So the reality is this: our clinicians are freaking incredible. There is not one of them that is not incredible. This is their life's work in the same way that it is my life's work. They are incredibly passionate about thyroid care, and so You guys are in great hands. You don't need me. Plus, I'm not licensed across the country, so it's almost impossible for me to, to do that as well. I'm reading this verbatim, but how are you fit and hot? We need a workout routine of some type. So we are actually launching a workout routine and nutrition support at Modern Thyroid Clinic. We're in the final stages of getting it all situated on the platform, so we will be able to share that with you guys so very soon. And you can do the same workouts and the same darn nutrition that I do. So, so excited to bring that to you guys. We are beta testing it in our VIP patient group, which is kind of the only way that you can work somewhat with me. I oversee every case, we meet monthly, and I give a presentation, answer questions with everyone. That is not an ongoing enrollment, we enroll quarterly. So if you want to stay tuned on that, you can definitely email us at info@modernthyroidclinic.com. It's the most intensive, most costly way to work with us, and for a lot of people isn't necessary. But anyway, we're rolling out the fitness program there, then within our own weight loss program, Modern Weight Loss, and then we'll roll it out to our patients and the general people at large. So stay tuned on that. We're very, very excited about it. But this was fun, guys. Thanks for tuning in and listening to me talk about myself for 45 minutes or so. I heart y'all, and until next time.