16. Dr. Mary Pardee: Personalized Approaches to Gut Health, The Gut-Brain Connection and Returning to Foundational Health Practices

When you hear these huge claims about your microbiome, especially on social media, like, really be cautious as to whether that is going to be something that's legitimate or just a sales claim.

Can you think of a gut healing protocol that's been consistent for every single person?

Not one. If it was a one size fits all approach, that would take away my job and would all be healed. It would all be healed. Great. It'd be so amazing. So, yeah, no, it's. It's so individualized. It depends on what somebody is dealing with. That's physically impossible because not all of everybody's gut symptoms are due to the same thing. So the one product can't fix everybody's issues.

There's no perfect diet, there's no perfect meal plan. There's no perfect supplement protocol. There's no red pill in that. This is conditioning that we have to let go of if we're really going to step into a healing journey. The following is an operation podcast production. My heart is, like, buzzing right now because I get to sit with you. I feel super excited that I get to call my girlfriends to be part of this. And you're not just a girlfriend. You're somebody who is going out into the world creating tremendous impact. And something that I value so much about our relationship is that when we get together, there's no surface stuff. Like, we dive deep right away, whether we're talking about emotions or childhood, how we're feel, feeling, bowel movements, like, you name it, we go into that. Right. And from one of the very first walks that we took together, we have this. Remember when we did the stairs?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right, yeah. And we're talking about women in wellness. And both of us growing up, like, out of all the symptoms that we've suffered from, that probably brought us to this profession. Right. And what we do today based on our own experience. But there's a lot of suffering that brought us here. A lot of that's still ongoing.

Right.

We don't want to hide that. But us staying on this healing journey, we just said, like, what would the impact have been had? We have had other women sharing their experiences growing up. Like, so we knew what to expect. So when traditional doctors were telling us that all of our symptoms were normal, Deal with it. We could actually just understand that it was something within us that was off.

Yeah.

So to start off, you know, this podcast is really all about ancient wisdom in a modern world and really how we can, you know, go back to our roots, roots of healing, and really get rooted in our own lives and our emotions and our bodies and our practices, and ultimately our inner wisdom for healing.

Love that.

Right. Like, there's answers within us. There's a wisdom within us that I think we're losing touch with. We're still in a living in a world where we're constantly searching for external motivators for healing. And, you know, you and I jam.

On this all the time, for sure.

So let's start off with, you know, what are three things that really help you feel rooted in your life, in your body, and your happiness?

Yeah. I mean, first of all, I'm so happy you're doing a podcast now. Like, this is finally meant for you. 100%.

Thank you.

And we. We entered this podcast, we started it. I don't know if it's going to be on film or not, with the grounding, meditation or visualization. And that's like, one thing that really gets me. So some form of mindfulness really grounds me into who I am and to how I want to be of service in the world. And so I definitely oscillate. And I really try to find, like, a daily practice with that. It's usually a meditation. I do a. A form of like, tm, basically Transcendental meditation. And something with stillness in the morning is essential for me to feel like I'm grounding into the day. I am far from perfect, and there's days that I miss it. And on those days, I definitely feel a difference. I just feel like this more chaotic kind of fluttery energy throughout the day. So some form of mindfulness, and then the other one is community. So for me to, like, really feel grounded and whole and in purpose, I have to be around not just any community, but like, my community, like my people. And what I've learned over the years is that I don't do really well with large groups. So I'm much more of like a one on one or like three on one, like just a smaller group setting where I can really drop in with people and feel safe and feel like I can just be myself. I don't have to filter anything. So that's like a huge piece of me feeling grounded in who I am.

So those are two really great core values, I think, for healing. Stillness.

Yeah, right.

And safety. Yeah, the feeling of safety that you still look for as an adult, which I think is such a huge component.

Huge.

And just because I know you, I know that you've got, like, you know, a big chunk of modalities that you can turn to. So for people listening, you know, I always say that a lot of times we will have these platforms and they look at us as women, as practitioners. Oh, well, they're a doctor or they're a nutritionist. So it's gotta be easy for them, you know? Know, for the amount of times that I hear people say, oh, meditation's not for me. Yoga, it's not for me. The first time you sat to do tm, was it easy?

Not for me. Impossible. Still not for me some days. Yeah, totally. No, it's not easy. It's still not easy for me. And. And that's where I've kind of bounced around and I've been in, like, breath work and this and that, and I think they all have a place and I find value for most of them. But I recently with. I did a training course in meditation with somebody, one on one, and he's like, you gotta pick one and you gotta just keep doing it. He's like this, like, fluttering around, like, not figuring out which one you want is. It's. You just can't get better at something unless you practice it. So if you wanna be good at basketball, what do you do? You don't go play soccer one day and track the next day and ice skating. Like, you play basketball every single day. Absolutely. So that's where I'm focusing in on just this one practice of meditation. And hopefully one. They'll be like, wow, I'm better at it.

Yeah. So we know it's not woo woo anymore. This is all backed by science. But I think we're also getting to a point where it's being preached so much that people are like, oh, it's meditation. We live in a world where it's just. It's feeling impossible. We're stress, we're stressed. We are busy, we're overworked, we're tired. That often those things go to the wayside. Right. And I'm a big believer that you can adopt all of these healthy habits. Right. You try meditation one day, breath work another, maybe, I don't know, you go for a run, you try all these different practices. But unless you really tune in and make something, a ritual, your rituals become you.

Yeah.

Like, it takes getting to that moment of like, oh, my God, there was a minute or 30 seconds, three seconds where I didn't have a thought. And that felt like a complete wave of bliss for my body.

Yeah.

That's the mindfulness aspect.

Right.

Like, I want more of that. And I think that that's what makes people go back.

Yeah, you're so right, though. It is routine. It's like, what do we do every single day that starts to become us and we become it. Right? Yeah. Easier said than done, for sure. But I totally am right there with you.

Yeah. So on the flip side, you know, on the way, easier side for most people, what are things that make you feel completely uprooted?

Ooh, where to start? Now, for me, the ones that come up when I think of that are, like, too much caffeine. Like, I do really good with a little bit of caffeine, because then I feel motivated. I'm like, yes, I want to tackle the world, but it is such a fine line between feeling motivated and Holy sh. Whatever. I'm overwhelmed, and I feel like there's too much going on. Right. Like, my head starts to buzz, and I don't know what to do first, and then I switch from one task to the the next. So caffeine, for me is like, this piece that if I can get it just right, it's great. But if I overdo it, I feel really ungrounded. How are you with caffeine? Do you do it?

I feel like you were meant to say that to me today, because I'm really struggling with this. So even as a nutritionist, I really avoid taking people off of caffeine if I don't have to. I love the taste of it. I love the ritual of it. I love the smell of it. But also, there's that fine line. Genetically, I am caffeine sensitive, so if I have a coffee after 11am I'm screwed that night for my sleep. But, yeah, this morning, for example, we shot another podcast, and I forgot to drop in with her. It's like, oh, my God. I forgot the most important foundation of how I start with somebody, because my caffeine was just, like, 10 steps ahead, right?

Totally.

It's a drug. We should probably treat it.

It works too. It's like a good drug that works. Totally.

Yeah, but that's a good point, though. Like, things that make us uprooted in life are things that we often don't even think of. Right. They've become so habitual for us every single day that we don't recognize the simple things that are completely derailing us. Right?

Yeah.

So water before coffee?

Yeah, water, coffee. Or just, like. Just less. Just less. Like, when I think I can have a full cup of coffee, I'll, like, tell Misha, my partner, and he'll be like, oh, gosh, no. Please don't do it.

I know. Yeah. And let's shut out mud. Water too. Because like there's so many incredible alternatives that are out there. You just have to do it for your hormones.

Yeah, right. 100%. And I just feel so much more grounded. I end up getting more done when I'm the right amount of caffeinated versus over caffeinated. So it always sounds like a good idea. And then after I'm like, nope, this didn't work again.

And let's just note caffeine after food, right?

Yeah, yeah. Eat something earlier in the day, less of it. All the things if you're super anxious. I wouldn't have caffeine that day. Like I just take it off the table of a possibility for me.

Yeah. I want to take a quick break from this episode to thank our amazing sponsors by Optimizers. Are you tired of feeling tired? Do you always hit the snooze and then slam your head right back down on the pillow in the morning? With all of the things that you have to take care of at work, at home, with your family and your friends, it is no wonder that you feel so tired. You take care of a lot of different, different things. So what's the solution? Well, I love to recommend supplementing with a full spectrum magnesium supplement and my go to is Magnesium Breakthrough from Bioptimizers. Magnesium Breakthrough is an all natural supplement that helps you reduce fatigue and sleep more peacefully. It even strengthens your muscle and improves your heart and brain function. While most magnesium supplements aren't full spectrum Magnesium Breakthrough is the only magnesium supplement on the market that can take the optimal ratio of all seven essential types of magnesium. Their formula includes CO factor ingredients to multiply the delivery of magnesium to every cell in your body and absorb at a very high rate. Not all formulas do this. Imagine having the strength and the energy to get out of bed every morning and face the day boldly, courageously. To be able to show up as your best self and keep that energy up through the day and into the night. So if you want to feel more energized and get the best night's sleep that you've had in forever, give Magnesium Breakthrough a try. For an exclusive offer, go to bioptimizers.commona and use promo code MONA. That's M O N A during checkout to save 10%. Okay, so you are a doctor of gastrointestinal health. You are an official gut expert. Gut health, gut microbiome. These are trending topics in the news and media. And you know, there's so many people out there giving advice, Right. I think it's important to recognize that everything that we know about gut health and the gut microbiome is still emerging.

It's super new. Yeah. I mean, it's new and we've been sending it for years. Right. But we still don't even know enough to be making most of the claims that are being made, especially on social media. So, like, the buyer, beware when you hear these huge claims about your microbiome, especially on social media, like really be cautious as to whether that is going to be something that's legitimate or just a sales claim.

Absolutely. And I really want this to go on the record. When you are, you know, just thinking back to the past few patients that you've been working with, can you think of a gut healing protocol that's been consistent for every single person?

Not one. Literally not one. Yeah. If I could, I mean, I'd be a multimillionaire. Right. I would just like shout out all of these protocols and I wouldn't need to spend any time with patience. I'd just say, you know, buy this, this and this and you're good. If it was a one size fits all approach, that would take away my job and would all.

But it would all be healed.

It would all be healed. Great. It'd be so amazing. So, yeah, no, it's. It's so individualized. It depends on what somebody is dealing with. So we'll see. And I know you're on the same line with me, but you'll see, like an ad, right, for like this colostrum or like whatever it is on social media, and it's like, will heal all of your gut symptoms. I'm like, that's physically impossible because not all of everybody's gut symptoms are due to the same thing. So the one product just can't fix everybody's issues.

And let's close that up too. Okay. So where does the colostrum come from? Where is it manufactured? How is it packaged? There's two types of colostrum. Right. That are beneficial for different things. Totally. Right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So many factors.

Absolutely. So when I work with people and the reason why I always choose whenever possible is to partner with a functional medicine doctor. Okay. Because we need to have the biological aspect of it, there's the coaching aspect of it, and then also just the mindfulness aspect of it for people to stay accountable. Right?

Yeah.

So when we think about this, I would say, like, one of the hardest, one of the biggest hurdles with my clients is helping them understand that there's no perfect diet, there's no perfect meal plan. There's no perfect supplement protocol. There's no red pill, and that this is conditioning that we have to let go of if we're really going to step into a healing journey.

Yeah, absolutely.

Like, if you can customize everything according to your blueprint.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's hard, right? Like, people just want an answer. They just want to know, like, what is the fact there. But you're so spot on. Where we have to listen to our bodies and we have to treat ourselves and not think that you're going to be the same as your friend, as the same as the health influencer. You listen to the dogmas out there drive me nuts, where it's like, everybody should eat this or everybody should eat that. It's like it's creating way more confusion than. Than it's helping most people.

I actually went silent on social media. Like, it's so loud that you can find so many people promoting and pushing different things, and you try them without even knowing if they would honor you. Right. And I think, you know, I know you get this question all the time. What do you eat? What's the perfect diet? Right. I want to do what you're doing. It's like, no, no, no, no. This has been, like, years in the making of me trying to understand how to navigate this one body in today's modern world with my stresses and my learned behaviors and stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beautifully said.

So with gut health, something that I love about your work is that you take a tremendously big, diverse topic and you own it in and you make it very tangible for people. There are so many aspects to gut healing, from digestion to mental health, to hormonal health to longevity. So what are some basics, like, when you think about the interconnectedness of it all? So let's basically just start with the fact that gut health is not just digestion and absorption.

Yeah.

How do you define it? Ooh.

How do you define gut health? I mean, that's a really, really hard one. So when somebody comes to see me, this happens a lot, actually, and they're like, I want to heal my gut. I'm like, okay, what's wrong with your gut? First, like, we need to identify what you're talking about with that. And we can also just go into, like, when we're talking about optimization and ensuring, like, if you're healthy, you just stay healthy. We can talk about that separ. But when somebody feels like something is wrong with their gut, the first thing I want to do is hone in on what is Wrong. And this is hard for some people to actually vocalize and pinpoint. And so I'll go through a list of questions, and this is like a first intake with somebody where I'm asking, you know, how many bowel movements are you having per day or per week, if not daily, what do they look like? So we use the Bristol stool chart to say, you know, are they really loose or are they hard? And they look like little rabbit pellets. Where are they on that scale? Any blood or mucus in the stool? Any bloating, gas, or distension that you're feeling? So nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, we'll go through the whole gamut. That's usually enough information for me to start to pinpoint where the issue is going on. And then from there, we really want to talk about what could potentially be causing those issues. We'll talk about family history, we'll talk about past medical history. We'll talk about their diet, exercise, lifestyle, and then we do lab work. So I rarely treat somebody without getting their labs back and then seeing the full picture of everything. And so. And that. That's really why it's so important, where you don't want to just throw a slew of supplements at something. So if somebody comes in, they're like, yeah, I'm bloated. We're not going to just put in, like, digestive enzymes and probiotics and glutamine and, you know, whatever it is, we're not going to just do that empirically. We want to see what the cause is, because narrow down your treatment options, and you're much more likely to have outcomes much faster versus just throwing the kitchen sink at it.

Absolutely.

Not to mention you're just going to throw away your money. Right. Most of the people that come to see me have spent thousands of dollars on supplements already, and they're still here. So why would I throw another few hundred dollars of supplements at them? Same goes with medications. Like, you really want to see what your cause is initially. And that's not to say we always find a cause. So I like to be super transparent. Like, finding the root cause is not always possible. I wish it was. It would make my life a lot easier as well. But we want to make sure that we've ruled out a bunch of things, and then if we're left with, okay, this is looking like X, Y and Z, we're going to go ahead and treat now because we know it's not all of these other things. But that's really what I do is I just want to narrow it down as much as possible. Use an evidence based approach and all of the testing options that we have, which we have so many testing options available.

Such a good point. Because, you know, it's not an uncommon scenario to sit with someone and going through their medical forms. Irritability, gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, foul smelling gas, low sex drive, poor concentration. It's like trying to get to the root cause of all of it, but yet we're throwing so many things at the system to try to make it heal. It's like, well, no, no, no. Just like, let's start with the basics, right. You know, I would say that ancient medicine has known this from the beginning of time. Right. All health starts with the gut. In Ayurveda we say this all goes back to the quality of your digestion. So if you're ignoring the symptoms that you're suffering with, and let's call it like it, this is this you're suffering. If you're experiencing symptoms like that every single day, you are suffering.

Yeah.

Stop ignoring the symptoms. And I can just think of like a lot of people who are listening. They might be going to their doctors and they're saying, here's all my symptoms. And they might be walking away with either a prescription, which you and I agree there's a time and a place for western medicine, but there's no inquisition to understanding what that root cause would be. So, you know, I've said this a few times, but, you know, make sure that you find a doctor who's a partner in your healing. But what kinds of questions would you ask a doctor?

Yeah, yeah. And, and you made me realize one thing too, where we're looking at the whole person. So this is why I got into naturopathic medicine. And it's one thing that I think that we've really lost in naturopathic medicine and functional medicine is when we talk about a holistic, integrative treatment plan. It doesn't just mean we're using herbs and medications, doesn't just mean that we're talking about exercise. It means that we're looking at the entire person. And I take that really to heart when I treat somebody because we want to get to know the person and as well as possible to really understand where this came from. And it's so common that I see that stress, anxiety, depression, you know, mental health is involved in a case that if you saw a conventional gastroenterologist, they may just say is a physiological thing going on. And so we really want to make sure that we're looking at all aspects of a human. We're looking at their community. Do they feel supported? Do they feel safe, safe in their body? Do they have, like, all of the relationships in the environment that they need to be healthy in? And it's really rare in today's age where we're living in a time where we're not conducive to health based on our environment. Right. We have all these things going against us, and so we really need to have all the resources available to actually be thriving. And so when I'm talking to somebody, our questionnaire is part, like, psychiatric intake where we're talking all about their support system, we're talking about their past mental health, their parents, mental health, what it was like growing up in your house, growing like, as a child. And the reason behind that is we really want to get a sense of, who are you? Where did you come from? Where are you at? Now, a question I ask almost every patient is, what's the level of joy that you experience on a daily basis? And they're like, I'm coming in for bloating. I'm like, yeah, I still want to know the answer to this. Because if the answer is zero, like you feel no joy during the day and it's going to be hard to get your gut to start to feel good because likely that you're completely or, you know, really in this fight or flight response. If you're not feeling joy, you're not in the parasympathetic rest and digest, you know, part of your nervous system most of the day. And that's where we need you to be to start healing and to start your gut functioning well again. So it's always going to be a part of what I talk to people about.

Yeah, it's such an exciting time for healthcare because I think that Western medicine is finally, you know, sending a stick out to Eastern medicine. Although a lot of the data might not be there yet, it's coming. Right. But still, I think that in Western medicine, we're taking pieces of Eastern medicine without the integration. And I say this all the time, my greatest dream for healthcare is that there is integration. When you go to a doctor's office, you're talking about your childhood, you're talking about your physical symptoms, you're maybe moving through energetic care, understanding your body's qi, maybe doing some acupuncture so that you understand how to shift your own physiology. Right. So, for example, if we look at traditional Chinese medicine, people will Just go for acupuncture. If we're thinking about Ayurveda, they might just look at the food that they're consuming or just do yoga. Right. So where do you think in your mind, you know, how can the two worlds merge if. How can we no longer take that singular approach?

Yeah, I think it's essential, first of all, and I think it's the biggest mistake that I see when people come to see me and they've seen like five other doctors before. They're like, you know, I did the whole SIBO protocol, I did this protocol, I did the whatever. And. And then we start to go into, like the mental health piece. And there's a lot that hasn't been addressed there. And so I think it's really that we all have to realize that it's all connected, especially in the gastro world where we're looking at how your gut functions. The gut brain axis is a really strong connection. And if we're not talking about that in these chronic GI cases, then you're going to miss a whole piece of the pie and the person's going to take a lot longer to heal. The other side of that coin is that a lot of people aren't ready to talk about that yet. And so this is all under the understanding that you have somebody who's willing to go down that road with you. And there's just a lot of people that aren't ready yet, or they, you know, they don't believe that that's a part of it. And we're all at different places, so, you know, no judgment around where they're at. But in my clinical experience, it's much more difficult to get people into that place of real heal unless they're at least willing to discuss the mental health and stress piece of chronic GI issues. When we have that whole picture and we're able to discuss all of it, people get better, just faster.

Oh, my gosh. I love that. Yeah. I think there has to be a. A greater approach to the interconnectedness of all of it. And I would say, you know, for a lot of people, it is fear driven because there's a massive paradigm shift that has to happen. I think it's happening, but again, it's like re education. And for somebody, I think, living in a society where we're taught to do hard things, we're training people still through media, through experts that, come on, just do this, just do this intense protocol because it will feel intense. You're going to get a result. When we know that that doesn't always work, right?

Yeah.

So if we're living at a time where stress and anxiety have never been higher yet, we know from a physical standpoint, a physiological standpoint, the instigation of all dis ease is stress. How can we not address the subtle body and stress management prior to anything else, prior to a protocol, prior to supplement protocol or medication.

Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree. And when people are ready to do that, we dive right in. And, like, I can talk about, like, patients in the last few weeks that I've seen where it's like some people just aren't ready to take that step yet. And so part of the first, like, few times that I'm seeing somebody are just building rapport and establishing a place where they feel safe enough to start to dive in. And so it's not uncommon for, you know, me having to wait like a few weeks or a couple of months to even start to breach that subject with somebody because you want them to feel safe enough to speak about it. They're not in a defensive mode. They don't feel like you're saying it's all in your head. Right. I think functional medicine did a huge disservice to the mental health world when they came up with the slogan of, aren't you sick of doctors saying it's all in your head? And I get what they're saying. We're not saying that, you know, you're making it up, up. It's not a real thing. However, I think it's discrediting the amount of mental health that we should be addressing in these chronic issues that are going on. And so I'm always having that conversation where I'm not saying that your symptoms are made up or crazy or don't exist. What we're saying is that mental health can't be separated from physical health when it comes to these specific symptoms, especially gi. It's like, we know about the gut brain axis.

Absolutely. Because we don't. We live in a physical body, but we have to address our mental body, our emotional body, our spiritual body. Right?

Yeah.

I don't even know if you know this, but a couple years after being a nutritionist, so everyone came to me, put them on a protocol, lifestyle, exercise. They get the result, they come back and see me three months, a year later. Right. This constant yo yo cycle. It's like, well, what is it that's not supporting people and committing to change? What, what within them makes them believe that they're worthy of going on something hardcore, like living through something really Challenging, and then when they're done with it, to put themselves on the back burner and then abuse themselves with habits that aren't serving them. So earlier on in my career, I became an NLP practitioner.

I didn't know that.

You didn't know that?

Yeah.

So nlp, neuro, linguistic programming, a lot of it has to do with our languaging to ourselves. You know, would I want to hear the thoughts that are happening in your head? I try to understand that about my clients. But we also do something called timeline therapy. So through timeline therapy, we can go back to, you know, tell me about the first time you remember feeling sadness, or tell me about the first time you remember binge eating or an issue with your eating disorder or whatever it was. We can go back to the moment of time when they first developed or adopted that learned behavior that has stuck with them through adolescence, through adulthood as an anchor to self sabotage and undoing that. And then through that, I found that once we got once I could get them to a place of feeling, a sense of ease, and we're removing that kind of baseline vibration of not feeling like they were good enough. All of a sudden. The food choices didn't necessarily matter. They weren't interested in self sabotaging or abusing. It's like, oh, I feel pretty good. Yeah, the inflammation has kind of been coming off or my bowel movements are regulated. So this ties into that gut brain axis, which I really want to talk about. Because, you know, what comes first? Do I deal with my anxiety and my stress and my depression first or do I deal with the gut symptoms and what came first?

Yes, it's a question that I get every day from patients, and it's a question that I had before I went and got my medical degree. So this is like one of the things that drove me there. I can actually remember sitting with a mentor. I was in research before, and I was sitting with my mentor who was a PhD in exercise science, that she was the most intelligent woman I've ever met. Like, I, like, had this huge crush on her. But I was talking to her and I was talking to her about, you know, what I wanted to go into research about. And I was like, well, I've had gut issues my whole life. I need to figure this out because I still don't feel good. And I talked about how there was this like anxiety GI thing where I knew that one was causing the other. At that time in my life, I was really convinced that my anxiety was caused by my GI issues. I was like, Pretty set in that, because I was like, most of my anxiety is around my gut not feeling well. And therefore I really believe that my anxiety is caused by my gut. Fast forward, probably 20 years later, I'm sitting here in front of you today. If I could have told my younger self something at that moment, I would have told her that it is a bi directional conversation between your gut and your brain. They're influencing each other. It doesn't matter what comes first. It just doesn't matter what comes first. This is what I tell my patients at least. Maybe in 10 years we'll know something else. And I'll be sitting here and I'll be like, yeah, I was wrong about that. But as of right now, what I tell my patients is it doesn't matter what comes first because we're still in the place where we now are saying there is definitely anxiety and stress and there's definitely GI issues. We have to treat both. Yeah, the idea of I'm going to treat my gut so my anxiety gets better, I've rarely seen that one work. Whereas if you treat both of them, people usually get better faster. And it's because it is, it's a cycle. Right. And so if you look at the stress IBS cycle that we've developed in just with the world of like, psychology, what they identify is that there's an original trigger for ibs. Could be a stressful life event. Maybe your parents got divorced, maybe you went through, you know, grieving the loss of a loved one, but there's some initial trigger that exists. And then after that trigger, you start to identify, okay, I've got bloating now. I've cramping, like, I've abdominal pain. What is this? This is new for me. I don't know what this is. And that creates stress and anxiety within yourself because you're having these new visceral sensations that you've never had before. And so once that develops, then you start to increase the anxiety. And then what happens is you start to scan your body. Is there anything else wrong? So then we have the IBS stress anxiety cycle. So there's an original trigger for ibs. Some people will go through a divorce or have something stressful happen in their life, and then they have symptoms of IBS that start. So it's abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea, a combination of those bloating gas and then those actual symptoms starting make people concerned about what's going on. With me, I haven't had these symptoms before. Is something really wrong? Is something Bigger wrong. And so that increases anxiety and stress further just based on the symptom sensations themselves. Then we go forward and the anxiety and stress around the symptoms worsen the symptoms. You have areas in your brain that tell your brain, hey, something is wrong, like something is wrong, I'm nervous, something could be really wrong. And this is a survival mechanism. We actually want this to happen at some level in our body for other things. Because what if you were in the woods and you cut your leg and you started to bleed out, you'd want your brain to tell you, hey, pay attention to that because it could be really dangerous for us. So the same mechanism is happening. However, IBS symptoms are never dangerous, so they're never going to hurt us. But our body doesn't know that. Starts to redirect all of your attention to your sensations. So we have an increase in sensations in our gut, but we're also having this hyper vigilance take place where now we're starting to pay attention to our GI symptoms, we're starting to monitor them. We're starting to say, okay, how many times have I gotten to the bathroom today? We're starting to look in the toilet and say, is it floating or is it loose or is it hard? Because we're trying to figure out what's going on. But this increased attention to the sensations increases anxiety and worsens the symptoms. And then you have a worsening of symptoms that worsens anxiety and this becomes the feed forward cycle that is ibs, but is also a lot of functional bowel issues. We have functional bloating, we have functional constipation, and we can see this with a lot of different functional bowel issues that exist. And it's just a good example of does it really matter at this point what came first? Because now we're chasing our tail and we're in a cycle. We just have to treat both and put an end to the cycle so that we can start to come out of it. And it can be really scary for somebody going through that. I've had people think, you know, I've got cancer, I've got this, I've got that, and we need to clip it at any angle that we can just to stop the cycle.

So that's fascinating. So trigger sent to brain, brain turns on the stress response. We know that we're not exactly in danger, but sending out a stress response to the rest of the body and increasing the symptoms that we've probably suffered with for some time. But all of a sudden we start to identify with them a Lot of people start to suffer in silence. You know, they start to think that it's a normal behavior for their body, which is still a form of suffering. So when you think about the culprits behind that, you know, as a practitioner, then for somebody who comes in, what are three things that you would give them? You know, they've been living in this stress response for a while now. Bloating has become part of their everyday. Irregular bowel movements, part of their every day. Plus they're also someone who really identifies with stress and anxiety from the time that they wake up first thing in the morning.

Yeah, yeah. So I want to figure out where they're at. So I think that we have to meet patients with where they're at. And so if there's someone, we're like, hey, I did a meditation. I loved it. Like, this really feels like my jam. Let's start with meditation. Or, you know, I really align with breath work. Like, I feel most at home and grounded when I do some breath work. Okay, let's start there. There with functional GI issues. We actually have a lot of clinical tools that we can prescribe people now. So they're called digital therapeutics as well. So these are prescription based applications that you can download on your phone that lead you through things like gut directive hypnotherapy or cognitive behavioral therapy around your GI symptoms. So we actually have way more tools available as practitioners to be able to prescribe these people that are really targeted around their GI symptoms. So if they're open to something like that, then that's where we start. But I really just want to identify, like, what feels manageable for you right now and what feels most aligned with you. Because some people will just have preferences one way or the other, but I just want them to start somewhere with something that they'll actually do on a daily basis. Because if I think meditation will be best for this patient, but they hate meditation, but they actually kind of like breath work. We're going down the breath work track. Like, we're not going to try to, you know, push people into a category that they don't want to be in.

It's going through a process, right. I think a lot of people, when they meet with someone like you or me, all right, there's excitement around. She's going to give me something to do, right. And it's going to work right away. That's not always the case. You know, this idea of, you know, working with someone for one, three or six months, you're on a journey of Discovery of figuring out what you need to do for yourself as opposed to something that's just going to, you know, be treated as a protocol. You literally are creating. You're creating new set point for your biology. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And this is something that I'm hearing also that will change and evolve. Right. I don't think it's ever about starting these modalities or finding something that works and then arriving.

Yeah.

At complete gut health.

Yeah.

Right. It's an evolution 100%.

Yeah. It'd be fun if we just arrived in life.

Right.

We're like, oh, we are done. Level completed, no further level available.

You and I joked about that also because, you know, to be in this profession, I shared with you that I had mold exposure, and I'm like, really? Come on. Like, I'm back here again on another crazy protocol. But again, the instigation of it was all stress. And from my experience and my original healing protocol after heart surgeries, going back to the ashram, you know, I was eating more carbs than I'd ever eaten before in my life right after getting off the paleo diet. But what I say about the ashram is that you create a different vibration for the body. There's an environment that has to happen, in which, for me, was the feeling of safety. Like, I felt, okay, I'm going to turn down the noise that's happening in my mind. I'm going to address the symptoms that I'm feeling. I might turn on the feeling of compassion a little bit because, like, it sucked to suffer for so long. Totally. And, you know, I really want to own in on this. It's come up in a few podcasts, but, like, these symptoms of suffering for women that we try to muscle through in every day, like, sometimes we just need to be heard and understood. And, like, hey, I've been suffering for a while, and it's really prevented me from showing up the way that I want to show up in this world or showing up for my partner or my friends or my loved ones, and we beat ourselves up over it.

Yeah.

And there's no empathy because no one's talking about it.

Yeah.

Right. Instead, we're just being sold products and supplements.

Yeah. We feel alone, too. Right. I think that there can be that feeling of, like, I gotta do this on my own or I don't even want to talk about it. I have shame around it. Or, you know, I just feel like this is a journey that nobody else has been on is really common. And so I think that when you find somebody who has also gone through what you've been through. There's this immediate safety and just knowing that there's another, like, there's. There's a way out of this, there's hope that's still there. Actually, literally why I wanted to become a doctor was I. I remember leaving a gastroenterologist office and he looked at me and he was like, there is no cure for your symptoms. You're just going to have to live with it. And I know he was probably having a bad day and, you know, he was stressed. Right. So I know that he was in his own world and had his own life. The bedside manner that he had and the way he spoke to me made me leave that office in tears, feeling completely hopeless. I'm like, well, that sucked. Like, I can't get better. And. And I know what he was saying in terms of. I think at that point he had diagnosed me with IBS and said, like, there's no cure for ibs. Don't disagree with that entirely. Like, I know that IBS is a chronic issue. However, to leave somebody feeling hopeless, like, I think there's always hope. I think there's always something that we can do, we can tweak. Right. Even if we're just dealing at a mental health level, like, how can we help you accept something that's happened to you that's going to improve your symptoms, that's going to make you feel better? So there's always a level of hope that can be instilled into somebody that makes them feel like, okay, I can keep going with this. I think that it's going to get better.

I don't think. I hope is a word that Western medicine is acknowledged.

Yeah, it's a big one. It's a big one, though.

Yeah, Yeah. I think this is a good time to talk about vagus nerve. So vagus nerve, when I became a yoga teacher trainer, yogis have known about this forever.

Yeah, forever.

Right. So through the gut brain access, but also through supporting our energy, our mood, our state of being, our wellness, how does addressing your vagus nerve shift your physiology? And how could that optimize gut health? Yeah, yeah.

Do you mind if I talk about gut brain connection in general? Okay. So the gut and the brain are intimately linked and we call it the gut brain axis. And they're linked through a few different mechanism. One of those is the. The vagus nerve. So the vagus nerve is a cranial nerve. It innervates almost your entire GI tract, from your mouth to the lower part of your colon. And it's also part of your nervous system called your parasympathetic nervous system, or we, you know, call it the rest and digest part of the nervous system, with digestion being a key piece there. And so your vagus nerve is going to be more activated when you're in a place to receive food and digest your food. So this is something where you feel at peace, you feel relaxed. Um, and that's really going to trigger peristalsis, like the movement of the GI tract, digestion, absorption of your food as well. Now, we also have a few other things that create this connection. And I think of the gut brain axis is like a roadway, so a way for things in terms of messages to travel from your gut to your brain and from your brain to your gut, it's bi directional. So it's going both ways. And that's really when I harp on, you have to treat both anxiety, stress and the gut at the same time, because they're communicating with each other at the same time. And so we also have the central nervous system, the brain and the spinal cord that connect the two. We have the hypothalamic pituitary, adrenal axis, your HPA axis, that connect your brain and your gut as well. So your hypothalamus releases something called corticotropin releasing factor crf, and that goes and talks to your intestines and can change motility patterns in the colon when you are under stress. So we know that there's a link between these two things that actually affects your physiology and cause, you know, diarrhea, constipation, and then we have the enteric nervous system. So our gut is really unique in that it has its own nervous system. That's why we call it the second brain. But your gut has about 200 million neurons in it, which is the same number of neurons in a cat's brain. It's insane. So it has the ability to function on its own without input from the brain as well. And, and so it kind of has its own little factory that's going on there. And then we have the gut microbiome, which is the holy grail. So the gut microbiome is 100 trillion microbes, things like fungi, bacteria, protozoa, all of these different microbes that reside in our gut. And we have a really mutually beneficial relationship with these bugs, meaning that we give them a place to live that's warm and moist and has all the things that they need to eat. And in return, they give us byproducts that they produce, and they're able to digest things that we can't digest. So they're able to digest fibers and prebiotics and things like that. And so these gut microbes aren't just there just to be there though. They actually help us with a lot of functions in the body. So I think of them as a, as a whole city. They're made up of little factories, right? So we have a bunch of different factories that are these microbes. The factories aren't all the same though. And we don't want them to be all the same because if they were all the same, then they would have a monopoly. And if there was a monopoly, then they would start to outbalance each other. And this is why diversity is so crucial in the gut microbiome. We want to have a bunch of different species of bacteria in our intestines. And if we have that, then they can each produce different byproducts, just like a city would. You want somebody who's selling bananas, you want somebody who's selling bread, you want somebody who's selling dairy. If we, if we all just sold the same thing, we would be really hungry and bored. And so we have all these different colonies. They're all producing different things and, and some of them also eat the things that other people produce. But these byproducts don't just stay in the gut. They're able to use that roadway that I talked about. They're able to travel through like nerve connections through our gut brain access. They're able to cross over our blood or the, the barrier between the intestines and the, the bloodstream so that they can circulate throughout the body. They're able to communicate with all these different areas of our body. And so they were looking at the gut microbiome when it comes to the liver. And the liver has thousands of genes in it that are, they're able to be changed by the microbiome. So they're influenced by the gut microbiome producing different substances. And a lot of those genes that they change in the liver, they change the expression of have to do with metabolism too. And so that's where we think that there's this connection between our gut microbiome and our metabolism that exists. And then we've, we've also seen a relationship between the gut microbiome and our mood too. And so there's been some studies on, we call them germ free mice, but those are mice that don't have a microbiome. And they are able to see that they have Higher rates of stress response that exist in these germ free mice. And when you give them lactobacillus rhamnosis, a probiotic, we see a reduction in anxiety and stress in those mice. So really fascinating. But you can see how widespread this is. So. So yeah, we have the vagus nerve, we have an enteric nervous system, we have our gut microbiome, we have our central nervous system and then we have our autonomic nervous system. All of these things are going to be how this gut brain connection is formed. But it's also why when we say, you know, your gut is so important, it's because of this communication and everything that goes along there.

Absolutely. Any practices that you recommend then for vagus nerve release?

Yeah. So I mean you'll hear, hear people talk about things like, like gargling or singing that can stimulate the vagus nerve transparently. Humming. Yeah. I've never seen them help with GI issues. I think singing's great. Like in, you know, I know you like to talk about like ancestral medicine and practices. I heard this recently and I loved it. Where there, there was a tribe that they ask when somebody gets sick, when's the last time you danced and when's the last time you sang?

Genius.

And like that just feels true to me. It's like if we're happy, we're singing and dancing as humans. Like that's like what we have evolved from. So I think there's, there's got to be something there. And I just like the spirit of it too. Yeah.

So in yoga at the ashram, we have something called satsang. Morning and night. It's a gathering in community where we chant and there's music and you know, I just have these memories growing up. You're never really into it to beginning at 6 o' clock in the morning, but by the end of the 30 minutes, everyone is singing and jamming and you know, you're using your vocal cords and it shifts your state of being.

Yeah.

Right. So I think that that goes back to the point of like, if you can shift your physiology first.

Yeah.

Through, you know, your external world, how that shapes your internal world. And let's just say out of everything that you just talked about, the magnitude of the fact that you have an ecosystem of trillions of bacteria and microbes within us. Right.

It's mind blowing.

It's mind blowing. It's like it's calling the shots. Like, what would be the impact if we could see our insides and what was happening to see this city and how it's function and what's not working. And I know one day we'll probably get to that point, but I think, like, if we really start to think about the power of the gut microbiome and then everything that we consume is going to impact all connections to our gut microbiome. I think that we might treat ourselves a little bit nicer.

Yeah, right? Yeah, yeah. It's fascinating. I'm excited to see where the research goes because we just don't know a lot of stuff yet.

Yeah. Okay, so let's hone in then on, you know, this connection to our environment. Right. So we know that we can change our internal environment by the foods that we eat, the things that we consume, beverages and stuff like that. Right. If we have a diet that is full of high processed food, food ingredients that we don't understand, even foods that are out of season, we're feeding specific types of information to specific bacteria, not always the good ones. Right. When we shift our diet into foods that are higher in nutrient density, these are most often foods that don't come in packages or a long laundry list of ingredient lists. We tend to optimize the good bacteria within our, our health. Right. Within our gut. So we know that food is information, so choose the information wisely. But what about our environment?

Right.

So there's now studies that show our connection to environment. And, you know, I call this the original biohacker that all of our ancestors knew. They spent time outside, right. Taking in different environments, taking in the microorganisms from the earth, from looking at the blues in the skies, the greens of the leaves, the aspect of grounding and taking sunlight in. How is our environment shaping our gut microbiome?

Yeah, I love this question. The first study that came to, I think in studies like. That's how my brain thinks about the first study that came to mind when you said this is there was a really interesting study done on pregnant women who were exposed to multiple species of animals during pregnancy. So let's say like dogs, cats, lambs, sheep, you know, they, they were exposed to a bunch of different animals, their children who were currently unborn at that time, but their children who were born would have lower rates of asthma, eczema and atopic conditions. Fascinating, fascinating. So there's, there's definitely something there with environment. Similarly, we have studies that show that if you use a DishWasher at home versus you hand wash your, your dishes, there's lower rates of, again, asthma, atopic conditions and eczema in people who hand wash. And so there's gotta be something there where there's, it's like the hygiene hypothesis, right. Where you're exposed to these microbes, potentially enhancing your gut microbiome, increasing diversity. That's there. So really interesting stuff when it comes to environment in, in that regard. But we, I mean it's, it all makes sense. Like we were meant to be in contact with dirt and different organisms and those likely are going to have an impact on our gut microbiome, either directly or indirectly. And so I think it's a fascinating topic and how far we take it, we'll see. Like, I know there's people that are like, you go eat dirt. And I'm like, okay, that makes sense. But like, be careful too. Like, I don't know, not eating the dirt in like Venice beach. For sure.

Where's the dirt come from?

Yeah. But regardless, I think it's a really interesting topic in our environment. Definitely shapes it. And then also is your environment stressful? Because we know that, that, that impacts the, the gut microbiome. So again, there's been studies about women who are stressed during pregnancy and then how that can affect babies as well. So I think it, I think it all affects it.

So chances are like we're going to continue to live in a world where we are busy, where we are stressed, where we are surrounded by, you know, hyper clean environments right out of a fear of germs now, especially after what we've been through. But we know also that nature is also very supportive. So you and I have talked about soil health. You know that it is like something that I want to focus on so much because if we don't have soil, we don't have the option to grow the sustenance that is going to fuel our health and wellbeing. Right. There's also not a lot of talk about the fact that nature itself, with the change in season, offers different microorganisms within the soil to help us with our survival and health through different times of the year.

Interesting. Yeah.

Right. And yet, you know, we're fine with flying in food from different parts of the world. You know, I think that eating seasonally, eating seasonally and eating locally is so much more than a fad or a trend. Like it's the first form of medicine that you can actually go to. Right. The closer that you can get the food to the earth, the better. Right.

If we just think about it from a certain sustainability point by itself. Right. We're going to have to figure out how to eat locally so that we don't have to ship things across the world. We're not paying for fuel, for gas, for all of these things. Just from a sustainability point by itself, I think that that's going to be pushing us.

And it's just wild with everything that we know about plastics. Also when we go to the grocery store and you go to the produce section, everything is in plastic. Right. It's just wild. Wild to me. Well, I love that you brought up the study around children too. Because if I think about, you know, children in the future, my greatest dream is just to be somewhere where my kids can go outside, get dirty. I want dirt under their nails, in all the crevices of their body so that they come home filthy. Because I know that this is something that is vital for their health and well being. Right. Yeah.

I mean, that's how I grew up too. And it's like we're, it feels like we're really far from that, which scares me. I don't have kids yet. I want to have kids and I'm like, wow, that feels like something that I need my kids to experience as well. Because, yeah, the dirt's cool. And it also means that they were out engaged with the world and they weren't looking at a screen. I would add that to my list of things that make me feel ungrounded is if I have too much screen time.

Yeah.

Whether it's my cell phone and I'm doom scrolling or my computer because I've been seeing, you know, virtual patients all day. But too much screen time for me is completely ungrounding. And I really just think we need to be connected to actual humans in nature more of the time.

Do you use any data to use an oura ring?

No.

So whenever I'm working late or on my screen before bed, my deep sleep will always decrease by at least 30 minutes if I'm off of a screen. And I've done this over the past year. So this is my data. If I'm off of the screen at least three hours before bed, my deep sleep will increase from 15 to 30 minutes.

Minutes. Yeah, I believe it. I totally believe it. I mean, my sanity decreases when I'm on a screen for that long. I'm just like, well, there that goes. Yeah. I noticed a huge change. The less I'm on my phone, with my mood, with my creativity levels, just feeling like I'm in purpose, my levels of joy, everything improves.

Yeah. We gotta clean up what we're watching, what we're consuming, right?

Yeah.

So if we could just, you know, I think it's, it might Be even impossible to, to pinpoint three things. But what are three things? Three to five things that you see happening in today's world that is really compromising people's digestion and gut health.

Yeah, I won't talk about too much. Cause I think we've kind of beat it at this point. But stress anxiety is probably number one on my list. In terms of what I see for your gut health specifically then I would do. Antibiotic overuse is really common. So it's not antibiotics. I think we're totally capable of taking antibiotics once in a while if we need them. I think they're life saving. I'm so grateful for them.

Absolutely.

But when we're using them to treat viral infections where we shouldn't be. Right. So antibiotics should be used for bacterial infections, they don't treat viruses. And it's really common for somebody to get like an upper respiratory tract infection or a sinus infection or something like that. And we're not sure if it's bacterial or viral. And we're treating it really quickly with an antibiotic where we may have been able to wait it out to see if it cleared on its own. And so the overuse of antibiotics I think is going to be a detrimental effect long term on our gut microbiome as well as creating resistance to antibiotics, which is not a good thing. And then alcohol and, and the way we eat in general. But alcohol specifically is a direct irritant to our gastrointestinal tract. When I say the way we eat, I'm actually pretty flexible when it comes to nutrition. So if you talk to me 20 years ago I was like gluten free, dairy free, egg free, all of the freeze. Like wasn't eating much of anything.

Like my friends called my house, my apartment, the house of free.

The house of free. So I'm definitely not like that anymore. Like I, I pretty much eat everything, but I don't eat a hyper palatable diet. And so I think that's a huge part of, of GI health when it comes to, you know, if we're eating a really hyper palatable diet, meaning that it's got things in it that make us want to keep eating it. It's addictive. So when you pair sugar with salt, things like that. Right. Like fatty with sweet, those become hyper palatable and we can over consume them. And that's where we see people getting to gain weight much easier. And then when you look at weight gain, it's, it's a big cause of reflux. So gastroesophageal reflux disease or gerd. And so I really think that the way we are eating, whether it's alcohol or hyper palatable foods, has a big issue or big determining factor on our gut health specifically. And then there's the flip side of that. And I always want to mention this because there's two sides to every coin. Being too healthy can affect your gut health through that stress anxiety loop. And so if you have now narrowed down your food choices to six foods and your scared of everything at the grocery store and you're scared of, you know, just living in general in the current world, you're actually doing your health a disservice at that point.

Just think about through all the restriction, if you're eating, if you're going with, if you're going to the grocery store every single week with the exact same grocery list.

Yeah.

Which most of us do because it's a no brainer.

Right.

We just go on autopilot. We're taking in a limited amount of nutrients and phytochemicals and vitamins and minerals from specific foods. We're completely missing out on the game. So an interesting concept. What you're speaking of makes me think of like, what if we just tried to eat more like our ancestors? Yeah, right?

Yeah. It would fix it. Like, we're gonna rotate. Not everything's available all year long.

You got it. Yeah. I love that. All right, so talking about that singularity, you and I both have a pet peeve of, you know, the supplement that gets hyper promoted by influencers.

Yes.

Right.

Yeah.

All of a sudden they're everywhere and oh my God, I have to try this. Everyone is having this like miracle effect from, from consuming it. So. So let's just go through this little rapid round. You know, whether these work for gut health or not. Okay.

Gut health specifically, we're talking about. Yep.

Gut health specifically.

Got it. I feel like I'm on a game show now. You are. I am.

Ready? Let's do it.

Let's do it.

You're gonna win a prize.

Do I get a prize? Yeah.

Okay. Probiotics. Worth it or not worth it for gut health?

Can I do caveats or do I have to just say worth it or not worth it? I'm so bad at this game already.

You can. Caveats are totally fine.

Okay. Probiotics should be used like a medication. So if we're just talking about, are we talking about like gut health in general? People that are already healthy. Are we talking about general?

You're on Instagram. You see a probiotic that's being promoted.

No. So I would say not worth it unless you know what you're treating. So when somebody comes to me and they have ulcerative colitis, there's been probiotics that have been shown to improve ulcerative colitis symptoms. So I use them as medications. You would never just go. Just take a random medication, don't take a random probiotic. Waste of money.

And I have to add on. Are you doing stool tests with all of your clients?

No, very few.

Very few.

Yeah, very few. We do targeted stool tests. So we do. We use Quest or LabCorp. We can most often go through insurance, but we don't do comprehensive stool analysis of the microbiome itself. And we could go into that, but I have reasons to not do it most of the time.

Colostrum worth it or not worth it?

Depends. Most of the time I would say not worth it. But you may get benefit depending on your. Your symptom.

So be curious.

Be curious. Yeah, yeah.

Be curious with everything.

Yeah, right.

Instead of. Yeah. Collagen. Worth it or not for gut health?

For gut, not worth it. For skin elasticity, wrinkles, hydration of the skin, potentially worth it.

Do you prescribe collagen?

If you're interested in that piece. So there's been a few studies that show like. Like I said, skin elasticity, hyd the skin and wrinkles with like 15 grams of collagen a day. So if you're interested in that, then go for it. I'm usually like, Botox works way better.

Right, There you go. Red light therapy. Worth it or not worth it?

For the gut, I don't think. Worth it. I don't see that mechanism, But I don't know about red. Red light therapy, so who knows?

Ice baths. Worth it or not worth it?

For your gut, not worth it.

But I see them everywhere. Talk, you know, the girl. Yeah.

Not for your gut. I mean, I could see motivation, energy, drive, like, it can help with that for sure. Delayed onset muscle soreness. Ice baths can work.

Yeah.

Got no sauna.

Worth it or not worth it for your gut?

No, I mean, I'm a huge sauna advocate though. So if you're looking for longevity, cardiovascular health, saunas can increase growth hormone, can improve insulin sensitivity, so definitely health benefits. But if you're treating your gut specifically, I don't see a correlation there.

Digestive enzymes worth it or not?

Depends. If you have pancreatic insufficiency, then worth it for sure. But as a general supplement for your gut, I wouldn't just use it As a heal all peptides.

BPC157 worth it or not.

Okay, so peptides are unregulated. BPC157 has a little bit of animal research for things like ulcerative colitis, so for healing GI linings that have ulcers or erosions or damage to them. But it's a rat study. I don't know about you, but like me personally, not ready to take a medication, especially the injectables that haven't been tested on humans yet. So I still consider it like this area of interest. I'm definitely, like really interested. And I could see maybe there's going to be a benefit that's seen, but I want to see human studies before I use it.

I love it. So we kind of did this for fun, but the point wins. You, you win. You got the card, you got the car. You win the car.

You get a car, I get a car.

You know, to really own this in from the heart, you know, living in today's world, healthy living, what to do for your health, what to eat, what supplements to take. It is so confusing.

Yeah.

Even as practitioners, with the amount of information and studies that we see pro something against something, it's just, it's all overwhelming. And I think that there needs to be a call for going back to basics, for understanding your physiology, and for finally tuning in to your own intuition of whether you need something or not.

Yeah.

So I think the most important question to ask yourself, whether it's the sauna, the ice baths, the probiotics that you're taking, how does it make you feel?

Totally.

If it shifts your state of being into a state of being, of feeling peace and happiness and joy. That is the whole point of living. Okay. When you can get yourself into feeling peace and happiness and joy every day, taking, removing yourself from fight or flight, getting into that rest and digest, getting into that rest and digest state, you're turning on your body's mechanism to heal. Okay. So, you know, the billions, trillions of dollars that are spent in marketing for these modalities for medication. What would the world be like if we spent that on education, if we spent that on addressing the state of our food system, stress and anxiety, acknowledging our farmers maybe as our first line of defense when it comes to healing.

What do you look for? I, I love that. And I think you're, you're spot on in terms of we need to do what feels right for us. And, and we, we need to trust that as well. You know, if somebody came to me and they're like, my gut symptoms are when I cold plunge every day, I'm like, great. Like, you don't need to be here. But like, amazing. And, you know, good, good on you.

Yeah.

Um, so I think that there needs to be some following intuition that exists there too. Um, and it's also just, you know, a reminder that just because some. Something helped somebody doesn't mean it's going to help you. So listen to yourself. If it's not working for you, then it's not working.

I heard you say what you ask your. You ask your patients, right? I ask my clients all the time. Well, how did it make you feel?

Yeah.

Ask yourself the same questions, right?

Yeah.

So to tie into this idea of ancient healing modalities, then, you know, I speak often about Ayurveda simply because it's what I grew up with. In Ayurveda, detoxification every day is something that's very important. Whether we do something as simple as tongue scraping, we're focusing on how we eliminate or doing something like Panchakarma, which is more of an Ayurvedic treatment where we're using oils and enemas and tinctures and massages and stuff like that. Are there specific ancient healing rituals that you find yourself referencing to your patients?

Love this. Well, if you come to see me in person, I make every patient a personalized tea. And so I love that. That's ritual for me. And I really like the act of. Because my. My office manager will be like, do you want me to make the tea for this patient? I'm like, no. Like, I really like doing it myself because there's something about me picking out the herbs with the patient, deciding what we want to make that day, making the tea, and then sitting down both with a cup of tea in our hands, that feels so like, juxtaposition to the world that we live in, where it's like, usually you go to the. Your doctor and it's like in and out and like, you get to see them for seven minutes. You're in the waiting room for an hour, and like, kind of chaos. I, like, want to create the opposite of that with my patients, where it's like, hey, we even have time to drink a cup of. Of tea during this visit. Like, that feels good to me.

And the fact that herbs are nature's medicine, like, they're potent, they are antioxidants, they're phytochemicals for the body that turn on and elicit a healing response. Something so simple. Yeah, right.

A lot of Our medications stem from herbs. Right. We've extracted them from it. But there's a lot of herbs that can be beneficial for your GI symptoms, and we know that now. Like, peppermint is one of those that has great research for IBS us. But I also just think medicine of sitting with somebody and connecting with another human at that level is like treatment in and of itself. And it's treatment for me too. So part of it is selfish, where I want to feel relaxed enough while I'm in a consult with somebody that I really feel open to hearing them, listening to them. I don't feel rushed. And so I think it's beneficial for both of us. Us.

What a beautiful concept to have with your doctor.

Yeah, I love it.

Can you imagine? Looking forward to a doctor's appointment.

I know. So my patients are like, I don't like tea. I'm like, you're gonna have to start to like tea, because that's part of our ritual. No, I'm just kidding. Most people will eventually catch on, but.

They become tea drinkers.

Yeah.

And what about you? You know, I talk about these ancient healing rituals. For me, a lot of them just feel really nostalgic.

Right.

In your family, with your mom, with your grandmother, do you remember any healing rituals that you guys had as a family?

Good question. Family healing rituals. My mom's probably gonna listen. She's gonna be like, you forgot this one. You forgot this one. What did we do? Well, so I have one with my partner right now where we give each other. I don't know if this is ancient healing ritual, but we give each other facials and drink tea. So we basically, like, create like, a little spa night. Doesn't feel ancient, but it feels really sacred to me where it's just like, no phones, just connecting one on one and really just being present with each other. And that's really fun for me. The other thing I would say is just like, being in nature and exercising. I guess that's an ancient tradition, right? Where. That's where I feel so grounded. If I am moving my body in nature, it feels way different than when I go to the gym. But if I'm going for a hike or mountain biking or rock climbing, something where I'm actually in touch with nature. Yeah, that's my jam.

I feel like this spa would be like. If you think about Turkish baths, and there's so many cultures that have spa treatments that are super healing, even Ayurveda. Like, a lot of it's massage driven, and we're.

We're Doing that. That's what it is.

We're the ancient. Your mom might not be that happy about it. All right, what do you think about, you know, if we were to think about the differences between men and women for gut health right now? So for me, I share often about my mom. I've only ever known my mom to have rheumatoid arthritis. Since I've known her, her entire body's completely deformed. And the blessing for me growing up is that the motto in our house was, eat it, it's good for you. You know, she would try Chinese medicine, the herbs, the teas, the doctors, the diet. Diets, functional medicine and gut health was like a trend when I was little. And I think that she's done her best to get there. But the reality now is that we understand scientifically that more women are prone to autoimmune disease than men. It's tragic, actually. So is there something that you would call upon women to engage with to really understand autoimmunity if it's something that's genetic into their family? Is there a difference between how men and women should be approaching gut health? Health?

Yeah. So we. We see something similar in GI with IBS specifically. So with. With ibs, women are much more likely to have IBS than men are, and we don't know if that is hormonally related or otherwise. You know, other risk factors for IBS are a neurotic personality type, people that worry more. And not to be sexist, but I. I'm a woman, so, like, I feel like women can worry. I think it's probably part of how we are wired just to make sure that we look after our kids. Right. We're like, we have that area of the brain that's scanning for anything that's going wrong, but I think for that for sure. So when I look at men versus women, are there changes that I would make based on, like, treatment plans? With GI health, I think just really tapping into how your body respond, responds to stressors. I think men and women likely respond to stressors a little bit differently, and that can show up really differently as well. In. In my practice, I've seen that men have a harder time sometimes identifying stress and anxiety. And so I think that there's a lot of sex differences when it comes to just the identification of what's actually going on in their bodies, too.

Absolutely. The common denominator is the same. Really understanding your own personal symptoms, tuning in, asking questions, identifying. Identifying what you need.

Right. Yeah.

I had this idea, and I Shared this with you before, you know, through the guests that I have on. I feel like these ancient rituals or healing remedies, recipes for teas and tinctures and body oils and stuff like that, it really is something that's dying off with our mothers, our aunties and our grandmothers. And I wonder, you know, would all of our ancestors as women, would we have been the healers in the villages, communing, talking about our stresses and our worries at that time, really recommending to each other the things that we needed, foraging for the right herbs and teas to keep everyone healthy and safe? Like this basic information that probably would have been transferred on generationally that now has turned into Dr. Google. Right. And even as somebody who works in this field with clients, every day I catch myself questioning the inherence of knowing what my ancestors, you know, the, the herbs that my aunties in India would grow on, on their balconies versus, okay, I better just check this out with Google, you know, to see what else is new, what are the studies that have come out. Yeah, so, you know, how can we balance both worlds?

Yeah, it's fascinating. I went to Africa a few months ago and it was at that point I was on safari, but it was at that point where I really realized how disconnected we are from nature. You look at the animals on safari and they're not looking to ask somebody, hey, can I eat this kind of thing. I'm sure they're looking at their mothers. You know, they're taking after somebody, but there's no Google there. They're not going to the doctor. Like, they're literally just going based on their instincts and what has been passed on from them, because they have that knowledge from generation to generation that's really in their DNA. That's not to say, you know, that some of them don't die because they ate the wrong thing. I'm sure that happens as well. But there is this generational passing down of knowledge that happens naturally in the wild and we don't really have that much anymore. And I think, I think you're spot on where it's, it's starting to die out. And, you know, I look at, you know, my personal family, my mother unfortunately lost her mother at a young age. And so I feel like that was probably cut off a little bit where she wasn't passed down some information. But that's definitely something when you bring it up where I'm like, wow, I have this yearning for that. Like, that feels really special. That feels magical. It has like some mysticism in it, which I really jive with. And it also feels like something that I've. I've, like, lacked in my life, but not for anybody's fault.

Things that we would want to know.

Yeah. Right.

Like you share with me about the teas that you make. I'm like, wow, what if you did that in another lifetime?

Yeah.

You just. You were the woman that people knew to go to.

I am so simple.

But it's so powerful. Right. It's not even worth making fun of.

Like, it's special 100%. And I just.

I have this vision, you know, it's getting to a point where I just. I work with so many people who are doing all of the right things. Right. The supplements, the. The biohacking, the doctor, the massage, the personal care, the personal chef. Like, the doing all the right things. And yet these inflammatory markers are still going up. Symptoms of stress and anxiety are still going up. Sleep is suffering, their mood is suffering. Relationships with their partners or people around them, Lack of motivation in this world or clarity on what their sense of purpose is.

Yeah.

Right. So, you know, I think what I'm really taking away from this conversation is I think it's time to turn down the noise.

Yeah.

On what's being sold at us and to us, and instead just tuning back into what our constitution needs. Needs.

Yeah.

Really understanding from a base point what you as an individual needs to wake up feeling just a little bit better. Might not be at 100, but what can you do tomorrow morning that are gonna. That's gonna make you feel just a little bit better?

Yeah.

Right.

That was beautiful. And give yourself grace. Like, allow there to be ease where there can be. I know when I've gone through health things, there's been this feeling of like, I need to figure this out right now.

Now. Yeah.

And that can push you into more stress and create that cycle that we've talked about today. And so just to give yourself a little bit of grace and give yourself a little bit of, like, a room for ease to exist. You're gonna figure it out. Like, there's. There's hope out there for you.

So interesting because you think about, you know, when you go to a doctor, if you're running your labs, looking at all your biomarkers, you're typically diagnosed with something. Right. Or you're diagnosed with an imbalance. And when you leave, you know, I think for most people. I know I certainly did. I began to identify with those illnesses and imbalances. That's not empowering.

Yeah.

Right. When we know if we're really going to create the space for the people that we work with to step into healing. It has to be from a feeling of compassion and empathy and maybe like this ultimate act of self love. Like, wow, oh, my God, you got so out of balance. Balance. I love you so much. I'm gonna do whatever it takes to make you feel better.

Yeah.

Right. We've got one body, one vessel.

Yeah. And working with that body versus thinking it's working against you, which can definitely happen.

Can you share with us just like what epigenetics is, what people need to know about understanding epigenetics?

Yeah. So you have your genes that you got from your mom and dad. Right. So you got some genes for your mom, some genes from your dad. Those are now your genetics, genetic code, and those genes are set. We can't change your genes. However, we have something called epigenetics where we can change the expression of the genes. And this is all done with our environment, what we eat, how we exercise, the stress that we put ourselves under, all of those factors can actually change how you express your genes. And so you could have a gene for something that never gets expressed rest, whether it's something good or something bad. Right. And in terms of exercise, we can take that for example, where if you exercise every single day, you're going to change your genes through epigenetics to favorably put out proteins that are going to be beneficial for the body. So very broad understanding of it, but it's really how your genes work, where just because it's a gene, depending on the gene, it may be expressed or it may not be be expressed. And we can benefit that by just improving our environment that we exist in.

So even if you have a genetic disease that is inherent and runs in your family, we now know that through our choices, we can turn on or turn off the genetic markers that cause us to get that illness.

Yeah, I mean, it depends on the disease. Right. Like, you can have some diseases that if you're born with two recessive traits from mom and dad, that you're going to get the disease. There's nothing that you can do to avoid the disease. Disease. Very few of those, though. So there's very few diseases that are completely genetically determined and absolute. So, you know, we talk about Alzheimer's often when we talk about longevity, where APOE is one of the alleles that can increase Your risk, or APOE4 specifically can increase your risk for Alzheimer's dementia. However, it's not a deterministic gene. So just having APOE Four alleles, even if you have two of them, one from mom and one from dad had, does not mean you will get Alzheimer's. So for something like that, you really want to focus on diet, exercise, lifestyle, body composition, stress management, sleep, like all of the things. Because just because you have that gene does not mean you will get the disease. And you can influence it by all of the choices that you have to make. There's other examples where if you have the gene, you're going to get the disease, but it's a fraction of the diseases out there. It's much more common that genes are not deterministic for disease versus are deterministic.

That's just so powerful, right? Like we really don't give enough power to the power of our choices. When everything comes down to a choice, the choices that we make day in and day out, whether they optimize us or whether they deplete us. And some things that you just listed off for those genetic markers are things that really tie into gut health, right? So like even if we turn down the noise of media and everything, some basics that everyone can start practicing as of tomorrow when they wake up to optimize their gut health.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is like if you are healthy and you just wanna stay healthy, right? So maybe you don't have any actual GI symptoms, but the things that come to mind for me, number one is walking. So I think walking is so underappreciated. I love resistance training, I love high intensity too. But walking is one of my favorite forms because, because it's really low impact, so you're saving your joints. But also it can be really meditative and can be really good at reducing stress levels. And so walking is one of my favorites for gut health. If you feel bloated after you eat and you go for a walk, that's going to help just because it can help trigger the vagus nerve to start moving. Help with peristalsis as well. Um, so walking is definitely number one, fiber. So fiber is what your gut microbes consume. So when we talked about those little factories, they need things coming into the factory. And for microbes, bacteria, it's going to be fiber sources. So all of your fruits and your vegetables diverse, like what you were saying, like you can pick a new vegetable every single week just to diversify your diet. And prebiotic fibers, things like Jerusalem artichoke, we've got garlic, we've got onions if you tolerate them, beans, legumes, things like that, super high in fiber that feed those microbes. So that's going to be definitely one. If you have GI issues, you may be like, well, this woman doesn't know anything, because those make me worse. You're going to have to tailor it right. So these all have caveats to it, but fiber is definitely on that list. And then fermented foods, and this could actually go back to ancestral tradition. So fermented foods have been around since like 7,000 BC or something. They've been around forever. They're a way to preserve food as well. So they were really helpful when we didn't have refrigeration. But fermented foods, Stanford did a research study recently, and they found that eating fermented foods on a regular basis reduced symptoms of bloating, but also improved 19 inflammatory cytokine levels in the blood. Things that can increase, you know, your risk for other inflammatory conditions. So for me, it's like everybody should be consuming fermented foods on a daily basis and rotate them. So we've got like, sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, fermented yogurts. You have so many options to choose from, from. And now, like, you go into erewhon or you go into whole Foods, and there's like a million fermented food options. You can get, like, cabbage, you can get carrots, you can get peas. You get pretty much anything you want.

Absolutely, yeah. This is where food as medicine really comes into play. Right. So when you go to the grocery store, variety and diversity is key. Avoid being a creature of habit. Focus on colorful foods. Focus on prebiotic fiber. I have to ask you, just because of my love of jicama.

Yeah, jicama for sure. That's on the list.

So the benefit just breaking down this, like, pre undigestible fiber or the good bacteria within our gut. What are you seeing? How could, how could that optimize our gut health? Yeah.

So those like, like I said, those little factories that I call microbes, they have to get products to get into them in order to produce products. So, you know, if. If we're talking about like a wood factory, you need to get the trees in to make the planks of wood. The same with bacteria. You need to get the building blocks in order for them to be able to change it and produce something else. So all of your bacteria require these building blocks, and they're. They're things like prebiotic fibers are gonna be some of the richest sources to provide food for the bacteria to then go on to produce your things like short chain fatty acids, things like butyrate that can help to feed your colon cells and reduce inflammation. Um, so they're really the feeding sources for your microbes to be able to make all of the byproducts that they make for us. Graphs.

So we can use food first before supplementation.

100%. Yes.

Thank you, sister. All right, some rapid fire questions just for fun.

Yes.

What's the number one mistake that you see women make when it comes to their gut health?

Choosing to take a million supplements and trying to heal yourself. By far.

Where do you think women are making gut healing and digestion complicated nutrition?

We make it so complicated does not have to be that complicated. We can really simplify nutrition pretty easily.

Can we end the diet revolution?

Yes. Restrictive eating, caloric restriction, ultra dieting. That's going to negatively affect your gut health for sure.

When we talk about this idea of integrative health, what's something that really excites you about western medicine?

I love western medicine. So. And I didn't always used to be like that. I used to be very anti western medicine. But when you use western medicine in a holistic plan where you're treating the whole person, a lot of western medicine will also help somebody, but it has to be used correctly and you have to know why you're using it and you want to use it in support of the person moving through what they're moving through. So I use medications all the time with my patients. I'm not anti medication. I just think that you need to know why you're using it and you need to, you need to understand how it's going to affect the whole person as well. But definitely not anti Western medicine.

I love that. And maybe even I'm with, I'm with you 100%. Like there is a time and a place for western medicine. We need it. It is part of our evolution and survival. And if you're being prescribed something, maybe just ask the question, okay, well, how long do I need to be on this? Or what's the action planner strategy for me to get off this?

Totally. Yeah. Yeah. But I think when we see pitfalls in western medicine, it's because, okay, yeah, we're using this to treat this symptom, but we're not acknowledging that this symptom is really rooted in anxiety, stress or depression or whatever it is. And we're leaving that untreated. When you see that happen, it's going to be playing whack a mole. So, yeah, you're going to suppress this symptom and then a year, two years later, you're going to have this new symptom arise and then you're going to whack that down with something else. So you want to make sure that you're still treating the whole person, even if you are using medications. Because if you're not, you're going to see things pop up later down the road, most likely.

So avoid just treating the symptom, look at treating the entire being.

Right.

This idea of holistic health. This is why I referred so many of my clients to you, because I trust you and I love this integration approach that you take at Modern Med. Let's share with people like, you know, you've got some courses that are phenomenal. You've done such a great job at covering so many diverse things today, but how can people find you and get in touch with your courses?

Amazing. Yeah. So I just launched a supplements course and I launched it with Commune, so we can give you the link for that. I originally was like, I don't want to do a supplements course. I'm always the person that's like, all these supplements don't work. Like, why do you want me to do this course? It sounds so off brand for me. And they're like, that's exactly why we want you to do it. So I go in and I debunk a lot of supplements that are not worth your money. But then there are supplements that have research behind them. And so I tell you what the research is and why you may want to take this supplement with a really targeted approach. So, no, if you're going to take this one, it can help with this, but it's not going to help with this, this. So that's through Commune. And then Modern Med is my practice. We see people mostly for integrative gi. So gastrointestinal conditions like ibs, constipation, diarrhea, bloating is a big one. All of our doctors there specialize in integrative treatments for gastrointestinal conditions. I currently am seeing people for preventative wellness. And so I'm seeing people that are healthy and want to stay healthy and want to geek out about all the things that they can do to keep themselves healthy. Healthy with a holistic approach to it.

Such a good question for health. Right? We think so often about the here now.

Yeah.

But instead ask, what are the things that you can do today that are going to help you live the way that you want to feel.

Yeah.

When you're 80, 90, 100 and beyond. Because it's inevitable that we can probably live that long, if not much longer. But I certainly want to be the woman that's hiking with my girlfriend.

Yeah.

A mountain. When I'm 19, 100.

I'm in. I'm in. I'm on the game plan.

I adore you.

Oh, I adore you, too. I didn't know what you said. Say it again.

So I don't like Canadian. I adore you. I'm so grateful for the light that you put out into this world. I love the fact that you are a doctor that just approaches healing with so much empathy and love and care. And I'm excited for so many people to see this and watch this and share it with people and their lives, because I. I just hope that people experience expect nothing less than someone like you for their primary care.

That means the world to me. And the world is so lucky to have this podcast coming out. So thank you for doing what you're doing and spreading your light and your gift, and I'm so excited to listen to all your podcast episodes. Thank you. Thank you. Yay.