373: Hack your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut Review with The Gut Genie

Hi. I want to welcome you to Midlife Conversations. I'm Natalie Jill, your host, and I help midlife women redefine and rebrand aging. On this podcast, I do what I do best, taking complicated information and conversations around aging that are relevant to us now and breaking it all down simply with actionable steps that you can implement to level up your life, because your best years are yet to come. I also regularly interview some of the most inspiring people living in their best midlife years. On this show, I cover topics about our health, hormones, navigating, getting weight, blood sugars, our mood, focus changes, even our relationships, career changes, beauty, and more.

Welcome back to Midlife Conversations. Today, I've got one of my favorite guests, and I say my favorite guest because not only is she a friend and she has so much great information, but this is, I believe, her fourth time on my podcast. I've got the Gut Genie, AKA Laura Fontero. It should be Laura Fontero, AKA the Gut Genie, but I've renamed her the Gut Genie, whether she likes it or not. Thanks for being back, Laura.

Oh, it's so good to be here, Natalie. This is going to be fun. We're going to talk all about it today, where you've been, what you've been doing, how you've been feeling, and what next steps are.

Yeah, and I wanted to do this because I think I confuse people, especially if they follow me on social media, because I'm all, you know me, Laura. I'm always trying the new thing, like, what. What do I need? What's the. I call it bio. Harmon. I'm sorry, Bio optimizing now or age optimizing versus biohacking. But people see me doing things like the oxygen chamber, or I do my sauna, or I do. I do all these, like, things. And. And people go, is that the thing? Is that the test? Is that the treatment? Is that the whatever and what I want people to know and the reason I want to do this episode, and it was important to do it right now, was that there is a process, there's an order to things, and just a little quick backstory. First of all, if you haven't heard me interviewing Laura before, you definitely want to go back and listen to some of those interviews. There they go, in order. But just a little quick, quick summary. About a year and a half ago, I was sick. A lot of things going on with me. I had gained weight. I wouldn't have been. I was not looked at as obese or anything like that, but I gained a lot of weight. For me, I was feeling very sluggish and I was chalking everything up to perimenopause. I just thought, it's aging, it's perimenopause. And I was just, that's what it is. And then when I had a blood sugar dysregulation, that's what really got my attention. And I tried to control it and fix it myself with a glucose monitor and going keto. And it did not budge, didn't move. And Laura suggested to me that it could be parasites.

And.

And I thought she was crazy. I thought she was crazy. But after not getting anywhere with western medicine doctors, I gave it a go, did a test with her, learned I had parasites a lot more. We'll go into on how you can learn more about that in a little bit. But learned it was parasites. Within the first few weeks of following a protocol she gave me not only to my blood sugar regulate, I started feeling amazing. Things started to shift, which then allowed me to get a lot healthier. I then learned I had a breast implant rupture, which we're going to explain how things tie together today. How things tie together. I had an explant that was like kind of next on the list. And I'm now feeling better than I have in a long time, like back to my old self, I would say. And I still have perimenopause things, but not all the stuff I had that was being chalked up to that. So the reason I wanted to have Laura come back on is as I share my journey, I get a lot of messages like, okay, should I get an explant or should I buy this, or do I need to do that treatment you just did in there, like this blood treatment you did or whatever. And there's a particular order. And I want to explain to you or have Laura explain why the gut health, why looking at what's going on in our gut biome is that most important first step. So, okay, Laura, take it away.

So, yeah, then and now we're right back to talking about gut and toxins and parasites and all of it. So I. I'm going to speak in analogies because I think analogies are always, always make it easier to learn something. So if we think about building a house, and I'm a daughter of a contractor, general contractor, was around a lot of construction growing up, lived in a lot of remod models as I grew up. And so I think that everybody understands that you don't put the roof on the house until you pour the foundation and raise the walls There is. If you try to build a house that way, it will not work. And fixing your body is kind of similar. There is an order of operations that helps you get the best possible results. Now, when I was working with you in the beginning, we were also kind of dealing with what you were willing to do in the moment, right? Because it was like, I don't think.

I'm not a very good patient. I gotta be real. I'm argumentative. I'm like, I think I know what I know. Like, a lot of. A lot of you listening are like that. You know, you think you know what you know. Exactly.

And you know, I do a lot of teaching about how I grew up in the Western medicine world. I spent over two decades working as a nurse practitioner for Kaiser Permanente, and I had to unlearn what I thought was true. I had to really humble myself and realize that I'd been down this path of trying to help people heal their bodies by prescribing drugs that weren't really helping, that were actually probably causing more nutrient deficiencies and causing problems. And you. There comes a point in your career, in your life, in your journey, whatever it is, where you get to realize, oh, maybe I don't know everything. Maybe I don't know what I thought. I know, and maybe there's a different way to do something. And so it's interesting because I was just teaching this in a class earlier last week, that we need to update things and do things 2024 style. So not 2001 style. And by that, I mean the gut microbiome was actually discovered by scientists and it became mainstream to. To all the people here watching and listening around 2001, that's when it really became evident that we cannot ignore this thing called the gut microbiome. So if you were born before 2001, you remember that when you went to the doctor in 1995, they weren't telling you to take a probiotic if you were born after 2001. Nowadays, even your regular doctors can't ignore the importance the gut. Right? So it's a mainstream thing. So here's what I would ask you. Is it possible. Is it possible that the way we handled the gut in 2001 and the way we handled toxins and the way we handled everything in 2001 from a functional perspective has shifted and changed, and we've got better ways to handle things now in 2024. So. Yeah, right. Because it evolves. Medicine evolved. I mean, back in the. In the old days, like ago, hundreds of years ago, we used to put leeches on people's bodies to bleed them out.

Wow.

We don't do that anymore because it was very effective. Right. So things have evolved and we used to always think about, you know, just go right after the toxins, let's go right after the toxins and get them out of the body. But we know now that there's a few things that need to happen ahead of time so that you can successfully remove toxins without hurting yourself. So even the way we. Even the way we approach solving gut problems is different, and the way we approach solving toxin problems is also different. So what I don't want to do is go straight for a heavy metal chelation or go straight for moving, you know, parabens and phthalates out of the body. Unless I've done some preparation and raised the walls before I put the roof on.

Can we talk about what happens when we do that? Because this is a real thing for a lot of my listeners and a lot of. I get the messages, so. And I have a share of a friend that this has happened. A friend of mine was doing heavy metal chelation. She was doing, and she felt like crap. And she kept doing it and doing it and doing it. And then she retested and nothing had changed. And she's like, what was the fricking point of doing that? And then I look at other people that are doing, they do all the right things they think they're doing like infrared sauna. They're doing. They're doing all the things that he talked and they're not getting better. So can you explain how that works together and how this connected?

Yeah. So what it comes down to, I'm sure everyone here has heard about we got to find the root cause. Like, root cause is a buzzword these days. Every time I turn around on Instagram or somewhere, somebody's got a root cause program. We've been talking about root cause in functional and integrative medicine for over 20 years. But it's. It's taken hold. And so we got to find the root cause before we. You know, there's a lot of fancy hacks and biohacking and bioelevating and bio optimizing type things that we can do. But if we're not solving four things, then it's going to take us a lot longer if we just go to those biohacking things. So those four things underlying the root cause of nearly every problem that we have in our health, whether it's cancer or whether it's an autoimmune disorder, or whether it's just low energy and brain fog, or whether it's just a terrible menopause. Underlying are four things. The first thing is chronic infections. Of course, parasites are in that bucket. And they can live anywhere in the human body, not just in the gut. So they can be in your sinuses, in your lungs, in your small intestine, not just your large intestine. They can be in your bloodstream, they can be microscopic protozoa, or they can be bigger worms like what we saw come out of you. The second thing is toxins. So this is all the toxins that you've been talking about on your stories on social media. And then there's, you know, there's metals, there's environmental toxins, there's pesticides, herbicides, there's off gassing chemicals from the paint in your house. I mean, it goes on and on and on. Right. The third issue is nutrient deficiencies. And this is what I always teach is, you know, we think about nutrient deficiencies being caused by farming practices that have changed over the years. So the food isn't. Isn't grown in such nutritious soil or, or it's. People are eating too much processed food. But here's what I would say is that nutrient deficiencies are actually caused by the first two problem infections and toxins. And there's a reason for this. Number one, infections are kind of skimming off the top and taking your nutrients from you. And number two, the toxins are blocking the receptor sites in the cells where nutrients go in. So think of your cells like having doors and windows that need to be open so the nutrients can get in. They're blocked off.

By the way, any of you that are might be rolling your eyes at that. This part, this is literally what was happening to me. Is that so you would have looked at me and gone, said, she's fit. I was eating like per. As perfect as I could. I was eating organic, I was eating natural, I was paying attention, I was taking my supplements, I was working out, I was moving, I was, I was paying attention to the kind of water. I was doing all those things and I was still having issues. And this was why. Yeah.

So the fourth thing is, is really the whole dysregulated nervous system that's caused by things like stress and trauma and all of this. So all four of these things can be a problem. Now if we just go straight to red light or straight to, you know, eboo or straight to and aren't addressing these things underneath, then you might feel a little bit better, but you're not going to completely resolve or have longstanding results. So that's always my goal, is how can we spend the least amount of money on your health and get the biggest bang for your buck? And EO is very expensive. Thousands and thousands of dollars you're going to spend on eo. And it's amazing. And I mean, she's talking about a.

Thing that I shared on social media, but I did it after all this other stuff.

Yeah. Oh, yes. So. So this is a way that you kind of get oxygen into the body and cleanse the blood, and this is one of the biohacking things you've done. So here's the thing, though. The biggest bang for your buck to figure out what's happening in your body and start to unpack those four root causes is a gut test and is a evaluation of the gut microbiome to see what's living in there, what's the inflammatory situation in there, what is the immune system doing? What is holding you back from being able to process your food and make energy from it so that you can heal? So that's what we did with you, is we started with this gut test and we figured out, like, oh, you've got parasites, you've got bacteria, you've got digestive things going on. Yeah.

She said based on what it looked like, I looked like I had leaky gut, too. You saw all kinds. It just made sense. Everything made sense. Even what you saw on my gut. That explained why I was presenting. Estrogen dominance.

Yes, that was. So there's a liver marker there. It's called beta glucuronidase, and it tells us kind of how your body's handling toxins that are supposed to be excreted from the body. And it also tells us what's happening with spent hormones like estrogen. So, you know, so I just. I think it's really important in a public service announcement that we really talk about. All gut tests are not created equal. So I think people may be listening right now. Going, great. I'm going to run out and get a gut test. Not so fast. There's a lot of stuff out. Out there that's a diy. Not okay. Thorough or anything like I did on you. Yeah. You really need to work with a practitioner who understands how to get you the kind of test that can get you those results. If it's a DIY test that you can just go online and buy, and usually they'll give you an eating plan or a supplement, you know, Probiotic. Based on your results, you've got to run far from that makes sense. Yeah.

Okay. I want to shift gears a little bit and ask because I'm just going off of questions that I've gotten, especially since we've done three master classes now together. This is your fourth podcast with me. Like, I'm getting a lot of questions about what you teach and sometimes I actually know them. I'm proud of myself. I'm like, I know the answer and.

Sometimes I definitely don't.

Can you help me understand? I mean, I, I understand. I think. I don't know how good I am explaining it. Why people don't want to just do a catch all parasite cleanse. Because we see people doing that too. Like, oh, just I just went on Amazon and bought a parasite cleanse. Or I just followed this influencer and bought a paras cleanse.

Yeah. Okay. So number one, I'm going to say something that may not make sense, but your parasites are helping you. So the reason that your body allows parasites to be there, and I say your body allows it, because your immune system is very strong and intelligent and it knows how to help you. And if it's allowing something like parasites or Candida or H. Pylori, which is a bad bacteria, any of this number of things, what your immune system is essentially doing is allowing this thing to be there so it can sponge up and clean up toxins. So parasites like to eat and live in toxins, and it helps take some of that toxic burden off of your organs and off of your body, while at the same time it does create a whole bunch of symptoms and problems. But it's the lesser of the two evils. Right? So the parasites are a lesser evil than the toxins hitting your brain or your heart or your vital.

Okay, so this is where, when people think parasites are good for you, they're not good for you. They're just the lesser evil. And they're helping to clean up stuff, right?

Yeah, they're not good for you, but they're helping make a bad situation less bad. But they're creating their own bad, right? Creating other problems.

So, okay, so what happens when someone just does a catch all parasite cleanse? Are they just killing stuff randomly? And then what? Tell me, tell us what happens.

Right, so this is a problem. You can actually cause more harm than good. So not all parasite cleanses are created equal. And one of the things that you want to really do is you want to, number one, you want to support the body before you do a parasite cleanse. So There's a few things you should do ahead of time. You want to boost up mitochondrial energy production so that your immune system has more energy to ramp up and solve this. Once you start killing things, you're going to want to open up the drainage pathway pathways in the body. So that includes the lymphatics, the fascia, the lungs, the kidneys, the urinary system, the bowels. We got to have you pooping. And here we all. We can't do a podcast without saying.

The word pooping poop.

So we gotta have you pooping regularly and really be moving your body. And then how you kill parasites matters. So these guys are tricky and smart, and so you want to, like, hit them and paralyze them and kill them and get them all out in one piece. You don't want them dying and decomposing inside of you, releasing all the toxins back into your body. You really want to move them out rather quickly. And there are very few protocols that actually can accomplish this.

Got it. Okay. Okay. My next question on that, and I. It was actually one of your friends I was following that. I saw this on her social media post. She did, like a series of colonics and she showed parasites coming out with that. Where does that fall into play? And is that one of those later things or is that like kind of a whatever, dumb or it is? I don't know.

Okay, well, that's a great question. So remember I said earlier that parasites can live anywhere in the body, So a colonic cleans out the colon. Well, those parasites, as soon as they realize, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, something's getting disrupted here, what do they do? They move up into the small intestine and they move out through the bowel wall right into your bloodstream. They just move right through your. Your gut is permeable. That's that thing.

So it could get some out, but a lot of them are going to move and hide.

Well, yeah, you're not going to hardly get any out because they're going to scatter. So imagine if you imagine if you had a bunch of, like a bunch of mice eating something in the center of the room and somebody walks in.

What do they do?

They scatter.

Makes sense, right?

These are. They're smart. They don't want to die.

So that's like, even when you have a colonoscopy and you clean, you do take the oral stuff as just going to happen.

They just move right away.

Okay, so it's not an good way to do it. So is that also why, like, when so when people say, well, I had an endoscopy or I had a colonoscopy and they didn't see anything, that's why not.

Yeah, mostly you're not going to see something because they move to the small intestine, which we're not looking at with a colonoscopy. Endoscopy is only looking into the stomach and maybe into the top of the small intestine called the duodenum. But everything else is invisible to us.

So unless you have a full on huge giant tapeworm, they're not going to see it.

No.

And hopefully you don't have that either. Okay, what about when, when people hear you talking or they hear our and they're like, well, I'll just go ask my doctor do to do a test where. What is typical western medicine think of when it comes to parasites?

Yeah. So your doctor is going to order a test called ova and parasites. It's going to look for about three or four different parasites that are considered pathogenic in the western world. But here's a good analogy for you. You're collecting a poop sample, right? That's how this is done at your doctor's office. I want you to imagine you were going fishing and you cast your line in the water and you know there's fish in that lake. You know there are. But you didn't get any bites that day. You didn't get a fish. Does it mean there was no fish in the lake? No, it means that your bait didn't work.

Right.

And so when you are doing a stool sample.

Makes sense.

Number one, you're collecting a stool sample and then you're taking a little scooper and you're actually just getting a tiny little sample of that and putting it in a test tube. What if there was no particle of parasite or ova or any part of the life cycle of a parasite in that sample of stool that day?

Which by the way, that is the test my doctor ordered for me first and it showed nothing. And then like when I did the test with you, it showed all kinds of things. So. Yeah, I can relate to that. Okay, what about. I'm sorry, I'm just gonna I all these like random questions so hopefully they go in order. And when some people say, because you can find anything on Google, right. It says parasites aren't a thing, it's just biofilm coming out. What does that mean? What is biofilm? And do we want biofilm in us and can it look like a paras site?

I think what you're Talking about is mucoid plaque. I mean, this is a big, giant debate in the Western world. Like, what is it? Mucoid plaque can be anywhere along your small and large intestine. And when you're doing parasite cleanses, oftentimes this, like, long, stringy, thick stuff will come out. And there's a lot of debate on what it is. And we think that what it is is biofilms, which is kind of like a force field that your bacteria and parasites will build around them to hide from immune system. Think of it like a mucus layer, and it will also be. It will also be just buildup of stagnant junk in your bowels. We think it's colonies of bacteria, parasites, a whole mix of stuff that's coming.

Up you don't want anyway.

No. And so what happens when you move this, like the big debate of what is it? Is it a parasite or is it a mucoid plaque? Like, what is that? Here's what we know. Know better out than in.

Yeah.

People imagine you. You absorb your nutrients in your small intestine. And if that is plugged up in your small intestine, making it impossible to absorb nutrients, people feel a lift in energy, a lift in brain function. Better sleep, more balanced. Yeah. More balanced emotions when you get this stuff out.

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, you talked about. About pooping regularly. Let's talk a little bit more about that because. And I can tell you, so many women that come through my programs, one of their big concerns when they first start is that they're not going. They're going once a week or they're going every three days. Why? I mean, to me, it's kind of like a logical thing that it makes sense. You just want it out of you. But help us understand, like, why this really is important to be going every day.

So before we even give you a single parasite cleansing herb, we want to make sure that you can eliminate your bowels. And the reason is, because what we're doing in the beginning, before we start moving parasites out and toxins, is we're getting all of your drainage pathways to funnel towards the bowels. So if you think of your skin, you should not have toxins coming through your skin. If you've got skin flares, eruptions, itchiness, scratchiness, psoriasis, dermatitis, that stuff coming through the skin, that shouldn't. It should all funnel towards the bowels. We want. We want. We want waste coming from your liver to go to your bowels. We want waste from your lungs to funnel out into the bowels. We want every, we want a one way path. Your lymphatics, your fascia, all of it should, should funnel towards the bowels. Okay. If you are not able to eliminate your bowels as you're moving toxins out of the cells and as you're, if you try, if you're trying to do a detox protocol without bowels moving, then those, those toxins are going to get recirculated. So back to your friend who said they chelated. They chelated, they chelated and then. And they just never felt better and they still had this huge problem. Well, chances are nobody ever opened their drainage pathways and supported lymphatics. Fascia, kidneys, liver, like all of this so that the toxins could go through the bowels. Now it's interesting when we take people through these protocols, they'll often say like my poop smells like chemicals, my poop smells like metals. My. Like I can. It's because this stuff is moving through the body and out.

Okay. Are what, what happens when somebody does first because this seems to be really popular, they do a heavy metal or mold detox. So I hear that a lot more than parasite cleanses. Like I'll hear. Or gut cleanup. I'll hear. I have so many friends. Like mold is like the thing right now. Like I, I cleaned up my for mold. Like what happens when you do that first without checking gold?

You have mold, you have parasites period. Because your body is going to allow the parasites to live there to help soak up up and sponge up some of those mold.

My.

So mold in itself is not dangerous, but mycotoxins are. Those are the toxins that mold puts off. So if you can imagine if you have parasites, which you do, if you have toxins, your immune system is working hard to keep everything status quo. Right. Like you're trying to keep going every day with your, your day to day. You're trying to be a mom, you're trying to do your job, you're trying to run your business, you're trying to be a spouse. All the things you're doing and you're immune system is trying to keep you going. Yes, it allowed the parasites to be there, but it's also a tax. Like have you ever had house guests that sucked? Like they have to be there because they're related to your husband.

Oh my gosh.

Really taxing you. Well, that's like parasites are like bad house guests. Right?

Got it.

Exact. So I always explain it's like a fine dance. Like we're doing A tango or we're doing a waltz. We need to take some of the load off of your immune system. We need to kill some of those parasites, and then we need to go in and remove toxins. And we need to keep going back and forth and supporting toxin removal, parasite removal, and at the same time, we're simultaneously supporting drainage pathways, removing. Supporting mitochondrial energy production and keeping the gut in shape, because that's Grand Central Station. Your brain and your gut are in constant communication with each other to make every function in your body work.

When. So when somebody says that they, like. So I. I mean, I. I could think of three friends right now, literally three friends that have been on this mold detox for, like, two years, and they are just not feeling better. So you would say it's because they haven't done this deeper work here, and it's just not gonna. It's just an end. They're just recirculating.

They haven't done it in the right order. So we want to start in the right. Just like we're raising the roof on the house, we're not doing that until we have a footing, a foundation, wall, walls. The plumbing and electrical are in. Then we're putting the roof on. So for people that come into our programs that have mold, we definitely want to support that. We start helping that move out safely right off the bat. But our number one goal is to open drainage pathways, support gut microbiome, support brain and mitochondria, support all of this. And then once that's done, we can seriously go in and push mold toxins out. And I've seen people. And I'm not kidding, Natalie, I've seen people actually clear their mold toxins in three to. Well, it's done.

Yeah.

And you look at their test because we order toxin tests, you know, and we. And we see like, oh, here's that. Here they all are, and here they all are not.

That makes sense. Yeah. So it's very black and white when you.

How.

What's your belief of how many people actually have parasites? Because I think you believe, like, most people are walking around with them.

Right. I mean. I mean, they live in an environment with us. Like, there are parasites in us, and our body can usually clear them. Right. Our immune system is made to clear them because we get parasites. Parasites aren't just in third world country. We get in trouble for saying that. Developed countries underdeveloped. Yeah. Yes. Parasites are in. Not just in underdeveloped countries, they're in developed countries as well. So, like, we. I live In San Diego, we're next to the Mexico border. The parasites that are coming from the sewage that's getting dumped into the ocean in Tijuana doesn't stop. It comes right up ocean. Right. I mean, it's just. It's there.

And I just think what I learned, too, because I eat. It's not just from eating raw sushi, by the way, which I don't eat anymore after learning what I've learned, but it's all the organic vegetables, too. Like, it's all the raw milk. It's like, think about the stuff that we do, thinking it's healthy, which it is healthy. But we are still.

Yeah.

Putting ourselves at risk.

There's. There's parasites. Not. It's not just undercooked meat or raw meat. It's in produce as well. It's in our pets, our cats and dogs. It's in. When we kiss people. How do we.

Okay, so this is what I wanted. This is what I wanted to ask you.

So there's.

I can understand now why Pastor I. Rising milk became a thing, or don't eat undercooked food became a thing because it was trying to help prevent a lot of this. Right? But now, being from the health world, we're like, no, raw milk is better for you. Like, you should have raw dairy if you're going to have it. You should have organic vegetables. You shouldn't have pasteurized foods. But so it gets confusing. So, like, what's the ideal state that you eat those things in their natural state, but your body's really good at eliminating? Or, like. Or are we making the problem worse by doing that?

You know, this is a great question. So. So I mean, I think one of the best ways to illustrate this is I work with many clients who eat their salad every day and their raw vegetables, and they say, gosh, I have so much bloat, and I just feel so bad. I say, okay, let's get rid of the raw stuff, and let's have. You only eat cooked things. Now, what is pasteurizing? It's like a cooking process, right? So let's have you eat cooked things. And then they say, oh, my gosh, it's so much better. I can tolerate those vegetables now, and I can tolerate. So it's because the gut microbiome can't handle it. It's a lot more work for those bacteria to break down and ferment those fibers when they're uncooked. And so what people are missing is they've got a disrupted gut microbiome, and they're trying to do all this healthy stuff, but their immune system isn't working, their bacteria.

I was doing, I'm doing all this healthy stuff, but I felt, I was like, what's wrong? How am I feeling? Like, not anymore, but that's how I was feeling.

I mean, just a free tip for all of your audience is if this is you, just stop eating raw food for a while. Just go to eating soups and stews and slow cooked and braises and just go to eating food that's very easy to digest.

They're lumping it and saying it's the oxalates. It's not the oxalates. Always. Sometimes it's, it's, it's this. It could be this. No, I mean that's like the trendy thing right now. Everything has oxid. Got it. I know some people are sensitive to.

It, but, but I mean, I run organic acids tests on people and we don't see it very often.

So it's a rare thing. It's not as, but it's. Yeah. So when some, some when people go to eating like extreme carnivore and they're like, I feel. So. I feel matter because I'm not having vegetables. I believe that this could be a big reason why. Why.

Yeah. So what I learned from a very famous functional medicine doctor, Ann Louise Gittleman. She's like one of the mothers of functional medicine. I think she's in her 70s or 80s right now. One day I was interviewing her like five years ago and she said to me, laura, the diet that heals you is not the diet that will sustain you. Wow. And I thought this was so profound because you get people like, diet is very polarizing. People swear to God their vegan diet is. Is what, is what, Is what healed them. Or they swear to God it was their diet or they swear. But that doesn't mean that you should be on that forever because it's very restrictive of all the other nutrients that our body needs. So remember that it may have helped you in the moment. Being that restrictive can actually cause serious problems down the road.

Okay, so what I, what I want to. I think I've asked you most of the questions that have come in here, but what I want you all to know, this was why it was important for me to do this again is I've been sharing a lot of different things that I'm doing, but this is that foundation. This is the first place to start is gut. Whether you. There's a lot of things I talk about and there's a lot of, you know, age optimizing things that I love. But the gut health is the first place start. I would even put gut health in line with when you're doing my fat loss stuff, like I, I put Laura in my programs because this is so important. Like, I don't think it's just about changing how you're eating to lose weight. I don't think it's just about moving your body. More like this is a critical part because when our gut's working right, our hormones are working better, we're detoxing things better, everything just works better. I know for me, this was huge eye opening. It made all the difference in my health. It, I feel like it brought me.

It's.

I feel like it like reduced my biological age, like 10 years. Like it made me 10 years younger on a biological age just because of how I feel fixing all of this.

And I think we need to make one more point that we always get questions on. Natalie. And it's when to do a toxin test.

Oh, yeah, when do you do a talk? Because that's the other thing. Because I shared when I did a heavy metal and molecular and people were asking and I said, well, wait and do the gut stuff first.

Right. So we get a lot of people from your community approaching me saying, I just want a toxin test. And so I'm a steward of your resources. So that's how I see myself. I'm a steward of your resources and I'm not going to waste your resources. So when we do a toxin test, just right off the bat, that's the first thing we do. We're probably not going to see a lot when we do a gut test first and work on some gut protocol calls and open those drainage pathways and get the body feeling safe to release toxins. When we do the toxin test about four weeks later, we see a completely different picture. So what I did with you was I slowly provoked your toxins. Like, so that's what the first phase of our gut protocols is, to slowly provoke toxins out of you in a really loving, kind way to your immune system and your body so that it doesn't crash your energy. Yeah. Then we can actually see what's inside of you. And I, I get this all the time where people bring me their toxin test and like, see, I did this.

Yeah.

And I'm looking at it going, this isn't even telling us the half of what's going on. Like, we need to repeat this in about four weeks and we'll see some. A completely different picture. So unless you have unlimited resources and money, which most people do not, don't bother to do a toxin test until you've done some.

That makes sense.

Provoking first. Yeah.

Okay. The next question is going to be how do they work with you and how do they learn more about this? Here's what I want you all to do. So this is going to be the fourth time that me and Laura are doing it and this is coming up here in a week. We are going to do our ever popular interactive master class because we are full comedians on there. No, we're not just full comedians. We're we actually teach a lot of stuff on our Laura teaches. I'll, I'll host it. If you go to midlife conversations.com gut midlife conversations.com gut if you have not attended one of our classes before, you are in for a treat. She's going to show you all of about how we get parasites, how we get them, where are they coming from, where are all the places that they're coming in, how do you recognize them and what the heck do you do about them. And she's even going to talk about the proper types of testing all the things. So you want to be on this class. If you've attended a class before, you're more than welcome to jump on again. But we just did one of these a couple months ago and I doing it again because of all the questions I'm getting and the amount of people that were had missed the last time that we did it. So it's on April 8th 8th at 4pm Pacific which is 7 East coast time. But if you go to midlifeconversations.com forward/gut I'll also have it in the show notes here but would love to have you on the class. Not only is she going to teach and you'll get a lot of great information but we're going to stay on and answer all of your questions as well. Thank you so much Laura for coming back yet again. I'm sure this is not the last time. I love learning from you. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thanks for taking time out of your dream day to listen in as my guest. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with friends and on social media. Be sure to tag me and our guests so that we can find you and share the love. I'm Natalie Jill fit on all social media platforms and the biggest thank you that you can give me is leaving a review and hopefully a nice one at that. This will help others find these episodes so we can help and reach more people. If you do leave me a review, please message us at support@nataliejillfitness.com with a screenshot of your view and we would love to send you a free digital download of my DSR journal as a thank you.