A Recap On Balancing The Body

Balance Body Podcast with Sherri Griggs, owner-operator of Balance Body Medical here in Omaha. Sherri, how are you doing?

John, I'm, I'm a little tired. I just got back from a wonderful conference, but otherwise I'm doing great. How are you?

Oh my gosh, this, this year has been crazy, and I feel like it's kind of coming to a crescendo here. Like, you know, it's near the end of December. We've done so much through the year, not only talking about, you know, with you, hormones and balance and what everything does in the body, and we're kind of learning about all these different things, but there's so many exciting new things coming out. I felt like— I don't know, I just feel happy that we're able to spend a little time and just talk about life and longevity and things that we're planning on doing.

Right. I mean, that, that literally, I was just at the American Academy for Anti-Aging Medicine, the Longevity Fest it's called. And there are just so many amazing things that we're learning and ways to increase our healthspan, right? Because we've increased our lifespan by decades as humans. But one of the things they quoted was that the last 7 years of our life will be spent in ill health on average.

Really? 7 years?

7. Yeah.

Wow. It makes sense when you think about it. I feel like— and we had a little precursor discussion on this, but like, I feel like Just how I know how we spend our lives. You know, we're young and dumb and we make all sorts of crazy decisions and we do, you know, nutso things when we're younger. And then I feel like the trend is to sort of become healthy or live a healthier life as you start aging because you start feeling some of the pain from the decisions you're making.

Yeah.

So, yes, when I think about it that way, it kind of makes sense that sort of near the end, it's a little bit more, you know, sick and dealing with that. But 7 years sounds like quite a long time to be dealing with sickness.

If you think about it, right? And, you know, as, as in our conversation before we started recording and talking about, you know, well, you've, you've done all these things to your body and you've damaged this and that, our bodies are amazing. Our bodies heal so well, but just like anything, as it gets older, it gets worn out, right? Organs get worn out. We don't make as many peptides as we used to make. We don't— our cells don't regenerate like they used to. We have damage to our DNA. There's things that we're predisposed to because of our genetics that start to take place because our bodies aren't able to regenerate at As well as they were when we were younger and things were fresher. But there are things we can do, right? We can support our bodies and replace peptides, replace nutrients, replace things— hormones. Like, we talk all the time about hormone replacement.

Mhmm.

And we learn— for instance, one upcoming talk will be about oxytocin. That's another one of our hormones that we lose And Dr. Lindsay Berkson talks about, because of the toxins in our world, how babies are being born without oxytocin and some of the changes that she believes she's seeing. So that will definitely be an upcoming podcast on how our babies are being born already in a deficit because of it.

And it does seem not just from a baby perspective and deficits From being born, it it does seem as if more people that are younger tend to need a little bit more replacing, right? So you've told me in the past that your age range for you know working with somebody and doing hormones used to be more like you know it was like forty-five and up or or higher and and then. Now it seems to be anywhere above 30, you know, could be a good time to start replacing because you start losing it so early. Um, I feel like that also leads into us trying to make sure that it's less of a burden for our older selves because we're trying to take care of ourselves and, and give our body what it needs as We're aging so that we can age a little bit more like fine wine rather than degraded oil.

Well, if you think about it, right, when wine is aging, it needs to be in a good environment, right? You need to have the right environment. If you sit it, you know, put it in a freezing environment or in a terribly hot environment, you're not going to— the wine's not going to do very well. And when you think about that, think about our bodies as well. What kind of environment Are we saturating our bodies with food toxins, alcohol? In fact, I just saw Dr. Mark Hyman say that I think that alcohol consumption has gone down 40%. It's really, really dropped.

Really?

Because of all of the, you know, news about cancer. And I would say we've all known this, but it hasn't been as publicly spoken or advertised or marketed or whatever you want to say. So I think the general public all knows now, and a lot of people are making changes because of that.

Interesting. That I, I, I'm sure I've heard it, but it didn't register with me. So that's interesting.

Yeah, just a few months ago, it was big news. You know, alcohol causes cancer. Drinking alcohol is, you know, one of the number 1 causes of cancer, but We know that it damages cells and damaged cells are cancer, right? And it reproduces and it reproduces damage because we damage this DNA and these cells are damaged and then they, they grow differently and they're damaged and that's cancer in a very simplistic way of explaining it.

So things that we're learning and things that we're seeing. that help us to— do you think the things that we're doing, like replacing hormones and, you know, adding more nutrients to our body and eating right and working out, all these things, does that help diminish the amount of time that we're living sick at the end of our lives? Is that something that you heard, or tell me more about this?

Yes, definitely. It definitely— so let's take, for instance, you guys have heard me talk all the time Tom O'Brien, The Autoimmune Fix. I've quoted that book all the time. Well, Dr. Tom has written another book called How to Fix Your Brain. Talks about lipopolysaccharides, and these lipopolysaccharides help bacteria and biofilm, and they can get through the blood-brain barrier and they cause cell damage. So he talks— and that will be one of them that we will talk about— what these lipopolysaccharides are, How we can test for them and what we can do to prevent the damage and to get them out of our brain. So I'm looking for a photo to show you here. I was so lucky. Here I am with Dr. Tom O'Brien. Yeah. Look at that. Yep. So that was this weekend. He signed the book for me, How to Fix— you know, You Can Fix Your Brain. You Can Fix Your Brain. And so he said, I really, really highly— Sherri, promise me you'll do these tests. And there are 4 tests that you can do. And I haven't— I literally just got home last night at midnight, so I haven't even had time to, to look it up. He talked about them in his talk. And one of the things he said for his patients, it's very interesting, that you could do at home starting today. He said apple pectin. Apple pectin helps Clear lipopolysaccharides out of your brain. He said, "I have my patients chop up, you know, cut up their apples, chop them up, put them in a pot, fill about a third water, boil it, soften them, add some cinnamon, and eat that every day. Applesauce, or eat an apple. The old 'an apple a day keeps the doctor away.' Well, now we know in this instance there are many things. There's fiber that the apple helps us with." It's healthy fruit. It's, you know, we now know that it can help clear these lipopolysaccharides just by eating an apple. So it doesn't have to be some crazy expensive supplement or, you know, anything like that. It could be something so simplistic. And that can help it. That would help increase your health span. Right? Because It can protect your brain. And we know there's so much dementia and memory loss issues with that. So that's just one of the things you can do. And we'll get into that deeper on another, another podcast. And I got lipopolysaccharides, oxytocin.

Yeah.

Couple more things coming up.

Oh my gosh. We get, we get, we're building an entire calendar for next year.

Well, and so some things that people can, can look for, We've talked about DNA in the past, right, for your weight loss journey. And so I'm planning to dig even deeper into DNA and offering a program that I'm still busy developing. My plan was to meet somebody who already had this program developed. I didn't, that I know of. I still have a lot of people to follow up with. But we— it can check. And when we do the podcast about that, we'll go over everything. But it can check everything from Whether or not you're genetically prone to a blood clot, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's, and other brain atrophies that are completely different. You need completely different things to support your body to prevent that from happening because you already have the genetics for it to happen. Right?

Oh my gosh! So an even deeper dive into the DNA than what you've already got, which by the way, the DNA. plan that you have structured currently is a deep dive into how our bodies are structured and able to— how we're able to work with ourselves, with how our DNA is set up to make better decisions and easier things and plan accordingly to what we're already built for. So, right, an even deeper dive would be crazy.

Yeah. And, and yeah. And so, so when we did Sures, right, we looked at Neuro, so we could look and see some of the things because we know that some people, anxiety, depression makes them want to eat. So when we look at the neuro aspects and this weight loss program, we can see, are you somebody that might be more prone to that? So we have to watch for that and support your body and support your neurotransmitters to prevent that. But then also food. So Are saturated fats a kryptonite for you? Are they something that are not good for you? So maybe an Atkins diet wouldn't be for you, right? Eating every piece of fatty meat you want to. Okay. Other people do good on that. Different body types. So like for you with your satiation, we are going to look at— let's see if we can look at— Either we would look at your body helping. What we don't know is your leptin hormone, which is what can help you feel full. Are you lacking leptin? Is it strictly a genetic thing, or is your body leptin resistant? So if we can do things to increase leptin sensitivity and levels, and that still doesn't change it, Because we know you're genetically predisposed. Could that be why? Sure.

I mean, shoot, that sounds good to me.

Right? So learning those things. Well, and like you've said, you knew at Thanksgiving that you wouldn't feel full. It's not so much of eating because you're trying to feel full. You're eating to fuel your body and knowing that you've eaten enough and that you're not going to feel But you had that knowledge that you didn't have before.

Right. And, and it's so, it's so silly because— well, I don't want to say it's silly, but in my mind it makes so much sense, and yet I never thought of it. I feel like sometimes we're a little too close to the decisions that we make or the things that we don't think about that we do based on not just our DNA but how our body's structured. That once I had a name for Or maybe not even a name, a culprit for why I do the things that I do. It made it easier for me to build a defense against that, or at least try to plan around it. Like, you know, take what we were just talking about with Thanksgiving and upcoming holidays. Like, I love these holidays because it's about food and you can eat as much as you want, and it's, you know, you know, no holds barred. But at the same time, this year it was easy for me to just take one plate and then be okay with it. And I don't— I lived my entire life with this, so you would think that it's something that would be easy for me to notice about myself, plan around. Even though I do know that I'm a plate cleaner, or a plate cleaner.

Um.

I just never helped myself until I took that test. We got to the bottom of it, and then it was just black and white. It was on paper. It was, hey, you don't feel full even though you are because you have this thing. You have this predisposed condition to do that. And then it was like a light bulb, even though it shouldn't have been. I don't know. I don't know why I'm working through it here live, but like, it just seemed so weird to me that once I found that out, it was a little bit easier for me to plan ahead and plan accordingly.

But we're all like that, right? You said you've had it your whole life. So, to you, that's just how you were. That's just who you were. And many times they've told people, eat until you're full and then stop, right? Eat until you're full and then stop. So maybe somewhere there in your psyche was this, well, if I'm hungry, my body must still need food. Right? Because they would tell us, you know, if you're full, stop eating, or don't eat until you're hungry. But then the problem became that you're hungry all the time.

Right.

And then it becomes a habit and you don't realize you're doing it. And then all of a sudden, you know, you get this awareness that this is something about you genetically. This is something you can't change, you can't fix, right? You manage it.

And it— that, that one distinction changes, or at least changed how I looked at it, and it helped me. You know, there's other things, other tools people tried to give me when I was younger too, like drink a glass of water and then you'll feel full faster, or, you know, eat more bread, it will expand and then you'll get— you'll feel full faster. Like all the solutions were to just get to the point of feeling full rather than just you're never going to feel full, just stop. And I don't know why, but I never thought of that myself either. So it just— I didn't mean for this to be the case, but I feel like if anybody's interested in knowing myself a little bit better, take the DNA test that you have because you will get so much information. It's so helpful.

Awareness is the first step, right? They always say, well, admitting you have a problem or admitting this, how about being aware of it, knowing it? You know, never do I recall, even, you know, when I was in internal medicine and any of the jobs ever working in nursing, do I recall them saying, well, some people just don't feel full. Just stop eating. I've never even heard discussions. I don't think I've even read anything about it. Right?

Mm-hmm.

It's not out there in mainstream. So you can understand why people were telling you what they were telling you because they just thought that You just needed to do something for your body to feel full. Never did anyone say, well, maybe that's just how you are.

I think that, I think that, um, a part of this flip from trying to solve sick medicine and, you know, being healthy all the way— there's a better name for it, I'm sure— but, um, you know, a big part of your plan is First thing is to eliminate, do the elimination diet and figure out what you're allergic to or what's, you know, hindering your progress right out of the gate, right? Food becomes so central to the fix, whereas it's not even a part of the discussion when you're talking to your doctor other than, oh, you're fat, stop eating. It's like, you know, what side—

Right.

What side of that is Helpful in any way, shape, or form.

I eat less and exercise more. And, yeah, it, it, you know, it's so— you— I literally was just talking to another clinician, clinician, and when you talked about how food becomes so central, she was frustrated because she had this patient that her, her estrogen, her hormones have been great, and then all of a sudden they weren't. She had all these symptoms of too much, and she's telling— asking me about fixing this. And I go, it's not the hormone. Something has changed. Did her diet change? Did this? She goes, oh, her diet. She quit eating well. And I said, well, that's the problem. The problem is not that she's getting too much of something. The problem is that her body's not clearing it because she's no longer eating for her body, right?

Right.

Food is meant to fuel our bodies and not meant to be social. We've made it social.

Yeah.

And we've made it all about treats and, you know, they say foodies, but food really is meant to fuel our body. And as I said to her, I said, here's the problem. You cannot out-exercise Or over-supplement a bad diet, right? If you do not eat healthy, and when you talk about the 31-day elimination, we're eliminating the most inflammatory foods. There's still a lot of food you can eat, right?

Right, right, right.

And finding out what causes inflammation. Most people lose around 10 to 12 pounds in that 30 days because they're losing a lot of fluid and inflammation. But, but knowing that People used to— I can remember this. Well, this piece of cake was 300 calories, so that means I need to get on the treadmill for X number of minutes.

5 hours.

The olden days, right? But knowing, quite frankly, the damage that that sugar did and that gluten did is not going to be fixed By getting on a treadmill.

I saw, I saw somebody on social do a really great representation of calories your body burns throughout the day versus how you burn it from working out. And I don't know what they used, honestly. It looked like it was like clear toilet paper rolls or something. And I think it was just pure sugar or some sort of white substance within it to show, like, represent calories. And they put them out on the table and like, it was just like the body burns X number of calories just living was like the biggest bottle, right?

Yep.

And then the workout bottle was like this little tiny one.

Right.

And it was just like, so, you know, how are you going to represent this in the gym? How are you, how are you getting rid of, you know, more than this when you go and work out if you're working out every day? I thought it was a really great representation.

It is a representation, but, again, that's calories. That doesn't count on what did the sugar and the gluten do to the body.

True. Yeah, totally true.

So that's where we— my old, and, you know, probably the 3rd or 4th time I've done, right? 100 calories of ice cream, 100 calories of broccoli. So it's not calories in, calories out. It really isn't. I mean, there is something to be said for it, but it's not because that ice cream and the sugar, the dairy, the fat. And then there's broccoli. There's the nutrients, the fiber, right? So one is very good for your body and the other one is very bad. And again, this amount of broccoli and this amount of ice cream. So that doesn't mean that you can't ever have ice cream. everything in balance, right? You have to figure you're going to balance it out. So if I'm going to eat something that's going to be damaging, then the other 95% better be stuff that's healing because I need to heal that damage I did, right?

And I think that encapsulates fully what I think it's like working with you, which I love. Like, It's finding what balance there's going to be because there's always a give and take. Obviously, with my own health goals, I'm trying to lose weight, be healthier, live longer, right? Longevity is a part of that. But also, you don't make me feel bad when I go on vacation and tear my body apart because of 5 days of bad eating. Well, which I won't.

Yeah. Because it's your choice. In fact, that was also part of that discussion with her because she was so frustrated. And I said, they're adults. She said, but I feel responsible. And I said, you're not. They get to choose, right? John, you get to choose you want to go on vacation and tear your body up. That's your choice.

Yeah.

But you don't do it every day. Again, I am the first person to say, but you still have to live because you still will die.

Right.

And people say, but you wanna— what's your quality of life going to be? That's a balance. And I told her, I said, you just have to accept what these people wanna do. Educate them. I said, educate this woman. Tell her, you, because of these symptoms, that tells me that your body's not metabolizing that estrogen. That means it's being recirculated through your body, which can be toxic to you. We need to clear that out. This supplement can assist in that. It's very expensive. This is your choice. You can continue to eat the way you're eating and feel like crap, but I can try to make you safer by at least clearing that estrogen out. Right?

Mhmm.

And I, I told her, I said, I have another patient that has, that also has autoimmune Hashimoto's, but she doesn't wanna go gluten-free. And I said, that's okay. But let me tell you, I'm gonna say this once, and then I'm never gonna say it to you again. You will get another autoimmune disease. Probably celiac's, maybe multiple sclerosis. You're aware what that is, right? Yep. Rheumatoid arthritis. Painful, debilitating, disabling. I don't know when, but you will.

Yeah.

And that's all I'm gonna say. I've educated you. You know what the consequences are of your actions, and I will support you. And that's all I'll do. And next time I'll go, are you gluten-free yet? Nope. Okay. And on we move. Right? Because then when she's ready, if she ever becomes ready, maybe it'll be the next autoimmune disease that'll make her ready. Then we can do the prevention for further autoimmune diseases.

People are going to make their own choice. That's for sure. Yeah.

And I'll never judge.

Right.

In fact, you know, we were talking about my journey and getting back to the gym and how much muscle I had lost. Well, eventually I got to get that going and showing people I'm not perfect either. You know, I, I don't eat perfect. I like my sparkling wine. You know, I wasn't going to the gym like I should be. And so You know, just making choices. And now I'm getting back to the gym. I'm already going back. And I tell you, I worked out Monday— oh no, Wednesday. I worked out Wednesday. I felt so good all day. I felt good the next day. And yes, I was sore, but I felt good.

Yeah.

Like, wow, I forgot how good this was.

Yeah, it's funny how that is. But I always, I always look at life and decisions that we make and, you know, things that we do almost like in mathematics is the sine and cosine, you know, the waves.

Yeah.

Good decisions, bad decisions. And I know it when I'm in the middle of one of my good decision waves, like when I'm going to the gym and have a regular schedule doing things that I need to and eating right, like I feel so good, and I know I'm like, this is so great. I just need to keep this wave as long as I possibly can because I know that there's going to be a dip.

Right? And, and it— you do, you feel so amazing, and but then something comes and, you know, knocks you off track.

And you never know, many of us, sometimes you don't know what it's going to be either. That's the thing.

You don't know. No, too many. And then too many of us don't get back up. Right? It could be cold. It could be a trip, right? It could be anything. And the point is not to give up. Don't say, okay, well, now that I've done this, might as well just do this. Just get back up and get there and do it. You know, we're hardest on ourselves.

Totally. I think we judge ourselves the harshest. And we just have to keep that positivity going forward, I think. So, yep, this will be what 2026 is, is a year of positivity, right? Like, absolutely trying to get everybody on the same page of making those good decisions.

Right. And so many, you know, exciting things that we'll have coming up in the podcast, the one about the DNA testing, the very extensive DNA testing, and I'll go into all of the different disease processes. I really want to talk a little bit about the Alzheimer's and the cerebral atrophy, the different things that we need. Because I was talking to somebody who said they were taking all of these supplements and doing things to prevent Alzheimer's. And I said, that's great, but what if your genetics don't— you're not predisposed to Alzheimer's, but you're predisposed to this other cerebral atrophy? You're still going to get dementia.

Right?

Yeah. It might not be of the Alzheimer's type, but you'll still have dementia because you weren't doing the things you needed to do. So we'll get into that. We'll get into the other hormone, oxytocin. How important that is, but oh, how picky that little hormone is. We'll get into lipopolysaccharides. We'll talk about, you know, being able to fix your brain and what Dr. Tom O'Brien is telling us and has learned. So those are just some, you know, 3 things that we'll be coming up with to help you have a better 2026 of positivity and moving in the right direction.

Oh my gosh, I love it. I can't wait. I can't wait till we talk about those things. It's going to be so much fun.

It'll be so exciting. And, you know, in the meantime, I am offering— it is a DNA weight loss special. It's only $500. You'll get your DNA test, your consultation, and your follow-up. You can go online and schedule a telehealth appointment if you're not in the Omaha area. Now, this is not going to be as extensive as that test, but it'll be like the one that, that John did, where we learned about, you know, what what he needs for his body so that he can be healthy and lose weight. Because we know not everybody needs a GLP-1 and not everybody needs a Contrave or something. They— we all need different things. So that's what that test is about. And, um, www.balancedbodymedical.com is the website. You can sign up there.

I highly recommend, even if you're not planning on Signing up for like the DNA weight loss package itself, sign up for 15 minutes, talk to Sherri, and just get an idea of like maybe you have one or two questions that you have on, you know, if you don't necessarily feel ready and you're not sure why, or maybe you have a question that really is like hinging your decision. Like just set up a time to call Sherri because that's going to be hugely impactful once you get a little bit more information, get to talk to Sherri one-on-one like I do every week.

There you go. So, all right. Well, we will talk to everybody next week. And next week, I think we should talk a little bit about oxytocin and what, what that hormone I'm looking at. Okay. That'd be the 23rd I'm looking at. Okay. What is next week? Yeah.

Christmas.

Is it the 23rd? 22nd, right?

Yep.

Oh, I'm just so confused. Yes. Well, next Monday we're going to talk about oxytocin.

Sounds great. Can't wait. Thank you so much, Sherri.

Thanks, John.