Your DNA Blueprint – How Genetics Shape Your Health & Hormones Ep4

Welcome to the Balanced Body Podcast, where Sherry Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness in Omaha, talks to us about health, wellness, and balancing hormones. All right, welcome to the Balanced Body Health and Wellness Podcast with Sherry Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness in Omaha, Nebraska, hormone expert extraordinaire. I kind of tripped up on my own words there. Also known as the MacGyver of hormones. How are you doing, Sherri?

I'm doing great, John. How are you doing?

I'm feeling good. I mean, we're on, uh, we're on, on the very first few baby steps of my journey into the world of, you know, health and wellness and balancing hormones and I have a whole bunch of questions about my own personal journey, but I'm— to answer your question quickly, I'm doing well. Thank you for asking.

So you're in— you're at 3 weeks now, right, of the elimination?

Yes. Yeah, so, so real quick, just to kind of paint the picture if anybody has not followed the journey, we started treating me for not only Um, just testing our hormones and seeing where I'm at and if I need to do anything to balance that. But also we're taking sort of a weight loss journey forward, right? And a part of this is to start off with an exclusionary diet where I'm getting rid of— and tell me if I'm missing anything— but corn, grains, any kind of gluten, soy, dairy, eggs. Sugar, starch like potatoes and stuff. Yeah, when you lay it out like that in a list form, it feels insane because it's like, what can you eat?

But yet I gave you 2 pages of all the foods you can eat. It's lots and lots of food, you know, and, and those are the most inflammatory foods for our bodies. And so You're taking all that inflammation out of your body, and there's all these other foods you can eat when you're not eating the inflammatory stuff.

Well, and I asked the question, what else can you eat? But honestly, you're right, there's so many things. And I think it just depends on, like, you have to change. It's not just a change in diet initially, it's a change in sort of habits. The habits I've had to build You know, and Lindsay helping me build healthy habits, shopping at the right place, buying the right kind of things, and then planning ahead. All key on this exclusion thing because you just can't really— there's nothing in the pantry that you can eat, but you can't just open the pantry and then start nomming on something because you have to kind of plan ahead. So, right?

Because we're getting rid of the processed foods, we're getting rid of the foods that we know that Food is becoming a big deal, right, with some of our— and not to be political, but, you know, we have Mr. Kennedy that's really talking about our food and the health. How do I want to put that? The healthiness of our food. As I told you, I am tongue-tied today, so this should be very entertaining. But the, you know, how healthy our food is for us. And that's one of the things we have so much processed food. Like you said it exactly right, John, when you said just being able to reach in the pantry and grab something. Or habits where we go to my one networking meeting on Thursday mornings and someone's brought donuts, right? It's that habit. Well, I'm just gonna grab a donut and have some coffee. You don't do that anymore.

That's true.

Because there's all kinds of evil in there, right? There's the sugar, there's the gluten. Who knows what they're using for oil to fry that in? Just, just right there putting the toxins in your body. And have you found— are you So I think you— I believe when we talked last week, weren't you already starting to, to feel better in general?

Yes.

Now that you've got another week under your belt, what are you finding now?

It's, uh, so, so being 3 weeks in, one of the first things I didn't realize, and you're gonna laugh at me for saying this, but I just, I didn't realize that the exclusionary thing would be such a big change in habit, right? Like, I didn't know— even though you had said that we're gonna get rid of things that are likely to be inflammatory, I didn't think I was going to be changing my diet. And I don't know why I didn't think that. It just— it was like a disconnect in my own brain. Talk about being tongue-tied or, you know, not prepped. So when you were like, all right, things are changing, here we go, Yeah, I was like, oh my God, we are eliminating everything. And I can tell you that it does. I do feel after 3 weeks better.

Okay.

Um, I've already lost weight. Something that you've always said about, you know, when people jump on this is like you automatically lose weight because you're kind of getting rid of inflammatory, inflammatory things. Like, because you've changed your diet— and by you I mean me— since I've changed my diet and I'm eating a lot more fruit and veg and things that are not processed, I have lost a bit of weight. Like, it's just a part of the process.

Yeah.

So, and I don't know why I didn't think that. I mean, am I the only one? I feel like I might be the only one that's like, yep, now we got to change how we eat, so we're changing everything and excluding a bunch of stuff. But I think it's good because there is obviously something, I think, And we'll find out what it is that I am either allergic to or have some sort of inflammatory inflammatory response to that I was eating because I have just I feel a little bit better brain fog is not so strong good first week on the diet it is I felt like a zombie which was crazy I don't know how I got anything done um it isn't like it's calorie restrictive by by no means are you told you you know can only eat this amount or you have to Restrict your calories.

You can eat as much as you want. You just— as much of the food that it— that's not inflammatory. So it might have been that you just had so much toxicity and inflammation in your system that as it was starting to clear out, you know, some people almost have like a—

DTs.

But, you know, they— it's almost like a rebound effect where they're taking some of these foods out that they were functioning on.

Yeah.

Their body was functioning on. And sometimes it can be bad bacteria or bad things in your gut that's functioning on, and now it's starting to die. I do know, um, I had a patient come in that whenever she would cut sugar out, she would get deathly ill, like sick. So she'd have to eat sugar again. So one of the conversations I had with her is that you have something. And we, we didn't end up testing her. She didn't end up going forward. But I'm like, you have a bacteria probably in your gut that loves sugar, and when you stop the sugar, it dies. And as it starts to die, we get what's called a Herxing syndrome and a die-off syndrome. And so as it's dying, the toxins are being released into your body, and it can make you feel achy and sore and nauseous and flu-like until it clears out, till your body clears it out. And that's why you also Do the shake and the supplement to help support your liver. Okay, because should you have some die-off, we want to make sure that your liver can filter that out for you.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And honestly, that would make a lot of sense that that's happening or happened to me because I mean, as you know, I was eating a lot of sugar before and That is one of the bigger parts of what I think has been hard for the exclusionary thing. What's funny is when I was talking to the nutritionist, she was saying that I would look at the end of 4 weeks and be like, I need an egg. And while I could eat an egg, I'm not necessarily not anti-egg or anything. I, I tell you, I'm more excited about things that have sugar in them more than anything else, including like You know, corn and gluten and all that stuff. So we'll see. We'll see what, if anything, I can still eat afterwards. But it's good too because it's a long enough time to to make a change to the habit. I think. I'm hoping.

Yeah. I'm hoping.

Let's I should say I'm hoping.

Well, you know, it'd be best if you never added sugar back in, right? You know what? And I don't remember if I told you about this last time that. There have been studies and they talked about how before, you know, the people, the people that lived in Mexico, our Hispanic population, that they weren't fat. They didn't have a lot of diabetes until they started. I mean, and they ate corn until they started eating our corn, right? And why is that, do you suppose? And that's because of the modification. And how we've changed our plants so that, as my friend who is a seed supplier said, yes, but our food is cheap. Why? Because we've modified it so that it can fight pests and it can fight mold and mildew and all this stuff so that we have larger crops. But then it also does bad things to our body too.

Mm-hmm.

And, and that's been one of the examples that That is a perfect example of a— see, tongue-tied, can't say— a group of people that didn't change how they ate. They ate the same way, but it was where it came from.

Yeah, the difference in the supply.

Mm-hmm. And what it has done to that group of people that now has a very large incidence of obesity and diabetes.

Hmm.

That they didn't have before.

Man, that's crazy. But I could believe it. I can totally believe it because, yeah, I tell you one thing I have realized with this journey is that I'm completely addicted to sugar.

Well, and the hope is that, you know, once you get past that addiction or you feel good enough that you don't want to feel that bad again, Yeah, that's true. That, you know, yes, you love it. But what I have found myself being gluten-free for several years— and when you're gluten-free, you're pretty much sugar-free in a sense, unless you're going to grab a handful of Skittles, right? But you're avoiding a lot of the baked goods and things— is that they don't taste as good as you thought they did. They don't taste as good as you remember them tasting. And you're like, oh, this isn't worth it.

It's true. I think that's one of the things that I had always had trouble with before with, um, other kind of diet things. Because again, this isn't necessarily diet restriction or caloric restriction like you were saying. And that's one of the things that, uh, made this— I don't want to say easier to do because it's not necessarily easy, but like much easier to take because If you're cooking down a thing of kale and you put in, you know, some tasty items in there to other vegetables and roots and, you know, clean chicken sausage or whatever, like you could still, you just eat as much as you want because how many handfuls of kale can you stuff down your gullet? So, right.

So you're not hungry at least, right?

You're not hungry, you're just eating differently. And again, to bring that back around, I just didn't understand that it was going to be a bigger pro— like a bigger part of this process. So that, that kind of leads into my question, uh, which I discussed a little bit ahead of time with you, but is— so we had talked last time about gut health and how a lot of this changing of diet and letting our internal gut biome restructure because we're not assaulting it with all sorts of crazy stuff.

Right.

Made me start thinking about like other hormones and what, if anything, they're getting out of this change. Like, how is it affecting other parts of my body? Because I do feel, like you said, better. But like, I do feel better.

Yeah.

What other parts are being affected from this change?

Well, if we think about this, there's so much that's being affected, um, right? The microbiome— we're allowing the gut to heal. but then also inflammation. So when you have inflammation in the body, that causes you to hold on fluids and then causes you to gain weight and hold on to fat. And if we really wanted to get technical, there's types of fat, you know, there's your brown fat, white fat, all of those things. But the other thing it does is, as it gets toxins, so by eliminating all of these foods that are See, brain is gone again. By eliminating these foods that are, you know, you can't grab out of the pantry anymore, these foods that are processed, you're eliminating toxins out of your body. We know that when we have toxins in our body, they will sit— toxins will sit on hormone receptor cells so that they can't use the hormones you do have in your body as well. The toxins also can bog down your liver, right? And your liver can be sluggish, and so it doesn't clear them out as well as it can when you have so many of them.

Mm-hmm.

So someone will find, for instance, let's say we'll use alcohol. So alcohol is a poison, right? It's poison to our body. It's why people feel drunk. They feel the way they do. But if your liver is sluggish and it's slow and it takes longer for your body to metabolize this and get it out, because that's the liver that does it, then you don't feel good. But you might find that even drinking in moderation— let's say you decided to have 2 glasses of wine one night or 2 drinks of alcohol and you didn't feel good later, or you didn't feel good the next day— that's probably because your liver is not working as well as it could.

Mm-hmm.

And it's not getting the toxins out because alcohol is a toxin. So we're What we're doing or what we've done is we've also given you the shake and the supplement that helps to clear the liver, right, to support it and to clear the toxins out. So you— and not only have we cleared them, but you're also not putting more in.

Mm-hmm.

So now you have fewer toxins in your body and your body is what we call cleaner.

Hmm, interesting.

And so it allows it to work better when it doesn't have a bunch of toxins and poisons floating around in your system wreaking havoc. Hmm.

And I tell you, I do— the, the place that I feel that most, because when you were explaining the cortisol test and how I feel during the day, and it's more active during the day, or like when you wake up you have the highest levels and then it kind of like goes down and then you have a crash at the end of the day?

You should.

Yeah, you should have that. Yeah, um, I can tell you for certain I didn't have that before and I do have that now. Like, I am way more— I— and it's not like I always thought, because you explained cortisol as like your feel-good hormones It wasn't that I was like really, really happy at the beginning of the day and then really like down at the end. It's just activity-wise, by the end of the day I'm like ready for bed, and then when my head hits the pillow I'm like out in 2 minutes, you know? Crashed.

So you're sleeping better, or at least you're falling asleep easier?

Yes, totally falling asleep easier.

And this is all by taking out the inflammatory foods?

Yeah, totally. I mean, and it— and, you know, I mean, does— so cortisol obviously had that, that change, but like these toxins going through and sitting on receptors, that's affecting like all of them, like the thyroid and, you know, the others. It's crazy.

Yeah, yeah. And, and as I tell people, and we haven't even started yet, We haven't even started balancing nutrients or balancing hormones or or doing any of that.

Yeah, because so that's gonna be after we figure out what I might be allergic to. And so the process of that, I think we walked through super quick. But this will be happening like next week or in a few days after next week.

So so what will happen is once I have all of your results back. So you're doing this while we're waiting for all of your test results to come back, right?

Right.

And that is preparing your body should we need to add any nutrients or add any hormones. We're now putting all of that into a clean body. It's like a reset. You could call it a reset, right? We've reset your body. And that way, when you are getting these things, we will know that you're going to be able to use them to the best of your body's ability. We're giving it the best chance to work. If we need to replace a hormone, we're giving that hormone the best chance to work for you. And we'll also know at that point that your gut is going to be healthier, which means that you'll be able to use the nutrients better. Just, it's just a really good reset and that overall you're starting off at the ground level of things being As good as they could be. Now, depending on what you start, so, and generally people, I see them, not always, but generally I see them before they start reintroducing some of the foods. So, we will get them started on what they're doing for their treatments, depending on what they need, before they start reintroducing foods. So, they're not, um, I mean, they are independent of each other. So let's say all your results didn't come in and it was time for you to start reintroducing foods. You can go ahead and do that. You don't have to wait for me to start treating you to reintroducing foods. And at the same time, if I get your results before it's time for you to reintroduce, it's okay for me to start treating you before it's time to reintroduce because you'll still be towards the end of that elimination and your body, as you said, You've noticed a difference even from week 2 to week 3. It's gotten better. So you're still getting better and better and better as you're going along. And as I've said, hopes are that some of this stuff, you'll, you'll never go back. That doesn't mean you can't eat sugar again, but you don't want to get addicted to it again.

Right. Totally.

Because I'll still have— there is a local baker here. It is Oh, what are they called? Crumb Cake Bakery, and they're down off of 114th and Dodge, and they do the most amazing raspberry almond cherry muffins, and they are gluten-free.

Hmm.

But they are not sugar-free, and I love them, but I might get some and freeze a couple and allow myself one a week. But now I haven't had them in probably 2 or 3 months.

Yeah.

And I don't crave it. I don't crave the sugar. But I do know that when my friend and I, Valerie, would go on a cruise and I would eat dessert every day because I was on vacation, then I would crave dessert every day. Right. So the occasional treat won't turn you into a sugar addict again.

Sure.

You know, and I know you've got, I mean, you're selling Girl Scout cookies. You got sugar. I mean, my gosh, you can't eat the cookies this year.

I know. Tell me about it. You saw the picture, but I mean, my basement is full of cookies.

And you can't eat any of them.

I can't eat any of them. And you know what you can do? You can smell them through the box when you are on this exclusionary diet because your sense of smell is back.

Right.

Oh, so I'm smelling them all.

Smell has improved. Is that what I'm hearing?

Yeah, it has.

Wow. See, I've not heard that, that your sense of smell has improved. So that tells me something was really assaulting your body, probably that your sense of smell. How's your sense of taste then? Has that improved as well?

Um, it's different, but it's not necessarily improved or Anything. Like, it's not like a stronger sense of taste. Um, so as an example, I always used to have like hot sauce or something by me when I'm eating something.

Uh-huh.

Um, maybe not always, that's an exaggeration, but like a lot of times I'll put hot sauce on stuff. With this eating clean, I haven't necessarily been using any of it. I think mostly because it has a lot of sugars, uh, in them. So I've kind of just Added that to the exclude list, but I'm not necessarily wanting to reach for hot sauce either. So that's interesting.

So maybe your taste sensitivity, because you may be tasting more flavors than you tasted before, so you don't feel like you need the hot sauce to make the food more exciting.

Yeah, possibly.

I also smell better. If your sense of smell is improved, yeah, normally taste goes with that.

True. It's true. I also have noticed that, um, like, I used to not like apples, and because apples are approved, I'm getting that for my sweet area. And I'm like, I even made my wife laugh the other day. I was like, where have apples been? Because I was eating them and I was just so, so happy to have whatever it was that was in there, right?

And, and she's a pretty clean eater, isn't she? Just has been, or—

because we're doing this together, so she's helping me to not feel left out from eating things, which is— I feel lucky. I feel lucky to have that.

That's good, because then, you know, she's— it's not just you being the only one that's eating a certain way and trying to cook for yourself, whatever, you know, the Kids, it's different, right? But it's not bad to teach them to eat eat this way too.

It's true. I can tell you that they hate it. They they hate that we're on this exclusionary diet because they keep wanting me to try you know things that they have. Uh huh. We got them we got them fast food the other day, and my son was like just one just one. Uh, chicken nugget. And I was like, no, I can't have any of that. Like, I can't have the chicken, I can't have the breading.

Oh, and those are horrible anyway. They're not even real chicken. Those things are awful.

It's true, but you know, I used to eat them, so, um, so, okay, so Yeah, week three is coming up or in the middle of right now, and then pretty soon it'll be time to test and see what I don't like. And I hear that it comes on strong too, so maybe that's what we can plan to discuss reintroduce reintroduction next time because then we can like go through what signals I'd be looking for because when I was talking to the nutritionist, she said very vaguely, your body will tell you. Yes, and it's different, and it sounded like it was a lot of different things.

Yeah, and, and everyone is different, um, but we can talk about some of the things that people have experienced when they have, you know, reintroduced stuff, or, you know, thought, well, it didn't sit well, so I've continued to stay away from it, and then I had a little bit and this is what happened. So we can definitely talk about that, um, And then we'll be talking about your results.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that would be exciting to discuss.

Yeah.

Anything terrible on there yet? I'm just kidding.

Yeah, I, I, well, I can say you will live for us to do this next week.

Yes, thank you. That is good. Perfect. Okay, if somebody else was listening to this and said they wanted to be on the same journey, one of the best ways they could do is to fill out a form or schedule a 15-minute call, which is on the site.

Balanced Body Medical. Go to balancedbodymedical.com and set up a discovery call. It's free. We can talk about your potential journey or what you might want to do. Um, you can also go on the site if you'd like to schedule a consultation to come in. You're welcome to do that as well. And, uh, but if you don't live locally, just start with a discovery call.

Get you, get you talking to Sherri, and you can explain your sitch, your situation.

That's right.

Perfect. Sherri, thank you for the time, and we're excited for a whole nother week to live life on exclusions.

That's right, and we'll continue with John's journey.

There we go.