The Science of Your Gut: 3 Easy Steps to Reduce Bloating, Improve Digestion, and Feel Better Today

Even before the pandemic, we have an epidemic of burnout. The way our lives are set up, it's set up a fast paced, you know, the diamond lane road to burnout.

Look, I'm excited. You know, you can't help but want to know more about a book than about a concept that says, you know, effing tired, right? I mean, I mean, seriously, how did you, like, come straight out and figure out that burnout was a major problem that we had to address?

Like now, even before the pandemic, we have an epidemic of burnout. The way our lives are set up, it's set up a fast paced, you know, the diamond lane road to burnout. And if we live the life that is given to us, prescribed to us, society, gives to us, we will be there. And so this, when I realized this and I started to change my life, I decided to stick with the things that were working and present them to my patients and present them to the world. Because I really do think that we don't have to be tired all the time and we don't have to hate our lives and our jobs and we can be happy and energetic naturally.

Well, you know, this, this journey obviously took you on, on your own journey. I know there's, there's a lot of talk about circadian rhythms and a lot of really cool things that I don't really think we know, most of us think about because we're so used to just grabbing a coffee cup and chugging caffeine. I know that's been. My journey is probably chugging way too much caffeine. I am curious, is there a disproportionate amount of burnout versus how it affects male and female based on our own biology?

Absolutely. Females are wired to shut down in the setting of stress, shut down reproduction, and it's an evolutionarily sound way for us to not get pregnant during famines and wars. And it makes sense. But in our society that we live in, if we live in that stressful society, then not only do we have trouble getting pregnant, but even women who are not trying to get pregnant will have hormonal problems, will have issues with weight gain and energy and libido and sleep and fatigue. Things that they may think, oh, there's something wrong with me, but a blood testing will show nothing. And this is why I think it really disproportionately affects women much more so than men. We're all fatigued, but women seem to be about 15% more fatigued than and burned out than our male counterparts.

Does it seem like there's a correlation between the types of stressors? For example, I went through a difficult situation a few years back where I had to literally replace my executive team with one of my businesses literally overnight, which was not expected, let's put it that way. Right. And it sent me on about a year and a half or two year journey of just a crazy amount of stress. And it seemed like I was more focused on, hey, can I take care of my team members, make sure everybody's okay. And my wife was more concerned about is my husband going to be okay?

Yeah.

Do the types of stressors play a role in, like, how quickly we receive. We get to a burnout?

Absolutely. The more your body registers this as a threatening stress and, you know, we think about threatening stress like running away from, you know, an animal or war or famine, but in our modern society, it can be something like the pandemic and, you know, the safety of our family and friends. It can be something even, even dietary or exercise. So athletes like Olympic women athletes and male athletes will see major issues with their hormones and fertility and energy levels when they're working at the extremes. And so what I tell people is that your body can't really differentiate the types of stress. It's how you internalize it. So does that make sense that we could all have the same stress and Steven is going to, able to, because he has all these things in place, his body is able to process it and still function, whereas Amy, on the other hand, does not, did not build those systems and the body is in a state of shock and fear and then everything shuts down.

Now, you discovered all the importance of all this in your own journey, obviously leading you to write the book. You've been very transparent about your own journey, but I think it's important for the audience to understand what you're offering is not just knowledge base, but it's actually experience based. Talk to us a little about your own journey, about how you kind of got into this.

When I wrote my book, I started with my own story. And the short story is that like so many people watching today or listening today, I was feeling burned out. But I didn't have time to stop and change anything. My life was just too crazy. And I was always in my head thinking of what I needed to do next. It was like that fight or flight mode all the time. And in that setting, I was too shy. I was embarrassed as a woman to tell my partners that I had to pick up my children from somewhere that closed at 5 and they had decided on an impromptu meeting. And when I finished the meeting, I rushed into the car and drove like a mad person. I mean, we've all been there, done that, and hopefully we're at a place that you don't do that very often. But I felt like my life was out of control. And lo and behold, I got into a huge car accident and it made me stop in my tracks and it made me say, what am I doing to myself? I'm not living the life that I want. I don't feel like I am in the body that I want. And you know, my career, my everything was something that was on autopilot. And so that week, because I couldn't do anything else, I had to sit back and start to really look into it. And I had been a nutrition major as in college before I went to medical school. So I knew that nutrition was a foundational thing that I needed to change, to change my health. And so that's where I started. And I made a lot of mistakes and I failed. But then I found a few things that really worked. And like circadian rhythms you mentioned was one of the big things that I learned. Like, I had no idea that we had a clock in every one of our cells. I don't think this is common knowledge.

It's not. In fact, most people, you know, I think they go, they wake up. I'm an early riser. I always have been. You know, it's from my youth. I remember being an early riser. Whereas my youngest son, for example, he's like most alive at night, which is like, I don't understand it. And we used to get into so many battles because we weren't actually respecting each other's, I guess, circadian rhythm rather than trying to communicate in the middle when we were both awake and coherent, if that makes any sense.

Yeah, yeah. Actually, Stephen, I will say tell you this just to add in, is that most people think that there's night owls and morning people. But if you really put everyone in a cave and they've done this in Sachin Pandas lab in San Diego, you'll find that most people who are night owls are conditioned to be such because of society. Either they work jobs that, you know, they think that they're more creative in the evening or whatever. But most people work, humans in general work on a day and night pattern. And so most people tend to be morning people. It's just that their lives have been shifted through society.

Now, I know some of your work is all about regulating the circadian rhythm, finding the rhythm within your circadian rhythm and kind of, you know, pulling yourself that direction. So if what you, if I heard you correctly, what you just said is maybe some of the aspirations or whatever you have in life is actually on the other side of maybe adjusting or moderating or somehow transforming your circadian rhythm. Is that right?

Yes. 45 minutes a day, you can shift your circadian rhythm. So that's why jet lagged, you know, if you go across the world, it'll take you a few days because that 45 minutes can, like that's the shift usually that happens. And you can do that by yourself by waking up about 45 minutes earlier, getting some bright light into your retina that goes straight to your brain that tells us it's daylight and your body will slowly shift.

Yeah, it's interesting you say that. I forgot, I almost forgot about this. But you know, I know that daylight is one of your big, your big ones, right? It's making sure you get enough daylight. Is that for the, the vitamin D components that it produces or, you know, because I'm thinking about other areas of the country, like, you know, we'll take Oregon for example, or Seattle. It rains all the time. Is there a correlation between higher levels of sunlight versus, you know, lower levels of sunlight as far as how you feel?

Absolutely. So higher. It doesn't have to be bright sun in order for our brain to get a circadian input. It can be overcast. It can be completely looks like a gray overcast day, but that's enough natural light to tell our body that it's daytime. So it doesn't need to be bright sunny. But there are additional benefits beyond vitamin D of the bright sun. You'll always notice that people in the summer months or live in sunny areas, their BMI tend to be lower. Their appetite seems to be more in check. It seems that there is a melanocyte stimulating hormone that happens when you see sun that seems to regulate our appetite and, and that I think a lot of us can easily. This is one simple thing that people can do to help their body mass index and help regulate appetite is get some light, some bright light input and get that MSH going so that we can get better control. And I think anecdotally, I feel like that's true.

Yeah, no, I would, I would agree with you. If, if I have five or six overcast day, like really dark overcast days, I don't feel the same as if I do. If I have five or six days or it's bright and sunny and nice Outside. And I think there's definitely something to that. I want to jump back to nutrition for just a second because here's what I've learned recently in the last six months, I'm doing it all wrong.

That's literally what I've learned. I'm learning more and more about the microbiome. I'm more and more about the importance of fiber and things of that nature. What are we mostly getting wrong about our diet? That's playing into our lethargy and then getting overwhelmed and feeling frustrated.

STEVEN unfortunately, we live in a world where our brains have almost been hijacked by companies that know these neural circuits to hunger and cravings. And so it's not your fault, really, that you're probably One of the 95% of Americans who don't get enough fiber. And that's true for all these, all of our rich industrialized countries is we're not eating enough fiber. And partially it's because our brains have started to seek more refined foods, because that's what we learned brings pleasure to us. And it's almost like I say, it's not your fault because we live in this world where people, companies know this neural circuit. They know that if they give us things that have high sugar, high refined carbohydrate content, we, our brains will crave that more. So part of it is just like reprogramming our neural circuits. And how do, how do you do that? It eat foods that don't have such high refined carbohydrates and such high amounts of sugar so that you can learn to get pleasure from other foods. So, you know, I think a lot of people can say, like, for example, me, I used to go to Starbucks and I would order these drinks with, you know, 50 grams of sugar, and I would crave them. I literally would say, oh, I'm just going to get one once in a while. Once in a while became few times a week, and then sometimes it was every day. And then I had to actually consciously detox myself from that. And now if I taste those drinks, I'm like, what? I was really addicted and it was really a craving. So start by understanding what your cravings are, what your cravings are doing to you. So identify what you're eating that is craving based and not hunger based, and then start to add more fiber into your diet. Fermented fiber is the best, which is like sauerkraut, kimchi, natto pickles. But pickles have to be fermented and probiotic, not just pickled. That means the Real pickles that were in the bin and not just put in the refrigerator.

And start by adding in fermented foods every day. Add in fiber foods every day. So six to eight serving of vegetables is what I recommend, which is a lot for the typical person. And start there.

Yeah, no, so I. I'm gonna get just your take on this. So I enjoy. I actually enjoy. I'm one of the weird people. I enjoy wheatgrass. Like, I. I don't have. I don't mind doing a wheatgrass shot. And I've been told that one wheatgrass shot, a couple ounces or so, is the equivalent of eating your daily consumption of vegetables and fiber and some of the nutrients. Is that true or is that, like, kind of a falsehood?

Well, I think you can definitely get a ton of antioxidants from the wheatgrass, but you wouldn't be getting the fiber unless you're chewing it.

Okay, all right. That makes a lot more sense. The other thing I wanted to kind of pivot on just a little bit is, you know, my wife and I, we just discovered recently several documentaries that scared the mess out of us because it was about GMOs and how everything that we basically eat has a. Is somehow tied to a gmo. Either it's a modified corn that's then turned into cornmeal that's then turned into cookie. Not cookies. Well, cookies, ketchup, a lot of other things. It's also being fed to the animals. The animals now have that stuff in it. Are the GMOs. Is. Is. Is important to our, you know, making sure we don't have a leaky gut, because I've been told that that actually can intensify inflammation and increase leaky gut.

This is a great question. This is a question that's still up for debate. So what happens is there's a lot of people trying to capitalize on both sides of the story, Right? So some people want GMOs to be the problem because they can either make money off of the non GMO stuff, or they can create an audience. And then there's the other, the status quo, which is basically that we don't know there are definite risks, or there's definitely questions out there about what it's doing. But do we really know what it's doing? No. Do we know that it's probably not a good thing? Yes. Do we know that it's definitely horrible for you and you will die if you ingest them? No. You know what I'm saying? I think from my standpoint, Looking at the research, I don't think that there is strong enough evidence yet that we should completely take them out of our lives because in some ways they can be helpful.

Well, that's the thing is, you know, they said the original reason behind creating, you know, especially corn, I think it's kind of where it started was to basically come up with a way to feed the world. It was going to allow the crops to grow at greater paces, you know, and things of that nature. And I think, I think I didn't get as concerned until I started figuring out all the treatments that go on the plants like the Roundup and stuff like that. That seems like it's causing more of problems to begin with. And you know, if you look at when GMO was created and Roundup was starting to be getting used and then, you know, gosh, Alzheimer's and all these different things kind of rise almost like parallel as far as a rising cases, as a rule of thumb. So what are your thoughts on how we're currently treating with like Roundup and stuff like that?

I'm absolutely on board with what you're saying. I think what we don't realize is that there's a lot of things that happened at the same time. You know, we 100% roundup is not a good thing and we should take it out. It's not something, something that we should be treating. We shouldn't have pesticides so bad that farmers actually come down with respiratory diseases by just inhaling them. We should have a better idea in 2021. We should have better ways to protect our plants and our crops that are not going to seep into our system. So I 100% agree with you on that. I think that what we have to realize also is that, you know, moving some things that people can do just right now on a personal level is start to eat less grains in general. I think that, you know, whole, whole foods, even, you know, foods in their whole form are just so much more nutritious and don't have as much of the concern as the grains do and the processed meats and dairy does that. I think that if we shift our diet a little bit away from the processed dairy, meat and grains and more towards whole foods, automatically you're going to improve your brain health, your gut health and your hormone health.

No, I love that, you know, and I think that's great advice because I've noticed a difference. My wife and I have been changing how we eat just in general, we're trying to eat less GMOs of course, less gosh. Gluten. Less gluten in general, we've all but cut out sugar for the most part. The sugar we can find. Sugar's into so much stuff, it's ridiculous. And I can tell you that I did a ketogenic scenario, cut down not that long ago. And going back to one of the things you said earlier, when I went through that process I used to consume, it was normal for me to have a couple of chocolate chip cookies in the evening or something like that. It was just my nightly routine. I like cookies. In fact, I was kind of like a quasi cookie monster when I was a kid. But when I cut that out and I went without it for probably close to 60 days, I could actually taste how sweet some of that stuff was where before I could barely taste the sweetener in it.

It's amazing how the shift happens. When you start to eat differently, you start feeling better. I do a intermittent fasting. I'm not sure where you stand on that, but on a regular basis, I typically start eating at 2 and I stop eating at 8. And as a result, I'm typically more focused, clearer. It took me a couple days to kind of get rid of the, what I refer to as the false hunger. Used to eating these processed foods and craving that gunk, you know, how does that sound? As far as, like, you know, at least trying to go the right direction to do this right.

So you may not know this, but my Instagram handle is askingmd because I had taught, talked about fasting and people were like, wait, what? What are you even talking about? So what I like to pair, and what I talk about in the book very clearly is that circadian rhythms and intermittent fasting can be paired together to get double the benefits. So anti aging benefits, weight loss benefits, mind body benefits. So kind of what you're saying is like I say cut off your meals at a certain time. So the circadian, we're not meant to be eating, you know, two to three hours before bed evolutionarily, genetically, you know, metabolically. So say if you stopped eating at 8 and that was two to three hours before bed, that would be ideal. And you really want to be doing a nice overnight fast. Now what you're doing is a very, very advanced fast because you're only really eating six hours a day. For most people, I would say start with even just not eating for 12 hours a day, do a 1212 and just start there and see how you feel. I mean, I remember when I first did the 1212, I thought, oh, so easy stopping, like food by 8 and then not eating until 8 in the morning. And guess what? It was super hard because I was used to these late night snacks or a little something before wine or some, something before bed. And then I worked myself up from there and I saw huge benefits. And so that's something that I really, really believe in.

Yeah. I mean the crazy part for me is in the, in what I'm doing is the amount of mental focus it gives me. Yeah, it seems like, you know, I used to, I'm a big, you know, I grew up like everybody else. Eat three square meals a day and you'll be good. And then you go through, you know, high school, junior high and into, you know, what would have been college for most people, not for me. But then you go into the young, we'll call it young adulthood. And then it's like eat six times a day, smaller meals, right. Portions. And I always noticed that every time I, every time I ate I would have about a 30 to 45 minute window after I ate where I was kind of like not necessarily sluggish, but kind of foggy.

Yeah.

And I found that to be very tricky in the terms of trying to make sure that, well, I was being my best.

Yeah.

So when it looks at, when you look at peak performance, making your mind, your body and everything that the whole connection operate at peak performance, what do you think are the top three things.

We need to be doing for peak performance? Number one is syncing to your circadian rhythm. So getting that light in the morning, getting darkness at night, stopping your foods, eating like your last meal, two to three hours before bed, maybe doing a fasted workout in the morning. So really sinking your circadian rhythms is number one, I think paramount. Number two is eating for gut health. I think everyone knows now that the microbiome is the center of our health and we don't pay any attention to it. If you really want to be productive, you really want to fix that mind, gut connection. Because absolutely everything that you're thinking and how you're concentrating and how you feel comes from that connection. So really doing, working on that gut, mind, gut connection. And then, and then the third thing is, you know, the mental health aspect. I think mental health.

We'Ve never learned in school how to manage emotions, how to manage, you know, what do you do when you fail and then you have to pick yourself back up. And I think we, unfortunately a lot of us learn from experience and mistakes that we make. But if you want to be at your peak performance, you got to Be able to drown out the negative things that happen on a daily basis if we keep getting emotional about everything happens. I mean, you can't run a business, you can't run anything when you are not emotionally mature. So that's something that I think is, is, is key in medicine that we don't talk enough about.

I love it. I love it. You know, it also brings up something else I love about your book. When you talk about healthy boundaries. It seems like a most. A lot of the emotional trauma that we. That comes in our life on a daily basis is 90% of the time, at least in my life, is caused by me saying too many yeses, not saying two noses. Two noses, two nos, too many no's. Right.

You know what I mean? Yeah.

Talk about healthy boundaries and how people can begin to set those up for themselves. I know you have a pretty hard stance on healthy boundaries and it's benefited your own life.

Listen, I grew up as a South Asian woman and we are taught as women in general and South Asians, you have to be nice to everyone. If someone's mean to you, you'd be even nicer. If somebody wants something from you, you have to be selfless and you have to give everything you have to somebody else. Your family needs you. It's. You have to be there for them. So it took me a lot of years to realize that unless you protect your own personal mental health, you cannot give to others. And so if there's someone in your life who is chronically bringing you down, bringing your energy levels down, I didn't know that we have control over that. You can stop giving them your energy. You can rearrange your life so that you don't have that person as a roadblock, literally a roadblock to your goals. And I know you can relate to this and I can relate to this. There were specific people in my life and are that work as roadblocks. And we need to learn to put up our own boundaries. And so they, you know, you can't control them, but we can control where our energy and concentration and time goes. And that is, I think, something that I learned pretty late into adulthood. And I think it has changed my life.

I learned late in adulthood myself. And you know, part of the biggest problem was is these were the people that I struggle with the most that I would have the hardest time saying no to or not setting healthy boundaries to were people in my own family. And as a result, you don't realize it that maybe you're on your own journey and it's okay to say, I love you, you're amazing, but I'm over here for right now. I almost had to, in a roundabout way, kind of train my parents in a way to kind of hold them accountable. Because growing up for them was very different than growing up for me in that, you know, in their lives, we used to have this old lie called family helps family. Know what I'm saying? Family helps family. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, that's one of the things that I think is so great about everything you're doing. I like the fact that you're bringing everything together. You're bringing nutrition together, you're bringing the importance of light together, you're bringing the importance of the microbiome. I mean, you're bringing all of it. Where can everybody actually get the book?

Everyone can get the book anywhere books are sold. It's called I'm so effing tired. You can go to I'm so effingtired dot com. You can find it there. You can find it on Amazon at your local bookstore on Audible. There's also my personal website, which is amymdwellness.com and I actually have kind of a free program going on right now, a 60 day free program for people. They can start at any time. So that's@amymdwellness.com as well.

Rock on. Rock on. I got one final question for you. What is the lasting legacy you hope to leave in the world?

I hope my lasting legacy, I hope is that I was able to influence change in medicine as we know it.

I love it. I love it. Well, Dr. Shaw, I appreciate your time today. I know you got a hard stop and you got to run to some other appointments, but you are welcome on the show anytime to bring your genius, and I am sure we can change some lives together.

This is so great. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

All right, take care. See you later.

Take care. Bye.

If you love that interview, go ahead and check out this next one right here.

Whenever I feel those moments of shame.

And I mean I feel them multiple times a day, there are times I just got to step back and I got to go.

Wait, wait, who said that?