215 Magdalena Wszelaki: How To Cook For Healthy Hormones

You know, when we start feeling better, we just can't stop. You know, you get addicted to feeling good. And then the whole idea of buying another slice of pizza or doing takeout from a Chinese takeout where you don't know what the hell they're putting in the food, it just becomes gross. Because I will ask myself on a regular basis, like, what do you need? And the body will tell me. And so, you know, like I said, we get addicted to feeling good. And just listening to that and honoring that is my biggest thing right now.

That's Magdalena Shalaki, and this is episode 215 of Wellness Force Radio. What's up, my friend? It's your host, Josh Trent. And welcome back to another episode for your weekly access to global experts in all things wellness as we discover the physical and emotional intelligence we need to live life. Well, in this podcast, we're talking about hormones and cooking, which at first glance could be deemed as separate silos. But as you'll learn on this special edition physical intelligence podcast, that cooking for hormone balance has a direct impact on healing a compromised immune system supporting better digestion. And by the end of the show today, you'll have a higher level of intelligence with some actionable things you can do. As soon as you're done listening to the podcast, that'll give you a true starting point to set this clear path for understanding how to balance your own hormones. If you're experiencing brain fog, weight gain, digestive issues, this podcast is brought to you today for clarity by our partners@intelliskin.net, which is actually so perfect for today's show because the foods that we eat are just as important as the breaths that we breathe. And from these last 200 shows plus, we understand that if we're not breathing correctly, our wellness can suffer. But most people don't realize that posture is actually the number one factor in taking proper breaths, as well as our body's natural systems functioning. Well, if your shoulders are pulled back and you're breathing through your belly and through your diaphragm and your nose, research has shown that that belly breathing, specifically nostril breathing, has the potential to lower stress by 30% or more throughout the day. And you could do this easily now by getting a tactile response reminder from this technology, this smart compression. It's something that I learned about last year from Dr. Tim Brown, the co medical director for the North American World Surf League. We interviewed him on episode 137 where he talked about this smart compression, this human technology. It's A top, a garment for men and women that you wear in either as a standalone workout shirt, but there's also travel and undershirts that you can wear as well that will literally give you a tactile response so you can pull your shoulders back so you can stop slumping and stand tall. Give this human technology smart compression a test drive over at intelliskin.net, use code WF20 for 20% off your test drive to pull your shoulders back, use code WF20@IntelliSkin.net and once you're breathing correctly then it comes to the food that we eat so we can start feeling and living well by Magdalena is gonna share with us the different types of symptoms men and women can be experiencing when they have hormone imbalances, estrogen dominance, why it's one of the easiest hormone imbalances to undo and its relation to our thyroid function. How cleaning products these toxic cleaning products can be disrupting our neurotransmitters. The purpose of doing an elimination diet as a first step to eliminate problematic inflammatory foods. How Magdalena revamped her diet, skin care, community and lifestyle to heal our own health conditions to now lead a community across the world doing the same. We also got practical on this show. When you're traveling, when you're making dinner, what do you actually do to promote healthy hormones? Magdalena believes that the real healing comes when we address both the physical and the emotional hurt and our gut and hormone health comes after that show. Notes from today are@wellnessforce.com 215 Share this podcast with a friend or a family member, somebody who maybe is at work that needs support in what they're working on in their wellness. And over the next 30 days, if you personally are calling in support for your own wellness journey, you're struggling with something you're working on more energy, you're letting go of weight. I want to talk to you on the phone. I want to learn about what you are personally struggling with in a 20 minute call over the next month for a limited time, for the first 20 people that sign up for a 20 minute call, I will pick your brain. You get to pick my brain for an ultimate Q and A. I wanna learn about you in this conversation so I can understand how we can grow this community and I can serve this community deeper and more practically and also together, how we can become wellness warriors. That's what this world needs right now. It takes a wellness warrior to live our life well in this world. It's not set up. Our current environment is not set up. For us to be emotionally and physically intelligent and healthy. It takes a wellness warrior like you to create that. So let's jump on the phone for a 20 minute call where I can support you. Just go to wellnessforce.com call the first 20 people that sign up. I cannot wait to connect with you. I wanna know how I can help you the most. Wellnessforce.com call for all my fellow wellness warriors out there. Now let's jump in with certified nutrition coach and founder of Hormones Balance, Magdalena Shalaki. Magdalena Shalaki, the nutrition expert and founder of Hormones balance, a nutrition practice that teaches women how to rebalance their hormones with nourishing food. But what's really fascinating about Magdalena is that she became a cooking for hormones balance global leader in educating women and men about the power of food for their healing. Yet most people don't know that her mother actually hated to cook. She learned about this so much in her own path. Magdalena, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I loved the piece that you picked up from the whole book.

Yes. You know, this book, it's just this beautiful guidebook for people to balance their hormones, food. It's such a powerful piece of the wellness wheel. You know, we talk about this on the show so much today we're focused on the physical intelligence, our eating, our moving, our sleeping. And in this eating category, a lot of people don't know that when hormones are off, it doesn't necessarily even matter what you're eating until you address the underlying cause. And we're gonna dive into that today. Now I wanna learn a little bit more about you live on the show though. You're in Boulder, but something tells me you're not originally from Boulder. Where are you from originally?

Yeah, so I was born to Polish parents. However, my father had an expatriate job and so we bounced around the world. That's why it's kind of hard to pin my accent. And it can change depending who I talk to. But, you know, I spent most of my life in Asia and so very formative years, like age 15 to till I was 32. And that really impacted how I look at food because in Asia, food often is used. There's a very thin line between where medicine begins and where food ends.

You know, in Asia, their food quality is probably incredible compared to the general school systems that we see here. Would you say that's true?

Very much so. And you know, with a little caveat that things are changing, you know, in China, with a single child policy, you have, you're beginning to see Obese children, which China had never seen before. So it's changing, but you're right that there is still a lot of great options. Definitely better than what we have here.

Yeah. And it's fascinating to me because so many people that write in, you know, they have children, they're caring for young boys, young girls. And the number one thing that I hear is I can't necessarily take care of them when they're away from my home. If there's Cheetos, if there's unhealthy food at schools, if they're at parties, whatever it is. Let's save some time in our upcoming conversation to talk about a parent's role in structuring, you know, eating habits for the child when they're not at home. Let's dive into cooking for hormone balance. This is a practical guide. This is a practical program. 125 recipes. Are these all handwritten? Did they all come from Magdalena's brain?

Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

These recipes, they're all in alignment with healthy hormone balance. But, you know, we could go so many different directions today. I'm excited to. Let's just start 30,000ft, though. When we look at commonalities between symptoms, what are some of these that are aligned with hormone imbalances? Let's start with a high level view of maybe a handful of symptoms that women could be experiencing when they're having hormone balance.

Yeah. So you know what I think, Josh? That's a really great question. That's such an important question because I think most women have an inkling that something is going on when we have things like PMS or infertility going on, or when we are sliding into perimenopause, where our periods are just where the word normal doesn't apply for those few years, we'll be sliding into menopause and we walk into a room and forgetting why we walked in there. I think most women have have a pretty good understanding that hormones are at play here. Right. But there's a whole host of other symptoms that we don't particularly connect to hormones because the common, you know, the pop culture, if you will, hasn't done that. Doctors don't talk to us about it. And it was part of the inspiration to create the book. So let's just dive into some very specific ones. You know, the way we look. So everything from, for example, storing fat around our hips or carrying it around the belly could be specific hormonal imbalances. Like, for example, the woman who is a pear who just cannot lose that Weight around her thighs and butt is your typical. That's typically estrogen dominance, and we can talk about that condition later. Somebody who's storing a lot of fat around her belly. That's a typical metabolic issue that's caused oftentimes by high sugar levels, high insulin, high testosterone levels in women. Speaking of how we look, the quality of our hair, which is such a big deal for women, can be dictated, for example, by the thyroid. The fact that we can have facial hair, growing our chins or nipples, which is so devastating for so many women, that can also be due to hormonal imbalances. Quality of our skin, for example, skin that starts to sag and we're beginning to lose muscle. That can be due to estrogen dominance, low estrogen or low testosterone levels, but also mental stuff. So how sharp are we? Foggy brain, Forgetfulness, or on the contrary, will be good memory. How sharp we are in our thinking, but also how optimistic and how much of a positive outlook we have on our lives can also be dictated largely by hormones. Something that a lot of women don't realize, like things like depression, anxiety, foggy brain, can be due to a whole different host of different hormonal imbalances.

Yeah, I know. So many people are probably raising their hand or they're driving in their car and they're nodding their head because depression, foggy brain, skin issues, fat storage around the waist and hips, and even hair. I was talking with a friend yesterday, and she was telling me when her hormones were off, her hair was actually coming out in the shower. It was freaking her out. It was like hair in the Dr. So let's talk about the hair, specifically when we look at your work. And we're also gonna dive into your story. I know you've had an incredible story, Magdalena, of overcoming your own health issues, but when we look at the hair coming out, what typically is that? What are they missing and what do they need?

Yeah, so hair is interesting because it's not, you know, it's not just a cosmetic thing. Some women will be like, oh, you know, I'm just so. I don't wanna be pedantic or be, you know, overly concerned about my look, but it's really a sign something is going on. So if it's a hormonal problem, because, you know, it can be due to toxicity or low vitamin levels or low biotin, there could be a host of different issues with hair, but from a hormonal perspective, it's typically the thyroid. And when we have a low thyroid function, the hair starts falling out and it generally tends to be all around and especially on the sides of the head. And if a woman is balding right in the middle, like the crown kind of balding, we call it almost like a patch that starts developing. That's oftentimes due to high testosterone levels in women. And oftentimes women who lose their hair on the crown, they also begin to grow hair in the very unwanted places, you know, like the upper lips, chins, nipples, et cetera.

Yeah, that is not a popular place. No one wants that to happen. I'm curious, can we talk about the high testosterone then? Because in my mind, I would think, okay, with more testosterone, maybe the hair would actually be thicker and fuller, but that actually can cause an imbalance where the hair falls out on the head and grows other places.

Yeah. So, you know, the word is balance, right? We don't want to have too much or too little of any hormone. And even as women, we need testosterone. And you guys, you need some level of estrogen as well. So it's not like that. We don't need any of those hormones. The question here is of balance with women. High testosterone typically happens when we have high blood sugar levels. That's your typical fasting glucose. When you go and see your doc, it's going to be on a high side. Or the marker that I prefer to use is called HA1C. That's much more accurate in blood sugar levels. And women like that tend to have elevated blood sugar levels, which then what happens is there is a hormone called sex hormone binding globulin. Just bear with me here for a second, but just want to show you how it's all connected on a biochemical level. The sex hormone binding globulin will be very, very low when we have blood sugar levels, and hence it doesn't bind the testosterone. So that woman like that would have so much of testosterone in her body that will result in that. Hello. As I was talking about. And that unwanted hair. But it's not just the ha. Let me just kind of look back just for one second about the symptoms, because I think it was such an important question you asked. And I want to talk about some of the symptoms that are really very disturbing. And a lot of women don't realize that that's due to hormonal imbalances. High testosterone, for example, can also be causing things like polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is the leading cause of infertility in this country. And doctors give us then horrendous medications that do a lot of destruction to the Liver and our gut in order to control that symptom. Or they put us on birth control pills, which has got its own set of side effects, most of them very negative and especially in the long term. But you know, Josh, even things like fibrocystic breast or breast lumps, which almost every woman who I know had either fibrocystic breast or a lump on her boob at some point in her life. And I can tell you that, and I'm sure you know this, you know, for having women in your life, that is one of the most. Is the scariest moment in your life when you find that lump. Right. And, you know, it's just the whole confusion about how do I get it diagnosed and who do I go and see? And you get scared by the medical institutions, right. And then, guess what? Fibrocystic breasts and lump on our breasts most of the time are caused by a condition called estrogen dominance, which is one of the easiest hormonal imbalances to undo. And if you wish, we could talk about that later. But also things like breast cancers. 90% of breast cancers in this country. And mind you, one in seven women will get breast cancer in this country, which is the highest that we've ever seen. And it's not going away, by the way. Our diagnostics are getting better, but the condition itself isn't getting any better. Most of women's breast cancers, Josh, are estrogen dominance. We call it estrogen receptor positive breast cancers, which are due to estrogen dominance. Again, as a condition, the fastest growing cancer in a country is a thyroid cancer. You know, and it's not. Most of them, they don't, they don't metastasize. But, you know, most of people will lose their thyroid. Right? It's gonna get. They're gonna get a full thyroidectomy and they're gonna lose their thyroid, which means that you have. You're dependent on hormone medication for the rest of your life. Right.

Okay. What is going on? It seems like there's a cascade of cancer rising not just with thyroid, but with breast and everything else. And if we trace it back, Magdalena, it really comes down to the foods that we eat and the emotional state that we're in. This is really powerful because I almost wann to ask this big question of, like, what are we eating? Is it the plastic in the foods? Is it the phytoestrogens when people pop something into the microwave, like, what's really going on when we look at estrogen's role in these types of cancers.

Yeah. So, you know, we like to point things, to point things to one thing, right. And the truth of that, Josh, is that there isn't one thing. But you mentioned many of them. It's a lot of times it's the perfect storm, right? Is the contribution of a number of different things all happening at the same time. Starting off with genetic predispositions, and I want to just stress the word predisposition. It means that you're inheriting a loaded gun, but something needs to still pull the trigger, right? And pulling the trigger. So for example, just to give you an example, like I have all the genetic predispositions to be super, you know, to have all the estrogenic cancers. So that will be breast, thyroid, ovarian, uterine cancer, all estrogenic cancer. And by the way, prostate in men, before I forget, because we talk about women a lot here, but a lot of women have partners and husbands who have prostate issues. And guess what? Prostate issues in men are due to estrogen dominance as well, right? And not to mention men boobs also estrogenic issues, right?

Men boobs are just as least popular as the hair on the lip for women. This is not what we want.

And I can tell you, men are beginning to get a lot of breast cancers now too. So, you know, anyway, so to answer your question, yes. So it's a combination of how genetically predisposition, you can get that done through like testing through 23andMe and then get somebody to interpret the results for you. You know, like you said, the xenoestrogen. Xeno as in. Comes from Greek, as in outside, external, external estrogens that come in from the mainstream brands of skincare products, cleaning stuff. You walk into, you see the brands that are advertised in all the major magazines and tv, those are the brands you just don't want to touch. That stuff is just loaded with chemicals that will be contributing towards estrogen dominance. But looking also, what we're putting, what we are eating is equally important. So when you don't eat organic food, right? Everything from the pesticides and fertilizers that we are using, all of that can be turned into the unbeneficial estrogens in the body. Lastly. Well, not lastly, but birth control pills, another humongous contributor, another one which a lot of us don't realize is stress. When we are stressed out, we produce cortisol. Cortisol steals progesterone in women. Progesterone is there to offset estrogen's work. So when we are depleted of estrogen, right? And you know, just to Give you an example, for instance, and I'm sure a lot of listeners will relate to this. And every, almost everyone, I think, has, knows somebody who experienced a family who's been trying to conceive for like five, ten years, Right?

Yeah.

And they just can't. And they do everything from, you know, Chinese herb to standing upside down and see, you know, do IVFs and whatever, nothing works. Right. And then they give up and then they go and adopt a child. Right. And then boom, a year later she gets pregnant. And that happens to a lot of adoptive families. And that is a classic case of somebody who was so stressed out for wanting to get pregnant no matter what, that finally when she falls in love and there's peace and love in the family, there's bonding, her hormones re regulate and she has sufficient progesterone of her own then to conceive. And so that's a classic, and this is just a good example of how. So stress can also bring down our hormones just to a total, you know, to really, to destroy the balance. Now body.

This is so cumulative. There's so many pieces to this thing too. And I want to connect a few dots because you've already shared so many gems here. We're talking about really this estrogen dominance factor, how that feeds into cancer. And then also, you know, the stress aspect, how we're sleeping if we're not repairing and restoring our brain health and our emotional health too. And so the plastics that we're putting in the microwave, that's just one piece of it here. Whether it's plastic or sleep or these stress conditions, this is what's actually rising the estrogen in the body, correct?

That is correct. And I'm happy you mentioned stress. That's another. I wouldn't connect sleep directly to estrogen dominance per se. But put it this way, if you have especially things like issues with your adrenals, which are really the mother of all other hormones, then it can pull and support all other hormones all at the same time. When you're not sleeping sufficiently or you're having poor quality sleep, you can't fall asleep or you're waking up in the middle of the night, you know, waking up tired, there is just no hormonal balance when we are sleep deprived, period. You know, so that's another element here. But everything you mentioned, you know, it's like I said at the beginning, it's this perfect storm. It isn't just one thing.

Yeah. This gut repair that you talk about in the book so much, there's incredible detail in this cooking for hormone balance. There's not just recipes for foods that'll help balance hormones. There's also your story and there's these tactical, pragmatic, really nuts and bolts things. I think what confuses people so much, Magdalena, is they go, okay, I know the story, but tell me what to do when my feet are on the ground. Tell me what to do in the kitchen. Like, how do I do this? On a day by day kind of step by step approach. You have this hormone foundation where you take someone through a gut healing guide and elimination diet, followed by the sugar balance, then liver detox and then refining the hormone balance. I think so many people will go to a naturopath, they'll start doing sublingual drops, they'll start throwing a bunch of supplements into their body without ever addressing them. The gut first. Let's talk about the first step people take when they really see where they are in relation to these hormones and balancing with the gut.

I'm so impressed you actually read my book. So. Yeah, no, you're right. And you know, just in defense of naturopaths and because I have a lot of friends who are in that space, you know, a lot of times us as patients, we are to be blamed for tactical solutions or walking away with 20 bottles of supplements. Right. Because a lot of times people, that's what people expect. Instant results, instant healing and naturopaths. So many of my friends who are naturopaths and integrative docs will say if I ask my patients to change their diet, they're never going to come back. So your listeners are in a very small, in a sliver of the population who are actually willing to make any changes. And kudos to you for doing that because it's going to pay off for the rest of your. To me doing things like some bling goal, for example, B12 or whatever you're doing, it's a little bit like imagining when your house has a leaky roof. And the B12 is a bit like having potpourri in a house or slapping a bunch of paint on where the mold is developing on the wall.

Yes. I like where you're going with this metaphor. I love this.

Yeah. What I have done is having worked with so many women over the years, what I've realized that. But it's not about the dim. Dim. For example, if you have estrogen dominance issue, a lot of docs like to integrative docs will give you dim alde methane to help you metabolize estrogen better and that can Help. But if this person has got messed up, digestion, chronic digestive issues, and let's talk about that in a second, and is binging on living on sugar and coffee, right? That dim can only go that far. And it might help maybe for a couple of weeks, couple of months, and then it stops working or just doesn't work at all. So that's what my experience has. So when you lay the foundation, it's a little bit like when you're building a home. You want to have a strong foundation because whatever you put on top, it just doesn't really matter as long as the foundation is strong. And in the context of hormones, like you mentioned, the three bodily systems, and I use the analogy of a three legged stool, if you want to sit comfortably on a three legged stool, all the three legs need to be firmly in place. One of them is missing or is shorter, you start wobbling, you fall. In the context of hormones, it's the health of your, like you said, it's the health of your digestion, your sugar balance and the liver's ability to detoxify you from various substances, including hormones. That's something that we don't realize how powerful the liver is to actually help us to detoxify us from hormones to make space for new ones. So gut health is incredibly important. I mean, there's a whole chapter that's dedicated to that. It's just very on a high level. You start off with the elimination diet just to eliminate the potential trigger foods that could be highly inflammatory. I showed there a whole guide on what are the foods, what other foods to remove. But also some people need to go a little bit deeper. Let me give you an example here, Josh. I think everybody knows that gluten and dairy might not be particularly complementary to a lot of people. They're highly inflammatory, unfortunately to a lot of women. So if you want to cut them out, especially temporarily just to heal up, but then you have also these very healthy foods, like for example, sauerkraut or for some people, kombucha, avocado. Well, guess what? When you have different digestive issues going on, there's so many people, for example, now having histamine issues. They eat that sauerkraut and then they're like itching all over, they're getting anxiety attack, they can't sleep, they start getting allergies soon after having a bit of sauerkraut, right? So what I teach in the first chapter in the digestion. So really how to restore your digestion so that you bring down the inflammation the chronic systemic inflammation in the body. And the importance of it is that that your cells, in order to receive the hormones into the cell, into the receptor of the cell, they cannot be inflamed when they're inflamed. And this is the reason when they're inflamed, that hormone just doesn't come in and do the work to give you this beautiful hair and ability of losing weight and be sharp in the head and having a lot of great energy and to play around with the kids. All of that comes from the hormones doing their work. But when you're inflamed, it's just the inflammation is like a natural blocker. And what I have found is that we do all these like, oh, I'm going to do my omega 3s and fish oils and this and that. While you're eating inflammatory foods, you're constantly adding fuel to the fire. Right? So that's why the whole cookbook is free of gluten, dairy, eggs, soy, corn. I also remove nitrate vegetables, so things like peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, because. And I'm not demonizing these foods, by the way, by any means, at least not all of them. For example, eggs are a good example. They can be a friend. Can they also be a foe? 50% of women I have found I've worked with in the past had a problem with eggs completely without realizing that. So, you know, that's really the starting point. And what I have seen, Josh, is that a lot of times when we take care of our digestion first, so many things, so many. Not just hormones, but just overall, our entire body and energy and our weight and everything responds so well that we don't oftentimes even need to do anything.

This is such a great point. I love your analogy, by the way. If you're leaky, if you have a roof, that's leaky, it doesn't matter if you have potpourri in the bathroom. That's what's happening when there is people and they're doing great things. I'm also not knocking naturopaths or anyone who's trying to help other people. But I think what gets skipped over is this more sometimes complicated. I think that's why people don't want to address it. Healing of the gut can take one to three months. Gosh, even six to 12 months. Right. Like, healing the gut takes time. That's why you have an entire guide through this elimination diet protocol in your book. So we look at the foods like gluten, like dairy, even soy. And then for Some people, they can't have peppers or certain things that are nightshade components. This process, though, it's typically around a month. Right. Like a reset portion of 30 days. How many days do you recommend when people actually do this protocol for removing the possible inflammatory causing foods?

Yeah. So four weeks is a good starting point. And from experience, people end up doing six to eight weeks just because they feel so good that a lot of times they just even have a lot of the fear to introduce some of these foods because they have a memory of just how crappy they used to feel. You know, pains, achievements, headaches, foggy brain, can't sleep, anxiety attacks, People have those memories. And suddenly when all these things go away just from doing the elimination diet, our PMS has improved. Women don't have PMSs anymore when they stop eating gluten or dairy. It's quite unbelievable. So to answer your question, four weeks is the minimal. And if you really want to kind of heal and seal your gut, so to speak, then doing it to six to eight weeks weeks is probably best.

Six to eight weeks would be maybe a more optimal window. And we look at some of the work of Rob Wolf and David Perlmutter and people that are colleagues of yours, you know, that are really allowing men and women to just slow down. Magdalena, don't you think really what you're also teaching is for us to take a well deserved deep breath and just to be more still and understand that when we make these conscious decisions about our foods and really start tuning in to what our body is telling us, I mean, look, all the wisdom is within. Then you went through a massive period in your life where you had rashes on your back. You couldn't even wear clothes that were open. You had to wear covering clothes. There was a lot of emotional things you were experiencing because of these physical symptoms. It was only until, and I'd love for you to share your story here, it was only until you slowed down and started really paying attention to what you were eating, to what you were putting in this beautiful body that you had. Take us through that story because I think a lot of people will connect with you.

Yeah. So, you know, Josh, a lot of times people ask me like, and I think this is one of the most powerful questions a person can ask herself himself. And this is, I would ask our listeners as well here today, if you were to give yourself some kind of health advice 10 years ago, what would that be?

Slow down. Slow down.

Yeah. And especially living in the United States, it's almost unheard of, right I mean, we laugh about the Europeans and the siestas and two month vacations and that kind of thing, but there's a good reason behind it. In my case, the health advice I would have given myself 10 years ago, and I did accept it to some degree, was to really tune into and listen to what my body's trying to tell me. Because my body has been slowly shutting down for a long time. But because I was living a very high life and working in advertising, I used to basically work for an advertising agency living in China at that point, when I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's in 2008. And I still remember going to see the doc and she was the conventional allopathic document doc. And she looked at. And one of my chief complaints was that I was experiencing severe fatigue and brain fog. And she looked at, she turned my file around and she says, you're 36 years old, of course you're tired. Wow. Right? Wow. And here I am living in Shanghai, which sees people in their 80s and 90s doing Tai Chi along the river at 5 o' clock in the morning. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Me? So anyway, so this is when I realized that something is really wrong. When I started researching and realized that Hashimoto's is an autoimmune disease and that means that my own body is confused and is beginning to kill its own self. That's when I realized this is not right. This is like, what have I done? What is going on in my body? That kind of self destruction has begun to happen. And mind you, in 2008 we did not have the kind of resources that we have today. I mean, today, just today, we kind of go on the other side of the spectrum. If you look at Hashimoto's, I mean, There are probably 20 books today on Hashimoto's. Right?

Sure, yeah.

Which can also be confusing because different people have different approaches. And so anyway, quite frankly, I think my health really kind of started off on the wrong foot right from the beginning. To start off with, I have genetics that are horrible. I mean, if you just look at my printout of my genetics, I literally have red boxes almost in every, I would say a third of the genes, which basically means I have double mutations on the them, which means that they compromise a normal functioning person to a very, very large degree. When I went to see my naturopathic doctor here in Boulder, when I had a first session with her and she said to me, have you ever had breast cancer? I said, why would you ask me that. And she said, well, just women in their late 40s the way you are, you are a perfect candidate for having that. In fact, most women I see with your kind of genetic. Would have had estrogenic cancers like breast cancer by now. Right. And I think the only reason why I don't is because I take care of myself. So genetics is one thing, but, you know, it's also having been born to a mother who bought into the 1970s idea that matters. Milk is less beneficial than powdered milk. So I was a powdered milk. Maybe I was never breastfed. Ended up in a hospital already in the first month with pneumonia, pumped with antibiotics. Right. So right from the beginning, having no good bacteria. And then whatever good bacteria I had, pretty much all of that got wiped out.

Wow. I want to pause there, too, and I want to just. Sorry to interrupt you here, because this is really, really powerful. I think. I look at the way that you just went over. Oh, I was actually raised on powdered milk in the beginning rather than the natural breast milk. I look at my own life. I look at other people's lives, Magdalena, like yours, that in those first three years of living, from conception to three, maybe three to seven years old, it's so important that we have a primal way of being cared for, of eating. And it sounds like you weren't. And this happens with babies that are born cesarean. They don't get the natural chemicals and estrogens from the placenta from the mother's birth. Looking back, do you feel like this is where it all began for you? The issues that you've had as an adult and all the things you went through? Was it because you didn't have that primal uprising?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, and a direct comparison to this will be my sister, who my mother kind of regained her wisdom to some degree. And my sister was a breastfed baby. She didn't have any of the problems I did. And so immune system weak right from the get go. Right. Like I mentioned, pneumonia. And then caboton eczema, which is also actually a form of an autoimmune response. Covered as a child, chronic ear infections and sinus infections. You know, Josh, I don't remember much when I was five, but I do remember being sort of taken to the hospital for ear drainage because I had so much pus in the ears. And then later becoming. That became cystic acne, constant migraines, terrible PMSs, constantly bloated in the tummy. Right. So, you know, and then finally I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's in 2018. So it was, I think it was just the final blow that my body's just been bashed up so badly. And you know, also just before I was diagnosed, living in China was one of the most exhilarating experiences. Just really, I mean, being in Shanghai was just the, you know, the highlight of my life, really. But it was also a time of, you know, a lot of alcohol. I never did drugs, right. But I smoked, you know, and being up at 5 o' clock in the morning to hit the gym because I was a semi professional athlete and I had a sponsorship for my team and we did adventure races.

Wait, you were smoking and doing adventure races?

Yeah.

How is that even possible?

I pulled it off and we did pretty well. I don't know, I think you just hit the gym and just continue doing. Yeah.

You're such a different person now. Looking back on what you've been through, what did you garner the most then? I mean, coming from this non primal way of being, you know, Rose, your mom did the best she could. And by the way, our parents always do the best they can. You know, they're just dealing with the information they have at hand. Coming from this nonprofit primal upbringing to then smoking and adventure races and going through all the health issues and thresholds you have compared to who you are now and who you serve now, what did you learn the most about yourself? What did you think you needed back then?

So like you said about the slowing down, I resigned from my job. And soon after, like, once I got the diagnosis and I understood what was going on kind of. Right. I just felt if I continue living in China in a toxic. This was 2008, you know, this is the year of the Olympics, right. So in the us you guys probably saw the photos of, you know, the pollution, right. And the dirty rivers and all that, which is all. Which is all true. There was no media manipulation that living in there can tell you. Like, you just never knew what the hell you were putting in your body, right? So I knew that I needed to get out of that. And I was so glad that I listened to that advice, that little, you know, that little voice that was saying, get the hell out of here. And this is when I moved to the United States. States with another job, took a huge pay cut and stepped down from a regional job to being almost a support staff.

Yeah, but you also saved your life.

Oh, totally, totally. I mean, in China, we sold the agency and we had a two year payout. I only took like 20% of what was owed to me and I Resigned. And my boss was like, are you crazy? Like this can set you up for life. And I'm like, the money that I'm going to get in two years time is going to go towards my medical bills just to save my life. So absolutely, absolutely I got out of there. And so I think the elimination diet, just immediately embarking on anti inflammatory lifestyle, which included getting off all the foods that I talked about, detoxification, living in a place. I moved to Seattle. So that was pretty easy. Nice clean environment and took a significantly slower job. I stopped traveling in a regional job. I was constantly on the plane, so I was covering Asia. So I was on the plane two times a week flying somewhere. And you live off hotel food and crappy airport food. Right. Just cooking for yourself and having control what you put in a body. Changed my entire skincare regimen completely. Nothing that you can see advertised in television, that's for sure. Smaller brands. Learned how to make my own things. Simplifying things, just really, really slowing down. Started doing meditation. I went to do a meditation. They call it a retreat, but it's more like a boot camp. Silent meditation for a month in India. So, you know, just the whole combination of things and surrounding myself with really supportive community of people who are very like minded.

Yes.

I'll be honest with you today. I don't have a lot of friends from my advertising days. We live very different lifestyle. They probably think, you know, you know, it's a little bit too of a radical change for them.

Why is Magdalena floating, wearing a white cape? Right. So I'm thinking about this journey and thank you so much for sharing this journey. You talked about it in the book as well. Well, in Cooking for Hormone Balance, you actually said that your mom hated to cook and your grandmother made food that was so bland you would like eat the spinach and then go run to the bathroom and spit it out. But you also mentioned, and this is a big take home for so many millions of Americans and really people across the world. You said you learn how to cook because you had to so you could save your life and your sanity. And I think that's honestly what is one of the biggest gems from this conversation. Magdalene is so many people, so many women. Women are not cooking. They're not cooking at home. They're not actually making their food. The majority of their food comes from packages and containers and bins. And they're wondering why the estrogen dominance is such an issue and why cancer is rising. How do we do this then? This is a really big question. How do we get people to cook more and to enjoy the cooking process?

Yeah. So, you know, I think first of all, I think this is a two prong approach. One is the realization that, you know, it's funny in the United States, everybody, everybody continuously talks about Europe and aspires to Europe. If you want to use another aspiration point, let me tell you, Europeans cook, Europeans go food shopping at least twice a week, where in America people go shopping twice a month only because we buy so many packaged foods. And I suspect your audience probably is not like that because otherwise they wouldn't be listening to your show. But the point is, for those people who don't like to shop, first of all, when you do, just if you can just give yourself the opportunity to do so just for a couple of weeks and embark on this anti inflammatory diet that I talk about in the book, when we start feeling better, we just can't stop. You get addicted to feeling good. And then the whole idea of buying another slice of pizza from a corner of deli or doing takeout from a Chinese takeout where you don't know what the hell they're putting in the food, it just becomes gross because then you start burping and then your anxiety comes back and you're feeling so fatigued and you're feeling like really yucky in your tummy. And so like I said, we get addicted to feeling good. So if you can just give yourself the permission to just to try this for a couple of weeks, that's the first thing. The second thing is starting off with really simple recipes that taste really, really good. You know, Josh, one of the big things I remember when I was, I was one of the very few people when I was living in New York who actually cook and invite friends over because, you know, New York is such a go out culture, right? And you know, and I didn't quite like a lot of the food in New York at that. You know, back then, seven, eight years ago, the focus in New York was more on like where the chef came from, you know, and all these accolades that he had rather than asking the question, where is the food coming from? Like, what am I putting in my body?

Right?

Something that's so different, for example, in California or Colorado. So and whenever I have a dinner party at my house, the constant remark that I was always getting was, oh my God, I can't believe it's so healthy. It was so quick for you to make this. It's so simple, but it tastes so good. And that's, you know, that's really a big shift because a lot of times we think that healthy means a boring kale. Raw kale salad.

Right. It doesn't have to sell.

Yeah, yeah. Drizzle of olive oil and, like, two drops of lemon. No, it doesn't have to be that way. You know, I don't. I personally don't even like kale. So there you have it, you know, and if you look at my recipes, Josh, you know, it's like so many of them have under 30 minutes. So many of them use no more than five ingredients. So many of them are not even. Don't require cooking, but more putting things together. And I'm playing around a lot with ingredients that can sit in the fridge for a significant amount of time, like fermented foods, for example, you know, or certain things that are healthy can't, you know, you can just open it up and put them together so it doesn't require cooking. So bottom line is surround yourself with simple, yummy recipes that really require. You can pull it off in 20 minutes. Batch cooking is another great idea. Right. Spend four hours on a Sunday, just cook up a storm. Have it till, like, Wednesday, Thursday.

Yes. I'm so glad you mentioned batch cooking. We're going to talk about that in an upcoming show. And this batch cooking, it's like making a little bit more food so you can eat healthy later. Proactivity around our self love. It starts way before we get home from a travel and we're exhausted and there's nothing. It really begins weeks in advance. Give people maybe some tactical tools they can do when they're traveling. How do you personally address this? Magdalena, when you travel, I'm sure you travel quite a bit. How do you prepare for when you come back home from a trip?

So, you know, when I get home, I just, I just hit, you know, the health store and just get my supplies. But can I give you an example of, like, what I do when I travel? Because that's the hard part.

Oh, yeah. This is the hard part. Please.

Right. So, you know, Josh, the big thing that I do is, like, I just, you know, I just, I'm wrapping up a book launch in the tour, right. And I was. So I was on the road for the past two months. And the big thing is, first of all, I would always rent an Airbnb to make sure there is a kitchen or kitchenette in it. Right. Go to the local. Now. Whole Foods almost in every city delivers. Right? So a lot of times, like, if I don't have a car, I would just get it Delivered, they do it within two hours. So there's no excuse not to. It's called instacart. Right. Just pick whatever you want. And a lot of times I don't, you know, I don't have time to cook. So one of my favorite recipes that's also in the cookbook, it's called Farmer's Wife's Breakfast. That's my absolute go to when I travel. So can I describe it? Josh, just quickly, what is it?

Yes, give us the dirty details. Well, actually, they sound like clean details. Details.

Okay, so the Farmer's Wife's Breakfast is Paleo. So it's. You know, what I'll do is the base of the Farmer's Wife's Breakfast is a bed of greens, because you want to get the greens in. And I love to work with cruciferous vegetables. So cruciferous vegetables will be things like arugula or mizuna or broccoli sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy. All the cabbages are cruciferous veggies. And they are hugely supportive towards the liver. They help with liver detoxification, but they also help you to clear those estrogens that are causing these problems that we talked about earlier with you. So I'll put that I love arugula because it's a crucifer and I just love the taste of it. And then I'll drizzle with just a little bit of olive oil and perhaps lime or lemon juice. Right. So that's kind of like a dressing for the salad. And then what I'll do is having on a salad a piece of protein. Really, really important to have some protein first thing in the morning so you stabilize your blood sugar levels. And so when I travel, like I said, I don't have time to cook. So typically I'll do a piece of smoked salmon, or I will do. I just buy a roasted chicken and have a piece of chicken on a side. And then I will do. Slice up some avocado, right. So it gives you the good fat and gives you the sustenance. And then do a little bit of sauerkraut or kimchi on the side. Right. So you've got the fermented food going on, the support and supportive for your gut microbiome, for the good bacteria for the gut. Right. And you know what? That's pretty. Maybe I'll sprinkle it with some flaxseed. So flaxseed is one of the huge estrogen detoxifiers. It helps you to. It brings in Good estrogens and it helps you to detoxify you from the bad estrogens. And that's that. You see what I mean? Like, it's not even cooking. This literally takes you five minutes to put this together on a plate. And you know, when food is ready.

Plus, it's making me really hungry too. I'm like visualizing this plate of food now. I noticed Magnolia, Angelina, though, you didn't really have too much starch on the plate. Why is that?

Yeah, so, you know, because I love to do starch, like later in the day. The things like, for example, sweet potato, you know, it helps us to stabilize our blood sugar levels actually, funny enough, towards at night. And so I prefer to be working with starches later in the night. But, you know, you can always add that in. If somebody wants to have a piece of sweet potato, they can always add that in. There's nothing wrong with that. The idea behind what I'm describing, the kind of breakfast is in my book, it's called the pff kind of breakfast. Protein, fat and fiber. So protein, fat, fiber, rich breakfast. And you know, Josh, I've lived in seven different countries, I've traveled to over 40. And one of the big takeaways is that when people are really healthy globally, what you'll see in the healthy eating countries and where people are really thriving, people never ever eat sweet stuff for breakfast.

Yeah.

And that's, and that's whether you go to Ethiopia, you go to, you know, you go to, you know, Japan or you travel to Peru. If you talk about, like traditional diets, no one ever eats sweet stuff for breakfast. They would do some carbohydrates and America.

Came out with the pop Tart, which is not funny. I'm just, it's, it's actually sad. And that's why I'm laughing at it because, because sometimes I used to get so worked up. Magdalena, you know, when I started Wellness Force, I was so angry at the way things were. And we've been talking about how to design the plate and how to structure the plate with. I love this, by the way. Protein, fiber and fat. This is a rich breakfast.

And can I tell you, when women eat this way, when people eat, and this is husbands as well, by the way, what I've been, you know, what women report is that they feel, first of all, they stop craving coffee, sugar. So immediately, your calories. I don't care, to be honest with your calories, but I do care about if your calories are coming from sugar and snacks. Just because 11 o' clock, your energy dips and we need something sweet to pick us up, so to speak. Right? When you have a breakfast like that, you don't snack until lunchtime. You have a lot sustained energy throughout the day. There is no cravings, there is no. Women feel so focused on, grounded, none of the airy sort of exercise, anxious kind of thoughts, rambling around. And the best part is Josh, one of the women said to me once who transitioned, and she was like the biggest opponent of this, right? She's like, I want my fruit, I want my oatmeal first thing in the morning. And I said to her, just try it for three days, please, and just tell me how it goes. She was a private client many years ago and she became the biggest advocate of this. And she said to me, magdalena, in order to change my nights, I had to change my brush breakfast. And it was so powerful because she got off sleeping pills just from doing nothing else but changing her breakfast. Yeah, right.

Yeah. This goes back to what we talked about too, with this proactive self care. You know, you plan before you travel. As soon as you get home, you're not going to just go home and lay down and then order something that's unhealthy. You're going to go to the grocery store. It's taking this ownership. It's what I'm hearing from you and there's some strategies in your book about this. It's taking loving ownership, ownership of your food, of your state, of your body, of you. Like that's why we're here on the planet. And so I want to ask this question then. When it comes to the timing of this, for people that are experiencing hormone imbalances, what are your thoughts on intermittent fasting? For people that are currently experiencing a hormone imbalance, is intermittent fasting a good idea?

So, you know, it's an interesting question, right? Because depending on who you ask, you know, whether it's Rob Wolf or the Paleo community, the keto community, right. You know, they're so down for intermittent fasting. So my take on it is I always defer to the concept of bio individuality. We all differ from each other. I find that a lot of the studies and the, you know, the anecdotal evidence comes from men and not necessarily women. And, you know, we have to remember that hormonally speaking, we are two such totally different animals. I mean, you really want to just, you know, say it as plainly as that. We are different animals.

We. I love the way you put that. Yes, we are.

And so intermittent Fasting, I have found, especially for women, for example, who have a lot of adrenal issues going on, problems with blood sugar control, their intermittent testing. Fasting just does not work. And especially combining that with coffee, no matter how much butter you want to fat you want to put into it is just, you know, you just have to listen to your body. And look, here's the thing. Just, you know, anyone should try it for a couple of weeks, you know, maybe even three days. Just, just do it for three days and just listen to your body. Your body will tell you if it agrees or if it doesn't, you start getting shaky, unfocused. Josh I can't do intermittent fasting to save my life. I just can't, you know, but I can fast. What I, for example, in my case, what I do is I do my own different version of it, which is I don't do food after 6p3 times a week. So I would just have dinner at five. So kind of like everything settles by six from that point on, I don't eat anything until the following morning breakfast, late breakfast, like 10 o'. Clock. And that makes me feel good. And going to, for example, going to sleep with an empty tummy actually will give you a lot better quality sleep. And it releases the liver from having to do so much work. So overall, I'm not a fan, but I see that working a lot, really much better for men than it does for women. But, but hey, I think everybody should try it.

I think so. And we all get to go down this path of self experimentation. Currently, as we're interviewing here, I've been doing intermittent fasting where I've been skipping breakfast. I just interviewed Aubrey Marcus about this and I'm like, you know what? I'm actually going to try it. I don't need to download it in a guide or read it on a PDF like you're saying, Magdalena, we get to try these things. And speaking of trying something, I want to save just one minute here to talk about adrenal fatigue and really actually diving into the unprocessed emotions, trying to look at the things that are causing us stress. You talk about this in your chapter on adrenal healing, the Adrenal Healing guide. You mentioned stress originating from past or present physical exertion, emotional distress, or also unresolved trauma. This can be just as powerful as digestive issues. How do people actually turn their head and look at these emotional traumas? How do they do that? What's the starting process?

You know, so by the way, this is not an area of my expertise at all. But what I will share with you is that, you know, when I work with people who have changed a lot of things around their life in order to recover, to support the adrenals in their recovery, meaning, you know, they modify their diet to support it. They follow the guide that I have in the book, right. You know, they religiously get off coffee, they go to sleep early. Right. And yet they display all the symptoms of adrenaline. You know, they do all that, say, supplements and, you know, and take vitamin C and they own magnesium and all that good stuff. Right. And things aren't just moving in the right direction, as expected, for six months, eight months, they're still suffering from a lot of symptoms. And this is what I've discovered, is that when I would dig deeper into issues with my clients, this is where things will come out. Well, yeah, but I actually come from an alcoholic family, right. Or there was raped, you know, rape. Or I witnessed my, you know, somebody committing suicide. You know, that kind of stuff. And what I have discovered is only when they address that, this is when real healing really starts happening. And, you know, some people, look, I mean, there are some people who've been in horrible car accidents and they move on, and it just doesn't affect them. Right. And there is others who, you know, just saw a dog being killed on the side of the road, and then that lingers on with them for the next 20 years. They're still blaming the father for not doing anything about it. You know what I mean? So I think we all are. You know, it's just. I think you would only know when you really address it. And there are so many beautiful modalities out there there, whether it's EMDR or brain spotting or somatic experiencing, that releases that trauma and addresses that. And as a human. But as you know, as humans, we are so good at hiding these things because it's a natural protection mechanism. Right. We forget a lot of times trauma. We bury that trauma so that we can function. The problem is that on the subconscious level, it can manifest with a lot of diseases. So you would only really know this when you start working with a really good practitioner.

Yes. And this is why I love the way your brain works, because this physical and emotional. There is such a bridge that connects the two of these. And I love how you've written about it in the book. We're gonna link your book in the show notes Cooking for Hormone Balance. I had a bunch more questions for you today, but I'm just gonna ask you five ones really quickly. Okay. The first one is Dr. Isabella Wentz. She wrote the forward in your book. How has she impacted you?

Hugely. She is one of my biggest supporter and she was the one I never wanted to do a book. She said to me, you've got to do a book cause you' got too much to say.

You recently had a hip replacement. It was a double, I believe. And then a few months later you were out bouldering. What do you attribute to this? How did you recover so quickly?

The lifestyle that I described in the book, totally anti inflammatory. Took care of all the different angles. Went to the surgery with the best health ever.

We talk about physical intelligence on the show today. Specifically, what are you currently leaning into for your physical intelligence? In other words, do you have a new way of thinking, eating or moving or sleeping as a practice that you're currently working on?

Yes, I am working with somebody right now on looking deeper into my genetics to fine tune my diet even further. I feel like I'm 90%. I want to feel 100%. And that's why genetics, I think, is going to be the next frontier.

Is it 23andMe or is it something else?

Oh, no, I'm working with somebody who interprets genetics and then aligns dietary changes based on the genetics.

Ah, this sounds like a smart person. We talk about emotional intelligence on the show quite a bit that you're currently walking on. So in other words, what are possibly thoughts or feelings or actions that you're currently aware of and you're working on?

You know, I just started a mecare campaign with my community and that's about self care. I've realized that just going through the book launch, I've completely missed that part. And just listening to my body and how realization how exhausted I was without realizing it because I was running on adrenaline. It was a huge aha moment to really slow down and. And I'm just. You know what, Josh? I'm taking two months off.

I love this mecare. It's so primal sounding, actually me care. And the reason why this is such a big deal is because you do a lot. You serve a lot of people. You know, hundreds of thousands of people are being affected by you every single month. How do you take care of yourself? What is your number one self care practice?

You know, I think the biggest one right now because as my business has grown and kind of is, you know, the book has opened up a lot of opportunities. I think the biggest thing for me right now is saying no to things.

Yeah, saying no is so powerful. Many Times that's come up on the podcast and there's something so healthy. There's a healthy boundary that you've established when you say no.

Yeah. Because then that frees up your time for the things that you have, you know, you want to say yes to, but you never. Because, you know, in the space we're in, we thrive on helping other people. Right. I mean, I thrive in getting those emails saying, you know, just how you, how women have, how it's completely changed their lives. Right. But then when you do that, it's kind of like an addiction and that comes at a cost of taking care of myself, and that has to change.

Last question for you today. This intersection of physical and emotional, there's also the spiritual. What is wellness to you? How would you define Magdalena? Wellness?

You know, I'll go back to what we said right at the beginning of the interview and that that is my body is sending very clear signals all the time. And just allowing to listen to that and say, you know what, like, I will ask myself on a regular basis, like, what do you need? And the body will tell me. And just listening to that and honoring that is my biggest thing right now.

Well, I just want to honor you, this clarity, this permission to slow down, this cooking for balancing our hormones, you know, living in a way that the creator, that God, that higher intelligence, whatever you believed put us on the planet for. Thank you so much. I want to acknowledge you for what you do, the contribution that you make to wellness and also the thresholds that you've gone through and the wellness warrior that you are. Thanks for coming on the show.

Thank you so much, Josh. You are a wonderful interview, I have to say.

Well, hey, look, I really care about what I do and our audience deserves this. Right? They want to know where can they actually get the tools that will affect them in the positive ways that they deserve. And also, by the way too, I want to talk about, about your quiz, hormonesbalance.com quiz. This is where people can start. So go to hormonesbalance.com quiz. We'll also link this in the show notes. But what a joy to connect with you, Magdalena. And I'm sure we'll be talking to you soon.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Josh.

Hey, my friend. Thank you for hanging out and growing with me on today's show. Remember to hit subscribe share this podcast with somebody you care about that you think gets to hear this message. Support the show by leaving a five star review for the podcast right now simply by tapping on your show artwork on your iPhone. Click that purple link that says Review this podcast. It helps the show reach more conscious and smart people like you and your voice will attract more world class guests that want to come on the show. So let them hear your voice. For all the downloads, videos, links and free resources mentioned on the episode, go to wellnessforce.com radio. And while you're at my house on the web, join us in the Wellness Force Community newsletter on that page and I'll send you four free guides around staying healthy with your eating, moving and sleeping while you travel. But don't let this conversation stop here. Join a group of people like you over at the Wellness Force Community Facebook page. This is where we talk about the things that really matter. We share our wins, inspirations, struggles and a lot more. So join us. Tap on the show artwork on your phone and hit that purple link that says Join the Facebook group and I will welcome you at the door. Ok. Now you get to go out into your world and create impact for the people that you care about. So until I see you again real soon, I'm wishing you love and wellness.