Fix Your Thyroid and Adrenal Health with Award Winning Dietician Nutritionist, Christa Biegler

10:14AM Oct 9, 2023

Speakers:

Angela Foster

Christa Bieglar

Keywords:

thyroid

minerals

potassium

adrenals

feel

labs

stress

adrenal function

health

nutrients

testing

nad

mineral salts

body

biohacking

depleted

gut

people

support

find

fasting has a lot of benefits. I worked in a fasting programme and its heyday and 2017. But if you're already depleted, this is not for you. It's making it worse. And so at a very basic level you're under nourishing.

You're listening to the high performance our podcast helping you optimise your health performance and longevity. My name is Angela Foster, and I'm a former corporate lawyer and high performance health coach. Each week, I bring new cutting edge bio hacks, inspiring insights and high performance habits to unlock optimal health performance and longevity. So excited that you've chosen to join me today. Now let's dive in. Hi, friends. In this week's episode, we're going to be talking all about thyroid function, and the importance of good adrenal function in terms of our overall endocrine system and Hormonal Health. We also touch on ADHD, we talk about how minerals are really, really important to this process and how to fuel your body for high energy and my fasting might not be the best thing. My guest today is Krista Biegler. She's an award winning dietician, nutritionist, and host of the less stressed life podcast. She's also the author of the eczema relief diet and cookbook, and she helps women overcome their fatigue and burnout. I think you're going to enjoy this episode. There's lots of information in it. As always, all of the show notes are over on my website, Angela Foster performance.com. But let me now introduce you to Krista. Krista is so cool to have you here today, I've been really looking forward to chatting to you, you and I kind of we were chatting offline before the show. And you and I very much have I think a similar approach of really helping and empowering women. So firstly, a very warm welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I really enjoyed interviewing you. And I think we share some mentors or some brain cells on things that we're attracted to for sure, even though we may be go about it in different ways, which I love, because there's always more than one way to accomplish these similar outcomes.

Yeah, for sure. I can't actually even remember how we first connected. But I think sometimes the universe brings people together. Let's kick off with your story. I know a bit like me, you help women with burnout with adrenal function? How did this all How did where did your journey begin?

Let me give you a more concise version of the origin story and bring you up to the second health crisis. So the first one was having a couple of small children working, creating a new business, you know that, like boom, boom, boom, all the things. And I had a massive skin outbreak. And so had a rash kind of covering my face, my eyes, my neck. And that took a while to resolve because it was hard to find someone to help me in that area. So it took longer than it should have. But a lot of gut and liver work was kind of the answer to that. And so then I was very clear, everything was good. And then years later, it was like I had recurrent or relapsing gut and motility issues. And I thought, well, this doesn't really make sense. Why would we have these issues? Well, the common denominator is some version of stress. But really the version that presented for me, which is kind of my favourite clinical picture is I had a sluggish thyroid that didn't show up on thyroid blood labs. And I had sluggish adrenal function which, if you know anything about testing adrenal function, our testing for it is not going to be common. It's not going to be good. It's going to you're the only real diagnostics we have for adrenal function, which maybe we should like, unpack. adrenals a little bit is, if I feel like if you're almost dead, Addison's or the other Cushing's disease, right, where it's like, there is no function. And those are extreme extreme situations where probably you're going to be hospitalised if it shows up in that way. But the problems occur much, much, much earlier. And when you have this kind of sluggish adrenal slash thyroid picture, despite what shows up on labs, which is so common for people, right, I don't really feel like myself, I don't feel great. I remember just not having any energy to pick up the house with small kids like late in the afternoon, like, Absolutely not like I just and I never thought as a high performance person. I feel that the word fatigue is sometimes like a really negative word that we would not resonate with, right, but everyone would want more energy. And so I think there's just such a little nuance with high performers where it's like, oh, I don't I don't know what your Enneagram is, but I'm a three. So I'm an achiever. And so it's like a blessing and a curse, right? Where it's like, there's certain words you're gonna resonate and there's certain words you're not going to resonate with. So for example, I didn't resonate necessarily with the word brain fog, or fatigue, but brain fog. I could have resonated with having a squirrel brain or feeling like I had to jump from topic to topic topic. I just thought I had undiagnosed ADHD. And then I started supporting my thyroid and I was like, Whoa, I am a laser focused machine, when I'm supporting my thyroid, and then I started looking at the Symptoms between ADHD and thyroid, sluggish thyroid and like these are very similar. They're very similar. What if some of this stuff is actually just an underperforming hormone system? So that's kind of a little bit that's like a an abbreviated version of how, you know, my story was, which is so often my clients stories. And so the answer then was, what are the sub what are all the nutrients that go into making these systems work and come into balance optimally. And so until I did that, I just kept relapsing in my like gut health journey, and relapsing in a way that I knew what I could do. But I was very discontent by it. Because as an achiever, you don't want to go backwards. You're like, I already fixed this problem. So why am I going backwards, but stress is kind of the great equaliser and stress will be the thing that kind of pulls us backwards no matter what there's so many mechanisms, of which and again, maybe stress is like a, it's kind of a negative word for a high achiever. But, but these these stressors that are somewhat inevitable, they have these downstream physiological effects in the body. And I feel like that comes up all the time. And I think that awareness is your first events, right? It's your greatest, it's your it's your greatest ally and biggest defence on I don't know if I want to say mastering your body, but just feeling feeling like you're most imbalance in your body and feeling your best in your body. So yeah, that's kind of kind of the story a little bit, you can do what you want with that.

Awesome, but there's quite a lot there that I definitely want to unpack. Because I think, for people listening, they, I think I think many people listening will resonate with what you said, there. There's so many people actually, that have sought a thyroid issue in some form or another. And even if they don't know it, so many people are suffering with it and what you were saying there around the sort of scattered thinking, the inability to concentrate or focus on one thing, and the link with thyroid health is super interesting. So before we dive into that, let's talk about the thyroid so that people can get a really good picture. Everyone's familiar that the thyroid is important, and probably have some kind of idea that it interacts with stress and adrenal function, and also sex hormones. But why don't we do a kind of whistlestop tour for listeners have an easy understanding of why thyroid health is so important and how it might be impacting them in different ways?

Totally. If it's okay with you, I want to zoom out your brain just a little bit more above thyroid health for a moment, because people ask a common conversation is my hormones are out of balance. And what I wish people understood a little bit is there's a lot to be said about hormones when you say my hormones are out of balance. So zooming out above thyroid a little bit. There's the ovarian adrenal thyroid access, the oat to access so you're a Varian your ovaries produce the majority of your sex hormones like oestrogen progesterone and some testosterone. And by the way, when you go into perimenopause, and menopause, your adrenals take the brunt of any of that production typically. So ovaries adrenals, produce aldosterone, which helps control blood pressure, they produce DHEA, which helps control blood sugar and lipids. And big one, if you if you have burnout, if like you're struggling to go more than a few hours between meals, your DHEA is probably low due to adrenal burnout. And then the thing that we know most about from adrenals is cortisol. Right? That's, I always call it the Darlene stress hormone, right? It's your fight or flight, it's your running from a tiger. And when you have cortisol elevated, I always think of it kind of like a speedometer. It's like there's the speed limit. And then often, we tend to be speeding. And I know that was kind of like your story too. So for so many of us, it's like we're speeding. And then when you run out of gas, because you go through, you burn through more energy when you're speeding. And when you run out of gas, that's that low adrenal function where you're not even producing these hormones. But when it's high, when you're speeding, your body takes blood flow and moves it to the periphery to literally run from the tiger and takes it away from the central area, which is where all your organs are. So for people dealing with fertility issues, gut issues, etc. There's not like adequate blood flow in that area. And cortisol is elevated. And then, of course, there's massive challenges, what happens to the minerals when those are elevated, so let's come back to that later, because it's kind of like the big crux of it. And then there's the thyroid hormone, so ovarian adrenal thyroid. And so when one of these often people when they say their hormones are off, that could mean lots of things. They're like feeling tired, they're not feeling good, or maybe they're pursuing fertility, or there's something with their menstrual cycle, I would say the ovarian hormones, the most critical is the adrenal, that's the most essential like if you don't have cortisol, you die. It's the most essential and so that one is almost at the top of the triangle to me, if that one isn't working, then the other two sides of the triangle, the ovaries and the thyroid, aren't going to do their thing. So now to the thyroid, zooming into the thyroid, some people I like to talk about thyroid metabolism a little bit interchangeably. Some people want a little more nuanced than that. But for the purpose of this conversation, I think it's totally fine. So far. I write and metabolism are very intermixed, interconnected, synergistic parallel. So when we think about metabolism, it's almost like the heat of the body. So when we're thinking about thyroid, I think the thing that makes us resonate the most is symptoms. So let's talk about symptoms of thyroid, because I always think Your Symptoms Matter More than your lab results, because there's nothing more frustrating to a woman looking for answers, being an advocate for herself asking for even the right test results. And then the test results come back normal. And it's like, well, I guess I'm normal, but I don't feel amazing, right. So I think symptoms are important for starting to find these patterns. So the top thyroid symptoms, which I did not resonate with, I resonate with different ones. The top ones that are just Dead Ringers would be fatigue. Again, we talked about the challenges around that. So just maybe, like not great energy rising, maybe wired and tired at night. So fatigue of some sort of hair loss, pronounced hair loss, and then feeling cold. When it's really severe, it's like chilled to the bone, that's when maybe you're going to show up positive on some thyroid labs being off. And then otherwise like cold extremities, and for me, I only noticed increased hair loss and cold extremities under times of prolonged stress more than a few days, I would notice those a little bit, but they were not enough to interfere with my life. So I often just like forgot or discarded them. Some other thyroid symptoms. So talking about mental health for a moment, and really postpartum stuff. I know that was part of your story as well. So when you're pregnant and postpartum, your thyroid needs the nutrients for the thyroid go up dramatically, of course, right? Like you're raising a human and then postpartum, there's a lot of recovery. So those are times when people end up with more thyroid symptoms during during pregnancy and postpartum. And so also you see a 25 and 30% increase in depression and anxiety when thyroid is not working optimally, right? So it's like once one thing, it's like one domino and a bunch of dominoes fall. Other thyroid symptoms that were more common for me would have been sluggish motility is called the birdbath effect. It's like stagnation in the gut and the motility and once you have stagnation, then you can have kind of like bacteria, etc, grow. So fungal overgrowth can be a hallmark of sluggish thyroid, we're just kind of keeps coming back with that lower slightly lower body temperature just slightly lower body temperature allows that kind of fester and grow more dry skin. The thyroid is metabolised partially due to liver as as bile acids. So, you know, these are like, again, just interconnected. Related like nothing's in a silo. It's like what systems are all impacted here. So dry skin, especially dry feet can be a big one. Sometimes losing the outer third of your eyebrow here is a big one. Especially there is a tonne of American pull up a list, but but those are some of the thyroid symptoms I've see all the time. And so talking about thyroid again, ovarian adrenal thyroid, symptoms of thyroid, and then when we're thinking about thyroid, do you want to talk about like testing a little bit? Because I don't remember the original question. But it was like let's talk about unpack thyroid a little bit. And so when I was given the chance,

it was Novia thyroid, which I think you've explained are really, really super well for people and how that interacts with sex hormone production, and also adrenal function. The question I thought was really interesting was when you were talking, which people often don't think about they assume thyroid function, yes, metabolism that makes a big impact, right. And I think some people will have an awareness around a drop in mood depressive like symptoms when thyroid function is poor. What was interesting was what you were seeing around ADHD and scattered thinking, because brain fog, Claire, yeah, and maybe not even. I mean, there's brain fog. And then there's also just this inability to focus and concentrate, which I think is endemic in current society part. And lots of people are thinking, this is because of social media use. And because we've got so many things being thrown at us, right, we're on multiple platforms. And then there's email and then there's this and, you know, WhatsApp and all these different things. And that is definitely having an impact, I think on focus and concentration and the ability to find sort of a flow state, but what have you found specifically in relation to thyroid function, and how that might be affecting a bit of people's ability to concentrate?

So it's technically all under the brain fog umbrella. It's just how we resonate. And there's another symptom, very similar to me to brain fog, which is it's not similar in like how it presents, but the way people interpret it. When I talk to people about an unrelated topic, heartburn, I often have to use the word indigestion, burping, and some other words as well, just because people don't always resonate with that one word and like I don't always resonate with brain fog, but brain fog still means when you walk into a different room, and you forgot why you went into that room, and scattered thinking and just not a clear, clear brain. And so of course There's multiple things. I mean, I could bandaid this with nootropics. And do does Lion's Mane help for sure. But supporting my thyroid at just a basic level, the nutrients that support thyroid massively help it as well. So it's technically under the umbrella of what we would call brain fog. It's just not necessarily a resident term. So whether you want to say like, skipping around, I've got a post, I think on like, overlap, like a Venn diagram of like, ADHD and thyroid symptoms, because when people talk about their ADHD symptoms, I always thought about scattered brain. But I think there's some other symptoms that people attribute ADHD and like, still, just like that, I write stuff to me, and so it's worth investigation. But the problem is, so this is where I always I pause, you know, it's like a simple question. People say, I want to test my hormones. Okay, great. What's the next question? Which hormones need to be tested? Well, the answer to that is, which symptoms do you have? Okay, now, here's the next problem. What if the testing isn't very good, which is true. So, so when you go ask, at least in the States, when you go ask for a thyroid test, when you ask for a full thyroid panel, they when you ask to test your thyroid, they will test TSH, TSH is not even a thyroid hormone. It is an alarm clock. Two is a pituitary hormone. That's an alarm clock that sends out messaging to essentially wake up and produce thyroid hormone. So the alarm clock wakes up T four, which is the other so if you ask for a full panel, they will usually order a TSH and a TI for that is not comprehensive. But so the the alarm clock wakes you up, wakes this system up. And then T four is the inactive hasn't gone to work yet getting dressed doing the makeup doing the hair, and then you drive on the freeway to work. And if you check into work, it's T three the active hormone. So that's often not test tested. If you get stressed, distracted, whatever, if you have elevated stress, cortisol, you accidentally talk take the wrong exit, and you go the wrong way, that's reverse T three, so going the wrong way. So reverse T three is elevated, that's usually a stress marker. And by the way, if it's not elevated, doesn't mean you don't have any stressors, it might just present a different manner. And then antibodies, antibodies are thyroid globulin, and oh, I'm like blanking on the thyroid production is TP and T G antibodies, when either and sometimes, and here's what makes this kind of fun is different countries, we have a little different ways we do the measurement units. And then sometimes we call those terms a little bit different depending on country. So if your test isn't exactly the same, sometimes there's multiple names for the exact same lab, which is confusing. So if these antibodies are elevated, there's usually a gut component as well as signalling to the thyroid that something is off, and then the immune system gets more involved. Because the gut is, is when we're talking about immune system, we have to talk about gut function. Like there's overlap there. So you know, that's to me like this conversation gets it doesn't like there's answers here, there's answers. And they're simple answers. And there's things you can do that could be dramatically improve what you're what everyone's doing right now. But to go back to if if I can for a second, if I go back to why did the adrenals impact thyroid so much, let's just draw a really quick connection here. When your cortisol goes up, it dumps out a mineral called potassium, which we're familiar with. But it's not natural for us to we dump out a lot of it. And it's not natural for us to deplete it and the way that we should deplete it. My favourite thing I actually had a client do that, like a very high performing client do this recently. Her potassium is very, very depleted. And she went and bought tried to buy a supplement for it that was like potassium chloride. And it's like this is does not actually help, like food does like food is much superior, which is so cool for repeating potassium, but it's very easy to dump out the potassium, which is a huge problem because potassium is one of the cofactors for digestive enzyme status. So now digestion slowed down. It's one of the cofactors for checking thyroid into the cell. So now, thyroid function has slowed down. And it's one of the cofactors for checking glucose into the cells and our energy is slowed down which was already slowed down with with thyroid, how simple yet how easily missed because our our body is so cool that it's constantly trying to like steal things from other places to keep us in homeostasis. So if you go and get like a basic blood lab, usually if those if your sodium potassium are out of balance, you might ended up being admitted to the hospital because you feel faint, you feel yucky, you're like going to pass out. So usually your body is really good at trying to create at least a blood level of homeostasis, but in the tissue that doesn't have any extra reserves to go do these critical tasks. So you just slowly get tired. Your thyroid slowly can't function. So again, adrenal, the cortisol dumps the potassium. This potassium does all these other functions kind of like any nutrients, you start to study. It's like there's all these things and now the thyroid doesn't function as well. So I always feel you know if If the adrenals don't work beautifully, then the thyroid is never going to work beautifully. And so often we're kind of chasing labs, like the TSH is out of range and we go on medication, which is a whole different thing. I'm like a huge fan of the before it shows up on the labs. Here's all the things that can be supported. So I'm a Jabra box. So I kind of jumping around a little bit trying to pull it all together. So feel free to refocus me

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totally. So, the average person should get to 3000 milligrammes of potassium per day, when people are not adequate levels of potassium, which is a lot of a lot of my clients. And I see that on a mineral analysis like hair tissue mineral analysis, which seemed hokey, I first learned about it, like 13 years ago, discarded him, you know, was real, my eyes were reopened to about three, three and a half years ago, which is helpful because we're in like this massive epidemic of like all time, stress high and minerals are simply the downstream effect of like, what has your stress then you've, we've always known, like, oh, stress dumps out magnesium. But really sodium, potassium, are the doorkeepers of each cell. So if you're studying potassium or deplete it, you're going to just take all the magnesium you want, and you're not going to retain this right like there's cofactors for retaining minerals. So you're not going to retain it because the doorway is not even open or it's kind of blocking the doorway on the potassium getting in. Another thing I You said something offline about as we get older, which we all do or sometimes these minerals getting more and more depleted with inflammation, which happens in a variety of ways. It dries up kind of cell membranes and so then you can't get minerals into the cell so sodium potassium or the doorman and so you must have adequate sodium potassium to even make that pump the same Potassium pump in the cell function. So these two go first, like on Noah's Ark, sodium, potassium are the first two in the door everyone else like and then there's a two by two after that. So sodium is a little bit easier, because we can use mineral salts, we consult our food that is a little bit easier for people to replete, but it's just unnatural, as I said before, for potassium for people to consume the amount of potassium needed. So here are some foods that are very rich in potassium. So, again, I'm gonna go over these numbers, because really, you have to count the numbers for a few days just to see where it's at, because it's like, oh, that was actually more challenging than I thought to get that amount of food base potassium. So again, the average person needs two to 3000 milligrammes of potassium, I recommend three to 4000, the worst case scenario, there's not going to be like an overdose or anything, it's just that sometimes your cell can't take it all in because, you know, some people would just they would be like, cool, I'll just like do 3000 All at once, or 4000. All at once. Sometimes your body can't do that, if it's like super depleted, or that membrane is kind of dried up a little bit like it needs a little support. So worst case scenarios, you may have a little loose stool, because you're doing too much at once you need to spread it out and go a little bit slower. That's the only real negative, and it's pretty uncommon, honestly, but it could happen soy foods to help you get to that 3000 Let's just shoot for 3000 At least, Mark. A cup of coconut water has 600 milligrammes of potassium, my top three foods would be potatoes with skin, so if you take the skins off, you've reduced the potassium by half the nutrients are in the skin. So like a medium ish potato like, again, what's me? potatoes, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, sweet potato is fine, either one. So and I can't tell you the difference of testing between the two. It's fine. Like, in general, I'm a fan of these nutrient dense carbohydrates. It's amazing to me how many people have been taught that potatoes are like, not good. Like, they're actually extremely nutrient rich, but we can all have our own opinions about things right. So potatoes, avocados, and bananas are some of the very richest right so all of those if you kind of have a medium ish sized one, you're somewhere between six and 900 milligrammes of potassium,

well, here's the thing, right? When I was in rental cars, you raise something really important here is so many people that I see, I don't know about you, because I think there's been a lot on social media around controlling blood sugar is they're obsessed with keeping and wearing CGM and keeping their blood sugar within this super tight range, that they go really low carb, which now obviously, these foods are a fantastic sources of minerals. Putting aside the avocado, right, the bananas and potatoes, people start to become nervous of eating them. That then potassium deficiency is driving yet more problems with metabolism and blood glucose control. So now they think they can't tolerate them. And the more you move away from these foods, the less able you are to tolerate them. This is what concerns me when we get hung up on one area of health and we go right must control blood sugar, and nothing else. Because

well, if you're Yeah, if you're depleted in this area, like you just said, and your adrenals are not in good shape that that education, you weren't going to be able to manage your blood sugar regardless, because if your adrenals are sluggish, you're not going to produce DHEA hormone, which helps control the blood sugar plus, let's not even get into all the mineral cofactors necessary for helping manage blood sugar. So you can't just you know what this is it's this obsession for controlling, right? This is like we want to control everything. We never want to have to learn from our failures, right? Probably because of whatever inside of us for long term. But that's like, what it breaks down to is like so many of our issues are just hung up in control of wanting to control every outcome everything like let me come try to control these numbers. One of my favourite mentors and thyroid, he doesn't even check blood labs for thyroid after like a baseline. You just like quit doing it right and like, addresses it via other modalities. And I feel that way as well, because I like So David Brownstein has written a couple of great books on on thyroid health and many other topics. But I was able to interview him. And it was interesting to me like he just doesn't even run thyroid labs because I think people get obsessed with getting it to be perfect. And blood labs are actually the, again, this there's two sides, it can be really helpful. Or they can be really frustrating for people because it's like not I like mineral stuff because it's more long term. Right? It's usually like

looking back. Exactly when you look here, but also what you say there around blood labs, people, how many people do you see and it gets in the way of their healing because they're literally going from kind of either month to month, which is crazy in some cases, right? Or at least quarterly of how can I improve my bloodwork? And it's like a snapshot at that point in time and that's the sole focus is interesting because I interviewed Dr. Isabella events right who He has written books on thyroid, and now recently adrenal protocol. And she too, has moved totally away from the lab testing for the vast majority of people because it's not accessible to everyone. And it's showing you how you can heal your adrenals without actually doing any lab test.

Oh, yeah, and blood, blood tests for adrenals are not going to be super useful. Unless your adrenals are totally fried, and your DHEA comes back low, it's just not going to really show up very beautifully, which is why I think I mentioned this at a different time. When, for me, it's a bit of a game on like, what's the least amount of lab work I can do for the most ROI. And so mineral analysis has been really useful, but unfortunately, it's just not. The negative would be that it's not easy to interpret. Automatically. It's not like toxicities and deficiencies only, it's like patterns. So they say a bit more.

I think that's the thing. Yeah, ratios, which is complex.

So yeah, so it's a bit more nuanced, which is okay. But this was nice to know, because I think people were very everyone wants everything in a soundbite. So they just want to understand something in like 10 words or less, which I understand, we all have to try. But I'm not was not my forte, like, well, let me explain the bigger picture to you. Because I want you if you don't understand it, you're constantly just asking more questions. And if you understand the big context, then you can start to answer your own questions, which is simply just more important to me, like I would rather you understand your bigger picture. But yeah, bloodwork, like I find people, it causes so much stress, we actually spent hours and hours and hours developing this really like intensive spreadsheet on all these lab values. And we abandoned it because we're like, I don't know, if we're really helping people. If we give them this information. I feel like then we're just inducing stress. And I was like, well, that's against our company values. And our core mission, you know, which is not to induce stress. So it's like, the bigger picture is understanding how it all works together.

So what have you found then, just to kind of round off in terms of supporting we've talked a lot about minerals and the importance of it and how it affects that whole kind of trilogy, if you like in terms of adrenal sex hormone, and thyroid function. What about the lifestyle behaviours that people should be embracing my How can high performers listening to this start to include more balance in terms of like practices that they can develop that might be holistic practices alongside nutritional strategies that are going to support that high output so that they can perform at the highest level?

Okay, perfect. So first up, I have to mention and give lip service. You talked about this on my podcast when you came on, you talked about a lot of biohacking processes are very masculine and induce stress on the body. And I find a lot of people looking at biohacking things, inflammation, things, etc. are doing fasting. Now I get it. Fasting has a lot of benefits. I worked in a fasting programme, and its heyday and 2017. But if you're already depleted, this is not for you, it's making it worse. And so at a very basic level, you're under nourishing. And as humans, things start out with the best intentions, and then they can kind of progress into the not best intentions. Example, might get some hate for this, but it's like someone has good intentions on trying a plant based vegetarian diet. They do great for a couple of weeks, and then they got to a restaurant with friends. And the option is noodles, you know, like, not nutrient dense compared to other things. With fasting, it's like it becomes because of ease. It's like before you know it, you're drinking coffee for breakfast, really spiking the cortisol and dumping nutrients and not nourishing with high density like high nourishment foods. So I have to mention that first because it's really common. And so sometimes when I see people depleted, like very depleted, I love and my clients are really honest. They're like, Well, I was really under eating because of like fasting practices and other things for a long time. And one challenge is that we love immediate feedback. And so sometimes when people have gut issues and other things, when you do fasting, they're like, I feel really good. That's like a brain is clear. It's like because you got a bunch of gut mission is you issues, and you're starving them, right. And so, so when you feel going on something, you do more and more and more of it, but I want to caution against under nourishing, that's actually I forgot that part of my story. That was actually part of how I crashed was I was working in a fasting programme. And it was under development. And it wasn't like we were you know, exactly what I just said was me. I was like, Oh, I can I can have a window and then before you know you're seeing coffee, and then you miss lunch, and then you miss breakfast and all these things. And so you're under nourishing. And before you knew it my adrenals were looking real poor. So after mentioned that, because if we're missing that point, we're missing kind of everything after that. So I have to mention that first because it's unfortunately common more I mean, I see it constantly. Next up is adding minerals easily through the day. Remember that Tim Ferriss quote that we both love if this was easy, what it would look like, awesome. First of all, don't like make sure all your salt is mineral salt. In the US we have this brand called Redmond's Real Salt. It's out of Utah. It's an inexpensive tablesaw Yeah, we have otherwise Okay, perfect, great. So otherwise, Celtic or any other Himalayan salts, all of his mineral salts are amazing. And after you get accustomed to those salts, really hard to consume other really hard to consume regular salt, like it's disgusting after that. So that's an easy one to switch that over, then adding electrolyte so I always just have my clients add electrolytes in some capacity, or they're better and worse ones, of course, and once we look at mineral analysis, we can focus that. But if you just start with electrolytes, the majority of people are going to notice an improvement because they're your dump. Electrolytes are simply minerals. So you dump minerals in at the beginning of the day. Now you've given your body the fuel to, to charge like enzymes, essentially, for enzyme reactions to happen. And so my friend Amanda calls him spark plugs for energy. And so you give your body some spark plugs for energy, and it's like, wow, I feel better. When and the minerals help get hydration into the cell? How often do people feel kind of waterlogged? They're like drinking all the water? Well, let's say they're like a runner. Like they're a hobby athlete. I think that was maybe I think you mentioned that in passing. That's a lot of inflammation introduced in the body. And there's a lot of nutrients dumped. And so if you dump the nutrients, and you, you mess up that sodium potassium balance, you can't get nutrients in and out of the cell. Sometimes, you're gonna feel waterlogged, just because you're so depleted and minerals. So you're drinking all the water, doing everything, right. And you're still like, I'm just all puffy, right? That is a sneaky thyroid symptom. Odd puffiness, like your face is kind of puffy. And you just feel like,

muscular. Yeah, exactly. A lot of really common thing. And when you will feel like one working out. And then a common thing that is like, I need to reduce body fat and actually do a body composition analysis and body fat is really low. And the reason you're not seeing the anatomy, the the aesthetics that you want, right, the definition is because of the water issue. But I don't know if you found this, I think there's a mineral issue. And also from an energetic perspective, sometimes it's indicative that you're you're holding on to things that you need to let go most.

Yeah, I would say if you're fluctuating more than five pounds, or two, two and a half kilos of body weight over a couple of days, that's inflammatory waterway, that can be related to bigger picture of inflammation and inflammation is being informed by the nervous system, as you say, right? It's been informed by gut health, it's been informed by toxic burden, etc. So I think there's like more gravity of inflammation. Like if you're having massive swings, if it's like you feel puffy, and just kind of, I don't know how else to describe it, because I have been there. So I have empathy. And I call it like, just kind of feeling gross, and not feeling great. And just be some people use the word fluffy, and I don't really resonate with that term, but it's just kind of a weird, you know, you can be a bodyweight and you can feel strong and good in that body weight, or you can be that body weight, and just feel kind of if that's how I feel like the thyroid water retention, funky mineral imbalance, when it's like, I don't have the perfect terms. But this is how I would describe it. My clients

are saying, I feel I feel like that they think they maybe got a thyroid potential issue. They don't have the budget to keep testing, for example, or they're finding it difficult to do like some people feel sensitive around doing hair testing why they don't want to take a whole bunch of hair out.

What because they're already losing hair. Yeah, exactly.

What can they

so they already have a thyroid already. Yeah, they should be focusing on their potassium, the biggest, the only real challenge here is when people, they hear me talk about this, and they're the only problem is like, people are like, Oh, I'm retaining more water is like, oh, because you're doing too much sodium to potassium, that's the problem, you need to be doing more potassium to sodium, there's an imbalance. So that's when what you find out mineral wise. And by the way, you can do mineral testing for like $100 and have it interpreted for $300, which is not crazy. So I'm just mentioning that for this person, who should

I even do you know, even even less actually, I found this some really good like, hair tissue specialists, like we were talking offline around Barton Scott and his company that will do it, as you say, for a small amount. And it is so insightful, I think, because you made such a good point early on around how it looks bad, right? I think when I was chatting to bartenders, like blood is you on your best behaviour. This is looking at what's been going on for the last few months, what have you been up to? And how much are you depleting those resources? And I agree, I think I think it's worth testing. If you can, and I'm prioritising that I'm working with someone who's highly skilled, right, like you are like she understands the ratios and things and how they fit together because it isn't, it's something that's difficult to interpret on your own.

I would say it is and just keep in mind that this didn't happen overnight. And when you burn a house down like that, you're not going to rebuild it in a few weeks. And I think that's the hardest thing for people is they have these values just like anyone with values they like finally or validated these values. They're doing the work but if they're not changing the stressors coming in the nervous system, they're not gonna see, they're gonna feel better, but they're not going to move the needle like they need to. And that's an unfortunately common thing, too is like, well, where's your stress been this this year? And so, for me when my potassium was really low, and I got those lab results, it was a bit of a wake up call is like, that's weird. I don't even feel that stress. Isn't that a problem? Right? That's a worse problem that high performers can have is like, an realised stress, right? You're just so good at managing it, you don't even realise it. And then you get to lab values, like, it appears that I've had some stress over time. But I always tell people that this could be from a very long term, right? Because it's just not natural for you to repeat it. So it could be going on for a long time before you actually did a test that showed us just like blood labs, it's like that could be affected by what your intake was the last 24 hours, 12 hours, five hours, eight hours, this is a lot longer keeps you a bit more honest, because it's long term. So in short, the answer to your question is, do a lot more potassium and slowly start to see the magic happen with

I've had led potassium, and when you get it, when you address it, it feels completely different. And I think just become aware of your behaviours as well, that you can't just expect to redress it, get it on balance, and then everything's fine. You don't need to take it anymore. Because if you keep burning it out all the time, you're going to be in that same situation quite quickly.

Heart palpitations, I was doing my thyroid list, mentally. And I knew there was a lot that I missed. You mentioned heart palpitations offline, that would be another potential direct symptom, right as you bring these nutrients into balance. Because you know, here's the worst part of that is that women have these heart palpitations and they think they're going to have a heart, they think they're going to have a heart attack. And really, they have got a mineral imbalance minerals, minerals, impact contractions of muscles, and your heart's a muscle. How cool, right? So work on your minerals. It's amazing. So just nutrient density, nutrient dense foods. And then I like again, back to the if it was easy, what would it look like? I'm so copious with my mineral intake via electrolytes, because it's an easy button. Right? It's like if I could change that you take I have taken a multitude of electrolytes over the years. I love the taste of element but it is extremely low in potassium high and sodium. So it's the wrong choice for maybe the audience that I was just discussing. I bring this up because my daughter is like It tastes like you're drinking seawater, like I don't think so. I think it's delicious. My friend Robin white labels a, an electrolyte called rady ra y vi and it's coconut and Bejo powder. I don't even know if I'm saying that fruit right? But it's a whole food powder and it's also goes by the name of Bumble root it's out of Originally, the company is from Montana and they do come in and out of stock a lot but a tablespoon and a half of that is like 900 milligrammes of potassium, I have looked for alternatives, but those are some ones I really like you can also a teaspoon of creamer, Tartarus, 500 milligrammes of potassium, occasionally gives people some gas, but you can add that to things. I mean, that's like,

yeah, upgraded for $2 and great ones, because you just drop them. So like, I'll just drop a whole bunch of minerals into my glass of water in the morning with a lemon or something. And it's just a great way to squeeze in like the iodine, selenium, anything that you need, according to your heart tissue analysis.

Yeah, I'm not familiar with them. So I'm gonna check them out. Because I always find getting enough potassium is kind of and then it sounds like they're very good at like other trace minerals, which is good, as well. Yeah, never heard. So like trace, trace minerals, you're gonna find a lot in those mineral salts. Yeah, and on that note, don't forget about topical absorption like, and so it's really funny, the response people will give me from me encouraging them to take an Epsom salt bath or a even better like an ancient sea salt bath, you're gonna get more trace minerals from that type of salt, more extensive salt, but better salt. If you have your entire body submerged in this warm water, look at how much surface area you're able to absorb minerals through, versus trying to take it orally, we're actually pretty inefficient at absorbing minerals orally through supplementation, because the different varieties, some are more absorbable than others. And again, that phospholipid layer, so kind of a telltale sign of like you are not absorbing your minerals very well is if you get a loose stool, and said this in different contexts before but if you get kind of a loose stool, if you take, let's just say a vitamin or something, if that's ever happened to you, you probably have a bit of an issue with your phospholipid bilayer. And it's not getting into the cell.

It's a great show. I love that about the baths as well. You have some amazing graphics on your Instagram that people can find and so much knowledge please share where can people find out more about you about your work and connect with you?

Yeah, since we're on a podcast, my favourite platform because I met chatterbox is the podcasts because then I can give more lip service to the bigger picture questions and answers. So my podcast is called the less stressed life which I was just looking for a synonym for inflammation. And back in 2017. When I started, it's been a fun umbrella of talking about all nutritional, structural and emotional versions of health and stress. And so the less stress life podcast I met Krista bigler.com, and on Instagram, I am anti inflammatory nutritionist.

Awesome. Thank you. We will link to that in the show notes. This has been super fun. I think you've highlighted so many issues. They're given people lots to think about, particularly in relation to minerals. And I think super, super interesting. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

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