Supercharge Your Energy and Resiliency with Dr Molly Maloof

7:00AM Mar 31, 2023

Speakers:

Angela Foster

Dr Molly Maloof

Keywords:

people

higher

burnout

book

carbs

sleep

hrv

low carb

body

eat

stress

micronutrients

insulin

pcos

blood sugar

luteal phase

biohacking

women

big

called

A lot of people over exercise and under eat and this can cause relative energy deficiency of sport for women, but then more often than not people overeat and under exercise and so both of these can be theirs or both of these are out of balance.

Hi friends so if you are looking to upgrade your energy and really dive into some biohacking then you are in for a treat. I'm sitting down today with Dr. Molly Maloof. She's the author of the new book, The spark factor supercharge your batteries for limitless energy and a fitter, stronger, more resilient future. Dr. Molly is a physician and Stanford lecturer and she spent her career providing personalised medicine services to high performing technology executives, billionaire investors, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and Academy Award winning actors. And in this week's episode, we talk all about how to optimise mitochondrial health what the latest bio hacks are and how you can really upgrade your energy. So without further delay, let me introduce you now to the lovely Dr. Molly Maloof. So Dr. Molly, it's absolutely wonderful to have you on the show today. Really, really excited to talk to you about your new book, The spark factor. Firstly, a very warm welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, it's awesome to have you here. I think it's really interesting. I was reading one of your stats around the fact that we have this burnout epidemic that's going on at the moment 45% of women. And as someone who suffered with burnout myself as a lawyer, you know, is something really close to my heart. And I think you know, my own experience with burnout actually is, it's quite a difficult thing to turn around. Because once you get to that point, what would you say in terms of women that are listening to this, when and men when they're thinking about the signs that show that's creeping up on them? What are the key things you should be looking out for?

You know, it's funny when I was writing this book, isn't that a little bit of a freakout? Because my editors were like, women who are burnout are gonna buy this book. And I'm like, Well, this is not necessarily a book on burnout. It's a book on energy metabolism. But I do have some really good blog posts that I just put up on the way that I approach burnout. And the reason why I didn't include them in the book was because there's a lot of controversy around cortisol testing in the functional medicine world. And so I didn't want to be slammed by all the scientists out there who are like these, these tests are useless, but I do personally use the Dutch test. And it's a really important test for me and my practice, because I want to know, is a person at like the alarm stage? Do they have really high cortisol levels? Do they have low dopamine, norepinephrine? Do they have low cortisol levels? Like where are they at in the stress response, and I have found that if you put a blood sugar monitor on and you do and you do a Dutch test, you can really see a person's higher low cortisol, and you can see how that's manifesting in their blood sugar regulation. So to me, that's something that I like, probably should have put, I mean, I think I mentioned it slightly, I did mention it in the metabolism section. But it's really important for people first and foremost, to recognise that your blood sugar is going to be fluctuating all over the place when you are burned out. And it's it can often be really low. So you don't know what's happening unless you do measurements. And so the first thing I tell people to do is like, before you go do anything for stress, like gets, you know, obviously, besides like starting recovering and getting more sleep and doing all the lifestyle stuff, you should get some sort of baseline of what's going on in your health. So getting your hormones tested, you know, really looking at, you know, essentially like looking at like your sex hormones, looking at your stress hormones, looking at your overall physiological function of your blood sugar. These are kind of good predictors of what's going on inside your body because your mitochondria are not only mediating blood sugar metabolism, but they are mediating the stress response. And they also mediate sexual reproduction. So I have this article called Understanding stress and the HPA axis, which I put this in the show notes for women who want to read this. But basically, you know, I like to gather a lot of data on people to find out what's going on inside their bodies, what's happening to their thyroid hormone, where are their micronutrient levels? What is their melatonin rhythm look like? What is their adrenal hormone rhythm look like? What does their sex hormones look like? DHEA? What does their gut look like? Because oftentimes, if you're really stressed out, you're gonna have bad gut health, especially if you're burned out. And oftentimes, you see, when people have really low energy, they're not detoxifying as well. They just don't have enough energy to do it. So what can happen is that that can cause problems with hormone hormone dysfunction. So I want to look at gut health. And then oftentimes, if you have issues with guts, you have issues with food And so there's usually food allergies and insensitivity so I take a functional medicine approach to stress. And and it's a multimodal approach. But I'm also looking at how is the person living their life? You know, like, what are they actually doing from day to day? And so I'm really looking at how to change a person's diet, first and foremost, because it's really a question of, you know, if you have really high stress, or if you're burned out, which is basically the end result of high stress over many, many months, you're gonna have issues with blood sugar regulation, as I mentioned, so you want to get regular mealtimes in, I wouldn't recommend fasting, I wouldn't recommend a lot of the micro hormetic stressors, I actually talked about this in the book, I wouldn't recommend a lot of high intensity exercise, I wouldn't recommend a lot of, you know, a lot of stress, a lot of the stressors that make you stronger when you're healthy, do not make you stronger if you're completely running on empty. Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally. And I think I think it's a common mistake, isn't it? When people start to feel a bit burned out, they almost feel like I can't get going without that faith 5k Run or I can't get going without that hit class, I'm actually that's a message that Yeah, to dial things back a little bit.

As all they're doing is they're forcing, they're forcing their body to pump up more cortisol the best it can. But eventually, it's going to just flatline and having been there during the pandemic, I learned firsthand that there's quite a lot of, there's a quite a lot that you have to like the a lot of people don't realise that they, they need to think about when they're trying to biohack their bodies when they're in burned up. And then burnout state and in fact, I should write a book just on burnout. Like, as my next book, I just write like, this is the guide to healing. We're now because and I may, I may even just do like some webinars on this topic. Because, you know, I think that a lot of women don't really know that they're, it's okay for them to slow down. It's okay for them to you know, like today, I have a really long day of calls, but it didn't start till 11. So I've got like 11 to seven today. So this morning, I just had a really easy morning, because my body was telling me I didn't sleep super well, last night, because I was up a little too late. I highly don't recommend this never happens to me, but rarely Am I on my phone late last night was like a rare occasion. But it was such a good lesson because like I am so rarely go without good sleep. And so last night, it was like so surprising how quickly my sleep was just like just be on my phone for too late. I mean, my sleep has really suffered. So most importantly for anyone burnout is you have to rest you really really have to rest as much as possible. Like it's so fundamental to healing. And yeah, that's that's one of the things that you should also think about and also just getting rid of a lot of process. I mean, I tell everyone this, whether you're burned out or not, just clean out all the processed foods and fast and fast foods out of your diet. Like they're not doing you any favours they're causing brain fog and inflammation, and metabolic and flexibility and I got dysfunction, so there's no reason for them in your diet. And yet they're super big part of a lot of people's diets, which is still a really big issue.

One of the key things to optimising your hormones is not just to get enough sleep, but quality sleep, and part of that is having a really good evening routine to encourage the release of melatonin. One of the most important things is limiting blue light exposure in the evening. Does that mean you can never work if you need to, or watch your favourite Netflix series? No. But understanding how light and circadian rhythms work allows you to use biohacking to adopt a more ancestral way of living even in modern times. After my evening meal I put on my blue light blocking glasses for a couple of hours before bed. My favourite blue blockers are from Bonn charge. Vaughn George is a holistic wellness brand with a huge range of evidence based products to optimise your life in every way. Founded on science and inspired by nature all been charged products adopt ancestral ways of living in our modern day world. Their extensive range of premium wellness products help you sleep better, perform better have more energy, recover faster balance hormones, reduce inflammation, the list is endless, and bomb chargers glasses are made in optics laboratories in Australia, not mass produced in factories in Asia, and they have stylish frames that have been featured in GQ and Vogue and science back technology tested to ensure they actually work. Unlike other blue light glass companies. Buying a cheap pair of blue light glasses is a waste of money as they won't work. It's so important to invest in a high quality lens. Since wearing the blue light blocking glasses from Bonn charge my sleep is incredible. I am sleeping longer, deeper and feeling refreshed the next morning, I've been tracking with my HRV device and I get into deep state of recovery during sleep. And the cool thing about bond chargers classes is that they come in non prescription prescription and reading options. They also have glasses for every need computer glasses for helping with digital eyestrain. light sensitivity classes for helping with low mood and migraines and blue light blocking glasses for improving your sleep. Bond charge also has other amazing products such as low blue light bulbs, red light therapy devices, EMF 5g protection and 100% black out All sleep masks, all backed by science bond charge also shipped worldwide in rapid time with easy returns and exchanges. And you can save a call 20% off any of their products, go to bond charge.com forward slash Angela, and use coupon code Angela to save 20%. That's boncharg.com/angela and use coupon code, Angela to save 20%. I think most people listening to this are probably like pretty focused on their diet because I know that they're making changes. I guess from the blood sugar perspective, that's really interesting what you were saying there about blood sugar often being being low, because I think we associate stress which maybe it's that pre stage of stress before biomat. But

it's really high when you're in an insulin resistant state. But when you're fully burned out, and you're like, I can't get out of bed in the morning, because I'm so exhausted. That's usually when you see people struggle with even keeping their blood sugar at a normal space. So fun fact, like I've seen this happen in women where they're like, Okay, I have weight loss resistance, I'm super stressed out. Like cortisol is high. And I'm gonna, you know, try to do all these bio hacks, right. And they end up with more blood sugar problems, because their body's out of balance. So like when it comes to stress, it's like, you can try your best to use your diet to change your your blood sugar, but if the stress is the cause, then you have to address the stress. And like you can do everything you want with food. But it's never it's not the root cause of and in the case of burnout and high stress. If your blood sugar's all over the place, you can change your diet to adjust for it. But it's not really addressing the direct issue at play, which is your life and your lifestyle. So I tell people when when their bodies are out of balance, it's a pretty good sign your life needs to change in some way. You know?

What about when you when you've seen individuals, I've seen this with people where their blood glucose actually is staying within a really tight range. If anything, sometimes it's trending down. But when you do fasting insulin, actually they are insulin resistant. What do you think is going on that higher insulin levels? Yeah, fasting insulin.

What's happening with fasting insulin, when it's high in your blood sugar looks normal is your body's compensating by pumping out extra insulin. So it's like it's doing its best to manage the reality that you're in. But it's not necessarily. It's like it's deceiving, right? So early in metabolic dysfunction, you see a person typically like with with higher insulin output, but normal blood sugar, and that's because your body is compensating by adapting to the glucose loads that you're consuming by creating more insulin and more higher insulin response. So I personally eat low carb. And I find that that's typically the strategy that I would recommend most people take that is a disease. It's not for everybody. Some people do better on weirdly enough, like higher carb diet. People who are naturally super lean, typically do well and people who are super active, but I still see problems and consistently high carb diets with athletes where they end up so carb dependent that they like can't do any like they can't perform unless they have carbohydrates available. So that's not really metabolically flexible. So one of the biggest questions in health today is how do we take a person who has a specific dietary style and get them to be more metabolically metabolically flexible, because you can get metabolic flexibility from being too low carb for too long, too high carb for too long, which is pretty fascinating. Because what happens when you're too low carb for too long, is your insulin levels are too low. And then whenever you eat carbs, your blood sugar spikes, and so it's kind of like physiologic insulin resistant, it's like it's not it's not insulin resistance, but it's like it's it's low insulin output as a result of a dietary style that leads to less insulin output, because you're not asking the pancreas to produce lots of insulin in low carb states. So um, yeah, I think this is like one of the bigger questions that needs to be solved and I think it will probably end up being through metabolic flexibility flexibility, flexibility training through carb cycling, that seems to be the the best strategy for it.

carb cycling in and around workouts.

Yeah, in and around workouts. And also, you know, like thinking through your day of the week like today, I'm not doing a hard workout because I worked out really hard on Monday and Wednesday. So today I'll probably do you know, some mild cardio and maybe some sauna, the gym and I have a lot of calls today so I'll be doing a fair amount of sedentary behaviours because I have a lot of calls with patients. So I'm just going to eat less on days like this, and I'm gonna eat less carbs on days like this because my body's not using them right. But when I'm exercising I definitely know a different notice a different When I have a hard workout day, my body needs more carbs that day, like it feels, it just feels like the craving for the carbs. And I just feel better. Now I mostly eat fruits and berries and vegetables for my carbs. That's generally where I get my carbs. I do some cassava flour in small amounts. But usually in combination with things like almond flour, coconut flour and baked goods, but generally speaking, most of my carbohydrate content comes from Whole Foods and fruits, vegetables.

Yeah, which is better. I've noticed that actually as well myself an on workout days, my blood glucose if I have carbs, like starchy carbs, it just stays way more stable than on day. So I tend to cycle around that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I have to work really hard at it because I have PCOS. I'm always trying to, oh, I know, that range. And it feels really hard because you have a much harder, right and everyone else who feels

Yeah, my friends with PCOS definitely have a bit more of a challenge because they basically, you know, have this insulin resistance as a result of this, you know, hyper androgen androgen ism if the ovaries and as a result, most of them do eat low carb. And I have seen under high stress people with PCOS, who eat really low carb, end up with thyroid dysfunction. So it's really a tricky balancing act, because you have to basically figure out how to like fix this. Now, I would be really curious to see what would happen on someone who has PCOS. I'm really curious about how ozempic or some of these GLP one inhibitors work for PCOS? Because I'm wondering if they would either cause problems with blood sugar or maybe ameliorate it. Like I know a lot of people use Metformin, and Berberine. And like, you know, do you use any any like insulin sensitising agents?

Yeah, I often use actually as well, my inositol Yeah, that kind of helps and helps with with sleep. But I think for me, probably like the stress component, the sleep and also just keeping inflammation, low eating as you're speaking and optimising or cycling carbs on those busier days or workout days. Yeah, has been tremendously helpful. But I think the thing for me I noticed the most. And I'm curious as to what you found is actually the luteal phase is where it's much more difficult for me to manage. Manage the glucose?

Yeah, well, it's typically because you're less insulin sensitive during that phase because you have less oestrogen around. So when we have less oestrogen during the luteal phase, oestrogen is influenced sensitising. So this is why we during our Flickinger phase, we do so well. And then we're during our luteal phase. It's like, I mean, I'm in my luteal phase right now. And I'm definitely eating lower carb. And I had such a good time. During my follicular phase, I was eating my ma suppo day because I found one at the store and it's like my favourite fruit. And I was eating like spoonfuls of this fruit. Like every day. It took me like three days to finish this fruit because it was like this big. It was like a gigantic fruit. But man, it made me feel so good. And then I started hitting up to my luteal phase. And I was like, Oh, I'm starting my period sometime soon, I should probably lighten up on the carbs. And this is one of things I talked about in the book that like, it's something that took me years to figure out like, why is it that during my luteal phase, I'm all over the place with my blood sugar, and what can I do about it. And so what I typically do, is I don't do as I typically do that the today was actually this week was actually interesting. I was really motivated to get back into the gym, because I hadn't been working out for like three weeks because of travel. And I was doing a book tour. And I was in LA and New York and Dubai, and my body was just like, you need to go to the gym like you need this. This is what you need to get back into shape. And my body gets in and out of shape like that. It's great. Like I can go really curvy, or really lean, like within a month or two, which is awesome. But it's kind of annoying because it's like, you put all this work into the gym. And then like two months go by and you've been travelling and it's challenging to get but you got to get back, you know, you got to do the exercise. And so I was in the gym, I kind of pushed it a little bit harder than I would have typically during my luteal phase and I definitely paid for it and soreness. So it's like you really should try to hit your personal bests in your follicular phase and try to give your body some space during your luteal phase to just be more inward oriented and more gentle, do more yoga. Even I have to remind myself of this, even I wrote a book on this. And it's still a challenge because you just you have this mind that wants to do what it wants to do. But then you don't always know what your body wants. So one of the things so I was laughing at myself, and I was like, Well, fortunately the I definitely course corrected. I was I did a leg day on Monday and then Wednesday I did an arm day and it was a lot more relaxed about it. And I felt I felt fine afterwards. But it was just super interesting how my body like told me Hey, maybe you should just do a letter exercise. And then also it's just like like moderate intensity exercise is really what you need to be doing during the luteal phase because you're burning fat more effectively. So you You burn fat better in more moderate intensity exercise than high intensity exercise. So those really intense workouts are best for when you're most carb sensitive because you're burning those carbs. So enjoy your carbs during the follicular phase, especially around your fitness, where blood sugar monitor, see which carbs work best for your body. And then when you hit your luteal phase, like, let your body ease up, you know, like, still get your steps and still get your exercise in. But don't feel inclined to like force yourself to do this, like hard exercise. Even if even if your brain wants you to do it, your body says I want to chill. You know, I want to relax, I want to do more. And we just we have such a high paced world, that it's hard for women to like, learn, like how do I how do I balance all of this and like I'm hanging out with my friends this weekend, who's got some kids? And I'm like, definitely like thinking about children. Thinking to myself, I need to spend more time with friends with children to like really understand this, this little change of life, you know,

I only tell you with like three of my own, I think three is a minor builder. Now they're like 10 and 14 and 15. So I don't know that actually gets I just turned into the taxi service today.

So there you go. Yeah, it's fun.

But it's interesting what you say that I think the thing is, when you've been travelling like that, and you just feel that need to work out. You just want to like, brutalise yourself so you can feel.

Yeah, it's funny. But I also like, you know, I definitely been doing a lot more of the bio hacks that there's a bunch of AI hacks I like kind of like started implementing after the book was done being written. And I was like, Man, I have to write another book already. Because there's all sorts of stuff that I'm learning about that like isn't in his book, but can you do it? He's one of my favourite new things is NAD therapy. And then methylene blue. So I use patches, and I have a friend who does NAD retreats, but it's like IV NAD is like really, really phenomenal stuff. And then especially for just like rebooting the system, if you need more energy, it's just such a awesome actually reminds me that one of my mentors was asking me about an ad. I need to read, I need to contact him. Um, but that's the one I was like really struggling last year after getting COVID. And I was like, it wasn't like bad struggle. It was more like, Oh, I definitely feel like I'm at like 75% this is not optimal. So I went and I did any therapy. And holy crap, did it turn me around like that? I was like, This is awesome. And then the second thing was methylene. Blue is like a mitochondrial enhancing agent. So I have these these things on my desk called prescriptions. I don't know if the tray

Oh, yeah. Yeah, them in the UK. I have you got the just blue? I prefer them just blue to the mix. Yeah, these are the just, yeah, like my

friends company. Actually. These are my friends, companies. I'm like, How do you open this thing?

Oh, Scott shot, isn't it? Yeah, Scott.

He's awesome. Scott and Dr. Seuss name? Dr. Chad atossa. That's it. It's so crazy how small the biohacking world is, like everyone knows everyone. The first

time I to their true case was a few years ago. And you know, they come in like the courtroom with the for Yeah, going out for a run. And I took the one with the CBD and the caffeine. And I just pop them in and just wait to go back. And I was really nauseous on the run. And I was like, Is it really meant to feel like this. And they were like, well, how many did you have? And I was like one and they were like no that that's for? Maybe for you. Oh, you're supposed to do Yeah. Border, like build up slowly. So I just took four quarters all at once.

Oh, yeah. Because you don't I mean, I definitely. Yeah, that's one of the funny things about like going to these biohacking conferences is I one time took. I definitely took I felt like I took so many stimulants at one point that I was like, this is not healthy for me. But never

so easy cocktail. So tell us about the methylene blue first because not everyone will have heard about this and the

I mean, the contrail health, I went to this place called kuya. And because I was just feeling like, I don't know, I was feeling a little a little worn down from three weeks of travel. I was like that's just hard work. Like plus I went across multiple time zones. And so I actually didn't have any jetlag which was really cool. But that's because I I just think I'm immune to it at this point. It's really It's crazy. I just immediately get on the new sleep schedule when I go somewhere. And I just I sleep really well and so it doesn't really affect me at all when I when I go to somewhere I'm just like I just sleep. I did sleep a lot last weekend, but that's just because I wanted to

I love to the states as soon as I get there I'm on the timezone But coming back to the UK. Is that going? Yeah, just a really big struggle.

They say West is best East is a beast, but I went to Dubai and I got right when I got there I just immediately went to sleep and and I slept a bit on the plane and then I didn't sit that much on the plane actually. But I and then on the way back, I slept a tonne on the plane. And then and then right when I got home I just went, went to sleep again. And so I think I'm just a professional sleeper at this point, despite last night, but yeah, so methylene blue basically, is this like, there's a bunch of supplements in the world that are like treatments for poisonings and like and I say it'll sustain is a good treatment for for liver poisoning like It's like Tylenol poisoning. And methylene blue is is used as a treatment for meth methemoglobinemia methemoglobinemia which can happen if people consume certain toxins and certain pharmaceuticals. And so basically, there's this thing called meth haemoglobin reductase. And it basically this is the NADH or NADPH dependent methyl meth haemoglobin. reductase enzyme. But basically, when this when this enzyme gets overwhelmed methylene blue is his antidote, because it can basically like sort of rescue. Rescue the problem, I think, I think, how does it work? Let's see here. I'm trying to figure out how this works. I mean, definitely works through like direct mitochondrial. Mitochondrial, like, I think it's like an I'm trying to think how does what does the mechanism action? It's definitely from mitochondria, but it's an SRS. I thought it was it was a it's a reducing agent of oxidised haemoglobin, so it converts it back into oxygen oxygenated form, which I think is part of the reason why, I mean, you basically need oxygen to burn fuel properly. And so it just kind of like gives your mitochondria a reboot, just like NAD. NAD does.

And how often are you taking it?

I mean, I just started doing it via IV, and I've only done it once. But you know, these turkeys I'll probably be playing I've heard you can just swallow them. I don't like my my tongue to look crazy. But

last ages on the tongue as well. That's what I found as sort of the Yeah, I don't want to because it's also good to do in conjunction with red light therapy.

Yeah, I'm a fan of red light therapy, especially for my face. I do these like biohacking facials, where I take my youngest products, and I have all these different little tools. And I have my guasha and I have my, my red light. And I have this like microcurrent device called the tenant bio modulator. And it like pushes electricity into the skin. And then and then I have like exfoliation, you know, tools, and I just like go in my bathtub. And then I have these like cold balls that are that are frozen. And I just like do all these little things to my skin in the bathtub. And it's really it's quite fun to play around. They're like these cold steel balls that are frozen that can they're really cold and that they d puff your face. Yeah. And people are always asking me about my skin. And I swear to God, it's I don't use that many products. But I experiment with a lot of things we will send me so and I take I mean, it's people are constantly sending me skin supplements and skin products. So it's hard to say which one works. But I started to use this one product called one skin. Because one of my girlfriends had terrible discoloration in her skin. And I was like what are you doing? What did you do to your skin? Like it's literally perfect now and she's like, it's this one skin? And like I'm like, Whoa, that's pretty wild. So I've been playing with peptides. peptides are certainly an interesting biohack that a lot of people are getting into these days. Yeah,

for sure. I was interviewing Dr. Rachel Vargo yesterday, just on skin. Yeah, it was fun. I haven't tried one skin. So I definitely look at that I'm a big fan of the younger skincare.

I love their products. And they've been the founders are just the best people they are hyperbaric I don't think I can live without it. It's just it's not actually hyperbaric mass. It's not it's a mask that it reduces oxidative stress in the skin. But it really does give me when I started using a mask, I was like up in the morning and like like the way my skin looked, you know, which is not what everybody can say about their mornings. And so I really do think that their products are fantastic. Like they're just good. They're just good founders.

And as you say really nice people. Would you like a snapshot of where you are on your health journey right now with personalised advice from me on how to improve, go to your total health chat.com and take my 62nd biohacking quiz and I will send you your free health score and personalised report with recommendations on each area of my shift protocol for health optimization. Shift contains the five key pillars you need to focus on for optimal health, sleep, hormones insights to track how to fuel your body with the right nutrition light hydration and breath work and training for your bowl. Read a mind, go to your total health check.com To find out your score in each area, and get personalised recommendations from me on how to improve takes less than 60 seconds. And you can take the quiz as many times as you want to, and track your improvement by following my guidance, simply go to your total health chat.com To get started. So looking at mitochondria, then because a lot of people struggle with energy, what are your top tips for? Yeah, that are really looking to upgrade their energy, maybe they have got, maybe they're not go for burnout, but maybe they're struggling in the morning, and they just can't get going. And they don't feel that they're kind of performing at the highest level? What would be your top tips? Sure.

So I was like explaining this to someone yesterday on a podcast. And I never really put it this way. But I want to like explain the whole cycle of energy production and like, succinct way. So basically, there's digestion, and it starts in the mouth, right? So it starts with the fuel you put into your body, because the the air you breathe, and the water you drink and food that you eat all becomes substrates for your body's metabolism. So if you have poor quality food, you're not going to have a healthy metabolism. But if you have poor digestion, you're not actually going to get all of those macronutrients and micronutrients that you need into the body, you may have malabsorption, you may have poor enzyme output. So like first and foremost, you've got to get your digestion, right. So gut health is definitely talked about in the book. And then once you have gut health down, you have to make sure that your food has nutrient density, because nutrients are basically what runs the the gears of metabolism. So you know how you produce energy is not just eating macronutrients, like carbs, fats, and proteins. But it's also all the micronutrients and minerals, because those are all cofactors in metabolism. So you have to make sure that you're getting proper micronutrients. And I typically see the most micronutrient deficiencies in vegans and vegetarians. So as much as people claim that these diets are best for everyone, I've seen a lot of B 12 deficiency I've seen a lot of micronutrient deficiencies, a lot of protein deficiencies, immune system dysregulation, more often than not in people who don't eat meat. So I'm full on omnivore and I think it's possible to have a healthy diet if you're a vegan vegetarian, but you really do need to get tested with your micronutrients and your minerals to make sure you're getting enough nutrient density into your body. So okay, so you got your fuel, got your digestion, you got your micronutrients. Now, the question is, are your macros balanced for what your body needs. So I talk about this a lot in the book, but there's probably a baseline of what people's macros need to be based on their genetics. And then there's also the effects of lifestyle on metabolism. So the sort of, sort of foundation of your diet should be high quality protein, and fruits, vegetables, in my opinion, that's my personal opinion. The reason why is you need these are most nutrient dense and also Phyto nutrient dense, so you need the colours of the rainbow and your diet. So colours are really key, and fibre and vitamin like probiotics, you know, this, at least comes from this comes from natural foods, soy protein as your foundation and then looking at your fats in your carbs based on what your body is going to metabolise best. So you can put a blood sugar monitor on and you can experiment with what happens when I eat higher fat meals, some people have more blood sugar dysregulation with higher fat, some people have more blood sugar dysregulation with lower with low with higher carbs. So you really I do kind of look at a blood sugar monitor as the tool to help identify what's the best type of macronutrients for you but also looking at you can look at your eye or beta styles you can you know your your eye, your Rana types, you can look at your body type. People who are bigger boned naturally are going to gear towards more higher fat, lower carb, people who are really skinny naturally who just burned carbs, like super easily, they can tolerate a higher carb diet, I have friends that are just naturally lean and higher carb and they do not do well on ketogenic diets or low carb diets they need higher carbs to thrive. So now you're looking at your fuel styles, right? You're like your your macros, and then and then you have to look at okay, am I using the fuel that I am putting in my body. So, if you are not moving your body regularly, then you should not be eating large quantities of food. If you are exercising consistently, then you should be eating in accordance to what your body needs. So a lot of people over exercise and under eat, and this can cause relative energy deficiency of sport for women, but then more often than not people overeat and under exercise and so both of these can be there's a both of these are out of balance but you but everybody needs to move their body like exercise is the fun Fundamental like best anti ageing drug on the market. And then there's the battery drain, which is psychosocial stress, work stress, financial stress, environmental stress. So looking at your lifestyle and looking at your, your relationships, and trying to figure out like, Where does your stress comes from? Because a lot of people that are completely unaware of their sources of stress. And so in my book, I go really deep into detail on like, how do you identify your sources of stress, as well as things like trauma. So a lot of what people don't totally understand is that your nervous system can get wired into a hyper vigilant state that's just draining your energy, just by having unresolved trauma. So I talk a lot about how unresolved trauma causes health problems for people and what to do about it in the book. So stress trades, the batteries, exercise charges, the batteries, and then there's, you know, environmental toxins, you don't want to poison the body. And so you're you want you've got to clear it, you got to purify your water and your air, whether you like it or not almost unless you live in the pastures in the prairies. And like there's you live in the jungle, and there's like perfectly clean air, you probably need to clean your air and water if you live in a city. So I use air doctor and I use the company got mould to check for mould. And then I also use natural action for for like water purification. And then I would say that, you know, so we've talked a lot about like the basics here of like, of health. But then the big one that most people don't recognise is like super important, obviously, like supplements are key, right? Like I do recommend basically the same five supplements for everybody. So, magnesium, for sleep, sometimes glycine and Vanina people really can't sleep. And then that vitamin d k 1k. Two, almost everybody needs that. Omega threes high quality pharmaceutical grade, if you can get them really don't want to eat rancid omegas. And then I like B complex. Some people recommend a multivitamin, but I'm a little bit more targeted. And I like to test before I give people a bunch of supplements. So you can take a multi or you can run labs to determine what you need in terms of specific micronutrients. But a minerals complex is helpful. I like the company upgraded formulas for hair mineral testing it it's such a great, great company.

It's just mind on actually.

No Did you

did you find Yeah, really interesting. Just like a kind of calcium shell. My potassium was really low and kind of almost like Yes, still signs of that background of but yeah, I've sort of been slowly writing super interesting. Yeah, yeah,

I've been definitely, yeah, we ended up we definitely need to make sure our minerals are properly balanced. And then on top of that, there's connection. So a big piece of healing is oxytocin. And it's nature's medicine, it's behind the placebo response. It's behind why when we have healthy relationships that extends longevity. So a lot of what the book talks about is is oxytocin and I could go way more into supplements and I have an entire article on my blog, which we can link I just put this up a few days ago. So we have like, but these are these blog posts in and

present on the show notes.

Yeah, for sure. But just there's so many different supplements you can take so I've given people some thoughts on like what how do you know which ones you need? And why and that that sometimes makes like I've just put down my wrote my most recommended supplements but there's a lot of different ways to biohack supplementation based on different systems you want to optimise

I want to pick up on something that you said around carbohydrates and fats and how that's impacting people's blood glucose because yeah, definitely that I've observed is is an is interesting what you're saying there about people being lean like I'm naturally very mean even though I have you know, PCOS and a degree of insulin resistance but what I've picked up on genetically I have a sensitive to carbs and fats, which is like annoying combination. Oh, yeah. Really? Interesting. You

need a higher protein diet. Yeah.

Which is what I do hire

people. Yeah, I brought to your niche. If you're, yeah, you're kind of screwed somewhere in the middle, then you just got to. It's like that high protein high, like vegetable content, you know?

Yeah. It's interesting, though, what I've observed is that the fats will get me faster in terms of you know, that you were saying, when you if you've been exercising, you can get in shape really quickly. And then if you haven't been exercising, you can kind of fall off the waggon quite easily. I noticed that myself, but the biggest determiner actually, for me is if I go really high fat, I will gain weight, I will gain fat much more easily. And if I have lots of fat, I'll see a more moderate glucose response because it's kind of modulating that effect. However, my blood glucose will then just remain at the sort of upper end of where I want it to be for much longer. Do you notice that in the fasting glucose is higher and that's probably the way

So that one more time. So if I'm said that

if I have higher fats in conjunction with carbs that may slow down, so I'm not getting those glucose spikes, what happens is the overall trend is just that little bit raised. And so then you get a kind of higher reading than I wanted. And I'm more vulnerable to weight gain. So although I have to manage those sort of spikes with carbs, as very rarely will gain weight as a real and I think carbs are very difficult to turn into fats in any event, but for me, definitely the first make a difference. I don't know if you found that that you can actually see, yeah, it might bring it, it might keep it in range, but it's kind of getting at the top of the range more than you would want it.

Yeah, I've actually seen that myself. But it's also highly dependent on my stress levels, you know, so like, like, I definitely, when I first started the whole journey of fixing my insulin resistance, I was like, first it was like, Okay, I'm not going to be eating any more gluten, because that was one of the big things that was causing me issues. But then I was like, I was just like, chronically under eating for years. So I had to, like learn to just like exercise and eat more food, which was really helpful. But then I did the whole, that I really started on the low carb kind of drained, and I realised that like, like you, if we just eat way too much fat, it's just not doing us any favours. So I definitely noticed a big difference if I eat more, more or less nuts. Like if I eat a lot of nuts, I think just like a chipmunk, well, you know,

it's so annoying. As well,

you want to make things that other people can have. But you just also like, you know, it's just funny because you like you definitely want to like, I want to I want to do like baking, but I can't necessarily do it all the time. You know, like I made banana bread for a friend of mine coming over. But I can't make that like a daily habit. You know, it's just like, definitely won't work. Yeah, so it's tricky. Now, do you think that like, when I eat lots of high quality meat and some fruit, I'm not carnivore, but like lots of green vegetables. Bone broth, like, I definitely seem to get the leanest and when I really cut the nuts, but I love eating nuts. So it's like, it's the one thing that's probably the like, it's funny because I can get in really good shape by just not eating any nuts for a while. But it's like I love them. So I don't know, I kind of like I kind of like let myself be a little bit curvier. But I also you know When summer comes around, I want to be in a swimsuit. So it really depends on if it's like winter or summer. I kind of do like a bit of a, I feel like a hibernate, I can animate what's the hibernate in the winter, and like, eat whatever I want. But I don't eat whatever I want. I'm very careful. But I definitely noticed that if I like I've learned these patterns at my diet that like if I really want to cut calories and cut cut fat, then I just cut out the nuts and nut butters. And they're a big problem for a lot of women, not just me.

Yeah, they're very good therapy going for me, I think there's so much with the low carb, can you just clarify for people, when you say low carb, what you're looking at in terms of overall percentage or grammes of carbs per day,

typically less than 100? Like around 100 or less per day is what I would consider more more low carb. But I think some people would probably see that as mostly keto. But keto is technically less than 4040 grammes of carbs that carbs a day. So I'm usually, so I don't usually go deep. I mean, I'll go into ketosis occasionally, just because it's sometimes you want to, but more, more. So when my body is in a state of lot more recovery. And I feel like a stronger sort of central baseline. I did a lot more ketosis last summer when I was like, when I was just like it kind of in and out of it. But you know, the thing about stress, I kind of think is that women when it comes to stress, like we're too low carb for too long, it will cause some hormone dysfunction for us. So we got to be like a little bit careful with how, how we balance these things. You know, I think what's really nice about this pot is like we're talking about like real issues that come up for people like us. I am sort of convinced, though, that like, my friends that have like extremely low stress levels, they just can eat a lot more liberally liberally than those of us who have high stress levels. So I think a big piece of this is stress, especially on women's bodies that contributes to the problems that we uniquely face.

Yeah, I agree with you. And you can see that actually, when you're wearing a CGM, you can see that kind of anticipatory rise right in the morning. You can have clearance levels on them. It's like shoot.

I mean, when I was the most stressed out my blood sugar was the craziest. And when I was the most, and then I would I would get like lots of relaxed relaxation and my HRV would improve. My my body would change, you know, like it would my blood sugar would get more stable. And it was so clear when I was travelling like crazy. I could just see like I would recover over a weekend from travel and then I would go travel again and it would go from like five All instance, senator to like progressively higher through the course of a week and it was really consistent. You know, I was surprised.

And what have you found? Kind of Lastly, in terms of HRV? What have you found to? Obviously stress is a big factor. What have you found is able to sort of move the needle the most? unmodulated?

Um, I I'd say I'm taking a taking a coaching programme right now with with this guy Jay wells on UHealth.

Yeah, he's been on the show.

He's great. And, um, we got I looked at my sleep last night, I got the lowest quick sleep score I've ever gotten. It was crazy. It's so weird. I'm, like, really surprised that like, just how bad my sleep was last night. Like totally. Totally, I've never seen it this bad before it surprises today's gonna be real fun day

tells you to I've had it a few times where it basically puts you into recovery mode.

It really should have done that. For me. I think it was a really good day. But I'm like surprised at how bad the sleep was last night. So today is going to be a recovery day. For sure. It's my fault. I was online shopping last night, because I have a bunch of shopping. I have a bunch of appearances coming up. And I was like, I need new dresses. And because I always I there's always photos that I have to be in and I'm like, I can't wear the same dress every time you know. And so I'm like annoyed because I was like, Alright, I'm gonna do some shopping. And then I ended up shopping for like two hours and finally found this and things that I liked. But people always ask me like, do you style yourself? And I'm like, Yeah, I do all my own styling. And they're like, Wow, that must like take some time and effort. It does take time and effort to like, pick out clothes for yourself. You know, it's like a whole nother job. Being your own stylist, I should just hire a stylist. But anyway. So what were what was I saying? So I was telling you about TJ. So I have a HRV. Like, I have the second I should put this on my website. It's like an HRV optimization list. And so there's like a bunch of ways to think about HRV optimization. And actually my HRV today was not that bad given that I slept like shit last night. So I'm like pretty grateful that like, it could have been, I was like expecting my HRV to be tanked today. And it was like it was it was it was fine. So mind body practices like gratitude journaling, I use these affirmation cards from intelligent change, that like will give you an affirmation. So like today's affirmation was, the more I focus on my mind, the more I focus my mind on the good in my life, the more good that comes into my life. And then some

companies The Five Minute Journal, yeah, okay. Yeah, they're awesome.

And then there's, you know, meditation or prayer, listening to classical music, massages, PEMF mats, I've got one from Central picks, acupressure mats, spending time with friends or family or pets. Exercise yoga, tai chi, intermittent fasting can help. So not eating late at night and then getting a solid overnight fast. I'd say that's the one thing that probably helps my HRV is I didn't I stopped eating you know, around seven and then I didn't start any it didn't start any food till like nine or so. So there was a good 14 hour fast overnight, which is good. And then sleep and circadian rhythms. That was not good last night. avoiding alcohol getting good bright light in the morning, maintaining hydration. That's one thing I do a lot better on. I've really started maintaining really good hydration throughout the day. It's one to take breaks up, you know, meetings that go in and make different elixirs and drinks and stuff and teas and water. And so I'm always breaking up my meetings with with beverages. And then I do the cold plunge at the gym regularly. I do I do. I've been doing CBD more lately. GABA and magnesium. And then Parmesan weirdly has good probiotics for for heart variability. There's a weird study on this. Chewing gum also helps with HRV

chewing gum helps with HRV

Yeah, I mean, but most importantly, is acupuncture. Yeah, there's a bit the vagus nerve I believe. Yeah,

yeah. And then like cold water even on your face is like really? Yeah. On the Mac and

totally. Yeah. And then diaphragmatic breathing breath work. I took a I took a nap yesterday for the first time in a while. After working from like, I don't know like 10 to five and I I definitely like needed that nap yesterday. It was really nice. So just getting like it started with just me doing deep breathing in my bed. But taking like 20 minute breaks throughout the day like like a couple 20 minute breaks for either Deep breathing or meditation, just to get your body back to centre is really helpful. Easier said than done. You might have to schedule it. Laughing oming singing I sing in the morning, I'd love singing in the shower. gargling weirdly, gargling works

coffee. And as we get back on counting, so am I really didn't I just didn't like to do Gartley and

coffee enemas are definitely things that can can work. But then there's a whole class like trading programme with Han UHealth that I'm taking right now. And I'm really excited about it. Awesome. Awesome, awesome links here in the show notes.

So any last before you there any last bio hacks that you want to share? Or close before you link to where people can find you and your work?

Um, yeah, I would say, I mean, sort of the next frontier for me is I've been doing a lot of work on sexual health optimization. So really fascinated by all the ways to optimise orgasm, I talk about, you know, different breathing practices in the book that you can use during sex, like that microcosmic orbit that Montauk Chia talks all about. But yeah, making sure you breathe during sex. And as much as cables are really important, I talked about cables in the book, making sure that you, there's this idea that we need to just pull in. But also pushing your vagina out, like pushing like bearing down is kind of like it's kind of like when you lift weights and you're lifting, and then you're bringing the back down. So you want to cables are great for like the, for one part of like, sort of the flexion of your pelvic floor. But then the extension is the pushing. And so this is something that a lot people don't know about. But it's really it's really actually helpful during sex for increasing gorge ment of the genitals, which is something that a lot of women don't realise like you should be your genitals should be in gorged similarly to how men have in front of their penis, women should have endorsement of their genitals to and it's not really talked a lot about, but you should be fully lubricated and in a gorgeous before you really engage in good sex. And most men don't know this, and they rush into it. And so, you know, giving giving yourself 20 minutes of like, foreplay with your partner, is something that just like you have to remind women about, like, they don't always know no notice. And a lot of men who just want to rush into sex, but can make a big, it can make a really big difference by just giving your body some space to fully get her fully aroused.

Yeah, that's really good tips. What do you think is the biggest block to women that struggle with orgasm

with their sexuality? Yeah, um, I would say the biggest block is trauma. So many women have trauma, and they don't know that it's affecting their sex lives. Still, as someone who's who's experienced sexual trauma, I had no idea that I had sexual dysfunction until it was gone after I used psychedelics with a partner in a sexual context that accidentally healed a bunch of sexual dysfunctions that I had. So I was really surprised like how. And this is something that I'm like, actively working on researching is like the intersection of sexuality and psychedelic medicine. But basically, a lot of women have unresolved sexual trauma. And it puts the body into a state of hyper arousal where it's too tense, or it's completely turned off and to indigent associate, and they don't know that they're doing this, I didn't know I was doing that. I just thought that sex was performative act. And I didn't really experience the full breadth of my pleasure until my 30s. So there's so much trauma in the world. And I think a lot of women don't really totally know that they can heal that. So one of the things that we're working on is, is actually like programmes for healing trauma women.

That's awesome. That's going to help so many women. Yeah, where can so obviously the book is now out, which is exciting. The spot factor? Please share where can people find more about you and your work? We're obviously going to put all the links that you've shared in the show. Yeah.

My Instagram and my website, Dr. Molly Dotco. Dr. Mo ll y.co. That's really the key. You can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn at Molly Maloof, MD. But I'm less active on there, but still follow me there.

Instagram is your main platform, right? Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. We will link to all of that. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Thanks, Angela.

Thank you for listening to today's show and for your interest in health optimization for high performance. If you're new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that you can get a free health score and report complete with personalised recommendations on how to optimise your sleep, nutrition, fitness and resilience in the top link in the show notes below. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Links to everything we talked about are also in the show notes and if you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe for more