Adrenal Health, Hasimoto's, and Going From Surviving to Thriving with Dr Izabella Wentz

4:25AM May 9, 2023

Speakers:

Angela Foster

Dr Izabella Wentz

Keywords:

people

body

thyroid

adrenal

gluten

sleep

fasting

protocol

thyroid hormone

dairy

hormones

genetic predisposition

find

helping

foods

interesting

cortisol

selenium

test

stress response

Extra iodine can actually increase the rates of Hashimotos. And that kind of theory behind that is when the the iodine and the thyroid is processing the iodine to create thyroid hormones, it can be a bit of an inflammatory process.

Hi friends in today's podcast episode, we're going to be talking about a topic that is near and dear to my heart as someone who's suffered with burnout, I really had to work on my adrenal function to get my energy back on track. I'm so excited today to be sitting down with Dr. Isabel events talking about her latest book, The adrenal transformation protocol, which is set to be released here in the UK on the 18th of May. It's already available in the US. This book focuses on resetting the body's response through targeted safety signals, which we talk about in this episode, including Dr. Isabella's four week programme has already helped over three and a half 1000 individuals transform things like brain fog, fatigue, anxiety, irritability, sleep issues, and libido. We also talk about thyroid conditions like Hashimotos, and what the various protocols are for helping to heal your body and put these things into remission. We tackle common questions like is gluten really bad for everyone with a thyroid condition? What's the impact of things like EMF, and how does your thyroid impact fertility and so much more? If you know someone that is struggling with burnout or thyroid issues, please share this, this podcast episode with them, because it can help so many people but without further delay, let me introduce you now to Dr. Isabel events.

Hi, Dr. Isabella, it's so wonderful to have you on the show. I've been super pumped to have you here. And it took some time to get this in the calendar. But I'm so excited to talk to you about everything to do with thyroid function, adrenal function and your new book, a very warm welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Angela, it's such a pleasure to be here with you.

It's lovely to have you here. Your books are kind of Bibles, I think for health coaches and practitioners. I think the best way to start off really because I know that you you know your history as more on thyroid function before you kind of dived into adrenals. What kind of took you there into the world of Hashimotos.

So Angela, and full disclosure, I was never interested in the thyroid glands, or thyroid hormones or thyroid medications when I was going through pharmacy school. It wasn't until I was diagnosed with Hashimotos in my 20s after almost a decade of some really kind of confusing symptoms that were kind of brushed off by my my doctors. And, you know, I was told I was getting older that everybody's tired that I'm probably just stressed out, so on and so forth. And so I got the diagnosis Finally, after doing some extended testing that I had Hashimotos. And I wanted to know if there was anything I could do to make myself feel better. And if there was anything I can do in addition to medications or perhaps in place of medications to just really feel normal and human again. And that's what led me down the path of becoming a, I guess a Hashimotos functional medicine expert slash human guinea pig was just trying to get myself to feel better and trying to get myself well. And I wrote my first book, actually, because one of my cousins, who lives in Poland was diagnosed with Hashimotos. And I was like, okay, Mom, we're doing this together, I'm gonna write this book, and you're going to translate it into Polish so that everybody could benefit from from getting this information and have a manual on how to heal themselves.

Amazing. So obviously, like you have it, your cousin has it. There's a kind of genetic predisposition. What do you think when we look at it from that perspective? We know that genes are sort of activated by an environmental perspective. What do you think are the key things for people to sort of watch out for?

So absolutely, genes are part of the conversation, right? So if you have the genetic predisposition for Hashimotos, or an autoimmune condition, that's going to be there within your DNA. But you also need two other additional things for the condition to manifest. One of them could be an exposure to some kind of a trigger. And I know personally, I was exposed to turn oval when I lived on the border of Ukraine and Poland. And for a lot of people even you know, they say it's like, oh, it's genetic. Its genetic. But the people that lived the closest to Chernobyl, there's a huge percentage of them that ended up with thyroid cancer Hashimotos, all kinds of thyroid nodules and thyroid issues. So it is just remarkable what the environment what kind of impact it can have on our gene expression, right. And then the other part of that is going to be intestinal permeability, also known as leaky gut. Dr. Alessio Fasano had found that these three things need to manifest for an autoimmune condition to be present, which is the genetic predisposition, leaky gut and then the trigger. And in my experience, you can't always focus on what the exact triggers might be. A lot of times I do focus on that and trying to figure out if we can eliminate them from the body, and then figuring out like, what can we do to help support gut health right, so that the gun is not permeable anymore.

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I think there's actually some studies and some emerging research coming out with EMFs giving potential problematic for people, especially those I've seen people who have underlying other things happening in their bodies, specifically people with Lyme disease. And people with mould exposure, they tend to be, you know, overall just a lot more sensitive. So even let's say if you have you were 100% healthy, you had nothing else going on with you and you and you had the genetic predisposition and you only had EMF exposure, you probably would stay healthy. But when you combine EMF exposure with mould exposure with Lyme with intestinal permeability, so on and so forth, you end up just your toxic bucket, because overloaded and you can't protect yourself as well and you become more sensitive to the environment.

Do you know that's super interesting that you say that because my husband developed the other form of autoimmune thyroid disease. So he developed Graves disease, and he is a trader in the city. Or he still is. And he obviously like has loads and loads of screens around him. It was very high stress job. And then he developed graves, and his father has antibodies. So interestingly, there was that genetic predisposition. But then when I look back to the time of his diagnosis, and where we were living, we've since found that actually that property became very waterlogged over time. And while we couldn't see mould, and my son's growth was completely different when we were there. So he moved from like the 90 Something percentile, right down to the 78th. And at the time, I was like wondering, like, what was going on? Why wasn't he growing and they removed his tonsils. I was hospitalised with pneumonia, my husband called graves and clearly it must have been and it's really interesting that you say that that combination of something like either Lyme or mould coupled with EMF can be enough and I guess stress, which we're going to talk about today and during this function is going to have an impact with leaky gut because I think this is so important. This is the bit my husband won't want to hear right is the need to remove gluten. I think a lot A lot of people struggle with that completely. Do you think? I think I heard you and possibly Dr. Mark Hyman talking about it that this is helpful in many cases, but not necessarily all. I just wanted to see what your thoughts are there and what the science shows.

So they're the science shows that if you have celiac disease, and if you have Hashimotos, antibodies of subclinical hypothyroidism, if you get off of gluten, you will be able to, in some cases, up to anywhere from 20 to 30% of the time, reverse the subclinical hypothyroidism and get rid of thyroid antibodies now, and there's not a lot of science behind gluten sensitivity and people without celiac disease actually getting better with Hashimotos. However, there is a very, I have a lot of clinical experience with this, where about 88% of the people that I've worked with, will say even without having celiac disease, they feel better off gluten, and their brain fog, their fatigue, their weight gain, diet, any digestive issues, a lot of things just get a lot better very, very quickly for them, sometimes within three days, sometimes within a couple of weeks. And then they also about 20 to 30% of them will also have a reduction in their thyroid antibodies. And now the thing is, there are proteins that are on the gluten molecule that cross react with the thyroid gland. And so in some cases, there might be a case of mistaken identity if the body is reacting to the gluten molecule for whatever reason, it may also react to the thyroid gland. So even without celiac disease, I do see this like very clinically relevant. And I know I personally was tested for celiac disease when I heard about this connection. I do not have celiac disease. And so I was like, I'm not going to quit gluten. You know, and then I had acid reflux, carpal tunnel, irritable bowel syndrome, so on and so forth. And then finally, you know, I was just so sceptical, and I was like, Fine, I'll just quit gluten. And so I could tell everybody that it didn't work, right. And I quit gluten and dairy. And within three days, I was like, wait a minute, where did these apps come from? Like, I'm not bloated. And my reflux went away and the carpal tunnel and the IBS and I was like, holy cow, it actually, I didn't realise that you your stomach wasn't supposed to hurt after you eat. I thought normally you just like you ate and then your stomach hurt. That was part of the digestive process. Right? So. So definitely I encourage people to do their own experiments and do their own, I guess science within their bodies to see if those foods are relevant for you. And gluten, dairy and soy are the three most common foods that aggravate people with Hashimotos.

And did you find like on an ongoing basis on a longer term, do you think it was the dairy or the gluten or both?

For me, it was both I have since been able to normalise or not be sensitive to dairy. I did have gluten on accident about two weeks ago, or not two weeks ago, two years ago, and I did have some digestive distress from that. But I have I feel like the dairy sensitivity has cleared for me now. The gluten one is still it's still present. And we could talk about how I think I might have cleared it out of my body too. If that's yeah,

let's talk about that. I'd love to hear about that.

So, you know, they say like children are our greatest teachers, right. And so a lot of things have changed. For me, I used to have this mindset that, you know, there are just foods and they're not going to be good for you for forever, right. And then when I was going through my own healing journey, initially, I had come across the autoimmune Paleo Diet, which is very restrictive, and there was a lot of foods that you need to eliminate. And so I was like, Okay, we're going to have to eliminate a lot of foods here, that's fine. And then I kind of had this mindset that maybe these foods just weren't good for me and maybe not for anybody. And then I went through some, some gut testing, and it was revealed that I had a common protozoa parasite known as Blastocystis hominess. And once I got rid of that with a protocol, then I was able to eat a lot of grains again, and my thyroid antibodies reduced significantly after that process and some additional symptoms vanished. And it's been really interesting, because this was, you know, over 10 years ago, and in the last five years, there have been research papers published on the connection between blastocyst as hominess, how we could shift the immune system how it can, if it's present in a person with Hashimotos, then treating treating it can actually get the person into remission. So there have been like small case studies published about this and I'm like, Yes, I'm like I saw this and I used to see this, you know, in my clients about 30% of the time when I was using it A specific test that is unfortunately no longer available publicly. And so that's kind of been my evolution where I was like, Okay, well, maybe, maybe it's not the foods, maybe it's something within my body. And so getting off of that I was able to tolerate grains again, and common symptoms with, with that particular protozoa are IBS and hives, which I both had, like just random hives coming up randomly. It's like, You're too hard.

Yeah. So hard to deal with that.

Uh huh. And then when I was a new mom, I was looking into some ways to support my body to, you know, after, after childbirth after pregnancy after breastfeeding. And I started up and during breastfeeding, actually, I started utilising some carnitine, and then some alfalfa, which is a lactation herb. And then all of a sudden, within three days, I felt like I had always, like after quitting dairy, I always had this weird aversion to it right where I would like look at it and smell it and grossed me out. Like my body just knew that it wasn't for me. And then all of a sudden, dairy was like tasty to me. I was like, this smells good. This tastes good. And then sure enough, my food sensitivity tests cleared. And then I was able to eat dairy without issues at that point on. And so my kind of theory is with with carnitine, it helps to support our mitochondria and it helps to process fatty acids, which we have them in dairy, and then the alfalfa, I wouldn't recommend it for most people unless, unless you want to like lactate because it can boost lactation,

really. The non feeding mothers, yeah. Or if it is not at that time of your life, it's probably not a good thing to supplement.

Exactly. So but utilising potassium doing some extra potassium alfalfa is a rich source of potassium may be helpful for for improving dairy digestion. So um, so you know, like, in a nutshell, I think people when they're starting off on their journey, they have a tonne of symptoms, you do want to eliminate the foods that are going to be problematic for you, whether you do an elimination diet, or a food sensitivity test, do it like that can be really, really helpful for you. And then with time perhaps once we've kind of done some repair work on your digestive tract and perhaps on some of the some of the products that are going to be helpful for for for helping you digest foods or digestive enzymes, you might be able to get get a lot of foods back and the majority of foods, I haven't figured out gluten yet so

and with gluten, what about if it's like I know quite a lot of people that feel gluten sensitive and they sort of apply to me, they don't really have any gluten unless it's in sourdough bread. And somehow a small amount of that I seem okay tolerating. I don't know if this has to do with the fermentation process. But that seems to be Have you found people tolerate that sometimes, as long as they don't steer and start going back to the pasture and standard bread and things like that.

That's such a that's such a great point. Because the sourdough process when when it's done correctly over time, that can actually break down gluten. And there's a lot of different theories out there on why people are so reactive to gluten these days. And one of the theories is that we just eat too much of it. And we don't take the same process to really break down that gluten protein because it's a difficult protein for most people to digest. I have seen some people eat sourdough bread with good results. Yes, that had been previously GLUTEN FREE. And definitely if they make it at home, or get like a real, you know, like a real sourdough,

then it might well, I suppose it's a little bit Isn't it like dairy when people feel they can't tolerate it because of the lactose and then they have something like a probiotic rich Yaga. And the bacteria have broken down a lot of the lactose and then they can kind of tolerate it just giving your guts a little bit of a helping hand, your microbes.

Exactly, exactly. And some people that are lactose intolerant, you know, there's a lot of options for that. So these would be things like even Lactaid supplements or utilising sources of dairy that are lower free and lactose, but then we also have to worry about like the casein and the whey protein issues. And then some people might even be sensitive to dairy fat, which which I couldn't even do butter or ghee, I was so sensitive. So some considerably sensitive.

I found it like, dairy is particularly kind of problematic for breakouts and things like whey protein. I know you know, a lot of people will say it's a really good source like postworkout to use something like a whey protein shake, but I find it and that to me is quite bloating, I think it's very individual, isn't it for people, particularly with as you say dairy and gluten and soy.

Absolutely. It's possible for a person to not react to any of the things at all and it's possible for a person to react to every single thing in them and so depending on where they are in the here Lean journey, I say, you know, I'm always talking to people that I feel like are just starting their healing journey, because they're the ones that are have the most questions and just figuring out what you're sensitive to cutting it out for a time period, don't think about it as a life sentence, right? So think about it as something that you're going to remove. And you can always go back to it if it doesn't help. But a lot of times when people get off of a food, and they feel so much better, they're like, I don't need to eat that food again, right?

Because they're feeling so good. And do you take when you take that approach for people listening, who maybe really are struggling, and they've just had a recent diagnosis? Would you advise them to exclude everything at once? And then see and slowly reintroduce things? Or have you found with patients, particularly ones, like my husband? Because they don't want to always give up things? Would you find that actually just saying, right, let's just take up dairy? Or let's just take out gluten and see how you are? Is it better to go with that full removal protocol, and then slowly reintroduce?

It depends on the patient. Right. So yeah, I just always try to meet people exactly where they are, and try to give them strategies, right. So I know some people that'll say, I want to go full in, I'm going to do autoimmune paleo diet. This is it. This is what I'm doing for 90 days. And that's just how, what works for them, right. And then I'll have other people that are like, you know, what, I just want to kind of take it slow. What can we do? And so I'll have kind of different start templates for people. And a lot of times some people are like, You know what, let's just start for two weeks getting off of gluten and see what happens. Or I have a reset programme that I do with with a lot of people where they're just coming onto their journey, and we're just switching the way that they're eating. We're doing more organic foods, more vegetables, and we're getting off of gluten, dairy and soy. And it's only a two week long commitment. So you're like, Can you do something, you can do anything for those genes, you

can do anything for two weeks. It's so true. So true. And I love the fact that you meet people where they are because I think with anything in life, right? Compliance is the biggest thing. So you want to get Would you like a snapshot of where you are in 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 bio hacking quiz. And I will send you your free health score and a 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 body and 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 it 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.

I mean, I see I talked to people all the time. And I see this thing where where they know everything to do like they have all of these amazing things. And they can they can give presentations on what a person should do right when they when they're trying to heal. But it's just like implementing it into your routine. That's a whole nother skill set. Right? There's the knowledge and then there's the implementation. It's like, how do you set up your life? And how do you how do you actually do it. And for me, I'm the kind of person that if I don't, if I don't prepare, then there's a good chance of failure. So for myself, when I first started changing my diet, I got cookbooks, and I made meal plans and looked up recipes online. And then I had a good two weeks worth of ideas of what I was going to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner and snacks. Otherwise, if you're just like, I'm gonna go gluten free tomorrow, and then you're like, oh, wait, but what I'm going to what am I going to eat for breakfast? I only have

so true. Yeah. And you have you have a recipe book as well. Yeah, yeah. We can link to that in the show notes. While we just stick with thyroid for a moment, because I really want to talk to you about adrenals and I'm very excited about your new book that's coming out. What about the impact of the thyroid condition on fertility? I think this is where people, it can be really upsetting. What have you found that if you can get the thyroid into all the autoimmunity into remission? How can people kind of really optimise their their chances really from a fertility perspective?

Thank you so much for asking about this. This is like a really, really big passion topic for me because most women worldwide in their childbearing ages, they're not tested, their thyroid isn't tested, but and they'll go on to have multiple miscarriages until they do further workup because having a sub optimal fibroid hormone, or even having thyroid antibodies, these can be things that can lead to fertility problems not becoming not being able to become pregnant, multiple miscarriages having a more challenging pregnancy. And they can even leave lead to like developmental delays in children if the mother isn't receiving adequate support during her pregnancy. So this is a huge, huge topic for me. And I wish every woman that was like, even had like a chance of becoming pregnant or even thinking about it was getting her thyroid tested. Now, the things that we need to do for that if you have an elevated TSH, generally between point five and two is where we like to see, most women, especially women of childbearing age, you may want to consider doing thyroid hormone, just because that thyroid hormone can increase your chances of conceiving and cure, conceiving increase your chances of keeping the pregnancy to so this is just one thing where even if your thyroid function is not considered, you know, like overtly hypothyroid, the pregnancy increases our demands for thyroid hormone, right. And so just having a little bit of external thyroid hormone might help if you have elevated thyroid antibodies doing something like Selenium, and up a dose of about 200 micrograms per day can reduce the thyroid antibodies. And that can be helpful with conception as well. And of course, I talk a lot about the lifestyle things. If you are somebody where gluten is driving that autoimmune process for you really working with the nutrition aspect of it to see if there's anything that you can you can optimise.

So interesting what you say there about taking thyroid hormone, because I think many people that are that have a diagnosis because people just naturally look after their health, they just don't want to be on any form of medication, they instinctively want to kind of come off everything, particularly when they're thinking about fertility. So it's really interesting, you say actually, that may help not just in terms of facilitating the pregnancy, but also the pregnancy actually continuing and being successful.

Right, and even the the well being of the of the of the child, so women who are already established on thyroid hormones before they become pregnant, right, when they they get pregnant, they actually need to increase their doses of t for medication, just because that baby needs that T for hormone to help them grow so and help their brain develop, and so on and so forth. So it's really important to I know I, I'm a pharmacist, and I know which medications are there's some medications I would never take, right? So I just would say absolutely not, I will never do that. And thyroid hormone. It's the same of what we would make make naturally within our bodies, right. So whether you're taking levothyroxine or natural desiccated thyroid, these are the same exact hormones that were making. And the you know, in the US we have ratings for whatever medications if they're, they're safe for pregnancy and breastfeeding. And definitely thyroid hormone is like safe and beneficial for both of those.

And you think the natural desiccated thyroid extract is also safe.

So the ones that are, you know, manufactured in the United States like armour and some of the other ones I they are going to be beneficial for most people and safe and of course you want to work with your own doctor. In some cases, you may need an additional source of t for if you are taking natural desiccated thyroid when you're taking the T or T 43. Combo. It's usually the T four requirement that can go up during pregnancy. There it is a bit of a controversial topics. So I do encourage women to work with their practitioners on that.

Yeah, that's what I was wondering. But the brands that you've mentioned, there are good ones. In terms of why we're just sort of finishing off here on the thyroid. In terms of correcting iodine deficiency, what have you found there because I don't is a kind of a difficult one, right? You don't need sort of sort of a Goldilocks, you don't want to have too much. You don't want to have too little.

I feel like a lot of people, they they may be looking at some of the thyroid and they think about what's required to make thyroid hormone and we look at okay, it's gonna be iodine and tyrosine, which is an amino acid. And so in very like simple terms, you're like, Okay, your thyroid is not making enough thyroid hormone. Let's give it more of the raw materials, right? But that's not necessarily like if you are deficient in iodine if you're deficient and tyrosine taking these will help right so if you have hypothyroidism because of tyrosine deficiency, iodine deficiency hypothyroidism, which which Is which is very relevant worldwide, especially in countries that do not add iodine to the salt supply. But in most Western countries, people don't have necessarily iodine deficiency hypothyroidism, they have Hashimotos, which is an autoimmune attack against their thyroid gland. And the thing is that extra iodine can actually increase the rates of Hashimotos. And that kind of theory behind that is when the, the iodine and the thyroid is processing the iodine to create thyroid hormones, it can be a bit of an inflammatory process, and the immune system can kind of tag that and notice that and, and lead to autoimmunity. So generally, I will say, a lot of times people are like you have a thyroid condition, here's some iodine, and I'm like, you have a thyroid condition is it Hashimotos. If it is, then here's a few other things we need to do before even like thinking about iodine, and one of them might be adding selenium. So when we add iodine, for example, to give a person with Hashimotos, iodine that can actually, when the doses are too high, that can lead to increased thyroid antibodies, a suppression of TSH, it can lead to a whole host of problems when they're selenium deficient. So so definitely selenium is something that I will think about way before I think about iodine, and then the doses of iodine, if a person is deficient, then I would think about how much you actually want to take with Hashimotos. And it's going to be anywhere from 100 micrograms to like 350 micrograms per day. And this is like the dose that you would find in a multivitamin or a prenatal vitamin, where if you go too high with it, that can actually be more problematic. And I like it's kind of like your iodine tolerance kind of decreases when you have Hashimotos. And there's a few other things that are out of balance before you can you can process it in a healthy way.

And have you found with the Selenium, that sometimes that can be depleted, because somebody has, for example, high levels of mercury.

Typically, it can be depleted one because of their malabsorption. So I've typically focus on gut health and malabsorption. And that can lead to decrease of selenium and then just not having enough access to it. But we we get selenium from our foods, and depending on the soil where our foods are grown, is going to be dependent on how much selenium we can extract. Definitely, there are a lot of inflammatory processes in the body and a lot of toxins that can cause us to be deficient in selenium as well, such as mercury, such as even exposure to yeast that can that can cause a selenium deficiency. So there it's very, very nuanced of all of the kind of all of that there's so many different triggers out there, and potential issues for why a person might become selenium deficient. And in a way I feel like it's the body's defence mechanism, right to when it becomes depleted and things

interesting. Moving on to adrenal function, because now you have a new book, The adrenal transformation protocol. What prompted the shift? I mean, they're very closely related and impact each other but I'm just curious what what led you down the adrenal route?

So definitely everybody that I've worked with, I would say is something is I will test their adrenal function, right. So when I was working with with a lot of people at first, it was like, Okay, do we need to worry about adrenals for this person, and at first it was kind of like iffy, and then I'll after a while, I was like, okay, everybody's got it going to have adrenal issues to some degree. I would say from the people that I've tested, about 90% of them had some sort of adrenal, some degree of adrenal dysfunction, and people with Hashimotos, and I personally was one of them as well. And at first I was like, so sceptical, and somebody said, you know, I'm feeling so much better gluten free, dairy free, and I'm still having morning fatigue, some fatigue throughout the day, some anxiety, irritability, and somebody said, adrenal fatigue, and I was like, I looked it up, it doesn't exist, right? It's like, when you read about it, from the conventional medical standpoint, it's like it's, it's not an actual thing. It doesn't exist. And then it took probably like the 10th person 15th person saying it where I was like, Okay, I actually have all the symptoms. Let me try what they're recommending. And then I did, and then I felt better. So I was like, Okay, this, this is really relevant. And so it's one of the, a lot of my clients that I've worked with, I've utilised very specific protocols for adrenals that I was taught and they focused on utilising hormones like pregnenolone and DHEA. adaptogens quitting coffee, quitting caffeine, making sure they were sleeping 10 to 12 hours a night. And that worked really, really well for some people, but then I would get other people that would say, I can't quit coffee, like, I just can't do it, like, it's not gonna happen, or they quit and they're still tired, or I'll have people that don't feel comfortable taking hormones. Or maybe they react to DHEA. Some women do get like cystic acne from that, and all kinds of other undesirable side effects from that. And then there were people that were just like, there's no way I could sleep as much as you're telling you to sleep, like I have a family, I have a job like I was just thinking that. Yeah. And I like I'm just, I'm a huge believer of there's so many different ways to heal out there. And there's so many different paths to help and so many different protocols out there. And I'm, I'm just a lifelong student, I love learning about all the different triggers and root causes, and the potential solutions out there. And so, you know, my clients and my readers, they, they come to me with something new, like, did you know that I feel like my thyroid condition was induced by this, and I'm like, I've never heard of that. But yes, this mechanism makes sense. And we can develop protocol for that. And what I found is, you know, I kind of got to a place where I was one of those clients, that wasn't able to quit the coffee that wasn't able to sleep 12 hours a night and wasn't able to take hormones, because I was nursing a brand new baby, like eight month old child that was waking up every two to three hours. And so I had to come up with a with a new different kind of protocol that could help my adrenals right. And I came up with this protocol, the adrenal transformation protocol that I that I'm sharing in my book, where I focused really on setting the body sending the body safety signals, versus doing hormones or, or, you know, even utilising the like some, you know, unrealistic life's life's change strategies. And so that's, that's kind of my kind of my whole journey with the adrenals. And just being excited when I discovered some new protocols and new pathways to healing.

And I would like to dive into that I have a question just slightly ahead of it. When you're looking at adrenal function, and you were saying you test quite often I'll look at the Dutch test and look at someone's cortisol levels. And you might see that, for example, their cortisol rhythm is kind of off course. So their circadian alignment needs a bit of work. Well, that morning, cortisol isn't rising quickly enough, right? So they don't feel energised in the morning. But then also there are markers of like the free cortisol in them metabolise cortisol, when you talk about adrenal dysfunction is this where someone has gone beyond the acute stage of stress. And now it's been going on so long, their bodies really beginning to compensate. And they're in that sort of preceding state of disease is that where we're, we're looking. So it's not just, they've been through a really like, tremendous period of work, or they've had some kind of emotional thing, but now they're coming back is where it's sustained stress over a long period of time.

Exactly. And you said, it's so well, it's, you know, stress, we're adapt, you know, we can adapt to it, and we're you our body knows what to do with acute stressors, right, you're getting chased by a bear or something stressful at works happens. And you kind of go through this stress response, and you have elevated cortisol, and it helps to get you through this stressful time. And then, you know, you shake it off, you walk it off, you sleep it off, whatever the case is. And then your body goes back to that normal alignment with the healthy alignment with the circadian rhythm where we produce just the right amounts of cortisol at the right times throughout the day. And then we're not like clearing it out too quickly, or we're not like forgetting it and keeping it in the body too long. And so what does happen though, is people when they are under, under that chronic sustained stress response, that alignment with a circadian rhythm just kind of goes away. And we might produce too much cortisol, like, on a prolonged basis, we might be on a cortisol roller coaster, where instead of having healthy levels of cortisol in the morning, that gradually take us on this lovely slide until the evening. We might be like this throughout our day and feel anxious and stressed out, right. And then you might also have what I kind of call like a flatline adrenal curve, is people that they just don't have a cortisol spike in the morning. And they're, they're having a hard time getting on a bed, and their brain fogs and they're super tired and they sleep in the whole day might go on like that. And some people might have a burst of energy at night where they're wider and tired or can't sleep. And then other people, you know, just kind of feel low the whole day and they'll go to bed. There'll be like when I go to bed at 9pm Why am I still tired, right? So there's different types of adaptations, like you said the body will make when it senses stress in our environment. And from or within our internal environment for a prolonged time period.

And when you're looking at are you focusing more on the actual rhythm of what it's showing, and whether it's in accordance with how it should be from a circadian point of view. And actually seeing that that spike in the morning and then slowly coming down? Are you looking at the overall levels like they metabolise cortisol, in response to things like DHEA, which is a more kind of anabolic hormone, you're looking at the ratios to see what level they're at.

I, when I work with clients, I would go through like a really deep analysis, and I would go through ordering, you know, sometimes, I love lab tests, and I can, like, go to all the webinars, and I'll, I'll call the lab consultants, and just just chat with them about things, right. So, so I personally love it all. And I would go through that in detail and try to optimise all of the different parameters. What I found, though, is that's not realistic and accessible for most of the people in my community is to have like, you know, a dedicated practitioner, it's one, it's challenging to find a practitioner that orders these labs, right. Second, cost might be an issue, because a lot of times they do cost out of pocket for the United States that are not reimbursed by insurance companies. And then another part is like, sometimes the practitioners may not give you, you know, they'll do the testing, but you're the protocol might not be compatible for you, right. So they might say, take this by, you know, you can't, your DHEA might be low, but when you take DHEA, you might have skin breakouts, and so on and so forth. So I wanted to come up with like a completely different paradigm where no testing is required. And where the person doesn't need to necessarily, like take hormones, and really worry about things, rather just focusing on like getting out of that fight or flight mode, and just shifting the body into like a thriving mode. And the way that I do that is just through targeted safety signals. So this, my programmes and my protocol that I talk about, in my new book, this is something a person can do, a health coach can do in conjunction with working with like a super detail oriented practitioner that can put them on the hormones if they need them. And that can help them you know, really optimise things, but a lot of the things that I do see is like people's symptoms do improve, like in a faster timeframe than they did when I was utilising just, you know, really like the Precision Medicine of, of giving you like a little bit of you know, this many drops of pregnant alone in the morning and some licorice to really raise that cortisol curve. Because your body kind of does it for you when it has the right safety signals, if that makes sense. And so my results are now like three to four weeks, where people see a significant shift in brain fog fatigue, morning fatigue, irritability, anxiety and sleep issues. Versus when I was working with more of the, you know, analytics that was like, Okay, so we're doing your test. Okay, did you do your test yet? Oh, you haven't done it yet? Did you do it? Did you do it yet? Oh, no, you haven't done it. Okay, like month goes by and they find a new test a few weeks go by, and then they get the test results a few more weeks go by until we find a time to schedule. And so you know what I'm saying? Like, it's now it's like, here's the plan. And you're gonna feel better in three weeks, versus we have to wait for testing and between all these appointments, so. And the other thing is like the protocols used to take much longer to work to sometimes three months to two years is when I would see the results that I do from just shifting the stress response into just shifting you out of that stress response and putting you in a more thriving state.

That's so bad, the weather is just so powerful. I love that because that's kind of what I truly believe I went on my own healing journey. And I just I totally subscribe to what Dr. Joe Dispenza talks about raise the body has an innate ability, given the right situation to heal itself. And I think as you were saying, there, you could go. And I think the first thing I would say for people listening who haven't done these tests, they're actually really quite tricky to do because even something like the Dutch test you're going to do at home, you think, okay, that's our home, that's very easy. You got to test multiple times a day urine multiple times saliva, and it's actually a real fast and I think the mental block of thinking goes, When am I going to do it. And then if you're trying to do it around your menstrual cycle as well, it becomes something that you put off put off by naturally with your protocol, people could be getting well a lot more quickly. The other thing is, is when you're prescribing lots of different things, their life circumstances over two years could be changing quite significantly. And now their adrenal peripherals changing anyway and they haven't learned to self manage, right because it's all effectively out of the bottle as opposed to them making changes. Exactly. Yeah. Which is really important because it's much more empowering so let's can we people can go and buy the book is coming out We were just discussing when we offline the dates, I think it is the 18th of April that the book comes out. Perfect. And so we will link to that. But just Could you do a quick summary of what are the things people need to think about, if they want to fix their adrenal protocol, I know you are their adrenals. Sorry, I know you have the full protocol in the book.

Absolutely. So really thinking about why your body feels like it's under stress, right. And so the the kind of key indicators are what's going to send those danger signals to our body, these are going to be things like sleep deprivation, so if you're not getting enough sleep, whether that's sleep apnea, or you're just using that to get enough sleep, or there's something that's disturbing you, if you could correct that, that would be super helpful for you, the other parts are going to be like, psychological stress. So if you are pressured at work, if you have pressure deadlines, you're not taking that time to really enjoy life and, and do things that are pleasurable to you, then you're going to be kind of in that fight or flight state mode all the time, then we think about history of traumas or things that have happened to you that maybe shift your perception of stress. So if you're somebody that's gone through a lot of Strama, your your body might be stuck in that fight or flight mode, unless you really address that traumatic experience with some deeper work. And then there's things like nutritional stressors, so blood sugar imbalances, nutrient deficiencies, skipping meals, not eating enough calories, as well as doing too much exercise, these things can be very, very stressful for the body, because the body can kind of get this message that we're in a famine, or we're in a war, you know, our cave woman genes would would not like skip meals, and would not be eating foods that are inflammatory to us, right, if we, if we didn't have to. And so thinking about making sure that you send your body those safety signals, that you are not in a war, that you're not in a famine that you are not like, in a life threatening situation, this is a fabulous place to start. So making sure that you're nourishing yourself, you're eating for blood sugar balance. For most people, this means more protein and more fats, you're getting some micronutrients on board. So common things that get depleted when we're in a stress response, B vitamins, vitamin C, magnesium, electrolytes, these can be very much game changing, as well as mitochondrial support, like D ribose, and carnitine. And carnitine are some of the things that I'll recommend for people to really utilise to replenish ourselves, right. And then just I think, for me, the biggest thing is finding time to do pleasurable activities. For a lot of people, this looks like time in nature, making sure that you're doing something that you're doing just for that, for the fun of it, there's this, like hustle culture that talks about, okay, if you have a hobby, try to try to like make money off of it, or try to make a business off of it. And I feel like that just means you're working around the clock, right. And if you could find the time for, for doing things that you enjoy, that can really quickly shift you into that thriving mode. It's just just a lot of these strategies that I focus on. And the beauty of it is like most people enjoy these strategies. So I'm not asking you to, like, you know, do things that you don't enjoy, most of the things are focused on are just really pleasurable activities, to adding them into your daily routine. And that can really shift your stress response in just a few weeks. Yeah,

amazing. And with the you mentioned fasting there and things like that, I think we've kind of been conditioned over the last few years as women that we've got to be like, doing these super kind of high profile jobs, and fasting for like 16 to 24 hours a day or even like three day water only fast and exercising at 5am in the morning. And my my, my own experience is it's just way too much for the adrenals and for your female sex hormones. Do you find that when you're helping someone rebalance their adrenal function that actually avoiding longer fasts or fasting more than 12 hours is a good idea, just wondering what the way you come out on that.

I think you know, everybody has their unique body and everybody needs to do what makes them feel best. And I know fasting is super popular and helpful for a lot of people. My ladies that I've that I work with that come to me because their brain fog fatigued and overwhelmed and they have trouble waking up in the morning. And they're you know, they're running, they're just burned out. Fasting can actually make them feel worse, extreme exercise like everybody's like, go running, it'll make you feel better, but for them actually that depletes their energy further. And so in many cases, I might recommend that they eat every two to three hours throughout the day. And then I'll even say if you're waking up in the middle of the night, make put a button Next to your bedside, and then make sure you have a snack, you know, before you eat, to kind of get you back on that solid circadian rhythm. And, you know, fasting can be healthy for a lot of people if they're healthy enough to fast, if that makes sense, right. But when you're in that really depleted state, the fasting can actually send your metabolism further from what you want it to be like that I go back to, like the safety theory that women are so tuned into our environment, if you're, if you're in a like it, you know, a lot of webinars are like, Okay, I have this body that tells me that, you know, if I'm fasting and exercising a lot, my body picks up the message that we're in a famine, and it's going to help me by slowing down my metabolism, right, and a lot of women are like to sit. And I know from certain things work, you know, you'll see like me on social media, where my husband did this, and he lost, you know, 20 pounds. And I did this and I gained his 20 pounds. And so we just have to be really mindful of our unique hormones of our unique makeup and the current state that we're in, right if we're like, super stressed, like, fasting can be too big of a stressor, like cold plunges can be really, really fabulous. But if you're in an adrenal burnout, that can make you feel worse. So a lot of times, they'll recommend things that like build you up like nice soothing hot baths and Epsom salts. Before you start doing some of these resilience building exercises, like definitely, resilience is a part of what I preach. But it is more of like the advanced thing, like we have to kind of get to a point where stressors are not too much for us, because people with the adrenal dysfunction, burnout, they don't mount a healthy, like cortisol spike to even good stressors there, they can just be super depleted, where just everything is overwhelming to them. So so maybe you do three, four weeks of the programme, that you might be able to introduce a lot of these things and only do them if they make you feel better.

Yeah, I love that. And you did MSMA, you feel better. Last question, just because I think I see it on your hand, I think you're wearing an aura ring like me. Is that right? Do you look when you're looking at adrenal profiling and helping someone? Would you encourage them to look at HRV as a metric? And try? And are these things that we're talking about? Have you found that these actually start to move the needle, because I know a lot of women that I see that are in my community, when they're working really hard, they get frustrated that their HRV is lower than they would like it to be? And I think many of these protocols you're sharing will be helpful to them? Have you seen improvements in things like HRV. With that,

I see a lot of improvements in deep sleep. So interesting. Yeah, so deep restorative sleep and REM sleep are some of the improvements that we start seeing when the body gets into this state where we start healing in our sleep, where we, a lot of times people will start on refreshing sleep, and they're stuck in that fight or flight mode. So they might have frequent night wakings, they may wake up at 3am, they wake up on refreshed, and they're, you know, their, their profiles for deep sleep and the REM sleep tend to be kind of low. And then once we get these adrenal things reestablished, their body actually heals more during sleep. So it's very impressive, because they start regenerating their brain and their body better when they can fully get into like our vessels, period. I would love to do a test on HRV I have not done that. So I love like a lot of gadgets, and I have a tonne of gadgets. At the same time. I know not everybody has access to these things. I think they should, but not everybody is like, you know, I in my ideal world, I would like test everybody for like the Dutch and adrenal saliva test. And I would have them wear an aura ring and I would have them do CG ends, and so on and so forth. And you know, just do a whole comprehensive workup for them. But I know that's not accessible. So I haven't, I haven't done a lot of research on that I primarily focus on the symptoms. And then I've had people report on their, on their sleep parameters.

There's, there's quite an interesting thing that I've observed. So there's a device called Firstbeat. It's a bodyguard here in the UK, that's medical grade devices, ECG that you can put onto your chest. And I'm doing it with a group have a bias thinking programme, where you think with things like your physiology and circadian rhythm, and we're measuring HRV. And what I observed which is really interesting, which fits very much with your protocol is you can see on that because you wear it day and night for just an assessment period and you could assess for one day three days or five days and use it on a patient and you can see whether they go into deep recovery so it will show you that level of sympathetic versus parasympathetic activity. And it shows you the period of time and also the intensity. And what I observe is, the more that you put little pieces of relaxation into the day, like you're talking about time in nature, and balance that sympathetic with the parasympathetic, the deeper the recovery at night. And also, what's interesting is if you've had a bad sleep, and I've tested this on myself, actually, and then you do something like meditation or visualisation, or even resonant frequency breathing, you can get deeper recovery than you did at sleep. So you can make up some of the deficits. So it's really interesting, because everything you're saying it's kind of lines up with the data that I've sort of been studying recently.

Oh, I love that. And you'll have to give me the information on this. This new cool device? I actually don't have that one. So

yeah, for sure. Yeah, definitely. I can I can share that with you, because it's really interesting. And it kind of gives people like they can actually see it. And they're like, oh, and they pay attention, right. It's not expensive. And it's assessments that people can use in clinics and then do an assessment and then share it with another patient, for example. Why should I love that? Yeah. It's been so amazing to have you on the show. I think I could like, I'm so grateful for the time you've given us. I could talk to you literally all afternoon. Please, first of all, just share where can people find you and your work?

Sure, my website is thyroid pharmacist.com. I have a ABCs of adrenals guide at thyroid pharmacist.com/abc. That's free for everybody. And that goes over some of the nutrients that are commonly burned through the stress response. And then I have my new book is out everywhere where fine books are sold. So Barnes and Noble, or Amazon or your online retailers, you can get that. It's going to be out April 5, April 18. And then I'm also on Instagram and Facebook. So come and find me. They're

awesome. And I love your Instagram, you share tonnes of information on there. There's like really helpful reels and things. So we will link to all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you so much for having me on Angela. Really appreciate it.

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