Recently I interviewed Reed Davis, and we chatted about functional lab testing. If you would prefer to listen the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.

I’m excited to chat with Reed Davis about functional lab testing and why we should go beyond the blood test. Reed is a Board-certified holistic health practitioner and certified nutritional therapist. He is an expert in functional lab testing and holistic lifestyle medicine. Reed is the founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition and the FDN certification course with over 4,000 graduates in 50 countries. Reed served as the health director at a wellness center in southern California for over 10 years. With over 10,000 clients, he is known as one of the most experienced clinicians in his field. Reed serves on the advisory board of the American Natural Wellness Coaches Board and the American Association of Natural Wellness Coaches. Thank you so much for joining us, Reed.

Reed Davis:

Thanks, Dr. Eric. Real pleasure to be here with you. Hope we can help them out a little bit.

Dr. Eric:

I’m sure we will. Why don’t we dive into your background? How did you develop the FDN program certification course?

Reed:

I worked in a clinic for 10 years, as you mentioned in the bio. My job there was to look at lab work on people and figure out what’s really wrong with them. That’s why I started working there.

I had actually been in environmental law saving the whole planet. I decided to work with people. “Hey, the planet is getting worse and worse. Saving the planet’s great: air, earth, water, trees, bees. What about people?” I was getting older. I was perfectly healthy. I had never been to a doctor except for sports injuries. What about people? What about me? I don’t want something sneaking up on me. When I went there, I’m sure your listeners would identify with this, everyone that came in the door, I started interviewing them. It was amazing the number of people who had been to several practitioners and weren’t better yet. I thought to myself, Wow, what a rip-off. What do you mean you have been to eight people, ten people, more, and spent a lot of money trying to figure out what’s really wrong? Some doctors had told them, “There is nothing wrong with you. Everything looks normal in your lab work,” which I questioned.

It was really remarkable how they were all, with different health problems, caught in a cycle of trial and error. It wasn’t one demographic. Most were in pain. You find out what else is going on. They have hormone problems. Their immune system’s shot. Their digestion isn’t working. Their detoxification systems aren’t working. On and on. Again, I came from another field. I didn’t have medical training. I had a lot to learn, but I had nothing to unlearn. I had to open my mind to what was really going on, if I could figure it out.

I started running lab work by the thousands.  Over 10 years, I ran thousands of labs on thousands of people. I had great mentorship from the labs and some doctors. I also made my own observations. That’s what started FDN. It just grew out of that practice. I developed a system of investigation, looking for causal factors upstream. I never wanted to diagnose or treat anything. I wasn’t licensed to do that. I had no interest in that. People already were doing that. I thought they’d been getting ripped off.

I also wondered why they were putting their health in someone else’s hands instead of taking charge themselves, as I had always tried to do for myself. I hadn’t been to a doctor for anything chronic or downward spiraling or degenerative, just some injuries. I didn’t know what the health system was like. I found out through these poor people.

One day, I was riding my motorcycle, and I thought, you know what? I am going to be the last damn person that these people need to see, which is naïve. I had a lot to learn but nothing to unlearn. I was just open to the data. I became an expert in the data that you can collect from these alternative labs: saliva, urine, blood. Not your CBC panel that physicians can say there is nothing wrong. People know there is something wrong. They go down the street and try a bunch of stuff. Some of it might be helpful. Some of it is not helpful at all, that rip-off thing.

10 years later, I find myself teaching the system I created of investigation into the healing causal factors, the healing opportunities. Of course, our protocols, which are known around the world now, the DRESS protocol. Diet, Rest, Exercise, Stress reduction, Supplementation. Well known and practiced. You have hired one of our graduates, so you know what it’s all about.

Dr. Eric:

Yeah. Speaking of acronyms, can you jump into the HIDDEN stressors? I did my research as I usually do before these interviews, and I watched your videos talking about the acronym HIDDEN.

Reed:

I started mostly just testing women’s hormones. I was ina wellness center, so there are some practitioners in there. I was a lead marketer in the beginning before I became a practitioner. I went to school and did nutrition classes and all the other things I did. I was out there getting business through bone density testing. I would go out in the world to different locations. I had a whole route. Every couple months, I’d be back to that location. Bones and hormones, really important. I tested hundreds and hundreds of women in the beginning just for hormones only. I could help them and do some balancing. I wasn’t ever prescribing. You have to balance your hormones. You have to reduce stress.

Guess what? I ended up having to test them for other things. Their digestion, they were eating well but had poor digestion. It took me a while, but I came up with HIDDEN: Hormones, Immune System, Digestion, Detoxification, Energy production, and Nervous system. There is a way to assess each one of those areas in a person. When you do, you are going to find healing opportunities, things that need to be fixed, so to speak, and things they can do themselves to do the fixing.

HIDDEN, a lot of people aren’t looking in these areas in the same way that I or any of my practitioners would do. Not wanting to diagnose and treat anything specifically, but looking for the hidden imbalances and dysfunction. A lot of it is really far upstream; it’s hard to find some of it. We figured out a way, and now we do the HIDDEN stressors and dysfunctions on every person. Doesn’t matter what your main complaint is. These are the areas that have to be looked into to correct chronic, stress-related, downward spiraling conditions, which is what people suffer from today. Everything from Hashimoto’s to IBS to foggy thinking to chronic fatigue.

It’s truly remarkable that assessment and the number of opportunities for healing, you will find in those areas. I call it the entire constellation of healing opportunities. It just works. When you look there and explain it to a person, teach them, then guess what? They will understand. They will really appreciate the information. It’s really intelligence gathering. Then they are much more likely to follow your recommendations for the lifestyle medicine.

Dr. Eric:

I agree. I like testing, trying to find the answers. What are some of the concerns with just addressing symptoms? If someone was having digestive symptoms, instead of doing a test, just taking some supplements, assuming they have parasites or SIBO. Same thing with adrenals. Some people might say, “I know I’m stressed out, so why should I do testing?” What are some of the concerns with taking that approach of not doing the testing and just jumping into the treatment?

Reed:

The main concern is that you are not addressing the causal factors. Your problem will just get worse. I need to back up a bit. There is nothing wrong with getting relief care. If you have migraines or debilitating hot flashes and night sweats, there is nothing wrong with getting some relief. Doctors are great at that. They have all kinds of lotions, potions, powders, and pills. So do alternative practitioners. They are big on their supplements and modalities and things that will get you out of pain and suffering. That’s okay.

But if you only address that level, then you’re not working at the causal level. We look upstream. Having said that, you look for the root cause. Yeah, we look, but there isn’t enough tests. Surely, there is no one test. But there are enough tests out there that you can get close enough to the root cause to have an effect on it. Especially when you use the multiple causal factor that constantly gives healing opportunities.

Realize this: Causal factors, no matter how far upstream they are, no matter how hard they are to find, are also having an effect upon each other. A lot of that is not singly measurable. You have hormone, immune, digestion, detoxification, energy production, and nervous system imbalances. All of these causal factors are having an effect upon each other. How will you figure out the one that is causing the thyroiditis? It’s almost impossible.

That’s why I call it metabolic chaos. I gave up a root cause. We look, and what we find is metabolic chaos. Let’s just call it that. The only way to fix things is to treat every cell, tissue, organ, and system at once. A person has to live. Lifestyle medicine is about living yourself out of the problems you lived yourself into. It’s really a non-specific treatment, but it works on every cell, tissue, and organ there is. It’s a very interesting, non-medical way for people to handle the problems.

I would start with that. It’s okay to treat the symptoms. If you stop there, you will probably need more of the same medicine. Thyroid is a good example. I know you’re an authority on that. You deal mostly with hyperthyroidism, which is a more difficult and often autoimmune condition. There are a lot of factors going on. The more common thyroid problem is hypothyroidism. There might be absolutely nothing wrong with the thyroid.

If you go in with a certain set of complaints, by the way, this is where I like to explain the “sounds like” method. You named it. You mentioned this approach. You go into a practitioner and say, “I’m tired, fatigued. I’m a little overweight. I can’t seem to lose it. Sometimes, I’m sad. I’m constipated. My extremities are often cold. My hair is thinning.” That sounds like thyroid. The typical practitioner would check the thyroid. Don’t break your wrist patting yourself on the back. All you found was one thing that is hypoactive. It’s not producing enough of the right thyroid hormone. You can replace that. That’s going to get that person some symptom relief. They may have a little bit less hair thinning or cold or numb extremities and constipation along with some other things that might clear up. It isn’t addressing why the thyroid is underactive.

I hope you’ll agree with me that this is a natural adaptive response to stress. If you’re under a lot of stress from a lot of different angles, emotional, physical aches and pains, chemical stressors, there is a lot of different types of stress out there that would put you into hibernation. Your body will go, “Whoa. We better not use up all our resources.” The hypothyroid is an adaptive in most of the cases we have seen. If there is less thyroid hormone, do you want to just replace it, or do you want to find out why? What are all the stressors involved that are causing your body to shut down like that? I hope you agree.

Dr. Eric:

I definitely agree that stress is a big factor. You mentioned digestion. Most of these conditions, both hypo and hyperthyroidism, most of them are autoimmune, and most of the immune system cells are in the gut. You need to have a healthy gut, healthy digestion in order to have a healthy immune system.

I agree, it would be crazy to do what most medical doctors do, and just give thyroid hormone replacement if the thyroid hormone is low. Similar with hyperthyroidism, with Graves’ or even non-autoimmune hyperthyroidism, just to say, “Okay, let’s give you antithyroid medication, which blocks the thyroid hormone.” You want to find out the underlying cause, whether it’s stress or some of the other imbalances that you mentioned, imbalances in the nervous system and other things to consider. Unfortunately, most conventional medicine ignores that and just puts a Band-Aid on the problem.

Reed:

I knew we were like-minded enough because you had me on this show, so we are probably very much like-minded in our approaches, too. Mine is not a medical approach. You being licensed have other options that I don’t have and never had. Working in the office, you can’t write a prescription.

The labs that the physicians had already run on these people weren’t revealing much data that was useful. That’s why we got into the alternative labs: the saliva, urine, stool, dried urine, finger stick tests, hair, tissue. I don’t have much hair to get any samples from.

Dr. Eric:

You can use other hair.

Reed:

Facial hair is okay. It will tell you something. Each one of these types of testing gives us a data point. Then our job isn’t to diagnose and change the numbers on the paper. It’s to get the person to do something to change the numbers on the paper. Those numbers aren’t the problem. They are the results of the problem.

Same thing with symptoms. I don’t know if I fully finished discussing chasing symptoms. It’s never bad to try to get out of pain. I totally understand. But you can’t stop there. The thyroid was a good example of why we don’t stop there. The reason we don’t test symptoms is we know they are the result of the real problem, just like the lab work. I’m a guy who teaches a course in lab work, yet I am saying those numbers aren’t the problem. They are just a result of your genetics and how you’ve lived, the signals going to the teams. It’s called epigenetics. That’s really where our DRESS program comes from. It’s an epigenetic program; it’s a lifestyle and environment-based program.

Dr. Eric:

I’d like to discuss some of the different tests that you commonly recommend. For example, with adrenals, you mentioned saliva testing. Is that what you use to evaluate adrenals? Do you like dried urine testing? Now there is the Dutch test.

Reed:

The adrenal part of the Dutch test is saliva, so it’s a combination. The urine part of that test is more about the sex hormones or their metabolites. That’s a good test.

The one we are using has been specially developed for us now that we have been doing this for 23 years. I have a lot of students and a lot of graduates doing this. I have some ability to maneuver in the labs space. I know a lot about labs.

We are using the Circadian rhythm along with the cortisol to DHEA ration ad the sex hormones. We have added to that saliva test melatonin because that is a finger pointing for some healing opportunities, especially if it’s low, or if it’s high when it’s supposed to be low. Also, secretory IgA. We get a window into the immune system all from a saliva test. Cortisol and DHEA are your catabolic and anabolic hormones. You want to have balance. You don’t want to be too catabolic or anabolic. They need to be in balance, cortisol and DHEA. The same test also gives us cortisol morning, noon, afternoon, nighttime. We can check out the Circadian rhythm. We see a lot of rollercoaster. It explains why people feel like they are on a rollercoaster. Their hormones are following along with that.

Again, we always look at the sex hormones. Same thing. These are the bioavailable levels. There is only a very small amount of hormones in your saliva. It has to be a really good test. These tests are very advanced now after decades and decades of work in trying to get accuracy. Specificity and sensitivity is critical.

You don’t have a lot of hormones in your saliva. What shows up is the bioavailable levels. Those are the levels that are actually working for you in your body. Through urine, you are looking at metabolites. They may not be exactly 100% representative, or it’s a good guesstimate. It’s not the bioavailable level. It’s gone through all those metabolic processes, and being excreted in the urine.

It’s also very time-specific. You can’t get time specificity with urine. It’s an average of the last several hours. We want to know what is my cortisol in the morning? What is it four hours later at noon? Then afternoon, nighttime, middle of the night. It’s very important to have time specificity. The sensitivity and specificity for these tests are proven to be very high.

There are over 300 white papers written on saliva testing now. When I first started, there was only a couple that we could refer to. It was considered alternative, crackery, whatever you want to call it. It’s come a long way.

Adding the melatonin at noon, melatonin should be very low at noon. It’s the middle of the day. Why would you have high melatonin? Only if something is wrong would you have high melatonin, and we can explore that.

Secretory IGA is the main indicator of how well your immune system is. It is the main component of the mucosal barrier in the gut that protects you from everything. The gut is most of your immune system. Secretory IGA is huge. It should be hovering all the time, just waiting for anything bad to come along that it can kill or at least sequester and be excreted from the body. You don’t want that stuff getting inside you. You have that mucosal barrier. That’s on the same test.

With one morning sample of saliva, you get the CA; melatonin at noon; the Circadian rhythm throughout the day; and the sex hormones, including progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone (the main ones). You can look at other ones if you want to. We don’t bother much with some of the metabolites.

Anyway, that’s a hell of a test. Great place to start. You can see how stressed out someone is, whether they are catabolic or too anabolic. It’s a way the body adapts. You could do a lot with that data to correct someone’s behavior. Just show them.

By the way, if they went to a physician and were told nothing is wrong with them, you can look at these test results and go, “Wow, look at all of this stuff that is off a little bit that you can improve.” versus “Nothing is wrong with you.”

Dr. Eric:

I know some saliva panels can collect samples of women cycling; this way, they are not looking at a single sample.

Reed:

Of course. In certain cases, like fertility cases, or if women are having extreme difficulty as they cycle with headaches or pain or cramping, all these symptoms that occur on a cyclical basis, you can map out the entire cycle. You have to take a saliva sample. You could do it every day, every three days. Sometimes, it is a matter of convenience and expense that you would do less testing. We have tests that cover the entire cycle.

It’s really interesting to look at the numbers. Some 35-year-olds are under so much stress that they are not ovulating. You can tell by the hormones that nothing is happening here. They don’t have enough estrogen to ripen an egg to be released. Then the progesterone may or may not be kicking in at the right time. It’s very interesting to map out.

Otherwise, with post-menopausal, you can take it any day. Just take it one time. That’s all we need. For the stress part of that, for women who are still cycling, we would just do it mid-cycle. That way, we get a window into whether your estrogen or progesterone are at the right levels at that time when they should be the highest. There is a timing with some of these saliva tests.

That’s another indicator that you’re getting real, usable information. It’s very time-specific. Time of the month-specific, too. How much better can you get?

Dr. Eric:

True. You can obviously collect the saliva sample any day, in the convenience of your home. You don’t have to worry about going to a lab. Sometimes, the timing of the lab during a certain day of your cycle, if you were going to do it through a blood test. Much more convenient to do it through saliva.

I’m glad you mentioned secretory IGA. Part of the HIDDEN acronym is Immune. Are there other markers besides secretory IGA that you look at? Or is that the main one for the immune system?

Reed:

It’s the main one. We are looking at other markers that can indicate there are issues going on. Obviously, the stool testing for pathogens and microbiome imbalances, your microbiome is also part of your immune system. It defends the good bacteria versus bad bacteria. It’s there for a reason. That can get way out of balance. I think that’s one of the other main areas I would look to.

Is it very diverse? You want diversity in your gut. You have to eat lots of different foods. Some people only eat 10 different foods, and their microbiome gets overpopulated. They are not unfriendly, but there is not enough diversity. That is a big part of the immune system.

Physicians run tests, too. Immunoglobulins and things. There are other tests that we would look at. You can look at the secretory IGA. You can look at IGM, IGE, IGG, and others. There are lots of immunoglobulins. Overall immunoglobulin is a good test. You can look at white blood cells. But for your standard FDN practitioner, they will use secretory IGA, which should be hovering, and it shouldn’t be too high. If it’s too high, you probably have some infection. If it’s too low, maybe you’ve had the infection so long that you stopped producing. You ended up with a chronicity of low CA, especially in stressed out people. Everyone knows that if you’re stressed out, you’re more likely to catch even just a common cold. When you get stressed out is when you get sick. Your immune system has gone down.

Dr. Eric:

Comprehensive stool testing, do you recommend- Let’s say, everyone with a chronic health condition. Everyone with Hashimoto’s or Graves’. Do you at least teach the FDNs where they should order a comprehensive stool test for everyone? Or does it depend on the person?

Reed:

We automatically run them on every client. Every client has something usually that is healable or needs balancing in that area. I got tired of doing piecemeal testing 20 years ago. The first thing was I brought a lot of new patients into the office by going out into the community. I was lecturing and doing bone density testing all over the place. I had a portable DEXA machine. I started selling hormone test kits. Women with bone problems needed to check their hormones. It led into this whole system.

Otherwise, when I had a client at the beginning, I would start with the stress and hormone panel that we just talked a lot about, and another one called the metabolic wellness panel that looked at digestion and detoxification and oxidative stress. Those two were foundational. I’d run those. Then I’d say, “We need to check for mucosal barrier or pathology and food sensitivities.” Sometimes, it would stretch a person out for two or three months by the time we got all the labs done, maybe even longer. I finally just had clients going, “Why didn’t you run all these tests at once? You could have fixed me a long time ago.” Not that I am doing any of the fixing, but you know what I’m saying. So I just made that the policy.

Everyone needs to do it. You will see this downward spiral as very observable by going through the labs. You might as well just do them all up front. That’s now my policy. That’s what I teach in my course. You don’t have to, but it’s the best way.

Dr. Eric:

What is the metabolic wellness panel?

Reed:

This is another thing we have worked with labs to change over the years. Labs come and go, in and out of business. Operations change. Science itself changes.

We have our metabolic wellness panel that is a dried urine test, which is very convenient. We can ship that all over the world and send out kits. You collect urine and put it on these papers and let them dry, and it’s cheap. We are looking at an old test for dysbiosis and leaky gut. By the way, it tells you that you are not breaking down protein very well. If you are not breaking down protein very well, because you don’t have enough of the good bacteria that breaks it down- Remember all this bacteria is not just sitting there for no reason. It’s part of your digestive system and your immune system and more.

So that test measures bacterial breakdown of protein. If it isn’t working very well, you are in a dysbiotic condition. You don’t have enough of the good versus bad, so you are already dysbiotic. Depending on one’s presentation or symptoms, it could right there point the finger at leaky gut.

We want to test further. If you are not breaking down your proteins, guess what? Amino acids are really important. Protein in a sense is amino acids. They break down into neurotransmitters. I have people with all kinds of mood disorders, who are usually not digesting food very well. It’s amazing how much food dictates health and other things people present with. If you are malnourished because you have dysbiosis, you can fix that easily. Take total control over that.

Another marker is oxidative stress. Right now, we are using the 8-OHdG, deoxyguanosine. That is a great measurement for breakdown of material inside cells. There is always oxidative balance. You have pro-oxidation and anti-oxidation. Inside a cell, it’s important to have a good balance there. If you are over oxidative because you have too much oxidative stress, your cells won’t even work right. They can’t respirate properly and do the job. The DNA can get damaged. That can lead to serious problems, mutations even, things like cancer.

We used to do lipid peroxides. Talks about oxidative stress on the membranes of the cell.

Another marker onthat test is urinary bio acids. They indicate congestion of the liver. Physicians look at liver, too. They will look at certain markers that they would observe if they were elevated for a few months. It might go up and down. They would check for a disease, like hepatitis.

Our test is more sensitive, more subtle. It’s much more of an anti-aging, detoxification marker. Your liver is not filtering as well as it should. When it’s like that, it’s full of antigens and immunocomplexes and dirt and weeds because of the leaky gut. It will spill excessive bio acids into the bloodstream, which can be picked up in the urine. The kidney filters out and excretes in the urine.

Bio acids, there is always a normal amount, but it shouldn’t be a high amount. If there is, we have seen liver detoxification programs do miracles for those people. It’s not diagnosing anything. It’s saying, “Hey, look, your liver looks a little congested.” Every one of your listeners probably- Hopefully they are of an age that remembers bags inside vacuum cleaners. A lot of people don’t today, but you know when your vacuum isn’t working well, you change the bag, and it works like a brand new vacuum cleaner. That is how your liver is supposed to work, like a brand new filter.

Dr. Eric:

Food sensitivity testing, do you use IGG?

Reed:

The test is not IGG or IGE or any other immunoglobulin. It’s a measurement of the release of mediators. It’s counting white blood cells basically, leukocytes and granulocytes. They are going to affect volumetric changes in the blood. From one blood draw, you can test up to 176 foods. No one eats that many foods. It will show up whether you eat the food or not that you are sensitive to it, so don’t eat it. It’s creating inflammation. It’s the Oxford Biomedical Mediator Release test, or MRT. You can follow a diet that is less inflammatory. People get better.

Looking backwards, I couldn’t imagine not running that test on someone, Eric, because miracles have occurred. To the degree that those foods are contributing to metabolic chaos is a degree to which you are probably going to improve by getting rid of those foods. For diet, we use metabolic typing system, but we also do food elimination, and we test, we don’t guess. You’d be amazed at what foods you might-

As a matter of fact, I have right now taped to my computer the little list of foods that I am sensitive to. It’s normally color coded. I just printed it in black and white. It gives you a list of foods to avoid and food additives and other things that are in your diet. It’s an oral intolerance test. It also gives you the good list. Out of 176 foods you’re testing for now, there will be a whole lot you aren’t reactive at all to. That’s your shopping list. It tells you what not to eat. You have given them a shopping list of what you can eat, delicious food. Have you tried this lately? No, I don’t eat that. It’s amazing how many foods you never eat that are on the good food list. It’s remarkable.

My wife and I spend time every week doing food preparation. We grow our own vegetables. We order our meats online. We have other groceries and items delivered. You can really get good at your food selection, especially when you run the test. Again, I got my most recent bad list here. Everyone needs it. If you have a health problem, those foods could be contributing to it. They may not contribute that much, in which case that test didn’t help you that much. But again, looking backwards, I have had people have miraculous results. Looking forward, can’t tell if it’s going to help the most. Looking backwards, would never have gotten anywhere close to the results we got without running that test.

Dr. Eric:

That is another test that you recommend for everyone to get. Obviously, it’s up to the person whether or not they want to get it. That is something you would tell everybody to get.

Reed:

Sorry to cut you off, but no, this is our program. This is how it works. If you’re going to work with me, I need to gather some intelligence on you. You want to tell me the same story you told the last practitioner, who guessed at what your problem is? “It sounds like this. Maybe run one test.” No, we are going to run our five labs: the stress and hormone panel; the metabolic wellness panel, three markers, and uric acid; the mucosal barrier assessment. We look at zonulin, a family of peptides, and also histamine and diamine oxidase. We get the histamine to diamine oxidase ratio. It’s very important. It’s a measurement of gut health.

That’s three tests. Those three alone would tell you a lot about a person. Then we give you all these healing opportunities. Their hormones are out of balance. Their immune system is under or overactive. Their digestion, detoxification, oxidative stress. There are all these healing opportunities, but you are not good. You want to do those, so you have an assessment of a person. You might as well just run the stool test for microbiome and pathology because it’s involved. There are some functional markers on that test as well. Then the food sensitivity test. How could I not run that?

If you listen to my podcasts, I tell this story a lot because everyone identifies with this poor lady, who is coming in the office. She was getting chiropractic. She is on her eighth visit or so. I am triaging. I am walking her back to the office. I say, “Hey, what’s wrong?” She is obviously not herself. “Oh, Reed, I am so upset. I am carrying around 40 pounds extra. I gained it in the last two years because I’m on medication for hives. I can’t stop taking the medication.” Before I get any words out, she was like, “And you know, Reed, I went to the doctor the other day for a check-up, and I told him how frustrating this 40 pounds is.” According to her, the doctor said, “Well, you can be fat, or you can have the hives. Take your pick.” She said, “That’s really depressing.” The physician said, “I’d be happy to write you a prescription for antidepressants if you want.”

I knew then why she looked so sad. She is staring at the ground. I asked, “Did you ever try to find out why you get the hives?” Seems like a logical thing to me and you. Her head snapped around so hard I thought she wouldn’t need her chiropractic that day. “What do you mean?”

Moving forward, I ran a test or two, got her off some foods she was sensitive to, and it only took nine days to quit her medication. She didn’t need it anymore because she found what was causing the hives. Within another couple weeks, she was working out to a sweat, taking hot showers, things she hadn’t done in two years because even on the meds, she couldn’t work out or take hot showers. You talk about life-changing. A couple weeks after that, she’d already lost 13 pounds of her 40. That would never have happened without running a food sensitivity test.

Make sure everyone does it. Kids with ADD. I had a principal call me and track me down through a mom. He said, “This kid is so different. He was poking the other kids, not paying attention, failing.” By the way, he is only nine years old. I got him turned around. Model student, smart kid. The principal tracked me down and said, “What’d you put him on?” What we put him on was a diet that works for him and a better sleep schedule. There is no magic pill. That was just doing the right test.

I can go on and on. I have countless stories like that. That’s looking backwards. Boy did it help. Can’t imagine not running that test.

Looking forward, I can’t really tell because I don’t know. You are going to have some sensitivities. To what degree are they creating that metabolic chaos or contributing to the chaos that is resulting in your specific symptoms, I can’t tell that. We just run the test.

Dr. Eric:

Do you know Elizabeth Yarnell?

Reed:

Yeah, the name is really familiar. Why do I know her?

Dr. Eric:

She is also part of Mindshare. She is really big into the Mediator Release Testing. I interviewed her on my podcast last year or the year before. I heard of it before I chatted with her, but she really convinced me to set up an account and start doing it. Honestly, I can’t say I have been doing it regularly, but I interviewed her again recently because she is coming out with a new book. I interviewed her before you, but your interview on the podcast will be coming out before hers. The point is, between speaking with her a couple times and then speaking with you, and I’ve had a few other practitioners, such as Cynthia Thurlow and Dr. Anshul Gupta, who recommend it. There are a lot more practitioners than I realized. Now it makes me realize I probably should be recommending it.

The reason why I have been hesitant is for years, as you know, IGG testing is a lot more common. I just didn’t find that to be as accurate. I don’t want to recommend a test for the sake of recommending it. Obviously, I want to find answers. By speaking with Elizabeth and now you and a few others, it’s something I probably need to be a little bit more stern about as far as saying this is a test that is going to benefit you.

Reed:

It may benefit you. We have to be realistic about that. You don’t know the degree to which these foods are contributing to the chaos that is resulting in the symptom. With IGG, I find it’s less common. In other words, the IGG reactions just aren’t as involved in the chaos as producing the symptoms. Not to the same degree as the MRT. I have run them both, and I have run them both on the same people over the years, especially with kids.

Sometimes, you want to remove every food that is possibly reactive in creating the symptoms because kids can’t think. They just don’t have the experience. They have nothing to go on. They might think that not paying attention and poking your friends and outbursts are normal. They don’t know why you’re yelling at them and sending them out in the hallway. I used to get sent in the hallway alot. Kinda proud of that now. The janitor would come along and say, “What are you doing out here again?” Anyway. Leave that for another conversation.

These food sensitivity tests, top of the line is the MRT. I know Cynthia and Gupta real well. I just looked up Yarnell, and I do recognize her picture from Mindshare. Good people doing good work. That’s what it’s all about.

Dr. Eric:

Well, thank you. Thank you so much. You shared a lot of great information. Anything else? I want to respect your time, but is there anything else you’d like to share? Anything else I should have asked that I didn’t ask you?

Reed:

I always have time for you, Dr. Eric, and to help people. It’s what I do. I get up every day, joyful because I do have a career like this and a job. If you love your work, it’s not work. That’s where I would end.

I always like to say the science is great. Gathering intelligence through lab work is all great. It can lead to magnificent, miraculous outcomes for the people. That is who we’re here for. We want to put control back in the hands of the people. It starts with that getting up in the morning. A lot of our job is to uncover obstacles to healing. The body wants to be fully functional. Every cell knows its job. You don’t have to teach your cells that they are an adrenal cell or brain cell or muscle cell or bone cell. They know what kind of cell they are.  They know how to do their job. Our job is to uncover obstacles to that natural state of being.

Sometimes, those obstacles- I find them on lab work. They are in the minds and emotions of the person. That’s another big part of FDN. We study coaching skills. We study motivation. Getting to the obstacles to healing, it has nothing to do with their saliva or blood or stool. It’s in their head. Getting into people’s heads is very important. Our system fully includes stress reduction, the mental and emotional states of mind that people might be in. We are not psychologists. We are not diagnosing anything like psychiatrists. We are not providing any happy pills. Although supplements are part of our program, they are not happy pills. You get what I’m saying.

That’s where I start a lot of conversations. Other podcasts I have been on, that’s pretty much all we talked about, is what’s in their head. How do you separate these things out? I’ll just add that’s also part of healing: your state of mind, your attitude, if you will, and figuring out why it’s a bad attitude, if you have one.

Dr. Eric:

I definitely agree with what you just said. Where can people find out more about you?

Reed:

What I do is I am the founder of FDN, Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. You can go to FDNTraining.com/SaveMyThyroid in honor of this podcast.

Dr. Eric:

Thank you so much for sharing your expertise and knowledge with regard to lab testing and going beyond that. I learned some things. I always love when I learn things from my guests. I’m sure the listeners will learn a lot, too.

Reed:

Thank you very much. I hope people get something out of it that’s useful. I’m glad you did, Dr. Eric. Thank you.

Recently I interviewed Dr. Stephanie Gray, and we chatted about sex hormones. If you would prefer to listen the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.

I am very excited to interview Dr. Stephanie Gray, who is a functional medicine provider. She helps men and women build sustainable and optimal health and longevity so that they can focus on what matters most to them. She is arguably one of the Midwest’s most credentialed female health care providers, combining many certifications and trainings. I’ll include all these certifications and credentials in the show notes. Specifically, she helps women in midlife who feel their bodies have betrayed them step back into their bodies by restoring optimal hormone levels so they can regain their sleep, figure, mood, and feel amazing once again. She is known for keeping hormone replacement therapy sexy, safe, and effective.

Dr. Stephanie is also the Amazon best-selling author of her book Your Longevity Blueprint; host of Your Longevity Blueprint podcast; and co-founder of Your Longevity Blueprint Nutraceuticals with her husband Eric. They enjoy spending time outside with their son William. They founded the Integrative Health and Hormone Clinic in Hiawatha, Iowa. Thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Stephanie.

Dr. Stephanie Gray:

Good morning. Thanks for having me on. Excited to be here!

Dr. Eric:

What I’d like you to do is give a little bit of your backstory. How did you become interested in learning more about functional medicine and doing what you do today?

Dr. Stephanie:

Sure. I think everyone in our field has our own personal health crisis, which I can get to. I also feel pretty blessed that I was raised in the Midwest in Iowa in a healthy family. We always had home-cooked meals. We were always engaged in physical activity, went to the chiropractor. Our parents were self-employed, so they wanted to keep us healthy because we didn’t always have great insurance. High deductible plan, even back then. We were taking vitamins. My parents were growing wheatgrass juice on the countertop. They weren’t hippies, but they were ahead of their time.

I feel very blessed that I was raised in a family that valued health. A lot of our neighbors had great insurance. Any time they were sick, their parents took them to the doctor, and they were given antibiotics. Back then, I almost envied they had great health insurance, so they could go to the doctor. I now appreciate the fact that my parents were helping to prevent me from ever needing to go to the doctor. I was raised with that mentality.

Secondly, I had my own personal health crisis which fueled my passion for functional medicine. I was already in functional medicine when this happened. One day, sitting at my desk, after seeing patients in the morning, my heart took off to the races. I had what was called medical tachycardia, very fast heart rate. You probably deal with this with hyperthyroidism. I did not have that. I was very stressed out. I had a very fast heart rate. In that moment, I tried to push the button on my phone to intercom my husband, who is our office manager. I was so disoriented, dizzy, lightheaded. I didn’t know what was happening. I thought I was having a stroke. I walked down the hallway of my clinic. I was very pale.

Long story short, my nurse found me. Went to the emergency room. I was sent to cardiology, who referred me to Mayo Clinic. They told me I could take a medication to control my heart rate. I already knew, practicing functional medicine, taking a medication wasn’t going to tell me why this was happening to me. That was only a Band-Aid approach. That wouldn’t really get to the root cause of the problem.

There are times and places for medication. Maybe I should have taken a medication at some point because my heart rate was so fast. But I knew in that moment that I had tools with functional medicine. My husband said, “It’s time. You will have to apply these principles that for years you have been teaching your patients to yourself.” That’s when I created the Longevity Blueprint because I really had to regain my health.

I was already in functional medicine when my health crisis started, but functional medicine helped me regain my health.

The other piece of my personal story was I was also struggling with infertility, which makes sense. My body was in a stress state, with a fast heart rate. I wasn’t in the place where I could grow a human. My body unfortunately had very low progesterone. We can talk about hormone levels. The stress I was under in that time of my life was robbing me of progesterone, which is needed to achieve and maintain a pregnancy. I had a lot going on. Thankfully, I had some tools that really helped me rebuild my health.

Dr. Eric:

With the tachycardia, you were able to avoid medication, which I assume was a beta blocker. Was that what they recommended?

Dr. Stephanie:

Yep. It was really sad. I feel like I had a very thorough workup. Having a high deductible, you pay $7,000-10,000 to get this huge workup to rule out big, bad things, which I didn’t have. They said I had atrial tachycardia. Where it was happening, they couldn’t offer me an ablation. Medication was what they had recommended.  I just didn’t feel like that was what I needed.

In hindsight, it wasn’t. I really needed to change my lifestyle. I will say gluten was a huge trigger for me. Pretty much any time I have cross contamination with gluten—I finally figured this out— but I would have very fast heart rate after certain meals. I tested myself for Celiac, and I remember when my nurse brought me the results, she just handed them over to me. I looked at them and thought, Oh crap. I’m one of those people. I have to go gluten-free. This was a decade ago. I had been preaching the importance of removing inflammatory foods to my patients. I was already 80% gluten-free, but I needed to be 100% gluten-free, which I have been for the past decade. That was a huge game-changer for me.

I also had SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth). I had so much gas, bloating, and pressure. Sounds silly, but I would have palpitations and fast heart rate until I could burp and alleviate some of that pressure and air. That wasn’t something that conventional medicine was putting the pieces together. I had to figure that out myself. I was low on magnesium, low on progesterone, super stressed out. Once I got my minerals up, my hormones balanced. Stress is a lifelong thing. I still have some stress in my life. Once I set some healthy boundaries, all of those things together really helped to calm my body down. I didn’t need to take medication.

Dr. Eric:

Stress for most people is a work in progress. Being a functional medicine practitioner myself, we are both aware of the impact of stress. It’s something that obviously never goes away. It’s always something you have to work on. I’m with you on that.

I talk a lot about functional medicine. I don’t know if any of my guests actually have spoken about what functional medicine is. Can you briefly, for those who are not familiar with functional medicine, differentiate between functional medicine and conventional medicine?

Dr. Stephanie:

You bet. I like to use the analogy I share in my book to explain this, which is the fire department versus the carpenter approach. Think of conventional medicine as being the fire department. That’s what I sought out. I went to the emergency room. The fireman has two tools, an ax and a hose, which I consider medications and surgery. For me at least, they weren’t offering surgery. For some other ailments, they would. Conventional medicine is great for acute care in that regard. Their tools are drugs and surgery.

When we think of chronic disease management, and me trying to get to the root cause of my problem, I needed a carpenter or contractor, who tries to rebuild the body. That’s where functional medicine comes in. Think of functional medicine as being that carpenter. They will ask how and why an illness occurs. They will try to discover the root cause, the dysfunction in the body, so you can fix it and prevent future fires, so you don’t need the fire department.

I would say that I do think from an acute care standpoint, if you get hit by a car, if you have a heart attack, we do need conventional medicine. We do need the fire department. I think the fire department isn’t great when it comes to chronic conditions and preventing those.

Dr. Eric:

Thanks for the explanation. This relates to the house blueprint concept as well that you talk about in your book?

Dr. Stephanie:

Yeah. We are so immersed in functional medicine. I don’t want to speak for you, but we just assume people know what we do. It is actually rather complex. When I was going through my health crisis, my husband said, “You need to make a blueprint, an outline as far as all we offer to help patients. They may just come to our clinic for fixing a gut issue or optimizing hormones, but we offer so much more.” I thought, okay, what’s a relatable analogy for patients to learn functional medicine? I created this Longevity Blueprint. I’ll try to describe that.

I’m comparing your home and how you maintain it to your body. Most of us know: mow the lawn, keep hair out of the drains so they don’t get clogged, change your furnace filters. There are innate things we do to maintain our home, so our home lasts a long time. We don’t always know what to do for our body and specifically each organ system in the body.

Throughout the book, I am comparing one aspect of the home to an organ system in the body. For instance, chapter one, which is probably most important, I talk about gut health. I am comparing the foundation of our home—you have a strong foundation upon which to build your house—to the gastrointestinal system in the body. We have to have a strong gastrointestinal system upon which to build great, long-lasting health.

That is just one example. Within each chapter, I am going through all of the available, complex functional medicine testing options for each organ system. I really talk about your human fingerprints being a detailed, unique marker of human identity, as are your test results. Your test results will differ from your neighbor’s. Those test results help your functional medicine provider personalize a plan to rebuild your health.

I can keep going if you want me to explain some of the other parallels I am drawing with the house and the organ systems if you want.

Dr. Eric:

Sure. Let’s go for it.

Dr. Stephanie:

I didn’t mention this yet, but something else that really helped me reduce stress was getting chiropractic adjustments. I don’t know what your thoughts are on chiropractic care, but I wanted to include it in the book. I would feel so tight and stressed. I would have a fast heart rate. Then I would get adjusted, and everything would lessen. I wanted to include the importance of maintaining the framework of the home, aka the spine, our musculoskeletal system in the body. That’s chapter two.

Chapter three is all about the electrical work in the home. I am comparing that to genetics in the body. Some lights, you want turned on. Some lights, you want turned off. There are certain genes we want expressed and other genes we don’t.

Chapter four is all about having the correct keys to unlock certain doorways in the home. This is a stretch, but I was comparing that to having the proper nutrients in the body, repleting nutritional deficiencies. You want that correct key to fit that lock to open the doorway or to bind to a receptor. You want to have the certain cofactors for enzymatic reactions in the body.

Chapter five, I am comparing the importance of tackling the laundry. We have a constant influx of dirty clothes needing washing and drying and folding and putting away. That is an ongoing problem, at least in my house. I am comparing that to the detoxification systems in the body, your liver, gallbladder, and bladder working appropriately so you can eliminate toxins.

Chapter six is my favorite. Maybe we can spend some time here. I am comparing the heating system and cooling system in the home to the endocrine system in the body, optimizing your hormones.

In chapter seven, I am comparing the plumbing system in the home, because you want clog-free plumbing, to the cardiovascular system.

Chapter eight, I am comparing the importance of having good roof integrity, aka treating and strengthening the immune system. You don’t want to have chronic infections. You want to make sure you have that protective barrier, your immune system in the home or the roof in the house.

Chapter nine, I am encouraging patients to find a contractor, aka a functional medicine provider, to help them work through all of this because again, it is complex. It’s not easy. You do need to run some advanced tests and be able to interpret those results as well.

Dr. Eric:

Those are some pretty neat analogies. Thank you for sharing. I definitely want to get more into the hormones. Before doing that, as far as my thoughts on chiropractic, being that my background is a chiropractor-

Dr. Stephanie:

I didn’t know that!

Dr. Eric:

Definitely in favor of regular chiropractic adjustments. I am a little bit overdue, I’ll admit, for my wellness adjustment. I do try to go in regularly. I don’t really practice chiropractic like I did years ago. It’s more functional medicine, focusing on helping people with thyroid/autoimmune thyroid conditions. Still, I definitely recommend chiropractic. Can’t say enough about chiropractic.

Let’s talk about hormones and where they fit into this analogy. I really want to dive a little bit deeper into the hormones.

Dr. Stephanie:

Here I am discussing how important the heating and cooling system is in your home, comparing that to the function of your thyroid, your ovaries or testes, adrenals, all of those organs that help produce hormones. You don’t want to have cold intolerance, your fingers and toes to be cold. You don’t want to have hot flashes or night sweats either. You want to have a favorable body temperature.

In this chapter, I am discussing ways for patients who are younger to produce hormones naturally. We can certainly go there. But I also talk about ways to replace hormones. I do have a heavy natural hormone replacement therapy practice. I’ve had lots of patients who’ve had hysterectomies who need replacement.

Here, I am dispelling a lot of myths: Hormones aren’t safe; they cause cancer; women don’t need testosterone. We can dive into as much as you would like.

Lastly, I also discuss the importance of optimizing estrogen metabolism. That’s what my doctor focused on, looking at urine hormone, metabolism testing to help reduce risk for estrogen-related cancers.

Dr. Eric:

We’ll talk more about the estrogen metabolism. It sounds like you recommend hormone replacement to a lot of women, especially if they have a hysterectomy, but maybe younger women, not as much. Is that correct?

Dr. Stephanie:

It really depends. Back to my story. Sadly, I was in my 20s when I first started checking my hormones and was struggling with infertility. I had my son at 35, a little later in the game, but it took me years. I was on progesterone. I had to take progesterone injections through my pregnancy because my levels were so low.

Not that everybody is as low as me, but I see a lot of high performers. They are just driven individuals, entrepreneurs, busy bodies, Type A, have higher stress. Unfortunately, when they are not supporting their bodies with nutrition and detoxification, they can end up with lower sex hormone levels earlier in life.

Progesterone is the first hormone I do start replacing. Many times, I have to replace that for women in their 20s. It’s not just a hormone I wait until someone is 50 to replace. If they are having PMS, heavy periods, anxiety, premenstrual headaches, infertility, they may need progesterone much earlier in life. That’s really determined based on a combination of symptoms and testing to confirm that they are low.

Dr. Eric:

That was my next question: How does someone know if they have a hormone imbalance? You don’t just randomly recommend bioidentical hormones. You do test your patients.

Dr. Stephanie:

No, no. I love testing. I don’t know about you, but I love it because I have seen so many patients, even menopausal patients, go see their gynecologist. They are put on estrogen without having any hormone tests run when they never needed estrogen in the first place. They come to me. I test their levels. They are sky high. Maybe they needed progesterone or testosterone, not estrogen. That is a big pet peeve of mine, when providers are willy nilly prescribing hormones without comprehensive testing.

There are various ways to test hormones: saliva, blood, and urine. There is blood spot testing as well; I don’t do a ton of that. Depending on the age of the patient, their cyclical status, the symptoms they have, that helps me determine what is the best means of testing their hormones.

Sometimes, for younger women, I will do a month-long saliva hormone test, where they will spit into a tube every couple days for the full month, so we can gauge-If they are having a symptom like a headache with ovulation day 14, or maybe day 26, they are having a headache, we can correlate symptoms with labs when we can see both together. I do like the month-long saliva hormone test for those sorts of patients.

For patients who aren’t cycling, we really don’t need to do a full month-long test because their levels are pretty stable. For perimenopausal patients who maybe are cycling every 2-3 months, or menopausal patients, I’ll just do blood testing on them.

You can still do blood testing on cycling women, but you need to test them a week after ovulation. That is when progesterone will peak. If patients don’t want to do saliva testing, I’ll try to have them target that window to do the blood testing.

For post-menopausal women, I just test them any day. It doesn’t matter.

We will test estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, sometimes DHEA, prednisone. A full thyroid panel, which I’m sure you talk about a lot on here. Many times, we will test cortisol as well. I can do that in saliva, or we can do cortisol in urine testing.

That leads me to the next form of testing we can run on patients, which is the Dutch test, dried urine comprehensive hormone test. We also just test one day, but that specific day, we can run cortisol multiple times throughout the day. Cortisol is supposed to be high in the morning, so patients are full of energy. It is supposed to gently reduce throughout the day, being lowest at night so they can sleep. We can see their Circadian rhythm, which many times is disrupted in the perimenopausal stage. We can also see their hormone levels. Plus we can see hormone metabolites. We can see how they are eliminating estrogen, which is really important, especially if I am going to be prescribing them estrogen.

I think your question was how does someone know if they have hormone imbalances? A) We test them. B) I have them fill out a symptom questionnaire. Many patients who have low estrogen have vaginal dryness, hot flashes, night sweats, urinary incontinence, memory fog. If they have low progesterone, they may have PMS, anxiety, heavy cycles, poor sleep. If they have low testosterone, which I am seeing a lot of that these days, they may have poor mood, motivation, drive, libido, energy, muscle mass. Many patients can have poor mineral bone density with any of the hormones being low.

We combine symptoms with labs to determine what is the best course of action for this patient. Do we want to try to boost hormones naturally and use supplements and herbs? Are they at a point where they are not producing anything? Maybe they have had a hysterectomy, so they just need hormone replacement therapy. If so, we can go there as well.

Dr. Eric:

A few questions. When looking at cortisol, it sounds like you lean more toward the Dutch test for looking at adrenals when compared to saliva testing?

Dr. Stephanie:

I do both. Let’s say I want to test their sex hormones. If we are going to do a Dutch test, to be clear, you can do it with or without the cortisol. It’s an extra $100 to do it with cortisol. For many people, it’s convenient to add that portion on. If we are not running sex hormones, let’s say they come to me, and we are focusing more on thyroid or gut health or other things, and we are not doing urine hormone testing, I will do saliva cortisol testing. It depends on what I am running for that patient to decide the best combination of tests. How do we make it the most cost-effective for the patient, too?

Dr. Eric:

I take a similar approach. When I dealt with Graves’, I did saliva testing, back in 2008. I wasn’t familiar with the Dutch test. I don’t know it existed back then.

Dr. Stephanie:

I don’t think it did, not through that company.

Dr. Eric:

I did saliva testing for adrenals. These days, similar to you, if I am just going to focus on adrenals, usually I will have someone do a saliva test. If we are doing the hormones, looking at the hormone metabolites, I usually recommend the Dutch test. We’re similar there.

Another question I had: In the past, I would do the cycling hormone test through saliva. Then the Dutch test also offers-

Dr. Stephanie:

They have it, too.

Dr. Eric:

I don’t know why I got away from doing the saliva test. Now, if I recommend a cycling hormone panel, it’s more the Dutch test than the saliva test. I don’t know if you use that.

Dr. Stephanie:

I failed to mention that. There are so many testing options these days. Yeah, I offer that to patients, too. It’s based on patient preference. Some people just don’t want to dip their urine. Some people think it’s easy and convenient to do the urine dipped test. Others like doing the saliva test.

It comes down to cost, too. The saliva test for some people ends up being cheaper if their insurance- We won’t go off on a big tangent. Do it through Genova, and they might get some insurance coverage. Precision is urine. I try to explain all the options to patients. Both can be accurate and very clinically useful.

Dr. Eric:

I’m glad you mentioned the blood test because some people, even if they are cycling, it might be cost-prohibitive for them to do. They would do the blood test one week after ovulation, correct?

Dr. Stephanie:

Yep, which is easy in a 28-day cycle. I have patients go to the lab on days 19, 20, or 21. If their cycle is 35 days or 21 days, then it becomes a little more difficult to determine when the best testing window is for that patient. I always ask if they have any ovulation symptoms, kind of twitching, cramping. Some patients get headaches with ovulation. Cervical mucus changes. If they are having any of that, I make sure we do labs after symptoms suggestive of ovulation. We don’t want to test before.

If someone is having a short cycle, 21 days, we may need to test them very early based on that. They may be ovulating day seven or 10. That becomes trickier. That’s where you need a functional medicine provider to help you know when to test in those situations.

Dr. Eric:

When testing in the blood, can I ask what you test for? Is it just estradiol, estrone, and estriol?

Dr. Stephanie:

Good question. Another one of my pet peeves is providers not looking at estrone. We know in the post-menopausal phase, estrone is way more predominant than estradiol. Many times, estradiol will look normal, but estrone could be very high. I have seen a lot of patients get mistreated with their provider thinking, “You have low estrogen levels. Let’s give you estrogen,” when they really weren’t low. Their estrone was high, but that was never detected. I think I learned that the hard way a long time ago.

I do test estrone in men and women. And estradiol, pretty much every single time I am doing blood work. If I am giving men and women testosterone, I also want to make sure that’s not aromatizing or converting over to their estrogens. Some patients convert over to estradiol. Some we see it in estrone. I think it’s important to test both.

Dr. Eric:

Do you ever test for total estrogens?

Dr. Stephanie:

I don’t. If I don’t order it, it comes back like that sometimes. They give me total estrogens. Maybe we should have this discussion another time, but I don’t know clinically how to use that. I do want to know what portion of that is estradiol versus estrone. You can give me your opinion on that, too.

Dr. Eric:

Good point. When I test for sex hormones in the blood, I’ll commonly test for estradiol and total estrogens. If it’s high, like if estradiol is looking okay, and total estrogens are high, I guess it could be either estriol or estrone. A lot of times, I’ll assume it’s the estrone. I guess you don’t know unless you test for estrone.

Dr. Stephanie:

I would say you’re still doing what’s better. You’re testing for all of the estrogens versus just estradiol. That’s when I think providers miss things, when they are just testing that portion. I guess it’s a good thing to test for total estrogens. We just don’t know the breakdown in that.

Dr. Eric:

Do you look at FSH, LH in everybody? Or just post-menopause?

Dr. Stephanie:

In younger women and men, yes. Totally depends on why they are coming to see me, if it’s fertility-related or not.

Post-menopausally in women, I really like testing FSH. That is telling us how unhappy the brain is with circulating estrogen. Sometimes, I like to explain to patients that when their FSH is very high, like over 100, their body is screaming for estrogen. They need it; they want it. That’s another confirming marker that we need to do something to boost estrogen or give them estrogen replacement. I do test those often. I will say I don’t test them in every single situation though.

Dr. Eric:

Why are hormones important to the aging process? How do they help with longevity?

Dr. Stephanie:

I have already mentioned today symptoms that hormones can help with: hot flashes, PMS, low libido, etc. At the end of the day, hormones are extremely important from an aging standpoint. Even if you’re listening and have zero symptoms, you feel great, hormones will still help you preserve your memory, bone health, heart health. When we think of the top leading causes of death—heart disease, which can be the silent killer—hormones will really help reduce chances of having cardiovascular events. When we think of estrogen helping with vaginal dryness, it helps with the elasticity of the tissues, and not just in that region. It helps with cardiovascular elasticity, to prevent stiffness and narrowing. You even have estrogen receptors in your eyes, all over your body.

As you age, not to get wrinkles and to look good and feel good, I really do think estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid, and cortisol all are extremely important. I can keep expanding, but hopefully the heart, bones, and brain, everyone should want to keep their memory as they age, hopefully those benefits were strongly conveyed there.

Dr. Eric:

Can you talk a little bit about synthetic versus natural hormones? There is definitely a difference. I assume most of the time you are recommending bioidentical hormones.

Dr. Stephanie:

Absolutely. In my book, I actually put in picture diagrams of the molecular structures of synthetic testosterone versus natural and synthetic progestins versus progesterone. When you think of synthetic hormones, they have to be tweaked in a lab. They are man-made because they are a profitable drug.

A little different than a hormone that is more bioidentical to what your body is making. Those are usually plant-based. Those are also slightly tweaked in the lab, so they are turning a yam basically into a hormone structure that is biologically identical to what your body is already making, meaning taking natural progesterone should fit like a key fitting in a keyhole. That progesterone should fit into your progesterone receptor exactly.

Synthetic progestins have a totally different molecular structure. They are going to bind partially but not fully as well as natural progesterone would into your hormone receptor. Synthetics are harder for the body to detoxify. They come with greater risks. They were what’s used in the Women Health Initiative study that scared away everybody from using hormones.

The #1 most prescribed drug last year was Prozac. All these women were left with many symptoms that hormones could have helped. Rather than find safer options of the hormones, we just started prescribing antidepressants to these poor ladies. I do think that hormones can be used safely and appropriately. We just need to absolutely be looking at labs, symptoms, using only bioidentical hormones, and given in the safest strata of administration as possible for that patient.

Dr. Eric:

Do you use any natural agents, like chaste tree or maca root, to help with progesterone?

Dr. Stephanie:

Yeah. Maybe I’ll expand on what I think you’re asking, if I use natural agents before we get to hormone replacement therapy to boost hormones. I personally took a blend of ProgestoMend from Douglas Labs, a blend of progesterone-boosting herbs, for my health years ago before I actually went on progesterone.

I actually want to go back and also say before I even get to those things for the younger population, I also talk to them about three things. The first is reducing stress. Stress is your body’s biggest hormone hijacker. There is no pill, potion, or powder that is going to replace lifestyle changes. Even for me, I had to say no to some things. I had to back off. I had to get into yoga and deep breathing. One of the best things you can do to optimize hormones is reduce stress.

The second thing would be to detoxify the body. I used to go to Bath & Body Works and get all these toxic lip glosses and lotions. I had all these chemical hair straighteners. I was essentially self-inflicting myself with all these endocrine-disrupting chemicals that were creating more of an estrogen dominance that led to endometriosis and some infertility. I wish I would have known back then to avoid fragrances and these parabens. I didn’t know, but you can only move forward. You can’t go back. I would encourage listeners to work to eliminate environmental toxins and do a liver cleanse, something like that, to help as well.

The third thing would be to work to fix nutritional deficiencies. Magnesium for instance, everybody needs. It’s important for thyroid hormone production and sex hormone production. It was certainly something I was really low in. That is just one example of a supplement, a nutrient that can help to boost hormones. There are several others.

For many of my patients, I am running nutritional analyses to see what vitamins, minerals, amino acids, antioxidants, Omegas they need. Let’s saturate the body with the nutrition they need first, and then retest hormone levels.

If still, after reducing stress, detoxing the body, fixing nutritional deficiencies, they are still not where we need them to be, then I will pull out the herbs. Yes, I’ll use herbs to boost estrogen, progesterone, testosterone if we need to, or lower testosterone. For patients with PCOS, sometimes we need to lower the androgens. I do use herbs after I get through those first three steps.

Dr. Eric:

Typically, what do you use to lower androgens? Saw palmetto?

Dr. Stephanie:

Saw palmetto is excellent. It specifically will block testosterone’s conversion to DHT. It’s a 5-alpha reductase inhibitor or blocker. We have a different combination of those herbs. Men will use them as well. Pumpkin pygeum horsetail, stinging nettles, saw palmetto. Those are the ones off the top of my head. We have a blend and various products that we’ll use for patients when needed.

Dr. Eric:

With testing for nutrients such as magnesium, you mentioned Omegas, I don’t know what testing you use, but I know you mentioned earlier Genova. Do you use the NutrEval, or do you use some other test? Blood testing?

Dr. Stephanie:

I am privy to Genova’s tests because I think, “I’ll use Great Plains for OAT testing.” We use probably 50 different lab accounts at our clinic. I am privy to Genova because I am privy to how they present their results. They are color coordinated with high needs and low needs. It’s very patient and user friendly. I do like that test. That also looks at nutrient needs. It will also give me a glimpse into gut health because it has some bacteria and yeast markers on there. It has oxalates and toxin markers and a basic heavy metal screening. It’s a really comprehensive glance at one’s health. That can help direct us to know which path we need next to go down. Do we need to focus on gut health? Do we need to focus on detoxification? I think it’s a great test. Everybody should have that test run.

Dr. Eric:

Depending on the answers that the test gives, you mentioned gut health. Do you ever run a comprehensive stool panel? Maybe look at beta-glucuronidase or other markers of dysbiosis?

Dr. Stephanie:

Yep. Many of my patients, which you are probably running as well, are doing food sensitivity testing. Back to chapter one of my book. In that chapter, I discuss literally what you just said. A stool test, a food sensitivity test, maybe SIBO testing. A lot of these patients will have gut infections. An infection is a stress on the body. Stress will rob you of hormones, not just psychological stress, but stress from things like infections. I absolutely run stool tests. I usually start with food testing. Let’s face it, most patients have GI issues as well. If the food testing and changing the diet improves symptoms, we may not need to dig deeper. Sometimes, we do. The stool test is usually the next step there for sure.

Dr. Eric:

Just a quick question with food sensitivity testing. Do you use IGG or MRT?

Dr. Stephanie:

I like IGG. I’m privy to that. I feel like there are different opinions. I think everyone finds what’s clinically most useful for them. I think it varies per lab because some labs’ tests are more repeatable. I do like IGG testing. IGA and IGE, sometimes, too.

Dr. Eric:

Getting back to the hormones. I don’t think you mentioned as far as type of hormones. Do you recommend for example progesterone cream or pellets?

Dr. Stephanie:

We offer everything here. When I started practice, I started with what I felt was the safest: the topicals, the transdermal application. I do think for patients who are very sensitive and have mild symptoms, topicals are great. A couple years into practice, I found out a lot of these patients are having dermal fatigue, where they get receptor resistance. They are applying the cream to the same place over and over, and they quit working. I needed to learn other ways to replace hormones.

I used sublingual dosing, so I do prescribe a lot of compounded sublingual hormones. Like putting B12 under the tongue, we do compound hormones under the tongue. I do prescribe oral progesterone because we can compound a sustained release version to release throughout the night, keeping patients asleep. Sublingual can’t be compounded as a sustained release version. That needs to be in the delayed release capsule. I do prescribe oral progesterone.

We do a lot of pellet procedures. Progesterone has not been invented in that pellet form yet, so the pellets are more for estrogen and testosterone. Estradiol and testosterone for men. Women will need estrogen as well.

I found throughout the last decade+ of practice that a lot of patients who are very symptomatic, or let’s say, they come to me and are not symptomatic but need to build bones. Hormone pellets are the quickest, best way to do that. Using topical hormones can help a little bit. Oral hormones can help a little bit more. I know there are patches as well.

I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I want to say oral and patch replacement therapy helps 1-3% as far as improving bone mineral density. Pellets can help up to 8%. Pellets in the literature really outperform any other form of hormone replacement therapy, which is really cool. I have seen patients come in with osteoporosis and a couple years later have normal bone density, which is amazing. There is no drug out there that is helping to build bones like natural hormone replacement therapy can. That is exciting for me as a clinician but super exciting for patients as well. They get to go back to their other doctor and say, “Look at this. My bones are improving.” Really exciting.

Not everyone is a candidate for pellets. Those patients who are sensitive to everything, no way am I putting a pellet in them. You can’t take the pellets out once they are in. There are patients who are good fits for the pellet. We just have to strategize with the patient what hormones they are going to take, what form, and what dose. Personalize that approach for them.

Dr. Eric:

Earlier, you mentioned an example of someone having a hysterectomy, and you will recommend hormone replacement. Is that every woman? Or is it just if they have a complete hysterectomy?

Dr. Stephanie:

That was one extreme example, which unfortunately I see a lot. I have a lot of patients in their 30s and 40s who have had hysterectomies because they had heavy bleeding or fibroids. I will also point out sadly, knowing they have had these surgeries, yes, we can replace hormones and help them, but having the surgery never got to the root cause of the problem as far as why they had the heavy bleeding in the first place. Removing the uterus doesn’t get to the root cause of the problem. We still have more work to do with those patients. Tangent there.

I have patients who haven’t had hysterectomies who need hormone replacement therapy. Maybe they had a very stressful decade of their life from mid-20s to mid-30s, and they are burned out. I see men and women with extremely low testosterone. I still replace individuals who haven’t had surgeries like hysterectomy. That was just one sad, common example that I also see.

Dr. Eric:

I’m sure there are some people listening to this who are completely anti-hormone. “I don’t want to take any type of hormone. I just want to do things naturally.” I keep an open mind. If stress and adrenals is the big problem and depleting the hormones, of course, I want to do things to help improve their stress handling skills. You spoke about doing this, too. In the meantime, the person might need to be on progesterone. Maybe not depending on the situation.

For those who have concerns about hormones, there are some who just maybe don’t want to take it. There are others who are concerned about it will maybe cause cancer, especially if you recommend estrogen. Can you talk about that? Maybe alleviate any fears people have about that.

Dr. Stephanie:

Common question I heavily discuss in the book. Hormones don’t cause cancer. If hormones cause cancer, we would have a bunch of 20-year-olds with cancer because they are the ones with high levels of sex hormones, right? We would see patients going through puberty, high hormone levels, getting cancer, and 90-year-olds not getting cancer. That’s not the case. The opposite is true. We don’t see cancers usually in young individuals with high hormone levels; we see it in the elderly with lower hormone levels. I do want to dispel that myth.

Some people need to be more careful with hormone use. If they have significant family history of breast cancer, I am going to be very cautious giving that patient estrogen. That also comes back down to you doing the year-end hormone metabolism testing. If I can assure we have these three major estrogen metabolism pathways working in your favor, and we optimize them, that will increase my confidence with the safety of me prescribing that hormone. In conventional medicine, none of this is done. That totally baffles me. In those cases, I will be more cautious with the use of estrogen, but it doesn’t mean it’s contraindicated. Hormones don’t cause cancer.

I will say hormones can feed an existing cancer. If someone had an estrogen receptor positive breast cancer, I am absolutely not going to give them estrogen. If a man had active aggressive prostate cancer, I am not going to give him testosterone. But hormones don’t cause cancer.

I will say the increased risks that were shown in the Women’s Health Initiative study although that was a very poorly designed study we could talk about. In that study, they were using synthetic, oral, horse urine, basically. The estrogens that were used there were from horse urine, and they were given orally. We think a lot of the risks with estrogen come down to that estrogen being synthetic and taken by mouth. When the hormone is taken by mouth, it has to be metabolized through the gut and liver, and that is where increased clotting can increase the risk of cancer. It’s not the hormone itself, but if we are metabolizing it improperly, bad things can happen like fibroids, cysts, and heavy bleeding.

Dr. Eric:

Let’s talk more about estrogen metabolism. What are some of the things you do to help support estrogen metabolism?

Dr. Stephanie:

Sure. The only way to assess metabolism or detoxification or elimination is in the urine. Genova used to offer this test, which was available back in 2008, but it can’t offer it because they use helium as one of their analytes for androgen. There is a helium shortage. Precision Analyticals is a main lab that offers urine testing for estrogen right now.

Bottom line is in that test, we can look at three pathways. One is the 2-16 ratio, looking at how high your 2s are—this might be over the heads of listeners—as compared to the 16s. If that ratio is unfavorable, there are things we can do like increase consumption of cruciferous vegetables or take a supplement called DIM. DIM is like eight pounds of vegetables a day without the gas. That will improve the 2-16 ratio to reduce breast cancer risk or even just risk of fibroids and cysts.

The next pathway we can look at is methylation. Many times, if I see poor estrogen methylation, I assume they are a poor methylator in general. It’s a phase two detox pathway. If methylation is poor, usually the easiest thing we can recommend to improve that is methylated B vitamins. Not everybody responds well or tolerates them, so sometimes we have to use other strategies. Methylated B vitamins can help there.

Lastly, the most dangerous marker on a urine hormone metabolism test is called 4-hydroxy estrone. If oxidized, that can lead to DNA damage and then cancer. How do we prevent that? We give antioxidants. This is what my doctorate was on, these pathways. Back then, the major antioxidants in the literature that could help that were n-acetyl cysteine and resveratrol. I think n-acetyl cysteine is great for a lot of things in general. A lot of patients take it for immune purposes these days. It boosts glutathione, which is the most powerful antioxidant in the body. I do think glutathione itself is very helpful for protecting you against that elevated 4-hydroxy estrone. There hasn’t been a lot of studies on it, but the ones that exist are more for n-acetyl cysteine because that’s what boosts glutathione.

There are things we can do if we find unfavorable estrogen metabolites to optimize them, to improve them, which is hopefully very encouraging to the listeners.

Dr. Eric:

Thanks for sharing that. Is there anything else that I should have asked you that I didn’t ask you? Anything else you want to expand on?

Dr. Stephanie:

I don’t think so. I will just say don’t fear hormones. Hormones can help you age well. A lot of patients have been burned, maybe because they saw a provider who didn’t quite know what they were doing. If you were going to have brain surgery, you’d want to go to a brain surgeon. If you want to optimize your hormones, go to a hormone specialist. See someone who really knows what they’re doing, so you don’t get burned. What they are giving you is really safe and effective.

Dr. Eric:

One more question that came to mind is how frequently do you retest? If someone is on progesterone or whatever hormone, when is the first follow-up? How frequently? Is it every month, every few months?

Dr. Stephanie:

Variable. I’ll say on average, for a new patient, they come in and see me. We will test hormones after the first visit. We will bring them back to go over those hormones. We will initiate some form of hormone replacement therapy.

Let’s say they know they want hormone pellets. They will get peak pellet labs done six weeks after their first pellet insertion. We will see what range they are in six weeks after the procedure. They will come back again. We will go over those labs. For many patients, if they are smooth sailing, if their labs are good, we have achieved symptom relief, we only test their hormones once a year. Once we know we are smooth.

For sublingual and topical, it’s a little different. I measure those primarily doing the Dutch test. I will get them hopefully smooth sailing within the first 2-3 months. We may have to tweak the doses a bit. Once the Dutch test comes back favorable, if levels are optimal, then I will test them once a year.

Not everybody is just smooth sailing out of the gate. For some of these patients, if we have to tweak their dosages, I am not going to wait a year to retest. We will retest at another three months. Once we’re smooth sailing, then I will test them once annually.

For some patients who have higher risk of breast cancer, they may want to do the Dutch test twice a year. It’s fine, it’s their money. I will test them as often as they want.

For blood testing, if I am just putting someone on progesterone, I may test their level two or three times in the first six months to make sure their dose is appropriate. Again, once they are smooth sailing, it’s usually once a year.

Dr. Eric:

Awesome, thanks. Where can people learn more about you, Dr. Stephanie?

Dr. Stephanie:

I have a couple different websites. YourLongevityBlueprint.com has my book, our podcast, and all of our supplements. There is a free tip sheet on the homepage reviewing some of what we talked about today: three tips to boost your hormones naturally, breaking down reducing stress, fixing nutritional deficiencies, and detoxifying your body.

My clinic website is IHHClinic.com for Integrative Health and Hormone Clinic in Iowa.

You can also find me on Instagram, StephanieGrayDNP, and Facebook. I also have a free e-book, YourLongevityBlueprint.com/Creating-Resilience. That is a step-by-step guide on what stress is and how to minimize its impact on your body and hormones.

Dr. Eric:

Check out Dr. Stephanie’s book, podcast, and other resources. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. It was a pleasure chatting with you. That was a lot of valuable information, especially with regards to hormones and touching upon some other great information. Look forward to being on your podcast as well. This was amazing, so thank you so much, Dr. Stephanie.

Dr. Stephanie:

You bet. Love talking about hormones.

 

Recently I interviewed Dr. Sabrina Solt, and we chatted about the carnivore diet. If you would prefer to listen the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.

I am excited to chat with Dr. Sabrina Solt about the carnivore diet. Dr. Sabrina is a naturopathic doctor located in Scottsdale, Arizona. She practices regenerative and anti-aging medicine and uses carnivore and animal-based diets as part of her treatment protocols to heal everything from autoimmune disorders to chronic pain. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us, Sabrina.

Dr. Sabrina Solt:

Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Eric:

Definitely one of the shorter bios. You get right to the point, just the important stuff. I appreciate that. Why don’t we start by diving into your background? How did you get into the carnivore diet? I actually did some research. I heard that you weren’t always carnivore; you loved your salads. Why don’t you talk about how you made that transition?

Dr. Sabrina:

It was a really interesting journey for me. As you said, I’m a naturopathic doctor. I went to naturopathic medical school, which is all about how plants are the greatest thing in the entire world, everything from putting your patients on plant-based/vegan diets, getting enough fiber. Then there is the botanical medicine aspect of it, too. All plants can technically be medicine. It was driven home in our education that there is no harm in consuming plants. I say that with quotations. We know now, and of course we know in general, that there are some plants that are harmful to human beings.

Let me backtrack a little bit. I’ve had digestive issues almost my entire life. It just became really debilitating over time. My diet became so severely limited. I had removed pretty much everything: gluten, dairy, soy, every grain. I had gotten down to basically vegetables and meat and some other fats. I would do nut butters. I still never got better.

As an MD, I had access to every gut-healing protocol you can imagine. I did all the bio hacking. I did the stem cell stuff. I did it all, over the course of my career. I still never got better. In fact, a lot of things were worsening as far as my symptoms went.

Fast forward to about a year ago. My husband came across another physician named Dr. Anthony Chaffee on YouTube. He is a neurosurgeon based in Australia who has been carnivore for about a decade, if not longer. He is a huge wealth of information on the subject and is one of the most strict. He preaches the meat, salt, and water variation.

My husband had some stuff he was going through at that time, and he dove in headfirst. He is crazy like that. I thought he was completely insane. “You’re going to make yourself sick! You need fiber and vegetables. You will die, and I will pick up the pieces.” Then he didn’t. He got better. His skin texture improved. It was brighter. The whites of his eyes were brighter. He had more energy. His mood was more even. He didn’t lose his temper at the kids anymore. It was pretty wild to see. Ok, there’s something to this. Maybe I need to be more open-minded about what the possibilities could be.

I started first by eliminating my salads I ate for lunch every single day. I literally ate a salad every single day for lunch. After lunch, I would not feel good. My pain in my upper back and neck would light up. I would get some brain fog. It was no good. Cut that out. Those things started to go away. That little bit of lower belly fat that I used to have just went away on its own, too. Maybe there is something to this.

It took me a few months, but I eventually got rid of the grains in my diet. I was still consuming oats and white rice. Those all went away as well. I started to improve. My digestion that had been a problem for so many years, I went through a period of time where I was using some digestive enzymes because the high fat I was eating wasn’t digesting as well as it should have been.

Of course, the other aspect was prior to that, what set everything off really terribly was back in May 2021, we went on a trip to Mexico. I picked up a parasite there. That parasite had really destroyed my gut over the year I had it after that.

Carnivore did save me, I feel. It saved me from what I was going through. Healed the gut stuff. Got rid of my anxiety. My sleep improved. I take almost no supplements now. We used to have two big cupboards of supplement stuff, full of things I have taken in my life. I have become the most low maintenance in my health I have ever been. It’s been amazing.

Dr. Eric:

Great story. Just to be transparent, and I mentioned this prior to recording, I don’t follow carnivore. I recommend vegetables. I have my morning smoothies. I am obviously not opposed to carnivore, or else I wouldn’t be interviewing you. I am very open-minded.

The reason I am chatting with you is because I heard stories about carnivore helping people with chronic health conditions, including autoimmunity. I work with people with Graves’ and Hashimoto’s. To be transparent, I’ve had patients who don’t seem to tolerate vegetables. I would say a lot of them on the surface seem to, but there are those that obviously they will try to increase their vegetable intake, which is what I have been recommending for years. They experience some bloating and gas. We may need to heal the gut, get rid of potential SIBO or other things like that. But hearing success stories from people who are in similar situations, they just changed their diet, and that seemed to resolve things. I decided to get someone who is an advocate and more of an expert on the carnivore diet, and that’s why we’re chatting.

Can you explain how this differs from the more popular diets like ketogenic? There is overlap with carnivore and ketogenic. And paleo is popular. AIP. Like you said, there are different levels of carnivore, where you could be strictly eating meat, but there are variations where you can add eggs and dairy. Is that correct?

Dr. Sabrina:

Yeah. There is some variation on this. Carnivore diet in general can exist on a spectrum. The actual term “hypercarnivore” refers to an animal or person who consumes about 70% of their food intake from an animal source. That can include eggs and dairy as long as the person tolerates it. Preferably, we like to get most of our nutrition from things like fatty ruminant meats. Some people do pork, fish variations, seafood. Some people do chicken.

The biggest variation between carnivore and keto, although there is some overlap, is keto emphasizes doing the high fat. You want to make sure you are existing in ketosis. That is not so much the focus of carnivore as it is just getting in the fatty meats and food from animal sources.

For a lot of people, carnivore is actually preferential over keto. I talk about something called the doctor bias, meaning most doctors are biased to what walks in their office as far as pathology goes. Many years ago, when keto first became popular, my bias became that I was seeing a lot of women who were middle-aged who started to do keto in order to lose weight. After about three months, yes, they lost weight initially, but then they plateaued, and their hormones tanked. I was left cleaning up the mess from that. I was jaded on the keto thing because of what I saw walking into my office.

What I came to realize is these women were undernourishing themselves in regard to protein. They were eating so much fat and not getting enough protein to support all of the needs their body has for it. Protein is a super essential nutrient. I would argue the majority of people walking around are severely under proteined. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon has a wealth of information in this area for ensuring people get adequate amounts.

The general recommendation for most people is 1g per pound of body weight, which seems like a lot. I am 110 pounds or so; that is 110g of protein. That is a pound of meat or more per day. I have no problem consuming that, and I feel so much better for it. A lot of people have difficulty because they are also eating other things, which is where the other diets come in.

Paleo still allows room for certain plant matters. Anything that would grow in the Paleolithic era is okay to eat in that diet. A lot of the plants we have today likely didn’t exist back then, due to the simple hybridization that we do in our current agriculture industry.

A lot of people compare carnivore to Atkins diet because it’s a high protein diet and severely limits carbs. That would probably be the closet comparison to a popular diet that still mainly is avoiding vegetables. Ultimately, a lot of people on this diet are avoiding pretty much all plant matter in general. That includes nuts, seeds, and vegetation, of course.

Some people will still consume fruit because arguably, when we are talking about avoiding plants, we are discussing the fact that plants contain antinutrients that can be more harmful to somebody’s health than the benefits you might get from consuming that item. When it comes to fruit, we can argue that technically, the plant wants you to eat its fruit so you will go poop out the seeds and start a new plant so it can reproduce a lot better. That’s why fruit is very sweet and appetizing to humans. It makes you want to continue to eat that. Ultimately, we want to make sure we are staying away from all the other antinutrients.

Like you were saying, there are some people who can definitely tolerate eating vegetables. There are a lot of us who have just been sick for so long and have done so much damage to our gut and our body that we have completely lost that ability.

Do I think this diet is for everybody? You can argue that we are all carnivores, and this is how we should be eating. There is a lot of complexity to the human being. We have this ability to be creative with our food sources as they come to us in the environment and to ferment things. We have learned how to cook things. We are not just relegated to eating animals in the raw and in the wild. I think there is something to be said for that, too.

Dr. Eric:

You mentioned protein. I have had other guests talk about protein. Cynthia Thurlow agreed as far as the 1g of protein per pound. One thing though when it comes to spacing out the protein, do you personally have breakfast, lunch, dinner, and then have 30-40g per protein per meal? Do you incorporate intermittent fasting, like Cynthia does? Try to have two meals per day.

Dr. Sabrina:

Honestly, I just go by my hunger cues. That was one thing that became interesting, was learning when I am actually hungry. A lot of people miss out on that. They never got a chance to learn what it feels like to wait for their body to simply want to eat something.

Some days, I will start my day with bacon and eggs in the morning. Most days though, I eat my first meal sometime between 11am and 2pm. It depends when I am actually hungry. My first meal is usually a one-pound ribeye with a bunch of butter and salt on it. It’s delicious. Dinnertime, sometimes I will eat burgers or ribs. I might do bacon and eggs again. Then a dessert for me is usually a small cup of some full-fat, sugar-free yogurt. Interestingly, I think I mentioned earlier that I used to be dairy-free. Carnivore got me back my ability toeat dairy. I can now eat cheese, yogurt, heavy cream. It’s pretty spectacular. I no longer react to dairy.

Dr. Eric:

You eat certain types of dairy, like raw dairy. Do you just make sure it’s organic?

Dr. Sabrina:

The yogurt I like is a conventional dairy. I just love the texture of it. It’s like ice cream. Most of the time, we have gotten raw dairy. We get organic stuff whenever we get it. None of it bothers me anymore at all. It’s phenomenal.

Dr. Eric:

There is no threshold. A lot of people are lactose-intolerant, so they might be able to tolerate smaller amounts of dairy, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference with you.

Dr. Sabrina:

Nope. Oh my gosh, I went through this phase when I was going into carnivore. I think my body was just trying to do a bunch of repletion from years of me being so deficient in stuff. Looking back, I never had a great source of calcium in my diet. I entered this phase of carnivore where my body was just craving yogurt. It was the only thing I wanted. I went through probably a month where I ate one of those big containers of yogurt almost every single day. It felt so good. It gave me so much energy. There is no sugar added to it. It was completely plain as day. I just devoured them. It was my body trying to catch up from all of the deficit.

In addition to the gut stuff, there was the adrenal stuff and stress stuff and thyroid stuff. You just set your body up for mineral deficiencies existing in that state for so long, especially consuming the vegetables I was consuming. Regardless of if a person tolerates vegetables or not, they are still going to contain oxalates and lectins and phytic acid. All of those things are not only going to be a mineral tax on your body, meaning your body needs minerals to break those things down and metabolize them, but they are going to block and blunt mineral absorption from the foods you are currently eating, too.

One thing I work on with my patients and myself is rampant mineral repletion for a lot of people.

Dr. Eric:

Can you talk more about that? You recommend for them to supplement with minerals separately.

Dr. Sabrina:

Yeah. The ones I really like to use are the Quinton ones. They come in glass. They are sourced from a plankton bloom that has been around for hundreds of years. This product has been around for a very long time. They used to use it to restore blood volume loss in soldiers. It has a wide spectrum of pretty much all the micro and trace minerals we need in addition to the macro ones like magnesium. It’s a great product.

Dr. Eric:

I think you mentioned fiber earlier. That is one of the concerns when it comes to carnivore and ketogenic. If you’re not eating your veggies, where are you going to get your fiber from? I’m sure you have a response to that.

Dr. Sabrina:

The short version is we actually don’t need fiber for our digestive system to run smoothly. There is another doctor who wrote an excellent blog post that debunks all of the reasons why we actually don’t need fiber.

The way I simplistically break this down in my reasoning for the carnivore diet is a couple of things. What we are made of is technically muscle meat and saturated fat. Our fat is solid at room temperature; it’s saturated. If we are going to consume food to repair things in our body that break down, it’s the whole you are what you eat thing, or you should eat what you are. The consuming of the animal proteins and animal fats is what is actually going to replete any of the damages in our animal proteins and animal fat.

Additionally, no part of us is made of cellulose. We don’t actually need that fiber in our diet to bulk up our stool. I joke that I am going to start a subscription page where I just post pictures of my daily poops to prove they are perfect. There are no issues with that whatsoever.

The other side of that is there is no essential nutrients that humans require that have to be consumed in plant form. All the nutrients that we need are actually the most bioavailable in animal protein. In fact, there are a great deal of nutrients that are only available in animal protein, meaning you can’t get them from plant sources, things like B12, carnitine, certain fatty acids.

Dr. Eric:

I’m glad you brought up pooping. I was going to ask you about bowel movements. Do you find that people making the transition, let’s say from a standard American diet or even they are eating a healthy Paleo diet and make a transition to carnivore, is there a transition period where they may be constipated initially?

Dr. Sabrina:

There is a transition period where you don’t want to trust a fart. Your stools get looser because there is simply no fiber blocking the transit. The fiber bulks up your stool, slows down the transit. When you remove that out of the way, it cures constipation. There was a study done that said a low or no fiber diet actually cures irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Dr. Eric:

Interesting. How about meat preparation? Is there a certain way you recommend preparing meat? More rare or medium well.

Dr. Sabrina:

You’re going to get the most bioavailability out of the nutrients, especially with iron, if you cook it on the medium rare to rare side. Then again, it’s up to the person. Whatever they like, whatever they enjoy.

We have something called an Otto grill. It’s a type of grill they use in restaurants where it’s a burner on the top, and you cook steak underneath, and you lift it up as a gradient. We also use a pellet grill. Arguably, pellet grills burn really clean versus using something with coals or gasoline. We try to reduce any risk that could come from the idea of charring your meat.

Dr. Eric:

Those are called Otto grills and pellet grills?

Dr. Sabrina:

Yeah, that’s a brand. I have no affiliation with them. It’s just the one we have. There are other companies that make similar types of grills. A pellet grill uses wood pellets to create a heat source that cooks your meat. They burn really clean, so you are very dramatically reducing any sort of risk of things like carcinogenic material.

Dr. Eric:

A lot of people follow ketogenic because when you get into ketosis, they do it for weight loss. I imagine with carnivore, a lot of people will lose weight because you’re not eating carbohydrates.

Dr. Sabrina:

Yeah, you’re completely changing your response to insulin by switching to a diet that really contains almost no carbohydrates, which is good for most people. My husband and I were having this discussion with somebody not too long ago. When humans are born, we are born into ketosis. As long as we are nursing from our mothers, from being breast fed, we maintain ketosis. You could argue it’s the preferred state for humans because of all the things it allows the body to heal. We see so much research on keto is this cure for this disease, and it treats this disease. Well, is keto the cure for those diseases? Or is ketosis the natural state humans should be existing in, and those diseases are a result of us leaving that state? It can go both ways.

I would argue that being in ketosis is simply a favorable state. You can get to that without doing a keto diet, but by simply doing a variation of intermittent fasting. I definitely do like intermittent fasting personally. I don’t actively practice it because I know I will be in it no matter what simply because of how I plan my meals and how I eat my meals. I usually only eat a couple of times a day at most. I ultimately end up fasting by default.

I really think there is something to be said with making sure that you are in ketosis. If you think about it, the wide majority of Americans or people likely haven’t been in ketosis since they were born. They are missing out on all the benefits that are going to come with that.

Dr. Eric:

I mentioned earlier a lot of the listeners have either Graves’ or Hashimoto’s. With Hashimoto’s, a lot of those people will want to lose weight. With hyperthyroidism, it varies. When I dealt with Graves’, I lost 42 pounds. A lot of people lose weight. There are people with hyperthyroidism who gain weight.

Let’s bring up the situation of someone with hyperthyroidism who is losing a lot of weight. They are concerned with getting enough calories from eating meat. Before getting into this, of course you want to lower the thyroid hormone levels. That’s the reason why the person is losing weight. No matter how much meat you eat, you might not gain weight; you might maintain or still lose weight. Is there a concern about eating too much meat?

Dr. Sabrina:

I haven’t seen it, honestly. It’s so interesting. People will say, “You eat so much meat. It will hurt your kidneys.” I had a patient not too long ago who had multiple things that came up, one of them being low thyroid function, low hormone levels, high stress levels. I believe she actually has an underlying autoimmune disorder. I say all that to set the stage with the recommendations I gave her.

Her kidney function when she came to me, her EGFR was just below 70. I actually told her to switch her diet to carnivore. Her EGFR two months later went up to over 80. What she did was stop eating carbohydrates that she was eating. She switched to a carnivore-based diet. That allowed her kidney function to heal and repair.

Protein does not damage the kidneys. It’s carbs that damage the kidneys. You really can’t eat too much protein because your satiation signals, your hunger signals are going to start to work properly, and you can’t simply overeat it. You can put a big piece of steak in front of someone and put a potato next to it. If they are eating the steak with the potato, the carbohydrates will interfere with your proper hunger signaling and cues. If you give the person just the steak, and they only eat that, they will eat it ravenously until their hunger cues start to catch up, and then they will stop.

People actually eat less on this way of eating because their hunger cues are so on point. They actually get feedback when they are full versus eating the carbs combined with the meat. This leads to something else.

A lot of people aren’t taught this, even providers: the Randall Cycle. Professor Bart Kay has a really wonderful, detailed explanation of how the Randall Cycle works. The short version is that if you are eating carbohydrates in combination with fat or protein, you’re actually not going to get almost any energy absorption from any of those because of how it activates something called the Randall Cycle. You will almost always store those carbs as fat when you are eating them in combination. Ultimately, carbs don’t exist in nature combined with fats or protein, whereas protein and fat exist in nature very well. You can eat those together. You will get proper satiation signaling, and you will get great energy absorption.

If a person is concerned about someone getting enough calories, extra fat is going to be the thing. People on the carnivore way of eating will sometimes snack on butter, and it helps you stay full, satiated. It is an easy thing to do, upping those fat levels.

Dr. Eric:

Interesting what you said about the kidneys, the EGFR increasing when switching to carnivore. You might not know the answer to this, but if you had to guess, were oxalates damaging the kidneys, and that’s why when they switched to the carnivore diet, the kidney function improved?

Dr. Sabrina:

For this patient, I do think oxalates played a role, but I think it was mainly the carbs ultimately. This is something that will apply to pretty much every American. Your kidneys do not like having to clear excess sugar from your blood. This is why diabetics have to go on dialysis. All that excess sugar intake causes that kidney damage and sets them up for kidney failure.

Dr. Eric:

Have you seen patients of yours get into remission with autoimmunity, where they are flaring up, and they are on the Paleo or AIP diet. Then they switch to carnivore, and everything calms down? Gradually over time, or quickly, they get into remission.

Dr. Sabrina:

100%. Predominantly my rheumatoid arthritis patients seem to respond the absolute best to carnivore. I think it’s because we are finally taking away the oxalates which are going to build up to deposit in joints. If you look at an oxalate under a microscope, it’s basically a ball with spikes. You can cause an oxalate-based arthritis syndrome on top of a rheumatoid arthritis syndrome. The body is already attacking the joints, depositing more crystals in there because your immune system doesn’t know how to clear them as well as the average person from the body. That has made the biggest difference.

Dr. Eric:

For those who are concerned about saturated fat and the effects of meat on cardiovascular disease, that also has been debunked. We also should say before I forget that I assume you are recommending healthier forms of meat, like grass-fed, pasture-raised, not just eating conventional-raised meat.

Dr. Sabrina:

Yeah. I tell people even a conventionally raised piece of meat is going to be way better than the crap you are previously buying. Purchase what you can in a way that is affordable for you and things you like to eat, and it will still be good. When you are eating the meat, you bank on the animal and their ability to excrete the toxins and process them before it makes its way into its own meat and gets to you.

There have been studies done that there is a variation of things like the fatty acid composition as far as Omega-3s versus Omega 6s in grass fed versus grain fed or conventionally raised animals. For the most part, it won’t make a big difference in a person going from a standard American diet to carnivore. Again, we want this to be manageable and affordable for people to do. If all they can do is conventional burgers, for example, go for it. It will still be way better than a packaged TV dinner they might have eaten before.

As far as saturated fat and cardiac concerns go, this is so interesting. From what I have seen, the experience I have had with my patients, and what I have read in the literature, it’s not necessarily saturated fat that is the problem. It is more the polyunsaturated fats and the high sugar. The combination of these two things is what I believe is the underlying cause of most cardiovascular diseases.

We are mainly made of saturated fat. It is our preferred source to rebuild things like joints, fatty tissues, the mild sheet that is surrounding every one of our nerves, the cushioning within our joints. It is our preferred source. The polyunsaturated fatty acids, things like canola oils, grapeseed oil, cottonseed oil, peanut oil, these are more detrimental to humans because they are not what we are made of. When a person is eating these, their body is taking them in, and it’s saying, “Ok, this is the building block that we have to do healing and repair. It is not necessarily what we prefer, but this is all we have to use. We are going to use it, and this is what we are going to use to rebuild tissue structures.” This is how we end up with cellular dysfunction. Our body used a building material it shouldn’t have used in the first place. It was making do with what it had.

This is where we will see changes to people’s cardiac pictures or cardiovascular system. We might even start to see things like cancer growth, tumor growth, the body behaving how it shouldn’t. This is actually the reason why, like you had seen in our Facebook group, the sunburn thing, why a lot of carnivores don’t actually get a sunburn. It’s because our cells have been made with that really strong saturated fat.

Every single cell has something called the lipid skin barrier. It’s two layers of fat surrounding it, and it’s supposed to be saturated. That is what makes the cell very strong. A lot of carnivores won’t get sunburned simply because our cells are made properly, and we can actually withstand the UV rays and properly handle them in our systems.

For example, over the summer, my daughter is the fairest-skinned child you have ever seen. She has blonde hair, blue eyes, super fair. Swam in the pool every single day all summer in Arizona. She did not burn once at all. We never put sunscreen on her. Same with our son. He is a little darker skinned than she is, but neither of them burned at all.

Once you’re removing those bad oils from the diet, and you’re actually focused more on saturated fat, you will see how things improve. I tell people to experiment with it. Give it 30 days. Give it 90 days. If you absolutely hate it, you can totally go back, but it might just change your life.

Dr. Eric:

That’s very interesting about not getting sunburned. I agree with everything you said about saturated fat. I also want to play devil’s advocate. If someone is working with you and following the carnivore diet, and maybe you don’t see this, but if someone were to do a lipid panel, and they have a total cholesterol of 230/240, LDL a little bit on the higher side, is there any concern with that?

Dr. Sabrina:

This is so good. We’ll talk about my husband. He won’t care we’re talking about him. He and I did a video on our YouTube channel, where I broke down all of his labs that he’s had for the last year. His cholesterol shot up over 400.

Dr. Eric:

Wow.

Dr. Sabrina:

Yeah. I don’t just do cholesterol panels. I run expanded cardiac monitors. We will look at the PLA2 enzyme, MPO, oxidative LDL, small density LDL, lipoproteins(a) and (b), CRP enzyme. It’s about as detailed as you can get as far as cardiac goes.

We ended up sending him for a CAC score as well (coronary artery calcium scan). He actually has a calcification in his left anterior descending artery. Knowing my husband’s history, which he had some really bad habits prior to carnivore- That was one of his reasons for pursuing it: How do I get rid of all the bad things in my life? He used to eat a conventional, store-bought oven pizza. A seed oil, gluten, and dairy nightmare with nightshades sprinkled on top. He was not treating his body very well.

When he switched to carnivore, all of a sudden, everything spiked. His cholesterol was over 400. His MPO was over 3,000. PLA2, which is the marker for the plaque repair, was super high as well.

What we realized after we saw this trend, and we kept checking, was that the cholesterol was increasing on purpose. We have to think about cholesterol. Cholesterol is something our body makes. Why would our body make something like that, where its only job is to do harm? It doesn’t make any sense.

Cholesterol is the starting molecule for all of our sex hormones. Cholesterol is the repair molecule in the body. If something gets damaged in the body like a blood vessel due to something like high sugar going through and causing some damage, the body is going to send cholesterol in there to patch it up. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s the whole idea of the fire truck being the cause of every fire just because it’s at a fire. Cholesterol is not the cause of the plaque in the artery; it’s there to repair. The body will then place a calcification over the top to protect it from breaking off and running into circulation and causing things like heart attacks or strokes.

In his situation, he had this issue. He was eating vegetables before. Maybe that was keeping his cholesterol low because of the fiber transit in the body. Was this beneficial in his situation? He gets on carnivore. Everything spikes up. Then everything starts to decline and improve. I am thinking to myself, Wow, did we actually just let the body make enough cholesterol to do what it wanted to do as far as healing and repair goes?

This then becomes my argument for all my patients who come in with high cholesterol. It’s usually the picture of the middle-aged person who is coming in with it. Very rarely do we see younger people. What do we know happens in middle age? Things start to break down in the body, and hormone production starts to decline. Is it not then logical that your body is going to try to make more of that initial molecule to help feed that pathway to make more hormones? Of course.

But what happens in a traditional office? The doctor prescribes a cholesterol-lowering medication. Give it three months, six months. What happens? They come back, and things are worse. Their joint pain is worse. Men get ED, and we are giving a prescription to manage the side effects. It’s not understanding this basic thing, that cholesterol was there to help in the first place.

Dr. Eric:

Has his cholesterol remained elevated over time? Has it gradually decreased?

Dr. Sabrina:

It is decreasing. His MPO was over 3,000. It’s now 50 points away from being normal. His PLA2 enzyme is completely normalized. His apo proteins have improved. His triglycerides are super low. His HGL is nice and high.

I should caveat that. LDL, total cholesterol are a problem and worth looking at in the presence of a low HDL and high triglycerides. If LDL is high and total cholesterol are high in the presence of additionally a high HDL and a low triglyceride, likely not problematic, but still worth looking at. HDL is going to be what is actually bringing cholesterol back to the liver to be eliminated by the body. Triglycerides are probably the most menacing thing on that cholesterol panel right out the gate because they are the fat bound to the sugar and the thing that’s most inflammatory. That can lead to liver disease, etc.

Dr. Eric:

Where do you like to see triglycerides? Less than 100? Less than 75?

Dr. Sabrina:

Less than 100. If I am being generous on someone in their healing journey, I might say up to 130. Definitely below 100. Mine sit at 60 currently.

Dr. Eric:

What are your thoughts on organ meat as well as drinking bone broth? When I dealt with Graves’ in 2008, there wasn’t all the bone broth powders. When you go into the grocery store now, there are a lot of brands of bone broth. There is a lot of talk about bone broth for gut healing, which I think is valid, but I’d like to get your thoughts on it.

Dr. Sabrina:

I never really ate the organ meats. I did some organ capsules at the beginning part of my carnivore journey for extra energy. I stopped those; I don’t take them anymore. I don’t think they’re necessary. I think they can be used strategically if you have a lot of nutrient deficiencies to correct, and you want to do it quickly. They are a good choice for that. But they are not necessary. If someone says they can’t do carnivore because they can’t eat nose to tail, don’t worry about it. I have never eaten a piece of organ meat in my life, and I am totally fine with that.

I love bone broth. I think it’s great. For a lot of people, it can be a really good addition to making things exciting. If you are cooking a piece of meat in a crockpot, and you want to add some bone broth to help cook that, that’s awesome. If you want to use it to drink a cup of something in the morning instead of coffee, a lot of people do that, too.

Make sure that you’re getting one that is as high quality as in the budget for you, and also make sure you’re not getting one with a lot of extra things like spices added to it, especially if you are super sensitive going into this. Those spices will be made from peppers, which are nightshades, which have those antinutrients we are trying to avoid.

Dr. Eric:

I know both you and your husband are physically fit. I’m sure carnivore plays a role in that, but I’m thinking exercise as well. Do you recommend resistance exercise? Can you briefly talk about that?

Dr. Sabrina:

The main thing I recommend for my patients is resistance training, and you don’t need a lot of it. 20 minutes, three times a week, moderate weightlifting. It will be super easy for people to put on muscle and strength eating carnivore because of the high protein you’re taking in. Your body will use it to heal and repair.

I recommend people walk. There is research that walking is the best exercise for maintaining longevity and increasing movement. I never really recommend high intensity cardio training or anything like that. You can get the biggest body composition changes in a way that is manageable for most people and doesn’t make them hate exercise by doing light walking and three days a week of resistance training.

Dr. Eric:

Okay. Three days a week, 20 minutes. Walking every day for like 30 minutes or an hour.

Dr. Sabrina:

Yeah, if you can, get 20-30 minutes a day. If you can only get in a few days a week, that’s great, too. Ultimately, the important thing is to have functional movement in our bodies, especially as we start getting older. Not every person needs to be learning how to do certain types of squats or bicep curls. Most people, it really comes down to how can I just continue to move my body in a healthy way so that I stay mobile as I get older? At least that’s what I see a lot in my practice. I get a lot of people coming to me with joint issues and whatnot.

Dr. Eric:

One important question I need to ask you: You mentioned pizza before. Your husband used to have the conventional pizza. Now, do you not eat pizza? Do you make modifications? Again, you could have dairy. You could have mozzarella cheese and the meat. Any pizza over the last year since you made this transition?

Dr. Sabrina:

I made a carnivore pizza. I have a reel on my Instagram, @DrSolts. It will say “The Viral Carnivore Pizza.” We totally made a pizza, and it was decent. The crust was made of shredded chicken and eggs and some parmesan cheese. We made an alfredo sauce. It was pretty good. It’s certainly not an everyday thing. We have only done that once.

What I actually learned with this way of eating is that I really just like eating one thing at a time. It is so much more satisfying for me just to have one thing on my menu versus all of these other different flavors. My body doesn’t like that as much.

Dr. Eric:

Thanks for sharing. Anything else? I’m sure there is a lot more you could share. Is there anything really important that I didn’t ask you that I should have asked you? Anything else you’d like to discuss before we wrap things up?

Dr. Sabrina:

Ultimately, just letting people know that this is simply an option. If you are like me, who has tried everything else and has nowhere left to go, and you have really limited your diet, and you’re still not healing. I tell people initially, I gave myself 30 days. If I don’t like it after 30 days, I can always run back into the warm embrace of kale. That didn’t happen clearly. I’m a year into this, and I’ve never felt better. Give yourself time to ease into it.

My husband and I run a Facebook group. We have 3,000 people in that group right now, and it’s only been around for about six months. In that group, we share a lot of information. We have a lot of people who will coach. My husband coaches people on the carnivore diet, too. He is a certified carnivore coach through a company called Revero, which is a company started by Shawn Baker. He is the author of the original carnivore diet book. He is a former MD, I believe. Join our group. We are Carnivore – Harder, Happier, Healthier. You can also check out our oyster supplement.

Dr. Eric:

Let’s talk about that.

Dr. Sabrina:

My husband and I, we get oysters from Whole Foods pretty much every Friday. They are only $1 an oyster. It’s our favorite thing to do because it’s the best deal ever. Every time we do this, we post about it on social media. People comment, “I don’t like oysters.” “I wish I liked oysters.” “I can’t get oysters near me.” Honestly, if you know anything about oysters, they are the most underrated superfood ever as far as their mineral concentrations. They are fantastic as a food.

“How can I get oysters to people?” I’m not sure if you use Full Script. It’s this online dispensary full of thousands of different products. There is no oyster supplement on there. I started looking on Amazon. All the ones on Amazon were gimmicky. They had low concentrations and fillers. They couldn’t guarantee they were being tested for heavy metals.

I went on a search and found this guy in Ireland who is a marine biologist who has a company. We actually source our oysters from him. We imported them directly from Ireland. They are all third-party batch tested for heavy metals and show what the nutrient levels actually are. Every serving contains roughly seven large oysters. There are about 12 pounds of oysters per bottle. It’s called Oyster Boom. You can find it on our website HarderHappierHealthier.com. If you use the code SOLT, you will get a discount on it. We have a Subscribe and Save, too.

They are amazing. People who take them, we see women’s breasts get more plump. Men’s erectile function improves. Some guys notice a change in size. Overall energy. I literally feel electric when I take them because so many minerals come in. They are the only supplement I take right now if I am being honest.

Dr. Eric:

Thank you so much, Dr. Sabrina for sharing your insights on the carnivore diet. I definitely learned a lot. I’m sure those listening will also gain a lot of value.

Dr. Sabrina:

Thank you so much for having me. This was fun. I hope your listeners enjoy it, too.

 

Recently I interviewed Annabel Bateman, who hosts another thyroid-related podcast called “Let’s Talk Thyroid”.  If you would prefer to listen the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.

I am excited to interview another host of a different thyroid-related podcast, Annabel Bateman, who is a Hashimoto’s patient, author, advocate, and coach. She has learned in 25 years of living with Hashimoto’s that the key is developing a lifestyle that supports and doesn’t stress her thyroid health. Drawing on skills learned in previous years as a lawyer, life coach, family law mediator, and author, Annabel seeks to empower, educate, and encourage women with thyroid conditions to develop their own thyroid-friendly lifestyle approach to their health so they can thrive, not just survive.

As I mentioned, she hosts a successful podcast, Let’s Talk Thyroid, which seeks to spread thyroid awareness and information. She is active on social media to spread positive, practical thyroid-related information. Annabel’s latest book Let’s Talk Thyroid: Positive and Practical Thyroid Health is all about how to live a thyroid-friendly lifestyle. While there is no magic happy thyroid formula or protocol, you have to start somewhere. This book is that somewhere.

Annabel lives in Brisbane, Australia with her husband and three teenage sons. Thank you so much for joining us, Annabel.

Annabel Bateman:         

Thank you for having me, Eric. I just had you on my podcast, which is being released soon. I am looking forward to being on the other side of the microphone today.

Dr. Eric:

Same here. You made a note that I should also let listeners know that the Let’s Talk Thyroid book was published under another name, Kiss and Make Up with Your Thyroid.

Annabel:

That’s right. For most people now, you’ll find it under the name you gave. That’s what it’s called on Amazon. For people buying locally in Australia, I still have copies with the original cover. Same book, new title. Trying to keep the Let’s Talk Thyroid thing simple.

Dr. Eric:

Makes sense. Why don’t we dive into your history? Why did you decide to write your book and create your podcast, which obviously relates to your journey with Hashimoto’s?

Annabel:

Let’s go back to a bit of my story. I was diagnosed when I was 22/23, back in 1996. At that point, I look back and think I was struggling for a long time. I suspect that puberty was one of the key triggers for me. Going back to around that 12ish mark. By the time I got to the end of my degree, which is when I was diagnosed, I had all the classic hypothyroid symptoms. The hair was thinning, frizzy, falling out. I was puffy. I gained a lot of weight and couldn’t lose it. I was tired. My muscles were fatigued. I couldn’t hold my arms up to wash or blow dry my hair. That was the final sign.

I was lucky in a lot of ways. It had gone so far that it was very easy to diagnose. I didn’t get the runaround that a lot of thyroid patients get. Went to see my doctor. “Your TSH is 185. You need to go see the endocrinologist tomorrow,” which I did. The endocrinologist said, “You’ll be fine. Just take a pill for the rest of your life.” I sat in the car and cried, thinking, I am 22, I don’t want to be on medication for the rest of my life.

That started me down the traditional hypothyroid management path of taking medication. I needed that, and I still need it. I still take thyroid medication. I am always someone who has been fairly open to natural things. I remember seeing naturopaths early on in the journey and taking different supplements. I still largely managed it fairly traditionally. I took the medication. That was probably the core thing I would say I did.

Around the five-year overlap, I was probably starting to hear about diet and lifestyle changes but not really wanting them to be true. I dabbled for a few years. I tried going gluten-free. Then I would give up because it would seem too hard. I didn’t know if it was making a difference. For the last 10 years or so, I got to the point where I was going to give the diet thing a really good go. I went paleo pretty hardcore for 30 days about 10 years ago. I didn’t know I could feel like this. The bloating went away. I am not just greedy and lazy; I thought I was greedy and lazy, and that’s why I felt six months pregnant every time after I ate. I was able to start to feel different and better with the diet. Over the last 10 years, there are a lot of other things like stress and mindset and reducing toxins that I have done. That’s 25 years in a nutshell.

I guess I’m the sort of person that when I find something that works, I like to share it. I like to talk about it to other people. When I started changing my diet, I started a food blog, which was called What Annabel Cooks. It was more of a way of recording what I was cooking. Instead of writing in an exercise book like my mom and grandma used to do, I thought I would start a blog. That sounded like fun. And it was fun. It spread a bit, and it spread a bit more. One of my friends said, “You should write a cookbook.” I thought that was a good idea, so I did.

Getting to the Let’s Talk Thyroid book and podcast has been a process of sharing what I am learning along the way. Realizing that it is this holistic approach. There is never just one thing. While the diet was massive, it’s not the whole story. I had the idea of writing another book that encompassed everything. It was the food, the lifestyle, how to reduce your toxic load, how to deal with mindset. It was a lot of different things.

A few years ago, when I had that idea, my husband said, “Don’t start anything new. You’re always starting new things.” Fine, I’ll have six months where I won’t start anything. In that six months, I planned to start the podcast first. I thought I would do that first. I’ll meet new people, get more content for the book. About 2.5 years ago, I started the podcast. It’s been fabulous. Last year, I wrote the book. This year, I’ve been trying to do a bit of both. Get the message out there.

Dr. Eric:

That’s an awesome story. For the first 15 years, you didn’t do much from a diet and lifestyle perspective. It wasn’t until 10 years ago that you finally made changes, followed the paleo diet, noticed improvements. Then you started incorporating other lifestyle factors. That led you to write your blog first, it sounds like, and then the diet-related book before finally rolling out the current book and podcast. Is that correct?

Annabel:

That’s a really good summary. There are all sorts of waves and twists we take in life, but that is a good summary.

Dr. Eric:

With the thyroid hormone replacement you are taking, has that stayed consistent over the years? As far as the type you are taking and the dosage. Are you taking levothyroxine?

Annabel:

Good question. Over the years, I have tried a number of different thyroid medication options. I have ended up back on the levothyroxine. We call it oroxine here. I have been on a pretty stable dose for a long time now. That’s why I started gradually increasing the doses. I have tried the natural desiccated thyrone. I have tried slow release T3.

The other options just didn’t work well enough for me. They weren’t that light bulb moment that they are for some people. While I don’t know that the levothyroxine is brilliant either for me, I have spent a lot of time working on some of those conversion pathways and getting my gut right and making my body about as healthy as I can within the limits of life to allow some of that T4 to T3 conversion. For me, it’s been a lot of trial and error over the years. The different forms of medication never really were that amazing for me to stay on them, so I have ended back on the standard.

Dr. Eric:

Everybody is different. There are people who switch to desiccated, and they feel a lot better. They feel a big difference. There are people who make the change to desiccated and don’t feel any different. Some people even feel better on the synthetic T4, the levothyroxine. A good example of why you need to listen to your body, which you did. You did try different things.

Annabel:

I have had a really good doctor for the last 15/16 years. The trialing of different medications, that’s what attracted me to her in the first place. I knew through someone else that she was open to prescribing different forms of thyroid medications. I am really glad I tried that. Maybe I will again at some point in the future, I don’t know. For a while now, I’m back on the standard treatment.

This is where I guess I say it’s the medication plus. It’s the holistic thing. If I wasn’t doing the diet and lifestyle things, maybe I would still be exploring thyroid medication options. I don’t think just the standard synthetic T4 replacement is enough for me. It’s everything.

Dr. Eric:

With that being said, why don’t we dive into some of the aspects of your book, including the four core lifestyle pillars that you talk about?

Annabel:

When I looked at all of the core categories of the different diet and lifestyle factors that both have helped me- When I have talked to different experts around the world and done lots of reading and courses and other things we do, I don’t think there are four core pillars that are unique to me. I think they are pretty consistent. When we were chatting the other day on my show, I thought we were on the same page.

I have broken it down into mindset first. I put it as the first pillar because it helps to have both a long-term approach and a curious, hopeful approach to our thyroid health. We are in it for the long haul. This isn’t something that will be fixed in 30 days or six months. Even if we are able to get our thyroid back into remission and feel great, you can’t just abandon everything that got you there. I think having that mindset of “This is long-term. This will take some experimentation. There is always something I can do.” Having that attitude and approach from the beginning is the first pillar.

The second pillar is what I have called unwinding, which is that positive spin on stress management. Stress is critical, that we learn how to manage it. I wanted to call that “unwinding” because that’s what we have to learn how to do.

The third one is food. Obviously, food is important. Food is the first place a lot of people start. I didn’t want to put it as the first pillar because I think sometimes people get stuck there and don’t move on.

My approach to food generally is about being anti-inflammatory. It’s removing the things that for my body are inflammatory. That’s ultimately going to look slightly different for everybody. A lot of core things.

The final pillar is low tox living. Reducing that day-to-day chemical exposure as much as we can. There are lots of great products out there—cleaning to skin care and makeup—to make it so much easier than it used to be.

Those are the four. There are other things I have fit into there, like sleep and exercise are in there as well. They could be their own pillars probably as they are really important, too. Part of what I am trying to do is keep it super simple. That is my principle. Keep it to four things.

Dr. Eric:

Makes sense. When it comes to mindset, when you work with someone, is that something where you find people could change? Do they already have to come in with that natural mindset? I could address the cause of this condition. My experience is most people probably already come in with the proper mindset, but there are some people who just don’t. A lot of people have the natural mindset, but some people are just trying to-

In my case, I deal with a lot of hyperthyroidism. They are trying to do everything they can. They are more desperate to avoid radioactive iodine or thyroid surgery. In the case of Hashimoto’s, some don’t see it as big a deal to take thyroid hormone replacement. My guess would be is most people already have that natural mindset who see you. I figured I’d ask since it’s the first pillar you discuss.

Annabel:

As you said, there is a bit of both. Even to be open to looking at diet and lifestyle requires an element of that mindset. A lot of what I hope that I do, both in my programs and even on the podcast, is to catch the people that are new on their journey. From the get-go, understand that there is more that you can do than just take the thyroid pills. Even if they are not making those changes straight away, just be aware right from the beginning there are other things.

Also, the people who may have been taking their thyroid replacement for 10-15 years without any real thought that there is anything else they can do, but still trudging through life. Part of what I am trying to do is spread that awareness to get that mindset. “I just thought I had to take my pill. I didn’t know there was anything else I could do.”

Once people get to wanting to work with people like you or I, they do have more of that. They are open to making some changes. Obviously, there is a broad range of people. Some are really ready. Some are desperate. Some will give it a go, probably a bit like me, more of that five-year overlap. “I’ll give it a go, but I’m not sure it’s going to work. I don’t know if I want it to work. It sounds too hard.” It takes a long time to change that mindset and be open to long-term diet and lifestyle change. Just even accepting that you have to deal with this forever in a reasonably active way, there is a lot of grieving that I think can go along with that.

I have to remind myself sometimes that this is me 10-15 years down the track. It took me a while to get there. It does take a lot of people time to get there. For other people, it’s like “Bang, done.” There is a variety.

Dr. Eric:

What do you currently do about stress management? Do you block out time on a regular basis, whether it’s yoga or meditation? What do you do? What do you recommend to your clients or as part of your programs?

Annabel:

I’m a constant work in progress when it comes to this. One of the things I have tried to do over the years is not have an overscheduled calendar. I am reasonably good at that, I think. I don’t make myself available all the time.

My kids are older, and that’s helped a lot. When they were little and needed a lot more of my time and attention, even the fact that they can get themselves home from school now, that helps. I have found for me that I need time on my own. I get a lot of that. I work from home. The kids are largely at school. My husband is at work. I get some of that naturally now. Perhaps in years past, I didn’t. I can also be deliberate about that.

I am not a great meditator. I have tried all the apps. I will do that from time to time. just go listen to one minute, two minutes. I am not very good at the long things.

When I really need to unwind, I’ll get out a big jigsaw puzzle; that is my preferred way to meditate, is to do a puzzle. There is enough tuning out of everything else to find where this piece goes. That gives me that calm state of mind.

I use my essential oils a fair bit to unwind. I’ll put something in the diffuser or roll something on my wrist and take a few big, deep breaths. I have a few favorites for unwinding.

Dr. Eric:

Can you name some of your favorite essential oils?

Annabel:

My favorite for when I need to calm down is neroli. That is my favorite one. There is a blend I use called Balance that has a lot of those earthy oils although neroli is a flower. There are trees that ground me. I like Siberian fir and lime as a blend in the diffuser. Probably my go-to, just to put on me, would be neroli, when I am feeling stressed.

Dr. Eric:

You said you use it every day. You put it in your diffuser typically?

Annabel:

I use essential oils across the day in all sorts of different formats. If I am really aware that I am wound up and need to calm down, having something in the diffuser. I will just grab something and roll it on and take a few deep breaths. Put a drop of an essential oil on my hand. Sometimes taking that minute to stop and take a couple of big, slow, deep breaths in and of itself, even without the essential oil. I find myself sighing a lot when I know I need to unwind.

In terms of the oils, either diffusing them or putting them on. I use them in my cooking and other ways. In terms of that, reducing stress, yeah, either on me like a perfume or in the diffuser are my favorite ways.

Dr. Eric:

Then food. You said you followed a paleo diet. Do you follow a similar diet currently?

Annabel:

I describe my diet as paleo-ish. 100% gluten-free. I am 99% dairy-free these days. That took me much longer to get to, but I do feel a lot better without dairy.

When I first went paleo, the gluten, grains, dairy, sugar, legumes, the whole thing. I definitely feel best when I am following that quite strictly. Life comes and goes and ebbs and flows. I suppose over time, what I have found is as long as I am 100% gluten-free, that gives me a little bit of leeway with some of the other things. Less and less leeway with the dairy over time.

For example, I had a wedding anniversary this week. We went out for dinner as a family. We went to a Chinese restaurant that does gluten-free which in and of itself is a miracle here. I don’t know what Chinese is like in America, but to find one that does gluten free is next to impossible. I did have a small amount of rice, and I was fine. If I ate rice all the time, then I would feel bloated. That’s why I say I am paleo-ish.

I am now super strict with dairy. I don’t do well with dairy. I found great alternatives now. That’s what takes a bit of time. I switched out the milk in my coffee for almond milk. I found some nice ice cream for that occasional treat that tastes good. It’s finding those replacement foods that have helped. The gluten is pretty easy once you know where to find and what to do. The dairy, I did find harder. Paleo-ish would be my diet now.

I run a Kickstart Your Thyroid friendly lifestyle program a couple of times a year. That’s around all of these things we are talking about, but diet is core. We follow that paleo diet. When I am running that, I will do that, too. It’s a good reset for me.

I let things looser a little bit. I know when I have to rein things in a bit, too. For me, that is part of maintaining that long term. It is still a lifestyle. I am not throwing everything out. I won’t eat gluten at all. Increasingly, over time, I guess I’m not deviating as much because I just feel better when I’m eating closer to paleo.

Dr. Eric:

I would say I’m similar. I eat modified paleo, pretty close to paleo, most of the time. I stray from the diet sometimes. I have to have my pizza! Usually it’s gluten-free pizza, but it’s not dairy-free pizza. I have had the Daiya, dairy substitute, but I usually don’t eat dairy-free pizza. How is the pizza in Brisbane? That’s an important question.

Annabel:

Interesting question. I have one son who delivers pizza for Pizza Hut. He has the youngest on a trial shift this week. Three teenage boys who love their pizza. I haven’t enjoyed pizza personally for a long time. Gluten-free pizza, there is some decent ones now. By and large, as soon as I eat pizza- I think it’s the tomato, which isn’t great for me. There is lots of great pizza in Brisbane.

I am probably happier not to bother these days. I would rather have something completely different. It’s just not worth it. We have pizza in the house often. I will just have a piece, and then I feel bloated and get reflux. I think it’s the combination of the grains, even though it’s gluten-free; the cooked tomato sauce; and the dairy. I think that dairy-free cheese is just vile. It’s artificial anyway. I’m with you. It’s hard to find.

Dr. Eric:

I assume you stay well hydrated, too. Do you drink purified water or spring water? What type of water do you drink?

Annabel:

This is one of those things that took us years to make a decision on a filter for our tap at home. I have been drinking purified water for years. For a long time, I was buying it in casks because we couldn’t decide on a water filter. The water filters take out all the minerals. You have to remineralize. I didn’t want the fluoride. We got stuck in overwhelm of researching water filters.

Cut to a few years ago. We have to make a decision. Let’s just get one. We did make a decision. We have a water filter, one that filters out core chemicals from the whole house. In the sink, we have one that does a bit more and takes the fluoride out as well. It’s interesting. Recently, I bought a set of those really fancy scales that tell you about your body.

One of the things I discovered is that even though I drink a lot of water, my body is not properly hydrated. It was ranked really low in the body water component according to these scales. That’s something I just had a meeting with my doctor this week about. I think I’m dehydrated even though I am drinking a lot of water. We are working on that at the moment.

Dr. Eric:

Interesting.

Annabel:

It is interesting.

Dr. Eric:

When you urinate, it’s not a lighter urine? That is one sign that you usually are hydrated.

Annabel:

My urine isn’t really dark. I drink plenty of water. I suspect that my cells aren’t hydrating properly. It’s going through, but I don’t know. That is a work in progress. I do drink a lot of water. I don’t drink a lot of other things. I have one cup of coffee a day. I’m not saying these scales, they’re off Amazon. But I was quite low, so I am going to start taking a few electrolytes and see if that can help rehydrate from the inside.

Dr. Eric:

That sounds like a plan. You mentioned there’s Pizza Hut, but you also mentioned coffee. Do they have Starbucks in Brisbane?

Annabel:

Starbucks hasn’t been very successful in Australia. I don’t even know if we have Starbucks in Brisbane. Having traveled to America a couple of times, you might do pizza better, but we do coffee better.

Dr. Eric:

I am not a coffee drinker, so I am just curious. I don’t go to Starbucks or eat at Pizza Hut. I have never been to Australia, so I was just curious.

Annabel:

We have a lot of small coffee shops, espresso coffee. You can get all the flavored coffees like they do at Starbucks. I would say generally in Australia, we are probably more about the espresso, the cappuccinos, without all of the pumpkin spice latte flavoring. Less sugary, and more small brewers and roasters. We have a very competitive coffee market here. I do like my one cup of coffee a day. I don’t know if it always likes me, but I like it.

Going back to the unwinding thing, for me, we have a coffee machine at home. It grinds the beans and makes a good coffee. That’s part of my morning ritual actually. I’ll take the kids to school, come back. I will have breakfast. Make myself a coffee. Just sitting down with my cup of coffee, I do Wordle. I don’t know if you know about Wordle. Anyway, it’s an online word game. I do Wordle for the day. Then I will read the Bible and journal. I have half an hour with my coffee just to set the day up. I think it’s more about the ritual and the time than it actually is about the caffeine.

Dr. Eric:

Same with my wife. I have never been a coffee drinker, but my wife has a cup of coffee per day. It’s not because she is addicted to the caffeine, but she really enjoys it. Now I have become an herbal tea drinker. To me, I do it for the health benefits, but I enjoy it. Years ago, if you told me I’d be drinking herbal tea on a daily basis, I wouldn’t believe you, but I actually enjoy it. It sounds like it may be similar. It’s part of your routine and your unwinding, like you said.

Annabel:

Yeah, I think so.

Dr. Eric:

You mentioned fluoride, which falls under the toxin category. What other things do you do as part of your low tox living, the fourth pillar?

Annabel:

This has taken years to figure out good products. 10-15 years ago I gradually started to remove some of these products that we are using on and in our bodies every day. I started switching to natural makeup and skincare. That was one of the very first things I did. Finding different brands that didn’t have all of the toxic stuff in them. That was harder back then. Now, here at least, you have choice. There are lots of brands that are making good makeup.

If you think about all the stuff you’re putting on your skin, a good place to start is what are you putting on and in your body that contains chemicals? A lot probably. Makeup, skin care. Food, not wanting to eat food that is full of chemicals and processed food. Water without the chemicals. Not drinking out of plastic is important, too. Skin care and makeup is something that you can replace one item at a time over time.

Same with household cleaning products. That’s another one I have changed a lot. Use natural products. Every time you spray the kitchen counter, I am not breathing in a lot of chemicals. I don’t have scented candles in the house. I don’t use air fragrance sprays. Those sorts of things, I have over time been replacing in the house. That is something we can just do. When the surface spray runs out, make yourself one or buy one from a natural brand that doesn’t have all of the toxic stuff in it.

Dr. Eric:

Agreed. We do the same thing. If someone is getting overwhelmed by hearing this, saying, “I have all of these cosmetics and cleaners.” You can just finish your current supply and then swap it out. Anything you are using on a regular basis, I would recommend try to make the switch to natural.

It’s going to be more expensive. When you eat organic food, that does add up because you are going through the food pretty quickly. With the products, if you spend a little bit more for something that cleans your counters, it takes us a month or two to go through that bottle. I don’t keep track. Same thing with makeup. I don’t really use makeup, but I imagine most makeup will last a while. It will last a month or two if not a few months.

Annabel:

More than that probably.

Dr. Eric:

Alcohol.

Annabel:

There’s another toxin.

Dr. Eric:

I wanted to bring up alcohol. I listened to your solo episode on alcohol. Haven’t covered that on the podcast yet. I wanted you to talk about alcohol. If you want to talk about the effects it has on thyroid health. Wherever you want to go with it, I’m cool.

Annabel:

It was a topic that I had been wanting to cover on the podcast for a while, too. Generally, as a patient advocate, not as a medical practitioner of any qualified kind, I like to bring on the experts. That’s one of the things I love about the podcast. I get to talk to different experts who bring the expertise. I certainly don’t have the qualifications for- You can know a lot without being qualified as well.

The alcohol is something that kept coming up in conversations with different people. Increasingly, I was finding my personal tolerance to alcohol- I would describe myself now as intolerant. I haven’t quite found the right person to bring on, so I decided to do some research and do a bit of a talk on it.

What I found was interesting. This is a big topic. If you listen to that podcast episode, I called it an introduction. There is probably a lot to it that I don’t even understand and haven’t delved into. It made me realize that alcohol is complex, isn’t it? There are so many different things associated with alcohol.

What I got from that was it really can impact thyroid health in a lot of ways. It can impact the thyroid gland itself. It can impact the gut. When we have a leaky gut, that’s not going to help the autoimmune response. Obviously, it impacts the liver. The liver is a core place where that thyroid conversion takes place. I don’t have a gallbladder. I haven’t had one for 15 or 16 years, which is reasonably common in Hashimoto’s patients. I have always been aware that my liver needs extra support. Alcohol impacts the liver. It’s going to be another thing. It’s another layer of inflammation.

In the end, everyone has to make their personal decisions about alcohol. For me, it’s just taken a gradual decline. I have never been a big drinker. I went back to decades of dieting, and I would rather eat my calories than drink them, is what I used to say. I like food more than I like alcohol.

I wouldn’t say I don’t drink. I do enjoy a drink, but I don’t enjoy the aftereffects, which usually for me is I have trouble falling asleep, even just with one. It doesn’t take a lot. I think I am pretty intolerant, or super sensitive at least. I don’t think it’s just me. I have worked out from talking to lots of different people in this thyroid space, it often doesn’t agree.

There are things we can do. There are better forms of alcohol than others, I suppose. Your super sugary cocktails, probably not a great idea because of all the sugar and cream and other things that go along with those. Clean spirits generally seem to be better tolerated even than wine. That was probably the first one. I don’t think I’m enjoying wine. I think it’s the sugars.

There are lots of things you can do now without alcohol. I don’t know what it’s like in America, but Australia has a big drinking culture. That’s another conversation. I have started to see there are more non-alcoholic  drink options being promoted  in the alcohol space. Alcohol-free gins and whiskeys and things. There is a place for that obviously. I like kombuchas and water kefir and things like that. I don’t drink those all the time, but having something special on a Friday night or going out with friends sometimes, it’s nice to have something that’s not just water. That’s my take on alcohol. There is a lot to it.

Dr. Eric:

I’m not a drinker either, but I bring it up just because like you mentioned, coffee. A lot of people have a difficult time with coffee. There are people who want to have at least once or twice a week a glass of red or white wine. Sometimes other alcoholic beverages, but wine is a common ask. Usually initially I am telling people to completely avoid alcohol while healing, but once you’re in a better state of health, every now and then, I don’t see it being a big deal, having a glass of wine or even other types of alcohol sometimes. I just wanted to get your opinion.

You’re right about the impact it has on the gut, potentially increasing the intestinal permeability, at least being a contributing factor to leaky gut. It’s a big reason I don’t want people to consume alcohol. There are a lot of things. You mentioned gluten. We want to avoid all those foods and beverages.

Annabel:

Beer. A lot of people don’t know that beer has gluten in it.

Dr. Eric:

Even the gluten-free beer, while regaining your health, I would say to avoid the alcohol. I assume they have gluten-free beer in Australia.

Annabel:

Yep, we do.

Dr. Eric:

Any additional tips for those dealing with thyroid or autoimmune thyroid conditions? Is there anything I should have asked you, or you want me to ask you, or you want to chat about?

Annabel:

The biggest thing I like to say is there are lots of things you can do, but try not to get overwhelmed by those things. When we feel overwhelmed, we end up doing nothing. You are better off just doing one thing and developing that into your lifestyle. Then pick another thing. Some of us, when we are making changes, some of it does depend on our personality and approach, whether we like to dive all in or just do a little bit at a time. Whatever is going to work in the long term for you, then do it that way.

If you’re listening, and you’re new to thyroid health issues, and you think all you have to do is take medication, you’re cheating yourself. You’re cheating yourself out of feeling much better than you could. That is probably what I would say. There are things you can do. Just take it bit by bit. You don’t have to do everything all at once, but you are going to have to make some changes if you want to feel great. The medication will get you somewhere, but probably not everywhere.

I think we all want to be feeling as good as we can. We all want to get as much out of life as we can. We want to contribute to our communities. The better we can feel, then the more we can be of benefit to our communities around us. You can do it.

I am a words of affirmation person. I tell myself all the time, “It’s okay. You can do it, Annabel.” If I can do it, you can do it.

Dr. Eric:

Well said. Annabel, where can people learn more about you? There is your podcast, Let’s Talk Thyroid, which you interviewed me on recently. You can find my interview as well as other great interviews there. There is also the book with the same title. What’s your website?

Annabel:

I have just made everything Let’sTalkThyroid to keep it simple. Brand new website, LetsTalkThyroid.com. You will find everything there. That is the simplest thing.

My social media, I am pretty active on Instagram and Facebook. That’s Annabel.Bateman.Wellness. Everything else is Let’s Talk Thyroid.

Dr. Eric:

Thanks, Annabel. It was great chatting with you again. It was nice diving into the pillars and talking about alcohol. Didn’t expect to talk about Pizza Hut and Starbucks, but it was nice chatting about that, too. It truly was a pleasure.

Annabel:

Thank you so much for having me on your show. It’s been really lovely to connect with you. That’s one of the loveliest things about this whole thyroid health space is connecting with like-minded people around the world. Thank you.

Dr. Eric:

I definitely agree.

 

Recently I interviewed Lloyd Burrell, and we chatted about electronic pollution.  This was actually a two part episode, and so if you would prefer to listen the interviews you can access it by Clicking Here and Here

I am excited to introduce Lloyd Burrell, as we are going to chat about electronic pollution. I have been following Lloyd for a number of years now, as he is the creator of the EMF Health Summit and the Healing with Vibration Summit. He is the best-selling author of the book Healing with Vibration; author of The EMF Practical Guide; and the founder of ElectricSense.com, which has had four million visits since its inception in 2009. He is passionate about educating people about the dangers of man-made electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and sharing solutions and helping people reconnect with the healing forces of nature. Thank you so much for joining us, Lloyd.

LloydBurrell:

Thanks so much for the invitation, Dr. Eric. It’s a real pleasure to be here.

Dr. Eric:

It’s definitely a pleasure having you. Like I said, I don’t know how many years ago I found Electric Sense and then watched your summit. I learned so much from you. As I mentioned in the opening, I am very excited to pick your brain and have you share your knowledge with my audience.

I want you to start off by telling everyone how did you get interested in EMFs and electronic pollution?

Lloyd:

It’s not that I found EMFs; it’s more that EMFs found me. I had a reaction to my cell phone one day in 2002. I answered my cell phone, and the blue gave me an initially unpleasant sensation, which quickly turned into an unbearable sensation. People said to me, “How did you know it was your cell phone?” It was really painful. It was what I call “hot ear,” “hot head.” I have these terms for it now, which is really common. It was an intense pain, which came on very suddenly from one day to the next. Literally, within a few short days, I couldn’t use my cell phone anymore; it was just too painful.

I was running my own business at the time. Wife, you take the cell phone, and I’ll go do something else. She was very obliging and sweet. I started reacting to mycomputer, the TV, the radio in the car, even the corded telephone. It just got to nowhere to run, so nowhere to hide, that kind of thing. I joke about it when I say it got too bad that I went to my doctor. I’m not one to go to the doctor. I never had a sick day or anything like that.

It was this journey that it put me on. I learned so much out of this journey. It took me about 10 years to get my health back on track and to understand this. I can say I have pretty much understood it now. There is a lot to this. That’s really how it all started with me. It’s been an amazing journey. It was some difficult times because it seemed like there were no solutions, but there are.

One thing I want to say up front is I felt it, but what the science shows really clearly and what this led me to do was to research the science. I was not interested in researching the science. I just wanted to get on with my life. But I had to deal with this to be able to get on with my life.

What the science shows really clearly, and this is what I want to share, is that EMFs affect everybody. This cell phone radiation, which is a kind of EMF, and I can elaborate on that, these EMFs affect everybody. Whether you can feel it or not, they are impacting everybody, these man-made EMFs.

Dr. Eric:

In a way, it might be a good thing if you feel it just because you know the impact it has, where if you’re not feeling anything, it’s easy to dismiss the negative impact that EMFs have on your health.

Lloyd:

Exactly. That’s why it was a blessing in disguise. There is no way I would have gone to all of these lengths to protect myself from these frequencies, these fields unless I’d gone through all of this pain. Unfortunately, that’s kind of how it is with a lot of people. That’s been my mission. That’s what kind of drives me about this.

I don’t just talk about EMFs. I also talk more broadly about energy and leading in good consciousness. That’s my next summit. I’m talking about the science of healing and consciousness because it’s all connected. It’s a long story, which I don’t have time to get into today.

The thing to understand is when I say EMFs, what I’m talking about is electromagnetic fields, or more precisely, man-made EMFs. What a lot of people ignore is we are actually subtle energy beings. Right at the very fundamental level, our cells are communicating via electrical charges, which are energy fields, differences in potentials, which is about energy. This cellular communication, which is so vital in our body, at a cellular level, it’s being disturbed by these man-made EMFs. Then my research more laterally is this energetic level and how we are actually composed of energy fields.

There is a top-down impact as well, which is even more insidious and more difficult to get your head around because people are thinking, well, that sounds a little bit woo woo, energy fields and all of that. No, actually, there is some hard science behind this energy field thing. Ancient civilizations, talking about this for thousands of years. They call it different names, like the aura. We have this official term recognized by the National Institute of Health called bio field. It’s this field of energy that surrounds us and is part of us and is this bridge between the mind and the body. This cell phone radiation impacts, disturbs, destroys this communication.

We are a bit of a communication system. The irony is we are using cell phones to communicate, but they are actually destroying, inhibiting internal communication, which is way more important than any cell phone conversation you might have.

Dr. Eric:

You no longer have a cell phone. You said years ago, you gave it to your wife.

Lloyd:

I do.

Dr. Eric:

You do have a cell phone?

Lloyd:

I went 19 years without a cell phone. This happened in 2002. I’ve had this cell phone for just over a year, simply because I’m not this person who is saying, “Down with the cell towers. Cell phones shouldn’t be allowed.” Cell phones are here to stay. It’s more about well, okay, our world revolves around this technology now. How do we use this technology safely?

I’d like to share some solutions. People are not even interested in the solutions, unless they begin to understand just how big a problem this is. It really is a big problem. That’s what the science says. There is a lot of science around this. You’ve seen my website. It’s all about the science with podcasts. I am interviewing scientists. I have interviewed 250-300 experts on this. It is overwhelming. There are decades of science behind this. We are talking about peer-reviewed science.

It is difficult for people to understand. I guarantee today might be the first time some people have ever heard somebody suggest that a cell phone might be dangerous still. Here we are in 2022, and people are still in the dark about this. How can this be?

Dr. Eric:

Can you discuss why it’s a concern? Even maybe when it comes to cell phone use, does it make a difference if you’re talking on your cell phone on speaker phone, or the type of headset that you use? I know you get into more of the solutions, and we can talk about shielding. It first maybe makes sense to explain why it’s a concern.

You mention how it made you feel bad. From what I understand, it goes far more than just symptoms. It could be a factor potentially, obviously not with everybody, but maybe with cancer or other chronic health conditions.

Lloyd:

Listen to what the science is saying. This is exactly it, what you just mentioned, cancer. The thing to understand is these EMFs impact on many different levels. They impact primarily on the energetic level. We are multidimensional, or we exist in so many different ways, more ways than conventional medicine is really ready to accept. We are more than this physical body. That’s what I’m saying, to put it simply. It’s impacting us first at this energetic level.

Then at a physical level, the cellular level. Obviously, that’s what the majority of the science is on this. Talking about how it’s impacting notably the cell membrane. We have a very clear mechanism, which is- I don’t want to get too much into that because it’s heavy.

Dr. Martin Pall, professor emeritus at Washington State University, his work on the voltage-gated calcium channels. We have this cell membrane. This cell membrane is super important. It’s like the key part of the cell. That’s what we know now. We thought it was just the outside covering, but it’s like mission control. The EMFs impact this mission control, a particular aspect, which is this voltage-gated calcium channel, the VGCC. It’s letting the calcium in and out. It’s no big deal. But it is a big deal. There is a lot of downstream effects from that.

That’s just one bit of science. A very clear mechanism which explains how we get this imbalance in free radicals and all the damage that comes from that. The chemical cascade from that, oxidative stress and adverse biological effects. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of biological effects. Breaking a single double strand of DNA, stem cell damage, very fundamental building block effects, like chipping away at those building blocks. Let’s explain it like that. Everything stems from that.

Symptoms, which can be varied. Very common ones are:

• brain fog
• What I had with the head symptoms
• Neurological symptoms
• Headaches, extremely common.
• Prickly skin, extremely common.
• This side of the face burning.
• When you’re texting, prickly sensations in the hand wherewe are holding the phone.
• The hot ear, the hot head
• Dizziness
• Sensitivity to light

I experienced most of what I just cited.

• Fatigue
• Anxiety, depression.

I went through that as well. It upsets your neurotransmitters. It gives you chemical imbalances. We have science on that. Dr. Martin Pall is not the only one who has worked on this; there is a lot of great research on this.

• Weight loss. Weight gain. I went through all that.
• Leaky gut. Years after, when I thought I was okay, that came on after.
• Body wide aches and pains.

Just a mish mash of neurologic, immunologic, psychologic complaints.

Then the downstream from that, the symptoms turn into possibly very serious diseases, all kinds of autoimmune conditions, cancer, cardiovascular disease, links to Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s. You name it.

It sounds like I’m pulling this from the top of my hat, but I’m not. There is hard science behind this. BioInitiative Report, a very big report that reviewed 30 years of science published in 2012 the first time. Republished subsequently multiple times.

Ever since we had electricity, Tesla was doing experiments on this with another chap. They did very rudimentary experiments, but they noted differences in perspiration, respiration, and body weight. They were experimenting with electricity also. There is so much going on here. It’s not even just this little thing.

What people need to understand is the wireless. When we say “wireless,” we are talking about radiofrequency microwave radiation. When we say wireless and Bluetooth, all that sounds sexy and great and fun. When you start talking about radiofrequency microwave radiation, then alarm bells start going off. Radiation, what you mean, like, Chernobyl? Hiroshima? Yeah, well, not exactly, but similar. That is what they call ionizing radiation.

All these devices, all of this wireless, which the industry wants us to use this term, this Bluetooth, this smart, they are all ways of not saying what it is, which is radiation. It’s not ionizing radiation. There is less energy there. The end result is basically the same. That’s the same terms of the damage done to your body, but it’s a 24/7 chipping away kind of damage rather than something which is very noticeable. That’s how they manage to get away with it. It is more subtle, but it’s a long-term thing, and we are exposed to these man-made frequencies 24/7. They are growing, growing, growing.

5G, all these different devices in our home. People living in these smart homes and proud of it. I can understand it’s a lot of fun. I love gadgets. I’m the first one to love gadgets. We need to know about the danger.

There is this wireless, this radiofrequency microwave radiation. Then even more astounding to people is that we can have dangerous EMFs from wires. How can that be? A wire? If it’s in a wire, then we’re safe, aren’t we? No, unfortunately. What’s in a wire, electrons. They do not stay in the wire. They permeate out into the room, into you. We have science behind this.

There are three kinds of EMFs involved here: magnetic fields, electric fields, and dirty electricity. This is a big subject. When your people are hearing this for the first time, they are like, whaaat.

Dr. Eric:

A bit overwhelming for some people.

Lloyd:

It is a bit overwhelming.

Dr. Eric:

You mentioned 5G and dirty electricity. When it comes to 5G, is the big concern that you get an enhancement of the EMFs, just greater exposure?

Lloyd:

With 5G, it’s almost been a good thing in the sense that it’s made people talk about it. I have been talking about this online since 2009, as you mentioned in my introduction. The 5G has made people talk about this.

The 5G was really a bit of a marketing exercise for the cell phone industry. They are always wanting to invent that bright, shiny, new object, so people go out and buy it and create a demand. It’s through that they are able to develop these technologies. It’s a vicious cycle they create. An ongoing demand, an ongoing supply of money for these technologies so they can develop it.

People are wanting it. It’s not putting the blame on them. The blame is with us users who keep buying into this technology, if there is blame to be put anywhere. With the 5G, they sold it as something which was so much better than the previous technology that we were going into these new frequencies and all these faster download speeds.

It’s all these generations. G just means generation. We started off with 1G. We had 3G for ages. Now, pretty much everywhere, we’re onto at least 4G. We are introducing 5G, and 6G and 7G are already in the pipeline. Probably the 8G elsewhere. That is their business model.

The 5G nearly never really quite came off as they had said because we talked about this in 2018 when I did my first summit. It was these millimeter wave frequencies. It is being rolled out, but not nearly at the speed that they wanted. It requires a lot of capital investment. 5G is the satellites in space, which is happening, over 100,000. 5G is these millimeter wave frequencies in some parts of the world, not everywhere.

Millimeter waves are short wave lengths. Why are we doing that? All of the other frequency bands are saturated. There is so much going on that they are going off the electromagnetic spectrum, which is just how we understand it. All life is on the electromagnetic spectrum because all life is electromagnetic. All living things. In fact, pretty much everything has a vibration. Even a rock. Even a chair. All living things on this spectrum.

The existing cell phone frequencies are saturated. Let’s give them some more frequencies. They are always needing money. Let’s sell off more frequency bands. They are selling off these higher frequency bands. 20, 40, 60 and higher gigahertz. That’s where the 5G is going. It depends where you live in the world as to what frequency they are using exactly.

The concern for me anyway which I don’t believe are necessarily founded, but the real concern is it’s a novel layer of man-made EMFs, which we have already got decades of peer-reviewed research, which is clearly linking these exposures to many, many symptoms, adverse biological effects, and a long list of serious diseases, including cancer, autoimmunity. I know a lot of your audience is interested in that.

There is science on how these frequencies impact the thyroid gland. I can share that very briefly if we have a moment.

Dr. Eric:

Yeah, let’s do it.

Lloyd:

We have three bits of science here very quickly. This is out of my book. It was easy for me to find. I have a 2016 Israeli study that collected human thyroid cells from healthy patients and then subjected them to this cell phone radiation. They found clear evidence of changes in thyroid cells. The study’s authors noted that the rise in thyroid cancer cases in Israel over a decade correlated with the rise in the use of cell phones. Correlation does not mean causation. I know.

Secondly, we have a study from the Hardell Research team. These guys are really good. It’s a Swedish research team who have been working on this for decades. It’s really high-quality research. In Sweden, that’s where the birth of the cell phone is. That’s where it all started. There is a reason they have been doing the research. There are some nasty things happening with regard to cell phones in Sweden before elsewhere in the world. Hardell found that in recent years, there has been a substantial increase in patients diagnosed with thyroid cancer in Sweden as well as in other Nordic countries. They concluded that this increase coincides with the growing use of smart phones.

Thirdly, we have this 2019 Iranian study. They reviewed 161 research papers. This is not just one paper. They reviewed a ton of studies. They found that cell phone radiation affects the thyroid gland follicles and the volume of cells in the gland. I don’t think I need to explain anatomy to people. People know where the thyroid gland is.

Just look at me here. I never use a cell phone like this. Never, ever. I did at one time, but never anymore. Here, look where your thyroid gland is and how far away they are. This is not a particularly big cell phone. This whole device is emitting radiofrequency microwave radiation, and it’s also emitting magnetic fields. It has a battery in it. It has a small magnetic field. That is a problem. This proximity to all of these very vital organs and glands.

Dr. Eric:

Definitely a good reason not to hold the cell phone to your head at all. Obviously, the more frequent exposure, the greater the risk. If someone is doing it on an everyday basis, holding their phone close to their head for an hour or two or longer, increased risk.

Maybe I’m not doing the right thing. When I speak, I’m usually on either speaker phone, or I’m using a headset. I know there are different types of earbuds. I don’t use the wireless earbuds. I know there are also different types. The tube type.

You do use a cell phone. How do you talk when you’re on a cell phone? Do you use speaker phone or earbuds?

Lloyd:

My primary means of communication is my landline, which I’ve taken off the hook. You can see perhaps on my desk here. That’s it. It’s not my cell phone. My cell phone is to go on my online banking and things like that. I have this job where I’m in this little office a lot. It’s quite easy for me. I created this. It’s not by accident. Because of what happened to me. I know a lot of people who need to use a cell phone more than I do.

I’m not using it like this, never ever. The reason is the way that these man-made EMFs, this radiofrequency microwave radiation propagates in space, a very small increase in distance between you and the source of the radiation exponentially reduces your exposure.

I’ll put that into plain English. That means distance is your friend. Because of this exponential, and people are a bit mathematical, they know what that means, it’s non-linear, it’s this very small distance between you and the device. In this case, a cell phone. Literally, a few millimeters can reduce your exposure thousands of times. A few millimeters. If we are like, here, holding it, arm’s distance away, it’s significantly less. That’s what I recommend: holding it as far away from this really vital part of our body, which is why we’ve got this skull and everything protected in that skull. As far away from my body as possible.

I recommend text, don’t talk. I’m not saying texting is safe. If you do want to talk, then I recommend the speaker phone, as you mentioned.

Or if you want to keep your conversation private, I recommend using an air tube headset. That looks like a regular wired headset, but it’s got a big air tube, a bit of tubing with no wire in it. That makes it much safer because otherwise, that wire acts like a kind of antenna, and it can bring in ambient radiation in the environment, whatever environment you happen to be in, directly into your brain. That’s why we don’t want to be using a regular headset.

Those are a few tips. There are others, like a really basic one. If you look at my phone here, you can see it’s on airplane mode. When we’re on airplane mode, then that is a way of disconnecting all wireless connectivity. We need to make sure that we have deactivated the cellular, the Bluetooth, and the WiFi. That is not always the case on all of these phones.

That is why I recommend at some point that you go a step further. I have my book of tricks here. I recommend getting something like this, which is an EMF meter, which can tell you if this device is switched on or not. I can give you a little demonstration if you’d like.

Dr. Eric:

I actually have one of the older ones, a Cornet. It’s probably time to upgrade.

Lloyd:

I just switched it on. You can hear it. That’s connecting, and it’s making a noise like a counter. It’s giving some figures on there. That is the only surefire way of knowing if you are on airplane mode. That is the only way to carry a cell phone on your person, is on airplane mode. Otherwise, it’s just ping, ping, pinging to its heart’s content, exchanging data with the nearest cell tower.

If you’re in a moving vehicle or in a building with thick walls or underground car park, things like that, it’s really having a hard time maintaining that connection. What I really mean is it’s emitting significant amounts of radiofrequency microwave radiation. I keep repeating this. When I say “significant,” these devices are amazing. We are talking between, the lowest power setting, a million times less than at full power. That’s how smart they are. It does all this itself without you knowing it.

Those are some tips. The other thing to do is look to make sure that you have all those little bars at the top when you switch the thing on. If you don’t have the full bars, that’s where you’re getting these million times more exposure than if you just got the one bar. If you have the one bar, then you don’t want to be using it, even at arm’s length. Only in emergencies. Make sure you have the full bars.

Avoid using it in a car. It’s like a sealed metal enclosure. Not good. You have to work really hard. That’s the one thing that can protect you from all this.

Those are some cell phone tips.

I’m not sure if shielding is effective, but even if it is, is it unnecessary if you have it in airplane mode?

Lloyd Burrell:

If you have it in airplane mode, well, it depends what you’re shielding from. There is no point in having a cell phone and then shielding and then going into the shield. You will trap it in. It is going to want to communicate out, and it will trap that radiation in. Like a microwave oven, it will cook you, not a lot. You will be exposed to that. You have people who are creating Faraday cages to sleep in. There is a whole misunderstanding about Faraday cages. I am not a big one for that level of shielding.

My approach, you can’t outsmart Mother Nature. As I said at the beginning, we are electromagnetic beings on an electromagnetic planet in an electromagnetic universe. Why do you want to go into a Faraday cage from the cell phone towers, the neighbor’s WiFi? You will shield yourself from all the other beneficial, necessary frequencies. That is a mistake. That’s why shielding is always a last resort. I can share some other tips with you about things we can do to reduce our exposures.

With this thing, so much of it is in our control. It requires a little bit of effort, but the thing is, you won’t make the effort unless you begin to understand, yeah, maybe, could be that which is giving me this brain fog, which is not making me sleep so well, which has made me put on all this weight recently, which is whatever symptom. There is no bodily system, no bodily organ that goes unscathed from these man-made electromagnetic fields.

Dr. Eric:

I agree with you about the Faraday cage. There are some people who might wonder, should I get shielding for my router, or if they have a smart meter, and they have problems getting it turned off or taken out? Should I get a shield over my smart meter? Will those things be helpful at all?

Lloyd:

Right. I get those kinds of questions all the time. There is a way to deal with this which is very simple. I don’t pretend to be an expert on this. What I am really an expert on is my own journey dealing with this. I have learned a few things about energy and stuff like that. I’m not an EMF consultant. I have written several books around this topic. I let people decide, here is what I have to say. I am not looking to be called an expert.

There is a way of going about this. You shouldn’t just listen to anybody, “You have a smart meter, so you need to do this.” What you do need to do is the following, and I call this the UMM, like how the Buddhists say. My UMM.

The U is Understanding. Unless you begin to understand a little bit about this, and by the way, this is way worse for kids. Children are more vulnerable. Understand this.

The first thing is to understand what this guy with this weird accent from England who is in France is talking about here. Is he making any sense? “I don’t believe it.” Ok, don’t believe me. Go do your own research. Environmental Health Trust has a great website. They have some great resources on this. My website Electric Sense, a lot of science on there. Go do your own research. Try to understand this thing.

I have thrown out a few technical terms. I keep going on about this radiofrequency microwave radiation. That is one kind of EMF. I have mentioned magnetic fields. That’s another kind. I have mentioned electric fields. That’s another kind. I have mentioned dirty electricity without explaining what it is. It’s understanding what all of that is. Rome wasn’t built in a day. There is a slight learning curve here.

Once we understand, the next thing to do is Measure. If you don’t measure, why would you go and do what Lloyd tells you to do or what any other EMF expert tells you to do? Only listen to an EMF expert if you talk measurements. Only take action if you have taken measurements. You know about this, Dr. Eric, because you have the meter. It’s the meter which enables you to get the information, which enables you to understand your exposures.

Once we have understood the exposures, then the third M is to Mitigate, to deal with that. There are three ways we can mitigate. We can turn the darn thing off. Cell phone, airplane mode, for instance.

The other way to mitigate is to increase the distance. Distance is your friend. Really simple.

The third way is to shield. The shielding is the last resort. That’s where people get topsy turvy. “Oh my god, I have this smart meter. I didn’t even know. They didn’t even ask me. I have this smart meter. Now I have these symptoms. Then I went online. It said it was this and this, and it could do this, and it could give me cancer. What do I do? How do I shield that?” Whoa. One step back. Take a deep breath.

What kind of EMF is it? A smart meter is a smart meter. There are some smart meters that give off cell phone type radiation. There are others that are giving off dirty electricity. Dirty electricity is a kind of pollution on our electrical wiring. What’s on the wires does not stay on the wires unfortunately. We have links to cancer notably and all kinds of symptoms around this. It’s understanding what it’s doing.

Getting measurements with this meter. This meter won’t measure the dirty electricity; you need a different kind of meter for that. You want a dirty electricity meter to measure below 50; otherwise, you take action. Smart meters can cause that kind of electrical pollution, or they can cause radiofrequency electrical pollution. That’s why you need to know. Otherwise, you’re wasting money shielding, and it’s not even shielding to any effect. You may as well just throw your dollars in the bin.

Having this little UMM protocol is having a method and being methodical. That is the way to go with whatever it is you’re dealing with, whether it’s the WiFi or the cell phone or a smart meter. I can guarantee pretty much everybody listening to this, unless they have gone through and measured with a meter like this, they have got man-made EMF exposures in their home which are impacting their health.

Let’s put it like that. It’s the impact over time. There is no such thing as safe and not safe. We don’t know what’s safe now. I don’t know. I have been talking about this and studying this for 20 years. I am not the person who knows the most. I know a fair bit. Anybody who says they have .0003 microwatts per square meter is perfectly safe, they don’t know. We are trying to get as low as possible. We know what’s dangerous. That’s the thing. We are trying to minimize our exposures. That might sound a bit vague, but it’s the truth. There is no safe because we are electromagnetic beings. Our cells are being impacted. Our energy systems are being impacted.

This is a softly over time adverse effect. It’s working hand in hand with all the other toxins. You know the toxic barrel? It’s feeding into that. Not only is it feeding into it, but it’s got this synergistic effect. It’s not 2 + 2 = 4 with EMFs. It’s the EMFs and the pollution in the air, the pesticides in the food we’re eating, the chemicals in the soaps and shampoos that we’re putting on our skin. n It’s not EMFs are the problem in and of themselves, it’s the EMFs and everything else. It’s this synergistic effect, which is just boom.

You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay. One day, you’re not okay. The problem is you don’t even know why you’re not okay. You go to see your doctor, and he’s never even heard of EMFs. He might have read a study on it maybe. There’s been another study out there put out by the cell phone industry saying it’s all safe. There is a lot going on here in the background to keep people in the dark.

Dr. Eric:

I agree that it’s not just about the EMFs. We live in a toxic world. We want to do things to reduce our toxic load overall. We live in a very stressful world, so we want to do things to improve our stress handling skills. Eat whole, healthy foods.

That being said, getting back to reducing exposure, how great of an impact does it have to unplug devices at night, like the WiFi? Would you say those are worth doing?

Lloyd:

110%. I know some people are in short term accommodation, renting a property for a few months. I have dealt with this sort of situation. “I can’t shield and all of that because it’s not my home.” “I’m sharing with somebody else.” There are so many excuses that people can find for not dealing with this. But there are so many ways to deal with this. I agree, if it’s not your own place, it’s a bit harder. It does take a bit of effort. All this is hard-wired. There are wires allover the place here. It’s a choice. All of this is a choice. You’re not going to make the choice for the wires and the effort it takes to do whatever to make your home safer if you don’t understand just how bad this thing is.

With regard to unplugging the WiFi at night, of course, it’s a yes. Who needs WiFi when they are sleeping? How can you be on your computer when you’re asleep in bed? If you do wake up, you should not have that cell phone in your bedroom. Your cell phone should be as far away as possible on airplane mode when you go to bed, people. “Then I won’t know what time it is.” Yes, you can know what time it is. There are things called watches and clocks and battery-operated things, which do not emit radiofrequency microwave radiation.

Nighttime is when your cells regenerate, rejuvenate. We have all these hormonal reactions. Melatonin is a very important hormone viewed by many to be the master hormone, which has got all of these properties and antioxidants and protection from cancer. You can’t get enough of this stuff. We know the science tells us that radiofrequency microwave radiation, and other kinds of exposures, too, at night inhibit our ability to produce melatonin. That is only one bit of the puzzle.

It’s exposing yourself to the WiFi when you can just unplug it. I do tell people to unplug it. Don’t be clever and think you can go in the settings and automate it because as soon as there is a system upgrade, it will switch back on. Unless you have one of these meters, you won’t even know if you have really switched it off because most WiFis have a public signal and a private one. When you switch off the private one, it’s still emitting a public signal that is a radiofrequency microwave radiation.

The other thing people are thinking, “Well, what’s the point? My neighbor has WiFi. What difference does it make?” It makes a difference. Why? Distance is your friend. It’s these exposures which are in close proximity. What’s outside your home, go speak to your neighbor. But deal with what’s inside your home. There are so many things you can and should do to reduce your exposure, notably in your bedroom. That is the most important place to focus on. That is where you get the biggest bang for your buck in terms of protecting your health, these nighttime exposures.

Dr. Eric:

Before we wrap things up, can I get your thoughts on earthing?

Lloyd:

Direct physical contact with the physical earth, the most obvious way to do this is take your shoes and socks off, and get out there in your garden, if you have one, or in a green space. If you are fortunate enough to live on the coast, the beach for instance. This skin contact with the earth enables these negatively charged electrons. Funnily enough, the earth, just like our cells, on the outer surface has these negatively charged electrons. These are tremendously beneficial.

The simplest way of explaining this is it has a normalizing effect. That almost downplays it because it sounds normal; it’s nothing special. But it is tremendously special. To get normal is not something you can get out of a pill. A pill will correct this, but it will have a secondary effect here. Earthing doesn’t do that. It’s Mother Nature’s medicine. It’s this connection. It’s absorbing these negatively charged electrons, and it’s discharging these positively charged AC (alternating con) electrons. It all has this normalizing effect. It’s a detox quite simply. That’s another way of thinking about it.

There is not science on everything I talk about. Most of it, there is. There is some really good science on this, 20+ peer-reviewed studies. Not thousands, but 20+. Why is there not more? Someone has to pay for these studies. That’s the problem with all of these studies. Same to show these detrimental effects of magnetic fields and cell phone radiation. Who is paying for it? The cell phone industry is very happy to pay for studies that show that there are no effects. That’s really so easy. They have shown how they could influence the science to show that it’s safe.

What’s incredible is that your autonomic nervous system relaxes almost immediately, 1-2 seconds. Almost immediately. You tell me a pill you can swallow where you get relief in 1-2 seconds. Acute inflammation is improved in 20-30 minutes. Improved sleep, accelerated healing of injuries, increased heart rate variability (an important indicator of health), reduced clumping of red blood cells. Another thing which the science tells us, these exposures cause what’s called a ruler effect. They cause our red blood cells to clump. The clumping means blood is less good at oxygen transportation, and it’s bad news. This reduces that clumping. The earthing is win-win.

The only controversial bit of this really is earthing indoors, which is another way. There are companies that do this. The controversial side is where we do this. Is there a net benefit?

Dr. Eric:

What would be your response? I assume there is no studies on indoor earthing.

Lloyd:

Here’s my recommendation. 100% earthing outdoors. Everybody doesn’t agree with this. We have building biologists who say, “That’s dangerous. In North America, you shouldn’t go barefoot.” I say listen to your body. Listen to me, and make your own decision. I say, don’t listen to me or Dr. Eric or any guy in a white coat. Listen, but then make your own decision. Listening to your own body is most important. You try it for seven days outdoors, and see how it works.

Indoors, same thing. If you can’t prioritize earthing Mother’s Nature way. Go swim in the sea. That is the most powerful way to earth. Wet, moisture conducts, water conducts superior conductivity, faster effect. Like I said, it’s almost instantaneous, some of these effects. Multiple times a day, getting out there for not long, a few minutes.

Don’t take your cell phone and multi-task. Get out there, listen to the birds. All of that is Mother Nature’s frequencies. It’s tremendously healing. Listen to nature. If you are fortunate enough to be able to go in a park or have a garden where you can hear the birds, oftentimes, it’s a choice. You don’t even think about listening to the birds unless somebody says, “Can you hear those birds?” We are too busy doing I don’t know what to listen to birds.

That’s the first priority with regard to earthing. Beyond that, if you live on the 42^nd floor, then you’re looking for other solutions. There are other solutions. That is earthing via your electrical system. That is a little bit more technical. There are some downsides because you can be connecting to dirty electricity, electric fields, and so on. You need to spend a bit more time understanding this and how to protect yourself. We even have devices now, like the NCB, for protecting from this ground current, which is pretty much everywhere, certainly in North America, when you’re using earthing. There are lots of solutions.

Start with the simple ones. It’s the UMM. People have said “Umm” until this moment here. This is a big topic. It deserves a little bit of time, reflection, and then taking action.

Dr. Eric:

Well said. You brought up an excellent point. If you go outside and do earthing, or even just go outside and get some sun, leave the cell phone behind while doing that. Get the benefits of the sun exposure. Get the benefits of the earthing. Like you said, listening to nature. You don’t need to be on your cell phone for even 5-10 minutes. If it’s 20-30 minutes, leave the cell phone behind.

Lloyd:

Absolutely. There are so many benefits to consciously engaging with nature. You could just go out there and have your cell phone, and you would get some benefit from the earthing. You would get some benefit from the exposure to natural light, even if it’s not sunny. The sun is still there. It’s coming through the clouds. We are still getting the UV benefits from natural light, which by the way is an EMF which we need. It’s much better for us than all of this artificial lighting, which are these frequencies. It’s such a big subject, CFLs, LEDs. The science behind all of this. If there is anything else you want me to share, then I am happy to with the time we have left.

Dr. Eric:

That’s up to you. I know we’re already over. Like you said, there are so many different things. One other question, since you brought it up, is the blue light. What could people do indoors to minimize their exposure to the blue light? Should they go out and get incandescent lights? On the computer, there is f.lux.

Lloyd:

Blue light is great. The sun is the most potent form of blue light. It fits in with our Circadian rhythm. It’s part of our biology. We have evolved around this day/night cycle. You get up in the morning, and then we are getting the blue light. There is less blue light as the day goes on. That’s what we need. We are designed to synchronize to that. What we do is we watch TV, go surfing on the internet on our computers, look at our amazing cell phone at all hours. Then we go to bed, and we can’t sleep. We know you can’t sleep because you’re programmed to be awake with this blue light stimulating you.

Blue light at night is the problem. We want to avoid blue light at night. We want to avoid screens. You can’t even see this blue light, but it’s there. All of these screens have it. We have free software called f.lux, which you can use to make your screen automatically dimmer. The Macs have this software. They do dim. You can go a step further and wear blue light blocking glasses. That is highly recommended. But you may not want to be walking around in your own home with glasses on.

Then it’s making intelligent, informed choices about what kind of lighting you have in your home. If you have an LED or CFL or regular fluorescent in your garage or utility room, that’s one thing. But having that in your bedroom, that’s the last light you see at night. That is not good news. You might sleep fine. There will be other symptoms though. It’s not like you have this blue light; therefore, you get cancer the next week. Doesn’t work like that. It’s a cumulative effect.

That’s the other thing. The studies show, and I said this at the beginning, is these EMFs are impacting everybody. You can’t feel them, so it doesn’t mean they’re not impacting you. They show these exposures are cumulative. If you’re okay today, it doesn’t mean you will be okay tomorrow. Therefore, now is the time to take action and start softly taking steps to minimize your exposures.

Dr. Eric:

You mentioned the shield. They could get the tri-field EMF meter.

Lloyd:

I’m not saying this is the best meter. Cards on the table, I work with a company called Less EMF. They have loads of stuff. I have a little shop, a selection of things which I recommend. You can get that from my website. When you buy from me, you buy from them. It’s shipped from the U.S., and I earn a small commission from what you buy from that shop.

Tri-Field, TF2, I’m not saying it’s the best one. But it’s a really good compromise because it can measure these three types, Mag (magnetic), Elec (electric), and RF (radiofrequency microwave radiation). It costs under $200. It’s a great investment. You can use this for years. You can lend it to your kids, your neighbors. It’s fun. Honestly, you will be shocked, not just surprised, by what you find.

Dr. Eric:

The air tube, they could also get those on your site.

Lloyd:

Another website I like to recommend is ShieldYourBody.com. He is really good. It’s Martin Blank, who was one of the pioneers in this field. They create their own products. Everything is their own. They have some really good, different ways, not just the air tube headset, but they have a way of converting a regular headset to an air tube headset also, which is very inexpensive.

Most of this stuff is not big bucks. It’s just a bit of effort. Then you have to invest in a meter. I have this little dinky thing here that is not a meter because it’s not giving us a reading. It gives a flashing light when we are in the vicinity. This is smaller than a cigarette pack. I don’t have big hands, but it’s tiny. I believe it measures up to 10gh, if not 20. There are constantly solutions coming out for this. There are a lot of good people working in this field.

Dr. Eric:

Thank you for sharing all of your knowledge, Lloyd, with regards to EMFs. Appreciate your website, ElectricSense.com. Your book Healing with Vibration, too. Can you briefly talk about the upcoming summit?

Lloyd:

The Science of Healing and Consciousness is a free event, January 16-22, 2023. What’s that got to do with EMFs? Everything. Consciousness is an EMF. It’s an electromagnetic energy. Ultimately, that’s what we are. Consciousness, we all stem from it. It’s a big subject. If you’re that person who has had struggles, health troubles, challenges in your life, and you are feeling a bit lost in this world, it’s getting a bit crazy, isn’t it? There is a lot of nonsense out there. You switch on the TV, and it doesn’t make sense anymore. It’s making sense of all of this, and it’s connecting with what’s important.

This is where all of this has led me. It just became very clear to me, my journey. I was fortunate. I had this reaction. I realized I was sensitive to EMFs, and then energy. We are energetic beings. Therefore, consciousness is what is behind all of this. If we can learn to work with consciousness, then this is the key to the door.

Dr. Eric:

Excited to tune into that in January. Thank you so much for taking the time, going over time, to dive into blue light. I learned a lot, and I’m sure everyone else did as well.

Lloyd:

Thank you so much for the invitation. I enjoyed it.