Recently, I interviewed Dr. Aumatma Simmons, and we talked about her journey into fertility specialization, the complex factors affecting fertility, why comprehensive testing is essential, why both partners must be a part of the fertility preparation process, advanced testing methods she recommends, how thyroid imbalances impact fertility, management of thyroid conditions during pregnancy, and more. If you would prefer to listen to the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.

Dr. Eric Osansky: 

Very excited to chat with Dr. Aumatma Simmons about fertility. We are going to tie this into thyroid health of course. Let me go ahead and give her very impressive bio here. 

Dr. Aumatma is a double board-certified naturopathic doctor and endocrinologist in practice for close to 15 years. She specializes in fertility and is the best-selling author of two books, Fertility Secrets: What Your Doctor Didn’t Tell You About Baby-Making and (In)Fertility: Secrets, Struggles, and Successes. Dr. Aumatma was awarded the “Best Naturopathic Medicine Doctor” award locally in 2015 and 2020. She was recognized as a top “Women in Medicine” doctor in 2020 and 2021. 

Dr. Aumatma is also the creator of Fertile Foundation Supplements, a line of research-driven nutrients that support your fertility journey. She is also the host of the Egg Meets Sperm podcast. 

In addition to supporting couples through individualized care in person and long-distance, Dr. Aumatma also trains practitioners who want to specialize in fertility. She has been featured as a holistic fertility expert on ABC, Fox, CBS, KTLA, mindbodygreen, The Bump, and other media, along with being interviewed for countless podcasts on topics of fertility, pregnancy, and post-partum health. Thank you so much for joining us. 

Dr. Aumatma Simmons: 

Thanks for having me, Dr. Eric. 

Dr. Eric: 

It’s a pleasure. I of course want to dive into fertility, but before we do that, why don’t we talk about how you became more of a specialist in fertility? I don’t know if this was right from the start, or if this was something over the years. 

Dr. Aumatma: 

It was actually a personal experience that brought me into fertility. I used just to be a women’s health doctor. I was seeing all kinds of women for all kinds of things, everything from anxiety and depression to perimenopause and menopause. Interestingly, fertility was never part of that mix. 

I was married to this person who started to talk about having children. Every time he mentioned it, I had a full-body reaction, which was “Ahhhh, no way!” We were already married at that point. It was a little bit of a shock initially. I was in my very early 30s and aware that what I had learned in medical school was fertility drops off the cliff at 35. 

I had a lot of introspection around do I not want to have children with him? Do I never want to have kids? As that was a possibility. Do I want children, and if it’s not with him, then what do I do about my fertility? Because by the time we separate, get a divorce, and then find a different person who is going to be the right person, I was looking at a very long period of time potentially between those things happening.

I did what I feel like most doctors would do. My response was: I’m going to spend every waking hour researching the crap out of fertility. Maybe this thing I learned in medical school is not actually true. Fertility doesn’t drop off a cliff at 35. I can do something about it now, so that I don’t have to worry when I’m ready. 

What I came to was two big realizations. One was there was a lot I could do that I started doing right away. Simultaneously, awareness of myself and being like, “Yeah, I actually do want to have a child, just not with him.” Working on the personal aspect while optimizing whatever I could do for my hormones and fertility. Simultaneously, realizing that this idea that fertility drops off a cliff at 35 really wasn’t based in science. Okay, if that’s not based in science, why are we giving so much credence to it? That was my process. It took about nine months. I was internal about it all. 

As I was being interviewed on podcasts about health, I would just be mentioning it. It was amazing how many women kept calling me up, “Oh my god, can you help me with my fertility?” Everything I know is theoretical. I have literally never done this before, you guys. But the number of people who were calling me was really high. 

Eventually, I said, “Yes” to this woman, and she became our first client. I said, “Yes, but you should really think about this because it’s not going to be cheap. I have never done this before. I have zero success stories to tell you about. You probably don’t want to do this with me.” I was trying to talk her out of it. She came back a few days later and said, “Nope, you’re the right person. I’m really sure. I want you to help me. I don’t care how much it costs.” She ended up being my first client. Three months later, she got pregnant. 

I simultaneously was invited into this clinic where one of my friends needed help. He was like, “Our naturopathic doctor just quit. Can you come help us?” They were a general clinic. I had no idea they had an acupuncturist who specialized in fertility. I had said yes to this thing. I walked into the clinic, and the acupuncturist was like, “I have been checking out all of your podcasts. You’re the perfect person. Here is a whole pile of cases that I have had no success with. Maybe you can help them.” This is happening way too fast. I fell into it at that point. 

I had really no reason to say no. All of these people are here and need help. No one else has been able to help them before. Let’s see what I can do. I started calling them up. “I looked over your case. I have some ideas for you. Come on in.” Out of all of those people who came in, a majority of them got pregnant that year. That was when I was like oh my gosh, it’s so amazing because obviously, the reward is huge. 

But it’s also amazing because I get to influence the health of not just that person but their child and then their grandchild all within one very short period of time. To me, from a health perspective and a person in the world, it was the perfect thing for me to be doing. That’s how I got into fertility. 

Dr. Eric: 

Awesome. How long ago was that, that very first success story? 

Dr. Aumatma: 

That was 12 or 13 years ago at this point. 

Dr. Eric: 

Wow. 

Dr. Aumatma: 

For a little while there, I was still working with some other menopause/perimenopause. Since the last 10 years or so, I haven’t taken on any new non-fertility people. I feel like if you’re a specialist in something, at least in my brain, there is no space for anything else. I breathe and sleep and dream in fertility. That’s all I want to do. That’s all I want to talk about. That’s all my focus is on. 

I feel as much as I would love to help everyone, I am very cognizant that it’s really that period of time, preconception, where I can make the most difference. It’s been about 10 years, where it’s just been all fertility. It’s always funny when people are like, “I would love to have you on my podcast. What would you like to talk about?” I’m like, “Do you know me? Do you know who I am?” There is no space for anything else. 

Dr. Eric: 

Same here. I focus on thyroid health with more of an emphasis on hyperthyroidism, even though I also help people with Hashimoto’s, because of my experience with Graves’. It’s similar. We both could help people if someone randomly came to us with a gut problem or something else. There is also only so much time we have to spend with patients. There are some people who are generalists and try to see everybody. That’s great that all you do is focus on fertility.

Let’s start off with the question: Why do so many women have problems getting pregnant? Why are there so many cases of infertility out there? 

Dr. Aumatma: 

Great question. When I started out in this field, the stats were one in eight women between the ages of 18-35—we are not even talking about all of the women who waited until later in life. We are talking about that age group who generally should be fertile. Out of that, one in eight were struggling with fertility. Now, the current stats are 1/5-1/6 are struggling with fertility. We are seeing this massive increase in fertility issues. 

It’s a multi-factorial thing. I don’t think there is one specific answer. I think it’s a combination of toxins in our environment, which are not only affecting females but also affecting the male side. It’s been said that in the next 20 years, statistically, we may have a majority of men with no sperm. This whole Handmaid’s Tale coming to life. The toxins are a piece of it, but I don’t think it’s everything.

Another big component is when people are choosing to get pregnant, women more and more are waiting until later in life. They are not being counted in those stats. There is that aspect.

There is also the aspect of stress. Everything is stress. We are all messed up because of stress. That is true to a certain extent. I would be remiss not to mention it because there are about 4,000 studies that point to how much stress actually impacts our HPO axis, which is the hypothalamus-pituitary-ovarian axis. There is an indicator that how much of what we’re experiencing in our life is going to massively impact fertility. 

Stress is such a generic term, so I don’t love using it. If there is a shift in our bodies, in our emotional experience, in the way that we view the world, where we are in survival mode, instead of creation or reception mode, then it’s going to be a really hard place to conceive. The pace of the world feels like it’s speeding up. There are more things that we are constantly worrying about. The political landscape, the wars that are happening. There is just so much. 

We may not be actively thinking about it, but it’s happening in the background. If the story that our body is creating about that is, “Hey, your priority in this moment is how do you survive,” then it’s really hard for the body to be like, “Oh yeah, I’m trying to survive, but I’m going to create another human.” On a very basic level, all of the stress that is contributing in our bodies is going to work against our fertility in a lot of ways. 

Those are the big ones that I think are across the board. Of course, we can get into hormonal imbalances, which is different from person to person. I think the factors that are impacting all of us are pretty solid and consistent.

Dr. Eric: 

Stress is big. Toxins are big. You mentioned it’s not just the female; it could be the male, lower sperm counts. I imagine when you work with someone, you obviously take that into account. Do you consult with both partners? 

Dr. Aumatma: 

In our practice, it’s mandatory that the partner is on board. We have a lot of women who are like, “Can you just work with me? You don’t ever need to talk to my husband.” No, that’s not what we are doing. There are plenty of other practitioners out there who will be happy to support you, but we’re not those people. 

Unless you are a solo mom by choice, who we do support, there is no reason your partner shouldn’t be on board, even if their sperm are great. This is the conversation that a lot of women will have reflexively. “My husband’s sperm is great. You don’t need to worry about him.” I’m like, “Sperm is the bare minimum we need to worry about. What is his lifestyle? What is his mindset? What toxins is he being exposed to? Is he methylating properly?” All of those things are going to impact not only whether you can get pregnant, but they are impacting what we really care about, which is the health of your future child. 

What is that pregnancy going to be like for you? Let’s suppose that a male has great sperm, which happens very frequently. But the DNA of his sperm is a total shitshow. He doesn’t know because there is no test that is regularly performed on the DNA of the sperm. There is a test for it; it’s just not commonly done. On the surface level, sperm look amazing. On the DNA level, sperm are absolutely not amazing. 

The woman gets pregnant, and she continues to keep having pregnancy losses. She is not sure why she is having those losses. Our society says it’s her fault, something she did. Internally, women take a lot of responsibility for fertility and pregnancy. She is also thinking, “Something is wrong with me. I’m doing something that is triggering the pregnancy losses.” When in fact, it starts with the male. 

But if he has never been tested, no one is looking at it. No one is saying, “Hey, it’s the DNA. It’s not even your sperm. It’s the DNA.” We can fix it if we just look at your epigenetics. If we dive in a little bit deeper on your health stuff, not only are you going to get her pregnant, and she will stay pregnant, but you’re impacting the health of this future baby in a very meaningful way. 

We won’t work with couples who are already coupled, already married, and the partner says, “I don’t need to make any changes.” That’s a no-go for us. I have fired people for that. “Here is a full refund. I want nothing from you. Goodbye.” It’s not what we’re about. People can do whatever they want to do. Our goal is healthier babies in this world. The how matters just as much as what the outcome is. 

Dr. Eric: 

That makes a lot of sense. You don’t want to spend all this time, and just the woman spend all this money, and three months later, six months later, find out everything is optimal with her, but the problem is with the significant other. 

Dr. Aumatma: 

They end up wasting time that way. They come back six months later and are like, “We’re still not pregnant.” The guy finally gets tested, and he is like, “Oh, sorry, it was my sperm all along.” It is a little bit of a bummer when that happens. 

We just want to cover all of the bases from the get-go, especially for fertility. They don’t have time on their side. Most of them don’t have patience. Even if it was a 30-year-old, she still wants to be pregnant yesterday. She is not in here, “Four years from now, I’d love to have a baby.” “I started trying, and I should have gotten pregnant last month. It didn’t happen. What the heck?”

Once that decision is made that they want to have a child, that pull is so strong. It’s so anxiety-provoking when it doesn’t happen quickly. Regardless of how old they are, time is not always on their side, just because of how we are as humans. We want everything now. They end up saving time in the future. 

Believe it or not, so frequently, men are the ones who are like, “I was never paid attention to. No one ever talked to me. I was always looked at as the sperm donor. ‘Who cares about you?’” As much resistance as they have coming in, once they start feeling different, then they’re like, “Huh. I didn’t realize it was possible to feel so good. My energy’s better. I sleep better. My sex life is better.” Those are the things that they care about, and those are the tangibles they’ll see improve. Most of them are like, “You changed my life.” It didn’t take a lot. Doesn’t have to be major anomalies or things out of whack. It’s just taking a 7/10 or 8/10 to a 10/10 experience in life.

Studies are coming out that men with optimal levels of testosterone will have lower rates of cancer and longer lifespans because they have optimal testosterone. Similarly, it’s been some of these studies have shown that men that had sperm issues were more likely to have cancer later in life. Men with lower testosterone is on the rise.

When we think about the preventative aspect of this, they are getting what would have been 10-15 years down the line as far as their health decline. We can catch it now and change the trajectory of their whole life. 

Dr. Eric: 

I’m sure that’s very rewarding for you and obviously for them. What are some of the things you do to optimize fertility? When it comes to stress and toxins, do you have people clean up their diet, block out time for stress management, do things to reduce their toxic load? Do you do testing? Look at adrenals, DUTCH testing, or a comprehensive stool test? What are some of the things besides the DNA of the sperm that you do for both partners? 

Dr. Aumatma: 

We have a sequence of tests we like to see in all of our couples. On the female side, we really want a comprehensive overview of how her hormones are functioning in her body. What are the deeper aspects of how her body is responding to stress? This is not just cortisol. 

How is TRH, for example? Thyrotropin-releasing hormone is one of the starting points. It’s a trigger. We have an experience or stress. TRH is the first one on the front lines. We don’t have a way to measure TRH, but we have some indices that we can see on labs. If we extrapolate that data, we have a software program we put it into, and it gives us this deeper aspect of how quickly is this getting on board? Is this over-responding? A lot of cases, it is. A cat jumps in front of you, and your body is responding as if it’s a lion. That’s problematic. 

To be able to see that on some lab values is amazing. Then we can dial back and say, “Oh, we see how your body is actually responding to these stressors,” regardless of if you have that stressor or not. Then we can go in with herbs, homeopathics, a whole host of therapies or modalities that can help to shift how that person actually responds to triggers. 

We want to change it at the deepest level and see that their body is becoming more stress resilient. I feel like most people, when we mention stress, are like, “She’s going to tell me to meditate.” No, actually. If you have time to meditate, go for it. Meditate all the time that you have. What I find is that if we don’t change these underlying things, then regardless of how much you meditate, you’re still going to have a triggered response. 

If we can regulate people’s nervous systems and shift the dynamic that people are having to triggers, how is the body responding? How quickly does that TRH come to the party? Then we really have the ability to create some space before that trigger is creating stress. To me, that stress resilience, that is the first set of tests we are doing.

The second is the hormones. You mentioned the DUTCH test. That’s one of our favorites. We love to see the urinary metabolites. We love to see how the hormones are processing through the body. It’s not just is your body producing a hormone? Also, is it converting it at the right pace? Is it converting it at the right times in your cycle? 

That’s giving us information about how to approach it. Rather than saying, “Hey, you have too much estrogen” based on one snapshot of a test, we can say, “You have too much estrogen only from cycle days 3-12. Let’s regulate that only during that time.” We can get hyper-focused on what needs to be regulated when instead of a willy-nilly, everyone gets DIM or whatever. I hate those one-shot everything approaches because it doesn’t work for everyone. The DUTCH test is really high up there.

The other one we love is the nutrient assay. How are your cells absorbing or utilizing these nutrients in your body? Not just how much magnesium do you have floating around in your bloodstream? That’s a really terrible assessment of magnesium levels. How much is actually going into your cells? Do your cells have enough magnesium to do all of the functions? That is going to be a much more helpful approach to figuring out what is going on there. 

Our last and newest test is the vaginal microbiome. It’s connected to the gut microbiome, so it gives us a little bit of reflection of the gut. But there are so many studies coming out every single day about how much the reproductive microbiome is influencing pregnancy: the ability to get pregnant, stay pregnant, and have a healthy baby at the end of the process. All of it is predictable through the vaginal microbiome. That has become a really essential test for us as well. 

Then we have a bunch of trackers and things like that. We are using CGMs. We are using basal body temperature tracking. We’re using hormone tracking through at-home urine strips. Those are all the ways that we can continue assessing and getting feedback about whether or not the things that we’re doing are actually impacting the outcomes that we want to see. 

On the male side, there is the semen analysis. Also, a comprehensive lab analysis to get a sense of the same things that I talked about on the female. How is stress impacting your body? How much of an impact is it? Are there triggers that shouldn’t be triggers? That kind of stuff will help us get the nuances of what this person is going to need to help shift their bodies out of survival mode and into creation mode. 

Dr. Eric: 

All right. Do you mind mentioning, as far as some of the names of the tests, specifically the nutrient test and the vaginal microbiome test? What companies offer those? 

Dr. Aumatma:

Cell Science Systems is the nutrient assay. The vaginal microbiome is MicroGenDx. These are really only available through practitioners. If there are people asking about this, they may need to work with someone who can actually order the tests for them. 

Dr. Eric: 

Same thing with the DUTCH. It sounds like you do a DUTCH Complete with Cycle Mapping on everybody? 

Dr. Aumatma: 

Yep. 

Dr. Eric: 

It sounds like you don’t do it on men. Obviously not the Cycle Mapping on men. 

Dr. Aumatma: 

No, definitely not. We have a few men who I really would love to see a DUTCH Complete on. It’s not a standard. We don’t test everyone. We can get a lot of information just from the basic tests. 

It becomes a necessity when their testosterone levels are low, and we have worked on it for a little while, and they don’t improve. That is where I start thinking, if we really had a DUTCH test on you, we would be able to see if your body is converting your testosterone into estrogen. Is that why you don’t have estrogen? Or do you have low reserves? You don’t have the building blocks for the testosterone? It would really help narrow and hone in on what is the best approach to support that person to get to that optimal level? 

I’m thinking of a couple of guys right now who have low levels for their age. We have worked with them for a little while. I usually expect to see an improvement within 2-3 months. If I don’t see those levels go up in 2-3 months, I’m starting to think, is there something deeper here? Should we be looking at something else? 

If you have the nutrients that you need to build testosterone, and you have herbs that are driving your body’s awareness that testosterone is needed, then we should see that outcome in a measurable way. If we don’t see it in a measurable way, in a reasonable amount of time, then I truly would like to get to the root of it.

Granted, guys are funny because they will wait on testing. Women are like, “Just tell me! I want to know everything. I want to know everything up front.” Guys are like, “Do I really need that? Will it really help me?” I take it a little bit slower with the guys. Ideally, we would like to get those numbers when we can. 

Dr. Eric: 

Makes sense. Let’s talk thyroid. How common are thyroid imbalances in those who are having problems conceiving? There are a lot of questions I have. What is the optimal TSH during pregnancy? What is the prevalence of thyroid conditions and the impact you think it has on someone conceiving, someone having a healthy pregnancy once they do conceive?  

Dr. Aumatma: 

Totally. Thyroid is a really huge component of fertility. PCOS, which is one of the leading causes of “infertility,” one in two women with PCOS will have infertility. Thyroid is almost always a cofactor in every woman with PCOS. It’s not just that she has this PCOS picture; almost always, her thyroid is not functioning optimally, which is then contributing to the PCOS picture. Often, not enough production of thyroid hormones will cause anovulation, irregular menstrual cycles, and infertility in general for unknown reasons. 

Essentially, thyroid has a direct correlation to fertility. Actually, we don’t know what they do yet, but there are receptors on the ovaries for thyroid hormone. The fact that there are receptors means there is a direct impact. Science hasn’t figured out what it is yet. But that research is happening. Hopefully, we’ll know soon. 

My sense is any time there is a receptor on a specific gland or cell or anything like that, it’s huge. This is going to impact, yes or no, not just this is maybe going to be helpful. It’s a direct impact. 

Thyroid is our metabolic regulator. You guys probably know that. If that regulation isn’t happening, it makes it really hard to sustain the growth of this little human in our bodies. If the thyroid can’t regulate, which we can talk about thyroid and pregnancy, but there is so much dysregulation. Our body is constantly trying to adapt. 

What will happen in pregnancy is—if we are observing thyroid through pregnancy, which if people are working with us, we are—those numbers are changing every single month. The TSH was fine? Now it’s totally not fine. What’s going on? We really have to make sure to monitor thyroid throughout the entire pregnancy.

I have seen a lot of doctors say, “Here’s your dose. See you later. Good luck with your pregnancy.” The reality is our needs are changing in every trimester. Every person is unique. If there is no way to pre-predict what the need is going to be, the only way to know is to make sure that you’re being monitored. That has a really big impact.

The autoimmune aspect of the thyroid is huge. If someone has antibodies to their thyroid, what I’ve seen is that they commonly have recurrent pregnancy loss. That is one of the leading causes or reasons why someone could have recurrent pregnancy loss, which is one of our sub-specialties. We end up seeing a lot of women with these autoimmune thyroid conditions that sometimes are not getting pregnant, but a lot of times, they are getting pregnant relatively easily. But the haywire of the immune system is then impacting the outcome of that pregnancy.

There are a lot of different aspects to how the thyroid is impacting and having a role to play in whether or not someone is going to get pregnant or not, and what the outcome will be. 

Dr. Eric: 

That’s interesting. What you’ve seen is someone with thyroid autoimmunity might not have a problem getting pregnant. I’m sure it depends on the person. Some might have issues. Even if they have no problems getting pregnant, carrying the pregnancy, having the recurrent pregnancy loss is what you see very commonly with thyroid autoimmunity.

I don’t know how many cases of non-autoimmune thyroid you see. If you see someone who has elevated TSH and/or lower thyroid hormone levels, but antibodies are negative, does that make it less likely for them to conceive in the first place? 

Dr. Aumatma: 

The non-autoimmune thyroid people tend to struggle with fertility. The autoimmune thyroid people tend to struggle with recurrent loss. That’s a big generalization. There are always going to be people outside of that generalization. 

In general, the autoimmune component, I think, creates an unhealthy environment for that baby in utero, whereas the sub-optimal thyroid function creates a difficulty in conception. Or we see it show up in other ways. We see it in anovulation. We see it in dysregulation of the menstrual cycle. It’s showing up as direct hormonal fertility issues. But actually thyroid is playing a huge role in dysregulating those hormones. 

Dr. Eric: 

I imagine most of the cases are hypothyroidism/Hashimoto’s. Do you have any experience seeing people with Graves’ or hyperthyroidism at all? 

Dr. Aumatma: 

I would say Graves’ is probably not high on the list of people that we see. We have had a handful of cases where Graves’ was present, and they didn’t know it. A lot of times, people know that they have Graves’. In that case, I’ll just be like, “I might not be the right person for you.” 

If they didn’t know that they had Graves’, but we see it in their antibodies, we see it in their TSH and T3 and T4, then we certainly will make an attempt to try and help them. We are not always successful. But we are successful some of the time.

Hashimoto’s and hypothyroid, all the time. That’s the more common situation. We see it a lot. 

I also feel like even though Hashimoto’s and Graves’ get put together as autoimmune thyroid disease, Graves’ is certainly way more complex. Someone like you who is hyperspecialized in that is a better fit for someone who has Graves’. 

Hashimoto’s, to me, falls more under things that we can do a lot about, especially if they are dealing with fertility issues. If they’re not, they should go to you regardless. If they have thyroid issues and are dealing with not fertility, go to Dr. Eric. 

Dr. Eric: 

Thank you. When it comes to the antibodies, someone with Hashimoto’s, because they have Hashimoto’s, that recurrent pregnancy loss is common. You will do things to improve their immune system health, I imagine. Do they absolutely need to have negative antibodies when it comes to TPO or antithyroid globulin antibodies? Is that your goal? Get them negative, or get them as low as they can before they start conceiving? 

Dr. Aumatma: 

Yeah, it’s multi-layered. I have seen cases in which we start out with antibodies at 800. Crazy high antibodies. I have talked to other thyroid experts who are like, “Oh no, the number doesn’t really matter. If you have any level of antibodies, you have antibodies, period.” 

Whereas to me, I’m like, the amount of antibodies makes a difference. If we go from 800 to 25 or 40, that’s going to be a significant difference in how much your immune system is responding and contributing to the dysfunction. Yes, my goal is let’s get them as low as we can possibly get them.

The other factor, however, is when people have those minor elevations in antibodies, sometimes they don’t go away. But we have addressed the root cause of why they had the antibodies to begin with. Their symptoms go away even if there is no change in the actual number of antibodies. In that case, we say, “It’s okay that your antibodies didn’t go from 40 to 0. But we addressed the root cause. We have healed a lot of what was happening under the surface. You’re no longer having the reactions and symptoms that you’re having. Your fertility hormones have optimized. At this point, we think it’s okay and safe for you to go ahead and get pregnant, and we’re going to keep managing the antibodies as well as your thyroid through pregnancy.”

Mostly, it’s just a time factor, I think. If we had more time, then we would wait until their antibodies were totally zero. A lot of these women are 35+. A) They don’t have the patience, and B) We are like, “How long is it okay to wait before your fertility really does take a turn?” We don’t always know the answer to that. We are looking at 3-6-month periods where we have focused time with someone before we have to be like, “They have waited long enough. Now they need to go and start trying.” 

In those cases, there are things like LDN that are great to support the antibody autoimmune picture while they’re pregnant and sustain it through pregnancy. They do relatively well and have healthy pregnancies. Their thyroid is managed, which is not always the ideal, I understand. But we do the best in that case, so they can quickly go to pregnancy.

Dr. Eric: 

You do have some people on LDN during pregnancy if you have difficulty getting those antibodies where you want them to be. 

Dr. Aumatma: 

Yeah. LDN is considered very safe in pregnancy. It’s a good tool if we absolutely need to use it. It’s not my go-to. it’s not the first thing that I want to be doing with people. But if we worked on the underlying factors, we worked on the things that we know to work on, and their antibodies are still high, absolutely. LDN will save the day all day long. 

Dr. Eric: 

How frequently do you recommend retesting the thyroid panel as well as antibodies during pregnancy? 

Dr. Aumatma: 

If they started with thyroid issues pre-pregnancy, then every 4-6 weeks. If they didn’t, then 8-10 weeks. They can go a little bit longer in between tests if they have no thyroid issues. 

Like I said earlier, the number of women that I see have dysregulated thyroid through pregnancy is really high. If we are supporting and are on the team of pregnancy support for people, then we always want to see the thyroid. We will see plenty of women who are like, “Hey, I didn’t have any thyroid issues. What the heck, Doc?” Pregnancy will sometimes bring the need for support for the thyroid up way more.

The other piece that we didn’t talk about is often pregnancy is stimulating antibodies. I haven’t seen it as much during pregnancy, but there will be a rise in autoimmune thyroid conditions post-partum. 

A lot of those women will struggle with the second baby. First baby, they’re fine. They got pregnant, no problem. They had a healthy pregnancy. Gave birth to a healthy child. Then baby #2, they’re like, “We have been trying for three years, and it’s still not happening. What’s going on?” 

Oftentimes, they have got a thyroid autoimmune condition that popped up post-partum because the pregnancy is a hard thing to metabolically regulate. It’s a really high demand on our body. It’s not a surprise that our body would wig out after a pregnancy. It’s a lot of change, a lot of hormonal flux, a lot of nutrients being pulled that all of a sudden, what your body was able to do before you had any children is completely different from what it’s able to do now. It doesn’t have enough of the reservoirs to be able to do that. 

Dr. Eric: 

A lot of these women with post-partum thyroiditis, if you were to test the thyroid antibodies during pregnancy, they would come back positive. The problem is with conventional medicine, if the TSH is within the reference range, if it’s a 3.5, which is in the lab reference range, they probably won’t test the antibodies. If they did, they would most likely see that those antibodies were elevated. 

When they give birth, it’s almost like the straw that broke the camel’s back rather than the trigger. They had this autoimmune component, and it perpetuates sometimes after that, is what you’re describing, making future pregnancies difficult. 

Dr. Aumatma: 

It’s also absolutely what you said about the TSH not being abnormal enough to trigger the antibodies. I have seen so many people who try to go through the insurance route who will have struggle with getting their doctors to order antibodies. “Nope, they’re fine. Why would you test those? Your TSH is fine.” 

We didn’t talk about optimal levels of TSH, T3, and T4 in that fertility period. To me, I think it’s slightly different than what is normal. I like to see TSH pre-pregnancy below 2, for sure, ideally even below 1.5. I should put a cap on that. Above 1. Between 1-1.5, which is a really narrow range. 

T3 and T4 ideally somewhere in the middle of normal is good, optimal. 

For pregnancy, the ACOG organization has put TSH below 2.5 as the optimal. We will generally go with that. If they were below 2 pre-pregnancy, and it goes up to 2.5, we’re not freaking out. But TSH in pregnancy is also very important for the development of the baby. 

If we don’t have optimal T4 during pregnancy- T4 is the hormone that crosses the placental barrier and impacts the brain development specifically of the baby. If we don’t have optimal TSH or optimal T4, then the health of the baby is at risk. We definitely care about that. That’s a significant factor. 

Also, a lot of times, women have fine TSH, fine T4 but are struggling with T3. They feel like shit through pregnancy. We could give you a tiny little snap of T3, and you would feel so much better. They go to their doctor, and their doctor says, “Absolutely not. You don’t need T3. You’re fine.” 

The health of the mom matters. How she is going through this pregnancy matters. It’s really important for her not to feel exhausted the entire pregnancy. It could be avoided with microdoses of T3, which are not going to cross the placenta but are going to make a difference in how she feels. 

It’s a lot of things to weigh out. For me, I’m like Mom first. Yes, we absolutely care about the baby’s health. We care about what is happening for the baby. We care about pregnancy and post-partum. But we also want to support this mom as she is going through this journey. It’s not just about the baby. 

It’s really not fair to moms who are just the carrier of the child. “Grow this human. We just care about this human who will come out of you,” which is the attitude of a lot of doctors. We want to be the advocate for the women. You can have a different experience. If you’re exhausted, and your thyroid hormones are suboptimal, but they’re meeting the status quo, your body’s need is still a little bit higher than the status quo. Supporting that will help you so much. 

Dr. Eric: 

Sometimes, you do go by symptoms regardless of what the thyroid panel says, or if someone is a little bit on the higher end but still within the lab range, you might recommend thyroid hormone or some T3. Is desiccated thyroid hormone safe during pregnancy? 

Dr. Aumatma: 

I don’t like it. It’s adding dysregulation amongst dysregulation, right? Pregnancy is this time of massive flux. The need is going up and down. Then you add another variable, which is desiccated thyroid, which is also not consistent. It’s really hard to regulate. My ideal would be microdoses of T3, which is just going to push it a little bit but not so much that it’s going to replace or be overwhelming to her body. 

I feel safer with that. I need to look into the studies. Is desiccated even safe? I don’t know if it’s contraindicated. I will look that up. I never use it. Oh god, that sounds so scary to me, to add another layer of dysregulation there. 

Dr. Eric: 

One last question I have is when it comes to supplements. I know you have your own supplement line. I’m guessing you don’t just recommend a prenatal. You probably do recommend a prenatal, but in addition to that, do you recommend Omega-3 fatty acids? Based on the nutrient testing you do. Some of it depends on what comes out on the test results. 

Dr. Aumatma: 

There is a standard for pregnancy, which is a prenatal, Omega, or DHEA, and a good vaginal and gut probiotic. Those are the foundations. 

On top of which we could tailor to whatever people need. Those can really start in the fertility period or preconception phase. The fertility line of supplements is really to dial in what do people actually need based on what’s happening for them? Infertility is often a blanket diagnosis. “You have infertility.” It means absolutely nothing for the majority of people. 

Instead, our supplements. The first thing will be you don’t just go online and take a bunch of random supplements. Totally anti-that. If you land on our website, it will take you through a quiz that will point you into the direction of which is going to be the right supplement to layer on top of the core supplements that you’re taking. 

Our approach is very different in the fertility space. Instead of every supplement under the sun, every nutrient under the sun, if we could figure out that your issue is with the uterine lining, for example, let’s just give you the things that are needed to support the uterine lining instead of every single nutrient that is going to overwhelm your body, make really expensive pee and poop, but do nothing actually to support your fertility. 

Essentially, how do we tailor this to each person rather than how do we make blanket recommendations? That’s the foundation. If they’re working with us, then of course, the custom nutrients and things that their body specifically needs can be tailored even more than our analysis. It’s called a Smart Fertility Analysis.

By the way, I should say that since you mentioned the supplements. We just rebranded. It’s coming out really soon. The new line is going to be called Madre Fertility. It has the analysis on the website. If someone looks up Fertile Foundations, they will still find my line, but it doesn’t have the fancy analysis guiding them into what they should take.

Dr. Eric: 

That sounds awesome. Very cool. Congratulations on the rebranding of the supplement line. 

I know you covered a lot. Is there anything else that you wanted to share? Anything else I didn’t ask you that I should have asked you? 

Dr. Aumatma: 

No, I think this was really good. There is a lot of good questions in there. 

Dr. Eric: 

Thank you so much. Dr. Aumatma, where can people find out more about you? If you could let them know about your website, your podcast, anywhere else, like social media. 

Dr. Aumatma: 

Sure. The podcast is called Egg Meets Sperm. That’s a really good starting point if you want to learn more about fertility, how to navigate stuff. 

Our website is HolisticFertilityInstitute.com. Social media, I’m @HolisticFertilityDoctor on any platform. 

Dr. Eric: 

I appreciate your taking the time to share this with everyone. 

Dr. Aumatma: 

Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Eric.

 

Recently, I interviewed Dr. Jolene Brighten, and we talked why it’s crucial to understand what’s normal for your menstrual cycle, how thyroid health impacts your fertility and sexual desire, myths about low libido and aging, the role of the vaginal microbiome, her flexible 28-day plan, and more. If you would prefer to listen to the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.

Dr. Eric Osansky: 

I am super excited to chat with today’s guest. We have Dr. Jolene Brighten. We are going to be talking about sex, hormones, periods, tying some of it into thyroid health. Let me go ahead and dive into Dr. Jolene’s impressive bio here. 

Dr. Jolene Brighten is a hormone expert, nutrition scientist, and thought leader in women’s medicine. She is board-certified in naturopathic endocrinology and trained in clinical sexology. Dr. Brighten is the author of Is This Normal, a non-judgmental guide to creating hormone balance, eliminating unwanted symptoms, and building the sexual desire you crave. 

A fierce patient advocate and completely dedicated to uncovering the root cause of hormonal imbalances, Dr. Brighten empowers women worldwide to take control of their health and their hormones through her website and social media channels. Dr. Brighten is an international speaker, clinical educator, and medical advisor within the tech community. Thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Jolene. 

Dr. Jolene Brighten: 

Absolutely. I’m so glad to be here with you and everyone who’s listening right now. 

Dr. Eric: 

We were chatting a little bit before I started recording this. I was telling you how I was listening to your audiobook. Really enjoyed it. 

I also let you know how my wife was not freaked out, but she was surprised because you don’t hold back in the book. You talk about sex, orgasms. We’ll talk about some of that here. Very necessary book. 

What motivated you to write the book, Is This Normal? You had written another book prior to this, The Pill Book, which was also amazing. If you could dive into that background. 

Dr. Jolene: 

Is This Normal? was born out of all of the questions I receive. So many people not understanding their body, having received misinformation. We know social media is full of it when it comes to women’s bodies. Everyone is asking, “Is this normal?” There was that inspiration. That is how we arrived at the title. 

When I look back at where this really came from, and what it was rooted in, firstly, women know their bodies. They know they’re normal. However, they haven’t been given all of the information. In fact, they’ve been given a lot of misinformation. 

When you look at the states in the United States, most of them are not teaching medically accurate sex ed. At the same time, we’re being told a lot of things like, “Period pain is normal. Being tired is normal.” I’m sure you have a lot of people who have heard that, especially when it comes to thyroid disease, or the myriad of things that affect women. They are chocked up as being “normal.” When women say, “I know my body. This isn’t normal,” they’re often pushed back on.

I wanted to help answer the question of what’s normal, what’s not when it comes to our anatomy, our hormones, our sex life. Then also help people navigate finding their normal. As anybody who has taken a statistics class knows, normal exists within a bell-shaped curve. Right smack dab in the middle is where a lot of people are hanging out. Then you have the outliers underneath. You have the distribution of normal. Normal is a gradient. Even when you get outside of that bell curve, you will find that people are still normal. It might just be their normal.

I help people navigate all of that and set it up as the book. If you were handed this from the day you got your period, you would be less likely to experience medical gaslighting. You are less likely to struggle with your hormones. You are certainly more likely to experience the pleasure that you’re after in this life. 

Dr. Eric: 

Everybody’s normal is different. You also mention in the book that people mistake common for normal. Just because something is common doesn’t mean it’s normal. People ask me all the time as well. Maybe not in relation to sex and orgasms. Sometimes, their hormones. For so many different things, is this normal? I’ll often say the same thing, “It’s common, but it doesn’t mean it’s normal.” You expanded on that. Maybe it’s someone’s normal but not necessarily normal for everyone. 

Dr. Jolene: 

As you bring that up, I think right away about how period pain is chocked up to be normal. It’s not normal. Period pain is not normal. It is common. I have been saying this for well over a decade. If you scroll my Instagram, you will see that. I was popping off about that so long ago. 

People have really challenged me. Doctors have challenged me. “If it’s not normal, why do so many women have period pain?” I’m like, “You’re a doctor. Why don’t you look it up?” What is going on is such a disservice to your patients.

We do a big disservice in medicine when we mistake that what we see are sick people. Who comes to us? People who have problems. People who want problems fixed. We mistake our experience of constantly seeing that everybody has period pain as being something that must be normal because everybody has it. You have a bias in that. 

In fact, we know from the research that because of this bias, because of the bias that exists in medicine that is against women and puts them at a disadvantage, something like period pain or pain with sex, which gets dismissed or chocked up as normal, is a big reason why it’s estimated for the condition of endometriosis that 6/10 never get the diagnosis. In fact, it can go as far as 11 years for somebody to actually get the diagnosis. This is a condition that affects anywhere from 10-15% of women.

I bring this up because I think it’s important to understand that sometimes, people are like, “Oh, what’s the big deal? Why should we even care about this?” This happens way too much in women’s medicine. 

In the case of endometriosis, this one example, a leading cause of infertility, something that can lead to gastrointestinal issues, problems that evolve with the bladder. Having actual lesions. Endometriosis is when tissues that are similar to the lining of your uterus but not exact exist outside of your uterus, and they respond to estrogen. It is deemed an estrogen-dominant condition because estrogen will stimulate the tissues to grow. Just like the lining of your uterus, they will bleed when you menstruate. Because of that, you can end up with strictures, tightening of tissues, lesions that are very painful, and lots of inflammation. That can affect your ability to have a bowel movement every day.

Dr. Eric: 

You said on average, with endometriosis, it can take how long to get diagnosed? Up to 10 years or longer? 

Dr. Jolene: 

Yes. It can take up to 11 years. When you consider the research says that only 6/10 women are actually getting the diagnosis, then you consider that those six may have had to go 11 years of going to their doctor, saying, “I have period pain. I have pain with sex. I have pain with urination. I have pain with my bowel movements. I have extreme bloating occurring around my period.” 

This is something you’ll see a lot on the internet. I don’t know if you’ve seen this meme going around. Women are like, “Oh, all the hot girls have bloating.” I look at that as a practitioner. Wait, if you have bloating, and it’s that significant- Some of these women are showing pictures of 4-6 months pregnant-looking bellies. That’s how bloated they’re becoming. 

When you consider that, I’m like, “Hold up. This could be endometriosis,” especially considering how long it takes to get the diagnosis, how misunderstood it is, and how many doctors are really dismissive of these things. As you know, working your patient population, if we see extreme bloating like that, that could also be SIBO, something causing inflammation in the intestines, related to thyroid disease and slow motility. In anybody who says, “All hot girls bloat,” I’m like, “Pause. Back it up.” That’s not normal. 

Dr. Eric: 

I’m glad you mentioned that. You’re not saying endometriosis is the cause of all bleeding. Same thing with period pain. If a woman has period pain, it doesn’t necessarily mean they have endometriosis, just that it’s commonly overlooked and missed. Many doctors might say that period pain is normal, and maybe it is, or maybe it’s not related to endometriosis. The point is, they just dismiss it. They tell their patients that it’s normal. Maybe the same goes with bloating and some of these other symptoms. 

Sticking with the topic of PMS and period pain. Some women have heavy menstrual flow. This is when we get into common versus normal. A lot of women do have some pain and cramping. Some have a heavier flow. In a perfect world, would you say there would be no period pain and a regular flow? Or is it some women’s normal to have a heavier flow and some cramping, for example? 

Dr. Jolene: 

The question is what is the flow? What are we talking about here? Let’s break down what a normal period should look like. Firstly, having some mild cramping, totally normal. Feeling a bit tired before your period, also normal. Feeling like you’re totally wiped out, exhausted, never should be considered normal. 

If you are driven to have to take NSAIDs consistently, every single period, for multiple days on your period, that’s not normal. Sometimes, people will push back and say, “Everybody’s pain tolerance is different.” It doesn’t matter. Your pain tolerance, whether it’s different than anyone else, doesn’t matter. 

If your period interferes with your activity of daily living, it causes you to vomit, to cry, you’re having extreme diarrhea with it, these are signs that your prostaglandins can be really elevated. Prostaglandins are hormone-like chemicals that stimulate the uterus to contract. Very good thing until there is too many of them, or they’re super potent. 

They also can be part of the inflammatory picture that we see with what people classify as “period flu.” Period flu is feeling really achy, like you’re getting sick, very fatigued before your period. That’s not normal either. 

I have more to say about the period. Just to jump in real quick, Omega-3 fatty acids in the diet and contributing magnesium are two things you can do to mitigate those prostaglandins and make an easy period. I typically recommend that you start with diet first. As you know, eating cold water fish consistently throughout the week, getting enough magnesium-rich foods, that can be a struggle for some people. 

Looking at something like 1,500-2,000mg of Omega-3 fatty acids, you actually make prostaglandins from Omega-3 fatty acids. That’s why those are so important. Anywhere from 150-300mg of magnesium. I like glycinate best. That helps women sleep as well. That can be really helpful to bring in and mitigate some of that pain. I wanted to give those solutions before I go further with the period talk. 

With the period, the average cycle is going to fall 3-5 days. If it’s less than two days, that’s pointing to too little estrogen. We can see that in late-stage perimenopause. Late-stage perimenopause is right before you move into menopause. Totally normal for periods to go all over the place, but also to have those shorter periods. 

If you are younger than 45, before we say it could be perimenopause, could it be anything else going on? Is there anything we can do to help with that? 

If your period is going beyond seven days, that is problematic. We get worried about that. That’s too heavy of a period. Maybe estrogen is stimulating the endometrium too much. Maybe you have fibroids. Maybe you have adenomyosis, which is a cousin of endometriosis. You can see clots accompanying the menstrual cycle when you have adenomyosis. I will say that condition is missed even more than endometriosis. 

I talk about a lot of conditions that are missed in the book, in order to help women advocate for themselves and have a more productive conversation with their doctor.

Now, in terms of the flow, how heavy should it be? Here’s what’s normal, and not always talked about. Firstly, a period that starts and then stops, that’s normal. Maybe your period, “Oh, I’m starting to have a flow for several days.” Then it’s really tapered off. Then it makes an appearance the next day. That’s not necessarily abnormal. 

Having a period flow that is so heavy that you need a super tampon and a pad, or you’re changing a tampon or a pad every single hour. I’m not talking about a tampon on a light day. I’m talking about a tampon and a pad because the flow is so heavy, it’s the only way to contain it. If you’re changing one of those products every hour, if you have to wake up in the middle of the night because the flow is so heavy that you have to change those products, this is too heavy.

I have billions of checklists in the book. I have a little checklist on what is not normal for your period versus what is normal. It’s important to understand what these parameters are. 

Like I said, your period might be three days up to six days. That’s all considered normal. When we have these outliers, we need to investigate what’s going on. We have talked about period pain. We have talked about the period itself. I’d like to talk about cycling. Are you good with that? 

Dr. Eric: 

Yes, definitely. 

Dr. Jolene: 

Cool. This is another one people are confused about. “My period has always come 24 days. Isn’t a 28-day cycle the norm?” Very few people are having a predictable 28-day cycle regularly. We set it up as a way to teach about the menstrual cycle. There is some science to support there is these averages of how long the luteal phase it can last, and how long it should last, and when ovulation might happen.

The myth of the 28-day cycle has lent itself to the myth of everybody ovulates on day 14. None of that is true. You may even ovulate one month on day 13 and the next month on day 15. It shouldn’t be that you ovulate one month on day 10 and the next month on day 28. 

Your cycle shouldn’t be something that is less than 21 days or greater than 35 days. Even though I say that, if you consistently have had a 38-day cycle your entire life, and you’ve been worked up and nothing’s going on, then that is your normal. 

In medicine, if you’re going beyond 35 days, we need to investigate things like polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). There are other conditions as well, but PCOS is far more common than those. 

If your cycle length suddenly changes, we need to look at if this could be hypothyroidism. Changes in the menstrual cycle are one of the most missed symptoms when it comes to hypothyroidism in my experience. That is because clinicians are trained to put someone on the pill when the cycles become irregular rather than test and understand what’s going on, unless, the caveat being, you want to have a baby. Then you might get that thyroid panel. 

When it comes to the cycle length, that should be pretty predictable within a few days of itself. It’s not abnormal if you did have 27 days and then 29 days. But it is abnormal if there is a change within your normal, or you are less than 21 or greater than 35. If you never know when your cycle’s showing up, you definitely need to see a provider.

Dr. Eric: 

I should say I see a lot of people with hyperthyroidism as well, which can also impact the cycle. In different ways, too. I can’t see there is a consistent pattern. Some people will completely stop cycling for a few months. Sometimes, it might be more frequent. Regardless of whether someone has hyper or hypo, it could impact. Like you said, especially in the case of hypothyroidism, often it’s missed. Doctors will look at other things. 

Dr. Jolene: 

Totally. I see the same thing with any thyroid disease. Sometimes, the cycle stops. Sometimes, it becomes irregular. Sometimes, the periods become very long. That is something that should always be ruled out. 

Most people are not aware of this. You may be, but I definitely want your audience to understand that when it comes to follicular development, this is how we get a mature egg that we then ovulate. That is very dependent on the thyroid hormones being optimized. If you want to have a baby, absolutely crucial. If you don’t want to have a baby, absolutely crucial because only by ovulation do we get the progesterone levels that we need.

You have been in the thyroid space for a long time. Most doctors will just check a free T4. Then you get to functional medicine. We are looking at free T3. We have those patients who just do better on natural desiccated thyroid hormone, which we know also contains T2. I have always said the body doesn’t do something for nothing. If it’s still making these hormones, there is a reason. 

What’s interesting is when you look at the research, T2 is actually involved in that follicular development and interaction with the mitochondria, which are really tending to the health, the quality of the eggs, and the health of the ovary overall. Thyroid health directly impacts ovarian health. This is so crucial not just for pregnancy but in the longevity conversation. 

The longer we can have our own natural hormones taking care of us, the less risk we have for things like dementia, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes. I could keep going. Take care of your thyroid, your mitochondria. That is one key to taking care of your ovaries. 

Dr. Eric: 

Based on what you just said, if someone is taking levothyroxine, synthetic T4, and if they are having fertility issues, not to say it’s definitely related to that, but it could be. When they are taking T4, they are obviously missing out on the T2. They are hoping that will convert to T3.

Dr. Jolene: 

The hope, right? Will it convert? Unless you’re post-thyroidectomy, which means your thyroid has been removed, your thyroid will still make some T2. It will putt along. It will do that. What we do understand really well from the research is that T4 is absolutely crucial, not just in follicular development in that egg health, but also preventing miscarriage. 

The long-term studies that have looked at when Mom had insufficient T4 showed that even these children, they followed this cohort up to 16 years of age, and they were behind in terms of cognition and motor skills. We know it has a tremendous impact on fetal growth and development. 

For anyone listening, if you’re like, “Why is my doctor giving me T4?” T4 crosses the placenta. There is this magic thing that happens in medicine where as soon as you become pregnant, you become the thing that’s carrying the baby in the way of the baby, and everyone is focused on the baby. They forget your health and wellbeing matter as well. 

I say that backhandedly. We know there are great providers out there. But we also know that the United States, we’re at the bottom. We rank bottom when it comes to maternal/fetal outcomes, when it comes to obstetric violence. We win at that. We’re not doing well as a developed nation. 

I want people to understand that if you have a great provider, yay. Celebrate it. Maybe share it in the comments. That would be really great. If you don’t have a great provider, and you feel like it’s just you, it is not just you.

Back to your point. I want to say something that’s been very interesting that I have observed and used in my clinical experience. Women who aren’t necessarily presenting with hypothyroidism, but they are going through IVF, sometimes giving a very low dose, like 25mcg of levothyroxine, can actually improve the outcomes of IVF. Do I have great studies that I can tell you about that? No. 

When we see things like that free T4, it’s hanging around 1, sometimes it drops below 1. Ideally, we want that 1.2, 1.4. That is somewhere where it’s like let’s just try. We’re only going to do it for one cycle. It will only be a few weeks to support you. You’re not going to have hyperthyroid symptoms from that. I have seen some pretty good outcomes. Take that clinical pearl, people, for what it’s worth, and discuss it with your provider.

Dr. Eric: 

That was awesome information. Low sex drive, low libido, something else that maybe practitioners in general, maybe not functional medicine practitioners but medical practitioners, would say is normal and more common. Why is that so common? What are some of the underlying causes? 

Dr. Jolene: 

Hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism. Oh man, the way your nerves are so grated in hyperthyroidism. Good luck getting in the mood. That can be really hard.

To answer your question. Why is it that so many women go to their provider and say, “I’m struggling with low libido,” and their provider is like, “Well, you were born with ovaries. That’s just normal?” I break this down. 

If we go back and look at the history of medicine, the history of medicine has essentially said we have this male component. That is the standard. That is perfection. We will measure everything against this. This other inferior model over here with baby-making accessories, that one should match, right? Everything is through the lens of men. 

With that lens, the myth, and I say this is a myth because I think it’s unfair pressure that society puts on men, is that men are always in the mood. Men always want sex. Men have more testosterone than they are using at a cellular level; therefore, testosterone is the key hormone driving it. Men are always in the mood. 

What we understand, firstly, is that for women, it’s not just testosterone. There is the estrogen component as well that’s really important in terms of your desire, your ability to self-lubricate. At the same time, all the other hormones matter as well, along with stress hormones. 

The stress hormone picture that I’m talking about, and thyroid, and insulin, this applies to all bodies. Doesn’t matter if it’s ovaries or testes. All bodies are affected by these hormones. It can affect their desire.

Now, when we look at the research, and we look at psychologically, are there these differences going on? What we understand is that there are more women who will identify with what’s called responsive desire. That’s where you talk about how you have to get things going to get things going. You’re not in the mood for sex until you’ve actually started foreplay. That is normal. It’s called responsive desire. Both men and women experience that. 

Then we have spontaneous desire, which is what the media shows us that all men should be like. They’re always wanting sex. Sex is always on the brain. They’re always chasing tail, so to speak. 

In reality, that spontaneous desire isn’t something that every man experiences, and women do experience it. When women experience it, they’re often told things like, “Oh, you have the sex drive of a teenage boy. You are more like a man.” Really, when you stand back, this is just a misframing and misunderstanding that men are supposed to be one way, and women are supposed to be another way. It’s absolutely not true. 

I talk about in the book the clitoral conspiracy. Everybody’s heard, “The clitoris was discovered in the 1990s.” Lies. No, it wasn’t. It was discovered a very long time ago. In French, the translation is “shameful member.” What does that tell you right there? It was something to be shameful of. 

They cut it out of anatomy textbooks. Even to this day, the majority of medical anatomy textbooks—this means the books your doctor is learning from—do not have medically accurate illustrations of the clitoris, which is why in Is this Normal? you will find three. I put three in there. If nothing else, y’all are going to know more than what your doctor knows about the clitoris. 

So far, I’ve talked about: We have the component of the different ways that sexual desire can work: responsive and spontaneous. The idea that women have to be different, and if it’s a problem, it has to be testosterone. We don’t know about the clitoris. A lot of people don’t. My necklace, which you can’t see behind the mic, actually says “Cliterate.” It’s a term that Dan Kearn coined to talk about being actually literate about the clitoris. 

Then we have a whole other component called the dual control model, which is all about things that turn us on, things that turn us off. this was research done by Bancroft and Janssen to understand men. 

If everybody is listening, “Well, she’s in women’s health. Why is she talking about men?” I think it’s so important to understand that these experiences are universal. There is a lot of similarity although I did tell you with hormones, it can be different with women. I will talk about that a little bit more.

The similarity being that our nervous system has to be ready and tuned to accept the sexual inputs. Those are the accelerators. If we have too many brake pedals on, those are things like stressing about our body image, stressing about unintended pregnancy, stressing about our relationship. A lot of stress is what you’re hearing. That is going to basically create a nervous system chaos in which you cannot receive the signals that maybe your partner is trying to throw your way. In those instances, it’s also another time to feel like, “Why am I out of the mood?”

When I talk about stress, and I talk about women, I want people to understand that the female body is more attuned to the stressors of the environment because biologically speaking, whether or not you want a baby, whether or not you can have a baby, the tissues, the cells, everything about your being is set up to survey whether it’s safe or not to have a baby. 

Let’s just face it. Babies are noisy. They will give you away if you are hiding from a predator. That’s like my biggest fear. What if there is a zombie apocalypse, and I have a baby? Or I’m pregnant? How am I going to outrun a zombie? I don’t know how I’m going to do that. That’s way out there. But if it’s a different kind of predator, like the real kind, like a tiger, how will you do that? The body knows. The body is inherently wise.

Your doctor says, “Eat right and exercise. You just need to eat less and move more.” You’re doing that. Now you’re never in the mood. That’s a negative input on the system. You just told your body, “The environment isn’t safe. You don’t have enough food.” These different types of stressors will cause biological shifts, shifts in our hormones that can impact our sexual desire, which is our ability to get in the mood. The safest way to live your life in moments that are high stress is to protect you from not becoming pregnant, which means you have no interest in having sex. Does that all make sense? 

Dr. Eric: 

Yeah, definitely. In functional medicine, they talk about the pregneninolone steal, the cortisol steal, where the body is prioritizing cortisol production at the expense of DHEA and the sex hormones. Is that what you’re talking about? 

Dr. Jolene: 

I’m so glad you brought that up. Pregneninolone steal is an outdated way to think about it. I’m not shaming you or scolding you for saying that. If you ever learned about it back when we learned about it, that’s how we talked about it. it’s this idea that pregneninolone, the mama hormone, she has given birth to cortisol and progesterone. In that moment, she is like, “I have to birth more cortisol. Forget the progesterone.” There is nothing left over. 

Now that we have more research understanding the mitochondria and how this is all working, what’s actually happening is the master orchestrator of hormones, your pituitary gland, your HPA of wherever it goes, whether it’s the adrenal axis, the ovarian axis, the ovarian-adrenal-thyroid axis, that is orchestrating things to say, “Let’s get cortisol up. Let’s make sure we are dampening down progesterone.” 

In the book, I have a whole diagram of how stress affects you. Too often as doctors, we say, “You need to work on your stress.” You know in functional medicine, we don’t do it like that. But the average provider that the woman is experiencing, she may go in, and they’re going to say, “You just need to get a handle on your stress.” What does that mean? What does it do? 

As stress goes up, we know cortisol production goes up, and ovarian function goes down. It’s not just progesterone, but all of the cycle can be impacted. Extreme stress, like hypothalamic amenorrhea, we see that you will lose your period. You are not getting enough calories; you are overexercising. 

Anyone who has ever had a significant life stressor, like your dog dies, someone close to you passes away, maybe you were in a car accident, and you miss your period, that’s actually normal. Your body was like, “Hold up.” Survival will come before procreation. Your body is shifting in a way to protect you. 

That’s what I think functional medicine does a lot differently. We stand back and ask why. Why would your body choose to take this path? Rather than trying to strongarm the body into submission, “Body, you’re misbehaving. I’m going to give you a medication. Going to suppress that. Going to do these things.” 

Listen, sometimes we need medications. However, even when we need a medication, we still need to ask why. Why did the dysfunction develop? I say “dysfunction” as in if you are not menstruating, therefore not ovulating regularly, and you should be, something has become dysfunctional in the system. The adaptation, which is meant to keep you alive, has adapted too far. You’ve adapted too close to the sun. You’re burning up. What is happening here? We have to ask the question: Why did this happen? Why did this shift happen? And work at that level. 

Dr. Eric: 

All of this is really fascinating. I want to talk about orgasms. I am 100% sure I have not spoken about this on the podcast. 

Dr. Jolene: 

Everyone wants to talk about orgasms. 

Dr. Eric: 

Exactly. Obviously, there will be overlap. For many people, thyroid health will play a role. Stress hormones, like cortisol. There is also going to be some psychological aspects as well. Let’s talk more about orgasms. 

Before we get into orgasms, if this is going to take long, we can skip over this. Every now and then, there will be someone who has a heightened libido. What would be the cause of having too high of a libido? 

Dr. Jolene: 

There’s no such thing as too high of a libido. That is your normal. When we say someone’s libido is too high, what we are really saying is they have spontaneous desire. That is the mode they are activated on and in which they are going through life. That is completely normal.

We get into trouble when we start pathologizing what is normal. That is definitely one of those instances where people are like, “Your sex drive is just too high.”

The other thing that happens sometimes in those situations is that person’s default of when they are stressed is actually to have desire. That’s not as common, to be in the mood when you’re stressed. But I think those people’s biology are really hip to the fact that the orgasm that we are going to talk about is going to release oxytocin, which combats cortisol’s negative effects. 

Cortisol will not only age you in what you can see, but cortisol will age you at the cellular level. If you are exposed to chronic stress, we know the brain suffers significantly. You can have memory deficits, cognitive deficits. With that, orgasms can actually help. 

This is what everybody gets when they’re intimate. These people will also get the connection. The connection, that intimacy, that act of mindfulness, which if you want to have an orgasm, it is an act of mindfulness. You have to be present in your body to even arrive there. Those things, we know help stress. If it was outside of sex, it would help stress. 

Sometimes, that is also where people are like, “Something’s wrong with you because you want to have sex when you’re stressed.” It’s because something about their being knows, “I can check so many boxes with this that are going to help me drop my stress and optimize my hormones.” 

Dr. Eric: 

A question I have with orgasms then: I’m in my 50s, even beyond that, 60s, 70s. You’re going to have natural decreases in hormones. Can someone in their 70s, 80s expect to have orgasms like they would in their 20s and 30s or even people in their 50s? Should they expect a decline, where maybe they can still orgasm as they get older, but it’s more challenging? Is it just because of what we’ve been discussing as far as the older people get, they’re more likely to have some of these other health issues develop? Some people have them for years, like Hashimoto’s can be undiagnosed for 10-15 years. I’ll stop rambling and have you talk about orgasms. 

Dr. Jolene: 

When I tell you how rampant STIs are in nursing homes, that’s all I gotta say. No, you shouldn’t be losing your ability to orgasm because you are aging. 

As you brought up, with the case of Hashimoto’s, and hyperthyroidism, long periods of undiagnosis that are going to affect the cardiovascular system. Anything that negatively impacts the cardiovascular system or our blood glucose, blood sugar, and our insulin levels, that can impact your ability to orgasm. 

Now, as we get older, we are at higher risk of developing diabetes and having circulatory issues. When we look back at the research, most of it has been done on men. Shocker, I know. If a man can’t have an erection, it’s like, stop everything. We have to figure out what’s going on. I think that’s a very good thing. We should also apply that to women. 

The clitoris and the penis are the exact same embryological tissue. When you’re an embryo, you get this hormone called testosterone that comes through. If you have a Y chromosome with the right genes, you have a penis, a scrotum, testes. If you don’t, you have labia, a clitoris. I outline all of this in the book. 

The clitoris and the penis, same tissues, get erections. Erections require nitric oxide, which we know those pathways can slow as we age. They also require good blood flow and circulation. 

Something that we know that is affecting far too many people in the United States that can impact our clitoral health/penile health is diabetes. If you have somebody with erectile dysfunction, you need to look at their cardiovascular health and diabetes. This is what I was taught in my nutrition science classes 20 years ago. The same is true of the clitoris. 

If someone starts complaining of inability or orgasm, simplest thing. I like to validate it. Yeah, it can sometimes be a struggle for a lot of different reasons. 

Getting older isn’t a death sentence for your sex life. In fact, many women who are post-menopausal report having much better sex at 50+ than their 20-something self. Part of it is you’re more comfortable with your body. Others is experience, and you understand your body more. But it’s also that the threat of an unintended pregnancy, which can mess with your nervous system, pull you out of the mood, is no longer there. They’re finding that they do orgasm better. They have a much better sex life. 

I want people to understand that. Not a death sentence. If you’re starting to struggle, get that investigated. Get it looked into. Something else might be going on. 

Now, the other piece that I want to say about sex as you age is lubrication is a must. If you are not having adequate lubrication, which as estrogen dips during certain times of your cycle, or post-menopausal, then you will need more lubrication. That is absolutely normal as well. 

I said that was the last thing I was going to say. I’m going to say one more thing about orgasms. The research tells us that only about 18% of women report being able to orgasm via vaginal penetration alone. That is based on their anatomy. Their ability to do that is based on their anatomy. Predetermined , nothing they can control. The distance. Where is the clitoris? Where is the vagina? This is important for people to understand because it may very well be you need more clitoral stimulation in order to reach an orgasm. That is completely normal. 

Dr. Eric: 

More foreplay, you’re saying? As an example. 

Dr. Jolene: 

I appreciate this. I talk about it in the book, about foreplay. Using the word “foreplay,” we all know what that means. I like to use common language, so we can arrive at the same place. 

We have to also recognize that foreplay is actually sex. It can be totally gratifying. You can achieve an orgasm. By the way, when you ask people, “Hey, remember the best sex of your life. Tell us what made it the best sex,” they don’t often report orgasm. I want people to understand that as well. Best sex of your life, people say things like intimacy, connection, vulnerability. They don’t say orgasm. 

We put so much emphasis on the orgasm. As a hormone doctor, I do think having an orgasm is great. If you can’t, we should investigate things. 

Understand that every sexual adventure, you’re not going to hit an orgasm. You may hit your orgasm in foreplay and decide not to have penetration if you’re in a heterosexual relationship. Or you might hit it in foreplay and have penetration and hit it again. It’s totally up to you. 

When we use the word “foreplay,” I never want people to feel the pressure. I want to acknowledge the pressure that foreplay is, to most people in their minds, the stuff that happens before, not the main event. But it can totally be the main event.

When it comes to clitoral stimulation, that can happen on its own, or it can happen in conjunction with a partner and having vaginal penetration at the same time. 

I list in my book a lot of ways to reach an orgasm. There are people who it’s like documented thinking off. People can just think about it and have an orgasm. 

There are people who go to the gym and work out and randomly have an orgasm. It’s called a coregasm. They are working their abs, and they did not intend for this to happen. 

There are a lot of ways to arrive there. However, the majority of people are going to only arrive there via the clitoris. Because the clitoris is not on the outside, like the penis, and it doesn’t have to pass urine and ejaculate- The penis has a lot of jobs to do. The clitoris has one: provide pleasure. 

The clitoral structure, what you see on the outside is the tip of the iceberg. The clitoral structure extends inside. Because of that, it can be more sensitive because it is more protected. It is not being stimulated all the time. Those neuronal pathways are the primary way that people orgasm. 

In the book, I also talk about people who have spinal cord injuries and how they find new ways to orgasm. This is how important pleasure is. I think If somebody is tuning out right now, or their doctor’s dismissing them, understand that the pleasure of being a human is so important that if you have a spinal cord injury, that pathway that went to the penis or the clitoris, those nerves will set up other places. Now, people are noticing that they can be stimulated on this other area of their body and achieve an orgasm. I want people to understand that that is because the brain is set up to be the big sex center, and it sends out those nerves, seeking out pleasure. 

Your body thinks it’s important. The World Health Organization thinks It’s important. The research says it’s important. This is not something we should take for granted. 

Dr. Eric: 

A lot more in the book for sure. Highly recommend everyone either read it or listen to the audiobook version like I did.

I have two quick questions, but they might not be two quick answers. If you don’t have time- 

Dr. Jolene: 

I’m gonna try. I talk a lot. I get excited. 

Dr. Eric: 

Just because nobody has spoken about the vaginal microbiome. The first question is if you can briefly talk about the vaginal microbiome and how to support it. And then briefly talk about your 28-day plan. I know people will have to read the book because there is no way to talk about the whole 28-day plan in a couple of minutes. Can you touch upon those two things before we wrap it up? 

Dr. Jolene: 

I just want to say I have ADHD. I write my books for brains with ADHD. You never have to read it front to back. You can jump in anywhere you want, and you can still get what you need out of it. Same with the plan. If you just want to jump in the plan, you can do that. While you’re going, go back and read it as you go.

You wanted me to talk about the 28-day plan. Before we get there, I want to get into the vaginal microbiome. Everybody needs to understand that it’s not just the vaginal microbiome; there is a cervical microbiome, an endometrial microbiome, a tubal microbiome, an ovarian microbiome. These microbes are everywhere. 

I talk all about it in the book. The biggest thing I think women need to understand is that your estrogen matters so greatly to the health of your entire microbiome. Your skin, your gut. As you enter menopause, we see that microbial diversity drops as estrogen drops. Your estrogen is so important. Your vaginal microbiome is no different.

Estrogen stimulates the cells that produce the glycogen that is the sugar that feeds the Lactobacilli in the vagina. Lactobacilli are why you have a pH that keeps yeast in check, BV out, and helps protect against other pathogens. Taking care of your estrogen as I outlined in the book is absolutely essential to taking care of your vaginal microbiome. 

I have an entire chapter about discharge and talking about BV, yeast infections, other types of infections as well. What you can do naturally to be working on that every day to optimize your vaginal microbiome. I think we are going to find in the future as it relates to cancers that there is a link to what’s happening in the microbiome there, not just by way of hormones, but also the inflammatory processes that can occur. That’s probably going to be like when I’m well into menopause. 

Don’t wait on the research. Just start taking care of your body now in the common sense ways that maybe your mama already taught you, and the new science is showing you that I talk about in the book.

28-day program. That is where we are going to get into how to optimize your hormones and how to understand your normal when it comes to sex throughout your cycle. I design the program so you can do the hormone thing if you want, or you can also bring in the sex stuff, too. You can understand your normal. 

The thing about libido and orgasms. We don’t go to our neighbors, “Let me compare my sleep to you,” and judge and shame myself for it. Are you talking to them about their periods and feeling shame and judgment? You are not. 

When it comes to libido and orgasms, we often compare ourselves to others and think something is wrong with us. Odds are, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. We need to help you discover your normal. If we know that normal, you can get the pleasure that you want and also enjoy the hormone benefits that come along with it. 

Dr. Eric: 

Thanks for discussing all of this. Do you have two chapters dedicated to the 28-day plan? It was in great detail. It’s not spending 5-10 minutes on it. 

Dr. Jolene: 

There have been people who are like, “I got the audiobook, and I needed the real book to see the checklist, the charts, to go through the plan.” It’s a very interesting book because so many people have said they’re listening to the audio, and they have the physical book and are looking at it as well. That’s so interesting to me. That’s how I usually do things. 

With the 28-day plan, there is a chapter setting it up, so you understand the why, the how, what to be tracking. Then there is the actual plan, of let’s get in and do it. I separate it that way because I think it can become way too much information when it’s like, “You’re doing the plan. I’m explaining to you all the reasons why you’re doing the plan. Here’s the next step of the plan.” Some people don’t want the explanation. They just want to do it. 

Dr. Eric: 

Where can people get the book? Should they go to your website? Should they go to Amazon, like I did? Anything else you’d like to share? Social media? The resources? 

Dr. Jolene: 

If you go to DrBrighten.com/ITN-Resources, there is a four-week meal plan, a recipe guide for you to help you optimize your hormones. We have other bonuses and goodies there. It goes along with the book really well. You can grab it now. Pick up the book later. 

You can get the book anywhere books are sold. Of course, most people use Amazon. You can request it at your local bookstore or call your library about it. DrBrighten.com also has the book. We can ever rarely outcompete Amazon. I’ll just be honest there. 

Dr. Eric: 

You’re on social media. TikTok?  

Dr. Jolene: 

Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Threads, @DrJoleneBrighten. 

Dr. Eric: 

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Dr. Jolene. It was awesome listening to your book. It was awesome chatting with you about your book. I’m sure the listeners learned a lot. I definitely did as well. 

Dr. Jolene: 

Awesome. Thank you so much. It was so great to see you again. 

Dr. Eric: 

Same here. Take care. 

Dr. Jolene: 

You, too. Bye!

 

Recently, I interviewed Nicolas Pineault, and we talked about the sources of electromagnetic pollution, the effect of EMFs on sleep, fertility, and thyroid conditions, the need for reducing our exposure, whether you should be using shielding, the potential link between EMFs and thyroid cancer, the importance of proactive measures in the home, and more. If you would prefer to listen to the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.

Dr. Eric Osansky: 

I am super excited to chat with Nicolas Pineault, as we are going to be chatting about EMF hazards, of course tying them into thyroid health. It will be an awesome conversation here.

Let me dive into Nick’s impressive bio. Nick “The EMF Guy” Pineault is the #1 best-selling author of The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs and an advocate for safe technologies. Through his unconventional approach blending humor, science, and common sense, he has become a leading voice on the topic of electromagnetic pollution and how it affects our health. For the last few years, Nick has been interviewing some of the best minds on health and technology and facilitating the curation of courses and educational materials to raise awareness on this very important issue. You can find more about Nick at TheEMFGuy.com. 

Thank you so much for joining us, Nick. 

Nicolas Pineault: 

Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure. 

Dr. Eric: 

This is a fascinating topic, something that affects everyone. I want to start a little bit with your background. How did you start focusing on helping others become more aware of the problem with electronic pollution? 

Nicolas: 

My journey started in 2010 when I got into nutrition but quickly diverted into environmental toxins. Yes, I discovered that many people can argue online about what is the best diet, but we can all agree that if you add glyphosate or other pesticides/herbicides or heavy metals in your food, that’s not good. 

Also, some people realized by then that there is plenty of scientific research that shows we are impacted by these toxins at variable levels. It also showed me and made me a little bit blasé about the current state of regulatory agencies. I realized that these substances are not properly regulated in a sense that the public is not completely protected against these health hazards, especially when they are cumulative and act in synergy. 

Another toxin I came across later in my career as a citizen journalist is electropollution. That was new for me because I had heard a little bit about the dangers of putting a phone to your head and maybe the risks of a brain tumor, but I had no idea that hundreds of independent scientists, who had very prestigious careers in other types of pollution, were pretty much saying the same thing: We need more research. We are under-funded. Systematically defunded, in fact. The more you find negative health effects linking cell phones to poor health, the less you get funding, which it should be the opposite. Urgent funding, additional funding from the government or health agencies. 

I was very alarmed by the fact that we should be studying this technology more, but we are doing it less and less. At the same time, we are increasing our exposure. 

This led me to write my book in 2017, The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs. I chose that title and that angle because I realized, my god, among many skeptics, even those in functional medicine who understand environmental toxins, a lot of them did not take EMFs seriously. 

Part of the reason is there is a lot of confusion online. Some of it is straight-up incorrect. A lot of it is fearmongering. Then you get the opposite side of the coin that there is no effect. This is non-ionizing radiation. It does nothing to the human body. It will not interfere with your sleep. It will not give you a brain tumor. There is nothing to see here. 

I think these two positions that are at the extremes are completely incorrect. I tried to make sense of what are these scientists actually saying? What can we safely say about these dangers? How can we communicate them? There is not a lot of certainty around EMFs. People are looking for certainty. “How dangerous are these, Nick? How long should I use my phone safely? What is the difference between cell phones, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth?” The topic is very complicated to communicate on a scientific basis because most of these questions are left unanswered to this day, due to the lack of funding and the systematic defunding of the entire topic. 

Dr. Eric: 

I think more people, including practitioners, are becoming more open to EMFs. Still, we have a long way to go. 

Now, you mentioned brain tumors. I think it’s safe to say, and you would probably agree, that in most people, EMFs are not going to cause brain tumors. They could do that potentially, but it goes beyond that. Some people might hear “brain tumor” and dismiss it. I actually listened to some of your past interviews, talking about some of the effects, like sleep disruption. Even that alone could be a big reason to try to minimize your exposure. Or conditions like tinnitus. 

For those who are brand new to EMFs, can you first talk about what EMFs are? Then maybe we lead into the conversation of some of the concerns, like potentially cancer, sleep disruption, and others.

Nicolas: 

Sure. There are many different types of EMFs. Of course, the electromagnetic spectrum is very large. It encompasses everything from the Schumann resonance, which is the natural magnetism emitted by the planet Earth, which we actually need from a biological standpoint, up to microwave radiation, which is your cell phone. We also have visible light. Then we go at the extreme in nuclear radiation. All of these exposures have different dosages that are compatible with the body. 

One thing is generally true. Natural exposures tend to be more compatible with our biology. The sun, visible light, we do have a certain dose of sunlight that we can get safely. Then we can get risks or even skin burning or other things that aren’t pleasant if we get too much sun. It’s understood that these exposures are not only beneficial, but they are in fact needed for good health. 

With the Vitamin D research that is exploding in the last decade, it shows us that our health is intertwined with the sun cycle, not just on a Circadian rhythm level, but also Vitamin D production and overall immunity. Researchers think of Vitamin D as a hormone, not even as a vitamin per se. It’s even more profound than that. 

We are closely linked with natural EMFs. There are all the reasons to think that if you temper with the EMF environment by creating new EMFs in the form of cell phones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cell phone towers, smart meters, everything that emits these signals that were essentially never seen in nature in these forms, intensities, and specific frequencies, then you might get into trouble. 

The entire topic of EMF needs to be understood by understanding first that we are bioelectrical beings. There are many components of our bodies that need electricity or produce electricity or have censors that read electricity around the cell or the mitochondria. If we understand that, and we recognize that we are bioelectrical beings, it makes it at least plausible that if you have a bunch of different random signals around you, that might create confusion on these bioelectrical censors of the human body.

We are really talking about electromagnetic biointerference, which is not a topic that is often discussed. Engineers are very well aware of electromagnetic interference. If your cell phone and neighbor’s cell phone talk to each other, and it causes disruption, and you both drop the call, or you hear each other when you shouldn’t, engineers are going to step in there and say, “There is something unacceptable going on. We have poor connectivity, or we have crosstalk. We will solve it.” In the case of biointerference, not so much. 

Our safety guidelines are simply based on the wrong assumptions. These engineers do not have the obligation to minimize the amount of radiation that your devices emit. To the contrary, at the moment, it’s almost anything goes. The threshold levels of EMFs that are accepted, especially in the U.S, Canada, Australia, and most of the Western nations, is so permissive that these engineers go for the maximum amount of emissions. Why would they choose that? It’s not to harm people; it’s just for better connectivity. They are not trying to minimize the potential harm or risks. 

This is really the situation here. We are talking about how to more safely use these devices, considering that our safety guidelines are anything but safe at the moment.  

Dr. Eric: 

Those are great points. There is research out there, but they are not paying attention to the research. Now we have 5G, which is even more powerful. I don’t know if 6G is coming in the near future. Is it? 

Nicolas: 

Yeah. It never stops. Part of the discussion we need to have is it’s not just what we’re exposed to right now; it’s what we have been exposed to before. Previous technologies were also unsafe. Many people focus on 5G. They hear 5G and read things. “Oh, 5G is dangerous.” They are reading these 5G articles on the web on their 4G phone and maybe are under the impression that they are doing well. 

I wrote my book in 2017. Way before that, you had scientists in the 1980s emitting concerns over the first Nokia phones, the big bricks. In reality, this topic has always been prone to controversy. We need to understand that all past technologies, and for the moment, all future versions of this technology, will be equally unsafe because we are not basing these safety standards on the right thing, which should be how much disruption are these causing? Instead, they are focused on how much heating are these devices generating on the body, which is the wrong thing to look at. 

Dr. Eric:

Let’s talk about how much disruption they cause, at least according to what you’ve read and the research that you’ve done. How harmful can they be? 

Nicolas: 

There is a vast amount of research on EMFs. The thing that is very concerning to me is a large traction of the public, including engineers and intellectuals, think there is no studies. I have even been told on Facebook- Of course, the Facebook comment section is not the most intelligent place for discussions. An electrical engineer told me, “This research that you are proposing is BS.” They weren’t so kind because they thought I was some sort of snake oil salesman or scam artist trying to create some elaborate scheme to extract money out of people by creating fearmongering around EMFs. They said, “Nick, there are zero studies showing that this radiation is harmful.” This is bizarre. If you just go on PubMed, you will find at least several thousand. 

We can say that some studies show no effect, and some do show effects. At least you can say to be fair that there is a mixed kind of literature.

Scientists are trying to pull together these studies on different topics such as, for example, cancer and cell phones. Is there a link between talking on a phone on the ear and different types of cancer of the head and neck, including thyroid cancer, which is increasingly being studied as we speak? It depends on which scientist you ask this question. 

You have groups of scientists, including top-educated etiologists who are recognized as great etiologists, such as Dr. Anthony Miller, who had great success in his scientific career around environmental pollutants. He said in 2018 that the data we have was sufficient to reclassify this agent called “radiofrequency radiation.” Radiofrequency is cell phones, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. He said it should be reclassified as a class 1 carcinogen. Six years ago, he said that it should be next to asbestos and cigarette smoking. 

If it were reclassified, I think the public perception around these risks would change. Of course, like you said very perfectly, it’s not like the entire population will die of a brain tumor. However, since we have nearly every single human being on the planet using a phone, if you change a small fraction of a percentage in brain tumors, you’re killing a bunch of people. 

The more the population is exposed to an agent, the greater the risks if we get it wrong. It’s part of the precautionary principle. If a technology is rolled out to the entire population, how much we assess the risk. The quality of our science needs to go way up compared to an agent that is used occasionally or in certain industries. Now we are talking about exposures to every single human being. Even more than that, we are talking about exposures to everything biological on the planet since we are rolling out these cell towers and global satellites around the planet, which is another rabbit hole.

As far as what kind of science we have besides cancer, there is good reason to think that our fertility is impaired by these things. Not only might it affect the thyroid hormones, but also, if you have a phone in your pocket, you might impact how much, for example, the tests will be producing testosterone. That plus maybe the quality of sperm can go down. It’s still being argued by different scientists. 

Some of them are quite convinced that there is a direct link between keeping a phone in your pocket and a reduction in fertility and testosterone. There are men out there who always laugh at this. “Perfect, I don’t want any more kids,” but they do want their testosterone and their longevity as well. Don’t disregard these risks.

As far as the thyroid goes, there are links between even just the presence of cell towers and thyroid dysfunction in certain studies. One of them found that you’re more likely to get hypothyroidism—which is very rampant these days, as I’m sure you’re talking about all the time—if you live within 300 feet (100m) of a cell phone station. The problem is these days, it’s becoming extremely likely that if you live in a city, you will be within this distance of a cell phone station because they’re everywhere. 

Now, with 5G, one of the big problems is the proximity of these antennas to the population. Even if you turn off your own phone, well, if you’re exposed to the cell towers, you might get these negative health effects as well. 

I was just looking at a review from 2019 called “The Possible Global Hazard of Cell Phone Radiation on Thyroid Cells and Hormones.” They said that more research is needed. It tends to be in every study you find on EMFs these days. More research is needed. It’s slow and tedious. Most of these lines of research will take a few decades to become strong enough. With enough studies of high quality and independent studies, we have a conclusion. 

However, the research has already said we think exposure by cell phones may negatively influence the iodine uptake in the thyroid gland or increases temperature effect on the thyroid gland. They also said that their reduction in diameter of thyroid follicles is potentially linked with cell phone radiation. 

Many of these researchers don’t talk about public policy. Does it mean cell phones are safe or unsafe? They just put the research out there and hope that WHO or a large governmental body will pick up these studies and do something with them. But many of them recommend against holding a phone to the head. 

It’s interesting because this is not what we hear from the governments at all. One of the only governments in the world that has been forced by its Supreme Court to communicate these dangers is the Italian government. A few years ago. That was after the Supreme Court found that a man was killed by a brain tumor, and they found causality between the tumor and his cell phone. They slapped the wrist of the government, saying you will be forced by your own justice to communicate these risks to the population. 

Let them know you can use your phone more safely by using speakerphone or headphones instead of putting it next to your thyroid and parathyroid gland and auditory nerves and all these delicate structures around your head and neck. If you don’t do that, then you’re avoiding most of the risks. 

Right there, you have many scientists who studied the topic argue: Why aren’t we erring on the side of safety while we’re waiting for these studies to become conclusive? What I see online and what I see from skeptics is, “No, I want definitive proof of harm. Then I’ll do something.” This is backwards thinking. It doesn’t work in public policy.

We have done that plenty with different agents. Agents are rolled out, and we say, “Oh, you know, we don’t see big dangers with lead.” 10 years later, we say, “Well, we think that we’re overexposed.” Every 10 years, the level of lead that is considered safe goes down. Eventually, I think most scientists agree that there is no level of lead that is acceptable in the body. Yet we do have occasional exposures.

The same with cell phone radiation. We are really far from that. Instead of preventatively lowering exposures from phones and maybe putting the cell phone towers a little bit further away from the population in case these effects exist, we are doing the opposite: bringing the cell phones to the population, making the phones stronger. It’s really where we’re doing it massively wrong with this entire story of health effects.

Dr. Eric: 

That was a great analogy with lead and other agents in the past. As you mentioned, why not just err on the side of caution and be safe rather than take the risks, even if it is controversial? Like you said, it’s backwards thinking. 

It could affect thyroid hormones, fertility, including testosterone, potentially also cause thyroid cancer. Is there any evidence that EMFs can play a role in autoimmunity, like compromised immune system and increased susceptibility? 

Nicolas: 

There are several papers showing different effects on immunity. It’s difficult because in many situations, certain exposures, especially when you are studying mice or rats or animal models or even just cell cultures, at certain exposure levels, you find effects like increasing immunity, but in certain other conditions, a decrease in immunity. 

It looks like in certain situations, we can adapt to the exposure. Maybe even the stress of this radiofrequency could make us stronger, act like a sort of hermetic stressor, like heat exposure or cold plunges or exercise. In other situations, when it’s chronic exposure, you see a depression, a downregulation of the immune system at many levels. 

As far as autoimmunity, there is not a lot of evidence, but we have certain researchers such as Dr. Trevor Marshall, who is a professor in California at the Autoimmunity Research Foundation, if I recall correctly. He basically ran a study with participants that had various conditions that are autoimmune, including lupus and other autoimmune conditions. I am not familiar with all of them. 

He basically shielded them against this electro smog at night. 90% of them said that they slept much better and started seeing their symptoms of different autoimmune conditions go down. He concluded himself that this is bizarre because if we believe the statistics, there should be around 3-5% of individuals who are electrosensitive that might be helped by these shielding strategies. He makes the case that people with autoimmunity are that much more likely to be electrosensitive and feel these effects.

Also, he said that in the future, an important component of autoimmune protocol to get better would be to shield against these external radiation stressors. That is something very radical to say, but he’s been studying the topic for over a decade now. He is considered an expert in autoimmunity. I don’t think many of his colleagues would necessarily agree because that is a fringe topic to study. I think it makes sense. 

Anecdotally, there are many functional medicine doctors who I connect with on a regular basis who see these patients come in, and they are affected by multiple things. Sometimes, they have autoimmune conditions. Some of them have multiple infections. They have low thyroid or hyperthyroid. Sometimes, they have 10 different things going on. 

One of them that holds true for all patients is that when they start reducing EMF exposure, everything seems to work better. Is it because you’re improving sleep and therefore overall healing? It might be one thing. It might be because you’re decreasing stress. There are different reasons. 

It looks like EMFs can worsen almost any condition out there, just like eating a diet of McDonald’s or Wendy’s will also do the same. In that sense, these man-made EMFs are almost the junk food of signals or frequencies if you will. 

Dr. Eric: 

Did I hear you correctly, that 3-5% of people are electrosensitive? 

Nicolas: 

It depends. Different scientists will have different assessments. I’d say 3% is very common among scientists. 3% are hypersensitive. That would be those who have a very hard time with EMFs. Normally, these people can pinpoint that certain exposures are causing them massive symptoms. Almost like a Celiac person knows they’re Celiac and eats bread; they can pinpoint that, “I ate my bread, and now I feel horrible for days on end.” 

Same thing can be said for 1-3%, some say 3-5%. Other scientists say there might be a third of the population who has mild to moderate symptoms, including a reduction in sleep. Maybe they feel more depressed, or they have different neuropsychiatric effects such as depression, anxiety, OCD-type behavior. That would be a third of all adults. 

Something I talked about in my 2024 summit on electrosensitivity, these two researchers on electrosensitivity had predicted that 50% of the population would be sensitive, based on the last studies, all the surveys they did in different countries. The curve was going up and up like in a hockey stick graphic. 

They asked the question in 2006, “Will we all become electrosensitive and be sickened by this technology?” I don’t know the answer to that. However, many doctors and even average laypeople who are fairly healthy changed their habits around technology and started feeling better. 

There is this difficulty to assess how much EMFs have contributed to my own health challenges, or even is preventing me from reaching my full potential. If I feel very well right now, do I feel 80%? In reality, I’m missing this extra 20% because of these exposures. If you cut down on EMFs, turn off Wi-Fi at night, turn off your phone, some of them realize, “I sleep much better. I thought I had reached the peak of my health, but it turns out that some of these gadgets around me were keeping me down. Now I have my full potential.” 

Same thing is seen in many professional athletes who know about the topic. I think increasingly, they will be interested in the topic although it’s tough because some of them are using censors and a lot of EMF things to perform better. It’s all a balance, especially not necessarily having these things with you at night. In the future, we’ll see EMFs being part of the discussion about the factors that we need to at least control in our environment. 

Dr. Eric: 

I’m glad you mentioned turning off devices before going to bed. If someone is having sleep issues, that’s something I definitely bring up. We are so quick to take supplements like melatonin and others to help with sleep. A lot of people overlook the impact of going on the computer an hour before going to bed or being on their cell phone and keeping their Wi-Fi plugged in at night. Those are simple changes. Unplugging the Wi-Fi every night, or having a switch, like a timer, to automatically turn it off and turn it back on in the morning. 

Would you say ideally a couple of hours before going to bed, people should stop being on devices? 

Nicolas: 

There are many aspects to this. Variations of radiation that connects your phone to a cell tower, not only is this impacting your melatonin possibly and shifting your brain waves in a way that is not conductive to great sleep. In fact, it will cause sleep onset delay. You are trying to go to sleep, but you toss and turn. Your brain is not going in the right type of brain waves that it needs to go in order to fall into your first sleep cycle and go into deep sleep and REM and cycle through these different cycles throughout the night.

I would say not only is radiofrequency a problem, but also the visible EMFs that are emitted by devices. Two hours before bed is good. I personally advocate for the use of blue-blocking glasses that help mitigate some of the problems with light.

In the scope of my work, especially during sleep is when you want to absolutely make sure that your cell phone is not emitting 4G/LTE/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, all these signals under your pillow. The reality is you have 75% of the population in some studies that have a cell phone near their pillow. 

Those that use airplane mode, in one study I saw from a few years ago, was 20%. It’s still not that popular. 2/10 people made me a little bit happy, I must say. I thought it might have been 3%, something very depressing, to be honest. But 20% is not enough. 

We know that it can impact sleep. We also know that for some people, it’s not just a small impact on sleep. It might be a huge impact. There are genetic differences, and there are also health status differences in different people. 

It looks like the stability of your bioelectrical system also will change with your overall health. That’s just an overall systems-thinking perspective here. If you’re in better health, you’re better able to handle occasional things that make you weak, such as alcohol, junk food. Maybe you drink one night, and the next day, you’re fine to go jogging, whereas someone in extremely poor health or chronic fatigue might do one workout or have one glass of wine and feel very fatigued from that same exposure. 

The same looks like it’s true for EMFs. Your ability to handle radiation might be way better if your overall health is better. That’s another reason if you already have autoimmune issues or thyroid issues, you should be more motivated to turn off the EMFs under your pillow. 

One thing you can do is charge your phone in the next room. I know a lot of parents use their phone as their emergency line for their kids. Maybe they are getting older. They are going out at night for the first time. They don’t feel good about turning off their phone at night. They never listen to me. That’s fair. Put it in the bathroom or on the kitchen table, somewhere you’ll still hear it, but make sure it’s not right next to your pillow. You shouldn’t be able to reach out to your phone. It’s just a distraction. Also, the radiation it emits will negatively impact your sleep. 

Dr. Eric: 

You mentioned airplane mode. If it is in airplane mode but still nearby within arm’s reach, is there still concern of some radiation? 

Nicolas: 

It’s more complicated than that unfortunately. You can be on airplane mode and still have Wi-Fi on. You need not only to be on airplane mode, which turns off the cellular antenna, which is what connects to the towers. Also, make sure to turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. You need to be aware of these things, especially if you have the phone by your bedstand. 

Some people use basic EMF meters, which can help. Double check your work. If you don’t know if your phone is emitting or under which conditions it is emitting radiation, if you have a meter that screens, it shows you that your phone is still emitting a signal. If you have Wi-Fi, it will sound almost like a rifle sound. If you have Bluetooth, you’ll hear a clicking. If you have these sound indications, or even visuals in certain meters that your phone is still emitting, it gives you an indication that you’re doing it wrong. You should go in the menu and turn everything off.

Something I can mention that is not for sleep. A lot of people work nowadays in front of a computer, including myself. I am in a new environment today, and I do have to use Wi-Fi. In many situations, I’m back home and use an internet cable to connect my computer to the router. 

Regardless, if you have a Wi-Fi router or non-Wi-Fi router, which most people don’t have these days, the reality is that your computer is often much closer to your body and your thyroid for that matter compared to your router. Your router may be in a corner of your home or in the living room next to the TV, which is often the case. Your computer will emit a fair amount of radiation with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth all day every day for hours on end as you’re working on it. 

Something that can be extremely positive if you want to reduce your cumulative dose of EMFs is to use these wires to connect your computer. Some people perceive it as a retrograde or old-school idea, but it’s still feasible. In reality, if you go in businesses, a lot of commercial buildings still use ethernet cables. It’s still a great technology to use for rapid data transfer and also cybersecurity. Much safer on many levels than Wi-Fi. 

If you have a home office, and you don’t like your Wi-Fi and complain about it, hit two birds with one stone. Wire up your internet to your computer, and you can cut down on radiation and have a steady signal that never drops. 

Dr. Eric: 

I’m using ethernet. It’s not just to minimize Wi-Fi, but it’s a better signal. It’s more reliable. 

Shielding, you mentioned blue blockers. Earlier, briefly, you spoke about shielding. If you can’t get your smart meter removed, it does sound like you’re a supporter of shielding for EMFs. 

Nicolas: 

Yes. Cutting down on emissions is way more effective than shielding. Partial shielding might dampen the signals. An example is something that’s sold that you can put over your Wi-Fi router, which will dampen the signal 90%. The problem with that is we currently don’t even know what is a safe dose of EMFs. When you have 90% reduction, is it a 90% reduction in biological effects? Is it a 90% reduction in risk? Not necessarily. Is it better than nothing? Likely, yes.

Even with that, I would turn off Wi-Fi at night. When it’s turned off, you know you’re doing good. When you’re starting to go into reduction of EMFs such as lower EMF technologies, some of it I perceive as EMF washing, just like brainwashing is the perception that your product is healthier for the environment when in reality, you’re playing with words. 

It’s a bit tricky here to talk about how much these are contributing to lowering your exposure. There are shielding strategies that are more advanced that you can successfully use at home although they require a larger investment of time and money, such as shielding the bedroom. Increasingly so, certain environmental medicine doctors are recommending these strategies to their patients. 

You can completely shield a room either with a bed canopy over the bed that is made oftentimes of cotton and copper or stainless steel or silver mesh. It doesn’t look like metal. It really looks like fabric that you put over your bed. It will cut down all the exposures that would have come from the outside. 

This is especially important in patients who have this level of sickness, such as autoimmune conditions, or have these levels of exposures that are tremendously high because they live too close to cell phone towers for example. They don’t feel well in their home. Some people really swear by these different strategies that are applied and verified by biologists or EMF mitigation specialists.

One of these specialists is my colleague Brian Hoyer from Shielded Healing. There are plenty of specialists who can come to your home and do a survey. I recommend it for almost anyone who can afford it to be honest. 

Many people tend to fear the towers so much and say, “I see this tower. It’s ugly. It’s very dangerous.” But they don’t recognize that all of the other things that they have installed inside their home sometimes can be worse than what the tower emits toward their home. It’s sometimes very difficult to assess what exposure is a priority for you if you don’t have the EMF meters and then the expertise to survey the home for these sources. 

Dr. Eric: 

What are your thoughts about pendants? There are some pendants that supposedly protect you from EMFs, which I’ve been skeptical of. It would be great to put on a pendant. I’m sure even they wouldn’t say it’s completely going to shield you. Do they have any benefit at all in your opinion? 

Nicolas: 

Some electrosensitivity sufferers seem to do very well on certain technologies. There is a question: Does it play on a reduction of symptoms, or is it protective? This is where you don’t really see scientists endorsing these as a magic bullet. I think many people are looking for a magic bullet that says, “This is tedious, turning off the Wi-Fi at night. Thinking about the cell phone towers and how much I’m exposed. Instead, I’ll wear something on my person and be completely invincible.” This is a nice thought. This is something that is very appealing to our psyche. It does sound too good to be true. It is too good to be true, in my opinion. 

So far, I have seen different technologies seem to lower some of the biological effects of EMFs, such as, for example, certain technologies you can use in your bedroom to sleep better, even in a high EMF environment. Would that be beneficial? Yes. Are you also supposed to turn off the EMF sources in the first place? Yes. If you do both, you’re doing yourself a favor. If you rely solely on these different stickers on the phone and pyramids and solar energy devices, I think you’re under the illusion of protection. It’s a dangerous game to play. 

Why I’m still taking this position is since we have indications that some people could be killed by this technology, that’s a big word to use. If you get a brain tumor and a glioblastoma and you die from your cell phone exposure, that’s extremely sad. In many cases, this has already happened throughout the world. 

If you are under the illusion that you have a sticker on your phone, and you will never get brain cancer from these exposures, and yet in 10 years, you come back to me and say, “Nick, I think I’m going to die. I have a brain tumor,” I wouldn’t feel good about myself because we don’t know for sure if it removes any potentially carcinogenic potential of these emissions. We don’t know that. 

Yes, these gizmos and EMF harmonization devices should be explored, especially for people who are electro-hypersensitive. But I have seen none of them offer the magic bullet that many people are looking for. 

Dr. Eric: 

Thank you for sharing that. Before we wrap things up, I definitely want you to talk about your upcoming EMF Hazard summit. 

I also want to ask you about Oura rings or other devices like that. A lot of people use those at night to help them monitor their sleep and see their sleep quality. With Oura rings, you can turn off Bluetooth. I wanted to get your opinion, if you think there is also risk with those. 

Nicolas: 

What we know on shifting brain waves is concerning to me when you use wearables to track your sleep. The Bluetooth technology might be impairing your sleep. It’s a bit ironic in how these things are designed. 

However, the Oura is one of the brands that I appreciate because you can keep it on airplane mode while you sleep. It will store the data locally inside the ring. I don’t know how, but the technology is becoming so small it’s almost ridiculous. It’s just a little bit of data about your HRV and body temperature that are picked up by the censors. Then in the morning, you can put it out of airplane mode and sync the data to your phone to visualize it and say, “How am I feeling right now? How does it corroborate with the data I have?” Then put it back on airplane mode.

My amount of exposure I am getting from the Oura is next to nothing. However, a lot of other types of wearables emit Bluetooth sometimes multiple times per second. I have a problem with that. I don’t think it’s well-designed. I think that if the technology can be designed in a way that it stores the data locally, and it just will sync the data once per day, or on demand, why aren’t all types of wearables built this way? 

It’s just poor engineering. I would recommend against it. Maybe there are occasions where you want to track your sleep with certain sleep tracking devices that emit Bluetooth. You do it for a month. Then you discontinue the use. I wouldn’t be completely against it. Chronic, prolonged exposure would be a problem. I don’t think it’s going to serve you well. 

Dr. Eric: 

Thank you so much for sharing this information, Nick. Before we wrap things up, is there anything else I should have asked you that I didn’t ask you? Anything else you wanted to summarize? 

Nicolas: 

If you want to summarize how to reduce exposure quickly, focus on the bedroom first. That is something I remind people. 

There are two things we can talk about when it comes to exposures. If you start playing around with a meter, everything emits EMFs. It’s hard to think about your priority here. Living in the woods? Hiding in a cave? It doesn’t work for most people.

In reality, look at what is inside your bedroom that could be contributing to these exposures at night. Where are you spending most of your time during the day? Some people have a home office. My dad, for example, he’s a realtor, so it would be his car. He is in the car three hours per day minimum, sometimes more. For him, it may be turning off the Bluetooth function in his car and pre-downloading songs or podcasts on his cell phone. I don’t think he’s going to do it, but still, I have to keep trying to educate him.

Think about where you’re spending most of your time. Focus there. If you start to think about all EMF exposures, it’s like being concerned over all toxins. It doesn’t work. You have to prioritize. In that case, make sure you tackle the bedroom and then where you’re spending a lot of time. I think you’re going to be 90% of the way there.

Dr. Eric: 

Wonderful advice. Thank you so much for sharing. Where can people find out more about you? Feel free to share your website. Also, if you could talk about your upcoming EMF Hazard summit. 

Nicolas: 

Sure. TheEMFGuy.com is my website. There is my book, courses, and whatnot. 

The EMF Hazard Summit 2024 will be live from April 11-14. It is focused this year on what I call the hidden academic of electrosensitivity. We give people 20 different talks that are focused on electrosensitivity. We have presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as one of the headliners. We also have environmental medicine doctors who are specialized in treating EMF-sensitive patients. That is very rare that we can find these doctors who have the medical expertise to diagnose electrosensitivity and who have figured out how to get these people to a place where they feel better. 

Of course, regardless of if you feel better or not, you should still lower EMFs. For some people, the level of EMF reduction that they require to feel well is completely unattainable in a city. They can’t actually live in society anymore. Their life choices are that much more reduced by their circumstances. How can they go back to good health and a good level of sensitivity, where they can still travel? They can take a car and go see a friend. Or maybe they can spend a few days in a city that they want to visit. 

It’s for people who feel electrosensitive or don’t know if they are electrosensitive or not. April 11-14. I think it’s the best yet. I can’t wait to get your feedback. 

Dr. Eric: 

I am very excited as well. Thank you again so much, not only for this interview, but for the research you’ve done, the upcoming summit, the past summits you’ve done, spreading awareness. I think it’s such an important topic. Appreciate everything you do. 

Nicolas: 

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me and helping spread the word the way you’re doing it.

Recently, I interviewed Bronte May, and we talked about how she overcame thyroid autoimmunity, the complexities of thyroid healing, the need for a holistic approach, the importance of self-advocacy, the controversial role of iodine, and more. If you would prefer to listen to the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.

Dr. Eric Osansky: 

I am pleased to have Bronte May on today’s episode, talking about common oversights when healing, including talking about emotional healing. It’s going to be a great conversation.

Let me go ahead and give Bronte’s impressive bio here: Bronte May is a naturopath with a passion for thyroid health. She knows firsthand the multi-layered journey to heal from a thyroid autoimmune condition, having personally dealt with and healed from Graves’. She understands how healing the emotional aspects of the disease can unlock deeper healing, and how mindset coaching can support this often challenging journey. 

Interweaving a variety of modalities from her toolkit, Bronte facilitates healing on a cellular and soul level to create space for self-healing. Bronte also offers an individualized 12-week one-on-one thyroid healing program and a 10-week group program, where she guides you through steps and tools that worked for herself and her numerous thyroid clients. Her programs are life-changing. Thank you so much for joining us, Bronte. 

Bronte May: 

Thank you so much for having me here.  

Dr. Eric: 

This is going to be great. Very excited to chat with you. Before we get into the common oversights, definitely want to dive into your background. I gave it away a little bit in the bio, but we’ll have you expand on your journey a little bit. How are you doing what you do right now? 

Bronte: 

Sure. Quite a few years ago now, I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. Knowing what I know now as a thyroid naturopath, I was misdiagnosed. I had high antibodies, and they were not really spoken about. I even pointed them out to my GP, and she said, “Don’t worry about those.”

Fast forward to three years after that original diagnosis. I had a relapse, and I was very sick, not knowing it was my thyroid again until I did further testing. They sent me to an endocrinologist, and I was diagnosed with Graves’.

From that point, they gave me some treatment options, which sounded very scary to me and nothing that I wanted to choose: having my thyroid taken out or radioactive iodine. They spoke about the risks of staying on carbimazole long-term. That felt very scary for me. No one explained to me what the thyroid was, where it was, what it did, how important it was. I was sent off and told I had six weeks to make a decision.

In that six weeks, I reached out to a friend who was in the medical industry. We spoke about changing my diet. When I went back to the endocrinologist six weeks later, they asked what I decided. I said, “Well, I’ve decided to create my own fourth option” because I didn’t like the three options they presented. They asked what I meant. I said, “I’m going to heal myself with food.” They told me I was crazy.

Fast forward, that really helped. I got my antibodies down by changing up my diet. With a thyroid autoimmune journey, it’s not just about your diet. That’s so much more. That’s what I discovered.

Through that journey, I became very passionate about health. That’s what led me to become a naturopath and teach other women what I have done myself. 

I see it as negligence, that the medical industry is not looking at the whole person. No one said to me, and I hear this from countless patients as well, “What is your lifestyle like? How are you feeling? How are you sleeping? What are your stress levels like?” They are not asking about your toxins or any digestive issues or anything like that. They are not unpacking what’s going on in your emotional body. They’re not asking anything about your mindset. All of these things matter. 

That’s what I’m passionate about in guiding my clients and teaching them about the different aspects and the self-empowerment piece as well, how to advocate for yourself. 

Dr. Eric: 

Same here. In the United States, I wish I could say endocrinologists were more open-minded, but it sounds like they’re the same way. They’re dismissive of diet and lifestyle playing a role in the development of conditions such as Graves’ and Hashimoto’s. Pretty much when it comes to hyperthyroidism, they give the three options: antithyroid medication, radioactive iodine, or thyroid surgery. Sounds like pretty similar in Australia. Not too many natural endocrinologists. 

Bronte: 

We hear it so much here. “Don’t worry about changing diet; it won’t do anything for your thyroid.” Your options are medication or removal essentially. Shutting down your thyroid with radioactive iodine. Even when I went back and my antibodies went down, they weren’t curious to ask what I did. “Ah, it’s just luck.” I was like, okay. 

I hear that from my patients as well. People who are inquiring to work with me, my endocrinologist or GP said that changing my diet won’t change anything. “How can I get off medication? How can I heal my thyroid? Is it actually possible?” I get that question all the time: Is it possible? Yeah, it’s so possible. So many people do it. You’re helping countless people do the same thing as well. 

Dr. Eric: 

Obviously, we both agree. We both have experienced it ourselves and have helped many people. I would say with endocrinologists, I could understand that’s just how they’re trained. I would like to think if I was an endocrinologist, even if I was a little bit closed-minded, I would think I’d say, “I’m not sure if diet would help, but you can always give it a try. It’s never going to hurt. If anything, it will help to clean up your diet.” They don’t even say that. They’re very dismissive, saying, “No, diet won’t help at all. These are the only three options.” It’s very discouraging. I don’t see it changing anytime soon. 

Bronte: 

The majority of them aren’t even curious about it. There are some good ones out there. I have had some of my patients who have seen good endocrinologists, but they are few and far between unfortunately. I hope that begins to change. There is a lot of information out there. There is a lot of people waking up to understanding that there are more ways to heal than just the mainstream. 

Dr. Eric:

Let’s dive into those common oversights when it comes to thyroid healing. I’d like to start with iodine. There is a lot of controversy with iodine and thyroid health. Some people say to take really high amounts of iodine. Other people say you don’t want to take any iodine when you’re dealing with hyperthyroidism or Hashimoto’s. What is your perspective on iodine in both hyperthyroidism and Hashimoto’s? 

Bronte: 

It’s very important in both of them. There is a time and way to introduce it. Obviously, there is more caution when the person is hyperactive or has Graves’. 

In both cases, I’m always looking at the antibodies, making sure we can get the antibodies down to a more reasonable amount before we start to introduce iodine. Introducing it slowly, particularly for those Graves’ patients. Introducing it alongside selenium as well. There is a delicate balance in the dosage and making sure that you do have enough selenium supplementation alongside the iodine. 

It’s definitely important for both. I think the other misconception around iodine is it is only for your thyroid health. This is not true. It’s really important for immune function. It’s important for breast health. It’s important for detoxifying estrogen as well. It’s not just thyroid health. For some people who have had a thyroidectomy, they don’t think they need iodine, but you still do. 

There is a lot of misconception around iodine. That is definitely one thing to be working with someone who knows what they’re doing and knows how to introduce it into your supplementation and when to do it. 

Keeping an eye on it. Even though some people are really depleted in iodine, they may have Graves’, and it’s not the right time for them to introduce it. They can get a flare. Same with Hashimoto’s as well. Sometimes, it can elevate antibodies temporarily. People start to freak out about that. I think the best advice is to be working with someone who knows what they’re doing around how and when to introduce iodine.

Dr. Eric: 

Do you recommend iodine testing? 

Bronte: 

Yeah, the urine testing. Is that what you do as well? 

Dr. Eric: 

When I do iodine testing, yeah, I find urine testing to be more accurate than blood testing. There is the patch test, which when most people do, it will disappear relatively quickly. I was guilty of recommending that years ago. If I recommend iodine testing, urine is the way to go. 

Bronte: 

Yeah. There is also testing for bromine. There is a lab out here. I’m sure you probably have labs over there that test it as well. Because it’s a halide, we want to make sure we are also looking at the bromine levels. Our halides, like fluoride and bromine, can affect the body’s ability to uptake the iodine. Even though some people may, on a urinary iodine test, be presenting with enough iodine, they are not actually getting it because of the halides they are exposed to through bromine or fluoride, if they are drinking fluorinated water. 

Dr. Eric: 

I imagine you’re recommending to avoid water with fluorine, toothpaste with fluoride, and minimize other halides, like bromine or chlorine. Install a shower filter? 

Bronte: 

Yeah, we can’t do everything at once. Detoxing your lifestyle is a rabbit hole in itself. Same as trying to navigate your thyroid autoimmune journey can be a rabbit hole. This is why it’s really helpful to work with someone who can help you take it step by step. That is very important. 

If you are going to invest money into your health, I would highly recommend at least starting with a water filter and getting rid of your fluoride toothpaste. Very important for thyroid health. 

Dr. Eric: 

What are some other common oversights when it comes to thyroid healing? 

Bronte: 

Other common things that I often hear is people saying, “I tried the AIP diet or the paleo diet or another diet,” but often people are not trying it for long enough. You really need to be giving something a go for three months or three menstrual cycles to really understand if it’s going to be helping you or not. 

Yes, if you have major adverse reactions to something, like straight up, that may not be right for you. Just because you are following an elimination diet, it also doesn’t mean that all of the yes foods on the list are going to be right for you as an individual. It’s important to listen to your body, but it’s important to give it that time and the consistency. I feel that people probably only gave it 70% commitment. It’s really important there is a high level of commitment, being really consistent and giving it the time frame. 

Dr. Eric: 

I agree. Following a healthy diet, like you said, AIP or paleo for 30 days is obviously better than not following it at all. Still, I agree. It’s best to try to do it for at least three months. Sometimes it is a mental game, where you have to tell yourself you will start out with 30 days. Inside, knowing that after that, you hopefully will continue with that. Definitely agree with that.

Do you recommend for most of your clients an elimination diet? Do you recommend food sensitivity testing? A combination of both? 

Bronte: 

It depends on the patient who is sitting in front of me as to their personality type. It would depend on what sort of elimination diet. The AIP diet is extremely restrictive. For some people, it’s very stressful to do that. That is counterproductive in itself because it’s causing too much stress for them. I am a bit more flexible for some patients, so I am doing a more paleo-style diet.

I also do testing. I have a hair test I do. It’s a biocompatibility test. It tests for over 600 items. It gives you an exact list of yes and no foods for you as an individual. Some patients choose that option, so they have an exact list to go by.

It’s coaching them around how to effectively create healthy meals. How to eat to optimize your digestion and get your nutrients from your food. 

Dr. Eric: 

We both agree three months sometimes longer. Let’s say three months go by, and someone is following a paleo diet, and they are not really experiencing any improvement in the symptoms. Maybe even the blood tests haven’t improved. What would be the next step for that person? 

Bronte: 

For that person, I’d be looking at other things, like underlying infections, toxin exposure, looking at their stress levels, looking at their sleep. Also, really going deeper into how they are as a person. How are they managing stress? How do they think? How is their relationship with themselves? Going even deeper than that. Looking into trauma history as well. 

I believe that the root cause of any disharmony—is what I call instead of illness or disease. Any form of disharmony really is in the emotional body. How we have responded to things that we have encountered in life. There is a bit of a list there.

I have a story of a patient who was doing all of the things. She was so consistent, so compliant, so committed. She still had symptoms that weren’t correcting with her digestion. I needed to investigate further, and we did a gut test for her. She came up with four infections in her digestive tract. 

It does pay to do further testing as well. If you find that your symptoms aren’t correcting, there are so many other aspects we need to be looking at. Gut health is a big part of it. Like I said, looking at mindset and the emotional components as well. We’re a whole person. We’re not just this physical body; we do need to look at all the physical aspects. I do believe we need to go beyond the physical aspects as well. 

Dr. Eric: 

You would agree that diet is important, but it’s usually just a piece of the puzzle. Changing your diet alone usually is not going to completely help someone with hyperthyroidism or Hashimoto’s reverse their condition. 

Bronte: 

No. Some people might be really lucky, but it just won’t be what you ate that caused your thyroid imbalance or thyroid autoimmunity. It’s an accumulation of many components over time. Our health is accumulative. 

While you may very likely reduce your symptoms by just changing your diet, as that was my story. That’s all I did, and I didn’t have anyone guiding me through the other aspects, the initial stages of my own healing journey. Yes, I got my antibodies down, and they also went back up when I got stressed. I realized stress is a big part of it. 

Through my journey, I realized there is so much more to this that I needed to dive deeper into: looking at my gut health further, looking at underlying infections, going deeper again. I found out early on about the mindset stuff. 

I had a breakdown in the supermarket because I was- You know when you have Graves’, you are always hungry. You constantly eat 24/7, but you are never satiated. That was me. I was wanting to eat, eat, eat, losing weight. I was at work and hadn’t taken enough food to work. I went over to the supermarket to try to get some food. There is nothing there I wanted to eat. This was so frustrating. This was so hard. 

When I went home that night, I was like, “Okay, I can’t have this perspective on my healing journey. I can’t keep telling myself this is hard. I need to be focused on what it is of the direction I am moving in, and what is my goal? What am I moving away from? What don’t I want? What do I want?” I needed to get clear on that. I started working more on mindset. 

Fast forward again, I realized that I needed to look into traumas and life events that have happened that have caused imbalance in my system, in my energetic system and emotional system. That was contributing to an imbalance in my physical system. There is a lot of different components to look past. 

My advice is to take a step. You don’t need to do all the things at once. In fact, I wouldn’t even recommend all the things at once. It’s overwhelming. The physical body is a good place to start. You will start to get symptom relief and feel better. You feel like you have more space and capacity to start to look at other areas. Maybe your next step is looking at detoxifying your lifestyle, living a more low-tox lifestyle. Then you might move into mindset, which you should do near the beginning. That’s what I do with my patients. If you don’t have someone guiding you, you decide what you introduce when because you’re the pilot of your own flight. But I would look at mindset. 

Then when you have more understanding of how you operate, then you have more confidence and hopefully tools to be able to unpack what is in the emotional body.

Dr. Eric: 

Start with the physical changes: diet, mindset. Then maybe later on, incorporate more emotional healing? 

Bronte: 

Yeah. I think that’s the best way. If you start to unpack some emotional healing in the beginning when you are feeling really crappy because you have an overactive or underactive thyroid, so you could be anxious or depressed, it’s not the right time to be looking at all the emotional stuff. I feel like it’s better to get your thyroid in balance first. Start to reduce your symptoms. You will start to feel a bit more like yourself, so you have more capacity and energy to be able to start to look at the emotional components. 

For some people, there is a lot there. A lot of my patients have very big stories, and there is quite a bit to unpack. There is quite a bit of trauma. 

Dr. Eric: 

You mentioned the example where you did a stool test, you found the four gut infections. Is that dependent on the person, like the person’s case history? When should they consider doing a stool test to look at gut infections, for example? 

Bronte: 

It’s dependent on the symptoms that you’re presenting with as well. Some people may have really extensive digestive issues, so you might want to be testing much earlier on. For a lot of my patients, I don’t need to do stool testing because the process that I take them through to heal their gut works. 

For this particular patient, it wasn’t correcting. It’s not that she wasn’t compliant in what we were doing; she was extremely compliant, very committed, and that’s why I was baffled. Why is this one not correcting? We need to look further. 

If you are doing all of the things, and the symptoms are not correcting, then look further. Or if you’re feeling really horrible, like you have a lot of digestive issues, like bloating, food intolerances, chronic constipation, or loose bowels multiple times a day (3+ times), which is consistent every day, you might want to be looking into doing a gut test to see what’s happening there. That is certainly not normal to have so many digestive issues. 

For some people, if they’ve had digestive issues for such a long time, that becomes their normal. But it’s not normal. I’ve worked with people who have had a bowel movement 3-4 times a week their whole life, so they figured that was normal. Same with people who experience PMS. They think that’s normal, and it’s not. It’s common, but it’s not normal. We want to have a bowel movement every day, 1-2 times a day. You don’t want to be having PMS symptoms either. When your body is in balance, you will be having regular bowel movements, and you won’t know when your period is coming, as you generally won’t have too many symptoms. 

Dr. Eric: 

Any other common oversights that you didn’t cover? 

Bronte: 

I think we covered it all. We talked about giving it enough time, being consistent, being compliant, the iodine piece, further investigation, getting further testing. We talked about the mental and emotional aspects as well.

Dr. Eric: 

When it comes to patient compliance, as far as the timetable for people to heal, as it does take a commitment. Some people have unrealistic expectations and might think that within two months, especially if they have Graves’ or Hashimoto’s, probably takes quite a bit longer, maybe not to start feeling better, but to reach the point of remission. 

What do you find in your practice with your clients as far as on average? Everybody is different. How long does it usually take for someone with Graves’ or Hashimoto’s to get to the point where they are fully healed? 

Bronte: 

Like you said, the timeline is very case by case. I do a 12-week program. Some people may think they are going to do that program, and then they’re good. That’s not the case. That’s why we say you need three months. That’s where you have to give commitment to heal the gut and reduce inflammation. But that is only the beginning.

What you do after that is so important as well. Your lifestyle needs to change. What you did before you started on your healing journey, all of the different things that you were doing that contributed to you having this imbalance in your body, having a thyroid condition. You can’t go back to those habits. It’s about learning to change your lifestyle and habits and identity around who you are and how you view your health.

The time frame, I would say for most people, is at least a year. For many people, it’s a couple of years. I’ve had the odd patient who got into remission in three months, but I rarely see that happen. She was lucky. I shouldn’t use the word “lucky” because I was upset when my endo said that to me. She was very committed, but she also didn’t have a lot of other things to be dealing with. She had already low-toxed her life. Her body just corrected quickly.

You need to give it at least 12 months of reasonably high commitment. I feel like the first three months needs to be the highest commitment you can give yourself. Then you can start to be a little more flexible and start to introduce some foods back in. Consistency is key.

Even now, me, years later, over Christmas, it’s not like I am going weeks and weeks of drinking alcohol every day and having sugar every day or eating gluten or dairy. It’s not part of how I am. I have completely changed the way that I view health. My identity doesn’t identify with that.

We were talking about this with a client yesterday. When you drive past McDonald’s or KFC or any sort of fast-food joint, I do not even associate that with food. Not even one percent of me would consider going in there, or eating a pizza with gluten and cheese. To me, that’s not food. You guys don’t’ have Tim-Tams over there. I wouldn’t eat packaged biscuits. If you go to your aunt or granny’s house, and they have biscuits there, I have no desire to eat it. I completely changed my identity around how I view food and how I view what I do with my body. I see my body as my temple. A bit of a tangent there with that answer. 

It’s an ongoing thing to heal. For you to reach remission, I can’t give a time frame. I would say for the average person, it would be at least 12 months. Then to stay in remission is that consistency and commitment and devotion to your temple, to your body. It really is a personality and a lifestyle shift to be healthy. It’s not just I do it for a snapshot in time. 

Dr. Eric: 

I agree. I’d say the average is 12 months. Everybody is different, so some people might take longer than that, or a little bit less than that. Three months, that’s rare, unusual, like you said. It sounds like maintaining a state of wellness overall, still eating a pretty healthy diet, living a healthy lifestyle, which I do as well although I admit I can’t deny that I sometimes have cauliflower crust pizza. I can’t say I’m completely pizza-free. 

Bronte: 

No, I do have different types of pizza. I wouldn’t sit down to a regular pizza with heaps of cheese and a normal gluten base. 

Dr. Eric: 

You do indulge every now and then with different foods. 

Bronte: 

Yeah. It was my birthday just last Friday, and I had sparkling red. I drink alcohol, but I don’t do it every week. I don’t even do it every month. 

You get to decide what is your level of commitment, so you can still have balance in your life. If you come from a European background, say, family and food is a big part of who you are. So much of that culture is around food and getting together with family. You might choose how you’re going to navigate that. You don’t want to completely not have those foods. 

You decide what is the right balance for you. What is your level of commitment? Is 70/30 where your balance sits for you once you have passed the main part of your healing, once you get past 6-12 months? You get to decide what your level of commitment is. 

I’m about a 90/10. That doesn’t stress me out. My devotion to my wellness is my joy. I get a lot of joy out of being really healthy and looking after myself. For some people, it’s not like that.

What I would say to those people is have a look at your identity. What is underneath all of that? Why do you think that way? It’s not that it’s right or wrong. It’s interesting to look at how we identify with health, how we identify with food. 

There is a big emotional component to it. So many people have an emotional attachment to food. That’s ingrained in us from childhood. You go to a birthday party, and you’re celebrating the birth of this person. Look at the food on the table. None of it is food. When we celebrate, we are putting poisons into our body. If you do really well at school, your folks are like, “Let’s go celebrate. We’ll go to Pizza Hut.” Those are toxins, right? 

When you’re an adult and have had a tough week at work, “I deserve to have a pizza or ice cream and a bottle of wine because it was a shit week.” You’re just punishing yourself even more by doing that. We all have these patterns until we become aware of them. It’s like becoming aware of what is driving that? If I have had a really crappy week, my default might be, “I am going to crack a beer open or pour a glass of wine. Really, what do I need?” 

So many people are afraid of connecting with their feelings. Can I actually sit with the feelings that are present? Can I actually make space for them to be felt, to be witnessed, instead of being pushed down and ignored? What do I actually need? Do I just need to have a good cry? Do I need to move my body? Do I need to ask someone for a hug? Do I need to reach out to a friend because I need someone to hold space for me and have a chat? 

Understanding what it is that I need, and meeting those needs with something that is not food. There is a lot to unpack when it comes to changing your lifestyle and resetting your identity of yourself, especially when it comes to wellness. How we respond to life really does have an influence over our physical body. 

Dr. Eric: 

I agree with all of that. I want to go in a different direction now. Maybe I should have brought this up in the beginning because this is more about staying safe while restoring your health. I think it’s important to chat about this because obviously, your background, you help people get into remission, restore their health. 

But when you dealt with Graves’, you did take carbimazole. A lot of my patients take antithyroid medication; it all comes down to risk versus benefit. Some people don’t want anything to do with medication. Same thing with Hashimoto’s. Some people should be on thyroid hormone replacement but don’t want to be on it. 

When I dealt with Graves’, I was able to avoid antithyroid medication, but not everybody can do that. I do work with people in the US who are on methimazole. Carbimazole converts to methimazole. 

Was there any hesitation at first when you took the carbimazole? Did you weigh those risks and benefits? “I don’t want to take the medication, but I know that it’s risky not to manage the symptoms.” Knowing that you are also going to try to address the cause of the problem, which you successfully did at the same time. 

Bronte: 

This is a part of my story I haven’t openly shared too much about. I do with my patients, but I don’t think I have on a podcast.

When I was initially diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, I was pretty unwell. When I had that relapse three years later and was diagnosed with Graves’, I was actually suicidal. I thought because before my initial diagnosis of hyperthyroidism, I had depression and anxiety, and I was on antidepressants, which I didn’t want to do, but I had quite a lot of stories and trauma to unpack from my childhood. I went and saw a naturopath, and we did a six-month detox before I went on antidepressants. It helped, but it wasn’t enough. I needed the antidepressants.

When I was coming off those is when I got diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. I was a bit scared that it was me going off antidepressants. I will get to the answer of your question.

I did go on the carbimazole because I had a lot of symptoms. My eyesight was weird. I had heart palpitations. When I had the relapse, I was very mentally unstable. I thought my depression had come back because I was off antidepressants at that point. I was seriously thinking to end my life. I planned how I was going to do it. I went to see the doctor. 

I couldn’t walk up a couple of stairs without losing my breath. I would go to the gym, and my heart rate would go up to 190 within 60 seconds. “This is not normal. Maybe I have a heart condition.” 

When they diagnosed me, the doctor said, “All of what you’re experiencing, you don’t have depression or anxiety. This is a thyroid condition, so it’s physiological and not psychological. Don’t worry, you will start to feel better quite quickly.” The antithyroid medication worked pretty quickly. I started to feel so much better within less than a week of being on the medication. 

If you don’t want to go on the medication, that’s your choice. It’s your body, and it is your choice. Listen to what it is that your body actually needs. If you’re like me and very mentally and emotionally unstable, it might be a really good idea that you do go on the medication, even it is for a short term, because you can get off it. If you get your thyroid removed, you will need to have medication. If you have really bad heart palpitations, that can be a risk. 

It is important to go on the medication to be able to support your body to come back into balance while you are also working on all of the other root causes, helping to support your body to heal holistically. That will support you to get off the medication, but the medication in the meantime will help you feel some kind of balance. 

That is my advice to any patients who come to me. How are you feeling? I’ve had a patient who came to me with T4 so high. I think she was 80-something. How are you sitting here normal, not losing your mind? Mine wasn’t that high, and I really wasn’t coping. I was crying every day. My coordination was off. I did a chef apprenticeship. I remember before I was diagnosed at my relapse point, I couldn’t coordinate in the kitchen. I was cutting myself all the time. I was off. I had a rash all up my stomach and my chest. I wasn’t sleeping. I was sweating in the middle of the night in the middle of winter. 

This lady who had T4 over 80, she seemed so normal. I didn’t get it. She was someone who didn’t want to go on thyroid medication. I supported her with that decision, and we got her thyroid back into range. 

If it’s something that you don’t want to do, then do seek to work with someone that is going to help your body heal holistically. Also, consider that maybe it is something you just go on short-term. You can get off it with the right support and putting the right steps in place. 

Listen to your own intuition. Your body doesn’t lie. If you have such a strong aversion to doing something or not doing something, you have to listen to your own internal guidance system. The practitioners you work with will discuss the risks with you. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it is your decision. 

Dr. Eric: 

That is true. The truth is that not everybody can manage your symptoms naturally. Even when I dealt with Graves’, I was open to taking the medication. I just made that decision initially not to do it, but it’s not like I completely ruled it out. 

If people are already taking antithyroid medication, whether it’s carbimazole for those who are in Australia or the UK, or methimazole for those in the US, there is a risk to switch to the natural agents because they don’t always work. Things like bugleweed or high doses of L-carnitine can be effective, but the medication is more potent. 

The challenge with antithyroid medication is it can cause side effects. Obviously, if someone is taking antithyroid meds, and their liver enzymes are really elevated, or their white blood cell count is depressed, or they are having other symptoms, and then the medical doctor/endocrinologist is pressuring the person to do radioactive iodine or thyroid surgery, in that case, you want to look at alternatives. 

If someone is listening to this, and they are already taking medication and tolerating it well, as long as you are doing things to address the cause of the problem, I agree. You don’t want to get discouraged about taking meds because you are keeping safe while you are addressing the cause of the problem. 

Most people don’t do that. They just take meds and pray they will go into remission after a year and a half or two years. Obviously, since they are not doing anything to improve their health, a lot of times, they will relapse. 

Bronte: 

That is such an important point to speak to. Many people are doing the medication route without doing anything else and wondering why they are not getting better. They go back to their endo or GP and up their medication, but it still doesn’t work.

I am particularly speaking to the Hashimoto’s people. They are taking thyroid hormone. A lot of times, they are on thyroxine, which is the T4 form, and it’s not working. Then their dose gets increased, but it is still not working. The underlying drivers are not being addressed. 

For a lot of these people, they are not able to convert T4 to T3, which is why they’re still feeling crappy. Upping their medication is not going to change that. If your body is not able to convert it properly, why? It’s not effectively getting into the cells. Why? We need to look at that. That is not what is being addressed in the mainstream. People are being let down in that regard.

It does really pay to be working with someone who is going to support you to understand how to approach your health from a holistic standpoint. Even if you only just want to do the physical aspects. “I am not looking at the mindset or the emotional.” Some people don’t want to or are not ready to do so. 

I would encourage you to look at the physical aspects and support the body holistically, so all of the systems within your body are working as best as they can be, that you are supporting those processes, so you can be converting your medication effectively, and you can get the energy you deserve to be having and reduce those symptoms. 

The hair loss aspect. You just taking thyroxine is not going to help your hair grow back. I’m sorry. It’s not going to fix that. Even if you are converting it properly, you’re probably still not going to get your hair to grow back effectively because you need other aspects. That is a common symptom with a lot of our thyroid patients, is the hair loss. It’s upsetting for women because we place so much emphasis on our presentation. We don’t want to be balding. I think the holistic approach is so important. 

Dr. Eric: 

Definitely agree. Is there anything else that you want to cover? Anything I should have asked you that I didn’t ask you? For those who want to know where to get started, you mentioned the physical aspects before getting into emotional healing. 

Bronte: 

Another important piece is to learn to advocate for yourself. I find a lot of patients, when they are going to see their endocrinologist or GP, and they get shut down, they are not feeling heard or seen or understood, or they’re told things like, “Oh no, we don’t need to test your antibodies because once they’re high, they’re always going to be high.” “I don’t test for iodine because I don’t know how to interpret the lab results.” I hear that a lot from patients’ doctors. Being shut down in their experience.

It’s learning to advocate for yourself. How you feel matters. What’s happening with you matters. Your voice matters when it comes to your health. If you’re not getting the support that you know that you want and need, and you actually deserve to get, I encourage you to find somebody else. Find another doctor to work with. Learn to advocate for yourself. That is even with your holistic practitioners. There are holistic practitioners out there who aren’t fully supportive either, who do shut down patients’ experiences. 

Listening to your own internal guidance. No matter what. Doesn’t matter who you are working with. You need to listen to what a yes or a no or a not yet for you is when it comes to your healing journey. Really listen to your internal guidance as to where to next and who to work with next. 

Just because you are working with one practitioner doesn’t mean that they need to be your practitioner forever. They might get you through this door or that door, but they might not have the key for the next door, so you might go need to work with someone else. Listen to that as well.

Dr. Eric: 

Well said. Bronte, where can people find out more about you? 

Bronte: 

I hang out mostly on Instagram, @BronteMay.Naturopath. Same for Facebook. My website is Bronte-May.com. 

Dr. Eric: 

Wonderful. Thank you so much. You shared a lot of great information. It was amazing having this conversation. Keep up the good work, helping others with thyroid and autoimmune thyroid conditions. 

Bronte: 

Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here and share this info with your audience as well.

Recently, I interviewed Dr. Jill Carnahan, and we talked about about her experiences overcoming numerous complex health issues, which is what her excellent book, Unexpected, is all about. If you would prefer to listen to the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.

Dr. Eric Osansky: 

I am super excited to chat with Dr. Jill Carnahan, who recently released an amazing book. I listened to the audiobook. It’s called Unexpected. Dr. Jill goes into detail about her health journey. Let me go ahead and dive into Dr. Jill’s impressive bio here.

Dr. Jill Carnahan is a board-certified, integrative, holistic medicine specialist, known as your functional medicine expert, often referred to as the Sherlock Holmes of medicine for solving the cases of the most well-known medical mysteries. 

Using state-of-the-art lab testing and biochemical analysis, she helps each patient identify the root cause of their illness by identifying nutritional or metabolic imbalances that may be contributing to their symptoms. Dr. Jill uses nutritional protocols and supplements, lifestyle changes, and medication to improve patient levels of function and always seeks to enlist the least invasive way to restore health and optimize healing. 

She has also sustained a 5+-year waiting list as the medical director of Flatiron Functional Medicine, a widely sought-after practice. As a survivor of breast cancer, Crohn’s disease, and toxic mold illness, Dr. Jill provides a unique perspective to treating a variety of complex illnesses and has traveled the world sharing her knowledge of hope, health, and healing live on stage as well as through newsletters, articles, books, podcasts, social media. Her memoir Unexpected is out now. That’s what we’ll be chatting about. Thanks so much for joining us, Dr. Jill.  

Dr. Jill Carnahan: 

I am delighted to be here. Thank you so much for having me.  

Dr. Eric: 

I enjoyed listening to your book. It was great listening to your health journey, even beyond your health journey because you discuss your divorce. I saw this summer, you actually interviewed your ex-husband on your podcast. 

Dr. Jill:

Yes, we have a lot to say about how you have a healthy relationship. He is in another relationship and engaged. I am so happy for him. It’s been a transition. We always say we didn’t do marriage so well, but we do business so well, and we have gone on to be great friends. That is so needed in our world, forgiveness and how we reconnect with other relationships that have changed over time. 

Dr. Eric: 

That is awesome. You have been through a lot: breast cancer, Crohn’s, toxic mold, getting a divorce. This really all started when you were young. According to your book, you were brought up on a farm, exposed to pesticides, took antibiotics, had your tonsils removed. A lot of people don’t tend to think about these things. As practitioners, we do, and we try to go back. I ask people commonly about antibiotic use and other things in childhood. You’re pretty confident that played a big role in your breast cancer diagnosis, maybe even your Crohn’s later on. 

Dr. Jill: 

This is part of the beauty and curse of medicine and being a medical detective. Ever since I had breast cancer at 25, I was like, why? Why did that happen? My last 20 years have been spent doing a deep dive into what factors contributed to my illness. What it’s allowed me to do, and you’ve had the same kind of journey, is really look at root cause medicine and what things contribute. I have no doubt that there were probably in utero exposures to chemicals, pesticides, and other things from the farm when I was young. A lot of these things are endocrine disruptors.

I don’t know if I mentioned this in the book or not. My sister had thyroid cancer. I had breast cancer at 25, and she had thyroid cancer at 28. Two girls, same farm, both endocrine-related cancers. To me, that’s even more evidence. Yes, genetics probably played some role. In my mind, genetics played the role in poor detox mechanisms. 

The environment on the farm. This is just anywhere because nowadays, rivers and streams and pesticides are all over the place. Of course, in the farm environment, there is lots of those. Because they are endocrine disruptors, they act as hormones in the body. They can disrupt thyroid, breast, and prostate for men. At 25, I was diagnosed with cancer. Looking back, hindsight is 20/20. We can start to see the patterns. 

What it’s allowed me to do is to look at patterns in my patients. “What of your lifestyle right now could be contributing to your chronic illness or potential future diseases? How do we reverse that?”  

Dr. Eric: 

Also, diet. You were also a vegetarian for quite some time as a teenager. It wasn’t a healthy vegetarian diet as you explain in the book. You were eating pasta and bread.  

Dr. Jill: 

Carbs. 

Dr. Eric:

I’m sure that also didn’t help. 

Dr. Jill: 

I want to speak to that. In hindsight, I grew up on a farm. It was steak and potatoes. It was a heavy meat diet. I realized right away very young that I didn’t feel very well. Looking back, it was low stomach acid, so hypochloridria, which leads to difficulty breaking down meat, so it doesn’t feel good in your stomach.

I was also zinc-deficient and B12-deficient, two things that are pretty critical. What we know about zinc deficiency is it can cause a lack of desire for taste in meat, or you don’t like the taste of it. Those things contributed to me deciding maybe I don’t need meat.

Of course, I wasn’t really schooled on what a healthy vegetarian diet is. I was 14 years old when I stopped eating meat. I gravitated toward carbs and processed foods. All I could get was processed soy, fake meat products. I joke because I say it almost killed me. 

Up until I was 25 and diagnosed with cancer, I was not eating a great diet. Unbeknownst to me, I had Celiac. I was eating a lot of gluten and didn’t know that was contributing to inflammation. Lots of bread and pasta. Not a great way to be a vegetarian. Nowadays, people can do well with that, but you have to be very deliberate about how you get your B vitamins and protein. From 14-25, I was not deliberate. 

Dr. Eric: 

You were a vegetarian until the breast cancer diagnosis? 

Dr. Jill:

Yes, for over 10 years. 14-25. 

Dr. Eric: 

Wow. After your diagnosis, was it a pretty quick change? Did it still take some time, like years later, when you started making dietary changes? 

Dr. Jill: 

What I also didn’t know is I was severely B12-deficient. I have some genetic mutations in my ability to absorb B12. When you take out the main source, which is meat, vegetarians/vegans are at risk for low B12. Most of them supplement because it’s hard to get enough B12 in a vegetarian diet. That is one thing we think about. I didn’t know this. 

I was zinc-deficient, low stomach acid. On top of that, I was silent or undiagnosed Celiac, which means I was already having atrophy of the absorptive surface of the gut. I was going into this malnourished. That particular diet, for me, did not help at all. 

Then I get diagnosed with breast cancer. I started looking at diet again. Didn’t make a huge change then. What happened was I got through three drug chemotherapy, which destroyed my gut. I already had a gut that wasn’t super stable, so it went to a really bad state after the chemo. Within six months, I started having gas, bloating, abdominal pain, bleeding, weight loss, all kinds of symptoms. 

I remember one day I am in the ER helping a patient get their blood pressure, and I literally passed out. I was taken into emergency surgery for an abscess for early sepsis. I woke up the next morning with a surgeon saying, “Jill, you have Crohn’s.” 

For anyone who doesn’t know what Crohn’s is, it’s an autoimmune disorder where your body attacks the gut lining. How weird that you had breast cancer and then Crohn’s. 

Let me tell you a story. I had this undiagnosed Celiac, so already a damaged gut lining. The chemotherapy that I took, especially cyclophosphamide, Cytoxan, is known to damage the permeability, the membrane that lines the gut. It basically induced a much more severe form of leaky gut, on top of my already undiagnosed Celiac. 

Then I had this gene I didn’t know about called NOD2, which makes me higher risk of developing Crohn’s. In this case, all it was was a hyper-responsive action to the microbial contents of my gut, spilling through the leaky gut into my bloodstream. That literally contributed to the Crohn’s. 

In my mind, it’s the perfect storm: undiagnosed Celiac, poor nutrition, B12 malabsorption, probable dysbiosis, meaning abnormal microbes in the gut. You take a drug like chemotherapy that causes more permeability, dumping the bacterial coating in someone who is very susceptible to this immune/autoimmune reaction. Bingo, you have Crohn’s. It makes sense, doesn’t it?

The Crohn’s was my opening of the door into diet changes. I sat with a gastroenterologist after I found my diagnosis. I needed to know what it meant. He said, “Lifelong medication. Probably immune-modulating drugs. You may need surgery to remove part of your colon.” He was very depressive with his prognosis. 

The last thing I said as I walked out the door was, “Doc, you know, I want to do whatever I can. Can I change my diet? Is there anything I can do?” He said, “Jill, diet has nothing to do with this.” I knew in my intuition that something didn’t sound right about that, even though I had no knowledge of a nutritional background then. So I started to go on a search to find answers.

That’s when I came across how a diet could potentially have something to do with it. I changed my diet. I got rid of gluten, processed foods. I completely revamped my diet. Within about two weeks, my symptoms of bleeding and pain were gone.  

Dr. Eric: 

Awesome. It’s sad. Even today, I get countless patients telling me that the endocrinologist told them that diet doesn’t play a role. Most of the people I see have Graves’ or Hashimoto’s or a non-autoimmune thyroid condition. Even if they don’t believe diet will play a role, why can’t they say, “It’s not going to hurt to eat a healthy diet, so you might as well give it a try?” Just to dismiss it, “No, diet definitely won’t help.” I am glad you made those dietary changes.

You mentioned silent Celiac. A lot of people think of Celiac as “I eat gluten all the time. I feel okay, so I probably don’t have Celiac or non-Celiac gluten sensitivity.” You weren’t experiencing symptoms for a number of years. 

Dr. Jill: 

In hindsight, of course. I had severe eczema and skin issues, which usually relate to leaky gut. I had some intestinal permeability. The zinc and B12 malabsorption are both common with intestinal inflammation, which I didn’t know until later. I was very tired. I pushed myself hard, so I didn’t realize how fatigued I was. Probably from that B12 deficiency, too. There were lots of signs and symptoms leading up to this.

I like to tell my patients this. If we check the genetics, there is a DQ2 and DQ8. These are the high-risk genes for Celiac. You can ask this of your doctor, and it’s very relevant to thyroid disorders as you well know. If you have those genes, even a half copy, even if you never in your lifetime get Celiac, the lifetime risk. The average age of diagnosis of true Celiac is 55 years old. 

As we know with autoimmune, you need a genetic predisposition, which is the genetics, like I had as well. You need an environmental trigger, like gluten over time. You need a permeable gut. When those three things are present, that is the triad of autoimmune disease. Celiac is a great example.

Say I have a patient with a DQ2 gene, a high-risk gene. You could go your whole life and never develop Celiac even though you are at 13-20% more risk. However, I think of it as a wagon wheel. In the center of that wagon wheel is that gene. One spoke is Celiac. The other spokes are Graves’, Hashimoto’s, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s, lupus, and multiple sclerosis. 

I could name any autoimmune disease and link it to that predisposition because we know that autoimmunity can come from that permeable gut and that constant barrage of microbial contents on the blood, on the immune system, creating inflammation that eventually ends in the body attacking itself. It can attack nerves in MS. It can attack the blood system in lupus. It can attack joints in RA. Any one of those things could be the outcome, even if you never get Celiac.

I say that all the time because people go, “Oh. If I avoid gluten right now, I could potentially prevent myself from getting an autoimmune disorder.” I say, “Yes. There is no guarantee, but you will definitely decrease that risk.”

If I could go back to my younger self and know all of this, I would have done my diet differently at 14 years old. 

Dr. Eric: 

You test genetics for Celiac for everyone. Do you also do a Celiac panel if they are eating gluten? 

Dr. Jill: 

The genetics are the predisposition you came into this life with. Like I said, the relevance is so important. I was shocked by the statistic that the average age of diagnosis of Celiac is not childhood, but 55 years old. That is a lot of decades of a barrage of the immune system before you actually become full-blown Celiac. 

If you think of the lining of the gut like the shag carpet in your ‘70s bedroom, that shag carpet starts to get ruined. You don’t have true Celiac until it’s almost down to a hardwood floor. A lot of damage has to happen for Celiac. You could have anywhere in between where there is lack of absorption of B12 or zinc or other minerals. You could have manifestations of fatigue. 

There could have been a connection to the cancer. I don’t think it was casual, but that whole immune inflammation, immune dysfunction certainly didn’t help me fight the cancer cells in my body.

In hindsight, all these things are relevant to tell the patient, “This is your risk. You have a choice today at 25 or 35 or 45 to change the trajectory of your illness.” If you know that, you can shift. 

What you ask about is the Celiac panel. In addition, which I also do, you can test for anti-gliadin, or deamidated gliadin antibodies. IgA and IgG. IgA is the mucosal lining, so that’s an early responder. IgG is systemic immune system. I do that as well. 

If you see that happening, that can either equal a non-Celiac gluten sensitivity, where they don’t truly have damage to the gut, but they are starting to have this very significant immune reaction to gluten. Or it could mean that they have full-blown ruining of that shag carpet that is leading to malabsorption and symptoms. It’s so core because I really believe that so many autoimmune diseases begin with part of this inflammation with our diet. 

Dr. Eric: 

My guess is if you do testing, let’s say the genetics are negative. Celiac panel is negative. It’s an autoimmune patient. Do you still have them avoid gluten? I’m thinking you do because it can affect the permeability of the gut and lead to other problems. 

Dr. Jill: 

What you are saying is you can have someone who comes in with no Celiac genes and no antibodies, so there is no known documented inflammation going on in the body. But, just like you alluded to, what happens is every single human post-prandial, meaning around four hours after we eat, with the consumption of gluten, it increases all of our permeability. 

Now, if you are perfectly healthy, with no sign of autoimmunity, no joint pain or brain fog, you feel amazing. Probably not a big deal. I don’t know about you, but for me, the patients who come to see me are not that class. They have multiple autoimmune diseases, sometimes chronic complex disease, sometimes unexplained brain fog, migraine headaches, joint pain, etc. Thyroid disease is rampant. Probably 8/10 of my patients have hypothyroid, Graves’, or Hashimoto’s, or some form of thyroid disorder. Because at least for me, that’s not the population I see. I really ask almost all of my patients to be gluten-free, most of the time dairy-free, and sugar-free. That is a core. I’m sure you’re similar. 

Dr. Eric: 

Yeah. I was going to ask you about dairy. You do have to avoid gluten, dairy, and sugar. Do you currently still avoid dairy? I know you avoid gluten. But dairy permanently, or do you sometimes have it? 

Dr. Jill: 

No, it’s been 20+ years now. I’m very stringent on my diet. I just feel so good when I’m eating clean. I am 99% grain-free. Maybe twice a month, I will have a little quinoa. That is the only exception. I’m completely dairy-free. All cow’s milk dairy of some types. Free of all sugar. I don’t do a lot of nightshades. There are a few other odds and ends. I don’t do soy or corn. 

This is another story. I definitely had significant bacterial and fungal overgrowth in my gut. Part of my healing completely from Crohn’s was dealing with that. Specific carbohydrate diet or candida diet, these are two separate diets. They are some of the ways we decrease those microbial overgrowths in the gut. I found years and years ago that those diets worked. A low glycemic, low grain type of diet. Soy and corn aren’t horrible, but in the U.S., they are so often sprayed with glyphosate and often triggers for immune issues. They are in everything, so we get so much immune exposure to them. 

The broader elimination diet would be gluten, dairy, egg, corn, soy, sugar, alcohol. That is a lot more, but that is also a little bit more expanded to include the most common allergens we have in the U.S. 

Dr. Eric: 

You had candida overgrowth and SIBO. 

Dr. Jill: 

Yes. Just in case someone who is listening who has Crohn’s or colitis, we do a conventional lab on a conventional panel with a conventional doctor called IBD Risk Score. What it does is checks among other things Saccharomyces antibodies. This is brewer’s yeast. If it’s positive, it contributes to a prognosis that is worse with Crohn’s. When I started to understand this, I found out that 80-90% of Crohn’s patients have an underlying fungal component. It’s tested with the antibodies. That is conventionally indicated with severity scores.

This is part of my healing, but even in my Crohn’s or colitis patients, if they have any evidence on organic acids or bloodwork of antibodies to candida or signs in the urine of metabolites of yeast or Saccharomyces, that antifungal regime, whether it’s a low sugar diet, caprylic acid, and gallic acid, oregano, I use all of those things in order to treat and heal patients from inflammatory bowel disease. 

Dr. Eric: 

That works with both Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis? 

Dr. Jill:

Yes. The main difference there is Crohn’s is systemic. You could have ulcerations all the way from the gut/stomach to the end of the bowel. There is more systemic manifestations. Ulcerative colitis is more localized. Localized ulcerative colitis often needs some sort of topical or enema treatment that is anti-inflammatory in that local area. Typically, they both can be driven by SIBO and SIFO. If you find the root cause, you can often reverse. 

I don’t think I mentioned this, but 20+ years ago, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s. I was told it was incurable. I don’t have Crohn’s any longer. There is no evidence of it. That is something the medical system doesn’t really understand. 

Dr. Eric: 

If you went back to the doctor and got diagnosed, which you probably didn’t do, they would blow it off. 

Dr. Jill: 

Right. 

Dr. Eric: 

You also had a toxic mold exposure. If you could talk a little bit about that, as well as how common it is. In your practice, I’m guessing it’s a lot more common. I don’t know if you have any data on averages. I know there is genetics. 25% of people have the genetics that make them more susceptible, having difficulty clearing the mycotoxins from their body. What do you see in your practice when it comes to mold? 

Dr. Jill: 

Mold is super insidious. Let’s do a 30,000-foot view for a second. You and I deal with complex chronic disease. I think Mark Hyman, our colleague, said I am the doctor of last resort. He’s the one who people come to. I tend to see a lot of people like that, too, who have been to a lot of places. The conventional system has failed them, and they still don’t feel well.

The biggest framework is complex chronic illness is usually a combination of toxic load and infectious burden. These old infections like EBV or tick-borne infections or mycoplasma, these underlying infections inside of a weakened immune system that is not keeping them under control. 

And then the toxic load. Of course, phthalates, parabens, pesticides, endocrine disruptors, glyphosate, Roundup. All these things. Also in that bucket of toxic load is mold and mycotoxins. Mycotoxins are the chemicals produced by molds to protect themselves. These are smaller than particulate matter 1.0 or even 2.5, which is the size of a virus. We can inhale them into our lungs. They don’t need transport. They can go directly into our bloodstream through the villi. 

That is significant because we could be for 5-10 seconds in a moldy building and start to have symptoms because it goes so quickly from the airborne sensation into the villi into the bloodstream. It’s very quick. People can tell right away if they are exposed if they are sensitive.

Back to my analogy of complex chronic illness. Mold is a big deal because it’s often hidden. People often don’t know. They just know they haven’t felt well since moving into a house. It’s often location-based, environmentally-based.

About one in four people have the genetics where they have innate immune inflammation related to mold that can cause all kinds of damage and symptoms and diagnoses. But usually, in a household, some of the people are infected more than others. It can be very confusing. You can have one or two who are fine, no problems at all. Then you have a father and daughter who are incredibly sick. It could be respiratory symptoms, like chronic sinusitis, sinus issues, pain in the eyes, sore throat, trouble breathing, asthma, allergies. It could also be systemic. Probably the most common thing we see is fatigue, brain fog, and cognitive issues. 

This is relevant when you ask about statistics. Dale Bredesen, who does a ton of work with Alzheimer’s and reversing Alzheimer’s, he’s one of our colleagues. He talks about percentages. He has been saying for years that one in three cases of early onset dementia is related to mold. That is staggering. That is 33% of people with early onset dementia. Early, meaning 40s and 50s and maybe early 60s, not the classical Alzheimer’s. it’s very significant.

I was just with him a couple weekends ago. He for the first time said 80%. His percentage is going up. I have been used to him saying 30%. This is younger people who are presenting with dementia and cognitive decline.

I say that because typically people come to their doctor and might have a new diagnosis of Hashimoto’s or Graves’ or another autoimmune condition, or their cognition isn’t sharp, or they are waking up with a lot of pain, or they are having exhaustion with no cause. Granted, there is other things we look at. If everything else is coming back negative, over and over again, the environment can play a role. Mold, I see all the time. 

One of the questions I hear is, “My grandmother had mildew in her shower. Is mold really that big a deal? Why is it worse now than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago?” There are a couple things. First of all, in the ‘70s, we knew that mold could grow in houses, and we started putting fungicides or antifungal, anti-mold substances in standard paint. When you paint the inside of your house, it probably contains an anti-mold and fungicide. That all sounds well and good. 

What happened is just like what we have seen happen with antibiotic resistance, as we give it more to livestock and humans. We have these superbacteria that we can’t treat. Mold is the same way. It’s really smart, and it has outsmarted some of those fungicides. When we have indoor microbial growth related to mold or water damage, very frequently, it’s aggressive, puts out more mycotoxins than we used to see. 

If you think about construction nowadays, it’s often more porous materials. Things are put up much more quickly. Maybe less quality in some cases. The surprising thing is a lot of people are having trouble with mold in new construction. It’s not always an old home. 

Dr. Eric: 

If someone just moved into their home six months or a year or two ago, obviously, if they have any type of noticeable water damage, it could be a problem. It could still be hidden even if it’s new construction? 

Dr. Jill: 

Yes. I keep hearing stories. This is my world, so I hear all the stories. Things like they installed brand new cabinets. When they drilled into a wall, they drilled into a pipe. No one knew about it. That pipe leaked into the wall for months or years until they realized that mold was growing behind the wall in their kitchen.

Anyone who has ever had a leak under the sink, a leak from their fridge, water leaching into the wall or near the fridge. A washing machine that leaks. A bathtub that overflows. A shower that wasn’t properly installed. 

We think about grout as being protective. But grout is porous. If you don’t water seal and properly install a shower with grout in the sealant, it’s porous. It will go straight into the drywall and create a mold issue. 

One thing I learned is a year and a half ago, one of my neighbors’ fridge lines leaked into my wall, down into my condo. We had a major mold issue. Ever since then, I disconnected the water line from my fridge. It’s not worth it. I make regular old ice cubes in the freezer the old-fashioned way. For me, it’s not worth having that water source that could leak in my wall ever again. I, probably no matter where I live, won’t ever hook up my water line to my fridge in the future just because of that risk. 

Dr. Eric: 

That’s interesting. We don’t have that on our current fridge, so we don’t have to worry about disconnecting it. At least I don’t think so. We don’t have water from the front. 

Dr. Jill: 

Then you’re good. I ask about air filters, water filters because clean air, clean water, clean food is one thing I say all the time. 

“I have a fridge filter.” Fridge filters are not cutting it. They are pretty minimal in terms of the quality of filtration you want anyway. I would never rely on that as your sole filter for water in your house. 

Dr. Eric: 

I use reverse osmosis. What do you like? 

Dr. Jill: 

I am going to mention this because this is so significant. I am in the state of Colorado. They recently tested our water supply a year and a half ago. Every single water body tested tested above the legal limits of PFAs, polyfluorinated compounds like Teflon. These are forever chemicals. That means the half-life, we can’t even calculate. I think 50 years is underestimating it. Probably hundreds of thousands of years, we will still have these chemicals in our environment.

If you’re not filtering your water in some form, you are behind the game. You’re getting chemicals in your body guaranteed. Tap water is no longer safe. Then what do you do? 

Reverse osmosis. You could put whole house filters or under the sink filters. Those are amazing. They are kind of costly. They take a little bit to install. As they are pulling out those chemicals, they also deplete minerals, so you get a more acidic product. But it’s a great way to do it. You just to need to make sure you are replacing those minerals in your diet or as a supplement.

You can now get some really good fridge or standalone countertop filters that do a great job and are less expensive for someone who is in an apartment or smaller space. Nowadays, there are even good filters that come in water bottles, so you travel and take that with you. I always travel with a regular stainless water bottle with a filter inside if I am going places to save on clean water. 

Dr. Eric: 

How about spring water out of a glass bottle, like Mountain Valley Springs? 

Dr. Jill: 

As long as you know your source, and they test for toxins, I think you’re in good hands. The downside is water supply here in Colorado, from good mountain sources, has been contaminated with PFAs. 

To your point, reverse osmosis is the best. Carbon filtration, which can be as simple as a handheld thing in your water bottle, is pretty darn good even for PFAs and other toxic chemicals. 

Dr. Eric:

Getting back to mold. Do you test your patients with urinary mycotoxin testing? Do you have them test their house for mold, doing ERMI testing or using plates? How do you determine if mold is a problem? You probably know by looking at them, you have seen so many patients, so you have a good idea. I imagine you still do some testing. 

Dr. Jill: 

This is the million-dollar question: What is the one test for mold? Unfortunately, there is no one. There is a little bit of a scenario I can say. History is important. Even if you’re just listening, and you think, “Ever since I moved into this house, changed workplaces,” If there is a story that you can tell that your change of environment caused you to become ill. Maybe six months later, there is a little delay. Or a year later. 

My example is there was a flood in 2013 that flooded massive parts of Boulder. My office building was damaged. Didn’t know it. About 6-9 months later, I started having symptoms because there was mold growing in my office building. That time frame fits really well with this kind of damage.

History, stories are important. You can online for free do a visual contrast test. This tests your visual acuity and the small retinal vessels in your eyes. These little vessels can be damaged by biotoxins. If you’re having trouble with that test, you could be exposed to mold. That’s one more thing. 

Test-wise, I still do the markers like TGF-beta, MMP-9, EGF, MSH, and osmolality. ADH, antidiuretic hormone. Those are trickier to interpret. They are innate immune markers, and they don’t diagnose mold. You need to see a pattern, but if you see all of those abnormal plus a history of mold plus an abnormal visual contrast, there is a likelihood that mold is in the mix.

Urinary mycotoxins, this is not a perfect science. People are like, they should test that. It doesn’t always indicate exposure. There are some caveats. 

There are three main labs that do testing: Real Time Labs, Vibrant Labs, and Mosaic Labs. They are all very different technologies, so you cannot compare one to another. They all have different thresholds. Because this is such a new science, even the labs will tell you they don’t know what’s toxic or not. 

Now, do I use those in patients? Yes, I do. I use it as part of the bigger picture. I wanted to say that because that is the easiest thing to go out and get done. You could very well have mold. Just because you have positive urinary mycotoxins, it could be that you were excreting from years ago when you had an exposure. There are other answers. It’s a better idea to look at the whole picture and use that as part of your diagnostics, but don’t leave your home because you have a positive urine mycotoxin test.

Dr. Eric: 

It’s interesting what you said. I heard Dr. Neil Nathan say he uses two tests. He has a practice where he sees mold patients, and he uses Real Time Labs and Great Plains, which is now Mosaic Diagnostics. Just because one isn’t necessarily reliable. 

Dr. Jill: 

I agree 100% with Neil Nathan on that. It’s so easy to go out there and be like, I just tested positive. There are so many factors to take into consideration. 

For example, someone I know has mold. We will talk about environment as well. When a positive urinary mycotoxin test came back positive, we started detoxing. Six months later, we tested, and their levels are higher. They started to panic. I say, “Wait a second. We are measuring excretion. We want you to be excreting. I would expect in the first 3-6 months for it to go high.” 

Sometimes, it goes down. But sometimes, you are getting your body to get rid of a toxin that was stored in the tissues. For the first six months or so—this is one reason I don’t retest right away—you will get these values that sometimes go up. It’s not always a bad thing if they are really excreting that toxic load. 

You mentioned environment. I want to mention this quickly. Once again, it is by far the best to get an inspector who knows what they’re doing. So many areas in the U.S. or outside of here don’t have great quality inspectors who know what they’re doing. 

If that’s the case, I will still often recommend patients do a dust sample. It used to be called ERMI, But the data for ERMI, the way they do the diagnostics on that test is not very well validated. The technical name of ERMI is called Q PCR, quantitative PCR, meaning they check in the dust that you send in for DNA of mold in that dust. That is a very valid technology. What you’re doing is a historical snapshot of your home. 

I still do a QPCR in my condo once a year just to check in. I do it for my workplace. I think it’s a great place to start for patients who want to know if there is an issue. 

Say you have one that has loads of Chaetomium or a very high Aspergillus score. You need to find where that’s coming from. It’s not the end-all be-all. It’s an affordable way for the average consumer who maybe is trying to figure out if they should hire an inspector to start the process. Because I have seen hundreds of them, I often have my patients do that to look at that with them. Sometimes, we can look at the types of mold in the dust of their home, look at their results, and if it matches—it doesn’t always—you have a pretty good case for their exposure and where it might have come from. 

Dr. Eric: 

One more question with mold. You mentioned in your book supermolds. What is a supermold? 

Dr. Jill: 

Classical molds, Aspergillus, Penicillin, it’s where we get our antibiotics. These are not good. They cause more allergies, sensitivities, inflammation. There are some molds out there, like Stachybotrys that are just really nasty. They secrete a type of mycotoxin that has literally been studied as a chemical warfare agent. It’s been known to cause nephrotoxicity, damage to your kidneys; lung pulmonary toxicity; neurotoxicity to the brain and nervous system; and I could go on and on. Almost every system can be severely damaged. 

Some of these mycotoxins have literally been used to develop drugs that are immunosuppressants for organ transplant. For example, mycophenolic acid is a mycotoxin produced by some of these toxic molds that is used to make a drug called Cellcept, which is used in organ transplants to cause no rejection. They basically shut down their immune system. 

This is important because the molds are bad enough. They are spores, growing, throwing out these things. Say you remediate a place and have dead debris. I always think of it as a dried flower arrangement. If you flicked it with your fingers or blew on it, and you shattered it into these pieces because it’s dried and dead, you could have dead, dried mold debris particulate that could still stimulate immune inflammation. This is why it’s so important to clean up after you remediate. 

You could also have the production of the mycotoxins that get stuck in paper and other porous materials in your home or clothing. Even though that’s not the mold itself, and you might have removed the mold, if you still have those really toxic trichothecenes hanging around in your home after you remediate or whatever state of the process you’re in, they can cause some very severe immune and other issues in your body. 

Dr. Eric: 

That’s why some people have to throw out all their books when they have a mold issue. 

Dr. Jill: 

Yes. I’m so careful because we have seen patients who go into panic. There is another side of this that’s post-traumatic stress. It’s so stressful to have mold. The chemical reaction of mold, inhaling it through your nose, can trigger amygdala, the fight or flight system. Almost anyone who has had a significant mold health issue has a little bit of PTSD. Even if it’s the chemical. 

The reason that’s important is because you really want to downregulate the trauma related to mold. Because there is a lot of online groups that say, “Walk out of the house. Leave everything. Sell everything you own. Get rid of it. Go to the desert, and avoid mold.” Some really sick patients have gotten well that way. Mold avoidance is a real thing. It is a part of my protocol. You’re not going to get well with any number of supplements, IVs, or protocols if you have a massive mold exposure.

But the bottom line here is it doesn’t mean you have to throw everything out. That’s really important. The worst types of things are porous materials, like paper or books. What I always recommend is if you have scrapbooks or photo albums. I have a library behind me. What I recommend is if you consider those to be potentially contaminated, buy some plastic bins from Walmart, put all of those porous materials in them, seal them, put them in your garage or somewhere out of your house. Keep them sealed away as you’re getting well. 

Then in six months or a year, you can open that up, see if you react. You will know. You will feel fine or have an immediate headache or sneezing or some issue. That’s a great way not to throw everything out. If you feel like you need to separate them out, you can put them in a contained area in plastic bins for a while until you’re ready to take a look at them. 

Dr. Eric: 

That’s great advice. People don’t have to panic and throw everything out. Just put it in bins. Get reexposed in about six months, and see how you react then. 

Any additional tips? You already gave a lot when it comes to reducing toxic burden with clean water, related to the mold. There are air filters. I imagine you recommend infrared sauna therapy. 

Dr. Jill: 

This can be overwhelming. Even listening to me, “Dr. Jill, I can’t do all of this stuff.” Start with simple things. Clean air, clean water, clean food. 

Clean air, 80% of our toxic load comes from the air we breathe. You should have an air filter in your bedroom. Ideally, you want to have a classical filtration system that filters the larger particulate. Within that filter, make sure there is a VOC, a volatile organic compound filter, or particulate matter 2.5 or 1.0. Those are the really tiny particles. Usually, that means the core of that filter has charcoal, clay, or some absorptive material. There is a ton of brands out there, but get a good one that has that technology. That’s clean air. At the very least, in the bedroom.

Clean water. We talked about reverse osmosis and other ways to filter your water. You should be filtering your drinking water at the very least if you don’t do a whole house filter.

Clean food. Choosing organic whenever possible. Non-GMO, locally sourced, as close to home as possible. Grow some of your own things, even if it’s just herbs on your balcony. That is all super important. Eating things that don’t have a lot of unpronounceable ingredients. Very basic, whole foods is where it starts.

Other things you can add on: Infrared sauna is a powerful way to detox. You can either go to a gym or get your own sauna. You can get a sleeping bag sauna or a little envelope sauna tent that you sit in. These are less expensive ways to use a sauna.

Epsom salts baths, I’m a huge fan of those. I do them almost every night myself. That magnesium sulfate is a powerful detoxifier.

Castor oil packs on the liver and gallbladder can be incredibly helpful. All you need is organic castor oil and organic flannel. Put that on your liver, maybe with a little bit of heat from a hot water bottle or something similar. That’s wonderful for the detox system. 

Lymphatic drainage, you can do rebounding. You can do vibrational plate exercises or technology. You can do dry brushing before you shower. This is one of the reasons why the cold plunge is so popular because it’s wonderful for lymphatics. Even if you don’t have a cold plunge pool, you can just end your shoer with 30 seconds of cool water from your neck down, and that gives you the same effect.

Dr. Eric: 

One thing I should add, which I’m sure you agree with and don’t think you mentioned, even if you have to do it gradually, as far as cleaners and cosmetics. If you don’t want to switch to all-natural right away, I know it can be overwhelming, especially when you are already focusing on food, air, and water. But I would recommend the products you’re using on a regular basis, if you have a spray that you use every day, if you are using 409 to spray the household, use a natural cleaner. On your own, you can make a concoction that doesn’t cost a lot, too. I agree with everything you said.

I remember when I was young, my mom would spray these air fresheners all over. 

Dr. Jill: 

You have those plugins or things like that? Not good. I won’t tell you where, but a common area in some place where I frequent had these plugins, and I literally snuck around and pulled them out. This is toxic! People don’t realize it. They just think they’re freshening the air, but they’re putting in VOCs, which are not good. Those are hormone disruptors, too. 

Dr. Eric: 

I know we could go on for easily another hour chatting about this. Is there anything else that I should have asked you that I didn’t ask you? Anything burning before we wrap it up that you wanted to say? Any last words of advice for those dealing with any type of chronic health issue or trauma? 

Dr. Jill: 

No, I am just delighted to be here. I love the work you are putting out in this world. It’s so great to be with you.

If you’re out there suffering in some way, be it autoimmune or a cancer diagnosis, or even a loved one with early onset dementia, you name the issue, there is always hope. You’re already here, so you’re actively learning about your health. Continue to dive in. There are so many resources now for you. 

Sadly, we can’t expect our doctors to do the prevention anymore. Our system is designed for calamity and stroke and heart attack and car accidents. It’s not well designed to heal and help us optimally thrive. That’s up to you. But we’re here to help you. Go out there and do the next best thing. 

Dr. Eric: 

Where can people find out more about you? If you could give your website. Where can they get your latest book Unexpected? Anything else you want to lead them to?  

Dr. Jill: 

My website is JillCarnahan.com. You can find the podcast, the book, online resources, products we love. Everything is there. I have written a blog every week for the last 10 years. Any topic you want, you can search there and find it. 

If you want the book, go to ReadUnexpected.com. 

Dr. Eric: 

Wonderful, thank you. This was awesome. Appreciate you taking the time to chat about your health journey. As usual, I always learn things, and I’m sure the listeners did. Thank you so much, Dr. Jill. 

Dr. Jill: 

You’re welcome, Dr. Eric. Thank you for having me.