Explore The Thyroid, Adrenal & Mold Nexus

Introduction to Izabella Wentz 0:00

Welcome to another episode of Mycotoxins, Mold, and Chronic Illness. I'm your host Dr. Ann Shippy, and today we get to talk to Izabella Wentz. She is an innovative, solution focused, integrative pharmacist dedicated to finding the root cause of chronic health conditions. She's written four books, best sellers, and the most recent one is on the Thyroid and it's called The Adrenal Transformation Protocol. And she's just a gem out in the world sharing such incredible wisdom with a huge heart. And I think you're going to really enjoy learning more about her if you don't know about her already.

So Izabella thanks for joining us. Thank you. Ann so much for having me. I love the work that you're doing in this world. And thank you for creating this event to spread awareness about mold related issues. Yes. Thank you. And I know you've had some personal experience and then a lot of the people familiar with your work are also dealing with mold issues. So I think it's a perfect collaboration to have you with us today. Oh, my gosh. Absolutely. It's it's just I feel like mold can happen to anybody.

You could be eating the healthiest diet, exercising, doing all the right things. But if your home environment or your work environment, if you're being exposed to mold and many people don't even know that they are, this can really sabotage everything. So I'm so excited to be here with you to spread the awareness. So you've really focused on thyroid and adrenal. And I thought that if you'd share a little bit about how you came to be such an expert in these areas. Really by ways of being a human guinea pig.

So yeah, I think like many of us, I started having some health challenges. Unfortunately at a very, very young age. So starting around age 18, I started having a chronic fatigue

Personal Health Struggles and Hashimoto's Diagnosis 2:12

where I was, I was in undergraduate and I was going to sleep at 4:00 for a quick nap and then I'd wake up the next day at 1 p.m. and I'd miss my exams. And it just was very, very strange where I ended up having more and more progressive symptoms. I started having some depression. I started having anxiety attacks, panic attacks, brain fog and hair loss, carpal tunnel on both arms allergies, IBS, acid reflux. You know, it just things kept going. And I don't know how I got through undergrad and how I got accepted through pharmacy school, I guess.

You know, I just had to really, really focus my studies and not really focus so much on social things. And you're. Really smart. So I'm sure that that helped you learn things really quickly. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. And when I got through pharmacy school, I was sort of in this world where I was like, I'm so tired and I feel awful all of the time. And I would go to get checkups and I was told, like, there's nothing wrong with you or you're just getting older. Everybody's tired. You know, everybody kind of is working too hard.

You're anxious because you're you know, you're in grad school. Of course you're going to feel that way. And, you know, of course, I was 25 at the time, and it wasn't until I started working with some clients with rare disorders as a consulting pharmacist, when I realized that there are some doctors out there that actually can dig deeper. And then there are some doctors and professionals that just kind of cover the basics. And they may not even think, not not out of, you know, being bad people by any means.

Everybody. I think that I've ever worked with has done the best they can, but sometimes we just don't know what we don't know. And so I just found a doctor that was a bit more comprehensive. And at that point I learned that I had Hashimoto's with really high thyroid antibodies and and. You know, labs. Your thyroid labs didn't show a lot of what was going on. It was just the antibodies, right. I had my antibodies in like the 2000 plus range, which I spent under 35. Right. They were super, super high.

And these have been tied to anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, fatigue, feeling unwell, miscarriages, whole bunch of symptoms that have been correlated with thyroid antibodies even before there's an alteration in thyroid function. Now I had a mild alteration in thyroid function by the time I was diagnosed, so I did have subclinical hypothyroidism. And what that meant is that some doctors were kind of on the fence, whether you start should start thyroid meds or not. And I actually I'm glad that I did start thyroid meds because even though my test age was only like 4.5 or went up to eight, I was like a swath, right?

I was like so exhausted and so cold. But taking a little bit of thyroid hormone helped me feel better. It didn't. It wasn't like the cure. Like I didn't go from like, you know, being a couch potato to a marathon runner overnight with the meds. I actually had to start really digging deeper for what were the additional triggers that were causing me to have this autoimmune inflammation in my body. And that's that's how I became essentially interested in functional medicine and a root cause medicine and help becoming, I guess, a Hashimoto's and thyroid expert was just really through my own health journey, trying to get myself to feel human again.

So what. What was next in your journey? So you figured out that the thyroid was at the at the root of it. How did you actually get yourself? Well. The one of the first things that I did and this was such a tough thing being a Polish girl was I went gluten free and dairy free. And I had been on multiple medications for acid reflux, proton pump inhibitor, Pepcid, Tums. You know, I just had this huge kit of things to take because I just had constant acid reflux. Within three days, the acid reflux was gone of going dairy free and gluten free.

My digestive function normalized as well. I was shocked and it sounds strange, but I was like, Oh, you're not supposed to have stomach aches after you eat. And that that was a first for me in my twenties to realize that just getting off of those two foods and a lot of the carpal tunnel symptoms vanished. And just the overall inflammation in my body seemed to go away. I had been like an avid

Diet Changes and Root Cause Healing 7:00

worker, outer, so I was going to fitness classes and plays and yoga and all of that. And I always had this like, you know, bloated tummy. And all of a sudden I was like, Oh my gosh, I have abs under there. Like, this is what it feels like not to walk around bloated 24 seven. And so that really kicked off my journey. There were a lot of turns and twists along the way, and I ended up with figuring out that I also needed to balance my blood sugar. I needed to support my adrenals. I figured out what kind of gut infections I had and how to resolve those, and then worked on supporting my detox pathways as well.

It took a lot of trial and error. I did tons of testing. Some of the tests were useless, some of them were very helpful. And then I did that for for a little while until about three years, until I got myself into remission the beginning of 2013. And I had kind of been documenting all the things that were working. And I started to I released a book about this called Hashimoto's The Root Cause, talking about some of the things that I did to take back my health. And, you know, a lot of it was nutrition based, like the food is medicine, as well as utilizing nutrients that are commonly depleted in people with thyroid issues.

Yeah, it's just such a beautiful story, how it all unfolded for you. And so you over time, you, you really got to the root causes and then you found it. So tell me more about what ended up happening with your thyroid and and and getting those thyroid antibodies down. So thankfully, I was able to get my Hashimoto's antibodies into the remission range. And, you know, most importantly, my symptoms vanished. So no more IBS, no more no more acid reflux, no more panic attacks, no more hair loss. My skin was like bright again and just kind of felt like I awakened for the first time in many, many years.

I was spending so much time just being chronically exhausted that to have all of this energy, to do things, to be able to, you know, I would sleep from like 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. and wake up tired and all of a sudden I could wake up at like seven in the morning and I could stay up until 2 to 3 a.m. to see, you know, do things and not be tired. It was incredible. I felt like I gained a lot of my life back and then I started working with clients and at that point I was like, okay, let's do here, Let's do all these tests and let's try this.

And shockingly, they weren't as excited about doing all the tests as I had been. And they also weren't as excited about, you know, trialing various things. And at a certain point I came up with a liver support protocol that helped people feel better in just two weeks and kind of kind of to tie this together. The liver protocol actually helps to helps the person detoxify from many different toxins that are present in our environment, including mycotoxins and mold, toxins that can be very triggering for a lot of people with thyroid issues.

So this was I know I had a few people. I was like, you're just not getting better or you're off of gluten, you're off of dairy, but you're still struggling and you're sensitive to so many different supplements and vitamins and you know something is going on where your gut like allergy symptoms in your body, it's so much inflammation, you're holding onto your weight. You've got some cellulite and you're, you know, perhaps some estrogen dominance. And it was it was kind of like, okay, I think there's some toxicity going on there and using a nonspecific liver support protocol for two weeks.

This is something that helped so many people within just that course of saying, hey, I've been able to lose the weight, my skin issues cleared up, my brain fog is is so much better. And so this was this is has been a big feature of my work over the last eight years or so is focusing on getting the toxins out right and supporting the body's detoxification pathways. And I want to elaborate on that some more, but I just want to go back and and really emphasize something that I see with patients at the time that I think a lot of people missed, and that was that your thyroid antibodies went into the remission range.

Like most physicians don't know that that's even possible. And so I think that's really something for people to know that that's a goal to have really any autoimmune markers. We should be working with the body and iterate to find these key things that help you to totally get into remission and to and and also to not just be satisfied with this idea that they're

Remission, Antibodies, and Nutrient Support 12:00

gradually getting less energy with as aging. I mean, it was ridiculous to tell you that at 25, but if you're 35 or 45 or 55 people actually know take that on and they think, oh, this could just because I'm getting older, that it really doesn't have to be. So I just really wanted to emphasize that piece of hope that you bring. MM Yeah. It's interesting because people in their thirties and forties and fifties might actually believe it, but it's really not meant to be this way. And the part about thyroid antibodies, I've seen a lot of people say it doesn't, it doesn't matter because they're always going to be that level, so you don't need to retest them.

I've even heard some really well-meaning physician said you don't need to lower them because they don't actually attack the thyroid gland. And I'm like, you know, actually, if you look deeper at the research, they're correlated with with miscarriages, they're correlated with mental health symptoms, anxiety, OCD, and the very things that lower thyroid antibodies are also helpful for managing like OCD and anxiety and blood sugar issues and helping people feel better and having better outcomes in pregnancy.

One of the things that I did personally when I was trying to get into Hashimoto's remission was I utilized the Selenium supplement. So anywhere from 83 micrograms to 200 micrograms per day can be really helpful with lowering thyroid antibodies, usually by about half over the course of three months. And this is also something that's been studied to improve pregnancy outcomes. Another another thing that came out in the last few years, some research with using Myo Inositol for Hashimoto's about 600 milligrams of that, and it works in synergy with the Selenium too.

This can be helpful for balancing blood sugar for some men and women with with kind of that subclinical hypothyroidism situation that I had, they're able to actually normalize their thyroid function without taking meds. And the interesting thing is, you know, my own also it can also be helpful for PCOS and fertility and it can also be helpful for, you know, balancing blood sugar as well as conditions like obsessive compulsive disorder. And the interesting thing is it's thought that people with hypothyroidism tend to be deficient in Mayo and also tall and taking this on it's a it's a really easy to take supplement and it's actually taste sweet It's not nastier disgusting.

Right. This is so incredibly helpful for for young women, older women, women who are struggling with all of these symptoms. And it's all you know, all that to say that the thyroid antibodies are a marker of something of being out of balance in your body. And a lot of times you can correlate the thyroid antibody markers to some of the symptoms and other other things that are happening. And we can we can find targeted ways to address that. Yeah. And it's so interesting too, because it really is hard to find labs that will measure these things.

You know, science, such an important mineral. It should be like an annual screening that we do. But it's hard to find a lab that does that accurately and then inositol to measure inositol. I have to send that up to a lab in Germany, but it should be like part of like checking your vitamin D and your antioxidant levels, your cholesterol levels, the things that we should be doing, at least on an annual basis, to see if we're really getting everything that we need from our diet and supplements. So these are great recommendations.

Yeah, I do wish these these tests were more accessible. Generally, these supplements are going to be well tolerated. But of course, I always advise people to talk to their doctors and practitioners. And always, you know, the old pharmacist saying is start low and go slow. So even though I might have mentioned, you know, 200 micrograms of selenium and 600 milligrams of mayo and also tell you might start with tiny doses, if you're if you're trialing that and definitely talk to your practitioner. Right. And especially if you're sensitive.

But there are two really important things like the inositol makes up our cell membranes. So of course we, you know, for deficient in that nothing's going to work quite right. So those are really great solutions that are backed with good science. And readily available too. So I love that they're easy. Right. And I love how you're tying together all these different symptoms that people are experiencing, especially from environmental toxicity or mold toxicity that the brain fog, the hormone disruption, their infertility, all of those things are are often, you know, what people are actually experiencing their body when they're exposed to mold. So keep going. You're doing great.

What what are your other thoughts on and on these pieces of things that people could be implementing to help? And then I'd love it at some point. If you get back to talking about the liver support because it really is such an important piece of this. Yeah, absolutely. So one one some of the things that I've observed in people that have more toxicity in their bodies is that they hold on to their weight, that there is a bit of a theory of, you know, the solution to the pollution is dilution. So when you tend to be carry heavier weight on your body, this sort of dilutes the toxins and in my experience there, I've seen kind of two types of toxic people, people who are very like maybe perhaps thin, but they're very fatigued and they might have skin issues.

And then people who are a bit heavier and they tend to not have as many skin issues and maybe not as much of that fatigue, but they you know, that this is how their body defends itself against these toxins. My two week literary piece that really focuses on getting rid of the low hanging fruit in your environment. So are you microwaving your food in plastic? Like that's going to be a tough thing on your liver.

Liver Detox and Toxic Burden 18:30

So every time we we put toxins into our body, this can create a liver backlog for the average person, you know, a little bit of plastic here, a little bit of, you know, suntan lotion, a little bit of perfume might not be as big of a deal. But if you already have a, you know, a big toxic burden such as being exposed to mold or heavy metals or something else like that, then you can become very sensitive, like you become chemically sensitive to really basic things that most people find benign. So I've had one of my earlier clients.

She had a hard time going to the mall with her family because every time she walked past like a Yankee Candle store, she would have trouble breathing and she would break out in hives. And it just was too much for her to handle with utilizing the liver reset where you clean up parts of your home life and then you you would do sort of four times a week. And then we can go through some of the details, but then utilizing some supplements and foods to help support the detox pathways. She was like, I can go to the mall with my children again.

Like, this is amazing. Like, this doesn't bother me anymore. And so part of that is cleaning up, giving some of the toxins, giving the body a little bit more support to carry out those toxins. You know, as you're well aware, mold, toxins, they go through various liver pathways to get eliminated depending on the toxin, you know, they might need to go through like, look, Kiran, irritation or blue to thiamin conjugation. There's there's a whole bunch of these pathways where how the liver clears stuff out.

Right? Carries stuff out. Right. And sometimes when we become overburdened with toxins, we run out of the the cofactors and all of these amino acids and things that help that deliver do its job. So taking some of these as supplements, getting them through food, this can actually help carry out some of those toxins out of the body and can help a person feel much better in a very short amount of time. Now, at this point, with all the different testing that I've done on patients, I really just feel like everybody needs to be, you know, taking taking these things regularly because they're just so many exposures that we can't control anymore.

I mean, I love it that you're targeting some of the ones that people just aren't even aware of, like the sunscreen and the microwaving and plastic and but it's like it's it's it's getting to be even more concerning. And based on the labs that I'm doing over the last five years, where I'm actually getting to look at the toxin levels in people. So I'm so happy that you're getting this information out there because I think people probably do the two week period and then they want to stay on it, right?

They want to keep going. It's so true that that's one of the challenges I've had. And I'm actually updating some of my guidelines because I when I first started off, I thought it was a one time thing, right? Where you just do it once and then forever, you're going to be healthy. But it turns out that that's not necessarily the case. And I had a personal situation where I was mold exposed and it was, you know, the life happens. So you get exposed to mold or maybe you do some travel or, you know, I stayed out to hotels when I was like one of them had like mold visible on the wall.

And I was like, okay, please change my room. This is definitely not where I want to be. But after that point, I was able to test my mycotoxin levels and I was like, Of course I'm exposed to these things and then I would be able to look at the organic acid test, and some of them were already colonized within my body. And you know, just going through I love Great Plains Lab. They have a they've actually rebranded recently to Mosaic Diagnostics, which I will get every time I. Know it's coming in Great Plains, even for my patients.

And then they. They're like, What's this mosaic thing? Exactly, Exactly. But they have some fantastic labs people can do, such as the organic acid test, the micro tox test. And there's one called the toxin screen. And you can actually look at your toxic burden throughout doing this kind of testing. Now, the the kind of I would say the the cheat sheet for this is and is fetal cysteine and sana are probably going to be two of the most helpful things you can do to clear out your toxic burden. But there's also amino acids.

There is milk thistle, magnesium citrate. So making sure that you're moving your bowels on a daily basis, proper hydration, these are going to be some of the additional things that can help you clear out the toxic burden out of your body. I love you know, part of my recommendations is like if you can do sort of four times a week for 30 minutes, that would be amazing. If not, fine, find a way to sweat, because a lot of toxins, including mycotoxins, cadmium, various different toxic substances, we can actually sweat them out better than we can get them out of different pathways.

Especially if those pathways are already a bit sluggish. It really does make a huge difference. But one of the things that I think is so great about your work, Izabella, is how you make things so easy to understand and implement it. You you really do a great job of making things feel like they're not overwhelming and that you just take the next best step and and then put things together in a way that people can feel a difference pretty quickly. Thank you so much. I have to give the credit, said my professors and pharmacy school.

We actually had a whole semester of taking pharmacology concepts and health related concepts and translating them into to, you know, eighth grade level. And so that was every week we had to meet and they were like, No, no. The way that you're explaining this is is not going to make sense. Please make sure that you explain it in a way that would be really straightforward and easy to understand because people are oftentimes overwhelmed by all of the all of the choices and all of the different all of the different things that are going on with their bodies.

I feel in my experience, I have had some clients that definitely want to get like a Ph.D. in biochemistry and whatnot and all of these things right? But most of them, honestly, they just want to feel better and they have some degree of brain fog. So I just try to make it really accessible and approachable for people

Adrenal Dysfunction and Stress Response 25:30

because you know, I know what it's like to have that brain fog and how hard it is to just do daily things. I have personally gone through adrenal dysfunction myself a few different times, and this is oftentimes another part of the big presentation that people that I've worked with. Have you know, sometimes because they're mold exposed, they might get into this adrenal dysfunction stage. Sometimes it might be, you know, for a whole list of other reasons where their body gets stuck in this stress response and they're feeling overwhelmed, they're feeling brain fogged.

They're feeling sometimes unfortunately, hopeless and this is this is kind of part of that presentation. And so my goal is always to give them a little things that they can do that really move the needle and make them feel better so that they can awaken and they can have more brain function and more vitality. And and, you know, perhaps we could take baby steps and you feel a little bit better every day. And after a certain point before you realize you're like, oh, my gosh, I'm thriving. Sit there.

Maybe this is great. And that's exactly, I think what people need to have hope that they can get to the other side. There may be some people that are listening that don't understand what adrenal dysfunction is, and I know that's been really an important focus of your work more recently. So if you want to explain a little bit about that, I think that would be super helpful. Definitely. And I want to say that it is a bit of a controversial term, I guess when there's a condition known as Addison's disease, which is an autoimmune condition that impacts our adrenal glands.

And generally people are going to be diagnosed when 90% of the adrenal glands are going to be destroyed. And at that point, they do need to take medications to replace what their body is no longer able to to produce. This is not the same as adrenal dysfunction. So adrenal dysfunction is essentially a state of burnout where the body becomes overwhelmed. Psychologists have done a really good job of raising awareness about it from like psychological burnout, and you just feel super burned out. But there's also a physical logical component to it, too.

And when we focus on the psychological piece and the physiological piece, the, you know, mind and body, we are connected. Yeah. And typically the symptoms are going to be brain fog, fatigue, hopelessness, anxiety, irritability, feeling overwhelmed. That's kind of a cardinal feature being disconnected with the circadian rhythms. So rather than waking up bright, bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning and jumping out of bed, you feel sluggish in the morning, you have a hard time coming out of bed in the evening time.

You might get a second wind, so you might be tired, but all of a sudden you can't fall asleep. And you, if you do sleep, you your sleep might not be restful. You might be waking up, multiply multiple times throughout the night. So this is kind of a big part of that presentation. Salt cravings, sugar cravings, being addicted to coffee and you can override. Them quite a bit with the coffee, with the caffeine. Absolutely. You just push through. Perhaps also people who are dependent on substances like wine or alcohol in the evening to relax themselves.

This could also be a potential sign or symptom. And again, this is not like a disease or disorder. This is essentially what happens when we have more stress than we can process. And our body kind of doesn't know what to do with the with either current trust stress, past stress, stress, or a combination of of all of that beautifully described. And I think that with all the stress of COVID and now that I think that put almost everybody into some level of adrenal dysfunction just that all the uncertainty and the fear about what was happening, you know, in early 2020 and and beyond, I think a lot of people are still really kind of stuck in that over the top stress response.

They got activated in that time. Is that what you're saying as well? I would say so. So I used to work with people primarily with Hashimoto's Autoimmunity, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia. And I would tell you that most of them had some degree of a trigger as function. And during the pandemic it was pretty much everybody that I met that had symptoms of it, Right? So your average mom would have issues with anxiety or trouble falling asleep or just raising thoughts and all the worries. And I do think as humanity, as a collective, going through something like that can be very traumatic.

And sometimes that trauma stays with you and people will say, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger. In my experience, it's been, you know, what doesn't kill you doesn't sometimes stay with you and weaken you over time, unfortunately. And and that's what trauma can do. That's what some of these physiological exposures disturbances can also do, where they just weaken your overall resilience. And I personally, I would say that I see adrenal dysfunction in a lot of people these days and most of them don't have Hashimoto's, right.

I used to think it was more of a component of autoimmune disease where now I would say more people seem to have it. I don't know if that's been your experience. It it, it really is. It's I feel like people's adrenals when I measure them with the saliva tests are either, you know, way in overdrive or they're almost flat lining. But again, not to the point of where the chronology just would agree with the diagnosis. But you can clearly see that they're out of balance with how their adrenals are are making their neurotransmitters and hormones that the adrenal glands provide.

Yeah, absolutely. I was personally excited to get a book out about adrenal dysfunction because I felt it was super relevant to people at this time. And I also found some shortcuts and some additional ways to support that stress response. Part of what I and I used to do is I would test people's adrenal saliva test or I would do a Dutch test with them, and then I would look at their patterns and I would use various protocols, sometimes hormones like pregnant alone, or DHEA or adrenal glands, fillers, various things to kind of balance people out.

And this can work really well for for a ton of people. But then there's some contraindications to the hormones. For example, if people have a certain dominance, they might over convert DHEA to more estrogen, which you don't want if they have a history of of cancers that are driven by estrogen, this can be an issue some people might have, you know, they might convert various things to the wrong things. Right. And so you end up with with more symptoms rather than relief of your symptoms. And so the other thing is, I don't really think people should take hormones.

I'm all I'm really into biohacking and people taking charge of their own health. But when, you know, hormones like pregnant, alone and DHEA, I'm kind of like, you need to do this with a doctor or you need to do. This solely because it really does have long term and some pretty good significant consequences. So thank you for acknowledging that. But because, you know, some of these are just over the counter so people start taking them. And initially they might feel better, but they may be doing some harm as far as increasing the risk for cancer.

So thank you so much for and making people aware of that. So and there are the bio hacks, right? Like there are other things you could do besides that to produce your own hormones naturally, that are not going to be like in super physiological doses that can drive all of these other pathways. So like really getting to the root and actually helping your adrenals, not just putting a Band-Aid on there. So go for it. Let's share. Yeah, absolutely. I personally grew up glandular is are another thing that some people really do well what they really like.

But I've had some sensitive people that are like, I took landholders and I thought I was going to like have a panic attack or they can also suppress your access, which means your body will then not be able to make its own hormones because it thinks you're getting it from this glandular. Like the same way that if you were to take high dose steroids over a period of time, especially, you take them too late in the day. So I wanted to really focus on things that people could do just very, very safe and very synergistic.

And so one of the ways that I help people with balancing their stress response is using Epsom salt baths, right? So you focus on getting more magnesium in your body. That way. Magnesium gets burned out when we're under a lot of stress. Magnesium deficiency can cause headaches, it can cause anxiety, it can cause trouble sleeping, cause hormonal issues, menstrual cramps, so on and so forth. So one of the things we can do is we can soak in an Epsom salt bath for 15, 20 minutes sometimes if it's a tough day and maybe an hour, and this can help relieve some of those symptoms, it helps people sleep deeper.

There is a school of thought that it can also increase DHEA levels. I don't know how long you need to do this, and I don't have a lot of like I don't I like to say if I have like 100 clients with their before and after results, I feel really comfortable saying that this works. So I don't know that it's you know, I can't say I'm not going to put my money on it, but it is a natural way to support your support your health and your adrenals and then replenishing things like the B vitamins and vitamin C and electrolytes.

This can be incredibly helpful for for rebalancing that stress response because these are the things that tend to get out of hand when we're stressed out and and just to be clear, when I talk about stress, it could be from something in your current life, like your annoying work environment. It could be a traumatic experience like living through a pandemic, but the stress could also be physiological, like being exposed to mold or having a chronic infection in your gut. So All of these things can send a person into that

Blood Sugar, Diet, and Food Sensitivities 36:30

adrenal dysfunction state where they're burning through a lot of the nutrients that are then needed to produce stress hormones and neurotransmitters. So that that's a part of the of what we need to do to to kind of get back to baseline. And and a lot of times people will say, oh, I thought had migraines or I thought I had this and sometimes sometimes it's as easy as like getting more riboflavin on board and more magnesium on board. Obviously it's not always 100% of the time. It's not always the solution, but it can be really, really helpful just to do those foundational things.

So foundational because the at the adrenals need those precursors to be able to produce what what they need and do you see a lot of improvement with, with the dietary adjustments as well? Do you have a favorite adrenal diet? I do focus on a lot on blood sugar balancing as part of the adrenal protocol. This helps people a lot with the weight gain they can experience. It can help with with some of that mood stability and stability throughout the day. People that feel like they're anxious or irritable, people that wake up in the middle of the night, blood sugar can be very relevant for this.

And then anybody with with like fluctuating energy throughout the day. So if you're somebody that's like every day at 3 p.m., my crush, part of that could be that blood sugar piece. So I do it's paleo diet is kind of the template for it where we do lots of protein and generally more fat than the average person gets and we cut out some of the inflammatory foods like gluten, dairy and grains for a 30 day period just to give the body some time to recalibrate and balance itself out. And then I also utilize Myo Inositol as part of that to help with the blood sugar balance and then carnitine because this can help people get a little bit more.

It does a lot of different things. One of the things it does is it helps people use fat for fuel a little bit more efficiently. And this is one of the things that I found to be incredibly helpful for people with brain fog. I will use a combination of l-carnitine with a small amount of acetyl l-carnitine and this helps a lot of people with muscle pain and helps people with brain fog. It was studied in women with thyroid fatigue specifically. This is how it got on my radar. I was like, ooh, thyroid fatigue.

And it showed that about what it was 1000 milligrams Twice a day of carnitine can help resolve thyroid fatigue. That's just like easy. Yeah, very easy. So then after the 30 days, what do you like for people to do diet wise. Generally if they feel well on a paleo diet, this is going to be a safe diet for people to continue long term. And I do know that life happens. And so some people may wish to add different foods back or have them on occasion. And I think it just really depends on that particular person, what they're able to tolerate.

I know personally I've I when I first was on my healing journey, I was doing the paleo diet and that a little bit of autoimmune paleo diet. This might be something that people with Hashimoto's might need to do. Not everybody. And then I went back to more of a gluten free and dairy free diet with with adding back and some grains and things. But in the, in the last few years I was like, ha, I don't think the grains like me as much. So so definitely I would say, listen to your own body. If you're having blood sugar issues, if you're having, you know, PCOS like symptoms, if you're gaining too much weight, these would be some suggestions of potentially really diving back in on your blood sugar.

So you mentioned the paleo autoimmune just for the people that don't aren't familiar with that. Go ahead, explain that one as well. It's taking paleo a little bit more or a little bit more seriously. It's a little bit more restrictive, so I don't necessarily like to utilize it for every single person. And on a forever basis, it's something, you know, with the paleo diet, it's pretty much gluten free, dairy free and free of soy processed foods and free of grains. So the autoimmune paleo is free of all of those things in addition to legumes, but they also remove nightshades, which would be things like peppers, eggplant, tomatoes.

They also remove nuts and seeds. So you've got a few more additional restrictions with that kind of a diet. And the, the thing with Hashimoto's and autoimmunity is people can become sensitive to a whole host of different foods. And so the foods that they're eating can be causing inflammation in their body and leading to symptoms also potentially elevating Hashimoto's antibodies. Now, my focus is never to like if you have people on or a restricted diet for forever and ever and and eggs are also excluded is my focus is really on repairing what's going on in that person's body.

Typically we're really focusing on nutrient depletions, we're focusing on gut health, we're focusing on adrenal health and and toxins and all of the things to give people more food back. So specifically with eggs, for for many people, this could be a sulfur issue. So their body isn't able to process sulfur properly and you actually can begin to process sulfur properly and no longer have egg sensitivities. If you for example, if you add in molybdenum to your routine, you can also I have a protocol that's focused on thiamin, molybdenum and butyrate, where we help to rebalance the microbiome a little bit.

And then the person and I won't say it's like anaphylactic reactions may not work, but people who couldn't eat eggs before, they're able to incorporate them into their routine. Same with, you know, another common food that people may be sensitive to is oxalate. A lot of times that's making sure you have the cofactors to break them down, such as p5p, which is the active version of B6. And you're also looking at, okay, why do I, why am I growing oxalate in my body? Is it is you know, you probably there is a rare condition that can cause this but also having Candida and mold overgrowth in the body can cause you to produce oxalate and there's also this pathway the like oxalate pathway where if you take too many lysine eight supplements or glycine, you can essentially produce oxalate in your body through this this pathway.

I know that gets a little bit too into the biochemistry and the weeds of things but we want to look at why is your body not tolerating these foods like I don't want you to be just eating ice chips all day. Right. Right. And to know that a lot of these restrictions are temporary, there are some that tend to be better if you stick with them perfectly or perfectly and permanently like the gluten in the dairy. But a lot of the other restrictions, once you heal to get settled down the immune system, it can be better, but it can be really helpful for some people to go to that level of of implementing a restrictive diet for a period of time.

Yeah. So and then just to clarify the so the what the oxalate are Okay. Yes. So oxalate are typically D found in foods, generally foods like beets and spinach. Our thoughts to. Favorite foods I know. And they're so good for us to they're thought to have high levels of oxalate and you know the various symptoms people have tied to would be like kidney stones I think is probably the most popular one. But also bladder issues, pain in the body, waking up throughout the night. These can all be potential symptoms of oxalate sensitivities.

And I know I know sometimes getting off of oxalate can be very helpful for those symptoms. I typically would recommend doing a test like the organic acid test to see if your plates are elevated before you do any of that. If they are elevated, then, you know, maybe you you would want to reduce the dietary intake of the oxalate or if you eat them, eat them with like magnesium citrate or calcium citrate to kind of block some the absorption. But also figuring out like, what's your body making so much and why are you not tolerating those foods?

And oftentimes it's making sure that they're processed correctly and do we have enough of the cofactors like the B six or p5p to clear them out? And what what's driving their production in the body? Right. Like low grade infections. Yeah, that's great. You're covering all kinds of really awesome topics that are so related to people with normal because often they do end up with these low grade chronic infections with the bacterial and fungal overgrowth that then cause the oxalate levels in the body to rise.

And I really do think it's an important area of why of these symptoms are occurring from from mold.

Mold Exposure and Recovery Strategies 46:30

And I, I know it's there's always these different food trends that I see where people are talking about like the low histamine diet or the low oxalate diet. And, you know, I'm on social media and people are like, I have every I've been online for the last ten years and I can kind of look at what people are asking on social media or through my customer service. And every now and then different diets will trend. And it's like oxalate and everybody that's got oxalate issues. I'm like, rather than eliminating any of these these foods forever and ever, please do an organic acid test and see what's driving that right, because it could be could be some overgrowth in your body.

And then the same with histamine issues. I know, I know. People are like, oh my gosh, histamines, but our bodies should be able to break down the, the histamines we get from our from our diet for the most part unless, unless you're, you know, various types of fish and way too many of them. And so that's another red flag for me when people have histamine issues is to look at What's driving those histamine issues, Is it a is again, is it a mold overgrowth, is it something like ap5p deficiency? Is it something like a gut infection H pylori and blastocyst vitamin S, which are two infections that can trigger Hashimoto's, they can produce Histamine D and two amoeba Fragilis is another one that I just learned about in the last year or so.

That can also be a histamine producer in the gut. So I, I always urge people to ask more questions and dig a little bit deeper, you know, histamine and oxalate issues. And if you haven't gone down and explored whether mold is part of what's triggering your body, then please, please make sure you do that. Very well said. So anything you want to share more about your own mold story or I know you just had a recent water issue and anything that would be helpful to the listeners to know about that. Oh my gosh. So absolutely.

I just it was funny because we were talking about being on the mold summit and I was like, Oh, I was I was kind of had a lot just finished releasing my book and I was trying to get through all of my to do's, and all of a sudden I got mold exposed and it reminded me and I'm like, I need to get I need to get to the Gold Summit and I need to get the word out about it. So we had a toilet leak in our master bedroom, and all of a sudden I found myself really tired and pessimistic. Like, I'm one of those people that's very optimistic to the point where it annoys other people because I'm always like, Let's look at the bright side of things and somebody will say, This person is a jerk, and I'll be like, But have you thought about, you know, their childhood or whatever?

I'm just I'm just always very like. An internal optimist. You're such a bright light. Absolutely. And all of a sudden I was finding myself being, like, really irritated and, like, very pessimistic. And I was like, Is it because I'm just tired? I was falling asleep on the couch, I gained some weight and my brain wasn't working. I'm sitting at my laptop trying to get things done and I'm like, Why? I just I pray not working. I can't focus on anything. I go into my bathroom and I see there's a spot on the floor.

And I was like, Wait a minute, how did that get out of it? How did the water get out of the toilet? And then I looked behind and there was a leak and the baseboards were actually kind of warped. So and, you know, we have a small child and he was he was kind of acting moody. And my husband and I were like, why is our son so moody? Are we like terrible parents? Like, what are we do? Oh, and all of a sudden, you know, my my husband takes out the baseboard and sure enough, it's warped and it's got it's got, you know, a bit of mold growth in it.

It was less than maybe like I clean my toilets every week. So it was at least, you know, barely there for a week when that happened. And fortunately, my husband's been working on his handyman skills, so he got everything out and made sure he got every every bit of the wetness out. And then we ran a humidifier and then we all got on binders that some sauna. And I took some of the library said support. And you know, within a three, within 2 to 3 days, I'm like, okay, I feel so much better. And it just and our son, you know, he was he was kind of getting frustrated with things. And we're like, this isn't your personality.

What's going on? And he's back to being his normal, charming self, Right? So, goodness, you caught it so quickly that kind of have been such a disaster and that was such an important time with the book launch and everything. Oh, yeah. This was about it was mid-May or so, and I just was you know, it just makes me really sad for people who are exposed, who think that there's something wrong with them where they're like, Oh, I have ADHD because I can't focus or, you know, like, I like just mold exposure for me personally and the women I've with, you can be eating a perfect diet, exercising it can just cause you to gain weight out of nowhere.

And the brain symptoms and just feeling overwhelmed and feeling pessimistic. Mold can really mess with a person's neurotransmitters. So, you know, it can like I said, it can happen to anybody. And I am really, really passionate about letting people know because this this can be like people typically think of asthma, right, or allergies as the symptoms that you would experience with the mold exposure. I didn't have asthma. I didn't have allergies. But there are things you can look out for. So these might be skin issues like eczema in children, adults.

This could be a red flag, definitely asthma and allergies, but also brain fog, depression, cravings for sugary things, cravings for alcohol. I was just recently talking to a colleague who who mentioned a client they had worked with in the past who who had a alcohol addiction. But it turned out they were colonized with mold. It's it's it's incredible what how much damage mold can do to a person's body and the amount of healing a person can experience once they remove the source of the mold and once they address the body, like the colonization in the body, this can be profoundly helpful.

I, i, I used to think it was very simple. Like many years ago, it was basically you could take a binder like charcoal. You could take oil of oregano to kill the mold. And that was kind of all you really needed to do. I've learned a little bit more over the last decade with making sure that you are removed from the exposure source doing supporting your liver pathways. Various mycotoxins can also, depending on what you have in your body, for example Leo Toxin, the toxin I had that was causing the brain sarcoma, which is Ghoulardi, can be very good for helping to bind that out where other molds, there's other types of binders that may be more effective.

So there might be some you know, I really appreciate the work that you're doing and getting into the nuances in the weeds with people, because not everybody will tolerate all of the different protocols and we oftentimes need to tailor them to the individuals. And sometimes there might be brain support that they need to do, like carnitine and choline or even neurofeedback or some kind of something to support their neurotransmitters. So I really appreciate you educating about this and spreading the awareness.

Oh, thank you so much. You just you just did a great summary. I'm like. Of the approach popping adrenals and mold. Like, what do you think people realize, okay, I'm being affected by mold. My adrenals are probably and really in survival mode, but where do you think the top things are for people to really help their adrenal gland stay healthy in this situation? So definitely we talked about the the nutrients, the Bs, Cs, magnesium and the electrolytes. Can be very, very helpful. Mold can mess with our diuretic system.

And so electrolytes can be a part of restoring that. The adaptogens can also be incredibly helpful. I personally like Holy Basil that seems to have some anti mast cell properties as well and antihistamine properties and seems to be kind of one of my favorites for mold exposure. But there's a whole list of other ones that can really help you stabilize some of your neurotransmitters so you can have anxiety that's brought on by mold and depression. And the adaptogens help you tolerate stress a little bit better, so they make you a bit more resilient or less a little less anxious, a little bit less overwhelmed, perhaps boost your mood a little bit.

Practical Support for Mold and Adrenals 56:00

So I love to utilize them and whether you have high cortisol or low cortisol, they can be very helpful. Oftentimes say people like people around you become less annoying when you take a nap. That's beautifully said. Then I also utilize I more than Candida when we have them in our system, they could really mess with our blood sugar. So of course the blood sugar balance can be helpful with more protein, more fat in your system and then also utilizing myo-inositol can be very helpful for these kind of exposures.

And then the the probably the biggest thing in my client population has been the brain fog and carnitine can be incredibly helpful for clearing out some of that mold, brain fog. And then Saccharomyces boulardii is what I actually use as part of my adrenal protocol, because whether we're mold exposed or under a lot of stress, this could suppress our inner immunity. And so Secretory IGA is something that lines our intestinal tract, and this is of our first level of defense from pathogens. And let's say, you know, you're eating sushi and somebody has good levels of secretory IGA.

You do not you could eat the same sushi, but you're the one that gets the the illness from it. Right? Right. And then you can also be more susceptible to various types of not just various infections, but also to food sensitivities. And so I put people on Saccharomyces boulardii as part of the protocol, and that naturally raises their secretory IGA levels. So it makes their gut a little bit more resilient. It also tends to clear out some of the some of the pathogen. It's like Candida and a little bit of mold binding to help the body get rid of them, have some benefits against, you know, like H.

Pylori, which is which can be commonly seen in people with mold when the bile doesn't do what it's supposed to do and keep keep the keep us more sterile. And then it also helps with with infections, the protozoa infection that I've seen to be potential triggers in Hashimoto's like the blastocyst of common, is just taking Saccharomyces boulardii for 30 days. You can just clean up the gut a bit and that can be a big game changer for people. Beautiful. That's a very reasonable list. I try to keep it very small because I don't want people to be overwhelmed with with all of the different things that are out there because there's, you know, thousands of different supplements and medications and protocols that people can try.

But then there's ones that can that have multiple benefits that people can utilize. Beautiful. Okay. Well, thank. You so much for sharing your wisdom and your heart and your great stories with us about to bring hope and really the building blocks for healing. I love to let people know how to find you. Sure. Thank you so much for having me. Just such an honor and a pleasure to connect with you and to get this out into the world to help more people. My website is thyroidpharmacist.com so people can find me there.

I have Instagram: izabellawentzpharmd to Facebook is thyroid pharmacist Dr. Izabella Wentz and then I have books about Hashimoto's that are available on Amazon. So Hashimoto's, The Root Cause and Hashimoto's Protocol are two of my most popular books, and I also have a cookbook with autoimmune Paleo and paleo recipes that we talked about. And then my newest book is The Adrenal Transformation Protocol. So for people who are kind of in that stress response state, sometimes because of mold exposure with the brain fog, this is this book is for you because it can really help you feel better in just a few weeks with, with minimizing some of your symptoms.

Well, thank you so much for everything you're doing out there in the world and all the people you're helping and being such a bright light. Likewise. And thank you so much. Thank you.