Functional Medicine for Hormones: Getting to the Root of Women’s Wellness

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This is Doctor Talks. Our hormones guide us through every stage of life, from adolescence through menopause and beyond. Genetics play a key role in how well they function, and that's where our partnership with Fagran makes a difference. Their genetic panels reveal how the body metabolizes hormones, detoxifies them, and responds to environmental toxins, giving us a clearer path We're thankful for Fuguan's sponsorship of this podcast and their commitment to personalized women's health. Learn more in the show notes.

So Dr. K, one of the biggest things we get asked about is hormones. It is probably one of the hottest topics that we touch on. And so I thought what better way to kind of put all of our discussion or at least some of our discussion in one place about women's health and hormones. So, first off, before we kind of get into the nitty-gritty, can we just talk a little of the bigger picture? What are the major hormones that influence women's health? Well, estrogen, and there's three different types, and then progesterone, and testosterone, and DA, and those are very important.

Overview of Women's Hormones 1:12

But the drivers, many times too, of metabolism and hormones, you have to think about the thyroid gland. It's a hormone-producing organ in our neck, and then the brain tells a lot of these hormones to be made in our adrenal gland, our thyroid gland, and those kind of things. So how do you, and maybe just this is again a bigger topic, but how can we briefly go over how hormones shift throughout women's life specifically? Right. So when we think about young girls, they're estrogen dominant and meaning that their body is not cycling yet.

And then when you approach the age of menstruation, you have the follicular phase of the cycle and the luteal phase. So the follicular phase is you have a menstrual cycle, and then your body is preparing to release the contents of an egg for potential fertilization. And then once you ovulate, you have the luteal phase, and then the body is preparing for the endometrium, the lining of the uterus, to be able to have implantation of an embryo. So progesterone is what women need in the luteal phase of their cycle.

That's where you look at for fertility. And then when you approach perimenopause and then eventually menopause, you stop having a menstrual cycle and you want to maintain some levels of hormones. Progesterone for a woman is very much like testosterone for a man. It helps them with decision-making and joy in life.

Hormone Changes Across Life Stages 3:08

And our society is so toxic that we disrupt the normal flow of hormones and our food supply is disrupted that the goal is to provide the body into menopause and postmenopausal so that there's adequate amounts of progesterone and estrogen and testosterone to maintain bone density, your brain working with the estrogen receptors everywhere. It should be a seamless thing where there shouldn't be summertime moments like night sweats. But that's kind of the ages and phases and stages of a woman's life.

Pre-menstruation, menstruation, parry around menopause, menopause, and postmenopause. That's amazing. Well, and thank you for breaking it down because you touched on the big thing is that I think so frequently we hit these stages. You kind of talk about endocrine disruptors a lot and you start the endocrine disruptor talk not even when we're talking about adults. You start it with children and that there are things that can be brought up in young children that could start these cycles earlier or make them harder than they should be.

Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, you know, when we think about there's something called precocious puberty or children who have bowel body odor at a young age. So when we're looking at the body's ability to properly metabolize hormones and if there's signs and symptoms that something's not working right or you have advanced puberty, you have to make sure there's nothing going on in the brain like a brain tumor producing hormones. But if not, when you look at what you put on your body, like basic care products, that's very important.

And we always referred to an app called ewg.org, and there's another one called the Dirty App. But you want to avoid putting profound amounts on the skin of children of lavender oil and tea tree oil. Now, diffusing here and there because there's benefits, but too much too often, for example, in boys, you can have impaired production of testosterone shutting down and making a lot more estrogen byproducts. And that's where you walk around and you see these young men with moobs man boobs okay and it can happen very early on a big thing too in our environment is microplastics using a toothbrush that's an electric toothbrush with plastic bristles instead of moving over to say boars' hair bristles for tooth brushing.

So plastics, these things you put on your body, and so personal care products, they've done a good job of removing carcinogens from hand sanitizers, but hand sanitizers blend into endocrine disruption too. So when we talk about lifestyle changes that parents can do, you want to be able to sweat. And children and adults, but especially children, need to be able to sweat. And by giving what we call cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, garlic, Brussels sprouts, those foods are very,

Endocrine Disruptors in Children and Adults 6:29

very good at helping deliver work and detoxify. They have something in them called sulforthane and mustard, and we call them brassica vegetables like broccoli brassica. So that helps clean out the body, and you really also need to have really good bowel movements. Because if you're plugged up and you reabsorb broken down hormones that your body's releasing, that can lend to endocrine disruption too. And so I know you mentioned that it's really important for children, but could that help like people who are experiencing that in their 30s, 20s, like older?

So is this an overall? Yes, this is incredibly helpful across the ages and stages. Honestly, the toxic load that our body is under is causing some of these really big issues. I want to go through two different areas. First and foremost, I want to know, I know we get these questions a lot when people are either struggling with fertility, which is such a hard journey. or when they are experiencing severe and really life-halting like perimenopause and menopause symptoms, like that they just, and they're being told this is a fact of life.

So I want to look at this from two different ways. One, what are things that we could be looking for before it gets that bad? Are there things that we can do and see? Great question. So in functional medicine, we talk about the gut. Why? It's considered the second brain and everything that comes through our body and the things that we absorb or fail to absorb within our gut impact ovarian health, impact hormone health, so eliminating toxic poison products in the food that you eat. It's so important to be able to have a stable, good daily bowel movement.

if not three a day, okay, depending on the amount of fruits and vegetables. And let's face it, our society sets us up for being bound up and constipated on the run, not drinking water, but drinking soda and plugging ourselves up. So if you're going to want to mitigate or prevent a lot of these things, you have to be able to prepare the gut to absorb nutrients. And if you're chronically constipated, you can't do that. And even if you do poop every day, if you don't eat quality, and what I'm talking about is real fruits and vegetables, poultry, fish, wild-caught fish, and grass-fed beef and bison and those kinds of things.

But fruits and vegetables that should be organic. So it's the quality of what you put in so that the nutrients that you absorb are appropriate. So if you lack all these essential vitamins and minerals and you've had a life of chronic diarrhea or chronic constipation and you're malabsorbing or not absorbing anything, then treating the gut is paramount. So something you actually talk about, which I literally have just put together all together, is you'll talk about when it comes to constipation and how flax is really good.

But then we'll also, whenever you're trying to get rid of junk estrogen, you talk about how flax is really good. So can you talk a little bit about what happens when we have flax and what kind of flax we should be looking for to kind of help both sides of those things? Right. So organic flax seeds that are freshly ground have something called lignans and you want to have, you don't want to buy it ground. Okay. And another thing is you put it in your freezer, you take it out, maybe put it in a little coffee grinder that's just for seeds and the fiber helps you poop.

Okay. But. The lignans, the freshly ground flax absorbs toxic forms of estrogen in the gut so that you don't recirculate it. So food as medicine, it's a foundation of functional medicine.

Gut Health, Constipation, and Flax 10:48

So that's why freshly ground flax is so good for you. I love that. So one of the things that we always talk about a lot is genetics. There is not a single patient or person that we don't think is in need of having their genetics either understood or taken. And so when it comes to women's hormone function and hormone health, What kind of SNPs or genetics would we look into to help them optimize? Or maybe they have weighted and they are in a place where they're constantly having hot flashes or they're struggling with infertility.

Can we talk a lot about where genetics plays a role in this? Yeah, that's a great question or a great thing to key off into is that you look at how your body is unable to cool down inflammation. But specifically when you're diving into hormones, you want to know how the cells clean themselves out. That's called autophagy. So if you build up debris in your cells, you might be one of those kids that smells bad, prepubescent and pubescent, and has severe dysmenorrhea if you're female, or develop boobs, man boobs.

But then detoxification, which is global, the liver, the kidneys, the skin, the lungs, we look at that too. But there's also some hormone receptors, like something called FoxE1. It tells you how much selenium and iodine you have, and it'll predispose you to potential autoimmune thyroid disease. So when you look at just the symphony of our bodies, looking at these precision genetics, but specifically like PCOS, infertility, autophagy is at the root of that. You have to look at autophagy. Then the detoxification, you want to give your body glutathione or cruciferous vegetables or a supplement that has the equivalent of three pounds of two-day-old broccoli sprouts in it.

to clean out your liver and your gut. So that's where the genetics, that's where you start inflammation, then cleaning the cells out and then moving the debris out of the body. There's also hormone markers, but that's kind of where I would start. Amazing. And I think that's the beautiful thing. I think sometimes people feel like we can be a victim to our circumstances or we've just been completely blown off, which I feel like Dr. K, you can even touch on a little bit of your story where you were really struggling and then you were a doctor going to other doctors for support and help.

and then you were just treated like it was all in your head or it was just stress and not that stress can't impact hormones. They really can, but that doesn't mean that we can't give our bodies the support they can to deal with the stress that we're under. Could you talk a little bit about that and your experience that led you? I'd be happy to and it's a vulnerable moment but I used to have a lot of shame around this because as an MD to admit that you were struggling with these things but it's part of my story and everyone's story is different and that's the beauty of functional medicine and most functional medicine practitioners have their own story.

So for me, my cholesterol was elevated, bad family history, and I chose to go on a statin after the birth of my fourth child. I made a conscious decision not to breastfeed because I was so convinced that if my cholesterol went up too rapidly or I couldn't get it down, that I could have a heart attack based on my family's history. So number one, I didn't breastfeed my fourth child. Now I'm just grieving over that, but it's over and it's done. Second, six weeks into taking a statin drug, I started having these terrible images, grabbing a knife and stabbing myself with it.

And I went to my internist and told him, and he looked at me and said, really?

Genetics, Detoxification, and Hormone Balance 14:54

And I'm like, do you think I'm lying. I just told you my deepest darkest shame and you're gaslighting me. And so at that point in time, it was an aha moment where I decided there has to be a better way. So I made a conscious decision to, number one, never go back to that medical provider. Number two, pursue alternative care. Because I struggled with depression, because statins decrease bioavailable hormones and give you the energy that you need, and they're mitochondrial toxins. And by the way, when you open up your package insert, there's a black box warning about mitochondrial toxins.

We know that you can drive down cholesterol and LDL with other things that are not going to impact your mitochondria and lead to freaking suicidal ideation, which, oh, by the way, when you look in the list of potential side effects, it's down there in the 1% to 2%. I bet it's a lot more because people have so much shame associated with it and they don't know, and then they get put on an antidepressant, which, oh, by the way, I took 27 years of antidepressants, 11 to 13, and no one looked for the root cause.

Because I dealt with depression also, I went to Dr. Amon's clinic in Atlanta. They imaged my brain, and that kind of started my journey. And then I looked into precision genetics, and that's what changed my life. I found out what I need and what I don't need. And so that's part of my story. And when you talk about infertility and miscarriages, you'll hear everyone say MTHFR, it's methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase deficiency. Well, there's a whole pathway and it has impact on that, but you got to look at all these other areas too.

And we have an episode coming up that is literally just going to be about breaking down MTHFR. So please stay posted. But a part of your story, Dr. K, that I first want to thank you for being so incredibly vulnerable because it was, it was a time that you were ignored and gaslit and And I just feel like every time we mention that there's just somebody and the audience are listening that just goes, that's exactly what's happening to me is that they feel so lost and so alone in all of this. And I just love that you are a provider who doesn't only want to support them and help them, but knows and listens and hears because you don't ignore symptoms.

If you're experiencing this, we're going to believe that you're experiencing it so that we can do something about it. But a part of that journey, and this is something that we get a lot, is we'll have someone call in and say, I want help with hormones. And then they get in their initial appointment, and we start discussing a condition called chronic inflammatory response syndrome. We start talking about SERS. Other people call it, I think, mold illness, biotoxin illness. It goes by many a name. But I know that was also a part of your journey.

And I want to kind of understand, maybe from a personal point, moving into a medical point is, why do we go there when someone's saying they're struggling with hormone issues or hormone imbalances? Well, this condition not only affects hormones, but it first affects the immune system and the neurologic system, and it's all intertwined. So all of our hormones affect that. So part of where we look at that is we have a lot of questionnaires and forms that we ask patients to fill out. And then when they get into the office, trying to piece together everything that's happening and their body may show up with the hormones.

problems like autoimmune thyroid disease or hypothyroidism, erectile dysfunction, severe symptoms of menopause, waking up in the morning and night, sweating, and it may be a man who's waking up in the morning and night having night sweats. Severe depression, panic, anxiety, gut dysfunction, all of those things can be part of this service. So if we fail to widen our scope, there's plenty of paces that will give you Your hormones shoot you full of pellets, but you're still having problems. And you may feel a lot better, but you're not going to cross the finish line and become balanced and regulated in all the areas of your life if you don't uncover all the potential problems.

Dr. K's Personal Health Journey 19:38

And SIRS is a big root cause of hormone dysfunction. And if I remember correctly, some if not all of the labs that are taken to get your diagnosis of SIRS comes from their hormone levels, are they not? Yes. So we check, well, we look at thyroid, but part of the SIRS evaluation is looking at cortisol, hormone, that comes out of the adrenal gland, then out of the pituitary. adrenocortigotropic hormone, ACTH, tydiuretic hormone, and osmolality, which happens to do with how much you pee or you don't pee, and if you get shocks when you walk across a room and touch things.

Looking at your androgens, which is testosterone free in total, DHEA, androstenedione, and then female hormones, we look at your estradiol. your estriol, estrone and progesterone and sex hormone binding globulin, thyroid stimulating hormone, free T4, free T3. Because if you're fatigued or you're having hot and cold and diarrhea and constipation and hair loss and growing a little beard or acne and all those things, they're all related. So you really need the full meal deal. There's also a hormone that comes out of the brain that most people have never heard of called MSH or melanocyte stimulating hormone.

And if it's low, where it's released from the anterior pituitary, your luteinizing hormone, your follicle stimulating hormone, your oxytocin, your thyroid stimulating hormone, your growth hormone, those can be abnormal too. all of our hormones. So there's a lot more to the puzzle than measuring a few labs and giving yourself pellets and, you know, not getting to the root cause. So we're taking a wider look and that's what we're pursuing when we partner with people. I really love that because I think sometimes when we can have that conversation, those are some of the things that we are even as a practice are doing better too, which is why we have group medical visits are trying to say like, hey, let me help you understand and functional medicine in general, which I think so many people are going to be really familiar with.

We don't deal with things in silos. Your body is interconnected. Your arm is literally connected to the part of your body. Why wouldn't we look at it all as a whole? And so I think it's really important that you touched on that doctor case. So thank you for that. You're welcome. Next up, what are some of the common signs and symptoms of hormone imbalance in a woman that may seem in the grand scheme of things really small, but what are some of those things that we could start to look for before kind of waiting for it to be a catastrophic thing and that we're melting down?

I think as women, we kind of put ourselves off a lot more than we should. So maybe we can help people go into more of a preventative action. I would say if you're a menstruating woman, if you're having a lot of cramps and pain and a lot of functionality, a lot of cravings, your hair falling out as one of them, dry skin, knee, disrupted sleep. subtle weight gain, you just keep gaining weight or you just can't seem to lose any weight. Oh, there's another hormone called leptin. Leptin receptors are destroyed when your cytokines inflammation is so bad and sores and you can't lose weight, you know, regardless of what you do.

And people are looking for magic shots and magic pills and magic liquids instead of diving deep and finding the root cause. And our society is instant gratification. The other is sweat, we call them summertime moments, flushing, frequent urination is another clue when it's not necessarily associated with a urinary tract infection, decreased sex drive, vaginal dryness. For a woman, those are some of the things that you look for. to just kind of go, something's not quite right. So one of the things that you said, and we're just going to kind of go over a really big thing, which is there are different fruits and vegetables and whole foods.

We've talked about flax. Is there any other specific type of food or food group for the lifestyle approach that you would like to mention? You know, anyone can look up seed cycling. It's like supporting the follicular phase and the luteal phase. If you've got a lot of deficiencies, that's not really going to help you. And when you say deficiencies, you mean like nutrient deficiencies or what other kind of deficiencies? If we measure your progesterone.

SIRS, Mold Illness, and Hormone Dysfunction 24:18

And here's the other thing too. With women, we like to use topical hormone replacement therapy and you need to measure two things. You measure salivary hormones and you measure blood hormones. The reason is you want to see where you are age-wise with the salivary hormones. But you also want to check the blood concurrently to make sure that you aren't starting at a high point. You need to have a baseline and then to check. And it's better to apply topically as a woman, whereas men, we tend to check blood and use injections of testosterone, but you can also do little trochies, things that you suck on that will help.

I think it's good to divide things out. so that you only have maybe different forms of estrogen in combination with testosterone. But if a woman doesn't need estrogen, then we can do topical testosterone alone. But, you know, we want that balance. You shouldn't be developing acne or any of that and the hair falling out. So a lot of times when women have pellets, even though it's supposed to be time released, you exceed the physiologic levels of testosterone, even though they say it's time released and many, many people come to us wanting to get off of their pellets because their hair's falling out.

And regardless of what they do, they can't get it regulated. So that means there's something more than just a hormone deficiency. So I really love what you're saying because where we started off with like the food and stuff, like what we also don't want to ignore is a underlying medical condition, right? So what we are saying is please eat toxin free. Please go to EWG and look at the Dirty Dozen and the Clean 15. because that is something that you can do right now. You can do it, you can scan your products, you can do all that.

For anybody who has researched hormone health, you will get a lot of different poaches, programs, medication suggestions, all of those things that are magically going to fix what you're saying. What I love that you're saying is yes, there are very good things that you can do, but when there are deficiencies, hormone deficiencies, that is we're partnering with a provider And what I personally love about our health coaches, get to partner with your provider as well. So I do believe in the power of health coaching a hundred percent, but in conjunction with there are other deficiencies taking place, not just saying, like, we're not even judging your lifestyle.

We don't know your lifestyle. We don't know who you're listening and all the things you're already doing. So I really love that you mentioned all the different ways that they can layer in. and help with those deficiencies. Can I ask a question, though, about this kind of thing? Once you get put on hormone, either replacement or creams or anything, is that just going to be something that they would need to do for the rest of their life? What does that look like? No, not necessarily. Progesterone can be given to a woman of, you know, adolescence on up, depending on what's going on in their body.

And just a little bit of progesterone, the second half of your cycle can help you conceive. especially for women who've had numerous children, one right after the other. But no, you're not mandated to that. But living in our toxic environment, you may feel much better, have good, robust bone density, but it all depends on your individuality. And that goes back to why we're here. Precision genetics matter. And we can tell when we do the Wellness Blueprint that we offer here, we also have, there's hormones on the Wellness Blueprint, hormone receptors, and then the autophagy, the detox.

And I would say too, another thing to remember is that for menopause, a huge missing ingredient are certain minerals and you can do all the hormones in the world and still have issues and it may be the minerals that you're missing. So sometimes that may require some IV administration of some minerals to kind of build you up and fill your bucket and then you could maintain that but to sustain bone density brain health in our society. I know for me, I will probably have a little bit of hormone replacement the rest of my life because part of my journey was that I did have a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and forever I am unable to absorb appropriate amounts of certain vitamins and minerals.

So that will help me.

Signs of Hormone Imbalance 28:58

And it makes me a very happy person to the point that, you know, I'm 61 and it's kind of funny. A few years ago, my husband said, Have you gone through menopause? I just laughed and I said, yeah, honey. He goes, do you know, I meet with my friends and their wives are so gripey. I'm like, yeah, you know, when you give your body what you need in the right amounts, you don't have to be a gripey person and be angry and irritable. That's another thing. Irritability and anger, pause, perimenopause is a big fat deal.

Yeah. Well, and I feel like the beauty of what we're saying is, is that when your body doesn't have what it needs, ultimately, your symptoms, your behaviors, even a part of like what I've spoken to several women is like, they feel like they're not like themselves. Like, I just don't feel like myself anymore. Yes, when your body doesn't have what it needs, you aren't like you don't get to behave like yourself. You don't get to feel like yourself, which is ultimately kind of what I want to dive into next real quick, which is when someone isn't feeling like themselves.

I think it can be really easy for people to want to jump to kind of the things that you said, which is the faster approach, whether that be pellets, whether that be faster looking for the quick fix. Can you talk about the difference between our approach, which may be a slower approach to things, but is it lasting? Because that's kind of what we're dealing with right now is asking those questions. That's really a great question, because if you just Google and you look on social media and look at podcasts, there's thyroid talks, there's menopause talks, there's infertility talks, all these things.

The foundation of what we do here at Hope for Healing is precision genetics, because that's your uniqueness, the way your body works. And that has set you up to have those problems. I had a patient that just told me she consulted with like a very famous menopause doctor and they said, you need to be on this, this, this, and this. And she's like, wait a minute. you want to put me, everybody should be on XXX." And it's like, wait a minute, what about all the other things that are influencing why my hormones are screwed up?

So we start with the genetics, we pull in all that lifestyle because you've got to poop, you've got to sleep, and the sleep may be impaired by the imbalances of the hormones. So that's a work in progress. then looking at your blood labs and potentially your salivary labs, but also looking to see if you have another condition that's driving the endocrine problems. And that's where what you mentioned before, chronic inflammatory response syndrome or biotoxin illness, plays a huge key in that. I think it's so amazing that you went into the way that everything is connected because I think nowadays people have been trying to silo down.

Like you have a hormone condition. You have a, I mean, I can't think of any other conditions at the moment because we've been talking about hormones. But what I'm saying is they kind of put you in this bubble and then treat you as if you were in this bubble. And then if you have a side effect, well, that's just a side effect. Well, that's just the side effect of this versus saying, hey, how can we look at you as a complete person? Because we believe that holistically, you need to get better, and you can get better.

I think a great example of that is a man who's struggling with depression. He's going to a psychiatrist and receiving an antidepressant, but no one bothers to measure his testosterone.

Hormone Therapy, Minerals, and Individualized Care 32:28

And to optimize that, and that can change your worldview. I mean, it can give you the motivation to get up in the morning. That's the other thing, just if your hormones have gone to pot, it's like you wake up, you don't have any motivation, or you know you have to exercise in order to keep your endorphins up so you don't get depressed. So it's so important to think globally instead of silos, like you were saying. I love that. Okay, so as we wrap up this episode, I think what I'd love to go over are just, I think this topic can feel really hopeless.

So I know we're going to get a lot more into several other topics around this, but whether someone doesn't feel like themselves, someone is being told that they can't have a child or feels like they're doing everything right, What is some like hope or even actionable steps that we can give when helping women restore balance and energy and overall wellness when this is just, I mean, let's be honest. Some of these people have been struggling for this for years and has still yet to find that kind of hope.

I would go back to the basics. We all need air. We all need sunshine. We need hydration. We need to get outside. And we need people that love us and don't gaslight us. I think having open-ended conversations, asking questions, and if you're stuck going to an allopathic physician, kindly ask those open-ended questions. If you've done your own research, cleaning up your food plan, cleaning up what you do control, what you bring into your home, what you put on your body, how you eat and prepare your food and what you put in your food and swallow.

Those are things that you have in your control. And then finding a functional medicine provider in your area that can partner with you that is literate in SERS or biotoxin illness. And hormones are all a big part of that. That's paramount. You have to correct those. So starting from the inside out, what you put in, helps influence the hormones that you do make. I would say hang in there, start small, and find people that are in your corner and that aren't going to hurt you. And sometimes it's not family.

It's better to love them, but if you need to do it from a distance because we want to maintain the relationship. But sometimes our family members are the ones that are the most difficult to partner with or for them to understand you. They just don't get it. And we let our hair down with our families, whatever hair you may have. And so that can be really hard to hear. No, one of the things that just because you touched on not all of us falling into like a cookie cutter approach to this hormone health and then there are things that we can know genetically if someone was wanting to maybe dive into a little bit more of like maybe the things they were born with because that's what we're looking when we're looking at genetics at least for us when we're looking at aseps we're kind of looking at what we were born with Because you talked a lot about the importance of really diving into this personal approach, and one of the things you discussed was genetics.

What would be their kind of starting ground for genetics to be able to get more information about maybe autophagy or any of those things? Where would you tell them to start? Well, the panel that, that if we were starting at ground zero, I would say the immune, autoimmune and inflammatory panel. And that deals with the inflammation, the hot red swollen and painful, and then the autophagy piece. That's a very good starting place and that's excellent. And I think that that's extremely helpful. We love to help people with that.

just when you put the fire out, then a lot of times you can start absorbing things and knowing what you need and what you don't need. Because you can get on the internet, take the turmeric for this, take the curcumin for this, this is the type of CBD you need, try this, try that. And it's like, it's so confusing and so overwhelming and I heard a lot of good things about this. Do you really want to take one more pill that you're guessing about? Why not? No, for sure. So that you don't waste your time, you don't waste your money, and you can do targeted help to help restore some balance and function.

Well, since you mentioned all that, how does personalized genetics even fix that? Like how would that even help make sure that we're targeting the right things and making sure we're not just taking another supplement that this influencer said?

Precision Genetics and Targeted Supplementation 37:18

So how does genetics actually help tailor some of that stuff? What would the results look like or suggestions, maybe just examples of that? Yeah, that's a really great question because it's not as simple as just inflammation alone. There's multiple systems in our body. There's something called the endocannabinoid system, the toll-like receptor system, the JAK-STAT system, and there's things that modulate immunity. And you use different things to target those. So for example, bioidentical hormones target a certain area.

Vitamin D lowers inflammation and there's a substance called palmitoyl ethanolamide that targets the endocannabinoid system. But if you don't have those markers, don't use it. Also, pure cannabidiols that target CB2 receptors, which, you know, lean into inflammation. And then for this toll-like receptors, those are all over the body, and we use low dose prescription naltrexone for that. You can also use curcuminoids. You can use berberine. It depends what your genetics show, and it's targeted. If your child is autistic, we're going to use what's on their panel.

We're not going to use something that's not on their panel. Why waste your money and your time? So I really love that because you weren't I love because like when you specifically mentioned it, which is why I was asking like, are you going to take tumor or not? Well, it could work for you. But do you want to take that guess? And, and that really is your choice, like whether people want to, okay, I heard it, it may work for someone. But it also, I mean, like, as in talk with Catherine, like she, which is one of our genetic providers, she'll be like, Lauren, that isn't great for you.

Like that isn't what you and so I learned that if I would have gotten on the bandwagon where everybody was talking about it, she was like, it actually could cause some issues. And so I'd really like you to be careful. So it's not that we don't sometimes as a provider won't say, hey, for a short period of time, can you take blank or do whatever, but it's because of our precision genetics that we're able to make those wise decisions. And honestly, what I've loved is not waste our people's money. when they don't need a product that won't actually move the needle.

Thank you for kind of breaking that down. I think it's kind of important for people to understand like, yes, you get this information, but how does that information get applied? And so I really appreciate your time. Specifically, you know, with this whole curcumin thing, If you have a genetic marker in the MAO family, then you can become hypertensive. And some people will buy bottles of this stuff and be popping the curcumin and thinking, it's good for everybody. And well, then their blood pressure's up and we don't want to cause that problem.

So you want to be targeted. So thank you for unpacking that a little bit. I love that. Well, thank you all so much for listening and we look forward to you joining us on the next Thank you for tuning into Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks.com. Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on Doctor Talks.

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