Gut Health, Weight Loss & Anxiety: Your Questions Answered

Intro and Q&A Setup 0:00

When we're on our blood sugar roller coaster. So say you're having something with higher carbs. It's shooting you up, and then you're bottoming out. You could feel jittery. You could feel anxious. And I've had a few patients now that their anxiety was due to blood sugar imbalance and some insulin resistance. So that's something that you'd want to you could wear a continuous glucose monitor. You could play around with different supplements. You could hunker down on your macros and and check those out.

But that's another root cause for anxiety that you definitely want to look into and make sure it's balanced and balancing your blood sugar is just it's key. It's key for longevity. Welcome to Doctor Talks, the podcast, where every episode leads to a healthier you. Join us as we navigate the world of optimal health, uncovering groundbreaking strategies to conquer chronic disease. In each episode, we'll bring you the latest insights from leading health experts, medical innovators, and wellness warriors.

If you're seeking to transform your health journey, or if you're looking for answers to burning questions, you've come to the right place. Get ready to unlock the secrets of lifelong health and vitality. This is Doctor Talks, real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most. Hey everyone, it's Doctor Jen. Welcome back to a Q and A. We are doing these special in the integrative of Health group on Facebook. I'm gonna ask people to put their questions and what they're struggling with, and we're going to answer them on the podcast and YouTube.

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Weight Loss, Candida, and Gut Health 1:51

Share this. If it helps you at all, or you think it would help anyone because I would like this informed consent. Goodness to to get out there. I am a practicing physician and double board certified, so it's it's hard to get through some of the bad information out there. And as always, this is not medical advice. This is just suggestions. Things that I've seen that have worked in my practice. So let's get started. Someone was asking weight loss, macro counting and dealing with Candida after overcoming H.

Pylori. Okay, so gut health is big with weight loss. We need to make sure that our gut is functioning properly, that we, our GLP one receptors are taking care of, that we have a good amount of good and bad bacteria that they're in there in a good ratio. Okay. So when we have a lot of good bacteria, then if we have some Candida or bad bacteria, it covers that, right? We're not going to see Candida rise up and cause problems. But what happens is there's a dysbiosis or overgrowth of the bad bacteria.

And Candida is so common, so common for women, so common in women in perimenopause leads to sugar cravings. It leads to bloating. It leads to skin problems. It allows other infections to come in, such as age pylori or C difficile causes inflammation, creates biofilms. Right? Yikes. What are symptoms of Candida overgrowth? Sometimes a Candida overgrowth. Our sugar cravings bloating, rashes, itching, yeast infections, rashes under the breast of Candida brain fog can be big with that fatigue trouble sleeping.

So a lot of different things can be out of whack. What I think is interesting is I think it's pretty common after being on birth control. So me personally, I was put on oral birth control to regulate my period, when really it was Hashimoto's that was the problem. So this is also why if you're listening and your daughter or yourself, you're going through irregular, erratic periods or something isn't right no matter what the age. That is a warning sign. Our cycle is like a vital sign for our health as women.

And if it's off or you're having all these crazy symptoms like PMS is not normal, even though it's normalized. So just because it's normalized doesn't mean it's normal. And this happens a lot in the health field. So what we can do is that we can really examine our cycle and and figure out what's going on. Now, what you don't want to do is jump on birth control. So anyway, I was put on birth control to regulate my period. And we know that oral birth control contraceptives, it's conjugated equine estrogen. It's c.e.

It's not real estradiol. It is not doing good things on those receptors. It's doing bad things. And it's also depleting us of minerals and also making it more likely for Candida to grow in the gut. So this happens a lot. And I remember personally, I didn't have any signs of yeast infections until after my doctor in high school put me on birth control, and I did not need to be on birth control. And then I struggled with Candida up until about, you know, ten years ago when I, you know, really started practicing the integrative medicine in my practice over ten years ago.

But I, you know, this candida can flare up to in patients. So I see patients take it, get it under control. I have a protocol unhealthy by Doctor Jen for Candida. It works excellent. Sometimes though if botanicals don't help we do go to things like die Fluky and rate or nice stat. And sometimes we do need that to break down the biofilm. So it really just depends on the patient. So when we're looking at coming out of a Candida infection stress, you want to make sure that you're not stressed, that you are not creating stress.

Because when we have high stress, high cortisol, we're going to create an environment in our gut that it's it's going to be favorable for overgrowth of candida and the bad guys, you know going off. So we want to make sure that we want to make sure that we're replenishing with good probiotics. And spore based probiotics too, are helpful. And then that we're not killing off the good guys. So we're not you're swimming in glyphosate, right? If you live in the Midwest, that could be an ongoing problem that I tell my patients in the Midwest.

You should probably be on Gut Protect Powder every day, especially during harvest season, because otherwise you're getting inflammation in that got the good guys are getting cut off and not good. They're dying off. So you're going to get that dysbiosis antibiotics. So if you have to if you have to go on antibiotics for some reason, then you need to supplement with a probiotic and prebiotics to feed the good guys that are left. So we know that there's an increased risk of candidiasis or candida after antibiotics, you know, oral or IV.

So you got to realize that you have to be proactive. And when I work in the E.R., I always prescribe a probiotic with the antibiotic. And I explain with them how to take it, you know, two hours, 1 to 2 hours to to be safe apart from your antibiotic and take it for at least a month. But keep going. But I try to at least teach a little bit in the emergency room. And please don't give antibiotics for viruses. Don't take antibiotics for viruses. Sometimes doctors or practitioners, especially if they're new practitioners in the urgent care and they're just out of school because they just want to, you know, get a job.

And that's why they hire new grads. Because it's less expensive. It's awful, I know, but they will just, you know, just give antibiotics even though it's a virus because it takes longer to educate the patients. You have to advocate for that. And I think antibiotics have such an important role in diseases. But keep a healthy gut first, because we know that our immune system is in our gut. So you're coming off killing the Candida. Your sugar cravings are butter. Your sugar cravings start coming back.

Well, is it stress right? Is it just you need to do a sugar reset. Try to decipher that. But I will say that, you know sugar is addictive, so you have to be careful that you're not feeding that addiction. And then if you're feeding that addiction to you're feeding the Candida in the gut. And then if the candida in the gut are overgrowing, they are going to through the gut mind connection, ask for ask for sugar. Right. So we have to be careful. It's a vicious cycle I know. But it's something that you can get under control.

So I recommend like a three day sugar fast if you're trying to like kick the cravings. And a lot of the times like a carnivore diet short term can really shut down those sugar cravings. Even even a three day sardine fast or a three day carnivore bar fast. We'll just reset it. I know over Christmas I felt like I was getting out of control. I'm like, oh my goodness, I'm just losing it. I'm so inflamed. I just like, have I'm craving sugar and I'm just eating it. And I was stressed too, because we were moving and I just was like, no.

And and I did like a, like probably three day animal based, but like a full, like two days of just carnivore and just reset everything to whole food. And but this can include fruits too. So sometimes you just need to shut that down or just have berries which are lower glycemic index. So all of these things can be helpful if you're coming off a Candida infection or if you're coming off like, like sugar cravings and all these things that I'm telling you guys about, they're all going to help with weight loss, too.

Isn't that amazing? And inflammation. So like one of those resets can be very helpful okay. And you're just going to feel better. Your skin's going to look better. You're not going to be as bloated. Inflammation is going to be better because candida is always going to be there in the gut. And it's okay to have some candida in the gut, but it's when it over grows that it's the problem. Okay? It's when it over grows and creates inflammation and you are just having a leaky gut or dysbiosis from all the inflammation from the candida.

So going going off of the candida once again you just have to look out for those symptom times that it might be coming back because it definitely could come back because how did it get there in the first place. So if you're not changing that then it could come back. So Candida is one of those that you kind of have to keep in check. This is where I love Gut protect powder. You could do colostrum along with making sure that you are keeping that inflammation low in the gut. You could use peptides such as BPC 157, KP and or La Raza tied to keep that, knock that inflammation down and keep that gut healthy.

Keep the villa nice and flourishing like they should be instead of flat and and not good. So all of those things are great. And like I said, you could find the protocol on Healthy by Doctor Jen. Let's do one more question. So someone they are having significant anxiety since the death of the mom a little more than a year ago. So. Oh, I'm so sorry for your loss. That is heartbreaking. And anxiety, you know, fear. So losing losing someone first, you know, going going to the church and asking for prayer, asking for to be surrounded by the word, getting in the Bible and making sure you are you're asking God, God for help.

You know, the spirit of fear can can be terrifying. And we know fear is how we're controlled, right? Fear is what the news does for us. Fear is what it can really has significant problems. And it could also hurt our faith. Right? So we need to really dig into what is going on with this anxiety. Like once again, what is the root cause of the anxiety? Anxiety can also be caused by abnormal gut flora and you want to look, you know, what's going on with with the gut flora.

Anxiety, Grief, Hormones, and Blood Sugar 12:36

There's a lot of great botanicals for anxiety anxiety there. You could be missing co-factors such as magnesium is great, so magnesium l-theanine is great at night. So I do have that at the store. Two capsules at bedtime. It crosses the blood brain barrier. Really great stuff. And then also try my eggs. So I take both of those at night and try. Mag has the mallet and glycine in the citrate, so you need to replenish your magnesium, especially in times of stress you're burning through a little bit extra.

I love DKB, it's from magnolia bark and it is found in the product called serenity. That one is great. Also helpful for sleep too, so I love that one for anxiety. L-Theanine is amazing. Lightning is an amino acid found in green tea, which it balances. Caffeine, balances the the caffeine in green tea. And you can take that one. So it's just it's just amino acid found naturally. So I tell patients so you can take that. If they're waking up in the middle of the night feeling anxious, it can kind of help them go back to sleep.

You can take it during the day. A lot of women, when I check their saliva cortisol tests, they have this spike in the afternoon. And it's because that is when, like the kids are coming home from school, or if you're homeschooling, you're getting dinner ready and your husband's coming home and it's like you got to clean up the house from the kids being there all the day and like all the things. Right. And I feel this sometimes, like when I would come home from work and then everyone was coming home and I was trying to cook dinner, and everyone is just like once the, you know, once me and attention for me.

So I sometimes it will take in l-theanine in the afternoon. So that one is really helpful for anxiety. And that along with the Dehp, I've had patients like really do well with it. And one of them like they were coming off some benzodiazepines with it with the Dehp. So that was great. Anxiety can also a root cause be from hormones. So if you are stressed that is going to affect your progesterone and your hormone cascade. So maybe you are already perimenopausal or maybe you're menopausal and not on hormones.

And that anxiety can really creep up. So anxiety can 100% be from hormones. And that one is, you know, you talk with your doctor, you test, don't get some hormones and you appropriately treat depending on if you're in perimenopause, menopause or you're menstruating, you know, normally. But maybe your progesterone is a little low. So a lot to do with that. And it's oh gosh, like when women have anxiety and perimenopause. And then we put them on progesterone and fix that root cause it is like night and day.

They do so well. It's it's great. I just I think it's amazing to see. And then we use oral progesterone on if there's also trouble sleeping at night because of the break how it progesterone breaks down when you take it orally. It can be really helpful. One more thing I wanted to mention for anxiety that could be a root cause, could be blood sugar balance and blood sugar problems. When we're on our blood sugar roller coaster. So say you're having something with higher carbs. It's shooting you up, and then you're bottoming out.

You could feel jittery, you can feel anxious and I've had a few patients now that their anxiety was due to blood sugar imbalance and some insulin resistance. So that's something that you'd want to you could wear a continuous glucose monitor. You could play around with different supplements. You could hunker down on your macros and and check those out. But that's another root cause for anxiety that you definitely want to look into and make sure it's balanced and balancing your blood sugar is just it's key.

It's key for longevity. It's key for going through perimenopause and menopause. It's key for being an appropriate healthy weight blood sugar balance is is all of that. So that's another thing. If you're having some some more anxiety or anxiety creep up okay. That was two questions for the week. So I hope that this was helpful. I would love if you guys you created this podcast and give it a thumbs up on YouTube and show me that you guys like these breakout sessions, these Q and A's, and I will continue to do them.

So have a wonderful day. Thank you for tuning in to 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 WW dot Doctor talk.com. Stay connected, stay healthy and join us next time on Doctor Talks. Real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.