Misdiagnosed & Dismissed? How Women Can Reclaim Their Health Naturally

Opening Advice on Trusting Intuition 0:00

Believe in yourself more than you believe in the system. The system can't help you if you don't believe in yourself and you don't trust yourself. And we have a very strong women's intuition. The only time it fails us is when we don't listen to it. And it's so easy for us to push that down and be told it's just nothingness. But it is so powerful. And I just don't think that we embrace that enough. And so I would say, yeah, when you really feel like you can't do it any more, just listen to your gut, listen to your intuition and don't give up.

Keep talking to people. Keep asking the right questions. Keep searching online. You're going to find the right person to work with. This is doctor talks. Real talk from real doctors. Only issues that matter to you most. Welcome to the Truly Healthy M.D. podcast. I'm Doctor Monica, how are you? Today I have Doctor Deborah Muth with me who has recently published a new book.

Podcast Introduction and Guest Welcome 0:55

Doctor Deborah and I have known each other for a while in an integrative space, and so I'm really excited to finally have her here on the podcast. So welcome, Doctor Deborah. Thanks for being here. Hi, Monica. Thanks for having me. I am happy to have this conversation with you today. So you and I met online. We've we've been interacting for a while through the mold group. Right. I know that you see very complex patients. Id2. And I heard that from your background. You came actually from a conventional background, even though you're a natural path.

And tell us how you got to where you are right now. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm conventionally trained as a women's health nurse practitioner and a natural path doctor. That's what my doctorate is. And so I'm not a medical doctor. I'm a naturopathy doctor. And I started out in very conventional ob gyn as a nurse practitioner. And when I was 28 years old, I started having symptoms complex, weird symptoms, muscle pain, joint pain, fatigue, brain fog, weight gain, things like that. And I did enough research that I was convinced.

When I went to see my primary doctor, I was coming out with one of two diagnoses. He was either going to diagnose me with fibromyalgia because this was in the early 90s when fibromyalgia was the new thing, or Ms.. And I was exactly right. I spent about ten minutes in his office. The tech came in, took my temperature four different times, finally said, I don't know, something's wrong with these thermometers. Your body temperature reading, it's like 95.4. And he's like, that can't be right. And I looked at him and I said, there could be a little bit of a problem.

From Conventional Care to Integrative Medicine 2:34

It's 100 degrees outside. I have a long sleeve shirt on and a blanket, and I'm comfortable. And they completely dismissed my low body temperature, and the doc came and spent a few minutes with me and said, you have fibromyalgia? Here's a prescription for narcotics. Here's another prescription for antidepressants. Go home and be prepared to be disabled in four years. And I was like, what? I was 28 years old, just had my youngest child. I remember walking up to the car just sobbing, calling my husband, going, oh my God, what's going on?

And back then I had my wacky witchcraft friends, right? And they were doing this woo medicine. And I called them and said, okay, I've made fun of you, but you guys can help me because nobody else is obviously going to help me. And they took me to see some friends of theirs that were holistic nurses and studying holistic medicine. And we realized a couple of things. I had a thyroid issue. We cleaned up some mold and yeast in my body. I was living in a house that had mold in it. My kids were getting sick, didn't put two and two together back then, and that's what took me down the naturopathy route.

And I thought, there's more to medicine than what we've been taught, and I need to learn this. And so I quickly embarked on a degree as a natural path doctor. Fast forward to being 56 years old. I go in to see my orthopedic surgeon for some neck issues. I have some degenerative disease, and I said, I think it's time that we explore doing something my neck really bad. I'm getting this numbness and tingling. And he looked at me and he said, you're really smart. He's like, I can't believe you don't know what this is.

And I'm like, what are you talking about? Yeah, my neck is really bad. And he said, no, I think you have that mess. And I went, oh my gosh, here we go again. And went back and did the brain MRI had some white matter lesions. And he called me two days before Christmas, three days before Christmas and said, you have that mess, you have white matter brain lesions. And I said, no, in my world, miss is something else until proven otherwise. Never bothered to read the rest of the report. That said, my white matter lesions could be toxins or Lyme disease or traumatic brain injury.

And when I questioned him about it, he said, well, you don't have any of those things. And I said, I have all of those things. And he just dismissed it and said, please go see the neurologist. You can get on some medication. You're young, it's early. We can prevent a lot of disease. And I said, thank you, but no thank you. And that took me on this journey that created the book scene. At last seen at last. And so I really, really loved when I was reading it definitely geared more towards women. Is that correct?

It is. It's more geared towards women uncovering their misdiagnoses and allowing them to reclaim their health. If you liked this discussion, please hit the subscribe button and consider leaving us a review. It really helps people find us and we truly appreciate your support. Is there a reason that you felt that you needed to write a book geared more towards women's health? You know, being a women's health nurse practitioner, that was part of it. I certainly do see men. And we see men in this arena as well.

But unfortunately, the number of women that are dismissed is much higher than men. You know, it takes 4.6 years longer for a woman to get diagnosed with any condition. We have 60% of the women being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. The statistics are so clear that women are treated differently in the health care space, were dismissed more often with cardiovascular disease. So I really wanted to dedicate this to those women who've not been heard, who've not been seen, who've been told, this is all in your head.

It's anxiety, it's hormonal, you're stressed out because you're raising kids and just completely dismissed by our traditional medical system.

Misdiagnosis, Mold, and the Path to Naturopathy 6:30

Yeah, for sure, for sure. I do like to follow other authors that have the same kind of message. Like, I don't know if you've heard of Stacey Sams, who's a, I think, an exercise physiologist in Grinnell. Her tagline is A woman or a man. There's all these studies that are done on men and how fasting is better for them. And forget about pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals do not want to put women in trials, especially reproductive age women, because you might be pregnant, you're out completely. And so yeah, the conventional health care system is much better built for men than it is for women.

So I love all you all you guys out there. I will definitely treat your patients too, but I'm always very happy when there is some attention put to why it's more difficult to get the correct diagnosis for a woman. Yeah, absolutely. And I agree with that. I think it's much harder. We're much more dismissed and we're we're harder test subject. Right. We are more complex than men are. Our hormonal systems are different. The pregnancy times, the nursing times, all of that is so much more unique than our male counterparts, so that when we are put into a study, we skew their results.

And they don't like that. They like it when it's very clean and very easy to digest or dissect those results and put them in statistics. Absolutely. And so this new book that you have, it just came out this year. Is that correct? Yes, ma'am. Okay. And I found it on Amazon. Is that the best place for people for people to find it or where it where should people look for it? Dot, Amazon or Barnes and Noble are great places to find the book. Okay. And I saw that it was broken down in a few different not only chapters, but different sections to make sure that people got the right context.

And eventually you lead the reader through some facts, but some stories also to make make it more digestible. Sometimes. Yeah, textbooks are so hard to understand, but I really loved all the stories that you put in there that just make it so much more personable and very much up to date with actionable items. What's the framework that you propose in this book? Yeah. So first I have the foundation where you understand, like, why is this happening? What can we do about it? And I really want to encourage women to reclaim their own feminine power.

We look at hormones and gut function and understanding why the body needs to be looked at as a whole system and not as a unique system. You know, we're not just a heart. We're not just liver. We're not just kidneys. We are all in one. So when we part this out to all the specialists, there's still not somebody looking at the whole. And so that's a really important part. And functional or integrative medicine practitioners we do that. We look at your body as a whole. We don't look at you as one single part.

And then part two of the book is the root cause really looking at what's causing those conditions to give you those symptoms anyway? Is it a hormonal imbalance? Is it a toxin? Is it an infection? What is driving all of those symptoms that don't make you feel like who you want to be? And then part three, we take you down this healing path. Like, what are the things that you can do both conventionally and holistically. And we also include spirituality in there. Like what can we do from a spiritual component that makes us whole?

Because I think we forget about that. There's all these things we want to do to us and take for us, but if we don't have the right spiritual connection, I see people really struggle with that, and they don't heal when they don't have that. And it doesn't mean one spiritual component is better over another. This isn't a religious part, it's just having that spiritual connecting us, that mindfulness that way to connect back to Mother Earth and to ourselves and kind of have a higher power. You know, I've had women tell me my higher power is my high heeled shoes.

Why the Book Focuses on Women's Health 10:20

That's great. I don't care what the higher power is, just as long as you have one bigger than ourselves. Fatigue, brain fog, mood swings, weight gain. If you're a woman in your 40s to 70s, you've probably been told that it's just aging. But what if it's not actually healthy and e-comm? We look deeper. Hormones, nervous system health. Hidden toxicities. You're not broken. You just need a doctor who really listens. Visit a fully healthy ecom and book a consultation today. It's time to feel like your.

Real self again. That's amazing. Yep. And I found it. Very cutting edge. I really liked that you talked about peptides. I use a lot of peptides in my practice, and I find them very useful. A lot of times people say I've taken. I've done five, six diets, I've taken 50 or 60 supplements. But it wasn't until I got to the peptides that I really felt that change inside my body. What's your strategy? To try to understand? When I took the time to integrate peptides into, therapy? Because it's usually not something that we do the first visit or the first time somebody come sees us, it's down the line.

But people want to know a lot about this. There's a lot out there on the internet. Yeah. And so it's it's a, it's a process that you and I have to go through as clinicians to say, okay, this is where you are and where you need to be when we can start implementing those. Yeah. Absolutely. I agree I love peptides and it has made a huge difference in my practice bringing them in for patients to use, my patients that have been stuck and we've put them on peptides. They feel so much better. And I'm like you, I don't do it.

The first visit it. Depending on what I'm dealing with. I like to build the immune system first because most of my patients have chronic illness, chronic infection, mold, Lyme, all of those kinds of things, viruses. And so I want to build their immune system first. So I love to use things like TR one or TB 500 or BPC 157 to reduce inflammation, increase the immune function and really give them that strong foundation. And then from there really dial it in specifically to that patient and what they're trying to accomplish, and where are their deficiencies and trying to rebuild that with people who have long haul Covid?

I have a little bit different stack because I want to protect their heart. I need to build their immune system. I need to reduce inflammation versus somebody who's just looking for some anti-aging and regenerative medicine. Then that's a whole lot different. It's a lot more fun. There's different stacks we can use there, but definitely makes the difference in is cutting edge. I like the fact that you use the word fun because sometimes it gets difficult for us as clinicians to see patients that are very complex and have a lot of symptoms and sometimes don't get better as fast as we would want them to.

So bring a little bit fun back into practices is always amazing. Absolutely. I get a lot of questions, especially since I still run a lot of the commercial circles. I'm a medical doctor. I still do some hospital work about the validity of what we do. And is this evidence based or not? Where do you start talking to people when people want to have that kind of conversation with you? Yeah, I mean, there is so much evidence based research out there on everything we do on peptides and exosomes and supplements.

Book Framework: Root Causes and Healing 13:40

It's just a matter of knowing where to find it, right? Like there's even niche studies that we can find on peptides and exosomes. You just have to dig for it a little bit more. And the literature is going to call it by a different name. But yeah, I think we're we're not utilizing the literature like we should. And we have to remember that peptides are just amino acids. So they're compounds that are no different than what we would take in in food. We just can't get them in the level of what we want.

And we can't be very specific about it in our food. And so this allows us to kind of bio hack the body a little bit. But I think there's just as much evidence and research as we have in traditional medicine, probably even more sometimes. Yeah, absolutely. I always like it when a person or a clinician who has considered what we do, not evidence base showing them all the literature and introducing them to a lot of the evidence that's out there and having their eyes open and having their practice improve once they start embracing all of this.

One of the main things that I feel is a core thing that I want to do with my career is introducing more of our conventional colleagues to what we do, having and be a part of the conversation and just have opening up that curiosity a little bit. You and I met through the group with Doctor Neil Nathan. He talks a lot about mycotoxins, mold toxicity, one of those things that, again, conventional medicine is just has not caught up. But at the same time we use, you know, use drugs like cell ups which are also right for mycotoxins.

So there there is literature out there. It's just not literature that you might find by reading the most recent gem article. Do you most of your patients deal with mycotoxins. Is that one of the main root causes that you deal with? Well, what are the main root causes that you find in the patients that come to you? Yeah, it's a lot. We do attract a lot of people who have mycotoxins illness, who have tick borne disease. We typically will find the high viral loads because people don't know to look for viruses like HHV six and CMV and Covid and all of the viruses that are out there.

So we tend to dig a little bit deeper with that. But a lot of people, yes, find us because of the mycotoxins and the tick borne disease. To start with. And you have a certain framework that you work with your patients as far as first working with certain supplements or nutrition or medications, what what's your general framework when you work with patients one on one. Yeah, absolutely. So first and foremost is always nutritional foundation. Right. We want to get their diet right. A lot of our clients that come to us are pretty savvy.

They've already done diet. They've done detox, they've done all the things. But if they're new and they've never done that, then we want to get the inflammatory foods out of their diet as quickly as we possibly can. We want to start to drain the lymph system, detox a little bit, open those drainage pathways for them so that when we start introducing killing agents, we don't make them feel like we're trying to kill them at the same time. And so they they can do that a little more freely and they can still function and work.

So then we'll bring in those killing agents. We're certainly going to do lab work at the very first visit, unless they come in with things like that and explore all of their things. It's the biggest thing for us, really, is hearing that person's story. Like, I love to hear a person's story because in their story to me is their pearls. That's where the medical detective work comes in, where we can really dig in and put those pieces together. And they tell me the timeline of when things happen and you know, I was okay until this happened, and then this happened and then that happened.

And those are all the clues that tell us what we're dealing with, and then we can target that pretty quickly.

Peptides, Evidence, and Clinical Use 17:25

We have some fun toys in our office, too. We have a biofeedback machine that we use that can help us identify different bacterias and viruses and parasites, and which organ systems are challenged. And we do full body thermography, where we can take a picture inside the body and we can find your quote unquote, hot spots. And those hot spots are showing us the inflammation in the body, and they correlate to different things. So it allows us to really target very specific testing. And it gives us an idea before we even start figuring out what testing we need, so we can save people a lot of money by having these couple of things done in advance, and then do their history and then start to develop their individualized protocol.

I'm sure that a lot of people out there say, yes, definitely save me some money. Most patients that come to me have already spent half a fortune on. Yes, a lot of tests and clinicians trying a lot of things. And so if we can get to the root causes a little bit faster and get them more effective treatment, that goes a really long way. Yeah. And yeah, absolutely. I agree with you listening to patients. And it's not just that first visit, but I always find it interesting when I've known a patient for a while and I say, wait, let me look back at what we talked about the first time.

Yeah, sometimes a lot of the clues were there, but it took a little bit of time for other things to resolve until we could get to a point where we could look back and were like, oh, the clues weren't there. Let's go back to to what you told me the first time. And so getting to know the person, a lot of factors, not just their lab work, but their their family factors, their, socioeconomic, they're so many things that go into who they are at that moment when we first meet them. Yeah, absolutely. And I think too, like once we start having that in-depth conversation, we start asking the questions.

People go home and they start thinking about things and they start talking to their family like, where did I grow up and what was around there? And we start talking about environmental things, like how close to a golf course do you live, how close to the farm fields to you live? How much are they spraying around you? Because we don't think about those kinds of things bothering us or what kind of companies are around you. And we start, you know, doing some digging and looking at zip code areas. Did anybody have a toxic spill at any time while you were living in that area?

And what kind of things got dumped into the environment? They start going through and they start looking, and then they come back with more clues for us. And the more clues you can give us, the easier it is for us to get to the bottom line faster. Yeah for sure. I do think something that patients appreciate about working with integrative clinicians like us is that it's a path of their own self-discovery. It's not just us dictating where the treatment's going to go, but the more that they can be self-aware of their current symptoms, their current state, past thing that happened to them, the more that they can be a part of us discovering what's going on with them.

And and that's a a huge part of the healing journey, not just taking another pill, doing another detox. It's becoming a lot more self aware and understanding your body, your path where you stand and defining your future. Yeah, I agree, and I think there's so many people that find themselves for the first time in the midst of their story and their crisis. And unfortunately, I have a lot of patients who end up in divorce during this time frame for a variety of reasons. Some of it's good, some of it's not.

Sometimes during these journeys, they realize that they're not with the partner they should be with, that it's actually making them sicker.

Root Causes, Testing, and Patient Storytelling 21:00

And then once they leave that relationship, they start to feel so much better until they find another partner that's exactly the same. And then they become sick again. And so uncovering some of those secrets that we never would have done without having a journey of illness, you know, it changes us. It really does. We're not the same person when we go through those things. Absolutely. And those are things that are definitely can't be found in a pill. There's no way. There's no way. Absolutely. And so it definitely is fun to, like, bring you back that word to practices as an integrative clinician, there are so many things coming up in the horizon.

Are there things that you've learned recently or that you've been accredited recently to your practice that you're like, hey, this makes me excited to go to work and to start using this? Are there any things that are really motivating to you right now in your life? Absolutely. I mean, we kind of reignited our practice this year with exosomes, stem cells, ozone therapy and all these really cool modalities that are really allowing us to hack our way into people feeling better. I'm really excited to see where plasma therapy goes for repairing and regrowing the brain.

We're actually seeing gray matter improved by 2 to 4 deviations in a year of more gray matter, which is exciting to see for all of the people with the brain. Inflammation and Alzheimer's and dementia and neurological conditions, because we are starting to see reversal of those things, or at least suppression of them not getting worse. They're, you know, halting or they are improving, at least. And so that's a really exciting therapy to be bringing in and at time to be part of science. That's really, really amazing.

And you as a, as a person. So you were told in the past chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, where are you and your health journey? Have you found total health? Are you in your process of healing? Where where are you? Sorry for the personal person, but you know, no, that's okay. We have personal questions. That's right. And and I think our, our listeners like to know the person behind the interview and the person behind the book. That's what makes these things interesting. Yeah. You bet.

So I really healed myself. It took me about 18 months. I really dove in and said, I'm going to find the answer to Ms.. And I'm going to reverse this. And it took me about 18 months and I did just that. I included all the modalities of what I offer in my office and then some new things, and hence the reason we had some changes in the office this year because I feel amazing. I really I don't have any kind of lingering symptoms. I saw finally saw the neurologist because I finally just said, okay, I need to do this.

You know, in my heart of hearts that I'm not just being stupid here. And so I saw the neurologist February of this year and gave her all of my scans, told her all of my things, and she said, I don't think you have Ms.. She's like, I don't know that you ever did. She's like, but I honestly think, I think you have post-Covid peripheral neuropathy now. It was the newest diagnosis that they gave me. And I'm like, all right, this is crazy. But at least it's not Ms.. My white matter is resolving, which we never thought could happen.

I regrew my gray matter by two standard deviations in eight months. And so I feel amazing. I feel on fire and I love being part of medicine at this point. Because honestly, when you get that diagnosis, you're scared, right? Like I was sitting here going, okay, am I going to be able to practice? Am I going to be able to play with my grandkids in a couple of years? What am I going to do? And I just wasn't willing to take their answers. And I'm a little bit of a rebel at heart. So I'm glad to be able to stand here today and say, no, I did it.

And I don't have any of those complications that I had almost two years ago now. So that's amazing.

Healing Journey, Empowerment, and Final Thoughts 24:55

It sounds definitely like you empowered yourself. And when I was reading your book, that was the main message that I got, that you want to empower so many other people that may not feel empowered right now. It's it's hard. It's hard to be to live in our current climate. It's hard for so many people medically, financially, the amount of stress and toxins, if there's somebody out there listening that just doesn't feel like they can be empowered. What would the first few steps be for them to start becoming empowered, especially women, since that's the general population that you treat that listen to my podcast.

What are the first steps for people to reclaim their belief that they can be empowered? Yeah, you know, I would say this sounds cliche, but honestly just never give up. You may not have come across the right person that can help you yet, but that doesn't mean that they're not out there. So first and foremost, never give up. Secondly, though, believe in yourself more than you believe in the system. The system can't help you if you don't believe in yourself and you don't trust yourself. And we have a very strong women's intuition.

The only time it fails us is when we don't listen to it, and it's so easy for us to push that down and be told it's just nothingness. But it is so powerful and I just don't think that we embrace that enough. And so I would say, yeah, when you really feel like you can't do it any more, just listen to your gut, listen to your intuition and don't give up. Keep talking to people. Keep asking the right questions. Keep searching online. You're going to find the right person to work with. It's all in the time line of the journey, right?

It may be five years, it may be ten years. But just don't ever give up. There's always new things coming about that make this healing journey so amazing. You know what we have today we didn't even have five years ago. And so there's always something that can be done. It just may not be on the timeline we want it to be. Absolutely. And and that's part of the reason I love having this podcast, because I know that people out there are listening. They are trying to find answers where they haven't found them anywhere else.

And having people like you who's on the cutting edge and putting books out there and coming on these podcasts, what a privilege and honor to have you here on this podcast. I really, really appreciate. Do you have any final words for our listeners today? Oh, I would say, you know what? Life is amazing. Your body is amazing and it can heal. So don't give up on it because it's not going to give up on you. That is so true. Thank you so much for being with us. Doctor Deborah. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Monica. Right.

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