Protect Your Hormones in a Toxic World

Introduction to Environmental Toxins and Hormones 0:00

We have someone with us here today, Dr. Margaret Christensen So first of all, thank you for joining us. thank you. And we're going to dove deep into how environmental toxins and exposure affect our homes and therefore affect our health outcomes. And for anyone that's listening, again, for women, this is so much of a priority now versus grandma's reality. We don't live in the same reality anymore. You know, since the 1950s, I think we've added another approximate 150,000 toxins to our toxin. Burden toxic burden that we now breathe and eat and smell and live amongst.

So we cannot expect to have the same habits and have the same outcome. We have to understand how we need to be armed for today's reality. So we're gonna dove deep into that. So before we get into the toxin side and what that's doing to our body as a foundation with your brilliance, maybe you can help us understand the hormone side. Like, what are we actually dealing with? Just the basics of, like, how our body uses hormones. Well, hormone hormones are messengers in the body, so they're like sending an email from one end of the body to another or a text message, telling it to do something.

And so we have different types of hormones. We have what we call steroid hormones. And those are things like cortisol and also estrogen and progesterone and testosterone come out of that lineage. And cholesterol is actually the basis for that. And then we have other types of hormones, things like neurotransmitters, which are more more long and insulin rich, more along the lines of peptides, a little smaller sex. So hormones are signaling molecules. They're telling one part of the body to do something.

So if it's the thyroid, then the thyroid hormone is telling your body to produce energy. And if it's estrogen, then estrogen is telling your body to grow the lining of your uterus or gross breasts, or if it's testosterone, it's it's helping with libido, whether you're a man or a woman. And if it's insulin, again, it's managing your blood sugar. So hormones are signaling, molecules are messengers that that tell the body.

How Hormones Work and Interact 2:12

Okay. Hey, what's up? What's what's what's next? And what do we do? And the way you describe it, I've read some of what you put out there. You talk about this dance of the hormones and you paint this picture. So tell us about that dance. What was that? Yeah. So, you know, what's really important is to understand that, again, there's different types of hormones. And let me just let me just kind of talk some of that and then how they all interact with one another. That is the that's one of most critical things in terms of you're trying to figure out what's going on in your body is understand it's not just one thing.

You can look at it. You have to look at it in it, really from a functional medicine perspective, a whole system is in how does everything interact? So we have things like your stress hormones that would be adrenaline and cortisol, and then the brain is signaling that production, the part of the brain called the hypothalamus and is signaling your adrenal glands for adrenaline, cortisol, DHEA. Those are all involved in the stress response. And then there are sex hormones such as testosterone, estrogen, progesterone and derivatives.

And those are produced either in the ovaries or the testicles are also produced in the adrenal glands, post-menopausal. And a lot of folks. And and then we have hormones like for blood sugar management that would be insulin is one of the primary ones. There's other ones such as leptin. It's important to understand that all of these work together and when you have high levels of stress hormones, they are going to impact your production of, for example, sex hormones. You make more estrogen, not enough progesterone.

You can get heavy bleeding or endometriosis or it knocks out your testosterone if you're a guy and then you have no libido and difficulty with erections. Those stress hormones also trigger insulin production. So insulin is your blood sugar management hormone and and insulin tells you, hey, I'm hungry, I need to eat my blood sugars too low or is too high. All the diabetes that we're seeing is related to that. And insulin itself then feeds back into your estrogen, progesterone, testosterone into some of those enzymes and it impacts the levels of those particular hormones.

And it in it feeds back into your stress hormones and can impact those. And then all of those can affect, you know, also, you're not transmitters how well you think you're feeling. You know, what do you what do you sensing? Can you have brain fog or not? Are you happy? Are you sad? So there it's just this dance. And when we're looking at it, we can't just look at one thing by itself. And I didn't I didn't mention thyroid in there because the thyroid hormone a lot of people understand that's what helps make energy in our body.

And again, when you have a lot of inflammation going on in the body, inflammation raises cortisol levels, it raises insulin levels and it it can inflame the thyroid, affect energy production, and then also affect your sex hormone production. So that's the dance that's going on. Yeah, no kidding. It is complex. And where do you I mean, with so much going on and so many pathways intersect with each other, how would you know where to start with somebody when you're working with them? Well, a lot of times it's really a good history.

And and from a functional perspective, we actually actually start with how stressed was your mother when she was pregnant with you? And then what are the different stressors that have been along in your life? And then what are your current symptoms that you're having? So, for example, if you're having things like infertility issues or you have endometriosis or polycystic ovarian syndrome, you have uterine fibroids, you have super heavy bleeding, you have no libido. Again, if you're a guy, you're having erectile dysfunction.

And we're seeing that in younger and younger and younger men. It's just horrendous. So that's some of the common, you know, and then the other piece I would talk about would be neuropsychiatric symptoms. So I talked a little bit about, again, neural inflammation before we started and understanding that all of these hormones play a role in whether or not you may be having anxiety, depression, irritability, bipolar, anything. So we start with a good history and, you know, figuring out, okay, what are the symptoms are you presenting with today?

And then we go back and look at again how many different stressors and traumas and talks and exposures have you had to get you to this point today? And that's that's where we can start helping you sort out. And I'm sure a lot of other people are talking about just the role of detoxification, because we know that the toxic burden that we have now, that's really where so much of the hormonal disruption is that we're seeing. So now that's good. And the work the work that you do is around that toxic burden.

We're going to dove into that. And I want to ask you, since we're talking about the dance, before we get to the inputs, if there's there's also the metabolites we make from our hormones, the toxic byproducts of, you know, the hydroxy acids. And then how much how do you know if it's an external source or is it that you're making something internally that is inflammatory in nature? And how much does that impact something like brain fog? Where is it the neurochemical? Is it the inflammation from the hormone metabolite itself?

How do you play that dance? Well, again, I think this is where we are required to have whole systems thinking. And what is what is really tragic, I think, in the way we are educated today and certainly in medical schools is in silos and nobody's talking to one another. But if you get a good history out of somebody, then you know, that's how I know where to start, where to start. And so so many are there. Are there functional tests you can use that would maybe determine what quality of hormones you're producing at?

Absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, I just start I start with a big basic plan, a bloodwork. Okay. And has yeah. So we're looking at pretty, you know, the complete thyroid hormones

Testing, History, and Functional Medicine Approach 8:12

PSA T3 T4 for reverse T3 thyroid antibodies if you want that. And then I'm looking at an adrenal stress index at the same time, I want, you know, 4 to 5 cortisol patterns throughout the day. And then we can also look at blood levels of hormones. We can look at salivary levels of hormones, we can look at urinary metabolites of hormones. So one of your questions that you just ask is how do we know where some symptoms are coming from? And a lot of times we don't know. We don't know initially without starting to dig deep.

But what we do know is, are some basics, are some basics of where are, you know, where is the hormone produced, how is it metabolized and how is it get gotten rid of? And if we can just start with those things, oftentimes that's where we can help somebody get better. Yeah, I know. Like for the past. So you're talking about ransom. And one challenge we often see is that the the training that you were talking about, allopathic M.D., in terms of what the ranges and what what do what is actually a red flag and how do you actually implement?

Yeah, because all of a sudden you're up against a wall against what is believed to be true, you know? And so how do you determine yourself some personal insights onto like where you need to focus on what the sort of standard majors are kind of off. Right? Well, you know, unfortunately, a lot of the standard rangers are completely bought and paid for by big pharma. Let's look at cholesterol, you know, normal cholesterol was when I was in medical school was 250. And we have done nothing zero zero to impact the rate of death from heart attacks, particularly in women, by lowering cholesterol.

And cholesterol is the singular molecule out of which our our estrogen comes out to test. Testosterone comes out of cortisol comes. So when we're low in cholesterol to, you know, ridiculous levels, that's a problem. So, again, we can we can and there's there's not one kind of easy answer here. A lot of it is, is I'm looking at different levels of hormones, their metabolites and their adrenals. What's your blood sugar going on at the same time? And how much stress are you going on? So those are the things that I'm putting together.

And then I know that, you know, you're into genetics. So part of getting a good family history, for example, you have a family history of alcoholism. That tells me a lot. That tells me a lot about certain pathways in the body and also certain nutritional deficiencies. And this is that that you may have and and also, you know, histories of, for example, of cancer and all that. A lot of that can be genetically determined. But as we know, just because you have the genes for something doesn't mean you turn on.

What's turning on is the environment, the environment that's coming across those genes to to turn the genes on or off or shut them down. And so when I'm doing a hormonal workup, you know, first of all, I'm just you know, I'll start with, okay, why are you here? You know, what do you want help with? And then get a very detailed history going back and looking at stressors at nutrition, at environmental toxin exposures. And we can get into, you know, what those toxins are, but it's a big deal. Yeah.

And then maybe the next question is to ask, okay, you know, where are hormones? Where is the vast majority of our hormones metabolized and you tell me that and then I'll I'll fill in the details. Yeah. So so the way we look at the cascade, we personalize a little bit in terms of the genes that actually convert, you know, cholesterol to like cholesterol being the seed for everything. And then you convert it to progesterone, testosterone and estrogens. And the uniqueness of how we do that is it's highly variable.

And this is where, you know, in terms of, like you said, let's test upfront, what does my hormone map look like? Am I more energized, more estrogen wise? And then what is my butterball? Is it more toxic because of the two hydroxy which is safe until I get to menopause and it flips and becomes a threat on its own, you know. And then the detox pathways are clear, though. So that entire map understanding like you do, it's not a silo or a concern. It's the full cascade from beginning to end. You know, what do I do from beginning to end?

Then my net result allows me to pick a path, a personalized path. And I think you have this crazy algorithm running in your head because you've done it so many times that you see the person, you see the paperwork, you hear the symptoms, and you already compute and understand exactly where to go. And that's a that's the brilliance of working with somebody like yourself, because you've had the experience, which is really key yet. No. Well, I think yeah. Well, I mean, so, you know, and besides the genetics, I mean, I think one of the most critical aspects to understand if you're if you're interested in hormonal balance is start, just start with gut health.

Two things. You know, you start with adequate sleep, getting enough sleep. And, you know, and good gut health and making sure your poop and every day because the vast majority of our hormones are metabolized in our gastrointestinal tract. And so if you have leaky gut or increased intestinal permeability, you have you've had a lot of gut issues. We've been on tons of antibiotics. You have a lot of dysbiosis, you're drinking a lot of alcohol. The gut and the liver are what's processing your hormones.

And if they can't if they can't do it well and you are end up recirculating toxic hormones like you were mentioning, there's different metabolites of hormones. So you can go down good pathways or not so good pathways. And being mindful of those is is helpful, but you don't even need all the fancy testing. It's real simple. You clean up your diet. Yeah, yeah. You get rid of the sugar, you get rid of the processed foods. You try Annie's organic as possible. Stop genetic modification. Learn about that.

If you don't know anything about that. I am on the on the board of responsible technology dot org. They're one of the leaders in helping to educate around the threat to to everything from genetic modification including to the recent pandemic. We're not going to talk about the details of that, but I'm going to talk about a genetically modified organism and a genetically modified solution. That wasn't what it said it was to treat it, which it didn't treat or prevent or, you know. So if we understand the roles of toxicants in genetics and disrupted gut right there, you can you can learn how to balance your hormones on your own by sleeping enough and getting your gut in order.

Yeah. So at a baseline. Yes, for sure. That's amazing advice. And I think the in between the lines hit that you dropped. What we have to look for is different than what our ancestors had to look for. And the way I suppose was I even mean somebody five years ago. Right, right. So and I'm not talking about grandma anymore. The reality of our food supply and, you know, certain technologies now being used in your meat supply.

Hormone Disruption from Diet, GMOs, and Toxins 15:00

And for example, it's there's no secret that this technology since 2018 has been used in pork. Right. And pigs are being injected with a variable M RNA shot, which is the the the actual active portion of it doesn't even require any FDA clearance because it's considered to be in, you know, a custom portion on the base formula. So it's very important to reeducate yourself on what clean eating actually means beyond just the pesticides and chemicals, etc.. Yes, to all of that, obviously. But there's more and there will always be more.

And to constantly be learning and never to think, you know, at all and you know, the reality of how quickly things are changing today. You have to keep learning and learning and learning and learning. And thankfully with people like you, we have some place to go. So now back to the what you were dropping a hint at. What are those talking? We talked about the hormone pathway. We talked about the dance. We kind of understand how the body works. We now know the implications of if you take this homeostatic, beautiful functionality away from your self, what are the things that are disrupting that that we're exposed to?

Well, again, I think genetically modified organisms are probably one of the most insidious and toxic things that we are being exposed to and triggering so much autoimmunity. So, you know, for those who don't understand what that is, you know, genetically modified organism, that's basically 90% of our food supply. Now, we've taken you take a virus and splice it to a piece of, you know, a piece of DNA from a bacteria and then splice that into a plant so the plant doesn't die when you spray it with glyphosate, which is also called ramped up and and or other pests, pesticides.

So now you have a plant such as corn that is now growing with that has been genetically modified. So it's completely new to nature DNA that, you know, the body's never seen it before. And it's also covered in in a pesticide which is a known hormone disruptor, a known neural toxicant and a known immune system disruptor. And we're consuming that. And it also acts like an antibiotic. So it's killing off our good microbiome. And so that's probably one of the biggest, biggest challenges. And then we're eating all these foods, food.

Yeah, a lot of what I call it food with a h, you know, p, h0d, it's pharmaceutical food. It's not, it's not real food. And so you have, you know, dyes and all kinds of preservatives as well as, again, all these pesticides and chemicals and they're wrapped in plastics and heated in a microwave. And there is there's actually no nutritive value other than calories and and those chemicals at very tiny, tiny amounts can can cause hormone disruption. So it's one of the reasons that we're seeing so much increase in fertility and autoimmunity and all that.

So the combination of GMOs with the pesticides, with food additives in our food supply is huge. So one of the things I say is become part of a local food gardener, food co-op or, you know, support your local or for an organic farmer, go down to the farmer's market, grow your own garden. We all need to understand what's happened to our food supply and I can get into that a little bit more. But so again, why it's important when we can to eat organic and I mean, that has its own, you know, challenges.

There's a lot of people trying to bend the rules there, but that's another piece. Heavy metals is another big challenge and heavy metal exposure. So things like mercury and aluminum and I won't mention where the most common source of that of those ingredients come from because again, that's one of the things that gets people censored of you start speaking out against, you know, the sacrosanct cow of what we're loading our children up with multiple 77 doses with by the time they reach 18th critically if you follow the CDC schedule.

So so that is another problem. And there's also it's in the why. I mean, we have, you know, heavy metals also from the water supply and from air pollution. So that's another piece. You know, all the plastics that we're being exposed to, they all have hormone disrupting effects. So again, drinking things like out of out of glass rather than plastic is helpful. I've already mentioned pesticides and then toxic. Old is an area that I'm particularly very familiar with personally and as well as my practice is one of the things that kind of really started with, but is probably one of the most common environmental exposures that goes completely unrecognized and that has massive hormonal disrupting effects, again, at the level of neurotransmitters creating all that brain fog stuff, at the level of actual hormone production of metabolize in itself.

And there are toxic mold mycotoxins that actually mimic hormones and mimic estrogens and mimic testosterone and mimic thyroid like hormones. So that's a very common exposure that a lot of people have no clue about. It can lead to fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, a lot of the mystery illnesses that we see. So, so, so basically we're surrounded by hormone disruptions and and then and there's no incentive for any of the industries involved, whether you're big pharma, big food, big ag, big media, you know, and that and the funding from big banking to change any of that because it makes massive amounts of profits.

And we have a sick care system, not a health care. So, I mean, all of those factors are are things that that we are dealing with. And that's like you said, this is the reality of today. And the act today is totally different from five years ago. I thought I knew five years ago, you know, everything okay? Yeah, no. Kidding. Yeah, there's a whole nother layer here. Yeah. Yeah. And then let's wait to see what's coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hold on to your boots. Yeah, have a practice. So a couple of those areas we should expand on.

But before we go there, I just wanted to ask you to break down for people that don't know. Yeah, we know that the word hormone drop should mean something bad, but what's the actual mechanism like? What does that. The disruption, what's actually happening? Well, that's great. That's a good question. And there's a lot of things that are happening. First of all, again, we would just go back to the idea that hormones are messengers. So the hormones are being produced in one part of the body and they're sending a message to another part of the body to do that.

And they do that by by triggering a receptor or turning, you know, flipping a switch, a receptor on that on the cell membrane to to say, hey, you know, do something, make some thyroid hormone or turn on some energy. That's what tells you that thyroid hormone tells your mitochondria make some energy. So so one of the ways that that you can have hormone disruption is that you can have something that actually mimics a hormone itself and attaches to that receptor and does things that's not supposed to be doing.

So that's one way it does it another way, like I already mentioned, is disrupting the gut. Flora. And so if you've been taking a whole lot of antibiotics in your life and you're taking a lot of medications like nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, things like ibuprofen or Aleve or, you know, pain medications, those poke holes in the stomach and they impact the microbiome, as do pesticides, as do all the things I just talked about. So you you you can you can disrupt hormonal function by disrupting good gut flora and healthy function so that the hormones don't work.

Right. Or or ones that have been metabolized or gotten rid of already and dumped into your intestines to be pooped out, the end up getting reabsorbed. So now you have too much of a toxic form in the body that doesn't work. So that's another form of hormone disruption. A third form would be impacting what we call the axis, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal. Now we call the G axis, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal thyroid gut gonadal gonads. So we're so again, when we're under a lot of stress and we're sending a signal from the hypothalamus in our brain, the master regulatory center, down to our adrenal glands, that via the pituitary gland to say, hey, make some, you know, make some run or fight hormones, make some adrenaline, make some cortisol.

Again, those are going to impact what hormones are being you know, what other hormones are being produced and whether or not you feel anxious or or you feel like you need to go eat a pile of French fries and, you know, a whole chocolate cake. A lot of that is coming from your stress hormones. And so that is another form of hormonal disruption, the inflammation that you alluded to earlier. And when triggering autoimmunity in our body, we're triggering cells to start producing inflammatory chemicals against our own bodies.

That's stressful. That's another way of hormone disrupting. So basically, we're not allowing our body to do what it's supposed to do because of inflammation. Again, pretending like it's a hormone that it's not mucking up our stress mechanism, axis response and, you know, mucking up our guts in our livers and not being able to get rid of toxins. So it happens on multiple levels. So just listening to you, I know that earlier you mentioned, you know, how women don't fare well when it comes to cardiovascular health compared to men, you know, and we find that I think the statistic is that 66% of women will die on their first cardiovascular event with no previous warnings, no symptoms. They don't even know that they're sick.

And then also on boom, it hits and it's hard to recover. It's a fraction of that for men. So is this because that's innate or is it because the hormone disruption is so prolific? Women are just set up, they're already at that threshold because that's the call it the hormone. The plague that we have today is affecting women so much more.

Mold, Heavy Metals, and EMFs 25:00

Or is it a combination? Well, I think it's multifactorial. Again, women are much more prone to autoimmune inflammation than men. Testosterone, to some extent, has a protective effect against that. And we know that a lot of cardiovascular disease is really it's cancer, autoimmune inflammation inside the blood vessels. It really has very little to do with cholesterol and cholesterol is a very marker, a terrible marker actually for heart disease. My mother, who is almost 90, you know, runs around with cholesterol in the in the two eighties to 300.

And she's great and she's, you know, she's sharp as a tack. So. Yeah, so, you know, there's a lot of myths out there. And I think, you know, I think the other thing to really understand is how tiny amount to understand that when our body produces estrogens and what are called pica gram amounts, that's a homeopathic level that's very little teeny amounts of estrogen. So it doesn't take a whole lot of any kind of hormone disrupting chemical that's acting as if it's a hormone. And that's what a lot of the pesticides do and a lot of petrochemical products, you know, along with muscle toxins, it doesn't take very much to start skewing the whole thing.

Yeah. So I hope that answers your question. No. Yeah, that's a really important point where people don't think about it like, oh, it's, you know, I'm, I'm in this environment. Everybody's in this environment. I'm not sure. But would you take a supplement? You're taking a capsule this big to alter some pathway and make yourself feel better and think about how little it takes to actually change your biochemistry, you know? And when you're holding those grocery receipts or breathing in those pesticides or whatever you're doing, it's probably a lot more than what's in that little supplement pill, you know?

So just imagine. So it doesn't take much and you're getting too much. It's a combination of both. One other thought I had, just because I don't know, you listed all these potential toxic burden threats, EMF and electric. Electric. And that's. A whole other that's a that's a whole nother battle last. Year. Yeah. Oh, really. So it's okay. Oh yeah. Yeah. And you know, again, you know, I mean, one of the things that particularly that 5G does, it disrupts what are called the calcium bolted gated channels.

And that's a very fancy term for what allows calcium and magnesium and potassium in and out of our and particularly the heart muscles to keep them to keep it beating. And EMFs disrupt that and find five G in particular. And it's one of the reasons that we're seeing all the side effects from it. And, you know, it's so interesting that, again, part of what happened in the last couple of years, while everybody was quietly hiding away and being shut down and is the rollout of 5G towers all over the United States everywhere now and so you know.

So yeah. So that's something else too that we're dealing with and I don't want to get people to down. Well I mean. There are solutions. That's the great news is you have solutions and that's people needed to understand the landscape like here's how your body works. Yeah, here's the threats. You need to know that there's a real threat out there. And now guess what? Dr. Christian heals people every day. Right? And so that's. Good, because the good news. Is they're. Right. Yeah, I'm a coach and I'm the head coach.

They're healing themselves, their bodies healing themselves. We're just I mean, this is this is basic function medicine principles, which is you take out what's toxic and you put in what's missing. And and, you know, whether toxic is toxic thoughts, toxic relationship, toxic foods. You know, Michael Toxins, that was my case, too. And then you put in what's missing sleep, laughter, joy play, you know, methylated B vitamins and zinc and vitamin D. And, you know, we need we need both of those things.

So our body has have really very powerful healing mechanisms. And then if we can tune in to those, that that can be super helpful. So I think that that's that's an important piece to remember is that we do have capabilities to help to heal ourselves. And then if we and it's overwhelming right now, I mean, here's that's a reality. And I don't even talk about trauma and the role of trauma in in all in in also hormone disruption. That's a huge piece. And one of the reasons from a functional medicine standpoint, we want to go back and ask somebody questions about kind of what happened and what happened to their ancestors, generational trauma.

You know, in my case, my father was in Auschwitz. And so that and he was a he was a Polish Catholic, picked up in the resistance movement because he was resisting against the Nazis. And so so that has given me epigenetically. Okay. So we can talk about genetics here, lots of things. It's made me a lot more sensitive to many things because of his level of stress hormones and ended up impacting his sperm count and what happened. And then my mother's her levels of stress hormone. So all of that can can be impacted.

And we can, you know, with technology such as you're working with, you know, you can you can get down to the nitty gritty of of, you know, what's going to be helpful for you. But there's just some basics there. There's just some basics that we can do to help our bodies heal themselves. So, you know. As I mentioned earlier and it's very true that list again. Yeah, yeah. And know this concept of you know multigenerational passed down trauma people think of it as somewhat woo like how do you pass on trauma.

But the the the sort of science of is very clear. You can't change your genetics per se. You're you're inheriting your genetic legacy. But the way those genes express, it's a coping mechanism that you're in. Your body doesn't know that you're not being born into the same environment. It thinks it's protecting you. Like Daddy and Granddaddy had this. So I'm going to arm you with this, you know, with the ability to cope with it. And all of a sudden here you are trying to practice medicine with the, you know, armor that you don't need.

So and that can be unwound. There are, you know, practices to to break that down and it heals multi generationally. And so you make me think of this where, you know, recently the CDC said that suicide rates and not only rates, but attempts are skyrocketing in young women. And they particularly called out young women teen age and they said it's now one in three American teenage girls has considered at some point taking her life because you just can't cope with it anymore. And this was not a statistic that you would expect from the previous generation or and even now, it's a bit of a surprise.

So are we seeing this because of the toxic burden? Is it because of social media or something else? But or can we is there something to be said about starting much earlier when it comes to dealing with your hormones? Well, I think both. I think, you know, again I think again, you know, women considering pregnancy and all that really need to learn this stuff very early. And and there's all kinds of protocols that we can use to help with detoxification and supporting optimal genetic expression. So, you know, that can be done.

But as far as a toxic burden, I mean. Absolutely. So the amps and then and then just the the just the social media itself. And and you know what has been done. I mean, you know, there's a lot that's been learned about how to brainwash at that is a lot of what we're dealing with with with with this besides the electromagnetics. It's also also has to do with how our brains are being trained and what's the best way to brainwash somebody? You isolate them? Mm hmm. You know, you isolate them and you feed them.

Healing Foundations: Sleep, Gut Health, and Nutrients 33:00

Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. So I think, you know, to for all those young women out there and, you know, this is multi-generational. It's an issue. It's not just the young woman, it's also some of the older ones. But that is a tragic, tragic statistic. But we, you know, to know that there is is hope and that whenever that this these are times of great chaos. And to be able to find center and to find community and to link up with one another to to and to be able to speak truth to power. Because I think that's another really big thing that's going on is something that's called cognitive dissonance.

And I don't know if you've heard that term before, but it's again, it's where we're being told one thing, yet our experience is something very different in our personal experience of what's going on is very different than what we're being told. And again, that often happens in households with that abuse goes on or alcoholism, you know, it's everybody hush, hush, be quiet. Don't, don't, don't confront the powers that be about what's really happening because you're going to get in trouble. And so that is a piece of what's going on now.

And one of the best things that you can do is learn how to turn this thing off. They are addictive. I mean, the science behind this is amazing. And yeah. So anyway, so we can use all of our technologies for good and for education and for lifting, but we can also, you know, they're also being abused in terms of, again, the misinformation, disinformation and silencing of the dissidents who are trying to speak the truth and get it out there. Yeah. Going the break. Off topic from that Facebook but that's part that but that's part of the generalized anxiety feeling just as his background low level anxiety and if you want to just talk about girls you mean you know and suicide let's let's just talk about all these mass shootings and all the boys that are picking up guns and Dr.

William Ray, God bless him. He was one of the very big first pioneers in the whole field of environmental medicine. He was right here in Dallas Environmental Health Center of Dallas, which is still ongoing. He passed away a few years ago, but he's he predicted he predicted the violent level of violence that we're seeing now and gun violence and the, you know, things like the mass shootings because of things like EMFs and so and what it does to the brain. So there are ways, though, to rise above that and to vibrate above these levels of disinformation of of hope and of despair.

And and, you know, and to and to reach out to one another, we end with hope. And so I hope that's what you guys are doing. For sure. And that's the intention of putting people like yourself and our community together. It's to understand that everybody feels the pain, regardless of what your perspective is, and have the cognitive dissonance has hit you. Yet we still all can see there's a mismatch here there. So this world is not what it used to be. So but knowing that you can rise above and this is a health concern as much as you said, hey, we went off onto the field here.

No, this is part of your health journey. If you are going to deal with this, you can go deal with everything else. You're not going to feel great. You know, this is a constant chronic stressor anxiety inducer, which is not good for any part of your body. So let's deal with it openly because it is part of your health journey. Yeah. And you know, and then I can speak to mental health issues because two out of my four have very severe issues between beginning with autism spectrum and that's one of the reasons I got into this work that I'm doing besides my own health journey and now as adults, what we're having to deal with.

And so I can absolutely speak to you that those statistics that you are naming are real and valid. And and again, there are there are ways to to to go around it. And so I'd love to just again, just talk about very briefly about some of the things that we can do to help ourselves. Sure. Like in terms of let's take that, for example, in terms of what? Because typically, when you use the word hormones and you're talking to a female audience like this, we start talking about estrogens and, you know, all the fibromyalgia and all that.

But we're also talking about the brain, right? So what can we do to mitigate and our mood and today's reality in context? Is it supplementation, is it mindfulness? Is it unplugging or is it all of these things? All of the above, yeah. Okay. So again, let let me go just go back to the first things that I said was, number one, sleep is to whatever you need to do to help with your sleep issues and to figure out and getting adequate sleep, because that's one of the things that brings our brains of toxins and and allows ourselves to rest.

We are being so bombarded with so much data and we're trying to process so many things that are our brains are just on overdrive. And so anything that we can do to help with quality sleep and that's a whole something in and of itself. But there is things that that, you know, I like to do for that. And then again, the second thing is, is to improve your gut health. And that starts with, again, diet. And then absolutely, there's there's certain supplements and nutrients that can be very helpful in repairing a leaky gut.

If we're talking about neurotransmitters and serotonin and GABA and norepinephrine and adrenaline, dopamine, there a number of precursors that are helpful. But again, understanding that we're 90% of those made in your gut. So your gut in in good order. And then again, if you're looking at genetics, I mean, so many of the people that we see here have all kinds of what are called genetic snips or changes in their what are called their methylation pathways or B, vitamin pathways, just to make it very simple.

And so our need now for extra B vitamins just to make and deal with the stress hormones now are important for detoxification. They're important for for hormonal production and metabolism, and they're important for neurotransmitter production. So you have to have adequate B vitamins. We need adequate zinc. We need adequate vitamin D, we need vitamin A, we know. We know. And those of us who are trying to speak out about it that having an adequate vitamin D levels. One of the things that prevents you from dying from Big C with, you know, from the virus and rolling around and, you know, so so, yes, it's a combination of those things.

So adequate sleep getting the gut in good health you and again this is where I'm understanding about some some of your genetics can be helpful in terms of targeting a specific nutrients to you. But you can also just just do some plain methylated B vitamins and adequate zinc and and, you know, DNC and right there, that'll probably help you. And then and then what do you do everyday? What's what's joyful, what's playful, what has purpose and meaning in your life? So even if you've got really crappy things going on and you're under massive amounts of stress, are you connected to something larger than yourself?

And I fortunately have felt that very, very deep spiritual connection. And I don't I don't care what you want to call it or what you want to label it, or you know whose bag you want to put it in. But being connected to something much larger than ourselves and understanding that we are spiritual beings, human and human body, and tapping into that force can be one of the most powerful healing mechanisms that you can have. And then being in community, talking with other people, speaking the truth with others community is another incredibly important piece of good health music, movement, dance.

Those are those are good things. But let's just start with good sleep and pooping and then trying to do something that makes you laugh every day. Yeah. Amazing prescription. And you know what you were saying about micronutrients? We see those every day in the clinical setting where things that are considered

Trauma, Mental Health, and Social Stressors 41:00

their value has been taken away from them, like even calling vitamin D, vitamin D when we know it's a hormone. Yes, that's true. Good point, right? Yeah. Yeah. And why is it called that? Because if if everybody had enough, you probably wouldn't have the health care budget we have. Right? Right. From our understanding of the 20 to 23000 genes in your body, 2000 require the appropriate level of vitamin D to express properly. So your genes are functioning. 10% of your biochemistry is off. If you don't have the right level.

On the right level is different for different people. Based on how you convert D2 to D3 transporter bind it, there's different genes that do all those jobs. Right. And so because of all the hormones. Yeah. For all of them. Exactly. We're all of them. Yeah. Yeah. How do you make it any transporter? What does this receptor look like and what are the micronutrients that are involved in that production? And it's and it's really pretty ridiculous that we have to take bottles of supplements that I mean, you know, as a human species, we didn't we didn't, you know, when we were cave people, we didn't we didn't run out to the local, you know, health food store and, you know, get a bottle of whatever it is.

MoCCA We were yeah, we were in the sun. We ate nutrient dense food. Yeah, yeah. You know, we were not eating plastic with our food. And there you go, a very different reality. And now there's a whole other challenge where it's understood it's not that the sort of powers that be don't know that this stuff is useful. Oh, they know that. Yeah, it's. And I'll give you an example. I'm in Toronto, I'm in Canada. Okay. And right now there is a movement by Health Canada to say that doctors should no longer be able to recommend vitamins.

Wow. Including vitamin D and vitamin C. And why? Because they're not evidence based as if. Yeah, it's if you go to PubMed. Yeah, there's I think 90 some odd thousand publications about vitamin D. Then you look up the number one prescribed drug, Lipitor, and there's I think ten or 11,000. So there's almost ten X the number of publications because of the impact it is ten acts of reducing your cholesterol when you actually need it as a mitigating hormone as opposed to not having it. Just understand anyone that's listening or watching that there's work you need to do on your own.

You know, there's there's learning outside of yeah. You know, do you not trust I wouldn't trust anything that comes through the through the mainstream websites for medical knowledge. I won't name them but yeah. Because it's all pharma if you understand that that big pharma funds 70% of advertise zing on mainstream media 70%. And it's even more of that when you look at the news. And it doesn't matter if you're watching MSNBC.com or you're watching Fox News. It's the same you know, the same forces and the editorial content of what you are watching and what you are reading is based on who's advertising and who's paying to be there.

So learning how to have some discernment on, you know, where you're getting information, listening to that still small voice within listening to that intuitive, knowing about Does this sound right to me or not? Does this resonate with me? I think that's real important. You know, as since the audience is mostly women here, I mean, our intuitive knowing is so powerful, it's so positive to to dismiss that is is to dismiss, you know, that that's that's the same you know, forces our animals use their instincts right to do things it's our intuitive knowing and paying attention to that is is is incredibly important.

So anyway that's that's a yeah but yeah I gather with people saying dance. Yeah yeah it's funny. I pray meditate. Yeah, yeah. Group praying, group meditation. There's science on how that exponentially raises everybody right. As a again, as a Canadian would I come into the U.S.? It's funny you mention the pharmacopeia shows. I always get this culture shock. There's three layers of culture shock I get every time I come, even though I've been coming for years. One is I land in the airport and I see the food that's available.

I'm like, That's not food, right? Right. Yeah. Second, yeah, second. And I see the people and like, how are you walking? Like you go to any country in the world, it does not look like this. Right. And the third thing is I sit down, walk by a TV and you see farmer commercials. The U.S. is only one of two countries in the world that allows farmers to advertise on TV. And it's now the biggest, like you said, the biggest marketer on TV. And same thing with lobbying that the biggest lobby. So it's I think New Zealand is the other one but it's like a few million dollars versus many billions that are spent in the U.S.

So this is a very American problem, unfortunately. All right. For anyone that's listening here, because there are some global listeners that won't even know what we're talking about, the never seen a Farmer commercial. Right. So but that gives that that speaks a little bit to the agencies that are sort of regulating protecting and how they think. So and that speaks to how much you need to be your own quarterback. Amen. Yeah, right. You know, so because you unfortunately our government your government either by the governments around the world are not interested in protecting the health of their citizens.

And it's that is what they're interested in is yeah. Who can they get money from. And, and to use I mean if you just look at the billions that the tech our taxpayers spent on developing this latest quote treatment for what's been going on for the last three years, and then Pfizer made $202 billion and they have zero zero liability. And, you know, and so anyway, I mean, I think this is people just need to wake up and understand. Yeah, that this is not our grandmother's hormones. Yeah. We are seeing massive quantities of fertility issues.

Again, early menopause, hormonally based cancers, etc. and there are things that we can do to shift and change it. And part of it is just learning and educating yourself and seeing somebody, you know, practitioners who least have educated themselves in health systems thinking, I'm with the Institute for Functional Medicine and they they're the really the premier leader in in terms of accrediting information that is being used to help actually create health rather than just treat disease. Yeah, for sure.

And so, you know, I'm sure anyone listening, I was thinking, well, how do I work with you? Do you actually see patients. I met Carpathia collaborative, Carpathia collaborative dot com, CAIR, HIPAA and the word collaborative and dot com. We have a team of practitioners here that have all been trained in this thinking and have been working with me for a long time.

Long COVID, Mold Detox, and Functional Medicine Support 48:00

And so we are here to to help and see people. I have a whole women's health team as well and as well as men's health and longevity. And then we also do a lot of work in the area of things like long haul COVID and chronic viral infections, mystery illnesses, a lot of things that you were plagued with and as well as myself and my family. So yeah. So that and also mold, detox, dot.com is another place to be able to find me and find a lot of good information. You need to see a practitioner. It's corporate, collaborative and very good.

In terms of what you just mentioned around long haul, there's I mean, we know so much more now than we knew we a few months ago. We do know it's just mitochondrial disease and we're trying to support that. So what do you see now that's really working that people need to know about? Because a lot of people this is a big gray area that they wish they knew more about. Well, things that we do here. I the you know, I've a ozone with ultraviolet light I mean oxygen in light about that. What do you think about that?

You know, oxygen and light to help heal something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hello. Yeah, yeah. You know, along with, you know, nutrients, things like methylene blue antihistamines. We have whole protocols on that, understanding that, you know, a lot of it is reactivated. We're seeing things like reactivated. Epstein-Barr virus, again, mitochondrial toxicants. Yeah, the mitochondria have been stressed and so supporting that can be helpful and that's what we do. And outside of so the methylene blue, what are some things that people can just get kickstarted with at home that are easy?

Just the things that I already said, an anti-inflammatory diet, vitamin D, vitamin C, it can be helpful to take some anti I prefer antihistamine herbs, things like quercetin you can google antihistamine herbs and those that would probably be just just some simple things. Again, get some sleep, get your gut in order. Probiotics. Hmm. Okay. Yeah. Understood. And cure. You don't live in moles? No, for sure. Before we end, I know this is a major problem. There isn't a functional medicine or biohacking or any sort of wellness conference that I go to where there isn't somebody working on mold.

Yeah, you know, and it seems to be a this sort of endemic type thing that isn't being treated as such. So how prevalent is it? Is it like in certain states or is it nationwide or a nationwide? Nationwide, 50% of houses, 60% of commercial buildings have hadn't had an issue with water damage. And that's a whole nother ball. Yeah yeah you can. Yeah. Access through health means. Wow second summit. 50% of homes. Have had have had apartments. Yeah. And not everybody gets sick again. That has to do with your toxic load and your your talks about getting a lot of it has to do with your genetics again how many how many exposures have you had to toxic to heavy metals over time in the form of the things that we can't talk about and, you know, all of those build up in the body and shut down our detox mechanisms and then make us more susceptible to whether it's to the COVID virus or anything else.

But toxic mold is probably one of the most common underlying environmental toxicants that people have no clue that that's why they're stuck. And that that question mark where people don't go there because it's like one person in the home, like you said, is sick and everybody else is fine. We've seen that over and over again. There's a family I can think of where the mother was diagnosed with Lyme disease because of how she felt. And the rest of the family was fine. When we looked at the genetics, what we saw was that the glutathione pathway she had what are called copy number variations, and she was actually missing some of the key growth drivers.

She didn't even have them. Right. And when we started to pick away at their epigenetic inputs, like what he been eating, what he'd been exercising, we realized that just in a renovation and ripped the kitchen apart and released all these mold spores that only made her sick. I mean, they were probably making everyone sick. She just had symptomatic reaction, like immediately because of her pathway. So that's just a keynote for everybody because you hear this often. Well, it's just this person. So it's not our home, it's not our environment because they're not you.

We're wired differently. Right. So anyways. That's a whole that's a that's a whole nother talk. I can do it. Know, I can I can, I can wax eloquent on that for a long time. So yeah, it's, it's. Yeah. That has and it has to do again just kind of kind of coming back to the same idea again with our hormones is that we have a, we have a kind of a genetically sized toxic bucket of our ability to deal with things, whether that is infections, toxins, stressors, environmental toxicants, psychosocial issues and stressors in our life, and that we have a spigot, we have several spigots, including our that get rid of things that are in the bucket and that would include our good gut function, our liver, working properly in us, peeing enough, shedding our skin, you know, draining our brains at night when we sleep.

Those are the spigots. But if you start closing off the spigots because of toxicants and, you know, or genetic needs for nutrients that you're not getting, and then you start filling up that bucket, then all of a sudden spills over in all these symptoms. Yeah, the conventional method is to put a lid on the bucket with medications or surgery, and nobody's identifying what's in the bucket. And how do we open the spigots? And that's what we do from a functional medicine standpoint. So beautiful. You know, I feel like we just because of this conversation, we just created three more conversations we need to have. Yeah.

So we'll see whether we might we dedicate a day to you just we can get through this stuff. So I wanted to thank you. This is a very awesome, awesome conversation. Exactly what we need to learn in here. And thank you for sharing your knowledge lot and incredible so thank you again for your time. Yeah carpathiacollaborative.com The Carpathia was the ship that picked up the survivors of the Titanic. So we have the Titanic of Western medicine just treating the tip of the iceberg. And, you know, and we have the functional medicine ships coming along to help pick up the survivors and, you know, bring them back to health.

Wow. Beautiful. Well, I got to let that settle in for a second. That was amazing. Yeah. But thank you again for your time. This is awesome. And again, everybody, check out the website and the clinical team is there to support you if you need. Thank you. You're welcome.