Toxins, the Adrenals, and their Impact on Menopause

Introduction and Guest Welcome 0:00

Hello. Hello. Welcome back to Mastering the Menopause Transition Summit. I'm still your host, doctor Sharon Stills, and it's still wonderful to see you all here. This has just been so exciting, so informative, so loving and so inspiring. And today we are going to follow with that we're going to have a great talk with my guest. We're going to talk about the very important adrenal glands and how they relate to your hormonal journey. We're going to talk about toxins because unfortunately toxins are everywhere.

We no longer say, are you toxic? It's how are you handling the toxins that are coming at you? It is just the the reality of the world we live in. So I'm excited to have this conversation with my special guest, doctor Wendy Trudeau. She is passionate about helping women optimize their health and lives as a functional medicine gynecologist. Through her own struggles with mold and metal toxicity, celiac disease, and other health issues, she has developed a deep sense of compassion and expertise for what her patients are facing.

She's the co author of Dirty Girl, which I see right there. Beautiful book. Ditch the toxins, look great and feel freakin amazing. I love that title. Welcome, Wendy. It's nice to have you here. It's great to be here. Sharon, I'm so excited to talk about this today. Honestly. Me too, me too. And I'd love to start with just your journey. I think so many of us physicians, healers, we have our own journey and that's how we get into serving patients in this way. So if you'd share your journey and I'd love it, I'd love to do that.

Someone said to me once is your mess, your message? And I said, oh, totally. My mess became my message. So my story really has two peaks. The first peak is characterized having terrible genes, really terrible genes. Worst two copies of all the bad stuff, including two copies for celiac disease, two copies for me for mutations, two copies for vitamin D deficiency, like right there, that's all the bad stuff. And then layering that on to do epigenetics,

Wendy Trudeau's Health Journey 2:23

the forces that occurred from my parents and grandparents, we were all immigrants. They were all super stressed. That causes genes to express themselves in ways that they might not have if they weren't turned on and agitated and then layered on. I'm a child of the 70s and I ate lots of sloppy Joes and then 80s and my god, all the microwave food in the plastic. And then I decided that I had to contribute to the world by going to med school. And I didn't just I didn't just want to be a family doctor, I had to be an ObGyn, which was like, in my mind, really hard.

I had to do something hard. And so I spent a long time essentially bombarding my poor little adrenals with stressor after stressor after stressor. So my first peak of my health breakdown mass occurred when I was 35, and I got diagnosed with celiac disease. And at that point I was pretty much barely functioning. So head to toe, brain fog, hair loss, anxiety, thyroid dysfunction, heart palpitations, bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation all on the same day. Depending on the hour difficulty with fertility, my bones hurt and I was wasting and I had nutritional deficiencies up the wazoo.

So that was peak one. I was 35. I got diagnosed with celiac and that was my entry into functional medicine. And I was like, oh, this is the coolest thing since sliced bread, right? Because I was a conventional ObGyn for that. So delivering babies, doing surgery, delivering babies, doing surgery, you know, rinse wash, repeat. And when this happened, it really opened my eyes to that. There's a different way that I could contribute. And that started the second part of my career where I then transitioned into functional medicine.

Fast forward like and I do all this work on myself, okay. And I will talk about the importance of adrenals in menopause. But I knew at 35 when I learned what a mess I was, I knew that my transition into menopause would not be good if I couldn't get a handle on my adrenals. And then I had done a really good job stomping all over them, and we needed to build them up. So let's set that to the side. Fast forward 1314 years and I'm now perimenopausal I go on the trip of a lifetime to France. We walk around for a week, I come home, I gain almost 10 pounds, not in France, but when I came home from France, I gained almost 10 pounds.

I had a rash on my face that would not quit. My brain wasn't working, I was tired and my hair started falling out in droves like droves. Just just, you know, you're showering. You're like, who started counting hairs? And I said to my hairdresser, it's like 100 hairs just in the shower. And she goes, yeah, that's that's too much. You should lose like 20 to 40 in the shower and then the rest throughout the day. And I was like, oh. And I originally chalked it up to perimenopause. I was 48 and I was like, God, perimenopause is a beast.

But it wasn't perimenopause, it was toxins. And because we live in a toxic world when we went to France, the reason I shared that about France is we went to France right after Notre Dame burned, and when Notre Dame burned, it released 500 pounds of lead dust into the environment. And the closer you were to Notre Dame, the more lead you got. And the farther away, obviously, the less you got. But we spent a week right there and that's when I went off the cliff. I had a huge exposure to lead, and it took me a few months to figure it out, and I was like, what's going on?

You know, first I checked my adrenals. They looked pretty good. And then I checked my thyroid. It was perfect. I never had such a perfect thyroid. And then I checked my hormones. They looked amazing, you know, like, didn't look. Didn't look perimenopausal. And then fast forward a few months, I learned about these toxins. And then I did the research and found, oh, oh my goodness, you know, the impact on my body has been profound. And I figured out I had all these toxins. And so then I started to work on removing them.

And I've spent the last three years actively getting them out of my body. And I happen to be a very loyal repository for all the toxins. You know, I'm loyal to them. Have terrible detox, but that set me up for a thing. And so I've been working on how do I optimize my body for peak performance and longevity? That's been the focus, and that's what I've been working on. And by the way, I lost more than I had gained just to, you know, because everyone cares about how they look and how they feel and their weight, you know, what do women care about our hair, our skin and our weight?

Well, I had checked all three boxes for dysfunction. My hair's growing back. I lost more than I had gained, and my skin is cleared up. Phew. Yeah, I was going to say you. This must have been prior, not just last month. You look great. So that's that's inspiring. And. Wow, how, How interesting about the fire from nurture. Just a reminder, we don't even always think about these things that we're exposed to and what they're what they're giving to us. And and yes, there are some, some of us who are loyal and who don't detox.

I like how you put that, who hold on to toxins more. And it's like I said in the beginning, it's really not about how toxic are you. It's what are you doing with the toxins you're exposed to? Because I'm sure there was some people who were near Notre Dame and their body just processed it out and they went out of their way and they were fine. And so so we have let's talk about let's see, should we should we do adrenals or toxins or both at the same time. Yeah. I think we want to set the stage right.

So I think we should talk about adrenals and how important they are to women's health in menopause, and then talk about how important toxins are to appropriate adrenal health and sort of walk our way through that path. That would be yeah, I would say, tell us what we need to know about the emails. All right. So when you think about the transition from being a woman who menstruate and is of reproductive age to being a woman who doesn't menstruate and is no longer of reproductive age, a that's a transition.

I always talk to my patients about honoring. Right. Because you go you really it's it is a different phase in life. So honoring that you're going through a different phase is really important. But when your ovaries stop producing the levels of estrogen that they do, there's a void. And you think, okay, well, what's going to fill that void? Well, in as you transition into menopause, your adrenals fulfill that void. So your adrenals are these little glands. They're like walnuts. They sit right on top of your kidneys in your back, and they're responsible for your fight, flight or freeze, which is life or death.

Why Adrenals Matter in Menopause 9:23

Cortisol, cortisone, run away from a lion. And they're also responsible for your hormone pathway when you're in menopause. Now here's the bad news. Here's the good news. Which do we want first? Let's do bad news first. Bad news is fight flatter. Freeze is going to be what your body always maintains over hormone balance. Think about it like getting out of the way of that lion that's running after you that your body thinks is running after you is life or death. Hormone balance is nice to have. So you're going to you're going to sacrifice nice to have hormone balance for oh my goodness I got to get out of the way of the lion.

Now sure, most people say to me, I'm not that stressed. Oh, I just pushed out my earphone slip in my hair about how unstressed I was. So people are like, I'm not that stressed. It's just the normal thing. I said, your brain might not think you're that stressed, but your body thinks you're stressed. So it's really important to not just think about how your brain is interpreting it, but what is happening at the cellular level. Because being stressed about your kids, your job, your boss not sleeping as you make this transition into menopause, not not feeling yourself.

All those things act as little stressors on the adrenals and the adrenals get diverted to maintaining what it thinks is a life or death situation. Even though it's not, the body has no other way to interpret it. Okay. Let me true. Very true. We have turned emails and watching our shows or whatever into stresses and stress and stress comes. It's not just the mental stress, it's the physical stress. It's the chemical stress. It's all stress. There's so many different ways that stress, stress joins us on our journey.

Right? It's an unwelcome passenger. It's a parasite. So the problem is that at the cellular level, your body can't distinguish stress because you're a bad boss or stress because you were late for something from stress, because you're going to get hit by a bus or line's going to air, it's all the same reaction. And so now if you go back to as you're transitioning from the woman who menstruate and the ovaries are producing all the hormones to the ovaries are coming to their quiet time of life, your adrenals need to pick that slack up.

And if your adrenals are stressed, they're like, I'm busy, buddy, right? Don't bug me. I'm busy. I'm busy because you're about to get eaten, and if you die, then who cares if your hormones are balanced? So it's all about priorities. Your adrenals so. And the adrenals are are really powerful. So let's talk about some of the things that you can have. Because, you know, everyone sits in my office and says I have a thyroid problem. And I'm like, well, you might, but you probably have an adrenal problem because they're going to run the show.

So if you say to me, my sleep is disrupted, I can't fall asleep, I can't stay asleep, or I always wake up in the middle of the night. I'm going to say, do you have an adrenal problem? If you say to me, I have night sweats, I always want to know, do you have day sweats too? Because if you only have night sweats, you have an adrenal problem, not a, you know, people like my hormones and like it is your hormones, but it's your adrenal hormones, not your female hormones. So let's keep them distinguished here.

And then if you say to me, I can't lose any weight, I'm going to say to you, it's probably not your thyroid. It's it's either toxins or your gut or your adrenals. And so since we're on the topic of adrenals, if your body is in fight, flight or freeze all the time, that sends a message to your liver a it says liver lion's coming. Do not do detox. Focus on taking the sugar that you've stored in your in the liver out. Put it in the bloodstream. Because we got to run. We are about to have to run and and put that sugar in our muscles like our our leg muscles.

It also says to the gut guys digestion is not a priority right now. Because remember, there's a lion chasing us or a bus about to hit us. So shut down for a little bit. We need to preserve our energy to run. Okay? All these things are happening in the background and you can set yourself on this path if, for example, like a car, two cars ahead of us a couple years ago swerved into the lane next to us and I looked at my husband, I was like, put your brakes on, because I knew that the car ahead of us was going to swerve into our lane from the car swerving into them, and I was like, oh my God, we're going to total our car.

I had this thought, we're going to get an accident. We're going to total our car break, break, break. So it took me two days to recover from that little we didn't get in an accident incident. He braked. Nobody hit us. Nobody hit us from behind. We didn't hit the side rail. The car next to us went in front of us. We didn't get an accident, but I still put the system into drive. Right, so you can take the system just from a stressful experience or thought. Okay, before I keep going, anything that you want to like unpack in that before we keep going.

There's so much. Right? Yeah, I know that. And that is so much of stress starts in our brain, right? It starts in our thoughts and we get anxious about things. I always say that's a waste of our imagination because often, often the things we stress about don't occur. It's something that hits you from the side that you weren't even thinking about. That's the stress. And so learning to to modulate our thoughts through mindfulness, through breathing is such a such a gift to our overall health and certainly our adrenals, because we have such an epidemic of adrenal dysfunction.

And I love that you brought up because it is true, somehow thyroid has gotten a lot of press and it might be right, like, am I right when I, you know, I won't even work on a thyroid until we look at the adrenals because you can just further deplete the adrenals if you haven't supported them and you start revving the thyroid. And so I'm glad we're like putting adrenals where it belongs. In this talk. And yeah, and I mean, I know I too trashed my adrenals. I, I used to think, you know, when I was going through school, I, when I was younger and raising my kids and it was like I wanted, I got a badge of honor because I could function on four hours of sleep and do everything I had to do.

And, you know, you're robbing Peter to pay Paul in an event. I was having this conversation with my 31 year old son the other day because he was saying he only sleeps like six hours, and sometimes he even can only sleep four, and he's fine and like, oh, you're fine now, but it's going to catch up to you. And so if you're listening, there's been quite a number of talks where I'm like, if you're listening and you're menopausal, share this with the the younger people in your life, because we can really help by prevention.

And if we understand this at a younger age, it helps us as we transition. Well, think about it. When you think about aging, aging is the end result of dysfunction. So when you talk to your son, the conversation is not even that. It's not harming you now. It actually is harming you at a mitochondrial and telomere level. Because think about when you reproduce your DNA, the telomeres are essentially the the caps to keep your DNA from unraveling. And every time your DNA reproduces, it gets shorter and shorter and shorter, and you die when it gets too short to protect the DNA.

So stress not sleeping stresses the stresses. The mitochondria are separate and stresses the telomere because you're not adequately, adequately resting and rejuvenating. So I would say it's actually impacting you now.

Recognizing Adrenal Dysfunction 17:28

You just can't see the impact of it. You'll see the impact of it in 20 years. But really it's impacting you now. Exactly. They know it's critical. They just don't feel it's impacting them. Right. Because they're not thinking they can do anything but that. That's not really. So I learned it by the time I hit my 30s. It was like, all right, everything I have done up until now has really trashed. And now I gotta rebuild. But because I rebuilt, I had a beautiful menopausal transition. I, you know, my my claim is I've never even had a hot flash.

It's just wow. Oh, it's so beautifully because I really pre gamed. And so some of you may not be in the pre game place here. You may be further down the line and that's fine. But if you know someone who you can share this with for them to pre-game. That's a beautiful gift you can give to that person and just your society as a whole. Because we need a healthy, younger generation. And right now they're being bombarded with toxins and invisible toxins and emfs and it just is. It's a little, scary on a on a health level.

What's going on out there? Yeah. It's horrifying. And I would even say if you're in the midst of the transition now, I mean, I'm in the transition now and I will say, it's so funny. I was at the osteopath this morning and he said to me, how are you feeling? I said, I am not right. I am just not myself. I'm fatigued. I'm having some sleep disturbances and I'm having a lot more hot flashes both day and night. Not just not just night sweats. And normally, I mean, I could go weeks without having a hot flash, but the last like two weeks, I'm like, God, I'm having like 6 to 8 hot flashes a day.

They're not bad. They last for like 30s. I get a little warm. I'm like, okay, you know, just do that and then they're done. But it's not normal for me. And it all put together in the package. It's not it's not normal. It's common. It's not normal. So I think what's really important is if you're in the transition right now and you have this expectation like, oh, well, my mom had a horrific transition. So I'm gonna no, not true. You're not your mom. We know more than we did and don't accept oh I'm just stuck with this because even if you didn't pregame you can impact it now.

So he's you know, he does this magical stuff with me and he's like, okay, you're blocked here. You're blocked here. Your pilot lights low and I'm like, okay. But I feel better, you know? Right. So there are ways that you can impact it. And if you're listening what can you do? One cut out alcohol super toxic for the adrenals. It's very stressful and it makes your transition into menopause worse. Think about it. Alcohol is a straight up toxic to try to get into bed by ten 1030 every night and get off the screens.

Don't have screens in your bed. Bed is for sex and sleep. That's a bed is not for watching TV. It's bad for you. Three avoid sugar because that stresses the adrenals and then the adrenals. Throw off the whole endocrine system for Epsom salt baths. Super cheap. Restores the energy, helps with the electrical properties in the body. You can do that in your house. You can do a footbath if it's too hot or cold foot baths. You know, if you're like in menopause, like you don't want to get in a bath, you could do a cold footbath if you're willing to get in a sauna, get in a sauna, even if it's hot.

So there's a million things you can do right. And then and then you can also support the adrenal, specifically with adaptogens. This is where I recommend getting in with a functional medicine provider so that you can really target what you need. But there's so many ways to help your adrenals so that you do have a better transition right now. Not some day in the future. Now, so what are so for someone listening who's like, how do I know if my adrenals are are messed up? What would you say? What? How do you like to practice that?

So if you have any of the complaints of I am having a really difficult transition from pre menopause, and then I'm not sure I'm assuming you've covered this but let's just go basic right. So you're of normal reproductive age. And officially perimenopause starts at 45. Perimenopause is the period where you're transitioning from being fertile and having regular periods to not having any periods. There's a there's an interim period. It can last 7 to 10, even up to ten years for some women. And it's characterized by fluctuations in your hormones, inconsistent ovulation.

That means your fertility is starting to decrease, the ovarian reserve is decreasing, and all of these things are happening. And that can have a consequence on your sleep, your mood, your brain function, your weight, your gut. So if you're a. In the perimenopause or you're now postmenopausal, meaning you haven't had a period for over a year, I always feel like it's a little squishy, right? Because you could go 13 months. Do you need to wake up for cancer? Probably not. It's probably just, you know, last gasp over a saying like, don't forget about me, I'm still here before I go into quiescent sleep.

But anyway, if you're having any of these symptoms like you're not sleeping properly and that's anything. Now, if you've never been a good sleeper, it's hard to gauge. So it's a change. If you had some kind of change night sweats, day sweats, hot flashes, weight changes, skin changes, sex drive, difficulty orgasming difficulty responding. It is very common to have difficulty getting as lubricated as you'd like. You know, as women, we need more foreplay. Men get an erection, they're ready for sex.

We actually have to work up to it so it can take 20 to 30 minutes of foreplay before we're actually ready to have sex. The vagina lengthens, you get lubricated. So it's not really just like flicking a switch. Switch as it is for men, you know? And it's like on off. And we're we're like, we have it. We have a dimmer switch there. You. So if you're experiencing any of those I did I mentioned difficulty losing weight I think I did. Oh yeah. Yeah. If your hair's not right, if it really anything head to toe, if you're like, I'm different, you want to start to look at what do my adrenals need?

Okay. You can fix your hormone levels, but that's not going to fix your adrenals. So if you keep abusing them, you're going to keep falling in the same pit over and over. So the goal is interop. It set you on a different path and trajectory so that you can go, okay, I don't need as much. Start to peel it off. Use less, do less, have fewer symptoms. Feel better. Yeah. Adrenal support. There's, you know, from bioidentical cortisol to ashwagandha to vitamin C to B5. But I always tell my patients like these things I'm going to give you and they're helpful.

But the way we heal our adrenals is through our lifestyle choice. So if you take all the herbs and supplements you want, but if you're not doing the things you said and really doing less, finding your passion, prioritizing sleep, etc., it's not. You're not going to have the beneficial effects like if you do it all, you say it so nicely and I say to people, I have the best supplements, but if you abuse yourself, they're not going to work. So let's make some changes. Like Bruce. Super nice. Like I don't always.

I'm like, you can't abuse, right? Like supplements aren't going to help if you abuse yourself. You can't abuse yourself. You have to make a change in the in the rat wheel. Either get off it, walk slower, change right wheels, whatever. You can't abuse yourself or it's not going to work. And I look at personally, I looked at it as a a gift that I had trashed my adrenals because it really helps me to stay on the path, on a health path, on a good life choice where if maybe I hadn't, I'd still be drinking or I'd still be staying up late.

And so really, your adrenals are not that forgiving. I stay up late. One night and they're like, hello? Did you forget you're supposed to go to bed early? And so they really keep you, keep you on the path

Testing and Supporting Adrenal Health 25:48

of, yeah, being good lifestyle choices. So yes. How do you do you use saliva testing to evaluate adrenal glands. Maybe you could talk a little bit I use both I mean, here's the thing. I never, ever, ever check cortisol in the blood because the minute you come at someone with a needle, their cortisol is going to go up. So then you're like, what am I looking at? So we do look at a, we look at, estrogen estradiol testosterone, progesterone and pregnant alone through the blood. These are the pregnant alone is the starting block for cortisol cortisone.

It comes from cholesterol. So if your cholesterol is too low, that's not good either. So we we test that through the blood. DHEA is the downstream metabolite in the in the hormone balance pathway in the adrenals. So we check that to see like you know do you have the substrate. Do you have the building blocks to cook with. That's a really totally, totally mixed metaphors. Do you have the do you have the ingredients to cook with to make your hormones? If your DHEA is is normal. And then we we look at cortisol through the saliva and we look throughout the day to see what's happening.

So depending on what the the needs are, we're looking either at blood or at saliva. Right? I find so many women think they have high cortisol and that's why they have belly fat. But I I'm constantly checking diurnal rhythms in the saliva. And you'd be surprised at how many women don't have high cortisol, but they've actually burned out their cortisol. Right. And they're, they're flatlined or they're peaking at the wrong time. You know, they're very low all day. And then if 8:00, let's, let's do a jig and clean the kitchen because now I have all this energy because they're, they're, adrenal the pituitary HPA axis is off.

And so it is I believe it's really important to check because a lot of the symptoms you've mentioned, they can happen with high cortisol, low cortisol. And if you're not checking you're kind of just guessing. So yeah I always check and I don't know blood for that. It's it's not right I always check. But I mean you know, we'll say you and I have done this for a long time, right? So I can say to someone, I'd be willing to bet that your cortisol is low in the morning and high at night. So, you know, while we're.

Well, let's get the data. And while we're waiting for the data, let's make you feel better so that you come back for your follow up. And we can tweak it instead of start from zero. So I usually will boost people with adaptogens in the morning. And then depending on what they say, right. If they say to me, I always have an anxiety attack at 4:00, I'm like, oh, well, your cortisol is hugely spiking. It's quite a down at 2:00 so that you don't have that spike. So it's based on what's happening with you.

But we definitely treat people based on symptoms. And I like the data to back it up so we could play around things that you me kind of tell. So yeah. So adrenals I love that. Anything else about the adrenals before we kind of shift over to toxicity. Yes. One last thing. You know, I always say to people sex or stress, you can't have them both. If there are any men listening, you have. I mean, women too. But for men, it's much more obvious because there's men have a sex drive no matter what. And women's sex drive will go down if we're stressed, so men's will too.

It's just a little more subtle. So you can either have healthy, functioning adrenals and manage your stress, or if you don't, you're going to have a cortisol steal where you don't make your estrogen, your testosterone, your progesterone, you're going to go right down that fight flight or freeze pathway and shut down your drive, your weight loss, your brain function, your hair. You're going to shut it all down because you're in fight, flight or freeze. So sex or stress is the essentially take home message.

You can't have them both. Yeah. So we see the theme here ladies. Right. It seems like I always get to squeeze in my stress is cause of 99.999% of issues. So here we have it again how stress is setting us affecting our adrenals, robbing us of a good sex life, which is our birthright and something we should celebrate as women. And so thank you for, for shining light on the adrenals and for women to have that in their consciousness. But that's something that needs to be addressed. So. Yep. So dirty girl.

Let's talk about toxic. Yes. Because toxins are a stressor. And now we've talked about all about how you have to coddle your adrenals. But if you have toxins on board that stresses your adrenals and gums up all the machinery of your beautiful body and how it should work, right. So let's I think it's pretty horrifying, Sharon. Right. When you think about how many toxins are out there. So let's put them in categories just so people can start to think like, how am I getting exposed to them? So there's toxins.

There's three categories of toxins and there's more. But I put them into three categories just because I can keep track of it that way. Heavy metals the big ones. Lead. That's from lead pipes. Living in a home that was built before 1978 or doing construction on it. Industrial processes, that's the general way is you get exposed Mercury fish, heavy mercury fish like tuna, mahi mahi, Chilean swordfish, Chilean sea bass, swordfish and then fillings. The silver fillings are high mercury and also industrial processes.

High fructose corn sirup because when you make high fructose corn sirup, you have to use mercury

Understanding Toxic Exposures 31:28

so that, cadmium, which is found in West Coast oysters to high levels and also smoking, there's more, but those are the big ones. Then there's mycotoxins. These are the toxins found in moldy buildings. These are mold toxins that when they get in your body, they put out toxins. It's really creepy. So mycotoxins, moldy building schools, dorms, buildings with water, water damage. I had a patient in a car that was moldy. If you have a car that was in Hurricane Katrina that was submerged, your car is moldy, so you can get exposed in a lot of different ways and, also it it makes you sick.

And then we haven't even talked about how it makes you sick. And then the last category is the other. It's like a nice bucket for all the environmental stuff. So that's industrial processes. Living near a highway, living near a golf course, living near a non-organic farm or a farm that sprays the products. We clean our house with, the things that we're putting on our body, nail polish, makeup, hair products, dyeing our hair, the clothing we're wearing, how we're cleaning that clothing, all of the things.

What better we sleeping on? What furniture are we using? All of those things around us. Okay, those are all toxins. And there are three ways that you could basically get it in you. You could you could ingest it. So that's the food you're eating. If it's not organic, if you're having plastic water bottles, if you're drinking alcohol. So you could put it in your body, you could put it on your body. That's where the nail polish and beauty products come in. Or you could be around it. It could be in your air or water quality or in your environment, and you're sleeping on it.

You're lying on it or hanging out on it. So a lot of ways to get exposed. Yes there are. And that that other bucket is is ginormous. It's huge. And also, you know, for this population, we have to think about, as we're losing bone. That is where those of us that grew up in the 60s, the 70s, the 50s, there was a lot of lead. And so as we're losing bone was exposing our land that we have stored there. So it's really important that you have a heavy metal consciousness and program, as you're also working on your bone health.

I would go so far as to say if you were diagnosed with osteopenia or osteoporosis, that you need to look for metals, particularly lead, because it preferentially hangs out in your bones. And so you. So when you think about, well, what are the toxins doing to us? Okay. Big picture. They make us suffer. If you get enough of an exposure it'll kill you. But then there's this stuff. Like it just tortures you. So if you break a bone, it's false to me. In the category of getting tortured because you got to deal with it.

So what? What are the consequences for Perry and Perry preparing postmenopausal women? So bone health, brain health. These toxins are implicated in dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, all autoimmune diseases, degenerative diseases and anything that causes you to fail slowly. Over time, toxins are implicated. Weight gain, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, anxiety, heart attacks. You could just kind of keep going on and on cancers because they are the end result of inflammation gone awry. And toxins are a major source of inflammation, which is why they stress the adrenals and to tie it all together.

So when you look at toxins, osteoporosis, bad periods, bad transition into perimenopause, all these things infertility, multiple pregnancy loss, all of these things can track back to toxins, which is the why it's important because it not only can kill us, but it tortures us while it gets us there. That's nothing any of us want. No, it's it's, it's implicated in everything at this, at this time of our existence. So what are some of the ways you look for toxins in patients? And one of the things you can share with the ladies that they should know about, that they can do to mitigate or do. Let's put this in two categories.

Let's talk about first the things that you can do on your own to clean up your environment, clean up your life. This what can you do without even needing someone like you or me? Right? So like we put together, I think it's part of the offering. We put together the promo, which allows you to, we put together all of the things that you can level up to for what are you going to put in your what are you going to use for cooking? What are you going to use for makeup? What are you going to use for your bed?

If you're buying a new bed? All the products that we recommend because it can be kind of overwhelming when you look at transforming your life, it's like, oh, there's a lot to do guys. So so we've we've boiled it down so that the listeners don't have to. So that's I would definitely go check out the promo at Five journeys.com/promo because that's going to help you as you transition through. So that's one. So there's a ton of things you can do on your own. Clean up your food, try to eat organic wherever possible so you're not getting exposed to the herbicides, pesticides and insecticides that are on your food.

That's one try to avoid processed food because the processed food are grains. The grains have sat in bins, and if it rained, those grains are moldy. So try to minimize the, you know, clean up the food you're putting in your body. Don't drink alcohol. It's bad for you. It's it's a straight up toxin. It makes the liver divert to only dealing with that. And then it stresses the adrenals, you know, rinse wash, repeat wash, rinse, repeat. Do the same thing over and over. So what we really want to do is decrease the number of things you're getting exposed to.

So don't drink alcohol. Minimize your sugar. These are all things you have control over. Move your body regularly and sweat so that you can get the toxins out. That's either exercise and or Epsom salt baths. Sauna, sauna, blankets on a pods. Doesn't matter. Do something to sweat. Dry brushing. Do anything you can clean up your products that are around you. Again, this is where that guide is going to come in. Really helpful because it's a nontoxic guide for healthy living. And it's all that's that's where it's going to come in. Very helpful.

Clean up your makeup, clean up the products you're cleaning your house with, clean up your laundry detergent, clean up your toothpaste, your hair products, all of it. Right. And if you're in the market for a new bed, you're going to want to make sure you get a bed that doesn't have flame retardants in it, because those are major endocrine disruptors. And your hormones are part of the endocrine system. So you want to don't just go buy a new bed unless you have the means to. But if you're looking for a new bed, then I would get one either birch or avocado.

Those are the top brands. And, you know, think about it. You sleep on your bed for ideally eight hours a night, so you want not to be exposed to chemicals while you're sleeping. Okay, so these are things you can do all on your own.

Reducing Toxins and Detox Strategies 38:48

Then there's the next level, which is, hey, I've done all this stuff, and maybe you're like me, where you're kind of a loyal repository and you're just not where you want to be, or you're not as healthy as you think you could be. So then you want to get into evaluation, and that's where you say, okay, you need a, a seasoned functional medicine provider who's going to look at the data and, and set you off on the path that will allow you to target what are you getting exposed to in the highest levels and consistently iterate on that path, because it's not like, oh, this is what I have, and it's going to be that way for ten years.

It's like, here's what I have today, and we'll work on this for six months and we should recheck it. So you what we do is we do urine testing for heavy metals and we do a provoked urine test. So we do two tests a baseline and a provoked test. That's DMZ. And we're using it to pull out the metals to see what are you storing in your bones. That's metals. And then for the mycotoxins the environmental toxins, the herbicides pesticides gasoline fumes all that. We're doing another urine test that's provoked with glutathione alone and a hot bath, which can sound kind of torturous if you're perimenopausal.

But you know, when you get out of the bath, you'll you'll evaporate, hopefully, and you'll cool down. But a hot bath for 30 minutes. So that's two tests. And that gives us all the data that we really need. And then we start to prioritize, you know, what's the highest? What's your problem? You know, if you just broke two bones, we're going to go for metals first and particularly lead if you have rashes and airway disease and can't lose the weight, I might go for mycotoxins first. It just kind of depends.

I mean, I had all of them, so I was just like, well, I'm such a mess. We're going to treat them all at once. Great. Like, I couldn't really prioritize because I was such a mess. Yeah. Glutathione and Sana will handle we'll handle a lot of things and it is a journey. It's not a I always say detox is not a weekend or a five day detox program. It's a it's a journey. And when you are provoking urine and you see what comes out, you know, sometimes that's the iceberg. Sometimes more often it's the tip of the iceberg.

And when you open up the Monk Diaries and you make sure that your detox pathways and your skin and your lymph and your kidneys and your lungs and everything is open and you start, gently guiding them out often, then the body's like, oh, okay, well, now I can relax and I can release more. And so it's definitely something you want to be be guided through because, there is a science and an art to it for sure. And it's something to take seriously because if you're if you're not detoxing properly, then you can just be moving toxins and then you're just detoxing rather than detoxing.

Well, think about it. You can get rid of about 1% of your mercury body burden every day. So if you think about the numbers, you go, okay, 1%. We want to get to 100. So after just over three months, we in theory could get rid of all the mercury in our body. But there's a wrinkle. We recycle 99% of what we're putting in our gut to get rid of. Meaning we really only get rid of 0.01%. I can never do this math. I think it's 0.01 of a percent. 100th of a percent is what we're getting rid of every day.

And so that's a big difference, right? Because that assumes you're not getting any further exposure. And so it's really important to make sure your gut health is intact. It all ties together right. It could be like so. So it's important that you have proper, fiber in the gut and that your gut isn't dysfunctional, that you're pooping, you're not constipated. You definitely would never want to do detox if you're constipated, because then you're going to make yourself sicker because it builds up in the got so that there's all these layers, which is the argument for working with someone because, you know, you don't want to make yourself sicker.

That's not the goal. The goal is get it out and keep it out. Right. And you manage exposures. So you certainly want to be looking at, you know, which is why we do the pre and post because sometimes we see well you have this major exposure going on to nickel or aluminum cadmium or gadolinium from testing you've had done. And so we want to be able to then, you know, put on our Sherlock home caps and figure out where you're getting this exposure and stop it. And certainly with Mercury you need to take care of your teeth.

You need to get those amalgams out. You don't want to be detoxing or even provoking and testing. When you have a mouthful of amalgams, you want to make sure you're removing the dripping source, and then you can kind of see what's going on there. So, it's definitely and I mean, I don't know about you, but I, I test patients regularly and I no longer you don't see patients who don't have toxicity. It's just a matter of their health affecting them. And and it's quite sad. Even the lab, some of the labs are like, no, it's okay if they have up to 75%.

You know, we're just looking at 95% being a bad thing. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Not okay. First of all, it all compounds on each other. So we got 25% here and 50% in this one and 75% in this one. But we want to get that number as low as possible. And detox is a is a journey. It's a lifestyle. It's really something that if we want to be mastering our menopause transition, we have to be participating in, it's really pretty critical because it will influence the quality of your menopause. And, you know, we talk about peak performance and longevity in our practice.

And and when we say when when we say longevity, people here are living a really long time. But being decrepit, I don't know why they hear that, but that's what they hear. And I'm always saying my goal is not only that you live long, but that you live optimally functioning and at the best performance that you're able to do. Not decrepit and sitting in a wheelchair without your brain. That is not the goal. Time. So the goal really is that your quality of life is amazing, that you feel good in your body, you have a sex drive, you feel you're like, oh, I feel good, right?

You feel good, I slept good. This is our time of we're no longer losing our wisdom through our cycle. We're retaining it. So this is our time of creativity and there's so much life and experience to be had now. And yes, you can do it while feeling good. You. If you don't have a healthy vessel, then nothing else really matters because you can't really enjoy. Even if you have all these wonderful things in your life, if you don't feel good, you can't appreciate and enjoy them. And so yes, we are definitely talking about longevity and healthy, vibrant aging.

Absolutely. 100%. Yeah. Well thank you, thank you, thank you for for discussing these important topics. My pleasure. I've really enjoyed it. So where can, you mentioned a guide. Can you just let me try and find you again and learn more? Yep, yep. There's lots of places. We have a guide on our website. It's the nontoxic guide for healthy living. It's at Five journeys.com/promo. And I believe your team has the link to it. Yeah well and then yeah yeah yeah. So that'll go in there and then the I'm on Instagram at at Wendy True bow MD.

And my name is spelled funny. But I'm assuming you'll put it all in there. And I am also on Facebook at that same link. And so people can find me in those two places or three I guess. Great. Well thank you. Thank you for being here and my pleasure for all the work you do in the world and all the all the ladies you help so and everyone, this has been a this has been a good one. This is some important stuff here. Adrenals and toxins two very very physiological important pieces we have to be paying attention to.

So I hope you learned something. I know you did. If you didn't listen again, there's a lot of juicy nuggets in here. So, thanks for being here and I will see you then. Right.