Toxins & Thyroid Autoimmunity: A Dangerous Mix!

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Thank you. Nice to be here, Jen.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Yes, I am so excited to talk to you today about toxins and autoimmunity. It’s just a bad combination, right? Yeah.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

It’s like a hungry and tired toddler, right?

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s so you have your own story of autoimmunity and toxins. Can you share this incredible story with us?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yeah, definitely. So my story is like a camel’s back. It has two major humps. They’re not as close as a camel, though, because my two major humps were very far apart in time. My first one was when I was 35 and I could pretty much not get out of bed and I didn’t know what was going on. I got out of bed every day because I was the primary breadwinner and I had to I had to almost two young children. I had one child and another on the way. And I just felt awful. And after my second child was born, my husband said, Why don’t you see my mentor? You know, before our insurance changes, go see him. And he diagnosed me with celiac disease, which was life changing because I had no idea that I had thought that I had any type of autoimmune disease until I was diagnosed. And I immediately went gluten free and changed my diet and started then to work on all those other consequences of having a messed up gut for so many years, which included candida and irritable bowel multiple food sensitivities. That was phase one. I was 35 at the time, and then I was doing pretty well. You know, I was I got into functional medicine myself. I was doing this all I’m doing with patients and then I hit the skids when I was 48. And originally I was like, God, these hormones are terrible. These hormonal swings are terrible. And I blamed it on hormones. But what had happened was we went to Paris for a vacation and as soon as I came home, it wasn’t in Paris. It was after coming home, I got I gained 9 pounds and I had lost about half the hair on my head. And I had this rash on my face, like my eyelids, my nose under my chin. I was itchy and I went to my face off and I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on. So what does every human do? 

When they came, 9 pounds, they say, okay, my thyroid must be off, right? Because that’s what we do. We check our thyroid. My thyroid was perfect. Never better. Okay. So then I checked my hormones because I was 48 and I was like, well, must be my female hormones now. They were pretty good, actually. Then I thought, okay, well, everything starts in the gut. I’ll check my gut. My stool test was really for a celiac with irritable bowel was really pretty good. I already knew that I had multiple strains of mycotoxins and I was treating that. So it wasn’t that and I was pretty stunned. And a few months later, I’m sort of still on this quest for like, why did again all this weight? Because let me gain weight and have my hair followed. Said no human ever. Right. And I heard on the report that when Notre Dame burned, it released 500 tons of lead dust into the air. And we were in France right after Notre Dame burned. And I looked at my husband, I got a letter exposure. I know I got a letter exposure and I did the testing and it had been previously mildly positive and now was definitely positive. And I had kind of blown off the initial result because I don’t know, I’m a doctor and I’m like, Oh, it’s not screaming at me. I’ll just deal with something else right there. There’s no shortage of things to deal with, given my health history, so I ignored it, which was not the smartest thing to do at the time. But when I got this higher level, I was like, Oh, this is really a big problem because I’ve gained the weight, my hair is falling out, I have this rash, I don’t feel well. And I started treating my metals, which is just crazy because it took a while. I’m still actually treating my metals years later, but my hair is starting to grow back. My weight fell off like fell off when I treated the metals enough, my body got the signal that it was safe and the weight literally fell off in the course of like three and a half months. Jeremy Yeah, well, then we wrote the book.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Well, it’s a great connection that you made that you look in a lot of people, they don’t look at environmental toxins correlating with their symptoms and your big toxins, you know, we’re all exposed to a little bit of toxins every day, but we need to be able to detox them out and identify the tricky ones, like heavy metals. Like you said, you are still detoxing them out. That does take years for some heavy metals.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yeah. And I honestly wasn’t thinking environmental toxins when we first started on this path because I thought really I assumed it was my thyroid because my mom had thyroid issues and it gets more common as you get older. So I just really literally figured I had an endocrine issue and honestly I didn’t, which is shocking. So it’s hard to treat yourself. That’s how I feel.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Our bodies are smart, though. It was your body definitely telling you that something was off there. Like, I’m going to gain weight and keep this leg, not be fluent in your body in a packet away.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

That really caught my attention, by the way. I was like, Oh, I can’t just blow this off because it hit my vanity point. I can blow it off when it didn’t bother me. But it really was impacting me. So I just I caught my attention.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Absolutely. Now, how to toxins impact our immune system? And did from your blood exposure, did you notice you were getting sick or anything?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

So I didn’t notice that I was getting sick like always sick kind of thing. But when you look back at my history, I was a kid. So let’s back up when you have medals, for every pregnancy you have, you get rid of about 50% of what’s in your body. And if you nurse you get rid of even more. So I’m the first child and my mom grew up at a time when there was lead in the gasoline, there was lead in the paint. There were mercury fillings. I had mercury fillings. I concurrently had this slow burn of gut dysfunction. You know, I’m a child of the seventies. I’m a child of the development of microwaves becoming common. So all of these things that weren’t really in my favor were happening faster food, microwaved food. We eat more breaded. The end of hybridizing the wheat. So it’s more allergenic, having terrible genes. There’s a lot of things that went into this. So when you look at me, I had autoimmune disease, so I didn’t have frequent illness when I was a baby, but I had autoimmune disease. So that’s a big, big hallmark of something’s really wrong here. Right. And for some people, that will show up as being sick all the time. But for me, it really showed up as an autoimmunity. And I already had the lead at that point because I was born into it and the mercury in the fillings and it just compounds over time.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Yeah. Your bucket gets overfilled with these toxins and then you start seeing the symptoms. Yeah. Speaking of toxins like mycotoxins can be really hard on your immune system and really suppress that immune system and that’s in that toxic bucket. It’s a lot. I don’t think people realize all the toxins were exposed, too, but it can get super overwhelming. Right?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

It does get overwhelming, especially when you start to think about testing and then treatment. It can be very overwhelming for people.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

So why is the thyroid specifically so sensitive to toxicity and toxins.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Or poor little thyroid is super sensitive in general. I would say the thyroid is the passenger in a lot of things. So when I mean by that is when someone is super fatigued and their adrenals are just completely tapped out, what happens is it starts to drag on the thyroid ability to perform well. So the thyroid is the the thyroid is the recipient of these problems. It’s not causing the problems. It’s just responding to the system is overwhelmed, okay? Thyroid gets shut down, particularly because when you’re stressed, you don’t properly convert your thyroid hormones because a lot of that’s happening in your adrenal. So if your adrenals are stressed, your thyroid is by definition somewhat stressed. So the thyroid is a sensitive organ, it’s a recipient organ and it’s just at the whimsy of what’s happening in the system. It’s just one of those sensitive organs like the gut, which can get thrown off by a lot of things too. I would say. Let’s think about that. In general, the endocrine system is very sensitive to insults, toxicants, toxins, stress, us, lifestyle, food, those all will hit. Those all will absolutely impact the endocrine system, including the thyroid ability to properly function.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Yeah. Any stress on our body. Our liver deals with so much, but it can only to a certain point because that stress on our body can affect the adrenals going to affect the thyroid, and it’s your whole body. We’re very resilient. I have found and in some patients I can’t believe the amount of resilience with them, but at some point our bucket gets overloaded and it kind of spills out. And sometimes that is with the thyroid. And you know, we might see that first with the thyroid lab work. I mean, in your case, when your thyroid labs are normal, which I think with you, you just caught it so early because you were so aware of the symptoms of something being off.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yeah. And it’s interesting because I had some mild thyroid abnormalities years before when I was still doing obstetrics and delivering babies and staying up all night, which by the way, I don’t recommend anyone play tennis if you have a choice of it is so bad for you. But I was doing that every week and constitutionally that is not the way my body is set up. So I had thyroid issues right after right around the time I left obstetrics and was diagnosed with celiac, my thyroid was also off. It’s very common to see thyroid issues with celiac patients because of the gene it’s on. So that was I was like expecting it. But it, it, it, it went away actually. The healthier I got, the healthier my thyroid got, which is surprising because I always think that we think about thyroid as being permanent. Right. If you’re on I was on medicine for about a minute, didn’t do well with it, went off the deep end and was like, okay, this medicine is clearly not working for me. I was like jumping up and down and hyper and anxiety, anxiety ridden and paranoia. And I was like, okay, I think it’s the medicine. And I stopped my and I said, Now if you’re doing well in your medicine, don’t stop your medicine. I’ve just had a bad reaction to it, but I did have for a little short period of time, thyroid abnormalities that got better the healthier I got, which is just magical to think about. Right.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Right. And our thyroid, while it’s very sensitive, it can also heal. So it is sensitive to toxins, but it can heal. We can reverse, you know, as long as there’s not permanent damage, you can help the thyroid heal and revive it and normalize some of those lives and everything. So I think that’s something to think about. Take baby steps, you know, make sure that you’re not being exposed to toxins. In your case, you really had no choice but let it in general, you know, old buildings, if you’re doing renovations, make sure you have good air filters because that lead being inhaled, it’s more common even still than people think.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yeah, there are over 10 million homes in the United States that still have lead pipes going into them. Think about Flint, Michigan, where there are it is not resolved. It is no longer in the news, but it is not resolved. People are have having lead pipes going into their homes and it’s it’s I’ll call it off gassing. But you think about off gassing as a gas but it’s off gassing into the water supply. So any home built before 1978, if it hasn’t been renovated down to the studs, has led. And as the home shifts and settles at the corners. Right. No, but nobody lives in a dirty home. Right. The home is clean enough. But as the home shifts and settles the corners and the where the ceiling meets the walls and where the walls meet the floor, the paint is getting ground into a very fine dust. And we walk on it, we eat it, we inhale it, and that lead hangs out in our bones, our organs, our brain, and our fat. And it messes us up.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Oh, yeah. Well, there was that big Consumer Reports about letting cadmium in chocolate sauce is right because it’s in the soil. So we can’t live in this bubble. We’re never going to get exposed to toxins. And we don’t want to have people try to be toxin free because I think that’s impossible. But what about cleaning up your toxins and reducing your exposure is the key. And that’s what you wrote one of your books about, right?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yeah. And I really do believe and wholeheartedly say that we have control over this narrative and we have agency and power and the ability to transform the trajectory so it all is not lost. Let’s start there. It’s pretty hard to live without being exposed to high levels of toxins, but we have control over a lot of it. And I think that’s a valuable thing to remember, is we’re in the driver’s seat here.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Yeah, absolutely. So what are some surprising sources of toxins that impact the autoimmunity Hashimoto’s part of the thyroid? What are some specific ones?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

So let’s talk about two in specific because these are two that you have control over. So one big one is perchlorate. Perchlorate is found. The derivative of perchlorate is bleach and chlorine. These are found in your water and these are found often in what you used to whiten your clothes. And they are tremendous thyroid disrupters, endocrine disruptors, but particularly the thyroid. And it’s also the perchlorate is classified as a carcinogen by the EPA. So this is where a reverse osmosis water filter would come in handy to remove the perchlorate. So you’re not drinking it and in addition to that, as much as it kills me to say because I love the smell of those freshly bleached towels, it’s toxic for you. Don’t bleach or towels and don’t use bleach in your products because it is an endocrine disruptors and it’s something that we’re directly getting exposed to. So that’s one of the first surprising ones. The second surprising one is something called deep. And it’s derived from tri-fennel phosphate and that’s flame retardants, plastics, nail polish, resins, electronic equipment. And the one that is most sort of in-your-face to me is the flame retardant portion of it and the electronics, because most of us sleep on a bed that has a flame retardant sprayed to it, so that if there’s a fire, we don’t get burned in bed. So when you think about the origin of that, back in the 1850s, 1900 people lived in very closely packed homes, you know, row on row houses. And if you smoked and you smoked in bed and you set your bed on fire, that whole row was going up in flames. There are certainly times in which it would be a good idea to have a flame retardant in your bed. But all in generally, we don’t need that because, well, don’t smoke and don’t smoke in bed B because otherwise you’re breathing it in and it is a it absolutely an endocrine disruptor or Rupert as well, endocrine meaning thyroid as well as reproductive and developmental problems. So these are two particularly nasty chemicals for the thyroid.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

You have flame retardants. I mean, so a little tip for parents because, you know, I know we’re both moms. So when you buy pajamas, so they put flame the flame retardants in pajamas for kids. So you can just buy them 100% cotton organic if you can snugly fit pajamas instead. Okay. And you want to see 100% cotton, it will say on the tag, you know, this is not flame resistant. The ones you don’t they’re usually character ones, the ones you don’t want. They’ve kind of feel different. And the problem is if you get those that are flame resistant and you’re, you know, with kids not only entering not only thyroid, but increased risk of ADHD. So you want to really look at those tags. I know when I had my first kid, I didn’t know any better. I mean, this was over a decade ago and we had those pajamas or got them as hand-me-down and they don’t really that doesn’t wash off. Right. Right. So yeah, whenever you get new clothes in general, sometimes the cotton is bleach cotton. Right. So you want to wash that all out in the washing machine. Always wash your clothes before you wear them or your kids. My teenage daughter, I always have to remind her she’s excited to wear something and I’m like, Wash it first. But I when I grew up, did you ever wash your clothes before you wore them?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I never. No, never. And it was like a thing, you know, oh, it’s now so nice and it’s great, but it’s full of chemicals.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Yeah, the smell is chemicals. The smell is damaging, you know, chemicals. But our world is more toxic now than when we grew up, correct?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yes, 100%.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

And I think that’s the hard part to get across to not only patients, but like my parents, for example, you know, they’re like, I was fine. Your family or my fine. I had Hashimoto’s that I had or, you know, reverse. But I think that we don’t realize how much more toxic our world is now. Now, that being said, some things like forever chemicals, they’re starting to be more strict with guidelines with those and starting to pan those out because those are terrible toxins also.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yes, but think about it, just like the BPA is now, BPA. So it’s just as bad for you. It’s simply that the knowledge base of how bad it is hasn’t developed, but it looks as though that’s just as bad, if not worse than the BPA. So part of the issue is the exposure and part of the issue is the breadth of exposure. And then the other issue, or at least one of the other issues is our lifestyle today, because we’re so busy and we’re getting exposed to so many things. And don’t forget the epigenetic nature of what happened with our parents, grandparents, great grandparents is influencing us now and that’s impacting our ability to be as healthy as our grandparents. Parents were. So it all sort of rolls up into this package that’s not in our favor.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Yeah, absolutely. I love what you said about the BPA because it’s kind of a little greenwash and and you’ll find that a lot when you look at toxins, the BPA free is a little bit of greenwashing, which means an advertisement kind of gimmick saying, oh, it’s it’s good, you know, like 100% fat free, which is terrible. Right? So it’s like it’s greenwashing. So watch out for that. Right? I mean, that’s something, too, that they kind of prey on consumers.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I have to tell you, Jen, I have been green washed so many times and I’m the original. Like I want to play. I think everything’s great. I’m like, sign me up. So my best example and here’s thing, we wrote a book, we’re all about low toxin, we’re all about decreasing exposure. I’m all about like, Let’s have everything, be healthy. I get snookered. So I see this ad for this clean laundry pod. I’m all excited. It comes in a paper container. So it’s not this big plastic jug that I feel bad about, like, doing to my kids because it’s never going to degrade and I can’t make it into a sweater. It’s not right. It’s not recyclable. So I’m all excited. It has no colors, it has no smells, and it’s in a paper thing. So I’m psyched. I order bulk. I have four kids. You have four kids, right? I order in bulk and I order on automatic shipment. I set it and forget it. I am so happy. Six months later I wake up and I go. I actually never checked to see that that was clean. I just took their word for it. Now we’ve already published the book. 

I am the spokesperson for Healthy Living and here I am. I’m like, Oh, I’m human. So the first thing to say is, welcome to humanity, folks, because you can’t get away from yourself. If you’re like me, you’re going to get all excited about a product and you’re going to buy it. And at some point it’ll occur to you to check it. So at this point, six months in, I’m like, Oh, let’s check the product. I check in an environmental working group. And I was like, Oh, that’s not up to my standard. Now, of course, this happens like after the monthly delivery had come. So this is rule number one. Check in on EWG or think dirty. Rule number two, if you have a lot of it, use it up because it’s not going to kill you. The sum total of what is going on here is not worth it unless you bought like a ten year supply. Then it would be worth getting rid of. But I had like a three month supply, so use it up and move on and have a sense of humor about it. Because the stress that you bring to the the humanity, if you stress about your humanity, it’s really bad for you. So have a sense of humor about the fact that you’re human and you screwed it up and I’ll probably screw it up. God. Right, but it’s okay. Just move on.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Absolutely. I think it’s happened to all of us. We’ll get something almost like an impulse buy because you just read the front because you’re so excited about like Costco. This always happens. I’m like, Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. I know this brand. And you just flip real quick and flip back at the label, and then you get home and you have like buyer’s remorse. You’re like, Oh, there’s a seed oil in there. And I didn’t want that in bulk. So I think that I, I totally agree with you, but a lot of times I tell patients to use what you have, like you said, and then just get a cleaner version the next time level up. Yeah. Oh, I love that level up.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Level up when you run out. Level up. But don’t you don’t sweat the small stuff. There’s so much coming at us so the goal is like, don’t sweat the small stuff. When you run out of something, that’s a perfect opportunity to level up. Don’t throw everything out. It’s super expensive. It’s not worth it.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Yeah, absolutely. Now, what are the top ways that we can decrease our reactivity and exposure to toxins?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I love this question, Jen. Okay, so let’s separate the reactivity and the exposure and the detox because it all, I mean, it all smushed together, but let’s separate them out. So the first is how do we the reactivity I want to set to the side and say, how do we minimize our exposure to toxins? So you have to think about, well, how are you going to be exposed? One category is, what are you eating food? Is it we eat hopefully a few times a day. We drink, we drink liquid, we drink alcohol, we drink wine. So looking at how do you level up your food? So if you’re it’s pretty unpopular when I say don’t drink at all. But that would be my line in the sand. Don’t drink at all. But if you’re going to drink alcohol, drink alcohol, that’s organic. Drink wine, that’s organic drink juice. That’s organic. Because when you drink the non-organic version, you’re essentially drinking a concentrated form of the pesticide life herbicide, glyphosate. So always drink organic, don’t drink from plastic bottles. Make that just a rule. Do not buy a case of water and stick it in your car for soccer days. 

Bad get a big thing a water gets a paper cups or get metal cups. I’m sorry the little collapsible cups, but get things that aren’t going to expose you and your kids, especially if you’re driving around with kids with with sports to more toxins place my kids show up with plastic bottles and I’m like so please place a place a no go rule on the plastic and then wherever possible level up and eat organic when you can’t. Right? It’s not always possible, but do your best. That’s food and water. Then as you’re running out of things, you want to level up on your beauty products. All these things we apply to our bodies can be toxic. So head to toe, hair products, hair color, hair dye, shampoo, conditioner, hair product, the gel, mousse, hairspray, any of it can be toxic makeup, lotion, moisturizers, all of those things can be bad for us. So you want to start to look at What am I putting on? You’ll notice my nails aren’t done. Nail polish is very toxic. There is one brand. Yeah, it’s. That was like my pride. I don’t do it anymore. So pick your battles. And as you start to run out of things, pick a better option. You don’t have to be perfect, but pick a better option. And then the third category of ways that we get exposed to toxins is our environment. And what I mean by that, that’s a huge category. 

What I mean by that is the air, the where our water is coming from, whether our environment is polluted, do we live near a farm, a golf course, an industrial plant? Because those are tremendous sources of exposure to toxins from the off gassing that those places are or highway. So do we live near any of those? Do we have a new bed that has flame retardant? Do we have new furniture that has flame retardant? What are the clothes that we’re wearing? I think of this is the things that are around us. So trying to do your best. Obviously, if you own a house on a golf course, you’re probably not going to move, but you probably do want to not spray your yard with glyphosate or roundup and see if there’s any way that you could place a barrier between yourself and what they’re spraying on the golf course and then make sure that you change your shoes, take off your shoes when you walk in the house so you don’t track it through your house and have a high quality air filtration system in your home so that you’re not breathing it in so that you can help your body excrete. So those are the ways you’re eating exposed. Then the next question is how do we get it out of ourselves, right? Because you can only there’s only so much you can do to prevent from filling up that pump. Okay. So now we’re looking at excretion and there’s a lot of things that go into this, too. So the basics move your body and sweat every day, ideally, but as 3 to 4 times a week, if you can’t do it every day, get enough rest. If you don’t sleep, your brain doesn’t detox. So you want to make sure you get enough deep sleep so that your brain is really kind of creepy when you sleep, the cells in your brain shrink down and separate. So now you have this big highway to drain the toxins out of. 

So you need to get enough sleep, manage your brain. You can have a stressful thought and we have about 60 thoughts a day. So when you have a stressful thought, you shut your detox down because you go into fight, fight or freeze mode and you’re not detoxing and fight, fight or freeze mode. You are surviving and fight, fight or freeze mode. So you want to turn off the survival mechanism as much as possible and focus on restoration, parasympathetic digestion, rest, and these are the basics. And then there’s the what I’ll call the higher order behaviors, which are take supplements that can support the liver, things like gluten, thiamin vitamin C, alpha lipoic acid and acetyl cysteine, proper man and contract fiber, folic acid, activated charcoal. These are all different things that will help with binding with toxins, both metals and mycotoxins and environmental toxins. You can do there’s got there’s so many and blinking you can do sorry I just totally blanked off and went on a different thing. So there’s a lot of things that you can do to bind to toxins and help get rid of them. And then the third category are things like hyperbaric oxygen, sauna therapy, red light and infrared therapy. I said sauna, Epsom salt soaks. There’s a lot of ways that you can help the body start to detox on its own. So you sort of pick and choose. You don’t have to do them all, but to start to pull at them so that you essentially tip the scales. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to tip the scales towards detox instead of towards tossing up.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Absolutely. And if you know that you’re going to be exposed, like, for example, my son plays in a junior PGA Golf League in the Springs and I walk with him around the golf course and I’m like, Oh, I’m getting exposed to so much glyphosate. And they’ve done studies on this, on people that golf and people that live by golf courses because they have glyphosate exposure. And you know, as we know, it’s a carcinogen. So when you’re being exposed, you can take a binder that day or you can take some glutathione or any C and support your liver or dry brush or do an Epsom salt bass. So I think if we’re aware of the toxins around us and then we’re aware of like what you said, what to do to help eliminate the toxins, we can decrease our bucket overflowing. Right. And that’s the big thing because it’s stressful, right? I mean, when you did an amazing job explaining it all, I would recommend that everyone goes back and listens to it again and takes notes. But just. No, you can stop.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

No, no, no. They should memorize it. Don’t just memorize the whole thing.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Memorize it well. But once you start living it and that’s the thing. So when and I have been living like this, doing these things because of our own health problems and because we come from that conventional background. So then when we know that there is a better way to do medicine, that we committed our lives to medicine, we are going all in, right? Like we’re walking the walk. And I met Wendie at a forum and she is just an amazing soul and she walks the walk. Can we talk about how you did cooked your dinner.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

How you got. Totally. No, don’t tell her Venetian.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Oh, okay. Yeah. So. Well, so I brought a bunch of snacks and like Quito bricks and stuff, and I knew I’d be eating, like, out, like, once a day. And that was fine, because I would do like a modified fast. And we went out to dinner and when she was there and she brought this beautiful meal and they brought like a special cooker, why don’t you tell us about it?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yeah. So just to preface this, part of this is driven by that since my diagnosis of celiac, it’s almost like being punished, right? So I just want to reassure the people out there that the more compliant you get with your food, the less tolerance you may have for excursions. And in my case, the more compliant I am with gluten, the less tolerant damm to smaller exposures. And what’s really cool, John, I will just, I just want to share with people that I used to be that person who would be down for the count for 6 to 12 weeks after one gluten exposure. My worst gluten exposure after I became gluten free took me three months to heal from and it was devastating and I pride myself on living at a high level and I really am committed to making a profound difference for people. So I can’t be off my game for three months. I can’t do that right. That just doesn’t match my view of life. So I didn’t expect this when I started the toxins removal. When I started this whole process, I started with Mycotoxins because that was the one I knew about first. And I noticed that a side effect, a positive side effect of doing the Mycotoxins removal was that I was getting less and less sensitive to gluten. 

I never eat gluten on purpose, but I was suddenly able to go from having six weeks of reaction to the first time I noticed it. It was two weeks and then I noticed it was ten days. And then I noticed that it was 24 hours, and then I noticed it was 12 hours, which for me is like manna from heaven. But because that conference that I met you at, I was presenting on the last day of the conference, and when I get gluten free, my brain stops working. So I cannot afford to be off my game when I’m presenting to 250 people. So what we did, this is the whole background. So the reason that we do this, A, is because the quality of food we cook is much better, but B because I cannot be exposed to toxins to gluten in particular before I present because my brain doesn’t work. So we brought an induction cooktop and pans and ironically, my husband got a migraine on the flight over. We live in Boston. The conference was in Las Vegas and he got a migraine. So we get to Las Vegas, we check into the hotel and he’s like, actually really sick. And so I said, you know what? I don’t really want to go anywhere with you. You rest. I’ll got a Whole Foods. So I go to Whole Foods and I’m like planning my meals, you know, we’re going to have this at this time. Okay, what do I need for it? We’re going to this tent. So I planned out five days of meals, and I come home with five bags of food and we separated it out into the dinner with leftovers for the next day, which would be part of the lunch. And then the lunches, which were largely salad based, but with all kinds of cool stuff in it, like the leftovers from the night before. And so it gave me kind of a ration of grief when I came in with five bags of food. But I was like Jupiter for five days, and we ended up leaving two avocados and we took we schlepped everything else home, but we didn’t really have anything left over. We eat everything, which I was quite proud of. But we, we schlepped along a induction cooktop and cooked in a room. And, I mean, what it was nice is I felt like I had control over my food, but I also had control over that. I wasn’t getting exposed to non-organic food, pesticides, toxins, artificial colors. I don’t eat sugar. So it really worked for me to have control over that because it takes away this tremendous area of anxiety. Yeah.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Absolutely. And once I have found with patients, we’ll do like a liver and gut kind of reset program. And once they’ve know how it feels to feel good, they don’t want to feel bad again. So I think with your story, one you like, you didn’t want to feel bad, you know, and I think it also it comes down to like a little bit of food informed consent. You could be like, oh, I’m going to eat like sugar today because I am I want it right at like especially around like the holidays, like I’m going to eat this and I know how it will affect me and I know I can get back on track or I know I can get back on track in a couple of days or so. You go somewhere and you know that people are going to be wearing perfume. So give your liver a little love or do some dry brushing or taking Epsom salt baths that night. So I think we just need to learn how to deal with these toxins because they’re not going away unless we lived in a bubble. Right.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

And that’s not realistic. So it’s really all about, for example, those days, Jen, when you go to your son with the golf course, those are buddies not to drink, drink alcohol, right? Like mitigate your body’s body, burden your bucket, don’t fill bucket on days that, you know, it’s getting filled. And we all know the things that fill our bucket. And they can be stress. They can be the way we think they can be our stress. So it’s it’s excuse me, it’s important to really keep those in mind and not discount the impact of visiting a relative or travel or sleepless night, you know, keep, take those into those those times when we’re stressed, we actually crave the foods that don’t work for us and can also downstream harm the thyroid. But those are the times to stay on the straight and narrow when it’s really when we don’t want to like oh to stressed, you know, that’s exactly when you need to because your body needs it the most.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Oh yeah. And women with our cycles, you know, that luteal phase, you’re just going to be more susceptible to emotional toxins, other toxins. So because your body’s trying to detox that estrogen and that ties up that liver. So we have to just our bodies are really complicated, but that’s why we’re here and that’s why we’re passionate about teaching everyone to understand their body and toxic load better.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Totally.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

So when you can you. Oh, go ahead.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Now it’s just reminded you of teenagers and I’m teenagers and my one of my second teenager who’s 16 always says totes macoutes. So since they chose me right back at you, like these are the times to really drill down into it when you’re stressed 100%.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Absolutely. I love that when you tell everyone I think you have something exciting happening and 20, 23 right now and then also tell everyone where they can find you.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yeah, there’s so many things going on in 2023. We have a summit that we launch in April of 2023, which is on environmental toxins, autoimmunity and chronic diseases. And that’s live. And then we have our current book, Dirty Girl Ditch the toxins look great until freaking amazing that’s already out that’s on Amazon. We have Dirty Girl Detox, which is the detox line designed to support you when you’re exposed. And then we have our second book coming out later in 2023, which is all about menopause and transitioning. So that’s from sex to brain function, master menopause and feel freakin amazing. You’ll feel a theme here because we’re all about feeling freaking amazing. And yeah, so we’re really, really into having people feel freaking amazing and there’s lots of ways to participate in that.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for teaching us about toxins in the thyroid. It was so nice talking to you.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Thanks for having me on.