Barbell Shrugged - Cortisol, Mold Exposure, and Gut Health w/ Lacey Dunn, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash #771

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Lacey Dunn is a functional medicine dietitian with a fiery passion for helping women feel and look their very best! People call her their “Hormone Fairy Godmother” as my one mission in life is to help women go from surviving to thriving. Dunn has an obsession for all things hormones, thyroid, gut, and metabolism. Aka - a nerd. Dunn says her job is to help people like you to reclaim their health, hormones, and become the master of their own bodies. I am committed to help my clients take their life back into their control. As a functional medicine dietitian, Dunn is passionate about helping women because she has been in the trenches of hormonal chaos herself. Before discovering functional medicine, she was burnt out. Her hypothyroidism and cortisol issues left her suffering with chronic fatigue, random weight gain, hair loss, anxiety, and depression. Dunn had primary ammennrohea until age 25 (aka no menstrual cycle), and was left frustrated and confused. Her years of bodybuilding and weight training were no longer showing in her physique and she felt like she was hit by a truck on a daily basis. Conventional doctors would not listen so Dunn listened to herself. Dunn found (and treated) her own hypothyroidism and got her period finally, naturally. She became my own health advocate. Lacey’s best-selling book “The Women’s Guide to Hormonal Harmony” which is available on Amazon gives women the knowledge, tools, and confidence to rebalance your hormones, master your metabolism, and become the boss of your own body. I am very thankful to have been featured in top media outlets, such as TIME magazine, Forbes, US News, Eat This Not That, Popsugar, Health, Well + Good, 30 seconds, Bodybuilding.com, and Paste Magazine! My goals as a dietitian are to give people like you the tools, confidence, and knowledge to take your health back into your own hands and be the master of your body and life! Work with RAPID Health Optimization   Links: Lacey Dunn on Instagram Work With Lacey Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, we're going to be talking mold toxicity. We're going to be talking about gut health, cortisol, all the things, functional medicine with Lacey Dunn. We've been in the same ecosystem for many years now, finally able to get her on Barbell Shrugged and think you're really going to enjoy her approach and very, very well versed in all things functional medicine, lab testing, and the ability to go find root cause issues. And I think she is awesome. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where you're going to find all the things. And if you'd

like to come in and get your labs completed, lifestyle, performance testing, all the questionnaires, so we know exactly what you're looking for, your health history, all the things, you can head over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where you will find a link to set a call up with me so that we can walk through everything health and performance related and get you started inside rapid health optimization. Rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I's monitor doug larson coach travis mash lacy dunn we finally made it here i feel like we've been like in the same same uh same universe here and and we finally get to have you on the show it's fantastic

and so excited as we were talking pre-show we said what are the things you're most excited about big wedding coming up we're not going to talk about wedding planning though are you having a band or a dj a dj i love that um anytime i get to go to a wedding which is like once every three years now i used to be and go to like there's like the time of life where you go to weddings like every other weekend for like three years and all your friends get married. And then you go like five years without one. And then maybe your best friend gets remarried. And then you're the second, you're the best man again. But now every time I go to one, I'm like, did you throw a party for me? You want a band and you want me to get dressed up for a really nice date night? Thank you. All I have to do is go to this little ceremony thing at the beginning.

How friendly of you. Such a party for me. I love that. Yeah. All of your married friends that are going to show up that have kids, that's what they're thinking. Just a little insight. They're excited because they finally get to breathe for a night. Today on Barbell Shrugged, less about me, more about you.

We're going to be talking about all things functional medicine, cortisol specifically, but we're talking briefly. I'd love for you to introduce yourself and then we're going to dig into a little bit of mold toxicity, which is something we haven't done on the show for a very long time, but I'd love to get a little background. Introduce yourself to the people. Yeah, of course. Thanks so much for having me on. So for your listeners that don't know about me, don't know about me. My name is Lacey Dunn. I am a functional medicine dietitian living in Jacksonville, Florida right now. I'm obsessed with everything functional medicine. Like you could throw me in gut cortisol, hormones, PCOS, mold, Lyme, everything. I love it all. And the reason I got into functional medicine was through my own cortisol issues. I created my own hypothyroidism issues from chronic stress, high cortisol, and then that filtered down later down the road and developing mold toxicity, candida, H. pylori, parasites, you name it. So I've been put through the wringer myself. And I think that's a huge reason why I'm obsessed with everything functional medicine is because I've been through it. I understand my clients and I'm able to, in my opinion, be able to help them, but also understand what they're going

through at the same time. So I love it. I am so excited that the world of functional medicine is rapidly expanding that you guys are in it here to help people too, because a lot of times, a lot of people are getting lost in the sea of confusion for other people's own opinions. And we're here to make sure that people understand how to fix their bodies and understand their bodies from the inside out. So I absolutely love what I'm doing. And I got my master's degree at Texas Women's University.

I got my bachelor's at UGA. So go dogs. And that's, you know, a little bit of insight about me. I used to do bodybuilding, but now my main focus is just loving my workouts, loving my life and having fun. Tell your cortisol Genesis story here. Like how, how did you end up having those issues? So I thought I could do everything. I was competing or trying to compete, getting a master's degree, doing a dietetic internship,

which is basically an unpaid job working 40 hours a week on top of doing a master's and online coaching. So I was working online and getting a master's doing all that together. And I essentially just developed my own hypothyroidism. It started with like me kind of having like this weird waking and I'm a tiny person. So waking automatically, like you could see it puffiness, hair loss, literally lost my eyebrows, terrible digestive issues. I couldn't sleep bad acne. I felt like crap and I just couldn't figure it out.

I went to the doctor and I had through my nerdiness through my classes, we were learning about iodine and learning about iron. So I dove into, Hey, iodine iron that is in relation to the thyroid. So I started reading and looking to Aviva Rom. She has an adrenal thyroid revolution. Started reading her book and everything that she said, I was like, this is me. So my doctor, I asked him to check my thyroid levels. And unfortunately, in conventional medicine, doctors just pull, as you guys know, a TSH maybe to check and see quote unquote hypothyroidism. Well, that doesn't tell you the full entire story. And I knew from my own research that I needed a TSH, free T4, free T3, reverse T3, TPO, TGAB antibodies to see the full entire

clinical picture in regards to what was going on with my thyroid itself. So I did that, got that done. And lo and behold, terrible hypothyroidism. Then they started me on thyroid-based therapy, lipothyroxine. That did nothing, didn't budge anything. They started me on T3, didn't budge everything, anything. And then I started digging deeper. I was like, okay, what are the root causes of why this hypothyroidism could have developed? And also what are the root causes of why I'm not responding or absorbing this thyroid medication? And that's when I started again to functional medicine even more and started diving into gut cortisol, environmental toxins, inflammation. And through all that, that's when I was able to figure out additional things causing my hypothyroidism and able to heal that. But I truly believe

the key trigger was cortisol and stress hands down. Wait, so for people that aren't overly familiar with cortisol, it's, it's kind of a pop culture term in many ways. And the way, the way that's probably using normal conversation isn't like the most scientific. It's like the, this general stress hormone. If you're feeling stressed out or you're, you're feeling kind of overwhelmed, you say like my cortisol is high, you're not really truly measuring it. It's like just how people talk. Like what, what really is cortisol and what is it? It's an effect in your body physiologically. Yeah. So I love cortisol. It's being demonized a lot. And there's a lot of quote unquote, like hype to like cortisol drinks

and lower your cortisol, but cortisol is a beneficial hormone outputted by your adrenal glands. And there's a lot, we could talk more about it, but cortisol is essentially important to reduce inflammation, get your body to run away from a tiger, a stressor. And that stressor can be under eating, over exercising, toxins, inflammation, you name it. But cortisol is made as a fight or flight hormone to get us to run from the tiger internally or externally, suppress the inflammation to support our immune system. And then it does a lot of other things, especially when it comes on to the metabolism. So cortisol essentially helps our body go into gluconeogenesis. So we're converting protein amino acids over to glucose. It's basically dumping blood sugar because cortisol helps your body to dump that from your liver. So it's increasing your blood sugar and then also makes you catabolic. So it makes muscle wasting

happen and also releases fatty acids into your bloodstream. So with cortisol, it does a lot of things that way with your metabolism, but it also impacts your vasoconstriction, your blood pressure. We have this impact in regards to digestion as well, because the body doesn't want to push all of your energy into digesting your food if it wants to run away from a tiger. And so cortisol, past all that, also impacts your body's communication, which with the HPA axis, there are hypothalamic pituitary axis and the thyroid, so the HPAT axis. So it can cause downregulation and suppression in regards to thyroid hormone output, thyroid hormone conversion. It can cause imbalances or a miscommunication in regards to testosterone

creation, estrogen creation, progesterone creation, ovulation, or sustaining progesterone. So essentially, anything wrong with cortisol will impact the entire body, whether that's your metabolism, your thyroid, your digestion, your sex hormones. It's demonized a lot. But cortisol, if you think about it, is there to try and help you. And I think that's one of the most important things is in a chronic stress period, you want cortisol to be there to suppress that inflammation and to prevent you from getting sick or ill. But long-term cortisol is when we start developing these issues. What is the, what is like the relationship there between the like menstrual cycle? Um. You kind of briefly touched on that on the symptomatic side. Yeah. So there's a lot of different connections in regards to that. So

in regards to women in particular, what high stress first will do, high cortisol will do, is it will prevent the body from ovulating. And ovulation is the only way that you're going to be able to get a period and potentially have pregnancy. Not only that, but it will decrease the amount of progesterone that you can sustain. Cortisol and progesterone are, you know, they counterbalance each other. Stress will deplete your body of progesterone. So essentially what you could see is menstrual cycle irregularities, infertility, but there's a huge connection with lack of ovulation, lack of sustaining progesterone in women particularly. So as far as kind of precursor to cortisol, correct? What? Progesterone is a precursor to cortisol?

No, no, not, not per se. So cortisol comes from the adrenal glands and it's going to be a byproduct of we start with ACTH filtering down into our adrenal glands making cortisol and then that will filter down into telling our body or pituitary to then signal. So we've got GnRH, which is coming from the hypothalamus, then signals LH and FSH with signal estrogen and then progesterone production. So it all starts from the brain and then the cortisol, which filters down into our sex hormone creation. Gotcha. I know also with, with, with cortisol dysregulation, it can, it can radically affect your sleep wake cycles. Like you want to have a higher circadian rhythm throughout the day. And it's kind of the opposite for melatonin. Can you tell us about that? Yeah. So cortisol, when you wake up in the morning, it should be highest in the morning and lowest in the evening. And that's because when we wake

up in the morning, we're supposed to have what's called a cortisol awakening response. So that first 60 minutes upon awakening, we should have this rapid rollercoaster up, down in our cortisol. And this is very important when it comes down to fighting inflammation, apoptosis, which is like the killing and destructed red blood cells, autophagy, all that. So cortisol is very important to be highest in the morning, lowest in the evening. And what can happen is if you have a dysregulated nervous system, whether that's, you know, from chronic stress or night shift or blue light exposure, essentially you can have low end range cortisol throughout the day or high or whatever it is, but there's this inverse connection with cortisol high and melatonin in the evening.

And so what you want is cortisol highest in the morning, lowest in the evening, because if cortisol is high, it's going to counteract and prevent your body from producing enough melatonin, which you need to fall and stay asleep. But also it plays a big role with your immune system and your fertility as well. Your body's ability to combat different infections. So yeah, huge correlation there. What are some ways to ensure that, to ensure that the cortisol is highest in the morning, lowest in the evening? That's a great question.

Light, using light as therapy. So I always recommend using sunlight if you can to try and get your body to really have a healthy circadian rhythm. So getting sunlight access as soon as you wake up in the morning is extremely helpful for that. That way you have that cortisol awakening response, getting your body access to sunlight in the afternoon and reducing red light, reducing blue light. I almost said red light because I'm on a red light kick right now, reducing blue light exposure and overall artificial light exposure in the evening,

because that blue light and the artificial light can increase cortisol or suppress your own melatonin production. How quickly in the morning with the sunlight, like, you know, right away, like, so walk outside. Yeah. As soon as you wake up in the morning, it's the best because that cortisol response, cortisol waking response is within that, within that first 30 minutes is when you have that rapid spike. So you want to try and get that as soon as possible. Does it matter? Like some people are like, they love to wake up super early. Some people like to wake up. Is there, is there a perfect wake up time for people? I would say the perfect wake up time is whatever you got to do to do your, live your life.

There are, you know, studies or some people say that like, there's this window of opportunity from when you sleep and when you wake up that could be better. I don't truly believe that because there's different types of people. But I like to say you need to try and get that sunlight in. And if you can't, there's happy lights that mimic sunlight, that UVA light that could be helpful to produce or mimic that cortisol awakening response. But if you don't have that, um, that's called a flatline car, flatlined cortisol awakening response. And that's when a lot of people start developing these long-term inflammatory issues, chronic pain, chronic digestive issues, chronic autoimmune diseases, chronic gut issues, things like that. Um, on those like overall stress side of things, uh, i feel like a lot of times people get uh there's

there's kind of like maybe two sides of it of the lifestyle stress like my business my family my kids like the things i need to do etc um but then the full like stress load on my body is also all of the things that aren't perfect internally, whether that's like nutrition, supplementation. And for the lifestyle side of things, like maybe I can go like meditate away some of my problems, but how do people know if this is like a lifestyle stressor that they need to be dealing with that's causing issues? Or there's just deeper internal health issues that is just wreaking havoc on their immune system that's causing most of the stress. They've got all the lifestyle things handled, but they still have a lot of issues, and then tracking those problems

down. That's a fantastic question. A lot of people struggle with this. They do. I like to say, make a list of things in your life that are energy drainers and energy fillers. First, figure out what in your life could be contributing to giving you love, joy, happiness, makes you feel good versus things that are draining you. That's the first thing that you could do in regards to, you know, your lifestyle. And if you feel like overall you're checking the boxes and there's not like toxic people, all that, you're not overtraining, overworking, then you can go into, okay, what are the additional things that I have not addressed in regards to, okay, how's my diet? What's my toxic bucket overload? And then you can question, okay, what's my environmental overload

in regards to things like mold or maybe metals in my water or gut infections, because let's be real, there can be things going on in your gut that can increase cortisol and then cause you to have that high stress or cortisol response from that. But I always do like to say there's a root cause to why we develop these imbalances in our body. We develop hypothyroidism, we develop gut issues, we develop a suppressed immune response from something. And a lot and many times it's from a dysregulated nervous system and some shape or form, some shape or form of cortisol dysregulation. I'm not saying everybody's got high cortisol. Everybody's got low cortisol. But there is always a nervous system component to everything.

I mentioned mold a couple of times now. And Anders mentioned that at the beginning of the show like how does that play into this so mold is an extreme environmental stress mold is like the craziest one because nobody ever sees it coming yeah like the number of times i hear people have been like chasing health issues for like years and years and years and then all of a sudden someone comes into their house and like you've got black mold in your closet. And they're like, tell me why, tell me how this got there. Mold seems like there's like, there's like a,

there's really like a scary ghost or something in a place in your house. Like there's, there's a monster under your bed and you're breathing it in and it's killing you. Like it's, it's a freaky one because no one even knows it exists. No, it could be hidden and it could be behind walls. It could be in the AC unit. It could be extremely hard to find testing for mold. There's, you know, there's a lot of inaccuracies. Yeah.

And it can slip up and it can, you can get sick from mold years after an exposure. It can stay in your body. So mold is a big demon and it's one of the biggest environmental stressors. Yeah. It's, it's pretty bad. You environmental stressors. Yeah. It's, it's pretty bad. You're freaking me out right now. Yeah. No, I'm here to help. You got mold, buddy. You got it somewhere. I have no doubts. Yeah. I'm about to go. How do you find out? First question. How do you know if you have mold in your, how can you get it checked out? That's an extremely hard thing to find sometimes because there's basically two or three different types of mold testing in your home.

So you can check to see if mold is in your body via a urine test or maybe a blood test, or you can check to see if it's in your environment through one, a air sample. So some professionals will go in, they'll do an air sample that has very, very low sensitivity, specificity. So you can lose or not see that it's there. You could do a micrometrics ERMI, which is my favorite. It's either a Swiffer or a vacuum, and it basically checks to see and accumulates the different types of mold and the amount of mold spores that are present. And then the last one,

the micrometrics ERMI. Micrometrics ERMI. All right. the Ermi. Micrometrics. Micrometrics, Ermi. Mm-hmm. All right. Yeah, I love that one. It does have some false positives, false negatives, I'm sorry. But that one's my favorite. So that's used for clinical research. And then the last way is, of course, knocking out walls. That's the one that I see with like if somebody's symptomatic for molds and we are not seeing a positive result in regards to one of those tests knocking out, we typically see something.

Yeah, but mold will do a lot of things. So in regards to mold toxicity specific symptoms, we can dive into that. But OK, let's dive into it. There's a lot of things. Yeah. So the way mold essentially kind of like starts is it impacts your hypothalamus. So we see reductions in what's called MSH, which then involves leptin, touches your pituitary, touches your thyroid, touches your kidney levels. So essentially the starting symptoms that I see are increased urine output, frequent urination, chronic stress, chronic anxiety, stuffy nose, sinus congestion,

brain fog. We see a really bad suppression and testosterone. I see this in women all the time that are exposed to mold, absolutely none or, and then greatly reduced. And then I see a lot of issues when it comes down to increased intestinal permeability, leaky gut, because that mold will increase cortisol that then also creates a leaky gut. But in itself, mold will create these cytokines that also with that inflammation can cause that leaky gut. We can see development of SIBO, candida, exacerbation of any shape or form of autoimmune disorder. That's a big thing that I see. And then the key thing with mold is there also starts to be these development of what's called mast cell activation

syndrome symptoms. So mast cells are basically just, I like to think of them like Pac-Man, they're going in to fig out, kill the foreign invader. And when that happens, they start to what's called degranulate. So they basically start to like explode. And when they do, they create these increased histamine inflammatory reactions. So then people start developing weird, allergic or random sensitivities to anything, to food, to the environment, like scents and smells and sound. And they also start developing these really rapid pots, developing pots like symptoms of that increased thirst, urine output, dizziness upon standing, chronic fatigue, passing out, things like that. And mold is a demon and it can mimic a lot of other disorders.

And that's the hard thing is a lot of people think, okay, my symptoms, they sound like potentially hypothyroidism, or maybe it's candida or SIBO. And mold can be dismissed by a lot of practitioners. And I think that's because a lot of people know that mold is everywhere. And they think that, you know, it's okay to have a little bit of mold. But the truth is, it's not just the mold that's there. It's what type of mold is it? Is it stachybotrys, which is completely damaging to your lungs, your kidney, your brain, can cause Alzheimer's disease. And then what not only the active mold, which is damaging to your body, but what are the mycotoxin spores and the volatile organic chemicals that it also produces

that can cause that inflammatory effect. And then when it comes down to mold as well, then we've got to talk about in regards to your exposures, There's also a dietary exposure to that as well. Mold and mycotoxins can be in the foods that we eat. It could be in coffee. It could be in grains. So there's a whole, yeah, mold is a big, big problem. And people are being dismissed because of the exposure issue. Yeah. Outside of calling you, like, what are some of the ways that people can start to kind of eliminate mold? It seems like such a, a broad term. And then even when you get specific on the different types, like how do they, how do they know how to make it better? The first thing you got to do is reduce

your exposure. So I always like to say, have a dehumidifier, keep your humidity under like 55. So 50 to 55 is a good range. And then there's things that you could do like cleaning with vinegar, but decreasing humidity is the very first thing. And then with your AC units, making sure to clean those out, change your filters as much as you can is another big thing. That means us people here in the South, us Southerners. Us Southerners. We have lots of humidity. Yes, we do do it's in our lives already we don't even know yeah that's why i dump my dehumidifier out like every single day and i have my air doctor my happy air filter which will also reduce the mic the mycotoxin and the

mold yeah overload for sure uh air purifier i don't even know if it's actually doing anything but every time i turn it on gives me the warm fuzzies that I'm doing something great for myself specifically for eliminating all that stuff that I don't know. What is the area that it can affect you? Let's say that your basement might have some mold, but you're upstairs. Will it migrate from down to it stay where does it stay in a certain area? Yeah, that's a good question. So do you have, well, if any, any shape or form of time you go downstairs, you can bring it upstairs, you can move it around and then it can start releasing spores.

But another thing is, of course, if it's in the basement and the air ducts are connected to that basement, it can go circulate through the air ducts and go through your entire home. Oh, great. Awesome. How much more is your body? Well, the reason I ask is like, you know, my whole family,

we've been, I mean, this little cold thing has been a month and a half and we just like, we get better, we get it again, we get better, we get again. And I felt great on Sunday. I went downstairs and I worked out and then i got the sickest i've been so now i'm like some airflow in there man i know investors i'm getting i'm getting this handled yeah she's freaking me out

that's good i needed it i needed this motivation i'm not here to freak out but i'm happy to help yeah that's a lot of people they they think it's in the addict and that that's not an issue, but the addict, it literally will filter through the entire house. So yeah, that's very important to get it, you know, cleaned up. I mean, so if your house is 50 years old and you discover that you have mold in your house, is there a way to free your entire house of mold or do you just have to move or are you just going to be like perpetually, you know, low level sick the rest of your life? The first question is what type of mold is it that greatly impacts what your

game plan is. So if it's something like, you know, a little bit of Asperger Aspergillus or penicillin mold, that's not as bad as patulin, which is a form of like stachybotrys black mold. So first you got to figure out what kind of mold are we dealing with? That will tell you, do you need to immediately get out or is remediation a possibility? I never remediate if there was statue botryos, it's just not worth it. So in regards to remediation, there's a lot of different companies and, you know, Dr. Michael Rubino is amazing in regards to remediation, it has to be about getting everything out, everything cleaned. And when they remediate, they also have to completely cover things adequately and fog.

And so it's I am not an environmental person. I don't know essentially everything about cleaning up mold once you found it. But I do know the level of exposure and the type determines what those next steps are. Yeah. And that sounds brutally expensive and time consuming. Oh, it could be thousands of dollars. And I know a lot of people sell their homes, honestly, but I don't want everybody to like freak out either.

Cause I've been the person to like, be like, Oh my God, there's a tiny little bit of mold. Like something is going on. But in the end mold is everywhere and it's gonna be, I mean, we have mold outside in itself And it's gonna be I mean, we have mold outside in itself, and it's not killing anybody. So it's the type and the exposure. And also, if you have ongoing further health issues that are suppressing your immune system or creating an increased histamine response, like H. pylori infection, that's going to increase your body's

sensitivity to mold because you're already sensitive to histamine, right? And then you're going to have extra stuff, you know, sinus congestion. It might not actually mean that you're living in mold. It might just be a tiny little bit of extra histamine is adding to the histamine bucket and then you're having a reaction. And then there's the HLAR gene, which impacts your sensitivity. It's like a canary in a coal mine. If you have that gene, it can predispose you to be more sensitive to mold. Um, and a lot of people, I know women in particular are more sensitive than men. So that's just another thing to keep in consideration as well. Yeah. The total, the total stress load on your immune system. I've always kind of thought of like that one thing isn't going to get you. It's kind of like stacking bricks in the wrong way.

Um, but I feel like the, the mold one's extra scary and that you're like breathing it in. Um, there's, there's not like a bug to go get, you gotta go find some weird thing in your, like in your attic that's circulating in your house. It's just terrifying to think about. Um, you mentioned H. pylori though. I feel like that is one of the fun bacteria that pops up very regularly and people really don't know what's symptomatically or how to go about dealing with that. Can you dig into that? Yeah. So H. pylori is actually naturally found in the body and 50 to 60% of the population has H. pylori without any issues. It's protective against allergies, especially kids. But essentially, H. pylori is a spirochete bacteria organism that can colonize in the stomach. And what it does is

it produces what's called urase, which at the first state of the infection can cause severe high stomach acid. So think reflux, heartburn, burping. And then over time, it develops into this chronic case of H. pylori, in which you can also start developing food sensitivities, constipation, diarrhea, undigested food in the stool, really bad bloating, things like that. So H. pylori is a big demon. It's 100% if it stays there, it will burrow into the intestines, not only potentially causing stomach ulcers, but also stomach cancers. The key thing with H. pylori is there's always a root cause of why it came. Most people have it. It's just, do you have the innate ability to kill it off? So stomach acid and H. pylori compete with each other. Stomach acid is our first line of defense against other pathogens, whether that's parasites, yeast, other bacteria. And so stomach acid is depleted by chronic stress.

So the reason why people are getting it, I find now a lot of times is one, because people are sharing it back and forth with their spouses, their kids, their dogs even. But two, people are chronically stressed. They're not supporting their body's immune system. Maybe some people have mold toxicity suppressing their stomach acid and immune system getting H. pylori, but essentially H. pylori causes this downstream effect in our GI tract where we start developing dysbiosis, which is an imbalance of our beneficial and our bad gut bugs. And that's when we see also development of things like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO, or intestinal methanogen

overgrowth, IMO, just overall dysbiosis. Plus it becomes this systemic inflammation in our body, which as physique athletes are training, then you start to become catabolic, losing muscle, inability to gain muscle mass. Or you see these major alterations in autoimmune markers, autoimmune disease, thyroid, sex hormones, you name it. So that was a lot. Sorry. Yeah. Now this is great. All the vocabulary words. I love it. H.Y. Laurie is like one of my favorite things to kill. I don't know why. Who's going?

I'm just like, let's go. I'm killing it. There you go. So fighting all that in the background, even if you're not like overtly sick and you're kind of living a normal life, but all this is happening in the background, it's still limiting your ability to adapt to training and to perform at your best. Even if it's not like, like really tangible in the moment. Like if you put on, you put on five pounds of muscle mass over, over six months, like if you didn't have this, maybe you would have put on seven or eight pounds of muscle mass. Like you would be better if it wasn't in the background, but sometimes people just, of course, don't know that it's there. And so I think they're out there, they're hitting

their potential, but they're really not. Yeah, no, that's why I always like to like question, could anything be better for you when you're training? Can anything be better in my training? Can my recovery be better? Can my digestion be better? Can my sleep be better? It's always good to try and optimize your biofeedback to make sure that you're not missing those internal deep-rooted causes. So you said you came from a bodybuilding background or you competed in bodybuilding for a time. Was that after you kind of cleared all of these issues you mentioned at the beginning of the show. Yes. So I went back after healing my body, not from mold that was after, but I did go back after healing my body of H. pylori and Candida and went back and did training. I 100% when I was going through that, I thought I was just like bloated because of the foods that I

was eating, but little did I know that that was greatly impacting my physique. I kid you not so much water retention, muscle loss. My training was not even close to optimal. So it makes such a big difference. I mean, if you think about it, if you're not properly utilizing the foods that you consume and getting those nutrients, then you're not going to be able to build that muscle mass or recover at all. Yeah. Do you, um, I've heard, and maybe this is even more on the, um, female side of things when women go into such a caloric deficit and get their body fat so low for those shows. Um, maybe this is like a, an impact on the overall immune system of just body fat. Shouldn't be that low to begin with, but it seems to affect women more in long-term

health, getting that lean to be able to stand on stage than it does men. Is that, is that maybe too much of a stretch? No, it's a hundred percent true. Yeah. It's a hundred percent true because estrogen in itself, like as women, we're supposed to have more estrogen and that also does help to increase our immune system. Um, and then as women as well, if you think about the fact that we have that HPA axis, and then we've also got the progesterone, we lose that progesterone, then we don't have the ability to combat cortisol either with that. Progesterone and cortisol, they do go hand in hand, and they do kind of like counteract each other. So then you lose that stress resiliency, you're more stressed. Then of course you develop leaky gut, low stomach acid, then some maybe pathogens, then some maybe nutrient

deficiencies. It's hands down. It's a more an issue for women than it is for men. With the, the hormonal side of that thing, uh, of, of getting lean like that um why doesn't the problem kind of right itself once you start adding the weight back on is it is it like the damage is already done and there's there's a um like a a deeper kind of intervention that needs to be had if the hormone balance is it's super out of whack essentially when you that lean. How come just like a refeed and getting you back to normal weight doesn't seem to kind of just get you back to a healthy state? Yeah. And 100%, it depends on the person. If you're trying to take care of your nervous system, your gut, trying to prevent low stomach acid, all that through your prep and on your prep,

then sometimes you can help mitigate those side effects. But unfortunately, it can take time for the HPE axis to start regulating again. And just refeeding in itself doesn't always work. Sometimes you have to give a little bit of push in regards to that communication, whether that's inositol to help with the brain to ovary communication or something. But yeah, it can take time for that communication because you're basically shutting down the production of your sex hormones when you are doing your prep. They're very, very low and it can take time for the body to be like, oh, this is a safe space in order for me to potentially have a child. So it's just the body safety mechanism response. Yeah. The hormonal side of things, and I'd love to, I don't know if this actually comes down to like the functional medicine side of things, but when it comes to infertility, especially

in like normal, healthy looking people, do you have any kind of insight into why that may be happening? And we talked about cortisol a little bit earlier when it comes to the menstrual cycle, um, and, and allowing that to get more, uh, normalized, being able to like recreate or to restart a menstrual cycle, but, um, infertility as a whole, um, do you have any thoughts on like, uh, where that may be coming from? So many thoughts. There's so many potential root causes of infertility, some of them more conventional, like, you know, having a fallopian tube blockage or a abnormal sized uterus or like it being like

unicorn shaped. But then there's the whole aspect of what are the more functional medicine sides of infertility? And the first thing that I'm seeing now are endocrine disrupting chemicals. I mean, just now, praise God that this is being shown. They're showing that mycoplastics found in like testes and then ovaries. And that's so scary, but that can greatly impact your ability to conceive men and women. So environmental toxins are huge in regards to that chronic stress is a big one. And these, I would say almost sometimes severe deficiencies in our nutrients, because if you don't have

adequate sources of your nutrients, your body is not going to be able to properly create a human. So there's a lot with that, then there's the whole inflammatory effect. inflammation in itself can suppress your ability to ovulate and then sustain progesterone to pregnancy. So I think that's a big impact, a big reason why there's a lot of increased miscarriages as well with the toxins plus chronic stress. But infertility is definitely multifactorial. There's a lot to it. But I think now where we are now, toxins is one of the biggest issues. Yeah. Hey, Mash, you don't have to worry about mold in your house. You should be freaked out by that plastic. Plastic's terrifying. You ever go to Starbucks and get that piping hot boiling water they serve you for coffee. And then they put that beautiful

little plastic thing in there, just dip some plastic and boiling water. And then you're going to drink it through the plastic mug. Awesome. What about taking, I've been thinking about this. What about taking capsules? You know, let's say you take your vitamin. That's like gelatin though, right? Is it? I'm curious. I heard a stat. Hold on. I heard a stat recently that the average American eats a credit card size worth of plastic on a daily basis. A credit card. Probably a spider every month. That too. What'd you say? Probably a spider every month.

Awesome. While you're sleeping. That's not funny to me. I got spiders when we sleep. It's just a joke. Probably at Masha's farm. He wakes up not even hungry. On the microplastic. microplastic poisonous spider last night

i've heard that ever since i was a kid but three spiders a year or whatever yeah i know on the on the microplastic side of things i heard ron and patrick not too long ago talking about how um microplastics um and i don't remember the exact specifics about how this was measured and whatnot but there's been microplastics found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients at like a 10 X level. Don't quote me on the numbers more than regular people. And they, there's suspicion there that the microplastics are a contributing factor to Alzheimer's. Um, I know none of the details here, but I was wondering if you, if you dug into this at all and know anything about microplastics specifically in relation to Alzheimer's and dementia. I've only briefly seen that only briefly seen that, but I 100% believe it.

Yeah. Same in regards to mold will definitely cause Alzheimer's and will definitely deplete your like kill off your neurons. Dude, out of all the things that that could go radically wrong in my life, Alzheimer's and dementia are terrifying to me. Many, many other things that could be terrifying, but that's like the one that like my brain circles back to. I don't want that to happen to me. There's many, many other things that could be terrifying, but that's like the one that like my brain circles back to. I don't want that to happen to me. Tell me,

tell me more about mold in relation to Alzheimer's. So mold will damage the brain. It will kill off neurons. And with that, then you see this increased level of Alzheimer's and dementia and people. Unfortunately, I'm burning my house. Let's not live in the open air yeah you can't you can do it

out there yeah we're excited about uh functional medicine's kind of growing uh industry-wide here how do you know if you're just quote-unquote not feeling like yourself if you need to go to a functional medicine practitioner versus a general practitioner medical doctor physician like how do you know which which side of the fence to play on and, or they both have value should you always be in connection to, to both parties? How do you think about that? They both have value. I fully believe every single quote unquote functional medicine practitioner should be

a combination of functional conventional medicine because conventional medicine should be used as needed. Um, example, antibiotics can be life-saving. If you've got a UTI that's severe, you can't kill off with herbals. You don't want to die of kidney disease and go into, you know, sepsis and then have kidney failure. Like let's use antibiotics as needed. So fine. I like using both 100%, but the key thing is like, how bad do you feel? Right? If you have a high fever and significant pain, you're going to probably want to go to the ER

versus go to a functional medicine doctor, right? So it just depends on what level of quote unquote pain and issues do you have? And then be open to see both of them at the same time. You totally should. I mean, you know, one, you got to stop what's happening. Like, you know, if you're sick and like, you need to stop it, but then you need to figure out what caused the whole thing. And so that's what I think when I see someone like yourself, I think of, you know, the root cause.

Let's stop that. Takes a little bit longer, a little bit more work and time on my part, but it's so well worth it down the line. But like if I'm having a heart attack, I'm going to go to the doctor, you know. Yes, please do. Please don't come to me if you're having a heart attack yeah give me some valerian root for my heart attack yeah or you know but like the more acute the condition the the more yeah yeah makes sense you break your arm you're going to the doctor right chronic or long term the play is then totally the medicine slash health and fitness side of it seems to be yeah boy yeah you gotta have them

both i'm with you i feel like people that are like they they bend heavy one direction and they kind of discount the other side it's like it's it's it's unnecessary like you have don't throw out the baby with the bathwater and you really should utilize both right 100 100 so that i mean that's why the life expectancy is so much higher now. I mean, we do have good science. Let's not forget some of these things are working. We're living longer, but then at the end of the day, let's fix all these chronic issues. Totally. The industry and kind of the direction that it's heading right now, what do you see as like the future of functional medicine? Like what's coming in the next couple of years that you think could potentially be very exciting?

The newest trend is going to be in this next year, parasympathetic work, childhood trauma work, resetting your nervous system. We're seeing this a lot. I'm sure everybody's going to see all the vagus nerve stimulators, you know, pop up. I am excited for that because I think a lot of people

have a dysregulated nervous system. They have a lot of chronic that because I think a lot of people have a dysregulated nervous system. They have a lot of chronic stress. They have a lot of like childhood trauma. We all have COVID trauma. Let's be real, right? So we've got to all work on this. I'm excited for that to be something that is focused on. That way people are able to start to recognize their triggers, their emotions, dive into their history, everything like that, because all that can also impact your body. There are, you know, chronic diseases that can be manifested or created through chronic trauma. So I'm very excited for that to be a thing. I think that's going to be almost too much of an issue, just throwing it out because I'm honest. I think a lot of people are going to start thinking that, you know, a dysregulated nervous system is the entire reason why they have XYZ issue.

So I think that's going to be a problem. But that's the biggest trend that I see that I'm excited but scared about. Am I allowed? I feel like we live like such a weird impact like part of the conversation of like uh this down regulation um and i i think back uh many times i just kind of like what happened like 200 years ago when um like people in travis's mountains were out there killing each other over like landlines um and where you could put the rock on someone else's property like that. I feel like because we're so safe,

so many of these things are, have, have popped up in like the behavioral health space and we're not safe. We're more. Oh yeah. I want to hear her answer. Why are we not? Well, hold on. Have we lost resiliency as a species? Because I feel like maybe all of this stuff did exist. We just didn't have the people to tell us like back in the day

when the mountain people were fighting each other. My feelings are, and these are just my opinions, is that we have so much societal pressure to reach these standards that shouldn't be there. And we have so much comparison and we have so much on social media and it's making people anxious, depressed, and they feel like they are forever going to be a failure. And I think that's a big reason why a lot of people are having these issues. Not only are they getting it from the world and around them and social media but they're also getting it from their parents that got it from so there's a combination of other things but i don't think we're in a safe world right now i think we're in a world that needs to shut like shut down and needs to stop putting so much pressure on people and kids i've heard that

as as um the the what is the right term here the There's no one left to blame theory of suicide. Where like in modern societies where people are doing very, very well, that's where suicide is the highest compared to like third world countries and whatnot. And if there's so much opportunity and anyone can like just pull themselves up by their bootstraps,

you can go from poor to being a billionaire and there's no one left to blame. If you aren't a multimillionaire, then all you have is yourself to blame. Then like that contributes to stress, depression, anxiety, because in a society where if you are successful, it's your fault. That also means that if you're not successful, it's your fault as well. And so that belief system and that societal structure leads to higher rates of depression anxiety etc um i don't know if that's trauma specifically but

i've heard those where we both said sorry no i really like that she said it's yeah well i i totally agree i said maybe it's what we value as opposed to that being the trouble. Is it do the only thing we value is the dollar sign or should we value the fact that, you know, you have a family, you have your children, you're there all the time. Like, you know, you pick and choose your battles. I feel, you know, like I'm not going to I'm not going to sacrifice my time with my children for $1, you know, like I'm not, I'm going to provide for them. And so like when I'm at home, I feel totally, that's the one thing I don't stress about. I feel like I make a really good living. I provide, but I'm time in my family, not necessarily the dollar signs because I look

at like growing up, you know, I had a stepfather who had lots of money, but he was always stressed. He was rarely there. He would get angry, incredibly angry. And like, I don't know, like that's one thing I've learned not to stress about. That's good. I highly suggest that you continue that 100% because a lot of people, they aren't the same. They want to be, of course, the provider and they keep going or they want to be a perfectionist in regards to their career, being the best mom possible and all that.

That's when we start developing all these like long-term or it's a component of developing these long-term health issues. It's just that chronic stress, that chronic anxiety, that chronic go, go, go, that chronic type of perfectionism. I want to do well and it's fun. But when I'm at home home like i'm very thankful i'm never like i have the anxiety of like you know my best friend he has lots of money he's killing it like i don't see jealous i'm excited for him but i feel like i'm doing great too like we're not there's nothing we don't we we want for you know we went to australia last year for a month old family i'm. I'm good. But mainly I just look at it.

I have my babies. I get to see my children every night, cuddle, and I have a beautiful wife. I want for zero. I mean, I want to do well. Don't get me wrong, but it's more of a game to me than a thing I value. Yeah, 100%. You being Travis Mash also I'm like counteracting Going against my point

From earlier I do think If you don't have a full brain And a career that you established Before all this stuff hit Yeah Like the constant bombardment Of all your friends doing these cool things and social media.

I could see how like a 16 year old finds that and it's. It their minds explode. But I also. Yeah, it's it's when that stuff starts to hit you and when those like little diesel just ran by right now, talking about her in a decade right now. Yeah. All the things she's going to be facing that I never had to deal with. I just went and like played sports and just settled all the things on the ice or wherever we needed to.

And now it's like it never leaves you. It never stops. And that probably has a much longer lasting, like the chronic effect of that is much higher than the 60 minutes that you're on the ice or under the barbell or whatever it is, sport that you're trying to play that you're finding the stress. It's the never endingness of it. The infinite feed of stress that comes at you, the things that you aren't doing, et cetera. Totally. But I will say this, my kids won't have to worry about like growing up in a single mother home or want to grow up in this, with this, you know, crazy, I don't want to say that

in this home with another person who does have anger issues, you know, they'll have, they'll see their mom and their dad loving each other. They'll see, you know, they'll see that they are loved by their mom and dad. And so they'll have less in that area. And to me, that was the most impactful and the most damaging. And so they won't have that. And I'm in control of that. So. Yeah. Oh yeah. Lacey, it's fantastic meeting you. can the people uh find you and work with you and learn everything that you're doing yeah of course thank you guys so much for having me on it's been fun to get to chat with y'all you know thank you i appreciate it so you can find me on

instagram i'm at faith and fit my podcast is root cause radio my book is the women's guide to hormonal harmony you can get that on Amazon. I do want to apologize. I have a three-legged dog. His name is Gabe and I post him all the time because he's the best. You can also vote for him today.

So, yes. But thank you guys so much for having me on. It's been great. Three-legged dog. Tell me more. Was it born that way? Was there an accident?

So they found him on the side of the road. His leg was just dangling so they had to unfortunately remove it but I was a, I was supposed to like help him wean him back to health. So I was a foster fail,

but yes, he's, he's my heart. That dog had social media. It'd be looking at all the four legged dogs and feeling bad about itself. Right now. What's your dog's name? Gabe.

Gabe is slaying life with Lacey right now. Not worried about any of the four lelegged dogs and living the dream. Coach Travis Mash, where can the people find you? Mashalee.com. You can also read all my articles on Jim Ware. And so in the blog section, they always tell me to say, but I will say this. When I was doing my master's and I did my thesis,

it was on fatigue, a lot of it. I was using VBT to measure fatigue. And so doing my literature review, seeing that like FOMO, fear of missing out, is like an actual thing where you can, you know, that you can label someone with FOMO. I thought it was a joke, but it's like become a real thing. When I was a kid, there wasn't a FOMO. You know, we didn't have Instagram and all that stuff. So it is definitely causing a lot of issues for younger people with you know with depression anxiety so this was awesome by the way you were awesome right so i took lots of notes there you go douglas e larson social media is a fomo

generating machine i think seriously instagram for the record is driven almost entirely by envy and at least maybe on the guy's side more than the lady's side. I'm not sure. Envy and lust. I used to just say envy, and my buddy Ryan was like, oh, yeah, lust's in there, too. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it's all the big one. I don't know about yours. Mine's all kid games, marriage stuff. If you hit the search function. It's all very wholesome on your feed. There's no weird AI-looking people that are perfect on there. Mine's just AI bikini kicks and dudes fucking snatching world records.

It's all way too much. Right on. I'm on Instagram. I try not to go on there because I don't think it's good for me. Lacey, great seeing you again. I knew this was going to be a fun show, and it totally was. Thank you for being here. Thank you. I am Anders Varner

at Anders Varner, and we are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you get over to RapidHealthReport.com. That is where you can come hang out with us, get all the labs, lifestyle, performance, building our programs and getting you healthy. And you can access all of that over at RapidHealthReport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.