Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Tend, Befriend & Thrive: Navigating Trauma with Dr. Sara Szal Gottfried MD

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Dr. Sara Szal Gottfried shares joins us on this episode to share her groundbreaking work, particularly her latest book, "The Autoimmune Cure." Her insights into hormonal health have revolutionized how we approach wellness, and now she's applying that same pioneering spirit to the realm of autoimmune conditions. Whether you're grappling with an autoimmune diagnosis, seeking to resolve past traumas, or simply curious about a more holistic approach to health, this episode is for you. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep228 Sara Szal Gottfried MD is a physician, researcher, educator, mother, and seeker. She graduated from Harvard Medical School and MIT, and completed residency at UCSF, but is more likely to prescribe a CGM and personalized nutrition plan than the latest pharmaceutical. Dr. Gottfried is a global keynote speaker and the author of four New York Times bestselling books about trauma, hormones, and health. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences at Thomas Jefferson University, and Director of Precision Medicine at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health. Her focus is on the interface of mental and physical health, N-of-1 trial design, personalized molecular profiling, use of wearables, and how to leverage these tools to improve health outcomes. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I bring you Dr. Sarah Godfrey. Okay, so if you're not familiar with Sarah, let me just, let me just fill you in. She is a four-time New York time bestselling author. She is a Harvard trained medical doctor, OBGYN. And I have been following her work for years. Her ideas around hormones are spot on. She is one of the first. I would actually consider her a pioneer.

in really helping the world see some root cause problems to hormonal challenges. And she's now doing the same thing with her new book called The Autoimmune Cure. A couple of reasons I wanted to bring Sarah on. Not only is she a dear friend and I respect her work and I love the way she thinks, but autoimmune conditions are really on the rise. And I knew she would take a very interesting slant to the autoimmune. immune crisis that we're in. And so you're going to hear in this conversation a approach to autoimmunity that I know you have not heard before. And what I really dove into with her was

this concept around how traumas trigger our immune system and cause our body to turn on itself. Now, let's just let's stop and think about that for a moment. you get a trauma whether it's at two or it's at 20 or whether it was last week and these traumas can become triggers for your body turning and attacking itself sometimes they're triggers for the genetics sometimes they're triggers for just turning on itself and attacking itself so we have now hit a moment in human history where we are talking about mental health openly which is beautiful That is one of the most incredible things post-pandemic. And what Sarah brings to the conversation is how when we don't resolve these traumas, how they turn into our demise and our physical demise and specifically through autoimmune challenges. So whether you have been diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, whether you just want to know how to resolve traumas,

whether you are just a fan of Sarah, or if you're looking for a new approach to looking at a more holistic approach to your health, this is absolutely the podcast for you. We spent a lot of time talking about what autoimmunity is. We spent a lot of time talking about redefining these triggers that initiate an autoimmune response, and then we end up talking a lot about trauma and all the ways we can heal trauma on our own. We ended the conversation talking about a new paradigm for health that she and I both see for women. It was beautiful.

I am doing this intro right now after I just got off this interview with her and I am a calmer human. Then when I started, my heart is more full from this just deep and loving conversation with this brilliant woman. So Dr. Sarah Godfrey, I hope this regulates your nervous system as much as it did mine and that you find a path towards health and happiness from her words. This was incredible. So enjoy. Welcome to the Resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Let me start by welcoming you back. to the Resetter podcast because you've been here twice.

You actually may be the most frequent guest I've ever brought on. So I'm so happy to have you here. Happy to be here. Happy to be back. I have a lot to ask and a lot of detailed conversation I want to have with you, not just about autoimmunity, but about trauma. And so, but let's bring everybody into the conversation first because I think autoimmune conditions are, and I think you would probably agree, are so misunderstand.

understood and so mistreated. So can we start by just explaining what the heck the body's doing when it's in that autoimmune phase or that autoimmune crisis? When you look at healthy people, healthy individuals, about one in three is making antibodies against their nucleus, the anti-nuclear antibodies. That's according to some research that has been collected recently. And this is a dramatic increase from. what it looked like 25 years ago. So we've got this massive rise in autoimmunity. And you're

right. There's such a misunderstanding. There's such a gap when it comes to conventional medicine. We know that people with autoimmune disease like psoriasis, Hashimoto's, multiple sclerosis, they often struggle for up to seven years before they get a correct diagnosis and they're seeing multiple doctors. So we are utterly failing these folks. Yes. So what is that we're talking about? We're talking about, I think of it as kind of this continuum from a state of health where your immune system is working perfectly. It's working really well. It's able to identify pathogens, things that get into your system, that it needs to fight. And then at the other extreme is autoimmune disease. And that's where the immune

system is dysregulated. But there's a vast middle ground between the two. And that's where we know that you, your immune system, which is designed to protect you. Like it's this army of cells that help you fight pathogens and, you know, just kind of distinguish what's foreign from what's your own tissues. It becomes confused. And that confusion can be for years, sometimes. you know, seven to 14 years before it declares itself as a disease that's recognized. So that's what autoimmunity is. It's kind of that path before the autoimmune disease, where if you look under the hood, there are things that you can identify that are happening.

So that leads the next obvious question is what confuses it? Well, the confusion is something that you and I talk about a lot because we think in terms of root causes, and Alessio Fasano at Massachusetts General Hospital, pediatric gastroenterologist, talked about the three-legged stool. And so the three-legged stool that you have to have to develop autoimmune disease and lead to this confusion is genetic predisposition together with increased intestinal permeability, leaky gut, and then a trigger. And that's where things get interesting. Yeah. Because, you know, for some people, the trigger might be infection. like with COVID. For some people, it might be pregnancy and postpartum. That's a really common time,

especially for Hashimoto's. And for some people, it might be perimenopause. Right. Right. You know, people think of perimenopause as this hormonal change, estrogen, progester, and testosterone are changing. But it's much broader than that. Like your metabolic system, your immune system is dramatically changing. Yeah. The way I always learn, trauma. I learned it through the lens of there's physical trauma, there's emotional trauma, and then there's a chemical trauma. And I spent so many years in my clinic detoxing heavy metals was a big piece of what we did. And we always looked at things in terms of a toxic bucket and that your body can handle so many traumas, so many toxins until there's one that just hits the top and the whole

bucket falls over. Is that still the way we would look at it through an autoimmune condition? Because I'm sure you've had patients. I had patients like this where they were going along. Everything was fine. And then something happened. And all of a sudden, now they have a diagnosis of an autoimmune condition or they have some chronic disease diagnosis. But they didn't see it coming. But there was just like one thing that tipped it over. Do we still look at it that way? we do so you know when i think of triggers what i'm listening for when i'm talking to a patient is i was fine until this happened and that's like the the straw that broke the camel's back or tip the bucket over so for some people it could be a divorce it could be you know losing someone

suddenly that you love it could be a near fatal car accident it could be, you know, what we all agree is traumatic, like an experience like 9-11, surviving 9-11, or a genocide. But then there's these other sort of smaller traumas, small-tie traumas, that can really accumulate and lead to what you're describing where your bucket just overflows. And that can be things like a book launch that is dysregulating, that never ends. It could be, you know, a breakup with a partner. It could be one of many different things. But that toxic stress, I agree that there's sort of a window of tolerance.

There's maybe that's another way of thinking of the bucket, that there's this window of what you can tolerate. And that's true emotionally and psychologically, it's true in terms of toxins and your ability to deal. detoxify and kind of keep up with it. And it's true in terms of physical trauma. So, yeah, that window of tolerance kind of noticing, are you within your window of tolerance or are you someone who's kind of pushing the window and maybe outside of your window of tolerance? Knowing what that feels like in your body is really critical. Okay. So that concept right there is my new aha, thank you for putting it into some words that my brain just stuck to. I think, and I am pretty sure you're going to agree, that we are so dysregulated, and I'm especially going to say

that we as women are so dysregulated, we have been working so hard to keep up with the patriarchal pace that we don't even know what regulated looks like. Yes. And the only reason that I can I can say this from firsthand experience was because of the crazy book launch that never ended with Fast Like a Girl. Once I said no and I just stopped, I haven't been on a plane in like almost 10 weeks. I was on a plane every single week last year. And in that calm, I started to understand how off I was, how disregulated I was. So going back to your statement, do we have any way of knowing that the trauma has taken over the body that we are tipping into this really crazy place and we are dysregulated? Do we have anything that we can look towards other than what I did, which is just shut everything down and

finally take a breath? Well, first, I want to honor you for shutting everything down because I think that's a courageous thing to do. And it's often what's necessary. to start to get back within your window of tolerance and just to kind of notice maybe with fresh eyes, what is your window of tolerance? You know, you learned that being on a plane once a week, not knowing where you're going to wake up in the morning, that's past your window of tolerance. Yeah. So I think there's, you know, there's a lot of ways to measure this.

And I agree with you. I feel like we're more dysregulated than ever before in our history. And I've been taken care of. people for 30 years. I've never seen people who are more polarized and divisive and, you know, just struggling with being able to wind down and go to sleep. Yeah. And so, yeah, we can measure this. We can, you know, the way I think of window of tolerance is that you can measure it with the pine system. So pine is an acronym for your psychology. That's the P. Your immune system. That's the I. your neurological system, the N, and then your endocrine system, the E.

And so when you're past your window of tolerance, your psychology might start to change. You might feel more irritable. You might feel depressed, more anxious in terms of your immune system. Maybe you start making anti-nuclear antibodies. Your inflammation goes up. Maybe in your neurological system, your heart rate variability, which I track. I'm a big fan of wearables. I track it because I'm not the best historian.

Like I have a hard time sensing what is true. Am I past my window of tolerance? And so things like heart rate variability, the measure between my sympathetic nervous system, fight, fly free, fawn, and my parasympathetic nervous system, which is stay in play, rest and digest, the balance between the two is measured by HRV.

And sometimes it's just way too low. like when you're on a plane every week. And then your endocrine system, of course, you can measure things like your cortisol, the stress hormones, estrogen, testosterone, even insulin. And that links it to metabolism. So that was actually my first clue that I was just so tipped into freeze mode. You know, my nervous system was in freeze was I put a CGM on. And my blood sugar was like crazy high.

And my fat, you know, my fasting blood. sugar and I hadn't changed my diet at all and I was like whoa like this is unusual and so I I used that as a marker I also could not get enough deep sleep or REM sleep I was like I didn't matter what I did I couldn't get those in in in order and that was like those were like little inklings along the way that I'm like mm something's off something's off so on in your book what I love is this chart that you have about broadening the definition of trauma because when I looked at that I was like oh and I don't have an autoimmune condition that I know of but to your

point and you can maybe share what you we talked about at the beginning before we started hitting recording about the number of healthy people that we're seeing with autoimmune markers but when I look at this chart I'm like okay overwhelm yep got that anxiety yep hyper vigilance insomnia difficulty connecting anger easily triggered difficulties with focus depression, self-sabotage, negative thought patterns, like all of those. Yeah. Well, I came up with this list because I had all of them. Right.

I mean, yeah. Right. Thank you. Thank you for being so transparent because I think it's important for people, even leaders of health movements, to be able to be human. So I think it's really important. You're sharing your story. Well, we have to talk about our vulnerabilities.

And, you know, this is another place where. I'm at a point of my life, like I'm in my 50s, where I realize that these symptoms, things like overwhelm and being easily triggered and hypervigilance, they are messages, divine messages to be decoded. Yeah. They're not things that are happening to me. Like I'm not a victim of these things. I am actually creating them.

They're happening for me. They're happening through me. And so my work is to understand what those messages are about, to understand what's true for me, like look upstream and also downstream to see what these mean in the context of my body. And then to do that for my patients. So that's what led to this book was realizing I have a pretty large trauma load. And I realize that, you know, some people feel like, oh, trauma, it's such a buzzword right now. Well, it should be because there's, we're at a point where very few of us have been able to escape some sort of overwhelming, emotionally distressing event. Yeah.

Do you think COVID tipped us all? COVID definitely did. I mean, this is where, you know, conspiracy theory can kind of come in and, and make things a little more polarized. But, you know, sheltering in place. especially if your home wasn't a safe place. The infection itself, the vaccinations, you know, we had a vast uncontrolled medical experiment. And so, yeah, what we know, you know,

there's still peer-reviewed journals that are just starting to publish about this. But there's the classic autoimmune diseases of which there are 100. and include some of the ones that we mentioned. And then there's non-classical autoimmune diseases, including long COVID. So we're seeing a rise of all autoimmune diseases post-pandemic. And, you know, we're still trying to understand what that is. But I think the pandemic was definitely a trigger for a lot of us. So you could look at each individual thing.

You could say, I mean, let's just take the average person, within the pandemic. We had the quarantine, so that could be a trigger. Then many people got, actually got the virus. So that could be a trigger. And then we have a vaccine that was rolled out that wasn't, it wasn't thoroughly tested. That could also be a trigger for some people. So when when I hear a lot of people post-pandemic disoriented, nervous systems not regulated, like lost. Let's just say that. They're lost in their life. They're lost in their health. And what I just heard and what you're saying is that it could be all those things that just threw a whole society off. Absolutely. And some of these triggers can interact with each other. So,

talking about that. Yeah. So the, you know, the people that I saw among my patients that I take care of who had the most dysregulation through the pandemic were women 40 plus. So that juxtaposition of these vast hormonal changes, immune changes, metabolic changes, you superimpose the pandemic on top of that. The vaccine reactions I saw were mostly women who were 40 plus, new onset type 1 diabetes, new onset multiple sclerosis, new onset rheumatoid arthritis, long COVID. So, yeah, some of these triggers can interact with each other and can be interdependent. Yeah. Yeah. So if you went into COVID with a brewing toxic bucket and then you got, you hit all that, and then on top of that you were in your perimenopausal years, I just want because this is my audience. You know, these are women over 40 and I want them to hear themselves because what I think we do as women is when our health isn't working right, when our brain isn't working right. We don't think it's somebody else's problem. We think it's our problem and we turn on ourselves.

And we start going, I did something wrong. I must not be good enough. And that's where it breaks my heart. So can you talk a little bit about what happens when you see this dysregulation in 40-year-olds that are already struggling with the loss of all these neurochemicals? How do we support her so she doesn't think she's crazy? I'm so glad you're raising this because there's a way that our culture makes us feel like, we've got a moral feeling.

Yep. That if we can't perform as, you know, superwomen, that there's something wrong with us. And we've got to change that. Like, if we just look at the simple physiology, there are so many things in our culture that dysregulate us. So, yes, it could be a blood sugar problem. It could be an immune system problem.

It could be that your stress response system, your heart rate variability is too low. But a lot of this is a relatively normal response to an environment that is not designed in our best interests. So I think, you know, you talk about patriarchal pace. I sometimes think of it as, you know, patriarchal stress disorder. I think there's a way that we need to look outside. of ourselves and not assume that we're doing something wrong and just start with a query, like start with a question of, is there something in my environment?

Is there something about the way the environment's interacting with my biology? That's leading to me feeling so dysregulated. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, in just spending a lot of time thinking about hormones and women and how do we lift women up, I feel like. we fought for this moment. And I could cry about this because I feel like we fought for this moment.

We fought to be at the table with the men and to be heads of corporations and presidents of, you know, of countries. And yet did we ever stop to think if it was in our best feminine interest, if our feminine body could handle that? And I'm not saying that we, I came through the womb of a feminist. I am a feminist. I raised a feminist daughter. And I still question if this world is so dysregulated that we've been trying to keep up with something that is destroying us. And if so, where do we go from here? Well, this is where you and I have to riff together.

Because I'm in a similar boat, you know, mother feminist, I'm a feminist. I'm a feminist. took women studies. It was one of my first classes in college. I've got two daughters. And yeah, we fought for this moment. And what have we won? Right. So in some ways, we're still embedded in a structure that's not designed to honor the feminine. Yeah. And so how do we, how do we work with our biology better? I've got to few ideas and I you know I hope that together we could do a feminine thing where we collaborate instead of one of us having the answer that is perfect I always say that

I'm like the feminine collaborates the pay you know the Patriarch competes the feminine collaborates love it yeah so one thing that we know works really well in terms of stress is to tend and befriend so you know this idea that the stress response, the sympathetic nervous system triggers the spite flight for most people that was discovered in the 1930s, and it was discovered in men. And so you can imagine women, you know, sort of our ancestors on the Savannah maybe with like an infant in one arm and a toddler in the other arm. Like fighting or running is not going to work well. But if you're part of a group, if you're part of a village where you're protected and you look out for each,

other and you support each other and you process together and you have an emotionally distressing event but you've got someone to talk to about that you're not alone with it yeah that makes such a difference and that's really the process of oxytocin so women are really good at oxytocin right we need oxytocin estrogen helps with the production of oxytocin so the more that we can tend to befriend And it's super regulating and it's even co-regulating. Like one of the things I feel just talking to you, Mindy, I feel us co-regulating each other. And that's what's so needed. It's what we need.

You know, my hope is a podcast could be regulating. It could make you feel better. It could make you feel loved. Yes. It could make you feel cared for and inspired and not like you're falling short or you're not doing it right. Right. Right. Yeah. And oh God, I have so many thoughts on this one. One thing I've been saying to my community lately is we have all these nutrition theories out there in the world. And we start as health professionals start fighting against each other like you've got to, you know,

you've got to do this and not this. And we start looking for absolutes. And I just feel like we're never going to find the answer in absolutes. We're going to find the answer in nurture and and understanding, taking a principle and applying it and saying, I think this works for me and then allowing somebody else. Like, let's just use a plant-based diet as an example. I personally don't follow a plant-based diet. I did for many years. It didn't work for me. But I have friends that follow it. Women, my yoga instructor, she is one of the healthiest plant-based humans that I know, and it works for her. So what we can't say that there's one diet for every single human on the planet. There's just your diet. And what we see is a lot of animosity

and fighting and rhetoric and, you know, people standing up going, but the science says this. And I want to say the same thing about the science. I just want to be like, but the science is like this little isolated thing they took and looked at. Like let's be our own end of one. So can you talk a little bit about that because I feel like we've even created this patriarchal aggression when it comes to nutrition because we're looking for an absolute. Do you think like there's a nutritional absolute for the feminine body? No, definitely not. You have to personalize. And that's where N of 1 becomes so helpful. I talk a lot about N of 1 in this book, the autoimmune cure, because it's a critical part of, you know, figuring out what's right for you.

And so I was plant-based through medical school. I just was so horrified by anatomy class. I just couldn't imagine eating meat. And yet, you know, my hormones kind of took a nose dive. It wasn't a good fit for me. So me neither. And of one, I think, is really critical. And a lot of people think, you know, it sounds a little fancy.

It sounds kind of complicated. it's not. I guarantee a lot of our listeners and viewers are doing end of one experiments. They're just not calling it that. Yeah. So I think end of one is critical. Otherwise, when you get this kind of absolute rule, like you must follow the Mediterranean diet. You must follow a plant-based diet. You must follow a carnivore diet. It leads to alienating people. Thank you. It disconnects them from their truth about what they know their body needs. And so, you know, many of us have to spend a lifetime to figure out what that is. But when you look at the studies on, say, the Mediterranean diet, the most studied diet that we have on the planet, it ends up being nutrition for the average. Because you're looking at big groups of people, you're trying to see how it affects certain outcomes like high blood pressure or Alzheimer's disease, even autoimmune disease. whereas N of 1 helps you do precision medicine for the individual. So I was taught in medical school. That's the better evidence.

So there's the randomized trial like we've done with Mediterranean diet. But even above that in terms of the hierarchy is the end of one experiment. But we don't emphasize that. I actually have never heard you say. That last thing I've never heard anybody say. And I do often think, you know, there's two. things if we just have a diet that works for everybody that it's simple but the human body doesn't work like that and whoever gets to discover it gets to be the hero and like again we're back into

this patriarchal dysregulation so so do you do you think that when let's go straight to your autoimmune protocol because is there a diet we can eat that is going to support this get pull us out of this dysregulated place that we're in Now, the studies show that a properly designed elimination diet really makes a difference with autoimmune conditions. So you know what yours is. You know what you're reacting to. Exactly. So it's a way to do the end of one experiment.

So an elimination diet is an end of one experiment where you're taking the things that are most likely to trigger your immune system. And you're eliminating them for a period of time for some people. three weeks for some people three months just depends on your condition so you eliminate the gluten the dairy the night shades maybe nuts and seeds the things that tend to be immunogenic and then you slowly at them back and see how you react to it so it's a way to personalized diet that I think is really effective and it also helps with leaky gut yeah to talk about leaky gut because i know stephen gondry he and i had a real detailed conversation when he put out the energy paradox. I asked him what the number one reason that somebody would lose energy and he said a leaky gut.

But I feel like it's a little bit like this trash can diagnosis. Like we just put all these symptoms in the category of leaky gut, but we don't really know what to do with it. Can you give us a way out of leaky gut that we know would work? Well, I would say start with an elimination diet. So I talk about elimination diet in the book. There's a whole chapter on it. I think that is probably one of the most effective ways of trying to reverse leaky gut. And then you want to think about some of the things that trigger leaky gut. So if you look upstream, that includes alcohol. Yeah.

So now might be a good time for us to talk about alcohol. Yeah, I was going to say what? I know I go for it. But here's what you have to say about alcohol. You have to say it through the lens of a perimenopausal woman who's losing progesterone and hits the end of the day. and she can't calm herself down in that glass of wine is her BFF. Say it through that lens.

Yeah. Hey, I am that woman. So I totally get it. I was that woman too. I totally get it. I think the challenge here is that the very thing you think you're getting from alcohol, you're not actually getting. Yeah.

So people drink because they're, you know, kind of they feel like their nervous system is afraid. They feel dysregulated. They're just trying to transition after a long. busy day. They want to relax. They want to just take it easy for a while. And yet, alcohol is raising your cortisol. It's raising your stress hormone. It's disrupting your sleep that night. It's leading to the situation the next day, depending on how much you drink, that can make you feel more anxious and kind of erode your mindset. So I would say there's much better things that you could swap the alcohol for that I talk about in the book. Like microdosing on mushrooms.

Yes. I have questions on that. We'll talk about psychedelics, breath work. You know, one of my favorite things that is in the book is Kana. Kana is similar to MDMA. It's a, it's a plant that's from South Africa. And it's very hard opening. It gives you that feeling of relaxation and bliss. and it doesn't have the side effects that alcohol has. I mean, if we just talk about how alcohol is associated with a greater risk of breast cancer, you know, most women I know are afraid of breast cancer and with good reason because 12.5%, you know, we've got a lifetime risk of 12.5% of it. And so two servings, more than two servings is associated with an increased risk.

So we need to find, you know, the problem at the end of the day for that perimenopausal woman, is dysregulation. And we need to treat the dysregulation. And yes, a glass wine seems like the easy solution, but it's going to backfire. Yes. Yeah. And that was my experience for sure in the last couple of years and to a point where I've finally now been able to unwind myself from it. What are your thoughts? What about marijuana? What about how many women do a gummy at night to be able to sleep? So I think cannabis definitely has a role here. I think it does help with sleep. It helps with relaxation.

You just have to be, you have to track your relationship with it. So just like I would say women should track their relationship with alcohol and notice, you know, are they drinking so much that it's causing leaky gut and it's causing an imbalance of their bacteria dysbiosis in their gut, potentially putting them at a greater risk of breast cancer. you also want to track your relationship with cannabis. And if you're using it daily, that's where you got to wonder, like, is this the best thing? But I think occasional use is helping the endocannabinoid system. It's helping with reducing inflammation. So I'm a fan of it more in a like a ceremonial use. Interesting.

Okay. So but still, so if the woman, you're not saying like to the woman who instead of having your glass of wine at the end of the smoke a joint, you're saying like, you know, do some breath work, you know, do the, cana I heard of a while about, so you're saying just move to a different parasympathetic stimulator. That's what I'll call it. Yeah, try some things to regulate yourself. You know, one of the things I do at the end of the day is I take a sauna. So I go sit in the sauna for 30 to 60 minutes. I do some breath work. I find that holotropic breathwork is super effective for me. So I'm a big fan of that.

I talk about that in the book too. What we want to do, you know, kind of a bigger frame here is we want to create healing states of consciousness, healing states of consciousness. So that might be with cannabis. It might be with breathwork. It might be talking to a girlfriend. Like I feel a healing state of consciousness talking to you, Mindy. Agreed. It might be Kana.

It might be psychedelics. So you've got to find your list of what grounds you. What helps you when you feel dysregulated? Yeah. Because wine is not the long-term solution. No. Well, and I always say that I feel like alcohol and even marijuana is a dissociative. So you're going to check out.

Whereas what I've seen, my personal experience with psychedelics and just the research I've seen, it's a check-in. And it's a way to go into yourself and start to get to know a version of yourself, which I have. have to tell you, I haven't given you an update, but the last time you and I talked, I brought you on my podcast and I asked you a question about trauma and I said, what's the best way, this is like two years ago, maybe even three years ago, I said, what's the best way for us to deal with traumas that might be affecting our hormones? And without a doubt, you said psychedelics. You actually, I think specifically said ketamine and I was not expecting you to say that. And it set me down a rabbit hole of trying to understand psychedelics. And I've been all over PubMed looking at the

research I can find. I have done several ketamine assisted therapies myself now since your comment. I've done several higher dose psilocybin journeys. I've experimented with microdosing psilocybin and there's something there. Yes. So that is healing. And that might be why I was able to see the disregulated state that I was had gotten into. So can you talk a little bit about that and I've brought I've been talking pretty openly about this on my platform but I'm so happy you included a chapter on it in the book. Well, I'm I'm delighted to hear that our conversation inspired you to look into this and you know, the thing that I think is interesting you talked about dissociation and what I found personally is that I dissociated all the time.

Yeah. Like the way that I think I was successful with book launches and with making it through medical school and, you know, working outrageous hours was that I could go upstairs. I could try to solve a problem cognitively and just leave my body and not tune into the dysregulation that I felt. Because if I was tuning into it too much, I don't think I could accomplish much. That's right. So I think a lot of us are functionally dissociated. and it's important to recognize that. So the thing about psychedelics is that they're especially effective for those of us who tend to dissociate.

And the dissociation pattern often stems from childhood. So you can look at this. You can look at like your adverse childhood experiences score, your ACE score. We've got a questionnaire on our website. If people want to figure out what their score is, do you know your score, Mindy? No, but my podcast, producer took it before we hopped on. He's like, oh, that was enlightening. So I, but I'm going, I'm going to take it after this. I don't know my score. Okay. Well, next time we talk, I want to

hear what your score was. Yes, I will. So this is one of those tests you don't want to score high on, and you want ideally a score of zero. I'm a six. And so I learned as a kid that to perform and to be hypercognitive was a way to get the love and attention that I wanted. And so, you know, what you witness, what you patterned in your body, you tend to use through most of your life. And psychedelics can help you see it in a way, you know, without all the stories, it helps you see it and then start to heal it. Especially when, you know, I'm not talking about recreational use. I'm talking about therapeutic use. Right. Yeah. And I think the journeys that I did was with a licensed therapist next to me. A couple of them were a licensed therapist and a psychedelic expert next to me.

The one I did last year was one of the most beautiful experiences I've ever had because it was a therapist and a psychedelic expert. And it was like two women like there supporting me and guiding me as I felt like my body just talked. And I just like traumas just came out. We actually, and I've shared this on my podcast before, I actually had a traumatic birth of my firstborn. And we went back in a psychedelic state. We went back and I rebirthed her and to just clear that trauma. And do you know that the relationship with her is dramatically changed? She's 24 years old.

And so when I was able to just heal that piece of it, now I was able to be a different version of myself for her. So, but to have women around me who supported me in that vulnerable moment was, it was profound. I'm not sure I've ever had a human moment like that of just being so cared for by two women that I pretty much didn't know. I love. I love hearing this because, you know, I've gotten certified as a psychedelic in psychedelic medicine. I've got three certifications with ketamine with psilocybin, MDMA, and I see this all the time. I think that especially for the female body. There's an opportunity to create regulation that is unparalleled.

And there's data to support this. You know, if you look at kind of the extreme case of someone with post-traumatic stress disorder, the gold standard right now in the U.S. is talk therapy, sometimes trauma-informed, but not always, combined with a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor. So not always, but there's three that are FDA-approved for PTSD. and the efficacy of that is somewhere around 30%, which is pretty abysmal.

Pretty bad. Yeah. Like if when I entered therapy in my 20s, if I was told that weekly psychotherapy, which takes a ton of time and a ton of money, had an efficacy of 30% for helping me resolve trauma, I don't think I would have done it. And yet psychedelic assisted therapy,

like MDMA assisted therapy, has an efficacy of resolving PTSD symptoms, in 67 to 71%. So it's more than twice as effective. Is that with one therapy or is that like multiple sessions? It's with two to three sessions and with preparation and integration, but it's very different than the pharmaceutical model of taking an SSRI every day. And the effects are durable.

Like they last for years afterwards. So we're really, we're on the cusp of a revolution in terms of ways. to deal with dysregulation, ways to deal with how trauma gets embedded in our systems, like the birth trauma you experienced, you know, to hear that story of being so held by the people who were holding space for you to feel so seen and to be able to process the way that those issues were stored in your tissues, just makes a huge difference. I've never, I've never experienced that kind of love. And I don't mean that because the MDMA. I mean, it was a trifect of several things that took me on that journey that day. But MDA was one of them. But that was the moment that I walked, I did it last May. And when I came out of it, I was like, that's the beauty of women. That's, that's the love that women can support each other in. And it was like, I got a little taste of it and I was like oh what if we had a whole culture of this what if we had a whole culture of women

lifting each other up and supporting each other and crying with each other and cheering each other on like wow like would that regulate us I think that alone might regulate us for sure and you know it's these healing states of consciousness and I think you know men can also achieve these healing states of consciousness they can be therapists they can be guides they can help people. But there's something about the feminine experience, kind of being known, understanding, like, what it is we're up against, asking the hard questions about the ways that our culture disregulates us. And then feeling so embodied and feeling like you can go in and work with that trauma signature that you might have. And feeling that sense of love. I mean,

really, it's that simple. Like, that feeling of love and connection. is so critical for women. And when you feel dysregulated, often it's because you're cut off from that feeling of love and connection. So well said. Talk a little bit about breath work because that was another thing

that I took a little journey on in the last couple of years. I decided just to go into all the hard places and deal with them. Well, I'm curious about what type of breathwork you've been doing. Right. So there's lots of different kinds.

In fact, after I get off with you, here I have a breath worker that I work with on a continual basis, and so I'm doing some work with her. So I think it's more like holotropic breathing where you breathe in through your mouth. She has me go like that, like breathing in real quick. But here's what happened. The very first time I did breath work. So one of the things I've been trying to heal from is a near death experience that happened to me in my 30s. I swam into a pile of Portuguese manor down in Cabo San Lucas.

there was probably 10 or 12 of them wrapped around me. I went into anaphylactic shock, and it's a long story, but I went down the tunnel. I went down, I had the life review. I went down the tunnel, and I was stopped from going to the other side, but there was a picture of my husband and my two children who were in first grade and third grade at the time, and they like stopped me from crossing over.

And when I came out of that experience, what happened to me was I became even more dysregulated. Like I was like, I became a workaholic. I was like, there must be some reason I was left here. And I just, it was like my nervous system flipped into this frantic place. So I didn't deal with it for like 10 plus years, maybe 15 years.

So last year I decided to deal with it. And I did it in breathwork. And the first time I did this holotropic breathing, I literally had the same physiological experience that I had without the tightening of my throat when I had the went into these jellyfish. And I remember saying to my breath worker, I'm like, I was shaking. And I'm like, this is it. This is what I was doing. But what blew me away is that my cells had that memory for 15 years. They did not let go of that memory until I engaged in breathwork and brought it to the surface and was willing to release it.

What a story. I mean, this is, you know, know we talk about how trauma gets lodged in your body there's a signature of trauma and this near death experience it just sounds um so devastating and it was scary and then that that conclusion that I think as part of patriarchal culture you know that okay I was spared so now I have to really give my gifts to the world and I have to over function going forward like that's it makes sense that you would feel that way. And that's the way that trauma sometimes can live on in the body, make us over function. And so I had a similar experience with holotropic breathwork. I went to a medical conference, not a near-death experience, but I went to a medical conference in Las Vegas, and they had a

holotropic breathwork tent. And so I, this is like day three of being at this conference. and I find Vegas pretty dysregulating. Like there's the casinos, the smoking, the lights, the drinking, the, you know, it's horrible. And so I went into this holotropic tent, kind of a dome, and I had a little headache because I was feeling toxic and I was irritated and I wanted to fly out that day. And inside of 20 minutes, doing the breath that you described, like the, that completely transformed my system. It got me regulated. And I was hooked.

It can create a healing state of consciousness. It can create, you know, some of what we're talking about with psychedelics. You can get that with your own physiology. You know, the way that one of my teachers describes it, because I then did it four times a week, of course, because I'm an overachiever for the next couple of years. So one of my teachers talks about how you can create your own medicine, you know, just like what you're describing with, you know, having that traumatic experience again and then being able to work with it using your breath, you're creating your own medicine. And that can make such a difference.

So holotropic breathwork is a big part of the book because I think it's creating these healing states of consciousness. There's other ways of doing breathwork that can do that too, but it's especially valuable. And it's something that Michael Pollan did because he couldn't take MDMA. So his book, How to Change Your Mind, he talks about doing breathwork and its holotropic breathwork. Yeah. So do you think you can heal yourself from an autoimmune condition? I absolutely do. So, you know, I tested positive for anti-nuclear antibodies five years ago.

So I realized, okay, I'm making this weapon. My immune cells are making this weapon, my B cells against the nucleus of my cells. Yeah, which is insane. It's so core. It's so fundamental. And so I didn't have just a little bit. I had really high levels. And so that got me to start to look at, okay, what happens if I start to heal my leaky gut?

What happens if I start to work with the trauma that's embedded in my tissues? And last year when I was finishing the book, I tested my anti-nuclear antibodies again and they were zero. Amazing. So I totally believe that you can do that. And I see it all the time with patients that I'm taking care of who've got Hashimoto's thyroiditis. And we implement the protocols that are in the book and they're able to, you know, get their antibodies way down, sometimes to the normal range. Amazing. And it's not with some big medication.

It's with, you know, these fundamentals, like the way that you eat, move your level of embodiment, the way that you have trauma embedded in your system, as well as immunomodulators, things that can tonify the immune system like vitamin D, curcumin, in the case of Hashimoto's, black cumin. We know that lotus naltrexone can also be really effective. Yeah. So we cover all of that in the book. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's interesting as you were talking about the book and the protocols in there. One of the insights I had in putting Fast Like a Girl out into the world is how much a well-thought-out book. And I'm just going to say, I know mine was just because I spent so much time and I know all your books have been that way. When you literally sit in the place of writing a book to help a person with a condition and give all the resources you can possibly think to give, there becomes this moment. that a book actually becomes medicine, becomes the doctor. It becomes medicine. And I think it's between that and our ability to get a message out on social media, we can take a lot of that and start to heal ourselves. So, but we have a health care system that doesn't really applaud that. There's not

really this moment of like the, let's just call it the patriarchal health care system, wanting us to heal ourselves. So speak a little bit as we as we finish up here. If I'm a woman or I'm going to say a woman. If I'm a woman that has an autoimmune condition, I'm listening to this podcast. I'm like, I have Hashimoto's and my doctor literally never said to me anything about psychedelics and traumas and leaky gut and all the things we're talking about. They go and they get your book and they move into action. How do they work with their doctor? once they go into that action. How do we lovingly invite the doctor into this healing space?

Well, the patriarchal model in the health care system is that the doctor knows best. The doctor is the expert. And there's kind of this top-down approach. You will do this. Like, here's your thyroid medication. See you next year. Whereas we know that a more feminine approach, a more collaborative approach, that's looking at the upstream root causes of why you have Hashimoto's or some other autoimmune

disease, we know that that's more effective. And I think what happens, we're sort of trained to do this. What happens is that we take that 15-minute appointment that our insurance maybe pays for that's twice a year with our doctor, and we kind of see that as that's our health. But you're actually turning over your power to the wrong person because you can be your own best doctor. Like you can take your health into your hands and you can say, okay, I'm going to be empowered about this autoimmune condition, these antibodies that I have. And I'm going to start to make some changes with lifestyle, with, you know, some of these things are not expensive. An elimination diet, holotropic breathwork, very low cost. The book itself, the autoimmune cure, very low cost.

There are things that you can do that really addresses upstream causes. And that's the challenge that I want to impart that people realize you have the power to make these changes. So how do you work with a clinician? You've got to find the ones that are open-minded. That's right. And when you find the ones who've had their own health crisis, maybe they had Hashimoto's when they were postpartum. Maybe they got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and they're not happy with the latest biologic that they have to take. When you find those clinicians, those are the ones you work with for the rest of your life.

Because they're open-minded and they understand kind of the power dynamic. And they want you to recreate health. Yes. Yes. So well said, I always say, and if you have the resource and that doctor you want to go to, it lives in another state. You hop on a plane and you go. Like you do whatever you can to make it a safe environment where you,

are working with your doctor on your healing journey. And if they're not, you know, in your network or they're not in your, you know, in your town, you do everything you can to get to somebody who is exactly as you described. So, so beautiful. We're going hiking when you're out of your book lunch, because, you know, I really, when I realized how dysregulated I was from my never ending book launch, I kept thinking about people who had come before me and you were one of the people that I thought of. And I was like, Sarah, I don't, where'd Sarah go? I don't really see Sarah on social media as much. And then I saw somewhere that you were putting a book out and I was like, oh, look at that. She's not doing the traditional book launch, which is the patriarchal pounding of the, you know,

the pavement. And so it was really beautiful. When you wrote, did your birthday post, I was like, ah, there she is. That's what she's been doing. So it's a different, it's a different model, Mindy, right? Like I'm, you know, the, and I asked to do this book launch differently. I wanted to do it having conversations like this where we're regulating each other and we're regulating our viewers and our listeners. It's a different way of talking about a book. And that's what I most want. Like, those are the conversations I want to be having. And I'm at an age, you know, a lot of people say when you're 50 plus, you just don't care. much about other people's opinions and it really frees you up to say okay that's regulating that's

not regulating i'm going to go over here and do this yeah well i'm going to call you the diva of the of the book world you're like you're like the queen you're the one that has been at this for so long and it's really impressive to see you do it different um and i only after doing it the patriarchal way have I realized that I will never do it that way again. That is not for me anymore. So I do really well when I see an example and you have become that example for me. So thank you so much for standing up for your own regulation

and for showing us all how it's done. It really truly is touching me. And I can't wait to go get out in nature with you. Yes, please. Well, you are my sister. And, yeah, I am here for you. I am here for you. Thank you.

Thank you. Let me finish up on this question. This is something I've been asking everybody this year, because I think it's a really interesting one, which is, what does health mean to you? Like, how do you know when you're healthy and what does it mean to you? And do you even have any health goals anymore? Do you have a goal that you're shooting for? Or is that too patriarchal of a goal? A goal might even be a patriarchal word now that I'm thinking about it. But do you have a target? Do you have something you're searching for? Yeah, I love this question because I think a lot of. about health and I think about how conventional medicine is centered around disease, not health. And so for me, health is homeostasis. Yes. It's where the internal process, your internal physiology is in a state of balance regardless of what's happening externally. So homeostasis is really critical.

I know it, I know what it feels like in my body. And so a big part of what I do with the way I live my life now is to use that as my kind of North Star, that sense of homeostasis. And you only got there because you've done some work to get there. I just want to, I really want to point that out because I feel like I got a glimmer of homeostasis in the last month. And it was like a wake up like, whoa. Yes. Wow, was I off course for a lot of years. But here's what happens when you have that aha moment.

It's such a powerful moment because when you're in a dysregulated state and then you take the steps like you've done to create regulation, to create balance and homeostasis, there's no going back. No. It's just it's so miserable in contrast. You never want to go back there. Yes. So I want people to understand if you're feeling dysregulated and like you can't wait to have a glass of wine tonight because you feel so dysregulated, the way you feel like it's easier to correct it than to live with the misery of being dysregulated. Yeah. Yeah. So well said. Well, I could talk to you forever. Thank you. I think we should co-regulate together more often. And I really see a new paradigm of health opening up for women from books like what you've just. put out in the world. So thank you. Thank you for taking the time to do that. And thank you for doing

the book launch in a regulated way. I'm watching and I really appreciate it. So. Well, you're next. You're next. The next book. I know. I know. Thank you. How do people get this book? We should probably, I mean, I know this is, this is a patriarchal question. How do people get this book? Well, you can get the book anywhere books are sold. You can go to Amazon, Burns & Noble, your local independent bookstore. You can go to my websites or gotfreedmD.com. We've got, you know, links to purchase it there. We've got take, you know, giveaways and contests that we do occasionally. And we try to incentivize people to engage with the book and then hopefully spread the message as you become more regulated.

So anywhere books are sold, you can get thought immune cure. Wonderful. Well, I adore you. Thank you so much for, I feel calmer than I started. So we definitely, I hope the listener did too, but I'm going to go after this right into breathwork. So today has been a great day. So appreciate you. And I can't wait to go hiking and discuss this more.

Awesome. Thanks, Mindy. My pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. so please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.