Well with Arielle Lorre - 40: DR. WILL COLE - All About Inflammation & Living with Intuition and Grace

Episode Date: January 22, 2020

In this episode I talk to functional medicine practitioner, GOOP Fellas co-host and best-selling author Dr. Will Cole about his personal health journey and experience with autoimmune disease; the markers of good health including mind, body and spirit; causes, manifestations and ways to manage inflammation; how to use food to support our bodies; mindset and it's role in our overall health; gut health and PCOS; the physiological effects of kindness and SO much more!   If you like this episode please rate, review and subscribe! ❤️   For more about Dr. Will Cole: www.drwillcole.com www.instagram.com/drwillcole   Follow me! www.instagram.com/ariellelorre www.instagram.com/theblondefilespodcast www.theblondefiles.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I'm Ariel Laurie, and this is the Blonde Files podcast, where I talk to experts, influencers, and inspirational people in the world of wellness and beyond. Whether it's mental health, spirituality, nutrition, gut health, hormones, exercise, meditation, entrepreneurship, beauty hacks, and procedures, I cover it here with real conversations and even realer guests. I know you're as curious as I am, so I'm asking the questions for you. and you get to listen in. Welcome to the show. I hope everyone is having a good week.

I am so happy you're here. I'm really excited about today's episode. It's a really powerful one. My guest probably needs no introduction, although I will introduce him here shortly. But I have Dr. Will Cole on. He is the co-host of the Goop Fellas podcast. He's the author of two books,

Ketotarian and the Inflammation Spectrum. And of course, he's a doctor. but I'll get into that in a minute. I have to tell you, when I was editing this episode, I had to pause like every 30 seconds because there are just so many amazingly poignant sound bites and quotes, and I had to stop and jot things down. So if you're listening to this in a place where you can take notes in your phone

or in a journal or something, I'm sure you're going to want to. So this is your heads up. Of course, we talk about inflammation and food and autoimmunity and more. But at the core of this conversation and the theme that kept coming up is living with grace, lightness, and intuition. Because as he points out numerous times throughout the episode, our physiology impacts our thoughts and emotions. And our thoughts and emotions impact our physiology. So we can't just work on one and expect the whole system to then be aligned. We have to look at it more holistically to achieve this balance and lightness and grace that we deserve.

So a little more about Dr. Will Cole. He is a leading functional medicine expert. He consults people all around the world. He specializes in clinically investigating underlying factors of chronic disease and customizing health programs for thyroid issues, autoimmune conditions, hormonal dysfunctions, digestive disorders, and brain problems. Dr. Cole was named one of the top 50 functional medicine and integrative doctors in the nation and is a health expert and course instructor for the world's largest wellness brands such as Mind Body Green and of course Goop. And he just could not be more gracious and kind and so smart and he totally delivered. So I'm not going to ramble on anymore. I hope you enjoy this.

episode. And please remember, if you do like this episode or the podcast in general, take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way in supporting the show, and it means a lot. I appreciate you guys. Okay, enjoy. All right. So I have Dr. Will Cole. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It's going to be a great conversation. I know it. It's going to It's bound to be because you're on. I'm not bringing my best self to the podcast right now. I was just telling Will, well, I guess we're not off camera, but before we started recording that I am a little under the weather right now.

So if you guys hear me sniffling or coughing, I apologize. I have misophonia, so I hate sounds like that. Oh, yeah. But, hey, we'll get through. But I'm so, thank you. And I'm so excited you're here. I have your book, The Inflammation Spectrum, and I'm really excited to really get into all that. I've personally been going through my own health things, and you are just such a leader in the functional world.

So I can't wait to talk to you about everything. Yeah, I love the stuff. So let's go. Yeah. So why don't you just introduce yourself to the listeners for somebody who doesn't know anything about you. Yeah. So my day job is consulting patients online. So I love this. My passion is getting to the root cause of why people are struggling with their health problem. So my people are people that have tried all the things and that are still struggling. The people that have gone from doctor

to doctor and they're like, well, it looks autoimmune, but I don't really know what's going on. Or they've done everything conventional medicine has to offer. They've done everything that, that alternative medicine has to offer, basically, but they're still, despite their best efforts, struggling. So I love the complex cases and my heart goes out to them, but it is my honor to be a part of their wellness journey. And so that's what I'm spending my weeks on, immersing myself in these complex cases with autoimmune issues, digestive problems, neurological issues, like anxiety and depression and

fatigue and brain fog. and then hormonal imbalances too we deal a lot with those so that's kind of the the crux of what I do and then I also write books about that stuff too so I've written two books the ketotarian was my first book it's a mostly plant-based ketogenic book so it's a way to go keto the clean way and my second book which you just mentioned is the inflammation spectrum so both of those books are really born out of my own personal journey and my clinical experience consulting patients so that is what I do. And I also co-host Goop Fellows podcast, which is Goop's first spin-off podcast, James Mullen and I host that. And yeah, that's no big deal.

I don't know how I have time for it all, but somehow I manage it. That's huge. I love that Goop has a podcast for men. And I wonder if that's, I wonder if in your practice, men are more difficult to work with than women. Have you experienced that? Yeah, I would say so in some ways. Yeah, most of my patients are women. And it's interesting that when Goop fellas was launched, it was launched because more men than ever were looking at Goop and the team at Goop saw that. And they wanted to give a voice to them that were interested in all the goopy stuff, like the wellness stuff, the biohacking stuff, the lifestyle stuff.

but give them a voice in that space. But it's interesting that I haven't looked at the demographics recently, but the last time I checked, the majority of the listeners weren't actually men still. So it's still a growing space that Goopfellas is for men and women and whoever you are, but it's coming from a guy's perspective. It's coming from Seamus and I's perspective. So we're talking about, you know, different, whether it's relationships or mental health or addiction or wellness, we are covering all these different topics that are really just human topics.

don't have to be gender specific, but it's definitely coming from a guy's perspective. Yeah, it's really amazing. I'm sure you guys are doing really well listener-wise, but everybody should go listen if they haven't. So I'm curious about your own personal journey with health because oftentimes people who become healers get interested in that because of their own issues. So can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure. So I grew up in a home that was, was my parents were very interested in wellness. So I, when it was not like as trendy as it is now, in the 80s and 90s, I was like drinking strange adaptogenic tonics and like raw goat's milk and all this strange stuff. But that, so I was definitely not your typical kid food wise. And then

that evolved to me being what I would call a conventional whole foods vegan for 10 years, from my mid to late teens to my mid to late 20s. And then I saw over those years that my health was slowly declining. And certainly a Whole Foods vegan diet is better than the standard American diet. But what I learned over that time period is just because something's better, doesn't necessarily mean it's optimal for you. And I had to sort of evolve my diet from my wellness. So it's still a mostly plant-based ketogenic lifestyle. And that's why where the book Ketotarian came to be, it was my own personal experience of eating high, healthy fat, mostly plant fats, lower carb, clean, plant-centric ketogenic diet. But I brought in things like wild-caught

fish and pasture-raised eggs and ghee and some like vegetarian keto and pescatarian keto options. And I do a cyclical ketotarian approach that I advocate in the book. So I'm not always in ketosis. I'll, you know, do a cyclical approach to get my clean carbs in, to create and maintain that metabolic flexibility that you can gain with being fat-adapted. So that's my own personal food journey, but that also coincided with, I have autoimmune conditions on both sides of my family. So things like Hashimoto's, both sides of the family, type diabetes, both sides of the family, MS-type symptoms, both sides of the family. I mean, I can go on and on. Like, it's pretty rich with autoimmune issues.

So I knew myself, I had a double snip of what's called the MTHFR gene, a homozygous dip for the MTHFR, what's called the C677T location, which is just a fancy way of saying at a specific location at this gene, the MTHR gene, which is the gene that makes the enzyme that converts folic acid into folate. And why that's a B vitamin? So basically, why is that important? is because that's a master methyl donor, which is a carbon hydrogen group that does a lot of really important things in the body. It helps detoxing and making your gut healthy and your detoxification pathways healthy. Helps to lower inflammation levels, and my body's not that good at it. And that MTHR gene SNP, that's gene variant, is associated with autoimmune issues.

And that makes sense. You get a copy from your mom and a copy from your dad, and you know, these two copies of this gene variant. So I knew, okay, I knew what the research said, being in functional medicine, that a third of autoimmunity is due to genetics, and two-thirds is epigenetics, the lifestyle stuff that we can control that influences genetic expression and downregulates bad a gene expression or turns on bad gene expression. So I wanted to do everything I could to take responsibility for my health, to have a

agency over my wellness and I can't control everything. I know that. It's not becoming obsessive or thinking that I'm God. It's not that. But I want to do everything I can to support my wellness to realize what I'm up against and at the same time help my family and help the people that I love. So that was my early years in functional medicine, kind of seeing what this could do in my life, seeing this what this could do in my family's life. And now like all these years later, I get to talk people, talk to people around the world about this stuff that are just looking for answers as to why they feel the way that they do. So it definitely comes from a personal place for sure. So, okay, so I have a few questions about that. But I'm curious, like, at what point you knew that your body was healing? And what are, I mean, what is good, I don't want to say perfect, but what does good health look like to you? What are the markers? For me, if you're looking at subjective and objective markers, like subjectively, for me, it was my

energy levels. It was my peace of mind, like I'm prone to anxiety and our mutual friends, Liz Moody, and I have talked about this at length. She struggles with this same thing as I do. So it's energy, anxiousness, and digestion for me. And then, I mean, those are all inflammatory symptoms. And that's the inflammation that spectrum. then I'm talking about in my second book is because inflammation exists on a spectrum.

It looks different for different people. And it is a continuum from low-grade symptoms to more extreme symptoms. So I had these sort of autoimmune inflammation spectrum symptoms, knowing the genetics that I have, knowing the proclivity that I have for these sort of issues. And so that when I saw those things decrease in frequency and intensity, then I knew, okay, things were moving in the right direction. meaning I had more energy throughout the day. I had extremely less anxiety, more peace of mind, more stable, energy-wise, or mood-wise.

And third, my digestion was better. I wasn't having bloating. I wasn't having GI issues anymore. I wasn't having any GI pain. Those are really big areas that I wanted to improve. So when I started shifting the foods that I ate and focusing on different natural medicine protocols, all based in functional medicine. And these are the things that I talk about in the inflammation spectrum.

Like all the toolboxes that I talk about in the book are all things that research shows are to be effective for these sort of issues. So for me, I would score higher in the GI issues, the anxiety, brain issues, and the energy areas of that quiz that I have at the beginning of the book. And everybody's going to look different. Maybe that someone else, it's not their problem and it's going to be something else. but these are all inflammatory problems, and that's the subjective stuff that I saw improve, and then objectively is running labs.

And, I mean, there's a lot of potential labs you could run, but like something for me, like I'd want to see the inflammation markers improve, like, because I have the double MTHFR snip, that is in part responsible for recycling something called homocysteine down, which is a inflammatory marker that in functional medicine, we went homocysteine to be under six. and mine is prone to being higher. So by focusing and targeting my food medicine protocol and natural medicines like herbs, micronutrients, like vitamin supplementation,

it would be to get that homocysteine down, which is a sign of inflammation, getting C-reactive protein down. This is another inflammatory marker that in functional medicine we want CRP, HSCRP, the high sensitivity one, to be under one. And then running a good microbiome test

and looking at things like intestinal permeability, or leaky gut syndrome, looking at dysbiosis, any bacterial overgrowth, and lowering gut-centric inflammation. We run these inflammatory markers looking at gut inflammation like calprotectin and lysosium and lactoferrin. We want that to come down too. So it's not just feeling better, which is certainly the goal, but it's looking those, looking and targeting at what we're finding on the labs, which the labs are a reflection of why I would feel the way that I felt, or somebody else would feel the way that they feel. So that's, that's what I did for myself and that's what we do for our patients. So a lot of people, when I put up a story on Instagram saying that you were

coming on, we're curious about what exactly inflammation is. And I know that you've said, like, oftentimes we don't really know when we're having an inflammatory response or inflammation until it turns into something bad. So can you do that? just kind of define what inflammation is and different ways that it can show up in your body? Sure. So inflammation, first of all, is not inherently bad. There's actually nothing wrong with inflammation in check. It fights viruses, bacteria, it heals wounds. It's a super important part of human physiology that the human race would not be here if it weren't for healthy, balanced inflammation levels. It's when inflammation is thrown out of balance when problems

ensue, where it's chronic, this chronic insidious inflammation that is the problem. And you're right, like it is like this very nebulous term where what the heck are they talking about. I think inflammation means maybe people think musculoskeletal issues, like muscle joint issues or a migraine or soreness. Like, yes, that is true. That is all inflammation. But when we're talking about chronic inflammation, it's this diffuse systemic inflammation that really is what researchers are looking at as being this commonality between just about every health problem under the sun. When you look at autoimmune conditions, if not all, are inflammatory, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, all chronic inflammatory health problems, digestive problems, inflammatory problems,

to mental health issues, which most people don't realize that, you know, in Western thought, we like to separate mental health from physical health. But mental health is physical health. It is not separate. Your brain is part of your body. And it is when research is really looking at, and you can go on PubMed where all the research that's being done in the world is put on here, something referred to as the cytokine model of cognitive function.

It's basically saying cytokines are pro-inflammatory cells. How are these pro-inflammatory cells called cytokines impacting how our brain works? How's inflammation impacting mental health? and anxiety, depression, fatigue, brain fog, other mental health issues, ADD, ADHD, autism, all of the above, anything impacting the brain or the nervous system, inflammation is implicated in these health problems. So it is quite important and quite far-reaching to understand the complexity and the far-reaching effects of chronic inflammation on our health. Because, I mean, these problems that I just mentioned, that's sadly the majority of the human race right now. And it's so sad, but at the same time, like, we understand these issues more and more. And a lot of these problems, the majority of these problems, we wield a lot of influence on our life.

So this is not to scare people and make people become hypochondriacs. This is just say, look, we have to look at the statistics and look at the rise of chronic health problems. And we have to look and realize, like, what can we do today? And in most cases, for most people, we have so much power over our health to decrease the frequency and intensity of these things to start reclaiming our health. So the other side of that dichotomy of sobering statistics is the is the fact that there's so much hope and there's so much so much you can do to feel better and to be your optimal self. Yeah. I mean, it is kind of astonishing that, you know, inflammation really is at the root of so many of these issues. And

oftentimes people just put medication on top of it, right? Which, isn't going to fix anything. So in your practice, I know it's so different for everybody, but what are the most common causes of inflammation that you are seeing? Well, it's important to say this, that all of these, like I said earlier with autoimmunity, a third is genetics, two-thirds is epigenetics. So all of these epigenetics things, again, are constantly and dynamically instructing genetic expression. We used to think of, you know, the old thought, of genetics was, if my mom had it, or my dad had it, or my grandma had it, I was just going to wait and there's a matter of time before I was going to get it too. And now that is really an antiquated

view of human physiology, that the majority of how long we live for most humans is due to epigenetics. It's the lifestyle choices. So it's the foods we're eating or the foods we're not eating, meaning biochemistry, the foods we're eating, like I say in the book, every food we eat is either feeding inflammation or fighting it. There's no Switzerland meal that's like doing nothing to your physiology. It's serving one or the other. And in some food, certainly, it's a spectrum of influence as well, meaning some will do it negligibly. It's you're not going to notice it. Maybe just on a lab you would notice it. But some, and a lot of the foods of people are eating are influencing our biochemistry in significant ways where you can notice

it and how you feel, which is what the book. explores. So it's foods, not just the foods you're not eating, but the foods you need to be eating to instruct your biochemistry in a positive way to calm down inflammation, to balance inflammation. And then it's stress levels, which is a major exploration of the inflammation spectrum book because it's not just about food. You could be eating like the best like superfoods under the sun, but if you're, you know, sabotaging yourself with stress every day, that's not good. So we look at stress, we look at toxins, We look at sleep. It's profoundly important for inflammation levels in human health.

We're looking at social isolation. Like, what's your community? What's your relationship health like? And then looking at technology, looking at screen time, looking at the impact that blue lights having on people, the light on from technology. All of these things are epigenetics. These are the lifestyle things that are instructing brilliantly your biochemistry

in one way or the other. And we have to look at all. all those things because it's not just one thing. And it's very easy to be myopic and say, what, it's just the food or it's just that. Well, it's a confluence of factors. It's really a perfect storm that breeds the storm of inflammation. I feel like people, myself included, look to like exercise and diet as the end all, be all and the answer because it's something that you can kind of easily control, right? Whereas like sleep and screen time and, community and all of these things are a little bit more vague, I guess, I would say.

And for me, like, I was one of those people where I got diagnosed with gut issues. I did the perfect diet. I did what I thought was, you know, the perfect exercise at the time. And I want to get into this with you as well. But, you know, I did all of that. And my gut issues kept coming back and they kept getting worse. And, you know, I did. I tested for toxins.

and I did have some of that, but ultimately I realized that it was like the things that I wasn't addressing. Like I truly believe in trapped trauma and like trapped energy. And that obviously leads to stress and the screen time and having a job where you're on your phone or your computer all the time and being more isolated and all of these things that we usually don't want to look at. And, you know, it's hard. Yeah.

It's so much. I mean, you're absolutely right. And the research is really catching up with that anecdotal. Like what I see clinically all the time is that the things from our past traumas are definitely something that people have to heal from to start. Like, those are impediments many times to people's recovery. Is that they can get to a certain degree with food or a certain degree with some like sort of advanced like natural medicine protocol.

Like all those things are compensates. components to their journey, but trauma and things from the past and all those other things that I mentioned, research is showing that things like trauma has the power to perpetuate and trigger autoimmune problems and gut problems. It's like it's the mind-body connection that's all one and the same. And it's the bidirectional relationships between the bidirectional relationship between the mental emotional component and spiritual component to health and the physical. And the reality is that our physiology impacts a mind and emotion and that space. But then conversely, the thoughts and emotions impact physiology too. So it is so profoundly important and something that we have to explore with these type of complex cases because it is so beyond the basics.

It's not just like stop eating McDonald's and work out more and then you're going to be all healed. That would be brilliant if it was that simple. But I don't get cases like that. It is oftentimes really, really going deep into someone's health history to understand what is blocking them from recovering. Do you know Alyssa Goodman? Yes, she's a good friend of mine. So she was on the podcast recently. Her episode is actually coming out this week.

And we were talking about the clients that she sees. And we were talking about mindset. And she said, the people who recover are the people who recover are the people who, truly believe that they can heal. Yeah. And that truly believe that they're going to recover. And, you know, it's interesting also because my husband, who's quite a bit older than me, he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, like, decades ago to the point where they were

going to have to do surgery and, you know, it would have changed the course of his life. And he, I mean, this was maybe 20 or 30 years ago, so before this stuff was having a moment like it is now. He ended up going to somebody who at the time was, you know, considered, considered an alternative practitioner. And she put him on some herbs and he got better. But I asked him recently, like, why he thinks it made such a difference. And he said, you know, I just decided that I was going to heal. And he was like, I really believe that it was my mindset. And you've said that you can't heal a body you hate. So can you kind of talk about how, like, how mindset plays a role in healing. Yeah, absolutely. And look, I mean, you take two groups of people and you see somebody

that's resisting like so much in their life. There's the inner resistance and inner, like their trauma is playing out in their life on a daily basis from the past. And then you have the people that they're not perfect by all means, but they have a sense of grace and lightness to their life and surrender, but yet a hope that you see in their eyes. despite going some really heavy things. And it's so interesting. There is a refining process of pain, like physical pain.

There's a refining process. And I feel like their soul oftentimes comes out, like the light of their soul comes out, like through their pain and suffering. But yet that same pain and suffering for some people makes them more rigid and more bitter and more angry. And you wonder what came first sometimes. And we always have this conversation as a clinic.

Like I wonder what they were like, 15, 20 years ago, you don't know because you didn't know them then. But like what came first? Was it their attitude and all that stuff? And then? Or I think it's probably a bit of both, but it's this vicious cycle. But look, nobody, I'm not faulting the person that is struggling and really is like being drowned, proverbially speaking by their pain and trauma. I'm not judging them at all. But you can see it in their space. And that's sort of the duality of functional medicine. It's the science, which is the labs and getting to the root cause and being evidence-based. And then the art side of functional medicine is reading all of this and being an empathic

person, which I think really serves me being a good clinician. But I'm a firm believer of that mantra that I talk a lot about is you can't heal a body you hate. You cannot shame your way into wellness. You cannot obsess your way. You cannot orthorexia your way into health. And I feel like I get it. I understand it's a part of this vicious cycle.

and I get it so much, but we have to move past that if we're going to reclaim our life. And I think that it's, but under the camp, let me be clear on this, you look at the camp that are people that are, that have this, I'm ready, this, I'm going to get better, and they have that positive hope that's there. There are some people that are still struggling under that group, but I'll say that group of people are way more likely to heal, meaning that it's not a for sure thing. I'm not saying that once you change your attitude, you're going to just be healed, but it is fertile ground for transformation. So the mind space, the mental space, the spirit space, is fertile ground. It's not the flower and the tree yet, but it's fertile ground. And you have to start

with fertile ground to plant something awesome in your life. So I think that that's without a doubt important. It's something that I know Alyssa Goodman has talked publicly about her own past and recovering from that and healing herself from cancer and autoimmune condition. So it's definitely something that I see play out in a lot of patients. So I kind of want to touch on the role of exercise and all of this. I mean, we were kind of talking, you touched on like you can't orthorexia your way into health and you can't exercise. your body into health. I'm curious, like, I know that's something a lot of people struggle with is how to tune into their bodies to know what's best. So you talked about how, like, in your own

journey, you were eating whole food vegan, but it wasn't serving you at a certain point. And so you found a way that was serving you more. And I talk about this a lot because I've also been through all the phases. I've been through eating disorders. I've been through orthorexia. I've been through over-exercising, all of the things. And it took me years to get to a place where I feel like I have tuned into my body. I'm a huge proponent of meditation. I mean, that has really kind of like awakened myself to myself, if that makes sense. Yeah. And so it's hard when people ask me, how do you tune in and know what's best for your body? How do you know when to do a less intense exercise or how do you know how do you know how to take a day off versus like you're just being

lazy so do you have any pointers for anybody listening who might be struggling with that sure um and that's really the the question and the exploration that i'm having in the inflammation spectrum because in my opinion and what i've seen consulting patients over the years is that when the body's out of balance it's really hard to come from a place of intuition because my goal is to get everybody that I am consulting and working with is to get them to the place of deep, sound intuition, intuitive living, and that's eating and the movement that you do, the relationships that you have in your life, the healthy boundaries you have in your life is all coming in a place of just radiant intuition. but it is really hard to come in your life with intuition when your body's out of balance. And I mean that like spiritually out of balance, mental emotionally out of balance, and physiologically out of balance. And that's what inflammation, chronic inflammation is.

It's the immune system out of balance. And it's manifesting in that way in millions and millions of people right now. and what I want someone to do when they're reading that book or if they're just doing it in their own life, I want them to center themselves on all those levels because at that point, like, how are they supposed to know what way they're supposed to eat? Like, should I be having this or that? And there's so much confusion. Like, people are getting bloated and getting stomach pain from salads. And it's like salad is like the postered food for like healthy foods.

but yet people are having these foods and it's causing the bloating. So what's right? What's up is down and what's down is up. It's so much food confusion out there and diet disillusionment that it's hard to kind of get clarity on food as medicine when even the healthy foods are causing you stomach upset or flare up at some degree. And that's the space of autoimmunity that I know well.

So you have to center yourself. You have to find out what your body loves and you have to find out what your body hates. So you have that clarity on the path towards wellness to create centering. Because when you are out of balance, it's like, oh, is it intuition or is it hangariness? Is it intuition or is it stress eating? Like, you know, hangariness is not intuitive eating. Stress eating, emotional eating is not intuitive eating.

So I really want people to kind of create a balance, calm their body down. So that's why I have these different plans, which are really tailored. elimination diet approaches, which I think are good ways for people to lean into not eliminating foods for the sake of it, but by finding out what your body loves is a act of self-care because avoiding foods that make you feel lousy isn't punitive. It's not becoming obsessive about food. It's not orthorexic. It's that, no, I love feeling better more than I miss that food that makes me feel really lousy. And that's that food piece that I want people to find for themselves.

And we're all different. So there's not a cookie cutter approach to like, this is the magic formula for food. That's not going to happen. So it's the tools in the inflammation spectrum are just geared from my own clinical experience, my own personal experience on how to use food as medicine. Because what I can do then is calm everything down, center things down. And we talk about all the non-food things too. So looking at your relationship with technology and sleep and stress and all the toxins and the products that people are using.

Why are we doing all of this? It's to create stillness. To create stillness and space to hear what your body needs, to hear what yourself needs. Because there's a lot of noise going on and all the world. Like internally and externally, you have noise. It is really hard to hear your intuition. But when you create stillness, you can hear very clearly. this still small voice of what your body truly needs.

Yeah, it's so true. I had a therapist on recently, and we were talking about this, and how, like, the simple act of just slowing down and getting quiet can really magnify. I mean, it's illuminating, I guess is the word I would use. Absolutely. So many things. And for anybody who hasn't read your book yet, it's very straightforward. There are a couple.

There are basically quizzes for different functions of your book. body and then you either go on the core four track or the eliminate. So you either eliminate four irritants. Is this right? Or eight? Yeah. Yeah. So the core four are the four foods that are most likely to cause problems. And then we talk about the non-food inflamers too, which I can't like not stress enough, like looking at stress and toxins. And it's not just about food. But the core four foods are grains, added sugar, high omega-6 oils, like canola oil and vegetable oil, and dairy. Again, that's not saying all those foods are bad and everyone needs to avoid them all the time. It's just saying statistically they're going to cause problems in a lot of people.

So I want you to find out your bio-individuality. And some people can maybe you'll find out, hey, I can do two of those foods with the other two aren't working for me. Or I'm fine with all four. I want you to explore this. And then the more advanced track for the people that score higher on the inflammation spectrum quiz in the book is the eliminate track. So it's core 4 plus 4 or more.

And that's nightshades, which are peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, goji berries, bite potatoes. Those are higher in alkaloids that can be irritants to some people, which are proteins in these foods. Nuts and seeds, legumes, and eggs. Again, all whole foods. Nothing inherently wrong with them. But it's basically the interaction, the relationship between the food and someone's system that can be a problem. So people with more prone to autoimmunity, people that are more prone to food sensitivities.

We talk about the different genetic snips. We're all different. So I want the person, the reader, to really explore what foods are my best medicine and what foods make me feel not so good. So it is really not about, you know, demonizing any of those foods. It's like, I do great with nightshades. I do fine. I love ketchup. I love ketchup.

I love ketchup all day, all night. I love peanuts, and the peanuts are a legume. I love peanut butter. But some people are going to have problems with legumes, and some people are going to have problems with nightshades. So I don't have any, like, negative thoughts about any of those foods. But I just know consulting patients that, yeah, you're going to have problems with some of these foods, and you're going to notice it in your life. And I want people to find that out for themselves.

And what are your thoughts on the narrative that we have around certain things? foods that we eat. I mean, do you think that that truly affects how the food affects our body? Yeah, I would say so. I would say, and this goes into the orthorexia space, and what I've found with that space is that most of the time there's something physically going wrong. There's some sort of autoimmune gut immune access issue and then that you have that flare up, that initial flare up, or that time of the flare up. And that creates this negative connotation with foods because the person feels like, whoa, like food,

my body's turning against myself. And food is my enemy because everything makes me feel miserable. And then that creates this vicious cycle of not wanting to have that flare up again or feeling so stressed about it ever happening again in every meal. And at that point, that paired with all the conflicting information from Dr. Google, it can create added stress.

And I think that's looking at stress and the disordered relationship with one's food and with one's body. So that's definitely a component to it too. It's not just the food. It's the environment of which you're eating. It's the headspace of which you're consuming the food. So say that somebody goes through this process and they eliminate inflammation. How do we maintain and.

and sustain that kind of anti-inflammatory lifestyle. Well, I think it's coming from a place of grace and lightness. And what I mean by that is just like, okay, how are you centered? To me, it's like the genesis of sustainable wellness is coming from a place of self-respect. And if you're, and that's why I feel like in mindfulness practice and whatever that looks like for you, like whether it's anything. Anything that's anchoring you in the present moment. So for many people, it's going to be some sort of mindfulness meditation,

present moment awareness, some inner body awareness, some active stillness like yoga or Tai Chi. Or it could be exercise if it's getting you into a flow state that is grounding you. I think that to me has to be, like if you get your head and your heart right, you're going to way more likely give your body foods that it needs. If you're going to center yourself and create stillness, you're way more likely to give your body what it needs. And you're going to be all the things you're doing in your life, all these awesome acts of wellness are going to be emanating from that space of stillness and using self-care as a form of self-respect. So to me, that stuff is so infrastructurally important because at that point, it is just a manifestation of that intuition. that I keep talking about. It's not the other way around where you're just going to like

somehow like diet your way or will your way or obsess your way into wellness. That's stress and striving consciousness. I feel in the long term doesn't serve most people. And they have to kind of come from a different vantage point and have a paradigm shift on why they're doing what they're doing. Because you can have the same act like going on eating a certain way or doing a certain movement or having a certain routine or regimen, you can have that same act. But if you're coming from a place of stress and striving, that's going to create a completely different outcome as if you're coming from a place of grace and lightness. So to me, your head and your heart and your spirit and your intention is so important. Yeah, that's so true. I never really thought about

it that way, that it can be the same day to day, but your attitude about it completely changes the effect. So I'm curious, what is? A typical day in the life for you. I know that you're an intermittent faster, right? Mm-hmm. I am, yeah. So I typically will intermittent fast in the morning. So it's time-restricted feeding, basically.

And it's not because, like, I am even really thinking about it. Like a ketotarianism that I talk about in ketotarian is eat when you're hungry. When I wake up, I'm not really hungry. And you look at human physiology and circadian rhythms is that, you know, when cortisol higher in the morning that it's supposed to be to wake you up to get you out through the day and insulin is low. I don't really need to eat in the morning. And as someone gets more fat adapted, that's what they can do.

So I go until noon because I'm with patients all morning. But I think waiting like two to three hours after you wake is actually important for a lot of people. But if you enjoy the art of breakfast and you're eating clean foods that serve you, then enjoy that. That's no big deal about it. But for me, I typically would do like a 12 to 6, 12 to 6 30, 12 to 7 sometimes eating window, depending on when I get home after consulting patients. And I just eat within those windows. And I'm making sure I'm eating enough food. I'm well nourished. I'm getting enough calories through those hours. But I'm allowing my body, it's like the yin and yang of life. I'm allowing that time for my body to rest after I'm eating because eating requires a lot of

energy. And I think that we think, like, we always have to be eating. We have to have this six meals a day. And it's like we hear all these conventional advice. We never give our body a break from digesting food. And many people have these bacterial overgrowth, like it's like sebo or yeast overgrowth. It's because they're always eating. Even if they're just grazing, they're just like having small amounts all day. They are not ever giving their body a chance to digest it and break these things down and have balance in their life. So I'll break the fast at noon. I'll have like a plant-centric, like a ketotarian-type lunch. I like these pesto zoodles, these zucchini noodles that is in ketotarian. And then you could add like added protein on there if you wanted to.

Or, you know, I have like a keto smoothie for lunch, which like typically we have like almond milk or coconut milk, avocado, some greens, some berries. And there. And then for dinner, the same sort of thing. It's just a clean, satiating meal for dinner. But, I mean, I'm consulting patients all day long, so typically it's, you know, back-to-back. And I don't really have time to really think about food that much. But I'm eating until I'm full. I'm eating until I'm, you know, well-satiated.

And I, one thing I do in the morning is I'll drink, while I'm fasting, I'll drink Earl Grey Tea. Earl Grey tea is a black tea with Bergamont in it. And Bergamont is a citrus from Calabria in Italy that's been shown to enhance autophagy, which, you know, break that word down autophagy. It's self-eating. It's like your body's own cellular renewal, self-recycling system. It's your body's own anti-aging, anti-inflination, lowered disease pathways. So fasting does that, ketosis does that, and this Bergamont does it too, according to studies.

So I'll have that to, I'll kind of marry those benefits in the morning to, to, to, optimize the benefits of fasting. And then a ketogenic diet, a clean ketogenic diet is the fasting mimicking diet as well. So it's eliciting a lot of the benefits of fasting, the anti-aging benefits, the anti-inflammatory, the lowered inflammation, the brain boosting benefits of it. So that's my food day and, you know, what I'm doing while I'm consulting patients online. And what do you do to keep stress at a manageable place? Yeah. So it's interesting. So we start our morning off, like, as a team. Like, even though we consult patients online, my whole team is basically here. And I think community is important. And we start our morning off, like, looking over the case, like cases for the day. We do case reviews. And we hold space for them. We're praying for them. We're meditating for them in the morning of just how we can be there for them in the way that they need. So I think that having a community,

A, for me, it's my team in the morning and setting the intention for the day. And then also in service of others, it's for us, it's just easier because that's what we do professionally. But no matter what job you have, you can do that. You can have a community. You can hold space for people. You can start your day with prayer and meditation. And you can be in the service of others in any way that makes sense for you in your situation.

So to me, I think that's my seed for the day. It's what I'm going to plant for the rest of the day. And then it's holding, it's really important for me because I'm consulting people with heavy stuff with a pain body that's, that's, you know, sometimes activated. And sometimes, you know, people that are going through heavy things just very sad. And we have to be there for them and hear them and be present for them. And that's definitely important for me to be fully present. for them as much as I can be. So I have, to me, I have my office, like, very zen, very...

It sounds like it. Like, it's very still and quiet, and there's, we have nature in here with, like, air plants and, like, crystals and defute essential oil diffusers and nature, like, research shows that if you just have, like, houseplants in your office, you have lower inflammation levels. And then studies are pretty remarkable. Now, I do have, like, I'm in western Pennsylvania, so I do have nature outside the windows too. But even if you don't have that, if you're an urban setting, you can have these plants and research those. Those will also be very restorative to you and your stress levels.

So that's kind of where I'm at. And then I'll do a breath. I do a breath meditation in between patients too. So it's just becoming aware of my breath. It's things that Eckhart-Torley talks of. I talk a lot. Accord totally is like my guy, man. I love this guy. Yeah, me too. So all the things that Eckhart says, I do. So it's inner body awareness, present moment awareness, these type of things that are just very simple, practical things that people can do to be centered, to anchor themselves in the present moment. I love that you talk about being of service to others because I find, and I talk about this a lot too. Like, I can get so often to the weeds about me and my life and my job. Like, you know, we can get really kind of selfish, self-centered, right? And, you know, my husband and being in recovery really has helped me to recognize that.

And if I am feeling out of control or, like I said, often the weeds and kind of directionless and frenetic, you know, all of these things agitated, if I can just bring it back to like, how can I help at least one person for you? you have your practice. You know, for me, it's a bunch of strangers on the internet that feel like my community, though. They don't feel like, you know, it feels like, like friends. How can I help just one person? And that's such a good intention, I think, that anybody can do. Everybody can be of service, whether it's, you know, I mean, it can be the smallest thing. It doesn't have to be on this grand scale. And it makes everything better. Yeah, totally. And it's anecdotally, we know that. But science is really showing that that this sort of act of benevolence, just simple acts of kindness, do so much to our physiology.

It lowers inflammation levels, a lower stress hormone. It's associated with just a longer, happier life. So many studies are looking at that, which it should really encourage and empower us to do more of that. It's not just doing good for other people, which is certainly truth. But it is also helping you in return. And it's this, you know, it's the mystery of giving, I think. Yeah. I think it lends itself to self-esteem.

Obviously, you're going to feel good about yourself. And it's, you know, I think it puts things in perspective. For me, it helps to cultivate gratitude. Yeah, absolutely. And gratitude is kind of like a panacea for, you know, so many things. I mean, Brune Brown, she does so much good research around that and like looking at the people that are like the most content, the happiest people. One of the common, like, personality traits that people have is gratitude. It's really remarkable. I see that in my life for sure. Yeah. And anybody can have gratitude. You don't have to have certain things and a certain lifestyle. Oh, not at all.

It's accessible to everyone. I love that. Okay, so I want to get two listener questions because people were falling all over themselves for this one. If you're battling Candida and have other gut issues, what do you try to treat first? And I'm sure this is very individual for each person. Yeah, it is. So I think first of all, the question is when things are like yeast overgrowth, Candida overgrowth or other gut problems, whatever you're talking about, sebo or histamine intolerance or Mickey Gut Syndrome, inflammation in the gut, it's finding out for sure if you have it. I think a lot of times we throw these words around here,

and oftentimes the person is, well, I have all the symptoms. Like I check all the boxes, so this is what I have. In health care, just because something looks like a duck doesn't mean it's necessarily a duck. It could be a very good duck imposter. It could be a goose. And it's And it's important to know exactly what's going on. Because you don't want to go around treating something or addressing something or supporting something if it's not, in fact, what you have going on. But let's assume you've done the labs, you kind of know what's going on. Then I would say the larger picture is, okay, can we see the yeast overgrowth as the cause or the effect? To me, I almost see the yeast overgrowth is like a ripple effect.

Like what sort of environment was hospitable for the yeast and fungal overgrowth in the first place? So I see it as a part of a larger ripple effect of imbalance in the body. And remember, just like with inflammation, yeast is not inherently bad. It's the Goldilocks principle. We don't want inflammation too high or too low. We want it just right. Same with hormones. We don't want hormones too high, but we don't want hormones too low.

we want to adjust, right, when we need them. And same with yeast and bacteria. Yeast, candida albacans, or candida, any other candida you're thinking about or any other type of yeast and fungus is not inherently bad. It is about balance. You don't want bacterial or yeast overgrowth. You don't want a deficiency of them either. There's a lot of research actually coming out looking at the mycobium, myco being the prefix for yeast and fungus. Healthy yeast and fungus is actually needed for a healthy gastrointestinal system. So to me, it would be saying, okay, What's the bigger picture? What's the health history look like?

What's like the amplifiers and the perpetrators of this? And instead of it being the sort of Western thought of blasting it with an antifungal, which has its place and certainly is needed sometimes, it's not always needed. So you want to sometimes create a better environment or create a stable, balanced environment to have healthy balanced yeast and fungus. So it's going to be creating. Like, whatever is needed to create that balance is important. So is there some hormonal imbalance that's feeding this unhealthy gut?

Is there some sort of autoimmune component and disregulation that's supporting this imbalance or that's causing this unbalanced gut? Or do we need some antimicrobials, good old-fashioned antifungals? There's a place for that too. So I think it's always putting it in context with your health story. Like what's the narrative here and what led to where you're at? today. Right. So I hope they answered your question. Yeah. Okay. So kind of to that point on the hormone thing, is PCOS an inflammatory condition? Yeah. The PCOS polycystic ovarian syndrome, it is typically

associated with insulin resistance, meaning the cell receptor sites to insulin are blunted. They're allowing an accumulation or causing an accumulation of insulin, which is a fat-storing hormone, higher glucose, and that's going to cause a ripple effect of testosterone being imbalanced and polycystic ovarian issues. I'm curious, do you, I mean, lifestyle plays a huge role in PCOS, right? Yeah. I mean, yeah, looking at, looking at toxins, all of these things are things to consider. I was curious if you feel like people can kind of lifestyle their way in.

to PCOS. Oh, yeah. And if they can lifestyle their way out of it. Yes and yes. Yeah, for sure. I mean, because, I mean, look, it's estimated that 50% of the United States is insulin resistant. That's a lot of people. And for some of that 50%, that's going to be PCOS people. That's going to be, that's on that insulin resistant spectrum. And it is absolutely, I mean, of course, there are genetic predispositions for insulin resistance. There are genetic predispositions for this hormonal resistance pattern that can make some family members more prone to these things. But that doesn't mean that it's not reversible.

That doesn't mean that it's not improvable and drastically overcomerable. It may be very resistant for some people. It may be a harder. If someone does have that predisposition to insulin resistance and PCOS, it's going to be maybe a harder recovery, but it's still something that they should look at. And these are things that I see all the time. reversed and overcome. Again, not a quick fix. I don't want to over, like, simplify, but it is something that people wield a lot of influence over and they don't realize it.

And so many people just take the pill. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Take that foreman, take a birth control pill. That's what it is. But it's a lot more than that. What are the best preventative measures to take now for good health in the future? I would say the big categories are food, stress, and sleep. Like those are big umbrellas with a lot of different new ones underneath it. So it's definitely exploring the best food medicine, looking at acts of stillness as far as stress, and making sure your sleep is restorative.

And to me, like those are the big things that people need to look at in their life. and creating a good tools in your toolbox for each one of those categories. How many hours of sleep do you recommend eight? Yeah, I'd say seven to nine, depending on the person. And it's not just the hours, right? It's the quality of sleep, not just the quantity of sleep. Yeah, you can't just take an ambient and call it eight good hours of sleep. Exactly.

Or if you're going to bed and you're tossing and turning the whole night, or it's interrupted, or you, looking at the falling asleep and staying asleep and the quality of sleep are very important. If you are sleeping through the night, quote, unquote, but are waking up, like, miserable and tired, like you didn't get any sleep, we have to look at the quality of sleep here. And those are definitely things to consider. It's not just the hours. But if you're looking at hours, that would be typically seven to nine hours. What should I expect from a first consult with a functional practitioner?

If it's a good one, I would say a comprehensive health history. So that's going to be us asking a lot of questions. I had one older gentleman ask me if I was in the KGB because I asked him any questions. Not in the Russian secret police. I am just wanting to get to the root cause. And if we're asking these obscure questions to like the average person, like is the outer third of your eyebrows thinning? Well, it's not just because I want to know about your eyebrows. It's because it's associated with low thyroid issues.

Or if you are craving salt, it may be an HPA access issue, like a brain adrenal axis, HPA access issue, or, you know, so on and so forth. We go through all of these signs and symptoms that a lot of these questions, are actually in the inflammation spectrum quiz, which is adapted from questions that I ask patients that's in the book. But it starts with the health history because the health history is so important. And that's like where the duality that I talked about of functional medicine begins. It's the science and the art.

It's holding space for them. It's hearing them. It's asking the right questions. It's getting, it's just knowing them. And in the time that you have with them, and it's about an hour, hour and a half, it can go longer for some complex cases. So this is not like a typical intake, but a health history is so underrated because it is such the navigator, the blueprint for the next steps. And that tells me, okay, what labs are the most relevant?

Let's get the labs out to them. Let's give them a starting point based off of the health history. There's so much information that's gained. So to me, I think the first step and what someone could expect from a functional medicine practitioner is that at the beginning. I love it. You're like a health detective. Yes, I'm sure I'm telling me it's for your physiology. Okay, I like to end my podcasts with. What is one thing that people are probably doing that they shouldn't be doing and one thing that we should be doing for our help?

So one thing that people are doing that they shouldn't be doing, I would say is, and I don't want to to be redundant, but I would say it's coming into the space of wellness with a sense of shame and stress and obsession. To me, I think like it's just not good. It's just not going to be a great thing. And I see a lot of like disordered eating disguised as wellness practices that I think that it's just not good. And look, you can have the same principle like intermittent fasting. Great example. Great tool to have, something that I talk about in both of my books and something that I utilize for patients. But if you're coming from a wrong space and you think more is better and you're just going to starve yourself and just call intermittent fasting, like that's not a good

headspace to come from. So to me, it's like that paradigm shift that I talked about. Same practice, different paradigm. I think that's one thing. And then something that I think that people aren't doing that should be doing is the opposite of that. It is coming to a place of grace and lightness and bringing that back into wellness. I think that gone are the days. And I think we're going to have this sort of post-doctor Google, a rebound response in our culture of content on content, just people saying, what does my body love? What do I need? Like I have all this information on my fingertips, but what's actually right for me? And people are just going to want that more than ever and they're going to want community and they're going to want just back to human things

that humans have been with for thousands of years people are going to want that more than ever because we're divorcing ourselves from what our genome has adapted with over thousands of years that I think that we're going to have a renaissance of just things like the simple things like that you kind of said earlier like that are free and low costs like meeting with people and getting out in nature and eating real food and keeping it simple. I think those are things that we are going to be, people are going to be awaking up to that. They're already doing it,

but it's going to happen in higher amounts out of necessity. Yeah, we're meant to be like in our pack of under 100 and foraging for food and eating together, right? Totally. And the more we remove ourselves from that, sort of what our birth rate is and what we are. meant to how we're meant to live, you have to see problems ensue. It's really not on a macro level, like on a societal level, economic level, on an environmental level, but also on a personal

health level too. Such an important message. And you are such an amazing carrier and spreader of that message and healer. So thank you so much for coming on. This was such a good convo. Well, thank you so much. You have a great, great platform. I really appreciate all that you're doing and providing such a light for people. This is great. Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate that.