Never Been Sicker

NBS #140: The Hidden Health Problems Your Blood Work Isn't Catching

• Michael Rubino • Season 2 • Episode 140

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You've been told your labs are normal. So why are you still exhausted?
Why do you still have brain fog, hormone issues, weight gain, anxiety, or chronic fatigue?

In this episode of Never Been Sicker, Michael Rubino sits down with functional medicine practitioner Dr. Heather Stone to discuss why conventional lab work often misses the earliest signs of dysfunction and how a root-cause approach can uncover what's really happening.

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CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction
00:20 Why Normal Labs Miss Chronic Illness
02:40 Root Cause vs. Disease Labels
06:20 Blood Sugar: The Foundation of Health
11:55 Why Thyroid Isn't Usually the Root Cause
13:50 Mold, Mycotoxins & Autoimmunity
15:35 The Dust Test Discussion
17:40 Can You Heal While Living in Mold?
22:10 Why Some Patients Never Get Better
24:05 Brain Fog, Hormones & Fatigue
29:00 Test, Don't Guess
32:15 The Biggest Self-Healing Mistakes
35:00 Functional Medicine's Biggest Weakness
37:15 The Correct Order of Healing
39:45 Why Women Develop Autoimmune Disease
42:20 Is Mold the Missing Link?
44:20 Why Modern Homes Create More Mold
48:35 The Biggest Lie in Medicine
50:20 Controversial Health Opinions
55:15 Where to Find Dr. Heather Stone

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Dr. Heather Stone DC is one of the top functional medicine practitioners in the world. She has over 20 years of clinical experience in private practice. During that time she has successfully helped thousands of women overcome the symptoms of hypothyroidism and Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Her thyroid transformation blueprint has been used by hundreds of doctors, and thus has helped countless women return to happy, healthy, & lean. Her mission is to change the face of healthcare through her private practice, books, masterclasses, webinars, education programs, and retreats on her ranch in Texas.

🔵 Follow her:

Instagram: @drheatherstone

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwRA4XSwUnTMZvUtRIITDrw - 

Dr. Heather Stone, DC
https://linktr.ee/drheatherstone

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/764005931160743

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🔵 The Dust Test: https://www.thedusttest.com

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SPEAKER_00

Just because it's common doesn't mean that it's normal.

SPEAKER_02

My name is Michael Rubino. I'm on a personal mission to make sure you don't get sick inside your own home.

SPEAKER_01

I knew there was something wrong. I'm just so relieved there's something that you can do about it.

SPEAKER_02

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Never Been Sicker. I'm your host, indoor air quality expert, Michael Rubino. And today's very special guest, Dr. Heather Stone. Dr. Heather Stone, thanks so much for taking time out of your busy day to be here with us.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_02

All right. So why do so many patients have normal labs but still feel sick?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I think the, you know, that's like the million-dollar question, right? Well, and I think the the biggest uh the biggest thing is that most people who are getting their labs done, when they get their labs done in the conventional model, really that model is set up to for a disease drug therapy model. So the labs that are being run are to diagnose a disease. But many people that don't feel well, like let's say they have fatigue and they're not sleeping well and their energy is low and they can't lose weight, uh, those aren't necessarily like diseases that you would diagnose. Now, it could be, and those things do get caught, like if it was low thyroid clinically speaking, or maybe you had diabetes or something like that. But there's a whole host of people that fall under those diagnoses. So they have all of those symptoms first before the diagnosis ever gets there. And so in our conventional model, when we are looking for a disease that we can pair with a drug therapy, a drug, or a surgery, a lot of times uh these these types of symptoms and people fall through the cracks because you're not really looking for what is at the root cause, where are where are the underlying imbalances that are actually causing those symptoms?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so it seems like a lot, like we love to put people in baskets with labels on it, and we love to have these questions that help diagnose if they belong in that basket or not. But we're pretty bad at understanding the root cause.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. Exactly. I think the the model is really set up to label and medicate. And so if we want something different than that, if we don't want to sit here and suffer with all these symptoms until we get a disease, then you have to really expand what we're looking at. We have to go a lot deeper, not only in the lab testing, but the analysis and the understanding of what is the underlying root cause. Because the symptoms that your body gives you is just a way of communicating, right? The body communicates and gives you symptoms to tell you that something is not quite right. So you just have to understand and know what labs to run and how to analyze those labs, and then that will tell you what path you need to move forward.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, that's that sounds like a really smart way to do it. Yeah, it's certainly we need to move away from the traditional medicine scene where we just, you know, stick labels on people and say, here's a pill that you take for the rest of your life. With that being said, you know, what are some of the biggest root causes? And maybe you're gonna run out of paper and ink on this one, but what what what are some of the biggest root causes that get missed in traditional medicine?

SPEAKER_00

Well, um, if I would say the biggest root causes, what we do is we really focus on women with low thyroid, right? And I think that you can apply this across the board really to any person who is dealing with any symptoms. And if you think about the body, the body doesn't work independently, like meaning the liver doesn't work in isolation and neither does the thyroid and neither does any other organ system or hormone. The body all works together. So one of the biggest things that we are seeing right now in our population is an ever-growing occurrence of autoimmune issues. And a lot of these autoimmune issues are it's it's increasing in the one of the leading causes of death, but it usually doesn't get classified as they died from an autoimmune disease because there's so many other underlying imbalances. And so if you can say, all right, well, what is what's triggering this immune system? Like what's causing the immune system to attack the body? And when we look at these underlying causes, number one is underlying blood sugar issues or what we would call dysglycemia. And in fact, dysglycemia or blood sugar dysregulation is at the heart of every single chronic degenerative disease that we suffer from. And that means that your blood sugar is either what most people would think about is that they would have high blood sugar, right? Where you think uh prediabetes or diabetes. But there's a lot of time that goes between when we first get uh dysglycemia or a blood sugar problem to when we actually get diagnosed even with prediabetes. But what we can see is that people can have chronic low blood sugar, they can have a lot of variability in their blood sugar, where their blood sugar goes up and then it goes down. And this is all where weight gain starts as well. So blood sugar is absolutely huge. It is foundational, and it's gonna be very difficult to get the needle to move or to reverse any kind of chronic degenerative disease or autoimmune condition if we don't get the blood sugar stable. But the other thing that we look at is all of your detoxification pathways. We look at your liver and kidneys and the body being able to clear toxins. One of the main underlying imbalances that a lot of people deal with is a high toxic load. And that we look at environmental toxins, we look at heavy metals, we look at mold toxins or mycotoxins, uh, food sensitivities, underlying infections, um, hormonal imbalances. I mean, the list, you're right, it just goes on and on and on. But that's what you have to look at the person in front of you and really get a good health history and understand what they're dealing with, and that will give you clues because the body's communicating as to what is it that we need to do to test to figure out what are the underlying imbalances, because that's the key. For someone who's dealing with health issues, you don't want to just go try everything and assume all of these things are underlying imbalances. So you would you would want to do the appropriate testing so that you could see what was going on with that one particular person and individualize and customize care so they get the best results in the shortest amount of time.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I'm I'm actually writing this down blood sugar. Sounds like that was a vital thing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, especially in America. I mean, honestly, um, about 80% of Americans are overweight, obese, or morbidly obese. And blood sugar is at the heart of all weight problems. So I have yet to be proved wrong in my clinical practice that if someone is dealing with a weight issue, they're gonna have a blood sugar issue somewhere. Now, it doesn't mean it's diagnosable, it means that it's more of a functional problem that just hasn't been uncovered.

SPEAKER_02

And uh now I'm asking for a friend because I'm very interested in myself here. Uh so how does how does one check their blood sugar?

SPEAKER_00

Well, uh for me in my practice, I have a blood sugar or a dysglycemia panel that we run in blood work, and it's about 12 different markers. So we can look at not only an A1C, which is what most people get, right? A hemoglobin A1C is a 90-day average of someone's blood sugar. Now that's the average. It doesn't tell me if it's going up and down, it doesn't tell me if you are low a lot or high a lot. It'll tell me if your average is high. And then we can maybe dig a little bit deeper. But a lot of people get missed because their A1C is right at the edge of prediabetes and nothing gets, they don't get told anything until they cross into prediabetes. But we there's other markers like glycomark and fructosamine, which tell me about variability. It tells me how stable is your blood sugar. We also look at fasting insulin because your blood sugar could look normal, your average, and even fasting glucose could look normal, but your insulin could be really high. So your pancreas is pushing out loads of insulin to get the sugar into the cell. But also when there's extra sugar that's in the bloodstream that you can't get into the cell, the body uses insulin to package that as a triglyceride and it gets stored as fat. So you've got to think about sugar is energy. And so if the cells are full and they cannot take in any more glucose, well, the body's like, well, I have all this energy. So I'm just gonna package it and store it later. And that's the mechanism for why people start to have a weight issue when they have a blood sugar issue. Um, and we look at cholesterol and triglycerides because that tells us a lot. But for me, I also am always looking at my blood sugar. It was just fascinating for me because uh I started doing intermittent fasting like everybody was doing, and I did my labs and my blood sugar was terrible. I'm like, what is happening? And so this was before the CGM, the continuous glucose monitor came out, and I was pricking my finger like every 30 minutes to see what happened. And by 11 a.m., if I did not eat food, my blood sugar was already up to 120. And so this is it was for me too much of a stress response. My cortisol was high, blood sugar started climbing, and it was having a terrible effect for me. So then I just worked to reverse engineer that and figure out what's happening. But now you can see here I wear a continuous glucose monitor, not because I have a blood sugar problem, but because I want to monitor what my blood sugar is doing because it is so important.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I can see that. I I for sure need to do a CGM so I can start to understand how my uh glucose goes up and down and all of that, because I for sure I actually was diagnosed like a couple years ago with pre-diabetes. And then I did a I did a program, got on a panel after that, and it was like, hey, it's gone. So that was good. But um, you know, I it seems to me that it's definitely a problem for me, so I should probably be in control of that instead of that total effect of it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, exactly. And you would be really surprised. I mean, I was super shocked to see I have a lot of data and a lot of knowledge, right? That I know Book Smart, I've treated thousands of patients. Um, I've treated many, many patients with diabetes. But when you have a continuous glucose monitor on, uh, one thing I found out or I realized is I didn't realize my blood sugar was going so high. Like, for example, first I didn't realize it was going high when I was fasting and I was putting my body into a stress response. So now I can figure out what that timing should be. It's not that fasting is bad, but where should you be fasting? How long should you be fasting? And should you, and the timing of the fasting is really important. Um, but I only knew that because I put on a CGM. The other thing I knew is when I first started wearing it, I was kind of testing it and playing with it. And I know that chips and salsa and a margarita was gonna raise my blood sugar. But what I didn't know is that my blood sugar was gonna go over 200. I I was like, that is insane because I don't have a blood sugar problem. But I'll tell you, that's the last time I had a margarita. I'm like, I do not need a margarita. I don't need the alcohol nor the sugar. I had no idea that my blood sugar was going all the way up to like 200. My alarms were going off, my family's like, Heather, this is embarrassing. I'm like, I know, I don't know what's happening.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, you know, what gets measured gets managed, they say.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, that's exactly right. And it's just been a game changer. I often think, like, how did I ever help diabetics without a CGM? But there are some rules that we can follow that help regulate blood sugar in general.

SPEAKER_02

Totally. Well, thank you for that. I think it's, you know, I wanted to cover that not only for myself, but for anybody listening, it sounds like it's a really important thing. And I feel like a lot of doctors are not checking for that. And I think it's something that people need to have on their radar. Uh, you've mentioned thyroid, and you've often said that thyroid is not the root cause. So what is?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so usually uh when people get diagnosed with low thyroid, they get labeled, and everything is about low thyroid. Like when they go into the doctor, that's all they're looking at is are your numbers normal, right? Are your lab do your labs look good? And then they shish them out the door or they put them on more medication to manage more symptoms like fatigue and they can't sleep at night, anxiety, depression, weight issues. So when we're talking about low thyroid, most of the time, 90 to 98% of the time, low thyroid is actually caused by an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto's. That means the immune system is making antibodies to tag the thyroid tissue for destruction. And so what happens so often is that mostly the women get diagnosed with low thyro thyroid, um, and uh this is more prevalent in women than it is men. But when they get diagnosed, they get put on thyroid medication, and that's really where everything stops. And even if they know they have an autoimmune condition, they're not really doing anything for that. They're just giving thyroid hormones as thyroid hormone replacement while all along you have all these underlying autoimmune conditions. And when you have one autoimmune disease, you're at risk for developing multiple autoimmune diseases and thyroid cancer or any cancer, actually. And so it's very, very important that the underlying root cause actually gets addressed. And we're not just giving people medication to make the labs look pretty, because even though the labs look pretty, most people uh still are dealing with a lot of symptoms because they've got all these underlying imbalances.

SPEAKER_02

That makes sense. So when you're dealing with thyroid issues that are caused by something like Hashimoto's, how often do you see the environmental triggers uh as part of the equation? You know, mold toxins, air quality issues, things of that nature?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I would tell you that on every patient we do a genetic test to see how well do they genetically, I how do how well does their immune system identify and clear toxins and particularly mold toxins? Um, we run a test HLA D R D Q. And um I would say that probably, and this is just me from memory, probably 70 to 80 percent of our patients, um, that genetic test is positive, meaning they cannot identify and clear toxins efficiently and so, or mold toxins, and so these toxins will tend to build up in our system and it it's a trigger for autoimmunity. And you know what's really crazy is that these mycotoxins from mold are um they can sit on insulin receptor sites and they can impact your blood sugar despite having a perfectly uh perfectly good diet and trying to do everything you can to balance your blood sugar. If these mold toxins sit on insulin receptor sites, it's gonna impact your blood sugar. But these are all um, you know, a lot of people with autoimmune issues, they don't have good detoxification pathways. So not only do mold toxins or mycotoxins build up, but we also see heavy metals, we also see um environmental toxins, we measure for plastics and pesticides and a bunch of different toxins.

SPEAKER_02

That's awesome. I don't know if you see the dust test behind me or if you've heard of the dust test, but it's actually one of the tests I helped develop to test the environment. And then you could actually upload your mycotoxin results and it'll help you correlate whatever molds you have in your house with the toxins in your body.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I, you know, I don't know if I've heard of that or not. I mean, I have been doing uh mold stuff for a very long time. I think since it ever became a thing, I say very long, it's been like what, uh a decade or a decade and a half that it's really started to come even into the medical or even the fringes of functional medicine. Um, it certainly still isn't in the conventional model yet. Um, but you know, it's it's uh there's so much more of an awareness, which is awesome. So tell me again, so you can take the mold toxins that your doctor finds, like in your in, so we do a urine test, right? So you can do the urine test and then send it in to you guys and you can talk about the mold in the house.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so basically if you buy the dust test, which you know we have the way we do it is you integrate with doctors so doctors can provide it to their patients. And then if they have the test, they collect dust from across their house.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And then they basically send it in, it gets analyzed using PCR technology. So it's a DNA-specific analysis. And then you upload your doctor's mycotoxin report in the same portal, and it'll tell you any matches you have for the molds that are elevated in your house with the toxins that are elevated in your body. So it gives you some clarity as to like, okay, this this is being this is being caused by my house, and I need to do something about it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's really helpful because I do think there is some uncertainty around, am I currently in this environment? Like, is my current environment giving me the exposure? Is it somewhere that I have been recently or it was a long time ago? Right. Right? Because these people don't clear mold very well and they can build up in the system over a long period of time. So I can see that that would be very helpful.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely. And we'll talk offline about that, but I wanted to understand from your perspective, it how hard is it for someone to heal if they're still living in that environment?

SPEAKER_00

Well, it's very difficult, right? Because they continue to have that mold exposure. Now, I have some people that are like, well, if I can't remediate my house, I might as well not do anything, right? So that's not a good thing to do because we want to decrease the toxic load in the body. So, you know, you should always be working to reduce the toxic load, even if you can't do a full-on remediation. I also tell people, and you may or may not disagree with this, but you're never going to get fully away from mold. Like I have gone through my own uh, you know, on my own journey of clearing mold toxins. My son had some issues with brain function and learning when he was little and he was sick a lot, and I found out that it was mold. He was in a school that was really old and they were slowly renovating it, but I was like, I put it all together when we first started learning about it. And um, and I would say I moved from Colorado to Texas and in Texas, I'm in Houston, so it's so humid. The outside molds and the inside molds, even though they're not super high in my house, it's not, I'm not gonna ever be able to fully 100% live in a bubble, and I'm not gonna not travel. So, you know, for me, it's like reduce the load. I don't want to be living in it, I don't want to be, you know, uh breathing it in every single day. You want to do everything you can to improve the air quality that you're in all the time, but you also shouldn't necessarily be scared to travel if you if you can tolerate it. Like some people are super sensitive and and they really um it is more difficult for them to travel. Uh, but I just want to really always look to make sure the toxic load is down.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I for me and my experience and working with people over the past couple of decades, it it really comes down to controlling what you can control, right? So you can't do a full remediation, we'll say, what can you do, right? What how can we start to reduce the exposure to a level where you can actually start to get ahead of it? And you know, usually how I do that is I analyze data and I'm looking at, okay, well, where is the most toxic area? Is it the attic? Is it the HVAC? Is it the crawl space, right? How do we start to take approaches here where we could start to move the needle for people? Because I think what's one of the most challenging things is okay, now what? What do I do? Right. And so it's it's really helping people develop clear plans of here's the path that you should take. And obviously the biggest concern always is financial constraints. Like, how do I do this in a within a reasonable budget? And obviously the word reasonable budget is gonna be different for everybody, right? So it's really meeting people where they're at and helping them figure out. I mean, for some people, just getting like a super high-end medical grade filter for their HVAC at a cost of 2,500 bucks is gonna provide them a ton of value, right? And so, you know, it's really just understanding like what can they accomplish and how can they start to take steps forward. And obviously, that pairs exactly with what you do because we have to reduce the toxic burden, as you said. And so it's sort of a joint effort of let's do what we can, let's start taking steps steps forward, because certainly doing nothing isn't going to be the answer.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Uh yeah, I think we are in full disagreement with that. And I think, you know, doing what you can, you know, I I've had you just mentioned a few things, but like uh I didn't realize this in Colorado. Uh I didn't really have to clean my vents as much as I have to clean them in Texas. So we uh moved down here in a we I live in pretty much like a log cabin. So it's it's not fully uh uh there's there's some cracks from the outside coming in, right? So um it's not uh well what I was gonna say is we had them look test our house for mold and you know do some treatment in our house. And they said, Oh, you guys haven't cleaned your vents since you've lit moved here like four years ago. And they're like, you have to do that every single year. I'm like, oh my gosh, I had no idea. So we did a deep cleaning of our vents, we put that uh that um the light in the the the vents as well in the ducts so that we could minimize how much mold you know we're being exposed to every day and some air filters so there's things you can do.

SPEAKER_02

Good. I'm gonna recommend for you offline a medical grade filter for you as well because I think that will also get you some longevity in how often you need to clean your ducts.

SPEAKER_00

Oh sweet. That would be amazing.

SPEAKER_02

So what patterns do you see across patients who can't get better?

SPEAKER_00

Well what I typically see is when people are really struggling, it just means that you have an underlying imbalance that you haven't fully addressed yet, right? So everyone can get better. The body was born to heal. We are a self-healing organism but sometimes we just get knocked so far out of balance that the body has a hard time coming back into balance or what we would call homeostasis. And so really making sure that we follow or we get the testing done that tells us the answer of what's going on physiologically and really start to address all the underlying issues, that's mostly why people aren't getting better. And then the other piece of that puzzle is you know stress. And I think we can do all the things that we're supposed to do the eating right the taking our supplements the exercising the cleaning up our environment reducing toxins but if you don't address the stress component it can really keep someone stuck in fight or flight or in what we call sympathetic overdrive. And the body is not meant to be there long term and that is not a place think about if your body is in a state of fight or flight you're always trying to run fight or hide your body feels like it's always under threat. That is not a time for you to heal it's not a time for you to rest it's not a time for you to digest. And so I really work to help uh help patients get back into that parasympathetic state in order to calm down that sympathetic overdrive to give their body the best chance of healing and recovering and coming back into balance while we're dealing with all the physiological things.

SPEAKER_02

That makes sense so I want to give you like a hypothetical case and pay so if someone has like brain fog, fatigue and hormone issues what's your diagnostic order of operations?

SPEAKER_00

Is this a male or a female?

SPEAKER_02

Let's say it's a female.

SPEAKER_00

Okay so brain fog, fatigue and hormonal issues.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So the first thing that I would do is um I would go through my blueprint okay and so uh I have a thyroid transformation blueprint but you literally can put it onto any uh any disease process or symptom that we're dealing with okay so first of all uh we would think about okay what are the patient's goals what are the main symptoms what's the most important thing to them so that we're on the right page and then I would start looking at their health history and really understanding what they've had and experienced in the past and then the next thing is we've got to order the testing so that we can see what's going on. So someone who has fatigue who has brain fog and hormonal issues let's say they're hormonal issues most common let's say this is a perimenopausal patient. So maybe she has hot flashes maybe she's got some mood swings maybe she's got some anxiety and depression maybe her menstrual cycle is off so I would run I would really be looking at blood sugar I um blood sugar plays a huge role in hormones it plays a huge role in sleeping and energy it's literally how your body makes energy and how your body functions all the physiological processes in the body all the metabolic processes happen with your glucose regulation so I would look at blood sugar I would certainly look at thyroid I would definitely look at adrenal function. So your adrenal glands help your body handle stress they help your body regulate your blood sugar as you're moving into menopause when we are in perimenopause your adrenal glands start to take over the function of the ovaries so when those ovaries stop producing estrogen progesterone testosterone the adrenal glands kind of take that over and if your adrenal glands aren't doing well or they are fatigued or they're underfunctioning you can have that's when women have a lot of postmenopausal symptoms or what they call menopausal symptoms is because the adrenal glands aren't healthy enough to take over that hormone function. And so we go through these major phases of hormonal shifts. All right so I would look at all the hormones as well as adrenal function and then I would look at gut make sure and I would evaluate are there any underlying infections that might be going on and of course I would do a total toxest so that we could look at all of those toxins I mentioned environmental heavy metals and mold toxins. It's really important to understand that when we're dealing with autoimmunity we look at all of those kind of core underlying imbalances right so blood sugar hormones adrenal toxic load gut health food sensitivities but the really cool thing is they've been doing a lot of research that's been coming out in the last 10 years or so about brain health and dementia and Alzheimer's it's literally the exact same kind of pillars that we look at for brain health right your blood sugar is imperative underlying infections and toxic load in the brain we also have to look at the gut and the brain connection because the blood brain barrier communicates with the gut barrier and it communicates with the lung barrier as well like all of our barrier systems communicate. And so it's it's just really fascinating how the body works but that would be the first approach I would take is first let's not assume I'm thinking it could be thyroid blood sugar hormones adrenal glands. Okay those are maybe the primary things but let's test I love it when I'm surprised because that means I'm not like already going into a label and testing only you know a small amount of things but I want to make sure that we uh do the test and then you have to analyze appropriately and look at patterns. One of the biggest mistakes I see people make as they make their way into the functional world is they continue to think like the conventional model. So in conventional medicine like if your A1 hemoglobin A1C is above a 5.7 it's prediabetes right so they look at one marker if your TSH is above a 4.5 in some areas above five they diagnose you with hypothyroid. But in functional medicine because we're not looking and separating the body you've got to look at patterns right you've got to look at liver enzymes and inflammatory markers and cardiovascular health and you've got to look at how the body is all working and communicating together to understand how to prioritize what is it that we need to work on so that we aren't just guessing and we're actually have a uh a very clear path forward.

SPEAKER_02

Well I love that aspect of test don't guess I'm a huge fan of obnosis over assumption that's for sure I think it's very easy to fall into assumptions especially when you're dealing with cases and you see some similarities it's very easy to be like oh it's got to be this but then like you said you love when you get surprised and me too and what I do. It's really really fun. You know um what's interesting about people is when you interview them they talk a lot about how they've been to several different doctors doctor to doctor to doctor looking for answers trying different protocols things not working.

SPEAKER_00

Why do so many people try diets supplements detoxes and still don't get better yeah I think you know my answer may seem a bit redundant is because they're not getting down to the root cause and I have a maybe another caveat to this sometimes it takes longer than what we expect. I find that sometimes patients' expectations are um like it should be working overnight like a medication when they take a medication right like if you have a headache it takes the advil or tylen or whatever it is you're taking it takes like four two to four hours for it to kind of kick in and then your headache's gone right so when you're working with the body the body is very complex and if you're not doing the appropriate testing sometimes we're not doing enough to tip the scales in a short time so it so even if somebody is eating well right well that doesn't mean that the eating well is not working. It means that they may have other things that haven't been addressed yet to move the needle or tip the scale enough so that they actually start to move back into balance and the body feels well. One of the mistakes I see people do is they say okay I'm gonna change my diet and I have this expectation that I'm gonna lose 10 pounds in 30 days. So they change their diet for good and it might be a good change, right? It might they might say I'm gonna take soda out of my diet and so they do that for 30 days and they didn't lose 10 pounds and they're gonna say it didn't work. But they didn't really consider that maybe they're eating donuts and they're eating all these other you know all this other sugar was it a bad thing that they took out the soda? No. So they should keep the soda out but usually they're like that didn't work and so then they go back to drinking the soda again. So sometimes we I always talk to my patients about stacking habits right so we're gonna handle the highest priority things because we're testing we know the needle's gonna move but we don't know how quickly their necessary or how quickly their symptoms are going to go away. So we just start stacking habits. So we're gonna get their diet in we're gonna do supplements then we're gonna get the body moving we're gonna get their detoxifications go pathways going so that we can actually clear toxins and then we're gonna keep moving forward. Most of my patients it takes about eight to 12 months for them to really make substantial progress and most people aren't willing to stick with it that long because they're not testing so they can see progress or if their symptoms aren't getting better they give up and start something new. It's like they start that first part of the journey over and over and over again instead of continuing to move forward.

SPEAKER_02

What are the biggest mistakes that patients make when trying to self-heal that's a really good question.

SPEAKER_00

Well first you have to start with really having the belief that your body can heal number one right because if you have a belief that um you're different or you're not enough or you have a belief that it's not available to you these are the most these are the three common false beliefs that most people have and a lot of people will want to heal but in their mind they're thinking well this is genetic or this is the way that it is as you get older or this is what happens when we go through menopause. So they have these beliefs that block them from continuing to move forward on the path. So if you have that belief then you get stopped very easily and you go back to start right so you have to know fully that you were born to heal and that your body is capable of healing. After all the people that think that it's in their genes your gene expression depends on your environment. So if you start to change your environment you literally can change your gene expression. Your genes are not a death sentence uh they are essentially just responding to the environment so that is number one and if people um usually I can find if they are making excuses for why they haven't been able to stick with it or heal, you can almost always uncover a false belief in there that has to change and then it allows them to move forward.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah it's so incredible.

SPEAKER_00

I think false beliefs are so important you know a lot of us do like you said it I think the number one thing that I hear is people normalizing things like oh I'm just getting older oh I should be tired because I have little kids et cetera that's right like you know it's yeah and one of the most dangerous ones is uh well these are senior moments right they kind of minimize their brain function thinking that this is normal but one of the things that's extremely important is just because it's common doesn't mean that it's normal. We literally live in a very sick world especially in the United States. We are not the picture of health and so I don't know if I'd compare myself to any others in the United States, especially people who are you know having chronic degenerative diseases but if we would find someone else who isn't suffering from that, find someone that we can aspire to be then it'll actually help us reprogram our brain to say oh that's actually possible and I don't have to have dementia and chronic disease as I age I think that's well said.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah I I totally believe that it's really important to kind of align our beliefs so that we could actually open the door to a handling. I wanted to ask you because we beat up on traditional medicine a bit and nothing in life is perfect. I'm a huge fan of functional medicine but I think it's all important always to understand the pros and cons.

SPEAKER_00

Where do you feel functional medicine falls short that you've been able to kind of uh you know enhance in your practice well I think just to be clear there is a place a time and place for conventional medicine right like literally my son just dislocated his thumb he's a baseball player and he's texting me mom do I I just dislocated my thumb it might be broken uh should I go to urgent care? Like yes honey go to urgent care and call me when you get there. Okay so you know there's absolutely a time and place for conventional medicine. And then in functional medicine I think there's you know it can fall short a lot of practitioners that I have seen or come across they don't do enough testing and they don't set the patient up for success from the beginning. Like for me I like to get as much testing as I need in the beginning so I don't feel handcuffed and then I'm trying to guess as we move forward. So I think the testing is probably one of the most important things. But I I think that you know I would say this I'm trying to think about where does functional medicine fall short? For me making sure that we have the testing I like to do treatment plans up front so I can make sure to set the appropriate expectations for a patient so they're in it for the long haul not this come in one visit and then come back in 30 days or 60 days later I don't really like to practice that way because I want to have a plan. I want to see results I want to actually see patients have transformations. So I really like to set it up to uh set the expectation up front and make sure that I have the tools and they have the tools to succeed. Totally is there an important sequence to healing the body if you ask every functional medicine practitioner we're all going to have all of our own different answers. But I would say this um for us at our practice what we have seen work best is that for us we like to make sure that all of the detoxification pathways are open and functioning first, right? That's foundational for us to really support liver gallbladder digestion decrease inflammation that's the first thing that we do because if if you're with nutritional supplements we're always working on blood sugar from the get-go um but really making sure these detoxification pathways are open open because a lot of people try to detox a lot of people say I know I have mold I'm gonna go get on some binders or they're gonna go take charcoal but if they can't clear this out right you if they can't clear this out they're releasing the toxins in a more toxic form they're just gonna reabsorb them again into the cell so for us we want to make sure that all the detoxification pathways are open and they're being supported and then the next phase for us if we're talking about detoxification is to make sure that they have all of the the cofactors and the vitamins and the nutrients and the antioxidants in order to facilitate detoxification. And then we take them through more of a deep detox where we're using binders and things to clear the toxins out so they can appropriately clear them. Now along the way you customize make sure blood sugar is good for us handle underlying infections and so that's kind of the path or the process that we go through.

SPEAKER_02

So what do you think happens if you get the sequence wrong?

SPEAKER_00

Well that's when a lot of people they start to clear try to detox and then they get all these symptoms right so they can get rashes they can get like they can feel like they're getting the flu they can have diarrhea they can have massive headaches. I always know for me like when I'm detoxing if I'm detoxing too quickly I start to get headaches. I'm like okay I need to back off a little bit that was too much sauna or I need to support my liver and and and kind of go back. But it's you could that's when people start to get detox symptoms is when they their detoxification pathways are kind of overloaded with their toxic load.

SPEAKER_02

So the the other interesting thing that I I wanted to talk about today is you know I I personally see a lot of women as clients that typically are impacted by mold in their home or dealing with some sort of autoimmune deficiency, et cetera.

SPEAKER_00

Why do you think that women are disproportionately affected um I don't know if we're disproportionately affected by mold or not because um I think sometimes men just push through and they are less connected to their bodies um and usually with men the women the wives are dragging them into the doctor's office like you know to save them from an amputation.

SPEAKER_02

Although I did write down blood sugar that's good.

SPEAKER_00

That's good. But I and you know autoimmunity uh I think it affects all of us. I don't know the stats on are women or men affected more with autoimmunity. My thoughts are probably women are more affected with autoimmunity. And for me I my I my view is biased because I only see women um and I would say that most of the ladies that I'm seeing are all autoimmune. And I think that autoimmunity is growing like I said earlier and it's just more and more and more prevalent because we have such a toxic world and when your immune system has gone awry and you're uh you have so much toxic burden on the body then you're gonna have all of these symptoms and you're gonna suffer. I'm trying to think like my son as a when he was young was really affected by the mold. My husband was also affected by mold. But honestly if I didn't know about what I know my husband had some fatigue he had some brain fog but he was also you know in his 40s and testosterone levels were kind of going down. So we could have attributed to other things and would he have ever uh you know uh uh consulted with a doctor about that probably not because it wasn't something that was impacting his life most people don't change or get checked out until the pain is uh more until the pain overrides the pain of going to the doctor right so your your pain and your suffering has to be high enough where you can no longer deal with it anymore. But I I think that we have a big autoimmune issue um that is not really being addressed and that's why so many people are affected by mold and toxins.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah it's interesting like there's the chicken or the egg you know did I develop autoimmune disease and then get sensitive to mold that I get sensitive to mold and then develop an autoimmune disease and obviously there's a lot more research needed and all that but you know do I would say that you mentioned about if you had to guess 70 80% of your patients are dealing with mold toxins.

SPEAKER_00

You know and that's that's obviously very high and I see a lot of people and they're dealing with symptoms and issues and they have mold confirmed by testing their home do you think that environmental factors are a big missing link right now or a big missing piece right now in the functional medicine world um certainly I do and and I would say this I mean we've kind of been dealing with in in my practice mold like for the last 15 years um I don't know the exact timeline but that's kind of when things started coming into the forefront of of this world. But it takes like I don't know I think 35 years for some of the research to actually hit mainstream and that is if they have a drug for it right so it might even be longer or never for it to hit mainstream but you know I don't know I I just think that um not all functional medicine practitioners are dealing with mold. Don't have a lot of awareness of mold, and I was guilty of that too, like you know, prior to 15 years ago. But I think the more that we learn, the more research that's out there, the more that clinicians are kind of paving the way, like, okay, this is kind of how you look at this, this is how you test, and this is how we get great results. More and more practitioners are starting to put this into their practice.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, that's good to hear. Yeah, obviously, the more the merrier, you know, the more that we know about it, the more we can diagnose it and help deal with it. And I think that's a you know a big thing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I think the question that I have is why is it such a problem now? When it hasn't, maybe has it always been a problem? I don't think it has always been a problem. I wonder why it's such a an issue now. Is it with building materials? Is it with our immune systems? Is it with, you know, our toxic load overall with all the other environmental toxins that we're dealing with that haven't really been in our system? So I don't know. I I always am thinking about, you know, why is this such a problem? Why are people suffering? Kind of like why all of a sudden is everyone sensitive to gluten? But I think we can now look at the research as to when that kind of started exploding and what kind of happened in our environment. But I still haven't figured out why this mold thing is is such an issue now.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Well, I bet it's all connected when all is said and done. But interestingly enough, I I have a theory for that that answer. Okay. Um, you know, so in the 1970s, Richard Nixon's president, and we had a global energy crisis. So what we did in that response was push towards energy efficiency. And homes got cheaper to build, um, they got more efficient. Today they're building homes in six months or less, uh, where it used to be a two-year-long process, right? So we've sped up the process, cut a lot of corners, so houses are having more issues. Um, and certainly these homes that have been tighter and tighter and tighter, if you go back to the balloon frame structure, there was an air cavity between the exterior wall and the interior wall. And so if water came in, it had a, you know, it would typically go down to the crawl space, et cetera. But there would be materials weren't sandwiched together, trapping moisture. They were actually allowed to breathe and dry. Today, everything's on top of each other. So water comes in, it holds onto the water like a sponge, and mold only needs 24 to 48 hours to start to grow, right? And so then you start to really create this issue coupled with how tight these homes are, we're basically living inside of snow globes. So all the particles we put out into the environment, which is going to be hundreds and hundreds of millions of bacteria particles, virus particles. Then you've got all the chemicals we use, the microplastics in our clothes that shed into the environment. You've got mold and bacteria from water damage, um, and just you know, not a general lack of understanding of how to maintain certain things like HVAC systems. And what we start to do is we start to pack earlier, like you said earlier, right? But we start to pack these snow globes full of toxins, and we're just regurgitating it. The best analogy I can give you is if you've ever been in a car and turned the AC on, you know that little button that has like an arrow that goes back. Well, that that recycles the air instead of brings fresh air in from outside. And so when you do that, obviously you're regurgitating whatever particles are in there. Well, our houses, that's what they do. They essentially are recycling the air inside. So we're regurgitating our own mold and bacteria and viruses, et cetera. And so I think that has a lot to do with it. If you looked at the trajectory of how homes, you know, how homes are being built, how quickly they're being built, with a lot of oversight. I mean, even new construction homes are full of mold when they're being built, right? Because they're just shortchanging the process of making sure they dry out properly, removing any mold that does grow. Um, and so it's it's it's really a sad story. I mean, I think the the latest survey that's ever been done showed 50% of homes had a history of water damage in North America. I mean, that's a pretty large number. So when you start to compound that with all the other not so great things like our food supply, water supply, you know, it really becomes a compounding issue. So that's that's my theory.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I like your theory. I think it's a very sound theory. Yeah, and um I think it's 50% of all buildings in the United States have mold. I think that's pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_03

That's pretty bad.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And I think it's really disheartening. A lot of people say, no, my home was is is new. I'm like, well, that doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't mold in it. So, you know, let's test anyway. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So I like to ask two sort of fun questions towards the end of the show. And um, one is what's the biggest lie that you've uncovered in medicine? Um, and it can be in any area of medicine, but just like what is one of the biggest lies that you've realized is just not true whatsoever as you started practicing?

SPEAKER_00

Um that's an interesting question. I've never been asked that. So I I would say that um one of the biggest lies that I, you know, continue to come up with in front for conventional medicine or it in the general uh, not necessarily conventional medicine, but in the general medical model is that you know they they treat everything like the body can't handle it, right? So they always are overriding the body system and not getting the body back into balance. So that the whole model, I think, is like, you know, sometimes the body needs to be rescued, but really the body just needs to be put back into balance most of the time, unless it's in an if an actual emergency situation.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. No, well said, that totally makes sense. The other question that I have for you is a little bit more, we might need to let our hair down here. And it's uh we're I like to talk about controversies mainly because you know what's interesting about controversies, they usually start off as highly controversial, and then we find some truth in it, and then usually 20 years later, all the studies come out, and it was like, yeah, that was actually true. What what is a controversy that you've uncovered that's been true for you?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I mean, where do I start? All right, so let's let's see. Um the biggest thing that uh, you know, this is really controversial. Um the biggest thing for me is uh I just don't think that we need vaccines. So for me, I do not vaccinate and I do not vaccinate my children ever or nor my animals. Um I think that we can really work with the body, we can work with uh how healthy the body is, and it should be able to overcome any of those viruses that we vaccinate for. And the more research that we do and the more uh things come out, it's usually backed up by science, but not always the science that we want to uh let out.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, there's actually a great documentary by an attorney about vaccines and how unproven they actually are, uh, which I think is important for people to know because obviously not a lot of people know that. We trust you know our authorities, et cetera, and we don't always get the real story until much, much later. Um why do you think it's so controversial? I think one of the arguments that I always hear is you know, uh, if if my kid's not vaccinated and or if my kid's vaccinated, your kid's not vaccinated, your kid's putting my kid at risk, but isn't that the point of the vaccine? Help me understand that.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Yeah, that is the point. That's that's why I don't understand that either. So it how could my kid be putting your child at risk if your child is vaccinated? Because that is the point of the vaccine, right? Is to protect them from getting that disease process. Um, so you know, to me that didn't make sense. One of the things where I was like shocked is that they had never done a study where they compared non-or unvaccinated children to vaccinated children. Uh that when they did those studies, they always put it compared to another vaccine or they compared it to using some other thing. It was never to an unvaccinated person versus a vaccinated person. And so there was some studies that had been done independently that showed uh huge change huge differences where the vaccinated um cohort was significantly unhealthier than the unvaccinated state.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah, I know I saw that study. It was pretty mind-blowing.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And it's an important discussion, you know, whether it makes people uncomfortable or not, these things are really important for us to look at data and for us to learn from data and not just to blindly trust, you know, the manufacturers of these products that are looking to turn a buck by selling the products. You know, I think it's it is important that we come with an open mindset and really observe for ourselves. And look, if you observe the data and you still want to get vaccinated, that's a that's a choice. And I think that's a choice that everyone has to make for themselves.

SPEAKER_00

Um, but I think they've put so much fear into the population that that's where it becomes so heated, right? There's so much fear um without actually having the knowledge. And then then because there has been so much misinformation or the studies that they've done, they haven't been, you know, unless you're a scientist that looks through these studies and understands what they're doing, you know, to a general population, they're not going to go look at the studies and analyze the studies. They're going to really look and take advice from the people that they trust. And it's not that, you know, necessarily that doctors are a lot of doctors didn't even know that they there weren't those studies either. And so I think there's a lot of fear, and there is uh they've withheld information. And I think it's now it's like, well, who do you trust? So it's it's a it's an interesting predicament we're in now.

SPEAKER_02

Totally. Yeah. And then obviously more studies, more time. We're gonna learn more.

SPEAKER_03

Yep.

SPEAKER_02

And you know, people continue to make personal decisions for themselves. And sure. I would say that I think it's really important not to judge others, you know, don't judge someone if they choose to or not to get the vaccines. Um, I think that's a really personal choice. You know, it's you're putting something in your body. Uh, you know, and I think that you have to agree with putting something in your body, and we have to stop judging one another for that, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I would just really encourage people to make educated decisions and not fear-based decisions. Um, and so that that is, and if you decide, whatever you decide, we should support, you know, whatever decisions people make because it's a very personal decision.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, you know, for this conversation today. I know I learned a lot. I'm sure my listeners learned a lot as well. I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy day to be here with us, to share all of your wisdom. It was so appreciative. Can you before you go, can you please tell everyone where they can find you, how they can work with you? Um, I know that I need to get a blood sugar panel done. And hopefully, if you're listening and you haven't done that, you have that same idea.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so um, the way that people can find me is on Facebook. I have a very large group at the moment. We just hit 250,000 ladies in that group. Um, it's called Happy, Healthy, and Lean. Um, and for us, we really specialize in ladies who are dealing with low thyroid or any kind of thyroid issue, even if the thyroid's been taken out. So that's the place to go. I do masterclasses and thyroid Thursday, and I'm in there every single day. So it's a really lovely community, and then uh the path forward will kind of start there.

SPEAKER_02

That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking time to be here with us, and we'll see you soon.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been fun.