B (4:45)

Oh my goodness. Candace. Hi.

A (4:47)

Hi. I'm so happy you're here. We, we are new friends.

B (4:52)

Yes.

A (4:52)

And we have had this incredible season. I had Lisa Whittle on. We had 12 weeks of conversations talking about our body and soul and how we view our body, what we think about ourselves, but more importantly, what God thinks about us. And while we've been on this journey talking about health, women's health and, and all of the emotional feelings, we really dug into the theology which is which I feel and Lisa has felt has been missing so much from so many of our lives when we are on this body journey of life.

B (5:34)

Right. Right.

A (5:35)

And so those conversations have, I, you know, have probably been at this point our most watched season and the most questions have come in from the season as well. And it was very important to me because Lisa's not a doctor, I'm not a doctor and we can talk Bible and we can talk feelings really well too. And I'm so happy that we really dug into that theology. But I felt that it was really, really important to bring on a doctor and someone that had some really good, solid advice that knows a whole lot more than we do and that we could answer a lot of the questions that are coming in.

B (6:18)

Oh, my gosh.

A (6:19)

So here you are. Here you are. Well, you. I, you know, read part of your, your bio, and I would just love to hear for you to share your story about how you got started and, you know, tell us your starting place and where you are now. Give us a brief synopsis.

B (6:38)

Well, I would just love to mention that when I started watching the episodes with Lisa, I was just taken aback by how incredible God works in our lives because he's been downloading this message to me about scripture and faith and our bodies and how important it is to reconnect that. And here Lisa is talking about the same thing. And I'm just thinking there's so much revival going on right now. He's working through so many people, and you are connecting these women and, like, getting the word out. So thank you for even providing this platform because women need a voice and another choice. And I'm excited for these conversations we're going to have because you're right. Women are more confused than ever.

A (7:28)

I certainly am. So I can't wait to deep dive on it. Some hard questions I have.

B (7:33)

Yeah. So God has been setting me up since I was a little girl, honestly. I was raised in the Catholic Church. I knew Jesus loved me and I was going to heaven, but I was a wild child. I did not listen to authority. I wanted to do things my way. I always, you know, live by the mantra, rules are made to be broken. And so by the time I was 17, I was pregnant. And, you know, I finished out 11th grade. My high school counselor didn't want me to finish out. She said, you are a bad example. I don't want the other girls seeing you showing because then they're going to think they're pregnant. Yeah. So the adults in my life were, you know, not encouraging me to finish school. So I did finish out 11th grade. I didn't go back for 12th grade because I had my daughter. Wow. And I, you know, grew up without health insurance, so I had to go on Medicaid. I went on food stamps. I was assigned this grumpy old doctor.

A (8:37)

Can I ask where. Where were your. Were your. Was your relationship with your parents strong?

B (8:44)

Yes. In the sense that they were good people, good Catholic family, lots of family. They were working and taking care of the little ones and Doing what they needed to do to survive. And so I was kind of on my own. That's just how we grew up, where I grew up. And so I had to figure things out. And I was assigned this older gentleman who was on the verge of retirement. I had a very traumatic labor and delivery for women who have had babies, they know about being torn. I had a fourth degree tear and it was never the same.

A (9:23)

Okay.

B (9:26)

Came to realize that he was a family practice doctor, he wasn't an obstetrician. He used forceps on me. All of this invasive stuff that there was no conversation about. And.

A (9:35)

And you didn't know at 17 the kinds of questions you should ask.

B (9:39)

Exactly. I was scared. I trusted the white coats. I just thought, they know what's best. I'm not going to say anything, but watching my daughter just laying there in the warmer, feeling violated while I got stitched up for like an hour, just in excruciating pain, I. I just vowed to never let her go through that. And it was one of those come to Jesus moments. He was like, you can't let any women go through this. Like, you need to use your voice. And I went on this journey of developing Hashimoto's after I delivered. And that is like this acute thyroid storm where your thyroid overacts. And you know, 30 years later, I came to understand that I wasn't using my voice and that's why my thyroid was attacked. But that's a whole nother thing we can talk about. And I eventually went back, got my ged, went to medical school, became a doctor like God wanted me to. I did all the things, but fast forward 20 years, I was so burnt out, I couldn't walk away from the OR table. My back was in such excruciating pain, I would just bend over and wake up.

A (10:53)

And the OR table. Because you were delivering.

B (10:54)

Because I was doing C sections or hysterectomy surgeries at 2 8.

A (10:58)

So you became a gynecologist and an obstetrician?

B (11:02)

Yeah.

A (11:02)

Okay.

B (11:02)

Yeah. And here's the thing. I was doing it without God, even though he gave me this mission. And it was like, this is my calling. And I was all in. I was trying to do it all out of my own might, my own fruition. And I burnt myself out completely to the point where I had to take time off. I had back surgery, came back five days later and re injured and couldn't move. Christmas Eve, I was stuck in a delivery on a bed helping a woman push and I couldn't get off the bed. I was. Wow. Yeah, it was life. It was a life altering moment. I went back.

A (11:43)

Was the lady's baby okay?

B (11:45)

Yeah. Thankfully I had a backup partner who came in and took over. You know, it wasn't that imminent that the baby was coming.

A (11:54)

Right. Okay.

B (11:57)

And I went back to the surgeon. You know what he said to me? This is after I just took six weeks off to heal. He said, back surgery is like lay's potato chips. You can't have just one. Well, just put some rods and screws in your back. You might herniate above and below and need more surgeries. But it's okay. It's not a big deal.

A (12:15)

Like, what are you talking about?

B (12:17)

It's not a big deal? I'm 40 years old and you want to put hardware in my back, like time out? So I did the unthinkable and I left my job for four months. I left all the patients that I thought could never live without me, all the things. And I realized I was trying to carry my entire life myself, raise my little babies, my older daughter, all my patients, be chief of staff of the hospital, OB chief of the department. Like, I was carrying it. My back was screaming at me to put that down. And then I found this whole world of health and wellness, which you know all about and a lot of people know about because they watch daytime tv, they read books.

A (12:59)

But what's amazing to me is you, you just said, and then I found health and wellness. And yet you're a doctor, you're a medical doctor.

B (13:07)

Ding, ding, ding.

A (13:10)

So tell me about that, because I think that some people's mind is being blown right now. Like, don't doctors know everything? Or don't they have a better, bigger understanding than we do? And what is the difference between a medical doctor and health and wellness?

B (13:25)

Yes, Incredible questions that I didn't understand as a doctor. And I, I was just talking, you know, before we got on set, that doctors are really ingrained in their minds, that they are the healers, they are the ones with the answers. The patient needs to listen to them. If you don't do what they say, you're non compliant, that type of thing. And the truth of it is, it's a world of diagnosis and disease. It's very biased. When you're in that world, all you see is disease and dysfunction. Even as an OB gyn, women are supposed to be mostly healthy, coming in for pregnancies and stuff, but it was some of the most unhealthy patients ever. Diabetes, hypertension, pcos, all of these Things. And we did not learn about this as doctors. We did not learn how to make people well. So even the absence of disease is not the same thing as being healthy. They are separate. So that makes sense. Yeah. I get women who say, I went to the doctor, I'm good for another year. You know, they didn't get another diagnosis. So they internalize that. To me, they're healthy, yet they're carrying 30 pounds of extra weight, and they're in chronic pain and struggling.

A (14:46)

Okay, so I. I want to talk all about. We have so many listener questions, but we're really going to break up the next three episodes, and I'm going to give you the foreshadowing here. We. I really want to talk about periods. I want to talk really in stages of life. Okay, so when we as women have our periods, what that means we're going to do a whole episode on perimenopause. That's going to be next week. And then the following week we're going to do post menopause, which is so much of my audience listening is perimenopause or post menopausal. However, there's so much about the period, and we do have a lot of young listeners, too. So if you think this episode is not for you, please, please stay tuned and continue to listen, because I've learned so much about it. But. So as we talk about our bodies, let's talk about. Well, you can just start where you feel is. Is right when it go. When we talk about periods, I want to talk about birth control, how that affects the body. Or maybe there's another. Is there another starting point?

B (15:56)

I think it's really important for women to realize that their period is a message from their body about how they're functioning. Just like our bowel movements, which nobody wants to talk about. How is your pooping going? That is telling you so much about how your body is functioning. And the period is doing the same thing. Unfortunately, we have millions of women on hormonal birth control, and so they're getting this false sense of having a period when that's not really a period, that's a withdrawal bleed. So the information you're receiving is not the same. So let me break that down, because in 2015, the American College of OB GYNS said your period is a vital sign, kind of like when you go in and get checked. They do your weight and your blood pressure and your pulse, their baseline indicators of health. And they said the period is a baseline indicator of health. I completely agree with that. But they didn't parse out the part that it can't be on hormonal birth control. So we have all these women walking around thinking that there's nothing wrong with them. And then they eventually come off the pill and they're not having periods or they can't get pregnant or they're having these other medical problems. And so honestly, what is happening is normal puberty. Your ovaries are little, you know, organs down in your pelvis. You have two of them, they're kind of dormant and when you go through puberty, they awaken. And I think of them like a factory. The factory turns on, all the lights come on and the parts start moving and they start making hormones. They start ovulating and releasing eggs every month. And this factory is supposed to continue to function until your about 51. That's the average age of menopause. And unfortunately a lot of things disrupt that factory and try to shut it down. But the important part is those ovaries are talking to the brain and the brain is talking back. So there's this two way conversation going on all the time between all the hormones produced in your brain and the ovaries. Birth control shuts down that communication so that you're taking hormones, your ovaries aren't making them. So there's this false sense of, oh, I'm regulating my period, I'm regulating my hormones. No, we're not, we're shutting them down. And so I lied to my patients for a long time not knowing because that's how I was trained.

A (18:37)

So what happens when we take birth control like the pill? What are the most common side effects that you're seeing in women?

B (18:47)

Yeah, so initially a lot of girls go on birth control for symptoms. You've probably heard of girls going on.

A (18:55)

It for acne, the biggest one. I mean, been there.

B (18:59)

Yeah, me too. And the saddest part is there's no rhyme or reason for which birth control pill your doctor prescribes. It's literally a crapshoot. Wow. If this one didn't work, we'll try this one. It's like a different progestin, a different dose of estrogen. It's got a seven day placebo where it's continuous. It's all, you are the guinea pig. It's all just a guessing game because honestly, we're trying to shut down what's happening in your body and overriding it. And so we sometimes use it for symptom control, but we oftentimes create symptoms when we go on the pill. So we See, anxiety and depression, mood disorders. We use it to help pms, but oftentimes it makes mood issues worse.

A (19:50)

See, this is what's so crazy when I hear you say this, because I. I've talked openly about dealing with depression in my life, and that first started in my very early 20s, and there were circumstances around that certainly played into it. But that's also when I went on birth control, because I. I met my husband at 18, I was married at 20. So that's when all of that started happening for me. But I never, ever thought that birth control could have something to do with maybe something that was inherently there, but making it worse or possibly causing it. I don't know.

B (20:37)

Yeah, well, and here's the hard part to discern is, is it the synthetic estrogen and progestin that you're taking, or is it the sequelae that comes from being on the pill? So birth control pills deplete major vitamins and minerals in our body, but no one tells you that when you sign up to go on the pill. I didn't tell my patients that. I didn't learn that until I went on to the Cleveland Clinic Institute of Functional Medicine.

A (21:03)

Right. And no one's really reading that. Those. The little instruction pamphlet that they give you, that little. Are so. Right. Well, no, it's really little. And it's folded like, a hundred times, and you open it up and you can't read the words because they're too small. And we're not reading that to see every single side effect. You kind of see maybe like, oh, it might cause an upset stomach or headaches or diarrhea or, you know, and you just go, eh, whatever part of life. And you move on.

B (21:32)

Right, because you're trusting your doctor who gave it to you. And so we have millions of women on birth control pills who become deficient in B vitamins. And B vitamins are essential for mental health, energy, mood, focus. It depletes our magnesium, which, you know, most women at this point know the amazing benefits of magnesium. We could talk about that. But it also changes your gut microbiome, the bacteria that live in your body and make your neurotransmitters, like your serotonin and your gaba.

A (22:05)

And what's gaba?

B (22:06)

So GABA is an amazing calming neurotransmitter. It helps us not feel anxious. It helps us calm down and go to sleep. And so when we have these disruptions going on, it can manifest as an anxiety disorder, depression. So, like, my heart breaks for you. My heart breaks for me because I've lived through all of this myself as well, but I see it every single day. Day women. You know, my friends will text me, should my daughter go on birth control pills? She's dealing with this or that. It's like, if you're not using it for birth control, please don't use it for that. Find out the root cause of why you're struggling and, and take care of that.

A (22:50)

Yeah. So I would, I would say the biggest reason people take birth control other than birth, for birth control is acne. What are some of the other reasons it might be prescribed?

B (23:02)

So a lot of the times it's for to regulate periods, Quote, unquote, regulate. And a lot of women have this undiagnosed pcos, polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is actually insulin resistance, blood sugar issues more than anything. And putting them on a pill gives them a monthly period so that everybody feels better. The doctor thinks they fixed them, the patient thinks she's better, but it's only masking the problem. So when they try and come off that pill, the PCOS comes back and they're like, why can't I get pregnant? Why can't I lose weight? Why am I struggling? And so it really is important to have informed consent. That's what I'm, I'm not here to judge or tell you you should or shouldn't do anything. All I know is, for me, if I would have had true and informed consent, I would not have been on birth control as long as I was because it very much contributed to me having depression and chronic gut issues and, you know, ending up on five different medications.

A (24:09)

And what about ibs? Irritable bowel syndrome? I, I, I don't have it anymore. I'm so grateful. But can I tell you, in my early years, I have some of the most embarrassing stories of my life. Like, only my close, close friends share it. And I don't know if I'm just feeling really open. I, like, I've told him, if he, it's like, what's the craziest story that's ever happened to you that I have, I have a couple of those stories, and it has to do with ibs. I mean, it's awful and humiliating and so embarrassing. But is that something that could be affected by birth control?

B (24:51)

Absolutely. I am right there with you. I have some horrible stories. I, during my internship, I was interviewing a woman who just got diagnosed with breast cancer as a, you know, I'm an intern. My little white coat. I'm, I'm like, trying to Give empathy. And she's crying and I need to go and have diarrhea. Like, I'm dying over here. Yeah, it was the birth control pill.

A (25:16)

Oh, wow. Never made that connection. Had no idea.

B (25:21)

I know somebody's like having an aha right now and we're gonna save them because I suffer. Like. How long did you suffer? I suffered forever.

A (25:32)

Thankfully, I wasn't on birth control for very long. I was only on for a few years because then we had. I had our daughter Natasha when I was 22 years old. And then I. I wasn't on birth control, which I want to now talk about other birth control options because I had my kids at 22, 23, and 25.

B (25:54)

Boom, boom, boom. You just bang em up.

A (25:57)

Yeah. So just a few years I was on that, but then I switched to a different form of birth control. So. Because I have so many questions that I'm trying to, like, stay on track. Well, then I went to an iud.

B (26:16)

Okay.

A (26:17)

I want to know about all the different forms of birth control because the reality is, after I had my children, I didn't keep up on different kinds of birth control and what happens with each kind. Because as I have gotten older, I've now learned that some. What I would have considered safe and fine are types of birth control are actually abortive fashions.

B (26:44)

Yeah.

A (26:45)

And so now I'm very interested in this because I have a daughter. I have daughters in law or a daughter in law. I hope to be a grandmother one day, and I want to be informed on this. So if there are a lot of side effects that many of us are unaware from birth control pills, can you tell us some of the other options of birth control and some of the things we might not know about them or what we should know?

B (27:14)

Yeah, I think this is a great conversation because you're probably not gonna get this full, informed conversation with your doctor. They're gonna, in their mind, they're gonna tell you what they think is the best option for you. I see it all the time. And I just want to throw in there that if you are struggling with acne, it's almost always a gut issue. So we're going to talk about that more next episode. But yes, the skin is a mirror or reflection of what's going on in your gut. So just know that, ladies. So, okay, back to birth control. You have hormonal types of birth control. The birth control pills are almost always a combination of an estrogen and a progestin. So they're all synthetic progestins. Here's the deal. We make progesterone. That is the biochemistry. Like, if you've ever taken chemistry class, you see the carbons and the hydrogens and all the things around the circles. Progestins look a little bit like that, but they're not exactly the same as the progesterone our body makes. It works the same on the uterus to prevent the lining inside the uterus from growing the endometrium. That is what we grow every month and we shut off as a period. So these different progestins are very strong and potent, and that's what we use in all of the different forms. So there's many pills which are just progestins, and that we like to give after pregnancy when a mom is nursing, because we don't want to give estrogen that can affect the baby. A depo shot is another form of a progestin only. Or the nexplanon rod, the implanon rods that go in our arms, they can stay in there for years. Those are all progestins. Then you talk about IUDs. There's progestin only IUDs, and they come in different doses. So there's a highest dose, a middle dose, and a lower dose. The idea is that these thin out that endometrial lining so they don't grow. It also thickens the cervical mucus, so sperm aren't supposed to get through the cervix. Then you have barrier methods like diaphragms, sponges, condoms, that prevent the sperm from ever getting past the cervix. So when we think of birth control, the ideal is that we don't ovulate. We don't ever release an egg so that it can never meet a sperm and get fertilized. That's what we don't want, right? So the birth control pills, the combos, they make your body think that you've already ovulated and that you are in the second phase of your cycle, the luteal phase. And so you just kind of like staying in this luteal phase all the time. And so you never ovulate the progestin, only hormonal stuff. They thicken the mucus, they thin out the lining. But that ovary might ovulate. And so progestin only, like a mini pill or an especially. Plan B, the emergency over the counter. Oh, my gosh, I just had intercourse. I don't want to get pregnant. I'm not anything. Let me take this. That has the potential to have you still ovulate and have a fertilized egg that then you get rid of. So that is what you're not wanting. Okay, got it. The IUDs also have that potential, but the hormonal IUDs, because they thin that endometrial lining so much, even if the egg and the sperm meet and become fertilized, it can't implant because there's no plush, thick lining to grow into. There's no little pillow for them. And so we think of it as a bortificant or border fashion. I. I can never pronounce that word. But it does have that potential. So, you know, in that regard, it's like the emergency pills and the IUD more than anything interesting. Yeah. So luckily they're so effective at causing a hostile environment inside the uterus that most of the time the sperm just don't survive. The sperm actually has to get not into your uterus, but all the way into your fallopian tube. Your egg is hanging out in the fallopian tube to meet up, not in the uterus. So it has to travel all the way up and then come back down. So I honestly think it's a very, very small percentage of the time that it's happening and you are getting rid of a fertilized egg. It's just a very low percentage. Does that make sense?

A (31:59)

Yes, it does.

B (32:00)

Okay. So, you know, after I had a baby at 17, that doctor gave me a diaphragm. Like you have a 17 year old, a diaphragm.

A (32:09)

I bet there's people listening that have no idea what a diaphragm is.

B (32:14)

Oh, my goodness.

A (32:15)

Do you want to share?

B (32:16)

I mean, it's a little circle device. It used to be made of rubber. It's probably made of silicone now. And you put spermicide or gel that kills the sperm and then you put it up inside the vagina. You have to leave it there for hours after intercourse. All the sperm die and then remove it. And I was so good. Like, I did not get pregnant using that. That was all God, because I don't know how I did it. But, you know, that is a nice way to not affect your hormones, just to use those barrier methods. Or the best ways are the rhythm, the natural family planning where you're paying attention to your cycle every month. And here's the cool thing, like you really are only fertile for probably four to four to five days. Because the day you ovulate around day 14, the sperm can get in and last a couple of days and hang out, wait for that egg to be released. So there's two days and then the egg lives for a couple days. So there's about a four to five day window where you can actually connect and get pregnant. But outside of that you really can't. But here's the problem. A lot of women don't have regular periods so they don't know how to follow that natural family planning. And if you're nursing and breastfeeding and not having periods, you can get pregnant before you ever have a period. And I know there's women watching going, yep, that's my mom.

A (33:44)

I think my mom with my brother and sister because they're considered Irish twins.

B (33:48)

Oh yeah.

A (33:49)

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B (36:53)

But.

A (36:54)

But can you explain an entire period in the month and the different phases of a cycle?

B (37:01)

Oh my gosh, I would love to, because I don't think we know this as women. Oh my goodness, this is so sad. Okay, so day one is the first day we start bleeding. That is cycle day one. And we try to aim for a cycle of 28 days. They say 21 to 35 is, quote unquote normal, but in my mind, we're getting way outside the normal realm once you're getting that far apart. So day one, you start bleeding, you bleed five to seven days. Around day five, our estrogen starts to rise. Our ovaries make estrogen. It starts to increase. That triggers the lining inside the uterus to stop shedding and being bled off and removed. Because you're not just bleeding blood, but you're actually removing, removing that tissue that grew that endometrial lining. So you shed actual tissue. And so that shedding stops and it starts to regrow a new month from estrogen. Estrogen's a growth hormone.

A (37:59)

And that's why you feel good after, right after your period that with at least that first week feels great. You feel like your stomach's a little flatter, you feel a little lighter. You don't feel bloated. That's what that first week is.

B (38:14)

Yeah. And you're like, I'm gonna run a marathon. I'm gonna start a whole new workout routine. Like you get all these plans because estrogen is very motivating. It's our natural antidepressant hormone. It makes us feel good. And so that's on the rise. And then testosterone starts to creep in and rise up. That's our motivation hormone. It gives us drive. Not just sex drive. I mean, the whole process purposes we're trying to procreate. So it gives you sex drive, but it gives you drive for life. So you're like, yeah, let's actually start training for that marathon. And then our brain says, okay, it's time to release the ovary. And so it shoots out luteinizing hormone, and that triggers the ovary to release an egg. That's.

A (38:58)

And that's ovulation. Okay, so now ovulation for me, hurts. It's. I feel it. I know exactly the day in the 24. I don't know if it's 24 hours, but I feel it for 24 hours about. And it's painful. So I know exactly when I'm ovulating, and I feel like the cramp feels worse than a period for me at this point. So what is that?

B (39:21)

Oh, my goodness. So that egg literally has to burst through, out of your ovary. So if you look at an ovary closeup that has just ovulated, it looks like the wall of it has been shred open. It bursts through. So, yes, some women really feel that, and some women make more prostaglandins, this like, pain feeling chemical to go along with it. So the. The more pain, usually the more prostaglandins. And sometimes that's associated with chronic inflammation and gut issues. Okay. And it depends on how often you ovulate. So we know that girls who just started and they're brand new to ovulating, their ovaries haven't done it a lot, usually have a lot more pain or if you've been on birth control pills, but a little bit of pain for that day, totally normal.

A (40:18)

Okay.

B (40:19)

Okay.

A (40:19)

Yeah.

B (40:20)

And then that area that's left over where the egg actually lived is called the corpus luteum. And that area inside the ovary starts producing progesterone. So as the estrogen rises again, the progesterone rises as well and actually goes even a little higher. And so progesterone is our anti anxiety hormone. It calms us down, it chills us out. So the second phase of the cycle, the luteal phase, the first one's the follicular. The second phase, our body's trying to prepare because it thinks it's going to get pregnant or that it is pregnant. And so you. You want to chill. You're like, man, I want to just go to yoga now. I just want to, like, relax and get a massage. And I'm not actually gonna do that marathon. Like, what was I talking about? And like, everything shifts, and that is progesterone. Coming in and calming you down and hoping that you fertilize that egg and get pregnant. And then when that egg does not implant into that lining that has been growing all month, it triggers the drop of those hormones. So the little ovary factory shuts down. Production, estrogen and progesterone and testosterone all drop, and the lining sheds and you begin again.

A (41:37)

And that's your day one. That's so interesting. The progesterone. You know, when you have a big event or something exciting or maybe it's something from work and it's your day that you have to present. I mean, whatever that is. And so you're a little nervous, and the last thing you want is your period because you go, oh. Or you're PMSing. And I don't want to feel bad. And I've come to realize over the years that it's actually the best thing for me because when I get nervous, that part of my cycle, if it's right before my period, it mellows me out. And I'm like. I mean, I don't want the bloating and the. And the cramping. I'm like, oh. But it actually calmed my nerves and down because now I'm like, whatever. I just. I'm cramping right now. So this is. This isn't even important what I have to do. And then I actually end up doing a better job because my nerves aren't frazzled.

B (42:34)

Isn't that incredible?

A (42:35)

It is incredible.

B (42:36)

I know. I can't wait for next week when we talk about perimenopause, because progesterone just saves so many women's lives. It's such a good hormone. That's why most women feel good during pregnancy, at least mentally and emotionally, because that level is so high in pregnancy.

A (42:53)

So I love having my period at this point in my life because I've. I understand that it. It gives me life, you know, it's. Things are working. So how do we set our minds for the. For women that just have such uncomfortable periods, they're horrible. Maybe they're not consistent, or maybe the cramping is so bad. I mean, there's so many other symptoms that can go along with it. How do we look at it from a more positive mindset? Instead of going, ah, my period's coming. This is awful. How do we look at it as this wonderful thing that my body's doing? And this is actually, if it's running properly and right, this is a good thing that I have.

B (43:36)

We need to start as young girls and teach them that this is actually a beautiful thing. And getting back to the beginning of our conversation, it is telling you so much about how your body is functioning. So we need to start to learn how to see that as a positive thing, that, oh my gosh, we are healthy or hey, we have some things to work on. So if you are having really painful periods or they're heavy, or they're dredging on, or you're spotting in between, or you're having severe pms, that stuff's not normal. That means there are some root causes of the things we need to address and take care of. So it's an opportunity. And I hear all the time women going through menopause and they're like, darn it, I just wish I could have my period back because I felt so much better. I had no idea. And I've been wishing it away this whole time. So I'm here to say, like, be happy you still have this hormone production because without it, you are going to change and we're going to dive deep into that. But your hormones make you who you are. They give you your personality, they give you your energy and your brain the ability to function and produce and do things. They give you the ability to love and feel and desire and connect with people. And when they go away, it doesn't feel good. So yeah, embrace that period, but don't suffer if there's something going on we need to investigate.

A (45:06)

Right. So how would someone find out about their gut issues, all of the underlying issues that their doctor is telling them birth control is going to fix this. Or they don't even question and say, well, what is your diet like? What are some of those questions that you would ask one of your patients?

B (45:25)

I would love to go back to when I was an obgyn for a minute because I was a highly sought after robotic surgeon. I would take on the worst of cases. If you had stage four endometriosis or 10 centimeter fibroids growing, I would remove it all robotically through little incisions. And so I did these hard cases and I would spend hours dissecting bowels away from the uterus tubes and ovaries because they would be scarred together. And I was trained to believe that it was all the endometriosis like driving this scar production and this inflammation. And we just needed to suppress the estrogen more and keep doing surgeries every one to two years. And when I went on to study functional medicine, what I learned was our gut health determines our gyne health, not the other Way around. So it's stuff happening in your gut that is seeping out into the pelvic organs. There's infections and inflammation going from the inside of your gut to your ovaries, uterus, and tubes and driving this endometriosis. So it's an inflammatory process. And I didn't know that as an OB gyn, we don't learn about the gut microbiome. And I mean, we learn basic digestive stuff in, like, one class on the GI tract, and it was not helpful. So when I really got into functional medicine and learned about the intricacies of the gut microbiome and how it really is running, everything that's happening in our body, like, I was just in shock. First of all, I was angry that I had, like, done all this band aid medicine and I had done all these surgeries on women, and a lot of it was probably not necessary because we weren't fixing the. The root problem of where it was coming from.

A (47:19)

So is gut health all based on the foods we eat and the things we drink, or is it also based on our stress level, how much sunshine we get or don't get, what our work environment, our living environment is? Tell me about gut health. What affects it?

B (47:36)

Oh, my gosh, such a great question. Everything. So, you know, I didn't learn about nutrition or eating well as a doctor, so I didn't realize that food is information. And it is telling our body to either create disease or to create. Create health. So food is a big part of that. And in America, we have a lot of food that is bad for us, but it is so much more than that. It is our stress. It is the toxins in the environment. And so we have to be able to evaluate that. And when I see a woman for these issues now, what we do is we look at her entire history. We do a timeline of her whole life. And I ask, when did your period start? When did the symptoms start with surgeries? Have you had. Did you grow up on a farm with a bunch of pesticides and toxic chemicals? Did you have traumas in your life, your parents, divorce, someone die? All of these things? Because what we now understand and can see in stool testing, which is super cool, is that you have different things happening in the gut that are affected by chronic stress or cortisol, different things that are affecting your immune system, different things that are killing off your good bacteria and causing yeast overgrowth. Like, we get to see all of this in functional stool testing, which is incredible, and it is saving women's lives.

A (49:13)

So this can also feel so overwhelming. Everyone I know, everyone listening, you're watching and you're going, great, so where do I start? Where do I start? Do they talk to a professional first? Do they go to Instagram first? Because of course there's a ton of people and influencers. I mean, you're on Instagram, I'm on Instagram, I'm not a healthcare professional. But we're getting fed all of this information. How do we know what's true?

B (49:40)

We have to go back to our original download of how God created us and how he created this earth. So those are some of the things that he showed me when I was laying flat on my back for a week and couldn't move, is I started reading my Bible and understanding that he gave us everything we need to thrive and be healthy. But we keep trying to muck it up and think we know better. And so we create all these what I call Franken foods. They're like made in the factories. It's not even real food. They like pull out the nutrients and then they enrich it with something that's not healthy at all. And so if you could start to think, how did our ancestors live? What did God provide us from the beginning? And get back to that, you're going to start healing. So you want to be in the sunshine, you want to eat the clean, healthy animals that he gave us and the vegetables and the nuts and the seeds.

A (50:40)

So you're saying we should all homestead. We need to start growing all of our own food, canning it, all of the things I know. So I think it's great. It's not my life, but the healthier, the more aware I am and the war, the more aware I am of the information means I can make the healthiest choices that I have around me and from where I live and what my, you know, what my, I would say availability is. I mean, I'm not going to become a full time farmer because it's. That's just not my life. And you might live in the city and not have the land to even do that if you want. But this is all so informative. So we can make really good decisions based on that knowledge. But I think the biggest thing for me is finding the trusted sources.

B (51:31)

Yeah, absolutely. And like you, I don't have time to do a bunch of meal prep. I can't grow my own vegetables. But I. You hit on something, you know, you said, I can't go be a farmer. Unfortunately, some of the farmers in this country are the most unhealthy. We See the most brain cancers and different cancers because we have been using pesticides on our foods for the past few decades in amounts like unheard of. And we do it to kill the, the bugs, the insects, but it's killing our gut. It is setting us up for chronic gut dysbiosis. It's killing our good bacteria, which then turns on autoimmune disease.

A (52:15)

So, you know, are any foods safe?

B (52:19)

They, they are. I love to say, try to find something that doesn't have an ingredient list. You know, real foods, they don't have an ingredient list. They don't have labels. They're just food. Try to eat animals that they themselves have eaten well. So don't eat the meat and the chicken that were fed a bunch of genetically modified cornmeal because we do that to make them fat. So that's just gonna make you fat and sick. Don't eat animals that are injected with antibiotics and hormones because that's gonna go into you and affect you.

A (52:58)

And that's also, also been a big reason that I, I had heard over the years that has caused a lot of young girls to start their periods way earlier because of all the hormones that the foods, the animals have been injected with. Is that true?

B (53:12)

Yes. And the obesity rates in children. And now we are seeing type 2 diabetes in children. Type 2 used to be called adult onset diabetes.

A (53:22)

Oh.

B (53:23)

Because we only saw it in adults who were obese and had, you know, these issues. And now we're seeing it in children. I remember going to the beach as a kid because I grew up on the beach. Like there would be one overweight person on the whole beach and you would, they would stand out, you would notice them. You go to the beach. Now, the majority of people, at least I live in Michigan, they are overweight. They're carrying tons of extra weight. And this is not a shame thing. Extra weight is a symptom that something is going on. You are inflamed. There's a reason for that. And we're definitely going to dive into all that with the perimenopause because it gets out of control at that point. But it's really important to realize that all the little choices you're making every day with your food, they just add up. So if you can get organic, if you can get grass fed beef, if you can, you know, make it as clean as possible, you're going to make a, a difference in the long run.

A (54:24)

Wow. We have so much to talk about, but we are going to go to a listener question and I'm Going to try to take a few of them because we have an overwhelming amount. So this question is from Lindsay and she asks, how do you stay consistent for the long haul with nutrition?

B (54:42)

Yeah. That's what we're talking about. Right. That is the, the real plight of the modern woman is we don't have a ton of time to be worrying about where we're going to get the food and is it clean and is it safe. But farmers markets are amazing because usually local farmers don't use as many pesticides as more commercialized farmers. It gets your kids involved. When kids get to pick out their veggies and stuff at the farmer's market, they actually want to eat it, they want to prepare it. So that can be really fun. Look local. There are like, you can get amazingly healthy eggs from people who have chickens in their yard. You know, my, my sister does that. I have friends who do that. There's so many way to source. You don't have to go to the big chain stores and eat all of that commercialized meat and the eggs that the yolk is like almost white. It's so devoid of nutrition.

A (55:41)

Yeah. And I would also add that if you're asking how to stay consistent, consistent for the long haul, if you have big changes to make that you don't try to do them all at once because you're setting yourself up for failure, it really will become overwhelming. But if you could either just pick one and start with it and say, hey, I am a soda pop drinker, I'm gonna start eliminating this from my diet. Or I do have, there's a local butcher or, you know, someone where I know the meat is good, I'm going to switch to this. And even if you only make that one change and you make that for a month or two months and then add in another change, you're way better off and going to stay consistent. I believe when you make small changes at a time.

B (56:28)

Absolutely. And pick a few things that make you feel good. When I started swapping out the bottled salad dressings, which are full of inflation inflammatory oils, with olive oil and red wine vinegar, like, my brain started working better within a week and I was energized.

A (56:45)

That's a great. It's a great one. We have not bought bottled salad dressing in years. And so I always have extra virgin olive oil. We actually make it ourselves. We have olive trees and we press it. We've had two vintages already, but we have extra virgin olive oil, lemon. I do like a champagne vinaigrette. Any kind of Vinegar. You can do apple cider vinegar, a little Dijon mustard, salt and pepper. There's your dressing. It's amazing. I don't even measure it out. Yes, you can find that recipe on my. My Instagram somewhere. Okay, let's ask one another question. Oh, this is a good one. This is a. Huh. This is from Frimpy. How do you feel? Confident. Postpartum. I know I created a beautiful baby, but I hate my body.

B (57:33)

Oh, my gosh. Doesn't that break your heart?

A (57:36)

It does.

B (57:37)

Okay, so I feel you. I feel you. I was 17 when I had my baby. I had the brightest purple stretch marks on my butt, on my boobs. Like, I felt destroyed. This was at the height of Pamela Anderson and all of that going on in the 90s. Married with children, if anybody remembers that show. Like, everybody was blonde. Bombshell. That was so much mindset work that I had to do, and I just kept taking it to Jesus. I kept reading scripture and what does Jesus say about me? And praying that this would go away and things would get better. But you really cannot heal a body you hate. You. You have to stop saying that to yourself. Like, look at your body as your sister or your best friend. What would you say to her? You would love on her and tell her how beautiful she is and how she's going to get strong again and how she's going to change and, like, it's going to happen and. And you got to get into action. You do?

A (58:44)

Yeah.

B (58:44)

What do you say to that?

A (58:45)

I also would say that there's so much that goes deep into the soul that we talked about earlier this season with Lisa and. And Frimpy. If you weren't able to listen to those, I. I hope that you will go back and do that, because, yeah, it all comes down to how we think about ourselves, but really what God says about ourselves and it's the renewal of our minds to know that God did not create you. You are perfectly. You are fearfully. You are wonderfully made in those ways. He created you uniquely. And you might not be satisfied with what it is at this point, but your. Your body is this beautiful tool also that just birthed a baby. And you need to have grace for yourself. But understanding that connection with God to. And the grace that he gives you to then be able to pour that on yourself is just something that I know can change your. Your. Your heart and your mind and those thoughts. But it takes work. It takes work. So, yeah, every day at it. Yeah, here's a really quick one. And then we have to go. But we're going to be back next week. Do you have any good sports bra recommendations? This is from Ava. Do you have a company that you like wearing?

B (60:03)

Okay, so I use Victoria's Secret. I like a lot of extra support. I also like Athleta. Those are kind of old school, but that's what I use.

A (60:12)

Those are great. I, I use Lululemon. That's kind of my go to brand. I like Aloe. I like Viori too. All of those. But you know, sometimes Amazon is, they have, they have great stuff on there. So. Yeah, just depends what your needs are, I guess. But there's lots of good sports bras out there. Also Jockey. I will mention them. People don't think about that, but they, they're sold everywhere. They're a company that's over almost 150 years old. They're pretty incredible. And I have a few sports bras from them that are really good too. Okay, well be sure to come back next week. And remember we have a whole body guide for you this week season. Go to canvas.com to find the link. It's also in our show notes. And you'll also find a link@canvas.com to ask questions for future episodes. And if you want to join a private podcast discussion group, I invite you to become a part of the Together community. Download the app and learn how to become a monthly member@canvas.com together. Until next time. Be grateful all day, every day. Candy Rock Entertainment. All rights reserved.

B (61:32)

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