Brains Like Ours

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Brains Like Ours"

Podcast: The Dream
Host: Jane Marie
Guest: Tyla B. Barnes, Licensed Clinical Scientist
Episode Date: March 20, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Jane Marie re-introduces The Dream as a weekly interview show with expanded freedom, but still focused on unpacking the American Dream—and the barriers that make it so difficult for many. Jane speaks at length with clinical scientist Tyla B. Barnes, author of Brains Like Ours: A Smart Girl's Guide to Mood, Modern Life and the Science Behind Mental Health. Their wide-ranging discussion dismantles the gender and race data gaps in medicine, explores the personal and systemic challenges women face in health care, and arms listeners with practical knowledge about lab work, hormones, and self-advocacy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Gender, Race, and Bias in Medical Care

• Jane opens with staggering statistics on health care inequity: on average, men receive pain relief and treatment considerably faster than women, even for the same injuries ([03:35]).

  “Did you know that on average, you can get Tylenol 30 minutes faster than we can in an emergency room? … That’s the power of the D.” — Jane Marie ([01:35])

• Audio clips from John Oliver further illustrate historic gender and racial bias, noting that the “default” human body for medical studies has long been male, further disadvantaging women ([03:00-03:54]).

2. Tyla’s Backstory & Motivation

• Tyla describes her journey into medical science, influenced in part by her father reading her medical texts as a child and the health struggles in her family, particularly lupus and RA (rheumatoid arthritis) affecting her mother and aunts ([05:52-07:35]).
• Her close-knit family, especially her bond with her mother, shaped her values and outlook on caring and advocacy ([07:02-08:51]):

  “I slept in the bed with my mom until I was 27, until I got married. We used to watch the Real Housewives together. Come on.” — Tyla B. Barnes ([08:39])

3. Firsthand Medical Disregard and Racial Bias

• Tyla recounts a harrowing experience after being hit by a truck while saving her dog; despite her knowledge as a clinical scientist, medical staff repeatedly dismissed her stated sensitivity to pain and her specific instructions about her rare blood condition—until her white husband advocated for her ([10:16-13:00]):

  “The nurse looked at me and said, ‘You can handle it,’ and she shoved my leg right back in, like, trying to set it. And I screamed bloody murder…It wasn’t until my husband called…they listened to him. And I was in surgery within hours.” — Tyla B. Barnes ([10:46-13:00])

• Jane identifies the phenomenon: “It’s crazy…not being Black, but just having a husband or a partner that can get shit done.” ([13:06])

4. The Systemic Shortcomings of Medicine—Especially for Women

• Tyla explains that the standard reference ranges for bloodwork and diagnostics are usually extrapolated from large populations, often using male subjects, and thus can fail to catch significant individual or gender-specific issues ([23:10-24:08]).
• She notes the flawed design leads to many women remaining undiagnosed or undertreated for conditions such as thyroid disorders:

  “You’re also going to get people that are really in need of care that are going to fall under that normal range because it’s so wide.” — Tyla B. Barnes ([24:08])

• Jane emphasizes the capitalist exploitation of these gaps “where you can extract resources or money or whatever,” citing the supplement and wellness industries ([21:45-22:04]).

5. Tyla’s Mental Health and Lab Experience

• Tyla explains her own experience with depression, adverse reactions to Zoloft, and how a look at her own lab work revealed severe Vitamin D deficiency and parathyroid issues triggering her symptoms ([17:07-20:29]):

  “The Zoloft completely just—I didn’t even recognize my own brain. And that was the scariest part…when I went to go run my own labs, my vitamin D was basically in hell.” — Tyla B. Barnes ([18:43])

• This experience inspired her to write Brains Like Ours, aiming to help women better understand lab results and advocate for care.

6. Breaking Down Lab Work, Reference Ranges, and Advocacy

• Tyla teaches that the “normal” lab ranges are broad, generic, and may not fit the needs of women or minorities. She encourages women to ask for more thorough thyroid panels (e.g., free T3, free T4, not just TSH) and to learn how to talk to providers ([33:30-34:29]):

  “That knowledge is power and power is great in advocating for yourself. And a lot of people don’t have that language.” — Tyla B. Barnes ([34:19])

7. The “Load Capacity” Framework for Mental Health

• Tyla presents her “Load Capacity” framework: mental health as a battery with six pillars—nutrition, movement, connections, mindfulness, hormones, and hobbies—that collectively determine our capacity to cope with stress ([28:16-31:40]).

  “Your mental health has six different pillars that contribute to your finite load capacity. If you think about it as a battery…” — Tyla B. Barnes ([28:16])

• She dives into hormone regulation, the effects of cortisol and DHEA on mood and libido, and the downstream impacts of stress and estrogen:

  “If you’re constantly stressed all the time as a woman, you’re not producing testosterone which is responsible for your libido…there goes your memory and there goes your motivation and there goes your mood.” — Tyla B. Barnes ([32:06], [32:55])

8. Making Science More Accessible to Women

• Tyla’s goal is for her book to be an almanac for women—something they can bring to appointments and use to empower themselves:

  “I hope that when there’s moments when they go...to their appointments and they leave and they’re sitting in their car, I hope that my book is in their trunk and then they can go and reference what their labs say.” — Tyla B. Barnes ([35:44])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We don’t get taken seriously when we say that.”—Tyla B. Barnes ([10:14])
• “There will always be something that will make people not take me seriously. And that’s infuriating because I work really hard.”—Tyla B. Barnes ([13:16])
• “I think that we get exploited a lot in that gap [between lab results and real health]…I feel like that gap lies a lot of exploitation from the wellness industry…”—Tyla B. Barnes ([20:49])
• “When you know the science behind things, then you stop feeling like you have to carry the load so heavily.”—Tyla B. Barnes ([32:55])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:35] – Opening monologue, theme of gender/medical bias
• [03:00-03:54] – John Oliver clip: medical gender bias
• [05:52-08:51] – Tyla’s family health struggles and background
• [10:16-13:00] – Tyla’s personal ER bias story
• [17:07-20:29] – Tyla’s mental health journey and diagnostic gaps
• [21:45-22:04] – Exploitation by supplement industry
• [23:10-24:08] – Explanation of reference ranges in labs
• [28:16-31:40] – The “Load Capacity” Framework
• [32:06-32:55] – Hormones, stress, and mood
• [33:30-34:29] – Empowerment through lab literacy

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Conclusion

Brains Like Ours is more than a conversation about labs and numbers—it’s a rallying cry for female self-advocacy in a system designed around someone else. Tyla B. Barnes shares candidly from her life and expertise, demystifying blood work, calling out systemic failings, and offering practical steps for women to take charge of their health, hormones, and happiness. The tone is smart, direct, and deeply empathetic—an episode that’s both educational and empowering to anyone navigating the American health care maze.

Transcript

[Paige Desorbo]

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[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your res of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Hey.

[Stephen]

Hey. So each week, you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. Here's News Flash.

[Stephen]

I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jane Marie]

I'm Jane Marie, and this is the dream. I want to talk to the men in the room for just a minute. So, guys, if you're taking care of your kids right now as part of your one hour a day, that you directly participate in the care of your own children. Parents. That's according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Make sure they cover their ears for this part, okay? Did you know. Did you know that on average, you can get Tylenol 30 minutes faster than we can in an emergency room? Oh, yeah. Even if you have the exact same injury and the same amount of pain? Pain. On the pain scale, 30 minutes faster if you have an acute condition and you go to the Doctor, you get a diagnosis eight days faster because it might be the man flu and something chronic like rheumatoid arthritis. 52 days. 52 days faster. That's. Oh yeah, that's the power of the d. Okay, the kids can uncover their ears. Now. Here's John Oliver, famously a man, talking about all this. Of course, I cut out the supposed jokes because we all know men aren't funny.

[John Oliver (clip) / Narrator]

Doctors have held a position of high esteem in our society for generations. But while medicine may be the most respected of all professions, it is important to know that not everyone has the same experience when they visit a doctor.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

I think I would have been treated completely differently if I had been male.

[John Oliver (clip) / Narrator]

Historically, women's bodies have always been fraught with judgment and misconceptions. There are many, many studies showing this. For instance, they found that women were less likely to be referred for knee replacements than men. If they're over 50 and critically ill. They were less likely to receive life saving interventions. While some of this may have to do with implicit bias on doctors parts, there is also a systemic problem here where doctors may literally know less about women's bodies. Because historically medicine has studied men's bodies, which here means those assigned male at birth as a proxy for all bodies. And as one researcher who studied this will tell you, the reason for that was incredibly dumb.

[Stephen]

There's this assumption that you are me with pesky hormones.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Oh, with pesky hormones. The idea is that the fundamental things are similar between you and me. So that ironically, the best way to study you is.

[Jane Marie]

Is to study me, and so on and so forth. As a fan of science, I think about this stuff all the time and I love talking to other fans of science who are smarter than me and do science for a living.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

At work, I look at people's blood smears. I look at their chemistries, like their serum chemistries. Saliva, urine, poop, blood, vagina, excretions, everything that comes out of your body comes to me.

[Jane Marie]

My guest today is a licensed clinical scientist at an academic hospital. She has recently published a book called Brains Like A Smart Girl's Guide to Mood, Modern Life and the Science Behind Mental Health. Though we dive into much more in our discussion.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

My name is Tyla B. Tyla Barnes, if you want to look up my license. And I'm a clinical scientist. I have years working in the lab. I've worked at the va, I've worked at Los Angeles General. I used to work in integrative medicine and I was a former first responder as well. I was an EMT I wanted to become a nurse, but then being an EMT and working in those, like, urgent situations, I'm like, maybe I kind of want to be more on the science side of it. I've been trained in hematology, chemistry, immunology, blood banking, and pathology, and basically all the ologies, microbiology, all that good stuff. So, yeah, I actually just started doing, like, a lab review type of business where I will review people's labs in optimal ranges and kind of letting them know what the doctor probably wasn't able to cover within that 15 minute visit that our healthcare and our insurance system allows.

[Jane Marie]

Did you always want to work in medicine and science?

[Tyla B. Barnes]

You know, it's funny. So I have a very weird relationship with my dad, and I don't really get to see him very much. He has like a. He's been in and out of rehab, and he swears that because he used to read me medical books when I would go to sleep. He swears that, like, that's the reason why I am who I am today.

[Jane Marie]

Wait, why was he reading you medical?

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Because he wanted to be in the medical field really, really bad. And unfortunately, it didn't pan out for him in that way. So he says, like, I'm the reason why you're just such a medical head. And I'm like, yeah, okay.

[Jane Marie]

In your family, are there health issues?

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

Okay. Can you tell me a little about that?

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah, sure. My mom has lupus with a combination of ra. She has both? Yeah. And then my aunt had to have her thyroid completely removed, and then my other aunt also has lupus, too.

[Jane Marie]

And do you live near these folks?

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

What does it look like when everybody's kind of dealing with that stuff?

[Tyla B. Barnes]

For my mom, it was extremely heartbreaking. I thought that she was gonna die, and I remember because she was just. She had Bell's palsy. Like, so what happened? She didn't know that she had lupus and ra, and my mom's a phenomenal woman. Literally top tier.

[Jane Marie]

Tell me about her.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

She is. She raised me by herself. She is my best friend, but totally understood how, when I was a kid, how to switch it and be mom, which is such a hard role to play. I could only imagine.

[Jane Marie]

Are you an only child?

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

So I'm that person for my daughter.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah. Yeah. And it's something that I love about her. Like, I talk to her every single day, multiple times a day. I see her all the time. She's literally my heartbeat. And my aunts, I have four aunts who are more like my sisters than they are my aunts because I'm the only child, you know? But, yeah. And so being that close to my mom, she went to work one day, and she walked in, and her face was drooping and her heart was beating really, really fast. And so she ended up going to the emergency room against her own will because she still wanted to keep working. Literally insane. Okay. And so she was in the hospital for, like, three days. I slept in the bed with her. I totally called into work. I was like, I'm not coming in if something happens to my mom. Just get rid of my position. I'm not even interested. Like, you're never gonna see me again. And the nights when I was sleeping in the bed, they're like, do you want to sleep on this chair? I'm like, no, I'm sleeping right here. I slept in the bed with my mom until I was 27, until I got married. We used to watch the Real Housewives together. Come on.

[Jane Marie]

My kid does that.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Why would I get out of the bed?

[Jane Marie]

It's just her and I in the house.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Why would I get out of the room?

[Jane Marie]

No, I have the tv.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

In my room.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Exactly. Yeah. I totally get it. Oh, my God. And then they took her labs, and they ran the test and everything, and they told her that she had lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. And at that time, I didn't quite understand what that meant. I just knew that her body was breaking down on her. Her fingers would literally be, like, so bent and out of, like, they would look, like, scary. Yeah. And R.A. runs in my family. Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

And my grandma's are always like this.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

And they were artists, and they had to do their art like that.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Oh, my God. Really? Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Like, it was just. It was so. It was so sad for me to watch her go through that, because I have to be honest, my mom looks really young, and she's really beautiful and has such a vibrant spirit. To watch her be broken down like, that was like. Oh, my God. It was horrible for me. That was a horrible time. I'm sorry.

[Jane Marie]

And so your family has that. Those autoimmune things going on.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Alopecia as well, too? Oh, wow. Yeah. Balding.

[Jane Marie]

And you're black.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

I am definitely black.

[Jane Marie]

So the gap in information.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

You know, that's another data gap.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah. We don't get taken seriously when we say that. Oh. Can I tell you the saddest thing ever? I was hit by a train. What? I was. I was hit by a F150 truck in Huntington beach, saving my dog. She jumped out of the car and I just went into, like, dog mom mode. And I was hit as a pedestrian. And so I was sent over to UC Irvine. And my fibula and my tibia. My tibia was shattered. My fibula was broken in half.

[Jane Marie]

For those listening, that's your shin bones.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah, yeah, sorry. So I'm laying on the concrete. I'm really, really scared. The ambulance comes, they pick me up and they. I used to work on the ambulance, right? And so I'm like. They're like, okay, we're just going to give you some fentanyl to ease the pain. And I was like, where's morphine? I thought we gave morphine. And they're like, no, well, fentanyl doesn't drop your blood pressure or whatever. And I'm like, no, not taking that. I'll just deal with this. So I rode all the way from Huntington beach about like, 30 minutes, just in so much pain. I get to the hospital and I tell the nurses. This is during COVID by the way. So I'm all by myself. And I told them that I am very sensitive to pain. And the nurse looked at me and said, you can handle it. And she shoved my leg right back in, like, trying to set it. And I screamed bloody murder. And I was like. And I told my husband, he said, I can't believe she did that, because he wasn't able to be there. It was during COVID So I was all by myself. Another thing, another way that they don't listen to us is I know that I have a blood condition called pseudothrombocytopenia, which means that my platelets love to just talk to each other and love to just gather amongst each other very close. So a lot of the time when you run my blood, it looks like I'm very low on platelets, but I'm really not okay. So I'm telling them this. I'm like, if you take my blood, you have to take it in a blue top, a citrated top, because if you don't take it that way, then you're going to think that I'm low.

[Jane Marie]

I don't know what you're talking about.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

I'm sorry. So the side trated top is just. What is this? A different type of solution at the bottom of the tube that doesn't encourage the platelets to clump together.

[Jane Marie]

Okay.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah. And so I'm in and out of consciousness at the hospital, and they keep pushing back my surgery because they weren't listening to Me, they kept saying, we can't do surgery on you because you're going to bleed out. And I'm like, no, I keep telling you guys that I have this condition. It wasn't until my husband called. Oh, and they listened to him?

[Jane Marie]

Well, first of all, he's a dude.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

He's a dude. Yes. And he's white.

[Jane Marie]

He's the boss.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

He's the boss. Yeah. And they totally listened to him. And I was in surgery within hours.

[Jane Marie]

The number of times I've gone through that myself, not being black, but just like having a husband or a partner that can get shit done.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

It's crazy. How does that make you feel? Feel?

[Tyla B. Barnes]

It makes me feel like no matter how intelligent I am, no matter how hard I work, there will always be something that will make people not take me seriously. And that's infuriating because I work really hard.

[Jane Marie]

We'll be right back. The U.S. surgeon General says kids who spend more than three hours a day online are twice as likely to struggle with depression and anxiety. And nearly half of girls and about a third of boys say social media causes overwhelming stress. Researchers have even found that teens who spend more than five hours a day on their phones are at double the risk for suicidal thoughts. I want to avoid all that stuff with my kid. Good news, there's a better option. A company called Gab is tackling this with something they call tech in steps. Instead of handing a kid a full on adult smartphone right away, Gab offers safer phones and watches designed specifically for kids with no social media. Younger kids can start with GPS enabled watches so parents know where they are and as they grow, they can move to phones with parent enabled apps. It's technology that grows with them while helping protect their mental health. The bottom line, your child doesn't need a device built for adults. I absolutely love our Gab phone. For my 12 year old, I can see where she is. She can call me. Others can call her if I approve them. Anytime she gets a text message that has a bad word in it, I see it. I don't have to monitor everything she says, but when she's texting with someone and they say, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, jerk. I see that Gab keeps kids connected. Without social media. I can't recommend Gab enough. If you're looking for a phone that makes parenting easier and gives you a little more peace of mind, check them out. Visit gab.comdream and use code dream for an exclusive offer. That's Gab G A B B

[John Oliver (clip) / Narrator]

hi, everyone. This is Karine, the voice of Simon Fairchild from the Magnus archives. And today I want to talk to you about Boost Mobile. Some things quietly drain you like an expensive phone bill, trapping your money month after month. Here's a quick money tip. Stop paying a carrier tax when you bring your own phone and switch to boost Mobile's $25 Unlimited Forever plan. You can unlock up to $600 in savings. That's money that belongs in your life, not trapped in a phone bill. Reclaim those savings for something you're actually into. An EMF meter, a thermal camera, or whatever strange corner of the universe you're currently exploring. Visit boostmobile.com to unlock your savings and take back control. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers pay $25 per month as long as they remain active on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan. Boost Mobile January 2026 survey comparing average annual payments of AT&T Verizon and T Mobile customers to 12 months on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan details.

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[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan. Fellas, I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Hey.

[Stephen]

Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to Single Chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jane Marie]

Tell me about being a lab technician.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

So I'm not a lab tech.

[Jane Marie]

Oh, sorry, I don't mean to say lab tech. You're a clinical scientist.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

I know, but okay. Okay, totally. It's totally fine. Now, I know this field is, like, very unexposed in the medical field, but the reason why I got to wanting to write this book, just to be a little bit vulnerable. I've always kind of struggled with anxiety and depression, and it's kind of just been like a shadow in my life. Since I was 16 years old. I found out that my high school sweetheart was dealing with something within himself that meant we couldn't. Our story had to end. My parents had divorced, and so I went to a psychiatrist and they prescribed me Zoloft at 16. And it was okay at that time. I didn't really stay on it because, like, I just had a community of friends that kind of kept my energy on the up and up. But in my late 20s, I went through another really, really, really bad depression. And my husband, Todd, it was so difficult for him to even peel me off of the couch. Like, it was to the point I was paralyzed by thought rumination and OCD types of thinking. And we would go for walks and stuff and it would make me feel a little bit better, but I was like, no, I want a quick fix. Like, I just want to feel different. I thought to myself, okay, let me just go back to Zoloft.

[Jane Marie]

And here Tyla's going to explain a little bit about her own experience. This is just her personal experience, but she had one of the more severe adverse effects that can happen when you take an antidepressant.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

So just a heads up, I'm telling you the truth. I almost, like, unalived myself. We lived on the 12th story in our apartment. It was a beautiful apartment, literally overlooking the water. And we had to move because I couldn't even go on my balcony because I had such bad suicidal ideation that I knew for fact if I sat on that balcony, I would jump. It was just my brain. The Zoloft completely just. I didn't even recognize my own brain. And that was the scariest part. And so Todd drove me to the Long Beach Psychiatric Facility. I was about to just check myself in because I just didn't trust my brain at that point. But the psychiatrist told me, get off of it. And when I went to go run my own labs, my vitamin D was basically in hell. My calcium was very high and that was triggering para hypothyroidism, which is known to increase depression. It's known to make you anxious. And so I got a prescription for like, you know, the 1500 or whatever they try to give you, like vitamin D, like massive vitamin D. Prescription or whatever. And I got that. And to be quite honest with you, I don't think I have felt that type of low sense. I mean, yeah, I have bad days. Everybody has bad days. That's modern life. Right? That's just life. We deal with things. But the severity. Yeah. Has not been that bad since. And it was just like such an awakening for me to where I'm like, if this is happening to me, I'm a clinical scientist, you know what I mean? If I know that this has to be happening to other people too, where they're just getting. Nobody's running their labs. And that's kind of scary to me because I almost lost my life because of it.

[Jane Marie]

So I think this is interesting because we do talk critically. We take a critical eye to the supplement industry. And what I'm going through now in my life is menopause and some other stressful things where I'm like, I know something's going on in here.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Can I be honest? You're like, yeah, please do. I think that we get exploited a lot in that gap. I think that the ranges aren't necessarily made for women. So I think that even though you go, your. Your provider looks at your labs for a minute or two minutes before they come in to see you and they tell you that everything is fine and you go home and you're up Googling things at 2am and then before you know it, you're on three supplements that you probably don't even know if you need or not. And I feel like that gap lies a lot of exploitation from the wellness industry, which is kind of scary. And I don't think that it's the wellness industry's fault. I think it's kind of just the way that it's been built. You know, it's capitalism. Exactly.

[Jane Marie]

Which is exploiting weaknesses. Right.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

And making. Oh, my God, that's so, so bad. It's true.

[Jane Marie]

I mean, isn't that just what it is, though? Like, if you were to define what. What capitalism is, it's like looking for holes where you can extract resources or money or whatever.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah, yeah, it is. That's exactly what it is. And the wellness industry is really heavy on that.

[Jane Marie]

So I wanted to ask Tyla if we're looking at real science. If I'm looking at blood test results or urine test results, say, from my doctor, what am I actually looking at when I see those ranges? I don't know if you've ever seen this, but if you get your cbc, it usually happens at your annual physical. It'll say, here's what your cholesterol is, and there's kind of a scale, and the middle of it is normal range. And then there's a number below that and a number above that. And if your number lands in either of those zones, your doctor calls you and you have to have a conversation. But it's important to know where those numbers come from, how significant they are, what they consider, and don't consider who they come from.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

It's from a sample population size. You're trying to get the 95% of all the people, so you'll cut off the 2.5% on the high end and the 2.5% on the low end so that you'll have 95% of that population out of the hundred of that sample size.

[Jane Marie]

What she's saying here for us non scientists is that to get those ranges, like, what's safe and what's not safe, science looks at a certain number of healthy people, maybe 100, maybe 1,000, maybe 10,000, maybe way more, hopefully. And they say, okay, this middle 95%, this is what their numbers are. And then arbitrarily, sort of, they cut off the very bottom and the very top and say, those are probably things we should look at because they're outliers. Right. It does help for a comparison of, like, how are you doing compared to the general population?

[Tyla B. Barnes]

But unfortunately, you're also going to get people that are really in need of care that are going to fall under that normal range because it's so wide. For example, like the thyroid stimulating hormone, the lid is at 4.55. You should be between 1 and 2.5. So imagine, I mean, I've spoken to so many people and they're like, oh, my God, if I'm at 3, I feel like crap.

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[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the SM

[Hayden]

Daddy and We are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Jane Marie]

Hey hey.

[Stephen]

So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Tyla B. Barnes]

Nothing is everything.

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[Jane Marie]

Welcome back to the Dream and my discussion with clinical scientist Tyla B. Who wrote a book called Brains Like Ours, in which she discusses all the minutiae of like lab reports that you might get from your doctor, how to have discussions about them, et cetera. She also talks about a thing that your doctor brings up constantly, which is lifestyle choices, especially if you're a woman. If you have a Problem. Nine times out of ten they'll say, well, let's make some lifestyle changes. Let's change your lifestyle. She has put together an idea about how to think about that kind of advice. What things you really need to focus on to get the numbers to change, which sounds impossible, but it's really all about hormones and the way that your body's system reacts to all kinds of stuff. It's about chilling out. It's about chilling out.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

I have a framework that I basically kind of came up with. It's called the load capacity framework. And essentially it's basically saying that your mental health has six different pillars that contribute to your finite load capacity. If you think about it in a. As a battery, right? So your nutrition, what you put in your body makes your neurotransmitters, the movement that you do that can lower your fasting insulin. That's very important. The people that you surround yourself with, your connections, that can lower your cortisol, that's oxytocin as well. Your mindfulness, your ability to sit and be calm or to be able to like change your. Because I do struggle from ocd. And to be able to change your thought process and stop those very intrusive thoughts. You can measure that with cortisol, right? And then another one is your hormones obviously are extremely important. That's like actually my second part of the whole bucket goes into thyroid and perimenopause and menopause and all those amazing things. And hobbies, hobbies are so important because they. And not even monetizing your hobbies because then you add on that pressure of, of performing and that anxiety that comes with it. But hobbies are really good because that helps you regulate your cortisol. Cortisol exists on a diurnal curve. So like in the morning when you wake up, your cortisol should be higher. It should be high like a 15 to 25, right? But as the day progresses, it should go downward and you should be no greater than five at night so that you can go to sleep, because that's your fight or flight. But what happens a lot of time with burnout, you'll see that people have a flattened curve. So they don't have it high at all. They're just down all the time. The fatigue that sleep won't cure, just being. You wake up tired, you're just extremely lethargic all day long. That's. You should get your cortisol check and make sure it's a four point salivary check, not just one draw, by the way.

[Jane Marie]

You're such a nerd.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

I love that. I am such a nerd, I swear. But yeah, and then some people have it when they're just, they're up in the morning and they're up at night and they're up at like 2am replaying all of the mistakes that they've made when they were in high school. That's like that anxiety. That's a, that's a problem with your HPA axis, which is your hypothalamus, your pituitary and adrenal gland. You're overexerting it. And another thing that's really interesting too with hobbies is they help you regulate a hormone called dhea, which is known to actually decrease in women as we age. And the, and DHEA and cortisol exist as counterparts. Okay. So when you're calm and you're good, you have a lot of dhea. It shunts to DHEA rather than cortisol because you're not needing to fight off a line. Right? Yeah. And the really funny part about DHEA is those make the androgens in our body, so that makes the testosterone that makes the estrogen. So of course you're not going to feel like horn dog if you have too much cortisol in your body because you're stressed. But if you relax, then you're allowing your body to create those hormones.

[Jane Marie]

Wait, say that again. Slow it down just a little bit.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah. So DHEA and cortisol exist in counterparts. So when you're overly stressed, then your body will shunt to just cortisol. Cortisol. Cortisol. And you won't make shunt mean. Shunt means basically like cut off all DHEA and only produce cortisol.

[Jane Marie]

So it's like I'm choosing this.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah, you're choosing this rather than choosing that.

[Jane Marie]

Okay.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

And the interesting thing about DHEA is this the precursor to a lot of our sex hormones. Hormones. So if you're constantly stressed all the time as a woman, you're not producing testosterone which is responsible for your libido. You're not horn dog, baby. You know what I mean? You're just like, I'm stressed and you're not getting enough estrogen either. Which estrogen has such a down downstream issue if estrogen affects so many different parts of the body.

[Jane Marie]

When you asked me how I, how my day was, I ran out of my estrogen patches two days ago and have had a really hard time getting my doctor and my pharmacy to communicate correctly so I don't get them again. Until tomorrow night. And today I've been feeling like I'll never be happy again.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

But that's not real though. So another thing that really made me want to write this is because when you know the science behind things, then you stop feeling like you have to carry the load so heavily. And estrogen is super responsible for your serotonin synthesis and it's a, it's basically a building block of dopamine. So if you don't have estrogen, there goes your memory and there goes your motivation and there goes your mood.

[Jane Marie]

Okay.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah. So it's not you. Estrogen even taps into our immune function.

[Jane Marie]

Wow.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Yeah, estrogen's a big dog. So brains like ours gives you a reference on how you can read those things in laboratory work. There's an entire glossary that breaks down your cbc, your cmp, your lipid panels, your special chemistry. I even go into your urine analysis. I'm like that detailed. My whole goal here is to give women the language to go and speak to their providers and ask for specifics. Like in the thyroid stimulating hormone, the TSH that I mentioned before with my book, you should be able to go to your doctor and say, can you actually order my free T3 and free T4 too? Because I want to know the whole picture that right there, that knowledge is power and power is great in advocating for yourself. And a lot of people don't have that language.

[Jane Marie]

Why isn't more time spent looking at labs the way that you look at them?

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Because doctors are only given 15 minutes, if you're lucky, 20 minutes, I guess, if you're lucky. And between them having to chart and all of these other things that they, all the other responsibilities, it's just not, it's just not able to be done in that short span of time. And also the reference ranges that a lot of places are using are so wide. They're like we spoke about before. They're just basically this big gulper spoon, just trying to grab as many people as they can to fit into a data point. I don't think that we're really, I think that our, our healthcare system looks for disease and not for like dysfunction and optimizing us on an individual basis.

[Jane Marie]

And, and why isn't that part of the lab, like the lab's responsibility? Why isn't there a role for someone who can do these evaluations with a little more time?

[Tyla B. Barnes]

That's what I'm building.

[John Oliver (clip) / Narrator]

Great.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

I hope that people use it as like an almanac and I hope that they use it as a reference guide. Like when you're reading it and you're going through it, I talk like you're my best friend throughout the whole book. I'm just like your best friend that happens be to to be a clinical scientist. You know what I mean? And I hope that it's they dog ear it. I hope that they highlight it. And I hope that when there's moments when they go to their lab to their appointments and they leave and they're sitting in their car, I hope that my book is in their trunk and then they can go and reference what their labs say and they can say, oh, okay, well this says it's normal, but it's kind of on the lower end according to brains like ours, because it's meant for brains like our hours.

[Capital One Bank Announcer]

With no fees or minimums on checking accounts. It's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends it's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capital1.com Bank Capital One NA Member FDIC

[Skyrizi Advertiser]

My perfect day has sand, salt water and friends. But my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis can take me out of the moment. Now I'm all in with clearer skin thanks to skyrizi risen Kizumab RZA a prescription only 150mg injection for adults who are candidates for systemic or phototherapy. With Skyrizi, Most people saw 90% clearer skin and many were even 100% plaque free at four months. Skyrizi is just four doses a year. After two starter doses.

[Paige Desorbo]

Don't use if allergic to Skyrizi. Serious allergic reactions, increased infections or lower ability to fight them may occur before treatment. Get checked for infections and debris. Tell your doctor about any flu like symptoms or vaccines.

[Skyrizi Advertiser]

Thanks to Skyrizi, there's nothing on my skin and that means everything. Ask your doctor about Skyrizi, the number one dermatologist prescribed biologic in psoriasis. Visit skyrizi.com or call 1-866-Skyrizi to learn more.

[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash

[Hayden]

Daddy and We are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Tyla B. Barnes]

Hey.

[John Oliver (clip) / Narrator]

Hey.

[Stephen]

So each week, you'll get my unfiltered, raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.