← The Thyroid (and Hormone) Fixer Podcast: Thyropause, Menopause, Metabolism and How to Fix It
The Thyroid (and Hormone) Fixer Podcast: Thyropause, Menopause, Metabolism and How to Fix It
535. High Dose Melatonin, Mistletoe and Other Cancer Modalities
00:45:00
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- [00:00]
Dr. Amy
Welcome to the Thyroid Fixer podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Amy, and we're diving deep into the world of hormones, especially for all you fierce women in perimenopause and menopause and everyone struggling with hypothyroidism. So if you are battling weight gain, you're feeling like shedding those pounds is an impossible feat. If you're dealing with plummeting energy levels, gut wrenching fatigue, or a libido that seems to have left town, then you're in the right place. And let's not even start on the hair loss. If these symptoms are sounding all too familiar. You found your tribe. My goal is to educate, empower, and shake up your world. Remember, I want you to embrace every inch of that badass woman that you truly are. So if you're ready to dive in and fix things, let's go. Let's talk about the power of berberine for blood sugar control and for moving you into a state of insulin sensitivity. Now, what does that mean? So when you are insulin resistant, we can look at your fasting insulin number on labs and see that's above a six. You can look at your glucose, your fasting glucose on your labs is that above an 85. Is your continuous glucose monitor that you're slapping on the back of your arm consistently reading above an 85? Is your hemoglobin A1c above a 5.2? If you answered yes to any of those. Oh, wait, let me also add in. Do you crave carbohydrates and sugar through the day? Literally, where your. Your body is screaming at you to go get something from a vending machine or eat something sweet, then that points back to your blood sugar and your blood sugar being out of whack and being on this roller coaster. Now, what this means for you is inflammation. It means weight gain. It means an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer's. Now, if you're carrying around an extra 20 pounds, you're not really thinking about your brain and the health of your brain when you're 70 and 80. But I'm here to tell you the fastest way to age is to keep your blood sugar on that roller coaster and keep it high. To get control over our cravings, to get control over our weight, to be able to tap into our fat stores for fuel, we need to have steady, regulated glucose. And this is where Blood Sugar Fixer comes in. Blood Sugar Fixer was one of the O G supplements in the Fixer line. And I designed this because I kept seeing over and over again with the patients we were working with elevated insulin, elevated A1C, elevated glucose, inability to lose weight, carbohydrate and sugar cravings. And this is where Blood Sugar Fixer comes in. It takes that wild ride, that roller coaster of blood sugar and it squishes it together to a nice wave like pattern, steady, balanced, even, so that your cravings, you no longer get those cravings screaming at you. It allows your body to literally tap into the fact that you're grabbing on your stomach or your thigh saying, gee, I really wish that this was gone. This big chunk, yes, it taps into those fat stores and uses that to burn as fuel for energy. But you can't do that if you're a sugar burner. You can't do that if you're insulin resistant. You can't do that if your blood sugar is dysregulated. So what you want to do is bring in Blood Sugar Fixer. Now I made it more economical. There's a lot of companies on the market that they only have their Berberine at 400 milligrams. Well then you have to take three per day. The therapeutic dose is 1200 milligrams. I've also seen it at a thousand or 1200 milligrams. And if you take that all at once in one capsule, you might get some loose stool that becomes a little unpleasant to deal with. So 600 milligrams per capsule is what's in Blood Sugar Fixer. You take it twice a day, one with each main meal, and you will start to notice a difference, really within a couple weeks of your cravings. And then as you are testing, you're going to see those numbers come into alignment. You're going to see the numbers come down on your CGM, your A1C will come into that beautiful optimal range below a 5.2, your insulin will become beautiful once again, below a 6. And the bottom line is you will feel better, you will decrease inflammation, you will lose weight, you will gain control of your carbohydrate and sugar cravings and you will protect your brain. So that's Blood Sugar Fixer twice a day, one cap twice a day. That's it. Do you ever feel like your energy is just off, like you're not fully alive during the day and then you're restless at night. Chances are your circadian rhythm, your body's natural clock, has been disrupted by a lack of sunlight. So what's the solution? This is where I bring in the Mitolux sun lamp. It is designed to mimic the best of the sun helping restore your body's rhythm. UVB for vitamin D that helps our energy. Red and infrared light for mitochondrial support. And let's not forget our skin and collagen formation. It's amazing. It's like a reset button for your health that you just turn on and then sit in front of and enjoy. And during those long gloomy winters, those long days, it's a lifesaver. No more winter blues, by the way, improves your mood, no more low energy, improves your energy. So you need to get yourself a mito lux lamp. It's so portable, it's so easy. I sit it on my desk, I take it with me to my bathroom, I stick my face in front of it. After I wash my face, put on my serum. It is amazing for your skin, but amazing for your energy, amazing for your mood. You want to go to mitolux.com forward/doctor Amy. So that's M I T O L U x.com forward slash D R A M I E. You're going to use the code, Dr. Amy. They are giving me the code to give to you for 10% off. You will not regret it. This is the best, best, best red light, hands down. I have many of them in my house. This is the only one that I use. It is so easy, portable and it works. The most important thing is it works. So mitrelux.com forward slash Dr. Amy. Don't forget to use the code. Dr. Amy. You know, when it comes to the world of cancer, it's a scary word. I know this firsthand now, but I think if we approach it in a way with open mindedness and we go to the experts who have dove into the research because this really is a path that you can't walk alone. You know, we can biohack by listening to the biohacking dudes out there, my friend Ben Greenfield, or if you're listening to Breca or whoever you're listening to, even Brian Johnson who does every biohacking treatment all day long, that's all he does. You can implement that. But then when it comes to prevention of cancer, treatment of cancer, you really need a guide. So I wanted to invite my guide, Stephanie Gratz, who is a board certified family nurse practitioner, but she's the founder of the Health Spa, a cutting edge integrative wellness clinic and select balance supplements. She has over a decade of experience in functional and root cause medicine. She has trained under the best of the best when it comes to cancer care. Paul Anderson, Nisha Winners, who I've interviewed on the podcast as well. And she really specializes based on her own path that she's walked on these complex chronic illness cases and proactive cancer care. So her approach really blends this advanced lab testing that we're going to talk about on the show that she did with me with personalized whole body protocols that address everything from, of course, thyroid and adrenal imbalance to immune dysfunction and detoxification. She has many programs, she has memberships, but they empower patients to really take control of their health well before symptoms or diagnoses appear. And this is what I wish I would have done with her. But of course, I am blessed to have met Stephanie because of this new journey that I'm walking on, walking down now with my cancer diagnosis. So dive into this episode, take away some pieces that can really help you. And my goal is for you to learn from this journey that I'm on. And all of these pieces of information that I'm giving you are for you to take what resonates with you and, and be proactive or implement. Because this is really how we end up preventing. This is how we end up catching things, even in healthy individuals like myself, catching things before they become a problem. I have been waiting for this episode episode for a while, especially since we met a couple months ago, started working together a couple months ago. And I really wanted you to come here to my audience, speak to them about everything that you're teaching me as it revolves around cancer and cancer prevention and treatment and different options that people have and labs that people need run on the topic that we're going to start this conversation out on, high dose melatonin, as it ties back to prevention and treatment and all the other amazing things that high dose melatonin can do. And I want to break some of those myths because I've been on it now for a couple of months and starting to work with you. And I'm amazed at what I see and what I feel and what I expected and what didn't happen and what did happen. So I want to start there and then I really want to go and unpack everything that we kind of talked about off air, all of those tests that need to be run and the different strategies that people can be doing now. Because really, now that I'm walking this journey, I'm realizing, and it's very, very eye opening, I am realizing that in this toxic world that we live in, we should all be on some kind of a prevention model or a prevention protocol, because whether or not you have genes that predispose you to Cancer. Whether or not you have cancer in your family, we are all exposed to and at risk for cancer. And proof positive with me, it doesn't matter how healthy of a lifestyle you're living, There are specific things that I was not doing that I wish I was doing for better cancer prevention. So all that to say, Stephanie, welcome to the show and thank you so much for being here.
- [10:32]
Stephanie Gratz
Thank you, Amy. I'm really looking forward to diving in with you today.
- [10:36]
Dr. Amy
So, okay, so when we met, I want to start off with the melatonin. And you're like, are you taking high dose melatonin? I'm like, you know what? No, I've heard about it, I've read about it. I know that it was used even during COVID for treatment of COVID but when we're talking about high dose melatonin, can you unpack that for us? And then I have a lot of questions surrounding it too.
- [10:57]
Stephanie Gratz
Okay. So I first learned about high dose melatonin probably around seven, eight years ago. Dr. Shallenberger was talking about it and it was more of a newer approach to mitochondrial protection and especially in cancer care. I do want to make a caveat that if you are listening and you do have cancer, it's great. But if you have a blood cancer, lymphoma, anything like that, then you don't want to take high dose melatonin. There's specific procedures and protocols for that. So I just want to make that before everybody just jumps on the bandwagon and gets melatonin. But for any solid tumors, it is, it is fantastic. And prevention for anybody that is getting x rays, mammograms, PET scan, CT scans. So really at low doses, the 3 milligrams a night that you commonly think of melatonin as, it mimics the natural circadian rhythm. It acts on this MT1, MT2 pathway and receptors and really regulates that. But at the higher doses, like 100, 200 plus, I mean, there's some people taking thousands. I mean, really there, it's like the wild, wild west. So we kind of stick to what we know best right now. But at the higher doses, it bypasses the circadian system and then it acts on the receptor mediated cells directly impacting cellular detox. So really it's acting like a totally different molecule doing that. I compare it to like high dose vitamin C and we'll probably talk about high dose vitamin C later. But and low doses, vitamin C is an antioxidant, right? It's helping with all the oxidative stress in the body. But then in cancer, we use it as higher doses where it turns into an oxidative therapy. So it actually flips a switch. It does oxidative properties like chemo does. But the best part about vitamin C is that it protects your natural cells and it only removes the abnormal cancer cells. So melatonin acts like that in low doses versus high doses as well.
- [12:52]
Dr. Amy
Okay, so that's interesting. So it's a totally different action on the body, high dose versus low dose. So, and, and it's interesting what you said about it helps improve that mitochondrial function, helps improve detox, because one of the things that I've uncovered after looking at my DNA is that my mitochondria struggle, for lack of a better word, and I really have issues detoxing and even methylating and metabolizing my hormones. So will high dose melatonin actually help with that and all of those pathways as well?
- [13:24]
Stephanie Gratz
Yes, it can. Again, there's still a lot of research to be done, but from the early research that we're seeing is it is really helping with like the redox pathways and opening up all of those systems. So it really is acting like a miracle antioxidant. It's more powerful than glutathione, vitamin C, vitamin E, you know, the major antioxidants in the body. Yeah.
- [13:43]
Dr. Amy
Oh my gosh. Well, yeah, all you hear is glutathione, glutathione, glutathione, when it comes to antioxidant status. And you're saying that this is even stronger now, isn't glutathione actually contraindicated in certain types of cancer that you actually want to avoid that?
- [13:59]
Stephanie Gratz
Yeah, so it's more complex than that. And this is why I really recommend someone working with a practitioner that really understands the integrative metabolic approach to cancer. Because everything is complex. When we're looking at, let's say someone has cancer and they're getting acute radiation, well, glutathione in short doses for that can really help with the repair post radiation. But in general, long term, sometimes that pathway can kick up. It can help kind of feed and fuel cancer cells. So we watch it's like a push and pull. So sometimes it's appropriate, sometimes it's not. So you really have to look at your whole picture and use it when it's actually indicated.
- [14:38]
Dr. Amy
Well, and to that point, that's why I'm so happy to be working with you. I said in the beginning that you have literally trained under the best of the best in this industry and you're so knowledgeable on all the different treatment protocols for each type of cancer, you are correct. It's imperative that somebody be working with someone to guide them because this is, this is a crazy journey to try to figure out on your own. Okay, back to the melatonin. You know, so many of my patients will say, well, I can't take 3 milligrams of melatonin. I can't take 5 milligrams of melatonin. It goes the opposite for me. I'll get wired, I'll have nightmares, I won't sleep very well or it will make me groggy the next morning. Now, I have experienced this in the past. Usually when I go up to, let's say, 10 or 20 milligrams of melatonin, that's when I will experience kind of that opposite effect or the really, really groggy effect the next morning. What blew me away about your high dose melatonin that I'm now taking? There's none of that. There's no fatigue. There's no, you know, after the next morning fatigue, there's no nightmares. I think it is helping me sleep to a point. Of course, I stack you with magnesium and progesterone and all the other things, but why is that? Why is there such a difference between the low dose and the high dose? As it affects our brains and our sleep and can people who don't tolerate the lower doses tolerate the higher doses? Which is really like contradictive in my mind and in most people's mind. But can you explain that?
- [16:05]
Stephanie Gratz
Yeah. So, I mean, I get that question all the time, right? Because when I tell a patient to take 150 milligrams of melatonin, they're like, oh my gosh, am I going to be able to function? And quite honestly, when I did for the first time, I'm like, how am I going to be. I'll have to take it on a weekend when I know I'm not going to be doing anything. But I was the exact same as you where at lower doses I was sensitive. But again, that's because the lower doses are binding to MT1 and MT2 receptors. And with the higher doses, it is skipping that. It's, it's working independently of melatonin receptors and entering the mitochondria directly to exert their, the effects of the pathways, the oxidative stress and all of that. So it's actually going its own pathway. So I tell people, even if you're sensitive to the low doses, it's doing something different at high doses. And you only know, I mean, it can make some people sleepy. But I have patients that take it four times a day throughout a day at high doses, and they have no, no effects, really. It depends on you. And there's some hormone, some genetic snips at play there as well. But for most people, they tolerate it just fine.
- [17:07]
Dr. Amy
I was just going to ask you about taking it during the day as well. So if someone did want to, or let's say I wanted to experiment with taking 200 milligrams instead of taking 200 at night, I could essentially take 100 during the day and 100 at night without having an effect on my energy levels. It won't make me more fatigued during the day. Nothing like that.
- [17:27]
Stephanie Gratz
Not typically. Again, this is why I tell people like, everybody's so different that do a test run when there's a day that you don't have anything like major going on. But there's a lot of people that take it during the day. If they get the vivid dreams at night or they're not able to take it at nighttime, they'll take it throughout the day.
- [17:42]
Dr. Amy
Now, my plan is to stay on this long term. So, you know, whether I have the hysterectomy or not, to take care of the cancer, my plan is to stay on this long term because of its antioxidant status and be. Because of its preventative status or. I really never want to hear the C word again, Steph. So there's nothing wrong with me taking it ongoing. Right. It does not have a negative feedback loop because that's the other thing that I hear. Well, it's going to shut down my own melatonin production.
- [18:07]
Stephanie Gratz
Yeah. As, as we mentioned again, it's working on its own pathway, so it doesn't do that same thing. Now, if you're feeding someone 3 milligrams every single day, that essentially 3 milligrams is a small amount. So I don't think that would change it. But if you're in the 20s and 60s and it's not converting into a different pathway and it's still using the MT1, MT2 receptor, then it might. But at the higher doses, you're not risking that for now. You know, science changes. Right. And that's what really, when we work in integrative medicine, you know, this. I know this stuff changes all of the time. So we just go with the best research that we have in the moment because we're on the cutting edge. Right. We're doing the things that we're not going to wait 50 years for a new study to come out. So we're doing the best that we can right now and it's showing really promising results for long term use.
- [18:54]
Dr. Amy
That is so amazing. Now could it even help with your immune system, let's say during the winter? I mean, since we used it during COVID Covid was a virus or man made, don't know, but it was a virus, it was a weird virus and it was being used as, as part of standard Covid treatment protocols. So can we even use it for treatments of the common cold or the flu or use it during the winter if you're not going to use it long term? Ongoing?
- [19:21]
Stephanie Gratz
Yeah, I mean there's indications. And as you hit with COVID were using higher doses of melatonin and it was showing really effective results. And even so, post viral syndromes, obviously long Covid is one of them. It can help restore the mitochondria, it can reduce oxidative stress, it can modulate the immune system. So anybody that has autoimmune disease, it can help downregulate an overactive immune system. So really it's not just for cancer, it's for a lot of, quite honestly, a lot of what standard Americans are experiencing. Right, a lot of oxidative stress. So it's really helping deeper going to the mitochondria. And when we talk about this too, if you don't have cancer, I tell everybody have one bottle on hand because let's say you have an X ray, as I mentioned. X ray, PET scan, bone, DEXA scan, mammogram, all of those are radiation. And so doing 300 milligrams is what I recommend. One to two hours prior to any of those scans will help protect your mitochondria from the radiation during those scans.
- [20:22]
Dr. Amy
Oh, that is so interesting. Oh my gosh, I wish I would have known this years ago with the amount of X rays and now CT scans and all of that. Oh my gosh, that's crazy. So this is really. I have a list of supplements that I lovingly call my no duh supplements, meaning of course, duh, you're going to take these every day. And that's like your vitamin D and your magnesium. And I put iodine in there because I love iodine. But this sounds like this needs to be part of the no duh supplement list. People should be on this, they should be taking this daily and making this part of their regimen, in my opinion. I mean, it just sounds borderline miraculous. Why the hell wouldn't we take this every day.
- [21:01]
Stephanie Gratz
I mean, I agree. Also, I've done the research, and even. So, like, our. My company, Select Balance, I created the 150 milligram melatonin, because before that, their highest, I think, was 60. And I was like, gosh, we're giving people too many capsules to begin with. So that's why we bumped it up and made the 150 milligram. But, yeah, I. I mean, I'm. I practice what I preach, and I make this stuff. I. For myself to heal, because I. I have a history of autoimmune disease as well, so, you know, I do this stuff to help myself as well.
- [21:31]
Dr. Amy
Yeah, I love it. I love it. Well, I'm taking yours, so. That's right. I'm taking 150, not 100. So, yeah, I'm taking Balance. Okay. Beautiful. Now, I want to transition, because you do so much more. Obviously, I wanted to pick your brain about the melatonin because it fascinates me, and not enough people are talking about it, and there's a lot of misinformation out there that we just very quickly unpacked. I mean, it's that simple. So now I want to move into the world of cancer and everything that you do. So I came to your clinic, and. And, number one, we ran tests, and when you initially gave me my lab order to check for all of these markers that you wanted to look at, I went to LabCorp with it, and we got the results back. And as it turned out, LabCorp could not run over half of them. So I came to your clinic because, obviously, this is what you do, and you were able to run all of the tests. So right there, off the bat, that tells me that conventional medicine severely drops the ball when it comes to oncology and cancer treatment. Because if. If LabCorp can't even run these markers, who is getting this tested? No one, unless they're coming to see you or someone like you. So, you know, you're working very closely with patients navigating cancer. What's the biggest. Are the biggest gaps you see in conventional oncology when it comes to testing and. And root cause healing?
- [22:48]
Stephanie Gratz
Yeah. So I think one of the biggest gaps I see is that conventional oncology often waits for the cancer to appear before taking action, and they focus almost entirely on killing the cell versus rebuilding the train. So there's minimal attention that goes to, like, what actually caused the cancer in the first place. Right. We're so focused on the tumor that we're like, why did that environment create the cancer Immune dysfunction, toxin overload, chronic hormone imbalances, emotional trauma. Emotional trauma is a big one that we don't talk about. All of that is like the. The essence of the environment. So until we actually heal that, we can remove that tumor, which will usually lead, leave cancer circulating, or cancer cells, stem cells, you know, planted. So until we actually really heal the environment, that cancer has a great opportunity to represent itself.
- [23:41]
Dr. Amy
Yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense. So you're looking the. The markers that you ordered on me that we eventually did. P for what exactly? I'll just hand that over to you because I can't even begin to.
- [23:52]
Stephanie Gratz
Yeah, everything. So, I mean, really, the comprehensive cancer testing one, I'm looking at cancer markers, and I run the full gamut. You would see on your testing that I didn't just run ovarian cancer markers, I ran breast cancer markers, colon cancer, because some of them can cross react with different cancers. And when I find one, if there's a cancer marker that's high, I love following that. So then every month we can look at that. We also use company like Signatera that will draw your. You can do a blood test that will look for circulating tumor cells. And so that's a really great baseline because let's say it's at zero. You don't have any circulating tumor cells. You have to. You actually have to have a pathology. So this isn't for someone that's just healthy wanting this, but this is for someone that had a tumor, that has a biopsy. They'll take a piece of that and look at the cancer cell. And then they will look and see if there's anything circulating that can often detect recurrence of cancer 10 to 12 months before a scan even will. So if there's any fragment of DNA or the circulating tumor cell popping up, it will flag that. And then it's like what we're doing right now, we have to switch. So it's just. There's blood tests like that. We look at infections, because if you think about every single part of your body, lung, ovarian, cervical, breast. There can be parasites, viruses, bacteria that are associated with those cancers. And then we look at hormones, look at vitamin D, we look at the things that can put cancer cells on fire, like vegf, iron, ferritin, galactin 3, those type of labs as well.
- [25:26]
Dr. Amy
Okay, I like that. I like the fact that you can look so much deeper into someone's profile, health profile, blood profile, and find things that really are our early detectors. And in my opinion, well, this is my Opinion. We're going to ask your opinion. Much better than, let's say a mammogram, right? Because we hear so much about mammograms. It is radiation. Does it really detect everything? Can you tell more by looking at the tests that you run to look for breast cancer markers, ovarian cancer, Mark, can you tell more from that than you can from. From, let's say, a mammogram?
- [26:04]
Stephanie Gratz
Well, you know, mammograms have their place, but they're a tiny tool, right? And they're. They're a toxic tool. Let's be real. Like, you're getting radiation blasted into you. And let's say you have, like a BRCA gene that is, you know, indicative of breast cancer, ovarian cancer. You're actually increasing that risk by continuously putting radiation on your breasts like you are waiting for the genes to flip on. So when they see that you have a BRCA gene and they tell you to go in and get mammograms every six months, it just. Just makes my. My heart hurt because they're really doing you an injustice because the more times you get a CT scan or radiation or mammal, like, you're putting yourself at risk. So it's a tool that can be helpful, that has saved people, but it's also overdone as well. And it has also falsely told people that they have more extreme cancers than they do. And then they do something extreme like, you know, do mastectomies or anything when maybe it wasn't indicated. You know, there's thermography as well.
- [26:58]
Dr. Amy
There is.
- [26:58]
Stephanie Gratz
There's specific ultrasounds. There are different things that are coming out that are more specialized as well. But then, like, just looking at your. Your genetic profile, I know you looked at this, Amy, like looking at all your genes, and are you a poor estrogen metabolizer? Because if your estrogen pathways are blocked or your liver isn't detoxing your estrogen, well, that's when it can become harmful in your body. And I can tell you, before anybody gets cancer, I work with women doing this program called Harmony Within. I check their hormones, I do the whole kind of basic picture. And 90% of women have estrogen dominance in their body. And this because of the xenoestrogens, the fake estrogens that we're constantly exposed to. The plastics, the soy, the. All of the things in the external environment that we get exposed to every day.
- [27:44]
Dr. Amy
We're all looking to support our thyroid naturally, boost our immune system, and just really have more energy. I have found purality Health. Now, the only problem with Pity Health is that it tastes so good. All of their supplements, from the Mind Boost that I'm going to tell you about to the vitamin C tastes so good, you want to eat it every day. You want to take it every day. It's crazy. I'm addicted to it. I'll tell you more about that. But let's start with the thyroid, something I talk about all the time. As you know, Purality offers a wide range of products that can assist you with thyroid health. But specifically, my favorite is the adaptogenic mushroom. In Mushroom Mind Boost, it tastes like chocolate. I will put Mushroom Mind Boost on a spoon with a little bit of peanut butter, and it's literally a treat. But not only that, it's a liposomal blend of functional mushrooms like Rishi and Cordyceps. Now, Rishi and Cordyceps, they help regulate your body's stress response. We know we need to balance our stress, balance our cortisol so T3 and T4 can work, and so T4 can be converted over to T3. Then another amazing product to support the thyroid is the liposomal lion's mane. That gives us focus, clarity, cognitive support. Again, bringing down stress. Lion's Mane can help boost nerve function, support your mood, both of which is significantly affected when thyroid levels are imbalanced. Now there's the vitamin C. Ooh, vitamin C for our skin, for our immune system, for our adrenal support, oxidative stress reduction. And it tastes. Oh, like you're eating a starburst. It's incredible. I put in my water and it flavors my water. It's amazing. Since the thyroid is incredibly sensitive to inflammation and cellular damage, vitamin C protection is crucial. And here's the best part. Their patented liposomal delivery system makes all of these ingredients highly absorbable to your body. Is actually using what you're taking bonus, right? So if you're ready to finally feel like yourself again, you want to head to purality health.com forward slash Dr. Amy and enter the coupon code Dr. Amy to save up to 45 off. So you're going to go to P U R A L I T Y H E a l t h.com forward/d r A M I E and use that same code, D R A M I e. Get your 45 off. Because your body deserves more than, you know, just okay health. And when you say estrogen dominance, it's not necessarily going to show up on labs like you're not going to always have an estradiol of 500, right? No.
- [30:32]
Stephanie Gratz
Right. This is why I. That's a great question. And I always. If someone is having cycles, I always get their labs done in between their luteal phase, which around here, no, doctor, Western medicine doctor is getting their hormone checks for women. They have all these symptoms. They're like, oh, it's just. It's psych. It's some mental health disorder that you have, you know, but they're not even looking at hormones, but they're definitely not looking at luteal phase. So days 19 to 21 of your cycle is when they really should be testing. And then we look at the body, and even if they're in the normal range, there's a calculator that you can put progesterone and estrogen in, and that can show that, let's say your estrogen is really dominant compared to your progesterone. And that's where we try to support that.
- [31:14]
Dr. Amy
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Now, when it comes to thyroid cancer, how often are you working with women with thyroid cancer? How prevalent is that?
- [31:24]
Stephanie Gratz
Honestly?
- [31:24]
Dr. Amy
Not.
- [31:25]
Stephanie Gratz
Not often, luckily, because a lot of. I think if you talk to Naysha Winters, too, she's one of my, you know, great mentors, but it's not a common cancer. And that's one of the things that there's a lot of healing that you can do before you go extreme and to, you know, get radiation or to get it excised. So I always recommend, especially if you do get a cancer. Thyroid cancer diagnosis, see someone integrative immediately because that could save your. Your thyroid for sure.
- [31:50]
Dr. Amy
Okay. Yeah, I'm the same. I don't see. I don't personally see a lot of thyroid cancer coming to the clinic, but I will see them. Them after their thyroid is removed or they've had a radioactive iodine treatment and now they're deeply in that hypo state that we have to rebuild their hormones. But to your point, I don't. It's not. It's not prevalent. There's not a lot of thyroid cancer. But what do you believe that women should. What lab should they run before they're diagnosed with cancer? Especially if they have that strong family history of thyroid dysfunction or they themselves have thyroid dysfunction, Is there. Is there a greater risk of different types of cancer? Not even necessarily thyroid, but other types of cancer if you do have hypothyroidism yourself or in your family?
- [32:30]
Stephanie Gratz
Yes, I believe that any of that imbalance with the HPA access, you know, the thyroid, the cortisol levels with your adrenals any in your sex hormones, if any of that's out of balance, that can lead to an environment that increases your risk for cancer. The labs that I mentioned above for you, like, you know, looking at a CBC, a CBC, a simple $5 test that shows us your white blood cells, your red blood cells can tell us kind of the health of your body. A CMP can tell me a lot. And looking at your electrolytes, liver, kidney function, inflammatory markers are really important. Homocysteine is, I think, one of the most underrated markers. So homocysteine can be a huge inflammatory marker and increase angiogenesis, cancer markers. So we do a lot of, like, working with pushing those pathways open if it is elevated. Cytokine panel is really important too, because that is looking at all the interleukins and seeing. Okay, is there a lot of. Is there immune basis that, like, is something wrong in the immune system that we need to, you know, look at and correct as well? So, yeah, there's a lot of different labs that we just go more in depth with. And again, looking back at the infections, mold, heavy metals, toxin, chemical exposures, you know, getting to the root of all of that.
- [33:42]
Dr. Amy
Yes. And I love. Oh, gosh, I just. I love that you do this, and I love that there. There are people like yourself out there that are providing this level of care and that we are getting it out there to the world. Because even I didn't know. I. I did not know about you or what you do until, unfortunately, I am faced with an actual diagnosis. And, you know, the purpose of us doing this podcast and me shouting it from the rooftops is to help people be more preemptive. You know, it's. It's unfortunate. I'm sure you see this in your practice as well, that. That you don't really think about cancer until you have it, until you're told that that big C word or maybe somebody very close to you in your family has it. But even then, I'm sorry, my. My grandmother has. My father has. I watched him go through cancer twice. He damn near died. He came back. He had a bone marrow transplant. It still didn't imprint on me the importance of testing, of prevention, of any of the protocols that. That you put people on for prevention. So I'm really happy that we're having this conversation. So I come to your clinic, and you have a multitude of different things. Devices, protocols, treatments that can be really blended and customized to each individual. And I want to kind of just go through some of them and have you unpack Them because they're fascinating. Let's start with. You just sent me mistletoe. Haven't started it yet. Just literally opened the box yesterday. What is mistletoe? Who needs to use it? Why is it beneficial? Talk to me about that.
- [35:10]
Stephanie Gratz
Yeah. So mistletoe is really great in cancers because it will help stimulate the immune system to get a response. So a lot of times our immune system is kind of sleepy and either sluggish or turned off from something from the stressors of life. Right. I always kind of compare it to, let's say an elderly person. They can be septic and really sick and not have a fever. Right. So a lot of times people in my clinic, when they come to me and they're like, hey, I haven't had a fever in five years. I'm like, oh, that's actually not good. Your body needs a fever. Like, you need to produce this warmth to actually kill microbes and to get your immune system strong and functioning. So I always love when we can say that I had a fever, you know, for the first time in a long time. But mistletoe is what kind of replicates that. So it's used for stimulating that immune system response to burn. I like to call it, like burn off cancer cells or cells that shouldn't be in the body. It's getting our immune system looking around and seeing what doesn't belong in getting rid of it.
- [36:15]
Dr. Amy
That's fascinating. Okay. I've heard about it, I've heard it talked about, but I didn't know the. The use of it. So can this be used for prevention and treatment?
- [36:25]
Stephanie Gratz
I like to keep mistletoe for during treatment. There is something called hellebore Boris that is of. It's like, this is a German philosophy in medicine. It's really an art versus a science. Right. So I can go more into mistletoe, but helleboris is also called Christmas rose. And that is for more like immune system, just generalized help. So I would do that versus mistletoe for prevention. And that's just a little injection as well. But yeah, yeah, mistletoe, like I said, it's an art. Because your case, there's different types of trees. So mistletoe, we think about it as a Christmas kissing little plant, but it actually is like a parasite. It grows in the middle of trees, and it sucks the nutrients from the trees and it grows into this like just big ball. And so each ball has like these little beads on it. And what in them is like this. It's a toxin that mistletoe is and that's what we use. So each tree is a host tree. So like for women that have breast cancer or ovarian cancer, they probably will be getting apple tree. So mistletoe Molly is apple tree. And that's for women and like the essence of a woman. And then there's like piney or fir tree depending on like, for men and prostate cancer. So it's really unique based on someone's cancer type as well.
- [37:41]
Dr. Amy
Guys, this is fascinating. I love, I love unpacking all this. Okay, so there's also high dose vitamin C. Many people have heard of this. This is something though, that you have to do injection wise or, or IV wise. It's not like you're going to take a boatload of oral vitamin C, right?
- [37:58]
Stephanie Gratz
No. Yes, oral. High dose of oral vitamin C will give you diarrhea. I mean that, like it irritates the gut. So I actually, if people are constipated, I tell them to do flushes of vitamin C. Like that's what will clean them out. But let's say you're typically taking orally 500-3000mg of vitamin C a day. Again, that's an antioxidant. What we're doing is an IV has to be IV and we're doing 50,000 milligrams of vitamin C. It's passing the gut. It's turning into, it actually goes from. It's an oxidant, but when it goes into the veins, it turns into hydrogen peroxide in the body and then that's what goes around and kills the cancer cells.
- [38:38]
Dr. Amy
Okay, so huge difference. And I have heard that, that even in some cancers you don't want to use high dose antioxidants. You want to. And that's where the, the vitamin C infusion versus oral differentiates itself.
- [38:52]
Stephanie Gratz
Yeah, because it's not an, it's not an antioxidant, it's an oxidant at that point.
- [38:56]
Dr. Amy
Now why is that, that in certain cancers, you know, we always hear antioxidant, antioxidant. Oh my gosh, it's so good for you. It's good for prevention of cancer. It supports your body. But why is it in that certain. Certain cancers or, or maybe all. I'm not sure. I'll have you unpack that. But why do we sometimes avoid the high dose antioxidants?
- [39:14]
Stephanie Gratz
It's that push pull that I talked about earlier with the glutathione. So there's certain pathways that we don't want stimulated while they're getting certain Treatments. So it really is like we don't want it to contraindicate itself. We never give glutathione with high dose vitamin C because they would offset like an antioxidant versus an oxidant. Doesn't even make sense. So it's really working with the pathways and what we're currently treating. So when people are on like the heavy protocols, we don't want to push antioxidant pathways too much because then we could be blocking some of the oxidative properties that are actually getting rid of the cancer cells.
- [39:51]
Dr. Amy
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. And again, this just speaks so much to needing to work with somebody because it's a confusing world out there. You know, what you hear in the typical world, just, just, you know, antioxidants and detox and glutathione and vitamin C. Yay. Might be totally contraindicated in your particular active cancer case or in my particular active cancer case. So now you also did a really cool treatment on me. It was an ozone sauna. Now why does that help? When is that indicated?
- [40:19]
Stephanie Gratz
Yeah, so I love ozone. Have you ever had ozone, blood ozone before?
- [40:23]
Dr. Amy
I haven't. You know that I've used ozone suppositories, but I. And I know the smell very well, but I've never had blood ozone. Done.
- [40:32]
Stephanie Gratz
Yeah. So ozone is O3. So it, it mixes O3 with O2. And it can be a really potent cleanser of cells and toxins. So we use it in, in different realms, especially with like, any illnesses like viruses or. Anytime we're feeling depleted, we use blood ozone. And that can really perk someone up. But with the ozone sauna, you're going into this fiberglass chamber, your head is sticking out and then it's pumping in the steam to really get the cells, your skin to open up, your cells to open. And then the oxygen and ozone goes into that cellular pathway and it helps to really detoxify the cells.
- [41:07]
Dr. Amy
Oh, that is crazy. That's amazing. So that would work across the board for treatment, for prevention, for all types of cancer. Are there any contraindications to that?
- [41:17]
Stephanie Gratz
No, it really is a simple. There's not a lot of them around, so it'd be hard for people. You know, I don't think people can actively access ozone saunas, but if you do, or even just like the blood ozone would be good. Or, you know, there's different. There's eo. Now, I don't know if you're familiar with eo.
- [41:32]
Dr. Amy
I've heard of it.
- [41:33]
Stephanie Gratz
Almost like it's almost like mini dialysis. It's like you start two IVs and then the blood goes through the vein or comes out of the vein and it goes through this filtration device where it collects biofilm, molds, toxins, plastics, microplastics, and then it ozonates it, UV lights it and puts it back in your body. So like it's giving your body basically a oil change. Right. So that's what I love for like prevention. Those are the type of things that once a year invest in your health in that way.
- [42:02]
Dr. Amy
That is cool. Oh my gosh. That is very cool. Yeah, I'm gonna have to try you one of these days too. Okay. And then hbot, hyperbaric oxygen, you have that in your clinic as well. How does that apply to? Yes, obviously cancer, but also just anti aging healing. Talk to me more about that. I have not, I've not unpacked HBOT therapy on the podcast yet.
- [42:25]
Stephanie Gratz
Okay. So. And it can resist chemo and radiation. HBOT floods the terrain with oxygen and disrupts the low oxygen advantage. So really it's like helping put in action where it needs to be. It can also help synergistically work with things like radiation therapy because it can help generate free radicals. Making the oxygen makes it more effective. Certain chemotherapies can thrive on more potent oxygen rich environments. So there is definitely a bunch of different procedures. I love using HBOT just in general for prevention brain health. So it can really help with anybody that's had concussions in the past, any neurological diseases. It can help put oxygen into the brain where we don't often get that experience any type of fractures or anything like that. It can actually help which you're talking about the anti aging. It can help push out red blood cells and stem cells from the bone marrow. So the stem cells are what leads to the anti aging and all that effect. So that was a long answer, but no.
- [43:28]
Dr. Amy
That's beautiful. That's beautiful. So when we're talking about the different H block chambers, I just want to kind of pick your brain on this. There's, there's, you know, there's the medical ones that you literally have to be monitored. You can't bring in a computer, you can't have jewelry, don't bring your phone in. You know, it's big time. And that would really be more for wound healing. And I don't even know what else it's used for. Just, you know, really hospitalization, wound healing. Like a friend of mine's father was diabetic and Lost his foot and had to do HBOT therapy. But then we have the ones that are available at home in different clinics that you can do more often and the atmosphere pressure is a little bit lower. What's the difference and what's the benefit? I've actually heard that it's more beneficial to do the ones like you have in your clinic that go up to a 1.3 ATA atmospheric pressure and do that as a therapy as opposed to a once in a while big time metal chamber, one that goes up to I think three or four. Four atas.
- [44:27]
Stephanie Gratz
Yeah. So the, the heart chambers can go up to three ATAs. And we used to think that that was the best. But Dr. I think his name's Paul Harsh, he's like the HBOT guru guy. He has a, a lot of books about it and they did a lot of research studies on soft sided chambers with ata atmospheric pressure up to like 1.3. The soft chambers that you see a lot versus the hard. Really the heart has its way, like you mentioned wound care, Lyme disease specific protocols can be helpful and then sometimes like damage, radiation damage effects can be helpful with the heart chambers as well. And sometimes if you had had radiation, insurance will cover the hospital heart chamber radiation sessions. So that's something like with insurance people opt for. But most of the things that you need can get done in a soft chamber. It's usually less expensive, it has less side effects. With the hard chamber. There's risk for cataracts because of that high oxygen pressurization. There's risk for other medical malfunctions of the machines itself. So the safer alternative option that does really good for especially prevention and cancer is the soft chamber.
- [45:35]
Dr. Amy
Okay, okay, good. Because that's more wildly available anyways for people. And I really wanted to know, even from my own knowledge which one was better because you hear both sides of the coin. But I've been, I've been hearing that as well that the soft sided chamber actually has more benefits. It's because you can do it more often. And, and the beautiful thing is you can bring in your phone and your computer if you're in something for an hour or more. You know, it's really hard to just lie there and be still. I want to be able to do some work or check Facebook, I don't know. But that's beautiful. That's awesome.
- [46:06]
Stephanie Gratz
You know, I was watching, gosh, one of the, one of the guys that is like one of the ultra humans and he was talking about how he did his own experiment with a soft Chamber, this was just recently on 90 days in the soft chamber, one hour a day and his inflammatory markers went down non existent. Like he reversed his age. You know the tests that they can do, all of these proactive positive markers were of benefit by using the chamber for one hour a day for 90 days. So I mean there are definitely benefits for those pathways.
- [46:35]
Dr. Amy
Interesting. Okay, now did I miss any? Because I didn't do all of the treatments at your place. But did I miss anything? Like is there another, your favorite treatment that you have that we didn't touch on?
- [46:47]
Stephanie Gratz
You know Art, we try to do as much cutting edge as we can here. We do the NAD infusions and that can be good for certain indications. Anti aging, longevity, just general health. Ketamine therapy is one that I love doing for patients and I'd like to do that because when I was treating patients with cancer there was always like an emotional part that I couldn't connect with and I was like, well maybe ketamine would have some effect on that. And you know, because there's a lot of anxiety, ptsd, trauma in everybody's life and especially when you get diagnosed with a something like cancer, there's a lot of fear around that. So the ketamine lotus, Ketamine is like, it helps increase brain drive, neurotropic factor in the brain and reconnect the synapses that were lost or disconnected and create new ones. And so that's one of my favorites that I love doing here.
- [47:39]
Dr. Amy
Well, that was amazing. That was the first time I ever experienced ketamine and that was incredible. It was so just calming and peaceful. Now I didn't do any talk therapy. You just kind of let me roll with it and go on my own little journey. But that was just absolutely an amazing experience that I absolutely want to have again. So I'm so happy that you offered at your clinic. Yeah, I mean you really do it all. So if people want to. Well first of all with the, I'm going to go back to the, the high dose melatonin. You have it in your line, you ship, you're actually giving everyone a 20 off discount for your, your select balance higher dose melatonin. So we'll put that in the show notes. But you can go to selectbalance.com, use the code Dr. Amy 20 D R A M I E 20. And you also will work with people. I mean you have people fly in from everywhere and you're, you're in my little state of Iowa just down the road, but you will have people fly in to come see you at the clinic as well as pull from miles and miles around locally. And I know you're going to give a discount there too. But can you tell people a little bit more about how they can begin this process of, of working with you? What do they need to do? Call and schedule an appointment? Do you start with labs? How do they begin this process?
- [48:53]
Stephanie Gratz
So for people at a distance that want to work, it would be best to give them kind of. They can email me at stephanie@thehealthypractitioner.com Someone from my team will respond back to them, but that will give us an idea of what they're looking for for therapies and then we can route them in the right direction.
- [49:09]
Dr. Amy
And yeah, with the labs, I mean, it's going to be a crapshoot. They might have to come to your clinic to get all the labs done because can't promise the lab corps is going to do it. But you're actually giving $100 lab test kit with protocols for men or women. And that is@Select balance.com and we'll, we'll put that into the show notes too, because it's a longer link. But can you talk about that? What's involved in that test kit?
- [49:32]
Stephanie Gratz
So these are just more like what we talked about earlier, the prevention things like looking at your hormones, your inflammation, your iron, your cbc, cmp. So it's really just looking at the person as a whole and like what you can do to optimize your body so that you prevent something like cancer from occurring.
- [49:50]
Dr. Amy
Beautiful. Well, I'm so happy that you're, you're offering that to the audience, so thank you. And that you have a discount code, code for that too. So we'll put that down in the show notes and we'll put all of your contact information in the show notes because I really think it's important that people who are on this journey or like I said earlier, start this before you get the diagnosis, because that's what I wish I would have done as well. And you also guide them even in nutritional therapy, lifestyle therapy, all the other things that they need to be doing too, in terms of, of changing up, maybe their hormone protocols, their nutrition protocol protocols, the way they're eating. You really encompass the whole person. And you look at them from head to toe, which I love.
- [50:27]
Stephanie Gratz
Yeah. Yeah. We have some great people on our team that are advocates as well that can really help any of the plans, like help you walk through the path so you don't feel alone. I can't sit with a patient, you know, for hours at a day. But there are advocates that can really help that understand this. So I just say, like, don't feel alone on your journey. Get the support that you you need because you know it can make all of the difference.
- [50:49]
Dr. Amy
I love that. I love that. Well, Stephanie, thank you so much for your time today. And you know, we'll put all the links in the show notes once again. And I and I really, truly believe that this podcast will help a lot of, a lot of people, whether they're walking the cancer journey or they're looking to prevent. So thank you so much for being here.
- [51:03]
Stephanie Gratz
Thanks Amy. Appreciate you.
- [51:10]
Dr. Amy
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