← 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
598. Does Inflammation Really Cause Hashinoto's? The Autoimmune Truth No One Told You
00:40:52
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- [00:01]
A
So how do you even know that you are inflamed? I hear so many of you saying that you can feel inflammation in your body. Or maybe you're just experiencing excess fatigue. Maybe you're experiencing weight gain, joint pain, headaches, migraines, whatever it is, brain fog. Now, of course, all of those symptoms can be correlated to low hormone. Welcome to the new and completely reimagined Thyroid Fixer podcast. A podcast that refuses to sound like every other health show out there. We're here to disrupt this entire space, and now you are part of that disruption. If you're listening right now, it's because something inside you finally said, I'm done being ignored. And I'm here to tell you. Good. Because this is where everything changes for you. This is where you say, no more. No more being dismissed by your doctor. No more being told your labs are normal. No more recycled medical advice. No more recycled biohacking advice. No more being told to accept what you know isn't right here. You'll get truth. You'll get clarity. You'll get information you can actually use, tools, strategy, and guidance you can apply right now to take back your energy, your hormones, your metabolism, and your life. Every episode will give you something real, something that moves you forward, something that reminds you that you were never the problem the system was. This is the Thyroid Fixer podcast. This is your turning point. This is where you rise. Get ready. We're about to disrupt everything you thought you knew about thyroid and hormone health.
- [01:41]
B
Let's go.
- [01:42]
A
Healthy hormones begin with healthy cells. So when we talk about thyroid or hormone health, we usually focus on lab supplements or symptoms. But there's a deeper story happening in your body, and that's one that begins in your cells. Every hormone your body produces relies on healthy, energized cells to do its job. And at the heart of each cell are the mitochondria, your energy centers. As we age, or when the body is under stress, mitochondrial function naturally declines. That can show up in so many ways. Fatigue, slower recovery, or just simply that feeling off. This is where Timeline Nutrition's breakthrough Mito Pure comes in. Mito Pure is a highly pure form of a nutrient called urolithin A, if you've ever heard of that. It's backed by over 15 years of research, multiple human studies, and has been shown to support mitochondrial health, muscle function, and overall cellular performance. By helping your mitochondria work more efficiently, you're supporting the foundation of your energy and your long term wellness. I personally found that this deeper cellular approach to Health is a powerful complement to everything we do for thyroid and hormone balance. It's not about quick fixes. It's about building resilience from the inside out. If you're ready to support your body at the cellular level, Mito Pure offers a clean, clinically backed way to start. So you are going to go to timeline.com. Dr. Amy so that's T I M E l I n e.com I forward/ D R A M I E. And you're going to see the code on there. Dr. Amy 10 D R A M I E 10. But if you want to try the gummies, the Mito Pure, it's actually going to give you 20% off your order. So just go ahead and click that code. D R a m I e 10. You'll see it on the page or you can add it at checkout. You're going to save some money while giving new life to your cells. You have questions about your thyroid, about your labs, what they mean. What about your hormones? What about insulin? Why are you gaining weight? Why are you so tired? Why are you losing your hair? Why won't my doctor listen to me? Why won't my doctor test these things, all of these questions that you have running around in your brain and you know that if you just had the answers that that could push you over the edge into optimal health, that you could be that badass human that you are meant to be. Well, I got you covered there because I am going live every single week in the just fix your thyroid Facebook group. That is my Facebook group, a beautiful community just filled with amazing people where I am in there, my nurse practitioners are in there, my health coaches are in there. There are patients in there that have been with me for so long, they're experts in their own right and they answered just the way that I would. So we have you completely covered in this group. So not only can you post your question every single day, every single hour, if you want, you can mark your calendars for our weekly live Q and A sessions where you get to ask your question to me and I'm going to answer it live on air. And not only that, we are doing product giveaways, we're doing working with our team giveaways. You're going to want to be in there and actually be live on that call. If you're at work going in the closet, just shut the door, Take minutes for yourself, take a half an hour for yourself, take an hour for yourself so that you can get the information that you need to bring yourself into optimization land where you're not looking sideways at a brownie and gaining weight at the same time.
- [05:34]
B
What?
- [05:35]
A
You can feel amazing every single day because that's my goal for you. You know that I love, love, love to answer your questions and this is the place where you can get them answered live. So how do you even know that you are inflamed? I hear so many of you saying that you can feel inflammation in your body or maybe you're just experiencing excess fatigue, maybe you're experiencing weight gain, joint pain, headaches, migraines, whatever it is, brain fog. Now, of course, all of those symptoms can be correlated to low hormones and low thyroid. But inflammation is really at the root cause of most diseases and most symptoms. Now, you've heard my guest on the show before, Dr. Shivani Gupta, but we're bringing her back on because she has a brand new book out, the Inflammation Code that I'm just going to start off right off the bat, do not hit the stop button. You're not going to end this episode because I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that we're going to talk about food. You think that we are going to give you this magical anti inflammatory diet and tell you to take out the processed foods and take out the sugars. Well, you know what, I think that that's pretty much common sense at this point. And I love the fact that Dr. Schiavone literally leads off by saying this is a non diet book, this isn't a cookbook. It's not your new meal plan to reduce inflammation. She's getting real with the inflammation code and she's getting into science and Ayurveda. I love the way she says it better than I do. So I'll have her say it on air. And she is bringing together everything that you can do. Yes, of course, in a natural setting, but outside of just changing up your diet and eating organic. So, Dr. Schiavone, thank you for writing the inflammation code and thank you for being on the show.
- [07:27]
B
Thank you for having me. Always love being on your show.
- [07:30]
A
Well, we love having you. And as you have said openly, I mean, I've been on your Instagram lives, you've been on my show before. You are a patient of the Advanced Thyroid Hormone clinic and you're doing amazingly well. But I think a lot of that is attributed to how you live your life and actually applying what you're teaching and writing about in the book to your daily life.
- [07:53]
B
Well, I've learned so much working from you, like working with you and hiring your team and learning how to actually manage my thyroid health and hormone health has been enlightening because now I have the energy I want. And then. You're right. From the Ayurvedic perspective, I definitely tie in all of my wisdom from the ancient wisdoms of how we can really manage our health from a different approach. And so it's the perfect synergy because you have such wisdom and I get to bring the ancient wisdoms in. So, yes, Ayurveda is this ancient system of medicine from India that's over 5,000 years old, similar to traditional Chinese medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine has acupuncture and other great tools. And in Ayurveda, we taught a lot about a lifestyle you can live every single day that is inherently anti inflammatory. We don't have to obsess about diet, although paying attention to a good healthy diet is going to contribute to less inflammation. Right. But what most people don't realize is inflammation is stealing our energy. And we're forgetting that piece of the puzzle. The fact that inflammation affects our mitochondria, all those inflammatory cytokines, the oxidative stress, they affect those power plants of our cells. And as our energy diminishes, ATP goes down. We're wondering, why am I so tired? And we know that inflammation affects our thyroid. It's going to affect our thyroid health as well. It's going to affect all hormone production and it's going to affect our gut health. And we know gut health is tied to hormone health. So when we have leaky gut, we've got all this inflammation in the system. The entire immune system is confused in a state of chaos, attacking itself. And really we're dealing with this chemical soup within us, these forest fires where the body's like, I don't know which fire alarm to shut off at this point, but all fire alarms are blaring. And that's when we start to feel the symptoms. You mentioned brain fog, fatigue, aches and pains in our joints. Maybe it's our digestion being off, frequent headaches. And when those symptoms happen, we usually say, gosh, this must be aging. And when I hear that voice inside of me, I always go, no, no, no, this is inflammaging. What did you change? What just happened that changed in your life? And we need to go back on that and fix it, because this is not aging. This is inflammation that makes you feel like you are aging.
- [10:14]
A
Now, I want to unpack the autoimmune component really quickly because I love that you mentioned that you Have Hashimoto's. The majority of my audience have Hashimoto's or some kind of autoimmune because it's becoming more and more prevalent in the world today. Outside of Hashimoto's, we have rheumatoid arthritis, we have alopecia, we have, oh my goodness, lupus, MS, type 1 diabetes, psoriasis, eczema. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. What do you think when you're, when you were kind of looking at how inflammation actually kicks up those I'll call em, soldiers, because that's the analogy that I use. Or these little soldiers that go out and attack your thyroid or your hair follicle or your skin or whatever, your joints. What is happening when inflammation triggers autoimmunity?
- [11:03]
B
Well, we look at inflammation as this dysregulation in the system. And what's interesting is so many different factors can cause inflammation. I simplify it down to every single thing that your body doesn't know what to do with is going to cause an inflammatory reaction. So we think of inflammation as, oh, I hurt my elbow or I pulled something at the gym. My shoulder hurts from the gym today. Okay, yes, that's inflammation. It's showing up as bursitis or whatever it is for you. But the bigger issue here is most of us are living in kind of a toxic soup of life right now. Whether it's our air quality, our water quality, our skin care, things coming out of our kitchen, maybe it's the pans we're cooking in, who knows? But the environmental burden of what's coming at us is so significant that the body reacts and the immune system reacts and says, I'm going to go send immune cells to go figure out what that is and clean it up. I always give the example of an Oreo. Let's say you eat an Oreo and it was just a quick treat. You were just trying to eat something on the go. Your body does not think of that as food. It didn't come from Mother Earth. It's just chemicals put together in a package to look and taste like food. So your body says, that's foreign. Like, I don't. That's you ate a toy. In my opinion, I'm just going to take some fat cells, surround that thing, park it somewhere and wait for you to do a good healthy detox that lets me release that. And so imagine if we do that hundreds of times and thousands of times. Maybe it's soda, maybe it's food, like products. Maybe it is our skin care and makeup and all these things. We use our hair, skin, nails, everything. The body's going to react and say, this is a problem. Let me figure out how to go handle it. And if it doesn't know how to handle it, then all of a sudden it's fighting that battle on all fronts in our hair. And that's why our hair is falling out, because it's a deprioritized part of the body. Or maybe it's our joints. Things start to hurt and we're wondering, gosh, why does, like, my hip hurt and my knee hurt and my feet hurt? When things start to stack up, that's a sign that the inflammation is accumulating. And from an Ayurvedic perspective, we look at it as inflammation meets a clogged lymphatic system, a backed up lymphatic system, creating a traffic jam. So when we have that kind of traffic jam in the body, all of a sudden your immune system's like, I don't know where to go, I don't know what to focus on. I don't even know what to prioritize. And so then any virus or problem can come in, take hold, and your defense shield is down. And so that communication of true, like confusion in the system and then also those inflammatory fires going and attacking everything in us is the problem. That chronic, low grade persistent inflammation is going into your joints. It's going into different parts of you. Maybe it's attacking your skin cells, that's vitiligo. Maybe it's attacking your joints. That's rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis. It's just spreading. And it's a matter of where are your weakest points that it takes hold for you. My experience was, it's my hair, my hair is my weak point. So if I have something go off base, it'll show up here. And then that's my canary in the coal mine signal. Hey, something's off. You need to go figure that out, right?
- [14:12]
A
Absolutely. So in Ayurveda, what is the principle for actually training treatment of autoimmune? So, you know, here, even in functional medicine, we will use black cumin seed oil, we'll use a, a medication called low dose naltrexone. So we'll use supplemental form, we'll use prescription form. And then of course, the diet and lifestyle will come in. I know it's not a diet book, but like you said, you can't just treat a dumpster fire and expect a person that's loading themselves down with McDonald's to function properly and be able to calm down inflammation. But so we remove the gluten, we clean up the diet, but then we will treat with either medication or supplements. What's the Ayurveda principle?
- [14:55]
B
So when it comes to those fast solutions, the whole book is about all the lifestyle tools we could use. But if we want the fast, quick Solution, my whole PhD dissertation was on turmeric. So I reach for turmeric first. It is a very powerful anti inflammatory, antioxidant. It's also antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal. It treats the body like the ultimate janitor. It gets in there, gets into the gut, helps clean up and fix the gut lining, cleans out any H. Pylori, candida, all these things, parasites, anything malignant that doesn't belong in the body. Then from a longevity standpoint, it goes after the senolytic cells, those zombie cells that are attacking everything that shouldn't be there anymore cleans that out. It does help when it comes to the AMPK pathway. So it can help with insulin sensitivity. We know it can also help lower cholesterol. So it has this very systemic approach. It's a solution from Mother Nature so our body knows how to receive it and utilize it. But what I love about it is it goes after those master switches of inflammation. So TNF alpha and NF kappa B. And it impacts the interleukins LOX and COX as well. Illinois 6. Illustration IL1 beta. So the fact that it's going after over 30 different inflammatory pathways means that whatever is the inflammation problem we're suffering from, whether it's big, medium, or small, it gets in there and does the job. And to me, that's really exciting. That's why I studied it in depth. And then I went on and created a whole supplement around it. Because I saw that people were taking turmeric, but they weren't feeling anything from it. And I thought, okay, well, first of all, no one's creating anything of quality. Secondly, half the labels say curcuma longa, which is just the plant name. So you're wasting our time giving us regular turmeric powder. And then a lot of people do come to me and say, okay, well, I'm using my fresh turmeric. And I'm like, you are pretty much wasting your time. Fresh turmeric's good. You can juice it. But when we were in ancient India, we didn't use fresh turmeric. We always dried it and got the spice. Cause that's a much more concentrated form of it. And when you take that spice and use it, most people say, well, I sprinkle it on my chicken. When I cook some chicken, I'm like, that is not enough. You need to understand that out of the entire turmeric plant, only 3% of it, 3 to 5%, is the curcuminoids. And we have studied and found that that's the most active part of the plant to get the result we want. And so that's where we talk about extracts. And in extracts, people play a lot of games and just extract what they want. And they never do the standardized highest levels. But when you standardize for that highest potency and reach above the 95% standard and you mimic mother Nature's proportions of curcumin from that turmeric, then the body really knows what to do with it. And so that's been my body of work for the last decade, is teaching how to do this. And then I developed formulations based on that.
- [17:43]
A
Let's stay on that for a minute because you're so right. Curcumin. Turmeric. I say turmeric, you say turmeric. It is almost oversaturated in the supplement market to the point where I know even before I met you, I would look at a curcumin or a turmeric supplement and just think bullshit. Like it's just again, it's, it's the spice that I can get at Giant Eagle and put it into a little capsule. And I've never heard anyone say that they take something with turmeric with curcumin in it and it makes a difference. Now the. That was all until I met you and I learned about your deep dive into your deep dive study into this very unique compound and how powerful it can be when it is manufactured and encapsulated the correct way. So yeah, why is it just, what is it a marketing hype train that people have jumped on? What's the deal?
- [18:40]
B
You know, when it comes to supplements? We know that there have been articles published, Wall Street Journal and things like that where they took products off the retail shelf, they third party tested it, and when they did, they saw that the majority of the supplements, up to 70% of what's in your big box retailer when tested, doesn't have the active ingredient at the level stated or doesn't have the active ingredients at all. They're full of grass, they're full of wood pulp. So the supplement industry is unregulated. And when we go and buy supplements like that, we have no idea who makes them. Is it a multinational who doesn't care about our health? Who is that company? And. And are they just making it for a profit then? The same thing applies to Amazon. We all love Amazon. My whole life is half Amazon prime and Target drive up. But I will not buy my supplements or skincare off of Amazon because I have bought products before and it came completely fake. And I know many people in the supplement world right now who are friends of mine with supplement companies and their own clients are getting fake versions of their own products. Yes, that's a pretty serious issue. We want the convenience of Amazon, but we don't want our products sold in a fake version of itself that could harm people. Because who knows what's in it? You could have put anything in there. And so those are the two biggest issues I see with supplements. The third one is, why did you make the supplement in the first place? What problem are you trying to solve? In my case, my PhD is on turmeric. All I studied is turmeric. I happen to be obsessed with turmeric and I do believe it can solve 99 problems out of the hundred problems we have. So for me, I am a turmeric first company and then everything else I make is for the joy and fun of it, because I want to see, can I make the best menopause tea? Can I make the best sleep tea? And I iterate on those ideas. But the one thing I never change is the quality of my turmeric. Because I know for a fact, even though it's extremely expensive to make, it is so effective, people would know. People would know automatically if I changed one tiny thing. One year I tried adding Ashwagandha to my main formula and that entire database erupted and got mad. And I said, guys, I'm just trying to make you a little calm while you handle your inflammation. And they're like, no, you're never changing this on us. And so I think there's great companies like yours and like mine that actually build to solve the problem. And when you do that, when you're really product focused, first, formula first, then you drive real change because you're worried about that absorption. You're stuffing as much as you can into the capsule. You're delivering something with such a high result in it, it's actually so much more about the client than it is about the company.
- [21:18]
A
Yes. And I'll never forget, I mean, we were just together a few months ago and I was in so much pain. I was like, shivani, I'll Trade you a thyroid fixer for inflammation, because I need it. And it worked. I mean, it absolutely worked. You're like, take a couple of them. I think you told me to take two every few hours. And that absolutely. It allowed me to be present at the conference for the entire weekend without just thinking about your pain. Because pain can take over if you are exhausted, gaining weight, you have brain fog, just feel off, and you're tired of doctor hopping and wasting money. Listen closely. So many women bounce from provider to provider trying supplements, protocols, and then functional approaches that never truly address the thyroid. Months turn into years, and you're still stuck feeling like garbage, wasting your precious life. So this is why we offer a thyroid and hormone solution call. It's not a lab review. It's not treatment. It's clarity and strategy to determine whether you're a good fit for working with our clinic. We specialize in thyroid optimization and hormone optimization together because they go hand in hand. You can't do one without the other. You have to do them both. We prescribe in all 50 states, and if you become a patient, we take care of you from start to finish. Testing, treatment, optimization, and ongoing support. You don't have months or years to waste feeling this way. And you shouldn't have to keep throwing money at people who don't truly understand the thyroid and. And hormones. So if you're ready for real help, go to doctorami.com that'S-R-A-M-I-E.com and click book a call in the top right corner to schedule your thyroid and hormone solution. Call and just let us help you get your life back and be that badass human that you are meant to be, that you deserve to be. Now, you have actually spoken to groups of osteopathic doctors, of surgeons that regularly prescribe opioids for pain management, and you have effectively shifted their mindset away from big pharma to actually using turmeric for the treatment of pain.
- [23:36]
B
I have. You know, when I built my company, my dream was, next time I walk into an orthopedic office and I have pain in my body, instead of saying, just take NSAIDS 247 for 10 days, which is what the doctors had told me. And that gave me stomach aches. And I remember going back to the ortho and saying, you gave me stomach aches. Like, thank you for the no more knee pain, no more foot pain, but if you destroy my gut, what's the point? And they were like, oh, that's just a side effect. And I got so angry. And I thought, you are the group I'm going to change. First I want you to have a new tool in your toolkit where when the patient comes in and says, I've got pain, you, you say, you can take turmeric for that. Doesn't have to be my turmeric, but find a really good one that's potent. And so I went doctor to doctor for years, five years, I was the first pharma rep of my own supplement company, going door to door every doctor I met, teaching them. And then I started getting invited to neurological conferences, orthopedic conferences. And I would show up and be the only oddball talking about a supplement or herb or plant. I'd sit in these rooms and they're all showing their surgeries and their hardware they put in us. And. And then I'd get up and I'd have to say, look, I'm here to open your mind to a new idea. What if we wanted better post op recovery and post op outcomes? And so here's a good pre op, post op solution and let's talk about the healthiest patient showing up to surgery and what that means for you. And that's what opened their minds. But what's cool is we've been able to cut opioid use in half in orthopedic offices. That's less addiction, that's less constipation and issues post surgery. So it really excites me that we can start leaning into turmeric in this way. And my dream is actually to publish double blind placebo controlled trials for each different specialty of medicine. So GI medicine has new studies published in the British Medical Journal right now that show curcumin is as effective as PPIs, but doesn't have the side effects. We know that that's true for joint pain, that one's an easy one. But what if we proved it for each and everything that exists?
- [25:39]
A
I would love to see that. I would absolutely love to see that. Because if we can reduce opioid addiction and opioid use, oh my gosh, that alone will move the needle in saving people's lives. I mean, across the board. And then like I said, when you are in pain, it affects every single area of your life. So even if you can get a pain reduction of 50%, let alone a hundred percent, that's improving the quality of life and it's allowing people to do what they love to do, even include work. I mean, you can't even think if you are in constant pain. Now, speaking of the Brain. Speaking of thinking, you also. I'm shifting gears here very quickly, but you talk about mental inflammation. Now is this the same thing as, or would it present itself like brain fog and maybe anxiety, depression or what is this mental inflammation that you talk about in the book?
- [26:33]
B
Sure. So I was writing the book and I was so excited because I came up with these ideas like elemental design and your institution, your individual constitution. And then I taught all these different, these different pillars of health, circadian rhythm and gut digestive fire. I was so excited. And then I got to the end of the book and I kept thinking there's something missing. And if I don't teach everyone and show them that their stress alone will cause the physical inflammation that we're all running away from, we're trying to. I eat gluten free, I eat almost dairy free, I love cheese a little bit. I'm pretty much alcohol free, rarely have a drink or two. I'm pretty much sugar free. So I'm like a 90 percenter on most of those food categories. I exercise and lift, I walk in nature, I practice what I preach. But stress alone might get me in the end. That mental inflammation can cause the physical inflammation and we truly underestimate it. We think, okay, I'm just going to run around and be a stress basket forever and I won't pay a price for that. But you literally do pay the price because it will cause those same fires. And so from the Ayurvedic perspective, we think of that as you have a gut digestifier. That fire is your metabolism, it's your energy, your gut is your brain health, it's your mood on the vagus nerve. We know we're connected, gut brain axis. And majority of us living our lives, high stress, busy, overwhelmed, lots of responsibilities, list of things to do that never ends. I'm on the hamster wheel too. Go, go, go. What happens? We knock out our digestive fire and then we lack this vitality and resilience. And so the homework or the practice from Ayurveda is not just the typical like breathwork yoga, we all know that stuff. But how do you truly build a reservoir of resilience that you can lean on when things get stressful? We are all going to go through stressful times. We're all going to go through those seasons of life. We're all going to have moments of catastrophe and suffering. That's just life. But what if you had a reservoir you could pull from in all those moments so you didn't physically take such a hit that you Generate an autoimmune condition or something like that. Because typically by the time they have generated full blown autoimmune conditions, their menopause is way off the rails in terms of their symptoms. Like they're really suffering. And so my dream is, what if earlier in that puzzle, we could learn to live on our circadian clock? If we could learn how to really build a robust digestive fire, how to put so much resilience into the system and then, yeah, mental inflammation will come along, we're going to have it. But it doesn't take a toll. It doesn't knock us out, it doesn't create total burnout, and then we have to re repull ourselves out of the hole to get back in the game.
- [29:19]
A
I'm so happy you mentioned that because I've been saying that forever, that people don't realize what stress does to the body usually until it's too late or until they're diagnosed with some uncurable disease or cancer. But stress takes such a toll, and I'm assuming that it's due to just all of those inflammatory pathways, the inflammatory cytokines that you had talked about earlier. Those are kicked up during times of stress where we don't have enough to dampen that inflammatory fire. Unless we do possibly load up on turmeric curcumin and utilize the principles in your book on a day to day basis just naturally with like the foods that we eat. Just because you eat a salad doesn't mean that you have and some berries. You don't have enough antioxidants, enough coming into the system to dampen that inflammatory fire.
- [30:15]
B
The thing is, we're all running around pretty starved and exhausted. And I think most people can feel that, like, especially in the group of women. I am one of your patients. So that's where I was at when I called you last summer. I was like, I can't do this. Something is wrong. My brain is missing. Please help me. And you said, well, you're in the middle of writing a book for Hay House, so I get it. You're. You're using every asset that you have in your brain. So I understand why you're at where you're at, but also, let's get you the support you need. And you adjusted my thyroid meds, you adjusted progesterone, which I needed, and no one else was giving me, like, a lot of things I needed, you supported me with, and I love that. And I think when it comes to hrt, unequivocally, we need someone to partner with. Us and customize with us and truly handhold for us. I worked with your team every day I was texting, I was like, I don't know how to inject stuff in me. This is all new testosterone and things. And we got to test ideas that I've always wanted to see. So I think it's really about who are you partnering with for your health? And then coming to this question of inflammation. So many of us are thinking we're eating healthy, we may not be eating enough. So many of us are cutting all carbs, all fruit, all the things that are nourishing. And we're women, we are cyclical beings. Ayurveda teaches us we need to be in circadian alignment. And so there's only so long that we can defy the circadian clock. Waking up and just running at 200 miles an hour all day, crashing and sleeping late because we're taking our me time from 10 to 11. Ayurveda teaches that 10 to 2 on the circadian clock is the fire time of day. Pitta time of day is what we call it. But that's when you're going to clear inflammation and the lymphatic system. And if you're not gifting that to yourself, then it doesn't matter what you're doing all day because you're just a clogged up system. You're just full of all the excess garbage. You didn't clear out the glymphatic system of your brain, you didn't clear out the lymphatic system in your body. And then you wonder, like you said, why we're generating incurable issues at an alarming rate. I think it's now one in two or one in three people will get a cancer diagnosis. Three out of five people have a chronic inflammatory disease. Inflammation is the number one killer of us as humans. And so to me, inflammation is preventable. It's not easy, but it is preventable. And so I like to teach from the Ayurvedic perspective, at least all the easy stuff we can do. So we can 80% at least win at the inflammation by living on our circadian clock and doing self care rituals that are detoxing. But once we get that part, then we can level up into diet and those fine tunings that we need to do now.
- [32:56]
A
I had never heard of the 10am to 2pm I always talk about your rest and repair time is 10pm to 2am at night. But talk to me more about this fire time, like what should we be doing between 10am and 2pm to better serve our bodies for sure.
- [33:15]
B
So the 10pm to 2am at nighttime is your best time for that rest and recovery and still sleep from 2am onwards. I'm not trying to cut your sleep in half, right?
- [33:24]
A
Right. But the night owls that go to bed at midnight or one, it's like you're missing out.
- [33:29]
B
Exactly. And then during the day, your fire time of day is actually when you have the best brain power to do your best work. And you're meant to eat your biggest meal of the day. So if you're a one meal a day person, put it in that window closer to 12. If you're going to eat foods that are harder to digest, let's say you've got lots of superfoods and nuts and harder to digest things, put it into that timeframe because the fire is there to absorb the most out of those foods. So some of us create the smoothie with everything, which is fine. But if you have some of those superfoods you want to move into lunchtime, you have an even higher chance of absorbing them. And then we're meant to make dinner light and easy to digest before bed, which most of us do not do. We sit down to that dinner and we want to enjoy it. But Ayurveda teaches move more soups and stews into your dinner time. But 10 to 2 is your most productive time of day. So you're meant to leverage it and get the biggest projects done.
- [34:22]
A
Okay. And you had also mentioned the lymphatic system. Now can you just kind of expand on that for the listener so that they understand what that system does and how it assists in decreasing inflammation?
- [34:35]
B
For sure. So in Ayurveda we talk about the lymphatic system as the pathways that move all of our waste. And what's cool is in modern day life, we are talking a lot more, at least online about the lymphatic system and how we have to move it ourselves. Right now I see a lot online about jumping and moving and running and.
- [34:54]
A
Like using the vibration plates and all.
- [34:56]
B
That as well as a big cell. I'm. I'm almost sold, but I'm worried I'm not going to use it because I don't think I want to be shaken like that. I don't want to be jiggled. I might have to do this another way. And so it's interesting because Ayurveda teaches us a couple of simple habits we can do every day that does move the lymphatic system. So the first One is called tongue scraping and using a copper tongue scraper. So in Ayurveda we teach that all the organs of the body are reflected on the tongue. Just like in reflexology, all the organs are reflected on the bottom of your feet. And traditional Chinese medicine teaches this as well, that the tongue is very important. And so when you gently scrape your tongue seven to 14 times, you're actually massaging all those organs of the body and gently reducing what we call ama. Ama just means this toxin residue that forms in the system. Nowadays we call that clogged lymph. And so it's interesting, Ayurveda said we will teach you a series of things to do that will all reduce that toxin burden and thus your digestive fire, your body, everything can function on track. So step one, use your tongue scraper in the morning. Step two would be oil pulling. So nowadays on TikTok, people are talking about oil pulling. Oil pulling is an ancient, ancient remedy, ancient habit that we teach where you put a tablespoon of oil in the mouth, any food grade organic oil could be coconut oil or sesame oil, olive oil, anything really. And you move it around for about five to 20 minutes, you can swish it around at the end. And when you spit it out, only spit it out in the trash, not your sink, toilet or shower. But what this is going to do is it's going to clear out all the toxins in your mouth. Our mouth accumulates a lot of toxins. This is the first place all of our food and everything we're going to chew on goes. So it's important to clear this out. And we know oral microbiome ties to heart health. We know that oral microbiome ties to gut microbiome. This is a chain that's connected. And so clearing this is going to help us when it comes to that as well. So a gentle detox to the system as well. And then finally we teach about dry brushing and abhyang massage. Dry brushing is ancient Ayurveda. I actually have one here. Ancient Ayurveda teaches us to take a dry brush and gently brush the body from the extremities inwards towards the heart. And what that's going to do is it's going to gently move the lymphatic system. Ayurveda knew 5,000 years ago there's a layer of the body that you cannot see. And by gently moving it, we're going to detox all of our systems. So I like this as a nighttime habit because, you know, during bed you're going to clear the lymphatic system. So why not get it moving and flowing well right before bedtime? Finally, the last one I teach is called abhyang massage, which just means sit on the ground on a towel, take any warm food grade oil and really gift that oil to your skin and to your body. And so when we talk about perimenopause, menopause, so many of us are kind of imbalanced in this elemental design called vata. And so we're just feeling dry, tired, joints are achy and cracking and not as like supple. Our skin can dry out a lot in perimenopause menopause. So this habit of gifting your body oil and really heavily using oil from your feet up to your neck, and then you can also do head oil massage with it, which gives you thicker, luscious hair, is a good way to ground yourself. Really support your lymphatic system because you're moving it. Again creates oilation of the joints and more oilation of your skin. But it's also grounding because sometimes we need the mind to settle so we get that great sleep overnight.
- [38:23]
A
You know, the last time we spoke that is the one thing that stuck with me that I have been doing. And I remember you said it on the interview as exactly that, like you gift yourself at night this beautiful like oil massage. And you're right. As a menopausal woman, I'm all dried out now, I got hormones on board, but my skin is still dry. So you need to like put proper moisture in and on. That's what I have been doing. Shivani. I've been gifting myself with nice little oil massage at night. So really all I need to add in is the dry brushing and the tongue scraping and I'm good to go. I don't need to buy one of those $5,000 lymphatic compression machines for myself. I can get some lymph going just with three simple practices.
- [39:09]
B
Exactly. I like to make it affordable, attainable and fast. I can't do like a mega biohacking suite. I am a mom, an entrepreneur, a wife and I don't know how many other things a house manager of this house, a business owner, a mother, a sister, a daughter. Like there's too many things we are as women. How can we possibly give a morning hour and a night hour all to self care? So for me, the tongue scraper takes 10 seconds, dry brushing takes under three minutes. Like I need it at that speed. If I'm going to do a massage. I'm going to like be on the phone. Not that we should do multitasking self care, but I am usually like doing three things while I get self care. And maybe it's like yoga music and breathing and the massage and then a hot bath if I can fit it in. So I get my magnesium in with Epsom salt. So I try to stack as much as I can. And then that profound sleep, that relaxation, that is the stress resilience that I was talking about. You gift yourself this and look at that oasis of like peace and reserve and the body feeling incredible. And then yeah, if the next day is stressful, you at least filled your cup. So I'm a big believer in fill your cup today because you never know what tomorrow will bring. And inevitably when my cup is full, when life brings what it's going to bring. Like my year was full of mold, 2025 mold. It's like, okay, I handled the project and then I have to move on.
- [40:32]
A
I love it. I love it. And I love how you make these steps so easy and actionable for people in the book. So when women read the inflammation code, yeah, it's for all people. But we're talking to women right now because we're really horrible at self care and we're really inflamed and stressed out all the time and we wear all of those hats that you just said. So what can women expect from to gain when they read the inflammation code?
- [40:56]
B
So the inflammation code is a blueprint. It's you first taking an elemental design quiz and understanding what body type you are. Are you air, fire or earth? Because once you understand what you have been since birth, you can then start to tailor all of your self care to yourself. You can customize your circadian clock, your diet, your gut everything. And then I go chapter by chapter and teach my six pillars, Pillars of health from Ayurveda. So circadian clock is of course first I'm all about sleep. Because of our sleep quality's off. We are screwed regardless. Then gut health diet. Then I teach the super spices since turmeric is my favorite. But I also happen to love using ginger, cumin seeds, fennel, fenugreek, cinnamon. Like there's more spices we can add to our life and those create such powerful health benefits. They're like a category of superfoods that we've just been missing this whole time. And so I'm trying to bring those back into our life and spice up our life. And then finally I talk about mental inflammation. Cause I want everyone to get that if you keep allowing stress in 24 7, you'll still lose at the health game. So don't make the health game your full time job and then be so stressed out you still lost the battle.
- [42:08]
A
That's so good. And like I said, you make it so simple. What a beautiful, beautiful gift that you have given people by putting your time and knowledge and education into this book. So of course we're going to put everything in the show notes as to where people can buy it, but can you tell people where they can find you and where they can buy the book?
- [42:25]
B
For sure. So the book is at the inflammation code.com My website is my name shivanigupta.com S-H-I-V A N I G-U-P-T A and I'm at Dr. Shivani Gupta on Instagram and I have a podcast and everything like that. And then my turmeric formulas and teas are@fusionary formulas.com F U S I O N A R Y and I have a special code for your audience. Dr. Amy A M I E will give them 15% off at Fusionary.
- [42:55]
A
Absolutely. So we will put all of that down into the show notes. All you have to do is drop down, click the link you'll get right there, use the code like Shivani said. Dr. Amy D R A M I E and that'll save you 50%. So Dr. Shebani, thank you so much for coming on and breaking down this topic because it's, it's prevalent. It's. We're all inflamed. We're all inflamed. We all need to do something. So I'm going to step up my inflammation lymphatic game just a little bit and I'm going to get a little bit more consistent with taking your supplement too, because I only take it when I'm in pain. So I really should be taking it every day. My dog takes it every day. I don't take it every day.
- [43:30]
B
So that happens a lot. A lot of people's dogs take my turmeric and they're like, my dog is doing amazing. And I'm like, how about you, my friend?
- [43:38]
A
I don't. Right, right. Like the dog can't have a placebo effect. Right. It either is working or it's not. So now that I see it working with my dog, I should probably incorporate it. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I greatly appreciate it. And everyone listening, make sure you share this because everybody in your life is inflamed. Subscribe to the podcast and share this one because you're going to help your next person in need. Dr. Schiavone, until next time, we'll definitely have you back on it's thank you.
- [44:05]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [44:11]
A
The information shared on the Thyroid Fixer Podcast is intended solely for informational and educational purposes. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your physician or other qualified healthc care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition treatment or before making changes to your healthcare regimen, including medications, supplements or other therapies. Use of the information provided in this podcast does not establish a doctor, patient or client provider relationship between you and the host or between you and any other healthcare professionals featured on the show. Any medical opinions or statements made by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or affiliated parties. Statements regarding dietary supplements or health related products mentioned in this podcast have not been evaluated by by the fda. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Some episodes of the Thyroid Fixer Podcast may include sponsorships or affiliate links. The host may receive compensation for discussing or promoting certain products or services. Any such sponsorships or affiliations will be clearly disclosed during the episode. All opinions expressed are those of the host or guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of any sponsors. The inclusion of a product or service is not not imply endorsement by any healthcare professional featured on this podcast.