Talking PCOS with my Doctor

Welcome to a sister on her, mr. A podcast where we show you the real behind the scenes of how we balance the PCs lifestyle in our marriage, gluten and dairy free. I’m telling your fellow sister and registered dietician And I’m Sirak husband, engineer, and peace us personal trainer. We’re going to make PSUs a little less overwhelming and a lot more fun.

Three, welcome everybody. To episode 12, we are here at the doctor’s office with dr. Nirvana and Tallinn. Welcome. We are so excited to be here. Dr. Nirvana was my doctors several years ago and she gave me so much guidance on what I needed to do. She’s the one that told me to go gluten and dairy free, which is awesome and has changed my life.

And dr. Nirvana is also, she’s a doctor in naturopathic medicine, which is amazing. And we’ll talk about the difference between that and regular doctors and she, you can find her on her website doctrine, nirvana.com. She works virtually, and she has a podcast regenerate. You wait, thank you guys. Thank you so much for having me. It’s truly an honor and a great pleasure.

Um, I’m a nature pathic doctor. I’ve been in practice since 2006 and my focus is on hormones and helping ladies as well as gentle men balance their hormones. Um, it’s truly a passion of mine because there’s so many wonderful, natural things that we can do to help balance hormones. So I’m happy to share as much knowledge as possible. Yeah. And the best part about this is that you were like tie-ins doctor that changed her life to help her see like the path that like she should go on.

And like, I guarantee you all the sisters are listening to this. They’re like drooling right now. Cause like, who is this? Yeah. Who is this doctor that should all be like, yeah. Three of my whole PCLs journey. I remember coming in here with my mom and sitting on your chair and just be like, what do I do?

This is totally helped me and introduce me to all the right supplements and lifestyle changes. And it was just so different than my actual experience when I got diagnosed, which was like horrifying and very uninformative unfortunately. And that’s what a lot of people go through and that’s actually, it breaks my heart when I see people coming to my office and they’re having these experiences,

you know, and it’s tragic and it’s traumatic and they feel like they have no options. So, but there definitely are options out there. Yeah. So encouraging to know, can you tell us a little about the difference between being a functional nutritionists, natural pathic doctor, like you and a gynecologist? Absolutely. So the main difference is in the education.

So nature, pathic doctors are trained very similar to MDs and dos for the first two years. So we learn everything similar to let MDs and dealers learn. However, after our first two years in practice, that’s when things change. So we both start seeing patients in clinic, however, they, for lack of a better description, stop learning in that they’re not learning the holistic modalities that we’re trained to learn such as botanical medicine,

nutritional, Ivy fair, be physical medicine, nutritional biochemistry, even nutrition. Um, and so what happens is we start seeing patients, we’re learning all these different modalities. So we have a lot more tools in our toolbox. And so when we are ordering labs, for example, or able to order a lot more specific labs, and we’re looking at the overall body as opposed to just treating symptoms and by masking the disease or the phenomenon that’s occurring for the person.

Yeah. You can’t just like put out the fires by like treating those specific symptoms. You have to treat the entire body, the whole light area to make sure like it doesn’t occur again. Oh yeah. Like you, like you said before, you know, when somebody comes in for something like PCLs or depression, you know, they’re oftentimes they’re given just an antidepressant,

but there’s so many things going on underneath. Yeah. It is. And that’s actually, the fun part is discovering, you know, what is going on? It’s like a little bit of a puzzle. And so for me, it’s, it’s fun trying to discover, you know, what’s hiding beneath it. Is it emotional? Is it spiritual? Is it just physical?

Because most of the times it’s, there’s a lot of different factors. And while we heal the physical aspect of it, we allow for all the other aspects to heal too. Right. And is that similar to what a functional nutritionist might be doing? So, um, in terms of a nutritionist, um, I think that they help to give a lot of guidance and direction.

And in terms of, um, functional, when the word functional is used, functional is basically, um, meet your apathy. But, um, nowadays a lot of conventional docs are going into schools where they’re receiving a license of some kind to practice functional medicine, which is really nature, pathic medicine, but they’re not, um, the whole of it practicing nature,

pathic medicine. So I would just say, if you find someone do your research on them, uh, what their training was, how long have they been in, um, training and, or treating what you’re looking to address and then go from there? Um, yeah, because you know what a lot of women with PCOS don’t go to specialists for PCO S and that is where I feel like they get lost in the numbers because there’s,

there has to be a certain type of treatment for women with, you know, a certain specific, um, knowledge about PCLs Rather than shoving birth control Metformin and all of these things. Agreed. Yeah. So tell us what the sure signs of PCLs are when you’re working with a new patient. Well, it’s interesting you say that because sometimes are there aren’t sure signs,

you know, they don’t even know that they have it. Some there’s been so many different times actually, where a patient has come in and they say, you know what? I feel great. And then based on what they’re telling me, I decided, you know what, let me run this marker on the lab, or let’s just look at the overall picture of this.

And then I see it in their blood work or even their, your analysis. And then, you know, I ended up telling them, well, actually what you have is polycystic ovarian syndrome. So sometimes it’s just hirsutism, which, which is just, you know, extra, extra hair on the face for ladies, which, you know, is,

um, normal for us all to have some hair on our face. But it’s when it starts to get thicker and increased will, could be hirsutism. It could be just, um, irregular Menzies or periods, or it could be infertility. It could just be one sign and more than likely it starts with insulin resistance. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Okay.

So I’ve heard hirsutism is due to excess testosterone, so that could be because of insulin resistance. Yeah, Absolutely. So what happens with insulin resistance is basically the excess insulin is stimulating the ovaries and then the ovaries will end up producing excess testosterone, but it can also do it from the adrenal aspect of it. Right. And so when that happens, if it’s an access producing too much testosterone,

then the enzymes get kicked in that increase to DHT, which is the active form of testosterone and therefore causing the narcissism or the excess facial hair. And then that will cause hair loss. Oh, is he, I don’t know the tour connected. I thought it was just due to the excess testosterone and estrogen and that imbalance. But there you go. I guess insulin resistance is a big,

much bigger factor than we thought. What are some of the labs that you highly recommend people to take? Cause I know it’s confusing everyone, not everyone, but a lot of women say that their labs are within range and they’re like, I don’t feel like they’re within range. So touch on that a little and yeah, what’s going on. So I think that’s a fantastic question because oftentimes my patients will come to me and they’re so upset because they say,

well, my doctor tells me that my labs are normal and I take a look at them and what’s normally were going on is they’re not requesting for enough specific labs to be done or markers, I should say. So that’s one area. And then the other thing is, is that in the conventional world, the ranges are so broad. So actually the labs get their numbers from 18 to 65 year olds,

believe it or not. Yes they do. And so everybody will fall within this range. So the average is All these data’s based on just that huge Adrian. Yes. The 1865 year olds. So generally speaking people fall within normal range of that, but in the nature pathic world, my ranges are a lot more conservative. So we’ll give thyroid as an example.

So my TSH levels, I like them to be between one and two. Whereas in the conventional world, the ranges are between one and five, depending on the lab that we look at. And when you’re going over then to generally what’s going on is someone’s extremely hyperthyroid at that point. Yeah. So that’s a good example. And some of the labs that I like to recommend are,

so we’re checking serum, hormone, binding globulin, we’re checking cortisol levels. Um, and if we can do cortisol am cortisol levels between seven and 9:00 AM that’s ideal, um, progesterone, um, even we want to check the 17 alpha pregnant, a diet dial. Um, the reason is, is because Cushing’s can mask PCLs symptoms and vice versa. So if we check that 17 alpha marker or beta marker,

excuse me, what ends up happening is we get a more clear definition. Um, then it’s also a great idea. If we can check some neurotransmitters because often times, uh, the imbalance in hormones will cause an imbalance in the neurotransmitters. So we can see where the neurotransmitter deficiencies are as well for, um, patients with PCLs. Cause unfortunately depression can be a contributing factor.

Yeah. And especially like, if you’re not eating right for a us, I’ve heard, there’s a lot of new transmitters that’s been discovered in the gut. So if you’re not eating right for your body, then you can, can trigger all these like dopamine and serotonin issues. Absolutely. Yeah. So we can definitely check for those as well. We can check for it in the saliva.

We can check for it in the blood as well. Definitely shaky checking insulin markers is a very important glucose. Um, all fasting of course, um, hemoglobin A1C to see how it’s been doing in the past three months, um, and all of the hormones, right? Your estrogen, your progesterone, your total and free testosterone. Um, vitamin D levels are also very important to get checked.

It’s with PCRs, they’re usually low. So what are some of the recommendations you would have if somebody had high testosterone or low test, like give us an example of, um, a picture of someone with PCLs and what you would say when you look at their lab work. Cause it’s very typical to have high testosterone, low progesterone, high cortisol at night,

low in the morning. So what is the next step? So the next step, when we get our labs back is to figure out how we can treat them. Not only does it fit their lifestyle, but it’s going to address the labs as well. But when we’re looking at the labs and we see the results, we see everything is out of balance,

then we have to determine why did they get out of balance? And it’s, it’s really sitting down with the person, the individual and asking them these questions. And I think that’s what sets my practice apart from a lot of others is that a lot of people don’t take the time to really listen to their patients. It really breaks my heart. When I see patients come into the office and say,

you know, my conventional job just sat down with me for five minutes and gave me a prescription. And you know, they didn’t listen to me or if they did listen to me, they said, Oh, you’re just depressed. You know, here’s an antidepressant for you and that’s not really treating the person. And so what I would want to do is figure out the root cause of what’s going on.

So I think that would lead us then to the question of, okay, why does a person have height have, excuse me, have high testosterone generally it’s because of environmental toxins. So xenoestrogens can do that. So plastics and chemicals, so chemicals. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and a lot of chemicals that people don’t think about. So for example,

um, I bring this up when I give my talks, um, sometimes, and, um, they are the new car smell. So new car smell is one of the worst fumes that we can inhale or, um, Neil Polish fumes from nail polishes hairsprays and cosmetics. And of course we know lotions and creams I’ve even heard recently from Tallinn receipts that you get from a store.

Yes. One of the most amount of BPA in them, they deal with that with just paper. Like that’s insane. Yeah. No, unfortunately the ink it’s got. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Well, I was gonna say like two things I really like struck out to me right now. Like when you were talking is like, you’re not like doctors,

like you, you’re not just like going, looking into the future and saying, all right, let’s just fix your problems by losing weight and doing this. You’re like investigating what happened, how you came to this and like solving it by, you know, getting down to the root root issue, which is I think great. And the other thing was like mentioning that your lab results are not based on this 20 to 65 year old,

a 65 year old range. Cause like a 25 year old woman can come here and leave thinking that she’s healthy, but she’s only healthy for a 60 year old as a 60 year old, which can be crazy. Yeah. So like, I think it’s really important that like ladies and like any anybody finds doctors that are specific for their, for their functional needs.

Yeah. So that’s great. Yeah. What are some of the other things that contribute to the hormonal imbalance that’s happening? Such good questions. So I’d love to know this. I think one of the things that is not addressed as much as it should be is our liver. So when the liver isn’t functioning, well, it can actually, so going back,

the adrenals actually produce Anderson or Dion. They the HEA and testosterone. So Andrew a dial goes to the liver to make estrogen. So if the body doesn’t need estrogen, it’s going to upregulate the production of it. If the liver itself is not functioning properly. So that’s one way, for example, um, also the liver won’t clear out excess estrogen,

so, and that will cause elevated testosterone. Right? So all of these, if one hormone is out of balance, something else is going to go out of balance. Right? So there’s always an indirect relationship going on in the body, especially when it comes to our hormones. Okay. Something like a liver functional, what is it called? The pill,

But Oh girl, I, I have to say this. You got me on a liver supplement when I came in like 10 years ago and it wasn’t Gaya. Cause you had, you had a bunch of supplements. It was whatever brand you had. And then after I stopped seeing you, I was ready to branch out and then I couldn’t get that liver supplement.

So I got the Gaia one, the daily liver cleanse anyways, life-changing taking the liver supplement. Yeah. I take it like two or three times a week. And I really like, I feel a lot better like the next day. Yeah. I mean, absolutely it should be taken if you’re not that I’m advocating drinking, but we’re all human beings.

And we, to me, I believe everybody should partake in everything in life because that’s what we’re here to do. I mean, not everything, but from my ASFAB yes. Have some wine or what have you enjoy yourself? And if you do take a liver supplement right afterwards. And so for some people, it needs to be taken on a daily basis now,

is it something that everybody should take on a daily basis? I don’t think so. Right. Because we don’t want to, um, supplements also have a time and a place. So it’s important to know what that time and place is for each of our bodies. Right. Exactly. And I’m just curious about when you say liver and testosterone, like,

is that also applied to males? I’m like absolutely. So a good liver health for males also like is tied to like a good supply of testosterone in the balance. Absolutely. Yeah. Actually a lot of, um, gentlemen that you’ll see that have a large belly what’s going on is generally they have insulin resistance or diabetes. And so the fat cells go up in their body and they have excess fat storage around their organs.

Um, and unfortunately what ends up happening because they have a poorly functioning liver due to the insulin resistance and, or their diets, their body over produces estrogen. And so oftentimes you’ll see those gentlemen with what’s called gynecomastia, which is actually the beginning of small breaths or hair loss. Exactly. And it’s because their testosterone is being shunted towards it’s decreased because their estrogen levels are so high because of the insulin resistance,

Not to make it about me or anything, but is it, should I get mine checked out like at age 30 and like every five years Or something? Or is that something that would, I would recommend that everybody get blood work done at least once a year. Okay. Cause the bias constantly. Yeah. Cause I’ve never had that check. Like my testosterone.

I have no idea if it’s good or bad, I feel Okay. We’ll come to you for Alright, well we’ll all talk about it. So I just because, um, a couple minutes ago you had explained how the liver works with producing enough estrogen and testosterone. And I just wanted you to repeat that so people can understand how important liver health is and how,

when you’re managing insulin resistance, you’re actually really managing your liver is health and because your liver is detoxing, estrogen, um, it’s important to take care of that. And you, you explain two pathways that contribute to that. Um, yes. I’m trying to think of the two pathways. Um, well there’s cause there’s so many different pathways, right.

But I think let’s, I wonder if we talk about the liver and the gut as opposed to the two different pathways, because if we don’t have the good microbes in our gut and or if we have leaky gut, right. That will prevent the conversion of the hormones in the gut because hormones get converted in the gut and produced in the gut. Fibroid is one good example of them.

Um, however, uh, if the liver, then if we have the nutrients in our gut, um, ideal nutrients in our gut that gets shunted over to the liver. And then the liver says, okay, these are the nutrients I need. Or I have in order to do the processes that I need to do or produce the hormones that I need to do,

excuse me, produce and or to detox the hormones that I need to detox in a proper fashion. So in terms of the pathways, the liver truly either can upregulate pathways or down-regulate pathways. So making sure that the liver is healthy to do a job is important, especially when it comes to diet and, um, uh, enzymes, even in the liver,

It’s like a PR like the traffic controller, you know, like when there’s no lights, the lights aren’t working as a guy in the middle of the street saying, you go, you go like the livers, making sure all the everything’s flowing smoothly through all the pathways. I think that’s a great way to describe it. Yeah. And some of the things that contribute to our gut health,

like gluten and dairy. So I remember you telling me to stop eating gluten and dairy and sugar of course. But yeah, that really helped with everything. And it probably extremely helped with my liver very much so. And you know, the studies that have been done with gluten are basically now showing, which is kind of scary. Um, and I hate to admit it because I love Fred,

you know, moderation in all things. However, what they found like gluten is it mimics the insulin receptor. So when you eat gluten, it snags onto the insulin receptor, it opens it up and it says, Oh, I’m actually insulin. Right. And then it allows for a constant flow of glucose into the cells. And so when that happens,

it just doesn’t turn off. So we can be anywhere from a couple of days to weeks, depending on how sensitive the person is. Oh my God. Yeah. So that’s not for everybody, right. Not everybody’s going to react the same way, but it just depends on certain markers in the blood that we can test for and see, you know,

what should that person be eating is gluten really, as detrimental as you know, it is for other people, right. For them. And dairy also contributes to insulin levels Very much so because of the testosterone production. Yeah. And we’ve talked about in the past, like the 81 and the eight two caseins and how they’re, uh, like it’s been changed and causing inflammation in the body and the gut,

So true. Yeah. Dairy is certainly not one of my favorite things. Yeah. Period. I think that I would, that’s one of the first things I would take out also because of the fact that both gluten and dairy contribute to autoimmune issues as well. Yeah. Yeah. Like I’ve heard people who have an excess amount of, um, uh,

dairy and like have all these auto immune issues like as adults. And just like once they complete take it out, not even related to PCLs, they just take it out, take it out all the dairy and like all their auto immune problems like in their body just goes away. Right. It’s amazing how diet And it also, after eating gluten and dairy,

while you’re sensitive to it for years and years can develop even more sensitivities I’ve found like people are, they can’t even eat oats or any type of grain, even if it’s gluten free, because they have completely like damaged the lining of their gut caused leaky gut, insulin resistance, and all the things contributing to feeling bloated, sluggish, gaining weight, you know,

and everything is bothering them. Now I explain it to my patients by saying, if your body is in a state of inflammation, how can it protect itself? It can’t, if you’re constantly being beaten up, right. How can you defend yourself if you’re, you know, on your Stover and being beaten all the time, your poor little body doesn’t have a chance.

So it’s really important to remember that it’s definitely about quilting the inflammation. Definitely. Um, but allowing your body and giving your body the tools so that it has what it needs to do, the job. Yeah. And what are some of the tools that you recommend? I know you have a protocol at the regenerative, like, um, you know,

your regenerative protocol. Yes. Yeah. So I designed the regenerative health program to take a new approach to healing the body. And I wanted to do this because I felt that just, you know, going to the root cause wasn’t enough. Each one of ourselves has memory, right. Cellular memory and it remembers trauma. It remembers injury. And so if you are trying to heal an injured cell,

you’re just going to allow it to turn over and regenerate in a way or reinvent itself, if you will, in a way that it’s coming from a faulty state. But if you reprogram the cells right. To forget that memory and to start healing and repairing themselves from a new standpoint of, Oh, I’m healthy. Now I can do what I need to do when we want to regenerate ourselves in that regard.

Right. And so that’s what I do with the regenerative health program is I help to repair the cells, allow them to let go of the trauma and injury that occurred in their cellular memories so that they can now start off with a whole new, new approach. And what’s fascinating is each one of ourselves turns over at a certain amount of time or a different amount of time.

So for example, our O sites or our eggs that we were born with that are in our ovaries, um, we only get a certain number, one more boring, right. And that’s it. But we can help the mother when she becomes pregnant to repair her own cells. So she has a natural, healthy, vital environment for the egg to nourish and flourish when it’s growing specifically,

once it gets fertilized. So for a lot of the GI cells, they turn over at about every two to seven days. Uh, the liver turns over at about once a year. Right. And That’s how often it regenerates the inside of it. Exactly. So it’s turning over. So my regenerative pro health program is basically to, okay, they’re going to be turning over at this amount of time,

but how can we make them healthier? So when they regenerate, they’re starting brand new and fresh in a healthy manner, as opposed to regenerating a dead or injured, traumatic sound When your body’s creating yourselves as basically copying cells. So if you have unhealthy cells, it’s just gonna keep on copying those. So you have to kind of re make sure those cells are starting to become healthy.

So as it’s copying, those are healthy cells to new healthy cells. Yeah. What are those things that you do in your program to get, you know, give us some example. So, which is so exciting to talk about. Um, a lot of it is, is the constitution of basic nature, apathy. However, um, it’s looking at certain markers in the blood that I have found to teach people to eat right for their body type,

not to follow, for example, the crazies out there, um, that are, you know, the ketogenic diet, the paleo diet, the, uh, whatever those diets are, those aren’t right for everybody. Each one of us has a specific diet that’s best for us based on these certain markers in our blood. So they’re just specific markers. I check in the blood to help determine how can we be give the best diet because that’s our fuel,

right? The fuel for our body is going to be our diet and then making sure are they living in a healthy environment? How is their liver detoxing themselves? What are their exposure? So eliminating, uh, um, their exposures to the things in their world that are causing the hindrances on their body. Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve heard with, uh,

regenerative health that, uh, there, there’s like a lot of research going into, um, uh, risk test, the thing in wine, what was it called? Resveratrol. And then there’s 30 on NIH T and all these, um, there’s like this doctor named Davidson Clara. I think he’s like a research scientist on anti-aging. I’ve been hearing a lot about it and yeah,

it’s, it’s very, it’s a subject is really growing. And so one of the things I do look at in, in the regenerative health program is making sure that the mitochondria is incredibly healthy. Right. Cause the mitochondria is the powerhouse of every single one of the cells. So making sure that it’s getting the proper nutrients to feed it. So not only can we reverse,

um, her not only hair loss, but um, grain hairs. Right. So generally when a hair is turning white it’s because each and every one of our cells is being exposed to too much oxidation. It’s been aged a lot quicker than it should be. Yeah. Well, we can actually reverse that us. Yeah. I’ve heard like tips, like,

uh, like, like sauna, like at certain temperatures, a number of times a week helps with like anti-aging and stuff like, like CBD oil. And, but like one, like very interesting. I, I think I learned is that like with aging, they used to think that like, um, bad copies of cells were being made because you know,

it’s getting, uh, the body’s getting older and it’s not able to copy good anymore, but they realized that it’s not the cells itself, but it’s, it’s more of the scanner. The thing that’s scanning the cells is maybe getting old. It’s almost like a CD player. It’s not the CD itself. That’s getting old. It’s the thing that’s reading the CD,

that’s getting old and therefore it’s making bad copies of the soul. Yeah. So like, there’s all these like different research and the regenerative hell. It’s interesting. Like, it’s crazy. Like it’s not just this one thing. It’s like all the factors in the body It truly is. And that’s the thing. It’s never just one thing. Right. And so that’s what makes my job so interesting is I get to look at all these things and investigate them and say,

okay, well, where is this out of balance? And how can we bring them all back into balance together? Yeah. So like all those, um, uh, uh, shoot resveratrol and, uh, NAD, along with the, the solutions you’re adding with, you know, your environment, lifestyle, like it all just encompasses that one goal of anti-aging or regenerative health,

regenerative health. Yes, exactly. Releasing the old. So we can start brand new, fresh, you know, a brand new brand, new you every day. Yeah. And, you know, supplementation it’s so there’s so many supplements out there, which one do we start with? And when you really dive into blood work and you know, the person as a whole,

what they’re struggling with, what their cells are like, what their blood work is saying, then you can give the right supplements and yeah. Definitely help regenerate things In terms of, um, PCLs one of the things that I love for, um, bringing down testosterone levels is spearmint tea. Oh yeah. All the time. Yeah. I love, love,

love it. They know. Not only is it tasty, it’s good for digestion, but it’s so easy to incorporate in our lives. Then we have chaste tree for increasing progesterone levels. Oh, chase street, tree chase tree. So it’s an herb. And I always, when I see this earth, I see this vision of like this almost like a goddess because she’s promoting,

um, progesterone. Yeah. And which is in charge of the luteal phase of our cycle. And that’s where I use a lot of seed cycling with my patients. I love seed cycling and it’s so easy to do. Anybody can do it. So what that involves is in your first, um, first stage of your cycle. So your follicular stage,

um, we eat one tablespoon of flax seeds and one tablespoons of pumpkin seeds a day, every day for the first 14 days of your cycle. And the idea is, is that not only is it a balancing out estrogen level? So if it’s too high, it’ll bring it lower. If it’s too low, it’ll elevate it, but it helps the liver to detoxify excess estrogen as well.

So that’s the whole purpose. And then the second half of the cycle, you eat Sesame seeds and some flowers, even a tablespoon of beach every day. And what that does is it promotes some progesterone pathway. And so it actually helps, um, it’s got a lot of zinc and selenium in there that promote those pathways. So it’s wonderful. Cause you can put on your salads,

you can put it in your smoothie. Yeah. It’s so easy and it’s tasty and healthy. Now that I saying this, I remember you recommending me to have flaxseed crushed, but like you wanted me to crush it. So it was fresh not getting it pre crushed. Um, so that like it releases the enzymes. And then I would add that to my protein shake.

Oh my gosh. I’m getting flushed. Yeah. And rotating these, it helps you to get all these different, um, available nutrients, like spread out. So you’re not like just going heavy with it for like long period of time. You’re like spreading it out and rotating all these important nutrients slowly. Yeah, Exactly. And our body needs different things on different days,

you know? So it is good. And that’s very important too, is we shouldn’t be eating the same foods every single day. Yeah. Like when I had this same smoothie five days in a row, I’m just like, I got to change up. I need some eggs this morning. Wait. So I have a question. So a lot of women with PCs have low progesterone.

I mean basically all of us who are struggling with PCOS have that. Um, and of course going gluten and dairy free treating inflammation, treating insulin resistance, but should a lot of women take chest tree, then that’s going to help with progesterone. It really does. It’s a very safe alternative to helping with low progesterone levels. However, if, if a person is cycling,

what I would recommend is not to be taking chase street on a daily basis. It’s really important to take it. I would say from date 11 to 26 of the cycle, because then you’re going to give yourself more of a, um, a natural approach. You’re you’re giving your body more of those natural, um, timeline, if you will. Um,

or if that’s too difficult to remember, just take it during, you know, the last two days of your cycle. It’s the two day, excuse me, two weeks of your cycle. Oh, okay. Yeah. Two last two weeks of your cycle. So that’s two weeks before you start your period, correct. Okay. Yes, exactly. And,

or for menopausal woman, if they have issues and they need it. For example, when I have my ladies do is take it days one through 27 or so, and then take three days off. Um, as long as you’re taking a break from it, it’s important. But if you are substituting it because of low progesterone for PCLs, it would be important to do on the last two days.

Excuse me. Oh, the cycle. Yes. Yes. So that, that might be a good supplement for a lot of women out there. Absolutely. In addition to helping with insulin resistance, taking all of us tall, I don’t know if we mentioned this earlier. I highly recommend it’s off. Absolutely. Yeah. And then going gluten and dairy free.

Awesome. Very much so. And I think one of the key points though, that I would like everyone to remember more than anything about taking herbs is to make sure that they’re getting it from a good quality source because a lot of the herbs that are from India and China are filled with heavy metals. Um, and so you can actually call the companies themselves and say,

can I have, um, your report on heavy metals? Um, kind of like a toxicology report report for herbs, if you will. Um, and they will give it to you. I mean, they should give it to you if they really have nothing, If they’re a reputable company. Absolutely. But I mean, every Arab is going to have a certain amount of toxins cause it’s just impossible to not have some amount of a toxic load,

but it it’s important to note for people to remember that. Yeah. Honestly, like if you’re, if it’s something you’re putting inside your body and like you care about the quality, like I would just go with like a company or someone that sells it, like in the States or like at least somewhere where it has a reputable, like FDA, something along those lines,

regulatory guidelines to make sure that, you know, they’re standing to those things. Yes. Organic is not enough. Basically Your favorite supplement brand. I know you used to have some in your office. Oh gosh. Yeah. I’ve have so many for different things. But I would say in terms of, um, herbs, Gaia is great. WISEWOMAN is great.

And Tori Hudson’s company. So she, to me is one of my favorite in terms of nature, apathy for women’s health, um, Tori Hudson, she, her company’s name is Vitalica so she’s got a lot of, yeah, Yeah. I’ve heard that company. Yeah. I think I do see their bottles at whole foods usually. Yeah. Just the tip to you and the sisters out there,

there’s a website named labrador.com. They’re like a third party laboratory. And what they do is they pretty much buy the new supplements or what have you, any category from the shelves and they test it and they say, how accurate is it to their nutrition label? Yeah. And it’ll tell you like, Oh, like on the label, it says 30 grams of protein.

But when we tested it, it only came out to be 24 grams. And like, yeah. And then it’ll tell you if there’s like, um, bad things in there, like Akisol faint potassium or heavy metals, like you mentioned. Or if there’s like sucrose, like it’ll tell you all be careful. It has these things in it. And then he’d even give you like a top 10 ranking of like all the different categories.

Like, so yeah. Check that out. I don’t know if like I have no idea if they get like advertisements or whatever. Cause I don’t know how they do their top 10, but to me it’s like a good source of just getting an idea of like where I should start from. Yeah. Oftentimes women with PCLs are too scared to start supplements because they feel like birth control,

spear lactone and Metformin, that concoction that they get from the directors is their only option. Like they walk away from the doctor’s office feeling like that’s, they’re broken, that’s all they can do. But there are so many supplements out there and there’s credible websites where you can make sure that they’re true to their word. Even with supplements, you added like,

just be careful, make sure you get, you want to get the most out of it right when you’re paying for it. Like there’s some like vitamin multivitamins that are more, um, uh, digestible and absorb absorbable by the body because they’re whole food multivitamins. Whereas like some cheap one you might buy is not easily digestible. And then like most of it is like not retained by your body.

Right. That’s actually why I created the gut become, I was so frustrated with the supplements out there for gut health that didn’t have either the idol, nutrients, or they weren’t from reputable company or, and a lot of people were taking them. For example, I just wanted to create one that I knew could have a certain amount of ingredients that I knew were effective for healing.

The gut that’s night. And it’s, I mean, it’s simple. It’s not what I see over there. Yeah. That’s the GFI calm. Okay. So that’s great. Again, it’s for leaky gut and for gas, constipation, heartburn, gluten, it’s got a high amount of L-glutamine in it and some enzymes and uh, but all it does is just simply heal the inner lining of the GI tract.

Amazing. You know, I mean it’s to the point does what it does. Yeah. So it’s something that’s really useful if maybe you’re just starting to heal your PCs or your condition, and you’re trying to kind of help your body, your gut start from scratch and the healing Very much. So. I mean, I have people, lots of, I have all of my PCLs patients on it,

but you know, even if somebody just wants to regulate their bowels and they’ve had a difficulty with regulating their bowels, it’s really good facts. We got to go number two, got to get those bad guys out as much as possible because otherwise they’re going to re circulate. Yeah. I definitely have to get some for my sister cause she’s getting off of birth control right now.

And she has kind of a weaker immune system. She has a lot of allergies and she’s cut out gluten and dairy and things like that. I feel like she’d really benefit very much so. Yeah. Very much so because with allergies, there’s, it’s a multifaceted approach in that we want to boost the immune system. Right. Um, but it’s kind of already in hyperdrive,

but if we heal the gut, we don’t allow for the allergens to cross the gut barrier. Right. Once it’s healed. So it allows for those allergies then to go to the liver so that they can be removed efficiently. Wow. So you think like by taking the proper supplements and strengthening her liver, she can really start, um, reacting less extremely to things like dust and yeah.

It, well, especially by peppers, by healing the gut too, because when the, whatever it is that is in the gut that we eat, if it crosses into the blood, the body sees and say, wait a second, you’re not supposed to be here. So I have to create, what’s called an antigen antibody complex, something that recognizes it in the blood,

kind of like the soldiers of our body sends it out, says I’m going to get you out. So that creates inflammation. The more it sees it, the more inflammation and Susan the body. So her body is probably in a state of hyper inflammatory, especially getting off birth control. Cause I know that that’s, that causes more inflammation, more leaky gut,

further aggravates the issues that are actually underlying and causing PCLs and things like that very much. So, you know, one of the things that is bothersome is when my patients are being put on birth control to help regulate PCLs symptoms, that’s not the cure. Right. And, um, especially when they’re gosh, depo is my least favorite of all of the,

um, birth controls out there. So not only does it cause bone loss, but it causes extreme weight gain. It causes depression. I mean my poor patients, when they finally decide to go off the deppos or the depo shots or they stop them. So depo, Provera, yeah. It’s a band brand of birth control. And so what it’s,

it’s an injection that people get and you only have to do it every few months and which completely shuts down the period. And it’s absolutely horrific what it does for the body. One loss that’s like, that’s one of the most important things for a woman that’s, you know, getting older as she ages, How are we contributing to bone density? I know.

And these people, I mean their lives are turned upside down from it. And unfortunately, um, it takes a while to regulate their hormones, but it’s highly possible. But in the meantime, not only has that happened, but their adrenals have been shut down because their hormones are shut down. So, you know, it’s a cascade of events. That’s I think how do these things come out?

Like, how is it approved for like, and like given to so many women, like just here, you know, like with all these side effects and like, what’s the point, like, what’s the point, what’s the point of treating or like birth control if it’s causing all of these problems? Yeah. Yes. Actually I would say if a person had to be on birth control,

so if condoms are completely, for some reason or another out of the picture, which really are the best way, um, in terms of making sure that pregnancy doesn’t happen or obviously in terms of diseases, what have you, but in terms of getting pregnant, there is the non hormonal IUD, which, you know, it’s okay. Um, it’s probably the least invasive.

However, it does release a small amount of copper in the blood. So if it’s really thin copper on a constant basis, and if the body can’t filter it out for some reason or another, then you start having copper deposition in the central nervous system. So that means our brain as well as our liver. And that can cause a whole slew of symptoms.

So, you know, it’s just important to know these things, um, when you’re getting on it and maybe every few months, if a person does decide to get on the non hormonal IUD to have their vitamins and minerals checked, just to see how they’re doing, is there a copper, you know, um, elevation in their blood and if so,

that needs to be addressed well, yeah, yeah, very much so. Or that, that, you know, you need to get out of your body because you should be able to detox that on a regular basis. Yeah. One of the things that’s actually quite funny is how the copper, what it does is it’s kind of comical, but kind of sad at the same time.

So what copper does is it, it deflects sperm. So it really is quite effective. However, the copper not only deflects it to capitate, the sperm takes the head off of the sperm from the tail. So it’s pretty invasive to the. It’s true. So it’s very effective, but unfortunately quite destructive to the sperm itself. So, um,

How did they discover that they in the laboratory let’s let’s use copper and it works, There was a sexually studied denimy Ron. I can’t remember who came out with it. They did a study in about 200 men and unfortunately these men had really high copper levels in their blood and they were infertile cause they were doing the study on infertility. Oh. From like from the environment.

Oh yeah. It very much cover what’s causing it. What was in their environment? That’d be we’re absorbing. It could be anything. Yeah. It could be work. It could be the air, it could be field, it could be anything, whatever is absorbing from the body. It could be water People who work with copper, you know? Yeah.

My ancestors, my last name is means pop maker. They used to, they used to work with my last name, collide. John means a purse, a pop main coop. And in the past they would go around town and like both out copper and like redo them so that they would be usable for people or like any sort of metal too. So they had enough to like pass it down.

So are there other, um, so we talked about birth control, but what about Metformin and spironolactone? What about those in terms of impacting our health or hormones? Unfortunately. So spironolactone is a medication it’s a diuretic given to those with high blood pressure. And the first thing I always ask my patients, when they’re on, I said, do you have high blood pressure?

No. Well, why did they give you a sprint, a lockdown? So one of the side effects is that it lowers androgen levels or testosterone levels. So it does do that. However it can cause abdominal bleeding, um, and it throws off the sodium and potassium ratios in the body and sodium and potassium are incredibly important just to get ATP into the South.

Um, and for the ATP process, which is basically cellular energy to start working. Um, so if those levels are off, you know, that’s gonna affect your energy levels as well. So a lot of these people that are on spironolactone are constantly fatigued. Wow. That’s a huge issue. Yeah. And I know ATP from working out, like you want to always maintain a high ATP so that you’re constantly outputting higher energy during your workout.

Like more way to do is like constantly breathe deeply during rest periods so that you’re getting ATP levels higher. Cause like they’re usually lower after a set or so It’s so true. And oxygen is one of the best things, best nutrition for ourselves. Yeah. So with Metformin, only these medications, you know, even medications like ibuprofen or aspirin, they deplete the body of B vitamins.

So while Metformin seems to be the safer one of, you know, the medications out there flip blood sugar and things of that sort, it does the B vitamins and it does cause disturbances, but you don’t need to be on that because there’s so many natural approaches to balancing hormones. So some of my favorite herbs are Jemima. Jemima is wonderful and making the cells more insulin sensitive,

for example, there was Burberry and there’s where green chromium picolinate AIDS. Um, I mean there’s so many different wonderful CDOT system and acetol system works at the liver level. So what that’s doing is it’s helping to promote glutathione and glutathione is a wonderful protective antioxidant to ourselves. Right. And so indirectly, it will definitely work with blood sugar And old FaceTime,

just like everyone needs to join. Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve heard of all these recent, crazy studies about Metformin and this like news articles about cancer and this and that. I don’t know how much of it is true, how much of it is accurate, but like I would just not take a chance with, if it was up to me. Yeah.

Why take a chance on don’t get me wrong. There’s a time and a place for medications. I mean, they have saved so many lives upon centuries upon centuries, um, but time and a place for everything. Right. And oftentimes Look Metformin, especially it’s like before you even know what you could have done before taking Metformin to treat insulin resistance, you’re spoken to as if that is the only solution,

this is now what you need to do. And you know, you’re broken, take this, fix it. And it’s like, wait, there’s so many. Right. And I think that brings up a great point up in that, um, people are made to fear, um, what’s going to happen if they don’t take those medications. Right. When really there’s always a natural approach always.

And it’s just about getting the proper guidance for it. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. One of the first things I recommend as like an actionable step for someone who has just been diagnosed with PCRs is find a doctor you trust and figure out what the root issue is. And if you can’t afford to find the doctor that you trust and you can’t afford the lab work and all of this stuff,

just start by going gluten and dairy free and take it from there and then learn more about supplements. What are your symptoms? What else do you need to do? You know, and start small because there is so much you can do. And just the smallest thing of changing your diet to gluten dairy free has helped so many women and then further adding the layers of other changes One step at a time.

You’re absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah. And this has been an awesome podcast. I can already tell, like just this conversation we’ve had back and forth. We should do this play more times. Yeah. We can do this. Yeah. I mean, I wanted to ask like a lot of questions and like, just get into this stuff, but maybe next time,

next up, next time we have an episode like this, we’ll like get more into it and like do this more often. So like thank you for being on this episode with us. Yes. Thank you so much for coming on. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. And before we go, can you say again where people can find you and they can reach you and just anything.

So the easiest way might be my website. So dr. nirvana.com, there’s also Instagram at dr. Nirvana. Um, I’m so excited to do my podcast. Yes. Podcasts, regenerate, you regenerate you. And um, and of course there’s Facebook at dr. Nirvana heals, but I’m really just an email or phone call away. Yeah. I should just know.

Okay. Nirvana is one of my favorite bands of all time. It’s why I have this tattoo. People wonder Nirvana’s logo. And I’m like, I loved them when I was 18 years old. I still do. And I got it. This was one of my first dumb tattoo that I got. I have more, but you know, yeah. It was meant to look at this.

You helped Tallinn. And then I ended up meeting Tallinn and then, then the two Nirvana’s get together. That’s it Truly synchronicity is amazing. Yeah. The way life works, it just brings people together. Thank you so much. And we hope to speak with you again. Yes. Oh, absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you both. Of course.

Alrighty. Bye sisters. See you on the next episode. Take care. If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, you have to come check out the sisterhood. It’s my monthly membership site, where sisters just like you are learning how to move through the stages of S from Sage one cold and alone at the doctor’s office to stage five, nailing the PCs lifestyle,

gluten and dairy free. Get ready to finally feel in control of your body. Again,