197 – How to overcome adrenal fatigue – Podcast with Dr. Izabella Wentz
All PCOS Diva podcasts are available on:
Mentioned in Podcast:
Electrolytes for PCOS: PCOS Diva Revive
PCOS Diva Podcast Episode 94: The Latest PCOS Research and Hot Topics with Dr. Fiona McCullouch
Dr. Wentz Free Adrenal Healing Guide: ABCs of Adrenal Support
Dr. Wentz’s New Book: Reverse and Heal Adrenal Dysfunction
Connect with Dr. Izabella Wentz’s:
Dr. Izabella Wentz Website
Instagram
Facebook
Previous Podcasts with Dr. Izabella Wentz’s:
PCOS Diva Podcast Episode 107: The Healing Diet for Hashimoto’s Thyroidosis, PCOS, and More
PCOS Diva Podcast Episode 66: PCOS and Hashimoto’s Shared Healing Protocol
PCOS Diva Podcast Episode 22: Got PCOS? What You Need to Know About Hashimoto’s and Hypothyroid
Izabella Wentz, PharmD, FASCP, is an internationally acclaimed thyroid specialist and a licensed pharmacist who has dedicated her career to addressing the root causes of autoimmune thyroid disease after being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis in 2009. She is the author of three books on Hashimoto’s: Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the Root Cause, Hashimoto’s Food Pharmacology, and Hashimoto’s Protocol, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller. Dr. Wentz currently lives in Texas with her husband, Michael, and their son, Dimitry.
Transcript:
Amy:
Before we get started with today’s podcast, I am really excited to introduce a new PCOS diva podcast host, Dr. Vinu Jyothi. Dr. Vinu is a physician researcher, and she has a master’s in public health. She has her own personal journey with PCOS and she’s passionate about holistic medicine and healing, as well as understanding the science behind PCOS. Dr. Vinu lives in Cary, North Carolina with her husband Senthil and her two young boys. So a very warm welcome to Dr. Vinu.
Dr. Vinu:
Thank you, Amy. I’m really honored and feel grateful for being here. I have had my own journey with PCOS, you know, I still face some of the struggles, and I am glad to be a part of this community and to share my knowledge, and you know, all of the experience and also, you know, kind of go through this process with everyone else here. So,
Amy:
and I think that’s what you’re gonna be such a powerful leader and mentor for the PCSD the community. So let’s dive into today’s podcast topic, adrenal health. This is an often overlooked underlying factor in PCOS and it certainly was for me, adrenal health is not widely understood by most mainstream medical practitioners. What better person to demystify adrenals than Dr. Isabella Wentz, who blazoned a path towards wellness for thyroid and Hashimotos sufferers. I’m so grateful that Dr. Wentz is turned her attention to adrenal health with her latest book, adrenal transformation protocol. Welcome back on the PCOS diva podcast, Dr. Wentz.
Dr. Wentz:
My gosh, it’s such an honor and a pleasure to be here with you. I’m so excited to
Dr. Vinu:
welcome Dr. Wentz and I know you’ve been here on previous podcasts, but for those of our listeners who Who, who do not know much about Dr. Wentz, she is an internationally acclaimed thyroid specialist and a licensed pharmacist who has dedicated her career to addressing the root causes of autoimmune thyroid disease after being diagnosed with Hashimotos thyroiditis in 2009. She is the author of three books. And her her very recent book, The adrenal transformation protocol is supposed to be released very soon. I’m sure you’re excited about that book, Dr. Wells, and my first question to you was going to be what is adrenal fatigue? And how does someone know that they have it?
Dr. Wentz:
Sure, adrenal fatigue is essentially a constellation of symptoms that many of us feel when we’ve been exposed to a lot of stress. And so we sort of get stuck in this stress mode. And we end up with these symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, trouble sleeping at night, pain in the body, libido issues, feeling overwhelmed. These are some of the more common patterns that people see with adrenal fatigue. But it is, it is one of these conditions that’s not recognized by conventional medicine. So it’s been pioneered by the integrative medicine community because people were coming in to see their doctors and saying, like, I’m just exhausted, and I have brain fog, and I can’t remember things. I feel so awful and stressed out all the time. And unfortunately, people are always told, Well, everybody’s stressed, everybody, everybody has sleep issues. And you know, these, these symptoms that you’re experiencing are very common. Just because they’re common does not mean that they’re normal, or that they’re supposed to be there. So, there are various tests that integrative practitioners may recommend to test for adrenal dysfunction adrenal fatigue, such as adrenal saliva test or a Dutch urine test to look at our cortisol patterns throughout the day. However, I really think that an easy or straightforward way to figure out if you have adrenal fatigue is going to be if you feel a little bit dizzy when you stand up. If you go outside and you’re light, your eyes are sensitive to the bright lights, if you’re always having to wear those sunglasses, that’s going to be a good indication of adrenal fatigue. If you feel any of the symptoms like fatigue and brain fog, if you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, if you feel really, really snug, sluggish, irritable, anxious, these are all the patterns associated with adrenal fatigue. So I have a whole checklist that I go through with people where we go through various symptoms that they can Have and they can test themselves at home. For example, if you get up quickly and you feel like you’re lightheaded, if you tend to have a low blood pressure, this could also be an indication of adrenal fatigue.
Amy:
Dr. Fiona McCullough was one of the first folks that I heard talking about adrenal androgen form of PCOS. And it seems to affect a lot of women that are not that classic. You know, centralized sort of obesity, insulin resistant PCOS. And I’m definitely one of those women that I’ve really realized over the years that I have that adrenal driven PC form of PCOS. But when I And if anybody’s interested in learning more about that, listen to my episode, podcast episode with Dr. Fiona. And there’s also a post that we will put in the show notes about that. But that’s why I was so excited that Dr. Isabella Wentz was writing this book because so many of us also have that adrenal driven form of PCOS. But when I ever brought that up to my doctor, they looked at me with this like really confusing face and thought, well, if you don’t, you know, have Addison’s disease. You know, then then you really don’t have any adrenal issues. So why is it that mainstream medical just won’t acknowledge adrenal dysfunction?
Dr. Wentz:
I think the the main kind of adrenal dysfunction and a lot of it, I feel like is related to the terminology, right? And so Addison’s is a well recognized, very rare condition, but it’s an autoimmune condition that affects the adrenals leading to destruction of the adrenal glands, so they can no longer produce adrenal steroids and they can’t produce hormones. Now, this is a very it can be a life threatening condition. And generally people with this condition need lifelong supplementation or prescription medications such as cortisol to help them get through day to day life to replenish what their body is no longer able to make. Now that is the mainstream medical condition that’s recognized and this is a life threatening, very serious condition. However, adrenal dysfunction, adrenal fatigue, has some of the same similar symptoms, but they’re much more mild, and the adrenals aren’t actually fatigued. As you know, the early innovators in integrative medicine have suggested the adrenals are just fine. What they’re what’s going on typically, and adrenal quote unquote fatigue is that the brain is not communicating very well with the body. So there’s a bit of a feedback loop that’s been jumbled. And so people end up having these beautiful adrenals that are perfectly capable of producing enough adrenal hormones, but yet, they’re not producing enough or the producing too, too much of these hormones. And this is the pattern of adrenal fatigue. There. I think, a lot of times, you know, doctors will say adrenal fatigue doesn’t exist, but they’ll call it HPA Axis dysfunction, right? So that’s the that’s the actual term that if you look up medical research or published least research, HPA Axis dysfunction seems to be what is recognized as a real condition. Right. But the I guess the common common term in the world is adrenal fatigue or adrenal. I like to call it adrenal dysfunction.
Amy:
Well, I think with adrenal dysfunction, there’s so much that’s within your control. And I think you’ve done a beautiful job laying out step by step how to really heal and bring your your adrenals back into balance. And as I was going through your book, the different sections of the book really aligned with healing PCOS, so I’m just going to kind of go through those quickly balancing blood sugar, reversing inflammation, replenishing nutrients, restoring circadian rhythm, supporting mitochondria, distressing and building resilience. And I was hoping that you could kind of touch upon some of those areas for listeners.
Dr. Went:
Sure. So essentially, adrenal issues develop when we are under a lot of stress, right. And so our bodies tend to get stuck in a stressed out state. And I like to think of it that our body is in a bit of a danger response and so the way to rebalance that is, I want to send the body safety signals to let the body know that it can kind of relax and let go of the stress and digest and go from like a survival mode into more of a thriving mode. And part of that is looking at what are the physiological imbalances that occur from chronic stress. Typically, people that have been chronically stressed, they’re going to have issues with blood sugar. So we typically will focus on getting them on a blood sugar balanced diet to help to help send that safety signal to their body, that, you know, things are calm, that things are peaceful. Another kind of danger signal that our body perceives, is when we don’t have enough nutrients. On board, when we’re depleted, this is going to be this could be as a result of chronic stress. So we know that stress burns out our B vitamins, our electrolytes, our vitamin C, our magnesium. And so just, it’s like a vicious cycle where you You start off in this stress response, and then it sort of fuels itself right and you end up initially, people start off with very high levels of cortisol and over time, that just decreases and decreases until they feel burned out. And part of part of getting back into balance is replenishing those very nutrients that got burned out through the stress process. So making sure that you’re getting some B vitamins on board, lots and lots of vitamin C, magnesium and replenishing electrolytes is going to be tremendously helpful for rebalancing the stress response. I know people that will say they had issues with sleep being and pain throughout their bodies, and anxiety and fatigue, and just doing some of these very targeted and very specific. So safety signals, as I like to call them helps to bring the body back into balance and helps to let the body know that it’s okay you can you can sleep like you don’t have to keep watch. And you don’t have to feel so anxious, like everything is okay. And so I go through, I have 14 different safety signals that I outlined throughout the book. And they focus. There’s there’s a chapter on nutrition. And so those those are some of the nutritional safety signals. I talked about using various nutrients. And then I talk about things like circadian balance. Now, I know this is this is a topic that you’re very passionate about, as am I. And this has been something very, very close to your heart, right?
Amy:
Yeah, it’s something that really moves the needle for women with PCOS. And it’s it’s not hard to do. And it’s really enjoyable balancing your circadian cycle. We’ll we’ll link some articles in the show notes. If you want to read deeper, but tell us like what is your concept of restoring circadian rhythm.
Dr. Wentz:
So there’s a few different things that I like to implement. And essentially, we’ll see people with the people that I’ve worked with typically will say they have trouble getting out of bed in the morning. And they’re just so sluggish. They drag themselves out of bed, and then their their day is just like, they’re kind of in a fog until maybe like lunchtime. And after that they’ll have a little bit of energy, but then they’ll have an afternoon crash around three o’clock. And then then maybe kind of towards the evening, they like feel alive, right? They feel human again, and then but still tired. And then they it’s time to go to bed, but they end up feeling wired and tired. And then they have this. This what’s called the Flipped cortisol curve, what I typically a healthy cortisol curve. For those of you guys that aren’t familiar with cortisol, it’s it’s one of our stress hormones, you might hear that cortisol is bad, right? And it’s not bad. It’s actually essential for life. So we need just the right amounts of it at specific times throughout the day to feel energetic and healthy throughout the day, and to keep our inflammation at bay and to keep our bodies repair at bay. And we need very low levels of it at night so that we could fall asleep. I like to think of cortisol kind of like if you had like a cup of coffee, right? So that’s kind of the effect that you might get from cortisol. And typically we want cortisol to be very high in the morning or high in the morning, and then go down as gradually throughout the day. Now typically people with adrenal dysfunction they can present in a few different cortisol patterns. One common one is going to be low cortisol in the morning and we’re barely judging by we’re judging by and then towards the evening when that cortisol is supposed to be low. It actually ends up high and so they can’t sleep. They’re wired and tired. They’re like laying in bed. tossing and turning. Like what is going on? Right? Some people talk about night owls, right? Like, oh, maybe you’re just a night owl. But humans, we’re not cats or we’re not owls, right? We’re not nocturnal creatures. My, my, my five year old son is always talking about mommy what animals are nocturnal? are owls nocturnal are cats nocturnal. And so humans are not nocturnal, right. And so we all have the ability to have good energy during the day and restful sleep at night, there’s a very, there’s a few very specific things that we can do. And I know it sounds like very, very basic, but it’s like so game changing. So just making sure that when you wake up in the morning, and no matter what time it is, I know some people struggle with, you know, waking up at 10, right, or 11 that I’ve worked with, with fatigue issues. And just with chronic health issues, but trying to, if you could step outside, when you get up in the morning, and let the bright lights kind of let your body know that it’s daytime, it’s time to be awake, right? It doesn’t count if we’re inside of our homes, because our homes just don’t have enough light in them. Now, I live in Texas, and I live in California. And so I know this is super easy for me to do like most of the time. But um, but there’s a part of the world and I grew up in Chicago and I grew up in Poland and I lived in Colorado where where you know, it’s not necessarily possible to step out of your house. Or it may be the days aren’t Sunny, even on cloudy days, just stepping outside, you’re going to be able to get a little bit of light into you, that’s going to be helpful. Now, if you can’t step outside, you know, if you if you don’t live somewhere Sunny, and it’s wintertime, you can actually get one of a special light. There’s a whole bunch of different lights out there that I talked about a few options in the book, and I have some in a bonus guide that comes along when people purchase the book. But there’s sad lights, happy lights, blue light therapy, lights, full spectrum therapy, lights, and then I know we were chatting about Dawn stimulating lights that help our bodies know that it’s time to wake up, right. Part of that is actually so this is kind of like one part of it right is like making sure that you are exposed to as much like bright light throughout the day. And then in the evening times when the sun sets, making sure that you’re not exposed to bright lights and I know cellphones, we have our our laptops, we have our TVs and we have so many exciting entertainment options like at our fingertips in the evenings. But that isn’t doing us a lot of favors for helping us fall asleep. So one recommendation is to make sure about two hours before bedtime at least that you stop utilizing any screen time my husband and I we actually have red lights in our house so red lights and at a certain time once the sun sets they turn on in our house and our our whole neighborhoods like oh your you guys are in that red red light house right? Like what do you have going on in there. But red lights are very much they’re very fabulous for helping us promote sleep and letting our bodies know that it’s it’s time to rest. The other thing is if I recommend sleeping in a really dark room, that’s that’s actually a bit cooler than most people probably are used to sleeping. So typically, studies have found that the people have trouble falling asleep if the room is too warm and they end up with night wakings and nightmares. Generally, I would say like 60 to 65 degrees is probably the right temperature for most people to help them fall asleep and stay asleep. When we think of like our ancestors they were they were living in caves right and caves are dark and chilly. And then that’s what they were doing at nighttime and they were coming out during the day and they were out in the bright lights. Another another little thing that is I think very much under appreciated and my husband and my son and I just moved into a new house last summer and we there’s these little you know blue lights that we have in our bedrooms and they might be from from like an alarm or for us it was like our blinds that had this little blue light attached to it or maybe it was like the temperature the thermometer or you know whatever whatever sources of little blue light. I typically will cover them up with a Little bit of like black or dark blue tape, just so that I don’t see it at night because even a little bit of that light can wake us up. For a while I’ve bought a month or two after we moved into our house, I just kept waking up in the middle of the night and I didn’t know what was going on. And then one night, I just happened to look towards my, my blinds. And there was this really beautiful bright blue light shining right and deep into my eyes when I had realized that the little stickers fell off of fell right off of the blue lights. And so sure enough, when I replaced the stickers, it was like okay, my, my, my wakings my, you know, 123 am wakings that I had for a week were completely gone, right. And so these are just very like, I know, they don’t sound very, you don’t need a ton of supplements, or nothing really fancy. But these are things if you try them, just give them just give them a week and see how you do if you have more energy in the day, if you feel more rested and able to sleep at night.
Amy:
Yeah, and I pretty much guarantee that you will if you if you try some of these techniques, and like we were saying they’re very enjoyable, it’s not hard to do. You have some other really nice distressing ideas. And I would love for you to share some of your favorite ways to de stress. women with PCOS tend to have elevated levels of cortisol. Stress is something that we have to distressing is something we have to work on on a daily basis. And I think we could all use some, some maybe new ideas.
Dr. Wentz:
One of the things that I really love and this is fabulous said that time to can promote relaxation in the evenings is taking an Epsom salt bath. And just getting into a warm bath and having some absence putting one or one to two cups of Epsom salts, and letting yourself soak from anywhere from 15 minutes. My husband usually cuts me off about an hour, but I’m out of there, you know, what are you doing, that can just really put your body and your mind at ease and get you ready for bed. I guarantee you no matter how stressful your day was, if you take the time for an Epsom salt bath, you’re going to feel better, your joint pains are going to be lessened, your anxiety is going to get better your mood is going to get brighter, just taking anywhere from 15 minutes to depending on the time of day, right? Sometimes upwards to an hour can be such a game changer. The other things that I really really love adding into my day to day life are just like very simple, pleasurable activities. I feel like a lot of us and I’m I’m I’m I say I’m a new mom. But I have a five year old right. So I still feel like a brand new mom, right. And a lot of us just so like we have our work and we have our families we have our kids we have some of us are like in the sandwich generation. So we have our elderly parents that we need to take care of. And we end up like caring for everybody else. And have like a long list of things to do. Like, you know, you’re remodeling your house, you’re decluttering your house, you’re buying stuff to furnish your house, whatever, whatever is happening, you’re, you’re always on the go. And sometimes it feels like all of these things we’re doing, it’s just like, more and more tasks, but taking some time to do something like pleasurable. And just just for fun, and just for the enjoyment of it. You know, whether that’s going to a bookstore and browsing for a little bit sitting down and if you’re a great artist, maybe painting and you know, not painting for selling it and feeling because that that can put pressure on us but just just painting for the enjoyment of it. Or I like adult coloring books, I don’t have any artistic tendencies. So just taking that time to do things you really enjoy throughout the day, even if it’s like 10 to 15 minutes a day going for a walk. Like that can really reset our stress response. And just get us out of that. Like go stress go stress, right. Oh, are we muted?
Dr. Vinu:
No, you’re good. That one’s okay. And I just wanted to add a couple of things growing up. I did have a red light because I wouldn’t sleep without a light my parents had a red light in the bedroom. Makes a lot of sense now, and maybe I should carry on doing that. And like you said I did join a dance class recently just because you know, no other idea but just Do something for myself. So it’s definitely distressing. I agree with you completely on that. So, the other thing I wanted to ask you was, what is the typical day look like on the adrenal transformation protocol?
Dr. Wentz:
Sure. So typically, what I recommend is waking up right? Once you wake up, making sure you get a little bit of sunshine into your, your eyes, onto your body, whether that’s stepping outside, or if you’re having trouble waking up, some blue light simulation can help. I love recommending the adrenal kickstart drink. And that’s going to be a little bit of orange juice, a little bit of coconut cream, and then also a little bit of sea salt to help balance electrolytes, and a little bit of protein. So we’re going to have a little bit of protein, a little bit of fat, a little bit of carbohydrate from the OJ that’s very rich and vitamin C and a little bit of sea salt to just help support the body and help to people tend to have lower cortisol in the morning. So when we have that lower cortisol in the morning, getting a little bit of the vitamin C, getting a little bit of the sea salt is going to help us we can awaken right. And then throughout the day, I recommend generally making sure that you are eating ample protein and fats. I know like fasting is super popular, and it can be very helpful for a lot of things. But and I feel like people in the adrenal dysfunction phase, a lot of them may not be quite ready to fast. And so in the initial stages, they may actually need to just work on upping their protein and fat intake, and then eating and snacking, perhaps every two to three hours. It depends on the person. But generally, what I found with my clients is that they do need to initially have a little bit more of a window of a shorter window of going without food, because we tend to have a lot of blood sugar swings in the early stages of trying to heal adrenals.
Amy:
That that I just want to interject, I think that is great advice, because a lot of women with PCOS, intermittent fasting is such a hot topic right now. And they feel like failures because they can’t, they can’t do it. And I think adrenal health is one of those kind of clues as to why it’s difficult for you to do intermittent fasting. So I’m glad you brought that up.
Dr. Wentz:
Yeah, it’s such a it’s such a trending topic. And I think it helps so many people, but it’s like, depending on what your is going on in your body right now is like you need to tailor that to you. And if you’re having trouble getting up in the morning, then there’s a good chance that you need to support your that you need to support your cortisol levels in the morning. And then if you’re having like fatigue throughout the day or anxiety throughout the day, this is a sign that you have blood sugar swings, and a lot of times people will say, oh my goodness, that like one of the things I recommend is a three o’clock snack. And it’s usually like a maca latte where people will utilize a little bit of adaptogens with with some coconut milk, and maybe some sometimes protein powder, or we’re having a little bit of a snack right at that time there say like, that’s such a game changer for my energy levels. And for my you know, I don’t get that three o’clock slump anymore, and I don’t have anxiety issues. So I, I recommend these little, little loves little doses of love for yourself throughout the day in the form of of nutrition and balanced nutrition. And then in the evening times, I recommend utilizing, making sure that you you know, like you move your caffeine to earlier in the day, you can utilize some herbal teas to help you relax and fall asleep, making sure that you’re not exposed to any bright lights within a few hours of bedtime. And these are some of the lifestyle changes I recommend. And of course, finding time for pleasurable activities is going to be something that we’re going to build on the first phase that typically I’ll have people just try to follow like the blood sugar balanced diet as they kind of get into the program. And then after that I’ll start recommending some targeted supplements. Some supplements that are really, really helpful when we are in adrenal dysfunction are going to be adrenal adaptogens and I already talked about B vitamins, vitamin C, magnesium and electrolytes but adaptogens are going to help us be become more resilient to stress. They’re going to help us feel more energetic throughout the day and they’re going to help us get sleep better at night. We’re going to feel less anxious when we take them They just sort of like just make stress more tolerable. So stress might still be out there, but we just perceive it a little bit differently. And our, I would like to say like our, our ability to handle it just grows when we take adaptogens. I like to say that like the people in my life becomes less annoying when I take adaptogens, right, that’s kind of like a common pattern. And I’m like, Well, I know that my adrenals need a little bit of support, if like, people are being very annoying to me, and it’s like, everybody is annoying. And for a while I, I sadly just lost my dog. But I was like, even if my dog is getting on my nerves, that’s a sign that like, maybe it’s me, right, maybe it’s my adrenals that needs support. And so those are, those are few targeted supplements, I typically recommend magnesium at nighttime, because it can be very helpful for helping us fall asleep and relax us. Myo-inositol is also a fabulous, a fabulous supplement that people can take, and I know you recommend that as well and combined with de Chiro inositol. For PCOS, it’s helpful for balancing blood sugar, it can be helpful for reducing anxiety. Typically, I like to use it in the evenings to help people fall asleep and sleep better, we have fewer blood sugar swings at night and fewer night waking. So then we’re more rested and more energetic throughout the day. As well as some mitochondrial support is what I’ll typically recommend, as part of the whole package. And amazingly, it’s only six supplements that people typically need. So it’s not like my brother says, some people are like pillowball Baggins, because they have, you know, like 35 different pills that they’re taking throughout the day. But it’s just a few targeted supplements to really support our stress response, support our energy levels, support our electrolytes. I know, I’d love to talk a little bit more about that if we have some time.
Amy:
Yeah, please do. Electrolytes were a big game changer for me. And it was one of the reasons that I brought the the PCOS Diva formula on and it’s not electrolytes, you know, I think about my, my kids that all play sports and you think about electrolytes to replenish after sweating. But and while that’s really important, I never really understood how helpful that can be for adrenal fatigue. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.
Dr. Wentz:
So it’s interesting that you know, when they studied electrolytes, and I like to utilize electrolytes that have vitamin C and D ribose. And this great blend of nutrients in there to support the mitochondria as well is that they studied them in like endurance athletes, right. And they found that endurance athletes recovered faster when they utilize electrolytes, right from their extreme sports. Well, I feel like for many people with adrenal issues, they feel like day to day life is like, you know, an ultra marathon, right? It’s like an endurance event. Like when you feel so overwhelmed and so depleted. Just like really, like easy, simple tasks, like putting away the dishes like that can be overwhelming and draining, right. And so this is what electrolytes can do for us. They can give us some of that endurance to recover from like the day to day stressors. And, and amazingly, people will say, like, wow, I had all this pain and cramps in my body. The electrolytes help that. I typically like to use them in the mornings as well to people with people with adrenal issues. And Addison’s is very well known for this they’ll have electrolyte imbalances, right? And so giving you electrolytes in the morning is going to help to help us support healthy levels of cortisol to making sure that we have more energy throughout the day. typically don’t like to use them at night unless you like to, you know, wake up a lot of times at night to go potty. But yeah, there’s it’s just very helpful to have these strategies that you use throughout the day and also knowing like what time throughout the day to use them. You know, using your electrolytes in the morning and your adaptogens in the morning, your B vitamins, vitamin C in the morning to drive up your energy right and bright lights in the morning and then in the evening. We’re looking at getting some getting some inositol and getting some magnesium to help us relax more and help us sleep. And that just does a really beautiful job of helping us have more energy in the day and helping us get restful regenerative sleep at night. Can we feel so much better?
Amy:
Yes, the whole concept that’s really hot of like by biohacking your body. I mean, you’re kind of biohacking that cortisol curve by doing some of these timed strategies, like you mentioned. One thing that really helped me with I suffered from that inverse curve. And in the morning, my cortisol was really low. So I used to sleep with a little tincture of licorice and ginseng, like right next to my bed. So I would kind of down that before I even got up so that it gave me like a little bit of energy. And it helped to raise my cortisol during that time of day when it was low. And I know in your book, there’s a tremendous appendix with all of those in information of about supplements beyond what we talked about in today’s call. I mean, there’s there’s a lot of other adaptogens and herbs that can really help with supporting your cortisol cycle.
Dr. Wentz:
Yeah, I have information about like, if you have low cortisol in the morning, there are certain things you could do so licorice, I love licorice, that that was super helpful on my journey as well. You can utilize, you can actually eat great fruit. So grapefruit helps to extend cortisol in the body, the bright lights are super helpful, as well as just getting more electrolytes into your body. Sometimes I’ll recommend for people to make soul, which is sounds fancy, but it’s just a mixture of sea salt with water, and then you sip on that throughout the day. And that helps to support a healthy blood pressure, healthy energy levels, healthy cortisol levels when we want them to be a little bit higher. Now, I also have recommendations for people who tend to have higher cortisol, like specific recommendations for that. Typically, most of the recommendations in the book are available to everybody, just anybody that’s stressed out will benefit from them. But I also have specific things for if you have like, if your core symptoms are libido issues, like if that’s an issue for you, I focus on you know, making sure you have maca can be helpful or Shatavari.
Amy 37:15
There’s specific Shatavari Yeah, that’s an amazing adaptogen or Ayuredic or that, that can really be helpful. It’s not sure about it that much.
Dr. Wentz 37:29
It’s funny, I think that like the name means like, women have 100 husbands, and I often wonder like, Okay, wow, that woman must have a lot of energy and a lot of like, you know, to have 100 Husbands, right? So, so I love having these little, I have a bunch of little protocols like I have a tired mommy protocol in there. So if you’re, the book was really actually inspired by my my son. And being a new mom, I have a lot of experience with adrenal issues from my own health and health of lots of people with Hashimotos that I’ve helped throughout the years, but the kind of integrative approach is typically quick coffee, get 10 to 12 hours asleep, take lots of supplements, including these hormones. And when I was I think like eight months postpartum, my baby was still waking up every two to three hours, I was still nursing. And you know, like, I started drinking coffee for the first time in my life. And so I was like, I can’t sleep 10 to 12 hours to like, get my energy levels off, right? And I can’t like I can’t like, I’m not quitting caffeine, like, this is just not happening. Like, I need this right in my life. Um, caffeine, you know, addiction can be a symptom of adrenal dysfunction, right. And then the other thing was like, I can’t take hormones, and I didn’t feel comfortable taking a lot of supplements because I was breastfeeding a baby. And so I had to come up with like, a whole host of new adrenal supporting strategies, which the circadian rhythm and a lot of these nutrients that are just so, so helpful for everybody, and so balancing, as well as the mitochondrial support, and, and some brain support was what I eventually came to. And I was like, I need to get this out to more people, because I’m sure there’s people that can’t take hormones, they’re not willing to quit caffeine, maybe they can’t sleep. And so I ended up releasing my book as a program in 2020 Out of all times, and like the results were so phenomenal, like 93% of people had had like, improved brain fog within within like, less than four weeks. And so I was like, Okay, maybe maybe I’m onto something here because I just, I just had previously been recommending these very, very foundational integrative protocols, and I was like, Okay, I have some new ones. Maybe I can share these with the world.
Amy :
But it’s an amazing book. And I think if you find yourself you can’t get through your day without, without coffee and you can’t unwind without your wine. That’s often a sign that you you need to read Dr. Isabella Wentz his new book.
Dr. Wentz:
Absolutely. And I know, some some programs would like be safe stop cold turkey, what I focus on is helping people get their energy levels up first, so that they naturally don’t need all of that caffeine. And they naturally don’t need all of that wine because they just feel more calm. Right. So there, they have more, I guess more resources available to them to reach for so that they don’t rely on that.
Amy:
So you had mentioned some free bonuses with, you know, for people to pre buy your book or, or tell us about those?
Dr. Wentz:
Yeah, absolutely. So I have a, if people go to thyroid pharmacist.com/abc, I have a little bit of a guide that focuses on the fundamentals and the foundations of adrenal balance. So it’s getting adaptogens on board, B vitamins, vitamin C, magnesium, some of the stress reduction strategies that are so incredibly helpful and life changing. And people can get in, get that over at thyroid pharmacist.com/abc. And then they can learn more about the book on Amazon. And whenever they purchase the book, I also have some blood sugar balancing recipes. So it’s a two week meal plan and recipe guide for blood sugar balancing, which is one of the key things we can do to to feel significantly better. And then when you buy the book, I mean, I have a whole library of of resources, including like insomnia, like ebooks on insomnia, ebooks on anxiety, and it’s, it’s, it’s going to it’s available to everybody that buys the book, and then there’s a special link to get that.
Amy:
Oh, that those are great resources, you know, for women with PCOS, I mean, you have to get that blood sugar balancing guide. But that’s really the first step for managing PCOS. And it’s just so so many of these symptoms overlap. So if you you know, follow Dr. Wentz this program. It’s just going to help with your PCOS in general. So killed. What is it two birds? With one question? Yes.
Dr. Vinu:
Yes, not a snake. I was gonna say I agree to that. You know, that’s going to be a great resource, you know, getting the book and then it looks like she is stressing on so many things that women with PCOS deal with. So it definitely is gonna work. So I’m Dr. Wentz. I was going to ask you what was some surprising things that you learned while you were developing this protocol?
Dr. Wentz:
Oh, wow. I think one of the bigger surprising things I’ve learned was that that that the mitochondria they play such an important role in adrenal dysfunction. I know I had heard about like, all these potential causes and reasons of adrenal dysfunction. And I just didn’t realize how mitochondria were involved and that supporting mitochondrial health for many women was part of the answer when they previously failed other protocols. The other thing that I learned and I kind of feel like, you know, I didn’t do my clients a service many years ago, was I thought that adrenal issues were caused by having drinking too much caffeine, right. I thought that was like the cause. But then, over time, I realized that like the drinking, like them being addicted to caffeine was because of an underlying issue. And so it was a coping mechanism. I know, I had one client that was waking up a lot at night, and having a lot of bladder issues throughout the day and super anxious, having headaches and stuff like that, and she was drinking like six espressos a day. And I was like, there is your answer, right? Like, quit your coffee. And then, you know, she quit the coffee and everything and she’s like, I’m still having everything. Like, it’s still going on. And the coffee was just a coping mechanism for her to try to feel somewhat alive. Right. And so, um, you know, kind of not not fixing, there’s underlying issues that needed to be fixed, to allow her to sleep well at night and to allow her to have energy throughout the day before. You know, like as a practitioner before I could ask her to like quit coffee, right? And so that was that was a big, big kind of like humbling moment for me because I feel like sometimes you know, you learn certain things and you have enough people that succeed with it, that you feel like oh, well this person, it’s just them and you don’t realize you don’t realize the underlying patterns that can be driving driving some imbalances. So I would say that’s probably like the biggest thing that I was like, oh, okay, this makes sense, right?
Amy:
Well, you know, thank you so much for using your struggles and turning them into you know, a brand new program for that’s really going to help a ton of women and I’m actually looking forward to going through your program I’m feeling a little a little bit and adrenal fatigue. And you know, I will I’ll be a guinea pig and be happy to share with everyone how your program you know, turn things around for me. So, so thank you for being on the PCOS diva podcast and thank you Dr. venue for you know, coming on and and being our new show host.
Dr. Vinu :
Thanks, Amy. And yes, I have to agree with you. You know, the tired mommy program. Yeah, it screams my name. So, Dr. Wentz. I’ll be more than happy to be your guinea pig to along with me.
Dr. Wentz:
Thank you so much for having me. I really would love to have you. I know we all just part of life is is managing our stress and it’s it’s a daily effort. So it’s an honor and a pleasure to be here with you and to help and thank
Amy:
you everyone for listening. We look forward to being with you again very soon. Bye bye.
