Listen
Listen to this podcast or watch the video. CLICK HERE
Transcript
Wendy: Hello, everyone. Wendy Myers here from myersdetox.com. Welcome to the life changing Medicinal Supplements Summit. I brought together the top experts in the world on health and nutrition to help you make the right supplement choices. You deserve to feel good and I want to teach you how.
Today, we’ll be discussing the top supplements to beat stress. I know everyone of you deal with stress at some point. I’m stressed doing the summit and I’m taking a lot of supplements to reduce stress like ashwagandha, which we’re going to talk about. And stress is one of the leading causes of disease and we need to use every supplement bio hack at our disposal to reduce it.
My friends and special guests are Damian and Heather Dube. They are diagnostic and functional nutritionists. Damian and Heather Dube empower individuals to take their body, mind, and spirit back from thyroid health, fatigue, and weight-related disorders. They are the cofounders of E3 Energy Evolved, a thyroid autoimmune and metabolism restoration system helping women and men create their lifetime best natural wellness and fat loss with no fitness.
They created their system during their journey to personally heal Heather’s Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, chronic fatigue, and autoimmune disease and doing that drug free and Synthroid free through individualized nutrition movement, stress psychology, and lifestyle change, and return to competitive athletics as a U.S. national level figure athlete in just over two years. They are expert contributors to Experience Life magazine and OnFitness magazine and nutrition science peer reviewers for TapouT XT.
Heather and Damian, thank you so much for joining us.
Heather: Thank you so much for having us, Wendy. We’re excited to be here.
Damian: Yeah, thank you very much, Wendy.
Wendy: I know that both of you have deep personal experience of the long- lasting effects of stress-related chronic disease in your life, and that you healed your own thyroid and autoimmune illness and chronic fatigue syndrome naturally. Can you share a little bit about your story and background and how both led to your shared passion as husband and wife for helping others to thrive in their health as well.
Heather: Yeah, so absolutely. Damian and I had a long history in the fitness industry actually. For about 15 years, we’ve both been really passionate about nutrition and working in and around sports nutrition and nutrition related to metabolic functions, so resting metabolism. And fast forward into our early 30s, we just got married, which can be a stressful time. We’re transitioning into newlywed phase.
And we had this period where a lot of stressful events came up all in a very condensed six-month period. We learned a parent was in stage 4 cancer right after our wedding. We were going through an IRS audit. We were going through a move. We just bought a house. And my company got bought out and I was in a really high-zest marketing job, where I was responsible for quite a bit in marketing and events program management.
So you kind of condense all these things together. And all of a sudden, I had been really – I would say, I always felt in control of my body all my life. And all of sudden, my body started speaking to me in really strange ways like, all of sudden, I didn’t feel the same motivation to show up to exercise. I really wasn’t feeling as intimate with my husband. I just wasn’t feeling right. I would have brain fog.
I got skin symptoms and kind of went through this period of going to a lot of allopathic or medical doctors for about, I would say, a year and a half to almost two years, where I got told, “Well, I don’t know what’s going on with you. Nothing’s wrong. You just have allergies. Okay, we test your thyroid and your thyroid is in normal range,” and yet my body was screaming by the end of that two years.
And so I finally turn the corner and went to a more natural practitioner and started to learn about the importance of stress. And stress is a cause of disease in the body and realized that, actually, I was dealing with full-blown
autoimmune disease at that time, chronic fatigue syndrome, and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.
And at that point, Damian and I really started to consider what were all forms of stress in our lives and why those mattered. And stress at a bigger level from a mental, emotional, physical, environmental level and really got into that, work at that time to begin to reverse my disease.
And so we became really passionate about it through that story because we went through such a transformational healing experience and something that most doctors, as you know, still say is not possible. You kind of have to just be on Synthroid and live with it and accept this kind of level or lower level experience of our mind and body, and we were unwilling to do that.
Wendy: I was right there with you as well when I was in my mid 30s or late 30s and same thing, doctors like, “You have to be on thyroid medication for life,” and they don’t heal. They’re not healers.
Heather: Yeah.
Wendy: And so that’s why people need to take charge of their health through supplements and in other ways, of course, as well. So we’ve heard that stress is the cause of almost all disease. Can you explain what occurs during the stress cycle?
Damian: Yeah, I can kind of touch on this. So let’s start by talking about the adrenal glands. So they’re little pyramid-shaped glands that sit right above the kidneys and they consist of two sections, basically. Anterior, which is the adrenal medulla. It secretes different catecholamines like epinephrine, norepinephrine, adrenaline, and noradrenaline, so when you get that fight or flight response.
Then, the outer portion, which is the adrenal cortex, secretes different corticosteroids like your cortisol, cortisone, aldosterone, which helps with mineral balancing as well as your sex hormones. So if you think about stress now and what occurs during the stress cycle. Now, let’s say that you’re – well, let’s step back.
The adrenal glands were basically designed for the stressors of several thousand years ago. So if you’re being chased by a lion through the jungle, you would get that fight or flight response, that the sympathetic state where it enhances your vitals and gives you the kind of energy and the alertness, awareness to get away from that immediate life threatening threat. So what happens is, basically, once the hypothalamus senses stress or some type of threat, it secretes ACTH or adrenocorticotropic hormone, which then allows the adrenals to release their epinephrine and norepinephrine as well as the cortisol and DHEA.
Now, the epinephrine and norepinephrine increase your vitals like your heart rate, your dilation of your pupils. They dilate your blood vessels to increase blood flow to your extremities, increase breathing, increase blood flow to your brain to allow for better awareness and alertness. So that’s going to kind of give you that energy or that drive to get away from that immediate threat, right?
And then cortisol is also secreted and cortisol has a couple of functions , one is that it basically asks the liver to start converting stored glycogen to glucose to be used for that immediate energy source. DHEA will help balance the effects of cortisol a little bit. So basically, when that cortisol is secreted, it also starts to kind of slow down some of the non-vitals. So being like your detoxification, your liver function; your digestion, so you’re not digesting food; your immune response, so your immune system isn’t functioning as well.
So if you think about it, let’s say, in today’s world, you’re driving down the street and on your way to work, you just finished breakfast. And all of a sudden, a truck pulls out in front of you. You almost hit it. You get that real quick alert awareness type of thing and you elude the accident and you pullover to the side of the road and you just take a breath, because you’re shaking because your energy is just through the roof at that point.
So that’s kind of like that fight or flight mode. But what happens then is that breakfast you just ate, you’re not digesting it anymore. You’re not detoxifying and so on. So when you’re looking at the bigger picture, once you’re over that threat, you tend to kind of crash. And that’s your body saying, “Okay. Well, I’m going now give you that window to kind of recharge those adrenal glands,” kind of like your cellphone battery.
If your battery is running low, you got to recharge it. But if you’re running a bunch of apps all at the same time, that’s going to deplete that battery even further. And if you don’t close some of those apps and recharge that battery, the battery is just going to continue to die. So the adrenal glands are very similar to that.
And in today’s world, we don’t have just the threat of being almost hit by a car but there’s the mental and emotional stress. There’s financial stress. There’s relationship stress. There are all kinds of different stresses that we’ll talk about in a minute, I’m sure. So our bodies can’t really differentiate between the two. So what we need to do is we need to figure out ways to not only calm the body by doing some more mind/body type of things, but also give some assistance through supplementation, that’s what I assume we’re going to talk about today.
Wendy: Yes. And from your personal and professional case studies, can you share a bit about why taking a broader view of stress is often necessary to come above a multitude of health conditions naturally? And what areas of stress do you address for healing that can be overlooked by some doctors or practitioners?
Heather: Well, I’m sure Damian would want to jump on this too, but this is critical for me. And I don’t know, Wendy, for you, you also went through this personally before you were in the work professionally. But having a background first in psychology and the way that I thought and saw my world was really critical because when I was sick, I was self-assessing more, I think, than doctors tend to.
I was kind of like, “Well, how am I thinking?” When I knew it was stress that was the issue, it was more like, what am I doing in my life that I’m like calling stress in? So I started to think more from a self-assessment perspective, like how’s my mindset towards things? How can I drop my stress down in the way that I see things?
And research shows that actually it’s not the stress but actually how we perceive the stress is more important that the stressor itself. And there are variances in people, because we see this now working with client. So the
psychological is huge.
To go back to your questions, specifically, why is it more important today and almost nonnegotiable to take a broader view of stress, because we’re hit this time, that’s a perfect storm, right? Now, our food is deficient. Why it’s so key to supplement, right? We have things going on environmentally now. Those apps that you don’t close down are also shooting some nice electromagnetic field off on your face when you’re staring at that thing all day.
All these things are forms of stress now. We have toxins in our environment. We just can’t keep that all out. There’s no way to nitpick at everything. We can manage but we also have to be aware of all the forms of stressors at a broader level so that our bodies can actually have a freer path to not take on such burden and we get more of an even balance by what we’re putting in and what we’re removing out of its way so that it’s getting what is needed to be nourished. But at the same time, we’re removing forms of stress that are overburdening it so you can get more back to balance. It’s just a broader view.
So when you’re thinking about energy, and that’s why we talk about E3 Energy Evolved, it’s more of an involved approach to considering how does your body metabolically function and produce energy. And what’s detracting from its energy and what’s adding into its energy?
So you want to think about movement as a form of stress, nutrition as a form of stress and your environment as a form of stress, your emotional and your mental. How do you show up in life? What’s your lifestyle? What’s our job?
All of those things really do matter if you find yourself in a situation where you’re dealing with thyroid or autoimmune disease or some form of fatigue and your body just can’t handle the burden and it’s telling you that through that condition. We need to get more giving to it and figuring out, “Okay, what can I weed out and add in so that it can function better and find better thriving in its wellness?”
Damian: Yeah. And if I can kind of expand upon that, we talked about how most people perceive stress as just that mental or emotional. But then there is that physical stress. So when we’re eating food, even if it is healthy, our body still has to process that. And there are still toxins in it even if it’s purely organic, because each plant has its own defense mechanism.
And our body has to kind of go through a process to kind of metabolize that and remove those toxins. So just eating is a form of stress as well. It’s necessary, right? When you’re in that constant strain of mental and emotional
stress and then you add that physical stress of like exercise and everything like that, that’s just putting it at constant fight or flight mode.
Okay. So when you’re in that constant fight or flight mode or that constant sympathetic dominant state, nothing else really matters because we can sit there and talk about, well, all disease starts in the gut and we got to heal the gut first; or well, we got to do some detoxing, let’s do some detoxing help your health and so on and so forth. If your adrenal glands are overworked, then none of that really matters until you get yourself to come down from that constant sympathetic state.
So once we get you to come down from that, then that will open up a window or a door to allow for better digestion and assimilation of nutrients. You still may need some supplementation for that, but it will allow you to digest better. It will allow your liver to detoxify better. It will allow your gut to work better, your immune system to work better and so on and so forth.
So in my opinion, stress and the adrenal glands are the primary source of everything.
Heather: Maybe you could share too because Wendy was asking about like case study, maybe even like Kaycee’s example of like working through her chronic fatigue or her adrenal fatigue in terms of taking a broader approach to stress.
Damian: Yeah. So a lot of what we do is we focus on a lot of things at once. But primarily, we are focusing on the adrenal glands and, basically, just shifting the mindset around stress. As we are able to start making you feel better through some supplementation, then that opens that window so we can start to shift the mind and how you view things, which will then open the window to further heal.
So a lot of things that we see, when somebody’s working with us, they’ll start having more energy. A lot of information will go down. They’ll have less headaches and just feel better throughout the day. And that’s a huge positive, right? Because that’s making them see that, “This is working. I’m feeling better. It’s not as bad as I thought it was. I can start moving forward.”
And then, it does take time to truly correct things but as we get those adrenals repaired, we get them able to produce cortisol more sufficiently so that it can actually counter the negative effects of stress. Then that allows everything else to kind of come into play.
Heather: And sometimes from that, which I know you see too, Wendy. It’s amazing. You can actually focus on the healing the process and remove movement. And if you’re getting the body to heal, it will even sometimes lose weight during that process because it’s letting go. Like that weight is often sometimes this response to the stress of holding on.
And then when it’s not threatened and you’re actually calming the body down , it’s amazing how it’ll actually release that. Well, it’s not the most important thing, the healing is, it’s just amazing how you can see that happen for a client. They’re like, “How is that I’m not even moving and my body just letting go?” It’s because we kind of calm everything down when it realizes it’s not threatened anymore and constantly having to react, react, react, respond, respond.
Wendy: Yeah. I wish I had that happen to me. I have not experienced that. But I have had clients experience that, for sure. Absolutely.
Heather: Yeah.
Damian: Yeah.
Heather: Well, it’s all individual.
Wendy: Yeah, of course.
Damian: It is. And everybody is going to be different. But sometimes, it’s the constant thought of, “I need to lose weight. I need to lose weight.” that’s stressful itself, right?
Heather: Yeah.
Wendy: Yeah.
Damian: So if you’re constantly focusing on the weight that may not be coming off, then that’s maybe part of the reason that the weight is not coming off in the first place. So if you can shift that mindset and start to realize that, “Okay, as I restore my function and just put the weight aside for a minute. As I restore my function, the weight can definitely start to come off.”
Wendy: Yeah. Well, let’s talk about some of the supplements that people can use to help manage stress. We all, like you said, experience stress in so many areas of your life, so we have to control what we can. Some people, they have three kids and they have a stressful job, they can’t leave it, and some things they can’t control. So let’s talk about some of the aspects of someone’s health that they can control to reduce stress. So what are your favorite supplements?
Damian: Probably one of my all time favorites are adrenal glandulars. The adrenal glandular helps kind of provide the adrenal glands with the nutrients that they need real life because it’s part of the nutrients that are contained in the adrenal glands are the nutrients that the adrenal gland needs for nourishment.
So if you’re taking a supplement that has the adrenal gland in it, that can help to nourish those adrenal glands and help them to kind of recharge a little bit better. Is that going to remove your stress? No, not necessarily.
But if they start to respond better, then you’ll be able to deal with your stress better. So that’s my number one.
Another one would be sleep aids. I’m not talking about pharmaceuticals but things like 5-HTP, GABA, phosphatidylserine. Phosphatidylserine is fantastic at helping to kind of regulate your circadian rhythm as well as your cortisol rhythm.
So a lot of people we find one of a couple of things, either their cortisol is super spiked and it’s kind of backwards, where it’s kind of low in the morning and then jacked up at night and they wonder why they can’t sleep.
So phosphatidylserine can help to kind of balance that and reverse that rhythm to where it should be.
Wendy: What brands do you recommend?
Damian: A product I really like a lot is Cortisol Manager by Integrative Therapeutics for that aspect. As far as a lot of other brands, we really like Biotics. They make some fantastic glandulars, which are very difficult to find nowadays.
A lot of companies are staying away from the glandulars for whatever reason , but Biotics is fantastic. Progressive Labs also makes some decent glandulars. Designs for Health makes some good products as well. They make some really
good things for kind of helping to cope with stress.
Heather: Standard Process is also good.
Damian: Standard Process, another good one. Yeah.
Heather: And then just to give you some example for you, Wendy, and your listeners. The other day my husband and I were talking and I said, “Just hypothetically, if there was fire in the house, I know in three seconds what I would take out of this house. On one hand, it would be my wedding ring, our wedding photos, and the two Jack Russell’s would be under my arms.” And he said, “I would open the supplement cabinet…
Wendy: I know it’s so valuable.
Damian: Because you need it because of all the stress.
Wendy: Thousands of dollars have been spent there.
Heather: Yeah.
Damian: Yeah.
Wendy: Go ahead.
Damian: Yeah, we can talk about other supplements too, if you like.
Wendy: Oh, please, yes. Whatever you like, whatever you use in your practice.
Damian: So ashwagandha is another good one. The Cortisol Manager I mentioned earlier has a really good combination of the ashwagandha, which kind of does have that calming effect allowing you to kind of cope with that stress. As well as magnolia is another really good one. Valerian, hops, chamomile, those can all be very calming, passion flower, lemon balm. Some manufacturers will kind of combine these different ingredients into one so you don’t have to sit there and take five or six different pills before bed or if you’re really stressed during the day.
Another one that isn’t really necessarily for the adrenal glands or for stress but can definitely help is Berberine. So we talked about how when your body spits out that cortisol, it kind of affects our blood sugar. And we find that a lot of people do have very irregular blood sugar levels, so spikes and then drops
and so on and so forth.
And that in itself can be very stressful having your blood sugar all over the map, so if we can kind of help to balance the blood sugar, that can just alleviate a form of stress from your body. So Berberine is fantastic at
balancing blood sugar. Research shows that it’s better than metformin for blood sugar regulation, and then it also helps to kind of kill off some pathogenic activity in the intestine, which creates another form of stress.
I don’t recommend you just going out and adding this in without speaking with a qualified practitioner, but lithium is another really good agent or mineral, actually, that can help to kind of calm you as well. So lithium has
really been shown to take you from that constant sympathetic state and start driving you into that parasympathetic state.
So it can actually calm you to kind of open up that window I was talking about earlier to promote healing elsewhere. It is one of those things that it can be toxic at higher doses. Lithium is used as an antidepressant. But in kind of lower doses, the lithium orotate definitely has that calming effect.
Wendy: Yeah, I think in such small doses like 5 or 10 mg and it’s much different than the lithium carbonate that’s like 250 mg used for depression or bipolar. It’s a whole another animal. I have a lot of clients who get freaked out when I say, “Oh you should take lithium,” and they’re like, “Wait a second, what are you doing to me?” But everyone is deficient. Everyone I tested is deficient in that.
Damian: Yeah and that’s the thing, you do want to test for that. So people that a lot of times respond very well to lithium are those that are kind of like their wired entirely, where they’re constantly stressed, they’re over stimulated but they’re exhausted at the same time. So this can definitely help to kind of calm you.
And it actually makes you more exhausted in the beginning because it’s driving you from that sympathetic state into that parasympathetic state, which then you can view as, “Well, I’m getting more tired,” but it’s actually doing its job to kind of just bring it down.
Wendy: I know a lot of people that are like in high drive or type A personalities, they don’t want to calm down. They don’t like being up and stimulated and constantly go, go, go, go, go and I would say I don’t feel that too.
Damian: And that’s why they all come to us.
Wendy: Yeah.
Heather: Know thyself.
Wendy: Yes. But first, you slow things down. A lot of people, they don’t want that but you need to do that, take the time out.
Heather: GABA.
Wendy: Yeah, GABA.
Heather: GABA is a type A girl’s best friend.
Wendy: Yeah, I take that every night.
Heather: Those are really good. And this too, I mean, I know all believe in bioindividualization, meaning sometimes you have to test and try. Everybody has different reactions to different things. I’ve tried different GABAs for many years in terms of blends. The ones that I finally found that, really, I love and I have a good response to is a blend by a company called Vitanica, which is done by – I can’t remember her name but she’s a naturopathic doctor out of the Pacific northwest. It’s a consumer line actually but it’s a really great blend.
I can’t remember the exact name of it but it has GABA and passion and skullcap in it. It’s really good.
She also makes a great product called Fem Rebalance, which I use around that time of the month. It’s got like chaste berry. But again, it’s like a blend.
For me, personally, I find I respond better to blends than individual. But obviously, when you’re dealing with a client, you need to sometimes like we need individuals so they can control and sometimes we need a blend. It just
depends.
Wendy: I love the PheniTropic by Biotics Research. It’s a form of GABA that’s been really effective for me when other forms of GABA have not been. I really love that one. And I take Adrenal Response by INNATE Response brand.
Damian: INNATE.
Wendy: That one’s great too with the adaptogenic herbs like ashwagandha, holy basil, schisandra berry, and things like that, and very helpful to dampen that cortisol release at night, that wakes you up.
Damian: That was fantastic. Yeah.
Wendy: Yeah.
Damian: I also like ADB5 by Biotics, which is a glandular. It’s got some other vitamins and minerals in there to help to kind of bring you down. I think it’s got the L-theanine in it as well, which can be very calming too.
Wendy: And I take glandulars too. I love glandulars as well.
Damian: I know you do.
Wendy: I love glands. So we mentioned a lot of stuff, what would be your top three for anyone trying to calm their stress, calm that fight or flight, wired but tired feeling that a lot of people, a lot of listeners are experiencing?
Damian: Probably the lithium, again, you do want to be careful with it, make sure it’s directed properly. But the lithium, the Cortisol Manager is really good. The one that you mentioned from Biotics, the PheniTropic is fantastic, too.
Yeah, I would say that those are probably my top ones. And there’s something that also contains the ashwagandha. And again, to Heather’s point, we do kind of like the blends, so you’re getting a little bit of everything. Because one thing might work well for one, might not work well for another. But if you take multitude of different things at somewhat lower doses, you might get a better effect.
Wendy: Yeah, of course, you have to try different things, I have clients, some products work amazing for them, and other products, they didn’t feel anything. So you have to try all kinds of different things. So let’s talk about when people are experiencing a stress response, how that affects their liver and their ability to detox?
Damian: So kind of what we were touching on earlier, basically, your non- vitals, like liver detoxification, digestion, and things like that, slow down because at that point the immediate threat is life. So that’s why your vitals are enhanced. When you are in that constant stress mode, your liver is going to have a very difficult time removing the toxins from your body.
And that’s why a lot of times, this liver cleanses that are helping to release these toxins from your tissues could be very dangerous, because if you’re not removing them from your body, because you liver is kind of overwhelmed,
then you could be potentially doing more damage. So you want to make sure that you’re not only working on that phase 1 detoxification but also the phase 2 detoxification.
Wendy: Yeah, that’s one of the ways that stress kills is when you’re stressed out and your liver is kind of shut down on the detox to a degree, the toxin just build up and cause all kinds of health problems…
Damian: And then all of a sudden you have cancer.
Wendy: Yeah.
Damian: Yeah.
Wendy: And so do you advise some people to do lab testing to guide their supplementation or what kind of tests do you like?
Damian: Yeah. We always advise lab testing. We like hair analysis because it gives a pretty good overall picture of minerals. I know you kind of recommend that as well.
Wendy: Yeah.
Damian: The trick is and I’m sure you can attest to this. The trick is in kind of interpreting the results. What I see most practitioners interpret them a little bit incorrectly. They interpret things at face value when you can’t take anything or very little at face value when it comes to the body.
We like urine test for the adrenal glands to get not only the cortisol markers but also kind of how your body’s metabolizing that cortisol. If it’s in its active freeform long enough to be used or if it’s in its active freeform too long where it doesn’t get metabolize very well and kind of like you’re in that constant fight or flight, that’s another fantastic test.
Wendy: Is that the DUTCH?
Damian: That is the DUTCH, yeah.
Wendy: Can you talk a little bit about the difference between the saliva testing, that most people are doing and most doctors are getting, and the DUTCH. Because I know with own experience, I got a cortisol test and “Oh my
god, you’re in stage 3 of adrenal fatigue,” and I thought, “That’s funny, because I’ve been working on my health for like six years and going to bed at 9P.M. like that’s a rip off.” And then I did the DUTCH test and it tests your cortisol levels and then your metabolized cortisol, what’s actually getting into your cells, that’s what counts. And that was totally normal. I did not have adrenal fatigue. And so the saliva test was misleading in that way because it’s like an incomplete picture. I think I answered the question myself. I’m sorry.
Damian: I think you did a little bit. The saliva is going to be a little bit more real-time, so that’s going to show more of the active cortisol that’s going through your body that’s affecting your tissues and so on. It’s going to give you some fantastic information. I used to test the saliva. I kind of steered away from that because I found I got more value out of not only looking at the different four points throughout the day but then also how your body is metabolizing it and utilizing it. It also gives me a good indication of thyroid
function.
So if you’re body is not metabolizing the cortisol that well, I mean that could be a definite indication that you might be a little bit hypothyroidal. So then you’d run thyroid test to kind of confirm that. But at the end of the day, how do you feel is also a good determination.
So we always use testing to see the hard numbers of where you are but we also have a battery of assessment forms that you fill out at the beginning, in the middle, at the end of your program to see how your body is progressing
symptom wise. So if you come to us with a thousand symptoms and they’re all really, really bad and then halfway through your program, you only have a hundred symptoms.
And the actual intensity of the symptom has decreased sufficiently. And then at the end of the program, your symptoms are pretty much gone. Even if your tests are showing that your adrenals still might be producing a little bit too much cortisol, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What’s probably even worse is if your adrenals are not producing any cortisol and you’re really stressed, because then that means that your adrenals are completely burnt out, which kind of what you’re talking about, the stage 3 adrenal fatigue.
So cortisol can be our friend when we are stressed but, at the same time, it can be our enemy too. So we want to kind of combine everything to really deal with that stress and nourish those adrenal glands so they can respond to the stress when needed. So remove the stress and then allow the body to respond to it when needed.
Wendy: Any other test that you guys like to guide supplementation?
Damian: Yeah. We always do stool test to really get a good picture of what’s happening in the intestines. If there’s a bacterial overgrowth or parasite or some type of pathogenic activity, we definitely want to treat that. Because if that goes untreated, that’s just going to create an additional ongoing stress that is just going to not only impact your adrenal glands but also impact your liver because your liver has to process those toxins.
It’s also going to impact your intestinal tract, your mucosal surface, because it’s going to create more erosion of that lining and so on. We like looking at foods that you might be reacting to as well. So if you’re eating a bunch of foods that your immune system is attacking, well, that’s going to create additional stress. So we definitely do food sensitivity testing. It’s what we recommend.
Wendy: That’s very, very important. You can be sensitive to very healthy foods. I’ve never guessed. I did a few sensitivity tests. I was sensitive to blueberries and I was eating them. “Oh my brain, brain food,” and my body
did not like them.
Heather: And you know what, you can never know, right? And so you test, don’t guess. Like I mean, we’re huge proponents of that. Because in our personal journey, it was extremely costly that tests weren’t done. I was on a
tackle box of nutraceuticals. Now, you do need to be on a lot of nutraceuticals or supplements when you’re essentially in a chronic state and you’re really far out of balance.
But making sure that they’re directed is very cost and time efficient, much more cost and time efficient than just kind of – it’s a shotgun strategy versus a rifle strategy. And for us, we prefer the rifle strategy. Let’s take it down , you know what I mean, and get it done versus like let’s just throw a ball, hoping it hits the wall, and see what happens.
Wendy: Yes.
Damian: We’re not huge proponents in over testing either. We have a lot of women that come to us with a battery of tests that they’ve done that don’t really provide a whole heck of a lot of useful information. Part of it is in the
interpretation.
But part of it is that when you looking at blood, a lot of times, it’s not really a good indicator of what’s going on with you at this point in time because blood’s primary role is to kind of keep homeostasis. So it’s going to keep its levels at a steady pace so that by the time that something is off in that blood test, typically, that’s a huge red flag. That means you’re kind of like beyond that stage where you’re definitely in a very, very deficient state.
Wendy: Yeah. I’m in the same mindset. I am not a big fan of blood testing for minerals and nutrients and things like that. I mean some things like the nutrient evals sure. But a lot of standard test the doctors run like the CBC, they’re testing sodium and calcium things, magnesium, zinc. Who cares? We need to look at what the tissue levels are in the body, which is why I love the hair analysis like what you guys do. The blood is not very accurate at least for minerals.
Damian: Yeah, I would agree with that.
Wendy: So anything else you guys want to add to our conversation about stress and supplements? Anything else? If not, just tell the listeners where they can find you.
Heather: Yeah. I think it’s great that you’re doing this because like Damian touched on before, we’re big proponents that human body change starts with food and it begins with food. And food being your actual food itself but also your micronutrients, your supplements, and it such a huge part of being able to correct health issues naturally from medicinal perspective but doing so in a healthful manner with no other risks or issues and just being willing to look at the process of individualization and being open-minded to that.
And that as you begin to physically restore, you can open the door to other areas like, okay, now I can look at mindset and environment and maybe even the spiritual aspects of restoration that we need to look at. But taking it one thing at a time, not trying to take it on at once, because it can feel so overwhelming. But really, you do always want to start with your food.
Food being your actual food and your supplements and they’re truly the biggest drivers of human body change. That was huge in our philosophy because we worked in athletics before and saw that done in nutrition program
design.
And that’s partly why we were so like there has to be a path to do this. And we were kind of getting all these, “No, that’s not possible,” kind of answers in the medical and practitioner community. We really always believe that there was more to healing.
And I’m so glad that you’re creating awareness through this event in that area. When you see it as an athlete, you know that you actually do take a lot of supplements if you want to change the body naturally as an athlete. So it was just natural to us to be like “Well, why wouldn’t I flood the body with nutrients to heal it? If I flood the body with nutrients to be at my best level of performance, isn’t that like a similar goal of greatness? So I need to flood the body with nutrients.”
So I think that’s a little shocking for people at first like be open -minded that supplements are huge in your ability to produce optimal wellness and less is not necessarily better. The more you give, it’s usually more than people expect I think too, initially, in the beginning. I’m sure you find that with your clients. They’re kind of like, “What have I got into?”
Wendy: Yeah.
Heather: Probably take more and then you level off.
Damian: And the other thing too that Heather kind of touched on is that food is the primary driver. So if you’re not willing to change your food, then don’t waste your money on trying to heal yourself.
Wendy: You mean the supplements?
Damian: Yeah. The reason I say this, because I do see some people that they just want that magic pill.
Wendy: Yeah.
Damian: But if you’re continuing to eat garbage, then that magic pill is not going to do a whole heck of a lot because there’s still garbage coming in. So if you’re not willing to change your food, then…
Heather: You got to do both.
Wendy: And that’s the same thing with medications. A lot of people that are diabetic, they’re like they still their diet that got them in the first place and they’re like, “Oh, I can just take my insulin.” It doesn’t work that way.
The insulin stops working. You can’t medicate your way out of a bad diet or supplement. Supplements can help but it’s the same kind of concept. You can’t supplement your way out of a bad diet.
Damian: Supplements are necessary but food is as necessary, if not more.
Wendy: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Heather: Yeah.
Damian: Funny, you mentioned the pharmaceutical. You watch this commercials and that’s what they do. They’ll sit there and say, you have this extremely unhealthy overweight looking people talking about their diabetes and how they’re taking this drug. Yet, on the commercial, they’re eating pastries and cakes and all this sugar filled, chemical-filled stuff. “Well, as long as I have my pill, I’m able to control my…It’s that simple.” It’s not that simple.
Heather: But I think, from the whole topic, I think it’s a great topic to bring to light. Particularly, public to have access to this information because I think there are sometimes people think, I have chronic fatigue or I have thyroid disease or autoimmune disease or whatever form of disease you’re dealing with that’s in a chronic state, we absolutely believe and are completely on the supplement train with you here that like changing your food is great, too.
And just to hit the other side of the coin but changing your food is not enough. It’s also not enough just go Paleo or just like – you need to come at that thing that’s like taking your body out like all guns blazing. And all guns
blazing is food and really powerful supplements and rest and taking as much stress off the table as we can realistically, like you said, when you got to go to work, you got to earn income.
But like bring in, upping your stress management game, doing more visualization, deep breathing, and all those things, like you really have to come at it guns blazing and be consistent and be patient and be diligent, over
time. It’s not kind of one of those things where you can say like, “Well, I can go on all these supplements and when do I get to go off?” And I think we’ve talked about that part, it’s not the way it works. You can get to go down with consistency.
Damian: But some things, you’re going to always need.
Heather: Always beyond them. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a commitment. And it’s a lifestyle commitment to wanting to thrive and be well for your lifetime. That’s what it looks like.
Wendy: I have a lot of clients that said the same thing like, “How long do I need to take these supplements?” Forever, until you’re taking a dirt nap. And it’s unfortunate that our food supply has got us in this situation but that’s the reality today and we have to deal with it. You have to deal with all those supplements.
Heather: Yeah.
Wendy: So why don’t you tell the listeners where they can find you and learn more about you and your program?
Heather: Yeah, absolutely. You can jump onto our website. We’re at e3energyevolved.com. And we have a new website coming out that we’re excited about. It talks kind of how we bring together like the science and the psychology and the spirituality and what we did on all that stuff.
And we just love sharing it and sharing people with education around the opportunity to experience more natural healing and transformational healing and what comes from that. Because so much comes from that as you know
than just healing. A lot of positive change comes from that. When we take control of our health and become empowered in being an advocate for ourselves and really driving that process and really owning it. Yeah. So they
can find us at e3energyevolved.com.
Wendy: Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate you joining us on this monumental summit.
Heather: Thank you so much.
Damian: Yeah, thank you. We appreciate you doing this summit and helping people like this.
Heather: Yeah, absolutely.
Wendy: Everyone, thank you again for listening to this free bonus talk, which is part of the Medicinal Supplements Summit. Stress is truly a killer. This is proven in research. And if you can’t reduce the stress in your life, you have to use every tool at your disposal to reduce stress. And supplements are a great way to cool the stress response.
My name is Wendy Myers. And my hope is that you and your family experience abundant health. And that all begins with taking the right supplements for you.
