Are Your UTIs and Yeast Infections Causing Bigger Problems?
Episode 174
Today on Integrative Wellness Radio, we’ll be talking about the infections in the female reproductive system that can throw off hormones. Dr. Nicole will shed light on two main infections, Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) and Yeast Infection. She will unravel if these infections have been the underlying cause of hormonal imbalances in women. Tune in to the whole episode and find out more about the right testing that suits your body’s needs. Interested in learning more about Dr. Nick & Dr. Nicole’s courses, memberships, or private work? Learn more at Integrative You . Have a quick question, Would you like to schedule a call, or just want to say hi? Text us at 732.913.0009. Our mission to innovate humans & Healthcare does NOT start and stop with us! This is why we are also dedicated to helping other practitioners in evolving healthcare too! If you are a healthcare leader and are looking to up-level your clinical + business excellence Learn more about our course membership: Limitless Healthprenuer and start boldly disrupting this industry! Noteworthy Time Stamps: 02:59 Very rarely a person looks like the textbook 06:13 A big lack of misunderstanding anatomy 13:06 Factors to consider with hormonal imbalances 16:09 Busting hormonal myths 20:42 We need to pay attention to what we eat 26:25 Tampons may cause yeast infections
Topics: infections, hormones, hormonal, yeast, integrative, utis, women, unknown
Key takeaways from this episode
- # Are Your UTIs and Yeast Infections Causing Bigger Problems?
- Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) and yeast infections can significantly impact hormonal balance in women.
- Understanding the anatomy and potential causes is crucial for effective diagnosis and treatment.
- Paying attention to diet and lifestyle choices plays a vital role in managing these conditions.
- Commonly held beliefs about hormonal imbalances are often myths that need to be debunked.
Pull quotes
Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems.
Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey.
Sometimes I tend to lose myself when I'm out here on my own. **Unknown:** Hello.
Transcript
**Unknown:** I been up all night, no sleep. Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems. I been up all night, no sleep. Dive into Integrative Wellness Radio with Dr.
**Unknown:** Nick and Dr. Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey. I feel like I can always feel it. Sometimes I tend to lose myself when I'm out here on my own.
**Unknown:** Hello. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to our second week of our month all about hormones. So as we talk about hormones tonight, we're really going to be uncovering a lot of information that you potentially have not heard before to really help you understand why you may have so many ups and downs with your hormones, and why you're not necessarily getting the answers that you're looking for, but you're also potentially not necessarily having someone connect the dots.
**Unknown:** And that's really, uh, what I specialize in as well as my practice is really looking at the body from an integrative perspective. So today we're talking more about some of the infections that we can actually have that are associated with the reproductive organs that can actually throw off our hormones. And especially I feel like sometimes women can make sense of the idea of having a lot of yeast infections and a lot of bacterial vaginosis, and how that could potentially play a role in their hormones being off, considering that is a reproductive organ. But a lot of women suffer from chronic urinary tract infections and think that that is com- a completely separate entity and that has nothing to do with their thyroid problem or their other hormonal imbalance.
**Unknown:** So tonight we're really gonna connect the dots to help you understand the bigger picture, and I'm not just gonna talk about hormones, I'm also gonna help you understand that maybe your hormones are truly off because of a thyroid problem or because of, you know, reproductive infections. But we're also going to touch on how your neurotransmitters, your brain hormones like serotonin and dopamine, the hormones that make us feel good, can actually play a very significant role in your hormones. And we're also going to talk about just the overall functionality of your gut and your brain, and how they can also play a role in your hormones. So we're gonna cover a lot.
**Unknown:** I'm gonna keep it super simple, I promise you, and be able to, um, allow you guys to walk away really feeling like you understand what might be going on with you, as well as what might be the cause to your hormone problems. So just to kind of set the foundation, some of you I know are listening are new, some of you are not. So for those of you that are new, just to kind of understand the premise of... I don't wanna say integrative medicine, I wanna say our style of integrative medicine is the foundation of our practice was found on always kind of challenging what we were taught and what was...
**Unknown:** what the textbook told us was correct. Because what we found as practitioners is as we got into clinical practice, very rarely did the person, the real-life person, actually match the textbook, and that kind of throws a whole wrench in your treatment protocol as a new doctor. So overall it kept us learning and growing and evolving, and it got us to a place that we, we look at the body in a very different way than we did early on in practice, and we look at it as an integrative- integration of systems, and then all of our protocols to help you heal are integrative as well. And this is why we're able to get better- people better in a short amount of time, which is really, really exciting.
**Unknown:** So for myself, everybody al- always asks, like, what's my specialty? What do I do? And for myself, I call myself an integrative medicine physician, but overall I deal with the mystery cases. I deal with the people that haven't nec- necessarily been able to get answers through their conventional methods or conventional testing, and I work with a, an array of different people.
**Unknown:** I work with kids, I work with autoimmune conditions, I work with hormone conditions, I work with neurological conditions. And the reason why I can work with such an array of people is because it's not about the diagnosis, it's not even really about your symptoms, it's about what is the root, what is the foundation that is causing the snowball of symptoms that you have. Because when we look at the laundry list of symptoms associated with, like, hypothyroidism, fatigue, our temperature is, like, out of balance, we're cold a lot, our hair is thinning, our nails are brittle, a lot of us can relate to that, especially as females, and we put the stamp on of thyroid. But there are so many things that can affect your thyroid, and there are so many things that your thyroid can affect, so we need to look at the bigger picture here and h- understand that anything can cause anything.
**Unknown:** And that's not to overwhelm you, it's just to know that you might be dealing with rheumatoid arthritis, a thyroid condition, and depression, and everyone's thinking that those are separate entities, but actually at the end of the day, they're all connected. So first and foremost, I want you all to know is just the foundation of the mindset and foundation of the way integrative practitioners look at the body. And that really starts with the body is not a bunch of separate systems. So when we work with all these specialists that are, are segregating our systems, and we're working with our heart palpitations with our cardiologist, and we're working on our gut issues with our gastroenterologist, and then we're working on our depression with our psychiatrist or psychologist, everybody is assuming that nothing is interconnected.
**Unknown:** And this brings me to just the, the lack of understanding basic physiology. Our basic physiology tells us that 90 to 95% of your serotonin, your feel-good hormone, is made in your gut. So if you're depressed but you also have irritable bowel, we can't just ignore one or the other, and we can't treat them separately. We need to treat them together in a really, really strategic way.
**Unknown:** And this really goes for some of the things we're talking about tonight when it comes to urinary tract infections and, and vaginal infections. So sometimes I feel like there's a big lack of just understanding anatomy. A lot of infections that we can acquire... Like, let's use a really simple example as the tonsils because the tonsils being in the throat is very, very, very close proximity to the thyroid.
**Unknown:** And your dental, your teeth, and all those fillings and those root canals and all those things in your mouth, that is also very close to your thyroid.So just based off of being in a bad location, you could have certain infections that were in your tonsils that moved into your lymph nodes, then which then started to affect your thyroid. And the same thing goes, urinary tract and vaginal tract are right next to each other. And it is very, very common that I see the same infections in the vaginal tract that I see in the urinary tract and vice versa. So we need to consider all factors because if you're constantly getting, you know, being told you have a yeast infection but it keeps coming back, it might be because you haven't resolved the urinary tract, and that's where it's coming from.
**Unknown:** So I wanna tell you guys a really interesting story, uh, because this was one of my early cases of a woman who came to me talking about her hormones, and she was just like, "My hormones, my hormones, they're so off. I can't get them in balance. I can't lose weight. I feel terrible, you know, I'm constantly freezing.
**Unknown:** My hair's falling out." And she really did have all of the traditional symptoms of having hormonal imbalance and a thyroid condition. So we did her lab work, and it definitely revealed that her hormones were off, but there was more going on that was being missed. And one of our really unique technologies that we have in the office is called bioresonance. The, the bioresonance ha- is able to pick up on the DNA of the body.
**Unknown:** It also has the ability to pick up on foreign DNA. So foreign DNA can come from, uh, yeast, fungus, bacteria, all different types of infections. So with that being said, she was talking about how in the past she had to get surgery to remove polyps out of her uterus, uh, that when they went in, they actually found that she had over thirty polyps in her uterus, and she ended up having to do, you know, a pretty serious surgery, and she ended up having to go back because some of the polyps came back about a year later. So as she was telling me this, this is kind of a red flag, and I was just like, "Okay, there's something obviously that's really, really stressing this area." Um, she did report that she had a lot of yeast infections when she was a teen into her twenties, but she didn't really have much as an adult.
**Unknown:** So when we dug in, what we found out was that one of her biggest problems in her system that was affecting her thyroid, it was also affecting her joints because she also had rheumatoid arthritis, and it was affecting her uterus, was strep. And yes, this is the strep that people get in their throat. Strep is one of those bacterias that is off people's radar because they think it's only associated with a sore throat. I find strep in people's knees, I find strep in people's sinuses, and I find strep in people's uterus, which can sometimes cause endometriosis, and sometimes it can cause polyps.
**Unknown:** So this was a woman that was completely ridden with strep, and you may be thinking, "Well, why couldn't she get rid of it? Like, why wouldn't her immune system get rid of it, or why wouldn't antibiotics get rid of it?" So antibiotics, you know, they can definitely play their role, but if there's an overuse of antibiotics, especially when kids are young with ear infections and sore throats, you can definitely build a resistance, and the strep can build a resistance against the, the antibiotic. There are a lot of organisms that have evolved, and they have evolved past the, the defenses that we use, like antibiotics, and strep is a, a de- definitely a big part of that puzzle. But when it comes to strep, it can move around via the lymph vessels.
**Unknown:** So I don't wanna get overly complicated with the lymph, but when you're sick and all of this hurts in here, that's not just your glands, those are your lymph nodes as well. And lymph is in your breast. You have lymph vessels that run through the body, so you literally have lymph everywhere. So if the strep gets into the lymphatic system, it can move and travel through the vessels and get to other parts of the body.
**Unknown:** And this can be a huge culprit behind thyroid conditions and different types of reproductive issues, let alone the fact that this woman also had a lot of fungus or yeast. So this will be the real kicker for you guys. So most of us have used tampons at some point in our lives, or we still use them, or we've used them most of our lives. So tampons are traditionally cotton, and unfortunately a lot of cotton and even a lot of grains, wheat, things like that, are grown and have mold on them.
**Unknown:** So there are things called mycoestrogens, which I will circle back to, but the point is, is that cotton, depending on how and where it is grown, can be moldy, and then you are putting that into one of the most absorbent parts of your body, your vaginal tract, and then you are pretty much creating fungus that is getting absorbed into the mucus membranes and is going to cause chronic yeast infections. So this is extremely, extremely important for you guys to understand because this happens a lot, and the mycoestrogens is a compounding factor here because myco is for mycotoxins, which is mold and fungus, so there are certain types of mold that can mimic estrogen in the body. So one of the other more common things that I see is that women have very elevated estrogen levels. And yes, that can be for a lot of reasons.
**Unknown:** Birth control is one of them, but another reason is if you have exposure to mycoestrogens through mycotoxins on your tampons, again, mold for those of you that are just hopping on. So you could be having chronic yeast infections just by using tampons. So this is just something, again, to take into consideration, and sometimes it's just about moving into organic tampons, but otherwise you can also utilize different, uh, s- other types of strategies. My personal favorite is the Thinx underwear.
**Unknown:** It's T-H-I-N-X.Um, the Thinx underwear are literally underwear that act as a pad. I know that sounds crazy, but I swear they work amazing. So check them out on their website, you'll love them. Okay, so as we start diving deeper into the hormone piece here.
**Unknown:** So I want you to understand that when it comes to your hormonal imbalances, there are many, many factors to consider. So I just blew your guys' minds with the whole tampon situation. But in addition to that, there is tons of estrogens or, you know, phytoestrogens that we're getting exposed to through our food, which I'm gonna elaborate more on. Then there are tons of different chemicals that are hormone disruptors that are in our personal products, our shampoos, our conditioners, our lotions, our tampons, all that stuff.
**Unknown:** And then we have different things that not a lot of people are talking about, like blood sugar instability and poor circulation that can play a role in your hormones. And I say this because blood sugar and circulation play a very significant role on your brain and your pituitary gland, which is the control center. Stress. Stress suppresses all of your hormones because stress in your body is equivalent to fight or flight.
**Unknown:** Fight or flight is you're in the woods about to fight a tiger or run. So if you're gonna fight that tiger or run, there is something your body is not preoccupied with, and that is having a baby. So all of your hormones get put on the back burner to funnel adrenaline to your stress. The crazy thing is, is that your body doesn't know the difference between stress from getting eaten by a tiger versus an email you got from your boss telling you you suck at your job.
**Unknown:** So as much as our bodies have evolved, there are some pieces that are still very based on our ancestors. Gut issues can play a very significant role on our hormones, and that's primarily because different toxins that come from the infections in our gut will shut down our pituitary function as well. So that can definitely be a big, big part of why we're not getting our hormones to improve. And then what we've already started talking about is infections.
**Unknown:** And this is anything from actual vaginal infections from the yeast infections to bacterial vaginosis or even STDs, but it also can be associated with chronic urinary tract infections as well. So let's dive into these things. So the myths about your hormones is PMS is normal. I think all of us at some point are just like, "Well, this sucks, but I guess it's just normal." And then we get told that food has nothing to do with our hormones.
**Unknown:** Usually our endocrinologist or gynecologists are saying, "No, food has nothing to do with it. There's nothing you could do to change your diet that will help your hormones." And then we also get told that, you know, hormones will mess with our mood, but that's PMS. But there's actually not a physiological connection, which there is, and I'm gonna show you. And then hormones are not impacted by infections in your body.
**Unknown:** And I'm not talking like infections you're aware of. I'm talking about low-grade infections that make you feel super tired and like crap every day that nobody's able to decipher 'cause they're not doing the right testing on you. And the last but not least is hormones are... have nothing to do or not...
**Unknown:** are not impacted by toxicity, which is another lie. So we're gonna talk about all of these now. Okay, so let's bust the myth about PMS here. So number one is PMS is not normal.
**Unknown:** And as much as the population that deals with it, it is not normal. And one of the primary reasons that we get PMS is because we do not have adequate amounts of serotonin. Serotonin is made in the front of your brain, by the way. So this could be you don't have a lot of serotonin because of a head injury.
**Unknown:** You don't have a lot of a, a lot of serotonin because you've depleted it through a bad diet and having really imbalanced blood sugar. In addition to that, you can also have PMS because your body is dealing with a low-grade infection that you are unaware of. So this is one of the more interesting things that I learned over time, is when you are approaching your menstrual cycle, your body is kind of funneling all of its energy to prepare for your menstrual cycle. So what that means is that if your energy was directed towards something else, like dealing with a low-grade infection, maybe it's a low-grade urinary tract infection that you have zero symptoms.
**Unknown:** Maybe it's a low-grade yeast infection that you have zero symptoms. Maybe it's a low-grade strep infection in your tonsils or your sinuses that you don't have any symptoms, or maybe you have mild symptoms. So then your immune system is busy, busy, busy using up all your energy to take care of all of that. And then menstrual cycle comes around and goes, "Hey, no, no, I need the energy now.
**Unknown:** I need you to derail because I need all those energy resources to get ready for the menstrual cycle." So this is the reason why PMS looks different for every female. Some women get migraines, some women get diarrhea, some women get fatigue, some women get irritable. It's not the same across the board. So why does it look different?
**Unknown:** It looks different because what is going on in the background that is not being figured out or not being understood, and a lot of this comes back to immune system stress. And for those of you that are sitting here being like, "Uh, that's not me, that's not possible," I will tell you right now, it is impossible for you to be walking around toxin and infection-free. And I say this because there is so much crap we're being exposed to just by food. There...
**Unknown:** And, and even if you're eating as healthy as possible, you know, for those of you that are listening that are farmers, like you know food comes from the ground, there's bugs on it. There is bacteria on everything we eat. But if you're immune-compromised, that bacteria can cause problems. If your immune system is strong, it doesn't cause problems.
**Unknown:** So it's important to just understand that chances are you are dealing with toxins and infections.And if you can work on those or build your immune system back up, you might actually resolve your PMS altogether. Number two, kind of already started to talk about this, is food and hormones. So food can expose us to a lot of toxins, but there are many things in the food that are disrupting our hormones. And the example that I use all the time, especially with my older clientele that do not get the whole eating organic thing, is I always say to them, I go, "Do you notice how females that are, you know, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve look like they're eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old?" They're developed, they have breasts, they- they're tall, they, they look like women.
**Unknown:** And part of this is the massive amounts of hormones that we are being exposed to. And we definitely-- we're seeing this in boys too. We're seeing boys that have bellies but the skinny arms and legs. We see boys that are developing, like, tissue around their nipples.
**Unknown:** Gynecomastia is what it's called. We're seeing this a lot, and a lot of this has to do with the growth hormone that is being pumped into the animals through industrial farming. Most of the animals are being fed soy, and then in addition to that, we have the molds that grow on some of the crops like peanuts and wheat and rice and cotton, which cottonseed-- I know people don't eat cotton, but cottonseed oil is the most common cheap frying oil when you eat fried food. So all of those foods are grown and usually have some level of mold on them, and some of those molds are mycoestrogens, and they disrupt your hormones by increasing your estrogen levels.
**Unknown:** So one of the most common mycoestrogens is on corn. So not only are we getting mycoestrogens from corn, but they're also genetically modifying the corn. So we're getting a double whammy here. So we really need to start paying attention to the things that we eat because, you know, honestly, I went through a period of time that I was extremely stressed out about food, and I was extremely stressed out about food because when you start learning about all the crap that's in your food, you're just, like, really overwhelmed.
**Unknown:** But one of the things that I took away was that if I can keep my immune system healthy, and if I can keep my body's ability to filter the bad stuff out, if I can keep that working well by keeping my liver healthy, keeping my gut healthy, then that's really the best that I can do because the last thing I want to do is live in a bubble. So I don't want you guys to be overwhelmed by the information. I want you to know that it's not necessarily just about navigating away from these foods, but it's also about making sure your body can actually get rid of this stuff. So one of the really interesting things about our hormones also connected to our mood is we kind of think that, you know, "Oh, I'm, I'm PMSing, so I'm irritable," et cetera.
**Unknown:** But sex hormones actually play a significant role on our neurotransmitters, and neurotransmitters play a significant role on our sex hormones. So one of the fascinating things is that you actually need adequate amounts of estrogen in order to have serotonin be absorbed by the receptors. So you could be taking an SSRI or an antidepressant to really try to amp up your serotonin, but if you don't have adequate amounts of estrogen, then you're not going to be able to actually use any of that serotonin. So it's not always about just putting it into the body.
**Unknown:** It's always about absorption. And this goes for literally anything. This goes for any vitamin, any B vitamin, any vitamin D, any mineral. You have to actually absorb these things.
**Unknown:** If you're peeing bright yellow, you're not absorbing it. So you need to reevaluate, so you're not just wasting hundreds of dollars that are literally going down the toilet, literally because you're urinating them out. So it's really important to know that there is definitely a synergy when it comes to these, uh, neurotransmitters and your sex hormones as well. For those of you that are listening that are men, which I doubt there's many, but you can go and tell your husbands or boyfriends, is that one of the really fascinating things about testosterone is low testosterone is equivalent to having low dopamine levels.
**Unknown:** So dopamine is very much associated with addictive behaviors. So if you have a spouse or a loved one that is struggling with addiction, struggling, you know, with cigarettes or even just struggling to get off soda, then they might actually be dealing with low testosterone levels, and that might be the reason why they cannot kick that, that habit. So there is a huge interconnection when it comes to neurotransmitters and hormones. And another big piece of it too is when you're dealing with low dopamine, like I said, that can kick up your addictive behaviors.
**Unknown:** But as a female, it can actually really lower your progesterone levels, which will throw off your menstrual cycle and could potentially even cause you to not get your menstrual cycle at all. So, so it's, it's definitely extremely intertwined, and it's a matter of being able to know how to deal with these things in a strategic way. Because it's not that you necessarily need to address the neurotransmitters and the hormones, you need to figure out which is the foundational problem. Is it the hor- is it the sex hormones, or is it the brain hormones, or is it an immune system problem?
**Unknown:** So it's taking a, a deeper look at the body and doing the right testing. So I've already kind of talked about this with the hormones and the infections, but just again, when it comes to infections, infections are going to create stress on the immune system, which is going to create a lot of inflammation, and it's gonna completely derail our body focusing on keeping our hormones balanced. But secondary to that, depending on where our infections are located, can contribute to different organs being stressed. So number one is if you have a lot of sinus and throat issues or you had your tonsils removed because you had th- so many throat issues, then you could easily have a thyroid problem that is associated with infections that are in your sinuses, in your mouth, in your gums, including cold sores or in your tonsils.
**Unknown:** So it's almost like one of my patient's husbands, uh, was, was with her when I was talking about her thyroid condition, and I loved what he said. But he said, "You're-- so you're saying her thyroid is in a bad neighborhood?"And I was like, "That's exactly what I'm saying." And I thought that was just a really, really great example of, of having people understand it. So your thyroid might not necessarily need to be addressed, but the surrounding area needs to be addressed to clean up the infections, to get rid of maybe those toxic fillings you have in your teeth, or to help you get rid of your sinus issues, and that could potentially be the reason why your thyroid is off in the first place. Secondary to that is the reproductive organs.
**Unknown:** So as much as we always say the brain is the control center, the pituitary gland that talks to the thyroid and the adrenals and the reproductive, but those organs talk back. The reproductive organs talk back to the brain. So everything is communicating with each other in a very synchronized manner. So if you are constantly dealing with reproductive, um, yeast infections, bacterial vaginosis, different types of urinary tract infections, you could easily have that create a major, major stress on the neurological system as well, which will continue to throw off your hormones.
**Unknown:** So it can work top-down, but it can work bottom-up as well. And I already talked about the role of tampons, but tampons going into the vaginal tract, being one of the most absorbent areas, is one of the leading reasons why women get yeast infections. And it's because cotton, that is not necessarily organic cotton, is typically grown and has been affected by fungus or mold. Mold, fungus, yeast, it's all the same family.
**Unknown:** So that can be a big culprit as to why you are dealing with chronic yeast infections. Another thing too is C-section scars, or really any scars for any type of pelvic surgeries. So when you have a C-section scar, you can easily have an accumulation of scar tissue that starts to create a lot of adhesions in your reproductive organs. This can create scar tissue around your fallopian tubes and cause you to be at risk for something called ectopic pregnancies.
**Unknown:** You can develop scar tissue around your uterus, which is what we call endometriosis. You can develop scar tissue around your ovaries, which could be confused for cysts. So it's very important to also not ignore the fact that you may have had two or three C-sections, and that might be playing a role in your reproductive stress or your hormona- hormonal imbalance as a whole. So really last but not least is toxicity.
**Unknown:** So when it comes to toxicity, there are so, so, so many toxins in our personal products, and I am talking about specific types of toxins that are classified as hormone disruptors. And this is everything from parabens to xenoestrogens, BPA, phthalates, pesticides, dioxin. So for you-- those of you that are like, "I don't know what that is", that's okay. What I would recommend for you to do is get an app called Think Dirty.
**Unknown:** Think Dirty is a free app you can download onto your phone, and you can actually start looking at your personal products and decipher are they super toxic, and do they contain these different chemicals that I have listed here. So these chemicals are known to disrupt our hormones, elevate our estrogen levels, and completely throw off our hormonal access. So it's important for us to not only avoid these, but also to potentially help our bodies detox from what we've already been exposed to. Because unfortunately, a lot of our personal products we're putting on extremely absorbent areas.
**Unknown:** We're putting lotion on our skin. We're massaging shampoos and conditioners into our scalp, like our skin is crazy, crazy absorbent. And I think a lot of people don't understand that, but think about it. Think about bioidentical hormones or hormone replacement.
**Unknown:** Most of them are creams or, or sometimes they're pellets. Like, that's because the skin is that absorbent. So we need to take into consideration, like, what are we putting on our skin? What are we absorbing every day, like from our perfumes and all of these lovely smelling things that we use?
**Unknown:** We could easily be throwing off our hormones by using these things. Okay, so this is a really, really interesting case. So one of my patients, she came to me, uh, a while back, and she had some thyroid issues. She had some pretty significant metabolic issues, and her biggest concern was, "I can't lose weight." She's like, "I have a thyroid condition.
**Unknown:** I've been managing it through Synthroid. I might need, you know, a different medication, or I might need some adjunct supplements, but I know it's my thyroid, that's my only problem, and I need you to help me lose weight." And I said, "Okay. Well, let's, you know, let's talk a little bit more about other things that are going on, and then we'll obviously do our testing and, and figure out the big picture." And, uh, she kinda didn't wanna hear it. She's just like, "It's my thyroid, I know that it is.
**Unknown:** Like, I've been to a million doctors. I just need you to, to help me with my thyroid." And I was like, "Okay. Well, I still am gonna do my testing, and we'll go from there." So as we dug in, we started to talk a little bit more. She was talking about pretty significant mood swings, not necessarily around her menstrual cycle, like she was just having mood swings randomly in the middle of the day.
**Unknown:** She was pretty fatigued, but she was like a, a high achiever. She was still powering through and running on adrenaline as much as she could. She also owned her own company. I think she had a pretty successful company.
**Unknown:** And she said that her memory loss was so bad that she had to have her assistant follow her around all day and write everything down that she said. So in addition to that, she said she had headaches, but she's like, "I've had headaches forever. They're really low grade. I can power through, I can manage." And I was like, "Okay." So we started to talk a little bit about her stress level 'cause I always like to, you know, make sure that I take that into consideration.
**Unknown:** Then she-- you know, I figured she had a str- high stress level. She's an entrepreneur, as am I. I get it. So we started talking about that, and she's like, "Well, my stress is not really from my job.
**Unknown:** My stress is actually because I'm a caretaker for my mom." And I was like, "Oh, I'm sorry." Um, and she's like, "Yeah, she has vascular dementia." And that was a huge red flag for me. So vascular dementia is dementia that sets in because of poor circulation to the brain that doesn't allow for the brain to get proper oxygen. So if your brain does not get oxygen, it cannot properly fire, it cannot produce neurotransmitters, it cannot-- the neuro- neuronal pathways do not work. The, it-- you're pretty much suppressing your brain's ability to function if you don't have proper oxygen.
**Unknown:** So when she said this, I was like, "Okay, memory loss is a huge part of the puzzle when you're talking about vac- vascular dementia."Headaches is another culprit behind vascular dementia. She also was talking about, oh, cold hands and feet. So she was pretty much saying that her, her hands and feet were freezing all the time. So pretty much what happened is her, her timeline.
**Unknown:** She had her tonsils removed at two years old because she had chronic sore throats. So she had a lot of antibiotic use leading up to the tonsils being removed because of her sore throats and the ear infections. The other thing she said to me, which was another red flag, was that when she was a kid, she was always small for her age. And then she said she had cold hands and feet, and she was eventually diagnosed with Raynaud's phenomenon.
**Unknown:** Okay, so let me piece this together for you guys so you understand. So what happens is, is that she primarily was dealing with cold hands and feet. So if you think about it, the heart in your chest, your hands and feet are the farthest from your heart. They're technically extremities.
**Unknown:** But so is your head. Your head is an extremity. So when you think about it, to pump the blood up, it has to go against gravity, which is actually harder to get the, to blood to the head opposed to the hands and feet. So if you have cold hands and feet, chances are you are probably not getting proper circulation to your brain.
**Unknown:** That will be a culprit behind memory loss. It's also a culprit behind the pituitary gland in the brain not getting proper oxygenation, which would cause the pituitary gland to be small, which would cause issues with development as a child. So the point is, is that she had improper circulation to her brain since she was a kid, and because of other components that came to the surface, it started to become more and more problematic later in life. And the reason why the tonsil situation was significant is because she then got her tonsils removed.
**Unknown:** Which your tonsils are a filter to keep things out of your lymph nodes as well as your digestive system. So if the tonsils are gone and that filter is not there, then things like strep or dental infections or gingivalis or whatever it is can get into these lymph nodes and start to cause a lot of issues with circulation to the head. Because if these lymph nodes are clogged, that means somebody put their foot on the hose, and circulation in and out is not working properly. So then when we started talking more, um, we realized that the lymphatic system in her head and neck, based on our testing, was very congested, and it was a big, big part of her circulatory issues.
**Unknown:** And her lab tests revealed she was dealing with something called CCSVI, which is a chronic cerebral venous insufficiency. So what that means is the blood was getting in, but it was having trouble draining out because the congestion in the neck was not allowing the veins to drain properly. So this, in turn, was not giving her pituitary gland the proper oxygenation that it needed, which was the reason why she had imbalanced hormones and also why she had a thyroid condition. So if you think about it, when you get your thyroid tested, what do they test?
**Unknown:** They test TSH, thyroid-stimulating hormone. Thyroid-stimulating hormone comes from your pituitary gland. So we're constantly looking at pituitary function, but if your TSH is off, we're just like, "Oh, no, no, no, it's just your thyroid. It's not the pituitary gland." Which is not quality information because it could easily be that the pituitary gland is part of the dysfunction.
**Unknown:** So the point of all of this and the point of this story is that you don't know what you don't know. There's no way for you to know these things if you haven't done the right testing, if nobody has asked better questions, if nobody has dug deeper into your history. It is impossible to know what got you to the place that you are, and how are you gonna reverse engineer it so you get better. You have to dig deeper and understand that everything is connected and that there are so many variables when it comes to your hormones.
**Unknown:** It's helping you to understand that everything from toxins to the food that you eat, to the personal products that you use, to your neurotransmitters, and all of those things are contributing factors to your hormones and your hormonal balance. So it's very, very important to understand the bigger picture behind this. So I do this because I want people to stop accepting their, their new normal and adapting to this, and just adapt that you're gonna have to live with this terrible PMS for the rest of your life, and just adapt that you're gonna have to rely on a medication for the rest of your life to fix your thyroid. This is not necessarily the reality of it.
**Unknown:** It's really a matter of being able to understand what the root cause is and fix it. Did she end up getting well? She did. She fought me tooth and nail, I'll tell you that, because she didn't really...
**Unknown:** I think it was a scary thing for her because her mom was dealing with the vascular dementia, so you know, when I had to have that hard conversation with her, I think it was really scary and she almost didn't want to entertain the idea because she wanted it to just be her thyroid. But when she finally, you know, let that guard down, she, she-- we worked together, and she did amazing. So, um, and her thyroid condition was resolved without ever actually addressing her thyroid, which is pretty cool. So when it comes to the biggest myth of all is that you have no control over your hormones.
**Unknown:** We're kind of led to believe that things are just gonna dysfunction in our bodies, and that we are just gonna have to deal with it. And really at the end of the day, when you understand the root cause, anything is possible from a healing perspective. And as long as you can figure that out, anything is possible. But if you haven't learned it so farVery rarely does anything look like a textbook.
**Unknown:** Very rarely is it just, "Oh, you have a hypothyroid, and if we keep tweaking your medication, we're just gonna balance your TSH, and all of your problems are gonna go away." Unfortunately, those are the women that I work with. I work with the women that are fed up, and they're like, "I've been on thyroid medication for twenty years, and I feel terrible. I'm still tired. I can't get out of bed.
**Unknown:** I can't sleep. My hair's falling out. I wanna hurt people when I have my period." And they just don't feel better. So those are the women that I end up working with is to help them figure out what is the root cause and give them an actual plan that is usually not textbook because I'm looking beyond that.
**Unknown:** So overall, I just wanna thank you guys for being here. For those of you that have been here, I really hope that you gained a lot from this, and I really hope that you're able to walk away having a better understanding as to why you might have not been able to see success with getting your hormones on track. And this really is such an educational experience, but when you get your own testing done and you figure out exactly what is going on in your body, that's really when this becomes such a breakthrough experience. And it's so empowering because you walk away and you're able to know not necessarily just how to get better in that moment, but you know how to sustain it moving forward.
**Unknown:** And I think that's a really important thing to drive home is that none of our protocols are geared towards let me just make you feel better in the moment. Our protocols are geared towards let's nip this in the bud and be able to get you better in a short amount of time, and let's give you the tools to sustain it because that is my biggest issue with medicine is that nothing creates sustainability. You know, you take a medication, but when you come off that medication, you s- you feel like crap again. So the goal is, for us at least, to create sustainability with the healing process and for you to really know what your body needs from a maintenance perspective.
**Unknown:** You know, I know for myself, I learned that, you know, everybody takes like a multivitamin. They take a multivitamin and a vitamin D and a probiotic, and that's like one of the ways that a lot of us maintain our health. And for me, I used to do that, and then I realized that my most vulnerable system was my lymphatic system, my lymph nodes. And what I needed to do was I needed to sweat.
**Unknown:** So now I make sure I do an infrared sauna anywhere between one to two times a week, and I, I do it that often because I have one. But I do that, and that is my best maintenance opposed to thinking that I just need to take all these vitamins and minerals all the time. So I think that that was like just very eye-opening to me knowing that, okay, the way that I maintain my body is very different than somebody else. So it's really fascinating when you learn these things and you're able to apply it, um, because it really is just, you know, you feel really empowered and you feel really in control.
**Unknown:** So I thank you guys for being here with me. Um, definitely check out our website if you have more questions. If you do have questions and you want to talk to someone at our office, you can set up a strategy call either through the link provided or you could set up a strategy call through our website, and you can talk with our client services team and they will give you a ton more information about how it all works and then we can get you rolling from there. So I thank you guys.
**Unknown:** I hope you join me, um, next week and also into the future months with our, uh, other topics that we're gonna be covering. All right, guys. I will see you next week. Thank you for being here.
**Unknown:** We thank you for being a listener and subscriber to Integrative Wellness Radio. If you're looking to learn more about Integrative Wellness Group as well as Dr. Nick or Dr. Nicole, you can check out integrativewellnessgroup.com.
**Unknown:** All night, no sleep 'cause I feel like I'm always dreaming. Wide awake, that's okay
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
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