August 22, 2024 • 58 mins
Summary
In this episode of the Next Level Human Podcast, Dr. Teta interviews Megan Lyons, a nutrition consultant, about the neuroendocrine-immune system and its impact on overall health. They discuss the effects of stress, exercise, and nutrition on the body, as well as the symptoms and signs of neuroendocrine dysfunction. Megan shares her personal journey of overcoming adrenal hormonal dysfunction and how it led her to focus on real nutrition. They also explore the role of the hypothalamus in regulating the endocrine system and the importance of addressing the root causes of dysfunction. In this conversation, Megan Lyons and Jade Teta discuss the role of testing in functional medicine and the complexity of interpreting test results. They also explore the importance of gut health and the impact of childhood development on the nervous system. They touch on the connection between thoughts, feelings, and the neuroendocrine-immune system and the potential for mind-body practices to improve health outcomes. Megan shares her personal experience with trauma and its impact on her nervous system, highlighting the need for a holistic approach to healing.
Keywords
neuroendocrine-immune system, stress, exercise, nutrition, adrenal hormonal dysfunction, hypothalamus, root causes, functional medicine, testing, gut health, nervous system, childhood development, trauma, neuroendocrine-immune system, mind-body practices
Chapters
00:00- Introduction and Overview
05:41- Personal Journey: Overcoming Adrenal Hormonal Dysfunction
08:28- The Impact of Stress, Exercise, and Nutrition
13:30- The Role of the Hypothalamus in Neuroendocrine Regulation
16:45- Recognizing Symptoms of Neuroendocrine Dysfunction
19:07- Addressing Root Causes for Restoring Balance
24:08- The Complexities of Testing in Functional Medicine
25:56- The Importance of Gut Health in Overall Well-being
33:46- The Connection Between Thoughts, Feelings, and Health
45:28- Taking a Holistic Approach to Healing
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Next Level Human Podcast everyone.
I am your host, dr Jay Tita.
I am here with my new friend,megan Lyons.
I was recently on her show,wellness your Way.
She has a podcast as well thatrecently came out and we wanted
to do a podcast swap because sheis just super amazing and has a
(00:20):
lot to share we're gonna covertoday.
Obviously, megan, you do a lotof things and talk about a lot
of things, but you and I weretalking about the idea that I've
been on a gut sort of kicklately and I do kind of like
when I'm hitting podcasts to geta lot of different people on a
topic to discuss.
(00:41):
I mean, obviously, gutprotocols are everywhere you
look now and I think a lot ofpeople have a lot of questions.
I also know you, like me, arean expert in endocrine function,
hormone function, and there isthis term that maybe you know.
I have a lot of practitionersthat listen to this show, so a
lot of you listeners know thisterm.
But for those of you who arenot listeners or new, this idea
(01:04):
of neuroendocrine immune and wecould even say psycho
neuroendocrine immune and thisidea that our psychology impacts
our nervous system the way wethink impacts the way we feel,
that impacts our hormonal system, that impacts our immune system
and that the gut is a big hubof this.
(01:25):
And so I really want to unpackall of this with you and just
get your take on it.
You know, I want to learn formyself and I just want the
listener to be able to hear youknow sort of how two
practitioners you know sort oflook at this.
And so why don't we start withyou just giving everyone who is
not familiar with you a littlebit of your story, how you got
(01:46):
into this work, your background,all the things, and then we'll
get into this discussion.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Absolutely Well.
Thank you so much for having me.
I am really excited to seewhere this conversation goes
today.
I own a practice called theLion's Share Wellness which is
here in Dallas, although thesedays more clients are not in
Dallas than they are in DallasEven my team of nutritionists
zero of them are in Dallas.
So we're a global nutritionconsulting firm and I got into
(02:17):
this work the winding way, whichI think is actually more common
than not.
I started as a high achiever,which will be important as we go
through my story justeverything competitive against
myself, always trying to do themost, which worked in a lot of
different ways.
I went to Harvard, studiedeconomics there, did well in
(02:38):
school and was happy on theoutside and on the inside too.
I think if you had asked me, amI happy?
I would have said yes.
I didn't really, uh, know howto explore that deeper, and so I
was just kind of going throughthe motions, going, going, going
as part of that journey.
I had never really exercised asa child.
(02:59):
I ate the standard Americandiet.
We didn't know any different.
But I met this cute guy onmove-in day of college, who's
now my husband 20 plus yearslater.
Uh, but he was on the track andcross country team so I thought
, hmm, I should probably get hisattention and learn to run.
So I went out for a run.
I felt amazing.
I really well.
(03:19):
Actually probably the firstcouple of runs I felt terrible,
but very quickly I felt amazing.
I got this runner's high.
I got really pulled into it andso I started running more and
more and more.
I started quote trying to learnabout nutrition, which back in
those days, before I knew whatPubMed was, before access to
social media, even any of thiskind of stuff, I was reading
(03:43):
magazines.
I was reading self and fitnessand shape and who knows what
magazines.
And they were telling me justeat less, eat half a protein bar
for lunch.
I would literally have abalanced bar for lunch and fold
over the wrapper and put it inmy top desk drawer.
That was my lunch half abalanced bar.
And you can probably guess wherethis story goes.
(04:03):
I just too much took this tothe extreme of running and under
fueling and I got into a prettydeep adrenal, hormonal,
everything crash.
So when I was 23, this tookseveral years right, I wasn't 23
in college, but I kept goingfor several years, no-transcript
(04:47):
, and that just started in mesomething that felt like I don't
know the answer.
But this is not the answer forme.
And I'm not totallyanti-medication, I think you
know great.
Have I taken medication?
Of course, will I again, ofcourse, but at that moment the
medication was not the answerfor me.
I knew I could fix it with howI was living my life, how I was
(05:11):
treating my mentality, treatingmyself internally, how I was
feeling all of that so longstory.
But to wrap it up, that got meinto real nutrition, and once
you kind of feel it, it's sohard to not share it.
So I did go back to managementconsulting.
I got my MBA.
I went back to managementconsulting again, but in 2014, I
(05:34):
eventually left and haven'tlooked back since.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, isn't that interesting?
It's a really powerful storyand I think when I talk to a lot
of practitioners who do thiswork, they have similar stories
about confronting sort of healthissues and when they're young
and thinking to themselves,there has to be another way, and
isn't it?
It is kind of interesting,you're right.
On the one hand, it's superprogressive that your doctor ran
(05:58):
your hormones at that time.
And the other sense and I wantto get your, your take the idea
that the fact that she or he didnot know she didn't know that
what the cause was, Because Ithink, for people like you and I
, I would predict if you cameinto me reporting certain
symptoms and I was like okay, soyou're a runner, you're
restricting calories, you'vebeen doing that for years, I
(06:20):
wouldn't even have to runhormones probably neither would
you to know exactly what's goingon.
But, again, traditional doctorsare not trained that way and
that is going back to some time.
But it is really interestingbecause we see this stuff all of
the time.
Well, actually, let me put itthis way, because this will be a
good way for you and I topowwow on this I see this all
(06:44):
the time.
You see this all the time,perhaps because we are
perceptually aware of what'sgoing on.
However, I can tell you asearly as just a couple years ago
, because certainly I wrote myfirst book on this stuff back in
2010, a book called theMetabolic Effect Diet.
I wrote my first book on thisidea that overdoing exercise and
(07:06):
underfeeding for long periodsof time is a stress to the
metabolism, in the same way thatovereating and not moving can
be a stress to the metabolism.
And at that time it was brandnew, perhaps light years ahead
of what most people werethinking Not that I came up with
it, but there were very fewpractitioners who were speaking
this way.
But even two years ago, I had arun-in with a very prominent
(07:32):
health and fitness influencer,phd in biochemistry and
nutrition, telling me this istwo years ago in a very public
debate, telling me this can'thappen, essentially, or that
this doesn't happen, and I wasdumbfounded that even in 2022,
(07:52):
that someone who is this issomeone who's I won't name names
because it's just notappropriate, and I have no
issues with the guy anyway, butit was just really interesting
that this debate occurred himsaying that this can't happen.
Now, one of the things that Ikind of you know, I know that
he's a guy who works with mainlyyoung men right, and that's
(08:14):
mainly his, and he is a youngerguy.
But from my perspective,clinically, this kind of thing
happens often, not all the time,by the way.
I mean, certainly you have somewomen who will do what you're
doing, you know, and do finewith it, but it is fairly
prevalent and I want to just getyour take on that.
(08:37):
How you see this.
Do you think that people arenow aware of this.
Do you still have to do a lotof education on this?
And just walk me through howyou even see what was happening
then.
Now again, I know we're goingto talk a little bit about the
entire psychoneuroendocrineimmune sort of thing and perhaps
focus on the gut, but from myperspective, what we're talking
(09:00):
about here is the neuroendocrinethe nervous system endocrine
piece of this, and I think it'sa nice place to begin the
discussion.
So I'm just wondering how yousee that.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, well, there's so much there.
And I think, to your point onstarting with neuroendocrine, it
wasn't just looking back that,I was just overising, I was for
sure, and I was under-fueling,but also I was under-sleeping, I
was under extreme stressManagement, consulting.
You're working 80 hours a week,traveling 48 weeks a year,
(09:35):
which was fine for many people,to your point.
But when we layer all thisstuff on top of each other, it
didn't work out in my case and Ithink that's part of why we're
seeing it a little morefrequently.
Our allostatic load, which, tothe listeners, is just our
accumulation of stressors,that's getting so high these
(09:56):
days because of the fast pace oflife, because of technology,
because of toxins, because ofall the things.
So our buckets are fuller,quicker, and that leads to this
feeling of burnout that I wasfeeling and that many other
people feel.
So I think it is increasing inprevalence.
And then also to your point, Ithink we you and I and probably
(10:16):
many other similar practitionerswe do attract these people
Because, honestly, if someoneout there has never tried to eat
healthily and has never triedto exercise, it does likely work
for them to do some exerciseand to eat some more vegetables
and to clean up their proteinsand things like that, and so
(10:36):
they don't need us, and I feelvery happy in continuing to
recommend all the things that Iwas doing, just at a much less
extreme scale.
So a lot of this stuff doeswork.
It's just Goldilocks when wetake it too far, it's too much
for our bodies, and our body, inlooking to protect us, starts
(10:57):
shutting down some of thesequote non-essential systems that
feel very essential.
Having lived that experience,it didn't feel good.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah, it's interesting Just yesterday.
I'll just walk you through.
This is a case that I just hadyesterday.
So this is a woman who came inand had gone through a pretty
severe breakup with a man thatshe fell in love with and he was
pretty manipulative to her andshe went through a very
stressful time with familymembers around the same time.
(11:28):
So a lot of stuff happening atonce Loss of a loved one, this
breakup happening, stuff at work, stuff with some legal things
that she was involved in andimmediately got her period and
did not stop bleeding.
Immediately got her period anddid not stop bleeding and had
(11:49):
gone to several differentphysicians and doctors and was
surprised that for me I was likeI know exactly what's going on
here and very similar thing alsoan exerciser, also someone
who's a striver and to me.
We see this often and I thinkit's really interesting that you
(12:09):
say that, because these peopledo tend to find us and I
oftentimes wonder is it thatthey find us and we recognize
them?
Because I do know that theprevalent story is they often go
looking around and I don'tthink their condition or what's
going on with them is recognizedby a lot of practitioners, and
so then, when they sit downacross from people like you and
(12:30):
me, we go.
I know exactly what ishappening here, because we're
not looking at metabolismthrough the lens of this very
narrow calories in, calories out, or this very narrow.
You've got a particulardiagnosis and here's a set of
cookbook recipes to follow ifyou get this diagnosis.
We're looking at it like themetabolism is a stress barometer
(12:53):
, a stress thermostat, and yourthermostat is broken in the same
way or dysfunctional in thesame way that your thermostat on
your home AC unit might be fromrunning the system too hot, in
the same way that an electricalcompany might have to go to
(13:13):
blackouts because too muchstress is being put on the
system.
This is what's happening to alot of people and they often
don't relate to it this way, andso I'm curious now, when you
see this, I mean, obviouslywe've talked about this idea of
a woman who gets her period andcan't stop bleeding, something
like you, where you hit fatigue,you feel incredibly horrible
(13:36):
other things that begin tohappen.
What are some of the othersigns and symptoms?
For listeners who are for thefirst time hearing two
practitioners talk about thisbesides fatigue, besides
menstrual issues, libido issuesFor men, the same thing can
happen.
They can start to get libidoand erection issues.
Women can get libido andmenstrual issues and it hits in
(14:00):
other places.
So what are the other placesthat you see people have
dysfunction here?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah, great question.
And the symptoms kind of likewhen we talk about thyroid or
gut health or whatever.
The symptoms are so wideranging that it is almost
impossible, in my opinion, togive a.
This is the set of symptoms andthat applies to everyone.
For example, in my experience,I lost my period for over 12
months.
This woman that you were seeing, she kept her period for too
(14:30):
long, so it can go either wayand similar with some of the
other symptoms as well.
That fatigue that you'rementioning, though, I like to
think of it as physical,emotional, mental fatigue,
almost like oh, I've lost thedrive to be myself anymore.
So it's not just like, oh, I'mkind of yawning two hours after
(14:53):
lunch, which might just be asimple blood sugar issue.
It's more of a deeply drainedfatigue is what I see in people.
I was actually just talking tosomeone yesterday experiencing
similar issues, very similar toyou, seeing someone yesterday,
and she was saying I just feellike my eyelids are closing in
(15:13):
the morning and I'm trying toopen them.
She has kids, she wants to bethere and wants to be energized
and she just can't.
So it's that really deepfatigue.
But what else do we see afterthat?
I think, going down your pathof neuro and all of the
endocrine things that follow, wecan see certainly thyroid-like
(15:33):
symptoms like hair thinning,eyebrow thinning.
We can see temperatureirregularity.
We can certainly see weightissues.
Some people with adrenaldysfunction tend to hold on to
weight.
I find that more common.
Some people actually tend tolose weight.
If it is leading them to not beable to weight, I find that
more common.
Some people actually tend tolose weight if it is leading
them to not be able to eatregularly or have appetite
(15:58):
changes.
Certainly sleep irregularities,I find even though people are
fatigued during the day, they dotend towards that racing mind
insomnia at night.
Their circadian rhythms arejust totally messed up.
Sugar cravings almost always Isee people with sugar cravings
when they have some kind ofadrenal dysregulation and that's
(16:19):
your body's last ditch effortto be like, hey, I need
something to keep me going.
And again, sugar works.
Does it give you energy if youeat a whole pack of jelly beans?
Of course it does for 10minutes or 30 minutes.
It just doesn't work over thelong term.
So those are some of the morecommon ones I see, but I'm
curious to see what you wouldadd on of the stress thermostat
(16:40):
of, just for the listener.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I know you know this, megan, and then just correct me
if I'm wrong, if you think I'mwrong on anything or want to add
anything here.
The way I see it is that thisarea, the reason why these
symptoms can be so varied, isbecause really the major site of
(17:01):
, let's say, dysfunction ordistress is the hypothalamus and
the pituitary, which isbasically the command and
control center of the metabolism.
It's kind of that.
It acts as the stress barometer, it measures stress and then it
acts as the stress thermostat.
It basically sends out signalsto the thyroid, the gonads,
(17:22):
ovaries, testicles and theadrenal glands, which then are
the major endocrine organs.
Of course it does more signalsthan that, but these are the
major ones, and so you can seedysfunction across each of those
areas.
So this is why you can seemenstrual issues, libido issues,
you can see fatigue issues,which you know, where the
(17:42):
adrenals and the thyroid getinvolved.
You can see high blood pressureand low blood pressure.
You can see a lot of this yinand yang that you alluded to.
You have either hyperfunctioning or hypo functioning,
and one of the things that this, by the way, is sort of a cheat
sheet for you listeners.
But it's not always the case.
(18:02):
But in general I see two typesof people, sort of the puffy,
heavier type of stressdysfunction.
These are the people who leanmore hypothyroid.
They lean more tired in thebrain and tired in the body.
And then you kind of have thismore thinner sort of phenotype
which seems to maybe hit theadrenals a little bit more in my
(18:25):
mind, where you get sort ofthis more thin appetite, wired
in the brain, tired in the body,maybe a little bit more storage
of fat around the middle, and Isee these again as the same
dysfunction one being ahypo-functioning, you know sort
of way that the body tries toadjust, and one's being more of
a hyper-functioning way that thebody tries to adjust, and then
(18:48):
that gets down into the gut,which I know is a big piece of
your expertise, which then thegut actually is one of my
favorite places to look at signsand symptoms, because it also
will illustrate this sort ofbalance between the
parasympathetic and sympatheticnervous system sort of the rest
digest nervous system and thestimulating you know uh,
(19:12):
struggle and striving uh nervoussystem.
And so you can see uh thingsfrom constipation for some
people, the more puffy, heaviertypes tend towards more
constipation.
You got the people who are moreloose stools, diarrhea.
You got a lot of people who arereally going back and forth,
things like IBS, lots of IBS,lots of GERD, heartburn, all of
(19:35):
these kinds of things.
I like to see the gut as one ofthe places where I kind of see
it as one of the most sensitiveareas to judge some of my
function.
Of course, nowadays we havetech, you know, so we can use
tech to see things like heartrate variability, heart rate
levels at night, how fast theheart rate gets to its minimum,
(19:55):
things like whoop, and you know,things like Apple watches and
things like our rings and andthose kinds of things.
But in general that's kind ofhow I see it.
I do kind of see this idea ofsort of a hypo functioning
phenotypical type and ahyper-functioning phenotypical
type, but I'm wondering how yousee that as well.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Totally agree.
In explaining this to clientsI'll use slow for the one that
you described as the more puffyindividual.
That's slow metabolism, it'sslow brain, it's slow hair
growth, it's slow digestion orconstipation.
Everything is slow in thathypofunctioning individual.
(20:40):
And then hyper is fast racingheartbeat, night sweats, anxiety
, fast thinking, fast digestionor diarrhea Everything's fast in
that case.
And one other thing that youmentioned I definitely agree
that it goes back to thehypothalamus and I don't think
we as a collective society payenough attention to the
hypothalamus, in part becauseit's harder to measure
(21:03):
hypothalamic function.
So we always say HPA axis.
I always say HPA axis,hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal
axis, but I don't really payattention to the H as much as to
the P and to the A, becauseadrenals we can measure to some
extent, although even though Irun the diurnal saliva cortisol
four times during the day,sometimes I still don't even
(21:25):
find the answers that I know arethere in that Pituitary can we
measure growth hormone and TSHand ACTH and whatever?
Yes, it's just harder in myexperience to measure anything
from the hypothalamus.
But I think you're right,that's the control system and I
think we as practitioners myselfincluded are missing a lot of
(21:45):
that.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Yeah, you know what's interesting about that.
I love that you say that,because I agree Hypothalamus
pituitary adrenal, hypothalamuspituitary thyroid, hypothalamus
pituitary gonadal but what wealso know nowadays that we now
see like let's take the thyroid,for example, one of the reasons
.
If you're a listener listeningto this and you're like, well, I
have some of these symptoms, Ithought I had hypothyroid.
(22:06):
I went and checked it and mythyroid seems to be quote fine.
But then you're hearing someonelike Megan say I know it's
there, even though you're not.
Because one of the things we'reseeing in the research is that
each cell, so the body,regulates thyroid function, but
it also regulates thyroid usageand it does this at the level of
the cell.
So each cell actually isregulating the amount of thyroid
(22:30):
that it wants to take in or not.
And a stressed out cell, a cellthat is dysfunctional, will
oftentimes decrease its thyroidhormone intake and slow itself
down, almost going into a cocoontype state or a sort of
hibernation state to protectitself.
And that's why we have to runfull thyroid panels.
(22:53):
That's why some of us getthings like reverse T3 and other
markers that tell us if thissort of cellular hypothyroidism
is going on.
But it is notoriously difficult,because what we are doing is
we're making a best guess and wewill tend to focus on the big
three oh this is the ovaries ortesticles, oh this is coming
from the adrenal or oh this iscoming from the thyroid when
(23:16):
oftentimes the major site ofthis shared dysfunction is the
hypothalamus.
And then we also forget thateach cell and tissue and this is
something that has been, youknow, sort of worked out over
the last decade or so you knowthat each cell and tissue is
regulating its own hormonaluptake and input and output as
(23:37):
well.
So there's this constant backand forth which makes our job
even more difficult.
So one of the things that Ihave found ironically is, I used
to be a guy who just runs testafter test after test after test
.
Ironically is, I used to be aguy who just runs test after
test after test after test, andit really is funny how much I
(23:59):
rely on my clinical symptomrecognition for a lot of this
now, and I'm just curious howyou see that.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Oh, I'm so torn on this because I am a data person,
like I said.
I don't know if I said, but Istudied economics in college.
I love data, I love numbers, Ilove math.
I would love it if it werepossible to run a test and
literally have a blueprint ofeverything we can do in a body,
(24:22):
and that's why the appeal or theidea of these tests is so
alluring to me.
I want it to be that simple,but it's not.
Even when we do get tests, likein your example, oh, my doctor
says my thyroid is fine.
Well, they just ran TSH and Ithink it's impossible to draw
conclusions just from that TSH.
(24:43):
So even when we do have thenumbers, it's a complex
algorithm that we aspractitioners are running in our
head of okay, this is here,this is here, symptoms are here,
history is here, poof, we putit all together and that's where
we come up with the solution,oftentimes.
So I don't know, is the answer?
Do I run tests on my clients?
(25:05):
Yes, I do.
Do I have some people come inwho say it's either cost
prohibitive or I've been testedout the wazoo and I don't want
to do that, or I just have nodesire Absolutely.
And can I still work with themAbsolutely?
It really, I think, justdepends on the person.
I would say 90% we can do itbased on gut instinct.
(25:28):
And then sometimes there aresome cases like gut testing,
since we keep touching on that.
Most of the time it's simple tofix the gut and we can kind of
tell, based on what's cominginto the gut and how we're
treating our body, what to do.
But sometimes I just get stuck.
I'm like I don't know, I coulduse some more information.
So I do think testing isvaluable there.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.
And the way a hundred percenttesting is valuable.
I just I oftentimes amfrustrated and certain tests are
are better than others.
I do think there are certaintests you can run, you know,
that can essentially pointdirectly.
Obviously, you know we have.
You know, someone comes in andyou run a test and you say, oh,
they have an infection with thisthing, we can give this
(26:10):
antibiotic.
Obviously, medicine works thatway and that's why conventional
medicine, traditional medicine,is so amazing with certain
treatments.
But in this world of, I wouldsay, functional medicine, it can
be tricky and the analogy Iwould use is imagine we have I
don't know a million, althoughit's probably a billion or a
trillion.
You got a million differentbiomarkers, let's say, and
(26:31):
different chemicals floatingaround the body and we measure a
hundred of them.
It's not even you know a drop,you know in in the ocean.
So that's why it can be sodifficult.
But there are big ones that canthat we know can make a big
difference.
For example, you know, from myperspective, if you have
something like the thyroid glandor the gut especially, these
(26:52):
are what I might call sentineltissues, meaning that they're
the ones who get hit first, likethe sentinel guard in the
castle.
If the castle gets attacked,the sentinel guards are the
first ones to get hit.
The gut, the thyroid, some ofthese things act as like
sentinel tissues, where they arethe ones that get hit first,
and so we oftentimes will lookto them.
(27:13):
They also tend to oftentimesget better first, before the
other things you know sort ofget better, and so I do think
that they're incredibly usefuland not to not do them.
But I also think that a lot ofpeople are frustrated, including
practitioners, because theydon't always point us to what we
(27:34):
need to do.
Although and this is where wecan kind of get into sort of the
stuff around the gut and thenervous system and putting this
whole thing together because Ido think that in our style of
medicine or our style of healthcare, there are big global
things that we can do that helpsupport the body's healing in
(27:54):
general, like one of the thingsthat you know, before I went to
naturopathic school, I was on myway to East Carolina University
Medical School and I rememberfirst looking at the curriculum
and going, okay, there's nonutrition, there's no exercise
and there's no psychology inthis, and also the philosophy
was drugs and surgery andnothing wrong with that.
You know cause those things arenecessary and I'm not anti any
(28:15):
of that.
I just didn't want to do thatmedicine.
One of the first things Ilearned at naturopathic medical
school is the body has healing,natural healing capability.
They call this vice medicatrinaturae, which basically means
you know nature has healingcapacity, and we all know this.
By the way, if you twist yourankle, all you got to do is
usually, if you stay off of it,it's going to get better.
If you cut your finger, youjust keep it clean and it's
(28:38):
usually going to get better.
And I like this idea withclients because from my
perspective, what we can do,usually there are things that we
can do that if we give the bodythe right environment, it
oftentimes can heal itself.
So this is like things like getpeople moving, get people
eating a whole foods, nutrient,rich, calorie.
(28:58):
You know less calorie dietusually is going to be, you know
, healing for a lot of people.
But when we're talking aboutsome of what you and I do, this
is the part of the discussion Iwant to have with you of what
you and I do.
This is the part of thediscussion I want to have with
you these things.
Often, for these people righthere, you are running like crazy
, doing all the things.
Yes, you're sort of nutrientdepleting, but it's not what we
(29:19):
typically think about.
It's not the, the sick couchpotato who's, you know,
essentially ill because they'reover consuming or, you know,
living a poor, poor diet.
It's something else.
And this brings me to this ideaof nervous system regulation
and what gets us stuck in thisand how we can begin to regulate
(29:41):
the nervous system sort of in adifferent way, which brings me
to many things in my head.
But I'm wondering what are thethings that you look at, you
know, besides just diet andexercise, if anything, that you
do to begin to work on thisglobally, to create the
atmosphere, the environment forthe body to heal itself?
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yes, Well, I love what you just said so much and I
want to add on.
There is an analogy that I usewith my clients that I think for
people in my age tends toreally resonate.
We'll see if it works for youand your listeners.
Jay, do you remember a toycalled the Etch-A-Sketch?
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yes, of course, yeah, Of course yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
So this is not a Natcha sketch.
I do not hang on to it.
This is more of a tablet.
But a Natcha sketch looks likea tablet and, for those who
aren't familiar with the idea,kids would have this little pen,
it would mark on the tablet andthen you have this slider at
the bottom that would erase themarkings that the kid put on.
And so it works great, it'ssuper fun, keeps the kids
(30:46):
entertained.
That the kid put on, and so itworks.
Great, it's super fun, keepsthe kids entertained.
But if the kid just goes crazyfor a little bit and smacks the
pen all over and gets so muchquote ink which is actually just
a magnetic response, whatever,but really goes crazy on the
Etch-A-Sketch, then that slidergets stuck and doesn't work
anymore.
And this is exactly whathappens in our gut.
Our gut has a magic slider.
(31:07):
It is willing to clear and healand do all of this stuff.
If we happen to eat a littlebit of glyphosate one time or
something like that, it is sohappy to clear that up.
But if we are pelting itconstantly, day after day, with
things that are irritating forit, we're like that kid with a
(31:27):
really overzealous marker on hisEtch-A-Sketch and then our
slider just gets stuck and can'tclear and needs a little help.
So I almost oversimplify itintentionally for my clients.
I have this handout that hasall the inflammatory foods on
one side and all theanti-inflammatory foods and
practices, stress relief,meditation, all of that kind of
(31:50):
stuff on the other side, and youand I know that it's not quite
that simple.
We can't actually puteverything into two columns, but
sometimes seeing that forpeople really helps.
Oh, okay, ultra-processed foodand alcohol and added sugar and
stress.
I just have to lay off theetch-a-sketch with those things
for a little while and increasesome of this healing stuff, some
(32:12):
really good quality water,sleeping at an optimal time,
optimal protein, greatvegetables and fruits, all of
that kind of stuff.
We just have to shift thatbalance a little bit.
So I do think, even though it'soversimplified, it can be
helpful to think about.
There's not one magic thing.
We're just pelting our gut withso much over time.
(32:33):
And that leads into yourquestion about the nervous
system.
I like to simplify things.
You'll get this point.
But I ask clients if I had amagic button and I could give
you one free day tomorrow whereyou can't be productive, you
can't play with the kids, eventhough you love them.
You can't do the laundry, youcan't work, you can't do
(32:54):
anything quote productive.
You just get to do something.
You could fly to a beach inBali and have someone feed you
fresh fish all day, or you couldgo to a Beyonce concert, or you
could do whatever.
What would you do?
And they look at me like I havethree heads, but then
eventually they spit out someanswer.
That to me, is a really big keyto what they're missing.
(33:17):
So if they did say I want to goto a Beyonce concert, well
great, maybe they're missingsome more stimulation being
around people.
Maybe that's what they need toheal.
Or if they said a beach in Bali, maybe they need some downtime,
they need some alone time, theyneed to turn their brain off.
But almost always our gutinstinct there helps us develop
(33:37):
a plan for nervous systemregulation.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
I love that so much and actually let's go into an
area that perhaps is maybe alittle bit different.
It's an area that I've beenfocused on a lot and I want to
see if you have any thoughts onthis, and if you don't, it's
also fine.
But have you done anything withyour clients around the idea of
childhood development,adolescent development, young
(34:01):
adult development and the ideaof a stuck nervous system?
So let me just frame this forMegan I see her nodding her head
but for you listeners, one ofthe things that and it looks
like Megan has a lot to say onthis.
So this will be good for all ofus, because I love to learn how
different practitioners areseeing this stuff.
But one of the things that Ihave, over the last, I would say
(34:22):
, 15 years or so, just becomeacutely aware of is that
individuals and it doesn't haveto be childhood development,
adolescent development, youngadult development we certainly
have these difficult trials,tribulations, sometimes capital
T traumas, although I think thatgets overused an awful lot Like
this idea of trauma.
(34:43):
It has to be sexual abuse orphysical abuse or world war,
being in a war or something.
From my perspective, when ournervous system encounters
anything that is difficult atthe time when we don't have the
knowledge, the experience, theknow-how, anything like that.
We just don't have the way ofmanaging and thinking about this
(35:04):
.
Our nervous system can't copewith it.
It ends up being too much of astress on the system.
And what I've been surprised atthe last 15 years or so is that
how the research shows that,going all the way back to our
childhood, we've had things likein the research they call it
ACEs or adverse childhood events, and things like that.
That our nervous system, if youimagine for the listener, if
(35:26):
you imagine a dimmer switch, youknow obviously you can dim that
switch up and down.
Now imagine taking the dimmeraway and that now your light
switch is either stuck in the onposition the lights won't go
off or it's stuck in the offposition the lights won't go on.
That it seems that our nervoussystem can act very much like a
light switch and when we havethese difficult events it can
(35:50):
cause a dysfunction in thenervous system such that the
nervous system either hyperresponds to things or hypo
responds to things.
Ptsd is an example of this, foradults, right, and we think
about PTSD with war.
But let's take it like this you.
You walk in and you know, findyour lover with another person.
(36:10):
That's like a PTSD situation.
You go into work and you loseyour job and you're out of a job
.
That can be a PTSD situation.
So I'm wondering, in yourexperience working with clients,
how much of this stuff have youseen be the beginnings, like
you talked about going tocollege, very stressful time and
(36:32):
adding on all this other stuffhow often do you see this being
the origin story of manypeople's illnesses?
Is it 5%, 10% estimate?
I mean, I'm just curious howyou see these things.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah Well, that's a great question.
I'll try to come up with anumber, but it's definitely
higher than 5% to 10%.
I think it's very frequent.
I don't always share this partof my story, but I'm happy to in
this case because I think itreally illustrates what you're
saying.
Right before I went to collegeand started this running and all
(37:05):
of this kind of stuff, in veryrapid succession I lost a close
family member to suicide.
I had two of my grandmothers,maternal and paternal, both pass
away from ALS, which is, ifanyone knows, that condition.
It's a brutal condition and Ireally I did not realize the
impact that that had on me, butI know.
(37:28):
Right then my nervous systemwas trained Because, if you
layer on top of that, my parentsvery well-meaning, they praised
me for achievement and, again,very well-meaning, they knew
that they were making me happy.
They knew that I was a greatachiever making me happy.
They knew that I was a greatachiever.
(37:49):
But when I saw my familycrumbling and I felt crumbling
inside and the only praise I wasgetting was for achievement,
that taught my nervous systemfire, fire, fire, fire.
Go Stuck in.
That sympathetic mode is safe,even though sympathetic fight or
flight that feels unsafe.
Right, that is an alarm signalto our body.
But my body, I strongly believe,got stuck in that phase, in
(38:14):
that nervous system firingpattern, and it was very hard to
unwind.
And I still need to get to bevery conscious of that's my
wiring.
And if I don't treat myselfvery well look, we all have
stressful days and we all havedays where we don't eat
perfectly and all this that'snot what I'm saying, but over
(38:35):
periods of time, if I don'ttreat myself well, I can slip
back into that in an absoluteinstant.
So I know that for me that's abig part of what happened and I
would say my guess, since Ipromised you a number, I would
say 40 to 50% of people havesomething maybe not similar to
(38:55):
my story, but something wherethey experienced these little T
traumas and their nervous systemdid get stuck.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yeah, that's so interesting.
Yeah, I don't know that I wouldventure a guess either, but
it's a lot, it's a lot of.
Yeah, I don't know that I wouldventure a guess either, but
it's a lot, it's a lot of people.
And the way I see this, justfor the listener too, is like to
me I see it as like thesympathetic system.
You have stress and if it'sshort lived then you can rise to
(39:23):
it.
It goes from stress to strength.
You know, you get resilienceright, so stressing it of itself
as long as we can cope with it.
But as stress continues, wezillions right.
So stress in and of itself aslong as we can cope with it, but
as stress continues we get, wemove into striving mode and as
it continues we go into strugglemode and if it continues even
longer and or it's a veryextreme stress, we go into shock
mode.
And, yes, we oftentimes can getstuck in those.
And so when I see clients andpatients coming to me and I see
them as go, go, go over exercisetypes, you know, obsessive
(39:47):
about food and all the things, Ido wonder oftentimes.
And then they're complaining ofhealth complaints.
I often kind of go okay, thismight be someone who's stuck in
striving or struggle mode andthey don't realize it, because
our culture celebrates strivingmode at least like when, you
know, people stuck in strivingmode mode tend to view
themselves and culture tends toview them as productive, and it
(40:11):
can have health consequences.
And a lot of people don'trealize that Someone who
overexercises and is not sickfrom it oftentimes doesn't see
that as why they might haveanxiety or depression or other
things, that it's part of thecoping mechanism of the nervous
system stuckness.
And so I do think this isanother big piece of this.
(40:33):
If we're going to talk aboutneuroendocrine you know immune
dysfunction, we want to go okay,what all you know causes issues
with the nervous system.
And then, a final place I wantto go with this discussion is
let's go even one step back,right.
So we talked a little bit about, you know, the signs and
symptoms, the immune stuff.
We talked a little bit aboutthe endocrine hormone system,
(40:53):
the hypothalamus, adrenal,thyroid, gonadal axes.
We talked a little now aboutthe nervous system.
Let's go back just one morestep and talk about, like, the
idea of psycho, neuro, endocrineimmune, this whole idea of the
psychology behind.
You know, you mentioned in yourstory, you know, some of these
uh difficult events.
(41:15):
You know, and here's theinteresting thing, will we call
them uh traumatic?
You know, certainly for somepeople we would call those
traumatic.
There's certainly some of themost difficult things any human
can deal with a suicide, loss ofloved ones, going through a
hard illness, but even thingslike you know.
I have a story when I was a kidthat many people will laugh at,
but was in hindsight.
(41:36):
I look at it like OK, this wasperhaps a form of trial,
tribulation, maybe even traumafor my nervous system, where I
got left at the baseball parkfor about two hours and was
sitting there in the dark when Iwas six or seven years old.
A very simple thing.
My parents came and got me.
We know what happened.
They probably got home oh myGod, where's Jade?
I thought you were getting them.
No, I thought you were gettingthem.
Then they come and get me.
(41:56):
But that fear of sitting therealone at a time where we don't
have cell phones and I was justalone at the baseball park and
didn't have that also was asituation that caused me and I
see now, being the youngest offour, things like that would
happen.
I have a difficult time trusting.
I'm very independent.
(42:19):
As a result of it, I don't leta lot of people help me.
I'm not a good receiver, I'm anamazing giver, but I'm not a
good receiver.
I'm not a good receiver.
I'm an amazing giver, but I'mnot a good receiver.
Lots of this psychology sort ofgoes into the way that I sort
of live my life outwardly, butit also permeates my nervous
system, which then permeates myendocrine system, which
permeates my immune system, andI do think this is not an area
(42:42):
that anyone is really talkingabout in medicine.
How exactly are our thoughtsand feelings relating to our
nervous system holding pattern,our hormonal function and our
immune-related way that ourimmune system relates and is
able to keep us healthy?
Speaker 2 (43:01):
I think it is such a fascinating field and if you
just catch me reading aboutsomething or something like that
, it's probably in this area.
I am so fascinated and soexcited to see what we learn in
the next decade two decadesabout this, because I think it's
so powerful.
(43:21):
And right now, on the one side,we have some of these more
woo-woo but, frankly I think,very interesting studies where
they'll take plants and they'lljust speak negative words to the
plants and the plants wither orsomething like that, and some
people look at that and they'relike, well, that's ridiculous.
And then we have another sidewhich we're starting to actually
see.
(43:41):
Okay, physiologically, peopleare now hearing the vagus nerve
connects the brain and the gutand just as many messages go up
from the gut to the brain as dogo down and that's where all our
neurotransmitters are generatedand all of this.
So people can attach to thephysiology and see, oh, wow,
there is this really bigconnection.
(44:03):
But then when we make this bigjump to our thoughts impact our
hormones, our thoughts impactour everything else, it feels
like a big leap for a lot ofpeople and I understand that.
But I know there's a lot therebased on my experience, based on
the research that's emergingand based on the experience that
I've seen in so many otherpeople.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Yeah, yeah, I'm with you on this.
I don't, you know, it's it's ahard thing.
Uh, we're starting to see somereally interesting research.
I don't know if you know, uh,any of you who are familiar with
the work of Joe Dispenza, whichhe's a pretty controversial
figure for many people, uh, buthe they actually his group, uh
really did.
He works out of UC San Diegoand they just had a really
(44:47):
interesting study that theyreleased showing meditation,
putting people in.
You know, I've been to some ofhis events, so the best way to
describe it is, you know, sortof heartfelt meditation, sort of
in the HeartMath Institute kindof way of thinking about this.
It's sort of a very different.
It's not just mindfulnessmeditation, it's a little bit
more than that.
But they actually showedseveral immune markers, one of
(45:10):
these immune markers Serpent 5,being actually upregulated to a
significant degree in thesemeditators versus controls.
The reason it got a lot ofpress and got a lot of people's
attention is because it isrelated to viral immunity and
decreasing viruses being able tobind and infect cells, and what
(45:33):
they showed in this particularstudy that he did is that
Serpent 5 is upregulated inthese individuals.
They also had less incidencesof COVID, because a lot of this
research is being done duringthe time of COVID and when they
did get COVID, they got over itfaster.
Of course, we all know thatCOVID is just sort of it's all
(45:53):
on our minds, so it'sinteresting to talk about.
But this would be viruses ingeneral and we are seeing some
very good, well done research Inaddition to much of the
research in the past.
Like Candace Pert and otherswho've been doing this work for
a while, we know that this stuffis going on, but it's getting
to the point where we're gettinga pretty good evidence base.
So I agree with you, it'sexciting.
But it is also a place where wecan quickly diverge into the
(46:16):
woo-woo, which doesn't mean, bythe way.
Sometimes the woo-woo isincredibly powerful and real.
We just have to be careful.
I think we call it woo-woobecause it's more like just
saying when I use that term, Imore just go.
Let's be careful here, becausewe don't necessarily know.
So we can speculate, but let'snot make things up, and so, yeah
, I'm with you, it's fascinating, and I'm wondering if you have
any other things to add on thatparticular element of this,
(46:39):
because I do think it'simportant.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Well, I have two things to add.
Number one thank you forcalling me out on saying woo-woo
.
I will say woo-woo to me meansI just don't understand that yet
.
For example, I go to theacupuncturist every month and I
so strongly believe in what shedoes.
She knows my body very well.
(47:00):
I have zero idea where to put aneedle in someone's body.
I am not educated inacupuncture.
Trust me, you don't want me todo acupuncture on you.
I don't understand how thatworks.
And in fact I've said to hermultiple times once I finish
this next doctorate, maybe downthe road, I'll just go to school
in acupuncture because I'm socurious.
(47:21):
So is that woo-woo to me?
Yes, casually I would say that,but that doesn't mean I don't
believe in it.
It just means I don'tunderstand it yet and we can't,
as humans, understand everysingle thing.
So that's okay.
There is fake science out there, which obviously I don't
promote, and there are peoplemaking things up, but woo-woo to
(47:42):
me is still in the realm ofgreat things.
And then on Dr Joe Dispenza, Iactually just saw him speak live
a little while ago.
I haven't seen the study thatyou're referencing, but I
thought, because ALS is alwayson my mind first thing I'll do
if another one of my familymembers is diagnosed with ALS,
(48:03):
I'm going to send them over andget them into one of those
sessions.
Is diagnosed with ALS, I'mgoing to send them over and get
them into one of those sessionsbecause the stories that he
shared anecdotally so anecdote,not science yet, but anecdotally
were fantastic.
So I do believe that there's alot there.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
Yeah, I could tell you, one of the reasons I have
made a pretty hard right turninto this area about 10 years
ago and especially over the lastfive pretty heavily, is for the
same reasons, Anecdotally, atfirst seeing in my own clinical
practice, but now just seeingsome pretty amazing things,
(48:36):
things that I probably wouldn'tnecessarily speak on this
podcast yet and things becausethey are but things that you
just can't explain, and I'mincredibly excited about what
some of this might mean, but we,yeah, we do have to be careful,
so yeah.
So, megan, thank you so much forbeing on the show.
I know that you have lots ofplaces where people can find you
(49:00):
and you have programs that yourun, so tell us a little bit
about where people can find youonline, how they can get
involved with you and any ofthat kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Sure, well, it's been so fun.
I know we could talk for hours.
The easiest way to find me ison my website, thelionsshareorg.
It's L-Y-O-N-S.
Shareorg.
Everything's there my podcast.
I've been blogging every weeksince 2013.
So lots of free stuff on therehow to work with my team and I.
Social media links everythingis right up there.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Perfect TheLionsharecom, or is it just
Lionshareorg?
Speaker 2 (49:38):
TheLionshareorg.
Yes, the benefits in quotes.
I'm winking of starting yourwebsite when you are still
management consulting and didn'tactually think you were going
to make this a job.
You just get the org, but itstuck by me for all of those
years and I'm keeping it.
Thelionshareorg.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
I love it.
Megan Lyons, thank you so muchfor being here and do me a favor
, stay on the line.
Just we're going to make surethis uploads and for all of you,
thank you for hanging out.
Welcome to the Next Level Human Podcast everyone.
I am your host, dr Jay Tita.
I am here with my new friend,megan Lyons.
I was recently on her show,wellness your Way.
She has a podcast as well thatrecently came out and we wanted
to do a podcast swap because sheis just super amazing and has a
(00:20):
lot to share we're gonna covertoday.
Obviously, megan, you do a lotof things and talk about a lot
of things, but you and I weretalking about the idea that I've
been on a gut sort of kicklately and I do kind of like
when I'm hitting podcasts to geta lot of different people on a
topic to discuss.
(00:41):
I mean, obviously, gutprotocols are everywhere you
look now and I think a lot ofpeople have a lot of questions.
I also know you, like me, arean expert in endocrine function,
hormone function, and there isthis term that maybe you know.
I have a lot of practitionersthat listen to this show, so a
lot of you listeners know thisterm.
But for those of you who arenot listeners or new, this idea
(01:04):
of neuroendocrine immune and wecould even say psycho
neuroendocrine immune and thisidea that our psychology impacts
our nervous system the way wethink impacts the way we feel,
that impacts our hormonal system, that impacts our immune system
and that the gut is a big hubof this.
(01:25):
And so I really want to unpackall of this with you and just
get your take on it.
You know, I want to learn formyself and I just want the
listener to be able to hear youknow sort of how two
practitioners you know sort oflook at this.
And so why don't we start withyou just giving everyone who is
not familiar with you a littlebit of your story, how you got
(01:46):
into this work, your background,all the things, and then we'll
get into this discussion.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Absolutely Well.
Thank you so much for having me.
I am really excited to seewhere this conversation goes
today.
I own a practice called theLion's Share Wellness which is
here in Dallas, although thesedays more clients are not in
Dallas than they are in DallasEven my team of nutritionists
zero of them are in Dallas.
So we're a global nutritionconsulting firm and I got into
(02:17):
this work the winding way, whichI think is actually more common
than not.
I started as a high achiever,which will be important as we go
through my story justeverything competitive against
myself, always trying to do themost, which worked in a lot of
different ways.
I went to Harvard, studiedeconomics there, did well in
(02:38):
school and was happy on theoutside and on the inside too.
I think if you had asked me, amI happy?
I would have said yes.
I didn't really, uh, know howto explore that deeper, and so I
was just kind of going throughthe motions, going, going, going
as part of that journey.
I had never really exercised asa child.
(02:59):
I ate the standard Americandiet.
We didn't know any different.
But I met this cute guy onmove-in day of college, who's
now my husband 20 plus yearslater.
Uh, but he was on the track andcross country team so I thought
, hmm, I should probably get hisattention and learn to run.
So I went out for a run.
I felt amazing.
I really well.
(03:19):
Actually probably the firstcouple of runs I felt terrible,
but very quickly I felt amazing.
I got this runner's high.
I got really pulled into it andso I started running more and
more and more.
I started quote trying to learnabout nutrition, which back in
those days, before I knew whatPubMed was, before access to
social media, even any of thiskind of stuff, I was reading
(03:43):
magazines.
I was reading self and fitnessand shape and who knows what
magazines.
And they were telling me justeat less, eat half a protein bar
for lunch.
I would literally have abalanced bar for lunch and fold
over the wrapper and put it inmy top desk drawer.
That was my lunch half abalanced bar.
And you can probably guess wherethis story goes.
(04:03):
I just too much took this tothe extreme of running and under
fueling and I got into a prettydeep adrenal, hormonal,
everything crash.
So when I was 23, this tookseveral years right, I wasn't 23
in college, but I kept goingfor several years, no-transcript
(04:47):
, and that just started in mesomething that felt like I don't
know the answer.
But this is not the answer forme.
And I'm not totallyanti-medication, I think you
know great.
Have I taken medication?
Of course, will I again, ofcourse, but at that moment the
medication was not the answerfor me.
I knew I could fix it with howI was living my life, how I was
(05:11):
treating my mentality, treatingmyself internally, how I was
feeling all of that so longstory.
But to wrap it up, that got meinto real nutrition, and once
you kind of feel it, it's sohard to not share it.
So I did go back to managementconsulting.
I got my MBA.
I went back to managementconsulting again, but in 2014, I
(05:34):
eventually left and haven'tlooked back since.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, isn't that interesting?
It's a really powerful storyand I think when I talk to a lot
of practitioners who do thiswork, they have similar stories
about confronting sort of healthissues and when they're young
and thinking to themselves,there has to be another way, and
isn't it?
It is kind of interesting,you're right.
On the one hand, it's superprogressive that your doctor ran
(05:58):
your hormones at that time.
And the other sense and I wantto get your, your take the idea
that the fact that she or he didnot know she didn't know that
what the cause was, Because Ithink, for people like you and I
, I would predict if you cameinto me reporting certain
symptoms and I was like okay, soyou're a runner, you're
restricting calories, you'vebeen doing that for years, I
(06:20):
wouldn't even have to runhormones probably neither would
you to know exactly what's goingon.
But, again, traditional doctorsare not trained that way and
that is going back to some time.
But it is really interestingbecause we see this stuff all of
the time.
Well, actually, let me put itthis way, because this will be a
good way for you and I topowwow on this I see this all
(06:44):
the time.
You see this all the time,perhaps because we are
perceptually aware of what'sgoing on.
However, I can tell you asearly as just a couple years ago
, because certainly I wrote myfirst book on this stuff back in
2010, a book called theMetabolic Effect Diet.
I wrote my first book on thisidea that overdoing exercise and
(07:06):
underfeeding for long periodsof time is a stress to the
metabolism, in the same way thatovereating and not moving can
be a stress to the metabolism.
And at that time it was brandnew, perhaps light years ahead
of what most people werethinking Not that I came up with
it, but there were very fewpractitioners who were speaking
this way.
But even two years ago, I had arun-in with a very prominent
(07:32):
health and fitness influencer,phd in biochemistry and
nutrition, telling me this istwo years ago in a very public
debate, telling me this can'thappen, essentially, or that
this doesn't happen, and I wasdumbfounded that even in 2022,
(07:52):
that someone who is this issomeone who's I won't name names
because it's just notappropriate, and I have no
issues with the guy anyway, butit was just really interesting
that this debate occurred himsaying that this can't happen.
Now, one of the things that Ikind of you know, I know that
he's a guy who works with mainlyyoung men right, and that's
(08:14):
mainly his, and he is a youngerguy.
But from my perspective,clinically, this kind of thing
happens often, not all the time,by the way.
I mean, certainly you have somewomen who will do what you're
doing, you know, and do finewith it, but it is fairly
prevalent and I want to just getyour take on that.
(08:37):
How you see this.
Do you think that people arenow aware of this.
Do you still have to do a lotof education on this?
And just walk me through howyou even see what was happening
then.
Now again, I know we're goingto talk a little bit about the
entire psychoneuroendocrineimmune sort of thing and perhaps
focus on the gut, but from myperspective, what we're talking
(09:00):
about here is the neuroendocrinethe nervous system endocrine
piece of this, and I think it'sa nice place to begin the
discussion.
So I'm just wondering how yousee that.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, well, there's so much there.
And I think, to your point onstarting with neuroendocrine, it
wasn't just looking back that,I was just overising, I was for
sure, and I was under-fueling,but also I was under-sleeping, I
was under extreme stressManagement, consulting.
You're working 80 hours a week,traveling 48 weeks a year,
(09:35):
which was fine for many people,to your point.
But when we layer all thisstuff on top of each other, it
didn't work out in my case and Ithink that's part of why we're
seeing it a little morefrequently.
Our allostatic load, which, tothe listeners, is just our
accumulation of stressors,that's getting so high these
(09:56):
days because of the fast pace oflife, because of technology,
because of toxins, because ofall the things.
So our buckets are fuller,quicker, and that leads to this
feeling of burnout that I wasfeeling and that many other
people feel.
So I think it is increasing inprevalence.
And then also to your point, Ithink we you and I and probably
(10:16):
many other similar practitionerswe do attract these people
Because, honestly, if someoneout there has never tried to eat
healthily and has never triedto exercise, it does likely work
for them to do some exerciseand to eat some more vegetables
and to clean up their proteinsand things like that, and so
(10:36):
they don't need us, and I feelvery happy in continuing to
recommend all the things that Iwas doing, just at a much less
extreme scale.
So a lot of this stuff doeswork.
It's just Goldilocks when wetake it too far, it's too much
for our bodies, and our body, inlooking to protect us, starts
(10:57):
shutting down some of thesequote non-essential systems that
feel very essential.
Having lived that experience,it didn't feel good.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah, it's interesting Just yesterday.
I'll just walk you through.
This is a case that I just hadyesterday.
So this is a woman who came inand had gone through a pretty
severe breakup with a man thatshe fell in love with and he was
pretty manipulative to her andshe went through a very
stressful time with familymembers around the same time.
(11:28):
So a lot of stuff happening atonce Loss of a loved one, this
breakup happening, stuff at work, stuff with some legal things
that she was involved in andimmediately got her period and
did not stop bleeding.
Immediately got her period anddid not stop bleeding and had
(11:49):
gone to several differentphysicians and doctors and was
surprised that for me I was likeI know exactly what's going on
here and very similar thing alsoan exerciser, also someone
who's a striver and to me.
We see this often and I thinkit's really interesting that you
(12:09):
say that, because these peopledo tend to find us and I
oftentimes wonder is it thatthey find us and we recognize
them?
Because I do know that theprevalent story is they often go
looking around and I don'tthink their condition or what's
going on with them is recognizedby a lot of practitioners, and
so then, when they sit downacross from people like you and
(12:30):
me, we go.
I know exactly what ishappening here, because we're
not looking at metabolismthrough the lens of this very
narrow calories in, calories out, or this very narrow.
You've got a particulardiagnosis and here's a set of
cookbook recipes to follow ifyou get this diagnosis.
We're looking at it like themetabolism is a stress barometer
(12:53):
, a stress thermostat, and yourthermostat is broken in the same
way or dysfunctional in thesame way that your thermostat on
your home AC unit might be fromrunning the system too hot, in
the same way that an electricalcompany might have to go to
(13:13):
blackouts because too muchstress is being put on the
system.
This is what's happening to alot of people and they often
don't relate to it this way, andso I'm curious now, when you
see this, I mean, obviouslywe've talked about this idea of
a woman who gets her period andcan't stop bleeding, something
like you, where you hit fatigue,you feel incredibly horrible
(13:36):
other things that begin tohappen.
What are some of the othersigns and symptoms?
For listeners who are for thefirst time hearing two
practitioners talk about thisbesides fatigue, besides
menstrual issues, libido issuesFor men, the same thing can
happen.
They can start to get libidoand erection issues.
Women can get libido andmenstrual issues and it hits in
(14:00):
other places.
So what are the other placesthat you see people have
dysfunction here?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah, great question.
And the symptoms kind of likewhen we talk about thyroid or
gut health or whatever.
The symptoms are so wideranging that it is almost
impossible, in my opinion, togive a.
This is the set of symptoms andthat applies to everyone.
For example, in my experience,I lost my period for over 12
months.
This woman that you were seeing, she kept her period for too
(14:30):
long, so it can go either wayand similar with some of the
other symptoms as well.
That fatigue that you'rementioning, though, I like to
think of it as physical,emotional, mental fatigue,
almost like oh, I've lost thedrive to be myself anymore.
So it's not just like, oh, I'mkind of yawning two hours after
(14:53):
lunch, which might just be asimple blood sugar issue.
It's more of a deeply drainedfatigue is what I see in people.
I was actually just talking tosomeone yesterday experiencing
similar issues, very similar toyou, seeing someone yesterday,
and she was saying I just feellike my eyelids are closing in
(15:13):
the morning and I'm trying toopen them.
She has kids, she wants to bethere and wants to be energized
and she just can't.
So it's that really deepfatigue.
But what else do we see afterthat?
I think, going down your pathof neuro and all of the
endocrine things that follow, wecan see certainly thyroid-like
(15:33):
symptoms like hair thinning,eyebrow thinning.
We can see temperatureirregularity.
We can certainly see weightissues.
Some people with adrenaldysfunction tend to hold on to
weight.
I find that more common.
Some people actually tend tolose weight.
If it is leading them to not beable to weight, I find that
more common.
Some people actually tend tolose weight if it is leading
them to not be able to eatregularly or have appetite
(15:58):
changes.
Certainly sleep irregularities,I find even though people are
fatigued during the day, they dotend towards that racing mind
insomnia at night.
Their circadian rhythms arejust totally messed up.
Sugar cravings almost always Isee people with sugar cravings
when they have some kind ofadrenal dysregulation and that's
(16:19):
your body's last ditch effortto be like, hey, I need
something to keep me going.
And again, sugar works.
Does it give you energy if youeat a whole pack of jelly beans?
Of course it does for 10minutes or 30 minutes.
It just doesn't work over thelong term.
So those are some of the morecommon ones I see, but I'm
curious to see what you wouldadd on of the stress thermostat
(16:40):
of, just for the listener.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I know you know this, megan, and then just correct me
if I'm wrong, if you think I'mwrong on anything or want to add
anything here.
The way I see it is that thisarea, the reason why these
symptoms can be so varied, isbecause really the major site of
(17:01):
, let's say, dysfunction ordistress is the hypothalamus and
the pituitary, which isbasically the command and
control center of the metabolism.
It's kind of that.
It acts as the stress barometer, it measures stress and then it
acts as the stress thermostat.
It basically sends out signalsto the thyroid, the gonads,
(17:22):
ovaries, testicles and theadrenal glands, which then are
the major endocrine organs.
Of course it does more signalsthan that, but these are the
major ones, and so you can seedysfunction across each of those
areas.
So this is why you can seemenstrual issues, libido issues,
you can see fatigue issues,which you know, where the
(17:42):
adrenals and the thyroid getinvolved.
You can see high blood pressureand low blood pressure.
You can see a lot of this yinand yang that you alluded to.
You have either hyperfunctioning or hypo functioning,
and one of the things that this, by the way, is sort of a cheat
sheet for you listeners.
But it's not always the case.
(18:02):
But in general I see two typesof people, sort of the puffy,
heavier type of stressdysfunction.
These are the people who leanmore hypothyroid.
They lean more tired in thebrain and tired in the body.
And then you kind of have thismore thinner sort of phenotype
which seems to maybe hit theadrenals a little bit more in my
(18:25):
mind, where you get sort ofthis more thin appetite, wired
in the brain, tired in the body,maybe a little bit more storage
of fat around the middle, and Isee these again as the same
dysfunction one being ahypo-functioning, you know sort
of way that the body tries toadjust, and one's being more of
a hyper-functioning way that thebody tries to adjust, and then
(18:48):
that gets down into the gut,which I know is a big piece of
your expertise, which then thegut actually is one of my
favorite places to look at signsand symptoms, because it also
will illustrate this sort ofbalance between the
parasympathetic and sympatheticnervous system sort of the rest
digest nervous system and thestimulating you know uh,
(19:12):
struggle and striving uh nervoussystem.
And so you can see uh thingsfrom constipation for some
people, the more puffy, heaviertypes tend towards more
constipation.
You got the people who are moreloose stools, diarrhea.
You got a lot of people who arereally going back and forth,
things like IBS, lots of IBS,lots of GERD, heartburn, all of
(19:35):
these kinds of things.
I like to see the gut as one ofthe places where I kind of see
it as one of the most sensitiveareas to judge some of my
function.
Of course, nowadays we havetech, you know, so we can use
tech to see things like heartrate variability, heart rate
levels at night, how fast theheart rate gets to its minimum,
(19:55):
things like whoop, and you know,things like Apple watches and
things like our rings and andthose kinds of things.
But in general that's kind ofhow I see it.
I do kind of see this idea ofsort of a hypo functioning
phenotypical type and ahyper-functioning phenotypical
type, but I'm wondering how yousee that as well.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Totally agree.
In explaining this to clientsI'll use slow for the one that
you described as the more puffyindividual.
That's slow metabolism, it'sslow brain, it's slow hair
growth, it's slow digestion orconstipation.
Everything is slow in thathypofunctioning individual.
(20:40):
And then hyper is fast racingheartbeat, night sweats, anxiety
, fast thinking, fast digestionor diarrhea Everything's fast in
that case.
And one other thing that youmentioned I definitely agree
that it goes back to thehypothalamus and I don't think
we as a collective society payenough attention to the
hypothalamus, in part becauseit's harder to measure
(21:03):
hypothalamic function.
So we always say HPA axis.
I always say HPA axis,hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal
axis, but I don't really payattention to the H as much as to
the P and to the A, becauseadrenals we can measure to some
extent, although even though Irun the diurnal saliva cortisol
four times during the day,sometimes I still don't even
(21:25):
find the answers that I know arethere in that Pituitary can we
measure growth hormone and TSHand ACTH and whatever?
Yes, it's just harder in myexperience to measure anything
from the hypothalamus.
But I think you're right,that's the control system and I
think we as practitioners myselfincluded are missing a lot of
(21:45):
that.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Yeah, you know what's interesting about that.
I love that you say that,because I agree Hypothalamus
pituitary adrenal, hypothalamuspituitary thyroid, hypothalamus
pituitary gonadal but what wealso know nowadays that we now
see like let's take the thyroid,for example, one of the reasons
.
If you're a listener listeningto this and you're like, well, I
have some of these symptoms, Ithought I had hypothyroid.
(22:06):
I went and checked it and mythyroid seems to be quote fine.
But then you're hearing someonelike Megan say I know it's
there, even though you're not.
Because one of the things we'reseeing in the research is that
each cell, so the body,regulates thyroid function, but
it also regulates thyroid usageand it does this at the level of
the cell.
So each cell actually isregulating the amount of thyroid
(22:30):
that it wants to take in or not.
And a stressed out cell, a cellthat is dysfunctional, will
oftentimes decrease its thyroidhormone intake and slow itself
down, almost going into a cocoontype state or a sort of
hibernation state to protectitself.
And that's why we have to runfull thyroid panels.
(22:53):
That's why some of us getthings like reverse T3 and other
markers that tell us if thissort of cellular hypothyroidism
is going on.
But it is notoriously difficult,because what we are doing is
we're making a best guess and wewill tend to focus on the big
three oh this is the ovaries ortesticles, oh this is coming
from the adrenal or oh this iscoming from the thyroid when
(23:16):
oftentimes the major site ofthis shared dysfunction is the
hypothalamus.
And then we also forget thateach cell and tissue and this is
something that has been, youknow, sort of worked out over
the last decade or so you knowthat each cell and tissue is
regulating its own hormonaluptake and input and output as
(23:37):
well.
So there's this constant backand forth which makes our job
even more difficult.
So one of the things that Ihave found ironically is, I used
to be a guy who just runs testafter test after test after test
.
Ironically is, I used to be aguy who just runs test after
test after test after test, andit really is funny how much I
(23:59):
rely on my clinical symptomrecognition for a lot of this
now, and I'm just curious howyou see that.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Oh, I'm so torn on this because I am a data person,
like I said.
I don't know if I said, but Istudied economics in college.
I love data, I love numbers, Ilove math.
I would love it if it werepossible to run a test and
literally have a blueprint ofeverything we can do in a body,
(24:22):
and that's why the appeal or theidea of these tests is so
alluring to me.
I want it to be that simple,but it's not.
Even when we do get tests, likein your example, oh, my doctor
says my thyroid is fine.
Well, they just ran TSH and Ithink it's impossible to draw
conclusions just from that TSH.
(24:43):
So even when we do have thenumbers, it's a complex
algorithm that we aspractitioners are running in our
head of okay, this is here,this is here, symptoms are here,
history is here, poof, we putit all together and that's where
we come up with the solution,oftentimes.
So I don't know, is the answer?
Do I run tests on my clients?
(25:05):
Yes, I do.
Do I have some people come inwho say it's either cost
prohibitive or I've been testedout the wazoo and I don't want
to do that, or I just have nodesire Absolutely.
And can I still work with themAbsolutely?
It really, I think, justdepends on the person.
I would say 90% we can do itbased on gut instinct.
(25:28):
And then sometimes there aresome cases like gut testing,
since we keep touching on that.
Most of the time it's simple tofix the gut and we can kind of
tell, based on what's cominginto the gut and how we're
treating our body, what to do.
But sometimes I just get stuck.
I'm like I don't know, I coulduse some more information.
So I do think testing isvaluable there.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.
And the way a hundred percenttesting is valuable.
I just I oftentimes amfrustrated and certain tests are
are better than others.
I do think there are certaintests you can run, you know,
that can essentially pointdirectly.
Obviously, you know we have.
You know, someone comes in andyou run a test and you say, oh,
they have an infection with thisthing, we can give this
(26:10):
antibiotic.
Obviously, medicine works thatway and that's why conventional
medicine, traditional medicine,is so amazing with certain
treatments.
But in this world of, I wouldsay, functional medicine, it can
be tricky and the analogy Iwould use is imagine we have I
don't know a million, althoughit's probably a billion or a
trillion.
You got a million differentbiomarkers, let's say, and
(26:31):
different chemicals floatingaround the body and we measure a
hundred of them.
It's not even you know a drop,you know in in the ocean.
So that's why it can be sodifficult.
But there are big ones that canthat we know can make a big
difference.
For example, you know, from myperspective, if you have
something like the thyroid glandor the gut especially, these
(26:52):
are what I might call sentineltissues, meaning that they're
the ones who get hit first, likethe sentinel guard in the
castle.
If the castle gets attacked,the sentinel guards are the
first ones to get hit.
The gut, the thyroid, some ofthese things act as like
sentinel tissues, where they arethe ones that get hit first,
and so we oftentimes will lookto them.
(27:13):
They also tend to oftentimesget better first, before the
other things you know sort ofget better, and so I do think
that they're incredibly usefuland not to not do them.
But I also think that a lot ofpeople are frustrated, including
practitioners, because theydon't always point us to what we
(27:34):
need to do.
Although and this is where wecan kind of get into sort of the
stuff around the gut and thenervous system and putting this
whole thing together because Ido think that in our style of
medicine or our style of healthcare, there are big global
things that we can do that helpsupport the body's healing in
(27:54):
general, like one of the thingsthat you know, before I went to
naturopathic school, I was on myway to East Carolina University
Medical School and I rememberfirst looking at the curriculum
and going, okay, there's nonutrition, there's no exercise
and there's no psychology inthis, and also the philosophy
was drugs and surgery andnothing wrong with that.
You know cause those things arenecessary and I'm not anti any
(28:15):
of that.
I just didn't want to do thatmedicine.
One of the first things Ilearned at naturopathic medical
school is the body has healing,natural healing capability.
They call this vice medicatrinaturae, which basically means
you know nature has healingcapacity, and we all know this.
By the way, if you twist yourankle, all you got to do is
usually, if you stay off of it,it's going to get better.
If you cut your finger, youjust keep it clean and it's
(28:38):
usually going to get better.
And I like this idea withclients because from my
perspective, what we can do,usually there are things that we
can do that if we give the bodythe right environment, it
oftentimes can heal itself.
So this is like things like getpeople moving, get people
eating a whole foods, nutrient,rich, calorie.
(28:58):
You know less calorie dietusually is going to be, you know
, healing for a lot of people.
But when we're talking aboutsome of what you and I do, this
is the part of the discussion Iwant to have with you of what
you and I do.
This is the part of thediscussion I want to have with
you these things.
Often, for these people righthere, you are running like crazy
, doing all the things.
Yes, you're sort of nutrientdepleting, but it's not what we
(29:19):
typically think about.
It's not the, the sick couchpotato who's, you know,
essentially ill because they'reover consuming or, you know,
living a poor, poor diet.
It's something else.
And this brings me to this ideaof nervous system regulation
and what gets us stuck in thisand how we can begin to regulate
(29:41):
the nervous system sort of in adifferent way, which brings me
to many things in my head.
But I'm wondering what are thethings that you look at, you
know, besides just diet andexercise, if anything, that you
do to begin to work on thisglobally, to create the
atmosphere, the environment forthe body to heal itself?
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yes, Well, I love what you just said so much and I
want to add on.
There is an analogy that I usewith my clients that I think for
people in my age tends toreally resonate.
We'll see if it works for youand your listeners.
Jay, do you remember a toycalled the Etch-A-Sketch?
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yes, of course, yeah, Of course yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
So this is not a Natcha sketch.
I do not hang on to it.
This is more of a tablet.
But a Natcha sketch looks likea tablet and, for those who
aren't familiar with the idea,kids would have this little pen,
it would mark on the tablet andthen you have this slider at
the bottom that would erase themarkings that the kid put on.
And so it works great, it'ssuper fun, keeps the kids
(30:46):
entertained.
That the kid put on, and so itworks.
Great, it's super fun, keepsthe kids entertained.
But if the kid just goes crazyfor a little bit and smacks the
pen all over and gets so muchquote ink which is actually just
a magnetic response, whatever,but really goes crazy on the
Etch-A-Sketch, then that slidergets stuck and doesn't work
anymore.
And this is exactly whathappens in our gut.
Our gut has a magic slider.
(31:07):
It is willing to clear and healand do all of this stuff.
If we happen to eat a littlebit of glyphosate one time or
something like that, it is sohappy to clear that up.
But if we are pelting itconstantly, day after day, with
things that are irritating forit, we're like that kid with a
(31:27):
really overzealous marker on hisEtch-A-Sketch and then our
slider just gets stuck and can'tclear and needs a little help.
So I almost oversimplify itintentionally for my clients.
I have this handout that hasall the inflammatory foods on
one side and all theanti-inflammatory foods and
practices, stress relief,meditation, all of that kind of
(31:50):
stuff on the other side, and youand I know that it's not quite
that simple.
We can't actually puteverything into two columns, but
sometimes seeing that forpeople really helps.
Oh, okay, ultra-processed foodand alcohol and added sugar and
stress.
I just have to lay off theetch-a-sketch with those things
for a little while and increasesome of this healing stuff, some
(32:12):
really good quality water,sleeping at an optimal time,
optimal protein, greatvegetables and fruits, all of
that kind of stuff.
We just have to shift thatbalance a little bit.
So I do think, even though it'soversimplified, it can be
helpful to think about.
There's not one magic thing.
We're just pelting our gut withso much over time.
(32:33):
And that leads into yourquestion about the nervous
system.
I like to simplify things.
You'll get this point.
But I ask clients if I had amagic button and I could give
you one free day tomorrow whereyou can't be productive, you
can't play with the kids, eventhough you love them.
You can't do the laundry, youcan't work, you can't do
(32:54):
anything quote productive.
You just get to do something.
You could fly to a beach inBali and have someone feed you
fresh fish all day, or you couldgo to a Beyonce concert, or you
could do whatever.
What would you do?
And they look at me like I havethree heads, but then
eventually they spit out someanswer.
That to me, is a really big keyto what they're missing.
(33:17):
So if they did say I want to goto a Beyonce concert, well
great, maybe they're missingsome more stimulation being
around people.
Maybe that's what they need toheal.
Or if they said a beach in Bali, maybe they need some downtime,
they need some alone time, theyneed to turn their brain off.
But almost always our gutinstinct there helps us develop
(33:37):
a plan for nervous systemregulation.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
I love that so much and actually let's go into an
area that perhaps is maybe alittle bit different.
It's an area that I've beenfocused on a lot and I want to
see if you have any thoughts onthis, and if you don't, it's
also fine.
But have you done anything withyour clients around the idea of
childhood development,adolescent development, young
(34:01):
adult development and the ideaof a stuck nervous system?
So let me just frame this forMegan I see her nodding her head
but for you listeners, one ofthe things that and it looks
like Megan has a lot to say onthis.
So this will be good for all ofus, because I love to learn how
different practitioners areseeing this stuff.
But one of the things that Ihave, over the last, I would say
(34:22):
, 15 years or so, just becomeacutely aware of is that
individuals and it doesn't haveto be childhood development,
adolescent development, youngadult development we certainly
have these difficult trials,tribulations, sometimes capital
T traumas, although I think thatgets overused an awful lot Like
this idea of trauma.
(34:43):
It has to be sexual abuse orphysical abuse or world war,
being in a war or something.
From my perspective, when ournervous system encounters
anything that is difficult atthe time when we don't have the
knowledge, the experience, theknow-how, anything like that.
We just don't have the way ofmanaging and thinking about this
(35:04):
.
Our nervous system can't copewith it.
It ends up being too much of astress on the system.
And what I've been surprised atthe last 15 years or so is that
how the research shows that,going all the way back to our
childhood, we've had things likein the research they call it
ACEs or adverse childhood events, and things like that.
That our nervous system, if youimagine for the listener, if
(35:26):
you imagine a dimmer switch, youknow obviously you can dim that
switch up and down.
Now imagine taking the dimmeraway and that now your light
switch is either stuck in the onposition the lights won't go
off or it's stuck in the offposition the lights won't go on.
That it seems that our nervoussystem can act very much like a
light switch and when we havethese difficult events it can
(35:50):
cause a dysfunction in thenervous system such that the
nervous system either hyperresponds to things or hypo
responds to things.
Ptsd is an example of this, foradults, right, and we think
about PTSD with war.
But let's take it like this you.
You walk in and you know, findyour lover with another person.
(36:10):
That's like a PTSD situation.
You go into work and you loseyour job and you're out of a job
.
That can be a PTSD situation.
So I'm wondering, in yourexperience working with clients,
how much of this stuff have youseen be the beginnings, like
you talked about going tocollege, very stressful time and
(36:32):
adding on all this other stuffhow often do you see this being
the origin story of manypeople's illnesses?
Is it 5%, 10% estimate?
I mean, I'm just curious howyou see these things.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah Well, that's a great question.
I'll try to come up with anumber, but it's definitely
higher than 5% to 10%.
I think it's very frequent.
I don't always share this partof my story, but I'm happy to in
this case because I think itreally illustrates what you're
saying.
Right before I went to collegeand started this running and all
(37:05):
of this kind of stuff, in veryrapid succession I lost a close
family member to suicide.
I had two of my grandmothers,maternal and paternal, both pass
away from ALS, which is, ifanyone knows, that condition.
It's a brutal condition and Ireally I did not realize the
impact that that had on me, butI know.
(37:28):
Right then my nervous systemwas trained Because, if you
layer on top of that, my parentsvery well-meaning, they praised
me for achievement and, again,very well-meaning, they knew
that they were making me happy.
They knew that I was a greatachiever making me happy.
They knew that I was a greatachiever.
(37:49):
But when I saw my familycrumbling and I felt crumbling
inside and the only praise I wasgetting was for achievement,
that taught my nervous systemfire, fire, fire, fire.
Go Stuck in.
That sympathetic mode is safe,even though sympathetic fight or
flight that feels unsafe.
Right, that is an alarm signalto our body.
But my body, I strongly believe,got stuck in that phase, in
(38:14):
that nervous system firingpattern, and it was very hard to
unwind.
And I still need to get to bevery conscious of that's my
wiring.
And if I don't treat myselfvery well look, we all have
stressful days and we all havedays where we don't eat
perfectly and all this that'snot what I'm saying, but over
(38:35):
periods of time, if I don'ttreat myself well, I can slip
back into that in an absoluteinstant.
So I know that for me that's abig part of what happened and I
would say my guess, since Ipromised you a number, I would
say 40 to 50% of people havesomething maybe not similar to
(38:55):
my story, but something wherethey experienced these little T
traumas and their nervous systemdid get stuck.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yeah, that's so interesting.
Yeah, I don't know that I wouldventure a guess either, but
it's a lot, it's a lot of.
Yeah, I don't know that I wouldventure a guess either, but
it's a lot, it's a lot of people.
And the way I see this, justfor the listener too, is like to
me I see it as like thesympathetic system.
You have stress and if it'sshort lived then you can rise to
(39:23):
it.
It goes from stress to strength.
You know, you get resilienceright, so stressing it of itself
as long as we can cope with it.
But as stress continues, wezillions right.
So stress in and of itself aslong as we can cope with it, but
as stress continues we get, wemove into striving mode and as
it continues we go into strugglemode and if it continues even
longer and or it's a veryextreme stress, we go into shock
mode.
And, yes, we oftentimes can getstuck in those.
And so when I see clients andpatients coming to me and I see
them as go, go, go over exercisetypes, you know, obsessive
(39:47):
about food and all the things, Ido wonder oftentimes.
And then they're complaining ofhealth complaints.
I often kind of go okay, thismight be someone who's stuck in
striving or struggle mode andthey don't realize it, because
our culture celebrates strivingmode at least like when, you
know, people stuck in strivingmode mode tend to view
themselves and culture tends toview them as productive, and it
(40:11):
can have health consequences.
And a lot of people don'trealize that Someone who
overexercises and is not sickfrom it oftentimes doesn't see
that as why they might haveanxiety or depression or other
things, that it's part of thecoping mechanism of the nervous
system stuckness.
And so I do think this isanother big piece of this.
(40:33):
If we're going to talk aboutneuroendocrine you know immune
dysfunction, we want to go okay,what all you know causes issues
with the nervous system.
And then, a final place I wantto go with this discussion is
let's go even one step back,right.
So we talked a little bit about, you know, the signs and
symptoms, the immune stuff.
We talked a little bit aboutthe endocrine hormone system,
(40:53):
the hypothalamus, adrenal,thyroid, gonadal axes.
We talked a little now aboutthe nervous system.
Let's go back just one morestep and talk about, like, the
idea of psycho, neuro, endocrineimmune, this whole idea of the
psychology behind.
You know, you mentioned in yourstory, you know, some of these
uh difficult events.
(41:15):
You know, and here's theinteresting thing, will we call
them uh traumatic?
You know, certainly for somepeople we would call those
traumatic.
There's certainly some of themost difficult things any human
can deal with a suicide, loss ofloved ones, going through a
hard illness, but even thingslike you know.
I have a story when I was a kidthat many people will laugh at,
but was in hindsight.
(41:36):
I look at it like OK, this wasperhaps a form of trial,
tribulation, maybe even traumafor my nervous system, where I
got left at the baseball parkfor about two hours and was
sitting there in the dark when Iwas six or seven years old.
A very simple thing.
My parents came and got me.
We know what happened.
They probably got home oh myGod, where's Jade?
I thought you were getting them.
No, I thought you were gettingthem.
Then they come and get me.
(41:56):
But that fear of sitting therealone at a time where we don't
have cell phones and I was justalone at the baseball park and
didn't have that also was asituation that caused me and I
see now, being the youngest offour, things like that would
happen.
I have a difficult time trusting.
I'm very independent.
(42:19):
As a result of it, I don't leta lot of people help me.
I'm not a good receiver, I'm anamazing giver, but I'm not a
good receiver.
I'm not a good receiver.
I'm an amazing giver, but I'mnot a good receiver.
Lots of this psychology sort ofgoes into the way that I sort
of live my life outwardly, butit also permeates my nervous
system, which then permeates myendocrine system, which
permeates my immune system, andI do think this is not an area
(42:42):
that anyone is really talkingabout in medicine.
How exactly are our thoughtsand feelings relating to our
nervous system holding pattern,our hormonal function and our
immune-related way that ourimmune system relates and is
able to keep us healthy?
Speaker 2 (43:01):
I think it is such a fascinating field and if you
just catch me reading aboutsomething or something like that
, it's probably in this area.
I am so fascinated and soexcited to see what we learn in
the next decade two decadesabout this, because I think it's
so powerful.
(43:21):
And right now, on the one side,we have some of these more
woo-woo but, frankly I think,very interesting studies where
they'll take plants and they'lljust speak negative words to the
plants and the plants wither orsomething like that, and some
people look at that and they'relike, well, that's ridiculous.
And then we have another sidewhich we're starting to actually
see.
(43:41):
Okay, physiologically, peopleare now hearing the vagus nerve
connects the brain and the gutand just as many messages go up
from the gut to the brain as dogo down and that's where all our
neurotransmitters are generatedand all of this.
So people can attach to thephysiology and see, oh, wow,
there is this really bigconnection.
(44:03):
But then when we make this bigjump to our thoughts impact our
hormones, our thoughts impactour everything else, it feels
like a big leap for a lot ofpeople and I understand that.
But I know there's a lot therebased on my experience, based on
the research that's emergingand based on the experience that
I've seen in so many otherpeople.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Yeah, yeah, I'm with you on this.
I don't, you know, it's it's ahard thing.
Uh, we're starting to see somereally interesting research.
I don't know if you know, uh,any of you who are familiar with
the work of Joe Dispenza, whichhe's a pretty controversial
figure for many people, uh, buthe they actually his group, uh
really did.
He works out of UC San Diegoand they just had a really
(44:47):
interesting study that theyreleased showing meditation,
putting people in.
You know, I've been to some ofhis events, so the best way to
describe it is, you know, sortof heartfelt meditation, sort of
in the HeartMath Institute kindof way of thinking about this.
It's sort of a very different.
It's not just mindfulnessmeditation, it's a little bit
more than that.
But they actually showedseveral immune markers, one of
(45:10):
these immune markers Serpent 5,being actually upregulated to a
significant degree in thesemeditators versus controls.
The reason it got a lot ofpress and got a lot of people's
attention is because it isrelated to viral immunity and
decreasing viruses being able tobind and infect cells, and what
(45:33):
they showed in this particularstudy that he did is that
Serpent 5 is upregulated inthese individuals.
They also had less incidencesof COVID, because a lot of this
research is being done duringthe time of COVID and when they
did get COVID, they got over itfaster.
Of course, we all know thatCOVID is just sort of it's all
(45:53):
on our minds, so it'sinteresting to talk about.
But this would be viruses ingeneral and we are seeing some
very good, well done research Inaddition to much of the
research in the past.
Like Candace Pert and otherswho've been doing this work for
a while, we know that this stuffis going on, but it's getting
to the point where we're gettinga pretty good evidence base.
So I agree with you, it'sexciting.
But it is also a place where wecan quickly diverge into the
(46:16):
woo-woo, which doesn't mean, bythe way.
Sometimes the woo-woo isincredibly powerful and real.
We just have to be careful.
I think we call it woo-woobecause it's more like just
saying when I use that term, Imore just go.
Let's be careful here, becausewe don't necessarily know.
So we can speculate, but let'snot make things up, and so, yeah
, I'm with you, it's fascinating, and I'm wondering if you have
any other things to add on thatparticular element of this,
(46:39):
because I do think it'simportant.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Well, I have two things to add.
Number one thank you forcalling me out on saying woo-woo
.
I will say woo-woo to me meansI just don't understand that yet
.
For example, I go to theacupuncturist every month and I
so strongly believe in what shedoes.
She knows my body very well.
(47:00):
I have zero idea where to put aneedle in someone's body.
I am not educated inacupuncture.
Trust me, you don't want me todo acupuncture on you.
I don't understand how thatworks.
And in fact I've said to hermultiple times once I finish
this next doctorate, maybe downthe road, I'll just go to school
in acupuncture because I'm socurious.
(47:21):
So is that woo-woo to me?
Yes, casually I would say that,but that doesn't mean I don't
believe in it.
It just means I don'tunderstand it yet and we can't,
as humans, understand everysingle thing.
So that's okay.
There is fake science out there, which obviously I don't
promote, and there are peoplemaking things up, but woo-woo to
(47:42):
me is still in the realm ofgreat things.
And then on Dr Joe Dispenza, Iactually just saw him speak live
a little while ago.
I haven't seen the study thatyou're referencing, but I
thought, because ALS is alwayson my mind first thing I'll do
if another one of my familymembers is diagnosed with ALS,
(48:03):
I'm going to send them over andget them into one of those
sessions.
Is diagnosed with ALS, I'mgoing to send them over and get
them into one of those sessionsbecause the stories that he
shared anecdotally so anecdote,not science yet, but anecdotally
were fantastic.
So I do believe that there's alot there.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
Yeah, I could tell you, one of the reasons I have
made a pretty hard right turninto this area about 10 years
ago and especially over the lastfive pretty heavily, is for the
same reasons, Anecdotally, atfirst seeing in my own clinical
practice, but now just seeingsome pretty amazing things,
(48:36):
things that I probably wouldn'tnecessarily speak on this
podcast yet and things becausethey are but things that you
just can't explain, and I'mincredibly excited about what
some of this might mean, but we,yeah, we do have to be careful,
so yeah.
So, megan, thank you so much forbeing on the show.
I know that you have lots ofplaces where people can find you
(49:00):
and you have programs that yourun, so tell us a little bit
about where people can find youonline, how they can get
involved with you and any ofthat kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Sure, well, it's been so fun.
I know we could talk for hours.
The easiest way to find me ison my website, thelionsshareorg.
It's L-Y-O-N-S.
Shareorg.
Everything's there my podcast.
I've been blogging every weeksince 2013.
So lots of free stuff on therehow to work with my team and I.
Social media links everythingis right up there.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Perfect TheLionsharecom, or is it just
Lionshareorg?
Speaker 2 (49:38):
TheLionshareorg.
Yes, the benefits in quotes.
I'm winking of starting yourwebsite when you are still
management consulting and didn'tactually think you were going
to make this a job.
You just get the org, but itstuck by me for all of those
years and I'm keeping it.
Thelionshareorg.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
I love it.
Megan Lyons, thank you so muchfor being here and do me a favor
, stay on the line.
Just we're going to make surethis uploads and for all of you,
thank you for hanging out.
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