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If you describe your health and your life as: busy, exhausted, inflamed and ignored by your doctor, then you need to hear this.
Up to 92% of adults are metabolically unhealthy, and the "normal" lab ranges your doctor looks at to say "you're fine" are based on the average of that already sick population. Which means you'll never actually feel good if you keep going to your traditional family doctor.
Dr. Elena Zinkov has helped over 20,000 women who refuse to settle with "normal" to feel like their vibrant selves again.
TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
- How chronic stress hijacks your gut, hormones and immune system
- What cortisol dysregulation is and why it really matters
- What hidden infections you may have that are sabotaging your health (Candida, SIBO, parasites)
- Why you're being gaslit by your doctor
- How to feel like your vibrant self again
More from Dr. Elena Zinkov
Website: drelenazinkov.com
Clinic: proactivehealthnd.com
Instagram: @drelenazinkov
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Josh (01:56.524)Dr. Elena Zinkov, thank you so much for being here.
(00:01):
Elena Zinkov (02:12.706)Thank you so much for having me on. I'm very excited.
Josh (02:15.928)glad you're here. It was quite the intro I put out there. I really worked on that one. I hope it did you justice.
Elena Zinkov (02:22.334)It sounded better than it did in my head, so that's all that matters.
Josh (02:25.072)Oh good, good. I use my announcer voice and I really put it on thick.
Elena Zinkov (02:30.029)You actually have a great, like, radio host voice.
Josh (02:33.28)Thank you, you know what, I've been told that for a very long time, like you should do videos or a podcast and I thought, I will do exactly that and now here we are.
Elena Zinkov (02:41.982)Such a great way to just let people know what you're great at and share the wealth of knowledge that you have, right?
Josh (02:49.464)It's a fantastic medium. And we're just so excited you're here to talk about the things we're talking about. I mean, as you know, I specialize in inflammatory bowel disease and almost every single one of my clients has some kind of hormone issue of some kind that we obviously have to fix. Why is that? What's going on with the gut and hormones?
Elena Zinkov (03:09.502)Yeah, it's a million dollar question, right? It sort of becomes this chicken or the egg issue or scenario where a lot of times we're wondering, well, is it the hormone imbalance that came first and then IBS or IBD or some other gut issues? Or is it the gut issue that started first, which then led into hormone imbalance? And of course, there can be.
room for both scenarios to happen or all of them to happen simultaneously. So I never like to just chase sort of the root cause even though it's important. But when someone comes in and they're really sick and they're just struggling, it just becomes a matter of let's kind of normalize things a bit. Let's get you feeling better. And then we can kind of pull at different strengths to see what the root cause is. So I like to use a couple of classic examples where
It could be the gut health that happens first and the inflammation that's in the gut that then affects hormones. And then another example of how there's a hormone imbalance that then leads to, let's say, an immune dysregulation or bowel issues. So one of the classic examples, let's say, is an under-functioning thyroid gland, whether it's a clinical hypothyroidism or flat-out
Josh (04:22.838)Okay.
Elena Zinkov (04:36.014)Thyroid usually speeds everything up. So normally it normalizes bowel movements. We have normal heart rate, normal breath rate, metabolism, fat.
fat oxidation, all the good stuff. So when someone has a slower thyroid function, we see a slowing down in the digestive system, which is why constipation, for example, is one of the symptoms of a low thyroid function, whether you're hypothyroid or you're kind of on a verge of being hypothyroid. And this is where
what I see frequently happen, and this is also a question that I get is, did I develop SIBO first or was I hypothyroid first? Well, we know that if someone is prone to constipation, they're going to be prone to develop in SIBO. They're going to be prone to developing inflammation in the gut just because they can't eliminate things properly. And when we normalize hormone function, in this case, let's say thyroid hormone, then we start to see the gut normalize.
And in this kind of situation, we have to address two things simultaneously, the gut health and the hormone health. So that's one of the examples where hormones affect gut health. Another instance, let's say is if someone for whatever reason, maybe they have low microbiome diversity, maybe they were...
Necessarian baby right or they were exposed to lots of antibiotics which ruined their microbiome diversity and they have Underlying some sort of gut disturbance or inflammation because of that and they have malabsorption Issues now you're not getting all those nutrients properly absorbed and that can lead to declining hormone levels Because hormones is not just about cholesterol backbone
Elena Zinkov (06:33.814)We also need certain nutrients in place that help us produce those hormones, but then also support all the enzymes in the conversion processes.
Josh (06:44.796)I often explain it to my clients that when your body needs nutrients, a currency in the body, and everything's a transaction, there's always a trade of resources. Something's being used or being taken up, being converted. There's nothing we take into our bodies that comes out the same way. It's always converted some way, somehow. I talk about it like bank accounts. Your body will store nutrients in the liver, the muscles, the kidneys, the fat, all over the place. But as we start to go through, we get sicker and sicker. We lose.
nutrient absorption due to inflammation, your body's going to steal from other places. Now because you're deficient in those, you're in the red. Now we have thyroid issues, now we have hair loss, we have eczema, all these imbalances, your immune system starts to go haywire. So when people are struggling so much with nutrient malabsorption, right, their bodies robbed all these resources from around the body, what steps would you give them for dealing with hormonal issues, be it thyroid, sex hormones, anything?
to start correcting that process, getting their body to absorb nutrients to self-correct.
(00:22):
Elena Zinkov (07:45.854)Yeah. One of the first things that I like to do is get a baseline because we want to know what we're what we're dealing with. And I like to consider myself as kind of a health detective or an investigator because I do approach the human body with
Um, a sense of curiosity. I want to know what's going on first before I start doing. Cleanses throwing multivitamins at people. And I'm very curious about, well, why isn't someone absorbing nutrients? Let's say not even from a supplement, but just even food, right. That that's contributing hormonal imbalances. So I like to do a pretty thorough workups. I'll include blood testing and gut health testing. So the two labs that I really like are GI map.
and Genova GI effects test and I toss between the two sometimes I use one or the other depending on what I'm looking at but we want to know is it a hormone imbalance paired with gut imbalance or is it both right so rarely do I see someone without a hormone imbalance or with a perfect perfectly balanced microbiome I generally will do
let's say two therapies simultaneously. And what I mean by that is
I'll take someone let's say through a corrective gut cleanse. And what I mean by that is we'll do antimicrobial herbs. We'll also include some binders because obviously kill, kill some of the opportunistic bacteria want to bind up some of the toxins that get released. I also want to include some of the healthy microbiome. So depending on what the gut test shows me and depending on what kind of issues my patients are having.
Elena Zinkov (09:33.616)or is diabetic or has neurodegenerative disease, I will use different probiotics in this kind of a scenario. So as we are looking to change the landscape of the microbiome through, let's say, this gentle cleanse.
then we are also correcting micronutrient levels. So then they might either benefit from the comprehensive multivitamin or more specialty vitamins. Maybe they need a little bit more iodine selenium, especially for their thyroid function or L-tyrosine, or maybe they're someone who's really depleted in iron. So we'll switch over to like a B-flavor supplements. So that's an example of where I would even not even rush to herbs.
that stimulate hormone production or even bioidentical hormones, which is, of course, very close to my heart. It's what I specialize in. But I really focus on, first and foremost, correcting the microbiome, correcting the nutritional imbalances. And that also includes amino acids, because those don't get absorbed as well in the context of microbiome imbalance. And then we can start getting a little bit more fancy and looking at.
Do we need to support the thyroid a bit more? And what does that look like? Do we need to work on adrenal health and support proper stress response and cortisol production and metabolism? And then do we need to go a step further and actually help someone with hormone replacement? Because someone who is clinically hypothyroid, and let's say hypothyroidism just runs in their family and there's no herb or cleanse you can do to reverse that.
they will benefit from a thyroid medication, which in turn will support their proper bowel movements and digestion and stomach acid production, which will prevent the C-bonals, other digestive issues from happening.
Josh (11:33.792)Let's talk about thyroid for a minute. So when we're dealing with hormones, obviously hormones are a very complex process. And one of the ways I describe it, it's like there are a bunch of marbles sitting on a table. One shifts, everything else has to shift around a balance to keep that table balanced. This is why hormones are so complex. And we often see people who come in with hypothyroid or low thyroid and they check and they test just their TSH. The TSH is high.
So for those of you listening, and Elena, if you're not watching the audio, she's rolling her eyes, shaking her head. We're totally on the same page here. So they check TSH. Now TSH is thyroid stimulating hormone. So when you have a low amount of active thyroid in your body, your body increases TSH, this stimulating hormone saying, we need more thyroid, make more. And that's all they check is that one hormone. What they're not checking is T3, T4, reverse T3. Like they're not checking any of these other things. We're not checking the active and inactive.
So we're not actually seeing, is your body under producing? Is it under converting? Like what is actually going on? Is it lack of nutrients and production? Like what's at the root of it? Why not?
Elena Zinkov (12:45.347)There's a few reasons for that. And number one, I think conventional medicine is kind of stuck in its old ways, even though there are, there is so much research and so many studies that anyone can present to their healthcare provider that shows, by the way, TSH is not the most accurate marker for thyroid function.
I think it has to do with one, how medical providers are trained, two, the amount of time that an average physician has with a patient. And a lot of times it's not their fault, right? When you're operating under number three, insurance model of healthcare, insurance will not only not reimburse you for
the time that you spent with a patient if you go outside of, let's say, the 15 minutes, but they might also penalize you. Or.
Josh (13:42.532)You guys are giving 15 minutes there. We're giving, I've heard cases as low as seven to nine minutes.
Elena Zinkov (13:48.11)Absolutely. I feel, yes, I'm being so generous with 15 minutes and a little sidetracked, but a lot of research shows that an average physician in the conventional model of care spends maybe a minute talking about dietary interventions, which is insane. So if we focus on properly treating hormones, one, we're not...
average physician is not taught how to do that, then you have the insurance side of it that dictates how long they can be with the patient and what they can't even prescribe. Oh, and by the way, if a physician prescribes thyroid hormone and they do a chart audit or a lab audit and the TSH was within normal limits, they can be penalized for prescribing something that was technically not medically necessary.
Josh (14:41.612)that didn't meet the ID 10 code like.
Elena Zinkov (14:44.066)Exactly. So there's a number of reasons of why physicians will opt to just check the TSH, even though the majority of providers nowadays, whether they're functional medicine and there's plenty of great MDs out there and other health care providers that are shifting away from just checking the TSH. Now, whether or not they know how to treat thyroid properly, that's a different story because you can test hormones.
(00:43):
Josh (14:59.864)for sure.
Elena Zinkov (15:12.614)all day, every day, but if you're just looking at the range, are you really, you know, looking at what's optimal versus just what's in the range? That's a whole different, you know, that's a whole different story. But those are some of the few major reasons of, you know, why providers only test the TSH.
Josh (15:28.856)Thyroid is an interesting hormone. I know you could write an entire dissertation on thyroid alone, and we have a lot of ground to cover today, thyroid hormone and sex hormones and all kinds, and it's such a vastly complex topic. We can't cram it in a one-hour interview, but thyroid is often associated with weight gain and weight loss. My thyroid's high, I gain weight, or I lose weight, my thyroid's low, I gain weight. Can you tell us briefly about thyroid? I know you mentioned it's speeding up and slowing down. What are its functions in the body?
What does it do for us and how does it connect to sex hormones and menstruation?
Elena Zinkov (16:02.462)Yeah, I love hormones so much. Again, a little sidetrack, but as I was about to say what thyroid does in the different parts of the body that it affects, it really reminds me one of the reasons of why I do specialize in hormones. And it's because of how hormones really do affect all aspects of our health from top down. So if we even just talk about thyroid function, it affects our immune system.
It affects how well our immune system, how well our antibodies are produced against whatever pathogen we're facing. It affects our cognitive function, how quickly our neurons are able to fire, how well our
brain is able to recover, how well we can, the neurons can rebuild and recover. And it does affect our blood sugar metabolism, fat oxidation, which in terms of effects are our metabolism. It affects gut health as well as. Auto immunity.
So we can have, if we have an improper thyroid function, it can in turn make us more pretty supposed to developing autoimmune disease. And then you mentioned, you know, the sex hormone, when we don't have enough of a thyroid hormone, we can have this downstream effect where then we don't have as good of a variant function. And in fact, I just had...
actually a client before this podcast and you know, I'm working with their entire family. It's first, it's usually the woman, then they bring their partner, then the kids get involved. And then, you know, then I, I'm working with a whole family, but this mom, um, her, you know, her teenage daughter has Hashimoto's thyroiditis.
Josh (17:42.73)up now.
Elena Zinkov (17:53.046)there is a gut components involved. So this again becomes kind of chicken or the egg thing. Was it the thyroid issues? You'll say hormonal issues or was it the gut? And certainly I feel like it's just two things happening altogether. But there's a lot of inflammation in terms of the thyroid antibodies. There is an underproduction of thyroid hormone and there's underproduction of progesterone and.
estrogen. And one of the conversations that we had, which ties into what we're talking about today is reducing inflammation, supporting thyroid health, simultaneously supporting ovarian function through certain nutrients. We're able to boost that sex hormone production and even infertility, even infertility. That's, I would say that
The one place in conventional medicine where I see thyroid being addressed better than anyone else anywhere else is in fertility clinics.
Josh (18:55.624)Well, it's interesting. I mean, is thyroid not the hormone that turns a tadpole into a frog? Right? And we look at fertility and growth and cellular development and neurodevelopment and all those things. I mean, thyroid is absolutely imperative and there's so much in our world, these endocrine disrupting chemicals and plastics and water and perfumes and colognes. The average woman puts something like 156 chemicals on her body every day. The average man has something like 65 or 85 chemicals a day.
and they disrupt and dysregulate your hormones. And it took a little bit, I'll tell you, it was a brave move on my part. It took a while, but I switched over from aluminum-based deodorant to a natural-based, I get it from Rocky Mountain soap, I'm a big fan, not sponsored, but maybe they will after this, but I love their natural deodorants and products. And you know, I'll tell you, I even started doing a detox bath. It was from Dr. Carrie Matage. I'm not sure if you're familiar with her, but.
Elena Zinkov (19:34.53)Yeah.
Josh (19:51.1)She mixes in a combination of bentonite clay, baking soda, borax, and Epsom salts. And they're all phenomenal detoxifiers. I started washing my hair with borax and baking soda. And you know what? It was almost too much. It stripped all, it was like a hard shampoo. It was incredible. And now I'm perfume free. I'm paraben free. I'm all of that stuff. And my energy is better. My focus is better. My mind is more clear.
Elena Zinkov (20:08.61)Yes.
Josh (20:17.828)I can think, I have more energy, I'm exercising, I'm stronger. It's incredible the difference just by clearing these chemicals out of my system.
Elena Zinkov (20:25.502)Yeah, I will say two things. One is you mentioned the fertility and thyroid and because I get to with just my line of work, I see women from all stages of life. You know, I see teenagers and then I see women in their 20s, women in their 30s, perimenopause and so on. But one of my favorite parts is let's say seeing a woman who is let's say trying to get pregnant and of course we'll work on hormone health and then
I check their thyroid throughout their pregnancy and I don't just check their TSH. Frequently what happens is if a woman is on the thyroid hormone, I'm adjusting her thyroid hormone based on her needs throughout the pregnancy. What happens is sometimes I have women who come to me for their second pregnancy because they weren't with me for the first pregnancy and they gain 20 pounds less during their second pregnancy compared to the first pregnancy.
(01:04):
you know, that's because we're a jet and we're not just, and I'm not just focusing on the thyroid hormone, but it does play such a huge role in insulin and blood sugar and our ability to utilize fat. And so when it comes into, when it comes to fertility and even fetal health, it is so important to monitor that thyroid through before pregnancy, during pregnancy, and then.
postpartum as well and not just focus on the TSH. And then the second thing I want to take is we're talking about environmental toxins. It is so important to address the environmental component. It is nothing will work as well as you want it to work if you don't.
lower your toxin exposure. You mentioned skincare products. That's huge. And it's also a very easy way to reduce the toxin burden. Water. I'm still shocked and surprised when I hear people are still drinking tap water. It's one of those things that for a few years I kind of stopped asking people because I almost felt silly asking if they drink tap water because most of the answers were like, oh no, I drink filtered water or I drink my alkaline water.
Josh (22:24.762)Yeah.
Elena Zinkov (22:38.242)But then I remember I was looking at one of my patient's lab results and just their metabolic panel came back really funky. And I asked, do you drink tap water? And they said, yes. And that was one of my turning points where I said to myself, I need to get back to asking people about this exposure. And fluoride, let's say even at the dentist office. I, you know, I...
Josh (23:04.812)Yeah.
Elena Zinkov (23:07.858)educate a lot of my patients that we can improve oral health and reduce the likelihood of cavity formations by not just relying on fluoride. Right. And it's also one of the bigger endocrine disruptors. And I frequently talk about this in pediatrics where how can we reduce endocrine disruptors, right? Even in our kids. And it even starts at the dentist office is that, you know, minimize that fluoride exposure.
Josh (23:32.6)Well, you know, it's interesting in the functional medicine community, Biosidine Botanical is the company. They have a great reputation because they use all plant based products and use natural remedies. And I changed over because I actually tested positive. I did my GI map. I had tons of Candida overgrowth. I had H. pylori, provatella, all these inflammatory bacteria. I was borderlining SIBO. My pancreatic function in the last days was way down. And so-
Part of that was clearing the oral microbiome. And so I switched over to this toothpaste that they have. And for those of you listening, if you're in Canada, it's really hard to get and crazy overpriced, but clove and neem, you can get those toothpaste basics. But I'll tell you, Elena, I don't have, you know the end of the day when your teeth are kind of fuzzy, everything builds up. My teeth are slippery, smooth and shiny all day. That's all bacteria. And we were always taught that sugar rots your teeth. Well, sugar doesn't rot your teeth. Sugar feeds bacteria. The bacteria eat your teeth, fix your oral microbiome.
And you're good. You know, I had Dr. McCullough on yesterday and we were talking about even like COVID and how it actually affects the entire GI system leading to all these issues and autoimmune conditions and IBD. He's like, you swallow that virus. Well, you swallow the bacteria, you swallow everything and it goes through your entire tract.
Elena Zinkov (24:44.158)Absolutely. I mean, we can test our viruses in our gut. And that was one of the things that I was going to actually mention is that you have your biggest source of your immune system or the hub for your immune system is your gut. And it is because your gut, besides your liver, is one of the most profound and important detox organs. This is where
kind of the outside world meets the inside world. And that is why our immune system is there, right? If you ever look at the innervation of the gut and the blood supply and the concentration of immune cells in the gut, it is so vast. And we just, we...
cannot underestimate just the immune response that happens in the gut and why it is so important to focus on gut health in any condition.
Josh (25:46.061)You know, you talk about the skin and the skin, just for our listeners, it's an organ. It's the largest organ in the body. And when I was going through school, one of my teachers had said, he says, if you put it on your skin, you may as well put it in your mouth. There's really no difference as far as its durability is there.
Elena Zinkov (26:03.03)Well, it is your biggest detox organ. So we can sweat toxins out, but that also means that toxins can get in. So for example, let's think about skincare products, right? They're fat soluble. So...
Part of what we need to achieve with skincare products is we need to get it into the, not just the superficial layer of the skin, but we need to get it into the epidermis layer. And that requires for a product to be fat soluble, and toxins are fat soluble, which is why they get stored in fat tissue. It's also another reason why we can do transdermal hormones, because anything that gets on your skin enters your blood supply.
And so we do have to be really careful with what we apply to our skin. And I would also say even the clothes that we wear.
Josh (27:05.204)microplastics and particles and all that junk. So two questions. Yeah, so many, and it's in Mountain Dew as well. They use fire retardants there. Well, two questions for you. So what clothing types do you recommend people wear and what water filter do you recommend the average household gets?
Elena Zinkov (27:08.062)Yeah, exactly. I are retardants.
Elena Zinkov (27:15.635)Yeah.
Elena Zinkov (27:23.154)Yeah, that's an excellent question. So cotton is usually my choice for clothing. And so predominantly cotton, of course, you can't really go wrong with that. And I'm not as well versed in the type of the type of clothing. It's not really my specialty. It's one of those things that I think I'm still learning a lot more about. When it comes to my kiddo I try to do
(01:25):
I try to support local businesses. I try to make sure that he has more cotton-like clothes and less of the synthetic clothing. Of course, we know nowadays that spandex is not the best for us. Do I wear it? I do. Am I trying to limit it? Yes, I do. Again, it's a topic that I'm still personally learning about. And I try not to live in fear. And what I mean by that is we do have
really awesome built-in detox mechanisms in our body. We are exposed to more toxins than ever, but we're also living in a time where we have access to sauna, we have access to binders, we have access to chlorophyll, to more greens than we can eat in a day or in a lifetime. So we have, yes, we're exposed to a number of toxins from the skincare products to, you know, the clothes that we wear, to the air that we breathe.
the water that we drink, but we can also really be mindful about the choices that we make and almost apply that 80-20% rule. It might not be perfect in some things, but I'm kicking ass and doing my red light, sweating, whether it's exercise or sauna, hydrotherapy, and the list goes on how we can support our detox pathways.
Josh (29:05.96)I mean, it really is the pick your battles. I don't microwave my food because it's radiation, right? And you can see if you actually look on radiography, you can see microwave food emits radiation, you swallow it, you absorb radiation. So I make the choice not to do that, but the shirt I'm wearing now is probably 40% polyester. So pick your battles, right? We're not expecting anybody to live on the land and share your own sheep and knit your own yarn and make your own clothes, but do your best.
Elena Zinkov (29:19.712)Right.
Elena Zinkov (29:33.587)Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. When it comes to filter. So I love a point of entry filter. So this is something that you can install in your home if you can. And it is able, then you filter all of the water that enters your household. So it's through, it's essentially carbon filtration process. And what I
One of the benefits of that is then you are, you, you receive filtered water, whether it's from your faucet shower heads, right? So you don't need to get multiple different filters for your house, like a shower head filter or a kitchen faucet. Um, pretty much in our house, you can get filtered water, properly filtered water anywhere.
Now the caveat is that point of entry filters, they're kind of notorious for pretty much stripping your water of everything. And so I like to balance it out by adding electrolytes into water or making sure that I'm getting my trace minerals, especially for someone who's active and exercising a lot and sweating it out. Then you want to make sure that you're getting trace minerals. We also have a water softener element.
Added to our in a form of salt Added with our point of entry filter So that's by far one of my one of my favorite fills filters to use you probably have do you have a recommendation? For something let's say someone is in an apartment or a condo and doesn't and can't maybe install a point of entry filter system
Josh (31:06.708)Yeah, and that's actually what I was gonna ask you about. I mean, there's so many, right? Point of entry, I'm in an apartment as well. So if I want a water filter and I don't wanna spend $6,000 on a Kangen filter, right? Which would go just in my tap because I don't have point of entry. I do have a shower filter. I got it on Amazon for 25 bucks. It's like 15 different layers. You got all these different rocks and minerals and all kinds of stuff. Dechlorinates the water and my skin feels much better. And the water is a lot harder. You know, like there's soft water and hard water. Hard water is more mineralized.
Elena Zinkov (31:15.798)Yeah.
Josh (31:35.424)but I grew up with very soft water, with a water where you would towel off and you're still wet for half an hour. Whereas this stuff, you brush it with your hand and you dry. It's very mineral heavy. And I quite like that myself. But I mean, there are so many different types. You can look at reverse osmosis, there's carbon filters, distillation filters, mineral base filters and rock filters. And like you talked about the carbon that you guys use, which is, I imagine just a big carbon sponge filter. Basically the water runs through.
Elena Zinkov (32:00.374)Yeah, it's actually, it looks like, you know, in scuba diving that the oxygen tank, I don't even know if that's the proper form, I used to scuba dive. And I don't even know if that's the proper terminology, but you know, it looks like this huge oxygen tank. And that's essentially the carbon, the carbon filter. But I do have to say since installing that in our house, I have noticed improvement in my skin as well as my hair.
Josh (32:06.818)Yeah, yeah.
Hehehehe
Elena Zinkov (32:29.154)And that's one of the things when we are dealing with any sort of even skin issues or hair issues, we have to look at our water, at our water source. And then the other thing I would add too, let's say you don't have access to the best water filter, right? You can't spend thousands of dollars on a great water filter. Balance that out with alkaline water.
So a pH balanced water that you can get at any organic store or any supermarket really nowadays, you can get access to alkaline water. And sometimes people say, well, that's expensive. And, you know, we spend money on other things mindlessly. And, you know, we just kind of subconscious. So spend money on alkaline water instead of the Starbucks lattes.
Josh (33:09.216)Mm-hmm. It's priorities. Yeah, yeah.
Josh (33:16.536)There's so many questions I have about so many things and I know we've only got 10, 15 minutes more of it here. So I won't go too far off track, but something interesting about alkaline water. Alkaline water, back to chemistry, and this is why I have lots of questions about it because I'm sure it's alkalized. But the question is, in chemistry, nothing can donate electrons while still maintaining its properties. So if I take an alkalized water, for example, because the number of electrons in the hydrogen balance and all that makes it alkaline.
And then if I ingest that, my body takes that alkalinity, what's remaining therefore becomes acidic, does it not?
Elena Zinkov (33:51.298)So you bring up a really great point. And I think it becomes going back to the, even the oral microbiome. I think it's alkaline in terms of being for very short and a brief period of time. But if you think about our bonus pH, it is so tightly regulated. It is just drinking.
(01:46):
Alkaline water or eating alkaline food. It's not going to change our bodies pH Because that is so tightly regulated like if your pH fluctuates from being too alkaline or too acidic Those are really big red flags in your body. So I don't even believe in testing like those saliva Strips and I don't know how you feel about those. I well, I'm very open
Josh (34:23.34)Mm-hmm.
Josh (34:32.488)Oh, you're having seizures, blackouts, like you'll die.
Josh (34:42.817)I don't test them either.
Elena Zinkov (34:44.222)Very open-minded. However, the pH in your mouth does not reflect your total body's pH because that is so, again, tightly controlled and regulated. So I think from an alkaline perspective or alkaline water, I'm looking at it more from what it's doing, let's say locally, as in when we're drinking water and what it does to our oral microbiome.
Josh (35:03.884)Mm.
Elena Zinkov (35:07.114)or our esophagus and soothing the lining of the esophagus and stomach acid as well.
Josh (35:14.036)very sensible. Good, good. Well, let's circle back. I'd love to talk a little bit more about PMS. Now, obviously PMS symptoms, estrogen and progesterone is probably the most imbalanced set of hormones that I see in my clients across the board, especially dealing with gut issues, which can contribute to anxiety, stress, depression, which again circles back and creates more hormonal issues. There's all these conversion problems now and it's a whole disaster. So
If someone's dealing with gut issues and they're having severe PMS, a lot of breast tenderness, really bad severe cramping during their cycle, heavy, heavy bleeding or dark, thick, like clotted blood, what type of steps are we going to take to start correcting some of those hormonal imbalances to reduce PMS to effectively? I mean, I believe and I've seen it many, many times. I've corrected dozens of cases of severe PMS where they don't even know the period comes on and almost like my wife, it sneaks up on her. She doesn't.
I'm on my period, I forgot about that, because it's so regulated now, when it used to be a week of depression. What do you do for your patients to come in and see you dealing with that and you are dealing with gut issues?
Elena Zinkov (36:22.282)Yes. So number one is we want to work on liver health.
just because liver is the first place where your estrogen starts getting metabolized and it needs to go through phase one and phase two of liver detoxification. And if our liver is not doing a good job of, let's say, breaking down estrogen or eliminating estrogen, then we're gonna have a backup of estrogen in our system, which can lead to estrogen dominance or an imbalance between estrogen and progesterone. So that's number one. Number two is we wanna make sure
that we're having regular bowel movements. So for women who are not having regular bowel movements, they're gonna be more prone to reabsorbing that estrogen that is now supposed to leave our system via bowel movement. Now, you know, that estrogen plus all the other toxins are getting reabsorbed back into the bloodstream, which again can contribute to estrogen dominance. So.
I definitely want to make sure that women are having proper bowel movements. And then the other thing is supporting proper microbiome. There are certain bacteria in the gut that can make a woman more estrogen dominant. So for example, the bacteroidy species and the formicida species of bacteria, they can, and even opportunistic bacteria, they can contribute to the increased production of beta-glucuronidase enzyme.
which is kind of the body's way of a sneaky way for the body to take estrogen that is now ready to be exported out of the body. And it just puts it back into the bloodstream, which is really interesting, kind of can work against us, um, to some extent. So we want to make sure that we're doing potentially a gut cleanse to even out the microbiome and supporting it with maybe a probiotic again of choice to support proper.
Elena Zinkov (38:19.542)Gut flora. So those are some of the main things that I would do to help reduce symptoms of PMSs, focus on liver health and make sure that we balance the microbiome. But I would say the other thing that I would do too is provide the right nutrients to help with progesterone and for venanolome production. And some of my favorite nutrients, they belong to the B vitamin family, B5 and B6, which are really great for adrenal gland function,
version of prognanolone to progesterone. So part of that is evening out that imbalance between progesterone and estrogen.
Josh (38:57.312)Something I'm very comfortable giving to my clients is like an over-the-counter progesterone cream. I use a company, for example, Neutrodyne, they make a cream called Profemina, and it's 20 milligrams twice a day, either kind of apply everywhere. I recommend typically vaginally so you don't get it on everything and every one. But why is it that so many women are dealing with lowered progesterone? Is it the conversions? Is it the pregnenolone conversion? Is it stress, is it liver? Is it all the above? What's going on in our 2023 where...
Progesterone is just so all over the map and lacking in so many women.
Elena Zinkov (39:31.494)Yeah, I think in part number one, we're more aware of it, right? We have we're talking about it more. I think the social media and even podcasts like this, a lot more women are learning about the impact of progesterone and low progesterone in particular. I have yet to see a woman who's progesterone dominant. It's not really a thing unless there's cancer, for example, but it's
Josh (39:51.552)Mm-hmm.
(02:07):
Josh (39:56.029)Sure.
Elena Zinkov (39:57.326)It's rare that you see a woman that I have yet to tell a woman after over 20,000 patients that I've seen my practice that, hey, you've got too much progesterone. We need to tone it down. But I think when we're talking more about it, there's more information about it. We're a lot more aware about the imbalances in hormones in particular progesterone. Number two, yes, women are mostly estrogen dominant and lacking progesterone. And I have to say it's most likely due to birth control.
Dietary causes, we're exposed to so many xenoestrogens and exogenous sources of estrogen plastics being one of them. Again, we talk about skincare products, some of the other endocrine disruptors that can make us more estrogen dominant. So those are some of the major reasons and of course stress, right? So we're just exposed to a lot more stress compared to different stress, I would say. Now, you know, especially in the US culture where it's like work, work.
and the balance is very underrated. But those are some of the major reasons why I see women being lower on progesterone from that perspective.
Josh (41:06.232)So I know we only have a few minutes here, but I'd love to talk about this fear-based approach that you mentioned about, you know, influences of providers that they need to understand. You say that we live in a toxic world, but don't need to be paralyzed in the choices we make. What is your approach? Cause we talked about that, like, I don't microwave my food. We talk about getting cotton, talk about, you know, getting out of EMFs and turning your wifi off at night, avoiding 5G and 3G and avoiding electromagnetic fields and sleeping on these different PEMF mats to get better.
grounding and there's so many things and it makes your freaking head spin. So what advice do you give to our listeners who are curious and upset all at the same time right now by our conversation?
Elena Zinkov (41:38.701)Yes.
Elena Zinkov (41:47.287)Yeah. So one, again, just like don't freak out because your body is built to be resilience and you, you do have checks and balances in place to help you function in this world. When you do want to be optimal and not just function, then you do have to start looking at where are the areas that I can improve, where are the areas that I
maybe overdoing it. And for some people, they could be getting great sleep, their diet is great, their exercise is on track, but maybe they binge drink on the weekends. And so that's something to take a look at. Someone could be
vegan or carnivore or whatever, again, hitting all the marks, but maybe that level of paranoia of being perfect in every aspect of their life is driving their stress through the roof. And in the end, you know, it kind of
bites them and does, you know, ends up causing the opposite result of what we're looking at. And what I'm leading into is that when I was still pursuing my degree in medical school and I was in a nutrition research class.
One thing that really stood out is we kind of compare different diets and cancer frequency and relapse. And it was frustrating for some people to hear that sometimes even the best diet, someone who was eating very well and had the best diet ended up getting cancer because it wouldn't add up. And so I think every one of us needs to define what is optimal health.
Elena Zinkov (43:32.222)What do we define as optimal energy? What is important for us? And then do a complete sort of like a life audit about where could we improve? Like if you're still, I was, I was on a weekend getaway with her girlfriend. We took our two boys to a soccer tournament and she's probably going to.
laugh and blush when she hears this episode they even mentioned this but it's really important it kind of goes back to I'm still surprised that people drink tap water I'm still surprised when people microwave their food in a plastic Tupperware container and I saw her microwaving something in a plastic cup and she was actually gonna give that to me whatever she was microwaving and I said what are you doing?
Josh (43:59.477)Hehehe
Josh (44:08.632)Mm-hmm.
Elena Zinkov (44:20.99)She's like, what? I'm like, you're microwaving it plastic. She's like, I can't do that. I'm like, no. Let me just spare you all of that xenoestrogen exposure and plastic exposure. But that's an area of improvement. And that is such a simple fix. Right?
Josh (44:37.076)And it sounds almost crazy, like I can't even microwave in plastic, but when you know the things that we know, you'd be crazy to do it.
Elena Zinkov (44:43.882)Right, exactly. But it's still not mainstream. And I know some people are listening to it like, Oh, that's probably stupid, or that's probably silly. You know, as one of my friends once said, nothing is obvious. And, and we all have areas of improvement and micro improvements or even major improvements that we can do. But I just don't like this approach that
Josh (44:54.392)Mm-hmm.
Elena Zinkov (45:04.298)If you don't do this, you will die. That you're surrounded by toxins and you're constantly absorbing toxins. There's nothing you can do. I mean, I feel like people are just paralyzed that they can't even eat a chocolate bar without being worried that they're going to get exposed to all of these like heavy metals. Or just can't go out to eat because Lord knows they use too many, you know, inflammatory seed oils. Granted, if someone is really sick and really ill, yeah, they do need to be super diligent about.
(02:28):
Josh (45:15.62)Mm-hmm.
Elena Zinkov (45:33.17)you know, really, um, avoiding those toxins and limiting their toxin exposure. But we're not talking about those, you know, those extremes right now. I'm talking about an average person, let's say who wants to live a healthy, long, um, fulfilling life. Just take a look at your life and see where you could improve. What are the micro, the major improvements and go from, go from there and listen to people who are empowering, not disempowering.
Josh (46:00.416)Well, I love that. Elena, my favourite question to ask at the end of any interview, is there anything else you'd like to mention, talk about, or leave the audience with before I wrap things up?
Elena Zinkov (46:12.974)Yes, I think if I could say one last thing is be open minded, be open minded and work with someone or have your health care team be open minded to different therapies and not get so caught up that you know
There's only one way to go about fixing the problem. At the end, it needs to be a total body approach and we need to think outside of the box with every person.
Josh (46:45.256)I love that. Well, Elena, thank you so much for being so generous with your time, spending the day with us and just sharing all of your knowledge and expertise. This podcast would never happen without the generosity of the medical community and it means the world to me and our listeners, or listeners to be as we're recording our first season that you and the community around you are just so willing to help the general public. So thank you.
Elena Zinkov (47:10.07)Thank you so much for having me.
Josh (01:56.524)Dr. Elena Zinkov, thank you so much for being here.
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Elena Zinkov (02:12.706)Thank you so much for having me on. I'm very excited.
Josh (02:15.928)glad you're here. It was quite the intro I put out there. I really worked on that one. I hope it did you justice.
Elena Zinkov (02:22.334)It sounded better than it did in my head, so that's all that matters.
Josh (02:25.072)Oh good, good. I use my announcer voice and I really put it on thick.
Elena Zinkov (02:30.029)You actually have a great, like, radio host voice.
Josh (02:33.28)Thank you, you know what, I've been told that for a very long time, like you should do videos or a podcast and I thought, I will do exactly that and now here we are.
Elena Zinkov (02:41.982)Such a great way to just let people know what you're great at and share the wealth of knowledge that you have, right?
Josh (02:49.464)It's a fantastic medium. And we're just so excited you're here to talk about the things we're talking about. I mean, as you know, I specialize in inflammatory bowel disease and almost every single one of my clients has some kind of hormone issue of some kind that we obviously have to fix. Why is that? What's going on with the gut and hormones?
Elena Zinkov (03:09.502)Yeah, it's a million dollar question, right? It sort of becomes this chicken or the egg issue or scenario where a lot of times we're wondering, well, is it the hormone imbalance that came first and then IBS or IBD or some other gut issues? Or is it the gut issue that started first, which then led into hormone imbalance? And of course, there can be.
room for both scenarios to happen or all of them to happen simultaneously. So I never like to just chase sort of the root cause even though it's important. But when someone comes in and they're really sick and they're just struggling, it just becomes a matter of let's kind of normalize things a bit. Let's get you feeling better. And then we can kind of pull at different strengths to see what the root cause is. So I like to use a couple of classic examples where
It could be the gut health that happens first and the inflammation that's in the gut that then affects hormones. And then another example of how there's a hormone imbalance that then leads to, let's say, an immune dysregulation or bowel issues. So one of the classic examples, let's say, is an under-functioning thyroid gland, whether it's a clinical hypothyroidism or flat-out
Josh (04:22.838)Okay.
Elena Zinkov (04:36.014)Thyroid usually speeds everything up. So normally it normalizes bowel movements. We have normal heart rate, normal breath rate, metabolism, fat.
fat oxidation, all the good stuff. So when someone has a slower thyroid function, we see a slowing down in the digestive system, which is why constipation, for example, is one of the symptoms of a low thyroid function, whether you're hypothyroid or you're kind of on a verge of being hypothyroid. And this is where
what I see frequently happen, and this is also a question that I get is, did I develop SIBO first or was I hypothyroid first? Well, we know that if someone is prone to constipation, they're going to be prone to develop in SIBO. They're going to be prone to developing inflammation in the gut just because they can't eliminate things properly. And when we normalize hormone function, in this case, let's say thyroid hormone, then we start to see the gut normalize.
And in this kind of situation, we have to address two things simultaneously, the gut health and the hormone health. So that's one of the examples where hormones affect gut health. Another instance, let's say is if someone for whatever reason, maybe they have low microbiome diversity, maybe they were...
Necessarian baby right or they were exposed to lots of antibiotics which ruined their microbiome diversity and they have Underlying some sort of gut disturbance or inflammation because of that and they have malabsorption Issues now you're not getting all those nutrients properly absorbed and that can lead to declining hormone levels Because hormones is not just about cholesterol backbone
Elena Zinkov (06:33.814)We also need certain nutrients in place that help us produce those hormones, but then also support all the enzymes in the conversion processes.
Josh (06:44.796)I often explain it to my clients that when your body needs nutrients, a currency in the body, and everything's a transaction, there's always a trade of resources. Something's being used or being taken up, being converted. There's nothing we take into our bodies that comes out the same way. It's always converted some way, somehow. I talk about it like bank accounts. Your body will store nutrients in the liver, the muscles, the kidneys, the fat, all over the place. But as we start to go through, we get sicker and sicker. We lose.
nutrient absorption due to inflammation, your body's going to steal from other places. Now because you're deficient in those, you're in the red. Now we have thyroid issues, now we have hair loss, we have eczema, all these imbalances, your immune system starts to go haywire. So when people are struggling so much with nutrient malabsorption, right, their bodies robbed all these resources from around the body, what steps would you give them for dealing with hormonal issues, be it thyroid, sex hormones, anything?
to start correcting that process, getting their body to absorb nutrients to self-correct.
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Elena Zinkov (07:45.854)Yeah. One of the first things that I like to do is get a baseline because we want to know what we're what we're dealing with. And I like to consider myself as kind of a health detective or an investigator because I do approach the human body with
Um, a sense of curiosity. I want to know what's going on first before I start doing. Cleanses throwing multivitamins at people. And I'm very curious about, well, why isn't someone absorbing nutrients? Let's say not even from a supplement, but just even food, right. That that's contributing hormonal imbalances. So I like to do a pretty thorough workups. I'll include blood testing and gut health testing. So the two labs that I really like are GI map.
and Genova GI effects test and I toss between the two sometimes I use one or the other depending on what I'm looking at but we want to know is it a hormone imbalance paired with gut imbalance or is it both right so rarely do I see someone without a hormone imbalance or with a perfect perfectly balanced microbiome I generally will do
let's say two therapies simultaneously. And what I mean by that is
I'll take someone let's say through a corrective gut cleanse. And what I mean by that is we'll do antimicrobial herbs. We'll also include some binders because obviously kill, kill some of the opportunistic bacteria want to bind up some of the toxins that get released. I also want to include some of the healthy microbiome. So depending on what the gut test shows me and depending on what kind of issues my patients are having.
Elena Zinkov (09:33.616)or is diabetic or has neurodegenerative disease, I will use different probiotics in this kind of a scenario. So as we are looking to change the landscape of the microbiome through, let's say, this gentle cleanse.
then we are also correcting micronutrient levels. So then they might either benefit from the comprehensive multivitamin or more specialty vitamins. Maybe they need a little bit more iodine selenium, especially for their thyroid function or L-tyrosine, or maybe they're someone who's really depleted in iron. So we'll switch over to like a B-flavor supplements. So that's an example of where I would even not even rush to herbs.
that stimulate hormone production or even bioidentical hormones, which is, of course, very close to my heart. It's what I specialize in. But I really focus on, first and foremost, correcting the microbiome, correcting the nutritional imbalances. And that also includes amino acids, because those don't get absorbed as well in the context of microbiome imbalance. And then we can start getting a little bit more fancy and looking at.
Do we need to support the thyroid a bit more? And what does that look like? Do we need to work on adrenal health and support proper stress response and cortisol production and metabolism? And then do we need to go a step further and actually help someone with hormone replacement? Because someone who is clinically hypothyroid, and let's say hypothyroidism just runs in their family and there's no herb or cleanse you can do to reverse that.
they will benefit from a thyroid medication, which in turn will support their proper bowel movements and digestion and stomach acid production, which will prevent the C-bonals, other digestive issues from happening.
Josh (11:33.792)Let's talk about thyroid for a minute. So when we're dealing with hormones, obviously hormones are a very complex process. And one of the ways I describe it, it's like there are a bunch of marbles sitting on a table. One shifts, everything else has to shift around a balance to keep that table balanced. This is why hormones are so complex. And we often see people who come in with hypothyroid or low thyroid and they check and they test just their TSH. The TSH is high.
So for those of you listening, and Elena, if you're not watching the audio, she's rolling her eyes, shaking her head. We're totally on the same page here. So they check TSH. Now TSH is thyroid stimulating hormone. So when you have a low amount of active thyroid in your body, your body increases TSH, this stimulating hormone saying, we need more thyroid, make more. And that's all they check is that one hormone. What they're not checking is T3, T4, reverse T3. Like they're not checking any of these other things. We're not checking the active and inactive.
So we're not actually seeing, is your body under producing? Is it under converting? Like what is actually going on? Is it lack of nutrients and production? Like what's at the root of it? Why not?
Elena Zinkov (12:45.347)There's a few reasons for that. And number one, I think conventional medicine is kind of stuck in its old ways, even though there are, there is so much research and so many studies that anyone can present to their healthcare provider that shows, by the way, TSH is not the most accurate marker for thyroid function.
I think it has to do with one, how medical providers are trained, two, the amount of time that an average physician has with a patient. And a lot of times it's not their fault, right? When you're operating under number three, insurance model of healthcare, insurance will not only not reimburse you for
the time that you spent with a patient if you go outside of, let's say, the 15 minutes, but they might also penalize you. Or.
Josh (13:42.532)You guys are giving 15 minutes there. We're giving, I've heard cases as low as seven to nine minutes.
Elena Zinkov (13:48.11)Absolutely. I feel, yes, I'm being so generous with 15 minutes and a little sidetracked, but a lot of research shows that an average physician in the conventional model of care spends maybe a minute talking about dietary interventions, which is insane. So if we focus on properly treating hormones, one, we're not...
average physician is not taught how to do that, then you have the insurance side of it that dictates how long they can be with the patient and what they can't even prescribe. Oh, and by the way, if a physician prescribes thyroid hormone and they do a chart audit or a lab audit and the TSH was within normal limits, they can be penalized for prescribing something that was technically not medically necessary.
Josh (14:41.612)that didn't meet the ID 10 code like.
Elena Zinkov (14:44.066)Exactly. So there's a number of reasons of why physicians will opt to just check the TSH, even though the majority of providers nowadays, whether they're functional medicine and there's plenty of great MDs out there and other health care providers that are shifting away from just checking the TSH. Now, whether or not they know how to treat thyroid properly, that's a different story because you can test hormones.
(00:43):
Josh (14:59.864)for sure.
Elena Zinkov (15:12.614)all day, every day, but if you're just looking at the range, are you really, you know, looking at what's optimal versus just what's in the range? That's a whole different, you know, that's a whole different story. But those are some of the few major reasons of, you know, why providers only test the TSH.
Josh (15:28.856)Thyroid is an interesting hormone. I know you could write an entire dissertation on thyroid alone, and we have a lot of ground to cover today, thyroid hormone and sex hormones and all kinds, and it's such a vastly complex topic. We can't cram it in a one-hour interview, but thyroid is often associated with weight gain and weight loss. My thyroid's high, I gain weight, or I lose weight, my thyroid's low, I gain weight. Can you tell us briefly about thyroid? I know you mentioned it's speeding up and slowing down. What are its functions in the body?
What does it do for us and how does it connect to sex hormones and menstruation?
Elena Zinkov (16:02.462)Yeah, I love hormones so much. Again, a little sidetrack, but as I was about to say what thyroid does in the different parts of the body that it affects, it really reminds me one of the reasons of why I do specialize in hormones. And it's because of how hormones really do affect all aspects of our health from top down. So if we even just talk about thyroid function, it affects our immune system.
It affects how well our immune system, how well our antibodies are produced against whatever pathogen we're facing. It affects our cognitive function, how quickly our neurons are able to fire, how well our
brain is able to recover, how well we can, the neurons can rebuild and recover. And it does affect our blood sugar metabolism, fat oxidation, which in terms of effects are our metabolism. It affects gut health as well as. Auto immunity.
So we can have, if we have an improper thyroid function, it can in turn make us more pretty supposed to developing autoimmune disease. And then you mentioned, you know, the sex hormone, when we don't have enough of a thyroid hormone, we can have this downstream effect where then we don't have as good of a variant function. And in fact, I just had...
actually a client before this podcast and you know, I'm working with their entire family. It's first, it's usually the woman, then they bring their partner, then the kids get involved. And then, you know, then I, I'm working with a whole family, but this mom, um, her, you know, her teenage daughter has Hashimoto's thyroiditis.
Josh (17:42.73)up now.
Elena Zinkov (17:53.046)there is a gut components involved. So this again becomes kind of chicken or the egg thing. Was it the thyroid issues? You'll say hormonal issues or was it the gut? And certainly I feel like it's just two things happening altogether. But there's a lot of inflammation in terms of the thyroid antibodies. There is an underproduction of thyroid hormone and there's underproduction of progesterone and.
estrogen. And one of the conversations that we had, which ties into what we're talking about today is reducing inflammation, supporting thyroid health, simultaneously supporting ovarian function through certain nutrients. We're able to boost that sex hormone production and even infertility, even infertility. That's, I would say that
The one place in conventional medicine where I see thyroid being addressed better than anyone else anywhere else is in fertility clinics.
Josh (18:55.624)Well, it's interesting. I mean, is thyroid not the hormone that turns a tadpole into a frog? Right? And we look at fertility and growth and cellular development and neurodevelopment and all those things. I mean, thyroid is absolutely imperative and there's so much in our world, these endocrine disrupting chemicals and plastics and water and perfumes and colognes. The average woman puts something like 156 chemicals on her body every day. The average man has something like 65 or 85 chemicals a day.
and they disrupt and dysregulate your hormones. And it took a little bit, I'll tell you, it was a brave move on my part. It took a while, but I switched over from aluminum-based deodorant to a natural-based, I get it from Rocky Mountain soap, I'm a big fan, not sponsored, but maybe they will after this, but I love their natural deodorants and products. And you know, I'll tell you, I even started doing a detox bath. It was from Dr. Carrie Matage. I'm not sure if you're familiar with her, but.
Elena Zinkov (19:34.53)Yeah.
Josh (19:51.1)She mixes in a combination of bentonite clay, baking soda, borax, and Epsom salts. And they're all phenomenal detoxifiers. I started washing my hair with borax and baking soda. And you know what? It was almost too much. It stripped all, it was like a hard shampoo. It was incredible. And now I'm perfume free. I'm paraben free. I'm all of that stuff. And my energy is better. My focus is better. My mind is more clear.
Elena Zinkov (20:08.61)Yes.
Josh (20:17.828)I can think, I have more energy, I'm exercising, I'm stronger. It's incredible the difference just by clearing these chemicals out of my system.
Elena Zinkov (20:25.502)Yeah, I will say two things. One is you mentioned the fertility and thyroid and because I get to with just my line of work, I see women from all stages of life. You know, I see teenagers and then I see women in their 20s, women in their 30s, perimenopause and so on. But one of my favorite parts is let's say seeing a woman who is let's say trying to get pregnant and of course we'll work on hormone health and then
I check their thyroid throughout their pregnancy and I don't just check their TSH. Frequently what happens is if a woman is on the thyroid hormone, I'm adjusting her thyroid hormone based on her needs throughout the pregnancy. What happens is sometimes I have women who come to me for their second pregnancy because they weren't with me for the first pregnancy and they gain 20 pounds less during their second pregnancy compared to the first pregnancy.
(01:04):
you know, that's because we're a jet and we're not just, and I'm not just focusing on the thyroid hormone, but it does play such a huge role in insulin and blood sugar and our ability to utilize fat. And so when it comes into, when it comes to fertility and even fetal health, it is so important to monitor that thyroid through before pregnancy, during pregnancy, and then.
postpartum as well and not just focus on the TSH. And then the second thing I want to take is we're talking about environmental toxins. It is so important to address the environmental component. It is nothing will work as well as you want it to work if you don't.
lower your toxin exposure. You mentioned skincare products. That's huge. And it's also a very easy way to reduce the toxin burden. Water. I'm still shocked and surprised when I hear people are still drinking tap water. It's one of those things that for a few years I kind of stopped asking people because I almost felt silly asking if they drink tap water because most of the answers were like, oh no, I drink filtered water or I drink my alkaline water.
Josh (22:24.762)Yeah.
Elena Zinkov (22:38.242)But then I remember I was looking at one of my patient's lab results and just their metabolic panel came back really funky. And I asked, do you drink tap water? And they said, yes. And that was one of my turning points where I said to myself, I need to get back to asking people about this exposure. And fluoride, let's say even at the dentist office. I, you know, I...
Josh (23:04.812)Yeah.
Elena Zinkov (23:07.858)educate a lot of my patients that we can improve oral health and reduce the likelihood of cavity formations by not just relying on fluoride. Right. And it's also one of the bigger endocrine disruptors. And I frequently talk about this in pediatrics where how can we reduce endocrine disruptors, right? Even in our kids. And it even starts at the dentist office is that, you know, minimize that fluoride exposure.
Josh (23:32.6)Well, you know, it's interesting in the functional medicine community, Biosidine Botanical is the company. They have a great reputation because they use all plant based products and use natural remedies. And I changed over because I actually tested positive. I did my GI map. I had tons of Candida overgrowth. I had H. pylori, provatella, all these inflammatory bacteria. I was borderlining SIBO. My pancreatic function in the last days was way down. And so-
Part of that was clearing the oral microbiome. And so I switched over to this toothpaste that they have. And for those of you listening, if you're in Canada, it's really hard to get and crazy overpriced, but clove and neem, you can get those toothpaste basics. But I'll tell you, Elena, I don't have, you know the end of the day when your teeth are kind of fuzzy, everything builds up. My teeth are slippery, smooth and shiny all day. That's all bacteria. And we were always taught that sugar rots your teeth. Well, sugar doesn't rot your teeth. Sugar feeds bacteria. The bacteria eat your teeth, fix your oral microbiome.
And you're good. You know, I had Dr. McCullough on yesterday and we were talking about even like COVID and how it actually affects the entire GI system leading to all these issues and autoimmune conditions and IBD. He's like, you swallow that virus. Well, you swallow the bacteria, you swallow everything and it goes through your entire tract.
Elena Zinkov (24:44.158)Absolutely. I mean, we can test our viruses in our gut. And that was one of the things that I was going to actually mention is that you have your biggest source of your immune system or the hub for your immune system is your gut. And it is because your gut, besides your liver, is one of the most profound and important detox organs. This is where
kind of the outside world meets the inside world. And that is why our immune system is there, right? If you ever look at the innervation of the gut and the blood supply and the concentration of immune cells in the gut, it is so vast. And we just, we...
cannot underestimate just the immune response that happens in the gut and why it is so important to focus on gut health in any condition.
Josh (25:46.061)You know, you talk about the skin and the skin, just for our listeners, it's an organ. It's the largest organ in the body. And when I was going through school, one of my teachers had said, he says, if you put it on your skin, you may as well put it in your mouth. There's really no difference as far as its durability is there.
Elena Zinkov (26:03.03)Well, it is your biggest detox organ. So we can sweat toxins out, but that also means that toxins can get in. So for example, let's think about skincare products, right? They're fat soluble. So...
Part of what we need to achieve with skincare products is we need to get it into the, not just the superficial layer of the skin, but we need to get it into the epidermis layer. And that requires for a product to be fat soluble, and toxins are fat soluble, which is why they get stored in fat tissue. It's also another reason why we can do transdermal hormones, because anything that gets on your skin enters your blood supply.
And so we do have to be really careful with what we apply to our skin. And I would also say even the clothes that we wear.
Josh (27:05.204)microplastics and particles and all that junk. So two questions. Yeah, so many, and it's in Mountain Dew as well. They use fire retardants there. Well, two questions for you. So what clothing types do you recommend people wear and what water filter do you recommend the average household gets?
Elena Zinkov (27:08.062)Yeah, exactly. I are retardants.
Elena Zinkov (27:15.635)Yeah.
Elena Zinkov (27:23.154)Yeah, that's an excellent question. So cotton is usually my choice for clothing. And so predominantly cotton, of course, you can't really go wrong with that. And I'm not as well versed in the type of the type of clothing. It's not really my specialty. It's one of those things that I think I'm still learning a lot more about. When it comes to my kiddo I try to do
(01:25):
I try to support local businesses. I try to make sure that he has more cotton-like clothes and less of the synthetic clothing. Of course, we know nowadays that spandex is not the best for us. Do I wear it? I do. Am I trying to limit it? Yes, I do. Again, it's a topic that I'm still personally learning about. And I try not to live in fear. And what I mean by that is we do have
really awesome built-in detox mechanisms in our body. We are exposed to more toxins than ever, but we're also living in a time where we have access to sauna, we have access to binders, we have access to chlorophyll, to more greens than we can eat in a day or in a lifetime. So we have, yes, we're exposed to a number of toxins from the skincare products to, you know, the clothes that we wear, to the air that we breathe.
the water that we drink, but we can also really be mindful about the choices that we make and almost apply that 80-20% rule. It might not be perfect in some things, but I'm kicking ass and doing my red light, sweating, whether it's exercise or sauna, hydrotherapy, and the list goes on how we can support our detox pathways.
Josh (29:05.96)I mean, it really is the pick your battles. I don't microwave my food because it's radiation, right? And you can see if you actually look on radiography, you can see microwave food emits radiation, you swallow it, you absorb radiation. So I make the choice not to do that, but the shirt I'm wearing now is probably 40% polyester. So pick your battles, right? We're not expecting anybody to live on the land and share your own sheep and knit your own yarn and make your own clothes, but do your best.
Elena Zinkov (29:19.712)Right.
Elena Zinkov (29:33.587)Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. When it comes to filter. So I love a point of entry filter. So this is something that you can install in your home if you can. And it is able, then you filter all of the water that enters your household. So it's through, it's essentially carbon filtration process. And what I
One of the benefits of that is then you are, you, you receive filtered water, whether it's from your faucet shower heads, right? So you don't need to get multiple different filters for your house, like a shower head filter or a kitchen faucet. Um, pretty much in our house, you can get filtered water, properly filtered water anywhere.
Now the caveat is that point of entry filters, they're kind of notorious for pretty much stripping your water of everything. And so I like to balance it out by adding electrolytes into water or making sure that I'm getting my trace minerals, especially for someone who's active and exercising a lot and sweating it out. Then you want to make sure that you're getting trace minerals. We also have a water softener element.
Added to our in a form of salt Added with our point of entry filter So that's by far one of my one of my favorite fills filters to use you probably have do you have a recommendation? For something let's say someone is in an apartment or a condo and doesn't and can't maybe install a point of entry filter system
Josh (31:06.708)Yeah, and that's actually what I was gonna ask you about. I mean, there's so many, right? Point of entry, I'm in an apartment as well. So if I want a water filter and I don't wanna spend $6,000 on a Kangen filter, right? Which would go just in my tap because I don't have point of entry. I do have a shower filter. I got it on Amazon for 25 bucks. It's like 15 different layers. You got all these different rocks and minerals and all kinds of stuff. Dechlorinates the water and my skin feels much better. And the water is a lot harder. You know, like there's soft water and hard water. Hard water is more mineralized.
Elena Zinkov (31:15.798)Yeah.
Josh (31:35.424)but I grew up with very soft water, with a water where you would towel off and you're still wet for half an hour. Whereas this stuff, you brush it with your hand and you dry. It's very mineral heavy. And I quite like that myself. But I mean, there are so many different types. You can look at reverse osmosis, there's carbon filters, distillation filters, mineral base filters and rock filters. And like you talked about the carbon that you guys use, which is, I imagine just a big carbon sponge filter. Basically the water runs through.
Elena Zinkov (32:00.374)Yeah, it's actually, it looks like, you know, in scuba diving that the oxygen tank, I don't even know if that's the proper form, I used to scuba dive. And I don't even know if that's the proper terminology, but you know, it looks like this huge oxygen tank. And that's essentially the carbon, the carbon filter. But I do have to say since installing that in our house, I have noticed improvement in my skin as well as my hair.
Josh (32:06.818)Yeah, yeah.
Hehehehe
Elena Zinkov (32:29.154)And that's one of the things when we are dealing with any sort of even skin issues or hair issues, we have to look at our water, at our water source. And then the other thing I would add too, let's say you don't have access to the best water filter, right? You can't spend thousands of dollars on a great water filter. Balance that out with alkaline water.
So a pH balanced water that you can get at any organic store or any supermarket really nowadays, you can get access to alkaline water. And sometimes people say, well, that's expensive. And, you know, we spend money on other things mindlessly. And, you know, we just kind of subconscious. So spend money on alkaline water instead of the Starbucks lattes.
Josh (33:09.216)Mm-hmm. It's priorities. Yeah, yeah.
Josh (33:16.536)There's so many questions I have about so many things and I know we've only got 10, 15 minutes more of it here. So I won't go too far off track, but something interesting about alkaline water. Alkaline water, back to chemistry, and this is why I have lots of questions about it because I'm sure it's alkalized. But the question is, in chemistry, nothing can donate electrons while still maintaining its properties. So if I take an alkalized water, for example, because the number of electrons in the hydrogen balance and all that makes it alkaline.
And then if I ingest that, my body takes that alkalinity, what's remaining therefore becomes acidic, does it not?
Elena Zinkov (33:51.298)So you bring up a really great point. And I think it becomes going back to the, even the oral microbiome. I think it's alkaline in terms of being for very short and a brief period of time. But if you think about our bonus pH, it is so tightly regulated. It is just drinking.
(01:46):
Alkaline water or eating alkaline food. It's not going to change our bodies pH Because that is so tightly regulated like if your pH fluctuates from being too alkaline or too acidic Those are really big red flags in your body. So I don't even believe in testing like those saliva Strips and I don't know how you feel about those. I well, I'm very open
Josh (34:23.34)Mm-hmm.
Josh (34:32.488)Oh, you're having seizures, blackouts, like you'll die.
Josh (34:42.817)I don't test them either.
Elena Zinkov (34:44.222)Very open-minded. However, the pH in your mouth does not reflect your total body's pH because that is so, again, tightly controlled and regulated. So I think from an alkaline perspective or alkaline water, I'm looking at it more from what it's doing, let's say locally, as in when we're drinking water and what it does to our oral microbiome.
Josh (35:03.884)Mm.
Elena Zinkov (35:07.114)or our esophagus and soothing the lining of the esophagus and stomach acid as well.
Josh (35:14.036)very sensible. Good, good. Well, let's circle back. I'd love to talk a little bit more about PMS. Now, obviously PMS symptoms, estrogen and progesterone is probably the most imbalanced set of hormones that I see in my clients across the board, especially dealing with gut issues, which can contribute to anxiety, stress, depression, which again circles back and creates more hormonal issues. There's all these conversion problems now and it's a whole disaster. So
If someone's dealing with gut issues and they're having severe PMS, a lot of breast tenderness, really bad severe cramping during their cycle, heavy, heavy bleeding or dark, thick, like clotted blood, what type of steps are we going to take to start correcting some of those hormonal imbalances to reduce PMS to effectively? I mean, I believe and I've seen it many, many times. I've corrected dozens of cases of severe PMS where they don't even know the period comes on and almost like my wife, it sneaks up on her. She doesn't.
I'm on my period, I forgot about that, because it's so regulated now, when it used to be a week of depression. What do you do for your patients to come in and see you dealing with that and you are dealing with gut issues?
Elena Zinkov (36:22.282)Yes. So number one is we want to work on liver health.
just because liver is the first place where your estrogen starts getting metabolized and it needs to go through phase one and phase two of liver detoxification. And if our liver is not doing a good job of, let's say, breaking down estrogen or eliminating estrogen, then we're gonna have a backup of estrogen in our system, which can lead to estrogen dominance or an imbalance between estrogen and progesterone. So that's number one. Number two is we wanna make sure
that we're having regular bowel movements. So for women who are not having regular bowel movements, they're gonna be more prone to reabsorbing that estrogen that is now supposed to leave our system via bowel movement. Now, you know, that estrogen plus all the other toxins are getting reabsorbed back into the bloodstream, which again can contribute to estrogen dominance. So.
I definitely want to make sure that women are having proper bowel movements. And then the other thing is supporting proper microbiome. There are certain bacteria in the gut that can make a woman more estrogen dominant. So for example, the bacteroidy species and the formicida species of bacteria, they can, and even opportunistic bacteria, they can contribute to the increased production of beta-glucuronidase enzyme.
which is kind of the body's way of a sneaky way for the body to take estrogen that is now ready to be exported out of the body. And it just puts it back into the bloodstream, which is really interesting, kind of can work against us, um, to some extent. So we want to make sure that we're doing potentially a gut cleanse to even out the microbiome and supporting it with maybe a probiotic again of choice to support proper.
Elena Zinkov (38:19.542)Gut flora. So those are some of the main things that I would do to help reduce symptoms of PMSs, focus on liver health and make sure that we balance the microbiome. But I would say the other thing that I would do too is provide the right nutrients to help with progesterone and for venanolome production. And some of my favorite nutrients, they belong to the B vitamin family, B5 and B6, which are really great for adrenal gland function,
version of prognanolone to progesterone. So part of that is evening out that imbalance between progesterone and estrogen.
Josh (38:57.312)Something I'm very comfortable giving to my clients is like an over-the-counter progesterone cream. I use a company, for example, Neutrodyne, they make a cream called Profemina, and it's 20 milligrams twice a day, either kind of apply everywhere. I recommend typically vaginally so you don't get it on everything and every one. But why is it that so many women are dealing with lowered progesterone? Is it the conversions? Is it the pregnenolone conversion? Is it stress, is it liver? Is it all the above? What's going on in our 2023 where...
Progesterone is just so all over the map and lacking in so many women.
Elena Zinkov (39:31.494)Yeah, I think in part number one, we're more aware of it, right? We have we're talking about it more. I think the social media and even podcasts like this, a lot more women are learning about the impact of progesterone and low progesterone in particular. I have yet to see a woman who's progesterone dominant. It's not really a thing unless there's cancer, for example, but it's
Josh (39:51.552)Mm-hmm.
(02:07):
Josh (39:56.029)Sure.
Elena Zinkov (39:57.326)It's rare that you see a woman that I have yet to tell a woman after over 20,000 patients that I've seen my practice that, hey, you've got too much progesterone. We need to tone it down. But I think when we're talking more about it, there's more information about it. We're a lot more aware about the imbalances in hormones in particular progesterone. Number two, yes, women are mostly estrogen dominant and lacking progesterone. And I have to say it's most likely due to birth control.
Dietary causes, we're exposed to so many xenoestrogens and exogenous sources of estrogen plastics being one of them. Again, we talk about skincare products, some of the other endocrine disruptors that can make us more estrogen dominant. So those are some of the major reasons and of course stress, right? So we're just exposed to a lot more stress compared to different stress, I would say. Now, you know, especially in the US culture where it's like work, work.
and the balance is very underrated. But those are some of the major reasons why I see women being lower on progesterone from that perspective.
Josh (41:06.232)So I know we only have a few minutes here, but I'd love to talk about this fear-based approach that you mentioned about, you know, influences of providers that they need to understand. You say that we live in a toxic world, but don't need to be paralyzed in the choices we make. What is your approach? Cause we talked about that, like, I don't microwave my food. We talk about getting cotton, talk about, you know, getting out of EMFs and turning your wifi off at night, avoiding 5G and 3G and avoiding electromagnetic fields and sleeping on these different PEMF mats to get better.
grounding and there's so many things and it makes your freaking head spin. So what advice do you give to our listeners who are curious and upset all at the same time right now by our conversation?
Elena Zinkov (41:38.701)Yes.
Elena Zinkov (41:47.287)Yeah. So one, again, just like don't freak out because your body is built to be resilience and you, you do have checks and balances in place to help you function in this world. When you do want to be optimal and not just function, then you do have to start looking at where are the areas that I can improve, where are the areas that I
maybe overdoing it. And for some people, they could be getting great sleep, their diet is great, their exercise is on track, but maybe they binge drink on the weekends. And so that's something to take a look at. Someone could be
vegan or carnivore or whatever, again, hitting all the marks, but maybe that level of paranoia of being perfect in every aspect of their life is driving their stress through the roof. And in the end, you know, it kind of
bites them and does, you know, ends up causing the opposite result of what we're looking at. And what I'm leading into is that when I was still pursuing my degree in medical school and I was in a nutrition research class.
One thing that really stood out is we kind of compare different diets and cancer frequency and relapse. And it was frustrating for some people to hear that sometimes even the best diet, someone who was eating very well and had the best diet ended up getting cancer because it wouldn't add up. And so I think every one of us needs to define what is optimal health.
Elena Zinkov (43:32.222)What do we define as optimal energy? What is important for us? And then do a complete sort of like a life audit about where could we improve? Like if you're still, I was, I was on a weekend getaway with her girlfriend. We took our two boys to a soccer tournament and she's probably going to.
laugh and blush when she hears this episode they even mentioned this but it's really important it kind of goes back to I'm still surprised that people drink tap water I'm still surprised when people microwave their food in a plastic Tupperware container and I saw her microwaving something in a plastic cup and she was actually gonna give that to me whatever she was microwaving and I said what are you doing?
Josh (43:59.477)Hehehe
Josh (44:08.632)Mm-hmm.
Elena Zinkov (44:20.99)She's like, what? I'm like, you're microwaving it plastic. She's like, I can't do that. I'm like, no. Let me just spare you all of that xenoestrogen exposure and plastic exposure. But that's an area of improvement. And that is such a simple fix. Right?
Josh (44:37.076)And it sounds almost crazy, like I can't even microwave in plastic, but when you know the things that we know, you'd be crazy to do it.
Elena Zinkov (44:43.882)Right, exactly. But it's still not mainstream. And I know some people are listening to it like, Oh, that's probably stupid, or that's probably silly. You know, as one of my friends once said, nothing is obvious. And, and we all have areas of improvement and micro improvements or even major improvements that we can do. But I just don't like this approach that
Josh (44:54.392)Mm-hmm.
Elena Zinkov (45:04.298)If you don't do this, you will die. That you're surrounded by toxins and you're constantly absorbing toxins. There's nothing you can do. I mean, I feel like people are just paralyzed that they can't even eat a chocolate bar without being worried that they're going to get exposed to all of these like heavy metals. Or just can't go out to eat because Lord knows they use too many, you know, inflammatory seed oils. Granted, if someone is really sick and really ill, yeah, they do need to be super diligent about.
(02:28):
Josh (45:15.62)Mm-hmm.
Elena Zinkov (45:33.17)you know, really, um, avoiding those toxins and limiting their toxin exposure. But we're not talking about those, you know, those extremes right now. I'm talking about an average person, let's say who wants to live a healthy, long, um, fulfilling life. Just take a look at your life and see where you could improve. What are the micro, the major improvements and go from, go from there and listen to people who are empowering, not disempowering.
Josh (46:00.416)Well, I love that. Elena, my favourite question to ask at the end of any interview, is there anything else you'd like to mention, talk about, or leave the audience with before I wrap things up?
Elena Zinkov (46:12.974)Yes, I think if I could say one last thing is be open minded, be open minded and work with someone or have your health care team be open minded to different therapies and not get so caught up that you know
There's only one way to go about fixing the problem. At the end, it needs to be a total body approach and we need to think outside of the box with every person.
Josh (46:45.256)I love that. Well, Elena, thank you so much for being so generous with your time, spending the day with us and just sharing all of your knowledge and expertise. This podcast would never happen without the generosity of the medical community and it means the world to me and our listeners, or listeners to be as we're recording our first season that you and the community around you are just so willing to help the general public. So thank you.
Elena Zinkov (47:10.07)Thank you so much for having me.
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