Check out more articles, science, benefits and studes on heat and full-spectrum light therapy using Sunlighten Saunas and light devises:

LearnTrueHealth.com/sunlightensauna

Dr. Wendie's gift to you: www.fivejourneys.com/promo

Detox, Self-Healing from Mold & Stress with Dr. Wendie Trubow

https://www.learntruehealth.com/detox-self-healing-from-mold-stress-with-dr-wendie-trubow

Highlights:

The importance of detoxing
The impact of stress on body functions
Mycotoxins
Genetics is not a death sentence
Microbiome health and leaky gut trifectas
Why toxicity testing is important in improving our health

Stress has tremendous effects on our bodies. It can affect our ability to detox, digest food, ovulate, have sex, uptake nutrients, and even control our food cravings! In this episode, Dr. Wendie Trubow shares how we can recover from stress and other health issues just by changing our diet and lifestyle!

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast. Today’s episode is really awesome. We have Dr. Wendie Trubow with us today, who, through her own healing journey, discovered a unique way of focusing on supporting the body’s ability to detox, heal the thyroid, balance hormones, especially for women going perimenopause or menopause and just how they get on the other side of feeling poopie and to the point where you’re feeling awesome. Another big thing we talked about is that these toxins can lead to abdominal fat and can lead to depression, and can lead to fatigue. And so many of us are running around getting our coffee fix in the morning, getting our sugar fix in the afternoon, so it’s a self-medicating fatigue, not realizing that fatigue is a symptom of toxicity overload and that by doing daily simple things with our lifestyle and our diet and our nutrition, little fun life hacks that we can maximize our body’s ability to heal itself, maximize the body’s ability to detox and balance hormones and feel amazing.

Wendie, after our interview, said, oh no, I forgot to tell everyone about this freebie that I’m giving away. So I want you to know to go to her website fivejourneys.com/promo, and I’ll make sure that the link for that is in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. If you are listening on a podcast directory, just click details or show notes and it’ll all show up there. I’ll make sure that’s there.

Another thing we talked about is one of my absolute favorite tools that I’ve used to help my healing journey because I realized that a lot of my health issues were from toxins, specifically heavy metals, and that’s something we talked about in the interview, so you going to love learning about that. But the thing we both, Wendie and I both used is a Sunlighten Sauna. Now, I’ve been raving about Sunlighten Saunas for about four, five years now, and the reason why is I kept having these really weird episodes where I taste heavy metals in my mouth. My liver will become distended. I’d feel very toxic and very sick. And finally, one of my doctors, one of my naturopaths, just turned to me and said, you know you should really use a sauna because you sweat out these toxins, and it bypasses the liver and the kidneys, so I thought, this is amazing! So when I started to dive into studying the Sunlighten Sauna specifically, because I was looking at all the saunas and I kept hearing Sunlighten. But why the Sunlighten Sauna over every other sauna system out there is it has this incredible patent to technology that allows the full spectrum infrared to be absorbed by your body efficiently. There’s actually receptors on your cells. We talked about this in my interview with Dr. Kahn, who’s a cardiologist, and he uses Sunlighten Saunas with his patients. And he says that on each cell on the body, there’s receptors for light which just like, boggles my mind, right? Because you can’t, like, pour me a cup of sunlight, right? Or like pour me a cup of infrared, right? You can’t drink it, right? You can’t take it. And so we always think that something physical like things you eat, things you drink, is a physical, tangible thing that you can hold that something that the trillions of cells in your body would absorb and utilize. But then, there’s this medium that our body absorbs and utilizes that is a light spectrum, and that isn’t that just wild. Well if you think about light is energy, and our body is made up of energy, so that makes total sense. Well, in looking at the studies, and there’s so many studies, and then Sunlighten also has worked with doctors and researchers to come up with some studies of their own. But the Journal of Athletic Enhancement published a study of ten national-power level athletes, and they found that the infrared improved the neuromuscular performance during intense training and that balanced and increased the testosterone to cortisol ratio, and they found that these athletes recovered faster, built more muscle, and could train harder, every day using the infrared system. There’s another study published by a top researcher in infrared technology, Dr. Michael Hamblin, and he says that after looking at muscle mass and muscle gain, they did find that with the Sunlighten System that there’s increased muscle gain after training and decreased inflammation and oxidative stress, which is exciting! Because the other day, so normally I’ve just been using my Sunlighten for heavy and metal detox has all these other benefits I kept hearing about but but mainly I was like I feel really good when I get out of my sauna, and for hours later I feel really good like I got a massage good. I’ve been using it to detox heavy metals gently out of the body, so it’s good me time, I feel amazing, I know it decreases stress, I know there’s all these health benefits, but that’s pretty much been my focus. Well, the other day, I did two workouts back to back at the gym, it was like Tuesday and Wednesday, and I did a lot of leg work, and my legs were really sore. It’s kind of hard to walk up the stairs, and I remembered, oh yeah, I’ve heard these studies about using a Sunlighten system to recover faster from athletics. So I jumped in my system that night, and I set it to the relaxation program because I was about to go to bed, I didn’t want to like because sometimes when I do the certain programs, I’m like more awake. So it’s good to do it in the morning for some programs but this one I just want a gentle sweat, I just hit the relaxation, and it was very gentle, it’s easy to breathe, it’s not very hot, it’s warm, you feel nice and warm like you’re in a cocoon. And I enjoyed it, it was very gentle it had the full spectrum, so it’s near, mid and far-infrared, and afterward I felt great, and as I was walking around, I took a shower, and I went to bed, I notice oh I don’t have pain in my muscles anymore, that’s good! But the next day I woke up, and I should have, normally, I would have had more soreness cause you know 2 days after an exercise, I worked out really hard that Tuesday so by Thursday I should have really felt because Tuesday and Wednesday I was doing a lot of work so by Thursday and Friday I should have really had more muscle soreness, I had zero muscle soreness after being in a sauna, and I thought, oh my gosh now I’m definitely going to use the system after every workout. I’ve seen these studies but I never had that personal experience until now. So I thought that was really cool.

It also helps with weight loss, and I always heard that like, oh, it’s good, because you know you’re sweating and you’re burning calories, but I’ve read the study, fascinating! That it increases a type of protein that stimulates the breakdown of fats, of these lipids with inside the fat cells- the adipose tissue. It stimulates the breakdown of that, so can be transported to the liver, and then the body can convert that fat and get rid of it. So I thought that was really needed because it’s actually stimulating the chemistry of the body to go to the process of burning fat.

And then with the anti-aging, it stimulates collagen production. A lot of women love, I mean, you know, and men that want to look great too. It stimulates the collagen production, so women noticed they have less fine lines and wrinkles. My big, big rave about the Sunlighten System is that it decreases stress significantly, so it helps with mental and emotional health as well, especially, in the last year I’ve been going through a ton of stuff emotionally, and using it has greatly helped me to just calm myself down. Have you ever been so stressed out, and the thing is stress is not an emotion, so you just walking around but you know your stress because someone does something and you just snap at them, it’s like you’re incredibly irritable and you have a short fuse, that is a symptom of being in a high state of stress. That’s why I noticed that after using the Sunlighten Sauna every day once a day I notice that, whew, it just brought it down, so my fuse is longer, I’m more patient, I don't snap at people, I’m very slow to anger, we’re supposed to quick to anger, so those are signs that you’ve decreased stress in the body and as Dr. Wendie points out today in our interview, the body cannot tell the difference between a mental stress, emotional stress, physical stress, all the kinds of stressors in the body it’s just a super stress. So whether you’re having physical stress or whether you’re having really hard time emotionally or mentally sometimes even spiritual stress. The body takes it to heart, and it’s all the same to the body. The body’s going to go through a state of stress no matter what. So doing things to decrease stress like walking, prayer, meditation, Sunlighten Sauna , awesome, they all help the body to decrease them.

But what I really like about the Sunlighten compared to other saunas because I’ve been in the sauna at my gym, which is way too hot, it feels like I’m trying to breathe in Vegas in July, it’s just way too hot. It’s hard to breathe. What I like about the Sunlighten is you can sweat at low temperatures. When I said low temperatures, I mean low temperatures for a sauna. When I breathe in a Sunlighten, I’m always surprised, I don’t sense any hot air going into my lungs, right? It’s not hot. It’s a very comfortable temperature, and you could ask my husband, I do not like feeling hot. I immediately turn the AC on when I get in the car. I’m just one of those people. I don’t like feeling hot, but there’s something about the Sunlighten that’s different. So if you’re one of those people who is like, Why, I don’t like feeling hot! You might actually really enjoy the Sunlighten because it’s very gentle, it’s just warm, and then all of a sudden you’re sweating because the infrared technology – the near, mid, and far infrared technology, is getting into the cells and warming you up from the inside. Your core temperature goes up one degree for an hour after your session. So it’s doing all this fantastic work inside you even after you leave the sauna, and they see that for 24 hours, it has this protective response for the whole body and for the cardiovascular system. This is such a cool information and Dr. Wendie agrees with me that it’s so great to use this type of therapy to detox the body from stress and from toxins in a natural way. When I interviewed Connie Zack the founder of Sunlighten, I ask for her to give my listeners a really good discount and she did and she’s honored that for years. I think it’s been five years now so she gives free shipping and she throws in some extra gifts. Call the company and ask them and find out what really great deal that they’re providing for listeners because they always make sure that they take care of you guys, and if you want to go to the link learntruehealth.com/sunlightensauna that’s learntruehealth.com/sunlightensauna. If you have any questions for me, I’d love to answer them, come join the Facebook group The Learn True Health Facebook group, where like fifty people away from reaching five thousand people, it doesn’t sound like a lot of people, we’ve a lot more listeners, I guess not everyone is on Facebook we’ve a lot more listeners than that but what’s cool about our Facebook group is people are so active and helpful. It’s a fun community where people are really supporting each other. So if you want to join our Facebook group, it’s not toxic, we do not attract that kind of person, it’s very supportive, very loving, very understanding, healing community that everyone’s sharing their information and asking questions, learning from each other and I’m very active on that group. So if you have questions about the Sunlighten System or anything that Dr. Wendie shares today or anything about my experience with detox and transformation, please come, join the Facebook group, you can do that by going to learntruehealth.com/group, or you can just search Learn True Health on Facebook.

And if you’ve been a long-time listener, you may have noticed that this last week we launched our new and improved website. It was a big endeavor. I wanted to make the website even more accessible for you. So we completely revamped it and updated it. The search function is working a lot better than before. So please take your questions to the search function on the website. Type in the topics you’re interested in, find your episodes, we’re almost at five hundred episodes. It’s so exciting that your answers are there for you, and we’re here to help. So join the Learn True Health Facebook group, and I look forward to seeing you there. Thank you so much for sharing this episode with those you care about. By sharing, we’re spreading this information. My goal is to help as many people as possible to learn true health. I’d love to turn this ripple into a tidal wave and help millions of people to transform their lives, and you’re a part of that; we’re all part of this ripple effect to help as many people as possible. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day, and enjoy today’s interview.

[00:14:01] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 482.

I am so excited for today’s guest! We have with us today, Dr. Wendie Trubow who specializes in detox but I have a feeling that this detox is going to be a totally different conversation than what we’re used to. You know, we’ve talked about detox, dozens of times, from many different angles, and this angle, and I love this because Dr. Trubow started off specializing in women’s health, right? And we’re going to hear your story but what I do know is that your personal experience led you to dive in to holistic medicine and discover that detox was the most important thing we really, really need to focus on, and supporting those systems of our body so that we can get on the other side of ill health. So, I’m really excited to jump in to this. Welcome to the show!

[00:15:05] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Thank you and feel free to call me Wendie during the show you don’t have to call me doctor.

[00:15:10] Ashley James: Well, it’s a hardened title, but I’m happy to call you Wendie. I know that as a medical doctor you went through excruciating years of higher education and indoctrination into the pharmaceutical industry. And somehow you managed to unbrainwash yourself to the point where you realized that there’s this whole world of healing out here beyond drugs, so, congratulations you’re one of the few amazing medical doctors that made it out the other side.

[00:15:38] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Thank you. I think there should be a bumper sticker, like, I survived med school and residency. I think that should be a bumper sticker because I lived through it but I did not thrive through it. I can’t say that I thought I survived. That’s all I get.

[00:15:54] Ashley James: Well, it’s really not an environment for thriving, is it? It’s really is excruciating what they do and it definitely a lot of doctors end up jaded, right, through residency, they have kind of going to becoming a doctor like with beautiful dreams of helping people and then through residency they are just completely torn apart. But something happened in your life, and I really want to dive into this, because I think your story will resonate with all of us. Something happened in your life that had you need to go beyond your medical school training to find out how to heal. So I’d love to dive right in and learn more about what happened to you.

[00:16:41] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I’d love sharing the story because what it really underscores, so first I’ll say is Ashley is it my health story has two peaks. The first one, well, let me back up and stop. I want to underscore, it’s really hard to recognize when you are going off the cliff, unless you have a particular world view that only accepts optimal health, okay? So I didn’t have that world view when I went off the cliff for the first time. And so it literally took me years to recognize that all was not right in Wendie Land, until, I got to a point where I thought to myself, oh my god, I have to get up today. I have to get up every day, but I’m so tired. And I got up because I was the primary breadwinner. That’s why I got up the bed, otherwise, uh-uh I would have stayed in bed. Sex drive, forget about it. I had head-to-toe issues. I was losing my hair. My brain wasn’t working. I had anxiety, no, I’m high-strung. I’m not anxious. I’m just happened to be like go, go, go high energy. I had a thyroid dysfunction where it was totally normal. I had heart palpitations, asthma, bloating gas, diarrhea, constipation, sometimes all in the same day, right? I’d be having diarrhea then be constipated then of diarrhea later, like, go figure. I had really heavy periods, I had difficulty conceiving – I made up for that one. And I had wasting in nutritional deficiencies, so I was really a mess, and that happened when I was 35. I was a year and a half out of residency. And I did go off the cliff in residency but again, world view, I didn’t have the view that I was supposed to feel amazing so I can’t just tolerate and feeling all these things.

And the other thing of it all, highlight, Ashley, is it doesn’t happen overnight for most of us. It’s not like Monday I feel amazing. Tuesday I feel terrible. What happened? I’m going to look into this? Now, it was this, slow, slow, deterioration of my health, okay? So I’m 35. I’m barely getting out of my bed and my husband says to me, why don’t you go and see my mentor who was one of the old time functional medicine doctors in Massachusetts? He was mentoring my husband. And our insurance was changing and he took our insurance that we were leaving so we kind of rushed it and got me in for an appointment and he did what I considered at that time a ridiculous work up. He has his proof before functional medicine in my world and he worked it. Fruit sensitivities, minerals, nutrients, and one thing that he did that he didn’t even talked me about was he tested me for Celiac, and it was positive. And on the car right up, I’m six weeks post-partum, I’m like about to lose my mind, I said to my husband, call him. I need to know what’s wrong. I can’t wait any longer. Now, I’ve read it six weeks mind you but it can’t wait another minute. And I said to him, you going to call him. So my husband calls him and says, alright, I’m sorry, but Wendie is freaking out here. Is there anything major that we should know about before we walk into the office? And he’s like, yeah, she’s Celiac disease. And I said, oh my dad has celiac disease! And he says, well it’s genetic. You probably should have been tested. I was like, oops. So at 35 I got diagnosed with Celiac disease and went gluten-free. I want to pause there because sometimes that’s a lot to unpack, and we haven’t even really gotten to peak two. That’s just peak one.

[00:20:23] Ashley James: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s really important to look at our family history not from the standpoint of, oh, because my dad had heart disease that means I’m going to have heart disease, or because my grandma had diabetes, I’m going to have diabetes. But it’s really important to look at it as, genetics don’t necessarily cause, it’s only the trigger that pulls the gun, right? It’s the nutrient deficiencies, the foods you’re exposed to, you’re typically eat about the same way, with typically have the same nutrient deficiencies as your family and so if your family has these issues, it’s really, really good to eat a diet that is corrective, to do lifestyle that is corrective, and preventive of those issues and what I’ve heard over and over again is, not only Celiac but gluten intolerance. So the intolerance, it’s not necessarily Celiac but it’s just the intolerance to it, is often, more than not often seen, if the mother has it all the kids have it. Same with dairy, dairy intolerance, something like 51 or 52% of the population of the earth should not, in any way, she’d perform be drinking the breastmilk from any animal, right? So any kind of milk from any animal, and yet we do. And so, if there’s one person, like, I see these moms, who are like, well little Johnny is allergic to milk so we don’t give him milk but the rest of the family does, and I’m like, that doesn’t make sense because if he has dairy intolerance or if you know you had dairy intolerance as a kid it’s more likely that all your children have it and sometimes their symptoms are masked because they’re also eating a bunch of sugar, they’re also, you know, there’s a bunch of other allergens and it takes time you’re going to remove these food sensitivities, right? Remove those grains and the dairy and the eggs those are the most common ones, right? Remove them for quite a while. I believe that a certain immunoglobulin responses, hyper responses have a 60-day, half-life, some of them, some of them are 30 days, some of them are 60 days. So, it’s like it takes a while to really calm the body down. And it’s not that big of a deal like I know some parents freak out, I wouldn’t know what to feed them if I can’t feed them sugar, right? If I can’t feed them a bunch of cereal and dairy every day, so you’ll figure that out. I don’t know, try fruit. But this is so common that we overlook that our major, major health issues could be something, that’s like, oh yeah my mom is allergic to that, or my mom had to avoid that, or my dad had to avoid that maybe I should, right? And this is what drives me off the wall is that, you’re a doctor, right? But how many doctors did you see? And you yourself are a doctor so you saw yourself? It’s kind of hard to treat yourself, right?

[00:23:25] Dr. Wendie Trubow: You can’t treat yourself. No, you can’t treat yourself. That’s very hard.

[00:23:29] Ashley James: What drives me off the wall is that in all your medial training there wasn’t a class that was like, okay we’re going to talk about food sensitivities and allergies and how we can help our patients to dial in their diet for the most optimal healing, right? That class doesn’t exist.

[00:23:46] Dr. Wendie Trubow: No. And we’d like 2 hours of nutrition training that was it.

[00:23:49] Ashley James: Drives me crazy.

[00:23:51] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah, so it’s not.

[00:23:52] Ashley James: Okay, so you’re in the car. You’ve been given this and also the light bulb goes on. Did you have a glimmer of hope? Did you have a feeling, like, hey maybe this is the answer?

[00:24:00] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I don’t think of things like that. It’s so funny, you know, I’m 51 and a half and I look at those years like a blur because I was in the midst of so many really all-encompassing projects, so the biggest project was reproducing, so I was either pregnant or nursing for 11 years.

[00:24:26] Ashley James: Hmm. Wow.

[00:24:28] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I know. So, and I have four kids. So you all can do the Math.

[00:24:32] Ashley James: Congratulations!

[00:24:28] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Thank you! So, that’s why I say I made up for them, infertility stuff or fertility challenges we should say. So that was kind of in my face, right? I’m trying to grow and feed and raise a lot of little people. So that was really encompassing. Then, the next part to that is I was a new attending doctor so I had to prove myself. Then the next layer to that is my husband, about, let me think about this. What is the timeline? About four years into my career as an attending, my husband decided he wanted to open a functional medicine centre, and so we opened this huge place that grew to be one of the largest functional medicine providers in the country.

[00:25:16] Ashley James: Cool!

[00:24:28] Dr. Wendie Trubow: And we’re on that rollercoaster for seven years and that closed in 2015 and that I feel like when I woke up, you know, because my kids, all of them were weaned. So I was no longer the human food slot machine?

[00:25:33] Ashley James: Creator?

[00:24:35] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I was no longer the human vending machine, like, oh I’ll have a snack now! And it’s free! It’s open 24/7!

[00:25:43] Ashley James: She doesn’t need to sleep!

[00:25:46] Dr. Wendie Trubow: No. I remember craving unbroken sleep in those days. So I didn’t look at it, honestly Ashley, on those early days I was just trying to survive. I was on the rollercoaster of life. I had zero brain space. I could gauge how overwhelmed I was by how long it took me to book an appointment for something, and I remember saying to my hairdresser, if you don’t make me book an appointment before I leave, you will literally won’t see me for nine months, because I’m just too overwhelmed to even think of calling you. So that was sort of the barometer for my life, and one thing hits the max right? You don’t feel well so it’s hard to then take care of yourself, and if you don’t take care of yourself then you’re not going to feel well, so you circle the drain, and that was me, circling the drain. So getting rid of gluten is very impactful because I noticed tremendous improvement head-to-toe immediately. But I’ll always say to patients, it’s like that shark’s mouth. Sharks have seven rows of teeth and when one tooth falls out the next tooth moves forward to takes its place, and that’s when it’s like you’re untangling your health. So, you have layer number one, cool, gluten. Guess what? Layer number two, was candida. And layer number three was dysbiosis. So I’m kind of work through those, and worked on my gut, for tsk, let’s think about this, thirteen years! And I was doing pretty good! I had gotten to a place where I was still extremely, and I still am extremely reactive to gluten. But I felt pretty good. Okay? So fast forward from age 35 to 48 when peak two happens, and peak two, we go on a trip of a lifetime. Now, just so you know, I have four kids, and we travel with both of our mothers. So it’s not just a romantic getaway, it’s like a soccer team that will show up! There was all of us! So we go in this amazing vacation in 2019 to Paris and we spend the week right around Notre dame and, whenever I go on vacation, I work really hard to stay on the eating plan that works for me so I generally don’t gain weight on vacation. So, I came home, same weight, fine, but a month after I came home, I gained 9 pounds. And half the hair on my head started falling out in droves, like, crazy amounts.

[00:28:14] Ashley James: Wow!

[00:28:15] Dr. Wendie Trubow: And I had a rash on my face that would not quit. And what do women care about – hair, skin, weight. Those weren’t ok for a doctor, right? You could’ve a blood pressure of 200 over 100, but you’re like, yeah, it’s been that high before but I just gained 6 pounds! Doc, I need an appointment tomorrow, right? So I freaked, and of course what’s the number one thing when you gain weight? Thyroid. So here’s where you can treat yourself but you can’t treat yourself. So I start to do my test, and by the way, I’m 48 at that point, so I’m perimenopausal. Damn, hormones! So I check my hormones, they’re perfect! I checked my thyroid, its perfect! And now, I’m like, hmm, maybe I’ll do a stool test! Maybe cause you got to run through your body right? So, I start to do a stool test, it looks for me really darn good! So I’m totally stymied. And I spent a month or so sort of flailing around like what am I doing? What’s wrong in here? Maybe it’s just perimenopause, right? Chalk it up! And I’m listening to the radio one day and I hear this report about how when Notre dame burned down it released five hundred pounds of lead dust into the air and the closer you were to Notre dame the more lead exposure you got the further away the less you got, make sense right?

[00:29:35] Ashley James: No.

[00:28:36] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yes! And I looked at my husband and I was like, we spend a week there right after it burned! I got a lead exposure! And that threw me off the cliff! And he was like, maybe? I’m like, don’t maybe me! That’s what happened! So I did the testing. Doctors are bad patients. That’s all I have to say. Bad doctor! I had previously done a lead and mercury, heavy metals testing on myself and it was mildly positive. So we, in our practice, treat when the levels are over 8. And I tested at 9 for lead a million of years before and I was like, it’s kind of a pain in the butt program I’m not going to treat for a just slightly positive level knowing what I didn’t know then is that often the first numbers you get when you’re someone that doesn’t detox well, the first numbers you get are often just the tip of the iceberg, and I didn’t realize that then so I blew it off, okay. So my number was 9 years ago and then I do this test after going to Notre dame and my level was 25% higher. That got my attention because I will treat at 12. So I said to my husband, oh my god, I’ve lead! Oh, and mercury by the way. Why go for just half of the bad ones, I’ll go for everything! I didn’t have cadmium, I didn’t have arsenic, and I didn’t have thallium those are really the ones we look at, all five of those. And then I started to think about what other toxins are there. So I did mycotoxins, which are the mold toxins that when you get exposed to mold it puts out toxins in your body those are called mycotoxins. So I did the testing for that. And I had four strains of mycotoxins. Tsk. And now I’m really thick. And I start treatment, I got so much better, like my hair loss slowed, my rash quieted down, I got, here’s the really cool part, I used to be the canary in a coal mine for gluten, so, I never went out to eat because I got so sick, anywhere. And so I don’t know why it has tested out, and instead of having a 3-month recovery to gluten I started to notice that my recovery was instead of 3 months, 6 weeks! And then it was 2 weeks, and then it was 10 days and then it was 5 and then it was 2 and then it was 24 hours and then it was like 12 hours which sounds pretty awful when you think about like brain fog and diarrhea but on the other hand when you compare it to, I used to do it for 3 months, it was such a different world.

[00:32:23] Ashley James: Yep.

[00:32:24] Dr. Wendie Trubow: So I did these treatments from mycotoxins and heavy metals and it’s hard honestly, like, my whole life was organized around detox. Get up, do something, do something an hour later, I did something throughout the day for months and when I was re-tested, I was like, oh my, because the levels of lead were so much higher and mercury was so much higher, and that’s really when we started to dive into, right, if you’re not detoxing it’s just a tip of the iceberg that your body’s able to start to sort of squeeze out, luckily, squeeze out, and then the last part of this was when I re-tested my mycotoxins after a year sort of occur to me like, oh, they also have environmental toxins testing and testing for pesticides so why don’t I do that at the same time, in for a penny, in for a pound, let’s just do it all. So my re-test when I did that I did the other and I was like, oh my, it’s never good news here, and I’ve got all bunch of those things to deal with. So I’ve been systematically addressing and removing things and so what I’ll say is, it’s a long process, A, B, it’s a rewarding process, C, I’d lost more weight than I gained, right? So I gained 9 pounds and I lost 15 pounds when my weight finally shifted, but it took two and a half years into the process before my weight shifted and I think that’s really important for the listeners because whenever someone comes and says, I can’t lose weight and my thyroids are normal. I’m like, great, you’ve most likely got toxins but it’s going to be a couple of years before your body quiets down, it’s not immediate.

[00:34:08] Ashley James: That’s been my experience with my own health. Every doctor I’ve gone through and I go to naturopaths and like holistic doctors. Every doctors, like, I walked in the door, oh, thyroid, you are thyroid, classic thyroid ha-ha-ha and I’m like no actually every test I’ve ever done my thyroid’s fantastic and they kind of look at me like they’re going to be the doctor that fixes my thyroid. Then the blood work comes back and they’re like, oh, okay, you’re right. I showed them all the previous lab tests and my thyroid is fine everything’s fine everything in all my blood tests are fine and when I finally figured out was I have major heavy metals to the point where everything I did like weight loss I’d feel, I could taste heavy metals I’d wake up tasting them in my mouth kind of like an ash tray whatever you imagine that would taste like it was horrible and then my body would exude a smell of burning rubber like when cars are spinning out the burning rubber’s smell like burning garbage that’s what my body would smell like and then my liver would distend to the point where you could see it pushing out from behind the rib cage and it was hard as a rock and one of my doctors wanted to do a biopsy we did the ultrasound and they’re like your liver’s just pissed of there’s nothing wrong we couldn’t find anything wrong here it’s just pissed of,f my gall bladder is fine but my liver was as hard as a rock and pushing out and that’s when it all clicked because I had to do my own sleuthing cause every doctor that I went to was like oh thyroid and I’m like are you kidding me and when it finally clicked my I’m like wow, I’m tasting heavy metals my liver is pissed off and I have MTHFR that’s just one of the many things and I’m sure attribute to..

[00:36:04] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Me too!

[00:34:08] Ashley James: …poor detox, which is what I want to talk about is why there some people can detox, like it’s so funny, there’s this one woman I know whose very similar story to you, if she was in the same room as gluten she’d be in bed for 6 months like she’s just everything she’s so reactive she’s constantly having to work on her health, constantly, constantly, constantly. Her husband, all he eats is pizza all he drinks is beer. He is fine he is the picture of health why is it that some people are easily over burned with toxins unable to like the liver’s unable to process them and seemingly no matter how healthy they feel they eat they’re still it’s just like this uphill battle with detox why are some people like that way and other people could spend their entire lives thru drive in or drive thru and like rarely got a cold, so, what is this? I’ve always heard it’s a microbiome, the microbiome is everything if you have a good microbiome then you are good but there’s so much more than that.

[00:37:15] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Okay before I answer that question I have to ask you something, can I call you Ash?

[00:37:20] Ashley James: Oh yeah, sure.

[00:37:22] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Okay Ash. So we were privileged enough to interview Alessio Fasano for our podcast and legit when I first read one of his papers I said to my husband this dude’s going to get the Nobel prize and I was like I’ve been a groupie for the last ten years of his. I love him to pieces and he’s this like beautiful Italian man with the accent and he does great research and It’s all about gluten and so one of the things he said he talks about is yes it is your microbiome and it’s a triad so you have the triad of the microbiome health which really is a term for gut permeability okay that’s what we’re looking at it’s the permeability of the gut and lets come back to that because I want to make sure we talk about the triad and then we will talk about each component. The gut permeability combined with a genetic susceptibility combined with a trigger – that’s your triad. So 40% of the population has the MTHFR gene and like 40% of the people have the gene for Celiac but very few people were actually are diagnosed of Celiac although the numbers much higher than suspect basically there’s more people with Celiac than know they have Celiac they just haven’t been diagnosed but basically when you put that together the thing that seems to set it off is not your genetics its actually your gut permeability so this is where the science gets so cool and so in your gut if your someone who carries a gene for Celiac that’s DQ2 or DQ8 positive it’s on the HLA subtype of antigens. If you have that then you upregulate these receptors called CXCR3 I don’t know why they named it that but that’s the name now when you eat gluten as someone with the gene and now the upregulation of these receptors, you have more receptors that bind to the gluten particles so it’s actually gliadin and the gluten and that upregulates something called zonulins. Zonulins are a substance, now in order to tell you what they do I have to tell you the significance, so zonulins dissolve the tight junction in your gut.

[00:39:48] Ashley James: Yes!

[00:39:50] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Okay. So your gut from your mouth to your anus is essentially one cell wall thick which is crazy to think you think you have this whole big barrier between you and the outside world but no there’s one cell wall that’s each cell is stuck tightly to its neighbour and that lines your entire GI tract now if you have the genes for Celiac and you eat gluten you upregulate the receptors and then zonulin gets pumped out zonulin dissolves the tight junctions and now the outside world is being exposed to your inside world, okay are you with me so far?

[00:40:32] Ashley James: Hmm-hmm

[00:40:34] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Now what’s really interesting is anyone who eats gluten opens up their tight junctions for about 15 minutes anyone genes are not but if you have the genes you open your tight junctions for like 4 hours and so what that means is that when you look at people eating a standard American diet, what’d you eat for breakfast? Huh, bagel, cereal, okay, what’d you eat for lunch? Sandwich what’d you eat for dinner? Pasta with chicken and broccoli, or lasagna or pizza, you basically, if you’re someone who’s genetically at risk you’ve opened your tight junctions for the entire day. So the outside world meaning bacteria, toxins, hormones, whatever, right? Food particles, you can pretty much start naming them all of those things you’re getting into your bloodstream, and your bloodstreams like what in the holy name of you know what is this? This is not me? This is not part of what I want to do. This is not normal. Your body starts to generate an immune response, and then things go haywire. So your body starts to attack everything because it’s like confused basically, okay? So one major part of the triad is genetic susceptibility combined with the gut permeability and then anything that gets through the gut serves as a trigger. Unless you went to Notre dame right after it burned and got a huge lead load and here’s where those three things don’t adequately explain everything, okay. Because the next layer to it I will just describe it like your health is the sandwich, the gluten-free sandwich, between of a bun, a gluten-free bun and that bun is your environment and your genetics and epigenetics and we can talk about epigenetics in a minute, the meat of that sandwich or if you’re vegetarian the vegetables of that sandwich are your sleep, your thoughts, your gut health, your nutrients status, your ability to move your body, your intimacy with others, how often you poop, all the stuff about you is the meat or vegetables of that sandwich put that all together and all of that is influencing whether you’re going to be someone who can do drive thru for their life eat Dunkin’ Donu.. I’m in Boston, so it’s Dunkies, it’s been Dunkies since I was a kid, so if you could go to Dunkies every day and get a coffee and a donut or if you’re someone who’s just driving by Dunkies is gonna make you sick like me, so it all kind of re-smooshed in and I’ll always say to people it’s hard to taste out the exact thing because think of yourself like a blended soup you can no longer pull out one ingredient because it’s already been blended together.

[00:43:22] Ashley James: Right

[00:40:23] Dr. Wendie Trubow: That’s your health. Okay.

[00:43:26] Ashley James: Before you move forward I really want to unpack what you said because I think it’s the most impactful, I want every single listener to really, really sit with, including myself to sit with what you just said for a moment and just really unpack it. So when you say from your mouth to your anus which is one long tube right so we’re kind of like a donut if you think about it because we always think that when you put stuff in your mouth and you swallow your quote unquote inside of your body but it’s actually not inside your body it’s a tube, that tube is kind of like the outside world in a sense, right? Because we’re like a pull noodle, we’re a pull noodle, and so when you say that from your mouth to your anus the only protection we have from the outside world I mean besides things like stomach acid hopefully kill things right is this one layer of epithelial tissue, right, like it’s a type of skin. Can we just get an image in our mind is it like the thickness of a hair or is it…

[00:44:39] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Thinner.

[00:44:42] Ashley James: It’s thinner than that? Is it so thin we can’t visibly see with the human eye?

[00:44:45] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Correct.

[00:44:47] Ashley James: So we have a layer protecting us from all the craziness of the world, that’s thinner than what we can perceive with the human eye, and when we eat barley, wheat, rye, I’m going to say oats because they contain gliadin.

[00:45:05] Dr. Wendie Trubow: They’re often cross-contaminated too.

[00:45:07] Ashley James: Right. So let’s just like throw out this notion of marketing which is gluten-free oats, just throw it out, because oats do the damage too. So barley, wheat, rye and oats if we eat anything even if we don’t have celiac let’s say you are the luckiest person, you won the genetic lottery and you have perfect, perfect, perfect genes, perfect digestion, it’s still even with perfect genes and perfect digestion causes leaky gut for 15 minutes so that tiny imperceivable with the human eye barrier between your insides like your bloodstream and your lymph system, your immune system and while you’re eating that barrier is dissolves slightly like the junctions are weakened and food particles that are not fully digested are allowed to enter into your body and then your immune system freaks out has to attack it then it causes this cascade of inflammation your lymph system freaking out and that could trigger all kinds of things and that’s for the healthy people.

[00:46:18] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Hmm. Hmm. Don’t forget, not just food. It’s food and bacteria, and molds, and toxins, and something that you walked by a perfume that you inhaled anything you swallowed, any chemicals on your water, it’s any chemical and toxin, not just food.

[00:46:37] Ashley James: Can we also dare to say parasites?

[00:46:43] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yup! Have at it! Anything that you can ingest you can absorb.

[00:46:48] Ashley James: Alright. So, basically the outside world, the crazy, crazy toxic outside world is getting into our bloodstream and our body has to deal with it and our liver has no idea what’s going on and now has to figure out how to deal with it, and that’s for the healthy people.

[00:47:02] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yup!

[00:47:03] Ashley James: And the unfortunate people, likely if you are listening to our podcast you’re not one of those people who is always healthy never sick, right. Like those people aren’t motivated necessarily to listen.

[00:47:14] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Right.

[00:47:15] Ashley James: It’s all of us who are like working on ourselves right, like, I’m on a health journey, I’ve healed a lot, you’ve healed a lot, when I’m done healing we’re still getting better and better. All my listeners I know still getting better and better. So we can’t be gluten-free once in a while, because that once in a while is still enough to cause this triggering, right, so we need to be really diligent and even more when in a restaurant we need to be hyper hyper diligent and not consume this because it causes even 15 minutes of that tiny, tiny, tiny layer of protection like removing that, I mean that’s really blows my mind I’ve talked to so many doctors about being gluten-free and why but you explained it in such a way that is so understandable and I think of so many people who are like, oh yes! I’m gluten-free but you know once a week I couldn’t, but that whole week your body is still cascading from inflammation, having to clean up the damage of one meal, like you said, one meal really worth that? Okay I’m getting of my gluten soapbox. So thank you. Is there anything else that you want to say that really have us fully grasp the necessity of a 100% of the population removing barley, wheat, rye, and oats because of how damaging it is to everyone.

[00:48:45] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Honestly Ashley, I think that’s a stronger statement than I would make even as a Celiac. What I would say is, there’s so many layers to this okay, so back like in the 1940’s, 1950’s there were food shortages and gluten, wheat, is not genetically modified okay, but I don’t really understand the difference, okay between hybridization and genetic modification because basically the end result is that they bred it so that it grows faster, it will stand drought, it will stand pests, and it doesn’t fall over in heavy rains or winds. That’s genetic modification in my world but it’s called hybridization.

[00:49:25] Ashley James: But what happens in the lab, right? With there like where going to take the genes of a fish, and we’re going to put it into a tomato, right? That’s GMO, right? Or we’re going to take this wheat and we’re going to make it so it’s resistant to, we’re going to actually create it Bt toxin so that the wheat itself kills bugs. I don’t like some crazy nonsense, now you’re like eating something that has the genes of something else. But breeding something when wheat even a hundred years ago is not even recognizable to the wheat we have today or even in the 40’s the amount of gluten is so much more it’s crazy it’s used to just be like a handful of little seeds at the end of the stalk and now it’s like a hundred seeds right on the end of the stalk it’s completely different and they also increased the amount of gluten in wheat, but yes, you’re right that overtime these crops were bred and now they bred to produce so much more gluten that people are reacting to that but don’t react to like ancient grains

[00:50:33] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Right. Right. So that’s one part of it and then the next part of it is that, as Americans we often are eating it much more frequently so we’re not necessarily cooking breakfast and cooking lunch and cooking dinner so faster food has become needed and that faster food is typically gluten so here you have the layer of where it’s more allergenic we’re eating it more, we’re eating more of it, you know, my god, I remember being a kid I found a dress of my mom’s. My mom was born in 1944 and I remember finding like I think it was her wedding dress, it’s kind of a midi, white dress it’s like a size 0. People are eating more we’re actually bigger than we were 50 years ago, we’re physically bigger, so we eat more and then the next layer of that is that you mention stomach acid there’s a really cool association between stomach acid and gluten sensitivity so if you have the gene for gluten sensitivity or celiac that you see more likely to have low stomach acid it’s not clear which is the chicken and which is the egg and which came first but there’s some kind of association okay, so the next layer is our lives are much more chaotic and so we aren’t taking the time to slow down and eat properly, chew our food, so there’s always layers to what we eat, we eat with stress that suppresses our stomach acid, that makes us more likely to let bacteria and not breakdown our food properly, into the next phase which is the small intestine so there’s all these layers to it, Ashley that just keep propagating but I don’t know that I would say everybody shouldn’t eat gluten period what I would say is the best and healthiest way to eat is a way that has a minimum amount if any of processed food and food from a package and if you start with that that becomes sort of naturally a gluten-free diet but it’s not gluten-free for the purpose of gluten-free it’s gluten-free for the purpose of getting higher quality nutrients that do more for your body and sustain the mitochondria and the telomeres and your DNA and your vitality that’s the reason not just to do gluten-free for the sake of it because of how you’re feeling as a result.

[00:53:04] Ashley James: Got it, got it. The mycotoxins you talked about I’ve been excited to uncover that can we jumped into that?

[00:53:18] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Definitely! Mycotoxins are nasty little bookers.

[00:53:20] Ashley James: Yup! So what are they and where did they come from and how do we avoid them?

[00:53:25] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Well, step into my office. So the most common sources are water damaged buildings and when you say this to someone have you been in a water damaged building? Most people are like I don’t know, not that I know of. That thing that you drill into, okay did you go to school? In a school? And they will, yes, okay schools are typically moldy. Did you go to college and live in a dorm? Yes. Okay, dorms are typically moldy, oh okay. A lot of government buildings are typically moldy. Old homes are typically moldy. Homes that are built in wet climates are typically moldy. Homes that have water damage like I live in Massachusetts and we had the snowmageddon winter in 2015 and a million and one people had ice dams which essentially opened up their roof to the outside world and then they have water in their walls so that kind of stuff is really hard to remediate so if you got water in your walls you got to fix it. So all of these layers, right, that’s the big exposure. I did randomly have a patient who had mold in her car that’s not the most common but she said when I diagnosed her she was like I know my car is moldy and she tested it and it was so that’s another possibility. And then there’s food. There are number of foods that are particularly moldy including all grains and that’s because when you think of how grains are harvested they cut them now I’m not that familiar with honestly harvesting but I know that they get cut, they get threshed, they get stored and that storage process they’re often wet so here’s where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t because if you eat organic grains they’re not sprayed with glyphosate which is a good thing you don’t what glyphosate in your body it’s terrible for you, actually I just had a whole long call with Michael Antoniou, Antoniou who’s a British researcher and has published some really landmark studies on glyphosate because I’m giving a talk on glyphosate and I was like I really want to dig into this with him and he was kind enough to do the data with me and the ultimate upshot is that glyphosate was developed as a, it was actually discovered as a chelating agent and then in 2006 Monsanto patented it as antibiotic and how it works is to inhibit certain enzymes in bacteria and other microorganisms and that inhibition throws off the function and creates lead cell death and its going on around us so if you’re grains sprayed with glyphosate you’re getting glyphosate you don’t want to do that. But if you’re getting organic, the glyphosate helps dry out the crops that’s why it’s helpful. But if you’re getting organic grains that haven’t been sprayed there is chance they’re moldy because they are sitting around waiting to be processed, and if it rained the day before they got processed they are sitting around so and there’s mold spores in the environment. Often for people in Massachusetts I will always find my patients are flaring in April and September, they’re like what’s going on? It’s the mold. It’s the rainy season. In our rainy season people flare in our neighbourhood. So mycotoxins when you got exposed to them again it comes down to genetics if you’re someone who’s sensitive and obviously I’ve got the gene because I’m really reactive to mold and once it gets into your body it just kind of hangs out and if you’re not a good detoxer it just hangs out. Then if you layer on, you eat a standard American diet and don’t get enough fibre to bind them or don’t do detoxing or stress the body and your body just stores it and hangs on to it because it’s got no other option it’s kind of backed into a corner.

[00:57:12] Ashley James: Can mold live inside our body like in our bloodstream or our lymph system?

[00:57:25] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Hmm. That’s a good question, Ashley. I normally think that the mycotoxins which are the toxins that molds put out as what’s stored in our fat and our organs but what you do bring up, you know, candida is a strain of mold, candida is a yeast and mold they’re related so you can have candida in the bloodstream its less common you can have antibodies to candida which is very common you can have candida in the gut so you can have it in your body but typically it’s the mycotoxins not necessarily the mold itself

[00:57:59] Ashley James: So if someone is having a mycotoxin you know exposure and I don’t want to talk about how you’d figured that out but let’s say they’re having exposure, they realize it’s their office let’s say and they moved offices to a place that is clean now the exposure’s gone! So eventually, the mycotoxins get cleared out or we now concerned that there’s mold living inside them? Because I’ve heard from some people that like if they’ve had a cinema mold exposure that mold is now like continuing to live inside them but this is environmental mold like not internal mold like you’re saying candida that lives inside you it continually produces mycotoxins now we’ve got to do a candida detox replenishing of the gut in the good way and rethink our diet for removing candida and so then that gets rid of the mycotoxins cause you’re not addressing the mycotoxins you’re addressing the cause of them. Is that my understanding?

[00:59:08] Dr. Wendie Trubow: It’s kind of both. So certainly you wanted to get out of the exposure, no questions, it is sort of schizophrenic to try to heal from mold when you are continuing to be exposed that doesn’t make sense now on the flip side I will say Ashley I always say to people who have silver fillings if you have mercury let’s start getting you detox and take your fillings out in the middle of the detox so that you’re protected from any mercury that gets into your system because we’re already binding it, right, but mycotoxins it’s more like we want to get you out of the scenario were you’re being exposed to mycotoxins so you stopped the madness because it’s just throwing off your body and jacking up your immune system and it really throws people off you want to get them out of the scenario wherever it is and then start to remove the mycotoxins that they have stored in their body.

[01:00:05] Ashley James: You know we haven’t even plugged your book at this point as a listener I’ll be like okay I’m sold how do I do this? How do I work with Wendie? How do I do this? Oh my gosh! I’m going to make sure that the links to everything is in the shownotes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com including the book, Dirty Girl, Ditch the Toxins Look Great and Feel Freaking Amazing. I definitely want to talk more about your book but I really want to understand the mycotoxins so either it could be in our food and you know I’ve seen this actually with coffee, back then my husband and I were on coffee we switched to mold-free like certified mold-free coffee and noticed the difference I was like what, what, like I really noticed the difference, I was like that is crazy, and so it could be in our food which freaks me out because I have brown rice in bulk you know I buy it in bulk I’m just thinking like is this moldy? How do we know?

[01:01:15] Dr. Wendie Trubow: It’s typically the oats, the barley, the wheat, the rye, it’s the grains, rice is a funny one because it sort of lumped in but it’s not so much rice, it lasts, it’s more of the I think of grains, not sure I let you get it that well

[01:01:34] Ashley James: So, okay, well, no, barley, wheat, rye, oats that kind of stuff right?

[01:01:35] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah, yeah

[01:01:37] Ashley James: So we should look into foods that are more likely to contain mold and coffee is the big one because of how they processed coffee so if you’re heavy coffee drinker really get mold free coffee I know Bulletproof coffee is one of those brands that are there that prides themselves you don’t have to put like MCT oil and butter or bacon fat or whatever they put in bullet-proof drinks you don’t have to do that you can buy the actual bag that says Bulletproof and give that a try.

[01:02:09] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah. Purity, purity is also, and there was a third one that I just hear about that I’m blanking on but there’s another brand I think if you do a Google search it’s like mold plus free plus beans you should get it.

[01:02:16] Ashley James: Yeah, there you go. So we want to make sure it’s not in our food, make sure it’s not in our home, in our car, we had a beautiful truck we still miss it but man it was full of mold because an animal had chewed through the barrier and gone into the cab because the way they make these trucks now they lined it like a soy lining it’s made from soy so it’s basically edible so you made an edible truck for the animal and because we live in a forest we live in western Washington lots of animals and an animal made its home, its cute little home inside the dashboard and all of a sudden, one day, I look at them and why is there moisture inside the truck? And this is like a newer truck, we opened the door and there was like three inches of fuzz it looks like shag carpeting on every surface especially the areas where the babyseat was because that’s like CSI where you like shine the black light over like that the mold was insane over by the babyseat I’m like what, that’s where he threw up and that’s where he spilled his drink or whatever but the whole thing was mold and our insurance you got to love AllState, our insurance totalled the car and paid us for it, which it sucks I’d rather have a truck than have a paid-off truck but I have paid off not truck, but yeah, that was our experience with it, AllState were like this is unsafe to drive at this point because of all the mold.

[01:03:55] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Well think about it, you know, Katrina, hurricane Katrina in what 2014 all those literally people were submerged up to the top of the first floor which includes cars and so a few of the cars that was in any hurricane, but hurricane Katrina I have pictures of where you can’t imagine see the cars because they are submerged so if that’s your car that has mold you should not be driving that car get rid of it.

[01:04:19] Ashley James: Yes and what if you bought a car, that’s why car facts are so important.

[01:04:22] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I know.

[01:04:22] Ashley James: Because if you bought a car that’s used you don’t know if that was in Katrina like you don’t know right and I did a few interviews of Green Homes Solutions I don’t know have you been part of them

[01:04:32] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I have.

[01:04:33] Ashley James: Sweet! So I’d interviewed the head scientist and then the CEO slash founder whatever, they are amazing guys but they created an enzyme that digests mold safely so it doesn’t allow for all the toxins to continue to build the spores or whatever to continue to be removed in the environment and then they also test to make sure they’ll comeback to test for years to make sure that it’s safe but Green Homes Solutions that’s my plug for them because I was so impressed with their treatment, we had mold in our bathroom and that I was so impressed with it and I love interviewing them because I got so much information but I can’t believe how many people I’ve talked to friends, friends family and also through the podcast and clients of mine and mold is so common it’s such a common problem and it’s so overlooked so once we removed ourselves from the molds what is the most important thing we should do to help ourselves recover from that exposure.

[01:05:44] Dr. Wendie Trubow: See a functional medicine provider who’s senior I used to be like see a functional medicine provider but it’s really see a senior functional medicine provider who’s comfortable doing toxins testing that’s the criteria right and then tests and then target your treatment to get rid of those strains from you.

[01:06:04] Ashley James: How do we test? Are we testing for mycotoxins or are we testing for mold? What is the testing?

[01:06:09] Dr. Wendie Trubow: You test for mycotoxins. You test your house for mold and you test your body for mycotoxins.

[01:06:15] Ashley James: Got it. And let’s say we removed the mold or removed ourselves from mold, like we got rid of the car, or we moved offices or whatever and we now know where no longer in the mold environment how long do we wait until we test for the mycotoxins because isn’t it gonna clear up of our system?

[01:06:31] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah I think this is really a nuanced question Ashley, so there are people who are not sensitive to mold so it’s so funny as I said that I thought huh I’m not sure if the studies have been done to look at because mold is implicated in to degenerative diseases, dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, all of the toxins are pre-strongly implicated in those diseases so I’m thinking about I don’t know the answer too so I’m completely hypothesizing here, okay this is the part where you’re like it’s not data I’m thinking.

[01:07:07] Ashley James: Right, or it’s the stubborn husband that says I’m fine, I’m fine, I don’t feel anything.

[01:06:31] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Right but the thing about it is there are people who are not genetically susceptible to mycotoxins or mold so what I honestly don’t know is what percentage of people with dementia don’t have mycotoxin genes I don’t know that okay I don’t know so I’m just thinking about if you are exposed to mold yes so you want to get out with it but if you are exposed to mold and you feel amazing that’s different when you’re exposed to mold and you feel terrible, right, so the behaviours are different if you’re someone who really is reactive to mold, you don’t do well in moldy environments you have a reaction then I’d say you’re someone who wants to then test and treat, if you get out of the moldy environment and you feel amazing I don’t know that I would go down to spend lots of time and energy and money on functional medicine visits and testing because maybe you don’t need it but the thing that I’ll say is amazing meaning vital vibrant healthy able to and interested in intimacy able to move your body bring working well not noticing any body system because its functioning optimally your weight is optimal you cardiovascular and metabolic status is perfect if that’s you cool you don’t have to do anything but if that’s not you then I will recommend testing and targeting your treatment.

[01:08:34] Ashley James: You answered my next question which is what the symptoms we should look for and that was awesome! Give us some more, give us some more symptoms of mycotoxin exposure.

[01:08:48] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Sure, so hair loss all things skin mycotoxins cause a lot of skin stuff so rashes, acne, itchiness just sort of being like god my skin just really not right, asthma, all respiratory disorders, weight issues, difficulty losing weight, I personally found that my gut got a lot more regulated when I started to deal with the mycotoxins. The mycotoxins was the most impactful thing that I did to quiet down my celiac canary in a coal mine stuff cause I started that first actually and so gut health…

[01:09:26] Ashley James: I’m sorry to interrupt I’m thinking about what you said, about hair loss, and about skin, and your story where you came home from Notre dame, were you also exposed to mold as well as lead like when the building burned I imagined parts of the building were moldy did that exposed you to mycotoxins

[01:09:44] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I may have. No, the burning building did not expose me to mycotoxins but I mean we stayed; we stayed in the historical French region. Like who knows, right, I have no idea where I got exposed to but it’s very possible but I already knew that I have a mycotoxin issue but it was like the sum total of all the exposures sent me over the edge, right, and the most pressing exposure that I got was a clear lead exposure, but I already you know theres so much we haven’t talked about Ashley I am a child of the 70’s, I had pneumonia when I was 6 months old which means I got antibiotic when I was a 6-month old I had multiple ear infections and strepthroat growing up it was sort of a path I was a poster child for food sensitivities but I didn’t know it and I’ve two genes for celiac and I had what occurred to me was a very stressful events in childhood and then I went to med school I couldn’t simply do a family practice no I had to OB-GYN cause it was hard and I got to stay up at night delivering babies sounds great until something goes wrong right and we forgot about the part where I grew up in the 80’s and microwaves came out and we had those pre-packaged meals in plastic and we took advantage of them and I have a whole bunch of fillings in my mouth, I had, I should I say so when you really start to look at my toxin package I was the whole package man I had everything so because the time when I got to the lead exposure I had mercury some existing lead, mycotoxins, environmental toxins, and now a little bit of lead that I got from being in Notre dame was the straw that broke my back that was it.

[01:11:47] Ashley James: So you were just waiting. Your body was just waiting to have that one additional stressor and for some people it’s not a physical stressor like leads for some people it’s an emotional event.

[01:11:58] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah or perimenopause hormone changes can absolutely be a stressor but you’re right on emotional event is a hugely stressful it’s a life changing something happens a breakup a death a traumatic loss and ending a friendship whatever that is a terrible boss who just keeps chipping away your self-esteem these are all massive stressors and can have a tremendous effect on our body’s ability to detox and I’ll be happy to dive in to that one cause that’s a great conversation.

[01:12:31] Ashley James: Ooh yeah, because I’ve had stories of people where it’s like I don’t know what happened but I had this emotional event and my health was never the same, their memory was like their health was so much better before but you’re saying that they could have been just on a precipice right they could have just been slightly over toxic or just you know had a little bit too much of the lead or just had a little bit of candy that sort of had this everything just sort on that edge and maybe they woke up tired 3x a week instead of everyday, right, and so they’re just on the edge and then they had an event and for someone then it’s pregnancy because that is emotionally stressful that is physically stressful and then there’s the possibly four five years of breastfeeding I know of a mom that went up to seven years of breastfeeding mostly people do two or three years but if you have several kids in a row like you can be eleven years or breastfeeding so that’s the broken up sleep and then we just say oh it’s just because I’m not sleeping it’s just because and we don’t listen to our body and we negate because we go oh it’s just because I didn’t have enough sleep or didn’t eat well or I’m running around chasing the kids or I’m stressed out because of the kids and we don’t take the time to go wait a second I never recovered from that pregnancy I never recovered from that and that could have been when we’re at that breaking point even the emotional stress was enough so yeah let’s talk just about something that is so intangible as emotional or mental stress could have a physiological effect on setting us over the edge especially when it comes to detox.

[01:14:21] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I love talking about this. So, it’s pretty cool the body does not distinguish between types of stress so the body doesn’t have a bucket for Madame Boss or that darn Massachusetts drivers, that’s not another bucket or the bucket of my spouse’s irking me or my kids are driving me crazy, none are those were separate buckets in the body whatever you say to me I’m going to say to you it’s all going into the stress bucket. So your adrenals are these tiny little organs that sit on top of your kidneys and they are magical they literally determine whether you live or die and under these tiny little things, important things come in small packages so they sit here and they are responsible for a number of behaviors and when you go ten thousand feet, big picture, the primary goal of your adrenals is fight, flight, freeze and maintaining your blood pressure so that’s your life or death pathway and your adrenals are going to do that at any cost and then your nice to have pathway is your hormone balance which becomes particularly important specially if you’re woman when you start to transition into menopause and the ovaries no longer do the job of making the estrogen your adrenals pick it up, okay, but if you have any stress in that bucket your adrenals interpret it in a particular way. So I call it the trinity I apparently like things of three but that’s just how it’s been presented. So there’s your adrenals, when your adrenals experienced that they are being stressed or something stressful is occurring to your body and that could be anything you interpret it at a cellular level like a lion is going to eat you that’s how primitive we are and when a lion is about to eat you it is not important to, digest your food, have sex, ovulate, uptake your nutrients, detox, none of that stuff happens it’s not important because what is happening your body is experiencing an existential crisis, like I’m going to die we need to focus here and what happens is a really cool cascade so the adrenals signals to the liver, liver, don’t you detox because what we really need to do is focus on getting sugar to the muscles so two things happened at that point your lives takes the sugar that it stores called glycogen out of the liver and makes it into glucose so you have glucose in the bloodstream and simultaneously your body will signal you, I really need some quick sugar, so you’re going to start craving carbs, usually carbs and candy are typically what people like I’m craving and I’m like oh alright you’re stressed so your body is telling you.

[01:17:23] Ashley James: Yes, just think about our society you have a breakup you go for ice cream you have a stressful moment you go for the chocolate bar like how many times is that reinforced that we go for sugar in times of stress.

[01:17:43] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah at least the ice cream has some fat hopefully but yeah so you craved sugar and you take sugar out of your liver now simultaneously what’s happening in your gut and that sugar goes to your muscles in your legs by the way so you can run cause ultimately your body is primed to run from a lion okay we haven’t kept up with the technology our bodies haven’t evolved that the same pace the technology has so then in your gut your adrenal signal the gut you know right now digestion and absorption is not our priority stop so if you just had a big meal that made its way to your intestines it sits there and it rots and then the bacteria that are anaerobic that are there to digest you when you die they are psyched cause they are like, oh a meal and they get going and those are the bacteria that make you bloat and gassy and gross that really disgusting cause those are dysbiotic bacteria okay and the other part of it is when you eat that sugar candida in your system you know it’s common to have candida and I would say even a small is normal but if you have a large amount it starts to run the show and when you eat sugar it gets fed and then it needs to eat more cause it just reproduced so it makes you crave more so now you are on the rat wheel of OGs I’ve just increased my candida in the system along with my stress so all those things are going on simultaneously right and in the adrenals you start to use up the raw materials that you have to make cortisol you start to use them up because you are constantly turning now this is what happens in the short term, in the long term, your body starts to go into long term crisis management because it’s like wait a minute obviously we’re not running and instead of starting to sort of increase your metabolism and burning and put sugar where it belongs you start to actually collect your calories and depose fat and usually that fat is called the angry fat and its full of interleukins and inflammatory mediators that are seating right in your gut. So people are like oh it came all this way right in my mid-section, I’m like yup that’s your stressed gut and so this is what starts to happen long-term issue you hold on to every calorie the metabolism starts to slow and you go down the inflammation pathway because you’ve deposited all of these fat around your intestines, then you will get fatty liver because you’re now in a dysfunctional pattern it’s pretty creepy actually.

[01:20:09] Ashley James: So you’re saying that the fat around the mid-section so like pear-shaped people or like Bart Simpson got or does it look like you’re pregnant like that shape where it’s just a bunch of fat deposited right there that is more likely than not stress gut deposits of angry fat from long term being in fight or flight mode?

[01:20:51] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yes and, It felt like I’m on in broad, yes and, and because when you’ve shut down detox your liver’s no longer doing the job what’s happening is I mean we’re exposed to thousands of chemicals every day humans have created over a hundred forty thousand unique chemicals and we created an additional unique fifteen hundred chemicals every year so as we moved for a day we’re exposed to thousand of chemicals and it’s like death by a thousand cuts because obviously none of them are in amounts that are going to kill us but they are in amounts that are high enough to torture us and so what’s happening is instead of your liver working on those and by the way alcohol is a toxin and it isn’t a cute toxin. So if you’re get exposed to alcohol you’re going processed that because it will kill you directly so you start to store this toxins in your fat and so if you’re having trouble losing weight and your thyroid is normal where I go is toxins cause it’s been about four years and I’ve been in this stance and it’s like everything kind of comes down to toxins and food and inflammation.

[01:22:13] Ashley James: Hmm-hmm toxins, food and inflammation. Seriously?

[01:22:18] Dr. Wendie Trubow: In a nutshell that’s your health

[01:22:20] Ashley James: So when you talked about the trifecta where you’re saying adrenals liver gut?

[01:22:29] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yes, yes

[01:22:30] Ashley James: Got it.

[01:22:31] Dr. Wendie Trubow: On top of the trifecta of leaky gut trigger and genetics slash epigenetics that’s another trifecta. I really like the word trifecta much better than trinity because I feel it was a religious reference and it’s not.

[01:22:48] Ashley James: That really sounds such a positive thing to be like the trinity that’s killing you, you know like, ha!

[01:22:53] Dr. Wendie Trubow: The trifecta. Actually the perfect storm and the trifecta of- I love that language it’s great I’m going to steal that blindly.

[01:23:00] Ashley James: You should do that. It’s yours now with bow on it. So, to wrap that up it’s very important to the emotional work and emotional healing and check in with yourself and it’s as important to makes sure you’re regulating your emotional stress and mental stress as it is your physical stress and your environmental stressors they’re all equally important because your body cannot distinguish between your emotional stress and the burger you ate to the drive thru or the plastics you’re exposed to or the lead you’re exposed to like stress, stress, stress but more importantly when our body is under threat, right, when you feel anxiety. Anxiety is the message, it’s like the red warning light on the dashboard saying hey we’re under attack were under attack and we can be totally safe but if we’re imagining something even just sitting there because the body’s always listening to our thoughts even if you are sitting there imagining something we don’t want to have happen is enough to trigger the stress response. So we’d have to be really careful, clear, we have to be very clear unintentional with our thoughts and do the emotional work, the emotional healing I’ve got great interviews on that but that is as important as the other stuff because if we trigger the fight or flight response we go into that cascade like you said and long term our body were fermenting or rotting food in our stomach, we’re feeding bad bacteria, we’re getting more mycotoxins in our body like that’s horrible, that’s all from just being careless with our thoughts and allowing the let’s say the mainstream media go somewhere there’s cable tv and watch it, not in my house, but go somewhere there’s cable tv and just turn to any news channel watch it for five minutes and you’re going to be rotting your food instead of digesting and absorbing your food right and then your body’s going to like what you’ve said in the long term you’d gain weight in the mid-section and that weight is also carrying with it a lot of toxins so we need to reverse that let’s err you know turn around make a U-turn go back and let’s go back to where we’re every day taking time to check-in within ourselves emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically and really be responsible for our state of stress and our state of triggering the autonomic nervous system parasympathetic response of our rest and digest you know it takes going for that walk five minutes three times a day just getting out there and breaking up your day doing deep breathing doing five minutes of meditation doing a few breaths and chewing your food slowly and making sure you sit, you sit before you eat and you’re in a calm state you know so all these little things add up hugely and that’s been my journey as well and I’ve seen this with so many of my clients like just making sure we’re taking ourselves out of the stress response so I loved that you associate that and you showed us, it’s like you see those crime shows where they show you the board and there’s a bunch of like these pins and strings on the board. You’re like the crazy detective that no one’s listening to until they finally realized that your crazy conspiracy board was actually true and you’re like look look you know you’re stressed out because your job is actually causing you to gain weight and also causing your candida which causing your brain fog and they’re all connected. So you got this great way of putting it all together and

[01:26:46] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yes, truly!

[01:26:49] Ashley James: So you’ve got the great way of putting it all together and allowing us to really see it. So thank you for the pin board. That’s wonderful. So we want to make sure that we’re checking off all these boxes are we go through. You want to talk about this epigenetics and I love this conversation because so many people are told by their well-intention doctors who are not trained in functional medicine or holistic medicine that’s like oh well you have diabetes because its genetic take this pill for the rest of your life, goodbye! You know it’s like what wait a second that’s totally not the case, epigenetics is a beautiful dance where the body can express in certain ways and due to nutrients or due to toxins could express in a different way so I love for you to enlighten us why it’s so important for us to understand our epigenetic tendencies and how we can utilize them to best detox and regain our health back

[01:27:51] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I’m going to use myself as an example because it’s such a clear example honestly so epigenetics is this, think of it like a small supporting cast of genetics that’s support your DNA and depending on what happens in your life, your parents life, your grandparents life, okay so we go back pretty far whatever happens on those three I guess you think of it the other way whatever happens on your grandparents life and your parents life and then your life influence whether your genes are going to turn on or not turn on, are you with me so far? Because this is really epigenetics insane it’s really cool so when I said I will share about myself I essentially come from a line of celiacs because my dad has celiac and I have celiac and my two brothers they’re half-brothers genetically to me my two half-brothers genetically who I consider emotionally my full brothers but really genetically they’re my half-brothers they have celiac and then when you go up the line my grandmother died of dementia which is strongly implicated in celiac and gluten sensitivity and then my uncle I’m pretty sure he’s got celiac but he won’t get tested and then his three kids out of the three two of them are sensitive to gluten and one of them has ADHD which is implicated in gluten sensitivity okay so and by the way of my four kids two of them are fairly sensitive to gluten we figured out that I have two copies of the celiac gene, a dubious genetic overachiever, I’ve got two copies for celiac, two copies for MTHFR, and two copies for Vitamin D deficiency. So I by default…

[01:29:51] Ashley James: Oh geez!

[01:29:53] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Right? At that point I stopped counting I was like I’m not looking at anything else so by default I passed that along to all my kids and we allowed my older two to have gluten at preschool and by that time they were done with preschool they were both sensitive to gluten so by the time we have this like second generation of kids you know we call them the bigs and the littles, the bigs were sensitive and the littles we were like no you’re not getting any gluten because we have epigenetically enhanced nasty genes for celiac and now let me talk to you about some things, so my dad was like pretty sick in his 20’s and this is before he had me his dad was very sick his whole life and was an immigrant, my grandmother she was intimate and immigrant but her parents were both immigrants and they lived a pretty successful life but they always lived in fear okay and then on the other side of my family my grandmother was an immigrant my grandfather was an immigrant and so my mom was the first generation born in the country and so those stressors acted to turn on those genes okay and so when you then layer on this is why it becomes a blended soup when you then layer on yes I eat sloppy Joe’s as a kid I had the microwave food and all the antibiotics that messed with my gut permeability and my microbiome by the time you get to med school when I’m super stressed and eating on the run and eating a lot of gluten my ability to fight this off has really been diminished and deteriorated and so epigenetics is what turns on or off these genes and sometimes they’re carved before you even born so you’re at the affective other peoples choices which kind of stinks but the good news is you’re only 15% right if I have lived a life of not eating gluten or if I have lived a life of not honestly not abusing myself in terms of putting myself in stressful situations I may not be where I was until I am now in terms of being so sensitive to gluten right knowing now what I did not know then but I didn’t know those things. Can I share a really cool study?

[01:32:15] Ashley James: Yes!

[01:32:16] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I want to share a really cool study. I heard about it on NPR I was driving from Western Mass to Eastern Mass where I live and I have my kids in the car and for once they were quiet I was like shh we got to listen to this so it’s such a really cool study of this tiny town in Sweden I’m pretty sure it’s Sweden they keep meticulous records on their inhabitants of their town and their records went back to like the 17th or 18th hundreds, it was a couple of hundred years and these 2 epidemiologists went there I don’t know why they did this but they went there and they started just combing through the records of this town and here’s what they found that was so so creepy and yet so such a huge thing for us to be able to make choices about our health that what they found was that if your grandparent when they were going through puberty experienced a feast meaning they had a good crop they had lots of food they ate a lot then their offspring two generations down this is the impact of epigenetics their offspring two generations down were significantly more likely to have diabetes and heart disease and on average died six years earlier than the general population and if you’re grandparent went thru a famine when they hit puberty their offspring two generations down were significantly less likely to experience diabetes and cardiovascular disease and on average lived twenty-five years more than the general population so there this spread of 30 years based on what happened to your grandparent when they went thru puberty.

[01:34:05] Ashley James: Can you explain why? I’m trying to wrap my brain around it. Is that because they were fasting and that has protective properties? I would’ve imagined a famine would cause stress on the body but why did that actually worked to their favour?

[01:34:24] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I have no idea. Honestly. This is what’s being studied now. So some of the reasons how do I say this it’s easy to feel victimized right because we can’t do anything about it it’s done it happened and the stuff that happened to my grandparents to my dad is seventy-five years to a hundred fifty years old and so we don’t have any control over that but your genetics again are 10 to15% of the total mix and we do have control over the 85 to 90% of it, meaning you have control over your eating, your sleeping, your pooping, your relationships,your intimacy your thoughts , how much you exercise, you have control over all of that and so that work is inspiring because you’re not your genetics. Yes, they put you at risk and it’s helpful to know what you are at risk for but you are not your genetics.

[01:35:29] Ashley James: That really makes me wonder if the protective properties of fasting went in to play and if so if you chose let’s say you do a 5-day fast every quarter or 3-5 day fast or 3-day fast there’s so many like that, when someone fasts for months and months and months they actually see the benefits of those fast when they continue to do blood work and check up on the person so there’s protective properties that happen when we fast and I’m just wondering if it then now were seeing evidence that it’s actually goes down a few generations, which boggles my mind.

[01:36:18] Dr. Wendie Trubow: It’s amazing.

[01:36:19] Ashley James: Right? So amazing. Cause we also see on the other side of that people who like for example were in the holocaust or you know very very traumatic experiences during the war that they’re able to see higher levels just observed ambient natural stress like higher level of natural stress hormones in the grand children of holocaust survivors and they talked about how people who like have normal stress lives versus incredibly stressful lives that even two generations there it’s seen in their genetic makeup which means it’s even more important if you know your grandparents your parents or your grandparents went thru really really, really, really, really, really hard times it’s even more important for you to take it seriously to check yourself to lower your stress levels or it’s even more important to get Wendie’s book and detox the stress levels and focus on you know ditching those toxins Dirty Girl Ditch the Toxins I’m excited for your book cause the way you teach, you handle this information in such an easy visual way right that’s what I love I want the science I want you to tell us the science but I also want people to understand it and be able to use it you know everyone must have walk away from this interview going okay now I know how to tackle that those 15 pounds on my stomach that I can never get rid of no matter what I do now I know now I get to look into my stress levels my mycotoxins all the stuff right the go down the checklist.

[01:38:04] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah, I mean look. I co-wrote it with my husband. I co-wrote it reading the book is like talking to me basically and it’s meant to be a roadmap right because you know if you think about how many toxins we’re exposed to it’s paralyzing and so we’re not going to tell you that you’re going to be toxin-free what I’m going to tell you is it you want to get your body burning of toxins down enough that it’s not messing you up so you can live a vital vibrant healthy life able to be interested in intimacy until you are at least a hundred, that you get better every decade, that is my philosophy and I will go to the Math, fighting for that one because that is my why, something you said earlier we have to talk about the why you have to know why you are doing this right it’s not because you have an event coming up and you want to look good for it, nope, it’s because you want to be healthy enough to see your great grandchildren and play with them and have them remember you in fifty years, right, or you make a legacy impact that is felt by millions you got to find some why that is massive because if it’s like I want to look better for the wedding I am going in to September after September you’ve no more future that pulls you forward this powerful enough, so you want to pick a big, big scary goal that you can accomplish in your lifetime but it gives you strength when you like oh, I really wish I could eat that, I really feel left out, oh I used to eat that at Thanksgiving, right, there’s a lot of emotion around food so when you are stripped to feel that emotion to get something bigger like yeah I did always used to do that and remember how I felt and here is what I want to do with this new found health.

[01:40:01] Ashley James: Uhumm-uhumm… you know it really helps me I’ve cut a lot of foods I used to eat and I imagine how it’s going to make me feel and I go I don’t want to feel that tomorrow and then I could imagine the way it’s doing to the tiny, tiny very less than paper thin lining of my gut and how eating for example fried food is a bunch of free radicals that’s like punching holes like bullets through the nucleus of my cells and causing all kinds of havoc just inflammation and havoc and craziness and then the oil, the fried oil in the food is suffocating the good bacteria in my gut and creating an anaerobic environment for all the bad stuff to takeover, because there’s this war that means there’s this real war going on your gut all the time and it’s the good versus the evil right they should make a movie there’s a war and there’s 6 pounds of bacteria in your gut it’s like there’s a Chihuahua or like I don’t know baby kangaroo living in your gut and there’s a war between like 2 or 3 pounds of bad bacteria and 2 or 3 pounds of good bacteria and they’re going at it and hopefully you have less than 30 pounds of bad bacteria but for all the people who are sick and so every single meal and every single decision could be is it going tip the scales for the bad guys or the good guys right, and then there’s the bad stuff in your gut that’s making the mycotoxins and you eat a little bit of gluten and all those mycotoxins are (slurps) sucked up into your body and affecting your brain. Do mycotoxins crossed the blood brain barrier?

[01:41:46] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Ooh, I don’t know the answer to that. I know that when you have a patient with dementia and get rid of the mycotoxins it improves brain functions so I have to say yes but I don’t know for sure, speculation.

[01:41:59] Ashley James: Both my grandfathers died of dementia I mean you can’t’ really figure out their Alzheimer’s until after right so they just called it dementia I was really young and this was in the 80’s when they died and when you said that likely people who passed away of dementia likely there’s a relationship between that and barley, wheat, rye, and oats right so likely right so that’s another thing is if you know of direct relatives that passed away of dementia or have dementia that you, yourself and people related to them could benefit from cutting out those grains right to prevent them. Our genetics is not a death sentence which is what you said, right, they’re not a death sentence. So if everyone in your family got a heart disease it doesn’t mean you have to as well it means that that’s the thing to circle on the chalkboard for you I need to live a life preventing this and I need to live a life creating heart health, focusing on heart health don’t focus on dying of our disease focus on everything that you can do, you wake up in the morning your feet at the ground you go, good what I’m going to do to create heart health today? I’m going to go for a walk, I’m going to drink my water, I’m going do my meditation or my prayer, I’m going to eat bowls and bowls of greens and beans and a little bit of balsamic vinegar for the nitric oxide you know so you build up this list in your mind of all these wonderful things and if you follow this daily habit of I’m going to create this health for me then that 15% genetic factor isn’t going to do you under right because we have to live a life of this actionable steps. And your book has a bunch of actionable steps can you share I mean you taught us so much but can you give us some homework some tidbits from your book you know tantalize us with the tidbits from your book because we’re all going to run out and buy it and afterwards and starts following it diligently but like set us a separate now what we can do starting today to improve our health

[01:44:15] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I love this question. I really encourage people to always start with food because you do it 2 to 3x a day at least and it’s the cornerstone of what we do so you have to take stock of what you are and get real so if you’re someone who’s eating a relatively standard American diet meaning something processed for breakfast lunch and dinner then action item #1 is to pick a meal and get rid of the processed food at that meal once you’ve won go on to the next meal, and once you’ve won at both of those both meals go to the third meal. So that the food you are eating generally is devoid of processed food yes you can have special occasions yes you can have a treat and what you want to watch out for is it’s not a slippery slope meaning you have it once in a while but then you start having them every day and then you are like oops, sorry, so it’s important to start with food and that is actionable right? And no matter where you live and I’m cognizant that not everyone has the same financial resources so ideally in a world where you have all choices you would go for no processed and organic and then do your best you can get frozen foods that are organic that are often much cheaper than fresh and those are pretty good so if it’s a choice between something that has pesticides versus something that is frozen that has no pesticides I would go for the frozen especially because it’s fresh frozen so it’s preserved all the nutrients in it and don’t cook it to death because then you’ll get rid of all the nutrients, so lightly cooked it. It’s so funny in our book what we go through is like if this is where you are starting for food do this and if this is what you are starting do this because we recognize you could be on a huge spectrum of places for food. So we start with figure out where you are and then start to level up. Now I always say to people most of the people, well actually all people that see me our female because I’m a gynecologist so I always see females but my husband’s partner sees men also and I always say to my patients watch your language, language is really critical and so this isn’t a diet, a. it’s is a lifestyle and b. there’s no cheating on your lifestyle there’s just what you do and whether or does or doesn’t work for you because you know they call me we have these calls since like, bless me Dr. T, I have sinned, oh my god, I’m not a confessional booth, you have not sinned you are perfect, incomplete and sometimes you do things that don’t work for you move on but then the question is let’s Monday morning quarterback this did you eat that at that party because you were a. hungry b. forget to prepare c. left out d. acting out what was the source of it, let’s get down to the source of it so next time you can have a win when you go to the party that you at the end of it say oh, I actually ate in a way that I’d feel good the next day, so we really look a lot of that in our book, are you sleeping, are you moving your body, what is your genetic risk, all of that. All of the stuff we talked about today or things that we talked about in our book, and we’re really drilling to it, is like one per chapter, we got a whole chapter on each of these things.

[01:47:37] Ashley James: Nice. I love it.

[01:47:40] Dr. Wendie Trubow: And you may want to cut this out, this is the part where if you want to cut it out I’m totally fine with but my experiences as a perimenopausal woman lead me to say to my husband we need to write a book about how to navigate perimenopause in a way that is empowering and so that book we’re starting tomorrow actually and that would be out in 2023

[01:48:00] Ashley James: Congratulations! I’m not cutting this out. That is a fantastic thing and I can’t wait to have you back.

[01:47:06] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Thank you!

[01:48:07] Ashley James: Talking about this I’ve a girlfriend of mine and she is a listener so it’s so funny when like my legit friends in real life then became my fans of my show, I heard that episode! Oh my gosh, this is cool, but kind of crazy and so we’ve known each other for years and she started becoming a listener, and I’m not preachy to my friends, I kind of can’t help myself so if I listen to any their conversation and I’m like oh I did an interview with this doctor and then I’ll catch myself because I’m like I’m sorry guys I know I’m like this I act like this you know like Lisa Simpson about health stuff but it’s kind of my thing I truly do geek out all the time 24/7 this is who I am and so a friend of mine didn’t tell me she had this health issues she’s had 7 kids, 7 kids, she knows at least 2 languages that I know, lived in several countries and just really had this very eclectic life at times incredibly stressful, really beautiful life, they do ministry where they opened their home to people who are recovering drug and alcohol addicts they are sober but they’re going thru their program, and they opened their home with their children opened their home and they bring them in because now this is a clean and sober environment so they for many years have ministered to these people who are like it so hard to recover from like fentanyl addiction like these crazy street drug addiction their kind of like their side gig is they constantly helping these people to get back on their feet and they’re called to do that and they also run a construction business so she’s like one thing or another and she said to me, oh I listen to this episode now I don’t have migraines anymore because I did what this top doctor told me to do, like just a major life thing, and then I did this, she’s done several things from several different guests but what she’d told me which I can’t wait for her to hear this episode so she’s listening. Hello!

[01:50:24] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Shout out! Shout out!

[01:50:26] Ashley James: Shout out! Yeah, she said to me something really interesting because she’s like really really healthy she looks really healthy and she goes, I hit a total wall and I don’t know where she’s in her 40’s I don’t know where her energy drops down to the floor like I don’t know where and I’ve heard people talk about it and but you say things several times in this interview you said things it’s like I’ve heard it but it never landed and you had these tidbits really land in my listening and I’m hoping for all the listeners too I bet it has and so for her I think because she’s at that moment where you said if your adrenals are taxed which I bet hers are because she’s lived such an amazing life, just beautiful, brilliant life so far her adrenals are taxed and then her ovaries were like well guess what we’re plucking out! Perimenopause. Welcome, welcome to the beginning of menopause and so now she’s like boom hits the wall completely slides all the way down to the floor so I can’t wait for her to read you book also because I bet that’s really going to help her.

[01:51:43] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Late spring 2023! It’s coming.

[01:51:45] Ashley James: Oh awesome! Welcome back on the show, can’t wait to have you back. I’d said earlier that I had that distended liver tasting heavy metals like I was crazy and I had switched over to a very healthy very clean totally no processed diet in an attempt to heal because anytime I was actually doing keto and meat and everything but that was made it all come flaring out, that was made it all, it was keto with a doctor we’re following and every week working with this doctor and it was so bad like three months of keto with this doctor my liver was crazy I was going through all this tests my liver enzymes were through the roof they’re very concerned they want to do biopsy and I was like, no no no then I did an interview that really turned me around and had me do 100% unprocessed whole food plant based very healing like a lot of raw food also one of my doctors said you really need to sweat because that is one of your emunctory systems that’s where your detox system that allows you to bypass the liver so I looked around and looked around talked to a bunch of doctors and finally settled on Sunlighten Sauna, have you heard of the Sunlighten?

[01:53:04] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I have one. I love it.

[01:53:05] Ashley James: You have one! Yes! So I have the 3-in-1 it says it’s about the size of a small closet I’m actually sitting right beside it right now that’s my Sunlighten and it’s in the office in the corner of the office, and my husband and I can actually fit in it even though it’s for one person we can both fit in it on a bench although, you know what it’s not as fun as it sounds to be sitting with your husband sweating that was fun for the first few times but I’d just like to just spread a little bit and have my space so we go back to back but what I thought that’s really interesting is my electricity bill didn’t go up well we turn off the heat because it’s the summer time and I just check the electricity bill so we’ve probably using the sauna a lot and it didn’t change so its about as much as having the heat on in which we didn’t have heat on much cause we’re in a very neutral area, Seattle, we hardly ever have the heat on but with the detox I started with the sauna and I noticed that everything slowly got better my liver went down within a few weeks my liver went down I stopped tasting heavy metals I’m sweating almost everyday in the sauna I would sweat everyday but if I didn’t really stay on top of my hydration then I wouldn’t do it that day it’s my reward at the end of the day for being hydrated all day long and that was about four years, four, was it four years ago it’s like time is sort of crazy, 2018 I think and what happened was for the first time in my life I successfully lost weight and kept it off it was 80 pounds and that was over the course of two years but you’re right the weight didn’t just start coming off right away it was gradual and it was definitely after the first few months like a little bit of first because that was inflammation but using the Sunlighten consistently was one of my best tools for detox and then I was introduced to other stuff as well I’m never going to say that it’s just one thing

[01:55:14] Dr. Wendie Trubow: No, it’s never just one thing.

[01:55:15] Ashley James: Right. It’s never just one thing that’s why getting your book is so important because what if it’s 10 things or 12 things and maybe we’re doing 3 of them and we need to add the rest that’s why you’re book is so important because it’s going to let us know about all the stuff we’re not doing that we could be doing to take ourselves to the next level so here I am I’ve come so far but I know there’s more for me to do and that’s why I’m excited for your book, I’m so excited for all your books all the books that you’re going to come out for the future but this one thank you for writing it I really appreciate that you came here today to share this and I just know that you’re helping so many people so many women but I think that this message can help men as well just like you wrote it with your husband and your addressing everyone so thank you, thank you for the future generations cause imagine the parents or let’s say people who are listening who aren’t parents yet make this changes and that’s a trickle effect down generations after generations so when you get up in the morning I just want you to think about all the generations that you are touching based because you’re sliding this information so thank you.

[01:56:23] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Oh it’s really a privilege. I think I love how you put that out there. It’s not that just for you it’s for future generations. That’s where the magic lives.

[01:56:34] Ashley James: And even let that be the motivator for not eating that thing at the party because I know some dads are like super endearing dads also but I can only say for my experiences as a woman because that’s what I am, in the moment, I want to eat that whatever that blank that’s going to be tasty really good in the moment but if I were think that this would harm future generations, my unborn generations, like my grandchildren or if you know if I have that idea in my mind, and even if I’m done having kids my health impacts my children my mom died when I was 22 and she was 55 and she was the epitome of health to me until she died, that was devastating to my life and what if I die young and how that impacts my son these are lifestyle choices that we can make their little tiny ones that add up every day and that is the difference between being around for you grandkids or not every listener you are important your life matters and the impact you have on your family on your future generations matter so you’re worth it to say no in the moment there’s temptations for the long term benefit of future generations they get to be with you and I think that is really beautiful and so we should remember that our life choices and every life choice we make does have even a small impact on those we care about.

[01:58:09] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yes, small changes add up to huge impact over the course of the year. It’s really impactful.

[01:58:18] Ashley James: Thank you so much for coming on the show. Please come back when you have your sexy book written.

[01:58:26] Dr. Wendie Trubow: It’s going to be a fun one. Once we embargo the title I’ll share it with you. The first one is Dirty Girl you can kind of imagine what the second one might mean. You probably can’t imagine the title but it’s certainly not going to be tame and boring.

[01:58:40] Ashley James: Okay good, good, I mean we’re talking about sex and health right so we need to make this fun.

[01:58:48] Dr. Wendie Trubow: We should. Not just fun but accessible we can do this we’ve got this we’ve got the tools, and no, it’s not normal to experience these things it’s fixable.

[01:58:40] Ashley James: I love that, I love that. Thank you so much Dr. Wendie Trubow this has been such a pleasure having you on the show and oh, I want to make sure that listeners also know that your website now I have fivejourneys.com is that the best for you or is there another website you want them to know about.

[01:59:17] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Well, I’m into world domination so that’s our clinic it’s fivejourneys.com the book is on Amazon that’s the best place you’ll get it for the least price we have my Instagram at wendietrubow.md and we have our own podcast which is five journeys podcast live like you matter.

[01:59:34] Ashley James: Nice definitely check that podcast. Awesome. Well thank you so much have yourself a fantastic day and I can’t wait for you to comeback on the show.

[01:59:42] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Me too, thank you so much Ashley, this has been great!

[01:59:46] Ashley James: I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Dr. Wendie Trubow. She was amazing, wasn’t she? And you know what, right after I recorded this I realized there’s 2 more studies I didn’t tell you about that I’m really excited about when it comes to utilizing light and heat therapy found in the Sunlighten Sauna System which offers the full spectrum the near mid and far infrared there’s two really incredible things and that’s increasing nitric oxide in the body and also the heat shock protein so the Sunlighten system when you use it on a daily basis it increases cardiovascular health and decreases high blood pressure actually there was a study I just read recently that it increases nitric oxide and if you’ve been an avid listener you know we talked about nitric oxide in the past because it is directly related to preventing cardiovascular events preventing like heart attacks and supporting longevity and the health of the cardiovascular system so we want to have a healthy level of nitric oxide in the body now there’s something called heat shock protein and we talked about this in episode 410 that’s really important cause Marcus Friedmann talks about the natural treatments for cancer that some countries are freely using in hospitals for whatever reason we get into that episode before, for whatever reason are not being used in this country but have been highly, highly studied in other countries so the use of heat therapy stimulates heat shock protein and there are some types of cancers that are unable to survive in the higher heat and so they find out that when you stimulate heat shock protein they’re also seeing that some cancers can’t survive in that and that’s why we have other certain countries they’re using a heat therapy as an adjunct with the other cancer treatments very successfully so episode 410 is really good to listen to about that but that’s what I love about the Sunlighten System is that it helps your body to increase the heat shock protein which heat shock protein and there’s tons of studies on it, it helps the body maintain homeostasis by forming new proteins reactivating misfolded proteins and it works as a chaperon to stabilize unfolded proteins and deformed cells which helps the body to prevent type 2 diabetes, obesity, arteriosclerosis and of course cancer, because we’ve seen some that cancers are DNA’s gone awry in some cases but there are many other diseases that we see where DNA’s gone awry thru oxidative stress so this is helps greatly to reduce oxidative stress there’s whole component of our innate immune system that heat shock proteins stimulates and boosts reduce free radicals and heat shock protein alone also aids in faster muscle recovery and repair and then heart protection as well there’s many studies I read but I just want to highlight a few of the ones I thought we’re really interesting heat shock protein also helps in relieving chronic pain and depression and in the studies they saw that people who were depressed reported that they had increased appetite they had a sensation of a relaxed mood and they had an alleviation from their depression which is amazing and it goes back to the fact that when we reduce stress in the body we could be we were doing something physical we’re sitting in the sauna our body is sweating it actually affecting our emotional state our mental state it’s helping us detox it’s having this anti-aging effect it’s having this really positive effect on the immune system and in our cardiovascular system so it’s always wonderful things happening all at once as far as all the healing tools that I have collected over the years it’s the Sunlighten Sauna System is the one tool that does the most things it’s like the Swiss army knife of holistic tools that I have in my arsenal that I use on a regular basis sometimes I’m going to use an oral health example it was kind of life changing for my oral health when I started using the tongue scraper and I realize that your mouth has never been cleaned until you’ve used the tongue scraper it’s a game changer the stuff that comes off your tongue twice a day is amazing you should definitely get a metal tongue scraper it does one thing it just that one thing and it does that very well and that’s effective and I like it and I have all kinds of health tools and bio hacking health tools to help me just optimize my life that I use all the time but the Sunlighten Sauna does over 20 things to the body and I’m learning more and more every time I look into it I’m learning more and more about what this light and heat therapy does for my health and so as far as investing in your health you’re going to get the biggest bang for your buck by using a tool on a daily basis that accomplishes all these different health results at once just like shifting your diet all of a sudden, oh all of these wonderful things are coming online epigenetically your gene starts expressing differently when you changed your diet when you lower stress your genes actually starts expressing differently your different enzymes start happening your body goes into this huge healing mode where it’s able to finally deliver resources to healing and to repair and to restoring and regenerating when you make this one time, you make this one change just one switch all of these things come on line and that’s what I’ve noticed with the Sunlighten System I just want a detox but I’ve got so much more so there’s my 2 cents and then some with inflation I don’t know here’s my 2 dollars on the Sunlighten System. Please if you haven’t already joined our Facebook group I’d love to see you there, I’d love to chat with you, if you have any questions or if you just want to share about your healing journey so many of us are on our healing journeys together and it’s so great to come in to a community and feel like you are not alone so please join the Facebook group say hi to me and thank you for being a listener thank you for sharing this episode to those you care about and I can’t wait for you to hear what’s coming up we’ve got some great interviews in the pipeline that we’re going to be publishing in the next month or so, so watch out for those and have yourself a fantastic rest of your day and please do something today to love yourself.

Get Connected with Dr. Wendie Trubow!

Book by Dr. Wendie Trubow:

Dirty Girl: Ditch the Toxins, Look Great, and Feel Freaking Amazing!

Best of RSMN: The Genius of Nina Simone