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351: A Parent’s Guide to Precocious Puberty & How to Slow It Down With Dr. Anne Marie Fine

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351: A Parent’s Guide to Precocious Puberty & How to Slow It Down With Dr. Anne Marie Fine

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

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Katie: Hello and welcome to the “Wellness Mama” podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and wellnesse.com, that’s wellnesse.com with an E on the end, which is my new line of completely natural and completely effective personal care products like hair care and toothpaste and now hand sanitizer. So make sure to check that out. This episode is a big one for any parents with preteens or kids that are getting close to that age because it’s all about precocious puberty and how we can help make sure our kids don’t go through puberty too early and what we can do to support them when they do.

Dr. Anne-Marie Fine is my guest today. She’s a doctor, award-winning researcher, and best-selling author, and the founder and CEO of IAMFINE, which is based on her personal and clinical experience with chronic disease called by environmental toxicity. And environmental toxicity is a big factor when it comes to precocious puberty. We’re gonna go deep on that today. But she also works with those with autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, brain fog, cancer, etc., and she’s done a lot of research on the rising environmental concentrations of 80,000 new chemicals in our environment and how this expresses in every phase of life, from preconception and pregnancy to precocious puberty, and even to health and hormone problems as adults.

So, a very information-packed episode that I know you will enjoy. And without further ado, let’s jump in. Dr. Fine, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Dr. Fine: Well, thanks for inviting me. I’m happy to be here.

Katie: I am really excited to chat with you about a topic that is coming up more and more with my readers and my listeners, which makes me think that it must be on the rise. And that topic is precocious puberty. And I think that there’s a lot of factors that go into this. And I think a lot of them have to do with an area of research and work that you do all the time. So, I guess, to start, for anyone who’s not familiar with that term, let’s define what the term precocious puberty is.

Dr. Fine: Precocious puberty is a label given to the fact that the boys and the girls are reaching certain signs of puberty, like pubic hair and changes in breast development, and breast budding, and genitalia. It’s really the age at which this is occurring in the boys and girls. And the problem is that the age at which this is happening has been declining pretty much globally. And so, people want to know why because there are implications for early puberty. And the other thing about precocious puberty is that the mainstream conventional medical doctors are just simply changing what’s normal to what they’re seeing in the practice. And so, now they’re saying that precocious puberty is the appearance of any sign of secondary sex characteristics in boys younger than age 9, and in girls younger than age 7.5 or 8. Whereas normal puberty in a girl is what they’re saying now is anywhere from 8 to 13 years of age, when really, 12 to 13 for a girl is, for about the last 50 to 75 years has been more of the norm, not 8 to 13 years of age.

Katie: Wow. And from what I’ve read, that change in age, and the percentage of people who are going through puberty earlier, that’s rising relatively drastically, like you said, compared to previous generations. What do you think are some of the factors in that pretty rapid change?

Dr. Fine: Well, the one that I’m not gonna talk about too much because I wanna really get into the chemical contributors like endocrine disruptors, but one of the other environmental factors involved in earlier puberty is the rise in obesity. And that has been fueling it as well. And our fat cells actually make estrogen. And so, that’s something that has been looked at as well. But there are many chemicals that I want to talk about, like pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, cleaning substances, cosmetic products, dyes, plastic solvents that are termed endocrine disruptors, meaning that they have the ability to change how our hormones work in extremely tiny doses. And this is the key, extremely tiny doses. And that’s how our own hormones work. Very tiny doses of hormones actually have large effects.

So when you have these teeny-tiny doses of chemicals in the environment, particularly at certain vulnerable ages of development, like in fetuses, for example, when certain…when your reproductive organs are actually becoming into being. They’re actually developing and the brain is developing. When you have exposure to these substances, you’re going to get something that may not manifest until puberty, or may not manifest. The breast cancer and prostate cancer increases risk. You may not see that until these people are adults. But some of the origins of these instigators are actually in fetuses. And that’s why it’s really important to do a preconception detox for women who are wanting to conceive because it starts there. We really have to look at where the baby starts.

Katie: Okay. So, let’s go, kind of, almost maybe on a timeline. Because obviously, parents who are dealing with, like, children now are worried about this phase being imminent. They don’t have the ability to go back and do preconception over. I know, I’ve read so much since I had my firstborn kids. I wish I could’ve changed things then. So I definitely want to make sure we see…you know, obviously, we’re not judging or trying…..anyone who’s not there. But let’s start there, like in a perfect world, what would we do before we even conceive to help give our kids the best hormonal start?

Dr. Fine: Before conception, the best thing to do is to see a doctor trained in Environmental Medicine who will take a very thorough history, including an environmental history to get likely exposures and where the person lives. There’s so much we can do with looking at, you know, with the internet, you can look up places by zip code and see what the main chemicals are in that environment. And then those people, and it really should be men and women, the sperm actually does carry environmental contaminant information into the new baby. Traditionally, we have focused on the mother though. And then those prospective parents need to be tested to see what contaminants, what kinds of chemicals is really high in them. And so, the program is going to be designed personally for those people.

So, it’s not… The same people don’t do the same thing. There is no reason to do, like, a heavy metal detox on somebody who doesn’t have a problem with heavy metals, right. So, you want to see what problems, what environmental exposures those people have so that you can really zero in on them and make sure that you’re doing a good detox. And then as far as some of us have already had kids, oh, wow, do I know that? Because I’m a mother too, and I’ve already had my kids. And I had them long ago before women were told anything about what to avoid, even when you’re expecting. And so, when I was pregnant, the only thing we were told was avoid alcohol and caffeine. That was it. And I have to tell you, I ate so much tuna when I was pregnant.

And, you know, that’s high in mercury. And I wound up with these kids who had ADHD, and I’m like, “I wonder what happened because, you know, I thought I was doing a good job.” But I did a course correction in childhood. I tested them for heavy metals and mercury. And when I saw it was high, I was able to go in and do some heavy metal chelation or detoxification. And I was really pleased to do that because when you’re a mother, one thing to remember, because you may have a lot of younger mothers listening right now, is when you have your children at home, that’s an ideal time to work with them. If you’ve missed something, like I most certainly did, to do the course correction and take care of it. Because once they’re 18 and leave the home, you know, your word is not the gospel anymore.

As a mother, it’s a lot harder to be able to go back and to do something. Unless of course, it’s their personal motivation, then, of course, that comes into play. So, I really feel that you made such a good point. A lot of us didn’t have that option. I certainly had never heard about it. And so, you just need to as you have children, and even in your own cells, as you grow, you always have the opportunity to make course corrections and to go back and to test and to really do a deep dive into what could be causing your particular health concerns. And then to be able to, you know, decrease your body burden of chemicals. So, it is not too late.

And also I want to say, I want to make this clear as well because this is what I see in my practice, sometimes, the mothers, they come in when they’re already pregnant. So, that’s not an ideal time, right? Or they’ve waited so long to get pregnant because of career concerns or financial concerns that now they’re concerned about, you know, getting to be too old and not being able to conceive. And they may not feel, you know, the need to take time out before they conceive to do preconception care. And so, those are some real…those are real-life issues that do crop up, but it is something that I do recommend. But, you know, it’s something that you have to, sort of, fix it in your head before the time arrives when you’re already pregnant, or you feel like, “I’m so old. I’ve just gotta get pregnant.” That’s really more important, right?

Katie: Yeah, exactly. And there’s a message of hope too, for anyone listening. I always try to remind everyone, you know, I didn’t figure out most of this stuff, sounds like you as well, until I was an adult and had autoimmune disease, and then had to undo all the damage and figure out what was wrong. And so, if we’re talking about this for our kids, even us starting when they’re children at all is an advantage over waiting until they’re adults. You know, so anytime, like the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second-best time is today. We always can start with what we know now.

And so, I would guess also, there’s kind of a spectrum. So, I think of it as like for autoimmune disease, for instance, I’ve kind of explained it that we all have a bucket and you can fill the bucket with any number of things. You could put marbles, or sand, or pine cones, or whatever it may be. But when you reach the top, it’s going to overflow. The idea being when you fill up that bucket and it gets overwhelmed, you’re gonna end up with some kind of problem and it’s gonna manifest differently for each of us. And I think of environmental toxins kind of in the same way.

The body is able to handle small amounts of these things and it’s pretty resilient. But when you reach a certain level of exposure, it’s going to bubble over. And so, you can tell me if that analogy maybe doesn’t work here, but that’s my thought with kids. And so, if we can mitigate their exposure and do things when they’re young to help them avoid filling up the bucket in the first place, that’s an advantage. Or if we can do things to help them take things back out of the bucket, that’s another advantage. And the earlier we can do that, the better. But anytime is a great time to start.

Dr. Fine: Absolutely, Katie. I so agree. We call that the rain barrel theory. And it’s true, it doesn’t matter what’s in there. Lots of things go in there, environmental toxins go in there, but also stress goes in there, and poor nutrition goes in there. And once it reaches the top, the next thing in, no matter what it is, if it overflows, that’s what’s going to trigger the disease. And so, the idea, it can be super specific if you are testing for it and looking carefully for it, but also, the pervading theory is that anything you can do to lower your bucket would be helpful, and to start at any time is helpful.

And by the way, even if you, you know, are super careful with your pregnancy and childhood, as we live and accumulate years, and our earth continues to be polluted, even when we’re careful, we are always accumulating body burden of chemicals. And so, it becomes necessary to make it a part of your daily life, but also, every now and then, to do a detox and lower that body burden before it overflows. Or a lot of people will wait until they have the actual, for example, autoimmune disease or something, and then they will go ahead and do it, or they get cancer or something like that. But it’s not a one and done. And so, it’s something that we really have to put in our toolbox and in the back of our head that this is an area that we need to pay attention to throughout life.

Katie: Absolutely. Okay. So, let’s go deeper on into chapters, especially for the subset of parents listening who are asking me these questions via email or direct message, who want to know, you know, if my kid…maybe they didn’t even expect this, my kid is at these younger ages and starting to show symptoms of potential precocious puberty. Like, what do they need to know about endocrine disrupters so explain what those are and where they are most often found when we’re talking about our kids?

Dr. Fine: Okay. So, let’s talk about specifics with the early puberty. Two of the biggest contributors to this precocious puberty are, I would say, BPA and phthalates which are plasticizers. So, the whole category of plastics is something that I’m gonna focus on here. And I’m gonna talk about them separately, but I’m gonna just tell you a few of the places where they are. Children’s toys contain phthalates, like that rubber ducky in the bath. Those rubber, soft rubber toys are phthalates. The shower curtain in your bathroom, if it’s vinyl, it’s got phthalates. And the problem with phthalates is that they’re not bonded to that underlying material. They are constantly falling off into the air. And so even your dust in your home has phthalates in it.

And so, believe it or not, Katie, this is so easy and free to do for everybody. But we need to dust more often and more carefully in our house, and that will keep environmental toxins down. You would not believe what’s in your dust, okay. And then in our cleaning products, we also have phthalates and our personal care products because phthalates are also used as incense, as scent fixatives. And so, the easy way to know that is to look at the ingredient list. And if you see the word fragrance or perfume on the ingredient list, that’s your cue that most likely those substances contain fragrances. You will never see phthalate on a label of anything. It’s just not required to be listed. Fragrances are a protected trade secret, and the word fragrance can hide up to 80 or 100 different chemicals and you don’t really know what they are, okay. So, let me just go through a few more of these and then we’ll back up a little. So, that covers the phthalates pretty well.

And then also, I wanna talk about plug-in air fresheners. Everyone listening should just after they hear this, they should just unplug them and throw them away because they contain phthalates. They contain formaldehyde, which is a carcinogen. They contain benzene, which is another carcinogen. And they are just emitting these into the air. And so you’re breathing them into your body. Phthalates can also be absorbed transdermally. So, if you have a scent emitter in your house, even those little sticks that you put in the jar of sense, if your skin is bare, and you’re…and it’s…I mean, you can’t even see it, but you are absorbing this stuff multiple different ways.

When you go to a department store and you’re walking in, and you’ve got the perfume sprayers, and I hate that. And so I always say, “No, thank you.” And I feel pretty virtuous about that. But then I discovered probably three or four years ago, that even if you yourself did not put any of it on your own skin, just walking through that cloud of perfume, every inch of your skin that was exposed you are absorbing that which means fragrance is like the new secondhand smoke. If you’re sitting in an office, for example, and you yourself don’t wear scents because you don’t want the endocrine-disrupting effects of phthalates, but let’s say you’re…the other people in the office are wearing scented…and it’s not just perfume, perfume is an obvious one, perfume and aftershave are obvious, but it’s underarm deodorant. It’s body lotion. It’s makeup. It’s hairspray. It’s many other things.

And so, if someone in your office is wearing it, you’re exposed even though you yourself did not consent. And you were educated enough to say “No,” and you’re using unscented products such as laundry detergent, dryer sheets, all of these things have phthalates. Our homes are just pumped through with endocrine-disrupting chemicals that are contributing to many things. Not just precocious puberty, they’re contributing to…they make you fat. They predispose you to diabetes and other health problems.

And also, I wanted to mention that the Endocrine Society, which is the world’s largest professional association of medical and research endocrinologists. So these are very conventional doctors, and even they have come on board and they consider reducing endocrine-disrupting chemical impacts to be one of their highest public health goals. So, when they came out with that a few years ago, you know, that was pretty profound that it’s being recognized everywhere.

So then, the other one that I want to talk about is the Bisphenols, Bisphenol A, BPA. And BPA is also part of plastic and predisposing to precocious puberty. And it’s found in the polycarbonate water containers. It’s found in thermal receipts. Thermal receipts is actually a really large source of this. And just like the phthalates, this chemical is not bound very tightly to the underlying material. And just touching it, this has been proven in studies, within seconds, if you take that person’s blood which they have, within seconds, not very many, you have BPA in the bloodstream. So, things are easily transferred, the BPA transfers from the thermal receipt onto your skin, into your body. And if you have used hand sanitizer prior to handling the receipt, you get about 10 times more BPA into your blood because the hand sanitizer contains things that are known penetration enhancers.

And that’s something to be thinking about these days because the use of hand sanitizer has increased. So, where do you find the thermal receipts? You’re going to find them in pretty much everywhere, the grocery store, the bank, the post office, if you get receipts at the gas station, you know, airline tickets. They’re pretty much everywhere, fast food places, other restaurants. But here’s the thing, we don’t have to accept them. So, just say no. Unless you are buying something that you might have to return, you know, you can just say, do you need the receipt for your restaurant meal? Take a picture of it on your phone or have it emailed to you. It’s no…it does you no good to take those things.

And then the other problem for ladies especially is when we stuff those receipts in our purses, that BPA is just coming off and touching everything in your purse. And when you stick your hand in your purse to find your cell phone, or your glasses, or your wallet, every time you put your hand in your purse, you’re just coating your hands with BPA. And so, I’ll just leave this tip here right now so I don’t forget it. But what I have my patients do is the ladies, I have them empty out their purse at home, get rid of all the receipts, take a cloth that’s wet with hot water, wipe out the inside of the purse, wipe everything off, every…the wallet, the phone, the makeup kit, everything. And then, get a Ziploc bag or something like that and put it in your purse. And if you must take a receipt, put it in your Ziploc bag segregate it from touching anything else in your purse.

Now, for the men, they’re discovering that, you know, same thing happens. The man puts it in their wallet. So, money is now contaminated with BPA and BPS. So, you know, it’s something that avoidance is really key here. You have to be really careful and aware of BPA. It’s insidious. The CDC has been tracking chemicals in our blood for decades. And at last count, it’s like BPA was in 95% of U.S. people, even though their half-life is pretty short. So, if it’s been found in 95% of Americans, that just means we’re exposed so ubiquitously that you could take our blood at any time and we would have it just because, you know, the stuff we were exposed to maybe two days ago, that’s gone. But now the stuff we were exposed to today, now that’s in there.

So, the BPA story I had…you know, I have a patient, we have to be really careful because sometimes I get patients who are looking at certain things in their environment, like the water supply and saying, “I can do better.” Yes, we can all do better, right. So, that’s good. And then they were ordering it from one of the water purification, I’m not gonna name them, who deliver it to your house on a regular schedule. And it’s purified, and then you can look up the water on their website and see what’s in it and what’s not in it. And it’s really interesting. I looked up this particular water, it actually was…it was pretty good water. But all of the containers were made of polycarbonate, BPA. And so, you don’t know how long that water, that good water, you know, about how long it’s been sitting in there touching the BPA which is coming off into it.

When they’re on these hot trucks being delivered, you don’t know how long they’re on there. You don’t know how long they sat on a shelf in the warehouse before it was even shipped to you. And what’s interesting is I called the company to talk about this, basically to ask them were they aware that this was not a good idea, and they basically said, “Yes, we’re aware that our containers contain BPA. However, we don’t feel that there is a health issue there. And so we are…you know, we’re still gonna use it.” And so, they haven’t really caught up to the science. And it’s really, unfortunately, mommas, it’s up to us to be our own FDA and to be able to be more discerning about what we allow into our homes. And so that…so, the idea of getting purified water is a good idea. There’s so much crap in the waters.

I’ve got a whole…I teach doctors environmental medicine. And one of my…one of the talks that I’ve gotten the most positive feedback on is the one that I did on, “What is in our water?” You would not believe it. But anyway, so with water, you do not want to drink bottled water of any kind, no matter how good you think the water is supposed to be on the inside. You want to have water that is in a glass bottle. And that’s really important. And that’s something that as families…and by the way, when I was a young mother, I did not know this. And so that was something that was overlooked. But thankfully, I eventually was able to get a reverse osmosis water system and not worry about that. And so, we have to just…like Katie said, you just have to start where you are. There’s no value in saying “Oh, woe is me….. I did it wrong.” No, you just start where you are. And you make the better decision and then you move forward.

Katie: Exactly. Well, and looks like I’ll just jump in on the water note because I think you’re right. And I have posts about this that I’ll link in the show notes as well at wellnessmama.fm. And I know you have resources as well. So, those will all be linked in the show notes. But when I started learning about this, getting rid of plastic can seem so overwhelming. And I’m a big fan of the 80-20 rule. So, for me personally, I figured out based on the current research, the biggest sources of exposure, like you mentioned, are inhalation via the air, and our water supply, and especially plastic water bottles, which are also horrible for the planet. So, we prioritized getting a water filter, actually a whole house filter we have at this point, and under the sink filter, and switching to using reusable metal water bottles, which is also much more eco-friendly as well. And that’s one change that makes a big, big, big difference.

And so if we can just move away from drinking out of disposable single used plastic in general, that’s a huge thing. We also put air filters in our house and don’t use air fresheners, of course, and switch to things like plastic-free in the kitchen. And I have resources to help walk people through all of that. But again, it’s like any incremental change you can make in this is a big deal, especially when we’re talking about kids. And that doesn’t mean you have to, you know, do it all overnight. This can definitely be a process, but it’s an important one to be aware of, certainly.

Dr. Fine: Yeah. And so, that’s what you wanna focus on when you have the kids at home, I think we wanna get back to how do you…what do you do with these kids who have precocious puberty? You have to look at, “Oh my gosh, I’ve gotta call out this one company.” Well, maybe not by name. But I think we have to take a really deeper look at what is in our homes because that’s where you as mothers, that’s where we make the most difference. The home is our domain. And we are the ones who are able to set it up in the way we want. And so, we really want to…like you said, Katie, we really want to root out all of the plastics, and all of the scented.

Honestly, I think the plastics and the scents in our home, those two…and to dust more, because I didn’t even talk about the flame retardants and all the other things that are in your house dust. But I believe, dusting twice a week, getting rid of plastic, getting rid of all of the scented products in your house, and eating organic, those things together are really going to be important for limiting things in your children that are endocrine disruptors. And we haven’t really talked about pesticides, but I want to add something here. The pesticides have been shown to lower children’s IQs. And in the animal kingdom, they are seeing hermaphrodite frogs, and coming about because of the feminizing effect.

We didn’t really talk about boys too much. But we have a twin problem with precocious puberty in the girls, and the feminization of boys via chemicals in the environment that act like estrogens. And so, pesticides are one of the vehicles that do this. But also, the phthalates are feminizing on the boys. And the studies are showing that the male infants are having changed male genitalia. And the way it’s changed is it’s showing a feminization of that male baby which, you know, in our audience of mothers who already have children, that may not be relevant right this minute, but I’ll tell you where it’s relevant.

Mothers, have you noticed that they are now marketing to our teenage boys? They’re marketing these products, these body scented products. And the marketing is very, very strongly suggesting, for example, that, you know, if the boys use these products, they can get not only one girl, but two girls. I mean, I have this in my slides for my doctors, it’s really wild. And these products, if you look at them carefully, they not only contain phthalates, they are so strongly scented, they have lots of phthalates in them. And phthalates are decreasing testosterone. So, you may not…that problem may not lead to a precocious puberty in a boy, but the lack of testosterone most certainly leads to abnormal male development.

And so, that’s something else that we want to consider in our homes. We want to think about the decrease in testosterone and sperm counts. And, I mean, the reproductive organs and systems in both boys and girls have been under attack for a while. And we are just now starting to see more of this. I wrote an article a couple of years ago for Thrive Global, in it where I basically…the title of it, if you want to look it up, is “The Handmaid’s Tale Becomes a Reality.” Because that is an Emmy Award-winning TV show that shows what happens when they polluted their environment with pesticides and chemicals. And they are now having trouble reproducing.

They have to get the handmaids in to be…someone who has been proven to have been able to carry a child. Basically they’re outsourcing the baby-making, right? And this show is incredibly popular. And it boggles the imagination because people act like it’s entertainment, but it’s really not because this is what we’re seeing in our patient population. We’re seeing a rise in infertility and a rise in assisted fertility techniques. And we’re seeing a rise in birth defects and a rise in, you know, developmental problems in our children. And so, all of this is stemming from these chemicals that have insidious negative implications at teeny-tiny doses, but that we’re getting those teeny-tiny doses all the time.

And that’s why, Katie, I wanna…you did say something that I do wanna kind of pounce on here. Air filters. Love air filters. 20 years ago when I started practicing medicine, I used to recommend them for my asthmatic patients. Not anymore. I think everybody should have them in their homes, in their bedrooms, in their children’s bedrooms. So, at least when you’re sleeping, you are able to filter out many of these things. We do not have good air. And the air in your home is between 5 and 10 times more toxic than your outdoor air, which is super toxic, and that’s because your home is off-gassing a lot of different things.

But that’s…we’re getting a little bit away from what we were talking about. But I wanted to bring that in too because you mentioned it. So, air filters, avoiding plastic, avoiding scented products, dusting really well, vacuuming with a really good vacuum cleaner. Most of them are just, I don’t know if you’re aware of that, they are just…you vacuum and then it’s like the dust just kind of goes out of the bag. You’re not…you’ve gotta have a good HEPA filter in there, so that when you are vacuuming you are truly getting rid and capturing the dust particles because the dust in your home is toxic. And then pesticide-free is something that you want to also focus on.

Katie: Totally agree. And I think, when it comes to endocrine disrupters and hormones in general, you know, getting rid of the bad stuff is a very important, big huge part of the equation. And then once you tackle that step, it’s then figuring out ways to support the body as well. Because I think it’s a balance when you’re talking about holistic health of removing the bad and then giving the body the good. And so, I think that’s another key area I would love to talk about and hear your thoughts. And a few of the things I’ve noticed and I do have kids in the almost puberty age, I haven’t had any, like, make that jump yet, we’re right on the cusp of it.

And so, thinking of things like supporting the body nutritionally with tons of micronutrients during that time, especially we know things like leafy greens bind to extra estrogen in the body. So, we wanna make sure our kids are getting a wide variety of different sources of micronutrients from ideally fresh local produce whenever possible. And just being cognizant of them getting enough nutrients because puberty, of course, is a time of increased demand on the body and very rapid growth. But I’m curious if you have any dietary or supplementation recommendations for both supporting kids from not going through puberty too early, which of course, you know, avoid processed foods and foods that contain plastic, like we talked about, but then also when it is the right time for them to go through puberty, how can we nutritionally support them best through that process?

Dr. Fine: I recommend, and this is kind of an area that I didn’t focus on too much before, but when I said no plastic, that includes processed foods that are packaged in plastic. Because in Puerto Rico years ago, they were finding premature puberty in female girls. They were finding little girls sprouting breasts, and getting their periods at 2, 3, and 4 years old. So, that is way worse than what we’re seeing here, right? And so, they tested these girls in Puerto Rico, what on earth is causing that? And they discovered it was phthalates, okay. And so, what they discovered, they had to kind of be detectives and say, “Well, where are the phthalates coming from?”

And one of the things they concluded was that Puerto Rico is an island, everything is shipped in, and everything is shipped in covered in plastic, plastic, plastic, plastic. So, your food being covered in plastic, your meats, your fat, fatty products like meats are being covered in plastic. You want to eat fresh. Well, okay, let’s just go back to the meat. If you’re buying meat, I recommend buying the grass-fed organic kinds of meats from the kind of place where it hasn’t been sitting there in a case wrapped in plastic styrofoam on the bottom and plastic on top. Go to the kind of store that is just sitting open in a case. And then you can wrap it, or the butcher will wrap it in a butcher paper. And then, you know, you take it home and you cook it. And then that way, it’s not just sitting in all of those wrappings of plastic for so long. So, I do recommend that.

Whole foods, fresh fruits, and vegetables for sure. I see that the children today are not really getting very many. And the problem is, as you alluded to, our detoxification systems in our bodies, they run on nutrients. The nutrients are the cofactors that…we have detoxification enzymes in our bodies, and if you are nutritionally deficient in some of them, they’re just not gonna run. And so, by saturating their diets with the micronutrients and the greens, in particular, I really like the dark leafy greens, but I really like broccoli, garlic is really good for supporting detox enzymes. I’m not a big fan of a lot of kale because kale is high in thallium, which is a heavy metal. And I’m seeing that the people who are eating a lot of green smoothies, because, of course, I test my patients, right? And so, a lot of the green smoothie eaters are coming up super high in thallium. And thallium is a very toxic heavy metal, and it’s in our organic and commercial kale now.

And why is it there? Because certain chemicals are polluting the agricultural water. And when you say a vegetable or fruit is being grown organically, those organic standards do not include the kind of water that’s being used. So, I’m having people be careful with kale right now. But I do love the isocyanides, I like the cruciferous vegetables. I like the cauliflower, the garlic, the berries are always really important, anthocyanidins and berries are really important for detox and good health. And so, your colored, I just said colored vegetables and I just realized cauliflower is white. The colored fruits and vegetables are what you really want to emphasize but cauliflower, it turns out, is a superfood, so don’t let the white color fool you. Just make sure you get plenty of other colored fruits and vegetables in there as well.

And then I have people stay away from sweetened drinks, even fruit drinks. I don’t like…I think having kids drink predominantly water is the way to go, purified water. And by the way, we need…your liver requires water to detoxify properly. And if you are dehydrated, you cannot detoxify properly. And I see a lot of people just not drinking enough water. I would have to say, most of the people I see are dehydrated. And so, let’s not forget that because that’s so simple, make your kids drink water.

So, did you have any other questions about the food? And then, of course…oh, one more thing, I do wanna say this, the food supply has gotten contaminated as well, not just with pesticides and herbicides. Do you know that the almonds are now being fumigated with propylene oxide? And I test for that. And so, I see that in my patients too. I just…it is just kind of criminal, people are eating almonds thinking they’re good, that there’s FDA requirement, that they’ve gotta be fumigated and that’s kind of a nightmare. So, you have to be…you have to really do your homework and find the clean foods.

And sometimes the animal foods are the most highly contaminated with something called POP, persistent organic pollutants like PCBs. And so, you want to make sure that even if you are a meat-eating family, you want to make sure that those meats, like if you’re gonna give salmon, it’s gotta be wild salmon because the farm salmon is the highest source of PCBs in the diet. And butter is the next one. Butter, the epidemiologists, when they go into a new area and they want to sort of get a quick and dirty idea of how much PCBs are contaminating that area, they will test the local butter. And that would be something that’s not dependent on whether or not that butter is organic. Because it’s not a pesticide, it’s something that is, even though PCBs have been banned since the ’70s, they’re in our earth’s soil and water, and the cows are eating grass off of the earth.

So, it’s not something that just getting organic butter is gonna make sure you don’t get any PCBs. So, animal products are the high…and they’ve shown this in all the…when they look at women who are vegan versus women who are not, one of the big differences they see is persistent organic pollutants. The vegans who aren’t eating animal products are really far cleaner from that one thing. So, you wanna make sure there’s plenty of plant foods in the diet. And if you’re going to eat the meat, you want to get as clean as you can with as few wrappings as you can.

Katie: Exactly. Yeah. I think those are all very, very important tips.

Before we move on, just to kind of piggyback on what you just said. I think a couple of other areas as parents that we can focus on that are really helpful are, one area right now of emerging research is, for instance, light exposure. And this is an area people tend to maybe discount because we can’t see the immediate effects or feel them as drastically as what we can feel what we eat, but there’s all kinds of research about exposure to artificial light at certain times of day impacting hormone levels. And also lack of exposure to natural light, and how that can affect proper hormone patterns. And this is true in adults and also in children.

And so, I always try to mention this to parents because if you were talking about young children, fixing light patterns can really help their sleep quality and how long they sleep. If you’re talking about teenagers, same thing, but it can also have an impact on those hormone shifts. And then for us as adults, we can see, and eye measuring can see differences in sleep quality. So, a tip there, I say is if possible, get outside and get your kids outside for at least half an hour as soon as possible after waking up because that natural light can signal important receptors in the back of the eye that are really important for not just circadian hormones like melatonin, but also for the proper hormone cycles, whether it be in children or adults.

And the same thing with avoiding artificial light at night. So this is another form of indoor pollution that often gets ignored, but when kids are getting exposure to blue light late into the evening, it confuses their body’s natural hormone responses. So, avoiding screens, using natural forms of light that don’t have blue light after dark, that’s been another key that was really helpful to us. I’m curious if you have any tips as well for exercise because we know the stats that kids today are not moving as much as kids in previous generations, but then there’s also evidence that, you know, too much exercise too young can be harmful. So, when we’re talking about balancing hormones and supporting kids in these different ages, any advice for what types of exercise to focus on with them?

Dr. Fine: Oh, the exercise thing kind of plays right into what I said at the beginning of our talk where rising levels of fat and obesity is also contributing to precocious puberty. And so, it’s very true once they took the physical ed out of the school, and the kids got really invested in their devices. Childhood Education has really dropped off a cliff and I don’t think that’s healthy. And by the way, you know, exercise is good for…it’s good for brain development, and it’s good for so many different things. I think, one of the things I’ve seen as a mother too is that the kids who…right now I’m talking girls, most girls and boys do some sort of sport when they’re young like soccer. And what I noticed in the girls who once they hit puberty, they stopped and didn’t pick up anything else, versus the ones who stuck with it or picked up a different sport, the girls who stopped are the ones who, honestly, by the end of high school they were already kind of plumping up, right?

And if you look back over, you know, my childhood, for example, there just wasn’t…kids just played from the time…they had recess at school and then they played from the time they got home till it got dark. There was so much exercise in a day. And I believe, as human beings, we evolved on a lot of exercise. Now, it wasn’t…as you alluded to, it wasn’t like training for marathons every day, that’s too much. But it was movement. And it was outside in the sunlight because I am seeing that research on natural sunlight on our skin. And it is very important not just for vitamin D, but those that full-spectrum lighting from the sun has health benefits that we’re just now beginning to understand.

So, I’m a big advocate of kids spending a lot of time outside playing. It might not even be a sport, but you can play outside when you’re little. It could be a sport. I don’t like sports with the head injuries, like the heading in soccer. I’m not a big fan of head injuries, like, from football or soccer or things like that. But having said that, I like soccer because, you know, there’s running and kicking, I think that’s a good sport. So, I think it should…if they’re not athletically inclined, I think riding a bicycle or playing outside is highly, highly recommended. And by the way, exercise is important for detox as well. It’s part of the things that you’re increasing circulation. Hopefully, there’s some sweating and that’s how you can dump some of your toxins out. But exercise and sunlight are very, very important.

The blue light thing is really key too because the kids are staying on their devices late into the night, and then that messes up their sleep. And you’ve got to have proper sleep. At any stage in your life, you’ve gotta have proper sleep or your body doesn’t work right. Guess what’s one of the things our bodies do in sleep? They detox. There’s no…they don’t have to metabolize or digest your food. They don’t have to, like, send energy to your limbs to move. Your body is working on detox while you sleep. Your skin, your brain is detoxing while you sleep. And so, we have to naturally maximize our body’s ability to detox on its own, as well as avoid the things that we know are gonna make us go in the wrong direction. And then thirdly, we need to buckle down and just, you know, get the proper guidance to do a really good detoxification several times, I would say, in your life.

Katie: Definitely. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. Are there any supplements offhand that come to mind that can help either with avoiding precocious puberty or that are helpful during puberty? And I know, I got one question from a reader. There’s an additive called inositol I think that’s used in certain teen multivitamins, and if that’s safe or recommended or not? I know my default with my kids right now is to focus on just gut health, so I give them high-quality probiotics and prebiotics. And then also, just supporting again from a nutrient perspective with as much whole foods as possible, and making sure they’re getting enough protein which supports proper hormones, but any other suggestions you would make?

Dr. Fine: You know, it’s really difficult to make a broad-spectrum recommendation for supplements. Because when I see children in my practice, it’s like they’re coming to me for a reason, and so everything I do is very specific to that one person. And so, to come up with something broad-spectrum and say everybody should take this. Really, I think, a probiotic is a good idea, Katie. I think gut health is super important. But beyond that, I’m a little bit…especially with the kids, I really like to push the good food, the nutritious food like you are. I really like to push that and not… I remember using, like, powdered greens, you know, with my kids and powdered fruit. I did use something like that. But without knowing what… I mean, the kids today are really having a lot of health challenges. And so, a lot of them could benefit from supplements. But to just say every kid, every preteen or teen needs a certain supplement, I don’t think I would be comfortable with that. Except for probiotics, I think that you could make a strong case for that. And, you know, as long as it was a really good one.

Katie: Absolutely. And I will also say one that I do with my kids, I order at-home tests for vitamin D. So, even if you’re not, can take the kids in for a full workup which I actually would recommend that as well, but I do test all of my kids for vitamin D and then make sure they’re either getting in the sun or getting vitamin D. Because we know vitamin D is actually a pre-hormone, not just a vitamin, and so that one seems extremely essential for proper hormone regulation. I’m guessing you probably see that in your patients as well, low vitamin D levels correlating with hormone issues.

Dr. Fine: Well, what I see, I’ve practiced in Arizona and Southern California for my whole 20-year practice. And I just was so shocked to see how low everybody’s vitamin D was. I just, I mean, we’re in sunny areas, I just can’t understand it, except that nobody’s outside. But, yes. Yes, I have seen that and there are other issues with low vitamin D having to do with immune status and immune health that are also very important. I’m curious with your…well, you probably don’t wanna say, but the vitamin D issue is such a conundrum because I will tell you this, in Arizona, I used to have my patients commit to 10 minutes of sun on as much skin as they could bear around noon, which is a certain time of the day when certain rays were at its highest.

And, you know, 10 minutes, that’s not a lot. And, much to my surprise, when I retested them, it didn’t really bring it up. And I just found that shocking, that the vitamin D level… So, I will say that I’ve had to supplement lots…probably most of my patients with vitamin D supplementation, even though I theoretically and philosophically would rather people get it from the sun. For some reason, I’m not seeing sunlight producing the levels of vitamin D that I would like to see in people. And I mean, I’ve seen levels as low as 17 in my cancer patients, right? You know, that’s pretty low.

Katie: Yeah, I think this is definitely something that’s epidemic. And I know it’s controversial, but I do spend time daily in the sun, not ever to burn, but just to get vitamin D. And I think healthy sun exposure is really important. And I do that with my kids as well. But I’m also, I will supplement with vitamin D, and also along with it, vitamin K at times just if their levels are low. Just because I know how important that one is for the immune system, for hormones, for so many aspects of that. And we’re getting really close to the end of our time. We might have to do a whole other episode just on precocious puberty at some point, but I know there’s a lot…the other aspect of this that’s not just specifically health and lab-related is, how can we support our kids in this age with body image and emerging from puberty with a healthy body image on the other side? And I’m curious how you navigated that with your own kids, especially since I’m still in this phase and haven’t really figured it out totally myself yet.

Dr. Fine: Oh, that’s such a good subject. Oh, that is so, so tricky, because we’re fighting media portrayals of unattainable…especially for the girls, unattainable body images. And the girls are starting to think they’re fat as young as age 8 or 9. So, I have a daughter and a son, so I got to do both. I really…how did I do it? I just never focused on…I tried to build body confidence by looking at and praising how well the body works, like “Look at you run. Look at you go. Oh, you wanna take karate?” Really praising how the body functions as opposed to how it looks. And so, there really wasn’t in my bringing up my kids, there really wasn’t…I didn’t really emphasize, “Oh, you look so beautiful today.” Right? I didn’t really talk about. I didn’t really say that. I focused on other attributes.

And I think I did it on purpose because I know that even when I was growing up, there was all kinds of body image, and anorexia, and bulimia, and all of this stuff, and it seems to start…well, years ago, it started in teenagerhood, but now it’s like preteens and young teens are starting, men and women are starting to have these unrealistic ideas of how their body should look. I think that the media today is more accepting of diverse body types than ever before. And I think that’s really a good thing. But I would just focus on body functionality, body health, you know, other things instead of, “Did you gain weight?” You know, “That dress is looking really tight on you.” I would never point that out to a girl.

Katie: For sure. I have taken the same approach with my daughters and my sons. I’m just focusing on the body being an amazing, incredible tool and like a machine that we can use to do incredible things versus how it looks. And it’s sad, but I had to realize this and learn this lesson as an adult over even the last few years, I would say is when I finally actually learned it and started to love my own body for what it can do and not just how it looks, or what I perceived as how it didn’t look, how it was supposed to. And that’s even after growing six babies from scratch in my body, and all of these other things it had done. It took me being that old and working through a bunch of trauma to get to that point where I could actually appreciate it. So, I think the mindset piece is key as well. And hopefully, giving our kids a foundation to respect their bodies and to treat them well out of respect and love, not to pry them out of lack, it’s a big key.

Dr. Fine: Yes, I agree. Good job.

Katie: Awesome. Well, our interview has flown by. I know that you have a gift that you wanna give to the subscribers which I will put in the show notes that I don’t say your email or anything out loud and that you also have a course all about detoxification for people who this is very top of mind for whether it be preconception or precocious puberty, whatever it may be. So, those links will be in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm. And I know you’re also available online and at drannemariefine.com is that right?

Dr. Fine: Yeah, drannemariefine.com, that’s my website. And, yeah, I’m offering a complimentary 15-minute call to see if this is a good fit for exploring how a personalized detox can work for you. I’m also, on my website, I just wanna point out that my…the book that I wrote and the products that I have are in the realm of clean beauty. So that’s another passion for me, and something I didn’t bring up so much with the boys and girls. But, wow, if they’re putting stuff on their face, the girls’ makeup, especially the teen makeup is very toxic. And you’ve gotta take a really strong look at that. And the boys’ products are, like I mentioned, varying into a very, very disturbing trend. And so, we have to be careful with that too.

Katie: I agree. Well, thank you so much. This has been such an information-packed episode. Hopefully, it helps a lot of parents and a lot of teenagers and preteens as well. And I’m really appreciative of your time today.

Dr. Fine: Well, thanks, Katie. Thanks for having me. It was fun.

Katie: And thanks to all of you as always for listening, for sharing your most valuable asset, your time with both of us today. We’re very grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of “The Wellness Mama Podcast.”

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

Source: https://wellnessmama.com/podcast/anne-marie-fine/

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343: How to Balance Neurotransmitters Naturally With Dr. Ann-Marie Barter

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343: How to Balance Neurotransmitters Naturally With Dr. Ann-Marie Barter

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

This episode is sponsored by Everlywell, at-home lab tests that you can get without a doctor order! I’ve used many of their tests and can recommend a couple that have been especially helpful. They have an at-home allergy test for 40 of the most common allergens using the same CLIA-certified labs used by Allergists/Doctors. The labs are reviewed by an independent physician and this test measures IgE levels of common allergens including pet dander, mold, trees, grasses, and more. But you can do it from your own home with a finger stick. I also really like their food sensitivity tests that test for IgG reactions. This was a big key for me in my health recovery, as there were foods that didn’t show up as an allergy that were causing inflammation for me. I used an elimination diet, but this food sensitivity test also filled in the missing piece of the puzzle for me. Through healing my gut, I’ve been able to remove all sensitivities except for eggs. Finding out I was highly sensitive to eggs made a huge difference for me, as I ate them often as an inexpensive protein source. I feel so much better now that I don’t eat eggs and I would never have known that without this test! I also use their at-home Vitamin D test to keep an eye on those levels and see if I need to supplement. Check out all of their tests at wellnessmama.com/go/everlywell. Use code MAMA10 for 10% off orders.

This podcast is sponsored by BLUblox. That’s B-L-U-B-L-O-X, which is an advanced light-filtering eyewear company. You’ve probably seen pictures of me on social media wearing orange glasses of various types at night. And here’s why. In nature, we aren’t exposed to certain types of light after dark, specifically, blue light, because that type of light signals the body that it’s daytime. That in turn suppresses melatonin and can interfere with sleep. This is the reason that a really dramatic study found that camping for seven days straight with no artificial light at all could actually completely reset and heal circadian rhythm and help a lot of light-related problems, like seasonal affective disorder. This is also the reason that I wear orange glasses after dark to block these types of light and protect my sleep, which I am adamant about protecting. I also wear certain types of yellow glasses and anti-fatigue glasses during the day if I want a computer to reduce eye fatigue. BLUblox has orange glasses and yellow glasses. Their orange glasses for nighttime wear are designed to block 100% of the wavelengths between 400 nanometers and 550 nanometers, which are the ones that are studied to interfere with sleep and melatonin production, and circadian rhythm. My kids also wear these kinds of glasses at night. And I noticed a difference in their sleep as well, which is a huge win for a mom. This is especially important when we’re watching a family movie at night or looking at any kind of screen as the artificial light, there is a source of blue light and can interfere with sleep. You can learn more, they have a ton of educational content and check out all of their innovative protective glasses by going to blublox.com/wellnessmama and using the code wellnessmama to save 15%.

Katie: Hello and welcome to the “Wellness Mama” podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and wellnesse.com. That’s Wellnesse with a “e” on the end, which is our new line of personal care products.

And this episode is all about neurotransmitters, especially what you need to know about dopamine and serotonin and how to optimize them naturally and from the inside out. I’m here with Dr. Ann-Marie Barter who has always had a mind for high-level problem solving. And she now uses functional blood chemistry analysis, nutrition, applied kinesiology, and other natural remedies in a functional medicine approach to help people with thyroid issues, blood sugar issues, gut health, hormone dysfunction and issues that stem from neurotransmitter imbalance. And so, in this episode, we go deep on a couple of those topics and some practical ways that you can start at home to optimize your neurotransmitter levels, to reduce stress, and to feel better in all aspects of life. So, without further ado, let’s join Dr. Barter. Dr. Barter, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Dr. Barter: Thank you so much for having me, I’m so excited to be here today.

Katie: I’m so excited to chat with you, and we get to talk about something that I am fascinated by but definitely don’t have a ton of knowledge about, or, at least, in depth knowledge, which is neurotransmitters. And I think, this is actually a really pertinent conversation right now, just with so much of what’s going on in the world, and, of course, neurotransmitters are always very important. But I think that we could have some special conversations around them right now. But to start broad and then, kind of, narrow down from there, first of all, kind of, define what neurotransmitters are and why we should care about them.

Dr. Barter: Well, so neurotransmitters are chemical messengers in our brain, and so they help us with mood, they help us with muscles and communication in our overall system, they even help us with our gut, and they also help us with sleep and memory. So they’re really important, and they’re really broad, and they affect the whole entire system. But the two that I think are most pertinent that I really want to talk about today are going to be the two that are called serotonin and dopamine, and those two are so pertinent in our overall mood, and our happiness, and how we see life. So that’s really where I want to go today, if that’s all right with you.

Katie: Yeah, absolutely. Does one lead into the other?

Dr. Barter: No, let’s start with dopamine, if that’s all right with you.

Katie: Let’s go for it. So what is dopamine?

Dr. Barter: So dopamine is our pleasure-seeking hedonistic neurotransmitter. It’s why we do things that, maybe, aren’t good. For starters, just as a really broad one, it’s why people do drugs, honestly, because you get a huge dopamine dump, but it’s also why we feel motivated, its why people use sugar, and so, this is our reward pathway. So, for example, you know, you’re feeling low one day or you feel worthless, and you’re like, “You know what, I just don’t feel good about myself. I am going to go into the cabinet and get some sugar,” and then suddenly you feel better. And so, you actually have a huge dopamine dump that pumps during that time period, and then, about two hours later, you feel worse than you did before you actually had the dopamine. So, ultimately, when the sugar is in your system, the dopamine can rise, you know, 150% above normal levels. And so, some things that we see, let me just read a few of the symptoms that we’ll see with lower dopamine, and you don’t have to have all of these but you can have some of these. Well, let me just tell you a few of these so that some people can potentially relate. You have feelings of hopelessness, you have self-destructive thoughts, you have an inability to handle stress, which may be really relevant right now, anger and aggression while under stress, you don’t feel rested even after long hours of sleep, you prefer to isolate yourself from others, you have unexplained lack of concern for family and friends, you’re easily distracted from your tasks, you have an inability to finish tasks, you need to consume caffeine to stay alert, you feel like your libido has decreased, you lose your temper for minor reasons, and you have feelings of worthlessness. And so, all of those are related to dopamine dysfunction.

And, what was really interesting was, I got into this in practice because patients would come in and they would say, you know, we would go over the diet that we needed to do, I do a 30-day elimination diet in practice and they’re all on board, and then, what would happen would be, they would come back in and they would be sheepish, and they’d say, “I really want to do it but I can’t.” And I would ask, “Is this a willpower issue?” And they were like, “I just can’t stay away from sugar or these carbohydrates.” And, really drilling down into that, they were trying to help themselves by eating the sugar and carbohydrates to boost it up. And so, that’s what we are seeing, was the dopamine would boost up for a little while and then it would go lower than it was before baseline. And so, you know, you end up in this vicious cycle trying to help yourself. So that made me start to really investigate how we could increase dopamine and what we could do. So that’s, kind of, the overview on, maybe, why dopamine is a little important.

Katie: Yeah, that definitely sounds like something you’d want to correct if those symptoms were ringing true with anybody listening. Obviously, sugar is not the way to correct it other than a temporary feel-better fix. So from a whole-body perspective, what are some of the ways that we can support the body’s natural dopamine response correctly?

Dr. Barter: Yeah, that’s a great, great question, and there’s not a simple answer to that so I’m just going to go ahead and run through all those. Number one, a lot of dopamine is made in the gut which seems counterintuitive because it is a brain chemical. So really looking at what’s going on in your gut, do you have any sort of infection, do you have a viral infection, do you have a parasitic infection? Do you have SIBO, do you have a yeast overgrowth, do you have leaky gut? Do you have dysbiosis of the gut or improper gut flora? You know, all of those things are really important to correct because, you know, a lot of dopamine is made in the gut. Second thing that is highly critical, and I’ll just tell you, most people do have gut issues. A lot of people don’t come through clean on the testing, I’m always surprised if that happens, but most people really do have gut issues even if they’re not showing gut signs and symptoms, like bloating, or changes in stool, or whatever it would be. It can be like ataxia. A lot of people will have more brain-type symptoms with gut issues, so it can go across the board. It’s really variable.

The second thing that I will see is, blood sugar dysregulation is huge. I see this in probably 90% of folks, and a lot of folks say, “Hey, you know, I don’t have diabetes so I don’t have blood sugar dysregulation.” And that’s not true, most people are hypoglycemic, hyperglycemic, a mix between hyper and hypoglycemic, so low and high blood sugar. And all of those things, ultimately, can deplete your neurotransmitters, especially dopamine. And so, that’s important because when we eat glucose, you know, the dopamine is going to rise and then it falls. So there was an interesting study that was done where they were injecting people with glucose, and they saw a dramatic rise on dopamine. So they know that that is correlated and that when the glucose is in your system, you have higher than normal levels of dopamine. But what we’ve also found, and why this can cause blood sugar dysregulation or also, and I’ll get to why this can cause, also, obesity is, they did a study. There was an experimental group, these poor rats, they were put on a food deprivation diet for 12 hours, so, no food. And then, at the end of that 12 hours, they were given another 12 hours, 10% access to a sugar solution or a sucrose solution, and then, also, rat chow for 21 days, okay? The rats increase their intake of the sugar solution consistently across the board, and then, they ate most of the sugar solution in the first hour they were given that. And then, when they looked at these rats’ dopamine levels, they were increased over 130%, and the control group, it was just given the rat chow, whatever that is, did not see a spike on dopamine on the same days. What they measured was, “Hey, do these rats also feel satisfied after they’ve gotten the sugar solution?” And the ultimate answer was, no, they did not feel satisfied, and so, they had what we call a delayed ACh response which makes us feel satisfied or acetylcholine.

And so, this drives us to, number one, binge eat, and number two, eat more sugar. And so, what we see is, you know, there’s an old Guns and Roses song that is actually about addiction and says, “I used to do a little, a little wouldn’t do, as the little got more and more.” And that’s actually what we saw with the rats, it started off with just a little bit and then they increased daily on how much they were eating. And so, if you’re eating more and more sugar to meet those needs, we’re also seeing a change in your blood sugar as well, and so, ultimately, we’re in a vicious cycle like, “Okay, well, we’re raising it and then we’re lowering it even more.”

And, what they have also found was, there was another study that looked at two controls in a population to figure out, maybe, why we have such an obesity epidemic. You know, I think they believe about 30% of the population is obese at this point, which is a tragedy. And so, they looked at, “Okay, is this about how much people are moving or is this about how much processed sugar is potentially in the foods that we’re eating?” And Nestlé did a study in 1998 to see how many new processed foods were hitting the shelves in the grocery store, and they saw 11,000 processed foods hitting the shelf every single year up until 1998, which means that probably now, it’s substantially more, and so, they’re finding that they’re using more processed sugar. And so, these are not just baked goods, I want to be clear about that. My patients say, “Did you know that salad dressing has sugar in it? Did you know that ketchup has sugar in it?” “Yes, I did. Canned foods can have sugar in it.” Anything processed can have sugar in it. And so, looking at these things, this definitely is causing a huge dysregulation in our dopamine systems. So really cooking at home because also, you know, restaurants are adding sugar, it makes that food more addictive. You want more, you had a pleasurable feeling when you ate that food, and you’re like, “Wow, I like that restaurant. Wow, I like that brand of X, Y, and Z.” And the manufacturers know, or the restaurants know you’re going to buy more, you’re going to eat more, because sugar is so highly addictive and there’s even been some chatter that it’s more addictive than drugs. People that have stopped drugs that use sugar now, they say it’s harder to get off of than the hardcore drugs that they were doing. So really looking at stabilizing those blood sugar levels is incredibly critical.

The next thing that we see with neurotransmitters is, you have to have the right nutrients in your system to make dopamine, okay? So people always ask me, “Okay, well, what can I take to get more dopamine in my system?” And it’s really not that simple because you can make yourself sicker by using some of these things. You can increase brain inflammation that will ultimately create something that we call quinolinic acid in the system, right? And, that can lead to scary, scary conditions like brain degeneration, dementia, ALS, you know, things that you just do not want to bridge the…things that you just, absolutely, do not want. So, I’m not going to give recommendations on how to increase dopamine, but I will say that simple things contribute to the making of dopamine, certain B-vitamins. Our methylation pathway is really important, believe it or not, vitamin C and copper are used in the making of dopamine as well, and also tyrosine. Looking at all these things, you have to make sure they’re in the correct balance. And we run a test called an organic acids test or you can also run a nutrition test just to see where these levels are. And, as a general rule, most people are very, very low in vitamin C. In fact, some of the experts have said that we’re going to see a recurrence of scurvy, ultimately, here pretty soon. And with, you know, the epidemic that’s going on here, you know, vitamin C in a lot of the studies of other countries protect people, especially liposomal or intravenous, you know, doing it with an IV. So, we are incredibly, incredibly low in vitamin C, you know, and in looking at those levels, also B-6 is incredibly low in a huge amount of the population. So, you know, running that testing to figure out where the nutrient imbalances are, and what can be pushed to actually make dopamine?

Another thing that they have shown is trauma is actually linked to having lower than normal dopamine. Again, also, limiting your processed foods, eating organic, eating clean foods, you know, because we know that chemicals and environmental exposure will also deplete these neurotransmitters, any sort of inflammation will also deplete these neurotransmitters, anything systemically that you have going on that could be, you know, creating a stress on your system. So that’s a lot of things, so it’s about fixing the body first, and then all these other things will fall into place.

Katie: That makes sense. And to go a little deeper and tease apart a couple of the things that you said. So I love that you brought up blood sugar, and hypoglycemia, or hyperglycemia, and I’d love to go into a little bit more detail on this and about testing. I think this is something I definitely had when I was younger, especially, as a teenager, and something I don’t have now. Even when I do long fasts, like, my blood sugar is extremely stable. And I’m curious, what approach you take to managing this with your patients. Just, like, myself, for my own data, I often will test my fasting blood glucose with just an at-home glucose meter a few times a month just because I feel like that’s a pretty good baseline and something I want to keep an eye on. And, mine’s usually about like 87 which is the range, kind of, where I want it. And I also test the HbA1c or the hemoglobin A1c every few months just to have that marker as well. But I’m curious, for people at home listening, how can they know if they might be hypoglycemic or hypoglycemic, and how can they pay attention to their blood sugar?

Dr. Barter: First off, those are super great comments. I do what you do. I send people home with a glucometer and I have them check at fasting, and then, I also have them check it about an hour and a half to two hours after they’ve eaten. So, first thing, fasting. I like to see fasting blood glucose around 83 to 87. So that’s when you first wake up in the morning, that is not having coffee, and just seeing where that number is. I will generally run an overview blood test just to get an idea. And on the overview blood test, you know, you’re going to check things like just regular glucose which is a snapshot in time of where your glucose is, and hemoglobin A1c which shows us a measure of, really, where you’ve been for the last three months. So it gives us a little bit longer-term data on where your blood sugar has been. And I have people check it, and then, I, ultimately, will do strategies to potentially lower, elevate, or stabilize that.

For some people, they really need to eat more frequently, for some people, we actually need more time in between the meals, and they just need to do three stable meals per day. Everybody is a little bit different, it depends on what we’re dealing with. So a lot of folks that come into my office actually have more eating disorders. So they don’t eat enough as a general rule, you know, they’re eating, probably, around 1000 calories a day, and so, I need to increase how much they’re eating. But I have them check their glucose and their glucometer multiple times a day, and as we start to do the interventions, you know, stabilizing the blood sugar, we see that level out. But, yes, I completely agree with the glucometer, you know, intervention. And, most people have glucose problems across the board even though they tell me that they don’t, even though they tell me they’re low, but you’ll see people get shaky if they haven’t eaten, hangry if they haven’t eaten, they feel like they need sugar after a meal to feel like they’re made whole or because they’re still continuing to crave foods, they don’t feel satisfied after a meal. You know, all of those things are actually contributed to having hyper, or hypoglycemia, or a mix of both.

So when somebody eats, we really want to see that glucose rise no more than 30 points above baseline. So let’s say, you know, your fasting glucose is 87, you eat breakfast and your glucose is, you know, 200, that’s too much of a spike. You either ate too many carbohydrates at that meal, you ate too much food, so depending on what’s going on, you might need a little more fat to stabilize that. So an example I like to give is, I went out one night, and I like to check my glucose as well. And that night I had protein and vegetables for dinner and ate out, and I don’t generally do that, and I had a glass and a half of alcohol. I had wine, red wine, Malbec, I think. I woke up the next day, checked my blood sugar 12 hours later. My blood sugar, I run at 85, was 198. A hundred and ninety-eight after the alcohol and the food that I ate, again, which was protein and vegetables. That was terrifying. That was about the last time I had alcohol because it was such an extreme spike, and guess what, that’s going to cause a lot of inflammation, aches, and pains, it’s also going to deplete your neurotransmitters. So really looking at the things that you’re doing that you think might be benign, same thing, you know, like with eating cookies, or, you know… I didn’t have any signs and symptoms the next day, I didn’t have a headache, I was getting ready to go for a run, nothing. So absolutely no symptoms of my blood sugar being up, you know, that much higher than its normal baseline which is quite scary, to be honest.

Katie: Yeah, no kidding, that is extremely drastic. And I like that you also mentioned with sugar, just how addictive it can be because I think we don’t call this out enough, and, especially, when we give kids so much sugar without even really thinking about the potentially addictive nature of sugar. I mean, we’re talking about in adults, like, what the cycle looks like and seeing these problems and then having to undo them. But obviously, with kids, we want to, hopefully, avoid the problem to begin with. And I’ve had multiple guests on this podcast that have said the same thing and including someone who actually had addictions to multiple drugs and said that breaking sugar was absolutely harder than heroin or cocaine. So that’s, like, really a staggering thing to think about, and this is a drug that we’re all…or not all of us, most of us, consuming very regularly. Do you have any tips for breaking that sugar addiction? Because I also think it’s really important to speak to, like you talked about at the beginning, this is not just a willpower issue. Like, if you have low dopamine and you have some of these symptoms going on, it’s not just that you don’t have enough willpower, you actually have something physiologically going on that needs to be addressed. So when someone is in that cycle, any tips for starting the process of breaking that?

Dr. Barter: Yeah, that’s a great question. First thing I’d like to say is that, I fell into this and I teach people about, you know, breaking this all the time, and I take people through this diet. But, my hours started increasing at work and I was a little more stressed out, and I found myself stopping at Whole Foods and picking up a cookie, and I felt guilty, and ashamed, and embarrassed about the whole thing, and hoped nobody I knew saw me because, you know, I felt like I was a complete hypocrite. And I just felt way more fatigued and exhausted. And come to find out, I had moved into a house at the time that had high levels of mold, environmental mold, which also depletes dopamine. And so, what I assumed was, “Hey, like, I am just way more stressed out, my hours have increased, you know, I’m working harder.” And I had all these reasons on why this had happened, but I was, actually, heavily being exposed to an environmental chemical that…we know that black mold depletes dopamine in a huge way. So the first tip I’d like to say in breaking that addiction is making sure you’re not being exposed on a daily basis in your home. There is a test that you can do, it’s called RealTime Lab test. You can get it yourself, it’s a dust test. It checks your home levels for mold. Is there going to be mold? You know, we want to make sure that the mold inside the house is not greater than the mold outside. Obviously, we’re exposed to just, you know, mold in our environment, but we just don’t want there to be black mold growing that is creating all kinds of problems.

I think the second thing to get started with is making sure to go on a, I think, an elimination diet, is really helpful in most people breaking the addiction. You know, really limiting processed foods, actually, limiting processed foods altogether for 30 days, and really working on seeing how you do with that. Some people have also said that light therapy increases your neurotransmitters, so using a lightbox in the morning can be very, very helpful at you just feeling good. I’ll never forget, I was actually with a friend one day and she said, “I’ve got to be honest with you, I thought that, you know, you always being in a good mood, and energized, and all that, like, I thought that you were faking that.” And I was like, “Oh, really?” And she goes, “I didn’t realize you really felt like that.” And I was like, “Oh, really? What changed your mind?” And she said, “I actually got a lightbox and I think that I feel like you, I have all this energy.” So, I mean, looking at that. And then, also, I think, in breaking the addiction, it’s really, really important to run the testing and figure out, “Okay, what’s low? How can you optimize your system to help yourself, to figure out, “Hey, do I have a gut infection, what else could be going on here?” And, I think one of the most important things to do, overall, is become an advocate for your health, you have to read labels. You know, food manufacturers are tricky and they’re not going to call out and say, you know, all the time, they’re going to get really creative names like “rice syrup,” or they’re going to say things like “sucrose.” Like, what is sucrose, you know? Ultimately, you know, all of these things, high fructose corn syrup, I think most people are pretty well educated that that’s sugar. But they’re going to be really creative on what they’re calling sugar. So I think, you know, limiting your exposure to all of these things is a really important start to breaking the addiction. You know, in, again, looking at some of these diet fads, you know, keto, paleo, I personally do a mix between the two of those. I’ve been a paleo advocate for a long time with, you know, a little bit of keto in there, as well. And so, I think, you know, some of these things, cooking at home, watching out how much you go to restaurants, all of those things are really important to kicking this addiction.

Katie: Yeah, I think those are all such great tips, and I’ll make sure we link. I know you have some resources about this, and I do as well, on some of these topics. I’ll make sure all of those are linked at wellnessmama.fm for any of you guys listening. And I know the other neurotransmitter you mentioned at the beginning that comes into play here is serotonin. And so, I’d love to understand, like, how did the two of those play together or separately, and then, what kind of approach do we need to address serotonin as well?

Dr. Barter: Yeah, great question. Serotonin is powerful. A lot of people have heard more about serotonin because, you know, if somebody feels, you know, serotonin plays like the traditional depression. Like, “Wow, I can’t get out of bed.” That looks a whole lot more like a serotonin. A lot of people have heard of SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, right? You know, that they’ll go to their doctor and get these “antidepressants.” And so, you know, there has been a higher understanding of serotonin, let me just run through a few of the symptoms. I will tell you on running testing, I have only ever seen one person that actually had full neurotransmitter function on both serotonin and dopamine, but they had severe brain inflammation that made them feel like they didn’t have it, so almost every person I’ve seen has low neurotransmitter function across the board. But here are some of the signs and symptoms, losing pleasure in hobbies and interests, overwhelmed with ideas to manage, feelings of inner rage or anger, feelings of paranoia, feeling sad or down for no reason, you feel like you’re not enjoying life, you feel like you lack artistic expression, you feel depressed in overcast weather, you’re losing your enthusiasm for your favorite activities, you’re losing your enjoyment for your favorite foods, you’re losing enjoyment for friendships and relationships, you have difficulty falling into a deep restful sleep, you have feelings of dependency on others, you feel more susceptible to pain, feelings of unprovoked anger and losing interest in life. And, all of these symptoms were developed, actually, by Datis Kharrazian, and so, I want to make sure I give him credit where credit is due, he did a great job developing these.

So serotonin is really important for us to feel happy, and a lot of times what will happen is people come in and they’ll say, “I have no reason to feel sad but I just do not like my life. I’ve got everything but I’m like ‘Meh,’ when it comes to everything, ‘I just don’t care, I don’t want to do this.’ And I don’t have a reason for feeling this way. And I feel guilty that I feel like this.” That is serotonin deficiency. And serotonin is much more deficient in women than it is in men, especially with our Western diet, that we’re looking at really high fat, high sugar, you know, processed carbohydrates, it affects women so much more than it affects men. Also, the lowering of serotonin is much more affected in the winter months and in dark periods of time. And so, what you see people try to do is, again, sugar plays but also binge eating plays a lot more in serotonin as well as with dopamine. So you’ll see people will, kind of, eat mindlessly to increase it, and as we get into full-blown eating disorders, what we see is, most people don’t feel normal unless they are eating excessive amounts of food. That’s the only time these people with eating disorders or binge eating disorders actually feel normal, is when they’re consuming food. And right after that, it drops off lower than it does on baseline for everybody else. So it’s like you’re feeding, feeding, feeding, you never feel satisfied, and then it drops off much lower. And the only time you can feel normal again is when you’re consuming food. So this creates a culture of, number one, binge eating, excessive eating, and you don’t have that, again, feeling of satisfaction. And both serotonin and dopamine play in, not only sugar consumption, but also binge eating as well or eating, or over-consuming, or eating mindlessly, both of these things are high when you’re eating, and then they drop down so much lower when you’re not eating.

Katie: Gotcha. Okay, that makes sense. And I know a lot of people with neurotransmitter issues, especially when that leads into things like depression, often turn to medication. And you’ve mentioned medication a couple of times, you’ve also talked about a lot of strategies for boosting it naturally. Do you think there is a time and a place for medication or, like, over time, can we support the body and remove that need?

Dr. Barter: Yeah, so, gosh, that is such a good question too. Yes, there have been cases where people are very suicidal, they’re on the edge, and it takes some time to boost some of these things back up. So if you’re on the edge or you’re feeling suicidal, I mean, certainly, there are a time and a place to really… You know, if you’re a danger to yourself, absolutely, get on medication for a short period of time, that’s what it’s there for, that’s what it was developed for. I’m personally not a fan of long-term antidepressant strategies. I think that you should be able to make these neurotransmitters yourself and help yourself instead of being on a medication, because, ultimately, with a medication, these are not boosting your serotonin levels. You know, they’re keeping the serotonin circulating in your brain but you’re not elevating it, that’s why when you come off of these medications, you feel like you’re getting brain zapped, you feel much more depressed than you were before you were actually on the medication, and you drop down. So I think it’s dropped down to a lower than normal levels of serotonin. So it’s important to build the serotonin back up and figure out why it’s low. Like, what were you exposed to, what happened, was this a trauma situation that happened? Why this was low? Were you going through something at the time, do you have a gut infection? And whatever it is, the things are the same, the things that depleted are the same as dopamine. But address those things because that’s going to be a really important long-term strategy to get this boosted back up. And so, yes, absolutely, short term, I can certainly see the use, but what I see when patients come in after being on an SSRI or, you know, antidepressant is, they’re like, “You know, I don’t feel any lows but I don’t feel any highs either, I’m just, kind of, flat. And, oh, by the way, I’m gaining weight and I don’t understand why.” And so, a lot of people come to me and they say, you know, “How do I not feel bad coming off of this thing, how can I come off of this because I don’t believe it’s serving me anymore. And, yes, I felt great benefit for the first couple of months but after that, I felt like it went flat.” Or they have to increase their dosage, and then, they just don’t feel any better and gaining weight. So, yes, I believe, short term, if you’re a danger to yourself, that’s absolutely where the medication came into play, but, ultimately, I see people really, really thrive after coming off antidepressants and really boosting their own neurotransmitter levels up, you know, in doing those strategies.

I just feel like when it comes to our lifestyle, there are really no shortcuts. You can do a medication, short term, but, ultimately, you, kind of, you just feel, kind of, flat after a while. So there’s really no shortcuts to health, you have to do the work. You have to go through and be, like, “Is it a gut infection, am I being environmentally exposed, what does my blood sugar look like, what does my diet look like? I need to read labels to see what I’m eating, I need to be outside, I need to have great relationships, I need to figure out what’s causing this stress, or where are my nutrient imbalances?” And all of these things create stress on the overall system. When we think of stress, we think of, “Oh, wow, you know, my marriage isn’t going so well,” or “I got in a fight with this person.” We really have to look at, “Okay, what is causing overall stress in our system? And nutrient imbalances can absolutely cause overall stress in our system, so can, you know, environmental toxins and so can gut issues. So really looking at this with a fine-tooth comb, and running the testing, and try not to do this yourself. People come in, they’ll say, “Oh, well, you know, I found some St. John’s wort for my serotonin levels being low.” Okay. Well, I mean, that’s great, and St. John’s wort can be helpful, but you’re really only looking at a small piece. Like, “Why isn’t your serotonin functioning, is it because you don’t have enough St. John’s wort, is it because some of your B vitamins are lacking? Like, where is there a break in the pathway, is it because you’re exposed to heavy metals?” That causes all kinds of breaks in our pathways that we’re not able to create the things that we actually need to create with neurotransmitters. You know, do you have dysbiosis? So just look at the entire picture to figure out how to boost it up.

Katie: Yeah, makes total sense. And I love that you mentioned, also, light and dealing with trauma because those were actually big keys for me personally. A habit that I started years ago with the advice of my doctor was, just going outside in the morning as soon as possible after waking up and just spending time outside even if it’s not sunny, it doesn’t have to be in the sun but just being in natural light very soon after waking up. And that helped so much my sleep, and my mood, and is now, like, a regular part of my life because of that. And I think a lot of people discount things like just how much light affects us and how much gut healing was a huge thing for me. And then, for me, personally, the last two years were, kind of, a journey of dealing with trauma because I used to have this idea that, like, I was doing all the physical stuff right, and I could just power through. And it wasn’t until I addressed all of that, the mental and emotional side as well, that all of those pieces eventually fully fell into place. And so, I think you’re right, I think this is a very holistic broad approach that’s different for every single person, and I totally understand why it’s tempting to want to just be able to find that single solution in a pill or in, you know, some kind of medication.

But if I’ve learned anything in these last 13 years, it’s just how personalized and individualized each of us is. And it seems like at the end of the day, finding our own answers requires that, working with someone who knows what they’re doing, and getting specific testing, and then, also implementing and trying because each of our own answers is going to be, potentially, very different. I’m sure you probably see that as well in your practice.

Dr. Barter: Yes. And, you know, I think a lot of people will come in, you know, with tons of supplements, and I think why I really warn against this is because they tend to be really sick. They’re like, “I went to the vitamin store and I’m taking this, for this, and this, for this, and that, for this over here. And it’s unwinding that, that it becomes so challenging because, you know, supplements can be very powerful, they’re very powerful medicine, and have to be used in the correct way. And so, some of the sickest patients I’ve seen are actually doing this, for this, and that, for that, with no end in sight. And, what I think is really important to note about supplements or doing these things, these nutraceuticals is, for most people, there should be a beginning and an end with them, right? So let’s say we’re boosting up neurotransmitter levels, okay? So in certain cases, I’ll start with certain nutraceuticals to boost these things up, but if they have a rampant gut infection, I’ll avoid certain things with doing dopamine because it can create such a severe toxic byproduct, and that creates a danger-situation for your brain. So, yes, I very much believe that there should be a beginning and an end you should have. “Okay, we looked at your testing and we see this going on in your gut, let’s address the gut, and then, we’re going to move on to something else because your gut should be healed up, you know, after we do these things, these X, Y, Z things, we can recheck to make sure that’s the case. And then, we move into these other things, Okay, wow, you know, this B-Vitamin is off and, you know, this antioxidant is off. Okay, what else could…” you know? So we have to figure out why boost these up, and then, ultimately, people just start to build and they just feel so much better.

But when we’re looking at trauma, I think that was really an important point that you brought up. When we’re looking at trauma, when you’re really stressed out, you know, not only the foods that you eat blow your blood sugar, but, ultimately, what’s going on in your life blows your blood sugar. If you’re constantly upset, you know, in a trauma-based situation, you’re never going to get someone’s blood sugar stable. If they hate their job and hate everything about their life, you know, ultimately, you have to look at that piece because stress really does blow the blood sugar as well. I’ve had people eat a perfect diet, do all of these things right, but until they heal the trauma, until they are healing what’s going on in their life, their blood sugar isn’t going to be stable. And so, that’s going to create such an inflammatory response in their overall body. These things are just all so critical to address, and I think, looking at these things, there’s just no shortcuts, and I just think it’s so important to heal the body. And I laugh. You know, people are like, “Yeah, I’ve tried to do this myself but I just couldn’t get all the way through it.” And they’re like, you know, “What do you think of that?” And unless you can read and interpret the testing, he who has himself for a doctor has a fool for a doctor, because you see what you want to see instead of being objective to the situation, and then, when the work becomes hard, a lot of people don’t want to go down that path, so we avoid. You know, you said, “Okay, I can do all the health stuff, I can take all the supplements,” but the part that’s hardest for us is probably the part that we need to address the most like the trauma piece, when you spoke about that. That’s a piece that’s particularly really important if you’re avoiding that. Or if that’s not the easiest piece for you to address, and where we have a blind eye is the most important piece.

Katie: Yeah. I think that’s such a great point. And this has been such a great primer into the world of neurotransmitters, and I hope that it’s also given people hope. That this is something that, while it may take time, and, like, any true healing in the body, I think, does take time, I feel like the body does want to move back into a state of health and of balance. And so, it’s finding the ways to support each of our own bodies in doing that.

As we get close to the end of our interview, are there any resources, and I can make sure they’re linked in the show notes, for people who feel like they’ve heard things that are matching up with their symptoms or that are really resonating so they can keep learning or find out more?

Dr. Barter: On neurotransmitters, specifically, is that what you’re asking?

Katie: Yeah. Or even the blood sugar stuff. Just, kind of, starting points of all of this.

Dr. Barter: We have tons of resources on our website with all of that, it’s on altfammed.com. We have tons of links and resources with that as well as the neurotransmitters, and we also cover a lot of these on our podcast, which is fearlesshealthpodcast.com, just really going through all of the blood sugar and the neurotransmitter stuff. Somebody that has a great book, I think, that really nailed neurotransmitters, I think one of my favorite books in primer of that was Datis Kharrazian, “Why My Brain Isn’t Working.” He did a great overview of a lot of the neurotransmitters as well.

Katie: Awesome. I will make sure those are linked in the show notes so people can find them and keep learning. Another question I love to ask at the end of interviews is, if there’s a book or a number of books that have really dramatically impacted your life, and, if so, what they are and why?

Dr. Barter: Okay. So that’s a great question. One of my favorite books that completely affected my life, you know, as we talk about the trauma piece. I lost my mother to ovarian cancer, and she was on hormone replacement therapy. This was before I got into this. And, you know, I think that that was a big driver for her ovarian cancer. Her hormone levels on the patch hadn’t been rechecked in, I think, 12 years and she continued to use the patch. So she died of ovarian cancer, stage 4 was when it was actually finally caught. And I read the book “Dying to Be Me.” And, that was a very, very powerful book about being who we are and this woman that recovered from stage 4 cancer on her deathbed. And, boy, that book was incredibly powerful and changed my life. You know, it had me sobbing on my floor and just gave me great peace after reading that. So if somebody has lost somebody, that was a very, very special book. Another one that I really loved, a book that changed my life quite a bit was… Oh, I do not deal with Lyme quite a bit. I don’t deal with Lyme in my practice, it’s not really my bag. But Neil Nathan’s book, “Toxic,” taking you through all of the cofactors of Lyme. I thought that that was a book that really opened my eyes and changed my opinion of Lyme, and all its cofactors, and the testing that’s generally done on that. So that was huge, and the book I’m reading now that I also think is very helpful is, “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself.” And, you know, these books, you know, I’ve really been working into meditation and I’ve started getting really great at meditation and utilizing that, and I think that that has been a powerful, power, power powerful modality in helping treat, you know, anxiety, and overall health, and just becoming recentered. So, that’s been something I’ve been working on in my own life, having that as a daily everyday practice, and I’ve just thought that that has been so powerful.

Katie: I love it. I’ve been taking notes. I’ll put all of those in the show notes as well at wellnessmama.fm. I know many of you listen while exercising or while driving. So if you are doing that, just check out the show notes to find links to everything we’ve talked about. Dr. Barter, I’m so grateful that you were here and shared all this today. I think this is a big topic, especially right now with so much stress going on in the world. And you’ve given so many helpful resources and practical tips today, and I’m just really grateful for you.

Dr. Barter: Thank you so much for doing this and getting your message out. I mean, you’re such a powerful source with all this, and so, thank you for just speaking the truth and continuing to do this. Very, very grateful there’s people like you doing this.

Katie: Aw, thank you. And thanks, as always, to all of you for joining us today, for sharing one of your most valuable resources, your time. We’re both so grateful that you did and that you joined us, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of “The Wellness Mama Podcast.”

Source: https://wellnessmama.com/podcast/ann-marie-barter/

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