Finding Your Peak Performance with Said Hasyim
Lori Esarey: Wellness is a practice, not just a word.
Kelly Englemann: Welcome to the Synergee Podcast, where myself, Kelly Engelmann and Lori Esarey shed light on powerful tools and topics that nourish your body,
Lori Esarey: and most importantly, feed your soul.
Kelly Englemann: Hey, Synergee listeners, we are about to interview Said Hasyim. I’m so excited about this interview. This is his very first podcast. He was all the way in Singapore, and I met him because Synergee chose his book, the Peak Human Performance as one of our books during this year to dig into, you know, how we can do things differently that may make a- a huge impact on the way we feel and functioning and on our productivity. And I had posted that on my website at Enhanced Wellness Living, and Said is an engineer and he had engineered a software that anytime someone mentioned his book, he would get an email. So Said reached out to me and said, Hey, I see that you are promoting my book. I just wanna thank you for that. So I sent him an email back to make sure it wasn’t like a automatic robot response, right? And he was a real person. I found out he was, you know, all the way across the world in Singapore and willing to do a podcast. So we invited him on the podcast, and you’re gonna be blessed by this podcast. We dig into- he’s got wisdom beyond his. And we dig into some really practical things that you can be doing to improve your productivity and your joy in life. So listen up.
Lori Esarey: We are so excited to have you on here with us, Said. Welcome to the Synergee Podcast. I just wanted to start out by asking you a little bit about your story. Tell us about you.
Said Hasyim: Okay. I was born in Indonesia. I live in a small town in Indonesia and. After high school, my parents sent me to Singapore to pursue a bachelor’s degree, and I was lucky enough to be offered a job immediately after my school, and I joined in IT industry for about six years. Eh, the work was hectic for me. I mean, I, I, I had a lot of overwork in, in that company and after work, I just wanted to lie down on the couch and watch tv. And on the weekend I sleep late and woke up very late. Life was miserable for me, , and I decided that I, I needed to change. I, I want to change if I want to pursue my goal.
So I started figuring out how- how to improve my productivity. It all started by waking up earlier and gradually I pile up a lot of habits on my own. So exercising in the morning and, and I even had time to take a nutritional course in the morning before going going to work. So in 2019, when COVID hit Singapore, when COVID hit Singapore, I witnessed the needs of my family members, the needs of my friends, and I realized that if I could survive, if I could survive this, what could I contributed for posterity. Then I thought that maybe I should I should document, I mean, I should published what I have documented throughout my journey to, to share with the world. . So that’s, that’s how I began writing the books about the productivity series and yep, that’s, that’s how my book came about.
Kelly Englemann: So when you started recognizing that your health was going in a bad direction, like the fatigue of just not wanting to do anything but sleep and be on the couch, how old were you when that started for you? That was 26. 26, okay. And you started making some changes and you started documenting those changes.
Said Hasyim: That’s right.
Kelly Englemann: And then you started documenting those changes because you wanted to leave that for what, what were you, what was the reason for documenting that?
Said Hasyim: Because I wanted to keep that for my children. I mean, I, I wanted to see what works and what didn’t works, and eventually I tried, I experimented with a lot of things.
Many things worked, many things didn’t work. And the good thing is that yeah, I ended up finding a lot of things that worked. So those, those are all the, the things that I documented them. Yeah. I wanted to keep it and share with my children.
Kelly Englemann: And then COVID kind of changed your mind. COVID was like, you were like, everybody needs to know this.
Right? Not just my children, but everybody really needs to know this. I think that’s phenomenal. Yeah. What a, what a great job at being so young. And taking the time to document right what you were seeing and feeling and experiencing. So what would you say are the foundational things that you learned through your experiment that have made the most difference initially and then continue to make a difference in your life now?
Said Hasyim: I felt that the foundational thing is that you need to take care of your body. That came first. That came first before anything else. throughout my, my research on the productivity. There are various areas like developing good habit, the developing good brain, and so on and so on. But the foundation is always starting with the good body, with the healthy body.
I mean, of course you can develop a habit on your own while you are being sick, but then it is not as accelerated as you could if you already have a healthy. . So that’s why I think that developing a healthy body comes as the fundamental, fundamental strategy if you want to synergize your entire operation.
Lori Esarey: Mm-hmm. And you, you actually narrowed down in this book, in your first book, you narrowed down three areas, right? Three areas to improve health, and I just wanna know how you chose those three, because there’s just a lot of things that we all could be doing right? To change the overall health of our body. There are a lot of things, but you chose three. Name those three. And how did you choose those three?
Said Hasyim: Those three are the exercise, food, and sleep . I think sleep Come first. Say sleep come first.
Kelly Englemann: Let’s talk about that. Sleep coming first.
Said Hasyim: Yeah, this took a lot of work for me too. I. Find it difficult to start to group this together, to group this tree into the foundation because when I started this, all of the information just jumbled up.
You have a lot of things to take care if you want to be productive, but yeah, at the end I finalized that. Yeah. This tree are the foundation that we must begin with. Sleep is because we sleep very long. We sleep the longest. I mean, I mean, we sleep a lot of hours throughout our life and the deprivation of sleep affects how- how you do your work on your day, what can do in the day? So that’s how I came about sleep is the most, is the most fundamental things to, to begin with, and I myself experienced that, that when I started this, this journey, sleep was the first thing that I fixed before I could move on to anything else.
Kelly Englemann: Wow. And followed by, I think that’s a mouthful right there. Yeah. I think a lot of times we try to skip sleep beca- because we have so much to do, not recognizing how it’s wrecking our productivity. Mm-hmm. . So it may take us twice as long to do a task that if we had gotten proper sleep, we could have gotten completed. Right? But you learned that That’s right. Through what you were doing to, to monitor yourself. That’s awesome.
Lori Esarey: So sleep first and then what?
Said Hasyim: Exercise. So the exercise part helps you to increase your serotonin level, which uplift your mood, combine that with a good sleep, you could sustain a lot of, you know discipline tasks that you need to carry on.
Whatever things that you want to build. I mean, whatever habits that you want to build that makes things easier for you to sustain whatever you want to build. So that includes sleeping on Time, which you know, come back to your sleep. Because when you want to maintain a good sleep hygiene, you need to, you need to be able to sleep at a schedule that you’ve, you set yourself for.
Sometimes you, we might be not as disciplined that today I, I want to sleep at this hour, but on weekend I want to sleep later. Mm-hmm. . So yeah, exercise, boost your serotonin level as well as increase your mood and that also makes you healthy. Being sick makes lethargic and unable to do anything you want demotivated to do whatever you like.
Lori Esarey: So were you saying that exercise impacts your sleep? Is there a specific time of the day that you should be exercising or a type that improves sleep?
Said Hasyim: Yes. Based on my research and I experienced this, , there’s some signs behind it that when you do the aerobic exercise in the morning, makes you sleep well at night.
Mm-hmm. compared to when you do it in the evening. Yes. Compared to when you in the evening. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you do the, an aerobic exercise, the heavy the, the strength training late at night or closer to your bedtime, it makes it difficult for you to sleep because your heart rate is elevated right after the exercise. Yeah, I explained that too.
Lori Esarey: So what you were saying was, sleep first, gotta fix that. Right? Improves performance, which probably allows you to exercise better. Right. And then turns around and helps you sleep. And then the last one in those three were food, right? It was food. So tell us about that.
Said Hasyim: Well I think that we need to favor whole foods, cut out sugar and all those help back on your exercise and help back on your sleep. You know, when you, when you eat good, you can. You can sleep well, you can exercise well as well. You have the strength to, to carry on your exercise. So food, food also makes you body healthy.
That those are the three foundations that I, I found is the base, base things that we need to figure out. And you said basically
Kelly Englemann: a whole food based diet. So real food. That’s right. Staying away from package, staying away from sugar. I mean, that’s right up our alley. That’s what we teach every single day.
Lori Esarey: So I have to ask this, what is your formal education?
Said Hasyim: Okay. I studied computer science, computer science majoring in digital security. So I’m a software engineer by training.
Lori Esarey: So how does that intersect with and how does that contribute? Like how did you get where you’re at now with essentially biohacking the body, as I like to call it? Mm-hmm. .
Said Hasyim: Okay. I, I like to maximize everything that I do when I do programming. I want to maximize its efficiency, and then the same goes to. my goal, when I wanted to improve myself, I want to drill to the detail. I want to dig into the the things that were, what I can do to maximize its benefit, what I can do to synergize its impact. So that’s how I came about that.
Lori Esarey: That’s awesome. I mean, I just think it’s pretty exciting to know that, you know, you took your detail of engineers. You know, Kelly and I treat engineers in our practice, and they have to know a lot of the why. Like, why, why, why, why, why? Before they’ll do the what. Right? So, you know, I, I see that in you, you know, you had to understand and you took that and you applied your experience with wanting to improve productivity. And then you, you basically put it into action and now are turning it around into helping others improve their productivity.
Kelly Englemann: So I absolutely love the engineer’s mind. I do . And I think it’s fascinating that you, you know, you measured everything too. So tell us a little bit about how you were measuring yourself.
You weren’t just going by subjective feelings, you weren’t saying, oh, I feel better. I mean, all you were, but what were you measuring? What were your objective measurements that you were doing during this?
Said Hasyim: All right. Every day when I wake up, when I wake up the first thing I’ll do is I’ll step on a digital scale and that will record my weight and it will be sent to the cloud, to the internet, I mean, to my storage in the internet every day.
So I have the tracking record every day, and. I have my Oura ring where I record my detail on that night. What did I do? What’s happening on that day so that I can tally at, at every week? I, I can tell you what did I do on that day and that contributes to this and that? Even my exercise, my, when I do the strength training, I record how much, how much weight I lift today.
Plus, you know, as soon I mean, include even the calorie intakes. When I eat, when, whenever I eat, I. how much calories? I record that down, but eventually you don’t have to do that. I realized that that’s a tedious work for you to do to weigh every single food whenever you want to eat at the beginning.
Yes. You need to. I mean, if you want to be very specific, so in my case, yes, I wanted to know, I wanted to know how much calories I. I took on the day, so I measure that long time ago, and now I don’t have to because I have the gut feeling. I know, I know already I can. Yeah. So
Kelly Englemann: you’ve walked yourself to a place of being able to have intuitive eating because you spent the time getting to know your body.
Right. And what was working for you. I love that. That’s what we teach also, is, you know, let’s learn your body first. There is a period of time where you’re gonna need to measure things and you’re gonna need to write things down and give us some objective data so that you can get to the place where intuitive eating makes sense. Right?
Lori Esarey: You know, we often say you can’t manage what you don’t measure, and. , although that is tedious work in the very beginning, it’s necessary work that has to be done so that you can begin to see and create your own connections. I feel this way. I see this data, and then after you create those connections, you have to do less of that monitoring.
Although I have to say, I do like monitoring, and I love that you use an aura ring. We use our aura rings too. We love aura, we love the data, and I’m falling more in love with it because, you know, of course they’re, they’re adding more and more parameters and more things, more data, more that we get some, yeah, more, more things that we get to, to monitor, which is, is really awesome.
So I wanna ask you a little bit about, Book your first book, and I hear that you now have four books and a fifth book on the horizon. Yes, I believe. Yes. So we’ll talk about all of those, but the one that I’m specifically talking about right now is Peak Human Clock, which is your first book, and I wanna know who’s Jack and who’s Johnny?
Said Hasyim: Oh, those are fictional characters.
Lori Esarey: Okay. . I just, you know, sometimes we have fictional characters that are family members or maybe they’re ourselves and we make it up. So they’re just fictional.
Said Hasyim: Yeah, those, those are fictional. But I, Jack is someone who was like me when I was young. Okay. Okay. Yes. and, and like like most of my colleagues when I was young.
Yes. So, so I need to make up one characters who represent this group of people. Yes. So that I can make it easier for reader to understand .
Kelly Englemann: Yes,
Lori Esarey: absolutely. Yeah. So it was using your own story, it was your own story. Yes. I’m saying that to, to really say to you and really to our, our listeners, that our stories are powerful.
our stories are really, really powerful. You know, Kelly’s story, my story landed us where we are today, doing what we’re doing today, talking to you and connecting with someone all the way over in Singapore. And I just think that’s really cool that our goal uniformly is we basically have the same goal, which is to improve people’s lives, help them live optimally, and it doesn’t matter where we live.
We have that power to do that. So I just think it’s really brave. Of you to begin writing these books. I know we have used this book in our practices and they have already begun. They make sense. They’ve had an impact already. And I can’t wait to read your other four and I can’t wait for the fifth one. So can you walk us through those four books that are out and then that fifth book that’s coming, tell us a little bit more about them. Sure.
Said Hasyim: The second book is Big Self Control. It is about building willpower. Building our own willpower to sustain a habit. To sustain a habit. So it is more about the scientific explanation on why some people fail their New Year resolution, why some people succeed. You know, some people just fail to build their habit 30 days later, some people could succeed in doing that. So those, those are talking about building a good discipline, building a self-control that you can stack up on your own to create more good habit for your own, for yourself, so that you can create a ripple effect throughout your life.
Kelly Englemann: So what are the key factors there that help us build sustainability with our goals? Because we all know that willpower is kind of a self-limiting, it’s, it’s almost like a fallacy, right? We can’t have enough willpower in and of ourselves. We have to create it, right? So what are the key factors that help us create that ongoing drive to, to sustain our habits?
Said Hasyim: All right, so the very first thing that we need, take care of that is that we need to make sure, we need to identify things that draw our willpower, the things that drain our willpower. For example a pack of potato chips in our kitchen’s cabinet.
Kelly Englemann: Ooh, now you’re getting nosy.
Said Hasyim: Yeah. And that was me when I was young. That was me. Every time you wanted to, you wanted to eat good, like you wanted to eat an oatmeal. For example, whenever you open up your kitchen cabinet, there’s a potato chip staring at you.
Kelly Englemann: Talking to you. They talk to me. Do they talk to you? They say, I’m over here. Hello!
Said Hasyim: So that itself is drawing your willpower that. Just having the potato chips lying on your kitchen cabinet is drawing your willpower. We haven’t mentioned about the design of the package, the packaging the psychological package, December, the company to draw you, draw you to pick up that potato chip and eat that.
We haven’t talked about that yet, so that itself is already drawing. Drawing your willpower. in. We cannot fight against our willpower forever. There’s just a limit. There’s just a limit. So we need to identify the list of factors that draw our willpower and then eliminate them. That way we don’t have to fight, we don’t have to resist against our willpower.
So we can use our willpower, the full tank of willpower for really something useful to main, to build a new habit. So yes, that, that’s really something that I mean the book will Rev revolve around talking about will. I
Kelly Englemann: love that. You know, every January we really focus on, you know, the power of creating habits that are gonna be sustainable.
And so I’m just gonna say to the listeners, this would be a really good read to dig into. I know from your first book, it’s very, it’s gonna be very engaging and also very practical, and how do you implement,
Lori Esarey: right, right. Yeah. And I think you hit on the point that creating an environ. that leads to success, right?
Mm-hmm. , because if you have more things in your environment that are drawing away from your willpower, then you’re not gonna be able to sustain, so, mm-hmm. . Yeah. It’s
Kelly Englemann: like that, the thing you used to say, Lori, time under tension. Yes. You know, the longer time under tension, the more opportunity for making a bad decision, right?
Mm-hmm. , that’s the same thing with setting that environment up, right? In a good way.
Lori Esarey: Exactly. So book number three, tell us about
Said Hasyim: that. Book number three is about brain plasticity. How do. Improve our brain power. Our brain is the CEO of our whole life. So if we want to maximize our productivity, I feel that we need to, we need to fine tune our brain power, increase our cognitive performance, and the book will talk mostly about increasing the neurogenesis or, or rather the regeneration of our neuron, of our cell, of our brain cell.
You know,
Kelly Englemann: we used to think that once those brain cells were gone, they’re gone. And now we know with neuroplasticity we can regrow those connections, right? Yes. How much, how powerful is that to think we can undo some of the things we did in our younger days, .
Said Hasyim: That’s right. And the powerful thing about that is the earlier you start the, the more benefits you get, you get Yes.
As you get older, yes. The earlier you start, because if not you are the longer you wait, the more your brain cell will have decay. We have, and then it would take longer time to grow that back. Mm-hmm. ?
Kelly Englemann: Yep. Yeah. Yes. So that’s a hot topic right now. Absolutely. And the brain health is a really hot topic. I think people are at the age where they’re seeing the consequences of damage to the brain through Alzheimer’s and dementia.
You know, those, those conditions are on the rise. We’re living longer, so we’re seeing more of that happen. So yeah, that’s gonna be really fun to dig into. And then
Lori Esarey: we’re also seeing that brain degradation or functionality of the brain decline is beginning earlier, earlier, earlier and earlier. You know, twenties and thirties, thirties and forties.
You know, it’s, it’s not in the later decades of life. Mm-hmm. , it’s, it’s earlier. So such an important topic and we know the role that a poor diet has on. , the brain health. We do know that. But I love that that’s a part of what you talk about in respect to productivity.
Kelly Englemann: And thinking about those foods that are neurotoxins or we call ’em foods.
Foods like substances in the packaging, right. That are neurotoxin and, you know, we’re, we’re consuming those as. I say as Americans, but I guess in Singapore you guys have access to processed foods as well. And so, you know, that’s a big part of what’s creating the damage and the inflammation in the brain.
Lori Esarey: And so the next book is on
Said Hasyim: Big Mindset that talks about living healthier and how you exploit our subconsciousness to move forward with your goal.
Lori Esarey: So the power of your mind, right? How you think so as you are. Yeah. And I think about, may I ask you how old you are? It seems like you have a lot of wisdom for, for being someone that is how old?
Said Hasyim: I’m 36 right now.
Kelly Englemann: Oh, wow, wow. Right. So Kelly, what do you think about that? I think, I think it’s incredible. I think it’s absolutely incredible. What do you think from a mindset perspective, what are the biggest things that we can be doing to improve our mindset? Because if we sit and watch the news, the sky is falling and I, and I have to tell you a funny story about the aura ring before you answer the question, but I had a patient come into me last week with his heart rate variability.
Right? He had a very low heart rate variability and he goes, according to Google, I’m going to die and . I mean, that’s just bad news, right? He was funny. He was laughing about it. He’s an engineer. He’s got an engineer’s brain, so he is tracking everything, which I love. But there’s bad news everywhere, is what I’m saying.
And if we are a consumer of bad news all the time, that’s making an impact on how we position ourselves with mindset, I would think. Was that what you found? And tell me more about how we create a mindset that’s positive and healing.
Said Hasyim: Alright you know, Kelly and Laurie, I haven’t been watching news for maybe a decade, I would say Haven’t been watching news for so long and I haven’t been following, I haven’t been using social media, Facebook, Instagram.
I haven’t been using it. I haven’t been using it for a long. at one point when I was 20 27 or 28, I deleted my Facebook account. Mm-hmm. . So I think the very first thing that we need to keep our brain, our mind healthy is that we need to stay away from all the the, any, any, any news that is not useful for us.
So I know COVID has been around for a long time. When I first heard about COVID it was really devastating and then it was all over the news. It can’t be helped, but people feel, feel anxious, you know, that that just makes matter worse. But then I found that there was nothing else I could do other than following the authorities.
They say they, they asked us to stay at home. Yes, we will stay at home, keep us, keep away from keep a one meter distance and so on. So there was nothing else we could do, even if we continue to be fearful there was, we can’t, we can’t do much about it. It’s beyond our control. So rather than putting our mind into that direction, we could channel its power into doing something else.
So in my case, what I did was I used most of my time during COVID time writing. and the outcome was, I got to publish my book. That’s, that’s the difference. , you know, first, first keeping, keeping on the news to check how, how many cases we have today, you know, what’s happening today. I, I can’t do anything with that already, so, you know, so that, that’s what I’ve been doing. So as, as of now, I also am staying away from news.
Lori Esarey: I just have to say, like, what I hear you saying is that distractions. The things around us as we really, again, going back to what you said before, is that environmental, looking at the environment and decreasing that and controlling what we can control and focusing our attention on what we can make an impact on.
Kelly Englemann: Absolutely. You know what I was gonna say is I, I feel like some of our listeners are cringing, thinking they can’t give up the. Right? Mm-hmm. , they have to watch the, they have to know what’s going on. And what I would say to that is, you have someone in your life that’s the headline news. They’re gonna let you know if the sky’s falling,
You don’t have to sit there and watch it, I promise. Yeah, you can. You can learn about current events in a different way.
Lori Esarey: So those four books are done and they’re published, and we’re super excited about those. And the fifth one you have on the horizon is about what?
Said Hasyim: Well life’s work. What you were born to do and how you can maximize the impact of what you’re going to do for the world. Yeah. So, so that books will talk about increasing your creativity, what you can do to see your goal achieved. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. So, so, so that books will talk about that. Yeah. As a whole.
Lori Esarey: So all of these together really, Your goal in all in writing all of these is to improve or share with people how they can improve their productivity and how they can improve their life and have the joy-filled life, it sounds like that they deserve to have. Is that correct?
Said Hasyim: Yeah, yeah. Yes, that’s right. I want to help them achieve their goal. So I start by stacking up the, the foundation that is having a good sleep, exercise, and, and eating a good food, followed by developing good habit, and then improve your brain power, and then create a happier life, happier. A joyful life by using your subconsciousness. And then finally do what you were born to do. Realize your goal at the end.
Kelly Englemann: And leaving that legacy, what a legacy you’re leaving to your kids through your books, right. And to the rest of the world. I love it.
Lori Esarey: Yep. And then, thank Said, this is your first podcast, right?
Said Hasyim: That’s right. That’s my first podcast.
Lori Esarey: Yeah. So I just, I wanna, you know, one of the things Kelly and I were talking about, we. Excited to have you on here to talk with you about this and have you on here for your first podcast. I can’t wait to say that I knew you win, cuz I think what you’re writing and what you’re doing is powerful and I truly believe that people’s lives are gonna be changed as a result of what you’re doing.
Said Hasyim: Thank you.
Kelly Englemann: So say, can you tell us, can you tell our listeners where they can find your books? And where, where they can find more information out about you.
Said Hasyim: I can be found in my website, sayidhasyim.com. That’s my full name. And it contains all the references to all my books. And my books are also in Amazon, so, yep.
Feel free to check that out. And
Lori Esarey: you also have, they’re available on, is it Audible as well? They’re recorded.
Said Hasyim: Yes, yes, the audiobooks are in Audible.
Kelly Englemann: Well, thank you so much for being here. We’re so excited that you joined us.
Lori Esarey: Yes!
Said Hasyim: Thank you.
Lori Esarey: Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. You can find more information about Synergee at Synergee for Life. That’s S Y N E R G E E, the number four life.com.
Kelly Englemann: And then Synergee Connect is our Facebook. And then please make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app so that you make sure you get future notifications of episodes.
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Understanding Your Hormones with Mark Newman
Kelly: Wellness is a practice, not just a word. Welcome to the Synergee Podcast, where myself, Kelly Engelmann and Lori Esarey shed light on powerful tools and topics that nourish your body, and most importantly, feed your soul.
Hey, Synergee listeners, we’re about to dig in with Mark Newman from DUTCH. So excited he joined us today. I will have to give you a little warning. It’s a little nerdy. We’re talking all things hormones. We’re getting into the weeds of how you actually metabolize your hormones and what that means for you as far as keeping hormones safe and effective.
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Welcome Synergee listeners. We are so excited today to have Mark with us. We are gonna dig into all things hormone balancing. Lori and I have known Mark for a long time and he has been responsible for a lot of our education and the backbone of, of many of the things that we do in our practice to help keep you safe with hormone therapy. And so we’re gonna dig into all of that today. So thank you, Mark, for being here.
Mark: Happy to be here.
Lori: Well, it’s the pleasure. I mean, obviously as Kelly shared, we’ve known you for a, a really long time. We won’t date ourselves, but going back to the inception of basically DUTCH. So tell us a little bit about your story. How did you land doing what you’re currently doing and, and why?
Mark: Yeah. For me it was, you know, a season in a few different places. Looking at some of the different tools that you can use to measure hormones and just kind of living with the pros and the cons of different things and, and all the wild sort kind of putting together in my head this sort of puzzle piece of like, okay, like if I wanted to do this better, what am I doing? How am I doing it? That sort of thing. And, and for me, a lot of it centers around just information. Like there, there are a lot of different, if you think about like, what’s in the middle of my house and I get to look in this window and I get to look in that window and I’m trying to figure out what the heck is going on in there, like the- the more vantage points I have, the more confident I am of what’s going on and I- I don’t like to be wrong. Because in the, in these situations, you’re talking about people’s health, right? I mean, if you march confidently in the wrong direction, like that’s something that we can do really easily in medicine if we have the wrong vantage point.
And so our testing is meant to really be comprehensive in terms of looking at a lot of different angles on primarily reproductive and adrenal hormones, but as you all know, we do some, some additional things. But those hormones that make us tick, like they’re, they’re complicated. And so we want to get a broad view of that because there are a lot of different flavors of dysfunction when it comes to your hormones, and that’s always been my goal, is to just get the best look at that we can, figure out what story it tells about you, and then try to put that in a format where, you know, brilliant providers like the two of you can take that and, and make it actionable. So that’s always been the game for us is to just find the best tools to figure out what’s going on.
Lori: So what is your formal education, Mark?
Mark: I’m a chemist, so I’m of that nerd, sort of set of . Like my thing is building the assay itself. Like I’m, I’ve always been. How do I build a better mouse trap for looking at the things that we’re looking at, which happen to be hormones? So I’m an analytical chemist by trade, and I’ve spent my entire career looking at different ways to test hormones in urine, in saliva, in blood, and different modalities that are available to doctors. And then trying to figure out like which one’s best. And the answer is almost always. It depends, right?
Kelly: Right. Yes. I love that. It does depend. Right?
Lori: And that’s why we are so excited to have you here because we have to have a conversation. I think we all know that hormones are disturbed, right? They’re imbalance and it’s a symphony of those hormones that lead to optimal wellness.
Mark: Mm-hmm.
Lori: And that is a question. And so many times we get asked the question, you know, our hormone. For me, but it’s not just “Are hormones right for me.” once you are on hormone therapy, how do we manipulate them? How do we dose them? How, what do we use? What types do we use so that we are treating you like you said, right? Safely and effectively? And it depends.
Kelly: It does depend. And I love what DUTCH has brought to the table in the way of a tool that we actually have like a 30,000 foot view of like what is going on with all of the intricacies of hormone balancing what’s, you know, we can extrapolate from that what’s driving some of this dysfunction for patients and really help them understand their hormones in a much different way than just looking at, say, serum testing for a patient. And sometimes serum testing is appropriate. You know, sometimes with my male patients on testosterone, I’ll just use serum testing for a while, but I love having the advantage of having the DUTCH as part of that treatment plan when managing especially female hormones. Yeah.
Lori: So tell us a little bit about appropriateness of testing because I, I love the soap box. Like you, you’ve given it to us a time or two, and I just think it really needs to be shared appropriateness of testing.
Mark: Yeah, I think it, it goes back to the same mantra of, it depends. But you know, serum testing is always gonna be in your toolbox, right? Because you’re not doing CBCs and blood chems. These things you, any doctor you go to wants to know if your thyroid’s outta whack and wants to know if you know these really standard things that everybody does. I sort of call that like commodity lab testing. It doesn’t really matter what lab does it, as long as they’re not crazy, like they, like, they’re really automated procedures and very standardized across the industry, which is really different than what we do. Like we have to go into our lab and go, what do we wanna test for? What methods are available and, and what is the scientific literature have to say about those things? And so it’s a, it’s a completely different category of things that we wanna look at. So serum is always gonna be a staple of what you do.
When you get into the hormone world, then it’s just somewhat limited. The most obvious place I think serum is limited is with cortisol, is just, you just don’t get a look- a good look at what’s going on inside the house, if you will, in terms of cortisol. So your stress hormone, which is gonna have to do with fatigue and depression and, and things like that. You just don’t get a good look from serum. So you’ve got urine and saliva as options? We do combinations of both. But the reason that we use urine, so DUTCH, for people that don’t know it, is an acronym of dried urine test for comprehensive hormones. So the idea there is the seat is the comprehensiveness, is we can look, you said 30,000 foot.
And what I love it is I can look from 30,000 feet and say, What’s going on. But they can, I can also drill down, you know, into the details and say, okay, the issue seems to be in your, let’s say, male related hormones of testosterone. But then you can drill down and, and also look at the, the sort of the, in the weeds of how’s my testosterone being metabolized?
Is that, you know, sort of part of the issue. So the appropriateness of testing as, as you asked, I think that’s what I want to do is look broad and then also be able to dig down. Because one of the things that’s complex is that there’s so much overlap. You know, say, “Hey doc, I’m tired.” Like, okay, well if you look at a DUTCH test, I’m tired could mean I don’t have enough cortisol. It could mean I don’t have enough testosterone. You know, we have a vitamin B12 marker on our panel, methylmalonic acid, right? Yep. So if you’re low on B12, what are you? You’re fatigued. Right? So you guessing is not very easy. in that area. You look at something like, Hey, I, you know, my, my aunt, my grandma had breast cancer.
Like, I wanna reduce my wrist. Like, okay, well your cortisol patterns, your estrogen matters. Your estrogen metabolites matter. Progesterone matters, me- melatonin. We measure melatonin.
Kelly: Melatonin matters, yes.
Mark: Levels are lower risks of breast cancer are higher, right? And that’s like the fourth layer of the breast cancer question. So, I would say the two prongs for us is, one, making sure that we’re using the right method in the right situation to get the right information. And then two, looking broadly so that we’re asking a lot of questions about where dysfunction might lie so that we’re not, the last thing you wanna do is treat the wrong thing to solve a problem because obviously you’re not you’re not gonna succeed,
Kelly: Right, like putting a bandaid on a symptom, not really having clarity on what’s driving that symptom.
Mark: Yes, exactly. I mean, if you have a, an overt, like really serious issue in a particular area and you’re just not looking in that area and so you’re fine tuning everything else, obviously you’re not gonna find success. So that’s again why comprehensiveness is so big for us is we want it to be accurate, but we want it to tell the broad story about what’s going on. And then again, then the- the right tool sometimes differs depending on, am I on hormones, am I on hormones? So if you’re on hormones, then you have to ask ’em another layer of questions of, well, how are you taking your hormones? Because the right tool sometimes differs. And we’ve built the DUTCH test to be as broadly applicable as it can be. And then one of our core values is transparency, is to say, listen, we are gonna build this as well as we can. We’re gonna tell you where it works well.
But in those few scenarios where a serum test is better or some other type of testing, then we’re gonna lay that out for you as well. Cause our passion is hormone testing, but also education because these are really complex issues that, you know, you all are busy in your practice. So we have a, you know, the nerd in me, like, we spend a lot of time digging into the literature and into scientific research to figure out, you know, in each scenario, What should a doctor be doing? And then, and then trying to sort of work with you, you know, to make sure that you are in that lane of best practices for the particular scenario, for the particular patient, you know, so you’re helping ’em get better.
Lori: So, I’m curious. I have to just ask the question. Would you go so far as to say that a provider of care not using urinary testing as a part of one’s treatment could be potentially dangerous.
Mark: Is it okay if I answer the- every question the same way and say It depends?
Lori: It depends. (laughs) this is good. This is really good though. Yes.
Mark: So I would say there are scenarios where without looking into the hood of the urine test, there can be things going on where your thing you’re doing to help is increasing risk of something you don’t want to have, right?
Lori: Yes, exactly.
Mark: So whether that’s breast cancer, Or those types of things because of some of the things that we’re able to highlight. Now, if you back up from that, and I, and I’m, you know, I wanna make sure my words are very careful, because in this industry it’s easy to get confused, it’s easy to get misled. So, there are scenarios where, yeah, you can do proper tests, you proper care of somebody and maybe you’re okay without an advanced test like ours. But I think in a lot of situations in most situations, I think it highlights things that are really helpful to optimize. And then there are some treatment situations where I think it really is critical is what you’re sort of getting at is, and I think when you start getting into the world of estrogen therapy, so a good, a good probably contrast would be progesterone and estrogen. So progesterone is something you can actually take without monitoring. If you look at the studies and you follow the studies, like, you can do okay with that. And the truth of the matter is, and this gets into like complex layers of lab stuff, The main reason you take progesterone is to counter the action of estrogen.
And the main place that’s really important is in your endometrium, as you all know. What goes on there? Lab testing doesn’t really for, you know, complex reasons, doesn’t really speak that much to that. There are other things about progesterone that our test helps to illuminate and it’s helpful, but, you know, you’re in this space of like, Hey, it’s additive. But if this was the only thing you cared about, like you can live without a test as long as you understand what doses, by what route of administration are actually really effective for your situation? Fine. Then you move to the estrogen. It’s like, okay, now we gotta be a little bit more careful because getting the dosing right, depends on how a person responds. It depends on how you’re actually administering the estrogen. And then once you get that right, then you still have the next layer, which is the metabolites because right, I mean, as you both know, where your estrogen goes matters. So there are pathways that help you prevent breast cancer or let’s- I would say more lower your risk of breast cancer.
And then there are pathways that have a direct mechanism of estrogen to an estrogen metabolite, which can actually grab a piece of your DNA and break it off. And now I’ve got an actual sort of mechanism of cancer risk. Causing cancer, but just shifting that risk profile. And that’s part of your job, right? Is the whole reason you take estrogen is because there are risks associated with not having enough estrogen, right? Right. And you’re trying to balance that. You have no estrogen? Man, you’re more likely to break your hip in a few years, and you’re more likely to have other issues that you wanna optimize as people age.
But then once you enter into the world of taking estrogen, now I’ve got other risks that I wanna mitigate, which we can, which is where the testing really comes in. To be helpful is how does my body process that? And if that’s problematic, the great thing is it doesn’t mean stop reverse course. You know, you guys have nutraceutical things and different options for supporting proper processing of estrogen.
So when you add together your intelligence of knowing how to bring estrogen to the table, whether it’s a cream or a patch or a gel or whatever, and then the testing to say, okay, how is this doing for her specifically in terms of getting this right? And then you have some interventions to, you know, to be able to intervene and make sure that someone’s feeling well, but also as optimal as they can be in terms of their risk for all the things that are associated with not enough estrogen, too much estrogen, and then let’s call it like poor processing of estrogen, like poor detox of estrogen. So, and that’s what you guys do really well and we’re super thrilled to be just a part of that process as a tool that you can lean on. You know, a lot of what I do in my time is get research out into the literature so you can actually go and you know, get on your computer and go, oh, here’s, here’s actual research that shows that the things that the DUTCH test says it does. Like they’ve proven that they’ve put that in the scientific literature. And that’s something that I think functional medicine needs to do better. There’s a lot of tools that are used that don’t really have that substantial. You know, underpinning of validation data that’s been peer reviewed, meaning other scientists have combed through that and said, yeah, this is, this is legit in terms of what we’re saying it does and what it actually does.
Kelly: So let’s dig into estrogen metabolism because I think a lot of our listeners may be a little bit naive to that conversation, right?
Mark: Yeah.
Kelly: They just assume that they take their estrogen and go about their way, and they either have side effects or they don’t. It’s either gonna work or it’s not, but they don’t really think about how that estrogen processes through the body and what that means for them in the way of risk factors-
Lori: And what they can do about it lifestyle wise, right? Which he brought up. Yeah. That as well. So yeah, let’s talk about metabolites. Tell us a little bit more about why it’s important to really look at these metabolites rather than just looking at our dosing.
Mark: Yeah. So the first question is getting the dose right? Right? You want enough estrogen that it helps, but not too much, right? That’s, and that, and that can be done in some situations with other testing. But I think the DUTCH test, to me is the best for estrogen in terms of getting the dose right. And then as you said, then we move on to say, okay, how am I processing that? So there are two steps of that. So you take your estrogen and it does its thing, and then your body says, okay, what are we gonna do with this?
And so it gets moved into these other metabolites on its way of like, Hey, I gotta get rid of this stuff eventually. And it’s got, let’s just say three different doors that it can sort of open and, and head towards the exit. You got three different exit signs. There’s a 2OH pathway, a 4OH pathway, and a 16OH pathway. Some people like to call them the good, the bad, and the ugly. They’re all sorts of different ways to sort of describe these things, which is helpful because they are very different in what they do. two hydroxy. This 2OH pathway is this good and protective pathway in that if you, when you load that into a system where, you know, a breast cancer is trying to get going, like it’s actually protective against that process.
Hey, we like that, that’s good. On the other hand, the four hydroxy is the one that’s most thought to be most problematic because as we, as I said before, it can actually damage your DNA and can cause an increased risk of having breast cancer, that would be then in that situation directly tied to the estrogen that you’re taking. Right? Which is why you all are obsessed with getting it right, but also getting it safe. Yes. And then the sixteen hydroxy estrogen is sort of this kind of in between, I guess it goes back to the, it depends sort of group in the, it’s a strong estrogen metabolite and so it depends. If you have not very much estrogen at all and you make a lot of it and you say, well, that’s helping me protect my bone. And there are studies that show that, that if you don’t make any of that and your estrogen levels are low, it’s gonna lead to more bone loss, but it’s a strong estrogen. So now when you get more hefty estrogen levels and and estrogen’s heading down that exit pathway, then it’s getting more estrogenic.
So it can, you know, in a premenopausal woman who says, man, I don’t feel well, I’m feeling estrogen dominant. And what do you. She’s estrogen dominant, it has high estrogen, but if she also shoves her estrogen towards that exit, it’s gonna make it worse because that’s a, an estrogenic metabolite that has, let’s just say more of an extra kick for estrogen down that pathway.
So you’ve got your three pathways, they each do different things. One of ’em, we would just. Really like to not see very much of. And then the other one’s considered more good and the other one’s kind of got this dual nature that we want to, you know, balance. You guys talk about balance all the time. So that’s sort of like, which door are you going out? And then there’s phase, part of phase two metabolism is called methylation. So that. That bad estrogen metabolite. When it goes down that pathway, it creates this really reactive, intermediate. So it’s sitting there, it’s on fire, and it’s ready to burn something, so to speak.
And then you have an option. It can either go burn something or your body can do what It’s. Supposed to do, which is detox, that thing, and let’s just say instead of burning something, it gets attached to something that puts the flame out and then out it goes, as you know, into the toilet basically.
And so that process of that protective, what we call methylation, that’s the other. thing that we’re looking at. What are your estrogen levels? Which doorway, where are they trying to exit out to hydroxy for hydroxy 16 hydroxy? And then are we methylating those intermediates to make them safer? And so we can look at that as well.
Like for me it’s, it’s super informative because I suck at methylating, estrogen, every single time I test myself. Why? Because I have, I don’t know if you all do genetic testing, but I have a genetic defect. Let’s say variant. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m just kidding. That’s right. I have a genetic variant for that enzyme that does that thing.
So when my enzyme says, oh, it’s on fire, I’ll get rid of it. Well, it doesn’t work as well as my wife’s, for example. So I’ve got both broken genes. She’s got both good genes so as you. Yes, guests from genetics. My kids are all one of each. And when you look at my wife’s and my estrogen, like methylation, I suck at it. She’s good at it. And so I need to support that. So magnesium and other, you know, methyl sort of things. And, and, and the thing that’s great about the DUTCH test is it doesn’t stop there, right? Knowing that I methylate very well. Guess what else that I don’t do very well is handle stress because I’m, if I’m making a bunch of adrenaline, well, how do you get rid of it?
Ah, the same enzyme is involved, right?
Kelly: Right.
Mark: And there’s like, I can connect those dots in my own life. You know, at 3:00 AM when I’m not dealing very well with some thought that’s bouncing around in my head. I don’t cool off from that as well as other people because I don’t, so that, that’s the multi-layered nature of what we do is there’s just a lot of really good gems to be found in all of this information. And I’m getting us off track a little bit here, but-
Kelly: so you mentioned, you mentioned Mark phase one detox. Yeah. And you mentioned phase two detox, but there’s also phase three when it comes to hormone balancing, and no one likes to talk about it, but I’m just gonna say it’s pooping, right? Pooping out those hormones. If we-
Mark: I have junior high kids, so not everyone doesn’t like to talk about pooping. (laughter)
Kelly: So we wanna make sure, you know, that people understand the way that we excrete our hormones is actually through bio flow and pooping it. So oftentimes we’re working with someone trying to get hormone balance. If we don’t address that factor, they’re just gonna be recycling those hormones and making those hormones more potent and more problematic.
Mark: Yeah, and that. That sounds a really interesting way that the, the body works. You know, you’ve got your estrogen and it’s gonna do its thing and then it’s gonna go through one of these doors and then it’s gonna get methylated or not in my case. And then it’s like, okay, how do I now, now how do I hit the exit? The real exit, right? Out the toilet. And that is, as you say, the things that are going on in your gut. Really impact that. So you take that thing, you make it more water soluble, like the body can add this little sugar molecule on it. So the sugar molecule says, Hey, now I’m, now I’m able to get outta here. And on its way through the gut, there’s a little enzyme that if your gut’s messed up, you can have a lot of this enzyme. And it says, I’ll take that sugar group, and it pulls it right off the estrogen. And now the estrogen is what? It’s just estrogen. It’s ready to go again. Right. So it’ll circle, as you mentioned, circle back through.
And this is something that has been…. let’s say a blind spot for us in that, as I mentioned, like we want all these windows looking in this house, right? And that’s one where it’s like the shade is pulled here. So what we did is we said we, we need a window into this area. And so that’s why recently July, I think we added Incon right to our, because this, this is my quest is get comprehensive so we can look in, you know, to use a, maybe a bad analogy, but as many windows of this house as we can.
So we say, what’s a marker? Where the science has shown that it, it tells you if something’s going on in the gut that might relate to this. Well, indica is such a marker that when your gut has an issue, indican spills over into your urine. So we started measuring that. Is it a hormone? No. Does it add to the hormone story? It does, yes. And then we, what we actually have just found, I, I probably haven’t shared this with you two yet, but we looked at men and women that have low endocrin, high indocin, and guess who has more estro? The high indocin people. right? Because why? Right? This says, ding, ding, ding, there’s a gut problem, and then on the estrogen’s way out it’s getting recirculated.
And so that’s the connection between estrogen and as you said, phase three. Phase one. Phase two is methylation, and then I gotta get rid of this stuff. And that has to do with gut health, which is why providers like you are so fantastic for patients because you’re not just gonna get narrowly focused and say you have hot flashes, I’m gonna give you estrogen. Have a nice day. Right? Because you know you have to care about how much estrogen and then how am I processing it, and then how am I getting rid of it? And if there’s a gut issue, then gee, if I don’t solve that problem, then I’m really not taking care of the whole patient. And so there is that interconnectedness between all of that.
And that’s what we love about functional medicine is it’s, you know, it’s wonderfully complex and there are just, A lot of layers to sort of dig into so that we can optimize somebody’s health. And I think the really interesting part of being in this in this industry, trying to help people.
Lori: I’m super glad that you mentioned indocin, you also added a neuroinflammation marker. Can we talk about that?
Mark: Sure. We get into the nerdy chemistry stuff. I love it. Yeah, there’s this interesting marker that you make and it’s called quinolinate or quinolinic acid. And it has this really interesting property in that you have this biochemistry, right going on.
A gets turned into B, gets turned into C all the way through whatever letter, and one of those is quinolinic acid. And when you make it, it just gets turned into like almost nothingness. Like it gets turned into this, you know, other biology that’s just like sort of gone, right? And so, well that’s not interesting, except that it’s made and influenced by inflammation.
Well that’s, that’s good to have, you know, a window into inflammation. But the things that process it from that step and beyond are present in your body, but they’re present in your brain. Which means when you make quinolinic acid not in your brain, it just keeps cruising from A to B to C. And you know, it’s one of those intermediates. But when it happens in your brain, it stops like that’s the end of the road. And so it becomes then this indicator of, well, wait a minute, if this is spilling over into my urine, that means I’m pushing things in this direction in my brain specifically. And so it becomes this marker of neuro-inflammation. Now it’s not that simple. There are other reasons that it can be elevated. So, you know, if you ever talk to people about plastics and plasticizers, pthalates which are I think a particular interest of mine, have always found them interesting cause they, they really mess with the chemistry of making hormones. So women who are exposed to a lot of ’em when they’re pregnant, their baby boys are feminized. Like physically feminized because of this. It’s like taking anti-testosterone. And so it’s just something that you don’t wanna be exposed to. And there’s a whole story to that. But if you are exposed to it, quinolinic acid, for whatever reason, I can’t remember the biochemistry around that, but it can be increased for reasons like that. But if it’s high, you want to pay attention to it.
And if you’ve got neuroinflammation going on, obviously that’s not gonna be a good situation for your patient. And you know, you all know how to address those things. So yeah, that’s one of our our newer markers is indocin for the gut, quinolinic acid for neuro inflammation, and then we added one also for biotin deficiency and that Alan tied into the hormones really interesting- interestingly as well in that we have a lot of women who struggle with hair loss.
Kelly: Yes.
Mark: So sometimes P C O S sometimes not, but if you, you know, if you’re I mean, I lost my hair. I deal with it. It’s not that big a deal. , I’ve, I’ve gotten over it. This is only audio, so that’s, that’s better everyone, just listen to me.
Imagine I have this nice head of hair, but I don’t. But you know, as a female, like this can be like life changing when you’re struggling with losing your hair. And so I’m not an expert in that per se, but three of the, the things you might think about would be thyroid, which that’s not us. It’s related to our testing. And if you’re doing hormone health, a lot of times you’re doing a thyroid panel, right. And then there’s the whole testosterone metabolism. So we all know testosterone, it’s the boy hormone, but girls have some too. They just have about 10 times less. And then there’s this metabolite, right? Dihydrotestosterone. It’s three times stronger than testosterone. And your testosterone either gets pushed towards that or gets pushed away from it. And that’s something you can see in our testing is am I doing that? Am I making testosterone into dht? And as a man, that plays into prostate health and there’s some interesting storylines there. But as a woman, the main thing that I’m caring about, there are symptoms of high testosterone. If I turn testosterone into super testosterone, Then I might have acne but also might have hair loss. When this stuff gets made in your hair follicles, you lose your hair. And so that’s something you might wanna look at.
And that’s been a thing that people have explored with the DUTCH test since the beginning is I got my thyroid panel, I got my DUTCH test, and then it got us to thinking, well, hmm. What if you have this big biotin deficiency that is silent, like you don’t know about it, that can cause hair loss as well. So that’s why we added that, is because it adds one thing to that story that if you’re missing, that you’re not going to succeed. Right? So it’s not a hormone, it’s not directly related to hormones, but it’s related to your patient’s hormones story. And so those are the things that, that we specialize in adding is, yeah, everyone knows testosterone, everyone knows estrogen, but there are these other things that add to the story in a, in a really substantial way. So again, you’re just more likely to find the right solution for your patients if that happens to be, you know, something that they’re dealing with.
Kelly: So, Mark, I wanted to dig into and, and just say, first of all, I appreciate the fact that from the time I started doing DUTCH testing, you’ve added a lot of biomarkers to the table. Right? One of my favorite things on the DUTCH Plus is actually the CAR. The cortisol awakening response. I mean, I just feel like that’s been a game changer for insight on how someone is managing their stress, how resilient they are. Talk to us a little bit more about that. You mentioned that in relationship to breast cancer risk earlier you kind of alluded to it, but we really didn’t get into that.
Mark: Yeah, it’s a really interesting marker. And it’s it’s a math marker. It’s a, it’s a change. What I would love to know, if you came into my office and I was a doctor, which I’m not, you know, I’m a chemist, but you know what I’d love to know. I’d like to look your stress hormone, and then I’m gonna open my closet and I’ve got, you know, I keep a bear in there, and the bear chases you around the, the, the room. And then what happens? Well, you just had a stress event, right? So your stress hormone’s gonna go up and then I’ll put the bear back in the closet and I’m gonna, you know, test your cortisol again. And then I can look and see how much did it change. Because when you have. If you respond appropriately? Hey, good job. Now, don’t, don’t spend your whole life being chased by a bear, right? That’s a lesson you probably give your patients. If you’re stressed all the time, you’re gonna have problems, right? If you’re stressed, your cortisol’s gonna go up. That doesn’t mean something’s wrong, necessarily. It means like you’ve got some lifestyle issues to work on now.
If the bear chases you and your cortisol goes up more than the average person, okay, now you have an overactive stress response and there are consequences to that, right? But bears are expensive to feed, obviously, and keeping them in your closet is rather difficult. And so we have a trick, and that is that the event of waking is a stress. Right? So the, the biochemistry, the things that go on in yourself happen when you wake up. They also happen when the bear chases you. So what we’re able to do is we take a saliva sample. So we have these little cotton swabs. You just stick in your mouth and kind of chew on a little bit, and it takes a little bit of saliva.
So what we wanna do is wake up and take one. And what does that tell you? It tells you you’re waking cortisol. And then when you wake up, the eye hits the back of your light. And all this really complex biochemistry goes on that I have a hard time explaining even to myself, let alone somebody else. It’s complex, but it’s the same type of thing that goes on when the bear’s chasing you is it’s the whole like, Hey, get alert for the day.
Right? Let’s go. Because hey, life is, there’s a certain amount of stress in life that you don’t have while you’re sleeping. And that, so that process we can. We take a saliva sample right at waking that says, this is your baseline. Right? And then we take another one 30 minutes later. So both of those points are interesting.
Maybe the first one’s low. Hmm. That means something. Maybe it’s high. That means something. Same thing with the second one. But what the research is really clear on is the gap itself, right? That stress bounce as you get up is itself connected to health, connected to like, if it’s too big. Getting major depressive disorder, you’re more likely to to get depressed.
And if it’s flat, right, so you wake up, the light hits the back of your eyes, I’m distressed and ugh, my response is sluggish. Then you’re more likely to be someone who’s tired and fatigued. and not just tired and fatigued. Tired and fatigued because of what’s going on with your adrenal hormones, Cause that’s the important thing, right? Tired and fatigued is one thing, but we, that’s what functional medicine’s all about, is asking why questions till we figure out the source of it. And that’s a really important tool, the cortisol awakening response. So the car is really important. So we look at cortisol in urine, we look at it in saliva. We have our sort of a two different tests.
DUTCH complete is urine, DUTCH plus is saliva. And then we combo that with the urine and that gives you a lot of information. So in either test, I can see this up and down pattern. I wake up, my cortisol goes up when I go to bed. It sure better be a whole lot lower, right? This up and down pattern throughout the day is really important. Now with the breast cancer angle is flatness. Flatness with cortisol is bad for people who have. In terms of their survival, like it, it points to some dysfunction that correlates, and I couldn’t really speak that intelligently to the cause, per se, of why your risk is then increased of not doing well. But the flatness of cortisone is bad, right?
You have this dynamic pattern of sleep, wake, sleep, wake. And your cortisol, your stress hormone goes with that up in the morning, down at night. And when that is dysfunctional, you have an issue. You can see that in urine, you can see it in saliva. The car is an additional variable on top of that. That is like really zooming in on that first 30 minutes of the day as you transition. When you wake up, you’re awake. But are you alert? Right? Not really. Like that’s a process. Right? And that’s what that speaks to. And the word that people really like to use with that is, and you mentioned. Is resilience, right? If I’m, you know, some of our docs like to talk about a, a trampoline in terms of like, if you think about a trampoline and a stress event and your body responding and a stress event and your body responding, how bouncy is your stress response in terms of resilience?
Cause we’re, we’re not meant, I mean like is stress, right? We’re meant to be stressed, to respond and then come back to baseline and life goes on, right? It’s. Repeated hits of stress or constant stress that is never relieved, that can really wreak havoc on how your body just manages all of that and how all of that works.
And the testing can be really, really informative in terms of, you know, sort of what flavor of dysfunction you might have. As it relates to those hormones, and that’s, that’s our game, that’s what we’re trying to do is paint that picture for you, the provider so that you can help the patient as best as possible.
Kelly: Yeah. So from a consumer standpoint, I think the question would be why not just do a salivary cortisol over a 24 hour period looking at four points versus doing the urinary, where we can see the metabolized cortisol versus the free Right. That’s, so what insight do we gain from that perspective.
Mark: That’s the story we started with, with you all. I mean there’s the H R T thing. The other big thing we do is cortisol. And that, that was the single variable that really led me to develop this testing method is everyone’s looking at cortisol patterns, and rightly so, right? They’re important, but the cortisol that we measure, while it’s the most important thing to measure cortisol itself, it’s only about one or 2% of the total that you make throughout the day.
And so what we discovered from looking in the scientific literature and just playing around in the lab with all kinds of measurements over, you know, years and years and years, is that there are downstream metabolites of cortisol. And if you want to think about it as just a bucket that catches all your cortisol you make, and at the end of the day you go look in the bucket and say, Hey, how how’d . I do and. . Sometimes that can be really informative, particularly in cases where patients are really clearing their cortisol at a rate that’s sort of abnormal. So the way I discovered that was looking at the cortisol metabolites and cortisol patterns. So you have cortisol. That’s cortisol itself. That’s free cortisol, the thing that does the action, right?
We’re measuring that. And then we also measure the metabolites. That’s the bucket at the end of the day that says, here’s how much you actually made. And what we noticed is that in people who were obese, just as an example, they had like contradictory stories. A lot of ’em had low levels of this cortisol.
And so then what do then, what all our providers have been saying for years and years and years is a statement like this, you don’t make very much cortis. And then you look at the metabolites and if the metabolites are also low, you say, yep, that’s what I said. That confirms the story. I already told myself. And what we found in these obese patients is, we’re wrong almost every time. And that you look at item and the metabolites are really high and you say, hold on, like, what is going on here? And then as you dig into the, into the research that’s been done, you find that as a person gets bigger, The cortisol doesn’t really move in terms of just looking at a whole bunch of skinny people and a whole bunch of bigger people.
You know, as individuals they’re very different, but as a group of people, they’re pretty much the same. And then when you look at their metabolites, very, very different. The heavier people have all these metabolites. And so that’s, there’s a story there that they’re making a lot of cortisol, fat loves cortisol, and so it sucks the cortisol, your adrenal gland makes the cortisol and says, Hey, I did my job. And then those fat cells say, you know what? I’ll just hold onto that. And it ends up in the toilet as a metabolite, and this is going on all day long. So these people, they’re adrenal glands are pumping out more and more cortisol so that what’s in your brain and your elbow and your wherever is at. Like an appropriate level, but you’re just cranking it out.
And so that has added a lot of insight for us, for the doctor to know what’s going on with a patient. And I could give you a, a quick example of a case where that was really, really helpful and that is that obesity. gives you this sort of look of lots of metabolites and maybe not that much cortisol. And the other thing that will give you that same look is jacking up someone’s thyroid, right?
So, oh, your thyroid’s low here. Take some of this, actually take a whole bunch of it. So if you put someone on too much thyroid medication, it just tells your body like, go like mad. And so your, your liver’s gonna take all your cortisol and metabolize the heck out of it and turn it. These metabolites and they end up in the toilet and you end up in this really imbalanced situation where you’re making lots of cortisol, but you’re just cranking through it.
So we had a patient a while back that tested and she had really low cortisol and really high metabolites, and I said, what the heck is going on? She said, well, you know what makes it look like that? I’m like, well, obesity. But she was super skinny. And I said, you know, if you have really high thyroid, that’ll do it. And she said, well, that’s not me because I’m low thyroid, and I’m like, oh, well now I don’t look very smart. And then she called me back that night and she said, you know what? I do have low thyroid. And so my doctor put me on thyroid and said, here’s your thyroid. Take it once a day. And I heard, here’s your thyroid take it twice a day. And so she had been doubling up on her thyroid medication. She had induced hyperthyroidism, right? And so what’s her body doing? It’s going, oh crap, I’ve got all this thyroid. I better get rid of it. Just turned your cortisol burning, if you will, into overdrive. And so the looking at the DUTCH test was really insightful to say, here’s what can cause this look. And as they, they dug into that with the provider and the patient, it was super insightful. They fixed her thyroid, we retested her. And what do you know? Not only did she no longer have these low cortisol levels because she was burning through ’em, they came back. Even more than that, they were high. It was like, okay, here’s someone who, who has identified as, gee, you don’t make enough cortisol with like old school testing that we would’ve done, but with the DUTCH test, we’re able to say, hold on. This is a more complex story. You’re burning through your cortisol. Let’s investigate that. They investigated it and then when they retested her, she’s actually like on fire as far as her adrenal. She needed to get her cortisol down and her stress response down and do some lifestyle maintenance, but they couldn’t even like get to that point because of this little issue. Really was a big issue in terms of getting her medication right with her hormones. So those are the types of insights that we love to see in people in terms of like having the testing being profoundly, you know, differentiating in terms of specifically what’s going on, you know, with a patient so they can get to the bottom of their issue and, and get back on track towards wellness
Lori: And what you just said. There was such a mouthful, but I have to go back and say it’s taking the right test and pairing that with the right provider of care. Taking the right history and the time listening to understand, to then be able to make the changes. And you know, I think sometimes in traditional medicine, we lean just to diagnostic testing, right? We say the 80/20 rule, 80% diagnostics, 20% history. We’re in functional medicine that’s switched back. 80% history, 20% diagnostic testing, choosing that right test to get the right outcome. And I just, I, I wanna say that again, is, there’s a lot to unpack in that test. And I love, I love, love, love. I’m, I’m a scientist too.
And you’re in good company because I’m a meth- I’m a poor methylator too, by the way. So yeah, you’re in good company, but I just wanna say that I really appreciate and value what your. I feel like your test allows me to be the clinician that I can be because I have access to it and I feel like my patients hands down. They’re lucky to have access to both of those. The good testing and the history, you know, that we have as well as we’re thankful for the education that you give us too, over time, right. You know, that we’ve, we’ve been able to take advantage of.
Kelly: It really allows us to leverage what lifestyle can do to change, change the landscape for that patient. Metabolically speaking, hormonally speaking.
Mark: Right.
Kelly: To be able to point it. This is where the challenge is. Mm-hmm. . And these are the things that we can do to improve that challenge. Whereas before that same patient you were talking about that had low cortisol, but high metabolites, that patient would’ve gone on perhaps adrenal glandulars. And we would’ve just been fueling the problem. instead of correcting the problem, right? Because we weren’t looking through the right lens.
Lori: Mm-hmm.
Mark: Yeah. And that’s, I mean, the, the care that you all take of like addressing lifestyle where you can and starting with that and then, you know, moving through those sort of different variables that you’re looking at with the breadth of knowledge that you have is, you know, your patients are, I think, really blessed to have providers that care that much, but also have that expansive knowledge in, in those things because, you know, ultimately, I, I think you’re always sort of guessing, right? Like you never get comprehensive information about whatever, you know, you don’t get to walk around in the house, right? You get to look and make observations and ask questions and all of that. And ultimately, we’re always like our, our certainty increases with all of the information that we have, but it’s never complete. And I think that’s what we are really trying to do with people is just increase the certainty with which they’re making the conclusions that they are, which leads to the treatment that they take.
And sometimes it’s a major shift from the initial guess of like, oh, you’re tired, it’s probably this. And then as we dig into these things, it’s, oh, this is, this is not only more complex, but it’s this nuanced issue that you all have solutions for. But if you don’t know specifically what the problem is then obviously it’s not easy to find the right solution for that patient because, you know, hormones are complex, life is complex, but the more information that we can give and the better that we can train the people out there in the, the specialty that we have, then we just love that aspect of what we do. And we, we wish we could hear more and more about the end stories that you all get to experience when people come back and say, “Hey, the intervention that you gave me is, is making a huge difference and impact in my life.” And that honestly, those stories are really the primary thing that fuels our entire company.
I mean, we loved hearing about, you know, people’s lives change because of what we’re doing. So it’s great to, to hear what, what you guys are doing, how far you’ve come and, you know, in your practice with using all of these tools, one of which just happens to be what we do. And we, we love doing it.
Well, thank you so much for dedicating your work to just, you know, what you bring
Lori: about at DUTCH. We really appreciate it. We know it’s blood, sweat, and tears, I’m sure. Right? Blood, sweat and tears, years.
Mark: There’s a whole lot of urine around here. Yeah. (laughter)
Kelly: So, yep. So, so tell us a little bit about, as we close, what way in which, if, if consumers are, are looking at people listening to this that don’t know Kelly or myself, but are listening to this podcast, how do they hear more about the DUTCH test?
Mark: You can go to DUTCHtest.com. We have a lot of information on there. We’re a little bit unique I think, in that we’ve put a lot of information out there, just generally that’s not behind a curtain for providers. So patients can do a lot of just nerding out and digging into some of these different topics and things that are, that are really interesting to learn.
And in some of those you’ve learned about yourself, there’s a lot of information there. And then we have a find a provider function, so people that aren’t in your neck of the woods that are looking for someone to work with. I, I do. Honestly, I love our test. I think it’s super important for people to get all that information, but the number one variable, honestly, is to find a competent provider who knows what to do with the tools that are available to walk through that journey with a patient towards wellness.
Because there are a million different paths that you can take to move from your whatever dysfunction you might. You know, towards wellness, and I think using the right tools and, and having the right training, partnering with someone like that is, I think can be the biggest like game changer for people who are struggling with things that may have to do with things like hormone health.
Kelly: All right, Mark, thank you so much.
Lori: Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. You can find more information about Synergee at Synergee4Life. That’s S-Y-N-E-R-G-E-E, the number four life.com. (synergee4life.com)
Kelly: And then Synergee Connect is our Facebook. And then please make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app so that you make sure you get future notifications of episodes.
Enhanced Wellness Living is Mississippi’s premier Functional Medicine Wellness Clinic! We are proud to serve all of Mississippi including Ridgeland, Jackson, Madison, Rankin, Byram, Hernando, Starkville, Flowood, Bolton, Hinds, Brandon, Oxford, Canton, Olive Branch, Clinton, Vicksburg, and more! Not in Mississippi? We have patients who travel from Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, and more for these life changing procedures!
Buyer Beware: All About Supplements
Kelly Engelmann: Wellness is a practice, not just a word. Welcome to The Synergee Podcast. For myself, Kelly Engelmann and Lori Esarey, shed light on powerful tools and topics that nourish your body, and most importantly, feed your soul.
Welcome everybody to the Synergee Podcast. I’m so excited to be back today with you guys. We have the delight of having Joell Daniels today with us in studio. We’re gonna be interviewing her and listen, it’s buyer beware. We’re gonna be talking about all things, supplements, the reason why we need to have supplementation in our lives, what they can do, what they can’t do, how they’re made, what we need to be aware of as buyers. Y’all listen in.
Lori Esarey: Welcome to the show. We are so excited to have you, Joell. So tell us a little bit more about you.
Joell Daniels: Well, thank you so much. I’m excited to be here. I do work for a company called Xymogen/Whole Scripts, both companies. We own them both, and I’ve been with the company since 1996 and was there at the inception when the team started Xymogen.
I’ve worn many hats over the years, but my primary responsibility is educating healthcare practitioners on our formulas and how they are best used to. Positive outcomes in patients. I’m really passionate about what I do. I got into this field of work because I was a sick patient, and I think I’m like many of the patients that walk into your clinics.
Unfortunately, it took me a long time to get to a functional medicine practitioner who looked at root causes versus trying to put out fires in the forms of symptoms all the time. I approach my job al- altruistically and that I really want to have patients not get into some of the holes that I fell into on the way to health.
Kelly Engelmann: Well, I can honestly say knowing you for as many years as I’ve known you, that passion comes through. You know, Lori and I are geeks. We absolutely love education. We’re constantly learning and growing, and you’ve been a big part of that for us. You’ve been a big part of putting things in front of us and giving us opportunities as providers to spread our wings and to provide for our patients. Quality supplements that we know 100% for sure are top quality and top grade, so thank you. Thank you for being here and sharing with us today.
Lori Esarey: Yes, thank you so much. Thank you. Joell. I’ve just gotta ask you, is this conversation today that Kelly and I wanted to have for our listeners. Why is this important for you?
Joell Daniels: I’m passionate about what I do because I wanna save patients from falling into the same holes that I fell into as a sick patient back in the nineties. 1990. I was very sick and I went the conventional medicine route and really, they were just doing symptom control. They weren’t looking at root causes.
So I did filter my way into multi-level supplement company who I spent thousands of dollars with and didn’t get well. I had no result whatsoever. And it wasn’t until I went to a functional medicine practitioner who did diagnostics with me and took me through a pretty rigorous, difficult program that was- part of the onus was on me to make changes in my life and to take supplements. I took a lot of ’em more than I really wanted to, but I’m better. And I haven’t had to hear the S word, which is what I call surgery. I haven’t had to hear that word for some sort of ailment since. So that’s my goal is to get people the access to people like you, practitioners who care and practice good medicine.
Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely. So, we know that it can be a journey of finding your way as a patient. You know, most of our patients are seekers most of the time. By the time they get to us. They’ve been many, many places. We’re not their first stop often times. So we hear that story over and over and over as it plays out in real time even today, and I don’t know if the Internet’s made that more problematic or less problematic? I mean, I’m thinking back in the nineties we didn’t really have the internet to lean to, to find access to resources. So I’m, I’m thinking you were kind of walking in the dark a good bit and today I think we’re walking in the light of the internet, but it’s oftentimes down paths that lead us nowhere. And I, I can imagine what that feels like as a patient. You know, we’ve all been there, right? As patients ourselves trying to find our own way.
Lori Esarey: And we need to be smart consumers because of that, right? Not just just believing everything that we see and making sure that we are educated to filter, right?
Kelly Engelmann: So why in the world do we have the need for supplementation today? Right? Shouldn’t we just be able to eat our way out of a problem?
Lori Esarey: I mean, that’s what we learned in school, right? Yeah. Most of our medical programs, you know, we don’t, we don’t need to take nutrients, so we don’t need to take supplements.
Kelly Engelmann: Supplements. It was just very expensive urine. That’s what I was taught.
Lori Esarey: Yes, me too.
Kelly Engelmann: Just very expensive. Urine don’t waste. That’s right. Waste your money on those supplements. Right?
Lori Esarey: Right. And then sometimes, you know, we hear, well it’s just another pill, right? We’re sick. It’s just another pill where, where. We’re trying to get them to understand that it’s really a supplement that fills in nutritional gaps. So let’s talk about nutritional gaps. Like why does our food. Or why does it not meet our nutritional needs?
Kelly Engelmann: So they say today that 10 cups of spinach today would be what one cup of spinach would’ve been about 10 years ago.
Lori Esarey: In nutritional density.
Kelly Engelmann: In nutritional density. And who can eat 10 cups? Who can eat 10 cups of spinach every single day, right? And I, I try, I mean, I’m challenged myself. We say we need nine cups of vegetables a day as an adult to meet our nutritional demands. I don’t have that much chew time in my day. I mean, I’ve tried to make it work, but I just don’t have that much chew time. And even with juicing, which I do daily, and even with my smoothies, I’m still not meeting that quota oftentimes at the end of the day when I look up.
Lori Esarey: So our soil is very nutrient poor. Right. It lacks in minerals the way that we grow our foods now. Right?
Kelly Engelmann: Monocropping? So oftentimes that soil is not nutrient dense because we’ve grown the same crop over and over, and by the end product it’s not, there’s no nutrient value there.
Lori Esarey: And we’re growing anything, anytime, anywhere. We’re speeding up the growth, skipping over maturation processes that are necessary for nutrients. Food doesn’t even taste like it anymore. I mean, eat a strawberry. That’s conventionally grown. It doesn’t even taste like a strawberry anymore, right? So just very, very nutrient poor food. And so I had to really rethink how I was trained as well.
And I understand, you know, if you’re going to, I would say this to our consumers and, and those listening today, if you’re gonna to your doctor and they’re saying, you know, you don’t need to take that. It’s just gonna be expensive urine, I really urge you to dig deeper and look because you’re not gonna correct your nutritional deficiencies with food alone.
Kelly Engelmann: And to the flip side of that, you’re not gonna correct your nutritional deficiencies with supplements alone. Yes, it really is the marriage of the two. That is the sweet spot, I believe. And then we think about supplementation. You, there’s a time and a place for supplementation, for healing. You know, your supplement regimen that you mentioned, Joell, you took more pills than you wanted to initially because you were working through a healing process.
And oftentimes that’s the case when they come in. There’s a lot of mal-absorption going on in the GI tract. Oftentimes more supplementation is needed to get that issue resolved, and then there’s a period of time. Or perhaps you’re on more of a maintenance or more of a let’s how to, let’s see how we maintain with the knowledge that you may go through stressors in life where you need to bump up your supplementation.
So oftentimes equate that to what do you, what are you asking your body to do? And that oftentimes dictates the strategies behind what we need in the way of supplementation to make that happen.
Lori Esarey: So, and, and because of that, when choosing supplementation, it’s really important to choose quality. Quality supplements to fill in those nutritional gaps that, like, as you just said, we create those nutritional gaps. Absolutely. We create them ourselves. Whe whether we, it’s something we like, we don’t like, we cook it a certain way or raw versus cooked, right?
Kelly Engelmann: And then we eat that thing, what’s it called? Sugar that steals all of our nutrients from us because it takes a lot of nutrients to out process sugar. Not that I do that, no, I would never do that, but yes. Sometimes I do that.
Joell Daniels: That’s right.
Lori Esarey: So that makes this an even more important conversation about quality nutrients, how to purchase them, how to buy them where. Them from and making sure that you have a relationship with a trusted, qualified healthcare practitioner to give you that guidance. So Joell, do you wanna add anything to that nutritional conversation that we just had?
Joell Daniels: I think the lives we live now. are much more stressful than the lives we lived before, and we know that high stress really affects our digestion and our gut health. So even if, and it doesn’t, the orange that was grown 50 years ago was so much higher quality with nutrients or dense nutrients than it is now.
Even if it was still that same orange. Our digestion is so screwed up from the stress that we face every day, from chemicals in our environment from a stressful life and more demands on us that it wouldn’t matter. We’re still not getting the nutrition we need, but I agree. I would prefer to eat whole food.
I think that we need to have a lifestyle that includes exercise and meditation and prayer, but we’re not gonna get it all from food. We’re just not. Not without supplements.
Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely.
Lori Esarey: So I wanted to ask a couple of questions. You know the question is, no longer are supplements necessary because we all know that our nutritional intake is so poor, the quality of our food is so poor. So it’s no longer a question of, you know, do we need them? It’s now a question of when we need them, what do we choose? So we wanted to kind of dig a little bit deeper with you on what does that look like? What does a quality nutritional supplement look like?
Joell Daniels: Well, as a consumer, prior to any of my knowledge in this field, I just assumed whatever I picked up on a shelf of a store, and of course this was pre-internet days, but it’s even more crucial now. I assumed that everything was okay. The New York Attorney General’s office did an investigation where they took lots of products off of shelves of major retailers, and not one of them met label claim and all of them except one had contaminants.
Kelly Engelmann: So Wait, wait, hold on. Joell, you said none of them met label claim. So what you’re saying is what was on the label was not what was in that bottle. That’s huge.
Joell Daniels: That’s correct. Wow. That is huge. And even something as simple as vitamin C didn’t make the mark. And I think that’s the most expensive supplement to purchase is no matter what the price tag is on that shelf, if it doesn’t have what it, what it says, and it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to, it’s a waste of money.
Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely. And it could be dangerous as well. Right. Oftentimes in that study, they found that there were contaminants in the product, right. Not just that it wasn’t what it said it was. Maybe it was something that would be harmful as well.
Joell Daniels: Exactly. At Xymogen, we really took that to heart and we built a manufacturing facility from ground up and we didn’t take an old warehouse and repurpose it and in doing the ground up construction. We were able to control manufacturing that other companies that try to convert an existing building weren’t able to do, and they’re a little bit boring, but they really do contribute to the fact that every capsule in every bottle is the same dose as all the rest of them. So we don’t get one capsule with 40 milligrams and another with a 200, but they’re a consistent dosing.
And we meet label claim and we don’t have contaminants. So, what’s on the label is nothing more and nothing less than what is shown.
Kelly Engelmann: So Lori and I have been able to visit, right? And we’ve been able to see manufacturing. It was really cool walking through there and it’s like a real eye-opener to see all of that come together from the way that product is brought in and tested and then produced and then tested again. And there’s a lot that goes into that process to make sure that, like you said, once you get that bottle, that every single capsule is the same.
Joell Daniels: That’s correct. And we also do things that other manufacturers don’t necessarily do, which is we qualify our vendors. So our suppliers that send us those raw ingredients, they have to go through a rigorous qualification process that once they’re approved, we received their product, we make sure that it comes with a certificate of analysis, and a chain of custody. A chain of custody is gonna tell us that it isn’t genetically modified. The certificate of analysis, which is also called the C of A, tells us that that ingredient is active, and I don’t remember the movie, but there’s a movie that talks about the circle of trust. And even though we’ve pre-qualified that vendor, they’re not really in that circle of trust. We verify, right? Their certificate of analysis to make sure, and that’s important to know because we reject raw ingredients all the time, and we ship them to other people that makes supplements when we reject them the supplier sends us a UPS label and we send them along.
Lori Esarey: So what you’re saying is that-
Joell Daniels: so they’re out there.
Lori Esarey: Right? So you’re rejecting that product. Right. And it’s, it’s being sent on to someone else who is using that product, who then that lands on the shelves. Getting back to your original statement of what’s on those shelves, you used to think, go to any store, pick it up. That’s a supplement that’s safe for me. And that’s good.
Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. I’ll have to say, when I first got into functional medicine, Gosh, 2004, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was have product on my shelf. Like I just didn’t think that was, you know, something I needed to be getting myself into. But I would send patients with a list of what they needed and they would go to the local store and they would come back.
Oftentimes they would come back with not what I asked them to get, and something completely different because the person sold them something different for the symptom they were having. Right. But just assumed they came back with what I asked them to get. You know, three months down the road, we’re not seeing the result.
And I’m like, I can’t function this way. Not knowing that what I’m giving them is actually gonna get them where they need to go. So the the ability to bring in quality supplements to the practice and know that they’re gonna see that result with that product over a period of time is. Has been a game changer for my practice.
Lori Esarey: Absolutely. And mine as well. And so I think as a consumer going to, whether that be an online platform to order supplementation or to a provider’s office or to a store, what are they to look for on a bottle? Is there specific terminology that they should be looking for on that product when they purchase?
Joell Daniels: Well, there is a stamp on a label that says GMP that stands for good manufacturing practices and that can be helpful, but it’s still no guarantee. Right now with the current environment where supplies are short, demand is high. It’s like the wild, wild west. There are so many supplement raw ingredients out there that we get into our manufacturing facility that aren’t making the mark. Also, we receive things that are substandard and our rejection rate has gone up during this last few years.
Lori Esarey: So, what you’re saying is that that certification of good manufacturing practices, which historically we have said to our consumers, use that as a guide. What you’re saying now is we have to be cautious even with that on the label.
Joell Daniels: That’s correct. I think you really the consumer needs to do that and look to their healthcare practitioner who has done the research like you and Kelly have done.
Lori Esarey: Yeah. So that means digging deeper, really not just to understand again that they got that label right cuz that there’s a price that comes with that CGMP. Correct? Right?
Joell Daniels: There is.
Lori Esarey: So there’s a price that comes with that. So it’s really going beyond that and like you said, getting to your qualified healthcare practitioner to dig deeper into the companies behind the brand. That’s what I hear you saying. the companies and Absolutely what the companies are doing, what their standards are.
Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. Right. Can you speak Joell at all to this thing that’s going on with counterfeiting of product? So, you go online to buy a product. The label looks like a good manufacturing label, and you get the product, but it’s not the real thing. Mm. What can you tell us about that?
Joell Daniels: Absolutely. When we first started Xymogen, we were the new kid kids on the block, and we did set the standard higher for everyone. And what we found in a couple of instances where our label had been mimicked and put on a bottle, how we found this is the person who got the bottle had a complaint about it, and we happened to mark all our bottles so we know who bought it, where it went, and these bottles weren’t. and the marking isn’t seen, but we could, we have a way to read it and the products ended up being counterfeit. And if we had those happen 20 years ago it’s even worse now. So, we check that all the time. Mm-hmm.
Kelly Engelmann: Wow. So, I’m just thinking about how many people go online thinking that they’re getting a good quality product because maybe they did look for Xymogen or another brand name that’s trusted, but then when they get that product, that product is not even what they think it is and how do we protect from that, right? Yeah. Because everything’s going online, let’s face it. The world has changed as we know it. And we are going to see, you know, vendors that historically have not sold online, be there and, you know, how do we know that we’re buying directly from that vendor? What can we do to, to look for that?
Lori Esarey: So how do we know Joell, what can we do and what can we help? I, I feel like this is buyer beware. Right? Right. Buyer beware!
Joell Daniels: It’s definitely buyer beware and I think the way to protect yourself is to, again, go through a healthcare practitioner who’s done the research, right? Because you’ll even see our formulas show up online, but that’s no guarantee.
It was interesting. There was a patient who returned product to a doctor and the reason she returned it was because she didn’t see the product on Amazon. So the patient automatically assumed that if it was on Amazon that it had been checked. And we know people selling on Amazon have been caught selling counterfeit products.
Lori Esarey: Mm-hmm.
Joell Daniels: And Amazon’s gotten in trouble for that as well.
Lori Esarey: Yeah. So directly through what you’re saying is through either a visit with your qualified healthcare practitioner in which you’re picking that up in their office, or they have given you a direct link to or provided you the proper way to walk through ordering it to know that it is the brand and the product that they have recommended?
Joell Daniels: Absolutely.
Kelly Engelmann: Does Xymogen have codes on the bottles that patients can view to verify that it is a Xymogen product?
Joell Daniels: No, but we do have our marking that we put on the label that we can investigate.
Kelly Engelmann: So, Xymogen can see that. Yeah. If you needed to investigate, but the patient themselves couldn’t see that.
Yeah. So it is tricky. It is buyer beware for the- for the person out there trying to get themselves better. They have all these symptoms that they’re dealing with or maybe they’re just trying to optimize their health. You know, they’re into fitness and they wanna stay well and it is truly by beware when it comes to the purchasing of those supplements online, I think.
Lori Esarey: So tell us a little bit about third party testing of raw material. You’ve said we’ve talked a little bit about contaminants, but what does that third party process look like to, to help you clearly know what product reject versus to keep?
Joell Daniels: So what we do when that wrong greeting comes in and it has that certificate of analysis, we’re unique in that we have our own analytical services laboratory, right in our building. A large one with very progressive equipment, and we can do what most labs do. So we test it initially ourselves and make sure that it’s within specification, but at the end product or during the process, if there’s certain tests that we need to do on an ingredient, we send it out to a third party independent laboratory.
So that’s a laboratory that has no skin in the game. They don’t care whether it, you know, they don’t make any money off at passing or not. Mm-hmm. . They make their money either way. And we just verified that our results are true and valid and it costs a lot of money to do that. And we’ve been told that we overt test things and the owner of our company is okay with that. We wanna put out a quality product that makes patients-
Lori Esarey: is that even possible? Right. I think Is that even possible to overt test? Right?
Kelly Engelmann: Exactly. From a functional perspective, absolutely not. Exactly right. We love the testing.
Lori Esarey: But you bring up a great point is. in the age in which everything is costing more.
You know, many of our patients are really thinking about their budgets and they’re wanting to trim them down as much as possible, right? But we can’t cut corners here. That’s what I hear you saying today. We can’t cut corners, we gotta be really particular.
Joell Daniels: Right.
Lori Esarey: So what does it cost? I just, I, I gotta kind of know like, what does it really cost to maybe batch tests?
Like, give us a little bit of an idea of, of the cost difference between putting just any product on a shelf at GNC, Walgreens, Walmart, versus putting a product on your warehouse shelf.
Joell Daniels: I don’t know the exact costs. I would say that it would easily double or triple the price because just the testing that we do with independent laboratories costs about a hundred thousand dollars per month.
Lori Esarey: Wow.
Joell Daniels: And I wanna reiterate that the most expensive supplement you buy is the one that doesn’t work. So while we’re trying to limit and cut our costs, like you said, Lori, this is not the place to do that.
Lori Esarey: Right. So I wanna, I wanna dig a little bit deeper into product labels and things that catch our eye. As a consumer when we shop. NSF is one of the things that my clients will come in and say that they see on a bottle. What does NSF mean?
Joell Daniels: Well, it’s a paid for subscription. So the company pays the National Sanitation Foundation, I believe is what it stands for, and they pay for that subs. So it’s not any additional verification that happens. It’s not like a GMP or for instance, Xymogen is an FDA registered facility and we’re inspected every 10 to 14 months. They knock on the back door, they give us no warning, and they come in and they stay for a couple weeks and they verify everything.
Lori Esarey: So NSF is just something on the bottle. To trick, if you will, the consumer into believing there’s something better about this formula than maybe one that doesn’t have NSF on it. Is that correct?
Joell Daniels: Absolutely. And it would be like a company that pays for their products to be checked by the Consumer Reports Organization or something like that. Those are all paid for subscriptions.
Lori Esarey: So is is USP the same thing? Because I’ve noticed a lot of , I would say brands that you see on the shelves at a health food store maybe, or even at a grocery store they’ve had there. There’s USP on there. Tell us a little bit about USP. What is that?
Joell Daniels: I’m not exactly sure. However, generally the USP means United States Pharmacopia, and that’s a standard of ingredient. Mm-hmm. . Okay. And of a raw ingredient.
Lori Esarey: Would that make that product any better than one that is labeled as CGMP or NSF? Does it create a better quality or, or not?
Joell Daniels: I think it is something to look for in that we know the company’s going the extra mile and using a USP raw ingredient. Okay. So one that has a standard.
Kelly Engelmann: Great question. So I’m curious, you know, when I toured the Xymogen facility a few years ago, one of the things that just impressed me was the, the humidity control. Cause I’m all about air quality control, . I’m kind of obsessed with that. If anyone knows me well they know why. But I, I noticed that there was a lot of pains taken to really control for humidity in specific areas. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how that equates to better quality product?
Joell Daniels: I can, and this does make Xymogen unique because again, we built our building, our manufacturing facility was built from the ground up, we didn’t take a warehouse and repurpose it. In doing that, we were able to install, train, car size dehumidifiers, and from the time a raw ingredient enters manufacturing till the time it comes out, we can control how much moisture is in the air, and that’s important because most ingredients are.
By exposure to two things, humidity and heat, and by preventing the humidity in the first place, we don’t have to apply heat to get things to flow properly. Our humidity control is from anywhere from 15 to 24%, depending on what’s being manufactured that day.
Lori Esarey: Wow. And in Florida where you’re located, that is even more important, right?
Kelly Engelmann: Right?
Joell Daniels: It is. When we opened our manufacturing facility we opened it in about April of 2011 and we were able to test it very easily because we had 19th straight days in the beginning of June, that year of rain. Wow. And they constantly were checking them because it was new. Right. And-
Lori Esarey: So let’s talk about shipping practices because one of the things that we know is that you are shipping all over the United States. Is that correct? We are. And are you also abroad? What are, are, are there other locations that you guys ship to as well?
Joell Daniels: We have a warehouse that we use in Canada that we own and ship in Canada.
Lori Esarey: Okay.
Joell Daniels: We also have distributors in other countries.
Lori Esarey: Expanding!
Joell Daniels: So we do ship both.
Lori Esarey: Yeah. Expanding. So the shipping process I can imagine has to be quite controlled to make sure that the end consumer gets quality products. How does Xymogen control for that?
Joell Daniels: Everything is under air conditioned, temperature controlled environment, unlike some major. Sellers who have big warehouses and don’t always do that. And so you can imagine if you’re maybe a patient’s taking a probiotic and they’re ordering it off of the internet, it might have been stored on a third story rack in the middle of summer somewhere, and might not end up the way it was meant to be at their home.
Mm-hmm. .
Lori Esarey: So from the time that a person orders whether that be you know, directly through again, , a provider recommending a specific link right, in which they’re ordering directly mm-hmm. From you, what is the turnaround time from that order to getting it out the door to them and then receiving it?
Typically,
Joell Daniels: we’ll ship within 48 hours, if not 24. Mm-hmm. , and depending on where they’re located in the country it could be one to three.
Lori Esarey: Yeah, I was just wondering, because I know that there’s a controlled amount of, you know, the heat as you spoke of before, I think one of the consumer questions would be, does the heat of that shipping process, like how is that controlled to make sure they’re getting a product that is still, you know, that is it.
It’s still quality.
Joell Daniels: We have equipment where we put a product in and we expose it to heat and humidity. So we know exactly how it’s affected. And for instance, our probiotics, which when we make them, we double fill them. What I mean when I say that is we put double the amount of the ingredient in there, and then what is on the label is what the strength of that product is at the expiration date.
Another way to say that is if we have 30 billion strength probiotic, we might fill that with 60 or 70 billion. When we make it, we have checked it. We know that if it’s exposed to 107 degrees for three days, it’s still two years down the road going to have and meet the label.
Lori Esarey: Excellent. Right, which, that’s the standards that you guys have put in place to ensure, again, the quality
Kelly Engelmann: product.
Right? And a lot of patients feel like if their probiotic is not refrigerated, then it’s not a good quality probiotic, but you guys have been able to vacuum seal, right, that probiotic in a way that keeps it fresh so that it doesn’t degradate with temperature changes. ,
Joell Daniels: that’s true. However, because we control that humidity from the very beginning and we never have to apply the heat.
A probiotic, for instance, is brought to life by heat and moisture, and so we’ve never brought that. Product to life before it gets in the capsule and before it gets to the patient. So it’s very stable, and then we nitrogen flush it into a blister pack. So again, we’re removing any of the unwanted part of the environment that might bring that probiotic to life.
And it’s only gonna live about three days. once it’s brought to life, we want that to happen after the patient gets it. So we expose it to nothing that’s gonna put that at risk par to that.
Lori Esarey: That’s a lot to unpack. It
Kelly Engelmann: really is. I was thinking we gotta go way, baby. Yeah, right.
Lori Esarey: We gotta go back a little bit to really understand what you just said, cuz I think that’s really important.
When you said that raw product, as I understood it, isn’t brought to life. Until, say it until when? Heat and
Kelly Engelmann: moisture. Right?
Joell Daniels: Heat and moisture is what brings a probiotic to life. Makes it active. Okay.
Lori Esarey: And that happens when,
Joell Daniels: when the patient swallows it
Lori Esarey: and you control
Joell Daniels: that. How? By not exposing it to heat or moisture during the manufacturing process.
If a company wasn’t doing that, that might be. , you would need to refrigerate it, right? But we avoid that.
Lori Esarey: And that part of that process is how you also place it in the blister packs, right? Yes. Which is
Joell Daniels: phenomenal. It is. And the nitrogen flushing gets the oxygen out of there so that product is sealed and viable.
and every dose. A trick in the industry would be to put a powder in a bottle, because every time the patient picks up the bottle, they’re going to displace the powder. As it degrades, it gets hard like concrete. Mm-hmm. . Another challenge is that just a plastic bottle allows too much air and moisture in.
There’s even a website that rates plastic bottles and how the vapor can get through them, and they’re rated. So we just avoid all of that. Yeah, yeah.
Lori Esarey: So what I, I guess my question will be when, when probiotics are supplied in a bottle like that, what is the best way to store them for the consumer? Is it refrigeration?
Well, wouldn’t at that point,
Joell Daniels: Probably mm-hmm. , since we don’t do that, I never really have to advise somebody on how to do that. Right. Ours are always in a, in a blister pack or they’re in a, a stick pack, so each dose is controlled.
Lori Esarey: Right. Which I’m sure that that costs, right. The end consumer a little bit more for the product because of the way it’s packaged.
Going back is really ING more. That’s right. Is it really cost? Let’s talk about cost more. Right. Not cost. Right, exactly. A cost is something that you spend money on that’s not creating value on your investment. Right?
Joell Daniels: Absolutely. And not contributing to your health. Right. Right.
Lori Esarey: So the investment, that’s expensive.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. . I wanna talk a little bit about the delivery system of products. You know, some of them are in capsules, some of them liquids, some of them in the straws that you referred to earlier. Give me a little. Understanding of what is the most appropriate type of delivery system for different types of nutrients?
Joell Daniels: Well, obviously there are some things like a fish oil as iGen uses a pre-digested water soluble fish oil. But those have to be in gel caps. But there’s some studies that show that taking a lot of gel caps is. , good for you. But the benefit of is a gel cap of it. Using a gel cap is the disintegration time, and so you’re always a supplement company is always chasing the disintegration time, and we use a second generation veggie cap, which equals the disintegration time of a gel cap.
It also doesn’t disintegrate where it’s not supposed to. So these, some of them will be digestive resistant, like in a probiotic. But they’re digested in the small intestine or large intestine or wherever they need to be at the time.
Lori Esarey: So sometimes it’s very appropriate to have a liquid formulation for better absorption and digestion. Right, right. Absolutely. Sometimes it’s better to have them in a capsule form, sometimes sublingual underneath of the tongue based on, again, delivery system, right. For that particular patient. But as you just also mentioned, and, and I think we need to also talk about a little bit, The best way to get it to you right, is the one that you’re gonna follow. Right?
Kelly Engelmann: Well that’s true, right, . That is so, so true. So many people do not like powders. You know, they want everything in in a capsule. So if they’re not gonna take it, it’s not any good for them. It’s not any good for them. It’s gonna sit in the bottle and not be consumed. Yeah. Yeah.
Lori Esarey: But then the delivery system really is the individual.
assessment of the qualified healthcare practitioner to determine how is their GI system, right? Are they gonna break it down right? And what’s the best delivery for them? So that’s, again, working individually with, with the client mm-hmm. to make sure of that. But so, you know, it’s, it’s really great to work with a company that offers multiple different delivery systems that allow us to choose right what’s best for them-
Kelly Engelmann: And have the patient have a voice. You know, they’re part of the equation too, and knowing what they’re going to do, or willing to do and able to do is also a huge part of the decision making when we do choose a product for them. Mm-hmm. . So Joell, you work for Xymogen? I do. Mm-hmm. , how can patients connect with Xymogen?
Joell Daniels: Through you. Okay. Or Laurie.
Kelly Engelmann: Okay.
Joell Daniels: And just to let your listeners know, you are the most amazing women, your skilled practitioners. I see clinics all day every day, and I have incredible respect for you. You have gone the extra hundred miles and looked at the science and educated yourselves, and you do think outside the box and you’re not afraid to say, I’ll find out. And I really respect that. And there any patient that ends up in your clinics are in the right hands and it’s really amazing.
Kelly Engelmann: Thank you.
Lori Esarey: Thank you so much. Sure. What a blessing. Sure. Absolutely. Well, I can speak for myself. I’ve, I’ve known you Joell for years. In fact, you are one of the key women who inspired me to take a new approach and look at look at healthcare delivery differently.
And really You know, back in the day, I like to say when I was experiencing my own health challenges you really inspired me to, to dig a little bit deeper, you know, get more education and look at nutrients, and I’m just really thankful for our relationship and I really appreciate you. Sharing your expertise with our listeners.
Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely. Joell, it’s a pleasure having you here and you know, we’re blessed to have you take care of us in Mississippi. You know, I got to know you through Lori, and the only way we got you here was really through that relationship. The relationship I had with Lori and the relationship she had with you brought you to Mississippi.
And so we’re delighted as always to have you feeding into our teams with education and resources. That goes to our patients, right? We’re able to spread that to our patients. So we, we really do appreciate you being here.
Joell Daniels: Thank you so much.
Lori Esarey: Oh, you really well, thank you. But I wanna say, you know, that that really goes along with what we say all the time with Synergee.That we really are better together. We’re stronger together. We’re stronger together.
Kelly Engelmann: Yeah, absolutely.
Lori Esarey: Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. You can find more information about Synergee at synergee4life.com, that’s S Y N E R G E E, the number four, life.com.
Kelly Engelmann: And then Synergee connect is our Facebook. And then please make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app so that you make sure you get future notifications of episodes.
Enhanced Wellness Living is Mississippi’s premier Functional Medicine Wellness Clinic! We are proud to serve all of Mississippi including Ridgeland, Jackson, Madison, Rankin, Byram, Hernando, Starkville, Flowood, Bolton, Hinds, Brandon, Oxford, Canton, Olive Branch, Clinton, Vicksburg, and more! Not in Mississippi? We have patients who travel from Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, and more for these life changing procedures!
Control Blood Sugar, Control Everything
Kelly Engelmann: Wellness is a practice, not just a word. Welcome to The Synergee Podcast. For myself, Kelly Engelmann and Lori Esarey, shed light on powerful tools and topics that nourish your body, and most importantly, feed your soul.
Welcome everyone to the Synergee podcast. I’m so excited about this interview today, guys, I get to interview Lori Esarey today, and we get to talk about something that is so passionate for her that you’re gonna hear it, you’re gonna hear it in everything she says today. When we first met, one of the first conversations that we had was about blood sugar and we’re gonna dig into control, blood sugar, control, everything. So, Tell us your story. Tell us why this is such a passionate topic for you.
Lori Esarey: So this story goes back years and years and years. When I was diagnosed with diabetes, when I was pregnant at 25, 24, 25. And so gestational diabetes, gestational diabetes is where it started. And prior to that-
Kelly Engelmann: Where you, that’s not where it started. We’re gonna get into that more, but that’s where she became aware of the problem.
Lori Esarey: Correct.
Kelly Engelmann: But we know that’s not where it started, right? (laughter) that’s right. That’s right. Exactly. That’s where it, that’s where it showed up. That’s where- why we need this podcast.
Lori Esarey: Yes. That’s where it showed up. Right, right. So at 24, 25 pregnant started having blood sugar control issues. And, you know, at the time, I don’t really think I understood what that really meant. All I knew is that most of my family had diabetes. And I was already a nurse at the time. I was completing my nurse practitioner degree. I had had a lot of education on diabetes. I knew my family history, but I didn’t really understand how that was going to affect me.
So during my pregnancy, yes, I was having these elevations of my blood sugar that were concerning to them, which then led to preeclampsia. Long story short, I deliver. and after my pregnancy, I continued to feel bad. I didn’t feel good. I felt like everything I did everywhere I went, I was carrying a 10 pound ball and chain with me.
The only word I could use to describe myself was the word slug. I just felt like a slug. Wow. The going conversation in my house was Lori’s on the couch again. Lori’s on the couch again, and I was a marathon runner. And I wanted to exercise. My body said yes, and my mind said no. Like I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it.
And sometimes it was my mind saying yes and my body saying no. It was just, and it led me down a path of sadness because I wasn’t able to be the parent I wanted to be the mom I wanted to be. I was going to support groups for new moms. They were really excited and I was excited about my beautiful bundle, but I just wasn’t excited about how I felt, so I went on a quest. I was starting to ask doctors like, what can I do? What is this? Why is this? I was diagnosed with depression, right? I knew I wasn’t depressed. I just knew I was sad. I couldn’t explain it, and they couldn’t explain it either, which just led my curious mind to start doing some research and on my own began to uncover. This relationship of when I ate, after I ate, I felt worse. If I didn’t eat, I felt better, but if I didn’t eat for extended periods of time, I felt worse. So I just started putting some things together at that time.
Kelly Engelmann: So what you’re describing is kind of that very familiar blood sugar rollercoaster that people can be on when they have unregulated blood sugar, right?
Lori Esarey: Right.
Kelly Engelmann: You feel bad when you don’t eat for a long period of time and then you eat and then you feel bad after you eat, and it’s like you’re chasing the food and the symptoms all day long.
Lori Esarey: And the frustrating part of that story is that my own medical providers, my own peers, who I just, I needed them to have an answer.
I felt terrible and they just, the only thing they had for me is, you know, here’s a pill. You know, and I knew in my heart of hearts there was more to the story, and so my persistence led me to really educating myself. I began changing my food, pulling carbohydrates out and putting better food in. But again, stumbling because at the time, what, what did we know about nutrition?
Kelly Engelmann: I was gonna say, okay, so what year was this? Let’s put this into perspective.
Lori Esarey: 1995.
Kelly Engelmann: So 1995. We didn’t have necessarily the internet to go to.
Lori Esarey: Not so much.
Kelly Engelmann: Not so much it was there, but it was very, there wasn’t information out there like there is today.
Lori Esarey: And good nutrition was calories in, calories out to lose weight. Everything was about weight loss.
Kelly Engelmann: And diabetics were oftentimes taught just the sugar free versions of what to eat instead of the nutrient dense versions of what to eat. Right?
Lori Esarey: And the bigger problem really was that the wrong testing was being done. My fasting blood sugar, for the most part was good. You know, I would have periods of time in which my fasting blood sugar was elevated, but standard of care medicine was an elevated blood sugar over 126 on two separate occasions.
Kelly Engelmann: Exactly.
Lori Esarey: And that’s the only tool in their toolbox they had at the time. Right. So that, and I do believe that hemoglobin a1c was starting right around that time, but even that, so I didn’t meet full on criteria for diabetes. So what were they to do? Right, right. So I think, you know, when I look at that period of time that I walked through was very, very frustrating.
I didn’t really quote unquote have a disease state, which I’m not necessarily sad about that, right? But my body was in a state of dysfunction. It was in a state of dysfunction. And how often now, you know, fast forward to what we do now, but how often do we now know that we have to do the right. So glad to have testing available, right? That we can do now. But we gotta do the right test to really understand what the real problem is to get to the root of that problem. But that is where it all started. It started from my own. I would like to say symptoms that I didn’t like that really rocked my world, decrease my quality of life, and traditional medicine didn’t have an answer for me at the time.
Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. So, out of that has birthed a practice. Yes. So Total Nutrition and Therapeutics in Central Florida where you’ve been practicing functional medicine for many years.
Lori Esarey: 15 years. Right?
Kelly Engelmann: 15 years, yeah. And I remember some of the very early conversations that we had as practitioners teaming up to explore functional medicine together, centered around blood sugar control, you know, centered around what, what should we be? What should we be eating? How should we be testing? How do we not only improve symptoms, but decrease disease risk?
Lori Esarey: Definitely. Right, right.
Kelly Engelmann: With the patient that doesn’t necessarily meet criteria for diabetes.
Lori Esarey: Yeah. When people ask me what really did birth as you, as you just said, to your point, what really birthed at TNT, it was the aha moment when I discovered that if I could just control my blood sugar, I had the ability to control the way I felt. And now I’ve taken that on to say, control blood sugar, control everything. Because now we know that if we can control our blood sugar, we have the ability to control inflammation. And inflammation is the driver of 90% of disease states.
Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, and yeah, we used to throw that around. You used to say it all the time, and I kind of picked it up to control blood sugar, control everything. And I, I believed that, but I had no idea until we had access to continuous glucose monitoring. What that really had the impact to do for patients day to day. And I’m talking not diabetic patients, I’m talking about patients just like me walking around feeling okay, but maybe not my best. Putting a blood sugar monitor on, realizing that there’s an element of dysglycemia dysregulated blood sugar that’s driving stress and driving inflammation and really creating a drag on the body.
You know, not allowing the body to function at its best. So you mentioned the right testing, so I wanna get into that. So what do we do today as we sit here for patients coming in complaining of fatigue and complaining of, you know, I don’t feel well after I eat. And if I go long periods without eating, I’m hangry and shaky and I just don’t feel well. What does that look like in the way of testing?
Lori Esarey: The right testing is extremely important, and it starts with blood testing. It really starts honestly with an exhaustive history, a qualified healthcare practitioner just sitting with you to really understand. What you’re experiencing, when you’re experiencing it, what symptoms are you having? What does it relate to? So that exhaustive history, you know, I know sometimes we fill out a long history form for our provider of care and we wonder why we’re writing it all. Are they really gonna look at it? And I just wanna tell you that a good, absolutely quality healthcare provider looks at all of that. So take the time to really do that. So that’s the first step, is a really good exhaustive history, a timeline. You know, when was the last time you remember feeling good?
Kelly Engelmann: Well, that’s when the questions ask, when is the last time you actually felt, well, tell me about that. Right? Yes.
Lori Esarey: And then trending, trending of those labs, you know, there’s not any one lab diagnostic test that tells the whole story.
Kelly Engelmann: Right. We know that’s, we say looking at those lab tests, I equate it to like looking, you’re driving a car and you’re looking out your windshield, and then you have your rear view mirror and your side mirrors. So each lab is like looking in a different way and it a different perspective.
Lori Esarey: Exactly. Right. Right.
Kelly Engelmann: That. Yeah. So not one test, right? That’s right. We wanna, we wanna look at a comprehensive way of evaluating inflammation markers, right? Right, yeah. Evaluating blood sugar.
Lori Esarey: Yep. So fasting sugar is very important. A hemoglobin a1c that’s gonna give a look at an overall average, six weeks to three months of one’s blood sugar.
Kelly Engelmann: Mm-hmm.
Lori Esarey: Again, not used to diagnose, but really to treat and evaluate when you change a variable. How does that number change? So that’s hemoglobin a1c.
Kelly Engelmann: Yeah, and you know, hemoglobin A1C is interesting in that it’s oftentimes in functional medicine we use that as a marker for aging. Mm-hmm. So it’s a measurement of cellular stickiness. It’s a measurement of your red blood cell, and if that red blood cell is sticky, it’s not moving through your body with efficiency. It’s clumping together and it’s a sign of aging and we know that we’re just measuring that red blood cell, but we can equate that to any other cell in your body that’s glycating. You know, it’s getting sticky. Great. It’s not functioning properly, it’s got honey all over it. It’s goo. Right?
Lori Esarey: It’s not good. Right. Not good. Exactly. So hemoglobin a1c is really, really important. I also like to look at fasting insulin, not just fasting glucose, and look at the relationship, you know, of the fasting insulin to that fasting glucose on the morning that you went to the lab. Right? Is it proportional or not exactly.
Kelly Engelmann: Does it make sense?
Lori Esarey: Does it make sense, right. So, and then c peptide, I like to say that carrier protein, if you will that bus that carries insulin around like to look at glycomark. Glycomark is a great test that looks for periodic spikes in blood sugar in the two weeks prior to, prior to you having that done.
So C peptide, fasting insulin, fasting glucose, glycomark. Those are the standard labs, I would say. Right, right. Can you think of anything more?
Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. Sometimes I like to do a two hour postprandial insulin.
Lori Esarey: Mm-hmm.
Kelly Engelmann: You know because sometimes you don’t capture that fasting insulin, they look fine, but you’re like, there’s a problem here.
Lori Esarey: Mm-hmm.
Kelly Engelmann: Let’s do a two hour postprandial and see what that looks like. So sometimes I’ll do that. I’ll do, don’t do that on everyone, but occasionally I will have a situation
Lori Esarey: where I will do that. Right. And you. You know a good point in that when we speak of these labs, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to have all of these, right? You know, again, your qualified healthcare practitioner needs to look at more than one lab, but specifically create a lab order form for you. And I like to raise that discussion because, you know, oftentimes when you’re seeing a new provider of care, you’re probably wondering to yourself, Shouldn’t they order lab work prior to my first visit?
And although that may be beneficial in some situations, I’m not gonna say across the board that it’s not. But I find that it is very important to meet with you first. You know, meet with that prospective patient first. Mm-hmm. create that relationship, understand what their symptoms are, and order tests that are appropriate for the symptoms, right?
Kelly Engelmann: Right.
Lori Esarey: What I’m looking for, looking for that root cause. I’m looking for that driver. What’s causing the problem. You see? Yes, the fluctuation of blood sugar is a problem, right? It does create cellular aging, it does lead to inflammation. But what’s, but at the end of the day, what’s driving it? Right? What is the root cause for that? And you know that really- going back to the 1990s, you know, I think we all knew, I mean, that was when things were coming out. You know, lowering fat, taking sugar out of food, you know, putting other things in.
Kelly Engelmann: Well, so the 1990s was on the back end of the 1980s, where 1980s we were so fat focused. Mm-hmm. Fat phobic focused. Everything was low fat. So all of these products came out that were low fat, but they were very high in sugar. Right. So then we rebounded in the nineties, right. Eating all of this sugar, avoiding fat. Right. Realizing that what did we create?
Lori Esarey: And calories in, calories out right from that. So if you go back there, you know, I think a lot of us think that, well, if we eat too many Snickers bars, we know our blood sugar’s gonna be elevated. But those aren’t necessarily the people I’m seeing anymore. You know, we. We’re privy to a lot of information now. Right, right. Internet wise, we, we have a lot of that. So the people that I’m seeing are the people now that they know not to eat sugar, right? Whether they’re doing it or not. Right. We know not to consume a diet that is high in sugar.
Kelly Engelmann: Right.
Lori Esarey: We know that that is not good for us, right? But what we don’t understand is that there are many other factors. That influence blood sugar control. Yes. So when we say control your blood sugar control everything, the question really is for you, what is the driver of that? Yes. You know, if it’s not too many Snickers bars and bond bonds and you know, sugar laid in foods, What is it? Is it poor sleep? Is it stress, cortisol? Is it a bad gut microbiome? What is it?
Kelly Engelmann: Yeah, I wanna, I wanna stay there for a minute because oftentimes when I bring up the challenges of blood sugar or the potential challenges that someone would be having because of blood sugar, I get the pushback, but I don’t eat sugar.
Mm-hmm, it can’t be that I don’t eat sugar. Right. They dismiss the opportunity to explore that as a problem or a potential problem because they think they’re already eating a diet that’s lower in carbs and lower in sugar. And to your point, there are many other things that affect blood sugar regulation, like stress levels. Mm-hmm. How you’re sleeping, whether or not you’re moving your body and you-
Lori Esarey: Environmental toxins!
Kelly Engelmann: Environmental toxins, all of those things contribute to that rollercoaster of dysglycemia that can happen for a person.
Lori Esarey: So it’s that dysfunctional glucose control or dysfunctional glucose regulation, really, which is the driver of disease states. So, it is really important to dig in with a provider of care on those particular drivers if you wanna control your blood sugar, right?
Kelly Engelmann: So one of the things in functional medicine, you know, oftentimes, so we’re not just doing labs for blood sugar. It’s part of the labs that we do, right? But we’re looking for drivers of inflammation. Blood sugar is one of the drivers for inflammation, but also other drivers of inflammation create dysregulated blood sugar, right? So we’re looking for that at the gut microbiome. Because we know that that’s probably 90% of inflammatory drivers come from what’s sitting in the gut or perhaps what we’re putting in our mouth in the way of food.
So as you know, you dig into your health in functional medicine or from a functional medicine lens. You know, you may go into your provider and they’re wanting to do all these different testing and you’re like, is this really necessary? And I have to say it. You know, in order for us to really dig deep and think about all of the potential drivers for inflammation and help you work your way out of it, we need to know. We need to know.
Lori Esarey: So the first step really is kind of going back to the full history we talked about and ordering some diagnostic testing. And then it’s, it’s really exploring, like you, you had mentioned continuous glucose monitoring. Now, you know, we have the ability now to see things point in time. Yes. And for many years, and Kelly, you and I spoke about this, we speak about this a lot, is we are privy now to tools in our toolbox that have created this like wow. Like in our, like this wow moment, right? Yes. Because we were seeing things clinically, we were seeing it, but we didn’t really have the research right. We just had the clinical experience and now we have the ability, we do, right?
Kelly Engelmann: I remember one of the first conversations that you and I had regarding blood sugar control probably back in 2010, and I had implemented a process for my patients where I’d walk them through a 21 day food elimination modified detox plan and what I saw in the first 21 days just really was a a wow moment, right where we saw symptom reduction, we saw improvement in energy, we saw improvement in blood sugar, and I was naive at the time and thinking that if I could just keep them there for 12 weeks, then I could correct the dysfunction that was going on with blood sugar long term. I think I overestimated what 12 weeks could do. Theoretically, you know, the pancreas can reset in 12 weeks. If we eat a diet that’s rich in nutrients lower in carbs, and we’re moving our body, we’re working on stress and eliminating other factors. But once we had access to the continuous glucose monitor, it really opened my eyes to that even more when we settled for a hemoglobin A1C of 5.3. And a fasting glucose of 85 being okay. That was our standard. As long as your hemoglobin A1C was 5.3 or lower, and your fasting blood sugar was 85 or lower, we’re good.
Lori Esarey: As functional medicine experts function, standard of care in medicine. Traditional medicine’s much higher than that. I mean, they were settled with, you know, 6.6, right?
Kelly Engelmann: Yeah.
Lori Esarey: 6.5, 6.6-
Kelly Engelmann: a1c of 6.6 and a fasting blood around a hundred right. Is okay in the traditional sense, but I’m talking functional medicine standards. We were thinking that those parameters were- we were, we were solid gold. Right. And since having the continuous glucose monitor as a tool for the last year, we’ve been using those in both of our practices and we’ve been having a lot of dialogue about what we’re seeing and it’s like, wow.
Lori Esarey: Right. Well, and also we have to remember that there are points in time lab. Yeah, that’s point in time fasting glucose, that’s point in time Hemoglobin a1c, even though it’s an average point in time, glycomark over the last two weeks. But with a continuous glucose monitor, we have the ability now to look at when you eat a meal.
What was your blood sugar prior to that meal? What was your blood sugar after that? And you get to see the flux. You get to see the flux when you didn’t have a good night’s sleep. You know what happened that morning, comparatively speaking to another morning. So now we have tools in our toolbox that have created much more of an ability to understand those drivers like we never had for.
Kelly Engelmann: So I’ve had a patient this week that I saw that has had a monitor on a few months and she went to Vegas week before last. Wore her monitor, thank goodness. And prior to Vegas, she had really flattened her curve. You know, her blood sugars were staying very stable. And this was just with diet alone, diet, exercise, and you know, working on her sleep. Sleep was a challenge for her. And when she went to Vegas, obviously the food choices were not that great. And then she had some, you know, fun time too. No shame there. But it wasn’t just what her blood sugar did in Vegas. Actually in Vegas, her blood sugar stayed pretty stable.
It was three days after that, her blood sugar was on this crazy wicked rollercoaster and it really opened my eyes to people that do really good during the week. And then they go out for date night, Friday night and have a couple glasses of wine and a dessert. And maybe, you know, continue that through Saturday, Sunday, and then they’re really good during the week and they’re not seeing any result. They’re not losing weight, and they’re completely frustrated with their lack of ability to lose. And they may even be gaining. But I think what happens during that weekend time or during that splurge time, is they set a rollercoaster in effect that it takes them the rest of the week to get under control. And then they start all over again. Mm. And I would’ve never seen that had I not had a continuous glucose monitor.
Lori Esarey: Absolutely.
Kelly Engelmann: To show me that.
Lori Esarey: Yeah. You know, the standard American diet we know is so high in carbohydrates and it’s so protein poor, and you know, many are beginning to make changes in reducing those carbohydrates, but not doing a great job at getting key quality protein and fiber in their diet.
So, The next step in working, you know, on this, if, if this is, you know, a listener, if they’re like, you know, listen, I’ve begun to make these changes. A food log is really important, right? Really understanding. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. And I think that’s really what we’re talking about here, right?
We have more ways to measure things than we’ve ever had, and logging food is really essential to understand what you’re currently doing so that you can begin to make those changes.
Kelly Engelmann: Yeah, and I’ll have to say, I love the, the idea of intuitive eating. You know, and not having to think about, right? Logging everything. But you’re not gonna learn your body unless you log it. You’re just not going to, and we’re tricking ourselves or fooling ourselves into thinking we can, but unless you log it and see what you’re doing and then see how your body’s responding to that, there’s no real way to know.
Lori Esarey: Right. So that’s an important step in the treatment of someone who is experiencing energy, low energy, brain fog, irritability, as you said earlier, hangry, right when you’re not getting your meals in, is really looking not just at your history, not just at labs, looking at your food log and then maybe considering getting a continuous glucose monitor where you can begin to really look at lifestyle differences.
You know where you’re sleeping, how long you’re sleeping. Are your blood sugars higher during the week versus on the weekends? I mean, that was an eye opener for me during my work week of Monday through Friday, my blood sugars run higher than they run on the weekend.
Kelly Engelmann: Interesting, interesting. So stress levels greatly impact,
Lori Esarey: Absolutely.
Kelly Engelmann: Blood sugar regulation.
Lori Esarey: Absolutely. So, so from a passion standpoint, I truly believe that if a person is willing. To do the work to understand better what their blood sugar is, and not just at any one point in time, but throughout the course of a day, weeks, and maybe even months to understand. And they’re willing to do the work of working with a qualified healthcare practitioner to really dig in, in somewhat of an intensive, right? They can learn how to reduce the risk of disease. So this past year I started working on. A control blood sugar, control everything bootcamp. And I am super excited about it.
Kelly Engelmann: I’m, I think I’m more excited than you are because I’ve been able to reap the fruits of your labors in many ways. And I mean, it’s just been amazing the learning process. But I wanna back up before we get into the bootcamp, because what we know now about dysregulated blood sugar, even in the absence of diabetes, Is that if you have dysregulated blood sugar, you have a tremendous increased risk for high blood pressure. for high cholesterol, for cancers, cancer risk is higher, osteoporosis is higher. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And so as a listener, if you’re sitting here thinking, oh, I don’t have a blood sugar issue. If you started developing hypertension at age 50 or so, I would pause you to think was blood sugar driving that blood? Right, because that’s what we’re seeing. That’s what we’re seeing clinically.
So now Lori has taken the time, energy, and effort to really put to paper and to visualizations and video all of this powerful content that has the ability to truly change your life. Not just short term, but long term.
Lori Esarey: It’s years and years and years of what we’ve been seeing in clinical practice and what I had the ability to see firsthand seeing is believing.
Kelly Engelmann: Yes.
Lori Esarey: I had to see it to believe it, and then to see it come to fruition. You know, over the past 25 years, it’s pretty exciting to take all of that and put it into one place where if someone is looking to explore, the relationship of how they feel to what potentially could be the problem. Blood sugar dysregulation, this would be it.
So spending some time in a 30 day intensive learning week one, all about the relationship between inflammation and. Blood sugar dysregulation. Week two, talking about the food, all about your food. Understanding carbohydrates, understanding how digestion of those foods affect. So it’s not just what you’re eating, it’s how you digest those foods or not, right? That can lead to a disturbance in your blood sugar.
Kelly Engelmann: Yeah guys, did you know that in your gut microbiome, if you have specific bacterias, you may actually absorb more carbohydrates from your meals than other people.
Lori Esarey: Right. So good food, good that maybe not for you during a certain time because your gut health needs to be restored.
Kelly Engelmann: Yes.
Lori Esarey: Exactly. Yes. So maybe, you know, maybe we have some listeners here that have been doing all the right things, but fail to really understand the relationship of their gut health. So we cover that. Yes, in week two, week three, we’re gonna be talking about supplementation and the value that key nutrients in your food, as well as pairing them with supplements in order to improve blood sugar regulation.
So, Medications do play a role for some. Some will come to this already being on medicine, right? Because they are a diabetic. But this is for those individuals that are also maybe just wanting to be a fitter version of themselves, right? Right. Optimizing their health. Maybe they are an athlete and they wanna increase their performance.
Maybe they’re already practicing in a functional medicine practice, but really weren’t privy to this firsthand. Right? Right. They haven’t experienced this. So that would be someone that would really be a great, a great candidate to walk through this process. But then week four, we can’t leave week four out.
I am a, I love stats. I love numbers. You know, you know that about me on that gate. I do know that. But it’s all about your numbers, right? It’s understanding your. Looking at these labs a little bit more and you having an opportunity for some of those that choose to do the bootcamp, they can pair it with some blood work so that they can see getting these labs at the beginning and then perhaps at the end, and really looking at the power of your numbers to guide your optimal health. To guide your goals.
Kelly Engelmann: Right.
Lori Esarey: To guide your goals. So what’s working, what’s not working? Right? We cannot manage what we do. Measure. We cannot measure, right? Absolutely.
Kelly Engelmann: So, I’m super excited about that. I know that the potential to . Change lives with that information. Experiential learning, you know, where we’re really digging into what this means for, for us as individuals. I know for me, putting that glucose monitor on and really seeing what was happening was eyeopening in the last year, and being able to flatten that curve has just been a lot of fun. You know, feeling like you’re winning the game instead of just trying to keep up with the game.
Lori Esarey: Right. But you know, I, I do know several patients who before even coming to my clinic, were beginning to use a continuous glucose monitor and feeling very, very frustrated because they saw the dips and they saw the highs, but they couldn’t figure out what was driving that to happen. Right. So, you know, if you’re curious. If you’re curious and you haven’t been able to figure that out, this is the time to really understand there’s more to it.
Kelly Engelmann: Way more to it than just food. Right. Definitely way more to it than just carbs for sure.
Lori Esarey: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. And that’s, you know, if you go back in time, that’s really what we thought. Calories in, calories out. Eat less carbs, you’ll be fine. Don’t eat the sugar, you’ll be fine. But perhaps, I mean, in my situation, I had done all that, then I paired that with exercise, but I became a marathon runner. Right?
Kelly Engelmann: So that was creating an element of stress to the body.
Lori Esarey: Correct.
Kelly Engelmann: Right, right.
Lori Esarey: So I thought I was doing the right thing. So when you look at all of of that, there’s so many more factors that could be driving a person to have this dysregulation. And to your point earlier, people that have dysregulation of their blood sugar have an increased propensity to cardiovascular disease and diabetes, when diagnosed with diabetes, we know that the, it’s fourfold. Fourfold. In addition to that, what I believe is more concerning, at least for me in regards to quality of life, is there’s also a fourfold increase in Alzheimer’s disease, right? So that’s quality of life. It’s very, very important to control your blood sugar, and I just urge everyone that I can talk to that is on a mission to live their best life. If this is one area they haven’t opened up before, right? They haven’t looked at this, they’ve looked at the gut because that’s all over the internet. They’ve looked at healing the gut. They’ve looked at exercise. They’ve looked at improving their foods.
They’ve looked at fill in the blank. Right, right. They’re food intolerances. We haven’t talked about that yet. Right. But food allergies, food intolerance, they’ve looked at all of that, but they haven’t really looked at as a whole, all of those things simultaneously to controlling their blood sugar, this would be the time..
Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. So that point is huge because as I said before, you know, you could be working on all these other elements and feel better and be functioning better, but still have an element of undercurrent of dysglycemia that you’re just not aware of. So yeah. If you, if someone wanted to reach out and they wanted to start on their journey with the Blood Sugar Bootcamp, how do they need to do that?
Lori Esarey: I would have them go to our tnt, the number four me.com (tnt4me.com). On that website, there’s a contact us icon. I would ask them to just click that link, send us their information and put under the comment section that they’re interested in the Blood Sugar Bootcamp.
Kelly Engelmann: Awesome. Awesome. I can’t wait to see this come to life and I, I’m gonna be implementing this also at Enhanced Wellness Living so guys don’t get anxious about not having access to you guys will have access to it as well. And I think this is, this is gonna be an amazing journey. I’m looking forward to just seeing the outcomes and being able to share maybe in a future podcast. Yes. And the things that we’ve learned because this area of science is mounting fast. Yes, really, really fast, and I love being a part of it.
Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. You can find more information about Synergee at Synergee for Life. That’s S Y N E R G E E, the number four life.com. And then Synergee Connect is our Facebook. And then please make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast. Up so that you make sure you get future notifications of episodes.
Lori Esarey: Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. You can find more information about Synergee at synergee4life.com, that’s S Y N E R G E E, the number four, life.com.
Kelly Engelmann: And then Synergee connect is our Facebook. And then please make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app so that you make sure you get future notifications of episodes.
Enhanced Wellness Living is Mississippi’s premier Functional Medicine Wellness Clinic! We are proud to serve all of Mississippi including Ridgeland, Jackson, Madison, Rankin, Byram, Hernando, Starkville, Flowood, Bolton, Hinds, Brandon, Oxford, Canton, Olive Branch, Clinton, Vicksburg, and more! Not in Mississippi? We have patients who travel from Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, and more for these life changing procedures!
Who We Are Individually, in Our Communities, and Together
[00:00:00] Kelly Engelmann: Wellness is a practice, not just a word. Welcome to the Synergee Podcast, where myself, Kelly Engelmann and Lori Esery shed light on powerful tools and topics that nourish your body.
[00:00:17] Lori Esarey: And most importantly, feed your soul.
[00:00:25] Kelly Engelmann: Hi, I’m Kelly Engelmann. I am the founder of Enhanced Wellness Living in Jackson, Mississippi, and the co-founder of Synergee. But better than that, I get to be the best friend of Lori Esarey.
[00:00:41] Lori Esarey: Yeah! So that is me, yeah. I’m the owner of Total Nutrition and Therapeutics and the co-founder of Synergee. And we’re here today to probably talk about one of, I would say a little uncomfortable, but we’re gonna be uncomfortable together today, really talking about our stories. Who we are individually, who we are in our communities and who we are together. And so we’re gonna do that today. Get uncomfortable with you, our listeners, just sharing with you where we come from and how our stories have impacted our today, ou-our clinics, our practices and our life today.
[00:01:19] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. So, how it makes us available really to have, you know, all these years of wisdom that we got from the school of hard knocks and from the formal education that we acquired and how that helps us bring to you, you know, the perspectives that we have on life and wellness. And family and fun. And so I hope that this is enlightening and, and fun for both of us, you know?
[00:01:44] Lori Esarey: Absolutely. I don’t dread tell my story. All of my story’s not beautiful, but God’s made it beautiful. And so I feel blessed to be here.
[00:01:52] So, in an authentic and a transparent way today, probably with a bunch of laughs, maybe a few tears. Um, we’re gonna share that with you. So hang on and get excited about the next several minutes together.
[00:02:04] Kelly Engelmann: Awesome. So, Lori Esery: tell us about yourself! Like where did you grow up? What were you like as a child?
[00:02:12] Lori Esarey: Oh my goodness. Yeah, so I was born in Baltimore, Maryland. I was born to my parents who are together today. They’ve been married 63 years.
[00:02:25] Kelly Engelmann: Woohoo.
[00:02:27] Lori Esarey: Yeah. Taught me some very valuable lessons, but was born there and then moved to Florida. I now live in central Florida, but moved to Florida when I was six years old. Uh, we moved to Florida to actually help my uncle with his retirement center. So, he was the owner of a nursing home, residential living ALF facility. Really just an aging community in Florida, and so we moved here when I was young and I grew up with entrepreneurs.
[00:02:59] You know, my mom and dad were a part of that business. We basically lived all of our breath. We were there, we were there. So, I started working at a young age and I got a chance to work with the aging adult. And so that’s that we’re gonna go back to in a few minutes, but that has really impacted my life in a very, very big way to see what health looked like in the aging adult and what unhealthy looked like.
[00:03:24] Kelly Engelmann: Wow. So, that made an ear- an impression on you really early in your life.
[00:03:28] Lori Esarey: It did.
[00:03:29] Kelly Engelmann: That gave you perspective that really most people don’t get to have.
[00:03:32] Lori Esarey: Right. And at the time I have to say, I didn’t necessarily like that we lived basically at a retirement center, right. Because there was a part of my early years in middle school and early high school that we lived on property.
[00:03:47] Kelly Engelmann: Wow!
[00:03:47] Lori Esarey: We did. So yes, it did frame my view of health and the aging adult. And so yes, a unique opportunity, but that’s where I also, uh, fell in love with and wanted to become a nurse.
[00:04:02] Kelly Engelmann: Sweet.
[00:04:02] Lori Esarey: Right. So I decided to go to nursing school. It was one of those things where there wasn’t an alternative. In other words, I didn’t come outta school thinking I would be this or that. Um, I was gonna be a nurse. However, I really thought that I was going to go in the direction of psychology and working with behavior because it just really, it intrigued me to see how people behaved.
[00:04:27] Kelly Engelmann: Interesting! So that’s what you’re doing today, right? You’re, you’re a nurse and a nurse practitioner, but at the end of the day, you have to say that you dig into behavioral health and behavioral changes quite a lot in your practice that you have today. So, that’s pretty interesting that that’s really was your heart from the very beginning.
[00:04:46] Lori Esarey: And a funny story to that is I headed into school dual enrolled in high school, graduated early, cause. Start school quite early and skipped a grade and was dual enrolled in high school. And in college, one of my first two classes were sociology and psychology. That psychology class. I learned how I didn’t wanna go the route of psychology because I’m an empath and I take on other people’s emotions.
[00:05:10] And so I bailed on that, but you know what? Here I am today, as you just said. I am working in the field, if you will, of psychology or behavior 24/7, basically.
[00:05:22] Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely.
[00:05:23] Lori Esarey: So, irony is right. So that’s where I started in. I went to nursing school. I went to, uh, two years of community college and then off to University of South Florida.
[00:05:34] And, um, at University of South Florida, I got the opportunity for, um, much like yourself-interesting how our paths in some respects had similarities, but offered to do the Valor Program Scholarship in which very few people in the nation are chosen. And in the same year, both you and I were offered that in different states- didn’t even know each other.
[00:05:56] Kelly Engelmann: We had no idea. We didn’t know each other or existed. And we were both Fowler awardees. And we got to really participate in a phenomenal mentorship program with the VA medical system between the junior year and senior year of nursing school. So, yes, that was one of the things that we talked about very early in meeting each other of that commonality.
[00:06:15] Lori Esarey: Yes. And so that experience really helped me to see ICU, intensive care, cardiovascular. And I got really intrigued with that type of emergency, thinking on my feet type of medicine. And so from there, I did graduate University of South Florida with my bachelor’s degree. And me, the forever student decided to turn right back around and go to school for my advanced practice, my nurse practitioner.
[00:06:40] And I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do. I was young at the time I was, you know, basically only 21 at graduating high school right around then. I’m aging myself now, but-
[00:06:49] Kelly Engelmann: You mean graduating college or graduating-
[00:06:51] Lori Esarey: Yeah. Gradu-graduating college. Thank you for, for reminding me of that. So, yeah. So at 21 graduating college and didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but knew that I loved school, loved education.
[00:07:02] I loved being at the bedside of patients already because I had had some really great experiences, but I knew I wasn’t done. I, I knew I wasn’t done. So I returned, I applied for the master’s program there at University of South Florida. I was initially turned down because I was too young and didn’t have enough clinical experience. And so I-
[00:07:23] Kelly Engelmann: So yeah, back in the day they required two years of clinical experience before they would allow you into a master’s program for nurse practitioners. So yeah, you tried to get in, you knocked on that door a little early
[00:07:34] Lori Esarey: I did! And so found a loophole, found a loophole that if you took a couple classes and aced them, that you had the ability to apply, and at that point they would typically accept you.
[00:07:43] And so that’s what I did. I went back to school to be a family nurse practitioner, and I’ll never forget my first day of class going around the room and them asking us, what did we wanna do with our nurse practitioner license upon graduation? And I have to be honest, I just, I don’t know. I was in that room with people much older than myself. Right?
[00:08:04] And so I’m the youngest in that group. And what do you wanna do? And all I knew is that I wanted to just do more. That’s all I knew. And so I was told to do the family because that was the most broad and it wasn’t narrowed down. It wasn’t niched down and that I could do that. So I returned to school to do that.
[00:08:20] And through that time period of my nurse practitioner, I not only got pregnant, uh, with my oldest daughter, um, I also was diagnosed with, um, diabetes at the same time.
[00:08:35] Kelly Engelmann: Wow.
[00:08:36] Lori Esarey: And I was a marathon runner and that truly, that period of time in my life was truly, I believe the catalyst for where I sit now because I had already been a nurse. I had already understood how traditional medicine, um, operated and I was not feeling well. And I wasn’t getting answers. It’s “You’re stressed. You have a new baby”. Um, it’s all of those things and really what it was is it was hormone imbalances and not just sex hormones, but glucose and insulin.
[00:09:11] Kelly Engelmann: Right.
[00:09:12] Lori Esarey: So, it opened my eyes at that time to, first of all, um, people who feel bad. Who are not getting answers.
[00:09:23] Kelly Engelmann: So people who feel bad may look good.
[00:09:25] Lori Esarey: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:26] Kelly Engelmann: And as a result of that, they may be told, “Eh, it’s just life. You’re just stressed. Go chill out. You’re gonna be fine”.
[00:09:35] Lori Esarey: Yeah! It’s all of those things that have happened in your life, that’s what it is. When I knew it was something more. Yes. I was sad. No doubt, but I wasn’t depressed. And basically was being diagnosed with depression. When, in fact, in hindsight, what it was was my insulin levels were elevated and insulin just causes a person to feel like you’re carrying a 10 pound ball and chain with you everywhere you go. And I did wanna lay on the couch and I was a marathon runner and I would get up and go mind over matter. I did it.
[00:10:03] Kelly Engelmann: You pushed yourself.
[00:10:04] Lori Esarey: I did. Yeah, absolutely. But at the end of the day, didn’t feel good. And so that really drove me to look deeper, to dig into- and once I graduated with my nurse practitioner degree, I was working in family medicine and I was seeing people just like me.
[00:10:20] Kelly Engelmann: And did you feel like you had enough tools in your toolbox to adequately treat those patients?
[00:10:27] Lori Esarey: Absolutely not. Yeah. And that was a huge disparity between what I wanted to do and what I was capable of doing, you know, I was trained to write prescriptions. I was trained to definitely listen. I mean, nurses listen. So I, I feel like I had more, you know, I had one up on some of my colleagues in the medical field and I was a good listener, but I didn’t know what really was the ticket to really help people feel better and not just get better temporarily, but to truly be better.
[00:10:59] Kelly Engelmann: So what did you do? How did you approach helping yourself resolve the issues that you are struggling with with blood sugar and with mood? And with lack of energy, like, what was your go to during that time? I know running was a go to, right? That was supposed to solve all of your problems. Right?
[00:11:16] Lori Esarey: Well, as mutual runners as people, uh, you know, the two of us that really did turn to running. Right?
[00:11:22] Kelly Engelmann: Mm-hmm. We say most runners are actually running from something.
[00:11:25] Lori Esarey: Yes. We often say that, right? We are, right?
[00:11:28] Kelly Engelmann: That is a clue right there.
[00:11:30] Lori Esarey: And if someone says that’s not true? It is true. ,Yeah. So we were always running. I was always running from something so running. Yes, it was my vice. It was my go, it was my give, it was my get out and do, but the reality was that I, as the forever student, turned to a lot of reading, a lot of books and a lot of trying to figure it out.
[00:11:50] And in my reading got really, really confused, I’ll be honest. Because it was the difference between what we knew about nutrition. Real, real nutrition, which in my opinion, we didn’t know much about, I didn’t know anything about and what I’d been taught. Calories in, calories out.
[00:12:08] Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely.
[00:12:09] Lori Esarey: Right?
[00:12:09] Kelly Engelmann: I read every single Runner’s World that ever hit the shelf up until 2004, probably. Yeah. And, um, yeah, it was all about calories in and calories out and no real talk about micronutrients or nutrient depletion in that role that it has in development of metabolic disturbances, such as blood sugar control.
[00:12:30] Lori Esarey: Yeah. So as I would dig in, um, to that information, I tried everything, you know, I wasn’t necessarily obese, but I was overweight. And so from Weight Watchers to Nutrisystem, to just trying to figure it all out, like what’s gonna make me feel better because you know, what I was being told was just reduce your calories, run more. You’re gonna feel better. This is just because you’re overweight or you’re depressed or you’re- and that wasn’t the case.
[00:12:59] So, it really brought me to this huge epiphany. And I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but it was- I’m not gonna get these answers in a traditional way. I’ve gotta keep digging and I gotta try it. I, I gotta try new things. And so I just really started digging into what does quality food look like? What does nutrition look like? Like, what does that really look like and began to, to take a different approach even with me, no more calories, but really looking at the quality of my food and beginning to make that change. But it was a very, very slow process. Very slow because you just don’t know what you don’t know. You know, I had grown up in an Italian home, you know, we didn’t have one, two course meals. We had meals. We didn’t have-
[00:13:50] Kelly Engelmann: Go mama.
[00:13:51] Lori Esarey: Right? So, we didn’t have one course, two course meals. We had huge meals. We didn’t have meals that were 10 or 15 minutes, you know, in our now traditional or whatever families that were eating on the run. We sat down for meals and the entire time we were sitting, we had large meals.
[00:14:08] We always had dessert and we always had wine with, with our meals. And so I teasingly say, I didn’t just come from a big family. I came from a big family, right? And so food was an emotional thing. Food was: you eat when you’re happy, you eat when you’re sad, you eat when there’s a party, you eat when there’s, you know, a, a death in the fam- like you, you eat, that’s what you do.
[00:14:31] And so you also, there was the clean plate club, you know, I grew up, you didn’t not finish your plate. And if you didn’t, it was saved in the refrigerator for you the next day, you know? So, I had a lot of, of thoughts, ideology, call it what you want. The way that I looked at food and the way that I-
[00:14:47] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. Messages around food and what food was, what the purpose of food was, food was for entertainment. It was for emotional support for bonding, you know, wow.
[00:14:57] Lori Esarey: So, this quest really was not just about learning more about food, but it was learning. Why do I turn to those things? So long story short, I changed my life and. Currently constantly aren’t we changing, um, hit a lot of roadblocks and, um, along the way, but as I began practicing medicine and family practice, I realized over time that although I had tools in my toolbox, as you say, to write prescriptions and to help people identify, in some respect, when they had a disease state, I didn’t have tools in my toolbox to recognize when they were in a state of dysfunction, right? The early stage-
[00:15:39] Kelly Engelmann: before disease starts-
[00:15:40] Lori Esarey: Before disease, 10 to 15 years before. Yeah. And I didn’t have tools in my toolbox that really in a powerful way could help people outside of- and, and prescriptions weren’t the answer for me. So, I practiced in traditional medicine for many years, and in 2006 started my current practice, Total Nutrition and Therapeutics in The Villages, Florida. Central, Florida. You know, the, the- retirement community of, of the world, basically one of the largest retirement communities in the world.
[00:16:09] And I took a big chance and it was against all odds as they say, not to use the, uh, previous movie out there, but against all odds, but it was against a lot of odds. Um, you know, in 2006, You know, you look back to that period of time. Um, not only in my life, but just in that period of time, you know, I worked with a lot of very powerful physicians and they were using things like, um, diet medications, and fat blockers to help people lose weight.
[00:16:40] And in their mind, if they would lose weight, they would be healthy. And what I was discovering is that you can lose weight all day long. I had lost hundreds of pounds up and down, up and down, up and down- down for years. But at the end of the day, I wasn’t more healthy as a result of it. And in fact, I felt worse.
[00:16:58] And so if I was really gonna help a person, it was going to be helping them understand that it’s about body composition and not body weight. And so, I really decided to take a giant leap of faith in 2006 and start my practice. And my practice focuses on truly helping people obtain optimal health and wellbeing, taking a food first approach and meeting them where they’re at.
[00:17:21] My youngest patient has been four months old. My oldest is 90 years old. You can imagine that the way in which I relate to them and my team relates to them is very differently, but the crux and the mission is the same is ultimately we all desire to live well. We want to have a greater health span and not lifespan. We wanna live well. And whether we’re currently retired or we’re in our early years, we want to have a vibrant life. And so, I get the joy to do that now and taking what happened to me and my diagnosis and turn my mess into something beautiful and turn my passion, um, into something that really instills in people, um, how to achieve what I did. And again, I’m learning alongside of them, just as you are. But I’m super excited to have that opportunity.
[00:18:12] Kelly Engelmann: Well, awesome. Thank you for sharing.
[00:18:14] Lori Esarey: Yeah, absolutely. So, we have to talk about you cause this can’t-
[00:18:16] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah, now it’s my turn! Yeah, absolutely.
[00:18:19] So, I grew up in south Mississippi. Um, my mom and dad divorced when I was seven and I was blessed to have a beautiful grandmother that just, I adored and she adored me and we had many, many good times together. She was my anchor during the time of chaos of that. My. Dad remarried quickly. And I inherited, um, a brother and a sister through marriage as my step siblings. And then ultimately my stepmom and stepdad adopted an additional child. So there were five of us growing up in the home and, uh, it was a little crazy.
[00:18:54] Uh, I feel blessed to be alive today of all the shenanigans that actually went down in the house that here I am. And I’m tough because of it. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. So, I will stand by that.
[00:19:07] When I finished high school, I really had zero direction in what I could achieve in my life. I had no vision for what that was gonna look like. I was blessed in high school to go to work for Swenson’s Ice Cream in the mall, and it was owned by an OB-GYN and his wife. And I worked there, waited tables and I could make a hundred bucks on Saturday. Like tips were phenomenal at an ice cream place. Go figure. So, I was banking all this money, had no idea, you know, what my college future looked like financially. And so I was saving religiously. And the OB-GYN asked me to come work in his practice. And I was really, really torn. I was honored because, you know, that seemed like such a grown up job. And, uh, but I knew those tips were not gonna happen in the OB-GYN clinic.
[00:19:59] Lori Esarey: They were not.
[00:20:00] Kelly Engelmann: So, I went to work in the clinic during the week, and then I would still cover some weekends in the ice cream shop. So I could, um, still bank some cash. But, in that time at the clinic, they took me. Under their wing. Um, he took me to the OR so I got to see surgery and C-sections and one of his assistants was actually a surgical tech and she encouraged me after high school to go to a surgical tech program.
[00:20:24] They’re only 12 months long. And after 12 months I could work in the career of medicine and actually make a pretty decent salary. And so when I graduated high school, that’s what I did. I moved up to Jackson, Mississippi, and went to Hinds community college at the time or Hinds Junior College at the time, it’s now Community College. It’s all fancy now, but at the time it was Junior College. And I completed a year at Hinds and went to work for a, um, orthopedic practice in orthopedic surgery, private practice. So, I went to surgery and did total hips and total knees and was all up in the Laminar Flow room and thought I was big and bad and realized that although I was making a living, I was able to support myself financially, um, with the help of a roommate. I was not going to have a life that I really wanted, you know, I wanted more.
[00:21:11] And so I started going back to school at night, taking night classes to do my prerequisitions for nursing. And I realized after about two semesters, that that was gonna take me 29 years to finish. If I went at night and took classes, (laughter)
[00:21:25] Lori Esarey: A long time.
[00:21:25] Kelly Engelmann: So, I had to bite the bullet and go back to school full time. And, um, I did my undergraduate at the University Medical Center here in Jackson, Mississippi, and I graduated top of my class. I got the Valor program that Lori was talking about and that afforded me the opportunity to go into areas of work I had only been in the, OR, and I knew the, or really well, but I got to go into ICU. I got to go into dialysis. I got to go into recovery room and be mentored by these nurses that were truly phenomenal nurses and mentors, and kind of opened my eyes to what the future of nursing could look like for me. Um, and so when I finished nursing school, I had done a scholarship program with the state of Mississippi, where I had to work for the state of Mississippi at the, the state mental hospital for four years to pay back the scholarship that I got to help me through nursing school.
[00:22:17] And so two years into that pay back. I got a letter from University of Southern Mississippi, inviting me to take part in their nurse practitioner program. Um, they had already, already admitted me to the program upon my acceptance of the letter.
[00:22:31] Lori Esarey: That’s pretty phenomenal.
[00:22:32] Kelly Engelmann: And so I always thought I would go back and do a nurse anesthetist because it made sense I was in the OR, I could relate to the OR, it was more comfortable for me. So when I got the letter, I was like, “ah, I don’t really know. I don’t even know what a nurse practitioner is”, right? What is that? I’ve never seen one. I’ve never talked to one. Um, I’m not really sure. And in fact, when friends would ask me, “what are you gonna do when you finish school?” I’m like, “I have no idea”!
[00:22:55] Lori Esarey: So similar stories again, right?
[00:22:58] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. At the time, nurse practitioners were not the thing.
[00:23:00] Lori Esarey: No.
[00:23:00] Kelly Engelmann: And so, in fact, when I graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi, I was the first nurse practitioner in the state that was in private practice. Uh, there were a lot of nurse practitioners. I shouldn’t say a lot. There were several nurse practitioners in, um, rural health clinics, federally funded clinics and things like that. But yet at that time, there were none in true private practice. And so I was one of the first in a specialty. There were some in family practice, but I was actually in an OB-GYN practice which was my cup of tea. I absolutely adored it. I worked with a physician who was just phenomenal. He was an excellent surgeon. He had excellent bedside manner. He was a great teacher and really mentored me in those early days of not really knowing what my role should be, what I could do. He really took me by the hand.
[00:23:46] I was able to stay in the OR, so I went back and got an RNFA degree, right? Which helped me, um, be able to be a first assist in surgery and actually get reimbursed for that through insurance payers. So I went with him to all of his cases, did C-sections, um, hysterectomies, all the fun stuff. And, um, I just loved it, but I worked, I worked in that practice for eight years and although I loved it, I loved seeing those babies be born. I loved being part of the family circle. I felt like I was part of many, many families. Um, what I was seeing in my patients is that by the time they hit 50, the wheels were starting to fall off. The check engine light was coming on. Um, despite me telling them to eat less and exercise more, I was a runner. You know, I could speak the running language. I could speak calories in and calories out. The tools in my toolbox were antidepressants, birth control pills and a little Premarin and Prempro. If that didn’t fix all their ails, I really didn’t know what else to do.
[00:24:43] But I was seeing hypertension develop. I was seeing thyroid disease develop. I was seeing osteoporosis develop-
[00:24:49] Lori Esarey: -and I’m sure hair loss and wrinkles and just decline in overall energy.
[00:24:54] Kelly Engelmann: Declining, overall energy. And these were beautiful people and they were living reasonable lives to my knowledge and I just felt like “You know, something’s missing here”. What else could we be doing to help them feel and function better? And I had a, a friend who was an OB-GYN that, um, presented me with this concept of fruits and vegetables in a capsule. Now, I have to be honest. I love my brownies and I love my ice cream. I do not love my broccoli. And at this time it was calories and then calories out. So, there were times when I had ice cream for dinner, all. And I would just get up and run six miles the next morning and felt really, really, really good about it until I was in Washington, DC, minding my business, and I stepped off the curb and developed a stress fracture. A stress fracture! I’m 20 something years old and I look hot and I am a runner and I am invincible and I have a stress fracture? Are you kidding me right now?
[00:25:54] Now, the backstory is I was training for marathons and I had done four in a row. Four marathons in 16 weeks.
[00:26:01] Lori Esarey: Which is insane.
[00:26:01] Kelly Engelmann: And I was eating ice cream for dinner. Hello? That math just doesn’t add up. So, I created a major metabolic disturbance and my bones were struggling.
[00:26:10] And as a result, they broke down, but I was told it was a stress fracture and it was just stress. No one ever bothered to tell me that it was nutritionally based. So my friend, my colleague, OB-GYN introduces me to fruits and vegetables in a capsule. And I thought “Way to go, Jetson food! I can just take these capsules and eat my brownies and ice cream and life is gonna be good!”, right?
[00:26:36] Lori Esarey: Right!
[00:26:37] Kelly Engelmann: But what happened was because I’m a, I am such a nerd and I am a reader and I’m, you know, all of that. I decided to start attending some of the educational conferences around Nutri- around nutrition. And every, every quarter or twice a year, rather they would have these conferences where they would bring in all the top latest researchers on nutrition and present the hard data on nutrition.
[00:27:03] As I, as I started to learn and study, I just became convicted that “Oh, my gosh, what have I done to myself?”, You know? At this point, I’m just turning 30 and I’m starting to see some extra weight, all those drug reps bringing cookies in the afternoon to the clinic. And I, of course ,had that with my Coke in the afternoon.
[00:27:20] Lori Esarey: But don’t worry about it. You’re going home to run.
[00:27:22] Kelly Engelmann: Of course, I’m gonna run again. So it’s fine. But I had created a medal out- a metabolic storm for myself. And once I realized that that’s actually what I was doing, I had no choice, but to start changing and then my appetite for learning and understanding just became more. At the time, the internet wasn’t a thing. There wasn’t information on the internet. To go search these things. I was subject to waiting for the next conference to roll around, to dig in a little bit more or maybe going to the library or getting a book, but it was very fragmented knowledge. It wasn’t complete.
[00:27:54] Lori Esarey: And I love what you said about the appetite and the curiosity, because that really was in a time period in which that wasn’t easily accessible. You had to look, you had to look. You know, deep to really find truth in the area of nutrition.
[00:28:09] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. So life, life circumstances brought me back to Jackson, Mississippi in 2004. And I looked around, I had been recruited to work in a pain management clinic, which was not my jam, but I was, my quest was to help them develop an osteoporosis program for their patients on steroids.
[00:28:26] So, osteoporosis prevention was supposed to be my area of expertise. That never really came to fruition in that pain management setting. And I became just more aware that I was in an area where that wasn’t really feeding my soul and there was no other practice that I had a desire to join. There were lots of OB-GYN practices that I adored, but no one was talking about nutrition. No one wanted to talk about nutrition.
[00:28:50] And so I decided… gosh, to step off the cliff and to open my own practice. And my idea was is I would treat women, we would focus on hormone replacement therapy and balance and, you know, throw in a little nutrition to help them out. And in doing that, I got to be mentored by an OB-GYN and in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Eldridge Taylor, I’ll give him a little bit of a shout out and he really opened my eyes to education opportunities. You know, what was out there. He had a mentorship program at the time. He allowed us to come together and present cases via a webcast once a week. So I was able to get mentorship through that.
[00:29:31] And then ultimately I stumbled on, and this is a funny story with my daughter, but we were in, and she was at cosmetology student and we were at an expo and I was at the expo with her just talking to vendors and. He, the vendor was asking me what I did and I was describing what I did. And he said, oh, well, you must know about A4M.
[00:29:51] And I said, a four, what? And he said A4M it’s a national organization for functional medicine, and you should know about this. And so I went home and looked it up and realized this was October. They had a conference in December. And so I signed up for the conference and when I signed up for the conference, I got a call from a representative Hillary and she calls me and she says, “Um, did you know, there’s a certification exam that you can take for functional medicine?” and I had been studying functional medicine through Dr. Taylor and reading everything I could get my hands on. And I was like, “No way, there’s a certification for this? Sign me up!” So, I went in December and sat for boards for, um, the A4M certification and functional medicine, functional and regenerative medicine. I passed my boards, have no idea how in the world- now they did send me reading material. This, you know, three phone book deep set of research articles that I managed to pour through. Right? Yeah. But I managed to, to pass that, um, certification exam and I came home and they called me to tell me I’d passed. And they said, “Would you be interested in doing our fellowship?” And I said, “What is a fellowship? Like I thought that was only for doctors.”and they’re like, “No, we have a fellowship in functional medicine.” And so I was like, yes, I want to know more. I mean, my appetite is whet. I have a practice that’s growing. I really want to have the education to back what I’m doing and what I’m seeing with my practice. I was already seeing results, but I didn’t really understand why I was seeing results. I didn’t have the science behind at the time. And so I went back and got not only my fellowship, but I did a master’s in metabolic and nutritional medicine from the University of South Florida.
[00:31:34] And that is where, my friends, I met Lori!
[00:31:37] Lori Esarey: It is! And prior, I just wanna say going back a little bit, I wanna make sure. And you did a shout out to Dr. Taylor, and I’m so glad that you did that because I think the common theme up to this point for both of us was number one: seeing how traditional medicine and the tools we had in our toolbox wasn’t enough, but number two: the steps and the people that were placed in our lives at the time that we needed them to know what was next.
[00:32:06] Kelly Engelmann: Yes.
[00:32:07] Lori Esarey: You know, I think about some representatives from companies that would come into the internal medicine practice that I was working at, um, and just kind of poking at me for a micronutrient study called Spectracell. And I think about my, um, being at a hotel for a traditional medical conference in Fort Lauderdale and simultaneously in that same hotel, A4M was going on. And this was about eight years prior to me hearing about A4M and I remember going to their, um, outside where they had the books. And I took that back up to my room and I was reading through their stuff more than I was reading through mine!
[00:32:47] Kelly Engelmann: So she’s talking about the program, so each A4M conference, we have like a catalog, right? That outlines all the speakers and the vendors with a lot of descriptive information. So that’s what you picked up was the catalog.
[00:32:57] Lori Esarey: I did! And I was just very intrigued. And so it’s just in hindsight, in the rear view mirror, there are so many people and so many opportunities that afforded us that next step-
[00:33:08] Kelly Engelmann: absolutely.
[00:33:08] Lori Esarey: -That gave us that appetite and that intrigue. And I am so beyond thankful, and it’s not a coincidence, it’s not a coincidence as we’re gonna talk that we met at A4M in Orlando that year, and it’s not a coincidence how we landed there. And that’s just a really cool P-part of both of our stories. So yeah, A4M it was in Orlando at probably one of the worst time periods of my life.
[00:33:33] I had been going through something really difficult on the home front. Um, with marriages not going well. Um, marriage, sorry, marriage not going well. I was this runner. I was in a state of, um, what I now know to have been adrenal fatigue. Um, I was on a search. I was on a search. I had already had my practice and I was already helping people change their nutrition to help them live a more optimal life. But I was missing something really big.
[00:34:04] Yeah.
[00:34:05] Kelly Engelmann: So you had a weight loss practice. That’s really how your, your practice started was you focused on and I should say body composition, you know? We were calling it a weight loss practice, but you were actually measuring body composition at the time.
[00:34:16] Lori Esarey: I sure was.
[00:34:16] Kelly Engelmann: So you were measuring biometrics that most clinics were not measuring when they were dealing with weight loss.
[00:34:22] Lori Esarey: My focus was, if you can reduce or improve your body composition, then you can improve your health period. That was kind of the period at the end of the story, right? But what I was realizing, about 80% of the people I was treating were getting better and they were reaching those goals, but 20% of them weren’t. Yet they were eating, eating better, right? We say, what you eat, what you drink, how you sleep, how you move and how you think.
[00:34:50] Kelly Engelmann: Yes.
[00:34:50] Lori Esarey: And they were doing all of those things better, right?
[00:34:55] Kelly Engelmann: But they weren’t getting better.
[00:34:55] Lori Esarey: They weren’t getting better. So my curious mind took me back to that catalog I had seen years ago and I was in a conversation basically with one of my reps who said, I have a free ticket. Do you wanna go? And a free ticket to me was everything because I didn’t have the cash to pay for these conferences. It was expensive. You know, going to A4M at the time. I mean, I wanna save my ticket just for that one day was close to $500 and, you know, typically it’s all about value, right?
[00:35:26] Kelly Engelmann: Right.
[00:35:26] Lori Esarey: I didn’t know that I valued it just yet. So was it worth spending $500 to go? So when I got a free ticket to go to the national conference in Orlando that year, um, I was super excited, but. Also not only feeling great. I was curious, but I was at a point where I had looked into A4M and to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into.
[00:35:49] It’s so funny how you said, you know, you just called him up and they said, you know, there’s this certification and you-
[00:35:54] Kelly Engelmann: I was so naive. Like, I was just like, “Sign me up! Sign me up!”
[00:35:57] Lori Esarey: Crazily. Me? Personality, it’s: “Oh, no, I need all the details. I need to know what this is going to take.” And I mean, I, again, different personalities here, but we, we got to the same end point, which is beautiful.
[00:36:10] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah, I was, was taking, I don’t remember what module I was taking that time that we met. It was, I was two or three modules in to my- to my fellowship program. There’s 10 modules that you take for advanced fellowship and for the master’s program. And I was two or three modules in, I don’t recall exactly what module, but, and I was attending the general conference and she was in general session, which, so we weren’t in class together.
[00:36:32] But Pam Smith. Can I say damn that Pam Smith? (laughs)
[00:36:38] Lori Esarey: (laughs) You’re loud.
[00:36:39] Kelly Engelmann: She would keep that conference hall so cold. I think she was having some hormonal changes. And she was keeping it frigid in there. And so, I hate to be cold. Anybody that knows me, knows I hate to be cold. And so I had found respite outside in the Florida sun sitting on a bench and, um, up walks, Lori. Asked me, you know, could she sit with me on the bench-
[00:37:03] Lori Esarey: -which there’s irony in that too, because I would’ve never gone out of my comfort zone to ask someone to sit down at their table. There was plenty of standing room outside, but that day. I asked to sit down.
[00:37:15] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah, yeah. We struck up a conversation and quite honestly, and this is where God works so beautifully because she was curious about A4M she was really wanting to, um, pursue more education. And she was telling me her story at home and the chaos that was going on and the challenges that were were happening and the physical stress that she was under. And I’m a mom, like, I just wanna protect everybody. And so I looked at her and I said, you know, I just don’t think this is the right time for you. This is a lot of work. This is not just coming to class. This is a lot of work. And obviously you have a lot going on. I wish you the best, you know? We exchanged numbers. And a few weeks later…
[00:38:01] Lori Esarey: We’re in Vegas! (laughs)
[00:38:03] Kelly Engelmann: (laughs) We’re in Vegas, yes! A few weeks later. She calls me up. Or texts me, I don’t really remember when you could call or text.
[00:38:09] Lori Esarey: Yeah. And I said, remember that class, do you wanna go, you wanna go to Vegas? And, you know, as I’m, you know, just thinking, um, about what that would look like, like I had a hesitation just to sit down at the dang table with you, and then now it’s “Do you, you know, do you wanna share a room in Vegas?” Had never been in Vegas, which was very interesting as well. Didn’t realize that there was literally just glass separating the bathroom from the general area of- so lots of funny stories in there. We could probably go into that in more detail, maybe somewhere else.
[00:38:40] Kelly Engelmann: Oh, no, no, no, we have to go there now. So I get- I get there first. Thank God, I get there first. And I don’t know who she is, you know, I’m okay with rooming, but I’m pretty modest and like, you know, straight laced and all that and there is only a king size bed. And they have no other rooms, you know, I did ask and I’m thinking, okay, how do I navigate this? Because the bathroom is solid glass and there’s no separation. Like you’re gonna see everything. And there’s a king size bed. And so I called down to the, to the desk again, and I said, um, do you have a cot? I mean, help a girl out. There’s no sofa in here. There’s no sofa bed. Do you have a cot? So they, they actually brought up a pretty nice cot, you know? So she gets in at midnight, I’m in the cot.
[00:39:26] Lori Esarey: (laughs) In the corner of this room-
[00:39:28] Kelly Engelmann: -covered up to my nose with my covers when she walks in and she got there and I was like, “Listen, I hope you’re not a freak. (laughs) I’m not into that. Let’s make the best of this weekend”. Um, but it just started a really, um, fun, adventurous friendship. And it was really fun to be able to do that fellowship program together and not feel like you’re alone or an island and, um, walk through the challenges of getting our coursework completed at record speed.
[00:40:01] Lori Esarey: Yes. And the master’s degree and, and all of that in between, but just simultaneously together. But yes. And orchestrated by God, there is no doubt because, uh, not a chance meeting, but a meeting in which we had similar stories, you know, although you were in functional medicine, started your practice within, um, just around the same year as me. Although your entry point was hormones and, and women’s health, as you just shared. And mine was metabolic disturbances, hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, but our purpose was the same in that we wanted to see people’s lives changed in a positive way, using food and nutrition and seeing the valuable benefit, but both having seen that, you know, 20% of our clients were not getting better and we were missing something.
[00:40:47] And what we were missing, come to find out, was the fact that there are metabolic disturbances that wreck the system and even just eating and drinking better alone isn’t enough. That what are those disturbances and how can you dig into those a little bit more and do discovery on that? Through testing biometrics, and really get people on an individualized lifestyle plan and putting them around experts in the field, not just ourselves. Right? Cause we can’t operate as an island, but using other resources in our community and other wellness providers to come alongside of our patients as well in a team approach to help them feel their best.
[00:41:27] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. So in my functional medicine practice in Jackson, Mississippi,I was pretty isolated. I didn’t have reps for companies like lab companies, supplement companies and things like that. I didn’t have access to those people unless I physically went to conference. I would have to go to conference, make those connections. And then hope they remembered who I was. And, and perhaps what I needed, you know, I quickly realized that Lori was such a huge asset to me because she did have those connections. She was in central Florida. A lot of those reps visited her, visited her clinic in person. And she was able to say, “Hey, I have this friend in Mississippi, can you help her out as well?”
[00:42:07] And so we quickly realized that there were, there was a lot of synergy in the way that we helped each other develop our practices.
[00:42:17] Lori Esarey: Keyword.
[00:42:17] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah, keyword: synergy. I remember distinctly a conversation that Lori and I had relatively early on in our education process where she was really struggling with the concept of bringing hormones into her practice. To that point, she had not tiptoed into the hormone world. It was my bread and butter. I loved it.
[00:42:36] Lori Esarey: Sex hormones.
[00:42:37] Kelly Engelmann: Sex hormones, right. And I started describing back to her and painting her the picture that what she was doing with her patients was already balancing their hormones. She was working on drivers of inflammation. She was working on dysregulated blood sugar. She was working on key drivers of inflammation, which at the end of the day is what balances hormones. And it was like a aha moment right there. She was like, are you kidding me? Then adding hormones is like the- adding sex hormones is like the cherry on the top. It’s not the main course. It’s the cherry on the top that really helps people feel and function their best.
[00:43:13] Lori Esarey: So, in working together in community, you know, what the joy of that was is seeing things and seeing potential that we didn’t know that we already had and being willing to integrate and also leveraging our power together, uh, for our buying power too, and buying equipment and buying things like that.
[00:43:32] And so we not only had a passion to treat the people in our local communities, and many of you listening to this have been, um, our clients, which is, uh, is, is amazing. And, and we love you and you have taught us so much. Yes. I mean, you have fed into us in the way we have fed into each other. You’ve taught us so many valuable things.
[00:43:53] So, we have a continued passion to do that, but we also have a passion to take that experience and open up the world, hopefully to this knowledge, by instilling it in other providers of care who maybe they already are starting their functional medicine practices, or maybe not. They’re seeing right now that they’re overwhelmed or overworked or not satisfied in traditional medicine.
[00:44:18] And they’re looking for an opportunity to really practice what we call fun medicine, you know? Functional medicine and do it in a lucrative way.
[00:44:26] Kelly Engelmann: Well, one of the things that we recognized, I think early on in helping other practices in functional medicine was that if you take the same strategies that you had in your conventional practice and apply them to your functional practice, you will burn out.
[00:44:42] Lori Esarey: Absolutely, no doubt.
[00:44:45] Kelly Engelmann: So, in order to really have a practice that can not only sustain the provider and the provider’s team, but ultimately the community and the patients we have to help them, and we have to help each other stay accountable to the self care and the disciplines within the practice that can create that. And that’s really what Synergee’s all about is really pulling our resources together, making sure that we are staying congruent with our message, making sure that we are speaking into each other and into our community in a way that’s going to promote, you know, a level of wellness that we could not achieve on our own.
[00:45:21] Lori Esarey: So Synergee came up. I-, I remember it like it was yesterday. Um, we were eating at one of my favorite restaurants in Orlando, um, Boathouse. Um, we had gone there in the afternoon and we’re having lunch and outside as we were eating, we were drawing on a napkin actually. And we were thinking about what a logo for this idea that we had at the time, not really knowing the name Synergee, but just knowing that we both had last names that started with E and kind of what would that look like? And I remember doodling on a napkin, and I remember keeping that napkin for years. Because Synergee didn’t come alive for several years afterwards, but talks began, began at that moment and continued throughout over the, over the years and now fruition. So Synergee is a company that, uh, both Kelly and I co-founders of it have together.
[00:46:15] And it’s a unique blessing. Um, as you said, um, using years and years and years of just our experiences in care with our patients and thanking in, in a grateful kind of way, for those who mentored us. Who mentored us and giving back and hopefully turning that into mentoring others, both, you know, other patients, as well as, um, our business functional medicine, other providers of care, but just feeding into them, um, encouragement, inspiration, knowledge, education, mind share, just getting together as a group and sharing experiences and cases but it has been a very unique opportunity and I’m so thankful for it.
[00:47:02] Kelly Engelmann: Right there atcha.
[00:47:03] Lori Esarey: Yeah. So, um, that’s really our stories as we like to share them. I don’t know that we got into too many of the things that we don’t like to talk about. At one point you did provoke some tears in me, I will say because there’s, you know, an emotional component, you know, to meeting, but so thankful, so thankful for what we’ve been through, what we’ve shared and what we’re gonna get to share in the future. So hats off to you, you’re a unique friend, individual, and I’m proud to be in business with you.
[00:47:33] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. And I wanna say thank you to our listeners. You know, we wouldn’t be here without you. You’re our inspiration. We have learned, as Lori mentioned earlier, so much wisdom from the way that you have responded. And sometimes the way you haven’t responded to therapy. And we just appreciate you for, um, walking beside us and allowing us to walk beside you on your wellness journey.
[00:47:54] Lori Esarey: And we hope that you realize that your, your story is unique to you, but your story is what makes you, you. And sharing your story and living out your story, not with guilt or shame, but an appreciation of that story is just such a beautiful thing. So, we really encourage you to, um, not only thank you for your time, but encourage you to keep listening because we look forward to future opportunities in which we can share more to inspire you and encourage you to you.
[00:48:24] Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. You can find more information about Synergee at synergee4life- that’s S-Y-N-E-R-G-E-E, the number four, life.com.
[00:48:35] And then Synergee Connect is our Facebook. And then please make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app so that you make sure you get future notifications of episodes.
Enhanced Wellness Living is Mississippi’s premier Functional Medicine Wellness Clinic! We are proud to serve all of Mississippi including Ridgeland, Jackson, Madison, Rankin, Byram, Hernando, Starkville, Flowood, Bolton, Hinds, Brandon, Oxford, Canton, Olive Branch, Clinton, Vicksburg, and more! Not in Mississippi? We have patients who travel from Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, and more for these life changing procedures!
How Truth Can Transform Brokenness Into Purpose
[00:00:00] Kelly Englemann: Wellness is a practice, not just a word. Welcome to the Synergee Podcast, where myself, Kelly Engelmann and Lori Esarey shed light on powerful tools and topics that nourish your body.
[00:00:17] Lori Esarey: And most importantly, feed your soul
[00:00:24] Today, I’m so very excited to have Eva Hunter with us. Eva has been instrumental in my life. There’s no secret to that. Often times we have the question, you know, “How did I get here? What does this experience mean to me?” and Eva was instrumental for me to walk through kind of my story of my life and put perspective into that.
[00:00:45] So, I’m so excited that she agreed to come on our podcast. I know that you’re gonna be blessed by just being able to share this time with us. So, you know, sit back and get a cup of tea or something to, to really dig in and listen. So Eva, thank you so much for being here.
[00:01:01] Eva Hunter: Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. This is awesome.
[00:01:04] Lori Esarey: And I wanna thank you too, cause I have gotten to know you just through Kelly and just through some of our interactions with interviews and you have blessed my life in ways that you don’t even know. So, I wanna thank you for being here today and for just being able to share this experience with Kelly and I.
[00:01:19] Eva Hunter: Oh, thank you. I’m gonna need a tissue.
[00:01:23] Kelly Englemann: I know, right.
[00:01:23] Lori Esarey: I think everybody might need a tissue. Um, spoiler alert. Yes, I have mine.
[00:01:28] Kelly Englemann: So when I think about, you know, developing a life on purpose. And I think about, you know, things that happen in our life, that aren’t always pretty. Um, but how we can take something that wasn’t beautiful and turn it into a beautiful purpose of God, I think about you. And so I wanna hear more about that journey. You know, I wanna hear about your journey. You’re a counselor. You help people in times of brokenness, whether that’s through sexual addiction and betrayal or whether that’s just trying to understand themselves better. Right. So I want our listeners to really understand where that came from. And how did that come about?
[00:02:04] Eva Hunter: Okay. So discovery for Roane and I in our marriage happened, uh, 32 years ago and I was 28 years old at the time with two, we had two small children and I could never imagine that God would use what we went through actually for good. But looking back today, I can see it was really hi- his great design for my life and for Roane’s life too.
[00:02:34] You know, it’s been, definitely been a journey, uh, just in, in my own healing. And you’ve been instrumental in that for me, uh, as well, uh, physically healing from just all what betrayal trauma does to us. And so, that’s definitely been something that in probably in the last five to eight years, that’s really been a focus for me.
[00:02:59] We moved back to Mississippi. Uh, let me back up a minute. Wha- discovery happened? We were living in Atlanta, uh, 28 years old and gratefully, there was a lot of help in Atlanta, right? Not so sure what would’ve happened. Um, if we had been here.
[00:03:16] Kelly Englemann: So for our listeners, let’s let me just ask a question for discovery. What does that mean?
[00:03:21] Eva Hunter: Okay. So that’s a great question. You know, this is just my lingo I know, I know. Yeah. So what that meant for me, I could tell that in our marriage, Roane had been distant and really down. And I was a stay at home mom at the time and I just asked him one morning, I was like, something is, something is off.
[00:03:43] I mean, what is it? You seem really down. And he said, Eva, I have a problem with pornography. This was in, um, 1990. We were very involved in church. We did wear masks, I see that now that, um, what we presented was not really reality of what was happening in the home or behind closed doors. Um, we just had a, we, we fought hard. Uh, and we loved hard. right. We call that intensity. Yes. . Um, I grew up in intensity, a lot of chaos, and so that was very familiar to me. And so did Roane, it was very familiar to us. We loved making up. Let me tell you. (laughs)
[00:04:27] Lori Esarey: Intensely!
[00:04:28] Eva Hunter: Intensely, but uh, but really what that did to my body, right, was detrimental to me.
[00:04:36] Uh, so discovery was when I asked the question what was wrong. And he said, I have a problem with pornography. As the weeks and months went by, we got into counseling and realized there was a lot more right than just pornography.
[00:04:51] Kelly Englemann: So basically he allowed you to see something that you had no idea existed.
[00:04:58] Eva Hunter: No idea existed.
[00:04:58] Kelly Englemann: So, your reality was we are a happy family. We’re in church. We’re following God’s plan. And then all of a sudden it’s like you realize you’re in a bad dream that you had no awareness of, zero awareness. It’s almost like if our house had had a basement and I did not realize there was a basement and maybe somewhere in the den, there was a trap door. But when I discovered the trap door and I opened it, it was just a whole nother world that I had no idea about whatsoever. So discovery wasn’t just a day.
[00:05:34] Eva Hunter: No, no it wasn’t. And, and we call that a trickle effect, a trickle disclosure. It came out it bits and pieces over probably three or four months.
[00:05:45] Lori Esarey: Which is a series of questions. Probably a series of counseling. I mean, multiple things that I’m sure you would’ve had to have done during that time period to fully discover
[00:05:55] Eva Hunter: Exactly. exactly. Uh, and at that time they didn’t do, what’s called a formal, full disclosure. We do today that we think that’s the best way to get it all out. That typically a partner will find out something they know there’s been some kind of betrayal, but you know, the, the person that I’m gonna say, the addict, he, has had, uh, so he has so much denial and he’s justified and he’s minimized. So he has no, really, he’s not aware of the depth of his acting out behaviors.
[00:06:29] And he’s been able to compartmentalize it or separate from it, you know, and he’s put it in a file cabinet somewhere and does not want to talk about it.
[00:06:38] Kelly Englemann: Right. So, today, you guys walk couples through that process of writing everything down so that when discovery happens, it’s a more complete, as best it can be complete, process so that the person’s not retraumatized.
[00:06:54] Eva Hunter: That’s right.
[00:06:55] Kelly Englemann: Without having to hear more and more, every time they think they know there’s more that they don’t know.
[00:07:00] Eva Hunter: Yeah. What happened to me, Rome was ready to tell the truth. And so as the questions would come enter my mind, I would ask them. And he gave me too much information. Too. Too many details. You know, the partner needs to know what are the acting out behaviors, but the details like, uh, what hotel were you in? What did the person have on, what did you do? Those are details that are seared in the brain and there is no bleach for the brain.
[00:07:26] Kelly Englemann: Right?
[00:07:27] Lori Esarey: Gosh, you bring up a really good point right now. So what you’re saying is, despite it’s not a personality issue, I’m a detail person. So, I’m a detail. I have questions for you. And those details for me, I feel are important. You’re saying that not so much.
[00:07:48] Eva Hunter: Right. It took me years to overcome those details. I mean, I can bring them up today, but they don’t take me out, but it really harmed me. It harmed me the details did. Yeah. For a long time. I couldn’t even picture that my husband had done the things that the man, I know… it doesn’t line up.
[00:08:09] Lori Esarey: Mm-hmm. Right, right. Incongruent. Absolutely.
[00:08:11] Eva Hunter: Mm-hmm. Very incongruent.
[00:08:13] Lori Esarey: So once there was discovery. What happened next?
[00:08:17] Eva Hunter: So we got into counseling and we were in counseling for about two years and we just really did not know. Remember? We knew how we only knew how to fight, um, right? And make up. And so there was just so much intensity and so much hurt between us. I got to the point where I was like, I need space. I wanna separate. Intuitively, I knew I needed to heal. So, I went to a lawyer thinking I was going for a legal separation in the state of Georgia. There is no legal separation at that time. I don’t know if that’s the case today, but so, and the lawyer said, you know, in order to protect you financially, the best way is to be divorced.
[00:09:01] And she said, you know, you can always remarry. Well, that was, you know, people in my family don’t divorce. And as a believer, That was something that was very, a very difficult decision for me to make. However, I was suffering. I mean, I was just suffering.
[00:09:18] Kelly Englemann: I wanna talk about that a little bit more because your primary emotion during that time…
[00:09:23] Eva Hunter: …was anger.
[00:09:24] Kelly Englemann: Was anger!
[00:09:25] Lori Esarey: And I had never seen like a, you’re so meek and mild and sweet, like when you told me that I was like, “There’s no way”.
[00:09:33] Eva Hunter: And it wasn’t anger. It was really rage. It was,
[00:09:35] Lori Esarey: Yes, and I can understand that. I know I’ve gotten there myself and it’s like, well, who was that person?
[00:09:41] Eva Hunter: Yeah. And I was really raging for almost two years. Yeah, truly. I was.
[00:09:47] Lori Esarey: There’s that intensity piece again.
[00:09:48] Eva Hunter: I know, it’s just it’s bad. Exactly. Which I didn’t know how to express what’s underneath anger is hurt, fear, frustration, and injustice. Right. And I didn’t know how to express those.
[00:10:01] Lori Esarey: I, you know, our emotions are so much energy.
[00:10:05] Eva Hunter: Right.
[00:10:06] Lori Esarey: And I think we try so hard just to keep it in. Just keep it in, just stuff, it stuff. It, I don’t, I shouldn’t feel this way anymore. Right. So let me just stuff it, instead of working through the physicality of out processing those emotions yeah. And moving right in order to get that done. Yeah. So you guys followed through, you got a divorce.
[00:10:25] Eva Hunter: We did, we divorced. And at that time, my brain began to calm down some cause I did get space mm-hmm and I was a little bit in survi- I was in survival mode too. I had to go to work full time. I had full custody of our children and Ronette had visitation. I. and that was really tough, you know, it was, it was difficult.
[00:10:45] However, it gave me enough space to realize I needed to get the help I needed. He had gotten a lot of help, but I had just really suffered for a long time. And so I’m… first thing I did was get involved with, uh, a group, uh, adult children of alcoholics (ACOA) and in that I really began to see how I had been affected from my family of origin and got into counseling.
[00:11:13] And I had had trauma from growing up in an addictive family system, but also, uh, I’d had an abortion when I was, um, 18 years old, the summer in between my senior year in high school and freshman year in college. And that was something that I had never dealt with. In fact, Roane didn’t, you know, we, we were going to get married and then we didn’t.
[00:11:36] And so I had some abandonment stuff. I didn’t even realize it. And we just, he, nor I ever talked about it. So that was something I began to get healing for as well. And just the trauma of our marriage, right? And at that point, I really could see for the first time that I was just as broken. I really did not think I was honestly, I did not. I thought I had left all that behind. I am fine. It has not bothered me. I really never connected my anxiety. It showed up in my gut with IBS, just a, but that’s where I would cure my anxiety. Yeah. But I didn’t know I had anxiety, but I sure did. I can get real busy and, uh, numb it out. My anxiety. Yes. Numb it out. And it, it motivates me to get a lot of things done. Right?
[00:12:26] Lori Esarey: Right.
[00:12:26] Eva Hunter: But that’s really my anxiety.
[00:12:28] Lori Esarey: Yes. You bring up such a good point there. I just wanna pause for a. Is physical manifestations as a result of those emotions that we took and the inability for many of us to not connect the dots, to see these things.
[00:12:44] Eva Hunter: Exactly.
[00:12:44] Lori Esarey: There are blind spots.
[00:12:45] Eva Hunter: Yes, definitely.
[00:12:47] Kelly Englemann: They are blind spots, for sure. And I, and we’ll get into this a little bit later. I, I wanna get through your story, but I often hear people say, you know, I had trauma as a kid, but I’ve dealt. I mean, that was a long time ago. That doesn’t matter now.
[00:13:00] Eva Hunter: Right. And the body keeps the score.
[00:13:01] Kelly Englemann: And the body keeps the score.
[00:13:03] Lori Esarey: It sure does. So what happened? You’re back to work.
[00:13:06] Eva Hunter: Yes. I’m back to work doing my own therapy work and begin to see that. Gosh, I’m just as broken. It looks different, but I have, have my own. My own stuff, for sure. Me too, as far as my own sexual brokenness as well, because I only knew, you know, how to connect through sex. I didn’t really know what intimacy looked like.
[00:13:28] Kelly Englemann: Right.
[00:13:29] Eva Hunter: So Roane and I decide about it was about a year after divorce. We began a process of reconciliation and we were remarried. And at that point, we both made a commitment that we would stay in recovery. We would be a part of a group. We would not hide what had happened to us anymore. We would be completely known to save people. Uh, so we just had a community around us that we could be authentic and transparent with, and that made all the difference in the world.
[00:14:06] Kelly Englemann: So we heal in community.
[00:14:08] Eva Hunter: Connection is the cure.
[00:14:09] Kelly Englemann: And often times when we’re hurt or wounded or sick for that matter, we go into hiding.
[00:14:16] Eva Hunter: That’s right.
[00:14:17] Kelly Englemann: You know, isolate. We isolate we’re shameful. Yeah. And we go and we, we go into hiding. So I think people, our listeners do need to understand that true healing happens in community.
[00:14:28] Eva Hunter: That is yes, absolutely. It’s really what heals the shame too. It’s the antidote for shame. Yes. It’s connection.
[00:14:35] Lori Esarey: I was thinking shame. And you know, we go into that. If we’re sick, often times in fear too, it may not always be shame. Right. It may be a combination of emotions.
[00:14:47] Eva Hunter: I agree.
[00:14:47] Kelly Englemann: That’s what Eva helped me so much with, because I feel like in the wellness industry, we put so much pressure on ourselves to be physically perfect. Right? And when I got sick, I had a major identity crisis. Like. I’ve done everything to take care of myself. How could this be happening? And what does this mean? Does this mean that what I’m doing doesn’t work? Does this mean, you know, what, how do I even put that into a place that’s healthy? And shame was a big part of that for me. Yeah. I felt shame that I got sick. And so you really helped me walk through that process of understanding. And I think we all have areas and wounds that need to be healed in a very powerful way.
[00:15:33] Lori Esarey: And your story helped me when I faced my challenges. To understand that for me much, the shame of, you know, now I have cancer. Right? And how could that be? Like, I’ve done all of these things and you said, oh sister, like, it’s gonna be fine. Like you, it doesn’t mean we’re immune to these things. You know, it’s…
[00:15:57] Kelly Englemann: …it’s how we navigate from this point forward.
[00:15:59] Lori Esarey: Absolutely.
[00:15:59] Kelly Englemann: You know, it’s an opportunity for us to learn things that perhaps we would never have learned. It gave me an opportunity to heal things. I would’ve never healed. Yeah. Because I would’ve never taken the time to look.
[00:16:09] Lori Esarey: Sharing our stories. Hence the reason for opportunities like this. You know, to share.
[00:16:16] Kelly Englemann: So, at what point Eva did you or Roane decide that this would be a ministry for you?
[00:16:22] Eva Hunter: So was somewhere in our forties. He really was the motivator of saying, you know, uh, I’d love to go back to school and get my master’s. I really wanna write a book. I can remember one of our sister-in-laws gave Roane a really nice pen for Christmas one year, because he’d been talking about, he wanted to write a book and, uh, Gosh, I just had that memory and gave him this pen. And then 20 years later, he ends up writing a book. Right.
[00:16:51] (overlapping speech and laughter)
[00:16:54] Lori Esarey: That’s how it happens!
[00:16:55] Eva Hunter: It really was. I mean, something that he had the vision for to do, uh, one day do the… Be a therapist and help other people. And that was about 10 years into recovery. And so we were somewhere in our forties, we went back to, and I was like, well, “I will too. Okay! That sounds good to me too!” And, uh, we went back to school, working on our masters at Richmont University in Atlanta. And, um, we maybe got away about a quarter of a way, of the way through, and then he went through a major depressive episode that was treatment resistant. And, um, so we were advised why don’t, y’all make your, your life simple. Move back to Mississippi.
[00:17:44] And we thought, well, look, we’re open to that. Ro and Josh were, uh, in college at this point. And so we were ready for, we’re ready to get out of the hustle and bustle of, of Atlanta. And just our life was really crazy busy during that season. Somewhere in there, we were also ministry leaders at our church for celebrate recovery. So, we were doing a lot of mentoring, mentoring other couples and people, and had done some lay counseling, that sort of thing. We’d made this decision to come back to Mississippi. We both are still… I, I left my job. I’d been with Delta airlines for 10 years at that point, maybe a little longer than that.
[00:18:25] And he transferred corporate job with Siemens and we transferred our hours from Richmont to Mississippi College. In my mind, we were going to do this once we retired somewhere in our sixties. We graduated and got all of our hours and were licensed at the age of 50. And he was like, Eva, I think we need to do this now. And I was a realtor at this point and very, very busy.
[00:18:54] Lori Esarey: So did you join Michelle?
[00:18:56] Eva Hunter: Yeah, I did.
[00:18:56] Lori Esarey: Is that what happened when you came here? She said, okay. You can help me with my real estate business?
[00:19:00] Eva Hunter: Oh yeah. She was so supportive. She’s amazing. Oh, my goodness. And very encouraging. In fact, we would come back to Mississippi. Here in Madison, uh, every Thanksgiving and they had been talking to us every Thanksgiving. Y’all please move back here. When now we were like, we are never moving back to Mississippi, that’s not gonna happen. But then we were became, you know, it’s such a God thing. Yeah. Now that I look back on that, that, that November, once again, the conversation happened and we were like, you know, maybe we should, we’ve been thinking about how to simplify our life.
[00:19:33] And so end up here, get licensed. And by age 50, we’ve opened a private practice by age 55. We have three locations, one in Starkville, one in Southaven and the one in Madison and 15 therapists that work for us.
[00:19:49] Lori Esarey: And a few books, right?
[00:19:51] Eva Hunter: Just one book! Just one book, but a work… couple of workbooks in the process, uh, and a podcast and lots of intensives that we do.
[00:19:59] We, we have never been busier and however, it is such a life purpose. Yes. You know, and even that, and we, we have to really have good boundaries and Kelly’s helped me with that too. about having good boundaries around my work, right? Yeah. That I can only do this amount and that’s all I’m willing to do because my health is also very important, because my mother has Alzheimer’s. I want, certainly wanna prevent that.
[00:20:27] Kelly Englemann: So can we talk about your health?
[00:20:28] Eva Hunter: Sure.
[00:20:29] Kelly Englemann: So I, I know when I met you. I remember the very first day that you came in for your, your eval. And I will be honest when I got your labs back, I was so confused.
[00:20:42] Eva Hunter: Oh.
[00:20:42] Kelly Englemann: Because the person I saw sitting there was so calm and poised and beautiful and vibrant. And when I looked at those labs, I was like, how did this happen? And I didn’t know anything about your trauma story at the time.
[00:20:55] Eva Hunter: Yeah, right.
[00:20:56] Kelly Englemann: And so our follow up visit, we kind of dug into, and this is the pattern that I’m seeing. I don’t like this pattern. This pattern makes me nervous for your long term health. And I wasn’t sure how motivated you are to make changes because you guys were just starting out your practice.
[00:21:12] Eva Hunter: Yeah, right.
[00:21:12] Kelly Englemann: And you were working till eight o’clock at night.
[00:21:14] Eva Hunter: That’s true.
[00:21:15] Kelly Englemann: You were skipping lunch.
[00:21:16] Eva Hunter: That’s true.
[00:21:16] Kelly Englemann: You guys were eating out.
[00:21:18] Eva Hunter: That’s right.
[00:21:18] Kelly Englemann: And I was like, “Ugh. How in the world do I get her to see that those patterns of behavior are only going to feed the fuel for the fire that’s already burning?” Right? And luckily enough, you were very receptive.
[00:21:35] Eva Hunter: Well, I was open, but it’s been a process too. Yeah, just in my, and now it’s kind of like my my hobby (laughter) I love to read, I love to be educated about, uh, healthy things. I listen to a lot of different podcast around health too. And trauma.
[00:21:53] Kelly Englemann: So you said earlier the body keeps score.
[00:21:56] Eva Hunter: Yes.
[00:21:56] Kelly Englemann: And I think you would be the picture. Mm of the body keeps score. If we had a picture beside the definition, right at the time of entry into the process of really your physical part of healing.
[00:22:09] Eva Hunter: Right.
[00:22:09] Kelly Englemann: And, um, I think a lot of times this is a common theme that I see a lot of times people come in, maybe they want hormone balance. Maybe they’re having a few aches and pains, but nothing big mm-hmm and then we get their, their labs back and I’m like, “Oh yeah, there’s, there’s more to this story”. And the way that you were conducting your life at the time was counterproductive to your health.
[00:22:32] Eva Hunter: Right.
[00:22:33] Kelly Englemann: And so having you see that these things are so impactful, you know, if we had a pill that could alter gene expression, you know, lower your level of inflammation, balance your blood sugar, everyone in the world would wanna take that pill. And that pill is lifestyle.
[00:22:51] Eva Hunter: Yes, it is. Right. I agree with that.
[00:22:53] Lori Esarey: I just wanna interject something that you had said earlier to me about this case you had said it was the most difficult conversation as you prepared for it.
[00:23:05] Kelly Englemann: Yes.
[00:23:06] Lori Esarey: You remember telling me that.
[00:23:07] Kelly Englemann: Because I wanted to be sensitive to, you know, when you don’t have an awareness that there is a physical problem, the last thing you wanna do is scare someone to death and have them say, “I’m never going back there because she doesn’t know me”. (laughter)
[00:23:18] Lori Esarey: Yes. And I, that’s why I wanted to bring that up. Yeah. Because it is, it, it I’m sure it was not only a sensitive conversation that you wanted to go in, in a. um, in, in a very heartfelt, loving way, bringing awareness…
[00:23:36] Kelly Englemann: Right.
[00:23:36] Lori Esarey: …to the problem in such a way that you, Eva, would be willing to make changes.
[00:23:43] Eva Hunter: Right.
[00:23:44] Lori Esarey: That’s delicate. Very similar, I’m sure, to you dealing with your clientele.
[00:23:50] Eva Hunter: Exactly.
[00:23:50] Lori Esarey: So, I wanna know what she said.
[00:23:53] Eva Hunter: Well, she was so gentle. I mean, truly, and I mean, the numbers don’t lie either. Right? So, I saw the numbers. I couldn’t make sense of a lot of it. That’s been a growing awareness for me. Uh, especially, I mean, I’m much more aware today for sure. But she was not… she did not present it as if you’re on fire. (laughter) Yeah, but I was, I now know I was on fire.
[00:24:22] Lori Esarey: Yes. Yes.
[00:24:23] Kelly Englemann: And I, you know, and that, and that maybe, maybe I should have, right. Maybe I should have, I don’t know. But I, I feel like sometimes if you come at it, but you’re on fire, people will run.
[00:24:34] Eva Hunter: That’s right. It would, I wouldn’t have believed you.
[00:24:36] Kelly Englemann: And you’re, you’re like that, that would never happen to me. And it would be, it was such a disconnect from your reality. But the chances of you making behavioral changes based on fear would have been off putting, I think.
[00:24:51] Eva Hunter: Right.
[00:24:52] Lori Esarey: But something that you said had to have resonated enough to make change. And I’m saying that because many of us, and I’ll just use us as an example, me as an example. Right? Very similar to each of the stories in this room. Very busy. We have practices, right? Running crazy. And our, it shows up the body keeps score. And when we have to make change, because we now see, we have awareness. Something happens. It’s that person who says to us in a calm, loving way, but in a way in which resonates with us, that gives us the “I gotta get this done”.
[00:25:30] Eva Hunter: Right.
[00:25:30] Lori Esarey: So something for you had to have, because, you know, you had something that was near and dear to your heart. You’re passionate about it. And remember you said, you know, you are very. Okay. Intense. Yeah. So I’m sure you go at everything in your life. I did intensely. So, how do you stop doing that? Or did you?
[00:25:47] Eva Hunter: Um, I do feel like I have, I’m so much more relaxed today than I was when I first saw Kelly.
[00:25:55] Kelly Englemann: Well, I, I think the first thing you embraced though, for honest, The first thing you embraced was the food.
[00:26:00] Eva Hunter: Yes, it was.
[00:26:02] Kelly Englemann: And that’s where I started with her. I was like, we’ve got to get…
[00:26:04] Eva Hunter: I drove my family crazy.
[00:26:06] Kelly Englemann: Yes, (laughter) that’s OK. because I felt like, you know, 90% of our inflammatory driver comes from the food that we eat.
[00:26:14] Eva Hunter: That’s right.
[00:26:14] Kelly Englemann: And I felt like if I could lower that burden and that you could see some type of physical response and an improvement in your numbers, because you were very numbers aware, right? Like you wanted to see testing, you wanted to have comparative results. I felt like if we could start there then we could make progress.
[00:26:33] Eva Hunter: Right.
[00:26:34] Kelly Englemann: And that’s where we started.
[00:26:35] Eva Hunter: Yeah. Right, right.
[00:26:36] Lori Esarey: Yeah. But when you’re in the midst of a storm, I’m just going back here. Cause I need to really understand cause sometimes we are so passionate for them, but when you’re in the midst of the storm, you saw that you saw what needed to be changed yet intensely focused on this passion, right, of yours. Were there some fears associated with making the changes?
[00:26:57] Eva Hunter: Um, I wanted to feel better. I didn’t wanna feel tired. And at that time, I was seeing a lot of clients a day and sitting in the chair all day long.
[00:27:10] Lori Esarey: So you recognized…
[00:27:11] Eva Hunter: I did, mm-hmm. I did, but, but I needed somebody to say that to, to me too. I needed somebody to say, “Hey, this isn’t a, this isn’t good. You need to get up and, and walk around for a 10 or 10 minutes or so, you know, even take some free weights to the office”, you know, there’s a lot of things you can do to incorporate your day in your day.
[00:27:32] Kelly Englemann: Yeah. We had to bake some things into her day.
[00:27:35] Eva Hunter: I did, I did.
[00:27:35] Kelly Englemann: Instead of totally rehabbing the schedule which happened over time. Over time, we rehabbed your whole schedule. I mean, I can’t even get in to see her anymore. (laughter)
[00:27:44] Eva Hunter: I sure have, I’m very intentional today, whereas before I would go, “Okay, that’s fine”. Send them on. No, I just have to really have good boundaries.
[00:27:57] Lori Esarey: Right. And you didn’t see it. It sounds like as a radical change, per se, she was giving it to you in bite size pieces that you could incorporate.
[00:28:04] Eva Hunter: That’s right.
[00:28:04] Lori Esarey: And I just think that’s so important for people to hear. Often times they think, you know, it’s, I have to go from zero to 60, you know? Yeah. And the point is you’re already doing 60.
[00:28:15] Eva Hunter: Right.
[00:28:16] Lori Esarey: Right? So, where can we meet you where you’re at to begin making those small bite size changes?
[00:28:22] Kelly Englemann: I just appreciate you sharing your story. Cause I know that’s not always easy to get into the physical aspects of your story, but I think it’s such an important part for people to hear that even though you could be living your passion and you could be full of creativity and get ideas. If we do not take the time for our self care and awareness to what our body truly needs, then we’re not going to be able to stay the course.
[00:28:46] Eva Hunter: Right.
[00:28:46] Kelly Englemann: You know, burnout is so incredibly high. Yeah. And so I think. You know, a huge message for us to really hone in on, but I wanna shift gears a little bit.
[00:28:57] Eva Hunter: Okay.
[00:28:57] Kelly Englemann: Because I feel like there’s more to the story to what you and Roane actually are providing to the community. When I read your book Sex, God, and Chaos. Did I get that right?
[00:29:10] Eva Hunter: You got it right.
[00:29:11] Kelly Englemann: I was, I was really intrigued by the start of the addictive behavior for men. And I feel such an obligation now, because, you know, we treat male sexual health in our clinic and Lori does as well. And I’ve been afforded the opportunity to have many conversations with men regarding their sexual health. And I feel privileged to be able to do that in a healthy way. But I had no awareness of the, and I should have put this together, but I had no awareness of the development of self soothing using masturbation and often times pornography.
[00:29:50] Eva Hunter: Right.
[00:29:50] Kelly Englemann: And then what that can lead to when you enter into a relationship and marriage and also the, the effects of that on sexual dysfunction.
[00:29:58] Eva Hunter: Yeah.
[00:29:58] Kelly Englemann: I knew about the connection of pornography and sexual dysfunction. That, we see commonly. But having the language to talk to them about how that got started?
[00:30:08] Eva Hunter: Right.
[00:30:09] Kelly Englemann: Without it being a judgey conversation was often challenging for me and I feel like that book gave me the language and the awareness of how that can develop for men and, you know, they, they want to be better.
[00:30:25] Eva Hunter: Yeah.
[00:30:26] Kelly Englemann: And sometimes they don’t understand how to walk themselves out of needing that comfort and what that can look like in a healthy relationship and marriage. So I wanna say thank you for that part of the book. What else would you say to that, Eva?
[00:30:43] Eva Hunter: Um, around men and their sexuality?
[00:30:46] Kelly Englemann: Yes.
[00:30:46] Eva Hunter: Um, a lot of times at the root is going to be big T traumas that they haven’t dealt with and anxiety because what happens in the brain, the, the fear center of the brain, the limbic, uh, part of the brain and the pleasure center are side by side. And so with or-orgasm, the fear center shuts down for a moment and all is well with the world. And so it’s really a way to medicate, self-medicate anxiety.
[00:31:21] So, if it’s something that they really wanna get help with, because what will happen over time, and we see this with even 20 year old young men that they have conditioned themselves. To only be able to orgasm through masturbation. They can’t have an orgasm with a real woman. Um, the vagina feels different than his hand and so he’s not able to finish and they they’ve actually trained their body to do that…
[00:31:49] Kelly Englemann: That’s right.
[00:31:50] Eva Hunter: Through repetitive activity and it is the saddest thing. You know, the wife does not understand, you know? Um, maybe she’s been a virgin when they got married, she saved herself for marriage and now he’s not able to perform with her.
[00:32:04] Kelly Englemann: Absolutely.
[00:32:04] Eva Hunter: It’s really sad.
[00:32:05] Kelly Englemann: So in functional medicine, we have a saying of, you know, instead of spending so much time only pulling people out of the river that’s raging, we should go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.
[00:32:18] Eva Hunter: Oh, I love that.
[00:32:19] Kelly Englemann: And so when I read that part of the book, I felt that, you know, I felt like this is, this is really where we need to be focusing our attention is why, why did they fall in the river to begin with? And then what can we be- what can we do? What conversations can we be having with our young men?
[00:32:35] Eva Hunter: Right, right. Yeah.
[00:32:36] Kelly Englemann: And the way of helping them with their anxiety so that they don’t develop the defaults of masturbation as their solution for their anxiety. And that we teach them healthy ways of bonding.
[00:32:49] Eva Hunter: That’s so good, right? Yes. Yes.
[00:32:51] Kelly Englemann: So how do we do that? (laughter)
[00:32:53] Eva Hunter: You know, there’s a couple things that come to my mind as you’re, as you’re talking, you know, this is not just us, it’s through our training, but they it’s recommended that the couple may go through a 90 day period of abstinence. It resets the brain. And when we say abstinence, abstinence, there’s going to be no, no orgasm for 90 days. They both agree. You know that, that’s and that resets the brain so that now they can see “What is my, my sexual drive? What- what is it?”, right? Especially if someone’s conditioned themself to be sexual every single day, right?
[00:33:33] Kelly Englemann: Right.
[00:33:34] Eva Hunter: So, and then as a man ages, uh, and he wants to keep that up, but yet he doesn’t have the hormone levels to keep that up. He may turn to porn and this is an older man now, right? Yeah. Yeah. So his porn use may increase, his masturbation may increase, you know, it’s just a mess when a couple comes into the room. But the willingness to do a 90 day period of abstinence can reset the brain. Then they work on their, during that 90 days, working on their intimacy, their really connection with one another. It’s a beautiful thing to see. It is how loving they become with one another. Yeah.
[00:34:14] Lori Esarey: Yeah. So that must be what drives your further passion as we talk about, you know, that passion and creativity side of things to really continue to do what you do because of the, the changes in people’s lives.
[00:34:26] Eva Hunter: Absolutely. I mean, it is so hopeful. It’s not hopeless at all. I mean, this week alone. Uh, I, it brings tears to my eyes to see the growth in people.
[00:34:39] Kelly Englemann: So, obviously in the arena that you’re in and helping, you know, you come alongside the female, typically and often times, they’re the ones that were betrayed.
[00:34:50] Eva Hunter: That’s right.
[00:34:51] Kelly Englemann: And so, when we think about betrayal trauma, is that classified as a complex trauma or how is that classified in the brain? Like what is the…
[00:35:01] Eva Hunter: It can be, especially- like mine would’ve been complex trauma because of the abortion and addictive family system that had never been dealt with and now betrayal.
[00:35:13] Kelly Englemann: Okay. Right.
[00:35:13] Eva Hunter: So that’s complex trauma.
[00:35:14] Kelly Englemann: So it’s complex because there’s multiple layers, multiple layers of that trauma that exists.
[00:35:19] Eva Hunter: Yes. Uh, but you know, and each one needs to be treated. Right, right. And betrayal tr- a lot of times the one, I mean, everybody has something in their story that whether it’s a little T trauma or a big T trauma, so it can be com-complex, but there’s different levels, right?
[00:35:37] Kelly Englemann: So let’s talk about the tools that you use to help walk someone through recovery from a trauma, whether that’s betrayal trauma, or whether that’s just relational trauma. I know there was a tool that you used with me to help me map out my story.
[00:35:53] Eva Hunter: Yeah.
[00:35:53] Kelly Englemann: So let’s talk a little bit about that.
[00:35:55] Eva Hunter: Okay. One of the main pieces, uh, is what’s known as a trauma wall. Formally known as a trauma egg, uh, we’ve changed it to a trauma wall. We think it’s a better analogy of what happens to us, how we will become walled off either from our emotions or, uh, we’ll become walled off in relationships, htrying to self protect in unhealthy ways.
[00:36:18] Uh, and in the trauma wall, a person will identify all their ways they’ve been hurt. By betrayal, abandonment, rejection, fear, or shame from their earliest memory up to present day. And so then they become, I mean, it’s a great tool because they become so aware. They see the pattern of what has happened to them.
[00:36:41] They’re able to then identify “What are my wounds, what are my shame messages? What are my IM messages?” and once they know those, now they can speak God’s truth to who, you know, to those old messages.
[00:36:56] Kelly Englemann: Absolutely. And that’s the powerful part of that is being able to recognize the patterns, right? Because we all have default patterns of behavior and ways that we behave when we are wounded. And being able to speak and do yourself talk to tell yourself the truth, God’s truth that’s yeah about what that truly is so that you can be more objective and not be hijacked, not have your brain hijacked hijacked by that experience that sets you on the path for maybe unhealthy default patterns of handling your stress.
[00:37:26] Eva Hunter: That’s right. Um, and then another tool is EMDR. Yes. So we’ll take one of those in their trauma wall. We can take many of those, whatever they wanna talk about and go deeper in that memory.
[00:37:38] Kelly Englemann: And I think that tool, to be honest, can be really powerful in situations where it has been perhaps childhood trauma where they don’t actually remember the details of the trauma and there’s so many questions in their mind and that’s often times even what I’ll see with, with individuals that aren’t healing is they, they may not remember the trauma, so they’re denying that there was ever trauma.
[00:38:00] Eva Hunter: Yeah.
[00:38:01] Kelly Englemann: And I, I often times will suggest “Let’s do some either tapping or EMDR work. Let’s see if we can activate the body in a way that will help with the healing process”.
[00:38:11] Eva Hunter: Right. It’s bilateral stimulation. So you’re using the right side and the left side of the brain and it helps get you out of that loop of getting stuck in those thoughts.
[00:38:23] Lori Esarey: Yes. So I just wanna talk a little bit about EMDR. Cause when I was first exposed to EMDR, I’m gonna play devil’s advocate here. Like how can something, so… what seems to be hokey, let’s be honest, right?
[00:38:36] Eva Hunter: I’m with you.
[00:38:37] Lori Esarey: Um, how can that really make a difference? So, I wanna talk about like, what is EMDR? Explain it to our listeners, what the experience is like. What happens in EMDR?
[00:38:47] Eva Hunter: So in, in EMDR, um, it’s identifying like the client will come in and we’ve already established what is their safe, calm place? And we’ve tapped that in. We’ve also established their container. Um, so it’s a place where they can put things in the container when they feel like they’re overwhelmed with emotion, or they can go to their safe, calm place.
[00:39:12] So they’ve already done a trauma wall they’ve already, uh, got those tools to be able to calm themselves down. So when they come in and they’re ready to do some work around, uh, some memories, uh, go deeper in the memories, I like to use what’s called, uh, Tara tappers. Um, and they will bring up the memory and then there’s just really some guided questions helping them, um, say, okay, “What does this memory say about you?” and we’ll tap that in, then we’ll say, “Bring up another memory”. Let’s say they come up with the memory and the memory- they go into all the details and they can remember a lot more in that setting than they typically can in daily life they may, they may be able to remember what the sofa felt like when they were five years old when they felt intense fear because there was a raging parent.
[00:40:13] They may be able to remember a smell. They may maybe remember the- the color of the walls. I mean, they just are able to tap into so many details of it and it gets to the place where they’re able to kind of normalize the experience instead of having it stored in the limbic part of the brain where, and, and be overcome with fear, they can now see it in a different way.
[00:40:40] Lori Esarey: Reframing it?
[00:40:40] Eva Hunter: Reframing it. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
[00:40:42] Kelly Englemann: But it’s the eye movement, right? That allows that processing out of the limbic system to happen.
[00:40:50] Eva Hunter: That’s right. And that happens in our REM sleep too, the eye movement.
[00:40:54] Lori Esarey: If people are getting REM sleep, right? So reparative, um…
[00:40:59] Eva Hunter: I’ve got a question for you guys. How much REM sleep do you think is good?
[00:41:04] Kelly Englemann: About 20%. 20% of your sleep cycle should be REM sleep.
[00:41:08] Eva Hunter: Okay.
[00:41:09] Kelly Englemann: So when you’re looking at your data on your Oura ring, which we highly recommend that you tap into if you’re really interested in, am I getting restorative sleep? About 20% should be rim. About 20% should be deep. And your deep sleep should be early in the evening. And your REM sleep should be later in the or early morning. And so, um, looking at the pattern of how you’re sleeping, I think can be important when you’re trying to understand “Is my body healing is my body repairing? Am I getting into a parasympathetic state with sleep. So, it’s a really cool tool to be able to use. It gives us other data points to help navigate for patients when they’re really stuck. So I really love having that technology.
[00:41:52] Eva Hunter: Uhhuh. Me too. I love it.
[00:41:53] Lori Esarey: I appreciate what you did, going back in the steps, leading up to EMDR. You know, it really made me think about, um, experiences people have had in their past. Perhaps they have gone to counselors in which things were offered to them, therapeutic solutions were given to them and perhaps not in maybe the way in which they should have been done and through their hands in the air and basically said it didn’t work for me. I have consistently seen EMDR be helpful for my patients.
[00:42:27] Now, I specifically work with certain counselors that I know are taking them through, as you suggested, you know, those steps because it is so hard. It is so important. It sounds like to have that awareness of it. But have you had people that have come to you who have done a lot of work before? And they’re saying to you, like, I’m gonna give this a try, a lot of distrust may coming to you and how do you, how do you address that? How do you overcome that with them?
[00:42:56] Eva Hunter: Many times. It’s, you know, and even with the trauma wall, let’s say they’ve done a couple of trauma eggs in their past, but I like to say, you know, there’s always new things. We’re always growing. So, your trauma wall today may look completely different than it did 10 years ago. I know mine. I’ve done about six in my lifetime and each one looks different. So we’re going to begin to deal with what we’re ready to deal with.
[00:43:25] Lori Esarey: Yes.
[00:43:25] Eva Hunter: Right? We’re always in growth mode until the day we, we die. Right? We- there’s always new awarenesses.
[00:43:34] Lori Esarey: So it’s not the, always the counselor. It’s not always, it could be their readiness as well.
[00:43:39] Eva Hunter: Yes. Right.
[00:43:40] Lori Esarey: And not to give up! Like, keep, keep searching. Cause definitely you’re always work in progress all and you know, not every counselor is for every person.
[00:43:49] Eva Hunter: That’s right.
[00:43:49] Lori Esarey: We resonate with certain people and maybe we don’t resonate with another.
[00:43:52] Eva Hunter: Exactly.
[00:43:53] Lori Esarey: And that’s okay.
[00:43:54] Eva Hunter: Absolutely.
[00:43:55] Lori Esarey: So don’t, don’t be- you know, don’t have the stance that it didn’t work for me.
[00:43:58] Eva Hunter: Right, try somebody else!
[00:43:59] Lori Esarey: We just need to try a different approach.
[00:44:02] Eva Hunter: Yes or a different modality.
[00:44:04] Lori Esarey: And so let’s talk for a minute. Cause I think this is important to define too, you know, what is the purpose of counseling? Because a lot of times people feel like they’re going to the principal’s office or they did something wrong and they’re going to be judged or told that they’re wrong.
[00:44:19] Eva Hunter: Oh, right. Yes. I know.
[00:44:20] Lori Esarey: And it’s hard- it’s a hard conversation with patients because often times I have to encourage them for months and months before they actually will go and, and do some work on themselves. So what would you say the point of counseling is?
[00:44:38] Eva Hunter: I’m just gonna say it very simply. It’s truly to know yourself. It’s truly to know yourself. What gets triggered inside of you. Why do you react the way that you do or respo- instead of responding to things? Uh, I didn’t understand why I re-reacted the way I did. I didn’t get it. Uh, you know, maybe somebody comes in and says, “I just- I can’t say no”. Well, we, there’s a long history of yes. We need to look at all of that. Why?
[00:45:06] Kelly Englemann: Yes.
[00:45:07] Eva Hunter: What is that about?
[00:45:07] Kelly Englemann: I think that’s powerful because again, if you understand the point in something… I like to say my job as a clinician is also to help you understand you.
[00:45:16] Eva Hunter: Right!
[00:45:16] You know, I look- I’m looking at biometrics, right? I’m not getting into a lot of the things that you get into, but my primary goal is to help you understand you and then give you some tools and strategies to make changes. I can’t make you make those changes. I just make suggestions. You can make decisions about what you do, but I think it’s so powerful. People wanna know, people wanna know, “how did I get here?”
[00:45:39] What has happened to me?
[00:45:40] Kelly Englemann: What has happened to me? And like you say, what has happened through me that is causing this distress or dysfunction and how do I walk myself out of it?
[00:45:50] Eva Hunter: Right.
[00:45:51] Lori Esarey: So that’s your role, which, you know, to help them see in themselves. How much time should someone commit? And I’m gonna say this to say, because in our role in functional medicine, we say, “Listen, this is gonna take you X amount of time, maybe 12 to 18 months. Kind of framing out reality. Right? An expectation. I find that in counseling or when recommending counseling, they want to go to one session.
[00:46:20] Kelly Englemann: (laughter) One and done. Right?
[00:46:24] Lori Esarey: So, I wanna know what you tell them when you see them.
[00:46:28] Eva Hunter: Well, it depends- a- many times if it’s betrayal, right? It, its there’s been betrayal in a relationship. The research shows it takes a partner three to five years to really heal that. And for their- I mean that’s a long time, right? And that can be really discouraging, but I let ’em know that pretty upfront that this is going to take a while. Um, so, but many times I’ll say give it a year. And let’s see what happens after a year. Gratefully, we have a lot of resources in our area, which is a wonderful thing.
[00:47:05] There’s a, a good recovery community here. Believe it or not. And you know, in our practice we do a lot of intensives so they can get a lot of individual and couple help through intensives. You can go to a three day intensive and do a year’s worth of work of therapy. I mean, it’s amazing what happens.
[00:47:27] Lori Esarey: you know, I know sometimes when I recommend counseling, I’ll say to them, I need you to give it six sessions because I feel like if I can give them that period of time, at least frame it out for that. Because I think sometimes they’re not sure due to past experiences if they’re gonna like someone willing to do the work, and it’s almost like you have to say to them as you’re sending them, I’ve just felt, you know, I’ve had this experience with them is saying, “I need you to at least commit to six sessions before you say whether you like that person or not”.
[00:47:58] Eva Hunter: Right.
[00:47:59] Lori Esarey: Because so often times I- I get feedback. “I just, it didn’t work for me.I didn’t like them.” I didn’t… and how do you really know? Because don’t you spend the first couple of sessions really digging into that history?
[00:48:10] Eva Hunter: Exactly. The history. Yes.
[00:48:13] Lori Esarey: So ,that’s good advice for us as referring.
[00:48:17] Eva Hunter: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you, you really don’t do much therapy in the very beginning. Quite honestly, you’re really gaining a lot of history. It’s a safe place for them to really talk and it’s important for them to hear themself talk. They’ll even connect some dots as they hear themselves say what’s really happening. Right? And, you know, we all have the answers within ourselves in therapy. It’s just-
[00:48:43] Lori Esarey: And sometimes that’s the uncomfortable part of therapy is having to hear yourself say what you don’t want anyone else to hear? Just yourself, right?
[00:48:52] Eva Hunter: Yes. Yes. Oh, this is my reality. Oh, goodness. Yes. Right? But good mental health lives in reality.
[00:48:59] Kelly Englemann: Yes. And I love that. You gotta say that again.
[00:49:02] Eva Hunter: Good mental health lives in reality.
[00:49:06] Kelly Englemann: And I mean, there’s so much power in that. You know? If we could learn to tell ourselves the truth and surround ourselves with people that will also tell us the truth, life can be a beautiful thing, right?
[00:49:20] Lori Esarey: So we’ve had, you know, a lot of good time spending, you know, just today, talking with you about your story and how your story, um, you’ve used to, um, to really impact people around this community and beyond cause I hear that you do some, some Zoom work as well, right?
[00:49:38] Eva Hunter: That’s right.
[00:49:39] Lori Esarey: Um, but really using your passion to change people’s lives profoundly. I just pray every day that people find their passion and I, what I hear you saying is your passion was found in your story.
[00:49:53] Kelly Englemann: Yes.
[00:49:53] Eva Hunter: That’s right, yes.
[00:49:55] Kelly Englemann: So Eva, tell us how people can get into contact with you for counseling, number one.
[00:50:01] Eva Hunter: Okay.
[00:50:01] Kelly Englemann: And then number two, how they can view access to your book and the podcast that you and Roane have done as well on the website for the book?
[00:50:10] Eva Hunter: Okay. So our website is lifeworks.ms. Our book is on Amazon: Sex, God and Chaos. Uh, we also have a website just for the book sexgodchaos.com that has a link to Amazon and some other resources on that website as well.
[00:50:32] Kelly Englemann: Awesome. Awesome. Anything that you feel like you need to say as we close any words of wisdom or advice that you want to share with our listeners today?
[00:50:43] Eva Hunter: I love just this phrase. You know, connection is the cure.
[00:50:48] Lori Esarey: It’s powerful.
[00:50:48] Kelly Englemann: Yeah. We heal in community, for sure.
[00:50:50] Eva Hunter: We do.
[00:50:51] Lori Esarey: Well, thank you so much for sharing this time with us. I look forward to future conversations because there were several things, let’s say, that we talked about today that we can dig into a lot deeper and I’m excited for that.
[00:51:06] Kelly Englemann: Yeah. I am too.
[00:51:06] Lori Esarey: For the future of that, Me too.
[00:51:08] Eva Hunter: Yeah, me too.
[00:51:08] Kelly Englemann: And I’m proud of the book I have to say. I’m really excited. I know Roane’s been talking about that since I met him the very first time we talked about his book. So I’m so excited to see that come to fruition. And, and then once I read it, I’m like what a blessing to have.
[00:51:23] And I would encourage listeners, if you are a mom or a grandmom of boys. And really of girls too. You need to read the book from that perspective. You know, what can we be doing day to day to really empower them in a way that they develop sexual wellness from a very early age?
[00:51:42] Eva Hunter: That’s awesome.
[00:51:43] Kelly Englemann: Yeah.
[00:51:43] Eva Hunter: Yeah. Thank you.
[00:51:44] You’re welcome.
[00:51:48] Lori Esarey: Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode, you can find more information about Synergee at synergee4life- that’s S-Y-N-E-R-G-E-E, the number four, life.com
[00:51:58] Kelly Englemann: And then Synergee Connect is our Facebook. And then please make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app so that you make sure you get future notifications of episodes.
Enhanced Wellness Living is Mississippi’s premier Functional Medicine Wellness Clinic! We are proud to serve all of Mississippi including Ridgeland, Jackson, Madison, Rankin, Byram, Hernando, Starkville, Flowood, Bolton, Hinds, Brandon, Oxford, Canton, Olive Branch, Clinton, Vicksburg, and more! Not in Mississippi? We have patients who travel from Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, and more for these life changing procedures!
Healthy Ways to Control and Conquer Stress
[00:00:00] Lori Esarey: Wellness is a practice, not just a word.
[00:00:10] Kelly Engelmann: Welcome to The Synergee Podcast where myself Kelly Engelmann and Lori Esarey shed light on powerful tools and topics that nourish your body.
[00:00:17] Lori Esarey: And most importantly, feed your soul.
[00:00:25] Welcome everybody. We are so excited to be here with one of our special guests, Dr. Isaac Deas. Thank you so much for joining us today. We’re we’re so grateful to have you here.
[00:00:34] Dr. Isaac Deas: Pleasure’s all mine, pleasure’s was all mine.
[00:00:36] Lori Esarey: Awesome. Well, you are here today with Kelly Engelman and myself, Lori Esarey the co-founders of Synergee and we’re just excited to be able to dig in today into real life. Real life topics, and our topic today is stress, stress management, and healthy ways to overcome it.
[00:00:56] Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely. And I’m so excited to finally get to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you from Lori over the course of the years. And I had the advantage of listening to your interview that you did with her last year.
[00:01:06] So I feel like I already know you. I know I’m a stranger to you, but I feel like I know you through Lori, so I’m honored to be here and I. Inspired by your story. So we probably will get into some questions about your story. I think that’s important when we’re talking to our listeners, that they understand where this perspective is even coming from. Right?.
[00:01:24] Lori Esarey: Mm-hmm.
[00:01:25] Dr. Isaac Deas: I just wanna thank Laurie and, uh, and yourself for allowing me to be a part of this. I’m, I’m totally humbled, honored to be in the presence of, uh, such worthy women. So, thank you for having me.
[00:01:38] Kelly Engelmann: I understand that you have a passion for helping women, right? And I share that passion. My career started in women’s health and I, I figured that if I could help a lady, then I’m helping the whole family.
[00:01:53] Dr. Isaac Deas: Right. Exactly. Right, exactly. Right. And you know, one of the things that I, I say unapologetically is I am a mama’s boy. my mama. My mama was my best friend. She’s passed, but she was my best friend. But, you know, I think it all started when I was maybe eight or nine years old. And my mom told me two things.
[00:02:14] She said, son always treat a woman. The way you, once your man treat me. And the second thing she told me, don’t depend on a woman to do something for you that you can do for yourself. So the cooking, the cleaning, all of that good stuff? That all came from mom. So kudos to my mom.
[00:02:33] Kelly Engelmann: That is, those are words of wisdom for sure. Music to every woman’s ears right now.
[00:02:39] Lori Esarey: Great advice. Great advice.
[00:02:41] Kelly Engelmann: Great advice. Glad you shared that to our male listeners that are raising young men now. Right? They need to hear that at a young age, from their dads as well as their mom. So I love that. I absolutely love that.
[00:02:53] Lori Esarey: So, I wanna dig in a little bit to that perspective piece that you brought up, Kelly, is you know, obviously there’s a perspective. Getting a feel for where your perspective comes from in reference to how you really number one, identify stress in your clients, but in how you relate to them as well. So a little bit more about your story that kind of would lead us into that conversation.
[00:03:17] Dr. Isaac Deas: Okay, fine. Uh, let me say my story starts sort of late. I, I had a very, very good stable upbringing. Uh, two parent families, no divorce, no separations, no domestic violence, nothing like that. But when I was in my late twenties, probably going into early thirties, for whatever reason, I was working on my doctorates at, uh, Columbia in New York city.
[00:03:45] And, uh, I just wanted to try a drug to see what it was like. And the drug I chose was, was crack. Back in the day, it was called freebasing. No stressors at that time. No stressors. I was just curious and we know the old saying curiosity kills the cat.
[00:04:05] Kelly Engelmann: Mm.
[00:04:05] Dr. Isaac Deas: Uh, I was curious. And, but I am an extremist. So when I do something, I’m gonna do it until, until I can’t do it anymore. Uh, there’s no gray area with me. So when I tried it, it was just an experiment, but it just, I got carried away with it. And then slowly I got addicted and that’s when the stress came in. I wasn’t paying bills. I had two children. I wasn’t going home at night. I wasn’t doing anything.
[00:04:33] I wasn’t being a good husband. I wasn’t being a good father and it, and distress just mounted the, the reputation I accumulated through the years, I lost that, which caused stress. It caused stress because I’m a family man. We always went to my mom’s house for Christmas, all the kids, all the grandkids. We always went to my mom’s house for Christmas.
[00:04:57] It was stressful that I wouldn’t go there because I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed about how I looked. I was embarrassed that I lost everything. I was just embarrassed. That caused stress. There was financial stress. Because I owed outta my house. I owed bills. I owed credit cards and I had no way of paying ’em because eventually I lost my job.
[00:05:19] Stress. And with stress comes making unhealthy choices. And I think a lot of people, a lot of the clients I see now that are in that vein that I was in, they make unhealthy choices. Be it drugs, be it alcohol, be it sex, be it, whatever. Uh, but unhealthy choices and a lot of it’s predicated on stress. And that’s their coping mechanism is if I can feel good temporarily, not fix the problem, but just feel good temporarily then I’m okay.
[00:05:56] Problem: when you’re using a substance, however, is when the substance wears off, you start to feel again. And we don’t wanna feel, so we have to get high again, ergo, you become addicted to that drug because our mind tells us, “The only way I’m gonna feel good is if I take that drug or that alcohol or have sex or whatever it is”. And that’s when the unhealthy part comes in.
[00:06:21] Lori Esarey: You know? So we often talk about stress by definition is any demand for change. Right?
[00:06:27] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes.
[00:06:27] Lori Esarey: Any demand for change. And so I just think it’s really interesting, you know, going back to your original curiosity, not stress that drove you to the drug. Right?
[00:06:37] Kelly Engelmann: Right.
[00:06:38] Dr. Isaac Deas: Right.
[00:06:38] Lori Esarey: And then, in then being addicted, then that drove stress for you. So I think again, perspective really is stress isn’t always, if you will, the cause… the trigger. Right. It can feed into the triggers of further stress. So…
[00:06:56] Dr. Isaac Deas: Exactly.
[00:06:57] Kelly Engelmann: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I’d have to say I struggle with curiosity myself. Almost to a fault. I think that’s what makes me a good clinician, because I’m super curious and I wanna see things for myself and I want to see change happen in the patient and in myself. But I think there is a point where curiosity can be pathological, right? Where it makes us make decisions to experience things that may get us into trouble.
[00:07:22] So, I think people resonate with that curiosity with, I see people trying things that I would never think they would try out of curiosity in and of itself. And that’s often times not talked about at all.
[00:07:33] Lori Esarey: No, not at all.
[00:07:34] Kelly Engelmann: Because a shame that comes with the experience that we’ve created for the sake of curiosity often times is a very shameful experience. So I appreciate you bringing that to light as part of the discussion too.
[00:07:47] Lori Esarey: Definitely.
[00:07:47] Dr. Isaac Deas: And there was one thing that Laurie just mentioned was triggers.
[00:07:51] Lori Esarey: Yeah.
[00:07:51] Dr. Isaac Deas: And one of the things I think we all have to do was help our clients to realize “What are your triggers? What are those things in your life that caused stress?”
[00:08:02] And, you know, just veering just for a moment. The pandemic brought on a lot of family stress as I see it. Uh, a lot of my clients that came in were husbands and wives who could not stand each other. They’d been married 15 years, they’d been married 20 years, but when they had to spend time together and not go to work, stress! It was just amazing how the pandemic brought couples together, which we would think, okay, well now I can have time with my family. Now we can do some bonding time, but it did the exact opposite in a lot of families. Stress!
[00:08:44] Kelly Engelmann: So what you’re saying is the patterns of behaviors that they had established with each other, they were ignoring, right?
[00:08:52] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes.
[00:08:52] Kelly Engelmann: Prior to they didn’t have to deal with it because they were out and about, and they had very little time together.
[00:08:58] Lori Esarey: We call that comfortable distractions, right?
[00:09:00] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah.
[00:09:01] Lori Esarey: Comfortable distractions.
[00:09:02] Kelly Engelmann: Keeping yourself distracted so that you don’t have to deal with the elephant in the room. Right?
[00:09:06] Dr. Isaac Deas: Exactly right.
[00:09:07] Kelly Engelmann: And then once everyone’s in the same room for prolonged periods of time and that stress builds, those things surface. So I think I’m seeing the same thing, you know, with my clients and those discussions that we’ve had in the last two years, you know, the structure of that discussion’s changed quite a bit in that regard. Like how do we deal with that in a healthy way?
[00:09:25] Lori Esarey: Yeah.
[00:09:25] Dr. Isaac Deas: Exactly right.
[00:09:26] Lori Esarey: And speaking specifically to triggers: I love that you brought that up and went back to it, because I think that’s really important to think about is I hear a lot. “Ah, but that, that’s work!” Like really trying to identify those triggers sometimes is stressful in and of itself. That creates self reflection, uncomfortableness, vulnerability, all of those things and time to do it.
[00:09:51] Kelly Engelmann: And time to do it. And a lot of times, as people we want to just blame the other person, you know? “It’s because they did this and they did that”. And when we really have to take ownership of what is triggering us, often times in a, an exaggerated way. So a slight annoyance may send us over the edge and you really think about the situation, the situation wasn’t that bad, but the response was really over the top.
[00:10:16] Then we know we’ve been triggered. That’s what I would call a trigger. Right? And…
[00:10:21] Dr. Isaac Deas: That’s exactly right.
[00:10:22] Kelly Engelmann: … dissecting that trigger and being able to understand what created that trigger. And then what is underneath the trigger.
[00:10:28] Dr. Isaac Deas: And one of the things as a male that I’ve noticed with a lot of males. We have, what’s called that male pride. We are not going to admit when we’re wrong. We are not going to admit that a substance, life has the best of us. It’s that male pride.
[00:10:46] Lori Esarey: (laughs) Yes.
[00:10:46] Dr. Isaac Deas: And cause the stress, because the longer you stay in denial, the more stringent that problem is going to become. And, and you’re exactly right. We have to face and take ownership of, of our shortcomings.
[00:10:58] Kelly Engelmann: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:59] Lori Esarey: Yep.
[00:10:59] Dr. Isaac Deas: And, and when we don’t, again, it’s added stress.
[00:11:02] Kelly Engelmann: Right.
[00:11:03] Lori Esarey: Right. So, question for you in, how do you get a person to, like what tools or what tips do you give them to find their triggers? To explore their triggers? Is there an exercise, of sorts, that you tell them “Listen, this is how you do it”? Because some people have never done that before.
[00:11:25] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yeah. Well, one of the things I’m a very direct person and I ask people “Is what you’re doing right now working?” And if the answer is no, then what do… I put it on them first. What do you think you need to do? Now, if you don’t come up with anything? I never tell people what to do. I give suggestions. “Well, maybe we can try this, maybe we can try that”. But I ask them first, “What do you think works? What if, what you’re doing, isn’t working then what do you need to do differently?” And, um, I also have them do five likes and five dislikes. Tell me five things that you like about yourself and tell me five things that you think you need to do to make life better.
[00:12:09] And I take those dislikes and I try to turn ’em into likes. So, you know what’s wrong. You have, you have these five things that you know that you want to improve on. Let’s start working on those.
[00:12:20] Lori Esarey: That’s great advice.
[00:12:21] Dr. Isaac Deas: We know what the good things are. We know what the good things are. I don’t want, you know, I can give you the pats on the back behind the good things, but let’s address those dislikes because I want them to tell me. Because you know yourself better than I do.
[00:12:34] Kelly Engelmann: Right.
[00:12:35] Dr. Isaac Deas: You tell me what you need to change. And then let’s us come together and try to find some solution.
[00:12:41] Kelly Engelmann: So you ask them basically to look in the mirror, and tell me what you see. Tell me the five things you like about yourself and tell me the five things that you’re not so happy about that we can then develop a plan for creating some meaningful change, because these are things they’ve identified themselves.
[00:12:58] This is not what you told them was wrong, but this is what they see. That they want to change. And I think that’s so powerful because people, if you give ’em an opportunity, they know intuitively. They know what needs to change, but having them say it out loud or having them write it down? That’s something that they won’t forget, right?
[00:13:18] Dr. Isaac Deas: Exactly right. Exactly right.
[00:13:20] Lori Esarey: Do you think sometimes you almost have to… thinking about default patterns, you know, cause that’s where my head went with that is sometimes people come in in the pattern. In whatever pattern they’re stuck in when stress or something triggers them. Is there a time it’s ever appropriate to get them to work backwards from that trigger? Like you’ve landed here how many times?
[00:13:43] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes.
[00:13:43] Lori Esarey: Right?
[00:13:44] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes.
[00:13:44] Lori Esarey: What’s the common denominator here? Because sometimes… do you ever have clients that go, “I don’t know. Like I’ve landed here three, four times in my life. But I don’t know”. Like how, how do you break that down with them?
[00:13:57] Dr. Isaac Deas: Well, you know, again, I’m a big one. I’m, I’m not a Freudian per se, but I think there’s a lot of merit to what Freud has to say. And when we take things back to childhood early years, it’s a pattern. I’ve seen my grandfather do this. I’ve seen my father do this. So I’m just patterning because I had no one else to pattern myself after. Uh, so I try to go back to the beginning.
[00:14:22] Let’s, let’s go back to the Genesis. When did this happen? Why does it happen? So, I find when I go back there to childhood and then try to work forward, uh, did you like what your father was doing? Did you like seeing him like that? Okay. Well, if you’re doing the same thing, what are we gonna do differently?
[00:14:41] And if you do have children, you’re passing it on to them, just like your father passed it on to you. When does a cage stop turning? When do we get off and say let’s go a different way? So Freud has a lot of good, uh, in what he says, so I try to go back to the Genesis of where it started and why it started.
[00:15:02] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. That’s, that’s good. I often times ask clients when they come into me to think back to a time when they felt well. Yes. When they felt physically well, spiritually well, you know, what did that look like? What did that feel like? And, you know, I’m always amazed that the people that they never have felt well. Right?
[00:15:22] It’s been since childhood, to your point, things that happened, traumas that happened. But having them understand that so that they understand the road to recovery and to wellness ultimately may take time. You know, it may take time. It may take time to unpack these things in a way that we really have understanding and that we can put the pieces back together.
[00:15:43] So being patient with that process and with the time that it takes to walk through that, because I don’t know about you but I often hear. “Well, that happened a long time ago. I’ve dealt with that”.
[00:15:54] Dr. Isaac Deas: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:54] Kelly Engelmann: Or “I did therapy for that”. And then, I go and I do their labs and I measure, and so does Lori, key regulatory hormones for the stress response. And I see on paper that their body doesn’t understand that that stressor was a long time ago. Their body is still living in the stress that they went through maybe, maybe decades ago.
[00:16:15] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes. And, and if, if you noticed, I don’t know if you y’all work with, if you folks work with teens or not, but I work with a lot of teens as well. This vaping, uh, that they’re doing now as a way of coping, the Dab Pens. They’re just putting all types of things in their body that, again, temporarily makes them feel good.
[00:16:42] And a lot of these young ladies I’m working with now… and I have to learn these new terms that they come out with. They’re pansexual, they’re bisexual, they’re this, they’re that, because they’re stressed from boyfriend/girlfriend relationships. “The boys use me. They take advantage of me. Well, I’ll just go be with a girl because the girls never hurt me.” Well, what, what happens when that girl hurts you? So let’s just deal with life, but they’re changing their patterns.
[00:17:12] Girls don’t wanna be girls, boys don’t wanna be boys. And a lot of it’s predicated on stress. They’ve been hurt by the opposite sex. They’ve been hurt because mom and dad aren’t paying attention. Mom might be on her second or third relationship. So, if she’s put more in that relationship, now they’ve just separation anxiety. “I don’t feel needed. I don’t feel wanted”. That causes stress. So, of course, the first person that comes along and says, well, I love you. I’ll take care of you.” There’s your heart. Now, they’re doing something unhealthy? You’re gonna do something unhealthy because you want to belong. You wanna be accepted. And so part of what the young people, I want them to feel good about who they are.
[00:17:54] And I’m a pastor as well. And one thing I’ve always said, you cannot please, everybody. You have to be happy with who you are and then that’s that. But getting them to that point, is, it’s some it’s, it’s difficult. It’s difficult.
[00:18:10] Lori Esarey: Absolutely. You brought up a really good point. I wanna circle back to, you know, you, Kelly had mentioned, we do a lot of biometric testing and often times, their testing doesn’t reflect necessarily… it doesn’t, it’s not congruent with what they’re expressing to us. And so when, you know, Dr. Deas just mentioned chemicals, chemical exposure. You know, those chemical exposures and those body toxins do create in essence, just a compounding effect…
[00:18:39] Kelly Engelmann: …of stress.
[00:18:39] Lori Esarey: Right. Of stress.
[00:18:40] Kelly Engelmann: So, Lori mentioned stress by definition is the demand for change. But I wanna take that one step further and say that your body can’t tell the difference necessarily in how it responds to stress. So for instance, if we have a, a chemical stressor, like vaping would be a chemical stressor. We have a physical stressor, like anemia, poor blood control, maybe dysbiosis. That would be a physical stressor and then emotional stressors, right? .
[00:19:08] So the body’s gonna produce the same types of hormones to deal with all of those stressors. And we may go into default patterns because of that stress response. And so I think that’s kind of what you’re saying. They get chemically overloaded with the vaping. It doesn’t necessarily solve their problem. It may temporarily calm them down, but then there’s a rebound effect. And then they’re just continuing to add to their toxic burden. Which, by the way, does change hormone production and utilization, which causes sexual confusion.
[00:19:40] Lori Esarey: Yes.
[00:19:40] Kelly Engelmann: It adds to that whole component of sexual confusion.
[00:19:43] Lori Esarey: Mm-hmm, right.
[00:19:44] Kelly Engelmann: Um, because their hormones don’t work the way that their hormones should be working. And as a result of that, they may have feelings that they can’t really understand. And then they act out of those feelings.
[00:19:57] Lori Esarey: Or they have a reduction in, I mean, you think about teenage boys. Yeah. And testosterone levels are typically quite high.
[00:20:03] Kelly Engelmann: Right.
[00:20:03] Lori Esarey: It suppresses a lot of those natural physiological hormone production, right. And utilization in the body.
[00:20:09] Kelly Engelmann: Well, it makes them estrogen dominant.
[00:20:11] Lori Esarey: Right!
[00:20:12] Kelly Engelmann: Right? So they may feel more feminine.
[00:20:14] Dr. Isaac Deas: I never knew that. So you’re teaching me something. Yeah, never. I never knew that.
[00:20:19] Lori Esarey: Well, this is the beauty of conversation, right? Because it’s know, it really helps people to be insightful to their, the way in which they’re expressing or, uh, defaulting or behaving as a result of their stress isn’t just because of these default patterns, if you will. But it’s neurochemical changes and hormonal changes that happen as a result too.
[00:20:38] Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely. So, I wanna give a tip while we’re talking about vaping and just smoking in general. You know, I’ve talked to many, many patients that have been successful in stopping to smoke, and I always asked them, “What was your strategy?”
[00:20:52] Because I think it’s important as clinicians that we can tap into what really has worked for patients real live, you know, point in time work. And every single one of them mentions deep breathing as a strategy. And you know, when you’re vaping and smoking, you’re deep breathing. And that desire for deep breathing is a stress reliever. And they’ve associated that stress relief with the vaping or with the smoking. And it may perhaps just be the breathing itself that’s helping them calm down?
[00:21:23] Lori Esarey: Yeah.
[00:21:23] Kelly Engelmann: So the tip is to develop some deep breathing techniques to offset the stress response. When we deep breath, we stimulate vagal tone. We stimulate a nerve that controls our brain and controls our gut and is very calming and, you know, that can be helpful for anyone going under, you know, going under stress is deep breathing, but especially for the ones that have developed habits of, uh, smoking or vaping, I think that’s a really good tool to encourage them to go ahead and start doing, even before they consider quitting.
[00:21:54] Lori Esarey: So maybe the relief that they’re getting through the vaping isn’t necessarily the vaping is what you’re saying. It could just be the physiological, deep breathing exercises that we typically recommend for any anxiety producing event. Right. Yeah.
[00:22:10] Dr. Isaac Deas: That’s pretty interesting. And, and, and what I find also is before they can get to this point of deep breathing and self-reflection, the… the smoking or, and/or drugs.
[00:22:22] Now the school grades are going down. That’s gonna become stressful. Now their parents are gonna be yelling because the grades are going down. That’s going to be stressful. So some of the side effects of stressing, it’s not just on the health, but it’s affecting grades. It’s affecting, uh, your, your relationship with your parents. And sometimes it even affects your peer group because you wanna be around people who are doing what you’re doing.
[00:22:49] Lori Esarey: So it’s that perfect storm. It sounds like. Right? So it’s a perfect storm.
[00:22:52] Dr. Isaac Deas: Exactly right.
[00:22:53] Lori Esarey: Yeah. So how do you break the cycle? So let’s talk about some strategies that you recommend for people to impart, to do, to start taking advantage of like, what are some things that you would say, what are some next steps?
[00:23:09] Dr. Isaac Deas: Well a-again, one of the things is the five likes and five dislikes, which we’ve already discussed. That’s, that’s one of them. And two, I try to bring in, if it’s a couple, if it’s a couple, one is stressful and one is not, I try to bring in the other couple. And if you love this person telling you what you’re doing is stressing me out, how much do you really love this person? So, sometimes when someone you love who’s gonna be in your corner no matter what, but, but they’re telling you that your behavior is affecting them, can you look inside yourself and say, you know, I really would want to make you happy. Not so much make you happy, but make… if I do the right thing, it will make you happy.
[00:23:52] So, I’m big on confrontation. So, how is your family related to this? How are you hurting your family? I want them to look inside themselves and say, you know, my behavior is not only affecting me. But it’s affecting those around me. I don’t wanna put ’em on a guilt trip, but I’m a realistic person. I’m a bottom line person, your behavior.
[00:24:14] So, another tactic is listen to the people that you’re hurting and, and, and what are you willing to do about that? Do you need to go into a rehab program? Do you need to come in for counseling more than once a week? You know, what do you need to do? So, really I try to turn their life inside out and have them look at it and then point out to me what you need to change and then allow me to try to help you to change it.
[00:24:41] So, a lot of self-reflection, a lot of looking in the mirror as your co-host said looking in the mirror at yourself. And saying, I either like this person, or I don’t. If I don’t, what am I gonna do to change this?
[00:24:53] Lori Esarey: So you’re saying identification and awareness is first step in anything, right?
[00:24:58] Dr. Isaac Deas: Exactly. Admittance. Admit that there’s a problem.
[00:25:02] Lori Esarey: So identify, admit, and then take action and being willing to… and I’m sure it’s an assessment of what a person’s willing to do. Very similar to our experience. Yeah. With people wanting or needing to change their lifestyle to more of an optimal way of living. If a person’s not ready to do that, they’re not ready to do the work. They’re not ready. No one can do it for them.
[00:25:23] Kelly Engelmann: Right.
[00:25:23] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yeah. And so, sometimes people just have to crash and I don’t mean that in a negative way, but sometimes they have to hit bottom. Lose some of your loved ones before you start to think “Okay. Yes. Maybe I really do need to or serious about what I’m doing.
[00:25:39] Lori Esarey: So, I wanna circle back to your story if that’s okay. Because you broke a pattern, you broke a cycle. And, I, I just think it’s so important to, I, I would like to hear a little bit more about that, cause you opened up with what you started to do and what you started to lose, but we haven’t talked yet about how you recovered from that. And now where you’re at as a result of that.
[00:26:01] Dr. Isaac Deas: Well, as I say, I’m a New Yorker and one of the things I had to do is come away from that environment. I knew New York well. I knew New York well, I knew where to go. I knew where to go and do things. And what helped me were two things. Two things.
[00:26:19] My family believed in tough love. They said, son, we loved you. And when I lost my house, I was gonna go back and live with them. They said, son, I love you, but that’s not gonna happen. You’re not coming back here. And I bottomed out and my bottom was living on the streets. I never in my life thought I would live on this street. I never in my life thought I would be an addict.
[00:26:44] Lori Esarey: And you had multiple, you had multiple degrees let’s… I just wanna say that again, right? So yes, not uneducated.
[00:26:50] Dr. Isaac Deas: I have a bachelor’s, I have three masters, I have a doctorate, I have a law degree and I went, I went to seminary. But I was halfway through my doctorate at the time. But coming out of that environment… well, actually I have to hit bottom first.
[00:27:05] If I never hit bottom, I never would’ve made the change. If people would have enabled me, if my mother and father would’ve took me back home and said, oh, we love you son, come on back home. I’d probably still be doing it. But, uh, their tough love. I had to hit bottom. And then secondly, I had to get out of that environment to a safe environment and I went, inpatient down here to Wildwood, Wildwood, Florida.
[00:27:30] I went inpatient counseling and that’s what brought me to Florida. And I was in there 22 months.
[00:27:38] Lori Esarey: Wow.
[00:27:38] Dr. Isaac Deas: It was an 18 month program, but I stayed in another four months as staff. Uh, so I just had to get me. I had to get me back. I lost me. I know who me was: the addict. I knew who me was: the, the street hustler. I knew who that person was, but I forgot who Isaac was. And so when I was in Wildwood and rehab, I learned to find Isaac again. And I said, he’s not a bad guy. He’s not a bad,
[00:28:06] Lori Esarey: We think you’re an amazing guy, but yes.
[00:28:09] Dr. Isaac Deas: Well, I praise the Lord that to God do the glory, but the thing that worked for me, and I know everyone’s not there, I had to give my life back to the Lord and that’s what really worked for me. And I know everyone’s not into the religious, spiritual part of it, but that worked for me. And I just said, “God, whatever, it’s gonna take. Whatever it’s gonna take, then I’m willing to do it”. It was hitting bottom. It was hitting bottom. I think that, and coming out of that environment into a stress free environment because New York is stressful. (laughs)
[00:28:47] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah.
[00:28:47] Dr. Isaac Deas: Wildwood back in 1988 was stress-less. There was nothing there.
[00:28:47] Lori Esarey: Yeah.
[00:28:47] Kelly Engelmann: Right. I think that’s a beautiful thing. What you said and, you know, coming back to your identity and your identity in Christ, right?
[00:28:56] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes.
[00:28:56] Kelly Engelmann: You know, if we can see ourselves in that mirror, what do we see? Right? It’s very different than what you saw on the street.
[00:29:03] Right. And being able to bring yourself back to the truth, really that’s the truth, um, is a beautiful thing. Um, I just, that’s amazing. I love it.
[00:29:13] Lori Esarey: And then embracing your story in such a way that has powerfully impacted the lives of others for years to come. So, this story wouldn’t be complete without hearing what you’re able to accomplish now and what you’re doing in your career.
[00:29:29] Dr. Isaac Deas: Now, well, God is good right now. I have my own counseling practice and it’s going very, very well. , I have a church here in Summerfield. We have probably about 120 members, uh, very integrated multicultural church, non-denominational, absolutely love it. I do a lot of workshops, a lot of team building exercises.
[00:29:51] Uh, I have a youth group, a women’s group, you know, my women’s conferences. So, just enjoying life now, God has… to God be the glory he has given me back everything I lost except for a wife. And I’m, I’m okay with being a bachelor. I don’t know if I wanna do this marriage thing again, (laughs) but now it’s just enjoying life. And my burden now is our, our next generation. Because when I see children going down where I’ve been. Good children come from good homes, but they’re taking the path that I took. That breaks my heart because I’ve been there. I know where you’re headed and that’s what makes me get up.
[00:30:36] I’ve been retired for the last four years, but evidently I don’t know what retirement is cause I’m still working, but I wanna see that next generation get healthy. And I wanna see women get healthy because I think, I think women forgot that they’re a gift. Women forgot that they’re gifts. They forgot that they’re Queens, they’ve allowed themselves to be treated unkindly, unhealthily, and they just accept it and no, no, no, no. That’s not gonna happen on my, not on my shift. (laughs) So, that’s my fight for the women.
[00:31:13] Kelly Engelmann: So women are so powerful in the home. You know, we often times set the tone for what we will and will not allow in the home.
[00:31:22] Dr. Isaac Deas: Mm-hmm.
[00:31:23] Kelly Engelmann: And often times to your point, women have been treated in a way that they don’t always walk in that power.
[00:31:29] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes.
[00:31:29] Kelly Engelmann: And so I wanna speak to that a little bit today to our listeners, because we do have. You know, we do have a lot of responsibility in our home as the… the wife and the mom and the caretaker, often times to set that tone for peace and love and understanding and having things discussed in a healthy way, you know, we need to open up the conversation about stress.
[00:31:55] In the home and what it looks like and how you see those default patterns. I wanna go into some of those default patterns that we see and that do get established, you know, relatively early in life, through modeling what we see our parents do. And, um, and then ultimately what we see our peers do. You know, we’re gonna become the five people that we spend the most time with.
[00:32:18] So choose wisely. Right? I always wanna be around people that are smarter than me and, you know, have things a little bit more advanced than I do. I don’t wanna be the smartest person in the room for sure. Um, I need those people around me. So, let’s talk a little bit about how to model. You know, for our women, how women can model healthy behaviors and healthy defaults, um, and how we can speak about it to our family and our friends.
[00:32:47] Lori Esarey: Yeah. I think that whole modeling, as you were talking about that I think about where that comes from, as you said, and it’s such a product of what we’ve seen in our past and you know, Dr. Deas you, you mentioned that already. Um, oftentimes we are just. copying and mirroring that, which we. Seen right. And our responses and breaking that, you know, to your point of, of women feeling and, and being the Queens, right?
[00:33:17] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes.
[00:33:18] Lori Esarey: I can tell you in my home, I mean, my mom was amazingly treated by my father. Um, there’s no doubt and that was modeled for me, but I still feel like sometimes there’s a guilt or a shame and, and maybe I’m wrong in that. I just feel like that sometimes we feel guilty for expecting or feel guilty for the time we take in self care or feel guilty for. And I, I don’t, you know, I don’t understand exactly where that comes from, but I know that that leads to a, um, decom, a, a decomposing or a, a decrease in our ability to respond in a favorable way. Right?
[00:33:53] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. I see that too. I see that often times in myself and I see that in the clients that I treat as well, where they do feel like self care is a luxury.
[00:34:02] Mm. And I think we need to talk about that because self care is like putting your oxygen mask on first, before you’re helping other people. And if you’re constantly running on empty, what’s gonna come out often times is not pretty. And it’s not your best response. It’s not what you need to be modeling to your family or especially to your children, right?
[00:34:22] Lori Esarey: And if we perceive it that way, then in fact we’re not gonna make it. Uh, it’s not gonna be a priority for us. Right?
[00:34:29] Kelly Engelmann: Right. Yeah. So what does self-care look like?
[00:34:32] Lori Esarey: Yeah. So what does self care look like?
[00:34:34] Kelly Engelmann: Because I think this is really important to map out when we’re helping people make change, you know, what does it need to look like? You know, where does it cross the line into overindulgence versus really healthy self-care?
[00:34:48] Dr. Isaac Deas: From a male point of view, uh, My family is much like yours, Lori. My, my dad absolutely adored my mother and that’s what I knew. And that was passed on to my sister, my sister, spoiled to this day. She won’t admit it, but she is, she has three brothers and dad.
[00:35:06] So, but, uh, I’ve always told women, you can give what you don’t have. You cannot give your daughter self respect and, and, and, and feeling like a gift. If you don’t feel like it, if you don’t have it, you can’t pass that on. Uh, but men, I think, have to see women, well a woman as their equal partner and treat her as that.
[00:35:32] So if she needs to go and get a massage or hair done, or just sit in her sun by the beach, let her do that because then she’s gonna be better for you. Mm-hmm . But if you keep her bound up and tied up and stressed out my, then you wonder why she’s snapping at you. Wake up, man, wake up! (laughter) But I’ve always told men that, you know, we always say we’re the head of the house. Well, we may be the head, but the wife is the neck. And the head is not going anywhere without the neck. Take care of your neck, fellas. And your head will do what it has to do, but take care of the neck.
[00:36:11] I used to date my daughter. I used to take her out on dates, open the door and this and that. And I told her, and my ex-wife used to date my son. So we taught them the finance, the finer, finer parts of life. And I told her this man, when you start dating, if this man is not treating you, like I’m treating you right now. You had the wrong guy, right?
[00:36:33] Lori Esarey: So, you mirrored that, I mean, that’s a really, really good piece of advice, is you mirrored what that date was to look like? Probably from start to finish. Exactly. Right, exactly. Opening up doors, getting her in there, driving her, right. Letting her pick, maybe her restaurant. We could go through all of the details, but I think that was a really good piece of advice, right?
[00:36:54] Kelly Engelmann: Right. Absolutely. Modeling that, what that, what a healthy relationship does look like, what boundaries look like
[00:37:00] Dr. Isaac Deas: Exactly right. Exactly.
[00:37:01] Lori Esarey: You know, something else I heard you say is that, you know, just as you, you know, I grew up in a home in which it was, it was modeled, but at some point life threw a curve ball. Life, a stressor victimization, something occurred. That created a change. So regardless of what I had seen, I shifted. Right. So I think it’s important to understand it’s not always a product of how you were raised. It can be a product of what you have been exposed to.
[00:37:33] Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely, absolutely. A trauma.
[00:37:35] Dr. Isaac Deas: When we look at some of these television programs and movies that are coming out now, they’re so misleading for women and for men and, and, and some of the music that are young people listen to it’s so unbecoming, how you would allow a man to call you these words and you’re dancing to this. It’s like, hello, something’s wrong with this picture.
[00:38:02] Lori Esarey: Yes!
[00:38:02] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yeah, you’re right. It’s what we expose our media, our media, our televisions. It’s it’s just, it’s going crazy.
[00:38:08] Lori Esarey: A degradation of normalcy, you know?
[00:38:11] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes. Very good word. Very good word.
[00:38:14] Kelly Engelmann: I would clearly say that. So the things that we grew up seeing and hearing are very different than the youth today and I do think we need to be sensitive to that. Especially as parents and grandparents, as we help them walk it out and help them stay anchored in who they are. Right?
[00:38:31] Dr. Isaac Deas: Corrrect. Correct.
[00:38:32] Kelly Engelmann: I think that’s super powerful.
[00:38:34] Lori Esarey: Yeah.
[00:38:34] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah.
[00:38:34] Lori Esarey: So we talked today about stress and the definition of stress and default patterns where it comes from exposure history. We talked about that and we talked a bit about some advice in respect to how to not only identify, but how to make some changes.
[00:38:53] Um, and it’s been great. It’s been awesome. So, are there any like closing words of advice that you would share to our listeners about how to roll with, expect it, and cause stress isn’t expected. Right? The only, I, we say the only consistent thing in life has change and I think change is probably one of our right biggest stressors.
[00:39:19] Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely. So don’t be surprised is right.
[00:39:21] Lori Esarey: Exactly. Not to be surprised. But what kind of key advice would you give to our listeners to really deal with and, and manage stress in today’s economy, in today’s in this time period that we’re in right now.
[00:39:35] Dr. Isaac Deas: Well, if I may, I would probably say very quickly, um, don’t take on more than you need to take on. Learn to say no, don’t put a lot on your plate. Rome wasn’t built in the day, just take on as much as you can do. And secondly, take time for yourself. That’s primary. Take time for yourself. Know when to take a break? No. When to go on a vacation, know when to say “No, not now”. Take care of you. And thirdly, don’t live up to other people’s expectations. Do what you need to do, what’s make you because no one’s walking in your shoes. You know what makes you feel good? You know when you run outta energy. No one needs to tell you. Follow your own heart.
[00:40:20] Lori Esarey: Mmm, that first piece of advice, I feel like you are looking or, or speaking straight to me through that microphone there. Dr. Deas cause you know, that’s not easy to do.
[00:40:30] Kelly Engelmann: Overscheduling I have been guilty of that for so long. And I tried to solve that problem by getting a calendar. So if I put everything on there, maybe I would make better decisions and it worked for a while or in April and Mar… january, February, March looked pretty reasonable and April just, Ugh, it blew up on me. So I’ve gotta get back to those words of wisdom, Dr. Deas that you just gave us and say, “Do not overcommit”. Pace yourself. I’m hearing you loud and clear and I plan to implement that right away.
[00:41:01] Lori Esarey: And I think I heard you also say, is setting your eyes on who you are, who, where your aim is, right? You know, again, the world’s expectations I think looking around sometimes is we feel like we’ve gotta keep up with the Joneses if you will. You know, and even if we would say “No, no, no, that is not me. Like, I don’t care what so, and so does”. The bottom line is if we’re constantly looking at social media and Facebook and Instagram at what everyone else is doing inherently, there becomes this natural chasing for those things subconsciously.
[00:41:37] Kelly Engelmann: Mm-hmm.
[00:41:38] Lori Esarey: So I heard that loud and clear through the advice that you just gave as well, to be careful, to know your aim and to not allow for those things to change or distract you from who you are and what you are trying to accomplish in your life.
[00:41:54] Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Dr. Deez, it has been a pleasure to meet you and get to know you a little bit better. I cannot wait for our viewers to be able to listen to your wisdom today. So thank you so much for being here.
[00:42:08] Dr. Isaac Deas: And if I may very quickly, uh, Lori, several of the women from my church were at my conference. And they’re waiting for you to come to my church.
[00:42:17] Lori Esarey: I can’t wait! Yes. So we are gonna get right on that because we really enjoy one of the things that, you know, Kelly and I have long had a passion for is to help people reach, you know, reach things in their life that they never thought were possible for themselves.
[00:42:33] So getting this message out to an audience to really have, have an impact on their lives in a, in a positive way. So I just wanna say thank you to you as well. I just, you know, too often, we don’t have time to connect like this and get the message out. So, we just really appreciate you taking the time to do that as well.
[00:42:51] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. And I’m sitting here thinking what it would be really helpful for our listeners to understand how they possibly could read more about you or get in touch with you? Perhaps they’re needing some counseling and really wanna reach out. What is the best way? Do you have a website address that you could share with us? Or do you have a number that you wanna share with our viewers?
[00:43:11] Dr. Isaac Deas: I have both, uh, 352-406-1264. Again, 3 5 2 4 0 6 1 2 6 4. My website is Deas- D E A S consulting.com. deas.consulting.com. Either way, phone call is best.
[00:43:33] Kelly Engelmann: Awesome, thank you.
[00:43:34] Lori Esarey: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And haven’t you, do you have some, um, things that you’ve published as well? Some or some recommendations?
[00:43:41] Dr. Isaac Deas: Yes. I have a coup… I have two books out. If you just go on my website and the books will be, the books will be there.
[00:43:47] Lori Esarey: Excellent! Thank you. See, I knew that. Awesome. Well, it was so great to connect with you today. Thank you so much. And we look forward to talking to you again in the near future.
[00:43:57] Dr. Isaac Deas: Alrighty. Thank you!
[00:43:57] Lori Esarey: We’ll see you.
[00:43:58] Dr. Isaac Deas: Bye- bye.
[00:44:01] Lori Esarey: Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. You can find more information about Synergee at synergee4life.com, that’s S Y N E R G E E, the number four, life.com.
[00:44:12] Kelly Engelmann: And then Synergee connect is our Facebook. And then please make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app so that you make sure you get future notifications of episodes.
Enhanced Wellness Living is Mississippi’s premier Functional Medicine Wellness Clinic! We are proud to serve all of Mississippi including Ridgeland, Jackson, Madison, Rankin, Byram, Hernando, Starkville, Flowood, Bolton, Hinds, Brandon, Oxford, Canton, Olive Branch, Clinton, Vicksburg, and more! Not in Mississippi? We have patients who travel from Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, and more for these life changing procedures!
Understanding Estrogen Dominance and the Role of Detoxification in Hormone Balance
Women’s Regenerative Health Treatments
Enhanced Wellness Living, Ridgeland, Mississippi, Functional Medicine Clinic
Kelly Engelmann, Founder, Family Nurse Practitioner, Lead Functional Medicine Nurse Practitioner
Enhanced Wellness Living is Mississippi’s premier Functional Medicine Wellness Clinic! We are proud to serve all of Mississippi including Ridgeland, Jackson, Madison, Rankin, Byram, Hernando, Starkville, Flowood, Bolton, Hinds, Brandon, Oxford, Canton, Olive Branch, Clinton, Vicksburg, Gulfport, Cleveland. Hattiesburg, and more! Not in Mississippi? We have patients who travel from Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, and more for these life-changing procedures!
Women’s Health – Top 7 Foods for Enhancing Reproductive Health
Top 7 Foods for Enhancing Women’s Reproductive Health
Women’s Regenerative Health Treatments
Enhanced Wellness Living, Ridgeland, Mississippi, Functional Medicine Clinic
Kelly Engelmann, Founder, Family Nurse Practitioner, Lead Functional Medicine Nurse Practitioner
Enhanced Wellness Living is Mississippi’s premier Functional Medicine Wellness Clinic! We are proud to serve all of Mississippi including Ridgeland, Jackson, Madison, Rankin, Byram, Hernando, Starkville, Flowood, Bolton, Hinds, Brandon, Oxford, Canton, Olive Branch, Clinton, Vicksburg, Gulfport, Cleveland. Hattiesburg, and more! Not in Mississippi? We have patients who travel from Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, and more for these life-changing procedures!
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