A first on the show: a board-certified OB-GYN and nutrition specialist who practices integrative medicine. To ensure the health of women and mothers, Jamie Seeman treats lifestyle as first-line therapy. She optimizes the controllable factors like diet, exercise, and sleep, before prescribing any medicine to the patient. She was motivated to modify her outlook and lifestyle after being diagnosed with pre-diabetes and taking thyroid medication during her pregnancies.
With a large following on social media, her message on lifestyle change, women's health, and the hard-to-kill mentality and her experience as a practicing clinician on the ground drive people from all over the country to come to her for treatment.
In her book, Hard to Kill, she describes the five pillars that helped her make this lifestyle transformation. In this episode, she shares her experiences and her hard-to-kill mindset regarding diet and carbohydrate restriction, physical activity and resistance training, sound sleep habits, meditation and recovery, and the quality of one's surroundings.
Quick Guide:
1:05 Introduction
05:21 What are functional and integrative medicine?
09:25 The connection of obstetricians and gynecology to diet
18:16 The right amount of protein for the body
27:21 The pillars of Hard to Kill mentality
38:59 How ketones and magnesium help in cyclic migraines
43:19 Ketogenic diet for menopausal women
45:23 Kickstarting metabolism at 40
47:10 Dealing with hair thinning and hair loss
50:01 Her day-to-day practice as an OB-GYN
52:05 Contacts and closing
Get to know our guest:
Prior to studying medicine, Dr. Jaime Seeman earned a degree on nutrition and exercise science. As a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist, she has a strong interest in preventative healthcare.
"I want to live the biggest, fullest, most amazing life I can. And I don't want to spend the last 10 years of my life in and out of doctors' offices and hospitals and taking a bunch of drugs. And so, it's really having this mentality of what are the things that are gonna kill me? And how can I prevent those things? And you know what, when it's my time, I've lived an amazing life." - Jaime Seeman
Connect with her:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doctorfitandfabulous/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doctorfitandfab/
Webs
Chances are, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't need to change your life and get healthier.
So take action right now. Book a call with Dr. Ovadia's team.
One small step in the right direction is all it takes to get started.
How to connect with Stay Off My Operating Table:
Twitter:
Learn more:
Theme Song : Rage Against
Written & Performed by Logan Gritton & Colin Gailey
(c) 2016 Mercury Retro Recordings
A first on the show: a board-certified OB-GYN and nutrition specialist who practices integrative medicine. To ensure the health of women and mothers, Jamie Seeman treats lifestyle as first-line therapy. She optimizes the controllable factors like diet, exercise, and sleep, before prescribing any medicine to the patient. She was motivated to modify her outlook and lifestyle after being diagnosed with pre-diabetes and taking thyroid medication during her pregnancies.
With a large following on social media, her message on lifestyle change, women's health, and the hard-to-kill mentality and her experience as a practicing clinician on the ground drive people from all over the country to come to her for treatment.
In her book, Hard to Kill, she describes the five pillars that helped her make this lifestyle transformation. In this episode, she shares her experiences and her hard-to-kill mindset regarding diet and carbohydrate restriction, physical activity and resistance training, sound sleep habits, meditation and recovery, and the quality of one's surroundings.
Quick Guide:
1:05 Introduction
05:21 What are functional and integrative medicine?
09:25 The connection of obstetricians and gynecology to diet
18:16 The right amount of protein for the body
27:21 The pillars of Hard to Kill mentality
38:59 How ketones and magnesium help in cyclic migraines
43:19 Ketogenic diet for menopausal women
45:23 Kickstarting metabolism at 40
47:10 Dealing with hair thinning and hair loss
50:01 Her day-to-day practice as an OB-GYN
52:05 Contacts and closing
Get to know our guest:
Prior to studying medicine, Dr. Jaime Seeman earned a degree on nutrition and exercise science. As a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist, she has a strong interest in preventative healthcare.
"I want to live the biggest, fullest, most amazing life I can. And I don't want to spend the last 10 years of my life in and out of doctors' offices and hospitals and taking a bunch of drugs. And so, it's really having this mentality of what are the things that are gonna kill me? And how can I prevent those things? And you know what, when it's my time, I've lived an amazing life." - Jaime Seeman
Connect with her:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doctorfitandfabulous/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doctorfitandfab/
Webs
Chances are, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't need to change your life and get healthier.
So take action right now. Book a call with Dr. Ovadia's team.
One small step in the right direction is all it takes to get started.
How to connect with Stay Off My Operating Table:
Twitter:
Learn more:
Theme Song : Rage Against
Written & Performed by Logan Gritton & Colin Gailey
(c) 2016 Mercury Retro Recordings
S3E15 Jaime Seeman
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
eat, women, protein, patients, people, diet, medicine, life, sleep, day, lose, hair, fat, important, obgyn, increases, muscle, called, nebraska, ketogenic
SPEAKERS
Announcer, Jack Heald, Jaime Seeman, Dr. Philip Ovadia
Announcer 00:10
He was a morbidly obese surgeon destined for an operating table and an early death. Now he's a rebel MD who is fabulously fit and fighting to make America healthy again. This is Stay Off My Operating Table with Dr. Philip Ovadia.
Jack Heald 00:37
Hey, and it looks like we're live. Welcome. This is the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast with Dr. Philip Ovadia. I'm the talking hairdo, Jack Heald, and we are joined today by Dr. Jaime Seeman who I'll be frank, Phil, I went and checked out her website and was instantly intimidated. Please, open this one up for us and help me not feel like a complete idiot here.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 01:05
I'm going to do my best. And I'll say that when I first came across Jaime, I was a little intimidated as well. But then I got to meet her in person. And she's just a wonderful person and an amazing doctor. And I was really looking forward to this conversation for a while. And I'm gonna let Jaime really tell her story, but just to give a little bit of an intro and background for anyone who doesn't know her in the audience. She is a gynecologist and obstetrician. She went above and beyond and is a Certified Nutritional specialist, functional medicine doctor, and she just all-around rocks it. So, with that, Jaime, why don't you introduce yourself to our audience?
Jaime Seeman 01:56
Well, Phil, Jack, it's so good to be here. Thank you for this opportunity. So, I am a board-certified OB-GYN. So, I work full time in clinical practice delivering babies and doing surgery and seeing patients in clinic from teenagers all the way to postmenopausal patients. But my story really starts as a little girl growing up in Nebraska, which is currently where I practice. So, I'm born and raised and I haven't really left the state. But I grew up...
Jack Heald 02:24
Cool room studio, by the way.
Jaime Seeman 02:28
So, I went to college and was pursuing a degree in nutrition and exercise science. I was playing college softball for the University of Nebraska, and met my husband in college and then went to medical school. And this was this transition in my life where I went from being very physically active, having to work out all the time to now being very sedentary. Now I'm sitting in a classroom, I'm sitting in the library for long periods of time. And it was the first time in my life where I really had to work on my diet a little bit because it was hard to maintain my weight. So, because I had this degree in nutrition, all I knew was to count calories and eat a low-fat diet. So, I was literally in medical school counting pretzels, counting goldfish crackers, just trying to maintain this normal calorie intake. And then my husband had this grand idea that we should start a family. So, we got pregnant with our first daughter when I was a medical student. And during my pregnancy, I failed my glucose testing. And fast forward a couple years, I had three pregnancies in, I don't know, 50 something months, all my girls are 23 months apart. So, I have three daughters, failed my glucose testing in every pregnancy, was still working out in my first pregnancy. But after my third daughter was diagnosed with pre diabetes and hypothyroidism, and I had a tragedy that happened in my life in 2015, I lost one of my best friends, and it was this pivotal moment in my life where as a physician, I felt like I should be the good billboard for health, I should walk the walk and instead of talking the talk, right, and so I really started to look into medicine and to look into nutrition. And I felt like we were doing a lot of things wrong. But I wanted to fix it on a very personal level before I felt like I could really translate this into clinical practice. So, I started changing my diet. I started with whole 30 and then paleo and then really eventually settled on a ketogenic diet. And these days, it's very almost keto, carnivore, I guess I would describe it and got back into the gym eventually, but not till 2018. But what started as really fixing my nutrition really started to translate into all these other areas of my life. It changed the way I practice medicine. It changed the way I parent my children. It changed me as a wife to my husband, and it really kind of lit this fire within me to change the landscape of how we practice medicine. I went back and did an integrative medicine fellowship, became a board-certified ketogenic nutrition specialist, because I think that these are therapies that really can help a lot of people because for me, it really changed the trajectory really of my entire life.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 05:17
We're not hearing you, Jack,
Jaime Seeman 05:20
You're muted.
Jack Heald 05:21
It'd be awesome if I would. We have a 20-year-old cat that likes, that shares this office. And when it's time for her to go to bed, she is an old lady and says, you kids get out of my bedroom, I can't sleep with you here. And she was just making a racket back there. So, I muted. Alright. So, if you hear what sounds like a lifetime smoker screaming in the bathroom, it's our 20-year-old, in the background, it's our 20-year-old cat. I have heard these two terms. And I realized I don't know what that actually means. Functional medicine and integrative medicine. I honestly don't know what that is.
Jaime Seeman 06:07
Yeah, I think the average person would probably say the same thing. But really functional medicine is the buzzword is kind of like root cause medicine. So really looking at lifestyle in the way that it contributes to disease processes. So, looking at our diet and things like that, also doing a little bit more open-minded testing and diagnostics and using other supplementations, maybe herbal things instead of using traditional medicines. It's really kind of like whole person, whole body. Integrative medicine is very similar. But it does incorporate other modalities like acupuncture, Reiki, ayurvedic medicine, and so, they're very, they're similar but different. And functional and integrative providers do practice differently. They really look at lifestyle, they are very much more preventative medicine than they are treatment medicine. Now, I'm an integrative OBGYN, meaning I'm board certified, I take all the certification tests that all the other OBGYNs do. But the way that I practice is definitely different than most people listening who go to their gynecologist or their obstetrician. I talk about lifestyle. When a patient complains of something, I'm constantly thinking how their diet, exercise, sleep, and stressors might be contributing to that process. And I think that that is always first line therapy. And it always should be first line therapy, because until you optimize the controllable things, medicine really doesn't do much for patients. It's like just putting a band aid on the issue. And that's what we're doing medicine. We're just throwing medicines that people but they're not making people healthier. And we really need to get back to the basics. And it just seems weird, right? That you should have to go to do additional training to do that.
Jack Heald 08:02
I'm laughing because 17 years ago, I sat in a traditional doctor's office complaining of something, first of all, he was one of the unhealthiest looking people I've ever seen. And he spent maybe three minutes listening to me and wrote me a script and walked out the door. And at that time, it became blindingly obvious to me that he wasn't remotely interested in why I was presenting with these symptoms. And I laughed because up until that moment, I just assumed that's what doctors did. Why is this going on? And now, it's humorous. I mean, it wasn't funny at the time. But it's humorous that that you're probably the 30th physician we've had on who's basically confirmed the same thing. And it's...
Jaime Seeman 08:57
Yeah, I mean, traditional Western medicine is to just to find pathology. To find pathology and to treat it with medicines and surgery. And Dr. Ovadia and I do that, right? We do surgical interventions, and they definitely have a time in place. But for the vast majority of chronic diseases that doctors in this country are treating, it shouldn't be medicine.
Jack Heald 09:24
Go ahead, Phil.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 09:25
Yeah, I was just going to kind of follow up on that. And say that the connection, I guess, between heart disease and what we eat might be, although it's not as obvious as it should be, I would say it's kind of more intuitive. But what do you see the connections between what you do in obstetrician and gynecology and what we eat? What are the interactions there that may not be as obvious?
Jaime Seeman 09:55
Yeah, so I always think like across the lifetime for a woman, right? I only treat women. For younger patients, polycystic ovarian syndrome and insulin resistance just by themselves look very similar. They can have a very similar presentation, ambulatory dysfunction, trouble losing weight, signs like dark hair growth and acne. PCOS, when you look at the studies, a lot of them look at medical interventions like oral contraceptive therapy, or medicines like Spironolactone. The studies done on low carbon ketogenic therapies for PCOS patients are amazing. I mean, they're small trials, 11 people, 25 people, but 100% of the trial participants who stuck with these dietary changes, had return of menstruation, they had improvements in their lipid profiles, they normalize their glucose and insulin levels. I mean, it's very powerful. So why are we not using that as the first line tool? And why are we just throwing medications at these people? And I think it's mostly because doctors aren't equipped with that sort of information, right? I have a background in nutrition, but nutrition is not a large integral part of traditional medical training. Lifestyle changes are also really hard. And I'm sure we can talk about that. A lot of it has to do with mindset and mentality surrounding your own health, because there are patients that just want a medicine, they just want a pill. And then as we kind of move across, now this teenager, 20 something year old is wanting to start a family, infertility is on the rise. Why are so many men and women now are struggling with infertility? This is a really modern-day problem. And a lot of it has to do with nutrient deficiencies, insulin resistance, stress, poor sleep, alcohol use, all of these lifestyle factors that really could be optimized. And the reason it's so important to me, I'm a mom of three daughters. The reason it's so important to me is because if women can get healthy before they get pregnant, we have healthier pregnancies, we have healthier babies. And it's not just in this general sense, like, oh, that sounds nice. During pregnancy, there is something called epigenetic modification. So, the diet that the mom eats, the stress she's under, environmental chemicals that she's exposed to, all of these things literally alter her baby's DNA. And these are things that are passed down from generation to generation to generation. So, I'm really passionate about people being healthy and having a healthy pregnancy, but also because of the impact that that has for really centuries to come. And then after women go through their years of fertility, they enter their fourth decade of life, they start to experience perimenopause. And when women go through menopause, a gene is aging, and a woman is set by the ovary. Once a woman loses her years of fertility and goes through menopause, and the ovaries essentially stopped functioning, and stop making estrogen in particular, aging is accelerated, cardiovascular diseases is accelerated, diabetes, loss of bone mass and muscle mass. So, the risk just absolutely skyrockets after menopause. And if you don't have lifestyle factors in a good place, diet, exercise, sleep and stress, the things I just keep repeating over and over and over, you are going to be victim to the two things that are most likely to kill you or make you miserable. And if we include the third thing, those are basically heart disease, cancer and neurologic problems. So, diet has such a profound impact, because it's something we do every day, and it's something we do multiple times per day. And I guess the optimistic thing I want people to hear is that the changes can happen really quickly when we're talking about dietary interventions. I mean, this isn't like, oh, well, you're gonna have to fix your diet for five years to see results. Even within weeks, we can see regulation of blood pressure, regulation of glucose improvements in lipids and insulin and things like that. So, it really is something that can be impactful in a short amount of time.
Jack Heald 13:57
Wow. Here's, I don't even know where to start. So, I'm just gonna, I jotted down some questions. It's interesting, because you're the first OBGYN we've talked to. You're the first health care provider we've talked to who focuses on a specific gender, most of the things that most of the folks that we talk to, whatever they, whatever lifestyle changes they're talking about, they work for everybody. And I just hadn't even thought about oh my god, what does it like to be a woman and dealing with all of these things? So, my daughter in law who is I love like she was my own flesh and blood. I sent her a note today and I sent her your website said, this is who I'm interviewing. I don't know what to ask her, if you got any questions you'd like to know. So, she's 41 and she sent me a bunch of questions. And I know one that a lot of women struggle with. Toenails and fingernails. This was not the first question she sent, by the way, but I know a lot of women look at they seem to have fragile toenails and fingernails. Is that a diet or lifestyle kind of thing? And is that fixable or improvable?
Jaime Seeman 15:25
Yeah, so I'm not a dermatologist, so I don't necessarily treat fingernails and toenails. But yeah, we can see changes to like hair, skin and nails with specific nutrient deficiencies. And also, things like protein and collagen. So, I find that across all my female patients, out of all the dietary things, the one thing that's really hard for women to do is to prioritize protein in the diet. And when we think about things like fingernails and hair, things women really care about, collagen and protein are really important for those things. And so yeah, we can see there's other alterations to like, thyroid problems can cause problems with nails. Certainly, people can have other problems like nail funguses and things like that. But like thin, brittle nails, is the sign that you're not giving your body what it needs.
Jack Heald 16:16
What does it mean when you say prioritize protein and collagen? For a woman. For a guy, yeah, I’ll just eat a bunch of steak. But what's that mean?
Jaime Seeman 16:27
So, when we think about the three macronutrients, fat, protein, and carbs, everybody listening right now, it's really easy to find carbs and fat, right? Every food that is the most delicious, delectable thing, right? Like donuts, Oreos, all of these things contain carbs and fats. It's very easy to find those types of calories, it's easy to think of ways to add carbs and fats into the diet. When it comes to protein, now, it really seems like something people have to make a very concerted effort to increase protein in the diet. And the reason that I'm very protein-forward when it comes to women in particular, is because if you don't eat enough protein, if you don't eat enough amino acids, first of all, you don't have the building blocks for some of your hormones, some of your neurotransmitters, you don't have the physical building blocks for your muscles, right, your bones, your bones are actually made of collagen and protein. And so, when you don't prioritize those things in the diet, and you eat a protein deficient diet over years and decades, the other thing you do is you lose lean body mass. And when it comes to metabolic health, muscle is a metabolic organ. We think of it as just something that makes us strong, and we associate it with strength, but muscle is the metabolic organ. And if you want to protect yourself from chronic disease over a lifetime, you want to have as much muscle as you can, across that lifetime. And so, to do that, you really need to do two things. And that's eat adequate dietary protein and do resistance training, which a lot of women don't do either. We're addicted to cardiovascular exercise, we're on the treadmills, we're on the ellipticals and things like that. We're not lifting heavy weights. And so, these are two strategies that women can use to combat chronic disease, reduce the risk of not only diabetes and heart disease, but osteoporosis and other things that kill women as they get older.
Jack Heald 18:16
Okay, I'm gonna ask for details. How does a woman determine what the right amount of protein is?
Jaime Seeman 18:21
Great question. So, the recommended daily allowance is around 80 grams. Now that is a bare minimum to essentially reduce disease. That doesn't mean that that's optimal for women,
Jack Heald 18:38
Right. That's the you're not starving to death level.
Jaime Seeman 18:43
Right? It's like keep you alive, but like nothing extra. So, when it comes to protein, my bare minimum, I don't care how much you weigh, if you're a really little woman, my bare minimum is 90 grams. And that's 30 grams of protein three times a day. And the reason I say it to patients that way, 30 grams three times a day is because when it comes to protein, what protein does from a dietary perspective is you ingest these 30 grams of protein. And the first meal of the day is very important for that 30-gram threshold and what is most breakfast is? It's like pop tarts, bagels, waffles, English muffin, oatmeal, cereals, right? Not a lot of protein, but that first 30 grams, the reason is because it probably is going to contain enough leucine content and other essential amino acids that stimulate muscle protein synthesis. So, what a lot of women are doing is they're constantly eating these sub threshold amounts of protein. They're only eating 10 grams here. 15 grams here, 10 grams here. They're not eating these 30 grams; I call it like a bolus. You want protein, you want to slam it into the system. You don't want to nibble on it. You want 30 grams down the hatch, and you want that to happen at least three times per day. Now protein is something that you can overeat and it's probably not going to cause you to gain a ton of weight. You can really leverage protein when it comes to body composition. And I think people can eat up to one gram per pound of their body weight. So, for somebody like me that weighs around 160 pounds, that's 160 grams of protein per day. And I usually kind of set a window for patients. So, I say, hey, let's try to get 120 to 160. Nobody's Perfect, right? But if you're at least hitting those minimum numbers, you're gonna have satiety. These patients don't have a lot of cravings and hunger when they're eating. Because when we eat sub threshold amounts of protein all day, our body is saying, hey, I didn't get what I needed. So go out and find it. Right? And so, it's constantly making people hungry. It's making them search for food. When you eat adequate amount of protein and fat, really, you're not looking for carbohydrates.
Jack Heald 20:46
Now.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 20:47
This is a controversial area, but do you believe that you can overeat protein? Is there such a thing as too much protein in diet?
Jaime Seeman 20:57
So, the Institute of Medicine, when you look at these three macronutrients, they say basically protein, there's this minimum threshold, but there's really not been associated, any adverse outcomes associated with excess protein consumption. And really the same actually, they say that about fat, right? Now, obviously, we know fat has energy calories, and you definitely can overeat. But when it comes to carbohydrates, there are certainly a lot of adverse effects with overeating carbohydrates. And when we look at the minimum threshold, there's really not a minimum threshold required for life. So, clinically, I've never seen somebody over eat a bowl of ground beef, I think your natural satiety signals when you hit 8-10 ounces, like that's a lot, right, for most people, or maybe a guy could eat like a pound. But you don't see people over eating protein. Right? It's just it's not a clinical everyday problem. I think it's almost impossible for patients to overeat it.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 21:55
Yeah, no, I certainly agree with that. Jack has been to a Brazilian steakhouse with me. So, he might have seen me over eating a protein. But I agree that you're really, and the scientific studies show it as well, that you really can't overeat protein. That message, I think, is more difficult, as Jack alluded to, to kind of get through to women. We have this sort of societal shunning of protein, especially animal proteins, when it comes to women's diet. So how do you find that that's received by your patients?
Jaime Seeman 22:34
Yeah, there's definitely a political agenda against meats, red meat in particular, these days. And I do have female patients that come in, and they're like, I'm eating a plant-based diet, or I'm really trying to limit my red meat consumption to one day a week. And these are alarming things to hear patients say because we've really vilified something that has a really excellent nutrient profile. It has great sources of protein and high-quality fats in it. And so, there is this political agenda, but when you look how much red meat we're eating since the 1980s, we're actually eating less red meat now than we were 20-30 years ago, yet the rate of chronic diseases are still increasing. So, is it really the red meat? And even you would know this literature better than me, Phil, but even the Cardiology Association has said the saturated fat containing red meat, when you're not eating these other processed foods, there's no evidence that it directly causes heart disease. And so, when it comes to protein sources, I mean, really, people can eat any protein source they want, beef, chicken, fish, but things that are really lean, like chicken and turkey if they're not getting other high quality, fat sources in the diet, you can't, low-fat diets definitely have their own consequences. And I think red meat is a great part of a healthy diet. And it actually contains about as much mono unsaturated fat as it has saturated fat. That's an inconvenient fact for people that like to attack red meat. But I think that, I think we are starting to change that stigma. And I think when my patients really finally grab on to it, and they start eating that much, like I'm full really fast. I mean, they're just mind blown, the satiety effect of eating adequate amounts of protein.
Jack Heald 24:19
Now, were you practicing before this big change occurred in your life?
Jaime Seeman 24:25
Yeah, I was. So, I was a private practice OBGYN and kind of going through my own struggles finding out I had pre diabetes. I had been on thyroid medication since my three pregnancies. And as I kind of started to change my world, I wasn't practicing that way. But people started to like, notice and I didn't lose like 100 pounds, but people just noticed I looked different. My energy was different. And then people started asking questions like, what are you doing? What are you doing? And at the time, I was really eating a quite a ketogenic diet. And in medicine, that was very are controversial. I mean, I had medical colleagues that, like wanted me turned into the medical board for like, promoting a diet like this, but I stopped putting a name on it. And I really started, every single patient that comes in my office, I do a 24-hour dietary recall. What have you eaten in the last 24 hours, right? And it's pretty incredible sometimes when we look at what they're eating on a typical usual basis, it's very low in protein. It's high in low quality fats like vegetable oils and things like these and it tends to be really high in processed carbohydrates.
Jack Heald 25:35
Now, has there been a change? Your web presence is powerful. I think that's the right word I recused. Has there been a change in the quality of your patients? Since you've made this change in your life? In other words, are you attracting a different kind of patient? And perhaps repelling another kind of patient?
Jaime Seeman 25:59
Yeah, I do. I get a lot of patients that come to me because they hear my messages, and they want to live that way. And they want me to hold their hand and help them do it. So, I do think it has attracted a different level of patient that wants to work on lifestyle. And that's really fulfilling for me because I mean, I can sit there all day and tell patients, hey, you got to eat the right foods, you got to be moving more. But like I said, there are patients that just want a pill, they just want a treatment. And that's probably not a good fit for me in them. And it's not that I can't meet a patient where they are. And I have some of those patients, okay? I don't want you to guys to think that my practice is like this magical unicorn practice of these highly motivated patients. I mean, I have those types of patients too. And we just meet them where they are, and we help them do the best they can. But I do think it is really shifted, the patients and I, with my social media presence, like I have patients that fly in to see me which is just mind blowing to me that people would expend the energy and expense of coming to Nebraska to let me treat them. It's very, very flattering. But I get it. There's not a lot of people in this country that practice medicine the way I do and when you're the pioneer in some of these areas, there's people to think you're crazy, too. So.
Jack Heald 27:21
Your website, I think the headline is hard to kill. Talk about it. I'm interested in what's the story behind that particular choice.
Jaime Seeman 27:35
Yeah, so Hard to Kill is the title of my book that was released this year. So, I wrote a book called Hard to Kill. And Hard to Kill is really the mentality that I have used in transforming my life since 2015. So, I kind of alluded to the fact that like, it started with my diet, but it really turned into so much more. And it turned into creating a level of physical, mental and spiritual resiliency in your life so that you're hard to kill, right? It's like it's metaphorical. But it's like, it's true, right? So, there are five pillars in basically my hard to kill plan. So, the first one is nutrition. So really dialing in, like we've talked about here for some time now. High-quality fats, protein, and really limiting carbohydrates to performance. The second pillar is exercise. And it really talks a lot about resistance training. And when it comes to cardiovascular exercise, doing things like sprinting and high intensity interval training tend to be a lot more effective than long steady state cardio sessions. The third pillar is sleep, which is such an underutilized respected area of medicine. But when people are not sleeping poorly, they're not making the right hormones, their circadian rhythm is off, and it increases risk of all chronic diseases and cancer. And so, sleep is such an essential part of our health that we have to we have to respect. The fourth pillar is stress and resiliency. For as much as we train and exercise, we need to be doing equal amounts of recovery, breathwork, meditation, it also talks about other modalities like sauna and in cold therapy and those types of things. And it really focuses a lot of mentality. And then the fifth pillar is environment, but I like to describe it as people, places and things. So, the people in your life have an impact on your health, the places that you live, our environment, our air quality, our water quality, and then the things that we interact with. So as an OBGYN, and mom of three girls, women use, on average, like 30 different products on our skin and our hair and on our faces every day. And these days, a lot of these things. It's tons of things when you think about it like nail polish, hairspray, lotion, the moisturizer, the anti-aging serum, the makeup, right? Probably at least 10 different makeup things each day. Yeah, on average, just like 30 products we're putting on our skin. And so, it's just acknowledging kind of this full spectrum of things that impact our health and will make you hard to kill because the book also talks about this tragedy that occurred in my life in 2015. That gave me a lot of perspective about my own mortality. And I don't know how much time I have, I mean, this sounds really, I don't even know the word to use, but for somebody listening, but I could get off this podcast tonight and drive my car to the store and get in a car accident and die. Like this is just, this is the reality, none of us know how long we have. And in whatever amount of time I'm given, I want to live the biggest, fullest, most amazing life I can. And I don't want to spend the last 10 years of my life in and out of doctors' offices and hospitals and taking a bunch of drugs. And so, it's really having this mentality of what are the things that are gonna kill me? And how can I prevent those things? And you know what, when it's my time, I've lived an amazing life.
Jack Heald 30:58
I feel we've got a soundbite there, I'm just like to say. We've got a killer.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 31:05
I want to dig into one of those pillars a little bit more. And again, specifically when it comes to women, resistance exercise, building muscle, these are things that sometimes get a little shunned even when and most women are afraid of. So, talk a little bit about that, and how important you think it is in women's lives in particular.
Jaime Seeman 31:30
Yeah, so I talked about this in my book. When I was a collegiate athlete, and I was having to train. Well, you guys can see this trophy sitting behind me if there's video. I was a two-time lifter that year in Nebraska. So, I'm training hard and lifting weights. But I will tell you right now, I got a lot of flak. I have very large, genetically, I have large quadricep muscles. And people would always make comments about my muscles or my body. And I was very insecure about the fact that lifting weights made me masculine. And I think there's still this societal perception that lifting weights is a very masculine thing. And I think that scares a lot of women away and really marginalizes them in this space. Women want to be thin. I mean, I grew up in the 80s and 90s. Heroin chic was like it, I mean, be really thin, like you don't want muscles. But I'll tell you right now, from a medical perspective, you want muscles. Any woman listening right now I'm telling you right now, you will not look big and bulky, there is a genetic potential to all of us. And you can lift a lot of weights and you will like the way your body looks; you will like the way your clothes fit on you. And you will be physically strong as you age, you'll be able to get up out of chairs, you'll be able to go up and down stairs, you're not going to trip on a rug and break your hip. You want to have strength. And you have to do resistance training to do that. And the other reason it's so important is because bone health, after menopause with the loss of estrogen, our bones start demineralizing at an increasing rate. And one thing that's likely to kill people after the age of 65. If you break a hip, your risk of mortality is really high. Your risk of not getting out of the hospital or rehab facility is really high. And so, and if you get a metabolic disease like cancer, you want a lot of muscle it's very protective against illness. Maybe you got hospitalized because of COVID. It is protective like on every single level. And it doesn't just move your bones, it secretes chemicals. It secretes something called myokine, they talk to your brain, they talk to your ovaries, they talk to every organ system. Your muscles are a metabolically active organ and you have to resistance train to build them. Your bicep, you have to send a message from your brain to your bicep that you still need it. And resistance training is how you do that. You can't do it on a treadmill. You can't do it by running.
Jack Heald 33:54
You can't do it by running. That's interesting. I'm not asking you to answer this question. But I have often wondered how can women seem to be so that they love the cardio and not so much the weight training? it's just always been odd to me. I do have a question...
Jaime Seeman 34:12
I think we don't encourage it when girls are little, right? Unless you're an athlete, you're probably not touching weights. And so why would you suddenly in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s feel compelled to go and do this when you've never been taught how to do it. I think it's very intimidating to, gyms are very intimidating when there's a rack of dumbbells and there's just a bunch of dudes doing bicep curls in front of the dumbbells right? We're seeing a lot more gyms pop up that are like just focused on women like they're like women only gyms and things like that. But I'll tell you, like these are things you can do in your home. There are very effective resistance band programs. Even things that include jumping are more effective. Anything that creates force is more effective than doing an elliptical machine or a stair climber, or something like that.
Jack Heald 35:03
I want to ask about one of the pillars. I've noted that many of the women with whom I have had close relationships over my life just sleep poorly. I mean, it's like, like the number of good nights of sleep are far outweighed by bad sleep. And it's been... I've noted it a lot, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Is that just a female thing? Do women just have more trouble with sleep than men? I mean, it's rare for me to have a bad night's sleep.
Jaime Seeman 35:46
No, I mean, I think there's men and women that are sleeping really poorly. I think it's kind of twofold. Gosh, we live in this day and age where there's so much to do. And it's like a Keeping Up with the Joneses thing, right? So, there's people that say, like, you can rest when you’re dead. Really bad advice, by the way. So, when it comes to sleep, what people don't understand is, we think that it's this like passive thing where we just lay down and fall asleep, right? Because if I asked you like, how you fall asleep, like, right, what would you tell me? Well, I don't know, I lay down on my bed, and I close my eyes. Good sleep actually starts during the day. So, your quality of sleep that you're gonna get tonight, Jack, started this, what time do you wake up this morning? Okay, so it started at 6am this morning, when your feet hit the floor. Your body's circadian rhythm is set by the absence or presence of sunlight. So, when you wake up in the morning, we have this surge of cortisol that happens, it's called a cortisol awakening response. We're supposed to be getting sunlight in our eyes, the sunlight is warming our bodies that helps us actually wake up. When you get warm in the morning, that will actually wake you up. And then we have less energy, we go about our day, we hunt for our food, we do our job, right? And then in the evening time, as the sun is going down and setting, the colors of the sunlight start to change, we're getting more orange light, we're getting more red light. But what we're doing is we're on our phones or on our computers, and we're getting tons of blue light and our brains not getting the message that we're supposed to be winding down. And we're doing other things like drinking caffeine, banging energy drinks, we’re eating a bad diet, and we're stressed, right, and we're never unwinding. And so, in the evening, our body is supposed to cool down, melatonin is going to be produced and the cooling down of the body, the absence of the sunlight, and the increase in melatonin secretion from the brain is what actually helps us fall asleep. And then what helps us stay asleep is that we get into these deep levels of sleep. And then we come out of them and we go into REM. The first three sleep cycles of the night are the most important when it comes to restorative sleep. So, the first couple of hours, but what are we doing? We're delaying our bedtime, we're not laying down until 1130, midnight, we're up watching Netflix or whatever it is, and we're missing these critical hours of sleep. And then chronically over time, when you're not getting quality sleep or you're getting short amounts of sleep, you're not getting these seven hours at night, which is kind of the magical number for most people. It adds up and it starts to impact your health. When we sleep is when we're making a lot of our hormones. People that don't sleep have higher blood pressure; they have more insulin resistance. So why are women sleeping poorly? I think it's a combination of a lot of things. But particularly at one point in a woman's life, menopausal really start to affect sleep. With the loss of estrogen, if you're having hot flashes at night, remember I said hot is supposed to wake you up. If you're having a hot flash at 1am, that's gonna wake you up because you're getting too hot. Our bedrooms too, also are not the most ideal. Some of them are too warm. We have too thick of bedding or too thick of mattresses. So, I think there's a lot of things contributing to sleep and I think there's men that are sleeping poorly, too.
Jack Heald 38:59
Well, I'm sure that's true. But I've just noted a market lack of ability to sleep through the night with women I have known. If you don't mind, I would love to pursue because my daughter in law is going to say what did she say? Some of the questions that a 41-year-old woman says, ask Dr. Seeman. Is there a way to get rid of cycle headaches?
Jaime Seeman 39:31
Menstrual migraines, is that we're talking about? Yes. So, what happens with menstrual migraines is that about a week before the menstrual cycle, we have really high levels of progesterone and estrogen. And then in the week leading up to the menstrual cycle, they come crashing down. So, this huge reduction in estradiol causes a reduction in brain energy. About a 30% energy deficit occurs in the brain. And then the progesterone, one of the metabolites of progesterone works as neurosteroids. So, it's very calming for the brain. So suddenly we have this loss of estrogen and loss of progesterone. And some women can get headaches from it, or some women just feel very fatigued, but menstrual migraines is because of that exact reason. Now, some doctors will say, well just turn off the menstrual cycle. Put them on a low dose birth control pill or something like that, or just treat them with migraine medication, which can be therapies that can help, but things that can help is controlling the diet. So, controlling the blood sugars, because with this 30% reduction in brain energy, when you get a migraine when you get a headache, the brain is telling you to, right, it's telling you to lay down, go in a quiet dark room and close your eyes. Because it's perceiving that there is an energy, the cell in the brain doesn't know if your boss just yelled at you. Or if it's your period. It just knows it's under stress and it doesn't have energy. So, this is actually where controlling the blood sugar is eating lower carb diet, high quality fats and proteins can be helpful. Other things that can be helpful magnesium, specifically magnesium threonate because it crosses the blood brain barrier, very effective. So ketogenic therapies, and magnesium supplementation alone can get rid of about 80% of migraines. Also, exogenous ketones, which are kind of a new area of medicine that we're just now starting to kind of research. They've only been around since 2015, 2016. But I think that we're gonna see compelling evidence the next five to 10 years for use of exogenous ketones for these people, too.
Jack Heald 41:26
How are those used? Is it like a cream or an injectable or what?
Jaime Seeman 41:30
So, it is a powder or a liquid that you drink. So, you would mix it up in water or something, and you would drink it and it puts ketone bodies into the bloodstream, and they last for anywhere from 60 to maybe 120 minutes at most. But the reason that they help in particularly for something like a migraine, is because the cell, a cell that is under stress, a lot of times loses its ability to effectively use glucose as an energy source. And ketones can circumvent that issue and provide the cell with cellular energy. They also create less oxidative stress inside the cell. There's lots of applications to them. Obviously, many people think of epilepsy and seizures, but it's a similar mechanism. But exogenous ketones can be another thing that can help with headaches and migraines.
Jack Heald 42:18
I want to pursue that particular rabbit trail. Would ketogenic, being in an acute state of ketosis have the same effect theoretically?
Jaime Seeman 42:29
Yeah, so but there's things that can kind of kick you in and out of ketosis. Like if you get stressed and bump your cortisol, you might down regulate your ketones. So, there's lots of things that can affect ketone levels. And so yes, you could be in therapeutic ketosis from a ketogenic diet, but the one thing you do have to pay attention to because I've told women eat protein, eat protein, eat protein, eating a higher percent of protein, you'll produce lower ketone levels. So, a true ketogenic diet, you're gonna want to keep protein to about no more than 20% of the calories and the rest are coming from fat. So, we're talking about a diet that's like 75% fat calories. But yes, you can put patients into therapeutic ketosis with diet alone, and you don't need exogenous ketones, but they can certainly be an adjunct to a low carb or ketogenic diet.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 43:19
So, let's follow it up a little bit with another common issue that women face, which is menopause, something that all women are going to face at some point. And what do you think the impact of diet and metabolic health is on that process?
Jaime Seeman 43:36
Well, with the loss of estrogen, there's profound physiologic changes that happens. So, estrogen affects the mitochondria. The loss of estrogen causes a pro inflammatory state within the cells. And so, it's one thing to experience hot flashes and night sweats and things like that, but like I've described, brain energy reduction by 30%, you start to lose your muscle mass and your bone mass at an increasing rate. Insulin resistance increases visceral depth, visceral fat deposition increases. So, from a dietary perspective, there's no diet that's going to make you start making estrogen again, nothing is going to turn the ovaries back on. But if we can mitigate some of these risks, right, I just said it increases the risk of insulin resistance. So really controlling carbohydrates during this period of your life is extremely important. You don't have as much resiliency to dietary excursions, right, like going out on Friday and Saturday and eating a whole pizza or drinking a whole bottle of wine. We don't have that resiliency anymore when we go through menopause. Alcohol, unfortunately, is a big one for women in this in this period of their life. It really should be minimized. It ruins the sleep. It makes it almost impossible to lose any weight, and it really contributes to this pro inflammatory state. I'm a huge fan of hormone replacement therapy for the right patients, it does not make them 20 again, but there's a golden window of opportunity for hormone replacement therapy, and it's within 10 years of menopause. And it can protect their bones, protect their muscle mass, protect their brain, and reduce a lot of the quality-of-life symptoms they experienced, like hot flashes and night sweats.
Jack Heald 45:23
Okay, two more questions that I'm going to be required to provide answers to actually what I'm going to do is say, hey, listen to the show. But she wanted to know, is there a good way to kickstart your metabolism after 40?
Jaime Seeman 45:39
Well, actually, the studies show our metabolism actually doesn't really go down. So, it is a little bit of a myth that people think that our metabolism goes down as we get older. What is happening as we get older is we're losing our muscle mass. And like I said, muscle is a very metabolic organ. So, if you'd like to eat food, like me, you want to kickstart your metabolism, work on growing your muscle mass. You cannot be in a caloric deficit to do that. And so, women who are chronically dieting, chronically trying to restrict calories, a lot of times are really dragging on their thyroid, they're losing muscle mass because they've never had an intentional period of their life where they've tried to grow their muscle mass. And just so you know, if you're in a dedicated resistance program and kind of optimizing diet, women can probably build four to five pounds of muscle in a year. Okay, so when we're talking about looking at the scale, like, that's not right, if you put on five pounds of muscle and didn't lose any fat, which is almost impossible, I'm telling you, when you start lifting weights, you're going to lose some fat. But if you're in your 40s, and you want to boost your metabolism, focus on trying to build muscle, and you're gonna see some awesome changes happen.
Jack Heald 46:56
I think there's a lot of folks are gonna go, wow, that sounds that sounds doable.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 47:04
That applies to men, by the way as well, does it?
Jaime Seeman 47:06
Yeah, it does.
Jack Heald 47:10
Oh, there's one other thing, and she'll be thrilled to hear this because I haven't noticed this. Phil and I, of course, have noticed it for ourselves personally. But she said, what about hair thinning and hair loss? Is there something that can be done about that?
Jaime Seeman 47:29
Yeah, so first of all, as you age, the hair follicles do tend to shrink a little bit. There's a lot of genetics that play to when it comes to aging and sometimes the pattern of the baldness. There's lots of other reasons why you can lose your hair though. In the last two years, COVID has been a huge one. So, illnesses can cause hair shedding, as well as pregnancy and postpartum. It's a process called telogen effluvium. So basically, the body is under a stress state. And the body says, I have a lot of things to do, and growing your hair is not one of them. And so, it causes all the hairs to basically, all of our hairs on our head are in a different phase of growth. And the ones that are in this arrested phase just fall out. The good news with that is that type of hair loss tends to come back. You'll see regrowth. I actually had an illness in the spring, people probably can't see it, but I have a ton of these like little short baby hairs on my head because mine is finally coming back. Certainly, nutrient deficiencies, lack of protein, copper, biotin, and those types of things in the diet. There's also hormonal reasons why people lose their hair. So, there is a metabolite of testosterone called DHT. That's a common reason why men, I'm just pointing at your head like as an example, why men can lose their hair. So too little and too much testosterone can sometimes cause issues with hair problems. It can be multifactorial; you can also have low grade fungal infections or conditions like alopecia. So, you want to see a dermatologist and have them look at it. But women lose, women and men lose about 100 hairs a day. That's normal, normal hair loss. If you're losing more than that, and you can do something called a hair pull test where you actually pull on your hair and if you're getting full length hairs, that's most likely telogen effluvium The other thing that women do is we...
Jack Heald 49:22
I love that word. Today’s word is telogen effluvium.
Jaime Seeman 49:24
Sometimes, women use a lot of styling products like hot straighteners and curling irons and things like that which are really damaging to the hair and it can cause like tons of breakage and fall out that way too. Or too tight of ponytails.
Jack Heald 49:41
And maybe that's the headache problem, too tight of ponytails.
Jaime Seeman 49:45
So, you really have to take care of your hair.
Jack Heald 49:47
Do they make your eyes do this? The ponytail might be...
Jaime Seeman 49:49
The ponytail’s too tight.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 49:54
You just solved two of her problems at once, Jack.
Jack Heald 49:58
All right.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 50:01
So, I'd love to hear a little bit more about what your practice has kind of changed into. I know you still continue to do a lot of the I guess what would be considered normal day to day OB GYN work but you do a lot of other stuff as well. So, what is your practice like on a day-to-day basis today?
Jaime Seeman 50:22
Well, I'm in my clinic four days a week. And like I said, I deliver babies, do gynecology surgery. So, like hysterectomies, pelvic floor surgeries. So, I certainly, there's a lot of instances where I’m not talking about diet, we're talking about incontinence and other things that really affect women. But my annual examinations, and my patients, I do see patients just for metabolic health, which is crazy to think that a gynecologist is spending their time doing that. But I have patients that literally just come to me because they want help with losing weight, they want help with optimizing their labs. It's crazy. Phil, I have patients come to me with our cholesterol panels like asking me, what's my risk of like heart disease and a heart attack? You know I'm a gynecologist, right? But I look at things through a different lens. And I think as providers, sometimes we can learn a lot from our patients, and I wish more providers were really open minded about some of these ideas. Gosh, that's really interesting. Let me do some digging, and let's get back together. But I think so many patients just get shut down. No, take the statin or move on or find another doctor. And that's really sad. So, I'm very open minded in my practice. And I really, I really enjoy my job a lot. I think the social media world is fun, because I can reach people all over the world, have followers in tons of countries, and I do my podcasts and things like that. But it's important to me that I'm a practicing clinician, and not just like running my mouth on Instagram. I take care of real-life patients. And I'm what I consider a boots on the ground physician trying to fight the problems that we have in our healthcare system.
Jack Heald 52:05
Well, I can see why people would fly to see you. I mean, honest to God. How long are we doing this, Phil? We've been doing this for quite a while. We've had a bunch of guests on. We've never had an OB GYN. And if I was a woman and had been listening to all this stuff, and all of a sudden there's actually an OB who gets it. I go, how do I find her? How do I find her? So that's the next question. How do folks find you, Jaime?
Jaime Seeman 52:36
Well, I practice in Omaha, Nebraska, I'm at Mid-city OBGYN and all that information is on my website. If you want to become a patient, I don't do telemedicine. So, I only see patients in person in my clinic. I'm on social media. I'm Dr. Fit and Fabulous. So, you can find me on Facebook, Instagram. I've got a Twitter and a TikTok and things like that. But I'll be real honest, I'm mostly active on Instagram. And I've got a website, doctorfitandfabulous.com. You can find links to my book and my podcast and all the other things I'm doing. It's called the Fit and Fabulous podcast. And we're gonna have a doctor Ovadia there here soon, which will be really fun. And it's a great podcast because we don't just talk about nutrition topics. So, we do everything from sexual medicine to nutrition to exercise, and everything in between. It's a really fun project.
Jack Heald 53:33
I went to your website and I just, who is this person, I want to find out a little bit. And I just randomly clicked on a video. And there was a fascinating sponsor for this particular video.
Jaime Seeman 53:47
Oh, yeah, everybody gets all wound up about like the sex toy sponsors and things like that. I mean, I'm literally a gynecologist you guys. Like this is what I talk to women about all day. And, but it is such a stigmatized thing and yeah, it's important. Sexual Health is really important. And it's, yeah, there's tons of podcasts. If the women are listening and you want to know, I've had some urologists on sexual medicine, sex therapists, we've got we've got great content on that.
Jack Heald 54:19
Here in the last two minutes. We have just, we're gonna spike your numbers. Oh my gosh, here we go. All right. Well, all that information will be available on the show notes so folks can track down Dr. Jaime Seeman. It has been really cool for me and it's fascinating to me to hear this side of it. And I'm so grateful that you were on the show. It was really, really cool for me. Thank you. And thank you Phil.
Jaime Seeman 54:49
Thank you, guys, for having me.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 54:51
Yeah, definitely really enjoyed the conversation, Jaime and I look forward to continuing it. We, Jack and I now have a very long running list of guests we need to bring back for multiple visits and you'll certainly be on that list.
Jack Heald 55:09
I just had, let's talk about sex toys as our next appearance with Dr. Jaime Seeman. All right, for Dr. Philip Ovadia and Dr. Jaime Seeman. I'm Jack Heald. Hey, if you like this podcast, go ahead and subscribe and smash that like button. All the various things that you guys know how to do, and we'll talk to you next time.
Jack Heald 55:36
America is fat and sick and tired. 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy and at risk of a sudden heart attack. Are you one of them? Go to ifixhearts.co and take Dr. Ovadia’s metabolic health quiz. Learn specific steps you can take to reclaim your health reduce your risk of heart attack and stay off Dr. Ovadia’s operating table. This has been a production of 38 atoms