Hidden Causes of Burnout & Why You Can't DIY It - Raewyn Guerrero

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Are you tired of feeling burned out, anxious and watching your list of medications stacking up after every doctor's visit?

Help is on the way!

Raewyn Guerrero is The Gutsy Executive Coach, guiding high-performing women from burnout to all out, by focusing on the Gut-Brain-Hormone-Skin Connection. Through the insights gained from functional lab work, they can fine tune their biochemistry and D.R.E.S.S. for Success (Diet, Rest, Exercise, Stress Reduction, and Supplements), becoming the CEOs of not only their health, but of their lives. Because when you get the body right, the brain will follow.  Her mission is to awaken everyone she meets to the innate wisdom of the body so that they can live longer with clarity, freedom and joy. 

After years chasing symptoms in the Conventional Medicine World to address her own Anxiety and IBS, she discovered the evidence-based, systems biology framework of Functional Medicine and Functional Diagnostic Nutrition.  This approach revealed how the gut is connected to the brain, to hormones, to the skin – to pretty much all health.  She’s been featured in the Huffington Post, the CW Network, and on numerous podcasts discussing a Nutrition and Psychology approach for Sleep, Panic Attacks and Anti-Aging. By offering a personalised roadmap for how to eat, think, sleep and move through the insights gained from Functional Labs, she’s set to change the face of healthcare and create a Well World.

Take Rae's Burnout Quiz at www.well-work.co to find out how "Crispy" you are!

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to episode number 20 of lighten up ladies. And I think we'll agree that modern day life is not for sissies, especially if you're a high achieving woman. And so wondering if this sounds like you, you wake up in the morning, super exhaust. Did in order to start your day, you need maybe at least one cup of coffee, maybe more.

And then when you start getting your energy up, you start crashing by two or three in the afternoon. And then when you get home from work, you have so much on your mind trying to calm yourself down, throw some food together, and then you get that. Maybe one glass of wine, maybe two glasses of wine, just settle your nerves and start calming yourself down.

Then for some reason, you have a hard time getting to sleep. You get your second wind later on at nighttime, get something maybe melatonin or something to help you sleep. You wake up sometime around two or three in the morning, and then you have to get your yourself back to sleep after you take a pee break and then you wake up super exhausted just to start it all over.

And then maybe you're doing different things that used to always help you get back into balance. You are exercising, you're meditating. Maybe you even have a gratitude journal. You're eating all the right foods. And yet you just can't seem to recover. Does that sound like you? And if so, you are not alone.

And I also have your back because today's guest. Raywin Guerrero is an expert at helping high achieving women, recover from burnout and live their best life. She also will share her own amazing story. She's a fellow functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner, and she also has a background in cognitive behavioral therapy and hypnotherapy.

So she has that mind, body connection down, and she will share with you how she recovered from burnout as a high achieving woman. And how you can do the same. So let's dive right into the episode and I will be back afterwards with some takeaways. Hi Ray. So good to see you today. Thank you for being on the show.

Thanks story. Such a pleasure to be here. Yeah, I, I love your story. I love your heart and I love that you serve women and how you serve women. So I was wondering if you could share how you got into the work that you. Yeah, great way to begin this story, because I think so many people don't feel like they have a story that can actually, that they can turn it around and impact other people's lives.

But I have this mantra it's called lemons to lemonade. So I had hit my rock bottom, but I've managed to turn it around. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about how that happened. And there are series of moments across my life. Um, beginning with, I think my father being in a coma when. Three then my grandfather having generalized anxiety disorder and being on medication and the Medica, the psycho pharmaceuticals actually hurting his brain.

And then me developing my own anxiety and IBS, um, in my thirties. And, um, having like, you know, my marriage crashed and burned, like my first marriage when I was in my twenties and a whole host of things that led me to the moment of, I was, I thought I was doing my dream job. I was a corporate wellbeing manager in central London at a global bank.

And. I just couldn't get myself out the door one morning and that was becoming more and more frequent. And by the time I'd gotten to this point where the, the roommate I was living with had taken a photo of me and said, you need to remember what you look like right now, because something has got us shipped.

Cuz I looked so drained. So gone. So depleted all my zest for life was gone. I had no more energy. It was taking me two hours to peel myself off of bed. And I think that was my defining moment when I knew, like I had to change my life. And at that point I had been fairly into health. Cause like I said, I was running a corporate wellbeing program, but I thought I was doing all the right things and I was very focused on that mind, body connection.

I meditated a lot. I did a little bit of yoga. I used to run a lot used to spin, but I really thought that if we got the mind, okay, then the body. Sort itself out, not realizing everything that I know now, which is, and which is what I try to help women to understand, because we all think that we could probably meditate or gratitude ourselves out of a bad situation.

And it's just not the case because we're such complex beings. And it took me, I don't know, 10, 11 years to kind of get to this realization and multiple specialists. I mean, Ologist known to man. I saw the endocrinologist psychologist, um, you know, urologist, gynecologist, like I saw them all and they didn't have any answers for me, you know?

And I kept, I was on this medical, what we call like the medical Merry ground kept going around and around around, and everyone just kept saying, we'll take this pill. I knew like, I'm like in my thirties, like, am I gonna just be stuck on more and more medication as I get older, because I had seen what that had done to my grandfather and I just thought.

Long term use of, of pharmaceuticals is not a good thing. Like they're designed to be used in short periods of time. So my wake up call was when I realized, like I have a pharmacy in my purse and this is not going to end well for me in my thirties. So I need to do something different. And that was sort of like the beginning of my journey into functional health.

And I was really lucky because of the fact that I worked in a bank where we had an on. GP. We had an onsite osteopath. We had an onsite, we had to have everything onsite and the osteopath, she was actually an IFM trained. Um, she's a, you know, she's a do, but she was trained in functional medicine and she was the one who kind of like started waking me up to the fact that, oh, you might need to run some very specific labs to figure out what's going on with your IBS, because IBS is just this blanket diagnosis and it could be impacting your anxiety.

And I'm like, what earth does that have to do? What does my gut have to do with my brain? And we got into the whole gut brain discussion, and that's how I became. Fascinated fixated all the words till I get. Like, I just wanted to know everything about how, what you eat and the integrity of your gut, how that would impact the way that your mood would show up and how you would show up in the world in terms of your energy levels and you know, your outlook on life.

And of course, you know, it's science, you know, we worked on my biochemistry by modulating those factors. Once we got the results from the labs and a Presto, like.  ended up no more anxiety, no more panic attacks, no more IBS. And you know, all in the space of like within the first month I was feeling like a completely different person.

Wow. Yeah. Completely D the first two weeks, I'll be honest were rough. And I always let people know. I'm like, you know, when you're going through a healing protocol, Sometimes it really has to get worse before it gets better. And that was kind of it. And I've seen that repeated with my clients as well. Yes.

So I'm, I tend to be there for them very, very closely that first month, like we meet regularly, like every week we have a built in chat feature. So when I work with them, one to one, they get to chat with me to let me know, Hey, this has changed. That's changed. I feel different in maybe not always in the best ways, just so that they know that they're supported and they're not doing this alone.

Cuz I have to be honest when I have seen my medical professionals.  There was no follow up or after care that was built in. And I even recently had like a, a small procedure on my thyroid and, um, the doctor just dis I mean, he basically made an incision on my neck and sent me off. Didn't get me any follow up instructions, I'm bleeding.

And I'm kind of like, and the next day I'm still thinking like, What do I do? Like, I haven't been told what to do. I have no phone number. I've got nothing to re and it was a weekend. So you like, you can't reach out to anyone. Um, and it's the thing that really kind of pisses me off the most about like modern medicine.

The fact that they're just like, oh, well, our job is done. So off you go, we've done the thing that we're supposed to do. Take your meds off you. Go goodbye. And. People need more, like you need more than that. You need support, you need reassurance that what you're going through, isn't gonna last forever. And you know, particularly like when I, like I said, when.

Protocol. And I began that in 2015, 2016, I started realizing like, oh my God, my stomach is really not doing well. My fir cuz you're introducing new herbs, new supplements, botanicals, all these different things, trying to change your biochemistry. So obviously it's gonna get a little bumpy, right? Some people breeze through it.

I have some people who said, Nope, nothing happened. And then other people are like, oh my God, I need to lie down for like four days. I'm really tired. I, my sleep's been disrupted, but then it starts to level out and you start to feel good and you start to get energy because you're rebalancing things. So.

You know, in a nutshell, you know, that was, that was my story. Like I've been through the fire and I'll come out on the other side and I am so impassioned and driven to make a difference for women who have been dismissed by their, you know, physicians, psychiatrists, coaches, even cuz they're like, well, we just can't help.

You're just depressed. Just keep taking your pills or you're just anxious or, or whatever it is. Stay on the level of thyroxin. Um, because I get a lot of that and a lot of people don't realize that anxiety and your thyroid are very intricately linked. So, um, So I like to, I like to help them connect those dots in the gut, the brain, the skin, the hormones, that the guts, like the seed of all of that.

So we kind of always start there and make sure that we get everything working really beautifully, because ultimately it's about getting all the systems of your body to. Speak in harmony. Right. And to like, to, to connect with each other because the traditional medical model, I think, which is what's different about functional health, is that it looks at this very of reductionist view.

It has this way of looking at the body as like, well, okay, you don't feel well. And if we take a car analogy, the car's not working, so let's just fix the tires. But what if it's not the tires? What if. Something under the fluid, right? What if it's the carburetor? What if it's the exhaust? What it, you know, so the functional approach is like, well, let's look at the whole person.

And let's see what's going on and we're not looking at the paper. We're not just looking at the labs because very often we would go to our doctors and I'm not alone in this. I've seen people who go to their doctors and say, oh, your lab works normal. You you're fine. Like off you go. But they're like, I feel terrible.

Like I can't sleep or I'm sleeping all the hours and I'm still waking up exhausted or, you know, You know, their hormones are tanking and they've got just no energy or whatever their guts in trouble and their labs are saying what you're fine. So the difference between functional medicine and the sort of traditional model is that we, we don't look at just the paper.

We don't treat the paper. We look at the individual and it's called terrain theory. You wanna modulate the terrain right. And make sure that that's optimal, because if you think about. If you've got a rose and you put a rose in the desert, what's gonna happen to the rose. The rose is never going to bloom, right?

Cuz it's not getting the right nutrients. It's not getting what it needs, the water, et cetera. But if you put it in the right environment, let's say in a beautiful greenhouse where it's getting fertilizer, nutrients, sun, water, all the things you're talking to it, you know, it will start to bloom and humans.

We're organisms exactly like that. We have to be in the right environment in order to bloom or to thrive or to flourish. So I like being able to help people modulate the environment so that it, it facilitates their thriving. That's so impressive. We're one questioning and we already have a drop the mic moment.

I love that analogy about the rose. It makes so much sense. And I think that what you shared about your journey with so much stress and burnout, and then working. From a psychological perspective, uh, practice, gratitude, meditation, practicing yoga, exercising, doing all the things, and then still feeling like you, weren't making a lot of headway then having physical issues with gut health and horrible fatigue, not being able to get up in the morning.

And it's so great that you had a roommate who was able to kind of put a mirror to your face and say, look, something needs to change. And that you went to the. And your doctor told you your labs were normal, gave you some medications, and you were saying that you felt like you had a pharmacy in your purse.

And so it's great that you were able to connect the dots and already with the background that you had with psychology and the people that you were working with in your wellness center, that was in the office. Um, you were working. To get that understanding that you needed to test your biochemistry with functional labs.

And also what you say about the difference between the medical model care versus the functional model of care helps people connect the dots to what can really help them. But you've also said that this is something that you shouldn't DIY for yourself. And you had alluded to why partially with the whole, you know, idea that sometimes when you're on your healing journey, you feel like you're moving backwards when really you're just going through a healing response.

And so can you speak a little bit more to that? Why it's not a good idea to DUI? Why your health and wellness. Yeah, completely. Um, you know, when I was trying to do it on my own, I was, I was a vegetarian, I was living on low fat yogurt and skinny blueberry muffins because I thought that was the right way to live.

And I'm living on coffee as well for energy. And I've seen very recently, I've had a client who, um, a biology teacher. Taking all the best supplements that she's aware of, you know, she's shopping from the health food store, um, taking, let's say vitamin D um, a couple other things that were that because she didn't have guidance on what was best and still eating gluten and all these other things that we know are inflammatory and can cause a lot of health conditions and experiencing things like joint pain, brain fog, you know, crappy hormones all over the, you know, in fact with a medical diagnosis.

Um, of hashing MOS and couldn't figure out like, well, why are my joints hurt? And I'm like, well, you know, when we did the hair test, we did the hair tissue, mineral analysis test. And we saw that, you know, calcium levels that were being dumped through the hair or through the roof, they were like, I was like, okay, well, your calcium's not going into your bones.

It's going into your soft tissue. And you're taking all this vitamin D but are you taking it? K2. So not understanding. So that's a really simple, basic thing that people don't get that certain supplements, you cannot take them in isolation. And that's why you need a practitioner and you don't take them forever either.

Like you might not need vitamin D forever. You might only need it in winter. And you know, like, oh, I'm just gonna get on this protocol and do it. I'm gonna do it myself. And I've had that recently, a lady got on a, a call with me, a, a virtual coffee. That's what I. When I set up to meet people to find out if they're a good fit for what I do.

And she thought, well, you're not just gonna run labs and give me supplements and tell me to go figure it out on my own. I'm like, no, that's not how I work. I said, because you're gonna need guidance across 90 days because you have to change your life. And she was going through a lot of things like divorced, et cetera, like a lot of stuff.

And she just thought it was gonna be labs supplements. I'm like, no, your life has put you into this place. You have to change everything. And I know it sounds overwhelming to think about doing. Right now, but that's why there's coaching built into what we do, the labs and the supplements and changing the food is one aspect.

But if there are other aspects of your life that require your attention, because the stressors in your life might be causing you to overeat or to eat the wrong things, you know, causing you to crave the cookies and the cakes, because what happens with stress. And this is one of my favorite things to talk about blood sugar.

When you've got that rise and that spike in cortisol, your blood sugar dips. And then the body is so desperate to get back into a balanced state, to bring the blood sugar back to a good level. And that's why sometimes people get hangry irritable, anxious, because their blood sugar has dropped because they're so stressed.

And then they start craving cookies and donuts and pizza. All the things that help bring them back into home. What, what would be homeostasis except they're because that's just the body looking for chemicals. It's looking well, what's the quickest source of sugar that I can get carbohydrates or sweets or whatever.

So it goes straight for that. And you think, oh, I have no willpower. I'm like, no, it's not your willpower. It's literally like your chemicals. You're, this is like a chemical reaction that's happening to you right now. And if we learn how to balance that, and if you learn to eat in a way that sorts that out, which is what I teach people, how to do in addition to all the labs and all those things.

So it's very, very multifaceted. And that's why there's a guide because. Trying to do this on your own will make your head hurt. Like you'll people say that it's like, oh my God, I can't figure this out. I'm like, that's why you got me. Drop me a message. That's why I'm here. Um, because I'm gonna help you do it and we're gonna do it in steps.

So it's not gonna be like, I'm gonna change my entire life today. Like, no, we've got 90 days, at least 90 days, you know, for every year you've not felt great. Give yourself a minimum of 90 days, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you're right. People wouldn't think about blood sugar. I mean, they would think about, you know, one aspect of it and isn't that the thing, right.

People are trying their best and they get information and they run deep into it and they might be running in the wrong direction, or it might work for this other person, but not for you. And not always, that's such a good point. It changes. And so having somebody who understands that, and we like to say tests don't guess then you're understanding that it's being customized.

Exactly. And so. Yeah. And you said stress. So, you know, it's true that many of us women are really stressed right now and that leads, uh, to burnout. And so I know that that's one of the core things that you work with, people who are high achievers, women who, you know, they've always been able to do the things and all of a sudden something happens, something shifts and you know, the things that they used to do stop working.

And so can you define what that is? Why is that happening? Well, I think one we've. And this is a really great question because our lives have evolved to a place where we are bombarded by notifications and demands. And, and we have no, there's no definitive line any longer between work and home. Whereas let's say our parents generation, you know, they'd go to work from eight to four or seven to three or nine to five, and then they'd leave and they'd come home and then work would be left behind because there was no cell.

There was no constantly being connected, being pulled in multiple directions. And I actually do a talk on this, on, on dopamine and, um, and the impact. Of how this, this disregulates your nervous system, how it disrupts your nervous system by having all of these notifications and all these calls. And it's called a biology of resilience because there is a BI, obviously it's a biological component and it's about your neurotransmitters and the fact that everything that we use right now, like our smartphones are not actually making.

Smarter they're making us dumber. Um, because we're so scattered, we can't focus. It's very, very difficult for us to focus. So why are we burning out? Because we're constantly being pulled in multiple directions and we don't have the ability to sit still, to focus, to concentrate when we get into a state of.

Flow. And there's a whole school of thought behind this called the, the science of positive psychology. When you get into a state of flow, that's when your energy elevates, but when you are constantly distracted and you are constantly being pulled in multiple directions, you become more anxious, more irritable, more moody.

Um, Again, you start eating all the wrong things. You don't sleep well. Um, there's, there's so much that goes on behind the scenes, like of, of just being attached to that device. Uh, and which is why it's so important for us to like disconnect to have digital detoxes, dopamine detoxes weekend detoxes go off into the forest.

Forest bath ground. Keep your phone in a separate room when you're going to sleep. Don't be picking it up in the middle of the night to check it, you know, because there is a real addiction that's causing us to be extremely burnt out because the pace of life has changed. We're no longer having those breaks built in where we have that line, like I said, between work and, and, and even social media.

It's designed to keep you on the phone all the time. So even you're, you're wasting hours scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. We're not breathing properly. We're not moving enough. So why are we burnt out multiple reasons? There are a number of behavioral components, societal environmental. Um, what else? I mean, even the time, the times that we're living in with all the.

The stuff going on with, in the world, you know, that's, the global climate has evolved to a place where things are very stressful. Things are expensive, people are worried. So there's a huge amount of burnout. I, I see, I have a nurse or an ex nurse, you know, she had to quit her job because she was really UN unwell and she was young.

Like she was not old and, you know, medical professionals are burning out a lot as well. Right. Because they're dealing with so much. So why are we burnt out all the things like literally, you know, environmental, cultural, global, um, you know, the, the psychological aspects of it, the, the things that are going on in our homes, the sandwich generation, the women who are looking after parents looking after children, looking after husbands, um, there, you know, there's a lot.

There's a lot on women's plates. And I like being able to help women, especially because one, I saw how my mother, she juggled five children, a full-time job, two older parents, you know, a husband who was sick at one point, she was very young when he was sick and in a coma and she had three babies. So. You know, it's, I, I feel it for them because they have the responsibility of cooking, caring, all the things.

I'm not saying, obviously that everybody's as traditional as my mom, cuz I, my sister's husband does all the cooking. She doesn't cook at all, but um, but you know, I think in general, women are the ones who are responsible for feeding people. So if you start feeding a family and she starts nourishing herself in the right way, Everything around her becomes better.

Her children become better at the a D D and I, I have a story about that. I have a client who was seeing me because she would blo after every single meal and she couldn't lose weight and all this great stuff. And she was starting off her day with a coffee and a baguette. This is in England, she's starting off her coffee and a baguette every morning and then was like, oh my God, I'm in pain.

Da, da, da. And then within one week of us getting her off of gluten, she lost seven pounds. Her stomach flattened. Her stomach flattened. And she said within the first month, so that was one week. She lost the weight within the first month. She said her daughter. Who was like 10 years old, who was always very sad and very moody and very irritable and cranky and couldn't focus.

She said her daughter completely changed because she obviously was cooking for the whole family and they were not eating bread anymore, not making sandwiches. And she was giving them vegetables and, you know, lean meats and, and, and, uh, you know, grassed and all that stuff. She's buying organic. And she said, her daughter completely changed.

And she said, I'm pleased about myself. , but I'm thrilled to see what's happened to my child because now she's happy. So that for me, like I get chills talking about, I literally just got chills talking about, because that's why I do what I do, cuz I'm like, that's, what's so powerful about working with women because what, when they become better, everything else around them becomes better to

yeah. Generations that's halo effect. Right.

great question. Because a lot of people don't even know that they actually are because they think, oh my God, I'm so wired. I have so much energy. Like, I'm fine. Um, and I guess I was that person too. I thought I was fine. I was going to the gym, like. For, I go for a run first thing in the morning, and then I'd go for a spin class in the afternoon for two hours, you know, before dinner or whatever.

And then I wonder why I can't get to sleep because my court has always been completely disrupted. And I see that happen over and over where women are like, okay, we have a coffee in the afternoon because we wanna get through the rest of the hour or kit cap. Usually be the other thing. It's like something sweet.

Um, and then a coffee. And then by the time dinner or bedtime comes around, they're wired. They're awake. So that's a sign that your cortisol's not doing well. Like you're not, you don't have the natural rhythm of a cortisol curve, which is what's, it's supposed to peak in the morning and then taper off in the afternoon so that you can have melatonin rising.

So when, when you are wired in the evening, that means you're melatonin stores are not where they're supposed to be, and that your cortisols elevated, which is not supposed to either. So that's probably one of your. Clues to look out for. If you are wired in the evening, your brain's whizzing around before you get to bed, you can't actually get to bed or you're waking up at three o'clock in the morning.

That's another big clue. The waking, the 3:00 AM wake up or the 2:00 AM wake up, whatever it is, that's a huge sign that there's a cortisol dysregulation pattern. And that there is that something's going on with your, and when I say hormones, by the way, I'm referring to. All hormones. So not just metabolic hormones or stress hormones.

I'm also talking about sex hormones, thyroid hormones. So metabolic hormones would be things like your leptin, your grine, your insulin, right insulin. Everybody knows it's about blood sugar. And then your stress hormones. It's adrenaline cortisol. Right. And then you've also got sex hormones, progesterone, testosterone, estrogen.

Um, and if one of your, one of those like different, uh, if we're gonna look at, think about them as like the legs of a stool, one of those legs of the stool are out of balance. Or if you think about how a stool, if one's. Falling over the rest of them are gonna fall over. And I guess that's, again, the difference between the medical model and the functional model, because they'll be like, oh, you know, you need, I don't know, let's say levothyroxine, cuz your thyroids out of whack.

We're like, well what about all the other things that are gonna be out of whack because of the hormones. Right. And what's causing the thyroid to be out whack. And a lot of people don't realize is that getting a TSH score, like just doing, when people say I've had a full thyroid panel. Usually they've just done something called just getting their TSH looked at and the TSH is actually produced in your PARY gland.

It's not a thyroid hormone. So that's something that, that normal people don't know, but, and doctors don't tell them that either. So TSH is not really a good indicator of thyroid health. Um, and if, and another very funny story, well, sad story, not funny. Um, I had a client who was told her thyroid was normal, but her TSH was.

Four. And in functional health, we want a C TSH at like a one, 1.5, maybe two. Um, so she was hypothyroid had been struggling to get pregnant. Her period had disappeared when she came. So these are all clues again, back to like, what are the signs that your body is not working? And you're burnt out your period disappearing, or you're having super heavy ones, um, things that are just not, and again, we've been told that, oh, women having heavy periods, that's normal taking three days out, having a headache.

That's normal, not. Normal common, not normal, very common, but absolutely not. Normal. Normal is when it shows up. There's no sort of DPIs before. Um, cuz sometimes people will spot for a few days. That's not a good sign. That's a sign that your progesterone is very, very low. Your estrogen's too high. So these are all little signs and symptoms or clues their clues that your body could be working better.

And that if you worked with someone. To actually figure out why it's doing what it's doing. You could fix it and you could get it to a place where you have invisible periods, where they just show up and they disappear and there's no pain and there's no headaches and there's no sore backs, sore boobs, um, no clotting, you know, wouldn't that be nice.

Um, you know, and I grew up, unfortunately, I was, I think I was 14 when I got my period and it was a mess because I had been on multiple courses of antibiotics as a young child. So my gut was completely wiped out. So I didn't, and a lot of your hormones are produced in your gut. And obviously, I didn't know that back then, so I just lived on ibuprofen.

I'd be on. 800 1600 milligrams of Motrin for years every month. Right. Uh, if I, cuz if I didn't, I'd be so sick, I'd throw up. Um, and I think there are a lot of people who think that that's okay. Like, oh, I'm just gonna have to lie in a dark room for a couple days or, oh, I'm just gonna have to take tons of painkillers every single month.

And that's not a great thing. That's a, these are our clues. When your SI your cycles, probably one of your biggest clues. Um, another sign that you might be burnt out. One of my favorites, if you're not pooping every day, twice a. Right. Peeing pooping, perspiring period, your four P's. You gotta make sure that those are all working because that's basically your body's elimination system.

And if you are not eliminating regularly, that's a big, big sign that things are. Like reci toxins are recirculating, and we don't want that because then that will lead to the brain fog that will lead to the exhaustion that will lead to the mood imbalances that will lead to, um, weight. That's difficult to shift, right?

You're not metabolically healthy if you're not. If you're not peeing pooping, perspiring. So drinking enough water is a big part of that too. Um, I could go on and on about this by the way, but I'm gonna stop. You can cut me off here. So the clues are, you're four PEs, you're peeing and pooping perspiring, your period.

That's four PEs for women. And, um, if you're waking up at three o'clock in the morning and if you're struggling to get to sleep and you're, you're just sort of like tired but wired. So I think those are some pretty simple things that you can pay attention to. Yeah, fantastic. I know I've checked all the boxes in my lifetime, um, for long period of time, we all have, so yeah.

Yeah. Your body's always talking to you and giving you clues. And like I was saying, it, it all kind of comes together, finding a person who's always asking why and not looking at one aspect of it. The person who addresses it in a more holistic matter is the one that's gonna be able to really. You people are sort of like that lobster in boiling water, you kind of like one thing leads to another.

One of the things you said is we're not even in the habitat that we're designed to be in now because of the modern day life. But if you can help people self-identify because I, I suspect a lot of people are experiencing burnout, but not really identifying with that. So can you kind of share what that looks like or what kinds of people are showing up to seek help from you?

Yeah. Well, I just mentioned, I have a biology teacher. I have. Nurse who had to retire early because she completely burnt out. Um, I had the CFO of a, a, a startup. Um, I actually had the CEO of a Unilever for, for Europe. So she worked with me. Um, so those are, and again, these are people whose hormones, like straight away.

They know like my hormones are not. Doing well, something's up with my hormones. And usually once I get them through the first sort of screening process, we see that the gut's not doing well either. Like they're not digesting food, they're not absorbing food. Right. So, cause it's one thing to be eating really great food.

But if you cannot absorb it, that's a whole other game. So nutrition is one part of the puzzle. And that's why I like saying like we have to do labs. There is no point doing any of this unless we do the lab work because we need to see. What's the integrity of your gut lining. Like, do you have the right enzymes to break down your food?

You know, do you have the right immune is mucosal barrier. Okay. Like all these things are such big things that other people don't really know because they think, well, I eat healthy and if I had a penny for every time someone said that I'd be a billionaire, like, but I eat healthy. I'm like, yeah, that's great.

But healthy for whom first question. And then like, are you digesting and absorbing any of this healthy, wonderful food that you're eating? So, and are you, you know, Is it right for you? That's, that's really the, the thing. And that's why we love to do the food sensitivity test as well. So I never run labs in isolation.

Um, I used to do that before, because like I said, I started off trained with the IFM sort of way of doing things and I work with a functional medicine doctor. Who's trained by IFM. So we would, we used to do one lab at a time. But since doing FDN and for people who don't know functional diagnostic nutrition, you have to run all the labs at the same time, because then that way you're not looking for an intruder in only one room of your house, because there's no point in just doing like, well, I've got one piece of the picture, like, well, that doesn't really help if you don't know all the other things that are impacting it, you know?

So some tests are better at picking up certain things than other tests as well. So that's why it's really nice to have. All of the pictures so that you can clinically correlate what's going on with your clients. So, um, I love running all my labs because they give me really, really clear, detailed, uh, information and insight and they give my clients amazing insight into why they've been feeling the way they've been feeling and insight that they've never had before, because blood work isn't the same thing as the functional lab work.

So, and people often wonder like, well, can this be covered on insurance? Why is it not unlike your doctor? Doesn't even know these things exist. Unfortunately.  you know, so that's why it's not covered on insurance. It's cutting edge and insurance. If you have to think about the origin of that word, it's to ensure you against if, um, when something goes wrong, right?

So you're paying into it for if you break a leg or if you get a heart attack, right. So then you can be treated, but it doesn't necessarily, it's not preventative, it's not proactive. And that's, what's so beautiful about what we do, because you can see. Before they become real problems and you can deal with them.

So that's, if you know, you're gonna ask me, what's the difference between functional health and conventional health? That would be probably the main thing. Like you're predictive. We're more proactive than being reactive. And that's what insurance is for being reactive. Yeah, you touched upon it, but can you share with the listeners what the difference, like, why do doctors not know about this?

Like why is it not on their radar? Well, they're not trained in nutrition for a start. Right. Um, and they're looking for disease, right? They're looking for full blown disease. Something that they can code. You know, so they can create an insurance code to, and then they can match a prescription to it as well.

So, and you have to remember that, you know, hospitals and things are funded, um, hospitals, universities, they're funded by pharmaceuticals, right? So pharmaceutical companies have a vested interest in getting doctors to prescribe their. Products. So that's why doctors don't know about being proactive because they know how to treat symptoms.

Um, and that's what they do. They help you manage symptoms, but they don't necessarily help you heal or reverse things. Now again, if you know, if I've broken a leg, I'm not gonna go see a functional medicine practitioner.  right. I'm gonna go to an ER and get a scan straight away. And that's what they're there for, for it's like, that's what they're for emergency medicine, right?

If you need open heart surgery, don't go to your functional medicine practitioner. You're gonna go to a surgeon, but if you need chronic lifestyle conditions being reversed and to be addressed, and for someone to spend time with you more than 10 minutes, You can see your functional medicine person, because that's what we're here for.

We're here to help you change your lifestyle. Whereas doctors will save their life. The functional medicine person will help you change your life. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. If something breaks or something needs immediate attention, mm-hmm . But if they say here's the medication and it's going to be for life, that's your cue to look for someone like you.

So, um, can you help the listeners? Walk through what it feels like to work with you, what makes how you work different? Oh, that's a good question. Well, I've been told by some of my clients that they said, I don't treat them like a gut on legs, which I thought was hilarious.  like, I treat you, treat us like we're real people and we're not just guts on legs.

Um, and that I really care and I do give a lot of time. So I've got like a ver created an ecosystem actually. So. We have got like the one to ones. I've got the group program. And then there's also like a hybrid version of that, where you have one to ones alongside the group. So you have a touchpoint, every single.

Where you see me physically, then you also have audio video hypnosis, all the cool things to help you reprogram your mindset. In addition to the diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction, and supplements. That's part of the functional diagnostic framework. So, and the stress, reduction's a big part of it because I think people don't necessarily understand either that stress is not just what you perceive and think about, but also your hidden stressors.

You know, we were talking about that the biochemical aspects of stress is really important to pay attention to. And that's why we go looking for them because we, someone could say, well, I don't feel stressed. I'm like, yeah. But, and I had, I actually had a manager who was like this. She said, well, I've never gotten stressed, but she was overweight and she was smoking.

So I'm like, well,  um, you might not feel stressed, but you are behaving in a way and you there's obviously some stress going on here. And of course the nicotine is definitely a stressor cuz it's toxic and tar. So you're putting stressors on your body and obviously that's gonna do things and change your biochemistry in a way that's obviously not beneficial, right?

So looking for internal stressors alongside the external stressors, um, as well as the psychological stressors and, you know, we call it the biochemical, the psycho psycho, emotional, and then the environmental, those three, those are like the three areas of stress that we will focus on reducing. So food could be part of that because that's, you know, part of your biochemical and it's also external.

Um, but environmental could be things like, are you living in a toxic. Like, is there mold, you know? Um, and so many people present with mold illness and don't realize, and they've been told like, oh, you've just got CBO. You've just got this. Or it's just headaches or it's, you know, or it's just anxiety. I'm like, well, what's causing the anxiety, what's causing the headaches.

And then you start digging and you realize, wait, it's these things. And then you can reverse. The anxiety or the headaches and you don't have to be stuck on meds. So, you know, um, that's what I love what I do because it's, it's literally detective work. You're like, well, you know, you might have anxiety and that the person next to you might have anxiety, but it, it could be for two totally different reasons, which is why the treatment protocol has got to differ.

Like you can't just blanket treat everybody for anxiety with benzos or with talking therapy. What if it's the fact that they're living in a home that is CRE uh, one, maybe it's a toxic place. Like they've. A lot of stress at home or two they're breathing in air. That's pretty toxic as well and disrupting their neurochemicals and biochemistry.

So there's tons of reason the drivers behind any condition. So we say, you know, the, um, who is presenting is the most important thing, cuz it depends your treatment protocol is gonna depend on who is in front of you and what's going on in. Oh, yes, absolutely. And I love your approach and your heart because it's, you're gonna hold the person's hand through it.

I know that this sounds like a lot, and there are a lot of moving parts and there are, but you have the best of the mind connection, the psychology and all of that aspect of it, managing stress on the emotional level. And also you bring the biochemistry in it. And I think that just seeing all of. It's in, in its entirety and also being present and holding that person's hand because it's true.

We only get 10 minutes in the doctor's office because it is a business. I mean, we are all businesses, but it's, um, they've gotta meet quotas and those kinds of things. So the medical model has, you know, its zone of genius and acute care. But then with, um, those of you, I mean, the women that you're working with, they're busy, they're high achievers.

They don't have time to dig deep into this stuff, but. High achiever too. And you're always curious and open minded. So you're able to be that other part, that partner, to be able to help them through their healing journey in a way that's unique to them. So that's really amazing. And, um, I know that now a lot of people want to find out how to connect with you to find out more.

So how can people reach you, Ray? Thank you. So you can find me on, well, hyphen works.co. And I would love if people took my burnout assessment, it's called like, you know, find out how crispy you are. And obviously there are some tips on, you know, wherever you score on that, it's a burnout meter, wherever you score on it, it will give you guidance on what you need to do in order to change that.

So, um, so while dash works dot C. Perfect. And I'll put that into just show notes and it was so fun talking to you. You're just a wealth of information and it's thanks. Really. I always learn something when I listen to you talk, so thank you so much. I appreciate you. I appreciate you too. Thank you for saying that.

I really love doing this and I love what you're doing, so please keep doing it. We need more. Thank you. Wasn't that a fun interview. It, uh, Ray is so full of knowledge and she has so much information to share. That makes my part easy because, um, I just get to ask one question and a lot of really great pearls of wisdom come out and you can tell that she's super passionate about helping women get out from burnout and it's so needed right now.

She was mentioning a lot of the reasons why we are all experiencing burnout, not just women. Especially women who are taking care of other people and doing all the things, um, they're working, they're probably in the sandwich generation, caring for their aging parents and their kids, and super busy. And we're in this weird stage right now, worldwide.

And so, so many reasons for burnout in particular, that we are. Bombarded with technology. We are not getting out in nature. We're not staying hydrated. We're not moving enough or over moving or, you know, just a lot of chronic stressors, the technology with the constant notifications and not having the ability to take a pause and.

So, so many reasons why we're in a state of burnout. And also she talks about the psychological aspect of stress, but then there's also the physiological aspect, your biochemistry. So that comes from, um, imbalances in hormones, your immune system digestion. Uh, it doesn't matter what you. Eat like, uh, Ray was saying, it's really what you, you can absorb and use as well.

And that the medical model, they are there to save lives. And so there's definitely a need for the medical model of care, but they're not nutritionist. I've read somewhere statistic of, uh, they have less than 20 hours of nutrition, if at all in four years of medical school. And it's. And so they are not nutritionists and nutrition is such a powerful way of building health and wellness.

And so it's definitely a gap in medicine. So it's functional medicine, really bridges a gap in, um, our medical care system. And that's where functional practitioners like Ray come in. And one of the other things that she points out is that it's really. Dangerous to DIY your way through health and wellness.

Um, especially if it's an acute chronic health condition, because there are so many moving parts. As you pointed out with the hormones, immune digestion detox, all of those systems need to be checked because there's a weak link somewhere in that. Group of different, um, functions that your body is trying to accomplish.

And it's probably more than one. And as she said in her own healing journey, one of the game changers was she was doing all the things in terms of managing her emotional wellbeing, but it wasn't until she fixed her biochemistry. Through looking at functional labs, that she was really able to make a difference.

And so I know one of the things that she likes to say is that when you fix your biochemistry, the brain follows. And so it definitely, there is something about the gut brain axis that we're finding that when your gut is not healthy, then it does cause anxiety and a bunch of emotional issues. And so it Def it definitely does work in your favor.

Help your gut heal your hormones and all the rest of it, blood sugar balancing. Um, I love what she says about the peas, the four P's of burnout. There are a lot of different things that she listed, but then in terms of detoxification, poop, period, perspiring and peeing, if those things are not regular, then, um, Something to look at and definitely to address.

And I love that. She says that you can't meditate and gratitude your way to health and wellness. And so it's really a comprehensive approach to addressing that as well as your biochemistry. I also love that. She says another reason why it's not optimal to DIY your health and wellness because. You want to be able to get that accountability.

Somebody who understands how the healing journey works. It's not a straight line, it's an up and down sometimes it's, you know, uh, three steps or two steps back. And so you wanna make sure that you have somebody there to guide you and help you be able to stay the course and know that you're doing the right thing.

And also always use the lab work to test, not guess and make sure that you're actually seeing progress. And so I encourage you to visit her website. well-works.co she's about to launch a group program around the time of the launch of this podcast episode. So please go visit her there and also take her burnout quiz.

See where you are, how crispy are you in your level of burnout. And that would be something that would be a great starting point to understand. Where you are. And maybe if it's a good idea to sign up and book a call with Ray, or maybe sign up for her group program. So I hope this is super helpful, and I hope that you take action on some of the great advice that Ray shared and until then lighten up lady.