The Q&A Files
The Q&A Files drops A Wellness Explosion
💥 BOOM! Attention Wellness Warriors. The game changer you have been waiting for is finally here. Say hello to “The Q&A Files,” where wellness meets revolution and your questions lead to new discoveries. Spearheaded by Trisha Jamison, your host, a Board Certified Functional Nutritionist. Cohost Dr. Jeff Jamison, a Board Certified Family Physician, and featured guest, Tony Overbay, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. This podcast blends three diverse perspectives to tackle your questions on health, nutrition, medicine, mental wellness, and relationships. Dive into a world of expert insights and actionable advice, all sparked by your curiosity. Tune in, ignite your wellness journey, and join the Wellness Warrior community.
The Q&A Files
42. The Power of Lifestyle Choices and Epigenetics, Part 1: With Lori Finlay, M.S.N., NP
Ever wondered how a personal health crisis can redefine your professional path? Lori Finley, a master's level nurse practitioner turned functional medicine specialist, joins us on the Q&A Files, as she shares her transformative journey from the high-pressure environment of critical care nursing to the holistic embrace of functional medicine. Discover Lori's motivation behind her empowering book, "Create the Vitality You Crave," as she recounts her own struggles with health issues that traditional Western medicine couldn't resolve. From genetic predispositions to environmental toxins, Lori's story is a testament to the power of taking control of one's health amidst the influence of big pharma and big food industries.
Lori's candid discussion of her health battles, including a low white blood cell count, spinal pain, and mysterious fainting episodes, reveals some gaps in conventional medical approaches. She highlights how functional medicine practitioners attempt to bridge these gaps by addressing the interconnectedness of genetics, environment, and emotional well-being. The conversation expands to the critical role of nutrition in health management, shedding light on how a holistic approach can significantly enhance patient care. As we explore the concept of epigenetics, you'll learn about the profound impact of lifestyle choices on gene expression and how personal empowerment lies within our grasp.
Step into the world of biohacking and wellness, where practical strategies for maintaining hormonal balance and vitality come to life. Lori provides actionable insights into detoxifying practices, from reading labels to utilizing infrared saunas, and emphasizes the importance of proactive health management. The episode concludes with a call to action, encouraging listeners to become their own health advocates by making informed choices that foster longevity and well-being. Join us for an inspiring episode filled with valuable knowledge and motivation to reclaim your health and vitality.
Below you will find Lori’s website information and her book from Amazon.
http://www.lorifinlay.com/
https://a.co/d/7bjUFwQ
Contact us at trishajamisoncoaching@gmail.com
Hello and welcome to the Q&A file, the ultimate health and wellness playground. I'm your host, tricia Jamieson, a board-certified functional nutritionist and lifestyle practitioner, ready to lead you through a world of health discoveries. Here we dive into a tapestry of disease prevention, to nutrition, exercise, mental health and building strong relationships, all spiced with diverse perspectives. It's not just a podcast, it's a celebration of health, packed with insights and a twist of fun. Welcome aboard the Q&A Files, where your questions ignite our vibrant discussions and lead to a brighter you. So welcome back, wellness warriors, to the Q&A Files. I'm Tricia Jamieson, your host, a functional nutritionist and lifestyle practitioner and a life and relationship coach, and with me today is my wonderful co-host, dr Jeff Jamieson, a board-certified family physician. Hello, hello, I'm here and we have a great show in store for you. Today.
Speaker 1:We have a fantastic guest joining us the amazing Lori Finley. She is a colleague and a friend of mine. Lori is a master prepared nurse with an impressive career, spending over 40 years. She has evolved from her early days as a registered nurse to advanced roles as a clinical nurse, specialist and nurse practitioner Specializing in functional medicine. Lori utilizes innovative tools like the Dutch hormone test and the DNA testing to help women balance their hormones and reclaim their vitality. Lori is also the author of Create the Vitality you Crave, a powerful guide encouraging women to take control of their health in a world where big pharma, big medicine and big food can lead us down the wrong path. So if you're ready to boost your health and maybe even your energy levels, stay tuned. We'll dive into epigenetics, biohacking, hormone health and all the juicy details about achieving holistic vitality. Lori, we are so excited to have you here with us today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, welcome.
Speaker 3:Thank you, I'm so thrilled to be with you. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Okay. So, lori, your book Create the Vitality you Crave carries a powerful message for women. What motivated you to write it, and how has your personal journey shaped the insights you share in the book?
Speaker 3:Thanks for asking. That's a great question. First of all, I spent so many years in critical care. I fell in love with crisis management medicine and heart transplantation and worked in cardiology for a long time. It wasn't until my mid thirties when I really got frustrated with the what I call like the Roto-Rooter procedures the crazy cycle of crisis management medicine, that vicious cycle that people go through and realizing that this isn't working and it was.
Speaker 3:Also, I'm traveling all over the country teaching about heart disease and all of that and my father passed away very suddenly with a massive heart attack and I was like I can't do this anymore, right? So God and I had a conversation and said I need to spend the rest of my life in wellness, teaching people how to get well. And so I did make some dramatic changes at the VA medical center where I was working in cardiology and created a big risk reduction program that went nationwide and things like this. But it wasn't until my early 40s that I left Western medicine and knew that I wanted to again spend the rest of my life in wellness. Well, as things go and God has a humor right Now earn your third master's degree called heal your own body, and learn functional medicine Because I was very, very sick, because personally, I've got some really wicked genes. My birth mother died at the age of 25. I was two years old. In one week, my father died.
Speaker 1:I read that that's terrible.
Speaker 3:It was. My father died at the age of 61. I had all kinds of cardiovascular disease and strokes and aneurysm, heart attacks and breast cancer and ovarian cancer and osteopenia and osteoporosis and all of this and multiple. It was like I don't have great genes on my side. So I started studying. Well, I started healing my own body, or trying to. I hated biochemistry and all of a sudden it was like if you want to heal your body, you better master this. And so I got certified in natural hormone therapy with a naturopath and really learning about functional medicine and cell receptor sensitivity and all of these things that impact our hormones and can restore our vitality.
Speaker 3:And Western medicine told me it was all in my head. I literally had a provider that said to me and this was a colleague, this was a colleague he literally put his hand on my knee and said quote. Or asked how often, how many hours a day, do you spend studying your illness on the internet? Unquote, it was just like wow. And then he said why don't you just leave all of your healthcare up to me? That was you know. And two days later he tried to prescribe hormones based on false positive lab data. And again, I'm already certified. Like I knew these were false positive lab data, so I fired him. But in that moment that he has hand on my knee saying this, I'm like, if this is how I'm being treated, how are my girlfriends being treated? Like I can speak the lingo, I know physiology, I know pathophysiology and for your listeners that means the disease process. I, like I know all. I know pathophysiology and for your listeners that means the disease process. I know all this and I'm being treated like this. How are my girlfriends being treated?
Speaker 3:And it was the same, exactly. So it was a very, very long healing journey that I had to go on. I had to find functional health providers that would help me get to the root cause, which for me was a significant DNA variation, which is why my mother passed away at 25. Some significant environmental toxins that I had no idea was being exposed to for years. It took them 15 years to find the black mold toxicity, right. Heavy metal toxicity, epstein-barr, all these things going on that were shutting down my mitochondrial. I've got some air quotes going on here. Mitochondrial dysfunction In Western medicine they just slap you with a title called chronic fatigue syndrome, right. It was like I wouldn't own that title. I never used that title. I didn't use that title until years after I'd restored my vitality and I'm like, okay, people can at least relate to that. They don't know what mitochondrial dysfunction is, but I knew and I was going to get to the root of it and heal it.
Speaker 2:In Western medicine we use chronic fatigue syndrome as a wastebasket term.
Speaker 3:In other words.
Speaker 2:We don't know what else is going on, so we'll call it this.
Speaker 3:And I don't have the time or the energy or the resources to dig in and find out what's causing this and don't have epigenetic tools in my toolkit. So I'm just going to label you and diagnose you with CFS or chronic fatigue syndrome and send you out the door. They do the same thing with fibromyalgia and many, many other things and anxiety and depression. Let's not get to the source of this, which is typically hormonal imbalance or microbiome and gut issues, and they just send you out the door with another prescription. Exactly that's why I was motivated to write the book. Like I've completely restored my vitality At 64, I'm way healthier than I was at 44. I just did a VO2 max test, which for your listeners means testing your cardiovascular resistance or your cardiovascular capacity. And you know, back then, when I was so sick, I'd have to sleep for two hours to have two hours of productivity, and sleep for two hours for two hours of productivity. I had to choose between going to church and staying for the whole church service or making dinner for my family. I had to choose. And now I've got the cardiovascular endurance. For a 60-year-old, no, it was superior, the top category superior. For a 40-year-old excellent and for a 30-year-old great oh, that's fantastic, excellent, and for a 30-year-old great and to be able to turn around my health from 20 years ago I had osteopenia. Now I'm in the 95th percentile for bone health. So I want women to understand we can heal our bodies.
Speaker 3:I was in severe premature menopause like no hormones flatlines, adrenal, you know, cortisol levels flatline that they had to give me Cortef because my body wasn't making any. And what's Cortef? Cortef is a bioidentical cortisol, you know prescription right that they will give you to give your body some cortisol, so you've got any energy. So it's like when you're really desperate, right, I mean, I was really really sick and really desperate. So to be able to come that full circle 20 years later and have this much vitality and energy, healthier than I've been in decades, like probably 30 years not just 20, but 30 years, hormones are in better shape than they were in my twenties and I want women to understand and I'm hoping that I can catch women in their 20s and 30s, before they even get to their 40s and 50s, and are perimenopausal. Like this is what's happening when you're in aggressive, young energy hunter mode, masculine energy, whatever you want to call it. Like this is what it's doing to your hormones and your adrenals and this is what it could doing to your hormones and your adrenals and this is what it could lead to down the road.
Speaker 3:And we've got tools now in functional medicine that we can predict. You know the risk of breast cancer in your twenties. It's not a mammogram at 40, which causes breast cancer. You know which can lead to and put you at higher risk for no, it's things that we can see now. So I want women to understand. This is what epigenetics means. Md Anderson Cancer Center said back in 2008,. Like this is old news. Do you think we've heard about this on the news? No, but MD Anderson Cancer Center said that only 5% to 10% of disease is caused by bad genes.
Speaker 2:Right and the rest of disease is caused by bad genes Right and the rest of it is caused by environmental factors.
Speaker 3:The rest is caused by epigenetic factors, right, Like what we're eating, what we're drinking and the air we breathe and the people we hang out with. And according to Dr Bruce Lipton, the godfather of epigenetics, it also means the thoughts we're thinking, right?
Speaker 2:Fascinating.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:This is very cool for me because, you know, in standard Western medicine there is none of this expressed and we don't have a clue of what this is about, nor do we know how to handle it.
Speaker 1:And it's so nice because Dr Jeff is so much more open than you know.
Speaker 2:everybody doesn't needa prescription and everybody doesn't need. You know, they need to change things on their own and are they willing to do it? And a handful of people are willing to make those changes and then the rest of them they don't, and so it's trying to reach those that want to, and that's, I think, one of the main reasons we are here together today is we want to reach those people who want to make changes and who are ready to see different opportunities than what is normally provided in Western medicine.
Speaker 1:Exactly Well, it took you some time to make that switch. Yes, and annoying wise.
Speaker 2:Thank you for reminding me of that. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Well, it did. I mean, that's not how you were trained, you didn't have nutrition classes. You didn't have a lot of the modalities that you know. I've been able to open some doors for you that you've been able to kind of take a look at it.
Speaker 2:And that's really been helpful. You know, especially when it comes to hormones, it's really changed the way I practice, you know, in the last five years. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:Well you know. So I really applaud you for that. And fortunately there's other providers out there, like you right, that are willing to get some flack initially. Get some flack because they're fighting the system and you know some of them might lose their jobs, et cetera. I mean, I wasn't even trained as a nurse practitioner or in any of my nursing, and we had way more nutrition education than a physician, but I didn't even understand all of this. Coming out as an NP, I had to do advanced training in functional medicine to really get this.
Speaker 3:And honestly, I think that one of the best credentials I have, if you will. Yes, I've got a lot of credentials, but I think one of the most important is that I've had to do this healing work myself and I know what it takes and I can relate to people right.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Definitely.
Speaker 2:I'd love to hear more of your story maybe at another time, but I'd love to hear more of that story and how you went from where you were at age 44 to now where you are at age what? 62,? You said 64. 64. So that's just an amazing journey that I'd like to hear more about.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well no, it's fascinating hear more about yeah Well, no, it's fascinating. If someone were to read what I went through and some of that I do write in my book you're like goodness, was she a hypochondriac? Or what? Like all this stuff going on? In fact, my stepson, my former stepson, said Lori is the healthiest sickest person we know, or the sickest healthiest person we know. Right, I was doing all of these really, really good things, yet my white count was down to 2.8. And my best friend that was going through chemo was like, okay, chemo girl, like hers, was 2.8 and she was on chemo. It's like what's going on?
Speaker 3:I don't know, or you know, I happened to have just in my mid thirties. I fell down some steps like on my butt right Not headfirst tumble over, but you know, boom, boom, boom, boom on my butt and had a what they call it compression herniation of you know, up here in my neck, c7, t1. Well, I had horrific issues with that and pain all day, every day, and I saw a chiropractor two or three times a week but nothing was helping. So I literally wore an ice pack under my lab coat, stethoscope, lab coat, ice pack right Every day at work, seeing patients and living on ibuprofen. Because they don't tell you when you go to school as a nurse practitioner that ibuprofen is going to cause leaky gut syndrome and they don't tell you anything about leaky brain syndrome either, that the two are connected. So I was having all kinds of gut issues and issues with my autonomic nervous system and blacking out, all kinds of things going on that Western medicine couldn't figure out. So it was this long, long journey. It was just like just keep pulling this string. And what is causing all this? Right? Well, I'd never done a DNA test to find out that, oh, you might want to avoid gluten and dairy. Well, that was causing half the leaky gut issues, right. But as soon as I got my spine fixed and got to see a really good provider, like okay, finally the pain went away and I got corrected.
Speaker 3:But it was those things that Western medicine didn't have a clue. Or you know even the syncopal episodes for your listeners, like spontaneous fainting episodes. I'd have a three to five second warning, and initially it was just every two or three years and then it was a couple of times in one weekend and my ex started CPR, like what is going on? We have a daughter that gives up on occasion. But I mean, western medicine was like, well, you need to have a pacemaker. Well, no, I didn't need a pacemaker. I did all these fancy cardiac tests. There was nothing wrong with my heart. It was my neck that I injured when I was 35. Right, so it was like all of these things that again we get these ologies or ologists in medicine.
Speaker 3:I like to teach people about what I call this tree in functional medicine. You know, if you look at the leaves of the tree in Western medicine, all these leaves are the different specialties. We've got a gynecologist and a rheumatologist and a you know endocrinologist and a psychiatrist and a cardiologist, all of these ologists, right, and internists like Jeff, but all of these ologists and nobody's talking to each other. How could your brain be connected to your gut, right? How could your depression be connected to your gut or your hormones? Western medicine can't put that together.
Speaker 3:And as you start coming down the trunk of the tree, you know you start looking at is there an imbalance at acid-base imbalance or hormonal imbalance or neurotransmitter imbalance? Then you start getting down to the roots. It's like, oh wow, are there genetic variations? Are you know they call them SNPs? Are there environmental issues or toxicities? Are there relational issues or adverse child events? Right, that may be contributing to what's going on physiologically, that emotionally, mentally and spiritually these things are impacting our physiology. And that's what I love about functional medicine. It's like let's really figure out what's going on. And sometimes if we ask people like, what do you think is making you sick, they can often tell us.
Speaker 2:Well, I can tell that. I'm sorry, Tricia, let me just real quick. Until Tricia really opened my eyes to some of the nutrition things that she learned through her work, I mean, we got really no nutrition training in our entire medical training, whether it be in medical school residency, what have you and it's still that way. There's still nothing. And that's something that I've just really appreciated how Tricia has given me so much more to work with that I can work with my patients on, and she hers, of course, too, but it's an amazing amount of a wealth of knowledge that is just sitting out there for people to use if they just will.
Speaker 3:If they just will is exactly. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, this actually goes right into my next question, so I appreciate that. Thank you, jeff. Yeah, and thank you for your comments here, lori. So you've been quite vocal about how big pharma, big medicine and big food influence our health. What do you think women really need to understand about these influences and what can we do to take back control?
Speaker 3:Are you ready?
Speaker 1:Here we are, we're sitting down, take back control.
Speaker 2:Are you ready? Here we are.
Speaker 3:We're sitting down, okay. Well, like Jeff, right, I've been wined and dined by big pharma, right, wined and dined fancy, fancy dinners, trips, the bagels, the sandwiches, the lunches, the dinners, the pizzas.
Speaker 1:The circuses.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, like all kinds of things by big pharma, right.
Speaker 2:I wish they still did that.
Speaker 3:And as a brand new clinical nurse specialist and the nurse practitioner was like wow, so these are the perks of getting your graduate degree right, and literally they were the ones training us and teaching us about their product. And it go kind of like changing even how you read the clinical study to be in their favor and we should prescribe their drug, right. So I've gone through all of that, right, the whole big pharma. But you know, the more I've studied and even the more I've studied about big medicine and big pharma, you know, and the coming back to my experience at the VA medical center, right, I have such incredible love and reverence for our veterans and we had to work like dogs and jump hoops to try and get them the prescriptions that they really needed right, like battling with the government and big pharma and big medicine and all this to try and make a difference.
Speaker 3:And then there's big food, right, and I remember hearing a few years ago of a really, really impactful interview with a gentleman that had a PhD in psychology and he was a consultant in the big food industry. Right, so he would go into companies and let them know what they needed to do to their products so that they would sell more products. In other words, what excitotoxins do you need to put in your products so that we would all become addicted to your product, right? So he couldn't say-.
Speaker 2:Such a real thing.
Speaker 3:He couldn't say any, of course, names, because he said if I give any names I'll be put behind bars right For life.
Speaker 2:But he's you have a non-disclosure agreement, so it just would go crazy, right. Disclosure agreements would go crazy, right?
Speaker 3:So he said, but I will say this he said it was very, very impactful one day as I came out of a board meeting of this big, big company that makes sports bars. So he wouldn't go into more specifics, but he says he came out of that meeting and the CEO said to him, quote the best thing that we ever did was take the money out of the inside of the bar and put it into the packaging.
Speaker 2:That scares me.
Speaker 3:What that scares me too, oh my gosh. And we have not been trained to read packages. So my message to women first of all is that we have no idea unless you start understanding and this is why I write it in my book and so passionate about this unless we understand that our risk of hormone-related cancers breast, ovarian, uterine, cervical, right hormone-related cancers, including prostate, for men, Thyroid.
Speaker 3:And thyroid. Yes, is directly linked to poor hormone metabolism and all of these toxins that they put into our food, they put into our personal care products, that they put into our cleaning products right? All of these toxins are gumming up our liver and our hormone metabolism, sending us down this trajectory for hormone-related cancers. And there are ways that we can track it and measure it. I've seen women, including myself, in 90 days, completely change the trajectory by implementing dietary changes or by adding a simple supplement, right? So if you can't do it with your diet and or if you've got a genetic variation, like I do, that you need extra support. Well then, like, find that out and take control of your health. And and until we start reading labels, whether it's our food or our cleaning products or our personal care products, we will be sitting ducks and we don't need to be.
Speaker 1:And we have to be our own advocate, because no one is going to care for us like we will. And it's just we think sometimes our government's going to take care of us. No, absolutely not. And the thing that I find fascinating. There's so many products and chemicals that they use that is allowed in the United States that is banned in other countries. That just makes me crazy.
Speaker 3:Right, right, even our lighting and our light bulbs, right, what they are doing to us and EMF electromagnetic frequency and I talk a lot about that in my book as well, but I mean the government just outlawed they just outlawed the safest light bulbs for us. Like that's crazy, right, Like what's going on in our world. People have no idea that electromagnetic frequencies are in many ways is a silent killer, like cigarette smoking was, or women don't know. In fact, I've been reading there are so many experts out there that are my mentors. One of them is the physician and author of the book called Dark Calories. Right, and it's all about the dirty eight oils, the hateful eight, she calls them, and you know she goes into all this fancy biochemistry that goes over my head. It's really profound in the first chapter, but she's the author.
Speaker 3:You know what? I can't remember right this minute, I apologize, but it's called Dark Calories. But she summarizes in the end of the first chapter like here's the hateful eight oils. And then she says here's an example when you go out and buy you know anywhere you go, any restaurant, fast food, and you have French fries, right, the oils that they're cooked in and the oxidative damage, the reactive oxygen species and oxidative damage and the stress that's caused to your body by one French fry is equivalent to you smoking one cigarette.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's fascinating.
Speaker 3:That's fascinating, Like there's so much we don't know right that the government isn't teaching us, isn't telling us, and we as consumers need to be aware. We need to be studying and reading labels and listening to experts to know that. Wait a minute, I am not turning my health over to the FDA.
Speaker 2:Yeah Right, definitely not. You know, that goes for in so many ways too. I mean, even even when we talk about Western medicine things, the FDA has had so many things wrong. It's like the whole COVID vaccine debacle. To me that has been such a big problem, because the darn thing doesn't work and there's so many parts of it that are harmful, and I've seen more people be sick because of the vaccine than are helped by it by a great amount. I mean, this is just one example of how the FDA isn't protecting us. They're protecting their pocketbook, and that's really it.
Speaker 3:Right, and I mean I experienced this when I was in cardiology, you know, back in the eighties, right, they come out with the pyramid right With on the bottom is carbohydrates and up the top is healthy fats.
Speaker 3:There's been clear studies like published in the British medical journal right and the Lancet and things like this, and they compared high carb versus high fat and the mortality and morbidity of a high carb diet is unbelievable. And if you just look at the trends in our nation since the 80s and look at the obesity or diabesity, right, the diabetes and obesity and the Alzheimer's and dementia and the heart disease and the cancers that have just exploded since the American Heart Association implemented that but would they recall that when these studies came out? Of course not. Or the pink campaign that focuses on breast cancer awareness and I'm like, wait, why don't we shift that to breast health awareness and let women know that? Really, the women out there don't know that the you know the FDA, the FDA and the NIH have actually paid millions of dollars to a physician to help him come up with a new screening tool because of the adverse events that mammograms cause. But mammograms are still considered the quote standard of care. So when you're 40, you should go get a mammogram.
Speaker 2:And it's still a thing where there are different ways to look at, you know, breast imaging and so on. The hard part is that there aren't very good methods. There just aren't. I mean even the ultrasound techniques, they're limited. The thermographic techniques that are, they're limited, and so you know there aren't really good thermographic techniques, they're limited, and so there aren't really good things until it's almost too late. And so prevention is the key.
Speaker 3:Right, and that's why I have been shouting from the rooftops and blowing my trumpet, if you will, and I sorry to interrupt, by the way, that's why I've been shouting from the rooftops about the Dutch test, dry urine testing for comprehensive hormones.
Speaker 3:Insurance doesn't pay for it, of course insurance doesn't pay for it, but out of my pocket I want to know what my hormone metabolism is Like. If this is the predictor and I've got more clinical studies, you know you can go to PubMed and you can start researching about. You know this is a fancy two hydroxylation, 16 hydroxylation and four hydroxylation. To your listeners, that means there's one really good, healthy pathway for estrogen metabolism and there's two dirty pathways and one of them literally like there's all these clinical studies that show that the four hydroxylation pathway damages DNA and they've done clinical studies that show that our cleaning products and our personal care products are what's causing this uptick in the 16 and 400 oxalation, the dirty hormone metabolisms. But there are things that we can do, like uptick on our cruciferous vegetables, like get rid of the toxins and then increase your cruciferous vegetables and all of your greens. Like that will make a difference Broccoli and cauliflower.
Speaker 3:Broccoli and cauliflower and kale and cabbage. Right, and for your listeners, like every time someone has a drink of alcohol, it lowers their glutathione levels and glutathione is critically important. It's the longevity molecule, the super longevity molecule, but it's also the most important molecule for detoxification. So if we're using up our glutathione on a glass of wine every night, we don't have that glutathione available to get rid of all those dirty estrogens. It's like we get to choose and we've got that.
Speaker 3:You know we can take control of those kinds of things, but Western medicine is not teaching that and they're just saying go get a mammogram, when, as you've said, jeff, a mammogram is not a screening tool. It is you know. So the best thing I think that we can do is very, very preventative and go to the very, very root cause, which is in your 20s and 30s. You can see what does my hormone metabolism look like. In fact, dr Tara Scott has said and for your listeners, she is a functional medicine providers and is an expert in hormones, and she literally says that the standard of care should be a Dutch hormone test at 25 and 35 and 45 and 55, so that women know okay, this is what my body typically does and how can I shift this?
Speaker 1:Lori, you mentioned that only 5% of disease is caused by bad genes.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:With the other 95% influenced by epigenetics. Can you explain epigenetics, what epigenetics is and why it's so important to our listeners to grasp?
Speaker 3:important to our listeners to grasp. Sure, you know, the subtitle of my book is Epigenetics 101, right To unlock your healing power, and people don't understand that. So you know, in my book I don't talk about well, there might be a handful of genes that I talk about, or SNPs, variations in genes that I talk about but mostly everything I talk about is how can you improve the overall function of your genes? Because we have the capacity with epigenetics and I'll explain it in a minute to turn our bad genes off and turn good genes on, or vice versa. I'm a musician and-.
Speaker 1:She sang with Gladys Knight. She has sung with Gladys Knight, oh God's so cool.
Speaker 3:I'm a flautist, I'm a choir director, I mean, I love music. So I like to use a big black grand piano as analogy. Right, like the wires on the piano remind me of our genes. Like they're there or they could be missing, like I am missing an entire gene. It's like the wire isn't there. So if I were to press that note, nothing would happen. So I have to work around that for my health. Again, it's why my mother died so young. But with that said so there's the wiring, and then there's the keyboard right and there's pedals right, and we don't know how that piano is going to express itself. Piano is going to express itself. Will Bach or Billy Joel or Beethoven or Beyonce come out of that piano? We don't know. It takes an external influence called a pianist to sit down and play those keys and work those pedals. Right Now you could have a flat key, so the note will be like ooh, that's a little flat.
Speaker 3:To me that's like one of our genes that are under-functioning. One of the enzymes isn't working, and so that enzyme might be functioning at about 60% or 30% capacity, or it could be a little sharp. You could be over-methylating, which is just as bad almost for your health as under-methylating. So we need to pay attention to those things. But what it all means when it comes to epigenetics is that we get to control again our diet, our lifestyle, how much stress that we're putting under our body If we do meditation and yoga and if we do movement every day, or if we hydrate, and if we're hydrating on a regular basis. Are we hydrating with clean water or really dirty water? Are we surrounding ourselves with toxic people or do we have a lot of toxic thoughts?
Speaker 3:According to Dr Bruce Lipton, who's the PhD godfather of epigenetics, he literally said our thoughts like we might need to repeat this our thoughts change our biochemistry, change the biochemistry of our blood, which changes the effect on our cells right, all the way down to the DNA. Candice Pert Dr Candice Pert, you know, who started Body Mind Medicine and worked for NIH and Washington University, et cetera Brilliant, brilliant woman. She discovered the opiate receptors, like brilliant, and she was the one that could actually, you know, stated that our emotions can get locked into our DNA and change the impact of our DNA right and the expression of our DNA. So it's like look, this is a big deal. So when I say we need to pay attention to adverse child events or our relationships or our stinking thinking, right different situations and respond how we deal with stress, the sleep that we get.
Speaker 1:I mean, it allows us so much more than what we've been previously thinking in the past, and that is oh, these are your genes, you know. Too bad for you?
Speaker 3:No, you're just sitting to take control Now we have to be a victim, you know, and that's the payoff for some people, right Like they don't want to take responsibility. So you know, that's the payoff of victimhood, but we get, we get to choose. And even if we get of victimhood, but we get to choose. And even if we're stuck in rotten medical system with a copay and a 15-minute dock-in-the-box experience, we can still. The reason again I wrote my book was the principles I teach in there can impact and improve and help any dirty gene become a healthier gene.
Speaker 1:So you emphasize that women have more control over their health than we often think. What practical steps can they take to start reclaiming their vitality, especially when the healthcare system can feel very overwhelming?
Speaker 3:Yeah, great question. I think one of the most important things that we need to do and we've already talked about reading labels and you know I mean movement is obviously critically important and hydration and getting adequate sleep right and managing your stress those things are all important and I would say that they come down to and what they really have a major major impact on is our hormone balance. They think women are completely oblivious. Our hormone balance they think women are completely oblivious. I was oblivious, with two graduate degrees in nursing, completely oblivious to how bad my hormones, how bad the hormonal balance was. Right Like oblivious. And most women have no idea that they start in perimenopause, sometimes in their early thirt, right Mid 30s. They have no idea that, even as a teenager, if they've got all this acne and severe PMS and anxiety and depression, that this is all hormonal imbalance, that we can start tweaking with our diet and lifestyle and getting rid of toxins and improving our diet. And it may mean, okay, let's boost up your progesterone with a simple progesterone cream.
Speaker 1:So how do you go about when you are working with clients? How do you go about helping people get rid of the toxins in their environment? What are some things that you share? Get rid of the toxins in their environment. What are some things that you share?
Speaker 3:Okay, first of all, I make sure people know that, look, this is a long process. This is going to take time. You know this is all compound interest. I teach compound interest all the time. It's like. You know, in our twenties we've been taught. You know you need to start saving for retirement in your 20s, right? And yet I meet clients all the time that are in their 40s and 50s and their fiscal portfolio looks great. Their physical portfolio, on the other hand, is a mess. Ie, they've got chronic disease and their labs are a mess. I mean, they feel like a mess and all their labs reveal it. So I want women to know, and help them understand, that they can gradually start doing these things. You know I talk about regular cleansing, right. I mean just adequate hydration is a great thing, but you know, trying dry brushing, right, dry brushing to help the lymph system.
Speaker 3:So explain what dry brushing is right, dry brushing to help the lymph system. So explain what dry brushing is. Dry brushing is a lovely soft brush, right, and you literally start at the top of your foot and dry brush up your leg to your groin, on both legs. It doesn't take a lot of pressure, it's very, very light. But you can start at the top of your hand and up your arm all the way up to your neck, up your breasts, like up to your neck and up towards your heart so that you're stimulating your lymph system to start working better and getting rid of the toxins in your lymph system. But jumping on a mini trampoline is also amazing, right that up and down G-force, right, and what that does to our body and our immune system and our, our, our lymph system, right, those are some things that we can do. Yes, do I think that everyone should have an infrared sauna and use an infrared sauna every week? Yes, that's amazing, right, what that does to cleanse and detox your body.
Speaker 3:Movement and exercise helps you sweat. That is one of your cleansing. You know systems in your body is your skin. So sweating is really important for cleansing. Yoga and breathing, or mindfulness and breathing and meditation, like use your lungs or, again aerobic exercise, but I think mindful breathing and yoga is better, for as you exhale and get rid of all these toxins you know, again, make sure that you're having really good hydration and fruits and vegetables, a lot of vegetables that are high water content right, like perhaps cucumbers, right, and vegetables that have high water content are great for your kidneys. Dandelion tea Everybody could go to the store and buy some dandelion tea and have a drink of dandelion tea every day and you can get used to it. Doesn't taste tea. Everybody could go to the store and buy some dandelion tea and have a drink of dandelion tea every day.
Speaker 1:And you can get used to it. It doesn't taste great at first, but you can get used to it.
Speaker 3:But I recommend the organic kind, not the toxic, but anyway.
Speaker 3:But there's little things and I write about that in detail in my book the things that we can do every single day and why it's important and how we can implement these little things in our lives, right that that are not not that challenging. Yes, I write an entire chapter or an entire section on entire chapter on biohacking, what that means and what we can do, and some of the cool modalities out there. I mean some of them I've been using for 20 years and you know now there's tremendous amount of scientific proof like no, this really works. Some of them are more cutting edge, but if people are interested, there's a really amazing community out there. If you really want to take charge and and handle your longevity right, prolong. And my whole point is I want and I encourage my clients, you know, let them know that your vitality can match your longevity, and that's what I'm working for. It's like my grandmother spent seven years in an institution with Alzheimer's disease and didn't know anyone, so her longevity right was there but the vitality wasn't.
Speaker 3:And like we, have and what a difference that would make yes, but we've got the power to control that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Well, you just brought up biohacking, so I'd like to, and that kind of seems to be the rage these days. What does that really mean, and how can women use it to optimize their health?
Speaker 3:Well, basically, it means you know that we can take control of our internal and external environment to improve our health and vitality right, to influence our longevity right and again, basic things that I say every day that we can do, that are biohacking right. That you and I have been teaching, jeff you've been teaching you know. Get out and exercise, networking that you and I have been teaching Jeff you've been teaching. Get out and exercise, move your body. Drink good, healthy water. Turn off your cell phone. Don't wear it on your body with your cell phone on. Put it in airplane mode, because this is what that 5G and those EMFs are doing to your body.
Speaker 1:Don't sleep with it too close to your head.
Speaker 3:No, I know it's not convenient, but get that out of your room even and wire your computer At my house. I only use Wi-Fi when I'm on my Peloton and then it goes back to my landline right To protect myself from the EMF. And there are things we can put in our homes to protect ourselves. There are special things. You can put special cases on your phone that you can protect yourself because you know 5G is not going away.
Speaker 2:All those 5G no, it's going to be 6G and it's going to be 10G. It's not going away.
Speaker 3:So we need to take responsibility and do what we can to protect ourselves. Right Little things like that make a difference. So biohacking again the things that we can do on the internal of our environment, you know, in our body, and external, like what are we doing to support our microbiome, our gut health, because that impacts almost every area of our body.
Speaker 3:What are we eating and how is that impacting our microbiome? What are we drinking, and is that sabotaging our health and our hormones and our microbiome? What are we drinking, and is that sabotaging our health and our hormones and our microbiome or not? Are we sabotaging or supporting? So those are things that we can do. And again I talk about different biohacking techniques, like grounding.
Speaker 3:In Florida, I could go out bare feet and go walk on the beach every day. That's awesome grounding that supports my body and the healing and the health in my mitochondria. Well, if there's snow on the ground, I won't be walking barefoot, right, but I do sleep. I've slept on a grounding sheet for years and years and years and what that does to reduce inflammation in your body is profound and improve sleep. Right, simple biohacking things are improving your sleep. Like, for heaven's sakes, you know, first of all, get rid of the TV in your room. You shouldn't have a TV in your room. Make sure it's cold, make sure you've got white noise and you wear, you know, dark, dark cover or your room's really, really dark. And even something simple, like when I'm. I don't I didn't put my funky glasses on today, but I wear these funky yellow glasses all day, every day, when I'm in front of the computer that decrease blue light. I wear red ones in the evening so that I don't monkey with my melatonin. I like that kind of monkey with my melatonin.
Speaker 1:There you go. That's nice, there you go. I've never said that.
Speaker 2:You better write that down.
Speaker 3:I know I don't want to monkey with my melatonin or mess up my melatonin. You know little things that we can do to improve our sleep which will profoundly impact our hormones. Dr Sarah Gottfried, which is she's a brilliant, you know, physician that specializes in hormones, she was like one poor night of sleep can like have you fall down two or three flights of stairs hormonally just in one night of poor sleep. So those are things that we can do to biohack our health and longevity. But PEMF and grounding and ozone therapy and glutathione support all of those things are extra things that we can be doing right. Bowel support like.
Speaker 1:All of those things are extra things that we can be doing, right? Yeah, I love that. That's fantastic. All right, wellness Warriors.
Speaker 1:We're hitting pause on this incredible conversation we're having with Lori Finley today, but don't you worry, we'll pick it right back up where we left off next week. There's so much more to dive into on epigenetics and hormone health, so be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss part two. A huge thanks to Lori for sharing all these amazing insights. Check the show notes for more about her book Create the Vitality you Crave and ways to connect with her. And, as always, thanks for tuning in to the Q&A files.
Speaker 1:If you have a question you'd like us to discuss on the podcast, please feel free to send it to Trisha Jamison Coaching at gmailcom, and, who knows, it might be your question that gets answered next. But until next time, have a fantastic day everyone. Bye-bye. Thank you, thanks for tuning in to the Q&A Files, delighted to share today's gems of wisdom with you. Your questions light up our show, fueling the engaging dialogues that make our community extra special. Keep sending your questions to trishajamesoncoaching at gmailcom. Your curiosity is our compass. Please hit, subscribe, spread the word and let's grow the circle of insight and community together. I'm Trisha Jameson signing off. Stay curious, keep thriving and keep smiling, and I'll catch you on the next episode.
