The Long-Term Effects of Birth Control, Antibiotics, and Steroids

Welcome back to Crunchy Stewardship! In Part 9 of our Fertility Series, we are shifting our focus to the conventional medical interventions we are so commonly prescribed.

From the "doc in a box" to our primary care visits, it is so easy to rely on a quick prescription to mask uncomfortable symptoms. But what are those "quick fixes" costing our long-term health? Today, we are digging deep into the systemic impacts of birth control, broad-spectrum antibiotics, and steroids. We explain how synthetic hormones act as endocrine disruptors, why your gut flora is the actual foundation of your fertility, and how certain prescriptions deplete the exact vitamins your body needs to sustain a healthy pregnancy.

Plus, Katie shares a fun homesteading update (baby chicks have arrived!) and talks about her real-time experience using homeopathy and natural remedies to navigate a stubborn spring cold.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Homestead Updates & Natural Cold Care: Katie's journey using homeopathy for a sinus headache, building pallet compost bins, and the arrival of the baby chicks! Plus, Chrissy's recipe for thyme-infused honey.
• The "Quick Fix" Problem: Why suppressing symptoms (like fevers or coughs) can actually prevent your body from doing what it was perfectly designed to do.
• The Truth About Birth Control: How synthetic hormones act as "fake keys" in your endocrine system, mask underlying issues like endometriosis and PCOS, and severely deplete the body of B-vitamins, magnesium, and zinc.
• Antibiotic Stewardship: The microevolution of bacteria, the danger of wiping out your gut microbiome, and why fertility starts in the gut.
• Heavy Metals & Hormone Disruption: A brief look at the endocrine-disrupting heavy metals often found in vaccines and where to find the transparent data.
• Steroids & Blood Sugar: How long-term steroid use spikes blood sugar (leading to fat-stored estrogen), thins the skin, and triggers withdrawals.
• Natural Anti-Inflammatories: Simple, holistic ways to reduce inflammation using ginger, warm baths, and steam.

Resources mentioned:

• Book Recommendation: Turtles All the Way Down (Vaccine Science and Myth): https://amzn.to/4nkFGbZ 
• Website: Just the Inserts - https://justtheinserts.com/ 
• Website: HealthLine Article on Birth Control: https://www.healthline.com/health/birth-control-effects-on-body#:~:text=Combined%20pills%2C%20which%20contain%20synthetic,while%20using%20the%20combined%20pill. 

Chapters: 

00:00 Welcome to Crunchy Stewardship
00:46 Fertility Series Setup
02:08 Random Revelation Homeopathy
10:01 Natural Cold Care Tips
12:31 Garden Beds and Baby Chicks
14:19 Medical Interventions Overview
15:36 Birth Control and Fertility
16:24 Birth Control Personal Experiences
18:02 Synthetic Hormones as "Toxins"
20:12 Phytoestrogens
20:37 Messing With Your Cycle
22:42 Masking Bigger Problems
30:03 Nutrient Depletion
32:14 Pregnancy Nausea
35:47 Antibiotics Gut and Resistance
37:44 Microevolution in Bacteria
49:25 Vaccines
55:02 Steroids

Remember, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God (1 Cor

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Transcript

Speaker 0:03

Welcome to Crunchy Stewardship. I'm Chrissy Rombach.

Speaker 2 0:06

And I'm Katie Fiola Jones. We're cousins on a mission to honor God by stewarding our health spiritually, mentally, and physically.

Speaker 0:14

From ancestral nutrition and natural remedies to biblical finance and holistic health, we are digging deep into how God intended us to live.

Speaker 3 0:22

So grab yourself a raw milk latte and join us as we unpack the ins and outs of crunchy stewardship.

Chrissy 0:33

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to"Crunchy Stewardship." You are here with Chrissy and Katie once again, here to share all things crunchy and not very many things conventional, because that's what we do around here. Um, we talk about nutrition, well, mostly nutrition, how it impacts our bodies. We are currently going through a fertility series and talking about, um, different things in our environments that affect our fertility, and ways that we can, um, improve our fertility and, um, essentially get pregnant without having to go through fertility treatments. Because everybody knows those are expensive and very difficult on the mind, and so we are just talking through how can we get pregnant without having to go through those difficult and expensive, um, treatments. So before we get into today's episode, today's episode actually, we'll be talking specifically about medical interventions and different common medications that people take throughout their lives that can impact fertility. Um, but before we get to that, we are going to do our random revelation for the day. So this random revelation, if you haven't been listening to us before, is just something that Katie or I learned throughout the week that is something crunchy, something related to nutrition, something related to the Bible, anything like that, that we would like to share. So Katie, let's kick us off with that random revelation for today

Katie 2:08

Um, my voice may sound slightly different today because I am struggling with just some, uh, like a cold. Just season changed, you know, and now it's finally spring-ish here in Michigan, and the weather has just hit me real hard and I feel like right now, at this very moment, my voice actually sounds slightly better than it did maybe even like an hour ago. see how the rest of the podcast goes. this has to do with my random revelation today. I thought I would share more of an anecdotal type r- random revelation today versus just a random fact I am going through this right now. So I am actually using primarily homeopathy in order to kind of work on my cold that I have right now. We've used homeopathy for a number of other things f- uh, for Malachi and for Wes. I haven't used a ton of homeopathy myself, mostly because I haven't necessarily needed it. I haven't had a lot of things that I have needed working on. Um, however, a couple weeks ago, actually, I did have this like pounding headache, and Sometimes when I have headaches, I just kind of let them be if it's not too bad, especially if I'm just kind of at home. I just kind of like to rest and read books with Malachi versus doing a bunch of stuff, and I'm like,"Okay, you just let the headache kind of work its way through. Drink some extra water. Turn the lights down low." But we were people and just doing a bunch of stuff, and so I was like,"I just don't want to be dealing with this headache while we are hanging out with people and trying to be friendly and stuff," because who here can relate to having a headache and just not wanting to talk to anybody, right? that was where I was at, and so I had done some searching to figure out what use in that situation. Um, I actually can't remember off the top of my head which remedy I ended up using at that moment. If I looked at my remedy kit, I'd be able to point it out and be like,"Oh yeah, that was it." But it actually ended up working within 15, 20 minutes, and my headache was gone, and I was like,"Whoa, this is crazy." So that was a really awesome situation, and so I've been trying to homeopathy right now for this cold. And what's interesting about homeopathy is that it doesn't necessarily just take everything away like taking like acetaminophen would or something like that, where you're like,"Oh, I have a headache." You pop this pill, and boom, I'm totally fine, and all my symptoms are gone. Or it's not like a cough suppressant where all of a sudden you're coughing and then you're totally fine because you've suppressed a cough. Homeopathy actually works alongside your body to help it heal itself, so it's almost like kicking your immune system into turbo gear and, and like speeding through the process. Well, with my headache, that was just like an easy and done kind of symptom where it's like just one thing was kind of the problem, and it was able to help in that situation. With a cold, everybody's had a cold, and you know that it goes through these different stages, right? And so-- And it's not always even, like, linear. It's like sometimes it goes to this stage to then that stage and then goes backwards and then this stage. And so with homeopathy in this situation, you have to be very specific to your symptoms at that very moment to figure out remedy is going to match the situation that you have at that very exact moment. And so you have to be as specific as possible with, like, where is your headache in your head? What kind of pains do you feel with that headache? You know, what does your mucus look like or feel like? Or, you know, like the colors and, uh, do you have a fever? And what is the fever? Is it hotter on one side of your body than the other? Which is a thing. Malachi actually has fevers, um, like irregularly on his head. I have one of those, like, scanner ones, and one side of his head is usually hotter than the other, which is always so interesting. but you have to be very, very specific, even to the point of like, what are you craving? Are you craving lots of liquid to like help soothe you, or are you not craving any liquid? Does hot liquid help more than cold liquid or vice versa? It-- So you have to be as specific as possible. with this cold, you know, you look for a remedy in that specific situation, so you take that remedy. have actually experienced like certain symptoms s- like going away, like pressure in my head. You know, when you have a sinus, like, headache, and it just feels like your head's going to explode? Well, in that situation, my sinus headache went away within like thirty minutes and then-- certain other symptoms didn't or they changed. Like again, like the mucus, like the types of mucus that comes out is changing and what I'm craving and what makes me feel better and the place of headache in my head. So then you have to like do a new remedy for that next situation. So I know. It's hard to say if I'm doing it right or not, and there's been a couple times where I haven't had the exact remedy that I think was supposed to be the match. I've primarily been using Google Gemini to help me, which actually Google Gemini has been very wonderful in this situation. I, I tell it to act like a homeopathic practitioner, and then I tell it all the things and tell it to like ask me questions to make sure that I'm getting like the very specific right, remedy for the situation. And in a lot of the s- the cases, it's been pretty spot on and has helped. then again, like the cold has been changing, and so I'm, I I don't know how quickly it's supposed to just be over. And I definitely feel myself going through stages throughout the day after I take certain remedies, and I'm like,"Oh, this one symptom is now diminishing," but then another one kind of pops up. So anyway, my overall, like, assessment of the, like how does it work well for colds, it's not my favorite right now. Um, it was really helpful when I had a pounding headache in the middle of the night from, uh, my sinuses. I literally woke up, and I was just pounding. And then there was another night where I was... My throat was just so sore was just like,"Oh my gosh." Like it felt dry and scratchy like a desert. And then I took, I think, belladonna for that situation actually, and it went away, and I was able to go back to sleep. And so, but then I woke up, and it, like the, the rest of the cold was still there. But it did help with that one symptom at that one time. But anyway, figuring it out. I don't... Again, I don't know if I'm doing it right, so I don't know if it's working. But, ugh, I

Chrissy 9:21

That's interesting.

Katie 9:22

just ready to be over it. I've Oh, I did try, um, this thing that my chiropractor does, this like lymphatic drainage on my sinuses,

Chrissy 9:35

Hmm.

Katie 9:55

that's my random revelation. It's more just this is where I'm at, and this is what I'm trying, and I don't know if it's really working.

Chrissy 10:01

Now I have to ask you, have you been drinking bone broth with all of this? Okay, good

Katie 10:38

I still have my cold, so I'm like,"Ugh." So I think a combination of homeopathy plus just like natural care practices is probably I'll take in the future. But yeah,

Chrissy 10:53

Yes, I agree. I've always found that bone broth is very helpful in addition to, like, a lemon or a honey tea. Um, those have also been helpful for me in the past with colds.

Katie 11:08

I've with honey and a splash of some, or like a, a sprinkle, a pinch of sea salt. Um, I- we use Baja Gold salt for, like,

Chrissy 11:23

You know what I've actually used, done in the past which cured my sore throat immediately was I had, um, thyme-infused honey. So I poured some thyme into the honey, and it infused for, I think, like, 24 hours, and then I, um, put it through a strainer so, to strain out all of the thyme so I wasn't drinking seasoning. Um, and then put some of that honey into, um, just, like, a chamomile tea or something like that, just, like, a calming tea, and that thyme-infused honey got rid of my sore throat within, like, three sips. It was amazing. I don't remember where I learned that, though. It might have been in one of Josh Axe's homeopathy books, but very helpful. I would highly recommend, except it took a lot of thyme, honestly. Thyme, like T-H-Y-M-E. Took a lot of the spice, thyme. Um, but now I'm growing thyme, so maybe that would as concerning'cause I wouldn't have to pay for it. I'm actually very excited. My herb garden is growing, and my herbs look happy, I'm so happy about it.

Katie 12:40

am so excited to is still... We still get frost warnings every night. Freeze, like, full freeze warnings I should say, not even just frost. It's, like, getting into the low 30s and every night. And so even though it'll be, like, 40 or 50 degrees during the day, like, not enough to go plant anything'cause everything will die. every day I keep working on my garden beds to get them all ready. We did build... I actually, I should, like, share a picture of it. I'm so proud of it. It's really basic, but we made a compost bin out of seven pallets, so there's, like, kind of chambers or boxes for the compost for different stages and stuff, and I'm, been really excited. I love, like, bringing out all of our scraps and stuff. Oh, and we just got baby chicks this past week, so we now have six baby chicks, and it is so cute. With Malachi, he, like... We'll just be in the house, and he'll be like,"Baby chickies outside? Baby chickies outside?" And he, like, repeats the same thing over and over until I'm, I acknowledge him And so I'm like,"Yeah, we can go into the garage and go see the baby chickies." And wa- he goes,"Pet chickies? Pet chickies?" so, uh, we bring out a, a chick, and he goes,"Pat, pat, pat," and he, like, pats it on the head and stuff, and really cute. And he gives it, gives the little chickies

Chrissy 14:02

I love

Katie 14:03

like, puts his little face up against the chickens. Oh so cute, and I just love it so much.

Chrissy 14:09

it. I love it. I love it.

Katie 14:09

Ah

Chrissy 14:10

Oh, I'm so excited that you guys finally got your chickens. Yes, it's been a long time coming.

Katie 14:18

Yep

Chrissy 14:20

Well, anyways, let's start talking about our actual topic for today's episode, um, which is completely opposite from homeopathic remedies and chickens. Uh, we are talking about medical interventions, particularly common medical interventions that people will get throughout their life, um, up, like even beyond childbearing age, um, just to treat common things, you know. Um, many women are on birth control. Many of us have been prescribed antibiotics. Many of us have taken vaccines, things like that. Um, steroids even. I've been prescribed plenty of steroids in my life. Um, so typical things like this, where you have an ailment, you go to a doc in the box or your primary care, they give you a prescription, it fixes said ailment in a few days, and you feel better. Or, and with that, um, unfortunately, a lot of these things have a lot of long-term consequences. And so today, Katie and I are going to be talking about some of these long-term consequences that can arise from taking these very commonly prescribed medications, um, throughout your life. So the first one we're gonna talk through is birth control. Birth control has long had a very... Mm, I don't really know how to say this. A very consistent claim that it does not affect fertility once you get off of birth control. Um, I don't know if I've ever talked to anybody who claims it differently, or any professional in the fertility world that claims it differently, um, but that is the very clear and stated claim across pretty much every birth control type that they have on the market.

Katie 16:24

It's kind of like this... Yeah, the scientific consensus is that most of the forms of birth control don't have any kind of negative effect on your health or your fertility long term Chrissy and I, as we mentioned in our very first episode of the fertility series, we shared both of our own, like, experiences w- in our fertility journeys, and both of us on birth control for many years. Um, and it's one of those things that now, years later, as we have tried to get pregnant and little success with it, it's one of those things that I, like, brought into question myself as to, like,"Oh, did this maybe actually have an impact on me?" Especially the way that I was using birth control was I was not sexually active before marriage at all, and yet I was on birth control. And so I used it more as like a, way to control my cycle. And so if I knew I had a vacation coming up, I would change when I was taking my pills so that way I wouldn't have my period over a vacation, because who likes having a period on, like, a beach while you're, like, wearing a swimsuit and swimming all the time? That's, like, so not fun. And so I, I really mistreated, I, I really abused, honestly, the pills and, like, being on the hormonal birth control. And so it, it's kind of, the, the way that I've been seeing it now is that yes, maybe for, like, the vast majority of individuals, and I don't even know if it is a, a vast majority really, but they, th- the, again, the scientific consensus is that for the m- vast majority of p- individuals, returns to a normal baseline shortly after you discontinue using a hormonal birth control. However, the hormones in the pill that you're taking or the patch that you're using or if you're using, like, a hormonal IUD, they're synthetic forms of hormones. And so it's the synthetic form of progesterone or estrogen, and they, they're synthetic, which means that they are made in a lab, they're not natural, act differently than the actual hormones that are produced by our body. And so it can confuse your body a bit. We've kinda talked about, um, some of these things, like wh- like even, like, when you think about synthetic vitamins, those often are not readily They, they're not as easily absorbed into your body because your body doesn't identify them properly as, like, a vitamin that they would find in a piece of food. It's man-made, and so they're like,"Wait a minute. This looks kinda familiar, but it's not." And so it's the same thing with the synthetic hormones, is your body is kind of confused. And so instead of those hormones supporting your endocrine system, they act more like disruptors, and they end up overriding your body's natural way of communicating between, like, your brain and your fertility system, so, like, your ovaries. And so, yeah, I actually, I, I copied a link to, um, uh, like, a, a source that kinda talks about that more. So if you're curious, I'll link to that in the show notes, um, so you can check it out

Chrissy 20:12

I feel like that has a very similar effect as like eating a lot of soy products and that soy's impact on our estrogen levels and things like that, or even like the impact of parabens on our estrogen levels because they have a lot of what we call phytoestrogens in them. So they're like fake estrogens and they trick our bodies into thinking that there's more estrogen than there actually is. And so the synthetic hormones, the progestin, and I don't know what the synthetic form of estrogen is, but the synthetic estrogen that is also in these birth controls essentially are tricking the body into thinking that the hormone is there to prevent ovulation. So a lot of the hormonal birth controls work. So ovulation is indicated. If you go back to our female fertility episode, I talk about the hormone cascade of ovulation. You have the estrogen spike and then it depletes very quickly. And then you get the LH and the FSH spike, which indicates ovulation. And a lot of these birth controls that have estrogen in them prevent that estrogen spike and drop, particularly prevent the estrogen drop, which prevents the LH and the FSH from going up, which prevents ovulation, which for all intents and purposes is the goal of birth control because the goal is to not get pregnant with it. The only problem is once you stop birth control, a lot of times it really does take the body much more than just a few months to regulate. I know for me, like I'm, oh, maybe almost two years out, a year and a half to two years out from having my birth control removed and my cycles have not regulated. So it's very common for cycles to just take a very long time to re-regulate. And so I think unfortunately, a lot of people have been misled of like,"Oh, you stopped taking the pill, you could get pregnant the next week," um, when in reality that just isn't necessarily the case. And I'm-- the more people I talk to, the more people I hear, um, having struggles, um, conceiving after stopping estro-- birth control.

Katie 24:52

Control because it solves other things, but then they get off, and they're not able to get pregnant, and then later they find out they have PCOS, when really, if they had looked into it when they were younger, maybe they would have caught something and been able to do more remedies in order to fix their hormone systems, um, instead of kind of just suppressing what's going on. And so yeah, it's

Chrissy 25:18

one, another ill or ailment, ailment? No. Disease? Problem

Katie 25:26

What

Chrissy 25:27

that is often, I don't even know. Another thing that is often masked with birth control is endometriosis. So there's multiple different stages of endometriosis. And a lot of times stage one really is just like kind of uncomfortable periods, you know, heavy flow, extra cramping. And so that's when doctors will put a patient on a birth control pill, which masks the symptoms, but doesn't actually solve the problem. So then by the time the person, the girl gets off of birth control and she's ready to have a baby, well, then that endometriosis has now progressed to stage three or stage four. And she has that much more of a difficult time having a baby because she went all this time having endometriosis and not actually knowing it because all of the symptoms were being masked by birth control. And so that is one of the issues that has been presented. And, you know, in medicine in general, we have that also. Like I remember working in the hospital even if a patient had a fever, they didn't always want us to give Tylenol right away because they didn't want us to mask the fever. They wanted to watch the fever and see how it progressed to then hopefully identify where it was coming from. And if we were giving Tylenol all the time, which is a very common practice in the hospital, I feel like every single patient is prescribed Tylenol every six hours, even at midnight, which doesn't quite make sense to me. But anyways, it would mask any sort of fever that would come on and infections can be missed because we're preventing the body from showing signs of infection. And so same idea with this. We're preventing the body from showing signs of problems, which can just allow the problems to get worse without us knowing that they're there.

Katie 27:28

actually,'cause that is kind of like what they talk about in homeopathy is like you don't necessarily just want those symptoms to go away because something like a cough or your nose running or your eyes running or your fever, your body's defense mechanism to fight off these bugs and germs or, uh, the, the s- the, like what am I thinking? Like the dust that's getting into your body if you have like allergies. You know, your body's trying to eliminate that stuff. And so if you stop yourself from coughing with a cough suppressant, then your body can't cough up whatever are the foreign contaminants in your body, whether it's germs or like an allergen kind of attacking you or something. Same thing with your nose running and the mucus all building up. It's your body's defense to say,"No, you're not allowed to be in here, bad guys. We wanna keep all the good stuff in." But it's super obnoxious obviously, but it's like your body's trying to actually itself. And so if you suppress those things, it ends up typically, I m- not all situations, but it ends up that you have, like, longer colds and longer drawn out, like, flus or allergies because you're not letting your body's natural defense, um, mechanisms work its way to getting all of the toxins, like just daily toxins out, um, like the way that it's designed to do it. And so yeah, when you have like a fever, it's just your body is trying to kill something off. And so if you temper the fire down inside your body, your body can't actually off the bad guys inside of it. So yeah, my-- Chrissy and I were actually just talking about this right before our episode of like what would we do, like, in a situation with our kids having a fever? And it's so-- Like in a lot of situations it's sad because they're in pain and h- you know, your body's achy. You don't feel good. Uh, it's uncomfortable. And so what we do in our house is just, like, we, we just make the person, baby or ourselves, as comfortable as possible. So we just kind of-- But we support that fever in its-- in the process of allowing it to do its thing. And so it's, hard because you're like,"Oh, I just wanna get rid of this fever. I wanna break it with, um, some medicine and just make sure that they're able to go back to sleep." Which sleep is good, but there are other ways to making yourself more comfortable without necessarily the f- the fever off. So anyway, um, the last thing I

Chrissy 29:59

Yeah.

Katie 30:00

Oh, did you have something you wanted to say

Chrissy 30:02

Nope, go ahead

Katie 30:03

Well, the last thing I wanted to say, um, kind birth control is that, um, there has been more documentation that, um, oral contraceptives end up depleting the body of essential nutrients, including, the B vitamins, especially B6, B12, and folate, um, as well as depleting it of magnesium, zinc, and selenium. And so that's, we-- I-- Did we talk-- Did-- I feel like we've kind of mentioned vi- nah, maybe we didn't talk about just like vitamins and nutrient... Oh, yeah, we did. Duh. Our first episode in the fertility series was all about, like, nutrition, um, and how these things are really important to all have together, so that way your body can function properly in order to get pregnant. And so it doesn't, when, when the vitamins and nutrients and stuff and the, um, like things like vitamin B are all out of whack, it's hard for your body to get pregnant as well. Just like your hormones have to be in balance, so do these other things. Um, mostly a lot of the deficiencies with your, with vitamins, um- mean that like, yes, maybe the hormone system is in place, and so you're able to get pregnant, lot of times with the vitamin, um, and nutrient deficiencies, it doesn't allow your body to continue a successful pregnancy resulting in something like a miscarriage, or it might be such an early miscarriage that you don't even realize that you, you were even pregnant to begin with. And so, know, your body needs all these minerals, these vitamins, and everything in order to build the baby out of, and so if it doesn't have that, it can't stay pregnant successfully long term, which is kind of the, um, unfortunate thing. And so if you are on a you should get off of it at least a year in advance before trying to get pregnant, so that way you can start working out like the, of your nutrients deficiencies as well as hormone imbalances. Hmm.

Chrissy 33:08

and other things in and around the house and everything like that. But I just wonder how much of it is actually related to these vitamin deficiencies that are caused by birth control that women have been on for so many years before conceiving

Katie 33:26

was pregnant I was so nauseous all the way up until my second trimester, and the thing that did help was, I think it was vitamin B6 that I was, um, told to take. But it was also in conjunction with Unisom, which is a sleep aid. And so, uh, my midwife at the time had told me,"Every night before bed, take these two together." It was half, half of a tablet of Unisom, and then, uh, I think it was just one vitamin B6, and I don't remember what the, like, concentration or whatever they call it of the vitamin was. But I would do that before bed, and usually the day before, I would have no nausea or very minimal nausea, or if I did have any nausea, I wouldn't end up throwing up at least. And so typically helped, and there were a few times where I'd forget, and then the morning after, it was so obvious that I forgot to take it. but I... It's, it's interesting now because I don't know what the side effects would be of the Unisom. I mean, it was half a tablet, so they're really itty bitty. but I did do that along with the vitamin B6, I think it was. And I probably took, like, a very synthetic form of vitamin B6 at the time because I didn't know any better and didn't know anything about vitamins and all this stuff. So if you're looking into it, I would recommend probably researching that a bit more before just doing whatever I did because I don't know that that's super crunchy these days. But it did help, so

Chrissy 35:05

Yeah. I just did a quick little Google search and Unisom has either doxylamine succinate or diphenhydramine, which diphenhydramine is practically Benadryl. So essentially you'd be taking Benadryl with the vitamin B6, which would make sense why it would help you sleep. Um, and I guess the antihistamine helps with nausea if the nausea is caused by some sort of histamine r- release or something like that. I don't actually know what the histamine-- how histamine relates to pregnancy nausea, but something to find out. We could do research on that. I love it. All right, so let's move on to our next section of medications that are commonly prescribed in life in general is antibiotics. I think personally You know, actually, I cannot count the number of times I have been prescribed antibiotics. I've gotten them for UTIs. I've had antibiotics for my acne. Um, I remember actually being put on, like, a six-week course of tetracycline for my acne, um, when I was in junior high. Uh, I've had antibiotics for bronchitis. I've had antibiotics for pneumonia. Oh, probably other things, I'm sure, that I'm just not remembering. Um, oh, I had antibiotics for a staph infection once. That was a fun one. I didn't actually know the severity of a staph infection, and I went to volleyball practice, and they kicked me out. I was like,"Why? I feel fine. I just have a weird sore on my s- leg." And they were like,"No, you're gone. Bye." Oh, the naiv- naivety. It's okay. The whole gym got staph. It was fine. Anyways, so antibiotics, in the short term, seem to be quite miracle drugs, and that's how they were originally presented to the public. So when penicillin was discovered a long, long time ago, I don't remember the exact year penicillin was discovered, um, but when penicillin was discovered, it... They found that if they gave penicillin to somebody with pretty much any sort of infection, the infection cleared up immediately. And th- so they started giving penicillin out like candy. Now, eventually, bacteria, because bacteria is a living being, and as we have all learned through, um, school, there's this thing called microevolution, where different bacterias and things evolve, just like humans evolve. Not, I'm not talking about macroevolution from, like, tadpole to frog to fish to human or to gorilla to human. I'm talking about microevolution. So the ch- microevolution is slight changes in jaw shape, which Katie and I have talked about in this podcast in the past, particularly in the research by Weston A. Price. He talks about the cha- the shape of the jaw and how it's different among different people groups depending on where they live. So that is evidence of microevolution, different slight changes in shapes or qualities that may or may not, that or that usually benefit the population as a whole. Um, a lot of people would al- also call this, um, oh, what is it? Selective

Katie 38:56

A survival of the fittest kind of a...

Chrissy 38:59

Yeah, like natural selection.

Katie 39:01

natural selection. There

Chrissy 39:03

Natural selection. Thank you. Going back to ninth grade biology. Um, okay, so nonetheless, bacteria have the same sort of thing going on. They, they do micro evolve. So if they are hit with a toxin or a, um, attack or something to kill them, and it doesn't kill all of them, then the ones that are left can evolve or change slightly to make themselves protected from this attacker, essentially. We do the same things. Your house gets broken into, you fix the deadbolt and maybe get a stronger deadbolt. Your windows get broken, you go-- might get some shatterproof windows, things like that. So we do the same things consciously and unconsciously. Um, our bodies do the same things when we talk about building immunity. You know, you have an illness, your body fights it, it builds the immunity to then be better at fighting the illness in the future. The-- this is microevolution. So all that to say, bacteria have the same thing, and so they build themselves up to fight these different attacks in the future. And so when penicillin was created, they gave it to everybody. Everybody loved it. It was given out like candy. It was the miracle drug. And then they realized it stopped working, and these bacterias were coming back stronger and not affected by the penicillin. And so they started creating different strands of the penicillin, amoxicillin, tetracycline. Um, I'm blanking on a bunch of other antibiotics right now. Sulfamethoxazole. Um, just a lot of different antibiotics to then fight these different kinds of bacteria. Now, antibiotics, some of them are broad-spectrum, so like an amoxicillin or tetracycline is a very broad-spectrum antibiotic. It will kill a lot of different types of bacteria. There's also narrow-spectrum antibiotics such as vancomycin or ertapenem, which are-- you can't really get just regular. You have to get them through an IV. That will be very specific in the bacteria that they kill.

Katie 41:33

was my BFF in the hospital, at one point I looked it up and I was like,"Whoa, let me, let me figure out what Vancomycin is." one of the, like, facts that I learned about it that it's basically considered, like, the last resort, that you go on when you have, like, such a severe illness that, like, there's nothing else there. And that

Chrissy 42:02

And the horrible thing is,

Katie 42:04

mm-hmm

Chrissy 42:04

and the horrible thing is some bacteria have become vancomycin-resistant.

Katie 42:12

remember kind of having some of those conversations with our doctor and being like, you and your son are now going to be put on Vanco," which was what they just called it at the hospital, was Vanco. And for the longest time I was like,"Vanco? What?" I just like... Anyway, and they're like,"Yeah, this is kind of like our last resort, and then we have to kinda think about doing some other, surgeries and things like that." And it was like, ugh, really scary stuff to talk about. But yeah, when I Googled it much later after all of it, I was like, oh, that, that literally is considered, like, the drug of last resort. and that was really terrifying after, like,

Chrissy 42:53

You know what's actually a random fact about vanc that is kind of scary? If I remember correctly, I think it is vanc. If you accidentally spill it on your clothes, it bleaches your clothes. I learned that the hard way.

Katie 43:07

That was like pulsing through

Chrissy 43:09

Yeah. Yeah, I learned that the hard way, you know, accidentally spilling a little bit of vanc on my scrubs because it happens. Anyways, so bacteria develop resistances to antibiotics, and thankfully, a lot of modern medicine has discovered this, and so we have what's now called antibiotic stewardship, which is pretty much an agreement between all medical providers to be strategic and intentional on prescribing antibiotics. So we don't wanna prescribe antibiotics for viruses because viruses aren't affected by antibiotics. They'll just-- the antibiotics come in and kill all the good bacteria, and then your body can't even fight the virus to begin with. So that is one thing that I wanted to get to that antibiotics do, is especially broad-spectrum antibiotics- Like that doxycycline that I mentioned, amoxicillin, um, even Zosyn if you-you-- an IV broad-spectrum, um, they kill all the bacteria, not just the particular bad ones. And so in our bodies, specis-spr- huh, particularly in our digestive systems, we have a mix of good flora and bad flora, i.e. good bacteria, bad bacteria. The goal is to have a ratio of a higher amount of good bacteria than bad bacteria, because the good bacteria prevents the bad bacteria from overgrowing. But when we take especially oral antibiotics, which are very commonly prescribed, they come through and kill all of the bacteria. Which unfortunately, if the bad bacteria develops a resistance to this antibiotic, then the bad bacteria can grow out of proportion to the good bacteria and cause mega bugs, like we've said before. Um, mega bugs, for instance, MRSA, methicillin-resistant ant- uh, Staphylococcus aureus or C. diff, which is really when your gut is completely depleted of good bacteria and there is only bad bacteria. I don't know if anyone has ever talked to a nurse. Most nurses will be like,"I can smell C. diff down the hallway," and it's horrible, and it's only killed by bleach. Fun fact, you can't kill it soap and, soap and wa- hand sanitizer does not kill C. diff, and regular cleaning wipes don't cl- kill C. diff. It has to be bleach or soap and water, and the only, um, remedy for it is oral Vancom for literally, like, four or five months. It's horrible. Yeah, it's a really bad infection to get and very difficult to kill. But it's caused by having too many antibiotics in our bodies. And so we've talked about before how all disease begins in the gut, and that was a quote by Hippocrates many, many years ago. And the truth i- like, that, that is very true. And with that, fertility begins in the gut also. So a lot of our hormones, a lot of, you know, our vitamins and minerals are all absorbed from the gut. Our hormones are affected by the things that we absorb through our gut. And so if we are missing this balance of good to bad bacteria in our gut, then we're not going to be a-able to absorb the proper vitamins and minerals that we need in order to fight off these bugs by ourselves. Um, and we're going to end up becoming Reliant on antibiotics and modern medicine and things like that. So that is one thing Katie and I have always tried to... well, have recently been trying to be aware of, of like how often we're prescribed antibiotics and what the antibiotics are prescribed for. I think in my adult life, I've only actually had antibiotics prescribed for UTIs, which I'm so thankful for because usually it's just like a quick five-day course, and then the UTI is gone, um, and we're all good. Uh, so praise God for that. But it's important to not avoid antibiotics at all costs because there is a time and a place when they are necessary. Like Katie and Malachi's instance, if they didn't have them, they would have died. Um, praise Jesus for antibiotics, they didn't die. At the same time, for very common illnesses and ailments, there's more homeopathic remedies and strategies that we can use that embraces the good gut flora and prevents that imbalance from occurring.

Katie 48:10

I've been exploring a bit more f- as, um, kind of like a natural antibiotic. also things like coconut oil is very antibacterial and can be used for other things around your body. Even just keeping your body clean, um, it's really good for that.

Chrissy 48:29

how oregano oil was discovered?

Katie 48:32

Uh

Chrissy 48:33

Have you heard that?

Katie 48:34

I don't know

Chrissy 48:36

No, like how the effectiveness was.

Katie 48:38

Oh

Chrissy 48:38

Some high school student was doing like a project for like Science Olympiad or something like that, and he essentially did like a, um, an agar plate of bacteria with certain antibiotics on it and then did an agar plate with oregano oil, and the oregano oil was more effective than all of the antibiotics on the other agar plate. And that's how they really discovered that oregano oil can be used for, um, as like an antibacterial. Isn't that fascinating? Just like a kid's high school project. Yeah. Fun fact

Katie 49:25

Well the and we still wanted to touch on one more medical intervention that often does disrupt our fertility systems, um, and that is And we don't really wanna dive too deep into vaccines and, and have a big debate or anything, but specifically about the fact that vaccines are often full of different heavy metals, um, as well as preservatives that end up disrupting our fertility systems. Um, and just the fact that there have not been any long-term studies on the impacts of vaccines on our health, um, not specifically just for our fertility, but just general health as a whole. Um, but when you think about heavy metals, I mean, most of us know, like, aluminum is a neurotoxin, and we should not be consuming aluminum in any way, shape, or form. Like, we... Most of us just know that and can agree upon that. Um, however, aluminum is still often found in vaccines as well as, um, mercury, and these are things that we know are contaminants and have a high level of toxicity in our bodies, and yet inject them into ourselves and our children, um, without having any real science to show the long-term impacts of these in our body. Um, specifically, you know, heavy metals often act as, um, kind of like a- another type of hormone mimicking agent, just like a lot of these other things we've been talking about. Um, they bind to our hormone receptors, and then they just im- impact or they end up disrupting like, the system, um, of our hormones, our, our, uh, endocrine system in the way that everything is supposed to communicate. It ends up just kinda scrambling everything versus allowing your body to communicate properly. Again, it's the same thing with a lot of these other toxins we've been talking about is that- heavy metals do these same things. And a lot of us, like, we know that. We know, like, there are certain fish that have high levels of mercury, and we should be really cautious of that, especially when we're pregnant. And lead is really toxic to our bodies. Like, we all know, like, long-term lead exposure, um, can end up, um, impacting conception in general. And it can also, impact the sperm quality in men. And there's just, like... There's a lot of information about each of the heavy metals specifically, but yet when we talk about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, it's just kind of glossed over that many of the vaccines have these heavy metals in them, um, and then also have, what's it called? Preservatives as well in them, which then we all kinda know, like, preservative-free food is good, so, like, preservative-free vaccines is also a good option. And they do actually offer many vaccines that don't have preservatives in them. Um, you, you do need to ask for that when you are getting a vaccine. And so you can ask specifically for one that doesn't have a preservative in it if they offer it, um, as an alternative. In some cases, certain vaccines don't offer it, but you know, if you choose to continue to use vaccines, that's, like, a good safer-ish route to go. Um, but if you want to learn more about vaccines, a, a book that can help you learn more about it is a book called Turtles All the Way Down, and they give you kinda just the facts about, um, vaccines. There's also a website

Chrissy 53:20

is The Turtles All the Way Down by John Green, the one by Anonymous

Katie 53:26

is a there's another book out there called Turtles All the Way Down, but it is for young adults. It's a young adult book. Um, but All the Way Down that we are talking about, I think the cover has, like, literally, like, turtles on it, and they kind of, like, fade into the background, and it's, like, white, I believe. But check out that book. It's, it's got a lot of information. It's, um, sometimes can be a little overwhelming to go through a lot of it. Another website I'd recommend is called Just the Inserts. And so you may or may not be familiar with the fact that every vaccine comes with a, um, insert, uh, like a medical information insert that tells you all about it, all the good and the bad and the ugly, and it usually will say things like,"This vaccine may have the risk of death." And they, they never share these things with people typically unless you specifically ask for them in most situations. And so- There's a website out there called Just the Inserts, and it basically takes all of the government-approved information on all of the vaccines and compiles it into one place where you can kind of just see it easily. And I don't think that they take a stance either way. They just simply are giving you the information, and that's why it's called Just the Inserts, so you can kind of do your own digging and decide whether or not a vaccine is something that you want to pursue for yourself or for your children or the rest of your family. And so that's kind of the main thing that we wanted to say today about vaccines. But yeah, Chrissy, do you have anything else you want to share in this episode in general?

Chrissy 55:02

I think I actually want to touch on steroids just a tad, um, because steroids are also very commonly prescribed. I was prescribed s- steroids a few years ago when I got poison ivy head to toe. It was horrible. I really honestly went to the CVS doc, like the little nurse practitioner at CVS, and I wanted her to give me a prednisone shot, but she only gave me a prednisone taper, and I was honestly very irritated by it But anyways, point being, steroids are often prescribed commonly in conjunction with antibiotics because they are anti-inflammatory, and so they, they kind of block our body's natural infection-fighting response to allow the antibiotic to come in and do the work that it needs to do. Um, it is helpful when there's a lot of swelling, when there's a lot of redness, when there's a lot of heat, um, that are, is causing more problems. Um, but steroids, as a result, um, they do actually increase blood sugar levels. So Katie and I have talked in episodes past on how blood sugar affects fertility because, um, higher blood sugar levels leads to higher fat re- retention, leads to higher estrogen levels because estrogen is stored in the fat. So if we are taking steroids, especially on long-term basises, um, it can jack up those, um, blood sugar levels like nobody's business, and a lot of times, um, steroids are also addictive. Um, my mom, for instance, she was prescribed steroids for many years for ulcerative colitis, which praise God, she used her diet and is now in remission for many, many years of ulcerative colitis because of changing her diet, and she convinced her doctor not to take her colon out. So guys, severe illnesses can be cured with, well, can be treated with natural remedies. But that's beside the point. She was severely addicted to prednisone because she had been prescribed it for so long that every time she tried to taper off of it, she actually went into withdrawals from it, and it took many attempts to taper down before she was finally able, able to get off of it. Um, and so that is one of the warnings I would give people. Like, they are addictive. They severely affect blood sugar levels. They can really make your body look like you have diabetes even if you don't, um, which affects hormone levels, it affects energy, it affects our livers, it affects our toxin processing, kind of the whole gamut is affected by blood sugar. And so, um, that is just one other thing I wanted to add on of the, the risks of taking steroids and some other things that are helpful instead of taking steroids as like an anti-inflammatory property is ginger. Ginger is incredibly anti-inflammatory. Um, taking warm baths, not hot baths, but a warm bath with, um, some essential oils can be very helpful as an anti-inflammatory. Oftentimes, if you're very inflamed in your sinuses, um, then even just allowing steam to go over your face, for instance, like during a cold, if you kind of just put your face over a pot of boiling water, allow the steam to go over it, it's very helpful for clearing the sinuses and relieving inflammation. So there's a lot of ways that we can relieve inflammation naturally without having to use any sort of steroids or antibiotics or anti-inflammatory medications like Advil or Aleve or anything like that.

Katie 58:58

add. I'm glad that you mentioned that. Um, our, our experience with, uh, steroids has been with our foster daughter, who I've mentioned before, um, the one with autism and has many other medical challenges. Um, she has eczema, and there has been basically nothing that has helped her eczema except for a steroid cream. And I don't remember off the top of my head the name, but, um, she actually had, what, like three different kinds. No, four, up to four at one point because different parts of the body, they wanted her to use different of it, like different strengths, because she would get this like eczema around her eyes, um, and on her face that obviously is super delicate, and so you don't want a, as strong of a, a steroid there because it could impact your eyesight. And even for her eye one, even though it was a, like a more diluted potency than the other ones, they even said like,"Only use this a couple days at a time and never longer because it really, it can impact your eyesight over time," which is like terrifying, but it also, again, was like the only thing at the time that was like helping her skin. Um, it also, it's hard in foster care because to bring kids to just your traditional allopathic doctor who then usually jumps to the first thing of like,"Oh yeah, try a steroid cream or try an antibiotic," because same thing, talking about antibiotics, she was on so many antibiotics for, uh, different things all the time because she would get ear infections, and then they would try one antibiotic and then go to another antibiotic and then, you know, just one to the other. And now at this point, funny because if Malachi ever got an ear infection, I have so many other remedies that I would potentially use first before ever going to a doctor to say like,"Hey, do this." Um, maybe we'll talk about things like that in the future, like childhood ailments and like what things you can do to help them because again, we were talking about fevers right before this episode of like what would you do for a baby that wakes up in the middle of the night screaming with a fever? And it's like, oh, I actually do have some things that I would recommend doing. But that is for another day and another time because are Definitely at the time where we need to say goodbye, and we are thankful that you have joined us today. Um, if you are a part of our Facebook group, we'd love for you to come and say hi. We have so many new people in the Facebook group, and I think everybody's afraid to, like, say stuff. But we would really love if you took a step of courage and posted something or said hello or anything, because sometimes I feel like I'm just, like, talking into the void in our Facebook group like,"Hey, let's chat," or,"Let's check out these things that I'm posting in here." I don't know. Anyway, uh, let us know how

Chrissy 1:01:45

I'm definitely guilty of not responding on the Facebook

Katie 1:01:52

If there's some other place that people would rather, like... W- like,'cause, uh, we want to kind of like build a community around our podcast of, like, people who are wanting to about things that are crunchy and yet still love Jesus and all these things. Like, I'd love to just chit-chat, but if Facebook is not, like, the best place to do that, um, let us know if there's another place that we should be to a community on or something. Um, maybe as long as it's not, like, just social media, because Chrissy and I also are really bad at just, like, Instagram. We literally started an Instagram channel and have posted, like, five things maybe. I don't know. We... I don't even know, because I haven't been on there in, like, a year because we, we made it and we were like,"Oh, we should probably do this," but we haven't really used it, so oh

Chrissy 1:02:41

So, but if you guys say that Instagram is better than Facebook, then I would be willing to sacrifice going on Instagram more frequently in order to post things so that you guys can be involved in our Crunchy Christian Mamas community. Yes.

Katie 1:03:03

Well, why don't you take us out, Chrissy,'cause you job of it

Chrissy 1:03:08

Oh, well, thank you. Anyways, remember as you are going about your day-to-day that whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do it all for the glory of God. We'll see you guys next time. Thanks for listening to Crunchy Stewardship