The Curious Introvert
A weekly podcast covering societal taboos & cultural blind spots. Join host Meredith Hackwith Edwards as she deep dives with curiosity & nuance into philosophy, society & culture with expert guests.
Episodes frequently feature philosophers, researchers, historians & journalists.
The Curious Introvert
Ep. 354: Is Your Cortisol Lying to You? Burnout, “Normal” Labs & Vagus Nerve
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What if the villain isn't high cortisol, but low? Does the idea of relaxing make you cringe?
Erin Kinney, ND, is a Naturopathic Doctor who specializes in helping type A patients use cortisol as a currency to generate energy, handle stress, heal, & perform. She is also the author of The Cortisol Cure: The Secret to Resetting Your Stress Response, Boosting Energy & Feeling Better Than Ever.
In this episode, she describes two patients with wacked out cortisol (is this YOU?), the relationship of burnout & cortisol, how to understand your HRV, if your fasting & exercise could be making your stress worse, when stress is GOOD, free tips to rebalance your stress hormones & how to find the right doctor to work with you
If you liked this episode, you’ll also like episode 61: REDUCING STRESS THROUGH BREATHING: HACKS FOR THE NON-HIPPY
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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dr-kinney-show/id1547023817
https://www.thekinneyclinic.com/about-dr-erin-kinney
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4:20 What your labs should say
6:58 The cortisol bank account
9:06 The real ideal numbers
11:34 Introvert vs extrovert stress
14:28 CGM spikes as a clue
16:10 What HRV is really telling you
23:51 Two muscles: stress and rest
25:21 Mold, trauma, and fight or flight
27:14 The 90/10 rule
31:15 Is burnout just low cortisol?
31:51 The top 3 culprits
37:29 Meditation and the off switch
39:31 The compressed vagus nerve
43:30 Why exercise isn't relaxing
44:30 Are you overtraining?
45:17 Fasting: his vs hers
47:22 Alcohol, weed, and your bank account
48:57 Free tips you can use today
53:24 Finding the right doctor
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Cortisol. It's a stress hormone we treat like a bad boyfriend. We resent it, talk bad about it, but having it makes us feel important and needed. We even feel guilty if we go without it for too long. It's a confusing status symbol and a common enemy among our peers. But is this how it's supposed to be? My next guest is a naturopathic doctor who specializes in helping type A patients use cortisol as currency to generate energy, handle stress, heal, and perform. She's also the author of the Cortisol Cure, The Secret to Resetting Your Stress Response, Boosting Energy, and Feeling Better Than Ever. Today we're going to explore what it actually means to have a stress reset. As we ask the question, could cortisol be the friend we love to hate? This is the Curious Introvert Podcast with me, Meredith. Around here, we explore taboo questions and societal blind spots. Please help me welcome the woman helping us reconcile our relationship with stress, the cortisol queen herself, Dr. Aaron Kenny. Thanks for being here. Oh, thanks so much for having me, Meredith. I'm so excited to dive into this. I am too. And I thought it'd be so much fun to start with story time. Sure. Yeah. Walk us through the experience of a man and a woman going through life with hijacked cortisol.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Let's start with the female, because that's usually most of the patients that I treat. So let's paint a picture. We have my patient, Susie. She's 43 years old. She has three kids. She works full-time. She comes in to see me because she's feeling tired, particularly when she wakes up. She wakes up, she cannot get going unless she has at least three cups of coffee or several energy drinks. She's tired all day. She feels like she could take a nap. And then right around 9 to 10 p.m. after her kids are asleep, she gets a crazy second wind and she can't fall asleep. Or her brain is going a million miles a minute. She feels anxious and she's upset that she can't sleep because she knows she has to get up and she's caught in this vicious cycle. Now, on top of this, she's also feeling foggy. She has trouble focusing at work. She feels like she's forgetting, you know, pieces of her life. She feels like she can't handle everything that's going on. Her sex drive is tank. She's having a hard time losing weight. And she recently started wearing a continuous glucose monitor, thinking there was something going on with blood sugar. But she frequently skips lunch because she's very busy. And she notices that in the afternoon her CGM is spiking. And she's like, wait, I don't get this. I'm not eating any sugar. So she sits in my office, she's really frustrated. She's seen her general practitioner who has run basic labs and has told her, Your labs look normal. You must just be stressed. It might be perimenopause and sends her out the door. And this is a common pattern that I see in women. Okay, so let's let's talk about my patient, Dave. Dave is 39 years old. He has two kids, works a job that he really likes, and he is struggling also to stay focused. His energy is a little low. He loves to work out. And over the past two years, his he feels like he's not making gains in the gym. He's lifting, but he's not seeing results. And he just feels like he, what did he say to me last week? He goes, I feel like an old man. I can only do these old man workouts, and I'm only 39 years old. What is going on? His sex drive is a little bit lower. He's having a harder time maintaining erections, and he doesn't feel great about that, but he's uncomfortable talking to his doctor and or his wife, but somehow he manages to talk to me about this, which cracks me up. But but anyway, so he's not feeling well either. He didn't actually go to his regular doctor because he doesn't like his regular doctor, but comes to me being like, please help me with what's going on. So these are two common pictures that I see played out. But then the general labs come back looking normal. And I'll tell you for Dave, when we did run his blood work, the blood work that his primary care would have run would have looked normal. He would have been told the same thing. Hey, your blood work looks fine. You're probably just stressed. You should manage it better. And, you know, I I feel like one of the reasons that I wrote the book that I wrote is because I'm so sick of hearing my patients tell me that what do I do with managing stress? How do what does that even mean? What do I, what does that mean? Like we don't look at it correctly in our society. Like stress is bad and we need to manage it, but then we're not told how to do that.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so what about labs? What does stress look like on a blood work lab?
SPEAKER_01First of all, you need to make sure your doctor's ordering the right tests, right? And the test that I like to look at is one cortisol, but particularly morning cortisol. And then I also like to look at a hormone called DHA, which is a precursor hormone to cortisol. It's also a precursor to the other sex hormones, so testosterone and esterine and progesterone. But if it's low or it's high, it can tell you some really useful information about what your nervous system is doing. And so here's the thing that I think is really important to understand is reference ranges, right? So the reference range for cortisol on a lab test is typically between six and 20. But ideally in the morning, you want your cortisol to be between 15 and 19. So I have a lot of men and women that come in and they're like, oh, my cortisol's nine. It's not high. I must be doing great. Cortisol should be at its highest in the morning. It's what wakes you up. And we use it throughout the day. So it starts off high and then it slowly goes down and it should be low right around 10 o'clock when it's time for bed. And then as we sleep, your cortisol levels are supposed to rise. And again, it should be at its highest in the morning. But if you're starting off in the morning with a cortisol of, let's say, six, seven, eight, nine, you're not gonna have the energy you need. And then throughout the day, when you get to 3 p.m., you're gonna be exhausted. And the interesting thing about what the body will do is when your cortisol levels get really low, the body will be like, oh my gosh, she still has three more hours in her day. She has to get through. It will start to produce adrenaline because adrenaline is like the poor man's cortisol. It will give you energy. It's a cheap, crappy energy. Like it feels like you've had 15 Red Bulls and you haven't slept, right? It's this energy of like tired but wired. And so this is where sometimes this second wind can happen. In some cases, we can see people have low cortisol in the morning and high cortisol at night. But I find most of my highly stressed type A individuals, they don't have low cortisol, or they don't have high cortisol ever. Their cortisol's low most of the day, and their body is overcompensating by producing adrenaline.
SPEAKER_00Funny you should say nine. Um, because this girl I know.
SPEAKER_02Uh okay.
SPEAKER_00Naming any names? Yeah, not naming any names, but okay, I had blood work done at 11 a.m. That's the tricky part. Okay. And it was my number was 10. Okay.
SPEAKER_01So is that that's not terrible. So I mean, ideally, I tell people I like to get a morning cortisol before 10 a.m. Because it depends on what time you woke up. It also depends on if you exercise or how much of your cortisol. Oh, if you exercise, that would not be an accurate read. Oh, so that's another thing. Like before you do blood work, do not work out. Oh you need to wake up, drink water. Because if you work out, so again, let me introduce. Can I introduce the cortisol bank account analogy?
SPEAKER_00Please, yes. Because I think the idea that low cortisol is problematic is it was new to me. So I I mean, I don't think I'm the only one that is feeling this. Oh my gosh, uh, this is new data info feeling.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So so we want to think about cortisol as it's your energy hormone. And it is the hormone your body produces in response to stress, but it does that to give you energy to deal with stress. So without cortisol, you you won't be able to handle anything that life throws at you. The number two thing it does is it's your body's natural anti-inflammatory. If you're sitting at a computer or have your phone out, Google structure of cortisol versus structure of prednisone. They are almost identical. So we know prednisone is a steroid that is given if you have inflammation that's out of control in the body. Well, cortisol is your body's own natural steroid that helps reduce inflammation. I like to think of it as your fix-it hormone. The body uses cortisol to help joint pain, to heal rashes, to help with acne, to again heal things in the body, right? So it heals things and it gives you energy. When we do anything, when you exercise, for example, exercise is a form of stress, it's going to spend your cortisol. So if you wake up in the morning and you go exercise, you will have your body will recruit cortisol because you'll need it for your workout. But then afterwards, you're going to see a lowering of your cortisol, right? So, so I say if you want to get a true read for what your morning cortisol looks like before 10 a.m. and don't work out. And don't drink coffee either, because if you drink coffee, that could jack it up and it could jack up your adrenaline. So, and usually most doctors will be like, oh, black coffee is fine for your labs. If if we're trying to look at hormones or cortisol, you can only have water. Oh, you're killing me. I know. I know. I'm sorry. It's no fun. My patients get so mad. They're like, what do you mean I can't have caffeine before my blood work? I'm like, you can mainline it right after your blood work. Mainline it. Oh my gosh. That's so funny.
SPEAKER_00You speak by language. Okay, so but ideal cortisol numbers on labs with all the preconditions that you stated should be between what and what again? 15 and 19 is where I ideally like to see it in the morning.
SPEAKER_01Because if you're starting off with that level, then it's you're gonna have good energy throughout the rest of the day. And DHEA? DHEA levels are there, the reference range is a lot wider. I think the reference range is different for men and women, but ideally for women, I like to see it like between 150 and 200, and men a little bit higher, like around 300. And sometimes we'll see a pattern where the DHEA is really high, but cortisol is low. And that just means the nervous system is kind of stuck in overdrive and it's it's pumping out this precursor, but you're spending cortisol essentially almost like faster than your body can make it. So you want your you want to be making a healthy amount of DHEA, and then you want that to be get converted into cortisol, and then you want to have enough in your account. So if we think about everything we do as being a spend, when you sleep, when you rest, when you engage in anything that activates what we call your parasympathetic nervous system, so that relax, that rest and digest, that's when you earn cortisol back. And we see the evidence of this bank account when you look at circadian rhythm. Again, I just mentioned that when you sleep, your cortisol level starts out at its lowest. And then as you sleep throughout the night, it rises. And then you spend it throughout the day, essentially. Right. So, so it's thinking about stress in a different way, not necessarily we got to lower our stress and manage our stress and lower our cortisol. It's like, hey, you just want to make sure you have enough currency in the account to cover all the things you need to do. And I don't know, that's been game changing for me because when I think about the biggest, you know, I think about on the debits from my energy account, my kids. I have five kids. My kids, my work, are my two big, but I love both of those things. I'm not gonna get rid of my kids, I'm not gonna quit my job, right? And right now, like, listen, I love talking on podcasts, as I know you do as well, but my nervous system's activated. I'm spending energy right now, but it it's not this isn't a bad thing, it's something that I love. So I think it's also like it gives you the opportunity to look at stress not as being inherently this bad, scary thing. Yeah, it's like stress is a part of life and it's just a spend, right? So we just want to make sure you're earning as much as you're spending.
SPEAKER_00I because bank account analogy. And I want to come back to a couple other clues as far as like data, but I I kind of want to explore this trail of bank account analogy because that's another woof big light bulb, is you know, you truly are healing our relationship with with cortisol because yeah, oh, it's not the enemy necessarily, it's just um energy in, energy out, which leads me to my introvert extrovert question because I, as an introvert, am energy in is quiet, sofa or nature, not a noisy place with a lot of people. I would not go to like a club to like unwind my extroverted friends. They gain energy by being around people. And let's go to a festival and to a mall. And I've heard you explain that it's the amygdala's job to interpret whether something happening outside the body is a stressor or not a stressor. So does that mean that introvert and extroverted brains interpret things differently? You know, it's interesting.
SPEAKER_01I've never actually thought about it that way, but yes, so I'm also an introverted. I think I would call myself an extroverted introvert, but I like I love people, but I need a lot of quiet recharge time. And so, so yes, I again, I don't, I don't actually know the scientific research behind that, but it would make total sense to me that someone who's an extrovert being around people, that's not gonna trigger their amygdala as a fight-flight response, right? They're gonna, they're gonna be like, oh, this is feeding me energy, right? Right. But an introvert being at a club, it might be triggering you to it's gonna be more of a spend for you. I I guess I really look at this whole thing as like, is this a spend or is this a deposit?
SPEAKER_00So is the opposite of cortisol acetylcholine? Because I had this other guy on the show who was explaining introvert, extrovert in terms of corporate employees of all things. Oh. And he said that the extroverted brain craves dopamine. And that's why they're like, yeah, let's go oOx, oONx, oOOOOS, oOK, you know, go to the club, let's go to the mall. And the introverted brain craves acetylcholine, which we get from being in nature and calm, quiet places. But does that mean that acetylcholine is essentially opposite of cortisol?
SPEAKER_01I wouldn't say that I think acetylcholine is the opposite of cortisol. They're very different molecules, right? If you look, cortisol is a steroidal hormone. It's a very big, complicated, like I call it an expensive molecule to make in the body. Acetylcholine is more of a neurotransmitter. It's a smaller, like quick, quick acting thing. So I don't know that I would say they're definitely they're opposites per se, but I think the way you're explaining it, you could view them a little bit that way, if that's kind of what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00Well, that that makes sense though. I like that you said cortisol is an expensive thing for the body because that sort of paints the picture, it sets the stage for all the other things that go wrong. So yeah, let's go back to that data. You mentioned CGM for one of the stories. So would let's say someone has a CGM and they are noticing those spikes in their sugars. Is that a clue?
SPEAKER_01Yes. So one of cortisol's jobs, one of the ways that it helps give you energy is if you haven't eaten and you have a stressor occur. So let's say you've been fasting and you wake up and you need to go exercise or a lion jumps out and is chasing you, whatever, right? So something's chasing you, you need energy. One of cortisol's jobs is to go to your liver and it breaks down what we call glycogen, which is stored sugar and it will release sugar into your bloodstream. So if you haven't eaten and you get really stressed, you're gonna see a cord, like cortisol will bring blood sugar up. Now, I mentioned earlier that if your cortisol is low, adrenaline can also do that. Adrenaline can also cause like a quick release of glucose. One of the things I see in patients that have low, low cortisol, like kind of flatlined, and they they're even having a hard time producing adrenaline, is they don't do well fasting. Like they'll actually have a lot of blood sugar drops. And sometimes this happens at night. So if you're someone who frequently wakes up at night with like a panicky feeling, or you're noticing you're getting alerts on your CGM in the middle of the night from a blood sugar dipping too low, that is a sign of chronically low cortisol. Now, if you're getting, again, any sort of blood sugar dysregulation throughout the day, so you're like, wow, that doesn't really make sense. I ate a really balanced meal and my sugars are going through the roof, or my sugars are dipping too low, that can also be a sign of dysregulated cortisol. So it's high at the wrong times or low at the wrong times.
SPEAKER_00I also recently learned about the correlation between HRV, heart rate variability, and stress. So my other question is you know how our like little smartwatches tell us what our HRV is overnight? Is that at all a legitimate clue to our cortisol levels?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So you want to higher HRV because that means like if you do get stressed, your heart rate goes up, then it's going to come back down. So it's looking at the variability, the changeability of your heart rate. If you have a low HRV, it typically means that your adrenaline is higher. That's what I tend to see. So like if you're running more on adrenaline, and I'll share a personal story. So I wear an aura ring and my HRV was kind of trending a little low for a while. And I actually started taking testosterone. And testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone in my cortisol bank account analogy are like your savings accounts. So if you look up the molecular structure of those three hormones, they are very similar to cortisol. So if cortisol is low and the body's kind of done with adrenaline, it will steal from those sex hormones. And so I started taking testosterone. Mine was really, really low. I'm, you know, perimenopause, whatever. And one of the biggest differences I noticed on my tracking device was my HRV got so much better. And I love aura ring because it will measure how much time your body spends in like a restore state, so like a parasympathetic state versus a stress state, my restore state like quadrupled during the day. And, you know, I was like, oh, this is interesting. When I went to go check my labs, my cortisol was the best it had been in years because I gave I literally, it was like I gave my body an influx into a savings account. And the body was like, oh, okay, I'm gonna use some of that, you know, to help the cortisol level. And so when your cortisol level is regulated, you're gonna have less adrenaline and your HRV is going to be better.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00Okay, this is so cool. How do we know what HRV is good though? Because I have Googled this, and those answers are ridiculous. And so right now, I'm personally just like last year, last winter, my HRV, I'm embarrassed to sorry, was 18. I was going through some stuff. And um, and then I decided uh to start meditating. I did a lot, I was doing a lot of things, but one of those things was meditating, and I used the Heart Math app. And that's you already know about that.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, it's a fantastic app.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh. I have the little ear thing too that you clipped in your ear. I've been meditating almost, I have missed one day since April. Every day. Oh, congrats. It's been great. Girl, my HRV this morning was 50. Oh, that's awesome. So that's fantastic. Thank you. But when I Google it, it's not like great job, Meredith. It's like, well, it's just like the lab work ranges. It's like, well, it depends. It could be anywhere from 20 to 60. And I'm like, that's unhelpful.
SPEAKER_01I actually get this question a lot because with all the tracking devices, patients are like, what is my HRV? Is this good? Is this bad? I would look at it as like it was 18 and now it's 50. Okay. That's a that's a huge improvement, right? And and things like, you know, I think the biggest thing that I've had to learn, had to teach patients is it takes a while for the body to recover from long-term stressful things, right? So if you went through something for, you know, a quarter, it might take a year to like get your HRV back up. But I don't know that we actually have enough data to be like, this is a good HRV. I think it really has to be like, hey, is this good for you? kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, do people who handle stress well, are they the ones that are just like aging gracefully aesthetically? Because I was also learning about the effect of chronic stress on gray hair and wrinkles and the condition of your skin. So are is like George Clooney just killing it or what? I think he might be.
SPEAKER_01I mean, If we think about it this way, again, if you think about like cortisol being an expensive molecule to make, and if you're running through your cortisol like crazy, your cortisol needs a ton of B vitamins. It needs B12, it needs B6 in order to build that molecule. B12 is important for keeping hair in a good color. Like all of those vitamins are so important for skin and all those things. So if you're burning through your cortisol because you're stressed all the time, you're not going to have these other nutrients available to keep you aging well. And same thing goes for the sex hormones we just touched on. I mean, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, they keep your skin looking young and youthful, right? So if you're stealing from those accounts, and this is what I'll see in patients when they're when they're totally burnt out, their cortisol will be low, their testosterone will be low, their estrogen will be low, their progesterone will be low. And they look like they're aging rapidly because those hormones, they're like hormones are the fountain of youth, and those are what keep you looking youthful.
SPEAKER_00That's interesting. And this is why the balance is important, but we don't really hear about this as much as we hear about HRT, you know, hormone replacement therapy. We don't hear necessarily about balancing the cortisol side. Yeah. Earlier, you said cortisol is the fix-it hormone. And I think that's another reframing of seeing how uh cortisol can be helpful. And I I would love to know how else it can be helpful. Because when I think about cortisol in my life, the only time I think of it as helpful is when I'm recording podcasts.
SPEAKER_01Um, because you get the cortisol rushing, you're like, oh, I got the energy. I do.
SPEAKER_00And you know what's so funny? Today I'm recording this from my home, but I normally record at the Pensacola Museum of History. And on those days, I'm back to recording, I'm meeting up with my cameraman and we set everything up. And something about that situation and the deadline, I don't know, it it's higher stress. I'm sharper when I and I don't eat like, or I if I do, it's very little because once I in the past, if I've eaten, I go into rest and digest, I guess. And my brain just and it's it's usually like not a carby situation, it's like a meat stick or something. Yeah. But I'm still like my body's like, oh, cool. Are we done? And yeah, are we done? I'm gonna go relax now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's interesting. The cortisol, it's like, oh, is there a lion in the room? And that helps me remember my questions and hold my thoughts and and just keep, you know, basically do four back-to-back book reports with really smart people. Um, but when I'm at home, I'm a little bit more relaxed. Yeah, I'm not pitting out my shirt as badly. Um and so I find that it's not quite the same experience. So, but that is the only way that I interpret cortismo. So I'm curious, yeah, from your perspective, working with so many patients, how do you see cortisol as a helpful hormone?
SPEAKER_01So I think, you know, what I hear in so many of my patients, particularly in midlife patients, is they struggle with joint pain or they struggle with rashes or like eczema or things like that, where they're like, oh, I'm itchy or my joints don't feel the same as they do, or I'm getting headaches all the time. Cortisol helps reduce pain from like from a very like in again, like what prednisome would do. I have a patient that I'm working with right now, male, he's in his mid-50s, and he's had so many joint pain issues and been to see all these different doctors. And when we ran his cortisol, his cortisol was a four, it was so low. But weirdly, his energy is fine. He sleeps fine, his energy is fine, but his deficit is showing up and he has pain everywhere. He builds houses, like, and so he's very physical with his body. And so the interesting thing that I think, you know, with healing patients is not everyone presents the same all the time. Sometimes people come in, like, my energy is fine, but maybe they're depressed or they're anxious, like it's showing up, their low cortisol is showing up in their mood, or maybe it's showing up in their joints or showing up in their skin, like acne. When I like treat people for low cortisol, acne gets better, their skin gets better, their skin looks so much better. It's wild.
SPEAKER_00That is wild. It's totally wild. So, as far as things that cause this, I mean, are some people just kind of high strung?
SPEAKER_01So the other thing I talk about in the book is I have this analogy where I think of you have two muscles of your nervous system. You've got your fight-flight muscle and you have your rest and digest muscle. And if all you do is work out your fight-flight muscle, that muscle is gonna get really, really strong. And just think if like you have really strong back muscles, but weak ab muscles. Like anytime you do anything, the back muscles are gonna fire. You want to have a strong rest muscle and a strong stress muscle. Most of us, because of modern day society, have really strong stress muscles, but our rest muscles are terrible. And so it it feels good to work a muscle that's strong, right? It doesn't feel so good to if you if you've never built your ab muscles and you go take a Pilates class, it's gonna feel terrible, right? So you're not gonna want to do it, right? So it's funny. I always ask patients, I'm like, hey, what do you do to relax? And I'll be like, uh, I go to the gym. And I'm like, well, that's great, but that's not technically relaxing. That's still stress, that's still fight flight. And I'll ask them, like, hey, do you ever sit down on the couch in the middle of the day? And they'll look at me like I have three heads. Like, why would I do that? And then I'll ask them to start doing it and they'll come back and they'll go, I tried it and I felt so uncomfortable. I felt like my brain was rushing and I felt so guilty. And it's because they don't have that muscle memory, right? So I think a lot of us, again, in modern day society, we value being busy. We value getting stuff done, we value getting up and running until we crash, right? And so we we have really strong stress muscles and not strong enough relaxed muscles.
SPEAKER_00Wow, I never thought of it that way. That makes sense though, because over the last year, I've completed a mold protocol. Um, we used to live in a shoebox, basically, and it was very moldy. And um, when we moved, something about the move, and I thought I was fine. My body disagreed, and all of these crazy symptoms just started popping up. And my functional doctor was like, Okay, let's start from the beginning, which is mold. At the end of the mold protocol is to reset your nervous system. It is like important. You have to do it. And I thought that was so silly. And they were like, meditate. And I'm like, what does meditating have to do with mold? This is silly. And that analogy that you just gave about an over-dominant muscle makes sense. So for so long, because my body was being attacked uh by this mold, apparently, it was in a version of fight or flight. And so I had to do um, I actually did fascial counter strain and energy work. I love your are those good. I was gonna ask you. Oh, they're great. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. So we treat a lot of mold illness at my clinic as well. And you get out of the mold, you detox it, but your nervous system gets trained almost to stay in this like crazy fight, flight state. So, you know, your doc is exactly spot on. You have to work. If you don't work on the nervous system, your body will keep acting like it's in a moldy environment, even though it's not. I'm a really big fan of cranial sacral therapy. What were the two you just mentioned?
SPEAKER_00Fascial counter strain and energy work. She's kind of like a pro, it's kind of her own thing, but it's like Ricky or pranic healing.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yeah. So those things all, especially if you're working in the fascia, the fascia is like a super energetic highway in the body. And when you're in chronic fight, flight, the fascia will tense up. And so working on the fascia helps it relax and it helps train the nervous system to calm down. So those are beautiful practices and really, really helpful.
SPEAKER_00I heard you say that we should be, I'm laughing. I can't even say it like with a serious face. We should be in rest or digest 90% of the time. That's why I'm laughing, because it's like, oh, that's okay.
SPEAKER_01I know. It's well, that's that's how our bodies were designed. Like it's funny, I look, I have a King Charles Cavalier and I watch her because she sleeps 90% of the day. She sleeps and she lounges, she lays on the couch. But when she gets up to go after something, oh, she will, you know, she's got so much energy and she goes after it. So if we think about it, like if you're resting, you're earning a ton of energy. So then when you want to go do something, you're gonna have so much energy, you're gonna be so sharp, you're gonna be so on. So like think like those days where you, you know, go and record the four episodes, like I don't know what you do the days before or the night before, or like oh, we don't socialize.
SPEAKER_00And then when I come home, I watch TV completely guilt-free. And it's usually like dumb TV, like like before this, recharging you. Yeah, I mean, I don't I wouldn't call Handmaid's Tale dumb, but um, I just now watching it, so don't give me any spoilers. But like I was watching that in between uh my first interview and you today because I was like, Yeah, we're just gonna you gonna chill and and this is what we're doing.
SPEAKER_01You're you're building up your bank account so you can have enough energy, enough money to spend on your interviews, right? So that's that's the way, and listen, I mean, I think our bodies were designed to spend 90% of the time in resident ideas. I'm not sure if that's actually possible in today's modern society, but you know, I think I mean, I the way I've had to work my life because I've got a lot going on, is I pick one day, it used to be a weekend, but now it's just one day a month, and I call it my bed day. And I plan for it and I put it on the calendar. I'm an I like I'm like you and I'm an introvert. And so it's usually one Sunday a month, and I tell my kids, I tell my husband, like, I'm not getting out of bed today. And I read and I watch TV and I take naps, and it's fantastic. And I look forward to it. And then for the next two weeks, I have so much energy because I had one day where I didn't get out of bed.
SPEAKER_00I am in love with this idea.
SPEAKER_01It's honestly it's the best. And you plan for it, right? So it's on, I literally have it on my calendar every month, and I'll plan it ahead. I'm like, oh, that's my bed day. We're not doing it. Like I just had one this past Sunday. It was great. Didn't get out of bed. What a great idea.
SPEAKER_00I have what I call people free days, and I try to make them Mondays and Fridays, but sometimes it doesn't work out. But I highlight them in orange on my calendar. I have a paper calendar because I'm a grandma, and those are my people free days, and that way I know that I just will feel better coming into the weekend, coming out of the weekend. But a a bed day sounds glorious.
SPEAKER_01It's really nice. It's like really my husband actually started doing it with me. He's like, Well, I'm gonna join you on your bed day. I'm like, Great, you can join me on the bed day, and then you know, then we also can have sex. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, because sex, sex is another really great energy builder. Yeah, like it's a really great parasympathetic state. So it's a great, you know, if if you've got good sex drive and you're in a good partnership, it can be a really healthy way to build your cortisol account.
SPEAKER_00Are you no wrong answer? Are you um at all into like the woo where they say like all of the the type A stuff we're describing is very like masculine energy and sex and rest and all that is feminine energy. Yes. Do you subscribe to that at all?
SPEAKER_01I do. And it's funny, I feel like I'm a very like go-getter. I'm a very type A person, like I get a lot of stuff done. I love and I have myself a burnt out multiple times, and I've had to do some work on my own internal stuff about making sure I'm balancing my masculine and feminine energy. Feminine energy is the receptive, is the calm, is the and the masculine energy is like, let's get stuff done. And we live in a pretty masculine dominated society. Like we value getting stuff done, and that's great, but I think you have to have the balance of the two.
SPEAKER_00Well, hey there. Since you seem to be enjoying this episode so far, double check that you've hit the follow button on your podcast listening app and subscribe on YouTube. And to join my free private Facebook group, search MFR Curious Insiders on Facebook or click the link in the show notes. Okay, back to the show. So you said burnout. Is burnout just a manifestation of chronically imbalanced cortisol?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, usually when you're really burnt out, it's low cortisol. Yeah. Low cortisol. And usually the first stages will look like sometimes the first stage can be high cortisol when you're like, I call it like you're you're a supernova diva, but you're soon to burn out. So when my patients come in and I test them and their cortisol is high, I'm like, well, well, a crash is coming. Like we gotta we gotta start like regulating now, or you're gonna end up in a dip. Um, but yeah, most burnout is like is just your cortisol bank account is completely spent.
SPEAKER_00Wow, your body is broke essentially. So back to the 9010, I I have heard you say that most of society is flipped, they are in fight or flight 90% of the time and rest and digest just 10% time and of the time. And you I love that you even mentioned like modern day living. So obviously, modernity is a problem, but if you were to pick the top three things that cause that inverse state in modern living, if you just had to pick like the top three guilty parties, what comes to mind for you?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I think I think it's like a pressure or this like desire to succeed. And I think in our society, particularly success is like I gotta do stuff, I gotta comp I gotta to accomplish things. And for most of us, it's it's career, right? I've gotta get things done, I'm gonna move up the ladder, I'm gonna start my own business, I'm gonna do all the things, right? So I think there's just like this an American, basically. Being an American, yes. I think being an American. I mean, and I think other countries, you know, Europeans do this better than us, but uh Western society is like this, right? We just are all like, we've got this drive. I do also think that some of this is born from a trauma response, like from trauma earlier on, like when your nervous system is trained when you're young to be super hyper-vigilant because there was something you needed to protect yourself from. I just read this great book. It was called Healing the Success Wound. And it was just talking about like women in the workplace, and we all have these different success wounds that we're trying to fill. And because of that, we like make ourselves super busy. And we either like grind really hard or we work hard, play hard, or it's a fantastic book if you're interested. If you're especially if you're in the corporate world, I think it was it's a great read because it kind of helps one to identify like, hey, why am I why am I pushing myself so hard? And I'm not sure what the third would be. I mean, some of it might be thinking about your mold story, like there, we our our physical bodies have an onslaught of chemicals and you know, like pollution and all these things. And those things do keep your nervous system in like a triggered state.
SPEAKER_00That's interesting. I thought for sure that you were going to say something about 24-hour news or like too. I didn't find like I don't watch the news.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, I guess it's very triggering for me. I do, I stay informed, but I can't watch 24 hour news because it keeps you in a loop.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't. I mean, if I if I see a news thing, it's on accident, or because someone has told me, hey, this is happening and you need to be aware. But I get feel stressed by having so many inboxes. Like, remember when we just had email or like just email and text, and like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Facebook, I mean, Twitter, uh Twitter, TikTok, all the stuff. Like, I can't answer all of these. It feels like people pulling at me. So I thought for sure that you would say 24 hour news, social media, or in boxes, but those are all really good things as well.
SPEAKER_01I was thinking more like larger, but yeah, you know, that's a great point to bring up because we're never not reachable. I just wrote a Substack post on this a couple weeks ago, like thinking, I think a lot of us wear like busy as a badge of honor. But I'm so busy. I don't know. I I feel like I had this two-week experience where every every event I went to, it was like seeing someone I hadn't seen in a while, and they'd say, Oh, how are you? And I'd say, Oh, how are you? And they'd say, I'm just so busy. I'm just so, so, so busy. And I was like, Why are we always saying this? What is the why do we feel like we have to be busy all the time? Yep.
SPEAKER_00I I'm convinced this is an American thing. Um because I think the industrial revolution just kind of set us on this path. And then, like, I'm originally from the Midwest. Um, and there is some sort of connection, although I couldn't spout it out for you right now, between Midwestern culture and Protestant um work ethic and righteousness. It's like a Vendigram of torture. So you must keep working and must have a full schedule in order to be a good man or a good woman. And um, and people don't want to be ostracized. If you ran into someone at the market and you were like, they were like, How are you? And you were like, you know, I'm just good, I'm chilling. They would just hate you. And maybe probably would be annoying. And they would not want to hang out with you. And so yeah, I think another element could be that we're just trying to fit in.
SPEAKER_01Trying to fit in, yeah. And and I think a lot of us do feel like we're busy and have a lot of things going on, and you yeah, you wanna you wanna feel like you're similar to your peers. So if you're constantly telling yourself, I'm so busy, I don't have enough time, I'm so busy, guess what? You're gonna be so busy and you're not gonna have and that tells your nervous system, I better be on alert because she's so busy. Gosh, right so true.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I better not let her sleep at night because she's so busy. And this is one of the biggest things I see with patients that struggle to sleep. It's not that, you know, sometimes it could be blood sugar hormones, other things, but when we've kind of ruled all that out, it's that you've trained your nervous system that it's not safe to turn off. And so the body will be like, oh, she's got a lot to do, she's really busy, we got to keep her on. You sleep for two hours and the body wakes you up because it's like, I gotta be busy, I gotta be ready to go. So, kind of back to that like muscle analogy. The more you train your rest muscle, the easier it is for you to sleep, for you to relax, for you to get into that mode, and the easier for you to fill your cortisol bank account.
SPEAKER_00So, meditation for some people, it increases the real estate for the cortisol receptor. I think you've said. Is that then good for some people and bad for others?
SPEAKER_01No. So when when the amygdala senses something that is a stressor, it'll send a signal to the hypothalamus and the hypothalamus sends out a hormone called cortical releasing hormone or CRH. And that tells the adrenal glands to pump out cortisol. And so cortisol gets released, and then you have the energy to go deal with the stress. Once you're safe, once the stress is over, cortisol, that same cortisol, is supposed to go back to the pituitary and it binds to a receptor called a cortical uh glucocorticoid receptor, it binds there and that actually turns off further production of corticoreleasing hormones. So it stops the cortisol spend, right? So when you met, and so what happens is if you stay in a stress loop, the body eventually is like, you know what? I'm not sure we should turn off. So it stops making that glucocorticoid receptor. So that's get gets downregulated. So then you go through your stress state and you try to calm down, but the body won't let you because there's no off button essentially. So when you meditate, it increases the availability of those off buttons, which you always want to have. I don't care who you are. You want to make sure you have enough off buttons. So if the body wants to flip out of fight flight, it can.
SPEAKER_00I'm starting to see why the word reset is so relevant. Yes. Because it's not just about like let's give it more or let's drain it out. Like it's about let's reset.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You want to have your nervous system activate. Like, you know, right now we're on this, we're recording this podcast. We want to be activated. So we're on and sharp. Or if you go for a run, you want your nervous system activated. Or if you stand on stage and talk to people, but then you you want to be able to just as quickly come out of that. And this is also this kind of ties into HRV as well, right? Because, you know, the easier your body can toggle between the two, typically the higher HRV is is gonna go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Oh, you're giving me so many good words, toggle. Yes. Oh, I okay. So what about the vagus nerve? Because the vagus nerve, I understand she's a party. Um, she's a lot, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So like I feel like we're talking a lot about me today. Sorry, everyone. But uh, like when I get blood work done, or sadly, when I have had my eyes dilated, I faint. And it is it is it is an ordeal that's like very sweaty, and then you know, tunnel vision, and then I yell, I'm going down, because I feel like that's polite. Sorry about the paperwork. I'm really sorry later. Yeah, yeah. And then I faint. And I I'm pretty sure it's it's my vagus nerve. And so some people have a compressed vagus nerve. What's going on there for some people with cortisol?
SPEAKER_01Well, so your vagus nerve is it's called the 10th cranial nerve, and it comes out of your head and it goes, it literally innervates all of the parasympathetic nervous system. So it innervates the GR tract, inner it has connections to every organ in the body, and it can get constricted at any point. Typically, there's constriction points up here that can happen when you have a vasovagal event, and that's when basically your nervous system is like it gets so high and sympathetic, the body is like, and we're done, and it shuts off, and then you go really hard into parasympathetic. And it happens a lot of the time. I see it happen a lot in patients whose cortisol is pretty low. So, in a time and I I'm very similar, I used to faint every time I got blood work. I I fainted in my car. I, but that was at a time I was getting a divorce. It was during COVID. I was going through a lot. My cortisol is super, super low, and I was running on adrenaline for quite a while. So when your sympathetics are like in a high state for a while, and I, you know, I don't know all of your history, but after being in a mold situation, that can usually trigger a lot of vasovagal events for for patients. We I see that really commonly. It kind of triggers like a POTS like state, like a, I don't know if you know about POTS, but it's a postural orthostatic hypotension thing where you can faint easily. Oh, yeah. So if you think about when you're in like a sympathetic state, everything is tight. Like the body tightens up like this. And so, you know, especially like up around here where the vagus nerve is going to go through, like if your if your scalenes are tight, if your traps are tight, it's a lot easier for that nerve to get compressed. Now it can get compressed at any point along its journey, but typically it can happen a lot up here. So again, when you're in a sympathetic state, when the body is like, oh my gosh, I'm super stressed, like everything tightens. And typically, most men and women with their stress, they do this to kind of protect themselves. And this hunting over can also make it easier for the vagus nerve to get compressed.
SPEAKER_00One more question about the vagus nerve is I somewhere along the road learned about when you take your eyes and you look far, far to the left or far, far to the right, but without moving your head, like you're trying to look behind you. And the one tip I said I read, it was like interlock your fingers and put your hands behind your neck while doing that. And they said you'll you'll have like a spontaneous yawn, and that's resetting your vagus nerve. And you should do it every day if you're struggling. It is wild. Like have you done it? It's really cool. Yeah, yeah. It's it's real. I actually I go to El Doa also, which is another thing, and we we work on fascia and stuff like that. And they had us look all the way to the left, and I almost like immediately fell asleep. It was banana. Interesting. Like just, I was like, whoa, yeah, almost just not pass out, but like went night night.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, it's allowing the nerve again, the vagus nerve is gonna trigger a parasympathetic response. So it's allowing you to calm down, right? And there's a lot of hack. I mean, that's one way that kind of gets you right in there. Like, I love like a belly breathing or laying. So belly breathing is a really great way to hack you out of fight, flight, but it's not gonna crash you out, it's just gonna calm you down a little bit. I also love like if you're someone who gets really tight vagus nerve, laying down on like a bolster, so on your back and like doing like a heart opener because that's gonna open up everything here. It makes it a lot easier for the vagus nerve to not get compressed, kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00You have such good tips. We will, for those listening, we're definitely gonna cover more of these hacks before we close out because this is so fascinating. What about exercise? You mentioned it earlier that it's not a great way to relax per se.
SPEAKER_01It's not, it's not relaxing, right? It's it's still stress. It's good for right. Movement is so important, but I like to teach people that exercise is a spend, it's an energy spend. A lot of my patients, when they come to me and they are really burnt out and they're really struggling and they're forced. Forcing themselves to go to the gym, they wake up at like 5 a.m. and like, we need to cut that out for a little bit. Or maybe we make sure you're getting rest days. Rest days are just as important as the exercise days. And if you are struggling with energy or struggling with sleep or feel like you might have low cortisol, you want to cut your exercise intensity back. So I usually like cut the cardio, focus more on like yoga or Pilates or weightlifting, the high intensity cardio or the HIT classes are not great for someone who has low cortisol. They're gonna spend it even more. How do you know if you're overtraining? So actually, HRV can be a good indicator of that. But a more simple way is just tracking your resting heart rate. So you have to establish what your resting heart rate is. So that would be first thing in the morning, like while you're still in bed, take your heart rate, or if you wear a tracker, you can look at it. And let's say your resting heart rate is 60. And let's say that morning you get up and you go run five miles. The next day you want to look at your resting heart rate. If it's in between 60 and 70, you're fine. If your resting heart rate is above 75, so 15 points, 10 to 15 beats per minute higher than it was normally, that means you overdid it the day before.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh. I love all this stuff. This is so cool. Yeah. I just feel like this is like, oh, this is the manual for how to live in a human skin set. A human body. Yeah, human body that we never got. Oh my gosh. Okay. Uh, what about intermittent fasting and stress? Uh, I pulled my audience because I knew we were gonna cover this. Yeah. I thought, oh, I wonder if they even do this. Like an overwhelming amount of them. And I checked because you can see the gender of every person. Yeah. And I thought, okay, it's gonna be just the guys. Nope. Mostly guys and girls who are intermittent fasting. And so is there a difference between male and female stress response with that? And what should we be doing?
SPEAKER_01So I love for women intermittent fasting, no more than a 14-hour fast. So like a 12 to 14 hour fast for women is fantastic. Anything more than that, especially if you're above 35, like hendering into the perimenopause phase, it tends to wreck your cortisol a little bit more than we'd want it to. For men, they can do longer. They tend to do better with that. They can do like a 16 to an 18-hour fast, but usually 14 to 16 is kind of a sweet spot for them. That's what I see in my clinical. And here's the deal: everyone is so different with blood sugar and all these things. Or if you're doing intermittent fasting and you're female and you're doing more than I just mentioned, and you feel great, meaning your energy is great, your sleep is great, then it's working for you. Don't change it, right? If you're doing it and your energy is poor, your weight isn't where you want it to be, and you have other like parts of your system that doesn't feel good, it might not be the best thing for you. I mean, that's the other thing I think about our bodies is if what you're doing is working, you're gonna feel good. If what you're doing is not working, your body is gonna be like, hey, excuse me, I don't like this. It's gonna give you a symptom, right? So I think sometimes we, and even I like sometimes we overcomplicate it a little bit with health stuff, right? Typically, for my burnt out patients, do not recommend intermittent fasting while we're rebuilding their cortisol. Once they're in a healthy cortisol range, then I'll say go for it. But because when cortisol is low, you have trouble regulating blood sugar. We tend intermittent fasting doesn't do what you want it to do with blood sugar when cortisol levels are at at a low in a low state.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So it seems like the order of operation would be correct the cortisol first before you're doing all of that. That's interesting. Um what about alcohol? Because I know it's inflammatory, but it's also pro-social. So is that like a net net neutral?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I that that's gonna depend on the person, right? I think some people don't tolerate alcohol at all. And so for them, that's gonna be a major spend of their cortisol, right? Alcohol also disrupts and fragments your sleep. I don't care who you are, it doesn't make your sleep great. And so if your sleep's not great, that's gonna leave you at kind of a deficit starting the next day. For most people, if you tolerate alcohol well, one to two drinks is not gonna, you know, and if it's allowing you to relax and have a good time with friends, great, like to your point, right? But if you're someone who's very sensitive to alcohol, you have one drink, you don't sleep, you feel crappy the next day. Even if it's allowing you to socialize with friends, it might be a detractor. And weed, I mean, people who smoke weed, they're pretty chill. They're they're pretty chill. I I prefer THC to alcohol myself. Yeah. That weed is gonna also depend on your personal chemical makeup, like how your how your endocannabinoid system is. But for most people, I would prefer that over alcohol.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So let's talk about tips because we definitely love to buy our way to wellness. Like we love our little watches and our little rings and our little gadgets and our little weighted vests and our you know, cool, extensive gym memberships. But if someone is waiting to see their doctor about all this, because obviously that is a huge and important first step is to be a functional doctor. But if that's not, you know, tomorrow, what can someone do tomorrow that's free to put them on the right path?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I think like really assessing first your sleep. What time are you going to bed? What does your sleep hygiene look like? Because that's going to be your biggest cortisol deposit. So, and I think the first thing is to take inventory of what your lifestyle looks like, right? Are you staying up till 1 a.m. every night? Are you watching scary TV before bed? Are you doom scrolling? Like what is what does that look like? And maybe work on that a little bit. And then you can take stock of what your energy looks like throughout the day. Like if you can't get in to get a cortisol test, see what your energy looks like first thing in the morning, a couple hours later, and you can track it on like a scale of one to 10, just with old school paper. And, you know, if your energy levels are good in the morning and they're kind of low throughout the day, you're probably in a good place. If you're starting off the day and your energy is like a three, and this is without caffeine. So if your energy level is great and you drink three cups of coffee, you know, we can't tell if that's the coffee or your regular energy. So you have to try this on a day where you don't do a lot of caffeine. Um, so assess things first. Um, one of my favorite super easy hacks, if you're like, hey, I'm I kind of get a slump in the afternoon, I'm tired, I'm foggy, I can't really focus, is to take, I call it getting horizontal for 10 minutes. So you like go lay flat. You can either listen to music or like just lay there and lay down for 10 minutes. And what this does is it tells the nervous system to calm down because your blood pressure is going to reduce, your heart heart rate's gonna go down, your breathing rate reduces. So it just allows the body to have a like a little mini recharge moment. So, or my late grandmother, she lived to be 98, she called it taking a toes up. She took one every afternoon. This woman took zero medications, she lived a really, really healthy life, died of old age, and literally every she had five kids as well. She would every afternoon, she would take her toes up and she would lay down for 20 minutes and then she would reappear refreshed and ready to go for the evening. So just a little, a little simple recharge, and it's free, and you can pretty much do this anywhere. For people that are in a working environment where you maybe don't have your own office or a couch line, you can go to your car, lay the car, like lay the seat back and just chill out for 10 minutes. Don't scroll on your phone though. It needs to be like a little mini. And you could listen to a meditation if you're into meditation. But I think, you know, I think a lot of us bookend our days with relaxing after like you might do a meditation in the morning, you might do in the evening. And those are great, but it's really nice to teach the nervous system that you can take a break in the middle of the day. And here's what I've noticed my patients that adopt that they start sleeping better. I believe that. And then when you start sleeping better, then your energy gets better throughout the day. So that's like my favorite really simple practice is to take a toes up or get horizontal for a minimum 10 minutes in the afternoon. And now, other simple things you can do if you're like, hey, that feels a little too resty. I'm not sure I can do that in the middle of the day. I'm I'm very winning spin out, is especially if you're working at the office, leave the office. Go sit outside, get some sunlight, touch your feet to the ground. You can do a mini like grounding exercise. You could even do this if you don't have time to leave your office. I frequently, if I don't have, if I have a day where I can't get out, I will literally like sit back in my chair. I turn my computer off, I cross my arms, I can like give myself a little hug, or you could do the little vagus nerve exercise you mentioned, and just like let yourself feel supported by the chair and just be like, okay, I'm gonna take a couple deep breaths and then I'm gonna come back to whatever I was doing.
SPEAKER_00I love that.
SPEAKER_01So my book has like hundreds of these little simple tips that you can incorporate. And my advice is you find some little practice that feels good to you, that's easy to incorporate, that you do regularly. So, again, if we think about these things as like we're trying to work out the relaxed muscle, it's it's reps. You have to keep getting the reps in if you want to build the muscle. So it might not feel great the first couple of times you do it because the muscle isn't built yet. But if you keep doing it, it's gonna start to feel better and better. The other thing I love to do in my office is I will go, I have really nice smelling hand soap. And in between every patient, I always go into the bathroom and I wash my hands and I just I spend like two minutes and I'll inhale. It's like aromatherapy. I'll smell the thing and I just like take a couple deep breaths and I reset myself and then I come back to the next patient.
SPEAKER_00I mean, from the theme that I'm hearing you say is pattern interrupt. So whatever you're doing, do something different. Um something different. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That is so good. When it comes to getting in with a clinician, should people expect to be going to a cash-based practice outside of insurance?
SPEAKER_01I mean, listen, in the insurance model, it's really hard on like from the practitioner size to make a business model work unless you're seeing hundreds of patients, right? So they don't have usually an insurance practice is not gonna have the time that you need to really like tell someone your whole case, right? So most of the time in a functional medicine state, like you're gonna need to pay out of pocket.
SPEAKER_00What kind of screening questions should someone ask their potential doctor, right? Because like in our town, um, we don't have like a ton of functional doctors, but I noticed that we do have a lot of doctors that maybe like to describe, use the word functional in their bio, but they're not like behaving and assessing as yeah, they're using it because it's a bud, uh a buzzword. It's a good SEO driver. Yeah. But so how can you ensure that it's a match before showing up and having to pay the the price?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I would make sure I always tell patients, like, look for a practice that will do a free consult before you go in. So like a free 10-minute or 15-minute consult so you can chat with them, tell them what you have going on. And I think it's also like seeing how they respond, see how you see how your nervous system feels when you're talking to them. Right. I don't know, I I do this for me because I want to make sure that I'm the right that the patient is the right fit for me as well. So I think you want somebody that one is knowledgeable about your specific symptoms and what you have going on. But I would ask, like, hey, what kind of testing do you run? Um, what is your communication style in between visits? Because when you're on this journey, you know, I think the number one most important thing when you're working one-on-one something is that you feel supported. Yes. And if you're someone that has a lot of questions and you might not be able to get them all in in your hour visit, you might want to ask them questions in between. So ask, okay, do you have a portal? Is there, am I gonna be able to message you in between? What does your responsiveness look like? Because most docs will have some sort of a portal to talk to you and they might charge extra. It depends on the practice. But I think if you're someone that has a lot of questions and you really want to feel supported, you want someone that's gonna, you're gonna be able to talk to in between visits. Yeah. Because sometimes it gets hard to get in with your doctor. And I always tell patients, I'm like, I don't want you to wait till our next visit and you've spent four hours spinning out on Google and freaking yourself out. Like, please message me with the question because I don't want your anxiety to go through the roof, right? And I always think it's best to talk to somebody so you can see if, you know, the way they communicate feels good to you. Because there's a lot of, there's a lot of us out there that'll run the same tests and you know have the same knowledge, but you want to make sure you're vibing with them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love that. And you offer 15-minute free consults, I notice.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's great.
SPEAKER_00And you're in Maryland, but you can work with people who are not in Maryland.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we work with patients all over the country. Um, so I have myself, we have another naturopathic doctor, we have a nurse practitioner, and we have a nurse who does IVs. Um, we can't prescribe in other states, but we consult on supplements and you know, we can run labs and do all those things. That's fantastic.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so tell people where they can read your book too, because I'm sure that they'll want to dive into all those cool tips and tricks and build on the understanding that you've laid the foundation for here.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So, best place to go is my website. It's drarinkenney.com. There's all the information about how you can pre-order the book. It officially comes out September 22nd. So if you're listening to that before, you can pre-order. If you're listening to it after, you can go order it. Um, I also on the on the website have a resources page where I have tons of nervous system regulating activities that you can go. So before the book comes out, you can go read those things. And one of the things we're offering for patients or anyone that pre-orders the book is you get a year access to our cortisol cure community, which is a community I do weekly lives there. We have tons and tons of resources on, you know, food plans, diet plans, exercise plans, nervous system regulation. I talk about labs. So it's a it's a great place to come and like feel supported in a community sense of sense.
SPEAKER_00That's fabulous. Thank you so much. This has been just such a cool conversation. I learned so much. Oh, well, thank you for having me. It was a great combo. I loved it. Thanks for listening. Since you made it this far, I'd like to invite you to be part of my private Facebook group. In there, I post content that I don't share anywhere else, and you can talk to me directly. M FR Curious Insiders on Facebook or click the link in the show notes. If you liked this episode, you'll also like the one with the Midwestern lumberjack-looking breathworker on de stressing techniques for the non hippie. That's episode 61. It's an oldie, but it's a goody from 2020. And stay tuned next week for a remastered favorite asking if society should be protected from uninformed voters. Until then, keep it curious.