Living Well with Janet: Do I have a Hormone Imbalance? Hormone & Gut Health with Dr. Paria Vaziri
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Hi everyone, it's Janet here from ABG. The Asian Bosco podcast is on hiatus, but I will be coming back with my own show, now titled Living Well or Trying To with Janet, relaunching in May. A couple of new things, the show will now be on video, but tempered expectations please, because I am now a one-woman team, but I will continue doing my best to bring you quality, and most importantly, personable content. The

The show will continue to be a combination of solo and guest conversations. I talk more about this in the first episode dropping May 6th. So please go search Living Well or Trying To with Janet on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Or if you're on YouTube, look up Janet W. That's Janet, the word double and the letter U. Please follow and subscribe and tune in for all the episodes to come.

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app. Surprise! It's Janet here. I am back with a special episode in light of February being Gut Health Month. Did you know that?

Well, now you do. Hormone and gut health are topics that you all have expressed interest in, so I have dedicated this very special episode to this topic. Before we get into the episode, I just want to share a quick reminder that this show now has its own feed, so if you're currently listening on the Asian Boss Girl feed, be sure to search for Living Well with Janet and subscribe or follow there because all future episodes of this show will be released on that new feed.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Living Well with Janet, where we explore what it means to live well. I'm your host, Janet, a yogi, a meditator, plant-forward eater, and all-around wellness enthusiast. I'm also a second-generation Asian American woman, an experimenter, and a deep thinker. Join me in my conversations and contemplations on the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social, and environmental aspects of living well.

I recently put a call out on Instagram to ask about topics of interest for this podcast, and a lot of the requests that came up were around women's health. As someone who prioritizes natural and preventative approaches, I've invited Dr. Priya, who is a licensed naturopathic doctor and specializes in hormonal health and gut health. She herself came to naturopathic medicine from a personal health experience.

In her early 20s, she was struggling with anxiety, hormonal imbalances, chronic fatigue, and gut issues. And she was shuffled around between doctors who couldn't identify what was wrong and kept putting her through a revolving door of medications, often telling her that her symptoms were in her head. During this time, she was on the career path to pharmacy school.

But from her own health struggles, found that she was resonating more with lifestyle medicine, herbs, and supplements, preventative and natural methods. So a month shy of attending pharmacy school, she redirected her life to naturopathic medicine. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Priya. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm really excited for this talk.

Oh, same, same. I've just been seeing so much in the health and wellness space around hormone health and gut health. So I'm super excited to talk to you today about this. But before we get into the questions, I'm curious if you can share a wellness practice that you're currently really into at the moment. Yes. Ooh, this is such a good question. I would say that the biggest thing on the forefront of my mind right now, I would say two things actually, if that's okay. Yeah, yeah. Because they kind of go hand in hand.

I have been really focusing in on my nutrition in terms of focusing on getting enough protein in each day and getting enough fiber in each day, which has been really helpful for just blood sugar support, which in turn has helped a lot with my energy and mood. And then pairing that alongside more mindful movement and really listening to my body's cues in terms of what's my threshold today for the type of exercise I want to do. So those have been my two favorite wellness practices, I guess you could say.

Yeah, I love that. I think for myself personally as well, I find that going back to the food and then the movement are my two main big pillars. I know there's so much more to wellness, but those are my key pillars as well. So I love to hear that those are things that you're doing. Mm-hmm.

So let's get into some questions on hormone health. I'm curious, what are some common hormonal issues that you see in women, especially in relation to like stress or lifestyle factors? And then how do you approach diagnosing and treating these hormone imbalances in women? Like, are there specific lab tests that you use? I think what we just love if the listener is coming to us and doesn't really know about how you practice, sharing kind of what it is that you do when it comes to like hormone health. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Hormones are really interesting because you can kind of think of them as little messengers in your body. They're really interacting with your mental, emotional health, things going on external to you, all sorts of different things. And they're kind of helping move and guide you through your day-to-day. So oftentimes hormones, if there's one imbalance, there's going to be other ones too, because they work really closely with one another. So

One of the biggest things I see is someone will come to me and they'll have a variety of different symptoms. I would say the most common is most women will come to me and they are having a lot of issues with symptoms leading up to their period and during their period. So a lot of PMS, I see a lot of like mood swings and mood changes leading up to the period, increasing fatigue, maybe acne.

knee, breast tenderness, just all those symptoms that people can experience a week or two before. And then oftentimes they're experiencing issues with the bleed itself as well. Like maybe they're getting cramps, maybe they're bleeding really heavily, maybe they're spotting a lot. So oftentimes we think of symptoms like that and we think, okay,

That has to be like high estrogen because that's one of the key hormones in the second half of your cycle. But then when you peel back the layers, you'll see, okay, wait a second, progesterone is also playing a picture here. And then there's our stress hormone cortisol, and then there's insulin as well. So there's a lot of different hormones. So I guess, I don't know how helpful it is to say that it's hard to say what imbalance is the most common I see, because I just feel like I see a variety of different ones and they really all do go hand in hand.

So when I'm working with someone, I do like a really detailed intake. I'm asking a lot of questions about how are you feeling? How's your energy? How's your mood? How's your digestion? And we kind of start to piece together, okay, it sounds like based off of what you're experiencing, this might be the imbalance you're experiencing, but let's test it because a lot of hormonal imbalances can mimic one another. So that's where I find the value in either doing blood work or doing something like a comprehensive Dutch test

And I kind of tailor it to whatever symptoms they're more predominantly experiencing because sometimes blood work is more helpful, but sometimes something like the Dutch test is more helpful if it's a lot of PMS, let's say, that they're experiencing. What is a Dutch test? So it's a urine test. And it's super helpful because it's not only testing baseline hormones like your

your estrogen, your progesterone, your testosterone, your cortisol. It's also telling us how you're breaking things down through your body. So it's giving us a look into your liver detox and how your gut is handling excess hormones. And that's often where I find people have the biggest issues. Sometimes it's not a matter of the amount of hormone, but how you're clearing it out of your body. - Oh, interesting, interesting.

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I know like you've said that your patients come with you and there's a variety of different things that can happen. But generally, maybe what are some like typical ways that you help to treat once you find that there is a hormone imbalance? I would say lifestyle is always number one. A lot of people will come to natural or functional medicine and say,

I've almost seen this trend towards green allopathy is what it's called, where instead of using medications, it's a whole bunch of supplements thrown at someone. And I think herbs and supplements, of course, have their time and place. They can help undo patterns, but they're never going to fix the long-term issue, which usually comes down to lifestyle. So how are you nourishing your body? Are you the type of person who's eating well-rounded meals throughout the day, or are you skipping meals and then

like fueling on coffee and not really supporting your body from a nutritional sense? Are you sleeping well? I think there is, I don't know. I'm not gonna assume how old you are, but when I was growing up, I feel like it was in the decade of like, you'll sleep when you're dead mentality. So that's been ingrained in a lot of us, but sleep is so important. And most people are not sleeping well. They don't fall asleep easily, or maybe they're not staying asleep. So I definitely spend some time optimizing sleep.

exercise like we talked about and definitely the nervous system. I feel like it's the least sexy answer that people want to hear, but I think stress is really at the forefront of a lot of hormonal imbalances. Yeah. Yeah. When you typically work with your patients then, is it like you kind of, because you can't be that with them, right? To like make sure that they're going to bed and that they're eating their meals. So what are ways that you kind of like help support them through that? I usually give them pretty, I don't want to say

I don't want to say comprehensive in the sense that it's restrictive by any means, but I give them kind of a guide in terms of, it would be great if you could hit 30 grams of protein with each meal. For your vegetables and fruits, these are the ones that are going to be really beneficial for your hormones, for your liver health, try to rotate these in. And then from there, you know, I give them a lot of suggestions on things that they can do. And it's all like,

I kind of throw a bunch of things at the person in terms of lifestyle tips and I'm like experiment with them 'cause not everything's gonna feel good for your body, but find a couple of things that work for you and really try to build a habit around it. And I think the biggest thing to encourage people with is,

I don't want you to make all these changes overnight. I don't want you to feel like you have to overhaul your diet and completely change up your routine. Just try for one thing, make it a really strong habit and kind of build from there. And I found that that's more successful because sometimes people will come to me and they want to do everything all at once. And I'm like, you're going to burn out and hate this process and it's not going to be sustainable. That is a really, really good point.

Yeah, because I think sometimes if you have too many things to do, you will end up and maybe it's like you can do it for like a week or so, but there's probably a finite period if you try to do everything at once. So I think that's a very good tip for anyone. Yeah, and I also feel like

even if you know all the things and you do them all the time, I mean, life happens. And sometimes you'll go through periods of time where it's really hard to prioritize your nutrition or your movement, or maybe you're not sleeping because there's stressors and there's things out of your control. And I think the more you could just have that compassion for yourself of, I know the things I should do and I'm gonna get there, but sometimes it's hard to get there as fast as I think I should.

you know, it's a marathon, not a race, I would say, or a sprint, whatever that is. Yeah. No, I appreciate that so much. I think that we all need to hear that a little bit more because it's true with so much information out there nowadays, a lot of us know the right things to do, but it can be really hard. You know, life happens to be able to keep all of those things in line and do them all the time. So giving yourself compassion and grace, I think is such a nice message to send to help someone like

kindly get back on track instead of feeling like they're forcing themselves. So you spoke a bit about like prioritizing lifestyle changes over say like herbs or supplements, but are there herbs or supplements that you find yourself prescribing or like asking your patients to take pretty often? Oh yeah, definitely. I think everyone should be on magnesium. Oh,

This is not medical advice, by the way. I do feel like most people need to be on it. Magnesium is one of our essential minerals and it plays a variety of different roles in the body. But unfortunately, it's kind of hard to get from food sources if you're not being really mindful of consuming foods that are high in magnesium. And I mean, our soils are kind of depleted anyway, so it's hard to get all of that. And the other thing is that your body depletes magnesium when you're stressed. And most of us are really stressed. Interesting.

We live in a very like fight or flight type of society where everyone's good. Go, go, go all the time. So I think most people would, but I've never given magnesium to someone and they haven't felt better. So I'll say that. What is like the general rule of dosage? And then do you have any, like, is it better to do like liquid powder? Cause I know there's a lot of magnesium products out there now.

I usually tell people to start with somewhere around like 200 milligrams, and then the ideal dose is going to be somewhere around 400, but it's really variable for each person. And you want to really pay attention to the form of magnesium you're taking because there is a lot of different magnesiums out there, but not

all of them have the same action. And a lot of the ones in the grocery store are not good quality and they're not doing a whole lot of anything. So for someone who let's say is experiencing sleep issues or anxiety or PMS, magnesium glycinate is a really good form to take.

For someone who wants a little bit more like focus and cognition support, or maybe you struggle a lot with like headaches, magnesium L-theanate is a really good form. And then for someone that's having more digestive issues, magnesium citrate is helpful. It's not a long-term solution. It's good for like short-term constipation, but just to get things moving, sometimes I'll have patients start on that while we work on figuring out why their digestive system is struggling.

Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned grocery stores may be not great. Do you have any particular brands that you would recommend? I

I really like Pure Encapsulations, Thorne, Vital Nutrients. Really any of the brands that you can find on a website called Fullscript is gonna be a good bet because Fullscript does a lot of third-party testing and they're making sure that all the supplements they bring on are medical grade supplements because supplements aren't regulated and there's a lot of supplements out there that have a lot of fillers in them or might not have everything they need in them. Like I know there was a study done on,

I think berberine it was during the peak of the craze where they went in and tested a variety of different berberine supplements at the grocery store. And a lot of them didn't have enough of what they claimed to have on their bottles. So just be mindful of who you're sourcing from. Yeah, yeah. That's a very good word of, I guess like warning. And then fullscript.com is the place that you said is good to kind of check out and vet your supplements. Yeah, yeah.

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So you spoke a bit about helping people through PMS or is it PMDD, different issues that relate to the menstrual cycle. Can you talk a little bit about how you approach that when it comes to managing a woman's menstrual cycle and any hormonal imbalances or symptoms she might experience around that? Yeah, definitely. I think that's when bringing in short-term herbs is really helpful if we know what the imbalance is because there's certain herbs that are super helpful for certain hormonal imbalances, but

Let's say someone has low progesterone levels and that's causing a lot of PMS for them, a lot of like mood symptoms before their period. Maybe they're not, maybe they're struggling with fertility and things of that nature, what we associate with low progesterone. There's an herb called Vitex, which is really, really helpful for it. So we can kind of pair that together and say, okay, we're gonna try to figure out why your progesterone is low. A lot of times it's because of stress, but in the meantime, here's an herb that's gonna help get you to that point that you wanna be at

sooner rather than later. So I think that's where the beauty of these herbs comes from. And then on the flip side, I feel like estrogen dominance is always an issue with a lot of women, especially PMS, heavy periods, cramps. And that's when all the liver supportive herbs are super helpful.

- Ah, okay, great. So when it comes to managing menstrual cycles, you feel like the herbs and the supplements can be a really great tool. - Yeah, it'll help move the needle because most often by the time I'm working with someone, they've been experiencing the symptoms for a long time. So the lifestyle changes are really important for that long-term success, but it's almost like you're stuck a little bit in those patterns. So then these herbs are really helpful to just get you out of those patterns, if that makes sense. - Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Well, along the lines of kind of talking about like the women's menstrual cycle, something I've been reading up more on recently since I just turned 39 is perimenopause. And for any listeners who maybe haven't heard of this term, it's really the transitional period before a woman hits menopause. So it typically starts in your 40s, but sometimes it can start in your late 30s. And during this time, like estrogen levels fluctuate, hormone changes can prompt a lot of symptoms.

I'm curious if you could share with us from your experience, like how does one determine if they are going through perimenopause and what are some ways to like manage it? You can first start with looking at your symptoms and your cycle. So typically what will start to happen is your period cycles are getting a little bit irregular. Maybe you're getting your period more frequently. Maybe you're skipping your period every so often. So you were starting to see those irregular patterns coming up because that estrogen is fluctuating.

Then often with that, you'll start to experience symptoms like the hot flashes, the mood changes, the sleep issues. Maybe there's metabolic changes happening to you where you're noticing more stubborn weight gain. So those are pretty typical symptoms that someone might experience going into perimenopause and then eventually menopause. And in that state, if you're suspected

something like that is happening, the age range is matching up, that's when doing lab testing to confirm it is really helpful. Because then if you're testing your FSH and your LH, you can see if you are getting into perimenopause. Because usually if you're testing FSH and LH at the right time of your cycle, around day three of your cycle, they should have like a pretty close one-to-one ratio to one another. But when you're getting into perimenopause and menopause, we'll see FSH start to spike up.

pretty high. And that could be an indicator that you're moving towards perimenopause. Okay. Those are great tips to have. So noticing those symptoms. And then if you do feel like those are matching up, then going to your doctor and getting a proper blood test to see what those levels are indicating that.

Yeah, exactly. If you do realize you're going through perimenopause, like what are some ways that you generally would recommend someone kind of manage the experience of it? There's usually two different routes that you can go down. And I do support patients through either one, depending on what their preference is. The first one is a completely natural route where we're really working with like supplements and herbs to help navigate the next steps. And so anyone that's going through perimenopause,

When we're thinking about your hormone production, your estrogen, your testosterone, that's happening in your ovaries and in your eggs during your reproductive years. When you're moving into perimenopause and menopause, you're not going to be able to produce those hormones through your eggs anymore. So then it falls back on your adrenal glands, which are producing other, like they're producing DHA and cortisol, which are known as your stress hormones.

That DHA can break down into estrogen and testosterone. So then supporting your nervous system and that gland in particular becomes really, really important in perimenopause. So herbs like maca are super helpful because they help support the HPA access. So then a lot of women feel relief in symptoms with that. And then there's other herbs too, like black cohosh is really good. Red clover is really good.

And so sometimes I'll walk patients through that step. We're using the herbs. We're using a lot of like lifestyle changes in terms of getting them to do more strength training, really focus in on their protein intake, just really optimize everything. But if they're still really struggling, then we have a conversation around bioidentical hormones, if it makes sense to them, if it's safe for them, and if they want to move down that route instead. Oh.

What are bioidentical hormones? I don't think I've heard of that before. So it's similar to hormone replacement therapy, but the hormones are coming from natural sources and not synthetic sources. So it's the same estrogen and progesterone that you'd be taking, but it's a little bit more natural. And so sometimes I'll have people start on a topical estrogen gel and then oral progesterone, and then they're feeling pretty good mood-wise, energy, sleep, all of that.

going into perimenopause and menopause. Okay, great. So it's good to know that those are options. Yeah. Great.

I'd love to talk a little bit now about how gut health impacts hormone regulation. Could you talk a little bit about this connection and how you address it? Absolutely. So when we're thinking about your hormones, there's obviously one end of it where you want to be producing enough hormones. So that's really important. And then on the other end of it is how you're detoxing hormones out of your system. So anytime you have buildup of hormone, your body's naturally excreting it. And that happens first in the liver and then it goes to the gut.

So if your gut's not functioning well, if you have a lot of issues with constipation, maybe there's a lot of inflammation, maybe you're experiencing a lot of bloating, just any type of gut symptom, that's an indicator that one of your detox organs is not operating efficiently. You should be having daily bowel movements, well-formed, easy to pass, no issues, no major symptoms really on a day-to-day. And so...

if you are experiencing digestive issues, that's the first line that it could start impacting your hormones. And then from the other end of it is your gut health

is kind of like the foundation of your overall health. And so it's really making a huge impact on your nervous system, your inflammatory levels, your immune system. So if there's some type of dysregulation going on in the gut, all those other systems are gonna be not functioning well either. There's gonna be an increase in inflammation in the body. There's gonna be stress on the body and all of that will negatively impact your hormonal health too. Oh, wow. So the gut is really kind of the core of,

Well, the source, I guess, where it can lead to a lot of things. Yeah. The gut and the nervous system are the two areas that I work on with everyone, regardless of what they come to me with. Like

they can tell me X, Y, and Z symptoms. And I'm going to be like, well, let's work on optimizing your gut and see how those symptoms play out in the aftermath. Yeah, yeah. So I am curious, like if a patient comes to you with any like gut issues, how do you generally approach like the diagnostic process and all of that? I usually do a comprehensive stool test to start. And some people have

some level of familiarity with it because they've probably done stool tests through their regular doctors. Those stool tests I usually tell them are testing for things like E. coli or salmonella, which unless you're super symptomatic with food poisoning, that's not going to come up on your stool test. The types of tests I run are looking at your full gut microbiome terrain, so the good bacteria, the

bad bacteria, your digestive markers, if there's any yeast overgrowth. So it's very comprehensive. And so we'll do that. And then depending on what imbalances come up, we start to tackle those. Okay. Got it. So it is also a panel or a test where you're able to hone in on the specific issue. Yeah.

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You did already talk a little bit about how like everything kind of stems from the gut, including like hormone health. But could you speak a little bit more about like the microbiome and how that plays into the role of overall hormonal health? Yeah, the microbiome is all the different organisms that are within your gut. Most of them are housed in your large intestines. And so they're playing a really big role in how you're absorbing your nutrients.

The byproducts they're creating are supporting your immune system and they're helping maintain like the integrity of your gut lining as well. So there's so many different things that they're doing. I mean, we know that there's the big gut brain access as well. So they're impacting your mood and your nervous system. Like I feel like that,

gut bacteria really has its hands dipped in like every single one of your health jars, essentially. So every system, I think I could probably link back to something that the gut microbiome is doing. So it's super important for your overall health and wellbeing. And so there's so many ways that it could impact your hormonal health. I mean, just from the most basic standpoint of if you're not absorbing nutrients well through your gut, you could be deficient in essential things that your hormones need in order to function well, like B vitamins or

or let's say zinc or magnesium. So there's just from that angle alone, that could be making an impact on your hormones. Yeah. And what, for anyone out there who might maybe doesn't quite feel familiar with the microbiome, what are some senses or symptoms to know that your microbiome is like off or needs to be addressed? So it's,

if you're not having regular healthy bowel movements. So ideally you should be going one to three times a day, well-formed, easy to pass, not feeling like, you know, things are not coming out the way they're supposed to, or you're really inflamed. Bloating is an issue too. If you're noticing a lot of bloating, a little bit of bloating after meals is normal. I mean, you're ingesting food, there's food where there wasn't. So a little bit of distension is totally normal, but if you feel uncomfortable or it's last

more than like a couple of hours, that's a sign that something's going on. Skin issues is really big too. People often miss the connection between the skin and the gut, but for anyone struggling with like eczema and acne, that can often come back to gut health as well.

abdominal pain, nausea, just all those digestive symptoms. Okay. Those are good to look out for. So I know that it's, you know, every patient is unique and every situation is unique, but are there kind of general dietary changes that you usually recommend to someone to improve their gut health? I usually tell people, take a look at your diet and like, be honest with yourself. How much of it is actually whole foods that are really nourishing and how much of it is a lot of processed

foods. Because when we're looking at processed foods, and I'm talking like ultra-processed foods, not like a can of beans or something. But when we're looking at a lot of those packaged foods, they're often really devoid of nutrients. And on top of that, they could have more inflammatory ingredients in them. So that's causing an issue for the gut. But I

alcohol consumption is a big one too. So I often tell people like try to cut back on your alcohol consumption and then really again, focus in on more whole foods, more anti-inflammatory foods, like really try to aim for fruits and vegetables that pack a punch. So that's often like your red and purple pigmented fruits and veggies, your cruciferous vegetables, your citrus foods, those are all really beneficial.

And then this next step is a little 50-50 because if you have a ton of imbalances in your gut microbiome, it's not gonna feel good. But if your gut just needs a little bit of support, adding in fermented foods and prebiotic fibers is a really helpful way to help your gut microbiome overall. So fermented foods are basically like the food version of probiotics. And then the prebiotic foods are specific fiber-rich foods that feed the good bacteria in your gut. Mm.

Okay. All such helpful information. Dr. Priya, I'm curious how you typically address common gut issues like bloating, IBS, or SIBO. So when it's getting to a point where we can safely say, okay, we've done what we can through lifestyle and diet and your symptoms are not improving, then we'll do the test. We'll do a stool test and then we start tackling it with specific herbs and supplements. So the approach that I take is

different depending on what type of imbalance comes up. So for someone that has SIBO, that's going to be bacteria that's growing in the small intestines. Again, we want the majority of it in the large intestines, not the small intestines. So a lot of herbal antimicrobials, things like oregano oil might be helpful, berberine, but I really match it to the type of bacteria you have in overgrowth. So you want to be really mindful of that. Same with like if there's bacteria imbalances in the large intestines, I usually match whatever is an overgrowth to the herb that's going to be the most effective.

So we kind of go through a few weeks of doing the antimicrobials. And then in the aftermath, we bring in good quality probiotics, gut lining support, kind of like healing and sealing up the work that we did. Okay, great. So we did talk a little bit about like the gut brain connection or gut mind connection. Sorry.

So I have a couple of questions that I kind of want to dig into that a little bit more. Firstly, I don't know if this is related or unrelated, but could you discuss a bit about the relationship between stress and gut health?

Yeah, they have a really cyclical relationship with one another because stress makes a really big negative impact on your gut microbiome. The first thing that it does is it reduces your digestive capability because you're not putting out as many digestive enzymes and maybe stomach acid when you are eating your food. When you're stressed out, I referenced this a little bit earlier, but you're in fight or flight mode.

And so your nervous system, you're either operating in the fight or flight mode or the rest and digest mode. So that's either the sympathetic nervous system or the parasympathetic. If you're super stressed out, your body's not going to be allocating enough resources to digestion because it's kind of in this, we got to like,

run or fight something off mode. Whereas when you're relaxed and in the parasympathetic nervous system known as rest and digest, your body's prioritizing other functions like digestion. So that's the first layer that we start to see. And then beyond that,

chronic stress does increase inflammation in the body and that inflammation can cause overgrowth of bacterias that we don't want in the gut microbiome. And then we run into the issue of now the guts in a little bit of chaos and that's further feeding into inflammation in the body. And then that negatively messes with our stress response too. So it starts to become really cyclical in that

Oh, wow. Yeah, I did not think about, I mean, I have heard of, it was interesting to hear you break down kind of like the immediate, like when you're in a high intense like fight or flight mode, it makes sense that your body doesn't have the proper resources to make other things function. But yeah, the chronic stress and how that can play a role and make it cyclical is also a really good example.

word of warning, I think for anyone out there who needs more prompting to like manage their stress. Yeah, definitely. And stress is such a hard one because I know that there are, I mean, life is stressful and our society is very high stress too. So it becomes a matter of like

How do you most efficiently handle your stress? And it's so different for each person, but I think that's the whole beauty of naturopathic medicine in a way is that we really like, kind of like what we've talked about this whole time is you really can't single out like one area of health without also examining all the other areas that are playing a role and how everything's feeding one another too. Yeah, yeah. It is all interconnected. Mm-hmm.

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How can gut health issues impact mental health specifically? So I know we talked about stress, but maybe if there's like mental health related issues that come up, in what instances do we find there's like a link to the gut and what treatments do you usually use to address that? I would say the most common way that it probably impacts it is stress.

through nutrient deficiencies alone, because when we start thinking about the nervous system and mood regulation, there's a lot of really essential nutrients that your body needs in order to have all those processes take place. I keep thinking to like B vitamins in particular, like B6 is so important for mental health and

Oftentimes, if someone's not digesting well, they could be deficient in a lot of these really important nutrients that your mental health needs. But taking it a step beyond that too, there's certain overgrowths that we can tie back to certain conditions. So I think one of the biggest ones that I usually see is the link between anxiety and candida overgrowth. Candida is a yeast.

And it's normal to have in small quantities within the gut, but it's an opportunistic infection. So what that means is it takes advantage of a weakened gut and it can go into overgrowth. And this is one of those cyclical relationships, unfortunately, because stress can cause an overgrowth of candida and then candida can actually increase anxiety. So-

A lot of times people that have a candida overgrowth, they notice like more irritability and anxiety that feels a little more out of their control. Lots of sugar cravings, lots of just feeling inflamed overall. Those are some pretty hallmark signs of it.

Oh, wow. And is that usually when someone will come to you is if they feel like they're feeling these symptoms and then sometimes the diagnosis will be it's candida? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Curious if there are any red flags in daily habits that you see often which affect hormone or gut health? Oh, yeah. I would say the most common one I see is the people that are skipping breakfast and just powering through with coffee all day long. That is really going to mess with your hormones. A

A lot of women come to me and they're like, I just don't feel hungry first thing in the morning, or I don't have time to eat in the morning, or I just don't want to. I haven't eaten breakfast in forever. I just have like two, three coffees and power through my day until maybe like 3 p.m. And then they're also feeling very low energy and cranky and irritable and like maybe a little dizzy and like all the things that we associated with

blood sugar dysregulation. And so I would say that's probably one of the biggest things I see. And then the second habit is not getting enough protein in. Okay. So the importance of properly nourishing ourselves is really important. Yeah. Which actually leads me to my next question, because I know that there's all this talk of intermittent fasting as a dietary trend. But

But I'm curious, like coming from a woman's health perspective, what are your thoughts on that in terms of like intermittent fasting for women and hormone and gut health? I think it's variable and it depends on what hormonal imbalances you have. So I know for some individuals, like let's say there's a big picture of like insulin resistance, it can be helpful.

not a long intermittent fasting window but it can be helpful in metabolic conditions for most women if you have a natural cycle which means you're not on any form of like hormonal birth control you just want to be mindful about the way that you are fasting i think you could hold a little bit of a higher fasting window during your follicular phase but when you're moving into like the two weeks before your period you really do want to focus on nourishing and resting a bit more because

That hormone progesterone is the star of that cycle phase and stress can decrease progesterone production. So if you are doing a crazy long fast and you're working out super intense, you're stressing out your body and that could lead to less of a progesterone production. Okay. Those are very wise words to offer. So as a parting kind of like conclusion, like topic, I would love if you could share for my listeners, we kind of range in age, mostly women, but I'm sure maybe some men are listening.

women in their like 20s, 30s, and some in their early 40s. So I guess within each of these like kind of age groups, would you have like kind of customized just like overall gut and hormone health maintenance tips? Yeah, 20s and 30s are going to look pretty similar because you're still pretty firmly in your reproductive years. And this is really, really the time I would say to take, I mean, you should always take your hormones seriously, but in your 20s and 30s,

You really, really want to work on making sure you have a good understanding of what your menstrual cycle is, what the hormones are, what they're doing across the month and how to really optimize them because everything you're doing right now is going to set you up for a very successful perimenopause and menopause experience. So if you're feeling symptoms in your 20s and 30s, get them addressed. Don't push the can down the road because then perimenopause is going to be even harder and you don't want to be going into that

decade of your life really struggling. And so we've talked a lot about like the importance of nutrition and being mindful of the way you're exercising and really supporting your stress. And when it comes to digestive health, just really prioritizing a more nutritionally dense diet.

And then when you're moving into your 40s, that's when I would say the nervous system support is going to be really helpful, really focusing in on building muscle mass, bringing in a lot of like balanced workouts, because all of that is going to be really important for the next several decades of your life. That was wonderful. Thank you so much, Dr. Priya.

This has been a really informative conversation. I feel like I learned a lot and I'm sure a lot of our listeners are going to take away some very useful information. For our listeners, Dr. Priya actually has a great Instagram account where she shares a lot of really helpful information. For our listeners out there, Dr. Priya, if you could share where people can find you online and if they're interested in maybe working with you, where they can contact you. Yeah, so my Instagram is at doctor.priya. So the doctor spelled out and then Priya spelled P.

And then my website is drpria.com. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. This was a great conversation. Yes.

Yes. And listeners, we'll catch you on the next episode. Thanks for listening. Once again, this is your host, Janet. If you're not already, please follow or subscribe to this podcast. I will be taking a little break, but we'll be back soon with weekly episodes. In the meantime, you can also find me on Instagram at Janet W. That's Janet, the word double and the letter U.

Hi everyone, it's Janet here from ABG. The Asian Bosco podcast is on hiatus, but I will be coming back with my own show, now titled Living Well or Trying To with Janet, relaunching in May. A couple of new things, the show will now be on video, but tempered expectations please, because I am now a one-woman team, but I will continue doing my best to bring you quality, most importantly, personable content. The

The show will continue to be a combination of solo and guest conversations. I talk more about this in the first episode dropping May 6th. So please go search Living Well or Trying To with Janet on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Or if you're on YouTube, look up Janet W. That's Janet, the word double and the letter U. Please follow and subscribe and tune in for all the episodes to come.