Blood Chemistry & Optimal Labs With Andy Lucus

Hello and welcome to the Ark Woman podcast. This is an exploration of woman kind. Here we discuss what it is to be a woman in the modern world while utilizing ancient and modern modalities in tandem to create a bounty of health for the body, mind and spirit. Good day everyone and welcome back to the pod. Thanks for joining us again today. I'm interviewing the incredible Andy Lucas and he looked at has been on the pod before and we were talking about male fertility and today he's back to discuss his new book blood chemistry. This is a fantastic book because we have all had the experience of going and getting our blood done by our GP going back to said GP and said GP saying it's totally fine. Your bloods are totally normal and you're fully healthy and everything is fine and you live feeling gaslit as fuck knowing that something is wrong and not knowing what and not actually having the knowledge to decipher what your bloods actually are enter Andy Lucas's incredible new book. So you go through all eight chapters and go through all of the 50 markers or most of the 50 markers in details specific to women's health and the trends that we're seeing in women's health at the moment. So you can look at your bloods alongside this book and go to your doctor and if they're telling you everything's fine when nothing is fine, you can eloquently tell them to get fucked. Enjoy the pod. How are you going? I'm good. How are you doing, Sarah? I'm great. I loved your book. We were just starting to talk about it and I was like let's just start recording now because I loved the book. I read it yesterday. I have the ebook version. It's so detailed, so simple. I feel like anyone could use this. Can you talk about what inspired you to actually write this book with? I think it's doctor. What's her name? Sorry. Doctor Miranda Miles. She's awesome as well. So speaking of Miranda, just to introduce her as well, she's my old nutritional biochemistry lecturer and I started working there when I graduated a few years ago and she's an absolute brain and a lovely woman to go very big in the women's health space. Obviously, as you know, and absolute pleasure to work with. Regarding how the book came about, though, it was very interesting when we were studying some of this stuff at university. We realized there's very minimal text out there for students, health practitioners around what is actually considered optimal in terms of blood chemistry. There's a lot of medical tests out text, obviously, that kind of talk about these types of things. But the way the medical industry looks at it, blood chemistry is very different to how we as natural health practitioners look at it when we're actually trying to achieve optimal health. I mean, there's a couple of great texts out there. Dick and Weatherby wrote one, James LaFarrow wrote one, but these texts are 10 plus years old. And they are dense like to actually find what you're looking for. It's your sitting there for hours, flicking through like the value like the I remember going through the back of these textbooks trying to find it. Okay, but like where is blood glucose? And it's just like in the middle of some obscure chapter somewhere and you're like, ah, this is so difficult. Yeah, and the reality is that they're based on US. So realistically being here in Australia, like there's the difference between the US ranges and the international standards. So basically, yeah, it just kind of came about in a way, there wasn't much out there. I found myself constantly referring back to old notes. And I just started to kind of piece one together and it's like, this is a really good idea to actually put something out there to market because I could only assume I'm not the only one in the situation where he's trying to understand blood chemistry. And so, I think that's the reason why I'm here in the wording phase, like having a nice little reference was, it just makes thought easy and realistically I refer back to it all the time even when I'm working with clients. So yeah, I mean, that's kind of how it came about. And yeah, it's been a great success so far. So we're really happy with what we came out with. I'm really happy that you've created this and I'm going to be using it in my practice as well. I've already found it very, very useful. I've had a few people for a cent of a blood to me this morning and used it and was like, oh my goodness, like this is such a great tool for me. I hope doctors use it as well because let's go into that. Like, what are your main issues with how we currently formulate so-called healthy blood reference ranges? And before we start that, what is a blood reference range and what is a blood test? Just before we get into this because like, no, a lot of people are going to know what this is. I don't think a lot of people have actually went and got their bloods done and they should don't even know what a reference value is or a reference range is. Yeah. So I guess in terms, obviously what a blood test is a lot of time when you're presented the GP and you've got some form of health issue. A lot of times I'll often describe it going get blood test done. So obviously they're drawing blood from your body. They're sending it off to a lab. The lab analyzes where your blood fits or the different markers within your blood depending on the test they're running. Now, regards to the reference ranges there. The reference ranges are basically set by the medical industry in regards to what they consider either they're looking for illness and disease. So it's a very broad range where, for example, I always use examples of like white blood cells which are immune system. Now the medical range is 4 and 11, which is quite a broad range. And the problem is the amount of people that we see, and I'm sure you deal with it as well, they present with blood tests and they'll go and see the GP. The GP will test their blood so they'll get the results and the GP will sit there and say, oh, your bloods are fine. But you're sitting there shaking your head because you still feel terrible. You've got these terms, you've got no energy, mental health suffering, whatever it is. You still know something's wrong. But according to the results of the GP said, everything's fine. The gas sliding. The gas sliding is insane. I feel terrible. I feel like I'm dying inside. And your doctor is like, yeah, it's fine. He's like, no, it's not. He's wrong here. Like listen to me and they'll let know, but the reference values are fine. So is there something wrong with our reference values and how we're collecting our reference values? Yeah, in a way, I'd say there is because it just depends how you're looking at from because I don't like to brag on the medical industry too much because they, I generally believe all their hearts in the right place. But the example I give myself realistically 15 years ago when I traveled overseas for five months, I'd come back and I was just as shallow myself. I'd get out of bed. I was completely exhausted. You know, I was chronically getting ill. I went and got my blood testism. When we refer back to that medical reference range of the immune system, I saw the white blood cells. And we said the medical range is between 4 and 11. My mark is we're coming in at 3.8. So I was on the low end of the medical range, but the GP just said to me, look, Andy, I look just rest recover. Take some time off. I had three testes in a couple of weeks. So I retested in two weeks and I came back at 3.9. Once again, he's like, well, there's not much we can do. We'll just retest in about a month. And that was basically it. Now I later found out down the track that I'd had a really nasty bout of glenginal fever, which of course, it massively implicated my immune system. And I've done nothing to fix it. It was one of those things where I not became disillusioned with the medical system, but realized it was something that was of working. So if we talk about why or kind of how the medical ranges work from basic from my perspective these days is what you find is, as I said before, the medical references, they're looking for disease and illness. So if you fit within their range, they consider you healthy. The problem is these reference ranges are based off, for example, so they take 1,000 people at random from the population. Now they'll do the old bulk of a few fit within the 95% trial. Then you are considered healthy. It's the 5% of outwise that they base their ranges off. The problem is if you look out the streets today, how many of that 95% are actually healthy? And I can assure you it's a very small city. 20% maybe 15 if you're in a nice neighborhood. Yeah, exactly. Good food supply, quality water, sunshine, you know, and you look at the world today and it's just not a healthy place to live in. What we're finding very much so as people are going to the GPs, they're getting their blood tests, they're told that their blood results are fine. They're becoming the solution. They're coming to say practitioners like us who are looking for more answers. And when you start to dig into it and realize that those ranges are actually not conducive to good health, then all of a sudden you start to understand and you can start to pinpoint what's really going wrong with someone internally. So what we've done with this book is very much collate what we consider optimal ranges based off a lot of research, a lot of studies. And you'll find the ranges for example a lot smaller. I go back to the white blood cells between medical range between 4 and 11. Our optimal range is actually between 7 and a half and 5 and a half. So you'll notice that's a much smaller window. So effectively what I'm doing from that instance, if you're sitting outside that 5 and a half or 7 and a half range, I'm putting a flag on that. Then I'm correlating that with all the other markers that might be in or out of range to look for trends to see what's going on and what might be leading towards this immune dysfunction or might explain why you actually feel in the way you're feeling. And from that you can effectively start to really help someone. And your book is fantastic because in the book for those of you that will buy it hopefully everyone will. It's fantastic because it has the low and then the high value and the you know the disease and the disorders that are associated with this. And you can see anemia with low vitamin D and low vitamin B. And that's showing you what systems in the body might be off. It's giving you clues for what you should be focusing on and what diagnosis you might be heading towards. And I did notice that like I noticed that over and over and over. over again that the reference values that were medicinal by the alopathic system were, you know, yours were probably just a squeege in between and sometimes they're a little bit higher and sometimes they're a little bit lower. And yeah, I just want to go in chapter by chapter. How many chapters are there? And you go through different systems of the body. That's a really. I think there's eight or nine chapters. I should know that. But I don't know what chapters are. I'll go with that. But there's 50 reference values you go through. Specifically that people can get in their bloods. And before we get started, people might want to listen to this podcast and then go, okay, I'm going to get my bloods done. How do people in Australia go and get their bloods done? Like what is the pathway to going and getting a full blood panel? And what would you recommend people ask for? Okay, so with this one, the standard way to go and get this done is obviously through the GP. And this is what I generally recommend people to try first. If you go and see the GP, you can generally get the large majority of this stuff bulked. Now, when you go and see GP, GP, they have to justify all this stuff to Medicare, which I think is ridiculous. I honestly believe someone we should be able to get access to a full blood panel every 12 months in terms of just being able to prevent things before they pop up. But we have to work, we live in reality, right? So like I said, the GPs need to justify their tests to Medicare. So generally what I say when I'm working with a client before they go and see their GP is basically just in a strange way for me to say this, but play up your symptoms on little bit. Sit there and say, look, I've been feeling really fatigued, my libido's crashed, I'm super depleted. And then just kind of talk about how you're just feeling a little bit worse aware, because they need to justify it, right? So basically once you do that, there might be more likely to get them to be able to do all the tests. Otherwise, what you can do, alternative health practitioners, we have the capacity to run tests privately, which do mean, does mean you'll be out of pocket for the tests. And depending on the full panel that you get down, that can be anywhere between three to five hundred dollars. So it isn't expense, but it's money well invested because we're talking health long term, right? You know, it's faries that kind of catch something early, spend a little bit of money correcting nutrition, diet lifestyle, then five years down the track dealing with disease and behavioral medication for rest of your life. So, but I mean, one of the things that I found is like most GPs will run, they'll run the majority of like, they're probably about 80% of the tests that I'd refer to and I'll go through those in a second. But then what you can do is always do, if there's a couple of tests that are missing, you can always just run those tests privately and they'll range from kind of somewhere between 10 to 50 dollars each for a test. So you might spend an extra hundred dollars just to get the top up of what you need, but it's well worth it because sometimes you can be missing very valuable information from just having one test, not in my list as opposed to everything else. But regarding specifically what we're looking at, you know, we're looking at a full-bite panel. So we're looking at red sales, white sales, we're looking at kidney markers, liver markers, cholesterol markers, iron studies, thyroid studies, which generally most GPs will struggle to bulk build. So that's one that I tend to refer at quite a bit. We're also looking at basic minerals, you know, magnesium, zinc, b vitamins, vitamin D, etc. I think I mentioned cholesterol. Also, to inflammation markers is a big one that I want to get tested with a lot of clients, you know, c-reactive protein, is a slight sedimentation rate because that gives a really good indication of what's happening within the body of the inflammatory state and also to sex hormones. And I will mention that obviously this initial copy of the book doesn't contain sexual thyroid hormones in it. That is coming in a later addition, but they are definitely things that we would recommend to get tested, especially yourself. So if you're working with what a woman, they are very important tests to get done. And that's a question I get from women all the time, is because our sex hormones change quite significantly and a lot of the time doctors are like, oh, let's just put you in whenever. And it's like, well, I don't think that makes total sense because, you know, luteinizing hormone, progesterone and estrogen are going and even testosterone, elxytocin will cycle through. So if you wanted women to go and look at sex hormones, what would you recommend doing two different panels at different times or like, how would you recommend women go about that if sex hormones is something they want to look at? And forgive you not having a specific summit at this point in time, but generally what I'd say is there are certain dates in certain for certain hormones that you want to test relative to your cycle. You know, whether that's at peak ovulation, whether that's two or three days after the bleed begins, that's when you want to get these tests done. So you can still get a full panel done, but you might speak to your GP and say, oh, look, if the GP knows what they're doing, they'll tell you when to get these tests done at the right time. If they're not, then okay, get your one test speak to someone different. So if you think you're low in progesterone, get it when progesterone will be at its most dominant vice versa, for luteinizing hormone and estrogen as well. And also to make sure you record where you are on your date of cycle. So when we are analyzing these tests, we can also make sure we're referring back to certain range because as you said, a lot of female hormones will fluctuate throughout cycle. And if we don't know which day you are on, then we can't make an actual accurate analysis of kind of where these levels are at. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's get started. I wanted to go through each chapter of your book. And I wanted to ask you a few questions about each. I'd like, I have so many more questions I wanted to ask like my, I was reading your book yesterday and I had like an A4 notebook and I had about four pages filled of questions just because I was like, this is so fascinating. I love blood work so much and I love this book so much, but I've bottled it down to two pages. So let's get started. All right. So let's start with red blood cell accounts. What would women look for in red blood cell accounts? Specifically, what are some general trends that you see in blood work from women? Especially one of the big, just in general with women, one thing that I see a lot of is very much depletion. You tend to see a lot of the ranges on the lower end of the scale. And a lot of that does come back to nutritional impact, which probably from a female perspective, the information we've been told for years is, eat less, move more, you'll be healthy, you'll be skinny, which is complete metabolic. What we need to be looking at is calorie intake is very much relative to caloric demand. So the more you're doing, the more stress, the more minerals and nutrients you need. Because the problem is if you're not eating enough, then you're going to impact oral mineral production. You're going to impact the development of red and white blood cells. It's going to impact your immune system. Generally what we see from general trends, like I'd see low white blood cells, low red blood cells, hemoglobin count is specifically low. I know a lot of women tend to run on coffee, which will impact these types of things from a negative standpoint. So I guess for all its hits of that, the whole depletion cycle, which I'm sure will get further into as we go into these questions. It's just something that I see time and time again. So sad when you see that, when you see blood work and you're like, "Oh wow, this woman is so depleted," and she's probably just like, "What's wrong with me?" And all the science is really quite pervasive and tells us that we should just be acting like a little man and that we should be able to do the, you know, the F-45 and eat vegan and you know, drink coffee every morning, but obviously that's affecting our blood work and our blood specifically, I would say pretty hardcore. So the next one I think is quite interesting because women have the highest percentage of auto immune disorders. So when women with these disorders get blood work done focusing on white blood cell counts, such as neutrophils and monocytes, for example. Yeah, so any blood panel that gets done, you should definitely be getting your red and white cell count. The white cell count is one of the most important markers that I look at in terms of how much information it keeps me. So when we're talking about things like auto immune conditions, now as most people are aware, or if they're not aware, a lot of auto immunity can be linked back to gut, to the gut. Now, when there's degradation in the gut cells, when there's intestinal permeability, so for leaky gut, what happens is the immune cells become overactive in an attempt to fight off what excess toxins, chemicals, pollutants, whatever the blood, whatever's put into the body. Now, what we tend to find is you'll see initially there's an acute response where your total white cells increase, but over time the body basically can't keep up production if it's constantly fighting. Like I like to use the analogy of the white blood cell, the immune system in general is like an army fighting a war. When it first go to war, it just throws as many troops out as possible in the hope that it can knock it off. Now, the problem is if it can't knock it off, you start to run out of troops to fight the war. For example, your neutrophils and your lymphocytes are more your basic kind of soldiers that can fight off the standard kind of illnesses and disease. Now, when you're dealing with more specific bacteria or conditions like auto immunity, what happens is the standard white cells and neutrophils on lymphocytes can't win the war, so that's when the monocytes, the sonophils and bachelors start to come out, almost like special forces to try and fight whatever is going on in the body. So you can see from blood work what stage of auto immunity or gut degradation a woman is up to and you can figure out, okay, this is where we're out and this is what we need to do from that, from seeing how many base fills and neutrophils and monocytes are hanging around. Yeah, so in a way, yes. So you won't see the specific condition, obviously, but what you will get is a strong indication that there is something going on. Now generally, when I see this indication, especially if we're dealing with something like auto immunity, if you've got elevated the sonophils gas fills monocytes. One of the first port of course is like, all right, we need to deep up the find out what's going on in the gas zone testinal system. So we need to know effectively what's happening within the gut. Now is there intestinal permeability? Is there elevated beta-glucoronobase? Is there digestive enzymes that are suffering? What kind of bacteria on parasitic makeup is within your gut? How is your microbiome being affected? Because if you can see this information, then you can start to work more specifically on correcting what's going on at a gut level. And when you fix the gut, then you fix the immune system. So I have a few questions about that. So number one, if you saw blood work come back and it had high white blood cell count, that would be conducive to some leaky gut or some gut permeability issue, would you recommend a stool test and looking at the microbiome and looking at the other markers in a stool test as well? Yeah, generally that's what would happen. So if you generally find with people with severe gastrointestinal issues, their overall white cell count will be low, but the specialised for monocytes, the sonophils and basophils will be high. Now that basically indicates that white has been fighting this for a while. If you're seeing just a white cell count, high and the specialised, monocytes, sonophils and basophils are low, my first question is have you been sick in the last couple of weeks? You know, the body is probably just fighting on some kind of virus. So once you kind of get that indication, okay, yes, they're chronically low, the specialised forces are high, okay, then we do need to go and do some further investigation. That's where something like stool test can kind of really comes into play. Okay, so what would you recommend for high versus low generally white blood cell count? So say if a woman got a blood work done and she had high white blood cells versus low, what would you recommend from a nutrient profile to correct this issue? So for trying to support the immune system in general, basic minerals such as zinc and vitamin C, like everybody knows, they're super important for immune health. One thing that I really encourage is omega threes. Omega threes are super-centre for helping heal the cells. You know, every one of our cells is made up of lipid membrane. We need good quality lipids, fats to actually help heal these cells, which protect the body from all these toxins and chemicals and viruses, for example. But then there's other things like if there's some kind of gastrointestinal concern going on and there's chronic inflammation in the gut, something like a curcumin is incredibly powerful for reducing inflammation, especially something also like prostitutin, which is actually really good to help deal with high levels of histamine in the blood. You know, those types of things can be really, really better official. Just a quick shout out to our sponsor's creation cacao. Creation cacao is an organic ceremonial cacao company and they are passionate about making sure that you guys have the highest quality cacao in your cabinet. If you know me, you know, I love cacao. I have it every day or every other day if I'm not having a match up. And I found it incredible for my health. I don't really lean into coffee so much anymore because I'd rather have a high fat high nutrient dense high mineral delicious drink, which is cacao. If you use the discount code, our Corman 10 at their website, which you'll find in the show notes, you'll get 10% off any order from Creation cacao. Okay, amazing. So let's move on to blood sugar balance, which I think has also all of these things we're talking about are having a moment in social media health spheres at the moment. There's lots of misinformation about a lot of the things that you clarify in this book, which I love this book for because it just made everything so simple. So blood sugar balance, can you briefly explain how blood sugar massively impacts women's hormonal health throughout the cycle and how it can impact different sex hormones specifically if you wanted to go down that route? Yeah, so regarding the blood sugar, I will quickly touch on some of the basics. You know, it's most people know that having a stable blood sugar level, regular blood sugar levels is super important to simple things like weight gain, thyroid function, energy production. And what you tend to find when people are needing consistent high-quality nutrients throughout the day, these levels become impacted. Now, what happens based off that we're moving into more women's health kind of sphere, effectively when you have elevated levels of something like insulin, for example, it leads to excess angrilym production. So that's going to lead to increased levels of testosterone. Now, from a female perspective, yes, females want X amount of testosterone, but they want much more estrogen. Now, you want to flip the scale in terms of men, you know, we want high levels of testosterone, but lower levels of estrogen, you know, they both have both have their place and their roles within the body. Now, what you tend to see when women have high levels of insulin are things like polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is really, really common. Now, that's associated strongly with increased levels of testosterone. So one of the other things you're likely to see too is when you've got that kind of hormonal balance out of wax, you know, too much testosterone on our festers, and that's going to mess with the menstrual cycle as well, which can lead to much further things down the track, you know, irregular periods can obviously lead to fertility issues further down the track. So it's super important that blood sugar is actually balanced and in within ratios, because from a female health perspective, because women are more sensitive in regarding to their hormonal balance, if that's out of wax, you can have massive implications on things like this before. Okay, thank you for going into PCOS because I think it is so interesting how we talk about PCOS and how it is changing at the moment, because people understand PCOS as a purely reproductive disorder and absolutely isn't. It is a metabolic disorder that netted negatively affects the hormonal system and the endocrine system. And I didn't actually understand the root of how that kind of came about biochemically in the body. Thanks for explaining that. So when we're looking at blood glucose, we're going to be looking at blood, the fasting blood glucose in a blood test. So how does high and low blood glucose for a woman's hormonal health affect women? So in terms of fasting blood glucose, now that one tends to, that can be manipulated quite well in terms of from an nutritional standpoint, so if it's fire low, it generally resolves with a quality diet, can be implicated or sorry, can be corrected quite easily. So I guess one of the bigger questions, and I think it was one of the, we spoke about this earlier, is in a way it's kind of linked with insulin as well. So what I might kind of look at, one of the big things that I look at, I look more at the insulin levels relative to women's health. So for example, for women's got low insulin levels that if you're not aware, like a lot of clients might not be insulin is very much involved in signaling the ovaries to release eggs during ovulation. So if you have low insulin, that's going to inhibit that egg release, which is going to basically, one that's going to have massive implications on fertility, it's going to lead to decreased levels of sexual moan production, which, you know, as we know in today's world, a lot of women are really struggling to conceive these dates. Now, I'm the first person to, I'm not going to sit there and put it on women because men have just a bigger role to play in this as women do. Most of the statistics out there will sit there and say it's one third female issues, one third male issues and the rest is a combination or a combination of unknown factors. So it's 50/50 play here for both of us. So we both need to be looking after ourselves here. But speaking specifically with women, low insulin levels, once again, he can become an issue here. I mean, it's indicated with both higher end low insulin levels. So this is where we always talk about ratio and balance, like it's super important that when we have these imbalances, especially when something like insulin, we need to correct this, especially if you're looking to conceive. What I will say is when we're talking about high insulin levels, like that is very much indicated with polycystic ovarian syndrome. So blood sugar regulation for women is super, super essential blood sugar and also blood insulin levels. But if someone's got high levels of insulin, they're going to be very estrogen dominant as well. And this is going to lead to mood swings, irregular periods, PMS, all these types of symptoms, which are going to have a massive implication on just how a woman feels, to be honest with you. And these are things that like, you know, come back to his go before the world becomes incredibly toxic. You know, women didn't really have to deal with too much of this at all. You know, it was just not really an issue. But these are modern issues, yeah, for sure. Like I talked to my mum about this all the time and she can't believe how sick modern women are. She's like, "Your husband, you should all be so healthy. We didn't have any of this. You know, they're all smoking and drinking and partying and carrying on. And you know, now we have this generation of people who are obsessed with their health and they couldn't be sicker because we live in environment that is just so toxic." So how can you, so if someone, if a woman has a low blood glucose or low insulin versus high, what would you recommend to equalize both of these problems out? So specifically if something's low in regarding to blood sugar insulin, we need to look at nutritional factors. You know, are they consuming up? Are they only specific types of diet? Are they getting the minerals and nutrients that they need? Generally, you're only able to see low insulin levels in people that are probably on the toot lean of the equation. And then on the flip scale high insulin levels, you'll see high insulin levels in people that are in, they don't look like their healthy. They're in good shape. Like I don't decline the other day who might have been carrying an extra five kilos of what he should be, but he had a fasting insulin level of 39. Now, you know, I've got another client who's 140 kilos and he's got a fasting insulin level of 29. Okay. I was just like, "Whoa, okay." So a lot of dietary and stress factors kind of play in this and the guy that I was speaking about with 39 level, you know, he'd been through some very, very stressful period over the last few years, drunk too much, eating absolutely crap, but because he was active, managed to keep his weight at bay. So from that perspective, Bye bye. high insulin high blood sugar when I look at that I'm sitting there looking at okay what are you waiting are you moving what is your lifestyle like low insulin levels and low blood glucose I'm sitting there going are you getting enough are you consuming enough of the right things because it looks like your body's running in your plate it's safe. And I think stress has a lot to do with that as well as much as I love and kind of dislike a few of the things that Dr. Mindy Peltz stands for she told this story about how she had a continuous glucose monitor and insulin monitor on her she had a fight with her daughter and she was in you know she she was doing a 72 hour fast so she was completely fast she had high ket ketones all the rest of it and she looked at her on her app later on after she had this fine her insulin went through the roof her blood sugar went through the roof so you could be eating correctly you can be eating and exercising and doing all the things correctly but if you're stressed out your blood sugar and your insulin still going to be negatively impacted and you'll still have these negative impacts on hormones. It's crazy how much stress can impact these results to personally like I had a test I had a big fight with the next part many years ago and I had my blood test taken the next day and my white cell clown had crashed to the like 2.8 wow I got to be tested two weeks later because we were worried and it was back up to look I'd naturally have a lower white blood cell camp because of some factors in my life in the parks but from that perspective like it dropped massively just based off that one fight. So there is something to the hippy-dippy sphere that says you know energy and motion like these things do absolutely have an effect on the biochemistry and the physical nature of our bodies for sure. Yeah and looking at things like you know if you've been exposed to illnesses disease chronic stress over a long period of time you know for my instance chronic stress has been a big thing through my adult life that's what smashed my white blood cell camp on my immune system function. No no matter what I did to kind of the only way to kind of really correct some of these things if you're not dealing with the underlying stresses then you can do everything from a nutritional standpoint from a you can eat the right food you can exercise move the right way but if that chronic stress is always there there's always going to be a problem so as you know from women's health perspective chronic stress is a massive issue that we need to take into consideration when we're getting these things done. Yep and it sounds so caches to say all the time oh are you stressed and almost in you know you probably see this for your clients as well and you bring up just the word you know people are like oh like yeah I'm stressed everyone's stressed out but we don't actually realize how we can negatively impact our health and I guess you you you've specialised in men's health and probably fertility as well and that's probably something you have to talk about with every single one of your clients and I feel the same as well so while we're on that what are some things that you would recommend for men and women to decrease the amount of stress in the body? Well stress is a it's a it's a herb say it's a it's a multi-pronged kind of equation because there's a multitude of different stresses out there that we're dealing with or it's physical stress nutritional stress emotional stress lifestyle stress but what I will say is a human body at a biochemical level doesn't differ in your differentiate between these types of stress it's all one stress so we need to basically and this is the beauty of blood chemistry you can start to see how this chronic stress is manifesting at a biochemical level and address it accordingly one of the big things I see quite commonly is simply most people are running on a very depleted state you know their stress output is up here the nutritional intake is in here so their bodies are chasing their own tail so what happens is the body can turn catabolic and start to break down its own tissues to find the minerals and nutrients that requires to keep us functioning it somewhat of a somewhat of a functional level like it's now if you're don't correct that imbalance you can give every supplement or make every lifestyle change under the sun but if you're not getting the minerals and nutrients you need the body's never going to be able to fight the stress at a chronic sorry at a biochemical level and you're going to be forever stuck in this chronic cycle of stress so yeah from my perspective like said we really need to take that into consideration and I think one of the biggest things with stress is there's certain stress we can control and certain ones we can't we control what goes into our body that's one of the first things we can address now if we control what we put into our body is that going to fix everything overnight no but will it help correct a few of the other imbalances over time of course it definitely will yeah so address it at a slightly getting a body back onto that kind of animal cycle where it's starting to heal itself so it's producing more energy so when you're dealing with the stressful situation guess what you can cope with it because you haven't got a million things running in your mind elsewhere all right thank you for that so the next chapter of your book focuses on electrolytes and before we go deeper into this can you please explain briefly what an electrolyte actually is because we hear this word a lot and I don't think people actually understand what it means and what electrolytes are and what their function the body actually is yeah so I guess the best way to look at electrolytes and we've all heard the word you know everyone talks about you get some electrodes I'll go and have a gatorade and you'll be fine when we're looking at electrolytes we're looking at things like sodium, potassium, like carbonate chloride now these are all essential minerals that once upon a time we used to get in our water because we used to drink water from the streams which would release these minerals off the rocks now what these electrolytes actually do is they actually help to move things in and out of the cells within the body so from a cellular health perspective they are super-super-essential so you can drink two liters of tap water a day which has got nothing but outside of the crap in there it's got nothing in the way of electrolytes in there so you can have plenty of water in the body but unless you've got these electrolytes which you do get from things like you can get from calcium, C-cell, lemon, lime they can attain a lot of these minerals out of electrolytes as well they actually hydrate the body in a cellular level which assists with you know producing energy moving minerals in and out to kind of keep us healthy and keep us functioning at our best so yeah electrolyte balance is super-super-essential and it's a lot of people do not take into consideration you know they think they drink their two liters of water a day and they think they're hydrated but they're not because their body can't actually tap water is the devil I always make posts on my Instagram about this about how we need to really make sure we're getting water from a good source because otherwise you're going to be you're going to be dehydrating yourself I think people are just drinking tap water all the time or at least unfiltered tap water from you know municipal water sources and they are just dehydrating themselves and leaching themselves of minerals over and over and over again and to be honest with you that's something that I see quite commonly throughout people's bodies dehydration because once again once when you talk about that stress impact like the more we're doing the more our body's functioning the more hydrated we need to be because we're going to burn through this stuff so you're generally seeing a lot of especially in I guess in the the older population that have been chronically stressed for a long period of time you know the corporate types that are working 10 to about a days and then they're turning to the weekend worries and they go and smash themselves across for two or three days of the week and then yeah it's very very common and I swear like the amount of times that I've recommended people go get their own waterfields is like I should be getting some kind of kickback for one of the companies I reckon I've sold them at least 50 or 60 waterfielders just through blinds out of the past you'd be a Kangan water affiliate before you know it okay so what electrolytes are the key for in your book and do you think women should keep an eye on a few of them like what you usually see in blood work from women in you know with electrolyte balance in the blood um look and in terms of importance like sodium potassium are probably the two of the first ones that I always go to like they all in terms of imports I believe they've all got imports like everything is imbalance for a reason it's got a role but in terms of what we can really most people understand you know sodium is generally where we get we get that from salt not from tail you can't get it from table salt but it's terrible don't get it from table salt but caltech seed salt inlay and pink salt um because sodium and potassium effectively they work synergistically in terms of fluid balance within the body so they very much what help to shuttle things in and out of the cell so if this is out of alignment from a cellular hydration perspective that's going to be negatively impacted what you tend to see is um people tend to be lowering the sodium equation these days because they're not getting enough you know people believe salt is bad table salt is bad mineralized salt is incredibly good because that's when we actually get these electrolytes from so like a little bit putting a little bit of a pinch of um sea salt or uh pink salt into water is actually a great way to great a natural electrolyte um but also to like calcium when we're talking about calcium a little bit later when we get to it's we're talking about minerals but from a bone health and osteoporosis perspective once again that is super super central that we're getting the levels of this inequality and we get this through our water as well not just through food because for women specifically we do know that bone healthy super important especially once they start to go through menopause and if they're depleted in these electrolytes you know sodium potassium calcium bicarb um chlorine for example then that's going to have a massive implication not just at a cellular level but from a hydration and energy production level but also in bone health so okay awesome so statistically three-quarters of women are or three-quarters of all vegan and vegetarian people are women and I noticed in your book a few of the of the warning signs um with low and deficient values in this book was associated with a vegan and vegetarian diet so women also have a far more likely chance of eating low amounts of protein. So can you please speak to to how these diet choices can show up in our kidney markers specifically. Yeah, so I am a big advocate against the vegetarian vegan diet. My, I'll give you very quickly my stances. And all honesty, like I know the large majority of vegetarians of vegans, they feel fantastic to the first two or three months because effectively, they're loading their bodies with minerals and nutrients and vitamins. They won't getting otherwise. They're increasing the levels of fiber. So all of a sudden what happens is they start to feel a lot better because the body's clearing a lot of waste out. But what happens is when they run vegetarian vegan diets over a period of time, the body starts to run into a static equation because they're not getting the, the minerals and nutrients and amino acids they require to actually heal and restore the body at a cellular and a muscular level. So regarding kidney functions specifically, what you tend to see is signs of malnutrition. So low your rear, for example, to me straight off the bat that's definitely an indication of low or malnutrition. The body's not getting enough protein. Now you can still have protein in your diet and still be malnourished because once again, we go back to that stress equation. If you're highly stressed, your protein demand is going to massively increase. If you're training as well, if you're lifting weights, if you're working on the tools, if you're working active job, your demand for amino acids to repair the muscle tissue that you're breaking down throughout the day is going to be incredibly, really elevated. So protein, for example, protein intake becomes really, really important. Now, can you get protein from vegetarian and vegan sources? Yes. Is it this bioavailable? No. And that's what people need to remember. So if you're training and then go on, have a plant-based diet afterwards, it's going to take a lot longer for those proteins to be kind of utilized by the body to get for start that repair process as opposed to, you know, animal proteins, which it's ready to go as soon as we consume it. One of the other markets that we want to look forward is Low Free Atman. Now, this is very much indicated with large amounts of muscle weight stitch. So once again, if you're not getting those proteins back into diet to support kidney function to poor support muscle repair, what happens is the body over time will start to break down the muscle tissue because muscle is very dense in minerals and nutrients, but it needs these minerals and nutrients to keep us alive. It's more important to be alive than have big muscles. Yes. For example, and you watch survival, you see what happens to these people when they become starved. Even the muscular guys, like they lose so much in the way a muscle tissue very quickly because their bodies just don't have enough to repair themselves. And the muscle weightage is incredibly high because it's so dense. So when you're running a vegetarian vegan diet for a long period of time, that's one of the things that we really kind of, you just see it very, very clearly. If you love your tonics and your medicinal mushrooms and you like things all organic and Australian made and owned, you are going to fucking love super feast. Super feast is a family owned Australian company supplying the best tonics and medicinal mushrooms in the world. Experience the magic of the I am guy, a blend, a personal favorite specifically made for female health. You can use the code RQM10 for 10% of any product at superfeeze.com.au. I have so many questions about all of the chapters, but I just want to go through each one lightly. So we're not here for hours now. So let's move on to the liver, which takes a huge hit with women specifically who are in birth, the birth control and even the copper IUD, which increases estrogen in the system. So what blood markers would you look out for with women specifically on hormonal birth control pills? Yeah. So specifically in terms of what actually happens, we're looking at the hormonal birth control does a lot of damage to the body at a cellular level. Now this leads to increased levels of inflammation when the cells become damaged, which what happens is in your sea in terms of liver markers specifically, ALT and ALC, when they become elevated, that's very much an indication that there's some form of liver damage or inflammation within the system. The liver is producing more of these enzymes to help kind of fight what's going on. So when I see ALT and AST, elevators, like, okay, straight off the bat, we need to look at what's causing this damage to the liver. Now, for example, the hormonal birth control, the contraceptive pill, for example, that is a strong indicator that you'll see elevated levels here. ALP, which is an alkaline phosphate or phosphatase, you tend to see lower in most people, and that's generally because of the malnourished thing. Now, as we know, any form of medication that we take does rub the body in minerals and nutrients too. You're likely to, generally say, a little bit lower in ALP, but AST, ALT, they're going to be higher. Now, one of the other liver markers that's worth kind of mentioning relative to this is Billy Rubin. Now, that generally is designed to mobilize bowel and excrete from the system. Now, you're likely to see an increase of levels of Billy Rubin in the system because the liver isn't able to clear this stuff as efficient. So obviously, if there's damage to the liver from something like hormonal birth control, that's going to impact Billy Rubin metabolism as well, which is going to lead to an increase to see in Billy Rubin levels. Now, one of the ways you tend to see people with high Billy Rubin count, because Billy Rubin is like an orangy ground kind of substance itself. When you have elevated levels of Billy Rubin, it tends to lead to that little, a yellowy team, that jaunus kind of look. Yes. So if you've got that skin tone, we need to look at what's going on in your liver very, very quickly. So, with women who are experiencing estrogen dominance, what liver markers would you expect to see with like a so-called sluggish liver? We hear about the sluggish liver a lot, but can you please break down what that means and what we would see in blood work with women who have this condition? Yeah, this one's pretty clear one. Generally, what you'll see once again, you'll see those elevated levels of AST and ALT. Now effectively, sluggish liver, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, hormonal imbalance, these will very, these present pretty clearly. Like I said, AST, ALT, generally your best markers. One of the other markers to look out for, especially regarding estrogen dominance, is one of the sex hormones, which is SHBG, or sex hormone binding globuline. Now, you tend to see this on the lower end of the scale. Now, SHBG is produced in the liver. So obviously when the liver is sluggish, as you mentioned, that's going to impact the production of something like SHBG, which, once again, in a low state is not great, in a high state and also is quite negative. So it's very important to understand that with the white human body, everything works in ratios. So the range has become super, super important. So it's bad if it's low. It can be bad if it's fine too and vice versa. And I think that's the thing that we need to wrap our head around is that the body is not acting alone. Like there's no one marker that acts alone. It has this relationship with everything around it. And obviously this is what your book goes into, which I think is great. But I think this is something that people need to remember when they're looking at their blood work, is that we're not just looking at these singular ranges. They all have a relationship to each other and they all have ratios with lots of different hormones that we are an antowarer of. I don't think, you know, the signs that we have at the moment is incredible. And we have more than enough knowledge to heal people adequately. Like this notion that we know everything about the human body is just so fucking ridiculous. We do not know everything. There's more that we don't know than what we do know. So moving on, so your book touched on blood protein quite beautifully is blood protein correlated with protein intake. And what would you usually see associated with high and low blood protein levels? Yeah. Okay. So I try to make the differential. It's not specifically to protein intake. It's more to do with general overall nutritional intake. Now, when you think about it from that perspective, like, is that linked with high with protein intake? Then of course, it's because protein is probably some of the most nutritional dense food that we can eat. Now, if you're not consuming proteins, obviously, then from a nutritional standpoint, you're going to be deficient in proteins. So, but it's also relative to it's not just a protein marker. So it's more a general-wise kind of I'm not getting enough of everything. It's one of the best sources to get it from. It doesn't mean I just need to eat more protein. So relative to kind of specific things like, I wanted to kind of touch on like, I'll kind of go through albuming and I'll go through goblin. And because they all have different kind of relatives now, one of the things with albuming, I should touch by, so let me take it back to that. Obviously, what protein markers in the body say albuming and goblin, very much, transfers of anything and everything around the body. So they are super essential. I do tend to see a lot of people with on the lower end of the spectrum relative to overall protein markers. But as I said, albuming and goblin have slightly different roles. So it's essential to make sure that we know that they're both within range, not just looking at the total protein care. When someone, for example, has low albuming, they're going to look at things like, well, nutrition is a big thing. So we need to look at, okay, are they eating enough food? Are they eating enough proteins in their diet? Vegetarians and vegans are notorious for having low albuming. Also, to liver dysfunction. Now, obviously, with these trans-loss, these proteins, sorry, being produced within the liver, if the liver is not functioning well, that is going to impact their production. Now the fact, excuse me, another factor too, we need to look at gastrointestinal dysfunction, is there issues with absorption? Is there issues with nutrient breakdown? You know, because all these things will impair the body's capacity to produce albuming. and therefore looking at something like. High levels of aluminum, for example, now that can be relative for example to elevated levels of protein intake if you're consuming too much protein and your body's not designed to take in that much That will lead to something like high-album now definitely not saying the carnival diet or something like that It's bad because it's not it's always relative to the individual because we're all different Just because a food looks good on or says it does this or that under a microscope That doesn't mean once it's within our bodies It doesn't act differently. You know one man's food is another man's poison. What I am much protein. I need to eat is very different how much protein you need to it so It's very essential kind of what we're working with this stuff We need to work it you know can be a little bit of trial and error to make sure we're finding the ballots For what you as an individual needs because ethnicity plays a role. Yeah, hormone plays a role. Now gut microbiome plays a role But one thing that is very clear with fire when the levels is that dehydration that we spoke about just before If we're finding high levels of ablubin, you know is the blood moving sufficiently is there enough fluid within the body to actually move this stuff around or is it kind of aggregating? Then if we talk about globions now as we know globions have much more of a link with the immune function So when we're looking at low levels of globion once again We're looking at male absorption the body just not being able to produce enough Live it as function once again plays a role in this but also to this can be very much linked back to autoimmunity and immune deficiencies if we're low in globulums You know immunoglobulums very look very important for our immune system now is that impacting? Had an immune function quite immune level. Sorry When we tend to see high levels of globulums like once again that can be more linked with okay This can be very strongly linked with specific kind of autoimmune conditions for example like rheumatoid arthritis multiple sclerosis Because the body's producing excess amount of these immunoglobulums to try and fight off its cells So we're going to see this in high levels. It's not something I see too often But it's definitely when you do sense like okay, we need to do some further investigations what's going on? And what are your new fixes for that? So if someone has high or low of these two specific proteins in blood work, what would you recommend to fix either of those issues? Dietary is probably the first protocol But also do you need to support liver function? They're probably the two main states that I go to first because as a byproduct if you support liver function theoretically That should take a lot of stress off the body You know a lot of people these days focus heavily on the gap which is super super important because we all know the gut is affected Our second brain. It's where it's basically the the mailing and packaging and sorting system of the body It does a lot of work But also to deliver as a mechronic stress and that's going to impact our bodies ability to deal with everything that's going on within the body So we need very much need to support liver function while we're doing this type of work But yeah, in terms of what we need to look at is very much From a nutritional standpoint what are the things we're missing from our diet? What might we be consuming too much oil or are we putting in things that are causing further irritation or further liver stress? Which is leading to these imbalances And so what would you recommend would you like to recommend any herbs or specific vitamins and supplements for supporting the liver specifically? Um generally what you'd want to do you want to support you want to increase adiocyaninase So you know dark fruits, dark sweatsuits, much much higher in adiocyanin content Then also to you want to look at supporting like glutathione production So things like inner-sidyl cysteine or glutathione as the supplement itself Um very very good to increase this uh overall kind of as sorry I should take once again take a step back Glutathione is the myastat adiocyanin in the body So anything we can do to produce extra glutathione to help eradicate free radicals toxins, pollutants, chemicals that will support liver function and then once again helps to balance out the protein markers Um also something like uh toodcarte don't ask me to pronounce The word itself and what toodcariz Toodcarizum form of acid Um once the animal helps to support this adiac chemical level To support function and natural production of these proteins within the liver Okay great so let's move on to the next chapter again So let's talk about lipids So lipids are really controversial at the moment specifically cortisol in um in cardiology So what's your stance on how blood lipids specifically cortisol are not cortisol Sorry cholesterol are seen in our typical alipatech medicine model Okay, so this is a rant for a completely different podcast We can do one specifically on cholesterol. I'd love to do that One thing one thing I started doing so I'm based in Melbourne. I started working out of um a facility down in Burmaurus which is a rather larger kind of elderly population So I'm working with down there specifically I'm there a couple days a week and I'm working with a lot of 50 plus trying to clientele Now cholesterol is a big topic of discussion down there because every single one of them has got their GP pushing them to go into statins my recommendation is Write the hell away from those things Because they're nothing but harm and if you really dig into the studies the incidence of actual benefit is less than 1% Less than 1% people and I think statins make one they are a money pig For the pharmaceutical industry they make a huge amount of money for the pharmaceutical industry and they absolutely do not help Because once you're on them you're on them for the doctor once you're on them for the rest of your life You can imagine the profit that comes from that Effectively what they do they strip your body of co-ins on Q10 they deplete energy levels they damage muscle tissue The heart itself is a muscle we're damaging the heart by taking statins all they're basically doing is suppressing The body's natural cycle of core cholesterol Which actually if we talk about cholesterol itself is super super essential for the production of all our steroid-based hormones So we're talking estrogen testosterone cortisol DHA which is our youth hormone Elosterone which is super essential for fluid balance or hydration within the body now if you have the lower levels of cholesterol you cannot produce these hormones So when you start taking statins or you're naturally trying to suppress cholesterol levels Your energy levels your sex You'll be known your sexual function is going to be massively impaired so I'm of the belief with a lot of the research that I've done that the body will naturally produce enough cholesterol with sufficient obviously dietary intake to support It's our needs for example one of the big reasons with from When we look specifically LDL cholesterol, which is known as the bad cholesterol It's not bad. It's actually really really good But it's one of the big markers they look at it from a cheap piece perspective when they put some on a statin So I'm just going to interject really quickly So what is the medicine level of what what overall cholesterol level you should have and LDL and HGL And what do you recommend is healthy in blood work So in terms of total cholesterol Medical ranges are generally between I think they're between three and a half and five they vary between labs Um, but generally most GPs want low cholesterol. They generally want to below four and a half Now the ranges that I look at Generally somewhere between four and a half to six and a half So I want it on the higher level of the equation now Little bit higher than that is not the end of the world. Especially if you made significant dietary changes like For example when you increase the amount of proteins and fats in someone's diet From a cholesterol perspective you generally see an uptick in total cholesterol And then they go so what tends to happen is like if I work with a client We increase their diet increase total cholesterol from a dietary perspective They get their blood done their cholesterol is even higher than what it wants Even though and what happens is that is the GP sees themselves and they're like oh no you have to go on a statin now This is with clients that are 25 30 35 40 who have in the previous months of kind of changing their diet have lost weight Increased energy look healthier performing better But of course because that one number on that one blood test has gone up you've got to go on a statin and it's like no No, it's just the body adapting to Increases in dietary cholesterol and eventually balances out over time So I naturally want high levels of cholesterol because once again as we mentioned before it's Supercentral production of all their essential all-owns that keep us young in third-time and virul I guess So from the flight healthy perspective cholesterol is essential um Yeah, I'm when I was just said before when I was talking about LDL cholesterol like LDL cholesterol is utilized with produced within liver and it's recycled by the liver The issue with cholesterol is when cholesterol specifically LDL cholesterol becomes oxidized from poor lifestyle choices so we're talking alcohol, medicinal usage, poor diet, sugar You know saturated nasty fats those types of things What that does to LDL cholesterol it becomes oxidized Now it's oxidized LDL that is the issue that's the stuff that can cause inflammation can lead to plucking within the arteries so It's not a cholesterol issue. It's a dietary issue Because what cholesterol LDL cholesterol becomes oxidized it cannot be recycled by the liver Which is what leads to the the clogging of the arteries etc So effectively what we want to do is ensure that that Uh LDL cholesterol doesn't become oxidized by one Ensuring reading of quality diet and eliminating as much toxicity as possible But also including things like antioxidants in our diet To help remove these fray radicals to prevent the oxidization of cholesterol before it becomes nasty take a stat and you're effectively just blocking cholesterol at the source when we actually do need it. The issue is the lifestyle choices are what we're putting into our body. Thank you. We will do a whole other podcast on cholesterol because I was vegan for a long time and that was something that something that you know the vegan science world talks about a lot is cholesterol and how deadly it is and it wasn't until I started eating meat again and actually started feeling better and I didn't lose weight but I felt more I felt more vital and I felt like my skin was better and then I found out that cholesterol is absolutely essential and I feel like I was completely hoodwinked. I think for the most part most of modern society has been hoodwinked and there's lots of weird signs out there around cholesterol. I mean I think we could talk probably to a whole podcast in the future just about that we could talk about that forever. Another controversy is iron so there's so much bad information on iron circulating at the moment what is your perspective on why so many women have low iron levels and what can we do about it? So I knew this one was going we again asked this all the time. Now effectively iron is critical for health, any production, red cell production, the problem is we're finding and I'd say a little lies my joke but I say a majority of women though it's tests especially pre-metables with them when we run their iron tests and they might have high levels of iron or sufficient levels of iron in the blood but they're generally depleted in ferretin which is effectively stored iron. So basically they do have some iron in their body but they're not storing any. They reserves the all-barred going so effectively if you think it from that perspective if you don't have a piece of red meat or intake any kind of dietary iron sources for a couple of days and you've got no stores this is obviously going to feel or explain why you're so you're feeling so depleted so crashed because the body's got nothing left. So regarding kind of as to why this is there's a couple of factors that are at play. The obvious one is dietary intake so women often assume enough high iron based foods so specifically iron protein sorry animal proteins because once again animal proteins minerals nutrients vitamins iron are going to be far greater absorbed or far more efficiently absorbed from animal proteins than it is from plant substances. So that's why consuming proteins within your diet becomes super essential. Now this whole analogy of only eating red meat twice a week I honestly believe is absolute bollocks because they recently came out and kind of disproved this with a study that what they were doing the studies that were saying that red meat is bad and should have a twice a week basically included every single process food or process red meat in the study they've never separated a piece of steak from a piece of salami so yeah it's smart enough to work out the difference between the two. But I guess one of the other factors relative to one of the reds of why women have low iron obviously I'm probably two two parts I should mention obviously a woman that's got a healthy menstrual cycle she's going to be losing iron when she when she goes through a bleed like that's a given that's why generally you'll find especially you've seen in the book like the ranges that I've got for fared levels between men and women are different you know I expect men to have higher levels of fared because we don't have a cycle we don't have a cyclical bleed whereas women obviously when they bleed every month they are losing a little bit of iron in their blood but also I guess one of the big factors that we look at and this is relevant to men and women is from a microbiome perspective if your gut health is impaired your body's capacity to breakdown foods if your microbiome is in balance you don't have the right bacteria that actually can synthesize iron within the gut then obviously you're going to be low on but then also from a structural standpoint if you've got damage or intestinal permeability you know damage to the cells in your gut your capacity to absorb mine is going to be impaired as well yeah further to that if you're consuming low levels of vitamin D sorry vitamin C vitamin C is required to uptake on within the cells so gastrointestinal from a gastrointestinal perspective that is critical when it comes to iron levels within the body and we will circle back to that in a few questions because yeah I would like to talk about iron infusions and leaky gut so do you recommend first of all iron infusions and supplementation of iron okay so two different answers iron infusions know the simple premises whilst it will get a lot of iron into the body very quickly honestly you will feel better the amount of people that I've spoken to that get a iron infusion they do feel better afterwards because all of a sudden they've gone from having nothing to having quite a bit so there's going to be a natural logic in terms of energy and how they feel that knock on effect however is much more significant so basically what happens is when you have an iron infusion it all bypasses the gut so effectively you're just pumping it into the blood so you're affected effectively you're just you're kind of it's just a band-aid solution but also to when they're putting iron when you're having an iron infusion the levels of iron that are going into your blood are well above what the body can actually deal with intolerance so the body will take some of it and you'll feel a little bit more energetic but what happens to the left over the excess iron that's now in the blood now effectively that's going to lead to oxidative stress it's going to lead to something called lipid peroxidation which is basically the damaging of the cells within the body which is then further going to lead to increased levels of inflammation now that's going to impair circulation and each transportation nutrient uptake and circular transportation as well so the knock on effect of having an iron infusion is quite significant simply because the body's dealing with high levels of iron that should not be dealing with or have the inner system at one time it's a toxicity risk it really is yeah so could iron infusions lead to leak you got indirectly yes yeah so all those things that I mentioned before like if you thought about if you were to pump all that iron to the gut that's going to do significant damage to the gut line and with like because it goes with a bloodstream all those responses that I mentioned before you know oxidative stress damage to cell integrity as a biocratic as it circulates around the system is going to come back and damage the gut at a cellular level because the body can't utilize all the iron that's been absorbed in that or being infused so it recirculates it's so awful because women have low iron and then they go to their GP and they're just like okay take a supplement and I have so many problems with ferritin late taking iron ferritin for gut health because I think there's certain like microbiome in in our microbiome there's certain bacteria yeast and fungi that feed on ferritin right and it could feed the bad bacteria so we could probably talk about that these iron infusions I just I see more harm than good overall so thank you for explaining that I just don't see it's a short term solution but at a cost yeah and that's very much a lot of the stuff that we do with from a medical perspective that's kind of how it works um I mean when we speak specifically about supplementation for example with iron like I'm not against it but I do tend to steer away from it unless it's like really severe or someone's running a vegetarian diet and they're not willing to shift towards um towards animal proteins or to try to get it from food sources um and generally with that instance one of the things that we need to be aware of is when we supplement with iron when we have elevated levels of iron in the body it releases something called hapsidon which effectively blocks the absorption of excess iron so if you're consistently iron supplementing sorry supplementing with iron on a daily basis you're just elevating this hapsidon level which is in turn affecting your ability to actually absorb iron so once again you end up with increased levels of iron circulating through the system wow now one of the ways to counteract this is to base me you could supplement your iron every second day which is one thing that I'll do with these specific clients but in terms of supplementation but we go back to the gut now there's actually a really good company out there that makes specialized probiotics and we want to plug them but they're out there um no you actually like them um like forget there's a company called Advanced Probiotics which I came across a couple of years ago after credit one of my friends who kind of brought it to my attention and they do make specific supplements that are designed to support the bacteria to support specific conditions so whether that's something like X-MAR, uh, PBS, um even iron so there's a specific probiotic strain that they utilize in there iron probiotic which will help to produce more of the bacteria that will produce more iron within that is fascinating and what's the name again sorry? Advanced Probiotics is a company I think the supplement itself is probiotic uh so biome iron pluses the actual probiotic it is a practitioner product um and for good reason like you know you don't want to be taking these just on a whim you want to be consoling with someone that knows what they're talking about but that's what I've kind of led towards I've shifted away from supplementing with probiotics I'm sorry with iron supplementation and shifting more to the probiotic form because we're actually going to correct it at a at a more kind of at a base level is probably what else are people? Well it sounds like you're healing an iron deficiency problem and an iron uptake problem holistically you're going okay we don't have iron in the body let's give your let's give more dietary iron and more supplementation let's only take it twice a day or like twice every second day and then let's also give you the probiotics to support the uptake of this in the gut as well I think how you're dealing with all of that is quite beautiful and I think that's how we should be doing it as opposed to just slapping on a huge iron infusion which causes all of this fall out later on This episode is proudly sponsored by DriftSurfco. They offer non-toxic, ethically-made and hand-drawn rugs and yoga mats and if you've seen me on my socials you're probably seen one of the three mats I have by them and one yoga mat I have by them. I absolutely back these guys and net it was one of the owners and she does all the art as she practices her Buddhist meditations and so it's incredible when you're on these rugs and on these yoga mats you can feel the love that have been pressed into these. They're made ethically, they're all non-toxic and if you want you can go to their website driftsurfco.org and you can use woman 10 for an exclusive 10% off any DriftSurfco product. So let's move on to some minerals. So one of the last chapters of your book or the last chapter of your book actually goes into minerals and this is something I talk about a lot with women because generally we see that minerals are quite depleted in women and we need high minerals in women because we're producing all these different sex hormones all the time. So what are some common themes you see in a modern woman's blood plan regarding mineral balances and I know this is quite a broad question so you might actually my question is would you see high copper in women with estrogen dominance would you see low magnesium in someone who was just getting birth like could you give us just some ballpark figures for if someone went out and got a blood test if they had lower high of these minerals the minerals that you talk about in your book what can we talk about what that actually means and how to take this apart and how to understand this blood work. Yeah we can break this down a little bit because it's quite important when you come to getting your blood tested these are some of the harder ones to get the cheapies to run. One of the tricks that I tell women is I tell them that if they're working with me I'm working with a nutritionist even I'm a naturopath because we're specifically looking at from a diet you're dispecting. Now across the board magnesium is a big big issue for both sexes but especially for women. Now magnesium is one of the most essential minerals that we can be consume when we need to consume on a daily basis. The problem is getting magnesium from food sources these days is becoming more and more difficult because magnesium used to be very very rich in dense in the soil which would grow into all the produce that we didn't you know whether it's fruits and vegetables or whether it's even just like cows that would eat the grass which had magnesium which we then it turned into cows. Magnesium in high levels of stress it's basically the one mineral that really kind of helps to fight or buffer quarters off. So when you become highly highly stressed the body needs more magnesium. Now if you're highly stressed but you've got no magnesium going in then all sudden stress is going to run rampant through the system. Now I think you mentioned before in terms of stress tolerance especially to women the the reality is women don't have the same level of stress tolerance that men do from a biochemical perspective it becomes very very obvious. So magnesium for most women is I pretty much with pretty much every woman that I deal with that is stress which is pretty much every woman. You know magnesium supplementation is super essential because it helps to calm the body down not just at a muskial level because everyone knows magnesium is good for muscle cramps but also from a mental perspective it helps to calm the brain down. So for those that can kind of tend towards the a little bit anxious. So I didn't question yeah magnesium is really really good for that. Also too for example like zinc and beat vitamins you know especially women that consume low protein diets or no protein diets you know B vitamins zinc zinc are found in the highest forms generally in animal proteins. They're really really essential from B vitamins are essential for energy production for stress tolerance zinc is super essential for super essential for immune function. Now in stress state these things become massively depleted so they're kind of common trends that I'll see specifically really zinc and B vitamins are probably zinc magnesium and B vitamins are ones that I see especially B12 chronically low in a lot of women and like these can be corrected quite easily from a nutritional standpoint but if you've been in that stress state or you've been doing you know you've been working to a grinding or let's say burning the can or both ends for a long period of time like we just to plead our bodies and all this stuff and this is why we feel so kind of pain. Yes you can give most people a B vitamin and all of a sudden they'll feel a kick in energy like two days later. Yeah yeah awesome and what would you recommend that women do to boost mineral levels if they don't want to eat animal protein would you suggest something like chilegit or like what would your recommendation be? Yeah so chilegit something like that will definitely help you know depending on if they're willing to use for example there's some really good organ based supplementation so if they don't want to eat meal eat meat that they're willing to take animal based supplementation that's another way to go about it. In those instances though that's where especially if they're not willing to shift away from the vegetarian or vegan lifestyle which you know I can understand especially from a from certain aspects if it's a help aspect but I kind of start to yeah I'll start to. But the ethical component if you don't know where your meat is coming from I feel like we're both very lucky because we recirculate in these health fields I live in fucking Tasmania so I can get really good meat wherever I am this is the place of milk and honey so it's not an issue but I think you know for the most part people who are vegan vegetarian don't live out in the country where they have access to good meat and if they didn't want to move away from that would you recommend synthetic vitamins for this and minerals for this or what do you generally these are the cases as we mentioned before specifically like with the iron it's a case like this where I would recommend supplementation and it would have to be long-term okay you know taking one model of B vitamins is not gonna boost to B12 when you B6 and you fall back to the healthy levels you know if you're not consuming it and you're living a life in today's world which is a very stressful existence like you're gonna be constantly depleting yourself so vegetarianism vegans the reality is and I'm sure most of them are aware of it like long-term supplementation or something like a B12 like a zinc it just has to exist otherwise they're just gonna be chronically chasing their own tail and they're just not gonna get the best at themselves at all so those synthetic vitamins can be used and they're not optimal and I do agree with you and I like how you went okay will they will they eat meat okay no will they eat organ meats which we could also do another whole conversation on organ meats because I think they are so fantastic and so bioavailable and if you don't feel open to eating that okay then synthetic vitamins are the next best thing but not the most amazing choice but you feel like do you feel like they have any negative consequences in the body for bioavailability over the long term because they're not optimal at least how I see it what's your perspective on synthetic vitamins and minerals yeah especially this synthetic stuff yes I understand there's issues with bioavailability the quality is super super essential you know if you walk in the bullies and there's a special for 50% off their entire range of supplements and they're already cheap $20 bottles as it is yeah there's a reason why they're so cheap so like in general it's probably relative just to kind of touch base on supplementation in general like I'm a huge advocate for supplementation to restore balance within the body now once we've got that balance and we've got these levels back up to where they need to be that's when it becomes less essential theoretically we should be able to get the majority of what we need from nutritional yep but that takes time so that's where you know for example I'm working with a client trying to build up their B12 levels okay why don't we need to get the meeting more animal proteins but two will it help to get their levels up higher quicker with a quality B12 yes it will so you might run a couple bottles of that whilst they're kind of working on the nutrition but yeah relative to that like I'm not I kind of it's the less from any agents so in terms of working with synthetic vitamins yes I will work with them but they're not ideal I'd rather be getting it from nutritional standpoints but also to like I said not everything is created equal you know there's some really good quality brands out there that I use a lot of for example thorn is probably a thorn research is probably my favorite company in terms of supplementation the amount of research they do compared to all the other companies out there is next level and their supplements work I've been using them for the years now so yeah it's a thorn research you know you might pay $40 for a B vitamin there versus a $20 Swiss B vitamin like it's the same as food quality yet and organic piece of steak versus a conventional grown piece of steak from worse it's like yeah and I think we just need to start prioritising health and it is more expensive than it is an investment and you're and you're worth it that's what I always tell women in my in my sessions that you're absolutely worth a $40 bottle of vitamins if you it's not a band like we're using this as a band-aid this is not a full-on solution I think in vegan vegetarian people synthetic vitamins are going to be a long-term solution and it's better than nothing and that's okay and this is where personalized nutrition is really important because everyone is so different okay so thank you for that so what do you commonly see in women with minerals and in their blood work on hormone or birth control and I keep bringing back to hormone or birth control because women are really interested in how this is affecting their mineral levels in their blood I see this all the time I see really depleted minerals and it changes all the time what do you usually see and what do you think of some fixes for that? Well effectively as you just mentioned like you're going to see depleted levels of just minerals in general especially bee vitamins and as we mentioned before because bee vitamins are so central for energy production and also for regulating stress levels Like, hormonal birth control, like, yeah, I'm not the expert in women's health, but I work with a lot of women. And, and I do, I work as, like I said, brilliant when it comes to this stuff, working with this self as well. Like, when women are on hormonal birth control, it just messes with the body on so many levels. And a lot of it, when you strip it back to the biochemical standpoint, when it's robbing the body of minerals and nutrients that you're consuming, then effectively, of course, it's going to have the negative implications moving forward. Like, and especially from a fertility standpoint, like, because if you're missing these essential minerals that are required for hormone production, that's going to lead to issues that are kind of, like, with sexual hormones that are fit, and from a fertility perspective. So I really can't advocate enough for women to kind of get them away from hormonal birth control. Yes. You know, this is your jam. Like, in terms of kind of what they can do about it, like I said, like, your work is fantastic. And that's why, you know, I definitely send women your way when, especially down in Tasmania. So from that perspective, I really think that we need to look at it from a, when you look at it from a biochemical level, if the body is depleted, how is it supposed to function properly? What is causing this depletion? Yes, because you're not consuming enough of what you need, and all because you're taking hormonal birth control or you're on that medication that's robbing your body of these minerals and nutrients. Like, the point you just want to be able to function with that. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So how does hormonal birth control impact women's circulating calcium levels? Now, this is an interesting one because hormonal birth control, I have looked into this briefly before, and from what I understand, it doesn't really impact calcium levels on a negative, in a negative way. And if anything, it's been shown to have a moderate intake or moderate increase. But the knock on from that is what hormonal birth control will impact at the calcium level is the capacity to absorb and metabolize all these minerals and nutrients. As we mentioned, when we're taking hormonal birth control, it robs minerals and nutrients from the body, which can lead to cellular damage and impaired mineral nutrient uptake. So from that level, that's how I look at it. It's very much will it impact calcium levels? Not negatively, but is it impacting at a indirectly at another level? Definitely so. Okay, great. All right. And just to finish up one of the last questions. So we're touching on a few different things that are quite controversial and like picking up lots of steam in the sphere at the moment. And one of them is coffeatoxicity. So coffeatoxicity is having a moment. Can you please speak to its optimal levels and how much too little or too much can impact a female body? Yeah, so coffeatoxicity, you're right. It's like it's a big one kind of in today's realm. We're seeing more and more of it, especially funnily enough those who live out in Western Australia where the soil couple levels is quite high. You're finding people with higher coffe levels and so obviously, sorry, I was able to say just because they're consuming more copper based or copper, sorry, food's draining more copper dead soil. But also, when it comes to a lot of earth control, we all know coffeatoxicity is quite commonly in this stuff. And from the way that I look at it, it's a difficult one to get GPs to test, to be honest to do. So it's something you really kind of need to go in there and ask. You know, if you're on earth control, 100% mentioned, look, I'm on earth control. I'm a little bit worried about my coffeatoxicity levels and how this might be impacting my body. Can we check coffeatoxicity? I like to think they do that if they work with a good GFE. But I mean, optimal ranges generally, I like them to be between 16 and 18 and the crazy part is the medical realm looks at it between 13 and 22. So they're very, very flawed ranges. We both know that excess coffeatoxicity levels can impact the menstrual cycle. It will have an impact on fertility impregnances. Also too, copper is essential for the sense of this of thyroholmones. When we're talking about metabolism, energy production, weight management, it can have, if copper is impacting thyroid function, then that's going to have the knock on effect that's going to have impacts, weight management, energy. These are super, super essential for women's health and health in general. One of the other things that I talk about, and I've got dabbled into a little bit, is it's not just essential that copper is in the rice levels, but also there's something when we look at zinc and copper together, so the ratio between the two and the impact on mental health. If you have an imbalance and there's been countless studies done on zinc and copper ratios, I'm pretty sure there was a study that came across years ago relative to, they tested inmates and their mental health relative to copper and zinc levels relative to episodes of psychosis and depression. They found that when the balance was out of whack, they tended to lean more one way than the other. Sorry, just to go back a little bit, so higher copper and low zinc was associated with psychiatric disorders in inmates, prison inmates in this study. Yeah, low levels of copper, I'm sorry, low levels of zinc, high levels of copper were shown to lead to more incidents of anxiety, depression, mood disorders, mental impairment. This is where we go back to that, what we mentioned before. I want to emphasize, especially if you are looking at my book and you're looking at one page, it's not a good idea to sit there and say, "Oh, low copper take X, Y and Z." You need to sit there and go, "Okay, what are the trends throughout my entire blood work that I'm picking up from, whether it's copper, is my zinc levels sufficient?" Okay, copper and zinc's fine, pick out and move on to the next. Or maybe my copper levels good, but my zinc levels low, that means also the ratio or the zinc to copper ratio is going to be out, so that could be potentially impacting my mental health. Interesting. I need to look at it, we can't just look at one marker and sit there and say, "That's the problem I'm not feeling great." It's an overall sum of everything combined that we start to see trends when things are out of balance that actually dictate how we're feeling and can lead to disease and illness, or even just like fatigue and just not performing it to bits. All right. Thank you so much. That was incredible. Is there anything else you wanted to say before you finish up? Can you please tell people where to find you, where to buy the book and more about your partner in crime who wrote this book with you as well? Yeah. So, I'm based in Melbourne, so I work out of two facilities. I work in Albert Park out of a place called Fraya Health. I'm in Bo Morris and a place called Call of Foundations. I've kind of split my time between the two and also a consultant, obviously. You can find me. My website is anylookers.com.au. If you are interested in purchasing the book, you can buy it through that website. I'm going to run a 20% discount for anyone in the purchase of the book, simply use the code "Arch Woman" in the checkout. And that will entitle you to 20% off, whether that's the hard copy or the ebook. Like regarding that, I think the book itself was originally had the intention of kind of designing for students, for practitioners that wanted a little bit more assistance. But what we found is a lot of people that are just health conscious that kind of want to take control of their own health will find this really useful. I mean, it's written in very easy to understand. It's broken down into simple language. There's no kind of heavy medical jargon or anything like that in that. And Sarah puts in screenshots or shares some screenshots of what's actually inside the book, so you can see what it's about. But I think in terms of kind of moving forward, the initial book kind of covers off the markers that Sarah and I kind of spoke about today, we're in the process of writing a second copy which is going to deep dive into fire hormones, sexual hormones, some of the more obscure tests that are a bit more specialized, I guess. Because we've just found it, we've had no overwhelming response of people that are comfortable, they've just found it incredibly helpful. We sit there and say, look, we want to get as much of this information out of the population as we can. Because especially in today's time, we're all learning that what we're being told in regardless of the health of our being is not serious. And we really need to kind of take control of our own health and the more information we have in our disposal, the better we can be. All right, well thank you so much. I really appreciate that discount code for everyone and I hope everyone uses it. Thank you. No, you're more than welcome. Yeah, it's always lovely to chat Sarah. Yeah. We could go for hours on anything and everything. Oh yeah, I think maybe I'll have you and I'll have Dr. Miranda Miles on with you as well when you release your second book, which will be in March, is that correct? I mean, we're aiming to get it to the end of March, start of April. Okay, no pressure. I'm just saying. That is the goal. This year, I should get to imagine, as we've discussed earlier, is getting busy fast. So, but we really want to try and get the status as soon as possible because we just think like this type of information. There's just not enough of it out there. No. In a world today where we've got information out of fingertips, one person says this, and another person says this, we don't really know what to make of it. So, if we can kind of bring it all together in one kind of resource, it really kind of helps to make things a little bit easier for everyone. Yeah, I mean, I remember when I was quite young, I was quite obsessed with Buddhism, this walk-knack. And there was this story, this parable of these four monks who were all blind and they all found an elephant and they all had a different part of its body. One had its trunk, one had its tail, one had its foot and one had an ear. And they're all explaining what this animal was and they're all fighting over what it was. And really, everything everyone was saying was true, but it was all different parts of the same animal. And I think that's what we're seeing in nutrition. or science at the moment. I think that's why your book is so fundamental for practitioners and even individual use is because it makes sense of this elephant in the room that we all have and it can help us understand what problem actually is going on and what the root cause actually is and how to solve this problem. Yeah. Cool. Well, thank you so much. We'll have you on soon. [Music]